#like. I do see where you're coming from! A lot of times villain routes acknowledge you to be the big bad meanie bobeenie! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

powdermelonkeg · 11 months

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This has been bugging me for a while now. Because of the racist elements surrounding Ganondorf and the Gerudo as a whole, is it morally wrong to write him as the villain in fanfics (even though he's a canon villain)?

Hoo boy. What a question.

I personally don't think so (other people's answers may vary, please DO NOT take me as the one final answer on this topic), AS LONG AS you're mindful of a few things.

Portraying the Gerudo as a whole as bad isn't a route you ever want to go. OoT's Gerudo are an example of this; a whole clan of people, and they're all thieves? No. BotW handled this part well by making them a distinct, fun-to-be-around people (they have a whole list of other issues, but they're not villains) that you could befriend and work alongside.

Giving Ganondorf valid reasons to be angry with the royalty and want power leans into a different problem you need to handle delicately, in that he/his people are oppressed. Them being oppressed isn't a problem on its own, but it's an oversaturated cliche that belittles POC's agency in the narrative and likes to glorify their suffering; why do so many stories about POC have to be about their struggles under a terrible regime?

You have more leeway with an established Ganondorf than one you make yourself. We know how Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess's Ganondorfs act, and a fanfic that keeps them in character is working with the pieces you've been given. With those, it comes down to asking why Nintendo made their main villain look SWANA (Southwest Asian/North African) yet AGAIN. With an OC Gan, you have to be careful to make him the villain without making him the face of his people or boiling it down to "white people save the world from angry brown man." And that's very tricky to do properly.

Don't make Ganondorf's existence a thing that his people have to atone for. TotK did this, at least in the English translation (and possibly as a byproduct of traditional Japanese ideals of honor). Riju's ancestor said her reason for granting her a secret stone is because she believes it's the Gerudo's fault for making Gan—that is a BIG no. He's his own person, he should be responsible for his own actions.

Especially with an OC, there are a few ways to mitigate the damage Ganondorf does as a character creatively:

Have the real Ganondorf be a good man, but the power-hungry dictator be a curse that took over him and/or replaced him. You can really lean into the horror with this one as everyone slowly realizes their king isn't the man standing in front of them; where's Ganondorf, and how much have they been telling this doppelganger?

Have Ganondorf's ascent to power be a hard-fought one, and follow his descent into obsession more closely. In TotK, Rauru says Gan's a "hero to his people," rather than only acknowledge that since he's the one man born every 100 years it means he's got a right to rule, as it was in OoT. Could he have waged a civil war in Gerudo, and won it? Is he a hero to his supporters only?

Make the struggle one of a point of view. Ganondorf believes he has a right to rule; why? Is it something he should have gotten by tradition, but was shunned because someone better than him came along? Does the Hyrulean side of things look more like a conspiracy to take something of his (hello, Triforce of Power) if you see things from his eyes? Has he seen the world fall, read the history books, and wants to stop the cycle before it continues, but can only do so by force? You can go with a self-fulfilling prophecy on this angle.

Make Link or Zel not white, possibly even of Gerudo heritage. This isn't a perfect solution, but it's the most straightforward and has lots of worldbuilding potential—the problem with a lot of things that make something racist isn't that they exist, it's that they're the ONLY thing that exists. If you've got five white characters in a movie up against a black villain, that's racist; it's visually reducing who's good and who's bad to the color of their skin. If you've got a mixed cast of white and black people on the heroes' side, and a black villain, you've repaired that significantly, because you can no longer glance at the cast and point out who the villain is by anything but their costume design. In LoZ specifically, we've got some new opportunities; Sonia isn't white, so not all of her descendants should be. Link could hail from Lurelin Village. Zelda could be the result of one of her parents being a Gerudo; people ship BotW Zel's mom with Urbosa anyways, so it's not like no one will be receptive to that.

Alternatively, make another Gerudo man that has to go head to head with Ganondorf alongside Link and Zel. One Gerudo male is born every 100 years; logically, there should have been one during the Calamity, and another one during the Upheaval. Or you could have Gan be one of a set of twins. Again, not a perfect solution, but it helps to mitigate stereotypes by having more characters in play. Compare BotW/TotK's Gerudo to OoT/MM's Gerudo, it's a VAST improvement in terms of how the narrative describes them as a whole.

Design-wise, there's a couple things you should not do:

Don't make Gan green as a stand-in for being brown. He's still POC-coded, you just upped the other-ing factor. "Haha, see this bad guy? Isn't he STRANGE looking?" That's the kind of vibe making him green portrays.

Don't make him or his supporters darker than the other Gerudo. If you want skin tone variation like BotW has, have a mix between both sides of the conflict. And ESPECIALLY don't make him literally black in skin tone (staring at Twilight Princess Gan).

Don't make his outfit overtly sexy. That's not to say he can't be attractive, but exposing his skin to make him shirtless and hot isn't fixing his monstrous-ness, it's objectifying the people he represents. Remember the problems with the vai outfit? Exactly like that, just on a guy. Also, it's terribly impractical for the desert; Wind Waker Gan had much more sensible clothes than TotK.

All in all, a lot of "fixing Ganondorf" should fall to Nintendo to repair in future entries, where their character design team needs to take a good long look at what they're putting out there before they make another villain. Your job, if you're fanfic-ing him, isn't to make him a perfect character or vindicate him; it's to handle what you WERE given with care and add to it in a better direction than the designers took it. And because it's fanfic, you have so many different ways you can do that.

And if this is too intimidating a prospect to tackle, there's Vaati, Malladus, Bellum, Majora, Ghirahim, even the Horned Statue in BotW/TotK you could break free and run away with.

Go wild.

#loz #zelda #totk #totk spoilers #botw #ganondorf #discussion of racism #what an ask to get at 1 in the morning #i'm of the mind that things don't have to be perfect to be tactful #but handling flaws and villains well (esp with LoZ) is a delicate art #i am pretty confident in this post's contents tho after a loooot of practice #so hopefully it tackles it well #real coffee hours #long post #ask bee #edit: HATE the bug that moves my readmore hate hate hate

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

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So if it is MEANT to be a villain route...Why are the villanous actions NEVER ADDRESSED by ANY of the characters outside of "Huh. I wonder if there was a better way to do this."

Why did they have Rhea go insane and torch a city? Why make potray Rhea as a villain when you could potray her as the hero whos genuinely trying to do good? Why have a majority of the characters still be able to be recruited regardless of if it makes sense? Why have the ending narration mostly be possible? WHY have Edelgard succeed and somehow turn her tyranny into a society that "ensures a free and independent society fot all."

If it's REALLY a villain route, why is there not a single character ending mentioning things like rebellions and conflict? Hell, the ending narration shows not a hint of villainy and potrays its ending as heroic.

"Embracing her newfound power, Edelgard could at last set about destroying Fódlan's entrenched system of nobility and rebuild a world free from the tyranny of Crests and status."

Again, if it was TRULY meant to be the villain route, it would have been POTRAYED as such. Instead of a villain route, we got "A route where one of the villains is made the protagonist and her views and villainous actions are never questioned OR addressed and outside of the conquest and starting the war, everyone is mostly happy."

Alright so this is going to seem like a nonserious answer, but I'm 100% serious when posting this image as part of a genuine answer to this question:

On CF, your actions are never addressed because of ignorance. On the surface, your actions seem like they've helped Fodlan, but as soon as the player looks any deeper it starts to become evident that something isn't right.

If Edelgard made a free and independent society for all, why are the people spied on in Hubert's ending with Dorothea? Why are rebellions secretly being put down in his ending with Shamir? That's not free, in a general sense or from specifically tyranny. That's a direct contradiction from two of the characters that can only be played on CF, and this is only found on CF.

Rhea is portrayed as a villain because she is Nabatean, and Edelgard hates Nabateans, and you are playing a route that emphasizes her ideals - which include wiping out all of the inhuman, bestial, vile, cruel Nabateans that have been plaguing humanity’s world. Rhea goes insane on CF because unlike all of the other routes, where the player and the lord never go out of their way to trample and spit on their enemies' trauma, that's what you are doing the entire time you play CF to Rhea - for months once Byleth returns, and that’s being extremely generous and not counting the entire war. You help drive Rhea and the other Nabateans away from their homes when taking over Garreg Mach - like Nemesis did to Rhea after the Red Canyon Massacre! You're helping someone try to kill off the rest of her people - like Nemesis did at Zanado! You're trying to kill Rhea with the Sword of the Creator, her mother's mutilated corpse - like Nemesis did! You're doing so with the descendent of Wilheim - spitting on the legacy of the one human Rhea could trust during the War of Heroes! You're literally recreating the single worst moment of Rhea's life, all so that you can help the one who views her as less than human.

Portraying Rhea as "the hero who's genuinely trying to do good" goes against Edelgard's viewpoint of all Nabateans being evil, and you're never meant to question Edelgard or make her change her beliefs. You as the player are actively discouraged from talking back to Edelgard, as she will noticeably get upset whenever you do - many times you will even lose support points with her, and this is especially bad for specifically Edelgard because you have to get to a certain support level with her to enter her route, with you having less chapters to do so because she won't talk to you until after Byleth achieves the Sword of the Creator in Chapter 4.

Look at how Rhea, Dimitri, and Claude are portrayed on CF. Rhea and Dimitri are demonized, while Claude is given some leeway from Edelgard. Now notice who of the three of them always speak their minds over Edelgard's villainy to her face, and which of the three of them bends to Edelgard's view of them as the bad guy. Dimitri and Rhea never allow themselves to bend to Edelgard - they call her out and call her actions evil. Claude, on the other hand, will remove himself from Fodlan and then afterwards make himself out to be a bad guy whom Edelgard managed to take down. He puffs up her ego, and he gets to live, while the two that don't must die. Edelgard is the one always out for the kill, and only by submitting to her is anyone allowed to live - which, I don’t think needs to be said, isn’t very heroic of her.

I've had my fair share of complaints over the characters that can be recruited over to CF, but even with those complaints... look at how those characters behave on CF. None of them are Felix levels of negative character development, but they all act noticeably worse on CF vs how they are on the other routes. To name some notable examples: Ignatz goes from wanting to paint Garreg Mach as it stood five years before to preserve its beauty to wanting to paint the violent downfall of the Alliance, Lysithea wants to abandon House Ordelia, which is in direct contrast to her core character motivation, Ingrid is willing to throw away her lifelong dream of being a knight of Faerghus, which she herself says is her spitting on her dead betrothed’s dreams, Leonie works with Jeralt’s killers, etc. etc.. And mind, CF is the route that locks out the most units - there's the obvious ones like Dedue and Gilbert who were already route exclusive, but then there's Seteth and Flayn, Catherine, Cyril, and Hilda. CF is the only route to have even non-exclusive units be completely unavailable no matter what.

Edelgard doesn't make a society that is "free," like I said above - having a secret police monitor the people's actions, or is ready to put down anyone who tries to rise up against her, is literally the opposite of free. Edelgard can and will ban plays she doesn't like - not free. Edelgard only allows state-sanctioned religion, if she does allow it - not free.

CF is a route that wants to make the player believe the lie that you're not the villain, because you are playing from the perspective of someone who herself doesn't think she's the villain, but like. Look at what you're doing. You're invading two countries for the express, explicit purpose of taking them over and making them your own. You're working with someone who's been trying to reunite Fodlan back under Adrestia as early as the prologue when she tried to have Dimitri and Claude assassinated. You're helping TWS. Your Imperial presence makes Church people flee - which, given that Edelgard wants Rhea and those involved with the Church dead, I don't blame them. You're working with someone who is starving her people so that she can carry on with her war.

CF lies to the player - Edelgard lies, constantly. She says she's willing to let Rhea live, but literally the scene before she says she seeks to fuckin' Exodia Rhea. She lies about Arianrhod. She lies - or is flat-out wrong, which isn't much better - about the Church hoarding wealth and about the Church splitting up the Empire. She lies about not knowing about TWS pre-ts. She helps spread the lie of Duscur being the ones who killed Lambert. She lied about not knowing where Flayn was when she was kidnapped. She lies to her people by making them believe she’s making the orders during the war, not Byleth. There's a student who doubts all of what Edelgard says right before the timeskip happens and who isn't sure about his decision to stay, and then there’s a man who calls Edelgard “a tricksy one” on the last explore section for lying about attacking the Kingdom capitol. She’s wrong about the history of Nemesis and Seiros, calling Nemesis killing all of Rhea’s family a “simple dispute.” She lies to her people about an entire war against a group who just a little bit ago were her allies. Lies and ignorance are staple points to CF as a route, it’s baked into it, so the idea of the CF going “oh no you totally are the good guys” literally as the city burns down around the players doesn’t come from nowhere.

And like... the ending narration “shows not a hint of villainy?” Um.

Her stepping on the flags of the Alliance and Church? Her recreating a painting of Napoleon - that little known imperialist - down to the hand of justice? Her denouncing gods constantly and then being ushered in by a statue with heavy resemblance to Nike, Goddess of victory? Hubert plotting away from the sight of the rejoicing people? Yeah, there’s a lot of hints to villainy.

Again, CF isn’t “portrayed” as a villain route because it’s you falling for the lies of Edelgard. You have a wool over your eyes. You accept everything Edelgard says as fact, even when she actively contradicts herself - sometimes as radically as in back-to-back scenes. You view yourself as a savior to humanity, even when you plunge it into darkness. You don’t think you’re the villain, so your actions aren’t going to be put in an explicitly villainous light - at least, not by anyone on your side.

This post showcases the difference between non-recruited characters fighting non-CF!Byleth vs CF!Byleth. Characters are mostly saddened by having to fight Byleth in the former, while they are mostly betrayed on CF. Byleth is very clearly seen as being wrong for having sided with Edelgard on CF by the non-recruited characters - Edelgard’s actions may not be directly criticized (save for by Dimitri and a few others), but it makes no sense for these characters to be this shocked and betrayed by Byleth siding with her if her actions were so good. Leonie deadass calls you a traitor to Jeralt, Ingrid says that you are not fit to rule Fodlan specifically for siding with Edelgard and the Empire after all she and they have done, and Dimitri questions you as to why you chose Edelgard and her “savage, bloody path,” just to name a few notable examples. You, as the player, are being criticized for siding with Edelgard. You say that the villainous actions are “NEVER ADDRESSED by ANY of the characters,” but what else are these reactions but characters addressing your villainous actions?

And like... “a route where one of the villains is the protagonist” bro that’s a villain route. Like. I’m not trying to be mean, but I am genuinely confused as to what you were trying to get at here.

Like. In a vacuum? I might can get the idea of CF not being a villain route a little better, were it the only route available (though even that is a very big stretch). But you have three whole other routes where there’s no conquest, there’s no working with TWS, there’s no using Demonic Beasts, there’s no killing/exiling the remaining (immediately known) Nabateans, there’s no continuous and long-standing lies that never get outed, the lords never stay flat out wrong about the events of the game, non-recruited characters aren’t shooting Byleth up the ass with accusations of being a traitorous lemming who’d follow Edelgard off a cliff... and they achieve peace. Those endings, with Dimitri Claude and “Rhea” (SS ain’t really her route even though it should’ve been but ye), lack the following in any of their endings:

Censorship

Spying on the people

Constantly putting down rebels in secret

State-sanctioned religion

(mind, this last one is in direct contradiction to CF’s ending narration that says that Church is destroyed)

None of this happens on AM, VW, and SS. They all have peaceful endings. They all have Fodlan see the light of dawn, and that is never contradicted in their endings. CF is the only route to have all of these things happen in it - I think that’s enough for it to be considered a villain route lol

#ask #anon #anti edelgard #Anti-edelgard #Edelgard discourse #Edelgard critical #just to be safe #Again really hope I don't come across badly and I'm sorry if I do!#like. I do see where you're coming from! A lot of times villain routes acknowledge you to be the big bad meanie bobeenie!#at least more directly than CF does - because CF does! Through the non-recrutied characters and through the subtext!#sure you can miss out on the former if you manage to recruit everyone but the latter is always present!#Fodlan is in a noticeably worse state in CF than on the other routes and you are actively questioned as to why you joined [lord's] side #by some of the characters you CAN'T recruit (Dimitri; Catherine)#which doesn't happen on the other routes - the other character just wish that Byleth chose them or don't want to fight Byleth #plus there's all of the actions you commit/are complicit in on CF vs the other routes #it just isn't flat out in your face with it because like... Edelgard doesn't view herself as the villain. A Byleth who chose to walk with #her doesn't view her as the villain - even while knowing all oft he heinous shit she's been a part of #so if Edelgard doesn't view herself as the villain and this Byleth doesn't view her as the villain and everyone trusts Byleth's word #who on your side is going to call you out?#hope I'm making sense!

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