#also when does it say Rauru is a chosen hero

[pa-pa-plasma]

zelda blasted moldugas in the gerudo assault scene, it was a group effort between her sonia and rauru. you can see the light coming from her hand. they just channeled it through rauru bc he was/is the chosen hero from that era

I saw that as them just giving him the power to preform such a massive attack rather than Zelda herself blasting them (probably supplied by the sage stone thing which i cant remember the name of). I'd have to rewatch the scene to check (the only one I rewatched was the one where Fi's theme played) but if she seems surprised I take it as more of a "oh shit i/we have that much power??" rather than a "holy shit my attack personally killed all those moldugas" kinda thing. it was Rauru's attack, Sonia & Zelda just supplied an extra power source.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Let me just preface this by saying everyone is allowed to have their own opinions, TOTK is a really fun game, and I'm glad that other people have been able to enjoy the story as well.

...But I'm being dead serious with my complaints about the narrative being 100% imperialist propaganda. And I'm getting really tired of people replying to those posts by saying it can't be imperialist propaganda, because imperialism is bad and the game says that Hyrule is the good guys.

Like, guys. That's not the argument you think it is. Yes, I am aware that the game tells us Ganondorf is a flat, one dimensional character with no ambitions, interests or motivations beyond destroying the entire world for the hell of it, and also it's totally not racist because he's green, not brown like literally every other member of his race. Unfortunately literally all of these things are kind of the entire goddamn problem.

See, the thing is, everyone trying to make these arguments is accepting the game at face value. Hyrule is the perfect and almighty nation chosen by the demigod Zonai, and whose royal family has the right to rule due to their divine heritage. The other races exist to serve the glory of Hyrule, and they're happy to do it. Ganondorf is pure evil and must be stopped at any costs.

But that's not how anything works. The story informing me that Hyrule is the ultimate good that has done nothing wrong is the whole goddamn reason why I don't trust Hyrule at all. There's always more of a reason than that. And the game fucking suggests there was more going on! Ganondorf mentions Rauru has repeatedly 'invited' the Gerudo to become Rauru's subjects, and let's be clear here, it doesn't matter how peaceful those 'invitations' were, when the guy who owns every single magical nuclear missile in the world repeatedly demands you surrender to him, there's always going to be an implied threat of 'do it or get magically nuked'. Just that power difference alone shows us exactly why Ganon would feel threatened enough to invade. It's because Rauru was holding a gun to his head, and Ganon was expected to just trust that he'd never pull the trigger.

And yes, even if it wasn't intentional Hyrule was always threatening to wipe out the other nations, considering the entire royal family walked around openly wearing their magical nukes as cute accessories. If they couldn't be safely hidden away, there wouldn't be four other secret stones sitting untouched in a vault until the last second.

But that's never acknowledged. Of course Hyrule is the only nation with the right to the secret stones; even if other races get to touch them, they can only have them if they swear eternal blind loyalty and servitude to the glory of King Rauru and Princess Zelda. Ganon wanting to have one magical nuclear bomb out of a stockpile of eight of them is proof that he's dangerous and evil. I mean my god, what if he just walked around all day wearing a magical nuke and using its power for his own benefit, that would be terrifying. It's only okay when Hylian royalty does it.

And you can't argue that Ganon betrayed his own people, considering we don't get to know fucking anything about his relationship with his people. He's shows as the leader of the Gerudo, we're told he's a hero to his people, he has soldiers that loyally follow him into battle... and then oh nevermind, they all hate him and will spend eternity trying to atone for sharing a race with him. How did the entire race do a complete 180 in the span of at most a few months? Who cares, what's important is that now they accept they exist to serve Hyrule so they get to be the good guys now and we don't need to know why they were following Ganondorf, or why they stopped following him.

Basically my point is that yeah, I fucking know how the game insists everything went down. That's the entire reason I think it's imperialist propaganda, because the entire story feels like Hylian propaganda to conceal and justify some horrific atrocities that caused all of this. I literally do not believe that I'm getting the story through reliable narrators, especially considering that the only people allowed to actually tell me the story are all the characters that have the most reasons to be heavily biased in favour of Hyrule.

When the game shows me protagonists that have a massive amount of power and control over the entire world, then says the bad guy doesn't like that system just because he's evil, and literally nothing and nobody in the game says anything to oppose that take, I have some questions about what the fuck the story isn't telling me. And I'd really appreciate it if people would stop trying to argue with me just by telling me to stop asking those questions.

[villanelleskiss]

alright fuck it... here’s my BOTW/TOTK timeline theory 

(full spoilers for BOTW/TOTK do not proceed without beating the games) 

okay, so the first thing i want to mention is that i don’t believe BOTW/TOTK fits within any timeline or at the bottom of the 3. i think this is a trilogy, the first game being Skyward Sword. 

here’s my explanation: 

Hyrule was yet to be founded at the start of SS. we start off on the island of skyloft, which has a very similar appearance of the great sky island we wake up on in TOTK. and it has been shown that if you flip skyloft upside down, it will be similar to the great sky island. 

by the end of SS, we have visited several areas which are very similar in placement to the map we see in BOTW/TOTK. the eldin, the faron, and lanayru regions. Eldin being the home of death mountain, faron being the water/forest region similar to what  it is in BOTW/TOTK, and lanayru being a desert area very similar to the layout of what we know as the gerudo desert. the rest of SS map is blank, bc theoretically, they have gone unexplored. it should also go unsaid that over 10k years, there is bound to be a geographical shift, creating different valleys, mountains, hills, barrens, etc. so while it looks slightly off, with that in mind, what we find in BOTW/TOTK map does make sense. 

plus, we don’t actually see sky era Link and Zelda found Hyrule, just that they have found the surface and plan on bringing their people down from the sky. we also never see how long each era of hero/princess live, but since usually 100 years pass between each new hero being born, there is roughly 80-100 years if not more unaccounted for. we also don’t know by the end of SS if there are other sky islands, bc if there’s one, then there is probably others. possibly one’s with Zonai, bc we find by the end of TOTK that the last few remaining descended to the surface, probably not long after Link and Zelda of the sky era. 

however, since we do know that Rauru and Sonia are officially the first king and queen of hyrule, that obviously would be contradicting if Link and Zelda did, so that would mean that within the sky era, they were not able to found the kingdom and possibly passed away shortly before the Zonai descended because we find out that Sonia was a priestess of the world (bc there wouldn’t have been a queen or king in that case) and together with their powers, zonai constructs etc they were able to build the castle, the forgotten temple, zonai ruins (possibly even after what happened after rauru and sonia’s deaths) built the kingdom based upon the finding of sky era Link and Zelda.

they are not aware however of the master sword, bc since the kingdom is just being founded, they do not know it exists until Zelda travels back in time to mention it. from this point, the master sword would have likely been moved to a safer place (now known as the lost woods to be looked over by the great deku tree) 

which brings me to my next point, the ancient hero. now, i know that it is being theorized that rauru and sonia must’ve had a daughter bc of when sonia tells zelda “i sense that we share a blood connection”. but i think that is being read too much into. bc every incarnation of zelda is of the goddess hylia, which would be more of a spiritual connection... but i don’t think by saying “blood connection” is wrong even if they did not have a child. also zelda’s mother in BOTW was not a goddess descendant. plus, that would invalidate the ancient hero, who is very clearly half hylian/half zonai based upon the ancient hero’s aspect, which shows this. also it would say that Link and Zelda are brother/sister, which isn’t true. because rauru would be the chosen hero of that time, so the ancient hero could not awaken until after his death. 

this is when ganondorf becomes the demon king, after demise promised would be born time and time again along with each new hero and princess, which we have seen previously throughout older iterations. through rauru, who imprisons him away and binds his magic, the calamity, is a mere mirage of the power he still contains attempting to undo his seal so he can bring chaos upon Hyrule again. the first time we see the calamity is through the ancient hero, who seemingly is using the master sword, which would have been found after Zelda mentioned it to Rauru and word passed down through the sage’s (who i also believe the divine beasts are named after). the first calamity is able to be sealed away, as it has numerous times until the events of BOTW. 

so, the events of BOTW and TOTK play out and that’s where the story for this ends. 

now, let’s address the other games. because there is a huge implication of other domains and worlds existing by the mention of it, through a character named Yona, who says she traveled from another domain, which would mean that there are other worlds. possibly with their own heroes and princesses, bc throughout TOTK we find armor that can be obtained from previous games and locations from those games as well, which, i mostly believe is just nintendo being nostalgic and wanting to honor those games, not exactly saying that they exist in this timeline.

but what if they do? what if through other kingdoms, or universes, those events all did happen and they have either been brought to us from those who have traveled from other worlds and/or universes. because at the end of the day, it is called the legend of zelda for a reason. a legend does not exactly mean it happened, but these armors and locations say, yes, they did happen and here is the proof they did. but possibly just not in this time. 

we always assume that only one hero and princess can be alive at once, which, i personally believe to be true, but what if it’s not? we know that TOTK, no other male gerudos have been born because ganondorf is still alive, but that doesn’t mean that demise couldn’t attempt to reincarnate himself through ganondorf in another kingdom or universe. with the power that we saw demise carry, he would be capable of doing so, so why not? why could these games not all occur at the same time other ones? 

(also there is the theory of the dragons in BOTW/TOTK, which has been almost basically proven to be zonai who swallowed secret stones bc how else would mineru know about it? but the zonai were also believed to be gods, so... what if they were and that’s how we got our dragons?) 

let me know your own thoughts! 

[foxshaped]

I still think the imprisoning war from TotK happened before Skyward Sword, and I’m finally writing it out. So sticking with what I’m good at, here’s way too much theorizing about a fictional story:

To start, this all hinges on one concept: if the Legend of Zelda, even as we play it, is all just stories and legends, no two people tell the story the same way. The games are reconstructions based on the stories told. I can’t find the tumblr post that I got that idea from, but it’s a great way to explain inconsistencies in lore and geography regardless. Even if you think everything else I say is bullshit, at least consider that.

Moving on. Some facts as presented in the games, each followed by my interpretation of those facts.

Fact: both The Improsoned and Ganondorf were physically sealed with an object and under a building. The path to Ganondorf’s boss fight in TotK, while not a perfect spiral like the pit the Imprisoned resides in, does wind back around on itself as you descend.

Rauru’s hand and the Sealing Spike are the same entity, they have the exact same function. The Imprisoned and dehydrated Ganondorf are the same entity, one just got a little embellished over the years, someone said “great evil,” and someone heard “large monster.” The Castle and the Temple of Time are both important places with sacred ties, one storyteller tells that the Castle sealed Demise, one says it’s the Temple. Either way, evil is squished by building.

Fact: all the Zonai buildings we are shown in the flashbacks are on the ground. They are in the sky in TotK. The ancient sea and desert in Skyward Sword are home to autonomous constructs, including a mining operation

Zonai civilization is what gets lifted up into the sky by Hylia to become Skyloft. The ones who made the constructs, the mine, and the related buildings were the Zonai. The Zonai existed before Hyrule, as it is implied that Rauru and Mineru are the last of the Zonai.

Last fact: there is no Link in the time Zelda travels to, and Zelda is not a recognized name despite it having been established throughout the series as a traditional name for the Hyrulean royal family.

In a wonderful time paradox, Zelda in Skyward Sword gets named after the Sage of Time who bravely fought in the Imprisoning War long ago and also happens her distant future relative, meaning BotW/TotK Zelda is her own namesake. Not very exciting as time paradoxes go, but what’s a time travel story without a little paradox? Link’s soul as of the Imprisoning War, if he even exists at the time, has not yet been linked to Zelda’s and become Hylia’s Chosen Hero, so there is no hero to help, no Master Sword to seal the evil. Hylia created the Goddess Sword to help should such a disaster ever come to pass again.

Now for some things that don’t have specific instances backing them up, but are still viable given established fact and lore

As for how it works with Ganondorf coming back through the series if I’m saying the Imprisoning War takes place before the confirmed canonical start of the timeline, he’s in a sort of limbo in TotK. When Ganondorf steals the secret stone from Sonia, his transformation into the Demon King gives birth to Demise (or calls Demise as an existing god or god-like being into him). Once Rauru seals Ganondorf, the spirit of Demise splits off from Ganondorf. When Link defeats Demise and Demise sets his curse, he uses Ganondorf as a template for all his incarnations.

The Rito are not seen other than in Wind Waker and BotW/TotK is because as a species capable of flight, they move around/are semi-nomadic. TotK establishes that there are civilizations outside of Hyrule, Yona comes from a Zora civilization outside Hyrule. This one doesn’t have anything to do specifically with the Imprisoning War, but works with why there were Rito during the War, Wind Waker, and BotW/TotK, but not between any of these events.

Honestly, the only thing I can’t come up with a good answer for is why Hylia didn’t do something in the Imprisoning War if she hadn’t given up her divinity yet. There’s options, but nothing that I can figure any existing evidence for. Perhaps she couldn’t directly interfere and is the source of the secret stones? Perhaps her divine energy would have caused the very people she’s trying to protect go mad, but lifting up the sky islands would not require her to be in direct contact with anyone? It’s a little flimsy. Honestly I like the idea of the secret stones coming from Hylia, but I don’t have anything to back it up other than they shine with golden light like other things that come from Hylia, Zelda’s magic is golden light, the light spirits in Twilight Princess are golden, but on the other hand there’s nothing to shoot it down. Also for the record, “secret stone” is not a bad translation. It’s a direct translation. Original is “hiseki” which is a portmanteau of “himitsu,” secret, and “kiseki,” gemstone. Again, doesn't have much to do with the overall theory, but I'm sick of people ragging on the translators for it.

Anyway, the Imprisoning War takes place before Skyward Sword, before Skyloft is in the sky.

Bonus theory! The dragons are the Golden Goddesses (I know this one’s probably pretty common, but I have more).If secret stones do in fact come from Hylia and have her divine energy, and the Goddesses have their own divine energy, those powers clashing when swallowing the stones to become dragons caused their personalities to split off and become the Oracles.