#before rauru for the first time was so… idk something about zelda going ‘i believe that man holds dark ambitions in his heart’ makes me ill

[evanatsuhi]

i cannot believe they pulled an axl with zelda but instead of it being interesting it just ended up pissing me off

[ganondoodle]

(idk if anyone wants to keep hearing my opinions on totk book stuff but-)

apparently it says that rauru DID have kids, multiple even, which yeah... is kinda necessary for zelda to even be connected to them so much so that sonia can SENSE a blood connection (which, even with all the excuses with magic, is just a little too far for me to suspend my disbelief bc its over, OVER, ten thousand years worth of generations that seperate her from them that one lil touch of the hand can sense that (feels more like an attempt to make you care about them or .. see them as zeldas "better" parents just bc they exchange a few nice words, i never got the feeling they were 'better' parents and its also kinda disrespectful to her actual parents, like sure rhoam wasnt the best but i wouldnt call rauru better just bc he was polite)- i could see maybe the light power of hylia or sth but since its the coolest dude that ever lived rauru now that had it which still doesnt make sense and makes me unreasonably annoyed and she can sense BOTH of their powers in her? nah) the fact theres NOTHING about them in the game itself is just so ... no way they planned any of this

i dont think theres anything they can do or say that wont make be believe they either

are making it up alla 'fix it in post' mentality trying to hastily explain stuff the game never bothers to do to try and appease fans or let it appear as if they thought about it at all

something went really REALLY wrong during development, which kinda seems likely given how the game turned out (im sorry i cannot let go, its not just the writing, the game design too and how little was changed in the map while being so damn expensive, i dont know how people dont feel scammed q_q)

given that they (allegedly) spent the last entire year of development on polish (where??? where????? huh??? like it would make it more understandable (EXCEPT for the price) if there was alot of trouble, which was also bc it got delayed and ... turned out like this, but they dont want to say it, especially given their reputation, with that quote i have heard way too many times 'a delayed game blah blah') i just??

are they just gonna go and do it like they did with kashiwa (kass)? "they uuuh where flying around the whole time ony cool sonau tech maschines, you just dont see or hear from them ooooorrr they were uuuuh out of the country at the time" (sending invitations to other continents to join their glorious kingdom ;) )

(bet they are also gonna say they did all the stuff like ... moving the shrines around (lol?) and lifting the islands up into the sky- which is still weird bc ... didnt they also say they were living in the sky before coming to the surface?? so where?? did they park all their islands on the surface and the mystery kids had the keys so they had to repark them back into the sky after they returned off camera?? xD also why are the islands so different as an environment if they where from the surface? like even the STONE up there is different- and if they were first in the sky then on the surface and the nback in the sky .. why is there not a single yellow tree or grass in the past- you cant really argue that it changed bc they were up there so long bc .. nothing else changed, the suddendly and totally always there sonau buildings are largely in prime condition, only some slightly moldy, and what we see of the glorious past looks barely any different from the present, aside from like ... some standard trees shuffled, no castle yet and that glowy uwu filter DESPITE that stupidly long time frame between it)

[the-game-spirit]

I have been going so insane over the zelda timeline regarding totk like I am LOSING my mind

like. either 1. botw/totk is a completely new continuity. worst option. boring.

2. it is SO FAR in the future of the (probably downfall) timeline and there has been SO MUCH canon-typical time bullshit in between that the other two either bleed over OR the ever-funny hyrule warrior's convergence theory happens that it may as well be just a soft reboot and history is just. repeating endlessly. also kind of boring imho

OR 3. totk memories happen sometime after skyward sword. interesting. also a completely fucking insane idea.

it's a misconception that SS zelda and link founded hyrule! they almost certainly didn't!

did the zonai make the timeshift stuff in SS? the tower of the gods in WW? the ooccoo? a fascinating concept!

what about the triforce? who knows! i don't think minish cap has anything to do with it either and it does get sealed away at some point sooooo

but more importantly

is there a fucking dehydrated ganondorf sealed away underground for every single zelda game

most people would be like, 'no, of course not, thats so stupid how does oot ganondorf exist if totk ganondorf is in hand jail already' and 'ganondorf has a history of reincarnation/revival but that can't happen if he's still alive ya dingus' and normally I would agree! I did agree! I've been scratching my head trying to make this work since I started playing totk

except!!! except!!!!!! we have literally already seen this happen before!!!!

so. skyward sword.

skyward sword is a closed loop time travel story. I cannot stand when people try to shoehorn another timeline split in SS because no split happens. that's the point. that was hylia's plan. the first hero? before skyward sword link? hylia's chosen knight that defeated demise? that was always skyward sword link in the past. demise even confirms this in dialog. something something he's 'never seen a hylian stand up to him before.' idk the exact quote but it Very Much Implies demise has never encountered any incarnation of link before.

so. how do we kill the imprisoned (demise) in the future and then go back and kill demise again in the past in a closed loop?

because we seal demise's consciousness in the sword, and his body in the ground

the imprisoned is clearly mindless. even more mindless than downfall timeline ganon post-resurrection. it has one single goal, which is to reach the temple and.... the master sword. with the consciousness of demise sealed within.

we have confirmation that two versions of the demon king can, technically, exist entirely separate from eachother.

it isn't a stretch to think that if his body is sealed away, effectively dead and unable to spread his malice, that the spirit of demise's hatred (if its not sealed with the sword, like in totk) would reincarnate until the time comes that the seal weakens enough (the first calamity) that it doesn't need to.

obviously there are still problems here like. where are the rito? (personally I think they just fuck off to hebra, which only barely exists in any other game, and I wholeheartedly believe the WW rito are a completely different species)

if totk ganondorf is sealed under the castle before oot, but the great plateau is implied oot castle town, why didn't we find dehydrated dorf there? uuuuuuuhhhhhhh next question

(listen the great plateau doesn't really match up with oot castle town anyway, no other details really match, definitely not the typical 'death mountain to the north(east), lake hylia down south' geography we usually see)

is rauru totk and rauru oot the same or different? zelda actually calls the sages 'ancient creators of hyrule' in oot, and since rauru is the only actually ancient one there.... uh. its entirely possible! why does he look hylian in oot? uhhhhhh? magic? because seeing some giant talking goat person that has never been seen before might not inspire trust in the traumatized monster-fighting 9 year-old-turned-16-year-old. also isnt oot rauru ALSO the owl? its been a LONG time since I played oot so I genuinely don't know if I just made that up but if so the guy has a history of changing form I guess

honestly I think we do have to allow for a certain level of handwavy 'new game' leeway, just like we do with EVERY game, in order to make this work. the map is always different. some things are introduced that have never once been heard of before in any other game. some things DONT exist that have in other games. some things are so different they're nearly unrecognizable. there are little easter eggs and no, they don't always have to mean something.

[umbralstars]

Zelda fandom rant:

Totk is not a retcon. It literally is not. It has a few weird story things going on with BOTW in regards to the Sheikah tech but that's it. It does not up-end Any part of the time-line other than saying fan theories that people got overly attached to aren't true.

It is never stated anywhere (in the game or the books) that the Link and Zelda from Skyward Sword are the founders of the Kingdom of Hyrule. We did not know when or who established the kingdom, and we now have Rauru and Sonia as likely candidates. I fail to see how this could be such an upsetting "retcon" to people when all previous lore had the time between Skyward Sword and Minish Cap as multiple Vague happenings.

"Where is the Triforce?" "What happened to the Zonai?" both of these questions honestly have the same answer: the Era of Chaos. You know the one where the Triforce and the Sacred Realm gets sealed and when we know that at least one race gets yote from Hyrule's plan of existence? And that the Zonai at their height were not only the direct descendants of the Gods (so basically gods themselves) and very powerful magic users? By the time Hyrule's established the Triforce is already sealed away until OoT, and the Zonai also have their own powerful objects in the form of the Secret Stones (which could be any number of things. Aspects of the triforce, mimicries of it, things given to them by their godly ancestors, idk have some fun with it). And it's not a stretch to say that Rauru wouldn't know about it or the Hyrulians own heritage from the skies with the loftwings; eventually leading to the crest of Hyrule that we know.

The sky in and if itself is already a realm of the gods separated from the surface reality. Just because we don't see the Zonai in SS doesn't mean they weren't around or weren't doing things on the surface before the Skyloftians re-establish themselves on the ground. They're capable of existing as their own thing. I don't really ever see people get this upset over like Oocca (even tho like,,, wtf is up with them?), and I can only assume it's cause TwiLiP is already in the fandom consciousness as a "good Zelda game" so it won't get scrutiny like the new one.

Idk I'm seeing people get personally upset and offended over percieved changes in the time-line. Even though I would argue with my whole chest nothing has been retconned or changed.

Also it's very funny watching people who were so against the idea that botw could mean that the time-lines converged now tout the theory; just so they can shove both it and totk (including all the "in the past" stuff with Rauru and Sonia) so far in the future it can't touch their precious "classic Zelda." And the time-line that I remember a lot of the fandom not even liking.

Like I believed in the convergence theory back during botw cause it made sense to me and we were already dealing with time magic. But no, it was Impossible until the new game did something people didn't agree with.

It's fine to disagree or have different theories but to say that the game is objectively bad and was trying to retcon things? I have to disagree. I really think it's a matter of people disliking change and totk not being the game they built up in their heads (or not Entirely following up on some of botw's story, like the fight with Calamity Ganon from the legend. Which is a valid criticism and one that I kinda hold myself). But making up false statements about the game to justify your dislike? That's pretty weak.

(And that's not to say I'm above hating games or spin offs. I don't like Hopes pretty much at all, but I Try to keep my hate grounded in things the game actually did)

To go off in a side tangent: I'm sorry but totk Does tell you the order it wants you to do it's story in. It tells you to go to certain areas first (like talking to Purah, then to Kakariko, then to Impa, etc), to talk with Impa on your way to Rito Village which is the first area the game directs you towards. Then when you go to the forgotten temple: there is a map on the ground showing you the exact locations of all of the glyphs plus the glyphs lined up on the back wall in a way that suspiciously looks....ordered. And Impa's dialog prompts you to try and figure out what this all could Mean. And you get a camera right at the start of the game which would maybe allow for something like Documenting the map and the wall mural.

Idk bout y'all but I figured out this riddle after a few seconds of looking at it on release day. So there was no guide or anything to "help" me. And yeah I'm being sarcastic because the answer is so blatant and obvious. The game Wants you to pay attention and do the glyphs linearly but is was not going to hold your hand and force you. And there is other dialog abounds which asks you to do the plot in a certain order, but you still don't Have to.

I don't know how to sign this off other than saying that, in my opinion, totk is a fantastic game. It's a good Zelda game. And yes, I have played plenty of classic Zelda games before anyone tries to accuse me of "not getting it." The lore and the story is also very important to me, I just disagree with much of the discourse I've seen (especially on Zelda YouTube). It's okay if you don't like it, but people who do like it aren't bootlickers or whatever.

And yeah there are things that I do dislike about the game, don't get me wrong. But gods it's not a bad game and it's not world ending. Maybe try having fun with the lore for once?