there is no "spirit of the hero" that was a lie spread by Big Royalty™️ to sell more knighthoods

there is no "hylia reincarnated" that was a lie spread by Big Royalty™️ to sell more divine right to power

there is no "demise's curse" that was a lie spread by Big Royalty™️ to sell more gerudo genocide

Ganondorfs and......some ganbubus- *i was then thrown one billion tomatoes at my head*

Found this old piece of Trayci from BotW, I was just learning to paint bgs digitally

It feels sweet to look back on

the thing fantasy racism doesn't understand about real racism, and honestly all bigotry, is that it's silly. like on its face it is absurdly silly. it follows zero logic at all. trying to backfill it with reason and logic belies a misunderstanding of this. so when you say the bigotry a class of fantasy people face is due to some event in the past, or some inherent danger to them, some genetic predisposition, or anything else to make it make sense, you're giving credence to the idea that bigotry makes logical sense. which it doesn't. it never has.

sometimes i wonder if we have forgotten that sharing creative work is, fundamentally, a bid for human connection. like I'm not posting art or fic for 'engagement' i'm posting it looking for other sickos to play with! i'd be making it anyway for my own gratification because there's something wrong with me, i'm sharing it hoping we can have something wrong with us together <3

GLORY TO

Demise is an impossibly boring motherfucker though. He's just Ganon with less swag. The day ppl shut up about his so-called curse is the day I'll finally know peace.

one of the best things you can make a female character is really bad at interpersonal relationships

like in the end I never want zelda protagonists to completely agree with zelda antagonists or us to "flip the script" and say that the antagonists were completely justified. but there's such a lack of nuance to the general conversation around zelda antagonists and it's frustrating to watch because as someone who likes them it feels like everyone is all too willing to just use them as plot devices with no motivations besides to hurt the good guys, or complete monsters that deserve nothing but to be completely annihilated. and that's annoying!

I feel like LoZ lore and the way it tells its stories encourages the mindset that one side has to be completely in the right and one side has to be completely in the wrong. The wrong side, as a result, becomes a plot device that amounts to "needs to be annihilated" without really encouraging examination of why they are considered wrong. There is also this idea that LoZ antagonists are fanatics and extremists who have a rigid mindset versus the LoZ protagonists who tend to be framed as being more open-minded and understanding, and I also think this is untrue of canon. LoZ protagonists tend to speak in very certain terms about how the antagonist should be viewed i.e. they are vile, they are monsters, they cannot be reasoned with. There is really no serious attempt from either side to come to an understanding of the other, of why they do what they do. There just is no nuance. Link and Zelda, and Hyrule at large, will only show kindness and understanding to people they have deemed worthy of it. As soon as you are deemed unworthy, that door of mercy is shut. Personally, I find the study of both sides of extremist thought to be fascinating. How would someone who has been trained to view the Yiga as nothing but troublemakers and cultists that are the scum of the earth learn to view them as human? To be honest, it has been troubling to me to see this sudden rise of people demanding that they want villains that are just evil because they don't want to feel sorry or understand the villain, that "some people are just evil because they can be evil" and then point to the rich and fascists like Trump and Hitler as examples. And it is funny to me. Do people think people like Trump and Hitler were born evil? Did their circumstances and upbringing not enable their worst impulses and ideas, and reward them? This isn't about feeling sorry for them, this is about understanding why such people exist and believe they can do what they do with impunity. This idea that discourages examination of people and thoughts that makes us uncomfortable because we just want to view them as "pure evil" so we can dunk on them and kill them without a second thought really goes hand in hand with the rise of fascism.

Really though, I DO need more fantasy-realm denizens to be more like "lol that's politics ig" when the king gets overthrown. Where are the single-issue Hylians who love Ganondorf, because he got rid of the skeletons in Hyrule Field?

What? Zombies in castle town? Who cares about castle town, you bougie bastard. Those people were all pretentious assholes anyway. All I know is when I have to ride all the way from Kakariko to Lon-Lon ranch to pick up the side of beef I ordered, I don't have to be terrified of getting caught out after sundown anymore.