Your Iron queen Au lives in my head rent free. If you want, could you talk more about where Ganon is in all this? Or something that might not make it into the fic that you want to talk about anyway.
ok sorry this took me so long to answer i got distracted and then i forgot! let’s talk zelda of power au ganon (plus a brief detour to talk about zop au gerudo). i’m actually gonna go ahead and put this under a read more because it got. long
ganon currently has less development than zelda or link bc of two reasons: first, i keep changing my mind about what i want to do with him, and second, every time i try to crack down and figure him out i get distracted with figuring out the gerudo more generally. the gerudo as-is in the games are, well, blatant orientalist/exoticism. i don’t feel comfortable carrying that over into my own work so i’m trying to fix it by repainting them with more of a realistic and grounded culture, which is proving more difficult than i thought because they are such a melange of real-world cultures (obvious arabic influences, elements of hinduism in some of their religion, written language is apparently based on latin?? but spoken language is DEFINITELY not latin-based and seems to me (based on very cursory research) to sound more like hindi or sanskrit than a semitic language like arabic, although i’m no linguist and i couldn’t find information anywhere on what the gerudo names and language were based on) plus i’m trying to be careful about how i approach the whole built-in conflict between the hylians and the gerudo because i don’t know that i want it to be a direct parallel to real-world european/swana conflicts (ESPECIALLY since i’m basing hylian religion on judaism which could lead to parallels with. you know. israel. and that’s a Whole Mess i don’t know that i’m equipped to deal with in this au i’m making in my free time for the fun of it) but i also don’t want to like...ignore the parallels to western colonialism that undeniably exist in-game already (some poking around i did suggested hylian/gerudo conflict could potentially be more based on conflicts between christian-dominated england and the muslim-dominated iberian peninsula under the umayyad caliphate so i might lean into that for influence since it feels a little bit safer ground to work with since it’s far from modern and therefore not such a currently relevant topic). tl;dr i want to fix the gerudo in this au but i’m still figuring out how to do that and it keeps derailing me whenever i try to dive into ganon.
back to what i have for ganon so far: this has changed from my original sketches but i decided that ganon is going to be very young in this (~14ish) and he, like link, lives under another name, although i’m still deciding what name that will be. ganon has the triforce of courage. when it becomes clear he’s the reincarnation of Yes That Ganon* (still figuring out how this happens as well; i know the easy answer is He Is A Gerudo Boy but i’m also working on how i want to tackle gender in gerudo culture because i’m annoyed by the way the games deal with it) the gerudo people understandably freak the fuck out, and so ganon is raised in a temple as a priest, forced to swear off all weapons and violence at a young age which is A Big Deal in a culture composed mostly of warriors. throughout his childhood he is watched Constantly, every move scrutinized, ready to strike him down or throw him behind bars should he show any sign of, like, wanting to take over the world or anything. ganon is pretty understandably resentful of this, especially since he’s not particularly interested in world-domination. when the iron queen is officially crowned, ganon’s mother tells him he must flee, knowing that zelda will soon begin searching for him. where ganon goes and what he does next i’m still figuring out but ultimately he, link, and zelda are going to have to work things out and get together to save hyrule as it dies around them.
“is ganon good in this au?” short answer: yes. longer, more accurate answer: no one in this au is strictly good or bad because that’s not how people work in real life and i don’t like slapping characters with that sort of one-dimensional paintbrush. every character for this au has flaws they must overcome and strengths they must discover. ganon’s arc will involve an internal battle against the curse of demise that lives inside him, feeding on his resentment. i think this may also involve a wizard of earthsea-type confrontation of the shadow self although i keep changing my mind about that since i kind of also want that confrontation of the shadow self/naming of the shadow to be part of link’s story feat dark link and centuries of negative emotion building up and mixing with magic to take semi-physical form. again, not sure, figuring it out.
*sidenote about ganon as a reincarnation of Yes That Ganon: ganon in loz games is usually implied to be the literal exact same guy just resurrected a bunch of times so Technically speaking zop au ganon is another reincarnation of demise, not ganondorf. narratively, however, he fills the same character space—the gerudo boy/man who is an incarnation of demise’ curse and who exists (at least initially) in conflict to link and zelda—so this somewhat of a semantic difference. that said i’ve also played around with the idea of having this ganon be actually literally the reincarnation of the og ganondorf, the idea here being that since this au takes place at the end of the timeline, whatever remnant of ganon’s soul existed within the calamity in botw was released back into the world after the calamity’s defeat and ended up reincarnating into a mortal body again. this is yet another thing that i’m still deciding on.
So, this is gonna be really open ended, but are they any bits of the latest chapter you want to really highlight? Like, things we should pay attention to or bits you really liked writing. Because I am Not Good at seeing connections without someone pointing them out and I love it when you expound on your stories.
i love this question so much, thank you for sending it in! i actually do have some things i’d be Super Happy to expand on more directly, yeah! once again this got wildly longer than i intended it to but that’s par for the course 😅
01. adelard’s teaching methods.
adelard was really calm that whole time. like, really not worried at all, while jon was pretty understandably urgent! his friends are not responding to his texts after one of them just Literally Disappeared behind their backs and there are Moths in the hallway and oh the room is full of them HEY ADELARD THIS SEEMS PRETTY TIME-SENSITIVE, DOESN’T IT? IS IT A CRISIS YET?
yes and no! because adelard has seen far worse. he saw amherst melt a whole town and sit on a People Throne it was about as bad as the corruption gets and he survived that. (here, anyway, lol. but again, that killed him in canon! it was fucking BAD!) this? this is nothing.
if he said “this is nothing” to jon right now, though, that’d not go over very well. because to him, it IS something! in general, it IS! just not enough to make HIM sweat, because he knows already that it’s manageable. so why not just tell jon exactly why he thinks it’s manageable? handle it himself?
he wanted jon to feel that pressure, to put him on the spot enough to see if he can summon up a useful gut feeling or dive into something that adelard at least knows is safe enough to, to see if he can handle this after all. he’s been asking adelard to teach him for a While now, but they haven’t done anything on the ground yet! talking theory isn’t the same as putting that into practice, and to adelard, this was actually a pretty perfect Test Run and First Job to see if jon’s got the stuff. and telling jon THAT would ALSO not go over very well, because again, these are his friends. he’s scared. he’s not hardened and objective yet, this is his life and people he loves and if someone minimized that, it would kind of ruin the progress he makes!
adelard isn’t actually a teacher. he’s experienced, he’s compassionate, he’s rational, he’s got the best interest of everyone in mind — but he has no way of knowing if jon is a hands-on learner or not! he’s not even trying to be super Sneaky about what he’s doing, either; he’s handling it at the pace he would if it was him, and seeing if jon can mirror him. that will tell him if he can keep teaching by showing, and it’ll determine the future of their mentor/mentee dynamic here. lucky for all of them, jon DID end up going along just fine!
but i really wanted to emphasize that just because adelard is experienced and wants to help, doesn’t mean he’s going to actually have a plan Every time, nor is he going to do everything perfectly/with undying compassion, either. yeah, he knows he stressed jon out! and he thinks that’s probably an important part of learning how to do this kind of thing in general. he wants him to be able to work under pressure when he ISN’T taking direct orders from somebody who knows better, and to guide him towards being able to make the right decisions when he’s alone, because someday, he will be.
adelard has a harsher side! he’ll grin at the feeling of finally closing in on a hunt right in front of a scared civilian, he’ll be cold and calculating when he has to, he will go back to re-lobotomize a guy because it’s the practical solution that worked. he’s not fluffy butterflies and rainbows! he’s just not gertrude, either.
basically, his teaching style is when they throw a baby into the pool to activate its floating instinct. he knows it’s safe to do certain things in a controlled, supervised environment, but damn if it won’t freak out some onlookers!
02. gerard’s citations of what’s happening in their inner world.
this was one of my favorite parts to write, i have been waiting. So Long. to finally get to use his perspective more deliberately and use his voice more, to differentiate it from gerry’s and show that i HAVE used it before! that first flashback scene in candorsteep was also him! ponytail i love you.
but here, every time i mentioned “inside” and whatnot, it was him referencing the inner world! i imagine their headspace is fairly dark and hard to parse unless you’re one of the more internal parts, so like, gerry doesn’t have much access to it himself but ponytail and the caretaker are very familiar with it and know it’s a big, sprawling dark house.
i mentioned the caretaker in this part! here’s where she first showed up:
Pchit-pchit, says the breeze inside, tapping windows for his attention. Outside, the sound of something spraying.
first of all, “pchit-pchit” is actually french onomatopoeia for the sound of a spray can or bottle, and she’s the one who was singing and mumbling in french when they went to scotland! she’s got a bit of a french accent, for actual reasons not just aesthetic, and it’s really fun to incorporate that stuff because it DOES happen sometimes! i am a new yorker but i have an alter with a southern accent due to some family, being raised on country music, and. i think he honestly just really likes cowboys but y’know lol.
the caretaker holds onto the way they learned to speak french, and also eric has family that lives in france! in TSP i mentioned gerry tracking down his aunt amelia in coaraze and meeting her for the first time. so, that whole thing is associated with comforting things gerry never got to have access to, and so the caretaker compensates!
the other important part of her here is being referenced as “the breeze.” that, i’ll expand more on when she shows up, because there’s a reason for that, too. and it makes my heart Melt.
she’s not the only one mentioned reacting to this, either! the part that gutted me most to write was this:
The decision to move one hand from his face is a sick one, but Gerard needs at least one unobstructed ear. Frantic smudging tears fragile shapes asunder with gentle, wet clicks that make someone inside start to cry. It’s not his job to console the children.
sorry for the bug death here but i mean, i’d also cry! and there is definitely someone in gerry’s brain who has been harboring a lot of his corruption-trauma-based feelings since childhood who would NOT be happy about any of this.
but also?
No one laughs on the inside, now. Gerry is bent over the sink. Breath is but a foreign word.
this is another reference to things i introduced in TSP, right in the first chapter: the dreadstone, a buried artefact that nearly drowned him in his own sink at home.
this is a lot of why he doesn’t see much of the headspace himself. if he’s not in the front, it’s because he’s in the sink.
03. the brief appearance of sasha’s pink text.
for those who want a reminder:
(ID: a screencap from AO3 that says: “You, she’d snarled. This is your fault.” the italicized dialogue is in berry pink text. /End ID)
the way i use colored text varies a little bit, but usually just denotes Supernatural Activity! the other times i’ve used it has been when raphael and sasha gave their statements, when ponytail compelled gertrude in the safehouse that one time, and when ponytail made his introduction on the tape by treating it LIKE a statement. so, typically a response to compulsion!
HOWEVER! every time michael speaks, i use a shade of sepia brown because he doesn’t show up often enough for it to get too Busy. and here, i used it just to show that sasha’s really not herself right now, she’s Lost In The Moth Sauce, and honestly, it IS michael’s fault as much as it is also based in her spike of animosity Towards The Archivist specifically.
honestly, it comes down to gerard! the fears are like colors, you know.
04. the way gerard and gerry each use other people’s names.
this one’s a smaller bit, but i am happy for the chance to point it out! the two most obvious examples in the whole series are adelard and mary, only one of which was done here but the comparison stands!
gerry refers to mary as “my mum” usually, not by her name or even “Mum” as a name in his thoughts, just... y’know, the title, not a name. a little bit of distance, but not completely, and it’s a little sad around the edges.
gerard? refers to her as Mary. he’s done it in two chapters so far (pyreknell and grimguard) and it was one of my subtler clues as to him being there, just a small difference between him and gerry before his reveal.
but with ADELARD... bit different! gerry started off calling him “dekker” in his letters, and you see it change as they become more familiar with each other and he’s not just trying to be respectful of him as an authority figure. them getting on a first name basis was a sign of their development!
but i have gerard Still calling him “dekker” through the first two chapters of changing face whenever he comes up, aloud and inside, to kind of establish distance because he sort of designates adelard as Gerry’s Friend, like he does with everyone else. this changes right in the very last lines of his scene:
He doesn’t know what else to say. His staring contest with what’s left of the swarm is interrupted by Jon’s cane stretching over him. Jon takes it back, and Adelard offers Gerard his hand.
“On your feet.” Gerard sways upright with the push and pull of both of their help, Jon’s hand drumming dust from his back. Adelard catches the side of his head with a grounding pat. No one inside flinches. “It’s time we move on.”
this is a Big Deal, kind of! this is gerard realizing that adelard Also wants to help Him, realizing he wants to accept that help, and not just help but comfort, too. the whole system has an issue with People Touching Their Head because it was a trend in mary’s abuse to grab gerry by the hair, so it’s a big deal when not only do they Let someone do it, but when they find it genuinely relaxing. it’s a bigger deal for gerard — the biggest memory holder in the system — to accept this kind of thing from anyone, ever.
so, like gerry, calling adelard by his first name is a sign of progress!
05. “seven months to the day.”
“There’s a moth in your hair.”
A wet laugh from Jon. “I’m sure there’s more than one! And I really wish there wasn’t! You’re the only person that can change that, Sasha, you need— you need to let them go, you need to let them go. You have to let go, or none of us can go on living.”
The same instructions Gerard had given her after her statement. Seven months to the day, seven months to hear it.
i’ve been keeping a timeline! by the day, actually! sasha gave her statement on april 9th, and the way that the events shook out naturally, this ended up being november 10th. it’s not exactly To The Day but it was so close by accident that i Flipped when i saw it and, like. it could literally be spun that right at that 7 month mark, she just Fzzzt! snapped.
this series has seven fics planned, each with seven chapters. there are seven main characters (gerry, tim, sasha, jon, martin, melanie, and [REDACTED]) who get POV scenes. there’s just a recurring Seven Thing, and so this being so close just. knocked me out ngl which i just AAAAH. have to say. HJBKn.
06. gerry in the final scene.
Gerry’s ponytail is different now, a loose bun at mid-height on the back of his head. [...] Every time Jon peers around her head to meet the feeling of being watched, Gerry’s eyes are on the steps.
this is not gerry. it’s also not gerard. hope this helps<3
07. rubber duckie debugging.
hehe seven bullets. ANYWAY I REALIZED SOMETHING ABOUT THIS THAT MAKES ME GO INS*NE once again an accident!
if you know TSP, you’ll know that in that, jon had given gerry a water bottle on the tube once without knowing who he was, and he’d carved a duck into the cap with a paperclip at some point. gerry ended up keeping it and pinned it to his backpack with all his other crow instinct keepsakes, and the first tattoo he ever gave his boss was a duck because she saw him doodling them once. ducks are a thing for some reason!
jon has Always had a bird motif, typically different waterfowl, but writing this chapter made me realize that there’s more to it than that and apparently he’s just An Duck, Specifically, For Some Reason.
example from THIS chapter is:
“I know you can hear me, Sasha, but I need you to look at me. I-I know— I know how hard it is for you to pull away from your work when it’s giving you trouble, I know you’re… trying to do something right now, a-and it’s not coming out the way you want it to. When did you give up on rubber duckie debugging? Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
him literally saying “let ME be your rubber duck” which is intended to be an inside joke sort of thing with her (because everyone who works with code knows what rubber duckie debugging is, and it IS a solid way to solve problems!)
this becomes more complicated when you remember what he and gerard talked about in grimguard last installment, when he told jon that adelard leans into the hunt even though he hasn’t aligned with it:
“If it quacks like a duck.”
and then jon asks him afterwards, “Where does that leave you? On the scale of one to duck.”
...denoting “ducks” now as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying “a person who has and uses power, but never became an avatar secure it.”
so, coming back to this most recent chapter, there’s also this bit right here:
Sasha crowds against his back on the landing, pinching the back of his shirt for guidance. He longs to turn around and take her hand almost as much as he itches for a shower.
which i had joked to ren the other day about by saying “sasha imprinted on him like a duckling.” which is pretty adorable and also killing me inside but IS relating now to the fact that 1) her focus is so strongly on him because of the loupe right now 2) she is ALSO someone who has power but is not an AVATAR.
HM!
the worst part of this is? there IS another duck-related thing that’ll come up later, too. but that’s BIG spoilers <3 just. what’s killing me is that i admittedly did not even plan for it to be this bad but there IS another HUGELY TSP RELEVANT component to it that i cannot WAIT to explain fsdkjfhsdkjfh FUCK!
The latest chapter just about killed me. I literally cried when he flatlined and then I cried again when he came back to life. It was very good but I am still in shock.
okay genuinely, i was not ACTUALLY expecting tears! i thought seeing it coming for so long might leave it as more of a creeping dread, nostalgic ache here and there, but i didn't think it would actually cross over that threshold, you know? i'm both very touched and so sorry JHBKN 😭
