#and at some point y/n's parents show up as yiga

[scrawnytreedemon]

Is it so bad that I don't really like ships of characters I simp and I only like the reader insert fics with them?

Yeah I can't deny I'm jealous of the canon x canon ships with my faves, knowing that they possibly can be together while I can't. I know it's dumb,so that's why I never hate on someone who likes those ships I just ignore it

Like Sefikura for example, I don't like it cuz I'm a massive hoe for Sephiroth,also bcuz sometimes they make the ship pretty icky,also bcuz Cloud is baby and I'm still angy at Sephy for mentally torturing my Babyboy like that

IT'S CHAOS WITH MY FICTIONAL FAVES!!!!!!

Nothing wrong with that, personally! I get wanting to indulge in the warmth of a good fantasy-- That is what alot of fiction is for, after all.

Bless you, anon. Alas, as someone also plagued with my own Dumb and Horrid Fictional Feelings, the brain can be such a little bitch when it comes to that stuff. Good on you for recognising how and why you feel that way, ignoring the stuff you don't like and focusing on what you do.

LMAO I get that completely. I should mention, though, that I am one of those people who indulges in the nastier side of the ship, lmaooo. Even so, I get why it wouldn't click with you.

(FR when is it not?)

#scrawny rambles #scrawny answers #ty for your letter anon <3 #completely different tangent aside from yours #very introspective stuff ahead feel free to ignore you know the deal #i have alot of respect for selfshippers #considering my sisters kicked me out of the habit very early on and i've been Mortified ever since #but man... i think if i want an reader!fic i can jive with i'd have to write my own #once again no shade to the writers you guys keep living it up #but alot of it ends up being 'i would NOT say that' for mehgkjfgdjh #GOD i remember this ghirahimxreader fic i read ages ago #and at some point y/n's parents show up as yiga #and i'm like. what father. I HAVE NO FATHER. or i have two. it fucking depends. both absent either way. #POINT IS i think there are alot of ways my life and cultural experiences differ that if anything makes it *harder* for me to be immersed #also the Shame. but i think that can be overcome. spite my siblings lmaooo. #again anon entirely different thread from yours #just plopping some thoughts here i've had for awhile

[golvio]

Revisiting the early quests hyping up the Yiga Clan reminded me of one of the really noticeable problems I had with BotW’s writing: the inconsistent and wildly fluctuating tone for the “serious” parts.

The introduction to the Clan most people get is from the guards outside of Impa’s house describing them as “sad souls” who went off the path Hylia laid out for them with pity. Then, Paya’s heirloom quest has them built up as remorseless killers in an organized crime ring, murdering Dorian’s wife in cold blood and being perfectly happy to orphan his daughters now that Dorian himself is no longer a useful informant. If you take on that quest early, odds are the Yiga Blademaster who shows up is going to kick your ass.

And then you actually enter the Yiga hideout and the same Blademasters that beat your ass when you were a lower level now have animations like this:

This isn’t an “uuuuuuuu y aren’t villains cool n edgy anymore like my beloved ‘90s comic books 😭” post. I’m okay with Kohga being silly. I love the concept of a character who’s at once funny and entertaining but also a really dangerous and skilled combatant who uses his clownish first impression to get people to let their guard down. The main problem I have with it is just that the tone is not consistent at all. The clan feels less like the complex, multifaceted organization that arose from a complicated and traumatic historical situation it deserves to be and more like all the scenario writers had great ideas but somehow forgot to get together and talk to each other about how to weave them into a coherent whole. It swings wildly back and forth between them being this scary force of assassins capable of infiltrating even the Sheikah secret service undetected to “Haha, look at these dork-ass losers! They were dumb enough to serve Ganon! Only a total dweeb would be scared of these banana-obsessed clowns!” Which is, y’know, kind of insulting to the Sheikah who actually did have legitimate reasons to be scared of these people based on what we saw with Dorian.

It’s like what bugged me about the main conflict within the Zora. It wanted to tell a story about generational trauma and bigotry, but was so terrified of presenting anything unflattering to the player and the lost kingdom of Hyrule that it turned everyone into goofy, exaggerated caricatures performing for our amusement. The Zora elders weren’t a bunch of extremely traumatized people who needed to heal, they were just a bunch of curmudgeonly old fuddy duddies who were out of touch and needed to get over themselves (Which they instantly did, because of how cool and awesome the player is for putting up with their stubborn old people nonsense. You’re so cool that the hot Zora princess everyone’s mourning was throwing herself at your avatar! Isn’t that awesome?). And Sidon wasn’t allowed to be a character in his own right, doing what he thought could help heal his people while risking a revolt or a forced abdication for breaking the ban against outsiders behind the elders’ backs! He’s just Your Funny Friend Who Encourages You, because he exists solely to get you to your objective at Vah Ruta, and the game never lets you forget it. And the younger generation of Zora, some of whom remember Link before his death, aren’t symbols of the younger generation trying to move forward at the risk of starting a major generational conflict with their parents/grandparents who’re still traumatized from the Calamity because it was practically yesterday in Zoran terms. They’re just funny clowns who put on a show for you and point you towards the bridge where Sidon’s waiting.

It’s like…they wanted the royal advisor seeing the armor Mipha made for Link to be this big, emotional moment, but the writers spent so much time assuring us that we didn’t need to respect the Zora that it felt…like something was missing, emotionally. Like, “Oh, you don’t need to take those old coots seriously! Sure, they’re all mad at Link for something he had no control over, but they’re just stubborn and old! You don’t need to take their cold silence so personally! Just keep your chin up and eventually they’ll realize how stupid they were being for ever doubting you, the great hero who’s come to save them!” And when Muzu’s looking up at the statue of Mipha, there’s not a sense of this broken community coming back together to heal, or a man in deep denial of his own grief coming out of the dark place his heart had been lost in to the point where he treated the little boy he once knew as a scapegoat, and more just him being, “Oh, right! How could I have been so stupid?”

It’s like…these people are traumatized. The Zora are grieving because the apocalypse practically happened yesterday. The Yiga were traumatized by the royal family, who their religion told them they were born to serve, attempted a genocide against them. Both of them are understandably lashing out against a world that they think forgot them, that blithely moves on, unburdened by the grief they caused them, not a care in the world. The game doesn’t want to sit with these emotions because it might make the player uncomfortable, interrupt the hero fantasy, spoil their fun. But in exchange for trying to maintain a lighthearted tone throughout, it just feels like the writers aren’t really respecting their NPCs as much as they should, and deliver a somewhat jarring experience where the emotional pendulum wildly swings back and forth depending on the whims of whichever writer was at the helm when they wrote that quest/sidequest that day.

The whole game is a story about trauma, or at least, it wants to be. The main character himself lost his identity after a near-death experience, either because of brain damage he suffered after the physical trauma he endured, or as traumatic amnesia caused by his mind desperately trying to protect him from the memory of something no one should have to endure. But the game just can’t sit with trauma. It doesn’t want to tie the concepts it introduces into a coherent, consistent theme that spans every inch of the world, every character. It just wants to introduce its cool new UI and have fun. Which…there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but can you at least make up your minds about what kind of overall story you want to tell as opposed to spitballing interesting pieces of story ad infinitum?

I’m a little worried about dropping this take, particularly because we all now know that BotW was designed to be the first part of a series, and so suffered a case of what I like to call “To Be Continued Syndrome.” It was built to introduce the world of Hyrule and its new mechanics & concepts to its audience first and foremost, with far less time being spent on the story. For all I know, TotK could resolve a lot of my complaints with what appears to be a stronger focus on story than BotW with more actively present characters, as opposed to Ganon and Zelda kinda hanging out at the castle and not really affecting anything until it’s time to beat the game.

But, it’s like…I’ve seen games at least try to treat their NPCs with more respect and put more thought into their storytelling without having to sacrifice gameplay or exploration, both in big budget and smaller indie titles. I’d like the Zelda series to finally catch up, too. I love the series, and I know they’ve got the potential to tell really compelling stories that don’t treat the characters who aren’t destined to be great heroes like nobodies you can just breeze past. I saw that in Majora’s Mask. I know they can do it again. I hope that’s what they meant when they said they wanted TotK to feel more like Majora in tone.

#long post #loz thoughts #video #botw #totk #the yiga clan #the zora #Youtube