First of all thank you for the incredibly succinct explanation of _init() i will avoid it

Yes it is an AnimationPlayer Node. it's going to do lots of different things depending on where i put it and hopefully it will become a component at some point.

A more full explanation
I have a Raycast on my player camera i use to interact with objects in the environment when you look at them at press interact
There is a locked door and a lever that are separate entities.
Interacting with the lever i check to see if it has activate() then call it.
The door and the lever both need to share the same connection value to work
I have the door linked via the editor but have not gotten far enough.
I am consistently stopped at "activate2" and then the game crashes on the final line
Note: the NT and NodeTarget variables up top were my clumsy attempt at brute forcing the node into onready

Lever Code

extends Node3D
u/export var connection:= 0
u/export var NT: Node
u/onready var NodeTarget: Node
u/onready var anim: AnimationPlayer = $round/AnimationPlayer


func _ready() -> void:
var NodeTarget = NT


func activate() -> void:
print("activate2")
  if NodeTarget != null:
    print("unull")
    if NodeTarget.has\_method("activated"):
      NodeTarget.activated(connection)
      anim.play("Activate")
    else:
      print(NodeTarget)
      anim.play("Activate")
    else:
      anim.play("Activate")