Essays on Zelda Ships
WAY BACK WHEN, I was an active member of the Zelda fandom. I was the article writer for the largest and most popular Zelda fansite of that time. That fansite is still kickin' (though I don't think it's as popular as it used to be), and my articles are still on there as well.
I wrote a lot of articles on a lot of different things, like the cultural origins of things (e.g. the real-world origin of the shape of the Triforce - part 1; part 2) and the graphics and whatnot.
ANYWAY, so here's a collection of the articles I wrote on the SHIPPING in Zelda. For a time, all anyone ever seemed to talk about in Zelda fandom was shipping and timeline theory (well, other than, you know, asking for game advice or trawling for spoilers).
Below is my contribution to the shipping debate. My intent with the below articles was to argue for what the authorial intent of Nintendo was for each of these games, not to propound why I like one ship or not another one. I was basically arguing that canon does not equal fanon! The tendency to equate canon and fanon seems to be a pretty widespread cross-fandom phenomenon!
Ships for the Hero of Time (Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask)
I wrote a lot of articles on a lot of different things, like the cultural origins of things (e.g. the real-world origin of the shape of the Triforce - part 1; part 2) and the graphics and whatnot.
ANYWAY, so here's a collection of the articles I wrote on the SHIPPING in Zelda. For a time, all anyone ever seemed to talk about in Zelda fandom was shipping and timeline theory (well, other than, you know, asking for game advice or trawling for spoilers).
Below is my contribution to the shipping debate. My intent with the below articles was to argue for what the authorial intent of Nintendo was for each of these games, not to propound why I like one ship or not another one. I was basically arguing that canon does not equal fanon! The tendency to equate canon and fanon seems to be a pretty widespread cross-fandom phenomenon!
Ships for the Hero of Time (Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask)
- Link/Zelda - written in February 2003. The e-mail responses I got to this article amused me. "BUT . . . BUT . . . YOU CAN JUST FEEEEEEL THEIR LOVE. WHEN THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER." Uh, no, they are POLYGONS with a few very set facial expressions, including the default "neutral" one, which happens to be the one used in the scenes in question. You just cannot read into Link + Zelda scenes like that; think of them as cardboard cutouts with faces painted onto them!
- Link/Malon - written in March 2003. This is probably the most important article of the bunch. It's the cincher!
- Link/Ruto - written in April 2003
- Link/Saria - written in November 2003
- Link/Tetra (Zelda) - written in June 2003. Obviously this was written long before The Phantom Hourglass was announced, so it just deals with The Wind Waker.