#its a very hard balance to get right bc otherwise you are just kinda repeating what canon tells you and that is all based on not great stuf
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just want to reiterate that i dont mean hes not allowed to be or do the things he does, he doesnt have to be a victim that is a poor traumatized lil boi or something, you dont HAVE to go with the opposite of what canon says about him, you can like him doing all the things he does in canon, in a way, well, good for him, he can do what he wants
but i just think its still good to remember that hes still a fictional character that does things a certain way bc the writers decided to and that some .. or alot of things (especially the nonsensical stuff...) might really just be an attempt to make sure hes still blatantly evil enough to label him the ultimate enemy, that his evil surpasses whatever else has happened, and that it is very intentional we never get to see another side of him lest we sympathize too much with him (which still happens, no matter what they do people will like him anyway) and forget we are supposed to view him as nothing more than a monster really
in the end im not trying police how anyone talks about him or views him, i just wanted to share how i view it since the whole "he actually is as selfish and violent as canon tells you" is very much a double edged sword, on one hand, yeah, theres people like that and he could be it and you can still like him just the way he is- on the other hand it also plays right into those tropes and i personally find it the most interesting to dismantle those (and find it a lil weird how quickly some are to reject even the idea of not 100% believing what canon tells you about him?)
(just to clarify, the people i mean that are all for his canon ways are those that still love him and are on his side essentially, cheering him on- not those fuckers who think he, or the gerudo in general, need to be even more blatantly horribly bc they are just not evil enough so they should kidnap people for reproduction or some shit)
saw a few posts talking about ganondorf and while i dont want to uh .. risk having to argue with strangers ... i cant shut up entirely (you know me)
(in my opinion that is probably missing alot or just not as well read as a lot of others since i really just say what i feel instead of knowing what im talking about-)
its kinda hard to really talk about him bc hes so .... steeped into tired old stereotypes and harmful tropes with intentionally so little else, if anything, that you almost always end up playing into them if you just take what canon tells you (and alot of people love defending it too :/ )
to what degree is it really his character and what is literally just some things that were decided he does to make it clear hes the one note evil guy, to justify whatever horror is done to him and overshadow/bury what anyone else has done, to not think about maybe he had a point bc look how much bad stuff he does! if you made him fight for the freedom/sovereignity of his own people against an oppressive hyrule he would be in the right- so ACTUALLY he opresses them violently and selfishly even WORSE and then wants to murder everyone tm that dont bow to him bc thats what evil people do! and hyrule is justified in taking them over in turn bc their rule wont opress them :)
its like a game of trying to one up whatever hyrule did with something more bad tm bc otherwise it gets hard to justify killing him over and over
im not saying hes not allowed to be prideful, selfish or violent of whatever, but you gotta know that all of that IS one of those ways that is supposed to make it clear how evil tm the desert guy is; it doesnt matter what hyrule has done bc look! ganondorf is so much worse! and im sure hyrule had their reasons :)
hes never actually allowed to interact with his own people, hes isolated/alienated from them and their culture constantly, hes their king yet he .... violently takes over "free" gerudo villages (what? what for?? what does "free" even mean? they werent following him? their king?? were they .. allied with hyrule, who are good tm, which means they were living in paradise aka "free"? (bc they are good ones tm bc they rejected their evil one in a hundred year man king ruling violently over only women .. *cough*)), yet hes never seen fighting alongside his own people (the most is them .. silently serving him in what, one scene??) and then he drops them the second he has evil MONSTERS to fight for him instead and orders them to kill every living thing or something bc thats obviously evil, he doesnt even care about his own people! how evil! why would he do that? idk, hes the sole, selfish violent evil man opressing his own people, who are all women! that what they do! and WE need to free them from HIM (and they should be thankful to us for it and try to attone for ever having birthed him in the first place) (or he is the reason tm why they suffered/were wiped out and he is literally the sole survivor of his people, bc he doesnt care about ANYONE but himself)
i dont mean he has to be a goody two shoes character (you can be an ass and still do good/be in the right btw) bc more often than not what that actually means is being allied with hyrule bc those are the designated good guys and being on their side makes you automatically good (eugh) but do you rly want to just ... play along with all the propaganda?
imo, aside from being obviously racist, thats also so boring? does selfish, violent evil man king with no people (bc hes not part of them or fighting for them, hes always presented as the worse oppressor) and nothing else to him that only wants to murder bc ... idk evil? sound interesting to you? (to the point that the ONLY time we were shown literally any sort of vunerabillity, end of ww, that theres people trying to argue he was trying to to manipulate you even there?? what for? why? are you trying to reject literally the one glimpse we are allowed into his perspective qoq)
why do alot of people reject the idea so much to consider he actually cared about them, how maybe that prideful and selfish look is just a facade, or even a fabrication? violence that had to be met with violence, not for any sort of selfish reasons, but for his people and was met with a fight he could not win yet kept fighting on, perhaps losing himself more and more in the process, or a lie told so often that it became reality, if someone has nothign left to lose, if all was taken from them, maybe even blamed on them, why not play into what you where made out to be, you cant convince them otherwise anyway its the reason hes never shown to have done a single nice thing, never seen non angry/smug smiling, how he has no one at his side unless he forced them, how he is not allowed to be human even a little bit, never shown being anything but a boring ass trope personified, hes less a character and more a big bundle of racist tropes that fights you at the end (sorry) while looking epic so trying to meaningfully analyze him just by what we are told and shown in canon will always fall kinda flat or end up playing righ into every shitty trope
that is my opinion :I
#ganondoodles talks#zelda#ganondorf#ganondoodles rants#sorry i wanted to clarify#i personally just feel a lil uncomfortable with going hard on his canon portrayal#in part bc i am just a big softie who doesnt like that and always asks why though and what if it was different#...also didnt mean to stirr any flames of the disk horse#just wanted to say how i feel about it#its a very hard balance to get right bc otherwise you are just kinda repeating what canon tells you and that is all based on not great stuf#also a lil bit annoyed how the whole 'no more sympathetic twist villain' turned into cheering for any one not evil guy#even though even those need to make sense#and theres like ... things to consider ... like sorry but totk gan is uuuh not a good irrevocably evil guy representation#theres like ... things to consider outside of the narrative saying this guy irredeemable evil#maybe also a little strengthend bc the fact that im all for redeemable villains especially those that get this treatment#of being one note villains you arent supposed to think about#i had been embarrassed about it for a good while bc i thought people collectively hated redeemed villains stuff#but i have since come to realize and accept that yeah .. sorry- im one of those :) demise is good actually :3
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