Rosalina's Storybook and the desire to create

Ever since I played Super Mario Galaxy for the first time, I've been mesmerized by Rosalina as a character. When I was still very young, there was something so fascinating about Rosalina that I couldn't quite grasp or put into words. The way her backstory is presented in the Storybook blew my mind, with the touching story being told alongside the beautiful musical score playing in the background. It felt magical yet unimaginably sad to me as a child. Even today, when I look back at the story and reread it, I just can't seem to explain the feeling that builds up inside me while reading it.

Creating such a piece of art has always been a dream of mine—something that is simple yet so powerful in its effect on the reader, listener, etc. Something that can be understood by anyone, especially children, yet still resonates with adults and people of all ages in their own unique way, while somehow connecting them all.

But how exactly am I supposed to do this? There are so many mediums out there that I can use. I could write a story, illustrate it, or write a song or poem. I could make a video game, an animatic, or a webcomic—the possibilities are endless. Yet I still struggle to understand what makes a story so unique and what makes people feel touched by the characters. The beauty lies in the simplicity of those stories for me personally. If we look back at Rosalina's Storybook, it only consists of nine chapters, none of which are particularly long, yet it manages to build this seemingly tiny world of a girl and her journey without relying too much on descriptions. It goes straight to the point in a way, yet manages to give its characters the attention they need to create this seemingly familiar atmosphere: a quiet place on a hill used for picnics with your mother, or beautiful star bits that taste like honey. There is this familiarity in this childlike imaginative world, and I just love it.

I'd love to write a simple yet impactful story like this. However, it seems that the more I think about it, the more it might ruin the story and the atmosphere I want to achieve. I might give myself a time limit to write down the first draft of the story and work with that until it pleases me, while trying to avoid adding unnecessary details. The beauty of those stories lies in their simplicity, and that's what I'd want to achieve. I want to capture these raw emotions, and present them beautifully, in a way anybody can connect with them.