cracks knuckles.
After enjoying a few days in the valley, I decided to shake off the laziness and address this thread, partially because I'm bored, partially because I didn't want to leave people hanging.
As Jack the Ripper would say, let's go by parts - instead of writing up random blocks of text that don't specifically address anything cohesively.
Canonicity
>
In regards to being "made by Nintendo", as I mentioned before, this isn't entirely the truth. The guide is marketed as "The ONLY guide from Nintendo" on its cover. This is because, much like Nintendo power, it is published by Nintendo of America. Published, not created by. Nintendo Power is not Nintendo/Nintendo of America, and this should be evident from the fact that one of this guide's writers left Nintendo Power to work at Nintendo of America (four years after this guide's publication), alongside the fact that Nintendo of America was not Nintendo Power's sole publisher throughout its run (it went independent at one point, and was then published by Future US until the end of its run, I believe).
I. The guide is indeed not directly created by Nintendo of America, but that doesn't matter for reasons I will elaborate on below.
II. Indeed, Nintendo Power eventually terminated its contract with Nintendo of America. But that's irrelevant because that took place nearly an entire decade after the Majora Guide was published.
Shueisha publishes all Dragon Ball-related material. If it suddenly terminated its partnership with Weekly Jump, that wouldn't somehow change the canonicity of the stuff it published 20 years ago, for reasons that should be obvious to any reasonable person reading this.
This is basic common sense, so I don't know why you even took your time to point that out, anyway.
>
If it's deemed more reliable due to being licensed by Nintendo, so are most Nintendo products. The Prima version of this guide was written by people who had nothing to do with Nintendo whatsoever, and is still an "Official Nintendo Licensed Product". It just means Nintendo has approved and licensed the product. It has nothing to do with canon, and does not mean the product was directly created by Nintendo.
I. First of all, it "having nothing to do with canon" is nothing but your personal opinion on the subject. The definition of what constitutes as valid input on the canonical events of a franchise is extremely loose, and we have always considered such matters very much case-by-case. This isn't some fact we have established and agreed on throughout this thread. In fact, that's the whole subject we're currently
trying to establish common grounds on.
2. Things like the Bradygames Guidebooks are actually very flexible and debatable when it comes to canonicity. I own several of their guides. Many of them contain a ton of exclusive interviews with the Japanese Developers that can't be found anywhere else, as well as nearly a dozen of pages going on the inner workings of the game, and concept arts of several areas, straight from the Japanese producers. This means that, despite being an English-language guide, the producers consulted the original developers during its creation, and almost certainly had them approve a good portion of its information.
If anything, this is shooting yourself on the foot. Prima and Brady are hardly affiliated with the original sources, yet they clearly don't take a random dump and paste that into their guides and hope for whatever. The fact that every guide they make contains exclusive inside-information about the game means those guides should be taken as sources of information that were deemed reliable by those who actually have the authority to dictate what is canon or isn't. Meanwhile, Nintendo Power is far more closely affiliated with Nintendo than either of those two companies.
III. You mentioned the fact that the official licensing seal does not mean something was created by Nintendo. This is true and common sense, but whether or not something is directly created by Nintendo is irrelevant. All that is necessary is that the information in it is deemed valid by Nintendo and evaluated. Was the guide's information approved? Let's see.
Let's travel back in time to roughly the same time this guide was published, using the Wayback Machine, and take a look at Nintendo's official website and their licensing standards.
At the time of the guide's published, Nintendo differentiated between licensed merchandise, such as toys and cards, and licensed game products. Licensed products were "recommended for use with the game" and went through "an evaluation process". They differentiated from merchandise and products by assigning a gold-star seal with "Nintendo Seal of Quality" written in it to in-game products. Toys and cards had a seal saying "Official Licensed Product" in black, red and etc.
See what seal this guide received for yourself by flipping to the last page.
By Nintendo's licensing standards at the time, the guide was absolutely a valid source of information.
Hope that takes care of that.
Warping the Universe
>
The first sentence of Majora's justification reads "Said to have warped all of Termina, a parallel universe, to the point where the heavens, space, and time were corrupted." This is a bit misleading, as these are two entirely separate quotes from separate sections of the book that don't exactly go together, so I'll cover them individually. We'll look at the Woodfall statement, first.
Context is a thing. If two statements are speaking of the same event, then it's clear they are to be taken together. The fact they're several pages apart doesn't change that. Whenever someone or something speaks of the Goddesses creating the world, we try to establish common ground between the statements. This is no different.
>
The exact wording is that everything has "become tainted by the cruel intentions of the Skull Kid wearing Majora's Mask". Tainted by cruel intentions. Just as the water has gone from pure to poison, the world is becoming contaminated. People's lives get worse, things look hopeless, the Skull Kid ruins lives wherever he goes due to his "cruel intentions". Not only does this fit with the way the statement is worded, but it's also supported in the game.
Except you, and anyone else reading this thread with
any modicum of common sense and basic reading comprehension, know
full well this is nowhere near what the statement is trying to convey, nor what it can even be reasonably interpreted to be saying.
They talk about the Deku Water being originally normal. They reveal it has been poisoned by Majora's powers. Then they reiterate that, much like the water was poisoned, everything else in the entire universe of Termina had also been - also by Skull Kid, wearing Majora's Mask!
What any person with common sense can take from that is that it is saying Majora's powers corrupted the entire universe of Termina, much like they corrupted the water. Not some random metaphor for ruining people's lives that is suggested nowhere in the quote. People aren't even mentioned in the quote. That's how much twisting is needed for that interpretation to be tenable.
One thing is interpreting a metaphor. The other is making things up and ignoring half the statement. No offense intended. If you're going to disagree with the guide's canonicity, do so as you will, but at least take the statements for what they are.
>
The idea that Skull Kid actively warped everything in the entire universe, or even on the entire world, is not supported by what we see in the game. If we honestly want to argue Occam's razor, please show me why something that blatantly doesn't occur in the game (everything in Termina being warped) requires less assumptions than a less literal version of the statement that actually aligns with the narrative.
I. You can begin by proving that it doesn't occur in the game's lore, since it's apparently so blatant. No such evidence exists off of the top of my head, but since you're that adamant, I might have missed something while playing. Like someone explicitly saying no such thing is taking place. That's not how Occam's Razor, common sense, or basic evidence work.
2. Removing half of the statement and inserting a random metaphor to interpret a statement that blatantly states "The universe is corrupted by the powers of Majora" as "Majora is ruining people's lives, and as such, technically tainting their world"
does not constitute "a less literal interpretation that doesn't contradict the game".
>
The amount of assumptions one must make to justify Majora warping the entire universe is immense.
The amount of assumptions one must make to justify twisting the corruption statement into a metaphor for people's lives being tainted is so much bigger that it's not even funny.
I'd also like for you to list this supposedly "immense" amount of assumptions that are required, since this is supposed to be blatant, according to you.
Corrupting the Heavens, Space and Time
>
The current interpretation of said statement is that Skull Kid "corrupted" the heavens, space, and time, and that this somehow ties into him being a universe warper. This is based on nothing. As you can see for yourselves, the statement just says that the mask has some sort of influence over the heavens, space, and time. It does not say what this influence is, or its extent. It just says it's there.
Already posted and shown. The influence is stated to be universal in scale by the exact same guide later-on. Assimilation of events is a thing. Moving on.
>
Anyone who has played Majora's Mask can tell you that the central conflict of the game is able to occur because Majora cannot counter Link turning back time. He demonstrates no time based powers whatsoever, nor any defenses to it.
Anyone who has watched Doctor Strange can tell you that the climax of the movie is able to occur because Dormammu cannot counter Strange using the Eye of Agamotto to rewind time and bargain.
Humorously, just like Majora, MCU Dormammu's current rating is entirely based on a number of guidebook lore entries clarifying he has absorbed, devoured and destroyed many of the realities in the multiverse, which is accepted because it isn't contradicted in the movie and makes sense for the character. The actual movie only has the Ancient One state Dormammu wants to devour the Earth. Which, going by your logic, would mean universal consumption is something that "blatantly doesn't occur in the actual storyline!" either, even though that's quite obviously not the case.
Regardless, all of this is irrelevant because, unlike his influence over the physical universe, Majora's influence over time is not clarified by the guide, and Low 2-C was dropped quite a while back, so it's a waste of time to respond to this.
Alternate Reality
>
On its own, something being described as an alternate reality or some variation of such has never been enough to suggest actual universal size, on our site.
Please provide examples of similar situations.
>
This is because the terminology is so vague and can mean anything the author wants it to, and does not have to denote universal size.
Oh? Newsflash: something being described as a "universe" in no shape or form denotes something that is the size of our own universe, either. The word "universe" means, quite literally, "everything that exists". However, that is subjective, because even if a dimension were room-sized, it would still qualify as a universe under that definition.
When have we used the above logic again? Never, because common sense is something, y'know, we actually have.
See what your logic leads to? Soon, we will be requesting for it to be specified that the world is 100 billion light years in size and ignoring basic definitions that would lead us there without such absurd requests.
The term "alternate reality", almost every single time it is used in conversations, and with every single definition of it by any reputable source, refers to a reality that parallels our own in size and structure. It is, by all means, a mirror universe.
When a term is universally used in such a manner, then Occam's Razor and common sense dictate we assume that's how we should interpret it in this situation, especially when the dimension in question
is actually shown to extend beyond just the planet on-screen. Just like we assume that "alternate universe" quotes mean the dimension in question is universe-sized, because that's the precedent for the usage of the word "universe" 99.9% of the time.
I rest my case.
>
I would like to further point out that Majora's realm does not fit the definition of alternate reality, as we know it. That would more closely apply to Termina, which is an alternate reality to Hyrule. A similar world with a different course of history, and similar characters playing different roles
Except the basic definition of "alternate reality" is, first and firemost, a reality that mirrors our own in structure and size. Whether or not it refers to an alternate
history depends on the context, and is not by all means a necessary definition of the term. So this is blatantly false. Majora's world would still fit the general definition, even if it weren't an alternate history.
Outlier
>
This is a 3-A feat coming from a verse where, aside from the literal gods who created the world, the highest feats are High 4-C.
There are two or three High 4-C feats. One is performed by Demise, whose standing in relation to Majora and the others is unknown, hence why we don't scale him to 3-A, And thus his feats are irrelevant to the discussion. The other is performed hyper-casually by the supreme artifact in the verse, that was created by Tier 2 deities to "showcase their ultimate power", and thus once again has no reason to be used to make this an outlier. The third one is a much-debated and argued feat from Zant, who is, you get it, not a God-Tier either.
Check the definition of
Outlier as we use it:
- "An Outlier is an event or incident that is considered to be completely and irreconcilably inconsistent with a character, entity, group, or series' normal displayed level of power."
I completely fail to see how two 3-A feats from Majora whose scaling pretty much boils down to the ultimate artifact in the verse that was created by Tier 2 entities to symbolize their power, and those who receive power from said artifact are somehow "irreconciliably inconsistent" with the series's overall standing.
If anything, it makes for a perfect scaling.
Conclusion
There is much debate to be had about the scaling of the feat, and this topic is certainly not something written in stone. But I personally agree with the feats in question and I definitely feel the rating is reasonable, and that the counter-arguments hold no merit - thus far.
People are entitled to their own opinions and views on a subject - indeed. However, what they are absolutely not entitled to is their own facts. I hope this post clears everything up. But if it doesn't, that's fine too.
Peace.