Rynling R&D

deltarune mettaton doesn’t get the amount of love he deserves
https://planetamarte.tumblr.com/post/786897660910125056/for-being-such-a-beloved-character-in-undertale-i

This is an interesting post about reading Mettaton as trans (among other things). I remember that this was a popular interpretation of the character in Undertale, and it's always good to see people finding trans joy in stories that speak to them.

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Anyway I think he and Tenna should kiss.

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Happy Summer Solstice ☀️

Please enjoy this light-filled painting of my dogs:

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Escaped Chasm
https://tuyoki.itch.io/escaped-chasm

Escaped Chasm is a 25-minute dark fantasy narrative adventure game created in RPG Maker with a mix of retro Game Boy graphics and anime-style cutscenes. Originally released in 2019, it’s the first stand-alone project of Temmie Chang, a longtime friend and collaborator of Toby Fox who contributed character designs and graphics to Undertale and Deltarune.

You play as a young teenage “Lonely Girl” who doesn’t leave the house and lives vicariously through her dreams and art. Her parents appear to have gone missing, and she doesn’t know what to do. To make matters worse, she’s tired all the time, and a strange man has started appearing in her house.

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Despite the ongoing horrors this week, the potted plants in my backyard have begun to bloom. Behold my lilies, boy! Look at them:

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These days, the Italian Market district of Philadelphia is primarily Latin American, and I go there all the time to eat. This week I tried a slightly fancier seafood specialty restaurant called Blue Corn (their Instagram is here), and it was so fucking good. I’m not opposed to the idea of moving to Europe, but there are many benefits to living in the United States.

Flesh, Blood, & Concrete
https://waxwing0.itch.io/fbc

Flesh, Blood, & Concrete is a free-to-play RPG Maker adventure game that bills itself as “an apartment building exploration simulator.” During its 45-minute playtime, the game delves into themes of isolation, mental illness, and existential dread within the confines of a decaying apartment complex.

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As an aside, I was just thinking that I’d love to see more games set in Eastern Europe. Flesh, Blood, & Concrete is a universal story, but the specificity of the game’s Russian setting adds a unique and interesting flavor. I also appreciate that this “apartment exploration simulator” takes the darker aspects of mental illness seriously but still delights in the playfulness of its morbid style of creative expression. It's one of the more intriguing RPG Maker horror games I’ve encountered, and I’d recommend giving it a shot if you can handle the (literal) viscerality of its imagery.

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I had a good time with moss and forests this past month, but now it’s hot girl summer, and by “hot girl” I mean Ganondorf. I’ve been collecting a bunch of fun references, and now I’m looking forward to once again being very weird about a fictional character online.

This is what’s been making me happy this month:

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I want to have a “someone was nice to me” category, but this is difficult to quantify. I guess it’s fair to say that I’m grateful to all the people who still leave comments on AO3 and Dreamwidth. I’ve become extremely shy and somewhat isolated in real life, and it really does mean the world to me that people take the time to reach out.

In my last post I casually said that “reading makes you smarter,” but it’s probably worth explaining what that means.

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So I’m not saying that reading will make you a “genius” at your field; only time and practice will do that. Rather, reading helps develop and maintain the basic cognitive skills associated with intelligence. Reading won’t turn you into a rocket scientist, but it will help you remember where you put your car keys.

ChatGPT and its ilk are, as they exist now, dumb as fuck. This is one of the many reasons why it’s distressing to see young people offload basic tasks and decisions onto what’s essentially a Magic 8 Ball. If I had to guess, though, I’d say that a lot of people actually need this cognitive crutch (such as it is) precisely because they’re no longer trained or encouraged to read. And, from where I’m standing, I can see an enormous gap in the performance of students who are able to read and the students who choose not to.

Oh! I forgot to mention:

The Comics Beat, which I now write for, just got its first ever Eisner Award nomination.

For my work at WWAC, I'm (technically) already an Eisner-winning comics writer, and now I (technically) might win it again. Nice!

Also, this past week there a huge social media crashout about Lee Lai's graphic novel Stone Fruit being mediocre and getting undue attention solely because of white guilt. Because my review of the book appears at the top of a Google search, I got a bunch of nasty mentions. I was busy disappearing into the woods, and I totally missed all of this. So much the better honestly.

Disappearing into the woods is great btw. Highly recommended.