Rynling R&D

An Unfound Door isn’t an adventure story, though it starts as one.

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...which is all well and good, but “tone” and “themes” are difficult to convey in a one-page cover letter! I will keep editing and adjusting and refining and submitting, though.

My wizard detective story “The Case of the Phantom Portrait” was accepted for publication, so I’m thinking it’s time to write a new one.

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Anyway, this story is about creativity and copyright law. And about how the latter shouldn’t exist.

Idk man, sometimes I think about how large animation studios treat their artists, and it makes me want to write stories about murder.

It appears that, once again, I got good solstice energy and spent the period between December 15 and January 15 writing the first 20k words of a novel.

The last time I did this was in Dec 2022 - Jan 2023, and I haven't looked at that project since then. I'm feeling the same sense of "I'm done" with my current project, The Archives of Hyrule, and I need to be careful not to let it fizzle out.

My problem is twofold. First, I'm not in love with the contemporary urban setting. And second, I'm feeling like I really need positive feedback right now. The first problem is easy enough to fix by setting the action inside and underground. As for the second, perhaps it might make sense to post the story on AO3 as a series of three or four "seasons." Maybe I'll let the already-written chapters rest for a bit while working on a few illustrations, and then I'll go ahead and post them later in the year.

Also, it might be nice to take a break from the Zelda nerds and get real about the "Bowser's Massive Cock Challenge" story I've been threatening to write for months now. I recently read a tidy bunch of Chuck Tingle stories (about the ongoing homosexual adventures of a billionaire T-Rex), and I feel like not everything has to be so serious. Sometimes it's okay just to be pounded in the butt by the physical manifestation of doing what you want and having a good time.

2025 has been a productive year of writing lyrical and well-crafted short stories with unique and original conceits, but this has gotten me nowhere. Now that the semester is over, I will write what people actually want to read. I'm planning a multichapter fanfic titled "Bowser's Massive Cock Challenge," and it will be about... Well. I'm sure you can guess.

I'm not joking btw. Readers need joy, and writers need positive feedback.

(And purity advocates need to go fuck themselves, perhaps literally.)

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So here's the question: I grew up in and around Atlanta and now live in the place I'm writing about. Would it be considered "appropriation" if I wrote the character speaking in my own natural dialect?

And here's the answer: This is not something normal people care about. You can't write in fear of bad-faith dipshits on the internet. As long as I'm not doing some sort of Stephen King level of caricature, I think I'm probably fine.

ETA: I think I got the voice down, and it's good. What gave me trouble ended up being my speculation on what robotics technology will look like fifty years in the future. But again, I decided that it's best to listen to the story itself and not think about the meta too hard.

Story Summary: Zelda has resigned herself to a dingy office in the dustiest section of the museum basement, but her complacency is disturbed by Ganon, a tech investor who demands access to the collection. As Zelda investigates the objects of his interest, she discovers that some of the more obscure holdings in the underground storage vault are more than mere relics. The museum hides a secret that should perhaps remain buried, but Ganon is relentless in his pursuit of knowledge that has long been forbidden. Despite her better judgment, Zelda finds herself drawn along with him into the mystery of the archives.

…that’s a bit rough, but it works, right? Maybe this story will be fun as Zelda fanfic.

I think it might also be cool for every chapter to include something like a tabletop RPG artifact card that consists of an illustration in (this) style along with a short written passage featuring some Dark Souls / Final Fantasy XII flavor text.

I’d also like to create character illustrations, maybe. I’ve always loved the Dragon Age tarot card style, and it might be an interesting project to learn to replicate it.

I wrote this as a reply to a comment on my Legend of Zelda fanfic novella What Dreams May Come, but it's worth sharing here as well:

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Specifically, if this is what happens to a society sustained by a torture nexus, perhaps it makes sense to disable the torture nexus. Idk man. When it comes to the torture nexus (ie, capitalist imperialism), I think it's important to tell stories about what a joy and a pleasure it is to destroy the loathsome thing.

Large Language Muddle
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the-intellectual-situation/large-language-muddle/

But a still graver scandal of AI — like its hydra-head sibling, cryptocurrency — is the technology’s colossal wastefulness. The untold billions firehosed by investors into its development; the water-guzzling data centers draining the parched exurbs of Phoenix and Dallas; the yeti-size carbon footprint of the sector as a whole — and for what? A cankerous glut of racist memes and cardboard essays. Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.

We're now a month into the semester, and I'm working my way through my classes' first batch of reading responses. It's impossible to exaggerate how obvious the computer-generated essays are. How obvious, and how insulting.

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So, to me, this essay isn't wrong, necessarily, but it demonstrates an onanistic obsession with intellectual privilege that runs counter to its stated goal of resisting the encroachment of LLMs into public discourse. As the market for writing shrinks due to lack of funding, building even higher walls around "the literary community" isn't effective praxis.

It’s very cool to have gotten a Lovecraft pastiche accepted for publication (fingers crossed). When it (hopefully) comes out, it will be the third Lovecraft story I’ve published in a fiction magazine.

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I sincerely believe that people should write whatever they want, but a part of me still worries that I’m going to be judged for aligning myself with the work of such a problematic author.

The truth remains, though, that these Lovecraft stories only occupy a small closet in the house I’m trying to build with my writing. What I’d want to say to anyone who judges me is not to be like the small rural library that only had room for Stephen King and HP Lovecraft, but to create space for original work that does more than facilitate a feedback loop of preset responses.

I finally finished a stupid two-panel comic (this one here) about my fantasy of taking direct action against oligarchs. The no-minimum tariffs bullshit absolutely wrecking the small businesses of indie artists was the straw that broke my back.

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But also, listen. In actual reality, hammers.