The past week has been incredibly rough. I’m actually writing this the Friday ahead of when it is supposed to be posted, because I’ve fallen super far behind on my blog post buffer and just barely managed to keep my streak of no unplanned skips twice in a row. Two nights in a row, I was struggling to stay awake as I wrote at my computer, giving up on any hope for restful activities in order to keep this blog going and my life in some kind of working condition. I managed it and have begun to slowly rebuild my buffer (I will have two posts ready to go at the end of the day), but I’m just barely keeping my feet under me between still struggling to get enough sleep, the physical therapy I’ve started to help with my back, the intense demands of work (which has gotten super busy again), and my desire to have something I can feel proud of (this unbroken blogging streak and this blog as a whole). As such, rather than prattle on even more about how I’m feeling on a day when I’m struggling to maintain even a neutral expression at work, I’m going to talk about The Legend of Zelda and one of my favorite peoples from the franchise: The Zora.

My first exposure to the Zora was in The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. I didn’t know it at the time, since I thought of them as the green river monsters that spewed fireballs at me, but there were indeed Zora in that game. It actually took me a long time to learn that the Zora had begun as enemies, mostly because there is very little to visually link the green, frilly-finned river monsters to the blue and white svelte humanoid creatures you first encounter in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I thought for almost a decade that the Zora showed up first in Ocarina of Time and only learned differently when I finally played the Game Boy Advance remake of A Link to the Past. It felt so strange to finally learn so much about this group of people–and people they were, given that you could deal with their leader and that individually enacting violence does not deny one personhood–who I hadn’t realized were another aspect of one of the most icon species of people from the Legend of Zelda franchise.

For a long time, the Zora were my favorite people in the franchise. I was never one of those people who developed any kind of feelings about Princess Ruto, Link’s “engagement” in Ocarina of Time notwithstanding, but I used to swim a lot as a kid and a teen and I really just felt pulled to these people who could cut through the water so gracefully. My whole thing as a swimmer was endurance swimming (marathons and longer relays), so I wasn’t terribly graceful or quick. I could just set and maintain a decent pace, so I really envied the Zora’s ability to fearlessly dive from heights (I was, and still am, quite afraid of heights). A envy that was heighted in Majora’s Mask when you could transform into a Zora and move through the water as fast as any fish. It wasn’t until later in my teen years, as I hit my growth spurt and puberty changed my frame from the small, slender build of a child to the large-shouldered, barrel-chest build I still sport, that I stopped feeling as fascinated with the Zora as I did back then. Nowadays, thanks to my build, I feel I have more in common with the Gorons, but I still find myself envying the fish-quick movement of the Zora in the water. It hasn’t really had much of an impact on me as I’ve played through the Legend of Zelda games, but I’ve definitely made a note of which ones include the Zora and which ones don’t despite there being plenty of space for some kind of fish people to live comfortably (I’m looking at you, Wind Waker!). It’s been so odd to see them show up, appear in two games in a major way, disappear for a game, reappear for the next, disappear again, and then show up to stay in the latest two mainline games. Even the Gorons have gotten to stick around throughout all that, despite being perhaps the least sea-worthy beings in the Legend of Zelda franchise…

All of this came up because, for the first time that I know of, the Zora have shown up sporting both of their forms in the same game. This time, though, the River Zora, as they’re known, aren’t playing the part of monsters. They’re depicted as normal people living normal lives, except that they’re green and frilly aquatic people. I do not know if they can shoot fire from their mouths because The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom takes a dim stance on any kind of depicted violence or even implied character death, so anything like spewing fireballs from even a non-player character’s mouth would likely get cut before the game released. Which is a pity. That was the coolest part about those guys. Anyway, the white, silver, and blue Zora are now called Ocean Zora and they behave exactly like the contemporary Zora do, what with their graceful swimming and diving and music. The River Zora also make music, but it’s closer to the sort of thing you’d expect from a Goron musician than a Zora musician, based on past games. Regardless, it’s fun to have them both in the game, even if I’m pretty sure I’m about to wrap up the part of the game that included them and then maybe never see them again after that (as has thus-far happened with the Gerudo). I still don’t know how long EoW is, so maybe I’ll be going back to places I’ve already visited, but so far my only reason for doing that is to get chests I missed the first time around, which doesn’t really give me much space for interacting with either group of Zora.