Birds Watching
Jun. 2nd, 2026 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingBirds Watching (on Steam here) is a one-hour walking sim about a man who talks to birds while an apocalyptic disaster unfolds around him.
( Read more... )
Since a leisurely run through the game takes a little less than an hour, I played it twice, and I have no regrets. Though the slightly murky lo-fi graphics caused a bit of trouble during my first playthrough, I appreciated the unique texture of the visual atmosphere more the second time around, when I was able to find significantly more birds to talk with. As something of an added bonus, the alternate reading of the game suggested by a reveal toward the end casts all the conversations in an interesting new light that’s worth a second playthrough to appreciate and enjoy, I think.
( Read more... )
Since a leisurely run through the game takes a little less than an hour, I played it twice, and I have no regrets. Though the slightly murky lo-fi graphics caused a bit of trouble during my first playthrough, I appreciated the unique texture of the visual atmosphere more the second time around, when I was able to find significantly more birds to talk with. As something of an added bonus, the alternate reading of the game suggested by a reveal toward the end casts all the conversations in an interesting new light that’s worth a second playthrough to appreciate and enjoy, I think.
(no subject)
Jun. 1st, 2026 10:56 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceQuick note that post-by-email and comment-by-email is (sometimes?) failing silently without actually posting right now! I'm pretty sure this is related to last night's shenanigans and will be fixed once Mark can finish the full fix for it, which he's working on, but if you've posted or replied by email in the last 24 hours, fish it out of your sent folder to check if it posted!
EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.
EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.
Let's Get Literate! Platform Decay by Martha Wells
Jun. 1st, 2026 07:42 pmrenay posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ladybusinessIt's hard to write about an advanced reader copy of one of the most coveted science fiction releases of the quarter. I tried, multiple times, to collect some thoughts about Platform Decay, the latest release in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I failed, every time, because my love for this series is immense, but also hard to quantify. Finding the words to describe sincere emotions? Ugh. Therefore, Platform Decay is already out, and you can read it now via your library or favorite indie bookstore!
Platform Decay is the eighth entry in The Murderbot Diaries, following our hero as it stages a high stakes rescue on Corporate Ringworld. It's working apart from its usual allies, it must infiltrate and escape the station with several squishy humans, and oh right, a former enemy asks for its help, complicating the extraction. Nothing can go wrong!
(Things immediately go wrong.)
To make matters worse, it's also dealing with an emotional health module. What's more stressful than a hostage situation in corporate territory? Mobile therapy. Murderbot must protect its humans (no pressure), avoid corporate forces that would love to slurp its kidnapped humans into corporate slavery (assholes), and navigate across a hostile station where one mistake could cost it everything (business as usual!). ( Read more... )
Platform Decay is the eighth entry in The Murderbot Diaries, following our hero as it stages a high stakes rescue on Corporate Ringworld. It's working apart from its usual allies, it must infiltrate and escape the station with several squishy humans, and oh right, a former enemy asks for its help, complicating the extraction. Nothing can go wrong!
(Things immediately go wrong.)
To make matters worse, it's also dealing with an emotional health module. What's more stressful than a hostage situation in corporate territory? Mobile therapy. Murderbot must protect its humans (no pressure), avoid corporate forces that would love to slurp its kidnapped humans into corporate slavery (assholes), and navigate across a hostile station where one mistake could cost it everything (business as usual!). ( Read more... )
Promise Mascot Agency
Jun. 1st, 2026 02:46 pmrynlingPromise Mascot Agency (on Steam here) is a retro nostalgia third-person driving sim / visual novel / card deck builder where you play as a yakuza enforcer running a talent agency for sentient mascot characters out of a love hotel in a small rural town, and...
...and you know what, let's just end this post there. This game is like someone took the best parts of the Yakuza series and boiled them down into concentrate, and it has some of the most entertaining writing I've seen in a video game in a good long time. I don't dislike Dispatch, but I also feel like Promise Mascot Agency is what Dispatch wishes it could be. It also has strong Persona 4 vibes, but if Persona 4 had a difficult time during the pandemic and came out completely cracked on the other side. I'm legit surprised by how good this game is.
...and you know what, let's just end this post there. This game is like someone took the best parts of the Yakuza series and boiled them down into concentrate, and it has some of the most entertaining writing I've seen in a video game in a good long time. I don't dislike Dispatch, but I also feel like Promise Mascot Agency is what Dispatch wishes it could be. It also has strong Persona 4 vibes, but if Persona 4 had a difficult time during the pandemic and came out completely cracked on the other side. I'm legit surprised by how good this game is.
(no subject)
May. 31st, 2026 10:00 pmdenise posting in dw_maintenanceRobby has managed to put in a temporary fix for the site errors and things failing to refresh or not showing up where they should! The permanent fix is going to need Mark's experience, and unfortunately -- seriously, this literally never fails -- Mark has been on an international flight all day, because of course he has. (Never. Fails. He and I are not allowed to both take vacation at once.)
The site will work just fine with the temporary fix in place, things just might be a little slow here and there. We'll keep you updated.
(no subject)
May. 31st, 2026 08:59 pmdenise posting in dw_maintenanceWe're aware of site traffic issues and are working to fix them for the people who are having problems! (The tactics the damn bot traffic uses are endlessly shifting, and they're really good at looking like real traffic, sigh.)
Mina the Hollower
May. 31st, 2026 07:44 amrynlingIt's so good. It's so, so good. Finally someone made a good Zelda game.
The accessibility features are really good too. I'm using a lot of them during my first playthrough, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be my only playthrough. I'll more than likely adjust the difficulty curve as I go along, and it's nice to have that option.
Also, I think I figured out who the final boss is going to be. And I'm not a furry, but hear me out.
The accessibility features are really good too. I'm using a lot of them during my first playthrough, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be my only playthrough. I'll more than likely adjust the difficulty curve as I go along, and it's nice to have that option.
Also, I think I figured out who the final boss is going to be. And I'm not a furry, but hear me out.
2026 Writing Log, Part 21
May. 30th, 2026 09:15 amrynling( Read more... )
My summer semester starts soon, but this week I did fuckall except to catch up on some reading. I wouldn’t recommend academia as a profession to anyone, but I can’t deny that it’s quite nice to have a few weeks where it’s your literal paying job just to chill out and read all the articles you’ve downloaded from JSTOR.
My summer semester starts soon, but this week I did fuckall except to catch up on some reading. I wouldn’t recommend academia as a profession to anyone, but I can’t deny that it’s quite nice to have a few weeks where it’s your literal paying job just to chill out and read all the articles you’ve downloaded from JSTOR.
Final Fantasy XIV icons
May. 29th, 2026 10:37 pmsorayomi posting in finalfantasy🌼 100x100 Total: 36
[19] Final Fantasy XIV
🌼 300x300 Total: 15
[15] Final Fantasy XIV
Posted here @heartsaligned
[19] Final Fantasy XIV
🌼 300x300 Total: 15
[15] Final Fantasy XIV
Posted here @
heartsalignedTesting needed in advance of code push!
May. 28th, 2026 04:10 pmdenise posting in dw_maintenanceIt's been a while since we've done a full code push rather than just hotfixes for bugs, so we are well overdue! Depending on availability, we're aiming to do one sometime soon; we'll let you know specifics once we've worked out good timing for everyone who needs to be available.
However! The reason it's been so long is we kept trying to get some of the stuff that's pending to "really finished" instead of just "mostly finished", and then we once again looked around and went "oh no, this is a really big code push with a lot of changes". Those make us nervous, because while we do a lot of testing ourselves, y'all are really creative in how you use the site and we inevitably find a bunch of edge cases when we let you loose on new code with your real-world data!
So, if folks have some spare time in the next few days, it would be a huge help if you could spend half an hour or so using the site the same way you normally do but with the "Site-Wide Canary" beta features flag turned on. Canary mode is a sort of "live testing" mode: it's your real data, but running the most up-to-date code.
Canary mode always does have a few glitches -- there may be missing text strings or errors about missing database properties, which is a limitation of how we run it. We don't need to know about those, but anything else weird that you run into, leave a comment with what you were trying to do and the error message you got.
I'll repeat that the "here be dragons" caution that's on the beta features page: some things may be broken, so don't use it for when you're doing something important. But a few more eyeballs on it before the push will help the push go more smoothly for everyone.
For folks who want to concentrate on what's changing, we haven't finished the second code tour of what's going to be in this push, but the ffirst one has a good chunk of what's going to be going live. (We'll get the second half done ASAP!)
However! The reason it's been so long is we kept trying to get some of the stuff that's pending to "really finished" instead of just "mostly finished", and then we once again looked around and went "oh no, this is a really big code push with a lot of changes". Those make us nervous, because while we do a lot of testing ourselves, y'all are really creative in how you use the site and we inevitably find a bunch of edge cases when we let you loose on new code with your real-world data!
So, if folks have some spare time in the next few days, it would be a huge help if you could spend half an hour or so using the site the same way you normally do but with the "Site-Wide Canary" beta features flag turned on. Canary mode is a sort of "live testing" mode: it's your real data, but running the most up-to-date code.
Canary mode always does have a few glitches -- there may be missing text strings or errors about missing database properties, which is a limitation of how we run it. We don't need to know about those, but anything else weird that you run into, leave a comment with what you were trying to do and the error message you got.
I'll repeat that the "here be dragons" caution that's on the beta features page: some things may be broken, so don't use it for when you're doing something important. But a few more eyeballs on it before the push will help the push go more smoothly for everyone.
For folks who want to concentrate on what's changing, we haven't finished the second code tour of what's going to be in this push, but the ffirst one has a good chunk of what's going to be going live. (We'll get the second half done ASAP!)
May 2026 Happiness
May. 27th, 2026 09:40 amrynlingOh man. I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of May. I guess time flies when you’re not dreading each new day in a horrible unending winter. Adding to the absence of snow on the ground, here are two books, a podcast about books, and a movie from the 2000s that made me happy this month.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Summer of Horror Exchange Letter
May. 24th, 2026 07:50 amrynlingDear author,
Hello, and thank you for offering to write me a creepy story forsummerofhorrorexchange! I love horror-themed fanfic, and I’m very excited to read your work. I’m a veteran explorer of cursed and haunted spaces; and, though I tend to tread on the “atmospheric” side of horror, I always enjoy encountering terrible new possibilities.
I’m a big fan of:
( Read more... )
I’m totally okay with:
( Read more... )
I’d prefer not to see:
( Read more... )
And here are my fandom-specific prompts and requests:
( Read more... )
One more note: I love flash fiction! Longer stories are fantastic, of course, but I will be equally entertained by a story closer to the 500-word minimum. Whichever path you choose to take, I’m wishing you a pleasant journey through these shadowed lands.
Hello, and thank you for offering to write me a creepy story for
summerofhorrorexchange! I love horror-themed fanfic, and I’m very excited to read your work. I’m a veteran explorer of cursed and haunted spaces; and, though I tend to tread on the “atmospheric” side of horror, I always enjoy encountering terrible new possibilities.I’m a big fan of:
( Read more... )
I’m totally okay with:
( Read more... )
I’d prefer not to see:
( Read more... )
And here are my fandom-specific prompts and requests:
( Read more... )
One more note: I love flash fiction! Longer stories are fantastic, of course, but I will be equally entertained by a story closer to the 500-word minimum. Whichever path you choose to take, I’m wishing you a pleasant journey through these shadowed lands.
another stolen meme
May. 23rd, 2026 08:58 amlarissaComment with the name of a woman character (in any show, movie, book, comic, etc that you think I'm familiar with) and I'll tell you one thing I love about her. In return, you can do the same in your journal (if you like!)
Grabbed this from althea_valara because you know I love female characters.
Pretty much any fandom in my profile or tags is fair game, with the caveat that if it's something I only briefly engaged with I probably won't have much to say. Alternatively just look at my fanlistings for ideas since those are all things I'm still fannish about.
Feel free to comment with multiple characters!
2026 Writing Log, Part Twenty
May. 23rd, 2026 06:51 amrynling( Read more... )
Not much to report this week. I’m just taking it easy.
This weekend I'm planning on dropping by the Philadelphia Renaissance Faire for one purpose: they're supposed to have a petting zoo, and I want to pet the goats! Please wish me luck. 🐐
ETA: They did not have a petting zoo. However! I met a Solaire cosplayer, and we did the pose together. \[T]/
Not much to report this week. I’m just taking it easy.
This weekend I'm planning on dropping by the Philadelphia Renaissance Faire for one purpose: they're supposed to have a petting zoo, and I want to pet the goats! Please wish me luck. 🐐
ETA: They did not have a petting zoo. However! I met a Solaire cosplayer, and we did the pose together. \[T]/