#<- tagging it with this because I’m not looking to argue with hardcore stans

[duskcowboy]

Let’s talk about the lightsinger theory…

[If this theory isn’t your cup of tea, I recommend you keep scrolling. You’ve been warned.]

Per my last post, I recently dug deep into the Lightsinger Theory tag which can be dangerous territory. I suppose for many Gw*nriel shippers, this theory feels equivalent to how many Elriel shippers feel about the Evil Elain Theory. So I get it, it’s not fun or easy to hear theories that somewhat paint a character you like in a bad light (especially when the people doing so use said theory as reasoning for why your desired ship won’t happen). However, after reading many “debunking” posts about the Lightsinger Theory, I want to address something:

Many anti posts use the “definition” of a lightsinger provided in acosf to prove the theory wrong because it doesn’t outright provide details used in the LS theory such as “glowing” or “singing”. Let’s review what was said in acosf…

Now, idk about you, but this isn’t really a “definition”; it sounds to me more like a story—some may say even a myth, or a legend. It basically sounds like something you’d tell your kids to discourage them from going near the deep end (a “boogeyman” of sorts). And the thing with myths and legends is that they are based on truth, but they evolve and change over time through the process of word of mouth.

Take these excerpts from the article, “How Great Myths and Legends Were Created”:

“It began with a real or imagined incident…It was passed along by word of mouth from person to person and from generation to generation until it had been told and retold millions of times and existed in a hundred different versions around the world.”

“There is also a tendency to exaggerate or minimize, to glorify or ennoble, to idealize or vilify. Beyond that, there’s a natural, unconscious tendency to analyze things, to take them apart and put them back together in different combinations and a natural tendency to simplify or edit.”

Therefore, what Cassian provided as information on a lightsinger could potentially not be wholly correct. So, we have to decipher what we anticipate to be truth and what could be embellishments added over time (or what’s been left out). This is why I believe that Gwyn possibly being a lightsinger doesn’t necessarily imply that she’s evil or manipulating anyone on purpose. The story of what a lightsinger is can very easily be based on a truth that has transformed into a “mythical creature”, and has a high chance of not being entirely accurate anymore. Additionally, the absence of seemingly “key words” such as “singing” or “visions” could have easily been lost in the process of retellings.

But if you disagree that what Cass said is a myth or legend, I’ll reel it back a bit and continue calling it the description of a lightsinger. Now, with descriptions, they typically highlight characteristics to create a basic overview. With this, you are not going to get every last detail. For example, a suspect’s description usually entails the following:

Gender, race, age/height/weight (estimated), and maybe some other vague descriptions of eye & hair color, clothing, etc.

So if a suspect description says, “white male, mid 30’s, average height, sandy blonde hair, and wearing black overalls,” and I see someone matching that exact description (down to the color of his overalls) driving a red car, NO ONE would argue I can’t call it in “because the description never said he was driving a red car”.

My point being that: the absence of certain details does not automatically mean they are a falsehood.

“It doesn’t say lightsingers sing”

True. But let’s draw an educated guess from surrounding evidence: “singer” is in the literal title, just like “shadowsinger”; the only shadowsinger we know of confirmed he sings.

“It never says lightsingers glow”

Again, educated guess. Power is consistently described as “glowing”. When Gwyn sings, she glows. It’s not a large leap in thinking to conclude she may be using some sort of power. If it’s not as a lightsinger, what is it?

“It doesn’t say they can induce visions”

It does say that “they appear as friendly faces” when in fact, they’re not. That seems to me like a manipulation of sight. Not a far leap to guess they could maybe induce other manipulations of sight such as visions.

An easy answer to all of these is also, “it also doesn’t say they don’t” but I suspect that’s not a good enough response. All I know is that this argument is teetering on argumentum ad ingorantiam…the “appeal to ignorance” fallacy of “it can’t be true because it doesn’t explicitly say it’s true”.

Just because the description didn’t lay out every detail, doesn’t mean it can’t be true. If SJM literally wrote “lightsingers are ethereal beings who lure you by enchanting songs” wouldn’t it have been too obvious? She might as well have just said “Gwyn is a lightsinger”. What we’re doing with this theory is piecing a puzzle together using legitimate excerpts from the text, and in this process, we acknowledge that we could potentially be wrong.

The description of a lightsinger may not explicitly say a lot to outright link Gwyn, but you know what it does say? That they lure people. And what does it say in acosf?

That Gwyn’s grandmother “seduced” an autumn male. What’s a synonym for “seduce”? LURE.

That Gwyn’s singing “beckons” and “draws Nesta in”. What’re synonyms for “beckon” and to “draw in someone/something”? LURE.

I think you get my point.

Look, I’ll acknowledge that all these “conclusions” and theories are unconfirmed. We’re well aware of that. But to insinuate that our logic is implausible when we use text from the book to build it is what’s nonsensical.

Whew! Two long posts in one day 🥴 sorry about that haha as always, lmk what you think!

[all credit to @silverlinedeyes for the OG lightsinger theory! Check them out for more detailed evidence!]

[enduracarrotchips]

YouTuber AU

Hello welcome to Dating Scandal but with Twitter Involved (nightmare)

A little exposition here: 

Link, Zelda, Sidon, Revali, and Riju are the most popular group of youtubers on the internet and have a huge fanbase that likes to theorize, draw fanart, and write fanfiction about them. Disclaimer, I don’t actually interact with real-person fandoms myself lol there’s just too much potential for drama and misunderstandings & they’re always bound to end in a dumpster fire but that is sort of what this au is about so.

Impa, Mipha, Daruk, and Urbosa are family friends that appear in a lot of their videos/streams. 

(This is an art blog I swear)

enter vidcon 20XX

Link: 

blows stuff up/sets stuff on fire with a side of cooking vids and gaming

most are filmed outside, he does those challenges where you try to cook stuff with limited ingredients/materials

has the largest fanbase of all of them, but not the most…intimidating.

does a lot of collab videos, mostly with Impa, Daruk, and Riju because they have similar interests/channels, but Zelda appears in his videos and is seen filming and the stans read too far into it

simps. i’m pointing at you.

Most popular videos are “shield surfing on rock!—how I broke my leg” “can Daruk eat Impa’s motorcycle?” and “how to inhale ranch dressing.”

Twitter handle is @ arsonistslullabye because he’s a hozier fan

45m subs

Zelda:

theories, analyses, conspiracies, and the occasional e x p e r i m e n t

she once got link to eat a frog for 50 bucks.

most people argue that she’s better than more popular YouTubers because she actually has quality content to give to the world and she has a lot of defensive supporters

She used to get a lot of hate before Urbosa spoke up about it and scared the bejeezus out of everyone

has an actual posting schedule

“Happy Sunday everyone, it’s Zelda Hyrule and today we will be talking about cryptozoology and why blupees exist, you cowards.”

Twitter handle is @ zeldaofhyrule and she is pan. just so you know. One of those calm extroverts that mystify me to this day.

18m subs

Sidon:

fashion/life hacks. Like gourmet troom troom but if they were real people.

Has the 2nd largest fanbase

most of them are girls

Sidon has a boyfriend though, which he told everyone at VidCon a few years ago

cue the drama and shipping and the entire fandom trying to figure out who the boyfriend is. A well known reddit thread emerged that presented the common guesses being Link, Sidon, and Zelda.

“But it can’t be Zelda, Sidon’s gay.”

“I’m not in the fandom but I thought Zelda was a boy??”

“Did you just say Sidon? Is that a typo? Are you saying that Sidon’s dating himself?”

Sidon x Sidon became a fandom joke.

Don’t look at me I’m just setting up all the worldbuilding. every fandom has their weird dark sides and Sidon x Sidon is the Linkcest of the Sidon YT fandom.

Mystery BF is actually Bazz, a pretty inconspicuous guy who appeared in a few of his videos. This was confirmed a year ago, but everyone still ships him with other YouTubers because they’re convinced he was lying to throw them off his scent. He really can’t catch a break and this is why you should not ship real people.

Twitter handle is @ officialprincesidon

says “beguiling” a lot

21m subs ᕙ( ͡❛ ▿ ͡❛)ᕗ

Mipha:

Sidon’s sister, hasn’t posted a single video but just has the channel for show because she appears in so many of Sidon’s videos as a model for his makeup tutorials and whatnot

has 328k for that. Everyone loves her, she’s great. @ mimipha

Revali:

Link’s sworn rival

Link thinks they’re friends

He kept popping up in link’s Twitter threads and making snarky comments until zelda called him out for not even following link (so why was he stalking his acc) which kept the Twitter drama to a minimum

Revali was the catalyst of a few popular memes and that’s where most of his subs come from.

drags link into a few challenges that always get a ton of views because of how competitive they get

“ITS JUST ASININE” is a running joke that everyone tries to get him to say. His @ is itsjustasinine as well

Urbosa is the only person who can win an argument with him

5m subs and growing rapidly. newer to youtube than everyone else.

Impa:

Doesn’t have a channel she’s just a mutual friend of Mipha, Zelda, and Link

Rides a motorcycle, so she is used in a few of Link’s videos.

@ ihaveamotorcycle because she thinks having a motorcycle is a personality trait. the most unruly on Twitter when it comes to replying to fan’s stuff, leaking upcoming videos and generally causing chaos.

Mipha’s girlfriend. That’s how she met Zelda and Link.

Urbosa:

Is actually a model, but she has a ton of YouTuber friends because she’s known Zelda since birth.

when she entered the youtube community she didn’t realize she would be adopting like 15 children

5m subs. her videos are professional & related to her modelling career. @ urbosasfury

I feel like she would do unboxing vids. I’m not sure what she’s unboxing.

Daruk

Just a friend of Link’s, fun guy. yells a lot. once ate a rock and had no reaction.

people are scared of him for that reason

Riju:

yoga & gymnastics & “ha look at how flexible I am its eAsY” videos

you know the type

she also does reactions and is sponsored by save the sand seals charities which she is very enthusiastic about. She’s also Urbosa’s niece and the only minor in the gang (15). I like to think that the champions YT community is actually not creepy so everyone respects her a ton

doesn’t post frequently, she mostly appears in Link’s videos to jump out of airplanes or whatever. And sometimes Zelda’s if she’s interested in the topic. 500k subs, but she’s always really popular when she appears in Link’s videos.

VidCon:

In the months leading up to VidCon, some fans on the internet made a few discoveries: first of all, that the inside of Link’s house is painted green. This is a big deal because all of his videos are filmed outside either in his backyard or on trips that he and the brosquad go on to do…whatever bros do. explosions. idk. The point is he had some announcement about VidCon and filmed it inside. Only the wall and a potted plant were shown.

However, the colour was similar to the the shade of Zelda’s living room. Fans dug through years and years of old videos and found a clip of Zelda walking through a hallway, where there was an open door and a glimpse of a houseplant.

There were 2 types of responses to the theory:

“They could just be roommates guys calm down”

“and they were ROOMMATES?”

others pointed out that Link could just not have a house and had to crash in Zelda’s

Some guy on reddit claimed he had a botany degree and declared that the houseplants in the clips were not of the same genus. Normal people pointed out that the plant would have grown 4 years between the clips and would look considerably different.

#Zelink trended on twitter for a while and people posted other old clips from both of their channels and the frog video blew up again

Impa retweeted a post tagged as #zelink with “rofl” and later publicly apologized for causing confusion.

Fans noticed that in the “can a motorcycle drive over my arm” (it was clickbait he’s fine) episode 2 years ago, Link was eating out of a paper lunch bag with his name written on it in handwriting that a few people claimed to look like Zelda’s, leading people to believe that she had packed him a lunch.

However, this theory was shot down with the counterargument that Zelda can’t cook. although. i mean how much skill do you need to make a sandwich.

No one knows what tumblr is doing at this time

Zelda wore a scarf in her “Save the Sand Seals” video that matched identically to the scarf Link wore when he travelled to Hebra to film a shield surfing video, but it’s been debated wether it’s actually the same scarf or not.

Neither Zelda nor Link has spoken up about the theories, and besides Impa’s one slip on twitter, neither has any of their friends. Zelda received a lot of backlash for the assumption that she was dating Link because he has a lot of delusional fans that didn’t want her to “steal their man” or whatever the hell that type of fan would get mad about

Oh yea and bolson & karson run a zelink fanpage on twitter sorry I forgot about that

after that whole mess, everyone was even more anticipant of VidCon in the hopes that some of their questions would be answered.

The whole batch went to VidCon this year: Link, Impa, Daruk, and Riju are a gang while Sidon and Mipha go together and Zelda & Revali each go separately. Urbosa is there for supervision moral support

Zelda has always been much better at dodging questions that she doesn’t want to answer than anyone else, so her Q&A went without a hitch. When asked to confirm the rumours she said “which one?” and then moved on to the next question (without actually confirming any rumours).

Link is generally a more awkward person but eventually said that he had filmed the video in Zelda’s house because it was nicer and didn’t realize it would cause such an uproar. Fans were disappointed, but Bolson claimed he saw Link and Zelda exiting the hotel elevator on the same floor after Link’s Q&A session. No one believed him.

Fans went back to theorizing over who Link, Zelda, and Sidon were all dating, because apparently they can’t just be dating unknown people and have to be with other YouTubers

Sidon and Bazz got engaged about a week after VidCon, making at least 4 preteen girls cry

actually try 4 million

Sidon x Sidon made a brief comeback but Sidon spoke up about his fandom for the first time ever on twitter and told everyone that no, he was not dating himself. eventually, everyone settled down and accepted that none of them were in a relationship save for a few loud fans.

Link and Zelda still got the occasional “when will you tell us who you’re dating?” comment but most of them were joking and the people who still hardcore shipped them were generally frowned upon. Zelda’s popularity went up after VidCon and she regained the 200k subscribers she’d lost after the first theory dropped.

Two months after VidCon, Link posted a video titled “Zelda and I’s House Tour!” and gave around 45 million people a heart attack

as revealed in the video, they had actually been dating since they were 16 and everyone’s just a fool.

the potted plant is named Hestu.

[isitandwonder]

Have been a charmie and at some point you stopped shipping them? I’m curious, why did it happen? If that’s the story actually... 😘

Hey nonnie, I’ve never called myself a charmie, I find this monicer rather ridiculous - but I did ship A/T and I still read a few authors who write for that ship... but I’m not super passionate about it or invested in it anymore, that’s true.

Why?

Because it stopped being fun and became a toxic cult.

You know, in the beginning (for me that was late summer 2017) T and A seemed rather cute together. They were goofy, had chemistry, they were kinda opposites (Tim lanky and dark and the newby, Armie tall, muscled, more experienced in the business), they were in this movie together that looked beautiful so... why not ship them?

Shipping, to me, means imagining two people being together and writing stories about it, chatting with friends, making stuff up, joking around and fantasize a little. It’s not real but something I imagine. And it’s being taken with a wink, with humor. Everyone involved knows it’s made up shit. And as long as it stays in fan spaces, I don’t see any harm done.

Well, that is not the case anymore.

So called fans or ‘shippers’ (they don’t ship, they KNOW, therefore the air quotes) harrass the real life partners and friends and associates and business partners of A and T. That is one thing I really don’t like. Keep stuff in fan spaces fgs!

But these people also harrass fellow fans who don’t agree with them. Like, wish them or their kids death, call them homophobes, call them all kinds of names, try to dox and mob them. Why should I be in a fandom that’s so full of hate and toxicity? I don’t have time for shit like that.

I still follow a few people on here who get it (you know who you are) but it becomes increasingly hard to find them.

That abyssmal state of the fandom shows esp in a field that’s really important to me and that I usually enjoy most: fan fic. I only still read about 5 authors. About half the people writing for the fandom are part of this toxic swamp I try to avoid like the plague (can we still say that?) on here and I wouldn’t touch their stories with a ten foot pole if you paid me money. Most of the other stories circle around things that simply don’t interest me or explore issues for the umpteenth time. I’m not saying that’s bad - write what the hell you like, create the 100th high school AU, whatever - but it just bores me (that is my problem. I also remeber a time when we had so much variety and creativity... go take a look at the older stories from 2017/2018, there are some true gems to be found!). It’s also a small fandom and maybe that’s the reason it becomes rather apparent that 80% of all WIPs get abandoned? Which is disappointing for a reader (I might be guilty of that as well, I don’t blame the writes, I blame the general atmosphere of this fandom that’s becoming less and less inspiring). I guess that only reflects the state of the fandom in general.

When ‘fans’ or ‘shippers’ are more into the private lives of the folks they stan (which might seem ‘natural’ for a real person ship but crosses a line when it’s carried into these peoples’ real lives), up to the point where it becomes harrassment, delusional, crazy, dangerous, rude, insulting, embarrassing and destructive, instead of supporting their faves - then it’s no wonder that this negativity creeps into other parts of fandom, driving writers and creators away.

(I recently came about a post re Tim where I had to read in the tags that he’s a great actor and that it’s sad that he has such a terrible fan base; that hurt.)

It has come to the point where I’m embarrassed to be associated with this ship - due to the very vocal delusional bunch of so-called ‘fans’ who are only interested in how much dick T gets from A. Like, for real REAL. In this fandom, a big chunk of people truly belief to KNOW that A and T are fucking like rabbits, that A will get a divorce soon (apparently since 2017; what are these people even hoping for???) and that T will only live for his daddy’s dick after that. And they go to ANY length to state and proof this and shout everyone down who might disagree. (Maybe they should masturbate a bit more to get these highly sexualized fantasies out of their systems? It also shows a lot about them, the way they view gender and sexuality, how they assign roles in this ship and what kind of behaviour/personality traits they depict over and over again. I could go on about the blatant, toxic heteronormativity that shows in this gay ‘ship’ that pretends to support LGB sexualities but this is already way too long lol).

I mean, if you want to rearrange your life around something like this - knock yourself out. It’s just not for me. There was a point I was really disappointed about these developments. Then I was angry for a few ‘bad apples’ destroying a place I loved. Now I only laugh about these people, though with some I really have pity because you can see in their posts how hard these mostly young, heterosexual women project  and that they truly have issues in their lives they should rather tackle instead of harrassing some other women on the internet who have the privilege to share the beds of the people they pretend to stan for real.

Oh, but it’s absolutely no use to talk to these so-called hardcore charmie ‘shippers’ - they are so deep down the rabbit whole they can’t and won’t come out of it or even listen. If you only say you don’t care who A or T are into for real you are a traitor, an anti, a homophobe, dumb as shit, dense, blind... That’s not a fun place in this fandom.

I mean, I was tempted to believe, too, for about 4 weeks late 2017. I was drawn intot hat dynamic of being privy to some insider info, feeling important, being in the know... But I’m so glad I was told that Liz was in Crema almost all the time during the filming - so the little stories A and T told were promo and nothing more. That was my moment of waking up. It took me like three days to come to terms with the fact that all I imagined was truly only a fantasy - but I’m so grateful I accepted that early on and was spared a lot of disappontment by that. I know a lot of people who weren’t so lucky and are now spending their days spinning more and more delusional theories to keep the world they built together...

Rn I see huge parts of the fandom trying to ‘disprove’ things they won’t belief or accept because it goes against their ‘knowledge’ of ‘what’s really going on’. So much energy goes into arguing that posts are fake and people lie etc etc. I can’t keep up with all this nonsense. And why should I? This is not fun. This is madness. This is negativity. This is destructive. Besides, most proofs are tarot readings and the analysis of pics and vids taken out of context (or are even manips). But I suppose these people find some kind of validation in their behavior? It just eludes me. I’ve deleted most of my fics, blocked and unfollowd almost everyone, and be warned, if you have charmie in your header that’s a sign for me to keep my distance...

But all of this is only my opinion, you are welcome to disagree, carve your own happy place out here, do as you please. I would never go on anyone’s blog to lecture them or police them but you asked so here’s what I have to say.