wattrudhistorian

[wattrudhistorian]

[wattrudhistorian]

Going from being an introverted lurker on reddit to trying to post my own stuff here is so wild. I keep typing out a post, deleting it, then retyping because I think it's not good enough but then I look at other posts and why am I so worried?

It's like I'm at a fancy Italian restaurant and keep glancing around the room to see which hand people use to pick up the forks. But then I realize that everyone is shoveling spaghetti into their mouths using their bare hands and I'm like ah okay so I'm clearly overthinking this

[wattrudhistorian]

Random rant of the day:

When I was in grade school, every year the school would give each student one of those weekly planners that also had the school code of conduct at the front, and things like times tables, time zones and such at the back. It was mostly intended for kids to write down homework and test/project dates? Anyway, at the bottom of each page of the planner portion would be either an organization tip, some inspirational quote, or a random “fun fact”. I still to this day remember a lot of the random facts, though I now wonder at how true some of those facts may or may not be.

And then there were the facts that I could believe as plausible, but they also raised additional questions for each one they answered.

For example, one of the facts was that a tiger’s stripes actually appear even on the skin - it’s not just on the surface of their fur like some animals. Thanks for the information, but now you’ve left me with the question of who is insane enough to shave a whole tiger. Anyone who has ever pissed off a normal cat (whether it was accidental or intended) knows how dangerous even those can be, and a tiger is like a cat that god pressed the “enhance” button more times than was strictly necessary. What has to break in a person’s mind to think “we need to know if the giant death kitty is orange with black stripes or black with orange stripes…let’s go shave one” is a good idea? And this information is pretty limited in how useful it is to most people; very few of us are likely to ever be in a position where we would need to know that a tiger’s stripes go all the way down to the skin.

Another fact from one of those planners is that naturally blonde people have, on average, about six times more hair on their head than brunette people, but the individual hairs are also much thinner than brunette hairs. This also raises a lot more questions for me than it answers. Who had the time and complete lack of social boundaries to just count the hairs on some random people’s heads, even if they were only using a set area (say, a square inch of a person’s scalp) and extrapolating from that? Because in order for something to be considered a fact, it has to be repeatable - in this case, that means someone had to count individual hairs on multiple people’s heads, and have a pretty wide sample of both blondes and brunettes. That is way more contact with strangers than most people would ever be comfortable with. And more importantly, WHO CARES who has more hair or thicker hair?! It’s not like most people can do anything to change that about themselves, short of a scalp transplant.

[wattrudhistorian]

what goes around comes around amiright

[wattrudhistorian]

reblog if you wear glasses. too many mutuals don't know they have glasses wearers in their midsts

[wattrudhistorian]

Fun historical fact:

Glass production traces back to about the 2nd millennium BC. The shards in this picture were apparently dated to somewhere between 1550 and 1196 BC and were found in Egypt. Tutankhamen may have drunk his wine out of glass that had designs like these. It feels like something anachronistic, but he was born around the 1340’s BC, roughly in the middle of the time period that these glassworks came from. 🤯

On an unrelated note, please ignore my horrible phone photography skills. Just because the museum says you can take pictures doesn’t mean you suddenly gain the ability to do it well. 😅

[wattrudhistorian]

I see a lot of fanart in the LU communities about how the heroes from further back on the timeline would struggle to cope with how “easy” Wild has/had it in the Divine Beasts or the Sage Temples. And yeah, the map is usually right inside and downloads straight to the slate/pad (which already has a built-in compass), and there’s a lack of mini-bosses, but like…were we playing the same games?

‘Cause I could easily make an argument that the boss fights combined with the environmental factors in BOTW and TOTK absolutely make up for the lack of challenge! If you didn’t manage to scrape together the rupees for armor and go to the fairy fountains a few times before you tackled a given beast or temple, you better have the ability to multitask like an omniscient GOD in order to keep track of your health, how long you have left on your current elixir/magic food, where you are on the platform, how many weapons and arrows you have left, AND what the big bad boss is doing. To an extent, this also applies to the Ganon fights, though admittedly the fight in Hyrule Field didn’t have nearly the number of environmental hazards as those in the Divine Beasts.

I have literally lost count of how many times I have nearly killed or actually killed Link in those games by mistiming a jump or losing track of my environment in a fight and falling. Wandering through Rudania alone was probably close to fifteen - not even the actual boss fight, just trying to reach the terminals. And TOTK was WORSE!!

So do not try to convince me he had it easy. If the others knew even half of what he had to do to free the Divine Beasts - and with little to no help on top of that - and found out he’d have to do it all again like five years later, they would either burrito-wrap that boy in blankets and insist he let them take care of it (which is how I suspect Time, Legend, and Sky would react - maybe Four too, but hard to say), or would treat him like he was Fierce Deity incarnate (everyone else).

[wattrudhistorian]

cure of ra

[wattrudhistorian]

Fire Spell

not just fire

Imagine if every bomb in Zelda had to be lit with a limited number of matches

I think you could forge Hyrule's sword with its own flames (?)

[wattrudhistorian]

Best news I’ve heard all month.

an absolute fuckton of people at pride rn

[wattrudhistorian]

I don't know exactly how to articulate this but... if you repeatedly show historical fiction women rejecting traditionally female skills/duties and doing swords instead, because swords is obviously the Most Important Thing, you are kind of implying that all the work that has been traditionally done by female hands for millennia was useless all along and not, you know, keeping civilization going. Because it's usually rejected not as a personal preference but as This Is The Important Stuff (male work) and That is The Dumb Useless Stuff (women's work) and that kind of bothers me. The message was supposed to be Vital But Underpaid and Underappreciated, not women's work is insignificant so let's all go do swords.

[wattrudhistorian]

You’re the kind of rainstorm that makes the rest of the day go from “please-end-me-every-moment-is-misery” heatwave to “I-remember-why-I-love-summer” perfect temperature.

Tag game bc I got bored

rb and tell the person who tagged you what brand/type of water (for example: Dasani, tap water, SmartWater, ocean water, etc.) they are :}

Tagggsss (to get this started): @moethh @spinostarz @skdjrhaejdhst-cat @royallykt @kybercrystals94 @calico-cows @miriyummy

[wattrudhistorian]

Probably a bad video game idea:

You play as a human-shaped robot that’s programmed to help people in natural disasters, emergencies, hospitals, etc. At first, your skills and the challenges you can take on are pretty limited, but as you complete tasks and gain XP, you can upgrade your skills (like increasing your intelligence/databank or dexterity for tasks in hospitals, as an example) and collect “modifications” that allow you to complete new challenges (like infrared sensors for searching through debris or echolocation for search and rescue in caves) or maneuver around different environments (flotation for floods or sea rescues, wheels to help you move faster in buildings/streets, treads for uneven terrain, and so on).

[wattrudhistorian]

One thing I would love more than anything to see in the next Legend of Zelda game would be the ability to play with the stable dogs. Hear me out: they’ve literally already programmed sticks as objects you can pick up, and you have the ability to throw weapons. I wanna see a game where, once you befriend the dogs, you can throw a stick for them, and they’ll run after it and bring it back. 🥹 And maybe if the game designers are feeling humorous, they can make it a little true to life and you have to either run after the dogs to get the stick, or you get pulled into a game of tug of war to get your stick/weapon back. 😂

[wattrudhistorian]

So I’ve been binge reading (and re-reading) Linked Universe for a little while now, and it has rapidly become one of my favorite comics ever. I love the characterization of the different Links, I like the story premise - really, everything about it has been great.

The most recent pages had me a little worried for Wild and Warriors, though. And the more I think about those two going through a dungeon together without someone to mediate, the worse the concern gets.

So far, Wars has been portrayed as a by-the-book, chain-of-command respecting military type who is used to having others around to both coordinate attack efforts with and who could watch his back in a fight. He assesses situations before making plans, looking for the most effective option that involves the lowest risks to himself and the people he’s leading into battle. It’s possible I’m missing something after reading LU (I never got to play Hyrule Warriors when I was younger), but Wars does not seem like the type who is going to enjoy spending prolonged time with someone as free-spirited as Wild without a buffer.

Meanwhile, Wild has limited memory of his time in Hyrule’s army, and while he seems to remember some things of his time in it, he has admitted that he doesn’t think he could ever go back to being that “perfect knight” persona. Most of his adventure was in a half-dead kingdom with almost no authority or rule of law, resources were scarce, and there wasn’t much of a coordinated effort to get rid of the monsters by the time he woke up (plus, the blood moons would have rendered most efforts to clear out all the monsters pretty much pointless). Wild was predominantly alone on most of his adventure since most settlements were either decimated or completely destroyed by the Calamity, and he had no consistent backup to help him other than the abilities that four ghosts gave him and Wolfie (and arguably this inconsistent interaction with people in general could mean his interpersonal communication skills might be somewhat stunted), meaning he’s largely used to doing everything on his own without any support and without anyone to communicate battle plans with. And as far as I can tell, Wild has thus far been portrayed as subscribing to the philosophy of “if I hit the monster hard enough as many times as I can, it will stop bothering me”. And considering his Hyrule has spent the last century with very little government or law, I don’t see him having a great time with anyone who insists on enforcing order and rules.

Wars has mentioned in previous chapters/pages that he’s never been through a dungeon before, and while Wild’s shrines are kind of like dungeons, I think most of us can agree that the risks in a shrine are a little less severe than a traditional dungeon (in most of the shrines, the worst adversary he’d face were mini guardians, which honestly didn’t cause near the damage a full-sized one out in the wider world could cause - his real constant danger in the shrines was missing a jump and falling into the void under the platforms) - in short, they’re both ill-prepared for what a traditional dungeon crawl entails, compared to literally everyone else in their group.

Both of them probably have some level of ptsd from their adventures, yet neither of them strikes me as being willing or mentally/emotionally ready to confront it, nor do they seem the type to comfortably talk to each other sincerely about any past trauma that might be driving their actions/behaviors. And while you could argue that their skills would allow them to trade off leadership depending on whether they’re up against a monster or a puzzle, I do not see that actually working in practice. It would be like pairing up two senior managers with completely different personalities and work styles and who have never worked together a single day at the company and expecting them to tag-team leadership well.

This is an extremely long-winded way to say that, as far as I can tell, these two are most likely going to drive each other insane, if Dark Link or the dungeon itself doesn’t do them in first.

[wattrudhistorian]

Why does it feel like, after you hit your mid to late 20s, you get a certain amount of Judgement from older relatives when you buy ONE thing over $50 that’s for personal enjoyment and isn’t strictly for function? Heaven forbid that I, an adult, have any fun that’s over $30 to participate in.

I’ve had hand-me-down vehicles, furniture, and even some electronics since I was a kid. Any electronics that were new and over that $30 - $40 range were usually for a practical purpose; calculator for college math courses, laptop for homework and job hunting (and I held on to each one I’ve had til it literally broke to a degree that repairing it would have cost more than a new laptop), the phone was to let people know I’m still alive and call if I’m stuck somewhere because weather or something, etc.

If I want to have a gaming system as an adult, and I have the ability to pay for it with my own money and not take out a loan or use credit for it, I would appreciate it if I could indulge in this one thing without being made to feel like I failed some unwritten test. Let me have this.