Seriously though when did he learn how to horseback ride that business ain’t easy
December 1, 2014
2:50 am
I think a lot about how Link was out cold for seven years because the sages were under the impression that prolonged loss of consciousness makes you more fast, agile, and worldly.
But hey it worked out okay for him.
It’s been a while since I’ve played Ocarina of Time, but as I recall Malon would allow you to ride Epona before the option became available to summon him at will. If you take that into account, then Link could have visited the ranch several times during the course of his adventures, learning how to ride a bit better each time, until the event actually came to pass that Malon said you could call Epona whenever.
Don’t think about it too hard, just laugh at the silly little elf man trying to ride the angry pony.
You couldn’t ride epona as a young boy, but you could pay for riding horses as an adult, and challenge against some moustache man to get a horse. Riding epona by calling her with her song was the only way to defeat moustache and win. So, in fact,you got plenty of riding exercise before having Epona.
True, but Link still rode perfectly fine from the moment he got on one of the unnamed horses. He had practice before the specific scene referenced in this page, but the point that he just suddenly knows how to ride a horse with no prior training still stands
…IF you took the practice.
Like I said, it’s been awhile.
I think the real point here is that link jumps through time so often that it’s not odd to think it rattles his head. Yesterday he was a man. Tomorrow he’ll be a boy. Sometimes the song of time wastes a week of his life as he ages only a few seconds. Ergo, link is the quantum man. Macro objects just kinda confuse him, sometimes. Like horses, or pots. Smashing atoms =/= smashing pots, Link…
Obviously they had one of those Psycho-Phone things that are supposed to teach you stuff while you’re asleep. Maybe that’s what the earring is actually for? It would explain why they were piercing the ears of an conscience minor.
Well, maybe not learn stuff while asleep, but he DOES get the Triforce of Courage. My interpretation of the Triforce would be along the lines of…
Power: Gives extreme strength and magic power (but not spell knowledge, so it’s basically just blasting big balls of magic everywhere).
Wisdom: Gives extreme knowledge, allowing complicated spells such as mastery of illusions and enchantment.
Courage: Gives extreme skill and imagination, allowing you to use your equipment and prowess to accomplish great feats.
Link is therefore an expert at everything he does, and instinctively knows how to use anything he picks up, like a random ball and chain. Also if I’m about right, this means that having the full Triforce gives you the ability to cast any spell with a massive amount of power, and the ingenuity to know exactly what you need to cast to do ANYTHING. This is pretty much what the full Triforce does, in fact.
Is there any reason that the triforce of courage doesn’t give you, I dunno, courage, bravery in the face of adversity and all that stuff that would come to mind from the word “courage”? Kinda like how the Triforce of Power and Wisdom both did right as they said on the tin?
From what I could tell, you have to BE courageous already to get the Tri-force of Courage. This implies to me that you have to BE wise or powerful or courageous in order to get the respective tri-force…. meaning the tri-force does nothing and you’re just the guardian and because you naturally have these attributes it makes you a good guardian to begin with. Obviously being a guardian does not make you a good person *points to Ganon* but merely the most able and mentally bodied for the job…. morality not included.
If i might… Allow me to add that the triforce of Wisdom seems a rather bit dysfunctional if not Twisted. If not, Link will be unemployed and the princess a first rate fully fledged genius ( or worse a bodybuilded Genius. Cause : the better way to protect the strength triforce may have been to give it to the smart one… But i also agree with nintendo: Arnold Schwarzenegger in guise of Zelda should have brought less sales )
so , as it stand the name are incorrects : the real triforce’s names are : the triforce of servitude ( do so many quests for nothing) the triforce of dumbfoul jamesbond class evilness ( Ever wondered why Ganon never tought of a massive epic raid on Link by night when he sleeped ? )and the Blonde triforce of frail and daft princessness ( refer to Ocarina of time where the princess herself save your ass countless time but mysteriously can’t save herself or end the quest …)
Feat gained: Triforce(Courage)
+50 morale boost to all rolls
Feat gained: Triforce(power)
X5 Magic damage
Triforce OP, devs nerf plz
…oh god, I felt dirty typing that.
Wouldn’t Wisdom just give you, you know, wisdom? It means you have great reasoning/critical thinking skills. Did Zelda even have those abilities you mentioned?
And Courage doesn’t necessarily have to do with imagination or skill. It just means having strength of will, especially when it comes to facing what you fear (since that is the definition of courage).
So wouldn’t it just mean that Link would be willing to tackle anything, and be the standard brave, fearless hero?
So then Link is in the Green Lantern Corps?
That makes a lot of sense, really
Zelda used the Triforce of Wisdom to turn into Shiek, becoming unscryable even to Gannondorf. She also gave Link the enchanted Light Arrows. Thing about courage is that there is good courage and reckless bravery. The way I see it, the Triforce of Courage gives link the ability to just DO things, AND have them work out. Sort of like the powers that go “if you completely and totally believe something will work, it will.” He has the courage to trust completely in his own skills so that he never messes up, with a little extra Triforce magic to make things work exactly as intended. Like, if power gives you infinite mana, and wisdom gives you the entire spellbook; courage gives you the ability to cast a spell unconsciously from your infinite spellbook and it’ll always be a spell that does what you needed it to do.
In my dictionary that’s spelled L U C K.
Well, it’s easier to be courageous when you’re lucky as all fuck
that makes sense…wasn’t it used to create the world or something?
The OoT explanation is that it was left behind at the gateway where the three goddesses left the world of hyrule after creating it, making the triforce a byproduct.
The Skyward sword explanation is that it was created by the goddess (singular) as a gift to mortals, and caused the war that brought the big bad into the world.
Courage (and possibly both of the others) also conveys resistance against magic from the others. Possibly this can be interpreted as giving someone the ability to at least partially fight against the types of forces they may encounter.
One of my friends (who is a rabid Zelda fan) theorizes that some part of the Triforce of Courage or heroic spirit empowers him with the knowledge needed to use basically anything. I mean when you think about it, riding a horse isn’t even top 10 on the hardest things Link’s instantly mastered. Lots of the items he finds are bizarre oddities that most of us would probably kill ourselves with before we learned how to use with any reasonable degree of competence.
I’m of the opinion it’s more “Triforce of Skill” than courage. When pitted against Strength and Wisdom, courage is not a superpower. Running up to the giant pig-god waving a shiny sword is courageous, but also stupid and probably going to get you killed. Running up to the giant pig-god with a shiny sword and a backpack full of esoteric items you’re Skilled with – that’s a plan.
I think courage is a super power when facing a gigantic dodongo, or even a regular size dodongo. Most people wouldn’t even fave a bat or a regular size spider, and link would jump across hot lava while fencing a humaniod lizard.
– Using a boomerang
– Shooting a bow
– Doing either of those with any accuracy
…for starters
To be fair, it’s almost always a magic boomerang.
link also can use the hookshot which would basically nearly kill any other human, or maybe hylians are just better at things than humans,
I don’t see any stirrups. Hey, horse riders of the internet, how does one get on a horse if there are no stirrups?
Romans got on theirs horses all right without stirrups, although their contemporary civilization, the parthians, used them for their famous cavalry archers and caused many problems for Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup
Also, Native Americans often mounted up and rode without stirrups OR saddles. It definitely requires a sharp sense of balance, but like almost any other skill, practice and a good teacher help a lot.
I suppose you can just jump on the horse, which would make it quite the athletic activity. I mean, really, if you can jump and land sitting on a horse, why even using one for locomotion instead of your own Olympian muscles? :P
Also, TIL there was a “Great Stirrup Controversy”. Fascinating.
You would be amazed what Side jumping through fields can do for you.
Because the horse runs faster, though the height boost is gratifying too.
Also, leaping ability doesn’t necessarily imply stamina.
Could use, like, a stepladder, or a friend to give you a boost.
For Link specifically, he’s fit enough to do backflips all day and night while carrying a sword and shield, AND clever enough to solve those devious ridiculously difficult block puzzles. I think he could figure something out.
Knights in full plate armor needed a rope & pulley. Guess what one of the squires duties included?…
sorry, I pop the bullshit flag here. the “knights needed a winch” was a fabrication of the 1800s for vaudeville, iirc. you are VERY nimble when wearing field armor THAT FITS RIGHT, especially when you’ve been training with various sorts and levels of armor and weaopns from age … 8.
you learn how to move. you have a reduced range of motion in a few ways, but that’s minimal. you /have/ to be able to move in combat.
Above is correct. As a Western Martial Arts practitioner and Medieval recreationist, I’ve been fortunate to be able to wear, move about, and fight in well-fitted harnesses of plate. One retains a remarkable level of range of motion and general mobility thanks to the well distributed weight and properly done articulation. After all, how can one be expected to fight if you can’t move?
When jousting, knights wore specialized extra-heavy armor to protect themselves from lances. Way heavier stuff than they used in the field.
A winch may be overkill, but they definitely needed some kind of help.
Awkward Zombie reference?
Yeeeeeesss
Stirrups only became a thing once the Mongols made them. Riding on horses without them is quite a normal thing to do.
In order to get on a horse with a saddle that has no stirrups, it’s actually not that hard unless you’re shorter than the horse’s withers, really. Grab the front of the saddle facing toward the horse’s tail, get a bit of momentum (as in, a quick step or two) and vault upward, using the saddle as your pivot point. If the saddle’s properly cinched, you don’t have to worry about it sliding too far off center point, and can easily shift back with a slight shift in weight.
Or, less acrobatically, you can brace on front and back of the saddle to boost your upper body across the saddle, then do a bit of a twist on your belly to orient yourself from across the horse’s back to astride, bringing your leg over as you do. Much less cool and graceful to watch, but arguably safer and more consistently effective.
I recall hearing somewhere that Link inherits the skills of all the previous incarnations, which is why he’s competent with so many weapons fairly quickly. Of course, a quick search shows no reference to that so idk.
That kind of makes sense, but then again, Link had to be trained in Twilight Princess on how to swordfight. And other skills, like riding horses and such, would have been learned earlier in his life, since that would be common knowledge to know.
How he automatically uses those other thing I wouldn’t know.
I’m pretty sure he’s able to do just because it’s a game.
*able to do it
Twilight Princess occurs in the timeline where Link is sent back to his childhood time. He hasn’t experienced most of his incarnations in this timeline, so the fact that he’s less skilled here fits. The Zelda timeline can be really confusing.
Out of curiosity, Coelasquid, you think you’re ever going to write a comic where you DON’T make fun of Link?
I think it’s a nice change of pace, but I wonder when we’ll return to the regularly scheduled
CommanderJaredCanadian Guymaking fun of KratosShe wrote one where Ganondorf was giving him a chance, and Link blew the chance. It’s not so much Coela’s writing as the character himself…
Describe Link’s personality in the games.
Nonexistant.
Too bad there are only like two hundred and forty comics in the archive that don’t include Link at all in any capacity.
Never ridden a horse. Also, do they ever say in game if Epona is male or female? Not really important, just something that jumped into my head.
They call her female in the games.
hey you hype for the legend of zelda majoras mask 3ds remake coel?
i am…always wanted to play that game since forever XD
Thank you. Now I am wondering if there is any advantage to riding a female horse as apposed to a male horse. Not that it matters much as I don’t even know where to find a horse.
As I recall, the Mongols favored mares for their milk, from which they made some kind of alcohol. Of course, they would still need stallions to breed new horses… Hmm, this calls for research.
Alcohol from milk? What. Cheese, sure that makes sense.
…alcohol?
To be fair, cheese doesn’t make that much sense either. I mean, who first noticed that their milk had not only soured, but solidified, ate it anyway, and told their neighbor they had to try it?
Going further, who thought to yank on an udder and get the stuff from some other species in the first place, long before it ever soured?
Someone really, really desperate.
The first person to try milk from a cow was very, very thirsty. Tru fax.
And how did he explain what he was doing to it
Someone who noticed that they feed their babies the same way humans feed theirs’, and milking a cow was less likely to get you punched by a woman or her friends/family.
The cheese that makes the absolute LEAST sense is .
THIS CHEESE
Yeah, never heard of kumiss?
This is only half true actually.
The mongols preferred mares in warfare because they are tougher, calmer and easier to handle in the thick of battle.
Which made for some.. uhm… interesting battles when mongol hordes met European armies, who at the time were very much in favour of stallions for their cavalry. (I think I first heard that in Terry Jones’ Crusades documentary. He described pretty graphically, what happened, when the crusaders’ stallions caught a whiff of the Mongols’ little mares… :D)
The mares’ milk, like you said, was an added benefit for the soldiers’ rations of course.
In my opinion, mares, or female horses, are much tougher, smarter, and more reliable than geldings.(think what Jack Sparrow calls Will Turner sometimes, but for horses) Never really dealt with stallions other than the one to two year old colts we’ve had that had yet to be gelded. Course, there are exceptions to every rule, and some geldings I’ve been around were nicer than some mares. Very much a once in a blue moon thing though, but I’m probably a little prejudiced.
I mostly remember “whelp” and a “eunuch” or two.
Heh. “Whelp”.
There was probably “geldings” though. I was due for a rewatch anyway.
No it was eunuch
I meant eunuch. I was trying to be discreet. :)
Back in Ancient Egypt, when the Hittites first rode in with chariots, they were pretty much unstoppable. War chariots were THE war machines of the age. They used stallions (not gelded). After the Egyptians managed to run the Hittites out, they had adopted the war chariots themselves.
Somewhere along the line, somebody got the bright idea of setting loose a mare in heat across the lines of battle. You might imagine how hard it was for the chariot drivers to keep the lines. That could be why some started gelding their stallions…
“In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain and the presence of foals in some sculptures.[1] She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion.[2] The worship of Epona, “the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself”,[3] was widespread in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries AD; this is unusual for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities.”
Basiclly she’s named after a real world horse godess.
I always assumed it was a Simon Phoenix type deal where for those seven years the sages loaded up his mind with all sorts of skills and tricks, but probably not Spanish.
Seeing a joke like this…it was only a matter of TIME.
Have we seen Epona in the er… main world with the Commander and everyone? I’m worried about Epona stuck in an inner city stable now.
Or does he have a motorbike or something in this incarnation? That’d be cool.
If LoZ were steampunk link would drive a motorcycle and call it Epona. He would be the Cloud Strife of Nintendo!
Well, believe it or not, he does drive a bike that’s shaped like a horse in MK8 DLC…
Pretty sure it might be called Epona as well. So.
It took me a few moments to process that as Mario Kart instead of Mortal Kombat. That was an odd mental image.
I suspect it was less “make him more agile and worldly” and more “make his arms long enough to swing the darn sword right”.
Capt. Blasko from the new Wolfenstein was out for twice as long without losing any muscle mass or nazi-killing power. maybe he should be in a manly comic.
Wolfenstein is an alternate history of Hyrule then. (Confirmed!)
But hey, that’s just a theory…
A GAME THEORY!
Were it not for Epona, I’d say that this page probably has the least muscle and/or facial hair in the comic’s history.
On second though, I just recalled that whole Bishounen story arc. Ne’er miiiind.
I was always more concerned about who it was that changed Link’s clothes for him while he was unconscious. And why they decided he needed tights.
It’s probably fashionable in Hyrule. Also, the Hero’s Garb is somewhat a tradition by then, it bears a good resemblance to the First Hero (Skyward Sword).
Personally, I was always concerned about this as well. That and why they decided to pierce his ears…
It’s still not as bad as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, in which Frey claims that abusing drugs and alcohol for several years basically turned him into Batman.
Not to mention that being unconscious for seven years would basically atrophy your muscles to the point of paralysis. It would have taken him much longer to start moving after waking up. But hey, magic. Am I right?
What I have always wondered is who during the seven years just randomly decided to pierce his ear? It never bothered me until someone pointed it out to me. Guess the Sage just got bored in those seven years and wanted to see if he could
I made a gif the other day. It involved navi. At least the anooying one we all hate. We can all now appreciate IHasCupquake for ridding the real world of her tasty treat form.
Here is link http://makeagif.com/i/Ru0D1f
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=118
Maybe they were sleep-teaching him, like in Demolition Man?
As Wolfgang mentioned, there’s rumor that Link keeps the skills of his previous incarnations (retroactive side-effect of being a hero of time infused with a third of the power of three goddesses I guess). As far as his body goes, my head cannon has generally been that the sages didn’t trap his body and just leave him there in a collapsed heap (in which case, when Gannondorf came in and took the Triforce he would have just squished the unconscious little body lying there). He was wearing all new clothes when he woke up (although obviously inspired by his previous clothes). My idea is that he was put in the magical equivalent of that toning chamber that they used on Neo when he woke up from the matrix.
However, the question that bugs me is… if they had the power to zap the boy from the normal world to the sacred realm after he pulls the knock-off sword-in-the-stone knowing that they were snatching the fellow who opened the freakin’ door that was blocking access to an artifact of the gods … why didn’t they bother closing the door after him?
Apparently, Ganon isn’t the only one who has problems with Link:
http://acidsquirrel.com/fs/i/2014/11/30/a23098264f46d7b5bbda3456630e27.jpg
Anyone else think of Link’s Awakening?
I don’t see it; enlighten me please?
I was always too stumped by why his clothes fitted and why he had an earring for no reason after the timespacecomma to notice this…
Maybe it’s like the Pokemans Daycare, y’know? You leave them long enough and they forget some moves and learn new ones. And that’s how he now mounts horses but can no longer pull a damn slingshot for no reason.
In the OOT manga by Himekawa Akira at least, it was said ear piercing is a coming of age ritual for Sheikha males, and Impa helped pierce Link’s ears after he defeated Dark Link. Not very cannon, but a setting I really dig.
Hey that may not fit at all with “game facts” but that’s kinda cool, yeah. Hell of a lot better of a reason than “he suddenly wanted to impress the babes during his stay in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber”.
Your artwork is fantastic, but that rich level of detail (especially in the backgrounds) is really not suited for just being B&W linework.
For my opinion I would rather see the page go up a couple days late and be finished rather than see a partial page like this.
I completely understand if you find it more important that you update on a regular basis;– really I do, I’m that way and I’ve uploaded an uncolored page from time to time. But if you think your deadlines are more important to your readers than they are to you, then I just want to put in my vote and say I’d rather see the comic finished than just “on time.”
Personally, I love seeing the line art. I enjoy seeing a little bit of the process that she has gone through to make the final art and it makes me appreciate the finished version all the more.
The point of OoT has always been that I should get in a coma…
Well now we know the other reason why he was in a ‘Go Kart’ in the previous one.
I can’t look at panels 3 through 7 without hearing the noises Link makes when jumping or falling in OOT.
HYA! HUH! EAAAHH! SHA! AAAAAAA~AAAAA! EERGK-SH!
…And after all the trouble Link had just get out of that go-kart in the last comic…
… i guess you could say he has a mobility problem…
I like how in the first panel, Malon is in her bubbly NPC mode, but after a few minutes of watching Link being all “Okay, okay, I’ve got it- no wait.” she just can’t keep up the act.
COLOR~~~~ :)
No Bowser medallion? :(
Wait, what if Link’s asshattery is just a result of brain damage from a 7-year coma and several riding injuries?
Why do you draw malon like she’s gerudo? if she was she would have been taken to the gerudo fortress, or is it just a tan?
I gave her a tan because she works on a farm.
Well, Link is good at puzzles…
http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=110507
Malon doesn’t have pointy ears, shes human, not Hylian.
try googling Malon, bro, this isn’t very hard to fact-check.