#A LEGEND IN A BAD WAY

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Im not saying the Wizard should totally become a full on villain or anything but it they ended up popping the fuck out of Ambrose or someone else after a passive aggressive/jealous/fearful comment or rumor about them, that would be Acceptable actually :)

[pinacoladamatata]

blink and you'll miss it moments around skyhold....

[uglynavel]

The Avatar fandom is always saying that if we get a continuation after Korra they hope we get to see more complex and flawed characters because atla and lok lacked them

Well I don't want that because y'all can't even handle the ones you were already given

[skywastherobot]

It's been 19 years since Bad Wolf aired, which means it's been 19 years since the best moment in DOCTOR WHO history.

[seawaveleo]

i am still on the first episode, it’s 1am

[introspectivememories]

sorry but do you ever think about the fact that the bernard we have today is a direct amalgamation of everything that happened in his past and i know that sound like such an obvious statement to say but it actually kills me to know that you can draw a direct line from who he is today all the way back to that sixteen year old boy who watched his best friend bleed out. like it is the defining moment in his life. it fundamentally shaped who he is and the person he's become. he is the bernard we know and love not despite the grieves shooting but because of it. because the gangs all got together and shot up his school. because tim walked out of that room with nothing but a baseball bat. because his darla got shot. because he watched her gasp and cry as she died. because he watched the blood coagulate around the wound. because he sat there and held her hand as her life drained out of her. because he walked into school that day with a joke he knew would make her laugh and her nose would scrunch up and she'd snort a little and tim would roll his eyes at him and call him ridiculous and instead he walked out with a bloody white shirt, blood under his fingernails, and two friends less. because, even now, almost half a decade out from the shooting, he thinks that if he closes his eyes, he will always be that stupid, scared little sixteen year old, holding the cooling body of dead best friend.

[sapphicseasapphire]

Thoughts to ponder.

Tears of the Kingdom spoilers (and lots of rambles) under the cut

When I started the Chain as Cryptids au, I didn’t really think I’d be able to work Tears of the Kingdom in, seeing how much I had changed Wild’s story. He’s a spirit with no memory of the Hylian he once was. He’s a force to be reckoned with but can be easily spooked- much like a wild animal. He avoids Flora like the plague since she’s his connection to the life he used to have. The life that isn’t his anymore.

But then… I had an idea. Flora would be desperate to find her Link again after discovering that he’s still alive (or… not really alive. Not quite a Poe but not quite a Hylian either). Regardless, after the events of Breath of the Wild, she’d start a search party and scour every corner of Hyrule to find him.

She never would. When spirits don’t want to be seen, they aren’t. But… this whole time, I imagined that Korok Forest acted as a sort of home base for Wild. Wild cannot speak verbally but can communicate telepathically with other spirits and spiritual beings. The Koroks and Blupees would be like siblings to him, the Deku Tree being like a parental figure since he basically started life over when he died. (Two Links raised by the Great Deku Tree. He and Time can bond over that later).

ANYWAY. Wild used the Master Sword for about half of the events of Breath of the Wild. But when it would need to recharge, he’d place it back in the pedestal in Korok Forest where it could become stronger under the watchful gaze of the Great Deku Tree. Then he’d be off, never staying in one place for too long, wandering the sandy shores of Necluda or the lava banks of Eldin.

This pattern would stay in place for years after the defeat of Calamity Ganon: Wild stopping at Korok Forest to reunite with his family and let the Master Sword heal and then disappearing into the wilds once more. And over the years, Flora’s search party would shrink until it was just her scouring the continent for her missing knight. Okay, yeah, maybe she’s a little desperate, but she can’t bear the thought of him alone out there. Not when he died because of her. Not when he’s all she has left.

And… when the Master Sword is recharging, that’s when Flora would finally take her search to Korok Forest. She finds the sacred blade but her knight is nowhere to be seen. The Deku Tree allows her to take it, urging her onward, warning her that eventually, she’ll have to use it. She heeds his wisdom, pulling the sword from her resting place and securing it on her back. Then she begins her search anew.

She doesn’t find him.

She trains with the Master Sword while she travels Hyrule. She starts to rebuild. She gets to know her people. And from the cover of countless trees and stone, a certain spirit watches her and his sword.

During her travels, Flora encounters a strange red-black mist that makes her people ill. They call it ‘gloom.’ And, what’s worse, it seems to pour out from under Hyrule Castle. The castle has laid untouched for years now, ever since the Calamity was sealed away and she set out on her search. But now, it would seem that she’s needed once more at the site of her greatest battle. The subject of her nightmares. The place where she los the last piece of her home.

Without her knight at her side, she makes her way to the forgotten foundation of her old life. She’s alone when she travels through the caverns, alone when she follows the melancholy most past murals and carvings that she itches to explore. Flora is alone when the Master Sword glows in warning. Alone when she battles monsters waiting for her in the depths.

The princess is all alone when she discovers a mysterious mummy being held in place by a single glowing arm. She watches as the appendage falls away, a stone falling to the rocky ground with an unassuming click. As she reaches to pick it up, the corpse reanimates. It stands tall, more alert and aware than any Gibdo she’s seen on her journey, and fixes her with a stare that she’d crumble under. She drops her torch and draws the Master Sword, holding the unfamiliar yet warm stone to her chest, and the mummy laughs at her.

It knows her name.

And it attacks.

Flora is alone when the gloom ravages her arm. She’s alone when the Master Sword is the first to crumble under that pressure. She’s alone when the very ground beneath her gives in to that same pressure.

She’s alone when she falls, pain lacing through her arm and golden light enveloping her.

But Flora is not alone when she wakes.

For the purposes of this au, Flora’s time in the past is going to be very similar to canon. She still meets Rauru and Sonia. Still meets Mineru and the Sages and Ganondorf. She still trains to control her secret stone. However, Rauru fixes her arm almost as soon as she arrives in this strange world. He doesn’t give her his, not like he does for Link in TOTK, since he needs it to seal Ganondorf away. But he and Mineru work together to combine construct parts and their own light and spirit magic to make her new muscles and machinery to aid in moving her own ruined arm.

The Imprisoning War is the same.

Sonia dies. Rauru sacrifices himself. And she still has no idea how to get home. How to heal the Master Sword and destroy Ganondorf in her own time. She still speaks with Mineru… and she comes to the same conclusion that she did in canon. This time, though, she’s taking much more of a risk. She can survive the centuries as a dragon, she can heal the sword. But she can’t be sure that her Link will be there to take it and finish things. She hasn’t even seen him in years.

… she doesn’t have a choice.

From Wild’s perspective, it happened in moments. He blinked and suddenly there were islands floating in his skies. Hyrule Castle floats ominously, red plumes of gloom branching out from underneath. Massive sinkholes give way to more of the poison, seeming to drop forever. His forests are ravaged once again, the climate in corners of the continent changing drastically.

And the princess he’d been following is gone.

While trying to get a grasp of what changed so suddenly, he figures out a way up to the Sky Islands. And to his surprise, he discovers a new dragon.

Now, Wild is familiar with all of the dragons in Hyrule. Farosh, Naydra, and Dinraal are just on the threshold of Spirit and Mortal, but they definitely qualify as spiritual beings. Meaning that Wild can speak telepathically to them. Their thoughts are always muddy and jumbled up, so he never gets much out of conversing with them. But he can tell that they enjoy his presence. So he rides with them in the skies of Hyrule for hours at a time.

This new dragon is smaller than the three he knows and flies much higher. Its ears are shorter, hair golden, eyes stunning. Instead of six legs, this one only has five. A scarred stump at its front and a glowing object on- no in- its poor head. Wild makes his way over as fast as he can, desperate to learn more about the beast.

The new dragon’s thoughts are just as jumbled up as he’s used to but he’s caught off guard by how miserable it feels. No. She. How miserable she feels. Wild places a glowing hand on her snout and tries to calm her, but it’s no use. Her thoughts may be chaotic and disorganized, but he senses her distress. She wants- sword. Knight. Link Link Link. You must find me, you have to save them all!

Wild takes the Master Sword from where it was buried in the dragon’s golden mane and is nearly thrown off by her shock at the action. But when his sword is once again in his capable hands, he feels an overwhelming gratitude from the dragon. It’s gone as soon as it came, replaced again by misery. Dread. Grief.

During the events of Breath of the Wild, Wild did not fight to save Zelda. He did not fight to save Hyrule. He fought for the land. For his fellow spirits that were being destroyed by malice. For the forests that were burned down by guardians. For the water that was poisoned by monsters. He defeated Calamity Ganon for his family.

He fights Ganondorf for the same reason. Except… maybe this time, he’s extra motivated by that strange new dragon. She seemed… so sad…

THIS IS GETTING WAY TOO LONG. But suffice to say that after the events of Tears of the Kingdom, Flora does not 100% recover from being a dragon. She keeps her telepathic connection to Wild and her immortality. She keeps her horns and scales and SHE gets the Master Sword. She’s a Cryptid as well, and she’s closer to Wild than she ever was.

. . .

Uhhhhh that was super long I apologize. But rambling like this is so much easier than trying to be coherent and careful when I write. I might to it more often if you think it’s legible haha. Feel free to ask questions haha, I love any excuse to talk about my Cryptid boys and their relationships with people in their worlds.

Wild’s Origin!

[triaelf9]

Turns out I went the other direction and thus MISSED the shirt (which only covers one nip, so really, point stands), but why be clothed when you could eat spicy peppers! (and get frostbite!)

[steamclouds]

That other not-so-nice Do'Urden brother

[skyloftian-nutcase]

TotK DLC idea!

The screen is black. You don’t hear anything for a long time. Then, faintly, in the distance, you can hear it.

Link. Link. Open your eyes.

While the line echoes familiarity, the voice does not.

Or. Well. It does. Because while it isn’t Zelda, it’s a familiar man’s voice speaking gently, so gently you almost don’t recognize it because there’s no way he ever spoke like this in the main game.

But he is now. And instead of a golden light being the first image you see before the screen shows Link awakening… you see gloom floating in the air. The image cuts to a Hylian waking up who… doesn’t look like Link from TotK?? He’s different, still small in stature, with slightly tanner skin, platinum light blonde hair, and red eyes. But… something’s wrong with his forehead. There’s a weird line on it.

This new character you apparently are gonna be playing in the DLC blearily blinks his eyes open, clearly groggy and too weak to really move. But then that line on his forehead moves a hair, it splits apart, and you realize it’s a freaking eye, red and yellow and it’s like the ones on gloom hands and oh gosh what the hell is it doing on his forehead—

Link realizes something is off and his eyes blow wide, his hands reach for his forehead and he screams in agony and terror, only for someone to scoop him into a hug to soothe him.

And suddenly you realize why that voice was eerily familiar.

It’s Ganondorf. He resurrected you from the era of the Imprisoning War. You, who have a history with him and his family. You, who he wants to protect, who he views as his kid, who he calls a prince and says he’ll keep you safe by controlling your body with his dark magic if he has to.

Welcome to Tears of the Kingdom: Hero’s Shadow.

You have to play a long gone Hero who was resurrected. Ganondorf, who is still recovering his strength in preparation for killing the current Hero, tasks you with finding your betrothed, his daughter, as well as his wife. They’re buried somewhere in the Depths like you were. He wants you to find their burial sites so he can use his secret stone to resurrect them like he did you, and control them as well. Which is doubly bad when you realize his wife was the original Sage of Lightning. He gives you free reign to wander once you go through a tutorial (he tests you to see if you’ve recovered enough strength), because he knows you love wandering and collecting things. Your own personal objective, however, is trying to help Hyrule from the Depths, to break free from Ganondorf’s control, because Link would rather set himself on fire than let Ganondorf resurrect and control the love of his life and his mother-in-law. Your best hope is to find shards of the shattered Master Sword to try and stab the eye on Dark Link’s forehead and break the control Ganondorf has on you. Until you can, though, the monsters are your allies, you can teleport across the Depths by manifesting out of the gloom created by gloom hands (just like what Phantom Ganon does), and the world below is your oyster. If you get too close to sword shards when gloom hands are nearby, Ganondorf can see your attempt and immediately takes control of your body, and no matter what button you press Link just walks back to Ganondorf’s location and stays there until you get a chance to try again.

You start with three hearts, all empty looking like when gloom hurts you, and if you get injured they just shatter. Whenever they all shatter, you respawn at Ganondorf’s location because his gloom hands came and rescued you from dying. The only way you can get more hearts is by collecting poes and offering them to the statues in the Depths. You can communicate with the spirits of soldiers, who may give you combat tips or info about the area. If you gain enough of Ganondorf’s trust, he’ll let you command monsters, and he might even let you wander the Surface (under his supervision) during a blood moon.

You learn of Link’s and Ganondorf’s history through discovering ancient relics/texts that trigger memories. This connection between you and Ganondorf stems back to time before the war, well over ten thousand years ago. Link was engaged to Ganondorf’s daughter, but during the Imprisoning War the family fought against the demon king. Ganondorf did love his family, but he loved power more. Link sacrificed himself, letting himself get mortally wounded to save Rauru from a killing blow. Gan held him as he died, and it allowed Link to both beg him to stop and stab him in the heart with a light shard. The shard didn’t kill him, but it was what Rauru connected with when he hit him in the chest, allowing him to seal Ganondorf away. Ganondorf still wants the world, but his love for his family is still present, though now twisted, so he thinks he can control Link and everyone else with his dark magic in order to keep them safe and in line. Once the threat of the current Hero is eliminated, the world will be his, and his family will be safe. As such, he treats you, Link, the player, like a stubborn child, reeling you in, but does so in a horrific way, torturing Link by controlling him.

You have to break free of this and stop him, and the only hope you have is the distant call of a sword spirit…

[phoenixyfriend]

Totally the Real Jango

Have another time-travel concept:

Clones go back in time. Run into some Mandos, most probably the Haat'ade. Subsequently LIE THEIR ASSES OFF. Specifically:

Sheer, bald-faced lying that they are are Jango himself from the future, relying on the pronounced age but identical DNA to sell it.

Any questions of fact that they get wrong regarding current and recent status with the Fetts or with Jaster get explained away with 'it was decades ago,' because they look like they're fifty, and this Jango is Twelve or something.

@jebiknights offered:

I can't decide if baby Jango would be really impressed with "older him" or extremely "unimpressed." Also potential hilarity for Jango to be POSITIVE that the person couldn't possibly be him but DNA checks out and all the adults are like "nah Jango is just being a brat."

…technically this only works if there's one clone, unless the second clone is Boba or Omega, or both, posing as Themselves but selling the clone-is-actually-Jango gambit for reasons.

In my mind it's one of the clones that got scarred up enough that if one of Jango's childhood scars is missing, it's explained away with 'well half that leg is synthskin grafts anyway, so who the fuck knows when the small scar got replaced with a Big scar.'

Which is. Most of the clones that survived that long.

So much of the ploy is reliant on Boba feeding information to whichever clone this is (Wolffe or Rex, probably) about his dad in order to sell the bit, but like. IDK why he'd even be cooperating. Just that he is. For the bit. And some scheming.

Boba's already an adult if the clone in question looks fifty or sixty, which means Jango is following him and Omega around with stars in his eyes. Jango thinks future him is scary, but future kids are badass, so he's gotta figure out what kinda cool bounty hunter he can be, even if the future sounds like hell in a handbasket.

But the IMPORTANT PART is that Boba is uncomfortable as hell due to. uh. lying to his dad. and also the fact that bb Jango does not know, at all, how complex all the feelings that he and Omega and the older clone hold towards dead future Jango are.

Jaster is kind of happy/excited to see them all, but the fake future Jango is... not very friendly or familiar with him? Which he's upset by until Boba says "you died when he was fourteen, so um. I never even got to meet you? And I guess he doesn't know how to feel about it" which is a great way to lie with the truth.

I don't want Boba to be too old, but the age difference needs to make sense with how old they look. Early twenties for Boba would be mid-forties for the other clone?

And stress added a bit.

And they can drop the odd joke about how Jango 'aged well' and looks younger than he is.

(If the time-traveller clone is Rex, they are definitely being stalked by a former Jedi who is really weirdly fond of staking out in trees.)

By the time the double aging actually shows, they'll have hopefully come clean and/or skipped town (whatever their actual goal is).

[vaguely-concerned]

kremy's voice whenever he's sincerely distressed is one of the cutest things I've ever heard. 'frooost fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it :'('

[gilmores-glorious-blog]

genuinely so unwell thinking about how there’s such an emphasis placed on vax being the one who needs his sister, who asks her to not go far from him, who is nothing without her. vex is the one who’s always been more independent, vax says it himself: she doesn’t need him. but in the end, vax is the one who leaves. and vex doesn’t realize just how much she needed her brother until it’s too late.

[chickenoptyrx]

'nother comic for the AU, but this ones not funny- more just 'miserable with small less miserable moments' :D

[bumblingbabooshka]

My name is [BRUTUS] and my name means [HEAVY] so with a [HEAVY] heart I'll guide this dagger Into the heart of my enemy

Something about having absolutely no choice in who you marry. About being literally forced by the law to spill blood - to accept this stranger as your husband over a man you truly care for or accept the fact that the man you love might die because you put him in danger. Something about risking becoming the wife of a man you've never even seen before a few minutes prior because you know anything would be better than putting your beloved in harm's way. Something about the trust inherent in that decision and in the way she speaks of it after. Truthfully, T'Pring doesn't know the captain and she doesn't know Spock. Either one of them could have taken her as their wife but she does know Stonn. She knows that Stonn will remain by her side no matter what. They made a plan together. They have an agreement which T'Pring believes will be upheld even though the plan changed with the arrival of Kirk. Stonn will always be there, always, and Stonn will be hers. Something about the language used around T'Pring: Ownership, subservience, non-personhood. T'Pring is an object that Spock can win. She cannot reject him, she has no say in the matter other than having Stonn 'claim' her instead. Even when Spock leaves after being very clearly rejected by T'Pring he says "Stonn, she is yours." as if despite her clear rejection he still owns her and is must formally 'give' her to Stonn. But the language T'Pring uses around Stonn is a break from that: "There was Stonn who wanted very much to be my consort, and I wanted him." Stonn who wanted very much to be HER consort and she WANTED him. The language here is very particular - It's not, for example: "Stonn wanted me to be his wife" - he is HERS. And she WANTS him. There's a mutual affection there and a strong trust - a trust which seems to be well founded since Stonn (though silent) stands by her side at the end of the episode. <- That might seem small but if Spock would reject her for 'daring to challenge' (again, the language is not 'because I don't want you' but more of an implied disgust at her having the AUDACITY to reject him) then it's not a stretch to assume that it'd be considered an insult in the TOS Vulcan society to NOT choose Stonn as her champion after a prior agreement. Anyway T'Pring was a woman in an impossible situation within a society which saw her as more of an object than a person and she wanted Stonn and Stonn wanted to be hers and she trusted that he would understand if she had to publicly pick someone else to ensure his life would be spared and he did understand.

[sehaniine]

what if zelda’s dragonification left a different kind of scar?