#botw/totk zelink my beloved

[lavb-b]

Practicing traditional again with these lovelies <3

[shellshooked]

evening stroll

[spacerockband]

the light dragon

[sehaniine]

zelda is proud of her hair braiding abilities and link is happy to oblige

[funsizedcrow]

Linktober day 11: Music/Dance

This is one of my favorites they look so happy :) i love drawing them dancing. Outfits taken from hateno villagers concept art in creating a champion

[skyward-floored]

the thing about botw/totk zelink is i absolutely adore it, i just adore other zelink MORE. Like I love orange juice, but my favorite is grape juice, and when i get a nice strong craving for grape juice all i can find is orange, and it is Frustrating

EXACTLY YES YOU GET IT

everyone is planting orange trees even though there's already a huge orchard of them and while oranges are indeed delicious, the grapes are literally dying a few fields over. please water them.

[smilesrobotlover]

Why are my fav Zelda ships the ones that aren’t even possible to be canon 😭

[magicpotatomaster101]

Been replaying botw

[angstandhappiness]

ADORABLE

I love them so much I will shove my entire fist into my mouth ❤️

[sabertoothwalrus]

out of curiosity, why do you not like zelink anymore? it never really appealed to me but I keep seeing art of it and I don't really feel the chemistry haha

HMMM well I still like it in some regards!

as kid I was almost exclusively a fan of OoT zelink. Like DIE HARD. Like it was my whole personality. I liked Link & Tetra a lot too, their dynamic is GREAT but I didn’t draw them as much. I wasn’t interested in TP zelink and I remember telling myself it was because “the designs are too hard for me to draw I’m only 9” and not that they had literally no chemistry 💀

It’s kinda wild cause I was already deep in the zelink trenches when skyward sword came out, but for some reason that game didn’t appeal to me at all??? idk if it was cause the game just wasn’t as fun to play, or if the designs put me off. It just didn’t hold my interest.

By the time botw rolled out in 2017, I was already identifying as aroace (<- spoiler I was actually a repressed lesbian) and had long gotten over zelink being the “default”.

Even my beloved oot zelink felt less realistic to me— I know it’s fiction and you can do whatever you want, but generally princesses don’t marry random knights (in child timeline, no one remembers Link’s heroism, so to everyone else he really would just be some random knight). I’ve come to appreciate oot zelink for its potential tragedy and complexity, with childhood friends-to-lovers, who are literal soulmates that share memories of war no one else in their world knows of, but for political reasons cannot be together. Their relationship would be messy and secret and bittersweet. Link wouldn’t even have anywhere else to go, since he no longer belongs with the kokiri. He canonically dies as a royal guard. He had children (TP Link is part of his bloodline) but he presumably died before they were old enough for him to teach them his swordsman techniques.

So far, botw zelink is one of my least favorite zelinks 🙈 I’m sorry I just don’t see it!! Which is INSANE because it’s by far been the most popular zelink in the past 15 years I’ve been in online fandoms for it. At most it’s unrequited and at least they’re both gay. To be fair I never actually beat calamity ganon 🤡 I’M GONNA DO THAT THIS WEEKEND SHHH and have managed to stay mostly unspoiled about botw’s ending, but I really don’t think,, that that alone will be enough to convince me. Idk. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Maybe totk will do it for me.

[jadevalentine-writes]

Playing TOTK makes my brain go brrrgh so have some pre-BOTW ZeLink fic ideas that have been rattling around in my head for the last month:

Zelda POV on Link obtaining the Master Sword. Spoiler Alert: she kind of resents him for it. It's a study on how natural his talent is whereas she has to try so hard to unlock her own.

A counterpoint that she did not always resent him. Background of how Link came to be in the royal guard and that one time he stepped in when an undercover Yiga Clan member snuck into an emissary's entourage and tried to knife Zelda. How Link kept guard at her bedroom door all night and when she finally passed out in a chair, he plopped her in bed and slept on the floor near her door.

When they embark on Zelda's power unlocking quest together.

When they arrive at an inn drenched and there is only one room left with a small bed.

When they are ambushed on the road and Zelda gets kicked from her horse. Link yanks her onto his and they skedaddle. It's only when they stop miles later that Link collapses off his horse with a abdomen wound. Wound tending and alightly panicked Zelda my beloved while Link calmly walks her through a field dressing.

Awkward times at Zora's Domain (aka Link and Mipha avoiding each other and baby Sidon sticking to Link like glue).

THE POOL OF COURAGE SCENE

Zelda complaining of Link to a young Impa and that Shiekah poet she used to adore.

Post-BOTW: Mornings in Hateno.

[birdmomblogs]

and you’re correct

[zellink]

hey, i’m nat! i write (and sometimes doodle) and go feral for botw link/zelda.

i’m flowerpower on AO3.

i'm also on twitter: flowerpower029

this is a sideblog.

inbox is always open :)

find my fics + tags below!

2024 all the bells say IN PROGRESS | 28 chapters | mature | pre-botw | #bells tag

Link and Zelda, the Calamity, and their tale of inevitability and doom, and most of all, of love. | What will you do with what you've been given when the story forever tolls the same way?

ikebana songs - my entry: blue devotion valentine's day drabble collection | 3k words | teen/mature | post-totk

Zelda, Link, and the flora of Hyrule. | Fragments of a life hard-earned, and the eternal spring that blossoms.

2023 nearer, my god, to thee one-shot | 11k words | explicit | post-botw

On the way to Zora's Domain, Link takes Zelda to a hidden place in the wild. | Link finally understands that it isn’t him who has absorbed this kingdom into his bloodstream—it is the kingdom, it is her, and she is surrounding him, swallowing him whole.

to caress a thunderstorm one-shot | 13k words | explicit | post-botw

After the Calamity, Zelda ponders upon Link, her duty, and her desires. | Zelda realizes that it doesn’t matter if they’re underneath the roof of the house, at a clothing boutique, in the secluded Sheikah village, or by the bay. It is the air that he carries around him that is warm and electric, emanating from the skin that wraps around his life force, his soul. So long as she stays by his side, it will always be that way.

liege man of life and limb 4 chapters | 25k words | explicit | post-totk

Zelda as queen and Link’s ascension from knight to prince consort. | A tale of oaths exchanged by two beings intertwined by the threads of fate, of a love that breathed life to the world.

tears through a white lace veil one-shot | 9k words | explicit | post-totk

Zelda’s homecoming in Akkala. | “I’m real,” she says, regardless of whether she truly believes it or not. “I’m scared I’d disappear, too.” She confesses. “But when you touch me, I feel real.”

TAGS: #️⃣ my fic = my fics lol but you can also find them on this post. #️⃣ my art = mostly just doodles because i'm not that good of an artist lol. #️⃣ nat says = shit i say. mostly zelink ramblings.  #️⃣ royal guard armor my beloved = royal guard armor art LMAO because i’m obsessed with it. #️⃣ blatchery plain posting = feeling like poking yourself with a hot iron thinking about zelda and link in blatchery plain? look at some blatchery plain art. #️⃣ thunder made man = link art that makes me feral that makes me think of how he’s a thunderstorm contained in a body.

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks for the tags y'all! @mistresslrigtar @zeldadiarist @ladyhoneydee y'all go read their stuff it's so good

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just 8, but it's about to increase! ;)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

58,767!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Legend of Zelda - All BOTW so far. I have some ideas for other Zelda games but they remain as ideas for now.

I also have a short Marvel story from my Steve/Bucky days circa 2013.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Shadows - An Epistolary Poem from Steve Rogers to Bucky Barnes

Is that a yes? (Zelink oneshot, NSFW)

That child of mine (my beloved longfic - I promise I'm coming back to this story soon! I miss it so much)

Silk and moonlight (with art from the magnificent @bahbahhh)

A chance encounter at the blood clinic (modern Zelink au that is very silly but you gotta be ok with blood donation)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Absolutely! I am a sucker for attention and I love talking about stories with people.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh DEFINITELY That child of mine. It's not even finished yet but there is some goooood angst coming, and I already know how it's going to end (I've actually written a good chunk of the finale already) and it's gonna be heartbreaking.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably A chance enounter? They get each other's number and the promise of a cute date.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope! I've only gotten some (requested) constructive criticism. I do have a fic planned that I anticipate being kinda contentious? But I'm already planning on limiting comments on that one lol.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yee! I've never written anything hardcore but I do really like writing and reading sexy scenes. I'm not much of a PWP kind of person (give me all of the emotional context) but I'm a big believer that sex and intimacy are fundamentally human experiences and can serve a story in so many beautiful and interesting ways.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I continue to chip away at my Deep Space 9/TotK crossover idea. It's gonna happen one day... maybe...

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, but maybe I'll try re-writing one of my stories in French sometime as a project.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No but I would LOVE to. The closest is when B and I collaborated and I wrote a story and she did the art.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Zelink, definitely. People whose souls are inextricably bound to one another and keep finding each other, lifetime after lifetime? That's the good shit right there. Obsessed.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

The story that walked into my head that made me start writing. It's a crazy ambitious story - Basic premise is that instead of the Sheikah technology being banned by the ancient king, the Sheikah themselves were banished from the lands of Hyrule. In the interim, Hyrule has been through many wars, dynasties and factions have all risen and fallen, and the bloodline of the Goddess has been forgotten. No one remembers any of the old stories. Zelda is a farm girl training to become a healer like her mother, Link is the son of the king who won the throne after lead a successful campaign against the Zora, and into all of this comes a young Impa, drawn back to Hyrule after thousands of years away, tormented by visions of calamity, a prophecy her people have passed down for millenia, knowing that Hylia would recall them to the land of their ancestors when the time was right. It's anti-monarchy, it's about climate change, it's about falling in love and renouncing power in order to fulfill a greater purpose, it's about knowing yourself, it's about righting ancestral wrongs, and I do not think it will ever be finished but I do like to come back to it every once in a while.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Coming up with interesting concepts!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Executing interesting concepts?

But in all seriousness, I know I still have a lot to learn as a writer. I'm overly descriptive, I have long run-on sentences, dialogue tags are my nemesis, and I struggle to write with real depth of character.

I do think I'm a good storyteller. I am just still honing those skills.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I think it's great! I am obsessed with conlangs - I think they're so fucking cool. For writing in existing languages, as long as you're familiar with the language, or getting someone to look it over and not just running things through google translate, I think that's wonderful.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Captain America.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

That child of mine my beloved

This was really fun, thanks y'all!

Tagging @louwhose @newtsnaturethings @wanderingnightingale and @bahbahhh ! I'm sure y'all have already been tagged but add me to the pile of fans who want to hear more about your work :D

[actualbird]

Zak…idk how much of breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom spoilers you’re actually privy to but lemme tell u…zelink and lukerosa have the delicious parallels of the dedicated hero and the designated by the gods (or designated by the Canon) heroine. There’s also this other detail in the second game but it’s super spoilery so I can’t rlly say it. Tears of Kingdom in particular made me think of that one card where Luke was a knight too in the whole doing whatever it takes to find the Beloved.

ooohhhh i actually personally do not know.......Anything about botw or totk hvjhVJSDF ive never played either nor have i played any zelda game ever ;w;

BUT my older sister is super into botw and totk and shes told me about the story and also about Something Specific that happened in totk that made her, a huge zelink fan, just burst into sobs. SO I KINDA UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS ASK IS SAYING AJHSFOLSFHVASLF

the fantasy/magic setting rlly suits lukerosa's brand of romance a LOT because of those themes of nearly inhumanly dedicated devotion and grand acts of sacrifice/selflessness ingrained into both luke and mc in their relationship. like my god, sometimes the shit luke in regular society canon dont feel like things a person should be saying in 2030s regular earth, it sounds like something a knight who walked straight outta a storybook would be

....huh

.......hey so silly idea for an au, but au where mc is lawyer like she is in regular canon 2030s earth universe and luke is a knight who gets isekai'd into it from his medieval fantasy world

................hey so enchanted au for lukerosa

.....................i think it'd be super cute for luke the knight to have to deal with 2030s futuristic stellis HAHAHAHJVSDFKJ.….and a possibly more cynical mc who didnt have a childhood best friend growing up but the moment she picks up this weirdo fantasy knight from a literal dumpster, it's like shes found someone who connects with her heart so comfortably like theyve known each other for ages.

//immediately tries to stop thinking about that because i have too many fic wips of my own and also it's like 6am and i have to take my cat to his vet check up jhvkjVKJHSDF

[rotisseries]

do you want to ramble about botw and totk?

this got long

YESSSSSS OK SO. botw zelda. I'm starting this off with a real attention grabber for you she's strangers coded to me. anyway. plotline of botw. the last time this hyrule has had a ganon encounter was 10k years ago. hyrule's whole thing is that the legend of the knight and the princess and the evil is a legend that has been passed down for generations, (sidenote I kind of hold the fun little headcanon that each zelda game is its own version of the same folktale, as opposed to being part of a real linear history, because frankly I know the devs don't actually care about the canonical timeline and I think some fans care too much. timeline is still fun though) so as you can imagine, 10k years, the current hyrule of botw is VERY divorced from its history, that's a pretty large part of botw in general, reconciling with the past. anyway the sheer lack of knowledge about the legend and the goddess power and anything related to it is making things very difficult for zelda. they have reason to believe that they're gonna have another ganon encounter soon, they've uncovered all these ancient robots and mechas that were used in the last battle, they're assembling a team of pilots for the mechas, they've gotten the current wielder of the master sword to protect the princess (link and zelda are like. 16/17 for the duration of the plot but link got the master sword at like 12. fucked up) and zelda is being expected to access her divine power, she can't. she doesn't know how, and her mother died when she was 6 (she didn't cry at the funeral. fucked) so she can't go to her for guidance, and her father is having her go to, and has been having her do this for years now, to sacred spring after sacred spring to pray in the hopes of accessing it. so she's dealing with a lot of pressure, and she just wants to work on the robots she is such a scientific mind its the cutest, zelink infodumping scenes my beloved, but she's also really focused on the ancient tech cause it's the only way she can think of to help, and her dad just gets more mad (her dad is such a shitbag. at some point he tells her she's the heir to a throne of nothing but failure. asswipe) about it cause he thinks she's not focusing enough on getting her powers so she feels powerless she feels like a failure and when link gets assigned to protect her it causes a lot of initial dislike for him because, to her, he's this embodiment of destined perfection she can't reach. he has the master sword he's their most skilled and youngest swordsman she's just a failure she's convinced he must hate her. he must think she's useless. and link won't communicate with her (this is the first zelda game with voiced lines and so therefore the first one where they give a canonical reason he doesn't say anything in cutscenes. it's because of the endless amount of pressure he's under, he feels like he has to be the perfect stoic swordsman. I could kill myself) so it's not really helping. eventually he saves her life from some yiga clan grunts and the yiga clan are basically evil ninjas and they grow to be friends, she confides in him in cutscenes, she has a diary you can find that implies he confided in her off screen, fun stuff, but she's not any closer to getting her power. then, on her 17th birthday, she goes up to the spring of wisdom to pray, (yes there are two others they are the springs of power and courage) because that's the hyrulean age of majority and adults are the only ones allowed to go up the mountain to the spring, and she has a feeling it's the last time. it will work, or it won't. they come down the mountain to where the champions are waiting (the champions are the aforementioned mecha pilots and I haven't really talked about them but they're all really good characters I love them also totk has a second gen of champions basically that are called the sages and I like the sages but I still prefer the champions I found out at some point not everyone feels the same way which. I genuinely don't get. but I'm gonna shut up about that now) and it hasn't worked. zelda doesn't have her power.

they're in the middle of comforting her, they get cut off by this horrible earthquake, they look towards the castle, and there’s this swirling mass over the castle, ganon is attacking. the champions rush to their mechas, and link and zelda run. the number one priority is to keep zelda alive. they head for hateno fort. (yes as in hateno the town with the house in totk. you can buy the house in botw and there’s a theory it was link's childhood home) they possibly went to the castle first and found out exactly what happened though, because on the way to hateno, zelda has a breakdown, screaming and crying about how everyone is dead and its all her fault, and they ARE dead. everyone at the castle is definitely dead, but ganon also managed to posses every single one of the hundreds of robots they had, AND had put evil blights in the mechas to ambush the champions, and the robots are wreaking havoc and the champions die in a losing battle in what was supposed to be their weapons of war. zelda and link make it to the field outside hateno, but there’s still robots everywhere, and link is on his last legs protecting zelda. he's about to get shot, and then she pushes him out of the way and finally has her divine power, she shuts down all the robots, and then turns to where link has collapsed. he dies in her arms. he gets taken to this shrine of resurrection to be healed until he can fight again, and zelda heads to the castle to hold ganon off until link is ready. she waits for 100 years.

100 years goes by, link wakes up an amnesiac, has to be given the gist of it, and then you wander around hyrule finding out all that ^ through various recovered memories (there’s a similar game mechanic in totk but it doesn't work as well imo bc in botw you can discover them at random and nothing bad happens, you already know how this story ends, whereas in totk it DOES spoil shit) you have to go free each of the mechas from the evil blights (which btw have similar weapons and fighting styles as the champions but otherwise bear no similarities and I just think it would've been fucked if they looked like the possessed bodies of the champions idk) and then you gotta go save zelda from the castle. you and her end ganon, it's an emotional meeting, the ghosts you were haunted by fade, and then the two of them leave, presumably to rebuild hyrule. so basically botw is about reconciling with the past, looking to it for guidance and forgiving yourself for the failures but moving on in spite of it, and I'm fucking normal

and then totk. so. link and zelda are investigating ruins under the castle cause weird shit has been happening lately, gross magic pouring out and making people sick. and then they get really deep, and find the decimated corpse of ganon, the man, being held by a magical hand. the magic is coming from him. ganon wakes up when they get in there, goes to attack them with the magic, link gets his arm fucked up and also the master sword this will be relevant later, and zelda falls down into this pit, link jumps after her, but he's saved by the aforementioned magic hand, he loses zelda. they're reaching for each other. also totk takes place like 6ish years after botw that's his common law wife of 6 years. and they lost each other once already for 100 years. oh god I'm so upset. anyway then the whole plot, is trying to find zelda. you wake up on some sky islands there are sky islands, your arm is now replaced with the magic arm, and the broken master sword has to be put in this mysterious glowing golden light. you go around you get help from your friends, who get dubbed the sages, and you discover, through a game mechanism similar to the lost memories botw quest, that zelda fell back in time. zelda has light powers as a general thing that's usually her power, in some games she also has prophetic visions, and in totk, you find out she also has time powers in her ancestry, and she accidentally sent herself back in time. at least 10k years most likely more. and she's hanging out with her ancestors, the first king and queen of hyrule. (timeline wise they are not actually the first king and queen of hyrule but whatever) the king is an anthropomorphic llama?? from the sky islands. zelda franchise tends to have furry species btw. anyway ganondorf is a threat back then too and zelda has to help the king and queen come up with a plan to defeat him it's a really fun journey she gets a lot of healing to that self esteem that her dad fucked up BUT ANYWAY. they realize they won't be able to permanently get rid of ganon and zelda has unbelievable amounts of faith in link and says that if they can contain ganon for now you can take care of it in the future, the king ends up having to sacrifice himself, and his arm, to keep ganon contained. and zelda still has no way back home to her time. then she sees this glowing golden light, and whoo! there's the master sword! it's still fucked up though. the only way to fix the sword is through bathing it in sacred power, and it's REALLY damaged, and zelda STILL HAS NO WAY HOME. so she turns herself into a dragon. there's these special stones that amplify magical power, she has one, and swallowing it turns you into an immortal dragon, at the cost of losing yourself. she holds the sword to herself, and it's going to bathe in her sacred power for 10k years or more. at the point you find out about this it's so fucked up cause you come out of the cutscene and you're surrounded by silent princess flowers and oh my god I haven't even explained the silent princess symbolism to you oh my god that's a whole other thing, anyway and dragon zelda is flying above you and at this point you've seen her around the map several other times and there were 3 other dragons in botw so you were kinda confused where this one came from but it was cool and it's just. ugh it's so fucked up. I kinda guessed the possibility early I just didn't want to acknowledge it. anyway then you get the sword from dragon zelda and it is stuck in her forehead poor baby and the sword claim scene is GORGEOUS and to the best of your knowledge and link's knowledge zelda is gone forever, and she did this for you. IT'S SO FUCKEDDDD and then when you get to fighting ganon he eventually turns himself into a dragon and dragon zelda comes to help you battle it out with dragon ganon and when you finally kill him the spirits? of zelda's ancestors show up, I think via the magical hand, and the one with time powers reverse both link's arm damage and zelda's draconification, and then you're both falling, and he has to catch her.

and it mirrors the last time she fell, when he lost her, and this time he catches her, and he hugs her to him, and they fall into a pond, and he carries her out and she wakes up and looks at him and says that she was in a deep sleep and woke up when she felt a warm loving embrace and "oh link! I'm home" and AUGHHHHHHGH SHE HAD SO MUCH FAITH IN HIM THEY'RE SO IN LOVE I'M GONNA THROW UP.

anyway so totk continues botw's themes of contending with the past and moving past old failures and making things right, but it also is really good as a sequel to botw in that botw is a very lonesome journey, and everything about totk emphasizes that you are no longer alone. you have friends to help you, it's no longer you alone in world you don't recognize that doesn't remember you, it's you having help. you don’t need to do it alone anymore. and it's just. UGHHHH. I like botw better than totk I think totk's story feels a bit lacking at times? but I think overall it works really well as a sequel in continuing and working with the themes that botw has