#the talk was about what influenced my comics

[lynelsscareme]

Two Hero of Legend's walk into a restaurant, and neither is ever, ever going to tell their respective group what they just saw.

Swift:

Legend:

Swift: ... Never talk about this?

Legend: deal.

Gates of Courage and Linked Universe are entirely different trees in the garden of time. They can see each other, and entangle their branches, but they can only ever grow and drop their own leaves. Legend is from a universe where he will - maybe - retire and have a life. Swift did... not do that. Did not do that at all. Legend dreamed and woke up, faith in happy endings shattered. Swift's nightmare kept going when he left Koholint, and that quest isn't the only one with nothing to show for it except bad memories and poor sleep.

(There is only one Ravio per timeline, after all, and Swift dreamt his away by accident. Much like many other quests he only barely remembers completing across time and reality itself... He's not really sure what number he's up to, and he's not sure quests in realms that may no longer exist after his timeline converges in the War of Eras matter in the count.

In the end, between the two, only one of them carved an Ocarina out of a time stone, and of all his regrets at least Legend doesn't have to lose sleep over that.)

Because of how massive the fandom base is for LU, I might as well state the differences up front so people don't get confused by changed characters and circumstances for each link. No, they aren't part of the same timeline (tree, I've decided to consider it) but they have a lot of shared patterns. The most glaring differences is both the number of Links (Gates has... an unholy amount) and the sequence of events. (The True OG timeline is the Downfall in Gates. Deal with that information how you will. Just know that Swift will be coming to terms with both saving untold numbers of people of the absolute destruction that originally awaited them when the Heroes Spirit broke, and condemning possibly hundreds of thousands of people to witnessing the same cycle of chaos that had plagued the world since the First Hero. You know that scene in Sinbad, where Eres shows the Sand Ocean? Yeah... close shave, mate.)

I can't not acknowledge the importance of LU in how I've made and altered certain characters - I've had to completely rejigg certain ones entirely whenever I notice I'm unintentionally mimicking or running alone the same ideas as Jojo - but that goes without saying, as does the influence all the other 'Link Group Quest' fics and comics have had over the years. There are so many that I, personally, have read and liked that it'd be impossible to list them. Regardless of that, I will happily tag my fanart of other people's pretty dam awesome depictions, and my own as vastly separate entities, and will do my best to extend that curtesy to all the others making their own Mega Works.

The most enjoyable part is, thanks to the Magic Systems and Major Divine Plot Bunny that makes my AU what it is, crossovers can be whatever you or I wish it. This is our sand pit, and we all have been given our buckets!

[In other words, don't let the size and complexity of LU scare you out of making your own variations of the idea. Nor the idea that others like me have been making ours for a while, or have seen the idea before. There is no crime punishable in playing with barbie dolls, go absolutely bonkers.]

[raptorjules]

saw a cowboy as i was leaving work last night. i am not entirely unconvinced that it was your cowboy ghost. you’ve doomed us all.

i would be entirely surprised if this guy followed me all the way across the sea but you know, whats a little Yee-Haunt to end your work night, amiright?

for context i did a panel at a convention recently here telling stories about my experience on the overnight shifts from when i lived in texas, ofc you're bound to run into some cowboy ghosts. so heres a snippet from my little talk about my time working in a restaurant on the late shift.

'cuz see I've had experiences before, when i was younger, at my first hotel job. (yeah i'm old and I've worked in hotels basically my whole life.) I used to work in a hotel restaurant in a swanky Holiday Inn in a my hometown (listen i know there's no such thing as a Swanky Holiday Inn but my boss tried very hard to make it so.) i didn't work the overnights, but i did work the closing shift, so sometimes i would be there past midnight cleaning up. one of my first nights there alone i was cleaning the ice machine, and this thing had a huge metal scoop and a pick. and the cook and i were chatting and laughing about something, and suddenly this ice pick flings itself off the counter so hard it embeds itself in the wall right beside my elbow. needless to say we were shocked. musta slipped right? now my restaurant was above a basement, and in that basement was a bar. i could see the entrance to the bar because one of the walls of my restaurant was made of glass and looked down on the entry. it was all enclosed inside the hotel, nothing was outside. so one day the bar has closed early and i'm looking down in the dark and watching the entrance and i see an old man walk into the bar and im thinking, huh. thats weird cuz i saw Al leave and i know he locked up. so i goes out the side entrance of my restaurant dining area that leads to a staircase that goes right down to the bar, and i go down to see whats up and i look through the glass door and i see a cowboy sitting at the bar. its dark. no ones there, i try the door and its locked. i take out my walkie and i call security. and two seconds before he gets there, i knock on the glass, you know the tune, classic shave and a haircut, and the cowboy looks up. he makes eyecontact with me and he has these blue blue eyes. and he gives me this grin, like he knows what hes up too, knocks twice and i blink and hes gone. someone tells me later a scorned woman murdered her lover there by throwing a knife so hard it embedded him to the wall. to be frank that sounds like a pretty convenient story to scare me, but after that i made sure to talk to the noises i heard around the place at night. just in case.'

next time you see my ol' cowboy with his blue blue eyes and haunting (ha) grin, tell 'em i said hello. and remember to talk to the noises you here when youre alone. you never know.