#sometimes at least lol
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is there a gender for "I don't give a fuck anymore so long as I get to have a cock instead of the fuckery I have now"? Asking very explicitly for myself
#I know this might sound insane to some#but I feel like I'd be more open to being enby or some sort of other/3rd gender if I was amab#there I said it that's how I feel#sometimes at least lol#ftm#trans man#trans#trans ftm#transgender#actually trans#transsexual#lgbt#lgbtq community#lgbtq#lgbtqia#enby#mogai#tucutecore#tucute#idek anymore#text post#text#drunk posting#drunk blogging#dysphoria#gender dysphoria
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going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with
-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)
-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)
-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)
-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)
-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)
-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)
-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)
-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran
-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy
-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre
-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever
#shit's crazy#theyre basically living history#percy is kinda the new hercules except less macho manly man#'oh who's killed this guy before' 'percy jackson'#like can you imagine playing capture the flag with rhese bastards#ur scaling the wall and you see these mfs make it up there in like 2 jumps#they arent allowed to be in the same team for any of the games because you KNOW theyd beat everyone else's asses#people are fighting to have percy on their team#not to mention the gods that just pop in for a visit every now and then#like at this point the fact that DIONYSUS is their camp counselor isnr even that surprising anymore#some scrawny teen dude shows up and will's just 'oh hey dad'#'YOU MEAN APOLLO????' 'yeah lol he just visits sometimes'#pretty much everyone there has survived at least one war#the background characters must feel hella overshadowed bcs what does it matter if u won a game when the guy in the cabin across has like#saved the world. 3 different times. like wtf#pjo books#leo valdez#trials of apollo#lester papadopoulos#pjo fandom#percy jackson#grover underwood#nico di angelo#annabeth chase#pjo hoo toa#heroes of olympus#piper mclean#chiron#camp half blood#pjo text post
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AuDHD is so funny sometimes like what do you mean my hyperfixations/special interests will last for years on end or possibly forever but they will cycle out every month or two with absolutely no transitional period or warning. like i will think about the same topic every day obsessively for 46 days in a row and on the 47th day with no visible cause adhd brain goes "ok! bored of that now" and autism brain goes "dw i got something queued up for ya" and i blast into full blown obsession on some other topic whose mental file folders haven't opened in 9 months. brain's out here treating hyperfixations like a crop rotation. once the dopamine runs out it cycles in another one but once something's in the rotation it never ever leaves. last summer we brought in one from when i was 11. it's so funny to me but frustrating too bc like. i cannot stress enough my inability to predict or control this. or how completely abrupt and random it can be
#actually adhd#actually autistic#audhd#aphelion.txt#ik 'adhd brain' vs 'autism brain' is a gross oversimplification especially given how much overlap there can be#but it at least helps me conceptualize wtf is going on in my head when i do this lol#and yeah i'm mostly referring to fandoms in this post but it can happen w more 'Traditional' special interests too#like my linguistics special interest which hasn't popped up in a couple years now but whenever it does#i will fill literal notebooks while studying 4 languages at once and simultaneously inventing a conlang#and then i'll be like Ok that was fun! and several months later im deleting like. 2gb of textbooks off my iphone to make room for an update#And sometimes yeah there is a precipitating event like 'Oh something new happened in X fandom with my blorbo!' but sometimes it's like#yeah. no. idk either. switch got flipped in my brain and X no longer sparks joy. only Y rn. how come it's Y? yeah idk i also wish i knew#i don't think any of this is actually an uncommon experience for people with these types of neurodivergencies it's just.#the severity of abruptness and TOTALITY of the switch that makes me feel like a weirdo sometimes lol#like I'M getting mental whiplash from this sometimes. idk how y'all are still following my blog
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Prompt 271
“Grandmother is visiting,” Damian suddenly said with no warning and with his usual not-quite demanding tone.
“Who?” Tim wasn’t the only one to startle, seeing as Bruce had practically froze, a downturn to his lips in a silent show of confusion.
Damian scowled. “Are you deaf Drake? Grandmother is coming to Gotham to, quote, make sure I am being properly cared for.” None of them had known that Ras was with anyone actually. At least Tim was pretty sure that would have been in the files.
“Oh?” Dick didn’t quite crouch to Damian’s height but it was a near thing. “She-” “He,” Damian corrected, interrupting him. They all exchanged a glance before Dick continued.
“Is he coming to the Manor or…”
Damian scoffed again, a tiny bit of a flush against his face. “No, Grandmother will most likely be staying with Akhi-”
Now wait one moment-
“YOU HAVE ANOTHER BROTHER?!”
#DCxDP#DPxDC#Prompts#Deadly Decisions#Danny & Ras are the homoerotic rivals that no one knows if they’re flirting or attempting a murder#It’s actually both they’re just also both Immortal#Danny to Jason: You can become a crime lord if you finish college- you’ve said you wanted to get a degree this is ur chance#Dusan (nodding): Mother has made all of us finish at least our basic education nephew#Why yes this does mean that RH has just made the heads in a duffel bag debut & the bats have no clue it’s Jason#Normally Danny wanders the universe but RAS (affectionately derogatory) HOW DARE U TRY TO HIDE THE GRANDCHILDREN#Morally Gray Danny#He’s well over 300 and that has an affect lol#Also has some fun fae vibes thx to his ghost half & human half finally balancing out#Let Jason & Damian be brothers#Tiny Damian: Akhi look I found a frog :>#Jason (newly not brain damaged & has no clue who this small child is): …. That’s great#Tiny Damian: *GASP* Akhi you can talk now :D#Fuck it- all the Al Ghuls deserve fangs from ecto contamination#Is Danny actually Dusan & Talia’s mother? No one knows and no one wants to ask the probably immortal fae being okay#Danny brought Damian a ghost hound puppy & Jason an original signed Pride & Prejudice book#How come Bruce wasn’t aware of Danyal? Talia forgot to inform him that the mother she was speaking of is in fact still alive#He disappears for a decade sometimes longer she was using past terms how was he supposed to know
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hi the literal whole entire reason i made these was bc i watched this 10 sec clip on youtube pls watch
youtube
#illustration#csp#pixel art#digital art#grima#grima wormtongue#lotr#lord of the rings#saruman#video#my art#sorry this kind of ooc anachronism is the funniest shit in the world to me#these are the least visually connected sequential drawings ive done lmao 🤣 but its how i see it in my head lol#the sudden american accent really adds to the humor for me as well lmao#i got stuck on the 2nd piece for so long but now im really happy w it ^-^ dont let your dreams be dreams ig 💗💗#sometimes you have to just draw it over from scratch lol#also happy news im employed again!! yay money!! but now i have less time for drawing ToT booo capitalism!!#🙏 i will do my best to keep drawing despite it all everyone pray for me lmao 💗💕#also im so certain that everyone in the grima tag has already seen this vid alkfjl dont mind me digging it up lmao i am easily entertained
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How do you draw the bodies? I know you made a tutorial on how to draw the helms, but I’ve just gotten into transformers and I’m struggling with the mechs😭
i made this in advance LOL hope it helps
#.txt#tutorial#note that i doodle the pose first and scavenge for references later. in case it matters#also sometimes i don't even get to step 6 LOL i stop at 3 and get right into coloring and rendering#i figure out the details and do corrections as i go. but that's for the stuff that doesn't require lineart#for the lined stuff i have to be more intricate. mistakes are more obvious then. at least imo#but i can cover them up in black fill most of the time mwahahahahhah
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child ward in search of belonging indulges in juvenile fantasies as a coping mechanism. sad!
#my drawings#asoiaf#asoiaf fanart#theon greyjoy#not tagging the others bc they’re products of his imagination#so @ their fans: dw they’re not real…….#well i mean they’re not real anyway but as in a portrayal of their canon selves etc#this has been finished for so long but i debated whether or not to upload it here lol i’m not super happy w it#i think i did this mainly bc i wanted to draw fancy and ornate clothing (at least by my standards lol)#but it’s a quote i think abt sometimes bc it’s kind of endearing and sad and funny at the same time#adwd#well the quote is from there#also he’s yassifying himself a bit in his imagination… he’s handsome and successful and everyone admires him#and sansa’s kind of.. reduced to his prize in a way. while his focus is on ned welcoming him into the family#legitimacy and validation and safety 👍
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jealous! viktor x reader (headcanons + tiny scenarios)
summary: viktor sees you talking with a friend and get jealous.
content warning: idk if it counts as a cw but jealousy?? also, i made with s1 viktor in mind!
author notes: heyyy, so sorry this one is little, im still trying to find motivation after the end of the series but i think it turned out cute! thank u for the request and hope u like it!! :)
» it was a common sight to see you walking up and down piltover’s academy, working or just chilling on lunch breaks, but every time viktor would approach you, you were already with someone. sometimes an unknown person, other times with a friend, laughing and joking, touching them in such a sweet way, side by side in the aisles.
» he looked at you both, blood boiling and shaky hands. if you looked at him, it was possible to see his lips forming a thin line, brows furrowing, his left eye almost twitching. oh, he was jealous.
» he felt angry at himself to feel like this, he didn't mean to be jealous at all, but he wanted to steal you away, just for a second, and be the one by your side, be the one you smiled to, the one you’ve been touching so sweetly.
» he wanted to reach for you, to interrupt your silly conversation about whatever you two have been talking about, he wanted to share his new discoveries with you, he wanted to be in their place so bad.
» but he couldn't complain, not when you waved a goodbye at your friend, and turned your body, recognizing viktor, eyes lighting up immediately, smiling from ear to ear.
“viktor!”, you shouted, voice echoing in the aisle while you walked to him, “i’ve been looking for you all day. you wouldn't believe what happened!”
he looked at you, expression softening, eyes shining, mimicking yours, his thin lips now turning into a little smile, “yeah? tell me."
» soon all the jealousy melted away, now, he is the one walking by your side.
#—swe writes#league of legends x reader#lol x reader#viktor x reader#arcane x reader#i should thank my friend this time bcs they helped me on this one#i didn't like how it turned out and was erasing and rewriting and easing and#but if my friend says its good then its good#thank u friend#so sorry if some of you guys read my tags and all my post have the same thing#< “thank u friend” and stuff like this. but they really help me out all the time#this is why i always thank them#they aint even part of the fandom! i just rant about arcane to them all the time#love my friend dearly <3#anyways!! sorry if this one is tiny. my motivation is almost zero these days#school stuff has been hard but its fine! at least i can write sometimes :)
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substitute
#my art#daycare attendant#dca fandom#moondrop#<- dca.. they're back in town ...#not tagging sun bc thats just their head :p#anywayyy hopefully this means something to someone. that's all i could ever wish for when it comes to my art#thats probably a bit too sentimental or something but sometimes it's hard to tell if the stuff you make is actually reaching people#or if you're just another person making content to satiate an insatiable crowd#is my art edible? is it a meal to you? is it a one time only thing? does it have any lasting effect on you?#is it just nutrients to sustain you? or is it something that will genuinely stick to you for at least longer than the first second?#i will stop talking now. you can eat my art as much as you'd like but can you at least savor it a little? compliment the chef a little bit?#for the ones who've read this far: this is actually for an AU i've been thinking about recently. i won't be sharing what it's about lol#but if you wanted some context for this... here you go. i'd like to think this has more meaning to it than just being an AU though#and maybe me not disclosing what the AU is will make you think about this post for a bit longer? it's a mystery now....#aaaand i just noticed i forgot the bells on the ribbon on their arm. great. excellent. perfect. whatever
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Maybe he wants to mix it up. Sometimes you get tired of playing the same part. Is that possible? He can change?
The Avengers (2012) // Loki (2021 - )
#mobius#loki#lokius#mcuedit#lokiedit#marveledit#the very definition of to be loved is to be changed!!#funny how meeting someone who freely chooses you above all they've been created to know and serve suddenly makes choice look pretty good#who knew 🥰🙃#honestly the genuine belief mobius has in them is so overwhelmingly beautiful sometimes i think about it and have to just take a minute...#and for loki to return that with such conviction to the point of facing their biggest fears oh i can't ;;;;;#also yes my loki series being open ended agenda continues bc there's no rest until we get at least another season lol#be the energy you want in the world and all that :'))#owen wilson#tom hiddleston#marvel#owenwilsonedit#dianagifs
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The Lamb is malicious in a funny way and the Goat is funny in a malicious way. No, I will not elaborate.
Anyway, everyone give thanks to the Lamb for interrupting what was sure to be a very boring and patronizing PSA from their grouchy cat hubby. Truly, they are doing God's work. Granted, the Lamb canonically is God now, so, uh. Mostly they're just doing their own work.
Speaking of their grouchy cat hubby, yes this is absolutely still Narilamb, Narinder is 100% into his goofy-ass spouse always no matter what and we all know it, he just wasn't expecting his brand new adopted kid to share the same single goofy-ass brain cell as the Lamb. :)
#fanart#comics#cult of the lamb#cotl#narilamb the goat AU lmao#cotl narinder#cotl lamb#cotl goat#did i look up a photo of billy the kid to base the goat's outfit off of?#i plead the fifth your honor#for real tho guys#rams and lambs are for sheep#for goats you want bucks and billies#or if you're afabing your goat - does and nannies#(tho to be fair ram IS sometimes accepted for male goats also? instructions unclear on that front tbh)#also don't worry - i am never gonna be all YOU GOTTA USE THESE TERMS OR YOU'RE DUMB AND BAD#it just kinda makes me giggle when i see mixed up animal deets#don't even get me STARTED on cat deets tho lmao#if i had a nickel for every time i saw a fanfic writer give narinder a knot#i would have two nickels#which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice#at least the one where he was a wolf instead of a cat because the author didn't KNOW he was a cat made sense LOL#yeah i'm over here outing all the lemon fics i read idgaf#if you know which fics i'm talking about you can't even judge me anyway cuz we both been at the same devil's sacrament#i should go to bed
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Cool awesome reminder that you don’t need amazing technical skill to be a good artist/storyteller
#I still compare myself to other people but also like. Damn. What if I don’t need to#That’s literally what working with other people is for . so you can fill in for eachother and make an awesome thing :)#Reminder that Toby Fox is not a skilled visual artist LOL he makes concept art in mspaint#Ik He’s more of a composer / character writer but you know what I mean. He works with other people to bring those ideas to life#You don’t have to be good at everything !!#Txt#art#I say this because rendering pieces of art takes me dozens of hours and it’s literally so much work and I hate it sometimes#Ok then make a simple stylistic choice instead of doing a giant painting !! it will still carry the same or maybe even greater impact#I still want to make awesome giant beautiful pieces of art (illustration) but alas I don’t have infinite energy#I usually only make sketches instead and that doesn’t mean they’re unfinished. Maybe that’s just all they’re meant to be#Until I change my mind at least 🩷#Adhd#Honestly anything that gets your idea across is good enough. Depends on the idea
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Because it is Mermay:
Originally did this art for one of @radiance1 prompts/story ideas, which also gives an idea of colors so.
#dcxdp#dpxdc#my art#prompts#if you wanna use this for inspiration do it#mermay#adult danny#THIS IS NOT SHIPPING#Vlad and Danny are simply fellow eldritch space creatures after leaving their destroyed dimension behind#I am blaming the GIW as they're so stupid that they were planning to nuke the Zone like that is Not a Good Idea#Yes Danny's lower face & throat splits open into a maw that is as dark as a black hole#I wonder if they change to merfolk forms over thousands of years & it results in outsider pov thinking they're evolving or something#but probably not#I like to think that sometimes they appear as unfathomable creatures#other times akin to beautiful animals of the very cosmos#and other times as something between humanoid and creature and something Other#humanoid forms may be smaller than their less humanoid forms but they're still like the size of a moon#If Ellie & Dan were also a thing in this au#I feel like Dan would be some sort of space sun shark- the inside of its maw like a supernova & flames trailing from its fins#and Ellie would be some sort of space-aurora eel (fin-frill like an aurora & body like a galaxy similar to Danny's)#I feel like they'd be at least the size of the Watchtower if they're any smaller than the other two#Very much ancient manifestations of space itself sort of vibes#Void Octopus Vlad#Space Whale Danny#he's not technically an octopus but closest thing he looks like lol#go wild
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Y'know that thing where a character is objectively badly written, but you still like them and even feel protective over them specifically because you see the potential they have + the source material treats them poorly and its Not Their Fault
Idk where i was going with this. Anyways, I love Rook guys :')
#dragon age#datv#no art here#oh my poor baby ill fix it for you#here comes rosie loving a mid as hell game again#(bethesda fan)#at least the rest of dragon age is Fantastic#and veilguard is sooo good when its good#its just also. so messy and lazy lol#ITS SOO CLOSE SOMETIMES#worth it for the companions (esp davrin) and solas content
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Okay swinging completely from the horror crossovers: Dead Boy Detectives/Mary Poppins crossover
We tend to compare it to a Bag of Holding, but Charles’s backpack is clearly more directly based on Mary Poppins’s carpet bag. (Mary Poppins even pulls out a large mirror from her bag at one point, that she then uses to do magic things with.)
Also, Mary Poppins (the movie) is set in 1910.
So may I propose Edwin having had Mary as a nanny at some point in his young childhood? He dismissed everything when he got older as some sort of childish imagination, until at some point - maybe as a distraction in Hell, maybe once he got out and started learning magic - he realized it was all real.
He recognizes the look of a potion she gave him once, and stirs a spoonful of sugar into the cauldron even though the book doesn’t say to. (The potion works much better than the book thinks it should.) He remembers her bag, and how it felt to what he now recognizes as magical senses when he touched it, and when he finds a backpack on a case he hands it to Charles and tells him what it does. He’s never quite been able to get Mary’s snap to work to tidy up the office, much to his dismay.
And perhaps someday, a woman comes to the office, and Charles starts to turn her away - sorry, ma’am, but we don’t take mortal clients, may I recommend you to Constantine? I can give you the address - and she says “Oh, but I’m really nothing so simple as mortal, I’m afraid. You can ask Edwin, if you’d like.” And Charles turns around to see Edwin’s jaw hanging darn near to the floor.
#dead boy detectives#edwin payne#charles rowland#payneland#at least in the tags lol#mine#sometime in 2025 Edwin half-remembers something he was told once -#‘one night I said it to me girl and now me girl’s me wife’#and mutters under his breath a word that sounds like nonsense#Charles says ‘what? was that Sumerian again?’ and Edwin says ‘nothing’#but a month later…
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re: sympathetic ganondorf vs evil for evil’s sake ganondorf, i think this is misrepresenting and underselling what’s actually offputting to people
“i’m evil because i’m evil” or “i’m evil because demise is evil” and the associated lust for power simply for its own sake has always been lame and low effort. there’s a reason it’s “shit tier” on the classic “villain motive tiers” thing
“i’m evil but there’s enough nuance to make the player at least somewhat sympathetic to me even if i’m still ultimately a bad guy” is a good thing that people like? i’ve never personally interacted with a zelda player who thinks windwaker ganondorf ruined the character or anything - he’s generally regarded as the gold standard of villain writing both in and out of zelda. this is roughly “high tier” on the tier chart
“actually TWIST i’m not evil at all, it’s the good guys who were evil all along, i’ve done nothing wrong and i’m completely justified in my righteous quest against the status quo, you’re the real secret true villain for being complicit in preserving it” is technically regarded as “elder god tier” on the motive tier chart but i would personally label it as “oscar bait tier”. these things *can* be compelling in conversation with the existing landscape, but often it comes across as a deliberate effort to subvert the audience’s expectations for the sake of being unpredictable (or worse, for the sake of proving you’re the smartest one in the room). in separate works where this conversation/critique is the entire point (eg. Watchmen or The Boys), that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the audience sets their expectations accordingly. in an established, long-running franchise, however, this almost always reads as dripping with contempt for the audience, like walking into a room and going “you morons like this shit? let me, a person much smarter than you, explain what it’s Actually about, because you’re an idiot if you’ve been a fan of this series before now”
on top of that, in the context of a series like zelda, this type of story feels myopic and disrespectful to the future of the series. “welp i burned down the 20+ years of lore behind this character so i could do a deconstruction, good luck using them in any capacity in the future, sounds like a you problem”
all this is to say, i think it’s a bit disingenuous/strawman-y to suggest that people put off by this want ganondorf to have 0 depth at all. there’s a lot of room for different kinds of depth, it’s just that the trend of the last decade has been for “depth” to mean “condescending deconstruction”
Hey!
Thanks for taking the time to write this ask, I think it warrants an interesting conversation. To me, there's like, a lot of things about what you're saying, and tbh I do see where you're coming from --in part.
First thing first... No yeah unfortunately some people Are hostile to even WW Ganondorf. It's been a rising trend in the fandom since TotK was released --people being very against the concept of any additional complexity to the character, either not getting it or considering anything he says pure manipulation that doesn't even warrant a conversation, literally making fun of people who were intrigued by this and wanting more out of this particular thread. This position not only absolutely exists within the fandom --less so on tumblr, I'll agree there-- but it's not even hard to stumble upon as a pretty regular opinion that gets tossed around. I had some interesting asks thrown my way, let's say. The idea that Ganondorf is a remotely interesting character that deserves more thought than what he gets is very much Extremely not the norm, and the very fact that you, as a fan, likes him as a guy is perceived as weird and missing the point by a lot of people. Like a lot a lot of people.
So I'll just... I guess I haven't clarified my position in a while, so I will reclarify my position on our favorite evil dude: I do like him perfectly fine as a villain, I do not want him to be "redeemed" by the narrative, I think he works fantastically as an ongoing threat, I think they could make him even scarier and more offputting and that would be super fun and thrilling... and I also think he already is complex. Like, inherently. Everything Nintendo has been putting into him since his first appearance is complicated --even their attempts at flattening him back in TotK do not fully work because they can't scrub him of the extremely loaded ideas they injected into him from the get-go. Nobody forced Nintendo to do a Mega Orientalism when inventing him, nobody made them write the NPCs to have this super weird antagonistic relationship to the gerudos in OoT, nobody made them have all this lore of the one man born every hundred years, raised by twin witches --and then nobody made them press on that tension point in Wind Waker explicitely, and then, in a more subtle fashion, in TP too. Nobody forced their hand when it came to having the strange "round ear" situation, suggesting (confirmed even, in additional canon) gerudos are born unblessed. The fact of the matter is: everything to make the relationship between Hyrule and the gerudos complicated has been there since 1998. There's no need for a Switcharoo to prove that anyone is smarter than the audience: everything messy has always been baked within the worldbuilding itself. It's in the cartridges already!!
Perspective on it is what could change, though --because, except in Wind Waker, we never get even a hint of a sense that we should think, as an audience, that Hyrule's super weird relationship to the gerudos is maybe questionable. Worth thinking about at least. Which, given the optics, is wild to me that to bring this particular can of worms up is still very largely considered crazy talk within the fandom (that, or the Sheikah situation across the series, also insane in many ways). And yes, it would perhaps lead to themes that are a bit heavier than what Zelda has been overtly dealing with (though, again, Majora's Mask exists --and I do find a lot of unpacked ideas in the Wild Era, like the very unquestionned gerudo bridal pipeline, very uhhh unfortunate already if I'm being honest --even moreso because it is unquestioned). But Zelda, when well handled narratively, can do wonderful things with evocative subtext, open doors never fully crossed, a lynchian pressure on what should feel offputting. We don't even need a sad monologue about it. It doesn't even need to be handled explicitely. But I think the pressure point is just better when understood and incorporated in some form, instead of being denied so hard the world itself start to feel incomplete and unlived.
I do want to say... I get what you mean with the whole "oscar bait" thing. There has been, historically and in recent years, a tendency to be driven by an external, almost panicked sense of morality rather than by the internal drive of a story, its internal thematic logic. I also do think it can feel very corporate, very "Disney looking back at its own movies and scrubbing off everything Buzzfeed deemed problematic in 2014 while making everything glossy and lifeless and awful" and it's not that great!!! and tbh I can't say I would trust Nintendo to handle any appreciation for the fact that the story of an eternal golden kingdom cheering on beating the evil outsiders who want to corrupt everything good and pure and blonde about that perfect inherently good place, is like, extremely not neutral. It absolutely is a delicate thread to weave, and I agree that putting a definitive end to Hyrule is probably not the smartest IP move to do. But, Hyrule doesn't have to be condemned as Bad, it can be merely complicated. And ongoing, regardless. To keep on with the Disney parallel: The Lion King would feel weird if we started to peel off the internal politics of the hyenas, it's just not the right place for it, when everything about this story revolves around the Righteousness of the Divine Right to Rule. But if the Lion King was an ongoing series that had been looping on itself for a while... wouldn't it make sense to figure out how to achieve majesty by studying other angles too, eventually? Is it that strange to suggest the exercise is like, possible? That it can be handled with artistry and soul?
I feel like... Yes, to acknowledge Ganondorf's humanity --not even to coddle it, just to acknowledge it-- implies taking in everything that makes him who he is, and that might rattle some foundational ideas about why this ancestral fight is even happening in the first place. I also do not think it means that he must be Good now. He can still punch a child and cackle maniacally, he can still be unredeemable --he can still destroy himself and others out of the most unconstructive spite ever, and we can still see the purpose in defeating him while basking in the "yea....." left in his wake (Wind Waker did that!!! Wind Waker did that and then we had more Zelda games!! crazy how that happened). This is hardly undoable. It does take some narrative skill, and some commitment to taking a bit of a risk, but Ganondorf is genuinely unmanageable as a character if you insist on your refusal to acknowledge his foundations --and I think it's partially why TotK's story is such a mess. He sells a TON, but you can't have him breathe slightly too loud without risking the entire world falling apart. They did try in TotK, so very hard, and to me they still failed--as insane as he behaves, Hyrule still doesn't come out of this looking good or particularly justified, because the very central core of Ganondorf's character is to be subjugated, and then rebelling in a destructive and brutally selfish, uncompromising manner that ends up robbing him of humanity --and the discomfort of that premise will therefore always haunt the conversation. Nintendo dug themselves into that mess. I feel like a lot of the Ganondorf fans I know merely... point at that. At the mess. And I feel like the longer the games avoid this mess, the more coats of spinach green they slather ontop of his skin, and the more nonsensical characterization they pile up, and the more Ganondorf will become a parody of who he once was, and what made him compelling to begin with.
And to top it all off, as if he wasn't contentious and complicated enough to handle already, they leaned into the internet turning him into a sex symbol for some fucking reason??? Yeah I genuinely have no idea how Nintendo will manage this dude moving forward, because to me, he is, at best, an endless source of (very lucrative) headaches, and at worst a ticking time bomb. I'm not sure how long they can get away with that TotKification strategy, is what I mean.
(Also: I tried to not overdwell on all the incredibly complicated conversation re: race and orientalism, but it's borderline impossible to have this conversation without acknowledging that I have never seen a major pop culture villain receive more pushback against "woobification" than him, and I don't think it's a complete coincidence let's say :) )
#asks#ganondorf#totk critical#(a bit)#thanks for the ask!#yeah it's complicated#I do understand the fear of deconstructing things without purpose --it does happen#I feel like it's kind of both a thing that happens and a thing that ends up soaking in all the DEI moral panic being flung around too#when to me these two things are like... not that connected honestly#(I have very pointed experiences to inform this take --but like it's a super complicated convo honestly and hhh tired)#there's incredibly soulful deconstuction --and there's terrified corporate deconstruction --and there's whacky lol random deconstruction#and not to over-pry anon but you seem to mention a lot this idea of “the writers wanting to be smarter than the audience”#and like... I won't say that it doesn't happen but I feel like this spiteful self-satisfied intent behind creative decisions is kind of...#at the very least it's hard to prove#I'm not saying this sort of anticipatory behavior to the point of betraying artistic intent isn't a thing. it absolutely is.#but I feel like a lot of the worse expressions of this backlash recently was honestly mostly projection#people generally want to do good art or capitulate under circumstances too difficult to surmount#(source: aaaaaa. hfgfhfgfh. death by gamedev.)#or just kind of fumbled their shit too that happens! sometimes you don't do a good job at art :(#but I think that rejecting complexity --or like the possibility of committing to complicated delicate ideas because it could flop#is no more helpful to art than living in fear of being called out for doing a moral wrongness#at some point you gotta imagine you can nail the concept and execution of what matters to you --because you can#things can be good and rich and simple and also complicated and it's possible and we don't have to live in fear of messing it up#that's my personal take at least
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