#generally zelda is great at a brush of vague worldbuilding that serves its exact purpose and leaves the rest to abstraction

[rawliverandgoronspice]

tbh I was very confused abt the tea cup scene bc: 1 We just had a scene with Zelda using her powers being much more powerful than Sonia. Idk but if that scene of supporting Rauru had happened after the tea cup scene it'd have made more sense? + Like, the entire scene was just "you can do it" and then she didn't, when talking abt going back to the future. I know it was a red herring, but still. It was like an exposition dump. 2 It felt so random. Like I'm bad at remembering, but this is the first time her powers are split in their origin? And was time ever like a particular power of Zelda's even? It feels like they made that problem just to solve it poorly. Idk tho, I know there's lots of time stuff, but all of seems to mainly stuff tied with objects, mastersword, ocarina, etc.

Hey thanks for the ask (sorry it took me so long)!

I don't know if Zelda's powers are more powerful than Sonia, but it's true they have been shown to be basically on par in the Molduga scene. It could be argued it's Rauru orchestrating everything and they just fuel his own power through the stones, but yes, I think they should have shown her struggling here --or just not even participating and feeling bad about it-- for the scene to land better.

It's true that for all the setup introduced, there is very little that is actually paid off beside the dragon thing, which was set up in a way that I thought was extremely heavy-handed (the second it was mentioned, which might have been my third memory I came across, I was like "okay so she's a dragon for sure and also ganondorf will for sure swallow his stone and turn into a dragon as a final boss move" and. welp. It did temper my wonder at the events that followed significantly.)

I don't remember either if it's the first time the split power situation is mentioned and I sincerely do not feel like watching the cutscenes again sorryyy ;; But, I did think it was a little bit of a weird choice to have her powers split in the middle like this. Not only does that make her purpose in the story muddier, but it also does emphasize her specialness a little too much in my opinion, it does feel like a layer cake with too many layers. I know there's been talks of Zelda being the Sage of Time since OoT came out basically, and I like this idea a lot, but I think they felt obligated to tie in the Light powers as well? I know it was for the whole "it's your ancestors bloodline", but I don't know. Also, them as her ancestors happened how many thousand of years ago? If we want to include split genetics in the equation like splitting her powers here would suggest, then surely a lot of that perfect clean split would have dissolved or strengthened along the way. She's not their daughter; she's their grand-grand-grand-grand-[...]-grand daughter. So. Yeah. Lore choices.