Rynling R&D

Sorry, I'm not done yet.

Like somehow we all decided to forget how ~~ beloved voice actor Matt Mercer ~~ literally put on greenskin and a prosthetic nose to play Ganondorf as an evil capitalist puppet master at the top of a corporate tower...

which is another point of Nazi propaganda that still exists to this day, like so
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...despite the fact that was fucking disgusting. Honestly if I were a professional actor I would do everything in my power to put as much distance between myself and that character as possible, but here we are.

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Tears of the Kingdom is a remarkably unbalanced game. One of the more annoying sources of this lack of balance is how quickly your bows and weapons break. To give an example, a sword that had an attack power of 12 and took 25 hits to break in Breath of the Wild now has an attack power of 6 and takes 15 hits to break. If you attach something to the sword to give it a greater attack power, the durability will decrease, meaning that it will break in 7 to 10 hits. Likewise, if you attach anything to your arrows, the durability of your bow will decrease substantially. This is especially annoying when the things you attach to your arrows are necessary for environmental navigation (to create light in dark places, for example).

If you stay on the beaten path and do your chores like a good little boy, this is not a problem. If you want to go exploring, however, you're shit out of luck.

I therefore decided to go ahead and do the fire temple, as the ability you get there helps you break rocks and other obstacles "for free." As I wrote earlier, the scenario for this temple bothers me. Essentially, Yunobo the Goron has invented capitalism, but none of the other Gorons wants to work for a corporation. Your job is to get the fat lazy Gorons off their fat lazy asses and force them into a situation in which they're alienated from their labor.

It turns out that Yunobo is being possessed by The Evil Ganon™, who is controlling him by means of a totally sweet luchador mask. (Seriously, I fucking love that mask.) After you have a silly little battle, Yunobo's mask breaks, and he returns to normal. "Normal" means that he's still the CEO of a corporation, of course, but now he's "good."

So I guess, in This Year of Our Lord 2023, we are back to the same bullshit where capitalism is divided between "good capitalism," which is enabled by smart and hardworking individuals, and "bad capitalism," which is a sneaky plot of people who look like this:

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I did the Wind Temple yesterday afternoon. As a dungeon, it was short and relatively simple. The boss, a giant prehistoric flying insect, was fun. Granted, this wasn't the strongest dungeon or the most interesting boss, but I have no complaints.

What stood out was the sequence leading up to the dungeon, which was so beautiful that it made me cry.

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I haven't seen anything like that in a video game since Journey. It was amazing.

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Link's task is to find and battle the regional manifestation of The Evil Ganon™ so that the younger generation of Gorons will say no to drugs and go back to the meaningless jobs that alienate them from their labor. After all, the emergent industrialism of Hyrule needs fuel.

Lmao no. Fuck that. This game is stupid.

Speaking of the Lightning Temple, I want to share a picture of the most (unintentionally?) adorable enemy in Tears of the Kingdom, the zombies that have started causing trouble in Gerudo Desert:

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I love their big heads and tiny little tails and stupid derpy faces. They remind me of my dog.

My favorite generation of Pokémon games is Sword and Shield. Hands down. I didn't play those two games for as many hours as I played previous generations, but only because I am no longer an insane completionist.

After that, I really like Sun and Moon. This is probably because I was going back and forth to Hawai'i for work fairly often at around the time they came out, but it doesn't hurt that they're fun (and short!) games with an interesting set of themes and characters.

Sun and Moon are also the generation where you could start going wild with dressing up your character, and that is exactly what I did. At first, my character had a very "classic" and preppy look. Then one of the NPCs was like, "I'll give you a special item if you show me the most colorful outfit you have." Just for laughs, I put my trainer in the worst clothing I could find. The absolute worst. Everything was bold patterns in bright clashing colors. And you know what? It was amazing.

That was when I realized: I can dress like this in real life.

So every summer I make it my mission to be a walking OSHA-certified neon recycle bin. I usually go straight for flip-flops, but I have made a thrilling discovery.

Behold! Botanical-pattern boardwalk loafers:
https://www.heydude.com/products/wally-funk-oasis-blue
https://www.heydude.com/products/wally-h2o-sail-on-sailor
https://www.heydude.com/products/wally-tropical-light-blue

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:

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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.

The storytelling in Tears of the Kingdom is so embarrassingly hamfisted.

In Breath of the Wild, Link was mainly exploring abandoned ruins and other uninhabited areas, so the Law of Conservation of Detail was at play. Namely, given that Link uncovered so little information about the past, every single detail needed to be significant.

Meanwhile, Tears of the Kingdom has no conservation of anything. There is text for days in this game, and a great deal of it is redundant. Spoilers under the cut.

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Come on, Nintendo. We get it. The green-skinned, hook-nosed man from the desert is evil. He lies and steals. He only understands force and violence, and he needs to be put down like the subhuman animal he is. Message received.

Mild Tears of the Kingdom spoilers + my garbage art under the cut.

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OKAY FINE. Fine. I get it. I know what I need to do.

(Here) is the video if you haven't seen it. It's completely in character and absolutely deranged.