I READ THE FIC AND YOU SHOULD TOO GO DO THAT RIGHT NOW PLEASE

What do you mean??? Random 30 second sleet attacks in April are so nice!!!

Day 267 - i hate hate hate korean weather so much

SO CUTE AND WHOLESOME AHHHHHHH

*gently holds*

WHAT THE HECK TYSM @i-love-zelda-16 I'VE NEVER DONE ONE OF THESE BEFORE I FRICKING LOVE THE INTERNET

My username is penguinly! It's actually not that deep but my long-term special interest since forever has been penguins and I hop between fandoms too often to choose a fandom-specific name. I chose penguinly because 'penguin' was taken on ao3 and it sounds really similar to Penguini which is the name of the penguin in my pfp. I probably chose to make it an adjective because it was like 2am and I thought it was really funny to have bad grammar. So yeah, I am now forever penguinly on the internet!

No pressure tags: @aaa-batteryy @palmolli @anicomicqueen

Floor's also open for anyone else who wants to share!

Tag Game!

Tag your moots and ask them where they got the idea for their tumblr accounts name! Thanks for the tag @hurricane105!

I’m a (genderflux) demiboy and I wanted something similar to my Wattpad username, NonbinaryNightmare, which was taken on tumblr. And I thought, hey, demiboydemon is pretty similar but accurate to my current gender identity.

No-pressure tagging some of my mutuals! @metro-mtp @hyruleairbnb @chimpukampu @livhatesbeans @beardedlink

I admittedly underestimated the ‘Graphic Depictions of Violence’ tag when I read this fic. But also this fic is now my prime example for why ao3 should never be censored. Yes, it’s bloody. Yes, it’s gorey. Yes, I would never be allowed on the internet again if I ever got caught reading this. But I’m telling you there’s something so raw and unfiltered in this fic it’s art. This is a work of art. I’ve never seen an author reveal so much of their thought process behind their writing before and this is what dedication looks like. I repeat, PLEASE READ THE TAGS on this work but King of Hyrule will probably live in my head forever as one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of taking a character and just running wild with the plot. It is simultaneously eerie how in character and how wrong the characters feel. It is so horrifyingly detailed and well thought out. It’s amazing to see someone so passionate about their work. I fricking love the internet.

king of hyrule: a clumsy analysis, ch1.

for @toyouhellohowareyou, @nyastri, and @starwolfie, who asked for a director's commentary on king of hyrule.... i've never done one of these before but i've always wanted to try!! we'll see how it goes. warning: i have given myself permission to ramble. hard tw for descriptions of gore under the cut.

also, my deepest apologies to anyone who thought i knew what i was doing at any point.

first i will give context. this fic was given to @across-violet-skies as an (extremely belated) birthday gift... i'd been trying to find out what sort of ideal gift riv would like without actually asking, and so far had received no hints, because i was a coward who wasn't actually asking. then a perfect opportunity fell in my lap! i said "i've never actually written anything from hyrule's perspective" (we are all gracefully ignoring THE VASE), riv said "i love hyrule. if you write hyrule it will 100% go on my to read list", @a-manicured-lawn went straight for the throat with "Hyrule MEETS THE CHAIN MID SACRIFICE"... and then thunder clashed overhead, sealing my fate forever. chat threw evil possessive fae rulie at me and i caught him with both hands. the first thing i wrote in the document was came back wrong.

i opened a new doc. faced with the spine-tingling prospect of writing from a perspective i was not experienced with, i immediately closed the doc. i backtracked to my headcanons file. in the hyrule section, i found this:

his sisters do not seem to know that he was born so large and wingless, but he thinks that maybe they understand better than he does, for joining them feels like shedding his skin for something truer, and even when he puts it back on he can feel it, these days. he can feel where it rubs against his wings underneath, feels like he is hiding in a shell like the hermit crabs of wind’s beaches, like he is only in disguise as human and is really perhaps something else entirely. fairies are mouthless unless they need to be otherwise, in the case of offered sugar water and fruit. they sing more than speak, and it sounds like chimes, and hyrule knows this, it needs no translation, it sings to the boneless ecstasy of this form, of flight and family and the sweetness of being small…

which i quite enjoyed thinking about. the intersection of fairy joy and horror had potential. the alien qualities of magical creatures. i drew from this feeling to cobble together an opening line:

Mouthless, the fairies sing to him. In his dreams they are made of light.

okay, so, this is a solid start, right? i love it.

He wakes from memories of the cold-sweet greenwoods of Twilight’s era to darkness, and for a moment the sound of his brothers’ laughter seems so far away he wonders whether they were a feverish invention...

i aimed for confusion and befuddlement rather than ignorance. he needed to have some sort of expectations for the situation, so i could fuck with his head more effectively 😈

...a flame deep in the cave, a flickering torch, and by it he sees blood.

here we meet fuckup number 1, in the second paragraph because i exceed even my own expectations! the original draft included monsters - because, logically, who put hyrule on the altar? wouldn't they wish to witness the sacrifice? i ended up getting rid of the monsters to eliminate the need for a fight scene (although, PFFFT, i went back there in chapter 2 anyway), but this lonely torch stuck around. it makes no sense. i don't know why i didn't just remove it. i needed the cave to be very dark anyway, so that the chain would have to light a lamp in order to see the damage hyrule's body sustained...

Hyrule reaches out a finger and scoops it up. It tastes of iron. He can’t afford to leave it, out in the open, where…

blood curse!

...the dark wet pool where he’d been laying. Hyrule reaches out with terrible dawning horror and traces the edge of a divot in the stone, a path for the blood that had leaked out of him while he was unconscious, down and down and down until his hand slips off the edge of the altar and sinks into a bowl of soft ashes —

deeply unhappy with this paragraph. dark wet pool, as a description, gets a mediocre 5/7. the stone altar has carved channels for the blood? okay, but why did i not call them channels??? and thirdly, THE ASHES, ALSO KNOWN AS FUCKUP NUMBER 2. THIS IS LIKE, THE ONLY TIME I MENTION THEM IN THE WHOLE STORY. WHAT THE FUCK, PAST ME.

His dreams of light and greenery are quickly becoming murky.

i quite like this sentence, but—

He lowers his hips off the edge, but he can’t feel the floor. There is not enough light to jump. The altar seems to drop away into an abyss.

WHERE! ARE! THE! ASHES! ARE THEY FLOATING??? HOW DID HE FEEL THEM OFF THE EDGE OF THE ALTAR IF ITS SO TALL??? i was having such conflicting mental images when writing this fic. the altar in my head was like... a normal altar height. but i needed it to be taller to explain why he didn't just run away, since i got rid of all the monsters. so i spent the whole three thousand words trying to edit the altar in my head. mostly unsuccessfully.

The skin on his stomach scrapes against rock as he pulls himself back up.

this sentence was about his hip bone. but i hadn't told you about it yet so i had to switch it out for skin. but it's really about his hip bone in my heart. you understand

...tries to draw his knees into his chest on instinct and the twinge becomes a full body shudder—a spike in his side that reverberates down into his thigh, creaking and bending—

this paragraph was originally about real pain. and then a few minutes later, i was like - wouldn't it be better (worse) if there wasn't any pain? then i can focus on the actual horror part of it rather than the injured part of being injured. if that makes any sense. the imagery is also a bit messy. if i was editing, this is one of the paragraphs i would rewrite. sometimes i actually can't believe i put this stuff on the internet. wtf am i doing

...traces the damp skin where his blood had run all the way back to where it started...

i can't even look this sentence in the eye. i did you so dirty, babygirl. you need a comma. or major surgery. maybe both

edit: i did, in fact, go back and add a comma.

...back to the tender flesh of his hip, where he touches something smooth and hard. He strokes it gently with his fingers, exploring in the dark. He finds wet skin, and hot tense muscle.

okay LETS GET THIS PARTY STARTED!!!

Hyrule shivers. He sits quietly with the ghost of what should be pain. Letting it wash over him. The knowledge festers.

something something the horror of placidity when faced with terrible things. something something hyrule has been running from this exact possibility for years and now that it has happened he doesn't know what to do next. something something life after his inevitable sacrifice has never been a possibility for him

He has been bled like an animal for this sacrifice.

ripping this sentence to shreds with my teeth. in a good way. me when characters dehumanise themselves‼️

If he has already bled into the ashes, if he has already been sacrificed, how is he still awake? How is he still alive?

this is me asking myself this question, by the way. at this point i still didn't really have any idea what was happening beyond "let's fuck em up"

Where is Ganon? Unless—

and then i was like, aha. there is something here that i can work with. you are watching me figure this fic out in real time.

...finds skin; hands reaching up from the ground, fingers just reaching the altar. He grasps them, weak. They are hot. Or maybe it is just that his own pulse is cold and slow? He feels faint.

reaching twice in the same sentence? i'm going to travel back in time and break all my fingers before i can hit post. that wasn't intentional. also, the hands were originally cold, and hyrule felt very hot, because like... fury and anger and evil, u know? temperatures rise with a fever? he's sick from the possession? but then later on i wanted legend to be warm with the triforce, and i realised that it made more sense for hyrule to be cold like a corpse. so i changed it.

He bites his lip. So what if he bleeds? What could it matter now?

hopelessness. lack of urgency. he (and i) are both starting to get an idea of what is happening.

“LIGHT!” Legend shouts. “I FOUND HIM! WE NEED LIGHT—are you hurt?”

legend's so cute when he's stressed out. i say this in a demonic writerly way 🥰

“A darkness looms in this cavern,” Four’s voice says distantly. “Something is shrouding the torches. They’re lit, but… the light is stifled.” “I feel it,” Time agrees. “Evil is here.”

where tf is everyone else? i ask myself. ensemble stories are difficult, because they shift the tone. i need to keep the focus solely on legend and hyrule, so [throws glitter] now you're all wandering around in the dark!!

Sorry, sorry,” he says again, feeling the heat inside him shift and writhe. “It wakes. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

this is the point where i was like, hell yes, he has ganon inside him. also, meet fuckup number 3. i forgot to get rid of the heat motif. he's supposed to be cold now. whoops.

“Sorry for what?” Legend cries. His hands flutter at the edge of the tall altar, empty, searching. 

in which i remind myself that the altar is supposed to be tall.

Hyrule curls his palm over his heart and wishes to wake from a dream. Nothing happens. He traces the familiar scar with the fingers of the opposite hand. It’s cold and light and empty . Why is it cold? Where is the tr—

first reference to the triforce. heavy-handed, but i needed to make sure everyone was on the same page. he doesn't have it anymore. also, i use the rich text box to post to ao3, and it always adds a space after italicised text, which is mildly annoying.

The path that led through the cold-sweet greenwoods, and laughter that quickly turned to shouts of fear and the ring of steel on steel. The ambush. His flaming sword. Legend, turning for a moment to protect Warriors’ back, and the Darknut that launched itself from behind a moblin towards him—

backstory! and a reference to the first paragraph, because i was really enjoying the phrase "cold-sweet greenwoods". an antithesis to everything currently happening (or at least, it was when hyrule still had his heat motif). "his flaming sword" is hyrule's fire spell. i picked a monster at random.

His hand comes away wet from his chest. He can’t feel anything.

i decided he was going to be impaled even before i decided he was going to be possessed 🥰 it wasn't in the brief but sometimes... sometimes you just gotta sheath a sword in someones chest. u know. u kn—

“I’m not Hyrule anymore,” he says.

and then i was like. you know what would make this worse? what if i trick everyone. what if ganon and hyrule's perspectives are hopelessly entwined? what if there's no way of knowing how much is hyrule and how much is ganon? what if this was actually ganon?

and so this is where i started to have lots and lots of fun. and we get into the gore.

His heart. He is touching his own heart. It beats still. That’s not a good sign.

a bit of casualness among the heavy descriptions! a bit of levity for your brain! also, hyrule(?)'s slow, burgeoning panic? i'm chewing on it. if i do say so myself.

Hyrule’s body withdraws his wrist from the inside of his own chest. How deep does the wound go? If there was light, would Legend be able to see the other side of the altar through him?

i was oddly captivated by this idea that legend would be able to see through his chest. this is also our FIRST use of "hyrule's body" replacing "hyrule" as the perspective character! this transition was something a lot of people loved, and i am very glad i went ahead with it. the idea didn't come to me until the night before posting, and i almost discarded it because it made some sentences clunky.

“You know it,” Hyrule’s body says gently. He cups his hand around the veteran’s face, red-stained nails just lightly pressing against skin, wondering what would happen if he dug them into that soft flesh. “You know it, don’t you? You saw that wound. Nothing could survive that.” “You’re not a thing,” Legend objects from under his palm.

once again, me and characters dehumanising themselves. not a huge focus but it complements the ganon/rulie identity issues nicely.

hyrule's always been a "do not go gentle into that good night" sort of character to me - the idea of him so fatalistic? so hopeless? alarm bells are screeching. something is wrong. SOMETHING IS WRONG

the uncomfortable intimacy begins.

“I think I am,” Hyrule’s body says. “I am a corpse.”

this has really got to be one of the most fun lines in the whole thing.

...flinches back, grip tightening on Legend’s face, dragging him forward until he is pressed against the altar.

underestimating the height of the altar, the sequel.

“Finally. We can see,” someone says. “That took forever. Where’s Legend?”

who? is the character omitted because it's not important, or because hyrule's body doesn't immediately know? the legend fixation is rearing its ugly head 🥰

...and Hyrule’s body is saddened but unsurprised to see tears on his face. They glisten like silver stars.

it took me literally twenty minutes to remember what this sentence was supposed to mean, if you're wondering how brain dead i am right now. anyway, it's genuine sadness, not patronising sadness. it's the part of hyrule that still lives and hurts to see a brother grieving. in a way, this is the only moment in the story that hyrule allows himself to properly mourn, and it's through the lens of his relationship with legend.

Their clothes are unstained, faces tense but clean of blood. In this unholy place, from this altar, their wholeness seems hideous.

i like this bit. it widens the gap between them. makes things a bit more real, a bit darker. presenting the chain as alien emphasises rulie's stance as an unreliable narrator. SOMETHING IS WRONG!!

Somehow, he does not care so much anymore about the mess. He is numb. The stone altar almost feels comfortable to his sensationless legs. He moves, and bone scrapes against the stone. 

this paragraph doesn't quite do what i wanted it to do. it's not raw enough. but it has potential.

...drinks the noise in, heart quickening. Another wave of blood paints itself over his chest.

i'm mortal enemies with this last sentence. i scratched it and rewrote it five times. still not happy.

He flashes his eyes into the dark, where the Chain lurk, unwilling to step closer, faced with such a spectre. A corpse. A king, woken.

the eye flash was important to me. i was thinking about how many nocturnal animal eyes reflect light? the inherent creepiness of blank glowy eyes. also subtle dehumanisation. and ganon begins to enter the story consciousness - a king, woken.

“You were too late to save Hyrule. You chose to protect Warriors instead.”

this was a largely unnecessary plot point. i don't know. i think i was just trying to increase the tension between legend and hyrule. highlight how off the gentle intimacy between them was. they weren't codependent before. they weren't a perfectly synced pair. and now...

Hyrule’s body looks at him and thinks with a deep, all-encompassing revulsion, mine. All mine.

had to make sure i was hitting that 'possessive rulie' button! i've never written a possessive character before so it took a bit of wobbling before i committed. "how weird am i acceptably allowed to make this?" i was thinking.

Hyrule’s body smears the blood lovingly over him: letting it trace the ghost of his silver tears over his cheeks and nose. Rubbing it gently into his forehead. He hushes him.

replacing the tears with blood -> replacing the grief with fear -> replacing the love with something more terrible. also, characters doing horrible unspeakable things very calmly and gently makes me shiver.

Legend sobs again and tries to pull away, but a dead man’s grip is stronger than stinging iron, and Legend himself is weak and trembling. Barely more than a rabbit under his fingers. He wonders, detached, what it would feel like to snap that neck. What it would sound like. The crunch of bone.

stinging iron! fae reference. dead man! enforcing that corpse idea. rabbit! we know this one. the intrusive thoughts are not winning yet, but they're getting closer.

He giggles, and squeezes Legend until he squeaks. “I forgot you all were here,” he confides cheerfully.

i had a lot of fun with this. the happy cutesy language!! the most effective kind of horror, for me, has always been when something awful is sort of... not quite in focus. there, but not fully understood. happening in the background, or right under your nose while you're concentrating on something else. very casual. very normal. very scary.

“But he’s mine,” Hyrule’s body says reasonably. The torch flickers as a slight breeze passes through the cavern. He feels it whistle through his chest and twitches. Warriors’ eyes are wide and afraid. Hyrule’s body grins and licks his bitten lips, painting his canines with blood. “What are you?” the captain breathes.

and this is when i was like, fuck ganon/rulie's identity crisis, why didn't i write this from someone else's perspective??? HOW AWFUL WOULD IT HAVE BEEN??? WHAT ARE THE REST OF THE CHAIN THINKING??? WHAT DOES HYRULE LOOK LIKE??? his detachment, while working well to create tone and pacing, really made it hard to convey the horror of his appearance.

to my great joy, all my dreams were later answered in Hero of Hyrule, Knight of Hyrule, and Founder of Hyrule.

“Oh, were you trying to say something?” he asks, with his best manners. “Go on. You can do it.”

the CONDESCENSION. i then realised what i was about to make him do, and ran back to riv, asking how gorey the fic was allowed to be. "i can change it. it's not too late," i said... "i am so curious," riv replied. so i continued.

and here we go:

...lips pressed tightly together against the blood, which coats his mouth and the skin around it. It looks like he’s taken a bite right out of Hyrule’s flesh, he thinks. It suits him...

i am making things WEIRD and i am making things WORSE. i have nothing to say for myself. it's intentionally uncomfortable.

Hyrule’s body pats his tongue. “There we are! That wasn’t so hard.”

this is one of those sentences that was worsened by the switch to "hyrule's body". but i'm on a roll now. the next few paragraphs mostly consist of me grinning evilly to myself.

...waits, fingers clamped across Legend’s nose, until the man swallows, shivering. His eyes are glazed. Drying blood clumped in the lashes. Hyrule’s body coos. This was his big brother, once.

this is really the point in which legend's agency is completely gone from hyrule's perspective. he ceases to become a player - whether that's because of the way hyrule has succeeded in taking all control from him, or because of ganon/rulie's further mental spiral, who knows? and i just threw that brother line in there to hurt you. of course.

“Ru—Rulie would n—never do this,” someone else agrees, voice breaking. Legend whines an agreement.

even though i'm having a great time writing a darker, more horrific hyrule, i retain the belief that the heroes are each fundamentally good people. my main doubt with this fic is that i don't think i'm straddling that line very well. i mean... after all...

“I already told you I wasn’t Hyrule,” Hyrule’s body says. He squeezes Legend again to coax more pained sounds from him. What is he feeling? Does it hurt? He feels the numb bone of his hip grind against the altar as he moves. The cold point of Warriors’ sword presses softly into his chest. The pressure is almost welcome compared to the gaping emptiness of his wound. “You can taste it, right? You can tell?”

the trusty old obsession with legend manifests itself as jealousy, for a brief moment.

here we see my second attempt at describing bone scraping on stone. it's marginally better.

you guessed it baby, it's the impaling thing again!! if he can't feel pain, does he think of it only as an absence? a lack? there is a metaphor here that i'm not touching but it's in the room with us. it's in the room.

blood curse. right. that's where we're going

Legend jerks in his hold. He laughs delightedly.

now we're getting it!

“Yes, brave one,” he croons, “that’s what the ashes were for. Except I didn’t have enough of a body left to really inhabit , so I borrowed this one. Oh, he bled so nicely for me. It was beautiful.”

those FUCKING ASHES!!! WHY DID I NEGLECT THEM!!! also watch me stickytape an explanation for the possession together in real time

“Didn’t even have to tie him down,” he says gleefully. “He only woke up once during the whole thing, and I guess he figured you’d left him for dead, because he just laid back down. Placid as a lamb, that one, in the end. So easy , when he realised he couldn’t do anything to stop what had already been started…”

is hyrule's body lying? who am i to say (yes yes i know, but). whatever the truth of that dark moment was, i really love this little speech. the idea of him mock-comforting legend with a sugar-sweet description of his own death does something to me. the way he presents himself as helpless. the way he presents himself as unheroic. as giving up. is this hyrule or ganon talking? does it matter?

“STOP IT!” someone screeches. “STOP IT! DON’T SAY THAT!”

i had to keep stopping and going back to add in bits where the chain could talk. whatever fucked-up thing was happening between legend and hyrule had even me constantly forgetting that everyone was right there witnessing it. and when i did remember i had to stop and shriek and wonder whether i'd ever have the guts to post this on the internet.

“BECAUSE I HAVE WOKEN. I HAVE BEEN REBORN. I AM GANON, KING OF HYRULE!”

title drop. every time i read this sentence i get jumpscared by the first bit of my username. the speech pattern is also very clunky. 2/7.

Silence falls for a moment. The torch sputters. 

that fucking torch!!! i'm going to commit a murder.

...and, unwilling to let go of Legend for some inexplicable reason, Hyrule’s body instead lets himself sink down onto the sword. His ribs crunch. The blade enters at an angle but then slots neatly into the hole already there—he slides down the steel, still laughing, until the crossguard presses across his chest.

this paragraph and the start of the next had some good ideas and poor execution. i'm playing around with the 'wound as an absence, a loss' thing again. filled by the sword, by violence. that other metaphor is still hanging around. i'm pointedly not touching it. and ganon/rulie places legend above himself. or is it that he places his control of legend above the physical condition of a body he enjoys injuring, to watch the chain squirm? that's the question, isn't it? is this an act of cruelty or protection?

...scrapes against the walls of his heart, tears his lungs ragged. Fresh blood bubbles into the wound and runs, dripping, off the end of the blade. Legend is crying.

blood & tears.

He can’t stop laughing in this dead boy’s voice. He is back. He is finally free. No longer trapped in blood—no longer suppressed by that triforce— his broken knees sag as he hunts them through the dark—

i just wrote him jumping down like a normal person (underestimating the height of the altar, the sequel's sequel), and then my fingers produced "his broken knees sag as he hunts them through the dark" in response to a personal inquiry as to what ganon/rulie's movement would look like and i was like, FUCK, okay, well, this has to be in it. so i broke his knees.

“Which of you has it?” he says suddenly, snapping his head around as he tracks their movement. His neck crunches. The sword in his chest slows him down. He isn’t bothered to remove it. Behind him, Legend retches, curled into himself on the floor.

how will this end? i asked myself. aha: a wish on the triforce. not too much of a deus ex machina, right? it's literally canon. so this is the point when i went back and added in that earlier stuff about the triforce. there's also a half-hearted broken neck in this paragraph. if i had the change to go back, i'd either elaborate on that or cut it entirely. i was too caught up at the time in wondering how to wrap the story up to pay attention to the details. my bad, guys.

The group exchanges glances, unwilling. He pounces on the nearest and shakes him against the ground, climbing atop the man and snarling in his face like a creature. “WHERE IS IT?”

does ganon/rulie know who this is? does he care?

As he leans over, Warriors’ sword begins to ooze back out of his chest. It slips down until the pommel touches the hero’s sternum. Like an axle it balances between them. He is a sheath for the blade. He is the meat on the skewer. He touches his forehead, leaving bloody splotches behind. Where are these thoughts coming from? He is not—he is more—he is GANON, RIGHTFUL KING OF HYRULE.

an interesting visual here, and not one that i'm convinced i pulled off. but i have been informed that the internal conflict was very good, which is comforting.

“Kill him, then,” says Warriors suddenly. There is an outcry from the others.

i wrote this without really thinking about where it would go, but i'm VERY happy i did. everything clicked into place. there could be a sort of standoff - ganon/rulie's dissonance would be exposed - then something and something else and then the end. i was getting close.

“You said he was yours,” Warriors says. “Why would Ganon say that?” He pauses. Hyrule looks back at Legend. He gets off the floor. 

this, wars my beloved, is a VERY GOOD POINT. he's the only person with a single useful thought in his head.

The blood and puke squelches under his bare feet as he walks back across the room to Legend.

i was pretty happy with this sentence for no good reason. it feels like a child to me. a disgusting, vomit-y child. maybe i'm just proud i managed to remember that legend threw up. keeping track of details is one of my most important goals in writing.

The wet tip of the blade touches the side of his neck. Simple and so—tantalising. Hyrule’s body can picture it. He can picture—

the internal conflict gets a change to shine. also i just love the contrast in the way ganon/rulie touches and thinks about legend. neither entirely separate. thoughts and actions bleeding into each other emotionally but not physically - he's holding back. he's been holding back this entire time.

But wouldn’t it be better if he—he has been so careful not to break Legend. So gentle. He has let him taste. Helped him understand what was happening—explained, kindly—let himself sink down with a squelch onto the sword—only thought about peeling back the skin from Legend’s face with his fingernails. Left the grinning muscle and bone safe in its flesh wrappings and protected— He stops.

i really love this bit. it was a joy to write. gentle horrors, once again. well-meaning destruction.

“See?” says Warriors. He sounds quietly smug. Hyrule’s body snarls. He wants to rip his arms off. Chew through muscle and tendon and nerve with his teeth—snap him bone by bone—he wants to haul him up onto the altar and keep him still and quiet and safe while his minions take over the world—he grips his forehead—what is happening to him—

my love for the em dash cannot be contained. i'm working on it, i promise, but it's easy and so tasty

Hyrule’s body looks. He finds himself with one hand cupped around Legend’s cheek, Legend pressing into the touch despite himself.

yeahh........ i fucked them up.

“I don’t—” he starts. “I SHOULD KILL YOU.” “But you won’t,” Legend rasps.

i'm not sure where i fall on the capitalised dialogue issue. (YES, i KNOW, it was ME who wrote it.) it goes a long way in emphasising power, magnitude, other-ness of the possession... but sometimes i squint at it and it seems a little camp. i guess that's not my problem anymore, though, unless i decide to write another ch—

“There you are,” Legend says. His mouth flickers into a smile. 

his agency is taken back. the culmination of something (of 20 days of bashing my head into a keyboard)

He pushes up to his feet, half-dried blood soggy on his face and matted in his hair—he stretches up to his full height, scabbed knees and dirty tunic and— His hand is so hot on Hyrule’s own that it burns. Legend blinks. Suddenly his irises are gold.

yes, i thought. yes, yes, yes, home run—wait, fuck, i don't know how the fucking triforce actually works—

“I wish to seal away Ganon once more,” Legend says. “So that Link, Hero of Hyrule, will be safe from harm.”

seven google searches and one plea to discord later, i say fuck it we ball. he's going to wish like a disney princess. it's part of the charm of the franchise, these cute fairytale elements, i say, as i frantically mop the blood off the floor

The torch roars higher. He sees a single tear on Legend’s face amongst the blood, shining like a silver star in the firelight. Darkness overtakes him—pain, suddenly, finally, spikes—

TORCH. 🪦

For a moment the sounds of the cavern seem so far away he wonders whether he is being tortured by a feverish invention. An echo. A might-have-been.  Then everything fades.

how do you write a proper conclusion to your essay? just rephrase the introduction/thesis. easy. what? that doesn't work with fic? surely you're mistaken. behold.

so here we are! this post has been a journey and a half. if you have genuinely read this entire thing, my life is yours. i had so much fun writing this fic, and i hope from the bottom of my heart you have at least mildly enjoyed me rambling about the creation of it. this story could never have existed without the wonderful egging-on of my friends 🥰🥰🥰 thank you for coming to my tedtalk

OH MY GODS THIS IS BASICALLY MY ‘IF ALL ELSE GOES TO SHIT’ FIC I LOVE IT SO MUCH

@skyloftian-nutcase your fic "Numb" made me FEEL THINGS. It gave me those little angsty butterflies and I just adore how you describe emotions! Everything flows so naturally and all your fics are just a joy to read!

I took a bit of creative liberty with this fan art, but I hope you like it! ❤️❤️

Passing out and getting my 5 hours is probably the right call here but I WILL have it up tomorrow! I promise those extra 300 words are WORTH IT (I made it angstier. Because angst. SO MUCH ANGST)!!!

Yall, I just realized a thing...

WILD AND SUN WOULD BE BEST FRIENDS.

hear me out here.

Both of them died, came back, and had to restore their memories. They both deal with feeling like an intruder in their own body, feeling like they can't live up to who they used to be in their past life. WAR PTSD!! FLASHBACKS!!! They're both knights (sort of? This is a bit of a stretch lmao) Sun went to a knight school, Wild used to be a knight before he kicked the bucket.

I need more content of them interacting and just relating to each other. Because they really would relate. Their experience of dying and coming back is not a very common one, and having someone else to relate to would probably make them overjoyed. Also, Wild has already spoken to her. Mostly just as a business exchange and she's Hylia then, but STILL. Pls someone write a fic abt them, I will marry you. This is my official proposal. Compete for my aroace hand right now. GET WRITING PLEASE YOU'LL HAVE MY SOUL. (because I'm too lazy to)

One side of my head is sopping wet and the other side is bone dry what the fuck was that aim @aaa-batteryy

highly recommend the ice bucket challenge

yup

yup

yup

yup

nope

yup

I love the internet part 2.

hey guys can you take care of this thing while i'm gone. he's had a rough day.

Technically Tuesday where I’m at. The burnout do be hitting hard.

Happy Monday everyone :)