Arachne Smith (arachnesmith@aol.com) On the literary viability of the Zelda series --------------------------------------------- I just have to drop a line to say I'm extrodinarily impressed by your work here. Some people may feel it's a waste of time to delve so deeply into a video game, but your essays concerning the Zelda series are concise, well-written and take their subjects and audience seriously, treating these games with the same respect as famous literature. I myself have lately gotten back into playing Zelda (namely Oracle of Ages and Ocarina of Time, with Majora's Mask to follow, hopefully) and been pondering the nuances of various characters (mainly the Sages of OoT), and actually wondering if anyone else had bothered to think of such things. Quite by chance I discovered your website and was happy to see that someone else indeed had considered similar themes. Honestly, I think you're on to something. Video games are a very new medium to the old tradtion of storytelling, and it would appear that the Zelda series has already established itself as a well-known story for many people. Is it possible that 100, even 500 years from today, that cultural historians will look back on the stories in such video games as important as those we study now (Shakespeare and Homer, for example)? As an English Major, I feel that the exploration of "non-traditional" or "modern" modes of storytelling--video games and comic books especially--is just as important as studying the myths and literature of anicient times. So in essence, you may very well be *far* ahead of your time. Keep up the hard work! Arachne Smith