My Blog n' Stuff

25/F You'll find Zelda, bees, art, games, and anything that makes me laugh at 2 AM here

[shalottpress]

Advent by @clara-aeri

Advent by @clara-aeri is another one of my favourite zelink fanfic that I have been binding alongside my copy of Roots. It features a Zelda and Link figuring out their roles and place in the world post BotW and how Zelda in particular is coping with the weight of her role moving into the future. Its full of angst, hurt/comfort and brings me such joy. I am so thrilled to have created a physical copy for my personal collection.

The bind itself is Lurelin Village themed, given that a significant amount of the story takes place these. I had picked the endpapers and decided on the vibes I was going for quite a few months ago, and this means I have been on the hunt for art of Link and Zelda at Lurelin for months! On my hunt I found this @eerna art of the pair in the sea at Lurelin Village and I once again knew this was the one for the cover. The fact we can't see their faces just works so well for the story inside. Again huge, huge thanks to @eerna for giving me permission to use of the art. Also, if it wasn't clear already, I live laugh love how @eerna depicts Link and Zelda together in all of her art, please check her stuff out if you haven't already.

I am completely in love with this typeset, and really proud of how it all came together in the end. The sheikah symbols mirror the UK text and I enjoyed being able to bring part of the ways the fic was edited on ao3, like the spaces between letters in the same word and using these sections as break points in the book, and to translate this into my typeset.

I didn't case this as well as I would have liked and the fact that the title on the spine is not quite central is frustrating but something I have to live with at this point.

Once again, massive thanks to @clara-aeri for giving me permission to bind advent and to edit my copy to be an edition that uses UK spelling!

More pictures and a video below the cut.

[clara-aeri]

This is absolutely stunning. I’m completely speechless, thank you so much for making this binding. The bindings you do are such a work of art TRULY, and I am so grateful to see this!!! 😭

[shalottpress]

Party of Two is a truly excellent smutty botw zelink fanfiction by @omegazeta5, and I was so happy to bind it into a wee quarto. This story features a Zelda and Link who are renegotiating their relationship post the calamity, and his amnesia, and also most importantly they are horny. Chefs kiss, I loved every word.

I was inspired by the meal Zelda prepares and the assistance Link begrudgingly provides for the chillies hence the peppers on the back, also this is a spicy fic and so I felt it worked well multiple ways.

My casing skills remain abysmal and maybe that will just be my calling card at this point.

The vinyl did not burn or melt particularly which I am counting as a win!

Many thanks to @omegazeta5 for giving me permission to bind this fanfic and for allowing me to edit my copy to be an edition that uses UK spelling!

More photos and a video under the cut.

[clara-aeri]

oh my god im so glad you’re back, roots is the fic that first pulled me into this space and i was just so blown away. i love your writing so much and i can’t wait to read everything you write in the future!

Thank youuu!! You are all too kind 😭 this fic was what pulled me into the fanfiction space, and I am eternally grateful I started the thing on a whim. Everyone in the community is wonderful and so creative

[shalottpress]

Roots by clara-aeri

Roots by @clara-aeri is one of the fanfics which made me decide I needed to learn to bind books. It's one of my absolute favourite botw fanfictions and if you haven't read it, what are you doing? It is out of this world, stop looking at this and go and read it! I am obsessed with this version of Link and Zelda and their relationship, and how link slowly recalls their relationship over the story.

I have been working on this bind for since August last year. I had been struggling to find a fitting cover since 2024 and to find the courage to use my guillotine on it. I am so pleased with the final result.

There were lots of first in this bind. It's a chonk of a fic clocking in at just under 250k words which meant I needed to split it into two volumes in the end. I learned how to make my own bookcloth so I could use the beautiful concept Artwork of the Master Sword released to celebrate Breath of the Wild's one-year anniversary for the cover. I made my own headbands and endbands using the bookcloth on the spine. All in all I am so proud of how far I have come with binding when I look at the finished volumes.

I made some mistakes like the title pages with the small lizard I used for breaks in different places, but because the lizard gets higher between vol 1 and vol 2 and I had intentionally reversed the image so the lizard was looking a different way for vol 2, I have decided it is that the lizard is meant to have climbed higher between the volumes.

I love the chapter headings and how the typeset came out it makes me so happy.

Video is before the cut because I think these binds are best in motion with the shiny gold vinyl. I was inspired that I wanted it to look like sunlight coming through the trees in the korok forest.

Huge thanks to @clara-aeri for giving me permission to bind this fic and to edit my copy to be an edition that uses UK spelling!

More pictures below the cut.

[clara-aeri]

This is absolutely one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. Thank you so much for your hard work and kind words, I’m stunned and so happy to have seen it!!! 😭😭

[shalottpress]

Finally settled on the chapter heading design for Roots and she is so so satisfying to me.

And I have a wee lizard as the screen breaks in honour of all the lizards that end up unceremoniously in elixirs throughout the story.

Typesetting is my favourite part of this process now, hands down.

[clara-aeri]

I just wanted to say how much I love your writing style!! I've been following your works for the last couple of years and I'm always so floored by your interpretations of the characters/story. How do you come up with such unique ideas?? Where does the inspo come from??

Hello I am late to answering this but thank you very much you’re too kind!

My non serious answer is years of reading Seraphim themed romance novels in high school that did something to my brain chemistry.

A more serious answer is every idea I have starts out with some kind of visual in my head. It’s also about the vibes of things.

Roots literally started when I listened to the first soundtrack of the 25th anniversary orchestra for Zelda. I was always drawn to the grandiose imagery of what would have been Hyrule before the calamity so the music made me think of a lot of scenes of soldiers and sprawling fields with little Link between them. Somewhere in the song there was a bit that inspired Zelda’s guardian from chapter 4. Only in my head she activated it in an open courtyard at night rather than inside a cave lol.

But yeah. Any idea I have starts with visual imagery. I then look for music that matches the vibe I would want the fic to have. For Undertow the first two images I ever had were Zelda kneeling in a rose garden and then the Lynel with the hydrangea flowers. Lots of flowers for that one. Then I found “Little Letters” by Paper Aeroplanes and chapters 1-14 of Undertow came to me after listening to it repeatedly. 😅

(How the characters themselves come out is probably thanks to my own sensibilities. I always had a soft spot for angry pouty boy characters with a heart of gold and then really mischievous but enigmatic girls.)

The actual story boarding always comes back to music though. “Ghost of a King” by the Gray Havens inspired Crown.

“Which Witch” by Florence and the Machine started Advent.

“The Blinding” by Florence and the Machine started A Bolt from the Blue. And so on.

TL;DR I run off vibes and listen to music that fits said vibe. I then base the story off of whatever visuals come to me. It’s a little backwards.

ANYWAY thank you for asking! I hope that made sense lol!

[clara-aeri]

Hey, there! I just wanted to drop in and ask if "The Undertow" is still going to get updates? It's totally okay if it isn't. I hope my asking doesn't seem rude or pressuring! I'm just such a huge fan of you and the story (all of your stories, really!), and I'm quite curious!

Hello!! I had one or two asks totally slip past me so please excuse my late reply 😭

You are not rude or pressuring at all! I am so happy to hear you enjoy Undertow so much. It is most definitely not discontinued, but for the sake of remaining focused on one project at a time, it’s in line behind Crown.

(Technically I DO have the next chapter of Undertow mostly completed 😅 I may wind up posting that soon since it would be easy, but I likely will not continue full updates until Crown is finished. I really hate leaving things undone so I always make it a point to finish things eventually. Otherwise the idea haunts me forever)

[viria]

a dream

[charbies]

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn

If I had an orchard, I'd work 'till I'm sore

[jinaxxo]

Zelda and Link as "The Shadow" (1909), Edmund Blair Leighton

[clara-aeri]

I'M SO HAPPY YOU ARE BACK!!!! Can't wait for your next update of Crown & Undertow!!

AWW thank you!! 19 pages of Crown’s 4th chapter are edited!! ((In case anyone missed it the 3rd chapter is out. Yay!))

I’m so glad I can finally read other people’s fics again too. I have a few I am itching to get back to 👹

[clara-aeri]

Not trying to pry or pressure you or anything like that. Just out of curiosity, is Crown discontinued?

Hi! This past year has been nuts, a lot’s happened that’s kept me offline completely and from fanfiction.

HOWEVER recently my schedule has changed and I’ve started working on Crown consistently! 😄 I am excited to share more soon!

[clara-aeri]

Love how you handled the different Zeldas in your Advent fic. And how you write Link in Rootsverse, it's exactly how I see him in this era. Do you have any thoughts about the other Links in other games? How they compare/contrast with botw/totk's Link?

Oh thank you!! 😊 Glad to hear that!!!

Boy do I have thoughts.

I guess- I should say that the way I wrote Link in Roots is definitely not how I’d imagine him to be in cannon. If only because I feel Nintendo values the self-insert aspect of the Zelda games too much to let the character stray very far from the “stoic hero” archetype. If anything, the Link I wrote in Undertow is the most similar to how I’d imagine his canon self to be- largely just due to how he doesn’t outright reject his responsibilities (pre calamity at least. I do subscribe to the idea that he’s much louder and funnier after losing his memories).

Agh- but anyway lol see my rambling below.

Starting with Ocarina of Time (OoT), that version of Link is definitely sadder than the others. He had a pretty good childhood, but his adult life fell apart in much more profound ways than the others’. He’d be as quiet as pre calamity botw Link. There might be a hint of the mischievous fairy kid still left in him, but very little. Lots of longing and disillusioned feelings that would maybe be best replicated in pre calamity Botw Link, yeah?

As for Twilight Princess (TP) Link, he’s a country guy 110%. I imagine he’d be too restless to go back to farming though- not after the world got so big. I assume he’d be a great guy to talk to, best with kids/animals, probably one of the most well adjusted after all his trials and a good pen pal to Zelda. He wouldn’t be as lively after losing Midna, definitely, but he’s doing leagues better than OoT Link. Probably has a much more dry, sarcastic sense of humor than Botw Link’s “He has a dumb belly” absurdist comedy.

Wind Waker (WW) Link- at a glance I’d almost say he’d get along with Botw Link, but after more thought I think WW Link would despise him. Botw Link would willingly eat rocks or stuff himself in an explosive barrel for jokes, but WW Link would either have to be tricked or forced into it. He seems… high anxiety. But also irritable. He has the most common sense out of all the Links and that is probably exactly what his problem is. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that most animals would attack WW Link on sight because of his constant bad, exasperated energy.

As for Skyward Sword— lol I think he’s so funny. I think growing up with Zelda “the Goddess turned teenage girl” would have had an impact on him. By far he is the most stable, most extroverted version of Link, but I think there’s something about him that would make him unknowable. He’s so relaxed but upbeat at the same time, seems like he’s always up to something but nobody ever knows what since he’s always asleep. He doesn’t have a thought in his head but he’s so perceptive too just- he’s just odd. But cool. Botw Link’s extreme stoicism pre calamity and crazy behavior post calamity would both stand out a lot next to SS Link. Yet his relationship with Botw Zelda most closely resembles SS Link’s with his own.

I’m not very familiar with the other 3DS Links etc so I can’t say much about them. These are also the vibes I get from how I remember all these Links after 10 years of not playing their games, so I could be wrong in how I’ve described them for sure.

Lol either way thank you for asking! I was a fun question to think about! It makes me want to write a reverse Advent featuring all of them ugh 😭😂

[clara-aeri]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Finally finished!! We’re on to chapter 3 of Crown now.

[clara-aeri]

Do you have any preference in POV? Link, Zelda, or something else? Ps. Your latest work is AMAZING

Ooooooof, this is a hard one. I enjoy Link a lot because I get to write some very flat humorous prose to match his soldier personality. But I have grown a soft spot for Zelda because she lets me write more flowery and also has a lot of baggage and grim memories that are perfect for angst 😂

But I wound up so used to Link’s POV after Roots that it definitely comes out more naturally lol and I prefer to default to it when I’m not feeling up to tons of editing, at least the specific way I interpret his character. I’ve seen some people interpret him to be much more sensitive and thoughtful instead of “bokoblin kill 👹” which is just as valid.

(If anything I’d love to emulate the way @jenseits-der-sterne portrays him in her work “Before and After” on Ao3 which is wonderful and everyone should read it. I would be using that POV nonstop if knew how to write in second person lol!)

But thank you!! I’m so happy to hear that 😭 I hope that answers your question!

[clara-aeri]

FIANCÉE?????? OP I FEEL FAINT

[clara-aeri]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

🕺