#i feel this especially for totk and botw like come on can you not see that playable zelda would be awful | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rawliverandgoronspice · 1 year

Text

THE GERUDO POST

(aka an attempt at a critique of how gerudos were handled in BotW and before)

Oh no. TOTK being right around the corner, it might finally be time for the Gerudo Post.

(aka half of the reason why I made a Zelda sideblog in the first place)

So I want to preface all of this by saying that, as you could probably tell already, I’ve always adored the gerudos. They have fascinated my small child brain when I was 7; then the obsession made its comeback when I was 14, and now, here we are, almost 28, and I’m still thinking about the gerudos. I think they might be among my favorite fictional cultures for their potential and their understated storyline. I guess growing up in a very Arabic neighborhood, coupled with being bi-culturally latinx (?? does Brazil count?? you tell me), also always made them feel like home to me –especially when I was very young and there was not a lot of cool female representation flying around that managed to involve fiercely independent PoC women, flaws and teeth included.

This whole weird-essay-thing tries to do two things. First: analyze the place gerudos have occupied in the series, their initial problematisms and their subtextual narrative arc during the Myth Era coupled with their relationship to Ganondorf. Second: tiptoe to Breath of the Wild and poke it with a stick to see what happens –and in doing that, explain why I believe a lot of their characterization was defanged in service of smoothing their past with the hylians instead of deepening the culture on its own terms, and why I’m a little apprehensive about what that might mean for TotK even though I adore seeing the best girls at it again.

Those are the uhh terms of service??

And now, we must go back to 1998.

OCARINA OF TIME ERA

There’s so many things about the gerudos that are noteworthy and rich, and they’ve made for a complex piece of Zelda lore ever since their introduction –and when I say complex, I don’t 100% mean it as praise. The very racially charged decisions made about their inclusion have been discussed at length by the fandom, especially when it comes to orientalist and Islamophobic tropes being deployed pretty thoughtlessly in Ocarina of Time (their sigil being literally a crescent moon and star originally, the parallels are pretty obviously there).

We’re talking about a band of amazon-like, big-nosed brown women from the desert ruled by a single Scary Evil Man born once every hundred years hellbent on conquering Hyrule who they apparently worship like a god, characterized primarily as thieves, decked in jewelry and orientalist-inspired harem/belly-dancing clothing, hostile to the white good guys of Hyrule (especially men), unblessed by the Goddesses and so deprived of elongated ears (this is true for OoT –we’ll come back to that), also known as a demon tribe with their deity straight-out described as evil-looking by Navi (on my way to cancel you on twitter Navi you watch out), and secretly led by evil twin witches who can turn into a single seductress and, as two mothers, raised their Scary Evil Guy king who happens to basically be the devil.

In so few words, gerudos are the future that liberals want.

It’s worth notice, also, that Ganondorf’s characterization in this game is… kind of relentlessly uncomfortable to play through, especially before the 7 year skip. The utter assumption of depraved and evil intents from every character surrounded by dialogue that does little to hide its biases in spite of having generally very little proof to back them up –even though, in the game’s context, every character is correct to call his eyes evil and the darkness of his skin a moral judgment in on itself. The scene where Zelda demands that we believe her conclusion that the sole and only brown guy in the entire kingdom is evil and will do harm, and the game straight out refuses to progress until we concede that her dreams are prophetic and that this man must be stopped at any cost even though she has no more proof than her discomfort… hits different on replay.

I’m restating all of this not to pretend I’m making a novel and thought-provoking point, but to bounce back on a tumblr post I saw a while back (that I can’t find anymore!! I’ll link it if I find it again) –and so express what it is that gripped me with the gerudos in spite of their pretty damning depiction… and actually maybe thanks to it.

There’s a surprising amount of texture to Ocarina of Time’s worldbuilding that exists folded within the things introduced and left hanging, or in its subtext –and whether on purpose or not, I believe it is why people keep coming back to this iteration of Hyrule.

What was that about the king of Hyrule unifying a war-torn country? Why did the gerudos break the bridge connecting them to the rest of the kingdom during the 7 year timeskip while still worshiping Ganondorf, and why are the carpenters trying to rebuild it against their apparent wishes? What was that about gerudos imprisoning hylian men trying to force entry into their lands? What was that about the secret death torture chambers right next to the Royal Family’s tomb and connected to the race of people who were, apparently, born to serve them?

Nothing? Oh okay… okay… okay….

The same can be said about this strange depiction of this hostile tribe, consistently described as wicked yet suddenly friendly once you prove you deserve their respect once you... defeat them, so you now have joined them? Ocarina of Time isn’t very consistent when it comes to characterizing them as their occupation (thieves) or as a proper culture, with a king and a strange system of rulership that seem to involve at least 5 people: Ganondorf, the Twinrova, Nabooru and the unnamed random woman who decides you’re now part of the gerudos because you slashed enough of them with your sword and hookshot, which, uhh ok.

They’re but a ragtag and negligible group when discussed next to gorons and zoras and hylians, but they also clearly have their own religion and at least a 400-hundred years old history (probably far longer than this) and hints of a written language of their own. I’m not sure the game itself knows what it wants them to be, beyond: intimidating and hot and cool, but also wicked and, because of Ganondorf and the way you barge in their forbidden fortress (heh) with the explicit intent to dismantle their king, in apparent need to be saved from themselves.

Speaking of rulership and the Spirit Temple, let’s have a quick tangent about Nabooru: I always found her characterization when meeting with Child Link pretty strange. I refuse to mention the promised reward, which feeds into everything orientalist mentioned above, but I always found her moral compass so extremely convoluted for someone coming from gerudo culture. Nabooru says that, despite being a cool thief herself, she resents Ganondorf for killing people as well as stealing from women and children. Stealing... from women. Nabooru. Why are you this pressed that he steals from women!!! This feels so out of place, that the only girl of that hostile culture that betrays her king and befriends you, is the one that upholds moral values that only a hylian could possibly hold.

Either way: the strange unquestioned contempt of the game for them as a culture, mixed with the occasional bouts of heart, friendliness and badassery, makes it hard not to consider their depiction as pretty biased in favor of the hylians finding them at once exotic, scary and exciting, and could hide a more complex reality you might only get one side of –especially when you know there were originally plans for Ganondorf’s character to be more gray and motivated than what the campy final version ended up being. To be blunt: even in the context of a game for children, and maybe because of that fact, it all reads like a reductionist and imperialist/colonialist reading of a more complex situation.

This might seem like A Lot coming from a game where the actual game writing can be this overall flimsy and simplistic due to the standards of the time (it’s rough, it's so rough). But I would have never dwelt on that thought about a little children’s game if not for the mainline entries that came soon after, because... ooo boy.

The sense you’re not getting the whole story was certainly not helped by the introduction of Wind Waker Ganondorf, and the chilling emptiness of Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess.

AFTER THE TIMELINE SPLIT

(I’m skipping Majora’s Mask, not because I dislike them in the game or think they’re not worth talking about, but because it’s a parallel universe and they’re never even called gerudos and their reality seems extremely different from their sisters in Hyrule so I think it’s okay to call them tangential and not dive too deep in this particular depiction)

Here’s something I want to highlight about gerudos and how they were characterized before BotW came along: their absence. Not only their physical absence, the lack of any gerudo character that calls themselves gerudo, but their absence from the text itself.

It’s not that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess retroactively scratch them off existence: we can clearly see Nabooru’s stained glass art in WW as well as recognize them being mentioned in Ganondorf’s final boss soliloquy, and WELL there’s quite a lot to say about their imprint over the world of TP. They are there –or at least they... were there. But nobody ever talks about what happened.

In Wind Waker, there was the deluge. It’s assumed lots of people died then, and those who survived scattered across the Great Sea. Are they sealed under the waves? Have they drowned? Is Jolene, Linebeck’s ex-girlfriend in Phantom Hourglass, a distant relative of one of the rare survivors? It’s unclear, beyond the fact that Ganondorf is the only living gerudo we see in this entire branch of the Timeline split.

In Twilight Princess, the desert which bares their name is empty. The hylians never mention that it used to be the name of a tribe: they’re not even named when Ganondorf is introduced for the first time, reduced once again to a mere band of thieves. We learn his plans to steal the Triforce in OoT were foiled, and that he may have turned to war. Then he lost the war, and was executed in Arbiter’s Ground: a strange structure in the desert, a mixture between a temple, a prison and a coliseum. What looks like gerudo writing coexists with hylian symbols, which often look much fresher. This dungeon is the Shadow Temple of TP: a prison hosting the worst criminals the kingdom has ever known, now haunted and cursed. Besides the locations, the only character that vaguely look gerudo in the entire game besides Ganondorf is Telma, a character with pointed ears that never seems to identify as anything but a hylian. What happened? Who’s to say. Nobody ever says anything. Not even Ganondorf bothers to mention them the way he did in WW –and though the game’s story is quite focused on another exiled tribe seeking revenge and dominion over Hyrule as retribution, the parallel is never explicitly drawn. So who’s to say what happened there. Who’s to say.

And in A Link to the Past and the games forward? The only mention of other gerudo characters are Koume and Kotake, resurrecting their son in the Oracles games through their own sacrifice and failing to bring anything back but a monstrosity incapable of making conscious decisions. Granted, most games in that extremely weird Fallen Timeline predate OoT and therefore had yet to make gerudos up at all. Still: canonically, between the gap of OoT and ALLTP, whatever it may be, gerudos disappeared here as well.

I think there’s something subtle and a little heartbreaking about the fact that no matter what Ganondorf does, the gerudos always end up dying out. His yearning for Hyrule, its gentler wind and the Triforce blessing its lands always costs him the kingdom that he does have already.

Now, does he care? A lot of people would argue that he doesn’t, that he used them like pawns for his own ambition and saw them as servants more-so than sisters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nintendo’s official opinion, but… One very powerful thing about most of Ganondorf’s incarnations (focusing on the human ones) is that he never seems to reject his cultural heritage. They could have gone for him wearing more kingly hylian stuff given the whole underlying theme of envy and pride surrounding his character, but never once does he try to look more hylian, beyond the ear situation that seems to be tied to the Triforce of Power? Either way: he is gerudo. Several of his outfits reference his mothers, as well as general gerudo patterning and jewelry. His heritage is something he proudly displays, even hundred of years in the future when there is no one left to remember what it means but him. I think it’s a very potent piece of characterization, an arc that crosses over multiple game and says something pretty intense about this character’s fate and his inherent destructiveness over the things he touches –starting with the Triforce, all the way up to his very own body and mind. His mental breakdown by the end of Wind Waker, when the king of Hyrule himself forces him to give up on the thing he sacrificed everything for, takes a new kind of weight with the whole picture taken into account.

(not to excuse genocide or general egomania-fueled madness and violence, but one thing doesn’t mean the other isn’t also relevant)

Regardless of whether this is a tragedy for Ganondorf as their uhh complete failure of a king, honestly, it is undeniably a tragedy for the gerudos themselves: a once-in-a-lifetime joyful event turned into a never-ending nightmare from which there seems to be no escape, their legacy now condemned to fade to black, leaving nothing behind but a demon boar forever laying ruin upon the world.

One may say I’m taking on the bleakest explication for the gerudos’ absence when there could be others. It’s true! Perhaps the gerudos are just chilling off-screen, completely fine, not interested in whatever is happening in the kingdom nearby and their disaster child having yet another temper tantrum about not being the Goddesses’ favorite boy. It’s possible! But regardless, what little elements we do possess as players doesn’t seem to support this, even if it remains possible –and regardless of actual gerudo lives, gerudo culture is definitively a goner in every single timeline.

Even if they did survive... Hyrule still won its unification war.

(I won’t mention Skyward Sword as they are not really a thing there, except for a butterfly that seems to suggest the Gerudo Province was a thing before the gerudo people –I don’t know what to do with this honestly– and the whole Groose situation, which, I’m not sure what to make of either beyond the fact that he may have gotten cursed by opposing Demise? And then went on to start the gerudo tribe, which ended up being an all-women group for some reason? Maybe? It’s not confirmed? I feel like it’s more of a fun tidbit than a central piece of the gerudo puzzle, so I’ll leave it there like I would a cool rock I brought back from a walk and that I don’t know where to put in my house)

Then, Breath of the Wild happened and changed things.

BREATH OF THE WILD

(Additional short note, but: while I won’t mention Four Swords Adventure, since it’s a weird one that almost nobody has played and severely messes with the Timeline, we kind of see the beginnings of what is about to happen in Breath of the Wild in this game –gerudos coming back without much explanation, then distancing themselves from Ganondorf to become friends with hylians because he was too hungry for power and now they are nice and have good reputation because they are our friendsss)

I was actually so happy to learn gerudos were making a comeback in a mainline Zelda game, and this got me more excited about Breath of the Wild than basically anything else the game involved. And getting to explore the Desert once again, meeting this new batch of impossibly tall buff girls, getting more about their language and their culture, Riju and the rest of the little girls are adorable, the grandmas are so cool, the sand seals??? sign me the fuck up??? And above it all, hanging around Gerudo Town at night and feeling as warm and cozy as little me liked to imagine how freeing it would feel, to stay there and watch the desert behind the safety of their walls in OoT… This was great. I loved it.

It was a huge compensation for the criticism I’m about to make, but did leave me with… questions regarding how their culture was going to be handled moving forward.

I’ll start with something small yet deeply revelatory, then work my way from there.

So... gerudos’ ears are pointy now.

This is pretty significant. Lore-wise, it’s been said that the elongated ears of hylians are there so they can better hear the voices of the gods. It’s considered a sign of holiness in-universe. There's a bunch of really thoughtful analysis on tumblr over that whole Ganondorf ear situation, which is a mess but also very interesting, but the short answer is: I think the absence of pointy ears was a clear design choice to originally signify them as Less Good. Even when Ganondorf gets pointier ears, they never get as long as hylians’. Worth noting: not every non-gerudo character has pointy ears: gorons, zoras and ritos (among others) do not possess this trait, and there are even some humans that have regular rounded ears in the series –though they always seem to be of lesser relevance, if not downright peasants in Twilight Princess. Pointy ears always tended to implied a strict hierarchy in the series: basically, the more pointy, the more Protagonist you become.

(also their eyes becoming green instead of the traditional yellow/golden, which looks more wicked and demonic --and cooler also tbh)

The pointy ears imply two things. From within the game, this could be interpreted in two ways: either that gerudos… converted, for a lack of a better term, and are now considered holy through their worship of the Golden Goddesses and/or Hylia, or that their mingling with hylians through tens of thousands of years had them acquiring this trait out of sheer genetic override (though they have kept their mostly-women birth rates, their big nose, darker skin –for the most part– and red hair). Probably a healthy mixture of both. Design-wise, it signifies something quite simple to the player: they are on hylians’ side now. They are good guys. We can trust them, even if they still have a little spice in them. They aligned themselves with us and against Ganon in all of its manifestations (even if he’s but an angry ghastly pig being parasitic to everything it touches in this iteration). They are on the side of Good, definitively, and will fight evil by our side.

On that note, I think it’s worth bringing out another major change from their initial iteration, which is their overt friendship with Hyrule as a whole, and with the Royal Family in particular. Despite not allowing any voe inside their walls (we’ll come back to this), their relationship with hylians is pretty neat. They have booming trade roads, travel and meet with the rest of the cultures, and are fierce enemies with the Yiga clan, who are renowned for being huge Calamity Ganon supporters. The tables certainly have turned. I want to bring out, in particular, Urbosa’s friendship with the queen and her role as the cool aunt taking care of Zelda and protecting her from evil (to be noted: I am not familiar with Age of Calamity so if I’m mischaracterizing her in any way, please let me know). The gerudo sense of sisterhood has been extended to the royals they used to fight against. I would go on and say the cultures peacefully coexist, but I think that what we’re looking at here is a case of vassal behavior, just like we used to have from zoras (in the non-Fallen Timelines) and gorons. This is a huge departure from gerudos being openly rejecting of Hylian culture in their initial iteration, and something that is worth returning to later.

Okay. Now it’s time to mention the weird obsession BotW gerudos have with romance. I didn’t take notice of my issues with their writing until I realized how prevalent of a theme that was. Now, the reason given for gerudos to refuse entry to males (of every race) has much more to do with preventing young gerudos to make mistakes than anything else, and is actively being put into question by the younger generations –which would make sense. But the amount of NPCs that either lament their lack of match, talk about their husbands (because they marry now apparently) or are invested in romance, and a very limited understanding of romance at that (heterosexual, closed, etc), makes for much more of the population that I initially expected. There’s no mention of what’s going on with their males, if there are new males being born and either exiled or abandoned, or if Ganondorf being technically still alive have have cut them off male heirs. Either way: no more kings, only girlbosses chiefs.

To have the gerudos so interconnected with Hyrule, not only through trade but through extremely coded romance where they have to make themselves palatable to a future male partner and enforce fidelity, was… a choice. The extremely brief and skippable mention of gerudos sometimes going to Castle Town in search for boyfriends in OoT became half of their personality traits in this game. We went from a race that was fiercely independent and mocking of the unworthy men who tried to mingle with them, to… this. Now I’m not saying some of the sidequests aren’t cute, or that I didn’t like the wedding, or that the grandma near the abandoned statue of Hylia (so she was worshipped at some point) clocking us and talking about her love life wasn’t one of my favorite gerudo conversations. I’m saying that the vibes have definitively changed. For the better? I’m not sure.

I once stumbled upon an article that said that Breath of the Wild gerudos were a huge improvement compared to their original introduction, because they were no longer presented as evil and hostile thieves groveling at the boot of a single man, but as a full culture allied with the protagonist and actively involved in the story, while still getting their Cool Girl Badass moment (again can’t find it anymore, I’ll link it if I stumble upon it again). I see where this comes from, but I honestly can’t help but consider it a reading that assumes something pretty major (though through no fault of their own, as the games tend to hammer this down as hard as they can), and that being hylians as the unquestioned anchor of Good.

Which, in spite of what the games want me to believe, I… feel uncomfortable taking at face value.

To me, regarding how gerudos are being incorporated in that goodie narrative, this is kind of a case of surface-level feminism trumping over colonialist/imperialist concerns. It becomes more important to perform the aesthetics of being cool and friendly and independent than scratching at any deeper problem that would risk making people uncomfortable. This is kind of Green Skin Ganon all over again: oh wait, isn’t it a little icky to have the evil bad guy being brown while faced by the most aryan-looking ass heroes of all time? Okay, then let’s take the brown guy and make his skin green so we don’t have to feel bad anymore that the conflict has racial undertones!! Solved!! There’s nothing questionable about changing a PoC's features to make it more monstrous and less human, right?

To me, it’s kind of the coward option: instead of accepting the messy reality those initial choices created (and their interesting nuances if taken at face value), let’s just… rewrite the PoC culture’s history to make it feel less uncomfortable for the white heroes. In many ways, it is an extension of what hylians have always done: scrubbing the weird and messy things about the past and shoving them deep down into the spooky well and far into the desert prison and away in alternate hellish dimensions, and then make up a very simple story where they get to feel good about themselves –except this time, it’s the fabric of the games, the literal reality, bending backward to make it happen. Which, in my opinion, makes it much worse than before. Now, there’s no conversation. The fabric of reality is changing their own history so that there is nothing to discuss anymore. Ganondorf was always evil incarnate. He never had any point. It was always 100% his own fault, his own hubris, his own fated wickedness. He was always demonic (and green, very important –having a flashback to people on twitter accusing artists restoring the TotK green skin to the original brown of wanting to make Ganondorf black, and like….. how do I put it gently…..)

And, above all else: gerudo are to distance themselves from his legacy so they can stay in the club of the Good and Just and Holy.

Because here’s the messy thing: as much as I love seeing the gerudos again in Breath of the Wild and as much I love for them to have survived the Era of Myth (??? somehow ???), this… kind of changes Ganondorf’s character arc. No longer do we have the story of a king who wanted more, either for his people, for himself or both, and led his culture to its destruction in his search for absolute Power, while remaining ironically incapable of maintaining what little he already had. This starts from him kneeling to the king of Hyrule in OoT and leads to the deluge, Arbiter’s Ground, his own mothers dying for the sake of his failed resurrection. Breath of the Wild changes this: now, the gerudo were apparently fine without him? They apparently did their own thing and became suddenly and inexplicably disconnected from his actions? I know it’s kind of implied they side with hylians at the end of OoT, but it’s honestly never really explored why they would cheer for the death of their king while never seeming to resent him before except for Nabooru –there are mentions of brainwashing for those who resist him (as well as “other groups in the desert”, tho they are never mentioned again), but it’s hardly a proper plot point for the majority of the tribe, aaaand they still die by Wind Waker in the Adult Timeline, in spite of their potential alliegance…

(again, this shift towards submitting to Hyrule actually started with Four Swords Adventure, getting crisper with each iteration)

There used to be this polite blur regarding Ganondorf’s relationship to them, how much he used them and how much he acted in their name (with arguments for both sides), and I think this messy and debatable question mark was one of the most compelling aspects of his character. Gerudos rejecting their relationship at a near-cosmic, reality-bending level, removes a huge layer of complexity to both parties… all for the benefit of making hylians come out cleaner out of this whole exchange, their moral grayness barely a whisper in the distance.

I’ll kind of go on the record and say that I suspect the addition of Demise to the canon to serve a similar purpose (at least in part): if Ganondorf becomes but the manifestation of a demonic curse, and is no longer an extremely messy character brimming with agency and drive, forcing the heavens to reckon with said agency in a way he was never meant to access, born from a complex set of circumstances from which we clearly get only a limited and biased perspective, then it becomes extremely clear that he’s a Bad in a way that isn’t worth exploring further. Even if he does have some points, he is a Bad. It’s what matters most. Not to say I even hate what this angle can bring to the table or that I want him to become Good (I don’t –I’ll talk more about why I dislike most takes on him being a helpless victim to the curse), but once again, who benefits from adding another Unquestionned Baddie to the equation to rest upon? Not him, and not the gerudos, that’s for sure.

So. Why did I, me, personally, like the gerudos in the first place?

Beyond the inherent coolness factor of their culture and the fascinating mysteries of what is merely suggested, I think… I think I loved gerudos because we were obvious outsiders. Because their rejection of Hylian culture was so sharp and extreme, their value system so different, and their writing, their religion, their relationship to power and hierarchy and worth wanted nothing to do with hylians. They didn’t need hylians, beyond them having potential resources to steal. In fact, the threat of hylians influencing their culture was such that the entry to the Fortress was forbidden to everyone (I don’t think men were ever singled out, by the way, even though they are mocked relentlessly). I think there was something inherently hopeful about this semi-matriarchy resisting the outside world, and especially its notions of what girls were meant to be –it was 1998, and every other girl character in OoT, besides Impa and Sheik that?? is another can of worms entirely, is either helpless or someone to save. For them to reject this narrow vision of femininity was, in my opinion, much more radical than what we got in BotW. Less nuanced, more problematic perhaps? But also much more powerful. Gerudo Valley is home, not to a town, but a Fortress.

Hylians were worth being resisted.

In Breath of the Wild, their refusal to let men enter their town is kind of boiled down to a fading tradition over-focused on romance, a meek little game of chase. Their entire goal seems to be finding a hylian to settle down with. Say what you will about the single man and the many girls (never explored and completely open-ended in its implications, btw), but at least it wasn’t… that. At least it opened the way for different ways for people to exist and imagine culture and civilization, outside of the heterosexual couple, the christian-infused patriarchy and its trickling down implications. What I want to say is: let my girls tell hylians they ain’t shit!! That they aren’t the end all be all of reality! This is what made gerudos so compelling in the first place! Where is that bite now? Where is that self-definition?

It’s gone, because hylians need to be Good. So we tee-hee at the creep running laps around the town, we disguise ourselves to breach their trust and infiltrate their town (though there is nuance to be had there, gender be complicated etc), we watch them pine after shitty dudes and take classes to become the perfect approachable woman and make love soups with ?? strange ingredients honestly, and we witness them get very friendly with the Royal Family they used to conspire against, dying to protect the princess against the manifestation of their ancient king reduced to a raving puddle of Bad Boar.

Hyrule, unified against him.

TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

For posterity’s sake: this post was made before the game was released. I’ll probably update my thoughts on a separate thing later on.

I don’t think gerudos allying with the hylians and burying their own legends about Ganondorf as deeply underground as they can until it blows up in their face is a bad setup at all. It’s actually pretty juicy, and there’s a ton of fascinating stuff that could happen here –even some involving gerudos taking a firm stand against him while still reconnecting with their past and the choices they made once. This is my hope with the title of the game: Tears of the Kingdoms. Let’s examine them all, account for the damage, and decide how we move forward from there with the full knowledge of where we come from.

What I am afraid of (and I already made posts about that) is the scenario where gerudos rallying against Ganondorf, which I expect will forcefully try to take back his place as their king, is used for cheap feminist points that completely fail to examine, well. Everything mentioned above. Where reality bends itself out of the way of the Goddesses, and hylians’ responsibility in any of this mess, so that everything bad is 100% Ganon’s fault and so he must be cast aside and torn away from the Cool Gerudo Girls and this is 100% justified and deserved because we are Independent Women Who Take No Shit from No Men (unless they are the king of Hyrule or any random hylian they wish to marry apparently).

I’ll say this here because it’s been burning my mouth every time I see discourse about Ganondorf and the gerudo: gerudos declared him as their king. To make a really bad comparison that I dislike: he didn’t run around to assemble girls and make a cult around himself, he was born with the cult already formed around him (and it’s not a cult, it’s just a different mode of governance –hylians also revere the Royal Family like gods, don’t they?). This heavily changes the dynamics at play. Not to remove any agency from him to do a little invasion about it, but chances are the ancestors to BotW’s gerudos fully expected him to behave in this way, at least to a degree –in OoT you see very plainly that they value physical prowess, feats of thievery, witchcraft and general violence. It’s more complicated than him being a Bad and making the poor helpless women go along with the plan uwu –even taking the brainwashing into account, AND Koume and Kotake counting as gerudos too, even if they might not be not fully innocent in shaping the culture and the man himself. If manipulation and forced servitude is the explanation given, I’ll be genuinely mad –because, once more, all the nuance and messiness would be flattened for the sake of making Ganondorf Bad and the gerudo Good (= on hylians’ side).

It bears to be said: I think feminism stances that require, not to criticize (which is fair), but to fully dehumanize and bestialize men of color to make any sense are uhhh bad, and it's worth questionning who they end up serving in the end.

The flip side of this would be to make Ganondorf a poor little meow meow that was secretly controlled by the evil Demise all along, and... I’ll be real. I really don’t think it solves our problem at all. It might even make it worse.

My problem with how gerudos have been handled thus far, being mostly connected to how they behave in relation to hylians Good, is that they’ve been systematically defanged not to threaten the status quo as much as they used to. I think it’s pretty clear why I’m not a fan of Ganondorf being a mere victim of cosmic circumstances; I have a post that goes more in depth about this, but to simplify: my man has legitimate grievances. To make him a mere puppet to Evil Incarnate would, to me, be just another attempt to erase the despotism of the Goddesses, the unjust hierarchy of the world, what hylians have historically done to the races they were in conflict with (looking at the Yiga for the most recent example…)

I’m not saying his fight is clean or even legitimate, that he isn't driven by his own sense of self-importance above anything else, or that he should win (he has no plan beyond domination and victory, that's not a future). But I think there’s something really important about having someone being willing to fully consume himself and everything around him for the simple fact that someone should resist the order of the world. Even if that makes him a heartless, cruel, and egomaniac demon-pig. Even if there’s no Hyrule left to rule. Even if his own people despise him, or are long gone and forgotten.

Is it a little heart-wrenching? Uhh yes to me yes most definitively. This is why Wind Waker Ganondorf hits so hard, and remains (I think) his favorite entry in the series so far. But… I still find this fate of eternal resistance more resonant and empowered, and far less grim, than if Hyrule’s lore absorbs his hatred and rage, gives it to another entity that would be Badder (= more opposed to hylians and the goddesses), and scrubs it off anything icky and uncomfortable, rendering it completely domesticated and non-threatening to hylian domination; rubbed of his skin color, of his complexity, of his own emotions, even made... kind of sexy now, in the same way his sisters have been made before him? I am very, very afraid of him being turned from furious and an unapologetic subject in his own legend to a "redeemed" (according to whom??) and palatable object in somebody else’s, that you now end up having to… save from himself.

Again, I want to trust that Tears of the Kingdom can walk that line and preserve everything sharp and contrasting and profound and thrilling about this fascinating setup. I don’t expect a philosophy course, this is a game for children –but it doesn’t mean Nintendo didn’t do an astounding job with similar setups in the past. Again, I’ll invoke the Wind Waker conflict, but Twilight Princess did a lot of great things as well (Zant’s speech, if you can get past the weird stretches and stumping and NNHYAAAs, is pretty fantastic) –and the subtle writing of Majora’s Mask is also proof enough this series can be complex without being impermeable.

So this is where my hope lies. Not really with BotW’s writing, which, I’m sorry to say, but I found to be below what the series has done in the past (I have no problem with the setup and how the story is explored, I think it was a great idea, but wasn’t ever sold on the actual writing the way I may have been with previous titles –it felt… very tropey to me overall, with a couple of highlights). But Nintendo has shown to know how to write compelling stories for children that know where to sprinkle its darkness and how to preserve its hope, and this is this side I’m relying on for this delicate storyline moving forward.

And now? Now… I suppose we wait and see.

(thank you for reading my impossibly long essay what the actual hell, at least I got it all out of my system, see you in part 2 for when TotK comes out I suppose aaa)

890 notes · View notes

ganondoodle · 1 month

Text

sorry i keep coming back to totk rants, but something that utterly baffles me from a game design perspective especially is

who, in their right mind, would think to put similar objectives with the same characters in the EXACT same place as its previous game when already reusing the same exact map (no, single rocks springkled around isnt a meaningful change, fight me)

like from a purely logical point of view its just ... not logical?? and TWICE so when most players will have played the previous game, so now that the exploration, which was the main driving point of it, isnt as satisfying simply bc you know most locations and what is what, the thing you need to do is subvert it as in you go to that location and theres something else now or something that leads to a new reveal, but not NOTHING either, bc you likely cared about what youd find- the satori mountain was such a cool mysterious place, so now you head to it to see what is now and its nothing but maybe an obvious treasure chest? thats both lazy (i realy use that since its way overused by people missusing it) and just ... it might be meant as a lil nod so that there isnt nothing at all but to me it feels even more condescending as if there were literally nothing instead

satori isnt here anymore? thats weird if its always been there, so you go find a cause, maybe theres a fissure somewhere you can enter a large cave system, an hidden entrance to the underground that reveals there is something corrupting the place somwhere nearby but not exactly in the same spot- make it into a bossfight at which end satori gets cleansed- maybe it got captured and taken somewhere else, to a place that was kinda neat but didint serve a big fucntion in botw like maybe it was dragged somwhere into the big tabantha canyon, or to the forgotten temple

you try to visit rito village but the snow and cold there got so bad that you cant even reach it without special gear, and when you do reach it its utterly frozen in thick ice and not a single soul is there, the perch of vah medoh is knocked over building a bridge as a subtle hint as to in what direction perhaps, its intriguing bc clearly they have to be SOMEWHERE, maybe they tried to use vah medoh to evacuate but bc its losing power and doesnt have a skilled pilot they crash land it into the mountains, now trapped there and due to the storm not able to send anyone out to get help, maybe some did but they didnt make it and you can find them on your way and rescue them, and bc of the storm being so bad no one can get out and no one can get in (except for our special boi linky ofc) and even after the storm has weakened they dont immediately go back and act like everythings normal, maybe theres an extra mission afterwards helping them rebuild the village but not exactly the same as it was but fortified, different to account for things like this happening again, establishing the crashsite of vah medoh as a second outpost, or a temple, to thank it for bringing them out of immedaite danger but couldnt go all the way

theres so many places that are so clearly modeled around botw that are entirely unused now bc they had to remove all things shiekah for no reason, the holes they left jsut being holes where somethings clearly missing or some chest with a gem in it while the new shrine thing is within view distance a few meters away, might as well have put them in the exact same place bc it really doesnt make a difference

(like alot of those ideas im using for the rewrite which changes many things but you get the point right??)

and its even worse imo with the building stuff, bc now you dont even have to journey there you can fly glide and literally drive there instantly like a giant skip button so you cant even appreaciate the way to it, you skip to one important part to the next

and then points of interest are REPEATED AGAIN, like with shrines and lightroots and settlements and big mines- that is the opposite of satisfying gameplay, you dont have to explore shit bc its all in the same place which is probably why they only did tiny changes to those few spots and nothing else bc they knew most people would run right to those so it gives the illusion of changes (which are half reversable or barely a change at all) and even those are STILL meaningless

its right up there with having even MORE grind with less substance to it than in botw, the shrines and krogs got a lil old but at least the environment, its subtle storytelling etc were something- and totk just bloated everything with more little meaningless collectables while not changing anything meaningfully (and instead pretends that some things where never there and those new boring things were always there)

more shriens with shorter puzzles or none at all, more krogs with the same reward system, over a hundred tiny caves that all blend together bc they are all so similar and you really only do them for yet another colelctable for old gear and ONE cool new one with a bad effect after which the things collected become uselessreally, souls to collect to buy you a single armor set, rewards being largley reused old stuff from botw (imo you should have a chest in your house, yes YOUR house, that got most of the standard versions of botws armor in it so you dont have to buy it all again??? but you gotta think of going home first and dont have to use it- make new versions of them alternatively so you can choose if you want the old one or new one and also LEAVE ONE AT YOUR HOUSE WITHOUT HAVING TO SELL IT SO YOUT INVENTORY ISNT AS ENDLESSLY SCROLLING AS YOUR STUPID ARROW BAR)

theres new effects from food and armor thats largely useless (like the attack when hot?? why wouldnt you you jsut combine an armor and a potion- put on hot armor and drink an attack potion? its way more efficient no?? idk i found it to be yet another effect thing to bloat my inventory especially when NPCs keep giving you shitty effect food)

the whole sonanium (zonaite?) collecting with multiple ways to convert it into yet another currency??? huh???? AND have it be the thing for you to autobuild with?? when you need it upgrade your battery which takes an insane amount of those stones?? wells, while finally an actual well are NOW ALSO LIKE A COLLECTABLE and im gonna take a wild guess that the reward is utterly disappointing too

the fairies are all blocked by much more annoying means than in botw (like i wouldnt want to carry those NPCs three meters away in their little cart antoehr time please) and the amount of material AND MONEY NOW you need is so much higher for no reason (if its their attempt to make the game harder its the lamest way to do it)-

all while instead of expanding on the foundation of botw they ripped it out to build a new one while pretending they are both there (im so so slaty about this .... a sequel like this should expand upon the stuff of the first game, both in theme, narrative, mechanics and more and not ... replace it with slightly different versions of it while abandoning everything established before and really only using it as a way to skip having to make you care about some characters bc you might still care about them from the other game)

i could go on, as always lol, anyway, i really really dont get why this got into the final game ..

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #ganondoodles rants #totk critical #*cracks knuckles* time to rewrite and design #no but literally #putting the same objectives into the same places with the same characters ........ and then repeating important places AGAIN in the-#-undergound is just so ........... thats the opposite of what you should do wtf #like im only an aspiring gamedev but ............... right????#like theres so many things #make the zora not be able totalk bc they are all poisoned by the goo so you have to understand them via weak fignerpointing #also have the champs be around the actual dungeon already so you can literally find the dugneon yourself AND do it right away #without having to go to the town- ask where is- get told where is- get little fight- get little puzzle- get dungeon that is often worse-#-defeat way to easy boss thats also found in depths- gets SAME CUTSCENE EVERY TIME- all problems go away- town normal again #there is quite literally no permanent change to anyone

97 notes · View notes

the-depths-au · 5 months

Text

FAQ

*this post continues heavy totk spoilers

How did it start?

A lot of people started posting some really cool art of a TotK ending where Zelda returns as a hybrid dragon creature thing. I saw a few that called it a “bad” ending and I noticed she was often portrayed with dominantly human-features just like, with horns or a tail, or the purple eyes, etc. I love to play video games(clearly) and I enjoy the challenge of seeing various endings, not just “secret endings” (think Heavy Rain, Until Dawn, The Witcher 3, Drakengard- anyone else play this?) I got to thinking about how her coming back didn’t really like a true “bad ending”. To me, a bad ending, really, would be one in which she didn’t get to magically, miraculously come back in any form. A bad ending to me would be Mineru’s warning held true. And in doing so, it would become The Legend of Zelda because she becomes the stuff of myths. Of true Legend. Fulfilling destiny (botw-era and the series as a whole). My brain sort of took off from there regarding the implications this would have on Hyrule and specially, our boy Link.

How could you! A Bad ending? Is this story at least hurt and eventual comfort??? Does it have a happy ending??

I could tag this hurt and comfort, but usually people who read these types of stories have certain expectations of what “comfort” is (and that’s okay!). Same with a “happy” ending. I don’t need stories to be wrap up in a bow with warmth to enjoy them. Honestly, some of the stories that have touched me the most over the years have had “sad” endings/negative character arcs/tragedy. That being said, I don’t particularly enjoy pure whump, either. What I feel is most important and what I am to do with this story, is to make any suffering meaningful. With purpose. And hopefully- maybe- you’ll see the “comfort” that is possible even in these types of stories.

Wait! So Zelda remains a dragon?

Yes. They defeat the demon dragon. Rauru and Sonia appear in a silent thanks, then they disappear and Link falls from the sky alone into the water. The Light Dragon continues along in her flight above him.

Link is also the only one who can see/has ever seen the Light Dragon.

Are there any other major changes from TotK?

It follows the game pretty closely. It’s just hard to say exactly what is in this story from TotK because there is just so much. In BotW, I headcanon Link took his time. He doesn’t remember anything. He is alone, lost, and the world is a vast, broken place. Therefore, it is plausible/ realistic in my head for all the side questions to be done prior to the ending being reached. In TotK, especially with the headcanon he and Zelda were together in the time between BotW and TotK, I had a hard time imagining Link would waste much time on anything unnecessary to save Zelda. So, with this in mind, I’ve had to justify the side questions to include in the story. Link’s journey is a bit different than my own. Whereas I actually spent 80% of my playthrough exploring the depths, this Link only went down when necessary. Meaning many of the lightroots have not been unlocked and he only has part of the armor of the depths. In the Linktober and the early concept, he has the entire set but this has been changed for the main comic.

How far after the events of TotK does this take place?

Five years.

Is it completely planned out?

Yes. I have a complete rough story outline done. It’s 17 chapters. I am anticipating some editing as I go, but regardless, it’s a big project. A huge shout out to @zeldaelmo and @fioreofthemarch for helping me get the story set. They are both phenomenal writers for the LoZ fandom so be sure to check them out!

What happened to the comic?

I made the decision to tell this story (initially) in writing. I have a very specific style in mind for this story as a full comic and honestly, I just don't feel like my artistic ability and overall proficiency is where I want it to be at this time. I'm still learning! I will be continuing to post art, concept art, and some comic panels here as I go and eventually, I would love to adapt the story into a full comic, but for now, I'll be telling the main story in writing.

How long have you been drawing?

I’ve been drawing all my life. Just for fun, although I took a few classes in school. Digitally, self-taught, since fall 2022. Still very new to this with lots to learn! I have a minor in creative writing and feel much more confident and comfortable with that.

Feel free to send me a DM with questions anytime! I plan to update this periodically.

Last updated 2/26/24

#FAQ

53 notes · View notes

cutebutalsostabby · 1 month

Note

Any really weird or funny things in the LoZ games you think deserve attention in LU fics?

Oh, a bunch. Where to start?

Firstly: they should play more minigames. Especially dancing. Weird that the Gorons moved on to wrestling as their main sport by Twilight's era; frankly that's a downgrade. Legend and Time should remind them what tradition looks like.

And some minigames are just... ridiculously dangerous? They would make GREAT crack fics. Any myths of Sky being normal and well-adjusted would crack under the weight of that game where you get shot out of a cannon and then skydive down to slam your face into a giant roulette wheel. Or that game from Labrynna (Legend) where this Goron throws a whole heap of bombs at you to see if you can dodge them. Only slightly safer than a similar game involving cuccos.

And on the more serious side of lore that I think is under-explored: the Royal Family has a daaaark side. In a lot of ways, really, which are HINTED at in the games, but rarely actually detailed. For example, it's mentioned in Twilight Princess that the Royal Family have been exploiting the Twilight Realm since LONG before the Twilight Realm started fighting back. And in TotK's ancient Hyrule, we never did find out what happened with the rest of the Zonai, or how exactly Rauru ended up in charge of things.

Ocarina of Time has the darkest portrayal of the Royal Family - even though Zelda is the only member of that family that you ever actually see (the king is somewhere offscreen at the time you meet her). Although everything seems fine and normal at first - notwithstanding the giant war that happened before the start of the game and which left Hyrule Field SWARMING with undead - you eventually come across Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple, which uhh... don't paint the Royal Family or Sheikah in a particularly nice light.

And then there's Zelda II's background lore from the game booklet, which says that a king from long ago created the monsters that guard the Palaces:

Are we just going to skip past the fact that the King can create monsters?? That feels important! When and how did he learn to do that? Does that have anything to do with how Dead Hand and Bongo Bongo came into existence? Or anything to do with BotW's Guardians, WW's Tower of the Gods, SS's Lanayru facility or the transformative shadow magic in TP? Possibly not, but it's fun to think about. Teehee conspiracy brain go brr.

There should be more spooky scary horror fics, maybe. Maybe I should write this. (It's vaguely included as a plotpoint in my longfic, but I am SLOW right now.)

#asks #legend of zelda #linked universe #zelda lore

21 notes · View notes

freakinflipflop · 11 months

Text

So does anyone want to hear about a BOTW/TOTK Home Depot AU? Haha who am I kidding of course you do.

So @teehee-vibes and I have been talking SO much about BOTW’s champions bc we both care them so so much

And it was late and I had just gotten home from 3 days of driving with my family for a road trip so I was SO so tired. And I was thinking about real life/store owner AUs and what types of stores would be the most canon-compliant. Bc you know, you can make something fun out of anything, but it’s always extra fun to see how you can shape AUs around canon.

And I had come up with the idea of Link running an oddities/exotic goods business that he stocks with stuff from his international adventures, and moved on to Revali next (bc he’s my favorite :] rito so so cool)

I thought archery store at first but like. That feels so much more like Harth (and Teba?)’s thing, so I was like gotta find something different. and all I could think was. he has the whole wind thing. he sells fans. control the wind.

so yeah I sent that to TV and promptly passed out

Woke up the next morning to a response from TV saying “Can’t believe Revali monitors the ceiling fan section at Home Depot”

And then we fleshed out an entire Home Depot AU around it. Including:

Current and next-gen champions all have their own jobs in the store corresponding with their talents/abilities/vibes in the games

Revali gives Tulin a phone and signs him up for Twitter at age 10

Revali frequently livetweets about coworker interactions (especially about Teba knowing about nothing other than the woodworking section)

Link, the store’s janitor, yearns for a position in the garden department

Kass invented the home depot theme

Link also knows how the entire store runs but is relegated to janitor work by their boss

Their boss is King Rhoam

He forces Zelda to work in the electronics section and keeps her from her true passion (power tools)

Ganondorf runs a SECOND, COMPETING home depot (or Lowes) and forces all of the OG champions to be transferred to his store. Link, who knows how the whole store works, has to train the new champions to take over the old champions’ jobs. The old champions are doing a shit job on purpose at GanonDepot. Revali vaguetweets about his boss.

Link puts anything in his mouth. he gets less consequences to this than he should. (bit started when we talked about his garden department dreams and how he can perfectly tell soil’s pH but only by putting it in his mouth)

Riju and Tulin both get jobs at the Home Depot after the OG champions are transferred through the power of nepotism and lying on their resumes. Riju feels bad about it. Tulin Does Not.

Anyway yeah I can and will post more about this. This is only a taste of the WONDERFUL AU that has consumed me and @teehee-vibes‘s DMs for like a week and a half. Revali also works in paint mixing as well as the fans btw

Edit: check rbs for some screenshots of TV and my conversations about this AU lmao some are worldbuilding-y most are shitposts

#botw #totk #breath of the wild #link botw #revali #zelda botw #link totk #tulin #kass botw #teba #teba botw #daruk does metal/stonework and urbosa works in electricity #mipha works with first aid materials and plumbing #sidon also does plumbing #link made a bleach/vinegar mixture when he was younger and attributes his iron digestive system to that #daruk responds ROCK SOLID BROTHER and slaps him on the back. most of the others are in shock #riju #riju totk

113 notes · View notes

fifteenth-entity · 9 months

Text

Surprised no one is talking about Tulin

Or at least not that I have seen, because just Rito village as a whole was so depressing to me, and I just feel the overwhelming urge to talk about it.

This is obviously for pre-Colgera stuff, but let me tell you, as someone who did all of the other main quests before Rito village and left it for last (cuz it's usually my favorite to do cuz I like flying and archery), going to Rito village was so horrifying at first.

It's the only place so far in TotK that I feel mimicked the feeling of desolation and abandonment as well as BotW did, because in BotW, the Rito are all so friendly to you and while they live in fear of Vah Medoh, they're not in immediate danger, which makes Rito village as a whole quite sunny and enjoyable to be around, that alongside the fact that it's a relatively easy to traverse landscape and the Rito aren't needlessly cruel to you, just rather dismissive. And then in TotK, you enter, expecting the sunniness (in attitude at least) of Rito village, only to be met with a silent, snow-capped landscape with zero life in sight.

And then you go to the market and you see it's being manned by a child. And then the only demographic you see manning the village is children. And then you realize all the adults have abandoned ship while they wait for you to come help and the children had to step up to the plate of supporting the village.

And then you meet Tulin.

In the beginning, I was slightly relieved to see Tulin be with Teba - finally, I thought, a supervised child, a child that doesn't have to take up the mantel of being an adult to survive.

And then Teba talks about the Stormwind Ark's song, a song originally sung to children, who by the way still believe in the existence of the Stormwind Ark, and how all the adults believe that the Stormwind Ark exists. And Tulin dismisses it as just a fairytale.

That crushed me. Of course Tulin has grown up, he's not the same fledgling he was in Breath of the Wild, he can hold his own. He doesn't need fairytales anymore. But even Genli, who looks to be around the same age as Tulin, believes in the Stormwind Ark. Every child and every adult believes in the Stormwind Ark, except for Tulin. This child has had to take his role as protector of the village so seriously that it has disillusioned him. Disillusionment isn't a good feeling even as an adult, but a child should not have to be disillusioned, especially when it comes to a higher protecting force like the Stormwind Ark is supposed to be. Tulin should still be allowed to believe in the existence of a Stormwind Ark. But he doesn't, and he speaks about its nonexistence with such conviction, with such confidence, that it's depressing.

Which, then, puts into context why Tulin was so dismissive of Teba's tutelage. Teba still believes that there is someone who will come save them, so the man who taught Tulin to take initiative and fight for the village's safety, isn't doing anything to help the village. Instead, Tulin's tutor sits around and waits for a saving grace that, in Tulin's eyes, is not real and will not come to save them (because why wouldn't it have come already if it were real?). So, when Teba is stressing the importance of stuff such as training and teamwork, Tulin is quick to dismiss him - Teba believes in something as fake as the Stormwind Ark, why wouldn't he believe in other fake concepts? (Yes, this mindset is extremely juvenile, but Tulin can't be more than 12.)

Link doesn't start out the BotW/TotK duology as an adult but when he joined Tulin, I was so relieved that someone more experienced would be there to take some of the burden off of Tulin. And when he got the secret stone and had to vow to help Link save Hyrule, that pained me. I didn't want to have a child accompanying me in a mission to save the world because no child should have to do that (Riju included, honestly, but Gerudo values muddle that conversation a little bit). And then I remembered it's only a ghost of Tulin that follows Link, not Tulin himself, and I felt slightly better about it.

But when you look at the wider picture, pre or post Colgera, Tulin is a child soldier, essentially, and I'm surprised I haven't seen people talk about him more as a character. When people call into question how dark TotK is, I just... immediately think of Tulin. This kid is forced to live in a dark and disillusioned reality because of the wider circumstances, and he's conditioned by those circumstances to be alright with that. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but that's quite dark on Nintendo's behalf.

And when I put it this way, there's also some parallels to draw between Tulin and Link here, but that's a different conversation for another day.

I just think this part of the story is depressing, and Tulin is my favorite character. And just to reiterate the title of the post - I'm surprised I'm the first person I've seen bring it up. I don't know if this is a bigger conversation, but if anyone has anything to add, I'd love to hear it because, owch :")

#legend of zelda tears of the kingdom #loztotk #totk #tears of the kingdom #tears of the kingdom spoilers #tears of the kingdom tulin #totk tulin

61 notes · View notes

errorwarblesrr · 11 months

Text

Okay I gotta rant, I'm going to state rn this post is neither pro or anti Zelink.

I wish people could stop arguing over the canonicity of BOTW/TOTK Zelink. Idk I've seen a lot of arguments on it, like both sides are trying to checkmate each other. It's annoying.

I remember back when articles twisted the words of Zelda's VA, and a bunch of people were rude about it. Both sides. Then, when she clarified what she actually meant, there was a whole fit about it.

These games are about player freedom. Nintendo also wants Link, this one especially, to reflect the player. They want to keep it ambiguous and up to interpretation, yes we know Zelda loves Link but we in fact still don't know how Link feels about her.

Even stuff that can be used as evidence still have some ambiguity to it, for example Link's old house. It can be used as evidence for both sides and be up to interpretation for whether they are or aren't living together. On one hand this was Link's old house and Zelda lives there now, Zelda has his hairband, she says he always remains by his side, he can sleep on her bed, the table is set for two, and she has to hide the new tunic. On the other hand no one recognizes the house as Link's anymore it's only referred to as Zelda's house and his belongings are gone outside of the champions picture, there is one twin sized bed with one pillow and it's also important to note couples in this game sleep in seperate beds, Link can get a house in Terry Town, people talk to him as if he also doesn't normally go there, and there's an npc that Zelda isn't one to turn people away from her house so Link has permission to visit. There is room for interpretation and to come up with different reasonings for both sides.

This isn't me confirming or denying this Zelink but to show there is strong evidence for BOTH sides because it is meant to be ambiguous and up to interpretation.

There's also Link just not emoting for any cutscene he is in with her. I believe this is so you can interpret him feeling whatever you want him to feel (though personally I would rather him emote). He doesn't show any emotion when he learns the truth about her, when they reunite, or when the sages pledge to serve her. This is a stark contrast to the Zelinks that are pretty much canon like in Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks. In both of these games there are very clear feelings for one another with Skyward Sword even having a romance theme for them. These Link's will emote and show how they feel in the moment with Zelda.

The point is it's tiring to see arguments on it. Civil discussions are fine, but heated debates are pointless. Aonuma says he wants people to see themselves in Link, and Aonuma also wants things to be open-ended and up for interpretation (like botws placement in the title). I haven't even touched on people hating on other ships (like miphlink and what not). I just think we should all be mindful, you know? You ship this Zelink? Great! You don't? Also, great! Both can coexist because, at the end of the day, neither is canon.

#the legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #totk #botw #breath of the wild #rant #shipping discourse #also this isnt targeted at anyone in particular or just one social media site #this is just something ive been seeing all over the place so

70 notes · View notes

neverchecking · 1 year

Note

Hi!! I just wanted to say that I love your work and I find your rendition of Sage/Totk Link absolutely AMAZING!!

And this isn’t specifically a request or anything I just wanted to comment

(and idk if this would count as a spoiler for TOTK but just in case I’ll say it: just talking about Link’s home in botw and Totk)

But as much as I love Link’s new home near Tarrey Town…

I MISS MY COTTAGECORE ONE IN HATENO!!!

And this just might be me projecting but I feel like Sage would miss it at times too.

Especially since a certain princess took it over and made it her own home.

And just passing through Hateno and hearing all about how “how this is Princess Zelda’s home” and how there’s literally villagers who will go in and clean the place while Zelda’s gone like?!?!?

Where was this hospitality for Link?!

Honestly I somewhat headcannon that Sage would begin to start avoiding Hateno simply because of how prominent of a figure Zelda became there for the citizens and how all the citizens seem to forget that HE used to own that house, that HE worked hard to but said house and completely fix it up when it was going to be demolished.

I ALSO MISS MY HATENO HOME I LOVED IT SO MUCH THEN I HAD TO USE MY IMAGINATION AND CREATE MY OWN HOME??? wHICH, BTW, COST SO MUCH MORE?!?!?!?

I think that's where a lot of Sage's resentment towards Zelda would come from, if not where it started. Imagine, you wake up with no memories whatsoever, suddenly have an entire kingdom on your shoulders, find out your friends are all dead, forced to rescue this kingdom and save someone who treated like absolute shit, but still manage to find a life for yourself only for her to then take it over.

Idk about yall, but I would be LIVID.

And yk what? Sage is. He is fucking boiling alive with his anger. When he first moved in, to a house that was fucking falling apart mind you, the villagers of Hateno all avoided him. None of them, save for Bolson and his company, offered their help. Bolson's help came at a price too, so he barely even counted that.

But here's this brat with the palm in her hand, getting all the credit for something he did. He fought Ganon. He saved her pathetic life. He did it all. When he finds out that the Mayor's wife is personally seeing to it that his home is being kept clean for her?! He has to leave the village and find a monster camp to cool down.

He probably only goes to Hateno for Cece. Bc we love Cece here. She did as all a favor with that Hylian hood (Iykyk). Or milk up at the farm as the farmer's family also love Link. They probably don't care too much for Zelda as she's all about modern this and technology that, while Link is much more comfortable with the slow life.

The only good thing is that now, he can let Reader design their dream home! A place with no memories of Zelda, or the Champions (The bitch took his picture too), just him and Reader, and the family they'll build there. :)

#cinder rambles #i miss my cottage core home #:(#Why did zelda take it?#when requests open- we as a community - should explore this #Give sage back his house 2k23

61 notes · View notes

thefloatingstone · 1 year

Note

How do I give my anime designs more character? I don’t want them to look bland, especially not the girls!

I had a whole different argument here and suddenly realised I was answering a question you didn't ask. I'm sick at the moment so my brain isn't working the best so forgive me if my answers seems a bit all over the place.

Most importantly, and something i think a LOT of modern anime does badly these days, is to not be afraid to PUSH the expressions of your anime girls.

if you'll forgive the mini-rant; modern anime has a really bad habit of not allowing female characters to have "ugly" expressions. Or when they do, they make them simplified emojis or make the one second of extreme emotion SO extreme it becomes completely off putting. Especially as there will be a tendency to only push an extreme expression in one single episode during a "dramatic scene".

This results in most girls in modern anime looking more like the limited expression range of a Vtuber than actual characters. There ARE exceptions, but this is a MASSIVE issue which was not the case in the 80s or 90s and only really started becoming more common around the mid 2000s.

Comparison examples! (you know I love those). I am using still images instead of gifs so the animation doesn't mask the drawing. But I'll show some animated gifs later in this ask

This extends beyond just facial expressions tho. Or rather... it doesn't.

Most modern anime shows will have the characters pull expressions in their face, but have their bodies relatively static, even in extreme emotions. If you compare the two screenshots above, the more modern example has a more extreme push to her eyes, but in the Dirty pair screenshot, not only is Kei's mouth open very wide, but her head is tilted backwards and to the side, her shoulders are drawn up, and she gives the impression even in a still image that she is in the middle of a physical reaction to something which annoyed her. Similarly, Yuri down there is also annoyed, and even though we only really see her eyes, you can tell she's hunched over and seething. In the modern anime screenshot she's just.... got the default "these are my angry eyes!" face with nothing really happening elsewhere.

Her shoulders I guess are kind of drawn up but so barely you wouldn't be blamed to think they always look like that.

And this comes to the second point.

DRAW FROM LIFE AND/OR PHOTOS.

There is NOTHING wrong using a pose doll to figure out a challenging pose. I have used pose dolls when I am unsure how a certain pose looks from a specific angle. But looking at real life, whether photos or if you can, life drawing, will be your biggest tool in figuring out how to breathe more life into your poses and art.

Now, to answer the ACTUAL question you asked about design;

I have to admit that character design is not a strength of mine. I have little to no practice with it myself and when I design OCs I end up not liking them or not enjoying their designs. I feel someone far more skilled at the design part of design might have better input, but I can tell you what I know just from observation;

The first BIG advice is; do not confuse interesting design with clutter.

This doesn't mean strip down your character design to look like a Y/N drawing, but more have every element you introduce into your design be there with some kind of thought in mind as to how it applies to the character and who they are as a person. This is a mistake I often see made with characters both OCs as well as professionally. Where character designers seem to think adding MORE to a design will make a character more interesting to look at. (PreCure has this problem a LOT)

Giving your character too many details without some kind of larger unification or idea, makes them harder to envision for people, because there's too much visual noise.

If I tell you to think of Link from Legend of Zelda, it doesn't matter WHICH Link you picture 9although at the moment it's most likely TotK or BotW Link), Link has unified design elements which means regardless of how detailed or cluttered his outfit becomes, we all know what Link looks like;

1: Blonde hair on the longer side usually, with fringe and side bangs 2: blue diamond shaped eyes, pointed ears, light skin 3: wears some variation of green. Can dress in other colours but Green is an identifying colour. Even in ToTK and BotW where he is most often shown in blue, Green is still the vast majority of the outfits and gear he will wear 4: boots and light coloured tights/pants 5: Twink

You don't need to look at a picture of Link to know this is what Link looks like. Other details like his earring, belts, gloves, bracers, undershirt etc are all there and enhance these elements and distinguish one Link from another exist, but they are not the unifying elements to Link's character design.

On top of this, all of Link's character design make SENSE for his character, what he does, where he comes from etc.

He is a Hylian so he has pointed ears and is generally elf-like in appearance. He spends most of his time in European forests so he dresses in green. When he wears other colours it usually corresponds to where he is currently traveling. He carries a sword and shield so he has a belt with scabbard. He carries an entire pantry worth of food with him, so he has various satchels and bags on his person (but not too many or the design becomes cluttered). He wears light protective gear to show he gets into fights but they are usually not heavy in nature because Link is nimble and relies heavily on movement.

This doesn't tell us anything about his personality because Link doesn't really have one, but it's a very strong character design all the same and informs us what kind of character he is and what sort of life he leads as well as what sort of background he might have (He is a skilled adventurer. Not a rich sheltered boy who has never been outside of a city before or something of the like).

Now I'm gonna compare him to the character design of a Mass Effect character which I don't THINK you'd have played since your profile says you're a teen and the game is rated M 👀 (or you might have, idk I'm not your mom) but ANYWAY! Looking at a character design which tells us about their PERSONALITY as well as way of living.

I'm not going to use any of the aliens as examples because then you have to bring in the subject of alien species into the equation and how they stand apart from the various other members of their species and etc etc. So we'll talk about a human character.

So... this is Jack

Although you may think her tattoos make her design cluttered, they don't because you don't really need to know what every individual tattoo looks like. You just know "Jack is covered in Tattoos".

So just looking at her, you can pretty much instantly pin down her personality. That being; she will most likely fucking stab you if you say one thing to annoy her.

She's like a punk on steroids. Shaved head, heavy make up, COVERED in tattoos, both ears capped in some futuristic piercings, some or other heavy duty uniform except she decided she'd rather walk around fucking topless and boots that could crush a man's skull.

Everything about her design screams "don't fuck with me I am VERY unhinged and will kill a man for less than the $4 in his pocket".

Jacks' entire personality is on display in her design. And the design as a whole present a single concept of who she is as a person, while ALSO tying into her backstory and lifestyle. (escaped prisoner from high security facility, still wearing the prison uniform, has been in an unknown number of gangs, has an extremely casual approach to sex and sexuality, uses her intimidation as a first line of defense to prevent people from getting close to her indicating a painful past)

And then you compare her to her design in the following game

This is a great design because it not only informs you on Jack's personality, but also her GROWTH AS A CHARACTER.

Her design is, at least compared to her first appearance, softer. She's grown her hair long enough to tie it into a ponytail, making her appear more feminine. But she still shaves the sides so you know she can still shank you if she wants.

Her outfit is still VERY revealing but she's also dressed borderline decently. She is not as defensive any more and could probably even walk around in normal society without getting a ticket (and then shooting the cop in response).

However even covered up, she's wearing a leather studded jacket, and she is still displaying her tattoos on her chest and hands proudly. She's still the same person... just less likely to murder you (although the option is still there if needed).

Now compare these character designs to some others which I would count as being "too busy" and tell me if these designs tell you ANYTHING about what kind of personalities these characters might have, what kind of lifestyle to they live, what do their environments and world looks like, or what it says about them

Fun fact; that last one is NOT a magical girl, but is in fact an alchemist who is living in a slowly dying world whose resources are being depleted and the future looks grim and hopeless as humanity tries to navigate this slow apocalypse.

I have no idea if any of that made sense or is useful in any way, but hopefully you get what I mean?

Look at real life. Don't rely on just referencing other anime and pose dolls. Don't clutter a character design with details that don't mean anything. make the parts of your character design you use have meaning or purpose. Even if that purpose is just "to give them a silhouette different to the other characters so she's easy to identify by sight"

#C-Puff answers #long post

45 notes · View notes

blueskittlesart · 1 year

Note

i miss the champions so much i know there's like no logical reason for them to come back in totk but i wanna see my guys again even if it's just more memories or something. do you think there's any way they could pull that off based on what we know about the game already?

i really hope so! at the very least i hope the abilities you get in botw won't be removed bc i cant navigate that fucking map without revali's gale. even the lack of expedited cooldowns from the dlc starts to get to me after a while at this point LMAO. in terms of actual implementation i'm trying to think if there's an easy way to give us more champion content in totk. In theory, we could continue to recover link's memories and see more of the champions that way, but from a writing standpoint that might feel clunky & at odds with the rest of the story unless it's VERY carefully implemented. My honest answer from a writing & game dev standpoint is that i don't think we're likely to get many more memory-style cutscenes, especially with the release of hyrule warriors a few years ago sort of serving as an extra source of champions content already. that might have been the point of hyrule warriors from a game dev standpoint, actually, if they realized while in production that totk wasn't going to have a lot of room for champion-centric content, hyrule warriors would have given them an easy way to satiate fans who really loved those characters without compromising the integrity of their already-written story in totk. tldr realistically i don't think there's going to be a whole lot of champion-centric content in totk but for now we can pray that i will have to eat these words in 3 months

#a lot of this speculation is also based off my own speculations about what the story of totk will be too so. take this with a grain of salt #but the existence of hyrule warriors at all suggests to me that we're going to get a lot less pre-calamity content in totk if any #because like. they wouldn't have made that game if they knew that precalamity cutscenes were gonna be a heavy feature of totk #hyrule warriors' draw from a narrative standpoint is that it occupies a space in the timeline that no other game can fill #and if they knew that within 2 years they were going to release a game that DID fill that space with the potential to retcon whatever they #wrote into hyrule warriors then they would have given hyrule warriors a different story/place in the timeline imo.#releasing 2 games back to back whose stories sit so close together without directly interacting with each other isnt a smart business move #so tldr i do not think we will see much of the champions in totk. HOWEVER i dont think theyll be gone entirely!!! the writers arent stupid #they know how beloved these characters have become and if anything hyrule warriors sales REINFORCED the demand for these characters. so #i think we will see them again in some capacity just probably not memory-style anymore #asks #totk predictions

50 notes · View notes

ganondoodle · 9 months

Text

more thoughts

big part of why i loathe what totk did with its story and lore is that it tremendously hurts botw in retrospect

i said that before and mentioned all of these points before as well but i just have to mention it again; how totk did away with all the little mysteries in botw, like the ancient hero looking kinda strange leading to lots of interesting theories- WHOOP its a sonau mix guy revealed through a collectable and its straight up said by purah/impa that that is the ancient hero .. like it was an always known fact ......

the sonau ruins in botw of a long gone group of people that lived in the forest of phirone - WHOOP those are just monuments built by hylians in memory of the sonau and actually their real architecure isnt rare and few but everywhere en masse and doesnt resemble the ones from botw at all, aside from some vague dragon motive; theres more stuff of the oh so sadly gone and not at all mysterious anymore sonau left than there was of the ancient shiekah in botw (and now it doesnt exist at all anymore, who cares about them, how important they were, or this worlds history, especially zelda, she never cared about shiekah or history that wasnt about sonau :)))) )

one of the biggest crimes, to me, personally, is what totk did with the dragons not actively mind you, but still changed my view of them and i hate it; i always saw them as these ethereal otherwordly spirits older than time itself (i liked the idea of them being like a final evolution of the dragons from skyward sword, tho of course i dont need that to be canon lol) and then totk comes along and .. the newly revealed -always been there super cool- race of people from the sky is heavily based on their designs ... and they have armor sets imitating the dragons ... and have ... magical never heard of before stones that turn people into .... dragons .... i get how that can be an interesting thing for people to connect but for me personally ... its a mystery that REALLY shouldnt have been solved, at all, or even touched, the fact that you knew nothing about the dragons other than they are here was what made them feel so much more divine and awe inspiring (i know you could try to think of it being the other way around, the sonau worshipping the dragons so much they dedicated all of their cultur around them ((but then again were is that anywhere, if they worshipped them so much then they sure didnt matter in any of what we say of them in memories..)) ... but the sonau designs, the armor ... the stones ... its all such an obvious connection ...) and its really hard for me to ignore it, i actively have to work now to keep seeing the dragons as these untouchable ethereal spirits instead of some sonau guy eating a fucking stone

and yet again its like .. can you really blame me for feeling weird about the sonau/dislike them when ... theres nothing that WASNT touched by the sonau, they already had tech way above the level of the shiekah, they were in the sky, the surface AND the underground all along, theirs is the actually important influence on the history of the world, they have been in every place that was once important, hell they were in every place were a settlement of people is EVEN THE FEW YEARS OLD TABURASA (tarrey town), their buildings look like they were abandoned 10 years ago, all their shit is still working, they founded (this) hyrule, they are the royals, they are the gods, they are the dragons, the ancient hero was a sonau mix clad in waht totk made out to be their signature design elements-

we had recordings from that time (tapestry) and even PEOPLE (the monks) and yet the sonau were a total mystery? even though their culture was literally still there when the shiekah built their tech?

what gets me escpeially is how .. they didnt NEED to erase anything shiekah, they didnt need to act like they never existed, they didnt need to make the sonau be the coolest guys ever and were so desperate to get that into your thinking everyone in the game is obsessed with them and tells you why you should be obsessed too

like am i just insane or is it a rather .. obvious connection to make that the shiekah found the tech of the sonau and built theirs inspired by what they could find, it was so old at that point that its non functional or even recognizable in the present, but when the shiekah found it they could still research it; given how the shiekah built multiple shrines and puzzles to them WITHTIN ruins that, in botw, were sonau ruins, i thought that was the logical line to draw and a good way to connect them while still leaving the sonau to be a mysterious ... mystery (this is what im going for in my rewrite btw)

also another thought, if the ancient shiekah could see the future to a degree they built stuff to prepare the next hero for the next calamity that would happen in thousands of years .. how did they never find out about gan? i know they were more about the future than the past but like ... were they really so stupid to see that the calamity will come back just the same from the same place and NOT investigate?? ESPECIALLY considering that the weird half sonau ancient hero was literally THERE when they saw the furture and built all of that for it???? the sonau werent gone gone in any sense and you CANNOT tell me that the shiekah jsut ignored this weird half whatever looking guy outfitted in an aesthetic and culture that wasnt obviously present anymore and clearly connected to somethign else, with probably clear scars were whatever buildings were lifted into the skies- SOMEHOW- and monoments LITERALLY STILL READABLE IN THE PRESENT that tells you about all theshit that went down?? even if you hid them with some weird mechanisms, are you realyl not gonen investigate?? also why hide it anyway?? if its supposed to be a monument to the sonau why the fuck would you built stuff to HIDE the information from it?? gan cant reach it anyway bc hes KINDA STUCK you are telling me the group of people with a vision of the future and high tech stuff that are famously obsessed with the stars and sky didnt see any of the sonau shit floating around there?? ohoho but it was hidden by magic uwu WHY bc you wanted to wait thousands of years for the "right" link to come around?? so you let thousands of people suffer and die just bc you wanted a specific guy? why not the ancient hero instead?? and solve the problem right then and there?? or would that mess too much with the history all of the sudden, you didnt care about messing anythign else up before either

its all just so messy if you start to think even a little bit about whatever the fuck happened in totk and i ahte it, it solves stuff that didnt need solving, ignores or even erases stuff that didnt need erasing and was all ready to go and be more explored, its infuriating

(also additional thought about the previous rant where i mentioned how characters, esepcially zelda, regress HARD in chaarcter development) someone mentioend this about link and ... YEAH, in botw the main thing was the connection between link and zelda, how they didnt like each other at first and at the end were THE brotp; in totk, aside from zelda mentioning how strong link is, theres nothing, the link that was revealed in botw to only be so silent and expressionless (not fully but like supressing everythign rly) bc of the immense pressure that was put on him is now just the most importanest sword guy who didnt even shed a tear when you get the memories of zelda basically killing herself; or did he know she will just be returned to normal with no harm or memory done no problemo in the end?? i dont WANT link to talk mind you, i never want to hear him talk tbh, i like him being mostly silent aside from his grunts when he climbs a cliff or soothes a horse (i go non verbal in high stress situations too) but you could have shown him be affected by it at all, or idk DO ANYTHIGN WITH THEIR RELATIONSHIP they are best friends whod die for each other but that doesnt actually matter in anything bc he just do what sword man does-

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rants #it really is a replacement for botw isnt it #might as well not have happened

204 notes · View notes

marcilled · 1 year

Note

I'd love to hear your thoughts on TOTK and what it's flaws and strengths are to you!

I had a whole response typed for this, ready to post, and my power shut off... well! I'm back now so I'll try to type my thoughts on this again.

big disclaimer here that tears of the kingdom is a HUGE game... I'm still working my way through it. I've done the equivalent of one of the divine beasts in botw for a bit of reference (they have a very direct equivalent in totk it seems).

that being said some of its strengths were the strengths botw had... truly expansive open world, that does an amazing job at rewarding you for exploring it. It never feels "empty", there's always some little surprise to find in every tiny nook and cranny you can explore- usually a korok. There's so many koroks. None of them are where they were in botw, despite using the same map (with some modifications).

this got really long, so I'm going to put a readmore (might contain some vague spoilers)

What I find especially apparent with totk, that sets it apart from the previous game, is that it does a really great job of guiding the player from point to point. It's still very much an open world game, but instead of leaving you directionless and hoping you find what you're looking for, there's always some npc mentioning that some weird ruins from the ancient zumblefuck civilization suddenly appeared in chungustown, across the suckdick river in east falumpa or whatever.

Even when you're just, you know, getting your horse out of the stable, the npcs will constantly be giving you directions to some major landmark, where you'll find a bunch of other npcs giving important quests or furthering the plot! In that way, you're never left wondering "well, this is great and all, but what is there to do in this game besides exploring", they just straight up tell you. botw ... sort of did that, but not enough.

I think that this sort of design philosophy is especially apparent in the tutorial island you begin the game at, where they very expertly crafted this island that is definitely "open world", but at the same time, directs you from point to point almost invisibly. Sure, you could visit any of the three shrines in any order you like- but there's one shrine super close to you, and it's the most visible from where you start the quest. So, may as well go there! Oh, turns out that the next shrine is way easier to get to after you have the ability from that closest shrine... Not to mention, the little robots give lots of tips for everything you're about to run into along the path you conveniently ended up taking that definitely isn't exactly where the game wants you to go! Plus, you keep running into this handsome goat man along the way who's always saying some contemplative stuff that makes you fall in love with him. Wait was that just me? Anyways, it's incredibly clever at guiding the player where they need to go without seeming like it's holding your hand either. botw wasn't really designed that way, and I appreciate that totk takes this approach.

In line with the direction that the npcs give you, I also really love to see how the world of totk feels so much more alive than in botw. In botw, humanity had nearly been wiped out by the calamity. For 100 years they toiled just to survive, and the remaining settlements felt very disconnected from one another, with how dangerous travel was. It gave this very melancholic feeling to every place you visited. However, in totk, it's clear that some time has passed since link defeated calamity ganon, and the people of hyrule have really begun to heal. There's people everywhere, and they're visiting each other more often. There's cooperation from every part of the kingdom, with everyone working together to try to find Zelda, and figure out what caused the upheaval, and what it means for the future. One particular interaction I really loved, was talking to a rito and a hylian woman at a stable near rito village, where the rito woman had come to pick up supplies for the village to deal with the intense blizzard there. The hylian woman said something like, "we're glad to help you, you've been wonderful neighbors to us!", and the rito woman was so thankful. that sort of camaraderie really sets the tone for totk, and it warmed my heart to see. There's this real sense of the world healing and supporting one another that I really enjoy.

Another thing that sets it apart, for better and worse, is the all-new abilities you get. No more magnesis or stasis or bombs, they're replaced with ultrahand, reversal, and... being able to attach bombs to literally any object you desire, as well as throw them directly, or even stick them onto contraptions you build?! Not to mention the ability that lets you travel up through ceilings. The abilities are quite different and do make a serious impact in how you play! The bizarre fucking contraptions you're able to build using ultrahand, combined with the various pieces of zonai tech, makes for some really compelling emergent gameplay! And lots of funny clips you can post online which I'm sure you've probably seen by now. It's a lot of fun.

That being said, I feel there's something lost by getting rid of the old abilities- for example, I almost never find myself using any of those abilities during combat. The most I'll do is attach items to my weapons (which is very fun!), but it's nothing compared to being able to bonk enemies with huge rocks using magnesis, or using stasis to pile on the damage onto a single enemy, or even just launch them off of cliffs. Although, the rest of the fun physics from botw is still there, like freezing enemies and making them slide around or what have you. I guess my primary complaint here is that the new abilities feel a bit underutilized, for example I pretty much never use the ability to reverse time, unless I'm doing a shrine where it's obviously required for a puzzle or something. Ah well.

I think my main complaint with totk really just boils down to the story just kind of refusing to admit that it's a sequel? even though... it is a sequel?? it's kind of weird, and just makes me sort of sad. Ancient Sheikah technology was crucial to the entire worldbuilding and story of botw, and somehow it's nowhere to be found in totk. They've just replaced all the ancient sheikah stuff with different ancient tech, which, while it's really cool in its own right, makes it feel very disconnected from the game that came before it. I get that they're trying to make the game feel welcoming to people who never played the first one, but you don't have to literally get rid of all traces of the previous game to accomplish that?!? I haven't found a SINGLE broken-down guardian anywhere in the whole game so far, much less one that's still living. There's been basically NO MENTION of the divine beasts either! The most I've seen is purah and impa having some ancient sheikah stuff/pictures relating to the calamity, but that's about it. It doesn't go beyond mentioning that the calamity happened, really. It's bizarre. They don't even talk about calamity ganon. What the hell!!! it just makes me kind of upset.

Actually, it goes deeper than this. the threat of calamity ganon was omnipresent in botw. You could always see it floating around the castle from almost anywhere on the map, at the very center. More than that, though, the remnants of an ancient war were everywhere- Guardians existed everywhere, always threatening you with that utterly terrifying music. There's not really an equivalent to that in totk. Sure, there's the zonai constructs, but... None of them are nearly as threatening as guardians were, other than the ones that are obviously boss fights. It just feels a bit sad, there's not as much "urgency" to your actions.

Then again, totk seems a bit more linear in its progression than botw- it could be possible that I'm still too early on to see the difficulty ramp up further, and introduce new threats? that'd actually be really cool if that were the case, but I have no idea. I just have to keep playing, I suppose. But as of rn, the "demon king" is just a big question mark, and his influence on the story is a bit unclear right now. it's not even immediately obvious what the endgame is, which is a lot different from botw. So perhaps I'll hold my judgement on this front until later. I just miss how the guardians were a constant threat, always reminding you of what your goal is.

And as one last quickfire of several little complaints:

The (english) voice acting in the game is very underwhelming. It's just not very good. I play ffxiv so I'm used to middling voice performances tho LOL. this was a problem in botw as well tho.

the boss fight i did (that i compared to one of the divine beasts) was too easy. i expected it to feel at least a little challenging, but i didn't feel threatened even once. the enemies i encounter in the overworld are tougher, it felt kinda underwhelming in spite of the (extremely good) boss music

the depths feels a bit samey after a while. my first impression was utter awe, i was like, "i'm completely in love with this game", but i soon realized that they used some sort of algorithm to translate the topography of the overworld onto the depths and suddenly the magic disappeared a bit. it's still really cool, and the mechanic of permanently losing hearts while you're down there makes it feel incredibly threatening, but there's simply not enough variety to feel like it's justified to take up that much space. unlike the overworld, the depths /do/ end up feeling empty after a while of exploring.

... I suppose as a bit of a TL;DR, my main complaints boil down to, "this is great, but it could be even better", or, "I miss some of the stuff that was in botw".

There's more thoughts I could probably share, like how I love all of the very blatant ghibli inspiration in this game (even moreso than in botw!), but I've already rambled quite a lot. thank you for the ask anon!! <3

#asks #Anonymous #long post

18 notes · View notes

flockrest · 9 months

Text

this one's to the lovely who dropped an entire essay back @ me in the inbox! i've decided to format the post such that i can answer some portions directly so none of us get confused, hope you don't mind! anything indented is what you sent in, the rest is part of my response :) it's another doozy but we love those, don't we? asflkdj here we go!

Hi, hope you're doing well! I'd been the anon giving you asks more on Revali's personality and his behavior around the Flock and the Flock's reaction (mostly Tulin's) towards him. Also, the 1.6k did not overwhelm me- if anything made me very happy and overall more curious ahahaha. If anything- thank you so much for accepting and taking the time to answer these asks. Can relate to the unhinged feelings over the lonely rito- I could be hours and hours thinking. That gif of the guy with a board behind full of clues and trying to connect the dots- that's currently me.

hello, welcome back! thank you, hope you're having a wonderful time too!! ♡ also gotta thank you again for sending these in, i genuinely get so excited to see things like this in my inbox!! your passion is so great to see! i'm glad you enjoy my answers, and that they make you all the more curious and open to sharing with me ♡ what a huge mood though afklsjdg this stupid bird just has So Much to him

I've re-read your post various times and even tried organizing my thoughts in paper. And there is so much I want to ask... What caught a lot my attention- was how you spoke a bit of Rito village during & after the Calamity; ofc we don't really get a clear picture of the before even with AoC's light but we do get the clearest view of the aftermath of it (ofc 100 years skipped). I do feel (Pre-Calamity) Rito Village had a larger flock(?) compared to the village we get exposed during BoTW/ToTK events. In a way feels the loss of their Champion & Calamity's wrath- made them all realize the importance of that sense of unity.

yes, exactly! you get it! it's a natural outcome from suffering any huge loss...and while it comes from a place of tragedy, i just. really appreciate how homely and cosy rito village feels in both botw and totk because of it — you get that sense of nobody is genuinely uncared for, even link! and this isn't to say that the other peoples of hyrule don't care for their own, it just! hits different with the rito. like you get the impression that everybody interacts with each other everyday! you literally can't go from the top of the village to the bottom without seeing almost every single resident; they're all practically neighbours! they're all, on some level, friends!

this significance on sticking together as a community is especially evident in totk. seriously, it makes me so emo seeing the kids step up to fill in spaces the adults did not mean to leave behind nor expect them to fill :') and their efforts don't go unrecognised, as they shouldn't be, but oh my god. on my hands and knees over how cherished the kids are in this damn flock!! nekk ( MY BELOVED ) puts it best: "they're the saviours of this village."

and like! they're going through extremely hard times with supply scarcities but still find the capacity to be so generous?? there are more things than i expected lying about that you can just grab — that they'll consciously let you grab! i'm going to need these folks to stop having such a huge collective heart fr it's making me feel A Lot 😭

( and in reviewing cutscenes from both botw and aoc in this context, i think we can safely say that their residential population was indeed bigger pre-calamity. there's more background npcs just chilling about in the memory "revali's flap" compared to most post-calamity cutscenes, and aoc literally shows that there are enough rito present for brigades! the reduced numbers we see post-calamity could simply be attributed to more rito travelling beyond their home and even hyrule, but then the calamity would probably be a big reason for that too )

Brings me back to ToTK, where I noticed most adults in a way spoke highly & relied (at least to me) a bit on Tulin's ability to use wind magic- after all it's been a long time since they ever witness it. But also appreciated how Harth's dialogues which he praises the boy's ability but is concerned of how Tulin is taking certain approach (how at first he goes alone) and his overworking state. Even Teba & Saki recognize their son's abilities but as parents are concerned- I am pretty sure while they acknowledge him as a rito warrior, they also want him to continue living his childhood. (Link does too btw- sorry I don't mention them often)

OH, FOR SURE. you are right on many points here; for sure, the adults have come to see tulin as a young rito warrior in his own right and do trust him to contribute in a way they wouldn't ask of the other fledglings; harth makes it clear that even before link had come, sending tulin to investigate the cloud surrounding the stormwind ark was an option they weren't as opposed to as our introduction to the kid made it seem ( and it's not just his wind-gust technique they're so in awe of either! god. he really has worked so hard!! and everybody can see it! 😭😭 ).

with the worry, i believe the nature of it really depends! it's all completely warranted given how tulin's initial views on how "he doesn't need anyone else backing him up" has apparently "gotten him into trouble more times than [harth] can count" ( which is definitely concerning but also. it can't be anything worse than getting his bow stolen and being left with just his talons for defence in the face of a monster, right? because tulin. tulin. that could not have been your turnaround if you've been doing shit like flying straight into frost taluses solo or something sflkjd ) anyway, but it seems for teba and harth, it's more in a we're worried you're actively sabotaging yourself with your recklessness way.

saki had hang-ups about tulin losing his innocence too early in botw ( "he is such a sweet boy," she says, and it never fails to make me collapse on my knees because he so is and the best thing is he never loses that aspect of himself!! ), but does appear to have come to accept that her son's growing up in totk? i unfortunately don't have a screenshot of the line that indicates this, nor do i remember it verbatim, but the vibes i'm getting from her are i'm worried because you have not learnt enough to be as grown up as you insist you are ( which leaves you ill-prepared for the situations you're trying to fly into ).

ofc it all connects to a primary worry for his safety and his tendency to do way more than anyone would ask of him, but i do think they understand, on some level, that trying to completely stop him is ultimately futile and will only make things worse — in that he'll start deliberately pushing them away when he's only leaving them behind for now.

he's a tween! still a child but only ever getting older, and with how important it is to their culture, i imagine being a warrior isn't as mutually exclusive from childhood as it'd be for us. like tulin's an outlier because he's a prodigy who excessively worked himself to that title, but i don't doubt that compulsory education for growing fledglings would involve, among other things, learning how to at least hunt and defend yourself in the wild! so i don't think it's that they're scared of him growing up too fast at that point in totk — because while he's definitely matured more than his peers in some parts, he is very much still experiencing being a child no matter what he argues in many others aflskdj — just more like...they want him to grow up well. properly, for a lack of better words. WHICH INCLUDES NOT OVERWORKING. oh my god with the overworking

( also oh boy. very glad you brought up link! no need to be sorry! i can't say much on him because i'm not a link writer, though i do ramble about his dynamic with tulin, including how he potentially sees himself reflected in him, over here if you're interested! )

But this also sends me off to another "path" makes me think- What if Revali didn't have this type of support? And it made me think how similar were Revali's and Tulin's in some aspects but how different the outcome were for both- it's a bit tragic at least for me.

YES. YES!! THIS IS IT, YOU HIT IT ON THE HEAD!! i've said it before and i'll say it again: tulin and revali are essentially one support system removed from being each other! they share notable parallels!

just. the fact that harth notices the injuries on tulin's wings from pushing himself to the limits. we don't get follow-up dialogue on that, but there's such a high chance that Words are exchanged between them when link leaves them be because we've seen their relationship. we know how harth cares for tulin, we know tulin is loved for more than what he can do and looked out for. now juxtapose that with revali, thrown out of his own tornado, alone in that moment where he picks himself up as well — but way less likely to have anyone say anything about his wing injuries or to even let someone think he has them. [spontaneously combusts]

i would say more on this and why the sages of totk in general act well as foils to the champions of botw, particularly regarding themes, but that really does feel like a post for another time sdflkjd and it is tragic! it is very tragic! revali was doomed by the narrative in more ways than one :')

I remember the diary where he speaks how the town began praising him for his achievements- that type of validation can be good but to an extreme and left unchecked, it can spiral someone into depending of it. And yet at the end of that diary... he still spoke how he need to continue perfecting himself. Something that AoC made me think in more depth was how almost everyone was "chosen" by destiny (or have a unique ability) and carried a title. But when I look at Revali he seems somehow an abstract to them. Even though in his diary such things were not something he cared for- he mostly valued folks by their responses and actions. (Note: Found cute how he appreciated the scarf and gave one to his bow... It really meant a lot to him// Also I do think Revali appreciated all the Champions including Zelda & Link).

YEAH. YEP. and the way he at first speaks about it, how he contradicts himself in tone despite trying to sound so self-assured — "as one would expect" VS the "i...could get used to this." that follows in the same entry — that's the attention and glory he's always wanted! now he's gonna affix it to the meaning of loving and being loved. which he's also going to attach to his abilities and what he can offer, which is deeply connected to his perceived self-worth. and he's going to make sure he'll never run out of ( tbf real and well-earned ) confidence in that self-worth by constantly pushing himself to greater, more impossible heights. i'm going to put this bird in a washing machine.

he's literally just a guy!! it's one of my favourite things about him, he's Just Some Guy in the group of people who were born into wealth; powers; blessings; respect. they all had their trials, but he earned his place among them from the comparative nothing he started out with and he's justifiably proud of this!

i do think he's also insecure about it at first, tbh ( which he reacts to by laying on the conceit even thicker ), even though his belief in hard work being a supreme indicator of one's "true strength" isn't actually shaken. he is genuinely like i more than deserve to be here but he's also like. and there's nothing you can do about it. don't you forget it. don't you forget it. don't you ever forget it. i wouldn't say it mellows out, but the more he gets to see the champions in action ( thus confirming that they are on his level — that he's fit to make a constellation amongst these that've already been mapped ), the less inclined he feels to explicitly remind them.

and oh my god. the things i could say about what the blue scarf likely means to him. it was handcrafted by zelda, hyrule's princess, for him specifically. it's part of a matching set with other big powers of hyrule. titles and uniform do nothing for him, he claims, but isn't this like being told you are one of us? that you have much to offer? it's "meaningless pomp", he says.

it's also still a gift.

the cloth he ties to his bow is the same shade of blue. i should really make another study post speaking about this more in depth, but i've always interpreted it to be a memento the same way teba and saki's feathers on tulin's quiver are! in tulin's time, this might mean, "these people are always with me." in revali's time, on the brink of a calamity, i imagine it might mean, "( if i fall, you who finds me, ) i belonged with these people."

And yet when Teba & Tulin show up- there is this subtle change on him(?) I wished the game had dwelled a bit more on Teba and Revali. Seeing their interactions was always interesting and in a way, Teba seemed to understand the rito champion. While I felt Teba was that friend or even family member(?) that Revali needed in a way or I could be just over reading, ahaha sorry. But sincerely, I always felt Teba & Tulin were that family or friends- that in a way Revali needed and it makes me think so hard on the "What ifs" and "What could have been"...

what i wouldn't have given for more content and interactions between these three as well!! it's especially fascinating to think about it from teba's side — there is so much recontextualising he has to do and does do about revali, because the one he's grown up idolising and hearing Songs about is uh. well, he's certainly there in the revali he meets, but i doubt he's really prepared for things like how painfully young he is.

he handles it very well honestly asfklsdjg i would not have taken to the realisation that my champion is a warrior hardened only by constant work and the battles he throws himself into, and kind of a fucking brat because he's like the 18yo who thinks being 18 is a decade away from being 17, and died distressingly young back in my timeline with the same grace he gives when he says — of the entire wild experience that is aoc — "this has been enlightening".

you are not over-reading, do not be sorry fr!! i do think revali found an opportunity for companionship in teba that he couldn't find anywhere else when he's built relationships and dynamics he can't change because he has an image to uphold! teba already comes with a dire respect for revali, the knowledge that his story does not end nicely, AND HE'S AN ACTUAL DAD. that sort of thing can bleed into your behaviour and the way you process things without meaning to asflkdjgs

THE BIGGEST MOOD!! wow i'm so glad writers ( it's me, i'm writers ) can create literally anything they want and so can explore these what ifs and what could have beens and give a resolution to a story cut short. this is what my the champions survive au is all about, i hope to have you stay long enough to see these things come out of it ♡

As for the Flight Range & Saki's dialogue; I've always been emo about the F.Range specially when you walk in and hear his theme playing in this music box style... it's like part of his soul is also there but that flame that burnt passionately has subdued and waits to pass to torch to the next generation. In ToTK it made me cry- specially when Kaneli comments (when you pick the bow,arrows) how they been collecting dust... But on the bright side, made me happy that even with the damages- they still hold dearly to the place and is currently being used as training grounds for flight. Which... is what Revali wanted for his people for them to reach the sky and break the limits (or that how I interpreted it).

AUGH EXACTLY, YOU GET IT!! 😭 he never gave it his name but it'll always be his! it's the most melancholic we ever get to hear his theme, full of the wistful yearning that was definitely present but more muted in its botw version! it's lost potential. an unsaid goodbye. revali's gone. but it's also grounds for hope, a tiptoeing hello: his legacy lives on still! i will always go fucking feral over the music in these games!!

YES!! YEAH!! [HOLDING YOU BY THE SHOULDERS] he calls his journal "the diary of revali, the rito legend" BUT HE DOES NOT. GIVE THE FLIGHT RANGE LITERALLY MADE FOR HIM HIS NAME. because it was never going to be something solely for him. he loves his people, he was never going to stymie their prospects! this loser is so good at making me infuriatingly sad AUGH

Re-reading Saki's dialogue with the context you given me- hit me like a ton of bricks. Because it was a new pov. When I first read her dialogue, I took it more of a "Remembering our Champion- one we couldn't help" rather than "commemoration of what he couldn't do". But I also remembered how contrasting are Teba and Saki; Teba being a warrior with pride, reckless at times - who admired greatly Revali's feats and aspired once to surpass him. Meanwhile Saki is more calm and is concerned with the concept of engaging battle- nervous about the training her son was exposed to. So, when re-reading her dialogue I take it more of a wife and mother concerned of losing her companion/husband and son to a similar fate to Revali's.

i swear we are on the same wavelength. yes, exactly!

another thing about revali's landing that makes me so, so deliriously emo — it's a physical permanency given without request: in the best way they can afford to grant it. the rito notably have very little tangible representations of themselves. they don't have statues or effigies like the zora or gorons ( and why would they, when they have Songs and the Windlines and are also probably restricted by their morphology ), and revali does not have any family to be likened to. link remembers him through seeing the landing, which was there, a part of rito village, before it was ever deemed revali's. it wasn't made for him. but they gave it to him! and i'm!! [BLUBBERING]

Revali's love for his people and Rito Village- it breaks me. I can understand that sentiment of loving someone or something from a far (?) - Even when challenging W.Blight and listening to his lines (both english and spanish for me), one can hear that hidden sadness. It's hearing someone who wants to go back home. "But even so, it will always be my home." - the entirety of those lines really hit me so hard the first time I've heard them.

I KNOW. I KNOW. [head in hands] a century has passed and he can't fathom it. "there's no one left who would even know me." he sounds so struck by it, in both the original jpn and english audio, i want to wrap him up in a blanket and toast him like a marshmallow! how much of that is grief? how much of that is longing? how much of that is some strange solace, in knowing he's alone but there's nothing he could've done about it this time?

Also, it makes me glad seeing a Tulin who can see the good in Revali- even if the champion can have a bit of a thorn like exterior. I've read some of the threads! They been wonderful and brought me a lot of joy. It makes me happy to see Tulin taking flight and moving forward. When you mention your student-disciple, are you referring to Kido? I know there were two names but I've lost the post with the cups. I would love to hear about them all!

thank you!! it heartens me to know that you've dipped into some of my ic writing too! i hope you'll continue to enjoy your stay here!! ♡♡

SLFKJKSDLG SO I'VE CHANGED IT IN THE POST NOW, but i meant master-disciple! apologies for the confusion!! kido is an original character of mine who would actually rather fall into totori lake than be revali's student alfjsdkg but that's how it be when you're a kid with a complex, turned-less-than-pleasant background with the concept of revali. if you're interested and up for it, please do give his dossier and study tag a peek! this is by no means a request that you do; it's totally fine if you leave him be!

There so many questions and facts, I would love to talk about... but as I scrolled up- I noticed this is becoming a long one. I am so sorry. I'd been trying to simplify and cut a bit ;-; Plus, I know this blog is a multiverse but focused on Tulin and I don't want to bother. So once again, thank you so much for taking your time in answering these asks. If anything if you ever do the academic-paper length study on lonely birb, I'll run over to read it X'D !!! But I'd been enjoying everything of the meta- the studies on rito's culture and behaviour. Also been curious on your views on Kass taking the role of a bard... Yeah, looking forward to keep reading. Thank you once again.

please, never be sorry for giving me your thoughts, no matter how long they end up being!! i mean it! i enjoyed reading through every line, it means a lot to me that you'd take the time and energy to send something of this scale to me ♡ you did not bother and will not bother, i promise! any of my muses are up for discussion, and so are their people in general! i have an itch to talk about these birds at all times, lurkers like you give me a great scratch ♡

one more time, thank you for your kind words!! i'm so happy to know that my thoughts are received this well!!

KASS MY BELOVED. i'm not sure if you've seen my study on what Songs, Songkeepers, and Scriptweavers are, but if you have, then here's some paraphrased disco ramblings on my Thoughts on him! with how important a role he played in keeping and invoking memories of the champions in botw's dlc, i'm of the belief that he's rito village's primary Songkeeper! ahaha, on this note ( and this is more of a fun roleplaying easter egg than anything ): my botw verse is named Song of the Reclamation — i keep the headcanon that kass, specifically, writes this Song after the game's events tucked away with other misc. details that inform how i run things here :)

this is already long enough, so i think i'll end it here asfljkd but feel free to bounce your thoughts off me anytime! this has been an absolute pleasure, looking forward to seeing you in the inbox again whenever you drop by! thank you!! ♡

#* arrowhead / study.#* vanes / study.#* roosting / ooc.#i hope you're sitting down or in bed because this a probably a good piece to read #when you're like. about to sleep. or when you're stuck in traffic sflkdjg #~2.7k words long excluding the ask! it's a bit of a monster!#BUT GOSH. thank you so much again for indulging me and letting me ramble my HEAD off about my blorbos of all time!! <3 #GENUINELY I APPRECIATE THIS SO MUCH. NEARLY CRIED WHEN I FIRST SAW THE ASK (AFFECTIONATE)#i hope this will be as enjoyable for you to read as it was for me to write! thank you! LOVE MY LURKERS. I LOOOOVEEEE MY LURKERS #someone better give me an absolutely UNHINGED about tu.lin and rev.ali medal at this point slfkjdlkg #long post cw

7 notes · View notes