Linear Timeline (rip into it)

[GZ Zelda]

Linear timelines are dead, and yet I'm still a linearist. Splitists are wrong because that's not how time works.

SS-->OOT-->MM-->TWW-->PH-->ST-->TMC-->FS-->FSA-->ALTTP-->OOA-->OOS-->LA-->ALBW-->TFH-->TP-->Z1-->Z2-->BOTW

Any questions? Also, this timeline has only one Ganon/Ganondorf across all the games.

 

[Spirit]

Splitists are wrong because that's not how time works.

It's how Aonuma works, though.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

what happens between spirit tracks and minish cap?

 

[thePlinko]

How do you know that’s not how time works? Do you own a time machine? Can you go back and redo decisions?

 

[GZ Zelda]

what happens between spirit tracks and minish cap?

So, at the end of The Wind Waker, Daphnes wishes to "Erase Hyrule" and for "Hope!" for the future (according to the Japanese.) However, while Hyrule is washed away, it isn't erased. The land they find includes the spirits of the sages from OOT, it includes Link, Zelda, Hyrule Castle, The Demon King resurrection. The land is called New Hyrule; Hyrule has not been washed away at all. The king's wish didn't come true. Over time, the land very slowly begins to drain and a small patch surfaces. This is the previously unseen land from the Minish Cap. Before The Minish Cap, we'd never seen Mount Crenel, the Castor Wilds, the Veiled Falls, the Minish Woods, Trilby Highlands, the Western Woods. The map is also tiny, even compared to other 2D games. Now, is this because Capcom made it? Yes. Is it also because the land has only been surfaced in the last couple centuries? Also yes. Also, after Wind Waker, the Triforce goes to the Minish Realm (in-game, it just flies away). And then in the Minish Cap, the Minish bring it back to the Royal Family and it joins with Zelda's bloodline (although it is called The Light Force.)

 

[GZ Zelda]

How do you know that’s not how time works? Do you own a time machine? Can you go back and redo decisions?

It's a very complicated, and also pointless, distinction, but people are theorizing about where BOTW goes, and that it's a convergence, but my point is there never was a divergence.

Time travel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In time, you cannot change the past. You can create wormholes from the past to the present, connecting changes in the past to the present if you left to go to the past from the present. But you can't go from the past to the future, then back to the past, and change the past, because then the future you went to can't happen. When Link goes back after Ocarina of Time, according to his destiny, which is brought up like all the time in the game, he is destined to play through the events of Ocarina of Time. He can't change this, no matter how much he wants to. Ocarina of Time must happen.

 

[GZ Zelda]

Splitists are wrong because that's not how time works.

It's how Aonuma works, though.

he's beautiful.

 

[thePlinko]

It's a very complicated, and also pointless, distinction, but people are theorizing about where BOTW goes, and that it's a convergence, but my point is there never was a divergence.

Time travel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In time, you cannot change the past. You can create wormholes from the past to the present, connecting changes in the past to the present if you left to go to the past from the present. But you can't go from the past to the future, then back to the past, and change the past, because then the future you went to can't happen. When Link goes back after Ocarina of Time, according to his destiny, which is brought up like all the time in the game, he is destined to play through the events of Ocarina of Time. He can't change this, no matter how much he wants to. Ocarina of Time must happen.

You literally just explained why there was a timeline split.

 

[GZ Zelda]

Wait, how? I just explained why there physically couldn't be a timeline split. In all three timelines, the exact events of Ocarina of TIme have to play out. But that's not the case in the timeline current. Only in the Adult TImeline do the events of Ocarina of Time happen. Which means that the split is wrong. Because OOT isn't happening in all the timelines. It's just happening in the one. Which means all the other games have to be in the splitists Adult Timeline, because that's how time works. You can't have any games in the Child or Downfall Timeline because they don't exist according to the rules of time.

 

[thePlinko]

Wait, how? I just explained why there physically couldn't be a timeline split. In all three timelines, the exact events of Ocarina of TIme have to play out. But that's not the case in the timeline current. Only in the Adult TImeline do the events of Ocarina of Time happen. Which means that the split is wrong. Because OOT isn't happening in all the timelines. It's just happening in the one. Which means all the other games have to be in the splitists Adult Timeline, because that's how time works. You can't have any games in the Child or Downfall Timeline because they don't exist according to the rules of time.

They don’t exist in that timeline. If you’re talking from the perspective of someone living in the great sea, TP never happened. But from an outsider we can see that if (X) happens (Y) happens as a result. If (link dies), (LttP onward) happens as a result. The events of OoT happen in all three timelines, just in different ways.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

how can there be so much time between OOT and TP?

 

[GZ Zelda]

My thing is the other two timelines don't exist. It's just the one. If Link dies in Four Swords, it doesn't make a new timeline because that isn't how time works and also, any individuals player's death isn't canon. It's the same thing in Ocarina of TIme; if Link dies, that's not the canon ending. The canon ending is the ending we see: Ganon is sealed in the Sacred Realm by the Seven Sages and Link is returned to the past to live through the events of Majora's Mask, which occur at the same time as the events of the canonical Ocarina of TIme. It's just that the Link from Ocarina of Time is doing his thing in Hyrule while the Link from the end of Ocarina of Time is doing his thing in Termina. And then dying and becoming the Hero's Shade.

 

[thePlinko]

My thing is the other two timelines don't exist. It's just the one. If Link dies in Four Swords, it doesn't make a new timeline because that isn't how time works and also, any individuals player's death isn't canon. It's the same thing in Ocarina of TIme; if Link dies, that's not the canon ending. The canon ending is the ending we see: Ganon is sealed in the Sacred Realm by the Seven Sages and Link is returned to the past to live through the events of Majora's Mask, which occur at the same time as the events of the canonical Ocarina of TIme. It's just that the Link from Ocarina of Time is doing his thing in Hyrule while the Link from the end of Ocarina of Time is doing his thing in Termina. And then dying and becoming the Hero's Shade.

That’s not how time works at all. Going back in time doesn’t put you in the same universe, that’s how you get paradoxes. What if link killed his mother before he was born? How would he be able to kill his mother if he was never born. We see the same thing in OoT with the song of storms. The only way you can possibly avoid time paradoxes is for the time traveler to go to an alternate timeline.

 

[GZ Zelda]

how can there be so much time between OOT and TP?

The only connections between OOT and TP is the Hero's Shade being the Hero of Time (assuming that the Civil War mentioned in TP is a new event resulting from the resurrection of Ganon through Zant's worship). This means it could take place at any point after the Interloper War and after Ocarina of Time. People just assume that it comes 100 years after because that's what Aonuma said, but as I've explained, I just do not think that's how time works literally at all in any sense.

Also, just like in the Minish Cap, there are entire new provinces discovered like Snowpeak and Ordona and the Arbiter's Grounds, a massive coliseum, has miraculously been built and has been in notorious use, even though that isn't the case in Ocarina of Time. Also, the Yeti are an evolved form of the Anouki. Also, the Mirror of Twilight was kept in the Palace of Darkness in Four Swords Adventures, which means that FSA has to take place before TP.

 

[GZ Zelda]

That’s not how time works at all. Going back in time doesn’t put you in the same universe, that’s how you get paradoxes. What if link killed his mother before he was born? How would he be able to kill his mother if he was never born. We see the same thing in OoT with the song of storms. The only way you can possibly avoid time paradoxes is for the time traveler to go to an alternate timeline.

That's my point. He couldn't have killed his mother because he has already lived the future in which he didn't kill his mother. Same with the Song of Storms. The windmill guy has only heard the song from the Hero of Time as a child because he knows it in the future. It's all bound to one timeline. It's the same past, and the same future, all in one timeline, for every game in the series.

They all are on the same timeline; the future of Ocarina of Time has to happen because we see the past happen. You can't change it.