#this is very long. i love rambling my bad

[tthoroughfare]

crush // abby anderson

*･゜ﾟ･* summary: abby is like can u read my mind? i've been watching u! couldn't fight to save ur life, but you look so cool!!! just me rambling about making abby realize she's not straight

*･゜ﾟ･* pairing: canon!abby x reader

*･゜ﾟ･* content: sfw! you two dancing around each other for now. abby being nervous and cute.

*･゜ﾟ･* length: 1.3k

this is part one and i've already written the majority of the rest. just thought this was a good way to break it up :)

recently i am thinking A Lot about the concept of being the girl that makes abby realize she’s not straight ,,, and the first girl she’s ever with

the idea of her being all fumbly and nervous and you having to take the lead. it’s just good

i also love the idea of being very different to her. you’re not a soldier like her, maybe you do something technical and sciencey. you get moved to the base and become friends, and people are just like… kinda surprised that you’re so close, so fast? on paper, you don’t seem to have that much in common but it just works. she likes that you’re different to her, it’s refreshing

you’d already heard a lot about her before you moved. you told her that not long into being friends with her, to which she’d scoffed a little, toying with her fingers. you were in the canteen, the two of you sitting opposite each other on the end of the table, leaving a gap between the rest of the group.

“good or bad?”

“good,” you’d chuckled, taking a bite of your lunch.

she paused, flitting her gaze away as you held eye contact, chewing slowly. “gonna elaborate?”

the corners of your mouth quirked as you swallowed. “just that you’re… pretty impressive. good at what you do. slightly intimidating.”

she scoffed again, eyebrows twitching. “i’m not… do you think i’m… you think that?”

“…impressive or intimidating?”

“either.”

you’d looked downwards, pausing before meeting her eyes with a teasing smile on your face. “you’re very tall.”

she didn’t tell you this at the time, but she’d heard things about you, too. she hadn’t paid it much mind at the time, but there had been a couple of mentions of a scientist girl moving in to help out with a new assignment full time, and that she was, ‘like, a genius’

also, manny had said something to her along the lines of ‘apparently she’s hot’, while raising his eyebrows with a cheeky smirk

she’d just rolled her eyes

but then she meets you for the first time, and okay. he wasn’t wrong

it’s only a chaste introduction as you cross paths one day, but she has to make a real effort to keep her cool. she doesn’t understand it, she’s just affected by you, just has to know you

and then she does know you, and she still wants to know you more. it’s this feeling, this drive, always wanting more more more

it sends her crazy. the fact it takes her so long to realize she has a crush on you makes her look back and laugh at her own naivety

she finds out you’re gay maybe a month into being friends with you, when you’re hanging out with her at the library. she never gave much thought to the fact you seemed to follow her around, spend nearly all your spare time with her. she figured it was just because you didn’t know anyone else that well yet.

she’s quietly reading on one side of the couch, while you try your best to get some work done on the other, papers strewn over the coffee table in front. it’s difficult to concentrate, though, even though you’re fully aware how inundated you are. one of her legs is slung up on the couch, bent at the knee, and you’re so conscious of the proximity.

after a good while of trying and failing to get anywhere, you look up at her and lean in a little. “hey, abby?”

she looks up from her book, acknowledging you.

“i’m bored.”

she chuckles as she sits up, closing the pages around her middle finger to keep her place. “c’mon, we need you to… save the world.”

you let out a small, fond scoff, putting your notebook and pen down on the coffee table. “that’s really… not what i do. appreciate the delusion of grandeur you’ve just given me, though.”

she watches you with a smile, not meeting your eyes as you sit back on the couch, shuffling around to face her. “so…” you begin.

“so…?” she parrots, raising her eyebrows slightly.

“what went on between you and owen?”

she’s a little shocked at your bluntness, laughing nervously and shifting in her seat. as far as she was aware, you didn’t even know anything about that. “what?”

you pull a face. “come on, i’m not stupid. i notice things.”

in truth, you’re using the question as a trojan horse to figure out if she likes women. you are genuinely curious, though, and right now the conversation sounds a hell of a lot better than doing what you’re actually supposed to be.

she pauses, eyes flitting around the room. “uh… we were together for a while. and now we’re not.”

you nod slowly, waiting for an elaboration that never comes. “that’s it?”

abby shrugs awkwardly, and you feel a little bad for pushing, holding your hands up. “sorry, sorry. i don’t mean to pry.”

“s’okay.” she messes with the novel, eyes trained on it as she runs the pad of her index over the closed pages. “what about you? you got a boyfriend?”

“i, uh… i was with someone. it didn’t work out.”

she hums in sympathy. “he a scientist, too?”

“she’s a medic.”

abby freezes, looking up at you, mouth falling open slightly. she feels stupid for assuming. “oh, shit, sorry. i didn’t realize you were — sorry. not that there’s anything wrong with that.” she mentally kicks herself for the last statement. of course there isn’t. she doesn’t even know why she said it.

you laugh, amused by her babbling and the way the tops of her cheeks turn pink. “you’re good, you’re good.”

she lets out a final, ‘sorry’, gaze darting from you, to her book, to the shelf on your right. then, she looks back at you, feeling the need to break the slightly uncomfortable silence that had fallen. “anyway… her loss.”

you chuckle. “owen’s loss. who needs ‘em?”

“who needs ‘em?” she repeats, breathing out a laugh.

after the revelation, something shifts for abby. she doesn’t know why, but finding out that you like women makes her feel… different (?) about you

not in a bad way. just different

she’d always looked at you and thought you were beautiful. possibly more beautiful than any girl she’d ever seen

and she knew she was nervous around you; she was normally pretty outgoing and didn’t really have an issue talking to anyone. but when it came to you she’d overthink every sentence, words getting caught in her throat. she just felt such a need to impress you, wanted to say and do everything right

she just thought that she really, really wanted to be friends with you. that she thought you were cool, and admirable, and funny, and smart, and liked being around you

but finding out that you’re gay just makes her… think. on a whole other level she’d never really looked into

knowing that you could, maybe, maybe, be a viable option sends her mind reeling with a whole host of confusing thoughts more than she’d like to admit

she’d never really put much thought into her sexuality. she’d always just assumed she was straight. sure, she’d looked at women before, gotten a little flustered around pretty girls, but just guessed everyone did

but when it was you… like. you… it was a whole other ballgame

and then, over a few months, she starts thinking about silly things like how it would feel to touch you — really touch you, not just the friendly brushes you already shared. how soft you’d feel, how it would be to have her fingers threaded through your hair

then she starts thinking about if she’d maybe want to kiss you

she decides she’s not against the idea

[maruyaaya]

hi everyone just wanted to drop by and show off the lego ninjago crochet dolls i made bc i think theyre very cutesie <3

the designs are based on the old designs bc i made these solely for my nostalgia's sake and i grew up with the og designs. more pics and my ramblings under the cut

lloyd garmadon!!

lloyd is my favourite so obvs he was the first one i made (you can tell by his unstuffed arms 💀). i was figuring things out with him but i am very attached to him. s4 is my favourite season and since lloyd is my fav ninja, i decided to give him the tournament of elements suit. what you'll notice is for a lot of these guys i just did random embroidery on their backs bc i couldnt be bothered to look for references of their backs.

jay walker!!

doing his eyebrow slit was so fun!! he's one of my favs for sure i think he turned out really good. sorry i'm a firm believer in light brown hair jay. he is not a ginger. he has light brown hair with ginger undertones.

nya!!

i struggled a lot with choosing which suit to do for nya bc i feel like her signature colour has changed sm but i wanted every doll to have their own distinct colour so i chose her grey one. it was probably a bad idea bc the embroidery was hell but i think she turned out cool!!

cole!!

he's def one of my favs of the dolls i think he turned out so cute. i love his thick eyebrows and his little smile i love him sm. honestly not much to say about him bc he was really easy to make (aside from the struggles of crocheting with black yarn)

zane!!

ZANES HAIR WAS AWFUL!! i had to try so many different techniques before i settled on this one and i do think it ended up looking okay. i mean, it at least looks how it looks in the show so i guess thats a win.

and finally kai!!

he is definitely my least favourite of the dolls. I JUST COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET HIS HAIR RIGHT. i don't think i ever did get his hair right. i think it's about as close as i could possibly get without doing a much more complex hair style with pieces i'd have to crochet and then stitch together. i think he looks fine! i like his lil smirk.

i'm very proud of them all and they took me a very long time to make. i really wanna make an achilles doll so that's probs my next project. there's a few greek mythology figures i wanna make, but achilles is my #1 so always him first <3

[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)

[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.

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Still very wild to me when people try to gotcha Jason with the whole "if you can kill other people for being evil why can't they kill you" when jason is like. One of the most passively suicidal characters I've ever seen. What if man

[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

[cry-ptidd]

I don’t really see Laura as evil, if someone was evil they wouldn’t ya know feel some remorse or feel terrible at the shit they done. They would move forward without a care. Laura to me was deeply hurt and took out it on the world with cruel force. She would have continued if she wasn’t stopped, but still. It really calmed her down just a tad bit and kills by orders now. Doesn’t feel bad about it but it does get to her at times. That I do love, i would probably tell her,”so after what happened to you-you just took it out on the world on innocence knowing you were innocent too?hypocritical aren’t we?”yeah i would be lunch.

Yeah she'd probably dislike being called out like that. I mean she's THINKING it but hearing it be said out loud always hurts and monsters are often immature in their ways of solving things.

I REALLY like this character analysis of her. I was a bit skeptical at the first couple words but I agree completely. She's not inherently evil, her mind was irreversibly fucked up by another's doing which broke her view of the world and herself and led her to either hurt herself or others. She chose both but moreso the latter.

When you think about it it's actually a bit hard to categorize her, like Alucard. Yes her crimes are countless and yes she fucking eats people and kids and innocents but she's also like... an animal. Her human instincts have been almost completely overtaken by her new werewolf ones and it's kind of a fucked up situation for her because she'd HAVE to eat human meat to keep her strength (in my werewolf lore hc). It's like vampires, their existence is inherently tied to hurting people, and especially to people (them) getting hurt and changing into something terrible. Seras is the only creature shown in the series that kept her morality because her mental backbone is made out of titanium and Integra rejected that altogether so we love them.

I just REALLY like "wounded predatory animal" type of characters. How much of your instinct is inherent and how can you fight it. Were you pushed to hurt or did you always have it in you and it has an excuse to let out. The aggression that comes with being a terrified creature with only your teeth to defend yourself. Delicious Give me 14 of them right now.

(.) Another note about Laura calming down after getting nearly killed is the realization that people can retaliate even when her attacks are justified in her mind. Yes she knew the concept of paper but never really understood it (like many people that don't even realize it). In her rage she had a "i got hurt, now I hurt them back and the cycle will stop" mentality that was kind of what happened in the abbey, with her killing her abusers and the physical harm stopping because their mangled remains literally inside her guts right now. It was a very childish attitude she had that made the silver bullet more a wake up call than an execution. It didn't really teach her that what she was doing was wrong (she knew it was wrong, all of it, and she still did it, which is very reprehensible and should be condemned), it taught her that hurting innocent humans (or rather, those with loved ones) will result in them retaliating against her.

[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

[perilegs]

my sweet little baby man is no longer with us

[sharknark]

⬇️rant about a really good hengren (reverse renheng) fic i read. link at the bottom give it a whirl

i've never read a fic so well-catered to my tastes before in my life and the best part is that i was so caught off guard by how good it was cuz the tags and summary had me like "right this is some omegaverse-esque, rawr XD mating shit"

but from the very first paragraph i realized it wasn't just ao3-typical possessive mating shit it was (dare i say) IN CHARACTER possessive mating shit. underappreciated dan feng lore is the two hearts shit, duty expects him to smother his own empathy and perform cruelty obediently (and that being in his dragon form literally numbs his empathy towards mortals) but then it's flipped around and he's criticized for being too heartless

there aren't a great many english fics that take advantage of the 'numbed empathy' thing, so this fic using that to explore the toxic codependency that drove dan feng to making yingxing immortal in the first place is so!

dan feng's dragon heart prioritizing it's own indulgence and power, his human heart screaming against it for empathy and restraint, but both hearts united in this possessive adoration of yingxing... dan feng is possessive to the point of harming his partner, forcing them to take his affection, inherently contradictive to the protective impulse to see the other unhurt.

dan feng makes yingxing immortal in a really sketchy operation, despite knowing that yingxing is literally defined by his pride in being a short-life. he wants yingxing to be with him so badly that he does the one thing that would hurt yingxing the most, too blinded by possession, this sickly overbearing affection, to empathetically respect yingxing's death.

yingxing lived cramming every second he could into his craft and his goals precisely because he has so much less time than all the immortal species around him, but when he's forced into immortality, his hands are scarred and ruined past the point of ever crafting again. he suddenly has so much time, all this time he would've cherished as a mortal, but is totally useless to him now that his purpose for living and passion is gone.

so there being a scene in this fic where dan feng is moping "yingxing doesn't wanna fuck because he's glued to his workshop", being followed up with a scene of dan heng fucking blade while kissing his scarred hand and crying that he's "so sorry", yeah no shit asshole, his dragon heart got what it wanted, blade has all the time in the world to fuck and nothing competing for his now limitless attention and no one's happy about it.

as arrogant about being a short-life as yingxing was, it really is compensation for the discrimination he faced for it. other immortals looked down on him, so having dan feng, THE top dog, be so deeply enamored with him stirred his own toxic codependent urges. he was so desperate to have dan feng's eternal regard that he's willing to die for him (as in the sedition), his death being the force cementing his place in dan feng's heart forever.

so the fic having yingxing ruminate on this, that he had hoped for dan feng to love him even centuries after he inevitably died, only for the fic to end with:

yeah yingxing... you left an impression... he made you immortal.... everyone's upset by this

(that's what makes dan heng forgetting blade was ever yingxing to begin with all the more painful because, you went and turned him immortal and when it backfired horrifically you went on and fucking forgot, bitch i'd be pissed to the point of centuries long bloody pursuit of vengeance too.)

here's the fic go read it and leave kudos and a comment, technically porn but i got so invested in the character study that part barely registered. also yeah if you hadn't realized already super dead-dove:

blah blah "renheng is toxic" sorry that's why i like it

[goobygnarp]

.

[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

[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…

[pied-piper-pluto]

i can say this at least: i am not in the abusive friendship/roommate living situation I was in in 2016, and that is a massive improvement!

[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.)