10/11/2023 - the minish cap/four swords/four swords adventures

i always love to think about the four sword itself and how it operates. because, i mean, in the minish cap, it could only create copies of link, right? and those copies were translucent and would disappear if anything hit them, besides. but in four swords & four swords adventures, the four sword creates PEOPLE. four entirely separate beings, all wearing the colors of each of the elements that the four sword was reforged from the picori blade with. and that's so interesting to me!!! i know some theorize that it was vaati being sealed in the four sword that changed the magic of it, but i don't think that's true. i don't know what IS true, but i do like to theorize myself! see, the difference between the minish cap and four swords/four swords adventures as a result of the differences in the powers of the four sword is that minish cap begins to feel a bit...lonely, by comparison. at least to me! after all, in four swords & four swords adventures, there's four heroes—and, at the very least, it ensures that none of them would ever have to fight alone. in the minish cap, link DOES have to fight alone—he may be able to create copies of himself, but they're still just copies. they still disappear if he moves wrong or runs out of magic. and while people like to debate on the ages of other links in the series where they can, in the minish cap link is, without doubt, a child—he was sent to find the minish to help repair the picori blade after vaati destroyed it specifically because only children can see the minish! so the idea i've gotten really attached to is that maybe the four sword's magic began to change because of a wish. a desire. maybe it wasn't something that was ever spoken out loud, but when you're a kid fighting everything from dungeon bosses to vaati himself, wouldn't you wish that someone was there to fight alongside you? wouldn't you wish that you didn't have to do this by yourself? the four sword doesn't have a spirit within it like the master sword does, but it's still a sword that was originally created by the minish out of good will and the desire to aid the original hero of men who wielded it, and it was reforged with the four elements by a boy who was spurred on by his love for his best friend and his desire to see her safe and alive again. maybe there's no spirit inside it, but i like to think a sword as powerful as the four sword that was created out of love would reflect that love. so maybe, when it was first forged, it was still new to the world and simply didn't have enough power to grant the wish of the little hero of the minish that wielded it—to be able to share the burdens of his journey with someone else. anyone else! and since it couldn't grant the wish of its second creator, it granted the wish for every hero that wielded it after him, after time had passed and its power grew in both strength and stability: they may be forced to fight, but they won't have to do it alone. idk!!! i just!!! think about the four sword and its bond with the hero of the minish a lot. :)

8/23/2023 - four swords (kind of)

man, i wish there was any merchandise at all for anything related to the four sword series—either minish cap or four swords themselves. i want a replica of the four sword, not the master sword!!! i want a cool shirt with the four links, not the stereotypical botw link or oot link or twilight princess link!!! where is the love for four swords!!!! mannnnn :(

7/19/2023 - hyrule warriors

listen. i've never played hyrule warriors and it's hit or miss on if i ever will. but GOD do i want it to be "canonical" just to throw a whole wrench in the timeline. it'd be hilarious. i want to see the hero of warriors scrambling to reign in the little hero of time and hero of winds. i want marin and the wind fish from link's awakening to somehow be there and point to them being "real" in one way or another because it would open up the funniest can of worms. hyrule warriors should be canon because it would turn the whole thing into comedy central and i for one am absolutely down for that.

6/30/23 - skyward sword

while i can't say i'm usually one for shipping in fandom unless the ship is either explicitly canon or has enough subtext backing it up that it's clear as day to me (and even then, i don't usually ship them properly a.k.a. i think of them as something more than friends but not quite romantic in the usual sense at the same time. does that make sense) but with skyward sword zelink i absolutely see the appeal. i've been slowly but surely making my way throught the game and man....the love between link and zelda in this game is sooooo sweet. i genuinely think about them all the time. and i will admit sometimes i forget about the romantic aspect of things in favor of the friendship aspect but no matter which way you look at it there's still love at the center of it!!! it's all about love!!!!! head in my hands.....

6/12/23 - the wind waker

i've been thinking a lot about the hero of winds lately. wind waker is one of my favorite games just from the story alone and i love that iteration of link SO much. he was just a kid who wanted his sister back! he was never the "chosen one", he forced the gods to make him their hero whether they liked it or not and it's SO cool of him. and he's so dorky and silly too. just a little guy. my love for wind waker knows no bounds.

6/8/23 - the legend of zelda (1986)

i LOOOOOOOOVE the original zelda from the legend of zelda because she looks so cute and small and unassuming and she can't be older than. idk. ten or eleven years old. and yet!!! this is the zelda who in order to keep ganon from getting his hands on the triforce of wisdom literally fucking shattered it into eight pieces and then got kidnapped and kept in a literal circle of fire for god knows how long until impa found link and link eventually completed his quest and saved her. look at her!!

this is the girl who went "fuck it we ball" and just. completely fucking shattered the triforce of wisdom. the energy it had to have taken to pull off a feat like that ALONE......MAN!!! NOT TO MENTION!!! it's implied that she hid all eight pieces HERSELF before she was kidnapped, which makes sense because she didn't want anyone else to be able to find & potentially lead ganon to them. so she was seriously fighting her way across a monster-infested wasteland and crawling through dungeons just to hide the triforce pieces. she's so awesome!! i love her!!! and she gets so overshadowed by the princess zelda from zelda 2: the adventure of link and it makes me SO sad. and it's not that i don't love the princess from adventure of link! i think she's interesting in her own right! but the zelda from the original legend of zelda...she's so cool. i love her. absolute beast of a ten year old.

6/5/23 - a link to the past

so, i finally got to start playing a link to the past a couple days ago, after i finished link's awakening! technically, it's a little out of order, since the hero in link's awakening is the same as the one in a link to the past and alttp comes first, but eh. who cares? i think the first thing that's really struck me about a link to the past is how urgent everything is—there's no real introductory phase. link is just immediately thrust into this life-or-death situation after watching his uncle die right in front of him. fun start! and then he's made out to be a wanted criminal by the brainwashed knights, which sort of gets to me when you realize that some of the people in kakariko village immediately start calling for the knights the instant they see him. can you imagine being ten years old or so and having people you grew up around instantly turning on you like that? man, it's a little heartbreaking when you think about it. at least there's some in the village who still believe in him, like the lady who tells him that even though people have been spreading nasty rumors about him she still trusts him. it was honestly a little nerve-wracking to be thrust into the situation so quickly—there i was, completely unused to the controls of this game yet, and already i'm having to defeat enemies left and right. i died an embarrassing amount of times before i finally saved zelda from the prison, i will admit! i know the original legend of zelda and zelda 2: adventure of link start out the same way, with link just kind of being already in the situation for the player to control, but a link to the past has them beat with making the player feel a giant amount of suspense at the beginning of the game. everything moves so fast! and given everything else that happens in the downfall timeline, it looks like the hero of legend really CAN'T catch a break at any given point, huh?

6/2/23 - link's awakening

i finished link's awakening today! man, what a game. the ending is so bittersweet. and with everything going on between link and marin on top of that? with marin both having a mind of her own (attempting to wake the wind fish herself by singing to it, only to get captured by monsters) and asking link to remember her when he eventually left the island? GOD. marin truly was the beating heart of koholint island and it showed every moment she was on the screen. story-wise, i loved this game. it was super solid, heart-wrenching, and just plain funny at times to boot. finding out along the way that koholint island was nothing more than a dream and that link himself might die if he were to wake the wind fish because he was in the dream too was disturbing in the best of ways (talk about suspense!) and getting attached to all the villagers didn't help matters. in the end, you don't even want to wake the wind fish! you don't want this place to disappear, and all the things you've grown to love with it! but you have to, because the wind fish doesn't deserve to be trapped in eternal slumber, and neither do you. gameplay-wise (and as i've only played the remake so far, it's all i can speak on) it's really fun, too! i wish they would've added a rolling function for the remake like the other zelda games have, even though i know it wasn't present in the original game, because walking was a bit too slow at times. the last two dungeons were a bit annoying to complete (eagle tower ESPECIALLY. that place was the bane of my existence), but you get frustrating dungeons with every zelda game, so at least i was a little prepared for it.

overall, it was SUCH a good and fun game. i loved it!

6/1/23 - breath of the wild

i can’t speak of botw as a game because i haven’t played it but i listened to the soundtrack again just to see if maybe my initial opinion of it had changed and. it didn’t. personally i still think it’s a really weak soundtrack as a whole. i think the only song i actually genuinely like is the vah naboris battle theme and even then i found an instrumental mix of it online that’s 10x better than the original. i saw people online raving about how good vah ruta’s theme was but it just reminds me of oot’s final battle theme with ganon with a little extra spice. and considering oot’s final battle theme had literally no spice whatsoever it’s not like that’s a particularly hard thing to do. and i WANT to like it. some of these songs do sound like they'd be very good if something MORE was just added to them. but they're just very.............how do i say this. basic. and not really in a good way.

5/27/23 - four swords adventures

in canon i accept that four swords adventures is placed after twilight princess in the child timeline because fine whatever i can't really dispute that but realistically i think four sword adventures would make a lot more fucking sense if you placed it after four swords and just had that reincarnation of ganon time travel back from the child timeline into the force era because. i mean. gesturing incoherently at the entire deal with vaati and the four sword sanctuary and the idea of somehow oot/mm/tp happening before that AND the deal with the palace of the four swords in the fallen timeline. because yes yes i know four swords as a game did not exist when alttp was released and this is the legend of zelda we're talking about but THEORETICALLY. given the information we have NOW. there is NO reason for the fallen timeline at that point in time and the child timeline to have. like. a differing place where the four sword rests. because if the four sword at the end of four swords is sealing vaati then. if one attempted to move or tamper with the four sword. vaati would. be released. and there is no vaati present in the fallen timeline. yes ganon was sealed into the four sword at the end of fsa but honestly that provides more of an explanation for the dark versions of the links in the palace of the four sword than anything else. if maybe that ganon's life force faded after time but his dark magic remained and contaminated the four sword to a certain degree (bolstered by the fact that the ganon of the fallen timeline was already wreaking havoc with HIS dark magic. the barrier created by the maidens around the four sword could potentially have failed in that timeline as the result of the sacred realm being turned into the dark world. so they built a palace around that bitch in the false hope that it would provide the barest minimum of protection or something).

and that's not even getting INTO the whole mess that is oot/mm/tp (tp definitely less so but oot definitely).....like if there was an extra sword laying around that could have stopped ganondorf/ganon that was easily accessible in the four swords sanctuary. that the royal family knew about. would that not have been hypothetically easier to acquire than the master sword. even if it wasn't actually easier thanks to the barrier left behind by the maidens if you KNOW where a magic sword capable of killing/sealing away evil is and your first thought is not "let's figure out a way to get past this barrier and get this powerful magic sword that is Very Much Within Reach" but "ay yo link can you do this complicated quest to break into the sacred realm instead" (yes i know this is a video game i'm talking about and it was necessary for gaming purposes) then like. what's even happening at that point. there is no knowledge of or worry about vaati or the four sword sanctuary whatsoever. this is entirely normal on its own except when you consider the fact that four swords adventures starts with zelda + the maidens needing to check the seal on the four sword because shit started happening across hyrule and their first thought was "fuck what if it's vaati what if it's the seal." which is NOT really the first thought someone from a timeline that has seen ganon defeated twice over would think. they would be more likely to think it was ganon again. it's what someone from the force era where vaati has been a very real and present threat would think. i feel like i'm going insane i could write a thousand page thesis on this i genuinely think four swords adventures should be placed after four swords in the timeline. i do not think i can accept it as canon actually i changed my mind while writing this entry.

5/26/23 - the minish cap/four swords/four swords adventures

feeling a bit insane thinking about the vast difference between the four sword's power in the minish cap vs. four swords/four swords adventures. why did the magic change. what happened to make it go from creating three translucent copies of the wielder at will to involuntarily creating four entirely separate beings out of one soul. it's sooooo different and i NEED to know why......

5/25/23 - four swords adventures manga/four swords adventures

while i will be the first to say that i prefer the fsa manga over the game because of shadow and his redemption arc alone...i think you have to appreciate how funny shadow is in the game as well. his Super Dramatic Introduction in the manga was awesome and i loved it but in the game after his Super Dramatic Introduction instead of watching link pull the four sword while hiding like he does in the manga shadow literally just walks up to one side of the four sword and starts just. bouncing right next to it. like literal endless bouncing. if link gets too close to him shadow just fucking hits him and bounces over to the other side and starts bouncing next to it again. it is THE funniest shit in the world. throughout the entirety of the game he keeps fucking cloning himself to the point where during the final battle there are literally more shadows than there are links. not to mention his hilariously high-pitched screaming when he a) does a spin attack or b) gets pushed down a hole/off a cloud/etc. the manga gave him much more of a personality and a real story but you gotta pay some tribute to the game for starting that personality and honestly making him just as funny as manga shadow.

5/25/23 - the minish cap

i was going to talk about how i personally thought the four sword looked way cooler than the master sword but then as i was getting both pics for comparison i noticed something. look at this:

look at the gem on the pommel of the sword. it's got the mark of the triforce on it. and this makes no sense!!!! the four sword has absolutely nothing to do with the triforce! the hero of men was entrusted with the picori blade and the LIGHT force, which is absolutely distinct from the triforce. true, there are symbols of the triforce around (like on zelda's dress and link's shield) but given how there's no mention of the triforce whatsoever throughout the entirety of the game + the symbols are kind of just There i think it's one of those things where the symbol was passed down through the ages without anyone really knowing what it means. people might just think it's the symbol of hyrule or the symbol of the royal family (since zelda wears it + the dead king gustaf has it engraved on his crypt) or something. who knows!!! my point is the triforce is sealed away in the sacred realm during this time and has been for ages!!! nobody seemingly knows about it!!! if the royal family DID know about it at this point i think the plot of the minish cap would've gone differently because there would be some "let's just wish zelda back to normal" thing or what have you. yknow what i mean??? maybe the information about the triforce & the sacred realm & whatnot resurfaces way after the events of the minish cap and that's why the royal family knows of it in ocarina of time. sometimes information is lost to history and then is discovered again later. as is the cycle of life. etc. etc. whatever.

and meanwhile! the depiction we have of the light force is THIS:

it's an entirely filled-in triangle with a circle around it! and honestly i think this is what should be on the pommel instead of the triforce. i mean there's already a gold circle around it all you would have to do is color in the empty spot between the three pieces of the triforce. or just remove it entirely. the four sword and the triforce have no connection and it just!!! makes no sense for the triforce symbol to be there!!!! and when you look at the later depiction of the four sword in four swords adventures they actually DID kind of fix this which i greatly appreciate:

i know they just look a bit different because the artstyle was more simplified (you can tell by looking at the hilts between minish cap's four sword and fsa's four sword—they simplified the lines and there's no red gem where there should be) but like. it also provides an immediately fix to the Giant Problem with the pommel. you see what i'm saying here.

5/25/23- the minish cap

what i love about minish cap link is that he just never stops glaring. ever. even when he discovers an item and does a happy little "showcasing-item-over-my-head" stance like all the links do he's STILL glaring. he does a >:D face. it's literally the greatest fucking thing. the ONLY sprite of him where he's not glaring is when he falls down a hole and does a O_o face which is also the greatest fucking thing. most annoyed little hero guy around. he literally stayed up until like 3am the night before shit went down as per his grandpa's words and then spent his entire adventure like If One More Monster Gets In My Way I'm Murdering Its Entire Species. and then given how he blazed through the final part of the game where you have to battle three rooms' worth of monsters and reach vaati before the bell rings three times......he's just absolutely not having it. i love him

5/11/23 - a link to the past/the legend of zelda (1986)/zelda 2: adventure of link

actually i'm obsessed with the way the early zelda games (which all happened to be fallen hero timeline games) had christianity as the implied religion. it's both hilarious and deeply fucking fascinating from the standpoint of All The Other Zelda Lore Available Now. i love old video game outdated lore and refusing to get rid of it. they dug their grave when they retconned religion and now they'll lie in it. like yknow obviously i know WHY christianity was the implied religion from an Outside The In-Game Universe perspective but when you DO look at it from an Inside The In-Game Universe perspective it would obviously beg the question of why DID christianity (or its. zelda universe counterpart. who knows if it would even have the same name. i guess it would though because of Mr. Jesus Christ Being Crucified but still) emerge ONLY in the fallen hero timeline. it makes sense for it never to develop in the adult timeline because. yknow. (biblical flood) the goddesses flooded the earth and all that. but what about the child timeline. what happened. what changed. this is such a stupid train of thought and yet it is scratching so many itches in my brain

5/3/23 - the minish cap

two minutes into the minish cap and i'm already grinning like an idiot. i LOVE THISSSSSSS. first of all link's resting bitch face in this game is suddenly not so surprising when you remember that at the beginning of the game smith said that link was up late helping him forge swords and stuff. pov you're just a little guy who stayed up until three in the morning the previous night and then the next day everything goes to shit. second of all oh my god zelda giving link the teeny tiny shield she won in the drawing and link being like "yay! a shield! '...it IS a little embarrassing, though. it's so tiny!'" like omg i love when childhood best friends and when flavor text gives the playable character personality. he still loves the shield though he's gonna be using it for his whole adventure. i also love when you open the treasure chest in your house and get the red rupee and link's only thought is "that's great." he is SO tired and it's SO funny and such a contrast to a game like, say, majora's mask where that link would get a red rupee and go "that's pretty nice!" I LOVEEEEEE VISIBLE DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITIES VIA FLAVOR TEXT!!!!!! LET'S GOOOOO

"even turned to stone by vaati's curse, her eyes are filled with life. hurry... save her..." when the. when the best friends of it all. oh mannnnn

"you got five rupees! that's kind of nice." i absolutely LOVE this iteration of link. all his flavor text is SO fun to read.

5/3/23 - ocarina of time/the wind waker

honestly there is something so fucked up about seeing the people in the end credits of oot celebrating their freedom from ganondorf's rule and knowing that in just a few generations their whole world will be flooded to nothing.

5/1/23 - four swords adventures manga

actually i think in a post-canon world where shadow is "brought back" (aka made fully corporeal again because at the end of the manga he is Very Much still alive which i thought was Awesome) he should get the chance to actually make proper friends with link. i know popular fanon consensus is that link was never reformed at the end and green & red & blue & vio all remained separate but i think it would be interesting. there's a lot to be said for the friendship that i think would grow readily between zelda & shadow since it WAS her words and her capture by the dark cloud at the end that ultimately pushed him to aid the light (because he was scared FOR her, which is IMPORTANT) but for all that the friendship between vio and shadow was based on false pretenses there is absolutely no question that they DID grow attached to each other, enough that when vio attempted to smash the dark mirror shadow was very visibly upset and after the four links reunite vio is very much...i wouldn't say regretful, because he knew what he was going to have to do from the very beginning (because shadow WAS very much a threat and i don't blame him for it), but saddened. and the thing is! at the end, when shadow aids the four, they respond in kind—it's green who finds "vio" and instantly tries to get him to lean on him and offers him a hand to help him stand. it's blue that notices that "vio" is having trouble turning the sphere and turns it for him. it's vio that pleads with shadow as he lay dying to just hang in there, and it's green who ultimately tells shadow that he's one of them, which leads to shadow finally letting himself dissolve in the light. it is all the parts of link that surround him in death, and so i think it would stand to reason that if shadow were resurrected he should get to properly befriend the whole person whose parts all accepted him in the end. and honestly i think they'd get along great.

4/27/23 - breath of the wild

if i had to take a guess at which timeline botw falls under i think i'd place it as sometime in the distant future of the downfall timeline. i think it makes the most sense but also i think the adult timeline especially should be left alone because they did NOT create a whole timeline based around breaking the cycle of demise's curse only to tie it back in at the end of all things. i refuse to believe it. maybe the child timeline and the downfall timeline got entangled somehow but never the adult timeline. in my head the reason there are rito in botw when they shouldn't exist outside of the adult timeline is because they're really just fokka from zelda 2 who eventually broke free of monsterhood (or whatever) and changed their species name to the exact same thing because. why not. and then lost their history or something because botw takes place ten thousand years in the future. yadda yadda etc etc. they have more similarities appearance-wise to the fokka anyway & it would make more sense.

4/27/23 - the legend of zelda (1986)/zelda 2: adventure of link

back on my legend of zelda 1986/zelda 2 adventure of link bullshit again because it's just soooo much fun to me. the lore is my sandbox and by god i am playing in it. it's so so so so so SO interesting to me that this link never wielded the triforce of courage against ganon—he had the triforce of wisdom that he put back together and that was it! and then he takes the triforce of power from ganon's ashes! and he STILL didn't even have the triforce of courage!!! he doesn't even get the triforce of courage until six years later in aol and that's at the very end of the adventure AND it's literally only so he can make the wish to wake the sleeping zelda up!!! and he already HAD the triforces of power & wisdom at the end of aol which implies that for the six years between tloz and aol he was not only being specifically targeted by monsters for his blood but also he was just. carrying two pieces of the literal triforce around. NEITHER of which were the triforce of courage. and he didn't even have the master sword either. that's literally so swag of him. he really said who needs the triforce of courage. who needs the master sword. i'll kill ganon with a rock if i have to.

4/21/23 - the legend of zelda (1986)/zelda 2: adventure of link

i'm legitimately obsessed with tloz + aol lore. imagine you're ten years old and you kill ganon and then you spend the next six years with monsters literally out for your blood because they want to sacrifice you to bring ganon back. and there is absolutely no indication that this idea or curse or whatever it is goes away after aol which means that this guy is probably going to continually be hunted by monsters for his blood until he dies. SAD!

4/19/23 - four swords adventures manga

ahhh god the more i reread the four swords manga the more shadow manages to break my heart. he's so so lonely and the more time he spends with vio the more it becomes obvious because he latches onto him without a second thought even though vio is honestly sending out red flag after red flag (questioning shadow about ganon, about the dark mirror, about zelda, etc. clearly fishing for information) and right when he thinks he's finally made a real friend vio betrays him. which!! in vio's defense!! is understandable!! given the circumstances!!! but then. like. GOD. shadow pulls himself out of the dark mirror gasping and sobbing and pleading with ganon to forgive him because he doesn't want to come back out into the world of light because he's SCARED and ganon says no. you're not forgiven. complete your task. and he comes face-to-face with zelda and tries to push her away because he doesn't want to be pitied and zelda tells him she believes in him and MEANS it and it's the first time anyone's ever said that to him and instantly. INSTANTLY he tries to protect her. when the dark cloud comes and takes her away he tries to stand up against it even while he's weak and shaking like crazy because he's terrified of the light. and then of course he shapeshifts to look like vio so he can lead the others to the tower of winds because he wants to help zelda. to help the one person who looked at him, as weakened and pathetic as he was, and told him they believed in him and meant it. he was already planning on turning on vaati while he was with vio but it was zelda's belief in him that drove him to self-sacrifice. all it took was one person saying something kind to him honestly for him to change. isn't that something!!!!!!

4/18/23 - the wind waker

it's driving me fucking crazy that in the majority of the loz games the goal is to save hyrule but then you get to wind waker and the whole ending hinges on the destruction of hyrule. hyrule is washed away and so too is the curse. with the destruction of hyrule comes freedom and peace and most importantly, hope. daphnes says it himself! hope! i desire hope for these children! give them a future! wash away this ancient land of hyrule! let a ray of hope shine on the future of the world!!! it's just. ARGH