#[marches down the street banging my obnoxious gay little drum] darkness! is! an inherent aspect of humanity!

[thecottageinthedark]

#Legend of Zelda#Twilight Princess#[marches down the street banging my obnoxious gay little drum] darkness! is! an inherent aspect of humanity!#not even in an edgy sense!!!!#if you can be nothing but good you can't actually even be good!#to live in exclusive obedience of light and all it is thematically correlated to is to live in hell!

I'm once again thinking about Twilight Princess and how much I enjoy that the Fused Shadows seem to be a standard cursed power thing - but only because they're in a world they weren't meant to be compatible in and got stuck to random beings, and once they're being used by Midna, sure, her spider mode is big and scary looking, but she never hurts anyone she doesn't mean to, she's in complete control, and bear-hugs Ganon out of Zelda without giving her a scratch. They're not evil and they (1/2)

(2/2) don't make people evil, at least not unless something else has gone badly wrong, and even then it's more complicated than 'they're evil now' (poor Darbus.) I also love how Midna has a line re: Zelda about how a life of luxury and a carefree youth can't teach someone about duty - just, the idea of Midna as someone who worked her ass off to be a worthy leader, who cares deeply and truly for her people and realm, and still being the little (or big) hellion imp we know and love, is wonderful.

Twilight Princess is a game I have a very frustrated affection for because it has one foot forwards into a really unexplored theme in TLoZ's narratives of light and darkness and then it never really brings the other foot down.

We have Midna's power, and we have the fact that Link through the game accesses something that's kind of an iconically villainish power in TLoZ (turning into a monster, to the point of wolf link squaring off with dark beast ganon) and we have her speech to Link about how the twilight was beautiful and she missed home, but we also have...

the fact that all of the Fused Shadows have attached themselves to monsters, and the twilight mirror shards too, and especially in hunting the latter, you can watch Midna become more embittered and frustrated that there seems to be so much potential for 'evil' in these, until she's kind of disgusted with them and disgusted with herself and it makes her endgame decision inevitable in a frustrating way,

that we are told we have to "match the power of the king of twilight" but Link never really learns dark magic himself- he fights alongside Midna who handles all that for him, and this distinction is important because, again, at the end of the story Midna takes all the 'dark' and leaves, because she thinks it's for Link's good, leaving him innocent in the light.

I'm haunted by the mental image of, one week after Twilight Princess ends, they can't find Colin, and if Link was a wolf he could track him down, but he can't, because Midna's not there, and the cursed artifact is gone, and Colin turns up okay (he just snuck off to train without telling anybody) but Link is tormented over this.

Wasn't it a curse? Weren't you happier without it? Don't you enjoy your reward of being a nice, normal, human whose personhood is never in question?

(Something inside of him paces and howls. He no longer has the tools to pull it through its skin where it can run and find relief.)

Anyway Motley you're completely right IMO, the fused shadows get the short end of the stick and come off super evil when they're basically mismanaged natural forces and this is just extra picante in a setting where we're used to the artifacts we pick up to do stuff lacking the implication they ever did any stuff that we weren't fond of.

[ganymedesclock]

I'm once again thinking about Twilight Princess and how much I enjoy that the Fused Shadows seem to be a standard cursed power thing - but only because they're in a world they weren't meant to be compatible in and got stuck to random beings, and once they're being used by Midna, sure, her spider mode is big and scary looking, but she never hurts anyone she doesn't mean to, she's in complete control, and bear-hugs Ganon out of Zelda without giving her a scratch. They're not evil and they (1/2)

(2/2) don't make people evil, at least not unless something else has gone badly wrong, and even then it's more complicated than 'they're evil now' (poor Darbus.) I also love how Midna has a line re: Zelda about how a life of luxury and a carefree youth can't teach someone about duty - just, the idea of Midna as someone who worked her ass off to be a worthy leader, who cares deeply and truly for her people and realm, and still being the little (or big) hellion imp we know and love, is wonderful.

Twilight Princess is a game I have a very frustrated affection for because it has one foot forwards into a really unexplored theme in TLoZ's narratives of light and darkness and then it never really brings the other foot down.

We have Midna's power, and we have the fact that Link through the game accesses something that's kind of an iconically villainish power in TLoZ (turning into a monster, to the point of wolf link squaring off with dark beast ganon) and we have her speech to Link about how the twilight was beautiful and she missed home, but we also have...

the fact that all of the Fused Shadows have attached themselves to monsters, and the twilight mirror shards too, and especially in hunting the latter, you can watch Midna become more embittered and frustrated that there seems to be so much potential for 'evil' in these, until she's kind of disgusted with them and disgusted with herself and it makes her endgame decision inevitable in a frustrating way,

that we are told we have to "match the power of the king of twilight" but Link never really learns dark magic himself- he fights alongside Midna who handles all that for him, and this distinction is important because, again, at the end of the story Midna takes all the 'dark' and leaves, because she thinks it's for Link's good, leaving him innocent in the light.

I'm haunted by the mental image of, one week after Twilight Princess ends, they can't find Colin, and if Link was a wolf he could track him down, but he can't, because Midna's not there, and the cursed artifact is gone, and Colin turns up okay (he just snuck off to train without telling anybody) but Link is tormented over this.

Wasn't it a curse? Weren't you happier without it? Don't you enjoy your reward of being a nice, normal, human whose personhood is never in question?

(Something inside of him paces and howls. He no longer has the tools to pull it through its skin where it can run and find relief.)

Anyway Motley you're completely right IMO, the fused shadows get the short end of the stick and come off super evil when they're basically mismanaged natural forces and this is just extra picante in a setting where we're used to the artifacts we pick up to do stuff lacking the implication they ever did any stuff that we weren't fond of.