Twink is crossing all his fingers and toes, but of course there’s no way Ruto is buying this. “You’re Twink, aren’t you?” she confirms. “It’s me, your fiancée, Ruto! Princess of the Zoras!” Twink reacts with a surprised blowjob face, I imagine because she’s still fucking referring to herself as his fiancée, and not because he’s a moron who doesn’t recognize the only female Zora in Hyrule. Ruto ignores this and continues to natter at “her” man. “I never forgot the vows we made to each other seven years ago!” she pulls from her extremely generous memory of that day. “You’re a terrible man to have kept me waiting for these seven long years.” Seriously, if not calling for seven goddamn years is not enough of a hint for her, I don’t even know what to say. She could have hatched all kinds of gross eggs with some other unsuspecting sucker by now if she’d just let go.

“But now is not the time to talk about love…” Ruto sighs. Twink agrees, since the time to discuss love with Ruto is five years from never. Ruto exposits to him, though she suspects he must know already, that Zora’s Domain is frozen over and that Sheik risked his boyfriend’s wrath to save her horrible self from freezing to death. She’s also distraught that her father and all those Zora men who somehow aren’t good enough for her are still trapped. Twink doesn’t bother correcting her regarding her father, because he’s thinking of going back and refreezing him for being indirectly responsible for this meeting. “I want to save them all!” Ruto announces. “I want to save Zora’s Domain!” Let me guess: she’s going to “save” Zora’s Domain just like Darunia “saved” Death Mountain. Sure enough: “You! You have to help me!” she decides. “This is a request from me, the woman who is going to be your wife!” Not if Twink and his fast horse have anything to say about it. “Twink, you have to help me destroy the evil monster in the Temple, OK?!”

It’s right in front of you, Twink! Shoot it!

Unlike Darunia, at least, Ruto has the tiniest scrap of information that can help Twink accomplish this task, assuming he doesn’t just leave right now and begin his life as a hermit in the Lost Woods, or kill himself on the spot. “Inside the Water Temple,” she says, “there are three places where you can change the water level. I’ll lead the way. Follow me, quickly!!” And with that, she swims upward. Twink sighs, knowing he’s too much of a sap to run the fuck out of here once he’s out of her line of sight. Plus, Naggy would ask him about the monster in the Water Temple every fifteen seconds for the rest of his life. So he removes his Iron Boots and swims after her.

But, in the one piece of good news this terrible place has to offer, this does not mean Twink is doomed to another dungeon of Ruto’s bossy, clingy company. When he reaches the surface and climbs into a tiny chamber, Ruto is nowhere to be found. All he finds in here, thanks to Naggy hovering around it like a spaz, is a stone etching of the Triforce set in the wall. But for now he ignores it and heads through the only door in the room.

So remember those “harmless rocks” Twink destroyed earlier? Well, he barely does, but upon being locked in this room, he finds four more of them, and it turns out they’re not so harmless. No, when Twink is in close proximity, they turn into steel ball bearings, extrude metal spikes out of some unseen orifices, and roll menacingly toward our hero. Still better than finding Ruto in here, though. The hearts and dignity Twink expends to kill these even net him the map, so this room could have been so much worse.

GGI should sell these as New Year’s Eve party favors.

Back to the Triforce on the wall. “Those who wish to open the path sleeping at the bottom of the lake must play the song passed down by the Royal Family,” it reads. Just who Twink wants to think about with the image of Ruto in a honeymoon suite burned into his brain: Zelda. She’s probably lurking somewhere in Hyrule too, biding her time and ensuring she is the last of Twink’s unwanted female suitors to stake her claim. Couldn’t just one of his childhood “girlfriends” have died? Would that be too much to ask? But Twink dutifully plays Zelda’s Lullaby on his cockarina and watches as the water level recedes to the ground floor. Twink jumps all the way back down, miraculously unharmed, and is surprised to find that the torch in the room where he met Ruto has already been lit. But, he supposes, magically self-lighting torches are pretty low on the list of stuff he’s going to worry about. It’s not like it’s a scented candle Ruto lit to get him in the mood. As far as he knows.

Twink uses the magical torch to light two other torches in the corners, opening the door to the next room. Inside, he finds some evil clamshells that look like Shellder the Pokémon. They slowly open their razor-sharp dentata shells, exposing their ghastly, vagina-like innards. Ruto’s Bridesmaids, as they are now known, hop toward Twink, giggling and brandishing color swatches and cake samples. Twink can injure the pink fleshy part with his Moneyshot, disturbingly enough, but he’s terrible at getting the timing right and keeps aiming poorly, hitting the outside of the shell. I can’t imagine why. Eventually I give up and have Twink slash blindly (literally, his eyes are clamped shut in terror) until they’re all dead. The loot from this traumatic experience is a completely not-worth-it Small Key. Twink sighs and returns to the main chamber.

NOOOOOOOOOPE

Now that the water is gone, a block that was floating in the moat earlier is on the ground, making it possible for Twink to reach a pushable block stopping up another hallway to the west. He pushes it until it too plops into a deeper, water-filled section of the hall. On the other end, he crawls out of the water and into a room with a crystal switch on one side of a deep pit and a mini-Gohma staring him down on the other. Twink shoots it square in the eye with an arrow, but somehow that’s not enough to take it down, and before Twink can fire again it hops excitedly down into the pit. Twink shrugs, smacks the switch with his sword, and hops across on the rising geyser to the door. Stupid mini-Gohma, getting shot in the eye and jumping into a pit of despair. Twink feels like that’s a metaphor for his day.

The next room is dominated by a long, hard purple dragon. And once Twink pulls up his tights again, there’s also one in a pool of water. Standing on the bottom of the pool, Twink notices a crystal switch in the dragon’s mouth, as well as a Moneyshot target in an underwater alcove. All he has to do is shoot the switch to open the grate up there and pull himself to the alcove in the few seconds before it closes. I say “all” because, I imagine, people with any amount of skill, precision, or timing have no trouble with this. I am not one of those people. On about the fourth try, Twink barely manages to hit the Moneyshot target in time, pulls himself up, and instinctively rolls into the area behind the grate, which he notices too late is full of Ruto’s Bridesmaids. The grate closes behind him just as they’re slashing him with their razor labia and screaming at the bartender for another round of cosmos. He takes off his Iron Boots and floats away with them still snapping at his heels like hungry little velociraptors. But all thoughts of escape immediately leave his mind, since all he finds above the water level is a chest with another Small Key and a switch to open the grate again. This place is so awful.

More backtracking! Next is the corridor leading south from the central chamber, which ends in an obvious bombable floor. You’d think with the normal water pressure this place is under, this structurally weakened tile would have given way long ago, but hey, look over there! Yet another underwater corridor awaits Twink under the floor, and even more of Ruto’s Bridesmaids, whom he is starting to hate more than Ruto herself, if such a thing is even possible.

Twink swims upward to find a small platform with a floor switch. It’s worth noting that these switches are a red-gold color, which against the blue stone of most of the Water Temple makes them look rusted. And that would actually make sense, given all the water, but they’re actually not. This leads to me getting out the Hammer of Recapper Revenge for no reason, and then feeling really stupid, every single time they appear. Anyway, stepping on the switch raises a pillar with a Moneyshot target on the next platform. But a normal pillar wouldn’t be phallic enough, so this one has some kind of Anubis-like dog head and is basically an anatomically correct dong with eyeballs, fangs, and ears. Hot. Twink has to charge up his magic sword spin to hit a switch behind a grate, which is easy enough for him with the penishead pillar in the room. But all he finds behind it is a Gold-Assed Spider. I just realized Twink has yet to really do anything other than explore a few isolated rooms that don’t help unlock anything else. Wonderful.

Twink is happy to use his Moneyshot on this.

Of course, just as I note this, it’s time for Twink to actually do something, so he expends one of his Small Keys on a door leading into the central pillar. Twink sees once he’s inside that it’s one three-story room with a series of platforms with Moneyshot targets. He pulls himself up to the lowest one and finds a Triforce symbol on the wall there. Upon closer inspection, the ornamentations on the Triforce tile look a little bit like grasping hands, like the Triforce is Goatse’s anus. Twink briefly wonders about what it looked like when he entered the Sacred Realm–maybe he came in through the Triforce rectum?–and then plays Zelda’s Lullaby again to raise the water to the middle level.

Naggy is way too interested in this.

Oh, for the love of God–this is another goddamn convoluted elevator dungeon, isn’t it? What is this curse? Am I going to start noticing sneaky elevator mechanics in every videogame dungeon I play through for the rest of my life? I guess I should start writing up my proposal to put “Elevator Psychosis” into the DSM-6.

The more I think about this, the more I’m starting to notice bullshit elevators everywhere, and down that road lies madness. So back to Twink. First, Twink sinks back down to the first floor and returns to the room where he met his lovely fiancée. With the water at the middle level he can now reach a small ledge one story up with a bombable wall. Past the wall Twink finds another Small Key in a chest. Fascinating! Next, he returns to the central shaft and dives underwater to a hole between the spikes on the first floor, making sure to hit as many spikes as possible on the way down. Under here he finds a low-ceilinged, water-filled chamber with a crystal switch on the floor and two grates in the ceiling. Twink knows exactly what’s going to happen when he hits that switch (directly underneath one grate, like he’s stupid enough to stand there and do it), but there’s a chest in this room and he has no choice. Before the ringing from the Moneyshot hitting the switch has even stopped, the grate over the switch rumbles open and lets loose a gently floating dogpile of Spiky Dildo Balls and Ruto’s Bridesmaids. This must be where her bachelorette party was being held.

🙁

Incredibly, by keeping a distance at the start, Twink manages to dispose of all these monsters without taking any damage. I’m as surprised as anyone. The other grate opens when Twink has finished shutting down the bachelorette party with extreme prejudice, allowing him access to another water-filled shaft with a Small Key at the end. Now that Twink is sitting on three of these, I realize Ganondorf Glamour, Inc. really let this detail fall through the cracks. Yes, they look like stick figure penises and are shiny, but didn’t he have enough left in the budget for some fancy engravings or a few gem studs? Even the Big Key is fairly plain. Twink’s future incarnation finds fancy butterfly pendants and silky golden feathers all over the place! GGI has a long way to go.