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wr1t3-my-wr0ngs · 8 months

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So I've lost the tag list for people who wanted updates of this story. It's been a crazy time for me, and I'm happy to once again get to share a new chapter with yall. As always, this is crosspoted on Ao3, so go and check it out!

He hates the desert. Even with his heat reducing gear on, the air is suffocating. His layers cling to him with sweat and sand, and every move he makes rubs his old battle scars the wrong way. The burn left by Volga throbs the worst, not as bad as it did the day he got it, but more than enough to make itself known.

He had tried to rest after being escorted to the tents, really he did. But between the weight of Times lingering glare, the betrayal rolling through his stomach, and the ever so subtle shakes that the long trek through the desert and subsiquent introduction to an entire village of Gerudo did not make better, rest would not come. Outside the tent, Warriors can make out the sound of Times voice pitched low as he speaks to someone. A fresh spike of betrayal lances through his heart.

He knows why Time is just outside, it's for the same reason his one time little brother had placed himself between Warriors and Twilight on the trek through the sands. Time doesn't trust him, and the lack of trust stings almost as much as the memory of the one eyed man turning sword against the Captain in favor of protecting that liar.

Twilight.

Even thinking about the rancher, if he can be called that, sends emotions and panic rising through Warriors in an unstoppable wave. All this time...all this time and Ganondorfs heir was right there. Sleeping next to them, laughing with them, getting them to trust him...

The tent walls seem to close in, and the phantom sound of a war long over rings in his mind. Its accompanied by the smell of blood, of faces he had trusted turning sword against him, fighting for his life through a battle field of a time and place he was never meant to be. Killing people he was responsible for all because of him.

The snarling Gerudo of his memory towers over him, the historic enemy of Hyrule bigger than life and oh so much worse than any text could convey.

The tent grows smaller and taller at the same time, perception distorting as the panic attack grips the Captain. He can't stay here, but leaving through the front of the tent isn't an option and with such a blatant guard, he's far too noticable in his current state. Piece by piece he strips himself of his outer gear; first the scarf, then the green tunic, then the chainmail till he's left in the soft cream shirt. Divested of the most noticable parts of his attire, he crawls over the numerous carpets to the back of the tent and inelegantly begins pulling up a stake from the sand. It's longer than expected by a factor of at least a foot, but it pulls up with little resistance and allows just enough slack in the back tent wall to slip out.

He makes for the first free tent he sees that doesn't have people milling about it. it wouldn't be his first choice of hiding spot, but now that he's out of his makeshift prison, he feels exposed without his armor. The tent flap allows him easy entry, and he takes a moment to breathe and get his heart rate back under control.

He doesn't expect to see the prone figure of Four, propped up on soft pillows, and the sight of the familiar face trips something in his mind. Quietly, Warriors creeps towards the Smith. A tight bandage has been wound across Fours face, the smell of foreign medical herbs and potions strong enough to be overwhelming. The young man's colorful tunic has been removed and carefully folded beside them, and the tell tail padding of further bandages and poultices can be made out under the shift Four wears.

They look...small. Smaller than normal, and the Captain's guilt mixes with the hurt and fear that still thrum through him.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, resting a hand on Fours brow and pushing wayward strands of hair away from the foul smelling bandage over their eyes. "I should have done something. Anything. But I let you get hurt, by him no less and-"

From out of nowhere, a sharp slap fires across the back of his head, hard enough to hurt but nothing more.

"ACK-"

"Do not lie,"

Looking over, Warriors finds himself suddenly face to face with one of the Gerudo. Deep lines and dark skin make up a face that seems as old as the desert around them, and fabric in clashing shades of blue, puce green, and muddy orange wrap around a body that is easily twice the Captain's own height from head to toe. How he missed her, he doesn't know, as even sitting down he can tell that she is easily among one of the tallest people he has met.

"You come to my tent, you will refrain from lying." She says, expression hard and unreadable. Her voice is heavily accsented with the same foreign curl that Warriors can hear floating around outside the tent, but hers is thicker. It clings to her voice from some point deeper than just her lips, native sounds repurposed in non native ways to service communication without any drive for mastery of the second language. It reminds him of the older Sheikah who sometimes visit the castle, the ones Impa bows to with difference, and whoes accents tell of a time before the Hylian language was common to the tribe and who learned it out of necessity. That resemblance alone is what keeps him from doing something rash.

Instead, Warriors rubs the back of his head, the sting still sharp from the hit, and glowers at the woman who has not moved from her corner where she sits calmly drinking tea.

"I wasn't lying-"

This time he sees the incoming blow and ducks the slap to the head, but he is entirely unprepared for the other hand that flicks him in the forehead with needle like precision.

"Another lie!" She chastises, clicking her tongue disappointedly and setting her cup aside with reverence. "You learn fast but do not *think* about what you say. You may not think them a lie, but that only makes them worse. You lie to yourself and believe it. What could you have done, eh?"

Her golden eyes drill into him, and Warriors swallows.

"Your friend has told me how the battle went. Do not take the fault for things that are not your fault."

Warriors opens his mouth to retort, but a fresh surge of pain from his aggravated scar makes him gasp instead. The adrenaline of his nerves had dulled the sensation, but moving around has been bad for it, and as the adrenaline leaves his system Volga's burn flares once more.

The old woman frowns.

"What is wrong?"

"Nothing," he grits out. "An old scar."

"Those are not nothing." She responds mater of factly, "I will examine it."

New fear shoots through him. It's bad enough he has to be in this tent village of Gerudo with an old war wound that won't stay calm, but the idea of any of them touching him-

Before he can begin to voice a complaint, his shirt has been removed without disturbing a hair on his head. Warriors blinks, fear and panic freezing in place within him, though he is of no mind to notice how comically fast it happened.

"How-?"

"Practice, now quiet."

Though her tone is brusque and her words cutting, the hands that begin examining the old burn scar across his side are gentle. He can't help flinching from her touch, the voice in the back of his head that kept him alive for so long screaming warning of an attack at being touched so suddenly.

The woman's hands pull back.

"You do not trust Sumati? That is fine. But you are in pain, so I will fix you."

"I don't-" Warriors tries, attempting to scootch away, but an iron grip prevents any escape.

"I say quiet, unless you wish to speak about trying to kill Meti'vi."

"Who?"

The old woman, Sumati, looks up briefly before continuing with their work.

"Meti'vi, our Little Wolf."

Her fingers find the knot of inflamed tissue that throbs in the ambient heat, the remnant of magic fire that refuses to stop burning. Understanding flashes through the Captain's mind and he tries to pull away, but the press of a cool something - herbal and sticky- to the painful scar instantly soothes and stills him in place with sheer relief.

"None of your people have said anything, but it is not hard to know. I recognize your kind, Soldier. I remember the battles of my youth. You are a Hylian Soldier. The Gerudo have not been friends with Hyrule for many many lives. I am not surprise that you made attempt. When he first came to be with us, there are many even of eh Gerudo that would have tried also were it not for Anish."

She sighs, almost imperceptible.

"There are fewer now who know not to try again,"

Warrior starts, turning to look at the older woman, making Sumati tut when the action takes his wounds out of her reach and the bandage she had begun to apply over the sticky herbs.

"You mean, there are Gerudo who tried to kill him?"

The idea boggles the mind.

"There were," Sumati stresses, once again gripping Warriors by the shoulders and turning him to face the way he had been. "We have not had a king in many centuries. Our last one lead eh Gerudo to ruin. The King of Black Lies was not only enemy to Hyrule,"

She sets the bandage and Warriors swallows.

"You're still helping me,"

"I am a healer, it is what I do."

"...I don't understand."

Sumati sighs, long and deep, and her hands pull back from their careful examination of each old injury and point of pain. Warriors looks around, confused to see the old woman sweep the puce green scarf from her head. Curls that are more gray then red spring back up in a short hair style when freed. The cut is practical, harsh, and meticulously maintained. With her head and shoulders now exposed, she reminds him of the old captain, the one before him who took Warriors under her wing. He's even more confused when, moments later, the fabric is draped over his bare shoulders.

"I spent my youth in wars, some started by us, some not. I know soldiers. And I know war does not end for us when killing stops. I see it in your eyes, the battles you still fight."

She leaves him for a few seconds, turning away to do something and he briefly considers ducking back out the way he came in. But he has begun to feel the exhaustion of the day, the wrung out emotional drain that fighting back the horrors of the war always leaves him with. So, when Sumati turns around and reverently sets a small wooden cup filled with steaming tea down, Warriors is still there.

She waits for him to take a sip before nodding, adjusting the scarf over his shoulders so that it covers him more fully, then retrieving her cup and taking a slow thoughtful sip.

"I know why eh Gerudo tried to kill Meti'vi. I know why Hylians have tried to kill him also. But I do not know why *you* tried, Warrior."

Rather than answer, Warriors looks down at the cup and takes one last sip of warm liquid.

Sumati sighs and takes the empty cup from his hands, tucking them into a fold of her skirts.

"You do not have to talk to me, but know that my tent is safe to you. I will not tell any where you are."

This time when Sumati reaches out to him, Warriors does not flinch, and even though his mind protests being manhandled into laying down, as soon as his head touches the ground his eyes begin to droop shut.

"What was in that tea?" he slurs out, fighting off sleep as a light cloth is lain over him

"Only tea, you bring your own exhaustion."

Without his permission, he falls asleep.

Sumati sighs, eyebrows pinched in thought as she considers her new patient. It had been odd watching the sand covered voe crawl into her tent from the back door like a man being set on fire. The fear in his eyes had given her pause. T'i knew fear, after more then sixty winters of life, much of it spent tending to wounds on bloody sands while those still able to fight climb over the bodies of those beyond help. Fear, anger, grief— these Sumati knows as well as joy or triumph.

But this fear had not been of a man in battle, or one haunted. This was the fear of the hunted and the lost, and it was relieving to see how the blonde relaxed when he had caught sight of his injured friend.

Then he had opened his mouth and started talking, and Sumati's relief morphed into resignation as the guilt and the weight of burdens unshared crushed the soldier before her eyes.

Treating this soldier will be a challenge.

A slight dampness soaking through t'i's skirts reminds Sumati of the cups that need cleaning, and with a groan, she crawls out of the tent and into the still too warm air.

Outside the tent is chaotic, but this is not unusual. Getting to set up at Kara Kara is a treat, a novelty that before the ban was lifted could not have happened. Having access to the oasis is strange and a blessed relief all at the same time. Water in a desert is a precious resource, and in all t'i's life t'i had never seen so much in one place. Still, something about it's depths keeps the old woman wary, and she keeps t'i's distance.

It is chaotic, but it is good, so Sumati doesn't pay it any attention until the frantic voices starts.

"Did anyone see him?"

A one eyed man, another from Meti'vi's group stands before a tent, gripping one of the long stakes in a hand.

"He's missing?" Another man asks, this one shorter and more square across the shoulders and wearing more layers then Sumati would have thought a Hylian capable of wearing in the heat.

The one eyed man runs a hand through his har, face twisted with worry.

"I went in to bring him some water, but all I found was this-" he gestures at the stake, "And most of his gear." The man looks grave, "Including his scarf."

A soft gasp of horror from the shorter of the pair is almost enough to make Sumati approach and ask what the problem is, until the next words offer her a final piece of information.

"Warriors left his scarf?"

Shakeily, the one eyed man nods. Meanwhile, Sumati's mind, older than it once was but no less as sharp, has put together the last piece of the mystery.

Warrior..., she thinks, they must mean the Soldier. She turns away from the pair and offers herself a rare smile of amusement. So, their prisoner has escaped? Too bad for them. After seeing the state of agitation the Soldier had come to her tent in, perhaps letting his captors sweat will be good for them.

---

Food has done wonders for Twilights mood and part of his mind frowns at how much of his depression was probably driven by unrecognized hunger. He is still shaky and uncertain, but the horrid little siren song of a voice in the back of his mind has quieted. That, at least, is progress. He takes his time getting ready to face the world again. Careful sweeps of a small brush over his lips add the bright yellow color of his lip balm to his encemble. Though not the best at applying the make up, there is something reassuring about the simple ritual. Once done, Twilight reluctantly leaves the tent.

The air around the oasis is cooler than the rest of the desert, and though his kurta isn't warm, he relishes the opportunity to shed the outer layer and walk around in his sleeveless blue undertunic.

There is something to be said for the power of a familiar place to ease anxieties, and the oasis is as familiar to him as the rest of the desert is by now. Even more familiar is the sprawl of tents around the water. The larger of the tents ring the encampment, offering a wall of sorts against the wind and sand for the smaller personal tents to take shelter in. Normally, a small collection of cooking slates and wide pans over hot fires would sit in the center of the encampment, but with the oasis this set up wasn't possible. Instead, the various cooking stations ringed the pool, each cooking area with a small group gathered around it.

Striding up to a near by palm tree, Twilight leans against the trunk and surveyed the area.

"No crown?"

"Absolutely not." Is the instantaneous response the rancher gives Legend.

"Funny, I thought kings had crowns."

Twilight sighs.

"Not me. It's not something I've ever been interested in. Besides, the money is better spent on them." He nods at the tents around him, indicating the Gerudo as a group.

Afraid of what he might see but starting to be resigned to the worst case event, Twilight looks over at Legend. For his part the red clad hero looks very relaxed among the hustle and bustle of the village.

"What do you want, Legend? An apology?"

Legend snorts.

"Oh hell no. Believe me, I get it. Heavy is the head and all that noise."

"You aren't mad?"

"Eh, I'm always a little ticked off with something. But not at you. Not anymore. Like I said, I get why you didn't say anything. Gotta admit I didn't see this twist coming, and yeah, I'm hurt you didn't say anything. But I've cooled off...metaphorically."

It's Twilights turn to laugh.

"You're gonna want to take mid day rest pretty soon. Trust me, heat resistant clothes are not enough."

"Yeah, I'll do that in a bit." Is the flippant response. "One of the women here was kind enough to offer us tents. Nali I think her name is."

"I know her. She's good at the hospitality game."

Legend nods, turns and then pauses.

"Sorry I snapped at you when we all found out. You don't deserve that."

Twilight doesn't get a chance to respond before Legend walks off towards a set of smaller tents.

#a wolf in kings clothing #gerudo!twilight #Gerudo Twilight #Gerudo Twilight AU #my writing #linked universe #lu twilight #lu legend #lu warriors #lu time #Sumati #panic attacks #ptsd #I adore Sumati but I also recognize that t'i is the worst person to ever become a doctor because t'i has the bedside manner of a lynel

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rawliverandgoronspice · 1 year

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THE GERUDO POST

(aka an attempt at a critique of how gerudos were handled in BotW and before)

Oh no. TOTK being right around the corner, it might finally be time for the Gerudo Post.

(aka half of the reason why I made a Zelda sideblog in the first place)

So I want to preface all of this by saying that, as you could probably tell already, I’ve always adored the gerudos. They have fascinated my small child brain when I was 7; then the obsession made its comeback when I was 14, and now, here we are, almost 28, and I’m still thinking about the gerudos. I think they might be among my favorite fictional cultures for their potential and their understated storyline. I guess growing up in a very Arabic neighborhood, coupled with being bi-culturally latinx (?? does Brazil count?? you tell me), also always made them feel like home to me –especially when I was very young and there was not a lot of cool female representation flying around that managed to involve fiercely independent PoC women, flaws and teeth included.

This whole weird-essay-thing tries to do two things. First: analyze the place gerudos have occupied in the series, their initial problematisms and their subtextual narrative arc during the Myth Era coupled with their relationship to Ganondorf. Second: tiptoe to Breath of the Wild and poke it with a stick to see what happens –and in doing that, explain why I believe a lot of their characterization was defanged in service of smoothing their past with the hylians instead of deepening the culture on its own terms, and why I’m a little apprehensive about what that might mean for TotK even though I adore seeing the best girls at it again.

Those are the uhh terms of service??

And now, we must go back to 1998.

OCARINA OF TIME ERA

There’s so many things about the gerudos that are noteworthy and rich, and they’ve made for a complex piece of Zelda lore ever since their introduction –and when I say complex, I don’t 100% mean it as praise. The very racially charged decisions made about their inclusion have been discussed at length by the fandom, especially when it comes to orientalist and Islamophobic tropes being deployed pretty thoughtlessly in Ocarina of Time (their sigil being literally a crescent moon and star originally, the parallels are pretty obviously there).

We’re talking about a band of amazon-like, big-nosed brown women from the desert ruled by a single Scary Evil Man born once every hundred years hellbent on conquering Hyrule who they apparently worship like a god, characterized primarily as thieves, decked in jewelry and orientalist-inspired harem/belly-dancing clothing, hostile to the white good guys of Hyrule (especially men), unblessed by the Goddesses and so deprived of elongated ears (this is true for OoT –we’ll come back to that), also known as a demon tribe with their deity straight-out described as evil-looking by Navi (on my way to cancel you on twitter Navi you watch out), and secretly led by evil twin witches who can turn into a single seductress and, as two mothers, raised their Scary Evil Guy king who happens to basically be the devil.

In so few words, gerudos are the future that liberals want.

It’s worth notice, also, that Ganondorf’s characterization in this game is… kind of relentlessly uncomfortable to play through, especially before the 7 year skip. The utter assumption of depraved and evil intents from every character surrounded by dialogue that does little to hide its biases in spite of having generally very little proof to back them up –even though, in the game’s context, every character is correct to call his eyes evil and the darkness of his skin a moral judgment in on itself. The scene where Zelda demands that we believe her conclusion that the sole and only brown guy in the entire kingdom is evil and will do harm, and the game straight out refuses to progress until we concede that her dreams are prophetic and that this man must be stopped at any cost even though she has no more proof than her discomfort… hits different on replay.

I’m restating all of this not to pretend I’m making a novel and thought-provoking point, but to bounce back on a tumblr post I saw a while back (that I can’t find anymore!! I’ll link it if I find it again) –and so express what it is that gripped me with the gerudos in spite of their pretty damning depiction… and actually maybe thanks to it.

There’s a surprising amount of texture to Ocarina of Time’s worldbuilding that exists folded within the things introduced and left hanging, or in its subtext –and whether on purpose or not, I believe it is why people keep coming back to this iteration of Hyrule.

What was that about the king of Hyrule unifying a war-torn country? Why did the gerudos break the bridge connecting them to the rest of the kingdom during the 7 year timeskip while still worshiping Ganondorf, and why are the carpenters trying to rebuild it against their apparent wishes? What was that about gerudos imprisoning hylian men trying to force entry into their lands? What was that about the secret death torture chambers right next to the Royal Family’s tomb and connected to the race of people who were, apparently, born to serve them?

Nothing? Oh okay… okay… okay….

The same can be said about this strange depiction of this hostile tribe, consistently described as wicked yet suddenly friendly once you prove you deserve their respect once you... defeat them, so you now have joined them? Ocarina of Time isn’t very consistent when it comes to characterizing them as their occupation (thieves) or as a proper culture, with a king and a strange system of rulership that seem to involve at least 5 people: Ganondorf, the Twinrova, Nabooru and the unnamed random woman who decides you’re now part of the gerudos because you slashed enough of them with your sword and hookshot, which, uhh ok.

They’re but a ragtag and negligible group when discussed next to gorons and zoras and hylians, but they also clearly have their own religion and at least a 400-hundred years old history (probably far longer than this) and hints of a written language of their own. I’m not sure the game itself knows what it wants them to be, beyond: intimidating and hot and cool, but also wicked and, because of Ganondorf and the way you barge in their forbidden fortress (heh) with the explicit intent to dismantle their king, in apparent need to be saved from themselves.

Speaking of rulership and the Spirit Temple, let’s have a quick tangent about Nabooru: I always found her characterization when meeting with Child Link pretty strange. I refuse to mention the promised reward, which feeds into everything orientalist mentioned above, but I always found her moral compass so extremely convoluted for someone coming from gerudo culture. Nabooru says that, despite being a cool thief herself, she resents Ganondorf for killing people as well as stealing from women and children. Stealing... from women. Nabooru. Why are you this pressed that he steals from women!!! This feels so out of place, that the only girl of that hostile culture that betrays her king and befriends you, is the one that upholds moral values that only a hylian could possibly hold.

Either way: the strange unquestioned contempt of the game for them as a culture, mixed with the occasional bouts of heart, friendliness and badassery, makes it hard not to consider their depiction as pretty biased in favor of the hylians finding them at once exotic, scary and exciting, and could hide a more complex reality you might only get one side of –especially when you know there were originally plans for Ganondorf’s character to be more gray and motivated than what the campy final version ended up being. To be blunt: even in the context of a game for children, and maybe because of that fact, it all reads like a reductionist and imperialist/colonialist reading of a more complex situation.

This might seem like A Lot coming from a game where the actual game writing can be this overall flimsy and simplistic due to the standards of the time (it’s rough, it's so rough). But I would have never dwelt on that thought about a little children’s game if not for the mainline entries that came soon after, because... ooo boy.

The sense you’re not getting the whole story was certainly not helped by the introduction of Wind Waker Ganondorf, and the chilling emptiness of Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess.

AFTER THE TIMELINE SPLIT

(I’m skipping Majora’s Mask, not because I dislike them in the game or think they’re not worth talking about, but because it’s a parallel universe and they’re never even called gerudos and their reality seems extremely different from their sisters in Hyrule so I think it’s okay to call them tangential and not dive too deep in this particular depiction)

Here’s something I want to highlight about gerudos and how they were characterized before BotW came along: their absence. Not only their physical absence, the lack of any gerudo character that calls themselves gerudo, but their absence from the text itself.

It’s not that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess retroactively scratch them off existence: we can clearly see Nabooru’s stained glass art in WW as well as recognize them being mentioned in Ganondorf’s final boss soliloquy, and WELL there’s quite a lot to say about their imprint over the world of TP. They are there –or at least they... were there. But nobody ever talks about what happened.

In Wind Waker, there was the deluge. It’s assumed lots of people died then, and those who survived scattered across the Great Sea. Are they sealed under the waves? Have they drowned? Is Jolene, Linebeck’s ex-girlfriend in Phantom Hourglass, a distant relative of one of the rare survivors? It’s unclear, beyond the fact that Ganondorf is the only living gerudo we see in this entire branch of the Timeline split.

In Twilight Princess, the desert which bares their name is empty. The hylians never mention that it used to be the name of a tribe: they’re not even named when Ganondorf is introduced for the first time, reduced once again to a mere band of thieves. We learn his plans to steal the Triforce in OoT were foiled, and that he may have turned to war. Then he lost the war, and was executed in Arbiter’s Ground: a strange structure in the desert, a mixture between a temple, a prison and a coliseum. What looks like gerudo writing coexists with hylian symbols, which often look much fresher. This dungeon is the Shadow Temple of TP: a prison hosting the worst criminals the kingdom has ever known, now haunted and cursed. Besides the locations, the only character that vaguely look gerudo in the entire game besides Ganondorf is Telma, a character with pointed ears that never seems to identify as anything but a hylian. What happened? Who’s to say. Nobody ever says anything. Not even Ganondorf bothers to mention them the way he did in WW –and though the game’s story is quite focused on another exiled tribe seeking revenge and dominion over Hyrule as retribution, the parallel is never explicitly drawn. So who’s to say what happened there. Who’s to say.

And in A Link to the Past and the games forward? The only mention of other gerudo characters are Koume and Kotake, resurrecting their son in the Oracles games through their own sacrifice and failing to bring anything back but a monstrosity incapable of making conscious decisions. Granted, most games in that extremely weird Fallen Timeline predate OoT and therefore had yet to make gerudos up at all. Still: canonically, between the gap of OoT and ALLTP, whatever it may be, gerudos disappeared here as well.

I think there’s something subtle and a little heartbreaking about the fact that no matter what Ganondorf does, the gerudos always end up dying out. His yearning for Hyrule, its gentler wind and the Triforce blessing its lands always costs him the kingdom that he does have already.

Now, does he care? A lot of people would argue that he doesn’t, that he used them like pawns for his own ambition and saw them as servants more-so than sisters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nintendo’s official opinion, but… One very powerful thing about most of Ganondorf’s incarnations (focusing on the human ones) is that he never seems to reject his cultural heritage. They could have gone for him wearing more kingly hylian stuff given the whole underlying theme of envy and pride surrounding his character, but never once does he try to look more hylian, beyond the ear situation that seems to be tied to the Triforce of Power? Either way: he is gerudo. Several of his outfits reference his mothers, as well as general gerudo patterning and jewelry. His heritage is something he proudly displays, even hundred of years in the future when there is no one left to remember what it means but him. I think it’s a very potent piece of characterization, an arc that crosses over multiple game and says something pretty intense about this character’s fate and his inherent destructiveness over the things he touches –starting with the Triforce, all the way up to his very own body and mind. His mental breakdown by the end of Wind Waker, when the king of Hyrule himself forces him to give up on the thing he sacrificed everything for, takes a new kind of weight with the whole picture taken into account.

(not to excuse genocide or general egomania-fueled madness and violence, but one thing doesn’t mean the other isn’t also relevant)

Regardless of whether this is a tragedy for Ganondorf as their uhh complete failure of a king, honestly, it is undeniably a tragedy for the gerudos themselves: a once-in-a-lifetime joyful event turned into a never-ending nightmare from which there seems to be no escape, their legacy now condemned to fade to black, leaving nothing behind but a demon boar forever laying ruin upon the world.

One may say I’m taking on the bleakest explication for the gerudos’ absence when there could be others. It’s true! Perhaps the gerudos are just chilling off-screen, completely fine, not interested in whatever is happening in the kingdom nearby and their disaster child having yet another temper tantrum about not being the Goddesses’ favorite boy. It’s possible! But regardless, what little elements we do possess as players doesn’t seem to support this, even if it remains possible –and regardless of actual gerudo lives, gerudo culture is definitively a goner in every single timeline.

Even if they did survive... Hyrule still won its unification war.

(I won’t mention Skyward Sword as they are not really a thing there, except for a butterfly that seems to suggest the Gerudo Province was a thing before the gerudo people –I don’t know what to do with this honestly– and the whole Groose situation, which, I’m not sure what to make of either beyond the fact that he may have gotten cursed by opposing Demise? And then went on to start the gerudo tribe, which ended up being an all-women group for some reason? Maybe? It’s not confirmed? I feel like it’s more of a fun tidbit than a central piece of the gerudo puzzle, so I’ll leave it there like I would a cool rock I brought back from a walk and that I don’t know where to put in my house)

Then, Breath of the Wild happened and changed things.

BREATH OF THE WILD

(Additional short note, but: while I won’t mention Four Swords Adventure, since it’s a weird one that almost nobody has played and severely messes with the Timeline, we kind of see the beginnings of what is about to happen in Breath of the Wild in this game –gerudos coming back without much explanation, then distancing themselves from Ganondorf to become friends with hylians because he was too hungry for power and now they are nice and have good reputation because they are our friendsss)

I was actually so happy to learn gerudos were making a comeback in a mainline Zelda game, and this got me more excited about Breath of the Wild than basically anything else the game involved. And getting to explore the Desert once again, meeting this new batch of impossibly tall buff girls, getting more about their language and their culture, Riju and the rest of the little girls are adorable, the grandmas are so cool, the sand seals??? sign me the fuck up??? And above it all, hanging around Gerudo Town at night and feeling as warm and cozy as little me liked to imagine how freeing it would feel, to stay there and watch the desert behind the safety of their walls in OoT… This was great. I loved it.

It was a huge compensation for the criticism I’m about to make, but did leave me with… questions regarding how their culture was going to be handled moving forward.

I’ll start with something small yet deeply revelatory, then work my way from there.

So... gerudos’ ears are pointy now.

This is pretty significant. Lore-wise, it’s been said that the elongated ears of hylians are there so they can better hear the voices of the gods. It’s considered a sign of holiness in-universe. There's a bunch of really thoughtful analysis on tumblr over that whole Ganondorf ear situation, which is a mess but also very interesting, but the short answer is: I think the absence of pointy ears was a clear design choice to originally signify them as Less Good. Even when Ganondorf gets pointier ears, they never get as long as hylians’. Worth noting: not every non-gerudo character has pointy ears: gorons, zoras and ritos (among others) do not possess this trait, and there are even some humans that have regular rounded ears in the series –though they always seem to be of lesser relevance, if not downright peasants in Twilight Princess. Pointy ears always tended to implied a strict hierarchy in the series: basically, the more pointy, the more Protagonist you become.

(also their eyes becoming green instead of the traditional yellow/golden, which looks more wicked and demonic --and cooler also tbh)

The pointy ears imply two things. From within the game, this could be interpreted in two ways: either that gerudos… converted, for a lack of a better term, and are now considered holy through their worship of the Golden Goddesses and/or Hylia, or that their mingling with hylians through tens of thousands of years had them acquiring this trait out of sheer genetic override (though they have kept their mostly-women birth rates, their big nose, darker skin –for the most part– and red hair). Probably a healthy mixture of both. Design-wise, it signifies something quite simple to the player: they are on hylians’ side now. They are good guys. We can trust them, even if they still have a little spice in them. They aligned themselves with us and against Ganon in all of its manifestations (even if he’s but an angry ghastly pig being parasitic to everything it touches in this iteration). They are on the side of Good, definitively, and will fight evil by our side.

On that note, I think it’s worth bringing out another major change from their initial iteration, which is their overt friendship with Hyrule as a whole, and with the Royal Family in particular. Despite not allowing any voe inside their walls (we’ll come back to this), their relationship with hylians is pretty neat. They have booming trade roads, travel and meet with the rest of the cultures, and are fierce enemies with the Yiga clan, who are renowned for being huge Calamity Ganon supporters. The tables certainly have turned. I want to bring out, in particular, Urbosa’s friendship with the queen and her role as the cool aunt taking care of Zelda and protecting her from evil (to be noted: I am not familiar with Age of Calamity so if I’m mischaracterizing her in any way, please let me know). The gerudo sense of sisterhood has been extended to the royals they used to fight against. I would go on and say the cultures peacefully coexist, but I think that what we’re looking at here is a case of vassal behavior, just like we used to have from zoras (in the non-Fallen Timelines) and gorons. This is a huge departure from gerudos being openly rejecting of Hylian culture in their initial iteration, and something that is worth returning to later.

Okay. Now it’s time to mention the weird obsession BotW gerudos have with romance. I didn’t take notice of my issues with their writing until I realized how prevalent of a theme that was. Now, the reason given for gerudos to refuse entry to males (of every race) has much more to do with preventing young gerudos to make mistakes than anything else, and is actively being put into question by the younger generations –which would make sense. But the amount of NPCs that either lament their lack of match, talk about their husbands (because they marry now apparently) or are invested in romance, and a very limited understanding of romance at that (heterosexual, closed, etc), makes for much more of the population that I initially expected. There’s no mention of what’s going on with their males, if there are new males being born and either exiled or abandoned, or if Ganondorf being technically still alive have have cut them off male heirs. Either way: no more kings, only girlbosses chiefs.

To have the gerudos so interconnected with Hyrule, not only through trade but through extremely coded romance where they have to make themselves palatable to a future male partner and enforce fidelity, was… a choice. The extremely brief and skippable mention of gerudos sometimes going to Castle Town in search for boyfriends in OoT became half of their personality traits in this game. We went from a race that was fiercely independent and mocking of the unworthy men who tried to mingle with them, to… this. Now I’m not saying some of the sidequests aren’t cute, or that I didn’t like the wedding, or that the grandma near the abandoned statue of Hylia (so she was worshipped at some point) clocking us and talking about her love life wasn’t one of my favorite gerudo conversations. I’m saying that the vibes have definitively changed. For the better? I’m not sure.

I once stumbled upon an article that said that Breath of the Wild gerudos were a huge improvement compared to their original introduction, because they were no longer presented as evil and hostile thieves groveling at the boot of a single man, but as a full culture allied with the protagonist and actively involved in the story, while still getting their Cool Girl Badass moment (again can’t find it anymore, I’ll link it if I stumble upon it again). I see where this comes from, but I honestly can’t help but consider it a reading that assumes something pretty major (though through no fault of their own, as the games tend to hammer this down as hard as they can), and that being hylians as the unquestioned anchor of Good.

Which, in spite of what the games want me to believe, I… feel uncomfortable taking at face value.

To me, regarding how gerudos are being incorporated in that goodie narrative, this is kind of a case of surface-level feminism trumping over colonialist/imperialist concerns. It becomes more important to perform the aesthetics of being cool and friendly and independent than scratching at any deeper problem that would risk making people uncomfortable. This is kind of Green Skin Ganon all over again: oh wait, isn’t it a little icky to have the evil bad guy being brown while faced by the most aryan-looking ass heroes of all time? Okay, then let’s take the brown guy and make his skin green so we don’t have to feel bad anymore that the conflict has racial undertones!! Solved!! There’s nothing questionable about changing a PoC's features to make it more monstrous and less human, right?

To me, it’s kind of the coward option: instead of accepting the messy reality those initial choices created (and their interesting nuances if taken at face value), let’s just… rewrite the PoC culture’s history to make it feel less uncomfortable for the white heroes. In many ways, it is an extension of what hylians have always done: scrubbing the weird and messy things about the past and shoving them deep down into the spooky well and far into the desert prison and away in alternate hellish dimensions, and then make up a very simple story where they get to feel good about themselves –except this time, it’s the fabric of the games, the literal reality, bending backward to make it happen. Which, in my opinion, makes it much worse than before. Now, there’s no conversation. The fabric of reality is changing their own history so that there is nothing to discuss anymore. Ganondorf was always evil incarnate. He never had any point. It was always 100% his own fault, his own hubris, his own fated wickedness. He was always demonic (and green, very important –having a flashback to people on twitter accusing artists restoring the TotK green skin to the original brown of wanting to make Ganondorf black, and like….. how do I put it gently…..)

And, above all else: gerudo are to distance themselves from his legacy so they can stay in the club of the Good and Just and Holy.

Because here’s the messy thing: as much as I love seeing the gerudos again in Breath of the Wild and as much I love for them to have survived the Era of Myth (??? somehow ???), this… kind of changes Ganondorf’s character arc. No longer do we have the story of a king who wanted more, either for his people, for himself or both, and led his culture to its destruction in his search for absolute Power, while remaining ironically incapable of maintaining what little he already had. This starts from him kneeling to the king of Hyrule in OoT and leads to the deluge, Arbiter’s Ground, his own mothers dying for the sake of his failed resurrection. Breath of the Wild changes this: now, the gerudo were apparently fine without him? They apparently did their own thing and became suddenly and inexplicably disconnected from his actions? I know it’s kind of implied they side with hylians at the end of OoT, but it’s honestly never really explored why they would cheer for the death of their king while never seeming to resent him before except for Nabooru –there are mentions of brainwashing for those who resist him (as well as “other groups in the desert”, tho they are never mentioned again), but it’s hardly a proper plot point for the majority of the tribe, aaaand they still die by Wind Waker in the Adult Timeline, in spite of their potential alliegance…

(again, this shift towards submitting to Hyrule actually started with Four Swords Adventure, getting crisper with each iteration)

There used to be this polite blur regarding Ganondorf’s relationship to them, how much he used them and how much he acted in their name (with arguments for both sides), and I think this messy and debatable question mark was one of the most compelling aspects of his character. Gerudos rejecting their relationship at a near-cosmic, reality-bending level, removes a huge layer of complexity to both parties… all for the benefit of making hylians come out cleaner out of this whole exchange, their moral grayness barely a whisper in the distance.

I’ll kind of go on the record and say that I suspect the addition of Demise to the canon to serve a similar purpose (at least in part): if Ganondorf becomes but the manifestation of a demonic curse, and is no longer an extremely messy character brimming with agency and drive, forcing the heavens to reckon with said agency in a way he was never meant to access, born from a complex set of circumstances from which we clearly get only a limited and biased perspective, then it becomes extremely clear that he’s a Bad in a way that isn’t worth exploring further. Even if he does have some points, he is a Bad. It’s what matters most. Not to say I even hate what this angle can bring to the table or that I want him to become Good (I don’t –I’ll talk more about why I dislike most takes on him being a helpless victim to the curse), but once again, who benefits from adding another Unquestionned Baddie to the equation to rest upon? Not him, and not the gerudos, that’s for sure.

So. Why did I, me, personally, like the gerudos in the first place?

Beyond the inherent coolness factor of their culture and the fascinating mysteries of what is merely suggested, I think… I think I loved gerudos because we were obvious outsiders. Because their rejection of Hylian culture was so sharp and extreme, their value system so different, and their writing, their religion, their relationship to power and hierarchy and worth wanted nothing to do with hylians. They didn’t need hylians, beyond them having potential resources to steal. In fact, the threat of hylians influencing their culture was such that the entry to the Fortress was forbidden to everyone (I don’t think men were ever singled out, by the way, even though they are mocked relentlessly). I think there was something inherently hopeful about this semi-matriarchy resisting the outside world, and especially its notions of what girls were meant to be –it was 1998, and every other girl character in OoT, besides Impa and Sheik that?? is another can of worms entirely, is either helpless or someone to save. For them to reject this narrow vision of femininity was, in my opinion, much more radical than what we got in BotW. Less nuanced, more problematic perhaps? But also much more powerful. Gerudo Valley is home, not to a town, but a Fortress.

Hylians were worth being resisted.

In Breath of the Wild, their refusal to let men enter their town is kind of boiled down to a fading tradition over-focused on romance, a meek little game of chase. Their entire goal seems to be finding a hylian to settle down with. Say what you will about the single man and the many girls (never explored and completely open-ended in its implications, btw), but at least it wasn’t… that. At least it opened the way for different ways for people to exist and imagine culture and civilization, outside of the heterosexual couple, the christian-infused patriarchy and its trickling down implications. What I want to say is: let my girls tell hylians they ain’t shit!! That they aren’t the end all be all of reality! This is what made gerudos so compelling in the first place! Where is that bite now? Where is that self-definition?

It’s gone, because hylians need to be Good. So we tee-hee at the creep running laps around the town, we disguise ourselves to breach their trust and infiltrate their town (though there is nuance to be had there, gender be complicated etc), we watch them pine after shitty dudes and take classes to become the perfect approachable woman and make love soups with ?? strange ingredients honestly, and we witness them get very friendly with the Royal Family they used to conspire against, dying to protect the princess against the manifestation of their ancient king reduced to a raving puddle of Bad Boar.

Hyrule, unified against him.

TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

For posterity’s sake: this post was made before the game was released. I’ll probably update my thoughts on a separate thing later on.

I don’t think gerudos allying with the hylians and burying their own legends about Ganondorf as deeply underground as they can until it blows up in their face is a bad setup at all. It’s actually pretty juicy, and there’s a ton of fascinating stuff that could happen here –even some involving gerudos taking a firm stand against him while still reconnecting with their past and the choices they made once. This is my hope with the title of the game: Tears of the Kingdoms. Let’s examine them all, account for the damage, and decide how we move forward from there with the full knowledge of where we come from.

What I am afraid of (and I already made posts about that) is the scenario where gerudos rallying against Ganondorf, which I expect will forcefully try to take back his place as their king, is used for cheap feminist points that completely fail to examine, well. Everything mentioned above. Where reality bends itself out of the way of the Goddesses, and hylians’ responsibility in any of this mess, so that everything bad is 100% Ganon’s fault and so he must be cast aside and torn away from the Cool Gerudo Girls and this is 100% justified and deserved because we are Independent Women Who Take No Shit from No Men (unless they are the king of Hyrule or any random hylian they wish to marry apparently).

I’ll say this here because it’s been burning my mouth every time I see discourse about Ganondorf and the gerudo: gerudos declared him as their king. To make a really bad comparison that I dislike: he didn’t run around to assemble girls and make a cult around himself, he was born with the cult already formed around him (and it’s not a cult, it’s just a different mode of governance –hylians also revere the Royal Family like gods, don’t they?). This heavily changes the dynamics at play. Not to remove any agency from him to do a little invasion about it, but chances are the ancestors to BotW’s gerudos fully expected him to behave in this way, at least to a degree –in OoT you see very plainly that they value physical prowess, feats of thievery, witchcraft and general violence. It’s more complicated than him being a Bad and making the poor helpless women go along with the plan uwu –even taking the brainwashing into account, AND Koume and Kotake counting as gerudos too, even if they might not be not fully innocent in shaping the culture and the man himself. If manipulation and forced servitude is the explanation given, I’ll be genuinely mad –because, once more, all the nuance and messiness would be flattened for the sake of making Ganondorf Bad and the gerudo Good (= on hylians’ side).

It bears to be said: I think feminism stances that require, not to criticize (which is fair), but to fully dehumanize and bestialize men of color to make any sense are uhhh bad, and it's worth questionning who they end up serving in the end.

The flip side of this would be to make Ganondorf a poor little meow meow that was secretly controlled by the evil Demise all along, and... I’ll be real. I really don’t think it solves our problem at all. It might even make it worse.

My problem with how gerudos have been handled thus far, being mostly connected to how they behave in relation to hylians Good, is that they’ve been systematically defanged not to threaten the status quo as much as they used to. I think it’s pretty clear why I’m not a fan of Ganondorf being a mere victim of cosmic circumstances; I have a post that goes more in depth about this, but to simplify: my man has legitimate grievances. To make him a mere puppet to Evil Incarnate would, to me, be just another attempt to erase the despotism of the Goddesses, the unjust hierarchy of the world, what hylians have historically done to the races they were in conflict with (looking at the Yiga for the most recent example…)

I’m not saying his fight is clean or even legitimate, that he isn't driven by his own sense of self-importance above anything else, or that he should win (he has no plan beyond domination and victory, that's not a future). But I think there’s something really important about having someone being willing to fully consume himself and everything around him for the simple fact that someone should resist the order of the world. Even if that makes him a heartless, cruel, and egomaniac demon-pig. Even if there’s no Hyrule left to rule. Even if his own people despise him, or are long gone and forgotten.

Is it a little heart-wrenching? Uhh yes to me yes most definitively. This is why Wind Waker Ganondorf hits so hard, and remains (I think) his favorite entry in the series so far. But… I still find this fate of eternal resistance more resonant and empowered, and far less grim, than if Hyrule’s lore absorbs his hatred and rage, gives it to another entity that would be Badder (= more opposed to hylians and the goddesses), and scrubs it off anything icky and uncomfortable, rendering it completely domesticated and non-threatening to hylian domination; rubbed of his skin color, of his complexity, of his own emotions, even made... kind of sexy now, in the same way his sisters have been made before him? I am very, very afraid of him being turned from furious and an unapologetic subject in his own legend to a "redeemed" (according to whom??) and palatable object in somebody else’s, that you now end up having to… save from himself.

Again, I want to trust that Tears of the Kingdom can walk that line and preserve everything sharp and contrasting and profound and thrilling about this fascinating setup. I don’t expect a philosophy course, this is a game for children –but it doesn’t mean Nintendo didn’t do an astounding job with similar setups in the past. Again, I’ll invoke the Wind Waker conflict, but Twilight Princess did a lot of great things as well (Zant’s speech, if you can get past the weird stretches and stumping and NNHYAAAs, is pretty fantastic) –and the subtle writing of Majora’s Mask is also proof enough this series can be complex without being impermeable.

So this is where my hope lies. Not really with BotW’s writing, which, I’m sorry to say, but I found to be below what the series has done in the past (I have no problem with the setup and how the story is explored, I think it was a great idea, but wasn’t ever sold on the actual writing the way I may have been with previous titles –it felt… very tropey to me overall, with a couple of highlights). But Nintendo has shown to know how to write compelling stories for children that know where to sprinkle its darkness and how to preserve its hope, and this is this side I’m relying on for this delicate storyline moving forward.

And now? Now… I suppose we wait and see.

(thank you for reading my impossibly long essay what the actual hell, at least I got it all out of my system, see you in part 2 for when TotK comes out I suppose aaa)

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