#is Zoras not Sheikah

[silenceoflink]

Back in 2017, back when I was a baby artist, I drew something to celebrate the release of Breath of the Wild, the most recent and groundbreaking Zelda Game. Well, with Tears of the Kingdom fast approaching, I decided to re-draw it. Paying tribute to the first 3D Zelda game, Ocarina of Time, I celebrate the new game.

[blueskittlesart]

what do you think about zora design? about past and current designs? how would you change it? actually!!! what are the zora (and other races) like in your sword of fate au???

got distracted by the second question. look at my little guys:

these are some of the current (working) designs!! from left to right it's sheikah, zora, hylian, goron, and gerudo! these aren't necessarily the average builds/designs for each race but they're the most important character from each race lol. sword of fate takes place really early-on in the timeline, so the culture and separation of races is still kind of loose especially among the humanoid races. the current generation of zora is basically the first generation to call themselves zora and attempt to establish a government or hold any authority alongside the other races of hyrule, and because they're kind of a young race i imagine they're less fishy and more invertebrate-like in this stage, hence my jellyfish princess! (her dad is a giant squid lol.) the sheikah are descendants of the original surface humans, whereas the hylians and gerudo are two seperate sects that both originally came from skyloft. the hylians built a few villages which each have their own distinct vibe while the gerudo took a more nomadic approach and roam the desert in small independently governed groups. The gorons are the most well-established race at this point, having been on the surface a lot longer than basically everyone else, and so they have a much stronger culture and shared identity than a lot of the other races that are still kind of getting their footing.

[figofswords]

planning a zelda dnd game with some friends yknow how it is

[kokiriofthevalley]

Rating how comfortable all the beds in botw look

PART TWO

Horse Stable Beds

1/10 - would NOT recommend

◍Mattress is uncomfortable because it's literally just hay

◍Smells like hay and horse

◍bed bug breeding ground

◍head lice breeding ground

Zora's Domain Bed

4/10 - would recommend if desperate

◍looks like a building inspector's worst nightmare

◍Sleepwalkers are going to become sleep swimmers

◍Cold

◍NO COVERS/DUVET?? Prison. Only lurelin gets let off about it because it's not surrounded by cold ass water

Lurelin Village Bed

6/10 - would recommend

◍looks comfy enough

◍my only issue is where are the blankets? The duvets, even?? I know lurelin village houses have no doors but like I like to curl into a ball, cause severe future back problems for myself and get warm, ok?

I desperately need someone to take my spine apart and put it back in place like rebuilding a failed Lego 1x1 skyscraper/sword please this is a cry for help

Kakariko Village Bed

10/10 - would ALWAYS recommend

◍Comfy

◍Reliable and sturdy bedframe

◍Silk bedsheets that are always fresh

◍Literally THE perfect bed

I, personally, would KILL for this bed. I would strike down calamity ganon himself.

Paya's Bed

9/10 - would recommend for speed runners

◍Impa would get off her cushion and beat your ass if she ever caught you sleeping in her granddaughters bed

That's it

Rito Village Bed 1

5/10 - would recommend

◍Would have to do some parkour to get on

◍Try not to roll over, otherwise you'll be sleeping on the floor with a bruised arm or something

◍would smell like bird seed (bird food 👁️👁️)

◍Cute bedsheet designs

TULIN JUMPSCARE

[hollypies]

Zonai Link au ref sheets!!!!

Basically when Link was placed in the Shrine of Resurrection the shrine's settings were set to Zonai! The Sheikah had built over the original shrine, improving upon the ancient technology left behind. Unfortunately when most of the technology was buried so was the knowledge of the shrines true capabilities.

So basically the Shrine is given an injured Hylian, but since it's settings are set to Zonai the Shrine freaks out like "Oh my goddess this zonai is absolutely fucked up 💀" and spends the next 100 years 'fixing' Link.

[bluebelledmoon]

BABE WAKE UP PLAYABLE ZELDA

this game is so pretty AAAAAA

[pocketseizure]

Governance in Hyrule

A hundred years after the Calamity, the Hyrulean monarchy only exists in the form of a ruined castle and a legendary princess. Not much can be said about the monarchy in its absence, but it’s interesting to think about in relation to the other systems of governance in Hyrule.

Although the Zora have a royal family, they’re essentially living in a communist utopia of shared resources and communal living spaces. Everyone works according to their interests and talents, and individual disagreements are given voice but ultimately suppressed for the good of the group.

Rito society seems to be the opposite. Warriors are highly respected, and they act according to their own individual ideas of what they think is the best course of action. Kaneli, the chief of Rito Village, is a retired warrior whose role seems to be largely symbolic. Although the village chief is respected, he has no real control over the younger warriors.

Kakariko Village seems to operate somewhere in the middle. As the village elder, Impa maintains cultural lore and tradition, and she can suggest courses of action. Still, her role is symbolic, and she does not directly arbitrate disputes or issue commands.

The Yiga are a bunch of obnoxious theater kids who have formed a cult around the most obnoxious theater kid. They are an outlier and should not be counted.

The Gorons seem to be set up like a corporation. Bludo is the founder of the Goron Group Mining Company, and he oversees its operations and manages trade. He commands respect, but he isn’t particularly concerned with anything outside his own interests. A lot of people who work for him don’t agree with his decisions, but they take it for granted that “labor” is what they should be doing. The Gorons are modeled on a stereotype of the traditional working class of downtown Tokyo, and I think their portrayal is meant to be a lighthearted parody of working-class solidarity.

Riju is the only person even remotely resembling a true ruler, and she’s an almost platonic ideal of a just and benevolent sovereign. She commands soldiers, directly confronts outside threats, enforces security over the market, ensures the fair distribution of resources, holds audiences with advisors and individual citizens, and generally works to maintain the wellbeing of her people. The idea seems to be that, as the only actual city in Hyrule, Gerudo Town is the only place that requires an actual government.  

Meanwhile, the Hylians seem to be doing just fine without any sort of government at all. They live in a beautiful and happy post-scarcity world where everyone has a place to live and enough to eat. Roads, bridges, and public stables are carefully maintained, and trade flows smoothly. People travel for pleasure and are free to pursue their own interests, whether it’s studying leviathan bones or writing magazine articles or hunting for mushrooms or searching for romance.  

It feels like the only real function of the Hyrulean monarchy was to combat Ganon, and Ganon only exists in opposition to the monarchy. I don’t mean to suggest that the destruction and loss of life that occurred during the Calamity was a good thing, but maybe it wouldn’t be such a tragedy if the Hyrulean monarchy were to end with Zelda…?

[greyciees]

And they were roommates

[the-ferocious-kittyrose]

Don’t understand why totk has the Zelda fans all in a tizzy.

Imo each Zelda game (and their direct sequels) takes place in their own universe. The universes follow the same basic timelines, but with slight differences, like character designs, locations of things, and other small details. So some details that may be canon in one game, may not be in another. No biggie.

The Hyrule that Sonia and Rauru founded wasn’t the first Hyrule. The past scenes in totk don’t take place directly after Skyward Sword, they take place after Wind Waker. WW Link and Zelda founded New Hyrule, but sometime after the flood waters receded, their descendants returned to the old Hyrule and re established a kingdom there.

Zora and Rito exist at the same time for the same reason brown bears and polar bears exist at the same time. Evolution baby. When Hyrule was flooded by uninhabitable waters, one group of Zora became the Rito, while another group, lead by Queen Ruto, left in search of safer waters. The Zora that left later returned, and that’s why the Zora are said to have come to Hyrule from elsewhere, and why there are other Zora domains outside of Hyrule.

It’s pretty obvious what happened to all the Sheikah tech. The Sheikah slate has been updated to the Purah pad, the shrines faded like the monks within them once their purpose had been fulfilled, the guardians and devine beasts were most likely destroyed or hidden, as they posed a threat to the people, and the towers were used for parts in Zelda’s restoration project.

Why are the Sheikah and Zonai so similar? Well it’s likely that the Sheikah simply took inspiration from the Zonai, or even collaborated with them. (It’s my headcanon that Mineru had a Sheikah wife, who was caring for Sonia and Rauru’s children in hiding due to the threat of Ganondorf. And it was Sonia and Rauru’s children, or perhaps children they had with ancient Sheikah, that found the dragon tears and created the geoglyphs.)

Where is the triforce? It is a bit strange that it’s never mentioned, and there’s no explanation to where it is, but I think it’s because it doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not physically. It’s possible that some unseen past Zelda absorbed the triforce into herself, and passed it down to her descendants. This is what Zelda’s sealing power is, and why shes expected to prey at the springs of power, wisdom, and courage to unlock it. This is just a theory, and a shaky one at that, but it makes sense to me.

[plumuto]

old but i never posted me and my friend’s botw ocs on here :3

[himelikestea]

❀Commissions Open❀

I've been unable to draw for a while because I broke my wrist, but since it's finally better now I'm opening up my commissions!

Base prices:

Sketch: €20-70

Lineart: €30-105

Fully Rendered: €60-140

Chibi: €10-45

Chibi Animation: €15-50

Turnarounds: €60-540

You can find the Commission Forms and my Terms of Service on Artistree!

[blueskittlesart]

I get the impression from your posts that you don’t think there’s a future where Zelda would end up queen of hyrule (I can see where her becoming queen would undermine her entire arc of getting freedom from the painful expectations of princess/chosen etc), but how do you think that hyrules government will work beyond that? Is the population recovered enough for that to even be something established within their lifetime?

honestly, based on what we see in other games, hyrule was never REALLY a proper monarchy. I think it's pretty likely that the hylian monarchy was functionally a symbolic one, especially by the time that botw rolls around. in most games in the franchise, hyrule is largely made up of sort of mini single-race societies that function by defaulting to whatever small tribal government they happen to have. With a kingdom technically made up of multiple different species, each with their own differing cultures, customs, and even lifespans, it makes much more sense to have small governments united in name alone. i think any genuine attempt at true united government of such widely varied and relatively isolated races would not end well for hyrule (can you imagine being a hundred-year-old zora and being told that you have to listen to laws made by hylians who have been alive for a fraction of the time you have?? no way.) But by having a technical alliance under the symbolic hyrulian royal family, all of these races reap the benefits of alliance amongst each other while maintaining their relative independance. This is why most of the villages in hyrule are race-isolated and have their own governing bodies--the zora have a king, the rito, gorons, and gerudo have chiefs, and several of the hylian/sheikah villages have mayors or other governing bodies. these are the actual, functional governments of hyrule. the royal family serves both symbolic and practical purposes as a symbol of the kingdom's allyship and as an entity that can build, maintain, and direct a widespread military force (and i think there's also definitely a religious element to their rule over hyrule, as literal descendants of god in-universe,) but other than that it isn't doing a whole lot of actual governing. (the exception to this rule is MAYBE post-wind-waker on the new continent, and maybe immediately post-sksw, specifically because in both those cases the hyrulian royals would have needed to take a more active governing role in order to rebuild the country.) so with that in mind, I think botw and totk make it pretty clear that this method of small government works pretty well for hyrule. I think the most zelda would EVER be is a sort of ambassador between villages and races, especially as hyrule becomes more intermingled in the aftermath of the calamity. small democratic government largely appears to be working for hyrule and for zelda in totk, so i think that's the road she would choose to continue down rather than attempting to reinstate a monarchy that never actually did that much in the first place.

[mimicbunii]

my oc jinni in the totk universe ^-^ he looks pretty as a sheikah but the zora fits him the best 

[delusionalcrow]

posted this on my Instagram but I'm not letting people from there find this account- anyway a few Zelda botw ocs (a very very small fraction of them)

Top from left to right: Tristan, Nataliya, Mikko, Greer, Damra, Isra, Dallan, Kewer

[maskedkitsune]

Here’s the guy who says there are only five races in Hyrule (the Sheikah are considered Hylians now)