zeldadiarist

[zeldadiarist]

the construction workers have something to say

[zeldadiarist]

Figured I'd sketch some quick refs of my Hilda and Ravio OCs for One Brave Deed— I thought it'd be cute to put them up for Art Fight this year! 💜✨️

A young street magician named Ravio is taken in by the greatest Sorceror in Lorule, Yuga. Ravio is cared for and mentored by the wizard, but it turns out Yuga is not who he seemed to be. He is cruel, ill-intentioned, and obtains his magic from dubious sources... Ravio plans to escape to his former life, but then the wizard takes on a second apprentice: Princess Hilda. Something about the princess carries a sadness unlike any he has seen before... So he decides he must stay. He must protect this stranger from whatever use Yuga has for her, and he swears to himself it will be the one brave deed he ever does.

Original Sketches

Fun fact — Yuga definitely made their clothes. Strange how Ravio's looks more fun and Hilda looks like she's heading to a funeral...

I honestly imagined Hilda's outfit as monochrome but I caved. Honestly, I imagine Yuga doing the same. He can't make the WHOLE thing drab. (Unfortunately, the banner was impossible to pick colors for, too).

[zeldadiarist]

I love it when the same character honorifics are basically used as a barometer for an evolving relationship over the course of a story.

"...Princess" (Derogatory)

"Princess." (You have disproven several of my previous assumptions but I'm still guarded and critical.)

"Princess," (Mildly impressed but still snarky)

"Princess," (I am coming to terms with how much your office has demanded of you and am finally considering you an equal)

"Princess," (I genuinely respect you, your office, and how much you have grown beyond it since we have met.)

"Princess." (Uh oh I've started catching feelings and am now using your title to remind both you and myself of the distance between us.)

"PRINCESS!" (You are in danger and I am now utterly devoted AND DOWN SO BAD.)

[zeldadiarist]

IT FUCKIN YURI DAAAAAAAAAAAY

[zeldadiarist]

[zeldadiarist]

somewhere out there right now is a kid with curly hair being raised by people who have wavy hair at best and those people are giving them 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner and telling them to dry brush it. and that kid is gonna spend all of middle school and high school hating their hair and moping over the flat iron. they're being told right now that if they don't dry-brush their curl pattern into oblivion every morning it means they're unkempt and gross even though they naturally have the kind of ringlets that a thousand bridezillas would commit horrible murders for every june. it's happening right now it's an absolute epidemic and a tragedy every time

[zeldadiarist]

Zoom In, Don’t Glaze Over: How to Describe Appearance Without Losing the Plot

You’ve met her before. The girl with “flowing ebony hair,” “emerald eyes,” and “lips like rose petals.” Or him, with “chiseled jawlines,” “stormy gray eyes,” and “shoulders like a Greek statue.”

We don’t know them.

We’ve just met their tropes.

Describing physical appearance is one of the trickiest — and most overdone — parts of character writing. It’s tempting to reach for shorthand: hair color, eye color, maybe a quick body scan. But if we want a reader to see someone — to feel the charge in the air when they enter a room — we need to stop writing mannequins and start writing people.

So let’s get granular. Here’s how to write physical appearance in a way that’s textured, meaningful, and deeply character-driven.

1. Hair: It’s About Story, Texture, and Care

Hair says a lot — not just about genetics, but about choices. Does your character tame it? Let it run wild? Is it dyed, greying, braided, buzzed, or piled on top of her head in a hurry?

Good hair description considers:

Texture (fine, coiled, wiry, limp, soft)

Context (windblown, sweat-damp, scorched by bleach)

Emotion (does she twist it when nervous? Is he ashamed of losing it?)

Flat: “Her long brown hair framed her face.”

Better: “Her ponytail was too tight, the kind that whispered of control issues and caffeine-fueled 4 a.m. library shifts.”

You don’t need to romanticise it. You need to make it feel real.

2. Eyes: Less Color, More Connection

We get it: her eyes are violet. Cool. But that doesn’t tell us much.

Instead of focusing solely on eye color, think about:

What the eyes do (do they dart, linger, harden?)

What others feel under them (seen, judged, safe?)

The surrounding features (dark circles, crow’s feet, smudged mascara)

Flat: “His piercing blue eyes locked on hers.”

Better: “His gaze was the kind that looked through you — like it had already weighed your worth and moved on.”

You’re not describing a passport photo. You’re describing what it feels like to be seen by them.

3. Facial Features: Use Contrast and Texture

Faces are not symmetrical ovals with random features. They’re full of tension, softness, age, emotion, and life.

Things to look for:

Asymmetry and character (a crooked nose, a scar)

Expression patterns (smiling without the eyes, habitual frowns)

Evidence of lifestyle (laugh lines, sun spots, stress acne)

Flat: “She had a delicate face.”

Better: “There was something unfinished about her face — as if her cheekbones hadn’t quite agreed on where to settle, and her mouth always seemed on the verge of disagreement.”

Let the face be a map of experience.

4. Bodies: Movement > Measurement

Forget dress sizes and six packs. Think about how bodies occupy space. How do they move? What are they hiding or showing? How do they wear their clothes — or how do the clothes wear them?

Ask:

What do others notice first? (a presence, a posture, a sound?)

How does their body express emotion? (do they go rigid, fold inwards, puff up?)

Flat: “He was tall and muscular.”

Better: “He had the kind of height that made ceilings nervous — but he moved like he was trying not to take up too much space.”

Describing someone’s body isn’t about cataloguing. It’s about showing how they exist in the world.

5. Let Emotion Tint the Lens

Who’s doing the describing? A lover? An enemy? A tired narrator? The emotional lens will shape what’s noticed and how it’s described.

In love: The chipped tooth becomes charming.

In rivalry: The smirk becomes smug.

In mourning: The face becomes blurred with memory.

Same person. Different lens. Different description.

6. Specificity is Your Superpower

Generic description = generic character. One well-chosen detail creates intimacy. Let us feel the scratch of their scarf, the clink of her earrings, the smudge of ink on their fingertips.

Examples:

“He had a habit of adjusting his collar when he lied — always clockwise, always twice.”

“Her nail polish was always chipped, but never accidentally.”

Make the reader feel like they’re the only one close enough to notice.

Describing appearance isn’t just about what your character looks like. It’s about what their appearance says — about how they move through the world, how others see them, and how they see themselves.

Zoom in on the details that matter. Skip the clichés. Let each description carry weight, story, and emotion. Because you’re not building paper dolls. You’re building people.

[zeldadiarist]

Can we find a sun god or diety from every timezone and make a map of them all?

[zeldadiarist]

If you see someone with a really bad fandom take, I’m begging you to open your emails and write a strongly worded missive to your local government official about something bad happening in your community or country.

If you’re in Canada you could email a rep about concerns about Elon musk interfering in our next federal election.

If you’re in the US the list is endless.

If you’re in the UK you could email about trans health care.

If you’re in Australia, what about dental care in Medicare?

If you’re in Europe, look into some EU initiatives of particular concern. Perhaps something to do with nature and biodiversity? Idk

Just today I emailed my local mla about coal mining in the Rocky Mountains and tomorrow I’m going to pick something else and do it again

[zeldadiarist]

the way i’m so unexcited for the zelda movie bc i’m fully expecting it to flop

[zeldadiarist]

On Writing (Zelda) Dungeons

Alright, one of the regular compliments I get on Goddess of Secrecy and now on Mark of a Hero is on how my dungeons feel like they could be in the games. It's still one of my strengths, so I figured I'd actually try to write thoughts down. I have never documented this process so please understand a whole lot of it is just ✨ vibes✨ and then piecing that together into something coherent.

Not to give homework, but I think the Deku Fortress (the first dungeon of GoS) still holds up roughly to my current standards and it's a quick read to get to relative to the other examples in my repertoire. I also have a particular naming convention for my works, so you can very easily jump to Dungeon Chapters & Boss Chapters via the index.

Concepting

I talked a lot about in a post I made on MoaH's dungeon design what I think the point of LoZ dungeons should serve as but I'll sum it up here. A dungeon has three goals narratively:

Advancing a local/character plot

Advancing a regional threat arc

Advancing the grand quest arc

If you want a really good example of this in games, Dragon Roost Caverns from WW is a prime example. I talk about it in the linked post above as well.

Starting your own, I recommend picking two of three things before you get into it:

An aesthetic

A boss and/or mini boss

The dungeon's relic

These things should inform each other and are the barest place to start before design. The aesthetic will generally decide the vibe of exploration, while the bosses determine the means of combat and likely your minions throughout the rest of the dungeon. The relic will engage with both as a puzzle solution. And typically if you can figure out two, the third will follow after.

Debatably, dungeons through an original legend should be concepts to connect together as a series of trials to build your hero up towards their final fight. It also depends on if you want to imply whether the dungeon order is linear or not how that will turn out. Having solutions only focused on general mechanics/exploration can lean more open world, while puzzle solutions that use focus on items or require items from previous dungeons will lean towards a linear narrative. Both are valid, but it's good to decide on one or the other before making a dungeon list and order.

Designing

I cannot emphasize enough in this step, but make maps. They don't have to be detailed maps, but figure out your spatial stuff. I wrote all of GoS without any maps and boy, let me tell you. The jump to having them for MoaH was night and day.

Generally, the recommendation here is to look at TTRPG dungeon design or escape rooms. If you got stuck doing this puzzle with other people/reliant on other people's pacing, what would be enjoyable to follow? Because unlike in the games where you are the player, in books, you're limited to the pace of the POV character.

There is also the limitation in writing of the reader's imagination. Complex puzzles are great and all in games, describing it in a way people can imagine is harder. Without the visual and interactive elements of games, easier puzzles are better because most people can picture the basics. As anyone who has played a TTRPG before can tell you, a puzzle for a 3rd grader will absolutely stump an adult if the setting or size of the puzzle makes them miss the important elements of it. You do not need to design complex traps and puzzles (in fact it will often go poorly).

This is also where that aesthetic decision can help. A relatively simple dungeon can absolutely be carried by an interesting location. Are there lore drops to be found in the dungeon? Is it just a cool space to explore? Is the means of backtracking post-relic something the reader can piece through as the character(s) explore it the first time? There should be hints on how these aspects will link together before the end.

I will get into this with relics as well, but it's a good idea to keep an inventory of your character(s)'s abilities before going in. Is your hero traveling alone? How many relics do they have? What resources did they bring into the dungeon? This can help inform solutions too by eliminating what your hero doesn't have access to.

Writing

Pick a pace of chapters. There's a reason that dungeons are consistent in their chapter length for GoS & MoaH. They're aimed to set the tone for how long the dungeon should feel. I'm going to use both as examples for outlining everything I haven't already said in previous sections.

GoS has two types of dungeons: Goddess Temples and Sage Dungeons. The Goddess Temples were designed to be shorter "tutorial" dungeons, the formula being 2 Dungeon Chapters + Mini Boss + 2 DC + Boss. Compared to the Sage Dungeons, which were 3 DC + MB + 3 DC + B. The Sage Dungeons also typically got a Mini Dungeon and Mini Boss to reach the dungeon itself.

The goal of this was to suggest size and difficulty. GoS was meant to parallel OoT in a lot of ways, the Convergence timeline event to the "Divergence" event that was the timeline split. So the Goddess-Sage split is meant to mirror the Child-Adult dungeon split. Once GoS!Link pulls the Master Sword, things got harder, the challenge leveled up, dungeons got longer and more complicated.

Conversely, MoaH's dungeon design was based around BOTW/TOTK and my general response to it. MoaH's dungeons are designed around the idea of having a series of shrines that build to a larger dungeon puzzle in a region. The split here will be a single dungeon chapter and Mini Boss at a time, but three or four trials before leading to the culmination of four dungeon chapters and a boss in the main temple combining the relics and puzzles from the trials.

In both cases, good divides for dungeon chapters are typically switching between floors, puzzles being cleared, or to break for backtracks to other wings.

Bosses & Mini Boss

The top of this, I want to say that the power scaling will not always be right. Nintendo doesn't even always get this right. Sometimes the Mini Boss is harder than the Boss. Obviously aim otherwise, but trust it's fine if it happens.

There are a goals to aim for with trying to keep that balance:

The difficulty of the puzzle

The tools necessary to solve it

How easy it feels like the hero lands a hit

Generally, a mini boss fight will rely on the tools already at the character(s)'s disposal while a boss fight should rely on the dungeon's relic. Both should incorporate parts of puzzles already in the dungeon itself, either in getting to the dungeon or in progressing through it so far.

It can help to look at boss fights as puzzles on a timer. The timer is how fast you hit it before it hits you harder. But that also should help pace the three stages of the fight. The first phase should be the longest, it's puzzle-solving first to see how to hit the boss. Stage two will likely be shorter, as that knowledge is reapplied. It's the same solution but with some added retaliation. Stage three should make the solution slightly harder to reach by adding that final hit glowing red desperation energy.

You want to make sure that hitting a boss monster is challenging but doable. This could be done by letting the hero get hit, focusing on coordination tactics, or having a failed attempt and having to retry. While never gets hit heroes are impressive in games, they can't build tension very well in stories. If there's no risk after all, then the reward won't feel as earned. At the same time, if there's too much risk, then it may feel like your hero is not competent enough to handle the fight. The character(s) should figure out the mini boss's weakness faster than the boss, or the steps to hit the mini boss should be easier to achieve than the boss.

If you want to come up with a new enemy and not reuse an existing one, I'd recommend picking two plants or animals to smash together. Generally, it only takes two or three off character traits for a chimera to start feeling like a monster. Too many elements though and the design may not read well to your reader (unless the point of it is to be unknowable or absurd). Your bosses should fit the aesthetic of your dungeon too, so if you're running short of ideas, trying looking what might live in the kind of environment that your dungeon is and you'll probably start getting ideas. But also, sometimes the answer is just rule of cool.

Relics

Relics are the best part of a Zelda game for me. They add a lot of fun to problem solving and reexploring old areas. They culminate to decide on the general skillset of your protagonist and dungeons serve in part as tutorials to learn how to use the relics in all its possible uses.

A relic should be the primary puzzle solution for a dungeon after its acquired. This is in game to experiment with its uses before the boss and experiment with its mechanics in lower stake situations. Most dungeons will have some no stakes mandatory puzzle in the mini boss chamber requiring use of the item before the character(s) can progress. And then it scales up from there to get creative and use the item with other tools at the hero's disposal.

While there are staples for sure (hookshot/bow/bombs/etc), most Zelda games will typically have at least one totally unique relic to that game. This is a great way to build your story's identity too! Your character's tools should cover a wide array of options, so it's important too to look at your relic list as a whole to make sure they don't overlap with other relics. It's also important to consider a relic having not only combat use, but also puzzle utility too! These are after all going to be used to get through the rest of your dungeon.

Companions

One of the harder things to balance is party comp. If your hero travels with other people, this can change the necessary scale of the dungeon as a whole. Puzzles and fights will need to be solvable with multiple people working together. Sometimes this can be expediting the issue, many hands make light work after all. Other times it's about strategically placing everyone on the map.

One thing you should decide early in is whether dungeons are intended to be solved with more than one person. If the hero is supposed to be handling their quest on their own and just happens to have a companion, then puzzles need to be solvable on their own (this may be better to implement the expediting method). Or you can make the puzzles quick, allowing for more dialogue while they solve puzzles faster.

If the hero is supposed to be traveling together, then puzzles should incorporate each of party member's skill sets. Be sure to add those to the inventory you take at the beginning of design! Rotating around party members solving the puzzles can help them feel like a team, but you can also incorporate this cooperation slowly if you're trying to build up a new relationship.

Based on Zelda tropes, it's very likely that the companion in question to a dungeon will be someone like a Sage. If this is the case, I would advise against making the character's abilities exactly the same as the relic. If the two are identical then it runs the risk of underselling them both. They can be similar, but they shouldn't be the same to make sure both have room to shine. Also so getting the relic at the mini boss isn't just your hero one-upping a companion. That's a quick way to making them seem less useful to a team! It's best to look at them as compliments. For example, if a dungeon gives the hero the hookshot to bring enemies in close, then having your companion be a fighter who deals with the monsters as they're getting dragged in to range would be a good way to highlight teamwork.

On the Grander Scale

As I said earlier, dungeons combined serve as the training montage that gets your characters ready for the final fight. But, as a narrative, they should share some central theme together to weave them together as a story. Maybe that's the overall aesthetic sharing some element, like the Divine Beasts and the Blights. Maybe it's a similarity in the bosses and how they appeared, like the echoes in EOW.

This is where making a loose outline can help. If you have a rough idea of the dungeon themes or relics you want to include, you can start to build a wider narrative theme you want to meet. Do you want your hero to feel more like a wizard? More magic focused relics may help. Do you want them to feel more like a tactician? Having more allies to coordinate could be the way to go.

And I do mean loose! For the entirety of GoS, I only had a list of dungeon names and some rough ideas for items I wanted to give Link. In the original outline, the Soul Temple was going to be kinda funky and disco themed. It ended up in narrative needing to be a much more serious late game beat. The same boss and relic was in the dungeon, but the aesthetic shifted to fit the theme I needed for that story arc. Your grander narrative can always come back to inform what kind of challenge your characters need to face in that moment. And that may change as you figure out the story.

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I think that's generally it though. If I think of anything else, I'll add it in a reblog or edit it in, but generally applying all these elements should get you on your way to making some fun dungeons. Excited to see what you come up with.

[zeldadiarist]

First lines challenge

I was tagged by @citrinediamondeyes to... share the first lines of ten of your latest fanfics (or up to if you have fewer) and tag ten people! Sorry this took a while to get back to, life is a little crazy at the moment.

All of my fics are archive locked - log in to ao3 to read.

The Test (BOTW Zelink, rated T): Zelda's knight was awful.

Matched Pair (TP Zelink, rated M): From the first moment she sees him as a Hylian, Zelda is aware of two things.

Home (TP Zelink, rated E): A letter from home arrives in Zora's Domain a few days after Link does. (this is a sequel, and isn't intended to hook new readers)

Two Different Worlds: Alternate POVs (TP Zelink, rated E): Zelda makes sure her smile is fixed in place for the tenth time in as many minutes. (this is a sequel, and is a collection of scenes from Two Different Worlds, so it isn't intended to hook new readers either)

Practice Date (BOTW Zelink, rated E): Fat flakes of snow fall gently, muffling the noise of nature around them.

Two Different Worlds (TP Zelink, rated E): "Good afternoon, Link. I trust this is a good time to talk?" Zelda gives him her friendly, polite smile. (I really like this first line, it sets the tone for the fic really well)

Link Goes Undercover (BOTW Zelink, rated E): The princess whirled around the corner ahead of him in a blur of blue and gold.

Maca's Matchmaking (AOC Zelink, rated T): "That's where I pulled the sword," Link said, pointing to the pedestal in the Lost Woods.

Boyfriend's Tunic (BOTW Zelink, rated E): When it happened, Zelda chalked it up to a hundred years of solitude.

I'm amazed at how much my style has changed and grown in the ~2 years I've been writing -- shockingly, practice does help.

No pressure tagging @silentsafflina @drsteggy @demiboydemon @sparklyhyperbole @summonerluna @abbyzwrites @zeldadiarist @mistresslrigtar @zeldaelmo @miadearden and anyone else who wants to play!

[zeldadiarist]

Private Concerts 💙

Redraw of an older piece

Took inspiration from JC Leyendecker’s painting style

[zeldadiarist]

he's just rly "protective"

[zeldadiarist]

Leave me and my weird names in peace

[zeldadiarist]

no other social media site gives me what tumblr has given me . i love this place . it’s awful here. i’ll never leave .

[zeldadiarist]

if you're in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline is July 31st 2025. i've posted about it before; it aims to create legislation for publishers to stop killing the games you pay for and to provide an end-of-life plan for live-service products. thank you!!!