#nintendork

[nintendork135]

Happy birthday, me

[mimzalot]

we never really needed the Zelda Timeline

 from twitter •  7th July 2019  

sharing my thoughts on the Zelda Timeline, oral tradition, gamer intellectualism and one of the best characters in Breath of the Wild. I may wrongly use 'oral history' and 'oral tradition' interchangeably but you get the gist of it.

hadn’t put this into words until recently but I think part of the reason the Zelda timeline never mattered to me was because Zelda has always been a bit more like oral history, rather than written history. it’s the Legend of Zelda, not the Cross-Referenced Facts of Zelda.

makes sense, too, why all the Zelda games have vastly different tones, but the same underlying themes and plot - Link is the archetypal hero (like Jack and Jill, Jack and the Beanstalk), and all the different ‘styles’ of game are the different voices they’re recounted by.

you got one person that tells the story with a light-hearted comedy tone! Wind Waker. you got that aunty that’s a fan of ghost stories and plans to terrify you! Majora’s Mask. you know that cousin who’s a big fan of birds? Skyward Sword! each legend embellished in its own way.

and not to be Me about it but it makes me wonder how much of this desire for Zelda’s timeline to be a written, coherent, step-by-step factual recount of events is tied in with the idea that historical, written fact is seen as intellectualism, whereas oral tradition is... not.

I’m used to oral tradition. as a Samoan, much of my knowledge of history has been told to me by family, and while there is value in finding the ‘truth’ of the matter, a lot of times, you just enjoy the story. there’s nothing to prove with it, you just listen and learn.

as a Samoan I’m also used to the fact that this isn’t really seen as a valid or intellectual form of academia. and as a member of the gaming and Zelda community, I know that there’s a pervasive obsession with academia, intellectualism, and proving video games are ‘smart’.

if you’ve been part of the Zelda community for longer than a minute you’ve probably at some point become aware that some Zelda fans - and Nintendorks overall - have suffered with an inferiority complex. the definition of ‘real games’ did not include games about fairy forest boys.

when ‘real games’ had to have the most realistic graphics, dark themes, competitive modes and, well, guns, Zelda fans were chuckled at by ‘real gamers’. it was a good game, but it was a kids’ game. Zelda fans scrambled for legitimacy in the gaming community.

evidence: when Wind Waker was first announced, the great source of fan despair? it was too cartoony, it wasn’t dark enough. how was Zelda going to be taken seriously when, while the rest of gaming was boasting realistic graphics, Nintendo had veered off-course into toon town!?

similarly when Twilight Princess was released, the great source of fan rejoicing was that it looked serious, dark and gritty. Link looked more realistic, and this looked like a game that wouldn’t have the Halo nerds laughing at you when you said it was the best series ever.

so what does the disenfranchised nerd with the inferiority complex do to intellectualise their media? how does the Zeldweeb prove their lore should be taken seriously? you take every piece of it and try to put it down on paper, in sensical order, as evidence. it’s history, baby!

you could probably skip the inferiority complex bit and jump straight to the fact that white audiences will naturally attempt to intellectualise through written history, because historically speaking, that’s what white history is all about. if it ain’t written, it ain’t legitten.

whether it’s because of an inferiority complex, or the cultural context within which media is consumed, or the nature of academia being steeped in white concepts of ‘truth’, we’ve been left with Zelda fans that are DESPERATE for the timeline to make sense. DEMANDING that it does.

and all I’m saying to my fellow fans is - it doesn’t HAVE to. it never had to! firstly because that’s an inherently flawed method of justifying the merit of something, but also because gaming elitism is dumb and there’s no need to force this game to be historically accurate.

because without this urgent demand for a Confirmed Zelda timeline, Hylian lore would be just like my ‘Fierce Deity Link is Sheikah’ headcanon, and numerous other Zelda fan theories - good, regardless of canonisation. speculative, like legends oft are. oral tradition, not written.

... but it’s 2019 now. the Historia was released, and you can tell the games are being made with other games and The Timeline in mind. and this isn’t bad! in fact it’s a pretty interesting progression from oral tradition into written that mirrors real world civilisations. sweet.

Breath of the Wild is the ‘convergence’ game, where all the haphazard timelines come together. to me this is a turning point in the Legend of Zelda, because from here on, games have a unified starting point. The Timeline can, from this point forward, be strictly abided by.

... but speaking of oral tradition and Breath of the Wild, I find it really charming that as Nintendo officially creates a ‘logical’ new-start for the written Zelda timeline, they also introduced an in-game personification of oral lore itself. or a birdification, rather. Kass!

was this thread just an excuse for me to gush about my favourite bird bard, Kass? I mean, no, but while I’m here, let’s talk about Kass! bc I love him, and also because there’s something very meta about a Legend of Zelda character whose sole purpose is to tell the Legend of Zelda

TLOZ as a whole operates mostly on oral lore. more often than not you are told of your history by others - from a great tree, a dead King, a Happy Mask Salesman. your sidequests are primarily word-of-mouth. music is integral in how you connect to Hyrule, past, present and future.

this has become a fundamental and seamlessly integrated part of how the series functions. just like you know that when you hit a crystal something will happen, you also know that in order to understand your surroundings you need to listen to people, stories and songs. NOT read.

... which brings us back to Kass! while the rest of the series (deliberately or not) makes gameplay out of oral tradition, Kass personifies that tradition. at the turning point of The Timeline, Kass both explains and demonstrates how Legend works, in-game and in-general.

and I find it extremely effective and maybe a little sentimental that while we can expect everything henceforth about The Timeline to be indisputable fact, there’s a character which exists purely to represent the legitimacy, excitement and cultural function of oral tradition.

(that the Rito seem coded as a tribal unit that live in a village and operate within a chiefly system not unlike my own culture probably adds to how quickly this comparison occurred to me, too, buuut culture-coding in Zelda is a topic for another day)

Breath of the Wild marks a junction. a new slate - ha ha. gameplay includes more elements of written history (filling a compendium, reading journals, visiting memories based on photos), throwbacks take full advantage of a chronological timeline (location names, weapon lore, plot)

Link is usually our bard, through which we create and share the Legend of Zelda. now, as Link, BOTW and maybe even the series overall develops in another direction, Kass is our bard, and he behaves as a testament to the original point of the thread - the oral history of TLOZ

and it’s just nice to think that this history is being fondly represented in the form of a big bird accordionist that gets bummed out when you don’t want to hear him talk about Zelda. I can relate to that. I think a lot of us can. especially the bird bit. huh? what? I DIGRESS.

ultimately, I didn’t need the timeline. I don’t really think anyone needed it as badly as they thought they did. but! I don’t reject The Timeline. a solid foundation opens up new avenues of storytelling - a direct BOTW sequel with reference to past lore, for example! EXCITING!

I just hope that while the franchise evolves with The Timeline in mind, we can still appreciate that, even untethered, in all its tonally diverse and time-insensitive glory, The Legend of Zelda was never ‘broken’, it was just a history unwritten - and no less enjoyable that way.

feel free to celebrate reaching the end of this thread by listening to this lovely song cover and joining me in prayer that Kass returns with more tunes for BOTW2. MAY THE LIGHT ILLUMINATE YOUR PATH!

additional notes: playing Tears of the Kingdom now and feeling INCREDIBLY vindicated rn. please no spoilers in the tags if you reblog but also SCREAMS AND RATTLES I LOVE ZELDAAA

[jayextee]

Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World

Every now and then I have a bit of a Wonder Boy kick. Hey dude, Wonder Boy in Monster Land on the Master System was my childhood, and I'm convinced it was an absolutely-blessed one to the point where if you take the average Nintendork's love for Ocarina of Time and just replace the game with Wonder Boy, that pretty much captures what it means to me.

I'd played pretty much every game in the series back when, right up until one day I got hold of a CD ROM for my Windows 95 PC with a Megadrive emulator (for what it's worth, KGEN) and like 500 or so ROMs. One of them was, what, Monster World IV? Couldn't understand a word of it, or get very far, but I wished that one day it'd be translated into English somehow so I could enjoy it.

And eventually it was! Initially for the Wii Virtual Console in an age where I didn't own a Wii, but then for the Wonder Boy SEGA Vintage Collection on XBLA and I very much owned an XBox 360. And I played it right after beating its immediate predecessor Wonder Boy in Monster World for the umpteenth time (a game I do very much also love) and then was excited to get around to this'n, finally.

Long story short, Ice Pyramid. That fucking ice pyramid. But I'm skipping a few chapters here.

So initially one thing that struck me about the game was how beautiful it all was. I mean it. So much character in every visual asset, the colours, the scenery. I was in love. Obvious care and attention to detail in every pixel, even if there's something of a tutorial tower that sorta-kinda overstays its welcome. More than a bit. Quite a lot. When will this thing end? Legend has it there's an alternate dimension in which I'm still trapped there.

No, right, but it's cool. You beat that introductory section of the game and get the expansive town hub of Rapadanga City. NPCs are full of character, there's a whole bunch of stuff to do (and learn how the multi-tiered/layered navigation of spaces works, this'll come in handy later) and... ...four portals. In the first of a fair few letdowns from games prior, it appears that traversal to basically the game's dungeons is less an organic and diegetic affair than what has come before, and just four doors. All of which gated by elemental medallions which, in turn, are gated behind plot developments and, well, I guess this is throwbacky to those Monster Land days? Maybe?

Enter Letdown Number Two: the dungeons. They're fine, good, things to do and lots to see. And then you fight a boss, and it's like, that sure was a Wonder Boy dungeon. And then the dungeon keeps on fucking going because apparently the game can get away with having only four of these things if they're double-length; with two bosses; right?

Evidently, this is where the care and attention to detail in the art cost the game in other areas, because now we've got to suffer Dungeon and then Dungeon Two Electric Boogaloo which reuses the same assets because back in 1994 cartridge EPROM space was still apparently kinda expensive?

But hey, the game's beautiful and varied, right? RIGHT?

And now we're back to the Ice Pyramid. Remember when I said you do a dungeon, then do it again for double-dungeon depression? Ice Pyramid is actually three; a veritable trio of torment, a trilogy of tedium; all of which clad in basically samey and repetitive icy blue bricks aside from some puzzle sections with statues.

Said puzzles are excellent, but the fact that it felt like I was on this part of the game forever burned me the fuck out on the SVC release of this, so I never got much further than the magic carpet ride before the air dungeon. Because my brain was like, no, we've had enough now. Nope. Won't play it.

Until, y'know, we get a shiny new rerelease with PlayStation 4 trophies and saving anywhere and whatnot. C'mon, dopamine receptors, you and I can finally beat the game this time, right?

In theory, yeah, I sure could. Had an initial hurdle early on with said saving, because there's no autosave; dying on a boss and then having to replay like 40 minutes of repetitive tutorial tower wasn't my idea of fun, really. So not only can you save anywhere, you're expected to -- and the wise old sage who was the original game's savepoint system is now a pointless guy who stands in dungeons sometimes to tell you "I'm surprised you got this far!". Nice. Awesome. Shut the fuck up.

Anywho, I beat it, and it was good-not-great, and honestly I think I'll go back and beat the Megadrive version in the near future just for the trophies on the Wonder Boy collection I have for PS4 and I probably won't hate it. Except for the Ice Pyramid. 3.5/5

[ijustthinkevilunoisneat]

I believe Nintendorks was a one time thing for IWS, go look up the members on cagematch, it's fun seeing who was a part of it

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

A bald man wearing a green shirt and blue pants appeared in the room. In his hands he held a ruler and a notebook. He greeted the residents of the room with a sporadic wave. “Hi, I’m Baldi!”

((no >:V))

[a-rich-friendship]

"Uhh, well... a giant Hand brought me here, and I don't know what this place is." He laughed, embarrassedly, resting his head on the Kingdom Key he held behind his head. "Do you know where I am?"

@nintendorked

[ask-illustratia]

Inspired by Spirits, here’s Nintendork as Lucas! I’ll be doing this with all askable members. As you can see, the color scheme has changed greatly. This will be a reoccurring theme. Nintendork chose Lucas because he is odd, not that many people know a lot about him, and also the striped shirt.

[n-clair]

mY HEART

[polly-jeanius]

The evolution of my inkling Rey drawing, from pencil concept to the warmth of a Jakku sunset and the cool tones of the snowy forest on the StarKiller Base. 

I started messing around with this concept last year after The Last Jedi came out. I first started doodling how Rey’s iconic hairstyle might work in tentacle form... I had a feeling it might look awesome, and it totally does! Tentacular! The rest just evolved off the cuff from there. As I was drawing I found myself leaning toward quintessential The Force Awakens-era styles and environs. The Octobrush just seemed a perfect alternative to Rey’s bo-staff, the innately Jedi-eque Squinja jacket fit together with Rey’s leather TFA belt like it was meant to be, and the both the warm and cool limited palettes of TFA’s iconic Jakku sunsets and the StarKiller Base’s snowy forest felt like the perfect backdrops for inkling Rey.

May the Inkforce be with you... 

Drawn on the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil in @procreateapp.

[nintendork135]

Uhhhhh... I'm a Toad now.

[jedinerds]

Hey idk if you’re flooded with requests for your inbox meme but I’d love to hear what you come up with for the name Katherine if you can!!!

Kiss From A Rose – SealAgora Eu Quero Ir– Anavitória (Lyrics in English)Two Ghosts –Harry StylesHe Like That – Fifth HarmonyEste Corazón - RBDReggaetón Lento (Remix) – CNCO & Little MixI Bet My Life – Imagine DragonsNorth – Sleeping AtLastElephant Gun –Beirut

💜💜💜

[unholyhymns]

nintendork replied to your post “why is doomfist white in the new skin”

they've been slacking on this...reaper has white arms in a few of the league skins and its pretty obviously supposed to be skin??? wtf blizzard

ew gross, does he really? i hadn’t even noticed but that’s awful

[silverhakai]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Miao Casabon (@silverhakai)

"Spread your wings and prepare to fly for you have become a butterfly, oh, fly abandonedly into the sun." #AnimalCrossing #ACNH #NintendoSwitchLite #Nintendork #SlowdownSunday #HappeningNow https://www.instagram.com/p/CTb36athU-m/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nothingcanstopmenow]

#animalcrossingpocketcamp #animalcrossing #NINtendo #NINtendork #addme >>81827434150<< #gaming #videogames #ACPC

[thegeekhustler-blog]

So yeah, then there's this too, to sweeten today's day. 😉 The girls are DEFINITELY in for a surprise, that's for damn sure. 😃 #thegeekhustler #nintendork #nintendoswitch #supersmashbros #familytime #joycon #ssb #smashbrosultimate #brawlforitall #multiplayermadness #preschoolgamers https://www.instagram.com/p/BvGMVSkhzue/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1m0rlv4jhqrpy

[ask-illustratia]

Muse Overview time!

Muse: Nintendork

Age: 17-19 years old

Height: around 5’7

Hair Color: Light Brown/Dirty Blond

Eye Color: Blue

Likes & Hobbies: Drawing, taking photography, playing video games, traveling Illustratia

Facts: Nintendork is actually the creator of Illustratia, and lives in the capital city. He also invites every citizen of Illustratia personally to come and live there.