#even when he's not explicitly interacting with zelda

[iti-iskuna]

ngl i find it... interesting... that the zelink fic i write from zelda's pov gets a lot less traction/attention on ao3 than the fic i write from link's pov 🤔

[ixtaek]

May as well post my TotK rewrite ideas which I largely was freewheeling while playing with my sister then tried to write while half asleep.

Under the readmore because it does get long and ramble-y due to being written while I was sick.

Rauru is Hylian and explicitly descended from the Link and Zelda in Skyward Sword, Sonia is now Sheikah (who are native to the surface). There are no Zonai.

First parts of the story basically the same. Zelda vanishes. Link gets a new arm. Ganondorf suavamente (sorry my siblings and I have been watching a lot of terminal-montage lately)

Rauru is a little more proactive telling you about the imprisoning war and directing you to find new Sages. He appears more often in the plot to greet the new Sage. Also you keep the master sword and with each stone you reclaim, it heals more.

Lightning is removed—Riju is Sage of Spirit because that's what the Gerudo were originally. Instead of Mineru surviving till the present as a Sage, Paya is the Sage of Shadow. Mineru is still a character though!

The memories shown to you by the Sages as you gather secret stones vary more—they show the struggles their people faced and their interaction as individuals with Rauru and Sonia. Each faced unique hardships, which almost parallel the disasters occurring in modern Hyrule but not exactly, before pledging their people to join Rauru’s nation and them becoming a Sage and using that power to save their people.

Mineru is a researcher studying the Sheikah tech—it’s implied or outright stated she is the nexus of the “new” tech we get in the game. She still put herself into a machine, but she is immobile and acts like Cherry as a source of Ancient Hylian Tech weapons.

The Divine Beasts are crashed around Hyrule, as well as the Sonia-Rauru shrines and temples. This isn’t plot relevant it just bugged me. Also some shrines will have puzzles that are already completed—this is randomized on each playthrough. At least one boss will be missing a chunk of health when the fight starts. There’s no explanation as to why.

The underground is now more populated—there’s at least one proper town down there, with wandering merchants and quests…. But almost every friendly NPC is a ghost. It’s hard to tell till you talk to them though, so Yiga still blend in. It quickly becomes clear the ghosts range in eras (maybe some even resemble NPCs from former titles?) but most are from Rauru’s era. All of Zelda’s memories are in the Depths.

Penn still exists as does his quest (see below). But Kass does too. Because I love him.

Here’s where I actually plot: Back in the imprisoning era, Ganondorf emerged as a threat. The Hylian king, accompanied by his Sheikah wife, had the blood of the goddess needed to seal him, and managed to do so without using the Master Sword. This elevated him to a hero status, and the various leaders swore fealty in exchange for his aid in lingering crises. All was well, and a child was even born, named for her fabled ancestor, Zelda. Unfortunately, the praise began to swell the king’s head. He became more demanding, wanting to build a grander Temple of Time to secure his legacy, raising portions of land to recreate his ancestor's home (Skyloft), exacting larger tributes to build his castle, and eventually letting his suspicion of the Gerudo lead him to declaring them outcasts and trying to slay the Gerudo sage. Sonia stood against him, and in his rage at her “treason” he struck her down. Rauru went mad with grief, revealing the sacred stones to be a method of controlling those whom he gave more power to. Realizing the danger of the king’s madness, the princess’ Sheikah nursemaid spirited baby Zelda away to keep her safe. Enraged at this kidnapping and believing that Sonia’s people would try to avenge her death, he used his Sages to betray the Sheikah and kill many, which is the betrayal that led to them adding the tear to the crest. For years he ruled as a bloody tyrant, leading to the ghosts in the underground, before he was opposed by a mysterious Sheikah warrior, one whom he called “the Sheik”. The Sheikah rebellion grew, stopping the Sages and rallying the people behind Sheik. In a desperate move, Rauru released Ganondorf and tried to control him through his sacred stone, but both were sealed under the king’s castle by Sheik herself, who of course was the now-grown Princess Zelda, Rauru’s daughter. You find all of this out by discovering (your) Zelda’s memories—when she fell into the Depth she was gravely injured and put her body in stasis, but because she was in the Depths her ghost was able to split form her body to roam freely and research this. The shrines that you’ve found finished and bosses that have health missing are her handiwork. The Penn sightings aren’t evil Zelda (or at least the ones that aren’t Yiga…) but people literally seeing her ghost. She didn’t talk to Link because she knew seeing her like that would distress him. You reunite her with her body and the Sages heal her, then go face Ganondorf. The fight is normal at first, except Zelda and the Sages get to help till Ganondorf knocks them all out except Zelda. But instead of the Dark Dragon, Ganon suddenly crumples… and the Sages rise up and attack you instead. You and Zelda fight them off and Rauru appears, wondering how you can be bathed in his power but still keep your wills. Zelda asks what he hopes to accomplish, and he dismisses her, saying he is creating the Hyrule he and Sonia deserved—one where his will is absolute over all, till even death will bend to it. Zelda pleads with him, saying Sonia wouldn’t have wanted this, but he grows delusional and confuses her for Sheik. Saying she’s made a mistake, he seizes control of her through the sacred stone from the beginning of the game and turns her into the Light Dragon, which becomes the final boss. The reason he could not overcome Link was Fi—the sword of evil’s bane rejected his control while absorbing his power the whole game. You fight the Light Dragon, and as you hesitate to land the killing blow, Sonia’s ghost appears and turns Zelda back with her Time power, with the overwhelming power Rauru had forced into her snapping back to him. Rauru reaches for his wife, being consumed by the power coming off Zelda, but she refuses his hand, not for what he did to her, but for what he’s done to everyone. You catch Zelda as in the end of the game. Also you get to keep your house. That was messed up man.

[seandwalsh]

If it’s not too much to ask, could you provide a rundown of Mario and Peach’s relationship throughout the history of the games — any developer insights and supporting material included if applicable? Their interactions have never failed to make me smile; I feel like every moment between them, no matter how simple, elevate my enjoyment of the games.

Do you have a favorite moment? For me, I think the ending of the first Paper Mario is my definitive Mario and Peach moment. Everything from the music to the scenery to how innocent it plays out perfectly encapsulates their relationship.

While other series, like Splatoon or The Legend of Zelda tend to have a greater focus on their worldbuilding and backstory, I think Mario’s greatest strength when it comes to its lore is its rich characters and how their relationships come together. You don’t follow the same main cast in The Legend of Zelda for more than a game or two at a time. With Mario, well - he’s always the same Mario. He’s familiar, and his personality is so strong that he continues to be the Mario we know, no matter the medium. It seems that Mario’s current primary developers, Yoshiaki Koizumi and Kenta Motokura, feel the same way:

"No matter what worlds he takes on, Mario remains Mario. Maybe this is strange but I find that fact very comforting,"

[Source: Yoshiaki Koizumi, Director and Producer of the Super Mario series, CNN Business, September 2020]

“…you can take Mario, or a Mario franchise character, and put them in pretty much any situation and it makes it okay. […] Mario carries it off.”

[Source: Kenta Motokura, Designer and Director of the Super Mario series, GameInformer, June 2017]

“Mario himself is a very strong character, so wherever he is he is strong enough to stand alone and be a good character. And even if he's next to a dinosaur, he's Mario!”

[Source: Kenta Motokura, Designer and Director of the Super Mario series, Metro, June 2017]

That’s not to say that Mario doesn’t have quite in-depth worldbuilding and backstory as well, but I think these characters are greatly understood by the people who work with them while largely being overlooked, misunderstood or written off by fans.

This is why relationships, like the one shared between Mario and Peach, can be such a highlight for players.

Mario and Peach, while not explicitly dating, are absolutely smitten with each other.

In fact, it seems that Mario instantly fell in love with Peach the moment he saw her, when she kissed him in Super Mario Bros.. Mario was so in love with Princess Peach that, according to the team behind Donkey Kong (Game Boy), it’s what caused Mario to break up with Pauline:

“Apparently the land of mushrooms is somehow in the vicinity of Donkey Kong's stomping ground that appears at the end [of Donkey Kong (Game Boy)]. Around that point, he meets Peach, and probably starts to have a change of heart [about Pauline] (laughs).”

[Source: Shigeru Miyamoto, Producer of Donkey Kong (Game Boy), Game Boy Donkey Kong Wonder Life Special - APE Inc. Official Nintendo Guide, June 1994]

“After that, Mario became famous, so Pauline must have gotten dumped (laughs).”

[Source: Masayuki Kameyama, Director of Donkey Kong (Game Boy), Game Boy Donkey Kong Wonder Life Special - APE Inc. Official Nintendo Guide, June 1994]

Paper Mario in its entirety is certainly a great example of Mario and Peach’s relationship. While the ending where they watch the fireworks is a highlight, the intro also showcases her attempts to spend time with Mario, eagerly awaiting him in the upper parts of the castle and wanting him to accompany her to the balcony.

“Oh! By the way, Princess Peach has been waiting for you.”

[Source: A Green Toad Girl, Staff of Princess Peach’s Castle, Non-player Character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64), February 2001]

“I think Princess Peach has been looking forward to seeing you since this morning, Mario. She's been restless... hee hee hee... How cute...”

[Source: A Pink Toad Girl, Staff of Princess Peach’s Castle, Non-player Character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64), February 2001]

“Oh, Mario! You came to the party to see me! You're so sweet! Thank you!♥ I was just resting a bit. It gets tiring, greeting all those guests out there! Nobody will bother us here. Shall we relax and chat, just the two of us? It was a lovely day today, so I'm sure it's comfortable out on the balcony right now. Would you accompany me, Mario?”

[Source: Princess Peach, Ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, Non-player Character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64), February 2001]

She gets worried about him while she’s kidnapped:

“I wonder what Mario is doing right now... I wonder if he's hurt... I'm so worried about him!”

[Source: Princess Peach, Ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, Non-player Character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64), February 2001]

Later on, we even learn that Princess Peach keeps a photo of Mario beside her bed, which she reacts to with a heart emoticon:

“A photo of Mario.♥”

She even gets embarrassed about it when Twink points it out.

Generally, the game makes an effort to highlight Mario and Peach’s love for each other beyond most other games in the series:

“Do you know of a place called Shooting Star Summit? It's near this castle. It's such a romantic place... It's definitely the best place for a date. Trust me. Maybe you ought to, you know, ask the princess to go there...”

[Source: A Toad, Resident of the Mushroom Kingdom, Non-player Character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64), February 2001]

“Does Princess Peach have a special man in her life? She's such a lovely lady... Whoever she loves must be very special indeed...”

[Source: A Green Toad, Resident of the Mushroom Kingdom, Non-player Character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64), February 2001]

Princess Peach has a very specific view of love, which she has actually expressed before in-game:

“Love... How do I explain? Love tells you when you want to be with a person forever. It makes you feel happy just to see that person happy, smiling...having fun. When you love someone, you will do anything to help when he or she is in trouble.”

[Source: Princess Peach, Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom, Playable Character in Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door, October 2004]

It’s pretty clear that when she says this, she’s thinking about Mario, between his obvious outwardly happy nature or his willingness to do anything to help her when she’s in trouble. This is reflected in Peach’s own actions in Super Princess Peach, when she saves Mario from Bowser’s clutches. It’s clear from her actions across various games that Peach would do anything to help Mario, and she’s comforted by him even in times of peril.

From taking Mario on a romantic vacation in Super Mario Sunshine, to talking about how caring he is with her paper counterpart, to her team name with him being “Cutest Couple” in Mario Party 5 and Mario Party 6, it’s clear that these two have a strong, devoted and loving relationship with one-another.

But when it comes to my personal favorite moment between them, I feel that my answer is quite a controversial one.

My favourite moment between Mario and Peach is the ending of Super Mario Odyssey.

Now, now. Put your pitchforks away. The main issue with this is that people tend to completely misinterpret the meaning behind this ending, and while I’m not going to go into too much detail here, I think it’s important to understand the intended themes of Super Mario Odyssey.

“[Super Mario Odyssey] is a journey following Mario to save Princess Peach, one of his most [beloved], so we wanted to make this an epic journey.”

[Source: Kenta Motokura, Director of Super Mario Odyssey, Vice, June 2017]

“Mario and Peach's relationship has been a big part of the games for a long [time], and in this game we're getting deeper into it!”

[Source: Kenta Motokura, Director of Super Mario Odyssey, GQ, October 2017]

“I've always thought that Mario carries a bit of a torch for Peach. I think that's true even back in the 2D Mario games. If not, he wouldn't be wasting his time rescuing her over and over again. [As for if Peach feels the same way,] The heart of a woman is a mystery.”

[Source: Yoshiaki Koizumi, Producer of Super Mario Odyssey, GameInformer, June 2017]

It’s clear that Super Mario Odyssey’s story exists to highlight the intricacies of the relationship between Peach and Mario in ways that hadn’t been explored previously. This is why the ending of Super Mario Odyssey is so excellent to me.

“The ending of Super Mario Odyssey is the culmination of an adventure both magnificent and personal. An upbeat song plays in the background while the scene unfolds: the joy of being reunited with someone you've missed, the slight embarrassment that comes with thinking of the one you love, Mario and Bowser's open honesty, and Peach's independence. Through the theme of marriage - which had never been addressed in the series before we see another side of Mario, Peach, and Bowser. The relationship between the three looks like it'll continue for years to come. The odyssey they've embarked on is far from over!”

[Source: Kenta Motokura, Director of Super Mario Odyssey, The Art of Super Mario Odyssey, September 2018]

Mario finally makes his feelings known to Peach, through a proposal, but he does so in the worst possible way. Peach refuses to marry Mario because he was acting immaturely. Mario cannot handle losing control of a bad situation and often makes rash decisions. While the latter is sometimes a positive trait for him, in this instance it’s a flaw which caused him to fight Bowser for Peach’s hand. You can hear Mario grunting while attempting to push Bowser out of the way and get Peach to accept him.

This is not the Mario that Peach knows. It is not the Mario that she loves. Peach had just been kidnapped from her home, dragged around the world and almost forcefully married to a man she’s romantically repulsed by. She was rescued by the man she loves in the nick of time who was finally about to make his move and propose to her, before Bowser barged back in and ruined the moment, and Mario started acting irrationally. She was fed up, and rightfully so.

So she turns down Mario’s proposal, and leaves. Peach does not turn down Mario’s proposal because she doesn’t love him - it’s abundantly clear that she loves him very much - she turns him down because it was the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

However, her love for the Mario she knows still rings true. Their relationship is so strong that even after all of that, they quickly recover, as is illuminated through Peach’s forgiveness. She takes a breath and calls out to Mario, inviting him to come home with her. It’s a showcase of the love they share for one-another, one more potent than we’ve seen before anywhere else. A truly well-crafted study of these characters and the intricacies of their interwoven lives.

[cookie-waffle]

here are my new Zelink totk theories with added context from minor spoilers:

- The American localization is gonna cut out/change a LOT of the more explicitly romantic subtext because american parents are pretty notorious for getting super easily offended. Directly implying that Link and Zelda share a bed is probably not seen as a big deal at all in Japan, but I can def see some of the more conservative american parents having a problem with it.

- Zelda is NOT gonna have any kind of pregnancy reveal at the end. Not just for the aforementioned reason, but also because it would heavily imply that Link is assigned male and Auonuma has actually stated in an interview that he doesn’t want to 100% confirm Link as male. (it’s why we don’t see Linkle in the mainline games)

- NPCs are gonna be referencing/gossiping/teasing Link about the relationship at some points. Link may even get dialogue options stating that he’s taken or likes someone else already when he gets flirted with.

- I do not think Nintendo is likely to blatantly just say in the game that they’re an item. They’re likely gonna rely heavily on obvious subtext, even in the Japanese vers.

- If I’m wrong about the last one…. ya know, I had this VERY low on my “likely to happen” list, but, the fact that they’re sharing a bed means that them kissing in a cutscene is not off the table.

- Link is either gonna show MUCH more emotion in this game while interacting with Zelda, or, Nintendo is gonna chicken out and have him stand around like 🧍again in every single cutscene because they don’t wanna disappoint fans who don’t ship zelink. (Usually I’d sorta understand but, they REALLY wrote themselves into a corner here. If Link isn’t at least visibly comfortable with her then that’s just shit writing)

- No, they aren’t gonna bone. Nor will there be any sort of reference to sexual contact between them. But, I also think a lot of teen and adult players might just sorta automatically assume that it happens because not only are they living together domestically, but they’re also around 23-24 yrs old now. Lot of time has passed. More than enough to, ya know…. “do stuff”

- There are likely more of Zelda’s diary entries you can find that give additional context to the relationship. Maybe she has another secret one in Hyrule castle or hidden in Hateno.

- Zelda’s room in the castle might be renovated now. And if it is, it’s very likely that it’ll be built to accommodate Link as well. There may even be some very cute easter eggs in her room like in Skyward Sword.

- Paya is gonna have some shit to say in her diary FOR SURE lmaoo. Probably something like “I’m so happy for them!” *you see what look like water droplet stains on the pages*

-The two thrones in the castle may actually have some subtle implications behind it. But I’m still not super confident that we’ll see Link become king. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that it will happen. But I’m just not used to Nintendo being so on the nose about their relationship. Them sleeping in the same bed is EXTREMELY out of left field for this franchise.

- There’s gonna be a musical reference to, or perhaps even remix, of “Romance in the Air” from Skyward Sword. And you know what? I’m gonna scream and cry and fucking explode because oh my god that is so romantic.

- No, Zelda is not gonna die. This franchise practically spawns money directly into Nintendo HQ. They are not gonna kill off the character who’s bloonline ensures more Zelda games.

[gainaxvel3o]

Wander as a deconstruction of Link

After another playthrough of Shadow of the Colossus, I had this strange thought in the back of my mind. Talking it over with a friend, I realized the protagonist of the game, Wander, had some aspects shared with Link from the Legend of Zelda, and that there was some interesting stuff worth talking about in terms of what they have in common, but more importantly, how they effectively contrast. I argue that Wander comes across as a weird inversion of Link once you compare them.

It's not one to one, Link never talks while Wander does a couple of times in the beginning, but still. Both are stoic sword wielders out on a quest. With their trusty horse, they travel across distant lands to find and kill monsters to fulfill their goal. Pretty surface level observations, sure, but both are united by an unwavering determination to see their quest through to the end.

In Link's world, that determination is portrayed as a heroic one. Why not? In those games, you are given a divine mandate to save the world from an evil villain (which is not always, but usually Ganondorf). He rescues people, performs sidequests, solves puzzles inside of dungeons, rescues the princess and fights evil. The monsters are terrors that threaten people, of course Link has to stop them. In a fantasy world with good vs evil morality and clear cut instructions, Link shines bright as a purely noble, well-intentioned hero. No matter how dark the situation gets, like the moon falling or the world being forced through an apocalypse, there is no question that Link is a good and what he does is good. His determination is a guiding light to the characters in-universe, with no real reason to question it.

They say a tragedy is putting the hero in the wrong story. If that's true, then Wander is an example of it in action. For starters, the story of Shadow of the Colossus is intentionally left ambiguous and up to interpretation. We know that Wander is carrying a woman named Mono to a forbidden land, we know that he's making a deal with Dormin to resurrect her from a cursed fate, and we know that he has to exterminate the Colossi. At the very end, we learn that Wander took his sword, the only thing that can kill a Colossus, from a man named Emon. Dormin posses his body but Emon performs some ritual that takes down Wander, and we last see Mono holding a horned baby implied to be him. We have bullet points, but at no point do we get real answers. What is Mono to Wander? A lover, friend or sister? What are the Colossi beyond being Dormin's soul jars? Is Dormin evil? Emon considers them such, but is he right? We don't know, and it wouldn't suit the game to let us know.

From the get-go, Shadow of the Colossus is a gray canvas so we're only allowed to judge Wander based on what he does on the quest. Okay, then what does he do? Well, we know he's trying to resurrect Mono, a very personal motivation. We know it goes against the natural laws of his world, as both Emon and Dormin point out. There are no townspeople in the Forbidden Lands, so we don't get to see how Wander typically interacts with others or get sidequests to solve/make the world better. The Colossi don't have minions protecting them, so Wander doesn't get impressions of them beyond what he sees. It's just him and Agro crossing great distances to reach the Colossi and wipe them out. Most of the time, a Colossus would just be minding their own business when some weird dude with a sword runs up to stab 'em. They are the only things to do in the game.

Because the game's story is minimalist in details, the morality of Wander's actions isn't so clearly defined the way Link's usually are. Because of this, Wander's determination can be off-putting, even monstrous, due to not having much of a greater context than the moment. He is explicitly killing the Colossi, making them bleed, using fire to scare one, firing arrows into airbags into another, making them suffer, for a selfish desire to save one person. Whatever regrets Wander has, like Agro's supposed death, he sets it aside for his goal. If we see Dormin as evil, Wander might even be potentially damning the world to save Mono. His determination is framed as a tragic rather than heroic.

In this light, Wander comes across as a strange, bizarre inversion of Link, actively defying destiny and murdering for his own sake. At best, he's an anti-hero fulfilling dirty acts. At worst, he's the villain. We don't know, because Shadow of the Colossus refuses to answer. It's all muddied waters compared to Zelda, where the hero's actons are put in world-saving contexts. Even Link's most morally ambiguous journey, the ordeal of the Wind Fish, is justified in part with rescuing him from nightmares attacking his mind. I doubt the designers behind Shadow of the Colossus had this in their thought process, but it's pretty interesting to compare the two, especially as Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom seem to take some inspiration from SotC (from the climbing mechanics, the wide open sandbox, the Divine Beasts, etc).

[fleetwood-cheese]

With tears of the kingdom coming out this year, I wanted to finally make a post about something that's been on my mind about botw. Namely, the memory cutscences, and specifically the one available at the Lanayru promenade. It's the memory players are most likely to find first (intentionally, at least, and its definitely the one I found first) and thus serves as an introduction to how the memories work and the characters within them, and it does this very very well in my opinion.

Firstly, it does an excellent job of being player's first immersive experience with the plot, specifically the story elements from 100 years ago. it introduces Zelda's struggle with her powers, that she doesn't have them and that's a huge deal (esp. bc so many prior Zeldas seem to have a solid grasp of their powers before the game even begins, or the development happens offscreen). It doesn't mention them by name, but it lets you know that there's something Zelda is supposed to be doing, something she's supposed to have or be able to do, that she can't. We know that whatever it is Zelda's struggling with is important, that the trip here was specifically for that, and that the results are disappointing. I'd probably have to replay the entire game (or at least the beginning) to confirm this, but I'm fairly confident this is the first time that Zelda struggling is brought up at all; before then the narrative has largely been that Calamity was so much more powerful than expected and no one was prepared for it and that everyone survived because of Zelda's sacrifice sealing Ganon in the castle. It's not wrong, its just the last part of the picture instead of the whole of it.

It also does a good job of introducing the Champions and their personalities to us. Its clear through the dialouge and body language that Daruk is determined, with a casually affectionate personality (he gives Link a nickname, immediately takes charge of the situation when Ganon appears, etc). Revali is clearly decisive and condifent, with his scoff alluding to his rivalry with Link. Urbosa is supportive but logical and practical, and her interactions with Zelda clearly reveal that they have a close relationship. Mipha is shy and her healer status is explicitly mentioned, with a very slight foreshadowing to her feelings for Link without being immediately obvious (it's very clear on a second play through). In just a few minutes we have a distinct, recognizable grasp on 4 different characters and their personailties, without ever needing to actually say their names out loud. Not to mention this is also likely the player's first introduction to thier voices and possibly the designs for their racing, depending on how thorough a given player is about spoilers.

It also introduces us to Zelda as a person, not a disembodied, guiding voice or a myth to be told to curious travelers. It doesn't start with her rocky relationship with Link, which could (and did, for some players, seriously shape thier perceptions of her), but as a girl under enormous pressure. Everyone in this scene expects something from her, and she's just failed to deliver, and we see how downtrodden and disappointed she is because of it. When the calamity appears, she knows she can't help fight but is determined to help in some way. She's almost desperate to be useful, despite her physical limitations and importance. This is a totally different way of potraying Zelda than most games give you, especially for a first look at her face. Most games introduce her as elegant or competent, such as Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, or as a friend you should care about, such as Minish Cap or Skyward Swords' childhood friend and companion. Botw Zelda is a radical change from that.

Overall, this cutscene does exactly what it's supposed to, especially if it's the first one you find. It gets you intrigued with the plot and interested in its characters, sets up Ganon's return as a major event and turning point, and clues in the player that what their seeing is the beginning of the end of this part of the story. This is memory #15 in the slate's memory, you've got a lot of story before this to find and time to create the rest of it however you decide to play the game.

[joculatrixster]

13, 14 and 18 for the ask game. >:)

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

LOZ - Ganondorf is not an interesting or cool character, hes actually quite bland. no like litterly i find him so boring as a character i barely even think about him.

Ganon is barely better but thats only bc hes a mindless beast fueled of rage and hatred which is interesting as a cautionary tale for those who seek to abuse their power and a great insight on what could happen to Link or Zelda if they ever lose themselves to their aspects of Courage/Wisdom becomign mroe spirit or god than mrotal lsogn their minds in the process and only being able to focus on one key duty of which for Ganon is to rule Hyrule(or destroy in more modern games like botw) but i have a few theories on what could happen to Link/Zelda if THEY ever abused the Triforce like Ganon did and gave up their humanity to their power

...that being said tho Ganondorf on his own just is not that interesting to me as a character. as a foil? great! as a dark reflection of what Link or Zelda could become? amazing! as what one could become when pushed to the edge and a living embodiment of the failures of Hyrule? perfection! on his own as a character i would make interact w/ others just bc i think he has something new or nuanced to say? ...no.

granted! i have not seen him in Twilight Princess and i heard he is quite good in that game so hey maybe he shapes up but as i am now i do not think hes all that interesting

Pokemon - IDK how unpopular this is but like Ash has been long overdue for a replacement, tbh i feel like we should have had a new protag every new region bc Ash was originally just Red? how cool would it have been to be ppl like Gold or Sun as protags and following the game's story a bit more closely?? i feel like Ash is just so bland at this point i want something new and fresh!

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

LOZ - Hylia and Demise were bad additions to the LOZ franchise and the mythos should have stayed focusing on the golden goddesses/Triforce for motifs, the fire/earth/power water/ice/wisdom and wind/lighting/courage as core motifs w/ focusing on trios and the number 3 could have been a VERY interesting setting for a power system and cultural beliefs but...

making it an explicitly light vs dark story in Skyward Sword kinda makes Link's role as an equal holder of the Triforce..irrelivant as hes just Zelda's Knight/Hylia's blade now, which is boring af. light vs dark godly battles have been done a zillon times! Zelda being descended form a goddess makes sense dont get me wrong, her family being in charge of the Triforce and the female line having the power of the light force could be foreshadowing or hinting to that. hell even bringing in the idea of divine right to rule would make it make sense but like...Ganondorf being the incarnation of a god's hatred, r u kidding me?

we didnt need a basically Satan to be Ganondorf's predecessor! it makes the fact Ganondorf was also favored by the triforce therefor making the golden goddess's morally grey for protectign such a cruel man not interesting anymore! he had power bc he was FAVORED by power same way Zelda had wisdom bc she was FAVORED by wisdom and Link has courage bc he was FAVORED by courage, their roles in the story r set bc power is a corrupting force, wisdom can clear one's min,d and courage gives u the willpower u need to succeed!!! oh but no, Zelda is just a godqueen and Ganondorf's agency is just gone bc hes cursed and Link isn't more than a pawn to be used in the gods' wars :\ bleh so boring...

Pokemon - the anime's characters r a lot less interesting than their game counterparts...is that unpopular? idk. i grew up on the anime but i loath how some characters are changed or cut out of plots to fit the narrative bc to me personally it erases what made them interesting in order to fit them into new stories and roles which at that point use another character or just like...make anime exclusive ones?? idk its more of an annoyance but i don't have many negative pokemon thoughts lol!

18. Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?

u know, i think tis rlly rlly sad how pathetic some fandom ppl r...like i can NOT image being so invested in other ppl's ships to try and gaslight them into feeling like bad ppl for not liking a popular ship likeeee can u imagine???

"ohhhh look at me im so unsure about myself and scared of having my own opinion i blindly follow fanon and the "right ships" WAA WAA u dont like my ship??? WAAAAAA!!!! SO MEAN SO DELUSIONAL ITS OBVIOUSLY CANON!!!!!!! HOW CAN U NOT SEE IT?!?!?!"

i fucking adore rarepairs and crackships! most of the ships i have i made up on the spot and id be LUCKY if it has more than 10 fics on ao3...ffs im lucky if it even has ONE fic let alone ONE FIC THAT ISNT JUST A ONESHOT PROMPT BOOK.

yall so spoiled on ur "canon" ship that u lost the fun of just dming ur friends at 2am saying "hey what is X and Y kissed?" and having them reply back w/ enthusiastic agreement then be starved for content for the rest of ur life...I did not invent Plain Yogurt x Sourbelt or get invested in the dynamics of Malon x Zelda/Link x Beedle for ppl to tell me im "biased" yes bitch im biased so now what?

lol i cant stand some fandoim ppl this is why i only interact w/ mutual and friends others i can NOT trust to be normal cookie run fandom burned me too much for me not to be suspicious of others who even vaguely hint at thinking that my ships r bad bc they r not popular

[linksthoughtbrambles]

Why Fi Started Talking in Link's Thought Brambles

In Link's Thought Brambles (my whopper of a 56-chapter, 200,000-word BotW AU fanfic), Fi is silent until chapter 48. Some have asked why - here's the answer, and also the answer as to why it has not been explained explicitly in the fic.

This is why I'd started making all those On Awakenings posts in the first place!

WARNING: Spoilers for my fic Link's Thought Brambles and the entire Adventure Log+ AU.

Conclusions from the On Awakenings posts I take as canon in that fic:

(From the analysis posts I put up--links at the end of this post).

a.) Fi can't talk to anyone on her own anymore after Skyward Sword. The person she's talking to... ......... must have their own magical power ......... must be fully aligned with the Triforce of Courage

b.) To be fully aligned with the Triforce of Courage, a person must have demonstrated the courage of a true hero by selflessly sacrificing their own life for someone else. Clarification: ......... The person doesn't have to actually die, but they must believe, at the time they make their sacrifice, that it's very likely they're about to die. It's that willingness to give their life entirely for the sake of the other person that makes them a true hero. ......... Recklessness and bravery are not the same as the courage of a true hero. Recklessness is selfish. Bravery is wonderful but you don't have to believe you're about to die to be brave. The courage of a true hero is a level up from that--the final, most significant form of bravery.

c.) Until that memory on the Blatchery Plain, neither Link nor Zelda in BotW could hear the voice of Fi (and couldn't hear Hylia's voice, either).

d.) There is a difference between Link and Zelda being able to wield magical artifacts (the Master Sword and the Triforce) and being able to use their own innate abilities. Artifacts have their own rules determining when and if someone can access them.

Magical artifacts have rules determining who can use them, when, and how. Above, Link appears to commune with the fully powered Master Sword after completing the entire Trial of the Sword.

I took the following things to be true in the fic, though they aren't necessarily canon:

e.) Pre-Calamity BotW Link is less aligned with the Triforce of Courage than any Link who came before him because of immense social pressure, pushing him toward conformity and recklessness. Clarification: ......... He couldn't hear Fi even if other incarnations of him after SS could hear her because of this. He has to re-awaken. He's been pushed out of alignment even though he had already met the courage of a true hero requirement in previous lives.

f.) Link has access to all of his own innate magical abilities regardless of how aligned he is with the Triiforce of Courage. (So does Zelda!). Those abilities are simply due to his unique soul.

g.) Link has subconscious access to his experiences/memories from previous incarnations of himself. He doesn't remember clearly, but he does, for example, naturally know how to be a total badass with a longsword, and he's a fantastic archer. He requires little training to be an excellent fighter (though training means improvement).

h.) "Alignment" with the Triforce of Courage is on a spectrum. Full alignment comes with all the abilities of the Master Sword, including hearing Fi. Someone courageous but not fully aligned could still interact with the sword a little. (I mostly decided this because I liked it, but there's evidence for it in BotW: Zelda's dream in which she interacts with Hylia but can't hear her).

Why is Fi slient at the beginning of the fic?

Fi is silent at the start of Link's Thought Brambles for the same reason she's silent in pre-Calamity BotW: Fi cannot simply choose to speak to whoever she pleases on her own, and Link is not fully aligned with the Triforce of Courage.

Why can Link do other cool stuff like the flurry rush and spin attack?

Because those abilities have nothing to do with Fi or the Master Sword! That's simply magic Link has by being his awesome self.

When in mid-air or after a well-timed dodge, Link can move so fast he effectively slows time around him. (I like to think of this power as 'time-dilation' because of the lengthening effect we see here and because of the slate's physics-themed runes).

What makes Fi "start talking" in Chapter 48?

I'm putting a huge WARNING sign here because below this is a major spoiler for the fic.

The idea that Fi "starts talking" isn't quite right even though it's how Link himself sees it/phrases it in the fic (he doesn't know exactly what's going on). To him, it seems like she suddenly starts talking, but she's actually been talking to him the entire time (being very snarky about it in the background, too), but he couldn't hear her.

In Short: The moment Fi "starts talking" to Link in the fic is the moment when Link demonstrates the courage of a true hero (just like he and Zelda both did at the Blatchery Plain in BotW). But she doesn't start talking. He suddenly is able to hear.

It was easy for readers to think Fi suddenly started talking because it was an "emergency situation" like she had no choice but to speak (kind of like on Blatchery Plain, where her speaking to Zelda has a chance of saving Link's life), but that wasn't it.

Fi speaks to Zelda for the first time right after her awakening in BotW.

The fic's text provides a clue that Fi didn't simply choose to talk to Link at that moment because of the emergency:

[Link screams because he just saved someone else by choosing to take a potentially mortal blow in their stead.]

-STER CEASE YOUR MOTION, REMAIN STILL-

That 2nd line in all italicized caps is Fi, shouting at Link immediately after he's severely wounded. The clue? Fi's already mid-word when he first hears her.

She was already shouting at him before he could hear--that's why that first word--"MASTER"--is cut in half.

She'd been shouting at him a good deal of that day, trying to warn him about magic she sensed, and while he could feel something was off and she even managed to communicate a direction to him (Fi's dowsing ability), he couldn't hear her words at all.

She'd tried shouting at Zelda, too, but to no avail.

After the first time Link hears Fi, he can always hear her when she speaks, but Zelda still cannot (because she is not yet fully aligned with the Triforce of Courage).

Wait a minute. What about the Melee in Chapter 19?!

Something similar happens in Chapter 19, in which Link is fighting to defend the Princess' honor. It's very brave of him, and noble, and all that, but it does not demonstrate the courage of a true hero for two reasons:

Link didn't believe his fellow soldiers in the melee were intending to kill him. (Beat the snot out of him, yes--though later he comes to think some did try to do him in).

Link wasn't saving someone's life. Sorry, Zelda. Your honor's great, but it's not life itself.

What about before then? Doesn't Link go monster hunting?

Yes, he does, but he doesn't believe he's going to die and he's not doing it to directly sacrifice himself for someone else.

Also... it's a bit reckless and vengeful, both things that fall into that selfishness category. It's reckless because he starts out as a kid going after bokoblins that have killed adults. It's vengeful because he starts doing it because the bokoblins killed people he knows.

Neither of those things is aligned with the courage of a true hero requirement.

Why doesn't Fi explain this to Link in the fic?

Fi absolutely under no circumstances can explain this to Link yet. It could ruin everything if she did.

Why?

I'm putting another blaring WARNING in here because it spoils something that hasn't happened in the ongoing fic Adventure Log+ yet.

Fi can't tell Link why he was able to start hearing her... because....

It would tell Link how to awaken Zelda's power.

Yes, you read that right.

Link absolutely must not know how to awaken Zelda's power.

And if you've been reading the fic, you may now be confused for two reasons: 1.) Wait, isn't Zelda's power already awake in the fic?! 2.) Why wouldn't Link be allowed to know how to wake it up?!

Hoooo boy. Here we go.

1.) No, Zelda's power is not already awake in the fic.

If you've read it, you know they've discovered some things about BotW Zelda in this AU: - She's unnaturally strong. - She has unnaturally high stamina. - She's essentially a perfect archer. Things in the environment can mess with her shot, but her aim is always perfect.

In the fic, once they discover these things, they assume Zelda's had her "sealing power" all along and they simply had misunderstood its nature. They have a whole festival and stuff to celebrate.

Oops.

What they're seeing are Zelda's innate magical abilities (and they haven't even discovered them all, yet). These are like Link' spin attack and flurry rush--they're things Zelda has access to simply because of her unique soul.

But just like she cannot yet hear Fi, she also cannot yet wield the complete Triforce (which is what shows up on her hand in the Blatchery Plain memory).

The power Zelda seeks to awaken in BotW is access to the complete Triforce. Only a person with a balanced heart who has awakened the hero within themselves is able to wield it.

2.) Link can't know how to awaken Zelda's power, because if he finds out, Zelda's pretty much guaranteed to find out.

But... wouldn't that be a good thing? Isn't the whole issue in those BotW memories the fact that they didn't know how to awaken Zelda's power? Isn't the problem that Zelda's mother died before she told anyone how to awaken it?

NO.

Because even sacrificing yourself to save someone else becomes a selfish act if you do so in order to awaken your own power. The courage of a true hero must be selfless. It mustn't be done with some additional goal in mind.

Zelda MUST NOT know how to awaken her power. If she knows how, she won't be able to awaken it.

I strongly believe that's why her mother never told anyone how.

[Note: SS Zelda doesn't tell Link that he had to awaken the hero inside him until he already had, either, for the same reason.]

The issue with Zelda's mother dying so early isn't that she never told anyone. It's that she didn't live long enough to make sure her daughter was exposed to situations in which she had the option to display such courage. King Rhoam and all the Champions play it safe with Zelda's life. They don't allow her to put herself in physical danger to protect anyone else.

Zelda's mother would have.

I can imagine a tradition of royal Hylian mothers and grandmothers taking their young princesses on grand tours of Hyrule, or perhaps to regions where they know help is desperately needed, to grow their princess' characters and give them ample opportunity to awaken the heroes within themselves.

As Princess of Hyrule, BotW Zelda should have discovered her power through connection to her people--and demonstrating willingness to give her life for them. On Blatchery Plain, she finally does thanks to her connection with Link.

That did not happen in BotW, so she fails to awaken it until Link is at death's door.

Back to the fic--okay, so Zelda can't know how to awaken her own power. Why isn't Link allowed to know?

Link can't know because if he does, Zelda will know very soon afterward. Either she'll read it on the Slate, or he'll tell her because now that he's talking to her, it's hard for him to keep his trap shut around her. 😂

Poor Fi. She has to keep this close to her metaphorical chest.

Thanks for reading!

If you stuck with me this far on a meta post about my own fic, WOW! Thank you!

Here are links to the On Awakenings posts drawing conclusions about how Link and Zelda's powers awaken (or fail to) in BotW and other Zelda games: - On Awakenings in The Legend of Zelda - On Awakenings... Part 2: BotW Link - On Awakenings... Part 3: Can't Fi Just Talk? - On Awakenings... Part 4: Why Can't Fi Just Talk?

They're more general Zelda lore, not just for Link's Thought Brambles.

If you like this stuff, check out my fic masterlist. The lore's interwoven in a lot of it (though some of it is pure comedy, which I love).

[blood-starved-beast]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the billionth time again and I can’t stop thinking about Link’s and Sheik’s relationship. I’ve just finished the dreaded water temple and just that one cutscene afterwards at Lake Hylia man.

Focusing on Link’s perspective, there’s so much conveyed that he wants to get to know Sheik better. From the way he rushes over to him(her?) when he steps off the Sage dias with a surprised face, the way he was really into the moment of staring out into Lake Hylia with him/her, the way he runs around the isle looking for her once she disappears from view. He doesn’t say or emote much at all, but those small actions say a 1000 words. And it makes sense.

Dude is a fish out of water after spending seven years in a magic-induced coma. Waking up, the people he knew either are gone or had changed so much (or not at all) that they’re practically unrecognizable to an older Link. Majority of his social interaction involved him killing things that want to kill him. Most of his other interactions are with people who necessarily wanting to interact with him per se. Sheik’s really the only one who he 1) sees regularly and 2) makes the initiative to interact with Link. And that’s not including the fact that (from Link’s limited POV) he’d just met Sheik post-timeskip, so no emotional baggage from his past. Of course Link would want to have some sort of stability outside of Navi in all this. He’d want a friend.

And I do see a similar trend with Sheik. Like Link, Zelda’s been isolated for years, training with Impa possibly with the anticipation that Link’ll return one day and they’ll need to work together to take down Ganondorf. She likely didn’t have time for social interaction much there. She likely could use a friend too. At the same time, however, the fear of lost, the need to complete this mission, the trauma of losing the ones she loves or how she was betrayed by them (Ganondorf couldn’t have gotten to power without some strings being pulled from the inside I’ll tell you) she likely is wary of making any close connections even if she’d like to have them, especially with someone she’d known from childhood who wasn’t there to change per se. And we see that in the scene.

Sheik’s waiting there for Link when he arrives, talks to/praises him, allows him to get close and they get to share a moment where they stare out into the water together. But that moment doesn’t last long cause seconds later Sheik’s already stepping away and is out of sight by the time Link notices. The game frames the moment from Sheik’s POV, we see him step away, it points back to Link, then Sheik jumps up to the tree. But it’s the fact that Sheik takes his time doing it that says a lot. Yeah, he’s trying to not catch Link’s attention, but why? Is it Sheik wanting to be goal-driven and not take Link out from the task/trying to maintain an aura of mystery, or is it Zelda not willing to allow herself to get closer to Link for fear of the reasons I’ve mentioned above? Likely both, but I do think the fact that Sheik’s hesitant to leave, the stare, and only for him to disappear up onto the tree (and not gone completely) that tells me that Zelda does want that connection as much as Link does but can’t allow herself to engage in it fully. She would’ve left immediately otherwise. She can’t get close to people and let them down like in her mind she did with the people of Hyrule.

And it breaks my heart. The way the events of the game shapes these characters and the tragedy surrounding even with the limited scenes/interactions that they get. We don’t need for them to say it explicitly but it’s there. In this scene and also in many others that add up. It’s so good man.

[ofcowardiceandkings]

I've seen you reference story implications in the sequel to BOTW a few times but I can't find an explanation and I'm still not sure what you mean 😖

not to worry being a vague mess is one of my fortés lol

im gonna get mad english-class serious a second because i need it to explain my shit hold on to yer horses lads this is gonna get long and over the top im SO SORRY in advance ..........

what i generally mean is if we take every interaction in BotW as if it had actually happened, not in the details minutiae sense like if you felt like Link would be nice to Bozai or want to spin kick him in the head way, but if Nintendo included an interaction or lore then it happened at some point or was learned way (the correct answer is spin kick though), then Link would know a LOT of very personal thoughts and feelings from a LOT of people.

to be fair, most of said people have passed away by this point in the story BUT more to the point Zelda is still very much alive and is also in some kind of tenuous contact with Link throughout the course of the game via Spooky Voice On The Winds just for good measure

regardless of what opinion you come away with of Link's own emotions - original Japanese text adventure log and player point-of-contact poker-face not withstanding - it is 100% canonical that Zelda had a thing for Link before the Calamity after they got to actually interacting and understanding each other. even if you wanna side-eye the construction of the story told by "Captured Memories" to be at LEAST a little romantically orientated (which in my opinion is a dubious stance to take given how typical storytelling structure works), what Kass has to say about the whole thing is explicitly textual, if only through secondhand information (although i will say a court poet seems like a sound bet in terms of reading people and especially if the person youre reading is a teenager with no concept of not wearing her heart on her sleeve and Small Emotions). trying to ignore ALL of that and - to be honest - what the latest batch of writing team has been doing since Skyward Sword isnt so much "reading the subtext/story wrong" as it is willfully ignoring it lol

not that im saying thats a bad thing, i also ignore chunks or details of stories i dislike because "fuck that im having fun" but i can also acknowledge that whatever im ignoring did in fact happen even if i think its stupid ... anyway

and the only reason i think this is a train of thought less-travelled is purely due to how HUGE BotW is, theres a LOT of stuff .. like i hang out with friends mostly playing BotW on twitch every day and we all learn things constantly. if you dont go hard for the lore and story you miss it, thats the nature of storytelling in the way BotW went about it

like i said, it's kind of dependent on what content is to be taken as having ACTUALLY happened. the only thing that isnt up for debate is that he regained all of the main-game memories since that's how you get the "true"/full ending. but did Link really read those diaries, did he really have that chat with Kass in Rito Village, is The Champion's Ballad lore going to be carried over,, that sort of thing. in my opinion? yes, because more solidly Nintendo included it for a reason no matter of what percentage of players found it, but in an off-shoot opinion if i was trying to regain my lost memories i'd give ANYTHING a chance of getting them back even if it meant the awkwardness of reading my long-gone friends diaries 🤷‍♂️

basically, what i mean when i have a meltdown over "the plot implications of BotW on BotW2" is im extremely curious to see how Nintendo handle 1) Zelda's established feelings towards Link (assuming they still exist, which i think we have reason to believe they do) and 2) Link quite possibly KNOWING about it. oh and them not existing in an extremely rigid class-driven society anymore.

i dunno about you - or the writing team for that matter - but if i was made aware that a pretty and smart person who i used to be around a lot had a thing for me i would be going out of my MIND lmfao

while their dynamic in past games has been quite developed or had romantic overtones before, BotW is by FAR the most complex understanding of them with the most information given to the player about how their characters grow from more than one angle. like having known each other for some time, general depictions of them existing around each other, visible emoting around the others' circumstances .. these things have happened before but not in such a huge combination. oh AND an abject change in their relationship after having come to some kind of understanding, which is definitely new, let alone that understanding happening OFF SCREEN.

i'll stop now before i actually write a full essay, but lets just say this is even more uncharted territory than Skyward Sword's obvious love story and the "oh and then he was king of hyrule :)" at the end of the original, because like ... its a sequel ... after the fact ..... unresolved

........ yeah

[kittmoon]

we need to talk about eggbot.

MAJOR HWAOC SPOILERS AHEAD. There are no pictures in this post so you should be able to breeze past the paragraphs and read it later when you want to. ⚠️

Been a long time since I’ve put a theory together. This’ll be patchy but stick with it. I’ve organized it with questions, you’ll see. Hopefully this’ll make my musings easier to understand:

Firstly-

Did eggbot travel back in time?

Kind of. He definitely traveled to the past, the question is WHICH past.

I’m going to state right here, right now, that I don’t believe that eggbot alone changed the timeline by himself. In fact, I believe that there are two separate timelines - maybe several - and eggbot chose one to go back to, one that wasn’t the one he was from.

We need to discuss both timelines that are presented:

Timeline One (T1):

Link receives the Master Sword around 12 years of age. He has it by the time he is appointed as Zelda’s knight. Zelda doesn’t like Link for a while. Link dies, the Champions die, Zelda fights Ganon alone, jumpstarting the 100 time skip to the BotW game.

Timeline Two (T2):

Link is Zelda’s appointed knight BEFORE he receives the Master Sword, aka ~16/17/18 years of age (They don’t say this explicitly, but the King has certainly taken notice of Link, and Link accompanies the Princess literally everywhere). He and Zelda are on relatively friendly terms with one another (although Zelda is still insecure in reflection of Link’s success, we never see any animosity). Eggbot is present. Link and the Champions survive, with the help of allies from the future of TIMELINE 1. Calamity Ganon is defeated. There is no 100 year timeskip.

But what if these two timelines are actually the same timeline, and in Age of Calamity we just don’t see certain events that are confirmed to have taken place (ex. Zelda’s Resentment)?

This is a fair question, and this is what I thought too, until we see that Link hasn’t received the Master Sword yet. Not only did it say in Masterworks that he received it early, but we also have Mipha. In her diary (Champion’s Ballad DLC for BotW)(T1), she states that the Sword has changed Link, and that when he comes to visit her after many years he is no longer the same smiling child.

We see this same visit happen in Age of Calamity. Mipha states clearly that it had been a long time since she’d seen Link, except he doesn’t have the Master Sword in this section of Age of Calamity. These are the same event, happening in 2 different timelines, the difference being that Link has the Master Sword in one instance (T1) but not in the other instance (T2).

So. It is clear to me that there are at least two separate timelines. How these timelines split to begin with, I’m not sure, but we know that eggbot didn’t cause some of these changes, like WHEN exactly Link pulls the Sword. Eggbot arrives in Link’s life when he’s nearly twenty, so if he had been meant to pull the Master Sword at age 12, then it would have happened already. With me?

(here’s a video by Nintendo Black Crisis in case you’re not, he’s better at explaining things)

Okay then, Kitt, so are you telling me that eggbot didn’t travel back in time, but instead stepped into a different timeline and went to THAT timeline’s past?

yes

Wait what the fuck why would it do that tho

Honestly? A bunch of reasons. Maybe it wasn’t possible for eggbot to travel backwards through his own timeline, but in a desperation to save Zelda, he traveled back to a different timeline, to save some fragment of Zelda. Maybe he tried going back in time but he slipped up, instead hurtling into the past of a different timeline. That’s for fanfiction writers and theorists to work out.

Here is what I am definitively saying:

These are two separate timelines.

Eggbot’s goal was to help Zelda.

Eggbot exists in both timelines, but only affects any of the events of the Great Calamity in Timeline 2. We know this because there are two eggbots, and Baby Zelda created an eggbot in both timelines.

Eggbot did not travel back in time. Instead he traveled to a different past. Whether he knew it was a different past is up for debate.

Any interactions in T1’s PAST, aka the memories in BotW, are NOT in the same timeline as T2. Therefore, and this is a side note, any interactions that fuel ships are probably in separate timelines and probably shouldn’t try to be sewed together in a canonical manner. But like. That’s just for theory purposes. If you want to write fanfiction or create fanart where it’s all a singular thread go ahead honestly I’d be here for it

Here’s what I Definitely Do Not Know:

How eggbot did this.

How Baby Zelda created a time traveling robot (seriously what the fuck).

Anything about Zelda’s mother or her involvement in this.

Why Link is literally an emotionless lump even before he gets the damn Sword.

Whether Link actually managed to digest any of those rocks?? I do not know

Anyways. Feel free to jump on this if you want!! Literally even if you completely disagree I am totally open to talk about this let’s have a fucking gander

[underthedekutree]

Gender and Race in Zelda Games - Pt 1

Hey, can we talk about how the Gerudo’s defining trait is their gender? It’s very explicitly marketed to the player that they are an all female race and that has a lasting impact on their culture and how they interact with other races, considering they are reproductively compatible with hylians (and is the only way to ensure their survival as a race).

Although Nintendo likes to distance themselves from any political statements, the Zelda franchise does give an insight into their views on gender identity and racial representation. I’m going to be mostly going off of Breath of the Wild (and a bit of OoT) for this.

There are 7 major civilised races in BOTW’s Hyrule, and they’re mainly based on standard tropes of the high fantasy genre, which has most of its roots in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Things like the Elder Scrolls and DnD follow a similar set of race tropes. Basically in a nutshell:

Hylians = Humans (protagonist material, has a far reaching empire, medieval aesthetic, predominantly white because yay colonialism amirite)

Zora = Elves (attuned with nature, long life/immortality, thinks they’re better than you, thin/sexy/youthful appearance, feminine)

Gorons = Dwarves (associated with earth, overtly masculine, stocky/stout appearance, b e a r d s)

Koroks = Halflings/Hobbits (smol, associated with plants and greenery, often the starting point in a story, disconnected from the world, humble people, old english farmer aesthetic)

Gerudo = Orc/Haradrim/Khajiit (the Oppressed Minority, often desert people, has an ”Exotic” accent/language, vague mix of middle-eastern, african and/or south american aesthetics)

Rito = Bird People (free spirits, archery for days, native american/canadian aesthetic)

Sheikah = The Asians (tm) (the wise philosophical ones, always has a shrivelled up old Confucian-inspired leader, are probs ninjas)

First of all, no, Hylians are not elven-coded; just because they have pointed ears does not equal elf. The way they are coded in the text is very much human.

So I’m going to elaborate a bit more on the Gerudo here for this post, since they are the strongest example of what my whole point of this is. I’ll be talking about the Gorons in another post later down the track (that’s a whole other can o beans).

Ocarina of Time is where we are first introduced to the Gerudo as a race, and red flag number one comes up: the main villain is Gerudo. The only man in an entire race of women, who has automatically assumed de-facto leadership because of his gender. Hmm. Okay then, game.

Because of Ganondorf’s actions throughout OoT, the Gerudo garner a sour reputation amongst the other races, and a lot of this context comes from reactions to Link wearing the Gerudo Mask. Many are terrified or unsettled by the mask, such as King Zora, some will comment on how it reminds them of a woman in their life, and Darunia very gruffly states how much he hates the Gerudo (wow dude, not cool). There is an everpresent stigma against them as a people, one that only compounds in the Adult time after Ganondorf takes over. In Windwaker, Ganondorf talks about how his original motivation was to take Hyrule for its resources, as his people were suffering in the desert whilst Hyrule florished. But his actions only caused them more suffering, as he seemed not to care for his people once he took Hyrule Castle, and the Gerudo could no longer mingle with Hylians, because this takeover increased the stigma against the Gerudo tenfold.

This stigma was so great that even in Breath of the Wild, thousands of years later, their people are still recovering from their collective shame (eg. Urbosa). Look how long its taken Germany to recover post WWII, and some still hold grudges against them, even though they’re now practically one of the most anti-Nazi nations ever. But clear strides have been made in Gerudo culture - they now seem to be a proud people, embracing both their strength and their femininity. But a new interesting issue arises.

It’s alarming how much suggestion there is in BotW that the Gerudo are being taken advantage of. Men are barred from city walls, and for good reason. All of the men outside of the walls are there for the sole purpose of entering the Forbidden Garden, as it were. Like the men at the bazaar who freeze up when they see lady Link. Or the creepy guy with the sand boots circling the town like a hawk in the hopes of catching a lady’s eye. There are a couple of guys in trouble on the other side of the desert you can save (from a lizalfos I think? If memory serves), and all they will talk about is how Gerudo Town is some kind of paradise of hot women, like they’re using their dicks as a compass. I hope they never get there. And to top it all off, there’s Voe and You, an entire dating class teaching women on how to interact with men, and how to walk the line between being cautious of predators, and not being Risa. 

I don’t know how to articulate how this messes with my brain, and I’m very bad at conclusions. Nonetheless, what I am trying to say is this. What does this all tell us about how Nintendo writes women, and how the changing times have affected the representation of women in Zelda? Why are there entire races who are tied to their gender? This trend of coding races to a gender in video games isn’t confined to the Zelda series either, its present in a lot of Nintendo games (if I may gesture to the Lochladies from Mario Odyssey), and media as a whole. Is this a good thing? What is the purpose? I don’t know how to answer those questions. There is always a form of subconscious meaning ascribed to the stories we tell, whether we intend to or not. I don’t know what to do with this information really, its just something to think about. And this is a starting point too, there’s a lot more to be said if you start training your eye to look for these things in the games you’re playing, especially Nintendo games, since they seem to have been free from The Discourse because of how they market their company to be so Opinionless and therefore accomodating to people from all backgrounds. But they most certainly aren’t opinionless.

Disclaimer: I do not believe that Nintendo are trying to push some Political Agenda (the opposite, actually), it’s mostly subconscious coding and association due to, as I mentioned, for us as people to express our own views through story.

Segway to part 2: I said at the start that it’s strange how the femininity of the Gerudo is so heavily highlighted, and its a core part of their identity as a race. So why the hell does this not apply to the freaking GORONS?

Have a nice day, and thanks for reading my rambles :D

[webarebares]

Queen of Arms Chapter 1

I decided to post my Zelink fic here because I’m lonely on Ao3. Here’s the link to it there and it’ll be cut down below :) It deals a lot of with healing and repressed feelings and also they’re kind of exes that weren’t exes.

Summary:  With Link barely remembering her, and Zelda still living in parts of the past, it's hard for them to know how to interact with each other. As Link starts regaining pieces back, Zelda and him have to figure out how to process everything that they have gone through to be able to regain what they once had. That is, if Link wants to.

-

It ached. Deep inside the cavities of her chest danced fire that would never be put out. The castle she once lived in was still full of malice and all the bricks were loose, easily ready to fall in one quake. Almost every single person she grew up loving was gone forever, and even if it had not taken 100 hundred years to return, the initial explosion of The Calamity could’ve never brought them back.

Zelda clipped back her long hair to keep it out of her face as she read behind the Goddess Statue in Karakiko Village. She hid there, reading on the floor to stay away from people for a while. Important Hyrule officials had all flooded the village the weeks before to start the process of reconstruction and find the way to fund everything. The most civilization they had standing was the stable association and the few towns. After barely surviving Ganon, she was still queen at seventeen. She was going to have to fight her whole life.

People were leaving at that moment and would gather back there in a month to finalize everything, but she didn’t want to say goodbye to every single person. She only said bye to Lady Riju who she formed a good friendship within a short amount of time. Riju helped Zelda sneak out of meetings when they had gone on for too long, and they would talk about Urbosa over sweets the children in the village would make them. They would all go around taking pictures near the Great Fairy Fountain on the Shiekah slate Link returned to her.

Link was off doing a secret mission for Impa that she wasn’t told about until he was gone. Right before the Calamity, her and Link were close friends and although he didn’t say much, he would tell her everything. She remembered every sensation of trust and admiration she had towards him along with… other things.

But now, it was hard to have good conversations with him. They were rare and Zelda would think about every word that left his lips like she could lose him again tomorrow. Zelda knew Link before The Calamity, but the Link that she briefly traveled with before settling in Karakiko? He was just a person she once met in a dream.

Link remembered next to nothing, still. He didn’t ask her a lot about before The Calamity and Zelda didn’t push to teach him. If she had the chance to forget the love for the people she couldn’t save, she probably would take it. It’d make living in this new lifetime more bearable.

Link would remember some things here and there. He recently remembered his father and some memories of them together at the outposts before he died. He said he heard his dad’s voice tell him he was proud of him. It was one of the few things he did ask Zelda about the past- how did his father die?

She wondered if he felt like he was getting the news for the first time again when she was telling him. If he remembered all the love his had for his father even if he hadn’t remembered his face or name just hours before.  Zelda remembered all the love she had for her dad the minute she was whole again and searched for it at the top of the Temple of Time with Link guarding her every step on the ripped up roof. All that was there was wind and the distant bones of Hyrule Castle.

Unable to focus on the book she was reading, she closed it and started drawing in the dirt. She wrote out her name.

ZELDA

She hesitated before she stared writing again.

L

“Queen Zelda,” someone called out. She immediately kicked away the writing her foot, awkwardly standing up. She walked to the other side of the Goddess statue and saw Paya standing with her head bowed. “So sorry to interrupt you,” she said quietly. Zelda didn’t know why Paya was intimidated by her, but she had an inkling it had to do with Impa’s abrasive attitude. “I was told I could find you here.”

“You’re fine, Paya,” Zelda replied with a smile she couldn’t see. “Am I needed?”

“My grandmother wanted me to tell, to tell you that everyone has left. You can come back now,” she bowed once again and ran off in a direction that wasn’t the house where they were both staying. Zelda got her book from the ground and made her way back to Impa’s house. She wouldn’t call Paya out for her for nothing but also, she would.

She closed the door behind her, Impa in her usual seat. Her eyes were closed, but she spoke, “I don’t mean to intrude my queen-,”

Zelda cut her off, “Call me Zelda. Please. We’ve been friends for over 100 years now.” Impa had a small smile on her face, most likely throwing her off from what she was going to say.

She licked her lips, seeming to try to recollect herself. “It seems you’ve gained yourself sense of humor while you were off in the Spirit Realm”

“I had time to think of everything I’d tell everyone when I first saw them.” Link was the only one left to check off.

“As I was saying,” Impa continued, “you have the respect of everyone. You cannot afford to lose it when your kingdom is so fragile. You can’t seem uninterested in the affairs of the people, or the people will lose hope. Nobody will steal the throne from you, but it’ll be harder to govern if you’re not the face everyone sees leading these choices.” Zelda felt like she was getting scolded by her father, the same buzz of shame vibrating through her core. Only difference was that Impa knew. Her father just guessed.

“I wish someone would try to take the throne from me,” Zelda sighed, looking down at the floor.

“You still have fight left in you?”

“No.” Zelda shook her head, looking back at her old friend. “I’d let them keep it.”

“You’re not an heir to nothing, you know that, right?” Impa asked her for the third time since Ganon was taken down. Zelda thought about Riju and all the little kids in Karakiko village who had lived their whole lives watching darkness radiate from Hyrule Castle until her and Link locked it away.

“I’m starting to believe it.”

Link got to Karakiko a few days after the higher ups left. The last time she spent a lot of time with him was when they went to Zora’s Domain to investigate Vah Ruta. They didn’t find any clues before Zelda had to come back to Karakiko to attend meetings. Even then, most of the talking was done by Zelda and pointing out things she saw when she was fighting Ganon. There wasn’t a lot to talk about with strangers.

She saw him early in the morning after leaving the bedroom she shared with Paya. Her hair was in a messy braid and she rushed to let it loose. “Good morning, Link,” she told him. He bowed from where he stood at the wall, and it made her think of when he was her royal guard. He still wore it often even if there wasn’t a team to match with.

Zelda looked around the room but saw that Impa wasn’t in her usual spot and at that time in the morning, Paya would be off cleaning outside. “Do you know where Impa is?” Link asked her. Her head quickly snapped to look at him.

“I’m not sure,” Zelda looked around as if Impa would be hidden in a small corner of the room. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. He went back to resting on the wall. “I’ll just wait here.” She felt awkward sometimes being in Impa’s house and doing things without explicitly asking, but she was sure she wouldn’t mind.

“Do you want to come into the kitchen and have breakfast with me?” she asked with her hair out of its braid. “There’s seafood fried rice left over from yesterday.” He looked at her for a moment, his mouth slanted as he thought. “There’s no need for modesty. I know you have quite an appetite. You might not remember, but we were really good friends once.” It stung to say that. Link just gave her a small smile and nodded before following her into the kitchen that was hidden behind sliding screen doors.

Zelda started a fire under the pot to warm the food up and gestured for Link to take a seat on one of the floor pillows. He did it without question which surprised her because he seemed to tiptoe around her. She got another pot to brew tea. One thing she liked about present time is that she got to do things for herself. Usually, she would get interrupted by a maid to let them do any little thing for her and she felt strange saying no. But now, the most someone would ask to do something for her was when Paya asked her if she needed help, and if she said no, Paya didn’t push it. She wondered sometimes if Paya knew how much she appreciated her.

Zelda sat diagonal from Link to wait until one of the things boiled. She purposely avoided sitting across from him because she wouldn’t be able to help stare. That’s most of what she did as they made their way to Zora’s Domain. Spiritually, she had been close to him for the year it took for him to get to her. That was never enough. Now, he was right in front of her and she could reach out and touch his face with consequences.

“How were the meetings?” Link asked, tapping his fingers on the lowered table. A spark of excitement flashed through her chest.

“Drawn out and boring. I snuck out a few times with Riju I must admit,” she said with a coy smile. Link looked at her with a raised brow. She wondered if he just remembered the parts of her that were all business which is why this confused him. “Impa was a little upset with me, but I’ll make up for it later. Everything is still,” she stopped talking. She didn’t know how to describe everything.

“Too much?” Link tried to finish.

Zelda nodded. “Yes. Too much.” Even then, too much wasn’t enough to describe all the feelings in her body.

“You were excited to start reconstruction,” Link reminded her. She was. The minute she could breathe in the Hyrule air and hold petals in her hand, she knew she was back where she belonged. It was her job and duty to nurture and love her kingdom.

But it got hard. Quick.

Not even a month went by before the reality of everything started to slow her down and now, she could barely lift a finger to do anything. The idea of being queen and bringing Hyrule to glory under her leadership slowly formed itself into a constant reminder that she was queen because her father was dead. There wouldn’t have been a need for reconstruction if she had unlocked her powers sooner. If she had admitted things to herself sooner so many people could’ve lived much longer than what they did.

Zelda looked at Link’s face while his eyes were drawn down to his hands. He had a new scratch on his cheek. It wasn’t deep, and it had scabbed up already in a thin line. Zelda said, “I think I was just a lot more joyful when we first won and now I see the cost of a delayed victory. So many people died.” Zelda sighed as she thought of the census they delivered to her at one of the meetings. “Hyrule has such a low population I could invite everyone to live at the castle once we figure out how to get rid of the malice.” Link smiled like he did a hundred years ago when they’d joke around. It brought so much comfort to her that she didn’t want to take her eyes off of it, even when he caught her looking.

“Maybe start off with Castle Town.”

Impa returned soaked in water. Link and Zelda were in the main area of the house talking when she walked in. Paya was frantically rushing to get her to her room to change, but Impa scowled at her. “Paya, let me greet Link first.” Impa slowly walked to the middle of the room where Link stood, and he seemed amused with the situation. “Good to see that you’re back. Let me get settled and we’ll have a private talk in the kitchen over tea.” Link who unknowingly to Impa just drank two cups, simply nodded. Impa and Paya headed into one of the rooms, Zelda looking at Link who was now stretching.

Zelda couldn’t help but ask, “Is this about your secret mission.” Link let out quick chuckle.

“I guess you can say that,” he said. His mouth fell open in a quick moment of remembrance as he a muttered a quick oh and started to search through his bag. He pulled out a familiar red book and handed it to Zelda, “This is yours.” Zelda stared between the fragile book spine and Link’s eyes. Zelda then took it and opened it to the first page to confirm what it was.

“How?” she asked in awe. “After all these years?” Link didn’t say anything, but he seemed glad to have brought it back to her. Zelda started to flip through many pages at once, recognizing her handwriting that differed depending on her anxiousness or excitement of the peculiar days. It was more than half empty as she just started it a year or so before the calamity hit.

There was one page she had to stop to look at. In the corner of a page, she had drawn an all-too-familiar sword next to a Silent Princess flower, the letter L written in cursive in different sizes all over it. It was one of the last times she had written. She quickly shut it, her cheeks warm. “Did you read it?” she asked, refusing to look at him. There was a silence and then there was Impa loudly making her way into the main room.

“Off to the kitchen with you, boy,” she said, pushing Link away from her.

[sally-mun]

(Sorry anon, Tumblr screwed up my draft of your ask, so you’re a screenshot now.)

I hope you realize what you’ve done, because this is going to be a VERY long story. Get a drink and strap in.

Before I can get into this too deeply, we first need to talk about Ocarina of Time. There are a lot of issues I had with OoT that I was VERY excited to see were later addressed by Twilight Princess, whether it was an intentional link or not. There are a handful of things involved here, but for me the biggest one by far is the Temple of Time.

Waaaaay back in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, the internet was still relatively young and, in a way, more simple and innocent. The standard for using it largely boiled down to, “I like [x], so I’ll search for [x]” and just seeing what mess of crap you ended up with. I did this mostly with Sonic and anime stuff, but every now and then I’d do it for things like LoZ as well. One of the sites this brought me to was called The Odyssey of Hyrule, which at the time utterly blew my mind with its content. It was a hotbed of Zelda oddities, glitches (some of which I now see often in speed runs), hoax debunks, and most importantly for this discussion, screenshots from early builds of the game.

We can probably trace the origin of my fixation back to this screenshot:

Those of you that know Ocarina of Time well can probably tell right of the bat that this is not an area that appears in the final game. The website posited that this was perhaps an area behind the Temple of Time, since the setting elements all look the same and the camera appears to be in a fixed location. After all, when you look at the building from the front, there’s a clearly visible path running along the side, and it does appear that the fence has a “gate,” although we can never open it.

See it there, behind the second gossip stone from the left? There’s a gap on either side of that bit of fence, right where the path happens to be. The rest of the fence on the right side doesn’t have gaps like that, suggesting that this bit of fence wasn’t originally there and the path was once traversable; my personal hunch is that the “gate” is actually a copied instance of the smaller bit of fencing on the left to save themselves the headache of redoing the fence entirely. The gossip stones, if they were originally there at all, were probably supposed to start from the far right wall instead of the left, which would also open up access to the path.

The longer this stewed around in my brain, the more it drove me absolutely crazy, because I realized that this could possibly explain a lot of seemingly disparate elements. For example, there’s a peculiarity in the Temple of Time that’s easy to miss if you’re not taking your time and paying close attention. After you remove the Door of Time to gain access to the sword chamber, the initial view of said chamber is actually much smaller. It’s especially easy to see when you switch to first-person, because you can more easily see how close the walls are on the left and right.

(My apologies for the shitty quality of these pictures, I took them back before we had decent digital cameras. I’ll get better ones when I post this as an actual article on my other blog.)

As you run into the chamber, the tight walls abruptly disappear and give way to the massive chamber we’re all familiar with. In fact, if you take your time and walk forward through this hallway, you can easily see the moment when the room changes from small to large before your eyes.

When comparing this oddity with the beta screenshot and the website’s suggestion that the path may have allowed you to go behind the temple, I became convinced that something else was supposed to happen back there, but was cut from the game for one reason or another. My guess is that the sword chamber really was originally very small as it first appears, and the larger chamber was a separate area behind it, which was used for... well, what? It obviously wasn’t something small and simple, like a chest with a heart piece; not for a room that grand. It was clearly for something big, something important, because it had to have a large enough scale of work that the designers looked at it and realized they couldn’t finish in time. After a LOT of mulling it over, I became convinced that it was most likely the entrance to the Light Temple.

You see, something else that always struck me as odd was the fact that you’re just given the Light Medallion as soon as you become an adult. You do absolutely nothing to earn it; it’s all part of the same cut scene that plays after you remove the sword for the first time. You meet Rauru, the Light Sage, pretty abruptly as he infodumps about what’s going on, and then he just forks over the Light Medallion without hesitation.

From a narrative perspective, it sticks out to me because Rauru is the only person you do not interact with at any point in the game. You don’t meet him at all as a child, and as an adult you only see him within the Sacred Realm. All of the other sages are people you have both a child and adult connection with in some way, and it’s up to you to awaken them to their powers by ridding their respective temples of evil. Why would they just skip that process with Rauru?

Perhaps they never meant to; maybe you were supposed to go through that same process, but the Light Temple got cut. When you’re designing a video game, there’s a practice that’s recommended before you start actually building it where you make a list of all the elements you want included, then you organize it by importance, and then you cut it in half. The top half is the one you focus on first, because it’s stuff you absolutely positively have to have in the game in order for it to work. The bottom half is stuff you get to include if you have enough time, and it’s added in the order you listed it because top items are more critical. It could very well be that the Light Temple was either on that second half of the list, or it was never on the second half at all but development time simply ran out and it got bumped.

Either way, at some point in the process I think they realized they weren’t going to be able to complete the Light Temple, so they blocked off the side path and expanded the sword chamber to eat up the extra space. After all, you can see how long the building is from the outside, so it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be a reverse Tardis and be smaller on the inside. Once the back path was removed, I imagine they reworked Rauru to reduce his role; my head canon has always been that he was some kind of high priest who oversaw the Temple of Time, since it IS essentially a church. I mean, just look at that garb. He certainly appears to be some kind of holy man.

Having him as a priest at the Temple of Time that you could actually meet and talk to as a kid would’ve finally made his presence make sense. It would explain who and what he is at all, since he just kind of appears out of nowhere as the game currently stands, and it would’ve aligned with the other sages insofar as meeting them when they don’t realize their powers, then saving them as an adult and awakening them as a sage. In fact, Rauru disappearing from the Temple of Time would’ve been the game’s first big red flag that something has gone terribly wrong in the last seven years, versus having to go outside to see all the decay and the dark energy around Death Mountain. Furthermore, each sage is someone that the game explicitly positions as a person that makes sense TO be each temple’s respective sage, and to me, a priest from the Temple of Time is the obvious choice for the Light Sage when you consider that the Light Temple is probably part of the same building.

Speaking of the Temple of Time, it has a lot of clues of its own that it may have once doubled as the Light Temple. For one thing, consider the songs that warp you around the game: The Minuet of Forest takes you to the Forest Temple, the Bolero of Fire takes you to the Fire Temple, the Serenade of Water takes you to the Water Temple... but what song takes you to the Temple of Time? It’s not a song with time in the name anywhere, it’s the Prelude of Light. This would make perfect sense if the Light Temple was supposed to share space with the Temple of Time, right?

Another clue is the warp points themselves. Each time you warp to one of the temples, you land on a large pedestal bearing the Triforce. However, there’s another image overlayed on them too: That temple’s medallion. If you play the Prelude of Light to warp to the Temple of Time, the pedestal you land on features the the Light Medallion, as though this is where you were supposed to have earned it.

I later discovered that this is even more prominent in another old beta screenshot, which is much more heavy-handed with the symbol on the pedestal.

Something else to consider is the fact that the Temple of Time is actually where you acquire the Light Arrows, the final item that you need before you take on Ganon at the end. Like the medallion before it, the Light Arrows are again just given to you without requiring any work. The other temples all have a critically important item inside that you must obtain to not only finish the temple itself, but that is then needed in other areas in the game. Doesn’t it seem like you’d have to complete the Light Temple to get the Light Arrows, and they’d follow the same pattern of being used to finish the temple and then go on for further use elsewhere (namely, Ganon’s Castle)?

Getting the Light Arrows last also lends credence toward the idea that the Light Temple was in fact lower on the development list, because it would’ve necessarily been the last temple you visited in terms of game progression. They’re not going to give you the ultimate holy weapon early on in the game; they have to save that for the end so you don’t blow through the rest of the temples without a sweat! Additionally, the Light Temple being last would only increase the tension of wondering where Rauru went, since each time you warped between the past and the future you’d have to pass through the Temple of Time and note once again that Rauru is missing.

If it were me making the priority list, the temples would be listed in the same order that you play them in-game, because obviously you need to go through [dungeon 1] before you can go through [dungeon 2] or [dungeon 3].* In this particular instance, chronological order and order of importance happen to be the same thing, and if the development team used the same reasoning, then yes, the Light Temple would be much lower on the list than the others. It’s entirely within reason to think that they had planned for it, but realized they weren’t going to have time to fully implement it, and instead blocked it off and handed over the items you would’ve obtained there so they could focus on getting other, more critical things done.

It’s also worth noting just how much infodumping happens at the Temple  of Time. As the game currently stands, there’s very little to actually do at the ToT, but there are many long conversations that take place there. You talk to Zelda, both as herself and as Sheik, you talk to Rauru (as that technically happens while you’re at the ToT), and even Ganon monologues a bit there at the end. You end up spending a LOT of time spent standing around while other characters pelt you with information in this particular location. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any big conversations here, but rather that I feel like there are more than there probably should’ve been. Some (possibly most) of that information could’ve been obtained more gradually and actively if the Light Temple had managed to be a thing.

And look, I’m not saying that what we ultimately got in the game doesn’t work; there’s nothing specifically wrong with the way Ocarina of Time handles the Temple of Time. I agree that getting the Light Medallion and Light Arrows in the ToT isn’t completely out of nowhere since the ToT is connected to the Sacred Realm. I’m only saying it doesn’t come across as the original  design to me; as far as I’m concerned, it clearly, obviously screams that what we got was a back-up plan. It works just enough to make sense, but it would work so much better if they did it this other way. Everything just clicks together a little more snugly when you consider that there may have been a sixth temple. It’s not that what we got doesn’t make sense, it’s just that I believe these ideas make more sense.

This topic is something I used to go on and on about back in the day, to pretty much anyone who would listen to me. I was met with about as many different kinds of feedback as you can imagine; some people agreed that I was on to something and had maybe solved a mystery, whereas others thought I was reading way too much into details that just don’t have that deep of a meaning. Unfortunately, it’s obviously not something I could take that far in an argument because there was no way to prove my hypothesis. It’s all just a guess, and even though I think there’s some pretty strong evidence to back it up, in the end I have no way to actually verify it. Sure I could contact Nintendo, but I highly doubt they’d tell me anything one way or the other.

SO NEEDLESS TO SAY when Twilight Princess eventually came along and had a Temple of Time that was a for-realsies playable dungeon with monsters and puzzles and items to collect, I went through the fucking roof.

At the EXACT moment that I realized that this is what the game was giving me, I literally screamed and shouted and cheered because I felt so... vindicated, in a way? It felt very strongly like a soft confirmation of what I’d been saying for all these years -- ESPECIALLY since the Twilight!ToT ALSO makes heavy use of the Light Medallion symbol. I feel like that’s about as clear of a connection as you can get.

Like, I know the Temple of Time being playable in Twilight Princess doesn’t absolutely confirm that it was supposed to be that way in Ocarina of Time, but it gives me that vibe because it feels like Twilight makes a point to ‘right’ a lot of ‘wrongs’ present in Ocarina. It gives me the sense that they were making up for some of the things they didn’t (or couldn’t) do the first time around. The fact that they were willing to delay the release of Twilight Princess just to make sure everything was just right also gives me that vibe. They could’ve just cut things again, but this time, they wanted to make sure everything was there, and that it was good.

One other thing I’d like to mention before completely moving on from this topic is something that I admittedly can’t confirm, but it’s another point that’s been on my mind: Back when I was playing Twilight Princess for the first time and I was screaming about the Temple of Time, a guy I knew back then mentioned to me that the ToT that we see in Twilight is, canonically, the same ToT that we see in Ocarina. He said that he’d heard somewhere that the Ocarina world map actually fit perfectly when overlayed against the Twilight world map, and the major world features/locations from Ocarina of Time lined up exactly with landmarks and ruins in the Twilight Princess world. I did attempt to look this up for myself before writing this post, but most of what I found was a big mess; I may attempt to line the maps up myself sometime if just to be able to better wrap my brain around what might (or might not) work here. What I can definitely say, though, is that the idea is at least supported by the theme of the series in general, given that it’s based around the notion of history repeating itself. Zelda games reference other Zelda games all the time, so it’s far from unheard of.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier the Light Temple isn’t the only thing that makes me feel like Twilight Princess is trying to make amends for things that were missed in Ocarina of Time; it just happens to be the one I was most prominently fixated on. Another big thing that Twilight Princess appears to be rectifying is the City in the Sky. Going back again to my old stomping ground The Odyssey of Hyrule, there was another beta screenshot that got a LOT of attention back in the day, because it 1) was an animated gif, 2) involves the Triforce, and 3) appears to be some kind of ‘Sky Temple,’ as it was known.

(Once upon a time that gif was reasonably sized, but since computers have roided the fuck out since the days of Windows 95, I realize it’s not the biggest or clearest thing in the world and I apologize.)

As I recall there were a couple of other screenshots that appeared to also be from this alleged Sky Temple, but sadly I don’t seem to have any of them myself, and although The Odyssey of Hyrule technically still exists, it looks like its images are all broken. In any case, the question of whether or not Ocarina of Time was supposed to have a sky temple was a HUUUUGE hot topic among Zelda sites for years. So many people spent enormous amounts of time and energy trying to find the so-called Sky Temple, largely because there was a sizable sect of the fanbase convinced that the Triforce HAD to be hidden somewhere in the game. Amazingly enough someone did eventually find the Triforce obscenely hidden in the game files (I wish I still had the pics of that, the amount of glitching needed to get to it was insane), but nothing was ever ultimately discovered about the Sky Temple. It just became one of those bits of gaming folklore that got passed around from person to person over time.

Which, of course, is why the inclusion of the City in the Sky in Twilight Princess, much like the expansion of the Temple of Time, feels a lot like Nintendo is making up for something they may have intended to do but were unable to complete.

Not gonna lie, when I played this area for the first time I couldn’t help thinking that the small glimpse in the gif above feels like it could feasibly fit in here, and it was just the coolest feeling of, “I knew it!”

Another thing that really bugged me about Ocarina of Time (and in fact still does to this day) is the fact that, even after you beat the Water Temple, Zora’s Domain remains frozen. I never understood how this could be, since every other area reverts back to its original, beautiful form after you defeat the evil in the associated temple. Not Zora’s Domain, though! It’s thoroughly unsatisfying to have gone through what is arguably the most hated temple in the game and not have a full reward for your efforts.

This, again, is something it seems Twilight apologizes for; not only does it actually replicate the original problem of the Zoras getting frozen, but IN THIS ONE YOU ACTUALLY THAW THEM OUT!! And not only that, you thaw them BEFORE you even do the temple! That alone feels like Nintendo practically coming out and saying, “Yeah, we messed up, our bad. Here, have the restored Zoras right away as our apology.” It was such a huge mental release to see that ice melt and the Zoras come back to life! My brain was finally able to let go of a frustration I’d had for years!

My last one isn’t so much something that I felt was supposed to be in Ocarina of Time, but rather something I just plain wanted to be there. I was always sad that, even though you do technically get to enter Hyrule Castle, you don’t really get to go in there. You get an extremely limited and very linear track to follow, and at best you just get glimpses of some of the other areas that probably would’ve been really cool to explore had the game been designed that way.

I always felt like the fact that you didn’t get any real exploration of Hyrule Castle upset some of the balance in the game, considering that you do have to fully traverse Ganon’s Castle as a solvable dungeon. Being able to get a thorough sense of what Hyrule Castle was originally like before evil fell would help reinforce just how much things had changed in the seven years that Link was in the Sacred Realm, especially since that contrast is such a strong theme everywhere else in the game.

So, much like my reaction when I realized I was actually entering the Temple of Time as a level, I had a very similar reaction when I realized I was getting Hyrule Castle in the same way.

I may not have freaked out quite as much, but DAMN if that wasn’t another enormous payoff for me! Getting to really look around inside of Hyrule Castle, and furthermore in a version that’s really able to convey the scale and grandness OF a castle, was an absolutely magical moment of overdue gratification.

What’s even better is that Twilight Princess almost gives you a sort of a fake-out in this regard, since at the very beginning you kind of go through Hyrule Castle but, like Ocarina of Time, it’s extremely limited and linear, so it seems at first like they’re going to do the same thing.

I remember playing this for the first time and thinking, “Well, at least I’ve gotten a little closer to seeing inside of Hyrule Castle, but I really wish they’d just friggin’ let us ACTUALLY go in.” IMAGINE MY CHAGRIN when later on that’s exactly what I ended up doing~ I’m sitting there fan-screaming and the game is going “AH HA I GOTCHA!!”

Soooooo yeah... This ended up being an extremely long post and probably way more than you were ever interested in knowing, but, yeah, I think that’s why Twilight Princess felt like such a bookend for me. Even though I did technically have the original LoZ as a child, my life as a Zelda fan really began with Ocarina of Time, and that game left me longing for several very specific things that Twilight Princess later fulfilled. I’ve never had so many large unresolved issues with any other game, and the fact that Ocarina of Time was the Zelda game that I ‘imprinted’ on, those issues left a very deep impression on me. Having Twilight Princess essentially go back and ‘fix’ those things was incredibly psychologically calming for me, and I think it’s a major reason why I haven’t particularly sought out other Zelda games in the last 12 years. Twilight Princess gave me the things I’d been looking for since 1998 -- a decade of hemming and hawing finally resolved.

I honestly feel like playing Zelda games may be different for me in some way now as I move forward, because I won’t have a part of my brain mentally searching for a way to fill those little voids in the back of my head. I have both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, which as I said in that other post I’ve actually never tried out, so I guess we’ll find out how I relate to them whenever I finally decide to take that leap!

If you actually made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU SO MUCH and I hope you enjoyed it~

*Fun fact, this isn’t necessarily true when it comes to the Fire and Water Temples. The game wants you to do Fire first, but it’s completely possible to do the Water Temple if you want to!

[know-the-way]

can we get a “do not despair” post for spellwood too?? feeling pretty sad after part 3 and would really like to hear how they could turn it around

Sure! Strap in - this is gonna take some turns. And if Spellwood/Blackwood ain’t your thing, just leave m8 - it’s not for you.

Right. So.

Honestly, at this point - the only thing keeping anything about this ship afloat in canon is their history. We know they have one, but we don’t know much about it. I had really hoped, since they had cast an actor to play young!Faustus, that meant we’d be getting a backstory. But apparently, all we were getting was a 20 second scene that reveals very little.

However, it does reveal something.

1. The book Faustus had was clearly referencing old world Gods & goddesses and it would seem - his interest/study of the mystical (i.e. eldritch terrors) dated back to when he was a boy. Along with pretty much everything else about him, I would very much like to know WHY he had the desire to study that. Why was he so desperately searching for power at such a young age? And why was he looking for it beyond the religion he was born into, which gave him the gift of magick and promised limitless power to the “worthy” already? In essence - Faustus, WHO HURT YOU. Considering his view of women, I’m gonna guess whoever hurt him was one. Maybe his mother? Maybe both of his parents? Idk, but the little shit definitely got fucked over somewhere in his youth by someone he probably trusted. Said it before and I’ll say it again - he practically screams ‘child abuse victim’ (a la Draco Malfoy, if you need a reference) and I’ll stand by that until I’m proven wrong.

(I was also really struck by the line “that boy knows nothing of true Hell” which Faustus says to Lucifer after Nick beats him in the witch’s cell. What hell has Faustus been through himself in order to say that?)

2. That scene also showed us Zelda & Faustus studied together and were familiar enough with each other to notice a change in attitude (“why are you in such a snit?”) and snipe back & forth from what appears to be a very young age. Which seems to suggest they spent a fair amount of time together at (and possibly before) the Academy. Not a shocking or new revelation really, except it kind of confirms their relationship wasn’t a whirlwind romance and that Faustus asking for Edward’s permission to marry Zelda wasn’t on a whim.

The main questions I have following that scene are if that excerpt he ripped from the book was actually about Hecate and her power. If so, is her power more vast than we even understood by the end of part 3 (i.e. can even she defeat eldritch terrors)? And could the reason Faustus got so upset reading it be that it said only women can call on Hecate, thus thwarting his search for an absolute escape?

Something confirmed about interacting with mystical entities is that they can/will drive you mad. Ambrose says this after Sabrina returns from her quest and finds everyone dead - “Blackwood was driven mad and feral by his insane worship of those eldritch terrors he prays to.”

And if mysticism can drive you mad - and he’s studied/sought these things out since he was a boy - it stands to reason that he’s been slowly feeding and incubating that madness until it finally fucking snapped.

(Side note - an Acheron configuration, which will also drive you mad, is an arcane device from ancient magick, too. So maybe Edward studied these things with Faustus at one point together? Curious.)

We saw him experience a big and sudden shift in part 2 - where his faith in the Church of Night waned with every challenge to his authority by Sabrina. Things had been going along fine the 15 years or so of him being high priest, that maybe he was finally starting to trust his faith in the Lord Satan, until Sabrina showed up and started meddling with the order he’d established. And THEN - in a last ditch effort to take back control and become anti pope, she interferes again and Satan himself doesn’t even seem to care how heretical she’s been.

So back to the eldritch terrors he goes - setting a contingency and pledging his loyalties to them in exchange for protection and power. But they also want an offering (“oh, they like offerings, yes they do”). Proof of loyalty by blood. Solution - poison the coven. Here’s your offering - an entire building’s worth of souls. Bing, bang, boom - “we’ll hide you in this cozy time rift at Loch Ness and siphon every last bit of sanity out of you while you’re there. Oh gosh, they’ve found you and taken our gift egg from you. Well, we can’t have a repeat of that, so while you go pursue it - make sure you get rid of any ties to this reality that you may have. Anything that would hold you back from the glory we’re promising you. Destroy them all, if necessary. The twins can stay ‘cause you’ve raised them to be insane, too, okay off you go!”

But what’s this got to do with Spellwood? Well. The two go hand in hand, the way I see it and here’s where the very small bit of hope for them as a couple (very small) lies.

It’s apparent that, at least somewhere in their history together, Faustus wanted Zelda. She seems to be the only thing about the Spellmans he could ever tolerate and why? Well, perhaps because he cared for her, perhaps they found a common ground in feeling inferior their whole lives (hurt/comfort is kind of their jam), and/or perhaps he just found her attractive (understandable). And if he didn’t have any affection left for her by the time part 2 rolled around, I do not know why he’d continue to pursue her after she cut their physical relationship off. Zelda was going to gain power by marrying the high priest, but there was nothing in it for him beyond... having her as his wife. Which perhaps he truly had wanted since they were young together.

But then he realized it would be more complicated than he thought when Sabrina really amped up her interference with presenting Edward’s manifesto and accusing him of murdering her parents (still never explicitly confirmed, btw) (also still very curious about when he said ‘you haven’t even read mine’ to her at the wedding - makes me wonder if what was in it wasn’t as egregious as the Church of Judas tenants wound up being). And so - he put Zelda under the Caligari spell to keep her from helping her family while he destroyed them once and for all. Except her. ‘Cause he wanted her. Not until he found out she had betrayed him in hiding Leticia did he seek any type of ‘vengeance’ towards her directly. Then, though he was far from sane before, he went well and truly mental after that.

So I see it like this - if he was driven mad and used by the eldritch terrors, he didn’t really have a grasp on reality nor would he have understood what he was doing. He wouldn’t remember any earthly affection he might have for someone because his mind would be corrupted by other worldly things. Thus - a conscience, remorse, and reparation might be possible if they’re able to restore some humanity back to him.

It’s a long shot... by a lot, but in the same way Sabrina told Nick he couldn’t have known what he was doing while under the influence of the Dark Lord’s essence (which we can certainly open a healthy dialogue about taking responsibility for your actions no matter what you’re going through/under the influence of *clears throat*) - so, too, could be the case for Faustus.

If proven as such - and they can additionally confirm some backstory that, at one point, he and Zelda did truly care for each other - it might be possible to salvage the dumpster fire that is their current predicament. If done carefully and with a fuckton of explanation. That’s a lot of built up character history to waste.

(At the very least, just give me an explanation, RAS. I am BEGGING you.)

*slow exhale* Okay, I’m tired. And wow, that’s a whole novel. Okay. Right. Thanks for your question, hope this helped. Bye!

[ganymedesclock]

So I saw a tag on my last post:

#i dont think we were supposed to think to hard about some of this

(via @mamamittens​ here,)

and I think in a way, that’s correct- the Zelda games are actively written in a way that discourages curiosity about Ganondorf. The “final fight” of the game is rarely an environment of Ganon’s making or in his favor. We are overwhelmingly kept away from Ganon himself- there’s no game where we can just talk to him, and I don’t think there’s been a game yet where we can choose dialogue options in a cutscene with Ganon.

We’re very rarely allowed to talk to Ganon’s subordinates. Those relationships are cast heavily in the dark. We don’t get to see Ganon grieving any of the people and monsters we carve through on our path to get to him.

We’re told things about Ganon in a way that is intended to be dismissive- we’re told he’s Cunning and a Schemer so we assume that he’s working towards some sinister agenda any time we’re looking at him or not. We’re told he’s underhanded so we can accept that events that seem completely unrelated are all his doing. We’re told he hates, and that he covets power, because that’s inherently how he is. We’re told he’s an usurper and an unworthy king so he is set across from the Hyrulean royal family, whose right to rule is never questioned by anyone we’re “supposed” to listen to.

We’re not supposed to think about Ganon. We’re not supposed to wonder about Ganon. We’re not supposed to listen to Ganon.

And this is unnerving, when people don’t tell us things about Ganon. 

In Wind Waker, there is a small detail where Ganon is only stated as “Ganon” by Daphnes. The time we hear him called “Ganondorf” is when he introduces himself to Link. That’s one of the first things he says to Link in this game- calmly and indifferently giving us this tiny, but fairly notable, detail of his history that Daphnes never told us.

And Daphnes omits a lot of Ganon in that game. The word “Gerudo” is never mentioned. We only know that Ganon didn’t come from Hyrule because again, he himself tells Link about his country and the disparity in climate- that Hyrule had something his people didn’t, and at least in that timeline, seemingly, the Gerudo were struggling. (One can argue in OoT they don’t appear to be struggling, but, why would Ganon, a king among his own people, keenly know and be able to describe the experience of poverty and living close to death if he never experienced it? He isn’t pulling this out in anticipation of pity; it’s a moment’s introspection before he braces himself to fight Link and Tetra for the triforce, with no suggestion that they could back down or negotiate)

And even just in a sense of immediate relevance of the game- Daphnes doesn’t tell us the Master Sword was used to seal Ganon. He doesn’t tell us that there’s consequences to drawing it whether or not it still had the sages’ power. In fact, Daphnes casually justifies withholding information- when he reveals his true identity, he outright tells Link that as long as Link was able to kill Ganon, Daphnes saw no reason to reveal Hyrule or his own identity.

Considering Daphnes is literally sending Link on a politically motivated hit on another ruler, this is really bad. It’s bad that literally all of the context we have on Hyrule’s downfall is either directly given by Ganon- who at no point is shown to lie to further the obvious agenda he’d have of Not Wanting Link To Kill Him- or prompted by Ganon’s actions and words raising questions that Daphnes admits he needs to answer.

In Twilight Princess, Ganon talks to Link less, but he’s still conspicuously wearing a crown. He is still overtly not Hylian- we can still imagine that he is from the Gerudo, which is very concerning, when the only inhabited structure in the Gerudo Desert in TP is a massive, extremely haunted prison full of torture equipment that was presided over by servants of the Hyrule royal family. Whether or not we were supposed to think deeply about it, having Ganon, overtly crowned, when there were no other Gerudo, and the sages claiming they merely executed “a bandit” who was blessed with the gods’ power basically by accident- literally only thinking about it as far as “but Ganon didn’t just sprout out of the desert at random, where did he come from? In other games, he’s from a people called the Gerudo who lives in the desert, but it doesn’t look like anyone lives in the Gerudo Desert except the Bulblins, and Ganon’s obviously not a bulblin” tells us that the nicest thing that possibly happened is famine or disaster wiped out the Gerudo, destroyed their city, and left Ganon the sole survivor.

It’s not a good look if you can’t admit the person you’re executing is royalty.

But we’re Not Supposed To Think About Ganon.

And in another sense, we are- we’re supposed to hate him. We’re supposed to think about the bad things that happen and think they’re his fault. We’re supposed to think about the bad he could hypothetically do, and allegedly is doing, somewhere we can’t see him, or where we can see the results but not anything that explains why Ganon did this or how.

We’re supposed to think about Ganon as an adversary, a beast, a monster, a tyrant.

We are not supposed to think about Ganon as a person who was ever a child, who ever had a homeland. We are not supposed to think about how Ganon frequently empowers or takes the side of people who feel like they were kicked around by the established order.

We’re supposed to think about Ganon as avaricious, but never Ganon who wants things. We’re supposed to think about Ganon as wrathful, but never someone who knew lack or suffering or punishment. We’re supposed to think of Ganon as vindictive, but never someone who has any reason to feel he was wronged. We’re supposed to think about Ganon who hates Hyrule, but never Ganon who was ever given a reason to hate Hyrule, or resent it, or be envious about it.

And more than these factors being only implied or not implied or only there if you ‘really think hard about it’- they are frequently implied or explicitly spelled out in canon.

Wind Waker Ganon tells Link that he was a person who lived close to death in a barren wasteland of a country. He says this was his experience, and motivated his desire for Hyrule. It’s threaded into the way he phrases his wish. He states this at a point when he has nothing to gain, is not telling Link to stop fighting him or that he’s justified, but merely, with the benefit of introspection, contemplating on how his ambition began. Daphnes is right there, perfectly able to hear him, and does not contest or argue this. 

There is nothing here that suggests Ganon is a liar- especially when, in Wind Waker, Ganon is a more reliable source of exposition than Daphnes is. He doesn’t lie in any part of the game- if anything, he tells us several important things before Daphnes does (that Tetra is carrying a piece of the triforce, that the Master Sword was used to seal him, that it has lost its power, that there’s a connection between the weakening of the sword and the “pathetic fools who made it”)

Which I think takes things a step further than merely shoddy lore- because, some of this stuff, like Ganon no intuitive motive for planting Kalle Demos where he ostensibly did, and no obvious means for creating, taming, or controlling this creature, genuinely is just shoddy lore- they made a forest dungeon for the players’ enjoyment and gave it a forest boss and then contrived a reason to be there and then put it into the boss rush because everybody loves boss rushes, right? Why is there a monster there? Pin it on Ganon.

But things like literally having people lie about Ganon, when Ganon conversely doesn’t lie to Link and half the time actively explains more than the mentor figure has at that point in a way that only partially feels like monologuing- it comes back to what I said. Ganon in Wind Waker suggests that he’s not the only one spurned by the gods, but so are Link and Zelda- and, once again...

...Nothing in the series really calls him a liar about it.

But we’re not supposed to think about Ganon in the way that we wonder about him at all. We’re especially not supposed to think that there might be any way to deal with him besides killing him. In Twilight Princess, we can guess he was potentially given a trial, because of the “Arbiter” in “Arbiter’s Grounds”, but in a context where the Gerudo were decimated, and it was the direct servants of the royal family trying him, in an isolated environment that clearly condones doing all kinds of horrible things to people, far, far away from any civilians or witnesses... how fair a trial could that possibly be? 

And what does it mean about Link’s morality in that game, if he defeats Ganon by tearing open that execution wound, following the steps of the sages, and the only real rationale is he started off trying to rescue the people of Ordon- who we’re never given a good reason why they were kidnapped and then abandoned, or something that ties it back to Ganon’s orders- and tries to defend Midna, restoring her to the throne (and basically ignoring Zant’s accusations that Midna’s family abused him, because we never meet said family, or hear anything about them from anyone else) and Zelda (who’s nearly a non-entity in Twilight Princess until the final fight).

Link is presented as an ostensible neutral party because he’s not a soldier of Hyrule, but in practice, he’s kept very ignorant about the situation he’s conscripted into, and he’s given all of his cues from Hyrulean perspectives and especially those of their royal family. And we, interacting with the world through him, are similarly kept in the dark.

So- yeah, so much more of Ganon makes sense if you just don’t think about it. This was clearly the stance we were supposed to take.

But...

On the other hand...

Are we really comfortable, through the character of Link, of playing the role of an unthinking executioner, who sharpens the sword because we were told, who cuts down someone we barely know anything about, who doesn’t give us that many reasons to oppose him not filtered through things we’re told by other people? Who virtually never directly attacks until we personally chase him down?

Even if Hyrule has only the best intentions, why write a story where we just have to take a bunch of confusing and downright concerning information at face value and kill a guy because destiny says so?

If this isn’t supposed to look like we’re the unwitting servants of evil, why are we supposed to be unwitting servants at all? After all, you don’t usually hear the term “unwitting servant of justice” because the general idea is that a just cause is one that doesn’t need to lie to people.