I’m sitting here trying to remember how the server clock works because I didn’t just switch to my surface after I was done drawing and it threw my ability to think off really badly.

Okay, I went back to duplicating my screens so now I can function in the writing space. I always forget what daylight savings time changes do in relation to the server. Either this page will post an hour early, or exactly on time… It’s a mystery to all. Or at least to me. Anyway, I don’t think it really matters if you’ve played Link’s Awakening or not at least in so far as the comic story is concerned. If you have chances a re you know without trying exactly what Carol sings in the final panel. If not you can look it up easily enough. The Wind Fish’s Ballad is one of the most famous songs in gaming history. The evergreen nature of Nintendo games means that it’s been relevant to some degree for 40ish years at this point. Generally I try to avoid pinning the comic to a specific point in time, but the fact of the matter is that the world is changing enough now that even the basics of life are growing more and more antiquated in the slow time world inside Between Failures. After two decades maybe it’s okay to just accept that I’m telling a story set firmly in a past that’s never coming back. In real life Thomas would be nearing 50. Extremely near, in fact. Most of the cast would be hovering around that age, give or take a decade. They will have lived through Covid, and all the other things we all did. I doubt I’ll ever get as far as that in their personal timelines, but you never know. I may do a manga style time skip where everyone comes back with new powers for the final arc. In any case the remake of Link’s Awakening sold around 6.63 million copies, so at least some of you have played that and some of you have played the original version and/or the Gameboy Color upgrade. Then there’s every Nintendo console it was sold on. Plus also some of you who emulated it other ways.
The actual game isn’t all that important. Maybe some people wouldn’t pick up on this unless I spelled it out but this is an illustration of how Carol is. Most people when challenged like this would argue, or act demure, and not want to actually demonstrate singing the melody. Carol just does it. And hopefully the art implies that the nails it without any warmup. She simply proves her talent with confidence and without hesitation. In the grand scheme of things, and in most other comics, this isn’t important at all really. In my comic these little things are the story. The moments you live and only remember as a hazy memory years down the road. Except since this is a memory tied to music it will live on in their minds in that special place music lives in all of our brains. The place that stays even when dementia takes away who we are. The song will come unbidden to them and a moment they shared will come alive again in their hearts. In that way a story told by other people becomes a story FOR other people, and it moves on across time.
I suspect most of you have never met anyone who reads this comic in real life. But somewhere out there thousands of people are also readers and are connected to you by way of my work. Even if you have no other common ground to stand one there might be this one connection that allows you to make more. It’s so simple and common we barely even think about it most of the time. The culture we share helps form the bonds of our society. Somehow I ended up making a niche little bit of culture for a relatively small group of humans that will almost assuredly never know they share that bond. I find that amusing.
I also find it amusing that even in places where readers gather the bond of enjoying the same webcomic isn’t even close to enough to stop fights from breaking out. Shared culture only gets you so far… XD
My life, in some ways, is like that meme of the guy standing in the corner at the party. Except it’s me at Walmart thinking “No one knows I make the B tier webcomic Between Failures.” That is probably a fate I have earned karmically.

Anyway, we’re one day closer to the celebration that is 20 years of this comic. Don’t let the anticipation interfere with your daily life until Friday. I know I’ll be struggling. Until then, keep an eye out for danger, and keep your stick on the ice.

37 Comments

The Ballad of the Wind Fish has always been a piece of music that’s been impactful to me, as has the story of not only Link’s Awakening, but several of the Zelda series. So, yeah, I get where Carol is coming from.

Also, holy shit, well done on that Koholint Island art. And the coincidence(?) that Carol looks a lot like Marin, especially in that dress.

Orchestral version. Many Many of it around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQRA8t6WpBA

Having owned and played the OG Link’s Awakening several times (mostly on that thing that let you play Gamepboy games on the SNES, I loved that thing), I didn’t even remember the song, although I remembered the visual of the scene of opening the egg. So I looked it up and the song is barely anything, considering the primitive hardware, and I’m not even sure how you would sing it. Even in the remake, it’s not much of a song, compared to the mountain of great music in the Zelda franchise. So I am shocked Carol can even remember it, much less replicate it. But on the other hand, I did start humming Super Mario RPG music earlier today, and I haven’t played that game in over 25 years, so…

You and I have VERY different definitions of what a memorable melody is.

Yeah, I guess. I have the entire soundtrack of Link to the Past seared into my brain, and lots of classic ear worms from the day like the moon level theme from Ducktales or the Gourmet Race from Kirby Superstar, but the Wind Fish Ballad just seems like something you learn on the recorder in 3rd grade. Good game, just really surprised to learn the song is considered so classic. It’s like I missed this part of pop culture.

If I was going to have Carol sing a Zelda song I’d choose the Ballad Of The Goddess, but it wouldn’t make sense for the story for her to know it. The beauty is that I can have her learn about it later.

Super Game Boy, I finally finished Link’s Awakening on that thing after being stuck forever because I was stupid.

No Thomas, you absolutely married the correct Graves sister xD

To the authors commentsry under the comic itself, I do find it funny that everyone here clearly shares a passion for the same thing and yet we are all so vastly different from each other xD life is so diverse in its experience but I hope we all want to one day be best friends in a small town somewhere.

If the Discord server is anything to go by most readers should not live in the same towns.

Most people get along online *BECAUSE* they are online. If they lived in close proximity to each other, they would all kill each other inside a year.

Fair enough, that is most of the human race as history has shown xD

I have, in fact, met three other Between Failures readers out in the Big Blue Room. One in my local (at the time) gaming shop, one in my worldbuilding/design group, and one chick I briefly dated.

One of my players, who I turned onto this comic, did a doodle of Neen giggling while a topless Carol gave her a boobhat for my DMscreen at the time, which led to the rest of them.

I could bet that all three of them could also sing the Ballad of the Wind Fish on command, too, though the last of the list would know it from the remake rather than the original (which I really liked, though I had to mod it to get rid of the DoF so it didn’t give me headaches…).

Which is to say that the little shared spaces are all the more important now that the large ones are broken.

There will likely never again be a shared social experience, outside of politics/major world events, the likes of, say, the Seinfeld finale. Like, COVID happened, but that was more a state-of-world change than something that happened *in* the world.

Meanwhile, to prove a point in a conversation, not a month ago I raised my voice in a restaurant to say “EVERYBODY LIKES TO SAY…!”

To which someone at another table shouted “SALSA!”

Even really big things like GoT don’t have the cultural penetration (even before the sputtering trip at the finish line). It can’t, in a fragmented media space.

The small, intimate, honest/sincere spaces are going to be the most powerful of them.

So: Cheers.

Does, the Big Blue Room, mean- [the world in general?], or [the world, off of the internet?] ?

I’m just curious.
I’ve never heard that term before.

She has a sister named Robin?
Quick, how many other sisters does she have? Or will it forever be a mystery

pretty sure it is outright stated a while ago that she has 2 sisters … either way she straight up says how many siblings she has when her and thomas comment on how well they actually know each other

The other one is Dusty. Robin was the only one pictured with black hair instead of ginger.

(Whoops, I am error. Carol’s hair has a little black in the back/lowest part. Did I unconsciously assume it was a shadow effect? Did I do the same for Thomas?)

So this is just Thomas tricking Carol into singing right? because he loves hearing her sing and she’s kinda too emberassed to do it?

If she has a good singing voice, [I’d] do that! :)
IMO, sometimes musical Maestros need some loving encouragement. :D

I had no idea about Wind Fish and never played games back then (or now). But that last panel is a delight, and any reason for us to imagine Carol singing is a triumph

Yeah. I can relate to a past that’s never coming back–Pong came out about the time I started college, and my entire experience of video games effectively amounts to none at all. I was a pinball kid. When I was learning to play pinball, a game cost a nickel, and the machines would award free games at random even if you didn’t win, to keep you playing. The few times I ever tried arcade video games, they just ate my quarters and shot me down fast. An expensive bad time, in my memory. 8-D

But that doesn’t hurt my enjoyment of Jackie’s great characters and storybuilding one bit. Don’t need to know the song to get the power of that last panel!

My gods I miss pinball, and I’m 43 and can only remember like 2 tables I had access to on the regular.

Sing, Carol-Marin, sing…

Link’s Awakening will always have a twisted place in my heart as giving me my first existential crisis growing up (“Wait, what if I’m in someone else’s dream and fade away?”), but replaying the Switch version was like spending time with a dear friend I hadn’t seen in ages – and the song still hit just as strong and sweet.

As for the commentary, you have shared something that brings you joy, and others have found their own joy in it and have contributed to a wonderful shared experience. And yes there will be fights both within (as example character ships and how characters come across to them) and without just by the nature of everyone having different experiences shape them, but we are still here reading and commenting. Perhaps the karma for putting this out and sharing with the world is to have a fraction of the world reach back in kind and hopefully make this whole experience worthwhile.

My mind jumped to what the final chapter (and timeskip) will be.

I think it could be one of the most bittersweet endings ever, because of how the store brought them all together.

Instructions unclear, do I need to learn how to sing the banshee queen’s lament?

I can’t hear her sing, but I know it’s beautiful.

1. I never played the game, but this song is a bop, as the kids say.

2. That last panel is rad.

Without the context, that last panel looks, um… yeah.

OMG I was thinking the same thing.

Exactly.

The image on the last scene could be misinterpreted as: “I’ve heard [it] being called many things, but, [having, “The Ballad of The Wind Fish” with your girlfriend], isn’t [one] of them. :D

Oh yeah baby

Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee!
XD

Ballad of The Wind Fish has to be my favorite piece of music to ever come out of Legend of Zelda.

Thank you for clearing up the confusion I had about Caril’s sleeve in the last comic!

…is it bad that I heard the 8-bit tones from the original game in my head instead of actual vocals?

It just is. There is no alignment.

*whew* That’s a relief.

2960 Sing A Little Dream For Me.

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