Headcanon of the week: Link's Adventure in Phantom Hourglass was not a dream
Relation to canon: I'm gonna admit I don't know
Why I like it: It makes more sense to me:
Sure, they wake up at the end. Sure, only 10 minutes have passed. Sure, the crew thinks it was a dream. But while these have easy explanations, one thing I couldn't explain is: If it's a dream, how does Link get from the ocean to being on deck? He fell overboard, but he wakes up on the ship. (Plus, there's the Phantom Hourglass and Linebeck's boat, but somehow those feel more explainable. Not explanations I'm satisfied with, but explanations nonetheless.) Feel free to mention your ideas if you have any.
Why did they wake up? Some adventures just end that way. Perhaps going from one world to another knocked them out.
What's with the time difference? There are at least two possibilities. Either time runs differently in the World of the Ocean King or Oshus used his power to make it so they didn't miss time in their own world.
And obviously the crew thought it was a dream because it's kind of an unbelievable story.
Evidence that it wasn't a dream: The existence of the Phantom Hourglass, Linebeck's boat, and Link and Tetra's shared memories.
There's some fun in thinking the adventure was a dream. I'm not unfamiliar with the trope. One of my favorite series are the NiGHTS games by Sega. Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it isn't real and doesn't mean dream things can't be transported to the real world. Plus, there's the parallel between this adventure with a whale and another adventure with a whale that was a dream (Link's Awakening).
But even if this adventure was a dream, I don't think this Link would think so or admit to it - not like the Link that awoke the Wind Fish.
Oshus the Ocean King and the Wind Fish are two different creatures. While the Wind Fish's Koholint was definitely a dream, I think the World of the Ocean King is a physical realm with loose attachment to Hyrule - something like a pocket dimension, maybe. Or perhaps it's located very literally within Hyrule, but it's something like the Lost Woods or that section in Phantom Hourglass where you need to navigate the sea in a certain path to get to your location. My thinking is that usually Oshus controls how people get in and out of that world, but when Bellum took over, he used the ghost ship as a bridge between Hyrule and the World of the Ocean King.
izzy806
turnnoffyourmind
theartofmadeline
janainaart
yousharknotpass
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
