Luthien have you noticed FW blindspots yet?
Check this out .. go to a level like sonics ..
Stand on the far right of the level by the edge, and teleport directly left.
You actually teleport SW even thought you're not pressing down.
It's impossible to teleport just west, because FW actually follows the curved landscape.
This, and the facts about teleporting "into" a hard platform, make me convinced that the game really is just pushing Zelda along the trajectory you input for a set time.
You may notice that the Sonic level has similar "cling" properties in that U - all kinds of moves will catch to it: PKT2, for example.
So what Farore's Wind does, I think, is give you invincibility frames and removes your control state, while removing your sprite. It then moves your character (in whatever sense it's still there) deterministically toward the destination, probably at constant velocity.
This leads me to conjecture the following: I think we can cut the teleporting short on a soft platform. That is, I think we can teleport up to a soft platform which exists closer than the full distance, and that we do this by inputting the same command as to cancel a jump to a soft platform.
I can't find the thread, but you should recall/know that in
Brawl you can tap down when passing through a platform and you will land on the platform - I think you actually cut all the lag.
If this is possible, one of three things will be true. Either (1) the Farore's damage animation will occur, in which case Development either put this in, or had good "all cases" programming; (2) we will appear without a Farore's damage animation, in which case Development didn't see this, and we'll have a nice surprise teleport ability; or (3) we will glitch the game to kingdom come, possibly in making our sprite invisible forever.
I seriously hope we have (1).
Can anyone try this?
Also, if anyone can find out conditions under which the normal platform trick won't work, that might make this easier to disprove.