Food for thought

Actively silly and painfully small. Born before 2000. She/Her. No blmatsu, no minors, there's NSFW on this blog, folks!! Asks are always open - I promise it's hard to bother me.

[narcissistcookbook]

she buffalo on my buffalo til i buffalo

[sharkurai]

grill cheese

[cuppydogshane]

i need to lock in (doesnt)

[teeth--wizard]

check out these midnas i drew

[zzoupz]

I drew these emo cats

[callali1y]

listen if a friend of mine transitioned and looked like me i would not be mad. i would not be asking questions. we would have other business to attend to

[sourgunk]

[skinny-dipping-sasquatch]

Reblog daily for health and prosperity.

[hotterthanhades]

every wikipedia editor in america right now

[c3rvida3]

kitten if you don't get daddy his 3D printed sensory slug in the next five seconds you can kiss your grandma's drywall goodbye

[c3rvida3]

This was supposed to be unrebloggable, but I was flying into a gamer rage at the antique store because someone was wearing too much Victoria's Secret Love Spell body spray and it gave me a migraine.

[bloobluebloo]

I'm glad the topic of orientalism was brought to the forefront instead of being stashed away in very niche parts of the fandom, but it is incredibly unfortunate that it has been boiled down to "sexualizing the Gerudo is wrong" and "to fix the Gerudo they should have designs that are a better reflection of the regions they are inspired from". While giving them more varied and appropriate clothing would be a good step forward (thinking of Facette in EoW), if that was the *only* thing fixed the Gerudo would still be orientalist. Orientalism, first and foremost, is a concept that was created to bolster western imperialism, making it seem enlightened in comparison to the "barbaric" east. And to be honest, even in circles that are more sympathetic towards Ganondorf, there is still this underlying sentiment aka "Ganondorf has a point but he's still evil! We're not denying that!" This is still orientalist thought at play, that in order to respect canon you have to internalize that the one person that opposes a kingdom that enshrines the divine right to power is evil and selfish and violent. And his people feel shame forever for his actions, and have only been considered heroic when they ally with Hyrule. Sexualization is a problem, for sure, but understanding the context of the sexualization is also important.

[ganondorf]

thinking about that post from yesterday like it IS good to see the orientalism in loz entering a more mainstream critical consciousness but the fact so many analyses seem to begin and end with the outfits and the sexualization just ends up being unproductive. that's only an entry point. like i said yesterday these are very pervasive tropes

the very fact you have an all-female civilization defined by the existence of its One Evil Male Ruler draws directly from western imaginings of the harem and the Despotic East; spaces eroticized and ruled by singular tyrants

[...] representing the harem women as victims of a system that enslaves their bodies and colonizes their minds. Many writers express the conviction that the harem as an institution is shameful and tragic. Lady Sheil is 'sure' that it is a site of despotic power, and envisages its patriarchal overlord as 'a needy, harsh, disappointed profligate man, responsible to no one, [who] often wreaks his temper on the persons least capable of resistance'.

source: Colonialism and Gender in the East: Representations of the Harem in the Writings of Women Travellers

and the refusal to seriously interrogate ganondorf's villainization out of fear that doing so might somehow ""woobify"" him is also a big part of what keeps these conversations stagnant. even many of the people willing to acknowledge the orientalism and imperialist logic embedded in loz still refuse to move on ganondorf himself. they stop at "but he's still evil :)" and decline to examine how deeply racist the foundation of that evil coding actually is. because the issue is not whether a character can commit harmful acts within a story, the issue is that "Evil Man From The Desert Wants To Steal Our Grass" is itself a villain template built from colonial anxieties and racialized propaganda

yet the moment you point out that The Desert Villain Coveting Our Prosperous Homeland is a poor and reactionary basis for a villain, people rush in to insist you MUST want to make him Soft and Innocent and Pure. it's a deliberate flattening of the critique. examining racist narrative architecture is not the same thing as demanding sainthood for the character trapped inside it

you cannot "fix" the gerudo simply by giving them more culturally accurate clothing. you cannot "fix" the gerudo without being willing to radically rework the narrative of loz itself. and you definitely can't "fix" the gerudo without addressing ganondorf's villainization

[bloobluebloo]

Exactly this.

I’ve been thinking about why, when the discussion of orientalism is brought up, why Ganondorf is a footnote when he should really be at the center of the discussion. After all, the Gerudo as a tribe were created as an origin point for Ganondorf; he was not added to an existing tribe. And I think it’s rather clear why; by centering Ganondorf in the discussion of orientalism, there has to be acknowledgment that LoZ’s narrative is a nationalist one. This is the only framework under which Ganondorf’s inherent villainy for going after Hyrule makes sense. Like why is Ganondorf’s desire for power and dominion “more evil” than Hyrule’s? Because he says he desires power? Because Hyrule’s kingdomship is an altruistic one allegedly, despite evidence that it has abused its power? So people just meander around the issue by focusing on all the signs that orientalism is present without discussing why the orientalism is there to begin with, what narrative purpose it serves. And many people just think that calling LoZ a nationalist and imperialist narrative is a step too far because they are attached to its stories and its characters. So there is this sort of refusal to dig any deeper, and we just end up with surface-level discussions.

[akahlt0]

2020年良い年になりますように

[bloobluebloo]

Ganondorf's relationship to power and control is an interesting one I think. I don't have any doubt that a part of him simply enjoys being the most powerful guy in the room and dominating. However, I do think his need to be in control stems from this idea that if he isn't in control, or if he isn't the most powerful guy in the room, that his person will suffer harm as a result, that there is no one in the world who has his best interests at heart except himself. I think this makes it very difficult for him to be vulnerable or honest about how he feels because exposing a vulnerability is exposing a weakness that can be exploited. All's this to say, I do think there is a small part of him that maybe yearns for that luxury, that someone would see his vulnerability and cherish it instead of exploit it. If he ever finds someone like that though, I think he would be ridiculously down bad for them.

[bloobluebloo]

One reason Ganondorf in TotK/AoI reads like a propaganda piece instead of like a real character that feels like he belongs to his world is just this framing that everyone always knew he was evil, including a large faction of his own people, or this line of thought that "had Ganondorf not taken power Ardi would have been chief". Ganondorf did not put himself into power; his people put him on the throne, through laws that have existed since before his birth. Additionally, you cannot on one hand believe the Gerudo to be this hardcore warrior tribe and also believe that they would have allowed Ganondorf to maintain a tyrannical hold on them without a fight. Characters from Urbosa to Riju to even the guards at the Gerudo town gates have proven that they do not tolerate nonsense. If Ganondorf was a truly terrible leader they would have ousted him a long time ago. Rauru called him a "hero to his people". So he must have done something right to maintain his throne. What I'm saying is that Nintendo themselves seem to be unsure whether they want him to have complexity or to be a downright evil character so you end up in this middling state where he just is whatever the narrative needs from moment to moment.

[bloobluebloo]

Thinking about how the concept of fatherhood would be such a foreign thing to Ganondorf. He tries to figure out whether his parental expectations would be to be absent as most fathers are amongst the Gerudo, or whether he would have to abide by Gerudo expectations and be a present parent. Is it that different from motherhood? Would he have to be like a mother? Is he expected to behave differently as a father? He would probably get paranoid and study fatherhood like some sort of academic subject because he has to win at everything, and be an incredibly offputting parent who has all his priorities confused along with his usual brainworms probably making things worse.

[immanuelcouldnt]

Did I mention I am very prone to distraction. And Wind Waker is super easy to doodle with the quick fill.

[snaileo]

had to get it out of my system. ganondorf holding a woodland boar piglet - he's quite fond of this little beast.