deeply enjoy that the novel can also be read as a commentary on the fallacy of information. we have zzs as the main narrator who adds to this nuance by being a former spymaster and leader of a bunch of proficient investigators. hes very intimate with the process of verification of information, and even his vast databank of knowledge and his abilities of filtering and sorting the "true" from the "fake" is tested throughout the novel through many instances and events. its especially interesting because he makes a major mistake, almost from the very start, that he resolves only after a very long time, and only after overcoming personal weaknesses. his personal weakness at recognizing truth vs decept reveals itself in the inability to meet personal events with a human perspective; he is basically functioning like a person with two lives, and most of the time, he at least acts as if he is regarding wkx, suspected master of ghosts, from the professional business grounds of the retired leader of shadows rather than from the perspective of a person with an adventurous life and wishes of his own. in this lies the danger to misinterpret and to refuse to confront what is truly going on. if zzs cant 'find' the "true reason" for the ghost master following his humble retired self, he is going to do his utmost to make up one (on the basis of his personal and professional experience with such situations), instead of considering at least once the admittedly unlikely chance that wkx might like him and is even deeply sincere about him. this doesnt signal anything less but that we, as the reader, should not irrevocably trust even the one person who is in most stories the most trustworthy; the main narrator. instead, we are advised to reserve us the right to doubt and think for ourself, to look critically upon even zzs, which only circles back to the novel's theme of the fallacy of information. it even lends to the novel's dialogue with the human right to form your own opinion and your own thoughts and come to your own conclusions, no matter how much they might diverge from norm or mainstream or traditions, and no matter how tempting it might be not to.
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I think the main reason WW's Ganondorf is so different from the others it's because he has learned that his battle against the Goddesses is not a matter of everyone against him/the gerudo but rather a everyone against the gods.
Besides Demise's curse, Ganondorf has always been flooded by his wish of revenge: revenge against the hylians who marginalized his people, revenge again the hero who slayed him, revenge against anyone who opposed him. He doesn't fight for a just cause because he believes the world is unjust and the only way of surviving is by being unjust in return.
But in the Adult Timeline, after the events of OoT and breaking his seal, he discovers an awful truth: it's not that the world is unfair, the Goddesses are. Just to seal him again, they flood the whole kingdom they were supposed to protect, killing most of the hylians population and condemning a few selected survivors to struggle in tiny islands isolated from the rest by a huge sea warren of fishes but filled with dangerous monsters. Even the other races had to undergo drastic changes in their bodies to survive un the aftermath of the flood. That's when Ganondorf understood that the Goddesses weren't just unfair: they were uncaring, and willing to sacrifice anything to torment anyone who wronged them.
I think this is why Ganondorf, even thought some of his actions are still deplorable (launching Link to drown at the sea, kidnapping girls, allegedly destroying a village...), we see that he's less willing to actively hurt people (in the final battle, he has TWO clear opportunities to kill Link and Tetra, and in both times he just incapacitates them, and besides whatever happened in Windfish island we never see him sending his monsters to attack people, just kidnapp a few of them). In fact, he's motivanted by a more "noble" cause: to bring Hyrule, or better said, his idyllic version of it, back from the seafloor. This could be because he has stopped seeing hylians as the "other", and has started to consider them as being from the same band, just a bunch of mortals trying to survive the whims of the gods, who play with them as if they were mere chesspieces.
So, in a sense, Ganondorf is not really much different from its other incarnations. He's still full of hatred and rancor, but It has been redirected. Not against the royal family, who exiled his people to the deserts. Not against the hylians, who lived si much better than them and even had the gall to call them thieves when they were just trying to survive. Not against the hero and the princess who defeated and sealed him when he tried to reclaim what he thought he deserved.
It's the Goddesses.
The Goddesses that drowned their people to "protect" them from him.
The Goddesses that decided it was okay to let two children fight against him as their champions. Forever.
The Goddesses that decided he is the one and only Big Bad Guy of the story when they have commited more atrocities than him, both by action and inaction.
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Wes hated Chairman Rose on principle. A big businessman who makes performative gestures to cover for all the shady shit Macro Cosmos was doing. He was the head of the League, bringing entertainment to all of Galar! What kind of clout chasing asshole would you have to be to criticize Rose?
He was too similar to Es Cade for Wes’s liking.
His hatred deepened when he went exploring the Galar mines for the first time, tasked with retrieving Leon from the maze of tunnels into the earth. He could spot every single poorly maintained beam, every rusty pulley, every failure of safety protocol. The mine wasn't on the brink of disaster, but it was heading there through negligence.
Wes had seen firsthand what the failure of one bolt could do. Orre used to be a thriving desert, filled with flora and Pokefauna, made up of underground mining towns connected to the surface through one or two way towns. But one bolt in a support beam of one mine failed, and the mine collapsed. In a series of explosive chain reactions, town after underground town collapsed, spilling out toxic fumes that wiped out almost everything. Even to this day, there are no wild Pokemon, and the scars of the catastrophic event can be felt by the region's few hundred inhabitants.
Wes had been one of the unlucky survivors. No one went out into the desolate wasteland looking for survivors: only criminals looking for corpses to rob. One Team Snagem member realizing that he had been still breathing was all it took to seal his fate.
When Wes had found Leon, he had grabbed the man's hand and refused to let go, guiding them out of the labyrinthine death trap of a man. Chairman Rose was waiting outside with his secretary, and his flippant attitude to making sure that the mine was safe, that the lives of people now were not as important as hypothetical people in the future, made Wes's blood boil.
He kept his mouth shut. He kept his mouth shut about the veiled disgust in Rose's eyes when he saw Wes holding Leon's hand, as if he were Muk, dirtying the Champion with gross Orre germs (although Oleana's disgust was much more obvious). He kept his mouth shut through the patronizing comments about how he wouldn't understand Rose's grand vision of the future. He kept his mouth shut, because he knew his reputation was of the suspicious Orre foreigner and speaking up will just hurt his chances further.
Wes Wolf was named after Lycanroc, a species of hunters. He noticed how vigorously Leon defended him, staying by his side as the cracks started to form in the already tenuous relationship between Leon and Rose. He noticed how Oleana kept glaring at Rose with daggers when the man wasn't looking, how she was probably planning on usurping her boss and taking control of the company. He noticed how Rose omitted a lot in his description of the ideal future, as if he only cared about the future because it was something he could shape to his worldview.
A hunter knows when to wait for the optimal time to strike. So Wes bit his tongue and waited, because he is the Desert Bandit, Apex Predator of Orre, Protector of the Wilds, and Chairman Rose is his prey.
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having a job were you liked and appreciated is wild. I said to one of my colleagues smth like 'oh I like that I don't feel afraid constantly' and he was like 'yea that means that uve truly arrived here' bitch wtf don't just say that to me on a Saturday evening
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