TLoZ: BACKROUNDU NO JUSTU!~ Pt. 3

I figure I'd better do one of these "word of God" journals every couple of chapters, just to answer any random questions that might come up and to organize my own thoughts. None of this is in any particular order, mind you; I just wrote it down as it came to me. It probably won't make sense to you if you haven't read the rest of 1,001 Knights, and may even contain some spoilers, so...well, you know where to go.


-The whole purpose of magic in 1,001 Knights is to confuse the hell out of Link. So, if you understand it, great! If you don't, mission accomplished!
-Something that might have escaped some people in Chapter 5, primarily because I got bored of writing Epona, is that in gameplay, she won't let you ride her while you are in your Thief Clothes. You have to be wearing the armor Din gave you before she considers you fit to carry.
-Tael drops references that hint at an understanding of our culture's popular references and memes, and Tatl, while not approving, often understands just what the hell he's talking about. In this world, fairies are beings that can pop in and out of different dimensions (which is what happens whenever they leave Link alone). So, before/during the time they were with Zelda (as the two have been alive for about three hundred years), Tatl and Tael would pop around in various universes - some would believe in fairies, and some wouldn't. Basically, Tael sits on a couch somewhere in our universe and watches cartoons when he gets bored, and that's how he knows about all the cultural references he does. And because they're cosmic energy tornadoes, they are aware of the fourth wall to a Deadpool-like extent.
-In Chapter 7, Sokra is singing and dancing to a bastardized version of "Do the Mario". No, I am not ashamed. See, this may be a third person narrative, but I'm telling it from Link's perspective. Link knows nothing about Mario. Tatl and Tael may know the theme to the first level of Super Mario Bros, but Link doesn't, and so I can't just say "Link heard the World 1-1 theme from the NES game 'Super Mario Bros'." This was the best way to convey that, and I'm not disappointed in how it came out. Talo would craft the lyrics to some nameless song. Also, I never watched that show growing up (too young), so I'm starting to prefer my lyrics to the original (especially with "shine" pun).
-In-game, Link can use the Rod of Seasons on anything in his inventory to copy it. However, he cannot use it on other people's toys except via cutscene.
-"Holodrum" sounds like "hologram", and "Labrynna" sounds like "labrynth". I don't know what the land in the canceled "Oracle of Secrets" game would have been called, but considering the roots of the first two, I named it "Vauliton" after "vault", which is a place you keep secrets.
-The design of the Dark Nuts is influenced by two Doctor Who baddies. Their bodies are textured like the Ice Warriors (the first or second story Jenna Coleman did after The Bells of St. John had an Ice Warrior aboard a nuclear sub, I think). Their heads look a lot like the Link to the Past Zoras. And their general appearance, silhouette, and gait is modeled after the Vashda Narada-controlled corpses in Silence in the Library (which is a fantastic episode that you must watch. If you need to get into Doctor Who, watch Silence in the Library and Girl in the Fireplace). The older one in Chapter 7 is more like The Destroyer from Marvel Comics, and moves and fights similar to Ghirahim.
-Link and company are eating hotdogs...yeah. Truth be told, I wasn't feeling very creative when I came up with that. The official explanation is that it's like sushi. I remember reading a Cracked.com article about how sushi originated from street vendors using whatever scraps of fish they could find to make something they could sell. Which is essentially exactly what hotdogs and hamburgers are; the only difference is a couple hundred years and half a world of distance and culture, and suddenly it's not a fast food, it's a dining experience. In Vauliton, hot dogs are a dime a dozen. Ship them to Hyrule, however, and they become "artesianal meats" - snob food.
-Saying that you have fairies telling you to do stuff is a is a euphemism for schizophrenia in Hyrule.
-The Zora are fish/amphibians. Ergo, they do not have hair. Ergo, everything that influences the shape of their head is made of flesh and blood and bone, like the tail fluke ponytail on the back of every single male Zora's head, or the Princess Leia-like bob Ruto has. Ergo, they really don't understand human hair, especially the process of growing or cutting it into new shapes, especially especially facial hair. Growing a handlebar mustache is comparable to having two flippers come out of your upper lip for a Zora. Trimming it would be like cutting off a finger to make your hand look better, and regrowing it would be equally disgusting. Sephner's comment about Linebeck's "masculinity" is a jab at this; the 'stash doesn't gross him out per say, but he does think it ridiculous that Linebeck values it so highly.
-I should note that Sephner, in his original concept art, seems to be a bit of a goof, something I've dropped in my portrayal. I imagine him to have the voice of Rook from Ben 10 Omniverse, and much the same personality and mannerisms.
-Along the same lines, I think the talking Dark Nut should have the same voice as Bluno from One Piece's CP9 (from the dub currently running on Toonami), Linebeck has the voice of Spandam, also from One Piece, and Shusenn sounds like an evil Iroh from Avatar.
-Yes, Zora language sounds exactly like dolphin language.
-Zoras lay eggs like fish do, in millions at a time. Because of this (and the fact that there's no home ownership underwater), they have a collectivist society. Zoras store all of their eggs in one place for safekeeping. When they hatch, no one knows who the parent is, so the community as a whole raises every new Zora who is chosen to hatch. The females are fertile, but all the males save one (the King Zora) are sterile. Still, they often chose to form social pairs based on personal preference or compatibility. Most commonly, these pairs are male-female, but they can be female-female or male-male. Their collectivist social order also causes Zoras to be somewhat interchangeable to the outside observer (though someone with experience or intuition can differentiate two Zoras based on personality or physical imperfections). Not having hair to distinguish one from the other doesn't help.
-Twilight Princess Zoras were frozen, but then they got better. Yet the Dark Nuts have a weakness to the cold. This is the result of a number of factors. First, the strain of freshwater Zora the Dark Nuts were created from is from a much warmer climate than the ones from Twilight Princess, so they don't have the same chemicals in their body that would protect a Zora from a more canon timeline. The Dark Nuts are immature to begin with, only having the equivalent of a year or two of naturally growth. Their magically-accelerated development also makes them weaker to stimuli that would ordinarily not affect a naturally-aged Zora at a comparable stage (this is also evident in their inability to air breathe). Finally, the frozen water not only physically damages the Zora inside, it also shuts down the oxygen recirculator that keeps the water inside the suit breathable and prevents fresh water from making its way to the gills.
-The "Avatar of Nothingness" is Demise's name in French. I was browsing the Zelda Universe wiki and found that little tidbit, and...c'mon, isn't that awesome?
-Barrhem was originally a kappa, which as all you Japanophiles know is a demon from the Land of the Rising Sun based on a turtle. Their heads have a depression filled with water; if that water tips out, the kappa becomes powerless. In the climatic boss battle of Chapter 7, I wanted Link to have to combine the powers of the Ice Rod and the Boomerang to foreshadow later upgrades, and I figured it would be easier to do this with a giant squid instead of a giant turtle. After deciding this, I went back to look at the original concept art to remember the specifics of what Shusenn and Barrhem were wearing and discovered that Barrhem looks nothing like my idea of a kappa. He also has this weird beak for a mouth...exactly like the beak of a squid! This is probably one of the only times in my life I've thrown s*** on a wall and not only did it stick, it brought the whole room together. He is now a Cepholid, a sentient marine species descended from octopi, similar to Zora except that they tend to inhabit the deeper parts of the ocean and prefer to avoid contact with other sentient species.
-Related to the above, Barrhem isn't actually OHKO'd "in-game." I just couldn't find a literary way to say "and then he did it two more times." Besides, Chapters 6 and 7 became much longer than I originally intended, and that section was inside a path split anyway, which would have made it twice as long.