June Happiness
Jun. 29th, 2025 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThis is what’s been making me happy this month:
A good book:
Between Two Fires is about a disgraced knight traveling across medieval France with a young girl and an alcoholic gay priest during the Black Plague. The story has elements of fantasy, but also a strong sense of place and historical specificity. The writing is very dark but surprisingly funny, and the characters do the heavy lifting to carry the story, which is like Dark Souls if Dark Souls were about two shitty middle-aged men doing an escort mission for a bratty preteen girl. This is crack to me specifically; but also, Between Two Fires is an objectively good book.
A good game:
I really enjoyed Flesh, Blood, & Concrete, a free RPG Maker horror game set in the decaying ruins of post-Soviet Russia. It’s bleak as hell, but also very creative and oddly charming in its own gory and catastrophically morbid way.
Another good game:
I also enjoyed Symbiosis, another free-to-play RPG Maker horror game. This one is about a rouge scientist living in isolation while raising an adorable child who may or may not be a biological abomination. The game only takes about 25 minutes to play but still manages to include a satisfying amount of grisly murder.
A good movie:
I tried and failed to watch half a dozen movies this month. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted. I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet, leave the house, and actually see movies in a theater.
A fun thing I created:
I put an absurd amount of love into a drawing of Ganondorf with a slight redesign of his outfit from Ocarina of Time. In lieu of whatever the hell Nintendo was doing in 1997, I subbed in a few cowboy elementsbecause if there was ever a fictional man who needs to be ridden like a horse
A good book:
Between Two Fires is about a disgraced knight traveling across medieval France with a young girl and an alcoholic gay priest during the Black Plague. The story has elements of fantasy, but also a strong sense of place and historical specificity. The writing is very dark but surprisingly funny, and the characters do the heavy lifting to carry the story, which is like Dark Souls if Dark Souls were about two shitty middle-aged men doing an escort mission for a bratty preteen girl. This is crack to me specifically; but also, Between Two Fires is an objectively good book.
A good game:
I really enjoyed Flesh, Blood, & Concrete, a free RPG Maker horror game set in the decaying ruins of post-Soviet Russia. It’s bleak as hell, but also very creative and oddly charming in its own gory and catastrophically morbid way.
Another good game:
I also enjoyed Symbiosis, another free-to-play RPG Maker horror game. This one is about a rouge scientist living in isolation while raising an adorable child who may or may not be a biological abomination. The game only takes about 25 minutes to play but still manages to include a satisfying amount of grisly murder.
A good movie:
I tried and failed to watch half a dozen movies this month. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted. I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet, leave the house, and actually see movies in a theater.
A fun thing I created:
I put an absurd amount of love into a drawing of Ganondorf with a slight redesign of his outfit from Ocarina of Time. In lieu of whatever the hell Nintendo was doing in 1997, I subbed in a few cowboy elements
no subject
Date: 2025-06-29 02:47 pm (UTC)ETA: And!! I really like the expression and pose on that Ganondorf.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-30 12:47 pm (UTC)I love the tone and atmosphere of the FromSoft games, but I'm not any good at playing them, so I'm forever looking for media that puts me in that space without me having to bash my head into the wall of being bad at video games.
Every Reddit thread about "books like Dark Souls" recommends Between Two Fires, but I put off on reading it for years because the back-of-the-cover plot summary is horrible. The novel isn't actually about an epic battle between angels and devils; it's a dark comedy written by a history nerd who likes dick jokes. It's also playing with the stark divide between folk Christianity and the Catholic Church as an institution, but that's secondary to making you care about the characters. I was really surprised by how much I liked this book. If you get a chance to read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-01 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-01 01:14 pm (UTC)No but really. I write a fair number of book reviews, both as a professional and just for fun, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what it is I'm actually doing. I've come to the conclusion that, more than anything, it's my job to try to crack the ice of the marketing copy to figure out what the story is actually about and why it might appeal to potential readers. I hope this sort of work is interesting and useful, but book reviews don't get a lot of feedback. Which is fine and to be expected!
But still, thank you. Definitely nice to hear.