"it's so embarrassing you like that popular thing" "oh ew that geeky/strange thing is so cringe lol" "oh it's kind of weird you get excited about that harmless shit"
dude i love how ironic and jaded you are and that's so cool and sexy of you. and i am so so glad to tell you - you won!! we all had a meeting and we decided that you won, and we are writing your name on the inside of a burger king crown. the marker smeared, sorry, but we knew any form of real effort is ugly to you. but anyway. congrats! you are officially the coolest, most ironic, most jaded person in-the-world-right-now. we would throw you a party but you would think it was totally boring - and besides, we're weird so we wouldn't have been coming. we would have brought our love of beetles and of baking and of little canapes. we would have brought our artsy videogames and pages of writing. we would have written a poem with you, our hands covered in ink, and spread out a canvas to dance on, the night so lurid and pink.
but do not worry. we will not throw the party. we will just get you a ringlight and that crown i mentioned. it is a nice crown, except for where one of us dropped it.
the vote was a really hard one because we had so many cool ironic people to pick off the shelves. all of you have hands that rot fruit, how strange is that - you can't look at something without destroying it for other people. you like it when you can squeeze a person into a pinpoint - all us small ones scampering our little feet around our ugly joys. the vote was also a hard one because we kept our voices down because you don't like it when we talk too loud. you were on your phone at the time, talking to people other than us. you are a ghoul of every moment - half in, half out, you resent us for being here without shame or embarrassment.
so good news! we have invented an island for people like you. you get to go there and speak into the air things like if you still like watching harmless twitch streamers in 2023 you're fucking boring. you will say things like liveplay podcasts are fucking ugly and it's kind of awkward they try to make everything gay. on the island we made you, all of your words will have weight. they will form in the air like icicles, large white behemoth letters that will crumple in anvils around your feet. maybe we will send someone there once in a while to sweep, but honestly you might be there for a while, alone, waiting. we are busy being outside looking for mushrooms and flapping our hands and humming. we are busy kicking our little heels while we watch cringey tv. we are busy - sorry! as an apology, we have pre-filled the island with every bland, mediocre, unscented thing we could find. the island has the texture of american cheese. the island has an ocean that never gets angry. the island is perfect for you, trust me. you will be so happy there - as happy as you can be, ironically.
we want to say we are sorry for doing harmless things that you find annoying, childish, or unappealing - but we are not sorry. we thought we could help you, because we don't mind laughing at ourselves, but it turns out you are allergic to color and noise and atmosphere, so this is the best that we can do for now. we are all making a big shirt that says i voted in the ironic monarchy. we got you one that is just a fast fashion buttondown. i am so excited for you and this island and the big life you have won. you have a cool jaded grey life and miles of irony to roam. i love you! be well.
now leave us alone.
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TotK DLC idea!
The screen is black. You don’t hear anything for a long time. Then, faintly, in the distance, you can hear it.
Link. Link. Open your eyes.
While the line echoes familiarity, the voice does not.
Or. Well. It does. Because while it isn’t Zelda, it’s a familiar man’s voice speaking gently, so gently you almost don’t recognize it because there’s no way he ever spoke like this in the main game.
But he is now. And instead of a golden light being the first image you see before the screen shows Link awakening… you see gloom floating in the air. The image cuts to a Hylian waking up who… doesn’t look like Link from TotK?? He’s different, still small in stature, with slightly tanner skin, platinum light blonde hair, and red eyes. But… something’s wrong with his forehead. There’s a weird line on it.
This new character you apparently are gonna be playing in the DLC blearily blinks his eyes open, clearly groggy and too weak to really move. But then that line on his forehead moves a hair, it splits apart, and you realize it’s a freaking eye, red and yellow and it’s like the ones on gloom hands and oh gosh what the hell is it doing on his forehead—
Link realizes something is off and his eyes blow wide, his hands reach for his forehead and he screams in agony and terror, only for someone to scoop him into a hug to soothe him.
And suddenly you realize why that voice was eerily familiar.
It’s Ganondorf. He resurrected you from the era of the Imprisoning War. You, who have a history with him and his family. You, who he wants to protect, who he views as his kid, who he calls a prince and says he’ll keep you safe by controlling your body with his dark magic if he has to.
Welcome to Tears of the Kingdom: Hero’s Shadow.
You have to play a long gone Hero who was resurrected. Ganondorf, who is still recovering his strength in preparation for killing the current Hero, tasks you with finding your betrothed, his daughter, as well as his wife. They’re buried somewhere in the Depths like you were. He wants you to find their burial sites so he can use his secret stone to resurrect them like he did you, and control them as well. Which is doubly bad when you realize his wife was the original Sage of Lightning. He gives you free reign to wander once you go through a tutorial (he tests you to see if you’ve recovered enough strength), because he knows you love wandering and collecting things. Your own personal objective, however, is trying to help Hyrule from the Depths, to break free from Ganondorf’s control, because Link would rather set himself on fire than let Ganondorf resurrect and control the love of his life and his mother-in-law. Your best hope is to find shards of the shattered Master Sword to try and stab the eye on Dark Link’s forehead and break the control Ganondorf has on you. Until you can, though, the monsters are your allies, you can teleport across the Depths by manifesting out of the gloom created by gloom hands (just like what Phantom Ganon does), and the world below is your oyster. If you get too close to sword shards when gloom hands are nearby, Ganondorf can see your attempt and immediately takes control of your body, and no matter what button you press Link just walks back to Ganondorf’s location and stays there until you get a chance to try again.
You start with three hearts, all empty looking like when gloom hurts you, and if you get injured they just shatter. Whenever they all shatter, you respawn at Ganondorf’s location because his gloom hands came and rescued you from dying. The only way you can get more hearts is by collecting poes and offering them to the statues in the Depths. You can communicate with the spirits of soldiers, who may give you combat tips or info about the area. If you gain enough of Ganondorf’s trust, he’ll let you command monsters, and he might even let you wander the Surface (under his supervision) during a blood moon.
You learn of Link’s and Ganondorf’s history through discovering ancient relics/texts that trigger memories. This connection between you and Ganondorf stems back to time before the war, well over ten thousand years ago. Link was engaged to Ganondorf’s daughter, but during the Imprisoning War the family fought against the demon king. Ganondorf did love his family, but he loved power more. Link sacrificed himself, letting himself get mortally wounded to save Rauru from a killing blow. Gan held him as he died, and it allowed Link to both beg him to stop and stab him in the heart with a light shard. The shard didn’t kill him, but it was what Rauru connected with when he hit him in the chest, allowing him to seal Ganondorf away. Ganondorf still wants the world, but his love for his family is still present, though now twisted, so he thinks he can control Link and everyone else with his dark magic in order to keep them safe and in line. Once the threat of the current Hero is eliminated, the world will be his, and his family will be safe. As such, he treats you, Link, the player, like a stubborn child, reeling you in, but does so in a horrific way, torturing Link by controlling him.
You have to break free of this and stop him, and the only hope you have is the distant call of a sword spirit…
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Turning tragedy into hope-Let him lose those arms
I’ve tried making this post three times so let’s hope that third times the charm y’all.
I’m just gonna come out and say it but when I saw that panel where Izuku doesn’t have any hands I literally got so excited.
AND ITS NOT BECAUSE I LIKE MY FAVORITE CHARACTER GETTING BRUTALIZED (well? I do think it’s a little funny but shhh)
But it’s because this has been foreshadowed almost as much as the handhold itself between Izuku and Katsuki. And it’s wonderfully tragic in the best of ways. Literally half of the commentary surrounding it when it came out in the leaks was “omg I thought of that!” Because literally everyone and their mother KNEW this was coming in some form. Izuku was going to lose an arm, and that would be the case.
Hell, even outside of the story the amount of official art and AU’s Horikoshi drew that had Izuku without an arm is astounding. Like it’s so painfully obvious that this was coming, and so he upped the shock when he made Izuku lose them both.
Izuku is even doing his white eye thing, he isn’t shocked, he’s angry. My dude is pissed. Clearly, to me at least, the loss of his hands is less of a shock to him and more so that he’s angry that afo took away the reason he lost them in the first place—Tenko.
Y’all gotta remember who Izuku is, he’s the stubborn motherfucker that refused time and time again to give up on his dreams, he’s the one that illegally saved Iida and Katsuki, he’s the one that refused to let go of Tenko’s hands because when he was in his time of need, it comforted him.
Izuku has been told by his doctors for over a year atp that he was going to eventually either lose his hands, or lose the function within them. He’s accepted that. He can try to stop it, hold it off through equipment and treatment, but at the end of the day, everything breaks eventually. He knows that. We know that.
So if he was going to lose his arms in some way, it’d be through this: saving someone, holding their hands, never letting go, comforting them.
It’s tragic and sacrificial, but Aizawa’s the same. Did we make theories about how Eri is gonna heal him from being an amputee? Did the story say “actually due to this cool magical illusion/quirk it was all a mirage/eri could heal it”? No, it didn’t. Did Mirko somehow get her arms and legs back because they’re tied to how she views her strength? No, she didn’t.
And there’s a reason they didn’t. Multiple reasons they didn’t. They’re heroes, their scars tell their stories.
Not even mentioning how that’s such a trope (“everyone else keeps their long term injuries except for the main character because he’s special and gets main character powers, like not getting a disability from a dangerous job! :)”), but why should eri, a little girl, be responsible for everyone’s injuries? She doesn’t even have full control yet, she’s playing it by day. (People LOVE to talk about how all the 1-A kids are just kids fighting in a war, except when it comes to a little girl being responsible for everyone’s injuries, somehow)
The reason eri was shown wasn’t because she was going to somehow save the day, but because she wasn’t. It was supposed to stop those theories from having actual merit, because eri doesn’t actually have the built up strength to help.
So, with that out of the way, I wanted to say how this is so fucking beautiful. It’s tragic yes, Izuku and Katsuki never got to hold hands, not properly, but maybe the measure of their trust is beyond that. Maybe, an embrace could suffice—this would go back to Izuku’s vigilante arc. Where, instead of holding hands, Katsuki caught him when he needed to. And he’s going to do it, again and again.
Maybe holding a robot or silicone arm won’t feel the same, but it’s the feelings surrounding it that matters, not the act itself. The hand hold is still there, the hands still haunt the narrative like a mouse within the walls. It bites at cords like their own emotional walls.
Katsuki missed his chance, over and over again, and he’s going to have to come to terms with that. But that’s not to say that the story won’t let this aspect haunt the narrative like it always has. It’s still THERE, and I believe in Horikoshi to continue to write a story about hands while the main character doesn’t even have them.
Izuku’s hands are tied to his strength, physically and emotionally. He views them has the glue that ties his heroics to himself. His hands have always reached out to others, his hands have always punched those who were wrong, and even when he had to switch fighting styles he still saw them as the reason he was able to fight at all. They represent OFA, his love, his anger, his weakness, his strength. They represent his sense of self, and yet he’s more outraged than hurt that he lost them for Tenko to be free—only for AFO to take away that freedom all over again.
THATS why the loss had to happen. THIS. He lost something so incredibly valuable to himself, but he lost them of his own accord. He could have let go of Tenko at any moment, yet he didn’t because he wanted Tenko to know comfort and freedom. He wanted him to be free.
You could say that Tenko was telling Izuku to let go because he was breaking down his emotional resolve, and I believe you could also say that he was telling Izuku to let go so he doesn’t hurt someone who tried to help him all over again. You could say it’s both. It’s selfish and selfless, like everything in this story is. But Izuku refused to, and that was a choice Tenko could never take away from him.
So, that’s how I’ll turn this tragedy to hope, because this was done out of Izuku’s love, why take away that meaning?
Why put them back?
Why take away those scars?
Scars tell stories, they tell you how we became the greatest heroes.
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