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rynlingI have apparently fallen off the "you need to quit playing Elden Ring" wagon, and I can already feel myself gravitating toward another hundred-hour playthrough. I'm so into Elden Ring that just playing Elden Ring isn't enough, and I also want to try to finish Dark Souls. Before I start again on that mess, I decided to briefly return to Breath of the Wild just to beat it and get the little star next to my save file.
Six years later, I find most of the voice acting in Breath of the Wild to be a bit cringe, so I've been skipping through the cutscenes. Still, the (mercifully wordless) scene at the end where Zelda confronts Ganon is fucking amazing. Goddamn. It's so good. It is so, so good.
The imagery and cinematography alone are great, but what really makes this scene special is that you (the player) have just fought Ganon, and he's a nightmare. This is a Zelda boss, so he's survivable, but still. You need a lot of resources for him not to one-shot you right off the bat, and he looks and sounds creepy as hell. When he turns into Dark Beast Ganon, that fight isn't difficult, but there's a lot of shock and awe. Having just sweated through this horrible boss fight, it's so cool to see Zelda snap her fingers and be like, Not today motherfucker.
Watching that scene again last night inspired me to reread the first half of my Zelda/Ganon Breath of the Wild Modern AU fic novel Malice, and holy shit. It's... actually really good?? Like, how did I write this???
The first five or six chapters are rough, but then the story finds its legs and gets progressively better with each successive chapter. It's got everything: good pacing, cliffhangers, a steady drip of interesting reveals, decent one-liners, sexual tension, evocative but not overwhelming descriptions, snappy conversations that don't overstay their welcome, and a stability and consistency of plot. And then there are some passages that are just downright beautiful. Like again, how did I write this?
I mean, I know how. I was living in DC and going back and forth to New York, and occasionally Los Angeles and London as well. I was meeting a ton of people and having a lot of experiences; and, despite the mounting harassment from my department chair that was slowly driving me to the verge of a breakdown, I was doing really well at my job and starting to receive serious recognition for my work. I myself am not "money and power" by any means, but that's what I was surrounded by, and that's what I wanted to write about. And then, on top of that, I lived in Washington DC, which meant that I could take long walks through what is easily (to my eyes at least) the most beautiful city in the world while thinking about the story I wanted to tell.
All of that vanished when I was denied tenure during the pandemic. It's gone, and I'm never going to get it back.
Damn. It's wild to think that what might be the best thing I will ever write in my life is a fucking Legend of Zelda fanfic novel. Wild, and a little depressing.
Six years later, I find most of the voice acting in Breath of the Wild to be a bit cringe, so I've been skipping through the cutscenes. Still, the (mercifully wordless) scene at the end where Zelda confronts Ganon is fucking amazing. Goddamn. It's so good. It is so, so good.
The imagery and cinematography alone are great, but what really makes this scene special is that you (the player) have just fought Ganon, and he's a nightmare. This is a Zelda boss, so he's survivable, but still. You need a lot of resources for him not to one-shot you right off the bat, and he looks and sounds creepy as hell. When he turns into Dark Beast Ganon, that fight isn't difficult, but there's a lot of shock and awe. Having just sweated through this horrible boss fight, it's so cool to see Zelda snap her fingers and be like, Not today motherfucker.
Watching that scene again last night inspired me to reread the first half of my Zelda/Ganon Breath of the Wild Modern AU fic novel Malice, and holy shit. It's... actually really good?? Like, how did I write this???
The first five or six chapters are rough, but then the story finds its legs and gets progressively better with each successive chapter. It's got everything: good pacing, cliffhangers, a steady drip of interesting reveals, decent one-liners, sexual tension, evocative but not overwhelming descriptions, snappy conversations that don't overstay their welcome, and a stability and consistency of plot. And then there are some passages that are just downright beautiful. Like again, how did I write this?
I mean, I know how. I was living in DC and going back and forth to New York, and occasionally Los Angeles and London as well. I was meeting a ton of people and having a lot of experiences; and, despite the mounting harassment from my department chair that was slowly driving me to the verge of a breakdown, I was doing really well at my job and starting to receive serious recognition for my work. I myself am not "money and power" by any means, but that's what I was surrounded by, and that's what I wanted to write about. And then, on top of that, I lived in Washington DC, which meant that I could take long walks through what is easily (to my eyes at least) the most beautiful city in the world while thinking about the story I wanted to tell.
All of that vanished when I was denied tenure during the pandemic. It's gone, and I'm never going to get it back.
Damn. It's wild to think that what might be the best thing I will ever write in my life is a fucking Legend of Zelda fanfic novel. Wild, and a little depressing.
