#i like to think it took zelda and link to really (re) fall in love with each other a few months/close to a year

[veggiecorner]

I need to know the peoples opinion

This is so crucial for me to know (no its not i'm just insane) BUT

[airplanned]

Okay, I'll bite. What on earth is "Flodded"?

First of all, it's a typo on my part.

Someone did a really in-depth analysis of what would happen if the Zora Reservoir exploded like it was threatening to in BotW. They had topological maps to show the new inland sea that would be created and where the water would flow and how powerful it would be.

That got me thinking about if BotW Hyrule were flooded. It would have big Wind Waker vibes, and he would have to awaken the Divine Beasts by diving underwater. Kakariko would be a port town.

At the same time, I was also thinking about what would happen if Zelda and Link weren't joined at the hip post-BotW. And I was thinking that he could drop her off in Kakriko and he'd disappear for a while to do pirate stuff and show up every six months or so to bashfully offer her courting gifts.

The big issue at the time was that I kinda wanted to write two very different things: a game re-write with water, and a different kind of post-game story where it was a lot of vibes. So thinking how to combine those never really got it off the ground.

snipit under the cut:

She leans over the side of the boat and skims her hand over the water.  They're flying across the sea, and he stiffens to grab her should she fall, but then she's back in the boat, using her wet hand to clean her face.  Her neck.  Her shoulders. Link tries not to look, but that's a bit hard when you're steering such a small craft.  One time he'd transported a family of four.  It had been cramped, but even then, they felt as if they took up less room than her small frame. Instead, he pulls the boat out of the wind, and slows so he doesn't have to focus as much.  He uses the break to strip off his equipment and pull his Champion's tunic over his head.  When Link had outgrown it, Nudge had had to add in a couple panels, but hadn't been able to match the fabric.  Where did you even get this?  He folds it neatly and tucks it away, pulling out his long coat and replacing his equipment.  As he looks up from securing his well-loved, tricorn hat on his head, it's to see Zelda watching him, a furrow in her forehead. He lifts an eyebrow in question, and she shakes it off.  "You look different." He decides to respond as if she's talking about his clothes.  "This here's a better outfit aboard ship.  Gets a might cold."  He quirks a smile at her.  "It's more expected that I look like this." Her look shifts to curiosity just as there's a flash in the distance, and he arches his neck to see.  "There she is."  He takes the tiller again, pulling them back into the breeze.  "Comin' to greet us." The Navi isn't the biggest ship, but she's big enough.  Fast enough.  One mast and six cannons and enough quarters for his crew to feel comfortable.

[fuckit-hero-of-trains]

Sit by the fire until... Chapter 2

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25870150/chapters/81650737

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you when you get magically transformed into a bunny rabbit against your will by the corrupted darkness of the Sacred Realm: somethings, unfortunately, tend to stick.  

Now, Legend isn’t saying that he’s hiding a cotton tail under his tunic or that his soul secretly aches to frolic in meadows or spend his time sleeping in holes or whatever else it is that rabbits do when they're not busy being very confused and scared twelve year old Hylians.

No.

But that doesn't mean he was left unscathed by having his entire anatomy re-written in less than an instant.

Because of course he wouldn’t. Goddess forbid he ever catch a break for once in his life.

He was still pretty young when it happened, so Legend can’t remember if his teeth had been quite so bucked before the incident. Regardless if they were or not, they sure as Hylia are prominent now. Then there's also the fact that he never really grew into his ears, the damn things always just a shade longer than they should be for a regular Hylian.

Before he joined this wild cucco chase masquerading as an adventure, Legend would sometimes catch himself looking at Ravio wondering, Is that how I would have looked? Besides the hair and eyes, the merchant was supposed to be his mirror image after all. Zelda and Hilda were, so it stood to reason that he and Ravio should be the same.

In which case, the bucktooth thing was going to be a problem regardless.

The ears, on the other hand, are a completely different story. From the quick glances Legend has managed to steal of Ravio’s side profile, the merchant has relatively short ears himself, which just make the Veteran’s own look comically long when the two stand side by side.

And ugh, and that wasn't even touching on his… less physical changes.

 Namely, his cravings.

Noshing on some leafy greens while home alone doing some chores? A-Okay.

Getting caught by Warriors and Twilight absentmindedly chewing on the hay he was supposed to be feeding the horses? Ehhh, not so much.  

Goddesses, his ego still hasn’t recovered from the amount of jokes the Pretty Boy had made at his expense. And that’s not even mentioning the veritable mountain of carrots he found in his bedroll, no doubt courtesy of that flea bitten farmhand.

Regardless of the less than natural way he got these… attributes, Legend couldn’t say they were all bad. ‘Cuz sure, his ears were a bit longer than average, but he could also hear better than most of his companions, able to catch the sound of crunching leaves above even their loud bickering. Like wise, his eyes were sharper than others in the low light of dawn and dusk, allowing him to see things others would miss.

Frankly, both skills had helped keep him alive during his quests. He was thankful for them in a weird huh, guess that works kinda way, but thankful all the same.

But sometimes Legend wanted to wring the goddesses necks because really? Being turned into a rabbit couldn’t have fixed this particular problem?

This particular problem being his absolutely horrible pollen allergies.

“ A-A-A!”

Each rapid, involuntary inhale feels like a simultaneous punch to the gut and a gasp for breath, the air yanked into his body and then stoppered up. It leaves the veteran in a state of limbo as a paralyzing calm falls over him; lungs full of air, shoulders hiked up, muscles tensed.

For a second, everything feels lodged in place, frozen, like the Champion had used his stasis rune on him.

And–

Legend clamps his mouth shut and tucks his face into his elbow just as tension snaps and–

“- acheew! ”

Nothing but a soft, cut off sneeze slips past his lips, yet, the force of holding it back  still sends Legend bowing over. He stays there, hunched over for a breath as his body recovers, before he straightens back up, sniffing irritably as he tries to ignore the itch prickling at his eyes and the congested pressure throbbing behind his sinuses.

A chortling huff sounds next to him and when Legend glances down he can see Wolfie– or should he say, Twilight– peering up at him, mouth open and tongue lolling in a doggy grin, but icy blue eyes too pointed, too teasing, to be anything but human.

Legend's nose twitches tellingly as it begins to tickle again and the wolf gives another stuttering huff. A laugh. Legend can practically hear Twilight’s twangy, Awww. You sneeze like a bunny.

The bastard.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, dog boy,” Legend grumbles, wiping harshly at his face in an attempt to stave off another sneezing fit. “Don't you have trees to piss on or something?”

That earns him peeled back lips and a growl, but Legend just sends the other a responding sneer as strides past the grumpy wolf and out into the rolling field of tulips that stands in front of them.

Another huff, this one more annoyed than amused, sounds behind the veteran before the wolf streaks past him, loping through the flowers with his nose down and tail high.

Legend rolls his eyes.

Twilight loves to show his teeth, but the farmhand is quite literally all bark and no bite.

And besides, they both have better things to do than needle one another. If Legend is going to be miserable, he may as well take steps to make that misery as short as possible.

Afterall, they aren't out here swanning through a meadow of flowers for pleasure.

The last Dark Portal they had all walked through had, once again, separated them. Legend and Twilight were lucky enough to find one another quickly, though, now that Legend thinks about it, it probably had less to do with luck and more to do with Twilight’s nose.

After regrouping, they had tried to search for the others more that day, but a storm had them holed up in a cave overnight to wait out the deluge. They had gotten up early to start their search again today, but so far they had no such luck in finding any of the others in the forest.

Which just left the inexplicable meadow of tulips surrounding the wood.

Legend had been hoping that the rain would keep some of the pollen at bay, but nooo that would be too merciful, wouldn’t it?

If anything, the rain just made this whole experience more aggravating. Now, along with stinging eyes, a running nose, and a throbbing head, Legend also had the delightful honor of feeling the tulip stalks and leaves and petals sliding wetly across his skin, the annoying slap of his tunic smacking his thighs as it got more sodden by the second, and the disgusting squish of water between his toes with every step he took through this Wind Fish damned field.

And sure, maybe it was worth it to reunite with the other heroes, but really, would it kill the goddesses to make his life just a little bit easier.

A bark pulls Legend from his miserable musings. Twilight's dark tail stands out among the ocean of pastel pinks and yellows and oranges, wagging frantically twenty meters away. It disappears after a second, replaced by a muzzle and expectant eyes.

Twilight barks at him again.

He must have found something.

Finally, Legend thinks as he begins to make his way over toward the other, hopefully a reason to get out of this floral hell hole.

“What is it, boy?” Legend asks, voice going high and mocking as he takes delicate care stepping on as many flowers as possible, “Little Time-y fall down the well again?”

Instead of a growl for his effort, Legend gets a flurry of black flecks falling upward, like pieces of reverse snow, in his peripheral vision.

“You know,” Twilight says as he straightens to his full height, eyes half-lidded. Unamused, “You’re really not as funny as you seem to think you are.”

And before Legend can interrupt that– No, actually, you just have a dog shit sense of humor. Literally– Twilight continues, “I can smell the smithy all over this thing.” He nods down at a small tree stump breaking through the tide of flowers. “The scent is a bit old, probably from sometime before last evening, but still traceable. I should be able to find him from here.”

Legend eyes the stump for a moment, peering into the cracked hole in the top of the wood. Inside, he can see the round, red caps of several toadstools sprouting.

He can also sense magic. Close to that of the fairies– natural and glittering and smelling of moss– but not quite the same.

The Smithy’s doing?

Or a natural occurrence?

Regardless…

“Welp,” Legend says, straightening up, “Let's go find him. Couldn’t have gotten far on those little legs of his.”

“Again,” Twilight huffs, the black fractals already consuming him once more as he transforms, “You’re not as funny as you think...”

His voice distorts and fades into nothing as the magic swallows him whole, leaving Legend once again having a conversation with a very unimpressed looking wolf.

“I like you better when you can’t talk,” Legend tells Twilight as the other sets off, snuffling at the ground.

The other pauses to give Legend a look that would be more at home on a disapproving mother’s face, before continuing his tracking.

He also whaps Legend in the leg with his tail.

Hard.

The prick.

They continue on their trek together like that for a while, Twilight occasionally pausing to shove his nose into the dirt some more as he decides which direction to follow as Legend trails behind, keeping his eyes peeled for a quadripartite tunic and a head of straight, gold hair.

It isn't long before the farmhand turned canine breaks off into a light trot and then a jog, and then a full on sprint.

And stops just as suddenly.

Legend is out of breath by the time he slides to a stop behind the farmhand, but from a cursory glance around, there doesn’t seem to be a short, mouthy smithy anywhere in the vicinity.

“What happened?” Legend asks, still searching, turning circles as he cranes his neck, “Did you lose the trail?”

Twilight gives a light whine, grabbing Legend’s attention.

Then he does two full spins and sits primly, looking up at Legend.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Legend crinkles his nose at the canine. “Use your words.”

Wolfie rolls his eyes in a way that Legend didn’t think was possible for dogs and then stands.

The canine stares at him intently, as though making sure Legend’s eyes are locked with his own. And then he flicks his eyes over the yellow tulip he is sitting next to meaningfully. Then back to Legend. Back and forth back and forth, his eyes go for a full minute before he stops and stares at Legend once more.

Legend feels as his face wrinkles in confusion.

It's just a regular tulip, just like the thousands currently around them. Pretty enough, he supposes. The bulb seems to be a little wilted, like it's been weighed down by rain water perhaps, but other than that, nothing to sneeze at.

Or everything to sneeze at, if you’re Legend.

Legend gives the flower one more skeptical glance before turning to look at Twilight once more, brow raised.

“Pretty,” he assures the other. “Not sure how it helps us find Four.”

Twilight heaves another too human sigh.

And then he reaches up,  takes the sleeve of Legend’s tunic between his teeth, and yanks.

“Hey!” Legend yelps as he’s dragged down into the dirt, “Watch the teeth! The embroidery on this thing took forever to do and even longer to enchant!”

Twilight pays him no mind, pulling him down and forward, closer to his chosen tulip.

Legend tries his best to keep his face away from the damn thing.

“I swear on The Three, if your slobber stains–”

Legend’s words crumple up and die in his throat.

There’s something in the tulip.

At first glance, Legend would identify it as the Smithy's earring. The small feathered one that he takes special care of. The one that Four refuses to tell Legend the origin of, besides his cryptic, “From a friend.”

Legend would say that it was just the earring, but… but it isn’t.

Rather than being completely red with a white tip, Legend can see that this little feather is only mostly red. Right before the tip, a darker red plumage takes over, followed by purple and blue and green.

Also, rather than being attached to the small, golden chain and stud Four uses to fasten the jewelry to his earlobe, it’s attached to a body.

A very, very small body.

By now, Twilight has let go of his sleeve, but Legend both doesn’t notice and doesnt care, all of his attention fixed on the little creature before his eyes.

From what he can tell, the little creature is asleep, curled up in the bulb of the flower, his feather tail tucked up near his nose for warmth. Looking past the plumage, Legend can see that the little guy has a very rat-like face, complete with a small, twitching pink nose, long whiskers and–because the creature is shivering– long, chattering rodent incisors. Oval shaped ears stick out from the creature's head, a mix between mouse-like and Hylian.

And framing those ears is shoulder length, soaking wet blonde hair.

Blonde hair held out of the little guy's face by a green headband.

And…

And he’s wearing the smithy’s tunic?

“... Four?” Legend whispers in amazement.

And just saying the other’s name out loud is like a spell because suddenly Legend can see all signs. The little guy has Four’s bag over his shoulder and the Four Sword at his hip. That same magic that was by the stump– the not-fairy, fairy magic– completely surrounds him, dusting him in the same way he is currently dusted in yellow pollen.

“Is that you, Smithy?” Legend asks a little louder.

But rather than startle awake, the small creature– Four, Legend reminds himself– simply hunkers down more fully into the flower, curling up more fully as his shivers increase.

“He must have transformed in order to speak with the Minish around here.”

Twilight’s voice, even though it is a whisper, gives Legend a start. He hadn’t realized the other had transformed, nor had he seen the farmhand crouch down by his side.

The other isn’t looking at him as he speaks, cool blue eyes instead locked on the fitfully sleeping smithy, face concerned.

“He once told me that the Minish are insatiable gossips. He must have transformed to try and find us.”

The concern on the farhand’s face darkens the longer he stares.

“He must have been caught out in the storm,” Twilight says grimly.

Legend tries to imagine what that would be like. To be the size of a mouse and out in a storm. Tries to imagine what it would feel like for gale force winds to pull at drag at him, crushing him into the dirt one moment and yanking off his feet the next. Tries to imagine dodging back and forth between tulips, avoiding the head sized, stone cold rain drops pelting down from the sky

It's not a pretty pictograph, he’ll admit.

And ugh, Legend really isn't a fan of what it's making him consider.

He spares another glance at Four.

And fuck, the little guy shivers and shivers and shivers until the fower he is sleeping in is shaking with it.

And then, he sneezes, the sound coming out tiny and squeaky and weak.

Son of a bitch.

With a sigh that is as weary and reluctant and annoyed as he can possibly force it to be even though the vetran is feeling none of those things, Legend takes hold of the flower near its stem. As gently as possible, he digs his nails into the soft green there, cutting the flower from the ground while keeping it intact.

He hands it to Twilight, who takes it from him with gentle, if slightly confused hands.

With one hand, Legend flips open his shoulder bag. With the other, he rips his hat from his head with a motion probably a tad more violent than is really called for. He arranges the hat inside the bag, making sure to cover his items with the soft fabric while also shaping a soft bed.

Without looking up from his work, Legend extends a hand out to Twilight.

Makes a grabbing motion when what he wants isn't immediately in his hand.

After a second, Twilight slowly places the stem of the flower back in Legend’s hand and the Veteran gently lowers it in the small nest he had created, making sure the bulb sits in a place both shielded from the sun and extra comfortable thanks to the extra fabric padding beneath it.

In one smooth motion, Legend takes a hold of the strap of his bag, pulls it carefully off of his shoulder, and places it on the other side of Twilight’s neck.

And then, he reaches down and touches the dark stone hanging from the necklace around the farmhand’s throat, letting the darkness flock around and consume him.  

When Legend blinks open his eyes, Twilight is looking down at him smugly.

He is looking down farther than usual.

Also looking smugger than usual.

“Shut up,” he grumbles, shaking out his fur before hopping on all fours to get closer to the bag.

“I didn’t say anything,” Twilight replies, not bothing to wipe the smug look off his stupid face even as he lowers the bag to the ground for easier access.

“Yeah you did,” Legend hisses quietly as he clambers carefully into the satchel, settling down the nest of leather and items and hat.

He pulls the flower closer to his side where it is warm.

Inside, he can feel as Four’s shivers begin to lessen.

"Cute," Twilight laughs from above them.

"Fuck you," Legend whisper spits, though he makes no move to push Four's flower away. If anything, he pulls it closer when he hears the smaller hero start to make small, chittering snores, surprised the smithy could sleep through such a racket.

Twilight, thankfully, doesn't comment, instead pulling the top of the bag loosely closed to give them some shade. Then, Legend feels as he gently lifts the satchel back up, slings it slowly over his shoulder as to not disturb the contents inside, and begins walking, hopefully back in the direction of the forest.

Legend can still hear the farmhand laughing to himself from within the bag, but without the others' eyes on him, he finds he doesn't care.

The pollen still itches at his eyes and nose and Legend can still feel the pound of his sinuses even now.  But something about the shade and warmth and soft rocking of the bag makes it hard for him to mind.

Four gives a harty twitch, kicking a petal directly into Legend’s face.

And even that doesn't dissuade the veteran from his task.

Instead, Legend sighs and pulls Four even closer, relaxing despite the discomfort.

He’s got dirt on both Twilight and now Four, the two heroes with sticks most firmly inserted into their asses. He can get out of whatever chores and lectures they try to pin him with.

Yep, he thinks , distantly. That's why he did this.

For the blackmail.

And no other reason.

[kingtaejjang]

So I just finished my first ever botw playthrough and I’m so fucking proud and impressed with this game. I didn’t have a switch until this year, so I had only ever watched my friend beat it and some online clips here and there but I knew the plot since I’m a diehard Zelda fan. But this was the first time I actually got to really EXPERIENCE the whole game and - honestly, botw has cemented itself as my favorite Zelda game ever. Man, Nintendo and the Zelda team really made the most incredible experience with botw. I know a lot of people weren’t too happy that they essentially threw out the original Zelda staples like dungeons and items and keys, but honestly I think that it was worth it for something as open and abstract as breath of the wild. It’s literally in the title - breathing new life into the series. And while I would LOVE to see the original Zelda-style dungeons or harder bosses in botw2, I don’t think that botw itself suffered without them. My only gripe is the final boss being that easy, I just wish that Calamity Ganon took more hits to bring down and that Dark Beast Ganon did basically anything. But I will say I can see how they went for a more Cinematic ending and that was 10/10. The story? INCREDIBLE. The characters? SHOWSTOPPING. The visuals? MINDBLOWING. 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game handle an apocalypse the way botw did. It’s not dramatic or intense, its just quiet - and that was incredible to experience. The end of the world came and went, and life (or whatever’s left of it) goes on. And that feeling after you regain some memories and you realize that you as Link essentially survived the end of the world is so intense and incredible. And god, the Captured memories quest is by far the BEST in the game. Travelling through Hyrule and slowly remembering Zelda (and re-falling in love with her but you didn’t hear that from me) was the most impactful part of the story to me. And the way the game ends, not with a triumphant “You did it!” but a soft and slightly scared “do you really remember me?” had my heart HURTING in the best way. I know they’ll find a way to do it, but honestly I have no idea how Nintendo is going to one up botw in the sequel but I am so excited to see it.

In short, I’m in my feels about botw and going to be in a post-game depression for the next while until I start the DLC! 

[xayneimagines]

The Importance of the Past

Fandom: Legend of Zelda

Pairing:  (BOTW) Link x reader

Warnings: None I think

Genres: Barely Angst, Fluff

Summary: Link and Reader talking about what little he knows of his past, specifically Mipha. Reader offers him some much needed comfort and words of wisdom. Here are some character HC this time around. -The reader is still learning how to fight. Link is mute. The reader knows Hylian sign language, though they still have some learning to do.

Word Count: 1313

Y/N had been traveling with Link for a month or so, having lost count of the days a little after a week of adventuring. Day tracking had proved to be a complicated and, for that matter, unnecessary task. Now they focused on much more useful habits such as cooking and slightly fawning over Link whenever Y/N could. Speaking of…

           Link appeared over the edge of the hill, meat in one hand and sword in the other, chopping at any vines that seemed to stand in his way. Y/N smiled and waved at him, having been left to keep an eye on the fire and let their ankle rest. Link smiled in return, sheathing his sword to take out one of his shields and use it as a resting place for the meat. He sat down on the grown beside them, glad to be off his feet for the moment. 

           ‘How is your ankle doing?’ His hands easily formed the words, slowly his usual pace to help them read along. 

           “It’s doing great. And stop slowing down on my account. I need to practice. If anything I should accommodate you, not the other way around.” Y/N smiled, moving their hands along with their own speech, finding it helped them memorize the signs easier. 

           ‘Oh, please. If I signed and my normal pace, you would never understand me. This is more me accommodating for myself so that I don’t have to repeat myself.’ He smirked lightly, laughing when Y/N thumped his arm with their fist.

“You know, you’re being a bit sassy today. What’s gotten into you, huh? Picking on me.” Y/N grinned before grabbing the meat along with a collection of seasonings and vegetables to start cooking. At this point, they were still getting used to watching him sign while doing other tasks, but they were luckily good at multitasking. 

‘What can I say? You bring the sass out of me. Plus, you’re cute when you’re angry.’ Despite the confidence in his expression, his ears and cheeks still turned a light pink at his minor confession. 

At this point they had already established their attraction to each other, though nothing was technically considered official just yet. With the threat of Calamity-Gannon and the unsureness behind even having a tomorrow, they were both apprehensive about how far things should be taken. This did not stop them from enjoying each other’s company and flirting. 

“Cute? I’ll have you know I’m a vicious warrior with a long history of violence and other...warrior...things.” Their eyebrows furrowed together while they tried to piece together their sentence, but a smile stayed just as clear on their face as it always seemed to do when dealing with him. 

‘Ah yes, warrior things. I know them well. Forgive me, oh great warrior.’

“Okay, haha, laugh it up. You know, you just wait till I’m the one saving you. Then we will see if you can keep that sarcastic face.” Y/N grinned as they flipped the meat in the pan before sitting fully back down. 

‘Alright, I’ll stop teasing you for an hour. How about that?’

“Well, that is the least you can do. So where are we headed in the morning?”

‘The Zora domain. I need to get a weapon of mine fixed…’ As he signed his expression turned into one that held despondent, though towards what was still a mystery to Y/N. 

“Link...You know...you can tell me anything…” Y/N’s soft expression and gentle touch to Link’s arm was meant to show comfort. They had genuine concern, noticing his change in demanor whenever the Zora would first come up. Granted the full conversations about the land and the people weren’t laced with sadness, positive memories involving his friend Sidon and fighting Lynels usually bringing him some joy. Still, that flicker of sadness was clearly there in his eyes, something that Y/N could not ignore. 

‘...I don’t want to worry you with my past. Not that I even remember all of it…It’s just I lost someone.’ He tried to give them a reassuring smile which was met with a shake of Y/N’s head. 

“Why don’t you tell me about them?”

‘Y/n...Um...I was...with them I don’t wan-’

Y/n grabbed his hands lightly to stop him, a smile on their face before they let go to continue their own thought. 

“I figured. Don’t worry, I’m not the type of person that gets jealous over the past. I’m sure they were an amazing person and, no matter how many years pass, they will be an important part of your life...and I want to know about your life...all of it if I can.” Their smile was sheepish as their small rambling came to an end. 

Link smiled and moved a hand to cup their face, a thumb rubbing over the skin there lightly. For a moment they just enjoyed each other’s quiet company, eyes focused on one another. Link slowly pulled his hands away, not wanting to let go but also wanting to communicate his thoughts. 

‘Thank you...That means a lot...Her name was M.I.P.H.A. She was a princess...and was kind. Ever since I was a child she was healing my wounds and doing all she could for her people. I couldn’t save her...I couldn’t really save anyone...She um...she designed my Zora armor...The women in their line do that for the people they plan on marrying...We were close.’

“She sounds wonderful. I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. You can’t blame yourself for the loss though. No matter what, it was the fault of Gannon...not you.”

‘I know, but…still...When I took on the divine beast, Vah Ruta, I managed to free her spirit...That’s how, when I fall in battle, I can get back up so quickly...But I can’t help but think of how alone she was all those years...and the fact I can only remember somethings of our past. The feelings are there, but...all these gaps.’

“Are also things you couldn’t have helped. When you freed her...what did she tell you?”

‘She thanked me...and told me she would support me in my fight.’

“Funny...None of that sounds like her blaming you, Link.”

‘Well she is kind...I don’t think she would say that even if-’

“Don’t live your life on what if’s and re-imagining the past, Link. That will only bring more heartache and pain.” Y/n turned to the pan on the fire, checking on the meat and vegetables before turning their attention back to Link. 

“Link, you’re a good man. You and the champions knew the danger and still risked it all. None of you failed. If you all failed, then we wouldn’t be working towards saving the world right now.”

‘Thank you, Y/N...Hey, when did you get so wise?’

“Well, as a child I slipped down some stairs and hit my head. I think that’s when.” Y/N joked, a wide smile on their face as they finally took the food out of the pot, handing link a plate before plating their own half. 

The food was eaten in silence, both Link and Y/N lost in their own thoughts at the conversation they just had. When the food was finished and they sat it aside, Link tapped their arm to get their attention. When Y/N turned their head, they were met with chapped lips covering their own and a sense of bliss filling their mind. 

Hands moved to bring them closer, one around their neck while the other rested gently on their side. Y/N returned the affection, wrapping their arms around the champion tightly. The kiss did not need to be deepened in order for either of them to get their emotions through to each other. The stopping of the world around them and the love that warmed their chest was proof enough of the love they felt. Link pulled away and rested his forehead against Y/N who happened to be grinning from ear to ear. 

[theorangestar]

Okay, Skyward Sword first impressions!

My first session was long, and there are spoilers for those who never played it before, so my thoughts are below.

- I like the ink blot opening sequence, but I’m a sucker for backstory and lore being told through illustrations and a different style than the main story.

- But why did the Goddess send all the humans to live up in the sky, but not any of the other surface peoples? Are humans just so weak that getting them out of the way is best for everyone? What about the others? I saw a Goron in that ink blot, are you telling me Gorons aren’t worthy of being saved and have to fight? Fuck you, Gorons are great.

- Also, it said humans were sent to Skyloft. Are... are we the humans? What’s the difference between Hylians and humans?

- Okay, the internet told me about Ghirahim and Demise, but who was going to tell me about the spiky doom monster?!

- The colors are very pretty. Skyloft looks great. The water reminds me of the Spyro games.

- Wow, Zelda’s bird is rude.

- Link’s got wood carving tools on his desk and I love me an artistic boi. He made all those figures in his room!

- Pipit is a little intense with severe eyebrows, but I like him. Karane is less intense, and I like her pigtails. I think she crocheted all the bird plushies in her room. I also think she has a crush on Pipit. Little evidence at this point, but that’s my theory.

- Also, if that’s the school uniform, does that mean boys get the long caps and girls get a beret? Karane doesn’t have a long cap like Pipit does. Why the different caps for different genders?

- Also Pipit doesn’t have his own room at the academy. Why doesn’t he have a room?!

- We were a year too late to have a yellow-clad hero. Bananas.

- Who made Fledge try to move these barrels by himself? Rude! At least give him a cart or something. I will help him. This poor guy!! I want to give him a hug, he seems so down on himself.

- Owlan and Horwell make me think of LOTR elves.

- PARKOUR!

- But seriously, I can see how these climbing features led to Breath of the Wild. Sky can parkour, but Wild just clings onto any surface like a spider and just goes.

- Remlits are Pokemon. And I love that Link just picks it up and just keeps smiling at it. Remlits are so cute!

- Zelda is so excited to see Link, this is such a turn from BOTW. She’s so sweet!

- Gaepora is literally an owl man. He is an owl. I don’t think his eyes can go any wider.

- Also, how come the Zeldas never look like their fathers? Zelda doesn’t look anything like an owl! And don’t get me started on Rhoam.

- Honestly, if I was Zelda, I’d be a little pissed if my dad kept saying how amazing my best friend friend is and pointing out how jealous I am but saying it’s natural because my friend’s bond with his bird is JUST. SO. AMAZING.

- SHE PUSHED ME!! D:<

- Wow, Link’s voice is deeper than I expected.

- Okay, someone stole my birb and I have to find it.

- Does no one name their Loftwings? Everyone just refers to them as “my bird”, “your bird.” If they’re supposed to be our soulmates or something, shouldn’t they have names? The remlit gets a name but not the Loftwing?

- ... Fledge, what do you know?

- These character designs are really weird. Obviously, Link and Zelda are made to be the most attractive characters, but the rest is a weird range of, slightly exaggerated but pretty normal to WTF.

- I don’t like Groose’s mouth. It makes weird shapes.

- Okay, he says I’m bragging about my friendship with Zelda, but so far it seems just her dad brags about it. I haven’t said anything. Sorry dude that I have her dad’s approval. Can’t beat that.

- Stop making that face at Zelda, it’s creepy!!

- FLEDGE!!! My goddess...  I may forgive you in time, but right now I’m mad. A heads up would have been nice! And after I helped with that barrel!

- I has sword.

- Okay, I do have a bit of trouble with the motion controls for the sword. Maybe I’ll get better with practice, but the precision I need for some of these cuts may be a problem down the line.

- Okay, does Link have premonition powers or something? First the dream with the monster, then he gets a vision at the blocked cave of his bird, even though he can’t hear or see it from this vantage point, and then later the dream with Fi. Is Link an oracle?

- ... It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that I needed to cut the gate with the sword. I’m dumb.

- MY BIRB!! :D I’m calling him Red. Or maybe Big Red.

- FLYING IS HARD OMG. I just keep going in circles over and over and over. This is going to be really difficult, and I had to recalibrate my joy cons a couple times midair.

- Okay, so Link and Zelda are the only ones around for the ceremony. Why is no one around to watch? How do they know we did it? We could’ve just skipped it and no one would have known.

- SHE PUSHED ME AGAIN!! D:<

- Aiming is hard when you’re falling. :’(

- Oh, this is a date. She wants to go on a date. Well okay, but only if she stops pushing me off stuff.

- HOW DID WE NOT NOTICE THE TORNADO?!

- Well shit.

- Also I fell again, but this time Zelda didn’t push me.

- Gaepora is really taking this well. I mean, he’s clearly concerned, but for someone whose daughter just potentially fell to her death, he’s really understanding about it.

- Fi ghost just had to lead me around the longest way possible, didn’t she.

- Also how do you pronounce her name? I’ve heard people pronounce it “Fye,” like “my”, but I keep wanting to say “Fee,” like “Do Re Mi.”

- I take back what I said about remlits.

- Motion controls once again my downfall. I’m trying to point the sword up, but Link will not follow me until my arm is completely arched over my head instead of straight up. I imagine from Fi and Gaepora’s point of view Link is just waving the sword around like a complete idiot.

- Between the sword fighting, the charging of the Goddess Sword, and all the flying, my arms are already sore. I better be ripped by the time this game is over.

- Okay, there was no chance to save any time from when I went to rescue Big Red to when I put on the green uniform. And Fi’s journey blocked all the save statues. I needed another save point in there.

- Fledge gave me a pouch, how sweet! Oh, he’s still talking down about himself. Okay, fine, I forgive him. My two goals for this game are to save Zelda and to find Fledge some self esteem.

Okay, that was my first session with Skyward Sword. I’m liking the story, but some of the controls are frustrating. I’m hoping it’s just a learning curve and I’ll get better as I go on. I know the Wii version had complaints about the controls, but I’m hoping some of it was fixed for the Switch.

Also Link is so cute!! I have to say, Link being so expressive is such a nice change from BOTW where he only makes expressions in certain situations, like when he’s taking a selfie, but he never makes any kind of expression when he’s talking to someone. It’s hard to read his character that way. But SKSW Link I feel I understand him more, and he has such a pretty smile. No wonder Zelda fell for him. XD

[sibyl-of-space]

Do you ever set out to write a blog post about why you like OoT3D so much and accidentally write a stupidly long think piece about your feelings on growing up? well i did. Behold,

A word of warning: this piece starts off on a heck of a tangent getting into my personal history with the game, as I don't think it's possible to talk about how I feel about it without that context. This isn't a review so much as an essay, and it's as far from impartial as one can get. I don't think I would be very good at writing an impartial review if I tried. So I didn't try.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the first video games I recall finishing on my own as a child. I grew up with two older siblings and would often play multiplayer games with them, or start (and not actually finish) other single-player games; generally if anyone actually BEAT a game it was one of the older siblings, and I would be either spectator or 2nd player. Which I thoroughly enjoyed, but taking the agency of gaming into my own hands was an experience of its own, and for that reason Ocarina of Time was very special to me.

As a child with undiagnosed ADHD I relied on familiarity for comfort. I only played this game in the first place because I'd seen my sibling do it first, and after I did beat it once, I kept coming back to it because I recognized it. I played it over, and over, and over. I talked to the same NPC's each time until I had most of their dialogue memorized. I put off the same dungeons I didn't like by doing the same sidequests. I jumped off random cliffs and tried to get the camera to look through walls when I got bored of the game, because it was familiar and I liked it, but I was tired of playing it properly. My brain became its own personalized wiki around the pieces of this game I knew... not that "game wikis" existed at the time.

Playing it in this particular way, I had a very specific opinion of it.

It was my first Zelda, so to me, it defined what "Zelda" was. Zelda was a set of goalposts provided that I was free to follow or ignore as I saw fit. Zelda was being Blank Slate McProtag with a grand, magical destiny to claim, not a grounded character with a personal story to tell. Zelda was using the power of music and a Big F*cking Sword to smite evil and save the world. Zelda was growing from fairy boy to Hero of Time and riding around a big field on a horse. Zelda had a lot of NPC's telling me what to do, and Zelda let me just completely ignore all of them until I felt like following directions.

And I spent a lot of my time completely ignoring directions. I didn't actually like any of the dungeons. I just hated some more than others. I hated the water temple because it was confusing to me and it was very punishing if you make a misstep (whoops, shouldn't have raised the water level? time to re-change it 2 more times to fix that). I hated the shadow temple because it was scary (DISEMBODIED HANDS FALLING FROM THE CEILING THIS IS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES). I could easily list dozens of things that I hated about every dungeon. So I never went straight to them when I was supposed to.

Dungeons--you know, the bulk of the gameplay in an action-adventure game--were these annoying things I had to trudge through to play the game, and it was the game that I liked. Which sounds counter-intuitive as an adult, but it was absolutely how I felt as a child.

But, begrudgingly, I did them anyway... sooner or later. I did the water temple because I felt sad for the Zoras frozen in ice and wanted to save them. I did the fire temple because I felt sad for the imprisoned Gorons and wanted to save them. I did the shadow temple because I missed the music in Kakariko Village and the rain felt depressing. The game told me what was wrong, and what I had to do to fix it, so I eventually did the dungeons I hated because there were fictional people counting on me.

(I also did a lot of NOT fixing things, and instead picking up random rocks on the overworld looking for grottos, and throwing bombs at random walls, and harassing cuccos from my invincible horse. Don't get me wrong, the people could wait, it's not like the game punishes you for taking your sweet time. But... well, at some point I would get bored of my procrastination, and do what I had to do to save the world or whatever.)

It's entirely possible that this game was my Favorite Zelda for a very long time simply because it was the first one I played. My inclination toward the familiar was an ENORMOUS bias in its favor, so other Zeldas that were different in... virtually any respect, were obviously worse and un-Zelda-like.

But there were definitely things I loved about it, things that made it my favorite, other than its familiarity. Maybe this game shaped my tastes to suit it; maybe I was drawn to it because of these preferences. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case, I played the game repeatedly for years despite hating its dungeons because there was so much else about it I was wholly obsessed with.

I loved the way it brought attention to its music. I was already taking music lessons from a young age so I was developing an ear for it, and being able to hear the link (lololol) between "Saria's Song" and the background music you hear in the Lost Woods... it gave that music a very special identity, a context and meaning. These melodies were simple for my young ear to reproduce on cello or piano if I wanted to, and I could even play them in the game on its own digital instrument. (Don't tell my cello teacher this, but I probably spent significantly longer learning how to tilt the control stick to play songs on the virtual ocarina than I spent practicing cello scales.)

A decade or so later, I gained the vocabulary to describe what I loved so much about the music in Ocarina of Time. The term is "diegetic music," music that is audible and perceivable as music within the context of a work. This game gave me a magical musical instrument and let me use the power of music to do magical things. I was a magical musician in this game! AND I had a sword!!! Literally the perfect video game.

It was more than just the music, of course. I loved the visuals as well. I would sit in the middle of Lon Lon Ranch in first-person view staring at Malon for hours so I could draw her and her stupid hairline on binder paper leftover from school. (I would sing along to her awful voice, too, but only when no one was around to overhear.) I liked the interesting patterns at the hem of her dress, the design on the panel hanging from her belt as an adult. After obtaining a spiritual stone or a temple medallion I would leave it on screen, with Link standing there holding it up long enough for his arms to get quite tired, so I could trace down its design. I took personal offense when people drew the Kokiri Emerald backwards. I felt like a genius when I realized the pattern on the back of the Deku Shield matched the golden part of the emerald. The game had an entire language of images that I was completely enamored with, and it was all so bright and colorful.

I guess I liked the story, too? It's hard to say definitively because I don't have any specific memories about that. I definitely enjoyed the writing, though. I liked the unique dialogue telling me about the relationship between the bald guy, the carpenter, the potion grandma, and the cucco lady ("her name is NOT Anju, she's DIFFERENT from the character in Majora's Mask, YOU WOULDN'T CALL MALON "CREMIA" - me). I liked talking to people and learning about the world. It gave me the chance to feel like I was really experiencing a whole, more fantastic world than the real one, where magic is real and a horse teleports to you if you play a song on your magic wind instrument. Among other things.

I was engaging with this game more as a multimedia artwork than as a game, but I was having a very good time, so what does it matter if maybe that wasn't supposed to be the point? I loved the music and the visuals and the worldbuilding, and I learned how to play it so I could experience these. That is what I meant, as a kid, when I would say that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was my favorite Zelda game. I didn't give too much of a hoot about Ganondorf's characterization or the temple design of the Bottom of the Well, I just thought Hyrule seemed pretty dang neat and I wanted to live in it for a while.

Unfortunately, at some point or another, I started to do this very hard thing called Growing Up. I resisted this thing for as long as I could, and to an extent I am still resisting it, but over time it did start winning the battle. As it did so, my perspective on gaming and other media began to evolve.

I won't do a disservice to my younger self by pretending to remember all of my different opinions and the various justifications for them over the course of my life so far. Ocarina of Time fluctuated between my favorite, to my second-favorite just under Majora's Mask, to my favorite, to "I love it but it's not the best", to favorite again, etc. I think it spent most of its time just under Majora's Mask, because there reached a point where I'd played Ocarina of Time so much that no amount of love for its visuals and sound and world could make up for the fact that it was getting stale. Majora's Mask felt much more rewarding for me when I would replay it over and over again and people moved and said different things and time really passed. I wanted a world that felt alive, and there was no question to me that Majora's Mask felt more alive.

So I gradually fell away from Ocarina of Time. I had it basically memorized anyway, and the NPC's never moved like they do in Majora's Mask, so what was the point? When Ocarina of Time 3D came out I was briefly very excited for it, but I wanted it to feel new again so I did a 3-hearts no-lens-of-truth "challenge run" off and on over the course of a few years, and that was as much as I played it again for a long time. Sure, the visuals were nice by comparison, but I still knew the game by heart.

That was in 2015. The next time I picked up Ocarina of Time 3D was last year, in 2020, over 5 years later, and probably double that many since the last time I'd played it all the way through in one go. So at age 27, I played a video game that had been everything to me as a kid, a game that I once knew better than the back of my hand, but now with only a vague recollection of its contents and an entirely different perspective.

It was the freshest eyes I've had on it since the first time I ever played it. It is probably the freshest eyes I'll ever have on it again.

Currently, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (3D) is without a doubt my favorite Legend of Zelda game, and one of my favorite video games I've ever played. This playthrough convinced me. I know that opinion may fluctuate again in the future, but that matters a lot less to me than expressing how much I love it right now, in this moment.

A side-effect of my Growing Up is that I don't get immersed in video game worlds like I used to. I'm unable to pass hours at a time just walking around a fictional town and pretending I live there. I place a lot more weight on gameplay, because if a game isn't fun, I am not going to spend much time playing it. I'm not scared of polygonal hands falling from the ceiling, especially given that they're extremely easy to dodge and easier to kill. Lastly, I've developed a habit of over-analyzing media in a way that prooobably hinges on "total bullsh*t" to others, but is significant to me.

So I was playing Ocarina of Time decidedly differently. I was actually following the directions given to me in the game, taking note of dungeon design elements that impressed or interested me, and deriving my own interpretation of the narrative as conveyed by story, gameplay, music, and visuals. One could probably say I was playing it "as intended" for the first time, but honestly, who even cares about intention.

I found myself really invested in the story. I like how there is a narrative implied for Link, not necessarily through the game telling me about his backstory with X and Y characters (the game tries that with Saria, but it falls a bit flat), but through his growth in terms of capability over the course of the game. Starting out as a kid who can only roll, getting a dinky sword and a shield that burns away, turning into an adult and using a bow with better control than the slingshot, etc until you are obtaining gauntlets that let you suplex massive boulders 20 times your size. I felt like I, as the player, experienced the transition from "I'm playing Adult Link the same as Young Link but taller," to "my moveset is completely different and I'm basically a god now," and it gave me a different kind of immersion from what I experienced when I was a kid. I was immersed in Link's growth because I felt like I transformed from being a kid to a total f*cking badass by the end of the game. I was projecting my own thoughts of whether he is a "child" or "adult" based on my own experiences and thoughts while playing.

And that narrative, that commentary on what it means to be a "child" and grow into an "adult", hits entirely differently when playing a game that I saw one way as a kid and now see another way as an adult. The game was commenting on how different the world looks to a child versus to an adult, and at the same time I'm noticing how different the game itself looks to me now, as an adult, versus when I was a child.

I currently interpret it as one of the most well-told coming of age stories I've ever experienced.

I also have a newfound appreciation for Ocarina of Time's iteration of Zelda, the character. When I was a kid, even though I knew Zelda and Sheik were the same person (sorry for spoilers but it's true), I still didn't really perceive them that way. I didn't even really perceive the adult and young versions of characters as the same person, because they look different and act different. I was a kid, I didn't have life experience and context to think of them in those terms yet.

I do now, and I'd like to go on the record stating Ocarina of Time Zelda is cool as f*ck. She spends 7 years in hiding undergoing secret ninja training, can somehow make an entire orchestra accompany her when she plays harp, has extremely dramatic entrances and exits for literally no reason except for the production of it... by the time the Nocturne of Shadow cutscene comes along there's an interesting and compelling camaraderie between Link and Sheik-Zelda, even though they've only had like 5 cutscenes together where all Sheik does is recite heavily pointed poetry. When Zelda reveals her identity at the end, it's a really powerful moment that sells the same "fate brought us together" feeling you get from the very first meeting with her in the courtyard, and again at the final reunion at the very end.

I'm repeating myself here, but I really have to emphasize: this game is most successful in what it conveys narratively without saying it. Sure, it tries to explain to me that Link is Saria's long time BFF or whatever, but that's mostly offscreen, and when you have Sheik show up and teach you magical songs at key plot beats and then reveal herself to be the princess who has dictated your journey from the start, that relationship starts coming off as a lot more meaningful. No offense Saria. Sorry about your ocarina.

This narrative-via-gameplay that I am probably heavily exaggerating from the text wouldn't be very successful if the gameplay weren't good. Fortunately, I'm quite pleased to announce that the dungeon design in Ocarina of Time (3D) is largely really solid. The Shadow Temple and Ice Cavern are the only real drags, the former because Bottom of the Well already did what it tries to do but better, and the latter because it's just boring bottle management when blue fire could have been so much cooler. Other than that? I had a BLAST. Puzzles are fun and interesting, enemies are diverse to suit their environments, I was totally RPing as mr. hero guy going on an adventure and exploring interesting places with distinct designs and great vibes. Turns out I actually love the water temple! Who knew? (Color-coded doors signaling water level changes helped a LOT.) And collecting magical artifacts along the way was just... fun. No better word for it. The game is fun!

There are, however, two things I completely agree with my younger self on.

The visuals and music in this game. Are awesome.

Ocarina of Time 3D looks, visually, the way I always wanted Ocarina of Time to look on the Nintendo 64. It's the same but more vibrant, rounded, colorful, detailed; but, the same. It's just brought to life. Even as a kid playing the 64 version with nothing to compare it to I wished the models were less pointy and ugly, and now I have a version where it looks the way I always dreamed it could, and I'm never going back. I have visual nitpicks with the 3DS version I can count on one hand and a mountain of things I love about it. The trade-off is nowhere near equal.

As for music? I stand firmly with child-me. Wielding a magic ocarina that you can play whatever you want on is unmatched, and weaving melodies for gameplay purposes that also match iconic BGM pieces is brilliant. I don't spend hours on end playing Rick Astley on it anymore (...but maybe I did spend fifteen minutes or so, for old times' sake), but I am ever a sucker for media in which music is a vessel for magic, especially when I'm allowed to play that music myself.

Everything I now love about this game, all of my take-aways from it, are perfectly encapsulated by the last scene as an adult, after defeating Ganon, when Link and Zelda have a conversation floating in the sky because Magic. (I don't need an explanation for why they're in the sky, they're in the sky because Magic, and because it's a gorgeous setting that fits the mood.) And after an entire game in which the Song of Time is emphasized as an important piece associated with traveling 7 years through time from the Temple of Time, Zelda tells you that she is going to send you back, and brings the ocarina to her lips. Zelda, who taught you the Song of Time in the first place.

And she plays Zelda's Lullaby.

Her performance hesitates, just slightly, before the last couple notes, and she opens her eyes to see you disappear, never to meet again in this future, but perhaps to meet again in another one.

It's absolutely perfect. That musical decision is one I never even noticed as a kid, but it is absolutely everything to me now. I don't necessarily know that I have the words to explain what about it is so perfect to me, other than "literally everything." Ocarina of Time's dynamic between Link and Zelda is simply poetic. It's a dynamic that is less about them feeling like real people and more about this sense that they are part of a greater destiny, two of the most important figures in the universe, souls whose combined story transcends time.

Maybe those kinds of stories aren't as impactful to some. But to me, there is nothing more deserving of a title like "The Legend of Zelda" than a game where, at the end of it, I truly feel as though I've been a part of something legendary.

[aurimeanswind]

Let’s Make Up—Sunday Chats—4/22/18

So last week I had a Sunday Chats all written and done, and while writing the last two closing paragraphs, my web browser crashed and Tumblr, being the platform with apparently no fail safes at all, completely lost all of what I wrote. I was initially going to just rewrite it the next day or the following Wednesday (my next day off) but then life happened and to be perfectly honest I had what we call in the biz a godawful week, so it didn’t happen. I apologize, I took your questions and selfishly coveted my answers when you had taken your time to submit them, and I am very sorry for that.

To make up for it, this week I am answering all of last week’s questions IN ADDITION to the few I got for this week, so hopefully it’ll be jam packed. Luckily I didn’t have a big editorial thought-piece ready for last week, so for this week...

The 10 out of 10

So I’ve been playing God of War, as I’m sure many of you readers have been, and I’m delighted by it in so many wonderful ways. But I think the reviews definitely set an expectation that is really impossible to meet. I’m not treading new ground here, I think that’s safe to say (as is usually the case with my writing) but it’s just the thought I’ve had the most playing God of War.

I think you get this idea that it’s a series of incredibly brilliant moments that tie together beautifully, and while I think much of that is true, a lot of what you do in God of War is run around and fight dudes. As great as that is, I’ve only had maybe two big moments in my ten or so hours with it. But the quality of what I’ve seen so far just gets me excited to see what moments I have coming up, especially since at this point, I really have absolutely no idea what the hell is going to happen next.

What i think gets understated in such a masterful score is just the sheer volume of production value poured into every inch of a game. I think that’s something that’s hard to convey across an entire review, let alone just a score, but boy, there is just a ton of polish and excellence throughout the game, from the small animations, to how Kratos always grabs a cliff’s face and doesn’t clip through it.

It’s really excellently made, and I hope everyone out there is enjoying it as much as I am.

What’s on Tap

So I finished Kingdom Hearts 1

I re-beat this game again, finally going and doing all the additional content, like synthesis, extra bosses, grinding to level 100, etc.

I dunno... I think Kingdom Hearts is great but its “post-game” content is really underwhelming. I think none of the bosses are truly “special” in a way that they are in Kingdom Hearts 2. They don’t have these strategies seared into my mind, at least.

That being said, the design philosophy in KH1 versus its sequel is so completely different and fascinating. It’s far more Metroidvania in its intent to have you backtrack and re-explore already searched areas. It feels almost like it’s from a completely different franchise.

Like... There is ZERO platforming at all in Kingdom Hearts 2. Like, none. I can’t think of a section where you have to jump from a thing to a thing, except maybe the extra dungeon they added in the Final Mix version.

It makes me hopeful that maybe they’ll revisit some of these ideas in Kingdom Hearts 3 but eh. I doubt it.

Kingdom Hearts 2 on Critical

I started this and it’s about as frustrating as I anticipated. It’s not terrible or world ending, as its essentially just Proud mode difficulty with half your total health.

But I’m about to fight Xaldin in my playthrough so basically it’s all downhill from here.

God of War

So yes, I’ve been playing God of War. It is indeed, a video game.

I mean it’s really great. I talked about it a lot on last night’s podcast if you want some more detailed thoughts. But here are some standouts:

The combat is labored in a way that makes it so much more intense and significant. Of all the things that remind me of The Last of Us, it’s this aspect. It’s the intensity of each hit, the feeling of desperation in every slam and slash, and the violence that goes with it feels justified in the God of War universe where it absolutely never has before.

I get a ton of Darksiders vibes from this game, specifically Darksiders 2. The way it introduces side areas, side dungeons, side puzzles, and especially chests, reminds me a ton of how Darksiders approached formulaic Zelda ideas. It works very well here.

The Axe is, of course, excellent. But I’d say it isn’t the throw of the axe that works, it’s calling it back.

The ambient dialogue between your characters feels pulled straight out of a Naughty Dog game, and it feels so derivative of that that it makes me like it a bit less that I’d personally want to. It just feels almost exactly the same, just with different characters, and so far, outside of Kratos and how “deals” it dialogue, there isn’t enough separating it.

Overall very good. I will eventually be writing a review for IrrationalPassions.com. Look for it someday.

Questions

Remember to look for my tweet with the hashtag #SundayChats every Sunday afternoon, reply to it with your question, and boom. That’s how the magic happens.

Last week’s questions:

Ya know last week I’d have a different answer but I’ll revisit that later. In short: stuff is happening. I’m trying to live my life. Trying to do good. Failing a lot, but I’ll keep trying.

I’ve been crazy busy too. I feel like this is the year I am trying to teach myself different and new things, whether they be on a technical level, or maybe software, or something else along those lines.

Thank you for the kind words. As for the future, I think there is another question asking a bit of something like this, but it’s trying to stay busy and trying to make bigger and better moves. Like, E3 I think is out of the question, but PAX West isn’t, and aiming for something like that is really exciting and it gives us a lot of new options and opportunities. Plus, we’ve been trying to have actual meetings on the reg about what we’re doing and what ideas we have.

A big one that Scott White has been spearheading you’ll probably know more about by the end of this month, and there are some new shows and new styles of pieces I think we are all trying to do. As for me, I just want to get better with video stuff, with supporting the team, and with GA, as that’s my main new project.

I like milk. I drink milk, by itself, or in chocolate form, pretty regularly. I’ve been at a restaurant with friends and asked for a glass of milk and everyone laughed at me. I’ve since never done that.

Milk is good.

I mean the biggest one was assuredly The Messenger, which is like, my #1 most anticipated. But I was lucky that my team got to go out there and see stuff and present it to me with cool thoughts and perspectives on all of them. Like, Solo sounds super cool and I want to see more of it, and City of Brass wasn’t on my radar at all but seems really cool. Mike convinced me to see Omensight and that’s just a really rad new entry from a team I didn’t think had it in them.

I mean, I don’t even really know who Kid Rock is. I mean I know of him, but eh. I’ve never heard his music before a day in my life. I hear he is like, not good? Like, not a good person, not necessarily a bad musician. But I don’t want to assume. Is this libel? Am I getting black balled out of the industry right now?

Also you look hella cute Roger. So proud of you.

It absolutely was not. A big thing was I was planning on getting a 4K TV, and since I had the Xbox One X I was happy with just that and then the HDR that my original PS4 could reach. But there was a good deal and if I was already investing so much I wanted to get the most out of my TV. So I swear to god if a PS5 comes out next fall I’ll be pissed.

Brian. Nabeshin. Jackson. So I can know what it feels like to be the nicest dude in the world and also a great uncle.

It’s really sad. But also nice since I can be alone again. But also sad.

A bit of a mixed bag.

Pretty much anything in Final Fantasy 15 looks amazing and delicious. But that Beef Bowl in Persona 4... Man, I’ve had dreams about that Beef Bowl.

This week’s questions:

Shoutout to Brandon Gann, who is in ALL WEEK’S questions for Sunday Chats.

Yes, God of War is great. I think I got into it pretty well above, but yes, I really enjoy it. The combat, above all else, just feels so great. It reminds me a TON of DmC Devil May Cry in that it is training me well and I feel really good at it. Plus the way the weapons work kind of reminds me of that kind of combat too.

It absolutely has to be the SNES. I think I’ve lost countless hours to that system, and it’s something that, as a gift for me, I had my parents go and buy of eBay waaay past its time so as I could sit down and revisit all these classic games. Something I’m still incredibly appreciative of to this day.

But A Link to the Past and Super Metroid are just so formulative of my current taste in games and the things I seek out the most in video games (see: adventure and backtracking) and that was the console I sank the most time into without a doubt. I think GameBoy is totally a great choice, I didn’t have my own until I got a GameBoy color, but the GBA was the one I fell in love with the most, and I wouldn’t really get deep into that until much later.

Hey like, real talk everyone? Hey? Everyone bring it down, it’s real talk time?

Like, I’m doing suuuuper not good. Like actively very bad, and it’s just a whole lot going on. Last week is like, top three, top four worst weeks ever for me, and I had to make a whole bunch of adult decisions that, while I was prepared for them, I wasn’t happy about anything, and everything seemed to just make the situation more miserable. On top of that, I just feel like I’ve been really shitty and a shitty friend to basically all the people in my life that matter the most, and on top of that I have a lot of stress from work and money and blah.

Like, in the grand scheme of things, I’m doing okay, I’ll be okay, but I feel bad, it all feels bad, and it’s pretty shitty. Like, I know this probably wasn’t the answer expected, but it’s definitely the truth.

I’ll do better next time.

In my defense, it’s what I was doing up until I started writing this, and, while I do need to go do the dishes before I get back into God of War because lord knows no one else will, I’ll be continuing my adventure in Midgard until I pass out tonight.

I mean I feel really good about it, so long as everyone involved feels good. Like we’ve certainly hit a lot more readers and have broadened our audience in a way we’ve never been capable of before, and we have opportunities now that we’ve never had before, and I feel really good about that. I’m not super into the numbers, but I am into opportunity, ability to cover games pre-release, go to events, things like that.

As for the end of the year, I feel like, or at least I hope, there is a bit more cross pollination as far as skill, like more folks will be able to support Social, and more folks will be able to do video, or host shows, or whatever that may be. But I want that to all happen within comfort: like Social is Jurge’s thing, and if he doesn’t want to share that because of his ownership of it, I get that, I respect that, and I’m all about that. People gotta have their territory of expertise, and since I’ve been jack-of-all-trading it alone this whole time, I’m all about doing that for myself.

Even though I kind of already have and that’s editing.

The Ninja Samurai from Ghosts of Tsushima (upcoming, I know) and Sly Cooper, because I’m all about creating the greatest Ninja clan this side of the land of the rising sun.

That’s all I got for this week. Thank you all for your patience and understanding. I’ll do better next time. I will try and continue to do these more consistently. I love you all, thank you for reading and supporting and listening and being great.

Until next time, keep it real.

[lyntendoswitch]

At the tail end of 2020 I discovered the video content of Tim Rogers who has inspired me to also voice my game opinions in an unnecessarily verbose and personal way. I don’t recommend clicking on the read more, but if you’d like to read a little bit about the best games I played this year, go on ahead.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch 9. A Short Hike 8. Disco Elysium 7. Personal 5 The Royal 6. Persona 3 Dancing In Moonlight 5. Vestaria Saga War of the Scions 4. Ring FIt Adventure 3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2. Hades 1. Animal Crossing New Horizons

2020 found me with an unprecedented amount of free time. I spent most of this year working for the government (a job with a very small brain effort that left me with evenings and weekends free to do whatever the hell). Additionally, I spent most of the year in quarantine with video games as my true, real friend and life companion. Compiling this list gave me more titles than ever to choose from, so I feel better about my list than ever. So here are the best games that I played this year.

Before I get into the top 10 I want to give 4 honourable mentions.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim This is the most recent game I played since making this list. I loved so many things about this game - the soft art style, the harsh music, the convoluted crazy plot. I love the aesthetic of this game and loved the characters - I believe it is rare to have an anime game where none of the characters irritate you. I even loved the combat, although I did not think I would. Something about shooting so very many missiles is so satisfying even when you don’t exactly know what is going on in the screen. The final battle in this game was definitely my favourite moment in this game - it was stressful, it was engaging, it was so extremely fun. The tragedy of this game comes down to personal taste. All time travel stories with complex timelines are bound to fall apart eventually, because no writer can keep all the threads together in a logical sense. 13 sentinels had so many story beats, plot twists, betrayals, and sci-fi tropes crammed into their storyline that I knew halfway through the story that there was no way they would be able to resolve all of it in a fulfilling way. I was, unfortunately, right - the ending explanation for all the chaos is, in my (correct) opinion, extremely lame. However, I certainly had fun on the journey.

Fire Emblem 3 Houses: Ashen Demons DLC I did not place this on my ranking since it is not really fleshed out enough to be considered its own game (unlike in previous years, where I have confidently but the Splatoon 2 Octoling Expansion as a separate title from Splatoon 2). However, this blog is, above all else, a Fire Emblem stan account, and I will not NOT talk about Fire Emblem. I do not care for the Abyss house. I think the characters are too close to being plucked out of the Fire Emblem Fates universe for comfort, and I mean this to be as profound an insult as possible. These characters are gimmicks above all else. I also do not care for the expanded lore that the sewer city brings to Garreg Mach. The idea of a centralized church school army is already so unstable, and to have a population of rat people living under it makes the whole foundation of the world crumble a little. However, the story and gameplay of the Ashen Demons DLC added something that the base game did not, which is challenge. (As an aside, I play on normal mode and am aware that there is challenge available to me if I wish for it.) FE3H offers you so many characters, so many paralogues, so many opportunities for training and stat increases, that eventually plot missions become completely boring. Ashen demons limiting everyone to new and interesting classes, limiting your available units, and preventing any sort of training made the chapters fun again. I found the chapter where you were supposed to outrun a golem before some gates closed fun as hell - it was my favourite part of the entire side story. 

Kentucky: Route Zero I played this game in February, and I remember not liking it at any point. It is confusing, disorienting, and lacked a clear goal. However, it has now been 10 months and I still think about it constantly - both the vignettes presented in it, and the way it made me feel. The Besties podcast made an excellent point about this game when they said that no one who plays this game ever compares it to other games - only books, movies, or paintings. The whole game is so fascinating and sticks with you - the wretched circle of a highway, the horse funeral. My favourite part is the live performance you attend at a run down diner with your party of four as the only audience. It is so quiet and contemplative and melancholy, and the scene is absolutely perfect. Kentucky Route Zero might be my favourite high concept artsy abstract artwork ever.

Blaseball As with everyone, it is difficult to call Blaseball a game. As the website says, it is a cultural event that I am so happy to participate in. I am so happy to have found a piece of media to fill the aching void that left by Homestuck when it ended, then re-opened the wound with their awful post-epilogue novel. I deleted my Twitter account this summer because I was tired of being angry and doomscrolling. And then, after Chris Plante on the Besties told me about Blaseball, I happily remade a Twitter account that only followed the official Blaseball account, the devs, and the numerous RP accounts. The quality of life improvement that having simulated, pleasant, hilarious social media to check every day is indescribable. It helped me cope with a rough life transition. Thank you, Blaseball. My favourite moment of 2020 is the 11pm boss battle of Shoe Thieves vs The Shelled One’s Pods.

And now....... The List.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch The start of 2020 was incredible because games journalism websites were churning out endless top 10 lists for both the end of 2019 as well as the end of the decade. I religiously picked through all of these lists and wrote down a list of 30 best indie games of this past decade that I missed out on for whatever reason. It was my first and last experience with a backlog - previously, I would simply impulse purchase games I really wanted to play, and I would not rest until the game is beaten. Having a backlog of things to try stressed me out endless and it dampened the impact of almost all of these quirky 1-6 hour indie experiences. However, not even the stress of meeting a self-imposed quota could dampen the impact of What Remains of Edith Finch. Exploring this house and playing through its various scenarios was so fascinating and beautiful. For me, the most impactful moment of the game was playing as the little girl who became an owl who became a sea serpent. That was when I realized I was not playing something that I would be thinking about for a very long time.

9. A Short Hike A Short Hike was the very first game I played off my backlog list of Best Indie Games. And boy, is it ever. This game takes 2 hours to finish but is absolutely saturated with heart and the exploration makes those 2 hours feel like you have been on a much longer and more fulfilling journey than you believed possible with so few hours. It is Animal Crossing and Legend of Zelda combined, condensed, and polished into a beautiful pearl. I was so instantly in love with the characters and loved doing the little side quests. I also loved getting totally lost because I wanted to see how far I could swim and ended up on a different part of the island. The most impactful moment of this game is its finale, which I won’t spoil, but it is absolutely incredible.

8. Disco Elysium Many people more eloquent than me have said great things about Disco Elysium, and they are all correct. As someone who loves character building and creating a character to roleplay instead of playing as myself in a game, I have never been more enabled to do just that than Disco Elysium. The mystery was so cool, the mechanics are exactly what I like, the exploration is great. The one drawback of this game is that I literally cannot remember a single song from it. Maybe it had an amazing OST? Every game that is released nowadays has to have an amazing OST. There is so much reading in this game that the music really has to be unintrusive, and so it faded right into the background and out of my memory. I love that you could create your own persona in the game, but that you find your identification later and discover who you were before. Also, I would die for Kim Kitsuragi. The finale of this game also kicks ass - I will not spoil it but there is a moment that is so quiet and intimate that it took my breath away. What an amazing experience.

7. Persona 5: The Royal In 2017, I did something that is not the deciding factor, but definitely contributed to, my being sent to hell after I die. I was in an unhappy relationship and really wanted out, but my boyfriend at the time had a PS4 and I did not, and I really wanted to play Persona 5. As such, when he got the game and I borrowed it, I tried to finish it as quickly as possible so that I could give it back and break up with him. To my dismay, Persona 5 is upwards of 80 hours long, and I was burned out long before it was over. I finished the game with such resentment in my heart that I could not fathom why anyone would like it. As someone who is older, wiser, PS4-er, and in a better mental state, I decided to give P5R a try. Playing the remake at a much slower pace and really contemplating the story and characters made for a totally different and much more pleasant experience. I finally was able to shed my dislike for these characters who held me hostage 3 years ago and really appreciate them. Additionally, the new content they added to the original was SO good. The new music in Mementos makes that whole section bearable!! Akechi’s entirely reworked social link!! Maruki is one of Atlus’s most interesting characters, and the final dungeon was so so so interesting!! I am profoundly sad that I can’t recommend this game to anyone because 120 hours is just prohibitively long. Most impactful moment: when Akechi joins the party and he is like, totally feral, lol

6. Persona 3: Dancing In Moonlight Every once in a while my palms start to itch because it has been entirely too long since I’ve played a rhythm game. This palm itch feeling sunk me deep into Theatrhythm Final Fantasy back in 2017, and this feeling forced me to impulse buy Persona 3 Dance. I am furious that I liked this game so much, because I know it was created simply to extract money from fools like me. The story was so blatant about it! “It’s a dream, ok? We’re all dancing because it’s a dream and none of this matters. Go play a song, idiot.” I’m not even angry at this - I almost respect the hustle. Additionally, it was so wonderful to hang out with the Persona 3 crew again. I did also play Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, but since I had already spent a hundred and twenty hours with the phantom thieves, there was no feeling of being reunited like with P3D. Also, in my mind palace, I consider P3D to have “actually happened”, and P5D to be the money grab hustle. S.E.E.S. is a cohesive unit. If Mitsuru Kirijo says it is time to dance, then dance we shall. I cannot be made to believe that Ryuji, Futaba, or Makoto will be compelled to dance even in a dream. Finally, having Elizabeth as your velvet room attendant did wonders. If there is a line between being a loveable eccentric and being annoying, Elizabeth tiptoes just around the former, whereas the twins are squarely located in the latter. The remixes in P3D also all kick ass (Burn My Dread Novoiski Mix? Deep Mentality Lotus Juice Mix?? Neither had any right to go as hard as they did), and I loved how they personalized the dance styles to the characters’ personalities. Even if this game was a money grabber, it was still made with love and respect for the series, and I loved playing it.  Most impactful moment: That first king crazy ranking on all night difficulty... god damn

5. Vestaria Saga: War of the Scions I had mentioned earlier that I appreciated the FE3H DLC for adding challenge back into 3 houses, but then I played Vestaria Saga and I realized I simply did not remember what challenge actually was. Vestaria Saga, the game by Fire Emblem’s creator, is the hardest Fire Emblem game I’ve ever played. This game honestly rules - it closes its door to the waifus of modern fire emblem games and is a return to form with political intrigue and smart tactical decisions and well-rounded characters. Every single chapter has these wonderful and deeply stressful plot twists and you always have to scramble to get all of the objectives complete without dying. There is a moment in this game where the main Lord, Zade, scolds princess Athol for being so reckless, how he had to force the army to fight a losing battle to rescue her, and look at how exhausted everyone is. He gestures to his army, and for the first time in a tactical RPG, I felt it. In all the fire emblems I play, my units end up being able to dodge and tank any hits they receive, but in Vestaria Saga finishing a map was a stressful, long, and sweaty process. I loved every second of playing this game - it is so rewarding in its gameplay and so rewarding in its story. Most impactful moment: the kiss!!! And how all of them face consequences immediately afterwards!!! I adore this game.

4. Ring Fit Adventure Ring Fit Adventure is the most fun I’ve ever had with a gimmicky fitness game. This game finally understands that they key to continuing with the game and building good habits is the ability to unlock and equip beautiful athleisure clothing. I actually got gains from Ring Fit Adventure, and I know this because I stopped playing it for a month, came back, and was unable to finish the reps at the difficulty I set for myself. This game make gym stuff so genuinely fun in a way that no one else has been able to do. I also really like the feel of the ring con! I have a few moderate complaints about it (a fitness game will never be perfect, unfortunately): you always start reps on the same side, and if you kill enemies then you don’t get a chance to try the other side at all, the motion sensor on yoga poses is wack, and FUCK the robot baseball minigame game to hell. Despite this, I absolutely adore this game and what it stands for. I may never beat the campaign, but it will always have a place in my heart. Most impactful moment: the first fight with Drageaux

3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake I was so so so curious about the hype surrounding this game that in the month before its release I manically played through the original Final Fantasy 7 so that I would have enough background information to be able to play and enjoy the remake. I was very glad I did. FF7R kicks ass. It is my favourite Final Fantasy game ever, and maybe it will always be so. I take a lot of issue with most FF games because they get too cosmically big and ridiculous and nonsensical by the end and that ruins the immersion of the story for me. Since FF7R only covers the Midgar portion of the original, it is forced to create grounded characters and a grounded, smaller scale story. And it is AMAZING. I loved every single minute of this game. The OST is incredible, and the art in it is absolutely unbelievable. I love how they incorporated random encounter enemies in this more realistic version. Also the dialogue!!! The way these characters banter with each other is so life-like and true to character that it boggles my mind. Even the NPC side conversations - never has a city or town felt so alive and filled with people than in FF7R. The ending of this game filled me with PRIMAL fear for the future, but it is so clear that the team making this game loves the world and its characters so much that I cautiously say I trust them to take the story further in the later remakes. Most impactful moment: Cloud saying “bring it on bitch” to an enemy made me black out laughing

2. Hades I generally stay away from rogue-likes and from real-time combat because for a game-liker I SURE am bad at video games. However, everything Supergiant Games ever makes seems tailor made for me, so when Hades came out of early access I bought it, and then I didn’t stop playing it until 80 hours later when I had unlocked everything ever. This game is SO good. The voice acting and storytelling is phenomenal. They did a spectacular job blending the story with the core gameplay elements. They made dying in a rogue-like fun and rewarding. The music is (as always) transcendent. I cannot say enough good things about Hades. Most impactful moment: a tie between the first time you watch the sunrise after your first successful escape, and the romance social link between Zagreus and Thanatos

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons Of course... Death Stranding may have prophesized the pandemic, but Nintendo created it to sell copies Animal Crossing New Horizons. This game saved all of us. The experience of having so many people I knew playing the same game all the time for the entirety of March and April was so incredible. I have plenty of quips about ACNH with relation to old games in the series (I loathe crafting, I loathe printing out Nook Miles Tickets one by one, and I worry that the sandbox landscaping feel of this game makes me less inclined than ever to actually talk to my villagers), but while they are all valid criticisms, they certainly did not stop me from pouring 350 hours and counting into this game. I have loved slowly, carefully crafting my island into a replica of Garreg Mach. I have loved collecting furniture and making turnip money and completing the museum. There is simply no other game that can be 2020′s game of the year. Most impactful moment: checking your mail and having one of your friends mail you an item that reminded them of you

[punishandenslavesuckers]

She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She’ll never have any peace now. (ao3)  

(chapter one) (chapter two) (chapter three) (chapter four) (chapter five)

(chapter six) (chapter seven) (chapter eight)

“I can do that.”

Zelda – presently in a meditative state, fingers looping rhythmically through her hair, twin hair clips between her teeth – blinks up at Draga. The sun is high in the boughs of the trees, thin beams of yellow laying down mottled light on the grass by the road. They’d stopped briefly along the road east from Tabantha Stable to eat and re-organize their things a bit – Link having gotten distracted during the morning and made a haphazard job of a few saddle bags. Draga, who is responsible for most of the distracting, kneels beside her, slinging his rucksack to the ground. He nods to her hands halfway through the beginnings of a single golden braid.

“Oh, no I’ve got it,” she says, smiling. “It’s just a braid.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Hylian isn’t my first language, but I think you understood me.”

Link, tacking the horses by the road, snorts audibly. Zelda glares at him but try as she might – his smile lopsided and newly familiar – she can’t maintain her glare. So, she glares at Draga. He looks impatient, like she should just smack him or let do it already. So, she hands him her clips and hair band and turns so she’s facing away from him. He immediately draws a finger through the braid she’s managed thus far and unravels the lot.

“Not up to your standard?” she chimes.

“No.”

For that, she does smack him.

“If I had a mirror…” Zelda mutters.

“It would still look like a Hylian did the job,” Draga says calmly, around the clips between his teeth.

“You are trying to pick a fight? Or are you just missing having enough hair to do anything with?”

Draga, already parting her front-right region of hair into workable sections, says, “Rude.”

“You’re rude. Don’t make fun of my hair.”

Draga ignores her. Focused on the task at hand. He moves carefully along the side of her head, starting with three parts and twining them deftly down, adding consecutive segments of hair as he goes (very quickly she must admit) around the back of her head. She fiddles with a wrinkle in her pant leg.

“So you’re sure about this? You don’t mind? I mean, I know we discussed this at length over the last few days and… and I know we all agreed it’s the most logical course of action and I know you said that you don’t mind, but I feel like you should know that at any time you may change your mind and we can find some other method. I could refocus my efforts on lost Sheikah knowledge. There may be vast magi-tech archives yet untapped in the shrines. Or the Beasts even. You saw Medoh at the Rito Village. We could go back there if you –”

“Hold this,” he says, taking her hand and pinching her fingers around the middle of a finished braid. Then he starts on the other half of her hair and… Zelda’s isn’t quite sure what he’s doing exactly. She can feel that he’s leaving some sections loose, then gathering them up again later with a sequential foresight that she does not really apply to hair styles.

“So?”

“I said that I’m fine with it.”

“But it’s forbidden for you… right?”

“No, I said only elders were permitted on the mountain.” Draga removes a clip from between his teeth and applies it to a part of her hair. “For generations, my family has guarded the Statue of the Eighth Heroine and preserved it from everyone. Foreigners and Gerudo alike. This mandate was passed down to my tribe, supposedly, by Nabooru herself. It is the oldest undisturbed archive of written Gerudo history dating back to the Naboorian Age. It will pre-date the Twilit Calamity and the Bandit Age.” She can feel him shake his head. “I don’t believe we will find a better place to begin our search.”

“You’re sure you’re okay with it?”

“Zelda, there are no elders left in my tribe, so it would fall to me anyway.” He finishes off another braid. “Besides, you’re the maiden-form Goddess. Who else could be worthier to tread sacred ground?” A beat. “Also, Link already paraglided down the mountain and took pictures of the exterior. So, it’s hardly that unbroachable.”

From the road, Link calls, “I said I’m sorry!”

“You’re a godless heathen.”

“I’m the Goddess’s chosen Hero?”

“A regular sort of heathen then.”

“I didn’t know!”

Draga coils the finished ropes of Zelda’s hair in a neat whorl at the top right-hand side of head, giving the mirrored spiraled braids an asymmetric weight. Draga pins the coils in place with practiced engineering and Zelda touches the finished work, admiring the complicated craftsmanship, fingers picking out the soft track and curve of her braids like a road coiling inward. She turns.

“Thank you, Draga.”

He’s still kneeling there, one arm braced against his knee. Even though she’s seated on a stump, he’s taller than her while kneeling, looking down into her face with an expression just short of worried.

“It could have nothing about the Goddess Mark. It may be a waste of time.”

“That would be fine. I like history for the sake of it.”

“You’re certain Hyrule Castle is of no use?”

Zelda nods. “Yes. Even before the Calamity, most records were lost in the fall of the Magi-Technical Golden Age.” Zelda gestures helplessly. “Our oldest texts only barely describe the events of the Twilit Calamity and before that, there are anecdotal accounts of an ancient hero who moved through Time itself. No record of his actions exist because, it’s said, he existed in a non-linear state. Stopping Ganon before his rise and after.”

Link says nothing. Reacts not at all to the descriptions of his previous lives.

“Prior to that, there’s only… myth and fairytale. So there is nothing in those catacombs worth returning for. Not if our aim is to know more about why the Goddess Mark has appeared now. Why it’s expanded its touch to you.”

“What do you know of it?”

“Theology and historical theory. We know the Goddess Mark is tied to Hylia and the creation myth of Hyrule – the Golden Goddesses who left the world in the hands of Hylia. But that’s it. Scholars of the age have only said that the Mark symbolizes the godhead, three in one – Din, Farore, and Nayru. The heart of the world. The balance that maintains existence. It appears in most Hyrulian symbolism. Hardly compelling factual account. Not like Naboorian hieroglyphs.” She sighs, almost romantically. “Such a record would be so… unromantic in its chronicle of the past. Vital. I have to admit, I’m selfishly curious to know what’s on that mountain for my own sake.”

Draga gives her a crooked smile. “Well, thank the hero Nabooru. It was she who mandated a record of Gerudo history be made written.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Hard to say. Nabooru was an ancient figure to my people, I have a theory. When the Great Chieftains brought the Gerudo out from the Sea of Sand and laid us at the shores of Hyrule… that was the moment our oral traditions began to die. Such things do not survive when you must change to survive a new world. She knew it then and committed great efforts to laying down physical records of our history. This is how we know we were different before we found Hyrule.”

Zelda smiles. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad your people did find Hyrule. We would be poorer for it had they not come.”

“Yes, I guess history would look very different.”

Link catches the tail end of the conversation then, walking up to tap her shoulder.

He signs, ‘We should go. I want to be past the Scab Lands before nightfall.’

“Okay,” she says.

And she kisses him on the cheek. She does it carefully, catches his chin with two fingers so he doesn’t move and fits her lips against the warm plane oh his cheekbone. There. Proud of herself – and feeling very giddy – she stands up and heads toward the road. She isn’t aware that anything extraordinary has transpired until Draga says, “For fuck’s sake,” and kicks her knight escort in the ankle to break him out of the trance. She smiles all the way back to the road.

When they reach the Scab Lands, there are three Gerudo on the road

Two of them, carrying twin travel packs and matching jackets, are dressed for the road heading north into Tabantha, bundled prolifically in an excess of scarves. One of them is capped in an adorable wool-knit hat, a grandmotherly kind with a pom-pom stuck to the top. This would seem a bit much, if Zelda hadn’t seen Draga stuff himself into excessive layers back in the Rito Village and his subsequent almost primal hate for the snow. He is, in fact, still wearing a scarf presently.

The two girls are talking to a third Gerudo woman on horseback. Her violently red hair is pulled back in a heavy tail – from it, hundreds of sparkling beads catch the light when she turns her head. She’s wearing a veil. Blue fabric pinned at her temples by elaborate gold clasps. The scimitar at her hip is sheathed in a mother of pearl scabbard. Zelda notes that, upon seeing them, Draga sits up a little straighter and nudges Arbiter into a faster trot.

“Greetings!” says the girl in the cap as they draw near. Her accent is very strong. She waves while her companion – a little older, sharing enough of her bone structure and contempt to be a sister – rolls her eyes and gently pushes her arm down.

“Good evening,” says the older girl in carefully done Hylian. Then in Gerudo, to Draga, “That’s quite a horse. I’ve never seen one more beautiful.”

Draga also in Gerudo, says, “Now you’ve done it. It’ll all go to his head now.”

Arbiter, as if on cue, tosses his massive head and nickers, stomping a hoof in the dirt and blowing air at the nearest girl who startles, almost losing her cap. The older girl laughs loudly. Draga smiles a little – just a suggestion of it but so specifically gentle Zelda finds herself studying the shape of it. Cataloging it. Hoping to commit it to memory so she can identify it again in the future – like the flight patterns of birds or the phenotypes of a rare plant species.

“Are you two headed north?” he asks.

“Yeah. Meeting a family friend. He says he has work for us,” says pom-pom girl.

“That’s good,” Draga says. “Lots of young Gerudo leave town without a single part of a plan. You’re doing better than I did.”

“Didn’t plan well for the cold though,” says the older girl. “I’m not looking forward to freezing my tits off on some gods forsaken snowfield.”

“I am!” enthuses pom-pom. “There will be snow. I’ve never seen snow.”

“Say that again when you run into a snow rhino,” says Draga, amused.

The older girl stares in horror. “What the fuck is a snow rhino? Don’t say there are snow rhinos.”

“There are snow rhinos. They’re ornery. I’ve seen them.”

Zelda notes that Draga leans harder on the male-conjugation than he does when speaking Gerudo with her. The older girl gives no sign she notices – possibly because she is distracted by the snow rhino and the fact earmuffs will not protect her from getting gored by one. The younger Gerudo girl though… as the conversation goes on, visibly frowns and Zelda can tell she’s trying to figure out Draga’s understandable but slightly canted take on her own language. It occurs to Zelda that the occasion for personal male modifiers in Gerudo might be uncommon enough that not everyone might have bothered to learn them.

About sixty seconds into the conversation, the younger girl confirms Zelda’s suspicions by blurting, “Oh! You’re a voe!”

Delighted. Like she just figured out a difficult riddle. Draga and her sister, bent over a map and reviewing their likely path north for safety and friendly rest stops, stare blankly at her. Draga, still in his saddle, glances at the older girl who balls a hand over her face in humiliation. This signals to the younger girl that she’s made an error and she wilts.

“Oh, uh, I mean…” She switches to her mother tongue. “Sorry. That’s rude right?”

“Yes, Rima. That’s rude,” says her sister, exasperated. “Goddess, you’re embarrassing.”

“But both the blonde ones are women, right, Taz?”

“No, you idiot. The short one is a man.”

“Really?” She stares openly at Link who tilts his head. “Are you sure?”

“You need to get better at this, I can’t tell you who is man and woman every time.” She looks directly at Draga. “I am so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Draga says, visibly trying not to laugh.

“Are you two on Pilgrimage?” Zelda says in Gerudo.

“Oh! Your accent is so pretty!” Rima exclaims, clutching her hands to her chin. “You know Gerudo? That’s so amazing. No one knows our language! I’m so bad in Hylian. I say the wrong things.”

“You say the wrong things in every language,” Taz snaps.

Zelda makes introductions and accepts compliments on her hair and, through the corner of her eye, watches Draga dismount and start going through his saddle bag. He pulls out a small wood box she’s never seen and what looks like a snowquill doublet and overcoat with a couple ridiculous hats. The hats are also snowquill, but twice as thick as normal with ear flaps that make her immediately regret not seeing him wear it. Draga inspects these items with a calm appraisal, then turns and holds them out to the older girl.

“You two should take these,” he says.

Rima bounces a little at her sister’s shoulder, peering as she takes the coats and opens the little wood box. “Oh. Pretty. What are they?”

“Are these warming stones?” says Taz, her eyes big.

Draga nods.

She looks up. “We can’t take these.”

“Sure, you can.”

“These are too valuable!”

“They aren’t worth a thing.”

“You’re lying!”

Draga looks mock hurt. “I’m sorry. We just met and you’re calling me a liar?”

Taz loses some of her cool worldliness to alarmed sputtering but Rima is already pulling on the snowquill doublet, and then the overcoat, patting it with warm brown hands and smoothing the thick material down. She admires its fit (a bit too large honestly, even with the doublet beneath) and spins around so the longer part flaps out around her. She can’t quite lower her arms to her sides on account of the layers.

“So warm!” she says, beaming from the gap in her scarf and hat.

“It’s standard gear, but high quality,” Draga says. “Don’t let anyone try to trade you for it. The doublet and warming stone should be enough to keep even Tabantha cold out. Don’t go without full gear once you hit the snowfield. The temperatures there are deadly if you’re not ready. Besides, I’ll hardly have use for it back in the desert.”

Link signs, onehanded to Zelda, ‘That gear is worth near its weight in gold.’

Zelda blinks, then signs, ‘What?’

‘Rito can only make so many snowquill pieces a year since they use molting feathers. And warming stones are usually ruby. That equipment is no joke.’

The girl with earmuffs is already pulling the warming stone from the box – an adjustable leather wrist-cuff into which a single small red stone is filigreed in with silver wire. The stone has to be flush to skin to transfer its effect, Zelda knows. Draga tells her so and shows her how to tie the bracer to ensure it can’t come off. Then he says earmuffs are inadequate against Tabantha cold and places the ridiculous hat on her head. Rima squeals in delight. Taz tolerates this new development like she knew it was coming.

Draga pulls the flaps of the hat down around her ears and frowns down at it with a kind of judicious pragmatism and vague fraternal concern that makes Zelda aware, suddenly, of herself and the fact she’s sitting on her horse watching her giant friend vaguely mother people on the road. Makes her aware of Link kind of grinning besides her and as Draga finishes tying the stupid hat on his fellow Gerudo, Zelda acknowledges her desire (familiar and strange simultaneously) to put her hand on one of them. Not in any way specifically, just to be in contact.

The woman on horseback, who up until now has said nothing, waits until the sisters have departed with elaborate promises of returning the favor one day that Draga clearly appreciates, but expects nothing of. The woman’s horse is shockingly beautiful, golden in color, perfectly groomed, and stands at disciplined attention until she, gently, taps her heels into the beast’s flanks. The sun catches on the painted kohl and red that lines her eyes. She smells faintly of jasmine and when she smiles, Zelda can see it in the way her eyes crinkle and she says…

“You can’t buy the love of the People, you know.”

Zelda, stunned, just stares.

Draga, however, seems unmoved, He sneers, actually, his lips curling back like a dog bares its teeth. “I wouldn’t pay shit for your affection.”

She smiles. Her voice is almost gentle, musical, even in Hylian. “Come now, isn’t it a difficult life to choose?”

“You don’t choose,” he says.

“Of course, you do,” she says, almost gently, almost affectionately. “I’ll show you if you like. It’s easy. Here tell me: What is your real name?”

Draga’s expression changes then – a scorching burn of rage like a flash-fire on clay, baking in a color. He gets darker, if possible, with the intensity, the totality, of his anger in that single moment but even through that heat, Zelda catches it – an undercurrent. A brief but violent glow of hurt. Then he speaks through his teeth.

“You should ride on.”

She’s still smiling behind the veil.

The woman kicks her horse forward a little, so the beautiful gold animal circles to his left. “But don’t you want wisdom from a sister?” she asks, continuing to circle when Draga holds his ground. “I gave it to those girls, I’ll give it you. As if you were like them. The courtesy due your mothers at the least. Here’s my wisdom: Stay out here. Don’t go back. You’ll do much better where they don’t know shit about the People.” Here, she looks directly at Zelda. “Riju isn’t a little girl on the road with no jacket. She knows a shorthair heretic when she sees one.”

“Excuse me?” Zelda says in Hylian.

And the beautiful woman switches to Hylian just to clarify, “If you want to fuck a Gerudo, you should fuck a real one, girl.”

Link puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles.

He splits the air with that whistle, cracks it open with that sound. A piercing almost painful zipline of air, high and aggravating – cut with an impossible vibrato and quite without warning the beautiful woman’s horse throws its head, issues an equine scream, and bolts. The woman, clearly not expecting that, shrieks and flails forward, snatching the reins and hanging on as the mare gallops full speed, breakneck fast down the road. By the time she recovers she and her horse are a quarter mile away.

Link drops his hand. Zelda stares. Draga glares. Link just shrugs.

“How’d you do that?” Draga says, patting Arbiter on the nose. The massive stallion acts rather like it didn’t hear a thing.

Link nudges Epona off the road. “We’re behind schedule. We should go.”

Zelda looks at Draga. “Are you alright?”

He mounts up. “Of course.”

“Why would she say something like that?”

Draga looks at her. His expression so neutral it makes a momentary statue of him. “Link’s right. We should try to gain ground before it gets much darker. This area isn’t safe at night.”

Zelda thinks about the flight pattern of birds, the mating habits of poisonous frogs, the sexual dimorphism between the male and female of a certain species of lizard, and the precise balance of the smile that touched Draga’s mouth when he tied that stupid hat on Taz’s head. She nods and follows her companions off the beaten path and they head into the wilds at the foot of the mountain range beyond, toward the uneven ridges that mark Draga’s homeland.

“That’s too much salt.”

“You said add more salt.”

“Not that much.”

“I can’t un-salt something, Link.”

There’s a silence.

“No. I’m not taking cooking critique where you spell things for me in Sign.”

“Add a little more of everything.”

“How about you give better instructions and we won’t have this problem?”

“How about you don’t dump too much salt in my salmon risotto and we won’t have this problem?”

“Never mind. Go back to not speaking.”

Zelda looks up from the bow in her lap – recurve composite, Gerudo make, one of Link’s spares dug from the vast and confusing depths of his enchanted travel pack. It feels warm and familiar in her hands. The wood curved like the dip of a hipbone. She watches her compatriots. Link is hovering and peering over his shoulder with a kind of bland anxiety that’s specific to food. Draga is glaring at him for it. She goes back to what she was doing because she explicitly warned Draga not to try and help Link cook. He gets weird about it. So, this his bed to lie in.

She smooths her fingers up and down the shape of the bow, fitting her fingers to the leather grip at the center, feeling again and again a vague sensation of reflex. Of want. It’s one of the lightest in Link’s arsenal at a thirty-five-pound draw – just enough pull to down an opponent if she puts some intention to it. The bowstring lays coiled in her lap, tacky, wrapped in wax paper.

“Could you back up?” Draga says.

Link does not do that.

“I need you to back up.”

Link kind of makes a face and Draga picks up the entire plate of spare ingredients from the grass and shoves it into his arms. “That’s it. I’m done You are like…” He says something in Gerudo that Zelda thinks is slang, but translates like ‘a jackal in heat’ or something to that effect. “I hate fish anyway.”

Link looks offended.

Draga leaves him there looking offended and comes to join Zelda. “You going to string that?”

“I’m trying to remember how.”

“I can show you.”

“No. I’m trying to remember.”

He frowns, then realizes. “Oh.” He crouches down in front of her, inspecting the weapon in her hands with a thoughtful reconsideration. “What is that like? Trying to remember something that didn’t happen in this life?”

“Like I’m remembering something I did in a dream,” Zelda says, carefully unspooling the bowstring from the wax paper. “I can ignore it if I want. What I remember in a dream does not confuse me. I am never uncertain about what I have done and what has been done by my predecessors.” She hooks the top of the string into the notch at the bottom of the bow. “Often, it’s not memory at all. Just a feeling. Indistinct.” She stops here to stand up, bracing the bottom of the bow against the ground just outside her right boot with the curve hooked up hugging the back of her left thigh, set diagonally between her legs. “It’s nothing specific. Just…”

Draga waits. “Want a hint?”

“No… I know this. I…” She grips the top curve of the bow and pushes it down like a lever forward, the body of bow bending against her leg. This gives her just enough time to hook the string into the top notch. She releases the tension and the line goes taut. “Ha!” She steps her leg out of the freshly strung bow and presents it to Draga. “It’s like muscle memory!”

Draga tilts his head. “Well, if it’s muscle memory, Princess, maybe we should try some target practice.”

She falters a moment. “Oh… well I could try.”

Draga fetches his own quiver from their equipment, taking long enough that she begins to regret her decision. She fully regrets it by the time he hands her the first arrow. He waits. Clearly not intending to help her figure it out whatsoever.

Nervous now, Zelda readjusts her grip on the bow in her left hand, awkwardly sliding her hand down the arrow from the middle of its length to the feather-fletched end. The feel of it sends a vague blush of familiarity through her. She closes her eyes. She imagines… fitting the bolt to the string, drawing it back. A compound movement, pushing the bow away and drawing the line back, high at first, then lining up. Mathematical. Precise. Her line of sight focuses and – she opens her eyes.

Draga is peering down at her, waiting and curious.

She shoves the arrow back at him, a sick well suddenly in the back of her throat.

“Never mind. I don’t want to practice this.”

Draga blinks a little owlishly. “Why not?”

“I just don’t want to. The draw weight is too heavy for me anyway.”

“How would you know unless you tried?” Draga says, his brow rising slightly.

“I… I just would rather not.”

He takes the arrow.

“Is this because you said you thought about killing me?” And when Zelda goes ramrod stiff, petrified, he scratches his chin and says, “Your dream-mind notwithstanding, if you think you can kill me, it’s going to take more than an arrow, Princess.”

She sputters, horrified. “I would never –!”

“Then there’s no reason not to learn this,” Draga interrupts.

He offers her the arrow again. When she does not immediately take it back and, instead, stands there frozen, he says, quietly, “It would be useful if you learned this.” A beat. “Relearn it.” Another beat. “Whichever it is. I barely follow you two when you talk about these things.”

“Draga…”

He steps forward and with an old archer’s ease, he fits three fingers beneath her left elbow and lifts her bow arm to a proper height. He nocks the arrow to the string for her, his fingers momentarily fitting hers to the line.

“Just draw,” he says.

Eventually, after a long moment, she draws.

It’s like taking a breath.

“Hm,” he says.

“What’s ‘hm’?”

“You have a long pull.” He moves out of her line of sight, behind her. “You draw all the way past your ear.”

“This feels right. Is that bad?” she asks, maintaining her stance, aiming indistinctly at the trees.

“Not necessarily,” he says. She can feel the shrug. “Your footwork is good. How does it feel?”

“Familiar.”

“It should.” His mouth is suddenly very close to her ear. “I saw you shoot at that dragon.”

A shiver runs down her spine and coils in Zelda’s stomach. A murmur enters her heart, but before she can react, he loops his quiver belt around her hips, drawing it tight. He’s kneeling behind her to do this, his hands occasionally bracing against her hip as he fits it. He’s not gentle exactly, tugging at the strap with a utilitarian strength she might expect if he were tacking Arbiter for the road. It forces her to brace. She looks over her shoulder to glare at him, but when she turns her head, he looks calmly up at her from where he’s kneeling. The fire light illuminates one side of his face, painting a gold heat into the high plane of his cheekbone and –

She immediately faces forward again, suddenly very aware of his hands against her hip.

He finishes adjusting the quiver and stands up.

“There’s a knot in that oak. Think you can hit it?”

She squints down the shaft, the bowstring digging into her fingers as she holds the tension and… she relaxes. She lowers the bow with the arrow still nocked to the string and turns at the hips to look up at Draga.

“Why did that woman speak to you like that on the road today?”

Draga blinks. “This is an obvious delaying tactic.”

“It’s an honest question.”

Draga thinks about it. “When you were learning Gerudo, you were taught the importance of gendered conjugation in our language, yes? That our pronouns delineate Gerudo as its own gender category. Then non-Gerudo women and men.” When he gets a small nod from her, he goes on. “Naboorian dialects are the only Gerudo dialects that allow for Gerudo-specific male modifiers at all and that dialect is not widely spoken. So, in effect, my own language does not properly allow for my existence.”

Zelda’s brows lift in surprise. “The dialect you speak… it’s an offshoot?”

“A slight variant. But yes. My family spoke it, but not many outside the Highlands do.”

She hesitates, then admits, “I honestly thought that Gerudo-specific conjugation was gender indifferent until I met you.”

He shrugs. “Our most common conjugation structures evolved without distinction. Hardly unnatural, but it’s also why that woman said what she said. If I have used any modifiers other than Naboorian – then she wouldn’t, perhaps, have spoken up.” He pauses a moment, thinking. “I have had more fights with Gerudo over my dialect than any other moral disagreement.”

“Why?”

“It’s very hard for the narrow-minded to ignore me when I speak Naboorian Gerudo.” He smiles a little, but it’s a brittle baring of teeth. “It’s subtle. Outside of my own dialect, if I wanted to specifically delineate myself as a man… I would have to linguistically separate myself from being a Gerudo.”

Zelda shakes her head. “Why don’t I know this?”

“You’re Hylian,” he says, shrugging. “Also, you were fighting Calamity Ganon so I hardly fault you for not being finely aware of the societal riffs among my people. Now, are you going to shoot that bow or do you want a grammar lesson?”

“Well…”

Draga waits.

“Oh, very well. I will try.”

Draga smiles.

Zelda turns back to her target. After a moment’s consideration, she draws a second arrow, hooking the feathered end into the loop of her pinkie finger while she sets the first arrow to the line – both shots held ready now in her right hand. She breathes. She thinks – not of the desert. No. Not the desert. Something else. Like… like standing in a long yard. She imagines her hair shorn short for battle, her fingers callused and scarred. Zelda draws. Aims. Releases the shot. Flips the next bolt over her knuckles and sets it to the line. Pulls. Fires.

When she lowers the bow, two arrows stand quivering from the mouth of the hollow, clustered at the head.

“Huh,” says Draga.

“That’s a Sheikah’s draw,” says Link.

Zelda blinks, her heart-pounding elation -- alien and effervescent, like she’s stealing it from another world entirely – subverted by the frank certainty the statement. Link is no longer cooking by the fire. He’s standing with Draga, watching, arms folded. The campsite smells of salmon risotto. Link’s hair catches bits of gold in the fire light, Draga beside him lit in copper. She blinks again at the peculiar mirror they make of one another, both peering at her with identical looks of intrigue.

Link points. “The way you bring it up, pull past your ear, and sight. The reload method. It’s Sheikah.” He shrugs, then signs, ‘I don’t know how to shoot like that. It’s one of the most challenging styles I know of.’

“Oh…” Zelda looks uncertainly to Draga, who just shrugs, then back to Link. “Really?”

He nods and she feels a strange dissociation, staring at her own fingers.

She shakes it off. “Okay, so I use a Sheikah draw? Is that bad? What style do you use, Link?”

Draga interrupts immediately, at volume, “Link shoots with his wrist out and some bizarre pinch and draw I’ve never seen and it’s appalling. Do not do what he does or ask for his advice.”

Link shrugs. “It a Zora draw.”

“It’s what?”

“I trained with Zora when I was younger,” he says blandly. “They shoot that way to keep their fins out of the line. I didn’t know that when I was a child.”

Draga stares. “So you shoot weird because you’re too lazy to retrain yourself?”

Link shrugs again.

“You’re unbelievable.”

Link says, “Dinner’s ready,” and walks back to the fire. Rather like nothing of great surprise occurred, leaving Zelda and Draga to stare after him.

Zelda shoulders the bow for a moment. “Draga… thank you for telling me all that.”

“You both deserve to know before I take you into it.”

“Can I ask one more thing?”

“Of course.”

“Why did she ask for your ‘real name’?”

He looks at her, a little surprised, then says, “Only demons have many names.”

Zelda blinks. “What?”

“Do you not say that in Hylian?”

She shakes her head.

“Oh.” He ponders this, rubbing his neck like there’s a knot there, his other arm folded across his stomach. “I’m not sure how to say it in Hylian, Names have power in the desert. Saying I have the wrong name...”

Zelda lays a hand on his arm, drawing his hand down. He looks at her.

“You know that we prefer you as you are, right?”

He stares at her. A strange expression. Like he hadn’t seen her properly or the dark made odd shadows in her face. “Thank you, Zelda.”

“Always.”

Zelda wakes to Link’s hand on her arm.

It’s still dark. She can hear crickets in the forest. Even the embers of their fire are dark.

Link’s face is just barely discernable in the moonlight, the blanket having fallen off his shoulder when he rolled over to wake her. He says nothing, but she knows what’s wrong. She crawls carefully over her knight, bare feet sinking into gap between their sleeping pads, fingers bracing against the mess of bedding. She can feel dew on the fur Link pulls over the top, strictly to keep the dampness off the wool.

Draga, lying next to Link, is breathing too fast. Keeps jerking involuntarily. Half-formed words escaping him in quiet suppressed bursts, like someone has a hand on his throat. He’s on his side, spine curled slightly forward, arms drawn close to his chest, like he’s cold… or like he’s trying to clutch his throat in his sleep and can’t. Zelda lays a hand over his brow and a faint gold light wells gently in her fingers. Link’s eyes – suddenly visible, blue, holding the glow in a way that defies what she knows about illumination – meet hers.

Eventually, the tension leaves Draga’s limbs. His hands unclench and the faint, pained tension in his features smooths away to unconscious neutrality. For another minute she sits there, her hand against his head and Link’s chin against her shoulder. She listens to them breathing until, vaguely, she realizes they’re breathing together and Link’s fallen asleep against her. They won’t mention it in the morning.

A reminder: Link doesn’t look dangerous until he is.

Lake Alumeni lies shining at the foot of the Gerudo Highlands. An icy wellspring of water wreathed by a copse of apple and evergreen trees, knotted with heather and long grass. The grass gives way to a sandy slope of shore before the lake’s edge and it’s there, under the dying sunlight, Link does as Draga asked of him. Namely: be very dangerous for a while.

He’s crouched, waiting, sword in hand.

He says, calmly, ““You won’t beat me without magic.”

Draga, knotting anther bandage around his forearm, snarls, “I know, you tiny bastard.”

Link doesn’t smile.

The lackadaisical courtesy of previous sparring sessions has gone, replaced with mercenary indifference – the blank, blue-eyed battle stare that is precursor, Zelda knows, to terrible violence. That’s the face he wears now. Apathetic as physics when he puts an impossible bend in the universe and uses it to smash his friend to the ground. Repeatedly. Viciously. Trying to draw out an response. Even the blunt edge of the sparring sword does the job – laying a ragged road of bruises and shallow cuts down Draga’s arms. Leaving him panting, laved in sweat and sticky with blood. IT’s been hours.

The air stinks with like live current. Link’s breath like the air before a lightning strike. There’s a storm in his eyes when he’s like this. Zelda almost forgot.

“Ready?” he says.

Draga thinks about it. Then nods.

Link hits him instantly. The blade sings with the blow and Draga lunges back. He swings a massive blow at Link’s flank, but he just pivots, ducks the side slash, and smashes his elbow into Draga’s back as he goes past. Draga hits the ground rolling and comes up instantly. Draga attacks. Fast. He’s still so fast, even now, but Link is always that much faster. He deflects the blow, pivots, and comes up slashing, sword ringing when it slams into Draga’s. It puts a terrible vibrato into the metal, driving the bigger man back but Link does not stop. Doesn’t slow an iota.

He presses the exchange with a merciless speed, the entire time saying, “No,” and “C’mon!” and “I’m going to kill you, if you don’t get this!”

(Zelda tells herself he doesn’t mean that. It’s a tactic. It’s just talk.) But he doesn’t stop.

Draga’s breathing hard. He tries to catch his balance. Link keeps coming. Link gets past his guard, strikes a glancing blow to his head. Draga keeps his feet, but only just and Link lays open another bleeding line against wrist, his thigh, his hip – Draga flinches and that’s when the lake shore shivers. Draga is already swinging when it happens. He brings the blade down and the impact is Lynel-like, buckling Links arm and spinning him around.

This time, the metal does not howl. It eats the impact and the air around him becomes heat-smeared, mirage-like. When he steps forward, small pebbles on the ground begin to shiver and jump as if caught in the gravity of a localized star. The surfaces of the lake ripples, a barometric shiver in the air displacing the mirror shine.

But Draga’s thrown his sword down.

He stands there, stock still, his hands clenched in front of him. Eyes closed. Breathing too fast.

Link, seeing this, steps back and lowers his blade.

“Control it,” Link says loudly. “Focus!”

“What the hell… do you think… I’m doing?”

His eyes take on a shine – glowing internally, red – usually a controlled burn, steady as the embers in a blacksmith’s forge. Now, she can see the erratic pulse of it, like someone is inexpertly pumping bellows into the forge, throwing sparks and heating the interior too fast, too much. He shakes his head. He breathes too fast.

Zelda steps in.

She’s got her hands around Draga’s wrists, then around the back of his neck. It’s like grabbing a burning skillet from a flame. She can feel the heat hissing against the thin golden shell that paints her skin, like heat crackling in water. She pulls his forehead down to hers and pushes that golden light through her palms into the muscles in the back of his neck where it travels like water down a wall, dousing his skin where it touches.

He's gasping. “I can’t breathe…”

“You can breathe. Breathe when I breathe.”

Draga’s breath is hot against her face, but it’s cooling. She feels the resistance start to give, like trying to dam water with your hands then letting it go. He lets her pour out light, running over his skin, into his skin and evaporating on contact. And in the same breath she can feel the… depth he was talking about, like a house that’s bigger on the inside, the vast space into which she is pouring herself with no hope of filling. The void that dragons opened inside him. But even so, Draga’s skin feels human again. When he breathes, there’s gold in it.

She pushes, carefully, another dose of sunlight against his skin and he twitches, shivering.

“It’s like a ocean moving around you,” she murmurs. “Like a river. You can direct part of the flow, but you can’t control it. Do you feel it?” She breathes slowly, speaks calmly. “You have to let go or you’ll drown. Every time.”

“It’s like you have your hand in my chest,” he says, surprising her.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“It’s okay. You’re not losing control.”

“That’s not what I meant, either.”

She blinks. “Oh.”

Zelda doesn’t recognize the way he’s looking at her. But at the same time, she knows it exactly. There’s gold on her tongue when she kisses him. There it is again – that dirty copper taste, like swallowing a coin. Like warming a spoon with her mouth. Her fingers close in his hair, her nails dragging on his scalp and when she finally pulls away, the air is calm around them. No longer boiling where they touch. Nevertheless, she feels hot. Her fingers against his neck pulsing, her heartbeat in her hands and in her stomach and she feels dizzy, like her head is filled with vapor.

She pulls away.

Draga shivers. “Thank you.” He looks at Link. “Both of you.”

Link joins them. The alien battle blank edge resolved into a kind of wry concern. He wipes sweat from his face with his sleeve, managing a small smile and a shrug that says, without sign or sound, ‘Whatever it takes.’

“Honestly,” Draga says again. “This would be much harder on my own. I’m glad I’m not this time.”

“Of course,” Zelda says emphatically. “I said you could rely on us and I mean it. I do. We’re going to figure this out together. We’re going to figure out the nature of this new magic. We’re going to go with you back to the Gerudo. We’re going to move forward.” She smiles. She doesn’t’ know why – overwhelmed suddenly by an excess of happiness. Or hope. She hadn’t been aware she lacked that before. “I have every confidence. I really do.”

Link taps her shoulder.

“Hmm?”

He cups her jaw and draws her into a kiss, tilting her head and his tongue is salt and milk in her mouth. Her heart races. A dizzy delight rising in her throat and she giggles a little. For some reason, Link seems to like that, and the way he’s kissing her becomes a little feral, his fingers knotting in her hair, his teeth just barely catching against her lip and rather without meaning too, a small moan rises in her throat. High and broken and Link immediately pulls back. Red in the face.

“Sorry,” he says, stepping back.

“What for?” says Draga, arms folded, looking a little disappointed.

Link blushes harder. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Why not?” Zelda says, a little punch drunk.

Draga laughs. “You’re allowed, you know.”

Link hesitates. Then, rather like he’s repeating a question, he moves toward them again. He looks between them. She can tell he’s trying to figure out the best tactical execution here. Draga just rolls his eyes, bends down, and lays a hand against Link’s jaw.

“For someone who clearly knows what they’re doing,” he says, “you embarrass easy.”

Link gets redder. “Got to hell,” he says, but in the wrong tone of voice.

Draga smiles.

Zelda notices the back of his left hand is brushing her bare wrist.

“Maybe later,” he says.

.

.

.

go to chapter 10...

[figmentforms]

Fig chatter! (Q/A)

First off, i just wanna say thank you so much to everyone for all the super nice and encouraging notes! It always makes me to happy to see that my work is making people happy and your notes really help to motivate me to do my best at this comic!

Yep!!! That manga is one of my favorite things in the whole world so it really really influenced my comic.

All is well! Thanks for asking! I just renamed it “Figmentforms-the-human” because I plan to do more with it than just reblog now. It’s gonna be where I post random stuff about my life and other ramblings as well! https://figmentforms-the-human.tumblr.com/

I really should but I mostly just look back to previous comic pages to keep the designs consistent. Don’t be like me. Be better and more organized. XD

I did! I hate to revise big stuff like that, but after the script re-write i realized that I needed to be able to give Skull Kid more expressions since he now plays such a bigger role in the story, so i decided to go with something more rendered out.

LOOOOL XD *feels proud*

They may be in flashbacks or something, but at this point i don’t think they’re gonna really be a part of the story! Too bad too because I really adore Midna especially. And thanks so much! :D

LOL not sure if that would count as a prank or as cold-blooded MURDER. XD Those birds are NOT to be messed with! 

Aw! Thank you so much! Sadly I don’t think I will be doing too many more conventions. I hope to go to ShutoCon again next year, but that’s really it! I always get super sick after every single convention I go to, so for the sake of my health, I’m gonna do much much less of them. 

Lol, thanks! As for time, i wouldn’t put much value on that! I’ve been drawing since I was a little kid, but I’ve seen people go from struggling to draw a stick figure to making beautiful illustrations that are much Much better than i currently can do after about two years of hard training. It all depends on your drive and focus. If you put in the time and effort you can be a master in no time. If anyone wants to get good at drawing, it’s never ever too late! Take some lessons and practice every day and you will be AMAZING in no time!

I love this idea! XD

Indeed! How many people think he should keep it? I’m on the fence!

The first chance i get i’m totally gonna put the bird people in the comic. I adore bird people.

I love supportive shark boyfriend Prince Sidon so much! I will totally draw him later! :D I did a couple drawings of him while i was at my booth for Shutocon but i forgot to take photos before they went off to their new homes! 

Thanks so much! :D I will have to put a part in the comic where Zelda explains this later, but how it works is that Zelda can sense the triforce pieces super accurately. Even before they awaken inside the bearer. She knew her daughter was Link the moment that she was born. The others can’t do that. Rinku not at all, and Ganondorf can only sense the pieces when they’ve awoken and are in the same room as him. 

0_0′ LOL OH MY!!! You are correct!!!! XD Behold me and my total inability to do basic math! XD But omg thank you so much for pointing this out!!! I really appreciate it! And please, if anyone else notices stuff like this, or spelling errors, or like, i messed up drawing something, please don’t hesitate to tell me because it’s a huge help!!!

I‘ve been too busy and broke, so sadly no. But after the wedding i think I’ll have the necessary time/money! I was so pleasantly surprised that the game turned out to be good! I was honestly expecting a train wreck after all the delays Nintendo had for putting it out! 

Gan will totally mellow and turn out ok, but he will always be at least a bit cranky. If nothing else than to keep up his “style”. As for writing, ooooomg. a very long time. I have the major outline that took me a few weeks to decide on everything, then i have specific events, another couple weeks, then revisions, a few more MONTHS, then for each individual comic i often stare at the screen for like 3 hours trying to decide on the specific dialogue. I’m really not a strong writer, so it’s never easy! XD I’m just glad that people seem pleased with what I’ve managed to do so far! 

Totally will! You’re safe! XD

He still has all that to deal with, but he’s also been through such an emotionally devastating time in his early life in this incarnation that it’s given him a bit more reflection and empathy this time around. Juuust enough to make him give this marriage thing a legit honest try.

I love Ghirahim with all my heart but I still find myself genuinely considering this >.>

YES. I love theme parks and things, Especially roller coasters and those impossible games! (but what I really really wanna do is awkwardly walk up to a Ganondorf actor and buy him a cookie. Hopefully they won’t be creeped out.)

 This is a really cool idea!!!

I totally didn’t know that!!!! Thank you so much for telling me! I’ll fix that later!! :D

When I first wrote the story I planned to explore it better, but with the re-write there isn’t proper room for it. I may do an epilogue bonus comic where this is given the attention it deserves. (I grew up in a home that was completely destroyed by alcoholism, so yeah, this is close to my heart and I want to do more with it.)

LOOOOL OMG I can just imagine her getting so mad every time someone brings up this pun. “I’M NOT A NURSE, DAMN IT! I’M A DOCTOR! AND THE BEST ONE IN THE WORLD!!” *angry shark teeth are showin’*

OMG *suddenly starts to imagine the cuteness of Rinku’s wedding and how much Ganondorf would be just a SUPER picky father-in-law-Zilla about all the details of the ceremony.*

Sadly I just don’t have the time to take on commissions right now! I’m going to be finishing up my current commitments with a couple game companies and then putting 100% focus on my comics (A Tale of Two Rulers and another relatively soon-to-be released original comic about the romance between a sweet-natured orc and a little power-crazy pixie) later this fall. Noooo idea when I’ll open up commissions again.

LOOOL poor Ghirahim! He’s honestly doing what he thinks he has to to save Ganondorf! But... well... it’s not working out. XD

[the-lady-mienshao]

My Inner Life Part 12: Labor Pains in the Ass (Happy Valentine’s Day!)

It’s been a while since we stepped into this distorted kingdom that’s called “Hyrule” now hasn’t it? Not that some of you may remember it...

Anywho, when we last left off Jenna angsted over Link being sent off to fight in the Five Paragraph War (which was resolved with the Treaty of Deus ex Machina) and stood by Link getting Hyrule’s Medal of Honor as those who were glossed over wished a fiery death upon them.

I do not own My Inner Life (not that I would want to in the first place) nor the Legend of Zelda series.

When we arrived back home all of the Kokiri were there to greet us along with or fairies Lilly and Navi. “Your finally home. I missed you Link.” Navi squealed as she flew over to him. (Hey wait, if Navi is Link’s personal fairy why didn’t she accompany him to war?) “You were really missed.” As she flew around him her blue aura brightened. “I missed you too Navi.” Link said as he smiled at her. “Jen and I really missed you to.” Lilly said as she flew in front of me. “Link, hey LINK!” (Oh God! OoT flashbacks!!! DX)

A girls voice called from behind the crowd. Then Saria came running through the crowd and up to him. “I missed you a lot too Link.” “How are you?” Saria said as her eyes lit up at the sight of him. “Were soo glad your home.” “Jen spent a lot of time with us while you were away.” (”Getting lit.”) Just then something caught her eye. “What is that on your uniform?” Saria asked as she gently fingered the pin on Link’s uniform. (Saria! Not in front of everyone else!) “It’s called the “Triforce of Valor.” “The King awarded this to me for my bravery in the field of battle.” Link said with pride. (”And because I also slipped 50 rupees to him”) A loud “WOW” came from the crowd as Link showed everyone. (Jenna must’ve held up a cue card that said something like “Say ‘wow’ or I will end you all”...) “Oh Link, that is soo wonderful.” “You must be so proud of him.” Saria said as she looked at me. “Yes I am, but I’m just glad to have him home again.” I said blushing. Then we had a small celebration to celebrate Link’s return home. (While all the hippy Kokiri stand aside, protesting for peace)

We had a small feast, then we danced and drank. (You’re not supposed to drink while pregnant!) Then around Midnight everyone went home, (bullshit!) and Link and I were left alone. We told Lilly and Navi that we were going to the pond out back to have a swim. The night air was warm, perfect for swimming. We went to our special little pond. (YOUR special pond?!?) Once there we took off our clothes and went into the cool water. We splashed and played around in the water for awhile. The I looked into Link’s eyes. They were glowing under the moonlight. (”Link is not here...”) I went into his arms, and felt his body against mine. Then he gently pressed his lips on mine kissing me deeply. It had been such a long time since we kissed like this. (Yeah five paragraphs is a long time to go without playing tonsil hockey with your captive husband) We kissed even deeper, our tongues finding their ways into each other’s mouth. I felt his hands caressing my body, felt the connection between us growing stronger. I ran my hands down his back as he moved his lips to my neck. I felt his heart beginning to beat faster, heard his thoughts in my mind. (”That prostitute I got was so much better than this...”)

I wanted him soo bad. Wanted to feel him. It had been such a long time since we made love. I whispered in his ear that I wanted him. That I wanted to feel him. And I heard him in my mind, heard him say that he wanted me too. I felt the heat of our bodies, felt his hands touching me, felt them caressing my body. I started to breath faster, as my heart was beating in unison with his. Then I felt him quivering (from drug withdrawal?) against me, as he slowly penetrated my awaiting body. (Of course... more sex...) The intensity of it raced through my body, raced through my bones. It had been a long time since I felt this feeling. As we made love, I felt our connection become full. (Okay please don’t use the term “full” like that ever again) I felt as if our bodies merged. We became as one. (Okay now you’re just re-using phrases from other chapters!) Even more so when we both came to a full climax. I screamed out his name as I felt him release his essence deep inside me. (*random Kokiri steps out onto porch* “SHADDUP!”)

Then I put my lips to his long, sexy pointed ear and whispered words of passion to him, (”You know what to do with that big fat butt~”) before sweetly licking and nibbling on it. (Oh God I just made that line even worse...) I heard him moaning softly as I caressed his ear with my lips and his body with my hands. I was so glad to finally be in his arms again, to be able to feel him. I had longed for this day; Longed to make love to him. Now my dreams had come true. He was finally home.

The next few days were hard on me, the dizziness became horrid and I started to feel sick. (Welcome to our world) It got so bad that I had to rest in bed. Then came the false labor. The pains were so intense that I felt as if my whole body was in a vise. I couldn’t get up out of bed without the pains making me feel like falling over. Link had to care for me. (Like he hasn’t been doing enough of that in this story) I ate all of my meals in bed. And when it was time to bathe Link had to help me to the tub to wash me. It was hard. I felt helpless. (Admit it. You enjoy it...) But Link had told me that he was glad to care for me. I was going to give birth to our baby any day now. And he did not want to see me or the baby get hurt. Then a few nights later it happened. (DUN DUN DUN!)

I woke up and rustled Link awake. “Link honey wake up, its time!” I was going into labor. (Are you sure? Did your water break? Are your contractions a minute apart?) “Grumble.” “Go back to sleep.” Link said as he rolled over. (I think that just speaks for itself...) Then I shook him again. “Link, WAKE UP .....I’m going into labor!” I cried as I shook him. “Wha, What?!” “Oh my Goddesses, its time!” (Oh now you realize the gravity of the situation!) He jumped out of bed, grabbed his robe and went to get Navi and Lilly. As he opened the door, I heard him calling for our fairies. “LILLY, NAVI come quickly!” (Like the fairies know anything about human childbirth!) Link cried. “What is the matter?” Navi asked. “Navi, you and Lilly must fly to the castle quickly, fetch Princess Zelda and the healer!” (Just go get the Ocarina of Time from the closet and teleport yourselves to the Temple of Time!) “Jenna’s going into labor, it’s time!” “And please make haste.” Link cried in urgency. “Lilly hurry, we must go!” Navi screeched. Then Lilly and Navi flew off to fetch Princess Zelda and the healer. (What does Zelda know about birthing?!?)

I didn’t have long. The baby was on its way. I felt the contractions become less spaced apart. I hoped that Lilly and Navi would bring the healer here quickly. (Well it takes an entire day to get across Hyrule Field so it’s going to be some time. Especially since they don’t have the Ocarina of Time...) I tried to hold the baby back, but that was no longer any good after my water broke. “I cannot hold the baby back any longer, Link!” “My water just broke!” “One way or another this baby is coming.” (Damn right) I cried as my breathing became labored. “Just hang in there my love, Lilly and Navi will be back soon with Princess Zelda and the healer.” (Actually they just got eaten by Kaepora Gaebora) Link was getting more concerned with each passing minute. Then a horse came plodding up to the front of the house and I heard voices. “Oh...my Goddesses.....they’re.....finally here!” I said in between gasps of breath. Link ran out the door to hurry them along. Then a minute later he came back with the healer followed by Princess Zelda. “Princess, go get some pillows and blankets!” “And be quick about it.” (So now Zelda’s been reduced to the midwife’s apprentice. Oh how the mighty have fallen...) After Princess Zelda came back with the pillows, she put a pillow under my head and the blankets over and under my body. Then Link came to my side and held my hand.

“Hurry the baby is coming!” I cried as the contractions became closer together. “You must breathe slower.” “Take a deep breath.” “Now push!” The healer yelled. I felt the baby trying to come out but something was wrong. (”The baby was hanging on to my ribcage and kicking the healer’s hands away.”) “Push harder!” She called again “I’m pushing......as hard as I can....DAMNIT!” I screamed. “Princess, do you see the head yet.” “No, not yet!” Zelda cried. “Damnit.... GIVE....me something, LINK...you did this to....me!” (”YOU.... made me... play... the Goddamn CDI... GAMES!!!!!!”) “DAMNIT.... get this thing....out of me....NOW!” I cried as the pain got worse. I started to curse as the pain became more intense. (We know sweetie) “Damn YOU...Link!” I screamed as I looked up at him. (but afterwards I told him I was sorry.) “You must calm down.” Take deep breaths......thats it.” “Princess anything yet?” “No, mistress (You’re an effing princess! Why are you referring to the midwife, who’s lower in social status, as mistress?) something is wrong!” Zelda cried as she looked up. “What?!” The healer yelled as a look of pure shock cross her face. “The baby’s head is not facing down!” Zelda cried again.

With those words came our worst nightmare. (Don’t blame you. C-sections probably didn’t go very well back in those days) My face went white as a sheet and so did Link’s. At that moment I thought our baby was going to die. I started to cry as the thought of loosing our baby looked evident. “We must act quickly!” “We have to get the baby’s head turned!” The healer yelled as she prepared to go in and turn the baby’s head. (”Hmm, it’s dark in here. I better light a match.”) As Zelda and the healer worked quickly they managed to get the baby’s head in the right direction. (Phew! That was intense!) “We got the baby’s head facing down now PUSH!” The healer cried again. “URAGH” I screamed as I pushed with every ounce of strength I had. “Mistress I see the head!” “Now hands, feet.....” Then the next thing that I heard was music to my ears, a baby crying. (Babies aren’t born that quickly!)

“Oh Goddesses....congratulations its a boy!” Zelda cried. Tears of happiness ran down my cheeks as I squeezed Link’s hand. Then Zelda took and wrapped the tiny baby in a blanket and gave him to me. (Aren’t you forgetting a little something? Like the umbilical cord?) I cried even more as I held the tiny miracle in my arms. “He looks just like you my love.” I said softly as I looked up at Link. “We made this tiny miracle together.” I laid my head against Link’s chest as I looked at the baby’s little face. “What shall we call him?” “Since he is a boy, and it was a son you wanted you pick the name my love.” (”How about... Tingle?”) I said as I looked into Link’s eyes. “Link the second he shall be called.” Link said with pride. “After his own father.” (Uh, egotistical much?) “Named after a legend.” “Link Jr.” I said softly. “Welcome into the world little Link.” I laid there and held little Link in my arms. I now felt complete. I had Link. Now I had a son with him. This was the most beautiful gift Link gave me. (Didn’t you say that about the house he built for the two, er, three of you?) He gave me......a miracle.

So it’s a boy for the happy couple... Yay.

About the “baby hanging onto the ribcage joke”, my younger sister was a C-section birth since she wasn’t coming out of my mom and it was almost like she was crawling further up to avoid the doctor. So my mom joked that she was hanging onto her ribcage and kicking away at the hands to stay inside!

[angstylittlecatboy]

memories of my sprite comic nobody read

I'm not sure if I believe in the whole angel numbers thing anymore but I think they want me to reintroduce my sprite comic (saw 111 while thinking about it.) I just feel like talking about it, idk. I know nobody cares.

Barring a few standout strips I don't think Purrnout the Edgy Cat (covering my bases here, but the comic predates me meeting FP by two years, “edgy” refers to how stuff like Linkin Park and Shadow the Hedgehog is referred to as edgy) was a good comic, most of it's gags fall flat, the backgrounds and walking sprites were mostly ugly (if my more detail-oriented brother was downstairs he'd insist I do better,) and I could never get a story arc off the ground, but I only made it to kill the bore (in the description it said "updates whenever boredom strikes") and I had fun making it.

The idea was to be a sprite comic (believe me, I’d draw the comic if I were any good at drawing, but I learned my lesson from having DeviantArt) that was something of an affectionate parody of early 2000s sprite comics while avoiding a lot of the common complaints about them, also throwing in some punk/goth/emo culture. Specifically, all of it's characters were original, only one was a recolor (and his name was Recolor the Hedgehog, he was the deuteragonist and straight man, I planned to make him the only character who can't do cool superpower stuff for irony,) I didn't use backgrounds from Google Images, it didn't directly take place in the universe of something else (my idea was that it took place in a nonsense universe where every work of fiction is somehow canon, though I wanted to be pretty strict about seeing concepts and objects but never characters from other works, but other than showing Recolor losing rings, nothing ever came of it,) I tried not to mainly use reference or shock humor, and I tried to use a consistent sprite style for the characters and backgrounds (I confess to ripping effects.) I don't think it ever achieved parody of 00s sprite comics, I wanted to eventually make some stuff like DBZ-style sprite battles and teen melodrama, but I ended up making a gag-a-day strip mostly utilizing cringe comedy. At least, all the good or least bad strips are cringe comedy. I tried teen melodrama but it was mostly big lipped aligator moments that went nowhere, especially both aborted story arcs (though the latter was going to be less teen melodrama and more band melodrama.) If I reupload the comic, the arc comics won’t be reuploaded with the rest as I consider them non-canon since neither got past two strips and the first attempt would have honestly ruined the comic if it finished. I guess there were two continuous strips where Purrnout commited tax fraud (I think this predated the Yoshi meme) but I don’t see that as a story arc. Actually the first three comics were sorta a story arc but they mostly just introduced the main two, explained why Purrnout is living in an apartment (I think I needed to explain this as I intended it as a Chekrov’s Gun for a later story arc,) and made some obscure Green Day references. Maybe the arc comics could get re-added at a different place on the timeline if I felt like completing the arcs. A huge problem is that I didn’t make an outline for them tbh.

The style I settled on for the backgrounds and sprites was that of the Neo Geo Pocket Color. The panels were in either that system’s resolution or one close to it (they were tiny.) I ignored palette limitations, but so did most sprite comics.

I must admit that the title character is a self-insert fantasy to some extent, he was admittedly, like 16-year-old me but cooler. Well, not really cooler since the comic revolves around him being a loser, but he was an emancipated minor and a good punk/alt rock guitarist, both tying into my fantasies at the time, and he was a lonely emo teenager trying to not be mainstream. If I brought the comic back, I’d continue to write Purrnout as 16YO me and not as 18YO me. I’m still a loser, but my spiritual beliefs, dedication to kindness, and inconsistent attitudes towards life WOULD NOT mesh with the character. Purrnout cannot have reverence to things that control the world or talk about peace and love, he needs to be angry at the world and be a bit of a deliberately insensitive asshole to the people he doesn’t like. Sort of a much less extreme version of an incel (I identified as such at the time.) Wouldn’t call him a Mary Sue, though it’s not really my call to make since I’m the author and this is the only creative work of mine that can kinda be considered “completed” that I’m still fond of in a way. Maybe I’ll cringe someday, but not today.

There’s not much to say about Recolor the Hedgehog, he’s very much a pretty normal guy other than having nerdy interests and Purrnout as a best friend. He more or less exists to be a straight man. He was a composite of my brother and an ex-friend.

I might as well mention the comic’s other non-antagonist character since I’ve already talked about both Purrnout and Recolor. Love the Golden Retriever, a rich, smart, pretty normie girl with a Pollyanna viewpoint, a wish to heal people like Purrnout, and a crush on Recolor. She was based on a variety of girls who tried to become my friend out of pity and were nice enough but we didn’t connect. Purrnout finds her annoying, while she considers Purrnout a friend. I also introduced another one, but she was part of the first aborted attempt at an arc. 

A third main character was planned as well, but she was supposed to be introduced in a story arc that I planned but never even tried to start. She wouldn’t make it into the comic if I start it up again, at least not without heavy modification, as I eventually met someone who was very similar to the character I had in mind. So similar that adding them now would look creepy.

The comic’s most common antagonist was a cat named Muffin. He was basically Chad Thundercock, probably the most shallow character in a comic that wasn’t long enough to get deep. I also introduced another character intended as an antagonist in an admittedly-hamfisted way named Felicity the Once-Golden Retriever, Love’s best friend who used to be a highly optimistic normie with a promising modelling career before Muffin cheated on her, and then became an angsty anti-society rebel who thinks cutting her hair and dying her fur darker makes her ugly. She hated Purrnout because she felt that Purrnout hadn’t suffered like she had and is moping for no reason, which annoys her. I think I was trying to do a straw feminist character minus the actual feminism, but don’t quote me on that. I had a third antagonist that I wanted to introduce, my favorite antagonist made for the comic actually, and he already cameoed, but I never ended up writing him. Maybe if I had my PC through Summer/Fall 2018 I would’ve made more (the last one was Spring 2018.)

But anyway, it doesn’t really matter. My brother was the only person who really read Purrnout, but I do remember him getting a chuckle out of it. I posted it on Tumblr (now deleted) and I got one follower, who was likely a bot. I never posted a link to it on my main Tumblr, partially because I wanted to see it gain an organic audience first (it didn’t lol) and partially because I was scared of it being seen as cringe. You may have come across it if you browsed the “sprite comic” tag on here. I know Tumblr is a bad place to host webcomics (at least if it’s the only place you’re hosting the webcomic) but it’s free, I was familiar with it, and I wasn’t making any plans to profit off of or take the comic seriously (it ran Summer 2016 - Spring 2018 and only had twenty strips.)

I’m still hesitant to bring back the comic because I honestly want to use the universe (most of it, obviously modifications would need to be made) for a video game idea I have, though that would be 10+ years in the future if I ever have credibility as a game developer since I couldn’t see myself doing that one without a team (”3D hack n’ slash platformer” is a lot harder than “2D JRPG.”) Hell, I originally made the sprite for a Zelda II clone I wanted to make with Purrnout using side mounted guns (because Shadow the Edgehog,) but for some reason, be it laziness (not wanting to re-learn Game Maker) or wanting to use the character for something more character driven, I ended up making a sprite comic instead. Another route I could do is redesigning and renaming Recolor, and removing all sprites ripped from other games, but I’m extremely hesitant to mess with Recolor’s design since his worried face is a running gag and if I did continue I’d still want to eventually make jokes that don’t work without him being a Sonic recolor.

Also, it wasn’t a furry webcomic, at least not entirely. “pet sized” (cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, etc.) characters would stand on fours while characters of much smaller or much larger stature (cows, hedgehogs,) than that would be anthropomorphic.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Sucky Things That Suck On Purpose

This may come as a surprise, but I like it when things don’t suck. In fact, I would say that I devote 80 percent of my efforts toward avoiding suckage. Sadly, though, I can’t control the actions of others, and I won’t ever be able to until The Device is perfected. But until then, some people make shitty things, and the rest of us have to deal with it. And while we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that everyone makes mistakes as we eat a pizza which inexplicably arrived topped with double olives and pineapple, there’s no solace in the knowledge that some people do shitty things entirely on purpose. On that note, here are five terrible things which people made fully knowing that they’d be terrible.

5

The Google Glass Battery

If you were sober or literate in 2013 and 2014, you may have had to endure the deluge of tech profiles and extremely not-boring thinkpieces on Google Glass. If you could not in fact read or legally drive in 2013 and 2014, Google Glass was basically Google’s answer to the question “What’s a super expensive piece of shit I can intrusively wear on my face which will obscure my vision and make anyone around me fearful that I’m videotaping them like some kind of creeper?” You know, a question that we’ve all asked.

While most of us immediately dismissed Glass as being about as appealing as a herpes scab parfait, there were naturally a few fans who couldn’t wait to be the dollar store version of Geordi LaForge. But even amongst those die-hard tech fluffers, there was a clear issue: Glass had a battery that sucked like a leech in the coldest recesses of the vacuum of space.

The battery life of Google Glass clocked in at around 45 minutes, meaning that you had just enough time to stream yourself watching one episode of Young Sheldon and then crying about it afterwards before it shut off. Google tried to explain this away as an intentional design feature that was actually beneficial and not an example of a battery assembled by a one-eyed guy in an flea market who smells like cats.

According to Google, your cellphone is just a dangerous espionage device constantly listening to you from your pants pocket and maybe sending all that sweet, sweet pants gossip back to Samsung or the Kingsmen or whoever the fuck cares what you’re doing. So in an effort to heroically protect you from filthy spies, Google intentionally made a shitty battery so that the New World Order agents will only be able to watch half of your masturbation session before they’re left hanging. Suck it, dickholes! You’ll never know how this one ends!*

*Hastily, with a climactic yawp.

4

Low-Quality Viral Commercials

In 2011, the internet was blessed with one of the worst commercials for a taxidermy business that anyone had ever seen. I say this not as a connoisseur of taxidermy ads, but as a logical human being. Also, do taxidermy places really need commercials? What more needs to be said, other than “Hey! Do you like wolves, but hate the bitey, movey kinds?”

This commercial for Ojai Valley Taxidermy featured the one-two punch of Chuck Testa’s taxidermy skill and acting, and made us all fall in love with the stuffed corpse of a coyote and the overall awfulness of the entire experience. It was poorly made, clearly cheap, and its only redeeming quality was that all of the badness made it charming as hell. Chuck Testa became an internet hero. And it was all bullshit.

Testa is just one of many viral commercial stars made famous for being in videos often shared as “the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.” One commercial for a mall from 2014 featured employees singing a jingle that sounded like a cross between 3 a.m. barf-in-your-own-shoe-drunk karaoke and a cat stuck in a well. It sucked large, and people went nuts about it.

For a local business trying to drum up some attention, you have two options: Legitimately make a forgettable, boring, low-budget commercial which blandly explains whatever you’re trying to sell, or roll the dice on potentially going viral by making an abomination. Create such an abysmal crime against advertising that the sun refuses to shine when the video is playing and birds immediately stop singing and synchronize-shit on your car. Make it so bad that everyone immediately shares it with everyone they know. And then your craptastic commercial becomes an internet sensation.

They say people are ten times as likely to share a bad experience with a business than a good one. People like to complain more than they like to praise, probably because if something goes right, it fits in with your expectations and is therefore unremarkable. It’s only when things go wrong that you get worked up and make a stink over it. So when you see a commercial that damn near offends you with its utter fuckshittery, you’ll share that monstrosity with everyone. And that’s exactly what they want.

3

Web Brutalism

When I first got the internet in my house as a kid, we got a state-of-the-art, badass, lightning-fast 56k modem. I could download an MP3 in like ten minutes, and sometimes an entire dirty picture would load up before something went buggy and the poor woman was cut off at the knees. And seven out of every ten websites looked like a low-res My Little Pony pony ralphed cotton candy and Four Loko across a small-town church bulletin board.

As time passed, we all grew up and became better people with better websites. Dancing baby GIFs gave way to interstitial ads and Flash videos. Designs that looked like they were made by a guy with vinegar in his eyes working in the dark faded away, and sleek, professionally designed mega porn sites took their place. It was a great time to be alive. Or so we thought, because I guess people got sick of things that don’t look like shit and Web Brutalism was born.

If the terribly cheesy name didn’t give it away, Web Brutalism is a kind of artsy shitsy internet aesthetic. You purposefully make your website look like the south end of a northbound horse. Ugly, disorganized graphics, shockingly off-putting colors, a veritable dumpster of design techniques shat out onto a screen — if your site doesn’t look a fourth-grader’s glue and cardboard collage, you’ve failed.

A classically bad website was designed on Angelfire by your aunt who collects figurines of Jesus playing sports when she wanted to do something to commemorate her love of beat poetry. Some links were unclickable, images didn’t quite line up right, and it had charm in the same way your macaroni artwork had charm to your mom, who never told you that it looked like shit because she loved you. By the way, your macaroni art looked like shit. It’s cool, though, mine looked like the shit that shit takes after eating shit sandwiches. And somehow, someone decided a forced version of that was a good idea.

Web Brutalism seeks to make a website harder to navigate and uglier to look at than a fine, upstanding site, like the one you’re currently enjoying. Why? The answer is best summed up in this quote I heard from a guy in a bar once: “Fuckin’ because.”

2

Bioware’s Female Designs

Back in the day when I had an NES, there were basically two female characters you could name across the spectrum of video game characters: Princesses Peach and Zelda, and I don’t even think Zelda was actually in her game. But I did beat Super Mario Bros. 2, and Peach helped a brother out on that one, so yeah, you could say I’m like a video game feminist or some such. Which is why Bioware’s curious history with female characters is such a headscratcher.

Bioware makes some pretty impressive-looking games, like Mass Effect, and the character designs are amazing. There is a definite problem with some of them, though, insofar as that amazingness is in how straight up nuts-on-a-donkey ugly they are.

When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans were quick to notice that the male version of the player character, Ryder, looks super badass and cool and almost exactly like the male model who lent his likeness to the game designers. The female version of Ryder looks like the model if you rolled her in a sack of sadness and didn’t let her sleep for four days while feeding her a straight diet of CHUD.

Twitter

So why, if you have the ability to render characters in a way that makes them look like not vaguely emotive ballsacks, would you make your character look like a vaguely emotive ballsack? This one requires a bit of creative tinkering in the ol’ thinky bag, but it does make sense. Female characters in gaming, as you may be aware, have a bit of a lackluster history in terms of realistic representation. After Princess Peach, the next big name in lady characters was Lara Croft, who was at first presented as polygonal boobs on blocks, and then later as well-vectored boobs on well-vectored short pants. And thus began a tradition of most video game women being little more than boobs and confusion. So maybe Bioware makes their female characters less appealing on purpose so as to not be considered sexist or douchey.

Bioware has never come out and said they’ve made purposefully ugly characters. They have acknowledged abhorrent animation issues and terrible facial expressions which they set to work on fixing, but fans were all pretty convinced that there had to be more behind the distractingly objectionable visages of the female characters. As noted gamer nerd and feminist Lisa Kerzner argues in her video, it looks an awful lot like Bioware put considerable effort into downplaying the character’s face to make her more of an ugmo hero type (but just in the face), while trying to pawn it off as a technical limitation. Despite the fact that numerous other games can feature women who don’t look like victims of barnyard mad science, including a lot of Bioware’s previous games.

Unfortunately, dealing with matters of sex, sexism, and gender in video games is like opening a bag of cat shit lined with explosive squibs right in your damn face. If you recall anything to do with Gamergate, you know this is ground no one wants to tread on, so you almost can’t blame Bioware for not saying jack shit about it, as you don’t want to feed any trolls. But at the same time, when it’s obvious that they can make a nearly identical male character, there’s clearly a reason they’re not putting that same kind of effort into their females.

1

Scam Email Grammar

Usually when I send emails, I spell the multi-syllable words incorrectly and use grammar that’s about as fucked as a friction-burnt Fleshlight. But that’s my own bugaboo to deal with, and has little-to-no bearing on the world of scam email.

The odds of you having never received a Nigerian scam email are slimmer than Slender Man’s weird dick, which I’ll tell you about sometime if you buy me a few beers. But for the sake of the kids in the audience who are reading this on the wall I inscribe all my articles on and have never received email before, a Nigerian scam email is a poorly worded piece of fuckery that shows up in your inbox claiming to be from some African prince who has millions of dollars tied up in banks overseas, and if you could just help pay some transfer fees, you can keep a buttload of it!

Typically, these emails use terrible grammar and atrocious spelling, not because the person sending you the email is a blithering idiot, but because they need you to be so gullible that you believe a Wakandan prince personally sent you a one-way ticket to being a millionaire, and he typed the message with a greasy turkey leg in his hand while riding a homemade roller coaster.

Most of us can identify a scam email right away. Another subsection of people will be suspicious but interested. And an even smaller division will write back to test the waters. The scammers want nothing to do with any of those people. They want the person who immediately responds with their bank account number in the signature line, because they only want to deal with people who may have mistaken a ham bone for Tony Danza more than once in their lives. So don’t be too proud if you recognize right away that someone sent you a weak as shit attempt at ripping you off; they just didn’t want you to waste their time.

Ian’s Twitter is awesome on purpose. Go look.

Does Troll 2 suck on purpose? Find out for yourself, and go down the rabbit hole of recommendations like Samurai Cop and more!

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It’s Very Hot Outside—Sunday Chats (6/25/17)

I’ve got a nice cold glass of water by my side, air conditioning, and video games, so let’s chat.

Lack of Update

Usually here I have a little blog-y editorial-esque update on my life, what’s going on, and all the complicated things. I don’t know if I have anything I necessarily want to share here. Things have happened. I had some ups and downs this week. A reviewer of video games from the 90s would have probably called it a “mixed bag”.

But there are some things I’m working on that I’d rather not share. A first, for Sunday Chats, I think? But I’m doing alright. I’ve managed to surround myself with supportive and wonderful folks.

To make up for not getting up to anything crazy or fun this week, I’ve tried to watch more stuff that people are out there making, so I’ll try and share that out in today’s chat.

Onto the next thing...

What I’ve Been Working On

My rut of not getting anything interesting written or done continues. But it’s very much self-inflicted. Essentially everything I want to write is a rewrite or a reworking of completed things, and that means I have to go back through the whole thing and find where I need to add, to tweak, to change. I haven’t been making enough time everyday when I write, so instead I’ve been writing new intros to things, or just jotting and half-establishing loose ideas in my head. I’m going to try and dedicate more time to actually writing some things this coming week, but with how my mental state has been, it’s been a bit tougher than usual to focus. I’ll try and get better with it.

I did, however, finish a big post-E3 write up and published that. Making it the first big thing I’ve published in quite a bit. Go check it out!

http://irrationalpassions.com/editorial-who-really-took-e3-2017/

What’s on Tap

Alundra

So I’ve come back to Alundra. I think I may have mentioned it in last week’s Sunday Chats, but this is a very good game.

It’s a Zelda-like, and its definitely up there with Okami as not-Zelda games that are great games. Rivaling even the Zelda games they tried to compete with.

While Alundra is no Ocarina of Time, or A Link to the Past for that matter, it is still really rad.

Alundra has a big focus on platforming, which doing that from the isometric/Zelda perspective is, as you could imagine, challenging. It’s hard to know where you’re jumping to and so there is a pretty wide disconnect with when you jump and where you think you’ll land.

The different planes of view really effect this too. Sometimes platforms are up too high, but positioned in front of you so they kind of look like they’re right next to you.

What I’m saying is Alundra needs a 3DS remake.

Resident Evil 5

Anyone who follows IP on Twitch may have seen I started a new streaming series with this and Jacob Bryant. I’m pretty stoked about it, because Resident Evil 5 is great.

The game is just crazy fun with two people, and the way the arenas and set pieces fall into place is great. It’s a little bit of tension, very RE style, but it’s more an action-based tension, because you’re never without the tools to do something about the onslaught of enemies. 

It makes for a really great challenge. Also we’re playing on Hard Mode for some reason, and we’re probably going to die a lot more.

I’m archiving all the streams on YouTube so go watch them!

Questions

As always thank you everyone so much for your questions <3. If you want to get your question in, find my tweet with #SundayChats in it from sometime Sunday afternoon and reply to it with your question! That’s all ya gotta do.

Colors is easy. My favorite color is red. I prefer Scarlet, as for a specific shade, but any passionate red color is good. Red is passionate. It’s bright and hard but soft and warm at the same time. The same is true of my second favorite, Blue, which I would always go back and forth with when I was younger. Blue or Red? I love them both honestly. 

My third is probably purple, honestly. Which I am coming to realize is very funny because that is red and blue together. But purple is just gorgeous. On a good day it may even be number one.

As for a boy bands... Well, I feel like I’ve been disappointing a lot of people on this recently, but I don’t really have an opinion. I’ve never really listened to them? Like, I respect them from afar, but I think I’ve heard like, two N Sync songs. There is this one Backstreet Boys song I really like, but I can’t even think of the name of it.

So I’m sorry that I’m a disappointment, is what I’m saying I guess.

I could spend forever on this question, so I’ll stick with broad themes and vibes that each gives me.

The first book is just magical. You get whisked away to another world. It totally encompasses you and really makes you feel like every kind of magic is possible.

The second book is great because its so juxtaposed to the first. It becomes so dark and dreary so quickly. It pulls the film back and shows you how dangerous magic is, and how deep-seeded hatred and prejudice runs through this world, just like ours.

The third is awesome. It’s so much about James and what he was like, and hearing more about that is great. It’s the only book Voldemort isn’t in at all, but you can feel him in every corner. You can feel that foreboding horror that is coming in the next book, but you don’t understand it at the time.

Goblet of Fire is like a highlights reel. It’s the summer blockbuster. It’s the high flying action piece of the series, from the World Cup, to each task, to the finale. It’s dark, it’s horrifying, it’s sad, and it’s full of emotion and angst. 

I love everything about Order of the Phoenix. Being so deep in Harry’s mind when he is going through living and watching a friend die. His insecurities, his self-doubt, his self-hatred, his disgust with himself, his dramatic tantrums. Every moment is genuine, and as someone who struggles with depression and hating himself and doubting every decision he has made, that shit hurts and hits home. I love Harry so much because there is so much of me in him, especially in this book.

Half Blood Prince may be my second favorite. It depends on the day. Finally getting all the secrets unveiled and seeing the relationship between Dumbledore and Harry really blossom. It’s all top notch, with an excellent turn of events and set up for the finale.

The seventh book is excellent too. It’s probably my favorite end to a series, one that’s spanned multiple things at least. It’s full of death, and regrets, and struggle, but it blossoms that same home that came from the first book. I adore it.

I have not read Cursed Child, and still know next to nothing about it.

HI!

Now I saw all the internet debates over Keenan and Kel vs. Drake and Josh, and I get it. They are two different eras, and I loved both of them. Drake and Josh was just more my jam.

That’s probably my favorite Nick live action show, just because I remember laughing the hardest I’ve ever laughed watching that show. 

But a special shoutout to iCarly. I know it gets a ton of shit, and I was just starting to grow out of that kind of show when I started watching it, but it was a show about three friends starting an internet sensation and growing into popularity. It was really ahead of its time, because it was about a show thats live-streamed on the internet. That’s like, half my life now? It’s crazy to think that started in 2007.

For a free bonus, to answer the Disney Channel OGM question, which is definitely a lot harder for me, some special shoutouts:

Smart House and Halloweentown are classics. But the real number one in my heart is Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. I fucking loved that Disney Channel jam to death as a kid. Maybe the “Zequels” weren’t as good, but I liked the first a ton.

Also like, hey, I enjoyed my time with High School Musical. Just the first. And I watched all the Camp Rock movies. But that’s mostly just because I’m a trash human.

I am not going to RTX, unfortunately, but I will be in Austin the same weekend.

Checklist

A few to throw out there. First up:

Persona 3′s Ending made me appreciate all of life’s little endings - Are Technica - By Steven Strom

A really excellent piece on Persona 3, which is now 10 years old in the US. As someone who has also written out a thing on Persona 3 and holds it in high regard, Steven really nailed his message here. I just stumbled upon this one too.

Kinda Funny Games Daily - new show from KF!

I was really worried about this show. It’s hard for me to keep up with daily content and I was concerned that it may lose the magic of that format I really love from stuff like PS I Love You. I am happy to say I was worried for nothing. Greg is excellent as always with his one-on-ones, and hearing that dynamic across different folks like Andrea Rene, who I also adore, is awesome. 

Nite Two @ E3 2017 - Austin Walker, Griffin McElroy, and more - GiantBomb

In my attempt to slowly catch up with the GiantBomb E3 content, I picked a couple of gems out. This was the first one. And whooooo dang is it funny. Having Griffin and Justin McElroy in the same room as Austin Walker, Patrick Klepek, and Jeff Gerstmann = very exciting for me.

The Adventure Zone - The McElroy Family of Podcasts (and Podcasters)

The big god’s honest truth as to why I am so behind on all my stuff is because I’ve been re-listening to The Adventure Zone from the beginning. I am already back on Episode 43 after just two weeks of doing this. And oh my god is this show so good. Griffin is such a good DM, and it’s so funny. The four McElroys have too much fun with their shenanigans in dungeons and gerblins world, and I can’t recommend it enough.

A shorter, more consumable Sunday Chats today. I’m getting excited for my next trip coming up, and I’m hopefully going to start working on some new ideas soon, so I am stoked for what’s coming in the future! 

Thank you everyone for your support, and hey: keep it real.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Sucky Things That Suck On Purpose

This may come as a surprise, but I like it when things don’t suck. In fact, I would say that I devote 80 percent of my efforts toward avoiding suckage. Sadly, though, I can’t control the actions of others, and I won’t ever be able to until The Device is perfected. But until then, some people make shitty things, and the rest of us have to deal with it. And while we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that everyone makes mistakes as we eat a pizza which inexplicably arrived topped with double olives and pineapple, there’s no solace in the knowledge that some people do shitty things entirely on purpose. On that note, here are five terrible things which people made fully knowing that they’d be terrible.

5

The Google Glass Battery

If you were sober or literate in 2013 and 2014, you may have had to endure the deluge of tech profiles and extremely not-boring thinkpieces on Google Glass. If you could not in fact read or legally drive in 2013 and 2014, Google Glass was basically Google’s answer to the question “What’s a super expensive piece of shit I can intrusively wear on my face which will obscure my vision and make anyone around me fearful that I’m videotaping them like some kind of creeper?” You know, a question that we’ve all asked.

While most of us immediately dismissed Glass as being about as appealing as a herpes scab parfait, there were naturally a few fans who couldn’t wait to be the dollar store version of Geordi LaForge. But even amongst those die-hard tech fluffers, there was a clear issue: Glass had a battery that sucked like a leech in the coldest recesses of the vacuum of space.

The battery life of Google Glass clocked in at around 45 minutes, meaning that you had just enough time to stream yourself watching one episode of Young Sheldon and then crying about it afterwards before it shut off. Google tried to explain this away as an intentional design feature that was actually beneficial and not an example of a battery assembled by a one-eyed guy in an flea market who smells like cats.

According to Google, your cellphone is just a dangerous espionage device constantly listening to you from your pants pocket and maybe sending all that sweet, sweet pants gossip back to Samsung or the Kingsmen or whoever the fuck cares what you’re doing. So in an effort to heroically protect you from filthy spies, Google intentionally made a shitty battery so that the New World Order agents will only be able to watch half of your masturbation session before they’re left hanging. Suck it, dickholes! You’ll never know how this one ends!*

*Hastily, with a climactic yawp.

4

Low-Quality Viral Commercials

In 2011, the internet was blessed with one of the worst commercials for a taxidermy business that anyone had ever seen. I say this not as a connoisseur of taxidermy ads, but as a logical human being. Also, do taxidermy places really need commercials? What more needs to be said, other than “Hey! Do you like wolves, but hate the bitey, movey kinds?”

This commercial for Ojai Valley Taxidermy featured the one-two punch of Chuck Testa’s taxidermy skill and acting, and made us all fall in love with the stuffed corpse of a coyote and the overall awfulness of the entire experience. It was poorly made, clearly cheap, and its only redeeming quality was that all of the badness made it charming as hell. Chuck Testa became an internet hero. And it was all bullshit.

Testa is just one of many viral commercial stars made famous for being in videos often shared as “the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.” One commercial for a mall from 2014 featured employees singing a jingle that sounded like a cross between 3 a.m. barf-in-your-own-shoe-drunk karaoke and a cat stuck in a well. It sucked large, and people went nuts about it.

For a local business trying to drum up some attention, you have two options: Legitimately make a forgettable, boring, low-budget commercial which blandly explains whatever you’re trying to sell, or roll the dice on potentially going viral by making an abomination. Create such an abysmal crime against advertising that the sun refuses to shine when the video is playing and birds immediately stop singing and synchronize-shit on your car. Make it so bad that everyone immediately shares it with everyone they know. And then your craptastic commercial becomes an internet sensation.

They say people are ten times as likely to share a bad experience with a business than a good one. People like to complain more than they like to praise, probably because if something goes right, it fits in with your expectations and is therefore unremarkable. It’s only when things go wrong that you get worked up and make a stink over it. So when you see a commercial that damn near offends you with its utter fuckshittery, you’ll share that monstrosity with everyone. And that’s exactly what they want.

3

Web Brutalism

When I first got the internet in my house as a kid, we got a state-of-the-art, badass, lightning-fast 56k modem. I could download an MP3 in like ten minutes, and sometimes an entire dirty picture would load up before something went buggy and the poor woman was cut off at the knees. And seven out of every ten websites looked like a low-res My Little Pony pony ralphed cotton candy and Four Loko across a small-town church bulletin board.

As time passed, we all grew up and became better people with better websites. Dancing baby GIFs gave way to interstitial ads and Flash videos. Designs that looked like they were made by a guy with vinegar in his eyes working in the dark faded away, and sleek, professionally designed mega porn sites took their place. It was a great time to be alive. Or so we thought, because I guess people got sick of things that don’t look like shit and Web Brutalism was born.

If the terribly cheesy name didn’t give it away, Web Brutalism is a kind of artsy shitsy internet aesthetic. You purposefully make your website look like the south end of a northbound horse. Ugly, disorganized graphics, shockingly off-putting colors, a veritable dumpster of design techniques shat out onto a screen — if your site doesn’t look a fourth-grader’s glue and cardboard collage, you’ve failed.

A classically bad website was designed on Angelfire by your aunt who collects figurines of Jesus playing sports when she wanted to do something to commemorate her love of beat poetry. Some links were unclickable, images didn’t quite line up right, and it had charm in the same way your macaroni artwork had charm to your mom, who never told you that it looked like shit because she loved you. By the way, your macaroni art looked like shit. It’s cool, though, mine looked like the shit that shit takes after eating shit sandwiches. And somehow, someone decided a forced version of that was a good idea.

Web Brutalism seeks to make a website harder to navigate and uglier to look at than a fine, upstanding site, like the one you’re currently enjoying. Why? The answer is best summed up in this quote I heard from a guy in a bar once: “Fuckin’ because.”

2

Bioware’s Female Designs

Back in the day when I had an NES, there were basically two female characters you could name across the spectrum of video game characters: Princesses Peach and Zelda, and I don’t even think Zelda was actually in her game. But I did beat Super Mario Bros. 2, and Peach helped a brother out on that one, so yeah, you could say I’m like a video game feminist or some such. Which is why Bioware’s curious history with female characters is such a headscratcher.

Bioware makes some pretty impressive-looking games, like Mass Effect, and the character designs are amazing. There is a definite problem with some of them, though, insofar as that amazingness is in how straight up nuts-on-a-donkey ugly they are.

When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans were quick to notice that the male version of the player character, Ryder, looks super badass and cool and almost exactly like the male model who lent his likeness to the game designers. The female version of Ryder looks like the model if you rolled her in a sack of sadness and didn’t let her sleep for four days while feeding her a straight diet of CHUD.

Twitter

So why, if you have the ability to render characters in a way that makes them look like not vaguely emotive ballsacks, would you make your character look like a vaguely emotive ballsack? This one requires a bit of creative tinkering in the ol’ thinky bag, but it does make sense. Female characters in gaming, as you may be aware, have a bit of a lackluster history in terms of realistic representation. After Princess Peach, the next big name in lady characters was Lara Croft, who was at first presented as polygonal boobs on blocks, and then later as well-vectored boobs on well-vectored short pants. And thus began a tradition of most video game women being little more than boobs and confusion. So maybe Bioware makes their female characters less appealing on purpose so as to not be considered sexist or douchey.

Bioware has never come out and said they’ve made purposefully ugly characters. They have acknowledged abhorrent animation issues and terrible facial expressions which they set to work on fixing, but fans were all pretty convinced that there had to be more behind the distractingly objectionable visages of the female characters. As noted gamer nerd and feminist Lisa Kerzner argues in her video, it looks an awful lot like Bioware put considerable effort into downplaying the character’s face to make her more of an ugmo hero type (but just in the face), while trying to pawn it off as a technical limitation. Despite the fact that numerous other games can feature women who don’t look like victims of barnyard mad science, including a lot of Bioware’s previous games.

Unfortunately, dealing with matters of sex, sexism, and gender in video games is like opening a bag of cat shit lined with explosive squibs right in your damn face. If you recall anything to do with Gamergate, you know this is ground no one wants to tread on, so you almost can’t blame Bioware for not saying jack shit about it, as you don’t want to feed any trolls. But at the same time, when it’s obvious that they can make a nearly identical male character, there’s clearly a reason they’re not putting that same kind of effort into their females.

1

Scam Email Grammar

Usually when I send emails, I spell the multi-syllable words incorrectly and use grammar that’s about as fucked as a friction-burnt Fleshlight. But that’s my own bugaboo to deal with, and has little-to-no bearing on the world of scam email.

The odds of you having never received a Nigerian scam email are slimmer than Slender Man’s weird dick, which I’ll tell you about sometime if you buy me a few beers. But for the sake of the kids in the audience who are reading this on the wall I inscribe all my articles on and have never received email before, a Nigerian scam email is a poorly worded piece of fuckery that shows up in your inbox claiming to be from some African prince who has millions of dollars tied up in banks overseas, and if you could just help pay some transfer fees, you can keep a buttload of it!

Typically, these emails use terrible grammar and atrocious spelling, not because the person sending you the email is a blithering idiot, but because they need you to be so gullible that you believe a Wakandan prince personally sent you a one-way ticket to being a millionaire, and he typed the message with a greasy turkey leg in his hand while riding a homemade roller coaster.

Most of us can identify a scam email right away. Another subsection of people will be suspicious but interested. And an even smaller division will write back to test the waters. The scammers want nothing to do with any of those people. They want the person who immediately responds with their bank account number in the signature line, because they only want to deal with people who may have mistaken a ham bone for Tony Danza more than once in their lives. So don’t be too proud if you recognize right away that someone sent you a weak as shit attempt at ripping you off; they just didn’t want you to waste their time.

Ian’s Twitter is awesome on purpose. Go look.

Does Troll 2 suck on purpose? Find out for yourself, and go down the rabbit hole of recommendations like Samurai Cop and more!

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