#maybe someone call in the lu sky people and let them go bonkers with whatever they find in here

[vagueandominousvibes]

Skyward Sword: A Fun Theory About Deity-Like Link

@guardedchild​ enabled me to post this, so here goes nothing!

Fair warning: This essay is about 3,000 words long. It’s not quite “scholarly” and “personal” in style and language, and doesn’t have a “proper” introduction or conclusion (I might come back and sort that out one day, who knows). I did this for fun, so I don’t feel constrained by scholarly conventions. 

If you want to skip past the literary theory I’m framing this through, I recommend going straight to the subheading “Groose and the Normative”. If you want to skip straight to Link, go to the subheading “Link and the Other”.

This is about Skyward Sword, so any time I refer to Link or Zelda, assume that, unless otherwise stated, it’s SS Link and SS Zelda I’m talking about. My primary focus here will be the change Link undergoes throughout SS, and how he’s Othered and made to appear deity-like. In order to show this, I’ll be comparing him to Groose first, under the assumption that Groose is a stand-in for the quintessential human, then briefly to a couple of general cultural ideas, and finally to Demise. Online sources are linked throughout, with literary sources listed at the bottom.

Othering

Let me first define what I mean by “Othering”: Othering (verb: to Other) is a term often used in Postcolonial Theory to describe the act of foreignising a person, a society, a culture, etc. Gayatri Spivak, known for his exploration of postcolonial theories, uses it in his A Critique of Postcoloinal Reason (1999) as a summarising term to offer an explanation for how one particular “narrative of reality was established as the normative one” (Spivak, 2115). “Othering” is a term that lets us think about the non-normative — whatever isn’t what you would expect from the majority of people around you. In a more familiar setting, cliques function through Othering: if you don’t tick the boxes for the clique, the clique can’t understand you. From their perspective, you become a foreign object, explained through stereotypes and rumours.

This all means that there’s a long colonial history that comes with the verb “to Other”. We shouldn’t forget this history. In the context of Link, however, I’d like to draw our attention to the act of division that comes with the idea of Othering. It becomes a case of “us” and “you”. This is a division that isn’t inherently negative — if we think in terms of cultural preservation, it can be good to consider “you”, the cultural minority, and “us”, the cultural majority, as two distinct groups. There can be overlap and exchange, and respectful learning and understanding, but by defining “you” and “us” we know what it is that we want to preserve. We can then work with multiple bodies of culture or bodies of understanding, which will be useful when we consider Groose to represent the quintessential human— the “us” — and Link to represent something/someone not human— the “you”.

Othering also suggests a process. Spivak says that the “narrative of reality was established” (my emphasis). To establish something means that steps must have been taken in order to make that something a reality. It didn’t happen overnight. Nobody got up one morning and said: “This is how it is now”. It happened slowly, over time, until it became the way in which reality was perceived.

Finally, I’ve always considered Othering to have an inherent fairytale quality. Maybe I’ve somehow overlapped it with Orientalism and Exoticism (big cultural no-nos today, guys!), but it’s not only in Postcolonial Theory that we talk about Othering. Literary criticism of medieval literature is littered with it, because medieval Europeans had a habit of looking at everything non-Christian as marvellous — also known as the Marvellous Other (“marvellous” here specifically meaning to evoke a sense of wonder, as in a wunderkammer). If you want to see a good example of the Marvellous Other, I recommend checking out the Hereford Mappa Mundi (the next four screenshots are from their website). The focus of the map — the centre — is Jerusalem, the heart of the Christian world.

The further out you go, the more fantastical the illustrations become. These are from edges of the map, and represent the humans and beasts supposed to live in those regions:

The Marvellous Other was, in other words, not only something culturally different to the normal Christian world, but something that looked and acted differently, and if you went close enough to it, you might be in danger of becoming absorbed by it. You could become the Other.

Groose and the Normative

Let’s establish Groose first.

When we encounter Groose, he is a bully who has a crush on Zelda and wants to undermine Link to get her attention. He has his allies, Cawlin and Strich, and a clear placement in the social hierarchy of the Knight Academy. From our everyday lives, many of us will probably have recognised the very specific archetype (school bully) Groose plays into. This recognition helps us establish the norms of the Knight Academy and Skyloft, and while it is still very much a fictional world, this little piece of everyday life creates an illusion of familiarity — it makes the implausible plausible, and tells us that it’s safe to assume that many of the social aspects of Skyloft are the same as our own. Our normal is therefore Skyloft’s normal, and Groose is one of the core characters in this sense of normality.

I think it’s also very telling that, like any other LoZ game, SS has a somewhat medieval aesthetic, and remember what I said about the Hereford Mappa Mundi and normality being at the centre of it? This is the map of SS:

(Source)

Skyloft is in the very centre. Of course, this could just be an easy way for the game developers to set it all up, but for the sake of the argument, let’s choose to think that it has some significance. As soon as we move away from Skyloft, whatever normality existed disappears. There are no clearly delineated social rules and guidelines on the Surface, and the deeper into each region you go, the more challenging and fantastical your surroundings become. The Surface therefore seems to be set up as a juxtaposition to Skyloft, and it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to say that where Skyloft is normal, the Surface is abnormal.

When Groose follows Link to the Surface, he is abandoning normality. Link’s sailcloth isn’t enough to properly carry them both, so they hit the ground hard. Groose then expresses wonder at what he sees: “WHOA! B-birds? TINY birds?! Wh-what … ARE they?! And what is that thing?!” (0:33–0:43). The final clause is said when he sees Gorko the Goron wander past. Groose then yells, “Where am I?!” (0:59) before getting up and shaking Link by the shoulders. Groose’s encounter with the Surface, and subsequent shock-fuelled wonder, all go towards showing that the Surface doesn’t fit his standards of normality. It breaks all of his expectations, and he has a difficult time believing what he sees.

Once he gets over his shock, however, he is off to attempt to save Zelda, but as we know from the game, he remains with the Old Lady at the Sealed Grounds and starts altering the area to suit his purpose. Rather than wander further away from normality, he stays with the only other nearly-human he has encountered so far (who isn’t Link), starts to create new social bonds (with the Old Lady), and builds man-made structures (the Groosenator). Rather than delve into abnormality — into the Other — like Link does, Groose starts to recreate a sense of normality right where he is.

Groose’s reactions to the Surface further strengthens the juxtaposition between the Surface and Skyloft, and the idea of Skyloft being the in-game standard of normality. We very get a sense of what’s considered normal to someone from Skyloft, and much like Skyloft itself sets the standard of normality, Groose becomes our frame of reference when we consider the general expectations and behavioural patterns of your normal human/Hylian. Keep this in mind as we proceed.

Link and the Other

Link and Groose

Although Link starts out as the victim of Groose’s bullying, and therefore also starts in the centre of the normality established on Skyloft, we very quickly find Link taking actions that don’t quite fit within the frame of reference established by Skyloft and Groose (and I’m not talking about throwing remlits off of Skyloft, or sleeping in strangers’ beds). If we consider the dialogue options Link gets, alongside his main quest and side quest, it becomes clear that Link is being driven away from Skyloft. He is destined to be Hylia’s Chosen Hero, and in order to accomplish this, he must leave behind the normality Skyloft provides.

Link’s first solid break with normality are the visions that lead him to the Master Sword and Fi. I’m not considering the tornado a break with normality for Link, because beyond Zelda missing, very little actually changed for him. With the Master Sword and Fi, however, he is immediately thrown into the fabled destiny of the Chosen Hero. The article here is important: the Chosen Hero. There are no other Chosen Heroes in his time. Maybe there once was, and maybe there will be later, but right then and there, Link is the only one. This creates a significant division between Link and the rest of Skyloft. He is still welcome there and can still live there, but he the process of Othering has started, because he now must leave the normality behind.

When Link arrives to the Surface, Fi warns him to be cautious: “Please proceed with caution, Master” (1:47:20). He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t shout, and he doesn’t start to panic. This is significantly different to Groose’s first reaction. Groose was thrown into the non-normative, but Link has been eased into it by Fi, and doesn’t appear as to experience the same shocked wonder that Groose will experience later. He pulls out his sailcloth, lands, and takes stock of his situation. And then he moves forward, deeper into the Other, guided by Fi and pushed by his quest to save Zelda.

The time Link spends on the Surface accustoms him to it. Much like the player learns what works and what doesn’t work down there, Link learns. The more time Link spends there, the more used to it he becomes. It becomes his normal. This is emphasised when Groose arrives. While Groose is experiencing shocked marvel and shakes Link for answers, Link pats his arm and smiles (1:31), and then explains the situation to him.

As mentioned previously, Groose then intends to save Zelda. What changes his mind is the awakening of the Imprisoned. Link seals it back into the Sealed Grounds, but Groose then admits to the Old Lady: “Me, well, there’s nothin’ I can do to help Zelda. I’m useless” (I couldn’t find the timestamp for it, but it’s note 64 on the Zelda Wiki). In the world of Otherness, the normative is “useless”. Groose can’t help Zelda, because Groose doesn’t have the skills or experience to do so. Link, however, does. In that one “I’m useless” Groose admits that someone as firmly bound to normality as himself can’t do what Link can. He thereby suggests that Link isn’t within the realm of normality anymore. Because Link is now the only one who can save Zelda, Link has become Othered.

Link and the Wilderness

If we want to see more examples of Link’s Otherness, look at the beings he surrounds himself by: Gorons, Kikwis, Mogmas, and monsters. Yes, some of these are humanoid. But the same can be said of some of the beings along the edges of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. When placed next to the people from the centre of the map, they still aren’t entirely human (or, as in the game, human/Hylian). By association, Link isn’t entirely human.

I want to talk a little bit about woodlands here, and the historical associations with woods, because I published an article on it a couple of years ago and therefore have some sources on woods hiding on my laptop. It’s mostly Anglo-centric sources, because that’s the perspective I’m approaching this from. I’m aware that, for a better analysis, I should have looked into the Japanese cultural associations with woods and woodlands, but so be it.

Discussions about woodlands will only really be applicable to Faron Woods and Deep Woods, but I think we can extrapolate some interesting bits from it, because Groose calls the Surface a “rugged, adventurous wilderness” (2:37, my emphasis). According to Groose’s standards of normality, the entirety of the Surface is a wilderness, and in the entry for ‘Wildwood’ in Man, Myth & Magic, Richard Cavendish brings up the woodwouse, a “wild man of the woods” (Cavendish, 3025, my emphasis). It might be a somewhat tenuous link (awful pun intended, please deduct psychic damage), but we know that other cultures have their own versions of the “wild man” (e.g. Icelanders in Old Norse times had their own outlaws and wild men, despite their lack of woodlands).

The wild man, Cavendish goes on to say, has a “closeness to Nature [that] connects him with two other figures, the Green Man […] and the unearthly woodman who is the keeper of the forest and its creatures (Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings)” (3028). Both the Green Man is an old pre-Christian nature spirit or deity still found carved into pubs and churches in the United Kingdom. He’s considered a “symbol of rebirth and resurrection” that ties ancient beliefs to modern beliefs (source). The unearthly woodman, if we use Tom Bombadil as the example, is an unexplained deity-like figure with unknown powers who wanders the wilderness and keeps it safe.

Personally, I highly doubt that the developers of SS read Man, Myth & Magic, so any similarity is likely to be coincidental. That said, cultural consciousness (a form of awareness of cultural symbols through interaction with that culture) might give us some leeway to consider this, because Link is the Hero reborn. Link is a symbol of rebirth. Link is also a figure of constantly growing powers  and divine gifts who wanders the wilderness of the Surface to find Zelda, and in the process keeps it safe. Perhaps by coincidence, Link walks among these highly cultural mythological powerful deity-like figures who live in our cultural consciousness.

Link and Divinity

Link’s association with the Other, with these cultural symbols, seems strengthened through his trials in the Spirit Realm. These are trials made for the Chosen Hero to prove himself to the Goddesses. He’s not allowed any weapons or tools, but gains gifts when he finishes each trial. In addition, each trial gives him what he needs to access Sacred Flames to temper the Master Sword. 

Comics aren’t considered canonical material, but I think it’s worth noting that in SS’ comic a point is made about the Sword having to be broken and reforged to be of use to the Hero. The Hero himself has to alter the Sword, a weapon of divine make and divine power, in order to become attuned to it. The accompanying panels suggest that it’s not only the Sword that must be broken and reforged, but the Hero also. (Source, 20–22.) It seems that a similar thing is occurring in SS: the Master Sword must be tempered to exert its powers on the Surface, but Link must also be tempered to be able to wield the divine powers within. By undertaking the trials in the Spirit Realm, Link comes closer to the divine powers that made the Sword available to humans/Hylians, while the Sword comes closer to humans/Hylians.

My final point is about the astounding similarity between Link and Demise. Demise, once more Others Link. He describes the humans/Hylians he knew: “[They] were weak things. Hardly more than insects, shivering under rocks and ready to flee at a mere glimpse of me” (1:06:33:16). Link neither shivers nor flees. In fact, this is how Link faces Demise (the following screenshots are from the last 30 minutes of this walkthrough):

His expression, his stance, and the way he holds the Master Sword all signal that he’s not going to back down. Link might be afraid, but if he is, his fury at Zelda’s treatment overrides his fear. While Groose, the paragon of normality, holds Zelda and makes sure she’s safe, Link faces Demise, and although there is a difference in stature and appearance, their major abilities and skills in the duel are the same: they both wield each their sword spirit (Link has Fi, Demise has Girahim); they both use lightning to their advantage; and their stances and the way they handle their weapons are very similar.

They duel on even ground, even when Demise is fighting for his life, and Link wins.

What we see here is then a character who has repeatedly been Othered by those who represent normality, or by what is assumed to be normality. His animations suggest that he is comfortable with abnormality, in the world of Otherness. The people he surrounds himself by are Othered, and on a cultural level, he has some similarities to deity-like figures in both pre-Christian beliefs and contemporary popular culture. He undergoes trials that strengthen his spirits and powers, and make him able to wield the full powers of a divine weapon.

Finally, his set of skills and abilities are remarkably similar to the only other fighting deity (discounting Zelda due to her being unconscious), and I personally don’t think that this is a coincidence. I think the player is meant to feel like they can defeat Demise — like they are on some even ground — and in order to accomplish this, the player needs to feel that Link is a powerful character with the ability to defeat a deity. This is done through graphics and animation — similar body language, similar stances, similar attacks. To some extent, Link and Demise mirror each other in the final duel, much like how the ground beneath them also mirrors them (another detail that I don't think is entirely insignificant).

Do I think that Link is a deity in his own right? No.

What I’m trying to suggest here is that Link gains skills, powers, and abilities that make him deity-like — enough to defeat an almost-formed Demise, enough to even the ground, but not literally deified. This is an important distinction, because in the end, although Othered, Link is still human/Hylian. There is a division between him and normality — one that I’m not sure he will ever be able to completely remove — but not a harsh final division. There is still room for communication and friendliness, and we see him becoming friends with Groose.

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The aim of this has been to air my thoughts and reasonings behind my theory of a deity-like SS Link. I’m not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other, but rather show how I came to perceive him the way I do.

Literary Sources:

Cavendish, Richard, ed. Man, Myth & Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1983.

Spivak, Gayatri. “From A Critique of Postcolonial Reason”. In The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 2114–26. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.