#ashei x ilia

[sleepy-the-loz-enthusiast]

The Twilight Princess gang playing Mario Kart

Partially inspired by the time I was playing it with my friends and I fell off rainbow road over 20 times, so now Twilight is god awful at it. Shad's also a god for some reason

Ashei and Ilia are fighting to the death for second, meanwhile Shad finished in first by a landslide. Poor Twi is just there...

Anyway, I hope this was nice to look at and have a good existence :]

[gayanarchistaesthetics]

A moment alone together, after the tavern has closed and everyone has gone to bed.

Models: Ilia, Ashei, Telma's Tavern

[warriors-eyeliner]

So I’ve been rereading the twilight princess manga before volume 11 comes out

um I’m no longer a Shad x Ashei shipper. Shad x Ilia is better. I love that Nintendo decided to make them somewhat canon for literally no reason🤭I was a fool before

April fools🤪

[zenjestrr]

picture midna going into a bi crisis when shed see link and zelda next to each other

I'm also adding Ilia into the mix because im gonna be real i forgot she existed but there's also enough juice in canon to make Link x Ilia a thing here's my setup: Ilia <---> Link <---> Midna <---> Zelda and if we're gonna add crack cocaine to the mix: Ilia <---> Link <---> Midna <---> Zelda <---> Ashei

[lozbotwfanart]

Could you draw some Ilia/Ashei pls? Them being cute GFs?

Ashei gotta be as strong as a Goron to wear all that steampunk armor on her

[cowboyzelda]

Far overhead the stars burn. Not us. We are inflammable.

iliashei, post-twilight princess

[loopy777]

Speaking of romance, whats your preferred ships in each mainline zelda game post OOT?

I’m glad you specified post-OoT, as otherwise I’d have to wrap my head around there actually being a choice between Zelda and Impa in the original NES LoZ. And Impa doesn’t even appear in the actual game.

Oracles: Maple the witch. Obviously. Even the manga realized she was worthy of a beefed-up role.

Wind Waker: I have to go with Tetra/Zelda. Medli felt more like a buddy, aside from being a bird girl. (What can I say? I'm biased in favor of humans.) It helps that Tetra is one of the best characters, never mind version of Zelda, in the franchise.

Twilight Princess: I think there's something neat about Ashei and her legacy of being a knight that works better for this Link than the typical Village Girl thing with Ilia. I like the little extra interactions the manga gives their time together.

Skyward Sword: Zelda, I guess. The only other option I can think of Fi, and she's a robot. I never got very far in this game.

Hyrule Warriors: I dunno, should we give Lana and/or Cia a chance here? Linkle is easily what the weeaboos call Best Girl, but I honestly think she's too good for Link.

Breath of the Wild: Paya. Obviously

Responses to your other related Asks below the cut:

Ah, the pain of being a Link x Ruto shipper :D we are a lonely lot(You Malon fans don't know how good you have it)

In all seriousness, that's basically how I imagined it as well. That if Zelda should have romance, "The courtship" should probably be in the style of the sidequests of Majora's mask, moreso than fire emblem, and at the end, there should definitely be a cool reward for each path. Hell if you wanted to build on what already exists, each romance route could have had an optional dungeon associated with it, like have the gerudo fortress one be a dungeon related to Nabooru's storyline, then add in more such equivalent dungeons, and with a cool reward at the end of each, along with the ending of said questline.

I also really like the way you described each of the girls as having a moment of "something something" that could have lead to something more. That’s basically how I have always thought of how Zelda handles Romance with Link, and frankly, i’m not a fan.

About the only time where i got a sense that there was more than something-something, that was genuinely on a deeper layer was Link and Midna from Twilight princess, but that game's ending pretty much much put a kebash on that. (Though I suppose if the next game finally explores the twilight realm again, Nintendo might throw us a bone with Midna's descendants all having blue eyes and dirty blonde hair. There was a period of time between ganondorfs death and midna leaving, where something could have happened.)

But in regards to romances in Zelda, my biggest problem with it, ironically enough, is Zelda herself. Because i find pretty much every single other girl the franchise has ever produced to be infinitely more interesting than her when she appears.

She's generally just a... Okay character. Which is annoying, when she's basically the default implied love interest, and I almost never get the sense that she and link have any chemistry or dynamic at all(even less so than most of the other girls introduced). Pretty much the only time where that wasn't the case, and i really liked her was in Wind Waker, but that's about it.

I didn't find her tsundere shtick in Breath endearing. Skyward sword Zelda was... Well it was Skyward sword, no one from that game is interesting. In Ocarina she was cute, but that was about it. Twilight Zelda was... There. Very regal and queen like but not exactly that interesting. In Minish Cap she has what could have been an interesting character... Only to get turned to stone 20 minutes in. And because i hated hourglass, i didn’t buy spirit tracks, so i cant comment on how she is in that game.

As for introducing a full blown romance mechanic into the franchise, i kinda wish they would, because i’m sick of them introducing implied love interests after implied love interests, only for it to never ever go anywhere.

Lets see not counting Zelda in her various incarnations, from Ocarina there is Saria, Malon, Ruto, Nabooru, Impa and maybe Navi. In majora's mask there is the romani sisters. Wind waker had Medli, the GBC color games had Din, and would probably also had Faroe if the third game had been made, twilight princess had Illa, Midna, Ashei and Hena, and Breath of the wild had Mipha (though she's dead) and best girl Paya.

Like... If you're going to introduce all these love interest, at least have the decency to utilize them. I think the reason Midna x Link resonated so strongly despite links kinda barebones characterization, is that for once, despite how it ended, it kinda felt like Nintendo was actually doing something with one of these love interests, and clearly a lot of fans were on board with that.

As for Fire emblem... I unfortunately kinda have to agree. I think there are definitly great romances that can add a lot to the games(Robin x Chrom by far being the best example of that), but for the most part i can take em or leave em.

I think this gets to a bigger problem with the storytelling in the Zelda franchise, that so much is kept vague in the service of allowing players to project into the role of Link, despite the implementation really not having progressed much since they let us name our save files in the original NES game. If they pushed a certain love interest or gave Link real dialogue, that would supposedly break the immersion. And yet I’ve never been more immersed in Link than I am in Mario or Megaman or any other character.

But yes, as mentioned in my shipping list above, Zelda is a very generic character outside of Tetra. That makes sense, as the original NES game made Link and Zelda and Ganon (...and Impa) pure archetypes with nothing unique about them. Zelda has continued to simply be The Princess In Need Of Rescuing, even when we don’t actually have to rescue her. They’ve tried to make her a stronger character at various points, but the confines of tradition have very much limited what they can actually accomplish on that front. Tetra is the exception that proves the rule, as she got to break free of the Princess role (for the first half of the game, at least, and then she loses her personality and becomes boring), but Wind Waker was probably the most innovative of the post-OoT games until Breath, and that got slapped down relatively hard by audiences, to the point where Twilight Princess retreated to the familiar. I doubt we’ll see the likes of Tetra ever again, but Breath did break down a lot of the OoT formula to great reception, so perhaps there’s room for hope of a truly different and interesting Zelda again. I personally love most of the ideas I’ve seen amongst the fandom for a Zelda-focused game, but I doubt Nintendo would go that far in a main-series entry.

Also, just a bit more of trivia regarding Ocarina of time, Nabooru actually has an in-game but unused bit of animation where she's sitting and playing a flute, as well as her being located in the Gerudo fortress at some point in the game (Probably after you beat the dungeon).

So presumably early in development (Before they cut the romance aspect of the game) they were probably gonna have you interact more with Nabooru as an adult, and given the flute, it would probably have been her teaching you the song to get to the spirit temple.

Kinda makes one wonder if that was gonna be how it was for most of the temples and sages, only to be cut, and the sages more active role in the story were effectively replaced by sheik to simplify it all.

Well, that’s interesting. I’m skeptical, though, they got as far as development of assets and character placement in dungeons before deciding on the importance of Sheik. Usually, stuff like that are signs of mechanics or features that proved to ambitious for the timeframe or capabilities. Perhaps Nabooru was originally supposed to be a partner in certain parts of the dungeon, either under player control or just scripted. I really doubt the Romancables angle survived up to the point of dungeon design, and probably didn’t make it past the early character design phase.

Hey, maybe she was part of the true quest to find the Triforce and unlock a completely different ending. I’m sure the players will finally figure that one of these days. ;)

[jcmorrigan]

Link

Twilight Princess Link is the one I know best but Skyward/Toon might blend in here

1: sexuality headcanon - BABY BI BI BI. Look, I just get the vibes that in TP, the people he finds just drop-dead gorgeous are Ilia, Zelda, Midna, and Shad. (I'm not gonna do my essay on why ShadLink is a super emotional and fun side ship but rest assured I have one.) I don't really care about BOTW but I hear that he has a crush on a big fish man and good for him. It's what he deserves. Skyward Link is probably in a state of "OH NO HE'S HOT" about Ghirahim's flirting, like "This man wants to kill me, why am I staring at the biceps when he does the dramatic poses, please brain not this man." But! Girls! Oh my God women are so beautiful to him! Midna was an AWAKENING. I'm not big on Zelink (except weirdly in Minish Cap) but I can see how it flavors canon. And Skyward? I, uh...I like Link/Peatrice. I know it's a whole "test of honesty" sidequest but I like to think that if you choose to confess to her, it's because Link DOES mean it, because she's always waiting for him when he has items to check and he probably can't help but tell her about some of his adventures when he does and then oh no she's too cute when she does the happy dance and Link has a weak heart that gets crushes way too easily. Link goes around his daily life like "The boys are pretty. The girls are pretty." And I don't know of a character we can canonically call nonbinary (except maybe Link himself?) but I'm SURE he would also find enbies also too pretty. And no, I don't see him as a horny perv type. Link is a BLUSHING AWKWARD MESS who tries to sweep all his crushes off their goddamn FEET so he can spend quality time with them.

2: otp - I don't know anymore for TP Link because I juuuuuust broke up my longtime love of MidLink (listen...the cinematic parallels between Midna and Lailah Zestiria were too strong, and now MidLailah is a thing and oops, Midna is ALSO bi as fuck) and I just said ShadLink was lovely but I also have nostalgia for Ashei/Shad so Iunno. But Skyward Link definitely is destined for PEATRICE. Listen, the dynamic of "chosen one hero who goes on the adventure x the one shopkeeper you have to meet up with basically every time you set out for a mission" SPEAKS TO ME, OKAY?

3: brotp - Midna. Zelda. Linebeck. Ashei. Agitha. Colin.

4: notp - There's not really any one ship I haaaaate for him. Even GanonLink could be fun if you do it right. I'm not a fan of the way most people play GhiraLink admittedly - you do you, but I always feel like Ghirahim needs somebody more VICIOUS to match his evil energy (I feel very strongly about villain4villain ships). But it's not BAD and it has some basis in canon subtextual dialogue. I guess the only ship that would gross me out upon sight is if you put him with Epona in a scenario where Epona did not gain human-level communication abilities.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head - I just like to think that after the events of Twilight Princess, Link realized that he loved the thrill of the journey more than he did just kicking around home, and though he does still have a permanent house in Ordon where he grew up, he will also take any excuse for a ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE.

6: one way in which I relate to this character - Taking the weight of the world upon our shoulders.

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character - Sumo Link in the iron boots. Because I would become an embarrassed mess if I had to wear that little fabric and so then I of course have to imagine wearing that little fabric and become an embarrassed mess just thinking about it. He is a braver person than I.

8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? - CINNAMON ROLL

[cinnamonbvnxx]

Wait... so no one was gonna tell me that ilia x ashei exists until i pressed the ashei tag?????

Me rn: 😼😼

[midzelink]

"#listen i know exactly how these two meet and how they start dating and it's beautiful and i LOVE THEM" Please tell me everything!

(( in reference to the tags I made on this Ilia x Ashei art ))

HOO, BOY, OKAY - where to begin?  A lot of this is going to be stuff that I didn’t really want to make a post about, because my hopes were that I would eventually write their meeting and eventual dating into a multi-chapter fic of sorts (called “Love & Horses,” and there’s good reason for that, I swear), but I struggle with writing enough as-is, and by the time I do (if ever) get around to it, this post will absolutely be lost to time - so, what the heck!  Lemme gush a little bit.  Some of this I’ve already written about in the description of this wedding piece I had commissioned, but I’ll expand on it a bit here. (Also, shoutout to @therealflurrin for inspiring a lot of this - we somehow fell in love with these two independently of one another, which just goes to show how much potential these two have. Spread the Iliashei love!)

So, what’s important to understand about Ashei (and this is all just my headcanon, of course) going into this is that she was raised alone by her father in the Hebra Mountains, with very sparse and sporadic human contact outside of him.  As she says in-game, he was a “knight in his own right,” and he “taught [her] the arts of war as though [she] was his son” - he taught her how to wield a sword, but unfortunately for her, that was pretty much all he taught her.  He was a troubled man haunted by the ghosts of his past, perhaps, but he was a terrible father, and when Ashei was only fifteen years old she bested him in battle and ran away from home. She was on her own for quite some time, surviving in the harsh wilderness of the frozen wilds, but she did so aimlessly; all she had was her sword, and with nowhere else to turn, she eventually found her way to Hyrule proper, choosing to enlist as a knight solely because she would have a roof over her head and some money in her pocket.  She was only sixteen at the time - she lied and told them she was twenty - and when she bested every captain in the entire royal guard in a single evening, they agreed to take her in.

Another important thing to note is that Ashei’s arrival in Castle Town (and one particular encounter with Princess Zelda herself, but that’s a story for another time) awakens The Gay within her; she’s never really been around so many people before, let alone women her own age.  This has some interesting side effects, namely that Ashei has no idea how to talk to or behave around women, and it plays into the first time she and Ilia (improperly) meet.

So, picture this: a short time after the events of the game, Ilia travels back to Castle Town to visit Telma, whom she bonded following her kidnapping and memory loss.  Ashei is sitting in the bar, sipping on some ale, and she hears someone come in and begin chatting; she thinks nothing of it, of course, until she takes a quick little peak -

- and sees the most drop-dead gorgeous person she has ever seen in her entire life.

She panics.  Face goes completely red, she hides her face in her hand, nearly drops her ale.  Her fight her flight instincts kick in, and she chooses flight, rushing out of the bar before the girl can even notice her, let alone speak to her - and though it’s a few days before she can get the image of her out of her head, eventually things go back to normal, and Ashei finds comfort in the fact that she’ll probably never see that mystery girl again.

Except, y’know - she does.  Because of course she does.

Fast forward a bit, Hyrule Castle is a still a mess of being rebuilt, and the people need something to keep their spirits up - so Zelda is like, f**k it!  Dance time!  An outdoor ball, in the afterglow of twilight, with food and live music and all what have you.  Ashei attends in a full set of royal armor, complete with helm and all the fixings, as she’s only there on guard duty, but just as soon she thinks the night is going to end without incident, who do you think she sees sitting all alone, and does she looks slightly sad or is that a trick of the light, and oh my gods that dress is lovely, was it handmade, did she make it, and what are the chances she would see her again -

Ashei is still quite flustered, of course - only this time it’s different, because here, she isn’t herself.  Here, she’s just a nameless solider among many - she could be anybody - and somehow, someway, she musters up her courage to approach the young woman…and offers her hand in dance.

And I think now would be a good time to talk about Ilia’s side of things; we know a lot more about her story, of course, but it’d probably be good to mention that, yes, she did love Link - and perhaps, once upon a time, he could have loved her, too, but after everything that happened, he was unable to readjust to life back in Ordon, and as we see in the final credits, he leaves, in a scene that tells us almost certainly that he only said goodbye to her.  Ilia goes through quite a lot both during the game and in the months after; romance aside, Link has always been her closest friend, and suddenly he’s so distant from her.  It’s difficult to handle, and as she watches him leave after a few months of struggling with this, with no idea of when or if he’ll return, I guess you could say that she fell out of love out of necessity; he was, and always will be, a very dear friend to her, but the weight of what had happened to both of them had changed them, and their relationship would never be exactly the same as it once was.  It pains her - but she accepts it, and moves on.

So, Link is AWOL for a while, yeah?  Ilia has a lot going through her mind, and like Ashei did before she found a good friend in Shad and a makeshift home in the Resistance, she feels aimless.  On top of that, she’s still dealing with the trauma that being kidnapped had saddled her with, and what sticks with her the most is how helpless she felt waiting for someone else to save her.  Then wouldn’t you know, one day she gets a letter from Telma inviting her to festivities to be held in Castle Town, and Ilia makes up her mind about something.  She packs up her things…and sets off.

The night of the festival, Ilia does take the hand of that mysterious stranger - and as they dance it’s wonderful and magical and lovely and for a time she forgets all of her troubles, but before she can see their face or even learn their name they’re gone, leaving her wanting and curious.  Some time passes, and the festivities come to and end; Ilia makes for Telma’s Bar, where Shad, Ashei, and Auru are unwinding from the night’s events.  Telma introduces the younger woman to the gang, and Ashei almost begins to panic, before she realizes that Ilia would have no way of recognizing her, that Telma was just introducing them to a friend, that this would pass and be done with in no time at all, but then -

“I want to join the Resistance!”

And Ashei is just like,

Ah.

Ah, shit.

This post is getting rather long, so I’m gonna try to wrap things up here - but as you can imagine, hijinks ensue!  Things reach a climax when Ilia insists that Ashei teach her how to fight, and Ashei lashes out and flat-out refuses in a burst of anger, which triggers an episode of “oh my god am I turning into my father oh f**k no” and sends her running, truly panicking this time; Ilia runs after her, of course, and when she finally finds her they get to talking.  Ilia tells her that whatever it is that’s bothering her, she doesn’t have to open up about it now, or tomorrow, or any time soon, but if she ever wants to, she will be there to listen - and then Ilia opens up, about why she joined the Resistance, about her kidnapping and her scars and the horror she’s endured.  She chooses to be vulnerable where Ashei cannot, and then suddenly the mood is lighter, and Ashei is sheepishly admitting that she couldn’t teach her how to fight because she likes her too much, gods be damned, and Ilia is joking about how she never knew she liked girls till now because there were none her age growing up in Ordon, and Ilia thought Ashei liked Shad and Ashei thought Ilia liked Link, except Shad doesn’t like women and Ashei doesn’t like men and Link has been gone for months now, and oh, aren’t they both so stupid - and then they hear music, and Ilia stands and offers Ashei her hand, and in that moment both of them know, y’know?  Ashei still has a lot of stuff she’s got to work through, and it’s not going to be easy by any means, but for now, she can do this much - so she takes Ilia’s hand and the two of them dance into the night, pushing aside their worries till morning’s light.

Do the two of them start dating pretty much immediately?  Yes.  Do they love one another completely and utterly?  Absolutely.  Do they get married and is their wedding super, duper gay?  You bet your ass it is.

There’s a lot more to this that I won’t get into here, including Link’s eventual return (after three years of being away!) and the aftermath of that, and the exact specifics of Ashei’s troubled history with her father and how being with Ilia helps her to heal from it.  On the plus side, Bo becomes like the father that Ashei never had, and fun fact: the two like the arm wrestle!  Like, a lot!  (And Ashei sometimes lets him win.)

[flurrin]

Girls of the Resistance.

moodboard - Ashei/Ilia

[x] [x] [x] [x]   [x] [x] [x] [x]

[gayanarchistaesthetics]

Ilia/Ashei

[midzelink]

The more I think about it, the more I’m actually kind of...surprised by how little (read: none) Iliashei (Ilia x Ashei) content there seems to be out there.  I know the Resistance members never played too big of a part in Twilight Princess, but Ashei is the most interesting of them by far, and she’s also definitely gay, so... What gives?

The only other women around her age are Midna and Zelda (which, I mean, if you wanna ship them with other women, obviously they belong together) and...I guess the lady from the fishing hole?  And her sister? Maybe? But then Ilia is right there!  And their ship name flows so nicely!

Anyways, Ashei usually comes across as cold and serious but she melts in the presence of very cute girls, this is canon.