#turning off reblogs bc i don't trust people to behave

[sage-nebula]

I think what is pissing me off so badly about Tears of the Kingdom’s story – or at least the part of the story that is told through the geoglyphs – is that I feel so much importance and agency was removed from Zelda and foisted onto Rauru in order to make him the focal, important narrative character. To explain in more detail:

Breath of the Wild is very much Zelda’s story. Although we play as Link, Link serves his titular role well in that through the memories we gain, we learn about Zelda – her struggles, and her character development. The story of 100 years ago is as much about Zelda’s struggles in awakening her sacred power as it is her triumph over everything that plagued her during her life: the expectations of her father and her kingdom, the feelings of worthlessness and failure on her shoulders, and Calamity Ganon himself.

And through it all, we see that Zelda’s story is one of her own agency; although expectations are thrust upon her shoulders, Zelda herself is the one who makes decisions every step of the way to do what she feels must be done. She travels to each of the sacred springs, she researches the Guardians and searches for alternatives to fight Ganon in case her power doesn’t awaken, she journeys to ask the Champions for their assistance, she travels with Link and gets to know him. Zelda is the one who saves Link’s life by telling Impa and Robbie to take him to Shrine of Resurrection, Zelda is the one who takes the Master Sword to Korok Forest to be protected, and Zelda is the one who imprisons Calamity Ganon in Hyrule Castle. For the first time in the series’ history, Zelda was the one who trapped and imprisoned Ganon, not the other way around. And she held him there for one hundred years. That takes a level of strength and fortitude no other character in the series can lay claim to. Although the game was pitched as Link having to save Zelda, not only did she save him first, but in the end it really was HER sealing power that sealed Calamity Ganon after Link dealt the final blow. She did that.

In Tears of the Kingdom, though . . . as soon as Zelda is yeeted into the past, she becomes a passive character for most of the flashbacks. Her personality is diluted into her saying “oh” and, at times almost timidly, voicing her thoughts on things to Rauru or Sonia. She never brings up Calamity Ganon, though she alludes to the name Ganondorf giving her pause; she lays the salvation of Hyrule entirely on Link’s shoulders instead of telling them how she awakened to her sacred power and was the one to finally seal him; we don’t once see her doing ANY research on her own even though she LOVES research and was actively searching for alternative methods to fight Calamity Ganon when she couldn’t get her own powers to work; when Sonia is killed she does literally NOTHING against Ganondorf . . . I could go on. Zelda only takes initiative after Rauru has already sacrificed himself to seal Ganondorf beneath the castle. The first real initiative we see her take is to turn herself into a dragon, which – okay, mood, but also it’s a complete departure from the driven young woman we saw in Breath of the Wild, who pushed herself past the point of exhaustion time and again even after her own father told her that her people thought that she was “heir to a throne of nothing.” Hell, we didn’t even see her start nerding out over being in the past and meeting the people she’d read about; it was a departure even from the little geek-outs that we saw in the very beginning of the game!

It’s a complete disappointment, and one made worse by Rauru’s existence. Now, one could say that Rauru’s light power is meant to allude to the Sage of Light in past games. After all, he DOES share the same name as the Sage of Light from Ocarina of Time. But Sonia explicitly says that Zelda’s power is the same as Rauru’s power, and Zelda’s power is Hylia’s power, which is supposed to only come from the blood of the goddess and only activate in women . . . and Rauru is both a man and is clearly not of Hylia’s bloodline. In fact, it’s kind of implied (imo) that Rauru married into the Hyrulean Royal Family, although that makes no sense because: a.) Hyrule would need to already exist in that case, and b.) he wouldn’t be King in that case, he would be King Consort, and Sonia would have been the one ruling the kingdom.

But then, that brings us to Nintendo’s misogyny problem.

The Zelda series is a weird case where in past games, there was actually a lot of focus on female characters, and particularly female characters in positions of power. Ocarina of Time, as much as I feel it is overrated, is a great example of this; we learn that Hyrule’s polytheistic religion is focused around three female deities (Din, Nayru, Farore), and five of the seven sages are female (Zelda, Saria, Ruto, Impa, Nabooru). Zelda herself plays a huge role in the game as not only is she the seventh sage, but she is also Sheik, who teaches Link all of the songs he needs to travel to the various temples. She played an active role even if she did ultimately end up captured, and this is a trend that continued in later games, such as when she fought Ganondorf alongside Link in Wind Waker’s climax and also partnered up with him in Spirit Tracks.

But then we have ways in which Nintendo seems to have been walking back some of this lore, such as how they went from goddesses to speaking of the power of gods in the aforementioned Wind Waker, and how they’ve now decided to do away with everything established in Skyward Sword to instead make it seem like the sacred power comes not from a female goddess (Hylia) but instead a goatman from the sky. We also see a gender imbalance among the cast; whereas the Champions were evenly divided by gender in Breath of the Wild (Urbosa and Mipha for the ladies, Daruk and Revali for the gents), we now have three boys (Sidon, Tulin, Yunobo) to one lady (Riju). Of course, this was a problem that was set up in Breath of the Wild . . . but at the same time, if they weren’t going to have Teba be the new Champion/Sage, then there was no reason why the new Champion/Sage couldn’t have been a female Rito. They could have easily gone with one of Kass’s daughters, or hell, even Teba’s wife, and they chose not to

But to me, the shift to focus on Rauru is the bigger issue, because of everything that comes with it. Because now he, not Hylia, is the source of Zelda’s power. Because Hylia isn’t even mentioned at the goddess statues anymore (and while it didn’t make sense for them to worship her instead of the big three in the first place, I’d still rather have that than this). Because he was apparently the founder of Hyrule even though that makes no goddamn sense. Because the technology that came from his people replaced everything that the Sheikah did. Because the Sheikah didn’t even get one iota of representation in the past flashbacks despite the fact that they were there before Skyloft even descended to guard Hylia and her bloodline. And I’m getting off track again, but moving Zelda to the background and removing her agency and her personality in order to try to get me to care about this skygoat (which failed, btw) just . . . bothered me, a lot.

I know I can write this whole game off as just a “what if” fanfic, because Breath of the Wild stands as a self-contained story that didn’t need any of this. And I probably am going to do that, but I’m still just . . . so immensely bothered by this. I finished the geoglyph flashbacks and saw that Zelda is now a dragon (which – are they trying to say that Din, Nayru, and Farore were mortals who decided to become dragons? Is that where Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh came from? That better not be the implication here), and I’m sure she’ll get turned back in the end, but this is just . . . a hot mess. And the tilt toward monotheism in the Zelda Lore, and also the centering of male characters, just . . . bugs me, a lot. In the end, I don’t like this Rauru any more than I liked OoT Rauru, which is to say, I really don’t care for them.

Sonia was good, though. I did like Sonia.