#i haven't played a zelda game in years despite it being in my top 3 fav franchises

[ragecndybars]

AO3 tag game :3

thanks so much for the tag @mvshortcut !!!!! much appreciated, this was a blast to fill out :D

How many works do you have on AO3?

86! Damn, that's more than I remember 🙀 I have been writing pretty fervently since I was pretty young, though, and I transferred all my old fics from fanfiction dot net to AO3, so it's a long stretch of time. All my old wattpad fics are still rotting somewhere though lmaooo I can't even access them anymore bc I forgot my password and I can't reset it bc I used a school email 😔

What's your total AO3 word count?

443,734! When I get to half a million I'm gonna have to throw myself a party. With boba and everything

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Oof, okay, here we go. A lot of the fandoms I have tagged on AO3 don't really "count" because they're just aggregate tags for the same fandom, so even though AO3 says the number is 48, I'm gonna count the TRUE number as 17. (It got cut down so much because of how many video game series have different games with different fandom tags on AO3, lmao)

Here's the breakdown of the list:

Persona (Mostly Persona 3)

Fire Emblem (Mostly Shadow Dragon and Blazing Sword)

Legend of Zelda

Pokemon

Professor Layton

RWBY

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Earthbound/MOTHER

Red vs. Blue

Voltron Legendary Defender

Naruto

Final Fantasy XV

Harvest Moon

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Avengers

Animal Crossing

Care Bears (despite having never actually consumed any Care Bears media to my knowledge)

The worst part is that this stupid list would be much, much, MUCH longer if I finished even a quarter of my WIPs 😭 Hell, even just my "Video Games" subfolder in my "Fanfiction" subfolder has more than 17 subfolders in it...

Y'all don't understand how many random fics my ADHD spares you from ever seeing I have no focus

Top five fics by kudos:

Ash and Emotion (Zelda) - Not surprising, I knew this was my most popular fic. It was for a ZeLink zine full of beautiful work :)

Resemblance (Naruto) - bro I always forget people really liked this one. Literally an unedited drabble I did in an hour for a "pride month drabble challenge" which I immediately abandoned. Trans rights I guess

Always Wanna Play (But You Never Wanna Lose) (Persona 3) - This one isn't surprising either, and I'm very proud of this fic so I'm quite chuffed to see it get so much attention... thanks everyone :')

The Beat of Your Heart (Zelda) - Now this one surprised me a lot. This was just a little piece for ZeLink week... Another unedited one, I literally was writing it on the toilet in church so I could get it out in time 😭

Comfort (Zelda) - Another ZeLink week piece, but I knew this one was popular. Also unedited, lmao. I was writing it on the day of my AP Calc finals and I rushed through the exam so I could have more time to work on the fic 😭 I made some Choices that year

Do you respond to comments?

I try to! But I get very anxious about it and tend to work myself into a tizzy, so I often put it off for later and then forget, haha. Then I'll go and respond to all my comments from the last few months and feel even weirder about it... T_T

What's the fic with the angstiest ending you've ever written?

Oof. That's... a hard one, haha. I've written a couple of fics without happy endings, though I typically don't. At least three fics which end on a canonical character death, for instance. But I'd say the ending which made me the most emo writing was Butter, a Mother 3 fic. It ends with Lucas, who's like 9, recently lost his mother, then lost his twin brother (and thinks it's his fault), and is now being neglected by his father, crawling into bed and crying. So yeah, pretty bleak, lmao... but at least he doesn't die I guess?

Do you write crossovers?

I do, but I haven't posted many yet. I'm not always huge on writing them, but I do think about them a lot. I was working on this one Persona 3 x Fire Emblem Awakening crossover but I lost steam on it, and now there's a really lovely crossover on AO3 with a similar premise that I was SO delighted to come across!!! Hope y'all don't mind me taking a break from linking my own work to shill for this one, hehe

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Unfortunately, yes, about six times, I'd say. Even more unfortunately, most of those times happened earlier on in my fanfic writing career, and I was pretty sensitive to hate back then, so I deleted many of the relevant fics, and some of them I don't even have access to myself anymore.

Not gonna talk about the ones that are still upsetting, but I will talk about the funny examples: on a (since deleted) RWBY fic, I said in the author's note that I "wrote them as platonic, but the fic can be read as WhiteRose", and then I got a glowing comment gushing about how good the story was which ended with "but then you had to ruin it by shitting all over WhiteRose, how about you [long suicide bait]". Third most baffling comment I've ever received.

The two most baffling were on different fics, but both were making the same weird accusation??? One was on a ZeLink fic (actually, on Comfort, my fifth most kudos'ed fic of all time now), and y'know I think I'm just gonna show you the comment in question:

The other one was on a long-since deleted fic which focused on both a romantic ship, as well as a fatherly relationship between one member of the ship and the other member's father. I guess having a fatherly relationship with your father-in-law makes your boyfriend actually your brother (and therefore you can't date him anymore). IDK man people are crazy. (tbf the commenter in question thought I was setting it up so that he'd get adopted by his boyfriend's parents, which would give them more of a case, but like... that didn't happen in the fic and wasn't going to. they just guessed at a future plot development and got angry about their guess)

Do you write smut?

I do, but I've never posted any. I've posted one fic that was very suggestive, I'd even call it "NSFW" in a sense, but never anything explicit. Maybe I will in the future? We'll see if I can ever finish anything smutty, lmao.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep, I had Ultimatum, my longest chapter-fic (and by far my most popular fic in the ff.n days) stolen and posted on another site by somebody. I reported it but never checked back up to see if it got taken down.

I also feel that I've had my work plagiarized pretty damn blatantly in another fandom (I was browsing a certain AU tag and read one which contained all the exact events and sometimes word-for-word dialogue from a fic of mine, just very very slightly rewritten) but the poster had no other works and their writing was definitely extremely juvenile, so... I figured they were a dumb kid and just decided not to raise a fuss. Checked back later and they deleted it, hopefully because they realized they shouldn't do that, so I figure there's no need to start shit over it. Honestly, if that person used that experience as a jumping-off point to write their own fics, then I'm glad it happened, imitation being the highest form of flattery and all.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, though I had someone reach out to me on fanfiction dot net a long time ago and ask permission to translate An Unheard Goodbye, which was super exciting! I agreed, but I don't believe they ever got around to it, or if they did, they never posted it. Still very flattering, and I think about that a lot, hehe.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

HOW COULD I POSSIBLY ANSWER THIS. UM. UM UH. UHHH UM UH I. UM.

I'm.... gonna say Zelda/Link? I haven't written it in FOREVER but it was such a huge part of me coming into my own as a fanfic author, so I have to give it credit for that.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

.......all of them 😭 god I have so many of these damn things. But for the prime example, I'd point to Ultimatum, an old Pokemon fic that I started in middle school. I got all the way to the climax and I feel bad leaving my readers hanging, but... at this point, if I did continue it, I would honestly have to rewrite the whole fic first just to be in line with my current understanding of the characters.

What are your writing strengths?

Y'know, I think I get character voices down extremely well in a way which elevates my dialogue and narration. That's probably the thing I'm most proud of in my own writing, at least.

What are your writing weaknesses?

BREVITY. Or the utter, glaring lack of it. I have also been known to muddy up my writing with an overabundance of A) adverbs, B) unneeded clauses tacked onto perfectly good sentences, and C) em-dashes 😭

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I think it's dope as fuck, but I currently can't really accomplish it because I'm monolingual (NOT FOR LONG IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, I'M COMING FOR YOU, JAPANESE FLUENCY!!!!). I will also say that I don't like when authors will write characters having a story-important conversation in another language, then put the translations in the end notes or something, requiring you to either read the chapter confused or else keep scrolling back down and back up.... I think even that's totally fine to do if what's being said isn't plot-relevant, though.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Naruto. I hadn't read or watched Naruto btw, I had only read other Naruto fanfics. I have spoken on this topic many times, but it remains hilarious to me. Also, so many of my old Naruto fics are lost to the Wattpad times, but I will take this opportunity to once again share a quote which I recently managed to unearth from my long-lost unsung magnum opus:

Never ever will I intentionally attain the level of comedy gold that I managed while writing completely dead serious Naruto fanfiction on Wattpad in 2012.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

See above. How could I ever top that fic.

In all seriousness, this question always makes me sweat, but I think I'm gonna say Oil, a slightly older fic from my EliHec days which I absolutely obsessed over for months before finally managing to finish. And, unlike most of the fics that I obsess over, I think the obsession actually made it come out better rather than worse, haha.

thanks again for the tag!!!! as for me, I'll tag uhh, hm, @wizard-finix @dreamedge @misty-wisp @flyfish1999 and any other AO3 writers who see this!!! (idk how many of you use AO3 and most of the MBS authors I know have probably already been tagged hehe but anybody who wants to should absolutely feel free!!!!!!!)

[novelmonger]

My Ranking of the Zelda Games I've Played

My sisters were ranking Zelda games, so of course I had to join in and overthink everything. So here are my...hot takes? Maybe? I haven't played Four Swords, Minish Cap, Spirit Tracks, A Link Between Worlds, Triforce Heroes, Breath of the Wild, or Tears of the Kingdom.

Ocarina of Time In my opinion, the only Zelda game that fully achieves what I've always wanted from the franchise. It has an epic fantasy story, probably the best music (including music being an integral part of the gameplay and story), distinct and interesting character designs, challenging temples, and THE ACTUAL BEST COMPANION IN THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE NO CONTEST. This Link is also my favorite, as he seems one of the most serious and lonely ones, very fitting for the high stakes of his quest. As a bonus, this is also the only game where you get to switch between being a child and an adult, which makes for interesting gameplay and story ramifications. All the nostalgia is there, but it's not just nostalgia, either. I've played this game so many times (in the original version, Master Quest, and various randomizers) that I'm pretty confident I know at least 95% of everything there is to know about this game. It feels like home.

2. A Link to the Past The one after OoT that comes closest to the ideal. It still has that epic fantasy feel, despite the much simpler graphics - which look very pretty nonetheless, especially in the GBA remake. I think this game has one of the strongest beginnings, because instead of starting you out in a calm little village to ease you into the quest, this game starts you out with Link following his uncle through a torrential thunderstorm to Hyrule Castle, and then coming upon his uncle as he's dying and taking up his sword and shield to go save the princess! The music is excellent (Hyrule Castle a;ldkfjsd;lkfjds;klfj), the temples/dungeons are challenging, and I love the concept of going back and forth between the Light World and the Dark World. (Less cool is Link turning into a pink bunny the first time he goes to the Dark World, but still.) There's a reason this one is a classic. Also, this game has hands-down the best title in the entire franchise. Everyone else can go home.

3. Phantom Hourglass I kind of surprised myself at how high I ranked this one, especially since I've only played it once almost ten years ago. But this game surprised me so pleasantly, I still think of it fondly. First and foremost is my whole theory about how Ciela is actually Navi - that theory healed something that had been broken in my heart for over ten years; I didn't realize how much I needed that until I heard Ciela's cheery little, "Hey!" For that matter, I felt like the whole game was full of fun, endearing throwbacks - mostly to WW, of course, but to plenty of other Zelda games as well, like the island with all the Gorons that plays the Goron music we all know and love. I really enjoyed the twists in the story, simple as they were, and overall the whole thing felt like a bite-sized WW. I've heard a lot of people complaining about having to keep on going back to the Temple of the Ocean King over and over again, but that was actually one of my favorite parts of the game. It was challenging, but in a way that made me want to keep trying - which is more than I could say for most of the temples in the newer games. So, while the art style is not my favorite and the whole game is pretty far from my ideal of what a Zelda game should be, I enjoyed this game so much that I think it deserves to go in my top three.

4. Majora's Mask This is a very solid game, taking a lot of the things that make OoT great and expanding on them. I really like how many NPCs there are and how they all have a story and things you can do to help them. It's also cool to play as Child Link but be able to use a lot of items he couldn't in OoT, like the hookshot or riding on Epona. The music is excellent, and even the new ocarina songs are memorable and distinct. It's really fun and interesting to be able to turn into different races, and all the different effects that come from wearing the masks feels like a natural progression from the mask sidequest in OoT. So, when trying to be objective about this, I have to put this one pretty high on the list, but I just couldn't put it in my top three. The main reason for that is that I find the story very depressing, and the overall feel of the game oppressive. The story is framed by Link's search for Navi, which he doesn't succeed in. The primary theme of the game is death, and no matter how many times you turn back time to fix things again, you know that inevitably the moon is going to fall in three days. It's like a pointless, desperate cycle that you get stuck in, and even if you help someone out with their problems, you have to turn back time again and it's like you never did any of that. The majority of the game makes me feel sad, hopeless, or anxious. So even though I have to acknowledge this is a really good game, I can never really bring myself to replay it.

5. Skyward Sword I ended up really liking this game. Part of that was because of the improved motion controls since Twilight Princess, so it felt more like actually swinging a sword around instead of just twitching your hand (despite the tendency to dorkily run around with your sword sticking straight up in the air). I don't really like the characters as much - they tend to be either annoying or just kind of blah for the most part - but I can't deny that this game is just fun. I had fun with all of the bosses, especially Ghirahim and Demise. And speaking of which, the final battle against Demise/Ganon has got to be the most epic battle in the entire franchise! I have never felt cooler than I did summoning lightning to my sword and smiting the King of Evil with it. I also really liked the Silent Realm levels, as nerve-wracking as they can be. Unfortunately, the game also suffers from a lot of less-than-stellar elements, not least of which is Fi. Ugh, ugh, ugh, worst companion EVER >_< I also didn't really like the Loftwings; they didn't end up being as fun of a gameplay element as they sounded at first. Overall, the temples tended to be pretty but not as challenging as I wanted them to be. And then there's the Oocca x.x What on EARTH. So Skyward Sword is a really mixed bag for me.

6. Oracle of Seasons/Oracle of Ages Since these are very closely linked and I feel almost the same about both, I decided to lump them together. I really like the look and feel of these games; there's something very nostalgic and comforting about them. Oracle of Seasons was actually the first Zelda game I ever played a bit of, and it intrigued me so much that's how I got into the franchise in the first place. So it's kind of funny that I actually only got around to playing these games a couple years ago. But they ended up being really fun, with interesting gameplay and good music. Points get taken off for not having a ton of story, and actually requiring you to trade rings through the Link Cable if you want to explore everywhere.

7. The Wind Waker This is another game that's really pretty solid, but I just didn't care for it much personally. I don't like the Toon Link art style, and didn't find the storyline that compelling. Zelda being Tetra was a really fun way to switch things up, but I didn't like how her personality did a complete 180 once she found out the truth about herself. It would have been more interesting if her piratey side showed through more even as she was trying to be a princess. I did enjoy the world, and it was fun to explore on a boat instead of on foot or on horseback. But it didn't feel much like a Zelda game - somehow, most of the game feels less Zelda-like to me than PH, even though they take place in the same world. Also, while there was some good music in the game, I hated the Wind Waker songs. None of them were memorable, so it was really hard to keep track of which ones did what.

8. Link's Awakening It's kind of a shame that this game goes so far down my list, because it was the first Zelda game I ever owned. I didn't realize what I was getting into, I just wanted to swing a sword around after trying out Oracle of Seasons. Story-wise, I really don't like this game. There's such a dissonance between the cutesy, silly adventures you go on…in pursuit of waking up a flying whale who is dreaming the entire island and all of its inhabitants into existence, so as soon as you wake the Wind Fish up to escape the island, all the places you've become familiar with and all the friends you've made just go *poof*. Yeah, 'cause that's not depressing! The whole game just left me feeling weird and unsettled. If you don't think about any of the implications of what you're doing, though, it's a fun, cute little game, a lot like the Oracle games. I found it much harder than those, though that might have been because I was much younger and less experienced of a gamer when I played this one. I will say that the music in this game is fantastic. I used to go to the square where Marin stands around singing the Ballad of the Wind Fish, and just sit there to let that tune soothe me.

9. Twilight Princess On paper, this one should be one of my favorites, because it seems like one of the games that hits closest to my ideal of what a Zelda game should be, with an epic fantasy story and the fundamental elements of Link going to the castle to rescue Princess Zelda from Ganondorf. But the reason this goes so far down on my list is that I was expecting it to be that ideal, and it fell really short of the mark, so the disappointment was much worse than games like SS, where it didn't look much like my ideal at all, so I wasn't expecting it to be. The concept of Link turning into a wolf is really cool, and I do like how the Twilight Realm is kind of like the Dark World, but distinctly different. Midna is probably the second-best companion; I like how snarky she can be, and she gets more backstory than most companions do. The climax is pretty cool, and I love how Zelda actually takes part in the battle - until SS blew it out of the water, I might have said TP had the best final showdown. There were also some cool new items - the Spinner being my favorite. But I really didn't like the drab color scheme that made everything look the same sort of muddy brown. Instead of beautiful, fantastical locations, everything just kind of blurs together in my mind, till I can barely remember any of it. I also couldn't stand most of the NPCs, who were either annoying, ugly, or both. None of the music was memorable except for melodies they reprised from previous games, and in some cases (like Kakariko Village) they made it so much worse I wish they'd done something completely different instead. And don't even get me started on the awful off-key howling you have to do! When you compare it to the beautiful tunes you can play on the ocarina or the harp…. Yeah, I was mostly just disappointed with this game and never want to play it again.

10. The Legend of Zelda/The Adventure of Link I probably shouldn't even put these on the list, because I never got anywhere close to beating them, but I have played some of them, and the reason I stopped was because I realized I didn't like them at all. I appreciate what they gave us, because if not for the success of these two games, none of the ones I love would exist. But…I just find NES-era games to be practically unplayable, sorry :/ The graphics look really ugly to me, and the gameplay is too clunky. It's gotta be SNES-era or later.

[mass-effort]

i just want christmas to come so i can drown my sorrows in zelda botw

[alligaytorrr-official]

Top 3 Games of 2017

I'd do a top five but that makes choosing even harder. Anyway here's an entirely predictable list, because I like talking:

3. Sonic Mania - This one's short: it's just an absolute blast. The music's unbelievably fun, it looks stunning, and to have a Sonic game designed as perfectly as Sonic 3 & Knuckles is as wonderful as a million other people have already written about. It's such a labor of love and it shows through every bit of it.

2. Night in the Woods - Any year without a game as incredible as my GOTY, this would be number one for sure. I followed the production for years and the supplemental games released ahead of time set extremely high expectations, and when the day finally came to play it it was everything I could have asked for. It's a gorgeous game to look at and to listen to, but the writing is the shining gem of it. Side characters are fully realized and charming and every day in-game I got as much pleasure from interacting with them around town as I did advancing the main plot. The main characters are written so naturally as to be anybody I could've made friends with in real life, and that's really what makes the game so special; it feels like I've lived it all despite that, obviously, I haven't. It's an incredible, genuine story of being mentally ill, lost, queer(!), hopeless, hopeful. It honestly helped me find meaning in myself and inspired me to reexamine my mental health - it's that well written. It's helped me stay alive this year, and I can't think of a better testament to how artful and impactful video games can be.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - OBVS this was gonna be it like literally everyone else's list. Quite possibly the best game I've ever played. I like open worlds just fine, but I was doubtful Nintendo would fill it with enough worthwhile material to make it effective, and somehow they went above and beyond what I ever thought an open world game could achieve. Every single inch of that massive world is packed with interest. Every time you think, "I wonder what would happen if..." the game has something for you. It's endlessly clever and impressive that the developers seem to have thought of literally every possible idea a player would have and designed the game to meet every expectation and to reward them for thinking outside of the box. I sank nearly 100 hours just about nonstop over spring break into this game and it kept me enamored for every last second. It's really an unparalled masterpiece.

Honorable Mention - Metroid: Samus Returns - A solid game and an excellent evolution of a series that hardly needed improvement in the first place. I loved seeing Samus back on my screen and super hope that when it happens again it's as good as this.