This will definitely seem entirely out of left field. You don't have to believe me.
And that's the beauty of it.
And yes.
I wrote all of this.
If you'll do me one favor. At least send this to anyone else who may understand.
You don't have to.
And that's the beauty of it.

This comment was originally posted by me for askyouruncle on his mgsv sucks and I love it full comp, his ac revelations vid, and the community post he made not to long ago about ac 3 running on computers in Boston.

This is the same comment but it applies to you and everyone, trust me.

Everyone should know the TRUTH about life.

The TRUTH is... YOU

And me.

All of us.

True freedom is a declaration of independence from everything. Good, evil, yourself, others, God(hear me out), and to know this grants us true freedom and that is beautiful. And to do the right thing, to be good, to follow God, not in spite of but because of this... that is true good, true righteousness. Everything is permitted but that doesn't mean we SHOULD do everything. The TRUTH is everything. About reality, ourselves, the good and the parts we tell ourselves is the horn. It's always just been us. To know yourself and to trust yourself is true peace. That is the path. Not to fight entropy, but to accept that it and everything else is the natural way of reality and humans and we have the freedom to govern our reality. That is the meaning of life. Thank you. Without you, and God, and all the other people and influences and thoughts and actions in my life would I have been able to figure this out. You have done something truly special Joey. You can rest now. Thank you all. Thank God. I love God and I love all of you. Yes. Even specifically you. I may never have met you but I know: Whoever you are you have the power inside you to find this truth. THE TRUTH. Godspeed.

Truly-
FC

P.S Ocelot was on the phone with Vidic and he also narrated PW.

Action Button reviews boku no natsuyasumi section 5 "I love everyone. And you can too"

Its super wild that Zelda, who has earned nothing and been given everything by birthright of being princess is giving Link a hard time about not earning his place and just everything being gifted to him because of who he was being choose by the sword and not earning it.

She has 0 self awareness

20/10

After binging the first in a day or two, and then taking a few days off to recover from it, I've finally finished.

That was... Beautiful. Masterfully evocative, brilliantly bittersweet, and far exceeded your goals, I think. I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours in BotW, and this made me feel all the same things as my very first playthrough, years ago... but even deeper, more powerful. The romance was excellent, certainly one of the best on this entire site, and the third act was an exercise in relentless excellence. OP, you should be proud of this one. It's art.

Absolutely PERFECT in every way possible. More than once I had to pause reading because I exploded with emotion. My favorite story by far, I’ll read it probably another 1000 times again XD Perfect no doubt

Youre a monster for making me wait…gosh i hate slow burns.

Also damn well dome this was an incredible story. Not my type of storybut thats not your fault.

Is there ever romance or are you just obsessed with angst…jeez.

Phenomenally written but man i came for romance and fluff and have been…disappointed. You match the tone of the game very well. Anyways give me romance before link dies

3 words. This. Is. Canon.

I’ve played almost every Zelda game there is. I got Tears of the Kingdom this year and I had said it’s my favorite Zelda game of them all, but your story just made me seriously reconsider making Breath of the Wild my favorite. I really really wish Nintendo had done what you did. There is so much unsaid and the memories only give us so much. The concept of Zelda holding off Ganon for a hundred years made me cry. It really opened my eyes to how terrifying and emotionally scarring that would have been, and if you play the game without this story, it’s very hard to think about that kind of thing.

I also liked how you (almost) led directly into ToTK. So accurate in your predictions! This story makes the end of that game even better in my opinion. Ugh it’s just so good! In fact I will even go as far to say it’s changed my entire Botw/Totk perspective.

Thanks for all the blood sweat and tears (oh so many!) you put into this. Much appreciated!

You're a genius at writing. The greatest work of all.

Wonderful. Thank you.

I'm not very good at commenting, so I'll just say thank you for writing such an incredible, beautiful piece, one of the best fics I have read, so much love and grief and heartbreak and hope, so many emotions and done so very well. Zelink forever!

Hear me out!

The Gerudo version of the game is Rich Voe, Poor Voe and the winner is deemed the former name and the loser gets the latter name.

The Zora version of the game is Big Fish, Little Fish, and the former is the winner and the latter is the loser.

So by what Link says about the Hylian version, would it be called King Asshole. Because thats brilliant.

“Eh mate lets play this, King Asshole.”

“What did you just call me?!”

“Its the name of the game, relax”

Damn! Why does mother have to be correct! XD

CM, I’m not sure if you still come back and read these reviews almost five years later, but I wanted to let you know how utterly amazing this story is:

I have to tell you that this is the greatest story I have ever read.

Again, in case you don’t believe me:

This is the greatest story I have ever read in my life.

Not a hyperbole. I didn’t play much of Breath of the Wild (because I kept dying), so I didn’t know about the storyline or Memories until recently, when I’m actually about to finish Tears of the Kingdom. The amount of care and well thought out detail you embedded into this story truly fulfilled the plot line exactly how I needed it, and I will henceforth declare this story as canon. I don’t care.

My jaw had dropped multiple times with how you gave explanations to characters whom I hadn’t thought of their origins. The creation of the Master Kogha we know in this universe, presumably to avenge his executed father and how he was treated by the Sheikha because of his bloodline; the subtle details of the banana-loving Yiga outside of Gerudo town; how Misko the Bandit obtained the armor sets, where Kass got his music; who won the Gerudo pool of money at the endeven Link’s own mother. There was also great satisfaction with how you accurately predicted who the next Champions/Sages of the races were going to be. (See? More proof that this is canon.)

The incorporation of Groose and Ilia had made my heart soar as a Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess lover, and seeing their place in this narrative, their stories continuing after the games I played years ago had ended, gave me such peace, and serenity, and complete, udderly disgusting sobs. I came to genuinely love Groose as a character, and how Link viewed him as an extension of himself, not only as a knight, but as a dear friend. And I couldn’t help but feel a tad bit of pity for Ilia. Seeing her childhood friend come home after multiple seasons, after he had been instructed by the Master Sword to serve the Incarnation of Hylia, the next Queen of Hyrule. Link’s mother knewor at least hopedthat his dear friend was who he would settle down with, after he defeated Ganon and fulfilled his purpose to protect the Princess. He would go back to Mabe Village, and they would be together, as his mother had subtly arranged by having Ilia stay in their residence. But then, when he finally comes home, she sees the Princess has come along, and she sees the way he looks at Zelda, a way he never looked at her. A look even his mother noticed. I felt the pain for her.

The universes and lore from separate storylines melding together to create a complete story of Hyrule is somewhere I want to live, to experience. I want to find my own place amongst the endless fields of grass and forests, rivers and lakes, mountain tops and deserts. While on the subject of geography, “Skies,Sands,Seas,Stones,” and even “Shadows,” as exasperations, on top of Zelda’s “Oh, by the gods,” brought so much pure joy to my heart, you wouldn’t even believe.

Your masterful knowledge and incorporation of the map of Hyrule makes me want to visit all of those locations and feel the story out in my own wandering play-throughs. They make exploring the ruins of the old villages so much darker now, knowing the context of how they fell: Walking through them doesn’t feel the same anymore. I could feel the terror, fear, sorrow visiting these places of broken cobblestone that Link and Zelda felt as they fled past village after village, burning to the ground around them, breathless and covered in mud too scared to look back, and too terrified of Ganon to stop.

I had the vaguest idea of how Zelda came to find that the King and all of the Champions had died from the limited details of that Memory. But the horrorcomplete and terrible horrorof the Champion’s dead bodies being thrown in front of them by the Blights made me pause and have to read and reread over and over again, to really comprehend the gravity of the situation and the actual reality Link and Zelda had to face head on. Specific mentions of Mipha’s eyes destroyed me. Then, in the following scenes of them fleeing Hyrule Castle and Castletown, watching as everything and everyone they’ve known die and burn catastrophically around them, I felt my heart lurch out of my chest. Even the smallest details of having to accept that Wisdom and Courage were also casualties of the Calamity elicited a tear and a drop of my jaw. Romani, recounting the fall of Made Village, the fate of Link’s mom (especially how she tried to shield them), and then her subsequent slow death, and the realization that Groose and the Order were finally laying down their lives for the sake of Link and Zelda’s survival caused me to cry in ways I didn’t think possible.

Don’t even get me started on the relationship you fostered between the two protagonists. I felt love. Genuine, genuine love in my heart while reading this. The love they had for their friends, their families, and above all else, each other. I felt like I was in the room for all of those close encounters, the stolen touches, the prolonged eye contact broken up by the awkwardness that naturally comes with teenagers, whether they had the fate of the world resting on their shoulders or not. The shift from innocence to maturity as the year passed on was gradual, but when the time called for it, their growth and hardened wisdom became evident.

I loved the subtlety, how you wrote about concepts without naming them aloud. The way Link braced and hopefully prepared himself for the mere chance of leading the kingdom by reading literature on politics, diplomacy, and market forces spelling out his desire to be kingNot for the title and power, but for the chance of having her as his queen. Although we don’t hear Zelda’s inner thoughts in the flashbacks, the way you had written her facial expressions and shift in tone made me able to think the things she would think, and I would feel the way she felt in proximity to her knightheavy breathing, chest pounding, skin like electricity. I appreciate you holding back and not writing out the intimate scenes at length and with great detail, though I can understand some readers’ frustrations at such restraint. You’re stronger than me.

Though I will admit, the chapter where Zelda felt the (incorrect) realization that Link had known the entire time, that he was waiting to hear her lie again, that she was horrified he was testing her, and the genuine fear she expressed thinking she would ever have to go back to Hyrule Castle again, and that reinstating her as Princess would trap her again in a nightmare of her own making made me feel those same feelings in my chest too. I felt like heaving, my breaths also stolen, a rock in the pit of my stomach. Her inner thoughts were so loud that I also began to feel them, and believe them. I hated the feeling of doubt also in the back of my mind, that Link had meticulously schemed behind her back for him to be in charge, and her to merely be an ornate object of a fallen ruler with a role of doing nothing in the throne that her father died in. I was also having doubts in my mind about Link.

But, as I no less expected, it all came to a resolution I knew that I needed. That they needed. I have put in 27 hoursyes, I went back into my screen time app and did the mathinto this painfully slow burn. I’ve tried to remember as much as I could from the beginning few chapters while I continued into the second half so I could see how far the two of them had come. From the measly beginnings, Zelda doing her prayers in the bitterly freezing hours of the night, commanding the gods to tell her why they they sent her Link. The awkward jealousy Zelda had with the women throwing themselves at him in Gerudo. The infamous, “Stop following me!” The snarky retorts of, “I swore an Oath,I go where you go,I live to serve,” I never knew I needed in my life. The inevitability of his friends, and own mother, calling out the obviousness whenever they could follow his eyes and saw he was staring at her, only her. The captivation of his love for her being one-in-a-million, and their story closing with a lifetime together.

(As cheesy as this sounds, I could only imagine finding a love in my life as passionate, burning, and wholly true as the one you portrayed between them. Of course, the obvious being that I’m no princess and there’s no knight and the world isn’t going to end if I don’t travel around the entire country with the same person at my side over the course of a year. I still want it though. Still waiting for my enemies-to-lovers arc, if the universe could bless me with it.)

As a light-hearted aside, I couldn’t help but chuckle when Link said, “I’m sorry I took so long.” I was sent back to all the mini games and side quests and stupid things I did while playing that were, in my rendition, the reasons why he took so long. Anyways!

My heart physically, literally ached at the entirety of your story, and I read it slowlyimpossibly slowto ensure I didn’t miss a single detail, wanting to live in each and every word because I knew that there had to be an ending eventually, and I didn’t want to let go yet. I willingly read the same paragraphs over and over again. I would go back to previous chapters just to read them again (shout out to chapter 30). There were times my heart raced in my chest from the slow burn, or I felt cold shivers down my spine from the tension, and I shed tears of sadness and immense tears of joy in ways I never had before at a work of literature. I gave up writing last year, but you’ve inspired me to start again, if only to imitate the world that you’ve brought to life. I hope I can be as great of an author as you. All I can say is thank you.

I will be thinking about this story for a long time. An incredibly, painstakingly long time. Painful because I know I will never be able to read this story for the first time again. But that was also the beauty of Breath of the Wild. Once you knew, you knew. Once you played, you played. You can’t take back the first time again, but I think that rings the bell of grief in its own way, like the theme of this storyYour story.

I’m currently about 75% finished with Tears of the Kingdom and experiencing a lot of Zelink feelings. I’m about to reread this masterpiece of a story just to feel my feelings even harder. CM, wherever you are, I hope you have played TOTK and are enjoying it as much as I am! And, if you get inspired to write any fics about it, I will be right here ready to absolutely devour it. Cheers!