#post totk headcanons

[mylonelydreaming]

Why is my brain imagining a zelink daughter having the ability to go feral dragon mode. Come collect your daughter Link she's got magic scales again yeah she started eating drywall

[rachelfc-art]

By Your Side

[mooncrisisdepression]

But what if the reason Link is right-handed in Breath of the Wild is because there is an old superstition in Hyrule that boys who are left-handed will be chosen by the goddess - so out of fear for their safety, children are forced to use their right hands.

[clowns0up-felix]

Doodle dump, but it’s low effort bc I’m tired!!

I’ve not really been drawing much, which is why I haven’t posted art in 2 days lol maybe I’m a bit burned out already but I’m hoping to get back to drawing finished pieces today,,, nothing but doodles fw my brain if it’s longer than one day,,, I WAS able to do a fully finished piece for my first ever art trade tho, which is something!!

I guess I’m in a very short art block (saying short bc I’m manifesting better art) and I feel very tired and unmotivated!!! This doodle dump isn’t much, but it’s something

[ladyrijus]

TOTK where everything is more or less the same except the dragon tears are as giant as the springs that Zelda went to, and Link has to wade through them to experience the vision. On top of that, after he sees the vision in full, he can relive that vision for as long as he stays in those tears.

Now, the reason why I want that is because I want to see Link witness the final memory and turn numb with denial and guilt and grief. It should not have surprised him the way it did; he knew in the previous memories she had planned to do it. But there were still more geoglyphs to search, still more time and hope for her to realize there was a different way, a better one that didn't ask her of so much.

He was wrong, of course. Destinies like theirs were never so generous.

Imagine that he appears expressionless, a stark contrast to his more emotional nature that has come out during gameplay. And yet his eyes are noticeably glazed over and he's frozen to the bed of the spring. The sages watch him through their vows, knowing this to be the last memory, and they feel it, immediately, that something is wrong. They desperately try to talk through their avatars, much to the surprise of their loved ones.

"Link? Link, snap out of it!"

He hears nothing.

And so the scene parallels to the off-screen moment Urbosa had with Zelda -- a careful Sidon wills his avatar to carry Link away from the cursed waters, and is pained when he's met with vehement resistance. Why would his wonderful friend drag himself back there, when whatever he saw tore his heart and shattered his soul? It wasn't good for him, to deal with grief in such a poisonous manner.

But for Link, he would weather the heartbreak in watching that bright, curious, ambitious girl sacrifice everything that made her who she was infinitely if it meant he could commit her face to memory. The Sheikah Slate that he took pictures of her with had been dismantled, and the Purah Pad contains no recollection of Zelda. He would watch his princess lose herself, over and over again, in that damned tear, than forget what she looked like.

He couldn't do that to her. Not again.

In the meantime, Tulin, Riju, and Yunobo have created a circle around him together, blocking the hero from hurting himself any further.

By this point, Link's expression is wavering, brows furrowed and lips pressed to a thin line. They don't get it, do they? All of the closest friends he had from an era past are gone; yes, Impa, Purah and Robbie are still alive, and they belong to that era too, but they didn't know him like the Champions did. Like Zelda did. She fought for him in death as much as he fought for her in life, and now he lost her too.

He finally collapses to the ground, shaking, and cries.

He had one job: Protect the princess. And he failed her. Twice.

[ghosted-draws]

I don’t think people talk about the messed up relationship between the goddess hylia and her chosen enough. Like, Link takes a LOT of nonsense through his generations, but specifically the fact that Zelda spends all of BOTW desperately looking for her approval and her to speak to her just once, spending all her time devoted to this destiny, while Link (while he is very much dealing with his own stuff, THANKS HYLIA) can just. call her up. she speaks to him no problem all the time. we exchange her objects for hearts and stamina the whole game.

And Link doesn’t even seem surprised! In both games this happens in! Like he had memory loss in BOTW yeah but for it to be so ingrained in him that he doesn’t startle TALKING TO A GODDESS is astounding. Just, thinking about that. If Link could do that and knew the whole time. Wondering why she only spoke to him. Knowing it would break Zelda if she knew, asking hylia why. Anyways i’m back on my LOZ nonsense the one chosen by an fickle god trope is very dear to me

[onefey]

it's all what if rauru and sonia had a daughter this what if her name was zelda that, which is fine and dandy and nice and cute, but, i've been thinking. what if rauru and sonia had a son, huh?

and they name him after his father, but really he looks more hylian - in fact, he ends up looking a lot like sonia's great great something something grandfather, who lived on an island in the sky and was the headmaster of a knight's academy,

and he never gets to properly meet his parents or mineru or zelda but the chamberlain who raises him tells him aaall about them, and he grows into a wise king with mastery over light and juuuust enough time power on the side to maybe keep a hero in a crystal for seven or so years,

and he does a lot of great things in his time as king. gathers six new sages, powerful even without secret stones, and names himself the seventh. builds a new temple of time, and uses it as a seal to protect the last thing hyrule has - the triforce, hidden long ago in the sacred realm. he sees to it that it is protected further from those who would use it for evil, and he rests easy in a peaceful kingdom.

and when he has a daughter he remembers the stories told by the old chamberlain who raised him and he names her zelda. and he loves her, he loves her so dearly, and she becomes a wise queen where he was once a wise king.

and one day he realizes that he has stopped aging, that he has inherited his father's long lifespan. his fellow sages die. his daughter grows old. so he presses a kiss one last time to her sleeping forehead, and he disappears, flying off into the night sky, only to return when he is needed again.

and maybe you don't even need to invent a child for sonia and rauru, because maybe you've already known him a long time.

[ofcowardiceandkings]

low res photo will have to do im on holiday ;____;

i couldnt , not ... they ......... yknow ??

man what a year what a game what a punch in the heart huh !!!

happy Tingdom Schwingdom Crying day guys lol 💙

(( i dont really know what im doing still re: post game headcanons but ive gone for like ... zonai pattern graft scars here ignore me im playin as per usual fksndkd ))

heres the original yucky little train sketch tooo

[bloomingbluebell]

since playing twilight princess again i cannot get behind the lu fandom characterization of twilight and wild i'm sorry. like i think twilight would be an overprotective big brother figure towards wild, absolutely. but wild doesn't take that sitting down. he doesn't like being coddled, and it's pretty clear (side note: i do really appreciate the analysis posts about wars and how hard he's been on wild potentially pushing wild closer and closer to a rather big memory. you can sort of see how twilight is not happy with how warriors is acting, but he's not saying anything right now. probably because it's not his place to, and also probably because wild wouldn't want him to right now).

i think that twilight and wild have a very different relationship to what most of the lu fandom thinks. they're close - that much is obvious from how they react when the other is hurt, and how twilight pushed through the rest to get to wild during the memories comic. but i think that a lot of the time, it feels like wild only exists around twilight, or he can't be left without twi otherwise he'll "do something stupid" or whatever. wild doesn't exactly appreciate twi's protectiveness or his advice all of the time, but he still looks up to twilight. despite whatever went down when they first met, wild worked to gain twi's trust in order for them to be so close. they're equals - just like the rest of the chain are equals. and yes, wild does a fair amount of dumb things and he's impulsive about it, but i would like to argue that twilight also does a fair amount of dumb things (in game and in comic)

(i think it also kinda feeds in to how wild is sort of infantilized by the fanbase. he's already not exactly trusted by the rest of the chain (legend especially, for some reason), and i think i'd like to explore that and how his relationship with legend formed. they seem to think he's sort of a loose cannon, especially after the previous arcs. wild hasn't seemed to realize it yet, but i do think something is coming, especially with him and warriors)

[veggiecorner]

I woke up within a cold sweat with this botw/totk zelink headcanon but i like to think Link actually proposed to Zelda but in an unplanned unofficial way. Like...a week after totk happens and they're having their first breakfast at Hateno (or maybe Akkala) and Zelda's rambling about how she's sad she never recorded ancient food recipes she's tried at her time in the past and Link just stops her and goes "hey...do you want to get married?"

Zelda's visibly like ??? huh??? and he repeats it. She's a lil spooked cause where is this coming from. Also she's dense so she says "well...I've...assumed I'll be married sometime in the future..." not connecting that he's literally proposing to her and he smiles so sweetly at her and says "I mean with me. Will you want to marry me?" And he steps over to her side of the table and finally gets on one knee.

[themarvelwars]

I'm so frikkin lost, like, I just had the dumbest HC ever.

Just imagine:

TOTK Link didn't get to keep his arm and he and Zelda spend their time teaching those children in Hateno after no more world-saving stuff has to be done.

But just imagine if they would have like a day where they susj sing stuff and Zelda and the kids go "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" and our poor one armed Boi Link just sits there, thinking something like 'goddess pls end me"

[kholnt]

lost hero drawing dump of things that i never posted

(second half of this post has been moved here)

[colgeras]

i like the idea of zelda and link both being physically altered after the events of totk. zelda being taller and stronger after draconification. her eyes stay wide and bright as well, and she has a wicked set of horns and sharp teeth. she has to be mindful of her sharp claw-like nails while working with children, so she files them down, as well as her horns. her mind tends to blank at inopportune times, and her memories are a little spottier than they were before. link now has a durable prosthetic arm created by the sheikah, but is just as skilled without it. his typical hylian ears are slightly larger and floppier now, and move with emotion. he wears extra sets of earrings in them when he gets the chance. his body is coated in a fine layer of light, wispy hair, which is useful in the colder regions. the rito are certainly fascinated by it, and tease him gently for taking so long to grow his own down. revali would find it funny. his teeth are sharper too, as are his nails, and his hair seems a little lighter than it used to.

[otherworldy-insect]

sea bunny.. but zora (this was an excuse to mess around with effects lmao)

[eiochevart]

For context: Josha asks what you discovered in the temple in the depths beneath the Great Plateau, and Link explains the new ability to her.

I just love this interaction so much??? Because, like, I know it can be interpreted however you like, but to me it just seemed super affirmative of my little headcanon that Link uses sign language. It makes sense that suffixes like “auto” wouldn’t be common in totk era Hyrulean, so he would have to finger spell it out for her, and then add the sign for “build”. I can really imagine Link standing there and signing with his hands!

[avalypuff]

I have more headcanons that I don’t think I can make into detailed stand-alone posts on their own, so I’m going to compile them here.

If it wasn’t clear, I absolutely love Rauru, Mineru, and what little we know of Zonai as a whole, so these are all about them as well a few snippets of their culture. Please refer to this post for my views on hybridization with other races.

Headcanons are under the cut. Oh also, just to clarify, I’m a believer that BotW/TotK are their own separate entities totally separate from all past games including SS. Please keep that in mind if anything “doesn’t add up with the timeline” :)

Food

• Zonai are carnivorous (this I believe is more than just headcanon, going off the fact all their teeth, even their molars, are sharp). While they can eat fruits and vegetables in small portions, they can’t sustain a healthy vegetarian/vegan lifestyle and will eventually become malnourished and sick without meat.

They’re also uniquely capable of digesting monster parts, unlike Hylians who get sick even from thoroughly cooked parts. Zelda was particularly surprised/concerned to see Rauru enjoying some Octorok calamari, and the following occurred:

“You can eat that?” -Zelda

“I can. Unfortunately you cannot.” -Rauru

• Rauru loves sweet food, such as glazed meats, and brown sugar steaks, while just about the only thing Mineru enjoys enough to eat consistently is a simple dish of spicy meat skewers. Rauru himself has no tolerance for spiciness. Never had, never will.

Physiology and Culture

• Zonai men are commonly known as “bucks” and women are “does” (like deer—goats too, lol)

• Zonai shed. Particularly in spring, as the weather gets warmer. Their fur might be short, save for areas where it grows longer and scale-like, but it doesn’t go unnoticed, especially when you’re sharing sheets with one.

• The third eye doesn’t have the same type of sight that their main eyes have. It’s an organ used to focus their magic, hence why it never opens unless they’re conjuring a huge spell.

• Males grow four horns, which, if not filed regularly*, can grow up to several inches, with the lower set remaining smaller and shorter.

Females cannot grow horns at all.

In the case of trans individuals it’s not uncommon for does to choose hairstyles that would hide their horns from view, but it’s in no way frowned upon to show one’s horns or lack there of if gender doesn’t align with physical appearance. De-horning is an extremely painful procedure, and not expected, though some opt for it anyways.

*Rauru files his horns each morning as part of his personal care routine.

• Fancy headdresses that give the wearer large, ornamental horns (think the dragon armor sets Link wears) are worn by both does and bucks during ceremonies or even celebrations/parties. Everyone loves them.

• Zonai don’t really have surnames. Instead they practice naming conventions based on their fathers’ names. In Mineru and Rauru’s case, their father’s name also ended in ‘ru. This wasn’t practiced by every family, mind you, but definitely by nobility.

• They don’t really kiss. Their lips physically can’t curl outwards like that. Instead, they share affection with tender nuzzling (gentle biting and licking when things get steamy).

Rauru loves being kissed by Sonia though, and always returns her affection in a Zonai way.

• Families typically consisted of mother, father, and one or two children at most. They had slightly longer lifespans than Hylians (Think a couple decades. Nothing extreme.) but didn’t breed as often, so their numbers were already low when they began going extinct. More on that in a minute.

• The same attributes of Zonaite that made it an efficient fuel source also give off a strange and poorly-understood radiation that invokes feelings of greed in those who spend a lot of time with it. This is part of what originally lead the Zonai to the surface, then later all the way into the depths, where they built mines all throughout in their desperate search for more.

As fate would have it, the depths concealed more than just tons of Zonaite. There is an entirely different ecosystem down there, with plant life, animals, and insects unknown to the surface world, as well as less... desirable life forms. Opening up and exploring the depths, as well as putting forth massive construction efforts to build mines, exposed the Zonai explorers to the first strains of a virus that would eventually devastate their entire civilization.

It didn’t happen all at once, but gradually over time they realized people who spent time in the depths were getting sick, and for some reason it was only the Zonai who were succumbing to the illness. More Constructs were brought in to aid with mining in place of people, but the damage had already been done and the virus was making its way to the surface world as well as the sky.

Despite the best efforts of researchers and doctors, the virus was spreading and mutating too fast, and 100 years after originally digging into the depths and unleashing the sickness onto the world, almost all the Zonai were completely wiped out.

• Mineru and Rauru were born at the tail end of the pandemic/mass extinction, and by the time Mineru was a teenager and Rauru almost as well, they were the last of their kind.

Rauru and Mineru

• Rauru, while used to being revered as a god by Hylians, doesn’t exactly enjoy it. …This I feel is supported somewhat in the scene where Ganondorf is loading him up with praise. Granted Rauru’s clear discomfort could just as easily be attributed to Ganondorf’s thinly-veiled threats. I like to think it’s both, as we also learn from the Ancient Tablets side quest that part of what caused him to fall in love with Sonia was that she was unafraid to speak to him as an equal, unlike everyone else who reveres him. This headcanon is a play on the trope “it’s lonely at the top.”

• When Rauru first proposed to Sonia, with a Secret Stone no less, she rejected him. Her reasons being she didn’t want to marry out of convenience, or duty, but for love above all else. A kingdom cannot thrive without love, after all.

Also, despite her excellent judge of character, and knowing that Rauru’s intentions were pure, more than anything she wanted him to understand his own reasoning for wanting to marry her, as well as to be aware that she’s her own person, and just because he is Zonai does not mean he can have whatever he wants all the time. (Referring to the previous headcanon, he may not like being treated as a god, but he’s used to it. It’s important to remember that, even in fiction, people are complicated.)

Sad, but wishing to understand and consider Sonia’s words, Rauru was going to let her keep the Secret Stone, but she gave it back to him. Their friendship continued to grow from there, and the next time Rauru asked for her hand in marriage, having grown as a person himself, Sonia accepted.

• Rauru doesn’t enjoy being called cute. It embarrasses him a lot, actually. By adulthood he’d decided it’s a waste of time to try and protest (he’ll always be Mineru’s cute baby brother) but he tries his best to ignore those comments.

• Mineru used to call him “Ru” or “Ruru” when they were young. He absolutely hated it.

• Mineru was very small as a baby. Even as a child she remained short, and when Rauru was born she was delighted at the prospect of being a BIG sister. Her joy was relatively short-lived however, as by age 10 Rauru had already grown taller than her. Although she’s taller than any Hylian, of course, Mineru is still short by Zonai standards. It doesn’t bother her anymore.

• We know that Rauru would often sneak away to hunt in favor of his duties as King, but I like to think it was not animals he was hunting, but monsters. He loved a thrilling fight.

• Rauru’s earrings are all clip-ons. By his own admission his ears are way too sensitive to endure being pierced ten times! In fact, because Zonai ears are one of their most sensitive parts, clip-on earrings were very common for others as well.

• Mineru learned all about Zelda’s friends from their time together, but nothing could have prepared her for meeting Purah 10k+ years later. Despite Mineru knowing she didn’t have much time left after Ganondorf was defeated, she enlisted Purah’s help in building a flying machine big enough to carry everyone up to Great Sky Island. The two bonded fast—maybe even faster than Mineru bonded with Zelda. Had things been different they might have even shared a romance… alas, as she often had to remind people in the present day, “I am only a spirit.”

Purah still thinks about her often.

- - -

footnote: I left politics out of this post to keep things neutral so these could apply either way. I have my own opinions on Rauru’s leadership, but that’s for another time. :)