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.)

nicholas_lucien spotted on Facebook that Fred Mollin, FK's composer, is selling his copies of the two "Dark Knight" episode scripts (that is, parts one and two). He will sign the scripts if asked. Learn more on Facebook. (See Nicholas_lucien's DW post.)

This is the time of year that I actually open ForKni-L digests, so I saw McLisa post that she's seeking a copy of an FK story she wrote and lost long ago, probably titled "The Werewolf of Toronto," and that she would greatly appreciate anyone who can share a file or a link. It's a lighthearted Halloween story in which, among other things, Nick and Schanke, working undercover at a Halloween parade, become their costumes (a la BtVS), and while Nick is dressed as a movie vampire, Schanke is dressed as a werewolf.

And while I have you, I should plug fkficfest again! Not that you don't know that we've reached the halfway point, with eight stories revealed and eight yet to go.

One of my favorite podcasts, Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols, is back for its third mini-season (four episodes a year; one weekly for Advent). Check it out on its own site. Or find it wherever you like to get your podcasts! (Here it is on Google Podcasts, where I get mine, until the migration to YouTube Podcasts next year.)

Each episode deep-dives a single carol though history, music theory, literary analysis, sociology, and theology. If that sounds heavy, it's not! The engaging researcher/reporter questions her expert sources on our behalf, teasing out the wonder, delight, sophistication, coincidences, and -- occasionally -- horror and tragedy, behind each composition. So far, across all their seasons to date, they've done: "O! Holy Night," "Joy to the World," "In the Bleak Midwinter," "The Huron Carol (Twas in the Moon of Wintertime)," "Silent Night," "Adeste Fideles (O Come, All Ye Faithful)," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," "Good King Wenceslas," "Carol of the Bells," and the premiere episode devoted to the history of carols in general.


If you're interested in Christmassy podcasts, you might also be interested in Christmas Past, which puts out many more episodes per season, starting right after Halloween and increasing its rate as Christmas approaches. As they describe themselves: "Behind every Christmas tradition is a story, often a forgotten one. ... Think: NPR meets Clement Clarke Moore." It's now in its eighth season, so a great back catalogue if you're looking for something specific.

Don't you love it when someone writes an exciting, energetic, original, pop song about the book you're currently reading and delivers it with full orchestration on one of those singing competition shows? Granted, that's never happened to me before, but I've never read the unabridged Journey to the West before, so...

Watch on YouTube

Subtitled in English: [Single Song] "Great Sage Equal to Heaven" sung by Hua Chenyu

(I listened to a podcast interviewing Julia Lovell, the translator of the recent (2021!) abridged version of JttW that I read before diving into the unabridged translation by Anthony Yu, and this was the outro music. I checked the podcast's credits to learn what it was and followed a link to this performance.) (Lovell's abridgement is very nice and absolutely imperative for classroom use! But I'm so into these characters that I need the whole hundred chapters. And, apparently, filks.)

The beloved fandoms that we chat about here are, for me, almost always those in which I need something more than canon. For whatever reason, those canons alone don't fulfill, and I turn to you, my fellow fans, for all the discussions and stories, fixing the errors and filling in the blanks, putting right what once went wrong and keeping the engine purring. It's a joy. But I do love some other stories, stories that I rarely if ever mention here, as profoundly as — and perhaps even more than — those fandoms I do mention.

Take the Pinis' ElfQuest, for example. (If you don't know it, try it! If you hate it, hush.) Now, deeply as I love it, I don't need to talk about it or read or write fanfic for it. It is. It is itself. It's enough. Canon fulfills. Granted, I say that having waited six months between black-and-white issues and bought the Stablaze color editions new in Waldenbooks. I have a poster signed by Wendy. Somewhere, I have a folder of my incompetent imitations of her work. I've had a long, long, long time for those roots to grow through my soul.

Anyway, I've been working a lot of sixty-hour weeks, lately. I rarely get on my own computer at home, or get to rather a lot of other things. I've been feeling pretty far down. But yesterday, Saturday, after about five hours in the office, I got in my car, looked at the gorgeously sunny day, and decided to go for a walk to decompress. "Okay, Google," I said to my phone. "Give me directions to the nearest park on the Bay Trail."

The place I arrived is an unremarkable cul-de-sac of drought-dry wetland between an abandoned factory and wetter wetlands, circled by bike trails, and as I began strolling in the spring sun, I plugged in my earbuds and pulled up the A Wolfrider's Reflections album, featuring mostly work by Julia Ecklar, but also some lyrics by Mercedes Lackey. (I won't go into how these most excellent filks went pro.) Point being, I hadn't listened to the album straight through in a few years, and while walking, overtired out there in the sun, it made me laugh, and cry, and ache, feeling the characters and knowing the moments. It's not just seeing the panels referenced in my mind's eye, or even seeing the events through the characters' eyes once again, because it wasn't just remembering loving ElfQuest.

The songs reminded me why I love fandom of itself, and all it does and can do at its best. Why do we do these things we do?

Funny, that a fandom where I generally feel no need for fandom, and filks that technically ceased to be fanworks (becoming authorized shared-universe works) ages ago, would so-suddenly supply that particular support.