#every time i see stuff about anyone who wasnt in skyward sword or botwtotk complaining about hylia i cant help but think

[jheselbraum]

I don't super go to linked universe (it's fine there's just A Lot of it and Almost Nothing in this fandom Isn't some kind of Linked Universe at this point) but I do wanna add to this, cause there actually is a hint at Hylias name and her relation to the Master Sword in A Link to the Past but if anything it proves that that Link would have no fucking clue who Hylia is nor would he have beef with her.

It's at the beginning and kinda easy to miss but one of the characters (I'm like 80% it's Sahasrala but it could also have been his wife) tells Link that the Master Sword is, like, this super powerful sword that was totally created by the people who used to live in Hyrule before the Hylians... A civilization called the Hylia.

Now, Hylia the character did not exist and definitely wasn't even a twinkle in Nintendos eye when alttp was made. This is the franchise that solved the "multiple writers across multiple decades who all want to write different stories" thing by basically doing the opposite of whatever DC and Marvel were doing with their classic franchises and completely ignoring the timeline even after they caved and actually made one. But even if you are looking at that scene in a post skyward sword context and applying the knowledge that Hylia the character is meant to have canonically existed prior to humans evolving according to Nintendo, I personally don't see how anyone could read that line of dialogue and come to any conclusion other than "by the time A Link to the Past happens, no one in Hyrule has any goddamn clue who the fuck Hylia is or what she did"

Because "the Hylia created the Master Sword" is actually a pretty reasonable drift from "the goddess Hylia created the Master Sword" and no, the franchise that has literally never made two games with an 80% seamless continuity between them did not secretly have Hylia in their back pocket while they were making A Link to the Past, a game that was made during the early days of Zelda when Link was still canonically worshipping The Actual Fucking Christian God there is concept art about this.

And these things happen! We can look at real world religions and see it happening! Gods get imported and exported, come into and out of popularity, even the specifics change from time to time (look up early Christian heresies you'll be REAL surprised by what you find)! And it's really fun that they introduced a wildly important character to one of nintendos biggest franchises after multiple games where she straight up doesn't exist because no one had thought of her yet, claim that she's actually been every single Zelda, and have it still work because Hyrule can't even directly remember the Triforce exists half the time so it makes sense they wouldn't always remember who Hylia is so they completely sidestep what would otherwise be a massive wasted opportunity by just not using Hylia if she doesn't fit the vibe (a link between worlds didn't have any mention of Hylia at all and that came out well after skyward sword)!

So that version of Link has zero reason to be mad at Hylia. If he's mad at any deity it would be literally the christian god there is literally a regular ass christian church in that game that is a key location.

Disclaimer: I don't super care, on like a personal level, if you have religious trauma and want to use your blorbos to work through it in a fandom setting I just like analyzing things and I like Hylia and I think ignoring what's actually in these games diminishes the impact of actual smart writing decisions that the devs make sometimes when it comes to continuity across different games, because usually they don't care about that sort of thing which is their prerogative but it's nice to see stuff working when they do decide to care. (I also think LU legend having beef with Literally The Real World Religious Figure Jesus Christ is a way funnier concept than whatever's going on with Hylia but I do want to emphasize that I am joking about that and generally Christian imagery in the early zeldas should be regarded with the same sincerity as the Christian imagery in neon genesis evangelion, which is to say have fun but it's literally just there to look cool and foreign for a Japanese audience, like how the Homunculi in FMA have English names in the original Japanese script but when it got translated they got Latin epithets)

Okay you know what actually yeah. I was tired but I had a point.

Why. On earth. In zelda fics. Do people not shut up about everything being hylia's fault forever and ever.

Like, the one deity out of a dozen odd who got cursed into this right alongside Link. All the focus on one great all being power who then gets blamed or blessed for everything that ever happens. It's just... I don't know, it just seems like a culturally Christian thing. Not even that - American catholic.

Especially Legend omg when people write him he never shuts up about how everything bad that's ever happened to him is all hylia's fault and she's doing it on purpose with no thought to her poor beleagured hero. He sounds like someone who grew up in an American conservative household who turned out to be queer and never bothered to unpack any of it and acts like he's now atheist.

But even then you could do something interesting with that!! The common headcanon that Legend is hylian royalty - of course that family would put immense worth and worship on hylia as her descendants, she who founded their kingdom. And maybe legend could feel bitter about not inheriting the magic, or the throne, or whatever meant he grew up away from the castle. Give him some unexamined religious trauma! Heck, he could bond with Flora over disappointing your family's expectations or something! They could work on unpacking it together! If you must make it part of his character at least think about why!

Because that belief is wrong, because hylia is literally the one deity we can pretty safely understand is not all seeing, all knowing, all being.

Every time she has a voice, a role, we see her make mistakes or be tricked and have regrets.

Skyward sword, she's literally zelda. She's a young protective warrior goddess (she used a sword and lead armies to battle against demise) who was created by the Three to guard the triforce and keep watch over hyrules lands. By the time ss starts she's already made several tough calls, not limited to yoinking hylians into the sky. When she was zelda she hated every second of leading Link around and even then!! It all hinged on him being completely willing! He was never forced to do anything, she didn't even have her memories with the plan until after she'd fallen to the surface! Their relationship was entirely genuine and she very nearly overestimated her own willingness to go through with the plan! And even then she still managed to get kidnapped lmao. That's not what happens when you're in charge of fate.

And in botw and totk - she's in her full divine form, her full divine powers, she's ancient and magic and worshipped in every corner of the kingdom. And (spoilers!) she loses contact with one of her own mf statues. Not just any ten apples high chibi statue you see in the towns, no, it's The Big One. She's got no idea what happened to it, but she's (rightfully) worried, and asks Link to check it out. And in an entirely separate instance, her OTHER big statue in the ToT gets overridden!! By a triangle head! And ol creep in the deep is the one who releases the statue! It's been what 20k years of power and worship - if she's not all powerful then she never will be.

Hyrule - every hyrule - is very, very polytheistic. She's not even a goddess of time to be in charge of stuff like that! There's multiple of them: Naryu, Cia (and Lana), Farosh to an extent, and many artifacts that can cause time travel, like the harp of ages, the ocarina, the big portal in ss, those time shift stones in the same game, the statue in wind waker. Please stop treating her like the magic elf equivalent of Monotheistic American Christianity God.

She was introduced in skyward sword. The game that came out before botw. She did not exist in any of the games that came before that. There was a lake hylia! In the kingdom hyrule! That's it! Her name or even existence wasn't even hinted at before that. It's actually canonically pretty unlikely any of the chain (cough cough legend) have even heard of her! And her assigned job is protector of the triforce. That's it. And she can't even use the thing. She can very explicitly as a main driving force of the ss plot not use the triforce she protects. And the triforce, shockingly, is not even in every game.

Cases that hylia often gets the most flack for (links awakening and all the trauma from that, Link failing in botw, the events of totk) hylia has absolutely zero part in. Hilariously. And she has zero power over wishes made to the triforce or who makes those wishes or what the triforce does about it.

She even gets all the blame for the cycle of the hero, the reincarnation! Which? We know exactly how that happened. Blaming her for a curse she herself is a victim to?? Demise, in skyward sword, explicitly, on screen, doing it ON PURPOSE, cursing the spirit of the hero and the blood of the goddess.

Hylia, I don't know if you've noticed, also has her own blood. Whether or not she lost that blood upon return to her divine form, she still couldn't break the curse. Link, spirit now tied to whatever demise had cooking up, is basically to reincarnate in time for whenever the Interesting Times happen. And it's demise's fault, who, again, did it on screen, on purpose, explicitly, pointing at the camera with text bolded and everything.

So why do people even blame her? I think it comes down to this:

Her name matches the kingdom. Whatever her connection to the people with the same name, I don't know, but she did found the surface kingdom as a mortal. Being named zelda at the time I wonder who chose the name XD!

Her worship in botk as a high ranking deity. Again, not monotheistic, there's temples to the Three and there's Malanya and Satori and the great fairies and the yiga worship ganon, but hylia is the most widespread for all she's basically a side character working for the new heart piece situation. Again, this is only the case in ss/botk, she doesn't appear in even aoc.

A misguided belief spread in fanfiction that in linked universe, hylia is the one opening and controlling the portals. To my knowledge, lu canon is that the portals are opened by dark link, or at least that's the working theory. I think it's assumed that hylia is the one who gathered the heroes together to combat it? If that's true? Congratulations! We have one (very plot necessary) act of hers in a fan comic. That is not canon to The Legend Of Zelda series.

An american Christian (I hesitate to say evangelican?) cultural understanding of religion. The differences between polytheism and monotheism. How one might feel if the divine was proven real on earth. Zelda is a Japanese property, it is not a Christian country. Though it draws aesthetic inspiration from western medieval fantasy it is not and never will be culturally western. The majority of ao3/tumblr users are American or at least English speaking, and that will always affect interpretation. It's giving 'be thankful to God no matter what for he always has a plan. Trust in him and your suffering will be rewarded' which is not a universal religious belief.

Something I've noticed to be surprisingly common in fandom, is where a mentor or figure of authority who is anything less than perfect or all forgiving can very quickly have their reputation ripped to shreds by the fandom. And then newer authors come, read those works, internalise that about the characters and produce new works that assume that character's cruelty to be par for the course. I will not be listing those characters or fandoms for a variety of reasons lol. But it is amazingly common and very hard to untangle, especially in larger fandoms. It's character bashing in a way near identical to cancelling people irl. It's not 'giving them depth' or 'making it more realistic' (grittier equalling realism is an ice cold take proliferated by dudebro comic authors and wrong besides.) Have some critical thinking.

Lately, I've also been running into a great many fics (not so much comics) that make hylia do some fairly heinous stuff... And then unironically blame her for it. They do remember they're the ones deciding what the characters do, right? She's not an abusive master playing with her puppets until they break, she's quite the opposite! Use the right tags (dark hylia/ooc characters/character bashing/author made them do it, idk) or dial it back. This is a growing percentage of fics and I'll never restrict content but yanno, if you're going to make hylia evil or manipulative at least understand it's a canon deviation (and do something interesting with it, I once read an amazing botw fic with evil hylia and fierce deity!).

TLDR, To summarise, hylia is canonically incapable both emotionally and physically of doing the majority of things characters in fics blame her for. Stop using her as a scapegoat especially when demise is right there. Please give your whumpees deeper characterisation than hating on hylia. Please give legend deeper characterisation than hating on hylia every time he or someone else is sad. Please remember wild can talk to hylia if he wants. Please double check anything you're not sure about :D!