#i also don't think Zelda would have allowed it either

[luimagines]

(( sparring match & don't make the child mad imagine ))

The chain and blind are in warrior's hyrule and lucky in the castle training ground were soilders train as warrior zelda notice the chain with impa. Blind holding wind hand and listening to all the sounds around them til they feel a magic presence of zelda and smile.

Zelda: link you return.

Warrior: hey zelda good to see you.

Warrior induction his zelda and impa to the chain and blind and she smile greet them all and ask the chain, warrior help on help training the soilders since some of them are untrained and blind can hear from their right to faintly hear a group of soilders talking about the chain in not a good light and the child grip their hand tightly that wind flinch since he holding their hand.

Wind: Heya blind ease up on-

Blind: sorry big brother ,zelda?

Zelda look to the cute child and smile answer the child with a yes.

Blind point their finger to the small group of soilders to their right.

Blind: can I spar them?

Time was going to step in to say something but blind owly look to were they think their papa is with a look of let me do this and zelda allow it and she take blind hand to walk them to were the main training ground is as the chain follow worry for blind as those soilders that was speaking ill of the chain get armed with wooden swords.

Zelda hand blind a wooden sword too and blind test out the wooden sword by touch then lightly tap the tip to the ground to how were the tip is as the three soilders chuckle saying how easy this sparring match will be but when impa give the ok to start the match blind listen to the three soilders move and swings go and use the wooden sword to block them all and swing back calculated and fast. That two of those soilders fell to the ground since the child swings hard.

The first soilder try to do a dirty trick on the blind child but blind can easily tell he's lying and dodge so blind upper cut and the angle that that the tip of the wooden sword break off but the chain flinch to see that soilder is going to have a hard time walking later but the spar match is over.

Blind: say mean things about my family again and I'll make you regret saying it.

Zelda giggle and take blind hand to walk th back to their family *chain*

Blind: sorry big brother warrior, this wooden sword is broken.

Warrior sign and glad that they did it because someone talk bad about them but seeing two soilders groan to the bruises and the other well need a ice pack wind very very glad he's their silbing cause he doesn't want to get a hit like that ever in his life.

The soilders fear the child more than Ganondorf and doesn't dare speak about the chain in fear they'll upset the blind child.

Fierce is grinning his grandchild on their first sparring and have the child by his side since time ask him to watch them.

Wow... that's one tough six year old.

Gotta admit though- I have trouble with this one since I don't think the chain would have allowed them to spar to begin with. It would be one thing if the child used their magic to attack from afar- but this doesn't match my perception.

Good on them.

[alilbitlesbian]

Goddamn Monsterfuckers

Reader x Sonia x Rauru

Zelda and Link weren't the only ones under the castle, Zelda's personal guard, a knight who was trained and hired to relieve Link of some of his duties, had been with them.

They stood next to their friends when the floor collapsed, falling into an inky abyss, time froze as they fell, the dot of light that was the dungeons disappearing above them. They'd accepted their fate already when light, yellow sparkles buzzed over their skin like static electricity, and then they were gone, disappearing in a mist of power.

---

Reader is nonbinary and also not even attracted to Rauru at first because they're convinced he's either a small lynel or an overgrown bokoblin.

Sonia and Rauru are IMMEDIATELY hooked though, also they think Zelda is dating R which is,,,, not true but it's funny so I let it happen, im so exhausted from writing this and the sidon x reader project, sfjkdlg.

send asks if you have any fun ideas for fics!! This one will have several chapters so please for the love of god just oneshots, just oneshots cause i cant sjfkdg

----

Their breaths were wheezing, confusing them momentarily as they lay, looking at the clouds as the soft twinkling sparks of magic finally extinguished like the sparks of a fire

-

They awoke in a field, tired and cold, a hand shook their shoulder, and their eyes snapped open, she was alone, in a field, and someone- a stranger- shook them?

Their wordless shout had the stranger withdrawing, muttering to someone they could not yet see, the Knight crawled away from the stranger, looking around and seeing the princess not far away.

In a flash, they were up to their feet, they stumbled, uneasy, and their eyes flicked from the hylian woman in front of them to the strange beast that bent over Miss Zelda's form, sharp teeth exposed and clawed hands reaching for the princess.

It took not a second to drag their sword from its scabbard and draw their shield, both royal guards’ issues that proudly displayed the symbol of Hyrule, the woman looked at them in confusion, but she followed their eye line to the beast and her eyes widened, mouth opening to shout.

The woman called out, and the beast barely managed to see the approaching guard before he sprung back from them, they stood over Miss Zelda, making sure not to hurt her as they kept both assailants away. If the woman knew a monster, she surely wasn't as safe as she appeared.

The beast approached, hands out in a placating matter, the knight snarled, snarled like Link had taught them to scare monsters and people alike, and held their sword at the ready.

The two figures glanced to one another, and in a wide arc, they stepped to eachother. The monster drew the woman behind it, a protective move. The guard grimaced, lowering their stance, the beast was much larger than them, it could easily defeat them, especially with how unsteady they still felt after the strange rush of magic and the fall under the castle.

No matter, they would not allow any harm to befall the princess.

"Your companion-" the woman said, they frowned, before hearing a soft groan, they glanced, panicked, between the princess and the threats, but as the young girl stirred and attempted to sit up, the choice was made.

"Princess!" They cried, shield dropping with a clatter and sword returning to its sheath with a soft *shiiing*, they slid on their knees in their haste to be by the princess’ side, they missed the way that the Hylian woman repeated the word they’d spoken to her beast, confused.

"Please, don't strain yourself." Their hands settled on the princess’s back and shoulder, protectively glancing at the stranger and monster as they helped her sit up, the second they heard feet approach, they scrambled to their feet, pulling out their sword and pointing it at the approaching figures, who paused immediately.

Their blood rushed, making them light-headed, their heart pounded in their chest, gritting their teeth

"Y/n, please." The Princess placed her hand on her knight’s shoulder, they lowered their sword ever so slightly. But still scowled at the two.

"Who are you?" The princess asked, uneasy, the knight placed the sword back in their scabbard, but their hand hovered near the handle, an action that did not go unnoticed.

“Princess..” They murmured, urgent, inclining their head in an obvious suggestion to leave, or at least reconvene, the princess nodded, noting her knight’s apprehension, but kept her eyes on the strange creature and the woman, the princess tilted her head at the strange couple, giving them an opening to speak.

“I am Sonia, this is my husband, Rauru.” Sonia approached the princess, and the guard bristled. An insult almost slipped off the guard’s tongue, one they’d heard not often in the towns they’d pass, a few times thrown at Kilton or his brother, or even, at times, at Hylians who courted other species.

‘Monsterfucker.’ 

The thought stained their feelings toward the woman, and they glared at her beast, visibly startling when it- he? Spoke.

“I am sorry we startled you and your companion, we were only trying to help.” They hissed under their breath, Zelda and Sonia did not seem to hear it, but Rauru’s ears twitched and he glanced to them, curiously.

“I apologize for my knight’s behavior, it is just.. We have never seen anyone like you before, most that look similar to you, are not sentient or kind, but rather monsters who wish only to destroy.” Zelda spoke, her soft voice settled the knight a bit, and Rauru nodded in understanding, his eyes now kinder as he took them in.

“Sorry for my manners, I am Zelda, daughter of King Rhoam and the Princess of Hyrule, and this is one of my personal guards, y/n.” You bowed reluctantly, your metal pauldron clanging softly with the motion as you waited for the conversation to continue before you stood again.

“What a strange and unexpected thing to say, as we are the founders of Hyrule, as far as I know.” The humor in his voice was apparent, but stale, you huffed at the joke, and he smiled, mirth in his eye.

“Wait..” Zelda paused, and so did you, narrowing your eyes as you looked between the two.

“Queen Sonia and King Rauru…” She murmured, you remembered her telling you about them, it was a small part of history, as sadly, details of the oldest history were always the hardest to find, just their names now echoed through your lands, in a long, almost endless line of kings and queens, they barely stood out.

“Where are we?” Your voice was hoarse, and scratchy. The two strangers looked slightly surprised at the quality of it, Zelda did too, but looked mostly worried, she glanced out over the lands.

“I- I don’t know.” She managed, you gazed at the two, they didn’t seem dangerous, but you had to remain on guard.

“Hyrule.” They replied instantly, but your eyes traced upward to the island floating above, you startled, and an involuntary whine slipped from your lips, Zelda followed your eyeline and startled in much the same way.

“What is that?” She managed, confused.

“Oh, that is the great sky island,” Sonia answered sweetly, you glanced at Zelda, then signed a quick question.

‘I patrol perimeter?’

‘Yes, quick.’ she signed back, and you took your shield from the grass, sword out as you started to search the forest for anything, landmarks, a monster hideout, a village, or the castle from afar.

You came upon a cliff, it wasn’t awfully high, but enough so for you to see down into a valley you strangely recognized.

You spotted Hylians, wearing revealing clothes and holding rough, handmade weapons, seemingly made from sticks and stones rather than the fine metalwork you carried, even Lizalfos had nicer weapons than that. You watched the hylians for a bit longer, they seemed to scavenge in the forest for fruits and vegetables.

Zelda called your name, and it didn’t take much more for you to return to her side, taking a dead sprint, still holding your sword as you settled next to her.

“Did you see anything?” You ignored how Sonia and Rauru appraised your weapon, or how you wheezed softly with each breath, you nodded.

“Hylians, not like you and me, like her.” You nodded toward Sonia, and Zelda nodded. “They wear primitive clothes, weapons like a monster’s not like ours, not even like a lizalfos or Lynel.” Again, Zelda nodded, hand to her chin.

“Then it’s certain, we must have somehow traveled back in time, Sonia and Rauru explained to me it could be the stone we found.” She held out the yellow stone, and you hummed, nodding.

“Keep it close, hide it.” You murmured, glancing at the islands above you nervously.

“We should return to the castle, I am sure my sister would be glad to speak to you, Miss Zelda.” You frowned, you’d roughly calculated where you were, near the Temple of Time, by the location of the valley and a mountain that you supposed would become the dueling peaks, but was for now just one mountain.

“How.” You managed, the raspy quality of your hurt throat had Zelda be even more concerned.

“Normally.. We’d teleport, but I don’t think that’ll be possible, if we walk a day, we should reach a town not too far off the route, and there we could get some horses.”

You nodded thoughtfully, chewing the inside of your cheek as you glanced from Zelda to the king and queen, they smiled, but the King's sharp teeth only managed to unsettle you.

"I suppose.. We should start walking then!" Zelda clapped her hands, you nodded, stretching your arms above your head while Rauru began walking, Sonia chattering softly to you and Zelda.

You remained quiet, eyes pinned on the unfamiliar landscape, searching for enemies or threats.

If you really had gone back in time..

Shaking your head, you sighed, surely, it wouldn't be that difficult, if it went up, it went down, if it went back in time.. Surely it could go forward, that's the way time is supposed to go!

Yeah, it'd be fine.

[blueskittlesart]

any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

[zarvasace]

I've been going through your ao3 bc I've n been having a hankering for Four/ colors content

Hyrule's fic where he has the loftwing tattoo is ouch in the good ways. Boy had it ROUGH and if I found out that happened to my bestie I would also puke so I get you, Sky.

And the one where Red and Vio grow up in a cult and Red is the perfect little cult angel so they'll be allowed to LEAVE and they haven't seen the sun for 16 years like my heart. Those poor boys. They just want to see their brothers and Red was too young to even remember them ;-;

I picture that Red and Vio found a nice house with a big garden and they spend all day relaxing in the sun and hanging out and nothing else happens to them and they're happy and also Red helps Zelda and the knights find and put a stop to the cult cause Red has alllll the information about them now.

Well I certainly have my fair share of Four and FS boys content. XD I've actually been meaning to add on a bit to the cult one, so here's a fun little epilogue! ~1k words, some CWs for implied religious trauma, some cursing, and moderate angst.

(said cult-themed fic is here! It's a whump fill and imo one of the more intense ones so.)

---

Green wipes his hands off on a towel and heads to the doorway to poke his head into the living room. “Hey, Vio.”

“Sorry!” Vio says, startling. The book in his hands jumps as he shuts it too fast. He looks up at Green, then blinks and settles. “Sorry,” he says again, this time apologizing for apologizing. 

Green takes a second to bite his tongue—he harbors an eternal, ice-cold hatred for the people who'd somehow managed to get it into Vio’s head that reading was something to apologize for—then shrugs in what he hopes is a nonchalant way. “I just wanted to ask if you had a preference between tomato sauce or cheese sauce for dinner. Blue and Red should be back soon.”

Vio slowly reopens his book to the page he'd been reading. “Um, I think Red likes cheese better.”

“Okay, well, what about you?” 

“I don't really have a preference.”

“Cheese, then,” Green says, just as the door to their little house swings open. 

Green’s little question had startled Vio, but Red's loud, enthusiastic greeting very much does not. 

“Viooooo! Guess what I have!” Red bounces in, wearing something a lot like what he'd worn that first day. It's red and yellow and reminds Green of festival robes. The thin fabric accentuates the way he dances in and presents a set of ominous-looking black iron keys to Vio in both hands. 

Those keys mean absolutely nothing to Green, but Vio raises his eyebrows. “You really did it, then.”

“Did you doubt me?” Red smiles. 

“Can we melt those down?” 

“Oh, I definitely plan on it.” 

Blue follows Red into the house, closing the door behind them both. He wears Vio’s old grayed cloak with the heavy leather mantle, though now there’s a splatter of blood across the side. Where Red is clearly very pleased with what they've done, Green can see Blue’s anger simmering beneath the surface. 

In a flailing of angry movement, Blue rips off the hood and tears the mantle off his shoulders. He bundles it all up and dropkicks the thing into the wall with a shout. 

“Woah, Blue,” Green says, stepping in but not touching him yet. “You okay?” 

“I'm fine!” Blue snaps. He throws his hands into the air. “I’m just dandy! I'm totally not traumatized at all! And I bet you aren't either!” He gestures to Red and Vio, who watch him warily. “We're all really well-adjusted members of society! Nobody treated me like shit while they thought I was you! Nobody at all!”

Green drops his towel and grabs Blue’s arms to stop him from throwing a punch at the wall. He's done it before. “Calm down!”

“Why should I?” Blue keeps shouting, but Green can see the shine in his eyes. “They kept saying, oh, they're good people, just misled, just take care of some of the leaders and everyone will be fine, but you know who gave a damn about me? About Vio? When we staged that—that—”

“Blue!” Green shakes him, hoping to snap him out of it, but all he does is shake the tears out. 

Blue is more prone to punching out his feelings than crying about them. The tears that fall down his face are out of the ordinary for him. He looks at Green like he did every time he became despondent: like he hopes desperately that Green can fix the world. His rage is quickly giving way to full-out sobbing, and it's a bit startling. This hasn't happened in years. 

Green has gotten good at dealing with Blue’s moods, but Vio and Red very much have not. Red has moved to stand half in front of Vio, as if to protect him, and Vio’s eyes have gone calculating. Then Red leans back to whisper something, never taking his eyes off of Blue and Green, and Vio responds, too quietly to hear. 

Blue starts to push away from Green, red in the face, but Vio is right there, hands raised as if he doesn't know what to do with them. 

“Um,” Vio says, “I'm sorry.”

“No, I'm sorry!” Blue interrupts, his voice breaking. “I didn't mean to—to get mad—and we didn't find you—and I had no idea—” 

Red taps Vio on the shoulder and whispers loudly. “Ask if he wants a hug.”

A short, wet laugh interrupts Blue’s tears, and he shakes his head as if to say it isn't necessary. 

Vio’s face goes tight in a wince, and Green starts to move to interrupt, but then Vio raises his arms and wraps them around Blue, and Blue’s sobs go quiet almost instantly. After a few seconds, they readjust so Blue can hold Vio back. Vio definitely isn't crying, but he does hide his face behind his bangs and Blue’s neck. 

Red looks like he's about to cry, too, so Green nudges him. 

“Want to help me make some sauce for pasta?” 

“Really?” Red says, looking up. “Yeah. I do.”

“Come on.” 

Red drops the keys he holds on top of Vio’s discarded cloak, then follows Green into the kitchen. He's a little subdued, but still enthusiastic. By the time Red burns his half of the sauce (surprising no one), Blue and Vio have shifted to speaking quietly on the old couch. 

It's going to be a long road of healing, even considering how far the four of them have come so far. But now they know that the cult isn't going to come after Red and Vio, or kidnap anyone else, for that matter, since they got the princess and knights involved. But Vio has begun to keep his books in plain sight, and Red curses a little more every day. Red goes outside into the sun most days, and drags Vio with him every so often. They moved to a nice little house, and visit their father at least once a week. Blue has been happy, and so has Green. 

It's a long road, yes, and doubtlessly it's an uphill one. But they're on it together. 

[crazylittlejester]

Okayokay, so at the time this au takes place, it's been about 5 years since the War of Eras and he has been promoted to the rank of General (like Impa I think) and is like a cool uncle figure to the knights in training.

Like most characterisations of hw Link (I'll call him 'Captain' because he would hate being so directly associated with the War), my guy has a shit ton of trauma that he's working through. For now I'm going to talk about the physical injuries he's had. Basically, at the start yk how Volga beats up this kid? Yeah, that's left a lot worse scarring. Like, Zuko from atla level scarring on his face, and it extends down onto his chest and the entirety of his right arm. As a result, the areas are either numb or he can't stand the feeling of anything rubbing against it (basing it on my own burn scar but anyways). Oh, and he's also got a massive scar across his throat from a messy attempted assassination. He only survived because of a fairy. Impa gifted him the scarf because he didn't want anyone to see the hero as someone that could be killed or scratched (completely ignoring the burn scars but he's a Link, he doesn't hold the triforce of wisdom).

Another thing is that when people found out that the War started over Cia wanting the Linkussy (I'm sorry) many harassed him and blamed everything on him, like to the point where people only ever saw him on the battlefield or sprinting back to his tent. Eventually it devolved into people saying the war wasn't worth fighting because he wasn't even beautiful (they said this because of his scars). At one point some soldiers managed to drug him until he was basically comatose and they snuck out in the middle of the night to deliver him to Cia and hopefully end the war.

He refuses to talk about what happened there. When he was eventually rescued, both of his legs were broken and he had Cia's name engraved in his back. Since then, touch has been difficult for him to accept.

Even after all that, he refused to turn bitter and still helped his teammates, even if they hated him, because he figured that if he was the hero then he needed to act like it before he was left to rot for being useless, or in case they decided they didn't need a hero.

How does toon Link and young oot Link play into this? They fought alongside everyone else, and were unofficially adopted as younger brothers by Captain. They were the only ones other than Impa and Sheik/Zelda allowed in his tent. He only took off the Hero mask around them because he refuses to lose who he was to who people expect him to be.

When the War finally ended, Captain slept for a week and woke up in the royal infirmary. He's lived in the Castle under royal protection ever since, because during the war somehow his home was destroyed and his family killed by monsters. This was retaliation after he was rescued from Cia.

Needless to say, Zelda got his twink ass in therapy. It's helped a lot, and now he can actually appear in front of people and take care of himself. He's still got a way to go, but now he can actually see a future for himself. Now he still works in the Hyrulean Military, but I don't know much about military stuff and it doesn't seem that interesting so cannot provide many details. But he's good friends with both Impa and Zelda and hopes to be a good influence on new recruits.

When my au happens, he's still depressed but he's functioning, and he serves as a lighthouse of sorts for the other Links. A person to talk to, someone to inspire them to keep going. The person he wishes he had when he was at his worst. He still refuses touch, but he shows love in other ways. Only Mask and Sailor really knows how it is a sign of just how much better he's gotten since the War, and they will stab anyone who badmouths him.

Side note: he's the only one who can get Mask to actually speak in this au.

Also, he isn't perfect. On his worst days, he can't stand the idea of anyone perceiving him and will have a full blown panic attack if touched by anything or he sees any eyes on him. Sometimes he accidentally lashes out at the other Links when they do something that unintentionally triggers him, and he believes they may betray him.

Anyway, I can't think of much more, sorry for the ungodly amount of text !!

(sorry i didn’t answer sooner i wanted to make sure i had the time read the whole thing)

I don’t think any of us are capable of giving this man a good time we all give him the worst life ever. DAMN. THIS POOR GUY (i say as if i treat him any better)

OUGH. im glad he got therapy 🥺

[rawliverandgoronspice]

behold: my second least favorite string of words in the entirety of Tears of the Kingdom.

(it's a little less transparent why this time so I'll explain my thoughts under the cut)

So why do I not like this?

In so many words: because if you remove it, the scene still works, but you lose the moral certainty of what is going on.

This single sentence does so much legwork for the entire game (the kind I dislike), to the point where I'm about 60% sure it's the product of a rework that realized how ambiguous Rauru's position was as the Good Rightful King and needed to nervously reassure the players that Ganondorf Is and Always Was the Invader, Actually.

(no matter that it leaves the gerudos in this awkward in-between state of both invaders and victims, while never dwelling in the specifics of their history and their own agency in the entire thing; brushed off as a sin they have to expiate through loyalty to the winners of that particular strife, but without explicitely blaming them either to avoid the implications of what that would have looked like)

If you remove it, not only do you lose a pretty clunky line that detracts from Ganondorf's intimidating presence (who is he even speaking to? who needs to hear this right now?) that honestly speaks for itself when it comes to his experience with warfare, but also you lose any tension and any mystery regarding why he is attacking in the first place.

You also... kind of rob Ganondorf's motivations of their meaning. "Hyrule will bow down before me" leads to asking... why? What does he want? What does he see in those lands? And what little we get with Rauru and then Link during the final fight begs more questions; why do you prefer hardship to peace? Why do you value strength? What leads you to want to rule a land devoid of survivors, become a king without a kingdom? I don't think we ever get satisfactory answers. If you remove this sentence, on the other hand... Subtextually, it becomes pretty clear that his motivations is that he felt threatened by Rauru's power, which is ripe with subtext and questions about whether this is a legitimate reaction, whether his "no survivor" stance is due to a feeling of betrayal when his own people turned against him post the Demon King shenanigans... I'm not saying it would fix the entire game's writing, far from it, but it would already do *so much more*.

(genuinely, I think he could have stayed completely silent during the Molduga Assault, speaking only in the Show of Fealty before going completely nuts after Sonia's murder, and it would have worked MUCH better in terms of characterization but anyway anyway

EDIT: ALSO!!! that way he wouldn't speak hylian to fellow gerudos, which is weird inherently)

Without this line, the core of the tension between the gerudos and Hyrule comes front in his conversation with Rauru; it allows the cause of his hostility to be Rauru's invitations, that he would have taken as a threat, and would have still made him warlike and domineering without making him cartoonishly flat, because, once again, Rauru is not acting in a particularly more legitimate way when Zelda arrives in Ancient Hyrule; and it would have been... fair to point that out. And make for better characterization for Rauru, and Sonia, and Mineru, and everybody. But the priority was for Hyrule to be pictured as unquestionably holy; always legitimate, always truthful, always beautiful, always just.

Also, and this is more of a nitpick but: why would Ganondorf want Hyrule, specifically, to bow down before him also? Was he at war with the rest of the disparate tribes before, and just carried on his ambitions to the very very newly-founded kingdom as they allied under a new banner? (though it seems to be implies the lands were crawling under monsters in a generic sense, and not Ganondorf's attacks in particular) Why would he even consider Hyrule a legitimate entity worth taking over then, if it is so new, born from the will of a powerful rival, founded by what is basically a stranger to these lands? Why would he covet something so young instead of destroying it and just calling the lands Gerudo Lands II or Grooseland or something?

I don't think any of that was even accounted for, because, beyond everything else: to me, this sentence is so clearly and painfully crammed in here to shield Hyrule from any potential blame and immediately characterize Ganondorf as Bad without having to remove any of the causes that could lead one to side-eye Rauru's little pet project as equally questionable.

Beyond the clumsiness, it is cowardly --and, I think, a little damning.

[themarydragon]

So my friend sent me this link to a youtube video about why the TotK lore isn't interesting. I couldn't get through it without a ten-screen discord rant (on my PC monitor, not my phone) so I thought I would put some thoughts here.

I don't delve too deep into TotK story but there are def some spoilery statements below, consume at your own risk.

The initial assumptions here seem to be that (1) BotW was more respectful of "The Lore" than TotK, and that (2) TotK made some unforgiveable sins that BotW absolutely avoided.

Both of these are completely false. And I am NOT saying that neither BotW nor TotK shat upon accepted lore. They did. There is no recovering the Hyrule Historia timeline, objectively. Instead I contend that the truth is the precise opposite: Nintendo has NEVER actually cared to try to make LoZ games have ANY amount of continuity.

Take the slide at the 5 minute mark of the video linked, above, in which we see the Master Sword was created specifically to be used against Ganon, and then the 7 sages set out to find somebody valiant enough to wield it (this is from the user manual of A Link to the Past, from the SNES, which also was about The Imprisoning War). Which, if you're playing the home game, you know got ret'conned TWELVE YEARS AGO by Skyward Sword. He's using the slide to explain why it was ridiculous that Ganondorf was able to shatter the Master Sword in the prologue to TotK, which tells me they didn't pay much attention to the mechanic in BotW in which the Master Sword "runs out of power" if you use it too much. If Ganon is an aspect of Demise (again from Skyward Sword, far more recent lore than the slide being used in the vid) then the secret stone he's wielding is amplifying DEMISE (WAY stronger than just some dude), which is why he's able to shatter the blade - but still isn't enough to destroy the sword. His entire complaint about the Sword being broken suggests to me he either didn't play Skyward Sword or has forgotten it existed, and has DEFINITELY forgotten the 'weapons breaking' mechanic started in BotW.

He makes another complaint later about there not being an explanation for the disappearance of the Divine Beasts. Which, sure. I wondered what happened, and figured the 5ish years since then made it old news nobody was talking about it anymore. I get why that might have been a breaking point for somebody else. But it's not just a TotK problem; BotW didn't address it, either. We see the Divine Beasts being dug up by the Sheikah in Rhoam's flashback - how did they get buried? The towers shoot out of the ground, how did THEY get buried, after the last calamity? Who put the guardians underground? How? HOW, if nobody is allowed into the tunnels under Hyrule Castle? It didn't get explained for BotW, so why is that an unforgivable sin in TotK? They give more than a passing suggestion that Purah has repurposed the guardians - just LOOK at the Skyview Towers. The jumpscare for BotW players when you get grabbed in the Lookout Landing tower TELLS YOU where the guardians went.

There is a significant section in which video creator is quoting an interview I haven't seen (and don't give two shits about), and I think it needs to be said: what is in the game is canon. What is in the interviews from other people is, by definition, not game canon. If it was meant to be game canon it would be in the game. Neil Gaiman talks about this when people ask him for clarification of his stories, go check his FAQ if you want a really good delineation of canon from somebody with way more clout than me.

So let's just look at the lore he's defending from BotW. The map is wrong. Straight up wrong, from all the earlier Zelda games. Nintendo cannot decide where the Lost Woods should be, much less Spectacle Rock. The Temple of Time, which again is mentioned early on as a clear homage to the lore, is in the wrong damn spot. If this is the new Hyrule formed post-WindWaker (as indicated by the existance of Rito), the Temple of Time should have been destroyed. And why do the Rito and the Zora both exist? According to WindWaker, the Rito evolved from the Zora, who couldn't live in the salt of the sea. Which is a pretty big jump from the original game that had Zora in the ocean, and the two games following THAT in which they were straight-up monsters. I don't want to get into ALL the ways BotW breaks from the established lore, but there's a LOT. They don't mention the fucking Triforce ONCE, ffs, that's sort of a big damn deal.

I get there was a canon timeline published in Hyrule Historia. I bought that book for that exact reason. And, as someone who has loved this franchise since I got that first golden cartridge in 1987, I looked at that timeline once, laughed at it, and moved on with my life. BotW de-canonized that timeline already, in a LOT of ways.

So saying that TotK is evidence that Nintendo no longer cares about continuity or lore, and by NOT villifying BotW (or TP or SS) for the exact same problem is disingenuous at best. Saying that TotK is just nostalgia-baiting is ignoring the BotW map (Lake Saria, anyone? Ranch Ruins, anyone?) in general, as well as all the game-specific loot that had NO other reason to be there but straight-up nostalgia. The only reason for Zelda to mention the other heroes in the blessing we hear in the first memory is to (1) destroy the established timeline (skyward bound, adrift in time, or something about twilight, all in a world where Rito exist), or (2) prey on our nostalgia. TotK isn't any worse for putting the WW shirt and the Awakening armor into the game, in terms of wrecking the timeline or trying to feast on our nostalgia.

I'm not going to try to hypothesize what this person (or all his commenters) didn't like about the game, or why they're so willing to overlook all these problems in BotW to villify TotK. And everybody is welcome to like to dislike a game for whatever reason they want, IDGAF, you do you. What I AM saying is that for someone who's upset about the lore, he really doesn't seem to actually be aware of how inconsistent it's ALWAYS been. If TotK is the game that taught you that Nintendo isn't trying to follow their own lore, then I don't think you have been paying attention to the lore for a good long time.

tl;dr this is still my favorite series and if you hate that it breaks its own continuity then you've been asleep for the last 12 years of lore drops my good dude.

[gay-jesus-probably]

(Feel free to ignore this-! I’m just happy to hear someone’s deep takes on Zelda)

I really love your deep dives and interpretations/discussions on the Gerudo people and their history, influence and life in BOTW/TOTK (I totally agree with all you’ve said)

I just want to ask/Point out (after reading your imperialism post about TOTK) didn’t the Zora for many years like- not want to serve or be a part of the Hylian families army either? Like, even before Mipha’s death, weren’t the Zora very much against conforming to the Hylian’s rules and such? (In every game?) I’m a bit confused on how Hyrule is split up, the Zora’s having their own kingdom(s), the Rito and Goron’s having elder’s/their own leaders but still serving the royal family??

It’s always bothered me how these separate races all still have statues to the Goddess Hylia (Started in BOTW) and not their own deity’s to pray to or follow (Like the Zora praying to Nayru makes sense, or even something like Jabu Jabu to bring back- or the Rito could’ve prayed to Valoo, a great dragon or something.)

It just feels like Nintendo COULD’VE put so much care into all their races stories and histories! But oops no this game will be for Kids(TM) and we can’t put anything too deep or serious. Makes me sad :( I wanted to see them in a deeper context.

Oh yeah, it's very weird that they just put zero effort into explaining some of the worldbuilding. I mean, in BOTW it makes perfect sense to have the races be off doing their own things! It's post apocalypse, Hyrule does not exist anymore, these different communities have no real reason to interact with each other! And I really liked that BOTW outright showed that there was no particular effort for diplomacy, but people still got along as individuals - I liked that we saw different races hanging around each other. I loved that there were Gerudo in Goron Town to trade for their gems, I loved that Goron were allowed into Gerudo Town because they're a race of rock people that legitimately don't have any real need for gender and just use masculine terms by their own choice, and the Gerudo understood that. And I loved the whole Tarrey Town sidequest, because it actually felt really satisfying to build up a new town that had inhabitants from all the races, not for any particular reason, but just because they were people that wanted to live there and work together. They didn't need a big central government to make it a whole Thing; they were just getting by.

And we also saw the less good side of these things, like that one guy in Hateno that greeted you at the gate, and decided Link was trustworthy specifically because he was Hylian, making it clear that xenophobia still existed. I like that Kass was kind of thrown by Link asking if he was a giant bird, and the implication that Link was being kinda insensitive there and Kass was choosing not to be offended. I liked that there was a Hylian couple on their honeymoon in Rito village because the guy genuinely loved the town and its culture, while his new wife looked down on the Rito and hated being around them. And I liked that the older Zora still held a grudge against Hyrule for many things, up to and including the fact that Mipha died defending it, and the older generation would rather risk everyone's wellbeing than accept help from a Hylian that had been involved. And I like that you can run into other Hylian's near Zora's domain that outright tell you Zora have been trying to recruit them to do something important, but they all refused to get involved because they don't think that those weird fish people could have anything serious going on and it all seemed really sketchy.

My point is, BOTW really did feel like it'd been a hundred years since the end of the world, and everyone was just trying to get by and live their lives. You saw people being open minded and accepting other races for no other reason than the fact that they were all people, and you saw people being petty and bigoted just because they didn't trust people that looked and acted differently from them, but for the most part people were all just getting by and doing their own thing. BOTW gave the impression that Hyrule had been an equal alliance between the Hylian's, Zora, Goron, Rito and Gerudo (and with the Sheikah having a considerably less equal role, specifically built on the Sheikah having been forced to submit to cultural genocide to save their own lives, and the Yiga clan being the survivors that fought back instead), with Hyrule acting as sort of the core of the alliance, if only due to literally being in the geographic middle.

I mean fuck, the existence of the Divine Beasts suggests that things are equal! Yeah, Hyrule has a royal family with holy powers due to literally being the descendants of a Goddess, and they're the ones that always get the reincarnation of the Hero that's the only one who can wield the bullshit OP magic sword... but they don't get a Divine Beast (Link's dinky little DLC motorcycle doesn't count). The Divine Beasts were specifically made to be weapons of mass destruction, and they were specifically made for the non-Hylian races. That really does suggest an active effort being taken to balance the scales, that the ancient people saw that only Hylian's were granted divine favour, and so if the gods wouldn't give that power to other races, they'd fucking make it themselves. The existence of the Divine Beasts feels like a promise to keep everyone on equal footing, and say what you will about pre-Calamity Hyrule, but they didn't even question keeping that promise.

...And then in TOTK, all of that's just gone. The Sheikah aren't their own people with a complicated relationship to the throne, now they're just Hylian's with a different aesthetic. The 'alliance' between the races turns out to be built on Hyrule's first King and Queen pointing their stockpile of magical nukes at everyone and asking them politely to become their subjects, and pretending not to notice the implied threat that they'd magically nuke anyone who refused. In BOTW the Sheikah race being sworn servants of the Hylian royal family was acknowledged as a fucked up situation, and that power imbalance being horribly abused in the past was what created the Yiga clan. In TOTK, we're outright told that Rito, Goron, Zora and Gerudo all exist for the sole purpose of serving the Hylian royal family, and that is framed as a good thing and the proper way of the world; the first sign of Ganondorf being evil is that he refuses to submit.

And even putting all that super gross ancient past stuff aside, the present day is equally fucked. Hyrule has been gone for a century. In BOTW, few people even remembered that Zelda had ever existed, and of those people not many of them cared. Nobody was really interested in having a central government, they were all getting by just fine on their own. And again, it was made pretty clear that the pre-calamity situation had been an actively maintained collective alliance between independent nations. There was a reason that people were predicting that Hyrule's monarchy would be abolished in TOTK, and that's because we all saw that there was literally no reason for anyone other than the Sheikah to respect Zelda's authority as a ruler - the Zora were the only other people to still remember her, and they were completely done with the Hylian royal family anyways. If Zelda rolled up declaring herself the Queen of Hyrule anywhere else, she'd be laughed out of town, because that's the standard response to a random teenager showing up and informing you she was actually the highest authority in the land. Zelda had no inherent authority left at the end of BOTW, if she wanted to be in charge, she'd need to earn it. That's the state of the world that we were shown.

Except nope, nevermind, Zelda's the almighty God Princess of the world and literally everyone mindlessly accepts her ultimate authority. She can order people to strip naked and walk into a monster den to die for her amusement, and they would immediately do it without asking any questions (yes I know the underwear thing was a misunderstanding, but the fact that everyone jumped to follow the misheard order without a single question is horrifying). And the imposter Zelda arc just hammers home the point that Zelda is in a completely unearned, lifelong position as dictator of the world, and literally nobody cares if she abuses that power. Zelda brainwashed Yunobo and forced him to ruin his own business and nearly destroy his own people? He's just worried she'll be angry that the mask keeping him brainwashed was destroyed. Zelda summons a giant monster to attack Yunobo and Link then walks away? Oh my god, the giant monster Zelda just summoned to kill us might hurt her, we have to save Zelda from it! Zelda literally openly attacks King Dorephan and tries to murder him? He'd rather go missing in the middle of a crisis and suffer alone in hiding than let anyone know that Zelda just tried to kill him. I don't understand why they bothered with the fake Zelda arc, because literally nothing the fake Zelda does is allowed to have consequences.

It just doesn't make any goddamn sense. Nobody feels real anymore, there's no politics between the races, there's no reason for anything being the way it is now. The entire world of Hyrule has been reduced to just Zelda's Fanclub, and nobody would ever consider doubting her for a second. I don't understand why the fake Zelda arc is in the game, because it's never actually allowed to be part of the story. Nobody actually cares about 'Zelda' tormenting people, and so we're told that there is literally nothing that can possibly happen to make Zelda lose her authority. There's no stakes. We're not supposed to care about anyone who isn't Zelda, we're not given any real reason to care about Zelda herself, and so why the fuck are we still here?

...I've distracted myself a lot here lmaoo, I'm not really sure where I was going with all of this beyond just rambling about shitty writing and bad continuity. The point is, BOTW had some really good writing and worldbuilding. That Hyrule felt like a real place inhabited by actual people, and the different races were their own, independent people. When they worked together, it was a sign of them putting time and effort into reaching out to each other and meet on the same level. Meanwhile TOTK feels like it's made of fucking cardboard most of the time.

(Also for the record I agree that the Goddess statues being Literally Everywhere was kinda fucked, BUT I'm willing to let it slide as a matter of just game design; that's where you go to trade spirit orbs for upgrades, so you want a spot to do that in every major town for player convenience. And using different deities in different areas wouldn't work, because the players are introduced to the mechanic with a goddess statue; they're not gonna naturally assume that the statue of a giant fish can do that too, so most of them would assume the statue is scenery and just ignore it. I thought it was at least a nice touch that the goddess statues had different decorations in some towns, and that some towns put the statues away from the main areas; it gave the impression that while everyone while worshipping Hylia was widespread, everyone was doing it differently, and in some places it wasn't very popular - just look at the Kakariko statue being in the middle of town with a well maintained pond surrounding it and torches to draw more attention to it, then compare that to the Gerudo Town statue being down a side street on the edge of town, away from the main gate, with nothing of any real importance nearby, and nothing to get people's attention. It really works with the Sheikah's culture being built on their devotion to the Goddess, while the Gerudo's history with Hylia and her followers is a lot more complicated, and so their statue's location implies that worship of Hylia is pretty unpopular among the Gerudo.)

[riddlerosehearts]

vil/idia valentine's day headcanons 💜💙

(as usual this post ended up more detailed and lengthy than i originally planned it to be, but i hope someone will enjoy it because i love this silly little ship of mine.)

idia has never liked valentine's day. it always seemed so pointless and frivolous, and there's so many people out talking and holding hands and kissing. probably all judging him for being alone. the only reason he cares at all about it is because many of the games he plays have limited-time valentine's events, so he usually just stays in his room all day playing through them.

and sure, idia loves a good romance anime, and he has more than a few favorite ships he thinks should totally be canon, but that's all just fiction. it's an escape from a reality where true love doesn't exist.

or so he used to believe. he never thought he'd find someone he really wanted to be with, or that they'd want him in return. not until, somehow, vil became that person. all the dating sims in the world couldn't have prepared him for this.

he knows he can't just hide out in his room on valentine's day when he has someone so important to spend it with now. but how can he give vil the happiness he deserves?

he could build a high-end custom laptop from scratch for him, or buy him a bouquet of his favorite flowers and take him to the fanciest restaurant in all of twisted wonderland, even though the latter idea utterly terrifies him. he could use his tech skills and his family's money to give vil the world, but if he knows his boyfriend at all, he knows that he probably doesn't want anything that extravagant.

(and besides, if the vil schoenheit tried to go out in public with his partner on valentine's day they would just get swarmed by paparazzi and idia is sure he'd roll a 1 and fail the stealth check required to avoid them. yeah, that's a quest path he will not be choosing anytime soon.)

idia knows it would be best to get vil something simple, but still thoughtful enough to make him feel special. and in the shoujo manga he likes, people always give handmade chocolate as a gift. but his cooking skill is stuck at level 1, and even if he could grind it up to 100, vil wouldn't want a box of chocolates loaded with sugar and calories. it can't just be some normie thing either--it has to stand out from the flowers and candies and love letters he gets swamped with by his fans.

remembering how vil has praised his gear designs for ortho before, he decides to buy some purple and gold beads and string them together to make a necklace. in the middle he places a small heart-shaped bead, adding an LED light inside that makes it pop with a subtle glow.

he also makes a handmade card that with a design that lights up at the press of a button. i imagine he'd put a pixel heart inside of it similarly to this zelda themed pop-out card i found:

they're both very simple projects for idia, but he feels certain that vil will love them.

and as for vil, he thinks valentine's day is a lovely holiday. it's an opportunity for people to celebrate the beauty of love, and to relax and take better care of themselves. even if you're single, you can still pamper yourself and celebrate with a friend. vil always tries to take the day off from any obligations if he can, though sometimes there are things he just can't slack off on.

this year, though, he absolutely will not be doing any photoshoots or interviews. this year he has a boyfriend, and yes he knows that idia hates the holiday but in his mind that's even more of a reason why he needs to be there for him. he won't allow idia to spend even one more second feeling lonely and unloved on valentine's day.

he initially has no idea what he should get idia, and ends up getting laughed at by cater who catches him googling "valentine's gifts for gamers" on his phone. look, just because he's acted in a few romance films and is considered a teen heartthrob by countless people who don't even know him, doesn't mean he automatically knows everything about dating.

cater and idia are friends, though, and cater knows enough about what he likes to be able to help vil pick a couple things out.

the first thing vil settles on is a lego building set that depicts a bouquet of roses. it would be fun for the two of them to build them together, and he wouldn't have to worry about idia inevitably forgetting to water them.

he also gets a card that's even dorkier than the one idia made for him--i'm specifically picturing this:

he tucks a note inside of it, with a short list of just a few of idia's best qualities. he hopes it can remind idia of why he likes him and wants to be with him and not someone else.

and lastly, he purchases a pack of bath bombs made to look like colorful D20 dice--relaxing, good for the skin, and aesthetically in line with idia's interests.

when valentine's day comes, they exchange gifts in vil's dorm room at pomefiore, where they've planned to spend the day. vil thinks the things idia has made for him are beautiful and he tells him as much.

but when idia recieves his gifts, he starts mumbling something about how a weirdo shut-in otaku like him doesn't deserve to be seen as a viable love interest and how vil must have had a confusion status debuff on him this whole time.

vil: "excuse me? you're not insulting my SSR boyfriend, are you? you don't think that i would try to max out the affection points for your route if i wasn't sure you were the perfect option for me?"

idia, who just knows the tips of his hair are turning pink: "s-sorry... i ran into a glitch that triggered the wrong dialogue. what i meant to say was, of course you picked a genius like me to be your player 2 instead of some lame normie who you'd have zero percent compatibility with! how could anyone but me match up to your top-tier stats?"

vil just smiles and rolls his eyes.

idia then reveals that he actually did get vil something sweet, but originally felt too nervous to give it to him.

it's a pack of candy flavored lip glosses. vil laughs and insists that they'll have to kiss enough times to taste test each flavor. idia's whole head of hair turns pink.

they spend the whole day together, doing things like watching an old romcom that vil adores or playing a co-op game that idia picked for them, and of course putting the lego rose bouquet together.

they also eat a nice meal together in a private place that vil set up for them in pomefiore--and all the other students know they'll incur their dorm leader's wrath if they dare to bother him on his date.

[sass-squat]

Do the Avians stick to their main outfits or do they mix it up? What are their cozy/relaxing clothes?

Excellent question my friend! I would say that for the most part all the Links generally just stick to their usual outfits. This is mainly because the chain is almost always traveling/on the road and their "canon" outfits are much more suited for adventuring then any other alternatives. However, their "everyday" clothes have been modified to have slits in the back to allow for their wings to slip through while still not compromising the integrity of their armor/chainmail underneath. In other words, there aren't really any major changes to their main outfits aside from having thin holes in the back to make room for their wings.

As for the Links cozy/relaxing clothes? They all have their own interpretations of what cozy or relaxing means for them, so I'm just going to group them into 3 general categories that I think they would be in.

Shirtless Gang:

Time - Listen, Time walks around in a suit of armor all the time so pretty much anything else could be considered cozy/relaxing clothes compared to that.🤣 But this man has some MASSIVE wings so I believe that he enjoys clothes that give him the chance to free them and let them breathe easier. Because of this, I would say his standard for "comfortable" would probably either be just a loose tunic or just some regular pants and no shirt.

Twilight - Like Time, this man works on a ranch and likes to wrestle Gorons for fun. Because of this, and definitely not because I'm a simp I believe he's very accustomed to working shirtless and so his definition of "cozy" clothes is honestly just sitting around shirtless in some comfy pants.

Warriors - I don't even have a proper justification for why I believe this man walks around shirtless I just feel it in my soul. He's a very very pretty man and I'm selfish and a simp and I want to see him shirtless. But in all seriousness, Warriors wears a LOT of layers all the time so I just want him to be able to take some off and relax a little bit.

Sweatpants/Pajamas Squad:

Sky - Look me in the eye and tell me that this man wouldn't wear cozy clothes like pajamas and the Zelda equivalent of a hoodie and sweatpants. Sky just gives off such warm, SUNny (pun intended) vibes and I believe he deserves cozy clothes that match that same energy.

Hyrule - This boy deserves all the love in the world and if I could give him the equivalent of a snuggie hoodie I would. Plus I can just 100% see him doing that thing where he forces Legend or Wind or just another member of the chain to share the same hoodie with him.🤣 He is basically the walking equivalent of the, "Get Along Shirt" meme and I will die on this hill.

Wind - There's literally an option in Wind Waker for him to be able to go through his entire adventure in basically his pajamas and for that reason I believe his cozy clothes are just a casual long sleeved shirt and pants. He also just seems like the kind of guy that can and would kill a grown man while in his pajamas and I love that for him.

Shorts/Tanktop Team:

Legend - Legend gives off baggy shirt and shorts vibes. I know he doesn't wear pants but listen...shorts don't count as pants. Give this boy his t-shirt and boxers combination please.

Wild - Wild could honestly fit in any one of these categories because he seems pretty easy to please when it comes to clothing. However, when it comes to relaxing I believe he prefers a casual tanktop and shorts combination because it allows his wings and feathers to breathe while still covering some of his many scars.

Four - Listen, Four is a pretty practical kind of guy so I think he really appreciates the mobility and freedom that a simple tanktop and shorts provide. Plus, I feel like whenever he has the chance he likes to run and crawl around talking to the Minish/Picori and shorts and a tanktop aren't as easy to get grass stains on.

Anyways I hope this answered your questions friend! As always, these are my personal interpretations but feel free to tell me what ideas you have for all the boys! Thank you again for you question!

[trulytiredhermit]

I read your Ravio/Legend section and👍👍👍 gud shit uhuh.

I think the dynamic of Legend and Ravio and their close good friend/roommate that they're weirdly possessive of, lol.

Ravio's someone I'm particularly interested in because on one hand I can see legend doing all of the vaguely threatening 'you're staying here and we'll take care of you, you have no other option' while Ravio goes along with it and tries to make it nicer for you (ie giving you choices on things or rather making it seem like you have a choice) so that you like him more. On the other hand I can absolutely see him blocking the door like 'you're not leaving💜'.

Also how would that type of thing happen?

Were you a neighbor that leg grew particularly fond of, and eventually the visits to his house get longer and longer-- only to mysteriously stop after one particular journey. Were you the one persistent enough to continuously come back even after he told you not to, only to seal your fate once the hero of legend grew too fond of you to risk losing you again. Maybe you even went out on a journey of your own to get Ravio because you knew that leg needed all the support you can get only for the two of you to bond on the way back and Ravio approaches legend like 'hey uhh...'.

Maybe you just needed a place to stay and Ravio was like 'I got just the place for you!', only for the first to approach and find out that Ravio's infamous pricing extends to rent as well. Don't worry though! He'll let you work it off in the shop! Soon you're pretty much spending 24/7 in the house between sleeping and working long ass hours you can't leave if you're constantly working in order to meet rent. Legend, while initially reluctant, eventually comes to appreciate the extra person to come home to, especially since he knows that Ravio isn't as lonely anymore since you came along.

Or you and Leg just bond while the events of Lu take place, only to go to his Hyrule and just...not come back. You can't escape if you have no clue where anything is! Which leads me to the next point.

With the 'Legend, Ravio, and their close good friend' trope, I think it would be funny if the villagers just...didn't acknowledge the blatant creepy behavior going on. Maybe your alarm bells ring on said behavior, but since the two allow you outside, you don't really think much of it; until you do try to seek outside help, only to be stared at by the villagers like you're crazy and either Legend or Ravio just lead you back inside like 'haha yeah they do that sometimes'. Now, whenever you get too close to the outskirts of the village the townspeople tell Legend, if not they just bring you back to the house themselves.

Listen, Legend is the hero of Legend, he's saved more kingdoms than he can count. Plus, he's best friends with his Zelda (or if you're going by popular hc, he is royalty himself). There's nothing you can do to make anyone think too badly of him or Ravio, who was here long before you ever were.

I was wondering if you had any more scraps👀👀

*I…

Bestie

YOU PREPARED ME A WHOLE MEAL! OH MY LORD!

I.LOVE.THIS

Like you’re so big brained, I could never.

Just as a person who also loves Ravio and Legend this is 😮‍💨🤌 chef’s kiss.*

————————————————————————

So, I think for this to work out the best way possible and make somewhat the most sense I would agree with the whole Reader is just a stubborn neighbor who would NOT take no for an answer when Legend was going through some bad times.

Reader is also the overly friendly neighbor.

In every game of Zelda the Link in question has to always help others to gain something that will aid them in their quest.

Which if you look at it as a whole is kinda messed up.

Like you wouldn’t just give the object to the dude who’s trying to save the world???

Anyways, Reader was the opposite of those people.

Reader constantly was checking in on Legend, asking if he ever needed something or just telling him things they heard around the town. Giving him home cooked meals to take on his long journeys so that he can have something to eat.

Reader makes sure that Legend always remembers that their house is open to them.

They really shouldn’t have

Over the years, Legend falls hard for the stubborn and kind Reader.

Becoming infatuated with the worried face that greets him every time he comes back home after an adventure, the one that checks him over for injures and makes promises to fix up his favorite meal that night.

The one who actually cares for Legend in a way others haven’t.

And oh how he cares for them in a return.

Somewhere down the line, Reader turns from his caring neighbor to his caring roommate.

Something had happened to Readers house, it had mysteriously caught fire and burnt down whilst Reader was out.

Leaving Reader with no home and no where to go.

That’s when the hero swooped in to save the day.

Little does Reader know, it was all planned.

Legend of course had some rules that he put in to play once Reader finally moved in.

1) don’t be out too late

“It so dangerous out when it gets dark, I think I’d worry myself half to death if you weren’t home before sunset.”

Tell him where you’re going

“I’ve made a great deal of enemies on my adventures, I fear they may try to target you to get at me. This way I can you’re safe when I come home and you’re not there.”

Remain close to the town

“I’ve been all across the land [Name], I know all that’s out there. I’d feel so much better if you’d keep to the surrounding area around the town when you went out to collect your supplies for baking.”

Should you need anything, just ask him or at least let him accompany you in your errands

“I can get you anything you need if it’s too far from the village, it isn’t a problem. And for things you need in the village I won’t mind tagging a long, I want to spend time with you before I’m sent off on another quest.”

There were a few other rules, but these were the main ones.

With Legend’s reasoning for each one, Reader didn’t feel too bothered by them.

As time passed, everything seemed to be going great for Legend and Reader but then something happened.

A new comer made their way in.

Ravio.

While out on a stroll one day, Reader just happened to come across a strange man adorned with a purple rabbit hood and purplish blue scarf.

Perhaps he was passed out on the road or something or seemed to be lost.

Either way, being such a kind person, Reader offers the stranger their assistance and to guide them back to town.

Ravio accepts and the two talk and even bond a little on their way to the town.

Ravio mentions him not having a place to stay and Reader, with their bleeding heart, offers that he could possible stay with them.

Which is when Ravio learns of Reader’s roommate, Legend.

Who, once Ravio and Reader get to home, is missing.

So Reader comes up with the bright idea to split up and find Legend and so Ravio and Reader search the town for him.

Ravio ends up finding Legend in the sanctuary and takes him back to the house. Soon after Legend wakes up and Ravio has introduced himself, Reader comes back home happy to see Legend safe.

The three talk and Reader reveals that Ravio needs a place to stay and says that they’d have enough room for a third roomie.

Legend, of course, can never truly say no to Reader (especially when they use their puppy eyes and promise to cook up Legend’s favorite meal and spend time with him).

Legend also feels a sense of ease being next to Ravio, like he some how knows him.

In the end, Ravio stays.

The events of A Link Between Worlds unfold and Ravio and Reader grow closer together throughout that time.

Of course, Legend would never let Reader accompany him on his dangerous journey, no matter how much Reader begged.

So Reader stays with Ravio and helps him out in his shop. Thus letting the two grow closer.

And as Legend stops by from time to time, even him and Ravio begin to grow a bond.

He finds himself thankful that Reader has someone to be with while he’s away on his adventure. He knows how lonely it can get sometimes and how much Reader can worry about him.

It also helps that Legend’s beastly jealously never rears its head when Ravio is with Reader.

Somehow, Legend is okay with the fact that Ravio has been growing closer and closer with Reader. Whereas with others he would surely run them off.

After all who would dare challenge the hero of Hyrule?

Perhaps it is at the end of A Link Between Worlds, when Yuga is finally defeated and truths have been brought to light about who Ravio truly is, that Ravio comes to Legend with the offer of a “lifetime”.

To share Reader.

Ravio would stay in Hyrule instead of returning to Lorule and continue to live with Reader and Legend where they could both romantically pursue Reader.

After all, it is a dangerous world and two heroes are much better than one. (Even while cowardly, Ravio is still willing to defend Reader).

Legend agrees to the deal.

Reader’s fate has been sealed.

Legend and Ravio return to the town as heroes and are now very respected people within Hyrule for having saved the land. (After all, Ravio did help Legend).

More importantly they return to their beloved Reader, who smothers them in hugs and checks both men over for injuries.

It is then that Ravio and Legend tell Reader about Ravio’s temporary stay becoming permanent.

Reader is ecstatic and they can’t help but let slip to Ravio and Legend that they shouldn’t worry about the space becoming too cramped because once their house is rebuilt they’d be moving out.

Legend forgot about… that.

He and Ravio share a glance whilst Reader helps out things away and sets the table.

It seems they have more talking and planning to do.

Legend and Ravio start sabotaging Reader’s plans.

For some reason, castle guards won’t let Reader leave the town to enter the surrounding forest to gather supplies.

Meaning Reader no longer has a way to make money, as they would collect supplies and fruit to bake goods to sell in the town.

(Legend and Ravio cashed in a few favors with Zelda. They worry for them they had told Zelda, “They’re so stubborn sometimes and too kind for their own good. Anyone could take advantage of them, we just want to keep them safe after what we’ve been through.”

Zelda agreed to their plea and whether she believed them or not truly didn’t matter, after all they had done so much for the kingdom. Why shouldn’t they be rewarded in return?).

No one else really needed a helping hand around the village so that took out any sort of side income Reader could make.

So Ravio with his caring heart, said he’d let Reader help him out in his shop.

But it didn’t matter that Reader was making money now.

Any builder Reader had tried to talk to about fixing up their house always told them they were either too busy or that it would cost too much.

“Going out is still dangerous these days with all those monsters still roaming around.” They’d say, “We’re sorry [Name] but we truly can’t help you out right now.”

Reader is never given an answer on when they’d even be able to start building.

(Legend had talked to the builders earlier. Buying them off to put off building Reader’s house for as long as they could. “I’m planning on asking them to move in permanently, I wish to court them.” He would truthfully tell the workers, “but they feel as though they’ve overstayed their welcome and I can’t shoo that though from their head.”

The workers agree to put off the work. After all, who wants to stand in the way of young love?

Soon word spreads around town and the whole town is helping to push Reader even further into the men’s arms clutches.

And even if they were the occasional person who objected to the act, who found the men’s behavior suspicious, they would never act upon their suspicions.

It would be dangerous to attempt to go against the man who’s defeated Ganon and Yuga. Not to mention that there’s two now.)

Eventually as Reader laments to Ravio and Legend about feeling like they’ll never get their home back, the two men comfort Reader with soothing, honeyed words.

“You can stay here as long as you need to [Name].” Ravio would say, gently rubbing circles onto Reader’s back as he sat next to them.

“In fact, why don’t you just stay here permanently [Name].” Legend would join in, caressing Reader’s hands.

“We’ve been speaking and needles to say, me and Ravio both care for you deeply. If you would allow us to, we would like to have a chance at courting you my dear.”

And with how sweet these men have been to you, how could you refuse. After all, you had grown to care for them too.

Why hadn’t you refused?

Did your choice even matter in the end?

No, even if you had refused, things would have turned out the same.

Your fate had been sealed long ago.

As like before, Legends old rules had remained in place.

But newer ones had been added that caused a slight cause for concern.

Don’t leave the house unless you’re with at least one of them

“We just want to keep you safe, my gem. The world is so dangerous out there. We can still visit the places you wish to go.”

“I feel like I’d die if you even tripped and scrapped your knee my dear. I must be with you at all times to make sure you’re safe.”

And so you were always accompanied by one of your lovers. If the townspeople took notice of this they said nothing.

Don’t speak with others outside of work

“I’ve heard there’ve been more bandit attacks going on, and with you working with me in the shop they might target you. I can’t afford to lose my darling gem.”

“Is it so bad that I wish to be selfish for once my dear? I won’t allow for someone else to steal you away, bandit or otherwise I will protect what’s mine.”

Now, even if you tried to have a conversation with someone they ignored you, refusing to even meet your eyes at times.

Or did they simply ignore the dangerous presences at your sides.

Eventually the rules got even stranger and a fear began to fester.

Don’t try to run away

“Oh darling gem, you’re so much safer here. Of course you still have choices! We’re not keeping you here captive, we just have… rules to help keep you safe, that’s all. We just love you so much.”

“ My dear, you know we simply do this out of love. Besides where would you run to? Your home is here, the villagers will be if no help to you and neither will Princess Zelda. All they would do is simply bring you back to our loving arms.”

And Legend had been right, the townspeople were not afraid to snitch upon you to Ravio or Legend if they saw you out of the house without them.

You were sure that they would even drag you back to that dreaded house if you had attempted to escape.

Don’t leave the house

“Just say it my gem, anything that you desire and I shall fetch it for you. Those berries and fruits you bake with i can bring you whenever you desire. I simply wish to pamper you and treat you like the glorious gem that you are.”

“There’s nothing for you out there anymore my dear. Why can’t you see that we are the only ones to truly care for you. Has anyone shown up? Has anyone brought forth questions about you? No. We are the only ones who can love you as much as you deserve. We are the only ones you need, my dear.”

You felt like you were going crazy.

But, things could have been worse you supposed.

At least they were kind to you, showering you with love and affection. Treating you with such high regard that you had never been given before.

Ravio, always the sweetheart, even braved the forest to gather fruits, berries, and other supplies so that you could bake like you used to.

Legend regaled you with tales of his adventures him when he got back home. He would been grace you with the most beautiful music should you ask for it.

Besides, maybe they were right. Th village that you had lived so long in, the villagers that you had always been so kind to, had betrayed you and left you on your own.

At least you had Legend and Ravio.

————————————————————————

*Gosh, this one REALLY got away from me. Honestly I feel like writing a ficlet about this now. Which you can probably see where it started to become one near the end 😂

Anyways I hope my ramblings were satisfactory and in all seriousness you might be getting a small fic out of this because I’ve just got so many ideas now and I LOVE this.

Now I’m gonna go to bed cause it’s like 2:00am 😂)

[oyasumi-ashurii]

Okay, so it might be a little hard for me to cohesively put all my thoughts and feelings into why I care so much about Final Fantasy VIII, but because of the 25th anniversary and seeing a lot of you talk about your love of the game I'll try the best I can. So here's my embarrassingly and extremely long personal history with the game and why it will always be my favorite.

Before FF8 I was mostly a Nintendo kid. Mario and Zelda were all I really knew, and as a hyperactive as I was I didn't really have the patience for anything story-heavy that took a lot of reading. Though I did I get a PlayStation later on I hardly bothered with anything other than Spyro or Crash. Anything similar in graphics to FF7 or 8 was mostly foreign to me too, with maybe the closest being my cousin having the first Resident Evil and I was far too young and too scared to bother with anything like that. So you can imagine the complete and utter shock kid me had going to my uncle's and seeing him play FF8 for the first time. I don't think it had been out too long but he was already on disc 3 in Esthar and, bless his soul, he let me play his save for a while. Being able to fly around the map on the Ragnarok?? The realistic proportions and animations in battle?? The absolute BANGER of a soundtrack?! All of it had me excitedly begging my parents to buy me the game. Nine year old me didn't know roman numerals, though, just that it was called Final Fantasy with some weird lettering. I had no idea of Final Fantasy as a series and I didn't know it was the eighth game or that there were eight of them at all. I couldn't remember what the cover looked like either and my uncle not long after that was going through his own personal troubles so I wasn't able to visit or ask him. We didn't have internet at home until the early 2000s (it was AOL dial-up too, jesus, I don't miss that) and my parents were strict about internet use, so I was stuck. My dad did eventually buy me an FF game as a surprise when I was eleven, and lmao can you believe I was genuinely upset because it was Final Fantasy VII?! That being said, I have an INSANE amount of love and respect for 7. Considering how much easier I think the materia system is to understand for newcomers, having it as my first, full FF experience was a bit of a blessing lol. FF7 hit me in a different way than 8 did, and maybe I'll make a post about it sometime.

So other than the brief times on the internet (I was only allowed on for an hour or two before I was kicked off) and reading gaming magazines I had hardly any access or knowledge about FF8 until years later. I knew the characters briefly and read some small stuff here and there about the world, but that was it. Even so, I STILL loved it. I would draw them (I've drawn most of my life, and I still do occasionally as a fun hobby), write about what I thought they were like, so, so much of me embarrassingly obsessing over it and driving my small group of friends in school bonkers (oh lordy I just remembered my preteen username I had used on an FF forum and now I'm cringing.) You get it. So why did I cling to the game so much, even though I barely played it? Why did it mean so much to me? Because around the time I was twelve I was deeply depressed, and throughout my middle school and early high school life video games and their stories were the only joy and comfort I had. I'm not going to go into much detail because it feels too personal to write on tumblr about and I'd rather not think back too much. If you want the gist it was at a moment in time I was mostly on my own. I felt isolated and alone, and due to growing up in and around strict, conservative circles I struggled with feeling far behind my peers, so my personal and school life suffered. Things got better though and I'm happy in my life now, so that's really it.

As I got a little older I had played other FF's and RPGs in between that I also fell in love with (especially Kingdom Hearts) and funnily enough horror games, but I still didn't get my hands on 8 until I got it on my fifteenth birthday and I was over the moon. That night and many nights and weekends after that I played every single bit of that game. I had printed walkthroughs and a guide of the junction system, with overly-detailed notes I had scribbled down and highlighted. I had written down all the rules of triple triad, weapon upgrades, item refinements and what you get from monsters, side-quests, all of it. I had never went all in into a game before, but I did it because I wanted to experience the game that gave preteen me comfort everything it had to offer. And I remember vividly when I finished it I cried until I was almost out of breath.

But you know, I didn't get emotional because of the nostalgic school-like feel and inspired real-world setting, or the overall main plot with magic, sci-fi and sorceresses. It wasn't even the deeply interwoven love stories, the theme of fate or the gameplay either, though I grew to love all of those things dearly with time.

It was because I was a socially-awkward and lonely fifteen year old girl that watched an equally as awkward seventeen year old boy overcome his own deeply-rooted fears and trauma and come out at the end of it all on the path to healing.

And I knew I'd be okay, and ever since then this game has and will always be that reminder and comfort for me.

Thanks for reading.

[spaceless-vacuum]

I am sold on your yandere version of Link but I've gotta ask... How does he fair if he was to actually succeed in winning you over? Is he still the type to want to lock you away from the rest of the world or do you get to explore it still? With him at your side of course because he would never trust your safety to anyone else I'm sure.

I love this idea because he is so much more manageable when you go with him willingly. Maybe I’m just soft for yandere who manage their tendencies with their darling, but I love the idea of the two of you just getting along. Of course it’s not perfect by any means. You still have some rules to work around, some spoken and some are just there for you to understand.

The two of you do travel together. Fighting while on the road is always a prevalent issue in Hyrule. Yet he doesn't want you to get hurt. So to get him to agree to bring you along you have to prove that you wont start anything. If you're allowed to carry a weapon, it’ll be a bow. A sword or any other weapon would only encourage you to get close to the fighting. That is the exact opposite of what he wants.

In fact I think he’d be more inclined to give you a slingshot. You can use it to defend yourself, but you wouldn't want to get into a fight with just a slingshot. Making you rely on him for knightly duties while keeping you safe if something does go wrong. This also opens up the option for you to impress him with your abilities. Shooting down enemies from afar is something he appreciates, even if he wishes you would just leave all the fighting to him.

More on traveling with him, don't expect to travel when injured! If you get hurt you're staying at camp. Either there are if it’s close enough a stable or a house. Broken bones? You're not leaving the bedroll. Just sit there in the designated safe spot until he comes back from his quest. From there you can be escorted to his house. All the items needed to heal you are there. Don’t worry too much about it, he's just being kind.

Once there you aren't allowed to leave until you are healed again. It’s too dangerous to risk you being killed all because your body is too injured. Stay by him and only with him and you’ll be ok. Don't wander away or go too far from the yard. He’ll have to force some bedrest if you get too out of hand. It’s all for your own good he says, as he ties your ankles to the bed frame.

Some part of him knows it’s wrong and he does feel bad for doing it, especially since you came so willingly, but you have to understand it’s for your own good. He’s the warrior with hundreds of years of expertise here alright?

That being said, some part of him takes so much glee from the idea of you being right where he left you. Even when travelling around he feels it. The giddy joy of knowing you're right there. Sitting by the fire of the campsite right where he told you to wait. By the time he comes back he’s ready to hold you tight and lay kiss after kiss on your skin. His treat for a job well done. 

All the war and killing takes a toll on him. He is for all accounts a kid who has to sacrifice himself so others may stay safe. To feel just like that kid and not have to worry about the world for just a few moments is all he needs. He gets it when travelling by himself, with Zelda when they are not working, and with you. Coming back home to you for a cuddle session is all he needs to feel safe again.

So all in all, you going with him works out best for both of you. Yes you still have to be careful and not do anything to make him feel like you'll leave, which is easier said than done, but if you're inclined not to talk to strangers (or anyone that isn't him) already, can handle yourself but you try to avoid fights, and don't travel far from where you're left you're in luck!

[hurricane105]

Ok this is coming from someone who grew up in a Western/historically Puritan mindset, but what if Zelda had to walk on foot to pray at springs? I could see Rhoam ordering it because he thinks suffering shows devotion to Hylia or something. It's also possible that she wasn't always praying at springs - she might have had pilgrimages to each statue of Hylia, which would explain why she's away from the routes between the castle and the springs in some memories (specifically 3).

In memory 3, Zelda and Link are on foot, and initially Zelda seems content. But she's talking about her plans for working on Sheikah tech - one of the things she absolutely loves.

And then she remembers the incoming Calamity. Maybe she thought about how poorly her prayers had gone at the statue of Hylia in the Temple of Time.

In memory 9, they have horses, and Zelda is the happiest she is in any of the memories. They're also not really on the route to any spring or statue, but they are near the ancient tech lab (the pre calamity location).

Memory 11. No horses in sight. Given the location, they're likely on the way back from the spring of courage (or maybe the goddess statue in Lurelin). Either way, Zelda's melancholy and thinking about how her prayers go nowhere - I'm guessing they were on the trip back, not heading out, although either is possible.

In memory 14, they're riding horses, and Zelda seems happy and relaxed. Later in the memory, she talks about having to go pray at Mount Lanayru - perhaps this trip was a break before her pilgrimage.

Zelda's generally happier and relaxed when they have horses, and stressed/sad when they don't. Either she's an even bigger horse girl than Link is, or the presence/absence of horses is tied to something else on their trips. I think she wasn't allowed to ride horses on trips to pray, partially because Rhoam is a terrible parent who believes in punishment until he gets the result he wants, and partially out of the belief that Hylia would hear Zelda if Zelda dealt with having to walk on foot to pray.

[beautiful-songbird]

Not a Replacement

Pairing: Idol!Yoongi x Clothing Designer!OC

Genre: angst. BIG angst. slight fluff near the end(?)

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: mentions of still birth, pregnancy, surrogacy, and grief. also vague hints at death and drinking as well as bad relationships with parents. This story was super heavy so just...be warned

Summary: After the death of their first baby, Yoongi and Rosaelia don't plan to try again. That is, until one of their friends offers to carry their baby for them. This doesn't stop Rosaelia from worrying about the outcome, though.

Rosaelia paced the living room.  This was it.  This was either the end or the beginning of the rest of her life, and she wasn’t sure which was worse.  Jasmine had been seated on her couch for over ten minutes now, patiently waiting for Rosaelia to be ready to hear which way the news swung.  She was so sweet, and Rosaelia almost felt bad for even allowing her to do this to begin with.

It had all started almost three years ago.  Rosaelia had never wanted kids, but she’d discovered she was pregnanat.  It had been right after Jin and Jasmine’s wedding, and when she and Yoongi had announced the news, everyone had been thrilled at the idea of having a baby around.

That pregnancy had ended in tragedy, though, and Rosaelia had been advised to never get pregnant again.  That was ok.  She could live with that.  She’d never put it into her head to have kids, so the thought of not raising a kid shouldn’t have hurt her at all.

Except it had.  It had taken a while for it to hit her, but when Jasmine’s son had been born, everything had hurt.  Rosaelia couldn’t hold Namu.  She couldn’t hold Esme’s daughter Elise four months later either, or even nearly a year after that, she couldn’t bring herself to hold Zelda’s baby boy.

As much as seeing her best friend have a kid hurt, seeing Namu and Zoro hurt way more.  Seeing both of them had reminded her of that tiny baby boy who had come into the world sleeping.  Antonio.  He’d been born weighing less than a pound, and her time with him had been none at all.  Somehow, despite, the pain, it had sparked in her the desire to be a mother.  It made no sense.  She’d never wanted kids but losing one she’d never even planned to have had made her want that life.

She’d apparently informed the girls of such a thing that drunken New Year’s Eve.  It hadn’t been brought up again until recently, though.  Sweet Jasmine was the only one who had had the courage to mention it after a whole year and a half.  Not only had she brought it up, but she’d proposed an offer.

“What if I carried the baby for you?”

It had always blown Rosaelia’s mind how a bunch of girls from all over the world were so nice to her.  Jasmine was like the older sister she never had, Yuna shared her love for companionable silence, Esme was the best friend she’d always dreamed of, Astrid was always reaching to pull her out of her comfort zone, Zelda very much resembled her younger sister, and Nubia was ever the sweet voice in her ear.

But this?  This was beyond imaginable for Rosaelia.  Jasmine would carry her baby?  Whoa.  Whoa.  The sheer shock of such an offer had been enough to get her to agree.

That had been three months ago.  They’d already tried twice, with no success.  Rosaelia had been willing to try again, but only because she was told this happened often.  Three was their average for how many tries it took.  So, after three, if it didn’t work, she was done.

This was number three, and Jasmine was waiting on the couch to listen to the voicemail they’d received.  This was what they’d agreed on, but Rosaelia somehow wasn’t ready.  She was terrified.  She wanted a positive, but she wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

“Rose, I know you’re stressed, but I have to go in ten minutes, and I really don’t want you to stress about this overnight.  Can we please listen to it?”

“I don’t think I want to know, honestly.”

“You do.”

“But what if it’s negative?”

“What if it’s positive?”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for that either.”

Jasmine patted the couch next to her, and Rosaelia sat down.

“Rose, I don’t think you’re ever going to be ready for this.  Either way it goes, we’ll know eventually, so we might as well know now, right?”

She nodded. “I guess.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Ok, play it.”

Jasmine hit the button to start the message, and the two of them held their breaths.

“Hello Miss Kim, I’m calling about your blood test results.  We are very happy to inform you that the IVF worked, and you are currently three weeks pregnant.”

There was much more to the message, but Rosaelia tuned it all out.  It had worked.  The IVF had worked.  She was going to be a mom.  This was actually happening.

“Rose?  Rose?  Hellooooo?  You there?”

Rosaelia blinked herself back to the present, but it was too much for her.  She burst into tears.

“Aw, Rose, come here.” Jasmine pulled the younger girl into a hug. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrified,” Rosaelia breathed.

“Of what?”

“What if this was a mistake?  What if I end up being a bad mom?”

“You won’t, Rose.  I think the fact that you were willing to try for this is enough proof already.  No one tries this hard for a baby they don’t want.”

And just like that, Rosaelia’s world had flipped on its head again.  And this time, there was a very big chance of success.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Rosa, stop pacing.  You’re just making yourself more nervous.”

Rosaelia sighed and glanced over at Astrid. “I just don’t know what to do.  I’m scared that I’ll have more hope if we have a gender reveal.”

“And why is that a reason not to have it?”

“Because.  If we lose this one too…it’ll be so much worse if I know.”

“You’re going to find out either way eventually, Rose.  And besides, it’s ok to have hope.  Even if it doesn’t last, you’ll have enjoyed it for a while.”

Rosaelia sucked in a breath. “So…I tell Jasmine yes?”

“I think you should.  You don’t have to, though.”

Rosaelia wrung her hands as she considered it.  She was so terrified.  She wasn’t sure she had the mental strength to lose another baby, but she knew she should be more confident that this was going to end well.  The problem last time had been that her uterus wasn’t strong enough to carry the baby, and that issue was remedied by the fact that Jasmine was carrying this one.  That didn’t mean something wouldn’t happen, though.

Despite this, she informed Jasmine that she wanted to know.  She knew that this time she had so much more support than she’d had last time.  She remembered how awful the last time had been.  Her water had broken at 21 weeks.  That was way, way, way too early for a baby to be born, but it had happened anyways.  After it was all said and done, she hadn’t known who to tell.  It wouldn’t take long for someone to notice something was wrong, but how did she tell everyone?  How do you tell everyone you just lost a baby?

Of course, the news had come out eventually.  She’d told Esme nearly immediately, but she wasn’t sure how to tell the rest of them.  There were so many other things going on – Jasmine was expecting soon, and Zelda was planning a wedding.  Could she even tell them?

And then, Yuna had brought it up one night near the end of July.

“Rosa?  I hope…this isn’t rude.  If you don’t want to answer this question, that’s fine, but we’ve all been a bit worried.  You haven’t…talked about the baby in a while…and you don’t really look pregnant anymore.  Did something happen?”

This has surprised Rosaelia.  First of all, she’d been surprised anyone had even noticed.  She’d been doubly surprised that Yuna had been willing to ask about it.  It was just the two of them tonight, so she felt a bit more willing to tell her than she had if they’d been in the presence of Jasmine or Zelda.

“We lost the baby.  In June.”

“Oh,” Yuna gasped.

Rosaelia nodded. “I went into labor, and…well…he didn’t make it.”

Yuna rubbed her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Rosa.  I shouldn’t have asked.”

Rosaelia shook her head. “It’s ok.  I needed to tell everyone eventually.”

It hadn’t taken long for her to tell everyone after that.  Yuna and Esme had both encouraged her to do so, and she’d felt more relived after everyone knew.  Of course, this didn’t mean it hurt any less, but the weight of having to tell everyone was lifted off her shoulders.

Somehow, that hurt was still there two and a half years later.  It didn’t hurt as bad to see all her friends’ babies, but it still saddened her to see little boys.  They all reminded her that in some other reality, she would’ve had one of those little boys now.  Had he been born near his due date, his second birthday would be coming up soon.

◇◆◇◆◇

The oddest thing happened.  Jasmine had planned the gender reveal.  This, of course, was not odd.  She was the one carrying the baby, and she’d wanted to be the one to make the cake.  The odd part had been the date she’d planned the party for.  October 24th.  It just so happened to fall on a Sunday this year, which was the absolute best day for a party.  But…it was Antonio’s due date.  Jasmine probably didn’t remember this.  It had been mentioned in passing nearly three years ago now.  But Rosaelia sure remembered it.

By the time that date rolled around, Rosaelia wasn’t feeling so great.  Even though it wasn’t his death date, it felt more like a death date to her than June 17th did.  This was the third year his due date had come around, and every time it did, she remembered how horrifying that one June day had been.  She remembered how deathly silent the room had been when he’d been born, and she remembered the lingering warmth on his skin when she’d held him.  She remembered how bitterly she’d cried.  He’d been so tiny, and he’d looked more like a little doll than a newborn baby.  He’d had Yoongi’s nose, but none of his other features had been quite as defined.

She’d sat there for hours just holding his little body, Yoongi right by her side.  Both of them had been in tears, and she’d realized she’d only experienced this kind of grief once before.  This was different, though.  Nothing hurt more than holding a baby you’d never get to raise.

“Rosa?  What’s wrong?” Yoongi asked, settling his hands against her shoulders.

Apparently she’d been in their bedroom long enough to be considered worrisome, because he’d came to find her.  She glanced up at him, feeling far too embarrassed about being caught crying.

“I…I don’t know if I can go…today.  It should be Antonio’s second birthday.  It…” she sobbed, and then her voice dropped to a whisper. “It feels like we’re betraying him by having another baby.”

“Oh, Rosa.” Yoongi crushed her in a hug. “We’re not betraying him.”

But it felt like a betrayal.  Just like falling in love again had at first.

“But…he was supposed to be our first baby.”

“He was our first baby.”

Those words stilled her.  She’d never thought about it that way.  It hadn’t felt like he was her first baby because she’d never seen him alive.  She’d remembered Jasmine talking about Namu’s birth not too long after that.  She’d talked about his big, tired eyes as he’d looked up at her for the first time.  Rosaelia had never had that.  Her baby had been gone before the world had even welcomed him.

“He was?”

“He was.”

She could remember knowing he was alive.  She’d felt his tiny flutters in her belly for a few weeks before that awful accident had happened.  It had barely been noticeable, but it had been there.  There had definitely been a tiny human in there, alive and active.  Antonio had been alive.  He’d been there before his premature birth had stamped the life out of him.

She sighed into Yoongi’s shoulder, finally giving into the tears. “He’s been gone for two years, Yoongs.  Why am I not over it?”

“Because we lost our child.  We’ll never be over it,” he replied, and she realized he was crying too.  He pulled away from her just enough to look her in the eyes. “How about we go upstairs now?  Even if not for us for Jasmine?  She’s doing such a big favor for us already, and now she’s planned this party, so how about we go to it?”

Rosaelia nodded, fresh tears sliding down her face.  Yoongi thumbed at them in an effort to clear them off her face.  “Ok…ok.  Let’s go upstairs.”

◇◆◇◆◇

Jasmine was the best at planning baby showers.  She’d planned all but one of the ones they’d had so far, and that one had been her own.  She’d made a cake, and the girls had helped her decorate the roof.  It all felt so special, and it made Rosaelia feel so sad.  It was awfully reminiscent of her first gender reveal, and that one had ended in tragedy only a few weeks later.

She was glad Yoongi was there with her and that it was only the few of them.  If they’d invited other people, Rosaelia would’ve felt way worse.  Barely anyone knew that it was her baby that Jasmine was carrying.  They’d all agreed not to tell anyone for Rosaelia’s peace of mind.  She didn’t want to have to go around with people knowing she’d lost two babies if this one died too.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to cut the cake when Jasmine handed her the knife.  She didn’t know if she wanted to know.  If it was a boy…she’d just be reminded of Antonio all over again, and if it was a girl…well, maybe that would be good.  Esme’s daughter could have a little best friend soon.  It would just remind her of Bianca…and Julia.  Bianca, the little sister she’d let go of when she’d left México, and Julia, the girl she’d lost so many years ago.

She needed to not think about it for too long.  Either way, she was having a baby, and that was what mattered.  It was just a baby.  Not Antonio.  Not Bianca.  Not Julia.  Just a baby.

When she cut into the cake and it came out pink, she couldn’t help but smile.  One glance at Yoongi told her that he was grinning.

“We’re having a little girl, Rosa.”

“We are.”

It made her happy, but she was sad all at the same time.  She couldn’t even explain it.  She wasn’t even sad that Antonio wasn’t here anymore.  This was something else entirely.  She remembered Bianca talking about being an aunt one day.  She’d never wanted to her children of her own, but she’d always hoped that Rosaelia would have children.

They weren’t in contact anymore, though.  Bianca had sided with their parents in the arguments that eventually resulted in Rosaelia leaving the country, and every conversation they’d had since had resulted in Bianca trying to get Rosaelia to talk to them again.  So, Rosaelia had practically stopped talking to her too.

◇◆◇◆◇

The next few months seem to go by too slow and too fast all at the same time.  Esme’s second daughter was born merely a week after the gender reveal, and somehow, this made Rosaelia all the more nervous for her baby to be born.

Once the 28-week mark had passed, Rosaelia was a bit calmer than she had been for the whole time.  Jasmine had made it to the third trimester, and each week was one step closer to a baby who could actually survive the outside world.

The only issue left in Rosaelia’s mind was a name.  What was she going to name this baby?  She’d named Antonio when she’d been only 16 weeks pregnant, that was, as soon as she’d known he was a boy.  But she hadn’t been so ready with this baby.  Naming the baby would make her more attached, and she didn’t want to make it even harder on herself if she lost it.

The thing was, there was less than three months until they’d be greeting a little baby for sure, and she could come sooner than that.  And…Rosaelia had some sort of idea.  She just wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, though.  It had been on her mind since she’d first been pregnant with Antonio, and now it was especially present as she thought about naming a little girl.  Julia’s namesake had already been honored once in a clothing line Rosaelia had developed…but.

“My middle name is Isabel.  After my grandmother.  Mamá said it means perfection.  Funny, isn’t it?  She’d think I’m far from perfect now.”

Of course, if Julia were here now, Rosaelia wouldn’t even be having this baby.  But she also wouldn’t have wanted Rosaelia to name the baby after her.  “Give her a special name.  Don’t name her after me,” she would’ve said.  But she’d departed from this earth thirteen years ago, and Rosaelia wanted to remember her.  Not that she’d ever forget her.

Rosaelia told Yoongi she was naming the baby after an old friend.  They’d be calling her Isabella.  Not quite Isabel, but close enough.  Rosaelia had had full intent of giving their daughter a Korean name as well, but Yoongi had insisted they give her Rosaelia’s own middle name.  Maria.  Isabella Maria.

So, it was decided.  They’d be greeting a little tiny girl named Isabella Maria on April ninth.  Or…somewhere around there.  Babies were rarely born on their due dates.

Rosaelia felt a bit heavier once they’d named her.  She knew that likely, this baby would make it.  But the knowledge that there was still an ‘if’ made her uneasy.

“Hey, Rose, what’s wrong?” Yoongi asked as they lay in bed one night.  He could tell she’d been uneasy for days – weeks, even – and he wanted to know what was up.  The only issue was that they never seemed to talk about their feelings, so it was a bit awkward broaching the subject.

She took a big, deep breath. “Just…what if we lose her?  She doesn’t even seem real to me sometimes.  I mean, I’m not carrying her, so how is she my baby, you know?”

He hummed. “I think it’ll feel very real when you’re holding her in your arms.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “What if it never happens, though?”

He thumbed at her tears. “It’ll happen.”

“But we lost Antonio.  We could lose her too.”

“We could.  We could lose anyone at any time, Rose.  We can’t dwell on that, ok?”

“Yoongi….”

“What is it?” he hummed.

“I don’t want to lose her.”

“We won’t.”

◇◆◇◆◇

By the time April rolled around, Rosaelia was much more confident in Isabella’s survival, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t insanely freaked out when Jasmine went into labor.

It was long.  Much longer than Rosaelia’s labor had been with Antonio.  And while Jasmine was completely fine with this, Rosaelia just spent hours pacing the hospital.  Jin had told her that everything was fine, and that Jasmine’s labor had lasted this long with her own son, Namu, so it was completely normal that it was taking this long.  Apparently.

It was nearly eleven pm by the time the tiny girl made her appearance, and she was loud about it.  This astounded Rosaelia.  She’d never heard a newborn scream before.  Maybe most parents didn’t like the sound of that, but to her it was a scream of life.  Isabella had made it.  She was alive.

Holding her a few minutes later was a completely unreal experience for Rosaelia.  Isabella was tiny, but she was nearly six times the size her brother had been.  Rosaelia finally understood the wonder of having her baby look at her.  And, strangely, Isabella was resemblant of what Rosaelia had thought Antonio would look like had he been born when he’d been supposed to.

She had Yoongi’s eyes, with the slightest crease over her eyelids.  She had his little nose too, but Rosaelia was sure her skin was a tanner shade than his was, and her lips were a touch too pouty to have been his.  She was the most adorable baby Rosaelia had ever seen, even more adorable than Antonio had been.  She had the blankest stare as she looked up at Rosaelia, but she was still so beautiful.

“Hey, look,” Yoongi chuckled. “It’s me.”

Rosaelia let out a soft laugh. “I never want to let her go.”

He laughed. “Maybe for just a few minutes so I can hold her?”

“Maybe….”

They’d be taking a little baby home soon, and it seemed surreal.  Isabella was really theirs.

This is part of the Dad!BTS series that can be found here

A/N: uh...so yeah this is finally getting posted. Honestly I started this months ago and thought it would never see tumblr

It would be greatly appreciated if you reblogged the story if you liked it!

Taglist: @jiminie-and-his-pinky-finger @jinnie-forthe-winnie @thornedswan @kookstempo @armys-dna @fly-you-dam-fools @aianloveseven

[labyrinthdancer]

alright ima gonna start dumping my linked universe/zelda AU's thought thingys

some headcannons that apply to all of these AREEEE hero's shade passing on? never happened. dude still kicking around hes also like super old talking 1,000+ old the portal to the twilight realm nerver closed i'll start with what i'm callin Monarces Will i guess? its all just world building the golden goddesses didn't abandon the interlopers COMPLETELY when they banished them to the twilight realm they made it so that all the monarchs would have a divine beast, a light dweller that's been touched by the divine in some way. when a divine beast dies they become a ghost and go to some special forest somewhere in the twilight realm and live with the other beast helping the current beast while waiting for a prophecy foretelling the destruction of the twilight realm to come to pass and rise to help the twili. at some point a corrupt monarch came to power and didn't like the fact that a light dweller had so much free rein over the realm so he made a spell called Monarch's Will that forced the divine beast to do what the monarch commanded, this spell inadvertently connected all monarchs souls with their divine beasts allowing both sides, to an extent, feel what the other is feeling and even have an inkling as to what they're thinking. in response to the continual abuse of this power the divine beast at the time made a counter spell called 'Chain Breaker' that would break the connection between the beast and monarch and make the spell useless. switching over to some twili customs the twili monarch is decided by combat or on special occasions elected. someone can challenge the monarch at any time but there are certain events where it is socially acceptable to make a challenge, the rules of the challenges are as follows the divine beast is the judge of the fight and must be present the battle ends when either the monarch or challenger is dead the divine beast can step in at any time if they think the battle will end with both the monarch's and challenger's deaths if the divine beast stops the battle a rematch will take place at a later date if the divine beast has to step in a second time both the monarch and challenger will be deemed unfit to rule and both will be executed a vote by the twili people will take place later to decide the next monarch. if the divine beast is still alive when their monarch dies they will start serving the next monarch BUT they will not have any connection with the next monarch and 'Monarch's Will' will not work also the monarchs and their divine beast complement each other! these are the pairs I have divine beast Athena the Pashiont and her monarch 'Guy I Don't Have A Name For' The Bloody, Atlas the Giant and his monarch Aquasha the Gental, Hero's Shade and Midna's dad, and obviously twilight and Midna canonically there are hundreds but I've only come up with two pairs so far