I get the impression from your posts that you don’t think there’s a future where Zelda would end up queen of hyrule (I can see where her becoming queen would undermine her entire arc of getting freedom from the painful expectations of princess/chosen etc), but how do you think that hyrules government will work beyond that? Is the population recovered enough for that to even be something established within their lifetime?
honestly, based on what we see in other games, hyrule was never REALLY a proper monarchy. I think it's pretty likely that the hylian monarchy was functionally a symbolic one, especially by the time that botw rolls around. in most games in the franchise, hyrule is largely made up of sort of mini single-race societies that function by defaulting to whatever small tribal government they happen to have. With a kingdom technically made up of multiple different species, each with their own differing cultures, customs, and even lifespans, it makes much more sense to have small governments united in name alone. i think any genuine attempt at true united government of such widely varied and relatively isolated races would not end well for hyrule (can you imagine being a hundred-year-old zora and being told that you have to listen to laws made by hylians who have been alive for a fraction of the time you have?? no way.) But by having a technical alliance under the symbolic hyrulian royal family, all of these races reap the benefits of alliance amongst each other while maintaining their relative independance. This is why most of the villages in hyrule are race-isolated and have their own governing bodies--the zora have a king, the rito, gorons, and gerudo have chiefs, and several of the hylian/sheikah villages have mayors or other governing bodies. these are the actual, functional governments of hyrule. the royal family serves both symbolic and practical purposes as a symbol of the kingdom's allyship and as an entity that can build, maintain, and direct a widespread military force (and i think there's also definitely a religious element to their rule over hyrule, as literal descendants of god in-universe,) but other than that it isn't doing a whole lot of actual governing. (the exception to this rule is MAYBE post-wind-waker on the new continent, and maybe immediately post-sksw, specifically because in both those cases the hyrulian royals would have needed to take a more active governing role in order to rebuild the country.) so with that in mind, I think botw and totk make it pretty clear that this method of small government works pretty well for hyrule. I think the most zelda would EVER be is a sort of ambassador between villages and races, especially as hyrule becomes more intermingled in the aftermath of the calamity. small democratic government largely appears to be working for hyrule and for zelda in totk, so i think that's the road she would choose to continue down rather than attempting to reinstate a monarchy that never actually did that much in the first place.
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Simon has been engaging in what he likes to call "exposure therapy"; in essence he'll go to Soap's room, usually when he's there, and stare at the snake until he feels his lips start to burn and twist. When he's feeling particularly brave he'll go sit on the bathroom floor and stare down the cobra, False cobra he reminds himself. That one is usually better, it's smaller and objectively otherworldly. It's hard to justify having a panic attack over a purple snake half as long as his arm. He's been getting better, the burning turns to a subtle itch to a barely noticeable twitch. It took five hours of sitting in cold tile to get even the slightest reaction last time, watching Hugo cruise around his enclosure while Johnny slept soundly in the other room. Hour six and he does something stupid.
He knows the falsie can't hurt him, no worse than a bee sting if he lets it chew him up, he read. He'd seen Soap handle him, seen the love in his eyes as he looked at him. He doesn't really realize he's done it until he hears the click of the glass door hitting home. And now Simon is frozen watching the snake come forward to investigate him, can feel the flicks of its tongue flicking over his gooseflesh. His lungs start burning, watching the snake flare out its neck hovering above his palm. His scales are wet from where he'd been swimming as he inches carefully onto Ghost's arm. The texture brings him back to the present, incredibly smooth and pleasantly warm to the touch from the warm water. Ghost shakes his head and looks down. Hugo is exploring his lap at a leisurely pace, poking his head into the folds of material in his sweats. Eventually he finds the stretched out pocket and in a flash he dives in and curls himself up as pleased as punch. After that, his exposure therapy takes a different turn and, with Soap's permission, he even takes Hugo to the break room in the dead of night to meet the goldfish (safely on the outside of the glass of course).
One day Soap approaches him with a pleased hop in his step and announces that he found someone for Hugo. Ghost isn't upset. He's not. He knows how Johnny's operation works, Hugo was never going to be a permanent resident...but it just feels so soon.
Soap gives him the details and a week later they've set a meeting in the parking lot of the local Tesco's. Hugo is leisurely curling through Ghost's fingers, distracting him from the exposed feeling of just a black medical mask, as Johnny watches with a small smile on his face that's slowly disappearing as the time crawls past fifteen minutes late. At half an hour late a loud car peels into the lot with a screech, making a beeline toward their borrowed pickup and pulling to a stop far far too close to Johnny for Simon's comfort.
The kid that gets out of the car is tall and lanky with dusty blond hair that's seen more gel than shampoo in the past several weeks. He's young, younger than Simon had expected and from the contemplative frown on Johnny's face younger than he expected too. He's early twenties, 24 at the oldest. He also reeks of cigarette smoke, not that Ghost himself is the perfect role model for lung health but he's not chain-smoked like that since he was a teenager with something to prove.
"Ay sup bruv! Sorry I'm late traffic's a fucking bitch." The kid claps a hand on Soap's back. "Where is it?" Soap is opening his mouth to answer but he's cut off by the next outburst. "Fuck mate you're holding it? That's fucking ballsy, mad respect! Big lad like you, probably take a while before it offed you though yeah?"
The urge to put a bullet through this cocky little wankstain is a loud chant in the back of his mind.
"Not worse than a bee sting." He growls under his breath.
"S' a Cobra innit?" The kid snarks.
"False Water Cobra." Soap corrects and Ghost can hear the click of his teeth as he spits out the words.
"...still venomous though right? Your post said it was venomous."
A pregnant pause fills the air as Soap and Ghost make eye contact. Silent communication flies between them, a language learned in a landscape of fire and death. The slightest twitch, a shallow nod.
"We're done here." Ghost snarls as let's Hugo slither into his pocket, crossing his arms.
"Oi! I dunno what you think you're doing freakshow but I'm not leaving without my fucking snake." The kid reaches ominously into his pocket.
The little shit makes it a single step forward before a heavy hand clamps down on his trapezius.
"Ah dinnae think yeh understand. We're done, aye?"
Ghost feels a grin twitching on his lips as he watches pain twist up the youth's pointed features, watching Soap twist him around and shove him into his car with little more complaint than a pained yelp.
When they're back on base Ghost lets out a small breath of relief when Hugo is safely returned to his palaudarium.
Laying with Johnny curled up on his chest later that night he feels more than he hears a small laugh.
"Yer attached to him now."
He heaves a great long-suffering sigh.
"Less of a brat than you are, made it easy."
His Johnny laughs loud and clear and if his brain is turning with plans of rearranging his room and researching plants then that's between him and god...for now.
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I don’t speak Japanese so I’d LOVE to hear more about the differences between the English and Japanese Re:Zero fandoms
yeah sure its very interesting to me now that ive noticed it more lately :o !! though ok disclaimer - i dont speak japanese either hah so if anyone is seeing this and does speak japanese + is familiar with the japanese speaking side of this fandom please add info if youd like!! and of course ill be mainly speaking from the english side of things bc im more familiar with that yes (sorry anon again im not a japanese speaker T^TT so sorry if i tread on info you already know!!). but yeah im speaking from my own experiences given the Topic at hand. ive been in this fandom since... 2019?? which is so wild to me aljsdfljsd.
anyway so - i think the big difference is mainly that the english fandom and many english speaking people that engage with rezero are. to put it bluntly, misconception runs Rampant to a very Interesting degree. to the point where it seems like the english speaking side of the fandom is More. Aggressive. than the japanese fandom. not that the japanese speaking side of the fandom is perfect - also bc what fandom is ever perfect 100% of the time, tbh - but that the louder people in the english rezero fandom are. well its a Very low bar. Very low. and from what little ive seen and heard so far, the japanese fandom tends to understand rezero and its characters better than the english fandom. which ig makes sense bc you know, rezero is japanese media, and also im sure cultural differences come into play here as well (im not familiar enough on this to speak about it in depth but the cultural differences feel Pretty Clear even though i cant 100% put my finger on what they specifically are).
but also bc yeah. its not That hard to beat some of the english fandom when it comes to media comprehension. misreading rezero is unfortunately Extremely common, both in and out of the rezero community. its Everywhere - youtube, myanimelist, ao3, ff.net, reddit, twitter, various rezero discords - and from what ive experienced, rezero tumblr basically kind of feels like finding an oasis after crawling through the desert for days on end lajdslfjs. which is probs bc rezero tumblr is Smaller and also a lot of us seem to be lgbtq+ in some way or be allies, so you dodge a lot of the misogyny and homophobia that happens in other rezero english circles. its why you see a lot of openly queer rezero-related posts on here while its a bit more. barren. in other rezero english places yes. bc its more safe to post queer rezero things on rezero tumblr rather than rezero reddit for Sure.
im not sure how the japanese fandom is with that exactly but theres some interesting differences between whats popular in the english fandom vs the japanese fandom. i mean as an otto fan ive been noticing how hes more popular with the japanese fandom—and on top of that, ottosuba is Way More popular in the japanese fandom too. reinsuba and julisuba seem to usually be the most popular mlm subaru ships in both fandoms but ottosuba is like A Little Up There in the japanese fandom. not sure if its on the same level as a ship like reinsuba but ottosubas Definitely loved as a ship. from what little ive seen it also seems like ships like vichisha are more acknowledged by the japanese fandom? im not entirely sure on like—Complete differences regarding what the japanese fandom finds interesting that may differ from english fandom, so ill really have to look more into the japanese fandoms fanart and fanfic when i can bc im pretty curious too. in general though, it seems like the japanese fandom has a bit more variety…. you can find fanart on So Many characters in rezero (which already has a very Massive cast full of very fleshed out characters) there. not that you cant in the english fandom bc theres a Bit of variety too, but id more so contribute that a little more to the Big Cast and less to having actual variety in fancontent. and of course im not saying that the japanese fandom may be a bit barren in some areas of fancontent—bc inevitably when u have a big cast of characters, side character content is gonna be more sparse compared to the main characters, but to me it does feel like the english fandom lacks variety in comparison. (and also yeah. seems like the japanese fandom acknowledges gay ships more in general tbh.)
whats focused in fancontent makes it easy to tell what may be popular in a fandom in terms of how fans perceive the source material and what fandoms want to do with the source material, if that makes sense. and its very easy to tell that with the english fandom if you just hop on rezero ao3–or even better, rezero reddit given theres a fanfic ideas thread thats usually pinned right at the top of the site. again i havent looked at japanese fanfic for rezero yet (bc i dont know where to look oops ajdndn) but when it comes to the english fandom you can tell that theyre generally more focused on the female cast both in fanart and in fanfic bc. theyre women and many fans on say, reddit or various rezero discords, are cis straight men, so inevitably… well lets just say you can tell when a man makes content for this fandom o.o theres also the. very weird reaction fic trends and trends following popular fics in the fandom, the two biggest being the watching him die again and again react fic and re:forgotten, the former of which includes a harem plot with subaru and the main girls of rezero while the latter is one of those subaru gets tortured by his ooc friends and then he gets revenge on them fics. which i suppose says something about the english fandom too.
of course on ao3 its dominated mainly by english fics (of course not all fics on there for rezero are in english— big shoutout to all the non english fics on rezero ao3 ur doing great <3 — but the majority are in english). and while yeah ur occasionally gonna find stuff like queer content or side character content or rarepair content, its definitely not that big in amount and also comes with the risk of. Hate. if anyones reading this and remembers the lone star stuff. (if u dont know—lone star was a julius x emilia fic where they NTR subaru or some shit and then it got bombed with hate bc of the ship? yeah.) so yeah english fandom is very cis straight oriented, ironically with the nastiest people being the very people that rezero criticizes. though this is also my personal experience, i do know several people personally whove been in this fandom for a while or were here for a while and yeah english fandom isnt very welcoming at times???? and it seems like at the very least the japanese fandom is A Little Less Aggressive than the english fandom is.
otherwise. yeah im very very curious about more of the differences in popular content between the japanese vs english fandom. i mean the english fandom’s main focus on the female cast for. Interesting Reasons other than their actual character depth is… interesting. and the astreas being popular in general vs otto + ottosubas popularity fluctuating is also very interesting to me (but i have several guesses as to Why that is), among other things. yeah id love to know what else the japanese fandom likes about rezero and see more of their content. i also have to wonder if characters like emilia and subaru are hated less by the japanese fandom…. T^T well that and the english fandom and many english speaking people engaging in rezero have this interesting pattern of either hating subaru No Matter What, wanting subaru to Not Be Subaru (ie using him as a self insert almost or attempting to change him into virtually another character), or putting subaru on a pedestal and ignoring his flaws and mistakes and that he Can do wrong. like theres Really not a lot of nuance there. so i wonder if the japanese fandom is. A Little more chill when it comes to character opinions like this too.
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