#eh sparknotes it

We're collaborating with @loz-extended-gifting for an Original Legends Gift Exchange!

Gifters and giftees will be paired at random, which means the participants may be assigned an OL they're not familiar with yet. It will be a great chance to discover a new work and to share yours, but we're aware that time is a thing that exists and reading a whole work is a big ask. After all, some of our members have epics under their belts!

So! We're challenging all of you to give us a summary of your Original Legend. Help us and our challenge participants #EH Sparknotes It so we can get a quick look at your work. How short or how long is entirely up to you, as well as whether it contains any spoilers or not. And while you're at it, check out the details for the gift exchange and sign up to support the community.

If you would like some help and pointers, click the read more for some suggestions and an example summary.

This story is set in a fairly typical Hyrule, but this Hyrule has a problem: the King. The monarch is a brutal tyrant, and the population is impoverished while the noble class enjoys every luxury. Any dissent is harshly punished and most people are scared to step out of line. Revolutionary cells can be found all over Hyrule, but they have yet to launch an actual revolution. 

Link, a fourteen-year old who happens to bear a striking resemblance to the long forgotten Hero of Time, is a member of one such cell: Din’s Justice. He’s a man (or boy) of the people with a strong protective instinct and will to make the world better, and he really, really hates the King and his nobles. He’s also impulsive, rude, and completely controlled by his emotions – particularly rage.  

One day, while supervising a group of younger children on a school trip to the Hero’s Museum, he grabs what he thinks is a prop to defend his charges from monsters who suddenly attack. The prop is actually the Master Sword itself. Link finds out similar monsters have been appearing all over Hyrule, laying waste to villages and even towns and cities, completely indestructible without the Master Sword only he can wield. The scenario is familiar: previous Kings have summoned the same destruction before, to terrorize people into behaving themselves and to reassert that the Royal Family is needed by arranging for the crisis to be resolved by the Princess of Hyrule, helped by the Hero. Link still agrees to fight the monsters, hoping to save as many people as he can even if he himself is unlikely to survive: the King has already promised to execute him once he was done. His one hope is to somehow manage to kill the King before he is put to death himself and to at least die happy. 

This is horror/tragedy/whump with many deaths, including children and infants, and with intense trauma for Link. 

Goddess of Secrecy

Link (17) is a nameless, an outcast by virtue of not having a family name, for no crime of his own. He spent his life in Eveningale Village, a helpful hand and a secret swordsman even if the favor would never be returned.

One day, Link is visited in a dream by the Drex, Endeavor Westwind, and tasked with becoming the Hero of his era. Guided by this mysterious visitor and their hawk, Link plunges into the forests for Deku Fortress, the first of many, many dungeons to come.

Through his quest, Link must first prove himself a Hero to the Golden Goddesses, all four of them this time, to draw the Master Sword. After that, with the help of Endeavor, the tenacious Zelda, the stalwart Impa, and many more companions, he must find each of the eight Sages before Ganondorf and his general Zeal can plunge Hyrule into ruin.

Mark of a Hero

Link Sayre (27) is a Marksman, a mercenary and a monster hunter in a Hyrule with a surplus of magic. One day, at the request of his former mentor, Ambrose, he and his guildmate, Saddiqah El Amin, agree to break into the Temple of Time to stop an evil wizard. Only to find himself blackmailed by the eldest princess of Hyrule into pretending to be the Hero.

Tasked with the new "Hero act," Link and his companions must travel all over Hyrule to reopen the path into the Temple of Time, from Deku's Shelf with its seedy Korok crime lord to Laketown and its haunted guardian and on to Goron City and its treacherous heights. Until finally, they return to the Temple of Inverted Time to open the way to Princess Zelda's rumored power and our pretender finds more truth to the tale.

Having drawn the Master Sword, Link is now tasked to seek out the Sacred Sealing Stones, one gifted to each of Hyrule's neighbors, to reopen the Sealed Door and the power sealed behind it. But between him and his goal is Ganondorf and his many generals, none of which are going to go down easily. The road is long ahead, but the party is determined to see it through to the end.

Restoration Age

Link Sayre (21) is a college student and part time equestrian. After four years of college and no degree to show for it, his life is starting to feel rather listless. One day, his best friend Dwarf suggests they go visit a site from their childhood--an abandoned temple outside of town.

The trip turns surprisingly sour as Link and Dwarf's arrival awakens a magi-tech computer that mistakenly takes them as the Hero and the Enemy, absconding with Dwarf and throwing Link into a dungeon. After Link manages to prove himself through the dungeon's trials, he's released to track down the next temple on his "quest," only to find a lot of reporters waiting for him.

After a brief run-in with law enforcement, Link is snuck out of custody by Princess Zelda. Each of them with their own goals, the two set out to take on the Restoration and hopefully keep it from sending Hyrule back to the dark ages!

Cinders of Life

Link Sayre (10) is an adventurous young kid living in a Hyrule Ganon has succeeded in taking over. The country is in shambles but that's not going to stop Link and his friend Feya from doing their best to put a little greenery back in Castle Town.

Their days of gardening go awry when Feya is caught using magic by the city guards. To keep them from continuing to hunt his friend, Link reveals he too can use magic and is taken off to Hyrule Castle where he meets the King and Queen himself. There the wheel of fate starts to turn again.

Alongside a mute Zelda, Link is tasked with freeing the Great Fairies from the mounds they buried themselves in to bring life back to Hyrule. Between them is King Ganon, whose humanity is all but lost, alongside his arcanely crafted children, the Mahjul. The journey is a dangerous one, and it'll be no small feat for these two to restore Hyrule to what it once was.

Day After Destiny

Link Sayre (42) is a war veteran of the Ash Uprisings and, as of the day our story begins on, to be crowned king alongside his wife, Zelda. Hyrule still shows the scars of the war not even twenty years prior, but with the royal family five heirs strong, there is hope for a future in Hyrule.

Tragedy strikes the night of Link and Zelda's coronation. A masked Kargaroc rider steals their children in the middle of a surprise monster assault on Castle Town. A new war now looms on the horizon of the kingdom.

With no idea where their kids have been taken, Link and Zelda, along with their commander Jacques, set out to reclaim their titles of Hero and Princess a second time to save their kids. So many unknowns between the risk of a new Enemy and old wounds bound to reopen, there's no time to lose!

A Taste for Adventure

Link Sayre (15) is a farmer, quite content with his life in rural Hyrule on his family's farm. That all changes when he and his siblings happen upon a pair of Deku Scrubs corrupted by a strange magic. They say their states were inflicted on them after they ate some badly tasting food.

After saving the Deku Scrubs, and sharing a meal together, Link crashes into an underground cave where he stumbles upon the "sheep," Yaftan. Revitalized with a scavenged meal, Yaftan insists that she must return to Princess Zelda.

Flying back to Link's farm, Link tells his family he plans to escort Princess Zelda's "sheep" back to Castle Town. He's given supplies for the road, before waved off on his adventure to trials unknown!

Song of the Sages

Link Sayre (17) is an aspiring bard--storyteller and fighter extraordinaire! She has spent her life in Haven, training for the day she will head off on a life of adventure with her mom.

Those plans are suddenly expedited with Princess Zelda herself appears in Haven's temple, having snuck out Hyrule Castle on a quest of her own. Zelda believes an Enemy is soon to appear and is going to find the Hero herself to prevent disaster from arising.

Colour me intrigued by the challenge. I hope the fruits of interaction will be sweet and tangy in equal.

In the major metropolitan capital of Greater Hyrule, New Castle Town, the world has become overwhelming in a familiar sense. Cellular phones, with not-yet a megapixel in camera power, have just been established, government takes after democratic republic ideals, steam engines and the like have taken over from the classical horse-powered era.

Into this setting land a trio of characters, familiar yet distinct. Zelda Ororo Nohansen (♀28) is a child of an industrious familia who sees the land in need of someone to address change in the great melting pot of New Castle Town. Being descended from the noble Gerudo people gives her inner strength to tackle the multicultural quagmires of governance over so many as well as a complexion of honeyed almonds and hair approaching coral in shade. She has two assistants from her family company of Sheikah staff, Paya and Purah, always at her beck and call, on the clock at least. She rises to nomination for Junior Minister, (think IRL idealized US House Rep or a Star Wars Galactic Senator if you will). In the process of her political demands, she is assigned a bodyguard, after strings are pulled by her estranged magnate father.

(Guardsman Special Class) =SC= Ser Link du Trac II is said bodyguard, one of the most decorated members of the county security and gendarmes, The Guard, at only 27. He is quiet, preferring to communicate via Hylian Sign, with stalfos in his closet, but resolve to keep his charge upright and on her chosen path to whatever end that entails. He is stubborn to his charge's early behaviour, chafing at what she sees as infantilizing paranoia. But eventually cracks form in the ice, and something wonderful blossoms between two lonely souls in the big city.

Rounding out the trio is Tali Drasil, Gerudo chaffeuse. Sardonic, unflappable, solid as bedrock. Quick to respond, and quicker on the riposte with a quip, she's the connective tissue between Zelda and Link's home life and working hours. Not active to get them together, but not opposed to what she sees as a cute happening, regardless of what shadows curl around them as the relationship deepens beyond security detail and secured client and young Zelda Ororo's career accelerates.

A collection of episodic stories (averaging <3k words per) gradually leading to a novella/longfic. Begins as slice-of-life in an apartment in the borough of Tal Tal Heights, blossoming toward romance, then comes the drama leaning into thriller territory as politics and peril dare to mix. Fluffy breading on a savoury snack. Art and/or literature welcome.

Long summary for my OG OL, Hero!

Hyrule, although most people don’t know it, has been under the continuous rule of Ganon for 1,500 years. The Demon King has turned it into a dystopia with living conditions so dire that hardly anyone lives to be thirty. The monarchy has been abolished and a new president who promises change and sunnier days is elected every five years, but as soon as they are in office, Ganon possesses them and things do not change. The population is human: Hylians are gone and the other races haven’t been seen in ages. 

Link is a worker in a sword and shield shop. Like all workers, he is small and extremely skinny. He has dark blond hair cropped short and blue eyes, and he has a few problems. For one thing, he has slightly pointy ears hated by most people because they look like the Hylians who are believed to have abandoned Hyrule. For another, he suffers from terrible nightmares that occasionally prevent him from waking up on time, making him late for work – an offense that can be severely punished. Finally, he’s terrified of everything at his job and of many things outside of it, including sharp things, fire, darkness, and closed spaces. 

Things get worse when a supervisor called Zelda becomes convinced that he’s the Hero reborn, and destined to save Hyrule. She has pointed ears too, though she hides them under her thick blond hair, and she believes herself to be reincarnation of the Princesses of Destiny. She is determined to talk Link into fighting Ganon, who she swears is responsible for some of the routine nightly murders. The fact that she turns out to be right about Link being the latest reincarnation of the Heroes of the past is just the icing on the cake. What is a hero with no muscle mass to speak of, afraid of everything including monsters and swords, supposed to do? He ends up finding support in his own past lives, but will it be enough? 

This is an adventure/horror story, with a high body count and graphic violence, with some of the victims children. 

the sparknotes of my OL, for expanding-hyrule's sparknotes it challenge!

contains spoilers for the premise of MV