riddlemearose

[riddlemearose]

Listen he’s trying really hard ok

This comic is based on Language Barriers by the amazing @quasar-crew!! I love this fic so much and I was thrilled to be able to make ark for it for the LU Writers Appreciation Project!

I also thought it was a great time to bring out the language nerd in me, so it was fun researching different scripts that could work to represent the different languages!! (Although the research mainly comes from Wikipedia, so I can’t guarantee accuracy) Breakdown under the cut!

Hylian: I used the in-game hylian script for this one

Goron: the script is Old Persian cuneiform! I picked this one because I thought the look fit well and it’s a script designed to be primarily cut into stone

Zora: the script is nushkuri, a writing system used for the Georgian language. It was picked because was trying to match the script that’s present on the Zora monuments in botw, which is also why I added a heavy slant to it!

Rito: this script is Tifinagh, used to write Berber languages. This one was mostly picked because I thought the look fit well!

Gerudo: this is the Gerudo alphabet, it makes it’s first appearance in Ocarina of Time!

#made me wheeze #good fic 100% recommend #linked universe

[riddlemearose]

*at the ADHD wizard meeting* sometimes i just find it difficult to hocus-focus

#I'm fucking losing it

[riddlemearose]

When I was in the hospital, they gave me a big bracelet that said ALLERGY, but like. I'm allergic to bees. Were they going to prescribe me bees in there.

#oh whack #I can finally accept my red bee allergy hospital bracelet now lmao

[riddlemearose]

*reads tags on the last post*

...ok but now I'm actually curious about your issues with TOTK👀

okay so to be per, fectly clear: Tears of the Kingdom is a really fun game. I've been playing a lot of it, aimlessly wandering around, exploring the Depths, finding shrines, doing side quests, and so on. At this point I've cleared the four regional quests, a bonus mainline quest I wasn't supposed to know about yet I found the shrine early and had enough hearts to open the door, what can I say, I'm curious, I have the Master Sword, and I think most of what's left is armor upgrades and wrapping up the main story.

But also I have been spoiled since the game came out about what's in store and boy do I see a lot of similar narrative issues to my gripes with Fire Emblem.

So we might as well start off small with how TotK actively rewrites its history in ways that are even more extreme than Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword introduced Hylia and Demise as concepts, with Hylia inheriting the Triforce from the Golden Goddesses of Din, Nayru, and Farore and tasked with protecting it, while Demise appeared as a demonic entity intent on taking that power for himself. As of Skyward Sword, Zelda was written as the mortal reincarnation of Hylia, thereby retroactively contextualizing her powers. The Triforce has been a power source sought after and fought over through every prior entry in the series, and even though BotW didn't make outright reference to it, the Triforce was clearly present on Zelda's hand when her powers awakened and appeared in full when she sealed Calamity Ganon at the end of the game.

And Tears of the Kingdom does away with it completely.

Hylia is mentioned as the only goddess. The Golden Goddesses aren't referred to at all. There is no Triforce at all, it's instead been replaced by the Zonai 'Secret Stones' even in the ancient past, despite the fact that we saw the Triforce at the end of the last game. It was right there. Zelda is also no longer the reincarnation of the goddess: instead her powers are re-explained as being the product of the historic marriage between the Zonai Sage of Light and the Hylian Sage of Time, giving her command over both (but she's considered only the Sage of Time for some reason?).

Also, BotW pretty heavily implied that Hyrule was a matriarchy: it's the queens and princesses who have the sacred power, so it stands to reason that Zelda's mother was actually the one in charge of Hyrule before her death, and the king only stepped into the leadership role on a temporary basis until Zelda came into her powers (hence that pointed "heir to a throne of nothing but failure" remark in one of the memories). But despite there being a Hylian queen right there in the ancient past, the game firmly establishes that Rauru is the one with the power, and Sonia is just his consort, a priestess who he chose to marry.

And then there's the Shiekah. Throughout all of BotW we were surrounded by these amazing machines, ancient technology crafted by the Shiekah and unearthed in working condition after a myriad in the ground which are still running and wreaking havoc a hundred years after the Calamity. We start the game in a Shiekah Shrine that literally saved Link's life and allowed him to recover from what should have been fatal wounds, though it did take a hundred years to do so.

And all of that is gone in TotK. Not a trace of it remains: the shrines have all been wiped from the face of the earth, the Divine Beasts are nowhere to be found, the Shiekah Towers have evaporated into thin air -- and the shrine that saved our lives is completely gone, replaced by a hot spring. It still bears the name of the Shrine of Awakening, but none of the miraculous technology remains.

Personally, the idea that either Purah or Zelda would consider the Skyview Towers worthy of dismantling that Shrine completely shatters my suspension of disbelief. They're both scientists: they should want to study all of that in detail to understand how it works, not destroy it for glitchy impersonations of the old towers I hate the Skyview Tower miniquests so much.

(Let me tell you, it was absolutely chilling for me to get to Rito Village and see an empty place where I clearly remembered there being a shrine. The Shiekah presence in history has basically been wiped out in TotK outside of Kakariko Village, and I don't like what that says considering that the Shiekah were also victims of a genocide by the ancient king of Hyrule.)

And then there's the imperialism. I have my issues with Three Houses and every ending needing Fodlan to be united under a single banner, though it's most egregious in CF where Edelgard's stated purpose is returning Fodlan to its proper state unified under the Imperial Standard. TotK is worse. There have been some excellent breakdowns of the narrative implications, touching on everything from the loaded imagery and black-and-white narrative purpose of Ganondorf and the Gerudo (dark-skinned evil desert dwellers who oppose the good and glorious worshipers of the goddess...where have I heard that before...) to the game showing outright that the other races of Hyrule were treated as lesser vassals in the ancient past (the Sages being masked and therefore erasing their individual identities, receiving the Secret Stones that Rauru had been hoarding only when Rauru needed help to fight Ganondorf and thereupon swearing their very lives and the lives of their people to him and his empire???). They're great analyses, they've been living in my brain for weeks.

But I think the thing that I'm most mad about is that the narrative bends over backwards to keep anything from changing. At the start of the game, Link's arm is so badly damaged by the Gloom that he nearly dies and he spends the rest of the game with Rauru's arm in place of his own...but then, in the end, he magically gets his original arm back no worse for the wear. Zelda, in an attempt to empower and restore the Master Sword, turns herself into a dragon, a process that we are told outright in the narrative will cause her to lose herself and is therefore irreversible...but then, in the end, she magically returns to her human form thanks to her ghost ancestors somehow reversing this supposedly irreversible process. And on top of all that, Hyrule itself is exactly the same when all is said and done: there's no change to the power structures, no independence for the other races who choose to come together in the spirit of cooperation like we saw at Tarrey Town -- instead, the four Sages once again swear their support and fealty to the Princess of Hyrule.

Personally? I like a narrative where the characters and the world change over the course of it. That's one of the things that I thought was so meaningful about BotW: while most of the gameplay takes place in the present, the true start of the game is 100 years in the past, allowing us to see how the Calamity affected Hyrule, the devastation it wrought and the continued struggles of those who survived through the century that followed. We end the game with Zelda once more free, where she had been locked in combat with the Calamity; with the spirits of the Champions at peace, where they had been trapped by the Blight within the Divine Beasts; and with Hyrule finally at peace and beginning to recover now that the Calamity has been sealed away. I still think it's ridiculous that they don't actually show any of Link's scars in the game (especially since we are at one point forced to strip to prove that we are who we say we are, and they say point blank I would recognize those scars anywhere when there are no fucking scars), but at least things have changed over the course of the narrative!

But nothing changes in TotK. The status quo remains untouched and unquestioned. And it just feels...bad to me. Insincere, maybe. Unrealistic, sterilized, manufactured. It's a narrative that says there's nothing to question, that everything going back to the way it always was is the right and proper way of things, because clearly the Hyrule Empire is the right and proper rule. And I just don't like that.

#totk #totk critical analysis #legit my issues with the game #great game mechanically but the plot left a lot to be desired

[riddlemearose]

When you come up with a plot point that fits the story way better but is way more devastating

#writing #IT DO BE LIKE THAT

[riddlemearose]

Out of the many things I love in TotK, I love the Constructs and I love the birds.

#tears of the kingdom #totk #they're friend shaped

[riddlemearose]

he’s right

#tears of the kingdom #totk

[riddlemearose]

Exploring the tutorial island: summary

#tears of the kingdom #totk

[riddlemearose]

In honor of Tears of the Kingdom coming out tonight, here is by far the greatest video I ever took during my Breath of the Wild playthrough:

#it do be like that #botw

[riddlemearose]

selfies with the sages✨

#tears of the kingdom #totk

[riddlemearose]

Frostbite❄️

#obviously my fav armour set #tho the gliding armour is a close second #legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #totk

[riddlemearose]

I just couldn’t resist the urge to draw something based on this by @samthecookielord 😂 Isn’t that comforting 😂

#totk #tears of the kingdom #yiga clan #fucking truth

[riddlemearose]

maybe i do miss the guardians 😭

—

Instagram | Twitter | Etsy | Shop | Ko-fi

#me as of 20 mins ago #I miss them 😭 #tears of the kingdom #totk

[riddlemearose]

i know most people have seen it but i cant emphasize how much this is literally my favorite breath of the wild clip of all time. also i can never fucking find this clip when i need it especially in high definition so here it is

#legend of zelda #botw #breath of the wild

[riddlemearose]

Hey there, long time no post!

I actually finished this piece a little while ago but I kind of forgot about it with my last uni course and life happening haha 😅 but since I've been replaying botw the last few weeks and with totk just around the corner I thought now was a nice time to share it with you all! ☺️

~(also I definitely am very normal about totk and absolutely not in any financial debt at all because of the collectors edition and OLED)~

#legend of zelda #breath of the wild

[riddlemearose]

Getting all the sages in TOTK

#tears of the kingdom #legend of zelda

[riddlemearose]

The Gerudo were running the only functional cross-regional trade network left in Hyrule. Why couldn’t they have focused on that instead of the “Quest to Find A Man” and all the weird mail-order bride fantasies it brought with it?

I guarantee a merchant traveling all the way to Lurelin in a bid to create a seafood trade route who ultimately falls in love with one of the fishermen and decides to settle down there permanently would’ve made for a way better story than what we ended up with in canon.

Hell, you could’ve made Rhondson Hudson’s major supplier of cloth and uniforms after the latter realizes his company needs unified branding in order to look professional and advertise themselves, and had them decide to get married and join together as permanent business partners as well as husband and wife after getting into a trade relationship as well as a personal one. Then you could’ve had her paying attention to fixing his uniform in particular as a cute hint that they’d get together in the end, and have it feel more like Rhondson’s own decision that she actively pursued than her feeling pressured by societal convention to marry and reproduce before she hits a certain age and resigning herself to marrying the first man who expressed interest.

#okay this please and thank #legend of zelda #botw #breath of the wild