#skyward sword worldbuilding

[powdermelonkeg]

TotK theory, do NOT read until you’ve beaten the Dragon Tears quest:

We never actually see the Golden Goddesses in past games. We see effigies of them, like the three Oscars flying into the sky in Ocarina of Time, or the three identical Hylian statues surrounding the Triforce in Twilight Princess, or the three pearl-holding statues in Wind Waker.

We meet their oracles in Ages and Secrets, and help those oracles get houses in Minish Cap. We meet their agents, the Twilight Princess Light Spirits, or the Skyward Sword dragons, or the three protectors of the Goddess Pearls in WW.

Even in Skyward Sword, we only see their symbols, despite being in the time arguably closest to them.

And now, in present day, when only Hylia is still worshiped, we have Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh. And thanks to Zeldra, we know how they came to be, to an extent.

We know they used to be mortal.

We know they had incredible power.

We know they sacrificed it for something.

A big question that’s always burned me since Skyward Sword is why did the goddesses leave?

Hylia didn’t. She stayed to help, stayed to fight until her last breath, then was reborn to try it again.

It always used to strike me as particularly cold of them that they’d ignore their youngest sister, even with all the power they clearly had at their disposal.

But what if they literally couldn’t help?

To become an immortal dragon is to lose oneself. They wouldn’t have even been aware.

Of course, why would an immortal goddess need to become an immortal dragon in the first place? Don’t they have everything?

Here’s my theory.

In TotK, we’re repeatedly told that the Zonai, when they descended, were praised as gods for their powers. And we know the Secret Stones amplify that power.

Coupled with the fact that we never see any consistent portrayal of the High Trio—

I think Din, Nayru, and Farore were Zonai.

I think they’re revered as gods because they descended from the heavens, as the Zonai were said to have been.

I think that their powers involved the terraforming they did to the world to make it habitable.

I think that Demise lived on the surface first, with the malice, with the gloom, and that the golden trio stopped his conquest of the surface peoples by force.

I think they swallowed their secret stones to keep them from being taken by Demise, since we now know what someone with even a fraction of his power is capable of doing.

I think when they became dragons, the power they shed in their wake coalesced into the Triforce.

I think Demise, when he waged war on the surface peoples afterwards, emerged from the Depths.

I think that Skyloft was Hylia knowing that the sky has always been safe, always been out of reach, and repurposing the lowest of the Zonai isles to protect them. Even though we know the Goddess Statue was on the surface originally, we don’t know where the rest of the isles came from—the Hylians rose with the statue, but spread to the other islands.

And I think that Demise telling Link that Zelda’s form pales in comparison to the magnificence of her former self is referring to the youngest Zonai sister’s former appearance. Because what a downgrade it must have seemed to him to watch one of the most powerful beings in the world, the one that sealed him away, turn herself into one of his prey.

[citrusici]

Star Wars AU: Sky's home world

So Skyward Sword's setting is very unique with how Sky literally lives on an island in the sky, so for this AU I decided to make his homeworld a gas giant! Kind of like Cloud City on Bespin, except Skyloft is naturally occurring and not a manmade structure.

Most people living on this planet live on the floating islands at the top layer of its cloudy atmosphere, where visibility is clear. The locals travel between islands and through the clouds via loftwing mounts. The cloudy atmosphere on this planet goes very deep, and lots of flying creatures native to this world live on the uninhabited islands deeper down. There are also old ruins on a few of these islands, but they're difficult to locate due to low visibility, atmospheric interference, and island movements.

(Fun fact: Levias can be spotted in the deepest layers just above the cloud barrier, but very few people ever get the chance to)

The atmosphere gets more dangerous the closer you get to the surface. Monsters get more frequent and more dangerous further down, and the lowest layers of the atmosphere are extremely volatile and stormy, to the point where even the sturdiest ships can't really get through it without crashing.

No one in living memory has ever seen the surface and there aren't any surviving records, but there are local legends of something hidden on the planet's surface. The presence of this "cloud barrier" and the unique phenomenon of floating islands only seem to strengthen the validity of these claims.

When Sky finally finds a way through the cloud barrier and flies down to the surface to look for Sun, he finds an ancient abandoned temple, far older than any existing records.

[themask-maker]

Some concepts for the Lizalfos in Ikana. They are found primarily in the Vaba Mountains west of Orq'oten, which are chaparral-adjacent in climate. They have more clothes and armor than this, but I wanted to show their markings so I just gave them the standard cloth from the game. They don't make a huge appearance in TMM beyond historical mention and this is just a fun additional thing. The Walla Variant is based on the Chuckwalla - they're sort of like the in-game SkSw Moblins.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

TLOZ translations always seem to be a bit shitty. I still see people talk about the weird translation of the Demise monologue at the end of SkSw. I think someone said that Demise was more general with his statement, as in there will always be forces from the demon tribe fighting against the light or smth? Not specifically "us three will always fight". (I've read it a few times, but hard to remember, sorry.) (On the topic of SkSw, I kinda dislike how much it impacted theories within TLOZ, some theories are really cool, don't get me wrong. But now, even games that existed for years before suddenly are being pushed to fit with the lore presented in that game. Ganondorf being the best example: He no longer is his own character who did bad things because of his own will and actions, it's now "He did it all because an evil curse made him do it. He had no choice, he was born as a vessel for the demonic lord." The implications that "the curse of Demise" also would mainly go for the already vilified race of the Gerudo, and make their one male an evil warlord is already kinda... yeah... no. (Not to mention that there are other demon lords throughout the franchise that have nothing to do with Ganon.)

Ohh speaking of this I recently saw this post that did a good translation of that very moment, and pretty much confirms what you are mentioning anon; that it's basically a promise of that cycle coming back moreso than Demise himself coming back (especially since his actual and definitive death is a big deal in that game).

But yeah, I agree it has taken a huge space in the way the series is thought about. I pretty much completely missed that hard turn, as I couldn't play Skyward Sword when it released and wasn't super into Zelda afterward anymore (I had gotten too edgy.... 2011 was the year where I got obsessed with every horror videogame in existence basically except for Resident Evil for some reason I could never get into that series ANYWAY WAY off topic........), so coming back a few years later had me very ???? puzzled about how the theories had reconstructed themselves around Hylia and Demise and endless cycles (it's not that it wasn't a thing before, but I wouldn't say it was as much a Series Trademark as it is now).

But yeah. Ganondorf having his own motivations makes him immediately stronger as an antagonist, especially since his deal is quite complicated all things considered.

I am having a thought about how a lot of Zelda villains' motivation is a sort of rebellion against nature. I have scratched enough digital paper about Ganondorf's situation, but like... Minish Cap Vaati is also very much motivated by his refusal to remain small and whimsical and seize power instead of staying in his lane (and then he gets horny in Four Sword so, maybe let's not go there), Zant is.... Zant, Hilda in A Link Between World has been cosmically punished for trying to reject the Goddesses and create a world on its own terms --like SERIOUSLY this is HORRIFYING I feel like we don't talk enough about how utterly nightmarish of a reality that paints for Hyrule as a whole-- Girahim is devoted but fights for the side more or less destined to lose... It's interesting how Hyrule is hostile to change and anything that threatens the statut quo.

(then you have the occasional Majora and Yuga, whomst I dooon't think really fit the above category --to their full credit! and then you have Bellum, who is..... a blob...... And I don't remember enough from either the Oracles game or about Malladus to put them in either category, I need to replay those games)

Hyrule really has this frightening quality to it when you stare at it for too long: that your two only options are to either graciously submit to your assigned cosmic role, or fight it and become darkness incarnate in some way. A Link Between World showed, quite starkly, that trying to escape that binary choice is *not an option*.

[screamting]

replaying skyward sword in anticipation of Tears of the Kingdom and we really don't give it enough credit that Zelda fully shoves Link off tall objects not once but twice in just the prologue.

We also don't appreciate enough that the premise is essentially "hey Link, have you ever wondered what's at the bottom of the ocean? I know it's supposed to be just uninhabitable wasteland and sand, and we can't reach it because at a certain point we simply cannot dive any deeper, but I think probably there's like. A whole world under there bigger than literally all the land we've ever known."

[ordon-shield]

The Writing Systems of Hyrule

We start at the beginning, with the writing of the Surface prior to the war with Demise. Following the theory laid out in this post, let’s assume that this is Mudoran writing, written by the people of Mudora. Like many real examples of early writing systems, it is pictographic.

Once Hylians moved up into the sky, we see a change in the writing system used by the events of Skyward Sword, with the adoption of a phonetic alphabet. The shapes of the letters used in this alphabet suggest it was mostly written on paper or cloth (likely due to the scarcity of trees and stone on Skyloft) with a pen or ink brush. This form of writing still has similarities to Mudoran however, such as the letter for U. We will call this form of writing Old Hylian.

Once Hylians descended to the surface once more, the way they wrote changed once more. By the time of The Minish Cap, a new system of writing had developed. This new way of writing used straight lines and corners, suggesting a shift away from writing with ink on paper or cloth, the average person opting to write by carving letters into the cheaper and more widely available wood of the Surface. There was also a shift to a syllabary rather than an alphabet, possibly to make it easier for words to be carved quickly. We will call this form of writing Traditional Hylian.

By the era of the Hero of Time, another form of writing, this one a simplified form of Traditional Hylian. This form of writing abandoned punctuation and certain other nuances of Traditional Hylian, reducing the amount of characters one had to learn to read and write, while also simplifying the characters themselves. This form of writing became especially common in the aftermath of the Hyrulean Civil War, with rates of literacy dropping. We will call this form of writing Simplified Hylian.

During the era of the Hero of Time, the history of Hyrule split into three branches, with each taking different routes when it came to writing. In the timeline where the Hero of Time became an adult before returning to his childhood, Hyrule was eventually flooded, leaving a handful of survivors that had fled to the mountaintops. The majority of those survivors were those with more education, who had lived in and around the Castle, along with those they had met as they fled, leading to a resurgence in Traditional Hylian. However, despite keeping the writing system of Hyrule, the people of the Great Sea would eventually develop their own dialect of speech to the point that it became it’s own language, distinct from that of the past.

In the timeline the Hero of Time returned to, Simplified and Traditional Hylian continued being used. However, at some point there was a drastic shift in how people wrote, shifting from the straight lined syllabary of the past to a new alphabet with curved lines and circles. The origin of this script is unknown, but some theorise that it was brought to Hyrule by an influx of non-Hylian humans, while other theories suggest that it was based on an old Sheikah script (due to the eye iconography). The curved lines of the script have even led to theories that it was related to the Gerudo script somehow, which is also an alphabet. We will refer to this writing system as Post-Hylian.

In the timeline where the Hero of Time fell in battle, Hyrule was consumed by the Imprisoning War, causing literacy rates to plummet, as well as the destruction of many texts and records. In the wake of this chaos, after the war was over the Royal Family chose to reform the writing system which had split into various regional variants during the decades-long conflict. Basing their new script on that of the first era of Hyrule, they created the New Hylian script, which would continue to be used up to the era of the Great Calamity.

With the Hylian script explained, I would like to quickly turn to one of the more fascinating writing systems in the history of Hyrule — that of the Ancient Sheikah who built the Divine Beasts. What makes this writing system so distinct is the fact that it was clearly deliberately designed to be used for technology rather than being written, possibly being created specifically as a secret script or programming language to prevent the secrets of Sheikah technology from being stolen by others.

[skyloftian-nutcase]

AAAHHH, just riding around Hyrule in botw with the music and the raw beauty and the vastness and barrenness and wilderness and—

My gosh, I love this game 😍

[ariathenovice3]

Zelda worldbuilding HC’s pt 1- skyloft

1. The weather is cold, often no more then 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 degrees Celsius), it is also very dry and windy

2. Because of the temperature, clothing is very thick and multi layered

3. Clothing is colored with dyes made from plants and some insects

4. Remlits can be sheared like sheep, and actually need to be at least twice a year, so this fur is used to line cold weather clothing.

5. They have a mostly vegetarian diet, consisting of roots, gourds, and herbs made into things like soup, stew, and breads/rolls

6. There are many separate islands with many different people, skyloft is just the equivalent of a college/military town, some people are born here but most who live there travel for school or work

7. Because of how much of their language is composed of straight lines they write with wooden styluses that are pushed into a ink soaked cloth

8. Most people start school at about 10-12 and graduate at around 20, although knights graduate earlier (often around 17 or 18) and healers/medical workers often graduate in their early to mid 20s

9. People are taller then in most other eras, with the average woman being 5”6 and the average man being 5”9 (the average in the era of light/Minish is 5”1 for women and 5”4 for men)

10. They use a lunar calendar with 14 months of 28 days each, there are 7 months each season (cold season and warm season)

[zelda-deep-wilds]

Story Spotlight #2! "Caring For An Amnesiac Demon Sword Boy" by LifezVictory

Hello and welcome to Zelda Deep Wilds' Story Spotlight!

I'll be sharing works by talented writers I come across, fanfics that exemplify the hidden gems theme of my blog. Like this one!

Caring For An Amnesiac Demon Sword Boy on AO3 Or read it here on Fanfiction.Net Rated T

Summary: Very AU and crack. During their final battle, Link lands a critical hit on Ghirahim, causing him to lose all his memories, and actually become a nice person? And being the hero he is, Link can't just leave the demon to fend for himself… Platonic Ghiralink friendship, found family and possible QPR. OOC, obviously.

Shared with permission of the author, @lifezvictory.

This story makes me so happy.

Despite the humor tag, the serious parts are treated with the utmost respect. And the story itself is so sweet. Do yourself a favor and give it a try!

Also, do check out the two short works in the author's same series, (Queer)Platonic Ghiralink on AO3 and also posted separately on FF.N.

We all need more sweetness and well thought out stories in our lives, and this is one of my favorites. Yay for cuddly Ghirahim, respect for Fi, and a VERY interesting take on Hylia, Demise, Zelda, and Link!

And we definitely need more friendship, found family, and queerplatonic relationship fanfiction. This is a lovely example!

Traysi's Recommendation: 5 stars

[goldensunset]

i do still wanna replay twilight princess though that was such a good game i’m gonna have fantastic memories of it forever

[powdermelonkeg]

Hey do you think it's possible to fix how time travel works in skyward sword so that this link can be the first hero who fought demise in the distant past? The one from the legend I think Zelda tells us (but maybe it was someone else, my memory isnt that great).

Anyways, I'm curious because I think that's what we were supposed to think. That Link became the hero in the present, them went to the past, and by defeating Demise became the hero from the past.

So, for this, you've got two options, one involving Link himself being known, and the other being Link's legend. They've got different criteria, so it depends on what you're looking for.

If you want it to be Link that's acknowledged, with the caveat that you also subscribe to the belief at the end of the rapidly-fraying timeline post, then you can say that when Fi course-corrected the timeline, that that was a side effect put into motion to make sure Link still encountered the legend that would lead him downward.

However, if you want it to be the legend, provided you also want to go along with what's intended for the timeline (because I doubt they actually put any thought into all those possible splits in the chart), then you can look to the Ballad of the Goddess.

This exists, alongside the legend of the man the goddess gave a sailcloth to. And everything up until this point-

-was pre-determined. Link was supposed to win the Wing Ceremony, Zelda was supposed to hear a call for the surface, and so on.

The Ballad of the Goddess was meant to be a hint and guidance for the hero when he first starts out. He knows what his job is, what the end result should be, even with other stakes at play. So we can reason that Hylia had at least some limited future sight ability in order to generate these prophecies.

With that in mind, the above phrase that generated my whole Mudora theory could well have been the same thing—Hylia telling her people about what's to come, but either leaving out details so they think it's already happened, or time itself distorting the tale to change it from future tense to past tense as it's retold each generation. We know from Gaepora's meeting with Fi that the stories of the past are altered and missing pieces. So if you want to stay as true-to-intention as possible, I'd say go with that.

My own thoughts on this line below the cut.

Personally, it's the past tense that gets me hung up on this bit of dialogue; that the goddess gave the sailcloth back then. It throws me into speculation mode because I'm like "no, that hasn't happened yet, so that means it's happened twice!!!" which gives me a springboard to speculate what the world before Demise might have been like. It's also a line that could have been fixed with a single word.

You know, they say that the goddess promised the Sailcloth to her chosen hero long ago.

If they'd done that, there would be no room for questioning. I do kind of want to ask @sunnylaurels what the exact wording is in Japanese so I know without a shadow of a doubt that it's a dialogue error and not a mistranslation (after BotW's journal conundrum I no longer trust localizations) but-

The fact of the matter is, regardless of what's intended, I think it's more fun to speculate about an unknown predecessor to Link. Someone who tried, who failed, who was given a second chance, who was scattered to the winds of time to fulfill a purpose. It's a whole pocket where I can basically make up what I want, and the canon is just ambiguous enough to support it, which is amazing.

However, I also know that some theories, despite how they're technically canon-compliant, feel like they betray the canon to subscribe to on the basis of the Zeldevs' intentions. I know for a fact that the dialogue was intended to reference Skyward Sword Link. In a similar vein, I know that Breath of the Wild's 10k years ago are intended to happen after everything else in Zelda canon, or that nearly everything in Twilight Princess is intended to be a callback to Ocarina of Time.

I just have a serious case of "but what if THIS tho!"

[ariathenovice2]

A wedding in skyloft, I will put more info and general traditions in the replies

[koboldfactory]

Gritting my teeth and vibrating with the force of 7000 12 cylinder engines every time someone says some bs like “Zelda games were never about the story!! They’re just generic fantasy schlock so it doesn’t matter that BotW and TotK have basically nonexistent stories with incoherent plots! It’s all about the MECHANICS”

Like. Is the only Zelda game you’ve ever played Zelda 1. Oh yeah right. I forgot Twilight princess has no story or stakes or characters you get attached to. Neither does wind waker or skyward sword. Also none of them have interesting worldbuilding and concepts that aren’t very common especially in the games space /s 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Go back to your “Secret Stone? Demon King?” cutscene simulator

[ryo-apologist]

Racer! Link

Racer! Link x Reader

CW: Smut, Minors DNI, I will block your ass, author knows nothing about racing and it shows

AN: Yes, this is about that Link. The one with the elf ears, says "Hyah!". Yeah I'm a Linked Universe Nerd. Sucks to be y'all. Keep ya guessing on which fandom has my balls this week.

~Darling XOXO

☾ So, I hesitated writing this for a number of reasons, but I decided I don't care. Hozier has a new song, April has me face down in the mattress with how hard it's fucked me and I just want to write about a Link near and and dear to my heart.

☾ Mario Kart Link.

☾ He's just a silly lil goober who's always having a good time. Especially when I play as him because what is second place? He'll never know.

☾ I know, canonically, both are Skyward Sword! Link and Breath of the Wild! Link. I do not care.

☾ Because come with me, sinner, as we explore a whole new world. A world where Mario Kart isn't a silly lil game. It's an empire.

☾ Like Fast and the Furious (I think, idk I never watched any of them). OR like sk8 the infinity at S. I do know that one.

☾ There are real things at stake here. It's intense, and it's heavy.

☾ Here, give me a break while I do some worldbuilding here. Mystery blocks are still a thing, they work by magic idk, except getting hit by one of those things is devastating. It's why the newcomers don't last long.

☾ All the main screen players (Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Inkling boy, etc.) are high level racers. They are A-listed and the ones you look out for if you see them in the lineup.

☾ Including Link himself. He drives a motorcycle he named Epona, which he built himself from scratch.

☾ I spent a lot of time (three minutes) trying to figure out a clever nickname for him, and then I saw some of the names other people gave their Linksona's and, while there's nothing wrong with them, I quickly realized I was overthinking things.

☾ It's mostly a stage name, his name is Link and outside of the raceway, he goes by it.

☾ But, for shits and giggles, and point of discerning him from the others, I don't care. Call him ratchet, greaser, racer, cypher, tank, axel, sparks. I'm giving you all the freedom! Me? Personally? I'm going to call him:

☾ Neo- a combining form meaning “new,” “recent,” “revived,” “modified,”

☾ Great I gave you some background, let's get into the fun parts.

☾ Neo, where do we begin with you.

☾ Have y'all read A Court of Mist and Fury? You know Rhysand?

☾ He's Cassian coded.

☾ LMAO You thought.

☾ He's a fun, kind-of guy but when shit gets real, he can shift from zero to a hundred like that.

☾ He'll be laughing with a newbie, patting them on the shoulder, but the second that visor comes down, he's unrecognizable. He's an A-lister for a reason.

☾ He's infamous for taking shortcuts that are insanely dangerous. He's almost always bandaged somewhere, but not his pretty boy, play bunny face.

☾ So Cassian and Lightning McQueen.

☾ He's totally the kind to shoot a wink and a flirty wave, spend the night and then be gone by morning. Or have them escorted out by his Zelda in the morning, Tony Stark style

☾ He's a slut.

☾ Can you tell I like my men slutty?

☾ And he's such a....character in bed.

☾ He's a selfish lover, but make no mistake about it. His partner gets their end. That's right. I said lover. He's fucked bowser.

☾ I'm kidding

☾ No I'm not.

☾ He doesn't care who's in his bed. Man, woman, the funky others who say FUCK YOU to the gender spectrum /pos

☾ He'll bottom, top, switch it up mid-way through. He just like me fr.

☾But he's not lazy. Selfish, yes, but lazy? No. He's the best rider both on and off Epona, yk yk.

☾ And he has such a pretty cock too. A pretty flushed pink, circumcised with such a lovely vein running up the bottom of it. And while pretty, sorry his balls aren't much to write home about.

☾ They are dangerously sensitive though. Suck on them and run your thumb along the head of his dick and he'll whimper.

☾ SPEAKING OF-

☾ He whimpers so nicely. God, when he's in the middle of bouncing up and down on you (artificial or organic both are good), and his own hands are running up his chest, plucking at his own pebbled nipples and playing with the piercings as his head is thrown back in pure bliss-

☾ He's probably sponsored by Monster Energy

☾ Has a sugar daddy FOR SURE. God wish I was HIM.

[monstrous-fusion]

Feathers (Skyward Sword) / he/ae / 18 years old

Determination is aer middle name. Feathers is confident, snarky and slightly egotistical. Ae had a taste of divine ichor and they're not afraid to drink from the devil's chalice again. Feathers is exceptionally skilled for a young man at his age. POTS has never stopped him, even if its gotten significantly worse since the beginning of this adventure...

Some worldbuilding stuff under the cut

Feathers has POTS (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) aer loftwing through a soul bond also has POTS, but acts as a service animal for him.

The satchel in the front actually carries aer carving knife and some extra pieces of wood. (Speaking of, he is VERY passionate about wood and trees).

Ae is in a relationship with Groose and Zelda.