#last year had been a real zelda year for me

[saltynsassy31]

Having had BotW as my first game and then playing Skyward Sword afterwards has been a very...humbling experience

[bonus-links]

Ahem, if I may impose.... Directors commentary?? 😁😁

YEAHHH lots to say abt this one

i know rule number one is don't point out the flaws in ur own work but i have to confess. i forgot to add hair highlights to this entire update. i didn't realize until i had already queued up the posts and i could not bear re-exporting and color correcting every page again. so i just let it be. it only kills me a little bit. they rlly add something y'know

i haven't seen a whole lot of comments about this to the point i worry i didn't do a good job of conveying it so: Loft's dream at the beginning is about ganondorf.

Loft has, in fact, chewed his nails to bits.

i'm gonna be so real, part of the delay for this update was bc my brain got so stuck on the logistics of where that damn bookshelf would go

korok bookends :D

i like to think the story of the hero of time is actually mostly an oral tradition on Outset, or at least that's how Gran Gran first told Link and Aryll the stories when they were children.

i worry a little bit about these 'lore recap" updates, bc like. I'm assuming you've played the games, or at least know the gist. but I feel like there's a few stories it's important for us to see Loft's direct reactions to, and the conclusions he draws from them, because it'll be important to his actions later. I try to make up for it by at least making these sections visually interesting HAHA i think this is the last major one though

on that note: I hope this comes across on its own, but Loft finishes Gran Gran's story himself because he's just realized the flood was sent by the gods, and not some external force of evil. he's also realizing that this is not the first time the gods have been willing to wipe the slate clean in the absence of a hero, and that it's actually something of a pattern. it runs up against his idea of how Demise's curse is meant to work. this is one such mystery mouseketool we'll use later.

also on that note: regardless of ganondorf's actions, i find it significant that the gods chose to destroy a man whose people suffered in a droughted desert with,,,,a flood. that thought was the conceit for this update

Loft has seen this play out in his dreams, but obviously doesn't fully know the context. also I'm gonna refer to this version of zelda as Sheik. he uses he/him pronouns thank you :-)

just wanted to show some closeups of the stained glass bc. i worked hard on them HAHA + the grayscale wip

i was really hoping this chapter would be done. last year. it was meant to be a chance to slow down for a second before the plot speeds up 😅 but we're nearing the last few updates!! thank you all for bearing with me <3 life has been kind of insane and extremely discouraging irl, so getting to post these updates and seeing you all enjoy them has been a real bright spot <333 special thank you to my patreon supporters bc. seriously it has helped more than you know.

i think that's all ive got for now! see you next time, hopefully sooner than 4-5 business months

[shaevilux]

People knock on Rhoam for being a bad dad cuz he's distant and stern to little Zelda and say how Rauru is the goat (heh) for taking her in like his own daughter. Like Zelda had her real parental connection with Sonia and Rauru. But frankly that's a little reductive.

Rauru literally descended from the heavens, married a priest, started a kingdom. Man didn't really know much strife yet. There's no looming threat of calamity or prophecy yet. Things are peaceful. Things are fine. Things are great. Zelda dropped in during this time, talking about a doom that's going to happen tens of thousands of years in the future.

This sad, lost princess.

Of course any reasonable person would take her in and calm her and tell her she is fine and listen and support her.

Rhoam not being able to be this kind of figure for Zelda is tragic. Just read this poor man's journal entries:

"It has been a year and three months since her mother passed. Perhaps she is held back by heartache too deep to heal. If the Ganon prophecy wasn't looming over our heads, I would tell her to take her time... To wait until she is ready. But our situation is dire and leaves no room for weakness—even on behalf of my beloved daughter. My heart breaks for Zelda, but I must act as a king, not a father. I must order her to train relentlessly at the fountain." Pg 4.

"In truth, I understand Zelda's feelings. Painfully so. She lost her mother, her teacher, before she could learn from her. Ten pointless years of self-training, without so much as a book or note to help her find her way... Those in the castle talk behind her back. And I, her only family, scold her for her shortcomings. No wonder she wishes to hide away in her beloved relic research. I'd love nothing more than to console her... But I must stay strong. She MUST fulfill her duty, just as we all must. Even if she comes to despise me." Pg 6.

"I have been told my Zelda went to the Spring of Wisdom... This will likely be her last chance. If she is unable to awaken her power at Lanayru, all hope is truly lost. If she comes back without success, then I shall speak kindly with her. Scolding is pointless now. I forced 10 years of training on her... and after all that, it seems her power will stubbornly awaken some other way. Perhaps I should encourage her to keep researching her beloved relics. They may just lead her to answers I can't provide. For now, I sit anxiously, more a father than a king in this moment. I sit and await my daughter's return." Pg 7. (He fucking dies and never gives Zelda this bit of closure uuuugggghhhhhhh Zelda I'm so sorry Rhoam I'm so sorry)

It sucks because most people remember the cutscenes (duh it's more immersive and important) and in the cutscenes of the first game Rhoam was mostly shown as being stern and mean to babygirl Zelda, who is closed fists explaining herself to him at the verge of tears. And in contrast everyone in the first royal family of hyrule in the second game treated her with such kindness and we can see how happy she was being there with them.

Rhoam was shackled by duty. By prophecy. By the looming calamity. And from the day he named his daughter 'Zelda' he shackled her as well.

And what does Zelda do with these shackles? She accepts them. She tolerates them. Because she loves her father and her kingdom and knows there's a power dormant in her that can stop the calamity that she must do her best to unlock. She does this dutifully. She does all the training, she does everything that is required.

But it still doesn't unlock. So she tries other ways. She isn't just going after the 'relics' because she's scholarly and nerdy and wants to learn about them. She does it because she's pragmatic. She knows her sacred sealing power isn't present in her. She knows she might not be able to control it or even unlock it in time.

So she tries this alternative approach. The Divine Beasts, the guardians. Ancient tech that was used to prevent the calamity of their time. And she awakened the tech. And her father chose the champions for each divine beast. And they were all prepared. And it's all thanks to Zelda.

And then... Fucking tragedy again. Ganon probably learned his lesson from the last time he was thwarted and immediately went for the tech, corrupting it and turning it against the new users. Against Zelda.

It's never really stated how fast it all turned to shit when the tech betrayed them (or maybe I don't remember) but every account points to it being almost overnight. The champions died. Rhoam died. And suddenly, suddenly Zelda unlocks her sealing magic.

I always always hate the literary trope of using tragedy to unlock a great power that could've actually stopped the tragedy from happening in the first place.

And it's no different in BOTW. I hate that Zelda had to go through all this to unlock her powers.

And then what happens next?

She's stuck in limbo (in an almost mocking parallel to Rauru in the next game with his imprisoning arm) holding Ganon back. For a hundred years.

This young woman had gone through so much only to be trapped with a calamity seeking to destroy Hyrule for a century.

Does she know her father died in the war? Does she know the champions died in battle? Would she know Link would survive in the Shrine of Resurrection? Would she know how long it would all take? The century she would have to wait?

I think she didn't. I think it all happened too fast. I think ultimately, she decided a stalemate with ganon was an agreeable outcome. I think in her mind she probably thought she failed Hyrule. When the divine beasts turned she must have been distraught. Distraught might not even cover it tbh. But at least... At least when the kingdom was brought to it's knees by the corrupted tech and was waiting for the final blow, she had the ability to ensure the final blow never came.

And oh boy I have a looot more to talk about regarding Tears of the Kingdom. But I do want to have a couple of more playthroughs of it to really formulate what I want to say.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

HUMMMMMM

What about Links to Zelda’s point of view of pre relationship after calamity BOTW, where everybody and their brother (AND SISTER) is in love with Zelda and hits on her, she’s oblivious of course because, yknow super in love with Link.

Every place they travel to post calamity, poor links cheeks STAY clenched.

Thanks for the prompt, @raziasark! I have been very slow, so I decided to post this one in installments. This first one is about 1100 words. I hope you enjoy the beginning and I'll try to be less slow 😂

Thanks @newtsnaturethings for bouncing ideas back and forth with me!

---

The Princess Vibe

At first, Link didn’t notice. He had a lot to deal with, and he was disoriented. Who could blame him? He’d just shot a giant purple boar on magenta-fire with magical golden arrows which somehow emerged from his soul while riding Geranium (who had somehow materialized in Hyrule field despite Link knowing for a fact when he last left him, he was happily munching hay at Riverside Stable).

Zelda’s arms around him were even more disorienting.

“Thank you, Link. Thank you,” she said, over and over like someone still half-dreaming, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

He held her firm, but so, so careful—she deserved every ounce of support he had in him, but she was his Princess, half-remembered and half an ethereal vision from his life before. Was it real? Was she real? Did he love her? He thought he did, but nowhere in all those glimpses of his past life had he said or done anything about it.

He could be imagining things, especially if they were in the past.

His head could be coping with all that secondhand drama.

Past-him might’ve just been doing his duty.

Past-her might’ve expected him to do his duty, too, and that was it.

Now-her might be glad he finally finished his duty, but that’s all.

Zelda shook like a dry, crackling leaf against him.

Link stroked her hair without thinking. He winced, waiting for an objection, but she just kept thanking him. He swallowed the taste of malice-fire, acrid and sulfurous in his dry throat.

She was free for the first time in a hundred years. She deserved that freedom. He wouldn’t foist his own feelings on her.

Later, he found himself wishing everyone else would see it that way.

--

They arrived, filthy and exhausted, at Riverside Stable.

“Huh?!” Ember said, his mouth agape as they approached on the unmistakable giant horse. “When’d you take him out?”

“Snuck him out like a thief in the night, eh?!” Gotter said, squinting at Link. “Why didn’t you ask us like normal?”

Zelda’d been half-dozing against him in the saddle, but her head rose at that. “Indeed not. I teleported him.”

“You-“

“What?!”

“I apologize for any inconvenience,” she said.

They stared at her.

As Link dealt with Ember and the logistics of re-boarding the horse, Gotter seemed unable to stop staring at Zelda, who’d sunk onto a stool to rest.

“Eh- do you- teleport often?” the portly stablehand asked in a strange tone of voice.

“Only recently,” Zelda replied.

“O- oh. I see, so- eh-“ Gotter wrung his hands and took a step closer to her. “What kind of things have you- tried?”

“Only Link and that horse.”

“Oh! You can teleport people?!”

“Not anymore,” she said.

“Eh? Why not?”

“I suppose it must be due to my renewed corporeality.”

Gotter scratched his head with a befuddled squint.

Link finished exchanging rupees just in time to see Zelda listing sideways. He rushed over, thinking to scoop her up, but she hugged his leg instead.

“Thank you,” she said.

He blinked. “You’re welcome.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up to see a sort of intense vacancy on Gotter’s face, totally fixed on Zelda.

Link hadn’t planned on staying there overnight anyway, but it gave him the creeps. He whipped out the Sheikah Slate. “Ready?” He asked.

Her face turned up, her eyes glazed and smeared face pale. “For what?”

“Let’s get you somewhere to rest.”

“Oh! Oh, there are beds here!” Gotter said.

Zelda started pulling herself up with Link’s thigh as anchorage. He helped her. Gotter reached out a hand, then pulled it back with an odd little…

Giggle?

“Oh- you have it, haha,” Gotter said.

Link had enough of the weirdness. “Ready?” he asked again as her arms wrapped around his neck. At her nod, he reached around her shoulders and tapped the icon for the Myahm Agana Shrine.

He adored her little gasp by his ear as the blue energy shivered through them. It was lucky, really—he could pass his own shiver off as that, instead.

--

They spent days just recuperating.

Zelda slumped onto a seat at his table as soon as they walked in, but he didn’t let her stay there. He carried her to his bed, deposited her there, and took her sandals off for her—she was already asleep.

He wrapped the comforter around her, grabbed a bedroll, and laid it out on the floor beside her. (This, it turned out, was unwise, since she stepped directly on his bladder about two hours later when she awakened to empty her own).

That incident aside, they each slept the rest of the night and morning away. Link awakened to the gentle pat of Zelda’s fingers on his cheek, and he turned to find her hanging partway off the bed to reach him.

“Where do you get your drinking water?” she asked.

Link was up like a shot and trotting to the well around back for her. He drew three hot baths that day, too—two for Zelda and one for him.

Time passed in a complete haze while they got used to being rested, clean, fed, and safe again. Link kept startling with this sudden feeling he’d forgotten to do something important—a false sense of urgency, leftover signals rattling around his nervous system (except on that first day, after Zelda’s first bath, when he realized with horror the only women’s clothing he had was his vai outfit, and he would feel like a monumental ass if he offered her that, so he offered his typical day clothes instead and that was worse—the way she looked coming out of the bathhouse with his undershirt and—shorts?!).

“Oh, uh,” he'd said with a nervous tremor in his voice. “Yeah, so those are undershorts, the pants are-“

“Too tight, I’m afraid,” she’d said with a furious blush (Link felt awful for embarrassing her), “around my- ah- posterior.”

Link had started to sweat as he feverishly searched his brain for the meaning of the word “posterior," which he knew he knew when his internal monologue wasn't screaming.

“Perhaps,” she’d said, “you could spare those Sheikah tights instead? They ought to stretch.”

“Oh! Sure,” he’d said, extremely happy for the excuse to escape any potential revelation of his temporarily-depleted vocabulary.

He later had a small moment of enlightened panic when he realized how she must’ve known about his tights (“every step” of his journey? Every single one?!).

There were quite a few other small panic attacks involved in not looking at all, not one little bit, at how those tights fit her. Eyes up, straight out at all times, absolutely no looking anywhere below neck-level at Zelda. None.

But apart from those things, his jumpiness was nothing but leftovers.

At first.

---

[To be continued! Not sure how long this will be, but clearly a multi-installment fic!]

[damallarky]

What I Liked About Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I keep seeing extremely negetive comments about Veilguard, even nearly two months after the game has been released, and that is insane to me.

Now, I'll admit that I had my own gripes about the game. But I have decided that I am not going to focus soley on the negatives. That makes me and everyone around me angry and miserable and that is not why I am on Tumblr.com. I am here for the memes and to talk about Dragon Age man.

So, I have decided to be the change I want to see in the world and make a non-exhaustive list of all of the things that I LIKED about Veilguard.

The Companions: I loved them. I loved their story arcs. I think they were well-written and very Dragon Age-y. They reminded me of the DA:O crew in a good way. I also can see what Bioware meant when they talked about the found family vibes.

The Art Style: This art style is my favorite out of all of the Dragon Age games. I've always prefered a more styalized look, because it's fun but mostly because it ages SO MUCH BETTER than a more realistic style in video games. Games like Zelda, Fable, etc still look pretty good today because they all have a more styalized look. At least in my opinion.

The Animation: This could go along with the art style, but I wanted to make it a seperate category. The animation in Veilguard was fantastic. The facial expressions on the characters were so well done. Ghila'nain moved like a Little Nightmares character which was great. Characters actually held onto their mugs!

The Voice Acting: Every Bioware game I've ever played has fantastic voice acting though. *shrugs*

The Seige of Weisshaupt: Was an absolutley fantastic moment in the game. Having a terrifying face hover over you while you desperately try to fight your way through the hordes of Darkspawn? Being led to safety by some random, badass kid? Davrin killing a Darkspawn's cousin last week? Lucanis not being able to stab a cloud? Perfection.

Being Able to Pet All the Cats and Dogs (and Assan): This speaks for itself tbh.

The Ossuary: Dude, walking into that funky underwater prison and seeing a massive aquatic creature swim by you was such a neat moment. I really enjoyed that area. That's also where we get to meet Lucanis and Spite, so yay!

The Fade Fish Tank: For similar reasons to above. I just think fish are cool ok? I also spent a little more time than I probably should have watching the fish swim back and forth.

Photo Mode: I love when games have a photo mode and I LOVED Veilguard's photo mode. I also love all of the photos that the community have been taking.

The Combat: The combat was really fun. I don't remember having as much fun with combat in a Dragon Age game as I had with Veilguard. You can tell the team put a lot of time and effort into it and it shows.

The Fact That We Got a Game At All: Look. After ten years of development hell, I wouldn't have been surprised if the game got scrapped. Yet somehow, despite the odds, the team at Bioware managed to deliver a finished game despite the odds stacked against them. Is it perfect? No. But it's here and it's real and out there for us to either love it or hate it despite the many times Bioware could have thrown in the towel.

Feel free to add to this list or talk about the things you liked about the game in the replies section! I know Veilguard has it's issues. Don't let the bad get in the way of the good.

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Malice's Stain (Imprisoning War)

I set out to write one thing, stumbled onto something I had written weeks ago, and was inspired, so have some post-war PLOT for y'all! >:D I feel like this can be read even if you have no idea what's going on, but whatevs, read as you please. <3

X

The smell of autumn was in the air.

Crickets chirped, a symphony of oncoming coolness and stillness, a song of farewell to the warm, moist summer nights filled with twinkling fireflies that replaced the stars. The sky sparkled, gracing the land with a preview of the splendors a cold winter night sky could provide. Flames burned quietly from torches, casting shadows taller than the castle’s turrets.

Link stared blankly out at the courtyard from the balcony.

He knew this feeling. Or lack of it, really. It took every ounce of energy to just breathe. Here he stood, permanently planted in this spot, not tolerating moving but not wanting to stay still. His mind was filled with cotton, half-thoughts trying to formulate sentences and failing to even convey anything beyond a dull ache, a shadow of what should have been an emotion.

This was becoming a problem, but he was far beyond the point of caring at the moment.

There were a million stressors on his mind, yet none truly seemed to stress him out. It was just another thing to be done, another item to obtain, another person to look out for. Day in and out, watch the children, watch the military’s progress in training new recruits, watch the Sheikah scientists continue to come up with new creations and make new breakthroughs.

Smile, say a few words, rinse, repeat. Go to bed, never fall asleep, get up, do it again.

He gave up even trying to go to bed tonight. He’d tolerated his son’s presence today. Tolerated it. What sort of father tolerates his children?

Link felt a twinge of something pull at his chest. His lips trembled. He leaned heavily on the balcony railing, sagging as if the weight of all the stars in the sky were bearing down on him.

There was a low rumble, a voice that practically growled as it chuckled. “So this is the fate of the Hero of Hyrule, then. You’re just as pathetic as I figured you to be.”

Link stiffened a moment at the voice, at the way his body physically reacted and wanted to scream and claw at the man. But no. He wasn’t there. He couldn’t be real. He’d sealed Ganondorf away years ago. Besides, last night Link had seen the Gerudo general he’d murdered when he was sixteen; he’d figured, after a week without sleep, he’d probably start seeing things. He’d gotten close to this level of exhaustion during the war, and he remembered he and Hemisi had nearly lost their minds.

It didn’t make it any more tolerable, though.

Link didn’t dignify the hallucination with a response.

“I’m grateful you didn’t marry my daughter,” Ganondorf continued, pacing the length of the balcony behind Link like a predator stalking its prey. “You would have ruined her.”

It stung, for a moment. Then Link almost laughed. “The only one who ruined her was you.”

“Imagine if I had won,” Ganondorf continued, either oblivious to his words or ignoring him. Could a hallucination ignore its creator? “Imagine the different state of things.”

“Hyrule would have burned,” Link snapped, glaring at him.

“Would it?” Ganondorf questioned. “Is it not burning slowly now, withering away as its nobles poison it from the inside out?”

“Zelda is working to fix that,” Link argued.

“Ah, yes. Zelda.” Ganondorf spat out the name like it was a curse. “How Nayru ever favored such a dim-witted child is beyond me.”

Link reached for a weapon before remembering he wasn’t armed. “You are the only fool I had the displeasure of knowing. Thinking you could control everything and in the end all you did was destroy it. Tell me, when you first came up with the plan to steal the Triforce, was murdering your entire family part of it or just a side quest for fun? You stood tall and proud like some king but you were nothing more than a clown, lapping at power like the pathetic boar that you were!”

“And yet here you stand,” Ganondorf hissed, motioning towards him. “The man with all the power in the world, and you are completely helpless.”

The fight drained out of Link, and he felt his face grow cold and pale. Rage filled him and exited just as quickly as he had no rebuttal.

Pathetic.

…He wasn’t wrong. Link was pathetic. He was weak and he knew it.

Years ago, he’d tried to end it in an act of desperation and fear, wanting to escape his imprisonment and avoid becoming a monster that he thought he was turning into.

Had he succeeded in avoiding such a fate? Was he not a monster?

He supposed he wasn’t. He was no Ganondorf. But… he was pathetic. Despite all his attempts to be otherwise, here he stood, arguing with thin air and unable to win.

“You were supposed to be the pride of the Sheikah,” he heard beside him, and he turned to see Lady Impa looking at him disappointedly. “Yet all you do is wallow in self-pity. Our duty is to the royal family, and you can’t even do that.”

“You’re no Hero,” Ganondorf sneered. “Heroes are powerful.”

“Heroes are selfless,” Impa added, walking up to stand beside the ghostly Gerudo man.

“How could anyone love such a wretch?” Ganondorf finally said.

“I don’t need your love or approval,” Link spat, though the fire had mostly drained out of him. It was less of a rebuke and more of a plea, a petition to himself to believe it.

He was over this conversation. He turned sharply, growing dizzy, staring down at the ground so, so far below.

Softer footsteps came next, lighter feet than the thundering steps of the monster he’d faced years ago but not as purposefully quiet as his chief. He caught sight of red hair in his periphery, and he saw Hemisi watching him, bubble ponytail over her shoulder, amber eyes reflecting the firelight.

Link bit back an exhausted sigh, squeezing his eyes shut. He should’ve known she’d inevitably appear in this insanity. He really should try to get some sleep. Would Zelda appear next? Or would his mind turn images of his own children against him?

Honestly, he probably deserved that more than anything.

“You look like shit,” Hemisi commented, an echo of her remark when they’d seen each other for the first time since Sonia’s baby shower. He recalled the incident fondly and forlornly, an event that probably should have never happened. But that had been years ago.

He wasn’t sure it was worth indulging this hallucination as well, and had very little energy to do so, but if he ignored it things would probably just get more out of control. “I haven’t slept in a week.”

“Why?”

Hell if he knew. He’d tried. He used to sleep too much. Now, suddenly, his body decided he just shouldn’t sleep at all. He’d had sleepless nights before, but never for such a long stretch. He felt like he was about to burst out of his own skin. He wasn’t entirely sure why any of this was happening.

“What’s wrong, Link?”

Her voice was so gentle. It made him want to scream.

But what was wrong? He had episodes where he felt down or unmotivated, but he hadn’t felt this insane since Sonia’s birth. His daughter was eight years old now!

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “Maybe I’m just tired.”

Hemisi snorted. “I’d say so. You haven’t slept in a week.”

He supposed that was a silly remark to make, given the circumstances. But he really couldn’t fathom what was causing this.

Link smelled lavender all of a sudden, and he turned, noticing that Hemisi had vanished, and only saw a silhouette in the entrance to the balcony. The curls that haloed their head, as well as the mildly heavier build from childbearing gave away the person’s identity, her lavender soap carried in the chilly breeze.

“Zelda?” he asked hesitantly, wondering if this was somehow a more vivid hallucination or if the queen really was there.

The silhouette stepped out of the castle entirely and into the open air, and the torches cast their light on her. Zelda watched him, hands rising to hug her bare arms as she shivered a little.

She was responding to the environment. She had to be real.

“Link,” she said softly, green eyes roaming the area. “Who were you talking to?”

Great. The queen overhearing her husband steadily losing his sanity was the last thing he needed right now. He felt irritation sting, pulsing angrily behind his eyes with his ever-growing headache.

“Myself,” he answered truthfully. “Long night. Do you need something, Your Majesty?”

Zelda hesitated, noting, “Are you not cold? It’s getting chilly out here.”

Link glanced down at his attire. He was still wearing his summer clothes, the bright red tunic laced with golden embroidery overlayed by the dark forest green cloth that draped over his left shoulder and across his chest, cinched at the waist with a brown decorative belt made of leather and beads. There was no need to wear trousers in the summer for nobles in formalwear, something Link had never really enjoyed, but he’d adopted the dress as he was expected, wearing sandals with it. At least the tunic went to his knees. Nevertheless, Zelda was right – he was underdressed for the weather, but… he’d chosen to wear his summer attire as it had been warmer in the day and he’d wanted the nighttime cold to slap some semblance of clarity into his foggy mind.

The hallucinations did not seem to be indicating that it was working. The way he only just noticed he was shivering didn’t help, either.

Deflecting, he jutted his chin towards her briefly, his earrings jingling in the breeze with the movement. “And you?”

She was, after all, in her own warmer weather clothes, a sleeveless ocean blue knee-length simple dress overlapped with a milky white overdress that crossed over her chest, shoulder to opposite hip, before encircling her legs, more in the back than the front. She had a thicker belt with cloth bearing the symbol of the Triforce resting over the area the overdress left exposed. Her curly brown hair was pulled out of her face, though styled in its usual half-up/half-down manner, so at least her neck was likely somewhat warm. He could vaguely make out goosebumps over her light skin, despite her hands covering her upper arms and the bright blue skin paint that decorated her from upper arms to wrists.

“I’m freezing,” she admitted. “Come inside, Link.”

Did she actually need something? It was strange for her to seek him out this late. They certainly weren’t on as bad terms as they used to be at the start of their rocky marriage, but given her actions over Sonia’s training, Link had distanced himself and their son from her. He hadn’t wanted Orik dragged into her scheming like his sister had been. It had left their relationship… cool, to say the least.

Sighing, he complied. There was nothing left to do at this point, and he didn’t have the energy to argue further. His eye roamed the balcony, scanning for any more hallucinations, but his mind seemed to be having some mercy on him; the demon king, Link’s chief, and his former love were all gone.

His fingers stopped stinging from the cold as he followed the queen indoors, though the air was still fairly chilly. Zelda didn’t speak, instead wrapping an arm around him and guiding him along. He glanced at her, almost wanting to ask what this was about, but not caring enough to do so. With the minor alarm of haunting images of his past disappearing, he’d grown numb to the world once more.

Goddess, he just wanted to sleep.

The couple eventually wound up at the door leading to Zelda’s chambers. Link glanced at her again, wondering if she wanted what he thought she did. They hadn’t been physically intimate in years—early in their marriage it had been a push between the two, Zelda needing an heir and Link needing a release from everything, but as they had matured and had two children and steadily avoided each other, neither really wanted to instigate anything all that often.

So why did she want it now?

Zelda opened the door, guiding Link inside, and then sighed, releasing him and heading towards the roaring fire. Link looked around, feeling out of place, and honestly just wanted to leave. He watched the queen a moment longer, watched as she took off her belt and outer dress before grabbing a robe and bundling herself up.

“Come to bed,” she said. It wasn’t quite an order—he was very familiar with what those sounded like—but it still seemed firmer than a request.

Link sighed again. Debated the matter for a moment, growing annoyed at being stuck here, but quickly acquiesced, giving up on the matter. The bed was unbelievably soft and warm, yet simultaneously too hard and cold, his back hurting, hair on his body rising in anxiety, muscles aching, mind still unable to focus.

He… wasn’t sure he’d ever felt this awful. Had he felt this bad during the war, perhaps?

Maybe the night before Hemisi and I fought Ganondorf, he mused. But back then, he and Hemisi, despite how nervous they’d been, had also had each other. There had been a little comfort in that, in the promise of a future after everything, in the hope that the world wouldn’t end the next day as Ganondorf held Zelda and the capital hostage.

He was far over the bitterness of how everything had unraveled between him and the new chief of the Gerudo, but his heart still hurt thinking about the war, about a time when he knew what hope felt like. And he wanted to smack himself for it. His children brought him hope and joy.

Well. They had. Until whatever the hell this funk was had started poisoning him.

He had episodes like these, but they’d never been this awful. Nor this agonizing. He’d be exhausted, paralyzed, but it would last maybe a day or two, a brief spell before Lady Impa would track him down and help him, or his children would find a way to fetch him (he still was too scared to let them know where his room was, terrified of what he’d do if they startled him awake—his reactions weren’t as severe as they’d been, but he still worried).

Zelda slowly got in bed as well, watching him a moment. She no longer hid her expression, worry clear on her face, and it made Link feel like he was under scrutiny.

She was trying to be nice. That’s what this was. Perhaps she did need something, but not now. But he knew she could be kind as well, and that seemed to be her only motivation. He knew that. So why did he feel like a caged animal?

Link waited. Time passed. The fire died. Zelda fell asleep. He was still wide awake.

A whisper behind him made him turn sharply, though he tried to be quiet for his wife’s sake. He caught sight of a silhouette, and alarm made his eyes widen as he slinked out of bed, looking desperately for a weapon.

The person vanished.

Link wanted to scream. He couldn’t stay in here. If these hallucinations got worse, he could hurt Zelda. So he made his way back outside, hoping the cold would slap some sense into him.

He never made it to the balcony, though. Something else caught his eye. It sparkled in the night, like an ember from a torch, but it was darker.

The crispness of the early spring air froze over as if winter had come anew, and Link felt like the wind itself punched the air right out of his lungs. It was unnatural, like he was being squeezed, like something was crawling inside his skin and tearing him apart. His head pounded, and the world darkened, surrounded in purplish burgundy energy, like blood and poison mixing together in a sickening magic that could only be produced by someone who had let evil stain them to their very soul.

Ganondorf disappeared as he screamed, encased in the dark essence, and Link clutched Hemisi more firmly. She was still limp in his arms, having taken the brunt of the lightning attack he’d sent their way, able to redirect it before it could kill all three of them.

When the vicious tornado of malice dispersed from the center of the dark storm, a massive beast stood before them, and Link felt as if his heart stopped. It roared ferociously, and he rose to its threatening call, drawing his blade once more, surprised to see it glowing bright blue. Behind him, Zelda cast a spell of some sort, and Link could see the borders of the dark storm held in place by a golden light, the same barrier she’d used to protect herself in the castle.

The real fight had begun.

Link felt his blood freeze.

No. No.

It was a single spark, and he’d been hallucinating. Nothing was wrong. Ganondorf had been dead for years now, soul split viciously into four to prevent the demon he’d sold himself to, the demon he’d become, from ever returning. The cycle was broken. It was over.

Paranoia overrode reason in his mind. There was no way everything they’d done, everything he’d sacrificed, had been in vain.

Link moved quickly, foggy head gone, filled instead with frantic thoughts, one overlaying the other, choking him as he hyperventilated, barely able to make it to the stairs as his vision started to blur, as his fingers tingled and grew numb. He pulled a torch off the wall, nearly falling down the next flight, and tried to slow himself down, tried to tell himself this was just another hallucination.

“Is it, though, boy?”

Link whirled, seeing nothing, but that voice had been clear, as if he—

He shook his head. You just saw him on the balcony. It’s not real. You know that.

Yes, yes. Yes. It… it wasn’t real. None of this was real.

Yet there it was again. A dark spark, a piece of that awful, hellish storm that had eaten away at Ganondorf’s flesh, that had tried to consume all of them. The reveal of the true evil, the physical manifestation of how far the former Gerudo king had fallen, the…

The day Hemisi’s father had died. The day the man Link had viewed as a father had…

Link bit his tongue. Focus! You haven’t viewed him as a father since he captured you during the war!

It was beyond infuriating that such thoughts still lingered, but he blamed it on being sleep deprived. He had to think!

Link took a steadying breath, and he continued descending into the depths.

Hyrule Castle was a large and formidable fortress. It had been rebuilt and fortified after the damage from the war, after that final fight when Ganondorf had taken the capital. During the reconstruction, they’d created an inner sanctum in the lower levels, accessible only by the most trusted Sheikah and the royal family themselves.

Zelda had been trying for years to learn how to access the Sacred Realm so they could properly hide and protect the Triforce. Link knew little of her research, but he did know it existed. He was no sage, and his magic was practical, not fantastical. He had no way of knowing how to access such a world, and had left such sacred matters to her. In the meantime, though, it was heavily guarded in a vault near the Temple of Time, returned to its holy resting place from which it had been stolen years prior. But the inner sanctum…

Ganondorf’s soul had been split into four pieces. Three had disappeared into the sky, vanishing beyond anything they could find, no matter how many scouts they’d sent, no matter how the Sheikah had torn Hyrule apart to find it. Zelda had theorized they’d moved into a different realm entirely, as the Triforce could of course do such a thing. But one piece…

One piece had remained.

The Master Sword, a sacred blade constructed by the goddess, refined by her divine Hero, was specifically designed to seal away evil. And it held a piece of what Link had killed that day.

After what felt like an eternity, the king consort finally reached his destination. Two Sheikah flanked the entrance, noticing his approach, and knelt. He passed through the door without delay, walking through a room with false entrances to misguide anyone who might get this far.

“Love, what’s wrong?”

Link jumped, startled, turning to see Hemisi watching him.

Goddesses, not now, he grumbled, returning his attention to the doors.

“Link, you really do look awful,” Hemisi noted. “You need to sleep.”

“I know,” he snapped, still trying to focus on finding the right door. He knew which one it was, dammit, he just couldn’t think straight!

He heard a young man’s voice next, still somewhat tenor in youth, almost unfamiliar as it had been so long, but it made him freeze up.

“Stop trying to convince him, Hemisi, he’s too stubborn,” Merovar, Hemisi’s long dead brother, grumbled from Link’s other side. The hero turned, looking at the teenager, but despite how alive Merovar looked, all Link could see was the broken body on the battlefield, the bleeding stab wound, all he could hear was Hemisi screaming—

Link squeezed his eyes closed, putting his hands over his face, pushing on his temples, begging Hylia for help.

He heard a whisper, the same one from the queen’s bedroom, so, so distant but somehow so much more visceral than either hallucination. It was deep, rumbling, but too far away to be discernible. The Gerudo royal twins grew silent, disappearing from the room, and Link thanked the goddesses over and over as he finally found the door he needed, rushing to it and opening it.

The air froze, stealing Link’s breath away. His left arm lowered, torch nearly falling out of his numb grip.

The inner sanctum was a large, stone room, four corners posted with guardians affixed in place, large heads swiveling constantly to seek out threats. Their usually blue and amber lighting was flashing purplish red as they all focused on the center of the room, though there was no true target to fire at yet.

Yet.

Malice swam in the air, peeling off the Master Sword like smoke from a flame. The blade sat on an altar in the center, surrounded by a light blue barrier of Sheikah technology and magic, the eye of his people still glowing brightly to ensure the seal.

“Link.”

The torch dropped entirely, and Link scrambled back towards the door, terrified, breath coming out in rasps. No, no, NO!

The fear at hearing Ganondorf’s whisper faded though, morphing into rage. That monster would not return, would never return, and he would die before he let him hurt his children, his queen, or his kingdom!

The seal was still holding, but he wasn’t sure if it would continue to do so. He had to find a way to figure out why the sword wasn’t enough, why that piece of Ganondorf’s soul was seeping out like blood from a wound. Had the sword weakened?

He needed Ze—

“Link!”

Gasping, Link turned sharply, finally losing his balance entirely in his exhausted state. Zelda leapt forward to try and catch him, hands scrabbling for his tunic to help ease him to the ground. He reached for her desperately, gripping her shoulders, breathless, speechless—

He refused to be helpless. He refused.

“The seal,” he rasped. “We have to repair the seal!”

Zelda’s expression grew frantic as she looked up, examining every inch of the room. Link couldn’t fathom why she didn’t just look at the sword itself, but—

The world spun and then grew unnervingly, disturbingly still. Link held his breath until his vision grew hazy around the edges. The queen’s green eyes examined everything at least five times before she slowly looked back at her husband. When Link saw the concern, the anxiety, but a lack of overwhelming dread, he slowly glanced around the room as well.

The sword was dormant. The guardians were swiveling their heads as usual, a reassuring scrape of metal, blue eyes passive.

Had… had it all been…?

“I’d been having strange dreams,” Zelda said quietly, kneeling down to be at eye level with him. “A strange, impending dread. I thought… perhaps one of the nobles were going to try something. But… Link, I think my dreams are about you.”

Link swallowed, but he could only scrape the back of his throat, dry as it was. “M-me…? You… you think I’m the threat?”

The queen slowly moved her hands from his tunic to his face. “No, Link. No. I… I think you need to rest.”

You’re becoming a threat.

But he… he could’ve sworn—!

What if you’d broken the seal in your panic?

Oh, goddess. Oh, goddess.

He heard footsteps behind the queen, and Impa came into view. The look on her face mirrored the nervous energy she’d had as she’d taken care of him all those years ago, when he’d tried to take his life.

“I—I swear, I—” Link tried to argue, but found his voice failing him, and suddenly, just like that, he was helpless again.

Weak. Pathetic. The words spat in his mind through Ganondorf’s own voice, and he whirled to look at the sword once more.

Nothing.

“Link,” Impa called gently, hand warm on his tense, shivering back. “Come on. We’ll get you something to drink to help you sleep.”

Was he… really…?

Link shivered, curling in on himself, feeling more humiliated and useless than he had in a very long time. The two women flanked him, gently holding him.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out brokenly.

“It’s okay,” Impa assured gently, oh so gently, that same soft tone she’d used so many years ago.

“We’re going to help you,” Zelda affirmed, her own tone softer than he was used to.

Slowly, Link let them help him stand. He took one last look at the room, at how peaceful it was, and felt like he was going to be sick.

Why did something still feel wrong? Was it just him?

The three made their way back up the countless stairs. The queen let out a small sigh – despite the worry she had for her husband, she couldn’t help but feel somewhat reassured that there wasn’t something else going on. She’d never had visions that pertained to Link, though, and it was frankly a little terrifying that he’d gotten this bad. The chief of the Sheikah watched her boy worriedly, wondering if he’d been on the brink of something far worse, remembering how bad he’d gotten when he was eighteen, terrified that he could’ve almost broken the seal himself without even realizing it. The king consort felt miserable and petrified in his own right, wondering if he should even be allowed anywhere, ignoring how his cheek stung over his old scar he’d gotten from Ganondorf.

But it didn’t matter what the three thought. Plans were in motion. A former ruler sat in the dungeons, awaiting his triumphant return. And farther in the depths than the former King of Hyrule, the inner sanctum remained spotless.

Except for one little spark.

[poupilette]

“Who is represented here?”

Link had always been fascinated by great monuments. In Skyloft, space was limited, so everything had to be small. The only real big decoration was the statue of the goddess, but over time, it had become increasingly difficult to visit. Now that he could explore new places and the Hylian civilization, he found joy in observing statues and other monuments.

This one was particularly beautiful and seemed relatively new, which piqued his curiosity about the stories behind its existence that was probably still not forgotten. The statue depicted a young man, or perhaps a boy, bowing before the figure of a tall woman. She resembled the statue of Hylia he had seen in front of the castle earlier that day. The entire statue was crafted from a dark material, except for the golden Triforce on the forehead of what he assumed was Hylia, and the two purple gems that sparkled in the boy's eyes. The dark obsidian of the statue contrasted beautifully with the white and gold imagery of Hyrule Castle.

“That’s a statue of Link,” Zelda said, looking up at the figure.

“What!? Really?” the sailor exclaimed, glancing between Zelda and the statue.

“Well, yes. Neither Link nor I are particularly fond of this statue, but it tells a part of Hyrule’s story that must never be forgotten. That’s why we decided it should remain here,” she explained, her gaze fixed on the obsidian figure.

“What happened ?” Link asked, still captivated by the boy’s gaze.

“That shouldn’t be my story to tell,” she replied, beginning to look nervous.

The group exchanged glances. They all knew they shouldn’t push for information about their Vet; he was quite secretive and deserved to keep his privacy. However, the statue's presence implied that this story wasn’t entirely hidden. The Vet wasn’t there, and since they met him, Zelda had been their only reliable source of information about him.

Link chose to stay silent, waiting for the sailor to insist further. He could practically see that Zelda was having the same train of thought.

“Well, I suppose it’s not a secret after all,” she sighed. She looked back at the statue, struggling to look away, and began to speak.

“As you know, Link is my biological brother. Long ago, the queens of Hyrule received a blessing ensuring that their children would only be born female, allowing them to continue Hylia’s legacy. Having a boy was considered a curse. When my mother discovered that one of the twins she had just given birth to was a male, she knew she had to hide him from everyone at court, even from my father, the king, to ensure his safety.” She turned around to look at the ceiling clearly avoiding the statue.

“She placed Link under the protection of an old knight who would care for him as his own. He received an education in the arts and music, staying far away from swords and blades. But secrets don’t last forever. Ten years later, I was kidnapped, and I used my power to reach out for help. Knowing I couldn’t rely on the knight, who was under dark influence, I sought anyone bearing the blood of the goddess. Link was the only one to hear my plea. Saving me meant revealing an identity that even we didn’t fully understand.

When my father discovered who Link was, he sentenced him to death, believing my kidnapping was a result of his existence.”

Link heard a series of sharp gasps beside him. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Hyrule, the kingdom he was building with the love of his life sentencing a ten-year-old boy to death for simply existing.

“Artists condemned to death are allowed one last act of creation—one last painting, one last song... I needed time to persuade my father to change his mind, so Link and I decided that he would dance. It was the only way to ensure he wouldn’t fall asleep if I took too long. He danced for an entire week in front of the castle, no matter how people treated him. Some threw shards of glass and boiling water at him, but he kept dancing without eating, drinking, or stopping. When I finally managed to make him stop, when my father accepted to let him live, the last thing he did before collapsing was bow before the statue of the goddess Hylia.” She stopped for e few second looking again at the statue.

“This statue is a representation of this moment, of my brother last dance. He never danced again him who loved it so much”

A heavy silence hung over them as they continued to gaze at the statue. So, this was one of the secret his brother had kept. What else remained unsaid among them? What other dark stories were hidden beneath their armors and swords? Link could feel the tingle of Demise lightning as he turned around hearing a shout from outside.

“Are you coming? We don’t have all day, and I’m hungry, so hurry up!” called their Vet.

The sailor was the first to snap out of his reverie, rushing to join the young man outside. The others followed silently, not looking back at the dark figure behind them. Link could almost feel the purple gems watching him as he stepped out.

————————————

I know that it doesn’t really make sense in the cannon of TLOZ but this scene was on my mind so tadam i guess

Same as last time if a made any error tell me i want to improve

And Sky is the narrator here so he is the one that is cold « Link » considering that he is talking about himself. Zelda call Legend Link because it makes sense

Have a great day again and this post is probably gonna be deleted because i dont really like how it turned out

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Hi! I have a question: can a person be autistic *without* having a special interest? I have identified with a lot of the posts from the autistic community, and the online tests I've taken suggest the possibility that I could be autistic (which I know should be taken with a grain of salt), but the main thing that keeps me from taking the possibility more seriously is that I'm not sure I have a special interest? I mean, I've had plenty of (usually fandom-based) hyperfixations over the years, but they've all been just that—hyperfixations. The only two things that I could remotely think of as being special interests would be bugs (with a heavy emphasis on isopods, which aren't technically bugs but fit the vibe) and the Legend of Zelda series. Both of which I feel like I don't actually have enough real knowledge about for them to be special interests, and there have been stretches of time where they did not have any active role in my life. Maybe I don't have a clear understanding of what hyperfixations are, and/or maybe I am only ADHD (because I know there's quite a bit of overlap), but mostly I really like reading and learning from your posts, and so I thought I'd see if you have thoughts on the matter! /gen

Thank you!

Hi there,

A special interest is basically something someone is a very focused point of a topic. Hyperfocus/hyperfixation however, is a bit different. It’s where you focus on something so much that it even interferes with your ability to do common things and tasks and it doesn’t last as long as a special interest. Like how I’ve loved collecting rocks a a kid and I still do to this day.

Please keep in mind that individuals can have hyperfocus and have a special interest at the same time. While others only experience one of these.

(To my other ND friends, feel free to correct me if I got something wrong. I wish not to spread misinformation).

I’ve found some sources that help differentiate between the two. I hope it helps. Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ♥️

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

The day you post this will probably make my year so i'm simply looking out for myself

🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞

thank you🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

Well I hope your year has been made!

Here's 1k from the final chapter, because I'm not even trying to count that hahaha.

---

“Well, you’re not getting anywhere,” Christopher observes. 

“Chris,” Eddie shakes his head. 

“I mean, he’s got a point,” Buck sighs. He turns his eyes to the list and begins to read them. “These are…”

“Perfect?” Chris responds. 

Buck clears his throat and lists them off.

“Christina,” he reads. 

“Seriously?” Eddie asks his son. 

“After her favorite member of the family!” Chris insists. “It’s perfect!”

Buck snorts.

Eddie sighs. 

“I don’t think I’ll choose that, but thanks for the suggestion, bud,” Buck says.

“Your funeral,” Chris shrugs.

Buck keeps reading. 

“Zelda.” 

“Like the video game character?” Eddie asks.

“It’s a nice name!” Chris argues. 

“It’s not… Terrible,” Buck replies diplomatically. He reads the next one. “Taylor… Chris, you remember my ex-girlfriend Taylor, right?”

“I sure do,” Eddie grumbles.

“Yeah, but Taylor Swift is really popular right now, so you can’t go wrong,” Chris says. 

“You can,” Eddie says. “You can go wrong. Please don’t name that sweet little girl after Taylor Kelly.”

“I definitely won’t,” Buck agrees. He reads the last name on the sheet. “Tetra? What is that from?”

“Sounds like a medication,” Eddie says. 

“Like Osteolaemus tetraspis,” Chris says. “A dwarf crocodile.”

“Oh god,” Eddie sighs.

“That’s actually kind of the best one,” Buck admits.

“Right?” Chris grins.

“Veto!” Eddie announces. “I veto it!”

“What?” Chris demands. “That sucks.”

“Oh, you can veto my kid’s name, huh?” Buck smirks. “I thought you weren’t helping.”

“One future step-father veto allowed per ridiculous name list,” Eddie says. 

Buck is certain his face goes bright red. 

“Okay,” he says. “Consider it vetoed.”

Chris sighs. “You guys are boring.”

▪️▪️▪️

In the end, it’s Bobby and Athena who are most helpful. Just like they had been when he was trying to find a home for Dove to begin with. He goes over to their newly built home one afternoon to talk. Dove stays with Eddie and Chris. 

“How did you choose your kids’ names?” Buck asks. “Other than Bobby Jr., I guess. I’m not naming her Buck Jr.”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” Athena chuckles. 

“First of all, Marcy named him after me,” Bobby says. “I was at a five alarm fire for several hours. By the time I got to the hospital, he had a name.”

“Harry’s out, too, then. We named him after Michael’s father, who passed,” Athena explains. 

“O-okay,” Buck nods. “What about the girls?” 

“There was no real special significance behind Brooke,” Bobby explains. “We were looking through a book of names. And we both just liked it. To me, it sounded like a nice, peaceful summer day. Nature and streams and everything. Just… Tranquil. I wanted that for her.”

Buck smiles. He likes the sound of that.

“It was similar for May actually,” Athena says. “May was always my favorite month, growing up in Florida. Warm, with long, sunny days. But before the summer swelter. I thought, what more beautiful thing to name my daughter after than the brightest, most beautiful day?”

“Those are both great,” Buck says. “I really like that.”

“We were both thinking of what we envisioned for our daughters,” Bobby says. “But you already know yours. Maybe choose something based on who she already is?”

Dove already is the brightest, most beautiful day. 

Buck nods. “I think I can do that.”

v.

Buck brings the matter to Dove. He thinks it’s only fair. It’s her name. 

It’s late March. Their hearing is in six weeks. Plenty of time to get the paperwork together to submit the moment she’s adopted. If they can pick. 

He takes her to Griffith Park. Makes a picnic for just the two of them. They find a spot in the Mineral Wells area. It’s a surprisingly quiet day. It feels like they have a large grassy area to themselves.

Dove is wearing overalls and a strawberry-print shirt. He thinks they need to go shopping again soon. She’s already gotten taller. At least he can save her outgrown things for Jee. 

“Okay, kiddo,” he says, when they finish kicking a soccer ball back and forth and sit down to eat. “I want to talk about your name.”

“My name,” she repeats.

“Do you still want me to pick a new one for you?”

She nods. “Yes. I still want a name from you.”

“I think I have an idea of how you and I can pick together,” Buck says. 

She twists her mouth, curious but apprehensive. He knows she wants it to be his choice. But he wants it to have meaning to her, too.

“Can we try?” He asks. 

“Okay,” she nods. 

“I was thinking we could pick a name that represents all the best things about you,” he says. “Because you’re such a special, amazing little girl. I want your name to say that.”

She smiles. She’s missing one of her canine teeth right now. It’s criminally cute.

 “Okay.”

“So, how about this?” Buck says. “Why don’t you tell me some of the things that you think are the best things about you?”

She furrows her brows. “I don’t know…”

“Come on,” Buck says. “I bet you can name a few.”

“Isn’t that rude?” She asks. “At school Mrs. Weller said it’s rude to brag.”

“Mm, it’s not really bragging,” Buck says. “But, if it was… It’s okay. Because I’m your dad and I like bragging about you.”

“Okay,” she says. But Buck can tell she doesn’t quite believe it.

“Alright, how about I start?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

“One of my favorite things about you, is that you’re curious,” he says. “You like to learn and try new things. I think that’s super cool.”

She blushes. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It’s true. Your turn. What do you like about you?”

“Um…” She trails off. “I guess… I’m nice?”

“You are nice,” Buck agrees. “What else?”

“I got good at swimming really fast,” she says. 

“You did,” Buck agrees. “You’re like a little fish.”

“No!” She shakes her head. “I’m like Chomp! Chomp can swim.”

Damn Eddie and his crocodile veto.

[ganondoodle]

since i cant stop thinking about things i care about and also i cant shut up ever im gonna say my bit about the "well of COURSE they destroyed everything shiekah after botw bc it nearly killed the entire country DUH do you not understand basic worldbuilding??" type of comment i had directed at me (mostly on twitter to no ones surprise and almost exactly worded like this)

--how would you even destroy it, the only thing you can actually damage with anything are guardians and nano-guardians, anything else cant even get scratched, hell you cant even climb the darn things, are you seriously trying to tell me they somehow completely pulverized not just the shrines but titans (divine beasts), the shrine of life and the pillars holding the guardians in storage around hyrule castle and the dome beneath it (whereever that went lol) when it was built to and DID last over 10 000 years ... and if you did somehow find a way to dismantle literally all of it why would you not ... use its parts for something else and also research it (lets be real here, purahs new towers are just the sheikah towers but more impractical and would by all means not need all of the material from all the missing stuff and the purahpad is just ... literally the shiekah stone but looking more like the switch and also worse bc its got almost none of the functions the shiekah stone had) they were so integrated into botws landscape removing them and their chambers would have been so much effort better spent in other places and just so unnecessary (think of the shrines at the twin mountains, removing all of that would be so dangerous and difficult to do), removing the pillars and the dome under the castle would endanger it collapsing no? there also would have needed to be a giant mechanism down there to make the pillars rise up, why would you go and try to destroy that instead of focusing on rebuilding the most important infrastrucutre

(on a sidenote, yes there are holes to the underground in the place of some shrines but its by far not all of them .. .even so there at the very least should be some rubble of them lying about at the bottom plus in most of their places its just plain earth, or sometimes even a cave locked by some puzzle which is.... so weird)

really the only explanation would be that it all just ... disappeared after zelda sealed ganon, which wouldnt only be hella unsatisfying as an answer but also again pose the problem that i would have caused the castle to collapse considering how shiekah tech was so integrated into it... unless it turned to earth somehow ... which would explain that but still be as satisfying of an explanation as 'it was all just a dream uwu' additionally, the zonau stuff under the castle wasnt even that far down so it must have intersected with the shiekah stuff, like the pillars or the dome?? but no its all just zonau ruins now wahoo

if literally all traces were gone and totk was a paralel to botw but with zonau instead of shiekah OK, they still called it a sequel tho, they still talk about the events of botw but in a way that sounds like it was just another lost legend, the tapestry exists as well, and there are a few old guardian parts on top of the hateno institute (still feels like an oversight considering how cleanly everything else was wiped off the map), plus purahs towers and the purahpad are clearly based off of it, so it cant really be some time fuckery either, some things still remain; it just doesnt add up and its frustrating as hell .. ... especially if you were like me completely thrilled and intrigued to learn more about the ancient shiekah, what WAS that dome under the castle for?? what WAS ancient energy really and why was it found in these specific places only?? did they know about ganondorf?? if they built stuff down there shouldnt they have inevitably come across the old tunnels?? the monks literally talk to link in botw why would they withhold that info, what reason could they have?

--by far my biggest annoyance with that excuse is that ... if you are so afraid of tech you dont fully understand being taken over by the bad guy again to the point you destroy not just the titans you basically worshipped as divine protectors but also immovable shrines that literally couldnt do shit to harm you even if they were pumped up to the brim with malice/miasma after they have already become non threatening/non functional anyway... HOW could you just go and fully trust and personally play around with new tech that LITERALLY rained from the sky out of nowhere, from a group of people no one knows shit about (like at least the shiekah were still existing and had a small part of recorded history) and never cared either until now that they are suddendly everywhere, even if it cant get corrupted somehow (kinda disproven by the spirit temple) how the hell would anyone know that?? if anything this would be a reason to be MORE afraid of it

even the ancient king that persecuted the shiekah bc he was afraid of their tech when they invented it didnt order them to destroy it, just bury it, despite them of all people knowing the best of how to completely destroy it??? and zelda doesnt seem like the type that would order old history and relics to be destroyed liek that??

it would have been such a golden opportunity to show that hey, the ancient shiekah based their tech on that of the zonau, they found the mines and tech and reasearched it to built their own from it, strucutres that show they were down here building the shrines from underground, titan prototypes, you cant do anything with it, its old and broken, but its there, environmental storytelling and all that

the shrine of life especially pisses me off bc thats like .. ok it was kinda not the best maybe but it still saved links goddamn life, even if it all became useless for some reason at least leave it there as a sign of respect, if there needs to be a cave have it be half collapsed after the cataclysm or something wheres the problem

(also idk if im the only one with that but in botws true ending when zelda says that vah ruta, i think, has stopped working it seemed like a good setup for more? and that she wanted to investigate that in the sense of ah shoot i want it to keep working tho and not in the sense of hell yeah lets smash it to pieces i know this is theory territory now but it seemed like it somewhat confirmed that the titans need a pilots strong spirit to work since they are not connected to the ancient energy network and the spirits of the champions passed on at the end ... the idea that ancient energy was spirit energy either gained from luminous stones or directly spirits is so neat, and i loved that idea of hey the reason why all of the energy went out all of the sudden is bc ganondorf is breaking free after having been kept in a stasis to use either his malice or his strong spirit to fuel it all has never left my mind since i first read about it bc its such a good setup for intrigue, like oh heck the ancient shiekah werent so coolio and 100% perfectly good either, maybe they knew about gans 'future' or history and hey why not trick him or sth into being sealed against his will so that problem is out the way and whoop hes pretty much an infinite source of energy nice lets use that for our research and not tell anyone oh no we created a monster (calamity gan) l guess we are gonna use the tech we fuel with his own life against him lol, OR you could have connceted it to the zonau maybe doing the sealing first and the shiekah discovering him later and being like oh neat an endlessly rich powersource we arent gonan tell anyone about weehoo

it would have tied into the ancient shiekah stuff, explained why it doesnt work well anymore, give a reason to explore the underground and discover it all, give a reason to why it was kept a secret bc no one wanted to admit yeah we made this monster ourselves whoops, give ganondorf a reason to be this angry and make it all more nuanced bc yeah ok maybe the zonau knew about gan and in their effort to prevent it caused it instead by sealing him before he became a problem and it all started a domino effect of disasters leading into all this mess that now poor zelda and link gotta solve

im not saiyng this is the better version or that i am better but again you can literally do so much with the setup for it all and what totk ended up doing with it feels so ... not even underused but straight up backwards treading you had it right on front of you INFINITE POTENTIAL AAARGH)

theres only so much fun gameplay and fantastic music can save and man can you imagine what could have been if the story got the same polish as the gameplay and music ;__;

[cringefaecompilation]

not to dunk on junior year again but i am noticing a pattern here with the treatment of certain storytelling elements here.

both bell’s hells and the ratgrinders were pcs that gained sapience. the difference is that the ratgrinders were villains and the hells are heroes.

one of the most love-it-or-hate-it aspects of campaign 3 is that it does not only focus on the main 7 or 8 characters and everybody else is tossed to the wayside unless they benefit them like usual. all npcs (with downfall, that's including the gods!) deserve a chance to have their story told and they are all written to be that. the generic runaway prince you have to help escape to a life of freedom! the cute little helper robot npc! generic spooky evil minions based on public domain monsters! the quirky quest-giving fae! the rough and tumble hired goon! the brave captain of the guard protecting a strong lady in charge!  yes, even imogen, who in any other story would be the sad little abandoned daughter of the bbeg who would mourn the hero killing her mother but understand that the hero had to do what needed to be done.

and again, you don’t have to like it!

but there is a weird sort of thing i noticed amongst all the critical role c3 criticism that reminded me of people defending fhjy. an undercurrent of insisting that all the ratgrinders (who were teenagers. who were groomed and then murdered.) were pure evil spoiled brats and just wanted to be handed everything on a platter because they didn’t deserve what the main cast earned their place as the main characters and made passive aggressive posts saying things to the tune of you know they’re evil right. very Watsonian with a staunch refusal to look at a Doylist explanation. it got so bad to the point where people were insisting that if you liked the ratgrinders and sympathized with them then you were a fascism apologist.

astoundingly enough c3 criticism has only scraped the surface of this sort of overdramatic accusation, but it goes in the opposite direction. if you like where the story is going and how it's being told, then you’re not a real critical role fan. the story should have just been about the characters fighting evil fae or just wiping out the ruby vanguard and everyone in it without all this stupid introspective discussion on power because it’s retconning the gods being bad guys! grey morality sucks, why can’t good guys just be good? they all feel like npcs except for imogen because she’s the only one with a chosen birthright!

(of course, if they say that last part out loud, that might not look so good for them)

 yes, we know the gods are imperfect. that’s what we’ve been saying this whole time. but all these passive aggressive gifsets of liam-as-orym saying that the gods aren’t pure evil and it’s stupid to think so or laura and matt ooc saying that the gods have a grey area don’t mean fucking jack if you turn around and insist the gods have zero flaws and everything they do is good, actually and Aeor Had It Coming.

important caveats:

the actors on d20 could not react to things they were doing in the moment. they were tired after filiming 3 episodes back to back and wrapped up their season faster than usual to join the sag-aftra strike. i am aware of this.

yes i know that d20 is a comedy improv series! that does not prevent it from having deep themes and character introspection! ayda aguefort and zelda donovan still very much exist and had their own arcs despite being npcs!

yes the ratgrinders were working with a man trying to kill and replace a goddess and yes he is a colonizing twat. however, doesn’t that also make it the fandom’s insistence that liking the kids is bad and fascistic but making ship art of him and the other teacher that killed all of them is totally okay? rules for he but not for thee? 

[getvalentined]

An autogenerated YT playlist threw The Final Fall from Tears of the Kingdom at me and I straight up started crying so I'm gonna ramble here a bit because it's my blog and I can post if I want to.

I feel like I got a lot more out of the ending of ToTK than a lot of people I saw talking about it, because I've been with the Zelda series from the start and I've been elbows-deep in the lore basically since I could read and was capable of detailed abstract thought, but I really wish I knew how to put into words how it felt to beat that game without rambling for a hundred years.

There's a sort of intense, personal investment in the series from decades of engagement that I never expected to feel had "paid off," but that's really what it was. We've gone through this story again and again, trying over and over and over to set things right—and we've learned a lot along the way.

Ocarina showed us that this was kind of Zelda's fault from the start, since she set off the chain of events that gave a piece of the Triforce to Ganondorf in the first place, thereby awarding him immortality and effectively locking her and Link into the reincarnation cycle until they could finally strike him down. Skyward Sword showed us that it was actually even deeper than that, implying that Ganondorf is the mortal vessel of an ageless horror that the goddesses themselves chased to ground ages ago, and that Zelda and Link are the result of Hylia and the warrior she chose never really being able to kill it once and for all—the reincarnation cycle in which they're bound started well before Ganondorf took his place as Din's champion. Hyrule Warriors showed us that no matter how many times he's sealed away, no matter how long he's sealed away, he'll always come back. The Legend of Zelda showed us that he doesn't need to be entirely sapient to continue causing terror. WindWaker showed us that even the goddesses themselves can't strike him down, and Twilight Princess showed us that no power can defeat him save for his own—not so long as he has a goddess at his back.

We've been through this story again and again, and never really won. It's never really final, even if he "dies" there's still openings for a return, there are too many gaps through which Demise—not necessarily Ganondorf, as they are separate entities, just the same as Zelda and Hylia are separate entities after SS—can squeeze back through.

The Calamity continuity is very clearly on a different timeline from the rest of the series. I understand the devs have said that it's "so far in the future it doesn't matter," but in-game that doesn't actually appear to be the case; the Imprisoning War is very clearly a different take on the events of OoT, on a timeline where Link never existed, where Hylia never manifested in mortal form, where she never started that cycle of reincarnation in the first place.

Beating ToTK felt like we finally did it. After almost forty years in the real world and thousands of years in-series, we finally did it. It's over. Everything we learned through all these different attempts came together to give us this one chance to set things right, to fix what we accidentally helped to break, to finally end it once and for all. A culmination of decades of effort and attempts and failure after failure after failure—because we did fail, every single time. Even when we won, we failed.

We didn't fail this time. We did it.

And to have the last stage of the game require the most high-stakes iteration of the repeated tests of courage given throughout the game, throughout the series—the fact that Link can't save the princess who spent ten thousand years saving him if he's not brave enough, if you are not brave enough to fall as fast and as far as you can? The final stage of the entire game reiterating the simple statement of the Stewards who taught you how to fall, "you have to be brave"—I choke up every time. Every single time. I can't put into words the rush that whole final fight gave me, from jumping into the pit at the bottom of the depths to diving to catch Zelda's hand. I can't describe how perfect it felt, how complete it felt, how finished the story feels to me now.

It took a lot of pain to get here. Decades. Centuries. But this time, those who are left really do get their happily ever after.

Because we finally saw what it meant to be wise, we finally learned how power can be reclaimed, we finally learned what it meant to be brave.

No goodbye has ever made me so happy. We did it. It's over.

[only-by-the-stars]

WIP Wednesday again...

... so here. Have this, the very last Song of a Champion snippet. ;w;

The silver did not vanish, however. It coalesced into two forms. One was a battered, beaten, but still whole sword, that looked to be of Zora make. It dropped onto the ground, landing with a soft clink beside a patch of forget-me-nots. The other— The other was a shimmering sphere, hovering above the flowers much like the one that had transformed into Zelda. Under the gaze of Mipha’s disbelieving eyes, it too spread and swirled and took a distinctive shape. That of Link, tumbling down to land in a heap amidst the blooms, stirring and sighing as Mipha stared, beginning to shake where she stood. Link. It was Link. Not a memory. Not a dream. Not a ghost. Here. Real. Alive. “Go on, then.” Zelda’s voice broke through Mipha’s dazed reverie, a hint of teasing buried beneath the weariness and the warmth. “He’s been waiting a very long time for you.” Zelda nudged her shoulder with her own, but Mipha barely felt it. She was already off and running, dropping both sword and paraglider behind her as she sought to reach him. The exhaustion in her limbs made the gap between them feel longer than it really was, but she shoved it away and ran. Ran to him, ending their separation after so, so very long. Link… you’re… I’m… Mipha lost her footing as she reached him, tumbling down onto her knees just as he rose to his, but she didn’t care. Her mind still locked in chains of shock, she opened her mouth and spoke, breathlessly, the only thing she could think to say right now. “Link…” His golden hair was an utter mess, hanging around his face in long, disheveled locks that still looked as tangled and dirty as they had at Fort Hateno, his hair-tie barely hanging on at the ends. Under his unkempt bangs a pair of heart-stoppingly beautiful cerulean eyes fixed on her face, meeting her own stunned gaze. For a long moment he seemed to freeze—the whole world seemed to stop—and all Mipha could hear was her own thrumming pulse, the few breaths she dared to take. Link’s ragged breathing, as they stared speechlessly at each other for the first time in one hundred very long years. Then—with what seemed like a Death Mountain sized effort—he turned his lips up into a smile that didn’t quite reach those staring, yearning eyes, and spoke in a voice she had longed to hear for what felt like an eternity. “Hey, Mipha.” It sounded so… casual. No—it was meant to sound casual. She could hear it all hiding under the surface, though: the love, the fear, the fragile hope. It stabbed into her heart like a thousand blades, tightening her chest, her throat. Mipha swallowed down the lump that had grown anew, and fought to speak, to give words to this moment though she scarcely knew what to say. All her thoughts were fleeing. Yet she needed to say something. She needed to say so much.

[erm-whatthefartscallop]

desire

this is quite literally pwp, I just can’t help but write when I have just such creative ideas(sarcasm) but I’m also writing more, so let me know!! In the process of writing a confession one where it takes place in an annual Iida/Ingenium cocktail event, and their first time :3 it’s hard to capture his essence 😔 I did write one where he was jealous/more erm…dominant? Words :( but I feel like it’s ooc for him…but not IDK I’m yapping anyway enjoy a semi-two parter!!

contains: nsfw!!!!!!

It’s gotten to the point where all he has is alone time, spending indoors waiting for school to start again. His mind is aching to see her again.

He didn’t realize how much he thought of her, they’ve been friends for years, and ever since the 3rd year assignment started all his mind could do is wander. Her hands touch his body through his suit, her small fingers touching his legs. She’s just making sure it fits, but he has needs and urges, and they are starting to overpower all his self control. 

He closes his eyes and thinks of the compromising position she’s in, on her knees, looking up at him, asking if this is okay. How can he sexualize such a dull moment!? She was only making enhancements to his suit, yet his perverse mind makes it seem as if she was favoring him. 

His pelvis began to rut into his hand, the same scenario echoing through his head. Is this okay? Her eyes, her beautiful green eyes looking up at him through her eyelashes, her lips parting to ask him is this okay? He softly moaned, he is confided in his room, his voice rising higher the more his mind undresses her. He can only guess how she looks. 

Oh he craves her so much, he wants her, wants to touch her, feel her, feel inside her. He began to roll his hips, his hand moving in a pace, biting his lip imagining how it would be like to be inside of her, whimpering, moaning his name, telling him to keep going, to go faster, to kiss her. “..fuck” he sputtered out his fluid dripping down his hand, his chest heaved up and down, his back hitting his sheets as he looked up at the celling, a tissue to clean his hand. 

He huffed as he looked to the side, all he could feel was immense guilt, but he doesn’t regret not one bit, if only he could experience the real thing.

Desire too

Another night of waking up with sweat, and an unwanted guest. He had another perverse dream about her. Iida doesn’t understand why his feelings are so strong and passionate, he never realized how much he thought of her. He closed his eyes as the dream was still fresh in his mind. She was meeting his parents as they have been friends for the past three years, she wore something respectable. A light blue button up, but the first two buttons were not done; her skirt was black and business casual, fitting outlining her curves. She wore sheer tights and black pumps. She pinned her hair back with bobby pins, and put on light makeup. He remembers clearly she had lip gloss with a red tint, that’s one of the many things he noticed that made him feel so guilty. She smiled as he greeted her, the dinner went well until his parents had to leave for a last minute meeting, they had to go to Kyoto. His parents trust him to make sure Zelda gets home safely right after they leave. He sees them out, Zelda begins to walk out too. “Wait, won’t you stay a while longer” he voiced out to Zelda, seeing as his parents had already driven off. Zelda gave it some thought, “I won’t get you in any sort of trouble?” She said in a soft voice, Iida shook his head no, “of course not” it was a bit of a lie, but they wouldn’t know. They sat in the living room, her hands on her lap, her legs crossed together, it felt like a great distance between them. His eyes scanned her, her body language, her clothing. He watched her through his peripheral vision, noticing the shirt was a bit see-through. He bit his lip as he looked away to look back at the tv

“Iida, I know you're staring…” she said quietly, his cheeks flushed red, he wasn’t going to deny it, “I was, I’m sorry…” 

“You don’t have to apologize,” she said in such a normal tone. She moved closer to him, “you asked me to stay for a reason, I think I know what you want” 

“What do I want..?” He knew exactly what he wanted, her lips onto his. And as if reading his mind that’s what happened, her lips pressed onto his, he could feel the sticky texture of her lip gloss on his lips, he melted in, his hand reaching around to the back of her head, her hand cupping his ear. She pulled away, panting in a way that made him feel his pants get tighter, his lips red stained, his eyes looking at her, waiting for more. She looked down to her shirt, and back at him. “Do you want me to take this off…” she said in a soft voice, almost innocent. He nodded his head, her fingers slowly undoing one button at a time, revealing more bare skin. He just watched intently, her hands then reaching back to unclasp her bra. Her arms are held close to her chest, to keep the undergarment from falling off her chest.

His pelvis rutted faster into his hand, taking in all of his length. Merciless chasing his end, he came with a groan. He reached over to clean off his hand. The same routine he always follows, that dream is the next thing he thought of for the next week. He couldn’t look at her without thinking about it, he just felt all the emotions that are tied with guilt. 

Zelda did notice that he would often postpone suit enhancements, and every time she got near him he would just keep a distance. It bothered her, felt as if she did something wrong, but she wasn’t going to confront him. Just like she’ll never mention when he is by her all she could think about is a dream she had. Her legs pressed together as she remembered the vivid sequence of events that occurred, nothing happened, but it felt real and intense. And ashamed to admit she grinded against her bed thinking about it. She laid in bed, her finger playing with her engorged clit. Her hole leaking with lubricant bringing it up to her swollen button. A slow circular motion to get her started. Her back against the bed frame, she left her curtain open, the idea of someone accidentally seeing her excited her and scared her. The light of the moon gave her all the illumination she needed. She let out soft little moans, her finger moving faster. Her voice raised a little higher as she began to feel her own limits coming to an end. She’s never orgasmed before, but she could only imagine. Self pleasuring for her was going as far as she could take. Never ever going as far to be left a moaning mess. The sheets began to get damp as she let out a whimper, her finger stopping. She felt guilt for wanting to feel more, especially from someone else, but she didn’t want him to know how perverse she is. They are both helpless.

[7grandmel]

Todays rips: 31/03/2024

Your Best Nightmario and Bowser's Finale

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume C

Ripped by Blookerstein

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume C

Ripped by Blookerstein, Sarvéproductions

Requested by themessengervevo! (@themessengervevo)

You KNEW this day was coming. Surely, right? Its March 31st, a landmark day in gaming history. The day that Super Mario died. The day we lost him to time forever. And the day that spawned perhaps the greatest April Fools event on all of SiIvaGunner. For me, its no contest - Your Best Nightmario and Bowser's Finale, and the entire event they were part of, were the absolute highlight of Season 5.

The April Fools events held prior on the channel since their very beginnings with Grand Dad Metropolis had all been presented as complete surprises. That is perhaps a given - it is in the nature of a prank to be surprising - but it's also where the Season 5 event differs most even today, in that its theme was all but known to us well beforehand. Announced on September 3rd of 2020 as part of a bizarre marketing tactic to drive up demand, Nintendo had let us known that their newfangled Mario celebration releases in Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35, would both be delisted from sale after March 31st. Super Mario Bros. 35 stung in its own right - it is effectively lost media now as a digital-only, online-only game, but Super Mario 3D All-Stars contained three of Nintendo's most celebrated games, games that had no reason to stop being sold just for a cheap trick. Everyone rightfully denoted how scummy of a tactic this was to drive up sales, but more than that: the imagery of Nintendo celebrating Mario's birthday by killing his games - and by proxy, killing Mario himself - was a joke that online spaces just ran absolutely rampant with. And can you blame them? That IS funny as shit, and reframes Nintendo's slimy marketing into something that makes them look far worse. Because of the joke's sheer prevalence, I had the same thought as many others in the early days of 2021 - there was *no way* that the SiIvaGunner team were blind to the potential this gag had, and how well it lined up with their previous explosive festivities just a day after. By March 29th, they even teased the event's start with three daily rips of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, a game all about impending doom affecting the world in just three days, with each rip featuring the melody of one of the three 3D Mario games in the collection.

And sure enough, the day came. With March 31st, we saw a whole day of nothing but Mario rips and Mario-related jokes in other rips - a last hurrah for his life - all ending with Super 3D All-Stars Music S64 Game Over. Just like that, he was gone - faded from the video, faded from view. Yet few of us could've predicted just how dire things would get.

In SiIvaGunner lore, the term "Figment" refers to the personification a meme or joke on the channel takes, its characterized state - think Mr. Rental in Mr. Rental [B Side] ~ Out of Options or Inspector Gadget in Become as Gadget and throughout his two takeovers. When a figment based on a real human dies, it can easily be reborn - the human itself lives on in the real world, after all, and can recreate the essence of its Figment in a variety of ways. But when a purely fictional Figment dies...its erased from all history. As if it had never existed to begin with, all traces of it are wiped from memory, wiped from the very state of having ever existed. And under Nintendo's very own Gulliotine, this was the fate Super Mario himself succumbed to. As a result every single Super Mario-series rip uploaded in the channel's five-year run, be they Kart, Sports, Paper or just outright Super, was set to private on the SiIvaGunner channel. And as April 1st of 2021 went on, it seemed to be harder and harder to remember the name of that mustachioed man. Had someone like that...ever existed?

I'm certain a lot of what I'm writing here is familiar ground to many of you reading, but I really want to convey just how incredibly well-done this atmosphere was. Throughout April 1st, fifty-five rips were uploaded, many of which featuring games that seemed just...the slighest bit off. The opening to the classic Philips CD-i game "Hotel", where a lone Luigi talks to himself; The underwater music featured in the SNES Launch title "Super World" with a bizarrely-lopsided logo, and most prominently - games like Super M̸̌̊a̴͛̿█̸͌̑i̵̛͊█̷̾̓ 64, Super M̸̌̊a̴͛̿█̸͌̑i̵̛͊█̷̾̓ Sunshine and Super █̴̧̀a̵̤̐r̷̙̋█̶̰̆o̶͚̚ Galaxy, three games that were bound by a strange malfunction in their presentation, as if they're collectively...held back by something. Or someone.

Your Best Nightmario stood out as the centerpiece of it all, with a title yet more bizarrely mangled than the rest - Super 👉█̸͌̑█̷̾̓😁̶̆͠☼̷̇̃👈̸̂͑█̷̾̓█̾̓ 64. Two fingers, pointing toward a desperate smile. It's-a-me. The rip serves as an incredible multi-stage arrangement of Your Worst Nightmare from Undertale, the boss music for Flowey the Flower. Its already incredibly befitting on the surface level - Undertale is at once one of SiIva's most prominently-ripped games, and a game very much about the state of living game characters have, the idea of how characters in games can affect you in a way that makes them worth remembering for all time. And though the rip is initially in line with the instrumentation of the original Ultimate Koopa theme, it uses the segmented style-shifting sections of Your Worst Nightmare to arrange music from other Nintendo platforming games - the ones primarily bound by featuring characters like Luigi, Peach and Bowser within them, but ones where I can't really place my finger on who their protagonist is. As a result of all these styles and the fervent, desperate, downright nightmarish pace of the music, paired with the full-on galactic-scale orchestral sections near the rips end, it truly feels like a hopeless struggle, a plea from an unknown hero to stay alive, to not be forgotten, to not be lost to the sands of time.

The sheer atmosphere conveyed throughout the entire event was primarily carried through these rips, of course, but it cannot be understated just how much of a part the comments section played in it all. There was no confusion - the buildup had been done so well, the gag established so clearly, that EVERYONE was on board with the day's theming in the comments, and "playing along" with the story's theme. Everyone reminisced and had fond memories of all these games - New Super Bros., Luigi: Superstar Saga, Super 64 DS, and more - yet we were all collectively wondering why things felt so different from before. It was the most fun collective gaslighting I've ever been part of.

As the day came to an end, Mario's fate seemed to be set - the entirety of April 2nd was silent, except for one rip that confirmed that even our beloved Gangsta Mario (see Caramariodansen) was lost. Yet on April 3rd, we were all finally met with Bowser's Finale, a direct followup to Your Best Nightmario by its very same ripper. Blookerstein, the legend behind The expanse of meme in past was split, A fiendish trap has now been set; Behind a tree the villains sit, Terror of sport, the Robbie's Net., this time aided by Sarvéproductions of Goodbye To Love fame, created the absolute perfect way to round out the event - a return to the desperate battle that had once seemed lost, now with the music of Finale instead of Your Worst Nightmare to indicate the turning of the tides - that this legend, nay, SUPER MARIO, was not going to give up. This figment did not deserve to leave us - and Bowser's Finale was his last stand. The excitement in the air, in the comments section, was palpable.

Finale is already an incredible theme, and one that some of us even have some emotional attachment to in the context of SiIva - remember Aphex all the way back in Season 1? Bowser's Finale leverages those feelings, and the theming set up throughout the event as a whole, to incredible effect, with the same structure of going through the styles of various Mario music to rising dramatic effect. Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy - the first two using songs like Slider and A Secret Course that are beloved by so many SiIvaGunner viewers, the third hitting a emotional gutpunch in its orchestral instrumentation, and all three bound together as the games that started this whole thing, the games part of the 3D All-Stars collection. It is with no exaggeration a pitch-perfect rendition of this idea, better than anything I could've ever anticipated before the event began - once again only elevated through the sheer sense of community the entire comments section held through it all, cheering Mario on, collectively remembering his existence - fighting to bring this lost figment back to reality.

Y'know, I've been critical of Season 5 in the past - it is likely still the Season of the channel I was "least" invested in taken on the whole. That is in large part due to its lack of ties to the channel's ongoing lore, as it was focused primarily on self-contained events just like this one. But GOD, those events. I still see people online today who are less in touch with what SiIvaGunner does, who cite this event - "The Disappearance of Super Mario", as some call it - as the absolute peak of SiIvaGunner's output past the Season 1 finale. I wouldn't necessarily agree - but the event was undoubtedly unforgettable, at once an incredible execution of a long-anticipated bit, surprisingly emotionally gripping, whilst also being subtly tied to the very canon and theming of the SiIvaGunner channel itself. I chose to highlight Your Best Nightmario and Bowser's Finale in particular today, but I emplore you to go watch the entire event yourself through the fanmade YouTube playlists - if nothing else to see just how committed to the bit everyone involved truly was.

But don't forget: There's more to this tale yet to be retold.

[thegeminisage]

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA ECHOES OF WISDOM FINAL VERDICT

SHORT VERSION: minor nitpicks but rad as hell

LONG VERSION:

what i loved about eow:

zelda getting her own adventure, FINALLY. it matters so much to me <3

the thinking aspect of it. i'm used to trying a puzzle a few times and then looking it up if i can't get it, but eow made me WANT to throw myself at the wall until something clicked. it made solving puzzles even more satisfying than in link games, somehow. though i had my initial concerns over not getting a "real" sword, i didn't really miss it until the final fight, and most of the time, i went out of my way to avoid using it if possible, because i wanted to be creative. in fact, even while playing, i looked forward to being able to watch other peoples playthroughs to see how they tackled certain puzzles differently from me. it's so fitting to who zelda is in the lore that it's crazy to me she wasn't een in the original concept - she just fits so PERFECTLY here, as if they'd designed it for her from the ground up.

the way link mattered in the story without stealing the stage (everywhere except the final boss, which i have mixed feelings on). i know that link's function is to act as a stand-in for us, but in this project especially, it's nice to see him get some personality - i think he's earned it!

i ALSO really loved, of course, the final dungeon and working together with link to solve puzzles. the last zelda co-op game we had was four swords where everybody had the same abilities bc they were all link, but what if we had one with link and zelda where they had different abilities? it was so exciting and rewarding to finally get to work with link after all the mystery surrounding him and the fights with his evil duplicate.

the stilled realm stuff was incredible. i had so much fun in the rifts i wish there had been more of them. picking your way around that fucked up landscape is great

being able to cheat your way around any landscape is great also. like i can get to hebra from the ground with enough platbooms, i can jump over tree barriers, etc. it made me feel like a master of the world.

i liked tri! not the most standout companion, but they were just confused enough about basic emotion and nonplussed about things in general to be funny and make me fond

in fact, most of the secondary characters were a lot of fun. i was pretty neutral on wright and lefte and the gerudo ladies, but the zora leaders, impa and lueberry, and of course, conde - they were all fantastic. zelda's dad not being shitty for once was a really nice touch, too.

loved all the callbacks to other games - the deku scrubs, the river vs sea zoras, volvagia, big blue pig ganon even though he sin't my fav

speaking of, i'm not mad about the lore either. it fits with what we know so far and it was GREAT to hear from the three goddesses again when it's been like 20-something years. i was kinda mad when they got shunted aside for hylia and i'm glad nintendo is bringing them into co-existence again

most of the time the music was just okay but when it was good it was REALLY fucking good.

overall, the story was absolutely charming, filled with mostly fun characters and environments and a creative mechanic and a world i cared about saving. none of that feeling i got from totk sometimes where i went "wait, what?" or "this is bullshit!" except maybe when the goron had to break the picture of his dead dad lol.

what i did not love about eow:

my absolute #1 main complaint is the quality of life bs. i should NOT have to go through so many dialogue boxes for a task that is repetitive. minigames that have a 20-second time limit where i spend almost as much time skipping thru the dialogue to try again? come on. smoothies? the dojo? these are things we do dozens, perhaps hundreds of times per playthrough. there is NO NEED to make it that tedious. i would have had a LOT of fun experimenting with smoothies if it hadn't been so tedious, but instead i went out of my way to avoid using them because i was dreading having to sit through the animations and dialogue boxes for more. and there's no quick retry for minigames, either. for the dojo where one misstep means you'll have to start over, all you can do is quit early and then go through the dialogue ALL. OVER. AGAIN. it is 2024!!! surely when they played the game they got annoyed by this too! what are we doing!

similarly, while i didn't hate the slidey menu as much as everyone else cuz i got pretty good at skimming it, it's still nuts to me that they couldn't come up with anything better, perhaps involving some sort of category. sometimes i want platforming echoes and sometimes i want combat ones. separate them!!

while the final boss was FANTASTIC in mood and presentation, my echoes and automatons being kind of useless + me being denied a sword made me feel like i had nothing to do but run around and dodge and watch link and my lynel fight the boss. this is a tricky one because i'm not sure what could possibly be changed to make me a more active participant and still leave link his sword (his presence elevated it so much - much like zelda's does in final fights against ganon), but it felt just an inch to the left from perfect for me

automatons in general - i was really hype for them, but most of them don't even move around on their own, and they're so slow a fast-paced combat sitch will obliterate them instantly. which would have been PERFECT for the final boss where i wanted a more direct means of attack, but they'd get toasted before i had a chance to wind them up. JUST removing the winding element would have improved these greatly without any other change at all, but it's another quality of life thing

the horse was also useless, but the horses have been useless in every game since majora's mask, and even in majora's mask it's iffy.

the world DID feel a little small sometimes, but i think that's the natural result of being able to cheat your way around it - and i wouldn't change that.

finally, the music - most of the music for the overworld sections was boring, where the dungeon music occasionally had more character. i was a little disappointed there wasn't more of the old melodies aside from little snatches of them here and there. i definitely understand composers wanting to do something new, but if their new something is this atmospheric, unhummable stuff...that just doesn't feel like a zelda score, you know? that said, again: when it was good, it was GREAT. that final boss fucking rocked.

overall this made me SOOOO ready for an oracle or minish cap remake from grezzo and absolutely RABID for zelda to have her own 3D adventure someday. they thought it wasn't possible but it ABSOLUTELY is, and the co-op sections near the end were especially wonderful and something i'd love to see in a mainline title someday. yes, this game was flawed, but it wasn't flawed the way totk was, it was overall a great joy to play and well worth both my time and money. there's very little i would change.

and, on a mushy real life note, echoes of wisdom did also help me get through the 15-day power outage after hurricane helene...i started the game just before the hurricane hit and finished it just after i got my power back, so helene kind of defined the experience of playing it for me. i'll never forget sitting in my dark bedroom with all the windows open and the generators going outside and my switch just propped up on my monitor stand, surrounded by battery packs, my only light from flashlights or candles, trying to help the time pass and enjoy the game while keeping a clooose eye on my battery life. it was one of the very, very few things i could look forward to in an uncomplicated way every day, and having something to keep me going was vital to my not just going nuts. zelda games usually seem to come out when i need them most! and i'm grateful to her too <3