2026 Writing Log, Part Eighteen

[rynling]

- I posted Chapter 9 of my Tears of the Kingdom Modern AU story, The Archives of Hyrule, on AO3 (here). This chapter is a bridge to the Act One conclusion that consists of two scenes from perspectives other than Zelda’s. It’s short and snappy and ends on a nice... not a cliffhanger, exactly, but a nice boost forward.

- I put together a tentative outline for Act Two of the story, plus more substantial outlines for Chapters 11-14. These chapters are going to be a lot of fun to write.

- I finished writing the “item card” flavor text for a series of ten illustrations of Zelda artifacts (tangentially related to the Archives of Hyrule story) that I’d like to post during this year’s Linktober art event. I also collected all the visual references. I don’t think anyone will care about this project except me, but I’m really enjoying myself. I feel like I was born to write flavor text for video game items.

- I got started on an essay called “Creativity at the Margins” that I’d like to publish as a zine illustrated with nature photography along the lines of “In Praise of Moss: An Argument for Sustainable Disability Positivity” (on Itch.io here). The point I’m trying to make is that there’s immense value in doing creative work even if it’s not popular according to social media metrics.

- I finished my “Barret Wallace Was Not Wrong” essay and sent it to my editor at Unwinnable. It’s a fun essay with a good message, I think. Fingers crossed that everything goes well. If too much time passes without a response, though, I think I might pitch the essay to Comics Beat, which now has a gaming editor!

- My review of The Art of Slay the Princess is now live on Comics Beat (here). Instead of writing an essay about the game’s story, what I tried to do is explain how and why its graphic novel adaptation works. It was an interesting review to write. And the devs shared the social media post on Bluesky!

- While comparing this book to the Homestuck graphic novels, I went off on a tangent about why the original Homestuck webcomic is no longer available to read online, but I ultimately deleted this paragraph from the review. Someone should really write a research essay about what happened to Homestuck, but that person is not me. I’m not touching that mess. Nope.

Hello from Munich! I came here to eat bread and buy books and look at art, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Life is good. I feel like I didn’t get to see enough of the Black Forest when I drove through Germany last summer, so later this weekend I’m going to rent a car and disappear into the woods.

Comments

[lassarina]

Yay for books, art, and bread!

man. I was only very tangentially aware of the far edges of Homestuck due to having a lot of friends who were WAY deep in the sauce, but even that is enough to be like "nah I ain't touchin that"

[rynling]

I wasn't deep into the sauce, but I really enjoyed Homestuck. I think its fandom in particular was the catalyst that helped fandom communities in general move from Livejournal and DeviantArt over to Tumblr, which in turn ushered in a golden age of webcomics in the 2010s. I get the sense that the fandom wasn't always a toxic mess.

But oh man. What happened to internet culture in general circa 2016 (surrounding the first Trump election) in terms of the radicalization of "discourse" happened in a big way in that fandom, so much so that the creator took the entire webcomic offline, along with all his earlier work. He now has a legal team that sends Cease & Desist letters to anyone who tries to mirror the original site or distribute copies of the comic itself.

I guess this is sort of like how the original creators of 4chan and 8kun did their best to destroy the sites once they realized what they'd done (but couldn't, since they didn't legally own them). Despite the very real and extremely scary historical consequences of these sites, this is fascinating to me. Like...

You know how in fantasy video games, there's always a theme along the lines of "we have created a magical power that's too dangerous to use, and it must be sealed"? You'd think the allegory has to do with nuclear energy, but it turns out that the closest real-world equivalent is... Homestuck. 🫠

[lassarina]

As far as "creating that which is too dangerous to be let to live, so we must seal or destroy", I feel like the overall theme there is "turns out the problem was people all along." I don't mean that in a misanthropic way, though; people have enormous variety both between individuals and within them. Someone can be incredibly kind in some circumstances and absolutely horrid in others. There's a reason we still pull out that Whitman quote.

It is kind of funny that Homestuck needed to be sealed, though. Trollfucking too powerful.

[rynling]

Trollfucking too powerful. 😌

[lassarina]

In a tabletop game I was in around the time Homestuck was peak, another player was literally maintaining a shipping wall for the party. (Her character and mine were in spades; in actual life she was my girlfriend.) lol.