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My Inner Life is a Zelda Mary Sue fanfic of epic proportions. Written at some point between the late 90s and early 2000s, it has gone down in history as one of the most memorable stories of its type ever written. It all started when a starry-eyed fangirl known as Jen began to have lucid dreams about Link and believed they were a real second life she lived, writing them down to share them with the world.The story followed the exploits of a girl named Jenna, a traveling merchant who meets and falls in love with Link Silverblade, who has a last name now. She then proceeds to marry him, have lots of sex with him while grunting like tigers in heat, and bear his babies. Along the way, the couple takes part in a bizarre bonding ceremony, battles Dark Link, and discovers that Jenna is descended from a race of magical peoplewho can control the elements.The author never actually finished the story, but it lives on in the memories of many traumatized and amused Zelda fans. The story, plus a shrine to the author herself, can be found here. You can also hear it in Dramatic Reading form here and here, although the latter isn't finished yet. If those aren't enough to quell your interest, there is also a Sims 2 reenactment in the works, part one of which can be found here. Also recommended is this sporking. Another interesting spork starts here.Adaptations of My Inner Life are troped over here.Also, see My Immortal, legolas by laura, DOOM: Repercussions of Evil, Love Is Deffinatly Blind, Back to the Frollo, and Atlanta Nights.
All There in the Manual: In the Author's Notes, Jenna mentions that she had to catch up the fic to where she was in the dreams and says that she's at a point in which she's given birth to twins (her third and fourth children with Link). This bit doesn't happen within the story itself.
By the point when the author and Link are crossing the desert back, Jen responded to a reader saying that she, Link and Nabooru would travel to her homeland, the great lebian coast, and that they'd face Dark Link again, she also spoils the presumed arc by telling us that Link would die, but not to worry, since he'd be back soon.
Let the record show that having sex while pregnant will not make your baby stronger. Let it also show that getting drunk while pregnant will give your baby the aptly-named Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which isn't a good thing.
Also, movement is generally more awkward and difficult during the last of the second trimester and the entirety of the third trimester, since, you know, the kid gets huge and all, while here Jenna is capable of traveling around and doing action scenes.
One does not boot horses in the legs to get them to move. It's the ribs. Really a firm squeeze with your legs is all that's needed. And maybe a light nudge with the heels. Actually, it seems rather impossible to boot a horse in the leg while you're riding it–horses are pretty big animals, after all. In fact, hitting a horse in the legs is more likely to send the rider flying off than make the horse actually go.
Jenna seems to be convinced that a horse's pregnancy is 3 months, when in reality, it can take a full year for a foal to completely gestate.
Artistic License – Chemistry: Jenna was able to smell sulfur from across a lake. Given that sulfur has a faint odor, she either mixed it up with Hydrogen Sulfide or she did no research at all. More likely, however, it was one of her Sue powers.
Artistic License Sex Ed: Some of the things described in the sex scenes would not work. At all. The author has no idea what the male refractory period is and seems to think that men can climax twice in five minutes without any problems (some can, but the odds are against it and doubly so for those out of their twenties!). Also, women do excrete a certain fluid during orgasm, but the sheer amount that shows up after every one of Jenna's orgasms means that she has some serious health problems. She's losing a ton of fluid rapidly each time- maybe, if the story had gone on, she would have died because of this.
Author Appeal: There's quite a few things the author clearly has a fondness for that keep recurring in the story. Jenna spends a lot of time bathing with Link or being washed by him, for example.
"He lifted my head up until our eyes met." A phrase which sounds more like Link is ripping Jenna's head off.
Jen also really, really likes to use the words "youngling" when describing any sort of baby animal; "miracle" when describing her first son, Link Junior; and "sneer" when describing how a villain utters their latest cliche.
To say nothing of the references to tigers during the sex scenes. In the sexual bonding ceremony, the characters are described as acting like tigers four times in just two paragraphs!
Awesome McCoolname: Jenna Silverblade and her horses, Midnight Star and Star Dancer.
Catch Phrase: 80% of Dalamar's dialogue is a request for expediency. "We must make haste!" is his most common.
Cat Girl: Not a literal example, but Jenna's "cat like instincts" (which are never explained) certainly invoke this trope. Just in case she didn't have quite enough Common Mary Sue Traits. She's also later able to smell blood and sulfur from across a lake.
The Complainer Is Always Wrong: After Jenna is given her own guardian fairy by the Great Deku Tree, Mido is the only one who points out that there's no reason for her to have one. He has a completely legitimate point there, since Jenna is not a Kokiri.note The justification is also rather flimsy; Jenna's fairy is supposed to protect her should Ganondorf return, but the game shows that Ganondorf is far more powerful than Link's own guardian fairy, who was useless in the fight against him. Also, Ganondorf is dead in this story and never does return. Of course, Saria instantly gets all up in Mido's business for this, yelling at him for having the gall to suggest that Jenna doesn't deserve every little thing she is given.
Throughout the story, it's told that griffins don't trust people. However, the only ones to actually display any mistrust, a pair of guards, are subsequently yelled at for goofing off on the job. Even though it's a guard's job to be suspicious.
Also, when Link and Jenna are about to travel to the griffins' home, he tries to get her to stay behind with the very good point of her being six-months pregnant. She goes with him anyway, and we're supposed to congratulate her on how feminist she supposedly is.
"It was a warm spring night and night had just arrived."
Even dreams that feel realistic feel very real.
"....AND IT IS ALSO THE READERS RESPONSIBILITY TO TAKE RESPONSIBILTY....."
"Should you ever need one of us in a time of need..."
"Knowledge of those great heroics is well known..."
"I entered a strange room.""The room was strange..."
"The more he attracted my attention the more I became more attracted to him."
"Completing each would bond us together in an unbreakable bond."
"Hearing his voice inside my mind made me feel closer to him. I felt as if our minds were connected."
There's also a spring festival. A footnote helpfully tells us that it's a festival that's held in the spring.
Don't Like, Don't Read: The author's note takes this Up to Eleven. If copied and pasted into Word or similar, it turns out the rant (consisting entirely of how people who complain about her writing or consider her character a Mary Sue are bad and should feel bad) goes on for three pages-ish.
Fauxlosophic Narration: Jenna tries to make herself sound philosophical and intelligent in her prologue, but it does a better job of giving examples of redundancy and general idiocy.
In many cases, she gives a footnote and then has Link explain to Jenna what the term is several sentences later in the body of the text. One footnote actually retells plot points from the main story.
Forgot About Her Powers: Jenna is constantly forgetting that she can control the elements and thus dispose of most enemies in no time flat. Or rather, she remembers only after everyone else has been incapacitated and she's been cornered, or she'll remember it outside of a battle so she can use it as a reason why she's not a Damsel in Distress, but every other time, she just forgets. It makes scenes that are supposed to be tense actually more stupid that they already were.
Full-Name Basis: Dark Lord Ariakas is rarely called anything but.
Hand On Womb: Jenna does this a lot when she finds out she is pregnant.
Have a Gay Old Time: "So like I said, if the content of this story sounds, too queer to you, TURN BACK NOW!"
Hypocritical Humor: Unintentionally: The author's note goes on and on about how immature it is to blow up just because people write something you don't like; it was written because people gave her fanfiction negative reviews.
Also in the author's note, she says that she didn't mean to make Jenna conceited because "I'm not really like that." In the story though, which is told from her perspective, she refers to herself as beautiful in the narration, claims she would be Hyrule's sole and most powerful protector, and calls herself compassionate in her dialogue.
Informed Ability: The Great Deku Tree says at one point that Jenna is "spiritual." Besides her worship of Link, no evidence is seen for this otherwise.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Much emphasis is also placed on Jenna's importance as a merchant, but she can apparently drop that to marry Link with no ill consequences to Hyrule's supply of cloth.
Moral Dissonance: The pregnant bender. Either Jen forgot that her character was pregnant at the time (which wouldn't be surprising) or she'd never heard of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (which also wouldn't be surprising).
Finding out she's descended from the made-up "Silverites," a race of people who can control the elements, was discovered at a very opportune time.
Her "cat like instincts" also come right out of nowhere. She doesn't even explain where they came from; they're introduced about halfway through the story with no explanation.
The "Phoenix Circles", which she apparently is skilled enough at fighting with to challenge Dark Link when Link cannot. Even though he's beaten Dark Link before and only gotten stronger since then. It's also prudent to point out that these "Phoenix Circles" are actually chakrams, and if one were to draw them on paper based on what little description was given, they would look incredibly similar to a certain Flurry of Dancing Flames'◊ version of these.
Porn Without Plot: There's not a hint of real, life-threatening-to-a-main-character conflict until near the end of the twelfth chapter and even then, it's resolved in less than two chapters. Indeed, there isn't any conflict, life-threatening or not, in the story until then.
Link and Jenna are parted for several months of plot time because he has to go to war. He's back in a few pages.
Another conflict is set up towards the end, involving Jenna and Link getting in the thick of a brewing war amongst Canon Foreigner countries. It reaches its climax when a huge bat-like creature attacks them at night and they opt to run away to Hyrule Castle instead of fighting. The story ends that same chapter and we're Left Hanging.
Rouge Angles of Satin: The spelling itself isn't too bad by fanfic standards, although Jen keeps using "alter" for "altar", "minuet" for "minute", etc. What's really bad is that she thinks quotation marks don't just open and close a quote, but go between every sentence within the quote.
Also, the deliciously memetic "from the gecko" (presumably "get-go".)
For some reason, the author mixes up "through" with "threw", pretty much every single time.
She also constantly writes "so" as "soo", which is either a spelling error or an attempt to emphasize the word.
Another example is saying "award robe" instead of "a wardrobe".
One hilarious example is Jenna saying that they'd "bread" Link's new stallion with Epona.
Satellite Love Interest: Upon meeting Link for the first time, Jenna's first thoughts are how handsome he is and how beautiful their children would be. They're banging within a few pages, without a hint of tension or believability.
Jenna: Also as a side note, I NEVER physically hurt ANYONE with this story. I got one reviewer that said. “Oh God please stop writing, your hurting everyone.” Now I want to know where I physically touched that person. I want to know how I’m twisting anyone’s arms to read this. I have never done anything of the sort in any way, shape or form and I DO NOT appreciate being accused of that!
Thirsty Desert: The Black Desert. This is even moreso than most deserts, because it's black, so it retains heat more easily.
Three-Month-Old Newborn: Seconds after his birth, Link Junior is cute, clean and cooing in his mother's arms. He's smiling, giggling and doing math not long after.
Don't forget, there was no mention of an umbilical cord and apparently the birth only took...eh, maybe five minutes?
Title Drop: In the prologue. "This is a book about my inner life..."
Winged Unicorn: Called "Unipegs" in the story. They appear towards the end of the story when Hyrule is preparing for war. Of course, by "appear", we mean "are mentioned in passing as an ally and swiftly forgotten".
And according to Jenna, Zelda can only take the throne if she's married (despite the fact that Zelda has been canonically shown ruling Hyrule by herself without spouse or parents in the majority of the games), something Jenna is certain she will never do. No wonder, because Jenna took Link first.
Another of the author's fanfics, "Childhood Lost", features Zelda angsting about her lost childhood (while recapping Ocarina of Time). Although this is an interesting concept, Jen never wrote more than one chapter and mishandled it horribly, and it looks like if it had continued it would have ended with Zelda giving up her claim to the throne in favour of Jenna, all interspersed with inappropriate Mariah Carey lyrics.