Hot take, but I personally think all the Criston Cole hate is bs. He's probably one of the most despised characters in hotd and the slander is so unjustified.
Like damn, are you guys really going to hate on him for despising Rhaenyra after all she put him trough?
I'm 100% certain that if the genders were swapped almost everyone would side with him.
Just imagine a girl that owes her dream job on a prince that is in a significant position of power over her. One night, after things don't go his way, he makes sexual advances on the girl. She feels like she has to sleep with him, because of how he helped her achieve her goal. Also because if she refuses, the prince may be enraged and make up a lie to get her executed. Afterwards, she feels dirty, she knows she broke her oath, and that if caught she would be tortured and murdered, so she deludes herself into believing they love each other and should run away together. At least that way, she won't have ruined her life in vain.
But when she tells the prince her plan and confesses her feelings, the prince tells her that he's not willing to give up the throne for her and that all he wants her for is sex. She's pretty much just his glorified whore.
I bet all I have that in this case everyone would call Rhaenyra an evil fuck boy misogynist who only sees ladies as objects to sleep with. But since she's a girl, then the fandom views her as an empowered, sexually liberated girlboss who takes what she wants. Even if that leads a man to almost committing suicide.
The fact that the fan base also has the nerve to call him a pathetic incel is just the icing on the cake.
Guys, I'm not sure if you now, but hating a woman for something that has happened between you is not the equivalent of hating all women.
Criston hates her and her only, while treating every other lady in the show with great respect, hell he worships the ground on which Alicent walks! And scolds Aemond for how he treats sex workers, 'Cause for him they should all be respected like the mother! He's probably one of the least sexist characters in hotd lmao.
Sometimes I wonder if Rhaenyra stans can't stand him because they genuinely can't fathom a man receiving her advances, being offered to be her lover, and rejecting. Like "how dare him break our queen's heart!"
Poor dude never stood a chance
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Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.
First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.
And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.
And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.
Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.
Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.
TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.
...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.
There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.
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i want to talk about the paradox prism for a minute because it's really interesting to me
[everything below is purely speculation / headcanon - please don't mistake it for canon. beware of spoilers for sonic prime part 3]
similar to the master/chaos emeralds, the paradox prism has a level a sentience. not anywhere close to the same level as the emeralds, but there's still something there
the chaos emeralds tend to set up a line of dominos to cause a future event (ex; sonic taking tails under his wing and learning to become more responsible from it)
the paradox prism doesn't do anything close to that, but it does share something with the master emerald; it holds memories
the prism was able to create more versions of the people it saw based on the emotions it saw them project (tails, knuckles, amy, rouge, and eggman)
the different shards / shatterspaces are made up from other major events. whether from this timeline or another is different for each shatterspace
new yoke was created from the group's frustration with sonic + an ending where eggman's almost won (i believe this could be pulled from the events of forces, considering the enforcers)
i think the reason new yoke is the only shatterspace to have a version of eggman is because it's the only one that makes sense to have one
it's pretty well known by now that eggman will need a helping hand if he wants any chance at taking over the world
the only thing better than an evil genius is five evil geniuses, right?
the new yoke group are, as i said, everyone's frustration
nine is frustrated with his past. reminiscing about his tormentors brings him more anger than pain, and living in solitude definitely does not help
rebel and knux are frustrated by the loss of their home (and the egg council in general). having watched their home be destroyed was more heartbreaking than anything at first, it eventually grew to an anger that spurred them on to fix it
rusty is frustrated with those who disobey/fight against the council, but her anger eventually ends up directed towards the council for the way they used her.
i could go more in depth about the new yoke group, but this post is gonna be long enough as is wefoefwof
the shard being red could simply be because that's the color that represents anger, but i'd like to think that-going back to forces-it was a bit influenced by the phantom ruby/infinite as well
no place is formed by the underlying sadness + a devastating event that permanently changed the world (chaos' rampage)
im not connecting no place to chaos because of the fact it's flooded, im connecting it because of the way the stories parallelled
chaos' rampage begun when pachacamac attempted to steal and harness the power of the chaos emeralds for his own gain
dread seeks out the 'devil's ligthouse' solely to prove he is a legend, nearly killing his original crew trying to do so
both protagonists of these stories are selfish and caused destruction for their own gain
dread's, well, dread comes from his failure of proving himself to be the most feared pirate to ever live.
him failing to collect the shard caused him to believe that he truly wasn't a good pirate, leaving him to spiral into a life of cowardice.
the rest of the pirates' dread comes from their longing to be actual pirates.
because of his failure and cowardice, dread now leads a peaceful crew. they don't do any 'pirating', which leaves much to be desired
they enjoy the parties and all, but their true fun comes from being pirates, which dread deprives them of
boscage maze comes from the protectiveness surging between everyone + a world where harmony between enemies is possible to achieve (possibly comes from a timeline where eggman simply doesnt exist, leaving mobius to grow peacefully)
boscage is the shatterspace with the most life. it's full of all kinds of plants because nobody there is destroying it (intentionally, anyways)
thorn rose is protective over birdie and the green. she does what she can to protect both, even if it means hurting people she once called friends
keeping the jungle and birdie safe is her #1 priority, and nothing will ever change that (that's not to say something else can't join them in being her priority)
the scavengers are protective over their belongings and, no matter how strangely they show it, each other
gnarly was nervous when sonic touched his house, immediately turning aggressive to make sure he wouldn't damage it
instead of hiding the berry, prim showed it to the others for a chance they could all share it
instead of running off on his own, mangey let the scavengers follow him as he sniffed out the berry (+ him fetching the one that fell off the treetops, showing it off to the group)
hangry allows mangey to crawl around him, which we can assume means it happens a lot off screen as well
they stick together and cover each other's backs, no matter how hard the fight gets
while we don't know what this shatterspace was before it turned into the grim, it's pretty safe to assume that it was apocalyptic
who or whatever used to live here is long gone. the only thing standing are the purple crystal things.
my guess is it's a timeline where eggman won. he won, and the world died out because he ruined the ecosystem from building so many machines.
while purple is usually associated with royalty or mystery, it's also associated with power, ambition, peace, and independence
whatever happened to the world before the grim, it's very probable that it was out of high ambition with a need for more power. eventually, the world found its peace and is now independent
ghost hill is the blueprint. the time before sonic & co. make their mark on the world. a blank canvas.
maybe a timeline where they don't get a chance to make their mark on the world
yellow is a very light, energetic color. the feeling of happiness at the chance to create something new and fun.
ghost hill and the grim don't have much in terms of characters and design, but i think the colors of their respective shards give us plenty of information about them
the paradox prism is nothing like the chaos emeralds, but is also just like them at the same time. it's powered by pure chaos with no sort of indication on how it was created or why it has the powers it does
i wonder if eggman knew what the prism was exactly or if he only knew that it was powerful
did he know breaking it would cause the world to shatter? did he know how may memories it holds? how many lifetimes it's lived?
i also wonder if the prism knew sonic would shatter it, and that it was already preparing the shatterspaces; hence why it glows brighter
maybe it understood that sonic is a hands-on learner. maybe it knew he needed to experience the lessons first hand, needed them to-quite literally-slap him in the face
maybe it knew they all had their own flaws that they needed to be aware of. maybe it lived through the timeline where sonic never shattered the prism.
maybe the prism planned to be shattered by someone so it could share its memories. maybe there was some sort of pull that told sonic it needed to be shattered.
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