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A personal express slot story. 2,976 words. Contains spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Given the game and the transformation tag, If You Know, You Know. But just for clarity: female solo, human (okay, hylian, whatever) -> eastern dragon TF.
This is a long-form retelling of the final memory cutscene from TotK that puts a bit more focus on the TF instead of it just happening instantly in a flash of light, while also incorporating and elaborating on the heavier and more emotional aspects of the scene.
This might seem strange to say given I'm writing literal fan fiction about it here, but I actually didn't like TotK very much. I found it very derivative, a largely unnecessary sequel forced to repeat things from its predecessor simply because they were there. For instance, horses are even more useless than they were in BotW since you can't take them into either of the two new layers that were added (the depths or the sky). The memory cutscenes are just a re-do from BotW except you're handed a map and have to squint for the one specific part of each glyph instead of using some deduction to figure out where photos were taken. The main-story temples are extremely formulaic and not that interesting, especially compared to the Divine Beasts in BotW. The map of the Depths is just the overworld map, but with an inverted heightmap and walls wherever there's surface water.
Furthermore, most chest rewards are generally worthless as I'm really not excited to find 10 arrows when I'm already carrying 300... and at the same time, incredibly important items are tucked into hidden corners of random-ass caves, making general exploration somehow simultaneously a waste of time and incredibly important. The fusion system is neat but the lack of being able to rearrange or favorite things turns it into Menu Hell. The fact that you're sent all over Hyrule searching for clues to Ganon's whereabouts just to learn that he hasn't moved an inch and has been sulking in the exact same cave from the intro is frankly insulting. Everything does way too much damage as though you're playing Elden Ring, which was also a problem in BotW, but at least you had the heavy armor set there. I never even found my way into the Lost Woods and only learned after beating the game (and getting to the Master Sword the hard way by chasing Zelderg back and forth over Hyrule and flying to her from sufficiently high launch points... twice, because I wasn't expecting a max stamina check to be able to draw the sword) that you're supposed to Ascend from some random pillar in the middle of the Depths; if there was any hint from any NPC that you were meant to do this, I didn't see it.
And yet, there was one thing I really liked about the game. Unsurprisingly, it was the thing this story is about: what happened to Zelda after the intro. The Light Dragon makes itself known very early on in the story, and you can see it serenely flying through the sky in a number of different locations. The dragons were in BotW too, so at first this doesn't seem out of place. But if you start hunting down the memory cutscenes you can figure out what's going on, even if it's possible to get hideously spoiled by viewing them out of order. (The moment Mineru tells you about dragonification you know that's what happened too if you have any familiarity with Chekhov's Gun.) When you find the last of them, the Light Dragon appears in the sky above you no matter where you are, to really drive the point home.
I thought it was a clever way to resolve the time-travel problem of "how do you get back from 1000 years in the past?" and the final memory scene does set the tone well, even if the dialogue (which I repeated word-for-word here just for authenticity's sake) could have used a little more work. It was a scene carried very much on what WASN'T said, and that was a big reason I wanted to write this. I'm also a fan of heroic sacrifices as long as they're actually meaningful, and while a lot of media screws that up by having the sacrifice be unnecessary, contrived, or pointless, TotK actually pulled it off really well in my eyes because Zelda really doesn't have ANY other options, and her choice to sacrifice herself is premeditated, and does actually accomplish what it was supposed to.
Those weren't the only reasons, though. TotK's dragonification explicitly involves identity death, and the whole 'loss of self' theme is normally one I don't ever want to write about... and yet I did anyway, both in a temporary/partial form and a permanent form with different characters, in Towards the Light. A combination of that, TotK, and (of all things) watching someone play Changed proved thought-provoking because they all presented me with a personal conundrum: how did I feel about identity death when the subject is, from a certain perspective, better off afterwards? From losing painful memories, being accepted into a new life, or in TotK's case, immortality. And so, I wrote this, to directly confront it by writing a scene that involved the theme of identity loss. Although it's still complicated it did definitely change my opinions on the matter... but don't expect me to write about it in anything Adult-rated, as I treat narrative and erotica completely differently.
Sadly, I was genre-savvy enough to also immediately know how TotK was going to end, because while it would have been emotionally powerful for Zelda to be stuck as a dragon for eternity, there's no way a family-friendly company like Nintendo would dare touch something that heavy (and I say that having played Super Paper Mario, but that's a whole other wall of text). Nor would they permit the identity-death of the franchise's title character, even with all the split timeline shenanigans of the Zelda franchise. Regardless, I thought the actual sacrifice itself was well-executed, and even though it took over a year after I finished the game (Nov 2024) before I found time to do it, I wanted to write a tribute to the one part of the whole-ass $60 game that I thought was done really well.
I hope the TF crowd also enjoys this. There's another huge TF story in the works but that's still going to take a while to finish yet, so stay tuned.
Available in additional formats:
- AZW3: https://files.catbox.moe/5b49zq.azw3
- EPUB: https://files.catbox.moe/zwxp0h.epub
- PDF: https://files.catbox.moe/r7v69n.pdf
- RTF: https://files.catbox.moe/xi74hn.rtf
All mentioned characters and locations, the scenario, and The Legend of Zelda franchise, all belong to Nintendo.
This is a long-form retelling of the final memory cutscene from TotK that puts a bit more focus on the TF instead of it just happening instantly in a flash of light, while also incorporating and elaborating on the heavier and more emotional aspects of the scene.
This might seem strange to say given I'm writing literal fan fiction about it here, but I actually didn't like TotK very much. I found it very derivative, a largely unnecessary sequel forced to repeat things from its predecessor simply because they were there. For instance, horses are even more useless than they were in BotW since you can't take them into either of the two new layers that were added (the depths or the sky). The memory cutscenes are just a re-do from BotW except you're handed a map and have to squint for the one specific part of each glyph instead of using some deduction to figure out where photos were taken. The main-story temples are extremely formulaic and not that interesting, especially compared to the Divine Beasts in BotW. The map of the Depths is just the overworld map, but with an inverted heightmap and walls wherever there's surface water.
Furthermore, most chest rewards are generally worthless as I'm really not excited to find 10 arrows when I'm already carrying 300... and at the same time, incredibly important items are tucked into hidden corners of random-ass caves, making general exploration somehow simultaneously a waste of time and incredibly important. The fusion system is neat but the lack of being able to rearrange or favorite things turns it into Menu Hell. The fact that you're sent all over Hyrule searching for clues to Ganon's whereabouts just to learn that he hasn't moved an inch and has been sulking in the exact same cave from the intro is frankly insulting. Everything does way too much damage as though you're playing Elden Ring, which was also a problem in BotW, but at least you had the heavy armor set there. I never even found my way into the Lost Woods and only learned after beating the game (and getting to the Master Sword the hard way by chasing Zelderg back and forth over Hyrule and flying to her from sufficiently high launch points... twice, because I wasn't expecting a max stamina check to be able to draw the sword) that you're supposed to Ascend from some random pillar in the middle of the Depths; if there was any hint from any NPC that you were meant to do this, I didn't see it.
And yet, there was one thing I really liked about the game. Unsurprisingly, it was the thing this story is about: what happened to Zelda after the intro. The Light Dragon makes itself known very early on in the story, and you can see it serenely flying through the sky in a number of different locations. The dragons were in BotW too, so at first this doesn't seem out of place. But if you start hunting down the memory cutscenes you can figure out what's going on, even if it's possible to get hideously spoiled by viewing them out of order. (The moment Mineru tells you about dragonification you know that's what happened too if you have any familiarity with Chekhov's Gun.) When you find the last of them, the Light Dragon appears in the sky above you no matter where you are, to really drive the point home.
I thought it was a clever way to resolve the time-travel problem of "how do you get back from 1000 years in the past?" and the final memory scene does set the tone well, even if the dialogue (which I repeated word-for-word here just for authenticity's sake) could have used a little more work. It was a scene carried very much on what WASN'T said, and that was a big reason I wanted to write this. I'm also a fan of heroic sacrifices as long as they're actually meaningful, and while a lot of media screws that up by having the sacrifice be unnecessary, contrived, or pointless, TotK actually pulled it off really well in my eyes because Zelda really doesn't have ANY other options, and her choice to sacrifice herself is premeditated, and does actually accomplish what it was supposed to.
Those weren't the only reasons, though. TotK's dragonification explicitly involves identity death, and the whole 'loss of self' theme is normally one I don't ever want to write about... and yet I did anyway, both in a temporary/partial form and a permanent form with different characters, in Towards the Light. A combination of that, TotK, and (of all things) watching someone play Changed proved thought-provoking because they all presented me with a personal conundrum: how did I feel about identity death when the subject is, from a certain perspective, better off afterwards? From losing painful memories, being accepted into a new life, or in TotK's case, immortality. And so, I wrote this, to directly confront it by writing a scene that involved the theme of identity loss. Although it's still complicated it did definitely change my opinions on the matter... but don't expect me to write about it in anything Adult-rated, as I treat narrative and erotica completely differently.
Sadly, I was genre-savvy enough to also immediately know how TotK was going to end, because while it would have been emotionally powerful for Zelda to be stuck as a dragon for eternity, there's no way a family-friendly company like Nintendo would dare touch something that heavy (and I say that having played Super Paper Mario, but that's a whole other wall of text). Nor would they permit the identity-death of the franchise's title character, even with all the split timeline shenanigans of the Zelda franchise. Regardless, I thought the actual sacrifice itself was well-executed, and even though it took over a year after I finished the game (Nov 2024) before I found time to do it, I wanted to write a tribute to the one part of the whole-ass $60 game that I thought was done really well.
I hope the TF crowd also enjoys this. There's another huge TF story in the works but that's still going to take a while to finish yet, so stay tuned.
Available in additional formats:
- AZW3: https://files.catbox.moe/5b49zq.azw3
- EPUB: https://files.catbox.moe/zwxp0h.epub
- PDF: https://files.catbox.moe/r7v69n.pdf
- RTF: https://files.catbox.moe/xi74hn.rtf
All mentioned characters and locations, the scenario, and The Legend of Zelda franchise, all belong to Nintendo.
Category Story / Transformation
Species Human
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 16.1 kB
Comments