I love good guys

Yesterday evening, YouTube recommended an excellent The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hand-drawn animatic fanvid that hit me from three separate directions. First, here's the vid:

Watch on YouTube

"Would You fall in love with me again - Zelink Animatic" by IcySoups (53 seconds)

Drawings. On level one, we have a hand-drawn animatic that flashes through many Zeldas and many Links -- maybe all of them? I didn't count -- a drawing effort allowed to blip by in less than a blink, to achieve its effect subconsciously rather than consciously. How amazing of the artist, to employ that timing, to let all that work rush past the viewer as it rushes on the characters. Of course what it's doing is implying the whole descent of the characters -- via heritage or reincarnation or time travel or fresh start -- through ten thousand years to each other again. Hylia and her chosen in every age; yet unique and independent and new. Nice work, creator. (But, again, even knowing folks can choose to watch at .25 speed... that speed feels bold.)

Song. On level two, what's that song? I didn't know, but I looked it up, and now I'm acquainted with Epic: The Musical, a concept album adaptation of The Odyssey that's been releasing one act at a time (Wikipedia page). Epic dropped its final act, "The Ithaca Saga," late last month. This song, "Would You Fall In Love With Me Again," is Penelope to Odysseus, on his return home after twenty years. Now that I know about Epic, I'll be listening to it. I have thoughts about how to apply these lyrics between Penelope and Odysseus, who after all represent the values of an entirely different historical culture -- and also, over and over, the values of every era that re-translates the epic, which gives this song a meta level that I love. Regardless, the lyrics are spot on for Zelink interpretations in TotK. Good choice. (Also: Fast turnaround! And this is not the only fanvid to this song up on YouTube already, which of course I know because it is now recommending them to me willy-nilly, regardless of fandom, because: algorithm.)

Book. On level three, I coincidentally happen to have just recently started rereading The Odyssey for the first time since college. I've been meaning to reread it for a while, and finally got in gear when (a) my best friend gave me the hardback of Emily Wilson's translation for Christmas, and (b) I heard about Christopher Nolan's upcoming '26 The Odyssey movie, which reportedly adapts only the second half of the epic... the half on Ithaca. ("The Ithaca Saga," if you will.) And -- here's the kicker -- literally just a couple of hours before I saw that video recommendation, I had been reflecting on a comparison/contrast of Link and Odysseus. (Of course Odysseus's biggest traits are being formidably clever and silver-tongued, neither of which come within a country mile of Link! And Link is an uncomplicated hero as we, today, see heroism, while canon Odysseus is so not. Nevertheless, there are story elements... TLOZ is frequently a stew of global folktale, fairy tale, myth, and literature.)

I'm still laughing over this 30-second The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom video after 24 hours, so I decided to share. The comic is by Atmavs (Tumbler) and the animatic dub is by GabaLeth (YouTube).

(If you're somehow still unspoiled for the trailer for the new game, watch the trailer first!)

( embedded YouTube video & link )

Signal boost to switchbladeeyes's post:

Kristin H. has shared good quality copies of almost all the color Forever Knight press package promo photos, including two I hadn't seen before. See her archive on Facebook. I was able to download copies even though I don't have a Facebook account. (They raised memories of the very few Starlog issues with articles about FK, which I read at the public library.)

FK images, whether promo stills or episode screenshots, are much rarer online than they used to be. I imagine that this is mostly due to age, but partly also to the passing of DVD drives attached to computers. If there's a way to screenshot streaming, I don't know it.

I contributed 6 D&DC recommendations to fanart_recs in November. If you're interested:

• "When they were happy..." by Manzanachan (G): Recommendation | Image
• "Dungeons and Dragons Crew" by Gndagnor (G): Recommendation | Image
• "Venger" by Manzanedo (PG-13): Recommendation | Image
• "Tiamat" by Cavalcanti (G): Recommendation | Image
• "Sheila from Dungeons and Dragons - Redesign" by Robson M. (G): Recommendation | Image
• "Dungeons'n'Dragons - Girls" by Tidi-Lebre (G): Recommendation | Image

Maybe I will do more sometime.

By a curious quirk of the show's age and the internet's age and the licensing of reruns, almost all the D&DC fanart online is by artists who live in the southern hemisphere (mostly, but not exclusively, Brazil). I understand that Robson M. (appears once in the list above; could have supplied all six slots) actually made the leap to pro illustrations for Wizards of the Coast.

I gather that the show is running on the new DnD channel/linear-streaming thing now. (I have the "red box" DVDs and haven't looked into that, so don't know details.)

This month, I'm signed up to recommend Dungeons & Dragons cartoon fanart on fanart_recs. The other signed-up monthly reccer (doing Baldur's Gate 3) already posted today, so I'll wait until at least tomorrow to post my first rec (min 4, max 8, in a month; I have 6 planned).

If you're interested in D&DC and/or fanart, come play!

(Of course I'll post a round-up here when it's done, too.)

Addendum, Thursday morning: My first rec for this project is up.