2025 Writing Log, Part One

[rynling]

- I wrote the first chapter of “What Dreams May Come,” a Legend of Zelda AU based on a hypothetical bad ending of Breath of the Wild in which Link fails to defeat Calamity Ganon. This story is set in a vaguely eighteenth-century future in which Hyrule has become nothing more than an uninhabited region covered in dense forest, and (I hope) it’s got strong Bloodborne vibes.

- I also wrote the story’s penultimate chapter, which is about rawdog fucking. I’m always too tired to have the characters go at it by the time I get to the end of a story, so I thought it would be best to go ahead and get this scene out of the way early.

- I wrote and edited a short listicle titled “Five Japanese Games Set in Fantasy America” and sent it to my editor at Sidequest. I know this is frowned upon in serious literary circles, but I love writing listicles. I love reading them too! What can I say, I’m a sucker for well-curated groupings of themes and motifs.

- I started work on my next listicle, “Ten Beautiful Sewer Levels in Video Games,” and by “started work” I mean “I scribbled an unannotated list of games in a notebook.” This piece is going to take some time to put together, and I’ll probably post rough drafts of the entries here on Dreamwidth (under friends lock) as I go along.

- I finished and edited my review of the horror comic anthology The Skin You’re In and sent it off to my editor at Women Write About Comics.

- The latest indie comics recommendation post is up on Women Write About Comics (here). I wrote about the recent graphic novels Ditching Saskia and The Gulf.

- The latest book recommendations post is up on Women Write About Comics (here). I wrote a bit about the essay collection Gathering Moss, which came out twenty years ago but still feels fresh and relevant.

- I’m still broke and tired from 2024, so I didn’t do anything special to celebrate the new year, but at the last second I made a cute graphic for the Year of the Snake. It’s on Tumblr (here).

I love snakes, and 2025 is the year of the wood snake, which feels especially auspicious. Here’s to lots of fresh growth and regeneration in the new year. 🌿

Comments

[vriddy]

Sewer talk! :D Well, gaming. It feels like "go kill some rats in the sewers" what The Default First Quest (tm) for every single RPG for such a long period of time... then again none of these were all that beautiful that I recall 😂 I'll be curious about your list :D

[rynling]

You are not wrong! and I still resent the Garamsythe Waterway in Final Fantasy XII. I think a lot of developers use sewers as an excuse to create a sprawling maze without having to worry too much about the specificity of the architecture, but there are some fun and interesting sewer levels out there.

I also think "beautiful" is in the eye of the beholder, so I'm going to need to switch out that word with something more specific. Like, I think the Kakariko Village Well in Ocarina of Time is "beautiful," but I understand I might be a little out of the ordinary in this regard.

[lassarina]

Okay, but well-curated groupings of things are great and may introduce someone to something they didn't already know about! Very important.

I hear you on the "too tired to write the fucking by the end." Good way to solve the problem!

Congrats on all you've accomplished already.

[rynling]

Thank you so much! I enjoy making small digital museum exhibits, and it's always important to aid discovery.

This is maybe cheating a little, but I've been considering taking down some of my older and unnoticed work on AO3 and refashioning it into stories that might hopefully appeal to a broader fandom audience. I used to write a fair amount of smut simply because it amused me to do so, and it's a shame to see it languish in obscurity.

I mean, it's not plagiarism if it's your own work, right? 🤔

[lassarina]

if certain romance authors can re-skin several variations of the same fanfic pairing and sell it for actual cash dollars, you can do whatever the fuck you want with your fic. XD I mean, you can anyway. but I'm just saying. The precedent is out there.