Reblog to scare Legend of Zelda fans

i have grown kinda tired of all the studio ghibli and totk comparisons bc i love most of miyazakis movies and its so annoyingly obvious that if totk actually took inspiration from them its all just the surface level aesthetic and none of the good story telling

TotK doodles cause this game have me in a chokehold

(Also this is my own designs for Link and Zelda, I ain’t trying to make it game accurate so be calm-)(also this is a separate design from my Linked Universe Wild design so also- be calm))

(Also Spoilers duh)(kinda))

You cannot tell me this isn’t how the prologue goes

Link got Ratioed by Matt Mercer

Also

Who’s idea was it to let this idiot (aff) have more means of setting himself on fire

(Idk how to draw shields- shut-)

If Link had a dollar for every time he heard a random voice in his head while in his underwear he’d have $2

Not much but weird that it’s happened twice

I am too poor to actually afford this game so stupid sketches is all I can do to satiate me (,:

Plz don’t flame me for not drawing the clothes btw, I hate LoZ clothes- they’re almost as bad as Genshin Impact’s clothes

So so cool but so impossibly infuriating to draw-

right but like . i'm not the only one who dreams about sso.. right...

would u draw prince link x retainer revali from that one royalty au i proposed 😊

(in reference to this post)

im ngl yall this au has been living in my mind RENT FREE like i will absolutely eat up any and all royalty aus 😁

🙏 so here's a doodle spread for that au

closeups:

the coloring on everything is Ugly but it's okay because i tried 🙁👍

i’m comfortably years late to this party but the game hades fucks severely

for the audience of exactly one who knows about it. thinking about the heart & soul au

The explanation for why totk’s story is so Not Great and how disconnected from its predecessor it feels being that the devs didn’t want to alienate new players who didn’t know anything about botw’s story just falls apart the more I think about it. Nothing from this stupid half a plot works unless the player is familiar with specific details from the better games that came before it.

The believability of Link and Zelda’s connection to each other hinges on you knowing about the nuance of their relationship in botw. The ancient sages fighting with the champions’ arms and divine beast helms will only be impactful to botw/aoc players because totk doesn’t bother to explain the significance of that callback at all. Fi’s cameo is meaningless unless you either got every memory in botw or finished the master trial dlc (and know about her from skyward sword). You’ll only get the full context of Teba being sidelined in favour of a 12-year old if you played a specific chapter of Age of Calamity’s second DLC. Like sorry but I think Nintendo just made a bad story tbh

So one take on TOTK’s ending I’ve seen quite a bit of is the idea that it deprived all dramatic weight from Zelda’s sacrifice and that she should have suffered the consequences of her choice (I.e. stay a dragon forever or come back as a dragon human hybrid). This strikes me as a shallow reading of the text and another example of how some people think punishment (or in this case “dying for a cause”) is the only viable ending for someone who made the choice Zelda made. It really rubs me the wrong way given all the development and tragedy she faced in both games. What are your thoughts?

There is something beautiful and tragic and meaningful about the stories etched upon our skin by powers beyond our control. I don't think the people that wish for Amputee Link or Dragon Zelda think that 'dying for a cause' is the only reward for sacrifice. It comes from the truth that most of us don't get to recover from the consequences of our actions the way characters in a story can. Which I absolutely get (one of my earliest fics was written to call out anime fanservice). To escape with no scars or signs that anything awful happened can feel unrealistic or like cheating in a world where we must bear the consequences of our actions. But is that really what happened?

First off is the Doyalist framework the story has to exist within. This is a video game for a major franchise that, while they are excellent at re-writing and ignoring their own canon, still needs to be available for future stories to be told through it. After all the emphasis botw placed on the 'goddess bloodline', if they were to kill Zelda, or even render her sterile, that puts a huge shadow over any future games they could make. You don't kill Harry in the Order of the Phoenix. The stories of Hyrule are far from over, even if this would be a satisfying end point for the timeline. Heck, there's no guarantee Link's not going to wake up in his underwear in a damp cave a third time, tbh. That's the reality of why Zelda had to return to her old body.

But does that mean that totk is a bad story? Does it render Zelda's sacrifices meaningless? Do these sacrifices only have meaning if she came back visibly changed?

I don't think so. Because the sacrifice was never about her body, it was always about her sense of self. "To become an immortal dragon is to lose ones' self" was the sacrifice that was demanded and that Zelda offered.

Guess what? She did have to leave Link to face Ganondorf without her. Zelda did lose all sense of herself for uncountable years. Zelda's memories, her sense of self, was stripped away from her and scattered across all of Hyrule.

It was only because Link loved her enough to collect the pieces of who Zelda was, only because he was able to understand them through the gift of Rauru's arm, and only because both Sonia and Rauru consigned themselves to living as spirits for as long as Zelda was a dragon, that Zelda's sense of self was returned.

It may feel like cheating, or maybe unearned, that Zelda got her body and sense of self back with no visible changes. But how many times have other people stepped in to help shoulder the consequences of your actions? How many times did your parents step in when you made a mistake, to give you another chance?

You ever leave the fridge open as a kid, and accidentally spoil all your food? In a family where money is tight, Mom and Dad might have to sacrifice eating full meals for a while so that their children can eat. That sacrifice is a form of love. If the neighbor hears about it (thin walls) and brings over some casseroles they took from their food stores, that took a few hours to make, does that diminish the parent's sacrifice for their kids? The consequences of that sacrifice, going hungry, have gone away because someone else stepped in.

The mistake was Rauru and Sonia's, letting Ganondorf in and not being strong enough to stop him. The sacrifice was Zelda's, her mind/memories/self. The intercessors are Rauru, Sonia, and Link, unwilling to let Zelda bear the full weight of her sacrifice.

Yes, we live in a world where we often do not get to walk away from the consequences of our sacrifices/choices unscathed. But we also live in a world where, every once and a while, we do get to walk away with only internal changes. Almost always because other people were willing to sacrifice too. Your parents? your siblings? Your friends? Your god?

Zelda's hylian body is a reflection of the sense of self she regained. Of her agency as a character instead of as a mindless dragon/a living sacred site. Zelda's character arc ends with her accepting the sacrifice demanded of her by reclaiming her responsibility towards the people of her Hyrule, taking up the mantle of power and leadership once again. The fact that other people step in to blunt the weight of that sacrifice does not degrade how Zelda changed to get there or what she went through.

It's actually the conclusion of Rauru, Sonia's, and Link's arcs that they also sacrificed to support Zelda. Her arc pulls all the others to their conclusions. Zelda is the narrative gravity of totk. I can't call that bad writing.

do you like totk or botw better?

In short: Yes, I like botw better.

Here are my reasons, though!

I know a lot of people view it as the better experience, which is completely subjective and valid if you do and like it better, but I just view botw as being better in almost every way.

I will give it to totk. The dungeons have a lot better atmosphere. The game has some extremely high highs with the build-up to the wind temple, the whole great sky island segment, and the final boss is a much better fight (though dark beast ganon has a better theme song imo).

Other than that, I prefer botw. Totk has a much grander story, but it's completely mishandled. You can argue that totk has a great story but has poor execution, and to me, execution plays a big role in what makes a story good. You can have good ideas bit it all falls apart if they aren't executed well which ends up making the story bad. It's not that totk has a good story with poor execution, it has good ideas but the bad execution leads to a poorly told story. (I hope that makes sense). Botw has less of a story and is more like a set of events. Botw has history and backstory that is told more organically. Link has amnesia so he slowly regains some of his memories of the past with some people trying to help fill him in. It feels more real...in a weird fantasy way. I guess totk is similar with how we see Zelda's memories, but not really? It's weird to explain. Everything 100 years ago is felt in present day botw while in totk most of those things don't really matter as it happened so long ago. Things only start to resurge because Zelda wanted to investigate under the castle. Totk also has twists like a story. Idk if this is making sense but that's how I feel on their stories. There was just not much botw could mess up on story wise as the way it was presented.

Gameplay wise I can not lie totk is technical marvel with the zonai tech. That's the most impressive thing about it. Tbh building contraptions isn't my thing though, it takes too long to make and experiment with a machine when I can just do whatever that machine was gonna do much faster. I see why people have a lot of fun with it though, it just isn't my thing. One thing I HATE in totk though is the amount of menuing I have to do. Elemental arrows had a serious downgrade. Yeah it's cool to fuse stuff to arrows, but not when I have to do it to ever single individual arrow and if I want to try something new I have to scroll past 50 other items in a single line. It's just tedious. If I want to use a good weapon I have to go to the menu, drop an item, and menu again to fuse it to a weapon that will still break. Item breaking is still an issue but it's more annoying and the weapons no longer look cool. Totk has some cool abilities, but idk I'd trade them all for remote bombs lmao. I hate going through caves, especially early game, and having to deal with the rock walls where they want me to fuse a rock to a stick 10 times to get through one cave. There's just a lot of little things gameplay wise that bug me. They doubled down on botws gameplay issues and added some more annoying ones. I don't even have to mention the sages abilities, that's a whole mess.

On the topic of gameplay, botw just has the better world. Idc, exploring that world for the first time is an unforgettable experience. Totks main world is too similar so the magic is gone. The sky and depths are also unimpressive and repetitive. Botw also has the benefit on how the word felt so lonely yet alive. Everything had a purpose or a story. The world has a history. And totk just doesn't have that. Outside of the upheaval, totk doesn't really build on botws world that much. I was hoping to see if they would've added new towns or see how they'd rebuild hyrule, but they really didn't do that. We only got lookout landing, which doesn't really count as a town, and a bunch of building stuff lying around which is cool I guess. Hateno has a school and Terry Town expanded a little, but with the estimate of about 5 years since botw it makes you wonder...what have these people been doing? We can theoretically build Terry Town in one day. There could be new towns.

Totk is a sequel that doesn't really acknowledge it's predecessor which is so odd. Botw stands on its own and is an overall more cohesive experience. Everything in the world feels purposefully crafted for that world while totk just slaps things on top of it with not much thought. Botw has some amazing world building while for totk it's either "the Zonai did it" or has some contradictory world building. For example, the old sages lifted up the sky islands so that Link would be protected from Ganondorf shenanigans, but then other sky islands suggest how they've been around long before Rauru since young Zonai used to train in them or something. There is also how Zelda says Link never leaves her side, but people she interacts with on an almost daily basis do not recognize him and how even treat as if he doesn't know some facts about her. So either she is overexaggerating by a lot and/or lying in her own diary or that people in hyrule have the collective memory of a rock. There's also Zelda supposedly never giving Link the champions leathers yet as a gift, but we see him wearing it in the beginning. Idk there's more contradictories, but I haven't experienced this for botw??? Totk is so disconnected and disjointed in comparison.

I'm trying to be vague but there's a lot to say, I'm sorry. I really was enjoying this game at the beginning but the more I played the more I noticed or saw things that bugged me and just kept adding up and up on each other. Botw was never like this for me. It's just more cohesive and I like that. There are so many other things I haven't brought up like the repetitive cutscenes, or missing characters/characters that SHOULD know Link but don't (namely Bolson and Hestu). But this post is long. I can't keep complaining about this game. Botw really is that one of a kind experience, and totk tries to replicate it but worse. Botw had a vine that totk lacks. You feel so alone, but you meet knew people and make friends. You build connections as you learn about the past and help those around you. There is no story, you're just a person going through the motions and exploring the vast world around you. Totk can't replace that for me. I'm the main character playing a side role in a disjointed world where not much makes sense. Everything is similar in all the wrong ways.

And most important of all, they took away Link's fun dialogue and personality now he really is bland asf and used to defend that he wasn't.

AoC deserves better.

I think enough time has passed for me to rant about the current status of BotW, AoC and TotK.

I'll start by saying TotK is a really fun game, I enjoy playing it way more than I ever did a portion of BotW, they actually found a good balance between old dungeon design and trying to revamp it somewhat, it still needs work but defo a step in the right direction; but the reason I believe people feel BotW was better for them, is because of multiple factors:

1.- The novelty of exploring wore off. First, you get to explore the same Hyrule from BotW, and while the overly needed addition of caves was a thing, the depths and skies added little to no substance, contrary to what the trailers made you believe.

2.- While the story, standalone at least, is not that bad, it isn't a big of a deal either, and while I believe the premise for it is better than BotW's, at least BotW bothered sticking to it with a strong foundation, whereas TotK story is glued together with nothing but tape and tears (no pun intended).

3.- The characters. BotW gave us amazing characters that sadly the plot didn't let shine (which is where AoC comes in, but that's for later), TotK gave us characters that are just... there. Even if BotW did little to nothing with its cast, at least they had their moments in the cutscenes; what do the likes of Rauru, or Sonia, or the past Sages have? Nothing. It's almost like they left out important plot points out on purpose and somehow thought not elaborating on them was a good idea? I bet not a lot of people know about Rauru's sneaking out antics, or Mineru not getting enough sleep because of her research, or Zelda liking to help Mineru with her research because that's just the kind of nerd she is, or the fact that Rauru and Mineru would perform together in the form of song and dance respectively. These are things that would have been cute to see in the form of cutscenes like we did with the Champions in BotW. You can summarize plot and characters to an extent in BotW, but not in TotK, sadly. That said, I don't mind Ganondorf being evil for the sake of being evil, but them choosing to make him less of bound to the curse and more the curse itself can get disappointing at times. What's the point in making him sexy with zero substance? (Yes, they made him sexy on purpose, they said in an interview). But back to the Champions, can I mention how little respect they had in TotK? Like, I understand passing on the veil of destiny to the now sages, but disregarding them almost completely like that was a decision I can't understand, you take the best of BotW and almost discard it completely in the sequel?

AoC, on the other hand, took everything BotW and just added the "what if" fanfic 'fix' where everyone lives and it's a much better, happier outcome, but as a result, it lets the best part of BotW (the characters) properly shine and be fleshed out, it's a game that was clearly developed with care towards the source. The hate it gets it's because it was marketed as a prequel to BotW, yet it wasn't (and tbh, I'm sorry but thinking a musou game was gonna have perma character death was kind of a naive thought), and thus has no place in the timeline, but we are somehow okay with TotK liking to play the game of "Let's pretend BotW didn't happen"? Where do we draw the line then?

If you think there's nothing wrong with how TotK handled BotW's retcon, but don't like the premise of AoC, you owe AoC an apology.

That said, if I were to recommend someone who really enjoyed BotW what to play next, I would recommend AoC 100%, as much fun I have with TotK, AoC is more respectful.

I don't want to hate on TotK entirely, because I stand by what I said, I still have lots of fun with it, I never enjoyed playing BotW, but I do TotK, but it's being praised for things that people used to justify hatred towards AoC, and I won't allow it.

ok so i saw a post (not mentioning it here directly bc no hate to the op of it, but im so annoyed by that plotpoint that i gotta rant) about the scene were they undragonfy zelda and it was all like

- no actually the people that are upset that both zelda and link returned fully perfectly intact dont get that it makes so much sense and is so cool actually bc its sonias time power amplified and reverseing both zelda and links arm so that she was never a dragon to begin with (thats why she doesnt retain any of its features) and link never lost his arm and its such a cool callback to when sonia amplified raurus light laser thing and the reason sonia didnt do it earlier is bc ghost cant be everywhere i guess :) -

i talked about this once before so i wont go super into detail but ... yeah that doesnt make that any less unsatisfying imo

aside from it just feeling like a thinly veiled excuse to return everyone to perfect and unblemished status quo more than a 'cool callback' it also annoys me on a game design level bc (as i mentioned in that older post too) why would you not include ANY of the signifiers of the time power when they do it? like the TÖK sound that goes off when you activate it, the world going black and white with that wave animation, and zelda actually transforming back like a reverse tp link wolf thing, ANYTHING? no its just sparkly light beam in ghost dimension town and sparkly poof everyones back :)))

also the implications of that even being possible is just .. making everything even more messy imo like if you can time reverse not just a persons body, or just PART of a body but also a SOUL being lost, over such a long time too.... that raises so many questions, if sonias able to do something like THAT how come she cant send someone back in time bc that tbh sounds way less complicated (on a sidenote is it jsut me or did anyone else feel like sonia talking to zelda -lol i cant help you control your powers you just gotta vibe with it and figure it out yourself bro- was a lead up to zelda .. actually getting control of her suddendly revealed time powers? or was that meant as in oh look she reversed a few weapons once :) bc it felt like it was meant to be she has to find out how to return to her own time USING HER POWERS .. and then its jsut kinda dropped, like so many more things and oh look a dragon :) )

but overall i just .... ok you can find a flimsy excuse for that scene but it still feels ... bad? like oh cool bad guys deaded once again for sure totally this time and everyones back to normal like nothing ever happened and also it even reversed even zeldas memory i guess so she literally cant remember anything and why anything like that was never done before that is bc of reasons(tm)

it just feels so meaningless, sure you can find some wobbly explanation for why something went like that instead of all the other possibilites but its just ... unsatisfying

am i meant to feel whole having returned everythign as if nothing ever happened? bc i just feel empty, especially on top of all the things that left me with such an empty feeling in the game it just puts the cardboard cherry on top of a cardboard cake, pretty to look at but shallow like cardboard and just as tasteless

All the LU Warriors headcanons I’m seeing in the tags makes me want to share my own so uh, have them.

He rarely talked for most of his life. He never really wanted to after puberty hit, he didn’t like how his voice sounded. So he barely interacted with anyone that wasn’t his immediate family. After the war started, however, he wanted to talk more. Even though Proxi could talk for him-which he was very grateful for-he wanted to be able to voice his own opinions by himself.

Speaking of immediate family, he currently has none. He and Linkle are not biologically related, but after the war they now consider themselves to siblings. Linkle’s older by two days.

Wars has a thing for his Zelda(I’m not calling her Artemis I do not like that name for her)but he hasn’t made any moves yet. He gets nauseous whenever he thinks about dating in any kind(mainly Cia’s fault). Zelda respects this, and doesn’t show that she has any romantic feelings about him whatsoever because she doesn’t want to scare him. Wars just thinks his love is one sided, making him wanting to ask her out even less. Linkle’s trying her best to help them out, but she hasn’t been successful yet.

Enough about love, because Wars is a-spec. He’s somewhere on there, I know it. Definitely not me projecting.

Wars loves clothing and the occasional dressing up. He never tells anyone this, but everyone during the war knew it. He got the others to participate too.

Legend once sarcastically criticized Wars’ fashion choice and he changed into his Koholint Hero’s Clothes for a week. Wars did not tell him why he did or what the clothes were called, but Wars felt so proud of himself. Legend just thought he was just making fun of him for his pink hair or something.

Wants to tell Legend so bad about Marin, but Marin probably told him that if he ever meets her Link, to not tell him he met her. She didn’t want to give him any hope that they’ll meet again, because they won’t.

Wars loves fairies. He loves them so much. He loves feeding them, dressing them up, taking care of them, all of that. Fairies love him too, because he tries to feed them whenever the chain isn’t looking. He tries to make sure that no one else knows, since he thinks it’s a bit embarrassing.

Wars wants to use everyone’s items one day. He had so much fun using the Spinner during the war, not to mention the Fire Rod. But he never really asks, since he doesn’t wants to come off as weird.

The ends of his scarf/cape thing used to be red, like in the game, but the dye faded after a few years. He tried to redye it, but it didn’t really work.

He was the captain of his own, specific group consisting of the wayward warriors from across time. They all did interact with regular soldiers, but they mostly worked with just each other and looked to Wars to guide them. Since he usually only command with these guys so I guess he was more of a lieutenant? Idk how ranks work tbh. Nevertheless, he was always called captain by the others, since most of them didn’t really know how ranks worked either. Captain just seemed to fit him. The others who did know about ranks just went along with calling him captain.

Impa helped him so much you have no idea. He was a pretty good leader by himself, but he always appreciated the help.

Both dislikes Tingle and is eternally confused by him. And disturbed. Can’t bring himself to hate him though.

Wars knows things. He’ll nod his head along whenever Time or Wind tell the group their stories, he’s heard them all before anyhow. He does the same with Legend, Sky, and Twilight when they share as well, since he’s heard a lot from their friends. He usually pretends that he doesn’t know anything, however. He’s just nodding along to nod along.

Wars hasn’t told Sky that he met Fi before yet. He doesn’t want to give him any false hope that she’ll wake up again.

he hopes that she’ll wake up too.

Wars doesn’t really understand Four’s negative view of dark magic, or anyone’s negative view of dark magic. A few of his items has a dark attribute, he’s worked with people who had dark magic(like midna), and he’s taken care of dark fairies. Dark magic is just like fire or water magic to him, it’s another type of magic that just so happens to be used by bad guys a lot.

Wars gets along pretty well with Twilight. I’d like to think he’s close with everybody, and besides Time and Wind(and the more teasing relationship with Legend) Twilight’s up there. Probably tied with Sky.

Probably interacts with Hyrule, Wild, and Four the least, compared to others. They all get along, but he almost never actively searches for them to hang out.

Very vague whenever he talks about his adventure. Usually just says something about the war and refuses to elaborate. Everyone’s usually fine with this since most of them do the same thing, but he’s dramatic about it.

So, now that I finished totk, I'd like to share my insight of the game overall with y'all. Fight me or agree with me, I'd like to know other people's opinions

PROS

The soundtrack is amazing. Zelda has always been about awesome music and this is not the exception. The soundtrack plays exactly what the environment was to convey. You're exploring the sky islands? The music is then calm. You're in the depths? the music will help you shit yourself. Going even more down, looking for Ganondorf? coolest music ever, full of mystery.

World exploring. I feel like this time totk forces you to explore the world, in botw you could directly go to Ganon and beat the shit out of him with a stick, but definitely not here at all. You find yourself needing bombs so you'll have to look for caves, then you need Sundelion, so you have to go to the sky. In a certain way, I hated that for the first days because I was trying to finish the game as soon as I could, but now I appreciate it.

We have our first disabled Link! At least until the end. It was nice to see him different for once. It'd be cool if he had stayed that way.

World development. In botw, you have this whole piece of land that's mostly monsters and ruins, but in totk things have changed after the calamity disappeared. We have more people around who're in contact with each other. The places don't seem as lonely as before and even people help Link. And, did you notice there's less trees? It's a nice detail, since there's new buildings made of wood everywhere.

Fusing mechanic. Tbh, I didn't love Fuse at first, but then realized how useful it can be.

Link's clothing. There's more clothes available bc they used the botw DLC clothing, which is cool! And the new designs are... slutty.

Zelink. No one can tell me otherwise. All the signs are there, bitches!!!!

CONS

Overall, it doesn't feel like a sequel. And I hated that. Nintendo keeps giving preference towards new players and in this case, it's not worth it. I dare to declare that at least 80% of people who purchased totk played botw and knew exactly what they were getting. This especially has to do with the point below.

There's no mention of the Champions at all, the Sheikah technology is missing, and where tf are the Divine Beasts?? I get that, yeah, maybe the Champions shouldn't be thaaaaaat important anymore, yet what about everything else? Where's my Sheika Slate????????

We were promised a dark game and this isn't it, not at all. Maybe I'm tripping? But I remember clearly on the first years of development people mentioning this game would be dark like Majora's, and going back to the first two trailers I could actually see it was kinda the case. However, with the last trailer, I made a bet that they probs rejected the idea and I was right. I'd like to have something like Majora someday again.

The introduction of a new race out of nowhere. The zonai.... they weren't my piece of cake at first. It seems cheap for me, I'm not sure. I don't know if they intended to introduce something, anything, from them since botw but ended up scraping the idea, but overall the whole experience I have of them from both games is that they took the zonai out of their asses and were like "yup, we got this!"

The end was TOO happy. Like I mentioned before, I'd rather Link have his arm cut. Purah can make another one if Rauru really wanted his arm so bad. Zelda transforming back was okay, but what I didn't really get was why did Sonia and Rauru didn't turn her back before????? They instead waited until Link fought his ass hard, lol.

I hated that Zelda was thanking ME at the end instead of Link. Don't look at me, bitch, look at your boyfriend! This has to do with this other post of mine about how Nintendo can't let go of Link being an avatar despite they themselves providing depth to his character.

I may edit this longer but rn I'm out of ideas and I'm at work, lol.

Do you think you'll ever expand on the au where Gideon and Wallace were basically role swapped? Hopefully that doesn't sound pushy or anything; I just loved the concept, especially the possible roommate dynamics between Scott and Gideon :]

I just realized I had asks and I never answered them but ga I need to! I’m glad your interested in it but I will explain what it is so far I’ll go in sections so it’ll be more organized. This is pretty long tho I’m bad at explaining so bare with me! I’m kind of gonna use this ask to explain the whole au if you don’t mind lol. Feel free to ask more questions!

The au itself explained: Gideon and Wallace are swapped roles. So now Wallace is the big evil character and is presumably Scott’s evil ex. Gideon is instead put into the role of being Scott’s roommate. He is described as Scott’s gay nerd roommate or just roommate. Since Scott doesn’t really have any real ‘evil exes’ during a random moment of being drunk Wallace remembers about his relationship with Scott (which is just college scollace fling, however I may change this later I’m unsure) and posts a thing on Craigslist and Ramona’s exes agree to work together with Wallace to terrorize BOTH Scott’s and Ramona’s love life.

Gideon: so it’s notable that Gideon being in the role of Wallace expands on his character if he wasn’t exactly ‘evil’ but unlike the anime that explores this concept I still believe he wouldn’t be the best person, and would still have his underlined struggles that are implied, just no status to inflate his ego. Unlike Wallace he is really bad at picking up guys lol, and is not really as accepting of Scott moving on with Ramona. He’s more distant and rude but he’s also snarky (just like usually Gideon lol.) Usually just games or goes to work, occasionally going out drinking with Scott’s friend group, (but no one really likes him.) also idk if he’ll go by Gordon or not.

Wallace: Wallace is an evil ceo that freezes his ex boyfriends in cryogenic tubes. He’s just straight up comically evil just super gay if that’s really the best way to put it lol . He’s a much more less insecure version of Gideon though I will say that. I don’t know if I will implement the glow as a concept for him since it’s a very Gideon specific thing that ties rlly deep in his character imo, but like Gideon he doesn’t really love his ex bfs but rather think of his boy toy trophies. I need to expand on him but this is it for now. He is also way less violent and angrier than Gideon.

Scott and Gideon’s relationship: So unlike Scott and Wallace I actually see Scott and Gideons roommate dynamic as the complete opposite. Gideon is almost like the opposite of Wallace in a way at handling certain situations. Wallace is willing to let go when Gideon is not. So the two met their first year of college in a similar fashion, Gideon compliments his Zelda shirt and class and the two just kind of click. They are both losers in college and enjoy being nerds but also try to get girls, (usually fails.) Scott often times comments on how Gideon is an ‘anti chick magnet’ Eventually when drunk Gideon says he likes dudes and he’s just gay after that. So eventually Scott gets with envy, Gideon thinks his band is lame and none of Scott’s friends really like Gideon but yadada. Obv before Gideon tries to hit on Scott but fails in a similar fashion as Wallace in canon. I like to think Gideon has a one sided crush on Scott but it’s like a huge crush that dies within time so yeah super one sided (sorry I’m scideon brained). So in the present Scott just kind of ended up living with Gideon. Gideon is quick to get annoyed with Scott but is also deeply attached to Scott I think and of course cares about him. He is more meaner about Scott breaking up with knives (rightfully so tbh) and is just more meaner to Scott in general, even if at times it’s just playful. He’s also not really that supportive of Scott’s relationship with Ramona but comes to terms with it eventually. But it’s notable he secretly hopes him and Ramona’s relationship fails, (yeah he’s still kind of an ass lol.)

but yeah that’s kind of it for now sorry it’s so long😭😭 I hope it makes sense. I seriously need to draw the au out more.

Yeah, so... Just to clarify a specific TotK-related thing I haven't been super transparent about, or not enough perhaps? I'm not accusing Nintendo of being this machiavellian entity with TotK's storytelling. I mean, it's not impossible that some narrative limitations were put in place to avoid rocking the boat too hard (and some people actually are conservative and have conservative beliefs that they champion in the work they make/fund, it's A Thing too also that we tend to ignore or wave off because Surely nobody would actually think like that, buuut sometimes people do think like that also and it's really unfortunate but people do be conservative the same way people do be gay and try to inject gay stories in corporate settings that try to maximize profit and audience reach, conservatives also do that it turns out!!! not saying it's what happened because I have no idea but I'd hardly say it's impossible), but: I think the final result and what I criticize about it happened mostly because of carelessness and/or lack of power from the narrative department to make their case (I didn't even see a "Writer" or any mention of a narrative department in the credits btw, so I don't know what's up with that), and not from active malice.

I am a consultant, it's kind of my job to work with game companies to mesh gameplay and narrative together, and honestly an enormous portion of my job is to just... point out that some tropes and some "evident" writing shortcuts have Implications, or might end up saying the opposite of what the game wanted to say (not my favorite part of the job, let me tell you this). The game industry is really super fucking bad with themes and media literacy in general to be really honest with you, so sometimes this conversation goes over super well and lead to very interesting places where we get to define a clearer narrative purpose to collectively push, and sometimes people get incredibly defensive and reject all and any criticism before slamming the door on your fingers. It's a known thing in the industry (and everywhere tbh, like trying to get a guy who is "such a feminist" to admit that he's systematically torturing his female characters to give them character growth is uhhhh very veryvery fun as you can imagine)

So while I'm not blaming Nintendo for twirling their copyrighted Italian Mustache while secretely trying to inject imperialist propaganda in their good fun game, I do blame them for not spotting their biases during a 6 year development cycle and for not making their narrative ambitions a bigger priority given the subject matter, and I do side-eye them for addressing said biases in ways that reinforce the core issue, which is to create a fictional conflict that refuse to self-examine and will sabotage its emotional beats, its writing and its character arcs to preserve, at almost all costs, an extremely flat worldview that also happens to parallel really unfortunate real life propaganda stories in its imagery, themes and tone (and this is a criticism I only have for TotK, and not towards the entire Zelda canon which has historically been much, *much* better than this, even in entries that were pretty close plot-wise).