Fandom Friday-Postmodernism and Zelda or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Timeline

You know what's a great idea with a newish blog? Kicking the internet's hornets nest! This is Fandom Friday and I love The Legend of Zelda. I've played (almost) every game in the series, know the lore forwards and backwards, and I just plain adore the series in so many ways. I'm a little odd though: as much as I enjoy the gameplay of the series, my favorite aspects have always been the ones that also show up in other, non-videogame media: the story, characters, and worldbuilding.

That means that, as you can see in the title and with that image there, I like the timeline. I was a part of the Zelda fandom long before Nintendo officially weighed in, and as controversial as it is, I actually prefer the Hyrule Historia timeline to other fan interpretations. Since liking any timeline at all, let alone the official one, is not very popular, I'm going to defend my position.

First off, a lot of people don't like theorizing on any sort of official timeline, period. Some of them claim that there can't be a timeline because all the games are literally Legends, as in the same legend as it is warped in different times and different storytellers. That's an interesting enough idea, if you don't look too closely, but regardless of all the clues, the events in certain games is radically different, and even in ones that seem similar, such as Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, there are clear references in the latter alluding to the events of the former. So unless you willfully ignore all evidence to the contrary, that theory is stupid.

The other reason a lot of people have issue with timeline theories is because it's fairly clear that up until, I don't know, Skyward Sword or so, there wasn't really any unified timeline worked out be the creative staff. And I totally agree on that. The Zelda universe was basically slapped together with game after game, and only rarely are there deliberate attempts to tie the disparate parts together. I don't think they had any timeline ideas until after fans became obsessed with it.

I also don't think that matters very much. I'm a firm believer in post-modernist theory, and one of the tenants of that theory is "Death of the Author", or more specifically that the opinions and intentions of the author or authors of a work are inconsequential when it comes to analyzing it. A great example of this in practice is a certain infamous scene from HBO's Game of Thrones.

For those who haven't seen the show, this scene was the talk of the internet when it hit the airwaves: Jamie Lannister, mostly likable dude, rapes his lover. She says "No," multiples times and screws her regardless. It is hard as hell to watch, and almost everyone who has seen it calls it rape.

Except for the guy who directed it. In an interview done later on, and in every quote I can find from him, he maintains that they intended it to be seen as consensual. It is known that was the intention, that like in the books it was supposed to be kinky sex, not rape. But even knowing that, if you watch the scene, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they didn't intend to film a rape scene, they filmed a rape scene. Intention and result do not always align.

Where does this go with the Zelda timeline? Well, just because the creators of A Link to the Past didn't intend for their to be games before it in the timeline, or more specifically for it to be a sequel to the death of the previous Link who failed in his quest, doesn't stop that fact from adding some extra weight and heft to the world in that game. The idea that the land we see there was carved out of Ganon's hands by sheer military might and sage magic, with no hero to save everyone, makes the world different from how it was intended, and that's okay.

So why is the timeline so messy? If you don't play Zelda, you'd think it would be easy to make a timeline. The first game in the series was followed by a direct sequel, featuring the continuing adventures of the same protagonist. The third game, A Link to the Past, is specifically a prequel to The Legend of Zelda, and soon after that came Ocarina of Time, which was a prequel to A Link to the Past. So when The Wind Waker came out, clearly a far future sequel to Ocarina of Time came out, the question was first raised: When is this game taking place? Is it before A Link to the Past, after, after Zelda II?

Things were complicated even further when Twilight Princess was released, a game which was also clearly a sequel to Ocarina of Time, but one whose references to that game clearly contradicted Wind Waker's version of that game's fallout. For a while after that, fans debated over how to place the games, and every possible combination was tried and debunked...until someone came up with a brilliant idea.

At the end of Ocarina of Time, the adult Link is sent back in time to relive his childhood, and go on to have kid adventures. Fans realized that if this event created two different timelines, one where Link is a kid and Ganondorf was found out early and one where he no longer exists and Ganondorf is sealed in the Sacred Realm, the problems mostly worked themselves out. In fact, it made Wind Waker and Twilight Princess's stories make a lot more sense. Once Nintendo noticed the fans suddenly cared about that stuff, they just shrugged, put together their own timeline, and worked it into a book to sell for mad profit.

Even with the fans, like me, who really enjoy Zelda theorizing and obsessing over lore, a lot of them didn't like the official timeline, mostly because it introduced a third branch in the timeline: a world where Link died fighting Ganon at the end of Ocarina of Time, failing in his quest and dooming the world until the Sealing War happened.

For a lot of people, this option comes out of nowhere and seems arbitrary, and while I agree in the sense that I have no idea where they came up with the idea, I like what it does for the timeline. Before, with just two branches of the timeline, it was difficult to exactly place where the original three games were. There were contradictions with placing them on either known branch, but this new option clears things up rather tidily for me.

So, all that said, I'm sure there are still a lot of you reading and rolling your eyes. Why devote this much time and brain-power to a silly game series? Well, for the same reason other people devote their brains to Lord of the Rings, the Arthurian Legends, Conan the Barbarian, etc. For me, The Legend of Zelda series stands out as the purest work of newer heroic fantasy being made these days. It carries that sense of a timeless world, of swords and monsters, magic and heroes, and it's a place I can always come back to for a slice of fantasy. It's a world I've grown attached to, and one many others have as well. So regardless of creator intentions, how nerdy it is, or are inner theory conflicts, I love theorizing and discussing the Zelda Timeline. See you all next week.

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