#im just in my feels frankly

[gerudospiriit]

[Alright. I finished the game a good bit ago, and I’ve been sitting on this thought for a really long time (i.e. almost when I started the game when it came out). So. If you want to read my brain go brrrrrrr about Nabooru and the Zelda series in general, keep going. Otherwise, scroll on. Nothing to see here.]

[I don't know if it's been apparent, but, outside of really enjoying Tears of the Kingdom on the surface and being super glad they improved by leaps and bounds from Breath of the Wild...it also made me super uncomfortable. I've made mentions of my hang ups with how inconsistent the story is when it insists on seemingly making historical references to past games while also erasing said games a few times. But that's...not really where the discomfort comes in. Like sure. I want consistency. I want the threads of history they sprinkle in to connect at least in some viable and valuable way. I'm an English major for fuck's sake. But, the deep down crux of it is more specific.

I've feared this since the first cutscene, and more prominently when I learned more about the new sages that fought with Rauru, and it only felt more and more true as I played through the game: Tears of the Kingdom has either replaced/deleted Nabooru or changed her. Ocarina of Time and basically every other game and that history became obsolete because...they can't happen. If the Imprisoning War is set at Hyrule's founding, and Ganondorf was sealed away all the way until Zelda and Link release him in TotK, we can't have OoT. We can't have TP. We can't have WW. And, if we don't have OoT, we don't have Nabooru.

Unless, with all the similarities to scenes and whatnot from OoT, this whole Imprisoning War is meant to replace the events of Ocarina of Time (and therefore every other game, essentially), which brings me to the second option: the Sage of Lightning from the Imprisoning Era IS Nabooru. Which is very possible because, judging by the cutscenes, AT LEAST this sage, if not all of the Gerudo, turned on Ganondorf for some reason (which may be him attacking their settlements for some reason??? That's an issue for another post re: The problems I have with Ganondorf in TotK, re:re: the mountain of reasons I hate Demise and his silly little curse). Just like Nabooru did in OoT.

Even going by the second less drastic read of what's going on there, it's still...uncomfortable. It means I have to pretty drastically change Nabooru's story to line up with this new telling of OoT (if that's what this is and I really see no way around it outside of what I'll mention later). And I'll be frank: it hurts. It hurts as a long time Zelda fan who ADORED the story it was trying to tell and who has adored this character for so long only to be left with these feelings about it all. It's frustrating to see the devs do so well and so poorly with the last like...three games when it comes to consistency of even the remotest kind when it comes to lore and story. Instead, like plenty of other games, movies, etc., Nintendo seems more concerned with the shiniest new gimmick within a game and cashing in on nostalgia than actually respecting Zelda's story. AGAIN. Tears of the Kingdom was a lot of fun and a top notch game. A HUGE improvement on Breath of the Wild. And if they had just...given the attention to the details of the story and lore to make it more cohesive and not like a big "we're literally retconning everything" which arguable kinda started with SS lbr), this game would have been perfect to me.

But to get off my bitterness a little and discuss moving forward with Nabooru and some just random thoughts about like...what to do? If anything? I might be jumping the gun, and I may not even make anything set in any kind of stone YET in case DLC gives us more to work with BUT. Here are my thoughts.

As much as it irks me because the devs are wishy washy and won't come out and just admit that, since SS, they've basically wanted to obliterate everything established and start anew with new lore, legends, histories of Hyrule, etc. and therefore keep making some serious links back to the old games they've imploded with their new lore without any real connection or explanation, the first option is to treat SS, BotW, and TotK as basically their own separate entity/AU. With so much changing from the lore and motivations to the religion and removal of the Triforce and other pieces of the story, essentially, it is just next to impossible to REALLY fit these together with OoT and pretty much the rest of the series in a cohesive, workable way.

Which means I would probably have to play two versions of Nabooru: one who follows the events from OoT onward, and another that follows the events of the Imprisoning War as the Sage of Lightning (and I still don't even know if it's HER aklsjdflkjaf) and everything else that entails.

The other option is to figure out a way to just...piece this monstrosity together like some poor, Frankensteinian beast and/or just ignore every ounce of logic and just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, go with the flow, and wing the fuck out of interactions to bs something together for her. Whether that's playing the timeline card because fuck how many more did Zelda create anyway with her time traveling or something else? I'm not sure yet.

And I may be jumping the gun. Maybe we'll get so very lucky and DLC will explain everything for us and we can understand wtf is going on here. But for now, I guess stay tuned for more existential crises ft. Nabooru? Ahahha...]

[toytulini]

listen im ace and im pro kink at pride and whatever, but the way some of yall are wording your posts in response to the backlash against it is uh. really taking me back to the ace shitcourse era.

yall know theres nothing wrong with being a "virgin", right? that its not inherently shameful to have not had sex, to never have sex, even if youre not ace, even if you do want to have sex someday, like, its fine that you haven't had sex?

maybe if your problem is that theyre trying to police your behavior and shame you for expressing your sexuality, you can say that? instead of resorting to "haha stupid virgin gets no bitches" like my god. do you not hear how fucking regressive that attitude is? i know, i know, youre "joking".

get a better joke

[parksrway]

decayed

redbubble

[skeletronza]

more @legendlarkpod doodles. guardians 👍

bonus falen :p

[indigopoptart]

gonna get back into the swing of things with!! some faces I did a bit ago!!!

+ closeups and oc creds under the cut!

the welcome home guys ofc <3

some of my guys!

(Niebla belongs to both me and @akemima ! <3)

-

And now, some friends’ ocs!

Lady belongs to @gremliinsart, Keira belongs to @funonion001 !!! :3

Sundown belongs to @carnivalcarrion !! <3

Damon belongs to @sammysun , Wizard belongs to @akemima !! :33 <3<3

[fortheloveofexy]

stepping away for a while. fics are on indefinite hiatus until i come back. queue will run for a while til it's out.

bye.

[turtletoria]

curious if anyone else has this problem: being articulate but incomprehensible? like for example, im very good at articulating certain things, and people say im good at writing; however it seems that nobody is understanding what im truly trying to say, and trying to come up with a way to explain my true (but also ever-shifting and indecisive) thoughts is arduous and agonizing

[definitelynotshouting]

So I just started playing In Stars and Time because I got curious about the sad little blorbo you occasionally post about and afshdjdkrn

I just. Wanna hug them. So badly 😭

Siffrin isat my everything my cinnamon fucking apple WKDNWKDNEKEKSK HE IS SOOOOO SQUISHABLE...... THEY NEED A HUG SO BAD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

Incredibly pleased im helping spread the isat propaganda like the dev rlly just Made a whump fic in video game format huh....... for tumblr girlies by a tumblr girlie.... my gods we respect the grind as if i could EVER be normal abt that

I'll be so real ive already written little tidbits for a longer au oneshot i want to write in between chapters of hunger au, and the exercise in 2nd person pov is SO MUCH FUN im enjoying myself immensely :] here, a snippet for both fun and profit (and more fun):

"Siffrin...." Odile says, and it strikes a sour chord, a ripple of dissonance that screws rivets around your chest and tightens. She shouldn't have to say your name like that, with that kind of weight— as if all the Craft in the world isn't enough to carry it. Pure reflex ducks your chin into the collar of your cloak; you avert your gaze back to the rubble-littered floor of the tunnel, tracing dark crags in the stone where sputtering torchlight fails to reach. There you go again, stardust. Loop's voice is an ephemeral echo in your ears, a byproduct of months, years worth of past loops gone by. It isn't real. Gone and made yourself another person's problem. It isn't real. "— need you to start taking this more seriously." Odile bites out each word with the same deportment of a dog tearing off chunks of meat, clipped and cutting. Her brows knit together, mouth pulling down in a sharp curve; the lines around her eyes are tight, carved from the knife's edge of her own disappointment. Her disappointment in you. You almost miss the next sentence as well. "I have no way of helping you if you don't speak to me," she says. "And when you minimize these things you went through— you realize that's going back on your word, yes? Gems alive, Siffrin. We want to help." You speak before your mind has caught up with your mouth, hundreds of loops sanding down the words into something practiced, rote. "But there's nothing to help me w—" "Stop lying to me." Odile snaps, and your jaw shuts so fast you miss biting your tongue by a mere hair's-breadth. Your lungs threaten to buckle— inhale. Exhale. Come on, stardust, Loop's imaginary voice sneers, can't you do something as simple as breathe? Or are you just that blinding useless? ... Shut up. Odile's eyes slip shut. She raises a hand to meet them, kneading at the soft skin between her brows. "I'm... sorry, Siffrin," she says, halting, stilted. "I shouldn't— that wasn't productive. I apologize." Tentatively, you say: "You don't have to." "Yes, I do." Odile straightens once again, tucking a strand of sweat-slicked hair back behind her ear with a grimace. "It's not... conversations like these are... hard. Yelling is pointless for both of us. I'm sorry." "But you didn't—" "Siffrin," she says, and this time the syllables of your name twist, a rise and fall that cracks wryly in the middle. One sharp eyebrow arches up into the canopy of her hairline. "You're supposed to say you accept the apology." You stare. She stares right back. Oh. She's serious. "I..." you look down. "Um. Accept?" "Excellent," Odile says brusquely, and bends to peer at an invisible speck of dirt clinging to her forearm. She brushes at it with absent, studious flicks, the epitome of single-minded focus. "Then now we can move on with our lives."

[stevieharringtonwifeguy]

post apocalypse au where the plot of stranger things doesn't happen but vecna still tears the world open and brings the upside down right side up. and the scattered people who managed to survive the initial earthquakes and power outages and complete breakdown of society have to contend not only with creatures from the upside down trying to eat them, but also with what the bleeding of an alternate dimension into their reality is doing to their bodies

people with prolonged exposure to larger tears seem to be slowly changed into something else, like some radioactivity from the dimension is mutating them. people grow claws, or leathery wings, or their face peels open, or they turn into unrecognisable piles of eldritch goo. there's vampires, were-demogorgons, flayed, weird ghosts, and the number of super powered people like el was in the show skyrockets

other people who manage avoid this fate shun those that fell to it. and to an extent it's reasonable, some people who get changed in this way completely lose their humanity, like the flayed, and while others retain it it probably doesn't seem that way when a vampire-like person needs human blood to survive. but a lot of people are just as terrified of the changes happening to them as other people are, and while they may not be harmless, they'd much rather use their new biological advantages to keep people safe

despite this, people that have been 'corroded' by the upside down are ostracised, feared, sometimes outright hunted by regular humans. so sometimes, they band together. form their own little apocalypse groups

eddie is in one of those groups. he wouldn't say he's the leader, bc they don't really have a hierarchical structure and eddie likes to think he's managed to maintain his anarchic ideals even in the face of the apocalypse. but he is the oldest, and the most scary looking (if not the most actually dangerous), so the combination of everyone being younger and his ability to scare off corroded-hunters that come looking for them means everyone else kind of follows his lead

so no one really questions when he comes back to camp one day holding two passed out humans. a mole-dotted man and a freckled woman, probably about eddie's age, who were injured and had crawled into a ruin building to die. and like. what was eddie supposed to do, leave them there??? no, gareth, it has nothing to do with how pretty the guy is. no, eddie doesn't know how they'll react when they wake up in the middle of a corroded camp, they'll cross that bridge when they get there. el says she senses that they're good people, so clearly everything will be fine actually!!!!!

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

whyyyyy are dog people so obsessed with their pet taking a shit...

[ganondoodle]

as cool as their design is im really starting to dislike the sonau in general, aside from their stuff suddendly being everywhere and everything being about them and how cool(tm) they are now with the mystery stone turning people into dragons and the similarities between the sonau and the three dragons (naydra, eldra, farodra) its actually not an impossibility that they used to be sonaus as alot of people have been theorizing about ..but ...... idk that would very much ruin their otherwordly yet ethereal mystery to me

i probably sound like some hater whos trying to find something more to dislike about totk all the time but i promise im not!!

the three dragons being some unexplained mystery, beings that are there yet few can see them, timeless, nigh untouchable, they dont act on anything, they dont talk, something about them has always made me look at them in awe; if it turned out they were just yet another cool(tm) sonau guy that ate a stone ... :/

not a fan of that one lads, but dont worry, i will keep my thoughts to myself from now on, i dont want to ruin other peoples fun nor seem like i just hate everything ... the three dragons are just really important to me so i had to say something

[y3ahwhat3ver]

Been seeing this over and over and it's sort of been annoying me but. Valentino and Alastor are not even remotely comparable. Like. Look I may be a bit biased bc I like Alastor and don't like Valentino beyond the funny moments he has but like.

Okay. Alastor sucks. Like he's a violent dickhead but part of that is that he's very restrained in his violence. The only times we see him do anything outright violent are when he/the hotel are under attack and then his one moment with Husk. His relationship with Husk gets brought up a lot when people make the comparison but to me like.

Throughout the show you see Husk talk shit to Alastor, literally all of the time. He heavily dislikes him (in my opinion a major part of that is bitterness over losing his own title just to become subservient to Al) but he doesn't ever really seem scared of him, beyond the one moment. He and Alastor have known eachother for years and it's pretty clear to me that Alastor sort of just. Let's him say whatever as long as he doesn't hit A Limit. Alastor's own contract is something he's very clearly sensitive about and Husk bringing that up when he was already in a bad mood. I'm not saying the way he treats Husk in this scene is good, or right but just that it makes sense in context.

I guess what really does it for me is Niffty as well? Like it's so clear she loves Al, quite literally crawling all over him and crowning him. They have a very sweet relationship in the show. She's comfortable enough with him to freely speak about her own feelings ("I really like them Alastor. They let me put on roach puppet shows without booing")

You just get the sense that like. Alastors relationship with his contractee's is. Maybe not the most outright friendly but it's not inherently violent.

And then you compare that to Valentino. Valentino is violent, but worse he's impulsive. And also kind of an idiot. Like the first time we see him it's Velvette calling Vox to come deal with him bc the man is on a rampage and killing her models. He has to be talked down from going to the hotel and killing everyone there. (Already a bad idea image wise but like. With the literal Princess of Hell in that hotel it's like. What was your plan for after that Val. What was your plan for after you attacked the only heir to the throne, the literal daughter of the devil. Christ.)

The difference here is that the only contractee we see him interact with is Angel Dust, and their relationship is fraught with abuse. Physical, sexual, and psychological. Valentino enables his drug addiction because it makes Angel more compliant. Even when he is not being violent towards Angel himself, he's still perpetuating that violence through the work he has Angel do (literally the everything about Poison makes me kind of sick to watch. Tbh, like great song but i cannot watch the mv without getting kind of upset. And look there's a conversation in there about sex work, and specifically SAFE sex work but that's not really what this post is.)

Like. There's literally a line in the show about Angel being WATERBOARDED at work. ("You know, Val, he's into that waterboarding shit now - I don't know, it's a kink." - episode 6 welcome to heaven) And this is JUST Angel's perspective. You don't see Valentino's other contracts but from the way Angel is treated, it's kind of clear that he does shit like this to anyone under his control, and thus anyone who cannot tell him No.

Look. You get the sense that Alastor is a dick, but there's no implication that he takes Niffty and Husk out back and beats them when he's aggravated (with them or otherwise.) We literally watch Valentino assault and threaten Angel because there is someone stronger than him [Valentino] who is trying to get him out of work.

[Edit (June 2nd, 2024): I want to clarify that I do like loser, baby and also Husk as a character and this is more abt my grievances with fandom comparing the two. In series, Angel needed that discussion with Husk and even thought their situations aren't 1:1 or even really that similar, it's still clear that Husks attempt to like. Empathize with him worked for Angel. That is all, thank u and goodnight]

[altruistic-meme]

once again thinking about how the fandom treats Kristina like she’s the devil incarnate and often refuses to see the same amount of depth in her as they do the other characters

once again thinking about how there are less than 25 fanfics on ao3 currently tagged “Good Parent Kristina” and over 100 tagged “Bad Parent Kristina”

once again thinking about how i can hardly ever find a fic, even that isn’t under the bad parent tag, that doesn’t have Kristina acting like a horrible terrible villain

once again thinking about how just because the way that Kristina behaves isn’t “Perfect Ideal Mother” this means that she must not love her children at all and will actively never choose their happiness or ever consider their feelings 

once again thinking about how Linda’s problems parenting are constantly ignored just because we do see her show affection to her kids, and apparently that’s the only thing that’s needed to make a good parent and any absence of this makes you a terrible parent and person

once again thinking about how Ludvig shows little interest in understanding Wilhelm, actively ignores what he says at the table, never speaks up for him, and yet the fandom would constantly rather make him a perfect and loving parent over Kristina, who we see doing what she thinks is best to protect her son, implying that she fought with the royal court to make sure Wilhelm would stay heir (something that, despite his outbursts, Wilhelm has said he wanted, if only to honor Erik), and specifically stating that she loves him and has no problem with his queerness, or with him liking Simon, aside from the scandal of the video.

once again thinking about how people will give August the benefit of the doubt, talk about how his character is deep and complex and how much they love that about his character, but absolutely refuse to see any deeper meaning or possible feelings in what Kristina does because clearly she’s just a horrible person and there is no depth to her at all 

once again thinking about how much of my own mother i see in Kristina and how much it pains me to see people saying that Kristina is an irredeemable villain who only exists to bring pain to her son because i know my mother loves me even when she makes mistakes and says things that hurt sometimes, because i know my mother is also human and thus not perfect. 

[arsenicflame]

"love is love" but its the fact that the love i feel for my friends is not inferior to other peoples romantic love

[startrekin-it]

Woke up last night with two hypos that i barely had the brain activity to fix, and i no longer own Jelly Babies. Desperately hoping we don’t have a repeat performance

[pacificgasandelectric]

Current Events in Silm fandom rlly reinforce my feeling that, despite claiming an ethos of acceptance/tolerance of anything that doesn't hurt ppl, a lot of ppl in the section of Silm fandom I frequent do follow a set of socially-agreed-upon mores about what concepts are "not acceptable" to discuss or propose (or the ways in which certain topics must be discussed to be acceptable), that you all seem to have agreed on despite the things those mores restrict not being harmful to anyone.

And when someone does say smth that violates those mores, the response is disproportionate to the amount of harm done (which is typically none, imo). I know it's tempting to say "but we just want people to be comfortable and safe", but treating ppl badly for the sin of sharing thoughts you dislike is NOT the same as preventing people from doing things that are harmful. The former is much more of a harmful behavior than the sharing of the thoughts that sets it off. Fannish etiquette, people: you shouldn’t act like someone’s meta makes them morally suspect just because you disagree with it; save the “this is morally bad” for things that are ACTUALLY harmful. We're all stuck on this website together & if you want to have any sort of community, you need to ACT like you're in a community, and that means letting other people say things you dislike. Block them if you need to! I block people all the time because i know it's better for me AND for them if we can both blog in peace.

I am not particularly comfortable with the young-queer-on-tumblr silm fandom rn due to this tendency to rebuke things that are uncomfortable rather than harmful. Maybe that's fine with you. But if your goal is to make all fans feel comfortable and accepted, you need to actually do that. If your goal is to make people who share your unwritten rules comfortable in your space, you need to admit that, and write those rules down, and curate your space so it follows them.

Edited 8:10am PST to clarify the specifics of the behavior I find concerning.