#I don't spend too much time thinking about the Gorons usually but I do like them a lot

[its-captain-sir]

oh my gosh, genuinely- PLEASE tell me about your turtles/zelda crossover

YESSSSSS I HAVE BEEN ENABLED ok ok ok so. don't have any explanation for Why it happens but the turtles end up in Hyrule at some point before the calamity. They're not together when they arrive, but rather split up amongst the four major regions. I'm sure you can see where this is going as to me drawing connections between the turtles and the champions hakdhskdjs I'm still missing a lot of the plot reasoning for all that to make this a truly solid au idea, right now it's kinda just been me thinking about who would be best matched with who, though it does get a little more complicated than just magically appearing in front of a champion and going from there

Meeting Mikey is point where it all sorta starts in my head. It's actually Zelda and Link who run into Mikey first on their way to Gerudo Town! He's just kinda been wandering the desert for a day or so after getting turned away from the town, and up until this point he actually has no idea that he's in a different universe, he honestly thought there was some kind of portal mishap and he ended up by another hidden city somewhere else in the world. Getting everything actually sorted out is a bit of a mess, but Zelda promises to help him search for his brothers, he and Link become cooking besties, and then they have him tag along to meet Urbosa. These two I paired together mostly because I felt like their powers of fire and lightning complimented each other well, and Mikey's chains might just be fast enough to help prevent something later on...... :)

Raph ends up in Goron City! In the hot springs more specifically, as it's the only place protected from the heat as Death Mountain becomes more active. Luckily Daruk was out and about though, so he finds Raph pretty quick before he spends too much time alone and takes him back to the city to get fireproof elixirs and eventually a custom fit set of fireproof armor. Raph has a BLAST with Daruk and they definitely spend a lot of time sparring (without having to hold back too much!) and showing off their different protection powers! Eventually though they do set off towards Hyrule Castle hoping someone there will have the answers to how Raph got here and where everyone else is.

Leo ends up in the Hebra Mountains and his first meeting with Revali is Absolutely Horrible. for Revali. Kinda like Mikey, Leo was on his own for a bit wandering around, except he ran into wayyyy more monster camps. Just bokoblins so nothing too bad, but it does mean his new motto becomes stab first talk later which makes for a bit of an issue when he runs into a Rito patrol spearheaded by Revali. They think he's a monster, he thinks they're monsters, it's a mess hdkdhdkfhd just as he's about to enter a really serious fight with Revali he finally gets clued in that these are People rather than monsters, so he drops all pretenses in his usual manner and backs off instantly and Revali's just left scrambling like "what." And really it only gets worse for him from there cause here's yet ANOTHER blue coded sword wielder except this one. this one tries to be annoying to him on purpose. Leo has absolutely no qualms about throwing all Revali's bullshit right back at him and pesters him beyond that just for fun (he's just similar enough to Donnie that Leo knows alllll the right buttons to press). Revali wants to get rid of him right away, but who knows, maybe Leo's portals would be enough to make a difference in the final hour if Revali had him on his side.......

Donnie is the only one to appear right in front of a champion right in the middle of Zora's Domain, so there's no escaping meeting Mipha hskfhskdhsj she's very nice to him though! And he likes how thoughtful she can be and that she's not overly loud. There's also something to be said about being long ranged weapon buddies <3 it's honestly just a very nice match up that quickly comes to be built on a lot of respect for each other, and so Mipha is the one who offers to accompany Donnie out of the domain and to Kakariko Village where hopefully the researchers there will have some answers (but Donnie will have fun exploring their whole entirely new form of tech regardless hskdhskdjs and he definitely becomes close with Robbie and Purah)

Eventually everyone heads back or gets redirected to Hyrule Castle and an actual reunion can happen! As for what happens after that point.... I don't know really. The only other ideas I've tossed around are how the blight fights could potentially go if they all had a little extra help on their side. If anything, I think this crossover would be in a similar vein to hwaoc, just not as easy and without time travel forewarning hskdhskdhsj it's something to keep thinking about though! Thank you for indulging me in my ramble cause I really do have so many thoughts and ideas about this hakdhskghsj

[loregoddess]

I just shot up in bed because I had a realization. if yunobo is daruk’s descendent that implies that daruk had kids, right? and since yunobo is a goron, that implies daruk had kids with another goron. all gorons are male. does daruk is gay?????? pls give your input on this revelation (like lowkey he gives big gay himbo vibes so we done been knew but—)

*slaps hands together* Do I have some Goron theories and headcanons to share with you, dear anon. (Under the cut bc guess who cannot shut up).

But first, for whatever it’s worth I end up headcanoning all fictional characters as LGTBA+ which totally plays into how I interpret the Gorons. So just know that that’s my bias as I write these theories and headcanons.

And also yeah, Daruk does seem very gay, and we love him for it.

So I’ve seen a lot of speculation about the Gorons and their reproduction, and also some interesting ideas about gender in Goron society. To start, I’ll go over some of the theories about Goron gender I’ve encountered. There’s this wonderful post which I reblogged recently, which looks at why Gorons are allowed in Gerudo Town in BotW. I’ll let you read the post for the full explanation, but in short the original Japanese text of the game suggests that the Gerudo don’t view the Goron as “men”, possibly because of how the Gerudo construct gender in their own society.

This then suggests that it was other races, such as Hylians, who started referring to the Gorons as “men” when they first met, and that the Gorons just kinda went with it because they might have figured that’s just how Hylian language works, which also might explain why they refer to literally everyone as “brother” (although “first meeting” is a bit vague because Gorons are literally one of the oldest races, possibly older than the Sheikah, if SS is anything to go by, so it could also just be a linguistics thing where the Gorons are speaking Hylian rather than their own language, and trying to work around the cultural linguistic differences as best they can). If the Gerudo don’t view the Gorons as “men” then it’s possible that the Gorons don’t actually have a strict set of gender roles/identities in their own culture, and fall on the nonbinary spectrum rather than into the “women/men” binary of other cultures. If the Gerudo understood this, then obviously the Gorons aren’t men and so it’s fine if they enter Gerudo Town.

Now, this obviously raises the question of, “So what’s up with those three Gorons who are obsessed with becoming manly men in the BotW shrine quests?” And for that I have two possible explanations. One, we do still have to remember that LoZ is a piece of fictional media written by humans who are going to project their own cultural and societal ideas into the writing, which likewise means that the potential nb coding was entirely unintentional and that the manly men Gorons of BotW were written, unfortunately, as a joke. Hate to be the cynic, but I’ve been burned by writers too often not to at least consider this possibility. However, canon is dead and fans build their own understandings and interpretations of fiction to suit their desires, SO I am also allowed to build off the cultural exchange I was talking about earlier--it’s entirely possible that while the Gorons don’t have any strict definition of gender in their own culture, their interactions with other cultures would have introduced them to different concepts of gender, and the three Goron in BotW therefore could be acting out “men’s” gender roles (or at least behaviors they view as masculine) intentionally as an exploration of gender, rather than as an enactment of Goron culture.

So, in short? I headcanon the Goron as nonbinary, with a few members exploring different gender identities found outside their culture.

Now, onto reproduction. I can’t find the original source, but I once came across a theory that Gorons are essentially uh...asexual (in reproduction, not sexual orientation, although I’m sure we could have ace Gorons as well). The specific theory I remember was someone speculating that the rock formations on Gorons’ backs are actually their future progeny, and “fall off” to become tiny baby Gorons, which is why some of the Goron elders have far, far fewer back-rock formations than the younger Gorons. Building off this, I’d speculate that the Goron’s diet of rocks could change the “genetics” of their future offspring just enough to cause genetic variation in Gorons, leading to the variations in physical appearance that we see in the Gorons’ designs, while also still allowing for things like Daruk’s Protection to be “passed down” to future generations.

To be fair though, I honestly don’t spend too much time thinking about fantasy reproduction because otherwise the Gerudo become a never-ending headache for me, and I also gave myself a headache with a different fictional media trying to figure out how a human-alien hybrid was even vaguely possible. Also, looking into various fictional media theories, there’s always those homophobic fans I inevitably come across trying to justify why certain couples “can’t have children” even though the fantasy world has like, dragons and magic and could therefore also steal the “ye olde stork brings baby to couple” myth, and the hypothetical baby has their parents stats bc a game world is fictitious and built on mathematic algorithms that do not give a shit about characters’ genders. But I digress. Headcanon whatever floats your goats honestly.

[zachsgamejournal]

PLAYING: The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword

I thought I was at the end of the game. Nope. Still going.

Still. going.

So that gives us a chance to touch on some more things, like the graphics, story, and sword play...

Graphics

When we first started playing this, I mistook it as a Wii U game. I remembered being so put off by the blocky, low rez graphics. Really Nintendo? But then I was corrected (thank Wikipedia) and I'm way happier with the graphics.

In a sense, they remind me of World of Warcraft's early graphics. Very obvious polygons (which I'm cool with) and decent texturing. So I'm having fun. I noticed that the textures are meant to look like painting, probably to help hide the graphical limitations as PS3 and 360 were well established graphical powerhouses at the time. "Yeah, well--look at our style" says Nintendo. Who am I kidding, they probably don't care.

But it is kinda sad how Zelda used to be an industry leader in all things, and now it's just popular.

The only graphical oddity that truly bugs me is the trees. They do that classic PS2/PS1 style of havine 4-8 sprites intersecting at odd angles to look like a full tree. For 1990s and early 2000s, fine--thanks for trying. But this was 2011. You don't get to take shortcuts anymore.

oh well.

Sword Play

So when Nintendo went all in on the Wii, they went all in. That meant making games that meant forcing motion controls every step of the way. Skyward sword's combat is based around the player having full control of their sword with near 1:1 movement. This really just over complicates the sword play. Much of the combat is about how the enemy is blocking from the left, so you need to attack from the right. And if you choose wrongly, there's usually a pain-in-the-ass counter attack.

Maybe with the wand, it was more fun, but with a controller using the right analog stick--it's just annoying. First off, if you want to attack from the right, you have to push left. The idea being that you're slashing from right to left. I'm getting used to it now, but the game was very challenging trying to adjust. Still, instead of slashing, Link will just point in that direction. Not fun when you're in the middle of a boss fight with low hearts.

I really wish they went with more tradiational combat as an option. Maybe that would have been too disruptive to the gimmick.

Story

Previously, I never thought of Zelda games as being very story driven. That was until I played Ocarina of Time and was blown away by how deep the mythology went. I don't think it's the greatest game story ever told, or even close, but it's good enough and fits the game well--turning the whole experience into something amazing.

Each dungeon in OoT has a mini-episode about it. The great Deku tree is cursed and needs to be cleansed. This starts the plot of there being something wrong in the land. Next, you find the Gorons have been cut off from their rock supply. You learn more about the Gorons while building relationships with the chief. Then there's interacting with Ruto in Jabbu. So you're not just solving dungeons, but you're participating in a story with other characters. This continues on in the adult dungeons with Sheik being an added layer.

Skyward Sword on the other hand...

The town of Skyloft has a lot going on. There's several characters with distinct personalities and some fun, character developing side quests. I enjoy it! But when you go down to the surface, where you spend 90% of the game, it feels like there's little going on. There's characters down there with whom you interact, but it feels inconsequential. they're mostly there to direct you toward objectives.

Maybe it's how the plot moves forward? The dungeons in Ocarina of Time aren't just tasks, they're mini-stories in their own right. But Skyward Sword's dungeons just feel like tasks. And they keep giving me more tasks.

I don't know. Maybe I'm being too...I've got high standards. This is 2011, we should know how to tell good game stories by now. So much of the game was chasing down Zelda. But "rescue the princess" stories only work over short experience. A long 30 RPG needs more, much more! And while Ocarina of Time revisited old areas, it still constantly presented new areas. Skyward Sword keeps revisiting old areas with new tasks. That works for side quests or with an open world. But this isn't an open world, and these menial, uninspired quests feel like side quests. It's like Assassin Creed's one where you had to do 5 stupid side quests before starting a mission. Lame.

I'll just say...if I ever play this again, it will not be for the story. At all.