#then again neither did botw

[veggiecorner]

while Mineru's send off is a sweet way of ending totk, I think there should've been an ending similar to Skyward Sword - where Link finds Zelda overlooking Hyrule (or I guess Lookout Landing specifically), and she looks conflicted. Once she notices Link she thanks him again for everything and they sit around in their silence. Zelda then opens up about her time in the past, of how she saw Hyrule being established, the first royal family rule over the land, and the war that followed it. She realized that while the kingdom seemed strong and the people seemed happy, she decided that she doesn't want that for her current land now. She tells him that she now is secure in her decision to not make the same mistakes as her own father, or Rauru has done when ruling over the land. She just wants to help her people - but as equals. I think that would be a good way to show where the story will be in the future - and how Zelda (and Link cause lets be real that man is not leaving her especially after the dragon thing) will spend the rest of her life.

[ganondoodle]

was at my sisters house to watch the cats a bit and played some botw again after a long time, spent an hour running around phirone (faron) and checking out all the cool sonau (zonai) stuff and i felt a wave of sadness wash over me, those ruins there feel so ... heavy with story, with sadness of tragedy, with the thrill of the unkown, yet its revealed to be nothing in totk, i honestly dont feel like the sonau of botw and of totk are at all releated tbh, theres like, NO design overlap besides sometimes some dragon-like figures that feel more like they put them into totk just to have some connection at all-

the botw sonau ruins are all full of curves hewn into dark stone with red accents, theres swirls and snakes everywhere, appropriately withered by time and weather- it was already a stupid idea to replace the shiekah tech with literally another ancient highly advanced civilaztion, but then to not even make them look or feel at all connected to the little things that were there?? totk sonau is white stone and gold and green, its all extremely angular and clean cut, together with weird hologram shit that reads, somehow, as both unfittingly techy to everything else while also neither mechnical nor magical

its fucking bonkers, i know they put some totk sonau bullshit into some of the ruins in totk, like the main ones in phirone but like, especially in that case with the direct comparison its so jarring and artificial, and i hate the excuse of "hylians built those different looking buildings as a monument to the sonau", like we needed more shitty excuses for bad writing decisions- the ancient AND current hylian stuff aligns more with totk sonau stuff, why would they adopt a completely different style to built shit around actual sonau stuff that somehow also looks like it was abandoned like, 50 years, 100 years ago, not over TEN THOUSAND years ago, both the botw sonau ruins and the shiekah tech look more ancient than anything totk sonau

and what for??? i imagine more botw sonau style ruins and like, thats entirely possible, why make it sth utterly different and give it a shitty excuse?? its so unnecessary?? like okay make the wheels out of withered stone hanging together like clumps by invisible magic like how the iwaroks (the .. stone enemy) works- i still would like it sicne i dont like the whole building thing in botws world, but at least it would feel like truly magic bs and fit into the design of botw sonau (even though im still not over NOTHING ever hinting that they were one step away from spaceships hologram aliens, the refusal to work with the stuff they themselves have put into their games drives me up a wall, YOU PUT IT THERE! DO SOMETHIGN WITH IT!)

just to put some modern tech into it? was it worth it?? (no)- and there i could even go on about how much i hate the 'tech' design too, its too little mechanical to be called 'tech' but too modern tech like to call it 'magic', (a balance which the shiekah tech did tremendously well imo) i keep being impressed with how conflicting and incoherent design and story can be in this one single overpriced game

(the reason them making it so modern techy looking was so players would immediately know what it was apparently and i just ... doesnt that make it more boring? like instead of the shiekah stone(slate) they just put a flip phone with numbered buttons and all and give it a vaguely stone texture? instead of like, a guardian with its spider legs and strange creepy design, just put a fucking tank there??? (and like, in a way i feel like the fact that they still tried to not make it look too modern by putting that green texture on it and like, a face here and there, makes it WORSE, a bad cover up is worse to me than none at all, like a shitty explanation can make sth worse than no explanation at all *ahem* literally every interview they did >:C )

also i dont know how you could even design a fan so it doesnt look like a fan? you dont need to put in literal car wheels with suspension and all in there to make it clear its a wheel bc how would you even design a wheel so it doesnt read like a wheel???

since when did they get so anxious about players not understanding something?? the whole series was built on puzzles of varying difficulty, whats with the sudden loss in trust in the player?? botw was already pretty easy but in totk the whole game treats you like you cant think or remember sth for more than 30 seconds to the point it gets actively agonizing to play through- the same two sentences of unimportant info repeated and shown to your face over and over, both in story and gameplay- and even with their immediately readable design choices for the sonau 'tech' they made half teh shrines either sloggingly slow tutorials or one puzzle shrines that are dedicated to teach you how the obvious thing works when you really learn it all on the literal tutorial island AND its obvious from the start BECAUSE THEY WANTED IT TO BE OBVIOUS!! its fun to figure things out and try stuff, its no fun to have a step by step guide glued to your forehead at all times especially when its so obvious, yes thanks for teaching me that a literal fire hydrant spits out water!! wow! never thought about that! thanks for telling me it 5 times too!! (even if it annoys me that they can just do that when not connected to the ground .. would have been more fun to make puzzle with if they were,,), its part of why i felt like the game was so condescending or outright laughing at me-

why even try to teach me how a fan works over and over when like, there arent even any creative things you can do with it in a reasonable amount of time and its never needed or incentivised either bc the game just hands you the literal solution or at the very least give you the four parts or what that you need to make what you need, like pulling apart two bricks of baby lego in fornt of a toddler to see if they can put them back together once you hand it to them

and dont come at me with the "its for kids" argument, the old games were too and theres alot of stages of 'kid', they arent stupid either and nintendo should know that they have alot of adult fans too, it doesnt need to be dark souls and its allowed to have easy stuff in there but the fact that it never gets any more challenging is the problem, yes part of the fun in games can be making your own rules and messing around but it really shouldnt be controversial to want a 70 bucks game to offer a fun experience without you having to make it fun all on your own (i for one dont enjoy spending 30 minutes glueing togehter a tank with ear shattering lasers just to inefficiently beat up 3 bokblins i could just swing my sword at for a few seconds instead and are not worth the materials spend anyway)

in the end it would have been less immersion breaking and more fun if they straight up put a honda civic into the game you can summon anywhere at no cost (hmmmm where did they just do it before hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) and transforms like a batmobile to fly around in rather than the weird sonau nuts and bolts hassle you have to put up with, costs stuff, can waste hours of your time and despawn as soon as you look away from it unless you want to make le funny tiktok videos i guess

its such a waste too bc the mechanic itself IS impressive, but its utterly missplaced in this game, it would have needed its own, truly own, game built around it, placing it in botws world is like dumping a bunch of knock off brand toys into a world that felt believable and meaningful turning it to feel like its really just a game for you to mess around in, never has a game felt more gamey to me and it SUCKS to have that magic pulled away like that, silly me for letting them make me care about it i guess

maybe its petty but as someone how really cares alot about design stuff, both visually and gameplay wise, it makes me furious to think about (as you can tell) .. also hyperfixation go brrrrrrr

(this is obviously my view on it, writing this to get it out, not to argue, i believe i have heard all the arguments already anyway and by this point all that is left is just insulting me directly lol)

[cherryblossombankai]

Day 27: Virginity Loss with Link (BOTW)

Warnings: fem!reader, sex, virginity loss

Tag List: @pixelcafe-network, @actuallysaiyan, @kenpachisbrat, @sweet-chocolate-sweet

Wanna be on the tag list? CLICK HERE!

He’s never felt so nervous. By the warm firelight, you share eager kisses and even more eager touches. Over the past few months of traveling together, your relationship has progressed. Friendship turned to longing glances, and then to lingering touches. You’d kissed him first, sitting by the river together. Then you’d start cuddling at night under the guise of needing to keep warm, making out, and then heavy petting. Now, a need settles over the two of you deeper than anything else. When his hands begin to pull up your skirt, you stop him. 

“Too much?” he asks softly, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“I’ve just…Never done this.” 

“Me neither,” he admits shyly. “Do you want to stop?” 

He would understand if this was not the dream you had for your first time. Out in the wilderness, by a fire, and with a man who barely remembers his own name. But by the goddess, he hopes you say yes. He nuzzles his face into the curve of your neck, panting softly as he waits for your answer. 

“I want you to be my first,” your answer comes in the sweetest tone he’s ever heard. He raises his head from your neck to look down at you, blue eyes searching for a hint of hesitation but finding none. 

“Yes, good,” he says nervously before leaning in to kiss you again. 

His strong, calloused hands continue their trek to your skirt. He slowly unfastens your belt so he begins sliding your skirt down your legs and he’s careful as he sets it aside. His fingers find the crotch of your panties with ease, and he draws small circles over your core. You let out a quiet gasp as he tries out a little more pressure. He draws his hand back as though burned. 

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, panicked.

“No, not at all,” you giggle shyly. “I apologize.” 

“It felt good?” he asks. 

“Very good,” you grab his hand to guide it between your thighs once more. 

He grunts as he feels the wetness on your panties. He begins rubbing again, seeking out the most sensitive little nub. He hooks his thumb in the waistband and pulls the flimsy garment off gently. Your panties join the pile of clothes forming at your side. 

Through heated kisses and gentle touches you get one another ready for the next step. Your bodies writhe together as you sloppily grind against one another, skin on skin for the first time. 

“I-I think I’m ready,” you whisper softly. 

“Alright, uh, here I come,” he blushes deeply. Then, he reaches down to guide his cock to your entrance. He pushes into you slowly, panting and whining at the way your tight walls clamp down around him. 

You feel stretched at his entry. Your walls flutter to accommodate him. You wrap your legs around his waist tightly, and you’re clinging to him with your trembling hands. 

“Y-you’re so tight,” he mutters softly. His forehead pressed against yours. He bottoms out with one last thrust, and lets out a small whine.

He begins a gentle pace, but for all his might he can’t hold it for too long. Before he can stop himself he’s cumming. 

“Shit-shit-shit, I’m so sorry,” he pants softly as he pulls out of you, watching your hole drip with his cum. 

“It’s okay,” you cup his face gently and pull him into a soft kiss. “We have all night.” 

[critterbitter]

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your comic making process? I find it hard to make comics that look eye-pleasing to read and yours are like candy.

Ah, comics! Dig under cut to see some old wips as I attempt to explain my nightmare thought process to you.

For making a comic AESTHETIC and APPROACHABLE:

I've noticed that it's easier for people to be pulled into a comic if I set the environment first and foremost, so people have some vague context for the scene. Of COURSE that's not always necessary ( there are a lot of comics that start out without environmental story telling and it works perfectly) but I've always liked having a lil illustration before digging my rat claws into the meat of the story.

For example! “Emmet and Elesa have a clandestine meeting in the library at 4 am.”

The sketch was sort of the jumping point to where I wanted to go with the comic. I wanted to a. explain wtf is happening and b. draw a nice conclusion about what the f is happening.

You don't need to make the environment available in every panel too! I'd suggest making your first panel tell all the environment detail you need and then like... slowly removing irrelevant detail from there. And then hit folks with the background again at the end. (So basically, you don't see the library in this comic until the beginning and a bit towards the end. I have tricked you! aha!) So that's one tip i have. For Readability: Anyways, to make a comic easy to read, spacing is super important. Dialogue tends to cramp a shot by a WHOLE lot. For example! Remember the "Lamp is told she's beloved (and has a tsundere moment over it"? That used to be TWO panels. Man. Nightmare fuel. Lemme find it. (This is the rough. I Lined It, realized the pacing is off, and then withered. Please don't look at it too hard.)

So here's the thing. This READS. But the sheer amount of dialogue in the beginning is fatiguing for me and the "you are beloved, Lampent" NEEDS that oomph of both characters realizing that over the span of years, their relationship stopped being antagonistic and started being family instead. Some folks are fine with blocks of dialogue, but I have the attention span of a patrat on candy. I will not make it. SO! To match the almost moody atmosphere, I stretched the comic out. I stretched that bad boy out a LOT. And I got this out of it.

Something to keep in mind in comics is there's always going to be one or two iconic lines. Lines that make people FEEL things. Those lines deserve their own panel, their own shot, their whatever. A good story has lulls in its conversation. If you can replicate it, you're winning. Character Blocking:

So basically no, it's not all witchcraft. It's only a bit of witchcraft. Another thing that helps is differentiating characters if they're on the same panel is by solid blocks of color. I have, for the longest time when working on storyboards, blocked characters different tones in order to help differentiate them. Don't be shy! Do that if it helps your comics read! Ingo will always be darker shaded then emmet. The angry nightlight will always have some hint of purple on her (unless I forget). The first goal in a story is to convey information, hehe. Here's an example of color blocking! (This is from a VERY old botw comic I did for linktober in 2021.)

It's, ah, rather rustic compared to what I do. usually. I know! BUT the primary goal here is to convey where the characters are in relation to each other. And the fact they're color coded makes life easier for both reader and artist. Alright! That's all the tips I can think of off the top of my head. Time to get off that soap box, haha. Overall: Basically, my work process is-- draw a story telling image/ write a funny piece of dialogue. Build the comic around that. Pace it so the important lines stand out. Color code the characters for max visibility. And then four to twelve hours of lineart, but that's neither here or there.

Thanks for coming to my unregulated rambling!

[avionvadion]

So I just got all floating thirteen stone monuments (the ones that look like flowers) in TotK, and I kinda like how they explained what role Skyward Sword Zelda took on and passed down.

Like, yeah. Zelda and Sky!Link brought civilization back to the surface, creating what is essentially Hyrule. But it wasn’t a kingdom. They were both from a little village in the sky. Neither are particularly greedy nor ambitious for power. Them naming themselves royalty never made sense to me.

But the stone monuments explain that before Rauru and Mineru came down to earth from the heavens, Sonia (Skyward Sword Zelda’s descendant) had been a priestess.

Given that Skyward Sword Zelda was literally Hylia reborn, and all of her female descendants inherited her powers… it makes sense that they would be priestesses. They have the powers of the goddess Hylia. Assuming Zelda returned to goddess-hood after living out her mortal lifespan, they’re also able to talk to her.

Hyrule only gained a “royal family” after Rauru came down, and Sonia only became a member of said royal family after marrying him- thus changing the duty of Hylia’s descendants from being priestesses to princesses.

Which is neat.

Also I love the fact that Rauru is canonically able to sing, and Mineru dance, and Sonia just watches them in amusement.

Also, baby girl Zelda is living her best life building constructs with Mineru, aldjskskks. Her attendant tried to be like, no, Zelda, it’s dangerous! And Zelda just ignored her to hop up on a construct and ride it. 10/10. Zelda is finally able to be the chaotic researcher she always wanted to be, with the familial support she’s always wanted.

Zelda was also the one who came up with the idea of making the sky islands, so she’s literally just copying what Hylia did before Skyward Sword. 🤣 Which is hilarious.

TLDR:

So, like, timeline wise-

Hylia creates the sky islands. Reincarnates as a mortal. Her mortal self, Zelda, descends to the surface with her hero, Link, and they create the “land” of Hyrule.

Zelda basically becomes revered, as she is literally the goddess, and is given the status of priestess.

Hundreds of years pass, Rauru and Mineru descend from the heaven. They establish the “Kingdom” of Hyrule, and Sonia (Zelda’s descendant) gives up her status as priestess to marry him, and all female descendants after are princesses.

TotK Zelda is zapped into the past. Tells them what’s up with Ganondorf. Gives them the idea to lift some of the land up into the sky as a guide for Link, doing exactly what the original Zelda once did back when she was still Hylia.

Then… Oot/MM happens, Ganondorf being reborn, and then Twilight Princess, with that Ganondorf being defeated and so on so forth until Ganondorf’s spirit reawakens as Calamity Ganon and gets sealed away, then awakens again ten thousand years later and is properly destroyed in BotW, and the original Ganondorf wakes up in TotK.

[blueskittlesart]

any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

[themarydragon]

So my friend sent me this link to a youtube video about why the TotK lore isn't interesting. I couldn't get through it without a ten-screen discord rant (on my PC monitor, not my phone) so I thought I would put some thoughts here.

I don't delve too deep into TotK story but there are def some spoilery statements below, consume at your own risk.

The initial assumptions here seem to be that (1) BotW was more respectful of "The Lore" than TotK, and that (2) TotK made some unforgiveable sins that BotW absolutely avoided.

Both of these are completely false. And I am NOT saying that neither BotW nor TotK shat upon accepted lore. They did. There is no recovering the Hyrule Historia timeline, objectively. Instead I contend that the truth is the precise opposite: Nintendo has NEVER actually cared to try to make LoZ games have ANY amount of continuity.

Take the slide at the 5 minute mark of the video linked, above, in which we see the Master Sword was created specifically to be used against Ganon, and then the 7 sages set out to find somebody valiant enough to wield it (this is from the user manual of A Link to the Past, from the SNES, which also was about The Imprisoning War). Which, if you're playing the home game, you know got ret'conned TWELVE YEARS AGO by Skyward Sword. He's using the slide to explain why it was ridiculous that Ganondorf was able to shatter the Master Sword in the prologue to TotK, which tells me they didn't pay much attention to the mechanic in BotW in which the Master Sword "runs out of power" if you use it too much. If Ganon is an aspect of Demise (again from Skyward Sword, far more recent lore than the slide being used in the vid) then the secret stone he's wielding is amplifying DEMISE (WAY stronger than just some dude), which is why he's able to shatter the blade - but still isn't enough to destroy the sword. His entire complaint about the Sword being broken suggests to me he either didn't play Skyward Sword or has forgotten it existed, and has DEFINITELY forgotten the 'weapons breaking' mechanic started in BotW.

He makes another complaint later about there not being an explanation for the disappearance of the Divine Beasts. Which, sure. I wondered what happened, and figured the 5ish years since then made it old news nobody was talking about it anymore. I get why that might have been a breaking point for somebody else. But it's not just a TotK problem; BotW didn't address it, either. We see the Divine Beasts being dug up by the Sheikah in Rhoam's flashback - how did they get buried? The towers shoot out of the ground, how did THEY get buried, after the last calamity? Who put the guardians underground? How? HOW, if nobody is allowed into the tunnels under Hyrule Castle? It didn't get explained for BotW, so why is that an unforgivable sin in TotK? They give more than a passing suggestion that Purah has repurposed the guardians - just LOOK at the Skyview Towers. The jumpscare for BotW players when you get grabbed in the Lookout Landing tower TELLS YOU where the guardians went.

There is a significant section in which video creator is quoting an interview I haven't seen (and don't give two shits about), and I think it needs to be said: what is in the game is canon. What is in the interviews from other people is, by definition, not game canon. If it was meant to be game canon it would be in the game. Neil Gaiman talks about this when people ask him for clarification of his stories, go check his FAQ if you want a really good delineation of canon from somebody with way more clout than me.

So let's just look at the lore he's defending from BotW. The map is wrong. Straight up wrong, from all the earlier Zelda games. Nintendo cannot decide where the Lost Woods should be, much less Spectacle Rock. The Temple of Time, which again is mentioned early on as a clear homage to the lore, is in the wrong damn spot. If this is the new Hyrule formed post-WindWaker (as indicated by the existance of Rito), the Temple of Time should have been destroyed. And why do the Rito and the Zora both exist? According to WindWaker, the Rito evolved from the Zora, who couldn't live in the salt of the sea. Which is a pretty big jump from the original game that had Zora in the ocean, and the two games following THAT in which they were straight-up monsters. I don't want to get into ALL the ways BotW breaks from the established lore, but there's a LOT. They don't mention the fucking Triforce ONCE, ffs, that's sort of a big damn deal.

I get there was a canon timeline published in Hyrule Historia. I bought that book for that exact reason. And, as someone who has loved this franchise since I got that first golden cartridge in 1987, I looked at that timeline once, laughed at it, and moved on with my life. BotW de-canonized that timeline already, in a LOT of ways.

So saying that TotK is evidence that Nintendo no longer cares about continuity or lore, and by NOT villifying BotW (or TP or SS) for the exact same problem is disingenuous at best. Saying that TotK is just nostalgia-baiting is ignoring the BotW map (Lake Saria, anyone? Ranch Ruins, anyone?) in general, as well as all the game-specific loot that had NO other reason to be there but straight-up nostalgia. The only reason for Zelda to mention the other heroes in the blessing we hear in the first memory is to (1) destroy the established timeline (skyward bound, adrift in time, or something about twilight, all in a world where Rito exist), or (2) prey on our nostalgia. TotK isn't any worse for putting the WW shirt and the Awakening armor into the game, in terms of wrecking the timeline or trying to feast on our nostalgia.

I'm not going to try to hypothesize what this person (or all his commenters) didn't like about the game, or why they're so willing to overlook all these problems in BotW to villify TotK. And everybody is welcome to like to dislike a game for whatever reason they want, IDGAF, you do you. What I AM saying is that for someone who's upset about the lore, he really doesn't seem to actually be aware of how inconsistent it's ALWAYS been. If TotK is the game that taught you that Nintendo isn't trying to follow their own lore, then I don't think you have been paying attention to the lore for a good long time.

tl;dr this is still my favorite series and if you hate that it breaks its own continuity then you've been asleep for the last 12 years of lore drops my good dude.

[ofstormsandfire]

Do you have any good BotW/TotK fic recs? Yours or other people’s!

Boy howdy DO I.

Going to preface this by saying that I have preferences, and those preferences tend to veer towards gay shit and people who don't initially get along ending up ride or die, and as such a high proportion of these are going to be Revalink.

Anyway. The fic that got me into that ship, changed my brain chemistry, and is a large part of why I go !!!! about ghosts (literal and nonliteral) haunting the narrative, characters with amnesia who are supposed to be dead, and the Rito as a whole, is Pinesong by aperplexingpuzzle and that is the fic that makes me go "if you read NOTHING else in this fandom read THIS holy fuck."

(But also you should be reading other things too, because there is so much good shit and I adore it greatly I go back to reread my favorites regularly. Also check out the authors I mention apart from just the fics I link there is so much good fic I'm forcing myself to just pick one per author or else I will be here literally all day.)

Next up: Moonlight (every single night) by Heleentje. Do you like time loops? Do you like characters slowly, painstakingly figuring out how to get it right? Did you get very attached to Revalink from the last fic? how about some ~queerplatonic Zelink~ in this trying time?

Frankly, it is very hard to pick just one fic by Ginneke, they've got so many good ones but I'm going to have to settle on Flowers from your Beloathed, which is another Revalink fic set before the Calamity where, y'know, Revali is getting flowers from a secret admirer. Except he's Revali. Hilarity ensues and I enjoyed the hell out of this one ^-^

Also also. Come Morning Light by misscoconi. Post-Calamity, they are both idiots (affectionate) and I am starting to realize that I have a bit of a pattern in my taste in Revalink fics. Huh. I'll unpack that later actually.

Skybound Wishes by Baddrummer is unfinished (unlike most of the fics I've recommended here) but y'all. Y'all it makes me lose my shit in so many ways because I am a SLUT for creative fix-it fics and gratuitous weaving-in of references to other games in ways that still respect the established canon but respect all of it, y'know, not just doing the TOTK thing of "actually nothing pre-BOTW matters anymore and neither does BOTW lol."

...I am starting to realize there may be a reason why I don't have a lot of TOTK recs. Also if this post is starting to sound unhinged and disconnected that's probably because I'm bouncing between Tumblr and studying for one of my finals like a ping pong ball.

But I do have one really, really big fic rec for TOTK. Y'all should check out Show Me the World Outside by IllusionOfDeath. The Sages get to do things, the Divine Beasts don't just vanish without a word, the Champions get actual recognition, and you can tell that the author is the Linguistics Georg (affectionate) of the fanfic world.

Anyway I think I will shill myself a bit too since you gave me permission to anon! If you read no other Zelda fics by me, may I recommend no one ever mentions fear, a fic that... it really was, in a lot of ways, a love letter to the fics in the fandom that I'd read and loved before. You've got the Champions getting to live and have nice things, you've got Revali being a dumbass (affectionate), you've got gay shit, you've got Problems Being Caused by the Yiga Clan in the background.

...Oh god this post is getting. A little longer than I meant for it to I've realized. Um. I love fanfic and tbh if you end up reading everything I've recced and still want more, my bookmarks on AO3 are public and I tend to bookmark just about everything I've read and liked enough to want to find again.

......I should probably get back to studying now but thank you for the ask! I like rambling lol

[cottagecorrosive]

*Tears of the Kingdom SPOILERS*

Okay, so I've seen some fanart that may line up with my thoughts, but I just have some stuff I wanna say after beating tears of the kingdom. The ending was very sweet and wholesome and it is literally the best ending possible for the circumstances. HOWEVER, I think it would have been more appropriate (may not be the right word) if Zelda stayed a dragon and LINK completely lost his arm.

So like, it was stated many of time that consuming the forbidden fruit gummy would result in an unchangeable and unthinkable transformation. I'm glad Zelda came back in the end, but as far as themeing goes, I feel she should have stayed a dragon. The monumental sacrifice to transform yourself into something you wouldn't even recognize to MAYBE get this decayed weapon to your companion thousands of years into the future so they can defeat the apocalypse (again). Although, the reason Zelda did so was because she had unwavering faith in Link - and vice versa - even though she is completely unaware of his state in the future. The last thing she saw was Link falling with her and his arm and his sword completely busted. But she still had faith because Link is the only thing in Hyrule that she can rely on. No matter what happens, Link will be there. So she makes this sacrifice to become a dragon and help Link kill the Demon King. There are a few moments throughout where there is some longing between Link and Zeldragon, which are quite somber. And by Link slaying the Demon King and ridding Hyrule of evil, her sacrifice was not in vain. In my opinion, her transforming back into human form takes away from the impact of that decision. While her initial decision believed she would not come back, within the themes of the story it makes it feel less (to me at least). And think about the bittersweet ending it would've been if everything was better and Hyrule was safe and Link just looked up to see her at all times. Sad, yes. But without her Hyrule wouldn't exist.

In addition, I believe Link should have permantly lost his arm. As stated at the beginning, the damage was beyond repair so Rauru just gave Link his arm / power for a bit. And in the end he used said power to heal both Zelda and Link's arm. However, I think it would've been way rad if Link, along with the help of the sages, took on the Demon King and they had to use all their collective powers to do so. And to land a final blow (since the Demon King is literally the most powerful being in Hyrule) they used Rauru's hand to weaken him, and tear away from Link's arm (though it's just a smooth stub now), and use the master sword to finish him. (And I feel the final fight was a bit lackluster but that's neither here nor there). Link would then straight up not have his right arm anymore. And it would've been cool if either Purah crafted Link a new arm from sheikah technology or if he simply lived without it bc disability doesn't need to always be "fixed." I was thinking something similar to Finn from Adventure Time honestly.

In conclusion, I believe Zelda should have stayed a dragon and Link should have fully lost his arm because it would fit better with the themes and make for a more interesting story. What I think both Zelda and Link's arm represent are sacrifice and loss for what you believe in. They were both willing to give up a part of themselves (though Link kinda unintentionally) to protect those they care about and safeguard their home. The end would've shown that their actions were not in vain and that it was worth it. I feel getting things back to "normal" takes away from these themes and the impact of these events. This is my headcanon bb. In addition, all the cute zelink stuff could've taken place between botw and totk so you could have both "haha cute couple" and "I lost my arm and my gf is a dragon now. That's rough, buddy" at the same time. :)

P.S. This is just my opinion I promise pinky. I heavily enjoyed this wonderful game (I finished it after all) and think the ending is really wholesome and great for Link, Zelda, and everyone else. Maybe I just wanna see my little guys suffer. Who knows.

[tirsynni]

I’m unsure everyone’s thoughts on TotK spoilers at this point, but just to be on the safe side, putting my thoughts Sidon and Link and other under a cut. Just ramblings and some mild cackling.

Okay, so TotK presented a new fun facet for Sidon: they gave him a bride. Obviously, Sidlink fans went completely nuts. Makes sense. This is a big change from the BotW dynamics. So first things first: my thoughts on the betrothal itself.

Some people went batshit and accused Nintendo of queerbaiting. Of all things, they insisted that Nintendo saw people so excited about Sidlink that they inserted Yona to break up the pairing. I have multiple thoughts on that, which will be split up a bit through my flailing meta. Most obvious first, though: Sidon is the Prince of the Zora. He is the only heir left. A betrothal makes sense! Yona was known to him, trusted, and she seems to have a solid head on her shoulders... and is also good for not taking Sidon’s shit. She is a good choice for a Queen, both for the Zora people and for Sidon personally.

I love Sidon to death, but he absolutely needs someone to balance him out. The Zora people are a monarchy. While they lack the divine rule of the Hylian Royal Family, they do have a definite strictness and structure. There is a great deal of respect for the royal family, for the structure that is in place, and the Zora people also rely on the royal family for multiple things. The Zora royal family is clearly not symbolic or there for show: they are the guardians, protectors, and leaders of the Zora people. Whoever would be paired with Sidon would need to fulfill those roles. 

From what we’ve seen of Link, he has two sides: feral little warrior or duty-bound Knight. He doesn’t try to take leadership roles: he hears of a problem, sighs a little at how the problem isn’t being solved, and does it by himself. He works with teams, but there’s no indication of him ever leading. He’s the Tony Hawk of Hyrule. He’s the guy who does things so quietly that people are baffled when they’re successfully done.

So where does all of this leave Sidlink? I think there are a couple takes on it.

While Sidon is canonically marrying Yona (and absolutely no Yona bashing on my blog: I adore Yona), I think if Sidon married her and Yona acted as his queen and the Queen of the Zora, and yet he still had a full relationship with Link on the side... he would do so with everyone’s blessing. Dorephan’s, the Zora people’s, Yona’s... Fuck, he literally put a ring on it, and he was congratulated. He has a statue of him and Link, and everyone honors it. He has it literally in writing on the wall how much he adores Link and wants everyone to know how awesome Link is. And fuck, did everyone talk to Yona after Link successfully finds the Zora greaves? Sidlink isn’t even my ship and it seems like she is giving her blessing and sounds thrilled that Sidon found such a great side piece.

Seriously, my favorite pairing is Revalink, and every Zora interaction seemed like Sidon was madly in love with Link, and despite marrying Yona, everyone in the kingdom was cheering Sidon on. Wouldn’t be the craziest thing, really, and would require no effort to make Sidon/Yona a political, if happy and respectful, marriage, with the King (and really, the Queen, providing no children come from it) having concubines/lovers/etc. Which makes the second possibility for this subject even funnier.

This is my go-to, although, again, even for a non-shipper, Sidlink is amazingly easy in TotK: Sidon and Link have nothing going on. It’s completely platonic. It never occurred to either of them that people interpret their interactions and Sidon’s comments as romantic. Everyone -- Dorephan, Bazz, Yona, everyone -- is convinced Sidon and Link have been fucking for months, if not years, and they’re okay with it. Hell, they’re thrilled by it. Yona adores Link and is fine sharing Sidon with him. Hell, she encourages it (with neither Link or Sidon understanding it but happy to have some time to hang out together). Dorephan is convinced that he has a pseudo-son-in-law and couldn’t be prouder. He expected to have Link as an actual son-in-law a century ago, anyway. Everyone thinks they’re screwing, and everyone is happy with it, with Sidon and Link never catching on. 

Bonus points if Link is actually in another relationship, and one day, I might write that little bit of crack.

More bonus points if Sidon is actually ace (which is really, really easy to headcanon, honestly) and Yona attributes his struggles with babymaking to his love for Link.

There’s possibly Link struggling to figure out where he fits with Sidon after learning about the engagement, with most of the kingdom (including Yona) taking it for granted that of course Link would stay with Sidon. There’s Sidon struggling with figuring out how to insert Yona in his life and the canon struggling of having someone else to lose. (At least he’s confident that Link can and will survive, even though Link vanishing must have scared the shit out of him.) There’s possibly Link knowing that such things exist due to his travels and his own history with royals but not connecting it to himself, especially when he sees Sidon struggling with his relationship and upcoming marriage to Yona. Multiple opportunities for both fluff and plotty tension.

But yeah... at no point do I see Yona actually being a barrier to Sidlink. It’s amazingly easy to see her as a fucking Sidlink shipper, whether the pair or actually together or not.

(And honestly, I think she did what it wouldn’t have occurred to Link to do: yell at Sidon to put aside his personal feelings and fears and fulfill his damned responsibilities. I think Link would have just accepted Sidon’s actions and tried to solve the problem on his own, as he does. It is Yona who recognizes that it shouldn’t just fall to Link and that Sidon has to take care of his own responsibilities, too, and get out of his head.)

Of course, for the people who want to write Yona and Sidon breaking up the marriage, write Link taking up a leadership role and stepping up as a fellow ruler, whatever... this bit of meta absolutely is not critiquing any of those takes. I’m of the firm mindset that people should write what they want, that fanfiction is amazing for exploring, and if people dislike a certain writer’s takes, they should just leave the fic instead of going “Well, I disagree with what you did here and here’s why.” Hell, even if it’s not with my headcanons or whatever, Sidlink writers are awesome in this fandom and write many solid fics, both with worldbuilding to back up their choice and with fics without the details and background and just happy fluff (and porn). If you like the above takes, awesome! If you prefer for it just to be Sidlink (no Yona bashing, please, though), also awesome. It’s fanfiction. Have fun with it.

[sablegear0]

Finished TotK Finally

As in, finished the story. End numbers after buying the last boss pictures and completing the Compendium were 87.72% complete. I may go back and do koroks and minigames sporadically when I want to wander around in the world again.

So I suppose people might expect my thoughts or a review. Idk if I have anything unique to say but I may as well so: Plot and BIG ending spoilers under the cut. Also extremely long detailed opinions. Like this one got REALLY long. TL;DR at the very bottom.

The End Bits The Light Dragon In a previous blog I applauded Nintendo for letting their women characters turn into incomprehensible beasties lately (TotK, Dread). For the record, I posted that shortly before being spoiled on the fact that Zelda changes back at the end. Needless to say I was re-disappointed. I get WHY they did it. Permanently removing the title character from the game via 10,000 years of ego death doesn't really seem like a great reward for the player seeking out the plot; BotW/TotK Link and Zelda have gone through more than most of their incarnations to get where they are, so it's nice to give them a happy ending, etc. It just... kinda sucks because that was a really cool move otherwise. But Nintendo will not tell us an intentionally tragic (or even bittersweet) story so we got our girl back.

Also she was fine, by the way. She just woke up fully able to move and speak like she'd just had a bit of a rough nap. She also canonically does not remember her millennia spent as a dragon in any fashion. I know the fan writers are probably having a field day with injury/trauma recovery fics for her and I don't blame them. 10k years of ego death and a monstrous transformation should come with some consequences, shouldn't it?

To be honest the nature of the deus ex machina in question bugs me more than the fact that it happened. "Idk Sonia and Rauru did something" is the actual explanation we get (thanks Mineru, you're a real one tho) and it feels... hollow. Like, if the two dragons had clashed and injured one another, and "dying" knocked Zelda out of the transformation the same way destroying the Secret Stone that Ganondorf had taken destroyed his dragon form, that would make more sense, right? You still get your dramatic ending that's a cinematic reflection of Skyward Sword and a symbolic close (presumably) to Ganon's cycle of reincarnation. The arbitrary "power of love" (and not even the Hero's love, come on) ending just doesn't sit right.

Ganondorf Neither did the actual fight with Ganondorf, to be honest. I prepped some pretty high-value weapons, assuming that like BotW I'd have to break a few swords on him before the fight was over. But they just, again, deus ex machina'd that the Master Sword was indestructible for that fight and at no other time. My big scary weapons did see some good use in the wave fight beforehand, which was kind of neat but also kind of underwhelming. I guess that's the point where the game checks if you can handle that many enemies (ie. did you bring enough friends), similar to how doing the Divine Beasts halves Calamity Ganon's HP in BotW.

The duel-style fight for the first two phases was kind of cool. Made a bit annoying by TotK's tighter timing on parries and dodges. And the fact that the legitimate pressure of having your HP outright destroyed (cool, stressful) was removed by the third phase (annoying, no consequences for doing poorly in that part of the fight).

Third phase was neat. It was cinematic, but with no actual danger. I don't think I took any damage that wasn't just gloom-ticks from standing on the demon dragon to attack it. Didn't even get to use my cool bows in the aerial battle. Additionally I didn't have any need for the cool armour I had worked so hard to upgrade. I spent quite a lot of time and effort upgrading the Ancient Hero's Aspect and a second high-defense set (Champion's Leathers, Soldier's Greaves, Amber Earrings). The latter I did use in the demon dragon phase because it looked cool. The former I completely forgot that I had (despite having had to kill an ungodly amount of King Gleeoks to complete it). I used the Depths set for the first two-thirds of the fight because of the Gloom resistance it offered.

The Mechanics Devices All that said, what TotK set out to do it did decently well. It expanded on the physics-heavy improvisational gameplay of BotW with the addition of the Ultrahand fusion mechanic and Zonai Devices, improving on their base engine to create a system that I have heard other devs consider basically magic. Devices and weapon fusion, however, were clearly balanced with the early-to-mid-game in mind. The devices were tools, not weapons, even the ones that were nominally weapons. They simply did not put out enough raw damage to be used offensively, and were better as deterrents or distractions for enemies.

Weapon Fusion I know people weren't crazy about weapon degradation in BotW and I think TotK managed to make it slightly worse. In BotW, all you had to do was find where a desirable weapon spawned and make note of it so you could come back to pick it up after the Bloodmoon respawned everything. In TotK, you have to do that AND fight a monster with a good fuseable part to improve it. You have to do twice as much farming for about the same amount of gain. And that's not even accounting for the weapons you'd break fighting something big like a Lynel - sure they drop good parts, but you might break 2 or 3 weapons taking one down, even with help from your sages. You're operating at a net loss.

Granted the fused part of a weapon does the bulk of the work, but TotK did the interesting thing of making each flavour of weapon ("Soldier's", "Zonaite", "Gerudo", etc) have its own unique properties. This is very cool, until you find a type you like and struggle to find enough of them. Again, you have to trek around to find them and also hope you have the materials for a good fusion. It has its moments, like sticking a Silver Lynel horn on a Gerudo weapon to get a damage value over 100 (which is absurd, most "good" weapons cap out around 50 on average, barring any extra effects), but again, you're usually operating at a slight loss with respect to weapons.

Armour Upgrades To be frank: It's bad. It's bloated and way too resource-intensive. In BotW there were a limited number of sets you'd actually want to upgrade, as each had its own unique thing and that's it, there's one of each. Even doing all of them for completion's sake was achievable. In TotK they have those basic sets, plus a few more unique sets, plus a few redundant sets, and a frankly absurd number of generic aesthetic sets (which flavour of Link would you like? Ocarina of Time? Twilight Princess? Link's Awakenng Remake?) And in all of this they never thought to rebalance the amount of materials required for upgrading.

And on top of THAT, I think they messed with the item drop-rates too! Most enemies can drop 2 kinds of resources, some potentially have more, some only drop 1. in BotW I don't think (thought I may have to check) each type was a guaranteed drop, but you saw every type fairly frequently. In TotK each enemy now has distinct rare drops. And they can be RARE. And the worst part is you need a LOT of them for some armour upgrades. For example; Lizalfos tails are the Lizalfos rare drop, and the armour sets that need them can need up to 15 of the stupid things from a particular species of Lizalfos. Have fun grinding, because now you're playing Monster Hunter instead of Zelda.

Vehicles and Horses The vehicles both did and didn't trivialize crossing the map; a significant amount of grinding is needed before you have enough batteries to cover any distance, Wings (the bird-shaped gliders) have a limited lifespan to keep you from just flying everywhere, and the overworld is generally complicated enough that any fast wheeled vehicle will not be useful for long, and any all-terrain vehicle moves only at a modest speed. Ironically, just use horses where available. They're faster, more versatile, and can be called to you if they're within earshot. Also horses can spawn with overall higher stats than in BotW, and can be upgraded, though with significant resource investment. (It is worth noting that the "best" horse in base BotW, the royal white horse, is only middling to above-average stat-wise when compared to a good wild-caught horse in TotK. They power-crept the horses!)

The most interesting vehicles/movement devices, to me, were the rockets and hot-air balloons. Both add a lot instant verticality in a game that is all about traversal. Fusing a rocket to a shield gets you a huge boost for little resource expenditure (rockets are a bit rare until you can purchase devices). And once you find the Autobuild schematic for a hot air balloon base, all you need to add is a flame-emitter and you can ascend as far as your batteries allow.

Shrines In my humble opinion, TotK knocked it out of the park with its shrines. The ones that have actual puzzles, anyway. There is an unfortunately large proportion of "blessing" shrines that have no puzzle in them, and not all of them even need to be worked for that hard. The ones that do have puzzles are excellent. There are quite a few that highlight different uses for devices, and a good handful that take the Eventide Island/Master Trials-style challenge of stripping you of all your gear and put some twist on it. (Notably these are most interesting in the mid-game, when you have enough hearts to survive but not to trivialize the no-armour combat difficulty.)

They also did the very classy thing of not locking outfit parts behind hidden chests in Shrines. All the hidden chests were perfectly optional bonus chests that required no frustrating re-visits after finding out where that last piece of armour was hiding. Also the slight variations on the music theme was a nice touch that kept the shrines feeling fresh. No shade to the Sheikah Shrine theme, but the strong synths could get a bit grating at times. TotK's gentle, plinky shrine theme variations were an improvement.

The Map The Overworld Probably(?) the most common complaint about TotK and one I share. It's too damn big. In addition to mostly recycling the map from BotW (which bothered some people more than it bothered me, I think), they added an equivalent-sized map for the Depths. Now, BotW's overworld already felt a bit sparse, but it fit the tone of a literal post-apocalyptic world and encouraged you to poke around looking for koroks and investigating enemy camps. TotK's surface overworld is dotted with far more enemy camps and significantly fewer koroks, so it is about as dense but more dangerous/annoying (depending on your hp and gear) to traverse.

There are some major changes to the surface, beyond adding ruins to some spots; most of Death mountain is now safe to travel on foot (probably to encourage use of vehicles) and is no longer superheated, and there are a few spots where the road network is broken, dividing the map into 2 halves that cannot be crossed between on horseback. (In BotW, by comparison, all the roads were connected and you could auto-pilot a horse from one end of the map to the other, provided you took roads marked on the map.)

The Sky The Sky islands were relatively few, for all the hype they got in the promotional material. However I think their self-contained structure and handful of unique features (the "death star" islands, the dive challenges) helped them not overstay their welcome. Besides, the islands themselves are technically also ruins, 10,000 years old and finally visible to the naked eye from the surface, It's a wonder there's as much left and it's as functional as it is. They are beautiful, though. I did enjoy just loitering around in the sky to take in the view and the relaxed atmosphere, as there are fewer enemies up there.

The Depths The Depths... I think I share the majority gripe with the Depths. They're too big. The Depths are another whole open world that is more hostile with even less in it. It exists to grind for resources and pad the playtime. The challenge of the depths is in initially traversing it, having to light your way through impenetrable darkness and navigate dense enemy encampments and find Light Roots to fill out the map. After that, provided you have enough battery power, it can generally be ignored by flying over it. Which is unfortunate. If I were to fix the Depths, I would make it more akin to the Sky Islands; more self-contained, make it a series of winding, interconnected discrete caves, like one big dungeon crawl, rather than a second open world to ignore. Still have the Light Roots be important to vision and mapping, but have the general landscape be more contained. Maybe even have a few more areas that are inaccessible at first except by dropping into the correct chasms, like they did with the Eventide Island and Tingle Island Chain areas of the Depths.

Everything Else Side Quests and Koroks Honestly I enjoyed the variety of sidequests in TotK, and also enjoyed that some of them were quite involved. TotK had two "Tarrey Town"-equivalent long-form side-quest lines; one being visiting all the stables with Penn (I am counting this as one quest because you get drip-fed armour pieces from a unique set throughout it), and the other being the Mayoral Election / Local Cuisine questline in Hateno Village. There were also side-quests to optionally construct the Champions' weapons, which was neat, and to build a house with crazy Ultrahand powers, which was totally frivolous but fun to do. The one thing that bugged me a bit about the side-quests was running into NPCs that reasonably should have remembered Link but didn't. It felt odd, especially poking around Tarrey Town initially.

The Korok puzzles had some new variety to them, which was nice. The block puzzles were given the extra interest of being able to rotate things with Ultrahand, and the vehicle/towing mechanics were given a chance to shine with the "help me reach my friend" puzzles. Having Hestu appear in some less-than-ideal places to begin with (and the whole Lost Woods thing omg what a pain) kind of sucked, but getting those sweet sweet inventory upgrades is always worth it.

The Characters I love all the Sages, I'm going to say it right now. It was really cool to see some familiar faces from BotW (that actually recognized me) and learn what they'd been up to in the ambiguous time-gap. Teba being the slight exception but honestly - meeting Tulin and realizing this sweet bean bird boy looks just like both his parents hit me right in the heart. Mineru was also very cool and I'm glad we got to hang out with her (and bid her a tearful goodbye... my lovely lanky lady...). I also appreciated that doing the Ancient Writings quest teases Mineru's introduction. That was a nice touch.

Penn and Purah are fun, and the Lucky Clover Gazette and Monster Control Crew quests add some depth and background progression to BotW's Hyrule. You get to see how ordinary people are faring and how things are advancing post-Calamity. Seeing the various peoples of Hyrule gather at Lookout Landing after clearing a regional temple was neat, even if it was really only for show.

I know some people have beef with Rauru and that's maybe a blog for another time, but I don't think I have a strong enough opinion to bother. I didn't mind him, I think his arc was clear enough, I think I would have liked to see more of him and Sonia interacting with Zelda in a more everyday fashion - it seemed like she had a lot of fun in the distant past and something more than just a text log of that and a couple cutscenes might have been nice. Honestly I think I would have liked to see more of Sonia especially, she seems like an interesting lady (again, something more than Chaucerian text as proof would have been nice).

I'm honestly kind of mid on Matt Mercer's Ganondorf? I get that he's a big name and people were excited to hear him in the role but idk if the voice was entirely a good fit. They rocked the hell out of his visual design, though. Very good updated look, borrowing elements from some of his previous incarnations. Again I would have liked to see more elaboration on him though; what was the Gerudo tribe like under his rule? Were there dissenters? Give me more worldbuilding or I'll be forced to do it myself.

Music Mostly the same, actually. Overworld themes were recycled. Shrine themes were different and an upgrade imo. Combat themes were slightly different but I probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart at a listen. The Temple music though, oh boy. I loved these themes; they took the ramping instruments from the Divine Beasts control panel gimmick and mixed the Divine Beast Approach themes with each Sage's unique motif to create some really cool but pleasantly unobtrusive tracks. The Depths ambience was appropriately spooky, and the dynamic theme that kicks in when you high-dive was a nice touch, especially since there are distinct versions for diving to the surface and diving to the Depths.

But the standout tracks for me? First, the intro sequence where you descend with Zelda into the foundations of Hyrule Castle and hear the ever-layering Zonai chanting with the spooky reversed voice clips? MMM. 👌 So spooky, so tasty. Genuinely had me on edge even though I knew nothing would happen because it was the intro. The return sequence by the endgame has it build even more intensely as you descend even further and it's fantastic. Second is the Gloom's Approach / Gloom's Source battle theme. The distinctly electronic drone and beat associated with the Depths/gloom-related stuff gets room to shine when this tense bass-heavy track kicks in.

The Little Things I am actually going to stop this one here because I think this part deserves its own blog. There are a ton of little details in TotK that I absolutely adored and I want to gush about them with proper space allotted.

TL;DR TotK is alright. I know I'll catch flak for saying it's "good", so I won't. Settle down. It's alright. Some things it does extremely well, some things could have been edited for time, and some things remained just kinda mid from the original.

If I have to give it a number, it's a solid 6.5-7/10 . Competently constructed, technically impressive, mostly cut-and-pasted, mildly bloated, narratively kind of boring with no sense of stakes and an ending that undoes some otherwise interesting choices.

[theoldaeroplane]

I inbox you the following: I must know what compels you about Link. I trust that he is Good and Excellent, but I simply yearn for an essay on what little niche trait makes you wanna fandom the fuck out of this little guy. 5-10 paragraphs of hyper fixated ramblings preferred, but not required.

ohhh starkid you've given me A GIFT. a GIFT.

So some background first, I think. I've always liked the Zelda games, in the way you play a mainstream game and are like "yeah that was good!" I played Ocarina of Time and Windwaker as a kid. I played Breath of the Wild when it first came out and had a fun time with it. Yeah. Good games! Fun mechanics. Characters seem a little flat, but they aren't why I'm here. What was the story again? Oh, right---yeah, they gave Zelda an actual personality that doesn't start and end with "princess" in the new one! She's a scientist! How neat.

Then Tears of the Kingdom comes out. I've just gotten a Steam Deck for my birthday and wow, turns out you can emulate TOTK already?? I try it out immediately. It's janky, but I love messing with emulators, so I keep going. I certainly don't have the cash to buy TOTK properly.

And in TOTK, for me, it starts with Zelda. It starts with this young woman barely out of her teens being flung into a horrible, frightening situation, and being forced to make an absolutely terrifying choice. And it turns out if you start looking at her more closely, that choice only becomes more and more viscerally upsetting as you incorporate things about her from the previous game.

It got me invested, and I still adore Zelda. I could probably write just as long a deliberation about her. But we're talking about Link.

I read a little bit of BOTW fanfic back when it first came out. It was almost all Sidon/Link stuff, because I liked the ship for a number of reasons, and one evening after another night of mainlining TOTK I decide to go look and see if I can find some that I remembered being good. I did, and they were still mostly good! But there was one in particular, with one line in particular. "You're Always Almost There," by Polyhexian. (On mobile so no link, sorry!)

'One hundred years ago,’ Link signed, 'A Guardian shot me through the chest,’ he grimaced as if in pain from even mentioning it, 'I died with everyone else, and then someone else decided to bring me, and only me, back to life to fix everything, to save everyone. I have to stop the Calamity. I have to save Hyrule. I have to fix the world. I am not a real person. I am everyone’s unfinished business.’

I had read it before. When I read it this time I closed my browser, opened Typora, and started writing. It wasn't more than a random narrative sifting through half collected ideas, and I neither finished nor posted it, but it got me started. A few weeks later I started writing To Be Well, which among other things directly addresses the idea that Link does not think of himself as a "real person"---and that he isn't sure if he wants to.

As I've written him, I've found more and more about him and his setting that fascinates me. Part of this is certainly that Link is intentionally designed as a "placeholder" character (word of God is he was deliberately designed to be androgynous to make it easier for more people to project on him). At first I was really fascinated by his relationship with Zelda, and wanted to look at that through a queerplatonic lens. In doing that I found myself trying to work through some problems of my own, which it turns out is just how I write fanfiction I guess: projecting! Huzzah! I decided to lean into it, and wrote "You do not have to be good," which is a story that takes some liberties with the canon to explore the subject of toxic purity and the toll it takes. Also, the logistics of kissing someone with a beak.

What makes Link compelling to me is ... what do you do, when you aren't allowed to be a person? What do you do when you've been told all your life things are like this and this and this, and that you must behave thusly?  What if you learn it was never true? How do you go from "perfect" to "real"? What does it even mean, being a person? How do you start? Is it even worth it?

I feel like I'm only scratching the surface, haha. I also love Link for whatever the hell he's doing with gender, and I've been having an absolute blast writing him as predominantly communicating via sign language. I'm playing fast and loose with a lot of things that only get half-mentioned in canon, and having a good old time playing in the sandbox of Hyrule. They're huge games and there's a lot of space for me to set up shop!

[gaylactic-fire]

Hi. Zelda link and sidon. How did they start courting ❤️

*Rattles you around like a maraca*

IT'S STORY TIME

Basically it's all Link's fault /aff

In my own mind Vah Ruta is like the first or second divine beast Link ends up conquering during the events of BOTW. So he meets Sidon fairly early on and becomes... very infatuated with the guy. After all, he's one of the first people to show Link unconditional kindness, despite everything that happened with Mipha. No matter where he goes in Hyrule, he simply can't get the big fish man out of his head... so he goes back. Again... and again... and again. The romantic tension in the air is absolutely palpable, and at some point, it just clicks for both of them. There's some frisky business. Just some guys with important, serious duties letting off steam, yknow :]. But neither of them make any real commitment to romance, mostly because Link knows he'll never be able to fulfil such a relationship with the fate of the kingdom still at stake and Sidon understands too. At the same time, they both know in their hearts that this isn't just a friends with benefits situation. They truly do harbour yearning, romantic feelings for one another. So Link one day promises he'll come back after the calamity and make Sidon his partner, for real.

Meanwhile, Link is still bound to his duties and he's desperately searching for answers about his forgotten past. He has complicated feelings about the princess the more memories he uncovers. He goes from a mild dislike, quickly to feeling very sorry for her and everything she went through. Then at some point (It's the frog memory bfr) he can't help but feel a certain flutter in his chest thinking about her. He's in romantic denial until he actually beats the calamity, and suddenly she's there in the flesh. They end up going back to Hateno, where they take it easy for a number of weeks. Zelda is understandably exhausted, and Link too (though he won't admit it). They start to get close again almost immediately, and they help each other work through the trauma of the calamity and the shared burden of destiny. It's refreshing, and Link can't help but feel so very safe around her... it's the exact kind of comfort that gives him a certain sense of deja-vu...

Oh fuck. It's love.

There comes a certain point a month or so after the calamity where Link is increasingly agitated and miserable. He's still well aware of his promise to Sidon and the longer the clock ticks, the more guilt bubbles up inside him. But he knows he has feelings for Zelda... and he knows she has had feelings for him since before the calamity, even. To leave now and deny those feelings would break both his and her heart. No matter what outcome, Link knows it is going to leave someone feeling abandoned and hurt...

So one day he just.. breaks down about it. Confesses everything and has a total ugly cry in front of Zelda about it. He knows he can't keep holding this burden in anymore. Zelda's... a lot less shocked than he expected. She DID see his whole adventure while stuck inside Ganon, after all (how embarrassing for Link). She knew him and Sidon meant a lot to each other, and within her own mind, she had resigned herself to the fact that she may never get to be his partner. But, admittedly, Zelda does absolutely still have feelings for him. In fact, it was her own source of guilt these past few weeks, too. And oh boy, now this is a conundrum.

Eventually, they take a trip out to Zora's Domain. Link's extremely nervous but optimistic that maybe something can be worked out. When they meet the prince, Zelda explains the situation and very quickly, just like that, there's a mutual agreement: Link has two hands and we will exploit that accordingly >:]

Of course, at first it's all about Link, but Sidon and Zelda quickly find out that they get on like a house on fire. They are absolutely insufferable together /aff. Zelda's a little awkward at first, especially within the environment of the domain and seeing some of the lasting bitterness that Link only in part managed to quell. But quickly she becomes very comfortable around Sidon... maybe too comfortable... oops there's that love again.

This concludes my college thesis on why the big fish, twink and nerd should be slammed together like barbie dolls.

[avatarskywalker78]

⭐star⭐

From a young age, Ganondorf had always been interested in studying history. Of his own people, certainly, given everything they’d gone through, but also of the various Hyrulean races, of their myths and legends and in particular the history of the Triforce’s Chosen. He’d done much research over the years, knew that there’d been a great many heroes – in fact, a great many wielders – of varying backgrounds and genders, and when he’d gone deeper even found the accounts of the failed heroes, the ones quietly erased from the history books. He knew that not all heroes were called Link, not all royalty called Zelda (and not all Zeldas were royalty, because the name tended to get a boost in popularity every few generations or so), knew the roles had ‘swapped’ as it were, in a number of Cycles, knew that not all those named Ganon or Ganondorf were evil – that sometimes the evil took a very different form indeed. [...] Names didn’t signify anything and neither did blood – being descended or named after a Hero didn’t automatically make one a Hero. That just wasn’t how it worked.

So not how it (usually) goes was a fun one to write for several reasons - the idea of a complete role reversal for Zelda was too interesting not to - and I love it very much, but I really wanted to talk about this section here because it's one of my favourites - a chance to showcase more of my world-building and delve into the Zelda mythos, and there were a number of reasons I did this outside of 'of course it's going to have had variations across the millenia'.

The first, of course, was addressing the fact that as of yet we haven't had a female Link in a canon game yet and to me that's shocking. I'm aware of the many, many headcanons within fandom regarding Link's gender identity, especially given his androgynous looks and, in BOTW, the clothes he gets to wear, but I remember the very first trailer for Breath of the Wild and being very excited because it looked like Link was going to be a woman...and being extremely disappointed when it turned out he wasn't, so I wanted to establish that there have been Heroes (along with other Triforce Wielders) of many genders across many Cycles.

Similarly with not only having Zelda be the Hero in this fic but establishing that this isn't the first time there's been a 'swap' - it remains immensely frustrating that Zelda is often sidelined in the series that bears her name, and that even when she does get to take a more action-y role (like with Tetra and Sheik), most of that is offscreen, and any badass-ness seems to vanish the moment she turns into a Princess again (like when she's immediately kidnapped post-reveal in Ocarina of Time, like what was that all about?)

The part about the failed heroes being erased from the history books was actually inspired by the answer you gave from when I asked about why another Hero didn't show up in the Adult Timeline, given that it was clearly decades between OOT!Link being sent back to his own time and Ganondorf returning. The idea that there was one who was defeated and then forgotten about was haunting, and then I thought that again, across the millenia, there's...probably been a few of those, statistically. Which is a very sad thought, but also interesting - and of course the Ganondorf in this fic has put enough pieces together to work out when these were, so they're not entirely forgotten.

The part about names was from a quote from Hyrule Historia (one of the best books I own), specfically the page introducing the Chronology section:

The heroes of these chronicles all share the name Link. These Links might have been the same person, a series of familial descendants, or a number of heroes with different names entirely. The Links of certain eras might have been named after the legendary hero. Hylian princess bearing the name Zelda have also appeared throughout the history of Hyrule. It is likely that the name was handed down through the generations.

I myself have had quite the journey with names, going from naming Link after myself, to thinking 'wait, I can't give him a girl's name' and sticking with Link for many years, and only in the last few going back to my name, or any name that sticks. And this quote stuck with me, the idea that not all Heroes were called Link, and I though 'I could use that!' because surely they can't all have been. The part about not all royalty being Zelda was something I changed slightly - in Zelda II it was established that all female descendants of the first Zelda were given that name in her honour, and that's something I've tended to stick with, but of course that was only in one timeline. Plus again, who knows what the unseen adventures were - and a gender-swapped Zelda wouldn't be called that. And of course it natrually follows that not everyone with the name Ganon/Ganondorf would've been power-hungry and evil - and Vaati was the main villain of Minish Cap and it's sequels.

The part about names and blood lineage not being any guarantee of becoming a hero was something I'd carried over from my Twilight Princess fic what a hero is made of (beyond destiny), where Link was worried that he was only the hero because he was descended from the Hero of Time and wielded the Triforce of Courage, but Midna points out that if he wasn't already courageous he wouldn't be it's wielder, and that there's plenty of other people fighting the good fight out there. The question of free will in the Zelda-verse is an interesting one and something I've seen brought up on this site before, but I do think that Destiny isn't this all powerful thing - all the games I've played there's always high stakes and a lot of danger and nothing at all saying 'you're gonna win this because you're the hero'. Link and Zelda have to fight with everything they've got to save the day - and when you've got one timeline that only comes about as a result of Link being defeated in OOT, and the implied failed hero in the Adult Timeline, it's clear this isn't always enough. Sometimes shit happens.

And of course you have Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks - yes, the former is Wind Waker Link, but he's in a parallel universe and has to go on a whole new quest and outside of the Goddess's symbols appearing every so often (plus the Fairies of Power, Wisdom, and Courage) Link has to go by this world's rules, and faces a completely different threat - and wouldn't have been here at all if not for the Ghost Ship. And in the latter we have a new Link in a new land whose guardians are the Spirits and the Lokomos - no sign of the Goddesses at all. Even the traditional green garb is a stolen guard's uniform. So yes, I think Free Will has it's place in this universe.

(And of course this sets up the fact that Commander Link isn't suspected to be a villain by the Hylians because most of them do buy into the 'he's descended from a hero therefore he must be Good', despite the proof he's a descendant being practically non-existent).

Director's Commentary Ask Game

[smilesrobotlover]

Ok as much as I don’t want to be involved with discourse I must say that I wish that Lurelin village was utilized more. I love beachy areas and the vibes and it’s such a pretty place, but overall there’s no reason to hang out there, except for that one mini game but it’s just a mini game compared to the other Hylian villagesyou know? Hateno has a home that you’ll eventually make your own, it has the tech lab that you go to for upgrades in botw. Tarrey town is a town you help build with an incredible side quest with people getting married, and the vibes makes it so hard not to return to it. But Lurelin is a very small village with nothing special to it. No labs, no personal connections, just a bunch of homies hanging out. And I wish there was something more there cuz I think it’s such a lovely place!

Totk did a much better job with Lurelin but it’s still less than the other Hylian villages you know? Each Hylian village has a major side quest (the mayor election for Hateno, Bolson’s daughter leaving and the monster sculptures, rebuilding Lurelin) which I feel like expand on the village’s more. Tarrey town is still under construction and it deals with just building things in general, in fact they’re building some of the zonai vehicles. Hateno is shown to be a simple farming community that also is growing with fashion, and Lurelin is shown to be a small but tight knit community. But the other two have some different in their towns compared to Lurelin. Hateno has that cute little school and the new fashion stuff, and Tarrey Town expanded to the ground. And yeah Lurelin was destroyed dhskbsksdb but once it’s rebuilt I feel like it’s the same from botw. No new buildings or expansions or anything which is such a shame! I think it’d be cool to see people on fishing boats or big boats by Lurelin fishing, or maybe take advantage of the pirate situation with actual pirates and not monsters and have some of the villagers help Link hunt them down or something. Idk maybe I’m missing something in totk cuz I truthfully haven’t been there since I rebuilt cuz, what reason is there for me to be there? It’s not different compared to the other two. If I’m missing something cool PLEASE let me know cuz I love Lurelin and I want to see more of it!

Again totk actually has cool stuff involved with Lurelin, but i feel like it’s less utilized compared to the other Hylian villages you know? I’m very glad they made one of the more important characters a guy from Lurelin, and we got some Lurelin language (Tauro my beloved) but even he’s not in it as much as the others (tho neither is Josha tbf, but still.) I’d just love to see more Lurelin stuff!

[redisaid]

Sad Machine

After (Part 1 of 2)

Don’t look over here. This isn’t BotW/TotK. This isn’t my only straight ship that got some sad easter eggs in the new game. This isn’t in second fucking person.

That’s a lie. It’s all a lie. Oops, this is Zelink sad introspection written in second person. I got the first line caught in my head and it spiraled.

There will be a part 2 when I finish TotK, because honey we need to talk about the [redacted]. Tiny spoilers for TotK in here, mostly regarding what you find out about Zelda in Hateno. 

I promise I will get back on Blue Moon soon.

5325 Words

Read it on Ao3!

I don't know much about your life beyond these walls The fleeting sense of love within these God forsaken halls And I can hear it in his voice in every call This girl who slept a hundred years has something after all

He is all you have.

You’ve known this fact for such a long time that it resonates in your very bones. Funny, how odd it feels to have bones again. But as you stand before him, descending in a beam of light, born anew from triumph as he was, but minus the scars, all you can ask him is, “Do you really remember me?”

He seems to think about the answer for a while. Eventually, he nods.

You both know it’s a lie, but you laugh the creakiness from your lungs and you embrace him.

You held him only once before, as he lay dying in your arms. That one final failure that was too much to bear, enough to bring out the goddess in you. It still stings that this was all you could give him, a promise he would be okay, even as he slipped away, and a blinding light you still didn’t understand.

He holds you too. Whether out of attachment or relief or something else, you don’t know. You never really did, and now it is even more complicated. He held you once before too, only once, but does it count? Was this even the same Link?

You collapsed then, falling into him with bitter tears. Your friends were dead. Your father too. He was all you had left, and all you could do for him was blame yourself. Link didn’t even argue, but he held you as he cried. He didn’t say anything to assure you, but steadied you to your feet again, and held your hand as you ran and ran.

You didn’t deserve his sympathy, even then. You were so callous and cruel to him. You treated him like furniture--ugly, unwanted furniture. He was always in the room and always a reminder that you were not what you should have been. He followed you dutifully, and you just wanted to be alone.

Now you cannot imagine what will happen if he lets you go. If you let him go.

Eventually, it happens. The sun wanes and Hyrule Field smells of flowers, and there is a future to consider. Despite having fought for it with every ounce of your being, you have not considered it.

Link whistles for his horse and helps you onto her back. He rides and you do not ask where he is taking you. For once, you learn from his silence.

You cling to his waist until you reach Kakariko that night.

You sleep in Impa’s granddaughter’s bed. Or try to, at least. You have forgotten what it’s like to have a body and do not understand its needs. But you do know that the way Paya blushes at Link makes you feel something ugly that you cannot name, will not name. Before, you would very much want to name it, to research it, to pin it down and know it.

Now, you are not sure.

When you ask where Link will stay, Impa doesn’t seem concerned. He shrugs his answer.

You find him outside, sitting on her roof. The moon is full but doesn’t bleed red. You have no warning for him, no dark prophecy. He cannot sleep and neither can you. Both of you have forgotten how to rest.

He looks down at you, his eyes the same blue that could be anything, mean anything. You hated him because you never knew what he was thinking, so you assumed it was that he was better than you.

You fell in love with him after you asked him what he really thought. Why he was so silent in his vigilance.

He answered you, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. He was afraid to speak. He was afraid to show weakness. He was afraid of being anything less than what he was supposed to be.

He was just like you.

You wonder, is he still?

You break the silence between you once again. “Can’t sleep?” you ask.

He shakes his head and looks to the whiteness of the moon. He turns back to you when you have nothing else to say, and helps you climb onto the roof with him.

You think, as you lay next to him there, that you may still be the same. Different, changed, scarred in not so similar ways, but the same.

You don’t question it when you wake up in Paya’s bed again in the morning. You know how you got here. You know why it was you calmed enough to remember how to sleep. And you know the honeyed apples Impa offers you for breakfast didn’t come from her. You still remember Link’s cooking, after all.

It goes on like this for days. The Sheikah treat you with both respect and awe and like you are a sickly invalid. Impa nags you like someone’s mother, and you realize that she is twice over. Link is around. He’s always around. He is always close by, actually. But he leaves you alone.

He does remember proper etiquette, you realize. Or maybe it’s instinct. He is close enough to defend you, but not to eavesdrop. Prepared to die for you, but not to touch you. He is ready, what for you are not sure, though Impa takes note one day and says it’s a good thing, because surely the Yiga still want both of you dead.

You say nothing to him. At night, when you cannot sleep, you find him. He is not far away. He is never far away. He watches the fish swim in the pond by the Goddess statue. You sit next to him under the tree beside it, and sleep.

He hands an apple to the Korok by the frog shrines that only you two seem to be able to see. When the creature makes a gleeful sound at the gift, you laugh unbidden for the first time since you came to Kakariko. You fall asleep next to an empty offering bowl.

You dream of the day you left him, entrusting his barely breathing body to Purah. It was a challenge to carry him that far, but somehow, you managed. He was shorter than you, but heavier for the density of his muscle. His blood stained your prayer dress, drying brown as mud, but you didn’t care. You had a job to do. You understood your purpose, finally.

You entrusted his sword to the Deku Tree, and a message, knowing that it might mean very little to him when he wakes. You understood that you must both make sacrifices to do what must be done, and the fact that he might wake not knowing you is the embodiment of all of that. Then, the picture of your triumph was so clear, so certain. It was worth waiting for.

The next night, he holds you again, and after this third time, you will soon lose count.

Impa tells you that you should let the people know who you are, and rally them to rebuild your nation, your court. The thought makes you lose your appetite for the creamy carrot stew that Link made for all of you. Even Paya seems to understand the severity of your silence and excuses herself from dinner.

Impa insists, “It must be done.”

Link finds you this time, crying in Paya’s bed. You don’t know when you started crying. It feels shameful and silly, even more so to be caught. But Link has seen you do more shameful things than this.

Hating him, of course, was the worst thing you’ve ever done.

When he speaks to you, it’s still soft and low. He can speak. He does have his voice. Just as before, he mostly saves it for you. “We don’t have to,” is all he says.

You start to protest. Of course you have to. Of course you do. It is your kingdom, after all. It is what you worked to save. It lies in ruins and you sit here crying over the thought of ruling it.

But Link reminds you that it isn’t just you. “We don’t have to,” he said. Because it would be you and him. Him guarding you as you sat in the ruins of your father’s throne.

But he is all you have.

“We have to,” you insist.

Link shakes his head. “Not yet.”

He leaves a note for Impa in messy handwriting you can’t recall having seen before. You usually did the writing, the communicating. Tonight, he does it for you.

He does a lot for you. Has done a lot for you.

You ride on Link’s horse, clinging again to his waist, under the waning moon. He takes you up, up, into the hills. To Hateno.

You arrive in the morning and no one seems to know who you are or particularly care. A little boy runs up to Link and asks him to show him his sword. A farmer waves to him. The woman outside of the general store asks him if he needs anything. An odd young man stares at you, but then goes to Link and mumbles a thank you to him for a favor he dares not name.

Link waves them off. He responds, quiet and polite, but clearly trying to get them to leave. He guides the horse as you sit atop it. You feel funny, out of place in a time where people do not remember you, or understand what you have done for them, gleaming white in your prayer gown, unstained as the moon.

You need different clothes.

He brings you to a house you recognize. Link himself never volunteered this information, of course, but another guard pointed out that he lived there as a boy, once, before his family moved to the castle to serve there.

You wonder if he remembers.

The house is small. The house is old. Link stables the mare and you wait for him outside. He opens the door for you, but lets you go in first.

It is a simple cottage, lined with treasures untold. Mipha’s trident. Revali’s bow. Daruk’s hammer. But it’s Urbosa’s sword and shield that bring you to tears.

That, and the fact that the table is set for two.

Link holds you again and says nothing. This is where you lose count.

He lets you go after a while, and goes outside. He comes back with a simple rice bowl topped with salted meat, and you eat it at the place he’s kept for you. You don’t ask him if he remembers this house. You’re pretty sure he doesn’t. But he remembers your favorite comfort food.

You tell him you need new clothes. He nods and keeps eating.

There’s only one bed, you discover later on. But you do like the sturdy writing desk in the loft, and the framed picture you remember taking with your friends, your Champions. Only you and Link remain.

He is all you have.

You are tired from riding all night. Your body begs you to rest. Your mind knows that Link has given you an opportunity to do so that Impa would not.

Still, you protest, “I can’t take your bed.”

He shakes his head, then realizes he’s going to have to speak to get his message across, “It’s okay.”

“Where will you sleep?”

He shrugs an answer.

You think, maybe, that the place setting was not for you. You think, maybe, that Link didn’t plan for the future either. You think, maybe, that neither of you knows how to live happily ever after.

“You’re not going to take no for an answer, I see?” you half ask, half conclude.

Link nods.

The sheets smell like him. You lay down and give up. He’s never asked you for anything, and now he only asks you to rest where he knows it is quiet and safe.

You let him walk away. One step. Two. The third is unbearable.

You reach for his hand, and pull him back.

You do not name what you feel when he lays beside you, when he holds you again. This time, you do not cry, but in addition to that nameless feeling, there is a weariness and a grief that is beyond tears. You feel it in him too, in the way he breathes shaking breaths into your shoulder.

You sleep into the evening. The sun is red as the moon once was when you wake. Link is gone, but he’s close by. You can hear him humming as he cooks outside.

There are new clothes folded on the foot of the bed. You change into them. The trousers are too short for you, but otherwise fit fine. The tunic is soft, but baggy in the shoulders. When Link returns with meat skewers and fruit cake, you realize these are his pants. His clothes. His house. His food. His bed.

He is all you have.

You don’t mind it. Neither does he. He won’t tell you that, of course, but you know.

A part of you feels you should be ashamed. But you’re not.

You are too tired for that.

“Did you sleep too?” you ask Link over a bite of cake.

He nods.

“We’ll both use the bed,” you offer as your royal decree.

He nods again.

You sleep beside him for a week before you ask him to cut your hair. You don’t have anyone else to ask, and he won’t say no. He won’t ask why you feel an overwhelming need to do this.

You feel like you’re treating him like furniture again for a moment, but realize that you would never trust furniture with this.

Only Link.

He cuts your hair with the Master Sword. When you ask him why, he actually answers.

“It stays sharp,” is his reason.

He slays your hair like it’s an ancient evil. You feel cleansed and light, sitting backwards on a chair outside the house, amongst the flowers. You watch the blonde strands blow away in the wind.

“Cut it shorter,” you tell him.

He does.

Your hair is shorter than his now, and you love it.

You comb his out that evening, untangling it from a worn blue tie. It is still wild and ragged, loose over his shoulders. You put the tie in the pocket of the pants you took from him, and ask him if he has another one, as this one is well past its prime. He does, and you tie it up neatly for him again.

His heart beats you to sleep.

You wake in the morning to a letter from Impa, saying that she and Purah will visit tomorrow. The boy who delivers it to you has no idea who these people are, what they have done, what they have sacrificed. Neither does he for you and Link.

But he is nosy enough to ask, “Who is your friend, Link?”

Link looks at you to answer, sitting at his kitchen table, with your short hair and borrowed clothes.

You don’t know the answer yourself.

So just, “Zelda,” must suffice.

The youth is content with that answer, knowing not what the name means, what fate it decided for you.

Link watches you as you read the letter. He reads your face to know what it says, but you tell him anyway.

“I can tell them to go. Tell them you’re sick,” he offers, in his quiet way.

You’re the one that shakes your head this time. “No,” you add, “I’m all right. It has to be done.”

Link should nod but he doesn’t. He just looks at you and understands. He knows. You know. Both of you are used to doing the right thing, even if you do not want to.

You know now that you do not want to be Hyrule’s Queen. You want to sit in Link’s house and eat his food and brush his hair and listen to him hum. You want the children only to know you as Zelda and nothing else. You want to watch people thank Link for saving their chickens, not knowing that he’s saved them all from something far worse than a loss of poultry.

But you also know that you don’t get to have the things that you want. Not now, not always. You know, though, that you can carve out spaces for them, times and places.

You can start to rule your kingdom from Link’s bed, still, soothed to sleep by his breathing.

Purah is a child and Impa is ancient, and they are both about as old as you, even though you still look seventeen. Somehow, this makes sense. Purah hugs you with her tiny arms, but then clings to Link’s legs until he gives her a pose and a little laugh.

They bring you clothes that look like yours from before, but are newly made. All royal blue and royal seals and triforces and fine tailoring. You don’t want them, and prefer how Link’s pants stop just short of your ankles, and how his tunics are loose around your shoulders.

They have tea at the table and say nothing about the two place settings and the one bed. Link makes them risotto, Purah’s favorite. Purah plans and Impa nods along. You are as silent as Link as you drink your tea and listen to them.

“Nothing to say, Princess?” Impa asks after a while. “You’ve been with Link too long. Where are your words?”

It takes you weeks to find them.

Hateno is thriving, so far away and so little affected by the Calamity. You venture out into the fields, walk along the creeks and ponds. You watch the windmills spin. You pet a friendly cow. When anyone asks who you are, your answer is just “Zelda, a friend of Link’s” and there are no further questions. Link is trustworthy, and has proven himself thus. You are assumed to be the same.

One day, you are feeling up to the general store. Link gives you rupees, and you try not to think how strange it is to be taking money from him, or why money is where you mind draws the line when you wear his clothes, sleep in his bed, and eat his food.

But you take his rupees anyway, and you walk to the general store. You buy rice and milk, and you ask the clerk where the children go to school.

There is no school. There is no education. There is no history or science. The man at the counter tells you he taught his children to read and write and add and subtract and how to run the shop.

“That’s all they need to know,” he tells you.

“But there’s so much more,” you say.

You find your words, telling Link that the state of education in this town is unacceptable and must be corrected. You plan. You ask questions. He nods and whispers answers. Eventually, he smiles at you.

“What?” you ask him.

He shakes his head.

You keep talking, even in bed. You don’t remember falling asleep. The next morning, the contractor Link told you about is waiting for you downstairs. Link makes him tea and a fruit pie. Probably also his favorite.

You spend the day designing the village school with him, while Link is not so far away, easily being heard chopping wood, catching frogs in the pond, and making a spicy curry for lunch--his favorite, you remember. He laughs when Bolson can’t handle the spice despite best efforts, and steams a nice, mild fish for him instead.

You are proud to say you can handle Link’s spicy curry just fine. You remember the last time he made it for you, when you were going up to Mount Laynaru in your thin prayer dress. He didn’t want you to be cold.

He is all you have.

You find his hair tie in your pocket when you do laundry in the pond. You don’t know how to do laundry, but you can figure it out. Link probably knows and would do it for you if you asked him or even if you didn’t, but he’s been asked to run something up to the lab for Purah, and you wanted to try to do something for yourself. So you sit with your bar of soap and let your legs dangle in the water as you scrub.

You keep the hair tie and find another place to hide it. He knows you took it, so it seems silly, but you hide it anyway.

The children know you only as Zelda. They don’t know what a school is, but you try to explain it to them. You try to tell them it is an exciting thing, to learn, to know more.

They don’t like the prospect of sitting inside for hours on end, but their parents seem appreciative of the project.

Purah visits weekly to talk about big plans and eat a bowl of risotto. One day, she knocks at the door and is not a child anymore. Nor is she an old woman. She looks about the same as she did before the Calamity, but maybe a touch older. When you ask how she managed that, she merely says it’s too complicated to explain and talks about building towns and towers and technology and how to make Hyrule a kingdom again.

She talks about moving on. She asks where you will go next.

There are many places you will go, but you know you want to come back here. So you don’t answer her, because that’s more complicated than however she managed to manipulate her age.

You, Purah, and Link are all right around one hundred and seventeen years old, sitting around your table. You’re all too young to buy a bottle of wine, but too old. You joke to Purah that she should have added a few more years for that purpose alone. She looks at you funny when you laugh, but agrees.

She has Symin bring you a bottle of wine the next day. You don’t even want it and Link shrugs, laughing as he mutters something about Gerudo Town. You get him to tell you stories, sometimes, of things you already know. Things you watched him do. Moments where you entertained yourself with his freedom in your imprisonment.

He was all you had, after all.

Link isn’t all you have, not anymore. But when you agree to go to the ruins of Castle Town and try to plan out a restoration project with the Sheikah, the understanding that he is coming with you is unspoken and unnecessary. Of course he is.

On the way there, you catch a beautiful golden mare for yourself, with his coaching. The thrill of riding her is incomparable, even after you’ve saved the world. But you miss your arms around Link’s waist all the same. But he grins as you ride beside him, confident and sure in your ability to keep your mount steady, as he’s now taught you to be.

Robbie meets you with the others in the ruins. He likes your hair. He’s sad that the Guardians and Shrines and other tech faded away when the Calamity was defeated, apparently no longer needed now that their intended purpose was fulfilled.

Link looks to the distant mountains in the four corners of Hyrule as he says this. You look with him, finding them empty. Your friends are well and truly gone. Their purpose too, was fulfilled.

And still, you and he are left. Only the old Sheikah remember you, and apparently some of the Zora. That’s it. That’s all.

Link is upset. You know this, despite the lack of expression in his face.

That night, you were meant to sleep in separate tents the Sheikah set up for you, but you crawl into Link’s bedroll once everyone else is asleep. You lay silently with him, and know that you’re the one holding him now.

It is the least you can do. After all, you are all he has.

You go other places. Do other things. See other people. Link, as always, goes with you.

You meet the Zora. Sidon is massive now, charming and almost insistently positive. He pulls both of you into a bone-crushing hug. He goes on and on, telling you how Link saved his people, telling you things you already know, like how amazing he is.

You meet the Rito. Their lives are short and harsh and they do not know you. Even their elder does not remember. But Teba is kind and his son is adorable. You watch with the boy as Link and Teba shoot targets at the snowy Flight Range, and little Tulin tells you that one day, he hopes to be just as fierce a warrior as the two of them.

You meet the Gorons. Link makes you drink a bitter-tasting elixir made from lizards. He laughs and mutters it’s payback from making him eat a frog. But it keeps you safe from the boiling temperatures. You barely pay attention to Yunobo because you’re happy that Link remembered the frog.

You meet the Gerudo. Riju is wonderful, a young and bright shining star. She makes you miss Urbosa so much. They agree to meet you at the Oasis so Link can come along. Riju teases him about how he made it into Gerudo Town to meet her. You tease him on the ride out of the desert that he would make a lovely vai. Link bats his eyelashes at you.

He’s funny, even when he doesn’t talk.

He wasn’t very funny before. But you liked serious Link. And you like funny Link.

He shows you the Gerudo outfit when you get home to Hateno. You laugh and he laughs and he does a little dance. You try it on and he says it fits you better. You argue the opposite.

When you go to bed, you lay your head on his chest and realize that you thought of this place as home.

You were glad to be home.

You are glad it’s with him.

Link is braiding your horse’s mane for you when the mayor comes to chat. Purah told him who you are, that rat. He’s honored to have you here. He agrees to let the children still think you are just Ms. Zelda, the woman who so desperately wants to be their teacher. The school is nearly finished, after all.

But he compliments your house.

It’s Link’s house, but you don’t tell him. Because it’s your home and this is confusing. You don’t want to know the word for what you feel and don’t want to define it.

Purah left for her new town outside of the remains of your castle. Symin has been relegated to the role of teacher with you, but seems happy with the job. Anything is better than babysitting Purah, after all. Impa leaves you alone, so long as she knows that you are willing to try.

You want to pretend Link is all you have, just a little while longer.

So you don’t correct the mayor. Sure, it’s your house.

Link doesn’t object.

You love that Link is always around, but sometimes, still, you want to be alone. You want an excuse not to look at him, to study and plan and do the things you’re supposed to be doing.

You ask Bolson to build you a room in the well, so you can think.

You laugh when you find that the frogs have moved in with you.

Link knows about the well. He never goes in. He knows you do. He knows you need a place of your own. Before, it was your study in the castle. Even then, when he was assigned to guard you there, honor-bound, he stood outside the door.

You tinker with things down there. Sometimes it’s trying to replicate ancient Sheikah tech. Sometimes it’s making armor and pouches for Link. Sometimes it’s just reading while playing with his hair tie.

Most of the time, you come up because you miss him.

The first day of school is as chaotic as you thought it would be and more. Symin has the children surprise you with pictures they’ve drawn. When you get home, you show Link one where he is following you, as he always does, and how the child drew him waving, as he always does to the kids.

You talk about the kids over dinner. You talk and talk and talk, as you once did. You feel fuller than you’ve felt in a very long time, and not because of the spread of fruit cake and rice bowls and curry and your new favorite mushroom skewers that Link made for you, though that all helps.

You feel like you’re doing something. Like you’re earning the title of Princess. Not in a destined and divine way, but in a way that matters to people. In a way that they can recognize you for, when you are ready to let them, that is.

You help Link wash the dishes. You insist on helping. When the thought crosses your mind, as you lean over to him to reach for a towel, that you should kiss his cheek, you don’t hesitate. You give into it immediately.

He looks stunned only for a moment. A flush creeps into the cheek you kissed, and doubtless too into the one you can’t see. But you’re the one who broke the barrier. You granted the permission, so Link can break his decorum, or what remains of it.

He holds you again, so many times you’ve lost count, and he kisses you. You don’t talk anymore that night, as you’ve found a better use for your lips, but you still feel just as full, bursting even.

The years pass, Link keeps your hair short and you keep his from being too wild. You finally feel like wearing your own clothes. You learn to accept that most everyone knows who you are now, and that they love you for that. No one says anything about the two place settings and the one bed in what they now call your house, or how the world is calmer now and you don’t need a bodyguard, but Link is always with you. No one asks what happens in Ms. Zelda’s house, in the one bed, when two people live there. Not even Purah.

You assume Impa must think Link sleeps on the floor every night.

You don’t put a name to what you feel for him because some things don’t need names. They don’t need defining. You understand what this is and so does Link. There isn’t a word worthy of it in any language you know. Besides, Link doesn’t like words. He doesn’t need them.

And in this rare case, neither do you.

In the depths below the castle, Link listens to you talk about the Zonai. He holds the torch for you while you search for your Purah Pad to capture the images that surround you both. You can see this place puts him on edge, but your excitement mostly blinds you. This world has been so wonderful to live in again. Together, the two of you can fix this. You can do anything together.

You don’t understand what you find at the passage’s end. It all happens so quickly. The mummified corpse that knew your names. The strange hand. The crumbling ruins.

When he reaches for you, you are reminded of a fact you’ve nearly forgotten after these last few years.

Link is really all you have.

And this time, he could not reach you.

He could only watch you fall. Down, down, down. Then disappear in a flash of light.