2026 Writing Log, Part Four

[rynling]

- I wrote the first (of three) sections of my Bowser smut story. Or maybe the first half? It’s a good opening, but I’m not sure how much stamina I have for a m/m sex scene between two goofy cartoon characters. Also, I still need a decent title that isn’t “Laying Pipe with Luigi.”

- I finished my main story for this year’s candyheartsex exchange! I had a lot of fun, and I can totally understand why people have written entire fic novels about this pairing.

- I saw an unrelated prompt for the exchange that has all of my favorite tropes, and I ended up using it as an inspiration to write another story. This exchange is popular for short and sweet 300-word treats, and I hope the recipient doesn’t mind that I wrote something a bit longer.

- This took some time, but I finally (finally!!) finished the first draft of my Sephiroth story for the upcoming Gloriosa zine). This story is about Sephiroth’s mental breakdown in the basement archives of the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim, and I had a great time playing with the cosmic horror of Jenova. I’m especially proud of my “excerpt” of five paragraphs from Professor Gast’s account of the expedition to the Northern Crater, especially in how they mirror the HP Lovecraft novel At the Mountains of Madness.

- This week’s post on my book review blog (here) is about The Blanket Cats, a collection of short stories about the clients of a three-day cat rental service. What I like about these stories is that all of the protagonists are, to varying degrees, the villain of someone else’s life. Will three days with a cat fix them? Probably not, but it’s always amusing to watch trashfire characters behaving badly.

- Work continues on my drawing of Ganondorf and the Helmaroc King from Wind Waker. It’s slow going, but I’ve been doing a lot of visual research along the way. There are still a lot of mistakes in the undersketch, but I decided to go ahead and start inking. The most recent draft is (here).

- It’s time to start working on the illustrations for Ruins, my upcoming short fiction zine. For the first of these illustrations, I made a retro Hello Kitty sticker sheet, which I posted on Tumblr (here). Though I did my best to be accurate, I’m not such a great artist, so it feels a little off-brand. Still, that’s in keeping with the story’s theme of “liminality,” so I guess it’s okay for Miss Kitty to be a little unbalanced and lumpy.

- Last summer I started a drawing of a hydrangea flower but put it down because all the tiny details overwhelmed me. I’ve been fantasizing about summer all week, so I picked the drawing back up, simplified the design, and added color without being precious about rendering every single petal. If you’d like some warm summer vibes, I posted the hydrangea on Tumblr (here).

I am tired of cold and snow!! This winter has lasted for at least ten years, and I would very much like it to be spring soon. Unfortunately there’s going to be a major snowstorm hitting the East Coast this weekend, and even the urban heat island of Philadelphia is expected to get a foot of snow. Best of luck to everyone affected by the storm. Best of luck to us all, honestly.

ETA: If you need some warm green energy, I just archived my short "Trees in Video Games" minicomic on AO3 (here).