couldn't you just do a BLJ to clip through the second key door straight to the upstairs, and not have to complete dark world or fire sea? or would the shortness of the stairs make this be too inconsistent or not work all together?
No you can't. Unfortunately the game doesn't load the upstairs until you beat Fire Sea. All you'll be doing is BLJing into a dark unloaded area. Not even TAS can skip both keys but the TAS can do moat skip to skip Dark World.
Slight correction: The game doesn't load the upstairs until you can unlock the door and walk through.
Longer explanation: The model data for the foyer of the castle, much like the famed Black Room of Death, just has it to where there's part of the spiral staircase room, but not anything past the first couple of steps. The N64 can't handle all that being loaded at once, so they separated the castle into different "areas" to only be loaded once you get there by means of a door (some way to warp from place to place).
We would like to announce that VC and EMU subcategories are now active on the Stage RTA leaderboards (under "Levels"). Stage RTA involves collecting all the stars in a given stage including the 100 coin star. Timing starts on star select and ends upon collecting the final star. You are allowed to us
