The Zelda timeline explained (possibly)

I've been sitting around, clearly with too much time on my hands and reading too much Legend of Zelda info, and it suddenly occurred to me how the Zelda timeline might possibly make sense in-universe. I sent a big long text-message essay to my sister about it, and she thought it made sense too, so I thought I might as well write it up.

Now, this isn't really anything mind-blowing. I'm not going to speculate on the meaning of some obscure half-hidden graphic asset, or invoke the hypothetical missing fourth piece of the Triforce, or put together a Tolkien-esque three-volume history of Hyrule that I'll insist is way better than anything Eiji Aonuma can come up with. I'm just going to apply some real-world historical analysis principles and invite the reader to reexamine the entire idea of the timeline from a different angle. If you disagree with my stance, that's totally okay. I'm just putting some thoughts out there.

Read on after the jump (spoilers ahead)!

Video game ramblings: prices, princesses, and the casual/hardcore divide

 No, there's no typo in the title. Today I want to discuss a sustainable video game industry, appeasing two very different subtypes of gamer, and my thoughts on Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

Read on after the jump!

 This didn't actually happen while we were playing, but in my headcanon this is how these two met. I thought this would be a fitting sendoff for this comic series. For now, I've got other projects to work on... until my niece decides she wants to play through Tears of the Kingdom. 

 Well, we finally finished the game*. It took us nearly a year (silly school getting in the way of video games), but it was a fun ride and I'm glad I got to come along. These comics also gave me a fun project to work on, so I'm grateful for that. It was nice to flex my cartooning muscles(?) a bit.

Ironically, my niece had been badgering my sister for weeks to just go fight Ganon already. And then this happened. (My sister said, "Do you want me to wait for you?" "No. (leaves the room)")

My sister and niece have started (re)playing Ocarina of Time and I've been watching, but I'm not sure I'm going to draw any comics about that, because a big part of what inspired these BotW comics was the sheer spontaneity of my sister and niece experiencing that game for the first time, my sister having no idea what she was doing (I coached her when she needed it, don't worry), and my niece being totally ridiculous the whole time. When we play OoT, it's more my niece eating snacks while my sister and I reminisce about when we thought N64 graphics were the most amazing thing we'd ever seen. Still fun, but it just doesn't quite fire my creativity the way BotW with them did.

That said, I think we're going to have a lot of fun with Tears of the Kingdom when they get around to playing that.

*Sort of. We freed all the Divine Beasts, beat Ganon, and completed a lot of the Ancient Shrines and some of the side quests. I wanted to take them through all the Shrines and side quests, but my niece's attention span only goes so far and I think they were ready to move on.

 She keeps forgetting the name of Dubious Food and calls it something different every time.

(Yes, I know meat and berries don't make Dubious Food. That's the other part of the joke. No matter how many times I try to explain the cooking system to her, she still doesn't quite get it. I think she's too busy looking for horses.)

 My niece wanted to go ride bikes with her friend (I guess she's allowed to hang out with people her own age sometimes), so my sister and I decided to keep playing with my sister's cat in tow.

It wasn't quite the same.

 Sometimes it's like she doesn't even want Link to save Hyrule. (I guarantee you that if someone were to say something like 'my headcanon is that she's secretly evil', my niece will absolutely take that and run with it.)

This really happened, and this is why you can't leave her with the controller unattended.

 I wasn't feeling all that great today and decided to phone it in as far as art stuff.

I'm not really good at phoning it in.

This maybe isn't something you want constantly in your ear while trying to navigate a puzzle full of live currents and killer robots. But she persisted nevertheless.

 She's at it again! Link's sassy little companion has been pretty busy with school (and playing through Echoes of Wisdom), but we finally managed to get some play time in. We might go challenge Ganon soon... but rest assured she'll be back to join Link on his Tears of the Kingdom adventures at some point.

This actually happened. It was great.

Video game ramblings: the unecessary sequel

 Again, it's time for more random rants about stuff that's been on my mind and I can't find a real excuse to write it up, so I'm just going to collect it all into this blog post and hope no one notices.

Below the jump you'll find more stuff about Pokémon (although surprisingly not about Scarlet and Violet this time), Digimon, Zelda, Super Mario Bros., filmmaking, and web design just because.

 

I drew this for my niece's birthday; I've been having a blast playing Zelda with her and I'm hoping we'll get more gameplay in at some point. Right now she's pretty busy with school, but come summer break we'll be tromping all over Hyrule again.

Also I guess I have to change the name of the comic now.

Video game ramblings

 I'm not even gonna make up an excuse for this; I just wanted to blog out stuff about video games. (Spoiler alert for Zelda and Pokémon games!)

 Actually, they should make that game.

 Well, at least we've still got the Smicar of Steven.

 What Happens When You Give Your Niece the Controller, Part II.

This was all from just one brief play session.

This kid is comedy gold.

 Move over, Calamity Ganon. This kid's got the destruction of Hyrule covered.

 To be fair, the game has the same effect on adults.

She doesn't really read the game text super closely. 

Consequently, everyone and everything in Hyrule has been renamed.