#//this is such a good design too like wow

[ezlo-x]

“Wow I hope BotW gets a sequel someday…” - my TotK summary <3

It’s been a year, and honestly. I did not complete that game at all. I watched lets plays and cutscenes in youtube and a few playthroughs of my friends. And every time, my regret of buying this game grows ever so slightly. I know I sound mean and harsh but I prommy I got nothing against ppl who actually enjoyed TotK. This is more of my personal experience of how my excitement playing this game completely burned me out less than halfway through the game.

Gameplay

I’ll start with gameplay first, as I have issues with it. Let’s start with the physics of the game itself. Ngl, there was a small worry in the back of my mind when I realized there would be in-game physics and that you have to rely on those said physics. I personally don’t have a good experience with game physics and they usually tend to frustrate me. Which somewhat happened when playing the game. It didn’t happen too often, thankfully, maybe because the zonai parts didn’t tend to last long. Speaking of Zonai parts and builds

I wish building Zonai stuff was a bit more fun. Or at least give us more time to experience our builds. We already have a disadvantage by having a limited amount of batteries that you have to slowly upgrade throughout the game. So, seeing that one of your Zonai pieces starts to flash and disappear is annoying. I understand we can obtain more zonai parts throughout Hyrule, but I wish it lasted long enough. Also, the fact that you can’t really travel a lot in many of the builds, oh how disappointing it was to build a cool Zonai truck with big ass wheels but get frustrated that it couldn’t pass through a few bumps on the road. I feel like the Hoverbike is the best Zonai build of the game.

The Ultrahand is fun when trying to solve puzzles or merge random items. Fusing weapons, on the other hand, is my favorite thing in the game. There’s something really satisfying about fusing a really powerful weapon together. I really don’t mind that the weapons are breakable if that means I have a spot to make a strong weapon. Weapon durability never really bothered me. Both games push you to explore around to look for weapons. I think it would be boring if they weren’t breakable.

The shrines are a big improvement from BotW's shrines. I wished there were more challenging Shrines over the many King Rauru blessings. I can't really say much about the dungeons as I only completed two out of the five. But I think there was a bit to be desired; it's almost a Zelda dungeon.

Sage abilities. I want to speak to the game designer who thought it was a great idea to activate the sage abilities with the same button you click to pick up items on the floor. A total downgrade to the way you’d activate the Champion abilities in BotW.

Rupees. I would like to speak to the game designer who thought it was a great idea that you now have to manually press A to pick up rupees from the floor rather than casually walking in front of it to automatically pick it up. From my previous point, do you know how many times I’ve tried to pick up rupees only for Tulin’s ability to fly them away from me?

The sky islands, ohh boyyy, finding out that they had to reduce the amount of sky islands is disappointing, but I understand in a game design aspect. BUT it is disappointing that the game was advertising itself for the sky islands, only for there to be very few in the final. Like remember back in 2021 when they were advertising SkSw HD, and then i think a year later a totk teaser dropped and Link was falling from the skies? Good times ❤️

The Depths: I enjoyed the Depths a bit more than the Sky Islands. But it does get boring after a while if you’re not there to fight monsters or look for treasure, which is also disappointing. I love the OST descending down a chasm and entering the depths. Also, don’t get me started on how frustrating it is to use Zonai builds there compared to the surface or sky islands.

I think those are all my thoughts on the gameplay. I still have a few more issues with it but I feel like it mixes with the story so lets get that over with

Limitation vs Freedom

My biggest issue with this game is that it gives you the freedom to do whatever you want. However, there is still a story attached, and the story still wants to play out linearly. So, we have a game that grants you total freedom on how you want to play this game, but the story is still linear. But even if you decide to experience the story while doing dungeons and shrines. The game doesn't update with the piece of information that you discover.

The Dragon Tears are a really flawed way to experience the story. Zelda's memories are scattered across Hyrule; the number of times I've seen ppl say they accidentally got the tears out of order cause they thought it was similar to BotW's way of getting the memories. Basically, if you happen to be near one memory, you might as well get it cause it'll get annoying to go back and forth. Only to the person's shock, they got a cutscene meeting the Queen and King and then going up the Hebra region as that's the closest memory from the previous one. Just to see Queen Sonia dead on the floor.

What also bothers me is that the game doesn't update when you make a discovery in these memories. For example, I found out that Phantom Ganon can transform into Zelda in the memories and walk up to the NPCs in hopes of a change of dialogue. But getting nothing, walking up to Purah, Tulin, then Yunobo, and seeing no change of dialogue got really tiresome. It's as if the game doesn't believe you're smart enough to connect the dots.

Also, for people who decided to explore and get the Dragon Tear memories before entering any dungeon. There is very little change of dialogue, suddenly the game strangely punishes you by not letting the npcs acknowledge what you just discovered. While it's not an actual in-game punishment, you're stuck with characters asking a million questions that you already know of. Suddenly, the game's freedom to do whatever you want gets put to a halt because you decide to have the freedom to experience the story however you'd like.

NOW I get to move the part that I’ve been waiting (dreading) for!!

Lore

Sheikah Tech…I don’t care how simple the explanation is on why they are gone. It is probably the dumbest explanation I’ve seen. The fact that it wasn’t even questioned in-game and by the developers baffles my mind. How does it vanish in thin air? Their explanation is that the Calamity no longer exists doesn’t make sense to me either. The Sheikah tech has been there for more than 10k years but only in a dormant state. I don’t want to ask any more questions, or I’ll be here all day, but it drives me up a wall how the lore of the Sheikah got shafted to the side for the new stone technology aesthetic. Speaking of which-

Zonai in general. The fact that WE DONT EVEN GET LORE from the Zonais aside from being viewed as gods is sooooo ughhhhh I wish there was more. Why are there two remaining Zonais? (This probably got answered tbh but idc to look) Who’s the ancient hero and how come he looks like a Zonai or just in fact a different race we’ve never seen before?

Draconification…god. I have many thoughts and also many thoughts about the secret stones. It is an idea that I find interesting and could’ve worked for me. If it didn’t contradict itself in many aspects, as in how becoming a dragon, you will lose your sense of self. I think it would be a nice foreshadowing of the fate Zelda could’ve had. I think making the other dragons take a role in that and expand on it would’ve worked. Idk I think instead of implying it, it could’ve been expanded and shown a lot more severity of the situation.

Apparently I don’t got much on lore, but you know what I got much of????

STORY

This one is going to be a FAT one so bear with me. God where do I even begin here, I'm going completely omit the part where the game feels like it’s gaslighting you through the npcs cause I feel like everyone knows that.

My biggest frustration with this game is that it has such interesting story concepts and cinematic moments. But I can’t but feel like these moments were there first, and everything else was built around it. However, whatever suspicion I feel about how they created this story, only to my shock and horror that there isn’t a credited group of people in the credits, only an outside team (company?). Before I continue, I think it’s dumb when people say TLoZ didn’t have much of a story when previous Zelda games had a storyline to follow (OoT, MM, WW, TP, fucking…even Link’s Awakening, and more). So yes, TLoZ does have stories. It’s not just about the dungeons if I'm being honest.

What I find so odd is that Monolith Soft has games such as the Xenoblade games, where the latest game of that series does have a credited team of writers. Hell, BotW had two credited writers. But I won't go far speculating why they decided to hire a company outside the team to write TotK; it is only interesting to me why they did that. Since there really isn't a solid team of writers, I will focus my issues on Fujibayashi as a story writer; after all, he is the director of this game. And I've seen multiple interviews after the game's release where he explains a lot of the game's "lore" and story that should've been easily explained in the game in the first place. I think this will be me sharing my opinions rather than critiques... boy where do I even begin...

Sages—the ancient sages, not counting Mineru, are pointless. I felt no connection seeing the Ancient Sages meet their predecessors. Can't believe Age of Calamity made me feel more strongly about the Champions meeting their predecessors than the ancient sages did. - I also think they really don't share anything important. Maybe the first time, yes, but you could easily remove their cutscenes and just have Mineru explain how everything went down, and nothing will change. - Now, to the present Sages, I can't really say much, sadly. Tulin and Yunobo were the only characters for whom I completed their quests, and I enjoyed their character arcs, especially Yunobo's. If I could pick up TotK again, I would try to do Riju's arc, as it seemed really fun to play from the playthroughs I've seen my friends do. I don't really care for Sidon. Before I dropped the game, I was going through his quest and got really irritated fast for many reasons that I have mentioned here previously.

King Rauru and Queen Sonia – There has never been a character that I've enjoyed where I think they deserved much better than what they were there for. I get it; Sonia was only there as the character to be killed off to move the plot forward, but oh my god...I could've saved her. I wished we could've seen her more involved in the story than just standing by Raruru's side. - King Rauru, my brain turns foggy when I think of this man, and sometimes there are too many words to explain my issues. But to water it down, I feel we centered ourselves too much on these characters who don't even affect the main protagonist to some degree. Sure, King Rauru first appears at the beginning to show you his magic hand abilities. But I guess I was hoping something like how the previous TLoZ games had your companion help you throughout your journey and are the key fact of many things in the story (Midna and KotRL appear in my head when I mention this).

Zelda—sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I think this game would've been 10x better if she had been the protagonist. I know it probably wouldn't make sense because she turns into a dragon by the end but Idc. What frustrates me about Zelda is that she's given very few options. It's a war or nothing. It's becoming a dragon or being stuck in the past forever. I guess that's the tragedy of her story, but instead of me feeling sad, it frustrates me.

Link—Oh god, here we go. Link has a very small role in this, and you can disagree with me. But how is it possible that this is one of the few Links that has little involvement in the story? Link just happened to stumble into a bigger mystery than it already was. Link didn't even prove himself to Ganondorf why he's a threat to him aside from the first cutscene and Rauru.

Ganondorf - .........I hope this is the last time we see Ganondorf in the series. I know that sounds shocking, but if Fujibayashi is going to take the lead in storytelling for future games, I don't want him to make another iteration of Ganondorf. To me, Fujibayashi works better by making completely new Zelda villains. Ghirahim and Kohga are perfect examples. Ganondorf in this game was so underwhelming and disappointing. He never directly confronted himself with either Link or Zelda. Gameplay wise, he's great, but the story? What is he doing here? Literally, it feels like they only brought Ganondorf back because people questioned about Ganondorf back in BotW.

Conclusion

There are many aspects of the game that I enjoy; however, in my case, the bad outweighs the good. That's why this game frustrates me: There was a lot of potential to be seen. There is probably more for me to say that I'm either intentionally leaving out or just forgetting cause there are many things. Happy one year TotK 🎉🎉🎉

[purereflectionsworld]

Here’s a snippet from an Aleida fic I’m working on, which I hope to post on AO3 once I’ve completed a few chapters. The goal is to fill in the gaps in her relationship with Margo, and Margo’s importance to her family, in that space between Seasons 2 to 3. This excerpt’s likely to be in Chapter 3, and is set in 1984. In which Aleida finds herself on a special first date, reminisces about Apollo-Soyuz, and realizes that Margo and Sergei’s relationship *might* not be as strictly professional as she’s assumed.

___

“So you’re one of the good Mexicans,” she says after he tells her about moving to Texas with his parents and brother when he was five - a perfectly uneventful journey in broad daylight - and her words come out about five shades more sarcastic than she’d intended.

He doesn’t smile. In fact, he’s looking at her very seriously. “The only bad Mexicans in my book are the ones who celebrate Cinco de Mayo, unless they’re actually from Puebla.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. She knows what a lot of the white collar Mexicans in Texas think of her kind. There’s a reason she’s never dated one of them before.

He sighs. “I will acknowledge that I’ve met a lot of Mexicans in my family’s circle here who don’t think like I do. Lot of them speak progressively, then treat my undocumented friends like shit. I’ve had to cut those people out of my life.” He meets her gaze, and her stomach flips over a little bit. “My ex-girlfriend, for one.” 

She doesn’t say anything for a little while. Then, quietly, she tells him about Mama’s grave in Parras de la Fuente, and the night that Americans landed on the moon. About Papa, and homework sessions in the viewing gallery, and tutoring sessions with the first woman in Mission Control, and the worst phone call of her life.

She doesn’t tell him that she used to be homeless, and was once shot at, and struggled to hold down a job, and dumped her ex unceremoniously the day he helped her get this one. That she’s still living in a trailer park and likely won’t be able to move out until she gets the double promotion Margo has been heavily hinting at. But as he reaches across the table to squeeze her hand, briefly, before clearing his throat awkwardly and turning his attention back to opening his beer, she thinks that maybe she could tell him, someday. 

He opens the bottle, takes a swig, and looks back at her. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” she says, giving him a little smile, so he knows it’s okay for him to talk again.

“So did you make it to the Kennedy School?”

“Yes, I did both tracks.”

“You know,” he says, smiling back at her, “I was waitlisted for one of the math tracks myself. Must have been ten years ago, too. If I’d spent a little more time studying, and a little less time DJing in my parents’ basement, we might have met. Which one did you do?”

It turns out that he currently teaches a lot of the advanced math she learned at the Kennedy School, so the conversation flows effortlessly back and forth between them for several minutes. He’s genuinely fascinated by all the ways she applies the concepts to design space shuttles, and satisfyingly incredulous that she works with idiots 10 years her senior who can’t keep up with her work.

“And your father?” he finally asks, gently, after the math banter reaches a comfortable lull. 

“Still in Parras. I’m working on it,” she adds defiantly, because his gaze is shifting to something like tenderness, and she doesn’t want his sympathy. “Now that I’m a U.S. citizen, I’m hoping to sponsor him officially. My boss is trying to help, and she’s well-connected, so we’ll see.”

“You’re a citizen already?” he says, eyes widening. “Aleida, that’s amazing! I’ve heard it’s an uphill climb out of the amnesty program. Sounds like you’re working on some high profile stuff so I figured you might be an LPR by now, but…”

“I got fast tracked as a one-off,” she says, and suddenly as she looks back at him and sees the spark of wonder in his eyes, she feels a twinge of happiness about it that she didn’t feel in Margo’s office when Ellen broke the news, or even on the phone with Papa afterward. “The NASA administrator’s in Reagan’s cabinet, and she got him to approve it personally. For ‘important contributions to national security.’”

“What mission?” he says almost in a whisper, enthralled. “You able to tell me?”

She smiles, takes a breath. It’s not a secret, but somehow she’s never talked about it outside of NASA and her calls to Papa. “Apollo-Soyuz.”

“Holy shit,” he breathes, and she feels a warm rush at his recognition. She’s sure he remembers exactly where he was when the sirens went off. “What did you do?”

“I came up with an important part of the docking mechanism. Stayed on the Mission Control floor with the team when most of the country went to the bomb shelters. And -“ She closes her eyes involuntarily, recalls that soaring feeling. “They let me give the order to the astronauts on the CAPCOM. I’ll never forget it. Apollo, Houston. You are go for docking.”

She opens her eyes, and swallows hard, because he’s exhaling, sitting all the way back in his chair, just staring at her with an intense mix of shock and admiration and pride. Pride that she realizes she only ever hears these days in Papa’s voice on the staticky phone line, and sees in Margo’s eyes, sometimes, framed by dark red strands of hair, in that brief flash after Aleida solves a particularly complex problem. 

*

“Okay,” he says twenty minutes later, taking another swig of beer, “so what I’m hearing is, you crashed your boss’ date with her Soviet counterpart the day you came up with the docking mechanism fix.”

“What? No, it wasn’t a date,” she laughs. “No way. You haven’t met Margo. If you had, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

“You said they were both dressed up kind of fancy, and that he was drunk when he complimented your work ethic. Oh, and that your friend Bill said the first Apollo-Soyuz meeting went so badly that your boss made an awkward sex joke by mistake and that the Soviet guy responded with a purposeful one. Did I hear all that right?”

She pauses, cocks her head. “Okay, I can see how you got that impression.”

“I rest my case,” Victor says, setting his empty bottle down with a grin.

[mechahero]

//Don't really go here but I'm obsessed with this

[carlyraejepsans]

Do you enjoy underfell? I thought you disliked aus /genq

i don't dislike the concept of AUs itself, I'm just not a fan of like... the subculture that spawned around them in the UT fandom specifically and how it eventually took over almost all canon content (especially when it limits itself to the bros)

i like aus visually! i am an artist at heart after all. it's just that, if I'm going to care about them as stories and not just fun design ideas, my bar is uhh almost impossibly high the further you move from canon lolol.

[zecoritheweirdone]

[slowly pokes my head in] hey. hey you guys wanna see a pony.

decided to draw an oc of mine as a mlp:fim character!!! verrry very proud of it,,,

[mawguai]

✨💖Cute and strong! He’s Elusia’s favorite! Rosado!!💖✨

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Oough my god W.I.T.C.H. redesigns poisoned my water supply, burned my crops, and delivered a plague upon my house.

[raveartts]

wow how do i suck at drawing my own character sooo bad

[glass-oranges]

BOY WHO FINISHED PORTAL REVOLUTION!!!!

[astrxealis]

sorry to ffxivlovepost always anyway Man the way the devs & game did so good in making an mc that is Basically a blank-slate for the players, and there's so many opportunities to make your oc However you like but. the game itself adds so much story and character to that blank-slate guy. amazing

[moinsbienquekaworu]

How have I been in fandom for - going on 8 years (?) and not gotten into fanvids before?? All the association I could have been making.... All the memories.... All the composition and clever editing....

[istherewifiinhell]

ohh smth else i can say quickly abt the good tf show. absolutely wild for this to be the third time/iteration im seeing wind.blade (all in a row infact) and its like. OH! oh wait! shes good. everyone else just sucked at writing her. okay. cool.

[sysig]

Quest Complete! (Patreon)

[jils-things]

pkmn soulsilver babbles c:

i have reached the tag limit writing my thoughts help. im not even done but ig ill just leave it at that AHAHSHSHSH

[crystalflygeo]

jhgvcxcvbhjklkjhgfc CRYS!!! have you started playing honkai star rail??? the game is pretty good so far!

though ofc, while the characters are hot, zhongli is still the only one for my heart. *looks nervously at jing yuan* yep, totally not simping for another character.

please, li i still love you i swear-

LISTEN I-

I started playing on launch day and I like it I do but I haven't touched it since I just don't have the TIME ;w; genshin has absolute priority and managing 2 accs takes too much time (also why I haven't writen ueueue OTL)

ngl I first got interested bc of March 7th

then I saw Jing Yuan and I was like. him. yes.

when I started playing I saw all the ladies are SO PRETTYY??? HELLO???

and then I saw Welt was there and........ 👀 s-sir? daddy? Welt gives me Zhongli vibes, hot college professor vibes sazxdfcghbjkml oh no I might start simping ;o; sorry zhongli I still love you more but woof woof bark bark

[kuiinncedes]

all i know is a simple name everything has changed