#the goth vio saga

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I like the idea of Vio adopting some Gerudo traditions as a way of mourning Shadow and coping with his loss.

I base a lot of my Gerudo culture headcanons on ancient Egypt, even though my specialty is Mesopotamia and “ancient Egypt” is about as vague as saying “yeah I have a mammal in my house”. The time frame we’re looking at- ancient Egypt is so vast that actual ancient Egyptians had their own archaeologists studying their own past. So. Read my uncited and sleep-deprived fandom post with that in mind, and maybe go look up Hathor’s significance as a goddess of both mining and makeup, or the origin of the dog star. People seem to think Egypt was all about death.

Still, I’m here for goth blorbo posting, so talk of death it is!

For my personal headcanons, and Hyrule Historia’s debatable take on Shadow being made from Ganondorf AND Link- I think he was both an attempt at mocking Link, but also possibly an attempt to create a Gerudo hero. It must sting that not only can Ganondorf never win, but even his people suffer the short end of the stick. I’ll leave Shadow’s creation and the motives behind it up in the air, but- I do like the idea of him being somewhat racially Gerudo, if not raised in it culturally. Shadow is alone, running on emotions and instincts that might be his and might be the old hate of an endlessly reincarnated demon. His brain keeps spitting up random facts about the divine ritual significance of the king, flooding season and how to respectfully summon ghosts, and he has no idea what to do with any of this.

Until, of course, one day he brings home a cute nerdy twink to the evil castle and Shadow wants this guy’s attention So Bad. Cue poorly planned and half-understood infodumping that still earns him Vio’s complete undivided attention and possibly even cuddles. We don’t know what they were doing while Blue and Red tried not to die. Maybe they painted eachother’s nails while Shadow awkwardly coughed up random facts about Gerudo noun modifiers. (It would work on me)

Let’s fast forward.

Shadow is, for all intents and purposes, very dead by the end of things. While I love the idea of Vio descending into the guts of occult research hell to bring him back, there’s time between the end of the adventure and when- or even if- his attempts work. Research is one coping mechanism. How else does he want to remember Shadow?

Shadow wanted to be a person, above all else. Real, someone to be looked in the eye and respected. Nobody else is going to mourn him- who else would have cared enough, known him enough? The other parts of Link might try to understand for Vio’s sake, but they didn’t live it. They didn’t drink with him and toss around awful villain greetings like “vile morning your wretchedness”. The only people who don’t get graves or rites or anything are… well, being deliberately treated as less than people. And even if Shadow was a magic construct made of half a dozen things and the kitchen sink, enough of him was Gerudo for him to cling to it and say this, this is evidence that I’m a person too.

Something about the practice of religion that might not be immediately apparent to the average white American Protestant or culturally Christian atheist is that orthopraxy and orthodoxy are two different things. Correct action versus correct belief, essentially. In the ancient world, it often didn’t matter if you “believed” in a god, especially if you were in a high political position- the motions still had to be performed. It was taken as a matter of fact that the ghosts needed to be given bread and the rash on your neck was a sign of a god’s displeasure that could be interpreted via medical divination.

I’m vastly simplifying it because this is a fandom post and I’m running on two hours of sleep, so I’ll cut to the chase- it doesn’t matter if Vio “follows” the goddess of the sands or any other deity, or even none at all. If he thinks Shadow would have wanted beer and bread left out for his ghost, according to how any real person would be honored, I don’t think it’s out of the question that he might just do that. Plus, I think Vio would be invested enough in how Shadow would want his memory to be treated that he’d do the reading and maybe hop over to the Desert of Doubt to ask the Gerudo for proper funerary details in person. Again, it’s not like Shadow would have any other family or friends to fill the role.

Vio absolutely has a little sketch of Shadow in his room with a glass of water and a little plate next to it, and when Blue leaves a giant platter of stress-baked cookies outside his door he shares them with his dead boyfriend. I’m just saying. The guy may be dead but the love is not.

#the goth vio saga #vidow #pagan religion rambles in my Zelda? it’s more likely than you’d think

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Alright so I have a therapy idea for Four that would give the LU boys a heart attack.

Sometimes you have baggage, and regrets, and memories. Nowhere to put them, nothing to do with them. Sometimes you change so much you barely recognize yourself anymore. So, keeping that in mind, and also my excessive amount of goth Vio headcanons:

Four should have a funeral.

It doesn’t even need to involve anyone other than the colors, but just. I think they’d have some baggage about the original Link, and nobody said you can’t have a funeral for the guy you used to be who won’t ever exist again. Get rid of some of the old shirts nobody wears because they were His and not Yours and it’s complicated. Figure out who inherits his favorite belt. Replace the nameplate on the door. All the little things that mean he’s still haunting their home, that feel just slightly wrong, because it was His and not Theirs and they don’t know how to feel welcome with those reminders around.

A little grave under the tree out back, out of the way, with the name “Link Smith”. I think it’d help. I also think, depending on if the LU boys know or not, it could be pretty funny to have them stumble on it and come up with wild theories about Four.

#lu four #the goth vio saga

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I love the idea of writing Vio as goth within the context of Four Swords, as opposed to goth in the sense of my 21st century irl perspective.

There’s a quote that I found via Wikipedia via the NYT that encapsulates the genre pretty well: “In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew.” That, plus a few notes on Victorian mourning culture, as well as punk elements like androgyny or gender anarchy, with some elements of pagan symbolism sprinkled in for flavor.

The idea of paganism in the land of Hyrule is actually so delicious I need a minute. I feel like a lot of fan writers are familiar with the wealth of Christian religious trauma that can be applied to every mention of Hylia and the Golden Three, but there are other belief systems in the series.

Vio as a character has some very interesting possibilities open to him. First off, he used to be part of one person, who could arguably be considered dead after splitting into Green, Blue, Red, and Vio. Depending on how you write them, even when they recombine the original still might not exist anymore. Vio is the contrary one, the one who least resembles the original- I feel like it’s not out of the question for him to see that death and rebirth as a kind of punk freedom, and cheerfully mourn that change in the same way I cheerfully mourn the person I used to be. I love a good skull or two. Hell yes I died, look at what I’ve become. It’s not mocking as much as it is a strange form of respect, if you pressed me to define it. Also, importantly, it’s fun.

Secondly, there’s their association with the Minish. Minish culture is very animistic, the Shinto influences are obvious if you look, and even if the Forest Minish have a rather Catholic (read: Hylian) chapel I think there’s evidence enough that it’s a result of cultural exchange. I am kind of feral about the idea of Zelda being essentially Jesus, and her knight making little offerings of fruit in the woods to the spirits of root and vine. For Vio in particular, I’d be tempted to introduce him to Gerudo beliefs via Shadow. The goddess of the sands, ancestor worship, etc. Not that Shadow is very devout, but he’s willing to talk about it to satisfy his nerd boyfriend.

I don’t think I need to say much about gender anarchy. He’s a Link. We all know.

Lastly, there’s Vio’s position as the member of the group that represents elemental earth, both the foundation of life and its final destination. Vio would absolutely have a complex relationship with death, both in abstract forms like death of the former self as well as quite literal death, considering his position as a fragment of a whole and the avatar of the element most closely tied to it. If anything, the only element closer is Shadow’s, void or aether. I think if he took some time on his journey of self-discovery, in a world where he didn’t have to rejoin into Link, he’d at the very least end up visiting a cemetery or two to try to connect to that aspect of who he is.

Don’t get me started on the fashion choices all of this could result in, or we’ll be here all week.

#vio link #loz four swords #loz minish cap #the goth vio saga

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I have written too many posts referencing goth Vio and not enough posts actually describing goth Vio. I should fix this.

I need everyone to know that Red is really supportive the entire time, drags Blue into it, and Blue and Vio 100% do the lesbians-doing-their-makeup straddle pose thing at least once. Blue is the best at eyeliner and he is personally offended if one of his counterparts has uneven wings when he is Right There and could have just done it in the first place.

Eyeliner is not a common makeup practice in Hyrule, it is extremely Gerudo, so we’re off to a great start actually. While the mines we know about in-game are mostly connected to Mt. Crenel, volcanoes in general, etc, given the blatant Egyptian references with the Gerudo (pyramids) as well as the general theme of making them Pretty Ladies, they deserve to have makeup and the mineral resources for it.

(I have vague thoughts about the Goddess of the Sands as a kind of Hathor/Sekhmet figure, but that’s irrelevant here)

I tend to base a lot of fashion and culture ideas in the Minish Cap era on Scotland/Ireland/Wales, though I think the climate in that version of Hyrule is a lot warmer considering the proximity of Mt. Crenel and the Desert of Doubt, so maybe a bit more like Galicia in Spain? I’m getting sidetracked.

When I think about dressing Vio, I tend to automatically fall back on archers and archery garb throughout history. Archers were an insane tactical advantage, particularly on horseback, so pants would be my go-to. Heeled boots were also useful to give you an advantage when standing in the stirrups, actually. Overall the boys seem to hoof it everywhere, pardon the pun, but in places like France heels were adopted so nobles could be a little taller than everyone else. In Ancient Greece they were used to denote the most important actors on a stage.

I’m getting sidetracked again. Point is, Vio in heels would be fun, but to be honest I could see Legend wearing them more often. Sometimes Time. And Twilight. That’s what cowboy boots are, you know.

Back on topic, Vio has the advantage of being able to make his own jewelry. Drawing wire in particular takes a kind of focus Blue may or may not have, and that’s not even getting into the detail work. Plus, as evidenced by BOTW, it’s good for enchantments. Considering Vio’s fanon fixation on dark magic, I could definitely see him experimenting with earrings that shield you from sunlight, or light magic in general, for whenever he finally resurrects his boyfriend. Vio quickly starts becoming extremely pale after that because he keeps forgetting to take the earrings off (they’re dark and cold and feel a little familiar, he doesn’t want to).

In that same vein of thought, I am genuinely not sure if whatever his body is made of can take tattoos, or how it would work when they recombine, but if you’re going to research necromancy you might as well tattoo ancient and ominous runes on yourself the same way you inscribe them into jewelry. Why augment items when you can augment yourself? They’d have to be carefully chosen and very carefully done, mathematically precise, but Vio’s up to the research necessary to make his own body into a conduit for dark magic. Considering the major sources of darkness in LOZ are the Gerudo and the Sheikah (and the Twili who might be both), the aesthetic is probably unmatched too.

I definitely think he’s got a little ruler tattooed on his finger specifically to make sure he gets his summoning circles right.

Depending on how you want to write the rules of necromancy his clothes could go a few ways, but I’ve been rolling around the Egyptian idea of no materials from the dead. No leather boots, for example, because you don’t want to offend the spirits by bringing the unclean presence of death before them, etc. If we want to get really wild with it, I would love to play with the idea of Vio doing some magic experiments buck naked just to remove that variable altogether. There are a few reasons to do something like that- respectfully showing you’re of lower status than whatever you’re summoning, an attempt to be more in tune with the nature around you, so on. There is some comedy potential for Green walking into the basement, seeing Vio naked and covered in runes, and walking right back out.

While the Era of Light probably doesn’t have a convenient goth scene or even a decently moody bar, I feel like I would be doing a disservice to the subculture if I didn’t mention music. Music is a massive part of the Legend of Zelda experience, and an argument could be made that raw magic- and the ancient language of the gods themselves- might be music. In English, the words incant and enchant both have their roots in the Latin incantare, “to sing”. In Skyward Sword, Fi sings, and both of the sword spirits seem to dance to channel magic. Don’t get me started on Ocarina of Time.

As such, no decent aspiring necromancer worth their salt could neglect the possibility that an understanding of music, particularly funerary songs and the like, might help in resurrecting a dead boyfriend. If there is a spiritual aspect to burial, surely there is an equal and opposite spiritual aspect to unburial. Given how I tend to utilize Gaelic mythology when I think about Minish Cap, there’s topics like the banshee caoine to consider. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gerudo had professional mourners. Vio is 100% experimenting with the technical side of writing music for ritual purposes and simultaneously writing little heartfelt pieces to go with the grief-filled love poems in the back of his journal that no one gets to read.

That’s all I have for now, but there will be more.

#vio link #minish cap #loz four swords #the goth vio saga

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For your consideration:

Vio with an ace ring (black ring on middle finger of right hand) and fire resistance earrings. Also magic runes at the edges of his eyeliner for better night vision.

Green with their father’s signet ring.

Red with the grip ring, a wrist holster for his fire rod, and chains on his wallet because he got pickpocketed that one time.

Blue with the power bracelets, as well as a necklace with a stamped metal tag on it as proof of their blacksmith mastery and approval to sell according to the merchant’s guild. Also the house keys. Can’t trust any of these fuckers with the keys.

#loz fsa #vio link #green link #red link #blue link #the goth vio saga

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Back on my goth Vio tangent, and considering projecting violently onto my favorite little guys.

My take on Four’s timeline, as a character, is that between Minish Cap and Four Swords he went from being an acceptable citizen of the country to what the neighbors delicately called “fae-touched”. After Grandpa Smith’s death, he tries to keep going as a smith, but ends up just moving in with the Forest Minish to build legendary weapons around people who don’t look at him funny.

Four Swords opens, Zelda calls him back from the forest to check in on the seal. One guy becomes four, they pulverize Vaati, rejoin. Return to the woods. Rinse, repeat.

By the end of Four Swords Adventures, this is where I go off script one of two ways: either they can’t recombine because they were split into five and their fifth is missing, they get stuck in the seal with Vaati because their fifth is with them, or they once again leave and spend the rest of their time making legendary weapons.

The life of a career hero, as we all know, is full of trauma and the horrors. Also I feel like he would’ve never had much attachment to the goddesses in the first place. If he kept any gods, they’d be small, useful ones- forge and forest, steel and seed, small local spirits of hard work and getting your hands dirty. Big gods, creator gods of destiny and fate, can come for him if they really want his time. He’s got horseshoes to repair.

I just love the contrast between Sky, who was raised and fed on stories of Hylia, who fully intends on marrying her mortal incarnation, versus Four the smithy who would politely tell Hylia herself to wait a second because he needs to finish up drawing this wire, then leave out some cut apples for the Minish, and then he’d have to tell part of himself to shut up and pretend to be polite some more because this is a goddess he should be respectful (this is a waste of time).

Time continues the tradition of unorthodox gods by mostly either honoring the Deku Tree or his wife. I firmly believe Time is the reason Malanya exists.

#lu four #worldbuilding #the goth vio saga

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Anthropology brain demands more fantasy goth subculture analysis. A favorite of mine is the vampire subculture, which would be really fun to apply to any media considering Vampires Are Awesome, but the hilarious thing is the development of the irl vampire subculture as a community almost entirely hinges on Anne Rice’s books and Vampire: The Masquerade. There’s literally no convenient way to translate it.

While people who would be inclined to the subculture existed before those books and games, conventions and then the internet drew those likeminded people together, and they proceeded to structure those new communities around the media that brought them together. The otherkin and therian communities don’t have quite the same quirk, because members tend to share a vaguer, more general interest and focus on introspection moreso than presentation.

If I wanted to make things easier on myself, I would just say “it’s fantasy, literally write vampires”. But if I did that then I wouldn’t be getting my anthropology enrichment. So!

Considering the (knockoff medieval) time period of most Zelda games, I think we’d be looking at something like the early days of the otherkin community at best. If I remember right it was mailing lists. There have always been people who feel slightly to the left of human, and it’s not necessary to have a community to define that, but if we’re here to talk about a very niche goth subculture because I read a couple of vampire Vidow fics then I think Vio would probably have to invent the idea for himself wholecloth, loosely based on observing demons during his time at the Fire Temple as well as anything he could read at the royal library.

Given the fact that Vio is arguably the Link with the least connection to the Original™️, his body was probably straight up conjured by an enchanted sword, and then he proceeded to spend a large amount of time living like a Creature of Darkness™️, I feel like Vio is uniquely situated for an identity crisis. Especially given the traumatic nature of his undercover mission and the need to mimic Shadow’s behavior to survive, in addition to whatever his own inclinations might have been and how they absolutely did not match up with anything the Original Link would do.

The irl vampire subculture might occasionally be witch adjacent, but it is important to note that nobody involved is actually a magical creature. I’m going to leave the debates about the validity of energy feeding versus medical sanguinarians at the door, because my personal interest in bringing it up is the relationship between vampires and their donors, as well as vampires and their cravings. Nobody is going to die from not consuming blood, but there tends to be a notable health benefit not gained anywhere else that may or may not be the placebo effect. The rub, of course, is actually sourcing blood in the first place. The consequences of not feeding are severe enough to make it worth trying, though.

So if I want to make Vio that sort of vampire, it might not even be that he’s having trouble seeing himself as human. If anything, that could be a comfort thing he applies to himself later, especially after Shadow dies. Medical sanguinarians display symptoms very like chronic illness with no clear solution or cause, and that’s the easiest one for me to wrap my head around (though I may try writing an energy vampire thing for fun). Any physical symptoms Vio had while traveling or undercover could have easily been chalked up to stress, or he just didn’t notice at all. Maybe some of the Evil Root Beer was actually blood and Vio drank it to keep his cover, very much liked it, and then decided not to unpack that.

The symptoms would be more obvious during low-stress peacetime, when he’s not constantly in survival mode and has maybe had a few dinners with the other three Links, who don’t seem to be having the same problems. They’re all Link, why aren’t the rest having weirdly appealing cannibalism dreams? Was it something in the metaphorical water, did the Fire Temple do something to him, are the rest just keeping it secret? He doesn’t remember feeling any of this before the split, maybe it’s just something that happens when you turn 16. Like puberty but slightly more awful. Maybe it’s because he’s the darkness in Link, and the longer he stays an individual the more that outs. It’d be very easy to just pile that onto his preexisting fears.

Vio’s a tactician at heart, so I think he’d make a scientific effort of figuring out what to do the second he discovers something that manages the symptoms. Without, of course, telling any of the others. They might have won the day with the power of friendship, but that’s very different from voluntarily being emotionally vulnerable or telling the other 3/4ths of The Hero that something went wrong and you might be a monster. They skin rabbits when they go camping and Vio wants to lick the blood off his fingers, and none of the others seem to.

Red’s just delighted when Vio starts speaking up more in the kitchen, volunteering preferences or even wanting to experiment. Liver, organ meat, slightly rarer steak than the others- those are still pretty human things to eat, you can get them from a butcher and Vio looks less like he’s falling apart at the seams afterwards. Blue might mock him for it once and cause Vio to shut down for a week, or a month, and they might not know why because Vio doesn’t talk but they try to avoid that again.

Depends on your characterization who finally approaches him, I could see an argument for any of them. It’d be a very fun conversation to write, partially because Vio has no frame of reference for wanting to Eat People other than ReDeads and maybe Shadow, though Shadow was oddly civilized about it. He didn’t exactly have a lot of restraint, ever, but I don’t think Shadow would bring up any impulses to bite Hylians because he wanted to keep Vio. He’d still drink blood though, out of fancy cups because he wanted power and also not to freak his personal hero out. He wanted to keep the guy but he wasn’t going to starve for him, and Vio drank the blood too so it was whatever.

(As a background note, I always think the demons being vampires is hilarious because Vaati is sitting in the back going “well okay you can keep a pet This Time because you have weird diet preferences”, meanwhile Shadow isn’t actually biting Vio because he doesn’t want to scare him off. Gay nepotism blood bag hire, and the part that makes sense to Vaati and Ganon isn’t actually even on the table. Baby bat’s first thrall and he’s just a gay disaster with no enthrallment happening actually.)

And thus, to wrap it all up, we give Vio’s character arc a satisfying emphasis by finally having him realize that being honest with people is a good thing actually and he should ask people for help when he needs it instead of slowly going insane, especially since he can actually trust the other Links more than he realizes. They’re not that incompetent, just different, and more importantly of course they’re interested in his wellbeing. It’d be a messy, awkward talk, but a necessary one, and four heads are better than one when it comes to figuring out how to manage what Vio needs, even if they don’t exactly know why he’s like this.

(If you’re curious about medical sanguinarians/“irl vampires”, I highly recommend The Red Cellar for further reading.)

#the goth vio saga #vampires

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On the topic of goth Vio, particularly for the sake of fashion choices and color symbolism, I really want to just talk about the color purple for a minute.

Vio being the Hero of Darkness makes sense thematically given purple’s pop culture association with villains in Japan, but in the West purple is Such A Queer Color.

Why is it queer? The easiest response I can offer is that it’s a combination of the two most gendered colors we’ve got: blue and pink. It is, quite literally, a queer color in that it blurs the binary. Sappho’s references to violets in some of her work also meant that violets would be picked up much later as a queer symbol. Pansies, which are related to violets and also frequently purple, also became a derogatory term for effeminate men or confirmed homosexuals.

(Fun fact: pansy comes from the French term pensée, “thought”)

The term lavender marriage was popularized in the early 20th century, and was largely used in reference to queer celebrities entering a heterosexual marriage together to keep their private lives a secret. The two parties could be bisexual or homosexual or anything else, but the marriage itself was typically a way to hide their queer orientations from the press and public.

Lavender linguistics is the term for the study of language used by LGBT+ people.

The lavender scare was a moral panic/witch-hunt in the 1950’s involving the mass investigation and firing of queer people from government service in the US on grounds that they were communists or communist sympathizers.

And, to tie this into Vio being goth as hell:

According to British rules surrounding mourning dress, lavender was one of the acceptable colors for the half-mourning period when women were allowed to start moving away from wearing all black.

That’s really all the thoughts I have for now, so I’m going to top it off with a few lines from Sappho for Vidow reasons and call it a night.

Fragment 94

Weeping she left me.

and told me this, too:

“We’ve suffered terribly, Sappho.

I leave you against my will.”

I answered: Go happily

and remember me —

you know how we cared for you.

If not, let me remind you

…the lovely times we shared.

Many crowns of violets,

roses and crocuses

…together you set before me

and many scented wreaths

made from blossoms

around your soft throat…

…with pure, sweet oil

…you anointed me,

and on a soft, gentle bed…

you quenched your desire…

…no holy site…

we left uncovered,

no grove…

#the goth vio saga

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Should I add yet another project to my folder. Should I unlock Pandora’s box and use my personal experience as a goth nerd to write Vio’s adventures in dark magic. It would include “boys will be boys” shit like self-induced trance states, nearly getting eaten by a mountain lion in the middle of summoning ghosts, possibly the local medium coming to tell him to stop for the love of god, and also bullying the local ghost hunters.

#the goth vio saga