K.K. Love Song & K.K. Ballad by socksock/@airplanned
This pair of fanfics are a love in the time of covid x animal crossing romance and the story is just absolutely delightful. Zelda saves Hyrule from covid and Link doesn't know where to put his fish market. It sounds like a bizarre crossover, but just trust me: I have never played animal crossing and find the memory of the first year of the pandemic traumatic af, but I was still completely charmed by this story. I was probably not the target audience for this one, but was suckered in anyway.
This bind was actually finished a while ago but I couldn't post it as I had also bound a copy for my friend who loves animal crossing and loz for their Christmas gift and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. Now she has it and I am free to share!
The gorgeous art on the front and back cover was done by @madocaito who was just awesome and I love both of the pictures so much.
As always, a massive thanks to @airplanned for giving me permission to bind this series into a wee book, and to edit my copy to be an edition that uses UK spelling!
Was there anything good at the plot conference yesterday or today?
I've been ridiculously busy this weekend so I've only gotten to watch three talks so far:
Introduction to the Summit and FAQ
- Daniel David Wallace
This was actually a nice talk, he had a nice bit starting with Kurt Vonnegut's "Make your characters want something right away, even if it's only a glass of water," and that the character's focus should stay on that desire, even after the inciting incident/upending of the status quo. So if a guy starts the story wanting to take his kids to Disney World, but then suddenly gets super powers, he isn't going to suddenly drop that desire to go fight super villains. His primary desire is still taking his kids to Disney World. And if he must be put face to face with his villain early on, have it be while he's trying to get tickets at the travel agency.
Murdering Your Masterpiece
- Maryrose Wood
This was a great one for me. I love her talks anyway so I was excited for it even before I heard it. It had lots of words of wisdom and was very real, and I think we all felt called out lol. The talk was about the story that we've poured our heart and soul into for 10 years, and how sunk cost fallacy can the better of us, and sometimes those masterpieces just need to be murdered. She had really practical ways to overcome those mental/emotional hurtles and to tell if the piece is salvageable. One of my favorite bits was: Do you have a Story, or do you have Pages?
Three Essential Elements for a Compelling Character Arc
- Megan Fuentes
I enjoyed this one too (though I found the speaker's word whiskery delivery to be a bit distracting). The premise was basic: The Wound leads to the Wrong Belief which will eventually be replaced by the Right Belief. But I felt like a lot of the connective tissue she put in was meaningful, like how the Wrong and Right belief should be an inverse pair, how a villain with a character arc is someone who has the opportunity to change their Wrong Belief like the hero does but chooses not to, and to fearlessly use references (e.g., archetypes and the Emotional Wound Thesaurus).
So yeah, so far so good! Best talks from yesterday as voted for by the people: Murdering Your Masterpiece by Mary Rosewood, What Literary Agents Look for in a Manuscript by Christina Strasbourg, and How to Turn Your First Chapter into a Page-Turning "Micro Story" by Lewis Jorstad.
I did spring for the paid pass, so I'll get back to you on if any others were particularly mind-blowing once I sit down and watch them all (and I may or may not also be downloading all the talks and stuffing them on a Google drive for easier access, lmk if you'd like that link).
Before and After: what scene did you write first? And What did you learn?
Yesssss.... Okay.
So... before I answer question “What scene did you write first?”, I should explain that I went into starting “Before and After” with three semi-related goals:
1. 2nd person POV
2. Smut 😅
3. Link doesn't remember anything except for the memories
Goal #1 was inspired by a BOTW Zelink oneshot I'd read ages ago called "memory 9.5: something similar". This story has always... stuck with me in an interesting way because I don't think I'd really read much 2nd person POV before that? I'd thought it was a cool POV to dive into and I just liked the vibe that that oneshot conveyed.
Goal #2 and #3 were tied together in my head at the time. It really was a very juvenile prompt that I gave myself: "what would it take for there to be zelink smut the night after they defeat the Calamity" + “oh and Link doesn’t remember anything beyond the memories”? That is a little embarrassing to admit, but my silly prompt did get me to sit down and write, so that’s something!
My thought process was this: if Link remembered nothing, then how would they get to smut the very first night after defeating the Calamity? The only way I could reason at the time was that they would have needed to have had some prior relationship together before the Calamity that Zelda remembered and he didn’t. My thought before I started writing was that she'd push them towards the smut. He’d be all surprised that Zelda wanted to be with him like that, but after some coaxing, he’d go along with it and then there’d be smut and emotions. It was going to be oneshot.
“What scene did you write first?”
I literally just started writing the first scene in chapter 1!
Link and Zelda have just defeated the Calamity, it’s on Hyrule Field right after she asks him “May I ask, do you really remember me?” As they’re hugging, Link is surprised because he realizes that he remembers her scent. That really confuses him because he wonders why he would remember this? This is his first hint that there’s a whole lot left for him to remember about both Zelda and himself.
“What did you learn?”
I think I’ll keep this answer scoped to the first scene/chapter. I learned a few things!
I learned that writing in second person POV is 1. possible for me to do and 2. that I like it. I remember in the first scene and through out the whole first chapter I was really pushing myself to not fall back on the same old sentence structures that I always use. I think writing in 2nd person really helped me to try out new things as I was writing. I think I learned more generally that it was a good thing to push myself to try new things because, hey, I might find that I like it!
The other thing I learned was that sometimes a prompt can be good to just get you writing, but that it’s okay to abandon the initial prompt if it’s not what you want to do anymore. I realized the story was going in a different direction.
It became apparent to me that I didn’t want to write smut even though that had been the prompt I’d given myself. I realized what I was writing was earnest in a way I hadn’t planned for it to be. I realized that Link and Zelda’s interactions were really sweet and confusing and fun and that I wanted to write more of the two of them in this style and premise. And then I started to get more and more ideas. I decided I should just roll with it and try my hand at my first multi-chapter.
And so that was that :) 130k+ words later and here we are.
I am working on the next chapter, and that’s been fun. I’m hoping for a Hateno montage of activities, but I’m not really sure how to do it just yet. Hopefully, I can have something soon, we’ll see! 🤞
-Yes I did used the Superhero!AU to talk about Super by @airplanned what of it?? 😂😂 Still stands as one of my favorites to read every now and then. 10/10 would recommend 👌🏾
-As a fandom I feel like we need to take in the fact that Walk to Remember is a great movie and to really draw out the parallels between Rapunzel and Jamie Sullivan
Silence by @airplanned is a lovely introspective fic where Zelda and Link have both been banished to the temple of time and begin an awkward friendship there under a vow of silence. I really loved the the worldbuilding around the religion and the description of daily life of the abbey. It is gentle and beautiful and I could rant about Zelda and Link's relationship in this story for ages. I'm so thrilled I have a copy for my physical collection now.
The beautiful art on the cover is done by @aquaticpal and perfectly illustrates the moonlight kiss from chapter two. Thank you so much for once again for giving me permission to use your art for this one-off personal edition!
My maths was slightly off as can clearly be seen on the cover, the border decorations do not go far enough over, which is annoying but not annoying enough for me to redo the whole cover. I am a recovering perfectionist and trying to practice the belief that done is better than perfect. I normally prefer more colours on my printed covers but this really suited the tone of the story.
Casing is never my friend and I will learn to live with it. I think I am actively getting worse at this point but that will not stop me making books!
Huge thanks to @airplanned for giving me permission to bind this fic and to edit my copy to be an edition that uses UK spelling!
