rynling | 2023 Writing Log, Part Sixteen

- I wrote the second “chapter” of my Lovecraftian monster romance story, “The Annotated Kitab al-Azif.” I thought this story was going to be dark academia, but I ended up describing what academia actually is, which is rundown, decrepit, and a little sad. Is the grad student growing tentacles, or is that weird smell just a product of the entire building rotting from water damage? Porque no los dos.

- I’ve already posted it on AO3 (here), but I did another round of edits on my Elden Ring story about Varré and Mohg. Definitely this story was written for one person, and that person is me. Damn I love this story. Good job team.

- I edited, formatted, and created images for my “How The Wind Waker Navigated Fan Expectations” essay. It’s currently in copyediting, and fingers crossed it will be posted on Sidequest soon!

- I contributed to the ecology-themed April roundtable for Sidequest (here) by talking about the 2012 point-and-click adventure game Botanicula. I mean, I say it’s “point-and-click,” but it’s for touchscreens. I played it on my first-generation iPad, and it was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen in my life. I still listen to the OST (on Bandcamp here) all the time.

- I wrote a mini-review of the translated autobiographical essay collection Until I Meet My Husband for the Women Write About Comics recommendation round-up post for May (which will probably be posted in early June). The author is an LGBTQ+ activist in Tokyo, but this book is mainly filled with drama. It’s compulsively readable. This is the sort of thing you’d expect to feel like homework, but really you’re sitting there munching on popcorn and being like, Oh no he didn’t. Until I Meet My Husband is almost three hundred pages long, but I finished it in two days. The translation, which was done by an internet-famous eroge specialist, is extremely good.

- I did another Draw This In Your Style challenge, and I posted it on Tumblr (here). This was fun, but I don’t think there’s really a point to doing these. I get less positive feedback on social media challenges than I do on my own stupid bullshit, so I might as well do my own stupid bullshit.

I just submitted my grades for the spring semester, and this evening I’m flying to London. Huzzah!