who knows

Fanart of Princess Zelda from LOZ Echoes of Wisdom, forgot to post this one before

1. loz is imperialist and orientalist in its themes

2. its narrative in some games functions more as propaganda rather than any sort of fairy tale-esque fantasy story

that is to say the orientalist themes wrt to ganondorf start when they decided to take the main antagonist, originally only a non-human monster, and portray him as a man from the desert with every possible caricaturization

and, a lot of the way that the hylian monarchy is portrayed is based on both medieval europe and japanese myth — the latter especially embodying the "divine emperor" ideology, which was something that was often utilized to justify imperialist aggression from japan, by inculcating the belief that the emperor was divinely ordained to rule the world

and b. what i mean that loz narratively functions more like propaganda than a fairy tale-esque fantasy in some games, is that there is no coherent moral statement to be found. particularly in ocarina of time and totk (the latter of which is sort of a revisit of the former) ganondorf does not actually function as any sort of parable. which is why any attempts to analyze and determine his goals beyond "evil guy from the desert wants to steal our grass" hits a dead end. you can't determine any sort of moral statement or anything about ganondorf's actual character just from looking at the source material alone. which is why so many people who analyze these things often come to these conclusions — not because we're trying to "defend" or ""woobify"" ganondorf, but because the writing in loz often makes it hard to come to any other conclusion with him besides this "fear of the other," that the demon from the desert will ruin everything you know and love

Aladdin, Al-Qaeda, and Arabs in U.S. film and TV is a great read but specifically i want to point out a specific quote and how it relates to ganondorf in wind waker: