#you have asked... the wrong person...

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I've never been more normal in my life.

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[choccy-milky]

finally drew clora and seb's kids!!🙌🙌

Celeste Sallow: OK THIS IS THE NAME IM SUPER PROUD OF BAHAHA because not only does the name celeste relate to the stars (in typical ravenclaw fashion...clora picked the name) but celeste sallow is also an alliteration. BUT, its an alliteration that begins with a C, which means clora gets to match with celeste in the form of both of their names starting with a C, whereas sebastian gets to match with celeste because both of their names are an alliteration/they're alliteration allies🥹ITS THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!🥳

Lewis Sallow: as for lewis, if you've read my fic then you know that seb has a vendetta against names that start with an L bahaha, but 'lewis' was actually HIS idea. when celeste was born, seb wanted to find a muggle story to read to her, since clora's favourite story is ALSO a muggle one (sherlock), and he wanted to stick with tradition. so he ended up finding alice in wonderland, which he loved because of how adventurous and clever alice was and of how much she reminded him of clora and celeste (both personality and looks wise). it became his favourite for those reasons, to the point that when they had lewis, sebastian overcame his L-name hatred by naming their son after lewis carroll.

Houses: celeste could have been sorted into either gryffindor or slytherin, but ultimately ends up in slytherin because she wants to be like seb. kinda like how clora also probably could have been in gryffindor, tbh. as for lewis.....him being 10000% in ravenclaw doesnt need any explanation BAHA, just look at him.

Appearance: since clora has a tiny bit of veela blood in her, thats obvs passed down to their kids, too, and so they mostly take after her as a result of it. but there's still little bits of seb that shine through in each of the kids: for lewis its his brown curly hair, and for celeste its her complexion/freckles. and the fact that celeste looks so similar to clora only doubles up sebastian's stress/protective instincts when he watches her BAHAH. he's ofc still proud that she takes after him so closely, but seb also cant deny that he wishes it had been their SON that had taken after him instead, to keep her out of danger.

Celeste & Lewis: for celeste and lewis’ relationship, celeste is a super proud big sister, and treats lewis kinda like how seb treats clora. if there's anything that needs to be done, she offers to do it for him. and although she doesn’t have the patience to read stories herself, she loves playing outside and having lewis read to her in the background, and loves to act out/use his stories to fuel her imagination. and lewis makes sure to pick stories that he KNOWS she’ll like (which mostly involve heroic and daring feats of adventurers or pirates. he's tried to read more classic fairytales and romances to her a few times, but celeste always gets bored). she loves to draw though, so sometimes when lewis reads books that have no pictures, she'll draw them herself.

Celeste & Seb/Clora: celeste is a daddy's girl LOL and always tries to impress seb with the stuff she does, especially after hearing how HE was at her age, and so its half to impress and half because shes competitive that she wants to do the same/be just as good. and seb always gets a kick out of hearing her feats in the crossed wands club, or in defense against the dark arts class, and he also goads her on, telling her she'll have to do better than that if she wants to be as good as HE was. and whenever celeste gets detention, clora always stresses and asks why, whereas seb just tries to keep the smirk off his face. as for celeste and clora, clora also reads to celeste, and bakes and cooks with her, which is something celeste actually likes doing. not only because it keeps her busy and she likes to help and get messy in general, but also because she likes the fact that it results in good food afterwards LOL, and constantly asks when things can be taken out of the oven. also, for as tomboy-y as celeste is, she honestly doesn't mind/likes the clothing that clora puts her in and likes when clora dresses her up, bc it makes her look like one of the princesses from the storybooks, and it just amuses her more than anything else. once she enters hogwarts, though, its mostly trousers. but she still DOES like the occasional girly clothing.

Lewis & Seb/Clora: lewis is a momma's boy LOL and unlike celeste, doesnt care about duelling or of proving himself or anything like that, and is only concerned with stories and his future studies. so ofc clora had to show him sherlock, which he naturally loved. it even inspired lewis to want to write his own stories, so that he could challenge his own skill and see if he could, but also because he wants his mom to read them, and likes the idea of writing his own sherlock-esque story with equations and mysteries to be solved that he can offer her. lewis also wants to write a book for celeste as well, bc although he wont admit it, he basically wants to write a story tailor-made for her and her interests. one that he thinks will have everything she’d love in it. and part of it is genuinely because he WANTS to do it for her, but the other part of it is also for his ego, and to see if he CAN write a compelling story, and write something that would actually get THE hyperactive celeste to sit down and read it in its entirety (not to mention of her own volition). as for with seb, lewis looks up to him more than anyone else, due to how well-rounded he is and how hes so good at practical stuff AND studying, and he kinda sees seb as a main character/protagonist from one of his books, and uses sebastian as inspiration for his own stories. if hes stuck on what he thinks the dashing main character should do next, he'll ask his dad what HE would do, which results in seb getting very weird questions that he nonetheless is always happy to answer. also, when lewis is older and finally learns the full story of what happened with clora and seb and ranrok and rookwood, he writes their story in novel form, except he just changes their names/some of the details, and it becomes a best seller LOL. and i didnt know where to put this, but the four of them all read a story before bed every night, with lewis in the middle and seb and clora on either side of him. though celeste stands at the foot of the bed, basically doing a charade/mime show of what theyre reading, and putting on a little play to go along with it BAHHA.

OK thats all i can think of for now ive yapped enough😩 if youve read all of this ur a real one.... ive also considered giving them a 3rd (and last) child, which would be a boy that looks exactly like seb, and seb would just be praying like please.....let this son take after me🧎‍♂️🙏 BAHHA

[gingerswagfreckles]

Gentiles will see a post where someone justifies murdering a 4 year old Jewish child for liking Batman under the argument that it is "cop propaganda" and write a paragraph about why Batman isn't cop propaganda instead of why murdering Jewish 4 year olds for any reason is bad.

[crow-caller]

If you find using alt pronouns tricky or unnatural, just a bit weird that you maybe avoid it as much as possible— I'm talking it/its, neopronouns like ae/aer.

Practice. That's it.

It is okay to find these odd to use, because you are not used to using them. It isn't that it/its is magically uncomfortable to use to refer to another human, it's that you haven't used it for people before and your brain isn't used to it. It's okay to have trouble formatting neopronouns, because unlike she/her/hers/herself you don't have experience using that pronoun and it's variants

Practice! Write something starring a character using those pronouns. Find a character who uses them you can write about. Just scribble out sentences. You need to train your brain a little, and that's normal.

Did you ever have trouble using they/them? I did! People who complain using singular they/them feels wrong are experiencing the same thing. I struggled to conjugate it at first because I'd not used it in such a way. Now it is effortless. You just aren't used to it. You should practice.

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he comes across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt, and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh." Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmare, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[stars-obsession-pit]

Hello! Can do a chapter fic off this fic prompt Danny phantom x dc: https://www.tumblr.com/corkinavoid/767516270934556672/dpxdc-legal-power?source=share

This isn’t a one-to-one recreation of that dialogue but it’s based on that as a framework/premise

Batman dropped down into the room behind a pair of figures—a teenage boy and a slumped adult—letting his landing create an audible thump to alert them of his presence.

If the teen noticed, he didn’t react. Even as Bruce approached, he continued to stare impassively at the wheezing figure on the ground, an old wooden bat with flaking green paint on its side loosely held in his right hand. Bruce had already suspected who the figure would be since he arrived, but seeing the Joker so broken was still bizarre. No laughing, no schemes. He didn’t even seem to be attempting to escape his binds, just… lying there, almost as if pinned in place.

Bruce paused a step behind the teen. “I don’t know what the Joker did to you, but this isn’t the right way to go about this.”

The teen scoffed, and Bruce felt a painful lurch in his chest as he was reminded oh so strongly of his son Jason. “And what, let him go kill more people?”

“I know he deserves to face justice, but not like this. Everyone deserves a right to fair trial. No one person should be judge, jury, and executioner.”

The teen turned to look at him with glowing green eyes, and Batman felt himself freeze. He had faced gods before, yet even using that as a comparison felt like an understatement. The boy’s eyes belonged to someone far older than his teenage form implied, and they radiated power. Inevitability.

When the teen—no, the entity—spoke again, his words carried an unearthly echo. “Perhaps, but I’m not acting for just myself.” He paused, glanced down at the Joker, then asked almost conversationally, “Do you know how many people he’s killed?”

Another pause, but before Bruce could even try to answer, the entity continued, “Eight hundred and fifty-six. He’s ended the lives of eight hundred and fifty-six human souls. I can tell you about every single one, if you want. About who they were, what their dreams were before he killed them. About the pain they felt at his hands.”

He punctuated the word ‘pain’ by raising up the wooden bat in his hands and ramming its end down onto the Joker’s arm. He let out a wheeze, muffled by the gag in his mouth.

“I have a duty to my people. I am the King of the In-Between and of all the souls that pass through it—even ones whose stays were as brief as his. I am the rightful arbiter of his fate. And with that power, I sentence him to death.”

He raised the bat again, adjusting his grip so he’d hit with the side rather than the end this time, then paused and let out a chuckle. “Of course, just because it’s based on some justice doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun with it too.” He swung the bat down, slamming it into the Joker’s side, then hooked it under the clown’s torso and flicked him up through the air to slam into the wall. “We all really hate this guy.”

With the entity’s attention fully turned away from him as he sauntered towards the Joker’s slumped figure, Bruce could finally unfreeze himself.

Even if the Ghost King did have the right to pass judgement on Joker, Bruce still couldn’t let torture go on like this. He wouldn’t win a direct fight, but he could hopefully at least grab the Joker and bring him over to the police. Carefully, he reached for some of the smoke bombs and batarangs on his belt and readied his grapple. He’d have to do this very, very fast.

But before he could move, another figure entered the scene. Red Hood, emerging from the shadows on the far side of the room, an unexpected bit of a pep to his step.

“Nice to see someone else who gets that that bastard needs to die. But if I may make a suggestion, how ‘bout you use a crowbar instead of that old bat? It’d be a bit more… fitting.”

[denkilightning]

watching dreams stream rn and the way dream always carries out conflict/confrontation conversations with entire paragraphs of stating everything about the situation from his perspective, how it makes him feel, what can be done about it and basically being extremely emotionally intelligent and mature for which the main proof is the message he sent tommy that he showed in the beginning VS tommys portrayal of him being a purposefully slow caricature with 'youre a bully 2x' 'its mine' 'youre the worst person ever' making him seem like a child mentally... same man who called dream 'an actual bastard' for posting a meme with the r slur in it

[cto10121]

Book Fiyero: *immediately recognizes Elphaba and stations himself at the backdoor to prevent her from evading him, stalks her halfway across town to her aerie (even though at that point in time she was only a college friend he hadn’t seen in five years), insists on seeing her again, instinctively goes to comfort her when she first cries, gets sucked into increasingly deep and fraught conversations with her about collateral damage and freedom fighter terrorism, calls her the “most individual, the most separate, the most real” DURING AN ARGUMENT, says he adores Elphaba’s looks IN THAT SAME ARGUMENT, doesn’t understand Elphaba’s “being born with a talent or an inclination for goodness is the aberration” comment because (implied) he sincerely believes Elphaba isn’t evil, changes his mind about the plight of the Animals all by himself but doesn’t mention it to Elphaba because he is afraid she would distance himself from him, buys scarves for both his wife and Elphaba even though only Elphaba likes scarves, is so concerned for Elphaba and her dangerous Lurlinemas Eve mission that he stalks her instead of staying at his club or just leaving town altogether, and is so worried about her that he returns to the aerie just to see her*

Also Book Fiyero: Am I in love with Elphaba?

[klanced]

“Keith is not a tsundere he just sucks” you know and understand more than a simple mortal mind could ever dream

i feel like a quintessential part of understanding keith's character is realizing that he is generally okay at socializing with people (he just doesn't like dealing with strangers), but there is something very specific about lance that makes keith fumble every single interaction they have

[vaggieslefteye]

ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ↳ anonymous asked: HUSK and ALASTOR or angel and valentino?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

you are so whimsical i qant to check out this mdzs (..??) because of your whimsical nature thank you sorry im very high and your art moved me emotionally

This is simultaneously the sweetest and funniest thing someone has sent me, thank you.

[crow-caller]

I've been contacted multiple times now for a scam on this site which is...

If someone contacts You, asking you to buy a commission (with listed reasons too like rent or food)... you need to watch out. All scams are shitty, but this one especially is taking advantage of an inclination to trust people and want to help :/ you should always, of course, verify where your money is going before you send it

Multiple times after posting with the word 'commission' in it, I've had accounts reach out asking if I'm buying any. Once the post in question was me being excited i had a commission in progress— definitely not a rime im likely to be buying another, but the scammer was likely just searching for any use of the word and messaging en masse

The accounts have art on them, but all reblogged or posted in a short time frame, fairly recent, and only a page or two total. This art is stolen, usually from very small artists, making it harder to backtrace. Talking to the person will be quite rushed towards reaching a payment. But there isn't necessarily one obvious script here

I'm just saying.... generally, artists don't reach out from the blue to ask you to commission them. People can work in various styles, but check someone's page. Reverse image search if there's any hackles raised. Legitimate people do have new accounts or no professional profile, and may need money desperately... but there are 100% scammers out there too.

It feels extremely shitty to accuse someone of being a scammer, but if you don't feel you can trust them, you can ALWAYS politely decline and refuse further conversation. "I'm not looking to commission right now, but thank you".

(In slightly similar scam watch, my ancientass never used Fictionpress has been overflowing with a similar but more obvious version of this— someone going "I love your writing!! I'm an artist and would love to make art for your story?". I've received like 10 variations of this script now. They're either wanting money full stop, or hoping to get you to pay for AI slop.)

[numberoneredriotfan]

Rody and Deku talking on the phone every other night after world heroes mission, Rody venting about different problems at his new job and then getting low-key upset when Deku tries to give him logical solutions to these problems.

Like- "nooo, I don't want a solution, I just want to complain!!"

[crk-kr-to-en]

I don't know if this is necessarily a translation ask but I was curious if you knew any more of the actual genders of the characters. There's a huge majority of the cookies who use they them or smth else in eng but I've heard a lot of them are mistranlated.

Yeah, the characters have already had an assigned gender before they're released but the Korean text doesn't use any pronouns and heavily infers their gender through voice or the context. An example would be Pure Vanilla who could've been mistaken as a female because his Korean VA is a woman, but the in-game dialogues, he refers to himself as a king confirming his gender is male.

And the cookies who use they/them do have an assigned gender in Korean, which makes the English version headcanons. (I already made a post about that here)

Another is Choco Werehound Brute, with he/she/it pronouns in English, who is also male. (I literally forgot to add the diva of all time.) I've seen that people(Western fans on twt especially)(There's always something wrong with them. It's Twitter.) get offended when other people "dead name" Schwarzwälder because he's "trans", which was never mentioned in the game.(They're heavily projecting and protecting absolutely nothing.) He is also one of the crk characters who are effeminate men. He loves wearing dresses while embracing his masculinity. His name in Korean is Charles which is his REAL name and he hates it when people call him that. The reason why he wanted to be reffered as Choco Cream Wolf Hammerman was because he wanted to sound intimidating and scary. In the episode where he was dresses as a princess, he was simply too deep in the princess act to break character.

This is Charles' Korean description.

새빨간 눈동자, 거친 갈기, 날카로운 이빨! 커다란 망치를 한 손으로 휘둘러가며 쿠키 왕국을 벌벌 떨게 만드는, 이름하여 초���크림 늑대 망치맨! 등장할 때마다 발을 쿵쿵 구르고 자신의 이름을 우렁차게 외치며 화를 내는 바람에, 유난히 가녀린 쿠키들은 반죽색이 하얗게 질려버린다. 지금은 감초맛 쿠키 밑에서 쿠키들을 겁주고 울리고 있지만 진짜 꿈은 케이크 괴물 중에서도 제일 센 악당이 되는 것. 언젠가는 망치맨이라는 이름처럼 오직 망치 하나 들고 세상을 지배하겠다는 꿈을 꾸면서, 오늘도 노을지는 지평선 너머를 아련하게 바라보며 우수에 젖는다. 이것이 악당의 진정한 로망...?! 사실, 귀족 집안에서 곱게 자라 찰스라는 본명을 가지고 있지만 이미지 관리를 위해 최대한 비밀로 하고 있다.

Bright red eyes, rough mane, sharp teeth! The so-called Choco Cream Wolf Hammerman, who swings a huge hammer with one hand and makes the Cookie Kingdom tremble! Every time he appears, he stomps his feet, shouts his name, and becomes angry, so the exceptionally thin cookies turn white in color. Now he scares and cries cookies under Licorice Cookie, but his real dream is to become the strongest villain among the cake monsters. One day, as he dreams of dominating the world with only one hammer, just like the name "Hammerman," he glances dimly over the sunset horizon and is soaked in glory. This is the villain's true romance...? In fact, he grows up in an aristocratic family and has his real name, Charles, but he keeps it as secret as possible to maintain his image.

I've already seen people (twt ppl again) use the excuse that "Cookies don't have gender," which is wrong because Korean text just doesn't use pronouns for them, but that doesn't stop you from headcanoning them in any way you want them characters to be.

[vesna-v-irkutske]

Hi, this might be a stupid question, but do you know if Nikita and Artyom were maybe "fans" of any like Western murders/mass shooters? Like for ex: Columbine, Jeffrey Dahmer, and yk, so on and so forth.

Hey, not a stupid question at all. Dismembered PugachOva has a song dedicated to Albert Fish, but that seems to be it. They probably knew more than that, but they didn't really talk about it, and they weren't that interested.

Расчленённая ПугачОва — Пиздато! (А. Фишу посв.) (Dismembered PugachOva — Cunty! (can be translated as "Fucking awesome!") (dedicated to A. Fish)) × It appears on this compilation album of "the band's greatest hits in 2008-2009". + A slightly different mix of the same song: Расчленённая ПугачОва — Пиздато! (Альберт Фиш — крутой мужЫк) (Dismembered PugachOva — Cunty! (Albert Fish is a cool man))

Artyom presumably knew something about the mass shooters, but it's unknown about whom exactly. × On September 3, 2010, he said the following to someone (the other person's answers haven't been preserved). Read it from the bottom up. He wasn't completely serious about it, he was just tired, I guess.

► Regurgitate — Perish in Blood

[rawliverandgoronspice]

re: sympathetic ganondorf vs evil for evil’s sake ganondorf, i think this is misrepresenting and underselling what’s actually offputting to people

“i’m evil because i’m evil” or “i’m evil because demise is evil” and the associated lust for power simply for its own sake has always been lame and low effort. there’s a reason it’s “shit tier” on the classic “villain motive tiers” thing

“i’m evil but there’s enough nuance to make the player at least somewhat sympathetic to me even if i’m still ultimately a bad guy” is a good thing that people like? i’ve never personally interacted with a zelda player who thinks windwaker ganondorf ruined the character or anything - he’s generally regarded as the gold standard of villain writing both in and out of zelda. this is roughly “high tier” on the tier chart

“actually TWIST i’m not evil at all, it’s the good guys who were evil all along, i’ve done nothing wrong and i’m completely justified in my righteous quest against the status quo, you’re the real secret true villain for being complicit in preserving it” is technically regarded as “elder god tier” on the motive tier chart but i would personally label it as “oscar bait tier”. these things *can* be compelling in conversation with the existing landscape, but often it comes across as a deliberate effort to subvert the audience’s expectations for the sake of being unpredictable (or worse, for the sake of proving you’re the smartest one in the room). in separate works where this conversation/critique is the entire point (eg. Watchmen or The Boys), that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the audience sets their expectations accordingly. in an established, long-running franchise, however, this almost always reads as dripping with contempt for the audience, like walking into a room and going “you morons like this shit? let me, a person much smarter than you, explain what it’s Actually about, because you’re an idiot if you’ve been a fan of this series before now”

on top of that, in the context of a series like zelda, this type of story feels myopic and disrespectful to the future of the series. “welp i burned down the 20+ years of lore behind this character so i could do a deconstruction, good luck using them in any capacity in the future, sounds like a you problem”

all this is to say, i think it’s a bit disingenuous/strawman-y to suggest that people put off by this want ganondorf to have 0 depth at all. there’s a lot of room for different kinds of depth, it’s just that the trend of the last decade has been for “depth” to mean “condescending deconstruction”

Hey!

Thanks for taking the time to write this ask, I think it warrants an interesting conversation. To me, there's like, a lot of things about what you're saying, and tbh I do see where you're coming from --in part.

First thing first... No yeah unfortunately some people Are hostile to even WW Ganondorf. It's been a rising trend in the fandom since TotK was released --people being very against the concept of any additional complexity to the character, either not getting it or considering anything he says pure manipulation that doesn't even warrant a conversation, literally making fun of people who were intrigued by this and wanting more out of this particular thread. This position not only absolutely exists within the fandom --less so on tumblr, I'll agree there-- but it's not even hard to stumble upon as a pretty regular opinion that gets tossed around. I had some interesting asks thrown my way, let's say. The idea that Ganondorf is a remotely interesting character that deserves more thought than what he gets is very much Extremely not the norm, and the very fact that you, as a fan, likes him as a guy is perceived as weird and missing the point by a lot of people. Like a lot a lot of people.

So I'll just... I guess I haven't clarified my position in a while, so I will reclarify my position on our favorite evil dude: I do like him perfectly fine as a villain, I do not want him to be "redeemed" by the narrative, I think he works fantastically as an ongoing threat, I think they could make him even scarier and more offputting and that would be super fun and thrilling... and I also think he already is complex. Like, inherently. Everything Nintendo has been putting into him since his first appearance is complicated --even their attempts at flattening him back in TotK do not fully work because they can't scrub him of the extremely loaded ideas they injected into him from the get-go. Nobody forced Nintendo to do a Mega Orientalism when inventing him, nobody made them write the NPCs to have this super weird antagonistic relationship to the gerudos in OoT, nobody made them have all this lore of the one man born every hundred years, raised by twin witches --and then nobody made them press on that tension point in Wind Waker explicitely, and then, in a more subtle fashion, in TP too. Nobody forced their hand when it came to having the strange "round ear" situation, suggesting (confirmed even, in additional canon) gerudos are born unblessed. The fact of the matter is: everything to make the relationship between Hyrule and the gerudos complicated has been there since 1998. There's no need for a Switcharoo to prove that anyone is smarter than the audience: everything messy has always been baked within the worldbuilding itself. It's in the cartridges already!!

Perspective on it is what could change, though --because, except in Wind Waker, we never get even a hint of a sense that we should think, as an audience, that Hyrule's super weird relationship to the gerudos is maybe questionable. Worth thinking about at least. Which, given the optics, is wild to me that to bring this particular can of worms up is still very largely considered crazy talk within the fandom (that, or the Sheikah situation across the series, also insane in many ways). And yes, it would perhaps lead to themes that are a bit heavier than what Zelda has been overtly dealing with (though, again, Majora's Mask exists --and I do find a lot of unpacked ideas in the Wild Era, like the very unquestionned gerudo bridal pipeline, very uhhh unfortunate already if I'm being honest --even moreso because it is unquestioned). But Zelda, when well handled narratively, can do wonderful things with evocative subtext, open doors never fully crossed, a lynchian pressure on what should feel offputting. We don't even need a sad monologue about it. It doesn't even need to be handled explicitely. But I think the pressure point is just better when understood and incorporated in some form, instead of being denied so hard the world itself start to feel incomplete and unlived.

I do want to say... I get what you mean with the whole "oscar bait" thing. There has been, historically and in recent years, a tendency to be driven by an external, almost panicked sense of morality rather than by the internal drive of a story, its internal thematic logic. I also do think it can feel very corporate, very "Disney looking back at its own movies and scrubbing off everything Buzzfeed deemed problematic in 2014 while making everything glossy and lifeless and awful" and it's not that great!!! and tbh I can't say I would trust Nintendo to handle any appreciation for the fact that the story of an eternal golden kingdom cheering on beating the evil outsiders who want to corrupt everything good and pure and blonde about that perfect inherently good place, is like, extremely not neutral. It absolutely is a delicate thread to weave, and I agree that putting a definitive end to Hyrule is probably not the smartest IP move to do. But, Hyrule doesn't have to be condemned as Bad, it can be merely complicated. And ongoing, regardless. To keep on with the Disney parallel: The Lion King would feel weird if we started to peel off the internal politics of the hyenas, it's just not the right place for it, when everything about this story revolves around the Righteousness of the Divine Right to Rule. But if the Lion King was an ongoing series that had been looping on itself for a while... wouldn't it make sense to figure out how to achieve majesty by studying other angles too, eventually? Is it that strange to suggest the exercise is like, possible? That it can be handled with artistry and soul?

I feel like... Yes, to acknowledge Ganondorf's humanity --not even to coddle it, just to acknowledge it-- implies taking in everything that makes him who he is, and that might rattle some foundational ideas about why this ancestral fight is even happening in the first place. I also do not think it means that he must be Good now. He can still punch a child and cackle maniacally, he can still be unredeemable --he can still destroy himself and others out of the most unconstructive spite ever, and we can still see the purpose in defeating him while basking in the "yea....." left in his wake (Wind Waker did that!!! Wind Waker did that and then we had more Zelda games!! crazy how that happened). This is hardly undoable. It does take some narrative skill, and some commitment to taking a bit of a risk, but Ganondorf is genuinely unmanageable as a character if you insist on your refusal to acknowledge his foundations --and I think it's partially why TotK's story is such a mess. He sells a TON, but you can't have him breathe slightly too loud without risking the entire world falling apart. They did try in TotK, so very hard, and to me they still failed--as insane as he behaves, Hyrule still doesn't come out of this looking good or particularly justified, because the very central core of Ganondorf's character is to be subjugated, and then rebelling in a destructive and brutally selfish, uncompromising manner that ends up robbing him of humanity --and the discomfort of that premise will therefore always haunt the conversation. Nintendo dug themselves into that mess. I feel like a lot of the Ganondorf fans I know merely... point at that. At the mess. And I feel like the longer the games avoid this mess, the more coats of spinach green they slather ontop of his skin, and the more nonsensical characterization they pile up, and the more Ganondorf will become a parody of who he once was, and what made him compelling to begin with.

And to top it all off, as if he wasn't contentious and complicated enough to handle already, they leaned into the internet turning him into a sex symbol for some fucking reason??? Yeah I genuinely have no idea how Nintendo will manage this dude moving forward, because to me, he is, at best, an endless source of (very lucrative) headaches, and at worst a ticking time bomb. I'm not sure how long they can get away with that TotKification strategy, is what I mean.

(Also: I tried to not overdwell on all the incredibly complicated conversation re: race and orientalism, but it's borderline impossible to have this conversation without acknowledging that I have never seen a major pop culture villain receive more pushback against "woobification" than him, and I don't think it's a complete coincidence let's say :) )