Rynling R&D

I’m focusing on An Unfound Door right now, but I still daydream about The Demon King all the time. If you thought I was done with this asshole, you would be incorrect.

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There he is!

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I told the artist that his personality is "tired," and I think they pulled it off nicely.

I should have told the artist that he should wear this shirt, but I am tired myself and wasn't thinking.

I forgot to add one!

Harriet the Hedge Witch
A series of early reader books about the adventures of a young earth wizard. This lushly illustrated series was created by an artist named Noelia Flores in the early twentieth century, and it's often compared to The Tales of Peter Rabbit and Brambly Hedge. When he was a kid, Ananth read these books so often that he could recite them from memory.

I imagine that, in this alternate universe where magic is real, there are a few significant differences in culture and society. One of these differences is that there's no tension between the United States and Latin America, and people come and go between North America and South America freely. So why wouldn't one of the most beloved series of children's books in America be written by an Argentinian woman?

That being said, I sort of want to write and illustrate the first book in this series myself. I've been doing more research into Beatrix Potter, and jfc that woman is amazing. I'm extremely inspired by her work!

I'm still thinking about the geography of The Demon King.

New York is destroyed, and Whitespire is somewhere in the vicinity of Elizabeth in New Jersey. The tower where Ananth is hanging out at the beginning of the story is east of Trenton. The "king's highway" that runs south of Whitespire and through the desert is, of course, the NJ Turnpike.

I'm not sure what happened to Philadelphia, btw. It's probably just a hole in the earth.

The Temple of Everlasting Autumn is way out in western Pennsylvania, probably somewhere around State College. I know it's about a three-hour drive from Princeton (which is a suburb of Trenton) to State College, so I'm assuming it would take a week to walk. What Ananth would do is follow the remains of the I-76 to Harrisburg, and then start heading north into the mountains on state highways when he hits the Susquehanna River.

In the original version of the story, I had him going through a tunnel in the mountains via the PA Turnpike, but I decided to cut that bit for the sake of simplification. Also, if Ananth is going to be traveling that far on foot, he's going to need to be younger than I originally imagined him.

Like personally, I like to believe that I'm fairly fit in my late thirties, but if you told me that I needed to walk to Harrisburg to save the world I think I'd probably just make my peace with the inevitable doom of humankind.

I got back into Elden Ring this week. It would be nice to write an "Adventures of Peaches" series of posts, but I'm not really sure what Peaches is doing. Mainly he's been picking fruit and flowers to craft into raisins to feed to his horse(?) as he explores The Lands Between instead of making progress on Stormveil Castle.

I also got myself back on Patreon in order to listen to the Elden Ring episodes of Bonfireside Chat, a podcast about From Software games. It's intensely detailed and specific, and each episode is more than ninety minutes long, so it probably isn't accessible to anyone who isn't familiar with the games. That being said, the production quality is extremely high, and the two hosts have good chemistry. They remind me of Bert and Ernie from the American version of Sesame Street in how kind and polite and supportive they are to one another. I mean, if Bert and Ernie were hetero and also highly invested in unpacking video game lore.

One of the many reasons I've been depressed for the past two weeks is that I'm frustrated that The Demon King doesn't have as rich of a world or a story as Elden Ring. I guess it's good to remind myself that I am not a studio, and I do not have a staff. Like Peaches, I am just one person doing my best.

Furi is a boss-fight-only game that’s like Hyper Light Drifter meets bullet hell. I’ve been playing it on and off in between other things when I have the PS4 hooked up. “Other things” used to be the FFVII Remake, but it’s mainly Elden Ring these days. Furi is super difficult... but it’s not as difficult as Elden Ring lmao.

I think the main draw of Furi is probably its synthwave OST, with My Only Chance being fairly representative. Every track is boss fight music, it’s great.

The story is absolutely banger.

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In other words, Furi has all the good shit I’m interested in. It’s also a lot of fun to play. It took me more than two years to git gud, but the payoff was definitely worth it.

Are they discussing murder or porn? You decide!

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It's always a pleasure to work with Frankiesbugs. I was like, Hey are you familiar with the webcomic Oglaf, and they were like, What an absolute question, of course I am.

I now have the plot of The Demon King outlined. Even if it’s as short as it can possibly be, it will still be at least 60k words long, which is a respectable length for a first novel. I’ve broken the story into manageable narrative chunks, so hopefully the new outline should be ADHD-proof. On top of that, I cut all the parts I haven’t been fantasizing about writing for the past year.

Writing a graphic novel version might be a stretch, though. I’ll table that idea for now.

What might be a more actionable idea is writing a graphic novel version of An Unfound Door, which can probably be finished in a single volume of around 180 pages. Maybe I’ll do a scene-by-scene outline of that one next and see how I feel about it. If nothing else, I can definitely write a script for a five-page opening scene.

Or I can wait a bit. Give the story and characters time to develop in my mind. Work on other projects.

Social media gives a false impression that everyone is always generating “content” all the time. And maybe some people really are like that. Most of the artists and writers I admire are not.

I’ve started to get to the point in visual art where I can understand what makes the pieces I like stand out. And that’s cool. At the same time, I’m only now getting to the point where I can draw super basic stuff with something that’s starting to approach ease and accuracy. It’s good to remind myself that I can take a year to work on solidifying “ease and accuracy” before I start reaching for something higher, both in art and in writing.

I just love them so much.



It would be really fun to write a Demon King graphic novel, but like. How do I put this.

I am nothing and no one, and I'm also really shy and get burned out easily by social media. I would love to work with an artist on a longer project, but I would also hate to be the person the artist has to work with, if that makes sense. I don't want to inflict myself on anyone.

There's also the question of funding, which is complicated, and I'm deathly afraid of making an artist feel like I'm taking advantage of them.

But still. It would be really fun to write a Demon King graphic novel.

I realized that I’d actually really like to keep writing The Demon King, but with some changes.

First, I’m going to scrap the Balthazar / Melchoir / Gasper names. People in the story will still think Ananth (Balthazar) is some sort of terrible demon king name because of the horrible things he did in the past, but that will just be his actual name. Marlowe (Melchoir) is a good wizard name on its own, and I think the name Mei Lin (for Gasper) is super cute, especially for a giant orc with a giant axe. Also, not using fantasy names is as good of an indication as any that this story takes place in New Jersey.

Second, Ceres is going to be a queen from the beginning. If you kill your mother in cold blood, you get to be queen. I don’t make the rules, I just respect them. Like I respect Ceres. Who is a queen.