#linked univers dive

[kuraiarcoiris]

I got my new @theegh0st keychains!!!

Four’s Colors are trying to steal my copy of Four Swords. I think they are succeeding.

Mipha looks pretty as a picture. Speaking of I splurged on a sketch again. Sky looks so done with the fools in the back. He likely just wants to nap.

These are so cool as always.

[kuraiarcoiris]

Dumb Idea #9 – Wind’s Resentment

Wind thinks about his place in the timeline. And he watches how Time treats Twilight. How Twilight gets the nickname “pup.” How Twilight gets to be a blood relation of Time and Malon, which even if it’s accidental gets him special conversations that no one can have. No one including Wind. Wind learns about how Time will one day die and wait hundreds of years to meet Twilight, to train him. How Twilight went on his adventures at the age of 16, not 12. And resentment begins to grow.

Twilight wasn’t compared to the Hero of Time every time he had to help a new area. He got a mentor who properly cared about him and taught him to fight and a companion who was there over his shoulder the whole adventure. He only had to go on one adventure. His father figure (less of a figure and more actual dad) didn’t resent him in the beginning. He didn’t lay impossible tasks at his door or had to be blackmailed into helping. Twilight had people in his village his age. He had little kids who he saw as siblings but didn’t have to be responsible for because they had actual parents without poor eyesight, arthritis, and low stamina.

Seemingly suddenly, Wind starts to pull away from Twilight. And not only Twilight, but Time too. They become hard for him to talk to civilly. To look at. To think about. Warriors tries to talk to him, but that lands him in the same category. It isn’t fair because Warriors understands a little. He gets being held to an impossible standard. To be responsible for other people. He didn’t have a proper father figure either. But he had Proxi. He had Impa. It wasn’t the same.

Wind starts hanging out exclusively with Legend and Hyrule. Because they aren’t part of the straightforward timeline either. They are from the other off-shoot. Time can have Twilight, and Twilight can have Wild and Warriors too. Would make things neat, easy. Sky to Four to Time to Twilight to Warriors to Wild. That can be the “right” timeline.  And Legend, Hyrule, and Wind can be the odd ones out. It’s not like either Legend or Hyrule care. They didn’t have stable companions either. They didn’t have father figures at all. Sure, Hyrule came after Legend, so they had that connection while Wind was by himself in another off-shoot. But they didn’t mind. They didn’t.

And Legend shelters Wind from Warriors’s attempts to talk. Hyrule hangs out more with Legend and Wind and stops doing crazy antics with Wild. And slowly the one Chain becomes two separate ones. No one knows how to fix it. Warriors can’t talk to any of the three, Time can’t do more than command his two other successors and Hyrule in battle, and Twilight can’t get close to Wind even in Wolf form. Legend’s bunny form is discovered, and the pink bunny gets to sit in Wind’s lap. But Wolfie is no longer the recipient of hugs or attempted kisses.

The rift grows. Four tries to mend it by asking about Wind’s shield but gets shut down with “it couldn’t be yours because it’s not from the canon timeline.” Sky explains that he’s the one that cursed them all and should hold all the blame for their troubles but Wind reassures Sky that none of the off-shoot timelines are his fault with a sneer at Time.

Finally Wild snatches Wind when the two Chains are in his era and teleports them to the Chaas Qeta Shrine. On the small Tenoko island, Wind has nowhere to go, so Wild forces him to sit with him on the shrine platform or he wouldn’t teleport them back to the others. Grumpily Wind complies.

There Wild reveals a secret. He knows where he falls in the timeline, and it isn’t after Twilight. Every time Twilight appeared, his Sheikah slate made it clear Twilight came from another world. Which Wild now realized meant Twilight was from another timeline. The hero Wild had grown up hearing tales about hadn’t been the Hero of Twilight. It had been the Hero of Winds.

When Wind heard that, he exploded. Because of course Wild wouldn’t have pretended to be Twilight’s successor instead. Wind wasn’t good enough to be Wild’s predecessor. He was just a kid who defended Hyrulean Kings and didn’t matter even to those who came after him.

Wind threw himself into the ocean and began swimming towards shore to the best of his ability. Wild quickly swims after him and catches him. Wind can’t get out of Wild’s grip and to his shame bursts into tears. He’s done. He wants to go home. Or at least go hide behind Legend and Hyrule and never talk to any of the rest of the Chain again.

Hugging Wind tight, Wild takes him back to Tenoko Island. He holds Wind while the teen cries. And when Wind quiets down, Wild apologizes. Wild explains that he didn’t tell Wind the truth not because he thought Wind wasn’t worthy to be his predecessor or because he preferred Twilight. Twilight was different to Wild than Wind was. Twilight was a companion he grew to love and trust. But Wind was his hero. Wind defeated Ganondorf at age 12. Wind rescued an Ocean King’s kingdom. Wind established a Hyrule that had technology so advanced that the Sheikah learned from it. A Hyrule that moved back to its native lands once they had dried enough.

Wind was so impressive. He accomplished so much in his life that Wild couldn’t imagine letting Wind know that centuries later he would be followed by a guy who couldn’t do at 17 what Wind did at 12. A hero who failed to protect the Hyrule Wind had painstakingly raised from the depths. Wild didn’t want Wind to look at him and resent Wild for making a mess of the world Wind left behind.

Wind stuttered that he would never. That he thought Wild was so cool and his meals were the best and how could anyone not be proud to have Wild as their successor? Wild would smile wanly and say he would have loved to hear those words from his hero, but for the last few months he hadn’t seen his hero at all. He had seen a bratty child wearing his hero’s skin.

The truth of how he was behaving would slap Wind in the face. He would think about how he would have felt if Time had started treating Warriors or Legend or Hyrule the way he had been treating Twilight. How he would have felt if Time had caused a rift between the people he loved, had made them choose sides because he felt left out. And his heart sunk.

Wild admitted that he knew his hero was still in there. That he knew the boy who grew to be the man that established his Hyrule existed behind the bratty child who had treated his older brothers horribly. Wild knew that that hero could fix the tear he made. Wind agreed.

They returned to the others, apologies were said, and Wolfie slept in Wind’s arms that night.

[kuraiarcoiris]

I keep thinking about the LU update, and several people have pointed out that TotK happens “in five years” to Wild. And yes, that’s a fun(?) easter egg and probable confirmation TotK happens after the LU. But what I keep getting stuck on is Wild’s idle animation in TotK. The one where he stares at his zonai arm if left standing still too long? What if he stares at it thinking about what he told Warriors? Thinks about how he made a life with his Zelda and then he let it be snatched away from him? What would Warriors think of him now? Probably that he needs to keep going and get her back. Because Warriors knows that Wild can accomplish everything he sets his mind to.

What if in this universe where he spent time with his heroic brothers, he thinks about what he’s learned from them during TotK and that’s part of what keeps him going? Because he knows his brothers believe in him and they would push him not to give up. That they taught him that failure doesn’t mean you are a failure, and they expect him to get his princess back and set his Hyrule to rights since they know he can succeed. When everything is still and despair knocks, Wild might think about the conversation and the time he had with his brothers and keep moving.

I don’t know if I can play TotK now without thinking of how Wild might be taking inspiration from his brothers. And I love that fact.

[kuraiarcoiris]

Wind is Not Emotionally Unintelligent

Every time someone says Wind is too immature to understand something, my soul shrivels a little. I get that Wind is the youngest of the Chain. And yes, there are some subjects like romance that he is not going to understand like the older Links would. Though how much any Link understand about romance and the like is another subject entirely. The point is that Wind is very emotionally saavy for a thirteen year old. He gets more complex issues than he maybe should as a young teen because he had to and also because he was raised to. Granny didn’t raise an emotional idiot.

In game canon, Wind had to deal with a girl who became a thief because she went from privileged to poor. He talked her out of a life of crime, and while yes some of his answers were silly, he listened and encouraged in a way that the girl felt seen and heard and accepted her new living situation. He dealt with his grandmother’s depression and heartbreak at the loss of him and his sister. He helped and stood by Tetra while she figured out her identity as a Princess Zelda. Wind is not an emotionally unintelligent child who doesn’t know what to do in emotionally complex situations. And he’s a Link, so he may run into brick walls, but he isn’t intellectually unintelligent either. They just drop their braincell every once and a while.

In comic canon, the first real conversation Wind is shown as having is a deep one about the Kings of Hyrule with Wild. One where despite him showing some callousness in his words—one he quickly picks up on and regrets but also his father figure was being slandered in his eyes—he shows how he understands the Kings of Hyrule in a way that Wild, because of King Rhoam’s treatment of his Zelda, didn’t. Wind is also the one who brings up his own placement in the timeline to Time which is something none of the others did openly. And while doing so, Wind was very careful not to explain why the Golden Three drowned the world because he knew Time would blame himself.

So I understand that boiling Wind down to “child character who doesn’t get things the others do” is simple and easy. But that’s some flat, uninsteresting child character you replaced my favorite with so that your favorites can have some kid to bounce off of. Wind is a child, but he is much more than that. Sure he has child-like moments, and he should. But he is not an immature brat. He had to scold the other Links for treating him like a child in comic canon, and yet here is so much of the fandom doing the same.

Stop treating Wind like some kid who would not understand emotionally complexities and backstories and motivations. He knew a girl in his game who was in love with a moblin who wanted to eat her. This “kid” has seen things. He is a hero in his own right, and one of the most empathetic too.

[kuraiarcoiris]

You know I was looking again at the LU update and this panel struck me because…

He is first. The very first. He should flaunt that fact (that he does not and cannot know) more.

[kuraiarcoiris]

Wind is related to Sky

Of all the Links, I think Wind is the one that is most likely related to Sky directly through the royal Hyrulean line. Why? My main reasoning is simple: He’s the only Link who can canonically shoot light arrows from his own magic.

Light arrows are a weapon almost exclusively produced by Zeldas. Tetra can use light arrows. She can shoot near infinite amount of them, which Wind cannot do. Wind’s magic drains much too quickly for more than a couple of light arrows. But Wind can still shoot them.

Hence the following theory: Wind is also a descendant of Lullaby/Sheik but from a weaker royal line than Tetra. During the Great Flood, King Daphnes might have sent his oldest daughter in one direction and a younger son/daughter with the Sheikah. The Sheikah ended up founding Outset Island and raised the youngest child of the king without any knowledge of their heritage for a secretive protection. Meanwhile the eldest daughter (I think that in times of turmoil, the king always has an eldest daughter because Demise Curse) was taken by the royal guard, as shown by Tetra’s portrait, who sailed over the seas to avoid Ganon’s detection. Hundreds of years later, Tetra was born of the eldest daughter’s royal line while Wind was born of the youngest child’s weaker line that was "diluted" with Sheikah blood.

Yeah, Wind would be a Sheikah in blood too. Would explain his sneakiness. Also he’s likely not the only Link with Sheikah blood, but I digress.

I do have second argument. And that’s if Wind is Four’s descendant, he will also likely be Dot’s descendant. Which means he would be of royal blood through Dot, and so him going through the royal line via Lullaby/Sheik would check out since what is the likelihood that in apocalyptic event another offshoot of the royal line would randomly survive?

So there’s the headcanon and the thoughts behind it. Feel free to agree or disagree. I may write a fic with this idea as its basis.

[kuraiarcoiris]

Let's be real. Poor Warriors.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

This was a tough chapter. Again, poor Warriors.

[kuraiarcoiris]

Please take note of these goobers:

That is all.

Original.