Leap Before You Think

I was obsessed with the game Okami for a significant chunk of my childhood. It had everything: wolves; mythology but not Greek or Egyptian; dry humour; beautiful stylised art; gameplay that was challenging but accessible to an eight year-old; women with huge badonkahoongas who turn into murderous foxes; being on the Wii so I could actually play it; a story that made me cry; wolves; women who no, seriously, really gave me a challenge for my sexuality at eight years old...

I was. Obsessed. With it. I played it again a few years ago on the PS4 remaster, and it fully withstood the test of time. It was equally as fun then as eight, ten, twelve years before. And thinking about it, my obsession then opened up so many doors to what would come in my life later. Before Okami, my internet usage was limited to Webkinz, Club Penguin, and Neopets. My desperation to consume more of the game than the game itself had to offer led to googling pictures from the game, which led to looking at fanart of the game, which led to deviantART, which I joined (with parent permission, to be fair) at the tender age of ten.

The internet was a much more lawless place then; before five big media corporations owned every website and it was all about social media, forums and small home-grown websites grew their own jungles. The other huge impact on my internet usage was Warrior Cats (much the same story, except it led to writing RP forums rather than dA), but specifically I was thinking about it earlier, and. Well. Maybe I'd have made my way there on my own eventually, but I joined dA well before the existence (or at least, the spread in my age group) of Tumblr or Facebook, and connected with millions of people and hundreds of communities, for ah, good and ill. I was exposed to things I shouldn't have been, but eh, that builds character. I knew enough to keep myself mostly safe and when to click off things I didn't like. Nothing had content warnings or age barriers or tags in those days, y'know.

My writing itself was heavily influenced by those forums that all came from Warrior Cats obsession, but I would never have progressed remotely as far as I did with my art or other parts of my writing if it weren't for deviantART. I'd never have written The Red Prince if it weren't for the art I did alongside it. I'd never have finished writing Seeking, the first novel I published, if it weren't for the small community of writers on dA that inspired me and gave constant feedback and encouragement, and I'd never have published it if not for them, and the same for Each Separate Dying Ember, and while I stopped posting my stories chapter-by-chapter online after that and left dA behind for good, I'd never have written or published Sylvestus without those.

And for me, it all goes back to typing Oki and Amaterasu into Google Images every single day, and following the link on one of the paintings there, and ending up in this mysterious world where people made art and other people looked at it and everything opened up ahead of me.

But there's another way Okami has stuck with me all these years, other than a general fondness and whatever latent effect childhood obsessions have on adult personality.

The wolf/sun goddess you play as, Amaterasu, has a very small companion, Issun, a wandering artist and moderate lecher, who provides all of the dialogue for the non-verbal Ammy (with his own twist, and sometimes in opposition to what she actually wants). One of his catchphrases was a surprising balm to a kid with severe anxiety: uttered on the several occasions where you are required to quite literally take a leap of faith into the next area (into the lair of Orochi the Eight-headed Serpent, or (after being shrunk down to Issun's size) into the throat of the sleeping emperor, or straight off a cliff into the ocean), he would spend a few moments airing his anxieties and bemoaning how he was too young and handsome to die, and then shrug and say:

"Like my momma always said... Leap before you think!"

It was a neat way of resolving his internal dilemmas of this mildly selfish yet equally reckless character, while also convincing kids playing the game that it was okay to mess up or jump off the edge of the map and just see what happens. The game also rewarded those leaps with beautiful graphics and a certain joyous flourish, an immediate reward for your courage: never a tough boss battle without some spectacular landscape and quick comedy first.

It's a simple mantra, and I still pull it out - I have since I first played the game too many years ago. I'm not at all that impulsive when it comes to the important things - I'm careful with money, I spend months or years planning and debating tattoos, I'm good at carefully planning a trip or a move or a big purchase - but equally I've learned to enjoy the spontaneity in things too. Get on the back of a motorbike with no helmet going 60 mph through Marrakech morning traffic, leap before you think! Make that scary phone call you've been putting off for three months right now with no script or planning, leap before you think! Drop everything and go and visit your friend who's in a bad mental place right now, leap before you think!

Some things you can build up and debate over for months, thinking and building ladders and establishing timelines and drafting plans. You can save money by booking early, you can avoid disappointment by preparing in advance, you can manage your expectations by doing research. But so many things in life will always, in the end, be a massive hole in the ground that leads straight down into the dark with noxious purple smoke pouring out of it. There's no other way into Orochi's lair. You can go around it a few times to be sure and stock up on health-restoring bones and equip your favourite weapon, but if you keep thinking about it, you're just going to be walking around the edge hesitating until he awakens and destroys the whole of Nippon.

Sometimes you have to shrug, kick off your shoes, and mutter, "Leap before you think," to yourself.

 

Join the art website that will change your life, giving you new skills, many years of anxiety and negative social interactions, and the motivation to follow your dreams and publish your books. Press the "finalise publication" button even though people might not like the book and it might get bad reviews and there might be typos you missed and once you do this you'll start losing Sylv again. Walk onto that stage and perform the poem that will officially excise you from the good graces of people who want you to keep your mouth shut about the things they did to you.

Make that phone call.

Are you standing at the edge of a new area today?

[Image ID: a screenshot of the original Okami game, showing a blurry gameplay screen of Amaterasu, a white wolf with red markings and a fiery shield on her back, looking over the edge of cliff. Below is a historical Japanese village and beyond it, the ocean. All of the artwork is in a traditional Japanese style as if painted with ink and brush. End ID]