The Legend of Zelda: Blood and Spirit

Afterword

Its hard to believe its been almost a year since I posted the first chapter of Blood and Spirit on Fanfiction.net A long, hard year, filled with ups and downs in both my real life and my writing. Over the course of this past year I have gone through the entire course of my senior year of high school, and through it all, all of the incredibly busy days and nights, I've found ways to brainstorm for this story as well as write it all because of my devotion not only to this story, but to my lovely readers as well (but I'll thank you all in a little bit). I set my mind to writing this story and by some miracle, I managed to finish it all within a year and the indescribable feeling of having reached the end of the beginning of my epic, game spanning trilogy fills every bone in my body, especially as I look forward to the glorious tale that awaits all of us with Light and Shadow (and to a lesser extent Wisdom and Courage).

And so, here we are in the afterword, which is basically going to be me rambling about the entire Bound Destinies Trilogy, so if you're into that sort of thing, please, read on! :D

Writing Blood and Spirit

The original idea for Blood and Spirit came about as I was writing Wisdom and Courage (the 2nd story in the Bound Destinies Trilogy; yeah, I kinda wrote them out of order… :P I wanted to form a trilogy based around many of the lore-staples I had dealt with in Wisdom and Courage, such as the connection between Hyrule and Termina, the Fierce Deity, the Dark Interlopers/Twili and their origins, the nature of the Blood of the Goddess and the Spirit of the Hero, the history of Hyrule at large, the Sheikah and more. Of course, from the beginning, I wanted to have each book in the trilogy be set as a sequel to a different Zelda game. Since Wisdom and Courage was set after Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask, I came up with the idea to have the first book be set after Skyward Sword and the third book set after Twilight Princess. I was so excited to write book one, since it would be set after my absolute favorite Zelda game (Skyward Sword), and that I would get to try my hand at writing these characters and this world into a huge, epic story!

I had always been fascinated in the story of the Dark Interlopers from Twilight Princess, and so I decided to let that be the framework for B&S, incorporating the Fused Shadow, Mirror of Twilight and more! Of course, I wanted to incorporate the corruption subplot into the story, and did it in a way that would also explain the origins of the Fierce Deity, as well as Hyrule's connection to Termina. From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to ship Link and Zelda hard, just like I did in Wisdom and Courage, but even more so here as I had the two of them tie the knot before B&S was even halfway over. As for Fi returning, I knew that I wanted to do that since she makes appearances in the other two books of the trilogy as well and so I had to give her the role of Link's companion once more, though the idea to give her more emotions came from its convenience to the plot and how I could develop her character in an interesting way. Veress came about from me trying create a villainess who could start the line of evil lady Interlopers/Twili and right from the start I wanted her to be ruthless, but also very cunning and crafty, which I think she turned out to be (as well as crazy, which was also what I wanted her to be). Sheik's character came about as a way to not only feed the love triangle I wanted to create, but also to serve as the one who would connect Link and Zelda to Veress (which I did through their shared backstory). Here's a fun fact! In my original ideas for B&S, Sheik was originally going to betray Link and Zelda during the final battle and join Veress, but then the whole subplot about her falling in love with Link came along and I knew that doing that would pretty much make her hated in everyone's eyes (and personally, I liked her too much to do that myself!). As far as Terminus goes, I created her so I could cement my theory that everyone in Termina is a foil to everyone in Hyrule, hence Terminus being Hylia/Zelda's counterpart and the Fierce Deity being Link's. And finally, what I really wanted to do at the end of B&S was detail the establishment of Hyrule, something I hope I succeeded over the course of the resolution. Overall, I have to say that the process of writing B&S has helped me to grow so much as a writer, testing my limits and pushing me to the emotional edge of everything, but I have had so much fun writing it! I sincerely hope that all of my hard work has shown throughout the story, from its highest moments to its lowest lows, to everything in between!