Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask (The Five Stages of Zelda-Game)

[Lord Raziere]

Like this.

That just raises further questions! [/Hermes Conrad]

[Qwertystop]

That would be a valid answer... If it wasn't for the fact that BOTW establishes that the sword recharges and repairs itself slowly between Links, and the fact that other than the seemingly permanent upgrades in this game most upgrades I can find are things like "we retempered the sword to make the metal stronger" or "we honed and sharpened it some." which, due to the aforementioned self-repair ability, would be permenant.

Depends. In WW, for example, the sword has not been sitting idle since OoT, it's been actively maintaining a localized time-freeze. That might be net-negative or at least net-even with its maintenance.

[Rater202]

Not that that's ever been an issue with Zelda: See the Zora, the Twili, and probably some other examples I'm forgetting because I'm not a Zeldaholic.

I am now imagining a Zora, a Twili, and a Goron traveling the kingdom trying to figure out why humans wear clothes and getting increasingly frustrated with everyone's refusal to answer.

[DataNinja]

That would be a valid answer... If it wasn't for the fact that BOTW establishes that the sword recharges and repairs itself slowly between Links, and the fact that other than the seemingly permanent upgrades in this game most upgrades I can find are things like "we retempered the sword to make the metal stronger" or "we honed and sharpened it some." which, due to the aforementioned self-repair ability, would be permenant.

Oh, well, I've never played BOTW, so... *shrug*

[LaZodiac]

Right the stream video! I've been very tired lately.

Zodi Streams: Skyward Sword [6] Dragon Quest

Video Length: 4:58:49

In this, we finish up the last of this set of dungeons, and do... all of the dragon stuff leading up to the final dungeon. Woo boy! I also get a bit salty cause I've been exhausted lately ooops.

[Rater202]

Not gonna lie, my first thought when you were fighting Ghirahim again, when his cloak and gloves disintegrate, was "Oh no, he's getting naked!"

Edit: If Groose invented rails then he kind of is indirectly responsible for, you know, the Spirits sealing away the Demon King from Spirit Tracks.

Can't use railways to seal something away if rails don't exist.

Edit 2: I actually shouted out loud "why would you do that!?" when you threw the cat over the edge. I don't care that he kitty is okay, that was mean.

[LaZodiac]

My apologies for throwing the kitty, it was one of those kneejerk reactions. I will give the kitty a good pet later as recompense.

[Rater202]

Two Hours and forty-nine minutes in... So. Much, Padding.

I can't help but feel that they could cut enough content that you could have finished this two streams ago and it would still feel like a complete game.

I'm not opposed to long games but this is just stretching it out for the sake of stretching it out.

[Lord Raziere]

now that I'm done playing the second chapter of Deltarune, and dealing with the headache that resulted from that for some reason, time to watch this.

Skyward Stream 6:
these trees look like weird cacti.

personally I'd just assume all the bokoblins are horny at this point Zodi, got to kill them before they blow at the sight of Link.
what do you mean by "phrasing"? I was referring to the fact they were carrying horns and were using them to alert other bokoblins of Link's presence
oh no its.....a DARK LIZALFOS! *dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUN* remember when you need more enemies but ran out unique assets, simply recolor them and add an extra descriptor to the name.

ah yes. the Nintendo fans eternal lament: that anything outside the three main series of Mario, Pokemon or Zelda get any attention at all except when its Fire Emblem.

look the game designers didn't know what else to put in that third mole's chest, they had something better planned for the boss key, and if someone was really dead set on a minimum heart run, getting one heart piece wouldn't change their total.

Link just casually falling towards lava with his arms outstretched towards a platform he can't see. I can imagine him with sunglasses just being chill while he does this.

this key doesn't even make any sense, some of the cubes shouldn't even be connected.

look all Girahim really is, in terms of villainy, is a worshipper of Slaanesh.

look: standing on a sword while someone else is holding it is a wuxia trick, kay? its something old masters do to screw with their sword martial art apprentices when they're not fighting seriously. somehow it like many other tropes spilled out elsewhere. realism is thrown out on the assumption that they're using chi to make themselves basically incredibly light and capable of balancing on anything, sword-balancing isn't even the most ridiculous thing you can pull with that trick.

okay the hands make the Imprisoned a slightly less stupid. but no more dignified. and so it is dead for the second time. its laughable form is probably why it became a Ganon.

I've played maybe an hour of Witcher 3 and only because my brother recommended the game to me. I've played more of Gwent because its strategy focus and it being a card game that relies more on you being smart than random luck of the draw.

CROSS THE GATE OF TIME....BEYOND WHICH ALL SHALL CHANGE! INTO THE PAST-WHERE NOTHING SHALL BE THE SAME!

whats wrong with RTS's? are you talking about modern ones, because I'm an Age of Empires 2 fan. oh, because brutal legends? I don't know what that is, but that doesn't sound like RTSes fault, that sounds like the people who made Brutal Legend's fault.

agh, its so unfortunate the stream is choppy because I want to read Zelda's explanation about Demise and Hylia but it keeps stopping and skipping.

Link is just listening to Zelda explain all this wide-eyed silently thinking to himself: "oh my her, I'm in love with a goddess reborn. why me?"

lying to Groose about Zelda. why do I have the feeling this won't end well? Yeah this whole thing with Groose is going too well too fast. something bad is going to happen, I just feel it.

"I hope you get through it and that they die"- Zodi, stop your making me laugh every time you say that with a happy straight face. hahaha.....my sense of humor is dark.

Hmmm, but perhaps Fi knows! the Tri-Force seems like something she'd know about. Or at least should.

I think they intentionally moved Owlen here just to confuse the player and pad play time.....

ZELDA WHY!? WHY DID YOU MAKE A DOLL OF.....THE FAIRY-GOBLIN-MAN? WHY DID YOU PREDICT THIS FUTURE? WHY!?

"Its kind of weird they never mentioned that we had a sky whale god or that it went missing."-well thats Nintendo worldbuilding for ya: only mention if its relevant to the task your doing. if its not relevant, it doesn't exist. Thats why you get a bunch of mario games that don't seem to be consistent with one another because they don't even try, a bunch of pokemon games that always set itself in a different region without mentioning others much, and you get Legend of Zelda games where Hyrule doesn't seem to have any consistent geography between its many eras. because despite Nintendo's many talents (making fun game mechanics and gimmicks, characters with as few words as possible, storytelling and so on....) consistent well thought world-building was never one of them. their worlds are built to be bare-bones and only provide enough information to keep your focused on playing, not to make actual living worlds that make sense, they're minimalist like that.

what from Thousand Year Door was padding? I'm an OG first-three Paper Mario fan, and um....I don't think the Doopliss thing was padding, that was countering a villain who was playing smart. now trying to find General White for the cannon to shoot the moon, that was padding because you go all across the land just to find him sleeping in his bed then wake him up, even though you saw him on the side throughout the entire game and if you went there early without talking to the people about where he was he wouldn't be there so you can't just sequence break if already know where he is. see? Yza knows the real padding even if I disagree with them on Vivian's chapter.

I don't hate or fear water levels, I just find them slow and clunky and thus a bit annoying, so I wouldn't play Subnautica either. but then Subnautica is also one of those survival games where you build a bunch of stuff just to be in an isolated place for no reason so I wouldn't play it just for that alone.

so water, forced stealth......is this like a tour of the three things that everyone hates in videogames? will we get darkness in the final one?

Fi isn't a Reyvateil, where is the romance between her and Link where we delve deep into her psychology by linking up with her mind? and why isn't the bow the second weapon you get with its own robot girl to be the rival in love?

Yup, real crackly stones, bones are.

the Thunder Dragon's eye sockets glowing yellow blink was the signal for "I give you permission."

....I need to get around to watching Vento Aureo, its the only Jojo part I've been lazy on.

I'd say its more likely that Link is simply being protected by divine magic from the time stones because they're y'know, the chosen hero? and that all thes tricks with timestones simply doesn't work with anyone else, because anyone else would cease to exist the moment they activate them.

why didn't you take out your shield?

yeah you have to understand guys, Link is basically a murderbot. he slaughters everything in his way without mercy. he exists to be Zelda's weapon, not even the ants are safe.

too late I'm thinking about time travel because I like going to weird places. How the tree was there depends on the model of time travel your using:
-the first explanation is of course, simply that Link is now in a parallel timeline where that tree was planted in the temple and not in Lanayru desert and the Groose we meet isn't the Groose we left, and now there is a treeless timeline out there that is just doomed because Link never came back, so its both always there and not there technically.

-the second explanation is that the detail of where the tree was planted wasn't important enough to impact to impact the timeline around it in any meaningful way, and thus the single timeline can handle the impact as long as its not too large- after all there is tons of details that are lost to history, so does it really matter the specifics of HOW something happened as long as people remember it happening the same way? only Groose and the old woman is affected and Groose probably doesn't know its significance as Groose probably didn't notice the lack of a tree there all that much, probably too busy building his catapult while the old seer knows enough not to tell, so it wasn't always there, but whether or not it wasn't, isn't "important" enough to matter to history. who decides what matters and what doesn't? the goddesses of course. they control time so they can cheat in Link's favor.

-another explanation is that the tree was never meant to be planted in Lanayru. perhaps Demise is more cunning when not being a stupid muppet monster and thus made sure the robots would plant the tree somewhere useless, screwing up the timeline. Link's role was actually correcting it back to where it was always meant to be and Groose was always meant to have this reaction. meaning it was always there, even before it was there, because it was meant to be there.

-a fourth explanation is that there is a meta-timeline above the usual timeline, this meta-timeline keeps track of all time travel events and the state of the tree before and after the replanting was apart of the meta-timeline above the usual one. there is simply many layers to time and Link was working on a different layer of time there.

[LaZodiac]

It's not that RTS games are bad, I just don't like them personally and get a little bummed when a game that could be really cool to play is an RTS instead. Brutal Legends is an RTS game on consoles (and recently on PCs) that presented itself as a Jack Black rock music tribute aesthetic beat'em up character action game, and it extremely burned me.

The stream and video are perfectly fine on my end I do not know why it's choppy for others...

I feel like Nintendo is better at world building consistency than that, but you're not wrong. Usually it's better in games like Metroid.

I mean given what bones are made of, they ARE stones. Bones are rock that bleed!

[Rater202]

I can't help but feel that Link punching someone while wearing the diggy diggy mole mittens would seriously hurt someone.

Also thank you, Zodi, for the "bones are rocks that bleed" thing, it's reminded me of a concept I've always been particularly fond of and giving me ideas for a thing.

[Lord Raziere]

I feel like Nintendo is better at world building consistency than that, but you're not wrong. Usually it's better in games like Metroid.

Well I haven't played a Metroid game in my life and I've heard that franchise is infamous for being put on the backburner. To me, Samus is a Smash character. So I wouldn't know how well they do Metroid, but that doesn't sound like a win to me.

@ Brutal Legends that.....doesn't sound like any RTS I've played, but then what I've played are Age of Empires 2 and 3 and Stellaris, and those are pretty slow and strategic, at about the same pace as Civ 6 which I'm playing now which is turn-based.

[Rater202]

What happens if you turn off the time rock after curing the Thunder Dragon?

[LaZodiac]

What happens if you turn off the time rock after curing the Thunder Dragon?

He's completely fine and nothing happens. I'll likely show that off next time.

[Rater202]

Not gonna lie, I was totally expecting that Groose would turn out to be Gannandorf in a "Nobody to Nightmare" scenario. And they'd make it clear in some goofy way like "I will be with Zelda, or my name isn't Groossannon Dorfowitz" or something.

[Lord Raziere]

Not gonna lie, I was totally expecting that Groose would turn out to be Gannandorf in a "Nobody to Nightmare" scenario. And they'd make it clear in some goofy way like "I will be with Zelda, or my name isn't Groossannon Dorfowitz" or something.

Yeah that was my expectation to, but more tragic because he interferes with Demise's return so Demise being insulted by not only being foiled by the chosen hero of legend but this mere oaf when some use dark magic to infect him and he'd be this hero and Demise would be defeated, but at the cost of Groose turning evil and Link and Zelda not wanting to kill their good friend, seal him away despite turning evil and thats why Ganon would eternally reincarnate because they would hope that Groose would one day be cured of evil. But apparently no, he just has this weird resemblance to Ganon. kind of disappointing.

[LaZodiac]

Oops I did forget to post this thanks for the reminder >_>

Zodi Streams: Skyward Sword [7] Kill The Sword

Video Length: 2:43:05

Genuinely just got caught up spending time with my beloved, completely blanked on doing this lol. We finish up Skyward Sword! Is a good game, glad to have revisted it. The Switch remaster is pretty alright, though as I do say in video it's weirdly finicky compared to the original in terms of keeping the controller synced.

[Rater202]

Oops I did forget to post this thanks for the reminder >_>

Zodi Streams: Skyward Sword [7] Kill The Sword

Video Length: 2:43:05

Genuinely just got caught up spending time with my beloved, completely blanked on doing this lol. We finish up Skyward Sword! Is a good game, glad to have revisted it. The Switch remaster is pretty alright, though as I do say in video it's weirdly finicky compared to the original in terms of keeping the controller synced.

That is perfectly understandable.

By the way, if you ever do play Psychonauts 2... Take the time to explore and talk to people between levels. There's a subplot with certain characters that just... Don't happen if you don't take the time to seek them out and talk to them between levels and the minor background characters all have arcs going on in the background.

There are also a lot of different things I'd genuinely be interested in hearing your thoughts about.

[LaZodiac]

That is perfectly understandable.

By the way, if you ever do play Psychonauts 2... Take the time to explore and talk to people between levels. There's a subplot with certain characters that just... Don't happen if you don't take the time to seek them out and talk to them between levels and the minor background characters all have arcs going on in the background.

There are also a lot of different things I'd genuinely be interested in hearing your thoughts about.

Yeah if I were to stream Psychonauts 2 I would play it how I play these games; lingering and staring and talking to everyone. I only rushed Psychonauts 1 because I've already done that, mostly

[Rater202]

Yeah if I were to stream Psychonauts 2 I would play it how I play these games; lingering and staring and talking to everyone. I only rushed Psychonauts 1 because I've already done that, mostly

Also, unlike the first game, certain characters will have their clairvoyant image of Raz change as the story progresses and their opinions of him change.

Spoiler

Show

And this applies to the previous game as well. While Sasha still sees Raz as a younger version of himself, Milla now sees Raz as... Well, I don't know what she sees him as, but it's represented visually as Raz dressed like Austin Powers.

[LaZodiac]

Ooops it happened again. Not that that's a bad thing.

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [3] Halo Four Runner

Video Length: 55:22

Pretty lengthy level, but given it is introducing new weapons, new enemies, new big name threats, and new things to grouse over with Em to the point of rambling for like ten minutes after the level actually ended, not a big surprise!

I like the little robot buddies. I like the stupid hologuns. I think the porcupine head can get dunked. I'm excited to hear all of you react to our reactions. Hope you enjoy, and have a good day!

[Rater202]

I was under the impression that you had a separate thread for Halo stuff.

More on topic: I've done some research and I'm pretty sure that you could do an entire Harem Comedy about the Hero of Time incarnation of Link—OoT and MM—with the number of girls and women interested in him at various points in time and the ship-teasing he gets.

And he grew up in a society of magically immortal eternal children so he has no idea why everyone is so interested.

[LaZodiac]

I was under the impression that you had a separate thread for Halo stuff.

More on topic: I've done some research and I'm pretty sure that you could do an entire Harem Comedy about the Hero of Time incarnation of Link—OoT and MM—with the number of girls and women interested in him at various points in time and the ship-teasing he gets.

And he grew up in a society of magically immortal eternal children so he has no idea why everyone is so interested.

... ah dang I put it on the wrong thread damn oh god.

I'd like to apologize, just this once, for how much I've slipped again schedule wise. Between a bout of personal depression, plus my dealing with it via binging FFXIV, and now recovering and spending time with loved ones has lead to me just completely dropping the ball on Majora's Mask. This will be attended to tomorrow, I promise. Friday, we return to Termina.

[LaZodiac]

Cowboy times here again!

Zodi Streams: Call of Juarez Gunslinger

Video Length: 3:55:17

Gunslinger! A classic! We play the whole dang game; it's pretty okay.

[Rater202]

I believe the term you're looking for, 20 minutes in the duel what never happened is "quickdraw."

Also, clearly, Paper Imp Zodi is Zodi's archetype projection.

Edit: If I had to hazard a guess, "all hat and no cattle" means putting on the pretense of being a cowboy without actually being a cowboy. An actual Cowboy was someone who worked for a rancher, taking care of the cows in the field, protecting them from rustlers, and in the case of beef ranches, driving them down where they'd be slaughtered.

"He's got the hat, but he's never worked with cattle a day in his life."

Or maybe "he talks the talk, but he don't walk the walk."

Edit 2: Regarding what it means to be American, please. Everyone knows that you can't call yourself a man* in America until you've shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Specifically. It has to be Reno, shooting a man in Vegas doesn't count.

*"Man" here refers to an ideal of masculinity relating to strength and maturity rather than biological sex or gender identity. You can still fit the platonic ideal of a man without literally being male mind or body. Look, English is a weird language, okay. I don't make the rules.

Regarding the psychonauts tangent, while Razputin was born in America, ethnically he's eastern european* with his parents being first-generation immigrants. This makes him no less American in terms of citizenship, but he may not have fully assimilated all of the quirks of being American. As it is, he drowns in water, while Americans, being as Raziere alludes to, dissolve like vampires.

*It's unclear if he's still intended to be Romani or if that was retconned in order to sidestep the use of a problem term—when the subject of his ethnicity comes up, he refers to himself as being "Grulovian," after the country his father is originally from... Though he clarifies that he's only "half" so he could still be Romani on his mother's side, or perhaps that Grulovian Romani consider themselves Grulovian, or that Raz was refering to nationality rather than ethnicity.

[LaZodiac]

Another stream; this time with a very special and beloved guest of mine.

Zodi Streams: Counterfeit Monkey [1] Literally Twisting Words

Video Length: 3:24:30

Fresh from getting smushed from two people into one full person, we've got to navigate our way out of Atlantis. The only thing at our side is a letter remover of taking out one-but-all-instances-of out of words. Turn a code into a cod, just a thicket into a ticket, so on and so forth. What will this text adventure make us do and say to get out of his perilous predicament? Who knows! But it'll also be rad as heck!

[Rater202]

I don't really have thoughts for this time... I'm not normally into text adventures and the like.

But some thoughts I had last time that I didn't share becuase I figured I'd edited the post enough and then nobody posted anything else.

"Sioux" is pronounced "See-Oh" and while I normally hate the "Magical Native American" trope with a passion, "the soul can have no rainbow if the eyes have no tears" is a good line.

Beyond that I was surprised as how good the story of that game was. You don't normally see Arcade Shooters with such a compelling plot.

[Qwertystop]

Hello! I was the scribble of names in the other corner!

[Lord Raziere]

Counterfeiting A Mankey:
This game's premise makes me think of some of the weirder more esoteric ttrpgs I've come across with strange abstract powers. could make something based on manipulating words.

....I wonder what would've happened if you answered "No" at the beginning. just be sarcastic right out of the gate, see how the game reacts.

Yeah, we don't want to Z-remove Zodi. Then she will just be an Odi, and get tricked by Garfield.

remove p's from apple, get ale.

Sot the history of this world is basically during like the Industrial revolution, everyone discovered reality was word-based instead? and all of religion and science had to revise itself as a result. writing dictionaries became a thing of war and power, because if you can change a words definition or spelling, you can change how people use all this tech to do this or that. wouldn't want someone to rename something like common like "rocks" into something long so you can remove one letter or another to get like, a bunch of riches out of nowhere or something. and thats just the application I can think of.

and yeah, with this system, find a bunch of monkeys, k-remove them to get money, invest all that money into stocks before the cops find you, and your basically set for life.

huh, you CAN turn stuff like a scarf or a chard into cars. though really, one wonders why this world didn't redefine its words into various shortenings of this and that so that all this letter-changing nonsense can happen smoother? like if its all consensual subjective reality, then all you really have to do is call an object something like "carf" or whatever as a synonym for something else, because multiple words exist for one thing, so you can turn a scarf into a carf into a car because you got enough people to agree to something being a "carf". I guess the governments in Counterfeit Monkey are more concerned with keeping it all tied down than experimenting, given that you discover at least two ways to accidentally kill yourself by turning things too large into something else with the letter remover.

yeah, a mirror reversing based on words is.....potentially useful given the nature of most words, might be very limited. for one, I'd imagine its useless for a palindrome: Mom reverses to Mom.

.......did you just create a mechanic out of thin air?........0_0.....is....is that mechanic aware of their existence?

.........okay the Yam reversal into May was a bit of stretch, you have to admit.

but yeah, this world is bizarre and a bit surreal. and this is when its English, given how some languages work? there could be entirely different concerns, tech and rules elsewhere, like how some languages conjugate a lot of things into one word, or how some words only have difference in terms of tone. like everything about this would be just a headache in any language, because what happens if you start mixing the languages and manipulating an object in one way in one language then manipulating it in another? gah.

[LaZodiac]

I don't really have thoughts for this time... I'm not normally into text adventures and the like.

But some thoughts I had last time that I didn't share becuase I figured I'd edited the post enough and then nobody posted anything else.

"Sioux" is pronounced "See-Oh" and while I normally hate the "Magical Native American" trope with a passion, "the soul can have no rainbow if the eyes have no tears" is a good line.

Beyond that I was surprised as how good the story of that game was. You don't normally see Arcade Shooters with such a compelling plot.

Understandable.

Right, right. And yeah, though the thing with Gray Wolf at least is that you can tell, due to how Silas is as a character, his leaning on that trope is him feeding them what they expected, and probably what he felt at the time. It's clear at the end of the game he was genuinely very affected by what Gray Wolf said, that Gray Wolf probably did a bit more to try and help him than Silas lets on, and that Silas himself is actually quite knowledgable about how these people actually worked (he only slips into stereotypes and tropes when trying to get at the people listening). It's neat.

Hello! I was the scribble of names in the other corner!

A very good and cool scribble! Everyone heap praise on my girlfriend for being rad as hell.

Counterfeiting A Mankey:
This game's premise makes me think of some of the weirder more esoteric ttrpgs I've come across with strange abstract powers. could make something based on manipulating words.

....I wonder what would've happened if you answered "No" at the beginning. just be sarcastic right out of the gate, see how the game reacts.

Yeah, we don't want to Z-remove Zodi. Then she will just be an Odi, and get tricked by Garfield.

remove p's from apple, get ale.

Sot the history of this world is basically during like the Industrial revolution, everyone discovered reality was word-based instead? and all of religion and science had to revise itself as a result. writing dictionaries became a thing of war and power, because if you can change a words definition or spelling, you can change how people use all this tech to do this or that. wouldn't want someone to rename something like common like "rocks" into something long so you can remove one letter or another to get like, a bunch of riches out of nowhere or something. and thats just the application I can think of.

and yeah, with this system, find a bunch of monkeys, k-remove them to get money, invest all that money into stocks before the cops find you, and your basically set for life.

huh, you CAN turn stuff like a scarf or a chard into cars. though really, one wonders why this world didn't redefine its words into various shortenings of this and that so that all this letter-changing nonsense can happen smoother? like if its all consensual subjective reality, then all you really have to do is call an object something like "carf" or whatever as a synonym for something else, because multiple words exist for one thing, so you can turn a scarf into a carf into a car because you got enough people to agree to something being a "carf". I guess the governments in Counterfeit Monkey are more concerned with keeping it all tied down than experimenting, given that you discover at least two ways to accidentally kill yourself by turning things too large into something else with the letter remover.

yeah, a mirror reversing based on words is.....potentially useful given the nature of most words, might be very limited. for one, I'd imagine its useless for a palindrome: Mom reverses to Mom.

.......did you just create a mechanic out of thin air?........0_0.....is....is that mechanic aware of their existence?

.........okay the Yam reversal into May was a bit of stretch, you have to admit.

but yeah, this world is bizarre and a bit surreal. and this is when its English, given how some languages work? there could be entirely different concerns, tech and rules elsewhere, like how some languages conjugate a lot of things into one word, or how some words only have difference in terms of tone. like everything about this would be just a headache in any language, because what happens if you start mixing the languages and manipulating an object in one way in one language then manipulating it in another? gah.

The sheer esoteric and inventive nature of the game (and the writing being quite sharp) is why I'm into this game. Like Rater above I'm not usually into stuff like this, but this one made a great impression.

Honestly I bet if you say no at the start you get a bit more explanation for What Is Going On, potentially?

It's honestly quite difficult to redefine words, harder than you think. Singular they was a word invented before singular you, but because of some daft idiot they was briefly shifted to "only plural" and now it's almost impossible to get anyone to think otherwise. You can really only get that sort of thing in while the language is young, otherwise it becomes too set in stone because a large number of old people refuse to admit they're wrong.

The mirror is equal parts mind blowingly expansive a tool and also exceptionally limited and I honestly love it. It could be used to do SO much stuff, but also oh god what stuff though? It's tough and I love it.

So, about the "other languages" bit. It's only softly implied throughout (mostly at the New Church) but the idea is that, due to the nature of this technology... every language other than English has been exterminated for this exact reason. If other languages existed it'd make the world just that much more complicated.