#this is very long. i love rambling my bad

[boiledkwamaegg]

I think it just clicked with me why when I first saw Faenil I thought they were really neat. they delve into the science aspect of Elder Scrolls which I feel like not a lot of OCs do unless they study Dwemer stuff or are House Telvanni. and I LOVE the slight sci-fi aspects Elder Scrolls has cuz if feels like no other fantasy series does that.

LONG ASS RAMBLE TIME!!! I'm putting most of it under a cut again. I'm gonna power through some other interesting asks today as well. But yes!!! I'm glad you sent this because I am so fascinated with the sci-fi themes in this series too! I guess when I started thinking about Faenil as a concept, I figured that a flesh mage should definitely know quite a lot about biology and medicine in order to properly work with their craft. But then I came across a problem - why would a society built around magic need a science-based doctor when there's alchemy and restoration magic?

I vaguely remember reading some story within one of the games (forgot which one it was) where someone gets sick and someone drives themselves mad trying to find a cure - so clearly there are limitations to restoration and alchemy when it comes to healing, but it's kind of left up for interpretation.

So here's where my own stupid headcanons come in. I mean, if a cure disease potion cures a contracted disease, kinda like an antibiotic, and restoration magic helps with closing wounds, then what do you do when there's something else wrong with your body? What if magic isn't always an available option? What do you do when someone has cancer, or even a benign tumor - what do you do when someone's appendix is about to burst - what do you do when someone has a heart condition - or diabetes - or failing organs... the list is endless, and I'm sure highly developed societies within fantasy settings have people who are specialized to figure these things out! And what's better than mixing magic with science?

I know in the games magic is pretty mechanical in the sense that most of it is only meant to aid you through combat, but the combat in the games is objectively pretty simple and boring, and I'm sure there are other unique ways to apply magic to the daily lives of people in Tamriel. What if you can use something like detect life (alteration) similarly to an x-ray? What if you can enchant medical instruments similarly to weapons and apparel? Could you create something like NSAIDs out of common alchemical ingredients? Can frost magic be used to freeze organs? Could you defibrillate someone's heart with dual shock magic? I have so many ideas. I'm especially obsessed with the notion that surgeries are so intricate that they might as well be considered magical rituals with the way poor preparation and the wrong tools will lead to a complete catastrophe. And obviously cleanliness and proper sterilization is vital to pretty much anything medical wise - but this is also a medieval fantasy land where medicine is still very experimental and understudied, so things will go wrong a lot! So, with that being said, I don't have to feel bad for not being a medical expert - I dropped out of medical school twice but at least I get to live my dreams through this fucked up and evil altmer OC haha

Thing with Faenil is that despite their absolute dogshit interpersonal skills giving a different impression, they ARE intelligent, not only because mages are a class built on intelligence, but because a doctor needs critical thinking skills; they need to be able to problem solve and they need to be highly analytical. So, while they are pretty inexperienced with the things they come across in Skyrim, they are constantly taking notes in their little journal and figuring out the easy way around taking down some new type of enemy or solving some weird dungeon puzzle. For example, I don't think Faenil has ever seen dwemer contraptions before, but they have definitely studied the dwemer from books and applied some of their mechanics to prosthetic limbs, so it's gonna be fun to explore how they will tackle something like a dwarven centurion considering they will most likely try to analyze its design to find out how to turn it off and then come up with a strategy to get to it. And, of course, they will realize eventually that teamwork is essential, just like it was with their work back in Alinor, and it will hopefully be pretty satisfying when Faenil gets an idea and everything falls into place just right every once in a while.

All this to say, Faenil is also one of those annoying "get destroyed by facts and logic" type people LMAO they will literally taunt a god in their face, get struck by lightning, and say it proves nothing.

[waytootiredstudent]

ohhh i think we're getting to the part why i started watching this in the first place!! The trump musk divorce! If i have to watch merz suck up to trump one more minute i am going to puke, gimme the drama come onnnn.

oh ho ho yeess this is indeed a 'bite each others dicks off' moment, i hope merz was so uncomfortable in that room while he witnessed this public divorce.

Please know that trump did his usual thing and somehow managed to talk about NASA, democrats, electric vehicles, inflation, grocery prices, the border and how beautiful the oval office was, without fully addressing the question anywhere in there but also telling everyone about his and musks divorce.

I picked highlights:

we start with ' oh i like elon but i rather have him critze me than the bill' :(

then we quickly pivot to ' elon was upset about the ev mandate but he knew it was in there from the beginning so idk why he's having such a tantrum now'

over to and have to quote this:

Remember he was here for a long time. You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the oval desk and uh even with the black eye I said "You want a little makeup we'll get you a little makeup."

But he said "No I don't think so." Which is interesting and very nice.

I feel like it's my duty to show you the picture Seth Meyer's graphic team cooked up about how musk would look with trumps makeup:

Okay now we enter the blame arena:

Trump is like: but he was only singing my praises idk what happened.

(He said wonderful things about me You couldn't have nicer Said the best thing He's worn the hat Trump was right about everything)

Sure he did donald. But now he's disappointed in Musk! Because Musk was saying such nice things about him before! Maybe he was just weird about how he missed the oval office?

He worked hard and he did a good job And I'll be honest I think he misses the place I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn't in this beautiful Oval Office. [...]

And I'll I'll tell you it's not he's not the first People leave my administration and they love us and then at some point they miss it so badly and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile I don't know what it is It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome I guess they call it But I we have it with others too They leave and they wake up in the morning and the glamour's gone The whole world is different and they become hostile I don't know what it is.

i fear you need to be some sort of insane in the first place to be able to work with trump. I feel like i suffered brain damage just trying to sort through all of this.

okay putting the full transcript part of that under a cut. It's terrible and rambling. i marked the parts where he was actually talking about the divorce. i won't bother with marking the answer to the question because he doesn't give one.

Reporter: Mr President The criticism that I've seen and I'm sure you've seen regarding Elon Musk and your big beautiful bill. What's your reaction to that do you think it in any way hurts passage in the Senate which of course what is your seeking?

Trump: well look you know I've always liked Elon and it's always very surprised You saw the words he had for me the words of And he hasn't said anything about me that's bad I'd rather have him criticize me than the bill because the bill is incredible It's the biggest cut in the history of our country We've never cut uh it's about 1.6 trillion in cuts It's the biggest tax cut tax you would say uh people people's taxes will go way down but it's the biggest tax cut in history It's uh we have we are doing things in that bill that are unbelievable

And uh when you look at what we're doing for small businesses for people for middle inome people all of the things that we're doing nobody's ever seen anything like it And you know Elon's upset because we took the EV mandate and you know which was a lot of money for electric vehicles and uh you know they're having a hard time the electric vehicles and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy and you know I I Elon knew this from the beginning

He knew it for a long time ago, That's been in there That's been uh I would say JD that hasn't changed That's been right from the beginning Mr I think Mr Secretary hasn't changed at all right from the beginning But I know that it disturbed him Uh he wanted and rightfully you know he recommended somebody from uh that he I guess knew very well I'm sure he respected him but to run NASA and I didn't think it was appropriate And he happened to be a Democrat like totally Democrat

And I say you know look we won We get certain privileges and one of the privileges we don't have to appoint a Democrat NASA is very important We have great people Uh General Kaine is going to be picking somebody with our uh we'll be we'll be checking them out and seeing but uh he wanted that person a certain person and we said no And you I can understand why he's upset

Remember he was here for a long time You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the oval desk and uh even with the black eye I said "You want a little makeup we'll get you a little makeup." But he said "No I don't think so." Which is interesting and very nice He wants to be who he is So you could make that statement too I guess

Look Elon and I had a great relationship Uh I don't know if we will anymore I was surprised because you were here Everybody in this room practically was here as we had a wonderful send off He said wonderful things about me You couldn't have nicer Said the best thing He's worn the hat Trump was right about everything And I am right about the great big beautiful bill

We call it a great big beautiful bill because that's what it is And uh again biggest tax cuts in history biggest economic development moves anywhere We've never done anything like it Uh business is spurred

And I don't know if you've seen the numbers but the numbers came out Even the CBO which is run by Democrats said that we're going to be uh doing you know I'd like you to discuss it The 2.8 8 billion a trillion that CBO this is some a group of people that are Democrats they're very hostile to us they just came out with phenomenal numbers what it does you want to mention that's yes sir so what what we've seen is we keep hearing from the CBO that there's going to be a large deficit from the bill which we disagree with but using the CBO scoring uh they came out and scored the tariff revenue we think it'll be the minimum of 2.8 8 trillion over the 10-year window which actually puts the bill in surplus if you include the tariff revenue which they won't do It gives you a tremendous surplus but we're not allowed to use that for some reason

They say scoring Nobody knows what scoring means Maybe a couple of people but nobody Somebody sits in the background they say "Well we're not going to allow that." They're not allowing other things that we have that are tremendously profitable for our country

But if you saw the other day CNBC they came out with uh numbers and the people on the show very good people I've watched them for a long time They couldn't believe the numbers how good they are The numbers were incredible

That was personal income and also very low inflation We have very low inflation We're down to 2% now and maybe even lower than that And when I took it over it was a mess Remember we had the worst inflation probably in the history of our country They say 48 years but let's say that's I think it's worse than that So we had the worst inflation in the history of our country under the Biden administration Now we're down to a beautiful number 2% You'd actually like to keep it there Better than zero is 2% It's going down maybe to one And 1% is like perfect That's perfect You don't want to have zero for certain reasons that are that nobody is very interested to listen to But we have almost perfect inflation

Grocery prices are down Everything remember eggs Eggs We weren't going to buy another egg for the next 20 years They were so expensive right remember you guys all hit me about eggs Eggs have come down 400% Everybody has eggs now They're having eggs for breakfast again But if you look at gasoline very important I think always the most important because it's the energy is a big the biggest factor

That's what happened He screwed up our energy policy and everything went up because energy went up But now energy is way down and uh they have states where you at $1.98 a gallon for gasoline So the costs have way have come way down And one of the things I ran on was that I ran on the border

We have the best border in the history of our country 99.99% It was uh last week three people came in Two of them for medical reasons We let them in because one of them had a heart attack I think it was a nice thing to do and one of them had something else So we've never had I had very good numbers for four years but we we really topped it

And I want to thank Christie and Tom Hman They've done a fantastic job But nobody mentions that anymore Remember a few months ago the border was a total disaster People were coming in by the hundreds of thousands of people a day a week a month I mean we had a month two million people came in in one month The border was being overrun and a lot of bad people criminals murderers drug dealers We had some of the worst people in the world coming in from all over the world It's totally closed And you know what people are coming into our country but they're coming in legally So we've done a great job

Elon knew that Elon endorsed me very strongly He actually went up in campaign for me I think I would have won Susie would say I would have won Pennsylvania easily anyway even if the governor ran the real governor not the governor from Minnesota who's I mean he's a sick puppy That guy that poor guy feels sorry for him But uh they they made a bad choice with him

But if you pick Shapiro or anybody else I spoke to him recently about his you know his uh house being set on fire which was terrible But if they picked him I would have won Pennsylvania I won it by a lot

Uh but I'm very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here Better than you people He knew everything about it He had no problem with it All of a sudden he had a problem and he only developed the problem when he found out that we're going to have to cut the EV mandate because that's billions and billions of dollars

And it really is unfair We want to have cars of all types electric we want to have electric but we want to have gasoline uh combustion we want to have different we want to have hybrids we want to have all we want to be able to sell everything And when that was cut and Congress wanted to cut it uh he became a little bit different and I can understand that But he knew every aspect of this bill He knew it better than almost anybody and he never had a problem until right after he left

And if you saw the statements he made about me which I'm sure you can get very easily it's very fresh on tape Uh he said the most beautiful things about me And he hasn't said bad about me personally but I'm sure that'll be next But I'm I'm very disappointed in Elon I've helped Elon a lot To that end

Reporter: Mr President did he, I just want to clarify, Did he raise any of these concerns with you privately before he raised them publicly, and this is the guy you put in charge of cutting spending. Should people not take him seriously about spending now, are you saying this is all sour grapes?

Trump: no He worked hard and he did a good job And I'll be honest I think he misses the place I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn't in this beautiful Oval Office and he wasn't and he's got nice offices too But there's something about this when I was telling the chancellor this is where it is People come in here even from Germany They come in and they they walk into the Oval Office and it's just a special place It's you know World War I it started and it ended here in World War II and uh so many other things Everything big comes right from this this beautiful space It's now much more beautiful than it was six months ago Uh a lot of good things are happening in this room

And I'll I'll tell you it's not he's not the first People leave my administration and they love us and then at some point they miss it so badly and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile I don't know what it is It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome I guess they call it But I we have it with others too They leave and they wake up in the morning and the glamour's gone The whole world is different and they become hostile I don't know what it is Someday you'll write a book about it and you'll let us know.

Listen I just heard that breakup beef between trump and Musk started while he was still with MERZ and so of course I open the video of the two of them and,

I burst out laughing because whatever the fuck Merz just did with the German election (came after a breakup of the ruling coalition that was engineered by one of the parties involved in the coalition, worst CDU results in years, took two votes to get elected as chancellor, his cabinet being full of obvious second and third choices) was definitely. Not. That.

His election was so strong that not even his own party and coalition wanted him.

[capn-twitchery]

Let's go failure for Twitch and Torture for Grace

failure: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

does getting the wrong memories and escaping alone instead of with other captives from the honey gardens count as a failure??? hm. they weren't entirely twitch at that point yet so maybe it doesn't count. plus it wasn't really their fault

so another big failure instead! ssea's sigil ridden eaten navigator! twitch met siggy back in their early piracy days & recruited him because he was a damn good navigator & twitch was curious about him. he's quiet but i think they got on well

it happens like it does in ssea: he's missing memories because of the correspondence tattoos, and when he asks his captain to help recover them, he feels so guilty about what he learns that he asks to be put on an island and forgotten forever.

but twitch had a better idea!

take him to kingeater's, surgically remove the bad correspondence sigils, cut in new sigils to make him forget what he doesn't need. they've seen something similar done before! and it means he doesn't need to leave for a miserable island. the ship's surgeon refuses to do it, but it's fine, twitch can do it themselves! it goes about as well as you could expect.

"The thing that follows you back to your ship is not the Navigator. But it has his skills, and his face (though the right half is blotted by the sprawling sigil). The crew edge away." [ssea ssource]

he's never quite the same after that, and neither is the crew as a whole. it takes a while for them to accept what happened (accept might be a strong word, though).

twitch keeps him around, of course, the weird shambling corpse of the guy who used to be their navigator,,,,they can't just throw him out after doing that to him. and he's still a damn good navigator

they were trying to help, in some way. in the weirdest way possible, but they were.

their other big regret is the ending of evolution. they think they made the best choice they could have-the naturalist didn't want to be the boatman. they couldn't have done that to him. so even if it ended in his weird, paradoxical nonexistence- letting him choose his own fate, in some kind of way, is the only thing that felt right to them

but fuck, do they miss him.

torture: Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?

and for grace...does torturing himself via guilt count-no, he's not been tortured! one tiny grace win, i think? 🎉

not that i know of, anyway. there's plenty of gaps in his timeline yet---

as for him torturing someone else...i don't think so? definitely not under any kind of normal circumstances. but i also don't feel like i can rule it out 100%. i don't know why though

whatever would cause that to happen, it'd have to be so, so extreme but i can't think of any specifics. that feels like something i'm gonna have to try and unpack at a later date, huh

asks from here!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

if i said i picked up this issue for anything but drunk erik i fear i'd be lying

(Wolverine (2020) #3)

[ducktracy]

I NEVER POSTED THIS WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH

ok i drew this back in September 2022 when i was doing a passive rewatch of every Porky and Daffy short in chronological order while i was working--drawn because i RRRRREEEALLY love how accepting and often enabling the early Porky is with the early Daffy’s hysteria. there's something genuinely sweet and funny about Porky just sort of chalking him up to his esoteric, silly little friend (esoteric, silly little friend is causing horrific atrocities). especially refreshing in an age where modern material seems to completely reduce Porky's tolerance for Daffy's screwiness (but a bit understandably so)

[canisalbus]

Which is your favorite platform? (of the ones you have accounts to post things I mean. I can't imagine it being Instagram since you don't really post there which honestly fair)

Tumblr, Twitter (X?) bluesky? Something else?

I think I'm going to have to go with tumblr, and it's not just because we're here. Twitter and Bluesky are nice and my experiences on both are overwhelmingly positive. But tumblr has an atmosphere that encourages originality, sharing your creations and talking about things in depth.

[iwoulddieforienzo]

Something really great about the persona 2 cast is that they all individually fucking SUCK to talk to casually. Every single one of them. They are all infuriating. We have:

Tatsuya, who will stare at you blankly if you try to initiate conversation (IS) and will dip without saying a word afterward (EP)

Batsuya, who will scoff and brush you off/otherwise act dismissive

Eikichi, who might honestly be the best to talk to in the IS crew and that is not saying much, who WILL talk extremely loudly over you (probably not on purpose?) and will not be paying particularly close attention to the conversation beyond whatever he wants to say (gets points for talking about his gf. gets points taken away for constantly talking about his gf)

Lisa, who will automatically assume bad faith and will be rude to you the entire conversation unless you manage to defuse her temper (good luck)

Jun, who is uncommunicative at BEST and requires an encyclopedic knowledge of flowers, metaphor and body language just to get a HINT on what he’s thinking, and who will be extremely polite but completely unhelpful. If you tried asking him what he wants for dinner I guarantee it will be the longest 30 minutes of your life as he goes “oh I have no opinion :) whatever you want. :))” EXCEPT HE DOES HAVE OPINIONS. He has SO MANY OPINIONS. He is Expecting you to be able to pick up on his “obvious” clues. He will be passive aggressive if you don’t. (Jun babygirl you suck so bad I love u)

Maya, who is a delight but will very quickly become grating if you try to talk to her about anything serious as she hits you with the white suburban mom's "how to live a happy, healthy life" lifecoach slogans. You can’t even mention, like, stepping in a puddle or something without her hitting you with the positivity beam.

Yukino is great actually. 10/10. She’s fabulous we love her. Incredible conversationalist, chill and fun and easy to get along with. But she’s from Persona One, she doesn’t Count.

Ulala, who WILL bring up her relationship problems in every conversation within 10 minutes at least once. Any longer and she will start talking about Maya.

Do I even need to explain Baofu. Have you seen him.

And finally, Katsuya, who is a cop and a kiss ass and Very Obvious about these things. Also he can't talk to women. He can barely talk to men. Help Him.

And yet they all work wonderfully as a group. They are so annoying I love them

[jaredthebc2]

Me whenever I see anyone’s OC X Canon content with N on my feed

[chewyhanniebug]

goodbye radioactive bunny gf pfp. gone but not forgotten 😔

[apologetic-artist]

Idk about yall but my frozen pizza that I get all the time that I love to death is so much fluffier and tastier than ever before and now I want to fall on my hands and knees to cry bc, one, I've never tasted it this good before, and two, I know that I probably won't get this taste again

[arkiwii]

very sad still see the saria/silence divorce headcanon still going around

have you ever tried to consider that they never dated before lone trail because it would be unrealistic with the timeline and the events and also because it would be overshadowing the actual truth of why they couldn't get along

[koropukgoro]

Actually I will ramble a bit cuz my friend & I do have a hc we’ve been playing off of that involves tiny Vash but since it’s canon in stampede that Vash can change the density of his Gate & in maximum (my preferred trigun) how Vash can grow really Big and Monstrous (so can Knives) if he adds to his mass so he can support his size that maybe an Opposite effect can happen. While growing, Vash needs added mass to support his weight, but the bigger he gets, the more inhuman and more of a flesh singularity he becomes; that growth also causes him to lose his identity and get consumed by himself temporarily. Because I’m a silly guy who likes thinking his GT with logic… but also… maybe when Vash overuses plant juices, or his body needs to fall into recovery mode after extreme body harm / near fatal situations (or extreme psychological stress), he goes into what my friend and I call “power saving mode”. Back up battery. His body shrinks. Size varies but the smallest he’s gotten is 2 inches. There’s an inherent fear he has if he pushes himself over his limits he might go quantum & never recover… like how in stampede he shrunk his Gate into a quantum state… it’s a very round about kind of canon aligned hc to make Vash shrink and be tiny. And cuz he neglects his plant powers so much he can’t control it… not until much much later in maximum… but he mostly can’t… also reflects his plant ability to absorb / store energy and release it.

Something something we’ve had scenarios where Vash’s body & mind gets so stressed out mini psychotic break or physical issue just causes him to shrink in his hotel room in front of Wolfwood & the Girls… and basically whatever’s on him at the time shrinks too so what he’s wearing n stuff… hehehe itty bitty & a lil squeaky and definitely extremely nervous exchanges between handling & being handled. Also accidentally freaking out his companions. Being small reminds him he’s not human & it makes him feel a lil self conscious…

[pangyham]

been thinking about the liyue gang and how id draw their physical builds so here are some thoughts i had for xy cy and gm in particular

- xingqiu, unsurprisingly, would be quite lanky. i like to think he has broad-ish shoulders, like a thin athlete's build? hes a long boy to me haha, long face, neck, limbs, fingers etc, so naturally hes stands (comparatively) tall at 5'6" or 5'7"

i like to think hes most physically attractive one and has that handsome princely and boyish charm to him because it adds a lot to his fuckass duality LOL

- chongyun is a lot like xiao imo! short stature but with muscular arms. he seems nimble and flexible because of his normal attack animations (which bears a lot of similarities to xiao's actually! this + the fact that chongyun's normal attacks create gusts of wind further reinforces my hc that xiao trains him). sometimes i watch high energy choreography vids on youtube and some dancers look incredibly light on their feet, almost like their body is inherently bouncy? and i imagine chongyun to have that agility to him. chongyun has a delicate face and aura and i let that bleed into my hcs for his fighting style and physical capabilities hahaha. hes kind of like a cat who's deceptively strong. as for height.. just a few inches taller than xiao, so perceptibly short at 5'4"

- ga ming my new beloved. pretty much similar to chongyun but more muscular and stronger just because he wields his claymore with ease. theres a noticeable weight different between cy and his claymore the way he lugs it up after he swings (or even other claymore users like razor who, on his last hit, bounces from impact). meanwhile ga ming literally slams his to the ground LOL. i love his movements though hes very swift and expressive and radiant.. if cy has delicate movements then ga ming's is fierce and (charmingly!) assertive

ga ming is wonderfully charismatic though, i know hes not well known in liyue harbor yet, but he seems like the type to gain a reputation from his friendliness. how could no one adore him hahaha. 5'5" for height! just between xy and xq

[gay-jesus-probably]

(Feel free to ignore this-! I’m just happy to hear someone’s deep takes on Zelda)

I really love your deep dives and interpretations/discussions on the Gerudo people and their history, influence and life in BOTW/TOTK (I totally agree with all you’ve said)

I just want to ask/Point out (after reading your imperialism post about TOTK) didn’t the Zora for many years like- not want to serve or be a part of the Hylian families army either? Like, even before Mipha’s death, weren’t the Zora very much against conforming to the Hylian’s rules and such? (In every game?) I’m a bit confused on how Hyrule is split up, the Zora’s having their own kingdom(s), the Rito and Goron’s having elder’s/their own leaders but still serving the royal family??

It’s always bothered me how these separate races all still have statues to the Goddess Hylia (Started in BOTW) and not their own deity’s to pray to or follow (Like the Zora praying to Nayru makes sense, or even something like Jabu Jabu to bring back- or the Rito could’ve prayed to Valoo, a great dragon or something.)

It just feels like Nintendo COULD’VE put so much care into all their races stories and histories! But oops no this game will be for Kids(TM) and we can’t put anything too deep or serious. Makes me sad :( I wanted to see them in a deeper context.

Oh yeah, it's very weird that they just put zero effort into explaining some of the worldbuilding. I mean, in BOTW it makes perfect sense to have the races be off doing their own things! It's post apocalypse, Hyrule does not exist anymore, these different communities have no real reason to interact with each other! And I really liked that BOTW outright showed that there was no particular effort for diplomacy, but people still got along as individuals - I liked that we saw different races hanging around each other. I loved that there were Gerudo in Goron Town to trade for their gems, I loved that Goron were allowed into Gerudo Town because they're a race of rock people that legitimately don't have any real need for gender and just use masculine terms by their own choice, and the Gerudo understood that. And I loved the whole Tarrey Town sidequest, because it actually felt really satisfying to build up a new town that had inhabitants from all the races, not for any particular reason, but just because they were people that wanted to live there and work together. They didn't need a big central government to make it a whole Thing; they were just getting by.

And we also saw the less good side of these things, like that one guy in Hateno that greeted you at the gate, and decided Link was trustworthy specifically because he was Hylian, making it clear that xenophobia still existed. I like that Kass was kind of thrown by Link asking if he was a giant bird, and the implication that Link was being kinda insensitive there and Kass was choosing not to be offended. I liked that there was a Hylian couple on their honeymoon in Rito village because the guy genuinely loved the town and its culture, while his new wife looked down on the Rito and hated being around them. And I liked that the older Zora still held a grudge against Hyrule for many things, up to and including the fact that Mipha died defending it, and the older generation would rather risk everyone's wellbeing than accept help from a Hylian that had been involved. And I like that you can run into other Hylian's near Zora's domain that outright tell you Zora have been trying to recruit them to do something important, but they all refused to get involved because they don't think that those weird fish people could have anything serious going on and it all seemed really sketchy.

My point is, BOTW really did feel like it'd been a hundred years since the end of the world, and everyone was just trying to get by and live their lives. You saw people being open minded and accepting other races for no other reason than the fact that they were all people, and you saw people being petty and bigoted just because they didn't trust people that looked and acted differently from them, but for the most part people were all just getting by and doing their own thing. BOTW gave the impression that Hyrule had been an equal alliance between the Hylian's, Zora, Goron, Rito and Gerudo (and with the Sheikah having a considerably less equal role, specifically built on the Sheikah having been forced to submit to cultural genocide to save their own lives, and the Yiga clan being the survivors that fought back instead), with Hyrule acting as sort of the core of the alliance, if only due to literally being in the geographic middle.

I mean fuck, the existence of the Divine Beasts suggests that things are equal! Yeah, Hyrule has a royal family with holy powers due to literally being the descendants of a Goddess, and they're the ones that always get the reincarnation of the Hero that's the only one who can wield the bullshit OP magic sword... but they don't get a Divine Beast (Link's dinky little DLC motorcycle doesn't count). The Divine Beasts were specifically made to be weapons of mass destruction, and they were specifically made for the non-Hylian races. That really does suggest an active effort being taken to balance the scales, that the ancient people saw that only Hylian's were granted divine favour, and so if the gods wouldn't give that power to other races, they'd fucking make it themselves. The existence of the Divine Beasts feels like a promise to keep everyone on equal footing, and say what you will about pre-Calamity Hyrule, but they didn't even question keeping that promise.

...And then in TOTK, all of that's just gone. The Sheikah aren't their own people with a complicated relationship to the throne, now they're just Hylian's with a different aesthetic. The 'alliance' between the races turns out to be built on Hyrule's first King and Queen pointing their stockpile of magical nukes at everyone and asking them politely to become their subjects, and pretending not to notice the implied threat that they'd magically nuke anyone who refused. In BOTW the Sheikah race being sworn servants of the Hylian royal family was acknowledged as a fucked up situation, and that power imbalance being horribly abused in the past was what created the Yiga clan. In TOTK, we're outright told that Rito, Goron, Zora and Gerudo all exist for the sole purpose of serving the Hylian royal family, and that is framed as a good thing and the proper way of the world; the first sign of Ganondorf being evil is that he refuses to submit.

And even putting all that super gross ancient past stuff aside, the present day is equally fucked. Hyrule has been gone for a century. In BOTW, few people even remembered that Zelda had ever existed, and of those people not many of them cared. Nobody was really interested in having a central government, they were all getting by just fine on their own. And again, it was made pretty clear that the pre-calamity situation had been an actively maintained collective alliance between independent nations. There was a reason that people were predicting that Hyrule's monarchy would be abolished in TOTK, and that's because we all saw that there was literally no reason for anyone other than the Sheikah to respect Zelda's authority as a ruler - the Zora were the only other people to still remember her, and they were completely done with the Hylian royal family anyways. If Zelda rolled up declaring herself the Queen of Hyrule anywhere else, she'd be laughed out of town, because that's the standard response to a random teenager showing up and informing you she was actually the highest authority in the land. Zelda had no inherent authority left at the end of BOTW, if she wanted to be in charge, she'd need to earn it. That's the state of the world that we were shown.

Except nope, nevermind, Zelda's the almighty God Princess of the world and literally everyone mindlessly accepts her ultimate authority. She can order people to strip naked and walk into a monster den to die for her amusement, and they would immediately do it without asking any questions (yes I know the underwear thing was a misunderstanding, but the fact that everyone jumped to follow the misheard order without a single question is horrifying). And the imposter Zelda arc just hammers home the point that Zelda is in a completely unearned, lifelong position as dictator of the world, and literally nobody cares if she abuses that power. Zelda brainwashed Yunobo and forced him to ruin his own business and nearly destroy his own people? He's just worried she'll be angry that the mask keeping him brainwashed was destroyed. Zelda summons a giant monster to attack Yunobo and Link then walks away? Oh my god, the giant monster Zelda just summoned to kill us might hurt her, we have to save Zelda from it! Zelda literally openly attacks King Dorephan and tries to murder him? He'd rather go missing in the middle of a crisis and suffer alone in hiding than let anyone know that Zelda just tried to kill him. I don't understand why they bothered with the fake Zelda arc, because literally nothing the fake Zelda does is allowed to have consequences.

It just doesn't make any goddamn sense. Nobody feels real anymore, there's no politics between the races, there's no reason for anything being the way it is now. The entire world of Hyrule has been reduced to just Zelda's Fanclub, and nobody would ever consider doubting her for a second. I don't understand why the fake Zelda arc is in the game, because it's never actually allowed to be part of the story. Nobody actually cares about 'Zelda' tormenting people, and so we're told that there is literally nothing that can possibly happen to make Zelda lose her authority. There's no stakes. We're not supposed to care about anyone who isn't Zelda, we're not given any real reason to care about Zelda herself, and so why the fuck are we still here?

...I've distracted myself a lot here lmaoo, I'm not really sure where I was going with all of this beyond just rambling about shitty writing and bad continuity. The point is, BOTW had some really good writing and worldbuilding. That Hyrule felt like a real place inhabited by actual people, and the different races were their own, independent people. When they worked together, it was a sign of them putting time and effort into reaching out to each other and meet on the same level. Meanwhile TOTK feels like it's made of fucking cardboard most of the time.

(Also for the record I agree that the Goddess statues being Literally Everywhere was kinda fucked, BUT I'm willing to let it slide as a matter of just game design; that's where you go to trade spirit orbs for upgrades, so you want a spot to do that in every major town for player convenience. And using different deities in different areas wouldn't work, because the players are introduced to the mechanic with a goddess statue; they're not gonna naturally assume that the statue of a giant fish can do that too, so most of them would assume the statue is scenery and just ignore it. I thought it was at least a nice touch that the goddess statues had different decorations in some towns, and that some towns put the statues away from the main areas; it gave the impression that while everyone while worshipping Hylia was widespread, everyone was doing it differently, and in some places it wasn't very popular - just look at the Kakariko statue being in the middle of town with a well maintained pond surrounding it and torches to draw more attention to it, then compare that to the Gerudo Town statue being down a side street on the edge of town, away from the main gate, with nothing of any real importance nearby, and nothing to get people's attention. It really works with the Sheikah's culture being built on their devotion to the Goddess, while the Gerudo's history with Hylia and her followers is a lot more complicated, and so their statue's location implies that worship of Hylia is pretty unpopular among the Gerudo.)

[bleaksqueak]

Insomnia is letting up off and on, but I'm still super jelly brained from it case in point, I want to continue back with posting WIPs for the aired pages, but I can't remember what page I left off on now lmao (guess I'll have to dig through my blog to check... eesh. at least it's decently organized by tags?) Not a result of goo brain, really, but equally "AUGH" is that I let my screen protector go for too long without replacing it and now it's slick as snot and I don't have a replacement handy to put on it. This isn't a resulting consequence of goo brain but it does mean I'm going to be trying to draw without any traction while I'm already loopy. Good times ahead!

[felis-insomnis]

I very much enjoy booping, but tumblr is running like ass today and I'm already low on spoons so I'm not returning boops as well as I'd like :(