#it's so weird to see what's basically a popular fan theory bulldozing past actual canon content

[rawliverandgoronspice]

hey! do you have any thoughts on demise as a looser/more fluid/symbolic/metaphorical figure in the context of the story of the series- like thoughts on what he represents, and stuff like what his curse could mean thematically rather than the more essentialistic absolutistic "literal satan" interpretation that most of the (at least western) audience seems to take?

i know he may be somewhat contentious as a choice introduced by the writers especially considering from an outside perspective what he kind of did to the majority of fandom analysis and discourse, but i've been thinking about how it's quite possible the writers had a more paganistic approach to what it means to be a deity and how demise doesn't even really have a NAME so much as he is supposed to be some sort of manifestation/personification of the concept of demise, and maybe also of hatred, and also i don't know, like, what the point of that hatred is or why there has to be demise/what implications there could be of this worldbuilding

hope that was coherent enough to make sense of anything i just said but yeah i was just curious if you do!

Heyy sorry never replied, replying now!! Thanks for the ask!

Yeah it's exactly how I'm taking Demise, and I think what you mention connects more to what little I know and understand of shintoism.

In French, Demise has an absurdly long name and is basically called "The Avatar of the Void", which I think is... interesting? It makes me extremely curious as to how Demise is called in original japanese --because to me, "Void" is about the absence of things more than their destruction. It's about the absence, not the inevitability of things crumbling down that comes with Demise. I don't know which of these concepts are the closest to the original vision (if it's Void rather than Demise I think it recontextualizes everything we thought we know about this world and characters, but in my opinion it feels too incoherent with the rest of the world, so my guess is that it was a poorly thought-out translation --but I might be wrong!), but to me it's all in the title: Demise. The curse is that every golden era must end with a reckoning.

I think the curse is extremely compelling in that mythological sense, the way Demeter and Persephone's tale is about the joy and pain of passing seasons; it's the given cause for this world's fate as it is condemned to rise and die continuously; and that their eternal, bright future will always be opposed. To be honest, I'm not even sure it's a *bad* thing. Conflict is not only inevitable, it needs to rise to the surface instead of being suppressed to ensure things do not remain stagnant and shortcomings are being acknowledged and addressed --which is also partially why the suggestion of TotK's golden forever after really doesn't sit right with me, especially since nothing was learned and nothing truly changed in the course of its runtime.

I think the curse sucks when people think it means that Ganondorf is a generic evil demon man without motive of his own. It especially grinds my nerves since I somehow never hear this argument being made for *any* other villain in the franchise. I know they look alike the most (and TotK didn't help matters here), but I never *ever* saw people arguing that Vaati doesn't have motive, for example. Or Majora. Or Zant. Or even literal nothing characters like Bellum, who by all means looks more like a primal demonic evil acting on instinct than anyone else. Somehow, we get to assume they have internal motives that, while obviously wicked and self-serving, are their own! But somehow, Ganondorf, the actual main antagonist of his series with the most amount of games hinting at his backstory and internal moral code, gets flattened as an evil puppet with no internal life whatsoever. It's genuinely bizarre.

Anyway sorry sorry! Thanks again for the ask!

#asks #thoughts #demise #skyward sword #ganondorf #zant #vaati #majora #tloz #zelda fandom critical #totk critical #thanks for the ask!! #I don't get how you play wind waker and still go “yeah he's just an evil spawn of satan and that's all there is to him” #you don't have to like him or sympathize with him! but there's obviously something more than raw evil there #it's so weird to see what's basically a popular fan theory bulldozing past actual canon content #and making its way into the way nintendo itself is starting to perceive their own character #anywayyyy