even just once more

Four Swords 🗡️ 🗡️ 🗡️ 🗡️

DI-DINK!

mogshade

Some days the brain thinks it can achieve any art style with ease. This is a lie. That bastard is once again lying. An absolute traitor.

theres a lot of emphasis on seafood in fanon but in reality there are NO fish out there to be eaten.

on the other hand, both pigs and crabs look pretty abundant, so i think theyre used as the main sources of protein ^.^ seagulls are a potential too but i feel the other two options are easier and quicker to capture and prep. seagulls are prob mostly esten by seafarers that didn't ration their supplies very well

iii can see a lot of soups stews and hotpots being a staple in the average great sea inhabitant's diet, obv the Main food item we see is grandma's soup which helps 👍 i personally think her soup is some sort of red lentil soup, with crabmeat and spices and a teeny bit of blue chu jelly ^_^ blue chus are super rare so grandma was saving it for link's birthday treat :)

something to be said abt the elixir soup is how it acts like a blue potion, so i can for sure see islanders using chu jelly in food and beverages rather than Solely for potionmaking, especially bc of how many places chus spawn . i think theyd be good for making a sweet treat ^_^

more onto drinks, ww had a coffee shop! explicitly saying that it has coffee and coffee beans too 🥳🥳🥳 it's particularly fun bc irl pirates had a history of drinking coffee a lot lol

Though I don't think it's entirely fair to fully disregard fishing as a food source, despite what's said about the Great Sea being fishless. After all, Outset is described as a fishing village by Lenzo, Orca's figurine description also says he was a fisherman at some point, and the shark jaws in his house serve as a material evidence to that. Maybe it's just that it's a rare and dangerous activity, and fish are something of a delicacy.

And also! There's this super obscure mechanic where, if you fail to salvage a treasure chest, sometimes you can pick up an octopus trap (based on a real method of catching octopuses), which will spawn a Big Octo — does this mean they're edible? They are monsters, sure, but the pots must be there for a reason. And if Octos are edible, this opens up Kargorocs as another potential game alongside seagulls.

*tee-hee* Okay! It will be beneficial for my own purposes to have all the ideas in one post, too. So, the gist of ot is as follows:

Great Sea is not the only sea in the world. The ocean goes on outside of the game's map, Link is just arbitrarily stopped by KoRL at the borders. We know of at least the World of the Ocean King — no matter if Phantom Hourglass takes place in the alternate dimension or not, the waters Tetra and her crew sail are implied to be outside of the Great Sea proper. Even in Wind Waker's text, there's some evidence to there being other countries that have commerce with the Great Sea denizens, i.e. Zunari and the Goron merchants not being from around here.

All the major habitable zones of the Great Sea are located either next to its border (Outset, Forsaken Fortress) or within one square radius of it (Windfall, Dragon Roost, Forest Haven, formerly Greatfish). The center of the map forms a dead zone, with the exception of the Private Oasis (not so much of a populated place, even including the basement) and Tingle Island (which, let's be real, shouldn't count).

There's evidence of both Great Sea being fishless and of Great Sea peoples going fishing at least sometimes, as discussed above. Except these two facts don't have to be contradictory, because:

What if they fish outside of the Great Sea? This would explain the proximity of the major population centers to the borders, as it's easier to transport the haul back home that way. One of the flags from the trading sequence, the Big Catch Flag, is made for "a festival in which fishermen hope for a good catch", yet "was made by a fisherman from a foreign land" — so there are fish in this world somewhere.

Okay, but there are two problems with the idea of them fishing outside of the Great Sea. One: Link seemingly has to be taught how to fish in Phantom Hourglass, despite coming from a fishing village, and Orca is a former fisherman — why doesn't anyone else from Outset is doing any fishing now? Two: if they have regular access to the outside, why Tetra's departure to seek new lands is treated like such a big deal?

Here's where the theory enters a more headcanon-y territory, but: my idea is that leaving the Great Sea, while possible, is really hard.

In BoTW, Hyrule's border is separated from the out-of-bounds areas by two kinds of barriers: regular invisible walls, but also the thick walls of wind pushing the player inside if they were to clip beyond the first type of walls. What if these wind walls existed in the game world diegetically, placed by gods to protect Hyrule from outside threats? It may sound weird, but BoTW is the game that invented Blood Moons to explain a common videogame mechanic of respawning enemies by an in-universe magic, so it makes this leap of logic a little more plausible. What's more, during the Dark Beast Ganon fight, Zelda even places a barrier of her own around the battlefield.

If the above paragraph is not conclusive, the rest of the series has two more examples of an area being separated by a wall of impenetrable winds, both of which are way more diegetic: Sea of No Return in Oracle of Ages and Isle of Ruins in Phantom Hourglass. They're both happening over the open ocean, too.

Going back to Wind Waker: what if something similar is at play over the Great Sea's border as well? If we assume that it, too, is surrounded by the walls of wind, the following quote from Zunari sounds interesting: "My story is a strange one... I came across cursed seas from a land far away...a land where the blizzards blow violently...heading for this town called Windfall. But dear me! As I traveled, a terrible storm descended and tore my ship to bits...yet mysteriously, only that escaped without so much as a mark on it..." — so he came from the outside, having to cross the border, and got caught up in the storm. Crossing it from the inside out, then, must be just as dangerous; fishing becomes a way riskier endeavour if you're guaranteed to hit a strip of permanent bad weather on your way.

It makes Link's role as the Wind Waker all the more interesting, too. His ability to guide the winds could've been a deciding factor that ensured a safe departure for Tetra and her crew; that would explain his presence on this expedition. Maybe he has to go ahead of them to clear the way beforehand, and this is why he sails separately from them on the boat that used to be KoRL. And after the events of Phantom Hourglass, Link has even more control over the storms via the Cyclone Slate and especially the Regal Necklace, the item that helped to dissipate the hurricane around the Isle of the Dead.

TLDR: the Great Sea is fishless, but there are fish living outside, which you can haul, but you have to get across a wall of winds first, so it's dangerous and therefore is done very rarely.

that is SUUUCH a cool take on the transition between ww and ph, i've never rlly thought about it much before </3 but it makes SOOO much sense . KoRL stopping u both for his own sake (not leaving the boundaries of his kingdom) and Link's own safety, then finally being able to push past those barriers with him gone (but using what he taught you) must've been so bittersweet ... stealing ur interpretation now 🤞

fishing coming back into rotation in both Phantom Hourglass (ambiguous) and Spirit Tracks (Papuchia being a fishing village, confirming ST seas are at least far away enough to support non-magic life) all but confirms something like this being the case too, which is so so so fun to think about !!! i agree it is not a Totally lifeless sea but i do get a bit salty when people unfamiliar with the game's worldbuilding treat it like its a normal ocean and disregard any culture the Great Sea inhabitants have built that might contradict such

i wrote this initially like 10 minutes before i fell asleep & on my phone so trust when i have SO much more thoughts laying around abt cuisine in particular. monsters as a source of food is a GAME CHANGER imo & definitely agree they should be viable

in more ancient/modern hyrules i don't see them doing this the same way that a lot of cuisines dont incorporate stuff like bugs; society sees it as kinda gross/unecessary and just prefer to stick to the stuff they have in abunance. BUT! with the great flood severely limiting resources i think a lot of that hesitance would be wiped away along with it, particularly for seafaring monsters!

my top picks for potential monster game are gyorgs (probably what Orca hunted? like a BIG gyorg . potentially the enemies in game are juvenile gyorgs whereas adults tend to stick lower in the ocean), kargarocs (especially in dragon roost), chuchus (duh), and octoroks/big octos (delicacy, ESPECIALLY big octo) - big octos have been on my mind a lot recently because in my (ten millionth) replay of the wind waker i JUST discovered those octo pots and thought it was SO COOOOOOL . guess i have just picked up the triforce shards perfectly every other time i play 😏

bokoblins, miniblins & moblins are 100% off the table for me due to potential sentience (? quest with Maggie & just how they act in general) . darknuts too . honestly most of the monsters except the ones above look kinda unpleasant/not really worth eating. i do think the koroks would eat boko baba seeds though ^.^

Chemically speaking since you can add food to enhance an elixir in botw/totk, it makes sense that one can add elixir ingredients to enhance food in ww!

Odd how chu jelly in multiple games now (TP Link can drink chu jelly straight, no processing even needed) seem to have innate healing properties but these strains of chuchu seem to have either gone exitinct or significantly changed enough that by the point of botw a blue lizard needs added to give the result more than miniscule healing properties. 🤔 Certainly helps that TP & WW likely take place around the same amount of time since OOT I suppose.

Though in the case of Twilight Princess I’m thinkin the only reason the Rednecks(TM) of Ordon know to drink chu jelly is cuz capitalism sucks & the potions available in town aren’t even much better than the raw material by its heckin self. 🤭

(Fun fact: allopathy aka what would become modern medicine irl had, um, some growing pains to go through in its early history… To the point that it was genuinely worse than folk medicine at first & once I specifically mention the miasma theory & surgeons refusing to wash their heckin hands even when asked towards the end of that era cuz they thought hygiene was ‘bourgeoisie nonsense’ that won’t even be a controversial statement. 🥴 … Twilight Princess’ era kinda carries the vibes of this irl era to me lmaoo, I’d take my chances on the raw Chu jelly too.)

Anyways another thing about grandma’s elixir soup is did you know it’s not entirely uncommon historically IRL for recipes to be documented as medicinal instructions before cookbooks? One notable example being baked onions. 🧅

That wasn't my main addition though! My main addition is some extra food options! This is from the Encyclopedia, so take it with a grain of (sea) salt, but it says the soup is made from "pork, corn, and other delicious ingredients." So they might have corn, even if we don't see it. It seems odd to have corn when we have no fields, but sometimes you find rice or wheat when you cut grass in BOTW, so I don't think it's too farfetched. After all, coffee was mentioned earlier as being at the cafe. Interestingly, Lon Lon Milk is also sold at the cafe. Where are the cows? Maybe they live in hidden grottos like in OoT? The cafe menu also features Deku seed cake. And maybe you can eat hyoi pears? Seems dubious, but no more dubious than some of the other things we've talked about.

I also figure it's likely that fruit and coconuts (and coconut water) are also common edibles/drinkables. I don't think there's direct evidence of this, but I don't see why they wouldn't have such items available.

About octos for food: in Tri Force Heroes, Octorok suckers are described as a "A Drablands delicacy! Eat it raw or cook it to perfection."

Anyways of/c another possibility for how the Elixir soup restores health & magic is the crabs of Wind Waker could have similar properties as botw’s Brighteyed Crabs. Food ingredients can also have buffing effects after all. Maybe fattier farm-raised pigs have a stamina-boosting effect not found in the leaner wild boars of botw. 👀 I personally headcanon that stamina restoring foods can also restore magic in a pinch, anyways.

Mayhaps the fattier portions of Big Octos have stamina and/or magic restoring properties. 🤔

Also ! Let’s not forget (damn everybody be eating Octorocks):

Hmmm anyways overall more evidence that monsters can be cooked they just likely need specialized techniques. 👀

I imagine Hylians through history have been looking at all these infernal Octorock pests & were like well there’s gotta be some way to eat these things—& attempted all sorts of mad science in the kitchen.