ADS THAT SUDDENLY TAKE UP THE WHOLE PAGE

Description and a bit more info under the cut. 

A series of green, blue, and red graphics using a nice sans serif font and a Zelda display serif font with white and gold as accents. 

First picture. 2024 Linked Universe Fandom AO3 Wrapped, presented by Mina, @zarvasace. (That's me!) 

As a fandom, we wrote 2,273 fics in 2024

That's over 6 a day every day this year! 

In smaller text below: Counting only fics tagged with “Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)” on AO3. Counting all fics last updated from Jan 1, 2024 to Dec 31, 2024. Data pulled by hand on Jan 1, 2024 at ~2:00 AM GMT-7. 

Next picture. Our favorite tags this year were:

1, Hurt/Comfort with 432 tags

2, Fluff with 352 tags

3, Angst with 335 tags 

4, Not Beta Read with 260 tags. Here there is also a brief exchange in two handwriting styles. One arrow points to this tag with the remark, “perfectionists, much?” Another cursive hand replies “Be nice.” to which the first says, “no”

5, Legend-centric with 251 tags

At the bottom of this image is a piece of parchment. The scratchier handwriting says, “Ha, I'm the favorite. Take that.” and the curlier handwriting replies “Not so fast, Ledge… we aren't done yet.”

Next picture. Favorite tags continued:

6, Blood and Injury with 230 tags

7, Wild-centric with 204 tags 

8, Whump with 215 tags 

9, Emotional Hurt/Comfort with 181 tags

10, Good Older Sibling Warriors with 163 tags. Legend's handwriting says “Din give me strength—” to that. 

Section break, and a bit more: An average of 7.46% fics every month were tagged Whump. Except October, which saw a spike to 29.5%.

Next picture. Our favorite Links. This info is presented in a table, with names on the left and number of tags on the right, organized from most to least. 

Warriors, 1408 (his handwriting says: HA!! I won something!)

Legend, 1398 (his handwriting says: BY TEN.)

Twilight, 1371

Time, 1323

Wild, 1217

Hyrule, 1151

Wind, 1143

Sky, 1137

Four, 1027

At the bottom is another piece of parchment. Legend says: “JUST TEN.” Warriors says: “Jealous?” Legend replies: “I don't know if being the favorite is a good thing.”

Next picture. Our favorite secondary characters were Malon (176 tags) and Racio (160 tags)

Section break. and the most popular pairings were Malon/Time (161 tags), Legend/Racio (89 tags*), Sky/Sun (66 tags).

At the bottom is the asterisk footnote: it's no secret that our fandom tags are a little wonky sometimes. This number adds together the works tagged “Legend (Linked Universe)/Ravio” and “Link/Ravio” where the work was also tagged “Linked Universe,” assuming that people would only tag one. 

Next picture. 2024’s longest fic was: This is an Adjuration by @not-freyja (linked below). 

Editor’s note: linked here!

With a total of 312,547 words. That's almost 971 a day! 

Began July 14, 2023, Finished May 30, 2024. 

Screenshot of the tag summary from AO3, showing a Mature rating, Gen, an archive warning, and complete. 

Significant tags: Time Travel, the Chain as Family, Time Loop, Multiversal Time Travel, Temporal War Crimes, Chain Meets Chain, Chronically Ill Sky, Four Splits Into the Colors, Fairy Hyrule, Hyrule Has a Blood Curse. 

At the bottom, Legend’s writing says: “That sounds like a lot of time travel…”

Next four pictures are a set titled Fandom Trends by month. Each month has, in order, a Popular Link, Popular Duos, Popular Genre, and Unique Tags, along with occasional handwritten commentary. 

January: Twilight. Twilight & Wild. Hurt/Comfort. Crack, Soft Legend. Commentary: Warriors says “aww.” and Legend responds “I'm going to poison your milk.” 

February: Warriors. Twilight & Wild, Twilight & Warriors, Legend & Warriors. Angst. Febuwhump 2024. 

March: Twilight. Twilight & Wild, Time & Twilight. Fluff. One Shot, Linked Universe Discord Server’s 5th Birthday Gift Exchange.

April: Legend. Twilight & Wild, Twilight and Warriors. (Commentary from Legend: “wow Twi”) Fluff. Humor, Canon-Typical Violence.

May: Twilight, Warriors. Hyrule & Legend, Twilight & Wild. (Commentary from Legend, circling Hyrule’s name: “Finally some good taste.”) Fluff. Other Additional Tags to be Added. 

June: Twilight. Twilight & Wild, Time & Warriors. Hurt/Comfort. June of Doom 2024, Sky-centric, Twilight-centric. (Commentary from Warriors: “Wait, doom?! Oh, there's Sky”)

Editor's note: congratulations to @somer-writes who singlehandedly got June of Doom in the top 10 tags of June. :)

July: Warriors. Hyrule & Legend, Time & Twilight. Hurt/Comfort. Twilight-centric. (Commentary from Legend: “leave some for the rest of us”)

August: Legend. Hyrule & Legend, Legend & Warriors, Time & Twilight. Hurt/Comfort. Crack, Fluff and Angst. (Commentary from Warriors: “I'm concerned.”)

September: Legend. Time & Twilight, Twilight & Wild. Hurt/Comfort. Sicktember 2024, Legend Has a Bad Time. (Commentary from Legend: “Excuse me?!” Warriors says: “I suppose your immune system is awful now.” Legend responds with: “ha ha.”)

October: Warriors. Time & Twilight, Time & Warriors. Hurt/Comfort. Whumptober 2024, Warriors Has a Bad Time. (Commentary from Warriors: “oh no…” To which Legend responds: “HAHAHAHAH”) 

November: Warriors. Time & Warriors, Hyrule & Legend. Fluff. Crack, Good Older Sibling Warriors.

December: Legend. Hyrule & Legend, Twilight & Wild, Warriors & Wind. Hurt/Comfort. Families of Choice. 

Parchment at the bottom has Warriors saying, “That's a nice note to end on.” Legend responds, “Not so bad I guess.” 

Thanks for coming along with me on this fun stats journey! It's been a privilege to add to this fandom. 

I thought about adding a section for ratings or prevalence of Gen fics, but I think you can guess that we’re a Gen- and Teen-heavy fandom. You can see my raw data and some more charts over on the Google sheet right at this link. Ha, link. :) 

tetra doodle! still waiting for the wind waker HD on switch </3

INPRNT Shop || Twitter || Ko-fi ||  ⚠ Do not use, repost or edit

Time takes twilight to get a pupcup

I literally couldn’t not think about this ask

TW loud noise at the end

Some Majora's Mask comics that I started forever ago and never finished. I really like them though so I will finish them at some point. I still need to sketch the last one and then figure out how I want to color them.

this might be weird to ask, but how do I critically look at another person's writing and implement what I like in their writing in my own writing? I've been having trouble improving in my writing, and frankly Im not sure how to go about doing that, even. It's easy to see what I like about another person's writing, but hard to pinpoint exactly why...

THIS IS NOT WEIRD TO ASK. It is, in fact, the most important question EVER.

How to Read Like a Writer

Re-read. If you get halfway into a chapter and think, Wow this chapter is super creepy–I wonder how they did that. Or get to the end of a book and think, I feel the poignancy of the fragility of human life in an inherently volatile economic system–I wonder how the writer made me feel that way… Go back and re-read that shit.

Read slowly. When you read like a reader, you read pretty fast. When you go in for your second, or third, or fourth re-read of a passage, chapter, or book that you want to know more about, read it slowly. Really. Slowly.

Read for technique, not content. Readers read for content (”In this paragraph, Damien gave Harold a classified envelope.”). Writers read for technique. (”In this paragraph, the writer made me feel curious about the contents of the envelope by giving sensory details about its appearance and weight.”)

Ask the right questions. They usually start with HOW: How did the writer make me feel? How did they accomplish that?

Read small. Did a chapter make you feel sad? Find out WHERE EXACTLY. What paragraph, sentence, or WORD did it for you? Was it a physical detail? A line of dialogue? A well-placed piece of punctuation? Stories are made of words and sentences. Narrow it down.

Practice. Reading like a writer is a skill that takes time to develop. Over time, you’ll get better at it!

How about y’all? Anything to add to this list? I made it off the top of my head so I’m sure I’m forgetting something. What have been your experiences with learning to read like a writer?

Hope this helps!

//////////////

The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo

“War Games”

[[Please do not repost or erase caption. Reblog this one instead]] Random comic. I don’t see much point to this one but I hope you guys like it. And before someone says “they could’ve just used the Tears to heal him”. They literally went through hell and back for those Tears and not even Link would want to waste it on him just because he felt tired (beaten to a pulp or not, lol).

As we see a barrage of evil executive orders come in, they are not immediately enforceable and will takes months or years to implement.

That’s still not great, but don’t let these pile up to the point of hopelessness. Take a breath, and look community leaders who will fight it every step of the way.

There seems to be a consensus that Gon wasted his life/potential for meaningless revenge, but was it? I keep wondering if CA was HxH equivalent of the Kobayshi Maru (Aka the Trolley Problem). Pitou was, of all the RG, probably the most capable in terms of balanced nen users. What would’ve happened if Gon had listened to reason? And let adults handle it? Or let Killua accompany him? Not used a nen contract? How many additional casualties would there have been? Was it really meaningless sacrifice?

Hi anon! Thanks for the ask! I don't know if you're the same anon from before, but this is another great question!

I think Gon's choices in the CA arc are tragic, which is different from saying they are meaningless.

*It's a tragedy that a thirteen-year-old kid felt so guilty for "causing" an adult mentor's death that he could come to the conclusion "I'm OK if it all ends after this" (the wording on his nen contract) because he wanted revenge on Pitou / to punish himself so badly.

*It's a tragedy that his best friend (Killua) could sense that he would probably do something gonzo and, in the worst case scenario, it would be a "double suicide" (indicating he did know Gon might throw his life away) AND YET even knowing this, he didn't feel it was his place to step in and stop it.

*It's a tragedy that Netero, Morel and Knov all knew that Gon was revenge-crazed and emotional, but they were so desperate for manpower (in the moment) that they didn't look too hard at his motives, or try too hard to stop him from coming along

*And it's a tragedy that Gon (and Killua) had the most potential for nen of anyone Wing had ever taught, but Gon used all of that potential up at once - although as Ging says, he should have died, so he should actually be happy about the outcome.

So I think when people say "meaningless" what they're really talking about is that sense of tragedy - both the tragedy that Gon almost lost his life, and the tragedy that he was willing to go that far in the first place. It's more the sense of how much was lost than that it was lost for no reason, probably along with the fact that Kite like... was alive... the whole time....

But meaningless is something different, because just as you said, what Gon did really was necessary to stop the ants. You know? The way the story is written, the RG and Meruem are so powerful that it's kind of implied that stopping them will need a miracle - all the pieces need to fall into place just so. What Gon did is a part of the puzzle so, therefore, what Gon did was necessary, and without him there they wouldn't have succeeded.

(Or maybe they would have, but that would have needed another, different kind of miracle - or maybe for Netero to be less selfish and set off that bomb sooner!)

There are two kinds of tragedy, by the way: in classic tragedy, like for instance in Greek tragedies, the tragedy is that the outcome couldn't have been any different from what it was. Because of Gon's reckless nature, because of how the story has been progressing so far where he's done increasingly more reckless things and never had to really deal with the consequences, therefore this final reckless decision was inevitable and that's tragic.

Or, in the more modern version of a tragedy, the tragedy is that things could have gone differently. Gon didn't have to give up his life to stop Pitou, he could have been stopped much earlier. And I've written about this before, but the point where this could have happened wasn't once the palace invasion team was already in East Gorteau, split up to sneak in.

Instead it would have been about a month earlier, when Gon and Killua first escape from Pitou.... Because on the one hand, Netero, Morel and Knov decided that Gon and Killua were old enough for the mission; and on the other hand, they didn't take Killua's account of the RG's power level seriously enough to call in more serious backup, when they still had the chance.

So I think the tragedy, the "meaninglessness," really happens there.

But, on the other hand - I mean, who really would have had the power to stop Pitou anyway? Gon after the nen contract is as powerful as any Hunter in the association. Who can even say if, after calling in the supposed "serious" backup, things would have gone any differently?

Actually it's even darker if you think about it - Knov and Morel essentially agree to let Gon and Killua come along because they underestimate the enemy, the same reason Kite let them come along.

But Netero knows Killua a lot better, and I don't think he disbelieves Killua at all. I think he knows the other reason the invasion team is small - to keep extra people from being caught in the blast if he has to use the rose bomb, in case the plan to use Zeno's power to separate the king and the RGs doesn't come off correctly.

I think he's swayed by Gon's determination - and Killua's, by extension - and he takes the Hunter approach of letting Hunters decide for themselves what they're Hunting, without stepping in to coddle or regulate. (HxH is a bit libertarian like that, in its outlook). And he does that knowing full well they could be blasted to smithereens. That's why in election arc, there's so much talk about reforming the Hunter Association to be less in Netero's (crazy) image.

But anyway, getting back to your question... no, I don't think what Gon did was meaningless at all. "Revenge has meaning, but you won't feel better after you get it" is a slightly different meaning from "revenge is meaningless" and "revenge is meaningless" is a cliche anyway, which isn't really how the writing in HxH works.

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