Re: Tears of the Kingdom, Part Two: The Sequel

[rynling]

I decided to stop being a whiny little malcontent and actually do something productive, so I sent an email to one of the curators of The Rec Center, a lowkey weekly email newsletter collecting fandom news and interesting fan art. This is what I wrote:

A few weeks ago on The Rec Center newsletter, you shared a piece of fanart of Ganondorf from Tears of the Kingdom in which the character was painted with bright green skin. That artwork is gorgeous, and I love how the artist employs pop art techniques to create a bold visual design.

This feels like a good opportunity to draw your attention to an emerging current in Legend of Zelda fandom, in which fan artists have started to express concern that Nintendo’s own depiction of Ganondorf as a desert-dwelling villain with green-tinted skin has its roots in harmful stereotypes relating to Judaic and Islamic peoples.

I’d therefore like to invite you to consider the manly beauty of Rehydrated Ganondorf with healthy and natural brown skin, which you can appreciate in two fantastic pieces posted on Tumblr (here) and (here). I’d also like to share (this) amazing artwork by the award-winning comic creator Yuko Ota, who plays on the East Asian elements of the original character design.

I want to emphasize that I don’t mean to criticize your excellent taste or the artist featured in your post in any way. Rather, I just wanted to pass on a cool and interesting reinterpretation fueled by the transformative power of fandom. We gleefully stan this horrible man, and they’re all good Ganondorves.

I actually think every artist who draws green-skinned Ganondorf in This Year of Our Lord 2023 needs to spend a solid fifteen minutes in time-out, but I'm trying to be more tolerant of accidental antisemitism and Islamophobia. It's just really in the water these days, and there isn't a lot of education concerning where it comes from or how it manifests. In the end, the most important thing is for everybody to be chill and not send death threats over fictional characters.

Comments

[lassarina]

I'll be honest, I was in my 30s before someone said in clear words that the green skinned witch/wizard representation was anti-Semitic :/ It really is deeply embedded in the water.

[rynling]

It's true! And like, how would you know? A lot of the more disturbing images expressing this trope have been destroyed, and with good reason. I think most people who know about such things would be content to let this particular visual motif fade into obscurity.

I guess the problem lies in the recent re-emergence of the trope in Asia, where (primarily) Islamic peoples are now depicted as having green skin in propaganda posters in India and China. This is especially disturbing in India, as Narendra Modi's political faction openly brags about its direct lineage from the Schutzstaffel, even tossing around the same "double lightning bolt" insignia as part of their messaging. Memes proudly depicting Modi as Hitler have become increasingly common as the idea of a Hindu ethnostate continues to gain popular support. Fun times.

The ongoing genocide in China is much more hush-hush, but green-skin propaganda images still occasionally manage to leak out into the wider internet. Haaretz isn't shy about reporting this, nor is Al Jazeera. It's all very fucked up.

And you might be thinking, But what does this have to do with Japan, and the answer is that the Japanese alt-right gobbles up this garbage like ice cream. There is a large and growing Japanese QAnon group called Yamato Q that organizes popular in-person regional meetings where people can get together to enjoy light mountain climbing, weekend retreats to hot spring hotels, and discussions of how a shadowy cabal of "global capitalists" are putting nanomachines in Covid vaccines in order to dilute the purity of Japanese DNA. In their shared fantasy, wealthy "desert people" conspire to burn oil and kill the planet, and only the heroic Japanese grassroots QAnon environmentalists can stand in their way... but only if they resist vaccines, which as we all know are made from the blood of innocent children.

Sorry for ranting. It's just... Straight-up medieval antisemitism? In 2023? Seriously? You'd think Nintendo of America would have better sense than to let this fly.

[renegadefolkhero]

holy shit

I've been thinking about this post, and I don't think I made this connection before you spelled it out. NOW it seems obvious lol. Thanks for the info, seriously.

[rynling]

Thank you for being kind about my ranting. I'm over it now, I promise. I don't think Nintendo intended anything malicious with the Ganondorf design, and it's not as though I'm ungrateful for all the delicious food I've been served.

......and not to make light of hateful online conspiracy theories that lead to real-world violence, but Yamato Q kind of seems like a reasonably chill and well-organized social group for disillusioned Gen Xers. They even have cute little membership cards?? Fuck those guys, but still. Their logo of a dragon forming a Q with its tail is adorable. God help us all when the far-right finally manages to rope in actual artistic talent.

[lassarina]

I mean I guess that assumes that they know.....why is the alt-right the same fucking everywhere. Why do they *exist.* Why do people have to be so fucking hateful. (I know I sound incredibly naive but it just makes me so sad. It's so much less effort to be kind instead of angry all the time.)

[raisedbymoogles]

....Ganondorves

[rynling]

Ganondii? Ganondae? Ganondorx?