#botw totk theory

[achoshistor]

[totk] loose ends

the devs said no dlc but theres sooo much stuff in the game thats just not even addressed like i get it its a huge game but they could at least say something thats not just "idk lmao"... who knows maybe creating a champion 2 will be real

anyways spoilers but mainly for totk

starting off on the surface there's the shape of the Gerudo highlands—no explanation for why its in the shape of one of the heroine statues

Misko is never really given an explanation either... what's the far off land they talk about regarding the treasures ?? how did they get the treasure into locations practically only accessible by link??

the Palmorae Ruins/Garini... he is literally just reduced to a shopkeeper in totk but wtf is up with that medallion... I think it is straight up gone in totk but even the doors back there... the other doors in botw opened up to a shrine/skeleton so why do these specific ones not open... and why was Garini able to help unlock the shrine in botw who is that man

ancient altar ruins, prison, other sinkhole caves/ruins littering the desert? this one is pretty minor and granted ive not really looked into the altar ruins but even with all the other ruins all over the desert like what are those even supposed to be

dragon skeletons/misc bones how did the one in Gerudo MOVE?? and how did the one in Hebra get stuck in there? there was a whole questline for this in botw with the different shaped heads and even another one in totk for the Gerudo one's baby/fixing the other two's bones/eyeball and its just left there are what even are those things and why do they just not explain them... plus i guess the ones in Eldin make some sense since there is a big one but the ones in Lanaryu?? i mean it did use to be a desert but there is nothing in the game regarding those bones... and also the skulls for the monsters like what are those and the bony rock around skull lake/ibara butte lake of horse god region/breach of demise like what even is that and WHY

Zonai ruins... im so sorry i post about this so much but aside from just the area labeled "Zonai Ruins" they do not talk about them at all in game... theres roads and like a graveyard and other various structures all over the jungle and even underground

Zonai ruins out of Faron... no explanation on the ones all over the Tabantha/Hebra region's caves... i mean at least the one door for the shrine you had to knock down was turned into a cave and the other two (that i know of) had a questline but whats up with the ones in the canyon? under Kakariko too like what's up with that?? Hyrule Ridge also like the thunder part from totk is tied to a sheikha shrine and they don't talk about it in totk (the balls) and Thyplo too i guess because they never talked about why it was covered in dark... but ig that was something to do with the Zonai since some shrines do that too... and the Zonai towers like what even are those

random Hylian ruins everywhere—they all have this weird shell crest thing on them (i do not have a picture right now but these are the stone ones not the wooden ones) and they were in botw too like reaching all the way to Eventide Island like are you seriously telling me the calamity reached the island?? why are they all broken down

why isn't Lake Kilsie frozen

Ankel/Tingel/other islands off of Sokkala/Upland Zorana... those islands are just not real to me at all like why are they so high up... were they manmade??

this one is also kind of minor but the descriptions for the labyrinths make no sense like who is talking to you (lord of owls/dragons/boars(?)

the people Josha talks about in the mural (statues)... you can see a Zonai in it and the trail of statues and Zonai look NOTHING alike you cannot convince me those are Zonai or even made by Zonai

the flowers in the water at Skull Lake and around Malanya Spring like ok this is also really small but why do they do that

giant tree stumps like they just do not even talk about those even though theyre all over central Hyrule

ancient Hylian ruins—the major reigons for these are Akkala and Tabantha... ik the creating a champion did talk about this but they did not really explain it or what they were... speaking of in Akkala there are Zonai ruins WITH the Hylian ones especially in the Tarrey Town/wetland area like what's up with that

owl/boar/dragon statues... the dragons are super present in totk yes but what is up with the owl and boar... the owl esp appears all over the Hebra caves

the horned statue thing that exchanges hearts/stamina for money... how does it move around and actually how does this work

I think that's it for the surface so for the depths theres also several things...

the Gerudo Underground Cemetery?? who was buried there and why not on the surface?? like i'm pretty sure it's right under Arbiter's Grounds...

coliseums?? there are a lot of them and I think they do correspond with locations on the surface but what was the reason for them being built??

ascend points—they pop up in mostly seemingly random locations... the one that made sense was the Akkala lab which overlooks the big maze island but the others pretty much take you to the middle of nowhere plus why does it have it's own music?? they have nothing to do with the story or anything aside from that one in Korok grove

lakes/secret spring of revival... tbh actually this is theorizing but i guess that the depths were under water at one point especially with that weird barnacle pattern all over the ground and that would have left water in deep areas but that does not explain where this water would have went or why the spring of revival is heated

general landscape of the area... its an inverse of the map but only of the current map... the one in the Forgotten Temple shows the central Hyrule region was a lake but there's not really a large area of ceiling high cliffs there... and also the dueling peaks have the river going through them as cliffs even though the ancient peak was just one... how do cliffs disappear/appear??

gorondia—is it the fire temple or what?? or was it just not even real

gleeok den: do the gleeoks just come from the depths?? is the king Gleeok down there like the mother of all Gleeoks?? and whats with the statues of the four races down there also??

speaking of statues there's not one for Hylians which ok ig they did not do anything useful but also they just do not match the style of every other Zonai building down there

bargainer statues?? again they do not look Zonai, they look like the statues that lead you to mines and they're always under goddess statues... are there more to be recovered because the one at lookout landing does not seem to have a goddess statue with it... plus the bigger they are the more limbs they seem to have like the big one under the Forgotten Temple has hands and feet (granted with like 3 fingers) plus they can give out hearts?? like seeing that actually what are the goddess statues doing with your shrine balls where do they take them?? and what is the afterlife where do these statues take the poes... plus why do their eyes glow the same color as the ancient energy...

ancient underground fortress/ancient observation deck?? theres no cities or anything that really needs defense down there so why is there a whole fort down there... and the observation deck is literally like a random structure but ig it makes sense since it watches over the heart

blupee den... how did they get down there

the bosses down there like why are they down there and why are there MULTIPLE of them + what are the flux constructs guarding

great skeletons... while under the ones on the surface they are not the same creatures... i've seen theories that are like "this is a dragon and the gloom hands ate them" which makes sense bc the skeletons are about as long as Naydra but who were these three?? were they unique to the depths or something and also if they were flying how would the gloom hands reach them

trees?? theres big tree stumps in some groves like what are those but also the smaller trees look more like coral than trees and don't even drop wood when you cut them... i mean ig they do work since the Yiga seem to use them but regardless I think they refer to them as "trees" so what even are they

Akkala House of Bones... what and why

ok i think that is all for the depths so now onto the sky

the islands... i get that most of them were raised from the depths but how come none of the rock on these islands looks anything like the rock from the depths??

dive ceremony... could the Zonai fly or something?? i mean i don't think we ever saw Rauru fly or anything actually how would they even get up there in the first place... plus were the islands in the sky before Ganondorf was a thing since they did raise the Temple to protect it or was it over many years or were the constructs lying

islands specific to Gleeoks/Constructs... why are they just there like I get they protect the soul pieces but are gleeoks not evil/made of malice since they have the eye or have they just been around before Ganondorf made all the Other Monsters (moblins/bokoblins/etc)

just the style differences between the Water and Wind Temples and normal islands...what is up with that...

also why are there no zonai cities or anything?? where did they live?? like even though the two of them were the last two left there had to have been others right??

I think that is all for now thank you for coming to my ted talk

[redraccoondog]

100% Nintendo verified canon: the entirety of Zelda's extensive emotional damage from Rhoam's shitty parenting was undone by this single extremely dad reaction from Rauru

[mochiwei]

Some TOTK Zelda doodles 💕 I have so many theories!!

[gay-for-the-moon]

I’VE FIGURED IT OUT

IT’S THE SAME HAND

This is the single illustration of the ancient Interlopers that we have pretty much at all. It’s from the Twilight Princess manga. The Interlopers, or the Dark Interlopers as they’re sometimes called, were powerful magic users who tried to take control of the Sacred Realm and were subsequently banished. Banished to the Twilight Realm.

The Interlopers became the Twili. And I think the Zonai were the Interlopers.

We don’t know much about the Zonai, but we do know two things: They were “strong magic wielders” (from the Zelda fandom wiki), and they disappeared. The stories match.

And honestly, what better way to subvert the theme of an endless cycle of light versus dark than to explore the people who discovered the in-between?

[powdermelonkeg]

Theory that solves(?) "founding of Hyrule" timeline inconsistencies:

Origin of Hyrule no. 1: Skyward Sword. Zelda, Link, and the Skylians settle the surface world at the game's conclusion. Notably, their dress looks nothing like the Zonai era.

Origin of Hyrule no. 2: Tears of the Kingdom. Rauru and Sonia are the king and queen who founded Hyrule. Notably, Zonai mechanisms and architecture greatly resemble the pre-Skyward-Sword-era Lanayru mining tech and symbolism, though Skyward Sword's art direction is more cartoony than TotK, so that has to be taken into account.

That's where it gets cyclical. If TotK's forgotten era came first, then:

Zonai influence should be ALL OVER Skyloft

The Gerudo should not exist, because they're (implied to be) descended from Groose, a Skylian; at the very least, there should have been a whole Gerudo culture in the Sky

Where did the Secret Stones go?

We should have seen Zeldra flying around in the sky, let alone Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra

But if Skyward Sword came before all things Zonai, then:

The Lanayru Mining Facility (assuming it to be Zonai in origin) should not exist

Hyrule should have already been founded by Rauru's time

Of the two, Skyward Sword being first on the wild surface makes more sense. But if that's the case, there are even more questions:

Where did the Secret Stones come from? Are we to believe that Hylia gave them to the Zonai, since the Golden Trio have already left the Triforce and departed?

What about the Zonai themselves? They supposedly descended from the heavens. Were they just up so high that the Skylians couldn't find them? Did Hylia cleave the ground twice? Did they spontaneously appear up there like mice in grain bins?

Why is there a whole Temple of Time with bells that Rauru, one of two of the LAST of his species, woke up and went to sleep to? In fact, why is there an entire kingdom's worth of structures already built before the Sky Reckoning?

My solution:

The Zonai did exist pre-Skyward Sword, and did descend down from the sky ages ago. They built the Lanayru Mining Facility, utilizing the power of Timeshift Stones in their work. This is not Rauru and Mineru's era.

The Zonai are among the people that stay behind to fight Demise alongside Hylia, while the Skylians were sent up to Skyloft. The people of the Surface are entrusted with the Secret Stones as weapons against Demise, with the caveat that they keep them hidden. That's why they're called Secret Stones despite being well-known to Ganondorf in TotK, it was PARAMOUNT that Demise not know he could get any stronger.

The war ends. Just about every civilization is obliterated by it. The Zonai retreat as far from Demise's seal as they can to lick their wounds. They take the sages' Secret Stones with them, so as to not be caught unawares and lose them to Demise when he eventually reemerges.

Skyward Sword.

The evil is defeated, the Skylians come down to the Surface. That's the signal that it's safe to return now. Shortly after the Skylians officially start to settle, the Zonai, who know how things work, help them build a proper civilization.

Time passes. The Surface is officially a bunch of scattered clans with varying degrees of territory. People are content, though nothing is particularly efficient. The Skylians take on Zonai fashion and building styles as generations pass. The Zonai themselves dwindle.

Rauru, married to the leader of the Hylians, looks to unite the scattered clans under one banner in the name of prosperity and shared resources, idolizing the pre-Skyward era where the gods walked the land. He and Sonia officially name the place Hyrule, and any clan that signs treaty with them is considered within its borders. Mineru, meanwhile, has made her first construct models based on the Lanayru Mine Robots of old, which add to the appeal of joining Hyrule as its subkingdom territories.

Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda's first 12 memories.

Between the Master Sword going back in time and Zeldra's ascent, Zelda and Mineru get to work with as many constructs as possible to protect the Sky Isles they plan to send upwards. They need a TON of Zonaite, and recycling is a priority, leading to the gachapon machines.

Zelda knows enough about her kingdom that she knows where the land is particularly rich is where the people of her time settled, and Zonaite is shown to enrich soil greatly. This is why all the old Zonaite mines are underneath the towns in modern Hyrule, despite changing geography through other eras, and Tarrey Town's new-ness.

Zelda ascends.

The secretive Sheikah clan, having seen the Blood Moon's rise when the Demon King took power, realize that Demise isn't, in fact, all gone. They decide this means that their job serving Hylia isn't truly done, and return to help the fledgling kingdom as best they can. They bring the knowledge of the Master Sword of Skyward Sword days with them.

Ganondorf first shakes the seal he's under without form, leading to the first Calamity and the initial rise of Calamity Ganon. This is 10k years before BotW. This is also the first documented use of the Master Sword to seal the Demon King away, recorded in the tapestry.

The Sheikah are forced to abandon their technology. The Yiga/Sheikah split happens.

Literally all the rest of Hyrulean History happens after this.

Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom.

[valgeristik]

Ничего не останется от нас, Нам останемся, в лучшем случае, мы

hi. hello. listen to this song

i have so many thoughts about these two. oh my god. maybe i will write it out some day, but for now drawing it out will do

translation will be under the cut! knowing the words does add to the work so i do recommend reading it. or just enjoy the art <3

Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser List

E-sims donation

heres the translation, color coded according to how i broke it up for the art. just in casies

first page:

Love is scarier than war

Love strikes more true than steel

second page:

More true, because of your own volition

third page:

You run towards all the winds

Let there be pain and eternal battle

Not atmospheric, not earthly

fourth page:

But definitely with you

caption:

There will be nothing left of us,

we will be left with, in the best case, ourselves

[phoenixcatch7]

The more I think about it the more confused I am by the very brief appearance the triforce makes in botw (and then nothing at all in totk?). Like, it should have evaporated calamity ganon on the spot, it should have overpowered him completely. If zelda had his triforce piece, if he didn't have the Power piece to resist like in tp. He should have gone poof.

Did she accidentally use her wish early? Pure hearted don't break the triforce by wishing on it, it didn't save link, it didn't defeat ganon. Did it break? Where did the pieces go? I can't remember if she actually had a triforce mark on her hand?

Totk having the triforce be in pieces above the clouds would have been so cool...

I'm not considering aoc canon for this but also?? What's zeldas magic and what's the triforce? Did -

Did she just wish for the power to save link? To defend him and protect the kingdom? Is THAT why she suddenly became so insanely strong??

Wait I think I'm onto something here. Zelda carrying the triforce without realising and only having the strength to wish upon it in her darkest hour, but being unaware and untrained, the triforce lost to faintest myth over eons, instead of wishing for ganon to be destroyed and the kingdom restored like every other purposeful use in other games, she instead simply wished to be able to save link, to not be powerless, not be helpless.

And the triforce granted it. Which is why that's the only time it appeared in botk.

[navisakura]

*Tears of the Kingdom spoilers*

-

Alr so everyone’s talking about Yona and how obvious it is that she was a forced heteronormative love interest for Sidon, but I think we’re all looking at this from the wrong angle.

My opinion is that that they added Yona to the game less as a way to stop people from shipping Sidlink, and more as a way to promote the shipping of Zelink. If you think about it, Zelda and Link have almost always been endgame in every iteration they’re in. In BoTW, while it was clear there was a little romantic tension in some of the flashbacks and Zelda’s diary, nothing concrete really happened between them story wise. Even at the end of the game, there was no real romantic aspect to their meeting again, no kiss or confession or not even a hug. Compared to Sidon, who practically worshipped the ground Link walked on, talking about him at every chance he got. The fans of course took this and ran with it, and Nintendo realized that now there was a ship more popular than what they intended, along with the fact that they definitely were not thrilled that a queer ship was the most popular for Link. So they decided to kill two birds with one stone and added Yona as Sidon’s love interest to mirror Link and Zelda.

All in all, I don’t dislike Yona, she’s just a boring wife character placed mostly for the purpose of encouraging hetero shipping in the fandom(Which ultimately backfired because people either see them as poly or being in a lavender marriage lmao). But it’s sad that they’ll probably never do anything interesting with her or expand on her personality other than her being Mipha 2.0 but green.

[hylianchampion17]

silly little headcannon please let me get my thoughts down:

so in Botw, Clavia gives Link a quest in Hateno Called “Secret of the Cedars”,

located on Madorna mountain; directly north of the village. Clavia sets up the quest by saying she found a letter in an old book in her house about a legend involving the mountain.

still with me? great.

if you go into any house in the village you’ll find these sugar/flour jars. the jars are Hateno’s signature blue and white colours with a logo of a three-peaked mountain range. it’s kinda hard to see, but it’s there. i think those jars are part of Hateno’s agricultural business.

it would make sense to associate the village with the mountain cedars because of its proximity and uniqueness. the odd placement of the trees is noteworthy. so noteworthy in fact, that hylians were writing folklore about it (evidence being Clavia’s letter). but that’s not all…

the tree-mountain motif isn’t just on jars; it’s design is literally EVERYWHERE in the village. painted on sheds, houses, furniture, crates, gates, pots, bowls, clothing, books, HELL EVEN THE SCHOOL NEWSLETTER HAS THE LOGO ON IT.

safe to say, Hateno Village itself is associated with the Madorna mountain cedars. my guess is that this connection was made the very day that Hateno was created. the tree/mountain symbol is woven into Hateno’s very foundation which probably extended to their farming business, which is why the design on the jars is so interesting. i actually made my own Hateno jar! the hylian translates to “Secret Cedars Imports” :)

thanks for listening!

[weareswords]

Zelda fans losing our minds over Ganondorf returning, Zelda becoming Hylia, the Zonai tribe origins, and the potential infinite time loop

Polygon: HUMMUS

[achoshistor]

[totk] what's up with dinraal?

shoutout to the person that reblogged this post of mine! tbh i completely forgot about it (and lowkey this account too). im gonna be honest i downloaded honkai star rail right before totk came out bc i missed the open world so like 5 months after finishing totk thats all i did bro the grind is so bad

[tbh i cannot remember the specifics of the plot rn would recommend not reading if you've not finished totk and botw + most sides]

anyways tbh to me it feels kinda like the botw/totk fanbase is slowly slowing growth esp with the announcement of no dlc... that's why i sorta lost interest. but basically

naydra = widsom, owl (ergo mineru/zelda?)

farosh = courage, dragon (ergo rauru/link?)

dinraal = power, boar (ergo ???/ganondorf)

clearly the power aspect was of some importance considering they had boar statues (again pic in this reddit post); however reading the article on the wiki (i have not 100%ed the game) they said the true crest of the zonai is not the spiral we see all over faron, but a different rectangular crest (let me see if i can find an image) i believe they were referring to the secret stones? which almost makes sense considering the spiral but at the end of the day that spiral looks like a much more evolved version of the secret stone crest, nor would the placement of the zonai people make any sense in regards to what we seen in totk: why are the ruins concentrated in the faron jungle, which is much farther south than the great plateau where the zonai are shown to have resided?

i mean even going onto dinraal, on another wiki it says that she's a fire spirit serving the spring of power; but the spring of power seems to be almost completely hylian in contrast to the spring of courage in the jungle. interestingly enough though unlike really in hateno necluda area there seem to be more zonai ruins but again underground or seemingly not tied to the zonai (bargainer statue).

naydra matches up with nayru, farosh with lanayru (farore maybe) but who does that leave dinraal with? actually it leaves her with din lmao i forgot there were three goddesses but actually therefore are these dragons like the literal immortalized forms of the three goddesses from like the non totk botw games? tbh then i think the ganondorf linkage is a red herring. the zonai (at least whoever was on the surface) must have worshipped the triforce. but i think this still does not solve the mystery of which zonai(?) would have been associated with the power aspect of the triforce. will we ever find out? idk... thank you for coming to my ted talk

[ganondoodle]

(while i am crumbling into pieces from cramp pain)

back when they announced the totk masterworks book i said i wasnt happy about it bc it would either

prove they thought all this was good from the start and everything went as planned

show us that they had unbelievable better ideas and plans but for some unknow reason scrapped it all

as it stands now with the concepts i have seen ... they somehow did both, some things seemed to have been planned fro mthe start (the whole focus on sonau/zonai stuff for example, which i personally just dont like bc i liked them better as an unkown mystery you never get to meet) and other stuff (like ganondorfs concepts, or the infinitely cooler castle in the sky esque concepts for the sky islands, instead of some nonsensical, meaningless little stone crumbs) was much, much more interesting initially (together with the interviews that said they initially planned to have the battery be a magic meter and make the sonau more magic than tech- but then decided to build their stuff around modern electrical devices just so players would immediately know what it was an what it would do -why????? thats so boring?? and unecessary ?? and they still give you tutorials for it anyway, multiple times??!!- for some ungodly reason)

it makes me more and more sure that this game, that took 6 years to make with most assets already being there (the same time that botw took to make?????????), went through a similar development hell as that one final fantasy game did where the director decided to make it an entirely different game every few weeks bc he saw something cool in another game-

its the only thing that makes sense to me, why else would it be so weirdly ... unfinished, its full of grand ideas badly executed, or like i said in a previous post, like an alpha build (weird! did someone in charge also see cool stuff every few months and decide they wanted it in there too no matter what so everyone had to scramble to try and put it in making the whole jenga tower fall over and over??), just to test how far you can push things, with placeholders everywhere, the same cutscene pasted in where another should be and a placeholder reason to get players to go soemwhere (fake zelda) and rough ideas for puzzles etc, that was never finished, jsut highly polished (in looks, sounds and presentation) in hopes of it being 'good enough' or players not noticing (like, take the underground for example, the idea itself is fantastic and cool as fuck, but its feels like an idea that was never finished and just barely fileld with some things to try and cover up the fact that it was never done, like a statue that wasnt done being carved but ran out of time so they painted it anyway- take the base map and invert it, put some easily accessible points of jumping down into it in random spots to test if the game can handle it- no time left to actually get that idea anywhere more specific and well thought out/put together, so its left like that, put the same texture everywhere, barely modified copies of the same enemies, and some little reward spots that make no sense, modelling three types of trees and an enemy camp is way quicker to do than actually making an entire new map (they didnt have to make it the same size btw, just make it big but unique caves, put the gravity effect down there in enclosed spaces! makes it less weird to have randomly happen in the sky! etc) but its there!! its in the game and if they are lucky most players wont go down there enough to notice how meaningless and unfinished it all is)

knowing they would most likely never admit to it though, probably bc of their reputation, is just addign to the frustrations i have with it :I

(i just hate to not know the reason for things, if the devs, who are usually the ones being worked to the bone for things they know arent good, where put through that bc some executive big shot threw their tables around every so often or neglected their project bc they wanted to focus on something else first ... id like to know, i dont enjoy making up these conspiracy (?) theories .......... but i cant shake this feeling, its jsut makes no sense)

[carrotsnake]

Zelda and the Tale of Melusine

I'll be looking at the parallels between Zelda's arc and some Medieval tropes of female metamorphosis, using Melusine: Or the Noble History of Lusignan as an example. Specificially a translated copy of Jean d'Arras's version, since that's the most well known one.

To start, a run down of Melusine:

She's a half human, half fairy woman cursed by her mother for imprisoning her mortal father in a mountain. The curse dictates every Saturday she turns into a serpent from the naval down. She must marry a human man for a long time to slowly undo the curse and become fully human, but he must never see her monstrous form beforehand.

If he does, she'll lose her humanity forever and transform into a dragon.

She meets a knight in the woods, he suspects her otherworldly knowledge comes from "some phantasm or diabolical power", to which she goes don't worry about it kitten. But he likes her so he's like ok! ^_^ yay!

She keeps giving him cool fairy advice, and with it his life magically becomes a whole lot better - he gains wealth, power, and not just him but other people listen to her advice: crops flourish, castles are built. The kingdom is thriving! They love her just as much as he does, so it's no surprise they get married. But there's just one condition, she hides in the bathhouse every Saturday, and he's never to visit or peep at her.

He breaks his promise and discovers her secret. She says he's cursed both of them, and now he's lost her forever: "Be sure that as long as you live I shall always find pleasure in seeing you; but [...] never again shall you see me in female form."

The next passage is as follows:

'Melusine, uttering a very doleful cry and then a heavy sigh, leapt from the window into the void, and as she swept across the orchards she metamorphosed into a massive dragon some fifteen feet in length. [...] In her dragon form she circled the fortress three times, and each time she flew past the window she uttered such an excruciating, desolate cry that everyone wept for pity, knowing that she was leaving under constraint and against her will. Then she disappeared in the direction of Lusignan, letting out such rueful shrieking and strident cries that wherever she passed it seemed as if lightning and thunder were about to split the sky.'

He never sees her again after that. But phantoms of her start appearing in the castle, secretly visiting her children at night and generally just spooking people by standing there menacingly. And that's how the myth is born.

I've already drawn connections through the images above, but what's the point of this?

Like lots of other fans I was irked by the whole 'zelda jesus' thing in totk, yeah it is a little odd that everyone follows her advice without question, and it's never wrong.

I'm curious, if the team was drawing from Western myths, that this was supposed to echo the fae. Especially since most of the quests keep you on your toes on whether this was the real Zelda giving advice, or a fake - a phantom(!) - deliberately sabotaging them. It mirrors how opinions on Melusine were split between a benevolent fae or a demon. Splitting them into two entities though, I can see how that would defang it.

The og text wasn't exactly that nuanced either. I remember my prof joking the message amounted to "always listen to your weird snake wife!" Maybe we SHOULD listen to our weird snake wives.

It's interesting Melusine only interacts with children after the curse - botw+totk imply only young children who are pure of heart can see dragons.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you can find it! Then you can look for more parallels, and read riveting pieces of dialogue such as this:

[spirit-tracks]

Okay SO. Theory Rush after finishing Tears of the Kingdom. Go.

The Zonai are said to have descended from the heavens to help found Hyrule. I can think of another race that descended from the heavens. Do you guys think the minish are native to the Zonai sky islands?

Does the Depths set look a little familiar to you? This along with Josha's theory that people once lived down there, I wonder if the interlopers were present in the Depths before being banished to the twilight realm.

The architecture and robot designs from Skyward Sword have a distinct Zonai look to them! So that leads me to believe the Zonai were the race that created the Lanayru Mining Facility.

It might even be that the Past from Skyward Sword is indeed the time period that Zelda was transported back to! Maybe the legacy of the kingdom of Hyrule goes back even further than the fight between Hylia and Demise: though I admit the early appearance of Demon King Ganondorf throws a wrench in this theory.

About secret stones and the amber relics in Skyward Sword: I want to say there's a connection between them, though amber relics don't seem to be as rare and important as secret stones, (we find them in abundance in Skyward Sword and they don't do much). Of course, i haven't played SS in a while so if they have any more significance it's escaping me at the moment. For the time being I'd like to think ancient hylians might have carried them around as good luck charms to emulate secret stones of their own.

The Legend of the Great Sky Island mini quest in has the construct telling us that the island was supposed to be where a hero will one day awaken to defeat the Demon King. I know our Link wakes up on this island, but there's definitely something eating at my brain about the Great Sky Island being related to (or perhaps even IS) Skyloft, and that the awakening of the hero is referring to Skyward Sword Link. (This potentially supports the theory that the Past in TOTK predates the war between Hylia and Demise)

There's a pretty good chance that Rauru and Sonia's child could have been named Zelda, after the sweet time traveling girl they practically adopted :) the first princess of Hyrule named after the last princess of Hyrule.

There is a giant dragon skeleton in the Gerudo Desert Depths, big as or even bigger than Farosh, Dinraal and Naydra. It is my belief that this mystery dragon became a dragon ala Secret Stone alongside the three aboveland, but was killed at some point in the Depths. I don't know what four people decided to become dragons, but my strongest theory is that Dinraal, Farosh and Naydra are the draconified forms of the oracles of the Golden Goddesses, Din, Farore and Nayru. So who is this?

Seeing as the Lightroots underground are activated via Zonai hand terminal and each Lightroot lies directly beneath a shrine on the surface, I think the Lightroots are extensions of these shrines, having grown straight downward to light up the underground. This is probably obvious but I just barely figured this out 😅

Since Rauru, sage of light, and a new Temple of Time are in this game, I want to think that this person and location are more than just Easter Eggs to Ocarina of Time. I think that the sage from Ocarina of Time was named after King Rauru, though I'm not sure whether him being the sage of light would have been a coincidence or a direct inspiration.

What I do think is that he indeed did put the triforce in that very same Temple of Time and all the sky islands went to the Sacred Realm until Tears of the Kingdom, when they came back to earth and appeared in the sky. That's just a theory but why else would the sky islands be reappearing as if from nowhere?

Speaking of which, there were floating masses in the sky in Minish Cap, namely great big stone temples and fortresses. Minish Cap takes place during the early days of Hyrule, which would be pretty much right after the Zonai descended. Perhaps the Zonai are the Wind Tribe mentioned, and the people we see in game are their descendants, who look much more hylian than Zonai due to being crossed with full hylian genetics over the generations?

Anyway I need to retouch up on my Zelda lore to make sure I'm getting the details right, (that, and i haven't yet 100% the game so i may be missing some totk context), but I HAD to post my thoughts and get them out there! I'll add on later if I think of any more, in the meantime feel free to brainstorm!

[powdermelonkeg]

You know, in retrospect, the Yiga being incredible with technology makes perfect sense.

The whole reason for the Yiga/Sheikah split was the first Calamity. After Ganon was defeated, the at-present king of Hyrule gave the Sheikah an ultimatum—bury and swear off their technology and return to traditional ways of life, or be exiled. And the ones who refused to comply became the Yiga clan.

So of COURSE when they found Zonai technology they imprinted on it like baby birds. They were exiled for being technologically proficient, they would have latched onto that legacy as the most important part of their identity purely out of (justified) spite.

[lunataylorscos]