Part I: Definition of Terms

To understand this new theory, it is important to understand what is meant by certain names. After all, there are four names which refer to the same place at different times, as well as a similar name which refers to a different place.

The OoT Past
This is the name that I give to the time period of the first half of OoT. This time period runs from the beginning of the game, up to the point when Link pulls the Master Sword, and a little beyond this point, when Link wakes up again in order to do such things as get the Lens of Truth and the Silver Gauntlets. It goes up to the point just before Link wakes up for the last time, after the end of the game.

The OoT Future
This is the name I give to the time period in the second half of OoT. This time period runs from the point that Link wakes up in the Temple of Time seven years after he first pulled the Master Sword, up until the point when Ganon is sealed in the Evil Realm and Zelda sends Link back. Note that in this time period Ganon is the Evil King of Hyrule, and Hyrule is overrun by Ganon's monsters.

The OoT Alternate Future
This is the name I give to the time period that covers all of the events that happen after the OoT past. This includes Link sleeping for seven years, Ganondorf conquering Hyrule, and Ganondorf being sealed (the OoT future). This is called the "alternate future" because, in the eyes of later Hyrulians, the events in the alternate future never really happened. They happened only in an alternate future. (For example, my new theory says that, after Ganondorf was sealed in the Sacred Realm, the OoT past became the Light World, and the OoT alternate future became the Dark World.)

The Sacred Realm
In OoT, the Sacred Realm is the name given to the land that grew around the resting place of the Triforce. Depending on who enters it, the Sacred Realm is either a paradise or a world of evil. After Ganondorf invaded the Sacred Realm and turned it into a world of evil, it was still called the Sacred Realm.

The Golden Land
In ALttP, people use this name to refer to the original Sacred Realm. In the ALttP time period, people no longer refer to the current Sacred Realm as the Golden Land; they call it the Imprisoned Dark World. The name "Golden Land" refers to the Sacred Realm as it existed from the creation of the world up until the point when Ganon was sealed in it.

The Evil Realm
This name is only used twice, in OoT, to refer to the tainted Sacred Realm. Rauru uses this name when he asks the goddesses to seal Ganondorf in the "void of the Evil Realm," and soon afterward Zelda tells Link that Ganondorf has been sealed in the Evil Realm. Later in the same quote, Zelda also refers to the Sacred Realm. There are two possibilities, then: either the Evil Realm is a poetic description of the tainted Sacred Realm, or it is a specific name given to something else entirely. We'll look at this a little later.

The Dark World
By the time of ALttP, the Golden Land had become known as the Imprisoned Dark World. It was generally believed that Ganon had transformed the original Golden Land into the Dark World using the Triforce. The Dark World is like Hyrule, but twisted by evil. Although the Dark World is in another dimension entirely, Hyrule and the Dark World are still related somehow, since portals exist between the two, and changing something in one world affects the "twin" in the other world. The Dark World disappeared after Ganon was destroyed.

The Light World
This is the name given to the land of Hyrule in ALttP. The Light and Dark Worlds were connected somehow: "Objects exist simultaneously in both worlds with similar shapes. If the form of a thing changes, it will affect the shape of its twin in the other world" (Sahasrahla).

The Dark Realm
This is a place referred to by Twinrova and Onox in the Oracle games. It is generally believed that the Oracle games occurred after ALttP. Since the Dark World disappeared after Ganon was destroyed in ALttP, the Dark Realm is not the Dark World. It is more likely that the Dark Realm is the Underworld of LoZ/AoL, or something else entirely (more on this later).

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