Thinking about that timeline merge theory there was for BotW/TotK, and if the latest of the 3 main timelines' Links are involved in whatever the plot of that would be it gets very funny since you'd have:

OG Link, Hero of Courage from The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link, at the end of the 'Downfall Timeline'

Saved not 1 but 2 Zeldas

Can cast magic without needing a staff

Does not know what a Ganondorf or a Master Sword is

The Four Links II, Heroes of Light from Four Swords Adventure, at the end of the 'Child Timeline'

Four of them (and Shadow Link)

Contributes to their timeline's rapidly decreasing Main Villain count by offing Vaati

Knows somewhat about Ganondorf, maybe not what a Master Sword is.

Engineer Link, Hero of Spirits from Spirit Tracks, at the end of the 'Adult Timeline'

Has 2 or 3 jobs at a young age.

Knows how to operate a train

Only knows about Ganondorf and the Master Sword because his old uncle Niko told him about them through paper cutout shows. Never fought a Ganon.

Probably the funniest lineup of Links to cross over together.

some of my thoughts on link, zelda, and the champions

this post actually started off with me trying to answer the last part of this anon's ask, and then it spiraled into something else, so i'm going to have to make another post about the actual idea 😭 for now, you can have this long-ass fucking thinkpiece i typed up because i love the champions dearly and i wanted a much larger presence from them as i played botw. this post is really long so if you want to read it, please sit down and have a snack while you read.

so the last part of anon's original ask was about the champions singing together and the idea of a found family—

anonymous asked:

Also: imagine all champions, Link and Zelda hanging out on one of the Divine Beasts and singing a song together (i am very weak to champions being a found family)

like you're so #real for this anon. i honestly do hope we get more champions content in TOTK because nintendo completely missed on not expanding on a found family dynamic between link, zelda, and the champions. sure there's the champion's ballad DLC and age of calamity (i haven't played either of these. sorry. i will soon!), but that's not.. they're still dead in the DLC and AoC isn't considered canon i think it's more of an alternative timeline? so that doesn't really count.

me personally i think daruk and urbosa are very mother and father, and they probably were if riju and yunobo are their direct descendants (which is a whole other rabbit hole in itself; urbosa and daruk died most likely leaving little children and spouses behind ㅠㅠ). and maybe that is the point; daruk is the rock (because he's a goron lol) that keeps the family together and in the botw memories is seen to be taking initiative to lead and tell the other champions to get to their divine beasts when the calamity awakens. he’s steadfast and encouraging and jovial and that’s very father of him! as for urbosa, she straight up mothers zelda and link in-game, she's basically zelda's maternal figure after zelda's mom dies. she's not a stepmom, she's the mother that stepped up 💪❤️

mipha bears the Eldest Daughter Curse™ and revali is the moody teenager who’s Not going through a phase, it’s a LIFESTYLE MOM!!!1!1!1!1 and imo link and zelda kinda give goofy twin siblings (imagine like the pine twins) vibes to me

i like the headcanon that link had a younger sister pre-calamity, but i’d like to add my own twist to that. assuming that link used to live in hateno village, what if link's parents split after the birth of his younger sister, with his father taking link and moving closer to hyrule castle to fulfill his duty as a knight, and his mother not wanting to get involved with the war against the calamity and taking his sister to stay in hateno? link must have been really young at the time and barely remembers being able to play with his little sister :( so even if he had a sibling, he was basically raised alone for most of his life. and if his father was a knight of hyrule, i doubt that he could have been the most present father to link either... with zelda's mother dying when she was young and her father being a complete dick, that makes both link and zelda the "only child" kids that were raised in less than desirable familial conditions. and so, i think link and zelda would have their own difficulties integrating into this found family dynamic with the champions.

now i'm not an only child (i have demons for siblings tbh), but i think both link and zelda are very independent people who feel like they can only rely and trust themselves with the way they've been raised. it takes a lot for both of them to learn to be vulnerable and trust others, and they're very much not used to the mismatched deck of personalities they have to deal with within the champions, that being jolly father daruk, very cutthroat mother urbosa, sweet and soft-spoken mipha, and dickhead ass bitch bird revali. how can they navigate through these relationships with their lonely childhoods swept up in prophecies of old? it's much easier than you think and it has to do with anon's idea: strengthening rapport with each other by singing together atop a divine beast >:]

ok i'm joking, i think that's more the apex of the roadmap to becoming a found family, but it's a very cute idea 🥺 after link and zelda are finally cool with each other, there are so many opportunities for each of them to bond with the other champions individually. there's of course zelda falling asleep on mama urbosa in vah naboris, link and daruk have their father-son bonding time by daruk protecting link from getting smashed to a pulp by volcanic boulders, etc etc, but what about mipha taking zelda to all the monuments that detail zora history throughout the domain so that zelda can study them? what about revali teaching link how to use the paraglider so that he can actually hit targets at the flight range and get a chance to finally settle the score between him and link? i actually like that idea a lot, because then we could get an explanation as to why the paraglider even exists in the botw universe (revalink for the win ehehe). nintendo, my dear friend, there could be so much more to this world that you've introduced to us.

on one hand, of course botw is narratively focused on link and zelda and calamity ganon, and mechanically about the open-world map, shrines/divine beasts, etc, that break free from traditional zelda conventions. but it leaves the champions to only be side characters that, though they played critical roles in handling the divine beasts, are nothing more than ghostly figures with a handful of one-dimensional character traits that only create a further disconnect between the current world of hyrule vs. its pre-calamity past. which is why we get champion's ballad and age of calamity, which both somewhat expands on the champions as characters, but never more than giving them a few more traits and interactions that, to me personally, feel empty and inadequate. i want to have these intimate interactions with the champions as characters in the botw map, ones that i can walk up to chat with as though they were sidon or beedle or a random npc traveler. i want to feel close to the champions, and nintendo, though with weak attempts, doesn't give me that.

the picture that purah takes of the champions is so important to me. this right here is peak found family, a group of the most mismatched individuals that somehow meld perfectly together and balance each other out, and we only receive it through the DLC. that's so stupid. sorry nintendo, i want more than three minute long memories of a singular moment in a past life, i want more than npcs telling me who i used to be. i want king dorephan to tell us about the time zelda fell off of a waterfall and mipha immediately jumped after her to save her clumsy ass. i want to look through historical records of the gerudo and find one about urbosa launching daruk at the mouth of a molduking and daruk chewing her out for it later. i want elder kaneli gossip with me about an old rumor about how revali and the hylian champion of the past used to be found asleep together on the floor of the flight range's hut after a long night of training. i want the world of botw to give me signs and stories about how close the champions were with each other and to make my heart ache, to wish desperately to have known them, instead of like, 20 memories that only serve the plot, or honestly don't at all. but i digress!

i know for some people, the presence of the champions were meant to teach link about tragedy and loss and the effect of war and ruin and evil and cherishing your loved ones or whatever, but i simply did not get that message. that was not what i perceived the champions to be, because to me, the game lacked showing the relationships link and zelda had with the champions. like okay, you died and you also happened to know me. what if link doesn't really remember them at all? then what?

you receive twenty or so memories about the champions when including the DLC, and yes i do concede it gives us some more insight about their characters, but it doesn't do much more than that. the cutscene where mipha moves vah ruta to ready its lasers at the castle, where she wishes to see her father and sidon one more time, especially is an excellent example of emphasizing their significance to the people around them, to us as players and spectators to this hyrule... i want more of that.

i could be wrong about some of the stuff i've said, so disclaimer again that i haven't played the DLC or age of calamity, and maybe you do feel closer to the champions when you play those games! fanmade fic and art and headcanons have been really great ways of helping me view them in a multi-dimensional way, but going off the game's content itself, the champions feel like hollow spectres of people we never truly remember or get to know. maybe that's what they're supposed to feel like, but i don't want to feel that way about them. i'm too attached to them now, and i want to get to know them! curse you nintendo!!!

Hang on. I'm being a turkey again.

⚠️Totk Spoilers/timeline speculation ahead.⚠️

I know it's a commonly held belief that all the timelines merged for BOTW/TOTK. But like... what if they didn't?

Follow me here.

What if, for the TOTK ancient past, we're looking at a timeline split so far back that it DOES pre-date Skyward Sword? We see a good amount of ruins, and there's enough technological overlap between the ancient past in Skyward Sword and Tears of the Kingdom, to conclude that the tech in Skyward Sword is old Zonai tech.

Now, this also means the "Ancient Robots" are actually constructs. This makes sense. There's some overlap in functionality and tasks there.

The timeline split isn't with Ganondorf's attack, and it isn't with the Zonai. It's with Zelda, who causes a butterfly effect the moment she arrives in the past. Her existence in that time causes the chain reaction that leads to her own birth.

Her presence leads to the sealing of Ganondorf; on that, I digress. The sealing of Ganondorf leads to the first Calamity, as mentioned in Breath of the Wild. The battle leads to 10,000 years of peace(no Ganon). Then Zelda is born. Her birth leads into the second Calamity, but doesn't directly cause it. They must coincide because she must go under the castle. She must go under the castle to awaken Ganondorf* and pick up the secret stone that causes the split in the timeline and her very existence(Oraboris anyone?).

Now, to elaborate on what I previously digressed: Zelda's presence in the ancient past led to Ganondorf being sealed. You might hate this part, but it's vital to this theory, so I'm sorry in advance.

Zelda's arrival causes Ganondorf to revolt in the way that he does. He uses the puppet of her to bait Sonia into turning her back to him so he can kill her and take her secret stone. W/o Zelda, he doesn't do that, Sonia lives, and he never gets a secret stone. He does still revolt in an attempt to get better resources for the desert, he's easily stopped without a secret stone. Thus leaving his reputation intact with the Gerudo when he fails, leading us into the timeline with which leads to OoT where the new King of the Gerudo bears his name and attempts a similar coup d'état.

Now, Skyward Sword happens anyway. Because Demise still rises, he still gets sealed as the Imprisoned, and the Link/hero of that era kills him and gets cursed.

Whether or not the timeline changes much from here is up to the theorist. However, I think it does only a little. Instead of things happening in 3 separate timelines, it happens in one very tangly timeline where everything happens from Ocarina to Twilight Princess, from Twilight Princess to the Downfall timeline, from the downfall timeline to the Great Sea timeline.

Somewhere along there, the sea levels fall, they return to the historic lands, and the setting we know for Breath of the Wild starts to take shape.

Another important bit: Sheikah Tech is a reinterpretation of Zonai tech. After Rauru and Mineru are killed in the ancient past of ToTK, the Sheikah attempt to recreate and continue the technological legacy of the Zonai. They create the Shrine of Resurrection with a specific tragically lost queen in mind(Sonia), and the Divine Beasts in the vague image of the helms of the Sages, to honor the non-Hylian races who survived the Demon King's attack. Naturally, they're intended as protectors. They didn't have enough might to defeat the Demon King, so they made the guardians in case Zelda's warnings came true sooner rather than later.

The guardians proved useful the first time, but someone(read "a noble") panicked and had them bury the tech. Likely because they feared they might be used against a corrupt monarch to sieze power for the people--because honestly, after that display of strength, what power-hungry ruler wouldn't want to destroy it?

That leads us into the set up to Breath of the Wild, where they're researching and digging up Sheikah Tech.

Post Breath of the Wild, Zelda, Purah, and Robbie(and maybe even Link and a few others), discover that Zonai tech are the more stable roots of Sheikah Tech. In an effort to expand the capabilities of their own technology, they nearly abandon Sheikah Tech in favor of Zonai research. Purah uses Sheikah Tech and some Zonai methods to build the towers.

Now we reach the set up to Tears of the Kingdom.

Circling back to Ganondorf and Demise and how it could make sense for Ganondorf to be there underground while other Ganondorfs make chaos and nightmares on the surface: The Ganondorf of the ancient past isn't Demise. No, he's a priest of Demise. He doesn't hold Demise's spirit. He's his own, terrifying bastard. At the start, in the ancient past.

Demise's curse doesn't involve him. He's sealed, biding his time under the castle. He can't, however, reanimate without power that not even a secret stone can bestow. When it's time, it's Demise's spirit who reanimates Ganondorf's body. It's no longer Ganondorf you're fighting, though he is most certainly in there somewhere.

And where's the triforce?

Well, I have no clue. For this to work, the dragons can't be in the ancient past if they swallowed it, they also can't be Zonai. Unless there's other shenanigans we don't see... maybe there is no triforce in this timeline, because it was swallowed by three Zonai at the start to protect the world from Demise. I... can't come up with anything else for that. Good luck.