#twilight secrets

[patchworkcrows]

Reading Fleets’ new fanfic got me all nostalgic for the past and reminded me about all the old art of Tovia done over the years. This isn’t ALL of it (I distinctly remember someone who was reading the fic made me fanart) but a HUGE ass chunk of it. 

I thought it’d be p cool to look at “the evolution of Tovia”. He started off as just an OC in this shitty Zelda fanfic and wound up taking a life of his own. Originally this like walking stereotype, he’d yell shit about how he “wasn’t gay” and just generally was supposed to be this sort of dumb goody-two-shoes? Weird.

Over the years, Tovia’s grown IMMENSELY - not just in looks but in his story, his character, and even his fucking NAME. I mean, Christ, originally it was just Tovia but now I have a full fuckin’ name for the boy (and if anyone actually follows me on here and REMEMBERS TS, you might remember that for a one year anniversary - oddly enough on what would become the anniversary of Skyward Sword’s release and my future roommate’s birthday??? - I hosted a big RP for fans of the story to join Tovia in this side-story adventure where he went to a parallel universe where Vaati never got reincarnated, meeting the Tovia he woulda been who was named Adam. Weird how that name stuck.)

But FUCK look at all this old ass shit from back then!!!! Tovia was my BOY! I mean, fuck, he STILL my boy. On the left with my pics, the MOST RECENT one there is the traditional drawn one from Goretober. Not a normal look for Tovs but (shrug) he’s a good practice character.

Towards the middle, we’ve got Fleets’ drawing from YEARS ago (and fuck my dude, check out her shit now it’s INSANE how much she’s improved over the years, I’m absolutely blown away by her art). Fleets has been a sweetie throughout the years and I remember when she first posted this pic I legit teared up. Fucking Senpai noticed me and it was the first time I got to see a good drawing of Tovia (I CANNOT draw, guys, I have such a hard time). It was like solidifying everything I knew about Tovia - that this dude wasn’t leaving. And god damn, dudes, Tovia skinny as fUCK in all these old pics. Skinny and straight and p white. 

Movin’ to Kay’s pics although I’m sure she’ll want me dead for sharing them. The Christmas pic fucking KILLS me. It was a gift one Christmas from her and I remember setting it as my background every Christmas. It was my absolute fave gift I got for SUCH a long time and I cherished it so much. There’s an updated version floating around somewhere on one of my old comps or in an email account, digital, but I don’t have the strength to search for it now. Kay’s been a huge help in my writing endeavors and honestly without Kay, I don’t think I’d be able to develop HALF the shit I’ve developed over the years. Each new project we take on gains its own new life and I’m amazed we’ve managed to just... take all these characters from one shitty little fic and breath such life into them. We’ve come up with some wild stories that I continue to say, to this day, that I will fuckin’ push to get them on air one day. Kay’s an amazing writer and her art has ALSO completely done a 360. When Kay sets her mind to it, she fucking achieves some crazy shit and I’m proud we’ve been friends for like 7-8 fucking years. Insane shit.

LASTLY, my gorgeous and insanely talented GF, Shady. Shady’s a sweetheart and when I first met her, I was so fucking nervous to share with her this underdeveloped boy. Tovia’s been this huge part of my life ever since I came up with him and it was... so weird to just share something so personal with someone I’d been looking up to the past few years (if you didn’t know, Shady makes SUPER good AMVs that inspired me to put more work and effort into mine and also helped steer me further towards film, though I don’t think she realizes that fact, lmao). But she loved him like her own little baby and over the years, has helped me take Tovia further and just... oddly enough, make him happy. My boy has a fuckin’ boyfriend who he grows old with and marries, someone he adopts children with, and I’m so so happy about it. Her art is fantastic and she’s really run with my claim “hey Tovia’s fuckin chubby” and just- ugh, I’m dead. What a wonderful girl (who also is doing commissions and you can find more of her art on her tumblr shameless-plug while I’m here).

I just... could go on for like YEARS about Tovia and how amazed I am, looking at all these photos, knowing that this boy’s been beside me since November 20th, 2009 (7 fucking years, guys - 7 years). It’s just insane. So like, iono. If you think you like a character you came up with but they’re just not ready yet and you feel bad or inadequate for it, like... keep goin’? Try new shit. Their story’s not ready yet and that’s okay cause like one day you’re gonna find it and god damn it’s gonna be awesome. 

[dragoninatrenchcoat]

this is if you were curious about that christmas in ts picture I just uploaded and you're probably not but I felt like going in depth so here you go

so basically TS is short for Twilight Secrets which is a Zelda fanfiction my friend and I were working on 3 years ago, and tbh it wasn't fantastic but nothing you wrote 3 years ago is all that good anyway. Basically what happened is, Tovia (an OC) sets out on a quest with Link (main Zelda character), then finds out he's a distant reincarnation of Vaati (villain from Minish Cap). It's a complicated situation because Vaati had died a long time ago, BUT the Goddesses had condemned him to a prison beyond death wherein he lived in the subconscious of his reincarnations, which is sort of confusing because reincarnations are supposed to be you, so there's two of him??

Anyway

Because of something that happened in the previous reincarnation's life, Vaati can begin to take control of Tovia a bit, or at the very least be heard at all which is a HUGE relief. And taking control is a lot of energy so he spends basically all of his time dreaming up a hallucination  that looks just like him - which takes a lot of smarts and I don't think Tovia realizes that...

Long story short, this picture didn't actually happen in the fic, but it's all the main characters brought together: Link, on the left, wrapping a present for Midna (chiefly because that was my friend's username/nickname at the time)(and I still call her this), Lois (Tovia's best friend and life-long crush) on the right watching Tovia decorate the tree, and Vaati, a hallucination that only Tovia can see, trying to smooch her with a nonexistent piece of mistletoe. Tovia's pretty dumb so he's probably about to blush his face off and tell Vaati not to do that.

To which Lois would probably go "What's he doing?" and Tovia would tell her and she would punch the air next to her in the face.

tl;dr the purple guy doesn't exist but he wants to bang the girl

[dragoninatrenchcoat]

I vote put it up. It IS your blog, and if anyone wants to understand it, you'll have to show them anyway. You might as well just put it up and direct them to the post whenever someone asks.

Well, also, if we WERE to put up the behind the scenes stuff, or even just the TSRP, it has to happen AFTER we finish writing TS. That way we avoid spoilers for the main story.

[dragoninatrenchcoat]

Anyone interested in Zelda fanfiction?

Midna and I are writing a story called Twilight Secrets. Well, I SAY writing. This was a thing we started ages and ages and ages ago, and uploaded that long ago, and it's been sitting there for a while, but - well that's not the point. The point is I think it has an interestng and compelling plot. Actually that's not really the point either.

I just wanted to make a post to try to explain about the universe and stuff, but I ended up plugging the story instead? I'll just put what I was going to say initially under the read more.

If you want to skip all that and see what the fuss is all about, here's the story. It could do with a rewrite but who cares read it anyway.

(warning: Twilight Secrets & related spoilers ahead)

What I wanted to say initially was that I think we've created an interesting universe. We - well, I say 'we', this was her baby initially - ok Midna created these two wonderful characters, Tovia and Lois. They're OCs, which the story is mainly about, but they're not Mary-Sues; they have their own pros and cons, flaws and imperfections. Yes, they do kinda tag along with Link, but the main Twilight Princess plot is secondary to the main plot of Twilight Secrets.

But here's the problem. See, we did this AMAZING on-chat RP with all the characters, me playing Vaati and Tovia sometimes, her playing Lois and Tovia sometimes, and we'd alternate playing Link, and I was always Shad and she was always Ashei - it was this whole big thing. (We created gmail accounts for every character and physically had them chat with one another.) The story turned out fantastic, with a wonderful conclusion (if a bit deus ex, but not overwhelmingly). The problem is, we were a bit silly in the story, just having fun, and we did things that we wouldn't be able to pull off in a written story. (Examples: Vaati and Link saying things like "yo skillet" to each other, Cassandra going "OoooOOOooOOoooOOO by the way I forgot to tell you this oooOOOoo" [she's a ghost], the dragon dropping them off in the forest south of Hyrule for no apparent reason, the Sages in the mirror room being silly and arguing with each other [one of them was obsessed with pizza], etc etc. You get the picture.) So we tried to translate over what we could, and that's why we're at a bit of a stall right now. It'll work out in the end, though.

Okay that's not even what I was going to say. I KEEP GETTING OFF TOPIC

No one's reading this, probably. Oh well. Gonna keep going anyway.

So we created these characters, Lois and Tovia. (Okay, she did. But I play Vaati and Shad!) We have a whole huge backstory for Vaati, which involves numerous characters (23 reincarnations? 25? Somewhere around there). I know some of them by heart: Ivato was a palace guard interested in Hyrulean history, George was a madman with a thief for a friend, Viaat was a conman, etc. These characters are so diverse and adaptable that we've put them (the main trio primarily, Lois and Tovia and Vaati) into so many different TS-like stories just for the fun of it; we've written them turning into animals, living in Castle Town, having spells and curses put on them, living in the 21st century, time traveling to Minish Cap, and we had different versions of Vaati running around, even a goddess or two and a child from the Lost Woods. Most recently, we came up with a next-gen fanfiction, with (more spoilers) Tovia and Lois's son and Shad's daughter. Yes, that sounds a bit mary-sue-ish, but in my (biased) opinion, they're well-rounded characters. Right now we're working on, for the fun of it, those two (in order, Sai and Addie) time-traveling to a version of Twilight Secrets where Tovia's sick and Vaati's magic is going haywire because of it. Sai's Vaati (long story) is being his usual charming self, Lois is cursing her tongue off, and Addie's trying to figure out what Shad's obsession is with the City in the Sky and why she'd never heard about it growing up.

My point is (Do I even have a point anymore?) we've written so much about this universe, so haphazardly, that it's become one of those inside jokes that's so convoluted that you can't share it with anyone, not easily. Midna and I can talk about Shad and Jalko, Chris and George, talking hawks, the cannon to the City in the Sky breakdancing, Shad's absolute inability to do anything effective on a battlefield, and businessdragons farming Oocca, but it would make sense to absolutely 0% of the outside population. The worst part of it all is, probably no one's interested in the slightest.

How can we put all these interesting things we've developed (reincarnations, ghosts, children, parents, the Periapt Anim) into stories without going totally overboard? Would anyone be interested in the chat-RP if we put it up? Would anyone be interested in the unedited version (including silly slip-ups, typos, us talking about what should happen next)? Would anyone care about the outtakes and deleted scenes we've saved up?

Sometimes I feel like I'm way too interested in behind-the-scenes shots of my own stuff. 

[twisecrets-blog]

[twisecrets-blog]

[twisecrets-blog]