Something Something Lemonade

For BOTW, the main question you ask from the start is "Who am I?" and also "What happened to Hyrule?" You learn the answers to these questions over time as you journey across the land and remember things about your past. The answer to "who am I" is "I am the chosen hero," and the answer to "what happened" is "We failed to save everyone." When you learn that, the goal changes from "go and do the quests because the old lady said to" to "Do what you couldn't do back then and save everyone."

In TOTK, the question is "Where the heck is Zelda?" and it's not your question, it's everyone else's. All the NPCs want to know where she is and you're just kind of standing there while everyone discusses it. And then the game throws you an early game side quest where they tell you exactly what happened to Zelda, and then you just have to putter around for 99 years and watch everyone run blindly towards Fake Zelda while you just follow them without saying anything until the final hour.

And then they force you to listen to the exact same spiel about the Imprisoning War, 4 separate times, without changing a single word. Whereas in BOTW, you get to learn about the Champions and who they were and their relationship to you, and explain the Calamity to you in one cutscene.

Plus, they don't expand on anything from BOTW in TOTK. Link and Zelda are just living perfectly fine in society despite having basically been dead for a century. And instead of expanding on the Sheika mythos, they just try and pretend they never existed and put the Zonai in their place as the Ancient Precursor Race with all the Ancient Technology That's Been Lost To Time.

The Guardian’s?? The stone corpses that were strewn literally everywhere over Hyrule, where you couldn’t go basically 10 miles without seeing another one, sometimes two, maybe even three. What about all the Guardian’s that littered the road to Hateno Village, the literal graveyard of them that took up a majority of Fort Hateno and Blatchery Plain. In TOTK you have to take that same road to Hateno Village, and they’re all just, gone.

Central Hyrule was teeming with them, surrounding the castle, patrolling, walking around still under the control of Ganon, and now it’s empty?

What about the Towers??? There was one in every province, they were very easy to see, you could see Faron Tower all the way from the Ridgeland Tower, and further. They weren’t exactly easy to miss either, they didn’t blend in with the surrounding countryside, they were bright orange before you activate them, then they turn bright blue! And they were gone too!

And what about the Ancient Weapons? Gone.

The Ancient Armour? Gone.

The Ancient Horse Armour, that admittedly was only available in the DLC, but that was gone too.

And lastly, what about the Divine Beasts??? The objectively main quest (besides kill Ganon and save Zelda), they were gone.

Did everything magically disappear? Did it sink back into ground waiting to be needed again in another 10,000 years? No! You destroy Ganon, the main enemy that has been producing the Calamities since the very beginning of the Imprisoning War.

I love TOTK, the quests, the open world, the art, everything about it so beautiful. But the main story? Lacking. We didn’t even brush over whatever happened to the Ancient Technology, it’s just not mentioned, like at all. We’re all supposed to just forget about it? As if the events of BOTW don’t matter anymore?

It would have been fine for the Ancient Technology to be gone, but at the very least an explanation would have been nice! A little FYI, for example they did sink into the ground (which physics aside) would have been a better explanation to ✨magically disappeared✨

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.

I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me

If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

Also for anyone curious, the character is Luye from The Legend of Hei II. Official design vs. the fanart under the cut:

In Japanese, the MoM tells Xehanort that he could refer to himself as "Jack" or "Taro." Obviously, I think that "Jack" could be a blatant reference to Jack from Agito XIII/Type-0, but the two names are also common names of characters in fairytales.

One such fairytale is the story of Urashima Taro. The protagonist, Taro, rescues a turtle on the beach. The turtle brings him to the Dragon Palace under the sea where he meets the princess, Otohime. For his kindness to the turtle, Otohime entertains him for several days and he has a great time. When it's time for him to leave, she gives him a box called the tamate-bako and tells him to never open it. Upon returning to the surface, Taro discovers that he was actually gone for over 100 years, and all of his friends and family are dead. In his grief, he opens the box and rapidly ages into an old man, the box having contained all the time that he spent under the sea.

You may have heard the story in various anime and games. I was just reminded of it while playing FFXIV's Stormblood, where you're tasked with finding the tamate-bako in one questline.

I feel like this pairs well with my theory that Demyx is the young version of the MoM. The box could contain time or his memories - something that would "age" him. If the MoM told Luxu that the box would age whoever opens it, perhaps that's why Luxu reacted with "But why?!"

(via Saturday Morning Cartoons: Baopu #15) by Yao Xiao

Implementing this has improved how I feel about myself, and HOW I SEE OTHER PEOPLE!!

I’m not a burden to put up with. I’m a person who deserves respect, but does have some idiosyncrasies.

Other people aren’t barely tolerating me, they’re being patient and considerate and working hard to be polite.