still thinking about how even just the decision to basically act like the shiekah tech never existed is just ... so baffling to me
bc again you could have done all the sonau tech does with shiekah instead, and they were perfect to be explored more in a sequel, why wouldnt you grasp that potential, the literal building blocks for more??
if you are that tired of shiekah tech .. dont make it a fuckign sequel to the game prominently featuring it???? totk doesnt take place generations after botw in which things could have changed drastically, its just a few years afterwards??
you want to reuse the map and get rid of shiekah tech? ok fine take LINK into the past then and the focus is for you to find a way to return; do some neat twist where its revealed that link was the one who sealed gan bc he couldnt defeat him without zelda or something if you dare (they wouldnt)
want less work than that and still reuse the map and get rid of shiekah tech AND reuse characters? ok then make it some alternate universe thingy like majoras mask in which everythign is the same but also isnt, its weird and creepy how characters you thoguht you knew suddendly dont act like themselves, shiekah tech doesnt exist, malice is now miasma, etc, it would give reason to why you feel so much like something about this world is familiar yet also very wrong
as far as im aware every "sequel" we have had so far were either generations apart from the first one, some alternate universe or a different location altogether- in all of which its plausible that things are different, things seem weirdly familiar but also wrong, or that another continent just works different from hyrule
but totk does none of that, its supposedly just a few years after the first game, same world same character, but its BUILT like some strange jumbled mess of stuff from botw and new stuff out of nowhere that just .. doesnt fit, but feeling a strange sense of otherness, a déja vu of something you know but it acts off, like an imposter, thats NOT intentional and it shows, its a mess of botw stuff, from stuff that people missed from the old games and entirely new stuff; i dont doubt it CAN work but the way it turned out is like a mix of 3 different puzzles forced together and being told 'see it fits!' even tho you can clearly see the pieces dont look right in these places
again it feels like a sequel that desperately wants you to forget the first game happened, that anythign from it mattered at all
and that isnt really ... the sense of a sequel? why insist on it being one when it only creates problems? is it marketing?? just like it was marketing to call age of calamity a telling of what happened before botw but then it wasnt that at all and that is still the sole reason why i dislike it? bc i was lied to? totk is like 10000 times worse than that, its a main title and doesnt even have the excuse of yeah its basically an excuse to play all your fav characters in fun ways and the game beign well aware that being its main appeal; what is totk appeal? a toybox with botw aestethic and none of the flavor?
(on a sidenote; the sonau tech doesnt even .. matter? in botw at least calamity ganon was made of shiekah tech parts and him overtaking other tech is a big point, the sonau tech doesnt serve anything but .. idk minerus useless mech? gan doesnt even aknowledge it, he doesnt care, all it is is toys for the player, not link, but the player.
the monsters mining the tech materials? what for? gan doesnt give a damn and they dont work for the yiga either??)
i said it before but it gives me the feeling that the way botw invited you to theorize, to look beneath the surface, the way it intrigued you and laid the groundwork for so many interesting things without denying anything.. was accidental? or perhaps put in the game without the directors noticing?
i cant stop thinking about them saying sth like "after botw zelda wondered if the kingdom of hyrule needed to keep existing the way it had been before the calamity, but then totk happens" bc it just feels like they realized too late that botw naturally led into questioning the status quo and they scrambled to fit it back into a flat and boring road we have seen so many times before (or even worse really) with totk
zeldas character naturally leads into her questioning and reexamine their history and set of rules? we gotta teach her a lesson of why she is importante god given monarchy girl that has to keep it bc what if evil brown man shows up again for no reason
maybe im grasping at straws here but looking at it this way the sonau .. make more "sense"; the shiekah were a group that was under the rule of the royal family, and misstreated before (oh no look soemthing interesting) so they dont lend themselves well to be used for teaching zelda that lesson- the sonau however are tailored really to be just that; they are a supposedly godly race from the literal sky that founded this version of hyrule, that had tech even more advanced and better than the shiekah, she gets put in the past to meet the perfect god king of goodness personally, also his very fridgy wifey that zelda later replaces in a way, shes put there and treated like family and then gets to see just how evil that evil big man from the desert is, sonia is falcon-punched to death solely so zelda can feel obligated to take over her role, have her new, better 'family' hurt by gan; similarly so raurus sacrifice, look what a noble and good king he is, he payed the ultimate price to lock that evil man away, now zelda you cannot let their sacrifice go to waste, rebuild that divinely good kingdom like it was!!
and even though they go so much out of their way to put the cart back onto the rails of black and white-good and evil in an even flatter way than the old games, it still doesnt feel right, at least to me, it still feels like zelda shouldnt have gone along with all of that, it feels like even her character from botw was walked back entirely, except for the intro, it made her feel like a stranger to me-
because this is a sequel, i know this zelda, she wouldnt act like that after all that shes been through, this feels ... off
and it all just insulting to anyone who cared about botw more than surface level, or the zelda lore in general, i dont even care much about the timeline, but theres alot of lore and themes beyond it that felt ignored, especially so given that .. its a damn sequel, non AU, not generations apart, directly part 2-
but its not.
it even feels very "corporate", put zelda in a dress again, people liked that, put crazy abilities in the game to flashbang people with how insane it is even if its not the best for the gameplay or the story, put a new asthetic into it out of nowhere bc its 'new' and act like its been there the whole time, put gan in there bc people miss him and find him sexy even if his role is just as flat as that of an evil cloud monster-
*sigh*
you know, i saw a post that said aoc was like a bad fanfic (affectionate) and totk was like a bad fanfic (derogatory) and tbh thats like one of the best comparisons/summaries i have seen ..
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someone probably said this already but in spiderverse i think it's interesting how when pavitr was first introduced everyone thought something bad was gonna happen to him bc of how confident and optimistic he was. and then in the actual movie we see that something bad was supposed to happen to him (police chief dying!) but it doesn't! miles stops it! and miguel berates miles for this, says it's going to cause the universe to collapse or whatever.
there's this idea that tragedy is inherent to spidermans growth, and while it's true that some spiderpeople learn important lessons through loss, no one stops to ask, is it really necessary? yeah, maybe the chief was supposed to die. but why does spiderman have to be formed through tragedy? why do we (as heroes) have to let people die? pavitr didn't lose anyone, and he's still a good spiderman! maybe, if he doesn't suffer, he'll end up better off for it!
so while miguel is arguing for all this big picture stuff about saving the multiverse he's lost sight of what it really means to be a spiderman, he's not looking out for the real individual people. yeah it's just one person who would die, but that one person means something to someone. shrugging and saying "stuff just sucks sometimes, we can't do anything about it" is the opposite of what superheroes do. pretty obviously, miles arc is also a reflection of the struggles people face in real life, working within unequal systems, where it's easy to shrug and say "that's just the way it is" and not ask "but why does it need be this way? can't we do something about it?"
miguel is arguing that you can't have your cake and eat it too. presumably, miles and co. are going to find a way to get around that and change things for the better (and maybe that's why miles has that line about two cakes in the advisors office!)
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"I need to find my darling husband!" Said Danny, dressed to the nines in a very elaborate royal dress with a lot of jewelry running through the ballroom after having been on the opposite end of a very worrying phone call.
"Seriously, what do you even see in that mortal!?" Screamed an observant and Danny stopped and leveled them with a glare cold enough to freeze over an active volcano and sharp enough to cut through obsidian.
"He makes me laugh."
Unlike those dead suitors went unsaid, but everyone at the ball (read: search for a bride/groom for the royal ghostling) practically heard it anyways.
Meanwhile over in the land of the living
Okay so Jason may have messed up. Now you see, he hasn't seen his platonic husband for tax benefits in a while, and he's been very careful to not let his identity as the Red Hood slip up before . Not even once in their relationship.
(He's not counting the time his in-laws sniffed him out as a Crime Lord, because Danny never believed them.)
Now, it wasn't exactly his fault he slipped up. You try to fight off an entire group after being pulled up on out of nowhere on the phone while trying to hide said noises of fighting.
Who was he calling? Danny of course since he said he was away for business. What business? Never specified and Jason wasn't going to pry.
So now here he was, bound 'helplessly' as Jason Todd along with a few other random civilians. Which, like, rude.
Wasn't he already good enough for this ancient ritual or whatever?
You know, he really should have walked with that "Anti-kidnapping device" he got that one time. Which honestly he feels like he should be surprised that such a thing exists but considering it was from Bruce. Well.
He's not surprised.
Oh, there's the Justice League now. Shame, he wanted to knock out a few guys himself- Oh, now he's being used to summon a ghost from the Infinite Realms of Royal Lineage.
Yea he probably should have walked with that "Anti-kidnapping device."
Wait a goddamn-
Is that-
"My darling husband!" Danny shouted, scooping him off the circle and away from the head cultist and swinging him around. "You had me worried sick!"
Now, he should ask the question anyone would in this situation when finding out your best friend and platonic husband for tax benefits was apparently a ghost of royal lineage.
"Why're you in a dress?"
"Okay, first of all I rock this thing." Danny huffed.
"That you do." Jason agreed rather easily.
"Second of all, blame those guys over there." He jerked his head in the direction of two very green floating eyeball people.
Not the weirdest he's seen, honestly.
The Observants were whispering to each other and leveling them-Jason in particular-a look.
"Now as you can see, I already have a spouse and I don't need another!" Danny hugged Jason closer for emphasis and he took the time to whisper in Danny's ear. "Did you really marry me to play the husband card?"
"Well, yes." Danny agreed. "But also because of taxes, because I love you and you're my best friend."
"So, we're still done for watching that movie right."
"Obviously."
A pained grunt came from below them and they both looked down to see Batman standing over a very unconscious cultist and looking up at them.
Hm.
He forgot they were there.
"So," Jason began, staring Bruce straight in the eyes. Batman's eyes narrowed. "Don't suppose we can push that forward to right now?"
"Yea, sure why not I'm not doing anything important." Danny leveled the Observants a look, and before either they, Batman, or the Justice League could do anything they both disappeared.
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