Wolf-pearl - Art, Tangents, And Tomfoolery

Decided to combine the markings of the fierce diety's mask and majora's mask.

Ready for a hot take? Time doesn't avoid using the fierce deity mask "because it's evil" as it is in fact not evil. It's just that when the fierce deity got sealed into the mask he was 100% done with everything and decided that he was just gonna sleep for the rest of eternity. Except people keep waking him up every time his mask is worn to fight eldritch abominations or whatever and he is not pleasant when he is rudely awoken. He's not always filled with the rage of 1000 suns, he just is whenever someone disturbs his napping.

Time avoids using the mask because

A) the diety's anger at being woken up gets super imposed onto Time whenever he wears it, and it's hard to think straight through the intensity of the god's outrage.

B) the feirce diety's body is just as unhappy about being awake as the god is, so fighting with the mask on both feels incredibly powerful and intensely exhausting at the same time. As in it feels like he could lift a mountain but at the same time his eyelids are just so heavy and if he stops moving he's pretty sure he'll fall asleep on his feet.

C) Time wants to respect the diety's wish to rest. The hero of time does owe the god for helping him defeat Majora after all, it's the least he can do.

D) the fierce deity can be petty about being woken up. The god is not above waking Time up at unholy hours of the night for months after using the mask.

I am always wearing pants but I refuse to wear jeans on principle. I won't let society convince me that jeans are the most functional legwear when I can wear pajama pants with larger pockets, don't need a belt, and are comfy.

Bonus, pjs have awesome patterns on them, while jeans are boring.

anyone else keep their pants by the front door so they can leave them off until last minute? it cannot be just me

Yet more eternatus-sympathetic au content. Fun fact, I have already posted art about this AU before. Additionally, this au is actually related to another AU I have a post about. They both started with the same base concept but went in two different directions.

The short summary is basically eternatus escapes after being revived, ends up in the wild area and hangs out with a backpacker, gets befriended by Hop, eventually joining his team.

The full description is under the cut:

Anyways let's get to the AU. It starts off with eternatus reviving in a secure storage facility of macro cosmos. Eternatus has enough wishing stars to revive but not enough to rebuild itself at full size, resulting in eternatus becoming an unstable melty version of the skeleton it is in game. However before eternatus can reconfigure itself into a more stable form, chairman Rose and security guards arrive. Everyone freaks out and in the ensuing chaos eternatus escapes. Eventually eternatus ends up running to the wild area due to it being the place with the most wishing stars and pieces,  something eternatus really wants to so it can grow/rebuild itself. At some point during all of that eternatus turns back into a blob due to not being able to maintain a large form with the current amount of wishing stars it possesses. So eternatus reconfigures itself into a form it can actually support in its current condition. That happens to be a much smaller, younger version of it's true form.

A problem that eternatus runs into quickly is that the legendary can get hungry. And eternatus doesn't really know how to get food. What eternatus does know is that the backpackers that hang around the wild area keep food in their bags. And that the backpackers will give food to other humans in exchange for stuff.

This leads to eternatus making nightly raids on one specific ingredient vender's bag. Some would say that's stealing. Eternatus would argue it's not stealing if you leave shiny rocks as presents.

So after about a month of the poor dude being confused about waking up to his bag rummaged through and freaking gold nuggets being left in his lap, he comes up with a plan to catch whoever or whatever has been doing this. He didn't know what he was expecting, but a glowing pokemon the size of a wooloo was not it. The dude's response to this realization is to cook a massive pot of curry for eternatus. He immediately wins eternatus over with his amazing curry, and over time he gives eternatus a nickname based on it's favorite food: Noodles.

Eventually backpacker discovers that OH BOY Noodles is actually really strong. This leads to him being really worried for Noodles' wellbeing because what if a trainer encounters Noodles and tries to catch him and Noodles freaks out and then people come after the lil noodle child? What if Noodles get caught by a mean trainer?? Etc etc etc. eventually the backpacker decides to call up the best person in the region when it comes to strong pokemon- the champion Leon- for advice on what to do to protect Noodles.

Leon: what? an incredibly strong pokemon? Count me in I wanna meet it!

Sonia, overhearing Leon: what? an unidentified unique pokemon of unknown origin? Count me in I wanna meet it!

Hop, oblivious to the entire previous conversation: what? Leon's going somewhere? Count me in I wanna go wherever Leon is going!

Leon: wait, no-

After convincing Hop to stay home and then arriving at the wild are, Leon and Sonia meet noodles. Noodles is at first weary, but warms up to them. Mostly because Leon is a living ray of sunshine. Part of the solution that the backpacker and Leon come to in regards to protecting Noodles is having Leon and Sonia routinely checking in on Noodles.

Over time Hop gets extremely curious as to why Leon is spending so much time in the wild area, and one day decides to sneak into Leon's baggage to go with him. Literally. This leads to hop meeting Noodles, and the two instantly bond while Leon is still processing the fact that his little brother snuck into his luggage. Leon decides to let Hop continue to come with him (officially, not hidden in a bag) to see Noodles whenever Leon is checking in with them.

Fast forward to Hop getting a starter. Hop, who is now very close with Noodles, decides that the first thing he needs to do is introduce his new partner to Noodles and tell them the good news about getting Leon's endorsement.

Noodles' response to finding out that Hop is going on a journey is to go with Hop. Noodles makes its intentions very clear. Hop asks the backpacker for permission to catch Noodles, which he does give after making Hop swear on his life to take amazing care of Noodles.

From here the au follows Hop and eternatus (who in renamed Victor) as they go through the gym challenge.

Notes:

Victor/Gloria don't exist in this AU.

The Backpacker still calls eternatus Noodles after Hop catches them, and Hop calls them Noodles when the legendary is being a dork.

Rose is collecting wishing stars in hopes of finding eternatus. He isn't evil, he's just extremely concerned about the unidentified pokemon he accidentally unleashed on the world.

This AU does end with Hop becoming champion.

Bede calls Noodles a menace. Considering that noodles did in fact rip open his bag to get at the wishing stars he had in it, I can't really blame him...

I haven't come up with a name for the backpacker. I'm open to suggestions.

I desperatly need to screech excitedly about the age of calamity demo, so obviously massive spoiler warning:

Ok so I was not expecting time travel, but you know what I'm 100% down lets muck up the time line together you funky lil eggy fella.

Sure I thought the game was going to be a proper prequel, but I'm honestly just as hyped for a timeline split. And honestly I can see why they would go with this instead of a direct prequel. They're probably trying to avoid the "yay you beat the boss! But actually you still loose" conundrum. From a gameplay standpoint, that's not fun or satisfying. It's rather frustrating actually. It also makes you more invested in the characters and the plot, because you can actually see a chance of them winning.

As for the timeloop theory I've seen floating around, I personally don't think the time travel is creating a time loop in this scenario. If they were going for a time loop scenario there would be no need to have changes to the timeline. And there definitely are already changes happening from what happened in the botw timeline. For one, Link getting the sheikah slate. It's implied in botw that the reason the shrines and towers never activated pre the calamity hitting was because Link was never given the sheikah slate. The slate has some sort of technology that makes it only fully activate if it senses the hero (probably meant as a safety protocol to keep it from being used by someone who wasn't supposed to.). In the botw timeline, link was never given the sheikah slate, thus the slate didn't activate it's runes, and the towers never rise. In age of calamity Link ends up holding the slate, causing it to activate and send out a signal to activate the tower.

Here's what I think is going on with the time travel: the egg guardian moves to/creates a separate timeline. Alternate timelines are already an established concept in the loz lore, so it's not a stretch. The timeline the egg leaves leads to the events of botw, while the timeline the egg arrives in leads to a different outcome thanks to the egg's meddling. It's like the ending of oot: Link leaves behind the timeline where gannondorf rose to power, and ends up in a timeline where gannondorf hasn't made his move yet. The timeline he left behind (adult timeline) continues without him, eventually leading to the events of wind waker. The timeline Link ends up in isn't actually necessarily the past, it's a alternate timeline (the child timeline). One where he hasn't met zelda yet, and gannondorf hasn't taken over. The timeline the egg leaves behind to result in botw is like the adult timeline in this case, and age of calamity is like the child timeline. They split into separate outcomes.

Also the whole timeline shenanigans explains why the egg guardian is no where to be found in botw. It no longer exists in that timeline. Also, since it was in a box in the opening cut scene, I feel it's safe to say it wasn't activated in the botw time line until the moments we see in aoc. It's not that unreasonable to think that they wouldn't have spent the time and resources on a small guardian that didn't apear to have any useful abilities. It had probably been shelved upon being found as a potential pet project if there was extra time. The outward appearance of the egg doesn't exactly scream powerful. I could see them thinking it was some kind of early prototype of the larger guardians. And a prototype isn't as useful as the finished product.

So anyways, other thoughts: Impa may look like her granddaughter, but she is still definitely a certified badass. Impa is the definition of 'looks like a cinnamon roll but could kill you". I am so here for it. Also: the king is once again proving that he is a dick by being mean to the lil egg guardian.

Also, yes I do have a lot of thoughts about the whole "the towers and shrines didn't activate because Link wasn't given the sheikah slate" thing. First off, why wasn't he given it? Zelda herself states in one of the memories in botw that "it appears that this structure (the shrine) was designed to be exclusively accessed by the sword's chosen one". So logically the solution to not being able to activate the shrine is give Link the slate and have him try. But that's not what she does. Instead she immediately goes "welp time to find a loophole". Why do it the hard why when you have the proper key right there in the form of Link? Was Link forbidden from handling the slate? Was Zelda being petty and refusing to let Link touch the slate? What is going on here?? Link not being given the object designed to only activate when held by him probably didn't help them in the fight against the calamity, in fact it probably helped lead to their defeat. Not only was zelda not ready, neither was Link because he couldn't receive the training he was meant to get from the shrines. This also brings up something interesting; Link not being given the slate is probably part of the reason they were having difficulty learning to control the guardians and the devine beasts. Instead of being given direct access, they had been trying to break through their programming by brute force. No wonder it took a while for Daruk to get the hang of controlling his devine beast, he was trying to operate it without having proper access. It could also explain the difference between sheikah tech that is all blue vs sheikah tech that is orange and blue. Blue tech has been fully activated by the hero, while blue and orange is operational but not properly "unlocked".

Have another one of my many eternatus centric AUs:

Eternatus is resurrected, either by Rose or just on its own. The legendary disguises itself as a human child. Eternatus then meets Leon and Hop and our intrepid bro duo immediately imprint on the legendary in disguise, bring them back to their house, and ask their mom "can we keep them????".

She agrees to take on another chaotic child for some reason.