Relevent to my interests

[rynling]

Rental
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2796550/Rental/

Rental is a short and spooky adventure game about the dangers of renting a house in an unknown place.

Lunacid
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1745510/Lunacid/

Lunacid is a first person dungeon crawler inspired by old FROMSOFT games like Shadow Tower and King’s Field.

I'm especially excited about Lunacid, as I've always been interested in King's Field IV but (a) I have no way to play it and (b) I am bad at games. Lunacid is supposed to be significantly easier than King's Field IV; and, like King's Field IV, it has a surprisingly good ambient soundtrack. Unfortunately, the only way to get the Lunacid soundtrack is on Amazon (here), but an early version is on YouTube (here). This is wonderful music to write to, and I've been listening to it on loop for the past week.

WHEN IS MY STEAM DECK GOING TO ARRIVE. WHEN WHEN WHEN WHEN.

Comments

[lassarina]

This isn't about games, but it IS potentially relevant to your interests: "unhinged botanical gothic horrors" book announcement, which I saw and immediately had to bring to you despite knowing nothing else about it. https://fixupx.com/paperfury/status/1780580740843122832?s=46&t=TPL_PfBVu0yLOgbNt0xCew

[rynling]

With respect, I'm not convinced that someone with 40.5k followers on Twitter who posts regularly scheduled ChatGPT-generated tweets about "writers are all mysterious cryptid forest creatures tee hee" in between bragging about how many books they sell every year really understands what it means to rot.

I looked at their Instagram, which is all twice-daily aesthetic photos of brand-new YA novels surrounded by aesthetic cottagecore botanical clippings. If this person is in fact real instead of an astroturf marketing construct, they're clearly wealthy, and they clearly have a staff of people working for them. At that point, I'm not sure that "queer" has any sort of meaning anymore.

This sort of made me want to write a tongue-in-cheek "how to" guide on how to behave like this author on social media, like, how much it would actually cost in terms of cash money and labor hours. It also sort of made me want to kill myself. It's super depressing.

......uhhhh wow. Sorry to unload on you like that. It's just difficult to see my own botanical horror stories get rejected on a weekly basis while large publishers are marketing a watered-down version of the same themes and aesthetic to an audience that only "reads" books inasmuch as it gains them followers on social media. I appreciate you for thinking of me, but damn I hate Twitter so much.

[lassarina]

I apologize. I didn't mean to be insensitive.

[rynling]

Oh no!! I'm so sorry. You weren't being insensitive at all. I was being unhinged.

I'm still convinced this person isn't real, though. I mean, who knows? Maybe they actually are a single human body controlled by sapient fungi, and they're more familiar with rot than I will (hopefully) ever know. The publishing industry sure is something smh.

[lassarina]

Publishing is wild and I'm not completely convinced it isn't a fever dream.

[rynling]

...I write, as I get ready to queue my own social media post for the day. 🙃

[lassarina]

That is a very adorable art.