me: i am going to do so much today!

me:

Underrated thing I love about Stray: it solves the core “narrative distance problem” you have in almost every other video game ever.

In other video games when you get distracted from the main story to go hunt for collectibles/ goof around, it always feels like you’re “ruining the narrative.” The NPCs are urging you to solve the world ending threat as fast as you can —and you respond by looking for the bonus items. It creates a distance between the player and character. It feels weird that the NPCs aren’t angry at you for hopping around and goofing off instead of focusing on the world-ending disaster

But in Stray it makes perfect sense because like. You’re a cat.

Of course the NPCS aren’t mad at you for acting oddly or running off and goofing around for a bit! You’re just a feral little cat, you don’t know better. Of course a cat would get distracted from a main storyline to goof around and go hunting for little treats. It’s just a little kitty. It needs to cause mischief. Everyone Gets it and it makes perfect sense

The moral of the story is that there should be more video games with cat main characters and that’s that on that

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

i feel like it's not rare at all for characters who on all accounts are "coded" to come across as good - beautiful, angelic, kind, gentle, open, soft-spoken - to turn out to be villains, but i want more of the opposite: i want more characters who are very much "coded" to be seen as evil - ugly, monstrous, demonic, sneaky, suspicious and secretive, sarcastic and biting, harsh, circling around the hero like they're a beast sizing up their prey - to turn out to be good guys, or at least not villains

i don't know i'm just at a point where everytime a character who is Very Clearly intended to be seen as evil turns out to be evil, i'm disappointed lmao

im quite tired of talking about totk, like im sure you all know by know just how frustrated i am, but something i still strongly believe was the logical, and best thing to do in a sequel.. -

while botw was about you feeling lost in a strange world with neither you nor link knowing anything and both discovering it as you go, the theme of lonelyness and isolation, freeing the spirits of dead friends you need toremember again, in the end finally reuniting with one of the only friends still alive, after a 100 years

totk should have been about community, about working together with zelda at your side, as a companion, after having been seperated for so long, and seeing nothing of the time between titles, this should have been her travelling alongside you, after botw you'd WANT to spend time with her and get to know her more, her being the diplomat, the archtitect, the scientist, the translator of old texts, a historian trying to find out the truth about what her fathers kingdom was built on, to right old wrongs perhaps, for a better future- theres so much that she should have been, so much of her character was primed to go into this direction- and instead she is a pretty prize with no personality you get at the end like this is an 80s cartoon still

(this is disregarding the whole fact that ganondorf, AS WELL, should have been a giant factor in all this, in the history of it all, to explore his character and his actions, to have zelda research and find out about histroy clearly written by the victors- theres so much potential depth here that it dirves me crazy, botw was such a set up for more that was wasted, utterly wasted, for something i wouldnt even want to call paper thin bc even paper has more depth than anything in totk)

i just woke up so i haven't actually watched the pokemon direct thingy yet, but i heard they mentioned they aren't pushing out another console release at all for 2024 and if that's true then frankly THAT news is way more hype than any actual game announcement could ever be. go girl let us wait!! this is genuinely what i've been begging for for years now

like, oh a new Legends game? that's neat i guess. oh wait it's being given literally ANY time to cook and they aren't crunching Game Freak to hell and back in order to pump out a bunch of half-baked annual releases for the first time in ages?? NOW we're fuckin talking. LOVE to see the torturous cycle broken

i am incredibly desperate to play some more wlw visual novels... or any sapphic dating sims rlly

i recently bought little goody two shoes (not just for the sapphic content, i also rlly like the psychological horror and ik most of the endings are bad lol) and i do plan on playing bg3 eventually (mostly for karlach) but other than those two, the only visual novels i've played with either pick-your-own-pronouns or a fem mc with at least one woman or enby LI are:

- the arcana

- life after magic

- our life now & forever (just a demo rn, and i am patiently waiting for 2025 🙏)

- mystic messenger????? (except this one hardly COUNTS cuz JAEHEE IS IN DENIAL. CHERITZ GIVE HER A ROMANTIC ROUTE WHY DOES SHE HAVE TO FRIENDZONE US 💔)

- touchstarved (there's mhin who's nb, and sen but we won't be seeing anything of her in the demo since she's gonna be a dlc romaceable character 😭)

(there's also obey me but i lost my account years ago and i don't wanna start over from scratch just to get to thirteen im sorry)

pleeeaasseee if anyone knows of any other visual novels with wlw content i would love to know 😭 preferably free cuz im broke and jobless 💀

his design caught my eye in the beginning but when i actually met him in game..

drew Engie again,,, i think my TF2 special interest is resurfacing

(might draw this one digitally i really like it!)

also bonus soldier sketch that i was proud of :)

Personality Through Quotes Tag

thanks @modernwritercraft for the tag!

My prompt: A quote about being called a monster when they made you a monster

This prompt fits all my characters so well, hahaha, almost like I keep writing the same tropes over and over again :/

Luna:

"Oh, me? I'm the monster here? When you- You bloody, accursed bastards thought it was fair to hunt down a kid and rip her soul right out of her chest? Do you know what it's like to grow up knowing that your whole country considers you an irredeemable monster?! Do you know what it's like to cry yourself to sleep with nobody to hug you but your thralls?! Do you- Wait, let me answer that. No, you don't. You just decided that the chance of me turning on you was worth killing an eleven year old over.

"But I'm here now, I'm not eleven anymore, and you're going to pay."

2. Ina:

"First, they took my freedom. I could have lived in chains in any case. Then they took my sisters. I could have plodded on in my grief still. But they took my husband, the light of my life, and for what greater sin than loving me? They cast my daughter into the abyss and named her 'demon', they sentenced my people to eternal servitude. And when I took up arms against them, they called me their Bane, the Godhuntress, callous and cold. A monster in name and soul.

"They were right. But they will not live to enjoy that rightness."

3. Hans-el:

"Who, little old Hans here? Why, I'm honoured that you noticed! Was it the mounds of corpses that gave it away? The intricately woven tapestry of skin and intestine? Or was it the goblet of blood made of a skull? Please, as if you don't have your own rivers of blood. As if you didn't find it amusing to torment a weak, small, male child who would never amass the power to get vengeance. As if you never ripped my piercings whole from my ears and smeared mud on my face. Hah! You ought to be in a Kvi'ora routine, with how you make me laugh. You can join it right after I have your limbs cut off."

4. Iraela:

"You are correct. I am a monster. I am a monster you made, with your little room at the top of the stairs, your giggling behind the fluttering of fans, your silent nights with the faint music of galas I was not invited to. I am a monster, and I am taking what I deserve. When you're a corpse dancing to my strings, I want you to remember that you had a chance to be nice to me. This, all this, is what you deserve."

Your prompt: a quote about remembering the ones they lost

Tagging @kaylinalexanderbooks, @kitkins13, @mywipsdontend, @memento-morri-writes, @drchenquill, @ink-flavored, @italiangothicwriteblr, @i-can-even-burn-salad, @oliolioxenfreewrites and anyone else!

nice suit dumbass, did your husband pick it out for you?

started another file and got two really terrible pairs of siblings. arent they pretty :)

BONUS I MARRIED ONE OF EM I LOVE U FOREVER PINKNIGO 🫶🩷

Me when I start act 3

“Well I guess I better design my next character”

And this is why I have never finished the game

Hilarious end to the final king gleeok!

I may have forgotten the kg over the far west of hebra existed. I did not know the game registered this as a kill (though I'm not sure it actually does? The music kept playing like nothing happened lmao). Either way, third last sage orb acquired!

i'm mourning the loss of purgatory's Government Assigned Team Dynamics (because i'm a sucker for shaking up dynamics and the forced interactions of people who may not otherwise have spoken) so please indulge me with your dream egg parenting group i'll start, bagi tina and rivers [i'm right]