#wind waker meta

[teething-possum]

You know, I never really liked Wind Waker (the graphics make me motion sick) but it had one of the best stories of all the Zelda franchise.

Not to mention it literally has one of the best Links of all time.

Like, almost all (if not all) other Links are destined by Hylia/the Golden Goddesses to become their champion and win over Ganon/Ganondorf/Demise. WW Link literally forced the Golden Goddesses to accept him as their champion because a bird stole his sister. (A fucking plus brotherly instincts right there btw )

Let me reiterate that.

A fucking bird stole this kid’s little sister and he got so mad and worried about his sister, that he literally forced the Goddesses of his world to accept him as their chosen one. Without being scared shitless or skirting around that responsibility.

He literally said “they took my sister so you are going to help me or so help me I will tear this world apart looking for her” and if that isnt badass I dont know what is.

Also there’s the whole “killing the living embodiment of Evil” thing. Every Link kills Ganon/Ganondorf/Demise in some form or fashion (sealing him in some Realm most of the time) but no other Link goes to the extreme of putting a sword through his head, now do they? He didn’t have to. He had found his sister by that point and guaranteed she was safe, but he continued to be the chose one of the Goddesses. Without complaint.

Someone could probably say this whole spill a lot better than me and with a lot more details, but I just think it’s totally badass of a like, 12 year old kid to face Death and Destruction multiple times for the sake of his lil sister. A bond between siblings saved an entire world.

Anyways, TL;DR- Wind Waker Link is badass because he saved an entire world for the sake of his sister and forced the hand of Goddesses in his sister’s name. He also killed a man in an admittedly violent way and that’s admirable.

[pocketseizure]

A Wind-Grieved Ghost explores the influence of medieval Noh theater on the striking costume worn by Ganondorf in The Wind Waker. I explain the symbolism of Ganondorf’s gorgeously patterned robes and argue that the sartorial allusions to Noh theater serve to characterize Ganondorf as a frightening yet tragic ghost displaced from the vanished kingdom of Hyrule.

1600 words . (on AO3) . illustration by @astarsor . for @hyrulefashion

[rawliverandgoronspice]

THE GERUDO POST

(aka an attempt at a critique of how gerudos were handled in BotW and before)

Oh no. TOTK being right around the corner, it might finally be time for the Gerudo Post.

(aka half of the reason why I made a Zelda sideblog in the first place)

So I want to preface all of this by saying that, as you could probably tell already, I’ve always adored the gerudos. They have fascinated my small child brain when I was 7; then the obsession made its comeback when I was 14, and now, here we are, almost 28, and I’m still thinking about the gerudos. I think they might be among my favorite fictional cultures for their potential and their understated storyline. I guess growing up in a very Arabic neighborhood, coupled with being bi-culturally latinx (?? does Brazil count?? you tell me), also always made them feel like home to me –especially when I was very young and there was not a lot of cool female representation flying around that managed to involve fiercely independent PoC women, flaws and teeth included.

This whole weird-essay-thing tries to do two things. First: analyze the place gerudos have occupied in the series, their initial problematisms and their subtextual narrative arc during the Myth Era coupled with their relationship to Ganondorf. Second: tiptoe to Breath of the Wild and poke it with a stick to see what happens –and in doing that, explain why I believe a lot of their characterization was defanged in service of smoothing their past with the hylians instead of deepening the culture on its own terms, and why I’m a little apprehensive about what that might mean for TotK even though I adore seeing the best girls at it again.

Those are the uhh terms of service??

And now, we must go back to 1998.

OCARINA OF TIME ERA

There’s so many things about the gerudos that are noteworthy and rich, and they’ve made for a complex piece of Zelda lore ever since their introduction –and when I say complex, I don’t 100% mean it as praise. The very racially charged decisions made about their inclusion have been discussed at length by the fandom, especially when it comes to orientalist and Islamophobic tropes being deployed pretty thoughtlessly in Ocarina of Time (their sigil being literally a crescent moon and star originally, the parallels are pretty obviously there).

We’re talking about a band of amazon-like, big-nosed brown women from the desert ruled by a single Scary Evil Man born once every hundred years hellbent on conquering Hyrule who they apparently worship like a god, characterized primarily as thieves, decked in jewelry and orientalist-inspired harem/belly-dancing clothing, hostile to the white good guys of Hyrule (especially men), unblessed by the Goddesses and so deprived of elongated ears (this is true for OoT –we’ll come back to that), also known as a demon tribe with their deity straight-out described as evil-looking by Navi (on my way to cancel you on twitter Navi you watch out), and secretly led by evil twin witches who can turn into a single seductress and, as two mothers, raised their Scary Evil Guy king who happens to basically be the devil.

In so few words, gerudos are the future that liberals want.

It’s worth notice, also, that Ganondorf’s characterization in this game is… kind of relentlessly uncomfortable to play through, especially before the 7 year skip. The utter assumption of depraved and evil intents from every character surrounded by dialogue that does little to hide its biases in spite of having generally very little proof to back them up –even though, in the game’s context, every character is correct to call his eyes evil and the darkness of his skin a moral judgment in on itself. The scene where Zelda demands that we believe her conclusion that the sole and only brown guy in the entire kingdom is evil and will do harm, and the game straight out refuses to progress until we concede that her dreams are prophetic and that this man must be stopped at any cost even though she has no more proof than her discomfort… hits different on replay.

I’m restating all of this not to pretend I’m making a novel and thought-provoking point, but to bounce back on a tumblr post I saw a while back (that I can’t find anymore!! I’ll link it if I find it again) –and so express what it is that gripped me with the gerudos in spite of their pretty damning depiction… and actually maybe thanks to it.

There’s a surprising amount of texture to Ocarina of Time’s worldbuilding that exists folded within the things introduced and left hanging, or in its subtext –and whether on purpose or not, I believe it is why people keep coming back to this iteration of Hyrule.

What was that about the king of Hyrule unifying a war-torn country? Why did the gerudos break the bridge connecting them to the rest of the kingdom during the 7 year timeskip while still worshiping Ganondorf, and why are the carpenters trying to rebuild it against their apparent wishes? What was that about gerudos imprisoning hylian men trying to force entry into their lands? What was that about the secret death torture chambers right next to the Royal Family’s tomb and connected to the race of people who were, apparently, born to serve them?

Nothing? Oh okay… okay… okay….

The same can be said about this strange depiction of this hostile tribe, consistently described as wicked yet suddenly friendly once you prove you deserve their respect once you... defeat them, so you now have joined them? Ocarina of Time isn’t very consistent when it comes to characterizing them as their occupation (thieves) or as a proper culture, with a king and a strange system of rulership that seem to involve at least 5 people: Ganondorf, the Twinrova, Nabooru and the unnamed random woman who decides you’re now part of the gerudos because you slashed enough of them with your sword and hookshot, which, uhh ok.

They’re but a ragtag and negligible group when discussed next to gorons and zoras and hylians, but they also clearly have their own religion and at least a 400-hundred years old history (probably far longer than this) and hints of a written language of their own. I’m not sure the game itself knows what it wants them to be, beyond: intimidating and hot and cool, but also wicked and, because of Ganondorf and the way you barge in their forbidden fortress (heh) with the explicit intent to dismantle their king, in apparent need to be saved from themselves.

Speaking of rulership and the Spirit Temple, let’s have a quick tangent about Nabooru: I always found her characterization when meeting with Child Link pretty strange. I refuse to mention the promised reward, which feeds into everything orientalist mentioned above, but I always found her moral compass so extremely convoluted for someone coming from gerudo culture. Nabooru says that, despite being a cool thief herself, she resents Ganondorf for killing people as well as stealing from women and children. Stealing... from women. Nabooru. Why are you this pressed that he steals from women!!! This feels so out of place, that the only girl of that hostile culture that betrays her king and befriends you, is the one that upholds moral values that only a hylian could possibly hold.

Either way: the strange unquestioned contempt of the game for them as a culture, mixed with the occasional bouts of heart, friendliness and badassery, makes it hard not to consider their depiction as pretty biased in favor of the hylians finding them at once exotic, scary and exciting, and could hide a more complex reality you might only get one side of –especially when you know there were originally plans for Ganondorf’s character to be more gray and motivated than what the campy final version ended up being. To be blunt: even in the context of a game for children, and maybe because of that fact, it all reads like a reductionist and imperialist/colonialist reading of a more complex situation.

This might seem like A Lot coming from a game where the actual game writing can be this overall flimsy and simplistic due to the standards of the time (it’s rough, it's so rough). But I would have never dwelt on that thought about a little children’s game if not for the mainline entries that came soon after, because... ooo boy.

The sense you’re not getting the whole story was certainly not helped by the introduction of Wind Waker Ganondorf, and the chilling emptiness of Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess.

AFTER THE TIMELINE SPLIT

(I’m skipping Majora’s Mask, not because I dislike them in the game or think they’re not worth talking about, but because it’s a parallel universe and they’re never even called gerudos and their reality seems extremely different from their sisters in Hyrule so I think it’s okay to call them tangential and not dive too deep in this particular depiction)

Here’s something I want to highlight about gerudos and how they were characterized before BotW came along: their absence. Not only their physical absence, the lack of any gerudo character that calls themselves gerudo, but their absence from the text itself.

It’s not that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess retroactively scratch them off existence: we can clearly see Nabooru’s stained glass art in WW as well as recognize them being mentioned in Ganondorf’s final boss soliloquy, and WELL there’s quite a lot to say about their imprint over the world of TP. They are there –or at least they... were there. But nobody ever talks about what happened.

In Wind Waker, there was the deluge. It’s assumed lots of people died then, and those who survived scattered across the Great Sea. Are they sealed under the waves? Have they drowned? Is Jolene, Linebeck’s ex-girlfriend in Phantom Hourglass, a distant relative of one of the rare survivors? It’s unclear, beyond the fact that Ganondorf is the only living gerudo we see in this entire branch of the Timeline split.

In Twilight Princess, the desert which bares their name is empty. The hylians never mention that it used to be the name of a tribe: they’re not even named when Ganondorf is introduced for the first time, reduced once again to a mere band of thieves. We learn his plans to steal the Triforce in OoT were foiled, and that he may have turned to war. Then he lost the war, and was executed in Arbiter’s Ground: a strange structure in the desert, a mixture between a temple, a prison and a coliseum. What looks like gerudo writing coexists with hylian symbols, which often look much fresher. This dungeon is the Shadow Temple of TP: a prison hosting the worst criminals the kingdom has ever known, now haunted and cursed. Besides the locations, the only character that vaguely look gerudo in the entire game besides Ganondorf is Telma, a character with pointed ears that never seems to identify as anything but a hylian. What happened? Who’s to say. Nobody ever says anything. Not even Ganondorf bothers to mention them the way he did in WW –and though the game’s story is quite focused on another exiled tribe seeking revenge and dominion over Hyrule as retribution, the parallel is never explicitly drawn. So who’s to say what happened there. Who’s to say.

And in A Link to the Past and the games forward? The only mention of other gerudo characters are Koume and Kotake, resurrecting their son in the Oracles games through their own sacrifice and failing to bring anything back but a monstrosity incapable of making conscious decisions. Granted, most games in that extremely weird Fallen Timeline predate OoT and therefore had yet to make gerudos up at all. Still: canonically, between the gap of OoT and ALLTP, whatever it may be, gerudos disappeared here as well.

I think there’s something subtle and a little heartbreaking about the fact that no matter what Ganondorf does, the gerudos always end up dying out. His yearning for Hyrule, its gentler wind and the Triforce blessing its lands always costs him the kingdom that he does have already.

Now, does he care? A lot of people would argue that he doesn’t, that he used them like pawns for his own ambition and saw them as servants more-so than sisters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nintendo’s official opinion, but… One very powerful thing about most of Ganondorf’s incarnations (focusing on the human ones) is that he never seems to reject his cultural heritage. They could have gone for him wearing more kingly hylian stuff given the whole underlying theme of envy and pride surrounding his character, but never once does he try to look more hylian, beyond the ear situation that seems to be tied to the Triforce of Power? Either way: he is gerudo. Several of his outfits reference his mothers, as well as general gerudo patterning and jewelry. His heritage is something he proudly displays, even hundred of years in the future when there is no one left to remember what it means but him. I think it’s a very potent piece of characterization, an arc that crosses over multiple game and says something pretty intense about this character’s fate and his inherent destructiveness over the things he touches –starting with the Triforce, all the way up to his very own body and mind. His mental breakdown by the end of Wind Waker, when the king of Hyrule himself forces him to give up on the thing he sacrificed everything for, takes a new kind of weight with the whole picture taken into account.

(not to excuse genocide or general egomania-fueled madness and violence, but one thing doesn’t mean the other isn’t also relevant)

Regardless of whether this is a tragedy for Ganondorf as their uhh complete failure of a king, honestly, it is undeniably a tragedy for the gerudos themselves: a once-in-a-lifetime joyful event turned into a never-ending nightmare from which there seems to be no escape, their legacy now condemned to fade to black, leaving nothing behind but a demon boar forever laying ruin upon the world.

One may say I’m taking on the bleakest explication for the gerudos’ absence when there could be others. It’s true! Perhaps the gerudos are just chilling off-screen, completely fine, not interested in whatever is happening in the kingdom nearby and their disaster child having yet another temper tantrum about not being the Goddesses’ favorite boy. It’s possible! But regardless, what little elements we do possess as players doesn’t seem to support this, even if it remains possible –and regardless of actual gerudo lives, gerudo culture is definitively a goner in every single timeline.

Even if they did survive... Hyrule still won its unification war.

(I won’t mention Skyward Sword as they are not really a thing there, except for a butterfly that seems to suggest the Gerudo Province was a thing before the gerudo people –I don’t know what to do with this honestly– and the whole Groose situation, which, I’m not sure what to make of either beyond the fact that he may have gotten cursed by opposing Demise? And then went on to start the gerudo tribe, which ended up being an all-women group for some reason? Maybe? It’s not confirmed? I feel like it’s more of a fun tidbit than a central piece of the gerudo puzzle, so I’ll leave it there like I would a cool rock I brought back from a walk and that I don’t know where to put in my house)

Then, Breath of the Wild happened and changed things.

BREATH OF THE WILD

(Additional short note, but: while I won’t mention Four Swords Adventure, since it’s a weird one that almost nobody has played and severely messes with the Timeline, we kind of see the beginnings of what is about to happen in Breath of the Wild in this game –gerudos coming back without much explanation, then distancing themselves from Ganondorf to become friends with hylians because he was too hungry for power and now they are nice and have good reputation because they are our friendsss)

I was actually so happy to learn gerudos were making a comeback in a mainline Zelda game, and this got me more excited about Breath of the Wild than basically anything else the game involved. And getting to explore the Desert once again, meeting this new batch of impossibly tall buff girls, getting more about their language and their culture, Riju and the rest of the little girls are adorable, the grandmas are so cool, the sand seals??? sign me the fuck up??? And above it all, hanging around Gerudo Town at night and feeling as warm and cozy as little me liked to imagine how freeing it would feel, to stay there and watch the desert behind the safety of their walls in OoT… This was great. I loved it.

It was a huge compensation for the criticism I’m about to make, but did leave me with… questions regarding how their culture was going to be handled moving forward.

I’ll start with something small yet deeply revelatory, then work my way from there.

So... gerudos’ ears are pointy now.

This is pretty significant. Lore-wise, it’s been said that the elongated ears of hylians are there so they can better hear the voices of the gods. It’s considered a sign of holiness in-universe. There's a bunch of really thoughtful analysis on tumblr over that whole Ganondorf ear situation, which is a mess but also very interesting, but the short answer is: I think the absence of pointy ears was a clear design choice to originally signify them as Less Good. Even when Ganondorf gets pointier ears, they never get as long as hylians’. Worth noting: not every non-gerudo character has pointy ears: gorons, zoras and ritos (among others) do not possess this trait, and there are even some humans that have regular rounded ears in the series –though they always seem to be of lesser relevance, if not downright peasants in Twilight Princess. Pointy ears always tended to implied a strict hierarchy in the series: basically, the more pointy, the more Protagonist you become.

(also their eyes becoming green instead of the traditional yellow/golden, which looks more wicked and demonic --and cooler also tbh)

The pointy ears imply two things. From within the game, this could be interpreted in two ways: either that gerudos… converted, for a lack of a better term, and are now considered holy through their worship of the Golden Goddesses and/or Hylia, or that their mingling with hylians through tens of thousands of years had them acquiring this trait out of sheer genetic override (though they have kept their mostly-women birth rates, their big nose, darker skin –for the most part– and red hair). Probably a healthy mixture of both. Design-wise, it signifies something quite simple to the player: they are on hylians’ side now. They are good guys. We can trust them, even if they still have a little spice in them. They aligned themselves with us and against Ganon in all of its manifestations (even if he’s but an angry ghastly pig being parasitic to everything it touches in this iteration). They are on the side of Good, definitively, and will fight evil by our side.

On that note, I think it’s worth bringing out another major change from their initial iteration, which is their overt friendship with Hyrule as a whole, and with the Royal Family in particular. Despite not allowing any voe inside their walls (we’ll come back to this), their relationship with hylians is pretty neat. They have booming trade roads, travel and meet with the rest of the cultures, and are fierce enemies with the Yiga clan, who are renowned for being huge Calamity Ganon supporters. The tables certainly have turned. I want to bring out, in particular, Urbosa’s friendship with the queen and her role as the cool aunt taking care of Zelda and protecting her from evil (to be noted: I am not familiar with Age of Calamity so if I’m mischaracterizing her in any way, please let me know). The gerudo sense of sisterhood has been extended to the royals they used to fight against. I would go on and say the cultures peacefully coexist, but I think that what we’re looking at here is a case of vassal behavior, just like we used to have from zoras (in the non-Fallen Timelines) and gorons. This is a huge departure from gerudos being openly rejecting of Hylian culture in their initial iteration, and something that is worth returning to later.

Okay. Now it’s time to mention the weird obsession BotW gerudos have with romance. I didn’t take notice of my issues with their writing until I realized how prevalent of a theme that was. Now, the reason given for gerudos to refuse entry to males (of every race) has much more to do with preventing young gerudos to make mistakes than anything else, and is actively being put into question by the younger generations –which would make sense. But the amount of NPCs that either lament their lack of match, talk about their husbands (because they marry now apparently) or are invested in romance, and a very limited understanding of romance at that (heterosexual, closed, etc), makes for much more of the population that I initially expected. There’s no mention of what’s going on with their males, if there are new males being born and either exiled or abandoned, or if Ganondorf being technically still alive have have cut them off male heirs. Either way: no more kings, only girlbosses chiefs.

To have the gerudos so interconnected with Hyrule, not only through trade but through extremely coded romance where they have to make themselves palatable to a future male partner and enforce fidelity, was… a choice. The extremely brief and skippable mention of gerudos sometimes going to Castle Town in search for boyfriends in OoT became half of their personality traits in this game. We went from a race that was fiercely independent and mocking of the unworthy men who tried to mingle with them, to… this. Now I’m not saying some of the sidequests aren’t cute, or that I didn’t like the wedding, or that the grandma near the abandoned statue of Hylia (so she was worshipped at some point) clocking us and talking about her love life wasn’t one of my favorite gerudo conversations. I’m saying that the vibes have definitively changed. For the better? I’m not sure.

I once stumbled upon an article that said that Breath of the Wild gerudos were a huge improvement compared to their original introduction, because they were no longer presented as evil and hostile thieves groveling at the boot of a single man, but as a full culture allied with the protagonist and actively involved in the story, while still getting their Cool Girl Badass moment (again can’t find it anymore, I’ll link it if I stumble upon it again). I see where this comes from, but I honestly can’t help but consider it a reading that assumes something pretty major (though through no fault of their own, as the games tend to hammer this down as hard as they can), and that being hylians as the unquestioned anchor of Good.

Which, in spite of what the games want me to believe, I… feel uncomfortable taking at face value.

To me, regarding how gerudos are being incorporated in that goodie narrative, this is kind of a case of surface-level feminism trumping over colonialist/imperialist concerns. It becomes more important to perform the aesthetics of being cool and friendly and independent than scratching at any deeper problem that would risk making people uncomfortable. This is kind of Green Skin Ganon all over again: oh wait, isn’t it a little icky to have the evil bad guy being brown while faced by the most aryan-looking ass heroes of all time? Okay, then let’s take the brown guy and make his skin green so we don’t have to feel bad anymore that the conflict has racial undertones!! Solved!! There’s nothing questionable about changing a PoC's features to make it more monstrous and less human, right?

To me, it’s kind of the coward option: instead of accepting the messy reality those initial choices created (and their interesting nuances if taken at face value), let’s just… rewrite the PoC culture’s history to make it feel less uncomfortable for the white heroes. In many ways, it is an extension of what hylians have always done: scrubbing the weird and messy things about the past and shoving them deep down into the spooky well and far into the desert prison and away in alternate hellish dimensions, and then make up a very simple story where they get to feel good about themselves –except this time, it’s the fabric of the games, the literal reality, bending backward to make it happen. Which, in my opinion, makes it much worse than before. Now, there’s no conversation. The fabric of reality is changing their own history so that there is nothing to discuss anymore. Ganondorf was always evil incarnate. He never had any point. It was always 100% his own fault, his own hubris, his own fated wickedness. He was always demonic (and green, very important –having a flashback to people on twitter accusing artists restoring the TotK green skin to the original brown of wanting to make Ganondorf black, and like….. how do I put it gently…..)

And, above all else: gerudo are to distance themselves from his legacy so they can stay in the club of the Good and Just and Holy.

Because here’s the messy thing: as much as I love seeing the gerudos again in Breath of the Wild and as much I love for them to have survived the Era of Myth (??? somehow ???), this… kind of changes Ganondorf’s character arc. No longer do we have the story of a king who wanted more, either for his people, for himself or both, and led his culture to its destruction in his search for absolute Power, while remaining ironically incapable of maintaining what little he already had. This starts from him kneeling to the king of Hyrule in OoT and leads to the deluge, Arbiter’s Ground, his own mothers dying for the sake of his failed resurrection. Breath of the Wild changes this: now, the gerudo were apparently fine without him? They apparently did their own thing and became suddenly and inexplicably disconnected from his actions? I know it’s kind of implied they side with hylians at the end of OoT, but it’s honestly never really explored why they would cheer for the death of their king while never seeming to resent him before except for Nabooru –there are mentions of brainwashing for those who resist him (as well as “other groups in the desert”, tho they are never mentioned again), but it’s hardly a proper plot point for the majority of the tribe, aaaand they still die by Wind Waker in the Adult Timeline, in spite of their potential alliegance…

(again, this shift towards submitting to Hyrule actually started with Four Swords Adventure, getting crisper with each iteration)

There used to be this polite blur regarding Ganondorf’s relationship to them, how much he used them and how much he acted in their name (with arguments for both sides), and I think this messy and debatable question mark was one of the most compelling aspects of his character. Gerudos rejecting their relationship at a near-cosmic, reality-bending level, removes a huge layer of complexity to both parties… all for the benefit of making hylians come out cleaner out of this whole exchange, their moral grayness barely a whisper in the distance.

I’ll kind of go on the record and say that I suspect the addition of Demise to the canon to serve a similar purpose (at least in part): if Ganondorf becomes but the manifestation of a demonic curse, and is no longer an extremely messy character brimming with agency and drive, forcing the heavens to reckon with said agency in a way he was never meant to access, born from a complex set of circumstances from which we clearly get only a limited and biased perspective, then it becomes extremely clear that he’s a Bad in a way that isn’t worth exploring further. Even if he does have some points, he is a Bad. It’s what matters most. Not to say I even hate what this angle can bring to the table or that I want him to become Good (I don’t –I’ll talk more about why I dislike most takes on him being a helpless victim to the curse), but once again, who benefits from adding another Unquestionned Baddie to the equation to rest upon? Not him, and not the gerudos, that’s for sure.

So. Why did I, me, personally, like the gerudos in the first place?

Beyond the inherent coolness factor of their culture and the fascinating mysteries of what is merely suggested, I think… I think I loved gerudos because we were obvious outsiders. Because their rejection of Hylian culture was so sharp and extreme, their value system so different, and their writing, their religion, their relationship to power and hierarchy and worth wanted nothing to do with hylians. They didn’t need hylians, beyond them having potential resources to steal. In fact, the threat of hylians influencing their culture was such that the entry to the Fortress was forbidden to everyone (I don’t think men were ever singled out, by the way, even though they are mocked relentlessly). I think there was something inherently hopeful about this semi-matriarchy resisting the outside world, and especially its notions of what girls were meant to be –it was 1998, and every other girl character in OoT, besides Impa and Sheik that?? is another can of worms entirely, is either helpless or someone to save. For them to reject this narrow vision of femininity was, in my opinion, much more radical than what we got in BotW. Less nuanced, more problematic perhaps? But also much more powerful. Gerudo Valley is home, not to a town, but a Fortress.

Hylians were worth being resisted.

In Breath of the Wild, their refusal to let men enter their town is kind of boiled down to a fading tradition over-focused on romance, a meek little game of chase. Their entire goal seems to be finding a hylian to settle down with. Say what you will about the single man and the many girls (never explored and completely open-ended in its implications, btw), but at least it wasn’t… that. At least it opened the way for different ways for people to exist and imagine culture and civilization, outside of the heterosexual couple, the christian-infused patriarchy and its trickling down implications. What I want to say is: let my girls tell hylians they ain’t shit!! That they aren’t the end all be all of reality! This is what made gerudos so compelling in the first place! Where is that bite now? Where is that self-definition?

It’s gone, because hylians need to be Good. So we tee-hee at the creep running laps around the town, we disguise ourselves to breach their trust and infiltrate their town (though there is nuance to be had there, gender be complicated etc), we watch them pine after shitty dudes and take classes to become the perfect approachable woman and make love soups with ?? strange ingredients honestly, and we witness them get very friendly with the Royal Family they used to conspire against, dying to protect the princess against the manifestation of their ancient king reduced to a raving puddle of Bad Boar.

Hyrule, unified against him.

TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

For posterity’s sake: this post was made before the game was released. I’ll probably update my thoughts on a separate thing later on.

I don’t think gerudos allying with the hylians and burying their own legends about Ganondorf as deeply underground as they can until it blows up in their face is a bad setup at all. It’s actually pretty juicy, and there’s a ton of fascinating stuff that could happen here –even some involving gerudos taking a firm stand against him while still reconnecting with their past and the choices they made once. This is my hope with the title of the game: Tears of the Kingdoms. Let’s examine them all, account for the damage, and decide how we move forward from there with the full knowledge of where we come from.

What I am afraid of (and I already made posts about that) is the scenario where gerudos rallying against Ganondorf, which I expect will forcefully try to take back his place as their king, is used for cheap feminist points that completely fail to examine, well. Everything mentioned above. Where reality bends itself out of the way of the Goddesses, and hylians’ responsibility in any of this mess, so that everything bad is 100% Ganon’s fault and so he must be cast aside and torn away from the Cool Gerudo Girls and this is 100% justified and deserved because we are Independent Women Who Take No Shit from No Men (unless they are the king of Hyrule or any random hylian they wish to marry apparently).

I’ll say this here because it’s been burning my mouth every time I see discourse about Ganondorf and the gerudo: gerudos declared him as their king. To make a really bad comparison that I dislike: he didn’t run around to assemble girls and make a cult around himself, he was born with the cult already formed around him (and it’s not a cult, it’s just a different mode of governance –hylians also revere the Royal Family like gods, don’t they?). This heavily changes the dynamics at play. Not to remove any agency from him to do a little invasion about it, but chances are the ancestors to BotW’s gerudos fully expected him to behave in this way, at least to a degree –in OoT you see very plainly that they value physical prowess, feats of thievery, witchcraft and general violence. It’s more complicated than him being a Bad and making the poor helpless women go along with the plan uwu –even taking the brainwashing into account, AND Koume and Kotake counting as gerudos too, even if they might not be not fully innocent in shaping the culture and the man himself. If manipulation and forced servitude is the explanation given, I’ll be genuinely mad –because, once more, all the nuance and messiness would be flattened for the sake of making Ganondorf Bad and the gerudo Good (= on hylians’ side).

It bears to be said: I think feminism stances that require, not to criticize (which is fair), but to fully dehumanize and bestialize men of color to make any sense are uhhh bad, and it's worth questionning who they end up serving in the end.

The flip side of this would be to make Ganondorf a poor little meow meow that was secretly controlled by the evil Demise all along, and... I’ll be real. I really don’t think it solves our problem at all. It might even make it worse.

My problem with how gerudos have been handled thus far, being mostly connected to how they behave in relation to hylians Good, is that they’ve been systematically defanged not to threaten the status quo as much as they used to. I think it’s pretty clear why I’m not a fan of Ganondorf being a mere victim of cosmic circumstances; I have a post that goes more in depth about this, but to simplify: my man has legitimate grievances. To make him a mere puppet to Evil Incarnate would, to me, be just another attempt to erase the despotism of the Goddesses, the unjust hierarchy of the world, what hylians have historically done to the races they were in conflict with (looking at the Yiga for the most recent example…)

I’m not saying his fight is clean or even legitimate, that he isn't driven by his own sense of self-importance above anything else, or that he should win (he has no plan beyond domination and victory, that's not a future). But I think there’s something really important about having someone being willing to fully consume himself and everything around him for the simple fact that someone should resist the order of the world. Even if that makes him a heartless, cruel, and egomaniac demon-pig. Even if there’s no Hyrule left to rule. Even if his own people despise him, or are long gone and forgotten.

Is it a little heart-wrenching? Uhh yes to me yes most definitively. This is why Wind Waker Ganondorf hits so hard, and remains (I think) his favorite entry in the series so far. But… I still find this fate of eternal resistance more resonant and empowered, and far less grim, than if Hyrule’s lore absorbs his hatred and rage, gives it to another entity that would be Badder (= more opposed to hylians and the goddesses), and scrubs it off anything icky and uncomfortable, rendering it completely domesticated and non-threatening to hylian domination; rubbed of his skin color, of his complexity, of his own emotions, even made... kind of sexy now, in the same way his sisters have been made before him? I am very, very afraid of him being turned from furious and an unapologetic subject in his own legend to a "redeemed" (according to whom??) and palatable object in somebody else’s, that you now end up having to… save from himself.

Again, I want to trust that Tears of the Kingdom can walk that line and preserve everything sharp and contrasting and profound and thrilling about this fascinating setup. I don’t expect a philosophy course, this is a game for children –but it doesn’t mean Nintendo didn’t do an astounding job with similar setups in the past. Again, I’ll invoke the Wind Waker conflict, but Twilight Princess did a lot of great things as well (Zant’s speech, if you can get past the weird stretches and stumping and NNHYAAAs, is pretty fantastic) –and the subtle writing of Majora’s Mask is also proof enough this series can be complex without being impermeable.

So this is where my hope lies. Not really with BotW’s writing, which, I’m sorry to say, but I found to be below what the series has done in the past (I have no problem with the setup and how the story is explored, I think it was a great idea, but wasn’t ever sold on the actual writing the way I may have been with previous titles –it felt… very tropey to me overall, with a couple of highlights). But Nintendo has shown to know how to write compelling stories for children that know where to sprinkle its darkness and how to preserve its hope, and this is this side I’m relying on for this delicate storyline moving forward.

And now? Now… I suppose we wait and see.

(thank you for reading my impossibly long essay what the actual hell, at least I got it all out of my system, see you in part 2 for when TotK comes out I suppose aaa)

[typecastwritesssss]

okay but like the wind waker man. that intro. so many questions. we all know ocarina is dark but man wind waker just straight up said "and then they all drowned and the gods never came to help" hello??? how many years. how many decades. how much time did the adult hero of time buy for them? which child of zelda’s was daphnes? her son? grandchild? great-grandchild? when he stared at the rising waters and realized nothing was going to save them, his kingdom, did he think it was retribution for all the war? 

has it really been all that long? yes and also no. the lines are so blurred. the zora are birds and the kokiri are koroks and they had time to Get That Way but everywhere you look the old Hyrule, the Hero of Time himself, they're both all over the place. the deku tree is implied to be the sprout from the adult timeline but honestly who knows. the golden goddesses are statues on islands somewhere and there was a tower built to test who came after but…who and how and why? what was the tower of the gods even for? how did they know they’d need it? at what point did they accept the hero of time was never coming back so they’d probably need to train a new one? 

and oh my god, that outset island tradition. “dress your kids in green and give ‘em a sword and pray to the gods they’ll have the courage to cast down evil.” link rolls his eyes at it but he wears them to appease grandma. the revered clothes of the hero have had time to pass into “stupid traditional getup” territory. how many “failed Links” were there before Aryll’s brother? what evil could those children have possibly stricken down? the monsters in the woods?

“what became of that kingdom? none remain who know” like goddamn. say what you want about the hero’s shade in twilight princess. but at least the traumatized ghost got to meet one of his descendants and pass on his songs and his knowledge, even if that knowledge was only of war and death and combat. in the wind waker he’s a statue. an element of a legend mentioned once or twice by the last remaining holdouts of the past—holdouts who so badly want him to return, view him as the solution over all else, that they never pause to consider any other option. there are stained glass windows of the seven sages in the master sword’s chamber that are never mentioned. there is so much that is never mentioned.

nobody knows what the fuck anybody is talking about. link doesn’t know old hylian. tetra is running around the high seas (as a pirate. she and her retainers are now pirates. how did things get that way) with a piece of the damn triforce around her neck and she doesn’t know who ‘princess zelda’ even is. the juxtaposition between ganondorf, older and tired and wiser but still hell-bent on ruling hyrule even if it is a dead land full of nothing and no one, and tetra, a zelda that knows nothing, asking why he’s laughing and calling him insane. because hyrule’s dead. she has no frame of reference for his longing, or what he found so great about this sunken kingdom.

and this is framed as a good thing. the king of red lions thinks it’s better not to let either of the kids in on the loop until tetra nearly dies for lack of knowledge. daphnes nolhansen hyrule brought “the hero” back just to end ganon, and hyrule with him. was the plan always to let the sea fall in on him? maybe. i don’t know. but he rejects zelda’s plea with him to take him with them to the land that will be the new hyrule, because “it will not be hyrule. it will be your land” and that still gets me. he thinks the best thing to do with his kingdom, Hyrule, the kingdom of a whole hell of a lot of irl people’s childhoods, is for it to wash away. he wants the kids to live for the future and they do and they will and they name it hyrule anyway in his honor but he never gets to see it.

anyways i’m still mad everybody got butthurt over “trains in a zelda game” like come on now

[goopi-e]

What I love about Wind Waker (among endless other things) is how Ganondorf has an excellent narrative foil not only in Daphnes, but in Link as well.

One is a boy from a backwaters island in a homespun green tunic crafted by his grandma. Other is a man from the desert with his mothers’ names inscribed on his twin blades. Both are characterized by their aching homesickness - but their homes are unhospitable to human life, and their destiny led them both to a point that, if they were to return, they would never belong anymore. And yet, they both are ready to defend it with their lives.

[tigirl-and-co]

i wasn't joking when I said 'I say this a lot'

the last one was on a comparison of WW link and gdorf

[autumn-sweet-fae]

Idea: The Adult and Downfall timelines combined before Adventure of Link.

Hear me out: So I’ve seen the theory that the south western third of world map in Adventure of Link could possibly be an older version of the Akkala and Eldin regions of Breath of the Wild. The biggest evidence to this being that Death Mountain is in the south west here, where as in most zelda maps is usually in the north east of hyrule.

But this begs the question “where then is the rest of AoL’s Hyrule?”

Well, if you go back to BotW’s map, you’ll see that across the chasm at the edge of the north map, there’s the elevated plateaus of foreign lands. So elevated in fact, that, if Hyrule were to be entirely flooded, those lands would be largely untouched.  

So my theory, that the kingdom of Hyrule in Adventure of Link is the same kingdom as New Hyrule in Spirit Tracks but centuries later. The very lands that Tetra and the Hero of Winds had founded after Wind Waker.

Meaning that some time after the events of Spirit Tracks but before the sleeping princess Zelda of Adventure of Link was cursed, the worlds of the downfall timeline and adult timeline combined. Considering the amount of lost history in AoL’s time, it wouldn’t be surprising if a collision of conflicting timelines was the cause.

Ganon’s existence also confirms the combining as we know that Ganondorf the man had been killed at the end of Wind Waker in the adult timeline. while Ganon the monster kept coming back like a cockroach in the downfall timeline, despite the Hero of Legends many efforts.

As for what becomes of the joined timeline after Adventure of Link, my theory is that a combination of the oceans receding and the growing scarcity of resources in the land would motivate the people of hyrule to migrate back to the old lands once again.

Then after this, the joined timeline and the child timeline finally combine, thus ending what would be called “The era of Myth”. A name that was chosen largely due to all the confusing timeline conflicts that historians couldn’t possibly untangle, and so they chalked it all up to being a bunch of myths and legends. Some time after this we would get the sheikah technological revolution, and with it the events of Breath of the Wild’s the ancient hero.

[kitkatt0430]

Yet another Zelda question from me but anyway. Wind Waker. You recommended 'Cry for Hyrule' and I loved it because it was a great retelling - and also because I had wondered about several questions like 'why didn't a new Hero show up' and 'why did the Goddesses flood the world?' but obviously that wasn't canon so. My question is this - given that in canon it's established that it was many years between Ganon being sealed away and Ganon breaking out, why the heck wasn't there a hero waiting? Like there's no way the Goddesses didn't see that coming, so why didn't they prepare instead of flooding the world? And why does the King choose to destroy Hyrule instead of restoring it (like everything was leading to??)

Oooh, so I have given this quite a bit of thought, in part for my own fanfic ideas. :D And I have two main theories about what went on during the time of the flood.

So there's definitely a good amount of time between Ganondorf being sealed and Ganon finding a way out of the Sacred Realm, but it's not super clear how much time thanks to the whole thing being shrouded in legend. If it was twenty or thirty years later, then there was no hero because a new one hadn't been born yet.

OoT Zelda is left to kick herself repeatedly for sending Link back in time to create an alternate timeline and eventually floods Hyrule so that no one gets to have the shiny toy... er... land. This could work since it would give Hyrule Castle time to be rebuilt, give the surrounding land time to regrow into the pretty under-sea Hyrule upon which we may look (but not touch), and if it wasn't built on the same place the old castle was built then it's possible Ganondorf's undersea lair is built atop the remains of the castle he was a load bearing boss for. (Not likely, but it's a fun idea.)

I do think this is the less likely theory. In part because it seems more likely to me that Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule was king by birthright than marriage. Marrying the Zelda of OoT would have made him king (like in the fic you mentioned) and they could have had a daughter named Zelda, so no matter what he would have been the father of the last Zelda of Hyrule Kingdom. But it just seems to fit better from what's seen in the castle beneath the sea that he's more of a single father raising a daughter, which tells me it's more likely been a few generations at least.

So it's likely been a loooot of time between Ocarina of Time's ending in the adult timeline and the events of the flood. Not decades, more like centuries. And the latest Zelda to bear the name Zelda is Zelda-ed. Not all of them live in times of calamity, but this one happens to be the latest reincarnation of Hylia. And so Ganondorf escapes because it is that time again, he can feel the cycle boost his power... whatever. And a hero does rise to the challenge.

And fails.

Drowning Hyrule becomes a last ditch effort to re-seal Ganon when the Link of that era dies - without the reincarnated Hero's Spirit, Zelda can kinda wield the sword herself but Fi was not meant for her. So to save as many lives as possible, evacuations were made as swiftly as they could to the tallest places of the land with help from the protector spirits - the Great Deku tree raised part of the Lost Woods, Jabu-Jabu (or Jabun, though I'm not convinced he isn't the same big fish from OoT despite the different designs) evacuated the Zora, and maybe Lord Valoo got in on it somehow? I can't remember his backstory at the moment, Valoo may have shown up post-flood - certainly turning Zora into Rito is post-flood action. But the point remains. As many people were evacuated as possible and the floods were called down upon the land. Hyrule itself was protected beneath the waters, frozen in a sort of stasis in which no living thing could survive save plants and monsters.

In OoT and Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, no one is really aware that Link is going around saving them until it's all over. So it makes sense that no one would know about the Link that tried to save them and failed. His story would have been a protected tale of the Royal Family, eventually lost like so many other stories of Tetra's family and Hyrule's history. And so the people would be left to believe there was no hero. Better to think they weren't gifted a hero at all than to know a hero could fail... right?

As for why King Hyrule flooded the lands instead of restoring them... I'm not really sure about that one. I know there were limitations imposed during the game's development that prevented having both sea dungeons above the water and land dungeons beneath the water which is why all the action intended for beneath the waves got scrapped (except for the castle and final dungeon), but I kinda suspect the ending was also affected by the limitations and so developers may have had to flood Hyrule to explain why the rest of the ending kinda had to take place on the sea.

Of course, that IRL speculation. For in universe... I think maybe King Hyrule was hoping that by trapping Ganondorf's corpse below the waves and burying Hyrule itself, that would break the cycle that Ganondorf was just the latest symptom of. Ganondorf's original reason for attacking Hyrule was to make life better for his people - he got lost in the power-sauce, so his good intentions went right out the nearest window (likely while OoT Link and Zelda were waving hello) - and without the land specifically blessed by the goddesses perhaps no one else would be tempted into gaining & misusing dark powers against their people once they made a new home.

Someone clearly did not anticipate the advent of trains or that demon trains might be a thing. :D

I do think it would have been interesting if flooding old Hyrule had caused the sea level to drop significantly, wreaking havoc because now all the ports are hanging out well above sea level (what a pain for everyone, especially anyone with beached ships) and also uncovering a number of new, empty islands across the seas. Along with the existing islands from the game now much enlarged due to underwater areas surrounding those islands being uncovered.

Anyway, I really like the idea that there was a hero of the flood era who failed. It's my favorite theory about the flood era. It's sad and tragic that he not only fails but is forgotten too, but it makes so much sense. Because the hero's spirit always reincarnates. When there is a great evil and a Princess Zelda? There's a Link to be the Hero. But. He doesn't always win. We've seen it before with OoT Link, since the downfall timeline is created by his death. And BotW/TotK Link almost joined alt timeline OoT Link and Flood Era link as a failed/dead hero. There are probably others scattered throughout the timelines too. The victories are remembered by history. The failures... not so much.

[thejolteonmastertj]

There is SO. HECKIN. MUCH. About this chapter that I love. Arryl & Tetra’s designs! Aaaaaaaa~ 💞💝💞🥹💞💝💞

Arryl! Aaaa they grow up so fast. 🥹

& Tetra’s characterization! Voice & body language! That’s especially perfect! The way she shifts from gruffness to affection, barely a few panels in & there’s a very clear picture for a multifaceted character. She’s the same BAMF we remember yet she’s grown so much! 🥰

The way even her internal recognition for the Master Sword is just “Link’s Fuckass sword” is so funny & does a lot to establish Tetra’s dialect even admist plot progression! I could almost hear the gruff woman voice say “fuckass sword” 😂 Also says a bit about the WW post-apocalyptic setting. It’s not the Master Sword, it’s the sword that was used once & was never supposed to show up again! 👀

& then her FACE as she’s like, Link, walk with me! 🤣🤣🤣 She’s grown so much since the events of Wind Waker & having a very appropriate reaction to the sword Link left at the bottom of the whole-ass ocean casually showing up again on somebody else’s person. 🤭

She’s immediately like damn what alternate universe (Phantom Hourglass reference) did you get sucked into THIS time huh? 😂😂

Then! Lineback flirting with grandma! I can totally see that! 😂☠️🫣🤣

Last but CERTAINLY not least! Those fake names! Loft’s first name to come to mind being Groose 💀 & Wolf’s being Rusl. 🥹 & then there’s Slate, who straight up ignores Wake/HeroOfWind 😂

Slate’s not used to anyone thinking twice about his name anyways, & his strategy’s probably better tbh esp on short notice. 😆

HOMESICK, pt. 5

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PATREON

[chicksdigsaurs]

The Finale of Wind Waker begins now! We have max hearts and a full triforce so let's go kick Ganon's ass!!

[tsvai]

getting orca’s 500 hits heart piece is almost metroid prime boss level hand cramp suffering

[goopi-e]

My pet peeve is when people treat Tetra's Zeldafication in WW as the game's shortcoming.

Guys. You're supposed to find it unjust. You're supposed to be horrified as to what your pirate friend was turned into. The narrative agrees that what Daphnes did was disagreeable. This is why she winks at Link in the final battle and urges him to return to their ocean: it's all but said out loud that Tetra is better off being herself and not forced into an outdated mold. This is literally what the game is about. The message wouldn't hit as hard if there were no stakes and no sacrifices.

[the-royal-hyrule-library]

[Image Description: a screenshot from “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker”. It shows Link staring at the stone statue that used to be Ganondorf. End image description.]

Man, I really love the Wind Waker Ganondorf fight. It feels different from other fights in the series in the sense that you aren't fighting to save a kingdom or the princess. Sure, Link went in that tower to get Tetra back and stop Ganondorf, but when the fight happens, that isn't why they are fighting anymore.

Tetra is already there with Link, and Ganondorf had already lost; Daphnes stole his wish. Ganondorf has lost everything, and now the only thing he desires is to take Link and Tetra down with him as the hope for the future he wanted was given to them.

A fight you go into expecting to be one to save a friend and stop the villain became nothing more than a battle of survival. The waters of the great sea are crashing down as it is to kill or be killed.

Throughout the whole journey, Link and Tetra both struggled against Ganondorf. The first visit to the forsaken fortress he throws Link into the sea to drown. The second time, he knocks Link down and is about to strike him down with his blade, Tetra just barely coming in to save Link on time, and even then, they're both not strong enough. Finally, in Ganon's tower, after going through Ganondorf's trials without even getting a chance to fight him, this man straight up beats this small child and steals his triforce. Every confrontation with this man has gone wrong, and yet it's now or ever because if they lose, they will die, and no one is there to save them this time.

The battle theme is intense. It really is two very small children fighting this huge man, but just as they're the hope of the future every once in a while, the great seas theme will play as if there is a gleam of hope. That they can make it out alive.

However, even then when they do win, it isn't a triumphant one. Anytime Link has beaten a boss in the game, he is overjoyed and ecstatic. He is jumping up and down as he slayed the monster. He won.

Yet for Ganondorf, this is his reaction for killing a man.

He looks to be in disbelief, frightened even. Whatever he is feeling, it sure isn't a good one. How could he feel good about this? One thing is for sure is that he is exhausted, and he almost passes out then and there, with Tetra needing to catch him.

I just love everything about this fight. From the music and setting to the aftermath and why you're fighting him. You're not fighting to win or save the day. You're simply fighting to live.

[autumn-sweet-fae]

Expanding on my earlier DownFall & Adult timeline combining idea…

What if the timeline collision actually happened between when the Sleeping Zelda was cursed and the events of the original Legend of Zelda? Because this opens allot of doors to potential Drama.

What we know of the sleeping Zelda is what the contemporary people of Hyrule know of her: A princess who had been entrusted with the location of the hidden triforce of courage by her late father, only to be cursed into eternal sleep by a dark wizard when she refused to tell her brother the secret location.

But we know nothing of the Hyrule she lived in.

So what if the Hyrule this Zelda had known had been the New Hyrule some centuries after Spirit Tracks? A Hyrule with a robust public transport and trading industry thanks to their great train engines. A Hyrule who only knew of Ganon in the aged text of history books and myths.

A Hyrule’s who’s advancements lead them back to exploring the deep of the seas with newly invented submarines. The histories spoke of a great power that had been lost in the old hyrule ruins, the perfect treasure to be brought back to the surface for their first deep sea expedition.

As soon as that treasure had been brought back, the ruling family quickly seized it before anyone could fully realize what they had found. The king knew the the dangers of the Triforce, how it was better off lost in the depths, but he could not bring himself to release it back to the waves. Instead he compromised, breaking off the triforce of courage and hiding it away so that the whole triforce’s full power could not be abused. His son had loathed this decision, but the king stood firm. The power of two triforces was more then enough to protect their kingdom, to grasp for more could only bring tragedy.

And he was right.

The king dies, the princess is cursed, and the prince still searches for more power.

The collision of timelines happens shortly after, perhaps as a direct result of what ever actions the prince took. The land and is people are changed, confusion and chaos break out. The royal family of the downfall timeline find themselves in a familiar unfamiliar world and try to keep the people calm. But are soon faced with the rule of a power-hungry prince demanding their triforce. (Not knowing that theirs has been in the sacred realm since long before the collision)

A decades long war breaks out, the land is forever scared, progress and histories both lost.

The royal family of old hyrule finally capture the prince at his palace. They discover the sleeping princess and take her under their ‘protection’ to ensure the Prince’s surrender.

But, before peace can be made, the ancient demon Ganon forces makes their return, his monsters taking full advantage of Hyrule’s chaotic and weakened state.

And so the centuries pass, the histories are scarce, the myths conflicting, but the monsters are always there.

At long last a hero finally appears and defeats the great evil, and a few years later, goes on an adventure of his own and awakens the sleeping princess.

And at long last, Zelda wakes up, and it’s to a world that is almost unrecognizable from what she had known.

[chicksdigsaurs]

Wind Waker continues! We're still on The Hunt but now we're mostly just looking for heart pieces! (and at some point we'll challenge the Savage Labyrinth)

[pocketseizure]

The way I understand it, the "Wind Waker Ganondorf was not wrong" theory was never about how Ganondorf is actually a good person. Rather, it's about how Ganondorf is not the mindless monster that Daphnes initially tells us he is.

The King of Hyrule had access to what was essentially a weapon of mass destruction, which he decided to use against Ganondorf. The result was the creation of the Great Sea, which displaced (and almost certainly killed) many people in Hyrule as the kingdom flooded.

The argument holds that, even if this particular result wasn't intended, and even if he carries the full weight of this guilt for the rest of his life, Daphnes still made the decision use a weapon of mass destruction that was certain to have civilian casualties.

The argument follows that, if Daphnes mischaracterizes Ganondorf as a mindless monster, it's possible that he may be misrepresenting the necessity of using a weapon of mass destruction. It's therefore useful to read between the lines of what Daphnes tells us, and one possible interpretation of this situation is that Ganondorf may not have been wrong to attack Hyrule.

This theory encouraged a few small communities in the Legend of Zelda fandom to consider what it would mean for Ganondorf to have more depth as a character than "he's an embodiment of Pure Evil and needs to be killed," as well as what that would mean for our understanding of the series lore. I'm not an expert on fandom history, but I get the feeling that the "Ganondorf is a fun-loving goofy dad" fan characterization comes primarily from Hyrule Warriors.

Wind Waker Ganondorf, Wind Waker Ganondorf im so sorry. Im so sorry you are the most mischaracterized villian of the series