why I'm a legend of zelda fan: Long/Personal Rant
This is gonna be long, but yeah.
So like, I love Zelda.
That’s like, 90% of my personality.
It’s my username, my pfp, my heart and soul.
As an autistic girl who has gone through many hyperfixations, legend of Zelda has always been then.
Legend of Zelda came to me at a super hard time in my life, when I was in 3rd grade I was diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and depression, I would later on be diagnosed with autism, worst of all, this all happened during covid.
It sucked. A lot.
I played video games, and I enjoyed them, mainly Mario, but it wasn’t like, my thing THINg. But one day, my family was buying and moving a couch all in the same day, and it was going to take a while, and since I was like, eight or something, I had to come ofc. So I brought the switch, but I forgot the game I usually played. So I was stuck with Mario Kart for hours, or this game my parents got but us kids had never bothered to touch.
The legend of Zelda, breath of the wild.
I put the chip in, and I was hooked.
It was unlike anything I had ever played, it was so incredible, it took me a month to realize that the tutorial area wasn’t the whole map. Then we got to the story, and I have a vivid memory of telling my family all about it at dinner.
It was the start of a lifelong obsession.
Everything about it was incredible to me, the world, the characters, the gameplay, the puzzles, it was perfect. I became obsessed with it. It was my only solace during one of the darkest times of my life.
Then for about a year, though I still loved Zelda (with all my heart mind and sole, during that year I dressed as Zelda for Halloween) but, I sort of stopped playing for a bit. I started playing.. shudders cringle mobile games. (I don’t want to talk about 4th grade)
But then I got back into Zelda around 2023, when the legend of Zelda tears of the kingdom came out, and boy, if I thought I was obsessed before, this is completely different.
Zelda became more than just a fun interest to me, it became a part of me. I met so many friends through chatting about legend of Zelda, it was incredible. I wanted to play more Zelda games, and more video games in general.
And it also made me feel like I could overcome things that are hard in my life.
As of now, I’ve played more than five times the amount of Zelda games than I had back then.
Legend of Zelda didn’t just make me happy during hard times, it’s taught me important lessons.
Something I honestly thing helped was the protagonist, Link. Link , though at a glance may seem like a regular protagonist, isn’t your typical fantasy video game protagonist when it comes down to it. He isn’t a big buff dude, he’s very feminine looking, he isn’t tall, he’s quite short, at most 5’8, but generally, about 5’2, or in some cases, in the younger incarnations, only four feet. He has long hair, and he’s infamously (in my opinion charmingly) quiet (this isn’t unique I just wanted to mention it)
Anyways, my point is, I found a protagonist who made me feel like anyone could be a hero, and for a young me that meant a lot. Legend of Zelda also taught me the importance of balance, how evil is needed for kindness to exist, how none of us are perfect and we all mess up and feel like we aren’t enough (eg. botw princess Zelda), and it taught me the thing I think may be one of the most important things I’ve ever learned in my life.
How in the darkest moments of life, when evil literally takes over, it isn’t going to immediately get better. Things won’t magically be brought back to the way they were before, there are things that can’t be undone. But you can' overcome it, some things can heal, and even if it takes 100 years, hope will always come, I know that’s cringey but it’s important to me.
But yeah, that’s a few of the reasons I love Zelda.
And to finish it off I’ll be sending you the other reason I play Zelda: torturing koroks, banana ninja’s, twinks, breaking pottery, and more :D
