Goron Nipples, or why I started doing this in the first place

Like many horrible things on the internet, it started with a shitpost. I hastily copied this picture to a facebook messenger group of my closest friends, fully realizing I would probably need to explain myself. And then I admitted that I recognized on sight that the nipples depicted were, in fact, those of the Goron Patriarch, Darbus, from the game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

How did I manage to pull out that name so quickly? Simple: Spend enough time with something, and eventually it becomes second nature. In this case, “something” happened to be my Wii around the year 2007, and “time” is approximately 20-some-odd playthroughs worth of this 50 hour game.

You could say I was obsessed.

Because that is most definitely the case.

But besides only etching the weirdly polyganal forms of Darbus’ magnificent Goro-nips, I also extensively translated the signs of the world from Hylian to English, figured out just the right spots stand to cause the mailman to launch into space or shoot into Hyrule Field’s many crevasses, and painstakingly completed every single of the 99 levels of the game’s dreaded Rollgoal mini game. 12-year-old Mono knew no bounds in the games she chose to devote her (frankly excess) gaming time to. From every console Zelda starting with Ocarina to Bioware’s Mass Effect trilogy, to Left 4 Dead and both Portals, to Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and countless otome games, I found myself being able to focus best when it came to sussing out the finer details and hints developers drop into their games. I’ve always loved reading every lorebook extensively, scrolling endlessly through codices, and painstakingly examining pixelated artwork and signage.

And there’s the word, the crux around this brain dump I call a blog: Lore.

After sending that (basically hideous) meme to my friends, they encouraged me yet again to find a space to catalogue these tidbits of information as I find them. Thus, my randomly assorted, chaotic, passionate slice of the web I’m calling Learn the Lore!

This space won’t have a coherent theme. I will simply write the discoveries I’ve made or the opinions swirling around in my head recently. My goal is to update this once or twice a month, but life may take its toll sometimes. I also would like to note that, in most of my posts, I will not be doing any deep dives or research into specific topics unless something happens to pique my interest. This is a primarily opinion based blog, and while I do have my own research specialities that may come into play, my opinions will be mostly completely unfounded and utterly useless for the sake of Scholarly Gamer Debate.

It also may not be just games. Maybe I get emotional after watching movies and may want to write. Perhaps I have one too many drinks and suddenly find new realizations in my favorite songs. Or something just pisses me off and I want to scream it into the void. Although I will say, this blog will (mostly) veer away from current events, religious, or political topics. I won’t say it won’t slip in sometimes. What I’m saying is that this is intended to be a space to relax and over-obsess over minutae that couldn’t even possibly begin to matter in the grand scheme of the world. That said, if something I say oversteps a boundary, let me know and I will work to understand what I’ve done wrong and get that fixed.

As an aside, my posts may/will contain salty language.

And finally, these posts exist as a praise to all the hard work game developers put into their product. Without these details, game worlds feel hollow, and without the love and attention lavished in even seemingly simple things like textures, flora and fauna, and the scattered codices and lorebooks, games wouldn’t be nearly the all-encompassing, enrapturing form of media that’s taken the world by storm.

But anyway, I’m starting to sound a little up myself. Enjoy, and I’ll be back later with my cache of random facts I’ve been hoarding over the years.

-Monochromata