did you hear about the. live action zelda movie?? it's going to be so so bad

I literally cannot wait I want it to be out yesterday I need that movie

I found your tags in that one post interesting because, for me, whenever I try to go back to playing BOTW after playing totk, I just don’t find it as engaging as it used to be. It’s not that it devalues BOTW or vice versa, just that I feel that BOTW is empty now. Hope you don’t mind me giving my take.

I don't mind at all, a lot of people feel that way! And I can see why, as TotK has more to do in it than BotW does. Some time after posting that I watched a comparison video that pinpointed the difference so well: BotW had only 3 progression bars (koroks, shrines/containers, equipment upgrades). The rest of the game was entirely vague and left to your choosing, not tracking your progress or instructing you what is worth your time. TotK has a whole bunch of new progression bars (Pony Points, recipes, cave frogs, etc.) that entice you to solve assignments, which actively goes against BotW's "make your own meaning" principle of freedom. Some players will prefer the first option, others the second. I'm in the first - in BotW a lot of the time I wouldn't even be doing quests, or trying to make any significant progress, I would simply boot it up and exist in the world, admiring its nature and architecture and music and worlbuilding, collecting material and roleplaying as an amnesiac wild boy falling in love with his kingdom. No other game has given me that level of immersion or made me want to do nothing but take walks, including TotK, because it's the only game of this kind that I've ever played, and I feel like not many people realized that more to do in a game does not automatically mean an upgrade. And that's the longer version of my tags!

With both BOTW and totk out of mind, would you say that the Zelda series isn’t heavy on connecting the timeline together anyway? If that makes any sense. I’m just curious.

It makes sense bc that's exactly how I feel! I think the games were NEVER intended to perfectly fit into any sort of a timeline, be it a triple one or a linear one. I think each game reinvents the lore and uses iconography of previous games only to reimagine instead of follow the conventions set by its predecessors. I don't care what Nintendo says, the official timeline makes no sense and I don't mind at all actually. On a creative level, it's fun to reinvent a world over and over again across decades, and on a capitalist level it's easier to sell games featured under one series brand than it is to sell each and every one as its own thing. IRL legends also rarely follow exact history, so if you don't wanna suspend your disbelief you can just tell yourself it's a series of legends that got transformed throughout times and there is no way to know if they are true.

BotW did great to establish this exact philosophy - it namedropped all three timelines, it features architectural and cultural references to everything, effectively rendering the official timeline useless. It doesn't matter which legends are true, the only thing that really matters is that Zelda is Hylia's descendant, Link is the reincarnation of the Hero, and Ganondorf was sealed away at one point and turned into Ganon. BUT THEN TotK said "Nuh-uh" and presented an alternative history that had nothing to do with ANYTHING. AT ALL. LIKE. NOTHING. NOT EVEN BOTW. If BotW was a love letter to all the games that came before it, TotK was a fire setting ablaze all the gentle nostalgia until only the barest bones of "Zelda is a princess of Hyrule" remained.

the thematic shift from botw to totk is so weird when u rly think about it bc in botw its all about a failed prophecy; zelda couldnt awaken her powers and the champions couldnt defeat ganon as it was foretold. it was about breaking free from tradition and convention and trying to find other means of defeating this evil (zeldas fascination with sheikah tech for example). i think this theme also aligns with the entirety of the loz franchise as a whole, given how botw did a complete 180° on the zelda formula theyve always had. everything just worked!!!

and then in totk its just like ... we go back in time and use the powers of old to defeat ganon ... ? not to mention that every researcher in the game is fascinated by these ancient texts and architecture. rather than innovators they become historians. youre expected to look for answers in the past rather than learn from naively following prophecies and suffering its consequences.

however i do think totk had a rly interesting premise when they decided to implement time travel. like i absolutely LOVEE everything about the light dragon etc etc but the story in general just did not hit as hard :( i adore this game its so fun and its so beautiful but there is so much room for criticism as well

also sorry for this long ass ask omfg .. but ur post earlier got me going !!

It's ok, I fully support long elaborations based on whatever I went off about! :D

Oh, that's an interesting view of it! I personally didn't think BotW was about forgetting tradition at all? The Sheikah tech is still history, it's still following in the footsteps of those who came before - the prophecy itself is was what led to its discovery in the first place. I interpreted BotW as a story about what happens when people try to imitate the past, I agree, but in the end the point was that they shouldn't let it weight them down, but should still pay respects to it. Hyrule forgot all about its history - who knows what might have happened if that ancient king never got spooked by the Sheikah tech and buried it! If it didn't stay exactly the same as it was 10000 years ago, Ganon might have never influenced it so strongly, and the Calamity might have never have happened! Zelda couldn't escape her history, all the progressive tech in the world couldn't imitate her role, but the only way she was able to realize her destiny was through her own means, on her own time. It wasn't about her rejecting convention, it was about her finding her own spin on it. She was being held back by the shadow of her mother and the expectations of the monarchy, and found a way to channel her inheritance through the wild, and through Link. And that was the theme of the game! Looking back at decades' worth of games, then picking and choosing what to keep and what to give up on! It is so cool!

I think TotK did great to continue this line of thought regarding Zelda's character - she is not a princess-princess she was forced to be 100 years ago, she is a teacher/researcher/engineer-princess, and everyone loves her and looks up to her. She is still a sort-of leader, but she is doing it in her own way, without castles or thrones or holy powers and almost entirely hands-off, letting the people guide her. In my opinion, it treats the researchers the same way it did in BotW, except yes, a new faction has been introduced to the plot that is dedicated to historical research. I don't doubt that the decade leading up to the Calamity also had a bunch of historians running around deciphering old texts and figuring out how stuff worked, we just didn't get to see it and got the finished results instead. Also, it's pretty clear that Zonai tech requires a Zonai to work it (Link can do it because of his right arm), so it's not as widely malleable as Sheikah tech which was able to be used by all inhabitants of Hyrule. And the finale of the game FULLY goes against history even harder than BotW did - yes, Ganondorf CAN be defeated, even if Rauru failed. Yes, Zelda CAN be returned to her original form, even if the transformation is supposed to be permanent according to Zonai history. In fact, the Zelda thing annoys me (no matter how much I love it) because it wasn't set up in a way that carried over any sort of a message or a theme. Impa said she would find a way to turn her back, I was expecting a quest dedicated to it, be it finding ancient texts or a new loophole, and then whoosh she's back through a Sonia-and-Rauru-ex-machina. I would say that TotK can't decide if it wants to break away from its history (by making half the game a completely new, blank slate) or go along with it (by making the other half of the game clearly love what happened before, all the way back to a divine Hyrulean monarchy) which is why it's so jumbled up at times.

Like you said, I love the game, I cry whenever I remember that beautiful finale, but it really dropped the ball when it came to BotW's comprehensiveness. Why did Link fail to catch Zelda in the beginning, but managed in the end? What changed? What is its significance? It's a beautiful scene and makes me so emo, but it rings hollow if I try to find a deeper meaning, and that's basically the game in a nutshell.

do you have any zelda fics recs? I need a "canon" botw and/or totk fic and CAN'T FIND IT

Here's a list of my fave BotW fics! I can't vouch for how canon-compliant they are bc my fav thing about BotW fics is expanding and remixing what we've seen in the game, but I do think some of them try to be as accurate as the game allows. Some other popular ones that I might or might not have read but were recommended to me are listed here in this tag, around the date of June 2021, and in the notes of this post.

As for TotK, I haven't started reading any fics for it yet bc the Great Sadness of 2023 stopped me from interacting with the game in any deeper measure, BUT that will change soon so followers pls give me recs if you have any. Happy reading!

I love how you just pointed out that the Hero’s Aspect opens the door for theorizing because like…for all the stuff that is unexplained in totk, I actually like it that way BECAUSE I can make theories, you know? I feel like people wanted stuff shoved in their faces and just chalked it up to “Nintendo is lazy” when they didn’t get that.

I am sort of split between the sentiments? Some unexplained things are soooo fun to explore and analyze because like you said, it is not in-your-face obvious what they mean and they could mean a million different things! They exist, they are there, they were definitely put in the game to be noticed, and yet they weren't explained. For example, the Hero's Aspect, or the connection between dragons and Zonai, or the exact locations of the ancient palace and temples and other places we see in the Tears. I only need a little clue and I will be thinking about it for months, exploring and looking and reading and having so much fun without EVER having my theories proven right. Headcanons are fun!!! Imagination is fun!!! BotW and TotK lean into it with their entire weighs. You make your own story in these games.

On the other hand, some things are sooo weirdly retcon-y, even when only compared to BotW. Why does the Zonai Forgotten Temple predate the Loftwing-style Forgotten Temple and doesn't even feature Hylia's statue? Why are we establishing Rauru as the one from whom Zelda inherits her sealing powers instead of Hylia? Why is Gerudo King Ganondorf given a totally different backstory to the one he had in BotW? The funniest thing is that these issues are so easily fixed. Reframe the beginning of the cutscene so we never enter the Forgotten Temple proper and stick to the Zonai rooms. Make Sonia the one with the sealing powers and the Zonai ancestors the one with the time powers. The Ganon one is not from the main game and is instead from the Creating a Champion book so it can technically be overlooked, but still, big L for me and every other person lovingly thumbing through that book.

And then there is the third option, some things are double-edged from the get-go. I don't need an explanation for where the Sheikah tech went - obviously it was either dismantled or repurposed, and the PurahPad and the towers still work powered on the blue source so it's not like it magically disappeared... But what happened to the Divine Beasts, the enormous semi-sentient machines that def can't be dismantled like that???? Couldn't SOMEONE maybe mention that they idk. Went unresponsive when the shrines retracted so they hid them away until they are needed again. OR, why does only half the NPCs remember Link, instead of either everyone forgetting or everyone remembering him and avoiding this weird distance created by half-assing it? Basically, I totally understand why people don't like it because I also dislike it, it's not game-breaking but why not just go all the way.

This was a long-winded way to say that while I absolutely agree that the speculation and theorizing is one of the most fun parts of both the games, it is also disheartening to be tripped up by the devs throwing their own lore in the trash, so I sort of get the complainers. I don't believe in the Big Timeline and will never complain about games not adhering to it, but I am pretty disappointed the devs didn't pay closer attention to keeping the lore clear between sequels at least, ESPECIALLY because it's so clear they were wonderfully pedant about other parts of it.

Revali's "the princess has been waiting an awful long time" hits different now

God...... my one consolation is that at least 100 years feels a lot if you are conscious, and several dozens of thousands of years must be one second if you don't have a sense of self or any sort of humanity left

ok so its been a couple weeks how do u feel about totk zelink now

(context: here is part 1 of the ask, and also SPOILERS AHEAD!)

For reference, I am currently done with the dragon tears and sages questlines, but still haven't finished the Kogha one. Whatever happens after this point, I have no idea, I'm chilling and doing side quests and leveling up.

There is a difficult line to draw between "this is what the game is saying" and "this is what I am projecting onto it", but to me, this game is about how well Link knows Zelda. BotW was about trying to remember her and why she mattered, and TotK is about trying to figure out her plans and what she was trying to tell you, as she is no longer able to guide you the way she did in BotW. It's listening to what people are saying about her and deciding if it sounds like Zelda or not. It is beautiful, and shows how close the two of them are now! BUT. It would have worked even better if we saw traces of their relationship in the plot. This is a three-pronged feature: 1) In the main quest everyone calls Link "Zelda's swordsman" or "Zelda's chosen protector" and are surprised when they see him without her, but the NPCs STILL don't mention him. The way I almost screamed when I stumbled upon that Lurelin NPC who is like "oh yeah the princess would disguise herself and go on vacation and hike up to the Lover's Pond at sunset!" and I was READY to hear about the person accompanying her. But there was no one. Zelda was alone as far as this guy was concerned. Like pls. 2) Link should have revealed his thoughts on the mystery of Zelda's identity for this theme to work, at least by being the one to figure out the Zelda prancing around Hyrule is an impostor. In fact, the way they didn't try to incorporate the tears quest into the main storyline is pretty disappointing - sorry but Link would NOT just ignore knowing where Zelda is. They should have hidden the last few memories until you're done with the fifth temple to make sure he doesn't look like an idiot. 3) We are STILL in the "Link doesn't react properly to Zelda" era. I'm not even talking about animation, I would have settled for a "Don't look so concerned, we will figure it out!" or a "I know you wish to bring her back right away, but leave the research to me and focus on beating Ganon first!" from Impa at the end of the tears quest. Sure, I choose to interpret his mad dash through Hyrule Castle to get to the sanctum Ganon fight as him completely forgetting any caution or reason in his desperation to get to her, but is that really it? EVERYONE ELSE cares so so much about Zelda as a person instead of a princess, they are constantly talking about her, so Link could have gotten some moments of that too. I'm glad the game stated that Link's duty ended with the Calamity and he CHOSE to stay with Zelda, so it's not that he only cares because he has to, but I wish it was shown outside that one line in a secret diary.

In conclusion, I still stand by my previous claim: Skyward Sword did this same dynamic better, so if I hadn't played that game I might have been elated over this one, but alas. I am still hoping for an earth-shattering emotional moment towards the end of the game that is gonna render all my complaints wrong, I haven't lost hope, but wow my imagination is working overtime to keep me happy

Got the master sword by "accident" (I was curious and by dumb luck I managed to get there) and after retrieving it and watching the cutscene, I'm devastated.

IT HAPPENED TO ME TOO I was curiously running around and found it in the last place I would have thought to look. I got decimated by the realization what it means but was too weak to pull it out right away. TotK your MIND for putting the sword there and dealing emotional devastation to everyone who finds it, be it due to a quest or by accident

Don't get me wrong Tulin is the cutest but where is daddy Teba ;_;

my brother and I have a joke that I'm cucking Teba whenever I visit Rito Village and that Tulin calls me dad, so you can imagine the first answer that popped into my mind when I read this ask

God I'm thinking about how Zelda's final words in the last cut scene (not counting the after credits one) are "Oh Link, I'm home" listening to the japanese voice she says "tadaima" and tadaima/okaeri exchanges (from what I've read) are usually reserved for family and couples ;-; (the next part of okaeri meaning welcome home, but there's of course a stronger meaning to it than in English aaaaa) just thought you would appreciate knowing this, they are so canon, Zelda's home when she's with Link!!! The whole last scene is so romantic and the use of tadaima just confirms it. It just popped into my head so I wanted to check the Japanese and aaaaaa

Thank you for telling me! My anime kid past really jumped out when I saw that line and thought "omg tadaima" njsdbvkjsabkja. It is so nice that she calls it home, even if she means it as her Hyrule instead of Link, she still def talked about him in the previous line. I am so happy with that entire concept of Zelda returning home for thousands of years.

do you have any recs for pre-calamity botw fics?

Here's a link to a compilation I've collected a couple weeks back, all pre-Calamity fics are listed as such! If you choose any choose No Regrets by webcomix Happy reading~

do you have any fancast (any char) for a zelda live action movie? I would die if hunter schafer was zelda oh my god

Ayy! But no, I don't, in all honesty I absolutely can't imagine a live-action Zelda movie at ALL. Any and all Zelda movies in my mind are 2D animated

For the continuity issues in totk you've seen is it just the Hateno/people who should not recognising Link thing or are there more?? Cause like whilst playing I have desperately been trying to figure out where the past stuff goes on the timeline but have been worried it's going to contradict skyward sword as continuity issue

Oh yes I meant that the NPCs who should def know Link (basically everyone he met without being disguised) should know who he is, if not as the savior of Hyrule then that random dude who caught a bunch of lizards for them. I am also not a fan of how NPCs explain the events of BotW to you even though YOU WERE LITERALLY THERE and THE GAME REPEATEDLY STATES YOU WERE THERE. Only Purah has dialogue that reflects how weird it is that you don't know (she's like "oh you forgot? well that's in character for you isn't it" bvjsdabvkdabvkj). They have Link go undercover during the game and get explained things he should know and it's not weird at all, they could have easily done that a few more times for the players who don't know what happened in BotW.

As for Skyward Sword, I am still not far enough into the story to tell if this game breaks it or not? Hyrule has risen and fallen and been re-established many times. If Sonia doesn't find out she is actually the first generation of Goddess incarnate, TotK can easily be set thousands of years after Skyward Sword. I mean, Hylia is DEF real because she speaks to you through statues, so I don't think Zelda's light powers come from the Zonai? They could say "Actually Hylia was Zonai and that's where the royal family gets their powers" but none of her statues reflect that so I don't think that's it, and the powers are passed down the female line. And Zelda as Sage of Time was a fan theory up until now, correct? So maybe this is the first real time she has had proper time sage powers, and it can come at the very end. Right now I'm operating under this timeline: Skyward Sword, every other game, Zonai era, the first Calamity, BotW+TotK era.

For the undragonification I wouldn't 100% call it a Deus ex machina, you get the impression Sonia was using her time powers on Zelda, Rauru was amplifying it with his light powers and secret stone, Link using recall on her and amplifying it through the sage's vows and then I think they might have been in a spirit realm thanks to Mineru? Judging by all the green fog? Which combined meant they could rewind Zelda's form to before she became the light dragon (and also rewound Link's arm). BUT they failed to set up a) Sonia's spirit hanging around, which would have been neat to have in the story somewhere b) that time powers could be used on living creatures and not just objects and c) that Mineru could bring people in and out of the spirit realm as the spirit sage tho not sure on that one but the green fog has gotta mean something

YEAH EXACTLY I am not 1000% against it because I can see how it could happen, but I wish they did just a little more setup. I get that Link got his time powers from Zelda, who wasn't as good at using them as Sonia is, so he might never have figured out how to use it on living creatures while Sonia could. They could have set it up by having Sonia exhibit her insane powers and making Ganon target her for that specific reason - so that she can't stop his plans. Rauru could have totally been set up as an amplifier, as his arm is how Link uses the sages' vows anyway. Mineru could have totally been like "I sealed all sages into the spirit realm but couldn't get to Sonia because she was gone already so she can't give you her vow" (what even ARE Mineru's sage powers, except not dying, which is what Rhoam did in BOTW anyway??). All in all, I am willing to buy it but annoyed at the fill-in-the-blanks I gotta do to get there, give me more content and cutscenes in these games!!!!!!!!

If you had to choose, do you prefer totk or botw and why? Personally I'm fonder of botw (for a few reasons, exploring being more difficult makes it feel more rewarding, the story/memories slotted into the gameplay better, the world/themes overall feel executed more cohesively and I find the Sheikah slate abilities more intuitive) but it seems to be an unpopular opinion online to like botw more so I'm curious! This isn't a debate on which is objectively better tho, they both have some things better than each other

I agree with you completely! There are some things I prefer in TotK, but overall I like BotW better. I knew that would be the case - my BotW story is disgustingly sentimental and impossible to replicate. BotW was my first open world game I've completed, it has taught me how to play AAA video games and opened a whole new world of media for me. A game whose entire point is to be thrown into a completely foreign land, without a map and with minimal directions on how to play, which forces you to rely on your real-world instincts and knowledge, was perfect for this journey. I beat the final boss over a year after starting the game because it took me that long to explore every nook and cranny of the game, to live in that world and learn to love it, and then I felt ready to face the ending. ALSO, while TotK's themes of connection, companionship, and renewal are a completely natural continuation of the story and I wouldn't change them, I gotta confess I prefer the tragic, beautiful yearning of BotW more. There's something so majestic about a story about two kids who conquered evil a hundred times before, but then failed a hundred and first time. ALSO, I never managed to get quite as lost into TotK as I could in BotW, where I could be playing for 8 hours straight and not notice it, which is probably because I know the map inside and out (although this might be because I am now an adult and not a hormonal teenager lololol) (also because switch controllers SUCK my hands HURT SO BAD if I play more than like 2 hours. wii u pad I miss you </3). ALSO, the storytelling was very dear to me in BotW but failed this time around. I feel like TotK tried to replicate the non-linear nature of BotW, but with a linear storyline, which made plot holes abundant and kept jerking me out of the story. In BotW the plot could have been summarized in 4 sentences, but TotK is WAY more complicated and needed better development and more plot-heavy sections a la traditional Zelda. Honestly, they should have either stuck with a completely linear plot, OR added more lines of code that would ensure Link doesn't just Not Tell Everyone he finished one of the main quests until the very ending of the game.

All in all, I get that TotK blows BotW out of the water when it comes to complexity and technical achievements, but the ideas behind the game and my own personal experience with it will never be beaten in my eyes. BotW 5 ever