Thank you for getting to the end of this massive trilogy. I know it's a big one with lots of large chapters the size of novellas, but planning the pacing and amount of books is difficult when you're still writing while posting serially. I've learned a lot from writing this thing over the past two years, including recognizing how long a story arc will be. I tried to adhere to the three acts of the game, but even then it was simply too huge, and probably should have been six books, not three. Hopefully that won't be the case in the next series, which is more original and should be planned a bit more carefully.

Planning can be hard when you hyperfixate. I hadn't written in well over a decade and I was super into it, and also super boneheaded as I did not nail down my process very well at first. Publishing a chapter a week is also not conducive to organization, and now I have a lot of little things that got added that aren't mentioned earlier that I need to fix...the main one being that Link knew Zelda as a child, and slowly remembered it through the memory block caused by trauma. Then there's the Gerudo eye color, Link lying to himself more about the Bulblins, Bo's passive bigotry, things like that. Those mistakes and tiny details will take some time to fix, and when the changes are published, I'll post something to let people know.

I started Twilight Princess in order to improve my own mental health. In the doldrums of the pandemic I found myself growing more and more unhappy, as did many other people. Not only was I not going anywhere anymore, I also hadn't worked in years, and my son wasn't a little boy anymore and required far less attention. All I was doing was playing World of Warcraft Classic all day, and sitting around while playing video games all day is not fulfilling at all. I decided to do that less and start writing again, and I chose to make a novelization of Twilight Princess in order to fix the bad translations and plot holes in that game, and a major one in Ocarina of Time. I also had an old Twilight Princess book idea I wanted to bring back, and a story I wanted to tell that I would think of every few years.

I was working on this thing for six to eight hours a day, nearly every day. It became a job, and I wanted to see if I could write the trilogy in a year. In a way, yes; I wrote the length of a trilogy in a year, and I wrote the length of two in two years. So even though I somewhat achieved my goal, I don't think I'm going to churn out things as quickly. I'm not going to keep sprinting when I'll do just fine at a comfortable jog. The idea is to enjoy myself and improve my writing skills and process, and I don't plan on killing myself to do it. Terry Pratchett aimed to have about 3,000 words done a day, and I think that's more than sufficient. Some days I would do as much as 10k words, which is really bonkers if you think about it.

I chose to give Link PTSD because of a conversation I had with friends a while ago, where we said that many game protagonists probably had it, especially the kid heroes in Zelda games. The Hero of Time in particular had to be pretty damn messed up, something that was reflected in the behavior that led him to where he was as the Hero's Shade in Twilight Princess. Twilight Link needed a reason to be the only Hylian in Ordon (a plot hole they never fixed, they were supposed to be all Hylians, and Ilia and Colin were supposed to be his wife and son), and he was just finally getting over the situation that had sent him there as a child.

And of course he isn't the only one with it; Ilia and the children have it after the Bulblins kidnap them, Bo has it after his daughter is gone, Ashei had it from being caught in an avalanche, and Zelda has it from all she went through over twelve years. Trauma is common in the real world, so it would be common in Hyrule. I went to research PTSD and the various ways it can manifest, including temporary memory blocks (which is what Ilia really had, not amnesia), and tried to figure out ways were people realistically reacted to things. That's why we have Petyr in tears on the side of the road away from everyone else, why Auren does her best to show that she's an adult, why Luda doesn't grieve her mother until Link speaks to her about it directly, and why Link himself doesn't really react to everything that's happened to him until the fall of Castle Town.

Hyrule was a terrifying place during the Twilight Invasion, and now there's something else coming. I don't know when I'll actually publish the first few chapters, so that's why the date is tentative. The next story is also quite dark, but for different reasons. It's also from the point of view of multiple characters, and because of that there will be more romantic elements to it than this story. Before I get on with that story, I'll be going through and doing the fixes on Twilight Princess, and also complete Wither, which has been neglected for six months now. When I actually properly fix a book, I'll post an addendum so you get a notification about it. There might be some radio silence for a while, but I promise you that I'll be working!

Once again, thank you for reading, and for your patience. I hope you'll come back to read other things by me in the future.

-Beth

There are some things I want to mention from throughout the story that were changed or important. Feel free to skip this if you're not interested:

Link does cry a lot in the second half of the story, specifically after he fails to save Castle Town. There's no way for him to properly recover since new things keep happening, and he's extremely stressed. I know people don't like to see their heroes in tears and think they should be stoic, but try to remember how moody you were when you were eighteen years old (if you are past that age). Now imagine how it would be if you had to go through all the things Link went through, and you were faced with what you thought could be your pending death. He also has anxiety as a symptom of his PTSD, and when you have anxiety, you can become very emotional.

Midna has a "cruel streak" but it isn't actually cruel, unlike her asshole behavior in the game. In the game she's just like that to make her seem like she hates the people of the light world more. Here she's doing it to cover up how frustrated she is, and some of her behavior back in the Twilight Realm reflects that. That's why she would get drunk, or run away, and why she even seduced Jannis. She was acting out.

Midna reveals to Link that she's human right away to try to get his pity, in the hopes that he'd cooperate better. It leads him to humanize her a lot earlier and not just see her as a little monster.

Link sings in order to tie him to the previous hero, who also had song magic. He technically does sing in the game as a wolf, but obviously they couldn't make him talk/sing as a human, so they never did. Here he's retained his grandfather's song magic and in fact knows all the same songs thanks to absorbing the previous Link's memories. He also has dream magic to link him to the first Link, who had abstract yet prophetic dreams.

Link's relationship with Ilia is a good one as a friend, and a toxic one as a lover. The two of them are young and don't realize it since it's their first love, and they're also tangling up lust into it quite a bit. Ilia is controlling and while Link resists that after a while, that doesn't mean she's going to stop being controlling, or manipulating for that matter. Meanwhile Link relies on Ilia for emotional labor, and expects her to be there when he feels as if he can't handle the things the world throws at him. He got really stupid at Kasuto when Zelda was there for him, because she wasn't Ilia, which is a situation that Zelda had warned him about and wanted to avoid. Link also has mommy issues to a degree, so he's subconsciously viewing Ilia as another mother.

Midlink did not happen until the end for the same reason Zelink did not happen until the end. Neither one of them go anywhere. Midna's love is cut short because she shatters the mirror so they won't see each other again, all because she wants Link to be happy with Ilia. Meanwhile there are little hints that Zelda's developing feelings for him, and when she flat out lies to him about it, he blindly believes her. He thinks that she'd never lie to him, but he admits at one point that he lies in order to not upset others about certain things, which is exactly what Zelda is doing.

Agitha is autistic, and so are Shad and Trevor. It's very obvious with Agitha, moderately obvious with Trevor, and difficult to tell with Shad unless you know what you're looking for.

Adelbert, Lizbeth and the magic purge was all there just so the Hyrulean army would be decimated and the Sheikah would be gone, so the Bulblins and Zant could move in and take over. Of course it has something to do with the Leighs, which actually were a later addition. The figures from the shadows needed a name, after all.

Everyone could see the barrier around Hyrule Castle, which is why a lot of people still managed to escape Castle Town. It's not like that in the game, and in fact only a Goron merchant mentions that he can see the barrier. I'm not sure if that implies that only Gorons can see it, or if the people of Castle Town don't care, but it felt like another plot hole to me.

Ralis is aged up because of how he behaved in the game. He did not behave like a little boy, and Breath of the Wild later explained how slowly Zoras age. He also needed to be able to fight in order to escape the Shadow Beasts that were trying to kill him, but still get wounded in the process so he'd be ill at Castle Town. The original reason that he was ill there in the game wasn't clearly stated, but it felt like "idiot humans do not know how to put the fish boy in water".

Link gets companions for each "dungeon" because it felt as if it was meant to be that way, like it was in Ocarina of Time. Ralis goes to Lakebed Temple, the Goron elders direct Link to where he's supposed to go in the mines, Auru goes with Link to the desert and then the two of them go to the Arbiter's Grounds along with Auren, Ashei goes to the Queen's Keep/Snowpeak, Rusl goes to the Temple of Time/Sacred Realm, Shad goes to the City in the Sky, and then most of them go with Link to Hyrule Castle. In the game, they were there in a brief cut scene where Auru blew up some Lizalfos and Rusl had a hawk while trying to look cool, but they served no other purpose and it felt lame. If they were really an underground movement, one would assume most of them would know how to fight.

Shad no longer says "old boy" because that's fucking stupid and a man in his mid-twenties would not talk to another young man like that. I think it's another bad translation thing. Meanwhile Ashei kept her "yeah?" because other people in Mido have it, including her father.

The Yeti became an intelligent race because I could not stand the caveman speak they had in the game. They were comedy relief in the game, but not so in the story due to how serious the events in the Queen's Keep were. The things with Lizbeth needed to be revealed, as well as show how Yeta was a pure, sweet girl that was corrupted by the dark magic of the mirror, which was foreshadowing to what would happen with Rusl. I just could not include the line "YOU NO TAKE MIRROR".

Coro's sisters only briefly get a mention because the river raft and fishing minigames are pointless from a plot standpoint. We know that Iza is fine because we see her hide in her house, and since her sister lives nearby, she would make sure Hena's fine too. There are no mentions of the other minigame NPCs, other than the busted attraction at Lake Hylia, and the S.T.A.R. guy who tries to get Link's attention in Castle Town. The game mechanics have been firmly removed from the story, silly minigames included.

Rusl does not get a golden cucco. Rusl does not even get a hawk. Rusl is a blacksmith who knows how to use a sword, which makes a whole lot more sense than whatever the hell he was in the game.

Link is not able to speak to animals, because as stupid as it sounds, I want some realism here. Animals do not talk to one another, and when Link speaks as a wolf, he still has a human mind. He's a man in animal form, and continues to think like a human even though he's turned into a beast. It's not any different than how Midna is a human in imp form, except she has the Fused Shadows to help her out.

Link's one-quarter Sheikah so he can use the Lens of Truth's ability, and he needs to use that in order to get rid of the "sense" mechanic that's in the game. He's also part Sheikah so he could have his cool mother that he later has mommy issues over, so he'd personally know Zelda as a kid, tie him to the rest of the Sheikah, give Bo a reason to not want him with Ilia, and a few other things that aren't in the story yet.

The map of Hyrule is stupidly compact and something like 500 miles north to south and 400 east to west. I would have made it much larger, but there was one thing that I couldn't change that was totally game mechanic related: the Bridge of Eldin fight. Link needed to have the beast come out for the first time in earnest, and in order to do that he needed to chase King Gar and Colin across nearly 30 miles and back, which is what a strong horse like Epona could reasonably do in about six hours. The timing is still a bit fiddly and I might need to rework it to make more sense, since it currently does not. In reality I'd say Hyrule is about 1500 or so miles across, and about as long north to south, and it's only a section of the continent. It would take Link a lot longer to travel in a kingdom of that size, especially when he started out on foot, so making it smaller helped somewhat.

Impaz is a former field medic so she could actually help Ilia when she was wounded. Ilia gets shot in the game, and then they just kind of forget about that. Meanwhile Impaz is the last person living in the previous Kakariko for no apparent reason other than "waiting for the herald of the heavens" (which makes no sense, why not wait somewhere with people?), so maintaining the seal on Bongo Bongo seemed like a pretty good reason to stay.

Koroks exist because there are no Kokiri in Twilight Princess, and not even any mentions of them. I also included Koroks so it would tie into Breath of the Wild better, which seems to follow the child timeline the best. In that game, when they talk about the hero and his Epona, I think they're actually talking about the Hero of the Twilight.

Traveling by cannon was stupid. It would have killed him. If there was a way to the Gerudo Desert in Ocarina of Time, it's still there in Twilight Princess.

Most Gerudo are bisexual. When Link noticed them touching each other a lot and holding hands, he was just an idiot and noticing couples being couples. He was also an idiot and didn't realize that Midna and Auren's flirting was real flirting, since the two of them are bi. There were a lot of things that weren't revealed in the story simply because Link was unable to notice them.

Kasuto is part of Link's backstory, but also a reference to the haunted town of the same name in Adventure of Link. It's the only town in the game that did not have its name reused for a sage in Ocarina of Time.

The Oocca city is not Skyloft. Skyloft itself was an academy and the town that sprouted up around it, and certainly not large enough to hold a large population. Since we see other islands that have people living on them, like the Lumpy Pumpkin's island, there had to be larger towns somewhere.

The Master Sword is awake and aware in Ocarina of Time due to a backup program that activated when the piece of Demise's hatred was reborn. Since that Link was a child that hadn't mastered his abilities yet, he was unable to hear the sword, and Navi wasn't a very powerful fairy so she couldn't hear it either. Meanwhile Twilight Link is more mature and far more powerful since he has two pieces of Courage, so he's able to hear the sword. It's also why Breath of the Wild Link is able to hear the sword, because the hero's soul gets stronger over time.

Not all the deserter soldiers are rapists. Not even all the ones at Deya were. It's just that the way the army was during the magic purge enabled a certain kind of soldier, and so men like that joined in order to basically do what they want and get away with it. Link had the misfortune of running into that specific type of soldier twice. There are still quite a few men like that still in the army, and Petyr has a lot of work to do in order to weed them out, and even execute some.

Bo is different to create conflict and explain more about Link's short life in Ordon. Even though Bo seems like a bastard later, he still is a loving father and a caring mayor. Abusers can abuse someone and still love them, all while not knowing that they're being abusive. Bo's need to make sure his daughter did not have a family with a man with Sheikah blood was so strong, he was willing to treat Link the way he did. What Bo failed to mention about knowing that Ilia would be drawn to Link wasn't just how attractive he would grow to be, but also because Link is very intelligent and literate in a place where most people are not.

I wanted to fit in the mailman and make some kind of gag with him, but I couldn't think of anything. He was the character that annoyed me the most in the game, other than Ooccoo.

Ooccoo and Junior were very different because I wanted them to be an intelligent species that spies on Hyrule and waits for the day the Hylians need to return to the sky. Of course, their city was made by Hylians when they had technology closer to that of the early 20th century, and the Oocca did not even evolve proper hands, so they couldn't maintain most it. The best they could do is continued to observe, grow food, and live in the city as a strange bird-human hybrid. They were a flock of domesticated loftwings that the first Zelda altered while using Hylia's power in order to safeguard the islands in the sky, while the rest of the loftwings came down to earth with the humans and eventually became extinct. Since she could only harness part of Hylia's power, the magical evolution went wrong.

Gregory is a running joke with me. I try to fit a Greg in the things I'm writing somewhere, if just to amuse myself. So far it's only been in RP stuff, but now it's spilled over into fanfics. If I ever publish anything, you know there will be a guy named Greg somewhere, if just mentioned in one paragraph.

I've put a lot of hints to let the reader know what the next story is going to be about, but I don't think all of it will be obvious foreshadowing. Hopefully there will be "Aha!" moments where some things make sense. And hopefully you'll forgive me for putting Link and Zelda through more bullshit.

And lastly...this is actually an exploration of trauma and anxiety from an autobiographical point of view. Something happened in my life that I thought I handled well, but it wasn't long before I started having panic attacks and days where I was incredibly high-strung. I stupidly thought it was due to the stress of caring for an autistic child that was nearly impossible to understand when he spoke, but nope. I did a medication shuffle and tried to find ways to be less stressed, and gradually improved. Years later I recognize it for what it is, and by going through trauma and mental illness, I feel I'm able to accurately express how a fictional character might go through it. And it never really goes away, but learning to live with it is just...learning to live, I guess.

Which is what Link has done. That's why he has courage.