#as any neurodivergent/disabled/queer kid can attest

[gay-jesus-probably]

Okay so I have a lot of thoughts about the whole thing of the Gerudo being a race of entirely women, with the only exception being one man born every hundred years, and that man automatically being their king. Now this worldbuilding comes from Ocarina of Time, and there's obviously a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications there, because it was 1998. And it seems that Tears of the Kingdom is sticking with the lore of Gerudo men being extremely rare and becoming the King of their people, which once again has a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications because it's 2023 and Nintendo has somehow gotten even worse about this shit.

But let's set aside the whole... everything, and look at this from just the in-universe perspective. How does it work? I mean, it's pretty clear that there is no overlap between the kings; the old ones are normally long gone by the time a new one is born, but the Gerudo manage to take care of themselves during the hangtime. So they must have an established system of government and leadership that doesn't involve a king, and somehow that system is set up in a way that does a smooth transfer of power once a new king is born and old enough to take the throne. But why bother always declaring a random guy to be your King when you already have a perfectly functional system in place?

I mean again, the whole thing has a lot of sexist implications, but we're not looking at this from a real world context, we're examining it in-universe. And we could just go the lazy route and say that their king is in charge just because he's the only man, but I don't like that. I mean come on, the Gerudo are a race of entirely women, and most of their outside problems come from Hylian men being creepy about it. They are entirely a matriarchy; there is literally no reason for their culture to have an inherent respect for men, even if the man in question is one of them. And they're desert people; they live in an extremely harsh and dangerous landscape, if they don't have their shit together, they will die. By sheer necessity, their culture needs to put a lot of value in being practical, because if they're stupid about things, people die. They really can't afford to have a shitty leader take over, and just letting some guy take the wheel doesn't really fit with the way their culture must otherwise work.

So again, why the fuck do they bother having a King?

I think it's mainly just a ceremonial position. Yes, if the guy is a good leader he'll be in charge, but if he isn't good at being a King or isn't interested in the job... fuck it, they've already got a functional government system that's been leading their people the whole time, why fix what isn't broken? The title of Gerudo King isn't about leadership or power. I think it's more about belonging. Because the Gerudo are a culture where every single one of them can be defined in the same way... and there is exactly one exception once a century. Men are considered to be inherently outsiders at the best of times, and more often they're enemies. A man born into this culture is a natural outsider; he is completely unique, and that means he doesn't really fit into his community. And well... when someone is fundamentally different from the rest of their community, they tend to be ostracized.

So I think that's why the position of Gerudo King exists. It isn't about them needing or even wanting a man to lead them. The title of King doesn't need to involve any leadership at all. It's about giving the man born every century a place in their society. It's a way of saying yes, you are one of us, you are a Gerudo, you belong here, you are wanted and you are loved.

The Gerudo know that every hundred years, one of their children will be fundamentally different from all of his peers. And so their society is built to ensure that a child who is completely different from them will still be loved and accepted. He will always have a place in their society. He doesn't need to earn their love, he has it just for existing. These are his people.

The title of Gerudo King isn't an inherent position of authority. It's a promise of acceptance.

[sprigazalea]

I remember a few years back, when I watched a lot of anarchists on YouTube, one of them poorly defined “Justified Hierarchies” and used the relationship between a child and a parent as an example of one.

I cannot stop thinking about how wrong that assertion was. Firstly, I am pretty sure Chomsky meant the term as something completely different from how it is being interpreted here, and even if it wasn’t, he would be wrong.

Secondly, it lacks any understanding of how children are treated broadly. Children are often not seen as autonomous beings with their own feelings and views of the world, but instead as property that their parents feels entitled to instill their beliefs of the world and of others onto. Anyone who has grown up queer, neurodivergent, or disabled can attest to this as fact. Furthermore, many adults *love* to embellish in the idea of controlling their child with others, justifying why they beat their kids, why they cant have their own privacy or agency, why they have to control how they look, how they speak, how they walk, how they talk, all with a smile and a laugh behind it.

[nightcoremoon]

now that I've driven home and had a few minutes to cool off and collect my thoughts, I feel I should explain myself to the people who have been following me and know who i am so I don't damage my relationship or reputation more than I probably already have. there was a post that an autistic person I follow made, where he vented about bigotry against autistic people, and ended with a passive aggressive "...janice". there was another post that a nonbinary person I follow made where they vented about bigotry against gender nonconforming people, and ended with a passive aggressive "...denise". I'm not 100% sure which was which but I DEFINITELY remember the posts, as well as the profile pictures of the people who posted them. I don't remember the urls though, and even if I did remember them I wouldn't list them in case the people who are now harassing and spamming me in my inbox and activity feeds decided to also hop on their [proverbial] dicks as well as mine because they apparently culturally appropriated those post templates, of ending extended rants about various bigots and ending them with names befitting of middle aged suburban soccermoms, karen. now, when listing people of this demographic, I used to include white among those adjectives. however, there are black middle aged suburban soccermoms, hispanic middle aged suburban soccermoms, and asian middle aged suburban soccermoms, and pretty much people of every race who have the potential to be this type of person the practice strawmans. obviously not every single middle aged suburban parent of children who participate heavily in after school activities is going to be the type of person to scream at retail workers or starbucks baristas or people who cut off their minivans when they're driving 15 under the speed limit in the left lane. not every single middle aged suburban person is an undeducated bible thumping bigot with their head shoved up their ass. not every one of them is a problematic piece of shit that stands by the #alllivesmatter crew or trump or whatever the republicans are rallying around this week. not even all of the white ones, and there are some people who fit the trope who are not white. I've dealt with many of them during my days at target, but I always stood by including white. until recently. when I learned it made black people uncomfortable when white people made white jokes, I was of course initially hesitant. "that's fucking stupid!" I though. "I'm not assuaging white guilt by doing this, I'm just finding it in me to laugh at myself". and then I read a bit more about the subject and figured it isn't worth the potential heartache if I fought it because in all honesty it kind of makes sense. my mom's boyfriend's son is black (and hispanic), and I had once made a white girl joke to my sister in front of him and mom told me later that both he and her boyfriend were uncomfortable with me saying that. after seeing the post that talked about it, and my... slight breakdown where I may have dramatically overreacted... I decided to try and stop with the white people jokes because I want to unlearn all of the racist shit that my dad, stepmom, aunts, uncles, grandparents, former friends, former acquaintances, and society in general that I possibly could, because racism as a concept digs into my skin and fucks me up. it used to make me absolutely seethe with rage, and I still get a little steamed by it. in fact I once got in a LOT of trouble with my high school sociology student teacher because I got really shitty with her when she- an anthropology student no less- kept calling one kid in our class by his initial because apparently kudsai is just Too Hard™ to pronounce. one day, an off day where I forgot to take my medicine, she called him that and I yelled at her "he has a name, so use it". granted I didn't like the kid. I thought he was annoying; loud, obnoxious, constantly making sex jokes while we were studying freud (and even the fucking holocaust), in the choir and the football team... basically like any other cishet teenage boy. but being annoying is no excuse for a teacher to not take five fucking seconds of her day to learn how to say his name right just because it wasn't franklin or gregory, two of the other black kids who I went to school with. anyone following me as far back as when annie got remade with quvenzhane wallis as the titular role might have read my thoughts on the matter of pronouncing people's names right. i'm not saying this to pat myself on the back for not being racist, because WOW was I a rough mess of things back then, but I was never like my dad's side of the family about race. back when michael brown's death and ferguson were still talked about, I found myself agreeing with rush limbaugh about some of the things he said, so clearly I haven't been a perfect angel my whole life. anyway, back to white people jokes making black people feel uncomfortable. I've been trying to make myself agree with that, which as anyone who has the syndrome formerly known as aspergers can probably attest to, is hard as shit to do. possible but hard. like, I'm even now still unlearning some acephobia, transphobia, queerphobia, islamophobia, and even though I know the occasional fleeting thoughts that I think are wrong and bad, they still happen very frequently. same goes with various forms of racism and xenophobia. my dad (and former stepdad's) influences are probably so deep because of various issues with abandonment and abuse that I'm not gonna discuss here, and they're both absolutely reeking with white supremacist microaggressions. so I'm definitely trying my hardest. part of that is why I reacted so negatively when people misinterpreted what I said, put words in my mouth, and straight up told me to kill myself in all of these messages that are still flooding in. another part is because I truly do stand by the things that I meant to say, rather than the things that it appears I've said. I really do think that it's unreasonable to say that it's racist for people who aren't black to make posts where we vent about various injustices we face from people who are misinformed and ignorant and straight up smarmy condescending assholes and then end it with a passive aggressive name of some baby boomer fuckwit, peggy. because these baby boomer fuckwits come in many colors (black people are still capable of being racist [against hispanic/asian/etc people, not whites, I need to make that abundantly clear], classist, misogynist, queerphobic, ableist, otherwise bigoted prejudiced assholes), and these names that are heralded as "typically white", like henry or franklin or gregory or harold or penelope or alice or etc, are not exclusively white names. I've seen or met black people with names like this and while it's definitely not the majority (not even close), and it's definitely partially due to cultural erasure perpetuated by gentrification, it still exists. so it doesn't make sense to me why the person who wrote the post that started me on this whole sequence of posts about this topic insisted that it was a 'white people names' thing. especially when white people names are more like khaeylieghhe or miakkaylia or annedeeye or some other ridiculous bastardisation of english language in order to make your child feel special and unique and end up growing to be a cookie cutter member of the conservative party that tries to take down affirmative action because they feel like it's reverse discriminatory or some shit. if it was something like that, making fun of those names that are actually like making jokes at the expense of white people [I think I should apologize in advance because technically this counts as a white people joke even if it's just an example] would make perfect sense. however I have not only seen posts in this template of ending with baby boomer names being used as tools to express their distaste in queerphobia, ableism, classism, xenophobia, and intolerance of other sorts, but I've made them before, and it has had not a god damn bit of racial connotation to it at all unless it's been specifically a black millennial on tumblr venting specifically about a white people-ism, and to make a post that shits on everybody who uses this template to cope if they're not black, and causes those kids who use it to cope to ask why not, and then get immediately shit on by assholes who treat them just like people are treating me, who tell them that it doesn't matter if they're neurodivergent or gay or trans or whatever because they're being Big Bad Evil Racists™ by ending their rant posts with names like becky, allison. I don't care if you're black. if you treat queer or disabled kids like shit and call them racist when they're not being racist, no matter what color your skin is, you're an asshole. and to act like fucking salem massachusetts when confronted with legitimate criticism of your ill-informed unbridled assault of an angry mama bear to queer and disabled kids, is just DISGUSTING. WEAK. and PATHETIC. and only serves to strengthen my points. so you know what, go ahead. keep sending me your hate anons. keep sending me the smarmy condescension. I can take it. just stop being fucking assholes to my family. your race isn't something I have any authority over but I won't let you use it as a weapon to beat people over the head with just because you get high off of the power you get from the veil of anonymity. false accusations of being a tier 6 skinhead is more palatable than telling us to kill ourselves.

[thoughtfulfoxllama]

Yes, this is my new Headcanon. It's absolutely amazing

Okay so I have a lot of thoughts about the whole thing of the Gerudo being a race of entirely women, with the only exception being one man born every hundred years, and that man automatically being their king. Now this worldbuilding comes from Ocarina of Time, and there's obviously a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications there, because it was 1998. And it seems that Tears of the Kingdom is sticking with the lore of Gerudo men being extremely rare and becoming the King of their people, which once again has a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications because it's 2023 and Nintendo has somehow gotten even worse about this shit.

But let's set aside the whole... everything, and look at this from just the in-universe perspective. How does it work? I mean, it's pretty clear that there is no overlap between the kings; the old ones are normally long gone by the time a new one is born, but the Gerudo manage to take care of themselves during the hangtime. So they must have an established system of government and leadership that doesn't involve a king, and somehow that system is set up in a way that does a smooth transfer of power once a new king is born and old enough to take the throne. But why bother always declaring a random guy to be your King when you already have a perfectly functional system in place?

I mean again, the whole thing has a lot of sexist implications, but we're not looking at this from a real world context, we're examining it in-universe. And we could just go the lazy route and say that their king is in charge just because he's the only man, but I don't like that. I mean come on, the Gerudo are a race of entirely women, and most of their outside problems come from Hylian men being creepy about it. They are entirely a matriarchy; there is literally no reason for their culture to have an inherent respect for men, even if the man in question is one of them. And they're desert people; they live in an extremely harsh and dangerous landscape, if they don't have their shit together, they will die. By sheer necessity, their culture needs to put a lot of value in being practical, because if they're stupid about things, people die. They really can't afford to have a shitty leader take over, and just letting some guy take the wheel doesn't really fit with the way their culture must otherwise work.

So again, why the fuck do they bother having a King?

I think it's mainly just a ceremonial position. Yes, if the guy is a good leader he'll be in charge, but if he isn't good at being a King or isn't interested in the job... fuck it, they've already got a functional government system that's been leading their people the whole time, why fix what isn't broken? The title of Gerudo King isn't about leadership or power. I think it's more about belonging. Because the Gerudo are a culture where every single one of them can be defined in the same way... and there is exactly one exception once a century. Men are considered to be inherently outsiders at the best of times, and more often they're enemies. A man born into this culture is a natural outsider; he is completely unique, and that means he doesn't really fit into his community. And well... when someone is fundamentally different from the rest of their community, they tend to be ostracized.

So I think that's why the position of Gerudo King exists. It isn't about them needing or even wanting a man to lead them. The title of King doesn't need to involve any leadership at all. It's about giving the man born every century a place in their society. It's a way of saying yes, you are one of us, you are a Gerudo, you belong here, you are wanted and you are loved.

The Gerudo know that every hundred years, one of their children will be fundamentally different from all of his peers. And so their society is built to ensure that a child who is completely different from them will still be loved and accepted. He will always have a place in their society. He doesn't need to earn their love, he has it just for existing. These are his people.

The title of Gerudo King isn't an inherent position of authority. It's a promise of acceptance.