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…
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Going thoroughly insane over how on completely different ends Sora's and Koushirou's roles and relationships with their mothers (and in extension their parents in general) are portrayed in Adventure. And once again, it was ALL based on miscommunication:
Sora is perceived as the tradition-defying "tomboy" who is "loud" and plays football; Koushirou is perceived as the "good boy" who is always "polite and correct" and never acts spoilt or out of line. The key word here is "perceived", because we see both of them display traits in front of their peers that go beyond the "role" their parents witness (and that both of them are willingly or subconsciously displaying in front of them); Sora is actually the caring mom/big sister friend who literally and figuratively takes everyone under their wing, Koushirou is opinionated, forward and outspoken when things are dire and at stake.
Sora's mother wants her to act more like "the daughter of an ie-moto", more feminine, less out of line - at least, that is the message that reaches Sora, since her mother asks her to quit her beloved football. Her polite and aloof attitude appears to be rather cold and dismissive to Sora, which is basically what makes her rebel against the whole flower arrangement business. She feels unloved and misunderstood, as if she cannot be appreciated if she isn't "perfect" in her mother's eyes. Thus she is unable to understand that her mother may just worry about her hurting her injured leg even more. Furthermore, Sora has a very poor grasp on the fact that she herself is acting towards her friends and partner in the exact same way, albeit in a more gentle way most of the time.
Koushirou's mother wants him to be more selfish, to tell her what he dislikes and what bothers him, to stop being perfect at all times - but that is exactly what he physically cannot do, as he himself is doubting his whereabouts, who he is and where he belongs to after learning that he's adopted and simply tries to just shove all doubts and worries aside. Instead of acting "normal", he is hiding behind that barrier and mask of perfection towards his parents - and has to realize that this attitude is worrying them even more.
In the end, it all gets (mostly) resolved through them realizing that they're still loved regardless of what happened; they don't necessarily HAVE TO change, but it is up to them whether they want to or not. Meaning, their respective arcs of self-discovery have not ended yet, but the foundation for better relationships has been established here. Sora will start playing tennis (a.k.a changing her hobby) in an attempt to move towards her mother more, choosing to do so for her own sake. Koushirou will try to act more open and casual towards his parents, even though he is actively being reassured that his hobby (being into computers) is exactly what he is all about and that he doesn't have to change that.
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it's so funny (read: sad) that if bigoted fuckheads didn't insist i was a woman simply by virtue of my body at birth, i'd probably be chill with she/her pronouns in addition to he/they. if my mom didn't insist i was her daughter, i'd probably let her call me that, and we could still have a relationship.
i'm nonbinary and 'gendered' words are hypothetically meaningless, but because there are so many people who are more interested in telling me who i am rather than lovingly and curiously letting me express my own sense of self, those words carry trauma.
there's no reason a nonbinary person like myself can't be a son and a child and a daughter. there's no reason a nonbinary person like me can't go by he, they, and she.
'she' is not a slur. 'daughter' is not derogatory. 'beautiful' 'pretty' 'gorgeous' 'feminine' are not insults.
to the contrary, they're parts of language that express certain facets of a multi-faceted human existence, like mine.
and i have this sad, mournful feeling that if it weren't for unloving, condescending people, i'd probably be down to be called any of those things alongside my usual masculine/neutral terminology.
but i'd rather die than let anyone tell me what i have to be called.
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Phil still had his sword out, pointing it at them, at her. His little girl. The others in a semicircle around them, trapping the two of them against a wall. He would not let them take her. He would not lose his huevo, not again. Phil took a small step towards them, and Charlie lifted his own weapon higher, shielding his little girl with his own body. Phil’s eyes where pleading, but Charlie wouldn’t listen to them. “Charlie, please mate, that’s not your daughter. You have to know that’s not JuanaFlippa.”
Charlie saw as she put down a sign just to his right, and began frantically scribbling on it, but he did not wait for her to finish her own pleading. “I know.” There were several gasps from the crowd, both shocked and angry, but he paid them no mind. “I know, but you’re wrong.”
His little girl stopped writing and looked up at him, confusion clear on her face. “dad please it’s me” could be read on the sign, in the strange way this huevo wrote.
“She may not be Flippa. But she is my daughter.”
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