#kittmoon

[kittmoon]

In my first playthrough of Breath of the Wild, the first legitimately intriguing location I encountered after leaving the Great Plateau was

my first published article for @zeldauniverse!

super cool getting to know these people and work with them. Special thanks to @sarcasticmudkip for being my accountability buddy for getting this done alongside my application to be a columnist (I am LOOKING 👁👁)

[drsteggy]

Hey Stegg! I’m going around to some of my writer mutuals/favorite fic writers and asking about their favorite works! Just to spread a little fic writer hype :) Tell us about the best fic you’ve written and why it’s kickass! This could include anything, from developmental fun facts, to character stuff, to your writing process, to thematic-weaving coolness. Have at it! :D

I still think of myself as fairly new in this space, and while I try to write and post regularly, I definitely don’t have a big body of work just yet. I also don’t know if I’m a good judge of my own work. I did have a crappy relationship with my stats last summer, but I’ve mostly gotten over it and I really do try to write things that I want to write, so most of my stuff is pretty self indulgent.

Like. I did creative writing in high school, and undergrad, but it got set aside hard for a long time as I turned skills I had to written debates on blog posts and forums. I came to fic writing without much clue what to do-my studies were sciences and a lot of them, and whatever English classes I took were pretty much minimal. I did love to read, and I read a lot, but if you asked me how stories worked I really could not tell you very well. I still can’t. I recognize that I probably soaked up how I liked story arcs to go, and I knew when I felt cheated or baited and switched (looking at you, LOST and Game of Thrones) but I definitely feel like the dumb kid when I’m somewhere watching people talk about the nuts and bolts of things. So we are gonna go on about my favorite thing I’ve written, because it’s also almost all I’ve written.

So my favorite thing I’ve written is still Uneasy Lies the Chosen of Farore. When I started to really fixate on the Legend of Zelda, I first sought out fan art, and there’s so much gorgeous art. Art led to fic. I hadn’t read fanfic since the 90s when I was obsessing over The X Files.

I particularly liked how flexible canon seemed to be in the fandom. The story goes that the hero and the incarnation of Hylia reincarnate repeatedly, and not all of them got to be a game, right? That idea was so exciting. Surely, at some point, they were adults, maybe older adults, maybe characters I could relate to a bit better than teenagers. So I looked, and the best I could do was finding them in their early, maybe mid 20s. This was frustrating to me and I spent a lot of time wondering if I would be worthy, should I stumble upon a sword with a blue hilt and a strangely flipped cross guard and I decided that I was a lot more worthy than I would have been at sixteen or twenty-five and from there it was a pretty short journey to imagining what it would be like to take that hilt, and that’s pretty much the first chapter.

I’ve written about how the rest of the story came to be before, so I’ll try to not retread that ground. At the time this was going on, I was still sorting out a pretty turbulent and awful period of my own life, and while I was mostly on the other side, I was also still trying to fit it into the rest of my life and I dealt with a lot of it through that story. I half joke sometimes that this version of Link is very much a self insert. I feel like a lot of readers pick up on the parent stuff. But there’s other stuff too, because when I decided to turn my thousand word scene into an 88k fic, I decided to use the overall arc of the previous four or five years as a scaffold to hang stuff on.

I’m not gonna delve into personal stuff for me other than broad strokes. I think I generally made better choices in my life, for example, than Link does, but it did take a therapist to help me see why I made some choices the way I did. The Great Deku Tree and Impa both say things to Link that were said to me. Zelda does as well at some point. Each time that happens he does take a minute to think on it and changes a little bit, so that by the time he is at the end of the story, the guy he was at the beginning might not recognize him.

People often comment that they find this Link and Zelda very relatable and I’m glad they do. In the games, Link is supposed to be the slate your write your experience on as you go. He is supposed to just be an extension of the player, maybe more so in Breath of the Wild which was my intro to the franchise. I really love the journey he goes on from realizing he is a pretty hot mess, and how much his shit is not as together as he assumed, though he needed a big event to change things out of his control to see it, to where is much more emotionally grown up and has found a soft place to land with people he loves who love him back on equal footing.

I recognize my little AU seems a little weird at first, but I’ve enjoyed playing in it enough that I also ended up writing a series of side fics for it, and I still think about what might have happened before and after the sword, that I suspect there will probably be more. It’s definitely a work I’m really proud of, and it also helped bring me into a community of people I really like, too.

The art I commissioned for this fic is making rounds on Tumblr again today, for some reason. Someone reblogged it and a bunch of other people saw it for the first time. I like to think when someone reblog sit out of the blue it means than maybe they went and had a read, and I like having that thought. I’m glad I brought this thing into the world. 2020 sucked pretty hard but this fic probably would not exist if it hadn’t.

Thank you, @kittmoon for the ask. I really do like to talk about that fic.

[zeldaelmo]

hi hi!! I’m doing this cool thingy where I’m asking some of my favorite writers about their favorite works! This is your opportunity to share whatever you want about your favorite thing that you’ve written, including cool thematic stuff, planning for the work, or fun facts you’d like to tell us about. Pop off! :))

Kittmoon, this is so cool! I feel very, very honored, both by the fact that you thought of me and when I see whom you sent this ask as well!

So, uh, the favorite fic of mine. They have all grown on me because I'm a relatively slow writer and always spend a lot of time with a fic. But if I have to choose one I'll go with strangers in the night.

Before I began that piece, I had only written two little fics so far, and I daydreamed about writing again. All my ideas were close to canon or at least in the universe of botw. I wondered how on earth would people come up with ideas for a modern AU? (Now that thought didn't age well. 😂) And since I was at a playground with my kids, I figured, maybe it would be cool to write Zelink as parents. I’ve rarely seen that as a major part of a story. 

So, I tried to think of scenarios that could be worth to be explored. What about one of them has a kid when they meet and they grow together with time? Hm. Not that bad, but a little boring. So, what if it's their kid but one of them doesn’t know they had a kid? Maybe for years? (it had to be Link, obviously, it just doesn’t work well the other way around) Now we are talking! Angst, emotions, identical crises! 👏

I wrote and wrote, and in late autumn, I thought I’m ready to go. That was around the time I started to read writing advice blogs. So, every time I found an useful advice, I checked my writing and edited. 

Well. And then I heard of show not tell. (Will you please stop laughing!?!? I’m was a bloody beginner last summer! 😬) I looked through the fic and noticed that I had whole chapters with inner monologue that more or less straight up told the reader about the things I wanted them to know. That wouldn’t do. I rewrote large parts of it, the scene where Link video calls Mipha is a good example for that. I showed in this scene not only Zelda’s difficulties with her father, but Link’s not-existing relationship with his parents (a hint to the beginning to show the reader why he struggles with the fact that he was suddenly a father), but he admits in the dialogue with Mipha his feelings for Zelda the first time in the story.

I dug further in the art of writing and discovered plotting. 👆🏻😆 The story was plotted just fine - or so I thought. In reality, it missed a second half. I included the whole ‘dating you would be weird’ disaster arc as a second half and I’m really happy with it. 

The story is now very balanced. In the first half, Zelda is the one who does a lot of mistakes and Link seems to be to good for the world. (Oh, boy, the comments about her behavior!) In the second half, however, it’s the other way around. Link makes a lot of shortsighted, dump decisions, while Zelda stands by him, no matter what. There are a lot of mirror images in this story and I like that very much.

I learned so freaking much with this story and on top of that, it was well received. I couldn’t ask for more! 💞

[spacebeyonce]

hi dom! I’m going around and spreading some fic-writer love by asking some of my favorite writers to share some cool things about their favorite work! Pick a fic that you’re really proud of and geek out about it :) why does it kick ass? You tell us!!

I CAN FINALLY ANSWER THIS AAAH. HI!!!

and a fic I’m really proud of, hmm.....I think for this one I’ll choose breathing out lmao since it was my first foray into a new fandom and I was nervous about how it would turn out and how it would be received. but the thing I’m proud of about it that I think I was able to translate well into the fic was, um.

there was this thing I had read - I can’t even remember where at this point - about uh, I think it was birds of prey? raptor birds? and how, when startled/stressed they have a response where they grip really tightly onto something, and can’t let go until they are out of the stressful situation and able to relax. and literally, that feeling was what made me want to, like. it gave me the idea to write breathing out.

because I wanted to convey that feeling - of being stressed, and wound up so tight for so long because of the situation, but slowly relaxing over time once there’s the realization of hey, it’s fine now. it’s safe. somewhat. if that makes sense! I’d like to think I conveyed that feeling along well enough, but hey, who knows? but I’m proud of that regardless.

thanks for the ask! asks like these really make me think about why I wanted to write a work in the first place and what got me there lmao.

[sarcasticmudkip]

hey you! :))

Heya! O.O

1. First impression: I don’t even REMEMBER...I think you’ve just always existed in time...lurking in the background...read to bombard me with a nice message at any moment,,,,and you seem a lot more put together than me.....it’s suspicious. I do not trust the tumblr messaging system one bit, you’re a spy I know it hmmm

2. Truth is: You do be very rad and very talented. Obviously, I still have my suspicions that you’re a criminal using me for cover, but I’ll let that slide since your writing is so fantastic

3. How old do you look: Never seen ya, but the vibes 22ish. If you’re any younger than 20, that’s illegal stop it

4. Have you ever made me laugh: You just made me write a Noir Murder AU Eggbot and Kip fic and I blame you for how hard I snorted at the concept

5. Have you ever made me mad: Making me wait like a whole YEAR for a Botw murder mystery fic, how dare >:(((( /j

6. Best feature: Your writing vibes be on point, very cash money of you to be so nice and to interact with me at all.  

7. Have I ever had a crush on you: no. get fucked.

8. You’re my: mutual that I made a bucket frog for and that will always be my crowning achievement in this relationship, there’s simply nothing you or I could possibly do to top it. Peak emotion.  

[moonrabbitisgay]

what’s your outlining process for your writing? I’ve been writing fanfic for years but I’m constantly changing my process lol

I have actually never outlined a fic before. I generally don’t write complex enough plots that I ever feel the need to outline - I just come up with a basic plot structure (or don’t) and then start writing away and let things develop in whatever direction they decide to go in.

(I do not recommend this method to anyone, for the record)

[kittmoon]

Tell me about stupid hologram link fic pls txs

Okay so this has been a thing for like a year now

Essentially I want to write a fic about Link stepping into a shrine and seeing nothing but a hologram of himself. Except it’s not him.

100 years ago, Link and Zelda were making their way up Mount Lanayru. Stopping in a cave for the night, they sleep, and Link has a dream where he talks to himself from the future. I’m the morning he didn’t remember any details, and it killed him, because he knew it was important. Was it a message from the gods? There’s an ominous feeling that hangs over him for the rest of their accent up the mountain.

Link talks to his past self in a Sheikah shrine. He tries to give warnings, even though that Link will not remember anything once he wakes. He tries to ask about his past, because even after a year of traveling he is still hungry for answers, but that Link is so tightly wound that he can’t express adequate emotion.

The Link from 100 years ago doesn’t understand this impersonation of himself. He’s too…wild. He talks with his hands. He’s tone of voice is louder and more gruff than Link could ever imagine. He has so many scars. The things he’s saying are crazy- age of burning fields, lost memories, malice infecting the land. Guardians that are known and feared as killers. Divine Beasts that are hovering like evil shadows over the civilizations they were supposed to protect. How could all of that be true? How can he answer all the questions that his future self is asking him - What was the Princess really like? Did he even enjoy being a knight?

I wanted it to be a bit of a heartbreak fic, and somewhat of a character study. I was thinking of either hinting at Revalink or Zelink. I’ve just been struggling to write it for so long that I renamed it in my drafts （´＿｀）

I will finish it someday. I swear. It used to be called Hallow/Gram which is a horrible name and I wouldn’t want to meet the sucker who came up with it (me).

You guys are more than welcome to ask me about this fic though! Tbh it’ll probably help motivate me (シ_ _)シ

[kittmoon]

quick tkasp update(s)

1. this next chapter is gonna be fairly long, but I’m not gonna split it up like I did with Chapter 7/8. It’ll be ~6K I think.

2. I’m considering making a character catalogue for the story. Since I don’t update super frequently I’m aware that characters can get jumbled (don’t worry, you’ve met nearly everyone, there’s only a few people left). Would this be something that you guys would be interested in?