#zelda timeline discourse

[rioblitzle]

i guess im not too involved in the zelda fandom cause seeing a post about rabid totk defenders is wild to me. from my perspective people were singing that game's praises for 2 months total before it fell to the "popular game bad actually" criticism wave and i don't think i've seen anyone say positive things about totk since then lmfao

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I don't get why people hate the timeline so much, its not like you can't pretty much completely ignore it when you play the games. The only time it even approaches mattering to the story is when there is an explicit sequel like botw and totk or zelda and zelda 2

Hey sorry your ask got lost in the sauce of my broken tumblr, but: yeah!

I mean, I get why in some sense. It's been a heated point of debate and I think some people understandably resent the space it has taken not only in fandom discourse, but in how people began to understand the game and its narrative aesthetic choices. There is such a thing as over-rationalizing everything to hard logic, and sometimes it's just not the fandom for that --especially when you begin to forget it's all just fan theory and start to forget what the games are supposed to be like and evoke beyond just strict facts displayed in a linear way.

What I think bugs me with TotK in particular is that it both evokes and relies on continuity and the idea of a timeline, of archeology, of history itself, while being so loose and vacant with it that it both is doing Timeline Shit while also completely failing to understand why some parts of the fandom were invested in Timeline Shit to begin with.

But that's just my two cents of course!

[not-quite-so-intrepid-hero]

So I missed the discourse at the beginning of fhjy, without major spoilers for The Seven please (since i’m in Ep2): does The Seven not take place during junior year? Bc Zelda is a junior. But I thought they were like already graduated and done bc Brennan says smth like oh Zelda’s off with The Seven during the Night Yorb fight.

So I headcannon that The Seven takes place during spring break Sophomore Year LMAO but unsure how that’s looking for everyone else timeline wise / if I missed something

[thebreathofthewild]

i still don't understand why the devs didn't just... confirm botw is in the child timeline. i think that was the original intent. it would have saved so much discourse. zelda even has a really on-the-nose line like "the hero has been Skyward bound, through Time, and steeped in Twilight...", which seemed like a pretty clear answer to me!

i guess at some point, fans decided random easter eggs "contradict" this? so the devs just caved, and decided to be like "uhh it can be whatever timeline you want." thats honestly my best guess

i thought the timeline was a fun idea when hyrule historia came out, but its clearly become this unnecessarily convoluted beast where the devs are trying to distance themselves from it. which i guess i respect.

so i guess that, in the end, actually validates the idea that you should just let fans do whatever they want with it lol.

[phoenixcatch7]

I’m glad to see your post about loving totk. There’s so much discourse going on right now and I don’t understand. It’s a phenomenal game that absolutely deserves all the same love BOTW got. I guess that’s just the video game cycle but Zelda games seem to get the brunt of it, you know?

Really? I've never seen any sincere zelda discourse, and I've been in the fandom a good while.

I mean I know there's a couple points of contention but they've been there since ocarina of time at the latest lol.

Having played hundreds of hours in both botw and totk, I can say I love them for different reasons. They're both absolutely AMAZING games, they're so much fun to play, you can really feel the love and effort that went into making them. Totk feels like an organic in-world continuation of what botw was, timeline wise.

I think one of my favourite things in totk is that a lot of next gen style games take the route of misery and undoing all your hard work in the previous game, heck stories do that too, but totk looks that old tired trope in the eye and spits on it.

Totk is a continuation of the world in botw, and they chose hope. They chose determination, love, progress, protection, community.

Botw is amazing because of its loneliness, its empty rolling vistas and space to explore and learn about this new world. Link is alone and everyone knows it. He has to build a life from scratch, build himself up from scratch, with not even his own memories. Everything is fresh, to both you and him, and you meet so many people on the way. But ultimately he has to do it all alone and it has this weight to it.

Totk is amazing because of its companionship. Everyone and their mother knows and loves zelda and link and they will NOT shut up about it. Everyone you meet is throwing their all into living life and working as one giant community, from bolson rebuilding lurelin and retiring there, to the school being built in hateno, the openly thriving tarrey town we built, the gossip reporter starting a proper official newspaper, the seal surfer pair travelling to learn new versions of the sport, the zonai team, the monster hunting expeditions - the list goes on!! Link is not alone!!! Everywhere you look businesses are booming! People are banding together and succeeding!!

Totk is absolutely a phenomenal game. It sucks that it's getting flack (though I have no idea what it could be for?), and I really feel the devs succeeded in what they set out to do. Both it and totk have their own strengths, but I must say, they're definitely strongest when together.

[mudora]

unnnghhh, I just need to get this out of my system before it gets stupid.  I promise, it is a -very- silly and light criticism of current totk discourse revolving around the three Goddesses, Din, Nayru, and Farore. Honestly I shouldn’t even be negatively affected by just some fun theories being thrown around, but clearly I’m bothered by it for some reason. And I can likely explain why. (This isn’t to stop fun fan theories from being made or me being an old codger and saying NO to fans, because that’s completely rude. If those developments are genuinely exciting to you, I getchya.) 

Current talk is that at least in BoTW and ToTK, the dragons that are roughly named after the three goddesses (not my assumption) (and are referred to as she) by the Goddess statues, are Zonai who consumed their stones. So at least in this universe that BoTW and ToTK decides to be in, these goddesses were mortal in some way or somehow turned their secret stones into the triforce or... something along those lines. I don’t inherently like this line of thinking, for a few reasons. Sort of the same reasons I don’t inherently like the idea of Zelda basically being the Virgin Mary figure in skyward sword and onward. It’s just opinion, and shouldn’t affect your fun times. And for some dumb reason it bothers me and I just want to explain why. The Golden Goddesses, Din, Nayru, and Farore, were not sideliners when it comes to the entirety of Zelda lore. They made the world, full stop, and possibly other worlds that also appear in the Zelda series. They -made- the kingdom of Hyrule, and left the Triforce behind after their creation was complete. They have no official appearance in any game (these are not the oracles), but their hand is -felt- in certain ways. Even if their presence is subdued, they still call the shots on their creation. Just like them, their respective Triforce Pieces represent their philosophy. Din is most comfortable in their Power. Nayru has ageless Wisdom, and Farore gives courage to all she holds dear. Together, they represent The Legend of Zelda’s whole philosophy: As one, they are perfect, working in tandem. Apart, they are still powerful, but become imbalanced and that imbalance throws the world into chaos, as it has time and time again since the Triforce’s original separation in Ocarina of Time. The Goddesses Themselves continue to have namesakes within the series, which is where the Dragon’s names in BoTW and ToTK will become more familiar. At least since Twilight Princess, the Light Spirits that protect the world of reality from shadow, are named subtly after their creators. Faron (Not Farore), Lanayru, (Not Nayru), and Eldin (not Din). They bear the responsibility of protecting creation and the Sacred Realm from the shadow the Twili created, and naturally were eventually banished to the Twilight Realm due to their sacrosanct acts. This is, as far as I remember, the first time we hear of these names. They were created by Din, Nayru, and Farore, but they themselves are not the gods incarnate, and never were. They simply had a purpose, and carried their namesake due to who mothered them into existence.  Now, again, I don’t really subscribe that much to a timeline, and never really have regardless of the “Official” timeline existing. BotW and TotK feel wildly different in terms of what is included in them. We at least know there are *stories* of the Hero of Time, the Hero of Winds, the Hero of Twilight, etc, etc. or they are at least vaguely mentioned in ancient rites and likely moldy tomes that haven’t seen the light of day in thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. Most of this ancient era has come and gone, to the point where the Sheikah tribe of old developed frickin computers with magic powers, and by the time THAT was featured in BoTW, it was already ANCIENT Sheikah tech. But with the events of ToTK, I’m completely complacent in thinking this could be a completely different -universe- then the actual “Official” timeline.  Much like how Termina exists, It’s not really difficult to imagine several different Hyrules existing in many alternate realities, dimensions, planes, what have you. And just because the Zonai exist does not inherently mean the Triforce and the Goddesses don’t also somehow exist in this set universe. I don’t believe the Goddesses would suddenly decide to become Zonai, when perhaps they are the ones who created them anyway, much like the Hylians, the Gorons, the Zora, etc. And even if there are multiple Hyrules, The Goddesses literally made it. I doubt, in any timeline, plane, reality, dimension, that fact would somehow be different, as they are literally the ones responsible for its actual existence. The Zonai, after all are said to be -descended- from Gods, and are only seen as gods themselves due to how these Gods GIFTED these guys with Secret Stones.  This of course, brings us to the dragons in question: I do understand where people believe these three dragons could be the Goddesses. Though the Zonai consider the process of Draconfication forbidden, I don’t really think it’s as forbidden as we think it is. Where I differ from the current discourse, however, is that I don’t remotely think Din, Nayru, and Farore were somehow Zonai, and partook of their sacred stones and it became the triforce. This just doesn’t make sense with the very little we have to go on, for a lot of  reasons. 1, we have to presume Din, Nayru, and Farore already exist, and have existed for Milennia. Otherwise, the Kingdom of Hyrule -would not exist-. Neither would the Hero, Neither would Princess Zelda, Ganondorf, etc.  However. I have a theory that the Dragons are the God forms of the Zonai. Though they are a bit goat like, they also share... quite a few draconic traits on their own, no?Sharp teeth, hair that more serpentine dragons have from Japan and China. They came from the literal sky and wished to bring their bounty to the races of the land. The Zonai -revere- dragons and dragon kind. The Secret Stones themselves obviously don’t just turn Zonai into dragons, as we can see from Zelda consuming hers. I presume, that these gifted Secret Stones likely come from the God-like dragons that the Zonai likely descended from. When swallowing a stone, you are inheriting the power of presumed God-hood as defined by the Zonai. You become immortal. You lose yourself. Because mortals and Gods are profoundly different. Now, whether or not Dragons are capable of becoming mortal on their own is a good question I can’t answer, but I suspect the Zonai have -way- more relation to the concept of the dragons then they do Din, Nayru, and Farore. The same goes for the Dragons that are already within Hyrule: Dinraal, Naydraa (Wtf that isn’t even close to Nayru), and Farosh.. These guys have way more in common with their other namesakes, the light spirits of twilight princess, then they do with the actual Golden Goddesses. And they presumably also share something with their Light Spirit Namesakes. They are guardians of the springs of Power, Wisdom, and Courage respectively. However I picture this relation to be more of these dragon gods wishing to protect creation from ages long past. Perhaps these Dragons never became Zonai. Perhaps these dragons are Zonai who wished to fulfill a purpose in protecting these springs. But being the Golden Goddesses themselves? I highly doubt it. There is plenty of room within the Zelda universe to have the Golden Goddesses remain as such, and to have other gods and spirits fulfill myriad roles deemed important to the Cycles.  If anything, I would say the Zonai are an interesting addition to the many races of Hyrule, and their story is a more compelling one, when viewed in a lense that encompasses their relationship to dragonkind. Not God-kind. Or... at least DragonGod Kind. I also feel like viewing it this way is -way- easier to swallow then somehow relating the Secret Stones to the Triforce. These are their own unique goodie. ToTK, more or less, is a lesson that the Triforce has already taught many times, but through a different lens. Might and Power can obviously come from many different things in Hyrule, and a DragonGod’s essence? Well.  How could Ganondorf, one who seeks power with relentless force, resist?  In her Wisdom, Zelda chose to seek this power to protect her Kingdom from the plague she so feared.  And Link, once again, is the edge of the sword, stuck within the power struggle. Yet his courage and valor lead to the destruction of the Demon Dragon.  I don’t know about you, but the Goddesses are definitely watching. And not as dragons. 

[danrifics]

Bethanie I'm sorry I'm bringing up Zelda discourse but this has been on my mind for months since you posted it. A few months ago, i believe it was December, you said that people only have twilight princess as their favorite Zelda game because it was their first and they are nostalgic. I'm sorry, but this is simply untrue. I have done a poll with my friends. My first Zelda game was windwaker, two of my friends have a link to the past as their first, one had ocarina of time, and three have Majora's mask. All of us have twilight princess as our favorite Zelda game. I in particular love it so much that since middle school I have planned to get a tattoo from it on my ribcage, and memorized the Zelda timeline just to understand where it fit in there. I cannot stand for this twilight princess slander - while nostalgia is part of it, it also just happens to be the best Zelda game. I'm sorry but also not.

(btw ily this isn't supposed to be actually aggressive, just joking aggressive. Obviously you can like whatever Zelda games you like).

okay first, im so sorry this has been plaguing you for months???

second, i literally am so confused i have no memory of this comment?? i also was under the impression that i very much love twilight princess and that its one of my favourites???

i do however want to stand by the fact that botw and totk are the best zelda games and i will not be convinced otherwise 😂

[less-than-three-3]

Tears of the Kingdom - a masterpiece sandbox, but a flawed sequel

It really does pain me to say that I thought TotK was just ok, because I did really love BotW. It had its clear pain points but for essentially a first of its type of open world game, it was incredible. But what mattered was that the design choices felt very deliberate, mechanics like durability and shrines were super key and important to the gameplay loop of exploring.

On the other hand, TotK, while it has very clear and high strengths with a very different design direction, has design choices across the board that genuinely baffled me, and I honestly question why this game was even a sequel besides being able to reuse everything. It very easily could have been its own game as it is, a different timeline with inexplicably identical characters and geography, because there is very little of BotW’s identity or even continuity really even present. 

And before you get your pitchforks, I do want you to hear me out - I promise I won’t complain about like durability or the map feeling empty or compare it to non-Zelda games, I’m gonna be discussing things that I don’t really see many people talking about? There will be spoilers! More below:

I want to start off by talking about my experience with BotW, but if you wanna skip this and just see my thoughts on TotK I get it, it’s just context that I think is relevant. I actually didn’t play BotW until about 2 years ago, despite being a huge Zelda fan I bought into that “bad zelda game” discourse so I thought I wouldn’t like it, so when I did play it I was absolutely blown away. I can still kinda get the complaints - some of the elements people love Zelda for were fairly weak, but as a redefinition of the series it was masterfully done. It was a game that not just rewarded and kept the cycle of exploration going through clever map design and durability, but did so by allowing essentially complete freedom of pathing and direction. 

I will always tell the story of how my entire first playthrough I did not know Hestu existed - I climbed the twin peaks and the mountains nearby to get to Kakariko and just totally missed him the whole time. Not that he was placed in a bad location, in fact I’d be surprised if more than a relative handful of people missed him lol, I was just on a completely different wavelength, and that freedom is incredible. But there were limitations - stamina is a necessary evil when you have free climbing and gliding (but not for running - #bringbackwhistlerunning), and it forces you to really actually scope out your terrain to manage your stamina. And, begrudgingly, I will “hand it” to rain for trying to get you to not just climb like a gremlin everywhere (this did not stop me just waiting out the rain, every time. I hate rain.). It’s a beautiful balance of self-motivated free exploration, and the soft limitations you have for that exploration. Without stamina altogether, the climbing and pathing, for example, becomes a lot less interesting when you can just entirely bypass like every cliff. BotW is a brilliant game of exploration, but you already knew that.

TotK, on the other hand, is not a game about exploring. Its design overall has such a strange identity to me. It reuses the main map of Hyrule, that’s totally understandable I’d be surprised if they didn’t, but is there really much to explore again? Granted, yes if you played this before BotW then there is, but from the lens of sequel let’s assume you’ve played BotW. For me, personally, I checked out the major towns from the last game, and it was really nice to see how they’ve evolved, but besides that, like... I guess there are many little shiny shrines placed everywhere again, but, like, I’ve already done that (For me, 2 and a half times over). The carrot on a stick wasn’t really enough for me to care all that much either, because after a certain number of shrines I just kinda felt like I had enough orbs. The motivating factor of exploration should not be the carrot on a stick reward at the end of the shrine, anyways.

And that’s not to mention the opening of the game, which is just so... clunky compared to that of BotW. BotW’s tutorial is genuinely probably the best out there, it essentially lets you loose to do what you want, how you want, and when you’re done learning the basic mechanics of the game, sets you loose again to continue to do what you want, how you want. TotK’s is so oddly rigid. The sky islands honestly weren’t the worst thing, they had fun things to do, but I did feel like it really dragged on compared to the Great Plateau which was about as slim as it could get. But when you get off of the sky islands, you’d think you’d be free to do what you want right? ....no. And that’s so fucking odd to me. They expect you to follow the quest markers for like, a few steps of the quest before you even get the paraglider and towers, and one of those steps leads you into Hyrule Castle which, for a lot of people, would raise alarm bells for “uh oh I shouldn’t do this yet”. If you went to do your own thing by seeing shiny things in the distance, you could possibly just not have the glider or the ability to reveal your map for a really long time. That’s weird, right? That can’t just be me.

Ok but fine, we knew Hyrule would be Hyrule, and the opening is just a few hours, so what’s the big deal, there’s so much more to explore! Well, the issue is that the sky islands are such a fucking bitch to get to (and basically require you to have a nearby jump tower unlocked, or a lot of patience with zonai gear), and getting between islands of different regions is pretty much not possible. And they’re SO sparse. It doesn’t feel like a region to explore, it feels like a few islands you can check out after unlocking a tower and not much else. 

The Depths tho!! They’re basically another Hyrule!!! Yeah, it is like Hyrule, but like, a lot lot worse. Like I said in the context, one of BotW’s greatest strengths in exploration were the landmarks and map design. So, why the hell did they decide to make an entire Hyrule where you have almost no such visual feedback to encourage exploration? You basically just have to choose a direction and commit (or follow a REALLY LONG series of statues), or maybe you see a Lightroot in the distance (this isn’t common). Maybe someone finds this fun but I certainly don’t, and I really honestly expected better from the developers of Breath of the Wild. You do have the actually really neat revelation that Lightroots are in the same place as shrines, and that the mining sites are where towns are. But I think that even further takes away from the essence of exploration? It’s so odd that the Depths are the way that they are, it truly has me questioning whether BotW’s design was truly intentional or if it was just lightning in a bottle that they couldn’t recapture. But maybe that’s just me.

So yeah the game has a lot of content and a lot of area, but I never really felt like.. that rewarded or satisfied by it. I actively just stopped exploring at a certain point, across all the layers of the world (ok I think I did get all the sky islands but that is NOT a hard feat to achieve lol). I wish there were a term gamers use that could describe this phenomenon of having a ton of stuff to do that starts to feel pointless to do... Oh yeah, it’s bloat. 

But let’s put a pin in that one, I don’t want to be so negative about the game because I did still like it. For one, the music is absolutely turned up to 11 compared to BotW, in part because it is a game with much more gravitas and more moments and areas that deserve that music. And BotW already had a fan favorite soundtrack, so you know this shit good.

The powers were a mixed bag, but I want to shoutout the absolute coolest power first, the one that I am the most mindblown by, that breaks the game without feeling blatantly unfair, and the one I am genuinely impressed is so well implemented:

Recall. This is the power that actually makes you feel like 1000 IQ, and I am pretty sure the people who came up with it and implemented it are too. It has so many broken uses in puzzle solving but, even when it’s clearly unintentional, it feels like a loophole, it feels like you outsmarted the devs. An entire fucking game could be made around this single power. And this game has 4. ...sort of.

If you thought I was gonna mention Ultra Hand, I’m sorry but you’re wrong, and that’s a larger discussion I will have later. Because let’s talk about the weird ones first. 

Like ascend. What the fuck is this power like it’s so incredibly niche and not in a funny way either, like cryonis. It’s not used to get between the Depths and the overworld and the sky, it has such a tight distance limit. And when you’re using it to scale vertical heights (or go through Taluses) it’s so finicky. Its most consistent uses are when the devs clearly designed “an ascend path” or for getting out of the overworld caves, and those are just like, really boring. The fact that most of twitter consistently forgets ascend is a thing is not good. You don’t want a power you entirely forget about. This is what I got in exchange for guardian launching?

Fuse is also a little weird to me, it’s fun but I feel like the novelty wears off a little quickly. On arrows it’s absolutely genius and a very wonderful replacement and addition to the elemental arrows, but for weapons? I know many people see this as addressing durability and collector’s anxiety from BotW but like, it doesn’t do either of those! They nerfed durability across the board for every weapon you get from the overworld except for sturdy wood sticks (which feel lame), and otherwise you have to either get zonai weapons (ok these are fairly abundant) or go underground and look for those statues holding unrotted weapons? This was supposed to address issues? All they did was push the issue of hoarding from your weapons inventory to your items inventory, which is a step forward for sure, but that’s not a solution, that’s them trying to trick us into thinking it’s addressed. You’d previously save your strong weapons just in case you need them later, but now you save your strong monster parts and gems in case you need them later. It’s the same damn thing, you just have actual bag space for it now so it's a little better! I’m a durability defender and I’m still confused by this.

Ok but the star of the show for most people is Ultra Hand, and I totally get it. Building the penis robot, or a mecha, or fucking drones is really cool and really funny. Breaking the limits of the game by attaching together a bunch of different things to solve puzzles in ways that they really shouldn’t have is cool (but Recall does it better). If you love sandboxes to just fuck around in and make a bunch of really cool or broken contraptions and doohickeys, you will love this. I just like.. don’t. Building a tank sounds cool but when I got at the helm I just kinda felt nothing from it, it wasn’t really that fun because the only input you can really give is the direction. I don’t feel like I’m playing the game. And I feel like it really disrupts those necessary limitations I was talking about at the beginning - I don’t find it satisfying to just entirely bypass a climbing challenge by just making a hot air balloon or rocket, and I don’t find it satisfying to just mow down enemies by holding forward as opposed to actually engaging with them. The battery is a limiter but is it even really that much of a limiter when the recovery items are so common (and in the case of rockets and hot air balloons entirely irrelevant)? This is on top of the vehicles despawning when you enter shrines so exploring with them feels AWFUL (easily the MOST baffling mechanic in the game). I dunno, they did really shoot for the moon and I think if you like this I’m very happy for you, but I do also think they really lost sight of what made BotW so revolutionary.

“But you control the buttons your press, if you don’t like it don’t use it!” I agree, and I didn’t really! I’m very happy with being able to use towers as jump towers which, with the wing suit, let you pretty much cover the entire region. But like, you still need to use Ultra Hand for shrines and temples. It’s fairly good in the temples, but I want to talk about the shrines, because some of them are great and maybe better than the best in BotW, but that makes the stinkers really stand out. There are a handful of mid-game shrines (as opposed to like, shrines right around Lookout) which were just “drive the vehicle we gave you” or “build a basic vehicle with the 3 obvious parts we laid out for you” like... that’s not a puzzle. (There was one shrine with a sick track layout and I’ll give that one a pass). I didn’t do all shrines, like I said I got tired of exploration, so I can’t speak to all of them, but this mixed bag didn’t help that either. At least there aren’t really combat trials outside the beginning.

While we’re on the topic, let’s talk about those temples, because one of the biggest talking points right before launch were the “big varied dungeons” that they added to the game, compared to the Divine Beasts in BotW which, while fine, were very samey and ultimately just 4 shrines squished together. So, what about the Temples? Well uh... let’s rank them, best to worst.

1. Fire Temple. Yunobo’s power may suck the most out of the 4 sages but I’d be lying if this temple and the road leading up to it didn’t slap. Using the minecarts the traverse around with changing tracks and figuring out how to guide the very finicky Yunobo Launcher into the rocks blocking your path was fun! Not my favorite temple ever, but it was a very good translation of the format. The boss also felt super traditional Zelda in the best way possible.

2. Lightning Temple. Besides the Fire Temple all the temples kind of take a “go in any direction and do these separate shrine puzzles united by a unique gimmick” and it’s pretty much just a reskinned Divine Beast, I don’t know who they were tricking. The Lightning Temple had the most interesting gimmick at least, essentially being light puzzles that were pretty satisfying, plus a killer boss fight.

3. Wind Temple. This was the first one I did and I was a little disappointed that it was just a divine beast, but the layout was in hindsight relatively interesting, and the whole path up to the temple with the sailboats was actually really really fun (and entirely irrelevant for the temple). People are loving the boss but it’s like ok? I think it’s just because people are just so used to the blights that a huge worm with Giant Enemy Weakpoint is cool by comparison. 

4. Water Temple. Water bubbles are sorta cool and the boss is a little shit. Sidon’s power and the goop was really annoying to use. The temple design does not even try to pretend it’s a temple, it is just 4 different islands with 4 different puzzles.

5. Spirit Temple. this shit sucked I’m sorry, getting the parts back to the center was ok and had some clever puzzles but otherwise it was kind of a slog to get them all, and the reward is a mech that was so slow and a little clunky and I just ultimately walked my ass to the boss. Maybe it’s because I just don’t really like the contraptions. I dunno, this was really meh. Boss was incredibly easy because he just gets instantly staggered by the cannon he drops lol.

And speaking of presenting us the same things as BotW with a fresh coat of paint, the dragon’s tears were also kind of dubiously implemented. They are definitely a clear improvement over memories in a lot of ways, but that really isn’t that high of a bar to clear. But because of the much stronger linear narrative structure of everything, you’re pretty much missing out on a lot by not doing these in the order that you find with Impa and that’s... really limiting? It only reinforces my assessment that this is not a game about exploration because when I see a giant fucking geoglyph I wanna check it out, I don’t want to look at my pictures to check if it’s “the next one I need”. Plus this order kind of encourages you to railroad your exploration of the regions in a specific order. It’s weird. But at least the story is really good.

And speaking of the story, yeah it was great, and it was genuinely tragic to experience those last few memories and have the very sudden realization of where Zelda is. But can I just ask, what happened to like anything from BotW? Where are the Divine Beasts, can they help? Was Zelda a dragon the whole fucking time, and we just somehow never saw her once in BotW? Why does no one outside Lookout, Teba, the Rito remember us? The only things that even remotely reference the very cataclysmic events of the last game are essentially throwaway filler dialogue from side npc’s and that’s weird right? 

Why is this game a sequel? 

I think if this was a Majora’s Mask situation where they were blatantly going in a very different direction in a different timeline and completely restructuring everything, but just reusing maps and models, I would get it. But it’s not, it’s the Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But it doesn’t feel like that upon even just a little bit of scrutiny. If they full sent the sandbox and new world and lore and origins of Hyrule as a whole new timeline and separate game, maybe they wouldn’t have felt obligated to keep so many of the incredible elements of BotW that ultimately either get trampled on or feel a little half-assed, and maybe it’d be even more fun for those who enjoy that type of game. Though to be clear, it’s not a case of mixed identity, I do feel all these elements can coexist, but I think it’s a case of them losing sight of or missing what really made BotW tick.

And again, not to say this is a bad game. I fairly enjoyed it, but to me it doesn’t meet the standards and expectations set by BotW, especially not as a sequel. But that may just be me, who does not care that much about sandbox elements. If you love them, and love the game, that’s great! My issues shouldn’t get in the way of your enjoyment, but I just have to say man, I wish I liked this game more.

[the-owl-is-not-amused]

Roddy, that doesn't sound like the Founding to me? It sounds more like the Imprisoning War mentioned in aLttP.

Which would put this in the Downfall Timeline. I think. I can already feel the headaches.

HELLO??? HELLO THATS JUST ZELDA.

SHE GOT TIME-TRAVELED BACK TO THE FUCKING FOUNDING OF HYRULE. ZELDA. HOW DID YOU END UP THERE. HOW DO I GET YOU BACK.

YEAH JUST A LITTLE BIT—

[cryptic-eccentric]

Hello ! My name is Silas, I am a 25 year old autistic trans man who uses he/him pronouns exclusively. I am also fictionkin but don't tend to post about it very often.

This blog doesn't have a set theme so expect a bit of a motley assortment of content mostly pertaining to fandoms, stupid memes, lots and lots of cats, aesthetic images -- basically whatever just happens to catch my fancy. Original posts are somewhat rare.

Some of the fandoms I may reblog content from include: Homestuck/Hiveswap, Earthbound, Invader Zim, The Magnus Archives, Twin Peaks, Paper Mario, the X-Files, Columbo, Lemon Demon, Soul Eater, The Owl House, and Danny Phantom.

Do not follow if you would object to fandom content that may or may not be listed above or are made uncomfortable of any specific species of animal because you will NOT enjoy this account.

I would prefer to avoid interacting with radical feminists, exclusionists, evangelizing Christians, discourse heavy accounts, blogs that post untagged NSFW content or are primarily about NSFW subject matter, and blogs that post material shipping Jude Harley and Dammek from Hiveswap romantically if at all possible. I have a sideblog for mildly suggestive material that I would rather not post here. If you'd like to see stupid dick jokes occasionally you can follow @cryptic-eccentric2 if you're over 18. Thank you for being here and feel free to say hi! I'm generally pretty easy going and wouldn't mind interacting with new people. Please dm me if you'd like my discord tag or switch/3ds friend codes.

Abbreviated kin list under the read more (doubles are more than free to interact):

IDs •Jude Harley [Hiveswap] •Martin Blackwood [The Magnus Archives] •Dani [Danny Phantom]

Primary •Dib Membrane [Invader Zim] •Jeff Andonuts [Earthbound] •Crying Child [Five Nights at Freddy's 4] •Shulk [Xenoblade Chronicles] •Nergal Jr. [The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]

Secondary •Snorpington "Snorpy" Fizzlebean [Bugsnax] •Dr. Daniel Jackson [Stargate] •Shad [The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]

Sourcemates feel free to dm or send asks about kin memories and such. I would prefer that anyone who kins either Professor Membrane [Invader Zim] or Dickson [Xenoblade Chronicles] not interact if they are specifically looking for canonmates for those timelines -- casual conversation is fine. I have no issues with anyone else trying to reach out.

[rosemiri]

Been seeing a lot of discourse in regards to where TOTK and BOTW now fits in the timeline but brain go brrrrrrrrr I had an idea for a fan comic/fanfic that I’m in the process of writing regardless of it because it’s fun. It involves a trickery plan that “Misko” or in actuality the Fierce Deity mask put in place after spending thousands to millions of years regaining his strength to end this tiring curse that has existed since times long forgotten. In the image he is currently possessing the body of a long dead Hylian soldier mummy and while I want his intentions to remain a mystery of sorts, yes he has revived Ganondorf after the events of TOTK.

Legend of Zelda is owned by Nintendo of course

[lame2882]

About Me ✎

Howdy! Welcome to my blog!

I'm not great at introductions. I've been here for... a good amount of years and I'm just barely getting around to introducing myself on here.

Anyway, Hi! I'm an artist and a writer and have chosen this blog as the vessel of my machinations.

Basics:

☆ I mostly go by Lame! But some other names I enjoy are Mel, Lochland, Castor, and Gayl (yes, I have characters with some of these names too)

☆ I'm trans masculine! Still figuring things out right now, but the pronouns I use are he/they/xe/xem/ae/aer as well as some others that I'll clarify later down the post!

☆ I am an adult! Still don't try anything sketchy tho. I am taken.

☆ Dissociated daydreamer

☆ Although I am a writer, I don't like telling stories through... writing. I love unconventional ways to tell stories like... comics and video games. Y'know, things I don't know how to do

☆ I will talk obsessively about my OCs and fictional worlds and you can't stop me

☆ I am obsessed with The Legend of Zelda and have my own fanon universe/timeline for it. Is it lore accurate? Absolutely not, but have you seen the canon timeline?

Hashtags:

#lame reposts is a hashtag that I put all of my reblogs under, just to keep things neat

#lame art is for all my art!

#out of canon shenanigans is for all my stuff that isn't canon to any of my stories. Ranges from random one-offs to whole aus, which will also be tagged respectfully

#in canon shenanigans is for all my stuff that is canon to any of my stories. Usually concept art or short stories

#Foranon is for everything related to my fantasy world Foranon, one of my main wips that I post about... a lot

#BoSZAU stands for Balance of Shadows Zelda AU. It's my Fanon Zelda Universe/Timeline... which is basically an alternate universe for Foranon

#TRTS stands for “To Rewrite The Stars” which is a new wip about my persona Castor and his twin Pollux and how they navigate the world

#DTHS stands for Devil Towne High School, which is my interconnected universe of various wips. Most of the stories have been abandoned, but I might still use the hashtag from time to time for the stories that are still being worked on

I also have various hashtags for various OCs but we don't have time for all that. Just look up their names and you'll get it.

More information about me as well as where else to find me below the cut!

I'm trans masculine. I mostly use he/they pronouns, but have been doing some fuckery with neopronouns and even nounpronouns and they feel really nice so here's a full list of pronouns you can use for me!

☆He/Him

☆They/Them

☆Xe/Xem

☆Ae/Aer

☆Ey/Em

☆Star/Stars

☆Void/Voids

Please do not start discourse on my blog, thanks

I'm an artist and writer! I write original stuff, but the only stories I've actually managed to finish have been fanfics. I finished a whole trilogy of fanfics but can't focus long enough on my original stuff to finish anything.

I am an avid daydreamer and I often forget about my surroundings because of it and I feel bad because it makes me oblivious to a lot of things. A lot of my stories come from my daydreams.

One of these stories is Foranon! I'd love to give a synopsis on it, but there's literally so much that would need explaining that I don't have time to put it all down here. It's mostly just a worldbuilding project right now with a narrative worming its way through it. I'll have to make an infodump post about it and I'll link it here eventually. For now, take the blog I made for it that I never touch @foranongame

I also have Balance of Shadows! Which is one of the many fanfics I mentioned in the paragraph above. It's a Zelda AU where I decided to mess with the canon timeline into something I find cohesive. The characters in this AU are kinda the same in Foranon as Foranon is basically just me repurposing fan characters for something more original.

I'm also hoping to return to my story Ghost Freaks! Which is a comic I've been planning for 4-5 years now. I published the prologue of the comic back in 2020 and then motivation killed me so I never touched it again. Hoping to revamp it and start on it again soon! Again, have the blog I never touch @ghost-freaks-comic

I'm... not good at synopses.

Social Media

You can find all my social media on my carrd here

All my stuff is some variation of Lame2882 or Lame.2882

Interests

As said before, I'm obsessed with Legend of Zelda, but some other interests of mine are:

☆Omori

☆Little Nightmares

☆Pin Collecting

☆Danganronpa

☆Astronomy

☆Night in the Woods

☆ROTTMNT

☆Don't Starve

☆Sky: Children of the Light

☆Ghosts and other supernatural stuff

And I think that's all you really need to know about me! Feel free to say hi!

[bloemrijk]

MAGNOLIA DIETRICH ROSENBERG

WELCOME! to my writing blog. twenty plus, new years. english native, german beginner. college student. busy and lazy writer. the record keeper of cradle.

the cradle archives - ko-fi

BEFORE YOU FOLLOW

i don’t wish to be dragged onto online discourse, honestly, for any topic ranging from politics to proship/anti. i’m a social science major, so i would like to avoid political content on my timeline. i block people who makes me uncomfortable or just encroaches into my space the wrong way. i don’t really have any dni, i follow back or i don’t.

ABOUT ME

likes: history. animanga. my cats. reading. tea. academia aesthetic. video games. sanrio. baking. music. autumn. flowers. mint. dislikes: disrespectful people. stress. math. fan wars. eye strain. drama. idol shippers. mornings. hpocritical people. hot temperatures. disrespect. fandoms: twisted wonderland. ikemen revolution. ikemen sengoku. ikemen vampire. ikemen villains. devils and realist. legends of link zelda. code realize.

WRITING INFO

ao3: bloemrijk

DO NOT repost my writings or translate them. Don’t ask to, the answer is no. I do not take requests. But I do enjoy rambling about ideas with people. I will avoid characters like Arashi Narukami, Chihiro Fujiski, Yumeno Kyusaku (Q), and other similar characters. If those characters are mentioned, they are only written as a background character and will be referred to by they/them pronouns. I will write stories with no romance, homosexual and heterosexual relationships. I write with original characters or purely canon characters, I cannot do ‘x readers.’ MATURE CONTENT such as smut, yandere, noncon, depression, abuse, murder and so forth may be present in my writings. Pay attention to warning tags.

TAGGING

🌸.about- anything about the admin 🌻.txt- random text posts 🌺.reblog 🪻.letters- asks 🌼.poll 🌾.spoilers 🥀.triggers 🌷.general- fanfics for general audience 🌹.mature- more so nsfw content, than anything 🌱.oc rambles If you are under the age of 16, please block the mature tag. If you want to avoid spoilers, as a catch all, use the tag spoilers. If you have concerns, use the triggers tag as a catch all. All other tags are for general audiences.

divider by cybird, transparent by ragyragd0ll

[thefinnishcap]

This is how the series has always been intended to be read. Hence why -like you said- almost every game in the series starts with them recounting an ancient story. It’s also why the official timeline has changed so many times. Nintendo has been very clear that the timeline is malleable. Hyrule Historia says that the timeline is based on “information that is believed to be true at this time” and that “As the stories and storytellers of Hyrule change, so too does its history.”

This paragraph is a tangent, but If I get a single comment on this about Hyrule historia’s canonicity I will rip your kneecaps off. If an officially licensed lore book is non-canon because of a few inconsistencies then literally none of this series is canon. (This is also how I feel about age of calamity)

A link to the past’s manual tells you that the game you’re about to play is telling you the next chapter in the legend of the hero of Hyrule. It then goes on to tell you about multiple other legends that came prior. Like the imprisoning war, and the creation myth. It repeatedly says that these legends have likely been heavily distorted over the centuries. So why is it any different for the legend you’re being told over the course of the game?

This is why I’m so tired of timeline discourse because like, it literally doesn’t fucking matter and it never has. It’s a big part of why I’m so tired of (in the words of Nayru on YouTube) the carcinisation of all Zelda discourse into “does Nintendo even care about the lore of the other games”

No.

The answer is no.

They literally never have, and that’s not a bad thing. Because not every single fucking game series needs to be fnaf. Zelda works because of the lack of solid continuity. Not in spite of it. A world like this could never work in another medium and that’s fucking beautiful. Trying to force it into this linear form of storytelling so it can easily be followed, is antithetical to what makes it The Legend of Zelda.

Anyways, thanks for listening to this idiot who’s very autistic about Zelda ramble for a bit.

I'm sure this has been proposed before but I think one of the most fun ways to read the Zelda Timeline and Zelda in general is to really lean on the fact that it's called The Legend of Zelda and think of all of the stories you play through as tales passed down over ages and eons rather than an exact recounting of events

it's right there in most if not all of the games (I haven't played all of them), it often starts with one of the characters telling a Legend from long long ago and stating a prophecy of what the future holds. a lot of the times, these myths resemble one of the other games, but it's not always exact. does that mean what happened in the game is wrong? or that the story is being misremembered? it could be either, or both.

i think it's also fun and interesting to try to make it make some sense, too, or at least to explore the ways the lore contradicts and doesn't add up and conflicts directly with other things we saw happen. but if these are all an oral history told again and again, it makes sense things get put out of place from time to time. Things might even be purposefully obscured, for all we know, by the politics of Hyrule, although it's just as likely that details get lost in time.

[gascon-en-exil]

"how this was going to become a thing," what do you mean ? that people were going to ship them with Alear ? or that people would be discussing wheter or no it's incest (God i can't believe we are discussing whether or not 2 pixels we pretend to exist have the same blood)

The second one - although as far as I've seen (because I really don't care enough to look), it's pretty much still only happening in my inbox.

Genuinely, where are people finding all of the incest discourse about the DLC? Is it on Twitter or something? Or is everyone just preemptively complaining about discourse that *might* happen?

See above. It was a funny observation that drew out a lot of preemptive complaining.

Oh that's easy. the majority of us are probably more worreid over people making Alear twins discourse rather than people shipping them because "self insert" biais or they simply decide that different personailty = different DNa

Headcanoning the differently-gendered Avatars as twins isn't new, but this multidimensional stuff might really set it off. I never saw the appeal myself - but then I don't see the appeal of Avatars, period.

Maybe it's just me but ever since Awakening, we could simply not escape the multiverse thing. it's either time travel, either alternate dimension, parallel worlds, alternate timeline.

To be fair, FE7 introduced the alternate worlds concept with the Dragon's Gate and the dragon-filled dimension on the other side. Awakening even nods to this with the name and map location of its DLC menu. Modern FE does kick this into high gear though, especially where Heroes is concerned. It's an easy explanation for all these settings (some with variable story routes) that doesn't require sticking them all in one big convoluted timeline à la Zelda.

[faroreswinds]

I think like Star Fox, Zelda does a soft reboot everyone couple years. Like Zelda 2 is clearly a sequel to Zelda 1, Link's Awakening reference's Link to the Past pretty clearly, but like OOT is a retelling of vairous old points. Also Hyrule Historia's timeline section even says not to take it too seriously and that future games may make it outdated.

Oh my god... A ZELDA ASK?!

Please, more Zelda asks! I love Zelda, I want to talk Zelda! Please, I promise I'm not as jaded as I typically sound!

I'm not sure if that's so true. I didn't go too into depth with the how the games connected as they were released, but really the only true soft reboot seems to be BotW, given that it is so far in the future that it doesn't really matter where it is on the timeline other than it takes place looooong after OoT (the game references OoT Link and Ruto as a sage).

If we group them based on released, then it goes like this:

Loz, AoL, LttP, OoT, and MM were obviously connected

LA was somehow connected but how it was unclear

Oracles are unconnected in any way

Four Swords is unconnected in any way

Wind Waker is directly connected to OoT

FSA and MC are connected to FS

TP doesn't seem connected to anything directly, except with vague possibilities to OoT (later confirmed to be true)

PH and ST are directly connected to WW, and thus connected to OoT

SS was always meant to be the beginning of the timeline

LBW and TFH were connected to LttP

BoTW is connected to OoT but overall a soft reboot.

Now, HH statement is obviously meant to basically give them an out, so that any new material that comes out can retcon their own work in the future. As you said.

You could make an argument that the Oracle games and FS are reboots, but then they go right back to connecting the games to the older games or even the new "reboots" in a weird, tangle-y mess.

Personally, I think the dev team just isn't interested in keeping continuity accurate. They have basically stated as much in multiple interviews, where story comes last and gameplay comes first. Here is one example of an interview with Koizumi:

They were always saying, let's not try to push the story forward too much.

Miyamoto was particularly famous for not caring about the story, and Koizumi had to sneak in story elements wherever he could. SS was actually written in a day, but before the story was written they made the whole setting in the sky because Fujibayashi wanted Link to jump from the high places, and they wrote it as a story for the Master Sword solely because it was a wii game and the player was going to swing their sword like a sword. This came before the actual story itself!

I tend to feel that lots of fans give the devs a lot more credit than they deserve when it comes to the lore of the series. One big mistake in SS, for instance, is that Link prays to the Triforce for a wish. Every other game either states Link must touch it or has someone touch it for their wish. Devs make mistakes. They forget things. Or they would rather do something cool and epic regardless of it makes sense or not. The Zelda team in particular cares if the game is fun first- the story and lore bits are completely secondary.

I had also mentioned a redditor's timeline they presented and I was totally all for it. I'm not claiming it to be canon but it makes a lot of sense. I'll link it here for anyone who wants to read it but I really like the concept of it, because it cleans up a lot of messes.

Enraric (the user) presents three "sagas" for the timeline: The Downfall Saga, the Saga of Time, and the Four Sword Saga.

They go like this:

The Downfall Saga: LttP — OoA/S — LA — LBW — TFH — LoZ — AoL

The Saga of Time: SS — OoT — MM — TP

                                             |

                                          WW — PH — ST

The Four Sword Saga: TMC — FS — FSA

Notably BotW is absent from this list but this makes sense since its placement is still hotly debated. But ultimately, this does sort of clean up a lot of issues many may have with the errors in continuity. Although, I may place LA right after LttP and have OoA/S after that instead in my own interpretations.

Anyways, thanks for the Zelda ask! I love them!