Once Again Wind Waking, Part Three

Last night my husband saw The Wind Waker for the first time.

He was like, “Wow, this is a beautiful game.” And it is in fact a beautiful game, so he sat and watched me play it.

After a few minutes, he was like, “Is this the game people were sending you death threats about?”

And indeed it is. I don’t really understand it either.

I think I’ve gotten a lot better about dealing with that sort of thing, thankfully. Yesterday someone reblogged one of my old Zelda meta posts, and it got a few more notes and reblogs. This happens from time to time – maybe once every two weeks or so – and the inevitable result is that another person will then reblog the post with something nasty added to the end. I might get one or two unpleasant messages after that. I don’t usually bother to look at my notes on Tumblr, but I do read the messages people send me, and some of them aren’t great. Last night I got another one calling me “literally Hitler,” which was good timing. Pesach sameach and all that.

I showed my husband the message, and he said that he wants to pitch the concept of “Literally Hitler” to Larry David, as having a time-jumped Hitler living in Los Angeles would be a good follow-up to Curb Your Enthusiasm. I considered responding to the Tumblr ask along those lines, but instead I just blocked the person. We only have so many hours on this earth.

Anyway, The Wind Waker is a beautiful and sweet and wholesome game, and spending time with it makes me happy. I just got news that I’m going to be teaching my class on The Wind Waker at UPenn in Spring 2022, and that makes me happy as well. It’s a good game, and it’s going to be a good class.

Once Again Wind Waking, Part Four

Now that I've stepped back from academia, I have space to think about the purpose of literary criticism, with "criticism" in this context meaning "analysis and commentary." Specifically, I'm thinking about how and why such a pursuit can be interesting and worthwhile.

I've come to the tentative conclusion that there are three main points of literary criticism, and all the fun stuff happens in the middle of the triangle between them.

One point is what the text is literally saying. Leaning too far in this direction is pedantic.

The second point is what the author intended. This can be useful in terms of thinking about a text's social and historical context, but leaning too far in this direction usually involves combing through first drafts and letters and interviews to look for clues to mysteries that don't really exist.

The third point is what the text is suggesting without directly saying it, and perhaps without the author intending to say it. Leaning too far in this direction puts you into the territory of conspiracy theories and fandom discourse.

If you can position yourself comfortably within the triangle of these three points, you can create interesting and worthwhile literary criticism.

In terms of The Wind Waker, I think a good middle-ground starting point is the supposition that Ganondorf is human and not inherently evil. If you read the text 100% literally and assume that everything every NPC says to Link is 100% true, there's no real room for exploration. For the most part, the answer to any given question becomes, "This happened because of The Evil Ganon," which is tedious and boring. On the other hand, if Ganondorf is just some grumpy asshole, and if the world exists independently of his moods and whims, then the game becomes much richer and more complicated.

The literal reason the player is given for the Korok seed sidequest in The Wind Waker is that "trees cannot grow because of The Evil Ganon." How or why Ganondorf would prevent seeds from growing isn't explained, because of course it isn't. I think that, in order to talk about the Koroks in a meaningful way, you therefore have to remove Ganondorf from the conversation. Like, let's assume for the moment that a mythical evil pig demon is not actually controlling the weather and start from there.