Friday, April 1, 2011

Heresy!

It's a silly day, so I might as well post a silly topic - even though this is an actual rant, not a joke, it's just on a goofy topic.  Oh, and it snowed a little in my area today. Snow in April. What happened to my Spring, dagnabbit?!

In hanging out on the Zelda Dungeon forum, I was confronted once again with a particular fandom-controversey among fans of the Legend of Zelda videogame series. And I realized once again that, quite some time ago, I commited a huge "sin" in this fandom!  

Unless you want a huge argument, never, ever bring up the topic "Link and guns" on a Zelda forum. It's almost as bad as saying that "Ocarina of Time" is *not* your favorite game of the series.  No, actually it's worse. People seem to accept that I like "Twilight Princess" for my own reasons, but the idea of a future Zelda game in which Link (protagonist, player-character) handles any form of firearm?  Hoo, boy....

But my best-reviewed, most acclaimed fan fiction, a fan fiction I co-wrote with a friend, a fan fiction that's garnered so much attention that it's been featured as a Fanfic Reccommendation on the illustrious TV Tropes wiki...

Involves Link being a gunslinger. 

Oh, noes!  It's here, if you want to read it:  The Great Desert  

It's The Legend of Zelda combined with sci-fi/Western.  Yes. My co-writer (Sailor Lilithchan) and I originally met and befriened each other in Trigun fandom (Trigun is an anime/manga that is a future-set Western) and we both loved Zelda... we started hashing ideas back and forth in AIM and thus the monster was born. It's not *entirely* a hash-apart thing... Link does still make use of swords, and of course, ultimate evil can only be banished via the Master Sword, as per game series tradition, and there's magic, and fairies, and undead things, and neighboring dimensions, and Hyrule's goddesses, though they show themselves be a bit... different... in this story than how most people think of them.  Still, it's an unusual setting, and despite the swordsmanship, in it... Link uses a gun.

I'm surprised I haven't been flamed out of the fandom for this fic, honestly.  It's such a contentious issue. I think my co-writer and I made it work, but still...

I would not object to a future Zelda game in which Link handles firearms - as long as they're the right kind. I'd hate to see some kind of gritty modern warfare reboot of Zelda, but a game that, like some of the games already in the series that feature pirates and steampunk adventure, I wouldn't mind seeing him with a flintlock pistol in addition to the sword, or, if a game was made that was like the fanfic Lilith and I created - a Hyrule that's "advanced" out of the Medieval Stasis but hasn't gotten futuristic or completely modern yet, perhaps taking a stint in a "Wild West for Hyrule" era - but keeping the magic elements, of course.   Or... a magic-powered psuedo-gun. 

He handles the energy guns in Super Smash Bros. just fine.  In fact, he does so hiliaroiusly in Melee' if you play the Young Link version on Tiny Melee mode. The trigger is bigger than he is!

Anyway, I just continue to find it amusing that I've commited one of the gravest sins in my fandom, yet it seems I've gotten away with it.  

Ride, Link, ride!

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