Author: Kathryn

Reader of books and player of games. College professor and pokémon trainer. Writes about Japanese fiction, media, gender, and society. In love with monsters and magic. https://digitalfantasydiary.com/

The Kumo Diary

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

A professor’s assistant at Tokyo Imperial University uncovers a curious manuscript whose author weaves an elegant tale of the twilight years of the Heian court. As she reads between the gossamer lines of the narrator’s account of a moonlit assignation, the quiet and unassuming scholar reflects on what happens in the shadows cast by civilization and enlightenment.

This story is a play on The Tale of Genji that I contributed to Carpe Noctem: Vampires Through the Ages, an anthology of historical fantasy fiction, illustrations, and comics about vampires in historically specific settings.

I wouldn’t say I’m a “fan” of The Tale of Genji in the same way that I’m a fan of the Legend of Zelda series, but I’ve read multiple translations of the book and enjoyed them all. When you engage with a story so deeply, it’s difficult not to come up with fun theories. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person in Japanese literary history to make this suggestion, but please consider: Why are the characters in The Tale of Genji always described as being so pale, and why are many of them only active between dusk and dawn?

“The Kumo Diary” is set in the Meiji period (1868-1912), Japan’s industrial era of “civilization and enlightenment.” As Japan attempted to establish itself as a nation that could compete with Western powers, its intelligentsia were motivated to create a unified “Japanese culture.” The Tale of Genji occupied an interesting place in this movement. On one hand, it could easily be regarded as the quintessential work of classical Japanese literature. On the other hand, its plot is largely concerned with the love affairs of a rotating cast of beautiful but neurotic women. Japanese scholars were therefore tasked with making The Tale of Genji a respectable classic to be held in esteem by a modern nation.

Scholars had been compiling and revising the chapters of The Tale of Genji for centuries, so it was necessary to create a “definitive” version of the text. While I was studying the history of The Tale of Genji, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the apocryphal chapters that never made it into the canonical text.

It took me ten years, but finally I wrote one of these apocryphal chapters myself. I embedded the so-called “Kumo Diary” into a frame story about a woman who finds the manuscript and decides not to share it with the stodgy male professor who employs her. It’s interesting to imagine there being a secret history of The Tale of Genji, and I really enjoyed writing the ending of my story. After all, who’s to say there aren’t demonic women pulling the strings from the shadows? If they do their work correctly, we’d never know they were there at all.

I’ve posted the story on AO3, and you can read it here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/50802628

The illustration is by the darkly brilliant Paristandard, whose creepy and creative illustrations can be found (on Twitter), (on Tumblr), and (on Instagram). It was an amazing experience to work with them, and I can’t recommend them enough for character designs, book covers, short comics, and other illustration projects. For this project in particular, the historical specificity of their costume design was uncanny, and I am in awe.

A Worthy Successor

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

In an eerie castle submerged under cursed waters, Ganondorf tells Tetra about the world that once was. Ganondorf’s story is at its end, but his words inspire Tetra to dream of the world to come.

I recently started playing The Wind Waker in order to do research for a short essay about Koroks. The Wind Waker is a fresh and lovely game, at least at the beginning, and I always forget the emotional impact of the end. The pathos of Ganondorf’s longing for the Hyrule of the past always gets me right in the heart.

I think it’s interesting that, after The Wind Waker, Tetra goes on to establish New Hyrule, the setting of Spirit Tracks. She thereby achieves Ganondorf’s goal of restoring an ancient kingdom blessed by gentle winds. This begs the question – how would Tetra know about Hyrule? Given how much time Tetra spent with Ganondorf under the Great Sea, I think it’s safe to assume that they must have talked to one another.

This story is my attempt to envision what these conversations might have been. I wrote this story a few years ago, but I’m returning to it now because it still resonates with me. The older I get, the more I sympathize with Ganondorf, and the more willing I become to let decaying empires fall to ruin in favor of embracing the winds of change.

You can read the story here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/35251798

The comic adaptation is by the magical Lightsintheskye, who is:
(on Twitter) + (on Tumblr) + (on Etsy)

Essay about Evergrace on Sidequest

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

My summer replay of Elden Ring triggered memories of an obscure PlayStation 2 game from 2000 called Evergrace. When I went online to see if anyone else had made the connection between Elden Ring and Evergrace, I was surprised to find that I seem to be one of the few people who remember this game. I did some deep digging and ended up writing an essay for Sidequest about why Evergrace is a forgotten FromSoft classic worthy of critical attention. Here’s an except:

Even in this brief description of the setting of Evergrace, FromSoft fans will notice various seeds of worldbuilding that have since sprouted into more developed forms in later titles, from the Darksign marking the Chosen Undead player-character in Dark Souls to the queen imprisoned in the towering Erdtree in Elden Ring. As I read about Evergrace, I was fascinated by the earlier forms of signature FromSoft leitmotifs that appear in the game, just as I was intrigued by its challenging elements of gameplay that would later evolve into the characteristic trademark of the Soulslike genre of video games.

You can read the full essay on Sidequest here:
https://sidequest.zone/2023/09/25/evergrace-a-forgotten-fromsoft-classic/

I’d love to write a substantial academic article about Evergrace, but I’m hindered by the fact that I can’t actually play the game without investing in a desktop computer that can run a PlayStation 2 emulator. Hopefully this essay presents a strong argument for textual documentation of classic titles, as well as freely accessible video game archives.  

Hyrule Fashion Anthology Preorders

~ Kathryn

Hyrule Fashion Anthology is open for preorders (here)!

Hyrule Fashion Anthology is a fanzine celebrating the complex evolution of fashion history through the characters and setting of the Legend of Zelda series. I contributed an essay titled “A Wind-Grieved Ghost” about the influence of medieval Japanese Noh theater on Ganondorf’s costume and character in The Wind Waker. I put a lot of love and research into this piece, and I may have even made myself cry.

The zine is filled with gorgeous fashion illustrations that illuminate the historical and cultural influences of the character designs in the series, as well as brilliant renditions of fan-favorite characters in a diversity of times and places. In addition to the artwork, the zine also includes articles about weaving, metalworking, and the beauty of style in all its forms.

Preorders are open until September 19!
If you’re interested, you can check out the zine through these links…

✨ Carrd: https://hyrulefashionanthology.carrd.co
✨ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HyruleFashion
✨ Bigcartel: https://hyrulefashionanthology.bigcartel.com

Terrible People

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Terrible People collects six short and eerie tales of dark fantasy, unfortunate encounters, and horrible life choices. The writing is accessible to teenagers and adults alike, and there’s a diversity of death, poison, and murder for everyone to enjoy.

Terrible People is my fifth zine of original short fiction, and it’s the first that feels like a real short story collection. Each of the stories in this zine was accepted for publication elsewhere; but unfortunately, every single one of these publications was cursed. To give an example, one online magazine closed their website and deleted their social media accounts less than a month after they accepted one of these stories. To give another example, a small press that published an anthology with another of the stories burned down, meaning that almost all copies of the book were destroyed.  

Perhaps I’m tempting fate by printing these stories on my own. Who can say?

If you’d like to order a (totally not cursed) copy of the zine, it’s on Etsy here:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1556837985/terrible-people-horror-fiction-zine

At 52 pages, the zine is relatively lengthy, which means I was able to give it a spine. This necessitated extra formatting work, and I feel like I’m slowly starting to understand the art of book design. What I’m thinking of doing in the near future is making a short chapbook from a single story and experimenting with the formatting until it looks more like an actual book. Terrible People is probably the last zine I’m going to make that has the style of formatting I’m using now, which I actually quite like.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps it might be nice to set up a micropress one day. For the time being, however, I’m content simply to continue writing these strange little stories while hoping that the curse haunting my attempts to publish them eventually dissipates.    

Review of The Hills of Estrella Roja on WWAC

~ Kathryn

I recently had the immense honor of being able to review emerging artist Ashley Robin Franklin’s brilliant Southwest Gothic graphic novel, The Hills of Estrella Roja, for Women Write About Comics.

Here’s an excerpt:

Even as Kat and Mari enjoy queer teen solidarity, they’re inducted into an adult world of queerness that was previously denied to them. Mari’s side of the story is especially interesting in this regard, as she gradually comes to understand that her identity isn’t just a matter of her own lived experiences, but also a product of the heritage shaped by the experiences of her extended family. The art of The Hills of Estrella Roja cleverly suggests connections between generations in subtle allusions and callbacks while immersing the characters in a gorgeous world that constantly reaches out (sometimes literally!) to pull Mari and Kat deeper into the natural environment that surrounds them.

You can read the full review here:
https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2023/08/the-hills-of-estrella-roja-review/

As always, I have nothing but gratitude for my editor, Kat Overland. Kat gave me the go-ahead to write a review of Franklin’s minicomic Fruiting Bodies and then helped me get in touch with Clarion Books to request an advance review copy of The Hills of Estrella Roja. I’m not used to playing in the big leagues, so Kat’s support was invaluable, as were their notes as a native Texan. For excellent taste and good-sense takes on comics, politics, and pop culture, you can follow Kat on Twitter (here) and on Bluesky (here).

You can follow Ashley Robin Franklin on Instagram (here), where she posts cute and colorful botanical studies and shorter autobiographical comics that are touching, relatable, and well worth reading.

Divine Beast

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Zelda returns to her original form after the defeat of the Demon King. But, after so many years, is the being that comes back to Link entirely human? Zelda has appetites better suited to claws and fangs, but Link resolves to care for her, no matter the cost. This is a story about Zelda attacking and eating frogs, and cuccos, and horses… and possibly something with even sweeter flesh.

I’ve been enjoying Tears of the Kingdom, but I’m frustrated by its story. I love all the characters, and I think the game’s broad narrative arc is an interesting reimagining of Ocarina of Time. Still, there are many elements of Tears of the Kingdom that I find unsatisfying, especially its ending. I understand the plot mechanics of what happens, which are nicely explained in (this post) on Tumblr, but Zelda’s complete reversion to her human form doesn’t sit easy in my mind. Is it really possible for a transformation of such magnitude to have no lasting effects? Did the sacrifice Zelda made really have such little weight?

Tears of the Kingdom fails to attach meaning to its worldbuilding in a way that very few Legend of Zelda games have in the past. It’s understandable to dismiss these games as childish heroic fantasies. Still, at some point, the true darkness of each game’s story expresses itself. The player may have seen the plot through the limited viewpoint of Link, the teenage “chosen one,” but the crumbling kingdom of Hyrule looks substantially different through the eyes of other characters. Link will emerge triumphant and ride off into the sunset, but everyone else has to live in the ruins, and it’s only very late in his quest that Link realizes this. With this realization, the player can begin to put together the missing pieces of a much larger story.

Despite having an incredible potential to expand on the many mysteries of Hyrule, Tears of the Kingdom does its best to simplify its story to a single one-dimensional layer: Ganon is bad. By defeating Ganon, Link gets rid of everything that’s wrong with the world, meaning that everything in Hyrule is now good again. This is all that matters. What happened in Breath of the Wild doesn’t matter. What happened in the ancient era doesn’t matter. What happened to the Zonai doesn’t matter. None of Hyrule’s past matters, nor does its future. In the endless present of the game, Zelda only exists as a vessel for “good,” and the only important thing is that Link saves her.

As much as I love Zelda, I resent that she only exists as a plot device and a reward for the player. While superficially turning Zelda into a superhero, Tears of the Kingdom robs her of agency. I generally like happy endings, but I hate the conclusion of Tears of the Kingdom. Simply put: it’s happy, but it’s boring. What I therefore wanted to do with “Divine Beast” was to make Zelda’s decision more interesting by ensuring that it has consequences. I also wanted to give the worldbuilding of Tears of the Kingdom a bit of the weight and depth it deserves.

And, more than anything, I want Link and Zelda to be free.

“Divine Beast” is complete at 2,000 words, and you can read it on AO3 here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/49296496

I drew the illustration myself. You can follow my art on Tumblr (here) or on Instagram (here).

Review of Soul Void on Sidequest

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I recently had the pleasure of writing a review of the Game Boy horror adventure game Soul Void for the online gaming magazine Sidequest. I love Soul Void, and I’d describe it as Undertale for people who love quirky adventures with elements of horror but hate bullet hell. Although the horror elements of Soul Void are quite gruesome, it’s accessible to players of all skill levels. The game is free to play on Itchio (here), but I’d recommend playing it on a Game Boy emulator like mGBA, which you can download (here). Here’s an excerpt from my review:

Soul Void is a dark fantasy Game Boy adventure game that takes about three hours to finish. Its story of a young woman navigating the perils of the underworld is intriguing and cathartic, and its art design makes incredible use of the eeriness of its retro pixel graphics. For anyone who enjoyed the characters and worldbuilding of Undertale, Soul Void offers a similarly offbeat odyssey of mystery and friendship illustrated with disturbing but brilliantly creative horror art.

You can read the full review here:
https://sidequest.zone/2023/08/21/review-soul-void-dives-deep-into-retro-body-horror/

I want to give a big shout-out to my editor, Maddi Butler, for helping me get my thoughts in order and work through some of the more interesting themes of this game. I’d also like to thank the Sidequest Editor in Chief, Melissa Brinks, for giving me an opportunity to write about Soul Void, and for allowing me to expand on my thoughts about this amazing game. For excellent writing and commentary on video games, you can follow Maddi on Bluesky (here) + Melissa on Twitter (here). If you’re in the mood for gorgeous horror art, you can follow Soul Void’s creator, Kabadura, on Twitter (here) and on Instagram (here).

Review of River’s Edge on WWAC

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I recently had the opportunity to review Kodasha USA’s release of Kyoko Okazaki’s 1994 graphic novel River’s Edge for Women Write About Comics.

River’s Edge is like an anti-shōjo manga about teenagers at the margins of society being evil to one another. This is the sort of gritty “all the trigger warnings” graphic novel that I wouldn’t recommend to everyone, but I really enjoyed it. I think it’s an important piece of art, and I’m grateful that it’s available in English. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

Even to readers not interested in manga classics or sociopolitical critiques of millennial Japan, River’s Edge tells an engrossing tale of teenagers precariously close to falling out of mainstream society. Characters who initially seem to be stereotypes gain fascinating depth and complexity as their lives spiral out of control over the course of a story that rapidly gains momentum. River’s Edge isn’t entirely bleak, however. The footholds the characters find in the landslide are meaningful, and their small moments of genuine friendship and connection are all the more valuable in the cultural wasteland they inhabit.

You can read the full review here:
https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2023/08/review-rivers-edge-reflects-gritty-millennial-malaise/

Review of Sas Milledge’s Mamo on WWAC

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I recently had the good fortune to write a review of Sas Milledge’s graphic novel Mamo for Women Write About Comics. The book came out last April, but it’s been at the back of my mind all year. Mamo is the sensitive queer critique of cottagecore that I’ve always wanted, demonstrating the appeal of “nature” and “tradition” while simultaneously arguing that these concepts must change and evolve for new generations.

Mamo is about a witch who returns to her hometown for a brief visit and gets pulled into a local mystery despite her best intentions. I started thinking about Mamo’s story this summer while trying to grow a tomato plant from Home Depot in my tiny concrete backyard. Either I was watering the plant too much, or I wasn’t watering it enough. Maybe it needed to be around other plants? Maybe it needed to be lifted farther off the ground? I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t thriving, and I kept wishing that I weren’t so clueless about growing a simple tomato plant.

Like, wouldn’t it be nice if I’d lived in the same place all my life, and I’d grown tomatoes every summer, and I knew exactly when to plant and harvest them. Wouldn’t it be nice to bake my own bread to go with the tomatoes. Wouldn’t it be nice if a kind older adult helped me. Wouldn’t it be nice if, when I went to the grocery store, I knew exactly where the yeast is, and everyone I saw in the store greeted me by name. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a backyard that wasn’t concrete. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tree by my house. Wouldn’t it be nice to live near the friends I grew up with, and be part of a community.

The truth is that I did spend a part of my childhood in a green and beautiful small town in rural Georgia where my mother’s entire extended family lives. And the truth is that I felt extremely alienated and unwelcome there, and that I couldn’t stay. My mother’s family has all the “tradition” you could ever want, and this was extremely unhealthy for me, especially as a young queer person. Even if you leave, though, a part of you is still going to miss the abstract concept of “homeland,” especially when it’s tied to all the simple pleasures most people don’t get enjoy in a city.

Mamo understands this, and it expresses these tensions beautifully. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

As a renegotiation of tradition, the cottagecore visual aesthetic of Mamo is liberating. Milledge’s bold and expressive art celebrates green spaces that exist on their own terms regardless of human relationships. The literary trope of seeking freedom from oppressive social constraints by venturing into the wilderness is as old as human storytelling, and Milledge’s colorful and immersive art invites the reader into the forest along with Jo and Orla as they attempt to find a new path between untethered freedom and rigid tradition.

You can read the full piece on Women Write About Comics here:
https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2023/08/mamo-by-sas-milledge/

As always, I’d like to express my appreciation for my editor, the amazing Kat Overland, who allowed me to write about a graphic novel that came out more than a year ago. Kat also writes about comics, and you can – and should! – follow them on Twitter (here) and on Bluesky (here). You can also follow Mamo’s creator, Sas Milledge, on Instagram (here) and on Tumblr (here). As I was reading Mamo, I realized that I used to be a huge fan of the artist’s Legend of Zelda comics (like this one), and it turns out that they still have excellent taste in fandoms.