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beginning of summer break: oh wow this is going to be so great I'm going to write so much good fic and finally stop being burnt out because I'm finally FREEEEEEE

end of summer break: *avoids eye contact with the 9 new passion projects and 3 separate to-do lists for getting my life back together that I didn't even start* back into the meat grinder we go

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WAIT NO FR

Wild: Sometimes, I don’t realize an event was traumatic until I tell it as a funny story and notice everyone is staring at me weird.

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anyone else unreasonably terrified of the question “what’s the last book you read” because it makes you instantly forget the actual books and exclusively remember the millions of words of angsty fanfiction

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when e.e. cummings said “i’ll live my life if it kills me”

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Linked Universe Links as Linkin Park Songs pt. 1

Sky - With You (Hybrid Theory) "And I'm left in the wake of the mistakes Slow to react And even though you're so close to me You're still so distant And I can't bring you back"

Kind of leaning more into the canon games since I think the opening of this song in particular has strong sksw vibes.

Legend - Good Things Go (From Zero) "Say I hate you when I don't Push you when you get too close" "Only you can save me from my lack of self control So thank you for always standing by me even though Sometimes bad things take the place but good things go"

This is probably leaning more into fanon/headcanon territory but I love angst and the good things go in regards to Koholint–

Warriors - Papercut (Hybrid Theory) "Why am I so uptight today Paranoia's all I got left And I don't know what stressed me first Or how the pressure was fed"

Pretty obvious for this one with the paranoia and I also feel like Warriors would listen to Hybrid Theory at the gym or smth.

Edit: forgot the links for good things go and papercut earlier lol. added them.

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omb -> OH MY BLAHAJ

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Thank you for the tag?

First Game: I think it was Sprinkle Island on an ancient iPad when I was like 7 or something. The game I'll actually consider my real first is probably botw just because it's the first one I genuinely hyper fixated on (that game consumed my life for 4 months it was great).

Favorite Game: I'm stuck between botw and sksw. They're just so different and I love them both for completely different reasons. I'll admit I haven't been able to play that many games in general because reasons (call me a fake fan I don't care that doesn't mean I love loz any less).

Game You've Played Multiple Times: This one's gotta be botw. I finished it once and wanted to 100% it but then my brother deleted my alt account on the switch that HE DOESN'T EVEN USE!!! I'd made a fair amount of progress, too. It's sad but I'll probably go back and try it again when I find the time and energy to.

Game With Worst Ending: 100% absolutely and completely botw. I'll admit it's the only game I've finished (again, reasons) but I beat Calamity Ganon in 2 tries. I was still relatively under-leveled and horrible at fighting. I still am (totk is a beast and I'm suffering). But it just felt so underwhelming. I was never really as emotionally tied to the story in botw but the ending felt like it was lacking something. Gameplay-wise and story-wise. I just finished the game and put it down and it was an anticlimactic end to the game that had consumed my mind for a third of a year.

Favorite Game Relationship: Zelink. Yuri, queerplatonic, traumatized friends trying to get through life, and other ways to be two eternal spirits reincarnated over and over and over repeatedly in doomed worlds. But queerplatonic is my favorite by FAR. As for which Link and Zelda I'll probably say botw for headcanon territory (yummy qpr) but sksw for actual canon relationship lol.

A Game You Like Watching Others Play And Want To Play: I want to play albw or alttp or oot or ww really bad but odds are none of that's going to happen for a WHILE. I also just want to actually play my 100% botw without the file getting deleted halfway through RGHHHH :(

A Game You Like Watching Others Play But Don't Want To Play: Ok. This sounds kind of weird but totk. I really like watching people do creative things and make cool machines. It's truly an amazing open world game. But HOLY BLAHAJ the game feels like it's dragging on forever. Or maybe I just suck at combat. It's probably both. It's probably the combat thing. I dunno. There's so much to do in the game but not enough reason (for me) to do them. It's entertaining but I'd much rather just play botw or sksw except the perfectionist part of me needs to finish that game before I can go back to the 100% botw run.

Online/Multiplayer or Solo: Solo. Unless it's ssbu because I love that game so much (to those who get it, I am the stronger Link now that I have learned to actually use projectiles). Playing games is for when I don't want to interact with real humans. I don't really ever play ssbu on my own so I don't think of it as the same kind of game as a loz game. It's a children's party game that I play with friends. Not a game that I play on my own. Wow that doesn't make sense but yeah. Words are incompetent human constructs and I hate them very much.

zero pressure tags to the log chat @aaa-batteryy @lllaaammmaaaa @crochetbeez @nourshmenthuesitos @zozozon11233 and anyone else who wants to join (I think most of my moots in loz fandom where this is going around have already been tagged lol)

So I saw this tag game that looked fun, but OP @/rainofaugustsith turned reblogs/replies off, probably cause it was a really old (2020) post.

So I decided to remake it with some of the easier questions in a new post so people could play. I'll start:

First game you ever played: Super Mario Bros on NES

Favorite game: Currently a PC game called Oxygen not Included. I have well over 2,000 hours in-game

Game you've played multiple times: Dragon Quest Builders 2. I've played through it like 3 or 4 times now.

Game with favorite ending: Skyward Sword. Having Zelda and Link reunite at the end after so many times of being so close, and just missing her

Game with worst ending: Tears of the Kingdom. I actually really dislike that everything that's happened to Link and Zelda is undone with NO lasting consequences. Like, Zelda is completely normal after undoing the (unreversable) dragonification, and lost-his-arm Link gets his arm back, despite it having been destroyed and replaced by the Zonai one.

Favorite game relationship(s): Skyward Sword Zelink, and DQB2 Malroth/Builder (female)

A game you like watching others play and want to play: Any of the older Zelda games, I'm slowly working my way through them, but there's still a lot I dont have. Also Cadence of Hyrule looks really fun, despite it not being popular cause its a spin-off

A game you like watching others play, but DON'T want to play: Rimworld. I really like watching this one YTber play it, but tried it myself and it is way too complicated for me. He makes it look so effortless and fun though

Online/Multiplayer or Solo: Generally solo, as I don't have many friends I can play online games with, and I find playing with strangers way too stressful. Friends are fine though

Tagging: @skyloftian-nutcase @skyward-floored @sprite-and-the-bunnydragons and anyone else is welcome to play too!

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yell heah evil sksw link is in da house

Follow to see the same photo of Evil Skyward Sword Link every day.

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OMIGOD IT'S THE BIRDS!!!!!

I’m back with some Loftwing sketches!

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having a given up by linkin park sort of day

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pov when that 30 minute “nap” ends with more hours of sleep than you get on school nights and you wake up at 3am STILL on the floor.

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YES PLEASE <3

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I'm dying because the culture shock goes BOTH WAYS!!! Meeting a Korean in America or an American in Korea? Suffer. Who knows what they expect. (Please someone lend me your copy of Social Cues I think they forgot to give me one.) I've seen some people do a weird fancy version nowadays where they'll bow and handshake AT THE SAME TIME??? But some people only expect a bow? And others only want a handshake? What a confusing world we live in.

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*epic riff*

we can't wait to burn it to the groooooooooounddd

we can't wait to burn it to the ground

"we're dating" "we're married!" oh yeah well we're building it up to break it back down we're building it up to burn it down we can't wait to burn it to the ground

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One thing I noticed playing TOTK is that even though it's an open world game, there's a LOT of not-so-subtle hints by NPC's that Link should get on with defeating Ganondorf. So I decided to make it angsty.

BOTW began with Link waking up alone, remembering nothing, and weakened to the point that it would take MONTHS for him to recover and fight Calamity Ganon. But he does it anyways. He slowly traverses this ruined land and builds himself back up from nothing. He meets new people. He explores. And he starts to remember who he was in the still mysterious Before but that's not the priority. His goal isn't to become who he was then, it's to figure out who he wants to be now, in this world that embodies the game's vision of freedom. He takes the time to complete shrines, free divine beasts, and eventually defeats the monster that ruined him, Hyrule, and so many lives a hundred years ago. He frees Zelda from her self-imposed cage where she's been fighting for a century. And it's a happily ever after, right?

WRONG. We see Link again in TOTK stronger than he's ever been before lose Zelda again. He wakes up alone, weak, missing HIS SWORD ARM, and at the start of another adventure where he must once again claw his way back to being strong enough to fight this new threat. Hyrule is destroyed again. Zelda is missing again. He has been defeated again. Instead of tracking down his own past, the little pieces of the puzzle are from the distant past. There is no promise that Zelda will be with him to fight Ganondorf. He is given no guarantees that Ganondorf can be defeated at all. Because he lost the first time around and he was stronger than he can ever become again in the game. And the worst part? He cannot escape it. Everywhere he goes, there are reminders of the Gloom, of Ganondorf, and of Zelda who is by all rights lost to him forever.

The theme of the game is togetherness, as a direct contrast to BOTW's tranquility in its loneliness. Link interacts with so many more people and it's so hard to avoid the NPC's spilling the same gossip everywhere he goes about the Gloom, about Hyrule Castle, and even about Zelda being missing. There is so much pressure to complete the job and fulfill his duty. Because they are so certain that the Hero will save them. Just like he did with the Calamity. But what if he's scared. What if Link, after losing his arm, after losing Zelda, after losing his strength, and after witnessing another version of Ganondorf come back after the Calamity, after seeing for himself the failure of the heroes of the past in defeating this evil – is afraid? And that doesn't mean he doesn't have courage because he will go to Hyrule Castle and fight and win eventually but what if, in the months proceeding that next battle, that looming threat hangs over him.

There is no acceptable precedent for this battle, the only past one having ended in a draw after losses that Link cannot afford. This reincarnation of Ganondorf took everything from the last Hero and Princess and the Sages that stood with them. What if the choking terror that he will not be enough this time trails in his footsteps? What if he is deliberately delaying the inevitable because he sees his friends, his Sages, dead and dying every time he closes his eyes. He will not be going into Hyrule Castle on his own this time. There are more lives at stake than his own and he is so, so afraid that he will not be strong enough.

Link is a Hero and being afraid will never take that away from him. But what if whenever strangers on the road casually remark their fear and hopes that someone will save them, he is no exception. He's scared and falling apart on the inside but if he shows fear, they will lose hope. So he holds it together and gets the job done. He will deal with the consequences in the aftermath. He lives. Everyone lives. But that doesn't mean the fear wasn't there.

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suffering because I decided to try and rush ganon in totk VERY unprepared (did not bring enough sundelion food. or food in general)and VERY underleveled (12 very pitiful hearts) in addition to my incompetence in fighting (I frequently die via moblin) and um. let's just say that I may have perished multiple times. Link is not having a very good day.

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O_O

This sounds GLORIOUS. Ooh I knew the dark green had to be something I’m so hyped about your hype for this fic and I can already tell I will be reading every word of it whenever you’re ready :)))))

ooh I don't know if you've mentioned this before but I may or may not have stalked your wip list sooooo YESTERMORROW??? wut dat :)))))

MY DEAR FRIEND IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED

long story, but bare with me. in the first week of august 2023, before i even had my ao3 account, before i had even done anything at all in this fandom besides lurk and write down ideas in a doc without deciding to commit to them, i came up with this tragedy plot, right? inspired by a combination of the whole "hey, what the fuck kind of implications does palace of the four sword have on legend & fours relationship" thing, and also this scene in a book i was reading that had some really unsettling imagery that had a visceral impact on me that i wanted to have a go at replicating the effects of. it was set post-lu in four's world, so i could only even allude to sky out of all of them... i worked his echoes into the fic as much as possible, but everyone else wasn't even born. i was like, this isn't fully cooked yet. it doesn't feel complete without the others. so i wrote about 2K of a depressed middle-aged vio talking to a dot who faked her death ten years ago, i titled it something long and pretentious cause i was 17, and then i put it aside, and went full steam ahead on the cursebreaker, and steady going under, and other more pleasant things.

a long time after that (think the beginning of august, 2024 - i do NOT know what it is about me and august, omg. i never realised this was a pattern before. there must be something in the air? finals rapidly approaching, maybe?) i got to thinking about hyrule, who has been a strong contender for my favourite character this entire time, and why haven't i written about him more? where were all my plans for him? i decided i didn't like the way i had characterised him very much. it was too sweet. too spineless. i wanted him to be fiercer. i wanted him to be a bit weird. or a lot weird. i wanted to write something that would make up for the lackluster way i had written him in the past. (this is also around the time i started ganonrulie, by the way. if you can't tell. LOL.) i wanted to write something that would attract itself to others who also felt this way about hyrule, because, i mean. i'm not one to complain, but once i decided i didn't like the woobification of hyrule, i started noticing it more and more. and that's what writing fic is for, right? to say: look, this is my take on it. and hopefully find like-minded people along the way.

anyway. the document started out with the words "High mage cave rat hyrule longfic", because tumblr is, as always, an inspiration, and there were some great posts on my dash about hyrule furnishing his cave, and being pestered by other magicians, and eating the soul of ganon, and fun facts about his games i hadn't really thought very hard about. and then i was like, oooh, this is a good opportunity to make it detailed and thoughtful, and full of references to the games, (i had discovered glowingjellyfishtreelights' ao3 account a few months before, and to this day i continue to be utterly enthralled by the way they seamlessly blend all sorts of items and landscapes and monsters and backstories from the games into a linked universe setting)... i started getting very high hopes for this fic. i decided then and there to throw my entire soul into it. i wrote "it's going to be an homage to linked universe", because i was still just as pretentious, only 18 now, and then immediately after i wrote "what is it going to be about??????????" with even more question marks than i included here.

i like plotting. i like making silly leaps in lore and conspiracy theories and connecting dots that probably shouldn't be connected. i like bringing back really old ideas and feeding them into new ones to create all manner of monsters. i decided it would be about time travel - almost a given, really [gestures to my track record] - and then i had the brilliant idea of exploring the chain at different stages of their lives, because in the year or so i'd been reading LU i'd built up a lot of headcanons for the chain pre- and post-adventure, and normally i'd never get to use them, because everything's set during LU, right? but now. now.

this is where we start getting to the things i can't tell you for fear of spoiling it. i must stay pretentiously vague. but safe to say, the story grew to cover a lifetime. lifetimes, even, all of them overlapping, each of the chain with a motive and a goal and a villain. a birth and a death. in less than a week i had feverishly melded the story with the tragedy plot i mentioned earlier, and another wind-centric plot i had been despairing of ever writing, and then an aurora-centric wip i had tucked away eighteen months before, and then another hyrule-centric oneshot i thought i'd never come back to, and then i realised that it was the perfect opportunity to put every single one of my headcanons and conspiracy theories into one place, most of which had been sitting quietly and unused since i started my ao3 and quickly got sidetracked, and then about a month later the doc got so big i had to download it and convert it to word, and then i started splitting it up into chapters, and i realised there was going to be more than 50 of them, and then i decided to give it a name, and couldn't come up with a good one, so i put yestermorrow in as a placeholder, and it STUCK, it fucking STUCK, my yesterday tomorrow, my first word-last word promise, and then before i knew it i was naming all the chapters and drawing up maps of each character's personal timeline through the story and tracking each triforce along its lifetime and thinking about framing devices and pulling up old dating systems i had made several years before and realising that i finally had the space to do everything i had ever wanted to do with the legend of zelda, and everything i had ever wanted to create out of linked universe, and, well. an homage indeed.

yestermorrow's outline, as of yesterday, has breached 30,000 words. sometimes i despair i will ever post it. there is so much plot that 80 chapters remain a conservative estimate, and my prologue draft is less than halfway through and almost 5,000 words. i am trying to be concise. will i ever actually finish it? will anyone ever read it? maybe not. maybe it's not any good. i go back and forth on this every day. it's full of headcanons, and barely hinged worldbuilding, and focuses a good deal more on my own ideas for zeldas and impas who are seldom seen in canon or fanon than anything i'd usually write, and i'm sure not everybody will be on board with my insane conspiracies. plus, i have dedicated way too much time to original characters for the sake of the worldbuilding. i have identity reveals designed to make you question your morality. i have done terrible, terrible things to characters you love. in my mind palace, i have orphaned children. i have killed innocents with the hands of my heroes. i have given almost every link and also some zeldas a fate worse than death. it was necessary. it was needed. it was all to save the world.

yestermorrow, though it started as a story about hyrule, and still is in many ways a story about hyrule, has (tl;dr) become a patchwork of everything i've ever loved about this franchise and this fandom. it's everything i have ever wanted to read all in one story. it's about time loops and overlapping lifetimes and secrets and tragedies and a time machine and godhood and motherhood and siblinghood and the nature of being born a mirror and grief and guilt and regret and shame and love and i'm going to explode because i can't actually tell you more than this. i don't want to spoil it. one day i hope you might be able to read it for yourself. one day. one day i swear