Redneck Alien Abduction: Termina Edition

There are two things about me that need to be understood in order for this hub to be understood to it's core. 1: I am from Appalachia and 2: I love the Legend of Zelda series. The 3DS remake of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is getting ready to be released, and the public is dying for it. We all know that it is impossible to get the special edition 3DS because those things flew off the shelves, leaving many fans upset, because some people, knowing that they were limited edition, bought them not because they were fans, but to auction them off to Zelda fans at a ridiculously high price. I've seen screenshots of those things listed at $5000. That's ridiculous. But the remake did make me think about the game.

I will say that on the 64, Majora's Mask was not my favorite game. I have an intense hatred for timed games anyway, and this entire game was timed. I have such an intense hatred for timed puzzles that I more or less beat the PS2 Prince of Persia- without slowing down time. There was one particular puzzle that I absolutely couldn't get past and my boyfriend at the time reminded me, “Why don't you just slow it down,” and I thought, “Oh yeah, I'm an idiot.” Likewise, in Majora's Mask, even after I slow down time (by playing the backwards Song of Time) I still feel rushed. I don't like it. But the gameplay is solid and the story is, well, as excellent as we've been trained to expect from Zelda, so it isn't as if I could pass it by. And being me, I have to get every bottle, every heart piece, every mask, etc. This means that I have to play every mini-quest.

One such mini-quest takes place in Romani Ranch. Romani says that she's training because aliens are coming in the night and abducting her cows. Her older sister won't believe her, and she's worried about her critters, so she's made it her business to practice with her bow so she can shoot the aliens right in the face, thus preventing them from hurting her livestock. Romani makes it clear that she is not one to mess around. However, she also seems to be a liar, because when you show up that night, she has her bow, but seems content to sit in the barn with the animals while you go out and risk your life shooting aliens.

So you hit the field, bow drawn, ready to start the slaughter. Because if aliens didn't want to get shot in the face, they ought not try to steal people's cows. And the aliens attack in droves, moving like a swarm, encircling the barn from all angles. They refuse to give up this relentless assault until the morning, meaning that it's actually in your best interest NOT to slow down time during this quest, because that's just going to mean that you'll be spending MORE time fighting aliens.

When I first laid eyes upon the alien, I wondered why I knew it was an alien. I mean, it's wrong of me to steriotype aliens as cattle mutilating, anal-probing, thieving individuals. And I had an intense hatred for these aliens, in particular. Romani never says that they're aliens, just that they're creatures coming to steal her livestock. So why did I think that they were aliens? As a child I couldn't really understand.

But now I realize; I know those aliens. I'm very familiar with those aliens. Those creatures were positively crawling all over Kentucky in the 1950s. Many people defaultly think of grey aliens when they hear the word “alien”, but in Kentucky there's such a history of “little green men” that among the older, pre-Paul generation, the default image of “alien” is these very creatures.

The most highly publicized alien attack occurred in 1955 in Hopkinsville, Ky. In this Appalachian town there lived a family known as the Suttons, who were spending the night leisurely drinking and unwinding in their farmhouse when they were viciously attacked. The creatures descended on the house, trying to get in through the windows, the door, clawing at the walls, and generally destroying property.

When the police came to investigate, they found the clawmarks and property destruction, and promptly blamed the family. They were drinking, they reasoned, and simply mistook a wild animal, perhaps a bobcat, for a swarm of aliens. People were skeptical with this explanation, because you have to be pretty drunk to mistake one bobcat for a swarm of aliens, and the entire family was not drinking. There were minor children who were obviously sober, along with adults who testified that they had not been drunk and had still seen the creatures.

This, understandably, terrified the Sutton family, and their neighbors. Especially because it didn't stop after that one night. For days the family and those involved with them saw the creatures on their property. Sometimes individually, sometimes in smaller groups, but never in the swarm that they first appeared in. Additionally, people in the area reported strange lights overhead.

Fortunately, the creatures never actually entered the house, or ever actively hurt any human. All they did was scratch up a bit of property and watch them. And where one had apparently been hit by the bullet, it left a luminous patch near the fence it was apparently jumping. Strange, but not particularity dangerous.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Zelda team used these incidents as the inspiration for the Romani Ranch quest. The aliens on the Romani Ranch look exactly like the aliens that the Suttons saw, and Romani had the same reaction. Rather than fear she decided to defend her property, just like the Suttons. And, like the Suttons, Link and Romani work together to defend the farmstead, eventually banishing the aliens for good.