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.)

Are you, or is anyone you know, a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K)? If so, you may be interested to learn that they're currently crowd-funding a new fourteenth season, completely independent of any studio or other corporate overlords (unlike the revival eleventh and twelfth season done in cooperation with Netflix, but very much like the revival thirteenth season in which they launched their "Gizmoplex" independent streaming, and of course also different from the old Comedy Central days, or Sci-Fi Channel days, or even the primordial local cable days).

Learn all about it at mst3k.com! Or on their YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X. This effort runs through this Thanksgiving Day (November 23, 2023), after which they will lock in the number of new episodes they'll produce for the season, so, to get more episodes, fund them before their deadline. And of course there will be their traditional "turkey day" marathon of "turkeys" (bad movies) being mocked in signature style.

I've personally backed each of the revival seasons so far, including this hoped-for fourteenth. I'd be happy to describe my experience with their "Gizmoplex" streaming and as a backer; please ask any questions.

(Never heard of MST3K? It's not like anything else, so it's kind of hard to explain, but don't worry -- as the theme song says, "it's just a show," so we can "just relax" about the backstory in which mad scientists trap a victim alone in space and force him or her to watch endless cheesy genre movies, but the victim fights back by creating sentient robots to watch the movies with, together endlessly mocking everything about the movies in a rain of jokes so dense that even if you catch only every fourth joke, you laugh all the way through. It's not for everyone! But it is very much for some. It's something I get to share with my sister, so I value it even more highly for that.)

Addendum: With 13 days left, they are currently at 33% of goal for a 6-episode season. Ouch. It really hurt that the studios didn't settle contracts earlier, so that the actors weren't able to do any promotion on social media or elsewhere. (They want to do a 12-episode season if they can get the money; they set the 6-episode season as the minimum goal.)