3/27/24 - the minish cap

to be quite honest i think in the minish cap as zelda grows up she's like. constantly armed to the teeth. swords and hidden daggers on her at all times. a collection of weapons on display on her wall. etc. not because she's anticipating an attack or anything (though ever since vaati attacked she thinks it's good to be prepared Just In Case) but because link is a blacksmith and just keeps making her more and more weapons. i like to think that someone (maybe a chancellor or something) tries to be like "hey....link.....don't you think maybe flowers or jewelry would be...more appropriate a gift......for the princess......?" and link just looks at them like they're stupid and goes Why the fuck would I bring her flowers if they're just gonna wilt and die within a day. and then zelda appears behind the chancellor like a demon in the night going Yeah why the fuck would he bring me flowers and the chancellor screams at the top of their lungs. i ALSO think zelda would get in the habit of gifting him shields in return. like the little shield she won for him at the picori festival isn't going to protect him forever (it was already so tiny when they were kids! and yet link is still so fucking attached to it that it apparently made it all the way to the hero of winds in the wind waker still usable. truly wild) and so she secretly gets into armorsmithing and whenever she has free time she starts making shields for him and so whenever he shows up at the castle like Hey. New sword. Here you go. Bye. she immediately goes WAIT WAIT WAIT DON'T LEAVE YET and then throws the newly-made shield at him with the full force of one of the falling boulders on mt. crenel. so link now also has a bunch of shields on display on HIS wall. and since his house is small compared to a Fucking Castle cleaning has never been so difficult. he still refuses to take any of them down.

3/6/24 - four swords adventures manga

okay so. i went a little bit nuts with my fsa posts on other platforms, so here's a mega-post that compiles them all into one:

shadow’s sacrifice being ultimately selfish in nature—wanting to save the one person who was somewhat kind to him without any strings attached for the first time in his short life—is one of the best things about the whole thing tbh. like here he is coming off the ass end of vio’s betrayal and being vaporized by the light of the four sword and begging ganon not to revive him because he’s absolutely terrified of the light and ganon ignoring him and dragging him back into it anyway and suddenly he comes face to face with zelda, shaking and sobbing like the world’s most pathetic little leaf in a hurricane, and like. the thing about zelda’s words to him is that they aren’t even. about shadow??? as a person??? to be honest??? she looks at him and says he can be a hero because he’s a LINK. because despite her previous hostility with him she sees this warped image of her best friend come crawling out of the dark mirror all hurt and scared and “faint and twisted echo” or not…he still wears the face of her best friend. and because of that i think she IS kind of projecting her own emotions about seeing her friend’s face in so much pain. i mean, hell, when the dark cloud takes her, it’s LINK she calls for. when she KNOWS that shadow and link aren’t the same person. but projection or not, she gave shadow the first truly kind words he ever heard in his life, even if they were less about HIS character and more about link’s. so when she calls for link, he answers. and that’s what drives him to take on vio’s image, to aid the other links, to smash the chair into the dark mirror and kill himself to take vaati down with him. BUT! one thing i do love is that his ACTUAL acceptance of the light came when green told him that he was one of them. one panel that drives me absolutely rabid is when shadow is still disguised as vio and green finds him and instantly starts fussing over him—asking him if he’s hurt, if he’s alright, telling him to lean on him, etc., and when green reaches out for his hand shadow reaches back for him with his own trembling hand for just a moment before rejecting the offer (“don’t worry about me.” in the fan translation/“i… i’m fine.” in the viz translation) and redirecting green’s attention to the fact that zelda’s in danger. but when green (the second person ever to be kind to him without strings attached, even though, as with zelda, it wasn’t strictly for HIM at first) looks down at him and smiles and tells him that he’s one of them (that he isn’t alone), THAT’S when shadow reaches towards the light and accepts it without fear, wholly and completely. THAT’S him reaching back for green’s hand—when green looks at him and actually sees HIM, as his own person, and still counts him as one of them anyway, even after everything. and given that shadow is still alive once the links become link as a whole again, no matter how much i think link and shadow would grumble at and argue with each other for shadow’s villain spree and vio’s betrayal and whatnot, that interaction is always going to be present in their minds. it’s gonna be like “congratulations douchebag! now you’re stuck with me no matter what! sucks to be you!” on both their ends and zelda is very kindly not going to point out that they’re both grinning like morons when they turn away from each other after butting heads for the millionth time. you see my vision

keeping in line with the 2/24/24 post, i think when link and shadow aren’t Quite out of the “convoluted apology” stage yet but they’re out of the “every conversation turns into a giant argument” stage link drops some line or another about shadow basically being family because now they live in the same house and do everything together and whatnot and shadow gets all snippy about it. like “oh i’m SORRY i didn’t realize family STABBED EACH OTHER IN THE BACK and BLASTED THEM WITH THE FULL FORCE OF THE FOUR SWORD” and link doesn’t even have a comeback for that because now he’s just sitting there thinking of the whole situation with blue and going “Well. Y'know. I did very much blast my dad with the Four Sword. And he’s still family. So.” and that actually shuts shadow up for two seconds before they go right back to sitting back-to-back like two pouting five-year-olds who don’t actually want to be arguing but are still arguing over EVERYTHING that happened nonetheless. i am once again touting the “middle school playground drama” comparison.

it’s so incredibly funny to me how hard green was mother-henning shadow-as-vio and how when he realized something was Up because shadow slipped up on his wording it really didn’t change anything at all. green literally went from celebrating shadow’s “death” to seeing him a shaking trembling mess and, even after he discovers “vio” was actually shadow the whole time, being like Alright so I’ve decided I don’t care about anything else he’s done. I’m adopting him as one of us. He’s ours now. Objections will be ignored. like that entire sequence is SO incredibly funny from that perspective. shadow got attached to vio incredibly fast but i think the speed with which green (and blue tbh. did you even see how upset blue looked when shadow died) got attached to shadow was somehow frighteningly faster. shadow is going to regain his body in post-canon and the essence of green in link is suddenly going to snap to the forefront of link’s mind and link is going to suddenly become hyperaware of every time shadow displays any form of weakness (presumably because he’ll no longer be attached to the dark mirror) and pounce on him with blankets and fretting like a goddamn force of nature. and the idea of that is SO fucking hilarious to me. it's like this:

vio, during his time with shadow: ohhh i know i’ve gotten attached to him but this can’t last…. he’s our enemy…. i have to put an end to his reign of terror….

green, 0.2 seconds after realizing the “vio” he’s been fussing over is shadow and deciding he actually doesn’t care: Ohhh Never Mind The Atrocities. This Saultry Little Binch Is So Fragile. We’re Keeping Him

was the situation technically more complicated than that? yes, but this is a funnier way of putting it, which means i automatically have to post about it. it's in my nature.

another funny idea i had is that i like to think shadow came out of the mirror looking exactly like link and then met his dragon and decided that its huge fangs and claws and colorings were the coolest things ever and then made himself look the same way. so he could be SO scary and awesome and not a total wimp like link. do you get me. when he changed forms to look like link to fool link’s dad at the beginning of the manga that wasn’t him casting an illusion that was him REMOVING his illusion. if anyone finds out the deep dark secret of him looking as boring and cringe as link does it’ll cut him deeper than getting hit by the four sword or vio’s betrayal ever did. he’ll kill himself again. he's hanging out with zelda for the day or something because he doesn’t have any other friends and he’s just complaining about how boring and stupid and dumb link is and he goes “he doesn’t even have any FANGS. or CLAWS. how people take him seriously in fights when he looks like a total PANSY ASS is BEYOND me.” and zelda is just sitting there very carefully not mentioning the fact that when she saw him being forced out of the dark mirror there was a split second, so brief she would’ve missed it if she’d blinked, that she saw link’s green clothes and pale skin before shadow became more conscious and his skin became gray and the fangs and claws started elongating and his color palette switched to “Emo Boy” instead of “Forest Elf” and instead she just goes Well. That’s your opinion. Now shut up I have paperwork

okay something something the reason light hurt shadow so badly throughout the manga is because he was hooked up to the dark mirror and a common thing about difference between shadows and true darkness is that a shadow can’t exist without light; a shadow is cast from a light source, after all. darkness is the total absence of light. so when shadow shattered the dark mirror light stopped hurting him because he was no longer being actively powered by magic derived from light’s absence and instead reverted to his truest essence i.e. a shadow which explains why ganon saying “while the dark mirror exists, you live” (or whatever the fuck) was a fucking lie. he’d live no matter what once given consciousness with a bit of magic. the power of darkness simply gave him a body. and since a shadow is cast from light, since a shadow belongs in the world of light just as much as it does the world of darkness, if there’s a way to give him a body via the power of darkness there’s a way to give him a body via the power of light. from the end of the manga onwards light would have no effect on shadow so long as dark magic isn’t used on him again because fundamentally he DOES belong to the light just as much as link and zelda do.

3/3/24 - community!

hi! so, i think something really important to fandom as a whole is community—fandom comes from people engaging with each other about a common interest, after all! and with tumblr being...the way it is now (if you don't use tumblr/don't really know what's going on...well, let's just say that the stability of the site as a whole is currently crumbling. there's a decently active LOZ community on pillowfort, it seems like, but pillowfort seems to be struggling financially and it doesn't seem like it'll remain the most stable site either. but! if you're familiar with dreamwidth (which has been running since 2009 and is still going strong), i created a new LOZ community on there called LOZ World, in the hopes that i can foster a decently active LOZ community there as well! and if nothing else, i'll certainly be posting there quite often myself. if you're not familiar with dreamwidth—it's a blog hosting platform that's a code fork of livejournal, with the ability to customize your blog theme to your hearts' content. i've seen many people complain that dreamwidth is "too dead" to do anything on, but i don't think this is true at all—you just have to put in some effort to search for and engage with people the same way you would here on neocities! and actually being active in communities helps a whole lot with that, haha. anyway! this has been my shameless promo—if you're a zelda fan who prefers a quieter internet scene but still wants a place to post your fandom thoughts, fic, analyses, etc. in the hopes of connecting with others who might agree with you (or just want to have discussions about your favorite or least favorite games, theories, whatever!) then that's what this community aims to be! whoever reads this, i'd really enjoy having you there and hearing your thoughts, if nothing else <3

2/24/24 - four swords adventures manga

the more i dwell on the fsa manga the more i’m so sure that the most interesting character to think about is link. the story begins and ends with him. in fact the story begins with link being showcased as an arrogant little dweebus middle schooler and the entire rest of the story was him quite LITERALLY being peeled like an orange and split apart into sections for the world to see and. 1) an orange that has been peeled cannot magically become un-peeled. okay well according to the four sword it can but the orange will always know the sensation of what it was like to be bare and split and fractured even if everything’s back to the way it was before. and that’s a very odd thing to grapple with because if the orange is split into sections then do those sections not become objects in their own right? do the phantom echoes of the sections not arise when the orange is magically resealed into a whole orange? this metaphor is getting away from me and i need to go to bed.

red and blue and green and vio were all sections of link with different personalities who all had the chance to grow on their journey but they were still just sections. link reforms and has to deal with the constant annoying thought of “…so did i do that or did red/blue/green/vio do that or did we do that or—” before he decides it doesn’t really matter anyway and goes back to bashing criminals’ heads in and acting like a dweebus because. hello. middle schooler. attention span of a rock (and thinking about what he was capable of doing when he was split [read: blue and vio] freaks him out a little bit so he’s not going to think about it). and also 2) with shadow literally being alive at the end of the manga i think that opens the door to the most convoluted apology session ever. vio was a part of link but link is not a part of vio because he’s the WHOLE so it’s just a whole back and forth between them like:

link: okay. um. i’m sorry for betraying you

shadow: YOU didn’t betray me. i don’t KNOW you. we interacted for FIVE SECONDS. VIO betrayed me.

link: okay well vio was sorry for betraying you (even though it had to be done [←he does not say this part out loud]).

shadow: HOW WOULD YOU EVEN KNOW THAT?!

link: BECAUSE I AM HIM!

shadow: NO YOU’RE NOT!

link: OKAY FUCK YOU STAY UPSET HOPE YOUR DAY GETS WORSE LIKE ACTUALLY!!!

and this continues like a cycle until zelda smacks some sense into them. because again. middle schoolers. it’s like playground drama between two twelve-year-olds fighting over their failed roleplaying stint with their OCs if it involved near-death experiences. do you guys see what i’m trying to get at here

1/12/24 - the legend of zelda/zelda II: the adventure of link

alright i'm going to be insane about the zeldas in the same way that fangirls are insane about link because SOMEBODY has to be. i think a LOT about aol zelda and how it must feel to have been put in a cursed sleep during a golden age of peace and prosperity only to wake up to a post-apocalyptic kingdom (that is STILL getting hit with monster attack after monster attack, as per the manual. all that rebuilding that link and og zelda tried to do and the manual still opens with "hyrule was on the road to ruin.") that has changed so drastically that there's absolutely nothing recognizable about it anymore. where a great forest once sat, a graveyard so big that you can't even see where it ends when you're standing in it now sits. everyone is dead; if they're not, they're either living in one of the tiny villages that have sprung up during the last six years without ganon or they might still be living in caves like they did before the fall of ganon. castle town (or what remains of it) as a result of suffering so many attacks for the last god knows how long, seems like it's on its last legs. everything you loved, gone.

and aol zelda, being a princess from a golden age with an older brother who was set to take the throne besides...she doesn't know how to fight. i doubt she'd ever been in a difficult situation in her life before everything with her brother and the magician happened. she grew up with handmaidens tending to her every need, extravagant dresses and jewelry, and feasts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. she never learned to walk stealthily or mask her presence in any way, which i'm sure is. fun. for link to deal with while trying to escort her back to hyrule castle from north palace while being hunted for his blood by monsters. he suggests that she take her heels off so that she won't keep tripping over roots and holes and her own two feet and she looks at him in shock that he would suggest she let her feet touch the nasty ground. i mean!!! i bet she even gets blisters on the way there because she's never had to walk such a distance before. and this is hardly her fault! it's just the product of the era in which she was raised!!! but it makes her a liability nonetheless. hero of hyrule i salute you for somehow getting this lady back to hyrule castle without one or both of you dying.

and then they get back to castle and meet up with og zelda (who finally managed to get the story of WHY link just up and disappeared out of impa and is not happy about it) and aol zelda is just kind of hit in the face with the fact that. this is her last living relative. this is her older brother's descendant. maybe if she looks close enough she thinks she can see him in her hair, the shape of her mouth, her nose. but then conversations begin and she's thrown off again by how...unlike a princess this princess zelda seems to be (at least by her standards) because og zelda was born and raised in this war-torn kingdom.

(what use were handmaidens when the castle was under siege? what use were extravagant dresses and jewelry when she was ten years old and shattering the triforce of wisdom and running around the kingdom to hide them in the underworld in the desperate hope that it would be enough to keep ganon from getting his hands on it? what was a feast when she was trapped in a ring of fire in the pits of death mountain? and with what food? the sheer amount of destruction present in the original legend of zelda (people living in caves, having set up SHOP in caves, absolutely NO villages or even the remnants of them to be found) indicates that this wasn't just an overnight thing; clearly, ganon's army had to have been attacking for some time and cutting down everything and everyone in their path to get to the castle and steal the triforce of power. what people are there to tax? to operate how a regular monarchy usually does? the past six years weren't just based around the rebuilding of homes and buildings, it was based around the rebuilding of EVERYTHING. it would not surprise me if og zelda's actions before the game and the slaying of ganon by link were quite literally the only things that convinced the people to stay within hyrule's borders: a heroic little princess, even if her title hardly holds that much weight anymore, who would risk her life to defend her land, and the arrival of a little hero who defeated ganon once and for all, who wields the triforces of wisdom and power both. maybe there was a chance in hell that this kingdom would persevere and rise to its former glory after all.)

she doesn't speak in pleasantries and implications like aol zelda does, because she was not raised in an era that permitted her to be anything but blunt. she's carried the weight of this straggling kingdom since her parents died (presumably killed in ganon's first attack, since they're literally never mentioned in either of the manuals) and because of that she carries herself more like the knights aol zelda knew in her time than the delicate nobility she was raised around (and raised to be, herself). she has a sword strapped to her back (because what fool in this era would leave themselves undefended no matter where they were) and the stiffness with which she wears her dress (that looks like it's seen more than a few scuffles, but so does the rest of her land—it serves as a reflection) indicates that she isn't quite used to wearing it, and she isn't—just because link was gone didn't mean the monster attacks stopped, and she can hardly fight them off to the best of her ability alongside the motley crew of people willing to defend their new homes if she's weighed down by a dress, no matter that impa constantly chides her for risking her life when she's all that remains of the royal bloodline.

(which, clearly, wasn't true.)

and aol zelda doesn't know what to do with it. what to do with herself, either, because what was the point in waking up at all if this was the world she returned to? but, eventually (and with impa's meddling), she and og zelda start to talk. to establish a bond, of sorts, as each other's last remaining family, even if og zelda has as little idea as to what to do with her as aol zelda does (would this be what she would have been in another life? a happier life? a princess who turned heads by walking into a room not with authority, but with beauty? a princess who was soft-spoken, gentle, unscarred, who had a kind word for everybody and longingly watched the sway of the trees below from the castle window for fear of the monsters that lurked in them? it's baffling to think about. she cannot comprehend a world filled with such softness, that someone once could have wandered through the forest pathways without fear. and yet, is that not the world she seeks to build for what still remains of her people?). it's barely anything, and there is always something calling og zelda's attention away, but it's a start. and, with time, perhaps aol zelda learns what it is to wield a sword, and og zelda learns what systems the hyrule of the golden age had in place that allowed it to prosper so. and when og zelda finally allows herself to be named the queen in full, aol zelda stands at her side, and thinks no longer of her brother when she looks at her.

1/10/24 - skyward sword

i finally finished skyward sword!!!! oh my god, what a game. what a GAME. everything, from the story to the characters to the music to the art design, was SO incredible. granted, i will say the designs of the boss monsters were a little......weak—looking at tentalus, scaldera, moldarach, and the imprisoned here—but with how good everything else is, who even cares?? god, i can't think of a time during the whole game that i wasn't having an absolute blast with the whole thing. and at the end, when fi said goodbye, i started crying like a BABY. it has EASILY gotten into my top five zelda games of all time. definitely on the "games i'm going to replay in the distant future" list. i can't even describe how good of a game it was. if you've never played it, i 10000000% recommend it. holy shit.

10/11/23 - 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. :)

8/23/23 - 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 :(

7/19/23 - 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