Cute little comic idea that I have for ww tetra/zelda and Ganondorf where its that one scene where Ganondorf is sitting next to her while Zelda’s in bed and she just asks “Do you think in some other lifetime we would’ve been friends?” And then Ganondorf pauses for a brief moment imagining all the scenarios of both him and Tetra being pirates and thieves and just simply answers “no” as he tucks Zelda in to bed.
a little messy… But I will drop it here and go have a cup of tea
And by him being a hyrule I mean him being a member of the hyrulean royal family, whose last name just happens to be hyrule.
"I was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule"- The Old Man (Botw)
A funny tidbit, but that could be why "Hyrule" chose his name (aside from him being the "Hero of Hyrule" of course). However, I think there is actually substantial evidence in the games to suggest that hyrule could actually be "Link Hyrule", descendant of the hyrulean royal family and "blood of the goddess".
Before we get into everything, let's make a quick list of what we know about Hyrule and his hyrule:
About Hyrule
Parents??? We know nothing about them, it's possible that hes been on his own for a while and never knew them (According to nintendo, he is 12 in Zelda I)
Obviously, he bears the spirit of the hero
He can cast magic without the use of any items
He has in the past and possibly in the present possessed the entire Triforce
About his Hyrule
After the Gold Era (legend's games basically) Hyrule entered the "Era of Decline". Exactly what this encaptures is not expressed by nintendo, but it can assumed that Hyrule was thrown into chaos and that things got pretty bad.
It is literally a wasteland
So throughout Zelda 2, it is stated that Hyrule's blood is needed to resurrect ganon. Think is kind of odd, because in none of the other games is the Heros blood a requirement in the resurrection of ganon. What IS frequently a requirement for Ganons resurrection is the sacrifice of Zelda (which is to say her blood). We can see this occur with the resurrection of Ganon in a Link to the Past.
The thing that all the Zeldas share and what I assume to be what makes thier blood so valuable is thier being "the blood of the goddess" AKA descendants of Hylia (Sky's Zelda). Therefore, the reason that Ganons minions would need Hyrules blood is not because it's the blood of the hero, but because it's the blood the goddess.
So, Hyrule is the only one the boys who can do magic without it being given to him or having to use an item. We see time use some magic, but all of his abilities are either channeled through his masks or were given to him by the sages in Ocarina of Time.
Time is given Dins fire in the Fire Temple (OOT)
Legend and Four regularly use magic, but only through items such as the four sword and fire rod.
Hyrule however, learns magic. His ability to do magic is innate and doesnt require any items. The only other characters I can think of who use magic like this are the zeldas and a couple of antagonists.
Most of the antagonists are either not hyrulean (such as Vaati, who is a minish and thus associated with magic) or associated with Ganon somehow, who can probably give them access to magic in some way.
So that leaves the Zeldas... who are descended from Hylia and thus have magic. Since Hyrule is hyrulean and definitely not in league with Ganon that just leaves the last option... being a descendant of Hylia and member of the royal gang.
At the end of a Link to the Past, Legend gains access to the whole triforce after defeating Ganon. He wishes on it and then it splits apart again, because he is not it's natural wielder. The hero is only the natural wielder of courage.
However, when Hyrule collects the whole triforce it stays with him. Why? If both Hyrule and Legend have the spirit of the hero, then why is Hyrule worthy of keeping the triforce and Legend not? Because Hyrule is natural weilder of both the triforce of courage as the incarnation of the hero and the triforce of wisdom as the blood of the goddess. The triforce of wisdom historically belongs to the zeldas, so it can be assumed that it is bound to the blood of the goddess. As for the triforce of power, it is often "taken" by Ganon. Since its nature is power, it would make sense for it to align itself with whoever seeks it (it being purest incarnation of power) out. Since Hyrule sought it out and took it, it chose to align with him.
In Breath of the Wild, we see that Flora also wields the entire triforce. (Evident by all 3 glowing pieces)
It is stated that this is a power passed down to her from her family. But the royal family has only ever passed down the triforce of wisdom not the whole thing... unless she had some potential ancestor with royal blood who some how assembled the whole thing and couldve passed it down thier family lineage...
There is something of a resemblance between them... or as much as there could be over 10,000 years.
Round baby face
Green Eyes (I'm pretty sure Hyrule has green eyes)
Although it's not clear what exactly happened during the era of decline, it is clear that things were looking bad for Hyrule. It is entirely possible that as the Kingdom declined, the hyrulean monarchy could've lost power and eventually been displaced. This would have led to thier descendants eventually blending into the populace.
So uh yah that's the theory!! I haven't played all of the games so I may have gotten some things slightly wrong. I doubt this is actually true do its probably more of a headcanon than a theory. This is my first contribution to this fandom though so yay!!
May add to this if I get more info!
ADS THAT SUDDENLY TAKE UP THE WHOLE PAGE
Oops I drew memes
there's a post somewhere about how ganondorf's death is often presented almost as a holy death, deeply dignified and with appropriate silence. i think the term the person used was like a kind of anti-martyrdom, like. "a holy death, but not of something good". i'm not sure if i'm using the terminology entirely correctly, but that's something that's always hit me. like. i don't think that comes from just the general seriousness of the plot, but also that there's a quiet acknowledgement that fate
itself was against him - and the inherent tragedy of that. like. they're So Close to digging just a little further and questioning that concept of fate + supposedly inherent character weakness in the first place. this is present in oot - zelda acknowledges him as pitiful, someone who couldn't control the triforce. and in tp, zelda seems to do something like a quiet prayer. this aspect of zelda herself isn't present in wind waker (iirc), but is embodied by the king, who directly compares himself.
That’s a concept that a friend of mine talks about a lot ( @betterbemeta ) in almost those exact words but I asked her and she said she wasn’t sure of the specific post, just that she didn’t get it from someone else.
But, yeah, I feel like... there’s this interesting sort of counter-narrative within the Zelda series, I think? There’s the main narrative, which is the Legend and the Cycle and that it is Correct to perpetuate the Cycle and live out the roles people are given.
But there’s also a lot of counterpoints, of things making it clear that the Cycle is hurting people, that you will not be rewarded or kept safe for perpetuating it- and in Wind Waker this is very interesting, because, a lot of the evidence points to Ganon’s stance- “Your gods abandoned you!” being correct.
Hyrule was destroyed. Most of its people were killed. Two young people who were active servants of the god at the time were murdered and nothing protected them. Ganon comes across as someone who’d know- because he’s acting as the Divine Opponent, here.
And there’s this scene, late in Wind Waker, where he reads Tetra’s dreams with his power.
This scene sticks with me, because it’s Ganon doing something unnecessary. He’s got no reason to treat Tetra hospitably at this point. He’s got no reason to tuck her into a bed, which he does, or acknowledge that she’s a child, or wonder who she is besides Zelda.
And, yet, we have this. unexpectedly introspective soft scene, and while it’s followed by the puppet Ganon fight, the things he says there don’t seem just like villainous trash talk, but, nearly a plea for these kids to realize how messed up their situation is. They’re allegedly agents of the gods who are being chewed up by their Fates, used and cast aside, and while he has an agenda in not wanting this to happen (as their given Fate is to be parties in his execution) there’s a bleak humor Wind Waker Ganon has about the situation that, to me, has never actually been contradicted within the Zelda games. Words to the contrary ring hollow. In practice, we watch Hyrule desolated, we watch its executioners throw him on vulnerable populations (in Twilight Princess, the Sages know enough of the modern Twili to recognize Midna in her cursed form- so they had to have known the people they were leaving at the mercy of a wounded, panicked Ganon who was nonetheless fully capable of killing a person with his bare hands at that point).
In Breath of the Wild, which doesn’t even depict Ganon as a person who can argue his point (though the sequel may shed new light on that), he still nonetheless seems correct about the nature of the cycle; Zelda is unabashedly a survivor of child abuse who was forced to pray in sacred springs starting at age seven.
BotW is basically the series’ most detailed thesis yet that the Cycle broke Link and Zelda and tore pieces from them they’re not getting back. Both of them lost a century. Zelda’s passions and interests were sublimated to force her into a passive role. People they knew and were close to died. Link’s habitual silence is depicted as a product of the anxiety that the hero role pressed on him, and he was also a human shield just to guarantee that of the Champions, Zelda at least could make it, that left him critically injured.
The only real coherent defense raised by the Cycle- which is meta-wise, “justified” by Skyward Sword, which establishes it as an unholy curse- is “this is the only way to save Hyrule” which is never challenged or argued or defended. It’s merely accepted. And we keep watching young, vulnerable kids following the paths laid out by their predecessors and being torn apart by these events.
Link and Zelda don’t look like people who are protected by benevolent gods that shine over them. Repeatedly, the deities of the Zelda setting are depicted as not especially loving. In A Link To The Past, the Triforce itself says it doesn’t care about good or evil, merely that Link has proven his worth and should now make a wish. Other characters in the setting describe it as fickle or a troublemaker. In Skyward Sword, Zelda, regaining Hylia’s memories and thus the clearest potential insight into how Hylia was thinking and feeling, states that Hylia obtained a mortal incarnation basically as bait for Link, who would be driven by compassion to protect his friend, and thus get functionally conned into acting as Hylia’s champion.
I think this is why fanworks that put the chosen three on the same side make sense, because, in this way, Ganon is more a contemporary to the heroes than the King of Hyrule, who, no matter how often he dies, never really has that sense of being a martyred hero who’s lost fragments of himself. Daphnes was able to choose his own death, and the death of his kingdom, on his own terms using the Wind Waker and then the Triforce; Rhoam controls the narrative at the beginning of BotW.
Ganon?
Just from what we know about BotW’s sequel (which is not much at all) Ganon is having a bad time. In a way, his fate seems to combine elements of Link and Zelda’s- he was confined for a long time in a death match with another force (Zelda), and he was heavily and brutally injured and may have lost consciousness (Link) only to awaken in an unfamiliar future where he’s been all but forgotten (both of them).
And part of this is the need that the games seem to have, to have everything be Ganon’s fault, but to never acknowledge or explore the relationships Ganon actually, has with the various entities he ostensibly commands. I love Wind Waker, but, as friends of mine have pointed out- there’s only flimsy excuses at best for Ganon to put the various boss monsters in the environments they’re found in. They’re themed to their environments so that they seem fitting elements, rather than something foreign placed there that’s disrupted an extant order.
It leads to this sense of Ganon more as a pariah than as a true Source Of Evil. Because he’s blamed for everything, including things that don’t actually seem to further any of his stated objectives and in fact, might even work against something he is stated to want (e.g. the withering of the Deku Sprouts in Wind Waker, which are stated to be a potential way to drain the Great Sea and leave the Land Below accessible once again- the big thing Ganon wants- but they’re stated to fail because of Ganon’s magic; or him outright saying he wants the sun to shine on Hyrule when earlier in the game Daphnes accuses him of cursing the entire sea into a state of darkness because he wants everything to be dark)
Ganon’s not blameless and harmless- like. he absolutely did shit and is rarely sorry for it or sorry but not enough to stop- but, it definitely feels like his role as Hyrule’s Enemy is a degree outside of his control, much as the Hero or Princess roles are out of Link and Zelda’s. This is a game series about people being forced into roles that cause them to suffer, and then the end takeaway is I guess It Was Worth It because the Bad Man Died.
It’s this situation where the narrative tells us we are dealing with a demon man who hates everything and the only holiness or justice can come from his death, and then at the same time we’re shown a guy who is a power-hungry jerk with a large list of offscreen and frankly mystifying crimes that don’t seem to add up with anything he seems to want or value or even his sense of humor. And it ends up leaving the whole Cycle... feeling rather bleak.
Thanks to @cy-the-angst-maker who enlightened me about the Links’ canon heights according to Nintendo….and ohmigod, they are all shorter than I could have comprehend. Especially Twilight’s canon height…
In a summary:
Wild: 4′10″ (147cm)
Twilight: 4′6″ (137cm)
Time / Sky: around 5′3″ to 5′4″ (160cm to 162cm)
Warriors: 5′6″ (168cm)
Toon Link: 3′4″ (102cm)
Classic Link: estimated to be around 3′11″ (119cm)
Btw I am around Time/Sky’s height. These boys are smaller than I expected.
As much as I find these hilarious, I’ll stick to the general fandom headcanon that Twilight is one of the taller Links. Especially in comparison to Wild lol.
BONUS: I made memes and ran with it
Keep reading
I just want to see how many of there are because there are a lot of us.
Reblog for sample size, please!
Why is he so well drawn… like this isn’t an edit… someone drew that face…
If you look at their progression of interactions through the comic, their relationship has a very distinct storyline/character arc and it's really really cool ok
So starting at the beginning (their first and early interactions).
Time likes Wind (I mean who doesn't) they have the hero connection, and there's a lot for Time to see himself in him.
Time doesn't underestimate Wind like some of the others, he knows perfectly well what's it's like to be a young hero (way too young like geez) and still be perfectly capable.
And then everyone splits up. They enter their new timeline/era thing through the portal and they separate into groups to try and find information, and Time and Wind go together. (why is that? Maybe Wind went with who he knew wouldn't underestimate him, and maybe Time wanted to get to know him a little more. Many possibilities.)
With the group split they end up fighting a bunch of monsters (of course). And the scene after the battle is just... Time takes Wind’s sword and compliments it, the art is so soft, it's just... it's the start of them have a really caring connection
ALSO- TIME QUOTING SHADE TO WIND TIME QUOTING SHADE TO WIND
Look of a hero, discipline with the blade... those were phrases used in twilight princess by Hero's Shade (Time's skeleton ghost thingy?) when he’s teaching Twilight how to fight and become the hero he needs to be. And the fact that Time is quoting that to be Wind's mentor and guide him as a young hero is so cool. (So. Cool.)
And at the end, after the battle, Wind asks him that question, “I was wondering... about your original journey” And Time actually answers Wind's question. He tells him about his journey, and this starts a whole new chapter in their relationship. Because guess who went into detective mode? Wind.
He starts theorizing, and actually tries to get a chance to bring it up at first (“speaking of history-”), but eventually finds (makes) a moment to explain his findings.
And Time's skeptical, of course he is.
There's a few reasons why, but here's the main one: Twilight. In this scene where Wind is explaining why he believes he is the hero after Time, his descendant, Twilight, makes two appearances.
But Twilight is not part of the conversation. He's sitting a distance away, and we have no indication that he even knows they’re talking. Yet Time still looks over to him, because Twilight is his descendant. He KNOWS Twilight is his successor, but in this conversation they puzzle out a bit more of the timeline split.
And Time realizes... he has two hero's that came after him. Twilight in the main path, the one that Time previously believed was the only timeline, but there's actually more...
And at the end of that section, Time’s a little overwhelmed (who wouldn't be when you're figuring out you broke the flow of time...)
But, this is the start of Time and Wind’s relationship with Time knowing Wind's one of his successors
Yet even though he's overwhelmed, he touches Wind and acknowledges the facts he's puzzled out (and it's so so sweet)
Buuuuuut this starts a whole new chapter in their relationship. For the section where they’re puzzling out the timeline, and the next, look at their faces. You can see it in those conversations, they're uncertain. Time is trying to reshape his understanding of the world (he’s shaken and looks pretty tired, probably because he found out he left a whole timeline without a hero whoopsies)- but he also cares about Wind and wants to be there for him as well. And Wind looks very nervous around Time. He's excited that he knows he's the hero he heard about before him, but he's nervous about getting closer to him like he wants to.
Then Time goes into detective mode.
And there’s one thing Time really starts wondering: how the hell did Wind’s hyrule get flooded? It was not, in fact, a giant ocean when he left that timeline. So he asks, and Wind answers, but they don’t really start timeline talk with the rest of the group yet.
And I would like to point out that apparently Time and Wind have like. Half the brain cells of the entire group. Because we see literally no one else (at this point) has had whole sections where they’re puzzling out the timeline, but these two are over here obsessing over it lol.
After they have those talks about timelines and kingdoms, they don’t have all the answers yet, but what they have established is this: in Wind’s timeline, he is Time’s successor, and they both want to be close because of that.
And then Time just like!! Adopts Wind :)
With all this build up and conversations, we now see Time and Wind spending so much more time together.
In the group they start ending up walking near each other more often, and they start fighting closer together in battles a bit more
But it’s not one sided- we see Time keeping an eye on and watching out for Wind during battle, as well as Wind defending Time when a skeleton was like. Falling on them. And they’re just working and fighting for each other and it’s awesome.
And it’s cool because through the storyline we see the progression: Time’s the hero dad for everybody, but then he and Wind fight together, and start talking about their journeys to each other, then puzzling out the timeline, then acknowledging that Wind is a successor to Time, and asking questions, and then we see them get so much closer throughout the storyline.
(And Time is still so close to Twilight obviously, he’s his descendant and they have such a special bond but then he’s also developed this unique relationship with Wind too and it’s great)
And so it’s just evolved into a really sweet relationship because Wind looks up to Time, and Time is kind of his mentor, but at the same time he respects Wind’s strength.
And the fact that in the first place Time was willing to tell Wind about his journey simply because he asked, leading to all these discussions and getting closer… well. They care for each other, and it shows.
:)
this might be weird to ask, but how do I critically look at another person's writing and implement what I like in their writing in my own writing? I've been having trouble improving in my writing, and frankly Im not sure how to go about doing that, even. It's easy to see what I like about another person's writing, but hard to pinpoint exactly why...
THIS IS NOT WEIRD TO ASK. It is, in fact, the most important question EVER.
Re-read. If you get halfway into a chapter and think, Wow this chapter is super creepy–I wonder how they did that. Or get to the end of a book and think, I feel the poignancy of the fragility of human life in an inherently volatile economic system–I wonder how the writer made me feel that way… Go back and re-read that shit.
Read slowly. When you read like a reader, you read pretty fast. When you go in for your second, or third, or fourth re-read of a passage, chapter, or book that you want to know more about, read it slowly. Really. Slowly.
Read for technique, not content. Readers read for content (”In this paragraph, Damien gave Harold a classified envelope.”). Writers read for technique. (”In this paragraph, the writer made me feel curious about the contents of the envelope by giving sensory details about its appearance and weight.”)
Ask the right questions. They usually start with HOW: How did the writer make me feel? How did they accomplish that?
Read small. Did a chapter make you feel sad? Find out WHERE EXACTLY. What paragraph, sentence, or WORD did it for you? Was it a physical detail? A line of dialogue? A well-placed piece of punctuation? Stories are made of words and sentences. Narrow it down.
Practice. Reading like a writer is a skill that takes time to develop. Over time, you’ll get better at it!
How about y’all? Anything to add to this list? I made it off the top of my head so I’m sure I’m forgetting something. What have been your experiences with learning to read like a writer?
Hope this helps!
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The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo