Himsl'nd: Where We're Going
For those who like mild spoilers ...
I wanted to write this post to discuss where I’m going with Himsl’nd. For those who don’t like spoilers, LEAVE NOW.
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Okay, for the rest of you: If you played any Nintendo® in the last decade or two, you probably keyed in that this is loosely based on Zelda. Specifically, as a child of the 90s, I designed this off of “Zelda: Ocarina of Time.” Luke is Link (duh?) and Zeke is Zelda (double-duh?). However, everything else – especially the idea that Luke-as-Link is from our world – is definitely unique.
In that sense, Luke is the reluctant hero: He just wants to save his friend and get home.
Luke is also a damaged hero. The novel starts out with “I had cum leaking out of my ass,” because he thinks that if he lets his property manager fuck him, then that will cover his rent. Luke has to do his own self-exploration and -healing in order to be the hero he needs to be to save himself and his best friend.
As something loosely based on OoT, there will be time-travel (yay! … or, if you hate time travel, boo…). Luke enters circa 23 years old. The “child” part of OoT will be him at 18 (because, obviously), while the “adult” part will be him at 30. Linked together by the tin whistle which, like in OoT, will let him travel through time and also do some other TBD things. That also means he’s time-locked out of the present time until he’s ready to face the Big Bad. Speaking of which, if you’re good with anagrams, or you really know your Zelda, you’ll recognize several names.
As gay-forward erotica, the land of Himsl’nd is highly sexualized, reflected in the names, the plants, the architecture, and of course there’s plenty of man-man-man-…-man sex that’s part of it. Do you want to visit Stud Ranch? Or spend a night in the town of Rodham before looking around the gr’Assl’nds of Asmodeus? If you’re kinkier, there’s always the Mountains of Mounthole.
Another note: if you’re looking for a short story, or even one that’s done after ≈12 chapters, this is not your story. This is planned out to at least chapter 100 so far, and I’ve written through chapter 25, I’m just doing lots of heavy editing why only through chapter 8 is posted. I’m revising the background mythology, the interplay with how to incorporate some of the side-quests from OoT, etc.
How far have I written and planned? Right now, chapters 9–10 are a Zeke cutaway where we get the background mythology, and that’s going to get scrapped. I’m going to put those in smaller chunks at the end of chapters as asides, because right now they are walls (quite literally, he’s reading the story on room walls) of exposition.
I have written through Luke’s passage through the Misty Woods, his journey to The Great Dicku, and that first “temple.” I’ve written through his return to Cockiri Woods after the temple, and up to his departure to embark on the rest of the book.
I have planned much further. The basic layout is going to follow the OoT child quests at this point, where he must journey to the Mountains of Mounthole, and the SeaMen domain in order to put together the pieces to move forward. That takes us through roughly chapter 60-ish. It’s hard to know exactly because I tend to outline conservatively, and then when I write I add things and chapters expand, and then I split them, and so the numbering system gets out of whack.
When he reaches 30 after the time jump, just as with OoT, the land is much more dystopian due to the influence of Fornondag (“obvious(?)” anagram of Gandondorf). Zeke is there, but … different. I said this would only give mild spoilers, so I’m sticking to that. I have the mechanism and the ideas all planned out, but the exact details are literally ~40+ chapters away, so I haven’t planned as explicitly there yet.
So … that’s where we are as of July 2027. Oh, and v7 of my worldmap is above. Names, exact layout, and some places are still subject to change, but this is getting close to what I envisioned in my head as I’ve been building and planning this story and world.
Oh: So what happens at the end? Spoilers …
Let’s just say that Luke does return to age 23, and confronts Fornondag at the wedding between him and Zeke. What happens after that … 🤐.