#also!! i don’t know anything about the zelda games!! probably don’t expect more zelda!!

[doveg0d]

my side of an art trade with my LOVELY friend @t3ddydarling :D!

[whyoneartheven]

What head canons do you have for the LU boys? (Yes, this is a request for you to ramble about them)

aaaahhh hello! Thanks for asking, but wow, goodness me

this will take some thinking XD

umm

ok a lot of these are a lil generic or just other people’s ideas I kinda adopted but here goes!

also I didn’t expect it when I started but this got long…

for Legend, I really like the idea of him drinking tea and still having an apple orchard. And also having honey bees! (These aren’t mine originally lol) Also I feel like post LU (this ofc may change depending on the ending) he fell into depression a little bit before digging himself out with Ravio and Zelda’s help… he cut his hair during this time. idk I just feel like that would happen. I like the idea of him having a good singing voice. (merperson stuff but also even beforehand. He definitely sang lovely duets with Marin once she taught him how) Also I feel like he’s one of those people that’s always cold! So he secretly likes to cuddle :)

with Wild, I feel like… he definitely doesn’t use recipes! This is based off how I am in his game and irl, as I just throw things together and never go back to see how I made things before, but also I feel like it just fits his personality! I think it would be hilarious if he named his horses at first after anything that had an impact on him so like, one horse is named Zelda and another is Stir Fry. Or smth XDDD Also based on my experiences in game (to an extent), I feel like he doesn’t actually care about legitimately looking fashionable… it’s more that he likes wearing things that looks crazy XD

on to Hyrule! Ok this isn’t as much a headcanon as a ship but I really ship him and Aurora; I feel like they’d be absolutely adorable together but he’s really private about it! I like to think Hyrule can sew? And I think he’d love to run around barefoot on fresh grass! And just, be in love with nature in general! And maybe he doesn’t have an eye for color; he can’t tell if colors clash or actually match. Also is it just me or does he feel like out of the entire chain he could easily be a Studio Ghibli protagonist? Just me? Idk lol

Time! I like the idea of Time and Malon having a running joke that the other is color blind, and the chain eventually picks it up! And then Time keeps mistaking one color for another (on purpose or not? We’ll never know), and every time the others go wild XD (this may or may not be based on a joke my parents have irl hehe). When Time first met Malon he was very very lactose intolerant. And drank it anyway, of course! also I feel like Time really likes flowers? Idk why! And finally, if Time was in the modern world he’d be the guy who’d be eating food months to years past the expiration date…

Four, my beloved! Umm this is kinda a design idea more than anything but I like the idea of him growing his hair out and wearing it in a ponytail post LU! (provided he doesn’t die…) I don’t think of him as having voices in his head or being a system but I still like the idea of him talking to himself sometimes XD! Also this is just something canon I don’t see talked abt a lot but I love he and Twi’s relationship sm! Four totally has RBF and definitely stares at people accidentally when he’s thinking… also I saw a crack fic somewhere where Four was already married to Dot and had children and the chain were shocked; it was hilarious, and while I don’t think he would actually have kids yet, I think it’d be hilarious if he and his Zelda are already quite far along in their relationship (as I ship them lol)

the man, the myth, the legend, WIND, is next! This man has Opinions. I feel like he’s the kind of person so have opinions on things he’s only heard of two seconds before, like automatically deciding he will like a food or deciding the other way round. (And yeahhhh I’m basing him on my brother lol) I’m definitely not the one to come up with this but Wind is probably the one with the best (and most opinionated) fashion sense (most of the others are just hopeless in varying degrees so it isn’t hard)! Maybe older him bonded with young Wars in the War of Eras over this (bc I love the idea of older wind being there), Idk XD! Also he definitely braids Aryll’s hair and is generally very responsible (I mean he’s a big brother he’s gotta be XD); he starts off almost treating LU as a bit of a vacation! Nothing will go wrong, his family is safe, and he gets new friends :D

Warriors, the wonderful man, is next! I feel like he’s very nostalgic and a little sappy. Like, just in general. He likes to look back on his happy memories! Also (once again not my idea) but I like the idea of Warriors growing up either orphaned or really poor, and living in the less palatable portion of Castle Town. (Therefore he played pickup soccer as a kid; he just feels like he would lol) I definitely ship him and his Zelda (ok tbh I ship ALL the Links with their Zeldas lol). I feel like at the point of LU they’ve talked abt it but Warriors isn’t ready (thanks to Cia and maybe just all the barriers in his mind about being inferior to her or smth) Also, give this man the craziest accent you can find and I am here for it; whoever first came up with that is a genius. Ok yeah you can probably tell I love Warriors angst

XD Sky!!! My bestieeee!! If Sky was in modern times he’d be one of those people who gets sleepy when they drink coffee, fs! He is definitely the artistic one, and maybe during LU he discovers a bunch of mediums besides woodworking that he loves (and maybe he makes a bunch of art for Sun, who knows!) This next one is based off @margindoodles2407’s Forger from her loz AU but the idea that his parents died in a house fire and he lived with Gaepora and Zelda until he was older is so cool to me! And bc of this I feel like he’d really hate being around fire (to the point of panic attacks? Maybe, maybe not). Finally, hopeless bird lover Sky is a beautiful thing. As a bird watcher myself, I cannot blame him.

Last but not least is Twilight!! This guy totally holds conversations with animals all the time and it freaks people out (they can never tell if he actually understands them)! Twi definitely has a lot of respect for kids too and talks to them like they’re adults (by using the same vocabulary and tone, not by talking about things that aren’t good for kids to hear XD) and I feel like he would write painfully cheesy love poems? Twi definitely can’t cook but I feel l Ike he also cares the most about food? Idk? ALSO LET THIS MAN QUILT. IDK I THINK HE’D BE TERRIBLE AT IT BUT STILL TRY AND IT WOULD BE FUNNY

ok, and that’s it!!! Wow, that was a lot…

and I could definitely come up with more lol

[buddys-ramblings]

I’m just gonna name some of the things I’m interested in, hopefully to prevent the posts over here getting too stale

Key:

Red = hyperfixation

Orange = knowledgeable interest

Green = regular interest

Blue = non-knowledgeable interest

Object Shows - Love these things to death. I even have my own (hypothetical) one. Just, no spoilers for any non-BFDI, non-II, non-ONE shows, please.

Smash Bros. - How fast the hours I have on this game went from 20 to 180 should tell you something.

Nintendo in general - I love Nintendo. I always have and I probably always will.

Worldbuilding - I’ve been doing this in such a specific way for so long that I just feel kind of empty without a world in my head. Hopefully at least one of mine can become an actual piece of media. Though, I have my other blog for this, so don’t expect too much of it over here.

Writing - As in, creating fictional stories. Any other kind of writing is 👎 in my opinion. And my creative writing is kind of garbage, so don’t expect me to make it public and tell you about it anytime soon.

Pokémon - Ah, yes, the longest of Buddy’s known hyperfixations at four years straight, five years total. How much I care for the electric rat varies from day to day, but I’m pretty sure I’ll always like the franchise.

The Legend of Zelda - Or more specifically, the Breath of the Wild subseries. I beat BOTW in four months, which is a record time for me. I’ve beat the Wind, Water, and Lightning Temples in Tears of the Kingdom, but nothing beyond that, so no spoilers, please.

My Singing Monsters - Ah, yes, the fourth longest of Buddy’s hyperfixations, at 16 months. Though I’m not hyperfixated on it anymore, I still try to log in every day and the occasional song gets stuck in my head.

Plushies - I like the idea of owning plushies, but I feel like I’m wasting money on them because I never do anything with them.

Bugsnax - I really like this game, I totally recommend it if you’ve got a spare 30 bucks.

Minecraft - Ah, yes, the third longest of Buddy’s interests at two years. I like Minecraft and everything, but I kinda stopped keeping track of updates around after the Nether Update. Remember when Update Aquatic was the new cool thing? Good times.

SCP Foundation - I used to be annoyingly obsessed with this fictional organization a few years ago, but now I’m less interested. I’m trying to get back into it, though.

Digimon - Ah, yes, the second longest of Buddy’s hyperfixations at three years straight, four years total. As much as I love this franchise, I’ll be the first to admit that I know nothing about it. I only finished the first season of the anime (which I don’t remember because it was years ago) I watched and thoroughly enjoyed, but didn’t finish, seasons two and three, and I lost interest in season four when I saw that the Digi-Destined didn’t get partner Digimon. I also finished Fusion (which I also don’t remember because it was more years ago).

Splatoon - I’ve only ever played the smallest amount of Splatoon 1, but I’m hoping to rectify that this September. Hopefully there’s just as much, if not more time in between Splatoon 3 and 4 than there was between 2 and 3.

Fire Emblem - I started gaining interest when I realized that I knew literally nothing about Fire Emblem, especially compared to the other 1st party Nintendo games. I’m specifically interested in the 3DS games and more specifically in Fates; yes, that Fire Emblem Fates. The one with Corrin in it. The anime swordsman that nobody likes.

[lindseybots]

OHOHOHOHOHO THIS IS A WHOLE AU???? This is INCREDIBLE my heart is MELTING LOOK AT THOSE SWEETIES!!! A thought to keep Wind away from the Tower of Spirits, in the Septimus Heap books there’s a rule where “when dead you only tread once more; where living, you have trod before” so perhaps Wind being a natural ghost unlike Zelda isn’t able to go above the lobby of the Tower. Cause let’s be real, he would totally go through the dungeons but Anjean would have his hide if he tried to go up the Tower.

Also, is this LU? Totally cool if not! Just the two of them having fun together is enough to get me bouncing off the walls!

Ooooo a lot to unpack with this one!

First of all, THANK YOU! I’m so happy that you love the au!! I’m having so much fun making it, so I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

Next, I’m gonna answer the LU question because that answer is going to be shorter.

Honestly, I’m kind of glad you asked because I’ve seen people mention it a few times in comments, reblog tags, etc of some of my AU posts before, which made me wonder if there was some confusion about it. So, I’m glad I’m getting an excuse to clear this up.

While LU is super great (seriously go check it out if you haven’t) and I am incredibly honored that you think they are worthy of standing together on the same playing field, it is a separate thing.

The Wind’s Track AU is not associated with Linked Universe in any way. That is to say: in the “canon” of The Winds Track AU, the events of Linked Universe DO NOT AND WILL NOT EXIST.

Of course, if y’all want to make fan content that is a blend of the two AUs, that’s fine with me. All I ask is that, if you could, please make it clear somewhere that, normally, the AUs are separate entities to avoid any confusion for people who don’t know. Also, it’d be really nice if you’d give credit to the au creators so newcomers know where to find our AUs. (Also tag me so I can see it 👀🤭)

Again, I don’t mind if people make that kind of content to combine the aus, but I would hate for people to come here expecting LU due to miscommunication and then not get it. Y’know?

Now, I can talk about Wind and the Tower of Spirits.

I never actually considered him NOT being involved in solving the floors. The idea that he CAN’T is REALLY INTERESTING. Ohhhh that’d kill him inside.

This boy is so used to being at the center of the adventures, and now he has to leave it to someone else? AND HIS LITTLE BROTHER AT THAT?? AND YOU MEAN TO TELL HIM HE CANT DO ANYTHING BUT WAIT??? OHHHH.

Not to mention the fact that this is the location in the game that you revisit the most for the story.

The way I can picture this poor boy ready to just race up those stairs, regardless of potential consequences. Anjean would probably be tempted to tie him down if he wouldn’t just phase through the ropes.

I LOVE THIS IDEA. Not only is it angsty, but it fixes so many of the potential issues I’ve been trying to solve within this AU.

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but I was also trying to figure out a way to get Zelda to go help in the Tower of Spirits in the first place. The only reasons she goes at first in the game is because Anjean tells them that it’s too dangerous for Link / Spirit to go by himself, and during that time, she is the only one available to fill that role. If Wind were able to go, then there wouldn’t have been any reason to essentially force her in the role. There would need to be a new reason made.

This idea, however, FIXES THAT. THANK YOU!!

I also love that it reserves a portion of the game’s events to just be for Spirit and Zelda. They have such a wonderful relationship in the game, so having the events of the Tower be for just the two of them could really help in maintaining that strong bond that helped make Spirit Tracks so special.

I’ll make a point to find ways for Wind to be more helpful in other parts of the game to make up for his exclusion from the Tower of Spirits’ floors.

[sailforvalinor]

I saw you post on seasons 1 through 4 of Dr. Who and I wanted to know more about your accidentally Christian pile. What are some other works do think unintentionally emphasized Christian doctrines or morals?

Ooooooh, really good question!!

So the first thing that comes to mind here is Marvel’s Agents of Shield--each season has it's own story arc and themes, so it's hard to pin down just one thing here, so I'll just talk about a few. I'll talk about the obvious one first: Season 3 in particular has a lot of Christian imagery (though in this case, it's definitely on purpose). You see a flash-forward of a cross necklace at the beginning of the season floating in a spaceship in space right before it blows up, and then you watch as that necklace get passed around from person to person, knowing that whoever ends up with it at the end of the season is going to die. I won't spoil anything more, other than to say that it results in quite a bit of Christ/crucifixion imagery and themes.

Other than this, there's a lot about the redemptive power of love (Fitzsimmons my beloved), individual guilt and how to handle it, how to let go of shame, the inevitable defeat of evil--I know there's more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. (AOS girlies/gents, feel free to chime in!) Additionally, one of the main characters explicitly a Christian, and while he's not portrayed perfectly, he's never ridiculed for it by the other characters or the narrative, which is a breath of fresh air. There are of course some things I don't approve of (prepare to have your skip button ready once or twice in the earlier seasons), but it's still a fantastic show, and by far the best show Marvel has ever come out with.

Harry Potter’s a pretty obvious one—Harry has to sacrifice himself and be fully willing to die to kill Voldemort, the fight with the basilisk in Chamber of Secrets has some Biblical parallels—but I’m fairly certain that these themes were deliberate, so I suppose they don’t really count. But they do to me, so 😂

Star Wars is another big one for me—of course, a la George Lucas’s original vision, SW is much more directly influenced by Buddhism, but I find that it often can’t help dipping into Christian themes. I find this is especially true with anything that has Dave Filoni’s name attached, likely because he in turn is pretty influenced by Tolkien and Lewis (Ahsoka is meant to parallel Gandalf, the World Between Worlds in Rebels was inspired by The Magician’s Nephew’s Wood Between Worlds, etc). Mandalorian season 3 in particular blew me away—baptism! Redemption! Rebirth! Mandalorian denominations/sects! Seriously, I was expecting them to come down hard on the strange rules that sect holds themselves to and for Mando to completely reject them—but they didn’t?? It was SO fascinating.

Kingdom Hearts is probably one of my favorite demonstrations of John 15:13: “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Otherwise, I can’t really think of any super prevalent Christian themes I noticed, but that one is just so strong and so important to the themes of the series, I couldn’t not mention it.

Final Fantasy XV has something similar going for it—although what I’m going to say has MAJOR spoilers, so if don’t want to be spoiled, go ahead and skip this (and play the game because it’s great—but Noctis having to willingly sacrifice himself by sitting on a throne in order to purify his kingdom is as blatant as you get. For crying out loud, he’s called the One True King. However this only holds true for the base game—the dlc’s (except for Episode Prompto, but that’s just because it doesn’t really apply to that plotline, also it’s incredible) and the novel in my opinion kind of ruin it.

Legend of Zelda is an interesting one, because it is of course heavily inspired by Shinto, but a few Christian themes sort of snuck their way in there. In Skyward Sword (oh and spoilers for Skyward Sword). Hylia, though certainly not meant to be a direct Christ figure, chooses to be reborn as a Hylian (basically a human) in order to save her people. The difference here is that Zelda does not know that she’s Hylia, and she never regains her goddess status (at least presumably until she dies of old age), but it’s an interesting parallel nonetheless. Also, there’s a famously creepy cutscene in Twilight Princess where we get the story of how the Twili were banished from Hyrule for dabbling in dark magic, and the sequence has always reminded me of the Fall.

Those were just a few that I thought of off the top of my head—I’m sure there are more, but that’s all that’s coming to me at the moment 😂

[veinsfullofstars]

⭐ Welcome! ⭐

Henlo. Hope you’re doing well. Thanks for poppin’ by. I’m Veins, an art goblin on the internet with abnormal levels of anxiety and chronic video game brainrot, and this is my introduction post. Any updates or news on my end will be added here as well. I hope you’ll be patient with me and enjoy your visit!

(Last updated 09/01/24)

---

Who are you?

What an existentially upsetting question. Well, for the moment, I go by VeinsFullOfStars online, usually shortened to just Veins. I’m also toying around with Ivan or Yves, but Veins is the most preferable. Nice to meet you!

Wait, didn't you already have an account here? With the same username?

I did. I, uh, panic-deleted it in response to the data-scraping fiasco and regretted it almost immediately. As a result, you might see reblogs from the deactivated account still floating around. There is, unfortunately, nothing I can do about those unless the blogs that shared them take them down themselves (and, hey, if you happen to be one of those folks seeing this, I'd super appreciate it if you'd maybe remove the old reblog and replace it with the new one from here if you can). It's my mistake for overreacting, and now I just have to live with it. Sorry for any confusion.

What are your preferred pronouns/gender?

Thanks for asking! I’m non-binary, and I use they/them pronouns.

How old are you?

Ancient (in my 30s).

What is your avatar supposed to be?

A goblin. Very smol, very nervous, very puntable.

What are you using this blog for?

Art, mostly. I draw digitally and sometimes make stuff with yarn. I've also been writing since I could hold a pencil (though I don’t have much finished, so art will be the main focus for now). Also, expect a lot of reblogs, shitposts, and/or silence between posts - I am a simple hobbyist with a lot of brain nonsense and IRL hurdles. I’ll do my best to post with some regularity, but - again - I hope you’ll be patient with me if things go quiet from time to time.

What are your interests?

I love stories. I love characters. I love folks who can weave whole worlds with nothing but words on a page or color on a canvas. I grew up on fantasy novels, short horror stories, and late ‘90s/early ’00s animation. I learned to appreciate slice-of-life and slow-burn romance much later. Mythology and folklore also slaps, and I wonder sometimes if I should’ve majored in psychology instead of lib arts. My playlists are nothing but video game OSTs with a little heavy metal and j-rock sprinkled in for flavor. I sold my soul to Nintendo years ago, but sometimes I find indie darlings to fall in love with for a time. Dogs are adorable little menaces, and I love them all with my whole chest. Cats are okay, and I am allergic to them. (Does that answer the question? I think I lost track towards the end there…)

Any current hyperfixations?

Tons, but the biggest ones at the moment are Kirby, Hollow Knight, and Paper Mario. More nebulous interests include (in no particular order) Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, Rain World, Stardew Valley, most Soulsborne titles, Hades, Darkest Dungeon, The Legend of Zelda, Undertale/Deltarune, OFF, The Binding of Isaac, Ace Attorney, Luigi's Mansion, Animal Crossing, The Magnus Archives, Sonic the Hedgehog, and countless more. When I say “multifandom,” I mean it, homie.

Do you have any other social media?

Just this and an AO3 account. So, if you see my name anywhere but these two places, it’s probably not me. For now, Tumblr will be the best place to keep up-to-date with my stuff. If anything changes, I’ll let y’all know here.

Do you have a list of tags you use on your posts?

I tag things obsessively, but I’ll try to sort out the most relevant/unique ones I use here:

#veins art - for any art I’ve made (chrono link)

#veins fanart - for art I’ve made featuring characters from other IPs

#veins ocs - for art I’ve made featuring my original characters/stories

#veins sketches - for any of my unrendered doodles/sketch dumps

#veins old art - for reposts of older art I made before moving to Tumblr (Note: these posts are here for archival purposes and may not reflect my current style/interests.)

#veins writes - for any written works I’ve made

#veins ships - for any posts (reblogs included) featuring romantic pairings; I will also try to include specific pairings as “#(blank) x (blank)” and/or any ship names

#veins rambles - for random thoughts/text posts

#veins answers - for any of my responses to asks sent in (chrono link)

#veins in dream land - for any rambles/headcanons about the Kirby series specifically

#veins reblogs - for anything I reblog, obviously

#kirbtober 2023 - for my Kirbtober 2023 art specifically (chrono link)

#childhood friends au - for art from my Kirby AU where Dedede and Meta Knight first met as kids (masterpost | chrono link)

#kintsugi au - for art from my Kirby AU centered around the Mirror World, the Wave 2 gang, and the Darkroach ship - warning: may contain angst and suggestive content (masterpost | chrono link)

I’ll update this with new tags if/when they pop up. Anything else will have generic tags to fit the context of the post. I also mark trigger warnings with tags like “#(blank) tw” if necessary.

What do you use to make your art?

For digital art, I use Clip Studio Paint and a Wacom Intuos Pro S drawing tablet (that I'm pretty sure I've had since high school). I don’t draw traditionally as much anymore, but, when I do, it’s usually just quick sketches with pencil and paper. For writing, I use TextEdit or whatever generic rich text editing software I can find. For crafting, I use yarn and plastic canvas.

What brushes do you use?

For sketching and linework, I use a slightly modified version of the Wick Pencil from the 8 Particle Pencil catalog made by saturns_day. For flats and rendering, I use the default CSP hard round brush, airbrush, and G-pen. For effects and extras (clouds, textures, sparkles, etc.), I use default effects brushes or whatever I can find from the CSP Asset Shop.

Can I share your work through reblogs? And are tags okay?

Of course! Reblogs are absolutely fine and always encouraged. I’m also fine with tags as well (though I ask that you not mark anything as a ship unless I’ve marked it as such on the original post - look for the tag #veins ships if you’re ever unsure).

Can I repost/use your work for my own personal/commercial use?

Absolutely not. While I am always in support of creators inspiring each other with our works and endeavors, that does not mean anyone should engage in art theft (intentional or otherwise). Under no circumstances may you repost, reupload, reproduce, copy, trace, modify, sell, use, tokenize, scrape/integrate into A*I, and/or otherwise claim as your own any of my art/written works. Never assume a piece of art shared online in yours for the taking - that is someone else’s hard work and passion, and you need to respect that.

Can I dub one of your comics?

As flattering as that would be, I worry about lack of credit or my work being stolen for others’ content, so I sadly have to say no.

Why is there a big watermark on your art?

The state of the internet today has made me extremely paranoid about things like art theft, bad-faith reposts, nonconsensual integration, etc., so I make sure to sign and WM anything original I post. I know it’s not exactly fun to look at (maybe even distracting or bad for engagement), but I’d rather be safe than sorry, so I guess I’ll just have to take that hit.

Do you have an askbox? Can we send in questions/comments/etc.?

Yes, the ask box is currently open, and I'm more than happy to receive any questions, comments, etc. you guys might have (even if it makes me a bit nervous, haha)! I just ask that you read the rules first before you submit anything.

Do you take requests/commissions/suggestions/collabs/etc.?

Sadly, I do not take art requests or suggestions unless I put out a specific call for them. I'm also not really in a position to take commissions either. Collabs I'm on the fence about - maybe with mutuals or folks I know personally.

Is this an inclusive space?

Of course! This queer little goblin accepts everyone under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, along with folks of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, disabilities, and colors. That said, there will be absolutely no tolerance for (inhale) racism, sexism, transphobia, queerphobia, xenophobia, misogyny/misandry, bigotry of any kind, ableism, p***philia, inc*st, selfc*st, z**philia, RPF, trolling behavior, self-promotion, the promotion of N*FTs or A*I art, or any otherwise harmful, toxic, or hurtful rhetoric. Anyone seen behaving as such will be blocked, reported, and forgotten. :)

Is this an all-ages space?

Hmm… I’m gonna have to say no. While I probably won’t be posting/sharing anything too lewd or graphic, I’m not opposed to things like swearing, angst, fluff bordering on suggestive, and discussions of mature subject matter (all of which I will make sure to tag with content warnings as necessary). Obviously, I can’t police everyone who wanders into this blog (especially since some people omit or lie about their ages online), so the best I can do is ask for good faith on your part. If you are under 18, interact at your own risk. The last thing I want is to make anyone - myself included - uncomfortable because there are kids in an adult-allocated space. Again, I hope you understand.

What is your stance on shipping?

The vernacular around pro- or anti-shipping confuses the hell out of me, so I’ll just try to explain my personal philosophy on it: I have ships I like, ones I’m indifferent to, and ones I won’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I only reblog (and tag) ship-related content I’m in support of, even if it’s not one of my personal favorites. Most importantly, I don’t bother others about their personal preferences. Anything I don’t like or don’t support, I simply do not engage with. Or, if it makes me too uncomfortable, I block outright. The same should apply to your experience as well - if you ever see ship stuff here that you don’t like, feel free to block the tags (look for specific pairings, ship names, and/or my personal tag #veins ships) or even the blog entirely. You are not obligated to like the things I like or engage with media you don’t enjoy. Respect for each other and curation of your personal online space is always key. Additionally, I 100% will not ship minors, blood relations (including adopted family), self x self, anything relating to b*stiality, or anything relating to RPF.

Are you okay?

No, not even a little bit... but fuck it, we keep going.

Why do you put a comma before the “and” in a sequence of three or more words?

You can take my Oxford comma away from me when I’m cold, dead, and rotting in the dirt.

Is there anything else?

Nah, I think we’re good for now. Thanks for taking the time to read all this. Hope it wasn’t too rambly or weird - just trying to cover all my bases. I hope you all have a lovely timezone out there, wherever you are. Be sure to wash your hands, wear your mask, and stay hydrated. Remember to be strong, be safe, and, for the love of dog, be kind. Peace!

-Veins (originally posted 08/07/23, reposted 02/29/24, updated as of 09/01/24)

[geniusphilester]

i’ve seen a few gamingmas wishlists and, as i’ll probably wake up around when the first video goes up, i thought it’d be fun to share a few of my wishes and expectations and have them blown out of the water immediately lol

what we know

-we already know that charlie mcconnell is playing lethal company with dan and phil. lethal company’s a popular indie horror game in early access right now: the description on steam says “A co-op horror about scavenging at abandoned moons to sell scrap to the Company.” and i think pj is also jumping in on this one?

-i’m so confident about the sims being included here that i’m putting it in “know” instead of “guess”. it’s ongoing, the new house is built, dil and dalien were prominent on the promo poster…it's not a big swing. holiday devan wedding???

what we can guess

-since we had halloween baking for spooky week, christmas baking for christmas eve seems likely? i would say the day could be variable, but if baking happens, i’d put good money on it being the last video.

-i’m not convinced that the promo poster is accurate as to what will happen, but dan and phil did specifically request the details included. so here’s what i see:

tetrimos, so maybe tetris? i would enjoy tetris 99 or something

the golf hats, a bag of golf clubs, maybe floating golf balls? probably golf with friends, as anyone could guess

ddr pad??? ddr seems hard to bring back, but i discount nothing and i would love it. (including it is big nostalgia bait either way. they're so sentimental!!!)

we covered dil and dalien/the sims already, but i would feel weird not writing them down lol

the switch, which could have a lot of interesting console-exclusive possibilities: zelda, mario, animal crossing? ring fit adventure would be hilarious and a good dan vs. phil

huggy wuggy, so maybe more poppy playtime. i wouldn’t have thought that likely since we’re done with spooky week, but we have confirmation on another horror game, so why not? i know what the next chapter looks like and the puzzles could be fun. maybe dan would finally exit his chair from jumpscare

this isn’t expectations or guesses or anything, but shout out also to phil’s plushie and the announcement moose

-i feel like they have a mini roblox series now, so maybe something on there? my main pick would be bee swarm simulator; they usually have a holiday event, and it’s a really solid game

what i want

-all my favorite games, which would include: co-op stardew valley (which would be another good switch option), hades, unpacking. maybe unpacking most because they could do the whole thing this month pretty easily.

-skimming my steam to see some other games that i think would be interesting: disco elysium (probably not youtube friendly, but i can dream), another crack at dream daddy, alan wake 1/2 or control, phasmophobia, wobbledogs, oxenfree 1/2, gone home, arcade paradise, inscryption, the hitman series, iron lung, death stranding. out of these, i want wobbledogs (deeply silly) and gone home (gay) the most.

-i really want fan mario kart tournaments brought back. i suspect it won’t happen this month because they’ve got a lot on their plate, but i played them the last couple times they did them, and i would love to make it into their round just once. but even if i wouldn’t (as is likely), it would just be nice to play with fans again!

-i hope there’s a couple other random collabs and indie games i don’t know/haven’t thought of. i liked the surprises during spooky week!

-i’m gonna share some of my thoughts on this bingo card because it covers a lot of my wishes, too:

golf with friends (likely, as i said)

mario kart booster courses: with the booster levels, they could do an entire rainbow road dan vs. phil. tell me that doesn’t sound good

stardew valley (really want, as i said)

sims 4 (pretty much guaranteed)

deltarune: the unfinished sequel(ish?) to undertale. as someone who was a huge fan of their original undertale let’s play, YES PLEASE

baldur’s gate 3: majorly popular dnd franchise video game. i started playing it this week, and it's delightful, but it's a lot of game. it would be a great collab, though!

stray: cat game!!! i own this and i got stuck on a part before i could finish. if they played, that would give me the kick i need to get back into it.

cult of the lamb: popular indie game with the streaming set because it has great twitch integration. i would enjoy watching them play, but i would enjoy it more if they did twitch streams later and played it there

it takes two: popular two-player indie game where you play as a married couple, i believe? i would enjoy watching this, but i admit, some of what i’ve heard about the game doesn’t leave me too interested in watching it specifically

untitled goose game: CLASSIC. oh man. chaos puzzles as a goose in a small english village? you can do this one two-player, too. and it’s good on switch.

spider-man: interesting inclusion! i’ve heard the game is good, but if it’s a new-to-me let’s play, i prefer indie games.

a board game: i wouldn’t be surprised if heartthrob with celebrities or whatever shows up lol. but this would be another good collab opportunity

among us: yes yes yes. mostly because i could watch it with my nibling lol. definitely a collab game; i wonder what size of party they could put together

minecraft (redo): could be interesting! i find minecraft so boring, but it would definitely get them views, and they always make things good

festive baking (likely, as i said)

-here’s my biggest wish: another festive day in the life. i don’t think i need to elaborate on that.

[cloudninetonine]

*insert generic and totally not awkward greeting here* Hey there, how have you been doing? Hopefully you’ve been doing well cause I haven’t and I’d like for someone to have a good day around here as a result.

Something something, warning for long ask, and briefly tossing my hat onto the Corrupted/Error Player here, the first time Player gets turned and when they’re killed (or maybe kill themselves if they snap out of it so they won’t hurt the Chain, the angst possibilities are endless), they scream like this (Possible Spoilers for Portal 2 if you haven’t seen it, even if it’s just an audio file)

https://youtu.be/aLB6irPFTRY

I feel like it would be fitting, plus they probably twitch a lot and move either mechanically from time to time or too smooth, like that uncanny valley of movement of something that seemingly moves normally, but there is something fundamentally off about it, or like those times when it looks like your game freezes due to FPS drops, you know like when your character movement is slowed down or sped up so it’s delayed? Something like that.

Also I just realized I haven’t explained how the Azura deal would probably look like in a Songstress Au if Player suffered the consequences for singing magical songs, so I thought I’d just show you here if you don’t mind spoilers, I feel like it would be like this:

https://youtu.be/NwNBPOBcptI

(Skip to 07:46 and stop at 08:27 to avoid spoilers from the other routes and game on the second link)

https://youtu.be/oIfYKm_vSfQ

Make the energy be like Malice or just corruption in general and you got a lovely recipe for angst, and the Chain doing their hardest to keep Songstress Player from singing too much.

I was honestly not expecting to have Lora shipped with Player after like three asks but honestly I’m chill with this outcome, I just hope Hyrule and Wild won’t murder my boy too much XD (I say, as I drop more content that will probably make him get murdered by them, but in all seriousness I’m glad you like the content, and yeah it’s cool if you want to use my stuff for Seraph or the Gerudo, just credit me for it yeah? One of these days I’ll probably reveal my Tumblr here so you can credit me there too or I can share with ya later if you want, I have way too many thoughts and theories about Seraph/Fia and am always ready to screech them to the world as well as general Zelda knowledge XD, but for now just credit the thoughts that are mine under Very Awkward Anon or VA)

Something something, Player and Lora reenacting this, either of these versions work:

https://youtu.be/0nkOCXtJtCA

https://youtu.be/ZUCxkflNJiM

On one hand, Dominant Player (Aka to the Chain ‘Hope this Doesn’t Awaken Anything in Me’/ “Oh.” Moment on both opposites of the spectrum, because that is when they realize that Player can sweep them off their feet in pure protag fashion), on the other hand “By Hylia I wish that were me”/”Lora you sly dog-“ Lora, who is literally just acting in character and probably doesn’t think too hard about it in the moment: “I haven’t done anything though? It’s for the role and they’re chill with it???” only to have the Realization later and just, screams into his hat after a while, or, plot twist, it’s not Lora but actually Octavo after one too many times seeing the Chain simp for Player and needled into it by both Cadence and Operetta (How I call Lora’s Zelda) and decided to take one for the team and also because he fits better as an antagonist protag than Lora and I headcanon both him and Lora have perfect pitch (aka the ability to recognize the pitch of a note or produce any given note) while Cadence and Operetta have perfect tempo (the ability to either instantly tap any tempo at will with perfect precision, or hear a tempo and instantly know the specific beats per minute, so basically they have perfect rhythm), So he can probably hit the JD notes with ease, on one hand, Lora is probably like “Look! Those are my besties! They’re killing it! Slay you both! You rock those roles!”, super supportive like the excited band/theater kid he is specially if Player also has perfect pitch or tempo or both (meanwhile the Chain is just like “Another challenger has entered the ring”, Four and the Colors + Shadow are specially invested in aiding Wild and Hyrule with the those graves now due to Vaati flashbacks/the theory that maybe Octavo is descended from Vaati, it’s even funnier if Player played Minish Cap and Four Swords but really liked Vaati’s design is spite of what he did, so Four has even more reason to be invested due to old beef and I personally headcanoning he can be spiteful when he wants), on the other he probably just turns to Hyrule and Wild and is just “... You know what, I get it, have room for one more in the planning? Cadence can help hide the body if we bribe her with treasures”, I feel like either option could work.

Or, alternatively, they manage to gather enough people between Player, Lora, Operetta, Candance and Octavo and reenact the entirety of the Twisted Musical, because it’s a musical that slaps and is hilarious in equal measure and I feel like it would match the combined gremlin/unhinged vibes of everyone involved perfectly (I’mma send the link here, it’s fully available on YouTube for free though I can understand it’s not everyone’s thing, your choice wether to give it a listen or not, I recommend leaving two full hours free and to be ready for a lot of laughs for maximum effect during those):

https://youtu.be/-77cUxba-aA

Cue Salty Chain chugging vinegar in the back if either Lora or Octavo gets to perform “A Thousand and One Nights” (39:28 to 45:15, bonus damage if Operetta changed the lyrics a bit so it changes Vizier to Hero or knight to cause chaos) or “Take off Your Clothes” with Player (1:27:55 to 1:31:20, also, consider, PLAYER being the main singer and not Lora, Operetta cheekily changing the lyrics also can apply here, poor boy is either flustered after the fact or right there on the floor with Wind, while the rest of the Chain can’t decide wether to choke or go green with envy to match most of their tunics), also I can see Lora, Octavo and Player performing “No One Remembers Achmed” (1:14:06 to 1:18:06) and the Chain being split between chocking/spitting out whatever they’re drinking, chugging vinegar and literally on the floor laughing, this musical is also probably the hardest try not to laugh challenge Wind has ever received in his life I don’t make the rules. If he lived in the modern world he’d definitely have a soft spot for Starkid Musicals.

I also absolutely love the dynamic between Player and Candace and you’re absolutely right, Lora is the shy theater and band kid that will not hesitate to sweep the floor with you in several if you test him or his people, Octavo is the sassy/unhinged theater kid with absolutely no chill and who slays the villain roles everyone inevitably simps for at least once and the guy who can and will break out into song at enough prompting, Candance is definitely the one beating people to death with her shovel and absolutely down to helping someone hide the body if needed be, while Operetta looks chill but will actually shank someone with a dagger on command as a warning if needed be and no one will believe she did it, Player and Lora are arguably the chill ones I don’t make the rules, plus they’re arguably one of the embodiments of besties to lovers if we go the shipping route or Lora is very supportive of whatever relationship they have, but is also ready to call in the rest of the squad if someone hurts Player (Legend beware, you have one Necrodancer, one other possible Descendant, a Grave Robber and a princess with a knife to deal with). Also the only Hyrule where Player can fight is Lora’s Hyrule due to rhythm games and the Chain gets to witness Player being badass for a change, probably the ones with the easiest time there will be Warriors and Sky, maybe Time too, I feel like between knight training and the Kokiri they’d probably have the best time there in the sense of moving to the beat and dancing to fight, Twilight, Legend and Wind are hit or miss but Hyrule and Wild are just horrible given their respective backstories, Hyrule probably never prioritized dancing much and hasn’t had enough people experience to get that experience and Wild is literally amnesiac and probably in the same boat, knight training he can’t even remember can only do so much as well as audio cues you get in the wildness of his Hyrule (like Guardians beeping being indicative of how close you are to one or how close they are to firing, or the way the Yigah talk because I headcanon they have a bit of a Sheikah accent beneath it all) so they’d probably have the hardest time fighting there and rely a lot on luck.

Also more thoughts, headcanons and possible theories on Seraph/Fia because why not? Though there will probably be less today and I’ll send more on another ask, kind of sleep deprived, haven’t gotten proper sleep in like two weeks so my brain is a bit tired, I’ll write what I can today and send more on a part three XD

• I headcanon that the slaughter of the Zonai was likely the breaking point for the Sheikah to split, can you imagine being a Sheikah and hear about all that going down? The Zonai were your allies, magic users and creators like you, they helped you implement and create a lot of technology, they understand better than anyone except maybe the Gerudo how it is to be ostricized by the crown for what you are well even though they need you around or can’t afford to get rid of you. The hero is one of them and helped aid the sealing of the Calamity and defeat of Ganon, they are the only ones who likely understand what it’s like as well as you do, and then suddenly you hear their hero is gone, either dead from sealing the great evil or died right after or maybe even executed after his duty was done and his people were saved, the remnants are scattered and the few who are identified hunted down and killed, and you get the decree that any and all technology from your people, your heritage and that they made with you should be disassembled, banished or destroyed. How do you react to that? You’d probably be furious too, my headcanon is that it was his death or news of his death that made the Sheikah, after many years of loyal service to the crown no matter the hardship or how harshly they were mistreated or slaughtered, finally snap, a group remained loyal because they felt it would be the best way to honor Seraph’s actions and sacrifice because the life of a hero is not an easy one and they won't betray Hylia after all that, while the other revolted and eventually got banished, forming the Yigah clan, maybe the original Yigah’s purpose was never to just be followers of Ganon, maybe their original purpose was to break the reincarnation cycle no matter the cost and if aiding Ganon, either the current or next one was going to do it then Hylia damnit they’d do it, they owed the Zonai and Seraph enough for that, and then the original mission would have been lost among the time gap of 10.000 years into what it is now.

This is probably just crazy headcanon or theorizing, but I feel like if Seraph connected the dots or he figured out what’s going on that he’d feel awful for that alone, because both Flora and Wild suffered as a consequence of his death because of the Yigah hunting them and I feel like he’d probably feel responsible for it even if in the more indirect way possible. Kind of would add up to the guilt of not being able to aid his shield brother.

• Because of this one unused/cut art of Wild with someone who’s most likely his Aryll/Linkle and someone who might be his dad or grandfather, I personally headcanon that Seraph also had a sister because I like making history repeat itself and healthy doses of angst, and I also headcanon that she was the Zonai Queen/Chieftain by right of conquest because since the Zonai are a warrior tribe it would make sense that they value skill more than bloodline or anything else when chosing a leader, why? Because I can headcanon that, and the idea of badass ancient warrior/magic user queen Aryll brings me incredible amounts of delight, I call her Macha (after one of the warrior goddesses in Irish myth) and my main belief is that she probably used a spear, learned and took a lot after her Gerudo Warrior mom in fighting style and that Seraph is incredibly proud of her, just the proudest big brother there is because look! That’s his sister right there! She is amazing and he adores her to death, I also headcanon that she probably survived when Seraph didn’t and that Wild is descendant from her specifically, so Seraph probably is very glad to have Wild as a descendant running around and being himself because in a way, it’s like knowing his people and his sister live on in someone and he’s fine with that even if the customs of the Zonai are gone and/or not present in Wild in a visible way, it’s in the way he cooks, in his looks, in the way he smiles and laughs and fights even with the Hyrulean knight teachings and he honestly couldn’t be prouder because he did his best, and even if he didn’t get it right in the first time he did good and succeeded and most importantly survived even more so than banishing the Calamity something even he couldn’t do and he’s Wild. And that’s enough for him to be glad he has him as a descendant (also probably thinks that way about Calamity, those are HIS great something nephews and he’ll challenge anyone in single combat if they say anything bad about them).

• Wild: I’m not good enough because I failed in beating the Calamity the first time and let Hyrule fall, I had no idea what I was doing but that doesn’t excuse that I could have done better. I apologize for dissappointing you and not being enough to live up to yours and everyone else's legacy.

Seraph, who also had no clue how to deal with the Calamity in the first time before his Zelda, likely his Aryll and Impa suggested creating the Guardians and Divine Beasts because clearly just Fi and Hylia’s Blessing wasn’t doing the trick and he ended up losing an arm in the process and likely died later: And you think I did? Faoil (wild wolf/dog) if anything you did it more smoothly than me even if it took a power nap and having your mind scrambled like an omelete to do it. You’re fine and I’ll fight you if you say otherwise. Meet me in the ring.

Like, can you imagine being Seraph back then? Sure they were expecting for Ganondorf to return eventually (even if they thought they’d be skipped over or that between him and Una they could help him, I mean it happened in Cadence of Hyrule technically, Young Ganondorf that's Wind's age and just vibing with existence is a thing, just throwing that out there), he always comes back due to Demise’s curse, insert William Afton saying I always come back here and all that for the meme. But you think any of them was ready for the Calamity? That is Demise’s curse and rage and fury and thirst for the blood of Sky’s descendants (or First’s, because I doubt he forgot when First sealed him the first time around, the rage probably started from there) and the wish to see Hylia herself suffer, it is pure divine fury that was left to fester for years upon years cycle upon cycle and across timelines, pure will given form and having given up trying to play human because clearly that approach wasn’t working so it evolved, it adapted. That is some eldritch horror/Greek/Irish/Norse/Actually a lot of mythologies type of stuff, I doubt anyone was prepared for it hence why the Beasts and Guardians were built, it was their way of adapting to such a drastic change, Sheikah Towers and Slates to better control and monitor the situation and coordinate Guardian attacks against monsters and heck maybe even soldiers brought back from death since the Calamity was a corrupting force with Zonai runes for self defense and new means of attack for soldiers, Sheikah Shrines not only tests and ways to prepare the next Hero but also as shelter for those who can’t fight, the Divine Beasts, the Magnum Opus of the races, built in record time to be able to aid Hylia’s reincarnation and the Hero with the Champions to pilot it because they couldn’t defeat Ganon and it at first, that was their way of adapting because the usual didn’t work. They knew some details, but they couldn’t imagine those details would change, they were just lucky to shift gears accordingly and be able to seal it for a 10.000.

And ten thousand years is a lot of time for information to be lost or altered, we never hear what happened to Seraph/Fia, or Una, or the previous Champions, we never hear what happened to the Zonai or even how they really were, we just know that they won and sealed it away.

... But what was the cost?

In summary, I believe that what happened 10.000 years ago was a Phyrric victory, and that the crown probably altered it or purposefully let the knowledge die out to give people hope and likely as much information to be able to fight back as they could without stretching just how close it was like how they practically erased the Twili, because it’s strange isn’t it, that Zelda using Hylia’s power was recorded, but not how she managed to do it to give the next generation the best fighting chance? It’s because it was knowledge that died out or was purposefully hidden, maybe how Una got her powers was too awful and traumatic, and so no one would want to repeat the circumstances and that’s why Rhoam only makes inferences, which in turn led Flora to suffer under pressure and being unhappy, no one knows how Seraph was really like, so they create an imagine on their head and push it onto Wild and Calamity who are forced to live up to it and even quit speaking as a result of being the ones to pull the Master Sword from the stone.

In summary it wasn’t that it was easier for them, it was because no one knew just how hard it was and sadly for Wild and Flora and the Champions and everyone 10.000 years ago, the Calamity learned how to adapt too after it regained it’s strength.

It would refuse to give them a fighting chance.

So if anything I bet Seraph would be really proud of Wild and Calamity for managing to do it anyway, no matter how long it took.

(I also headcanon that the way the Calamity was unleashed maybe was as a side effect of Seraph/Fia and Una trying to aid Ganon, but that’s for another post, this is getting long so I’ll save it for when I have more brain power as well as possible Zonai customs Seraph/Fia shows or uses and how I headcanon about the Cú Chulainn/Beowulf/Grettir deal)

• I honestly think that we play as him in ToK, at least in some sections or through his memories or with Wild kind of backseating his consciousness so he can find where he needs to go and to repair Fi, it’s possible I’ll be wrong later about this that’s just me making crazy guesses due to outfit changes, but in the trailer you see Wild not using the slate to use stasis (which makes sense, Flora was the one with it after all and it fell down with her or got damaged from the fall), but from Seraph’s possible arm and the Zonai were strong warrior magic users, which makes me think that the runes in the Sheikah slate were possibly not Sheikah, but translated and repurposed from Zonai spells if we go with the theory/headcanon they worked together, which also makes me draw the connection that either A: Either when he lost his arm (possibly via combat with Ganon or one of his general’s at the time, or history repeating itself and made it so that it got corrupted by the Malice and he had to chop it off before it spread and he became a Blight, which I also have a lot of thoughts about but I’ll save that for another ask) he gained the abilities to use the runes from it but it took his own stamina/magic reserves to make it work, OR, that he already could use runes like that normally and simply got so used to using them normally the arm acclimated to it or was made to accommodate it because I feel like the Zonai probably unconsciously used magic to be more durable and stuff or that was their entire thing, Zonai warriors being very strong because they have a lot of magic and it makes their stamina reserves bigger the more they train and build up their strength. In summary: not only was this man likely as healthy as a horse, strong as a bull or ordonian goat in his prime, built like he could wrestle and suplex a bear or lion and likely hit like a semi truck due to his Gerudo Gladiator life style and his Zonai Warrior upbringing, but he may possibly be the second most prolific/strong magic user we see in the series out of the Link’s like how Twilight, Hyrule and likely Time, Legend and FD are (maybe also Sky and Four?), But also the only one outside of maybe Hyrule who can or could do it without any assistance from a magical artifact and how insane is that? Leave some of the talent for the rest of us like sIR- Can you imagine this man just straight up freezing enemies with Stasis without assistance from his own raw power or just straight up summoning bombs or attracting weapons out of folks hands? I feel like we don’t talk enough about this possibility, it would make him a nightmare to face if you’re on his bad side, like I think he probably could give FD a good enough run for his money if that’s true like this man just snatched the protagonist halo and ran with it. Though I also headcanon he doesn’t do that often unless it’s too serious that he can’t help but use it because it likely ends fights too quickly and he likes fighting too much for that.

And that’s that for now, apologies if I rambled on, hope I didn’t bother you and hope you’re having a nice whatever time of the day is it! :D

-A Very Awkward Anon.

First off I hope you're having a good day to VA! Thank you for sending more of your ideas and also thank you for giving me permission to merge/use them with my own! I promise to give credit back to you once I do eventually use it!

First off you really are starting to make me ship Lora and Player much more, the friends-to-lovers thing? Perfect beautiful, fantastic, also him being shy until he's in song and dance? Definitely Disney Prince material, someone draw him as a Disney Prince (Actually someone should totally draw Disney style Chain for reasons I will not be giving)

Also-

I FUCKING LOVE PORTAL 2 AND THE GLADOS SCREAM WOULD MATCH THEM SO MUCH

Honestly Player just with the GLaDOS voice, montone and cold, but then they have those moments with such raw emotions that it makes everyone uncomfortable.

Also the royal family rewriting history makes so much sense, because come on- honestly I like to think that Seraph/Fia was made to be a very stoic hero, a man who got the job done and have history very fine and cut because they want Ganon done, they don't want emotions from the heroes or what not, they want the following Links to do what they were 'made' to do and that's it.

[anonymus-enby]

my relationship with food (part 2)

Right know I’m doing better than in those phases. And if I had the money, I could eat out every single day. But deep down I know that it’s still not good enough yet with me easily skipping a meal a day and when I make myself some lunch its not as much as it should be. And like mentioned before- dinner is also not that enjoyable. Ironically, when I went to the two therapists that went to (only for one session each) I didn’t really mentioned it because I guess in my head it is not really real- or I just don’t want to worry about another problem, you know?

Oh my, this is again much longer than I expected. I hope it was not too confusing. But there are so many things to talk about and I constantly fear that I am forgetting important things. I guess I could just write it in my next post if I forgot something and mark it with [edit for last post]

[edit for last post] my hobbies

Alright, I totally forgot to mention my hobbies in my “that’s me” post. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about that now. I feel like generally I like everything and nothing at the same time. I am always jealous of the people that have like one distinctive hobby that they love so much, they spent every time they have on it. I don’t really think I have that. But before I start to write an essay again. I am going to try and sum it up a bit:

I like to…

… read (favourite book: the secret history by Donna Tart)

… learn languages (I am learning Swedish right now)

… film and edit YouTube videos (but since I am anonymous here I can not say what my channel is called)

… watch TV Shows and movies (I’m currently watching the show ‘criminal minds’ recommended by a friend and I absolutely love it! Especially Reid of course ;) I just started season 4. Movies are a bit hard to generalize but some of my favourite movies are: ‘bohemian rhapsody’, ‘the greatest show’, ‘dead poets society’, ‘call me by your name’ and probably much more that just don’t come to my mind right now)

… play video games (mostly something for the Nintendo switch. I wish I had money to buy the new Zelda and Mario game. But I also sometimes ‘play league of legends’ with my brother)

… cook and bake (ironic I know, concerning the topic of this post)

… make music (I play a little bit of piano and the guitar, and I make wannabe songs with lame lyrics and always the same easy chords. Also, they are mostly really depressed or really depending on my mood. And sometimes there are other songs in-between)

… make friendship bracelets (I know, it sound kind of lame but it is actually quite calming. Especially when you listen to an audiobook or a podcast while you make the bracelet)

… explore things that interest me- but never enough to actually remember things (like Greek mythology. That shit is crazy)

… say good-bye now (wow, what a creative transition!) I hope once again I didn’t forget anything, but this is it for now. See you later!

Anonymus

[dragontamer05]

I get game comparison’s happen but I really do firmly believe that even if you wanted to try and take Sword/Shield or Scarlet/Violet and compare it to anything on the Switch BOTW is like probably the worst to choose.

1) As it is Zelda games have years worth of experience of home console 3D graphics to have improved to the level they are today

2) Where as Pokemon (main / core games) by comparison is still somewhat new to 3D- again compared to Zelda games- and newer still to being programmed and made for something like the Switch

3) Stylistically they are very different - While the characters might be much less chibi-esk the general aesthetic is far more cartoony, maybe a little fantastical but simplistic in nature- isn’t trying to aim for some hyper realistic design which I don’t think it should.

Where as LoZ while also not going pure realism - at least not say compared to what TP still seems aim for a more detailed design and I guess in away a believable sort of fantasy

4) Going back to the first point BoTW is hardly a new game either with years to have had graphics tweaked, bugs patched and whatever since it first released on the Wii U (idk how much or how little it changed between the two upon being ported but still)

5) i can only imagine the team set up and handling of their games is different- for one Zelda games seem to be allowed a lot more time to be worked on before a new big game releases out side of any smaller games here n there, like the hand held titles. Where as idk if they just aren’t allowed more time or what but Pokemon for better or worse tend not to have as large of gaps between games

6) Hot take but in someways it kinda looks better then Arceus. Now I like Arceus I really do and I’m not saying it’s a bad game or looks bad perse but Sw/Sh and specially S/V have a lot more popping colour to them.

There’s just a lot of areas in Arceus that feel like nothing but muddy and a bit samey at times

7) Who cares what one damn tree looks like - feels nit picky. Sure it’s basic and maybe the texture appears a bit flat but so what. You can tell it’s a tree and you can still tell that the texture is meant to be bark- doesn’t have to look real.

8) It’s Pokemon good or bad aside why would you expect it to be able to compare to or look like Zelda. Colosseum and Gale of Darkness sure as heck don’t compare to the graphics of Twilight Princess but over all I’d say they’re still good looking games

9) Having played both now, can it feel a bit odd going from looking at BoTW graphics to Violet’s sure but I still think it looks fine for a Pokemon game.

10) General thought but in a sea of games where so many are aiming for more realistic what’s wrong with the cartoonish / less detail focused- or at the very least I’m sure most people wouldn’t expect for a LoZ game to look like a Pokemon game so why would I compare and expect a Pokemon game to look like LoZ

11) Equally bad comparison or examples I think are when people take try to point a mod as ‘see it’s so easy’ when although I won’t knock the work that goes into mods and the like that’s still someone working with an already finished product - as well as working under their own time, without deadlines, having to work within someone else is specifications or anything else that comes with game development.

12) I know shit about coding but what I do know is sometimes even the smallest changes can make things go weird so maybe some of the design choices are just what worked without causing something else to bug.

13) To repeat they are fundamentally different games, whether at their best or worst graphically it’s simply unfair to compare them or at least compare them so closely without taking into account each games style (and the teams behind them)

I’m not saying there aren’t improvements to be made, or that it’s bad to compare games in general but I am however tired of the only game comparison I see people doing with Pokemon is to Zelda / Botw and whether intended or not just ends up sounding (to me) like Pokemon bad because it’s not realistic / detailed enough.

[lemonlurkrr]

@aureateart​ ok. My favourite parts of twilight princess  (and some other random thoughts about TP sprinkled in there) taken from my monster TP word vomit google doc :

Link lmao

Ok but for real, I like this incarnation of Link :)

I love Ordon (it just seems like such a chill and cozy village)

ALSO love how easy it is to interpret Link as being a sort of older brother figure to the Ordon kiddos. It’s just,, super cute? AND GHHH nice nice good thanks nintendo for giving me characters to care about/characters that I can imagine Link caring about

He didn’t sign up for any of this (tbh, none of the Links really signed up for this jshdjsd). But I mean like, dude was just going to take a trip to castle town, drop a gift off for the royal family, and come back. But haHA oopsies he did get to castle town eventually but definitely not the way he expected hsjdhsd

He’s just a little dude?

AND FUCK. HE REALLY HAD NEVER BEEN OUTSIDE OF ORDON UNTIL ALL OF THAT

everything is new for the player AND Link

Midna

She’s cool :)

she really just

*teleports into your jail cell* hello whore.

I am no master at writing but AYYYY she do got a character arc!!!

She was actually pretty helpful sometimes, I ALWAYS checked in with her before turning to a game guide

Other NPCs

NICE

Love all of the TP character designs (ASHEI’S ARMOUR??? AOWOAOAOOAO)

Saving Zelda and all of Hyrule was important yea but thinking back maybe it was more like, the Ordonians and the kids were what was pushing Link to keep on going

I like the Resistance members :) Very video gamey of them to have one NPC assigned to each dungeon but hey!!! Kinda cool getting to see a little glimpse of each of em

Idk, it’s just fun to imagine Link popping into Telma’s bar after each dungeon and taking a little rest :) (or to celebrate? maybe just chat, idk, give this man some downtime!!)

Honestly it was just kind of nice that Link wasn’t entirely alone. I mean, I know Midna was there the whole time, but I am always for giving Link a big group of friends (see my love for hyrule warriors, age of calamity, and LU LMAO)

Hero’s shade, very very cool, kinda sad he died with regrets but HEY. He got to pass on his knowledge eventually

AND the connection to OoT?? AND assumed to be related by blood too????? GOOD SHIT

Ilia, I REALLY really wanted to like her (er, it’s not like I dislike her, she’s just,,, kinda there for me).

It definitely seems like Nintendo was pushing to make her the romantic interest, but GHHHHH they really threw that out of the window for me by having her lose her memories

I saw a text post a while ago that said it would have been interesting if Ilia was Link’s sister instead and YES!! That would have been cool too :0

Wish we got to know Zelda a little more

I feel like we barely know anything about her

Idk man, like I said earlier, I never really had any sort of drive to save Zelda during my playthroughs

She obviously knows Midna, so maybe if they gave us just a little bit more of that relationship I’d be more interested in her?

TP WORLD BUILDINGGGG

Botw has good world building too, but each race felt kinda,,, isolated? I absolutely love the different architecture and vibe each town has (and all the the weapons too) but ghhh yea everyone felt so separated. As far as I can remember, we don’t see tooo much of the races interacting with each other? Now that I’m typing that out maybe that’s to be expected because of the calamity but KLSJDKJFD ANYWAYS THIS IS ABOUT TP

The world feels nice and alive, love how populated everything is

Castle town I like castle town a lot, it feels dense and busy and I really like how you can’t talk to every NPC you see

Very cool very fun that we got to see the Gorons hanging out in multiple spots

kinda wish we got to see the Zoras a little more (I guess they are a bit limited since they need water but GHHHH the tp zoras are so prebby,,)

BUT HEY, I do remember seeing a zora or two hanging out in the hot springs around death mountain after beating the lakebed temple (I think, might have been a different dungeon) 

but aaaa would have been nice to see them in at least a couple of other places. I think it would have really added to the “congrats Link!! You’re restoring peace to Hyrule” feeling you get from seeing the Gorons hanging out in Kakariko and Castle Town

ORDON

Love how chill it is and how it’s kind of separate from Hyrule proper

They really do seem to be doing their own thing apart from the rest of Hyrule

Just kinda adds onto the “he’s just a regular dude minding his own business” kind of vibes I get from TP Link

Also I like Ordona :)

THE LIGHT SPIRITS,,

Love their design

And love how they’re not exactly like a pure white?

Different spirit representing each aspect of the triforce my beloved

But yes hi I think Ordona is very cool

Who are you, how did you get here, which goddess do you represent? Do you even represent one of the three golden goddesses? Do the Ordonians know about you? Have any of them ever SEEN you??? Do they worship you? Does anybody even know about the existence of the light spirits?? FUCK so many questions but ghhh I like how they broke the status quo a bit by throwing in a fourth spirit :)

I feel like this one is kinda weird but I like that voice sample they used in the light spirit music. It’s spooky and pretty at the same time :)  

cutscenes mmmmm

Ok ok, the spooky lanayru cutscene is very good

BUT THE “Link, Chosen Hero! Lend us the last of your power!” CUTSCENE MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM LOVE IT SO MUCH

IT just

Idk man

It just hit different

I like the music

And seeing the light spirits swimming around in the light juice water whatever it is

Summoning the light arrows?

AND HHHHH “Lend us the last of your power!” THIS IS IT. This is the final battle.

Seeing Zelda bow down, and then Link putting his hand out 👌👌👌

Link: ok bud, let’s do this together :)

Connection to OoT (did I already mention this? Maybe., Whatever)

Very cool nintendo :)

I love seeing connections between all the diff zelda games.

Because like, on one hand, they’re all separate from each other because of yknow, individual hero stuff. BUT ALSO, they’re all connected because of the reincarnation stuff

Grrrr walking through the sacred grove and going “The Hero of Time walked around here a long time ago” FUCK THATS SO COOL

Is the Hero’s Shade watching me? What does he think of me? DIsappointed? Proud? The Hero of Time went through HELL so this timeline didn’t have to deal with any of the shit Ganon was gonna pull with the triforce, better not fuck this UP Link!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Midlink is cute

Kinda hurts that she smashed the mirror but that was probably so Nintendo didn’t have to worry about people going “but what about the twili??????” for any of the other games LMAO

BUT ALSO LIKE SKJDKLJFJ There are some pretty massive plot holes in TP anyway so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whatever it’s fine we’ll just use this for angst because GOD do y’all like angst

So is Shadlink

Honestly don’t know where this ship came from but it’s cute so whatever

THE MUSIC??

Love Midna’s theme and how they referenced the dark world theme from ALttP (I remember trying to learn the dark world theme on the piano and doing the Leonardo DiCaprio point meme at the little jingle I recognized from Midna’s theme)

Hyrule field theme SLAPS.

Apparently references a couple of the other over-world themes from the previous zelda games (I got this from 8-bit Music theory’s video on the over-world zelda themes, he talks about TP at around 11:40 but def recommend watching the whole video if you’re into music analysis stuff)

So there’s this bit of the Hyrule Field theme, I don’t know the official name for it but I remember seeing somewhere it being called the “at an advantage theme” since yeah, you hear it during the boss music whenever you expose their weak points. FUCKINGGG LOVE THAT. Didn’t notice it during my first playthrough, but hearing it during my second was like a little easter egg for my ears every time :)

Midna’s lament is very pretty (and fun to play on the piano)

COURAGE THEME.

I didn’t care for it too much when I started playing the game but hearing it in ZREO’s arrangement of the Hyrule Field theme literally makes me turn into a puddle of emotions. Also hearing it around and of the Ordon kids (I think it plays after Link saves Colin) AAAAAAAAAAAAA

Orchestra piece #1 and #2 HOLY SHIT???????????????? 

Literally, the first time I listened to those I just,,,, plugged in my headphones, volume 100, layed on the floor/against my desk and silently vibed. I don’t know what the hell it is, but those two just fit so well with TP?? I still avoid listening to them nowadays cause if I DO I definitely will get overwhelmed with the “god I love this game so FUCKING MUCH” kind of feels.

Wolf link sucks at singing

the first time I heard him howling Zelda’s Lullaby I lost my shit because LKSJLDKSGLKJFSKG god that was.,, Bad. Anyways, hearing him howl some of the songs from OoT was cute :)

TP STAFF ROLL??? 

VERY GOOD. IT’s like 10 minutes long and GOD do I love every single second of it. It doesn’t have the same energy as the skyward sword staff roll or the orchestra pieces but GOD does it hit good??

Nice and calm after that big exciting adventure. Maybe it would have been more fun or emotional to have a higher energy piece but it was really nice getting to sit back and watch the camera fly around Hyrule. Seeing like, the Gorons and the Zoras having a good time, the kids returning to Ordon? GOOD SHIT.

and AAAAA that end, when you hear the main Zelda theme and see Link riding off out of Faron woods on Epona… good shit. It gets you thinking, where the hell is he going? What is he doing? Off ot do more adventuring? Going to help out the resistance or something? Going to help Zelda? Or maybe he’s trying to figure out a way to restore the mirror of twilight? Whoooo knows.

hhHHHHhhh it’s just that final reminder that YES!!! YOU JUST PLAYED A ZELDA GAME. JUST ANOTHER STORY APART OF THE WHOLE EPIC OF THE ZELDA SERIES AS A WHOLE

I also want to acknowledge the instrument/samples they used for all the twili stuff.

They’re all just so unique and contrast SO well with the rest of the TP OST. LIKE FUCK!! Anytime I hear the screech from the Twilit Kargarok? Sends a shiver down my spine. I associate those sounds SO strongly with the twili realm. (Like, the same way you associate the BSHEWW VVWWMMM sounds with light sabers)

I love it so god damn much

literally any time there’s a certain sound or motif associated with something I lose my shit

Sacred grove sacred grove sacred gro-

lovely lovely lovely so much fun playing that on the piano. AND again, I did the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme when I heard the theme from the lost woods come in GHHHHHHHH

shoutout to TP Faron Woods for helping me study and get through all of my schoolwork

BLEGUUHHH can you tell that I really love music?

and also yea I guess TP is kinda cool too :\

IF YOU READ ALL OF THAT THANKS I GUESS

[pastelsandpining]

Zelink Week Day 4: Trust

broken | forged

Masterlist | Zelink Week List

words: 1086

summary: The Hero and the Princess catch up after Ganon’s defeat and Midna’s departure.

what’s characterization bc friend idk. country link superiority

Twilight Princess - post-game

@zelinkweek2021

-------------------------------------------------

Princess Zelda became very grateful that the grand garden was one of the least guarded places in the castle. Being in the courtyard, it was visible from all balcony posts, yet there were areas, however small, where the hedges towered just tall enough to shield them from view.

But for good measure, they were also seated on a bench. She knew the men stationed everywhere in the castle were only doing their jobs, but there were times she craved privacy that wasn’t provided solely by her bedroom or office. Just once, she would like to walk the grounds of the castle without eyes locked on and following her. Her council and the people of Hyrule surely would have plenty to say if they could see her right now, using her plans for restoration as an excuse to see and spend time with their dearest Hero of Twilight.

Their perfect princess, who sat far too close to him with a gloved hand pressed over her mouth to hide her laughter, acting so irresponsibly was unheard of.

“—she promised me that it was all I had to do, that it was some sorta twilight barrier, but that wall didn’t budge. I guess I should’a expected something was up. I felt real stupid afterwards, too. She got a good laugh out of it, and I got a bump that lasted ‘bout a week. I still have the headache.”

Zelda lowered her hand when her giggles subsided.

“I’m rather surprised Midna hadn’t tried worse. But I suppose she thought it best to keep our Hero in one piece,” she said, raising her fingers to brush his bangs aside. “No mark remains now.”

“She got me to do all sorts of ridiculous stuff for her own entertainment. Every time I thought I’d caught on..”

“Even princesses need to have a little fun. It’s just a shame it had to be at your expense.”

She felt so warm and comfortable next to Link, sitting under the rays of the sun. They’d come so far in so few months, and speaking so openly about Midna was therapeutic—healing, in a way. She’d taken a part of both of them when she left. It had been a sore topic for a while, but now here they sat, exchanging stories under a beautiful blue sky.

“Did she ever do any of that to you, or was I just special?” he asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You are special for numerous reasons,” she replied and folded her hands on her lap. “But you were not the sole victim of Midna's tricks. We shared the feeling of imprisonment, and eventually, we grew close enough for her to make me a target too. Though her best by far was when she told me she’d found the Hero, and brought me a wolf.”

Link’s pout was enough to make her suppress another laugh, though the ends of her mouth were pulled up into a smile.

“That ain’t fair,” he said, crossing his arms. “And that was just in the twilight.”

“Perhaps, but I like to imagine the look on Ganondorf’s face if you had shown up as the Twilight Beast.”

“He wouldn’t have been phased. Bastard probably kicked puppies for fun.”

Zelda pressed a hand to her chest and looked at Link with wide eyes.

“No one could be that cruel,” she joked, leaning away from him.

“Darlin’, yes he could. And I didn’t hit him hard enough.”

She had to fight back a smile. Every time he called her “darling” in his little accent, she felt so light and fuzzy. But she figured it was an expression everyone in Ordon used, so she never thought too hard about it.

“Well, if he somehow ever shows himself again, you can have a rematch. Although this time, I’d enjoy sticking my heels into his eyes.”

“I, for one, would love to see that,” Link replied, offering her a smile. And then his hand was gently holding her arm, his blue eyes fixated on her. “And how are you doin’, Princess? It’s only fair we check up on you too.”

“I’m doing just fine, thank you,” she answered with a small smile in return. Link’s eyebrow quirked up.

“And is that the truth?”

Zelda ducked her head to hide the widening of her smile. How could she not, when things were looking up? When she felt cared about in a way far more intimate than the respect her people held for her? She placed a hand on top of his and patted it twice.

“I’m managing about as well as everyone else,” she admitted with a light shrug. “But you needn’t worry about me, dear Hero.”

“Someone ought’ta,” he argued, giving her a look that said he didn’t quite believe her words.

“I appreciate it, truly. I just don’t wish to cause any trouble,” she told him.

“It’s no trouble at all, darlin’.” He seemed to realize what he’d said and lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Sorry, maybe I should stop sayin’ that.”

“I don’t mind,” Zelda assured him with a small smile. “In all honesty, I missed this. The casualty of friendship, I mean.”

And the interactions she could have with someone she truly enjoyed being around. She hadn’t had that until she met Midna, and Midna was gone. Link offered her a smile. There was a gleam in his eyes that she had to look away from.

“Can I trust you with somethin’?” he asked, leaning a little closer.

“Of course,” she assured, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “Anything.”

“I’m runnin’ from somethin’. I dunno what it is. Being lonely, maybe? Everyone back in Ordon--they see me different. It’s like they don’t even know me, and that’s... I like it here, where I get to... restart, almost, and I wanna thank you for that opportunity.”

“You don’t need to thank me, Link,” Zelda replied and gave his hand another squeeze. “You’ve done so much for Hyrule and the least you deserve is peace and a friend. I’m flattered you trust me enough to confide this in me.”

“I think you make for a pretty good friend.”

Link was smiling at her, soft and relieved like he’d gotten something off of his chest. She ducked her head and leaned backwards with a smile of her own, because if she looked at him any longer, she might’ve doomed herself to embarrassment by leaning in.

No need to ruin the blooming trust between them.

[bokettochild]

If you’re still taking requests maybe Legend showing off his outfits from Triforce Heroes (if you consider that one of his games) or just the fierce deity outfit if that’s to much

Good grief! This one really took it away! I liked the prompt so much, and had so many ideas for it, that I think this might have to be a multi-parter (wasn't expecting that).

I touched on three outfits in this one, but I have six more I might do as well. For reference, I included the Kolkiri Clothes, Linebeck's Uniform and the Cozy Parka.

I also realized while writing this that this is the first time I've written from Wind's perspective, which is positively criminal!

I am still taking requests by the way! If you want to see something, shoot it at me!

(Fic below the cut)

It started so normal, Wind never thought it would get so insane.

They were in the Old Man’s Hyrule, too far from the ranch to make it by nightfall but close enough to still be in a relatively safe location. Time had called for them to set up camp and as they were close to a stream, Twilight had called for the additional order of baths.

Watching Twilight drag his protégé into the water was almost worth having to have his head scrubbed by Sky.

Most of them had taken the chance to cool off and mess around once they were clean, and while Warriors attempted to duck Time under the water (a mistake, they soon realized, when the man easily overpowered the captain, who ended up getting dunked instead) and Wild sat in a tree watching their backs (hanging up to dry, Twilight had joked), Wind found that the rest of them were content to swim idly in the water, with only the occasional splash from one or another of them. Usually, there would be more noise, but Twilight was teaching Hyrule to doggie paddle, and they needed calmer waters so as to not scare the Traveler.

He cast his eyes over their group. A red-faced Warriors was coughing and spluttering out insults at a smug looking Time (boy he needed his picto-box), Twilight was gently coaxing Hyrule to the other bank in a manner highly resemblant of a parent urging a baby to walk, Wild was keeping watch, and Sky was relaxing in the shallows.

Where were Four and Legend?

A glance upwards and a signed conversation with Wild later and Wind was making his way upstream a way, around a bend that blocked off most of the noise but that Wild could still see over if needed, to where Four and Legend sat together one the bank.

Or rather, Legend sat, Four was floating in the shallows with a curious expression as he watched the vet- cleaning clothes?

“We’re out here having a good time and you’re doing the laundry? Boring much.” He drawled, drawing the attention of the two heroes.

“I don’t like swimming around others.” Legend scrunched up his nose in disgust, it wiggled, almost cutely. “And my things needed a wash.”

He snorted, turning his questioning gaze to Four.

The smithy shrugged. “It’s quieter over here, and Wars will try and dunk me if he gets the chance.” A heavy sigh escaped the shortest hero. “He really needs to be taken down a notch some days.”

“Some days?” Legend snorted.

Wind just rolled his eyes. So, what if Wars had a bit of an ego and spent a lot of time messing with them? It was just the way the captain expressed himself, Wind would do the same if he could get away with it and had a few inches on the others.

A flash of color in the spring caught his attention, bright pink against the soft blue of the water, and he surged forwards. “What’s that?”

Legend’s hand hit his face as the vet reached out to push him back, effectively pushing the excited child under water, and for a brief moment, Wind could swear he saw a pink skirt drifting just before his face before it disappeared and he was popping up out of the water again with a splash.

“You have pink clothes?” He grinned at the bundle of fabric in the Vet’s hands.

“I have clothes in all colors.” Legend sniffed, batting another piece of fabric at him in a shooing motion.

“Doubt.” Four and Wind deadpanned. “Nobody has that much clothing.”

Legend’s face was drawn, eyes dark with that haunted look that Time sometimes got when looking at the moon. “I do.”

Wind and Four exchanged a look. “Why would you even need so much clothing?”

“Adventure number six.” Legend sighed, returning to his washing.

Another shared glance was exchanged and the two boys swam closer to the older teen. “And you used all of it?” Legend nodded. “All by yourself?”

The vet paused. “I had some...friends, with me.”

“You have friends?” Wind sat up again, who knew the Vet actually got along with people other than Ravio and Zelda?

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, Wind, that’s kinda mean.” Four murmured.

“I don’t mean you don’t have friends,” He huffed bangs from his eyes to look at Legend better, it did nothing, they still drifted into his view and cut off his view of the top of Legend’s hat. “I mean, we’ve never seen them so I didn’t realize you were on good terms with more people than Ravio.”

Legend shrugged. “You probably won’t ever meet them, I... became acquainted with them outside of Hyrule and they’ve never been seen leaving the land where we traveled together.”

“What were their names?” Four asked lazily, eyes trailing after leaves that floated off downstream towards where the others were.

Legend’s snort caught them off guard. “You don’t want to know.”

Now that was interesting, Legend never shied away from giving names to the people he had met in his travels, what was so different about these people? He’d had nothing against telling them Ravio’s name. “Why not?” Curiosity was tickling at his just like his hair was, and it was the only thing keeping him from ducking under again to relieve the itching of slowly-drying hair.

Legend cocked a brow at the two of them. “Their names are worse than ours.”

Now Wind really wanted to know! “What were they?”

Four echoed his question, eyes glinting in the light as he stared over at the vet, who was now beginning to pack away his things again. It took some nagging (something Wind had plenty of experience with) to finally get Legend to answer, but when he did, he didn’t disappoint.

“Red, Blue and Green. A set of nut cases if you ask me.” Legend drawled, not looking at them as he stuffed something glittery and gold in his bag. Four froze, eyes flashing four colors, one after another for a moment before he turned his sharp gaze on the vet.

“Did they call you Vio by any chance?”

Wind stared. “Why would they do that? He already has a name, he wouldn’t need to match, besides, Legend doesn’t even wear purple.”

“His eyes are purple.” Four pointed out, and Wind turned to very pointedly try and see what color Legend’s eyes actually were.

They were purple.

“No, they didn’t call me Vio,” Legend rolled his eyes, pushing Wind out of his face again. “They call me Link, same as any sane person does.”

“We’re sane.” Wind protested.

“Debatable.” The two older heroes deadpanned.

Wind pouted, but let it go, gaze drifting for a moment as he let silence fall over them. Four was staring at Legend in a suspicious manner, eyes blue again, but he didn’t say anything, and the vet didn’t seem keen on saying anything either, instead getting up and walking over to the clothes he had draped across one of the trees. He wasn’t kidding, it looked like a rainbow over there.

“So, if those things belonged to your friends, why do you have them?”

“Only one with a bottomless bag.” Came the clipped reply. “That and I’m the only one who’s likely to need them again.”

“Your friends don’t need clothes?” Four balked.

“No! Of course, they do!” Legend made a face, swatting a hand at Four. “Wild’s the only one who goes around naked, I’ll have you know, and if any of them had done the same they would have been shunned by the whole kingdom.” The vet huffed, voice dropping to a mutter. “What with the fashion laws and all.”

“So, if they already have clothes of their own, what did you need all for this for?” He gestured towards the various garments that Legend was still packing away.

“They’re all enchanted, or otherwise intended for special purposes.” The vet winced. “Hopefully I’ll never need most of them again, but there’s always the chance.”

“Will we ever get to see them?” He watched as Legend stuffed another garment into one of his bags many pockets.

“Hopefully never.” Legend spat.

But when did things ever go Legend’s way?

It was a hat first.

A battle in the forest ended with black blood spattered everywhere, but with Legend and Wild having provided support from the sidelines in the form of arrows flying across the battlefield, injuries were more scarce than normal.

Of course, that could be attributed to the fact that there had only been a few of the black-blooded monsters in the camp they had just destroyed.

As most of them had gathered their weapons and wiped away the blood, Wild had come leaping down from the treetops with Legend following after at a more sedate pace. Wind wondered if that was because of the Vet’s arthritis is because of the huge hat on his head.

“Nice accessories, do some shopping while we were down here fighting?” Wars snarked, huffing a laugh at the vet as Legend’s feet touched the earth again.

Indigo blue snapped at the captain as Legend adjusted the pointed cap. “No time for that when I have you all to keep an eye on.”

Twilight sniggered. “What’s with the hat, Ledge?”

“Yeah!” Wind bounded up to the older hero, eyes wide as he looked at the strange accessory. “Where did you get that?”

“Is that one of the things you got on your last adventure?” Four mused, sparking further excitement in the sailor, if it was, than maybe Legend would actually be willing to tell them more about it!

“Yeah, is it?”

No one addressed the confused stares of the taller heroes as their three shortest members conversed.

“Yeah,” Legend lifted the hat off and brushed at its brim in a clearly fond display; if he even attempted to say anything about hating his adventure again Wind was not going to believe him, not after that smile. “A Kolkiri hat, made to aid archers and help them shoot more arrows. I don’t usually use it, but it helps when you need to take out more than one enemy at once.”

“You could just learn to shoot better.” Wild chuckled, plucking at the hats brim only to have the garment whisked out of reach by a glaring veteran.

“I can shoot well; this just helps me see better because it blocks the freaking sun.”

“Kolkiri you say?” Time mused, stepping forwards to peer at the pointed green cap.

“Sure, you didn’t just steal it off of a witch?” Wars teased.

“No witch could replicate this sort of quality,” And if there wasn’t pride in his voice than Wind would eat his boots. “Not even the finest tailors in all of Hytopia could imitate it, and they’ve tried.” Legend spun the hat in his hands before popping it back on top of his head. “Don’t know the tailor, but what I wouldn’t give to learn their tricks. Kolkiri know what they’re doing, and they do it better than most Hylian craftsmen.”

Time was smirking, and Wind really wanted to know why. “You should see the tunics they can make.”

Legend returned the smirk. “Oh, I have, I own one.”

“As do I,” Their resident old man chuckles. “Although I doubt I could fit in it any longer.”

Wind giggles, trying to imagine Time in the clothes he’s seen on the spirits of the kolkiri, it’s hard, what with how big their leader is.

“Hat might fit you though.” And as the words ring through the air, Legend is already reaching up to pull the brim of his pointed hat over Time’s face. Their leader chuckles, brushing Legend off and adjusting the hat to sit more securely on his head.

Somehow, Time looks more comfortable in the hat than he does in his armor, and even though the two clash terribly, he doesn’t seem to mind, a light smile gracing his features as they set off again.

It’s a few days before Legend brings out another item from his collection of clothes, and when he does, it’s only after the others have drifted off to sleep. Wind would have been sleeping too, but you can only stay awake so long when your mind replays the horrors of the past, and Wind can only watch in silence for so long as giant ocean-monsters attempt to destroy those he loves the most. Tetra’s scream echoes in his own cracking voice as he startles awake.

The stars shine brightly overhead, brighter still as they blur from his tears. Despite what the others might say, or the confident way he tries to convey himself, Bellum frightens him, even now, and everything he had to deal with on that adventure... it weighs heavy on his mind.

A strangles sob escapes him as he sits up to bury his head in his knees, arms wrapped tight around his legs as he tries to shake of the after-effects of the dream.

That’s all it was, after all, just a dream.

Just like the Ocean King, like Lineback, like everything else in that world had been.

It’s just a dream.

“Hey,” Legend’s voice is soft and almost lost in his sobs and the crackling of the fire, but Wind is used to listening for even the softest of sounds in the night; be it due to Aryl having a night-terror –her own dreams aren’t free from their adventure- or someone sneaking around to make trouble. “Sailor, you all good?”

It’s clear he’s not, and he knows that, so Legend really has no business asking, but at the very least he isn’t being told to stop being a baby. “’m okay.” His own voice betrays him and Wind wants to sigh in irritation. Usually, he’d pout and groan at the way his voice cracks, but right now he doesn’t have the emotional or mental strength to do anything about it.

There’s shifting from across the camp, and even though his head is still pressed against his raised knees, he sees a flicker of golden pink in the firelight as Legend crouches down before him.

Thank Hylia the vet doesn’t sit back on his ankles, Wind doesn’t want to know if he’s not wearing shorts under that skirt of his.

“None of that now, what’s eating you?” It’s a weird term, especially coming from Legend, who’s usually so clipped and professional in his speech, and Wind can’t help but huff out a short laugh.

“Nothing,” His hand dashes across his eyes, wiping the tears away, only to have more of them prick at the corners. “Go back to watch, I’m fine.”

“And Twilight is a dog person.” Legend drawls. “Look, if you have an emotional moment or whatever, you’ll be tired as shit when we have to leave in the morning. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel keen on dealing with another Sky.” It’s rough and gruff, but in a way that reminds him of Lineback rather than make him upset.

“I’m fine, just...” He dwells on his next words for a moment. He’s not scared, not really. It’s just the aftershock of a too-real dream about another too-real dream. He’s not really sad either, even if the island is gone now, he’s just... “I’m drained.” He whispers, scrubbing his eyes. “I miss everything back at home but,” He pauses, wondering briefly if Legend could even understand what he’s trying to express. “I guess I miss the things that aren’t there too.”

“Like what?” He doesn’t look up, but he knows the exact expression on Legend’s face; brow raised and mouth pulled into a thoughtful frown.

“Places... people. It’s all just dreams but..” He fiddles with the end of his blanket. “I miss the warmth of them I guess, miss the sea and the islands, even the fake ones, they were so... comforting.” He chuckles, surprising himself with the bitterness that tinges his own voice. “Even if I did spend so much of that time trying not to get killed.”

“Warmth, huh?” Legend hums. There’s a brief pause, one Wind almost takes for Legend rolling his eyes and deciding to leave him to his thoughts, but then there’s a brief rustling and something warm and thick settles over his shoulders as Legend sits at his side. “It’s no pirate uniform, but it still smells like the sea, if that helps at all.”

Wind wants to tease Legend for the sentimentality and love in the action, but when he turns to look at the Vet, his gaze falls instead on the royal blue coat that has been draped around his shoulders.

Too-long sleeves fall to fold at his waist while the rest of the long coat trails and puddles around him, rich, warm fabric blocking out the night chill. It’s a lovely coat, but it’s painfully familiar, and Wind finds himself running his fingers over the stitching and inspecting every detail with a precision that he only ever shows to his swordsmanship and sailing.

His eyes don’t fool him either, the coat is an exact copy of Lineback’s own.

“Where... where did you get this?”

“Like it?” The vet chuckles softly. “Hytopian tailors. It’s a sea-coat, made to aid traveling sailor’s in searching for treasure. Don't ask me how it works though,” A ringed hand waves lazily overhead. “I could never make sense of it all. What matters is that it’s warm, not even the ocean can chill you in that thing, and trust me,” Buck teeth and small canines shouldn’t look so chilling, but Legend’s smile is just that. “It’s tried.”

Wind decides not to push it. There’s no way Legend could know about Lineback, not with the gaps of time and timelines between them. So, instead, he nestles down into the coat, one which bears the promised scent of the sea, with just a hint of smoke and rum to it, and lets his mind drift off again while Legend hums something under his breath.

The vet doesn’t realize he’s humming any less than he realizes Wind is slumping into him, but by the time he does recognize it, Wind is out cold, his head pressed against Legend’s shoulder, the coat still draped over him as he snores softly. Legend doesn’t push down the warmth in his chest as he smiles down at the golden curls, no one will see him anyway. Gnarled fingers decked out with countless rings card through sun-bleached curls as a lilting melody pierces the silence around them, no one will hear it anyway.

In the days to come, Legend allows Wind to don the heavy sea-coat from that night. Warriors makes a comment about poor coordination between fabrics, and while Legend doesn’t seem to disagree, both of the older heroes seem of the opinion that it's for the best he holds onto it, what with the cold and all.

The last switch landed them in the mountains, and while the Hyrule they are in has not yet been confirmed, everyone knows one thing for sure: it’s cold. Wind buries his face in the raised collar of the heavy sea-coat, which, despite being in Legend’s bag for so long and the vet refusing to smoke or sail, much less swig rum, the coat smells of all three, and Wind buries a smile at the thought that maybe Legend didn’t get it new like he’d let on.

It does a good job of keeping him warm though.

He wishes he could say the same for Four.

The poor smithy refuses to be carried, but as snow whips around them as they trek through the knee-high snow, the diminutive smith is left chattering and shivering in their wake.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise that Legend has something to help with that.

Yes, the vet still isn’t wearing pants, but he doesn’t seem too poorly off, no matter how badly the others shiver. He and Wild only share a look and scoff when Warriors asks through chattering teeth how the two of them aren’t freezing.

“You should see the mountains in my Hyrule.” Wild chuckles brightly.

“Done this before, cold is cold, you get used to it.” Legend grins, swinging his fire-rod.

“N-not all of us c-can s-st-stand the c-c-cold.” Four chatters grumpily, sounding startlingly close to the minish he’s shown Wind in the past. “Jer-jerks.”

The concern on the faces of the taller heroes is obvious, but with Twilight’s teeth chattering nearly madly (the rancher's nose is somehow frozen) and Time wrapped as tight as possible in one of Wild’s extra cloaks, it’s clear most of the others don’t have warm things to spare.

They were separated in landing in this world, and even when they had all been pulling themselves together again it had become clear that there was nothing of Wild’s that could even fit the smithy, and not even the blue scarf that trails over his shoulders seems to be doing much good against the freezing winds.

“Hang on a sec.” legend huffs, already turning to rustle through his bag. The coat he pulls out is ridiculously plushy, and in a soft shade of violet that makes Four chuckle past his chattering teeth. The chattering doesn’t last for much longer though, not when shoves the garment over Four’s head like Wind has done to his sister so many times with the sweaters Granny has knit them. The smithy’s blond hair is mused beyond recognition, chunky and flying every which way as he pushes his face out of the plush, but the healthy flush to his cheeks assures the rest of them that he won’t be freezing any time soon.

“I- Oh...” Whatever Four was about to say cuts off as he looks down at himself. The coat is long, but not too long. Where Wild’s shirts would drown the smithy, a coat made for Legend only brushes against the smithy’s ankles.

Legend smirks. “It prevents slipping too.”

“Why aren’t you wearing it then?” Hyrule questions, the Traveler’s cheeks are rosy in the cold, but borrowed clothes from Wild, while also too big, seem to be keeping him warmer.

Legend winces. “It’s a pain to get off.”

“And inconvenience is enough reason to freeze?”

“Do I look cold to you, captain?” Legend snarks, turning an expectant look on Warriors. “Because I certainly don’t feel it.”

“Stop rubbing it in.” The captain huffs, unfortunately too big to borrow from the others, and now highly irritable from the cold. His scarf is still on Four, and if what Legend says is right about the coat, Wars won’t be getting it back for a while, leaving the poor captain to shiver as he clings to another fire-rod.

Four seems comfy enough anyway.

[fanartfunart]

More Time & Time Again/ OoT Timeloop. (I think this is just a multichapter fic now) Link is helping his younger self out when the boy asks about his own adventure. Link recalls how he failed to change the future. (Tw for death mentions/implied death, fire/destruction, injury and angst.)

Time & Time Again & Part 2

Ao3

-

"How do you know all this?" The Kid asked, holding the Megaton Hammer uncertainly.

Link just smiled, "I went on a journey like yours a while ago....In retrospect, the hammer wasn't too hard to use compared to this one sword that was like, twice my height at the time."

The Kid glanced at Navi with wide, excited eyes. She frowned, "No."

"If I found a sword that big though-"

"Stick to the hammer right now," Navi sighed, giving Link a side eye.

He restrained a chuckle and leaned over to his younger self. In a low whisper he said "I'll give you a tip to getting a sword from Biggeron when she isn't watching."

The Kid pumped a fist and Navi zipped over to gently bop Link's head. "Don't give him ideas."

Link laughed, "I'm not! The idea is all his!"

Navi glared. Probably internally cursing the technicalities of them being the same person.

"Actually though, can you tell me about your adventure?" The Kid asked, tilting his head.

Link frowned. (He was small again, placing the Master Sword back in it’s pedestal. His legs still felt shaky from finally, finally having defeated Ganon.) "Maybe later. ...Besides, you still need to practice with that hammer. You do not want to pull a muscle using that thing... Trust me."

The Kid hummed, and shifted back into a readied stance with the hammer. He grinned "If I win will you tell me?"

"Who said anything about winning? It's practice, not a game."

"Sounds like you're scared you'll loseee, Grasshopper."

Link's eyes narrowed and he grinned, "Oh its on Shrimp."

"Wha- We're the same height!"

-

Link could’ve sworn he’d rigged this game so he wouldn’t lose. Link guesses he’s always had a habit of succeeding despite all logical odds out of sheer determination. He also blames the fact that Navi was helping Little Link and that was just unfair. He sighed as he stared up at his younger self’s near manic grin, laying on the ground.

“Story time!” the Kid said, putting the hammer down and holding out a hand to help him up.

Link accepted the boy-teen’s hand, defeated. He walked over to a nearby crate and hopped up to sit on the edge. The Kid followed and plopped himself in the grass, watching attentively.

He couldn’t tell the Kid his actual story, so he’d have to make up something. He hummed, “...Where should I start?”

“The beginning?” The Kid offered, laughing.

The beginning of his real story was complicated. Was it when the Great Deku Tree sent Navi to him? Or, with that adventure a closed book, was it when he returned to his time, to grow up as he was supposed to?

“Right... Well, when I was younger, I knew a princess in Termina... She saw that an evil man... uh, her uncle, would be king soon and no one believed her... She had asked me to help her.”

-

He skidded to a halt as he spotted the King and...Ganondorf. His heart pounded in his chest as he stared at the Greudo King. Images of his beastly transformation overlapped with the man currently in front of him.

Link dashed forward, past the guards and into the castle itself. He heaved his breaths as he took the most obvious path to the main hall. He didn't even stop to admire the original architecture of the building that would be transformed into Ganon's Castle.

"Who let this boy in?" The King asked, gesturing at him. "This is a private meeting."

Link swallowed, "Where’s Zelda?"

"Are you one of her playmates? Are you lost?"

He shook his head. He stared at the man, balling his hands into the skirt of his tunic.

"He appears overwhelmed," Ganondorf said, oddly soft, "Let him gather his thoughts."

-

Link shrunk away from Ganondorf’s full attention. He partly expected Navi to start speaking for him... The silence of her absence echoed like the quiet before Ganon burst from the rubble of the castle. His heart began a drum beat of “Danger, danger, danger,” in his ears.

He ran. Link ran past the crackle of fire echoing in his mind and behind his eyelids. The distressed shrieks from Zelda, unable to help, ringing in his ears.

“I stood in front of the current King, with evidence of the man’s plans in hand, and explained what I knew...” Link said, wishing that had been true.

“What? Already? You didn’t even get the big sword yet!”

“Oh, but you see...The King didn’t believe me. Put under a curse by the evil man. He was merely a puppet... But the evil man wanted more than the throne.”

-

He took in panting breaths as he stood in front of Zelda. The royal garden a soft earthy type of quiet. The twitter of birds promising calm. He closed his eyes briefly.

"Link? You're back already?"

He nodded and gasped for breath, "Ganondorf... is going to... get into the Sacred Realm."

Zelda's eyes widened, "Are you sure.... Oh... The Ocarina?"

With a nod, he let gravity take him and he plopped onto the ground.

"We must stop him then!" Zelda announced with determination.

Link smiled warily.

They had sat for hours. Zelda planned out how to deal with Ganondorf with the little information Link had been able to provide the words to explain. Exhaustion catching up with him, Link eventually fell asleep. His head on her shoulder. Her voice guiding him to kinder dreams than he'd had in a while. Even before starting his quest.

-

“The princess allowed me to sleep in one of the rooms in the castle. Although she probably didn’t need to since I usually ended up sleeping outside anyway... Got used to it. Sleeping in the big bed just felt too strange.”

“The princess seems really nice.”

Link nodded, “She is....” he sighed, “But, before we could implement our plan-”

-

He woke up to a muffled thunk. Link sat up and groggily wandered to the noise. He hadn’t thought about picking up his sword. He faltered as he noticed Ganondorf and a Gerudo woman bringing in a set of barrels.

Ganondorf turned to look at him and raised a brow. "Child. What are you doing up?"

He pointed to the barrels, brows furrowed.

"Ah, they are a gift to your King."

"It's night," Link forced out. Voice raspy. His glare strengthening.

The Gerudo King walked over to him, dramatic strides intimidating and imposing. Link scrambled to stay out of arms reach of the man. Ganondorf halted. "I get the sense you and the Princess don't like me too much."

Link distinctly regretted not grabbing his sword. His hand itched for something to hold, to protect him. "You're going to hurt people." He said in a harsh whisper, curling his fist.

"You sound so sure.... Why?"

Link looked away and took a step back.

"I don't intend to harm you, child."

"You killed the Great Deku Tree." Link hissed, feeling tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

"Ah. I didn't expect one of you to come out of that forest. Do you plan on speaking to the king? Tell him I killed a tree? I don't think he'll quite believe that... And if he did, it was one tree, do you think he'll care?"

"I'm not going to let you get into the Sacred Realm! You won't get Zelda or I to open the doors for you-"

"The Princess can open the doors?" Ganondorf grinned, "Thank you, young one, for that insight. I would have thought that particular goal lost without the Kokiri Emerald.... Now I can simply move on."

Link's eyes widened, he turned to run to Zelda. To get his sword. To do something. Ganondorf was fast. Especially so now that Link was small again. He never hated being small before this moment. He writhed against Ganondorf's grasp on his arm. He yelled and twisted and kicked.

"Stop it. You'll wake everyone up." Ganondorf snarled. He huffed, "I do hate doing this to a child but you give me no choice." He spoke in a language Link didn't understand. With a sharp jolt in the back of his head, he felt the energy sapped from him. He dropped to the ground. He felt wooden. Like a doll.

Ganondorf picked him up with ease. Dropping him over his shoulder. "It shouldn't kill you. Don't be alarmed. It took significantly more work to kill the Great Deku Tree."

Link's eyes widened. He hit Ganondorf weakly, struggling with the rest of his might. Ganondorf gave him a curious look, seemingly surprised he had even this much fight in him.

He was deposited in the bedroom the princess had given him. "Do try to get some rest, boy.... You'll need it." The door shut and locked.

Slowly, everything went dark.

-

"He cursed you?!"

Link nodded, "I later would realize that the reason I managed to stay awake as long as I did was because I had my own magic.... I had learned some spells before, but found out I could no longer do them."

The Kid frowned, "That's terrible!"

"I learned more later, it didn't entirely sap my aptitude for magic." Link glanced at his own hands. "I don't know... I don't need them as much anymore."

-

Zelda shook him awake. She shoved him to the floor in her urgency.

She pulled him up and before he was truly aware of his surroundings, he was being lifted by hands much stronger than Zelda. Link squirmed, the sleepiness draining from him quickly.

"Link wake up! Please!"

He groggily reached out to her. She gasped "Oh thank the Goddesses."

"Impa!" Zelda cried out. "My father! Where is he?"

"We don't have any more time to spare. I'm sorry Princess. We must leave. Now."

Link gasped. No no, this shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't be happening at all.

Impa ran. She remained surprisingly dexterous and agile despite carrying both children.

Link watched over Impa's shoulder as Ganondorf appeared from the door. His sword was stained red. He grinned and took large, striding steps after them. Impa threw Zelda up onto a horse. Link squirmed out of her grasp before she could toss him up with her.

"Link!" Zelda shrieked, "What are you doing?"

He took out his sword and gestured towards the gates.

"You can't!" She cried, reaching towards him. "You... you could-"

Impa spurred the horse on before she could finish. Link closed his eyes to dash out the image of Zelda's panicked face.

-

"I... never saw the Princess again for a long time after that."

Link nodded, "Eventually."

The Kid stared at him with a deep sadness. He knew he probably resonated too deeply into truth. He would have to change more in his story.

"But you did see her again. Right?"

-

Link tumbled to the ground, ignored. Ganondorf grabbed his own horse. Link roared in fury and made a leaping strike.

Zelda's scream echoed in the distance as Ganondorf clashed against his sword, creating a slash across Link's arm.

Ganondorf pushed him back before he could complete his attack. Knocking him several feet back. He scoffed, "I don't have time for you, child."

Link winced as he scrambled to a stand, listening to the clop clop of hooves. Legs shaking, he raced to the Temple of Time. He knew Ganondorf would be back. He hid behind a pillar, and waited. He could still stop it. He would just have to stop his past self from opening the doors! That could work.

-

"I ran to get the King's Mask before the evil man could. With that, he could rule the kingdom as he saw fit. Masks have great power in Termina, as symbols and sometimes magical items." He explained.

"Oh cool." The Kid leaned forward, "I wonder if any of the masks I had as a kid would be important to people in Termina..."

-

Link looked down with a soft smile, "Some of them, maybe. But anyway.... the mask was... gone, by the time I got there."

The boy ran in just as he expected, the Ocarina of Time still gripped in one hand. Link attempted to dash after him, only to he grabbed from behind. A large hand muffled him. He kicked and squirmed and bit. All it got him was a tighter hold.

“I should’ve known the royal family would send someone through time to stop me.” Ganondorf whispered to him, “I didn’t expect a child. Although, perhaps that’s all they have left.”

Link growled and knocked his head back, hitting Ganondorf’s chin. He was dropped unceremoniously. Scrambling to a stand, Link readied his sword, glancing at the spiritual stones in their places.

“Really?” Ganondorf huffed, “You think that little tumbtack will stop me?”

Link glared.

-

Ganondorf summoned his magic and Link dodged out of the way. “Hm, you learned. Good to know.” Ganondorf walked past him, and Link ran forward to attack, but was yet again thrown back by a dismissive smack. Everything after that was a hazy blur.

Link woke up to the crackle of fire and a burning sensation on his left hand.

Link was quiet for a moment, feeling the oppressive smoke and heat suffocating him. Imagery of Castle Town on fire flickering behind every blink.

The Kid frowned at him, "Are you okay?" He whispered.

Link nodded, tracing the shape of the triforce of courage on his hand. He didn't quite know how the time travel worked with the sacred relic. He glanced at his younger self. He had it too, didn't he?

"Grasshopper?"

Link took in a breath and straightened his posture, "Right. Right. I'm fine. But um. Can we finish this another time?"

The Kid nodded. He stood and stretched. "...Um, quick question... If you don't mind... Why did you leave Termina? You grew up there. And you said it's doing fine now-"

"I was looking for an old friend... Now I just want to help people here."

"Oh. You're a nice person." The Kid concluded.

"...I've been told that." Link said softly. He ruffled the Kid's hair because he knew it would annoy him. "But! It's getting dark and if you don't go back home and rest, I'm gonna go find Sheik and he'll make you sleep."

The Kid gasped in indignation. Then blinked. "Wait you can find Sheik? Really? How!?"

"Oh my Goddesses, go sleep!"

"Is he here!? Is he following me or is he just going to places I need to be before me?"

"Forget Sheik, I will drag you to the forest."

The Kid laughed, "Okay, okay."

[linkspooky]

This is kinda random, but what is your top 10 favorite otps?

Sure.

#1 of All Time SPUFFY

Spuffy, it wrote the book on both beauty and the beast archetypes, and enemies to lovers. For me the most important thing in a ship is the character development it brings about. Spike's redemption doesn't work without Buffy, because it's meeting the one person who expects better than him and won't put up with his selfish crap, that forces his character arc. Buffy's development is also nothing without Spike, it's meeting Spike that makes Buffy confront her dark side, and realize that being a good person isn't something you are, but something you work towards for the sake of your loved ones. The ideal ship should inspire this permanent character development and chane (Unless it ends tragically), they should be an inseperable part of each other's character arcs.

#2 Kumagawa / Ajimu

This is what I was talking about when I said "unless it ends tragically". Sometimes you ship two people who should never end up together, because they probably won't accept their differences. However, even in a failed relationship, two people can be important to each other. There's not really a hapyp ending for Ajimu and Kumagawa, despite their similiarities when they're together they just seem to make each other worse. In Medaka Box they are the anti-Zenkichi and Medaka. However, for Ajimu Kumagawa represents her only human connection, and for Kumagawa Ajimu represents the first person to be "good" to him even though their relationship soured at one point. Therefore I find the ship interesting because despite the fact that they are permanently separated they are still an incredibly important part of each other's identities and who they are now.

# 3 Matsuda / Junko

Basically for the same reason as what I said above. There is no universe where Junko and Matsuda end up in a happy relationship, as long as Junko is still Junko. However, Matsuda and DanganRonpa Zero as a whole add so much to Junko as a character. As long as Matsuda exists, Junko's more than just a black hole that only cares about despair, and I think together the side materials like IF and Zero show that Junko actually is capable of caring for people outside of her natural tendency to want to throw everything into despair, however, humanizing Junko in this manner doesn't actually make her a better person. She can have feelings like romantic, and familial love, and she still chooses to destroy those things and the people in her life. It just adds so much to Junko as a character, which is what I like ships as, an extension of characterization through character interaction.

#5 UIHAI

I love Ui and Hairu because it's like a broken fairy tale. It was a love that could have saved Hairu, but it didn't, because for Ui he always realized his feelings too late to save anyone. Hairu was obsessively chasing after Arima for the smallest amount of approval, when Ui was right there, and already in love with her. They seem like the perfect couple that could never get together, because Hairu is too fixated on Arima, and Ui is too fixated on his job. They are perfectly suited to giving each other what they wanted, and even in lots of side materials and sketches they seem like a pair, or Ui's feelings for Hairu come across as pretty clear but it never came to be in canon.

#6 ZACK / AERITH

Once again for the same reasons as above, it seems like a fairy tale romance of a knight, and a girl he wants to protect, but it fails completely to live up to that story. Zack and Aerith is a tragic story of first love for both of them, and it's also really formative for who Aerith is now as a character. Zack tried to be there for her, and he tried to be a hero to Aerith, only to very consistently not be there for her, and then disappear from her life all together. Much later on, Aerith is incredibly isilated, unable to fall in love with the real cloud without projecting Zack onto him. It's a relationship where in a better world they could have been there for each other, but also the failure of the relationship develops them as much as characters as them getting together might have. Zack and Aerith are one of those relationships that seems ideal on the surface but they are very different people with different wants, Zack wants to be a hero, Aerith just wants to be a person first.

#7 LINK / MIDNA

The best zelda ship period. Once again the most important part of a ship interaction is the change that both characters inspire in each other. Midna begins not caring about Link at all, never referring to him by name, only seeing him as an object, an old legend, a hero to be used instead of a person. Midna's a manipulative freak, and Link breaks through to her because he actually isn't interested in being the hero of legend, he just wants to save the people closest to him at the village because he feels indebted to them, and Midna inevitably becomes one of those people. Link and Midna's partneship makes the game, because it's Midna who pushes him and makes him into a hero, but it's Link through his unfledging acceptance of her who inspires her to be a person once more, and not just the twilight priness.

#8 Morrigan / Warden from DRAGON AGE ORIGINS

This and Spuffy are like the only two on this list who actually end up together, so let me just have this. Once again my favorite aspect of a ship is the transformation the relationship brings baout in a character. The warden is a non-character, but for Morrigan herself, her relationship with the warden is what allows her to escape an abusive household, and beyond that decide not to repeat the cycle of abuse with her new family. What made this ship an all time fave was in witch hunt when the Warden gets to ask her what she wants, and she's just completely confused. Even with her mother dead, Morrigan is still a tool of her mother's ambitions, it's still all about her mother wants. It's her love with the warden, either through friendship or romance that awakens Morrigan to the fact she's allowed to exist as a person with wants and needs outside of what her mother wants her to be.

#9 Kaine / Nier

It's the Most Humanizing Ship Ever Between Two Mass Murderers. As a story, I think Nier is about finding the life, and love, in a story that is ultimately, fatally doomed. Nier only worse and worse as the game goes on but that doesn't mean there was never any love in his life. For every bad thing Nier does, he was not bad to every single person, specifically Kaine, it was Nier's love and belief in her that allows the wounds in her heart to start to heal. As Nier and Nier gets worse, Kaine's own shadow self says, that her feelings in her heart are no longer hatred, or even revenge, there's just a pure white light of love left. In a game where everything only rots, Kaine has healed to the point where she can love again when she never thought it was possible. It's why I like ending D the best, because it's Nier knowing he can never escape his own sins, but he can use his last action to heal Kaine fully all the way and allow her to live on a few more years.

#10 SATOSUGU

Once again, there's no universe where they end up together, and yet still on opposite sides of a conflict they remain each other's closest friends. The most important thing about a ship is the character development it leads to and Gojo would not be who he is today without Suguru. I generally get the sense that Gojo's idea of a good person isn't himself, but rather who Geto used to be before he broke. Gojo actually relied on on Geto for a lot more than he realized, considering it was the one connection he had that seemed to humanize him. Geto provided the chosen one who can do literally anything in the world with his powers, support and guidance. He was the jade, and the foundation of their two person friendship, and then the jade broke.

Gojo and Geto's broken relationship is not only the most emotional thing in the series to me, it's also an incredible part of who they are ten years after the fact. Gojo straight up didn't bother to make friends for ten years later after the fact even though he could have, Geto still told his daughters that Gojo and him were best friends, they just had a fight. He couldn't comperehend in Volume Zero that Gojo would still regard him as a friend after everything that they had done.

It's like one of those "Can't live with them, can't live without them" pairs. They want to be each other's one and only but it just won't work because they don't understand each other, and neither of them is willing to compromise. They are also each other's perfect yin / yang complement. Gojo is the opposite of Geto, and still carries a part of Geto within him, and Geto even after becoming the enemy of the sorcery world while Gojo is the savior, still carries that friendship with Gojo inside of him as well. While their relationship is a failed one, it's also a past I hope that the next generation Megumi and Itadori both learn from, even if Geto never truly comes back.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Can’t sleep, mind going precisely 56 miles an hour, so I think I’ll finally get around to writing this.

Couples days back, I went ahead and finally psyched myself up to do the Zant bossfight.

Because I’d picked up where I’d left off yesterday, which was just before the boss room, obviously I was taken back to the beginning of the area. This gave the whole ordeal a trek, if a short one, what with the Palace of Twilight’s laughable length, and me more time to think.

I didn’t want to do this.

It sounds stupid, but I really didn’t want to do this. I’d cried the day before trying to psych myself up and failing, and I’d cried then, before the boss door, stalling by sweeping away the crystal-fog as best I could-- A meagre attempt at housekeeping, and a futile one. Of course I couldn’t. This isn’t that sort of game. This isn’t a game for failed attempts at kindness, at least trying to clean this awful, awful place for an awful, awful man going through awful, awful things. I was supposed to be a hero.

Heroes don’t make beds.

They don’t wash dishes, or hang laundry, or hold a rival’s hand,

They kill.

The trek didn’t stop past the door, either.

We still had to walk up the stairs. To the throne.

To him.

And I was there, laugh-crying, wishing I didn’t have to. That I could skip this pathetic ordeal.

I tried to turn around and leave.

Despite it only looking like a larger one of the many, many doors we’ve passed through this awful, nonsensical, poorly-designed excuse for a palace that no one could ever live in, it didn’t budge. There wasn’t any turning back. I had to go forward, because this is an action game, and violence is key.

The game takes the reigns. Link walks up to the throne, sword drawn, despite my deliberate decision to sheathe it. The narrative begins again. Midna sneers, and throws a taunt at him.

Zant sits, and smiles. Smiles like he thinks he still has some form of control, or knows full well he’s lost it.

You know, when I was working through the Palace of Twilight, I’d come to the realisation that... Zant locked himself in the throneroom. From the outside. Logistically, despite the good laugh I had over this guy locking himself in from the fucking outside, where his opponents can grab the key, he could get out easily-- teleportation and all. But even that aside, it still spoke to a level of hasty panic, that he would even keep the key outside, behind a waterfall of yet more shitty fog-crytals in the hopes that would deter them. Deter us.

How long had the guy been here, alone in that room?

We all know what happens next. Despite this being my first playthrough, I’ve probably seen this cutscene a dozen times. Zant has what amounts to an overly-dramatised autistic meltdown expositing himself and his motivations. That he was upset and felt like everything he’d worked for had been taken away from him. That he was angry, angry and fed up of being relegated to a half-existence. Midna retorts, Zant wails some more.

What gets me is that, when Ganondorf visits him, engulfs him in this flaming ball of fucked-magical-fuckery, he just. Stares. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything. Ganondorf speaks as though he’s already decided that, yes, you will do, we will make a pact and rule Everything together; I will live on through you.

Did Zant even agree to this?

I think, subconsciously or not, he accepted it, but it begs the question of whether or not Zant was capable enough to partake in it.

Whatever the answer, he’s clearly not capable enough to partake in this. This fight.

It’s laughable, that I’m expected to find victory in this.

The fight was a fucking slog, 90% of the time. Some of these boss-battles I hadn’t played in nearly two years thanks to the impromptu hiatuses I’m so fond of taking, so I didn’t know what the fuck I was meant to be doing half the time-- And when I did, it lagged to shit everytime this poor bastard fired projectiles, because I was playing on the gamepad, because why on earth would I play this on the goddamn TV? It was a sad, pitiful encounter that I had to laugh my way through and also mumble “what the fuck“ on several occasions because I guess somebody at Nintendo ate cheese before bed and the dev team were so desperate to patch something together for this guy’s sudden crisis that they threw it in-- I’m obviously having a good laugh, but What The Fuck.

I knock the guy down in the last phase of the battle, the only one where he isn’t mimicking something else and dizzies himself spinning like a hyperactive child, and the game takes the reigns again. Midna prepares her hair. I look away-- I’ve seen it before, many times before, and it’s cartoonishly grotesque for a game that relies heavily on somber semi-realism. Midna has her own crisis-- And yeah, yeah bossbabe, I feel it.

It cuts back, and there’s a Heart Container on the guy’s throne.

I.

I killed a guy, and now I’m collecting his lifeforce. I stormed into the bunged-up attempt of a fortress conjured up as a last defense by a man who’s fallen head-first into insanity, tore through any meagre security measure like butter, murder the guy when he’s having an episode, he dies a fucked up death, and then I collect his lifeforce.

Is that fucked up or what?

For all of Zelda’s endless violence, rarely do you actually kill “people.“ It’s the kind of stuff reserved for the end, for Ganondorf, or some other corrupted nigh-demigod on the brink of losing their humanity, or never having possessed it.

We kill Zant.

Zant barely puts up a fight, and we kill him. Zant gets summoned from the netherworld by Ganondorf in Hyrule Warriors; we put him there in the first place.

If we were to view this from a literal, like this shit actually happened and these characters are to be held accountable standpoint, then what we did was justified-- If not wholly, then mostly. Zant got power-hungry, committed what amounts to a bio-terroristic coup on the government, disfigured his rival, a woman notorious for her beauty, then proceeded to attempt the same thing with Hyrule, leading to the indirect death of at least the people who got transfigured into Shadow-Beasts in Kakariko, and attacks you first, then yeah, no biggie?

But I’ll be fucking real with you chief, I don’t find it... I don’t know, persuasive? Effective? Compelling, would be the best word, to think of it that way?

What Zant is, is a narrative tool. One that was set up to be this big, bad interloper who you need to Take Down and Save Everything, as per usual Zelda format. The justification for why we should hate him, if I’m going to be honest, feels contrived, most of the time. He does some bad thing off-screen, Midna gets pissed, Midna and everyone within a 12-mile radius explains why we should be pissed in a way that often feels borderline developer-hand-y-- And that’s. Well that’s how Zelda usually is.

It’s justification to commit violence.

--To be clear, I don’t say this in a political sense. I mean it in the very literal “hit/kill a guy“ sense. And in all honesty, that’s kinda inherent to the ethos of action games. We enjoy catharsis-- We enjoy taking down big things, it’s satisfying! I’ve played a little Hyrule Warriors-- Loved the feel of it. Violence is inherent to even the most benign of action games, and it is what it is.

Where it falls short for me, is that with Zant, I don’t feel like I’m taking down some great foe that I should justifiably hate.

I feel like I’m a clearly more equipped person breaking into a room, and bludgeoning a mentally ill person.

I’m autistic. I may slot in easier to NT society than most, but I am autistic, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to see something I’ve fucking gone through be used carelessly as flavour for a prelude to violence. I have meltdowns. They’re relatively rare, and mostly in my room, alone, but I’ve also experienced one out in public. It was only sobbing, but there’s a special kind of horror, of humilation in knowing other people, strangers, family, what have you, are seeing it, and all you can think is how much you failed.

I can’t fully articulate why I cried so much during this, quite frankly, menial ordeal. I’m half-embarrassed to even talk about it-- Because then that means caring too much, and I can’t care too much over a poorly-justified character that wasn’t even intended to be sympathised with and that most of the fandom laughs at. And I can’t say I blame them.

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to the ever-present pity; some strange, childish commiseration I’d indulged in ever since I was six and cooing over Bowser and how awful everything was for him, that despite my continuous efforts, I can’t ever seem to explain.

I didn’t like the Zant fight. It felt empty,

And all did was sweep cobwebs and try to turn back.