Spoiler Gloom vs. Malice???(and related topics discussion)

[HeroOfWisdom]

Hey guys, it's me again. I know it's been a while, but I've been thinking about some stuff, and I want to discuss this with the wider community. Before going to report me for this being on the wrong forum, I would like to mention that yes, this will include my theories and questions on what I want to talk about. But they will mainly just be me trying to understand it myself while I wait for answers. So, let's get into it. Also, please excuse me if my analysis is all over the place or confusing or unnecessarily in depth. We just read another Steinbeck novel or whatever it's called in English Class in school, and it's so ****ing complicated to analyze that *****es work. **** you John Steinbeck, at least Shakespeare was canonically a fruity theater kid who wouldn't be rolling in his grave upon people writing gay fanfiction about his works of literature.
Anywaaaaaaays, In The Legend of Zelda BotW, we know that speed runners(as in just trying to defeat Ganon as fast as humanly possible type of speed runners) can beat the game in roughly half an hour to an hour on average, and they usually skip the Great Plateau Tower, which means they don't get the cutscene in which you see Calamity Ganon for the first time. The cutscene doesn't happen until you are quite literally inside of Hyrule Castle, meaning that he doesn't know Link is there until he is quite literally on his doorstep. Ganon now has about, let's say 15 minutes give or take, to stop Link. But if Ganon is so powerful, why would it take him so long in this possibility? Could it be that the more Zelda communicates with you, the weaker she gets, making it harder to hold Ganon back? But if you don't get that first tower communication he can't technically show up in game until you're within a proper range for him to sense your(Links) presence? But seriously though, like, come on dude! Hydrated Ganondorf taught people how to do what the Yiga Clan had to reteach themselves like 9,900 years later. He sent a whole ass army of Moldugas to unalive the Hyrulean Royal Family. Hydrated Demon King Ganondorf could not be killed, but only sealed away by an overly majestic furry(no offense to actual furries intended, and my apologies if you feel insulted. Please don't come at me, I'm just trying to jokingly make fun of mah boi Rauru in peace). Dehydrated Ganondorf turned Link's arm into an overcooked death steak. And broke the Master Sword like, a lot, only being scratched by a single shard of it that sliced his cheek open. He also created a convincing enough Puppet Zelda to lure Link around Hyrule, convince the Zonai Research Team to walk around in just their underwear(*cough* gay *cough* ), and then he proceeded to create 5 Phantom Ganons for you to beat up in Hyrule Castle before turning the almost dead of the fifth Phantom Ganon into five enormous Phantom Ganons. Rehydrated Ganondorf beats the **** out of Link and looks overall pretty fine(according to majority of fandom). Rehydrated Demon King Ganondorf could turn into a ****ing dragon, and beat the **** out of Dragon Zelda(aka the Light Dragon). So why was Calamity Ganon so damn disappointing?
But to the point stated in the title of this little post, why do we have both Gloom and Malice? As we can see in BotW, Malice slowly saps away at your health, but if you eat literally anything you can get it back. However, as seen in TotK, Gloom is more concentrated to the point where once it left Hyrule Castle as a mist it could cause similar harm to if you step on it, but while in the Castle Basement, the Gloom Mist couldn't hurt you? And you need a special type of food to heal from it, or light of a certain special sort, and there is armor and special dirt that allows you to resist it's effects? What?? This makes no sense, because why would we need both? Like how the Guardians were replaced with the Constructs, and how the old shrines made from Sheikah Technology were replaced with special magic Rock shrines? Or how somehow Purah managed to tear down all of the old towers and make her own? That shot you into the sky???? Not to mention that the Divine Beasts are all suddenly gone but there are divine beast masks? Or how instead of still being interested in Sheikah Tech, now she's interested in the Zonai? And how we keep learning things about Hyrules History that just doesn't line up?
You may be thinking, "Oh, but Wisdom, it's just a silly little plot device of a sort" or "WE HAD TO DEAL WITH THAT TERRIFYING MUSIC THAT PLAYS WHEN YOUR JUST VIBING IN HYRULE FIELD AND A GUARDIAN SPOTS YOU AND CHASES YOU DOWN" Yeah, I know, we're all traumatized. At least some of us didn't grow up with Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. Damn.
[For context, we ALL know why MM is considered "scary". And tbh y'all can't deny that OoT is pretty unnerving. And TP, well, that freakish cuckoo with a human face and the animation is kind weird/freaky. Like, no hate, but I really don't like how they animated Link turning into a wolfy boi.]
Also I'd like to mention that unlike Malice, Gloom isn't just a goop. At some point I will include images and screenshots to help make my point, but for now I would just like to point out the fact that you pretty much never see goopy Gloom except for very specific circumstances. Like, you go into the depths of Hyrule Castle and find some Gloom. See the way it sits on the ground? Point made. Also wtf is up with those Gloom Hands? I nearly **** myself when I first saw them. It was scarier than my first time with Guardians, or that time I was in the Great Plateau when I first started playing BotW and on the ground near the bottom of the Plateau and a saw a Moblin and freaked out because "What the **** is wrong with that Bokoblin!?!?!?".
My thoughts: After Link(BotW)(who we shall assume went full completinist speedrun, with the last thing he did being defeating Ganon)(yes including both DLC's) defeated Ganon, the Champions and all the dead people moved on, and they went to party in the afterlife with the homies. This could mean that the Divine Beasts(with no pilots) shut down, and so did almost all of the other Sheikah Tech(except the Guardians, those definitely all had to be killed off). Because Guardians are machines, I'm assuming that the Blood Moon never reseructted them, but instead those stupid pillars around Hyrule Castle just made more or something. This would mean that something would go down with those pillars, and Link and a small team of volunteers had to go around killing them all off, one by one. Using what was left, Purah and Robbie and Zelda could have constructed their newer technology, and eventually founded Lookout Landing, which we could assume was still relatively new during the events of TotK, because it is a ****ty base.
Maybe they (Malice and Gloom) are the same thing but used differently and thus have different properties? Maybe it's just a simple accidental plot hole that the Queen Gibdo was apparently fought by both Naboris or whatever her name was and Link+Riju, but Urbosa and Link both have fought the Molduking and won, when jt was implied that it had been at least two or three generations since it had shown up(prior to Urbosa fighting it)? Maybe it was a coincidence that the Zora Princess who shares a name with the Zora Princess from OoT, and had several landforms and a Divine Beast named after her? Maybe it's just a coincidence that the Bandit King Misko had hidden away multiple copies of certain outfits multiple times, and these outfits included a replica of what MM Link looked like when he put on the Fierce Deity Mask and became Fierce Deity Link? Maybe it's just a coincidence that you can get Majora's Mask in BotW and also I think I'm TotK, but it doesn't work the way it was cursed to in the game with which it shares it's name. Maybe they were just being nice to let us be able to upgrade certain special armors in TotK after we couldn't upgrade them in BotW. Or maybe they're trying to tell us something? What if the people who worked on BotW and/or TotK were trying to send us a message for us to decode? And what if this is so much more than silly little arguments and conversations about the differences between Gloom and Malice?
I don't know, this idea went really off the rails, and now I'm probably going to cry because I don't understand Zelda Lore anymore. But either way, I really want to discuss this with people outside of my family and friend group/s. Maybe there is a hidden message or code, or maybe it's just my inner Swiftie talking, begging for a fun little puzzle to solve. But really, I think I might be onto something here!

 

[Uwu_Oocoo2]

Yeesh, that's a lot to unpack dude XD. I'll discuss the stuff I know and ignore (for now at least) the stuff that makes my head hurt.

I've studied out malice quite a bit so I know a lot about it, I'll cover it briefly here but if anyone wants to know where I'm getting this info from just ask, I have citations. ANYWAY. We know malice is the manifestation of Demise's curse, this power is passed to multiple baddies across the series but comes to full strength in Ganondorf. By the time we reach BotW this power is overflowing, to the point where he has given himself over to malice (transforming him to Calamity Ganon) similar to the transformations of Vaati and Bellum. Then it began to spread across Hyrule in the form of Malice Goop and the corruption of the Gaurdians. Now moving onto TotK, it would make sense to assume that gloom and malice are one and the same seeing as it courses through Ganondorf's body. I'm as confused as you are though by how it managed to corrupt the entirety of the depths. Surely it isn't coming from Ganondorf, is there some other source of malice down there? Demise? It's tough to say at this point, I would assume the Depths didn't always have gloom though if people were able to make all those mines and statues down there though.

And on the subject of the sheikah tech dissapearing, that actually makes sense. After the events of the calamity I can't imagine the people wanted the technology that nearly ended them to stick around. The towers power the shrines, so if you deactivate the towers they go back underground and the shrines turn off, becoming inaccessible. Then they and the guardians can be destroyed. The new sheikah towers would've been built to power Purah's inventions.

 

[HeroOfWisdom]

I've studied out malice quite a bit so I know a lot about it, I'll cover it briefly here but if anyone wants to know where I'm getting this info from just ask, I have citations. ANYWAY. We know malice is the manifestation of Demise's curse, this power is passed to multiple baddies across the series but comes to full strength in Ganondorf. By the time we reach BotW this power is overflowing, to the point where he has given himself over to malice (transforming him to Calamity Ganon) similar to the transformations of Vaati and Bellum. Then it began to spread across Hyrule in the form of Malice Goop and the corruption of the Gaurdians. Now moving onto TotK, it would make sense to assume that gloom and malice are one and the same seeing as it courses through Ganondorf's body. I'm as confused as you are though by how it managed to corrupt the entirety of the depths. Surely it isn't coming from Ganondorf, is there some other source of malice down there? Demise? It's tough to say at this point, I would assume the Depths didn't always have gloom though if people were able to make all those mines and statues down there though.

That actually makes a lot of sense and makes it all easier to understand. Thanks! But what I really don't get is what happened in the depths and with the Zonai. Did the Zonai always live in the sky but put their land in the ground? What happened to the people who lived in the Depths? And where did Demise go? Where do he be hiding?
I actually am kind of interested in said "citations", because I've literally only played six of the games(none of which to full 100% completion including DLCs) and thus technically know nothing lol

 

[Ryuu Kage Desu]

The way I make since of the difference between Malice and Gloom is that while the source is ultimately the same, the purpose is different. Malice was intended as an attack. Gloom was more strategic; as it caused weapons to rot, and saps strength away, rather than deal direct damage. I got the feeling that Gloom even drew the energy it sapped (not just from Link), to Ganondorf; helping him regain some of his power, and that healthy glow.

 

[Uwu_Oocoo2]

That actually makes a lot of sense and makes it all easier to understand. Thanks! But what I really don't get is what happened in the depths and with the Zonai. Did the Zonai always live in the sky but put their land in the ground? What happened to the people who lived in the Depths? And where did Demise go? Where do he be hiding?
I actually am kind of interested in said "citations", because I've literally only played six of the games(none of which to full 100% completion including DLCs) and thus technically know nothing lol

So I get a lot of my information from the books; the Hyrule Historia, Zelda Encyclopedia, and Creating a Champion (which is about the creation of BotW). Here are some of the direct quotes I've pulled regarding Malice and Demise's Curse.

Spoiler

Hyrule Historia
Page 113- Ganondorf is full of wickedness and hatred (under subtitle Ganondorf's Malice)
Page 97- Sacred Realm turns into the dark world due to Ganondorf's "wicked heart".
Page 45- Koloktos and Page 59- Dark Keese seem to be filled with dark energy.

Zelda Encyclopedia
Page 21- His soul overflowed with malice towards Zelda and Link, and his will was strong enough to repeatedly break the seal
Page 29- The dark world overflows with malice and becomes the domain of monsters
Page 98- These may be animals or plants, even inorganic objects manipulated in some way by darkness
Page 99- They succeeded in destroying Demise, with the power of the triforce, but his hatred and malice toward the blood of the Goddess Hylia and soul of the Hero became a curse that would repeat itself for all eternity.
Evil finds champions in the Wind Mage Vaati, as well as the Lokomo demon Malladus, but no theat has been as pesistent as the power-thirsty Ganondorf.

Creating a Champion
Page 79- However, when Link gains the upper hand in their battle, it loses its tenuous control of the pure malice within and transforms into a rampaging beast. The pink and purple tar-like malice that appears all over Hyrule was designed first and, based on that idea, I decides to make Ganon's entire body into a monster made of hatred and malice incarnate.

And finally, a quote from Demise: Though this is not the end. My hate... never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end!

So to sum everything up:
Demise never said he would return, only that his malice would (which answers your question of where he's at, pretty sure he simply doesn't exist anymore at least not in any intelligent form). Time and time again is infects different hosts such as Vaati, Bellum, Malladus, or Ganondorf. It can also infect other things such as monsters or inorganic machines like Koloktos or the guardians. It also has the ability to corrupt larger areas such as the Sacred Realm (although that may have more to do with the Light Force which has connections to malice I won't bother getting into here). This malice also helps Ganon in his ability to continue breaking the seals placed upon him.

That's the malice stuff. As for the Zonai, I'm not too sure about them but I want to look into it further so I'll post here again if I learn something.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

My thought on it is Malice and Gloom are the same thing, it's just that Gloom is a much powerful version of Malice that saps energy away and is so strong it can erode the Master Sword.

 

[GZ Zelda]

TLDR Malice and Gloom are both manifestations of Ganon's hatred and rage; Malice is spirit magic and Gloom is blood magic.

Anywaaaaaaays, In The Legend of Zelda BotW, we know that speed runners(as in just trying to defeat Ganon as fast as humanly possible type of speed runners) can beat the game in roughly half an hour to an hour on average, and they usually skip the Great Plateau Tower, which means they don't get the cutscene in which you see Calamity Ganon for the first time. The cutscene doesn't happen until you are quite literally inside of Hyrule Castle, meaning that he doesn't know Link is there until he is quite literally on his doorstep. Ganon now has about, let's say 15 minutes give or take, to stop Link. But if Ganon is so powerful, why would it take him so long in this possibility? Could it be that the more Zelda communicates with you, the weaker she gets, making it harder to hold Ganon back? But if you don't get that first tower communication he can't technically show up in game until you're within a proper range for him to sense your(Links) presence? But seriously though, like, come on dude! Hydrated Ganondorf taught people how to do what the Yiga Clan had to reteach themselves like 9,900 years later. He sent a whole ass army of Moldugas to unalive the Hyrulean Royal Family. Hydrated Demon King Ganondorf could not be killed, but only sealed away by an overly majestic furry(no offense to actual furries intended, and my apologies if you feel insulted. Please don't come at me, I'm just trying to jokingly make fun of mah boi Rauru in peace). Dehydrated Ganondorf turned Link's arm into an overcooked death steak. And broke the Master Sword like, a lot, only being scratched by a single shard of it that sliced his cheek open. He also created a convincing enough Puppet Zelda to lure Link around Hyrule, convince the Zonai Research Team to walk around in just their underwear(*cough* gay *cough* ), and then he proceeded to create 5 Phantom Ganons for you to beat up in Hyrule Castle before turning the almost dead of the fifth Phantom Ganon into five enormous Phantom Ganons. Rehydrated Ganondorf beats the **** out of Link and looks overall pretty fine(according to majority of fandom). Rehydrated Demon King Ganondorf could turn into a ****ing dragon, and beat the **** out of Dragon Zelda(aka the Light Dragon). So why was Calamity Ganon so damn disappointing?

If you skip the cutscene, Malice is still shown surrounding the castle in King Rhoam's Hyrule Castle cutscene, meaning Ganon was alerted, most likely due to the completion of the shrines which are similarly connected to the Hyrule Castle Sheikah network.

Calamity Ganon corrupted all the Guardians and Divine Beasts and completely annihilated Hyrule, he was not disappointing. But CG definitely was weaker then Ganondorf, because he was just a product of his leaking Malice (which can be seen through the wisps leaking out of the open Gloom wound in his chest) rather than condensed Malice (which is the substance inside him).

I was tempted to involve the Secret Stone, but Gloom doesn't originate with the Secret Stone as Phantom Zelda is created before he gets the stone.

But to the point stated in the title of this little post, why do we have both Gloom and Malice? As we can see in BotW, Malice slowly saps away at your health, but if you eat literally anything you can get it back. However, as seen in TotK, Gloom is more concentrated to the point where once it left Hyrule Castle as a mist it could cause similar harm to if you step on it, but while in the Castle Basement, the Gloom Mist couldn't hurt you? And you need a special type of food to heal from it, or light of a certain special sort, and there is armor and special dirt that allows you to resist it's effects? What?? This makes no sense, because why would we need both? Like how the Guardians were replaced with the Constructs, and how the old shrines made from Sheikah Technology were replaced with special magic Rock shrines? Or how somehow Purah managed to tear down all of the old towers and make her own? That shot you into the sky???? Not to mention that the Divine Beasts are all suddenly gone but there are divine beast masks? Or how instead of still being interested in Sheikah Tech, now she's interested in the Zonai? And how we keep learning things about Hyrules History that just doesn't line up?

Gloom seems to be Ganondorf's blood itself; it pours out of him and he uses for magic and to create monsters and coat the moon. The "Blood Moon" doesn't seem metaphorical, only insofar as the blood is metaphorical. Malice is a more spiritual hatred; a residual spirit of Ganondorf that can float around the Twilight Realm, sit in the heart of monsters as Evil Clumps, and seems to originate with Demise. The Gloom Mist is so faint that it can't be harmful, but once Rauru's light no longer seals Ganondorf, he is able to once again wield his blood magic. Food cooked with the Sundelion, the flower of the Zonai Gods clearly filled with light magic, can heal you from gloom, and the armor crafted most likely with Gloom Clumps (cold pitch-black voids of pure darkness) absorb gloom before Link. But just think of Gloom as Blood Magic and Malice as Spirit Magic.

You can deconstruct the malfunctioning laser death machines that caused the annihilation of your kingdom and civilization in about five years, that's feasible, good riddance. The Shrines and Towers obviously just sunk back into the earth after the Hyrule Castle signal went offline (putting out the blue flames and the Shrine of Resurrection). No power, no point, shut it all down.

Also I'd like to mention that unlike Malice, Gloom isn't just a goop. At some point I will include images and screenshots to help make my point, but for now I would just like to point out the fact that you pretty much never see goopy Gloom except for very specific circumstances. Like, you go into the depths of Hyrule Castle and find some Gloom. See the way it sits on the ground? Point made. Also wtf is up with those Gloom Hands? I nearly **** myself when I first saw them. It was scarier than my first time with Guardians, or that time I was in the Great Plateau when I first started playing BotW and on the ground near the bottom of the Plateau and a saw a Moblin and freaked out because "What the **** is wrong with that Bokoblin!?!?!?".

Yeah, Malice clumps, poisons water, is clearly sentient with its eyes and mouths. Gloom is like blood, like sap in roots. More powerful, more insidious, more dangerous.

Phantom Ganon is described, since OoT, as an evil ghost of phantom mimicking Ganondorf. Like Dark Link. Shadow magic, ghost magic. Gloom Spawn seems to be that shadow magic with some of the Glooms blood magic, making the Gloom Spawn/Phantom Ganon combowombo.

Maybe they (Malice and Gloom) are the same thing but used differently and thus have different properties? Maybe it's just a simple accidental plot hole that the Queen Gibdo was apparently fought by both Naboris or whatever her name was and Link+Riju, but Urbosa and Link both have fought the Molduking and won, when jt was implied that it had been at least two or three generations since it had shown up(prior to Urbosa fighting it)? Maybe it was a coincidence that the Zora Princess who shares a name with the Zora Princess from OoT, and had several landforms and a Divine Beast named after her? Maybe it's just a coincidence that the Bandit King Misko had hidden away multiple copies of certain outfits multiple times, and these outfits included a replica of what MM Link looked like when he put on the Fierce Deity Mask and became Fierce Deity Link? Maybe it's just a coincidence that you can get Majora's Mask in BotW and also I think I'm TotK, but it doesn't work the way it was cursed to in the game with which it shares it's name. Maybe they were just being nice to let us be able to upgrade certain special armors in TotK after we couldn't upgrade them in BotW. Or maybe they're trying to tell us something? What if the people who worked on BotW and/or TotK were trying to send us a message for us to decode? And what if this is so much more than silly little arguments and conversations about the differences between Gloom and Malice?

Well this is the ultimate thing, the Zelda team uses the same motiffs and symbols (sages, Imprisoning War, Phantom Ganon, elemental temples) to convey meaning. Malice and Gloom do two different things so they can't be called the same thing, but, like water and ice, they are both the same substance, derived from Ganondorf's blood magic and Demise's hatred.

I've studied out malice quite a bit so I know a lot about it, I'll cover it briefly here but if anyone wants to know where I'm getting this info from just ask, I have citations. ANYWAY. We know malice is the manifestation of Demise's curse, this power is passed to multiple baddies across the series but comes to full strength in Ganondorf. By the time we reach BotW this power is overflowing, to the point where he has given himself over to malice (transforming him to Calamity Ganon) similar to the transformations of Vaati and Bellum. Then it began to spread across Hyrule in the form of Malice Goop and the corruption of the Gaurdians. Now moving onto TotK, it would make sense to assume that gloom and malice are one and the same seeing as it courses through Ganondorf's body. I'm as confused as you are though by how it managed to corrupt the entirety of the depths. Surely it isn't coming from Ganondorf, is there some other source of malice down there? Demise? It's tough to say at this point, I would assume the Depths didn't always have gloom though if people were able to make all those mines and statues down there though.

The roots are found all throughout the Depths, and Ganondorf's final battle is on Gloom's Origin, that gloom-infested stump thing. It is from the deepest depths of hell that Ganondorf pulses his Gloom throughout the depths and patches of the surface.

Did the Zonai always live in the sky but put their land in the ground? What happened to the people who lived in the Depths? And where did Demise go? Where do he be hiding?

The Zonai lived above the Cloud Barrier until, as Rauru says, the Goddess sent them. The Depths people seem to be Rauru's people; it is likely that Rauru's lifespan gave him a longer reign that allowed for most of the civilization in the Depths to develop. Demise is dead.