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changeling-rin · 4 years ago

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Hey there, I have a friend I've been getting into DL but I don't really know how to explain the links so I was woundering what would be the best way to explain each of the links (and sequels if possible please) - Friday (Please and Thank you!)

(cracks knuckles)

ALRIGHT PEOPLE HERE WE GO, LONG POST AHEAD

THE CHAIN LINKS

Gen: The Link from Skyward Sword. Short for Genesis, which he will never ever let anyone call him by ever because he doesn't actually like it. He's generally level-headed and appreciates common sense, and gets a bit miffed when things decide to divert from said common sense. He's the group medic, not necessarily by any skill on his part, but more because the group needed a medic and he couldn't believe there wasn't one yet, so the only logical decision was to do it himself. He gets very particular about the group taking the proper amount of healing items as a result. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio and is the effective 'super-ego', if you will

Speck: The Link from Minish Cap. He's quiet, by far the most quiet, and will really only speak up if he's a) confident in what he has to say, and b) confident that it will add something worthwhile to the discussion. He has the ability to shrink via his magic hat (Ezlo) and a magical conduit shaped like a Jar that he carries around with him. Due to the bit where he's usually in the background, the fact that he has a surprisingly violent streak catches just about all his enemies off guard - for example, his favorite method of attack is shrinking down and using his size to stab his sword directly into his opponent's eardrum. Ironically, outside of a fight, he's one of the Links most likely to apologize to a flower for stepping on it

The Four: The Link(s) from Four Swords. They're the split-in-four version of the Link who drew the Sword, but due to a hive mind effect, everything they do is in unison. They're pretty quiet most of the time, due to most people finding said unison relatively unsettling, but since the Chain couldn't care less about that they're more willing to speak up every now and then. They specialize in group attacks and such, but they're terrible at being individual. The nature of their hive mind means that it's both incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly difficult to break their unison, and so most of the time they won't even bother trying. They have a little snarky side that comes out when they're stressed, and they hang out with Speck most often due to having similar introverted dispositions

Ocarina: The Link from Ocarina of Time, and one-half of the Hero(es) of Time with Mask due to time being broken and the continuum being shot. He's the younger half, even though he's in his sixteen-year-old body, and since he has the mind of a nine-year-old it makes a very odd combination. He has occasional confidence issues and a few self-worth/doubt beliefs as the result of hanging out with his older self and worrying about how he's going to successfully grow into someone so competent. He can usually be found next to his older self, or at the very least in the general vicinity of his older self, and he has a profound distaste for the necessity for secrets. Most specifically, his future, because it's literally standing right next to him and he'd really like to know if he beats Ganondorf, thanks

Mask: The Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and one-half of the Hero(es) of Time with Ocarina. He's the older half despite being in the body of a twelve-year-old, and since he's technically got the mind of an eighteen-year-old at the very least it looks very strange from the outside. He's snarky, sarcastic, and takes great joy in messing with other people, most specifically his younger self by refusing to give away future hints and claiming ~Spoilers~ every time it comes up. He carries his transformation masks and uses then whenever the situation calls for it. He can usually be found next to his younger self because he's secretly worried about shattering his own personal timeline, and he puts a lot of effort into making sure Ocarina survives whatever mess they've gotten into this time. He also puts an equal amount of effort into making sure Ocarina doesn't notice this

Dusk: The Link from Twilight Princess. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio and is the quote-unquote 'ego' - or, in othher words, he's usually the mediating force. If it's pointed out to him though, he will steadfastly deny that he's in any suited for a leadership position - which is in blatant contradiction to the fact that he's probably the most effective member of the Leader Trio. He carries the Curse Stone from Zant around his neck in a pouch and usles it to transform whenever the situation calls for it. He's also the regular soul-host for Midna, Shadow, or both, depending on the day. He's by far the most level-headed Link, taking almost everything in stride, and it takes a lot to make him lose his cool. The one surefire way to do it is to threaten someone he cares about, at which point he will waste no time completely destroying whoever was stupid enough to make said threat

RGBV: Red, Green, Blue, and Vio are the Link(s) from Four Swords Adventures, and like the Four they're the result of one Link being split into four bodies. Unlike the Four, they've retained their individuality and have four very different personalities as a result. Green is the established leader of their quad-cell, and is the most level-headed one. He's not the most patient one, but he is the one who's not afraid to do what needs to be done. Red is the most emotional one, easily excitable and absolutely willing to give hugs to anyone who asks (and a few who don't). Blue is the most aggressive one, although he mostly directs it towards his enemies. He does have a on-again-off-again rivalry of sorts with Vio, but it's never gotten beyond particularly invested sibling bickering. Vio meanwhile is the book-smarts one, or at least the one with the most strategic intelligence. He's also the best ranged fighter they have

Lore: The Link from A Link to the Past, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, and Link's Awakening. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio, finishing off the dynamic as the 'id'. He's by far the most unique personality, being a hyperactive chaos entity who delights in confusing people and making them question reality. He's also a polyglot, knows at least ten languages, and is constantly hunting for new ones to learn. He's easily the most experienced Link and as a result has Seen Some Stuff, but instead of being traumatized by the weirdness he decided to go in the other direction and embrace it instead. He's an absolutely terrible shot in spite of his numerous adventures, but the sheer amount of stuff he has tends to make up for it. He hasn't met a situation yet that he doesn't have an item for and he's not about to start now - although this is mostly due to his conviction that bombs are the answer to every situation

Realm: The Link from the original Legend of Zelda. He is constantly, hopelessly, chronically lost, and has absolutely no concept of where he is in relation to where everything else is. He also has a somewhat tenuous relationship with the concept of physical space, which tends to result in him getting lost in places he really should not have been able to get lost in (for example, a volcano). Regrettably this also extends to his items, which he frequently loses. In spite of this, he's one of the most cheerful and optimistic Links in the group. It takes a lot to get him into a bad mood, and given what he already goes through while maintaining a good mood, the entire Chain has yet to see him in a bad one. A side effect of getting lost so much is that his stamina is absolutely ridiculous, which makes him very good at drawing out a fight - in fact, that's more or less his specialty

Sketch: The Link from A Link Between Worlds. He has the ability to turn his body into paint and move along the walls like a living hieroglyph. Unfortunately, due to being made of watercolors when he does this, he also has a severe phobia of water as a result of the fact that he might actually die a horrifically painful death if his paint runs too much. Outside of that, he's relatively level-headed and very crafty, in the literal sense that he likes to make things. He used to be a blacksmith's apprentice before this whole Hero business got started (his specialty is metalwork). He likes things to make sense and gets a bit snarky when the universe decides to spite him by making no sense at all. He's one of the best Links at stealth, because for some reason very few people will notice the artwork on the wall and as long as he has a surface to fuse with, he can get just about anywhere

Wind: The Link from Wind Waker. He carries said Wind Waker as part of his inventory, and it lets him control the weather. He's a certified Weather Master in everything but the official certification, because he hasn't had the chance to go back and take the test yet, but the ability to throw literal tornadoes at his enemies makes him arguably one of the most dangerous Links in the group. He does prefer to hang back in a fight and hit from a distance as opposed to getting up close and personal, but that's very typical for a mage. He has an overabundance of patience, stored up from sailing for days back on his home ocean, and he'll take just about anything in stride - unless you're threatening his family, then all bets are off. He's one of the quieter Links, being more content to wait and see the results of something rather than actively participating, but this in no way means that he's not paying attention. He knows what he's capable of, is fully willing and ready to do it if necessary, and makes no excuses to the contrary

Steam: The Link from Spirit Tracks. He has the ability to see hidden things, which extends beyond his own disembodied Princess Zelda and into things like mask spirits or just plain invisible opponents. He also has a summons in the form of the Spirit Train, which he takes great pleasure in slamming into whichever villain has annoyed him. He's got a dry sort of sarcasm and he's definitely not afraid to say what he thinks. As a result of spending most of his adventure on a Train, he's easily the least physically fit of the Links and therefore tends to hang back in a fight, relying more on his summons for heavy hits or his sight ability to provide support. His previous career choice was a locomotive engineer, and as a result he and Sketch get along very well. They have regularly scheduled brainstorm sessions about what sort of gadget they should try and make this time, usually with Steam providing the math and schematics and Sketch providing the real-world experience to make it real

Shadow: The Link from a variety of games, since whenever a Shadow or Dark Link appears, that was him. He's bitingly sarcastic, could not possibly care less about the opinions of other people, and takes great joy in finding the best way to insult someone as possible. Being formed from the darker emotions of other Links, he's understandably in a poor-to-terrible mood almost all the time, although he can usually be convinced to take it out on other people. A side effect of being made of dark magic is that he can't be out in the sunlight too long - it'll start to burn him in the same way a match burns paper. As a perk though, he can manipulate his body into any shape he wants, mostly ignoring physics as he does. This makes him easily one of the most powerful Links in the group, since he doesn't take battle damage the way a physically-bodied person would and is all but immune to being stabbed. He makes for an excellent aggro target, partly because he can take anything the opponent could give, but also because he'll give it all back and then some

Oni: The Link from before Skyward Sword. Also known as the Fierce Deity. Saying that he's overpowered is a bit of an understatement, as he can take out the likes of Majora in three hits or less, but he's very unlikely to actually use his power like that. As a result of being put into a mask, he has no actual autonomy unless someone is wearing him, at which point he takes control of the body of the wearer to manifest in the real world. This lasts with no repercussions until his mask is removed, at which point Oni returns to his bindings. He has not deigned to explain how he ended up in a mask or who managed to put him there, but the loose implication points to the aftermath of the Demon War as the cause. Further information is pending. He's stoic and composed, and has yet to be truly riled up by anything that's happened. He also refuses, as a rule, to get involved with the rest of the Chain's adventures unless his presence is truly required. As the First Link Ever, and the one from whom the entire rest of the lineage has descended, Oni feels somewhat responsible for guiding the rest of the Links through their journeys - but guiding and coddling are two different things and as far as Oni is concerned, his legacies need to be able to fight their own battles

THE SEQUEL LINKS

Rune: The Link from Breath of the Wild. He has the Champion Abilities, as well as his own Quicktime specialty, and is of course concerningly amnesiac. He's quiet to the point of almost being forgettable, which is a side effect of a) spending nearly all his time in the wilderness alone with nobody to talk to, and b) having to constantly be on the alert for Guardians because nothing alerts a Guardian like a loud hylian. His inventory is nearly bottomless, and he therefore immediately becomes the group pack mule. He's also hands-down the best chef (something which makes Gen only slightly jealous)

Lux: The Link from Hyrule Warriors. He is the quietest Link, but not because of his personality - it's because he can't talk. The most vocalization he's ever going to manage is incoherent yells of effort, because anything beyond that is locked behind a psychosomatic speech block. He has not deigned to share why he has a psychosomatic speech block and at the moment it's highly doubtful he ever will. He's second only to Shadow in his sarcasm and general displeasure with the world, and the rest of the group is lucky that hylian sign only has loosely defined curse words, otherwise he'd be going off

RSE: Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are the Link(s) from Triforce Heroes. Emerald is the leader of the trio, more or less, while Ruby handles anything that might need a good smacking and Sapphire embodies the emotional core. They have a strange dynamic where they bicker with each other to hide the fact that they care, which is a direct result of them still settling into their own dynamics. They have their Totem formation, of course, and share an incredibly specific set of opinions about fashion. The fact that they also have their entire wardrobe on hand is complete coincidence, yep

Lyric: The Link from Cadence of Hyrule. He can hear the Universe Music better than any other Link (with the possible exception of Wind) and he will do whatever he can to follow its lead. He's constantly moving to the beat in almost everything he does, and it makes him unexpectedly deadly in a fight. It turns out that following the Universe Music gives very good buffs and Lyric is a master at following the music. Ironically enough for all his sense of rhythm, he cannot sing to save his life and is in fact instrumentally challenged, which annoys him to no end

THE OC LINKS

Codex: The Link from the Evil Overlord List, a story I write that somehow developed its own protagonist. He's snarky, sarcastic, runs on caffeine and spite, and will probably take over the world someday if he ever gets around to it. He's currently just a college student writing his thesis paper (The List), but once he graduates the world had better brace itself

Wraith: The Link that was made as a result of a random conversation one day, in which someone asked me what would happen if Demise won permanently. Five minutes with my angst-stunted brain later, I had a cheerful sunshine child who had the ability to see spirits and was getting mentored by all eighteen dead Heroes as the backup plan to deal with Demise. He's way too pure for the world and probably shouldn't be as big an optimist as he is for someone surrounded by dead people

#Changeling Answers #DL Questions #All the DL Links #literally every single one of them #Anonymous Replies #DL Master Character List #Or at least the Master Hero List #Oof

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durotoswrites · 4 years ago

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For the Ask Game! 🧑 favorite character to write? And/Or 📒any fics planned?

Sorry for the delay on these - my heat exhaustion has left me knocked out for a while.

🧑 Favorite character to write:

Short answer: Harvest Moon's Cliff (all incarnations)

Long answer: I don't think it's really any secret that my favorite Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons characters to write for are the ones that reside at Doug's Inn. I see Doug, Ann, Gray, Kai, and Cliff as a large, dysfunctional family – AKA Doug and all of his children, haha. There are so many different personalities in one small space playing off of one another, and there's so much fun to be had. I loved how all the guys in shared a room in the GBA version of Mineral Town. It kinda reminds me of those cheesy sitcoms where clashing personalities all reside under the same roof. That being said, there is a particular shy, reclusive young man who blossoms with confidence as he finds purpose in his life. Bonus: he comes with a vague, tragic past that has tons of potential for exploration. I have a hard time resisting woobie-type characters.

📒 Any Fics Planned?

Short answer: Yes. I also plan to bring more of my stories over from ffn to Ao3.

Long answer under the cut, heheh. I rambled quite a bit.

Ask me about my writing processes and stories!

I have so many WIPs that haven't been touched in years that I'd like to finish, so new planned fics aren't posted yet. Some of them have more adult themes than most of the stuff I've been writing, so I get flustered sharing them. I've been at a crossroads, as I feel that you can't have growth without changing things up. On the other hand, I feel like a lot of my readers associate my works with a specific “wholesome” feel-good mood. It's kinda nice to be known for something, although that might just be my ego talking, thinking that people recognize my work as a “type”.

Regardless, in the end, I feel growth is necessary.

I don't want to leave a lot of unfinished WIPs waiting because they stress me out and I have too many of them already, so I'd like to have a bulk of my new stories with a good chunk written before I decide to post them.

Among those include:

A longfic featuring Pete's farm in Forget-Me-Not Valley (A blend of HMDS with the FoMT plugin and AWL). It takes place in the same universe as The Shy Newcomer (Claire in Mineral Town) and there are a few overlapping moments, although Pete's story starts first. Pete's personality is verrry different from Claire's, and his story was kind of supposed to be the yang to TSN's yin. Pete's best friends in his story are Ruby (not sure if I'm adding Tim yet), Nami, and Rock. Readers will be treated to a poorly-socialized pre-Mineral Town Cliff (if you think he was bad at the beginning of TSN, well... heh... he's a wreck here).

Another planned unpublished story is a crossover of Harvest Moon and the movie “In This Corner of the World”, based on a manga of the same name by Fumiyo Kouno. It was written as a gift for a friend. I have the entire outline figured out and have slowly been filling it in. My friend asked for an AU where Claire and Cliff have an arranged marriage and live with his family in Akiyama, the hometown I had created for Cliff in The Shy Newcomer. I took the opportunity to expand the characters in his family. I have it written during the same time period and society as “In This Corner of the World”, but had decided to write a spreading disease as an allegory for war, but then COVID happened and some parts of it just got really hard to write. There are also a lot of sexually explicit content as Claire slowly grows and learns from her spouse that it's okay to express what she wants despite sex being a taboo issue. If there's enough interest in the story, I'll post it, but I worry it's a little too niche for there to be many people into it.

Pastor Carter and Doctor Trent are one of my favorite rare pair ships. I've had a partial draft for a story about them for a few years now, especially focusing on Trent growing up and acknowledging that he has an unhealthy addiction for things that he knows he can't have. There are some more adult/sexual themes in this piece, too, including the main character lusting after a married woman (who also happens to be his patient) and some lemons. (Does anyone call it that anymore or is it just referred to as “smut” nowadays? Haha) I always feel so bad for neglecting the folks at the clinic in-game and wanted to write a piece that focused more on them, Trent specifically. It's a multi-chap fic, but I don't think I'm going to let it get as long as some of my other pieces.

I also really want to write a short romantic oneshot for every marriage candidate in Mineral Town, around 1,000 words each. So far, I have one for Cliff and one for Gray. I want to write Claire with everyone, because I think it would be fun to explore all the different personalities.

I have more installments planned for A Single Day, including a day in the life of the following characters, all with drafts in varying degrees of progress:

Anna

Doug

Nora (yes, I'm writing from the point of view of the cat living at the inn)

More to come – I think Lillia and Thomas would be especially interesting to explore

I do still have that Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask piece I've been pondering where Link befriends the soul of the deku scrub child while possessed by the mask. I don't have much written about it, but I really love the world of Majora's Mask. Such a fun game.

I also think about the lead carpenter's son in Ocarina of Time and that weird side quest involving the blue chicken and the son being lost to the forest. Then that unique-looking kokiri girl explaining that all who get taken in the lost woods become stalfos. Like, did the guy die? Was he sick? Did he want to die? There's just so much going on there that would be fun to explore.

I also have played OMORI recently and have like... A LOT of feelings about it. I don't know what I'd write, but I'm still damn impressed at how well the characters are developed in such a short game.

Other games I've had vague ideas about writing for include the following:

The Flame in the Flood: I'm thinking a survivalist/action story fleshing out Scout's backstory a bit more and her thoughts as she's traveling. I feel like she's a very lonely person, but isn't given the chance to really dwell on it.

Night In the Woods: I'd love to write more about Mae's dreams and what they mean to her. She doesn't really talk to anyone about them openly, so it's really hard to tell her feelings about them in some regards. We know that she's distressed about them, but I'd like to dive a little deeper. Do the nightmares end after the games does? What about Bea's new nightmares?

Hades (Supergiant Games): I think it would be fun to write more about the events that take place before the game starts, like Zagreus's duties in the house of Hades, and expand on the strained relationship with his father.

#ask box games #writing #beck-a-leck

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sweetbitgaming · 4 years ago

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The Development of the Zelda Oracle Games

Sweet Bit Gaming Mysteries: The Legend of Zelda The Seed of Courage

The Legend of Zelda Oracle series of games is often overlooked when it comes to focusing on the franchise as a whole. Certainly, there are more popular handheld Zelda games out there than the aforementioned pair; however, what if the entire concept for these games was fully realized? What if the trilogy Nintendo had promised fans was a reality and not just the topic of the day? Within this article, I’ll go over the development of the Oracle games. From many name changes to cut storyline ideas, this is the history of the Legend of Zelda the Oracle games.

Some of the earliest information out there in regards to the Triforce Series of games came to the public on July 28th, 1999 within an article published by IGN. IGN would state that Nintendo is “hard at work” on six different Zelda Gameboy Color titles. Within the article, it mentions that four of the new Zelda titles were being produced in conjunction with the Japanese design studio Flagship. This development studio was headed by Resident Evil lead Yoshiki Okamoto. Okamoto had revealed earlier in the year that Flagship would be working closely with Nintendo’s EAD team in regard to future titles on the Gameboy Color. Within this same interview, Okamoto would also reveal that Flagship’s work was restricted to the design of scenarios and storylines. While not much information was given, this “leak” would take place roughly a month before Nintendo’s Space World 1999 event was set to take place.

Any hope for the public to demo the game was seemingly heightened by an IGN web article published on August 20th, 1999. Their source of information would be cited as Weekly Famitsu. IGN within the headlines were promoting they were the first to have screenshots of the upcoming Game Boy Color exclusive Zelda game. This article was published roughly a week prior to Nintendo’s Space World 1999 event, which took place on August 27th-August 29th of that year. The game at the time was believed to be called The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Acorn and was also cited as being published by Capcom and Nintendo.

In the preview of the game within the article, IGN would mention that Princess Zelda was managing the four seasons within the Land of Hyrule. Zelda would be kidnapped by Ganon and it would be up to Link to manage the Rod of the Four Seasons and track down the eight pieces of the Triforce to save Princess Zelda and also bring balance to Hyrule. With Hyrule’s seasons becoming jumbled up, chaos would ensue and Link would have to travel between Hyrule and this “other dimension” while being guided by spirits residing in the “Tree of Mystery” and also a strange “Uura Tribe” which would be found in this alternate dimension.

Ricky the Kangaroo and Maple the Witch were mentioned briefly within this article as well. Not much information was given on these characters other than they would be allies to help aid Link in his quest to save Princess Zelda. Also mentioned were more details about the Rod of Four Seasons and how it would be required to solve certain elemental puzzles throughout the game. Possibly the most infamous amount of information detailed within this article is the mention of the Link System and how there would be three upcoming Zelda Gameboy Color games and they would all be a coherent story without getting lost within each other due to the Link System that Capcom and Nintendo were developing.

With Space World 1999 taking place, a lot of hype and media focus was still latched onto the Nintendo 64 DD, another story within itself. Zelda Gaiden, later to be renamed The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was also playable at this event. Demo copies of The Seed of Courage were also seemingly playable at this event. An interview would be conducted with Miyamoto by Nintendo Power Source and Miyamoto would give more detail and insight on Zelda Gaiden and the recently renamed The Legend of Zelda: Mysterious Fruit.

Q: After hearing rumors of Ura Zelda for Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, Zelda Gaiden for the Nintendo 64 cartridge format was a pleasant surprise. Can you tell me how these two games came to be developed?

A: We are working on two follow-ups to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. "Ura Zelda" uses the same system as Ocarina of Time but uses the 64DD to add game data. The story in "Ura Zelda" will be similar to Ocarina of Time but with new maps and scenarios. Zelda Gaiden, on the other hand, is a completely different game, although it too uses essentially the same game system as Ocarina of Time. Everyone has enjoyed the Zelda series but there's typically at least a 3 year wait between sequels! People who are in Junior High School when they play one Zelda game would be in High School by time the next game comes out, and those in High School will graduate before the next game came out! So, we wanted to make a new game in the series sooner. "Ura Zelda" will use the existing Ocarina of Time cartridge but with different dungeons, and new locations for the treasures. Since the 64DD media is cheaper than a new cartridge, this is an inexpensive way to make a sequel. We may also consider using network technology for "Ura Zelda." Right now, most of the staff is concentrating on Zelda Gaiden.

Q: How involved are you with the different Zelda games?

A: As time goes on, my direct involvement has become less. On the first Zelda, my involvement in directing the game was, say, 100%. With Ocarina of Time, my involvement was about 60%. For Zelda Gaiden, it will be about 20% and for Zelda: Mysterious Fruit for Game Boy, only about 10%. Until Ocarina, I was the Producer and Director of the game-not of everything but some parts. For Zelda Gaiden I will be in a Producer role. In that capacity, I'll decide the overall direction of the game, but I won't write the actual specifications myself. If Zelda Gaiden turns out to be fun to play, from now on we'll see new entries into the Zelda series with shorter time intervals in between. And, I'll probably have less direct involvement in the games. I've been saying all along that I have a lot of confidence in my teams, and I think they will make some good games.

Q: What kinds of things do you do as a Producer?

A: I just tell the staff members what kind of game it should be. The staff then figures out the details of the scenarios. So far, we've had thee big meetings to reviews the game's scenarios. As Producer I approve and disapprove of ideas in these meetings. Mainly I say things like, "If you try to go in this direction, you will never finish the game!" I help set the development priorities, and make staff recommendations. Q: So, what are some of the overall directions you have given to your game developments teams on Zelda Gaiden? What are some of the things that you want the players to experience in this game? A: I had several ideas that I wanted to incorporate into Ocarina of Time but that didn't make it. I've already given those to the staff. In Zelda Gaiden, players will meet some characters that they previously encountered in Ocarina of Time. There were many characters in Ocarina of Time who were in the background-- those characters will be more involved in the story of Zelda Gaiden. You'll talk to them more, and in the end you'll feel a deeper connection to the story of Ocarina of Time. Another thing we want to work on is time in the game. In so many games, you have, for example, eight dungeons. Finish four of them, and you're halfway through. You can guess how far you have to go. But that's not the true nature of interactive entertainment-it shouldn't be like reading a book and knowing you're halfway through it. That's not just something we're working on for Zelda Gaiden, we need to improve this for all of our games. The beauty of interactive media is it is different from other types of media, so we need to concentrate on those differences. Finally, we really want Zelda players to come away from this game feeling that they've played something totally unexpected. Q: In Zelda Gaiden, the moon is slowly falling towards the planet, and the player has a limited amount of time to save the world before it is destroyed. So how does the time limit in the game work? A: What can I tell you….hmmm. There are certain time limits in the game, but, you can play it again and again. If you don't do something in one game, you can try to do it in the next game. The amount of different things you actually do in the game will depend on the player's ability. This isn't a totally unique concept, but we do want to try something new with game time in Zelda Gaiden. To do that we are working on improving the "density" of the world. For example, say you have three days of game time. We are trying to see how many different events we can fit into those three days. That is why we need the Expansion Pak for this game-to keep track of all the events that are happening simultaneously in the world. Q: So the world actually exists and different things happen in real-time, even if you're not there to see them. OK, how about the masks? How many different ones do you think will be in the game? It looks like there is space for a lot of them on the Subscreen! A: There are three main masks-these are the only ones that make you actually change, or morph, into something different. Several other masks will have "human" like faces, and will be necessary to trigger certain events. You can use these masks to disguise yourself as different people. As for the actual final number of masks in the game, that will depend on time. I'm aiming for just under 30 different masks, but that depends on how long things take to develop.Q: You mentioned that the story in Zelda Gaiden will be closely connected to Ocarina of Time. How about the Running Man-will you finally be able to beat him?

A: Maybe you didn't see him in the Space World version, but there is a Running Man who is four times taller than the one in Ocarina of Time! We are experimenting with this character to see if we can make him interesting and fun. Did you see the dogs? In Ocarina of Time, they would follow you. In Zelda Gaiden, their reaction will vary. When you morph into a Goron, they will bark at you and run away. As a Zora, they will approach you. Don't try to become a Deku Scrub if there are dogs around, though! They will try to bite you! Q: What about the other fairy that is shown with Navi in the introductory cinema scenes? A: I don't know, I need to ask the staff about that! I have a feeling it's going to be an important character! Q: Things are busy on the Zelda front with the Zelda games for Game Boy Color that Capcom is developing. How did that deal come about? What is the plan for these three titles? A: Well, it's the same situation as when our team develops a Zelda game-the quality has to be high. Mr. Okamoto (head of development at Capcom) is a young and energetic game developer who says he came into the industry because of games like the original Donkey Kong and Zelda. He came to me and was very serious about developing a Zelda game. He has great teams of developers and he promised to use his best people on this project. A company called Flagship has 20 or so people who are working on the scenarios. Some people have asked me if this means Nintendo will be allowing other companies to develop games using our characters. But this is a very special case. I felt good about Mr. Okamoto and his team. We're not going to be letting everyone work on our characters. We'll be checking the quality of these three titles. Q: What is the connection between the three titles?

A: This project originally started to convert the original NES Zelda to Game Boy Color. So one of the titles will be a perfect conversion of NES Zelda. However, in working on this game, we have come up with a lot of new ideas, so there will be some new features. Basically I can tell you that there is a connection between the three tales. You can start with any one of them, but if you play them in a different order than someone else, the two player's games will be different....

In January of 2000 IGN would publish an article stating that a new Zelda game was planned to be released every six weeks. The first of these Gameboy releases in the “Tri-force Series” was set to be The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Acorn: The Tale of Power. After this initial release The Legend of Zelda: The Tale of Wisdom was set to be released and then the trilogy would conclude with The Legend of Zelda: The Tale of Courage. These games were also mentioned within this article to have the capability to link up with each other and exchange data. Miyamoto would do an interview with IGN on May 11th and state that the games would link up using a “password system.” No other details were given about the games during this interview.

By May 13th Nintendo would officially release some promotional images in regards to the Tri-force series games which were now titled: The Legend of Zelda: Mythical Seed of Power, Zelda, Mythical Seed of Courage, and Zelda Mythical Seed of Wisdom. Also on May 13th, IGN would conduct another interview with Miyamoto about the Triforce Series games and Miyamoto would disclose:

IGNpocket: What is your opinion on the Legend of Zelda trilogy in the works for Game Boy Color?

Miyamoto: Mr. Okomoto from Capcom is the producer on the games for the Game Boy Color, and he has been giving me the materials for the games. And what we have now is the games are becoming late, especially because of the "link system". With the link system, we're thinking about letting the gamer play whatever game first, and what happens in one game affects another game. And with that, the variable scenario is just increasing the work, and that's why we are late in schedule. But we can release the games later this year.

IGNpocket: How does the link system interface work?

Miyamoto: Well, for example, there are similar events in all cartridges. So if you've already finished one event on one cartridge, it makes the quest in another cartridge a little easier. Another example is if you find a specific item in one cartridge, then something special will happen on another cartridge.

IGNpocket: But how does that information get from one cartridge to the other?

Miyamoto: Password system.

By July 24th, Nintendo of Japan would decide to cut one of the games out of the Triforce Trilogy. It was reported that this was due to numerous delays and difficulties getting the link system to work properly. This was an effort to still have the other two games out by Christmas of 2000. Nintendo within this press release didn’t mention which game was on the cutting room floor. Nintendo of America hadn’t commented on the cancellation of the game at the time and it was unclear if the two remaining games would still be released six weeks apart from each other. By October 20th the concept within the unique release schedule was scrapped and rumors were abundant on IGN that the games would release sometime in January of 2001 in Japan.

By November 9th, IGN would report a brief “Chapter” of the latest Zelda game, now being titled The Legend of Zelda Chapter of Time and Space. This is the game that had been covered mostly in American publications through screenshots and leaked information while the remaining Gameboy Color game would go without much new information being provided. This other game in development would be rumored to go by the name The Legend of Zelda: Chapter of the Earth. It was suggested that this game would play much like the other Gameboy Color game and a link system was still set in place for the two games. By January of 2001, more information would be released by IGN in regards to the Chapter of the Earth title. This article would feature screenshots and storyline concepts for the upcoming games. By the end of the article, it was mentioned that the two games would be released in February and a potential American release date was planned before the start of Summer.

In an article published by Nintendo of Japan on their Director Interview series, Hidemaro Fujibayashi would be interviewed and give details on the origins of Capcom becoming involved with Zelda on the Gameboy Color. Here is that interview:

t seems that you first started making Zelda with Capcom.

Fujibayashi　Yes. At first, it seems that my Okamoto (Yoshiki Okamoto, managing director) had proposed to Shigeru Miyamoto, "I want to make Zelda with Capcom." That was about two years ago. After that, a free man started making 2D games based on the Famicom Disk System "The Legend of Zelda". The concept is to convey the goodness of Zelda in the NES era to children today.

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■ Was Mr. Fujibayashi also a Zelda fan?

Fujibayashi　Yes, when it came to the Famicom Disk System, I went to a toy store first to buy it. I remember squeezing New Year's gifts and running to buy them.

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■ Did Mr. Fujibayashi participate in the project from the beginning?

Fujibayashi At　first, I participated in the form of a clerk who summarized the overall opinions. At that time, I was only told about the concept, but gradually I became involved in the game production itself. First of all, I decided to give a presentation to Mr. Miyamoto, so I wrote a proposal based on Okamoto's concept.

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■ Was the content of the game decided at the time of the proposal?

Fujibayashi　Almost the pillars of the current game have been decided. In other words, it should be released as a Color Game Boy, use the four seasons, and retain the taste of 2D Zelda. It was decided that it would be released in a series of works, so I thought of a link system as an idea to make use of it. For example, if I missed a bad guy in the first game, I wanted to make the software so that the bad guy would appear in the other game. Since Zelda is a game with a solid view of the world, I thought that even a Game Boy could fully bring out the "living feeling" of the characters expressed in the 64 series.

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■ How was Mr. Miyamoto's reaction?

It　was your first time to meet Mr. Fujibayashi Miyamoto. I went to a presentation with Okamoto, but it was my first time to work directly with Okamoto, and I was thrilled because I was going to meet a famous person from another company. While explaining the proposal, Mr. Miyamoto was silent from beginning to end, so I was nervous. But when I finished reading, I was told, "I was thinking of going into it because there would be various holes, but it looks like it's done." I liked it, "I think it's good."

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■ After that, do you work at Capcom?

Fujibayashi　That's right. After that, I proceeded with the scenario while reporting the situation to Okamoto. As a role, I am a director and planner.

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■ I heard that Capcom games create scenarios first.

Fujibayashi　Yes. However, I think that the scenario came out in the Zelda series after the hardware specifications went up. Originally, Zelda in the early days was a pure action RPG, and there wasn't much talk about it. This time, I was hoping that the two could be fused. However, at first I was supposed to make a work that was one tenth of the current volume. However, as I made it, it got bigger and bigger, and it gradually became my own work.

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■ Did you make "Chapter of the Earth" and "Chapter of Space and Time" by different teams?

Fujibayashi　No, the same team made them in order. At first, I was interacting with the scenario team alone. So, while I was making the scenario, I secretly talked to the graphic artists and programmers who thought "I like it" in Capcom. Such personnel were actually decided by Funamizu (Producer Noritaka Funamizu), who reports directly to me, but I thought it would be better for me to consult with him first. I was angry at Funamizu, saying, "It's my job," but I was able to get the staff I wanted.

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■ After that, I think it's the work of actually making a game, but please tell me the procedure easily.

Fujibayashi At　first, I'll start with an image. After thinking about what kind of terrain it is, start making a map. After making it roughly, I thought about the character next. We will modify the scenario while making the game.

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■ Do you sometimes rewrite the entire field?

Fujibayashi　That's every day. If you actually move it and think it's different, fix it. When about 60% of the total was completed, Mr. Yamada of Nintendo participated as a supervisor. From that time on, I had the opportunity to hear Mr. Miyamoto's story. So I absorbed something like Mr. Miyamoto's view of Zelda.

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■ Are there any interesting episodes about the joint development with Nintendo?

Fujibayashi I　was playing Nintendo games and thought that every game had a common scent. When I met Mr. Miyamoto, it became clear that there was a way to make sense in the game that Mr. Miyamoto thinks. It was a great learning experience for our team to get it. After that, Mr. Yamada and his colleagues ask the character that we casually placed, "What is the name of this character?" Certainly, giving a name brings the character to life and makes the staff feel different. It seemed as simple as "give a name", and the important thing was that I was surprised. That's just one example, but I feel like I was taught the know-how of Nintendo's "making warm games." What I was most happy about was that both Mr. Yamada and Mr. Miyamoto treated me as if I were an employee of Nintendo. Rather than Nintendo or Capcom, he talked to me as a staff member who made games together. In the end, I think that kind of personality is reflected in Zelda.

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■ At the same time, I think this is a game that has a Capcom feel to it.

Fujibayashi It's　more about the individuality of Capcom's Zelda team than it is about Capcom. I tried to make the world view interesting with a slightly dark character. What is the difference between Kyoto and Osaka? The place where a little outlaw character appears may be Capcom-like. However, I don't think there is any difference in the system in the game.

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■ Please tell me if there is a story behind this.

Fujibayashi In　"Chapter of Time and Space", there is a tower called "Tower of Darkness", and there are people working there, but there are lines that say "I can't finish my charge" and "I can't go home". Some of our team couldn't go home (laughs), so I put them in a parody. However, we are a very homely team, so I was happy with the Nori. The person who came to give the message was involved in the meeting and talked for about 2 hours.

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■ That kind of homely atmosphere may be oozing out in the game. Then, what are the highlights of "Mysterious Tree Fruit" from Mr. Fujibayashi's point of view?

Fujibayashi　This time, Zelda was created with the individuality of the entire team. The highlights are the many events and mini-games, and the dungeon gimmicks. I thought about various big tricks that Game Boy can do. The ideas of all the staff are included, and I think it's quite full.

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■ What do you recommend for the link system?

Fujibayashi If　you play the two software as a continuation of the story using "Aikotoba", you can enjoy a deeper view of the world. You can also experience the true ending after the story is over. There will be new characters and there will be many events, so please give it a try.

On May 14th, 2001 both of the games, now titled the Oracle series, would release here in America. The games would receive positive reviews and critical praise for the link system that Nintendo and Capcom had developed. Over the years, the games have seemingly faded out of the minds of Zelda fans. Only hopes and rumors of potential remakes are the only true discussion these games draw these days. The concept within the trilogy of games was very similar to Ura Zelda to where Miyamoto wanted what was done in one game to affect that area in the other game. Also, did Majora's Mask overshadow these games? The development of these games runs parallel with each other and Majora's Mask is a beloved game within the Zelda community. Here's to remakes of these games happening on the Switch here in the near future.

#zelda #zelda fandom #nintendo #lost media #game beta #link #loz zelda

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elfindreams · 4 years ago

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MAJORA’S MASK: CYCLE 1

• So like... that stunt Link pulls in the opening cutscene where he jumps in to try and stop Skull Kid from stealing Epona, grabs one of her legs, and gets dragged along the ground for a minute or so... man that always made me cringe, assuming you don’t get stomped idk if that would necessarily be fatal, but WOW that’s an excellent way to get half your skin scraped off, CHILD WHAT ARE U DOING

• (Story-wise, how and why does Link even have Epona at this point? In OoT he gets her as an adult via quasi-theft, and I doubt he has the money to buy her now that he’s a kid again... questions.)

•Wasn’t sure how I would feel about the graphics changes in the 3DS version (already noticed some gameplay differences, huh) but Link is a qt and Deku Link is a MEGA cutie

• Tatl walked so Midna could run

• R.I.P. Deku butler’s son... at least Darmani and Mikau signed up for the whole adventuring business and then got shrekt in the process, this kid just had the terrible luck of randomly being nearby when Skull Kid decided to... kill him and use his soul to turn Link into a Deku for the lulz??? Ouch.

• GOD I love how the story of this game isn’t even a heroic quest really, it’s just two chaotic-evil shitlords having a slappyfight and you’re being forced to side with one of them, he’s sketchy and malevolent as fuck but at least he isn’t currently trying to smash you to death with the Whole Entire Actual Moon

• never understood why Deku Link can’t float in water... I know it’s bc GAMEPLAY but like... he’s made of wood...

• eternal lol at the dog in Clock Town barking and chasing Deku Link and knocking him down if it gets close enough. Being plantchild is suffering.

• fukken bomber kids

• I LITERALLY WAS TWO STEPS AWAY FROM THIS OLD LADY AS SHE WAS BEING MUGGED AND I JUST RAN RIGHT PAST HER BECAUSE I HAD TO CHASE DOWN ALL FIVE OF THESE DUMBASS KIDS BEFORE DAYBREAK AND THERE JUST WASN’T ANY TIME TO STOP AND HELP, I HATE THIS GAME

• “Wow, you caught all of us! We would let you have a bomber’s notebook and join our club, but you’re a Deku scrub. No scrubs allowed!” hey fuck off kid

• Skull Kid standing on the clock tower, realizing Link is looking at him through the observatory telescope, and doing a little dance before basically mooning him... wonderful, honestly.

• He doesn’t always do it, but the animation of Deku Link jumping up to grab a door handle (bc he’s too little to just reach up and grab it) and dangling off it as the door slowly swings open... superb

• Tael is the only male fairy you meet in any of these games, isn’t he? Huh.

• MOON.

• Babby Zelda... my child...

• ...Okay this flashback scene strongly implies Link brought Epona along with him to see Zelda before leaving... what, he snuck his horse past the castle guards???????

• (I very much appreciate the game letting you use the touch screen or shoulder buttons to play the ocarina because my 3DS is super fucky and both of those things only halfway work, if it were either/or this would be impossible lmao)

•Link has the fairy ocarina in the cutscene but it’s absent from the game... I know it’s because it would have zero gameplay purpose but the implication that he lost it makes me sad nonetheless.

• ...Who’s the goddess of time? Is this clarified, like, ever? I feel like it’s probably Nayru.

• MOON.

•Awww Link waving bye-bye to the Deku scrub in that lil dreamsequence thing...

• Really love the unspoken indication that the Happy Mask Salesman is using the song of healing to turn ghosts and restless spirits into masks and then just. Sell them. That’s not distressing at all.

• Hey Happy Mask Salesman come meet me in this back alley. No it has nothing to do with you flipping your shit and strangling a Whole Entire Child I just wanna have a discussion with you.

#text post #long post #adventures in majora’s mask

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bouncyirwin · 5 years ago

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KakaSaku Fic Rec | Readers’ Favourites

This took forever. Mainly because I had to retrieve the links myself, but it’s finally here! I present to you the KakaSaku fanfiction recommended by this fandom through comments, messages and asks per my request. Thank you to everyone who sent in their recs and to those who recommended some of my writings. Happy reading! Find 50 fics under the cut. I added a (*) next to my personal absolute favourites if you’re interested ;) Although I should point out I haven’t read everything on this list yet!

A Study In Movement by @ila-moon-beam | Ongoing | M

Sakura juggles taking care of her 12- year- old, working as a nurse technician and exotic dancer. It's not an easy life, but it's the best she can do given what she has. What she isn't prepared for is Sarada's handsome teacher who she meets at the parent/teacher conference, as well as his surprise appearance at the strip club she preforms at one night with his friends.

Private Practice by @alienwritesstuff | Ongoing | M

When nineteen year old Kakashi is injured during a mission, it's Sakura's job to see that he is healed properly. But, Kakashi is interested in a bit more than the healing she can give him. [Age Swap AU]

Nama-Stay Away From Me by @the-copy-mistress | Ongoing | M

When Sakura’s impeccable schedule keeps getting thrown by her gym’s ever tardy yoga teacher, she decides to give him a piece of her mind. Things do not go as she predicted. Modern AU.

Moment You Loved Her (back) by LindtLuirae | Completed | T

Some things are just worth breaking for. KakaSaku AU.

Hungry Hearts by @ila-moon-beam | Ongoing | M

Sakura is a single mom who works tirelessly to finish her bachelor's degree. She does what many other single moms her age do; they go to school, they work, they take care of their children. Except, things are different for Sakura in her last semester of her college career. Her daughter, Sarada, will be staying with her grandfather, she will be TAing for this mysterious new Professor at her university, and she will soon find a familiar face coming back to haunt her; determined to reconcile their family.

Everyone Goes to Tsunade’s by @mrssakurahatake | Ongoing | M

1920s AU, After their long term business partner forces them out, Tsunade and Jiraiya decide to open their own New Orleans speakeasy. Business isn't going well, can a new house band help them turn things around?

Into Darkness by @lady-otori | Ongoing | M

For Sakura, being the granddaughter of the head of the largest Yakuza clan in Shikkotsu wasn't easy. For Kakashi, being forced to consider marriage with the Fire Country's most spoiled Yakuza princess was worse. When the wolf and the dragon of the criminal underworld go head to head, bystanders had better look for cover. [KakaSaku] [Yakuza AU] [Arranged Marriage]

The Beginning, the Middle, and the Coda by @lady-otori | Complete | M

The beginning, the middle, and the coda to Kakashi and Sakura's relationship, in which it all begins when he expresses the most important thing in the most awkward way possible. A three-part series of interconnected oneshots, exploring three different stages of their love. [KakaSaku] [Fluff] [Smut]

Reciprocity by @sparkswithyou | Complete | M

On a mission gone wrong, one thing goes right.

Insatiable by @somnificsheep | Complete | M

Sakura tugs the covers back to reveal dark, pleading eyes looking up at her. “If you don’t mind it in the shower,” she says. “Some of us--” she leans down to nuzzle his forehead-- “have work to get to.”

“Maa, Sakura, anyone else might think you’re calling me lazy,” he drawls. “I’m simply taking advantage of having some time off, is all.”

House of Crows by SilverShine | Complete | M *

KakaSaku. War is coming to Konoha and Sakura is far from home, uncertain of her future. But one thing is for sure, Sakura will protect her unborn child at all costs, whether it be from Konoha's enemies... or from its own father.

Crowns Of Blood And Bone by @raendown | Complete | T

He hates and hates and hates until he loves her, slowly and in small pieces.

Daughter of Fire by JulietteDeschemps | Ongoing | M

Sakura got up and didn’t bother brushing the dirt from her dress. She had a feeling she was about to get even dirtier.

She looked at the memorial stone one last time, memorizing the characters without even realizing she was doing it. It would serve from that moment on as a reminder of her determination. She wouldn’t let Naruto and Sasuke join the names carved on that stone.

That was her nindo.

you'll never leave me behind by PersephoneHemingway | Completed | M

Sakura went ANBU and Kakashi hasn't seen her in a while. They face certain truths.

Masks by madstoryteller999 | Ongoing | T

When Sakura walks home after sending Naruto and the Sasuke Retrieval Squad off, the last thing she expects is to be attacked. What she could have never anticipated is that evening changing...everything.

In which: Sakura's Inner is far more diabolical than anyone ever expected, crows demonstrate themselves to be cruel mentors, the complications of selfdom in ANBU are realized, and Sakura learns exactly how much she hates Kakashi (and how alike they are in the most terrible of ways)

Pink Clouds by CharredCitadel | Ongoing | M

Konoha has fallen to Danzo, and Sakura has fled far away...right into the arms of the Akatsuki. Who would have thought that life as a missing nin could be so liberating?

Wish I Knew You by LindtLuirae | Ongoing | T

A lost bet and a forced dare brings two lonely losers together. Sakura never thought something as absurd-sounding as the 'No More Lonely Losers' program would land none other than Konoha's hottest bachelor and her long-time crush in her lap. KakaSaku. Rating might be upped later.

Mariposa by WhiskeyBlair | Ongoing | M

It wasn’t until he found himself getting a face full of skull fragments and brain matter that he even realized he was being rescued

To Grow A Garden by Wolfy Tales | Complete | T *

"So what do you think about having a kid with me, Sakura?" - A family focused one-shot [KakaSaku]

Follow Your Nose by @tipsyraconteur | Complete | M

Sakura decides to find her signature scent. Kakashi "helps". Things get out of hand. (Kakasaku. One-shot.)

In Case of Blue Scroll by Leola Majora | Complete | M *

In Case of Blue Scroll the Hokage must lock himself in his office and pull his hair out as what he thought were memories of a long lost love turn out to be the memories of a mission he was about to assign his former student, Sakura Haruno.

Konoha Files by @mummapaintstheblues | Ongoing | M

Exactly one year since his partner's untimely murder, Detective Kakashi Hatake is forced back into active duty.

He is paired with up and coming Detective Sakura Haruno.

Through their work together, not only do they catch a killer, but Kakashi begins to see a fresh new hope to the dismal world around him. But is this new partnership enough for him to abandon the darkness altogether?

Kakashi Candyman by @xoxoendoh | Complete | M

"Just how much did you drink before coming down here?"

"Sakura," Kakashi murmured darkly, trailing his hands down her thighs as he knelt at her feet, "I'm still thirsty."

Kakashi notices that his wife could use a little 'de-stressing' before hosting the Halloween Benefit Gala…. —Swalloween2018, KakaSaku, NC17—

Adaline by @nikkigrand | Ongoing | T *

I would choose you in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I would find you and I would choose you.

I pecan U by merrrcurius | Ongoing | M

It all started with a twig and a razor. The pecans didn't count because they didn't work.

Kakashi's just doing his duty as Captain.

It takes them places.

Discoveries in Oil by @nikkigrand | Complete | G *

Kakashi always knew that he would always be there for Sakura, even when she belonged to someone else. Birth AU

The Fletcher's Heart Paradox by @Moonlady9 | Completed | M

They are familiar yet total strangers. She knew their names but not the kind of people they were in this moment in time, she knows who they are from her moment in time. 28 years is a long time for people to change, but how much will Sakura change? How long will her heart stay steadfast, now in this new time. Time changes people, and their hearts.

House Calls by Spoiled Sweet | Complete | M *

Always the Team Mom, Sakura opens up her home as a clinic for the hospital-phobic ninja of Konoha. At the same time, her relationship with Kakashi begins to evolve in a way she never expected. M for swearing and later content.

make it holy by faeritell | Complete | T

Neither Kakashi nor Sakura welcomed the names on their skin.

Duty Before Honor by SilverShine | Complete | M *

[KakaSaku] Sakura knew why Tsunade didn’t want a virgin on this mission. Things might get out of hand. Acts might be carried out too far. She was glad Kakashi was accompanying her, but right then she wouldn’t have minded the entire population of Konoha.

The Cabinet Door by @itslulu42 | Complete | M

It says something about her, she thinks, that the only thing tying her to sanity is a talking dog.

Everything But The Kitchen Sink by @itslulu42 | Ongoing | M

Kakashi must have angered a god in a previous life. Why else would his soulmate be such a walking cliché? A Kakasaku Variety Pack of Modern Day AUs!

Omega Erased by @ila-moon-beam | Ongoing | M

A shift in equality caused a change in the dynamic between Alphas and Omegas. With the emergence of Alpha woman, the hierarchy reflected as such. Alphas began to mate with Alphas, simply using Omegas for their respective heats and ruts.

They were seen as play things. As a means to an end. As anything but equal to an Alpha. It had been this way for the past hundred years, society punishing Omegas for bringing out the worst in Alphas.

It was an Alpha world, and Sakura was just living in it.

A dystopian omegaverse.

Double Edged by nimblnymph | Complete | M *

Seduction is like a double-edged sword. You never know when you'll go from being the seducer to being the seduced.

your most important person by @fineillsignup | Complete | M

Some people got their soulmarks on their arms or faces or some other place that was more difficult to hide. He remembered how Minato-sensei’s hair would sometimes be lifted by the wind enough to reveal “Uzumaki Kushina dattebane!” written boldly across the back of his neck in crimson. His teacher had sometimes laughed in his gentle way about it, saying that fate was determined to make things easy for him.

Your Most Important Person

Or, Kakashi tries to fight fate and fate fights back.

Or, how many ways can a soulmark screw you over?

Or, sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

the malady of solitude by moonvalentine | Complete | T

A few years after the war, they're still trying to regain their footing.

Friendship by Numbers series by Oroburos69 | Ongoing | M

Sakura's too young, Kakashi's too...different, and neither knows what to do with a real, live friend. Clueless and incompetent, they stumble down the path of friendship, accidentally getting naked and engaged along the way. Seriously.

Take my past and take my sins by @thekatthatbarks | Complete | M

Sakura narrowed her eyes at him, not wanting him to play it off like he always did. Her hands came up to his face. “You look like you haven’t slept in months, Kakashi.” Before he could respond, her hands went down to his waist and she tugged at the hem of his pants. Unsurprisingly, there was slack. “And you’ve lost weight.”

“Sakura –“ Kakashi started, grabbing the hand that was at his pants.

A thought crossed her mind, making her blood go cold as she realized. She cut him off with a glare, “You picked up the mask again, didn’t you?”

A Poor Imitation by leafygirl | Complete | M

Sakura is injured on a mission, forgetting everything she knew of life in Konoha.

The Samurai and the Oni Girl by selberias | Complete | T

AU KakaSaku set in Edo-period Japan. Sakura is the descendant of a red-haired foreigner as well as a merchant's daughter. Kakashi is a local samurai who has fallen on hard times, a man whose pride has been broken down to this point. Love comes after.

It's Something Unpredictable (But in the End is Right) by BasicallyAnIdiot | Completed | G

The problem was not that Sakura broke into his apartment.

It was that she had opinions about his defences.

Scar Tissue by @TipsyRacounteur | Complete | M

She comes to him on the type of day that he has way too often—the type of day that almost breaks a man—and she asks him to let her take care of him. And just like that, he starts to let her in, without ever even meaning to. (For KakaSaku Month 2018 Healing Prompt.)

Better Man by Kakashisgf | Complete | M

Sakura and Sasuke have been married for over a decade, but things are far from perfect, and Sakura's beginning to realize that maybe she deserves better. KakaSaku

Say it Again by @nyxako | Ongoing | M

A story in which Kakashi loses his hearing during a mission, only to later realize that the only thing he can hear anymore is the sound of Sakura's voice. [KakaSaku]

The Taste Of Fire by @alienwritesstuff | Ongoing | M *

**Hogwarts AU** Like a moth to the flame, Kakashi couldn't seem to stay away from her. He knows it's wrong, knows it's too dangerous. But, he's drawn to the fire. And fires like these tear the whole world apart.

Aposematism by @youngjusticewriter | Ongoing | T

Pretty things were dangerous more often than not. They had to be.

Don’t you know that the world has a tendency of yanking beautiful things up and leaving them to slowly die wherever they were taken to?

Dear fellow traveler by youngjusticewriter | Ongoing | M

“You’re thinking too much. Let me make you stop,” Sukea offered and, yes, his voice was different but Sakura liked it even if something about it made her mind inch.

“Okay,” she agreed before closing her eyes. She didn’t want to (see the world, she just wanted to wake up to find out the mission had been a bad dream) see Sukea and think on the things that she kept picking up on from him. All Sakura wanted was to be Chinami who was just a traveler just like Sukea was. A traveler who didn’t have people’s lives slip through her hands because she wasn’t good enough.

Destroy the middle, it’s a waste of time by youngjusticewriter | Ongoing | T

“Another one?” Mrs. Takahashi asked, “You’re going to burn yourself out.”

(You’re not good enough to keep working; you can’t endure like others do. You’re too young. You’re supposed to just wait around until your teammates get back because those who abandon their teammates are worst than scum.

And Sakura wanted to laugh despite the loneliness that had dug itself into her skin, and had made her bleed, so not to be shaken off.

They left - they left and now it was just her so why should she wait until they got back? She wasn’t a piece of cake that could be discarded.

Sakura had wanted Sasuke and now she wanted to be better in serving her village. Her crush, her teammate, refuting her didn’t stop her chasing after him even though she should have respected his choice. What was their opinions, strangers opinions, compared to that?)

Then I burn, were the words Sakura wanted to spill out from her tongue, to spew out as though they were poison she studied and used, and I get up from my ashes.

Don’t slam the door, Sakura thought as paws pressed into her hand as though to hold it. It (having to pay for another door) wouldn’t be worth it.

(Don't) lay me to sleep by youngjusticewriter | Ongoing | G

Sakura doesn’t need defending though.

Sakura smiled at the girl, because that’s what Ami is and what Sakura hasn’t been since her dreams started, with tired eyes (with eyes too old because that’s what happens when your soulmate is a jonin with a pretty painted mask).

You got to choose before the choice is pulled from you by youngjusticewriter | Complete | G

Kakashi didn’t greet her with an apology, a lie, or even with a hello. (He wasn’t too for gone that he had neglected himself to point he couldn’t sense her coming.)

That’s okay because Sakura doesn’t smile up at him, she doesn’t (lie) promise everything is going to be okay, nor does she greet her husband like she would have this morning if he wasn’t already out of the house. Sakura didn’t even take one of Kakashi’s hands into her own and give it a small squeeze in comfort, in a subtle way to remind him she was still here. No, instead Sakura exhaled the breath she had been holding in and it doesn’t remove the heaviness she feels in her chest.

“You need to come home.” Sakura doesn’t ask for him to do it for her even though Sakura had too lost their child. (We’re not dead, Sakura wanted to yell, and if you continue to keep your company with them, with the dead, then one day when you do come home we might just have become the company you prefer to keep. We might just become the dead you idolize because you were too late in life to realize how much your loved ones meant to you.)

Ceremonial by youngjusticewriter | Complete | T

With bloodied lips and sharp canines Kakashi smiles at the sight - it’s only for a night after all. In the past he had tried to shove it down, had never voiced that sin unlike the others (so many others) to the tombstones of his fallen comrades, but he’s dying now. He can have it just for a little bit. The air is hard to breath in, its too cold or maybe he’s too out of breath, and there’s clothe from his destroyed mask in his bloodied mouth but that’s okay. It’ll be over soon.

Twisted fingers - Kakashi could actually see a bone poking out of one - reach up to touch but it’s too late.

come through (like the sweetener you are) by exarite | Complete | M

Kakashi was not Sakura's sugar daddy.

(Or was he?)

It Wasn't Even Us In The End by tedthedead | Complete | M

How many years?

How many years had he been lovesick, a yearning child needy for her comforting touch, a desperate man aching for the soft silk of her skin?

#kakasaku #fic rec #fan fiction #romance #angst #family #hurt/comfort #smut #drama #one shot #multichaptered #kakashi hatake #sakura haruno #naruto

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gamedigger88 · 5 years ago

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The Intensity of the Majora’s Mask N64 Commercial

I wouldn’t say I am a big fan of the Legend of Zelda series. My first game in the series was Ocarina of Time while most people my age were the NES, SNES or GameBoy games. I didn’t know much about Zelda except it was a fantasy game with swords and magic. By the time I finally got the game, Majora’s Mask was already out.

I hardly remembered the commercial from nearly 20 years ago (Holy crap, I’m old!), mostly because they would normally run the shorter thirty second version rather than the one-minute one. So I did some digging up on YouTube and found the original one-minute commercial. I would have to say, its very bleak for a kids game.

youtube

The intensity of the entire world looking up and noticing that something ominous is coming from the sky all while one boy is playing the game is pretty start to start off. The boy is secluded in a white, sterile room with just a TV, a chair, a Nintendo 64 and a copy of the game. All while this is just advertisement for the game when it’s shown gameplay, the intensity is there through the action shown in the gameplay. The room he is in is windowless, located in an elevated building in an empty Area 51-like desert with only two military personel watching him from inside a room through a one way window as guards surround the perimeter outside.

All while this is going on, you are shown different people in a major city, looking up into the sky, seeing not only the very same game the kid is playing, but also a giant red ball that has already come down through the sky and is on a quick impact towards the planet. This would have to be nerve racking as not only has the world literally stopped to watch this kid play a video game that’s suppose to save the entire world, as traffic has literally come to a stand still in a major city with no one blaring their horns begging traffic to move again, they are simultaneously watching the upcoming of their demise if the boy should fail right above them.

As the commercial goes back to the room showing more of the gameplay, it shows the mask system in the game and the support for the Rumble Pak feature as well. During this time, we see two men watching the boy play the game carefully as well as the look of determination of completing the game. We are also shown other people from different parts to the world looking up into the sky in concern, some even seem to hold their hands in hopes that the destruction of their planet does not happen.

As the commercial goes to different parts of the world, it shows different ethnicities, races, cultures, religions, social groups, genders, ages and etc all watching this kid play this game. We are shown that regardless of what the background and differences between everyone in the world, they all stopped and watch in hopes that their world do not come to an end. But as they watch, the sky is getting darker and the red orb in the sky is getting closer. Back at the room, the boy continues to play as he stands up. Anyone who has played an intense video game or match in a game knows what this means: its getting serious.

Overlooking the strange scene of a group of people holding TV screens to show more of the action in the game, everyone who were watching the screens are now watching the sky and the red orb is getting closer. Before you know it, you see a pack of dogs running. Anyone who know about animals know if you see a group of dogs running in one direction, something bad is happening or is about to happen.

Time is running out, the people know this and panic ensues. People have left their cars, running down the streets. Some people are stuck in their cars as they see the red orb coming down more. Some have already even accepted their fates, deciding not to run, but to face their dreaded fates head on, but with the look of despair on their faces. More people running, screaming, panicking, trying to get away from something they know they can not get away from. All hope is lose and everyone knows it at this point, but the boy keeps playing, intensely, with the tagline spoken as a bead of sweat drops from the boy’s eyebrow...

“72 hours, one hope”

If that commercial and that imagery haven’t given you goosebumps, I don’t know what will. Considering the dark overtone of the game, compared to the other games of the series at the time, it made for a very serous turn for the series and some believed that’s probably what the series needed. I personally didn’t play the game at the time, but I did got my hands on the 3DS version of the game. I haven’t beaten it yet, but I do look forward to at least experience the story and maybe try to save the world while I’m stuck in quarantine.

#legendofzelda #majorasmask #nintendo64 #n64 #nintendo #commercial #3ds #gaming #videogames

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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15 Strangest Legend of Zelda Unsolved Mysteries and Urban Legends

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The Legend of Zelda‘s 35th anniversary didn’t get much of a celebration (or even an acknowledgment) from Nintendo, but that hasn’t stopped fans from thinking back on the incredible history of one of gaming’s greatest franchises.

Take a long enough trip down memory lane, though, and you’ll find that the Zelda franchise is filled with uncharted detours into urban legends, conspiracy theories, and unsolved mysteries that prove even one of the most famous and discussed series in video game history can still leave us with unanswered questions and the sometimes even more bizarre answers to those formerly unanswered questions.

From dungeons with unfortunate designs to mysterious manors tucked away in snowy mountains, these are some of the great urban legends and mysteries in the history of The Legend of Zelda.

15. The Legend of Zelda’s “Swastika” Dungeon

The earliest controversy in The Legend of Zelda’s 35-year history occurred when some players claimed the game’s third dungeon was designed to resemble a swastika. Years later, more detailed renders of the dungeon’s map inspired a new generation of fans to ask questions about Nintendo’s design decisions. Some even suggested that the design was intentionally implemented for nefarious purposes.

There’s actually a reasonable explanation for this one, though. It turns out the map is actually designed to resemble a Manji: a Buddhist symbol that represents good fortune. If I had to speculate, I’d guess that because the two symbols are actually fairly distinct (they even face different ways) Nintendo probably didn’t feel the need to change the dungeon’s design for the game’s Western ports.

Interestingly, though, Nintendo did make some changes to the original Legend of Zelda for the purposes of localization. Most notably, the Book of Magic was originally referred to as the Bible in the Famicom version of the game.

14. How Breath of the Wild Fits Into the Zelda Timeline

For as infamously confusing as The Legend of Zelda timeline is, Nintendo has actually published an official chart that (somewhat) helps explain how every major game relates to each other. However, you will notice that Breath of the Wild is conspicuously absent from that chronological chart.

To be fair, Nintendo has addressed the game’s absence by stating that they didn’t want to limit people’s imaginations by assigning BOTW a clear place on the timeline. Furthermore, it’s generally accepted that the game takes place many years after any other Zelda title. That’s fine, but there are many clues in Breath of the Wild that seem to strongly suggest it does have a more definitive place in the Zelda timeline that Nintendo has just revealed quite yet.

What’s even more bizarre is that there are pieces of evidence in BOTW that support the possibility that the game could conceivably take place in one of the series’ multiple timelines or even all of them. Did Nintendo just throw up their hands and decide to ignore the timelines altogether, or is there an explanation that helps all of this make a little more sense?

13. Beating the Running Man in Ocarina of Time

The surest way to convince gamers they can do something is to tell them that they can’t. There are few better examples of this phenomenon than the lingering idea that you can beat the Running Man during Ocarina of Time’s race sequence.

To be fair, the fact that Ocarina of Time players consistently got this close to beating Running Man made it easy to buy into years worth of fan theories, photos, and even videos that claimed it was indeed possible to win that race. However, the vast majority of those methods turned out to be doctored or, at the very least, heavily exaggerated.

Technically, it is possible to “beat” Running Man using emulators and ROM hacks, but if you’re wondering if there’s some hidden way to do it on the original N64 cartridge hidden somewhere in the game’s code, the answer is “no.”

12. The Mystery of Twilight Princess’ Snowpeak Ruins

Along with being one of Twilight Princess’ best dungeons, Snowpeak Ruins has to be considered one of the most mysterious major locations in any Zelda game.

While Snowpeak Ruins is presented to the player as the home of a Yeti couple, it’s pretty clear they are not the mansion’s original owners. However, it’s never explicitly stated what the house’s origins are. The same could be said of a number of Zelda locales, but Snowpeak’s large suits of armor, blend of military and residential concepts, hostile location, strange paintings, and defensive structures feel so out of place in the Zelda universe that you’d almost suspect that it was somehow transported here from another world.

That doesn’t actually seem to be the case, but the fact that the game features subtle hints at the mansion’s origins without actually expanding on them has left fans wondering whether there is an official explanation for the Ruins’ lore and what it could be.

11. The Rumor that Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link Didn’t Start as a Zelda Game

Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link has long been considered one of the oddest entries into the Zelda franchise, but one urban legend suggests that the game wasn’t originally intended to be a Zelda title at all.

Basically, there are some fans who suspect that Zelda 2 is the Super Mario Bros. 2 of The Legend of Zelda franchise. In other words, they believe that the game was actually based on a completely different project that Nintendo simply converted into a Zelda game at some point in development. Given just how different the game is from what came before and after, it’s certainly easy enough to buy into the idea that the project didn’t start off as a Zelda title.

However, Shigeru Miyamoto himself shot down that theory in a 2003 interview in which he stated that the sequel’s differences were “his idea” and that the project was simply developed by “another team and different people to those that made the first game.” That said, it’s worth noting that he referred to the idea as “sort of a failure” and that he sees “A link to the Past as the real sequel to Legend of Zelda.”

10. Ganondorf’s Mysterious Armor in Twilight Princess HD

While the HD version of Twilight Princess is fairly faithful to the original, it does feature a few subtle design differences that have long confused fans. The mysteriously altered symbols in Snowpeak Ruins and some murals found near the end of the game are certainly worthy of further discussion, but no design difference has provoked more debate than Ganondorf’s new armor.

If you take a close look at Ganondorf’s armor in Twilight Princess HD, you’ll find that it features a few “mural-like” images emblazoned in gold. One of those images seems to showcase a hero that resembles Link facing off against a giant bird. It actually closely resembles a scene from The Wind Waker, but that wouldn’t necessarily make sense considering the respective timelines of those two titles.

In lieu of an official explanation, the most likely answer here is that someone at Nintendo imported some leftover assets from a time when Twilight Princess was reportedly intended to be a direct Wind Waker sequel. That or someone at Nintendo thought it looked cool and didn’t let the “lore” stop them from putting it in the game.

9. Nintendo’s “Abandoned” Wind Waker Remake

In 2005, Electronic Gaming Monthly shocked the world by revealing that Nintendo was designing a remake of The Wind Waker in the visual style of The Twilight Princess. This reveal was a dream come true for fans who desperately wanted Wind Waker to feature the more “realistic” visuals Nintendo had previously teased.

It turns out the screenshot was just one of EGM’s famous April Fools’ pranks. However, it caught so many people by surprise that EGM ended up running a series of letters from angry, confused, and hopeful fans who were more than ready to believe that the remake was real.

Even after EGM confirmed the whole thing was a joke, some fans continued to speculate that Nintendo was working to “fix” Wind Waker. The rumors only really started to die down when more people gradually got over Wind Waker‘s visuals and came to recognize it as one of the best Zelda games ever.

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9. The Recurring Hand in the Toilet

Drop by Majora’s Mask Stock Pot Inn after midnight, and you’ll find a hand sticking out of a toilet that asks you for a piece of paper. Give it one of a few available paper items, and the hand will reward you with a piece of heart.

It’s a bizarre moment made that much stranger by the fact that the hand appears again in Oracle of Ages and Skyward Sword. While the owner of the hand is named in Skyward Sword (Phoeni), the hand is only referred to as “???” in the other games.

While Shigeru Miyamoto has stated that the hand was inspired by old ghost stories involving a hand coming out of the toilet to grab the occupant (it’s your classic Ghoulies scenario), it’s still not entirely clear whether these are three different hands or if they share some kind of strange lore connection.

7. The Fate of Navi and The Missing Link

At the end of Ocarina of Time, we watch Navi fly through a window in the Temple of Time. Considering how despised the character generally was, few questioned the moment and were honestly just happy to see her go.

However, it’s never been entirely clear why Navi left at that moment, where she went, and what ultimately happened to her. Navi is referenced at the beginning of Majora’s Mask, but that game doesn’t shed any light on what happened to her or where she went. Navi does appear in the North American version of Hyrule Warriors, but considering that her name was removed in other versions of the game, it’s been suggested that her inclusion was a mistake or something that Nintendo eventually decided to change/ignore.

Interestingly, there’s a popular Zelda fan game called The Missing Link which tells the story of what happened to Navi between Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. Obviously, though, that’s about as unofficial as Zelda lore gets.

6. Zelda and Link Are Somehow Related

At the beginning of A Link to the Past, we watch as Link’s uncle says “Zelda is your…” shortly before dying. In the Japanese version of the game, Link’s uncle says “Y-you are the princess’…” before passing away. Both of those lines have led fans to believe that Link’s uncle was about to tell him that Zelda is either Link’s sister or mom.

While the GBA version of the game clarifies the matter by having Link’s uncle say “You must rescue Princess Zelda. Our people are fated to,” some still insist that the two are somehow related across at least some of the series’ timelines. There have even been a couple of references to Zelda’s brother over the years (though we never get to see him in any of the games).

Funny enough, there have been manga adaptations of The Legend of Zelda which actually “revealed” that Zelda is Link’s mom. However, those adaptations have been officially dismissed as non-canonical and unofficially dismissed as incredibly weird.

5. The Mystery of Link’s Parents

Before we get off the subject of Link’s family, we’ve got to take a moment to talk about the enduring mystery of Link’s parents.

It’s easy enough to ignore the manga idea that Zelda is Link’s mom (in any timeline), but unless you just accept that Link is almost always an orphan (thus fulfilling one of the great RPG character obligations) you’ve probably wondered who Link’s parents are. Well, Link’s father is referenced in Breath of the Wild and in some supplementary material, but the only game that refers to Link’s mom is Ocarina of Time. Again, she appears in the manga adaptations a few times across the various timelines, but Nintendo almost never directly talks about her.

While it’s likely this is just one of those things that Nintendo doesn’t have an answer to, the fact that Link’s parents are referred to at all in the games has only opened the doors for speculation regarding who they are in the timelines and the potential significance of their nearly constant absence.

4. Thawing Zora’s Domain in Ocarina of Time

As “Adult Link” in Ocarina of Time, you’re expected to set some things right that have gone wrong over the years. For instance, beating Forest Temple drives away enemies from Kokiri Forest. When you beat Fire Temple, Gorons return to their city. Given all of that, you would suspect that beating Water Temple will eventually unfreeze Zora’s Domain.

However, that’s not what happens. In fact, nothing you do seems to allow you to remove the ice in this area as Adult Link. That idea has given rise to a number of fan theories and straight-up lies regarding how to begin the thawing process, but to this day, nobody has found a way to do it without hacking the game.

Many have said that you’re just supposed to “assume” everything eventually works out, but it’s certainly bizarre that the area isn’t affected by your actions in the same way other key environments clearly are.

3. The Time Paradox of The Song of Storms

There’s a great scene in Ocarina of Time when Adult Link learns the Song of Storms from a man who can’t get it out of his head after he learned it from a child. To make a long story short, we eventually learn that child was Link who played the song in the past after learning it as an adult.

It’s a fun idea that doesn’t make a lot of sense. While Majora’s Mask eventually sees Link speak with the song’s composer, that plot point still doesn’t entirely explain what happens in Ocarina of Time and what Nintendo’s proposed explanation for this apparent paradox is.

The two most popular theories for this mystery involve a Primer-like explanation involving paradoxes and alternate timelines or the far more likely explanation that the logic of this moment was simply overlooked or disregarded when Ocarina’s story was written.

2. The Royal Origins of Tetra’s Pirates

It’s hardly a spoiler that Wind Waker’s Tetra is actually Princess Zelda, but that revelation opened some potential plot holes that fans have been trying to close for years. None of those plot holes are bigger or more fascinating than the origin of Tetra’s band of pirates.

We’re initially told that the pirates used to serve Tetra’s mother and later followed Tetra. It’s a simple enough explanation that becomes much more complicated when Link finds a photo in the sunken Hyrule Castle that shows an older Princess Zelda with a group of nobles that bear a striking resemblance to Tetra’s pirates.

Again, the simplest explanation at this point seems to be that the pirates are also descended from royalty, but the game never really makes that clear. Furthermore, the pirates eventually mock Tetra for actually being a princess, which either means they never found out they’re also descended from nobles, didn’t care about their heritage, or perhaps are just the descendants of pirates who have always aided the Zelda family.

1. Finding the Triforce in Ocarina of Time

No Zelda urban legend is more famous or more fascinating than the long-running belief that it’s possible to find and acquire the Triforce in Ocarina of Time.

In 1999, a user on the old Hyrule: The Legend of Zelda forums named Almandoz claimed they had found a way to acquire the Triforce in Ocarina of Time. After sharing some images and walkthroughs that they said verified their findings, the user later admitted that they made the whole thing up as part of an elaborate attempt to show how easy it was to exploit fan bases with these kinds of claims.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The actual motivations and identity of the poster remain a mystery to this day. What’s interesting, though, is that the legend of the Triforce never really died even after the whole thing was confirmed to be faked. Many elements of the original story remain entrenched in Zelda urban legend culture, and the idea that you can somehow acquire the Triforce in Ocarina of Time remains surprisingly strong to this day.

The post 15 Strangest Legend of Zelda Unsolved Mysteries and Urban Legends appeared first on Den of Geek.

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bizarredawdler · 7 years ago

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So, I finally beat Star Control 2 and it’s been quite an interesting experience for me. I have a LOT of stuff to say about this game, both good AND bad, so let’s get down to it! (As a side note , I played the Ur-Quan Masters version of the game , which combines aspects of the DOS version with the 3DO version of the game)

WHAT I LIKED:

- Exploring space. This game is actually surprisingly really big! Especially for a game that came out in 1992. At first, when I saw all the little dots on the starmap, I initially thought that as soon as I would get close to a cluster of dots, I would get into a sort of hub with the dots being planets, but then I was pleasantly surprised to learn that EVERY SINGLE DOT is an explorable SOLAR SYSTEM with a lot of different planets and moons to visit. This got me really excited to not only discover new planets filled with secrets and minerals, but also to meet new alien races along my playthrough. Exploring the starmap made me remember how inconceivably huge our universe actually is, and that the almost infinite amount of stuff we haven’t discovered is kinda insane. The exploration in this game really made me appreciate the awe of space itself!

- The simple gameplay mechanics. I’m usually very afraid to try my hand at space exploration games like these in general because a lot of times there’s a lot you have to learn right off the bat in terms of controls and gameplay mechanics and that can sometimes really intimidate me, but here the gameplay is actually very simple and easy to process, so I didn’t have to worry about having to remember about what button does what or how do I fly my ship properly again after a week of not playing the game. I particularly enjoyed the planet mining sections, as it plays like a fun minigame where you have to collect little dots that represent minerals while avoiding environmental hazards.

- The huge number, variety and originality of alien races. I feel like a lot of times, games like these that have alien races usually end up with aliens that are basically humanoid, but with alien variations to specific parts of their body. However, this game goes the extra weird mile with their aliens, and I really loved the weird and varied designs the develeoppers came up with for this game. Some aliens you meet are blobs with faces on them, others are just living talking minerals, and others are even just literally sentient air sacks! Not only that, a lot of them have really interesting personalities and backgrounds, and discovering more about their race and home planet was really interesting! I also really liked the voice acting in this game, as it gave just that little extra in terms of personnality and character that I liked about the numerous alien races I discovered. My personal favorite alien race has to be the Orz, because I loved their almost non sequitur dialogue and weird fish like appearance (I still feel bad I accidently angered them when I mentioned the Androsythn race to them too many times : (…).

- Customizing your ship and allied battle ships. This game allows you to modify and customize your ship with a variety of upgrades and additional ships to help you in combat. What I like about this particular customization process is that the game encourages you to experiment with those upgrades throuought the game and to try out different modules at different times depending on where and what you want to do on the starmap. This gave me a lot of freedom to improve my ship in my own style and to play the game in my own way, and I really love that aspect of it. Pair this with unlockable modules you can get by mining minerals or biological data, and I had a lot of fun slowly seeing my ship become more and more capable and explore further and further.

Unfortunately, all of the things I liked about this game got severly hampered by one major thing…

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

- You have a set amount of time to beat the game before you automatically lose the game and it becomes unwinable! (to be precise, you start the game in the year 2155 and you have about 4,5 years of in-game time to beat the game, which means your deadline is the year 2159. Problem is, if you travel a lot in Hyperspace like I did, then time goes by a lot faster and you end up only having approximately 3 HOURS to beat the game!! Even when you eventually have access to things that extend the time limit or slow it down this is still ridiculous!) I. HATE. THIS. GAME MECHANIC. HATE IT. HATE IT. HATE IT. I hated it in Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and I hate it here too. The worst part is, there is absolutely NO mention of this timer in-game whatsoever once you reach it. All you see is the bad alien race slowly moving and killing off other adjacent alien races, but for someone who played this game blind and actually didn’t successfully avoid the 2159 deadline on my first playthrough, I couldn’t possibly have known that this meant I ran out of time and that the game was therefore unwinnable! In my opinion this almost ruins the game for me, as it forced me on my second playthrough to avoid exploring too much (which was the thing I enjoyed the most!) as well as forced me to hurry up and figure out the things you have to do to beat the game (which is another problem entirely, but I’ll get to that in my next point) when instead I just really wanted to play and figure out the game at my own pace. If I only had to do like a few specific timed missions over the course of the game, then that wouldn’t have bothered me as much but bottom line: when I play a game, I don’t want to be in a hurry in-game to beat the entire game. PERIOD.

- Figuring out what you have to do to beat the game is very difficult. At first, I thought you just had to recruit as many alien races as possible throughout the game until a specific event triggers so that you can eventually fight the villains of the game, but it turns out what you ACTUALLY have to do is get some random artifacts from specific planets, make friends with very specific alien races, combine some of said artifacts, and then use some of your other artifacts at VERY specific moments and times, and THEN visit a very specific planet to beat the final boss. This wouldn’t have bothered me too much, IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE FACT THAT, AGAIN, YOU HAVE A SET AMOUNT OF TIME TO BEAT THE GAME!! Let’s just say that after my first playthrough, I basically decided to just finish the rest of the game with an online walkthrough because my patience was reached at this point.

- The dialogue options. I do like the fact that you can roleplay your captain a bit to fit your playstyle in this game, but unfortunately, it’s pretty limited. Your dialogue options basically almost always consist of either an obviously nice response, an obviously evil response, or an obviously silly/stupid response. Those limited choices kinda took me out of the game, as I was forced at certain times to make my captain say things I wouldn’t normally say just so I could advance the plot. I would’ve like to have a bit more options and nuance between them to really kinda fit my own roleplay style.

- The final boss of the game. This boss was really difficult for me to beat and can EAT MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF COCKS SIMULTANEOUSLY. Fuck that boss. That is all.

OVERALL:

As much as the negative stuff I said ruined a lot of what I enjoyed about the game, I still think, in the end, it’s a good game worth at least checking out. It’s just for me, it could have been so much better had it been for just a few game design changes and a few tweeks when it comes to figuring out what to do in the game (a quest log for example would have been really helpful to me to keep track of a lot of the stuff I had to do to beat the game, as I had to write down a lot of notes on paper, and it ended up being clustered and messy and I didn’t really like that). So the game started out as “this is an awesome game! ”, but the time limit and all those other negative points I mentioned brought it down to “it’s a good game” category for me. That being said though, if even after all I’ve said the game still made me appreciate the awesome wonders of space and the wonderful possibilities of discovering new alien races like Star Trek: Next Generation did, then it did something right in my opinion : )

#star control 2 #video game review #space #pc-dos #3do #pixel graphics #I'm sorry I'm harping on your favorite game sleeps-with-scales : (

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jenkinsgames-blog · 8 years ago

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Sound Inspiration Research

In this post I’ll be investigating and discussing video game soundtracks that have inspired me throughout the last term’s project. Although in a previous evaluation I decided that I wouldn’t have enough time to create the music for my game, I had still looked into the following so decided to get this research down for future use, but also because these pieces of music inspired the general narrative and genre of my game long before I’d even thought about what music to use.

Kingdom Hearts

The Kingdom Hearts series is made up of many games that have the player walk through the winding and confusing timeline of the series. Our main protagonist is Sora, but in other games the player also takes control of characters such as Aqua, Terra, Ventus, Roxas, and Riku. The narrative of the series is very long and complicated so I’ll skip trying to explain it in full, but the games take place in a universe where Final Fantasy and Disney characters live among each other in separate worlds through which the player character explores and battles enemies. Each Disney world features characters from different classic movies, and shows parts of those movies stories; these worlds in Kingdom Hearts are full of beautiful and brilliant orchestra pieces that are played constantly in the background, each unique to the film the world is representing. For example, when in the The Little Mermaid world, Atlantica, a version of “Under the Sea” plays. The reason that this inspires me is that the pieces are so beautifully written and fit the worlds really well, which is something that I really wanted to achieve in my own game/ interactive graphic novel. This inspired me to want to have a piece of music for each character’s death, and in my GDD I wrote, for example, that Daniel (my nerdy character) would have a retro 8-bit style piece playing over the artwork of his death to represent his personality.

Professor Layton

The Professor Layton games on the Nintendo DS have very similar soundtracks, consisting of pieces written with percussion and string instruments, and also a lot of piano. The music in these games could even be described as sinister and chaotic, building tension throughout the mystery puzzle games. However, there are also a lot of calmer pieces for the more relaxed parts of the games. This series’ soundtrack has inspired me in this project because it’s one that I have fond memories of from when I was a child, really building the tension when I was unable to solve a puzzle - making me not only more frustrated at times, but also relaxing me when I needed it simply because of how beautiful the music actually was. Creating music like this would be a massive achievement considering the genre I have developed my narrative and visuals for is also a mystery. I would have liked to have had similar pieces play throughout the game, looping when the player character was in certain rooms.

Majora’s Mask

As a massive fan of the The Legend of Zelda games, I knew that at one point or another throughout the course I was going to take a look at one of the games I really loved as a kid for inspiration. It just so happened that when I was looking for music that would inspire me this project, Majora’s Mask came to mind. Although having some very light-hearted and uplifting pieces in the game like the music that plays in Clock Town, the game also features some darker pieces too, which isn’t surprising considering that many fans believe that the entire narrative of the classic game is a metaphor for the beloved protagonist Link’s death. One piece that particularly stands out to me is the Marsh Land music. It sounds incredibly tinny and discomforting, causing the player to feel on-edge. The Majora’s Mask soundtrack inspires me with my project because it is extremely memorable because of it’s beauty and ability to set the tone of each part of the game - this is something that I could only dream to achieve, especially considering the supposed hidden nature of this game being quite disturbing, where my game is just extremely gory and graphic.

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tornrose24 · 8 years ago

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Only a Voice part 9 (A Moana fan fic AU loosely inspired by the Little Mermaid)

In which Moana finally meets Tamatoa. Also I posted ahead of time because it was Tamatoa tuesday.

Note that this can also be found on fan fiction.net under the name HolyMaiden24

There was a dark laugh as a cloaked figure stood behind the writer who was tied into a chair. Strings of pearls and rope were tied around her wrists to the rests and she stared at them in confusion. “See, I can’t take any chances with you like with your precious readers.” The figure reached out and rested his hand’s on the writer’s shoulders. “Consider yourself lucky I didn’t do anything worse.” “Uh...” The writer frowned at the ‘binds’ “I know this isn’t as bad as decapitation by the moon from Majora’s Mask but this is just awkward.” She cringed “Seriously, string of pearls for rope? Ugh, and then I keep forgetting that you’re a Disney character, which makes this a lot more weird.” The figure laughed. “In a good way sweetheart!” “What happened?!” The writer demanded. “I thought we had a truce! And I feel betrayed!” She frowned as a genuinely hurt look was on her face. “I mean, I thought we were becoming friends! And why do you call me ‘sweetheart’?” She asked. “In fact, why did I write out that you would call me ‘sweetheart’ that one time?” “Oh you mean the A/N version of me?” The figure laughed and the writer shot him a confused look. When he pointed, she turned around to see another version of Tamatoa in the human form she imagined him and he was also tied up in a similar (but more sparkly) manner. “I took care of him too.” He added. “Explain why there was a version of Maui’s little friend playing video games and also knew who I was.” The A/N Tamatoa asked her in an annoyed tone. “And can you explain WHY I’m a human?” The writer groaned. “Oh this’ll give me and the readers a headache with the reviews.”

“Well, off to pay a visit to the little human.” The cloaked figure laughed at the readers before looking at the writer. “By the way.... I realize you’ve been trying to restrain yourself from me despite allowing my other self to give away love to the readers. I understand why, you don’t want to be THAT kind of fan.” “No, I am not THAT kind of fan and I am aware that you aren’t MY kind of guy, even if I do like characters like you.” The writer snapped before she realized something. “Wait, what did I just say?” The figure laughed as he patted the writer’s head. “Oh you silly little human, I know you can’t resist me.” He then went off. “Have fun with the denial.” The writer just stared in dumbfounded disbelief before staring at the A/N Tamatoa. “He’s... kidding, right?”

My sadistic side really enjoyed this chapter. Now I’m not trying to make enter an angst phase in this story for the heck of it. Imagine being a teenager who is going through a really difficult time, in addition to having to deal with a lot of pressure of the difficulties of adulthood and that is the painful reality that is happening here. It was also interesting for me to do something new and explore the other sides of such issues within the family and how these events are effecting them, but of course this is a story where things are about to get MUCH worse. Speaking of which... As stated before, I wanted to keep the description of Tamatoa’s human form to a minimum, with the exception of a few key details. This is so that you, the reader, can envision your favorite humanized version since there are so many awesome ones out there to use (I know I have mine on tumblr and deviantart (also, its under the name tornrose24 if you need to take a quick look), but I’m curious to know which version you opted for in the reviews). Of course there was one thing I had to include in his description no matter what because I don’t think Motonui would be an easy place to maneuver around without it (especially without a walking stick). Yeah, sorry about that. So I did some alterations to some recognizable songs. The first song might be unfamiliar because I changed most the original lyrics but if you know the song Suppertime or its reprise from Little Shop of Horrors...well, you’ll see. (it’s one of the best broadway songs in my opinion, not to mention downright creepy). And in case a select few of you are wondering, no I didn’t use ‘Goodbye Moonmen’ from Rick and Morty or ‘Mermaid’ from Flight of the Concords as fitting as they would have been. Sorry. :(

Chapter 9: The lure of the Siren When night came there was a strange quietness upon Motonui. Even the sound of the ocean in the distance seemed to have dulled down to the point that its calm nature was missing. It was only if you were more aware of your surroundings that you would notice this, yet most of the villagers were in a hushed excitement for the visitors that would come tomorrow and the fun that the events would bring. Only a select few dreaded the day that was to come, yet one resident held a special kind of fear for her role. Grandma Tala finished her drink in silence before turning to see her granddaughter huddled under the protection of the tapa that depicted Maui in all his fierce glory. She had her head bowed and her arms were drawn into her body as her arms were around them in a tight grip to the point that she looked like an unmoving rock. Her injury was cleaned, treated, and bandaged up, but nothing could be done to fix the pain within the girl. Pua sat by Moana’s side and looked up at his human friend with sorrow and whined as he wished there could be a way to cheer her up but he didn’t know how. Tala sighed as she set the drink down. She would not let her son be anywhere near his daughter for the time being as there was too much anger and heartbreak for them to be in each other’s presence. Normally she would be more than happy for Moana to come spend a night with her, but this was not a happy visit. “I don’t think I can smile when I dance.” Moana finally spoke in a pained voice while she was still curled up. “I can’t think of a reason to. Not after what has happened.” Tala wished that she could posses all the knowledge of the world, for sometimes there was no true way to comfort someone so that they could be happy before the sun rose up the next morning. She knew that feeling when her husband died and it took awhile for her to smile again, but she knew that what Moana was going through was something entirely different. Her soul had almost been crushed completely when the boats were about to be destroyed by her father’s hand and she was going to lose a friend as a result. Worse yet, she had to experience the pains of not only growing up, but the heavy burdens she knew her future would bring in her role as a leader. “I saw you leave Motonui on that boat, but I did not say a word about it.” Tala finally spoke as she tried to find a way to help the girl. “I could not see you clearly but I could feel your happiness as if you were beside me. I had prayed that the gods would make that dream come true, and they did.” “But now its a tainted dream.” Moana looked up and revealed how utterly miserable she was as well as a slight redness in her eyes from crying. Even now it looked like she was trying to hold herself together. “I thought this would be the best day of my life, but when I remember what happens after I go back to the island, I’ll always remember how badly it ends. Even the best part of today had to be taken away from me by father.” Moana let out a small, bitter sigh. “I don’t think I’m meant to have happiness.” Moana confessed. “I’m always kept from the things I want more than anything and if I get one taste of it then I’m punished for it. If people try to help me, then they get punished. And now I am expected to play a part and smile and dance as if nothing happened.” She closed her eyes. “I feel like I’m suffocating because I want to be a leader for my people, but I don’t think I could be able to live up to their expectations. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a husband that I would like or if I’d even be able to have a child to continue the line when that day comes. I’m drowning and this time there is nothing that can pull me out or save me.” “I’m scared, Grandma.” Moana looked at her grandmother with quiet despair in her brown eyes. “I’m scared because I will always have to make sacrifices whether I want to or not. I can’t make my own choices because its like fate has something in store for me and I don’t know if I want it. I don’t know if I can wear a smile for a mask for the rest of my days.” Tala stared at Moana before she took a breath. “So you think you don’t have a choice in what you say?” When Moana shook her head, she continued. “Sometimes there is no telling what the world wants us to do or what fate has in store.” Tala told Moana. “We can’t change the past and we can’t always correctly predict the future. We can’t decide to be born into the life we find ourselves in, and the given circumstances limits our options, but we do have a choice. We can chose to stick in the same spot forever or we can get up and try to move on. You can make the most of what life offers, you can fight your way out, or you can let someone else decide your path. You can stay on this island or you can leave–” “I can’t!” Moana cried. “I can’t abandon my people and yet I–!” She gave up and sighed. “Not a lot of people in my life have ever considered what I want, especially considering who I’m destined to become. And yet, of all the people who gave me that freedom to have that one day to be out at sea was someone who could have easily taken it away from me. Someone who took a serious risk for my sake.” “Ah yes, the one who cannot speak.” Tala smiled knowingly. “But why would you think that way of the one who you tried to get away from through trickery and who you could not stand? I thought you regarded him as arrogant and–” “He is!” Moana confessed as she threw a hand out. “And he treated me like a bratty child when I acted like one! Yet–” She dropped her hand as she thought about her friend. “The more I spent time with him, the more I could really see him. Arrogant, smug, and a bit of a trickster, but...” She pondered over her words as well as the man on her mind. Had her opinion of him changed that much? “He went against father’s wishes to make my dream come true and I can’t think of too many people who would be willing to do that. It took me awhile to really know him, but I could see someone who could be fun, reliable, incredibly daring, adventurous, and determined. Someone who listened and who didn’t treat me like a Chief’s daughter, but as a regular girl, and was willing and patient enough to teach me all I wanted to know. There is more to him and I want to know more about him, like what he used to do. If I could have another day on the sea with him, I would take it in a heartbeat and not just because it would mean that I would have that day on the sea once more. And if it was in my power, I would do anything to pay him back for all he did. I’d even give him his voice back if I knew how to do it.” And in truth, she almost wished it were possible that he could stay in her life a little longer or at least that he could come back to visit her. If he was to leave her life forever, she doubted that she could ever forget him that easily. “And its all my fault that he’s going to be sent away.” Moana sighed. “For all he did, he gets banishment as repayment and I can’t do anything to stop it or say goodbye. I don’t think I even gave him a thank you hug in all the time I knew him.” Come to think of it, did she ever have a chance to do that? She verbally thanked him, but she never expressed it in the gesture that would have meant so much more and would tell him everything that she would not be able to say. Tala frowned as she thought some things over. “Would he be worth defying your father?” She finally asked. Moana looked up in confusion as Tala added “Some people and causes are worth defying all odds. Some sacrifices are worth making and no matter how large your foe may be, you can overcome them by being your true self as well as being true to yourself. Remember what I said about having a choice?” Moana was about to ask her grandmother what she really meant when they heard footsteps coming towards the fale. Afraid that it was her father, Moana hurried to one corner of the room while Tala got up with her cane and went to move the entrance aside. “May I speak with you alone?” It was her mother and she sounded desperate and lost. “Its about some things that happened today.” “I will in a second.” Tala nodded and walked to Moana where she knelt beside her. “Remember, if you really don’t feel up to dancing tomorrow, you can always claim illness at the last moment.” Tala whispered to Moana. “It works every time.” She then raised her voice as she got back up. “Would you like me to bring anything back? Some fruit perhaps?” Moana shook her head before turning to Pua. “I’d like to be alone for a bit, Pua.” She told him. “Could you go with Grandma?” Pua was reluctant to do so, partly because he didn’t want Moana to suffer alone, but also because he sensed that there was something wrong in the air. It was as if there was a strong force, like a large amount of mana that was compressed all together and stuffed into a coconut shell that could barely hold it in, but it wasn’t comforting and he had no idea what it was. “Please?” Pua reluctantly left Moana and followed Tala out of the fale as his concern for his friend won over his concern for the strangeness in the air. He hoped that Moana would have some time to clear her thoughts before they got back. Moana watched as Tala and Pua left and she could see a row of torches outside that illuminated the black darkness in their welcoming glow. When the entrance fell, she could see the lights from the torches through the tapas as well as the designs upon them. She turned to the tapa that she was originally under that depicted Maui–that intense gaze and those barred teeth made her think of her friend’s moment of anger from earlier–and she recalled her dream with the mysterious woman. So long as you are by the ocean or within it, it will protect you from a certain danger.” The words rang in her head but they only made her annoyed. “What good was being safe near the water when all it did was cause me trouble?” Moana asked the tapa of Maui before turning around to look at all the tapas. “What could can any of you be to me now?!” She demanded with a scowl as she walked around the room and shot accusing looks at the characters. “I can’t overcome my foe because he wishes to control my future! I can’t just abandon my people, no matter how much I want to leave! I’m not a hero like some of you and I don’t have the power like the rest! I can’t save my friend and I can’t save myself!” She felt like she was suffocating again, like she was choking on something unseen. “I know father will still try to burn down the boats.” She felt herself going into a panic. “I let our heritage be destroyed because of me! I let one person get in trouble because of me! I just can’t get out of the dance because of how much it means to me! I’m expected to do things that I don’t know if I can or not, I’ll always have to mask my real feelings–” She was drowning in her stress and she tried to swim back up in an angry outburst. “No one cares about what I want! Why would any of you start caring?!” She cried out to the characters. “Do any of you understand how I feel?! I can’t be the person–I don’t want to be–I–!” She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. “I don’t know what my true self is.” She stopped at the tapa of Tamatoa and collapsed under it. “I can’t–” She felt her tears coming. “I can’t–” She curled herself into a ball again and tried to calm herself as her head bowed into her knees. She was terrified and she wanted out. She didn’t want tomorrow to come and she wanted to defy all odds but she had no clue how. She couldn’t be true to herself and she had no idea who she was anymore. All she knew was that she was just a stupid, selfish little brat who couldn’t do anything right. Moana started to sob as her tears came flowing out while the ball of stress was still locked inside her body. The light from the torch outside illuminated the tapa Moana was in front of and it revealed all the sinister details that made up Tamatoa who was right above her. Yet an ominous shadow of a figure from outside walked forth and stopped in front of the tapa and covered up the character on it. The shadow blocked Moana from the light, trapping her in its darkness, and as she continued to sob, the shadow waited for a few seconds. “Hey little princess hello...” A smooth, yet deep sounding voice sang out from behind Moana. Moana ceased her crying as she took in the voice through her stress filled mind. “Wh-whose there?” She sniffed as she slowly raised her head and acknowledged that she was not alone. “You’re looking glum as can be...” She never heard such a voice before; it had a smooth, calming quality and yet there was an odd seductiveness about it that made you want to hear more. “Hello?” Moana’s voice rose in strength with her demanded as she began to forget her concerns. Who was outside the fale and singing as if it was for her and her alone? “You’re looking mighty sad.” The voice continued to croon and it was at this point that Moana finally got up, but the figure retreated away from the tapa as if he sensed what she was doing. “It’s so plain to me.” Moana wiped her tears off her face as she walked over to the entrance to the fale and opened it to see an almost human like figure in strange cape like garments of dark greens and browns that completely covered him from head to toe and slightly dragged upon the ground. He took one of the torches off the ground and proceeded to walk away from the fale with a strange staggering movement as if his steps varied between normal and uneven. “Well if you need a friend,” He continued singing as he went about his way “I got a hand to lend.” Curious as to who this strange singer was, Moana watched as he got farther away before she went over to also grab one of the torches. She watched as he headed his way on a side trail that lead somewhere near the mountains and forested area of the mountain in that strange walk of his. Could he be her friend? No, she was positive that couldn’t be what his actual voice sounded like (and she wasn’t sure if he did escape) but she felt compelled to follow this man who didn’t sound like any of the men from her village. No man she knew of possessed a voice that seductive or that unique. If truth be told, any distraction was a welcome to the girl and this was a very interesting one. “Come on, come on,” He sang as if he knew she was following him as he got further and further away into the darkness of the night with only a torch to guide him. “Come on, come on,” And follow him she did, away from her grandmother’s fale. “Come on, come on.” His singing continued to make Moana forget her troubles from earlier that day and her sadness turned to a burning curiosity. She wanted to know who this person was while at the same time she was drawn to his voice, which seemed to numb away her inner turmoil. “Poor unfortunate soul,” He sang another song. “In pain, in need. This one longing for their freedom, this one longing to escape, and do I help them? Yes indeed.” Moana was barely paying attention to his words as she continued following this strange figure farther and farther away from the village. It was easy to follow him due to his limping movements and his torch which he held as far away from him as possible, yet she was unaware as to where exactly he was going as they continued. Moana wanted more than anything to see the face of the one who possessed such a voice. She already had to go through many years wondering about the face of the voice she tried her hardest to remember. If her savior’s voice had been like a warm day with the sun at its highest point in the sky and was deep and full of life, then this voice had a strange playfulness about it and a smoldering quality, with a rich depth unlike that of the ocean. Eventually he changed his song again that practically radiated with confidence. “Well Tamatoa hasn’t always been this glam,” He crooned. “He was a drab little crab once. Now he knows he can be happy as a clam, because he’s beautiful, baby.” 

“Did your granny say, listen to your heart?” He continued as his voice picked up in volume. “Be who you are on the inside?” I need three words to tear her argument apart: your granny lied.” Moana became aware that they were now somewhere between the forests and the mountains as he continued in a more upbeat, show-offish manner. “I’d rather be shiny! Like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck! Scrub the deck and make it look shiny! I will sparkle like a wealthy woman’s neck!” For a brief moment Moana was reminded of her friend’s earlier smug behavior and felt convinced that if this man wasn’t him then these two would probably get along. In that moment she felt a twinge of regret and she completely missed part of the man’s song. When she came back to reality, she only heard “-they chase anything that glitters! Beginners! Oh, and here they come, come, come, to the brightest thing that glitters!” At this point the man stopped at a small dead end of an area where the earth rose up to serve as walls, though one wall was low enough that you could see the tops of the nearby trees. There were some plants and a few boulders and rocks, yet there were a few torches already placed here and there to give the area equal illumination. It was here that the man hummed the rest of the song and he thrusted the torch in between a few boulders and Moana stopped a few feet away to see what he would do. He cracked his head to one side and took the odd garment off before quickly throwing it away as far as he could as if he hated it and he let out a deep sigh of relief. He made to roll his head for a moment but then he paused for a second when he seemed to be aware that someone had followed him. “Well, well, well,” He sang with a low, amused tone as he turned around to face Moana, who almost flinched in surprise and even backed away a few steps when she realized that he was now fully aware of the fact that she followed him. This man was not ordinary in appearance. His clothing was unusual in that the vibrant colors were impossible to create with any ordinary dyes, nor did they look natural. His adornments included strange looking objects and materials that flashed and shone in the light of the fire and he even wore them as accessories. His appearance was so peculiar and flashy, yet so other worldly, that Moana had no idea if she was standing before a warrior, a lord, or even one of the gods. When she looked down, she realized why the man walked so oddly–he was missing part of a leg on one side and he was wearing some sort of prosthetic unlike any she had ever seen as a replacement so that he could be able to walk like a normal two legged person. “What have we here?” Moana looked up when the stranger asked in an amused and eager tone of voice. His talking voice was slightly different than his singing voice as he had specific accent that was more prominent and made the emphasis on some of the words come out differently than what Moana was used to. “I thought I heard someone following me.” He flashed the girl a strange grin that revealed a set of crooked teeth as he walked over to her. “I didn’t expect that it would be the young princess of this island herself!” He then bowed before her in a dramatic flourish, his upper body bending low as far as he could and his free arm extending completely out to the side. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness!” “I–uh–” Moana felt a little unsure as to what was going on. “I’m not a princess.” She told him with a slight awkwardness. “I’m the Chief’s daughter–I’m afraid isn’t the same thing.” The stranger let out a strange scoffing sound. “Aw, it doesn’t matter.” He got up and rolled his eyes before walking towards her. “From what I know, the titles are all the same.” He then did something Moana didn’t expect when he got close enough– he reached out and took her free hand with an almost light as an air hold and extreme carefulness. It was as if he was barely touching her and was trying to avoid completely grabbing her hand as if doing so would break it and he lowered himself slightly to her level as his other arm went behind his back. “Enchante, mon princesse.” The stranger gave Moana a wide, yet oddly charming smile before he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. It was such a sudden gesture that Moana had no idea how to react, yet she felt herself blushing at the contact of his lips against her hand. She couldn’t deny that there was a strangely charismatic nature about this man, despite his other oddities. “Was that too forward?” The stranger flatly asked with a frown after kissing her hand when he saw the blush, yet his eyes hinted at a pleasure towards her reaction. “You’ll have to forgive me.” The stranger continued as he lowered her hand from his face and he looked into her eyes. “I know that’s not the traditional greeting around these parts, but I’m a collector and I tend to pick up more than just treasures when I go out and about in the world. Its quite educational and some of the things I find are beyond your wildest imagination.” Moana heard his words but she was looking at his eyes–they were a beautiful shade of deep blue, like certain parts of the waters around Motonui, yet his left pupil was slightly larger than the right one. She wondered how that was possible (an injury or something he had since birth?) and she missed hearing the stranger brag about his career as a collector until he finally said: “Hey, babe?” The stranger’s unique eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Just pick one to look at.” “Sorry!” Moana shook her head with a cringe of embarrassment and focused on his face altogether. “You must get easily distracted a lot, don’t you?” He asked as he finally let go of her hand and he stood back up. “Granted I can’t blame you since I’m impressive looking to begin with and I know I got a nice set of eyes.” He let out a smug smile at this as he gestured to himself with a dramatic flourish. “I actually quite enjoy the staring, so I forgive you for stalking me.” “Wha–?! No, I–!” Moana didn’t know whether to be offended or not by his earlier words but she didn’t want to embarrass herself either, nor did she want to seem offensive (she did notice that he was missing a leg after all, in addition to the differences in his pupils). “I mean I did follow you,” She stammered “But that was only when I heard you singing and you were covered up and–and you are a great singer!” She quickly added before she could offend him. The man’s face dropped in confusion for a second. “Wait... you actually liked the singing.” “Yes.” Moana smiled a little after making that recovery as she moved her torch in her other hand. “I’ve never heard a voice like yours. I was feeling depressed about some things that happened but I forgotten all about them now, so thank you.” It was true, she did forget her troubles. The stranger stared at her in disbelief before he let out a smile that felt a lot more genuine then the others. “You mean it?” He laughed in delight. “Thanks, mon princesse! The last time I sang, I was told to shut up!” “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Moana frowned as she wondered how that happened. He was a great singer, so it couldn’t have been because he was terrible. “Yeah, well he got what he had coming to him!” The stranger’s following laugh was now more out of amusement but there was an odd thing about it that felt wrong and almost mean spirited. “Actually it was kind of ironic, now that I think about it!” His laughter died down for a moment and the humor in his eyes vanished. “You know its almost funny.” He mused as he suddenly became lost in thought. “There was a time when I thought my voice alone could make others see some sort of value in me. In fact it used to be my only favorite thing since it could make others happy.” His eyes became melancholic and he paused for a few moments to turn his head around to try to look at his back for some odd reason. “And then you find out that no matter what you do, all people care about is what’s outside and whether or not you’re–” He quickly shook his head and that smugness returned when he moved his head back to the confused girl. “But hey, why should others care about how you feel, right?” He closed his eyes as he cupped his chin with one hand. “Its not like it’s more important than politics, preparations, appearances, or why the sky is missing some stars at night.” The stranger opened his eyes and let go of his chin to wave his hand out. “Though I can see quite a lot above our heads right now.” He looked up for a second. “I wonder how they shine like that.” One part of what he said was oddly specific and yet it caught Moana’s attention all the same. “You know that Maui’s constellation is missing too?!” She asked. “Tell me,” She stepped forward. “What do you know about it? Why has it vanished?” “Oh?” The stranger seemed rather interested in her reaction. “So you hum–” He was about to say something but then hummed it instead before changing his words ”–you noticed that, didn’t you?!” His eyes then narrowed at Moana as his mouth turned into a smirk. “Question, O daughter of a Chief–well, its more like a personality question. Not one of the annoying kinds, like what your favorite color is!” He waved his hand but then he paused again. “Jewel tones.” He quickly threw it in as if he considered the answer but then he waved his hand again. “Anyway, its something more meaningful like...” His smirk deepened as his voice lowered to a strange, ominous tone as he leaned in towards Moana “What would you say if Maui turned his back on the human race and left them because they all took him for granted?” Moana stared in disbelief. What kind of question was that? “No,” She shook her head. “No he wouldn’t do that!” She denied this. “We appreciate all that he has done for us! We tell his stories and they inspire us even today! He wouldn’t just leave us like that!” That couldn’t be why the constellation vanished because Maui was said to genuinely care about the well being of humans. It just wasn’t a good enough of a reason. The stranger was taken aback by this but then he let out an odd snorting sound mixed with a laugh. He tried to hold it in yet he covered his hand as he snickered at Moana’s reaction and she thought she heard him mutter something behind it. “Oh sorry forgive me, something about that reminded me of something amusing that has to do with an old friend.” He shrugged and waved his hand again. “So despite all the less savory tales about him, you honestly believe that Maui is still a hero to you all? That he won’t get upset because one or two humans took advantage of his generosity over the years? You really think he is selfless enough to care about the feelings of at least one human if he goes missing, let alone if he actually does exist?” His words struck a small blow into Moana’s heart but the anger she held came back. “You probably know as much about him as you know about me!” The man stared at her and was taken aback by her outburst but then he shook his head as he threw his hands out when he shrugged. “Like I said, mon princesse–it was just a personality question.” “Of course I know enough to know that you were hiding a few secrets of your own and that you got in a lot of hot water with your daddy earlier today.” The stranger added as he walked around Moana, who was forced to turn around to follow him. “You are a little like me in a way–you can’t stand being like the others and being trapped and unable to do your own thing is suffocating you. You know that you were meant to shine and someone is trying to keep you in the dark. I know you have dreams and goals, mon princesse, but you can’t for reasons either beyond your control or because someone tells you not to do the things you want. And I’ve experienced enough to know that being selfless isn’t going to help you in the long run.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Trust me, I’ve been there and done that. I’ve been lied to before by someone close to me about how inner beauty can get you by in life. Unlike all your subjects and your family, I can give you a way to get off this island as far as you’d like to go.” “What do you mean?” Moana asked as something in her head was screaming that something wasn’t right. “Well, if you do everything exactly as I say, you can get off this island before tomorrow night.” The man shot her an incredibly wide eyed look and a mischievous grin–the effect didn’t make him look human and it started Moana for a moment. “You see, I can guarantee that the way things are going, you are going to be stuck here miserable and forever doing what everyone wants you to do instead of the other way around. Now if you are willing to ignore the ‘voice’–” His features relaxed back to normal when he used his fingers with one hand to make air quotations on that word “–in your heart and give in to being a little selfish, you can free yourself and get what you desire the most. And all my ideas and back up plans, mon princesse? Every one of them gets you right off the island.” “So what do you say?” He stopped and held a hand out to her. “Want to free yourself from all these people and get off for good?” Moana stared at the stranger before staring at the hand. She wanted so badly to get off the island after all that happened, yet this was all too good to be true. “Why exactly do you care about what I want?” She asked. “Why me, of all people? I don’t see how this benefits you.” “Hey, I recognize a real diamond in the rough when I see one.” The man told her. “You got out on a boat one time, but it wasn’t enough, was it? Don’t you want more of that? To be part of that world?” He gestured out to where the sea was. “Even if one can almost drown in it or if there are a bunch of storms and monsters down below, I can’t blame you. The ocean gave me a heck of a time when I tried to get here but its better out there, take it from me.” Moana hesitated and she was about to ask what the man wanted from her when she realized something. How exactly did he know about the boat and her dad being angry at her in the first place? How did this man get on the island without anyone being aware of him? Wouldn’t someone have told her and her grandmother? And how did he– He mentioned drowning. Moana paused and looked at his garments and at the strange objects he had that seemed to shine in the firelight. There were not many objects she knew of that could do that and fact some of these strange objects shone so well that the shine was almost a brilliant white. Something shiny hit her in the eye earlier today and it wasn’t the sun. The angle wasn’t correct and she wasn’t looking at it, so you would have needed something reflective to have the light bounce off. Then it hit her like a rock to the head. “You,” Moana gasped as she held a hand to her mouth in shock. The man raised an eyebrow at her and, despite her warning scream in her head, she let it out “You were the reason I–!” Then Moana realized that the man had deliberately lured her away from the village. He knew where to find her and he had something in mind when he got her away when she was all alone. In fact this area had been set up as if he was expecting her to come to him. She was beginning to be afraid. “I...I just remembered that my grandma will be looking for me.” Moana avoided the stranger’s gaze as she tried to walk backwards away from him. “In fact I think there might be some people out around this area tonight.” She lied with a straight face. “Maybe I could come by tomorrow instead.” She turned around and was about to walk away when she heard the man approach her and grab her free arm in a painful squeeze. “You know its very rude to walk out of a conversation that hasn’t ended yet, babe.” The man’s voice came out in a warning hiss before Moana turned around to face him. “Weren’t you taught better than that?” The stranger’s pleasantries faded and his eyes narrowed at Moana, who now realized that despite his impressive appearance there was something about this man that was wrong. She was just too distracted by her issues and his showiness to see it. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong with this man, but there was something hiding behind the grandiose surface and within his eyes. Her grandmother’s warning on how appearances could be deceiving could not have been more effective in any other situation. “You were the reason I was blinded on the boat today!” She trembled as she yelled out her accusation. “You caused that to happen and I almost died!” She narrowed her eyes at the man before her. “Did you tell my father about me being out on the sea too?!” She demanded. “Who are you and what do you really want with me?!” The look of embarrassed surprise in the man’s eyes was all Moana needed to know the answer. “Oh ho, aren’t you a clever one.” The stranger scowled as annoyance flashed in his eyes. Moana slowly stepped back as the man got closer to her as he kept his hold on her. “I’ve yet to meet your daddy, so no I wasn’t the reason why he found out, but he’s getting too curious for his own good at the moment. The thing is, you have no idea what you got yourself caught up in and I’m afraid I’m going to have to resort to a drastic measure.” He made as if to take something out of his clothes. Moana took no chances–she waved the torch between her and the man as hard as she could. The man recoiled in terror from the torch as fast as he could and almost stumbled backwards but by then she made a run for it. The man groaned in annoyance as he regained his balance before running after the teenager. “Why did I forget the bloody fire in her hands?!” It was almost as if the person who brought fire to the humans was still around her! Moana ran as fast as she could as she tried to figure out where she was and how close the village was with her fire in her hand. She might have a chance to outrun the stranger since he had a handicap (it was not the first time she took advantage of something like that), but she had no idea what it was that he really wanted with her and she didn’t want to take any chances. “GET BACK HERE!” The stranger yelled as she heard him coming. “I SWEAR IF YOU DON’T, I’LL MAKE THIS MUCH MORE DIFFICULT FOR YOU!” Moana chose not to respond back as she ran as fast as she could. Her injured leg was still recovering and was protesting against her actions, but she ignored the pain. A part of her wished there was someone by her side to help her, but she also felt confident that she could find the village. If she was close enough or else she could see it, then she would yell for help. At the same time, if she yelled for help, he would find her based off the sound of her voice. She once swore to never let herself be kidnapped again and to be ready if something happened, and now that was going to be put to the test. “I MEAN IT, YOU GET ONE CHANCE TO COME BACK!” He yelled again. The voice that was once so pleasant was now a cause of alarm and fear. “DON’T BLOW IT, BABE!” Where was she?! She thought she knew this island by heart and yet the darkness made it unfamiliar to her. Any moment the stranger could find her and already it seemed that her insides were starting to hurt from all the running! She knew that there was a freshwater pond and a waterfall close by if this pathway was familiar in the light of the torch. There was also a set of rocks she could hide behind over there if she was careful, but that meant that she would have to sacrifice her light. It was the only give away to her location and although she was afraid of doing it, she had no choice. The stranger sounded as if he were getting closer to her. She wished deep down that there was someone by her side and she wanted to scream but she couldn’t. Her heart was pounding and adrenaline was kicking in. She could barely even feel whatever she was stepping on underneath her as she ran for her life. Finally she found the small, narrow pathway that lead to the waterfall and she ran into it. When she finally saw the waterfall and the pond that turned into a stream that headed to her village, she glanced at the rocks, before hurling the torch into the waterfall. She quickly darted right to the rocks and crouched behind them where she was forced to wait. The darkness that she once feared could now become her greatest ally in this time of distress. “BABE!” The man sang. “WHERE ARE YOU BABE?!” Moana closed her eyes and covered her mouth as her body shook out of fear. Her breathing was already heavy from the hard work and it would be a give away to her hiding spot. Don’t find me, don’t find me, don’t find me. She pleaded. The footsteps slowed down and they got closer and closer to the waterfall. Moana held her breath. Her family and her friends raced though her mind as she feared what would happen if she was caught. The footsteps stopped. Moana pleaded to the gods to divert his attention away from this area. The steps then sounded as if they were retreating until there was a silence. Moana looked up to see that there was nothing out there; the sound of the waterfall cascading down into the pound was the only thing to break the silence. It seemed that the darkness was truly her ally for once in her life. With a huge sigh of relief, Moana got up from her hiding spot and held her face in her hands as she walked around the rocks. She would need to be extra careful getting out of here and she would have to alert the village about the stranger. She needed to get help and she needed to hide in a place where there was a lot of people. Moana took a few moments to calm herself down and she took a few deep breaths before she lowered her hands and opened her eyes to face the waterfall... and let out a strangled gasp of horror as her heart stopped. Staring right back at her was a large and incredibly monstrous face. She couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be, but it had intense colored markings of garish pink and dark blue on its face and somewhere illuminating the silhouette of its mountain of a head was a bright light blue glow. There was also pink and black colored antennas above its eyes–white eyes that were huge with a small dot of purple in each one and they were staring right at her. The water of the waterfall made the face ripple and distort a little, which only made the overall effect even more sinister. Moana took a few steps back before turning around as quickly as she could, only to come face to face with the stranger she had been trying to escape from. But now there was a big change in his appearance–the stranger also glowed in the darkness like the monster in the waterfall. All the peculiar adornments and accessories that he wore now glowed with that same light blue and he too also bore the blue and pink markings on his face. Even the whites of his eyes glowed as their blue color turned into the bright purple that belonged to the monster. Moana gasped in terror as she turned to try to get away before she found herself facing the monster in the waterfall again. She then hesitated as she stared up at the monstrous face and then realized that there was supposed to be a wall of earth and rocks behind the waterfall and there was nothing behind the stranger to cause that reflection. “What... what the...?” Moana gasped as her eyes widened while she tried to make sense of what was going on in her state of panic. The monster’s eyes narrowed at Moana and the purple of his eyes changed colors–one became light blue and the other became a garish pink. At the same time, his mouth grew into a big grin to reveal his white teeth which were as crooked as those of the one behind her. “Oh, babe, babe, babe.” The monster’s mouth moved, but the voice that spoke out belonged to that of the stranger. Moana turned around–her eyes wide with fear–as the man grinned and his eyes also changed like those of the monster’s. He took out a strange necklace with a purple shell with golden flecks that gave off a faint glow and he held a hand out to her. “You really shouldn’t have seen that.” In her panic, Moana made to run as fast as she could around the man, but he grabbed her when she was close enough and slammed her into one of the walls of earth that trapped her in this area with him. The strength behind the move was far more powerful than that of a normal human being and the force against the wall was enough to almost knock the air out of the young girl. While she was stunned, she fell to the ground and struggled to catch her breath as the man came and bent down to her level. Moana cried out as the stranger grabbed her neck with one hand, and forced her back up to her feet against the wall. Moana tried to scream but his hold was too tight to the point that he was almost chocking her; she tried to kick at him, but he kept his distance as if he expected it to happen. Instead she was forced to try to pull his arm away from her with her hands and she tugged as hard as she could, but it was futile. “I can’t believe you are the only thing in my way, but I can still use this to my advantage.” The stranger growled as he glared at Moana, who now tried to scratch at his hands while kicking at him. He then smirked as the hand that held onto the necklace flipped it in the air within the safety of his grasp before it was dangling down low between his fingers and thumb. “You humans with your embellishments to stories.” The stranger continued with a chuckle as he raised the necklace in front of Moana’s face. “Of course there are ways to make them real if you have the right possessions on hand.” “Wh–” Moana struggled to snarl at the man. “What are you doing?!” “Ever seen one so shiny?” The man sang as he waved his free hand and the shell of the necklace waved back and forth in front of Moana’s eyes. “Soak it in because it’s the last you’ll ever see.” Moana made to pull to the side, yet the man kept his hold and forced her off the wall and into a position that forced her to bend her knees as she furiously tried to pull his hand away as hard as she could. “Ces’t la vie, mon ami, I’m so shiny!” He sang in a dark cheerfulness as the glow of the shell grew and Moana tried her hardest to break free. “Now I’ll claim you so prepare your final plea, just for me.” He almost begged it as if it gave him pleasure. Against her will, Moana’s eyes were being drawn to the shell of the necklace that seemed to wave in time to the beat of the tempo of the stranger’s song. The more it glowed, the more she was drawn to it and her struggles were slowing down as the whites of the man’s eyes and the eyes themselves shifted from blue to pink and back again in a crazed manner and his grin widened. “You’ll never be quite as shiny,” He taunted Moana as her head began to throb and the browns of her eyes were slowly being taken over by a milky purple color. “You’ll wish you were nice and shiny!”

In back in the safety of the village, Sina slowly approached the fale of the man who could not speak with a basket of food in her hands. Tala followed her close behind with Pua by her feet and she could only let out a sigh and shake her head when she saw that there was already someone guarding the entrance to the fale with a club in their hands. “Maybe its better if I never tell them.” Sina quietly confessed to Tala as she looked down at the basket. “Maybe I’m not pregnant after all and it was a false alarm. Its not going to make things better.” She wanted so badly to tell Tui that she was positive that this was why her body was behaving so strangely lately (there had been so many signs and one of the women who helped deliver newborns that she confided in earlier was also convinced about this), but now it just felt too early to say. In fact, there could not have been a worst time for a feud to strike to prevent her from letting her family know. “It won’t unless you can help mend the bond between father and daughter.” Tala advised Sina. “If Moana chooses to stay with you tonight, please watch over her, will you?” Sina asked. Tala could only walk up to her daughter-in-law and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She carefully patted it before walking away. “Good night, Sina.” “Good night.” Sina responded with a weak smile before heading to the fale and Pua followed after her. When the guard looked up, she held the basket out to show why she was there and he nodded and parted to the side; Sina nervously went inside to see what her husband had done. The man had been tied to one of the central beams that held the fale up. A rope had been wrapped a few times around both his stomach and the beam he was pressed up against and his hands were tied at the wrists to the point that they allowed some comfortable movement, but they still kept them bound together. He had been forced to the ground in a sitting position and he was slumped over in a dejected manner to the point that his head hung low and his hair hid some of his face from view. Sina hated the sight and she wished that her husband hadn’t gone to this extent. She walked over and set the basket down close enough so that he could reach the food. “I’m sorry, I can’t find a good enough reason to excuse why my husband did the things he did.” Sina tried to apologize for something she knew she had no control over. He didn’t look up to indicate that he heard her, which made her lose more of her confidence. Even Pua tried to bump his head into the man’s leg, but he didn’t bother to notice Moana’s little friend. “I’ll see what I can do for you in the meantime.” Sina tried to say. “If it were in my power I–” There was no point in saying anything that could give him hope at the moment. She would give him an empty promise if she did. She sighed again and got up to turn around but stopped. She wanted to say something–anything–to cheer him up or give him closure, but she didn’t know what to say. It was only when she made it to the entrance and Pua followed her that the man finally looked up at Sina. She didn’t see the look of regret in his eyes before the light from outside vanished and he was stuck in the dark once more.

Sina later found her husband lost in thought as he looked at the strange golden brown object in his hands in their fale. She already knew the story behind it, but that wasn’t her concern. “You say that earning trust is important, but isn’t Moana’s trust in you as her father just as important?” Sina asked as she was determined to follow Tala’s advice. “You are afraid of losing her because of what happened in the past, but there are other ways to lose her forever. Could you imagine what would of happened if you did burn down those boats?” Tui turned his head to look at his wife, but he did not respond. “If I was in her position, I would have left the island and never came back.” Sina hardened her gaze. “I try to avoid picking sides and to help the two of you see the other’s views, but you went too far this time, Tui. Moana is also my daughter and I care about her happiness and well being. You cannot burn down those boats or else we could lose her for good.” Tui looked as if he wanted to answer but he could only force his eyes away from Sina, who was angry at this. At least her husband could be able to talk, so this was not excusable. “Can’t you at least let her say goodbye to her friend?!” Sina demanded. “I don’t want her to hate you Tui, but you have to at least make an effort to show that you aren’t the heartless father she thinks you are! What do you think will happen to her when he leaves the island?! What will happen if you choose to burn down the boats when the visitors leave?! What will happen to this family?! Do you think she would want to sleep in her own home with us ever again?!” “Eventually she will forget what happened, Sina.” Tui could only say. “Oh and like you didn’t forget your friend or your father?!” Sina yelled. It was at this point that Pua crawled away as far as he could from the argument. “Why would you bring them into this?!” He demanded. “We can’t forget the people who leave strong impressions on us!” Sina threw her hands out. “Especially those we were close to! So unless you try to find a way to fix this situation, you’ll be at risk of making Moana think that you were a horrible father to her when you were alive! She’s not going to have us in our lives forever!” Sina added. She had to stop herself from saying anything that could make the situation worse. She wanted to tell Tui that she wanted to be able to go to the other islands herself, that Moana might view the man who could not speak as a better father figure than Tui was when she looked back on those lost to her, that maybe his friend would not have appreciated how Tui was ‘honoring’ his memory. She needed to get through her husband’s stubbornness and make him see before her family was ruined forever. Sina glanced at the object in Tui’s hands. “You should return that back where it came from.” She advised with a scowl. “They say its bad luck to take something that belongs to the gods and I would not be surprised if that belonged to one of them.” “Its dark out and we won’t have time for that tomorrow.” Tui countered. “The owner lost it and they would have come for it if they knew it was missing.” “Then I guess you better not burn the boats.” Sina countered. “Because if you’re suspicion is correct, then we don’t know what will happen if the owner is not a friendly being.” Meanwhile a certain teenager was stumbling through the village as if lost in a trance. The moment she saw the Chief’s fale, she paused for a moment to take it in before she straightened herself up and headed towards it with more natural steps. Inside the fale, Pua sensed Moana approaching and he hurried out to greet her. The moment he finally located her coming towards the fale, he stopped and all he could do was stare in confusion. Sina sensed why Pua had left the fale and she stepped out to see her daughter looking at one of the many torches. “Moana?” Sina asked as she went to approach her daughter. Strangely enough, her daughter was dressed in an unusual skirt and top that was composed of a strange hue of magenta, with touches of blue and yellow. Even the clothing was somehow adorned with blue–green stones around her neck and what looked like rows of pearls upon the skirts. There was a string of pearls on top of her head like a crown and the only thing about her attire that did not change was the bandages around her injury. “Moana?” Sina asked again. Moana finally looked away from the fire and her eyes seemed to have a strange look in them like she was somewhere else. “Mother.” Moana nodded with a strange stiffness and a small smile. “Are you feeling well?” Sina was concerned and found herself holding her hands together. Was Moana still suffering and was this the result of it? She also wanted to know where Moana got that dress, but she was more concerned about Moana’s well being. Moana broke into a slightly wider smile as she straightened her back. “I’m perfectly fine.” Moana nodded and spoke in a strangely upbeat tone as if everything was perfectly natural, but there was still something about her that seemed restrained. “I just don’t think I can sleep here tonight. I think I’ll sleep at grandma’s instead.” Pua frowned from where he was as he looked over Moana. Something was wrong about her besides her outfit, which wasn’t exactly her style–there was a strange air about her that didn’t feel natural. He trotted over to her to see what it was. “I understand.” Sina nodded with a frown as she tried to hide her worries. “I know a lot has happened and I understand if you need to be away from your father for a bit.” Moana’s smile twisted for a second and she flinched at the mention of her father. Sina saw the intense flash of anger in her daughter’s eyes, but to her it felt perfectly understandable since she wasn’t happy at Tui herself right now. “I would like that very much.” Moana admitted. At this point, Pua approached his companion and when he tried to push against her leg, she didn’t acknowledge him by looking down or petting him like usual. “Well... I’ll see you in the morning.” Sina turned around and left, feeling horrible that she didn’t have any other way to fix the situation before tomorrow morning. And who knew what would happen tomorrow while each member of her family was supposed to act like everything was ok? Moana turned around and ignored Pua, who tried to paw at her leg with one of his feet. She went on and walked away without even looking down. Pua immediately regretted leaving her alone. He was offended that she didn’t notice him, but he could tell something was wrong because this behavior wasn’t like Moana. He knew something had happened when he left her alone and it had to do with that strange atmosphere from earlier. He had to be extra careful so that he could figure out what was going on and what had happened to her. And that meant that he could not afford to let any of the villagers put him in an enclosure with the other animals. Moana continued walking and when she passed by the fale of the man who could not speak, the person with a club moved in front of the entrance as if she was going to try to enter it. She only stopped to look at it for one second before glancing back at the fale where her father was. The mask broke as her forced smile darkened into an angry glare and her eyes narrowed at it. What he did today was unforgivable. She would not let him get away with what he had done. Did he want her to be the perfect daughter? Oh she would give him the perfect daughter tomorrow. She shot her angry look at the person in front of the fale and they almost stumbled backwards in surprise at how intense her gaze was. Satisfied, Moana continued on her way.

Somewhere not too far from the village, the stranger Moana encountered stood by one of the torches he stole as he examined his arm. It was a very human like appendage made of flesh and bone instead of a hard shell and when he took the princess’ hand to kiss it, it wasn’t a claw that was holding her hand and his sense of touch had been heightened to the point that he could actually feel her skin. He had taken a drastic measure in order to make sure that the human wouldn’t get in the way. Granted the ocean had been dead set on keeping him off this island and it was one heck of a struggle for him as it tried with all its might to drag him back into its hold until he finally managed to get completely on the island and away from it. He knew the ocean was going to give him trouble. It was partly why he couldn’t go after the girl when he had his earliest possible chance, because that entity seemed really invested in the current events and it wasn’t on Tamatoa’s side. Of course, he knew he couldn’t blend in the way he was, which was why he had the foresight to make a back up concoction that didn’t last as long as Maui’s was, nor did it have the ingredients that took the demi-god’s voice or tattoos away. He was not a magical being but he wasn’t kidding about how going out into the world would be educational because he picked up quite a lot in the vast ocean besides treasures. He lucked out in learning how to turn into a human, but he never had a real need for that until now. The moment he had taken the concoction, it was one of the most physically painful experiences of his life next to the loss of his leg. It was like he was being compressed and something was pushing against him, forcing certain body parts to retreat into himself and he had to bite down on one of the many trees to keep himself from screaming before it got too big for him. Even his insides changing was agonizing and especially when his posture was changed so that he would have to stand like a human. He wasn’t claustrophobic but he suddenly had a good idea what it was like when that happened and there had been a lot of cursing in addition to the screaming. He wasn’t sure if Maui got the better end of the same deal or not at this point. It took the once mighty crab a while to get used to the changes, including learning to move like a human, the change in perspective, and a whole lot of other things that were incredibly disorienting to him. Even learning how to readjust holding onto objects took some time and luckily he had enough while he was still observing and forced to hide in an (unflattering) set of rags to cover the splendor and shine of his human form from the unsuspecting mortals. Being in this form was interesting, but it wasn’t enjoyable if he couldn’t show it off, if he couldn’t see his proper reflection as it currently was, or if it had to come with immense pain with the initial change. Also he wasn’t able to get his missing leg back, which was a huge downside. He did grow a little fond of the human princess and he did appreciate her sincere compliment on his singing. It was disorienting in the fact that he didn’t have to do anything to force her to his eye level (and it had been years since he was large enough to be at eye level with a human) but he had been convinced that she seemed to like him and that he had impressed her by being himself. It was a blow to his ego that the only reason why she was comfortable around him at first was because he was a mortal like her at that point and it did prove his point that outer beauty was all that really mattered in this world. However it did make him wonder what the heck she was able to see in Maui if his body had been damaged by the spell, in addition to losing his voice. But somehow she figured out enough to force Tamatoa to take a drastic measure. It wasn’t a big loss because, from what he understood what was going on, he did her a huge favor that was also going to work in his benefit. As long as the princess was away from Maui, Tamatoa’s victory would come to pass and it looked like the stakes were raising much higher for the demi-god than ever before. He was even considering stopping by and gloating his victory over the voiceless man, just to add more salt to the wound. Tamatoa laughed as he took a fish that he stole from the village (it would help with swallowing down some of the concoction that he needed to take to continue hiding from the mortals and to stay away from the ocean) before he bit down on the once living creature and ripped it apart with his teeth to eat it raw. Its insides spilled out and some of it went down his chin before he wiped it away with the back of his hand (even as a human, the taste was still the same to him). It wasn’t fresh or still alive like he would have preferred, but beggars can’t be choosers. Tomorrow would be the final sunset and now it was a matter of waiting. In the meantime, Tamatoa now had a sure way to keep the princess away from the demi-god until it was too late for either of them to come to their aid.

Moana continued walking until she was near a torch that showed her that her grandmother’s fale was close by and it was here that she stopped. “So you want to get off the island, babe? Well the easiest way to do so is with this.” The voice of the stranger echoed in her head from before he left her to go off and vanish. Moana moved her hand so that she could reach for the back of the top that went with her new dress and pulled out a strange object that the stranger had given her. It was beautifully crafted with purple colored tones of some sort of material that felt like hardened tapa cloth and it had pearls spiraling around it, yet the top part was made out of purple coral that had been smoothed down so that it was safe to hold onto. “It doesn’t matter how you use it. There are many ways you can use it, but each one guarantees a one way trip out of here. Do whatever you like, but I do have one recommendation.” Moana grabbed the top end and pulled the object out of the beautiful sheath before she could hold it out to look at it. In her hands was a carefully crafted dagger made from the bone of an undersea animal that had been carefully sharpened to the point that lightly touching it would cut someone and the ends were jagged on one side. A bit of rope tied the topmost and blunt end of the blade onto the coral handle, and the blade itself it was long enough that it could cause serious injury if plunged deep enough into a person’s body. “At the very moment you stop dancing for everyone tomorrow–the moment you stop giving them the person they want to see–go ahead and go after the one person who held you back.” Moana turned away from the torch to face her family’s fale and glared at it. Without any light around, her eyes glowed with a faint purple which was the only clue to the fact that someone had casted a spell upon her. Compassion, love, forgiveness, guilt–they had been suppressed in the spell that was controlling her. Instead there was a numbness that dulled down her sorrow and stress, but there was a certain anger that had been amplified in the spell and was patiently waiting to erupt like a volcano. “Go ahead and kill your daddy, mon princesse.”

Now is the time to start being afraid since the nods to the original Little Mermaid are starting to become more obvious. I didn’t want to do the ‘hypnotized into marriage’ that was in the original Little Mermaid film because it didn’t fit with what I was going for (though I can imagine how Moana would react to both that and who she almost got hitched to if I did) though in some ways I see that this was a lot darker. And kind of ironic considering what’s happened to Moana (I do get some Te Ka vibes from this corrupted version of her). I admit that this... isn’t the first time I’ve had a character endure a similar fate/spell, or a strange character referring to the heroine as ‘princess’ a lot (looks at ‘Hyrule Warriors Warped’ for a second with a nervous laugh). Of course this is getting to the point where I can’t make Moana the damsel in distress forever. It feels wrong to me that I am doing this to her when she was able to save herself and Maui more than a few times in the movie. I wonder how many people thought that I would make Tamatoa be able to actually hypnotize Moana through voice alone. *laughs* Actually I wonder how many fans were won over by the act he was giving Moana (hand kissing and all) before the cracks in the disguise began to develop. I was kind of inspired by ‘Poor Unfortunate Soul’ by Serena Valentino for that one scene near the end where Tamatoa was observing his human form (there is a scene in the book where Ursula observes how Eric is first drawn to her human disguise under her spell). However I’m NOT going to make Tamatoa a sympathetic antagonist or someone who ‘needs to be fixed’ by someone. I don’t know his whole backstory and while I can only make a guess that it wasn’t a pleasant one, this is a guy who almost ate Moana in the original film and tore into Maui over his own insecurities. Plus I enjoy writing out a good antagonist when I get one. And with that, we enter the climax chapters of our story. Its a race against the final sunset at this point and while I need to do a little more research to make sure I get my facts right on a few things, I aim to give you guys something that feels unique as well as familiar.

“Thanks.” The writer rubbed her wrists and thanked A/N Tamatoa for helping her get free. “Your story self is weird as all heck, you know that?” She took out a special device and stared at two special buttons on her laptop that said ‘outtake’ and ‘fourth wall hammer.’ “Rgh, I want to use these and I had some good ideas, but I should wait a little longer!” The writer frowned in frustration. “Especially considering what might happen next. It won’t be as satisfying if I use them now.” “So,” A voice asked. “ARE you that kind of fan?” The writer turned in confusion to the A/N Tamatoa who grinned at her. “Do you want a little adoration from me? This chapter was updated on Valentine’s Day.” He reminded her. The writer felt herself panicking as a blush went to her face. “Uh... what?” She stammered. “Uh, no I don’t know if–look I admit that I can develop crushes on fictional characters like everyone else but I’m realistic enough to not fall under the delusions of–And I doubt I’d have a crush for you if you existed in real life, but–” “Oh gods, you stupid little idiot.” The A/N Tamatoa huffed as he knelt down beside the reader and grabbed her hand. “Here you go.” He took it and kissed the back of it. “Is that all?” He asked in a low and very suggestive voice. The writer’s blushing intensified before she collapsed back to the ground with a thud. “Wh... what is going on?” The writer continued to stammer in her state of confusion. “That happened. That actually happened. Why did that happen?! I thought I was above this!” She cried out. The A/N Tamatoa laughed as he turned back into his crab self. “Ok, seeing you act like that was worth it.” He turned to the readers with a grin. “Oh, would some of you readers like some appreciation from me too? Your adoration alone is good enough for Tamatoa.” “I’M GOING TO FIND MY REAL LIFE COUNTERPART AND KILL HER!” The writer screamed.

#disney's moana #moana #moana fanfiction #tamatoa #human tamatoa #tamatoa tuesday #maui #sina #tui #tala #pua #shiny #poor unfortunate soul

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sage-nebula · 8 years ago

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Zelda is on my mind, so, Zelda!

My issue with the Zelda timeline is not that there’s a branch where “this is what happens if the Hero of Time dies in the fight against Ganondorf.” I think that actually makes a lot of sense. My issue with the Zelda timeline is how the original OoT split (adult timeline vs. child timeline) works out.

For the first bit, it makes sense to me that there’s a timeline split where the Hero dies because that’s just how Time works. Time, at least in my mind, is like an extensive, massive tree branch that we’re all traveling down, and every single time we make a choice a new branch splits off that one. You can also think of it like a road, and these are forks in the road, whatever. When we make a decision, new branches split off from that. There’s the branch we decide to start traveling down, but the other branches, representing events that don’t occur or choices that aren’t made, are still there. They still exist. And since they exist, there are things that happen on them, there are events that occur because of them.

So we take this situation, with Link fighting Ganondorf. On one branch, Link succeeds and wins the fight. Ganondorf is trapped in the Sacred Realm. On the other branch, Link dies. He is murdered and Ganondorf’s reign continues unchallenged. Both of these branches exist, because they have to, just as Link’s death at any other point in OoT technically should exist in separate branches as well (though since Ganondorf’s reign continues unchecked, they all mostly lead to the same end result, with the exception of if Link dies prior to getting all three Spiritual Stones---that should be its own path). The same is true for any other Zelda game, really, and it’s true for other characters dying as well. The way a timeline looks is that it’s less like a line with a few branches, and more like a series of infinite roads and branches, all continuously splintering and fracturing, some only marginally different than their neighbors, others radically so. In this line Zelda dies in the seven year game because she’s killed by a Gerudo soldier while masquerading as Sheik. In this timeline over here, Saria dies in the Forest Temple before Link can save her. In this one over here, Ganondorf dies because he chokes on a piece of pita bread, and so on and so forth. Maybe in this other timeline no one dies, but Death Mountain erupts. Sure, everyone is saved, but Kakariko Village is completely decimated from the lava, and so on and so forth.

What we see as the Zelda timeline is---or should be---an extremely simplified version for our consumption based on the events that are relevant. All of those other timelines absolutely exist, because they must, because this is how Time works, but we don’t see them noted because they’re not relevant. The “Hero dies” timeline is relevant because Nintendo has figured out what happens after that point. The other possibilities are there, but right now we don’t need to know about them. They’re not relevant.

So I’m more than fine with the “Hero dies” branch of the timeline because it makes sense. None of us saw it coming, but it makes sense. The other part, though . . .

Oh boy.

So, long before Hyrule Historia was released and the actual timeline was revealed, my friend Andy and I got into a three hour fight---a fight with actual yelling---about the Zelda timeline. Keep in mind that this fight was from something like midnight to three in the morning, and we weren’t angry so much as we were passionate, but it was still a very heated discussion that involved our mutual friend/Andy’s roommate Pedro yelling at us to shut up about it and stop (which was kind of hypocritical, because this was the same guy who would give twenty minute speeches about his philosophical beliefs, would allow us to say one sentence, and then say “no no no” before he went on another twenty minute speech, but nonetheless). This timeline argument was, specifically, about how the branch in the timeline occurred. We both agreed that the split occurred with OoT. However, we disagreed with how that split should carry out. To summarize, our arguments were as such:

Andy:

The split occurred when Zelda sent Link back in time. This left the Bad Future/adult timeline, where Link no longer was, and created a new future from the child timeline.

Me:

Zelda sent Link back, yes, but the true split hinged on Link’s decision after that. Namely, in one version of events he chose to go to Termina (Majora’s Mask), which resulted in him not being there when Ganondorf broke free and wreaked havoc, leading to the ocean future (Wind Waker) in which we are specifically told that the Hero of Time did not come when called. In another, he chose to stay in Hyrule, leading to him being there when the time came and Ganondorf being imprisoned again (Twilight Princess).

And we all know who ended up being right, but I still disagree with it.

Andy---and Aonuma---feel that the change comes dependent on where Link is, physically, at the time. The way that Andy and Aonuma feel is that Zelda physically sent Link’s entire body back through time, leaving the Bad Future completely open and defenseless for Ganondorf to come back and wreak havoc (never mind that the Seven Sages have all been awakened in that timeline, and thus it should logically lead to Twilight Princess and not Wind Waker, but nonetheless). Because the Hero is physically present in the child timeline, and can warn King Daphnes (who for some reason listens to a ten year old stranger he doesn’t know versus his ten year old daughter???), everything is fine in the Child Timeline, whereas it is not in the Adult Timeline.

I still vehemently disagree with this.

I disagree with the fact that the split occurs when Zelda sends Link back. In fact, I feel that Link going back, warning Daphnes, and averting that Bad Future (as Nintendo says he did) means that the Bad Future just . . . shouldn’t exist anymore. It’s been averted. They saved Hyrule, Hyrule is still suffering, Zelda sends Link back to fix this mistake, and he does. Ganondorf gets imprisoned as a result of him warning Daphnes. Then, some time after that, Ganondorf breaks free. In one timeline, Link has gone off to adventure in Termina, and Hyrule is defenseless. This leads to Wind Waker. In another, Link said “nah, I can live without Navi” and never went to Termina, therefore he is there to save Hyrule and say “not this shit again,” leading to Twilight Princess. That is when the split should occur, that is what makes sense. I can see Andy’s reasoning that “but the Bad Future does exist, you can’t just wipe a branch off the map like that,” but I feel like that’s precisely what you are doing if you go back to specifically negate the event where that timeline happens. And even if it still exists, technically, in the context of your story and the things relative to your narrative, it doesn’t. It’s like---in Majora’s Mask, Link specifically keeps traveling back to the start of the three days in order to save Termina. Of course he can’t save everyone in every Cycle, but at the end of the game everyone is saved regardless, from the Moon and otherwise. The timelines where they aren’t are now rendered null. We aren’t doing anything with them anymore. That’s Hyrule’s Bad Future, I feel. That’s the “Adult Timeline.” The split shouldn’t be dependent on whether or not Zelda sends Link back, but rather dependent on the choice Link makes of whether or not to leave Hyrule, which has been a choice that he canonically does make since 2000. Particularly given that Wind Waker followed Majora’s Mask, I honestly thought for years that the Hero of Time’s absence when the people needed him in Wind Waker’s backstory was a direct result of him being gone from Hyrule as a result of his quest in Termina.

So yeah, tl;dr, my unpopular opinion is both that I’m A-OK with the Hero Dies timeline, but I still take issue with when the split occurs in the rest of the timeline (or rather, how it occurs). I don’t jive with all this Adult Timeline and Child Timeline nonsense. I much prefer a “if we have MM, we have Wind Waker” and “if we don’t have MM, we have TP” type of split. That makes the most sense to me. Nintendo’s other convoluted nonsense? Nah. Leave that on the wayside, son. They messed it all up.

(Andy was pretty happy to win the fight years later, though.)

#unpopular opinion meme #tofukitten

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ludomusoetme · 4 years ago

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Through the Corridors of Time

Blog for Introduction to digital music final.

Hello again and welcome to my process diary for creating yet another composition for digital music.

For this task I decided to take a section of music from a popular game and create a piece of music that expands upon the original. My artistic vision was to create an electro-acoustic fantasia on a theme that would carry across the feelings and impressions that a player would experience when they play through the scene or level in the game itself. I wanted the music to transcend the simple musical material provided and instead convey environmental, contextual, emotional and narrative connotations.

I wanted to ensure the theme I selected came from a source that used basic midi tracks in its design. This would allow interesting flexibility in instrumental choices as well as provide a rich dichotomy between the source material and my own work. I also wanted to ensure that whilst my piece remains faithful to the core concepts of the theme, it would not just be an arrangement of the original with new instruments. I wanted to synthesise new parts, combine themes and motifs from other areas of a game that related to each other, and overall create something experiential that builds upon the original and is not a derivative of it.

I was originally tossing up between some of the older Zelda games, but decided to forgo that series as I was far too familiar with the music of that series and was originally inspired to this concept by the artist “Theophany” who creates exceptional recreations and adaptations of the music from “Majora’s Mask”. I saw Theophany’s work as a guidepost for the general kind of piece I was aiming for, one that can take very basic themes and expand upon them in interesting ways.

Eventually I settled upon the game “Chrono Trigger” (1995). “Chrono Trigger” is a game that involves many different characters traversing portals through time to try and prevent the end of the world through an apocalypse. This force was known as Lavos, and is referred to in the game before it is revealed as “The Black Wind”. The game features many unique characters that have interwoven stories and themes that are perfect for me to play with and draw inspiration from. The game fit my criteria of beautiful sound design and great use of themes that resurface throughout in a traditional leitmotif style, yet also worked with extremely simple midi sounds to create the audio palette. My favourite song from the game is a piece of music called “Corridors of Time”, which is the music for the level in the game called “12.000 B.C.”.

In this level, the players’ party of characters have escaped from certain death through a portal in time into the frozen past. Upon arrival the characters find themselves on a barren stretch of land with no one in sight and only icy tundra to greet them. After travelling for a short time however, the party stumbles upon a temple that teleports the group to a set of floating islands in the sky that are lush and highly advanced through the use of magi-tech. This is where the music begins and is the setting of Corridors of time, a location and song that has always amazed me with its depiction of a fantastical world and a very memorable soundtrack.

Corridors of time features heavy use of an ostinato that repeats throughout the entire track. The musical material is quite simple and can be broken down into just a few fragments: 1. Piano Ostinato, 2. Sitar melody. 3. Bass, 4. Percussion, 5 choral “Aahs”. These instruments all fit together in a very simple AB structure that is repeated Ad Nauseam for the entire duration of the level. Thankfully the ostinato is catchy and the melody compelling enough that I can (and have) listened to versions of this song for honestly hundreds of hours over my life.

The difficult part when working with this material was how to seperate it from its original. Ostinato’s by their nature do NOT like to be interfered with, and the frankly minuscule amount of musical information makes it particular hard to work in variations. There isn’t even a variation of a theme in this piece, just a simple theme stated as the A section, and then a choral chordal-movement B section before repeating.

In order to capture the contextual and environmental aspects of the level, I decided I needed to begin in the frozen lands below and ascend to the islands above. As such I begin with a sample of a blizzard being played. I used extensive panning in this section to make the wind feel like it is howling around the player as they trudge through the snow. Before the we hear any hint of the Corridors theme, I wanted to pay homage to the main theme of the game itself, what I will call the “Chrono Theme”.

To evoke the sensation of traveling through these frozen mountains I recorded myself playing the Chrono Theme on the trumpet and mixed it using space designer with a very large room size and a lengthy tail. I also made sure that the sound was wetter than it was dry so it felt like it was coming from a long way away and echoing across the mountains.

So far we have provided environmental information (blizzard), context regarding the source material (Chrono theme), and are ready to introduce the listener to the contextual information regarding what we should be experiencing. For this I added footsteps trudging through snow. To simulate the experience of walking into the temple I made use of automation on the reverb for both the blizzard and the footsteps. I cross-faded the dry sound of the blizzard into the wet sound of a cave-style space, along with dramatically reducing the dry sound so it reduces in intensity. Concurrently I had the footsteps move from a relatively short reverb space outside (347 ms) to a longer (2.96s), wetter and larger cave-style reverb space that I used with the blizzard as well. This gives the feeling of leaving the blizzard behind as you head indoors.

This then leads into the teleportation sound to take us above to the floating islands and the introduction of the Corridors theme.

Initially I just used a combination of Alchemy’s “Laser Canon” in a few different configurations to try and simulate the purely high pitched sound effect used in the original game. After feedback however I combined this with some “Aftershock Rumble” to get the ascending rise but also a low rumble to make it feel intense. I also used a reversed cymbal crash to build toward the crest so we can feel a sense of resolution as the music begins.

The introduction to the Corridors theme begins with a descending strum on a vintage organ and, the primary solo instrument, a Chinese Ruan Moon Guitar. I wanted to create a spacey and ethereal feel and used a stereo delay so that the fragment echoes throughout the space. This descending strum is almost a repeating touchpoint for the piece as it heralds shifts between sections. For the ostinato I initially wanted to retain the simplicity of the original, however trying to create a standalone piece of music is very different to a backing track for a game and requires interest, flexibility and tension and release. As such, I set up multiple iterations to provide variation throughout the piece. In order to provide a pulsing interest the ostinato is always paired between two versions of the same instrument. These different lines are constantly shifting their panning in alternating directions so they cross over each other. To ensure that there was still a clearly distinct main instrument, one is significantly louder than the other. Further to this, the softer track is a single semi-quaver behind the main part of the ostinato which evokes an echoing sense of stereo delay. The initial introduction of the ostinato is the “main version” of it, and makes use of LABS “Soft Piano”. I particularly liked the sample as it was gentle and with some reverb has this spacious tone that I felt fit the mood I was aiming for. It also has the barest hints of the actual keys being pressed which gives a rhythmic counterpoint to the melodic information. Initially I went pretty hard on the ostinato by combining a few instruments together so it was packed full of interesting sounds! However this gave the piece very little room to grow and as such I stripped it down to just the piano by itself and saved some of the other instruments for later iterations.

In order to give the Ruan guitar more gravitas when it comes in with the melody line, I wanted an instrument with a similar yet more gentle tone to introduce a variant on the Corridors main theme. I decided a Celtic Harp carried the same plucked string vibe but was subtler than the Ruan. The song is written in F#m and this variation gave me the ability to set up the overall vibe of the piece and hint at some of the melodic contours that are to come.

The percussion joins at this point and makes use of a high Timbale, as well as a Conga line. I also wanted to have an homage to the original choral “aahs” before I replaced them with something else, so we have a single introduction of the choral section at the beginning just as a callback for those familiar with the original song.

I use an upright jazz bass for the bass line and played with its ADSR so that it had a punchy attack and crisp release. Replacing the Choral sections are LABS string ensembles. I found the original choral movements to be taking up too much of the layer cake orchestration with their density, so I chopped up the line into short, sharp string stabs, juxtaposed with longer descending movements.

This brings us to our first statement of the Corridors theme, what I’ll call A1. I use the texture of A1 as a base point for building density in the piece and try to vary it around that touchpoint. This featured essentially all of the information of the original song but in a different format. We have the melody line on the Ruan Guitar, Piano Ostinato, moving bass, percussion and then short string stabs taking over for the choral “Aahs”.

The first iteration of the B section reduces the material to a sparser variation. The bass holds long notes as opposed to its plodding lines before. The percussion becomes just a Tamborine, and the ostinato is fragmented into an extended variation as well as moved to a muted plucked guitar-harmonic instrument.

In order to soften some of the shaper sounds like the tambourine, I applied a plate filter to mellow out some of the harsher frequencies, which also left room for the choral section to fit into a higher pitched dulcimer sound. None of the original instruments are carried across from A1 to B1, yet the overall tone feels similar due to instrumental choices. It feels like a relaxing rather than a massive change.

The A2 variant returns with our roving bass line and percussive elements yet reduces the high Timbale so that it feels sparser. I wanted this section to have a similar textural density to A1 yet feel like it is building towards something. To this end I changed the ostinato to a plucked guitar version that is far more sprightly than the piano. The Ruan guitar I also elevated by adding variations to the main theme as well as playing with its articulation so we had some tremolo notes.

It is at this point we are introduced to the saxophone. It is difficult to find a “good” sax sample out there, but I was able to create something workable by using logic’s studio horns with some decent reverb through space designer and an almost invisible echo that gives it some added lift. You can barely hear it when the echo is on, yet it adds some much needed richness to the sound.

The saxophone needed to be introduced now so it can become a focus in the upcoming bridge section without feeling like it came out of nowhere. In order to do this I slowly introduce it with fragments of the Chrono theme. The original Chrono theme is in G#m, so thankfully it is just a simple transposition to get it to mesh with the Corridors theme. The sax builds at the end of A2 towards our bridge section.

For the bridge section I wanted to really break away from the literal sense of this track and instead bring in narrative and emotional connections. The bridge section makes heavy use of themes scattered throughout the game and weave together in a dialogue between characters.

To understanding the bridge, we really need to take a step back and understanding some context for the game… So strap in for exposition time! In the middle of this level, the party encounters a small child named “Janus” who tells them that “The Black Wind howls… one among you will shortly perish”. This is both a premonition and a callback to a previous encounter earlier in the game, for little does the player know that the small boy Janus they meet is in fact the younger version of Magus, a foe whom they have spent much time struggling against. For the first half of the game, the nemesis of the party is this “Magus” character. The journey to fight and best him takes up a solid 50% of the game and he is foreshadowed as the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) for much of the establishing segment of the game. When the player finally enters combat with him, before the fight starts he states “Again, the bitter Black Wind begins to howl”.

Magus’ main theme is the theme stated at the beginning of my bridge section. The original Magus Theme proved tricky to adapt and fit into my piece. The song is written in 3/4 with segments in E Phrygian that do not translate well with the F#m tonality. Thankfully the chorus section is in Am and after some extensive rewriting I managed to make it fit with a 4/4 backing time and not sound out of place. This introduction of Magus’ theme functions as a representation of meeting Janus halfway through the level, whilst also foreshadowing the reveal that he is in fact Magus’ younger self.

The second iteration of the bridge features “Frog’s Theme”, which is stated by the trumpet. Frog is Magus’ arch nemesis who joins the party to try and bring Magus’ to justice for his crimes. Frog’s brother was slain by Magus, who proceeded to turn him into an anthropomorphic frog just to provide even more cause for vengeance against Magus. Frog’s theme is written in G#m and 6/8 time signature. With a quick transposition and some rewrites I managed to get it also situated to work in the 4/4 timeframe. The fact that both Frog’s and Magus’ themes both now sound with a triplet feel to them makes them feel related in a way.

Getting two melody lines to sound out without feeling like they were clashing took quite a lot of work. The initial statement of Magus’ theme on the sax was mixed in the centre and placed low to give other instruments room to move. When I added in Frog’s theme I placed it on the trumpet and transposed it quite high. The two different themes thankfully occupy different pitches in the scale for their opening phrases. Magus’ chorus theme begins on the dominant and moves around the tonic without actually settling there until the end of its movement. It also has a large degree of melodic motion. Frog’s theme on the other hand has an AB structure. The B section is also focused around the dominant and features large melodic movements, but thankfully the A section begins on the tonic and remains close to it. By combining the chorus of Magus’ theme with the A section of Frog’s theme the two parts occupy different melodic positions in the scale and therefore do not clash or interrupt each others themes. To further seperate the individual themes I ensured I mixed them so their frequencies were separated, as well as panned Frog’s theme in the trumpet to the right and Magus’ theme on the sax to the left. This becomes a metaphorical duel between Magus and Frog as they battle for supremacy.

As the third iteration of the bridge begins, we have 4 doubled recorded trumpets that reinforce Magus’s theme on the left side, whilst a variant of the Chrono theme is stated in the centre, played on the harp. The harp also occupies the middle ground in regards to register (C#4) between the trumpet (F#4) and the sax (C#3). The trumpet sample I used is sufficiently sharper than the real trumpets and through some panning the real trumpets just act as a doubling to the sax playing Magus’ theme. I needed to ensure that adding a third melodic fragment wouldn’t muddy the already complex interwoven lines of Magus and Frog’s battles. I resolved this eventually through contrasting instrumental choice and using short and sharp plucked tones of the harp to cut straight through the bell tones of the horns so that it is still clearly audible despite the duelling themes in the background. This is symbolic of the main character, Chrono, who's eventual death forces Frog and Magus to work together as allies.

Finally we take our metaphorical battle and return it to the scene from which it came by introducing a variant of the Corridors theme on the Ruan Guitar with heavy use of tremolo so that its textural form would cut through the mix again without displacing the other sounds.

This required quite a bit of work as the tremolo on the Ruan only goes for 1 beat and nothing I could do would extend it further. What I eventually did was create a second Ruan line that would hocket between the original to extend tremolo notes for the longer duration I wanted. It took some time to make them mesh smoothly and not sound like 2 distinct instruments

This bridge section is the climax of the piece and took a lot of work to make it fit without clashing or sounding muddy, but I think each of the parts sings out its own phrases and when you understand the context between each of the melodic lines and how they joust it becomes not just interesting musically, but an emotional section that plays with the understanding of the greater narrative and the motifs utilised within.

After the battle that was just resolved we need pathway back to lower tension. For this B2 section we introduce our ostinato back with a bit of a pep in its step. The piano is joined with the plucked guitar quietly above it to add some lift to the quieter section. The trumpet accompanies the chordal line being played in strings and plucked on the harp.

Following this descent through the Corridors B section, I juxtapose a variant of the Chrono Theme on top of the ostinato backing of the Corridors theme. This variant morphs into a statement of the Corridors theme and functions as a recapitulation to the opening motif connecting back to the Corridors theme.

I wanted the end of the piece to mirror how the actual level finishes. The players find themselves stymied by a mysterious hooded prophet (Magus in disguise, who has travelled back in time), and are banished from the time zone. The next time they return, the main character is slain when encountering the evil power of Lavos (the Black Wind) for the first time. As such I wanted to include a combination quote from adult Magus/child Janus that heralds what is to come.

As this happens I start to reduce the density of the orchestration, there is no epic battle the first time you leave 12,000 B.C., simply an anticlimactic dismissal. The ostinato begins to reduce and the repeating form is discarded. As we close to the final iteration the ostinato fragments even more, like it is running out of power. The final iteration of the Corridors theme features the Ruan guitar and harp playing together as they play a quieter version of the main theme that stutters out in the end. The very end of the song features the time portal sample from the original game signalling the player being forced to leave the time zone.

I feel like the artistic vision I set out to achieve is encapsulated in this piece. It guides the listener through an environmental setting that ties many disparate themes and ideas together and tells a story not just of the notes themselves, but of what each theme represents and how it connects within the greater scheme of the game and the motivic representations.

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