#then conclude it with a critique of totk?

[succliberation]

The thing that no one ever tells you about writing video essays is how much shit you need to talk about before you can talk about the thing you want to talk about.

Like, even if I say something simple like 'there's too many pointless collectibles in totk', I have to sit down and really think about what that means. Are all optional collectibles in video games pointless, because they don't advance the main plot? Should every collectible be made non-optional in order to give them meaning? Is there such a thing as 'too many collectibles' in an open world game, because the player can guide their own experience and choose not to collect them if they don't want them? Is adding a side quest to collect non-optional collectibles good game design, or bad game design, or does it depend? Is it good that some collectibles have side-quests, and some don't? Going back to my critique, is it just something that's my subjective opinion? Or is it something that I can use 'facts and logic' to talk about what causes my feelings?

Idk, it feels like I could make a whole short video about the point of collectibles in video games before I even start making ONE SINGLE POINT in talking about totk lmao.

[aeghina]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @a-little-bit-of-ravioli

1. How many works do you have on A03?

31! Wow! Not even counting my FF.net and Spirit (portuguese site) fics too. I think adding them would be around 50? I know for sure I have much more than that in my drive.

2. What's your total A03 word count?

739.765 Whaaaaat? That's so many! And it's mostly the ones I write in english!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Inuyasha, Katekyo Hitman Reborn, My Hero Academia and Legend of Zelda, more specifically LU!

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

A Link in a chain . My first LU fic! My baby <3 Modern day, soulmate marking and platonic soulmates. The main focus is Wild getting to know them, then Legend accepting the others and finally Spirit joining them.

All Might said 'No'. This was a prompt for a MHA server and I had a lot of fun! All Might is the literal quirk, like a ghost protecting the Midoriyas.

Alpha and Omega. That was a challenge! In almost every way possible. Omegaverse, Toshinko

Merman. Also from a prompt. Merperson au, Toshinko.

Soul clock. Also from a prompt. Soulmate au where there's a clock counting down the time until you meet your soulmate. Toshinko and some platonic relationships mentioned too

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always! I love to receive comments. Even key-smashing make my day a lot better when I check the email

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably The Sacred Trees. It's more like a happy ending with heavy consequences. I live for happy ending, not sorry about that. They will suffer but they will be happy eventually.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

All of them? I'd dare say the happiest was Took You Long Enough, a Midlink reunion during LU and then afterwards. From the concluded, that's the happiest one but there's an even better one coming from a different fic not posted yet :D

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not recently, but I did in the Inuyasha and Katekyo fandom! I usually say a simple "thank you for your critique" because this usually throw people off enough that they leave me alone.

9. Do you write smut?

No! There's some heavily implied things, but nothing graphic or very descriptive (by very heavily, I'm counting the omegaverse fic too; I liked the concept but wanted something with less sex)

10. Do you write crossovers?

Not oftenly, but yes! The last one I wrote was a MHA and LU crossover when the brain was divided between them.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Once! The person copied one of my biggest series in portuguese, changed the name of the characters and some physical descriptions but it was basically the same. I asked them to put down, but had to dm some of the site's admin to make sure it was deleted.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Once by a friend from the MHA fandom and they encouraged me a lot to write more in english and give it a try. I'm here now so thanks to her!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! It will never see the light of day though, but my bestie and I created a whole novel about a couple and how the wife slowly got mad and then killed him in the end.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Hmm, that's too hard! I have many favorites!

Probably Zelink. LoZ is my old new obsession, it always go back and forth between the games as they are released or as I play again and the animes I'm watching. BotW and TotK gave me so much shipping material I'll be happily reading it until the next game is released.

A close second would be Kyoya/Chrome from KHR. I just love their dynamic, specially when they help each other to grow (and Mukuro being a gremlin jealous older sibling, that's the cherry on top)

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

A fanfic for the Grand Chase game when I played it. Ryan almost dies when they cross a desert, Ronan is sent to another world and needs to complete some quests to do that (he's my fav alright? I just needed a reason to send him to another world and do quests by himself, maybe question his faith and all that). I wrote maybe 30k? The idea is lovely and taunts me from a distance but I've never come back to writing it

16. What are your writing strengths?

A very good question... I'd say creating AUs. I love world building and leaving small details that have significance for the story later, I think I do an okay job at balacing dialogue and descriptions. My beta says I'm good at leaving crumbles in the story to solve the problem in the end too

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Punctuation in any language! Ugh, I just love commas sooooo much!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

English punctuation doesn't make much sense for me until now! I'm relying heavily on the corrector and trying to read more to see if I can absorb the info.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Inuyasha!

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

I'm very self indulgent when writing so I like most of them. I'd say the longest time favorite in portuguese is Librarian, a Toshinko fic where Inko is the hero and Toshinori is a librarian she meets because her son is a book geek. In english is A Link in a chain.

Wow, that was a lot! Alright, lemme tag @musical-chan , @arecaceae175 and anyone else interested in doing! :D

[onesunofagun]

Hyrule in botw and totk seems to me to align most with LOZ 1/2 maps and there's like a weird Hyruleception style goose chase if you ever go hard down that rabbit hole of timelines maps + the extra materials in terms of interviews and the historia and art books. It's very fun and it's one of those cheeky loops that is very flexible and very much DESIGNED to be so, in my opinion. Cleverly, in fact.

Twilight Princess and the released texts around discussion of its geographical changes since OoT more or less confirm that Hyrule does change and shift in very unnatural, large scale ways-- to the point where it certainly isn't unreasonable to conclude, with everything I've scoured, to say that Hyrule itself is very much a shapeshifting thing that forms and reforms (to some absurd divine rule) roughly around the divine presence of Hylia herself.

Read: where there's Zelda, the land around her will slowly but surely transform into a Hyrule barring some serious Divine intervention.

That is the conclusion I have come to based on pretty much everything Nintendo has offered up in the matter to date, as the one they're probably running with right now. And from a design point, it makes sense because of the flexibility it helps to give them to tell the stories they want to without limitation.

To reduce the entirety of Zelda to retellings is, to me, something that feels incredibly ignorant of the way Japanese history is recorded and told, tbh, and how the mixture of myth and actual military history often intersect. We know in absolute certainty that this is a cycle which repeats, and so of course the elements are the same each time, but it's like a fully realised monogatari.

Instead of taking, as in the real world, the fictionalised additions to real events as a vehicle for an overall lesson, say, Zelda merely proposes these tales in a fantastical setting in which those things actually are part of reality.

A little gripe, also:

I'm not that chill with the current propensity for good theory and analysis being dismissed as the sheer injection of fans and headcanon, instead of being treated as something both dissected and discovered?

I see so many bad faith takes by western fans on the Zelda Devs 'not intending' design elements. Even stuff that is deeply rooted cues from in Japanese culture and spiritualism, or things that have a clear reference point for those who have more context or are familiar with certain cues or subjects.

Like I'm high key aware of the narrative shift since skyward sword taking a much harder throughline with much less philosophical ambiguity, and for that, my preference lies with Aonuma's direction over Fujibayashi. I have many critiques on the direction of the overall core story and choices made. But I recognise what is intentional through the Japanese lens of conception and design, even if some of it isn't my cup of tea.

it is wild to me that people could look at something like... Heck, the architectural shift in Ocarina of time between the Romanesque Castle and Temple of Time being replaced/challenged by Ganon's tower-- in all of its unapologetic GOTHIC styling-- and dismiss that the team behind these games understands that subtext and intends for it to be there for the thematic impact. There is a real world cue and recognition to inform that decision. It would be a pretty big stretch to say that's a coincidence, to me, but it's an example of something you could easily see a post analyse in a clear and revealing way, only for the first comment to be like 'oh, if only the Devs ACTUALLY meant to do that'.

It's okay to be disappointed by a conclusion or overall direction, but seriously, the Zelda team and especially their conceptual frameworks are much richer than a lot of people seem willing to grant.

I'll admit a lot of my personal darlings of Zelda probably end up on the cutting room floor, these days, but I can see they weren't absent in the process.

Anyway TL;dr I fully am of the opinion that the Devs enjoy the sandbox more than some fans themselves seem to and like. Besties it's intended to be this way. This is Zelda. Op and those tags are 100%

Gotta say, I don't like all the theories that botw/totk are the only canon games/everything else is a retelling