Hi.
Been a while, yeah?
Okay, so here's just something of an update that I've been hoping to get out there.
Routine is still being worked on, but I want you guys to understand this. This story has gone on longer than I ever planned, and it's the longest story I will probably ever write. It's 40 chapters! Well, 38 with the combined Twilight Special. Which is out now btw, check it out!
Anyway, since the story has gone on non-stop for a year, I decided to take a break and focus on school work and relaxing a bit as the school year drew to a close. It's summer break now and I'm officially a High School senior, yay.
Here's my promise; I will finish Routine before I graduate next year.
This story will be done, I swear. It's my goal to do so.
But, for now, I will work steadily on the next chapter and hopefully get it out before July. But no promises. I am a man with ideas, ideas that need to write down or else I'll go mad from the lack of a creative outlet.
Alright, now onto the next thing; I will link my Deviantart account on the next chapter. I am drawing sketches and portraits of Routine and my other, Naruto-related Story. Plus, I will make some of them the story image every now and again.
And now, for your guy's special treat, a few character profiles. I wrote these up for fun, drawing on the insight I used in writing each character and what their inspirations were and such, please enjoy:
Link
When writing Link, I had to think about how his incomplete memory could be affecting his actions. The duties and disciple on a knight, especially royal guards, is very rigorous IRL, so it stands to reason that LOZ's version would be no different. BOTW's version of Link is very childish in a way, so I incorporated that into his character too.
There is innocence in his character, but he is still a hardened knight-turned-hero. But there is a deep similarity between him and Twilight, being Ancestor and Descendant of course. He can be cocky, but is mostly level headed, if blood-thirsty. The idea that experience changes a person is in complete effect with Link, especially with his view on how living in the Castle is making him and Zelda soft. He hates staying in a single place, but respects that Zelda needs to rebuild Hyrule.
As for other things, like his voice and whatnot, aside from the tone and pitch used in-game for his yells, I imagine his voice when talking would have an "Zora" accent since he grew up close to Zora's Domain. Similar to Sidon's accent, it would have a smoother, almost casual elegance. A far cry from the uppity posh accent that Zelda has.
Zelda
She was an interesting character to write, and a hard one to keep track of at times. She was rather...bratty in BOTW, very different from the responsible royalty that Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time had. But this changed with time as she came to know Link better. This is reflected by their relationship that blossoms into romance. My take on Zelda though is that she still wants to be independent and not rely on Link's sword or her divine powers every time there is danger. So, who better to fix that problem than Impa? But I didn't change her character just because she was trained as a Sheikah, she's still an amateur by their standards, not battle-hardened and cold.
Overall, She doesn't have that much development left before she started acting more like her ancestors.
Twilight & Shade/Time
Oh Boy. Where to begin? Alright, so at the beginning of the story, I had not planned for Twilight to appear whatsoever, only for a friend to encourage me to add him. So...I did so, and it only escalated from there. From a wolf to a man to a half-wraith. The biggest inspiration for him and Shade was, of course, Talion and Celebrimbor from Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War. As a matter of fact, I like to imagine they have similar voices, just higher in pitch. While I distance myself from the inspiration so as to make it unique in it's own right, the whole merged-souls concept has actually been exercised in other fanfictions way before I got to it.
Twilight and Shade are similar to commentators, observant onlookers of the story who anticipate the next danger, because they are used to this kind of thing. Luckily, I didn't listen to a reviewer who told me to get rid of Twilight. That would've made the story lose some of it's appeal.
Agahnim
With the underlying theme of corruption, who better to demonstrate that then a good-version of Ganondorf? The best part of Agahnim is that, since he is fighting corruption constantly, he has literally everything to lose. There have been plenty of good-counterparts of Ganondorf, but I wanted mine to be unique in that he could literally flip back to evil at any moment with no warning. It's a neat quirk that makes the ending of his story ambiguous. This is flippant with his evil counterpart, who I made a hazardous mix of the courteous Ganondorf you meet in OOT and TP and the chaotic Ganon you meet in the Decline Timeline. But they both have memories of the other timelines, which drove Ganon insane while Agahnim just lived with it.
While I might have already gave him appearance, recently I've begun to imagine him being very similar to Link and Twilight, with the former's build and the latter's height. He's still young, keep in mind, so he's not the tall, brooding reflection of his past self that Ganon is.