not to dive back into my apparently controversial video game opinions but the "they probably left out nigh all references to botw to not confuse new players" argument for totk really confuses me in turn bc …

if an overgrown non functioning botw shrine confuses you so much you cant keep playing how are you ever getting through any video game?? if you are not familiar with botw its just part of the environment for you, a fallen apart titan or a half collapsed shrine of life with a cave now leading somewhere else shouldnt completely confuse you-

but mainly ... this is (supposedly................) a direct sequel to botw, a literal second part, if you dont play the first one and just get into the second one you cant blame it on anyone but yourself for not understanding some things? like if totk actually built on what botw set up and you get into totk without having played the first one you really have no right to be angry about being confused by some things its like if you start watching a series with the second season instead of the first one, your own darn fault if you dont get it (also theres plenty of people who summarize video games for you so you could also jsut watch one of those if you really really dont want to play the first one)

if this is really the reason nintendy forcibly bent everything in totk to not dare have a proper connection to botw then ... im sorry but why the heck did you call it a sequel then, if you want to have a standalone game then make a standalone game, and if you want to reuse the map and models so badly then just say its some paralel universe or something, you have literally done that before!!

Saw that one divorce ask and couldn't contain myself: Explanation (or opinion, dunno) on "Ganondorf and Rauru are bitter exes and their hypothetical son is the hero from the 10.000 years calamity tapestry" point

(amazing art by Ganondoodles on tumbrl)

The artist does bring up a solid point: I do not want anything of Rauru's save the power he held.

Demise and Hylia

A little drabble I came up with based around @ganondoodle amazing art pieces around Demise and Hylia, because there is nothing I like more than two powerful beings choosing to get on each other’s nerves :P 

Not this nonsense again…

While the self professed King of Demons kept as furious an expression as possible, his smoldering glare set on the divine being holding him captive, his inner state was much closer to the feeling of exasperation than it was to genuine fury. When he had meticulously planned his takeover of the surface, rising from the earth with his army of demons in tow, he had certainly not factored in the chance that a being of greater stature and influence would be there to stop him right in his tracks. It became apparent that disrupting the will of the gods was no simple feat as he was subdued over and over again by the sentinel that they had placed upon the land, repelling each and every attempt of his to lay claim to that which he so deeply desired. While he did consider himself to be rather tenacious, he was starting to get irritated with each and every defeat he suffered at her hands.

“I do wonder...” Demise spoke, his tone deadpan considering the current situation. Divine arrows pinned his hands down as her blade trained on his neck, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. When the silence persisted for longer than the goddess deemed necessary, she found her brow quirking up, intrigued with the way he had suddenly trailed off. “Hmm... are you giving thought to your words before you speak? How surprising.” Hylia observed in that gentle tone that plagued his mind more often than he cared to admit. Her benevolent voice was, at least in his opinion, a sharp contrast to everything she represented. For the way she overthrew him over and over again, having forced him to become uncomfortably intimate and knowledgeable of every rock formation and mountain on the surface by virtue of having his face rubbed in its dirt, he certainly would have imagined her voice to at least have an inkling of authority within it. The fact that she continued to address him in such a way unnerved him just a bit, as if this was all a game.

“Whatever it is you may believe, I am a lot more knowledgeable than what you may think. I am as cunning as I am powerful my dear Hylia,” Demise responded, his lips upturning into the slightest of smirks as he saw the hand around her blade tighten, the tip of the divine weapon pressing into his skin as a warning. “Do not presume familiarity,” she warned him, a slight edge appearing in her voice. Demise, in response, found his lips curling, now fully taunting her with his smirk despite his compromised position. With every defeat, he had slowly begun to understand various ways in which he could get under her skin, even if it elicited the slightest tremor within her being. While the weaklings that were the surface dwellers thought of him as some sort of rampant, destructive force, he was also patient, and willing to wait for the opportune moment to strike. “Oh really? I would assume as such, since you continue to keep me around.” Fixing his intense stare on her, he shifted slightly as he continued.  “Tell me dear goddess, why haven’t you vanquished me yet if I am such a nuisance hm?” 

He watched in rapt interest as her facial expression contorted...not by much, she was good at keeping her facade, but enough for him to know that he was grating on her nerves. “Certainly Hylia, you have the power to destroy me since you continuously subdue me.” 

Another press of the blade against his throat, this time enough to leave a tingling sensation along his skin, a sign that it had begun to breach his flesh. 

“Perhaps it is simply because I do not wish to lower myself to your level, and your way of doing things,” she replied. The edge in her voice was gone, returning to its serene, gentle lull. The Demon King found himself a little annoyed that he had lost that slight upper hand he had enjoyed a moment ago. “Ah, so I suppose allowing a being such as myself to ravage the land is a gesture of benevolence for its dwellers. Surely the gods you serve find your approach admirable,” Demise retorted, his voice dripping with malicious sarcasm. 

He had begun to lose his patience with this game of words, no doubt exacerbated by the vulnerable position he was in. His last remark had been off the cuff, an observation he had no doubt made that he had thrown out in frustration. As a result, he too found himself surprised to see that it was those words that would elicited the greatest response he had ever gotten from the goddess, her lips downturning in a deep frown as if she were contemplating whether she should simply end him now or not for saying such things.

So, the gods were not pleased? This made things all the more interesting. “I may serve the gods, but I too have a will of my own,” Hylia responded curtly, finally relieving the pressure of the sword against his neck. She stepped away, waving her hand in the air as the restraints she was using to hold him in place disappeared. “Now, Demon King,” she said, that infuriating benevolent smile appearing on her face. “Crawl back into your hole lest I change my mind.” “How unnecessarily complicated you are,” Demise huffed as he sat up, rubbing at his wrists as he watched her back, her immense stature ever so graceful as she walked away. However difficult she was to read, this information he had just gathered was quite useful. He could certainly appreciate a deity as powerful as himself acting out of their own volition as opposed to being a mere puppet of the infuriating gods that imposed their rule of law upon the land. Though, he did wonder why, of all things she would choose to do, it would be to continuously spare him. 

“The cogs in your mind are turning continuously Master,” the voice behind him remarked. Demise simply grinned, a low rumble of a laugh emerging from his chest as he stared up at the skies, far too blue for a deity that was born of  burning fire and scorched earth. 

“They are indeed Ghirahim…” he replied. His grin widening to reveal his sharp teeth. “What do you think she is up to?” the blade spirit inquired, his small form settling on the Demon King’s shoulder. 

“Perhaps she is bored,” Demise responded, though he did not truly believe that to be the case. The Demon King prided himself on being thorough with his rivals, and he could still recall the shock that had briefly colored Hylia’s face upon seeing him for the first time before returning to its stony facade. It was amusing to think that she thought herself to be unique amongst their species, and he did often wonder if it was curiosity that stayed her blade.

What was that saying that the pathetic surface dwellers loved to tout? That curiosity killed the cat? 

“At the moment, we cannot overpower her physically...but a game of wits may garner us an advantage.” 

Demise was not a being that felt any obligation towards being honorable. If Hylia chose to continuously dance around the issue for such a daft reason, he had no problem with taking advantage of it. So long as he did not die, he had not lost. So long as he was alive, he could continue to advance and learn about the guardian of the surface. Tenacity would reward him with what he desired, he was certain of that. 

Whatever that desire may be.

since i cant stop thinking about things i care about and also i cant shut up ever im gonna say my bit about the "well of COURSE they destroyed everything shiekah after botw bc it nearly killed the entire country DUH do you not understand basic worldbuilding??" type of comment i had directed at me (mostly on twitter to no ones surprise and almost exactly worded like this)

--how would you even destroy it, the only thing you can actually damage with anything are guardians and nano-guardians, anything else cant even get scratched, hell you cant even climb the darn things, are you seriously trying to tell me they somehow completely pulverized not just the shrines but titans (divine beasts), the shrine of life and the pillars holding the guardians in storage around hyrule castle and the dome beneath it (whereever that went lol) when it was built to and DID last over 10 000 years ... and if you did somehow find a way to dismantle literally all of it why would you not ... use its parts for something else and also research it (lets be real here, purahs new towers are just the sheikah towers but more impractical and would by all means not need all of the material from all the missing stuff and the purahpad is just ... literally the shiekah stone but looking more like the switch and also worse bc its got almost none of the functions the shiekah stone had) they were so integrated into botws landscape removing them and their chambers would have been so much effort better spent in other places and just so unnecessary (think of the shrines at the twin mountains, removing all of that would be so dangerous and difficult to do), removing the pillars and the dome under the castle would endanger it collapsing no? there also would have needed to be a giant mechanism down there to make the pillars rise up, why would you go and try to destroy that instead of focusing on rebuilding the most important infrastrucutre

(on a sidenote, yes there are holes to the underground in the place of some shrines but its by far not all of them .. .even so there at the very least should be some rubble of them lying about at the bottom plus in most of their places its just plain earth, or sometimes even a cave locked by some puzzle which is.... so weird)

really the only explanation would be that it all just ... disappeared after zelda sealed ganon, which wouldnt only be hella unsatisfying as an answer but also again pose the problem that i would have caused the castle to collapse considering how shiekah tech was so integrated into it... unless it turned to earth somehow ... which would explain that but still be as satisfying of an explanation as 'it was all just a dream uwu' additionally, the zonau stuff under the castle wasnt even that far down so it must have intersected with the shiekah stuff, like the pillars or the dome?? but no its all just zonau ruins now wahoo

if literally all traces were gone and totk was a paralel to botw but with zonau instead of shiekah OK, they still called it a sequel tho, they still talk about the events of botw but in a way that sounds like it was just another lost legend, the tapestry exists as well, and there are a few old guardian parts on top of the hateno institute (still feels like an oversight considering how cleanly everything else was wiped off the map), plus purahs towers and the purahpad are clearly based off of it, so it cant really be some time fuckery either, some things still remain; it just doesnt add up and its frustrating as hell .. ... especially if you were like me completely thrilled and intrigued to learn more about the ancient shiekah, what WAS that dome under the castle for?? what WAS ancient energy really and why was it found in these specific places only?? did they know about ganondorf?? if they built stuff down there shouldnt they have inevitably come across the old tunnels?? the monks literally talk to link in botw why would they withhold that info, what reason could they have?

--by far my biggest annoyance with that excuse is that ... if you are so afraid of tech you dont fully understand being taken over by the bad guy again to the point you destroy not just the titans you basically worshipped as divine protectors but also immovable shrines that literally couldnt do shit to harm you even if they were pumped up to the brim with malice/miasma after they have already become non threatening/non functional anyway... HOW could you just go and fully trust and personally play around with new tech that LITERALLY rained from the sky out of nowhere, from a group of people no one knows shit about (like at least the shiekah were still existing and had a small part of recorded history) and never cared either until now that they are suddendly everywhere, even if it cant get corrupted somehow (kinda disproven by the spirit temple) how the hell would anyone know that?? if anything this would be a reason to be MORE afraid of it

even the ancient king that persecuted the shiekah bc he was afraid of their tech when they invented it didnt order them to destroy it, just bury it, despite them of all people knowing the best of how to completely destroy it??? and zelda doesnt seem like the type that would order old history and relics to be destroyed liek that??

it would have been such a golden opportunity to show that hey, the ancient shiekah based their tech on that of the zonau, they found the mines and tech and reasearched it to built their own from it, strucutres that show they were down here building the shrines from underground, titan prototypes, you cant do anything with it, its old and broken, but its there, environmental storytelling and all that

the shrine of life especially pisses me off bc thats like .. ok it was kinda not the best maybe but it still saved links goddamn life, even if it all became useless for some reason at least leave it there as a sign of respect, if there needs to be a cave have it be half collapsed after the cataclysm or something wheres the problem

(also idk if im the only one with that but in botws true ending when zelda says that vah ruta, i think, has stopped working it seemed like a good setup for more? and that she wanted to investigate that in the sense of ah shoot i want it to keep working tho and not in the sense of hell yeah lets smash it to pieces i know this is theory territory now but it seemed like it somewhat confirmed that the titans need a pilots strong spirit to work since they are not connected to the ancient energy network and the spirits of the champions passed on at the end ... the idea that ancient energy was spirit energy either gained from luminous stones or directly spirits is so neat, and i loved that idea of hey the reason why all of the energy went out all of the sudden is bc ganondorf is breaking free after having been kept in a stasis to use either his malice or his strong spirit to fuel it all has never left my mind since i first read about it bc its such a good setup for intrigue, like oh heck the ancient shiekah werent so coolio and 100% perfectly good either, maybe they knew about gans 'future' or history and hey why not trick him or sth into being sealed against his will so that problem is out the way and whoop hes pretty much an infinite source of energy nice lets use that for our research and not tell anyone oh no we created a monster (calamity gan) l guess we are gonna use the tech we fuel with his own life against him lol, OR you could have connceted it to the zonau maybe doing the sealing first and the shiekah discovering him later and being like oh neat an endlessly rich powersource we arent gonan tell anyone about weehoo

it would have tied into the ancient shiekah stuff, explained why it doesnt work well anymore, give a reason to explore the underground and discover it all, give a reason to why it was kept a secret bc no one wanted to admit yeah we made this monster ourselves whoops, give ganondorf a reason to be this angry and make it all more nuanced bc yeah ok maybe the zonau knew about gan and in their effort to prevent it caused it instead by sealing him before he became a problem and it all started a domino effect of disasters leading into all this mess that now poor zelda and link gotta solve

im not saiyng this is the better version or that i am better but again you can literally do so much with the setup for it all and what totk ended up doing with it feels so ... not even underused but straight up backwards treading you had it right on front of you INFINITE POTENTIAL AAARGH)

theres only so much fun gameplay and fantastic music can save and man can you imagine what could have been if the story got the same polish as the gameplay and music ;__;

made this for twitter since most people here that engage with my totk rants are the like-minded people my rants are intended for but i thought its kinda funny too and maybe it clears something up for anyone potentionally confused why i rant so much about it

correct me if im wrong but im PRETTY sure that for something to be a proper sequel it needs more than literally just reusing the same world and character models and slightly altering their design or adding an ability (that they got somwhere in between which isnt shown nor elaborated on either while previous abilities or interests/knowledge vanish)

made the mistake of saying that really totk isnt a sequel bc it doesnt build on, nor expand nor elaborate nor continue anything from botw, its the same preset of basic things like ... world and character models and tells an entirely different story utterly disconnected from anything botw, which it not only acts like it never happened (aside from like one dialog which is not enough for me when everyone else has literally forgotten everything and tbh feels more like a reference thats actually a slap and laugh in your face) but often times actively contradicts it, like a different version of the same thing

which is called an alternative universe

half of the reasons why i despise totk is bc i wanted, expected and was TOLD its a sequel when it isnt, can you really blame me for being disappointed and frustrated when i was told its a sequel, which should build on established stuff, to a game and its lore i deeply cared about and then get an alternative universe game that has nothing to do with the one i cared about except wear its face and STILL get told its a sequel even just by simply reusing models

sometimes i feel like im overdoing it when i rant about totk like i am talkign about nothing else and surely everyone has seen someone criticize what i criticize but then when i am anywhere but my own accounts (like in twitch chat for example) and i mention i dont like the game everyone else goes "???" "how???" or comments on anyone elses even just slightly negative post about it like "i have never seen anyone say anythign bad about this game lol" and such and i want to re-rant about it all over again ._.

forgot to post this yesterday, another sketch of a bowser redesign, this time just kinda did what i want instead of trying to stick to the real one, went for a bit more of turtle look

some die hard totk fans can be so annoying

you can like a game without jumping through hoops to justify why its bad writing and questionable choices are good actually, its ok to like things that arent the bestest most perfect thing

you can have your opinion and thats all well and fine but im tired of some people taking my posts as ground to debate me on bc they are 'objectively' more right than me despite their opinion too being based on their own interpretation and bias

i love ww and botw but im not acting like either is perfect, tetra/zelda being whitewashed suddendly when shes revealed to be royalty? bad, very bad actually; ganondorf only having a few lines right before you kill him to hint at there perhaps being more in his head than EVIL EVIL I AM EVIL ARGAGRGAHGHS? disappointing; (and so on and so forth) botw locking zelda away to be rescued yet again in the castle? not the greatest thing but at least it worked with the story and themes better than it did in totk; botw having that orientalist gerudo outfit that to this day is used to sexualize whatever chaarcter is put into it? not cool (as far as i know totk did away with that one at least); the gerudo design as a whole still being on the same level of not cool in botw as they were in oot- you get the point

the more time goes on the more negative i feel about totk, its got lots of reasons but aside from me thinking about what else they could have easily done instead of what we got its more and more bc its so put on a pedestal like its the best zelda ever and also its affecting botw in retrospect, not just by the lore, but the fact that people have been saying even shortly after totks release that theres 'no point playing botw' anymore, and will see botw as nothing but totks "bad" prototype is just SO infuriating to me

you know when you initially feel neutral (or ignorable dislike) about a character but then the fandom for some reason gets so insanely obsessed with them that you just start disliking them more and more over time ... yeah

there are multiple posts about there being made a deal with .. illumination ... to make a ....zelda movie..... over on twitter and i tweeted about me not being happy about it and hoping its not a thing (given how successful the mario one was ..... well, its gained alot more probabillity) and that yes i am 100% sure it will be bad and it WILL impact how i feel about the franchise bc i do care about it and dont want it to be bad-

it blew up over night and people got extremely upset about my opinion that i posted on my account so much so they either started insulting me over it, calling the zelda fandom toxic and insane (bc apparently i am the CEO of zelda fandom on twitter and am also toxic and insane) or start 20+ reply threads arguing with people while not untagging me on any of them

idk why it keeps happening that my random opinion posts blow up over there but maybe i finally reached a following size where i am in immediate danger of my harmless personal opinions to get passed around like i have some sort of authority over reality and i need to be rectified for it, but man its getting exhausting

so, hey tumblr!! thanks for not treating me like that for the most part! here goes my actually unfiltered opinion twitter would not be able to handle

i absolutely HATE the idea of a zelda movie, and i think it CANNOT be good unless you somehow get hayao miyazaki to do what he wants with it but we all know that aint happening and i also hate the thought of having to wade through and endless amount of screenshots of it bc it will make me see it, yes this time i actually do have a seething hatred for it, can you imagine crisp rat link????? i took psychic damage just wrtiting that and no its not even worth to have it just to make fun of it bc this isnt a funney ye olden times CDI crap but a modern billion dollar movie thats inevitably gonna be seen by millions of people and i will have to live with the knowledge most people will think of that first when i dare even mention liking zelda, i cannot express the shame i would feel i wish i actually had authority over reality to stop it from happening aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

a sort of mini-rant .. or more a personal opinion of totk; most my issues with it are probably clear by now, given how much i have talked about it, its probably also rather clear that i dont like the sonau (engl zonai) very much the way they were done in the game and its got lots of reason that all play into each other-

tho to mention something that is much more personal taste; i dont think sonau tech is actually that much 'tech', its mostly just magic animating some green rocky looking material or creating flames and rockets kinda out of nowhere

im someone that loves mechanical stuff, like old mechanisms, the first cars and first versions of technology, steam trains and such, i think its in part bc i like knowing the context of things, how stuff WORKS, and why it is or how it makes sense, huge metal beams attached to countless cogs, hearing the steam shoot out of the kettle(?) that powers a huge maschinery ... steampunk if you will

and shiekah tech, while obviously not exactly like that, still has some mechanical parts to it, sure its also magical, powered by some unkown material, but its got bits and pieces that move, it looks like something that seems pretty believable, if you look into a guardians ... hole at the flipside of it (you know what i mean) theres stuff that moves, glowy cogwheels and more, pipes and cores, you can see it between their 'head' and body too, you find springs and screws on broken ones, even the cores have some mechanism around it, and while being automatic and doing stuff on their own .. they are not sentient, not in the way sonau constructs are at least (listen i, in realy life, think of pretty much anythign inanimate as a sentient thing in a way, but maybe you know what i mean, i also like when things cannot just talk directly to you -also a reason i like silent characters- and instead you have to work a little or just ... pay attention to understand it?) (this also kidna goes for the shrine puzzles? like you often had to work with some sort of mechanical thing to get to the end of the shrine in botw, in totk you mostly just kinda glue stuff together and it .. just works?? not a fan of that tbh tho the shrine puzzles where one of the most fun parts nonetheless)

the sonau 'tech' isnt that, really, the most mechanical thing is a wheel or fan spinning? but all other stuff either just works (like rockets and stuff) or its a bunch of floating rings vaguely held together by some magical swirly string, and the constructs literally talk to you, like characters, while still being treated as nothing but 'maschines', i got nothing against magical maschinery (heck i love the shiekah stuff) but thats like .. too far removed from actual mechanisms to hit the right spot for me, that combined with the strange super modern look of some things (like the wheels, and kinda nonsensical steering thing, the rockets that just .. look like literal rockets with a vaguely rock looking texture over it .. etc) it made it all the more bleh to me

and while its far from a deal breaker it just adds another grain of salt on my opinion of the sonau things in general and the game as a whole (especially considering that lame ass excuse to just act like shiekah tech never existed ... ill never forgive them for that)

anyway, im normal again

as cool as their design is im really starting to dislike the sonau in general, aside from their stuff suddendly being everywhere and everything being about them and how cool(tm) they are now with the mystery stone turning people into dragons and the similarities between the sonau and the three dragons (naydra, eldra, farodra) its actually not an impossibility that they used to be sonaus as alot of people have been theorizing about ..but ...... idk that would very much ruin their otherwordly yet ethereal mystery to me

i probably sound like some hater whos trying to find something more to dislike about totk all the time but i promise im not!!

the three dragons being some unexplained mystery, beings that are there yet few can see them, timeless, nigh untouchable, they dont act on anything, they dont talk, something about them has always made me look at them in awe; if it turned out they were just yet another cool(tm) sonau guy that ate a stone ... :/

not a fan of that one lads, but dont worry, i will keep my thoughts to myself from now on, i dont want to ruin other peoples fun nor seem like i just hate everything ... the three dragons are just really important to me so i had to say something

I'm 14 years old and a huge Zelda fan, even I think totk wasted a lot of it's potential after playing EVERYTHING in the game which is really unfortunate. I really thought Ganondorf (and Link/Zelda) were such an interesting trio and to see them truly reunited in a sense had so much potential that wasn't used because Ganondorf was a one dimensional "oOoOoOo mR eViL mAn" villain and had his character butchered. I could go on for hours about this but I'll stop-

finally, a good opinion for once uwu

but to be real, the 14 year olds opinion post (meme? is it one?) i dont mean literally either, theres lots of adults with dogshit opinions too (and way .. way too many at that), that one commentary was the first time i actively noticed it which is why i thought of that post

i hope you didnt feel made fun of or anything, its just kinda ... you cant really get as much annoyed at teens having dumb takes as with adults, and to be fair the vast majority of dumbassery i have received is in fact from people my age or even older, my point is that theres always gonna be annoying people not matter their age but its more dissmissable when its younger ones?

reminder that my totk rants are me just rambling about my thoughts, ideas and complaints, im not trying to analyze anything, be smart, be right, debate or convince anyone who likes it that its bad just bc i think its bad or simply dont like the choices made, im literally just spilling out my brain so it doesnt keep haunting me

if you think something makes sense that i think doesnt i, and forgive me for being so blunt about it, do not care why you think it works, my opinion of this game will not change and i am okay with that

you are free to disagree with anything i say of course but i really dont care why, sorry

(sth i said only in the tags before but added now in this edit bc i think its important: its not bc i dont want to hear other peoples opinions and live in ignorance or something, but bc im tired and i PROMISE you i have seen 99.9% of those arguments already)

im not trying to be mean, aggressive or dismissive, but again, these rants are just me rambling with no intention of arguing with anyone, the only reason im still posting whenever i think of something thats bothering me (even if it might be dumb or be disproven in game bc i am not all-knowing and might be possibly misremembering something), and letting those posts be rebloggable/interactable is bc i have been told by quite a few people that they like reading them or that they feel validated in their own disappointment

thats it.