"Think about it often, the moment I was slain."

"And I'm nothing but a thief, with a knife looking sharp for the heart."

"You can see and not believe."

The promising child had vanished, but the city had not yet burned. Menacing movements in increasing shadows fought for her attention. From high above the common grounds; from higher still than all its walls; from an ancient-sculpted balcony, the princess looked out over Hyrule and made plans under the milk-blue moon.

Zelda remembered what it was like to sit peaceful, enthusiastic, studying or reading or talking happily with friends. For the life of her, she couldn't access it now, any more than she could see the friends her adoptive captor had vanished. How many years can pass without access to that contented mode? Was this adulthood, come too soon from the sky, never to release its grip? Or was it simple imprisonment, with only a key required to sever the lock from his shoulders and set right the world?

Time enough had passed. The sword was gone, the temple emptied, the great tree sagged and silent. Nearly five years. The boy wasn't coming back, nor her father, nor any other promise-making man. There were no promises left in the world, nor hope, nor especially any remnant of romance. A tyrant sat on a reupholstered throne, broadcasting violent triangular waves until her citizens, her charges, saw through violent miscolored eyes and staggered through the streets haunting those who still held onto humanity. Time enough had passed.

So she'd found Impa's dead religion's ceremonial clothes and watchful blade. Snuck together a mismatch of knives and honed them throwable. Channeled secret shreds of hot magic into lynel-eye marbles. Gathered handfuls of combustible tree nuts during her daily walks. Extended the dance lessons of her distant childhood into acrobatic rituals of martial preparation.

Princess Zelda had no more options; she was a goldfish figurehead, kept on display but now largely ignored. If she was ever spotted outside her bowl, she was returned swiftly by beast-twisted hands. Zelda couldn't act, so she would have to be someone else. And she would have to break the hands of any beast or man who brought harm to her beloved people.

She pulled up her boots, cinched tight her wrist wraps and binder, and raised the mask over her mouth. If Zelda must wait hopelessly at home, then another name would do what she could not. The streets would know a new shadow. Old symbols would drive back new horrors. Hyrule was out of time, but Sheik was just getting started.

—

[It's extremely stupid that I write fanfiction in an overwrought voice. This was supposed to set the stage for a game about Zelda/Sheik in the years after young Link is frozen in time; playing on the Batman concept, Sheik would roam the streets of a vast Hyrule, saving people from Ganon's monsters, restoring hope and making room for life. There may or may not be portions where you play as Zelda during the day, gathering resources and holding quiet court beside the tyrant Ganon, listening in his plans and the pleas he ignores to plan her next missions. I would prefer it not conclude with Link's return; this is yet another branching timeline. I think she would ultimately venture out of the city, rescuing Ruto from under the ice and maybe meeting other characters from Ocarina, and then she'd defeat Ganon. When Link emerges from the Temple of Time, he finds Zelda on the throne. Maybe she tenderly apologizes for the loss of his youth, but then she definitely breaks the Master Sword and Ocarina so that there's no chance of time travel being used to undo her work or restore Ganon to power.

Also in my dream game, Hyrule would be warped by Ganon's misuse of the Triforce of Power into a vertically-stretched, Bloodbornesque city of varyingly-mutated Hylians. His power is turning normal people into monsters, including the city itself.

Anyway! An Arkham City-style game with Sheik as Batman would rule! I should probably just write more plainly about these things.]

When will I meet the mysterious benefactor who will let me live in their spare room by the sea for 6 months while I read some books and look at birds

I listened to this new 4-song EP by all-time great band Hussalonia as I forced myself to go for a jog in the hopes that a new set of endorphins would override the crushing sense of uselessness and futility I feel toward my place in the world, and wouldn't you know these songs are about that very same thing. Not my favorite Hussalonia tracks musically, but I really appreciate the clarity of the lyrics in the last few Hussalonia releases. I have felt — and currently feel — a lot of what's in these songs, and it's nice/helpful/consoling to hear someone sing them.

Walking out my door, I notice I’ve accrued sedimentary layers of recent reading on the edge of my desk. I’ve recovered some of my drive to read this year. Each of these books is partially inside me now; I haven’t finished any of them, and they aren’t the only books I’ve let inhabit me in recent months. Everything stews together.

Also pictured: the cat who loves my work chair much more than I do.

This site is built with Kirby 3, which is a really good and relatively-simple flat-file CMS that I use a lot. I ran into an issue where images uploaded from iOS can display with the wrong rotation in non-iPhone browsers. It's not Kirby's fault, but Kirby also doesn't have an easy way to address this with its built-in tags. So I made a custom Kirbytag for displaying images that re-encodes all images before displaying them, which fixes the orientation issue. This uses Kirby's built-in thumbnail processor, so it doesn't require installing anything else. And as a side benefit, I can specify a maximum image width and shrink images down before sending them to the browser, which saves everybody bandwidth! Yeahhhhhhh

If this is of any interest to you, here's the Github repo!

[Here's a short piece from some number of years ago. I've tried on many voices over the years, and hardly ever sought feedback to see which voice was mine. I really like writing things like this, even as I hear dry choruses of hisses about being overwrought and unapproachable. In another life, I think I could have enjoyed writing the flavor text for Magic cards.]

The Dragon King sits draped in staves and rods, in tsunami grass and the moon in shadow.

Immediately: Correct your heresy: The overgrown British lizard you see before you, and which I can read in your seeing. His Roarship is not the false-god greed-beast of common parlor games and CGI-spectacle flame breath; He is of the lineage of River and Sky, the Dragons barely-visible, only ineptly described by that word "Dragon" and its overtime dilution. His is a wordless dominance, and it is only we who must struggle to speak of Him in the approximate. Neither is "King" sufficient; He is one who reigns not over some human domain of land or exploited serfs, nor over locked rooms of misbegotten metals. His is the breath of all trees. His is the beard of the wooliest lion. His are the robes of every silkworm's wettest dream, his belt the envy of the nineteen planets.

The Dragon King cradles in crossed arms a sword which cannot be forged or faked, on a heat-lightning seat of greenleaf curve, a contemplative cut-free head in his lap.

What does a Dragon King consider in his bended night? From one angle does his crepe paper mane give a vision of Dante's devil, and yet from another the impression of one child's best cotton friend?

Pyramids of possibility drift in and out of view. A cycle of old forest growth is brief-eaten by flames, speed-grown from complete char, to seedpod infancy, into even thicker twists. The face of the beheaded is turned toward Him, and we will never know its gaze.

What does this Dragon King desire, when He can feed and be full on mere stray wisps of any creature's emanated need? The heat of love either matched or unengaged; the hot-tar waver of any cricket's plaintive lust-hunger warble. When the plain rush of a certain crossbreeze meets His unlanguaged requirements completely? What use is a separate human head to His Mawjesty, and what ethic or anger made its separation sure?

One can count on the head of an imagined enemy as a favor-seeking gore prize from some dumb village cretin. That humans often and with pleasure think the death of another will improve their wicked lot. What use is a bloodless noggin to the vigorous nowness of the Dragon King, and why would He tolerate or reflect upon such a tasteless gift at all?

These are just some of the questions that wither before the Dragon King's whorled attention on this graphite-glossy, monochrome-lunelit, regret-stained night.