behold: my second least favorite string of words in the entirety of Tears of the Kingdom.
(it's a little less transparent why this time so I'll explain my thoughts under the cut)
So why do I not like this?
In so many words: because if you remove it, the scene still works, but you lose the moral certainty of what is going on.
This single sentence does so much legwork for the entire game (the kind I dislike), to the point where I'm about 60% sure it's the product of a rework that realized how ambiguous Rauru's position was as the Good Rightful King and needed to nervously reassure the players that Ganondorf Is and Always Was the Invader, Actually.
(no matter that it leaves the gerudos in this awkward in-between state of both invaders and victims, while never dwelling in the specifics of their history and their own agency in the entire thing; brushed off as a sin they have to expiate through loyalty to the winners of that particular strife, but without explicitely blaming them either to avoid the implications of what that would have looked like)
If you remove it, not only do you lose a pretty clunky line that detracts from Ganondorf's intimidating presence (who is he even speaking to? who needs to hear this right now?) that honestly speaks for itself when it comes to his experience with warfare, but also you lose any tension and any mystery regarding why he is attacking in the first place.
You also... kind of rob Ganondorf's motivations of their meaning. "Hyrule will bow down before me" leads to asking... why? What does he want? What does he see in those lands? And what little we get with Rauru and then Link during the final fight begs more questions; why do you prefer hardship to peace? Why do you value strength? What leads you to want to rule a land devoid of survivors, become a king without a kingdom? I don't think we ever get satisfactory answers. If you remove this sentence, on the other hand... Subtextually, it becomes pretty clear that his motivations is that he felt threatened by Rauru's power, which is ripe with subtext and questions about whether this is a legitimate reaction, whether his "no survivor" stance is due to a feeling of betrayal when his own people turned against him post the Demon King shenanigans... I'm not saying it would fix the entire game's writing, far from it, but it would already do *so much more*.
(genuinely, I think he could have stayed completely silent during the Molduga Assault, speaking only in the Show of Fealty before going completely nuts after Sonia's murder, and it would have worked MUCH better in terms of characterization but anyway anyway
EDIT: ALSO!!! that way he wouldn't speak hylian to fellow gerudos, which is weird inherently)
Without this line, the core of the tension between the gerudos and Hyrule comes front in his conversation with Rauru; it allows the cause of his hostility to be Rauru's invitations, that he would have taken as a threat, and would have still made him warlike and domineering without making him cartoonishly flat, because, once again, Rauru is not acting in a particularly more legitimate way when Zelda arrives in Ancient Hyrule; and it would have been... fair to point that out. And make for better characterization for Rauru, and Sonia, and Mineru, and everybody. But the priority was for Hyrule to be pictured as unquestionably holy; always legitimate, always truthful, always beautiful, always just.
Also, and this is more of a nitpick but: why would Ganondorf want Hyrule, specifically, to bow down before him also? Was he at war with the rest of the disparate tribes before, and just carried on his ambitions to the very very newly-founded kingdom as they allied under a new banner? (though it seems to be implies the lands were crawling under monsters in a generic sense, and not Ganondorf's attacks in particular) Why would he even consider Hyrule a legitimate entity worth taking over then, if it is so new, born from the will of a powerful rival, founded by what is basically a stranger to these lands? Why would he covet something so young instead of destroying it and just calling the lands Gerudo Lands II or Grooseland or something?
I don't think any of that was even accounted for, because, beyond everything else: to me, this sentence is so clearly and painfully crammed in here to shield Hyrule from any potential blame and immediately characterize Ganondorf as Bad without having to remove any of the causes that could lead one to side-eye Rauru's little pet project as equally questionable.
Beyond the clumsiness, it is cowardly --and, I think, a little damning.
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Hi, out of curiosity, do you have a list of prefixes and suffixes that you use to name characters in this au/rewrite? I'm just curious bc you clearly do a lot of research and I'm interested in just what all you'd put
I think I tried to start a google spreadsheet of prefixes and suffixes months ago, but I actually have an obscure brain quirk called ADHD, which stands for A Dude & His Distractions. I'm on 20 mg of being put in a washing machine (high spin cycle) a day.
But, it would just be for other people really. When I get the chance to name cats outright, I have a big mental list of names I already totally want to use, or think about the family they're part of and how their parents would name them. Like, I'll try to make it match their siblings, think about what sort of names their family typically uses, or use prefixes that canon hasn't used but I would.
Like, a Truckkit would be pretty fun for SkyClan. Gas in reference to marsh gas, Vetch or Teasel because they're some of my favorite plant names, I love "weird but ecologically valid" ones like Jelly, Cinnabar, Plantain, which describe something TOTALLY DIFFERENT from what you think those should mean.
(jelly = jelly ear mushroom, cinnabar = type of moth, plantain = type of grass)
So... all that to say, unfortunately I do not have a list. At least, not one that's physical. The closest you're gonna get for now is the Clanmew lexicon.
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its so odd to me that theres a whole genre of ppl who listened to tma and thought martin was this fancy tea guy and not just doing like a basic task you do in places where tea is part of the culture...
not in like a judgemental way like im american too and thats very much not a thing here but like ive seen it at least once or twice before in other stuff that thats just a task you can have an employee do like go make some tea
like its always read to me as martin trying to cover for the fact hes not as qualified as he says he is by going and making the tea for everyone its basic and boring but its something he did so everyones momentarily ddistracted by the fact he never seems to use his supposed education bc he brought them some tea.
we dont really have an american equivalent... im imagining the intern fetching everyone coffee trope but even that doesnt seem right since its not nearly as common hmm
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