I love good guys

The main plotline of the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) alone -- with no sidequests, exploration, minigames, or collections -- takes ~50 hours. So, roughly, 2 old-fashioned US TV seasons of 22-26 episodes or 3-4 epic Peter Jackson movies. Here's that plot, summarized:

( Massive spoilers )

I have not seen this lore theory anywhere, but it occurred to me within the past week or so, and, and surely -- surely! -- I'm not the first to think of it. Before Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment drops on Thursday, let me ask:

Could Rauru be a Link? That is, in the era of the founding/re-founding, could Rauru be the embodiment of the spirit of Hylia's Chosen Hero?

He's certainly done the work of Hylia's Chosen. He is courageous. He's defeated the monsters, brought peace to the surface peoples, supported (and loved and married) his era's blood descendant of Hylia who carries some fraction of her sacred power... and gave his life to bring down the Demon King in his era, passing on his wisdom and power to a future Link to finish the job in another era.

He sure looks like a Link ... in every way but being a Zonai named Rauru rather than a Hylian named Link, and not bearing Hylia's sword (or any sword; he's a magic-user). But not every Link gets that sword. And, until 2017, every Link could be renamed by the player.


(Or maybe Rauru is a male Zelda and the source of Hylia's blood in the royal line, but that's a very different and less likely lore/timeline theory.)

sunshine_revival '25 Challenge #2: "Write about anything you feel sentimental about..."

One thing I'm perpetually sentimental about is the cartoon Dungeons & Dragons (1983-1985; three seasons, the last one shorter). It was on the air before and after a significant event in my life, making a kind of continuous bridge through that, though of course I didn't know at the time that this was part of it imprinting itself on my imagination, as much as its superior writing (once you get past the first episodes that go out of their way to explain themselves to TPTB), voice acting (Diana's actress won an Emmy for her role, and of course Eric's actor is renowned), storytelling invitation to imagine yourself right into the scenario, and its sneaky continuity and deep lore in the days before continuity was permitted or lore wanted. And these were the days of bargaining with one's siblings over which Saturday morning cartoon would be viewed when on the one TV in the house, negotiating away blocks of the day to ensure you got the one half-hour that mattered.

Of course while the show was a huge success in the ratings, TPTB never stopped being nervous about it, in that age of moral panic about supposed cults and such supposedly using D&D to recruit/hurt kids, which looks like a pretty quaint worry now, but was indeed quite real (that is, not a real threat, just a real moral panic). That affected the show in many ways, most sad, but one incredibly good. TPTB lived in such fear of the Parents Television Council about this specific show that they mandated that our heroes must never use violence or offensive weapons. What a beautiful challenge to put in front of the writers! Surrounded by shows firing assorted colored lasers from guns, our heroes had to use their brains and empathy to solve puzzles and reconcile misunderstandings! And their very personally symbolic totemic enchanted weapons were highly defensive and evasive -- no swords in our heroes' hands! -- with even Hank's energy bow and Bobby's club aimed always at inanimate obstacles, never at people. (That was one of the mistakes the recent revival comics unfortunately made. They ditched that key constraint and gave Hank and Eric swords, showing they did not really understand.)

The recent D&D Honor Among Thieves movie (which was a good movie and deserved more audience attention) made use of widespread nostalgia for this show with a few background cameo tributes, which led some toys to finally come into existence for the show as cross-marketing with the movie, so many decades after we original viewers would have played with them. Though I'm not a collector, I snapped up the action figures and they bring me delight; the Diana figure is standing at the corner of my monitor right now, and the others are on a shelf I cleared for just them, even buying clear acrylic risers to display them better.

You can find the show on DVD (I have the "red box" version from the 25th anniversary). It ran around the clock on Twitch for an event leading up to the movie's premiere. I believe that it's not officially anywhere streaming now [Correction: It's on Amazon's "live" Freevee "Dungeons & Dragons Adventures" channel in the US! See comments!], probably because of complex rights issues (Marvel and Sunbow made the '80s cartoon; Hasbro now owns D&D; Paramount made the D&D movie; Disney now owns Marvel; etc.). Unofficially, it's on YouTube in both English and Portuguese, and many of the scripts are available online, most of them personally posted by the show's most prolific and daring writer, Michael Reaves, who died in '23, and loved the show as much as we do.

I recently replaced my TV (luckily, before tariff announcements). My prior TV was a decade and a half old. Its replacement, a Roku-brand TV, is fully 55" corner to corner and still blowing my mind when I rewatch familiar media on it. For example, rewatching first-season Forever Knight on the much bigger screen, I constantly see props, sets, and expressions more clearly than ever before. Mostly, it's just increased clarity/visibility from sheer size and from fiddling for optimal settings to make the old footage look its best on screens it was never meant for (so far, for '90s shows, I recommend "Movie" for DVDs and "Auto-detect" for streaming). But occasionally I see things I genuinely never knew were there.

For example, rewatching "Dark Knight" (German DVD*), I saw for the first time that Nick's TV stand is on a very low, wooden, wheeled platform, a rough hand-truck seemingly left over from when the warehouse was in use as a warehouse. And on Alyce's desk, next to her apple, which I've always seen, is a modest bran muffin that I didn't recall (FK Alyce's snacks contrast with NK Alyce's ice cream and chips; I do prefer NK's Alyce in every way, as I prefer FK's Janette in every way). In the Raven, I saw clearly for the first time the little flashlights the patrons shine on themselves and each other; before, I'd seen only the lights, not the devices. Most arrestingly, I saw, for what felt like the first time, that when Schanke and Nick go up the staircase to stop the crazed shooter in the apartment building in the Chinese neighborhood, and Schanke says, "It's just a little plasma, Knight; don't get all worked up" -- a line I believe is straight from the original Nick Knight script, where this scene happens in a health club and is pretty different -- they are not stepping around only blood on the stairs, but around a young woman's dead body. "Just a little plasma?" I know Schanke means, "Keep moving, Knight; we can't afford to get distracted now [with bonus vampire allusion]," but... perhaps that line should have been rewritten for how the scene was re-staged. Ugh.

Have you had similar experiences with old stories on new devices?

* Ages ago, when some companies maybe didn't realize the full implications of publishing factory reset codes, I unlocked a DVD player to make it region-agnostic. The FK German DVDs have all the visual footage of the initial Canadian airings, which were of course significantly the longest of the many North American cuts over the years -- plus the scenes, mostly just longer establishing shots, that are truly unique to the German cuts -- but very unfortunately the English audio track for those pivotal scenes from the initial Canadian airings is missing from the German DVDs, just as those whole scenes are missing entirely from the North American DVDs and streaming. (My ancient unlocked DVD player needed an adapter to work with the new TV. This is fine.)

How much time passes, in the past of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, between Link being formally appointed Zelda's knight and the day of the Calamity? What does the fandom generally think? What do you think?

(It's difficult to look this up via search, as all the keywords are primarily used for the "higher" timeline of the games, and of course discussion of Age of Calamity's AU differences, and the introduction of the "Champions" Ballad" DLC. This is the only relevant discussion I found.)

My guess right now is that it is likely no more than a year (until Zelda's next birthday), but at the very least three months (given the number and contents of the diary entries and memories). But of the fanfic I've read so far, there's clearly a widespread urge to get at least two and even three years in there. (What I'm wondering is, how much time do I reasonably have to slide in Champion-focused stories? And how young were Zelda and Link when introduced?) I suspect the game designers had one year in mind, but did they embed that intention in canon?