Castle of the Green Knight

Are there any fics (any length) centered around romantic Zelink pairing in a fantasy action/adventure setting?

Thanks for this continuous undertaking!

There are quite a few! I would say that it is probably our largest group within the archive, to be honest. As such, I'm going to run this list, but it will not have notes because it's so long. I'm going to qualify that the list I'm running is going to follow general genre standards for both fantasy and action/adventure (vaguely medieval, a greater focus on the questing than the romance, magic over technology, etc etc). There are a few more that might fit from a magical modern setting, but since this list will already be bulky, I'm going to skip over those for core fantasy. Will also, since it is in the query, only include fics and not other mediums we track. I'm also going to bold the works that have yet to be spotlighted!

Short Projects (<25k fics)

A Taste for Adventure 🌟 by @amelias-calamity-quintet

The Baker and the Seamstress 🌟 by @haste-waste

Colliding Fates by @loz-chainsofcorruption

Day After Destiny by @amelias-calamity-quintet

The Elder Ones by @zamorakas-the-king-of-ocs

The Mage's Lantern by @loz-untold-myths

The Maiden of Tears by @/Lillitera

Midrule by @loz-chainsofcorruption

Remnants of the Past by @justapixelthing

Shadows of History by @/palmolli

Song of the Sages by @amelias-calamity-quintet

Stone Fate by @loz-untold-myths

Moderate Projects (<75k fics)

Blooming in Adversity by @botwriter

Clayshaper by @agent-ig

Desert Blight by @/jclbs

The Enemy's Enemy by @wouldyoustilllovemeifiwasawyrm

Into the Woods by @/Lyxie

Of Blood and Spirit by @zafiada

The Prince of Hyrule by @batrogers

Red Vendetta by @greenknight407

The Threads of Fate are Frayed by @/dummies_and_dragons

Zelda - A Fairytale by @/Sakurelle

Large Projects (<250k fics)

All That Hurts Us by @karama9

Captain Araki and the Harbinger of Destiny 🌟 by @mistresslrigtar

Cloak and Dagger by @crownedcrusader

Fighting Fate by @/Allendra

The Last Resort by @/JDetan and The AngelicStoryteller

Shadows of the Past by @yami-savvy

Swamp Link AU by @skyward-floored

Unbroken by @deiliamedlini

Uneasy Lies the Chosen of Farore by @drsteggy

What It Means To Be Chosen by @raginghummingbird

Epic Projects (>250k fics)

Bright As Night by @/Allendra

Calamity Quintet by @amelias-calamity-quintet

Goddess of Secrecy 🌟 by @amelias-calamity-quintet

Legacies and Bloodlines by @/nolandsman

Mark of a Hero 🌟 by @amelias-calamity-quintet

The games have been pretty inconsistent about when the Triforce mark appears on someone's hand, and what it means when it happens. The original Ocarina of Time only has the glowing triangles appear after the Triforce has been split, as an indicator that 1. These people bear parts of the Triforce, and 2. They are near other bearers. This is picked up by Wind Waker, which only has the triangle appear on Link's hand after he's reformed the broken Triforce of Courage.

Twilight Princess gives Link a Triforce birthmark, indicating that he inherited the Triforce of Courage from the Hero of Time. This calls back to Zelda II, which introduced the idea of the Triforce appearing on someone's hand as an indication that they're capable of bearing the Triforce, not that they already have it.

The new teaser directly contradicts Ocarina of Time's original depiction, having the Triforce mark glow on Link's hand before the game has even begun. It's close to that Zelda II version, if anything, and I've already seen YouTubers insisting that this proves that version was "always correct."

For BOTW, the main question you ask from the start is "Who am I?" and also "What happened to Hyrule?" You learn the answers to these questions over time as you journey across the land and remember things about your past. The answer to "who am I" is "I am the chosen hero," and the answer to "what happened" is "We failed to save everyone." When you learn that, the goal changes from "go and do the quests because the old lady said to" to "Do what you couldn't do back then and save everyone."

In TOTK, the question is "Where the heck is Zelda?" and it's not your question, it's everyone else's. All the NPCs want to know where she is and you're just kind of standing there while everyone discusses it. And then the game throws you an early game side quest where they tell you exactly what happened to Zelda, and then you just have to putter around for 99 years and watch everyone run blindly towards Fake Zelda while you just follow them without saying anything until the final hour.

And then they force you to listen to the exact same spiel about the Imprisoning War, 4 separate times, without changing a single word. Whereas in BOTW, you get to learn about the Champions and who they were and their relationship to you, and explain the Calamity to you in one cutscene.

Plus, they don't expand on anything from BOTW in TOTK. Link and Zelda are just living perfectly fine in society despite having basically been dead for a century. And instead of expanding on the Sheika mythos, they just try and pretend they never existed and put the Zonai in their place as the Ancient Precursor Race with all the Ancient Technology That's Been Lost To Time.