Rynling R&D

This past month, I participated in two fandom art challenges and published an unusually high (for me) number of "spooky" adjacent stories and essays. You may be wondering how this affected my social media metrics. The short answer is that it didn't. Here's my experience...

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TL;DR: If you think it would be fun to participate in fandom art/writing challenges or to be more active online during the social media peak month of October, there's no reason not to. At the same time, you shouldn't feel left out if you don't, and it's probably best not to expect anything to happen if you do.

So I woke up to this anonymous ask on Tumblr this morning...

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...and (this) is the post it’s referring to.

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I’m not hating on the person who sent the ask, not at all. If they weren’t anonymous, I would reply to tell them that I appreciate them, and I might share some things privately that I won’t say here. At the same time, it feels deeply dystopian that this sort of vigilance is a perfectly reasonable response to the world we have to live in now.

Also god I hope no one thinks this about my own stupid illustrations. Like I’m not tracing from AI or whatever, I’m just bad at drawing.

Dear Author,

Thank you so much for offering to write for me!

I love atmospheric storytelling and worldbuilding, and what I want more than anything is the opportunity to spend more time in the fictional worlds that have captivated me. I’m equally delighted by slice-of-life, adventure, romance, and horror, and I also adore nonfiction meta essays and narrative concept sketches. Please feel free to dig as deep (or as lightly) into canonical lore and speculative theories as you wish.

I’m happy to read anything you’d like to write for my requested fandoms. I love most characters and ships, and I’m willing to be convinced on others. My fandom-specific prompts are just suggestions that I offer in the hope that perhaps they might be interesting to you.

I know that what you create will be wonderful, and I’m looking forward to reading your work!

I’m totally okay with:

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I’d prefer not to see:

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Here are some of my fandom-specific interests:

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I also want to share the two stories I received for this year’s summerofhorrorexchange!

A Seaside Romance
The Shadow Over Innsmouth . 4,424 words

This story is set in Innsmouth in the current day. A data center is scheduled to be built next to Innsmouth, which has managed to resist gentrification by generally being not such a nice place to live. This story is narrated by a semi-professional protestor and community organizer who moves to Innsmouth, starts dating a mixed-species resident, and ends up getting herself involved in the local cult. The narrative voice of this story is truly fantastic, as are its descriptions of the decrepitude of this horrible little town.

As an aside, I want to say that this story was written by the author of (this) viral post on Tumblr about the value of darkfic, as well as how fandom purity politics are garbage. If you’re curious about how a legendary villain defender actually writes darkfic, the answer is that they write it extremely well.

An (Unfinished) Report from the End of the World
Final Fantasy VI . 1,012 words

This is a series of land surveyor reports on the fate of various locations in the World of Ruin. It’s filled with lore and local color, as well as a sense of mystery surrounding what happened to the surveyor. This story reminds me of the small bits of flavor text often included with the video game guides published in the 1990s, of which Final Fantasy VI had several (of both the official and the unofficial varieties). I got so nostalgic that I ended up going back into an old FFVI save file and finishing the game. Which is an amazing bonus joy of good fanfic.

This author also wrote (this) story that imagines the contemporary Zelda from Zelda I and the now-woken ancient Zelda from Zelda II meeting each other and learning to communicate despite centuries of linguistic drift. This has long been one of my favorite stories in the fandom, not to mention a huge inspiration.

In both cases, it feels like Shakespeare took time out of his schedule to write fanfic for me. I’m afraid my head will explode if I think about this too hard honestly. But I'm not complaining!

My other toxic nonbinary trait when it comes to fandom is that I don't care whether anyone headcanons a character as cisgender, transgender, or genderqueer. For example, in Ocarina of Time:

Is Sheik a girl? Okay!
Is Sheik a boy? Okay!
Does it depend? Okay!

Like I don't care about "representation"; I just care about The Character.

I should probably note that I tend not to care about the canonical Word Of God in these situations either. I'm all for respecting the intentions of the creator, but listen: sometimes the creator is wrong (especially when it comes to Mx. Sheik Ocarina).

ETA: I should probably explain Nintendo's canonical position on Sheik for this to make sense. This position is that Zelda is a weak delicate flower, and that she's only able to become Sheik because her body is possessed by the spirit of a dead Sheikah warrior. Which is gay in its own way, but this contradicts the equally canonical position established in Hyrule Historia that, in the Downfall Timeline, Zelda... Actually you know what nevermind. I'm not getting into that. What I'm trying to say is that she/he/they is perfectly capable of self-defense regardless of gender, no spirit possession necessary.

I recently saw a thread on Tumblr (that I will not link to) with the usual handwringing over why no one leaves comments or kudos on fanfic anymore.

I totally understand this frustration, but what I want to say in response is that people are definitely leaving comments and kudos on fanfic. In fact, people are currently leaving Harry Potter levels of comments and kudos on fanfic.

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Between the relatively large number of highly engaged people online and the accessibility of Gen-AI writing, it’s now easier than ever to post stories that get loads of comments and kudos on AO3. But maybe that’s not how you want to spend your one precious life on this earth, and that’s fine. It’s probably best to consider yourself lucky that you have ways to use your creative energy that don’t involve creating “content.”

I hope everyone gets lots of good positive feedback! At the same time, it’s not your fault if that’s not happening; it’s just a strange time to be a writer right now.

Dear artist,

Thank you so much for offering to doodle something for me for the doodle4doodle exchange! I love cute characters, as well as attractive and stylish characters, and I’m also a fan of dark and gothic designs. I appreciate environmental art and concept art, and I can’t get enough of plants, wildlife, lush green spaces, and ruins covered in moss.

Whether you draw a character, a creature, or a place, I’m sure you’ll create something fantastic.

I am totally okay with:

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I’d prefer not to see:

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Here are my fandom-specific prompts:

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If you’d like to get a sense of my taste, I post my drawings as Rynling on Tumblr and reblog art as Pocketseizure, but I appreciate many different styles of visual representation, as well as artists of all skill levels.

Thank you again for volunteering to share your time and talent. I hope you have a marvelous time, and I can’t wait to discover and enjoy your art.

I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom a bit at a time every night and really enjoying myself. I think that's probably the best way to play this game - a bit at a time. There's a lot to do, and I imagine that it would be stressful to try to do it all at once. Definitely I was stressed out by the game when it first came out, but I have a feeling that I was attempting to take in too much all at once. Maybe it makes sense to say that Tears of the Kingdom is like Animal Crossing, but with Ganondorf.

Speaking of which, I dug out my old amiibo, and I was highly amused to be reminded that the Ganondorf amiibo drops massive chunks of beef. Bless.

This made me super nostalgic for the Rehydrated Ganondorf meme, and I was thinking of commissioning (this artist) to draw Ganondorf for me. Do you think he'd have fun with Ganondorf? Because I kind of think he'd have fun with Ganondorf. Right? Fingers crossed that he accepts the commission!

ETA: He accepted the commission!! Yesssss

I want to share the three stories I wrote for this year’s candyheartsex exchange event:

Whenever You’re Ready (on AO3 here) is a pre-canon Breath of the Wild story about Zelda trying to learn archery from Revali.

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A Modest Test of Skill (on AO3 here) is about a Lynel wordlessly challenging Link to a friendly archery contest that ends in the discovery of a Korok.

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The Nameless City (on AO3 here) is set ten years after the end of Final Fantasy VI, and it’s about the warmth of the friendship between Terra and Celes as they explore the ruins of a forgotten city under Terra’s new home in Mobliz.

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It’s been my experience that an extended period of online harassment comes my way every four years. The wheel has turned since 2022, and here we are again. I was thinking that I might preempt the harassment this year by openly posting the sort of discourse that will make me a target.

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I’m not saying that I want to be harassed, or that I think it’s fun to argue with chucklefucks on the internet. Obviously not. Still, if I’m going catch heat anyway, I might as well have the satisfaction of starting the fire myself.