2024 Writing Log, Part 49

[rynling]

- My minicomic “Trees in Video Games” was published on Sidequest (here)!

- I’m continuing to write my original wizard detective story “The Case of the Phantom Portrait.” It’s now at 2.7k words. Slow but steady!

- I wrote a short FFVII Rebirth story about Aerith and Tifa titled “Five Minutes in the Future.” Hopefully I’ll be able to edit and post it soon!

- I’m slowly working on my essay about analog nostalgia in Japan.

- I’m slowly working on my essay about fandom affect in indie comics cultures.

- I’m slowly working on a review of Ashely Robin Franklin’s newest comic collection.

- This week on my Japanese fiction review blog (here), I wrote a full-length review of the bestselling novel 52 Hertz no Kujiratachi. This book got adapted into a well-reviewed film earlier this year, and it features a prominent transgender character in the role of a romantic leading man. The author leans hard into the “kill your gays” trope, which isn’t great, but I appreciate how committed she is to conveying a “trans rights are human rights” message of solidarity between marginalized communities.

- I also posted a mini-review (here) of Natsuko Imamura’s Tonkotsu Q&A, which collects four stories of subtle social horror. Imamura is an incredible writer, and I’d love to see more of her work in translation.

- Probably nobody cares about my reviews of Japanese-language fiction, but I’d like to think these reviews might one day serve as a resource for somebody out there. Professional Japanese-language book reviews tend to be published in print and never made available online, while amateur Japanese-language book reviews posted online tend to be very amateur. I’m always grateful for whatever concrete information I can find about Japanese books, so hopefully I’m passing my gratitude forward at least a little.

- I returned to Echoes of Wisdom this week, and I’m having a great time. Did you know that Zelda can wear a Catwoman kigurumi outfit that allows her to talk to the cats in the game? This is ridiculous and adorable, and I had to draw fanart. I posted my illustration on Tumblr (here).

Happy Solstice and Season’s Greasons to those that celebrate. 🌿

Comments

[lassarina]

I mean, I will note that I actually stumbled across your review when a friend was wondering if a book would continue to do The Thing and it turns out you had written extensively about it, lol, so it has already been useful once!

Season's greetings. ♥

[rynling]

That blog has absurdly high SEO for reasons I will probably never understand. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a combination of (a) many current book "blogs" being on TikTok and other social media, and (b) most big book blogs specializing in genres that don't include Japanese fiction. But who knows. Whatever the reason, I try not to take it for granted.

Thank you again for sharing that story with me, by the way. I often feel as though I'm posting into a void, and I can't even begin to tell you how much it pleases me to have made that small but meaningful connection.

[lassarina]

I think the unique area of interest is helping it, for sure.

♥ I'm glad I could bring that to you! I'm always delighted when I find someone I know "in the wild" when doing something relatively unrelated to the sphere whence I know that person.