EEEE I LOVE YOUR CONTENT ON TUMBLR AND YOUTUBE IM A HUGE FAN AND I'M SO HAPPY YOU UNDERSTAND THE LIKE FOR THE MYSTERIOUS SMILEY BASTARDS LIKE JAX AND SANS
My current best seller--fruity black currants, pipe smoke, labdanum, a steel saber, and a single red rose. Rich, dark, and mysterious; its no wonder I can hardly keep them in stock!
I notice you are a Shadowheart fan! Honestly, mad respect, she's a fantastic character and all...
...but are you able to defend her stats-wise? Because I'm going to be honest, Shadowheart as a party member statistically is kind of a garbage Cleric. I respec her into Paladin IMMEDIATELY.
maybe i need to do that ...... im honestly kind of dog-shit at the bg3 combat. i just like having her there to look Beautiful and to Be Mean To Me. if she lands a hit doesn't concern me. she is my passenger princess.
i should probably try and learn how to build her though
It’s 6:00 am, three days before the Carnival of Time. The day you were supposed to marry Anju. You are Kafei, a man forced into the body of a child by a masked imp. Weeks later, you are still hunting for your mask. The Sun Mask. Your proof to Anju that you wish to spend the rest of your life with her.
You hope that all your feelings come across in the letter you write to her, passing by construction workers and a child dressed in green to place your letter in the mailbox. The Postman will get it to her in the afternoon. After that… You adjust the Keton mask on your face as you hurry back to the Curiosity shop’s backroom. You need to get some sleep if you’ll be awake and alert enough to keep an eye on the customers coming through his store. That bastard who stole your mask HAS to come along to pawn it at some point. Or anything, really - he’s the kind of scumbag who would steal from an old woman, after all. You’ll find him eventually.
You just hope it’s before the moon finishes falling…
You’re about to lay down when the bell rings outside. Strange. You didn’t expect someone to come calling at this time. Still, you put your mask back on and hurry to the door, opening it to see…
The boy in green. Exhaustion in his blue eyes, staring at you like he’s staring at a statue. But you barely even notice him when you look at what he’s holding in his hands, offering to you. Your eyes widen.
The Sun Mask. Your mask.
You open your mouth to start asking questions when the boy in green cuts you off, answering each one as they come to your mind before you have a chance to speak them:
“I found it at Sakon’s hideout. Yes, that’s the grinning man who stole it from you. I knew how to get in for reasons that’d take too long to explain. I’m Link. I know you’re Kafei for the same reasons that’d take too long to explain. I know what you’re going to ask for those same reasons. Yes, I’ll explain everything, but not today.”
You stare in wide-eyed shock as the green boy, Link, shoves your mask into your hands.
“Tomorrow at exactly 1:50 pm,” he goes on, “Anju will show up here at the Laundry Pool. She’s going to sit on that bench right over there and break down over not knowing if you want her anymore. That’s your perfect chance to give her your Mask and explain everything. No, don’t go to the Inn right now, that won’t end well for you or Anju. Don’t try to break in tonight either, you’re going to run into her mother and that won’t end well for any of you. I already know how this is going to go, and waiting for tomorrow is your best opportunity. I’ll meet you tomorrow at 6:00 pm, at the same bench, and you can ask me anything you want then.”
He doesn’t offer any further explanation, and before you can even ask him anything further, he pulls out an Ocarina and plays a short melody on it. The next thing you know, wings sprout from his back, surround him in a spinning cocoon, and he vanishes in a flash of light.
You’re convinced you must be hallucinating or dreaming until you look down and see the Sun’s Mask still remains in your hands. For the rest of the day, you keep waking up periodically to check that the mask is still there.
It’s 1:50 pm, two days before the Carnival of Time. You open the door into the Laundry Pool and glance outside. It is raining. She doesn’t even hear the door opening… but she’s there. Sat on the bench, exactly as Link said. Anju holds her umbrella with one hand, burying her face in her other hand as she cries.
You can’t stand the sight of this. Mask clutched in your hand and face bare, you step outside, not even caring how the rain soaks into your clothes.
She looks up at you. Recognition and confusion are in her eyes. Relief soon after. She offers a teary smile, and admits she thought you didn’t want her anymore.
You sit with her. You spend hours talking to her. Despite your new, cursed form, you hold her hand and it just feels right. You missed this. You missed her.
She reluctantly leaves to return to the Inn, your pendant around her neck as a promise that you won’t go anywhere. You tell her that you will join her tomorrow after her family evacuates. You two will see the dawn of the Carnival of Time together.
It’s almost 6:00 pm. You don’t bother leaving the bench, watching as the rain slowly dies down before evening strikes. And soon, Link walks down the path and towards the bench. He barely gives a second glance your way, as though he knew for a fact you would be there anyway. He takes a seat next to you, lets out a long, exhausted sigh, and buries his face in his hands.
“I’m a time traveler,” he says as a form of greeting. “That’s how I know everything that’s going to happen. I’ve been reliving the last three days over and over again. Usually it takes me an hour to convince you of all this, but do you mind just pretending you believe me this time? I’m too tired to go through the usual song and dance this time.”
You stare at him, a boy with the exhaustion of a tired old man. You ask the first, probably most obvious question on your mind: “Are… you okay?”
Link lets out a laugh, letting his head hang back as he stares hopelessly at the sky. “Two thousand days.”
“What?” You ask.
“Two. Thousand. Days,” he repeats slowly. “I did the math. About five and a half years. That’s how long I’ve been here. Tatl tried to tell me to count the Cycles instead of the Days, make it feel less crushing, but… I had to know, the REAL time we spent here.”
He shakes his head. “Heh. Maybe I just need to wait for seven years. Some kind of cosmic joke. I’ll suggest that to her next time I see her. She’s mad at me, see. A few cycles ago I tried to use the Fierce Deity’s Mask to attack the Skull Kid on the Tower instead of calling the Giants, and Tael tried to get in the way to stop me. I… managed to stop myself before I actually hurt anyone, but the fact I came close… she hasn’t talked to me since.”
He lets out another deep sigh, looking at you. “What do you think? Is there… anything I can say, anything I can do to make it up to her? I know she’s been going through this same as me, she’s just as stressed and tired and at her wit’s end, but…”
You stare in plain incomprehension at him. “Why are you asking me? I don’t even really KNOW you.”
“Not right now,” Link agreed, shaking his head. “I really should have stayed with you that first day, you always agree to let me in when I show up with the Sun’s Mask. But I wanted to rescue the Great Fairies this Cycle, and I wouldn’t have had the time. Besides, you’re always exhausted on the First Day.”
He leans forward on the bench, elbows on his lap, staring ahead at the frog that always stayed by the pool. Before you ask him anything further, he starts talking again. “Somewhere out there, beyond the deepest woods you can find, is the kingdom of Hyrule. That’s where I was born and raised. An evil man tried to take the power of the Gods there, and I stopped him. But I couldn’t stop him as a child, so the Gods trapped me for seven years. My mind was a child’s, but my body an adult’s. I lived in a horrible war-stricken world as an adult, and I had to grow up fast. I sealed the evil man away, and my ‘reward’ was being sent back before I was trapped to live out my childhood. Now… Now I don’t know what I am, anymore.”
He looks at you before continuing. “You’re Kafei, a man who’s body was turned into a child against your will. You remember what it’s like to be an adult, but the world looks at you like you’re too young to know any better. And a part of you can’t help but think, maybe even as an adult you still weren’t ‘old enough’ to fully grasp the world around you. That no matter what you do, something will always be outside your reach. Frustrated at losing everything because of one night, gone in a flash. That’s why I always go out of my way to see you, Kafei. You’re the only one still here that really understands me.”
He falls silent again, staring out at the water passing through the Laundry Pool. You don’t know what to say for a long while. This is… a lot, that he just dumped into your lap. Were it anyone else, you would think they’re absolutely insane. But… He knows far too much to be a liar. And his eyes… they’re too old to be on the body of a child. His face too exhausted to be a facade of weariness.
You suspect sometimes if you had the guts to look at yourself in the mirror, your face would look like his. You think you believe him, as wild as his story sounds. Besides, after everything you’ve been through yourself? Is his story really that crazy?
“So… you’ve been in a time loop for five years?” You ask.
“Five and a half,” Link corrects.
“Five and a half, right. You mentioned Cycles earlier, what—”
Link cuts you off to explain, “The day of the Carnival of Time, at exactly 6:00 am, the moon falls and destroys the world. I always jump back to 6:00 am three days before that. So a Cycle is three days to the end of everything.”
You look up into the sky, at the terrifying hunk of rock hanging in the air and slowly descending towards you. “Well. I guess I always knew the end was coming, I just didn’t want to…”
“You didn’t want to think about it,” Link finishes for you. “Yeah, everyone feels that way really. I think the only ones who aren’t at least a little worried about the Moon are the Gorons, and even then it’s only because most of them have been stuck inside for Goddess knows how long.”
Silence falls between you two. Your own hands clench in your lap.
“…so I’ll never live to see Anju be my wife,” you finally say.
“I don’t know,” Link admits with a sigh. “I really don’t know if the old timelines continue to exist after I loop back or not. The Goddess of Time never bothered to explain that one to me. Really, she doesn’t explain anything.”
He shakes his head again. “That’s how I got into this mess, you know. I asked her for a little more time because the world was ending, and she gave it to me. Oh, she gave me all the time in the world…”
“Have you managed it before?” You ask. “Saving the world?”
“More times than I can count,” Link explains. “On the Eve of the Carnival, I go up to the Clocktower, summon the Four Guardians of Termina - pick your jaw up, yes I’ve seen your Gods, they’re good people if a bit cryptic - they stop the Moon, and then Majora wakes up in full and escapes into the moon to try one last time to crush everyone. I go in, fight Majora, and as soon as I deal the killing blow… boom. I wake back up at the Dawn of the First Day. So… maybe, in one of those Cycles, you and Anju are married.”
He looks at you and manages a weak smile. “I’ll go and kill Majora again this Cycle, for what it’s worth. Maybe you two will live to see the dawn and get married. I just won’t see it.”
He means it, too. His smile is genuine, his voice firm. And in his eyes… they’re so, so tired. But they stare right at you with a weak, feeble shine. A good man weighed down by years of troubles.
“…what can I do?” you ask. “You’ve - you’ve saved my wedding. You’ve done in one day what I’ve taken weeks to try and do. I owe you…”
Link laughs at this, holding up a hand to stop you. “S-sorry, I’m sorry for laughing. I know you mean it. It’s just… you ask that every single time. No matter what we talk about or how the conversation goes, you always ask me that. And every time, I have to tell you that there’s nothing you can do. Oh we’ve tried, dozens of times, to break this curse. The Cycles that you travel with me through Termina are some of my favorites. Anju nearly tore my ear out every time, of course - she has her mother’s temper when I put you in danger. Deserved, honestly.”
“Heh.” You can’t help but grin. “That sounds like her. Quiet and clumsy, but the moment you do something stupid, she’s the first to demand what you’re doing.”
The two of you share a quiet laugh with one another. It’s funny… you don’t know this child at all, but it’s so easy to spend time with him. And spend time with him you do, talking late into the night, watching the sky grow dark and the stars shine above you. You give what advice you can about speaking with his Tatl friend, and he recounts stories of adventures spent together in previous Cycles long past. You even ask him about time spent in Hyrule, and he tells of forest children, of a King of Evil, of his own accidental fiancée and battles and victories.
…of a long-lost friend. He doesn’t like to talk about her. Only mentions “her” and how important she was to him. Whenever he touches on the subject of her, he clenches his elbows and hugs his arms closer to himself, as though in physical pain just remembering her. You don’t touch the subject further.
Dawn approaches. The both of you stand up from the bench, and Link offers a hand to shake. You look into his eyes as you shake it.
“You’re a good man, Link,” you offer. “And you are a man, even if your body tells another story. I only wish more recognized it.”
“Yeah, well.” Link smiles. “That’s why I always come to you. Good luck with Anju, tonight.”
“And good luck with Tatl next… Cycle, I suppose,” you say, breaking the handshake. “…I won’t remember you the next time we see each other, will I?”
Link shakes his head. “I’m going to reset to the Dawn of the First Day, and none of this will have happened. Don’t feel bad, I’m… I’m used to it.”
You want to ask him if he’s really used to it, if he can really handle another few years. Another many years. If he was really ready to spend an eternity in a loop like this. Because as strong of a man as Link is, you can see the pained exhaustion in his eyes.
…you really hope Tatl forgives him. He needs another friend.
“You’re strong,” you offer as parting words. “But… don’t forget, if you ever need someone to lean on…”
He smiles sadly at you. “You’ve said that to me every time we’ve spoken for the last year. Is it that bad?”
You hesitate before nodding once.
“…I’ll think about it.”
And as he turns to leave, when he thinks you can’t see him, his mask slips and the exhaustion returns. For a brief, fleeting moment you want to reach to him, grab him by the arm, and tell him to come with you and Anju. To offer him a place to rest, even for just one night. To show him an ounce of kindness that he clearly needs but can never achieve.
But he’s gone before you have the guts to do anything.
And he weighs on you even as you return to Anju…
…
It’s 6:00 am, three days before the Carnival of Time. The day you were supposed to marry Anju. You are Kafei, a man forced into the body of a child by a masked imp. Weeks later, you are still hunting for your mask. The Sun Mask. Your proof to Anju that you wish to spend the rest of your life with her.
You hope that all your feelings come across in the letter you write to her, passing by construction workers and a child dressed in green speaking animatedly to a fairy to place your letter in the mailbox. The Postman will get it to her in the afternoon. After that… You adjust the Keton mask on your face as you hurry back to the Curiosity shop’s backroom. You need to get some sleep if you’ll be awake and alert enough to keep an eye on the customers coming through his store. That bastard who stole your mask HAS to come along to pawn it at some point. Or anything, really - he’s the kind of scumbag who would steal from an old woman, after all. You’ll find him eventually.
You just hope it’s before the moon finishes falling…
You’re about to lay down when the bell rings outside. Strange. You didn’t expect someone to come calling at this time. Still, you put your mask back on and hurry to the door, opening it to see…
That first image is an edit of HUGZzz by Irene Strychalski. She’s improved tremendously in the past nine years, and you can see her current work on her tumblr, reniedraws! She has done backgrounds for Archer and Unsupervised, backgrounds and character designs for Chozen, and pencils and inks for issue #1 of Deadpool Family. She’s currently making a webcomic called Shaman Child. Here’s some of her current art:
[girl with scarf] [deadpool] [wedding commission] [hair and water]
As for the anime girl in the plaid skirt, I braved the hellscape that is early ‘00s anime websites, exploring endless gif-covered Gaia pages and vampire-filled roleplay forums, traveling across seas of unsourced DeviantArt edits and low-res hentai, to discover that she is an original character by Hiro Suzuhira. She has done work for Shuffle!, Ef: A Tale of Melodies, Akikan!, Phantom Breaker, and We Without Wings, among many others, and she is also a prolific freelance illustrator. Here are some examples of her art:
against my better judgment I'm becoming entranced by video essays that claim to be talking about really pervasive pressing issues that are everywhere 😱 that turn out to be about some shit you've never heard of in your life if you're not on tiktok or insta
and it's like. it's not that I don't think it's worthwhile to critically examine niche subcommunity issues. the analysis can be incredibly thought and insightful! but I do also feel that lending too much credence to things that bother you in internet bubbles can turn you into, like, the person On Here who sincerely told me that I was being naive for believing that tiktok romances aren't causing complete downfall of the entire publishing industry
"everyone is reading the same books and wearing the same clothes and buying whatever the algorithm tells them to buy, personal taste is dead!" I think maybe you need to like. talk to some people on the bus.
One of the most common ways you preserve pork without refrigeration is keeping it in really salty water. This makes the pork borderline inedible because it’s so salty. What you don’t see in medieval fantasy is people soaking their meat in water for a bit before they cook it.
That’s also a reason to boil your meat though. Like yeah meat tastes better if you sear it first but sometimes you’ve gotta get that salt out.
Also medieval peasants had more meat than you’d think because of these preservation methods. You can feed a pig scraps for the whole year and then butcher it at the start of winter and preserve the meat. Because of this they also often had access to lard.
Medieval peasants also didn’t eat chicken very often. That’s a source of eggs. If you’re lucky enough to own a cow it’s also unlikely you’d eat it unless it’s on its way out anyways. That’s a good source of milk. It’s more advantageous to keep a cow or chicken alive than to eat them.
These days chicken is usually the cheapest form of meat available. If someone is eating a chicken in a medieval setting though it’s either because they didn’t need that chicken anymore or because they’re rich enough to have chickens for eating.
If we’re talking mutton, European sheep are more often kept for wool or milk while middle eastern or African sheep are more often kept for eating. Europeans would of course eat sheep sometimes but it’s another one of those cases where it makes more sense to keep the animal alive rather than eating it.
Fat from a fat tailed sheep makes for good cooking fat if your setting is more middle eastern or North African inspired. European settings would prefer butter, lard, or olive oil depending on where exactly they are.
Goats weren’t super popular in Europe during medieval and ancient times. Very common in the Middle East and North Africa though both for milk and for meat.
A cow or ewe must have a calf or lamb every year to produce milk. Half of those offspring will be male, and thus will not produce milk. Ergo they were eaten, because you only need one bull or ram for a much larger number of breeding females.
The limiting factor for livestock keeping in the medieval period was winter fodder--there was enough summer grazing for the spring births in fallow fields that they fertilized with their manure , but not enough hay and grazing to get them through the winter. So the lambs--all the males and some of the females--would be butchered in the fall. A bull calf might be butchered as veal (or "baby beef", depending on timing) its first fall or might be over-wintered and butchered as beef the following fall. A few of the older ewes would be butchered as mutton, replaced with female lambs from the spring births. A female calf would be traded, sold, or kept as a replacement.
Similarly, half of the chicks born would be male, destined for spring/early summer butchering. (Or caponed, castrated, though that's much more difficult with a bird.) Chicken is a lean meat, though, and rather tough in a free-range bird, so it was usually stewed rather than roasted. Capon was a bit of a luxury food due to the difficulty of castrating them. Geese were much more popular due to the fattier meat.
Pork was plentiful due in part to the large size of a sow's litter. Over-winter one sow, and you get eight piglets or so, much more than a cow's single calf or a ewe's one to four lambs. Even if you didn't keep your own sow, buying piglets to raise and fatten was common. Most medieval pigs would forage rather than being fed scraps--hence the ubiquity of swineherd as a humble occupation.
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