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Just a question- do you intend to continue the Promises series? No pressure or anything! Do what you want! I'm just wondering.

I know it's been well over a year since I last updated that series, but i do still intend to come back to Promises.

Unfortunately, I am what one might call 'too invested' in BotW and my headcanons, to the point where it started to impact me in other areas of my life, lol.

I took a break in order to focus on my studies, which are very important to me. Also, last summer, a lot of things happened that meant I was in no state to write at the time.

Still, though, I imagine that the sequel releasing will give me sufficient motivation to write again, once I'm finished with my course at least.

It does make me happy to know that people are still interested in my series, even now. I'm incredibly sorry to have left everyone waiting for so long, but needs must and I've had to prioritise my focus. I will say, though, that I'm glad that I managed to get to a point where I felt content to take a hiatus, with Mipha reuniting with Sidon.

Hope this answers your question. :)

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Dropping in to make my first post in months just to say that I DESPISE the interpretation of BotW that the Champions, Hyrule, and all the people killed in the Calamity were just the price Zelda had to pay to live a happy, carefree life where she could 'follow her dreams'.

Like.

I've seen this viewpoint espoused unironically in regards to the game's final cutscene, and it just comes across as utterly psychopathic to me.

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Dark Robin

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Link & Mipha.

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Oh boy, I can't wait for the sequel to spit in my face for caring about the Champions and wanting to at least attempt to resurrect them, all whilst simultaneously pushing the narrative that 'Somehow, Ganon returned.' 😑

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Winter's Moon - Director's Commentary

So. Uh. I have a couple of asks in my inbox that have been sitting there since August, for a meme about asking authors for "director's cut/commentary" on a particular fic or scene. I've also been thinking a lot lately about my story Winter's Moon, and all the things about I would love to talk about, so... I'm going to, instead of answering those asks, write a series of posts breaking the fic down, chapter by chapter, with my process/thoughts/background/etc. on various things. sorry to the two of you who asked! or not, as you're getting more than you asked for, technically.

welp. anyway. here goes part one, which is an introduction to the story.

Intro

First off, a bit of background on a major part of just why this story is incredibly special and meaningful to me. I've been writing fanfic for a long, long time, but I've also taken some significant breaks from it. One began in 2017, as I finally became tired of trying to fit into a very clique-ish fandom that had never really accepted me (and that at times had treated me very poorly), and lasted until late 2020, when Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity came out. There were definitely periods during that time where I felt like my ability to write at all was lost, and it was. extremely painful, let's just say. But then AOC came out, presenting me with a timeline where things went right and the Champions lived, and Hyrule wasn't decimated. There's been a lot of criticism for various aspects of the story, and I'll admit some stuff was silly and could've been done better. But, for all of that, the gift of the alternate timeline where my beloved Mipha lived, and could be with Link, so delighted and soothed me that I was able to start writing again and reclaim that part of myself. I can't even put into words, ironically, how good that felt, how amazing it's been to have that part of my soul back.

But let's back it up a little to 2017 again. When I stopped writing, I'd been in the middle of an urban fantasy AU based on the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The idea had come from my years-long love affair with fairy tales (and that one in particular), as well as the fact that I was a year or so into my ongoing obsession with the incredible October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. And I was so proud of myself for coming up with what I thought was an amazingly cool concept like that! I've read fairy tale adaptations of various tales, of course, but most of them preserved the more medieval/historical setting (Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles is a big exception; I'm also aware of an East of the Sun and West of the Moon adaptation that takes place in a more modern setting, but as the reviews I've read revealed that birth control tampering by the "hero" is a plot point, I am keeping my mcfucking distance from that). There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but authors like Seanan McGuire and Diana Wynne Jones have given me an appetite for fantasy/magic mixed with modern day stuff.

So the upshot of that is that I completely loved that concept, but just couldn't see it through the end because of reasons outside of the story itself. That did mean, though, that I was haunted by that concept I loved despite having no desire to return to writing for that source material. It always nagged at me, even though I knew I could never finish it. Maybe because of that? I don't know. I just know that I loved the idea of it and hated that I'd never be able to finish writing something so neat.

Fast forward to February 2021, after AOC punted me headlong into writing. I was fresh off my Over the Garden Wall AU, and had seen advertising for a fairy tale themed Breath of the Wild zine here on tumblr, and wanted to apply to it when applications opened in March. (I ultimately was rejected, but such is life.) As I brainstormed ideas for pitches, that old unfinished fic drifted back into my head, unsurprisingly, and once again I was all "damn, that was such a cool idea, I regret leaving it unfinished even though I don't wanna write for that fandom anymore."

... but then it hit me. why couldn't I take that basic idea--of East of the Sun and West of the Moon in a modern day setting--and do it here, with Mipha and Link? why couldn't I take that unfinished business and lay it to rest? The OTGW AU had already shown me how fun it was to do a modern setting with Legend of Zelda characters from across the series, as well as given me experience with it, and in both cases my familiarity with so much of the series was a huge boost (as I had tons of material to pull characters and plot points and locations from), and I already had some old ideas I could recycle from that fic that would aid me in adapting it here... SO WHY THE HELL NOT? I almost immediately set to planning it out, thinking in my head what I could do with it all.

Which I think finally brings us to the basic plotline of the fairy tale itself. There are variations, of course, but the base framework remains the same: girl from a poor family is asked by a polar bear to come live with him in his castle, she agrees, has to deal with a man sleeping in her bed at night that she can't see, and when she finally gets curious she lights a candle to see his face with. Turns out he's a handsome prince, and that her seeing him means he has to return to his troll stepmother's palace east of the sun and west of the moon and marry her daughter, and he gets whisked away. Cue quest by the heroine to rescue her beloved and bring him home. This story also has some similarities with the myth of Eros and Psyche, for those familiar with that. As we go through this, I'll go into the various plot points and the way I adapted them in more depth (as well as discussing something to do with that myth it's similar to).

We'll start with the "girl from a poor family is asked by a polar bear to come with him" thing. in many versions of it, the choice is pretty much made for her by her father, unsurprising given how old a story this is (it makes a point of having her be asked, but her dad kinda coerces her into it anyway after she initially says no). the family's financial situation is important, as the bear tends to promise them wealth in exchange for the daughter coming with him. OBVIOUSLY THIS ISN'T GONNA FLY IN A MODERN DAY SETTING. Moreover, part of the family's financial hardships comes from the fact that there are too many mouths to feed, plus it's talking with the heroine's mother that is the catalyst for the pivotal candle scene. Mipha, meanwhile, is a princess in canon, with a single younger sibling, and a deceased mother.

My solution to this, in a modern setting, is to have Dorephan have faced financial ruin, yanking Mipha's comfortable life away from her. Her father is overworking himself, making her fear that it'll be into an early grave, and she worries intensely about Sidon's future, while also struggling to secure one of her own. Those circumstances, combined with her selfless nature, make it believable that she would want to help a stranger, even an especially bizarre one, particularly in exchange for the kind of money she could help her loved ones with. But more on that later!

Additionally, in lieu of her mother encouraging her to look at the mystery guy in her bed, I chose to have her living away from her family and with a roommate who is a good friend (this separation from her family also helps factor into why she's so worn down and miserable at the start of the story). I chose Impa to fill this role for a couple reasons:

1) this is something I'll go into more in the follow-up stories when I get back to them, but I want to establish Mipha's separation from so much of her life from before her family lost everything. at the start of this story, Link is gone, and has been silent for some time, and her high school friends like Gaddison, Kodah, Bazz, etc. have all gone off to college in other places, and kinda left her behind. between that and her busy schedule, the only real socializing she does anymore is with Impa, and Impa's girlfriend Zelda, who has also become Mipha's friend.

2) AOC Impa is just awesome. Love her. I also got really into the zelimpa ship, and thought it'd be fun to have as an established background element here, with the two being sweet, supportive friends of Mipha's. And this is a common theme in my stories: to give both Mipha and Link friendships outside of each other. They are best friends and very close, of course, but also romantic partners, and they need relationships beyond the two of them. Anything else is not healthy. If I isolate either one of them, you can bet I'll be showing how damaging that is for one's mental health.

this is getting long, so I'll get into chapter one in the next segment!

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I've had people tell me that I shouldn't get my hopes up for Mipha in BotW2, and should merely be content with AoC.

However, what these people fail to understand about me is that now I have canon material that SHOWS just how close Link and Mipha are, I will NEVER be able to accept a continuation of BotW unless it gives proper respect to their relationship, as well as the lore that explicitly offers a solution to the angst that Mipha's death causes.

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A couple of fun headcanons: This unnamed pond next to Link’s house (not Firly Pond down the hill) could have been made by Link himself 100 years ago. There’s nothing supporting this, but it’s roughly the size of the sleeping pools in Zora’s Domain, and it is within view of the bedroom window. Considering their history, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched for Link and/or his father to want a sleeping pool for entertaining Zora guests. (Of course I would like to think that Link dug it out specifically for Mipha.)

Additionally, the purple lotus flowers in this pond are extremely rare in the bodies of water surrounding Hateno. (They only appear here and in Firly Pond, while smaller white lotus flowers appear in the broken heart pond on Ebon Mountain. All three ponds are adjacent Link’s house.) These flowers are however very common in Lanayru, appearing in Ralis Pond, Mikau Lake, the bottom of Veiled Falls, etc. as well as the water surrounding the shrine in the Domain itself. It is very possible that Link and/or his father took some seeds back with them to plant in their pond to remind them or any potential Zora guests of Lanayru.

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link + zora armor

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More plushie adventures! This time, I posed them with the pumpkin soup I made from the Nomtendo zine. It was sooooo easy to make and delicious, I'll definitely be making it again!

It was very important to me to try this recipe from the book first, for a few reasons. One is that it's specifically "Yeto and Yeta's Pumpkin Soup", inspired by the soup you help the friendly yeti in Twilight Princess make, and Snowpeak Ruins is one of my absolute favorite dungeons in the whole series because it's so creative and fun. So it was for that reason that I used that place, and those two yetis, in my fic Winter's Moon earlier this year. I even had Mipha enjoy that soup in the story! So it's very special to me to make it for myself and pose them by it. 🥰

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More recent plushie pics! Top two are some holiday-themed ones; then the third is them perusing my Nomtendo zine copy, and finally a recreation of the pivotal candle scene in my story Winter's Moon. Posing them is so fun!

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Link would wear his Zora armour whilst getting married, so what would his bride wear? Here’s a doodle: 

I love Empress Theodora’s headdress, and things sort of spiralled from there.

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Mipha.

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Always

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not exactly mistletoe, but shhh--don't tell them!

(I seriously love my little Mipha from @ariannadi and have so much fun posing her with Link, I need to do more of these!)

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Chapters: 16/23 Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Video Game) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Link/Mipha (Legend of Zelda) Characters: Link (Legend of Zelda), Mipha (Legend of Zelda), King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, King Dorephan, Prince Sidon Additional Tags: Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Angst, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Angst with a Happy Ending, The Love Is Requited They’re Just Idiots, Idiots in Love, Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort Series: Part 1 of A Most Promising Anthology Summary:

As tensions rise between Hyrule Kingdom and Zora’s Domain, Princess Mipha has no choice but to submit to an arranged marriage in the interest of peace. Bound by her father’s word, she reluctantly agrees to wed one of King Rhoam’s foster sons in order to maintain a tenuous alliance and protect her people. Consumed by doubt and hesitancy, she scarcely suspects the happiness that awaits her…

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Chapter sixteen, in which things are revealed and hidden.

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"I don't remember being that cute"

I have seen way too many gifs with bite size Sidon interacting with regular size Sidon.

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Pro-tip: choose your paper wisely when working with watercolor. Opaline is definitely Not The Way.