#not over oot zelink

[sheikfangirl]

"If you want to rescue Zelda, come to my castle!"

This scene always gives me goosebumps 😭

That Sheik plot twist!!!! (Im not Sheik's fangirl for nothing by the way) Zelink have this emotional reunion and are separated immediately! THE DRAMA!!

I'll never be over that game. NEVER! OoT Zelink, my beloved 💕

(Btw I HATE shading gems and crystals 😂😭)

[itsrainingrabbits]

@zelinkcommunity Thank you so much for hosting this event, even though I'm a thousand years late! But I still wanted to participate bc...zelink...them... let's pretend Zelda's face is in the right perspective pls :> for her sake!/j

[scopophobia-polaris]

So I found this old thing, wasn't able to get a model of Zant helmetless but as we can see Zant and Shade are probably eye level with eachother

[yashahimewasamistake]

OoT Zelink is so sweet.

Link really cares deeply for Zelda. He spends a good part of the game searching for clues of her whereabouts.

He also has *moments* with adult Zelda that are meaningful and when he returns to his childhood, she's the first person he goes to.

And in MM, Zelda is the person he focuses on when the end of the world is getting near.

I know it isn't canon, but as I like HW, OoT Zelink is canon for that game, and so, I will accept it.

[adrift-in-thyme]

“Young love becomes deep affection”

Interesting choice of words there Sheik

[justapixelthing]

Another Oot Zelink Rant: Gatekeeping!

I keep telling myself I will stop doing these, but clearly I can not contain myself, so buckle up!

But what is it with the gatekeeping? I mentioned it before, but people continue spreading the whole "oot Zelink canonically can not end up together" thing. And I don't just mean Malinkers and nonshippers, but I also mean some popular Zelinkers, like artists and such who go like "yeah but no one actually believes oot Zelink got together/are able to get together". "The only way to ship them is the tragic way", etc, etc. You see, my rant isn't about saying these things shouldn't be liked even If I don't like them and It's also not supposed to be anti-Malink, because although I do not enjoy that ship (and fans certainly have ruined any chances of me liking it), I still believe in people having a choice. And I already made rants on how I believe it is possible that zelink did end up together, without ever stating Malink is bad.

But it's the whole "this is the only way" "everyone believes this" thing that pisses me off. Like stop speaking for everyone? You can believe whatever you want but you do not own the oot Zelink ship. Neither do I, no one owns any ship for that matter (unless it is a seafaring one). Let people have their own interpretations, headcanons, whatsoever. I suppose it is a problem with shipping in general.

So now a friendly reminder that your favorite youtuber or reddit/twitter/whatever thread saying Malon is Link's only option and Zelink is impossible still doesn't make it canon. And Nintendo certainly did not intend for it if they kept pushing Link and Zelda in other oot related content (interviews? Mangas they approved of? Official Art?). Does that make Zelink canon? No, it doesn't. But If Nintendo isn't willing to confirm even the most obvious Zelinks (SS, BOTW/TOTK) as canon, do you seriously think they will confirm Malink? But I got called a slur for my opinion before, so who knows if this wall of text matters.

Long story short: You can ship Link with whomever you like but don't speak for everyone on a specific ship and don't use false canon as justification to attack others. Canon is what Nintendo confirms.

Either way If anyone reading this feels addressed by this post, I'm sorry if it comes off as mean spirited, but I do think it is a big problem when people try to take other people's choices and (non harmful) opinions away.

[tired-twili]

How am I supposed to be normal about OOT Zelink when they fit so well together. Shared trauma is stronger than superglue, and the hurt/comfort thoes two radiate...its suffocating.

[veggiecorner]

Would you be disappointed if the next game didn't have Zelink

Eeehhh not really? I'm not an "all zelinks" type person (i only really like 3 zelink pairings tbh), so it wouldn't get me all disappointed. I'm interested to see that if they DO continue that route (especially if fujibayashi is writing it again - we all know what he's on kajsdbajksd) how they'll develop it? I'd like some sort of meaningful relationship between them that doesn't start out romantic

[valorborn]

what  type  of  “  i love you  ”  are  you ?

i love you, i've always loved you, i will always love you

it's commitment, it's devotion, it goes often without saying, but is felt nonetheless. it's accepting that you would travel to hell and back for them if they asked and knowing that they would do the same for you. it's an old ache, long after they've burrowed deep into your chest and settled there like a weight- grounding, an anchor point. even when you're apart, you can still feel the shape of them, it's like phantom pain. neither of you can help but succumb to the other's gravity, yet neither of you fear the collision. it means that you trust them, that they make you feel safe, that they feel like home.

[summertimemusician]

The Unending Storm

Your name is Link. And the skies have been gray for as long as you can remember.

'The world wasn't always like this,' comes the whispered lament of a princess with hair like spun gold, the cold seeps into your bones from the chilling tempest above. As she looks up at the sky, you wonder if her hair would look like the thing the queen had described as the 'sun' if the clouds didn't cover everything, 'The monsters were supposed to be gone, you know, my mother told me so. And the skies were clear and blue and you could see all kinds of light up there.'

You can barely even begin imagine, the wet, choking cold was all you'd ever know, the chill seeping into your lungs, the humidity always a constant. And now to join the water comes your own blood

...The water level still rises, the last of the Zora had long died out, the forests have long been submerged by the hungry, endless jaws of the deep. The Gorons and Gerudo are gone. The remaining people barely hang on, you've lost everyone, you've failed everyone. As you bleed out with the princess weeping over your body, and the king attempting to stand tall against the malice wearing a Gerudo face, you can't help but think about the uncaring gods up above, so called powerful Din who stands by as one of her worshipers stand against her creations supposedly courageous Farore stands silent as every piece of life she created die and ever watchful Hylia as she does not even deign to give her descendant hope, and ask why. How did this happen? Why did the Hero leave when instead of ending the cycle for good, he merely allowed this world to leave on borrowed time? Why did the queen pass the burden onto her descendant, knowing it was hopeless, but allow her to live a torturous lie that this could be turned around?

Why, why, why?

... Not even wise Nayru can answer you. Or maybe she does not deem it worth answering.

After all, what right did a mortal have to question the will of the gods?

You were never meant to attempt to pick up the sword, this world lived on borrowed time and was just waiting to die. Your failure and attempt at trying to finish what the Hero of Time started prolonged it's suffering, and at the end, you and your predecesor both failed. You'd never be free of this wretched, torturous, unending torrential downpour for sins none of the people should have to have to bear all because of a divine spat and the greed of men.

...You couldn't keep your promise, that once this was all over, you'd gaze upon the stars with Zelda in the green fields of Hyrule.

Your name is Link. People once told you to be a hero as the real one had to leave and in the end, you couldn't save or protect a single thing. No matter how hard you tried.

And in the end of all things, you can't help but think that for your failure, it's fitting that you drown.

[nocturnalfandomartist]

A commission I did for @jdetan, in which OoT Zelink watches a new dawn rise over the beautiful kingdom they've saved. Featuring some fun outfit designs I got to mess with, as well!

This commission is for JDetan's fic on ao3, A Destiny, Retold in Time. It is rated M, for language and violence (could essentially be rated T, for some). The title gives a decent hint on where the inspirations for these clothes came from. ;)

Time Elapsed: 8 hours

Program Used: IbisPaint X

Feel like commissioning something or just leaving a small tip to support me? Check out my Ko-Fi page! ₊‧⁺˖

✦ Ko-Fi

I have a Twitter also! ₊‧⁺˖

⟡ Twitter

If you're interested in my writing: ₊‧⁺˖

✧ Ao3

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REBLOGGING IS ENCOURAGED, BUT DO NOT REPOST.

[sheikfangirl]

Power △ Wisdom △ Courage △

A rough sketch I made a couple of months ago to commemorate Ocarina of Time's 25th anniversary. I might clean it one day and make prints for my convention tables, idk yet :) I'm still not over this game. I never will.

[cooking-with-hailstones]

The Legend of Zelda: stats of the kingdom

A Statistical Analysis of Popular Fanfiction in the Legend of Zelda Fandom on AO3

I like numbers and stats and for some unfathomable reason I find it calming. So over the past couple weeks, I’ve been making this spreadsheet!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a judgement of the quality, value, or merits of any of the fics on this list. It's just me being curious about what's popular with the Legend of Zelda fandom on AO3.

Feel free to go explore the spreadsheet. My own observations and analysis under the cut.

TL:DR, Link has a lot of kinky sex. Sidlink and Zelink are vying for who’s the most popular ship. Also, this fandom has a shit ton of sub categories that are truly islands unto themselves and have their own conventions.

Methodology: I'm including all fics from the first page of AO3 results (20 fics per page) sorted by:

Hits

Kudos

Comments

Bookmarks

Anything tagged under the Legend of Zelda and Related Fandoms tag that was in the top 20 most hits, kudos, comments, or bookmarks made it into the spreadsheet. This ended up including 51 fics in total.

I put all the fics into one single spreadsheet in order to compare the differences between fics that are really high on the kudos count but not the hit count, or what has a lot of comments but fewer hits. Basically, I'm throwing a lot of things together to observe what gets engagement and looking at patterns that emerge!

Popular fandom subcategories:

Botw (41 fics tagged as such)

Linked Universe (9, including one mostly set in the world of BOTW)

OoT (2)

(I do wonder what it would be like to run these numbers on other fanfic sites, given the popularity boom of ao3 over the last 15 years or so. But also, Botw was an insanely popular game even by Zelda standards, so… who knows?)

Tags:

Character tags: Obviously, Link was by far the most popular character, but here are the characters that had a minimum of 3 appearances per category. Yay champions!

Zelda

Sidon

Mipha

Urbosa

Revali

Daruk

Story tags: Again, just going by sheer numbers, here are the story tags that appeared at least 3 times in every category:

Slowburn

AU – canon divergence

With honorable mentions to fluff, angst, double penetration, anal sex, amnesia/memory loss, and mute or selectively mute Link, who all cracked above 3 instances in 2 separate categories.

Relationships:

This was a tight race, but shoutout to Sidlink for eking out the win for the most highly rated ship in the Zelda fandom with 13 fics qualifying in my ranking. Zelink is close behind at 10 fics. (That being said, Zelink takes it by volume: 7,797 fics tagged as Zelink vs Sidlink’s 2,193)

Other popular ships:

Revalink (8) (this one surprised me! I didn’t realize my beloved birb was so popular)

Miphlink (3)

Link/Monsters (2)

Sidon/Reader (2)

Ganzelink, Ganlink, Malink, Miphzelink, and Miphzel all made single appearances.

(Pls don’t start ship war discourse in the notes kthanx)

All right, let’s deep dive into the numbers!

Fics in all 4 categories:

Interim - starkraving

Sands of time -tirsynni

Congrats you are officially the most popular Loz fics across all of ao3! at least according to my particular scope of analysis.

Fics in 3 categories:

Displaced - socksock

Drown In Me - bacchanalia

Alone We Fight - SilvermistAnimeLover

Blood Moon Rising - MarquesGillette

Popular authors (people who show up more than once in multiple categories sorry comments georg)

MarquesGillette

MaryDragon

SilvermistAnimeLover

ObakeAri

Hits:

Top 5 most popular fics by hit count:

Displaced - socksock

Interim - starkraving

To Save Hyrule - orphan_account

Sands of time - tirsynni

Drown In Me - bacchanalia

First page by hits:

Min: 117,917 – Sidon’s Epic Pining Adventure (ObakeAri)  

Max:  189,622 – Displaced (socksock)

Average: 145,385

Average wordcount for fics with the most hits:

140,909

Kudos:

Top 5 most popular fics by kudos count:

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy - Icka M Chif

Interim - starkraving

To My Dearest Friend - surveycorpsjean

26 Minutes and 42 Seconds - T_5Seconds

Blood Moon Rising - MarquesGillette

First page by kudos:

Min: 4917 – Finding Link (Umbreonix)

Max:  10321 – Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy (Icka M Chif)

Average: 6981

Average wordcount for fics with the most kudos:

41,136

Comments:

Top 5 most popular fics by comment count:

Carlos from MarvelandZeldaFan's Children of the Heroes - KR5

This is an Adjuration - notfreyja

My Art - KR5

Sidon's Epic Pining Adventure - ObakeAri

Priestess of War - KR5

Woohoo! You all get to meet KR5 aka Comments Georg. Comments Georg has long conversations and RPs in the comments of their ao3 posts, which are usually fanart. TO BE CLEAR, THIS IS TOTALLY FINE AND COOL! I think it’s quite delightful! However, it does completely bork my ranking system because outside of comments, these posts do not have a lot of engagement (like, less than 100 hits and less than 20 kudos) and I don’t think they count towards my analysis of “what is popular in the Zelda fandom writ large”. But they qualified based on my criteria. Which I think speaks to the weakness of my criteria more than anything else tbh…

Anyways, shoutout to Comments Georg for truly showing off what it means to be a statistical outlier.

First page by comments:

Min: 1568 – The Quiet River Rages (MaryDragon)

Max:  43808 - Carlos from MarvelandZeldaFan's Children of the Heroes (KR5)

Average: 4131 (which goes down to 2042 if we exclude KR5’s impressive max, which is a full order of magnitude more than notfreyja in second place with 3470 comments. Very much demonstrating the power of a statistical outlier!)

Average wordcount for fics with the most comments:

275,593

Bookmarks:

Top 5 most popular fics by bookmarks count:

Interim - starkraving

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy - Icka M Chif

Sands of time - tirsynni

To My Dearest Friend - surveycorpsjean

Alone We Fight - SilvermistAnimeLover

First page by bookmarks:

Min: 973 – Expatriate (thehoyden)

Max:  2984 – Interim (starkraving)

Average: 1468

Average wordcount for fics with the most bookmarks:

70,027

Fic Ratings:

G: 3 (literally all fanart from KR5)

T: 22

M: 8

E: 17

Unrated: 1

Observations:

I ran this twice. Once including crossovers, and once excluding crossovers. This filtered out a lot of large drabbles and things like “flash fiction fuckings” which, no judgment, you do you, they just weren’t super relevant for what I was looking for. If you wanna see these stats including all the multifandom stuff that shows up, here’s the link for that:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DXDKXutIzVC-Iac93fFSDohAkphrn67yV-DmRt9xXmU/edit?usp=sharing

(I’m going to break academic professional analysis here and get on my soapbox for a sec – please don’t post big multifandom one shots where you tag like 20 different fandoms and every single kink that gets written about across 103 different chapters. This is literally what series are for. These kinds of things just clog up the tags, and it also makes it harder for people to find the things you’ve written that they want to read! I know this was a convention on ff.net, but this is not ff.net! We can make authors' lives and readers' lives easier!)

There were 38,427 fics in the tag “Legend of Zelda and Related Fandoms” (including crossovers, that goes up to 41,634). I manually added one back in though because it was entirely a botw story, just loosely inspired by another game.

Linked Universe fans comment a LOT. Strong correlation between high comment and Linked Universe fandom subsection. Y’all are very involved and active, and you show support to your authors. I salute you!

Sidlinkers, y'all are horny and I respect it.

Zelinkers, dear god we do love a slowburn.

All the most highly kudos’d fics are very low in the comment count. It’s almost an inverse correlation.

Excluding crossovers increased the correlation between hits and kudos quite dramatically.

There were not very many au’s other than canon divergence. Only one modern au as far as I could tell from a cursory examination of tags.

Lots more clustering, far less disparity between min and max numbers than when I ran this with A:TLA numbers.

Far less consensus on a vibe. Way fewer big writers, but lots of little writers doing their own thing.

Truly a lot of E fics. We are horny bastards.

We need more stuff written for games other than BOTW!!

There aren’t as many fics that are like “oh everyone in the fandom has read these fics”. There are probably those fics in each subcategory of the fandom, or within the specific ships, but there aren’t as many general fics that have entire fandom-wide appeal.

Thank you for reading! This was a lot of fun, and I hope you found it interesting. Shoutout to the Hateno Hangout discord for helping me refine this mess :P

Further shoutout to my partner who helped with writing some SQL to help with tag analysis. Truly partner of the year.

If you want more of this kind of egregious nerdiness, I did this with the top fics in the A:TLA fandom a couple weeks ago: https://www.tumblr.com/cooking-with-hailstones/751749202663669760/statistical-analysis-of-the-most-popular-atla

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Just thought about Zelink for a bit and my opinion on it (and basically it's: makes sense in some games but not really in others imo, or it's more interesting for them not to be romantic in certain games even (OoT comes to mind, I love love love what their non-romance can be in that one and it has wild layers to unpack) but you do you as long as people don't get extraordinarily weird with it which can and do happen), and it kind of made me realize I dooon't... I don't think I really vibe with them as a couple in the Wild era? I know the game, especially TotK, kind of pushes that a little bit, but... I feel like they're too codependant in a bad way for it to be a good idea for either of them honestly? Zelda never really gets over her urge to destroy herself in order to overcompensate her shame at not being perfect nor embody a perfect idea of what she should represent, and Link never gets over his literal oath of dropping whatever he's doing to constantly reshape his life around her. I feel like, for them to be together and for it to be cool and a good time and not a constant loop of feeding into each other's negative tendencies, they would need to completely and utterly dismantle Hyrule and then be a little selfish and unimportant for a while. And even then, old habits would die hard I think.

[shellshooked]

Can u plz do more of the Zelda movie au? I really like it and would like to see like maybe a documentary comic about the filming and are the actors for link and Zelda dating or is it just them as characters? (u don’t have to actually draw that if u don’t see this or u don’t want to)

im so late replying to this but i have SOOO many ideas on the zelda movie au!! let me share some lore hehe

So you know the spiderman actor and his love interest actress dating curse? how every actor that has played spiderman ends up dating the actress for mj / gwen Stacy? i like to think it's a similar trend with the zelink actors, except not all of them are dating. Botw / totk zelink DEFINETLY and the actors like to keep the details of their relationship private, but Link is NOT shy about how head over heels he is for zelda

Skyward sword zelink? you can never tell. it's the type of dynamic where Twitter stans are dying to know and interviewers always ask them about it but they both dodge the question successfully each time. They could be besties. They could be secretly married. Nobody knows.

Now, oot zelink are not dating, but in my head they're like Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. Ride or die besties, and they're the biggest oot zelink shippers you'll ever find.

Tp zelink aren't necessarily dating, perhaps some tension (?) however i like to think that their dynamic is more a trio one with midna's actress, who's best friends with zelda and they both playfully bully link

You know who else bullies link? oot ganondorf's actor. Irl he's actually in super good relations with every cast member and probably the warmest kindest most solid dude you'll ever meet but in every interview, every red carpet, every con event he always pretends like oot link is a nuisance and that he's only doing this because he's getting paid. When the Wind waker releases, he's obviously cast again (because duh, same ganondorf, so he's also in the Twilight Princess movie), and he takes care of link and tetra very well on set and makes sure they're always comfortable as child actors, all while he acts to be this super evil guy on camera. I love this duality, I feel like he would be so chill to talk to

In a way, I feel like the major cast from the franchise all know each other one way or another whether they're friends or just professional colleagues, they all relate to each other in some way. There's always a playful competition between botw and ss zelink actors on which pairing is the best, tp link's actor always jokingly disses wind waker for its seemingly childish approach while ww link insists his movie has the better soundtrack.

And now I'm rambling, and I definetly did not mean to dump this all on your ask omg I'm so sorry but this au transpires so much fun to me it makes me silly

[slaingelo]

pride headcanons and boy do I have a fuckin lot so take your pic ig, (oh yea they’re all transmasc hcs ofc so I’ll just list it)

transmasc Ruto, Botw paya and Zelda, Cia

oh also Botw Zelda and Link are Transmasc for Transmasc, they are very gay and very in love

feel free to draw which one you wanna or not one at all you don’t have to answer this!

this might've made me go a bit insane ok. first thoughts upon seeing this; LACE UP BINDERS T4T BOTW ZELINK HELPING EACH OTHER LACE THEM UP PROPERLY. gotta draw that, might come back to do those other ones though bc boy do I have thoughts about those also !

second thoughts. holy Fucking shit this gives me an excuse to go off about trans masc zelda and how inherently interesting that can be to the entire narrative. and then realizing how amazingly it could mesh with botw zelda's story specifically into a queer retelling.

THANKS ANON THIS ALONE MADE ME ACTUALLY LIKE BOTW ZELINK WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME

zelda's role is to take up the powers of hylia. zelda has always been a girl, a woman. of course all of them would be. hylia is a goddess. the first zelda was hylia's personal vessel.

botw zelda [ going to call him zel here on out in this post for clarity lol ] would have to come to terms with how his feelings don't align with his self-perceived role. at first, he thinks his yearning to be a boy is more to do with hating his responsibilities. i think his relationship with both his gender and his role in destiny is an incredible complicated one because of all of this.

meeting link, the other destined one, probably really fucks him up more. link being a trans boy himself, on a surface level, one might think would bring zel relief; someone like him, so close to him. but it does the opposite. link has always been a boy. this link, being assigned female at birth, is a boy as well. to zel, this reaffirms his thoughts that destiny has locked their genders into place.

in general, i don't think transphobia is a huge thing in the loz universe. it's like, a very niche kind of bigotry thankfully. it's MY childhood fantasy games and i get to mostly poof it out. i think the big exception to this would be those associated with destiny, prophecies, and of course, the reincarnation cycle.

zel is pressured to not only be a good daughter and princess, but to take on the powers that should be blessed to him by the goddess herself. everything just drives him further into hating everything, including link early on.

a big part of zel being able to actually unlock his powers would be both what i think happens in game [ desperation to protect ] as well as acceptance of himself. zel's inner turmoil over his own identity, where his duty as holder of the triforce of wisdom starts and right to be himself ends.

of course, there's no actual reason for the holder of wisdom to be a woman; as there is none for the holder of courage or power to be a man. it just so happens that it tends to be like that.

i think a retelling like this could add such a strong layer onto zel's character arc. it's so good. augh. thank yuo i hope any of this is somewhat coherent. they kiss in the end

btw i think generally trans masc zeldas go for the name sheik [ thank you OOT sheik you walked so the other tran masc zeldas could run ] but botw zelda specifically would take the scientific name of like, a small critter or plant, and alter it so it sounds kind of like a hylian name. OR just go by 'zel'. or both ! idk.