wolf in white van, john darnielle / the secret history, donna tart / gone girl, dir david fincher / the illiad, homer / seven pounds, did gabriele muchino / oresteia, robert ickle / the raven boys, maggie stiefvater / they both die at the end, adam silvera / romeo and juliet, william shakespeare / war of the foxes, richard siken
today in "google AI is fucking useless because it hallucinates things that never happened", i bought a couple CVS thermometers that have both been acting up, tried to search if there had been a problem with the whole product line:
there is no record of this product recall. it did not happen. the date "feb 8 2024" is the date someone listed a thermometer for sale on ebay.
any theories/thoughts on the fairies (and maybe great fairies)? like why most games in the downfall timeline (wind waker being an exception) they seem to have human forms, but otherwise they appear as glowing balls of light with wings?
Fairies show up in various forms across the land of Hyrule—at least, that's how they look.
From the drawings we get of LoZ/AoL fairies tend to be your most basic and stereotypical; a little elf girl in a dress with sparkles.
A Link to the Past portrays them similarly, though this one has more vibrant hair and thinner wings, with a decent halo.
Wind Waker gives us a LoZ/AoL style fairy again
Which gets reused entirely for Four Swords Adventures.
But in every other game, we get these.
Interestingly enough, though, we're not actually seeing a change in biology, We're seeing the effects of magical duress.
Like you said, most fairies that show their humanoid forms occur in the Downfall Timeline. ALTTP has vibrant pink, then ALBW is more muted, until we finally get to the dull, glow-less LOZ fairies.
The glow you see at the tip of their wands is actually what little magic they can summon left, concentrated into a precise point, like a laser. As Hyrule declined, their magic faded, not letting them summon the glow they're best known for any more.
A healthy fairy doesn’t need a wand.
In Wind Waker, we also see a decline in fairy power—so much so that by Spirit Tracks, there literally aren't any left; at least, not in New Hyrule. Our big exceptions come from Phantom Hourglass.
Ciela, Leaf, and Neri all maintain their vibrancy and luminosity. But they also draw power from what's essentially a minor god in his own right, the Ocean King.
So they’re outliers, not examples.
In the child timeline, where Four Swords Adventures takes place, we also see the powered down form of a fairy. But in that era, the magic of the world has been robbed, crystalized into force gems that fairies try very hard to absorb power from.
A fairy’s glow is an indicator of its magical health. The fainter the glow, the harder the fairy has to work just to keep itself aloft, and the more stress it accumulates as it tries to use magic.
Great Fairies, however, are a much clearer indicator of the magical status of a kingdom. The larger and more humanoid the Great Fairy, the stronger the country they reside in’s magic.
Ocarina of Time is a good reference point to have. These fairies are particularly large and very human-like, and Hyrule (at least from a wildlife point of view) is thriving.
Wind Waker, however, has an unstable Great Fairy type. The magic in this land is bleeding out and spiraling away, unused and unrestrained as it depletes. These fairies rule a dead world; a sea with no fish but the fishmen, a world with scattered islands and few offerings.
A Link Between Worlds’ great fairy has enough glow for a halo, and remains humanoid, so the magic is being used and maintained. But she’s also barely bigger than a human, indicating that her power’s weakening.
And then by The Legend of Zelda, she’s indistinguishable from any other fairy out there.
But Breath of the Wild?
These Great Fairies are HUGE. They’re the healthiest Great Fairies to date, in part due to their strategic hibernation in their flowers, and they match what we see of Hyrule’s life.
Yes, Ganon has the Divine Beasts and Guardians on his side. Yes, this place has lost its king. But the country itself is alive is thriving. It’s so full of magic that you can find Koroks in literally every corner of the world.
If I had to hazard a guess, since we never encounter them, I’d say that these fairies are the closest they’ve been to Surface Great Fairies from Skyward Sword.
I feel confident enough to post these now. A collection of all the existing posters after some edits from the other post that got 13k notes! These are full size/quality. Go nuts.
You may use them for wallpapers, tabletop campaigns, whatever. Consider tipping me (do people use kofi for that or tumblr's built in system? Let me know what you prefer) or buying a print or sticker here! If you do use them, let me know what for, or send pictures!
When people say acephobia doesn’t happen in the queer community😒
the command structure of the GAR suffers so badly from “we haven’t had a standing galactic army for 1000 years, we had to invent all of this yesterday” syndrome it is so fucking funny. the jedi high council had no idea what they were doing and were like, okay, the jedi are all generals now. what general do you answer to if two generals give you conflicting orders? the general. which of the generals is in charge? the general. which of the generals is the general over all the other generals? also the general. anakin is both the general of just the 501st and also the commander of gold squadron, apparently, how does he manage to be so annoying that he’s in a position of command in two separate branches of service? i cannot emphasize enough that the idea of rex explaining that their general is locked in a dogfight with separatist ships, so they have to hold off on such things as “orders” is just a thing that does not happen to people, ever. this makes absolutely no sense but given that the republic handed a military to the local superpowered wizard monk order that coordinates battles at most in small groups, i guess that’s kind of a fair way to take it. you win this round, rave baloney