#IM SO SORRY IVE OUTDONE MYSELF IM SO RABID ........................

[ofcowardiceandkings]

I've seen you reference story implications in the sequel to BOTW a few times but I can't find an explanation and I'm still not sure what you mean 😖

not to worry being a vague mess is one of my fortés lol

im gonna get mad english-class serious a second because i need it to explain my shit hold on to yer horses lads this is gonna get long and over the top im SO SORRY in advance ..........

what i generally mean is if we take every interaction in BotW as if it had actually happened, not in the details minutiae sense like if you felt like Link would be nice to Bozai or want to spin kick him in the head way, but if Nintendo included an interaction or lore then it happened at some point or was learned way (the correct answer is spin kick though), then Link would know a LOT of very personal thoughts and feelings from a LOT of people.

to be fair, most of said people have passed away by this point in the story BUT more to the point Zelda is still very much alive and is also in some kind of tenuous contact with Link throughout the course of the game via Spooky Voice On The Winds just for good measure

regardless of what opinion you come away with of Link's own emotions - original Japanese text adventure log and player point-of-contact poker-face not withstanding - it is 100% canonical that Zelda had a thing for Link before the Calamity after they got to actually interacting and understanding each other. even if you wanna side-eye the construction of the story told by "Captured Memories" to be at LEAST a little romantically orientated (which in my opinion is a dubious stance to take given how typical storytelling structure works), what Kass has to say about the whole thing is explicitly textual, if only through secondhand information (although i will say a court poet seems like a sound bet in terms of reading people and especially if the person youre reading is a teenager with no concept of not wearing her heart on her sleeve and Small Emotions). trying to ignore ALL of that and - to be honest - what the latest batch of writing team has been doing since Skyward Sword isnt so much "reading the subtext/story wrong" as it is willfully ignoring it lol

not that im saying thats a bad thing, i also ignore chunks or details of stories i dislike because "fuck that im having fun" but i can also acknowledge that whatever im ignoring did in fact happen even if i think its stupid ... anyway

and the only reason i think this is a train of thought less-travelled is purely due to how HUGE BotW is, theres a LOT of stuff .. like i hang out with friends mostly playing BotW on twitch every day and we all learn things constantly. if you dont go hard for the lore and story you miss it, thats the nature of storytelling in the way BotW went about it

like i said, it's kind of dependent on what content is to be taken as having ACTUALLY happened. the only thing that isnt up for debate is that he regained all of the main-game memories since that's how you get the "true"/full ending. but did Link really read those diaries, did he really have that chat with Kass in Rito Village, is The Champion's Ballad lore going to be carried over,, that sort of thing. in my opinion? yes, because more solidly Nintendo included it for a reason no matter of what percentage of players found it, but in an off-shoot opinion if i was trying to regain my lost memories i'd give ANYTHING a chance of getting them back even if it meant the awkwardness of reading my long-gone friends diaries 🤷‍♂️

basically, what i mean when i have a meltdown over "the plot implications of BotW on BotW2" is im extremely curious to see how Nintendo handle 1) Zelda's established feelings towards Link (assuming they still exist, which i think we have reason to believe they do) and 2) Link quite possibly KNOWING about it. oh and them not existing in an extremely rigid class-driven society anymore.

i dunno about you - or the writing team for that matter - but if i was made aware that a pretty and smart person who i used to be around a lot had a thing for me i would be going out of my MIND lmfao

while their dynamic in past games has been quite developed or had romantic overtones before, BotW is by FAR the most complex understanding of them with the most information given to the player about how their characters grow from more than one angle. like having known each other for some time, general depictions of them existing around each other, visible emoting around the others' circumstances .. these things have happened before but not in such a huge combination. oh AND an abject change in their relationship after having come to some kind of understanding, which is definitely new, let alone that understanding happening OFF SCREEN.

i'll stop now before i actually write a full essay, but lets just say this is even more uncharted territory than Skyward Sword's obvious love story and the "oh and then he was king of hyrule :)" at the end of the original, because like ... its a sequel ... after the fact ..... unresolved

........ yeah

#IM SO SORRY IVE OUTDONE MYSELF IM SO RABID ........................ #lol remember when i wrote a couple of sherlock metas ? good times ... im never gonna unlearn understanding fiction now its here #lets just say there are a LOT of ways this could go and i hope Nintendo doesnt chicken out if theyre implying what theyve been implying #there are a LOT of ways this could go ... and im not sure what i'd prefer ?? i just dont want them to sweep it under the rug #because THAT would be annoying and kind of rude to the people who DID find all the story they could :/ lol #i was already a hardcore LoZ fan but then BotW came and slapped me in the face with a chainmail gauntlet and challenged me to Step Up #i could actually 100% do a full essay on this im more than equipped but im not that bad yet #no ones pissed me off that badly .. YET .. i have seen some astoundingly bad takes out there though yeesh #anyway i'll go to bed now SORRY AGAIN [blows kiss] #rory's ramblings #asks #anon #long post #zelink #zelda blogging #botw/totk blogging