minish-shadow

[minish-shadow]

as soon as i started eow i knew i had to draw zelda relaxing w her cat 💕

[minish-shadow]

Heron type behavior

[minish-shadow]

If Ezlo has a birdsona Vaati can have one too... as a treat... they are not so distanced from the Ezlo-isms as they'd like to think and pretend. they can't escape it.

Ezlo is a heron (shapes, neck, if Wikipedia's [CITATIONS NEEDED] for symbolic meaning in mysticism are correct I think it feels fitting) and Vaati is a swallow (due to Kate Bush's Night of the Swallow. and the forked tail I gave them. and passerine migratory bird feels very Wind Mage Appropriate)

[minish-shadow]

Ezlo is a heron (shapes, neck, if Wikipedia's [CITATIONS NEEDED] for symbolic meaning in mysticism are correct I think it feels fitting) and Vaati is a swallow (due to Kate Bush's Night of the Swallow. and the forked tail I gave them. and passerine migratory bird feels very Wind Mage Appropriate)

[minish-shadow]

Heron type behavior

[minish-shadow]

you need to understand that i have two sets of headcanons. there's the set of realistic headcanons based on my genuine reading of the show, and then there's me playing pretend with my dolls.

[minish-shadow]

been very busy so I haven't been able to draw all that much, but I did make these quick little doodles :D

another thing from my sketch book while I was playing loz 1 since bombable walls aren't very obvious I just blew up every wall in every room.

and here be the little guy I would draw any other link but he be the easiest for me to do quick drawings of

[minish-shadow]

Zelda 1-2 Link?

Day 144: Zelda 1

[minish-shadow]

Seriously, huge applause to OG Link for fighting Lynels at the age of 10. Adding sketch version because I always like the sketch better. I mess up as soon as I start colouring lol.

[minish-shadow]

watching Minish Cap with my partner and 1. I may never be normal about Ezlo again. Sorry to all the Ezlo haters and complainers out there but could never be me. 2. they said of Vaati "its like. chuunibyou behaviors a bit" and I think that if anyone in the game had ever said this of them to their face it would have been so emotionally devastating that they simply would have quit and gone home. Unrecoverable.

[minish-shadow]

oh god. I could post my Interstitial playbooks here. I don't know if anyone even following me here has heard of Interstitial before (though its creator recently did a Zelda season on their ttrpg podcast and it was the sickest fucking thing ever . I admittedly still need to finish it but it was The Sickest Fucking Thing Ever) but both of them were inspired in whole or in part by Zelda characters. like one of them is entirely Shadow Themed and the other I made because I got inspired by the sickest line in the entire Minish Cap manga and what goes on with Vaati there.

[minish-shadow]

For the ask meme: Vio and 7, bc while I know you like the ship, I'm curious about the characters individually!

7- What do you like most about this character?

warning i went on an entire meta philosophical Thought Journey with this one and you will literally be able to SEE where it went off the rails. and then it just continued going off the rails until the rails disappeared from my field of vision and i have no idea if anything i wrote actually makes sense but here just take it

honestly i think part of why I love vio so much as a character is i did NOT expect to like or care about him, and then he ended up easily my favorite. the only thing i knew when i picked up the manga was that i would probably enjoy shadow as a character, which. of course i did. bc he's a very specific flavor of character i always gravitate towards, but vio was like... girl what? why are you in this story and doing the things you are doing? and by the end of my first reading i was just BLOWN AWAY by him and shadow and their entire subplot so i went to tumblr because i felt like i was hallucinating it and here we are now.

re: what i like most about vio... i go into it a lot in this post. vio is fascinating to me as a character from several perspectives, as a writer, a gay person, and just... having the philosophy and experiences that i do. there is such an inherent tragedy to his character that i don't think is lost on the authors--like i say in the post, shadow and vio both don't quite feel like they BELONG in this story, especially with how it ends.

like, i often write vio in particular struggling with the ways he deviates from the narrative set for him, both in canon and out of it. yes a lot of that is tied to queerness, but it also relates to themes of self-determination sub-textually tied to his arc. vio seriously just does whatever the hell he wants a good amount of the time, to like an eyebrow-raising degree. when he separates from the others and joins shadow he's on the Side of Good from the start, but i think he also realizes very quickly that there's more to himself than he'd expected. that doing what he had planned to do, especially to shadow of all people, was going to be shockingly difficult, and perhaps not even the correct choice at all. which is why vio's canon ending kind of falls flat to me, even though i can't imagine it could have ended any other way. this isn't to say he shouldn't have tried to betray shadow--it's an internal conflict he's going through, and a character usually makes the choice antithetical to what actually fuck i just boiled it down to the essentials i know exactly and fundamentally why i like vio as a character holy shit okay

SO normally a character in a story will start out Wanting something and Needing something else, and their entire arc is realizing, "aw beans, my Want actually sucks, i Need my Need" and then they pursue that instead. hero's journey etc.

think about the general premise of vio, and to an extent the other three: character is given individual consciousness to serve a specific noble purpose, and then cease to exist once said purpose has been served. and with the others, that's basically it, minor emotional and relationship arcs aside. but with vio? the premise GOES somewhere. oh no! character finds themselves drawn to the dark side by a "tempting" "evil" person or force, who CORRUPTS them into THINKING they WANT to defy that destiny! that they should be selfish, and bad, and turn their back on what they actually Need to do. so says the narrative, the character NEEDS to accept that they're not meant for anything but being used and discarded, because that's what good people do, and these are the Sacrifices We Must Make to Be Good. does your hero have any kind of unconventional or deviant leanings? well either that shit's getting straightened the hell out, or they are going to perish to save the Pure Good Guys, because that's all they deserve. that is a very common way to handle's vio's exact sort of character premise, and at first glance at the manga, one could argue that it's no exception. link still reforms, after all. arguably this kind of happens with shadow, but i think i like his ending a lot more outside of the shipping context. it says something more nuanced than above, but this isn't the post for going into that.

i would argue that almost every fiber of this manga pertaining to vio is actually trying to do the opposite of what i described above, even though it never is able to come to fruition.

quite simply, compared to the typical Needs and Wants of a corrupted hero type, vio's are like subverted. he's given a corruption arc, and it looks pretty basic at first, but it quickly becomes so... unconventional? and fun? and, dare i say, queer? i say it lot in reference to his whole turn of character once he joins shadow, but vio commits to the bit way more than is necessary to carry out his plan. shadow's not that perceptive and vio didn't need to be so close with him, so snarky and clearly enjoying himself, so bizarrely extra and innovative with the means by which he psychologically tortures his friends. his internal conflict, especially towards the end of his villain era, is less "i'm miserable because i'm a good guy and i want to save the world but i HAVE to pretend to be evil and like shadow," and more "i'm miserable because i'm actually enjoying a lot of these villainous theatrics and also i have become genuinely endeared to shadow, but i know i HAVE to betray him and rejoin the others because the world needs to be saved." i don't think it's a reach to say that that's what vio's conflict is, in the text. we see it in his expressions, his dialogue, and his reactions to things that happen.

i think this whole subversion was something the authors did with his character, whether accidentally or purposefully, REALIZED they did with his character, and didn't want to give up. but still, the story needed to end with vio rejoining the others and reforming the hero, because like. duh, of course it does, nintendo and source material and all that. but with the way a himekawa built up their obvious faves' (vio and shadow's) stories, it's like well shit, we came up with something we love but we can't really see it through. because within this brilliant subversion of the typical corrupted hero arc, the WANT is vio's sense of obligation to turn on shadow, reform link, etc, and his NEED is to say, "hey fuck this actually, i deserve to be a person and have relationships and do things i enjoy, and that doesn't make me any less of a hero. i'm smart and resourceful and there's definitely a way to both save the world and preserve who i am and get through to shadow."

self-sacrifice isn't inherently heroism. in fiction, it's often a deeply shallow and underwhelming resolution, especially when the character spends so much time growing and becoming who they truly are. i didn't grow up with religion, but i have a slight suspicion it plays a huge part in this entire attitude, and it sucks how much that permeates into media culture. doing good isn't something you can just phone in at the last second; it is a constant and ever-changing way of life, based on a moral system you develop for yourself as you grow. pretending to be someone you're not, acting solely under a prescribed ethical code especially as a grown-ass adult, makes you hollow and spineless, as well as unhappy, resentful, and unfulfilled.

doing good is hard. staying alive is hard. making decisions and forming connections and constantly being challenged are all very hard. but when you choose to embrace life, to accept failure and flaws but still try to be good, make meaningful connections and allow yourself to be genuine and happy and queer? that, to me, is the Goodest of the Good. and it's unique to each of us, while being something we all have the ability to choose for ourselves. and it's never too late for that. until the narrative tells you to jump off a cliff because that's, like, way too nuanced to be sustainable, and sure the story's resolved and it ended happily for the purest of heart, but what a bleak happiness that is. fuck that.

like, compare to vio to adora from she-ra. adora got the ending revelation i wish vio could have gotten. the whole, "i am worth more than my usefulness to others, i deserve love and self-determination" thing, and THAT's what really saved the day. adora saw her future, living happily with catra and the others, not dead or used but just LIVING, and said "hey, maybe the real answer here? the key to being a hero and saving the world? maybe it's loving, and letting myself be loved, and not sacrificing myself because someone said it's what i'm meant to do." and holy shit, she was right. and the narrative rewarded her for it, with a kiss from her catgirl gf and also destroying Big Evil and saving the galaxy or whatever.

fucking IMAGINE if that could have been the thing to save the day in the manga, just for a second. if you isolated just vio and shadow's arc and made them the Main Characters, like how adora and catra are in she ra. if it was truly allowed to be Their Story, if it was able to transcend the source material, if if if. it wouldn't even have to be just vio and shadow's story, honestly -- the four could realize, each for their own individual reasons, that maybe they can't unring the bell of their own existence. that they can protect hyrule better as themselves, that they deserve to continue the development they're been experiencing for the past 300 pages. and maybe vio would be the one to set that line of thought in motion, because has it not been set up exactly so he could?? if you've read my main au, you know exactly what i'm picturing here. and while i like some of the manga's canon ending, there's a reason most people who love these characters engage most often with alternate resolutions.

i think i like vio so much because he surprised me, and that's because he surprised the fucking AUTHORS OF THE MANGA. even more than a decade after publication, they made a point to say in their note that they appreciated the way people "got" what they were trying to say with shadow and vio specifically. i can't speak for them, and i will concede that i am mostly overthinking just for fun and none of this is that serious, but... come on. do you not see what i'm seeing here. they did something so fascinating and tragically unfulfilled here, and that all hinges on vio. and it's also just. so resonant to me as a gay person, in the same way she ra was.

obviously i could say more, and this is embarrassingly unhinged and maybe delusional, i don't know. i just wrote a lot of words about something so silly and arbitrary, but i took the time to write them because i care and can't get that time back now. so i might as well commit to the bit like gayass purple boy and post anyway

[minish-shadow]

You were the leveret, you are the lover (I was the leveret in hiding) Where the yarrow grows, I will be awakened (Rowdy and rigorous they reave and rally) No longer I am puppeted, string from your instrument (There, where the houses once stood)

Been listening to Kid & Leveret a lot lately and. um. Um well. My hand might have slipped and drawn Vio and Shadow in the album cover pose.

[minish-shadow]

rip Vaati. Estrogen wouldn't have saved them but maybe it could have helped.

Unfortunately my truest and realest and most constant headcanon is that despite giving off the world's most obvious Gender vibes, Vaati literally has no idea. They haven't even thought to question it. They have carefully stacked layers of coping mechanisms to deal with the worst of their dysphoria and will still go hmmm I think I am cis :) they need another person to ask their pronouns or something before they can even consider transgenderism as an option in the first place.

[minish-shadow]

Fic is done now to get my work double checked by my Plant Friend to ensure maximum accuracy.

[minish-shadow]

Hmmm okay time to vaguely reference a character who must've existed but has exactly 0 canon info. I will invent a scrap of personality and give her pronouns to fit into the context of this fic. [within 24 hours] Oh No

[minish-shadow]

A lot of people consider Green "the boring one" and this isn't true. But I think the funniest possible version of this is if it is a perception he actively tries to encourage. Delights in being thought of as perfectly average and regular. He tells Vio "I've been thinking about getting really into Taylor Swift lately*" and Vio (the one most people, including the rest of Four Sword, tend to think of as "if a normal person had something deeply, deeply wrong with them", the guy of a thousand fronts) is just like. [slightly shaken] what the fuck?