My question is, what's the difference? A lot of the crazy stuff I come up with, I'm 100% sure was never intended by the developers. It doesn't mean I'm not making legitimate observations of the Zelda Universe, or drawing logical conclusions from those observations.
It's irrational to assume that every single gap in Zelda lore has some sort of official answer to it; Nintendo undoubtedly makes this stuff up as they go along. Yet I see a lot of people turn down certain theories on the assumption that the subject matter "wasn't intended."
A good example would be the timeline. No doubt it's been reemerging in the theory section as of late, so there's obviously some vested interest in it. But a ton of the criticisms it receives aren't necessarily because we've found cognitive flaws in it, or contradictions in it, but because there clearly was no "intention" by Nintendo to construct the timeline in such a way as they did, or even to link the games together in such a way as they have. Which, while 100% true, disagrees with what I consider the fundamentals of Zelda Theory, simply because it's unrealistic for Nintendo to have chartered such an expansive lore Way back in 1985.
IMO, if a theory is logical, realistic, supported, and without contradictions, no matter how complex, cryptic, or unintended, it should hold legitimate ground in the theorizing community.
This isn't a huge issue; I can't name more than a few isolated examples of this off the top of my head, but I think it's an important and fascinating question nonetheless.
It's irrational to assume that every single gap in Zelda lore has some sort of official answer to it; Nintendo undoubtedly makes this stuff up as they go along. Yet I see a lot of people turn down certain theories on the assumption that the subject matter "wasn't intended."
A good example would be the timeline. No doubt it's been reemerging in the theory section as of late, so there's obviously some vested interest in it. But a ton of the criticisms it receives aren't necessarily because we've found cognitive flaws in it, or contradictions in it, but because there clearly was no "intention" by Nintendo to construct the timeline in such a way as they did, or even to link the games together in such a way as they have. Which, while 100% true, disagrees with what I consider the fundamentals of Zelda Theory, simply because it's unrealistic for Nintendo to have chartered such an expansive lore Way back in 1985.
IMO, if a theory is logical, realistic, supported, and without contradictions, no matter how complex, cryptic, or unintended, it should hold legitimate ground in the theorizing community.
This isn't a huge issue; I can't name more than a few isolated examples of this off the top of my head, but I think it's an important and fascinating question nonetheless.