If you want to talk about "cultural Christianity" let's talk about the belief even amongst self-declared "progressives" that people without spiritual beliefs are empty-inside NPCs going through life unsaved unfulfilled and miserable lol
ooooh the wisdom of 3 AM has just inspired me with a very cool and sad explanation for something in TotK, I'll try to phrase it as spoiler-neutral as possible just in case it breaches containment or tumblr's formatting borks again
and the fact that he can tell impa only reinforces this theory by making it even weirder that he tells nobody else
Instead of "live laugh love" or "home is where the heart is" my (wonderful, progressive, very accepting) dad put up the racism sign in the foyer
whats the racism sign?
The racism sign, as I like to call it, is from an art piece I made halfway through my first semester of art school:
It reads "any attempted theft will be reported to the police" in the 15 most commonly spoken languages by immigrants here other than English or other western european languages (in descending order).
This sign was only half of the art piece, the other half was the most stereotypically Icelandic painting I could think of:
When the piece was shown the painting and the sign were hung on opposite sides of the room, making the sign more of an afterthought for those who don't speak any of the languages written on the sign. Standing out just enough for them to notice it and maybe wonder what it said, but ultimately not giving it a second thought for the most part.
I wanted to highlight one of the most common ways racism and xenophobia present themselves here as well as the comfort of ignorance. The sign doesn't cater to you, you ignore it it, and you don't care what it might say. You don't have to think about it because it doesn't affect you.
For those who can read the sign though, or bother to translate it, this is just yet another reminder of people's ignorance and double standards. My inspiration for this piece came from my old workplace, where they had this sign hanging on one of the doors:
The main things that stood out about this to me were that
- It was the only sign on the premises written in anything other than Icelandic and/or English
- All of the additional languages (Vietnamese, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian) specifically targeted minority groups that already face discrimination here
- The location of the sign. We only had 1 of these, and they chose to put it up somewhere where only staff would see it rather than the customers. In fact, it was right next to the break room so you had to walk past it every time you went on break. And it was a sign reminding people not to steal. Big win for inclusivity here
People love saying that we're not racist/xenophobic here even though we very much are. The problem is just that so many people don't take the time to look when it doesn't directly affect them. I was very happy with my piece because people actually came up to me and asked what the sign said because they wanted to know, it started a conversation and made those previously unaware of this issue more aware. I wonder if these sorts of signs would be anywhere near as commonplace as they are if more people looked at them critically and asked "why is this the thing we bother translating?"
Anyway, all that aside I love my dad and I like the way this art piece turned out but also I am slightly worried about giving people the wrong idea when this is the first thing they see when they enter our home 💀
Okay, so I know the reason the physics in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have so many weird exceptions and edge cases is because the games' designers are concerned foremost with puzzle-crafting, and only secondarily with producing a coherent world model, and nearly every bit of weirdness can be explained by the fact that some puzzle mechanic required the games' physics to work that way. There's simply no deeper unifying logic to be found, and trying to find it is a good way to give yourself a headache.
One of those pieces of weirdness lies in the relative weights of various objects, particularly in relation to Link, the player character. Some objects are incongruously heavy or light for their size because the puzzles in which they appear require them to be, and Link himself is weirdly lightweight, presumably because that was the easiest way to cause him to experience the exaggerated knockback that many puzzles require without making the forces involved ridiculously strong.
Most objects and characters which recur among the two games are at least consistent in this respect. However, it has been empirically determined that in Breath of the Wild, Link weighs the same as 8.5 apples, whereas in Tears of the Kingdom he weighs the same as 10 apples, and now I can't stop myself from wondering what fucking puzzle mechanic required Link to be exactly 1.5 apples heavier.
one thing about me is i frickin love long ass youtube videos about the most random and niche topics imaginable. defunctland's investigation into who created the disney channel theme song? oh i was seated. a two hour breakdown on the lore of the entire tekken video game franchise? sign me up. a vlog about a cross-country roadtrip dining at every single rainforest cafe in the united states? i'm there.



















