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Fantasy Romance

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Characters: Link’s Awakening – Legend of Zelda

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We’ve been playing Link’s Awakening.

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Legend of Zelda – Link’s Awakening

I want to give it glowing reviews, but it’s really just okay.

Maybe it’s because I’m coming down off the high of a truly amazing game.

Or maybe it’s because I was expecting something more like Twilight Princess or Breath of the Wild.

Twilight Princess was a cross between an RPG and a puzzle game. We loved it in our house! Breath of the Wild felt a lot like Zelda crossed with Skyrim. Again, we loved it. There was more than enough story to keep us going even if we would have liked more. The DLC was disappointing to us, but the core game itself was excellent.

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Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild

I never played the original Link’s Awakening, so I can’t say how true this is to the original. Although I played the original Legend of Zelda, I stopped playing video games at a certain point in my life and didn’t pick them up again until my husband guided me back to them after we met. So, yeah, there were a lot of years I missed.

Still, Link’s Awakening felt more like playing Link in Mario Brothers game. It even had a lot of the same mobs.

Maybe it will get better, but I think we’re close to halfway through the game now.

My daughters love to watch, and I think my oldest could actually play it with little help. She’s working her way through Twilight Princess on the old Wii, and I think that is more difficult.

Still, I am disappointed. I have always been intrigued by the Legend of Zelda series. It reminds me of this William Shakespeare quote:

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”

― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 

Ganondorf born king of the Gerudo with a burning desire to rule the world.

Zelda born the princess of Hyrule.

Link whose story changes but is ever entwined with Ganondorf and Zelda.

My daughter once asked me who my favorite character in the series was. The writer in me answered Ganondorf.

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I’m not normally a fan of the villain, but this is an exception.

The game may be called Zelda, and we may follow the adventures of Link, but the story is Ganondorf’s. Zelda is wisdom. Her course is set. Link is bravery. His course is determined in reaction to Ganondorf.

Ganondorf is power.

He could be an elemental force of destruction. Raw power like a volcano. Like he was in Breath of the Wild.

But in other retellings, he isn’t. He’s born a man that has free will. That makes choices.

And we do not know that all of his incarnations are evil.

If he chooses the light, perhaps the triforce resonates in perfect harmony and ushers in an era of peace and prosperity. When he chooses the dark side, well, there’s a reason Hyrule is destroyed in the opening scenes of Breath of the Wild.

But the choice is always his. Link and Zelda are simply responding with wisdom and bravery to his choices. Makes for an interesting character.

 

A Bit of a Change

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As I had previously mentioned, it is that time of year where my day job gets insanely busy. I will be putting in long hours at work, trying to balance family life, and still attempting to put forth some fresh words on a page.

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About right.

I have new characters flying through my head, new kingdoms within my world, and new villains.

I am trying to keep the creativity lit while still meeting my other demands, and some of these characters won’t shut up.

Not a bad fate, except I have two other first drafts already in the works that I need to finish before I get to them.

I am not complaining about the plethora of ideas coming my way. What I need is more time…

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Where, oh where, can I get some?

For now, these new characters have been giving me snippets of their life and backstory on my commute into work, in the shower, while I make dinner…you get the idea. Whether any of these character will ever get their own book, I don’t know. Even if they do, how much of their story will stay the same, I don’t know.

But I thought it would be fun to share them with you. Give you a little glimpse of the madness that is being a writer as your characters are talking in your head.

I have precious little time lately, and rather than fight these shots of creativity, I am going to embrace it. See where it leads.

With that in mind, my blog posts for a bit will be shorts of all that they are showing me and telling me as I let them take over.

As always, let me know what you think.

If any of them sound particularly interesting, I will listen to them a bit more.

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Not suffering from this!  Just need more time!

Micro Fiction: Family

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Brelynn was like a sister to her, and the only family Mara had. The only family worth having.

How could Brelynn fall in love with a holier-than-thou Knight of Valor?

As the tiny fist of Brelynn’s daughter closed around Mara’s finger, a faint smile curved the warrior’s lips.

Maybe the Knight wasn’t all bad.

Where Did You Come From?

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A bit of a story snippet that came to me when I was on my way to work. I didn’t stop to write it down, but I did remember it all the way home where I did write it down. Wondering if this is the beginning of a new story.

 

Alex rocked back in his expensive leather chair, the scatter of papers across his desk not enough to hold his attention. Numbers scrawled across the sheets, thousands of them, but Alex knew what they said. Already knew how to turn a profit for himself and his investors on this venture.

Boredom nipped the edges of his thoughts.

He pushed himself out of his chair and stomped toward the door. He knew where boredom led, had followed it there before, and it never brought anything good.

Who is Alex? What are his hopes and fears? More importantly, what trouble has boredom gotten him into in the past? How is he going to escape it?

Is he the hero or the antagonist?

So many more questions than answers!

If this inspires a story for you, please drop me a link to it in the comments.

This popped into my head while I was in the car, and it had enough importance to my brain that I actually remembered it all the way home so I could write it down. Car time and shower time are the two places my brain does most of its thinking. Helping me resolve plot holes in a story, giving me new ideas, or helping me solve world hunger.

Most of them I forget by the time I get to a place that I could write them down.

Looks like this story really wants to be written. Or at least considered.

Have you ever had thoughts come to you in the car? Or maybe the shower? Maybe they were the solutions to problems at work or home? New characters? A new story? Maybe you’re reading something and you suddenly solve the central mystery?

Elves?

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As I mentioned in my post on dragons, the novels I write are in a fantasy world. While each novel is a standalone story, all of them take place in the same world.

So far, all four of my WIPs take place in the human country of Tamryn. I’ve established that magic is real. Vampires are real. Knights smite evil and liches haunt the living.

I have not yet brought it elves. But elves sorta have a but of a reputation…

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Given some of the writing I’ve seen, that reputation isn’t exactly unearned. And I’ve gotta admit, coming up with elven-sounding names is the bane of this fantasy romance writer.

I’ve mentioned them in passing in my work, but I haven’t yet written a story about them much less set one in their magical home of Tanalear.

Part of the lack of story writing is me trying to figure out how to add them to my world. Do I just jump right in and give readers a story in Tanalear? Or should I write a different story that brings an elf to the human city.

Bringing an elf into human lands creates all kinds of issues for me. See, I’m not entirely sure I buy into this half-elf business. If you aren’t the same species, you can’t procreate. There would be no half-elves.

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Nope, not buying it. Not even beer can change the fact species can’t procreate.

While I’m a romance writer, and I can imagine a scenario of an elf and human falling in love, I promise my reader a happily-ever-after (HEA) ending by virtue of writing a romance novel. So, I’m hard-pressed to view a HEA with a hero and heroine where one of them is going to die in seventy-five years, and the other is going to spend the next thousand mourning them.

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Basically, I’m considering if I need to craft some sort of adventure that features an elven protagonist before jumping into the elven world?

This is even harder than the challenges I face as a romance writer because the Tanalearian elves are isolationist and xenophobic, still turned inward even after their empire collapsed thousands of years ago in the Great Cataclysm.

The last remaining vestiges of their once-great empire are protected by ancient magics. Part of their story will be re-assimilating back into a world that now contains humans.

So, yeah, it sort of feels like the elves meeting the humans should be a big, climactic thing.

But I don’t want to confuse readers, either. Readers are smart, but if they’re expecting knights and dragons, I don’t want to disappoint with elves.

I also worry that lots has been written about elves. I sometimes wonder if your civilization collapsed, if the archaeologists piecing it back together would think elves were real.

Given that so much has already been written, I need to give it a fresh enough spin. I like to think I have this mapped out in my head. Besides, it’s not like many stories are truly unique. Amateurs borrow and professionals steal, as the saying goes.

I have given a lot of thought to their queen (Tanalearian elves have a matriarchal monarchy), her son, and some of the new mages. Even a major villain has been knocking around in there.

But none of them want to come to Tamryn. None of them see the point. They have yet to see beyond their crumbling cities.

Hmmm, perhaps we shall have to have an inciting incident…

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How about you? Do you like elves? Tolkien or otherwise? Read any stories that take place in an entirely elven world? Did you like it? What do you think of half-elves and half-orcs? Is my science brain thinking too much on this?

Kindness Matters. So Does Empathy.

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This is so amazingly true.  Everyone is experiencing life, and you may or may not know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

I try to remember this when I get cut-off in traffic. Maybe, just maybe, the person in front of me got a call from their daycare, and they’re rushing to get a sick child. Or they can’t afford to be late to work because they’ll lose their job, but their kids’ bus was late picking them up. Or they just learned their mother died and aren’t thinking straight.

It’s possible they’re just a jerk. Looking at you man in the red pickup truck that made a left turn in front of me and flipped me off. I almost didn’t stop in time, and pickup truck versus minivan isn’t a pretty sight for either of us. It took me the next half-hour to stop shaking.

But maybe, just maybe, there is something else going on.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. But it’s different when we do it, right?

Except, it’s not.

I was at FedEx the other night to pick-up a package, and a woman was there with two little kids. The boy was being especially difficult, and I could see she was trying really hard to keep them under control. Rather than glaring at her, I smiled at the kids, waved at the little girl, and told her my daughter loved My Little Ponies, too.

The girl was wearing a MLP shirt.

Completely eased the tension, and it cost me nothing. I was able to continue to ignore the boy as the girl talked all about ice skating and Pinkie Pie. The boy was still surly, but he was coming around for his mom and sister.

No idea what happened in any of their day, but I certainly didn’t need to make it worse even if I was getting frustrated with FedEx as it took them fifteen minutes to find my package. A smile and a nice word made everything more pleasant.

I’m not sure why we don’t practice it more. Why it’s so much “cooler” to come back with some snarky comment than it is to show kindness. Why we’ve equated kindness with weakness.

Kindness is not weakness.

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It actually took me some time to realize I was making this mistake, and I almost completely rewrote a character because she was kind.

Yeah, I know. I’m not immune to culture either.

Part of the reason why the hero fell in love with this character was her kindness, that inner light that refused to dim despite everything she’d been through.

I was going to change that because I mistakenly assumed that made her a weak character. It didn’t. It was part of who she was, and it made her no more weak than my smart-mouthed character in a separate book. Different, but not weak.

What do you think? Do you equate kindness with weakness? Do you try to see the other side, even if it is a jerk in a red pickup truck that almost killed you both? Perhaps you’ve known a jerk in a red pickup yourself?