#lmao the lost chapter of pinesong...

[ghirahimbo]

For the writer ask game: 13, 17, 18, 27?

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

HATE writing about myself—profiles, bios, etc. Impossible. LOVE writing inciting events. Very easy.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Ha ha, so I knew where I wanted the last BBN chapter I posted to end up, but I had a very hard time getting there? Anyway, these were all my various attempts at writing it 🤣

There's not necessarily huge variation between all of the files, but I played a lot with the idea that Link and/or Ghirahim, or possibly the reader, could still hear Zelda speaking to various degrees (lol hence the file names). In one version, Ghirahim and Zelda were basically able to converse while Link refused to "acknowledge" it. Wrote another that was the same, but the reader didn't get to see what she said. In another, Zelda’s voice would only come through in fragments, usually pre-flicker where Link’s mind was trying to churn through some idea that challenged reality. I stuck with the idea for too long, tbh, probably because it made aspects of exposition easier, and there were bits of the writing that I liked? But it kept turning the chapter into a big old Ghirahim-Zelda fight/debate, even when I tried limiting her presence, and cut out the tension of wondering what had happened to Zelda. Anyway, the focus in that segment really needed to be Link and Ghirahim’s interactions, which couldn't develop unhindered with Zelda chiming in, so I had to cut it out :')

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

I don't know if stressful is the right word, but I think Link from BBN just because there's so much to keep in mind? Trying to balance Link's levels of internalized ableism without carrying it too far or making the narrative itself ableist... trying to determine what Link could realistically do, and what he might need help with... trying to not accidentally write visual descriptions from his point of view 😂

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end.

Sooo Pinesong almost went in a very different direction, with Revali's restlessness leading him to go pick a fight with a Lynel, break his one bow he brought along, and experience a series of events that led him to remembering his own death? :') It wasn't that it was a bad direction, necessarily, and some of it was fun writing, but I realized that I wanted Pinesong to have a softer tone overall, so I scrapped it... all 4500 words :') In hindsight, this might be why some chapters take so long to finish 😭

Anyway, I just rediscovered the file that has that version written out (titled "Pinesong Chapter 5 Dramatic Version") so maybe you read a few excerpts and see for yourself how it changed XD

--

Progress at the Flight Range had finally stalled, coming first in inches and then not at all, and though Revali told himself there must be unavoidable mortal limits to what anyone could attain, he knew that his focus had become fractured, scattered to the winds by the very Hylian who had inspired it in the first place. Harth had accepted the broken pieces of his Great Eagle Bow with no mention that he’d ever seen them before, saying only that he would try to have a new one finished soon. Link had vanished into the wilds without a word of where he might go next, unreachable to Revali even had he wanted to find him—which of course, he did not—and the princess sent out no new invitations. It was as if the world itself were advising him to wait, to hold on, to be still… but Revali had never liked waiting, and refused to sit still.

Day after day, Revali wandered further from the familiar cold updrafts of his home, his Falcon Bow set securely against his back and his quiver bursting with arrows. All he needed was some reminder that his training was not without purpose, that he was worth more than his ability to pilot an old machine that he could no longer even stand to look at… but as he’d halfway feared, those scattered enemy camps he’d seen tucked away in the mountains and canyons were long since gone, with only the vacant, skull-shaped rocks and eerily empty forts left to prove that they had existed at all. The only “battles” he managed to find against straggling monsters barely deserved the term, though that didn’t mean he gave up his search. Stubbornly, he persisted, setting up camp in the frigid Hebra Mountains and no longer bothering to return for the night. Teba might have taken him up on his offer to train at the Flight Range, or even moved in there for all he knew or cared. He’d had enough of those stationary targets—it was time for something more.

The Lynel he stumbled across by accident, no matter what Teba would accuse him of later, although his first reaction upon spotting it was relief. Revali almost blundered straight into the creature while rounding the northmost edge of Hebra’s mountains leading into the Tabantha snowfields, but an unnatural stillness in the air made him halt just in time, taking quick shelter in a copse of trees as he spotted it prowling the frozen tundra, its enormous club in hand. Few animals were foolish enough to make their homes anywhere near a Lynel’s domain, and his surroundings were so silent that each careful breath he took rang painfully loud in his ears. Luckily, it seemed the hulking beast had not spotted him yet. If it had, Revali was certain he would know.

“So, Link missed one, eh?” he muttered to himself in satisfaction, heart racing as he eyed the creature’s silver coat and vividly violet stripes. Fear would have been the logical reaction to coming across a silver-maned Lynel, but instead, Revali found himself grinning. It had been a long time. “Typical.”

--

“Oh, I’ll be fine.” A soft snow had started to fall, but Rito were made to withstand the cold… for a little while. At least he would have plenty of ice to pack against his wounds. “I’ll just be sitting here dying.”

“I didn’t mean I would leave you here, idiot,” Teba grunted, standing to bend over, and before Revali could so much as protest, he’d been lifted up and draped across Teba’s back. “I’ll die myself before I leave you bleeding in the snow.”

He wanted to ask why Teba cared one way or the other, but suspected it might be taken the wrong way.

“That was a sharp descent from ‘master’ to ‘idiot,’” he said instead, and with his head resting almost on Teba’s shoulder, he could see Teba smirk.

“Would ‘master idiot’ be preferable?”

“Tempting.” Revali leaned forward with a sign, shifting so his wing wouldn’t be jostled. “I’d really just prefer Revali.”

--

“Revali!” Link called out as soon as he’d materialized, immediately catching sight of Revali’s fire and running towards it. Resigned, Revali leaned back against the cold stone. He should have been surprised, he thought, but somehow he was not.

“I had a feeling it would be you,” he sighed as Link approached. “Of course, making me wait all night seems a bit… indulgent.”

A vaguely out of reach memory and the expression on Link’s face made him wonder if he’d said something similar before.