#I read a digital copy so that number might be off

[quotidianish]

“Where’s Winter?” he whispered, nudging Ostrich with his elbow. She sat up and looked around with blurry confusion.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He was here a moment ago.”

Qibli twisted in a frantic circle and spotted a shadow flitting through the pear orchard. He couldn’t shout for Winter lest he alert the whole compound. Qibli groaned internally.

  “Stay here,” he whispered to Ostrich. “Stay as hidden as you can. We’ll be right back.”

She nodded, strutting back into the shadows.

  Qibli hurried after the Icewing prince and realized that he was aiming for the courtyard, separated from the orchard with a wall. It was enormous, surrounded with buildings and a partial bailey, blocking his view of the inside. The bricks were painted in a turquoise and amber mosaic of snakes and lizards chasing one another endlessly.

  Before even seeing where Winter was headed, Qibli knew all too well what he was planning to do. The courtyard was noisy with birds and other pest-like creatures, alongside the distinct growl of a dragon.

Arrrrgh, Winter, you obsessed ninny.

  He caught up as Winter was tinkering with the lock of the metal gate. It stretched up to an arch at the doorway, where the mud had begun to crumble, smelling of spoiled food, live pigs, and dates. 

“Are you serious?” he said, and Winter jumped a mile, which was almost hilarious enough to make this side excursion worthwhile.

  “Shhhhh!” Winter hissed.

“What are you thinking?” Qibli whispered.

  “I’m thinking your horrifying grandfather will make this poor dragon into tomorrow’s buffet,” Winter whispered back. “Unless I save it.”

“Right now?” Qibli asked. “In the middle of our own precarious escape?”

  “Well, I’m not planning on coming back!” Winter said, tugging on the lock again. “Hey, you’re a street thug. Can you pick this lock for me?”

  “An Outclaw is not the same thing as a criminal,” Qibli protested. “Oh, fine, move over.” He studied the lock for a moment, unsheathing his kirpan and inserting it into the mechanism, wiggling it around until he heard a click.

  “Now what?” he asked Winter as he nudged at the gate, careful not to open it too wide so the hinges wouldn’t creak. “We shove it in a bag and carry it off into the desert with us? I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, but dragons aren’t exactly travel-sized.”

  “We’ll just let it out,” Winter said, pacing past him into the moonlit quadrangle. “It’s smart enough to fend for itself after that.”

   Qibli decided not to point out that it hadn’t been smart enough not to get caught in the first place.

  Winter crouched beside a large chain, bound against the beige dragon’s hind leg and anchored into the ground with weights. Despite having thrashed helplessly a moment ago, this time it peered curiously down at them.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Winter said softly. He looked around for the small alcohol lamp by the window they’d seen earlier, and carefully reached for its shackle. Upon bringing the flame close to the brass chains, the heat thawed through the metal like snow. They both stepped back and waited.

  Slowly, the levitation-esque creature raised its head, tearing its obsidian black eyes from the two humans and towards the night sky. A plume of smoke shot through the air as it flapped its enormous wings once, then twice, then lifting itself off the ground, sending a whirlwind of sand flying into Qibli’s face, before swiftly gliding away to freedom.

[ninja-muse]

August is over! My reading month felt like it took forever even though otherwise, the month flew by. I blame this half on my top two reads of the month, which I was only reading in short snippets, and half on a number of lackluster reads and DNFs. I'm hoping to get back into my usual habits in September.

I did do better on reading off my physical TBR though! Even though one book was a "aw man, what do I read now?" and two more were, "I'm behind on my goal, quick, read something fast!" Plus the T. Kingfisher, which was graciously provided by my work, as was Running Close to the Wind. (Finally a month where I didn't spend money to add to my library!)

As for my top reads, The Salmon Shanties would be near the top of my list even if there wasn't a degree of reverse-nepotism involved. Absolutely excellent poetry collection, very layered and complex. If you're into Canadian poetry or poetry-of-place, pick it up! And Rose/House, once I got it back from the library because my Libby hold ran out, was absolutely fantastic! As was the quality of the French translation, because it sounded like Martine. So very, very glad I had the nerve (and linguistic ability) to read it. Super-creepy and I'm glad Tor's picked it up so I can hype the heck out of it next year. And then there's Jinn-Bot, which I wrote an actual review for.

On the other end of the list, sigh. I DNFed one book for feeling kind of trite, and another for being too predictable, and probably should have DNFed Voyage of the Damned for being uneven but I needed to know who the killer was. The Library Thief I'm also counting as lackluster—very good book, just wasn't for me or what I was expecting. Still deserves a 7.

Lula Dean, on the other hand, was surprisingly good! Fun and satirical and just plain entertaining. Read it in a couple days and it would likely be higher on my list except my reasons to be "glad to have read them" this month are less about quality and entertainingness than usual. I can't put "really liked this" above "finally I get to read a new book by X!", for instance. Or necessarily above "learned stuff!"

You might notice a distinct lack of any other news, and that's because there is none. September may be marginally more exciting, we'll see. (I know there'll be a bigger book haul.)

Anyway, on to September now, and in the meantime, here's my list everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

The Salmon Shanties - Harold Rhenisch

A collection of poems centered on and celebrating Cascadia in all its facets (or taking it to task, as the case may be). Out in September.

10/10

🇨🇦

warning: mentions racism, colonization, genocide

digital reading copy

Rose/House - Arkady Martine

There is a body within Rose House—two, if you count its architect, who ordered the house shuttered with his passing and left to its AI. Only one person is allowed to enter now, and she’s accounted for. And yet there is a body within Rose House….

9/10

🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: descriptions of a dead body

library ebook

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport - Samit Basu

Lina and Bador want freedom: from surveillance, from power structures, for their city, for all bots, or just for their family. This might come from cunning, or revolution, or a lost ancient artifact, or an underground bot-battle, or swaying a visiting space hero or the Not-Prince. Much more than an Aladdin retelling.

8/10

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (multisexual, achillean), Indian-coded cast, Indian author

warning: discusses colonization and oppression, references police violence

reading copy

Unwritten, Vol. 8 - Mike Carey with Peter Gross, Dean Ormston, Yuko Shimizu

When Tommy Taylor learns that Lizzie is trapped in the land of the dead, he goes to rescue her—but he’s unprepared for his adventures there, or the wider implications.

8/10

Indigenous Australian secondary character

off my TBR

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

Paul Bäumer recounts his time serving in the German army in WWI.

7/10

warning: war, death, animal death, gore, injury

off my TBR

A Sorceress Comes to Call - T. Kingfisher

Cordelia’s terrible mother has decided to marry a squire. Cordelia knows he and his sister don’t deserve that—but how to stop her, when she can do magic?

7.5/10

warning: child abuse, torture, murder, animal cruelty and death

finished copy received through work

A Man and His Cat, Vol. 4 - Umi Sakurai

Kanda gets the courage to make a new friend and revisit an old situation.

7/10

Japanese cast, Japanese author

off my TBR

A Gentleman from Japan - Thomas Lockley

The true story of a Japanese man who was brought to the court of Elizabeth I and influenced early modern English science.

7.5/10

warning: slavery, orientalism, war and violence

library book

Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books - Kirsten Miller

In Troy, Georgia, the fight for public decency is kicked off by Lula Dean, who craves attention and loves her Southern history—and her fencepost library, where someone’s put wholesome jackets over books she’s tried to ban….

7/10

ensemble cast including Black, 🏳️‍🌈 (gay, lesbian), and Indo-American POV characters

warning: Nazis, anti-Semitism, anti-Black racism, homophobia, rape, suicide

reading copy

The Library Thief - Kuchenga Shenjé

Florence talks her way into a job repairing a lord’s library, but is quickly drawn in by the mysterious death of the lady of the house. A gothic novel centering race, gender, and other marginalizations in late Victorian England.

7/10

Black British main character, Black British secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (trans woman, sapphic), Black British author

warning: racism, including slurs; rape, abuse, misogyny, queerphobia

library book

The Voyage of the Damned - Frances White

A grand state voyage is upset by murder and it’s up to the lowly, non-Blessed Ganymedes to catch the killer before they dock. Goddess help them all if he doesn’t….

5.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (multisexual), fat protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (nonbinary, ace, trans man, sapphic, achillean), Indian-, African-, and Japanese-coded secondary characters

warning: murder, injuries, blood, colonial thinking, attempted genocide, suicidal thoughts

reading copy

DNF

Remedial Magic - Melissa Marr

Safe and ordinary Ellie meets a mysterious woman in her library, and is whisked to a fantasy world where she’s probably a witch—and almost certainly in trouble.

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (sapphic), 🏳️‍🌈 author

reading copy

Casket Case - Lauren Evans

Garrett stops to ask for directions at Nora’s casket shop and they hit it off. Unfortunately he works for Death…. Out in September.

African-American secondary characters

reading copy

Currently reading

A Natural History of Dragons - Marie Brennan

A memoir by Lady Trent, renowned natural philosopher and adventuress, but covering her childhood and first expedition, to the mountain highlands of Vystrana, and the troublesome dragons encountered there.

library book

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts. The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle Victorian detective stories.

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 11 Yearly total: 70 Queer books: 1 Authors of colour: 3 Books by women: 6 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1 Classics: 1 Off the TBR shelves: 4 Books hauled: 2 ARCs acquired: 3 ARCs unhauled: 6 DNFs: 2

January February March April May June July

[paintersknife]

Simulacrum

Her face is the first thing he sees when he wakes up. It’s familiar somehow, but he can’t put his finger on it, as if the memory is shrouded in cobwebs, an old thing, desiccated and forgotten. (Where has he seen her? When has he seen her?)

“What’s your name?” she asks, but it’s clear that she isn’t really talking to him, judging by the way her hands reach out to grab his wrist, turning it to face her as she reads the serial number printed there. (Was that always there?)

“It’s Cl-” (It’s the one thing he knows.)

She cuts him off, dropping his hand as she reaches past him to pull out a thick manual from somewhere deeper in the pod, still refusing to look him in the eye. “03L-3103.”

There’s an expression on her face that he’s never seen before, but somehow it makes something deep inside of him hurt.

Setting herself down on the edge of the pod, she starts to flip through the book, leaving him in relative silence as he pushes himself up and out of it. She thinks that he doesn’t notice the small sob that she lets out while her face is obscured by the manual. (He does.)

“It says here that you have a memory chip and an emotion simulation module,” she says quietly after a time. Her voice is a little thick, as if she’s not used it in a while. “It also says that it might take a while for your memories to stabilise. So you should grab what you need and come with me. I can’t just leave you here.”

He goes with her, slowly shaking off the stiffness in his mechanical joints from being so long confined. It feels familiar as he walks with her and something buried deep within his memories stirs. (But was there always a distance between them like this?)

Fragments of recollections begin to coalesce in his mind, enough for him to know that they meant something to each other, once. It isn’t enough to make her look at him, isn’t enough to make him ask her about it.

Later while he’s helping to help her set up her camp, he catches her stealing glances at him with a faraway look in her eyes like she’s looking through him and at someone else. (Who is that expression meant for?)

“I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable,” he says, keeping his voice as gentle as he possibly can. She looks away, guilt in her expression. (What does she have to be guilty about?)

The silence between them seems to stretch on forever.

“You aren’t him,” she says eventually, her voice cracking. “He’s dead. He’s long dead and you’re just a copy with his face.” (He’s always known. A perfect copy is still just a copy.)

Her face falls at the harshness of her own words, regret written all over her face as her eyes flick to the floor, as if she’s unable to keep looking at the face of the man she once loved. He doesn’t blame her, after all, he is merely an imitation of something original, a prime version, perfection in all its flaws and he knows he can never attain that purity. All he is to her is someone’s ghost. 

What is he to do then, with these memories that aren’t his? With these emotions that feel so vivid that he’s afraid his exoskeleton will burst apart, leaving him the empty shell that she sees him as? Are they even his at all, or are they just lines of code, written and encoded to give him some semblance of substance? Is he merely a collection of silicon and gold, assembled and produced, a puppet pulled by digital strings? If that’s so, where does that leave him?

Tears well up in her eyes, overflowing and streaking their way down her cheeks. It makes his chest ache, but it's such a beautiful sight to him despite that, worth encoding in his memory. Would she even cry for him like she would for the one that she lost? (Is he even worth her tears?)

He can’t help but think that the real Clarence wouldn’t even have these doubts. 

Gently he pulls her towards him, wrapping his arms around her when she doesn’t resist. She buries her face in his shoulder, finally letting herself grieve all that she’s lost, all that she’s found. He doesn't know how long their time together will last, but he'll love her as much as she will let him. (It’s what he would have done.)

[mariacallous]

In many ways, I love living in the digital age. As someone who grew up in the analog world (my first journalism job, as a college intern, involved a manual typewriter and carbon paper), I am still delighted to be able to find out, within 10 seconds, whether a particular movie star is still alive or to share my latest column with the entire world through a social media post.

But the downside of digital life is driving me batty – so much so that I sometimes consider trying to go off the grid altogether to seek a less frustrating existence. I have a fantasy of this simple life that I describe as Full Bore Thoreau. It involves listening to birdsong and reading Russian novels while occasionally using a landline to maintain contact with other humans.

What has brought me to this point? Consider, as one of many examples, my recent adventures with usernames and passwords, involving E-ZPass, the device that allows you to travel through toll barriers without stopping to hand over cash. When I signed up for it many years ago, I apparently got a username and password. And I gave them my credit card information so that it could be charged when necessary.

All went well for years; I would get hard-copy statements in the mail from time to time, but never kept them around for long. I gave this arrangement no thought, until the day I got a voicemail message, claiming to be from a law firm, saying I had accrued massive E-ZPass debt.

I thought it might be a scam so decided to check my account balance, something I had never felt the need to do before. Signing in involved that original username and password. But, horrors! It turned out that my username was not my email address. I tried to retrieve it via my cellphone number or email address but only descended into concentric circles of digital hell. A phone call – old-school, I know – to customer service resulted in a demand for my account number, but in order to get that, I needed to, yes, sign on to my account. Round and round I went.

Of course, an issue like that is minor, one tiny piece of the daily puzzle that involves all the ways that we (and institutions like banks or employers) try to protect digital security. Two-factor authentication now stops us at every turn. To log in, you need to put in the code that’s just been sent to your phone, but as you go to your text messages to find it, the original question somehow has disappeared into the ether.

Those of us who do any freelance work descend to a special torture chamber that comes with registering as a “vendor” with part-time employers. This involves layers upon layers of proving your identity, submitting tax forms and navigating multilayered payment systems with weird names and byzantine processes. Not long ago, I got an email from the accounts payable department of a large media company that began with this less than promising line, including the capitalized F: “Your Form has been received and forwarded for processing.” It then directed me to the “secure onboarding portal”, where many other incomprehensible steps awaited.

All of this, I remind myself, is a result of privilege. These are the very definition of first-world problems, and I’m lucky – in a sense – to have them. But it doesn’t feel that way. Often, I wish I could step off the digital merry-go-round.

At best, such challenges help me to develop patience as I plod through the steps, ask for help when possible (often from a digital native, possibly including my son or daughter), and eventually solve the problem – as I did with the EZ-Pass puzzle.

The solution there, it turned out, was marvelously old-fashioned. I dug out a small notebook from a drawer, filled with scrawled usernames and passwords going back for years. And there the answer was, in all its inky glory. My login was successful, my account balance was fine, and I deemed it unwise to respond to the self-described lawyer.

Victorious for the moment, I moved on to the inevitable next hassle, while dreaming of fishing for my meals from the banks of Walden Pond.

[gamesception]

Sception Reads Cass Cain #37

Batgirl (2000) #17 - August 2001 Writer: Kelley Puckett Pencils: Damion Scott inks: Robert Campanella Colors: Jason Wright

Cass's book as been pretty downbeat for the last few issues. The tone of Cass's book overall is pretty sad and heavy, and normally I'm all about that angst, but the book can't live on angst alone, so have to have some brighter moments for contrast, you've gotta take the pressure off every once in a while if you want to keep building it or you just burn out the scale. So this issue brings us a refreshing change of pace, if only to give Cass and the reader a bit of a breather.

Sorry if this one goes up late. I'm running behind time wise, but I don't want to take a minimal approach to this issue, it's pretty important and has a lot of great moments. Do pease read it for yourself first, though.

The issue starts with this pretty cool sequence showing Cass's perspective as she gets distracted by the woman running away and lets this random goon land a punch on her. I like how the slideshow effect of the three repeated panels really emphasizes how much time Cass had to dodge this punch.

Followed by this great 'like father like daughter moment after she knocks the guy out where Cass and Bruce both have the same surprised and befuddled "Hmm" reaction to what just happened, with the same expression on their face and everything.

The perfectly synchronized training afterwords is also great, as is Bruce's worried expression. I can't keep copying every page over, we'll be here all day, but this issue really is great. One of my favorites. Again, go read it for yourself if you haven't.

Anyway, on the one hand this is such an indictment of Bruce. We the audience know that 'somethings been wrong' with Cass for a while, basically the entire time. She's consumed by guilt to a near suicidal degree and the loneliness and isolation of her lifestyle - even before she was forced out of Bab's clock tower but especially since - has left her without any companionship beyond her own self destructive thoughts, and the mission she's so dedicated to as her only hope of redemption continuously exposes her to the worst of humanity. So yeah, that Bruce didn't already know something was wrong, that he didn't anticipate how his decisions were making things worse, that he only notices that anything's off at all once Cass's mental state is bad enough that it's affecting her performance on the job? Yeah, that's pretty bad, if also so completely him.

On the other hand, you can see the concern all over his face. He should have seen this coming, he should have noticed it sooner, but now that he has he is very genuinely worried on her behalf, and that does count for something, even if he'll need help figuring out what's wrong or what to do about it.

And that help just so happens to call in the form of Barbara Gordon, who can hack in to delete the government's digital records on Cass's face, but needs her to sneak in and destroy the physical records.

At first Cass and Bruce don't feel like this is worth bothering with, as neither sees any value in her potential future civilian persona worth taking this risk to get it back, but Babs points out how they might yet connect the data they have to Batgirl and that convinces Bruce, which in turn convinces Cassandra because she absolutely does not think for herself these days.

I love this Jab Babs gets in at Bruce as Cass leaves, though I do wish it was made a bit more explicit that the *reason* Bruce has been keeping Cass on such a 'short leash' is that he doesn't fully trust her ever since David sent the video of her killing that man way back in issue number 4. On the surface Bruce is still deep in denial over it, but some part of it has to know, has to doubt at least. As is I'm pretty sure that's intentional subtext but because it's not explicit in the text I could just be reading in something that isn't really there.

In infiltration mission is pretty cool, starting with this sequence where Cass steals a key card off of a guard's bead chain, copies it, and puts it back without him noticing, which has Barbara admitting that the 'short leash' is starting to make sense. Just what exactly would Cass be capable of if she were allowed to run free?

....

The mission is successful, the files and physical evidence destroyed, and Cass's out-of-costume persona is free and clear. She can visit Barbara again, can see the sun again. Can. But will she?

Babs clearly doesn't think she will, at least not on her own, and so she goes to Bruce about it

It's a nice scene. I've missed Bab's presence in Cass's book the last few issues. This 'arguing over what's best for Cass' bit is fun, and also important characterization. I love how Bruce's expression as he says "Mole creature?" makes clear that he recognizes Bab's comment as a criticism of him and his lifestyle.

Of course, Bruce has a different idea of what's been bothering Cass. Not the isolation, not how /he's/ been treating her, but the mission. Everything's the mission for Bruce, and Cass is just like Bruce after all. The thing is, as right as Barbara clearly is here, Bruce probably isn't wrong either. Cass, like Bruce, dwells on her 'failures'. But taking down the villain responsible never actually makes Bruce feel any better.

Barbara still presses him to just order Cass to get some sun. The fact that she shouldn't need Bruce to tell her to do that, that this level of devotion and lack of independent motivation is a bad thing in and of it self, is too big of a problem to tackle today.

And to his credit Bruce relents!

I love these panels. You can feel how overwhelming the light is after so long in the darkness. Also good work from the colorist, showing this transition by going from all dark and cool colors that dominate her book to these warm (but washed out and too bright as her eyes struggle to adjust) colors. I mean, it's a fairly obvious trick, like being wowed when a musician changes chords, but it just works so well here.

And it's not just the sun, it's the people. Not just cass literally going from darkness to light but also going from being surrounded by victims and criminals, by the suffering and the cruel, and emerging into a wider world full of all the breadth and diversity of the human experience, loud happy annoyed worried people walking and running and shouting and living their lives that Scott does such a great job conveying with just a single page full of different and interesting faces.

And afterwards she's so happy, having picked up a rose from, somewhere, we don't see that bit. But of course Bruce needs to interrupt this moment of happiness.

So Cass does go to confront gov't man.

but clearly she doesn't actually feel better about what happened afterwords.

Her symbolism happiness rose, only so recently acquired, is already wilting. It's clearly not the sort of thing she can go to Bruce about. So, for once, now that she can, Cass actually reaches out to Barbara for help. About the rose. About what it means that getting justice for repentant sniper man's death didn't make her feel any better about it.

It's a great little scene to end out the comic. Symbolism's a bit on the nose, but it works. it's sincere.

The angst and darkness of the last few issues has been a lot, but it makes this bit of brightness feel all the more impactful. The underlying issues aren't resolved, it's still a problem that Cass has basically slotted Bruce into exactly the same unhealthy role that David used to occupy in her life. It's still a problem that Bruce let her do that. A real confrontation when Bruce can no longer deny the fact that she killed someone is still looming, as is her death match with Lady Shiva. But she's not quite so isolated now, and she's re-established a connection with someone who might actually be able to help her work through some of this stuff.

This might be the issue that best demonstrates the importance of Barbara Gordon in Cass's story, the key role she plays balancing out Bruce's influence. these interpersonal relationships and how they feed off each other - Cass/Bruce/David, Cass/Bruce/Barbara, they're the core of what makes Cass's book and Cass as a character so compelling.

......

Side note: I've waffled in the past over how much crediting to put at the start of each of these posts in terms whether to include inker and/or colorist even though I rarely comment on those issues. I'm wondering if I should also list the editor each time, as they also potentially have a pretty big say over what does or doesn't end up in the books, and keeping track of changing editors might be informative as to other changes in direction, or might show why some of Cass's side appearances work better than others?

For the Record, at least as far as her solo book goes, the editor as of issue 17 is Michael Wright, who took over from Dennis O'Neil starting in issue 14, the one where Bruce moved Cass out of Barbara's clock tower and into her own cave. Dennis O'Neil had been the editor of the book since issue 3 and co-edited issue 2 with Darren Vincenzo, who was the editor for issue 1. I think Michael Wright stays as editor for the rest of Cass's Batgirl run, save maybe for some one off exceptions here or there? So noting editors would be more for the sake of guest appearances.

There's also the issue of who's in charge at DC. As of issue 17 that's still Jenette Khan as President and Editor in Chief, but eventually Dan DiDio takes over, and it'll be worth noting when that happens. The fandom tends to assign him a lot of the blame for 'ruining' Cass's character, but as mentioned a few times already they also tend to date that downturn purely to the end of her ongoing title and heel turn in 'One Year Later.' I claim the decline started setting in much sooner then that, but I don't remember whether it started before or after DiDio's tenure as EIC began.

That's still a long way off from where this blog currently is, though.

Thankfully.

[rickmoya]

the books I read in 2024

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (1)

Digital Cosmopolitans, Ethan Zuckerman

Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson (2)

How To Take Over the World, Ryan North

To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever, Will Blythe

Hark! A Vagrant/Step Aside, Pops, Kate Beaton (3)

Making a Point: The Persnickety Story of English Punctuation, David Crystal

Ducks, Kate Beaton

Operation Do-Over, Gordon Korman

Fight Club 2: The Tranquility Gambit, Chuck Palahniuk and Cameron Stewart (4)

The Fort, Gordon Korman

Romeo and/or Juliet, Ryan North

Turning Japanese, MariNaomi

Abroad in Japan, Chris Broad

Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline (5)

Interesting Stories for Curious People, Bill O'Neill (6)

Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing, Kenneth Partridge

Swamp Story, Dave Barry

The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel

Blood, Bones and Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton

Flavorama, Arielle Johnson

Welcome to St. Hell, Lewis Hancox

Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, Henry Lien (7)

The City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau

Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

Out Of My Mind, Sharon M. Draper

italics: read it before struck: unfinished

Maybe I just suck at reading now that I'm past 40? I don't know. The last few years I've been making excuses and padding out my list with rereads, but at some point you have to acknowledge the trends. My trend is fewer books. This might be the lowest number I've hit in any year since birth.

I also read ten years each of the webcomics Schlock Mercenary and Sluggy Freelance. Got to a point I hadn't read before, but not finished with either.

I did rotate some stock off my TBR shelf, at least. Not that you'd know to look at it — the shelf is as full as ever. Then again, at least four books up there are rereads, and three others are juv/YA. Maybe I'll make more progress in 2025.

Goals:

Ding 40. (I originally put 50, but, like, come on. Trend.)

At least 40% authors who are not white men. (I did OK there this year: 12/26, not counting the trans guy who is technically a white man.)

At least 10 books off the TBR.

----------------------------------------------

So. I've had this book on my TBR since college. (The first time.) I took a modernist English lit course where we read Ulysses and To the Lighthouse, and Mrs. Dalloway was one of the comparative important links, but after Joyce I wasn't gonna do it right away. I found my copy at a mega library sale around the time I graduated. Opened it several times over the last 25 years, but the stream-of-consciousness/internal-monologue style meant (for me) that I couldn't set it down and come back and remember what was going on. So finally I had a free day and read the whole thing in almost one go. (I technically didn't do this until July, but I attempted to do it during a day off in January, which is why it's first.)

Substitute teaching exposes me to a lot of teacher libraries. Sometimes during a prep period I can read stuff from them. For this book (which I'd heard of but never opened) I was covering a classroom that was empty for nearly four hours.

I started poring through Beaton's comics on her archived website. When I realized my library had two books of it in print, I checked those out for easier reading. This entry encompasses all of it.

It's a graphic novel! It's totally unnecessary! It gets way too meta (to the point that it acknowledges IN TEXT that it's too meta)!

If you feel like you need to read this, ask yourself: have I already read Ready Player One? If so, then ask: was my favorite part the constant Family Guy-style "memba this?" references. Because this is that, just with different fandoms.

My niece got me this one. It's like a book full of factoids or the beginnings of stories. Not immersive, but good for while waiting through piano lesson.

Another substituting library selection, about an alternate-universe Taiwan where the predominant mode of transportation/self-defense is ice skating. I had a prep, thought this is a stupid book and then read half of it before the day was over. So endearingly stupid, I checked it out of the public library to finish.

[solarishashernoseinabook]

Could you expand on what you said in a post about libraries about the big 5 publishers screwing over libraries in terms of digital lending rights?? I’ve not heard of that at *all* and im generally pretty caught up on publisher news, so I think theres a pretty big library-shaped hole in my sources lol

All righty, a couple disclaimers here. One, this is from a Canadian library perspective, so idk how well it applies to the US. Two, I don't work in the collections department at my library, so I'm basing this off what I remember from class years ago

(also clarifying that I'll be referring to ebooks and audiobooks collectively as digital books just to make it easier)

But in short, the Big Five publishers only very reluctantly put up with libraries having physical books, and one of the reasons they do that is because only one person can have a physical book at a time. Digital books, though? Why, if a library has a copy of one of those, hundreds of people could read it at a time! That's profits they're losing! How terrible!

But, well, selling to libraries is still a sale, so the companies sell to them but restrict it as much as possible. One, libraries pay much more for digital books than your average consumer. I don't have the exact number, but it's significantly higher. Two, unlike a physical book, which a library can have rebound if it's popular but hard to find, and which could conceivably last years if it's hardcover or paperback binding, digital books have severe limits on them. Maybe the library can only buy one "copy" of a digital book - i.e., only one patron can use it at a time. That digital copy artificially expires after 20 loans or 2 years, whichever comes first. Got a waitlist of 50 people waiting to read the latest Alexander McCall Smith book? Too bad! 30 of them are gonna have to go without! Do you have a moderately popular book by Danielle Steel, which gets borrowed every couple of months? Sorry! You've had it for two years, so it's gone now! Better buy a new copy!

Now, this is the case on digital platforms like Libby/Overdrive. Each digital book acts the same as a physical book, except that most of them go away after a certain amount of time. Certain public domain books might be a one-time buy for libraries, but for the most part, every loan, every week that goes by is chipping away at a digital book's life. Certain digital platforms - Hoopla, for example - have what's called "simultaneous use" policies - maybe you only have one ebook copy of a book by Agatha Christie, but every library patron can read it at once. The trade-off for this is that my library has to pay a certain amount for every person currently reading or listening to a book on Hoopla. We have a daily budget that can't be exceeded. Every week we field calls from people who, one afternoon, wanted to open up Hoopla, but were told they couldn't take out any books - because too many of my library's 40 000 active patrons had also decided to enjoy a book that day. And not every publisher even allows simultaneous use licenses, or they don't allow it on all of their titles

A final reminder to this very long post: please do not boycott Libby or Hoopla over this, I beg of you. Your libraries are pouring a lot of money into them because they're being used. Instead, put pressure on the big five publishers to make their digital books accessible, and vote in your municipal elections to get libraries more funding so we have more budget to put into those items. An easy way to increase your library's funding is just to spend a bit of time a week in there. Hang out with your friend for a few hours, just walk in and look at the shelves, or sit there and use their free wifi to play games on your phone. Digital books are here to stay, and libraries are important for getting those books into people's hands

[kryptonitecore]

Reread: Transformers: Hearts of Steel

Hearts of Steel had some interesting places to go and an attention-grabbing concept - Transformers in the age of steam. However, I don’t think the art always used that concept to its advantage and a lot of the designs ended up being quite generic. This was not helped by the fact that a number of the characters were made monotone, with grey being a very prevalent colour. Overall, the art, though not bad, seemed something of an afterthought, which was odd for a miniseries like this. The initial concept art for the series came from Ted McKeever, but three out of four issues were by Guido Guidi, and one of the issues was done by Antonio Vasquez and Luis Czerniawski - so perhaps this was a product of the concept being passed around a fair bit, for example some characters’ designs and colours change substantially between issues.

As for the time period, it’s not meant to be a realistic take and that might be for the best - Mark Twain and Jules Verne are palling around, John Henry shows up, etc. I’m not very knowledgeable about this period of American history, but I think this is going for more of a lighthearted, folkloric tone. I quite liked the book initially, as it seemed simple, but as if it was heading somewhere quickly. That impression soon started to wear off - the characters were flat and one-note and dialogue was blunt. A lot of the characters didn’t have much to do, including both Transformer characters and human characters, Bonaventure and Vanflet being good examples of this.

The pacing also seemed odd to me, as it made the whole mini-series seem like a non-event. I was reading a digital copy and hadn’t realised the comic was ending until I clicked onto the next page and there were the closing panels. There was very little build-up,and therefore I think the climax of the story slipped past me without my even realising that it was supposed to be the highpoint. 

As intriguing as the central concept is, I can’t honestly recommend this one. Alright, back to the Spotlights!

[everygame]

Well, I absolutely did not expect it to take an entire year from exp. 2600 to the next issue, but such is life, honestly. Either way I'm terrifically pleased to announce that exp. 2601 will be debuting this weekend as part of Spring Online Canzine 2024, Canada's premiere zine festival running April 13th to 21st. 

This issue covers the eleven games released for the Atari 2600 in 1978, with essays on Space Invaders and the year 1978 to provide context. Even if you're not particularly interested in the Atari 2600, I think there's a lot in here for anyone interested in video games and their history, so I hope you'll check it out.

As with the first issue, exp. 2601 is being published in a signed, numbered limited edition of 52 and I'm also making it available as a PDF and ebook for people who don't want a little object, but still want something to read on an iPad or a Kindle with a bit more focus than they'd give to a webpage.

I am opening pre-orders here today, in advance of Canzine, so I can announce the issue with enough time to ensure subscribers know about it and are aware that they automatically receive 35% off in our ko-fi shop (including on new issues.) It's just $1 per month to become a subscriber, and you'll also get new articles a week early (as well as regular exclusive articles.) Physical copies will be sent out in the last week of April, with digital copies arriving as soon as Canzine begins.

In addition, and not to bury the lede here, for the first time since 2020 my ebook collecting the best of the original run of exp., exp. negatives, is also available for pre-order today, and will be on sale during, and only during, Spring Online Canzine 2024 (to reiterate: April 13th-21st).

If you don't have any of my available digital publications (exp. 2600, 2601, and negatives) I have also made a bundle of all three available for pre-order with a $2 discount for all (and if you're a subscriber, that stacks with your discount!)

I'd like to thank everyone reading this for their support across the years and let you know that there are more exciting things in the pipeline for exp. this year. Did you know it's been ten years since I started Every Game I've Finished? That fact might become important...

[sartorialadventure]

hello! i recently thrifted a fashion plate from la mode illustrée, with no information or date with it. i can’t find this specific print anywhere online, either. do you have any tips for figuring it out/ideas of where to look? based off of what i’ve read on the fashion, i’m thinking it’s late 1850s-early ‘60s, but i’m not sure. (i’m also pretty sure it isn’t a later reprint.) thank you!! i love what you do here 💖

So unfortunately, I am not a fashion historian and therefore I don't know. I don't have any access to fashion libraries or subscriptions to digital collections. There are a number of places online that have scanned copies of plates or issues of La Mode Illustree (example: Internet Archive, 4 of 6 issues of LMI for 1866). Obviously, it'll be a pain in the butt paging through all of the ones they have for a ten-year-or-more period (and they might not even have the one you want), but it's the best I can do.

Does anybody else have any research ideas they can share?

[gaymortagokat]

Character Analysis: Reyna

Part 2A: Analysis Based on Other’s Chapters

Intro:

Just as a reminder/disclaimer while reading, the page numbers seen below may not line up with a physical copy of the books since I got them based on my digital copies. It may feel a bit essay-like, so sorry in advance for that it helps me be more precise with my words. And for obvious reasons everything below this paragraph contains spoilers to Heroes of Olympus books. If you haven’t read part 1 you can here .

The goal of this section is to go into more detail of what specific characters have noticed about Reyna and what it says about her character as well as go into a bit of their relationship. It will stay in timeline order as much as possible unless there are quotes that support the same idea. Anything mentioned in the above sections will not be gone over again in this section unless it relates to a character’s observations of Reyna in a way that wasn’t already stated.

Jason

Jason is easily one of the most important people in Reyna’s life. This section will explore their connection from Jason’s perspective because it is the only detailed perspective of it that is available in the books. This section will also reveal information that Jason knows about Reyna, though it may be incomplete.

First what will be explored is the never would have happened romance between them. This almost couple is something that from Jason’s perspective wouldn't have happened. In The Lost Hero as his memory slowly returns all Jason remembers is Reyna’s name and that she might have felt the same way about her that he feels about Piper (page 409). By the time The Mark of Athena Jason remembers more. He remembers a trip to Charleston where Reyna spoke to what he thought was a ghost and was shaken up about it after, wouldn’t tell him what happened,and as he says “Reyna never acted the same around me after that,” -Reyna would later have her one perspective on this conversation which will be explored later (The Mark of Athena page 168). In this quote Jason might not know/remember how Reyna felt about him but he did notice how she started treating him differently. 

Earlier in the book, he does remember how he feels about Reyna saying “It’s just…I never felt that way toward Reyna,” on page 122 of The Mark of Athena. Which leads to the next section. His guilt.

In The House of Hades we learn that Jason feels quite guilty for what he had done to Reyna. In short, he feels guilty for two things: 1) letting “her believe they had a future together” instead of shutting her down and 2) he disappeared leaving her to run camp alone and when he returned and abruptly left he left her to deal with a war (page 182). His guilt about point 2 is further explored on page 313 where he says “She needed his help. If he turned his back on her…someone like Octavian could take over and ruin everything Jason did love about New Rome. Could he be so selfish as to leave?” (The House of Hades). His guilt doesn’t show that their friendship could end, in fact, at the very least it shows how much he cares about her. 

Even after Jason’s actions, his perspective shows that they still trust and believe in each other. Shortly after fleeing New Rome in The Mark of Athena, Jason suggests contacting Reyna knowing that she would believe what they have to say (page 111). In The House of Hades during Jason’s dream where he sees Reyna in New York Reyna says “If they are sailing for Greece, I know a place Jason will stop,” showing how she knows Jason (187). This idea of trust continues on page 200 where Jason, having gone exactly where Reyna said he would, states how much he trusts that Reyna will find the note he is leaving for her (The House of Hades). As for how much belief in Reyna Jason has, he says “I’d never bet against Reyna. If anyone can make it, she will,” (The House of Hades 191). Based off this line, despite everything in the last 8 months Jason knows he can still count on Reyna to be there for him and by extension the mission. 

Jason’s point of view for the most part demonstrates his relationship with Reyna, but in The House of Hades at least two important details about Reyna are revealed. 1) “Nobody ever used Reyna’s full name” and 2) “she hated telling anyone what it was” (page 184). The reason behind wanting to use her full name is that Reyna see’s it as the name of her childhood self and she abandoned the name when she left San Juan, Puerto Rico where she grew up (The House of Hades page 184). There are many possible reasons for doing this. First thing to understand is: in the Percy Jackson Universe/ the Riordanverse, names are said to contain power. This is generally in reference to the gods and titans as stated by Mr. D. in The Lightning Thief. In real life, a person’s name is their identity. 

Abandoning a name does a couple things for a person. Choosing what to be called (ie what name a person wants people to use) means that person is taking control of their identity. Abandoning a name also creates a separation between then and now. Both of these things can exist at the same time and separately from one another. At the time of The House of Hades we have nothing that suggests why Reyna might have abandoned her childhood name, and we won’t have that information until The Blood of Olympus. This set of facts will be revisited again later through Reyna’s perspective and Nico’s.

[shadowmaat]

Enough already

I see we've reached the point in the Eye Ay Discourse where we're now vilifying Neil Gaiman and trying to drive him off the internet/make him commit suicide. What a great look that is, gang. /facepalm

Oh, but it isn't ACTUALLY about whether or not he supports the Eye Ay, of course. No, it's about that cultish obsession with sex and "wrong" depictions of it. That means that attacking him is the only MORALLY PURE answer.

Great gods above and below, some of you people are an honest menace to society. Head empty, only hate.

Neil isn't perfect and has expressed some troubling views in the past, but A) "Past" isn't necessarily "Present" and B) that still doesn't mean you should tell him to kill himself you absolute fucking monsters.

Some of you REALLY need to get it through your terroristic little minds that pedophilia (CSEM) does not include works of fiction. The dictionary definition doesn't include fiction. The legal definition (at least in the US where most of you fearmongers live) doesn't include fiction. Writing and drawing stuff that makes you personally uncomfortable is NOT ILLEGAL and sure as fuck shouldn't be used as some kind of moral judgement on the creator's personality. Some of y'all just need to spew hatred and lies to make yourselves feel better.

And SPEAKING of legal definitions, it might behoove a few people to actually READ and COMPREHEND the judge's ruling on the Eye Ay case. Because if you read through it you'll see that the Eye Ay was clearly and blatantly in the wrong. There's no question of it and some of the excuses/reasonings they tried to use in their defense were frankly ridiculous and hold no basis in the legal reality of the world. And given that one "reason" they gave is that copying books to digital is an example of Fair Use, we should be damn glad the judge shot that nonsense down. That's a whole damn can of graboids that shouldn't be loosed upon the world.

If you can't accept that an organization can perform a vital and necessary service and still be wrong about some things, that's on you and your rabid idolization of a black-and-white universe. The Eye Ay fucked up and fucked up big. And it's a genuine shame because they do indeed accomplish a lot of good and vital things, but this wasn't one of them.

TECHNICALLY even the one-to-one loaning ratio was illegal (and clearly so according to law) but I think everyone was willing to look the other way until they decided to strip that away and allow unlimited downloads regardless of number of copies "owned." That made it a serious enough issue that Big Pub, who are a festering nest of diseased vipers and pestilence, felt a need to step in. Which is how we wound up where we are, with a good nonprofit having to pay for their mistake and the internet rallying to crucify an author who was previously considered one of our own. The fact that John Green's name is being used as a rallying cry to incite the internet mob is nothing but horrifying. Some of you have no shame and no moral backbone.

You're allowed to think the Eye Ay should be able to continue loaning endless copies of books. Just stop pretending that it's legally permissible.

You're allowed to think that people who write sexually explicit stories involving children, unwilling participants, animals, etc. are wrong to do so. Just stop pretending that fiction is illegal.

I'd also advise you to reconsider the idea that people who write about "sick" things must enjoy/perform "sick" things themselves. Maybe even pay attention to how those kind of "arguments" are also being used to describe LGBT+ and CRT content by nationalist/religious extremists. Are those really the kind of people (and beliefs) you want others to associate you with? Are they the kind of people you want to be? Clearly, if you want to drive someone to their death, you are.

Shameful. Stay the hell away from me.

[ninja-muse]

May seems to have stretched itself. I measure time partly by books read, and several of the books I read this month took me more than a week, which is unusual but non-fiction and classics will do that. This was balanced, of course, by me proving my ability to read an entire book within 48 hours, which happened a couple times, and so May also felt kind of liminal?

I read two books off my TBR shelves this month: Evelina and The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery is technically a reread, though, since I was assigned it in university. I picked it up because I wasn't feeling historical or cozy or queer or any of my other normal reading moods and I remembered it being the right sort of bonkers. Which it was, but I'd forgotten how much Margery goes on about God and his plans for her and how much more pious she is compared to everyone else. It got a little wearing, and I don't think I'd have liked her much if I'd met her. But I'm glad I reread it!

(My current reads are also brought to you by not knowing what to read next. Thank goodness that I have a stockpile of 200+ unread books at any given time.)

You will also notice there was yet another book haul this month. In my defense, I had a gift card and company access to a discount book supplier, and then my boss got excited about the James Patterson book and wanted everyone to have a copy. Unsure whether I'll actually read it but hey.

I also did pretty well with my physical ARC haul, in that I broke even, and had a DNF. The Book That Wouldn't Burn was more grimdark than I was expecting and failed to hook me on characters, plot, or world. Alas, because it was recced by a coworker. (The other ARCs hauled were digital. I need to get to at least two of them in June so stay tuned.)

In other news, I attended not one, but two cultural events on my own this month! I used to do this more regularly but then 2020 happened. It's only in the last year or so that I've really started going out to things again, and I'm not actually sure if I'd gone to anything alone until now. In any case, the history lecture and the symphony concert failed to do me in, so I might keep going.

Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Evelina - Frances Burney

Evelina travels to London and learns that the only thing more distressing than suitors is her newly discovered family. Inspired Austen.

9/10

warning: misogynist society, xenophobia (against French people)

off my TBR shelves

The Demon of Unrest - Eric Larson

The story of the six months leading up to the American Civil War, complete with weak governments, echo chambers, and political grandstanding.

9/10

warning: racism, slavery, war

reading copy

The Butcher of the Forest - Premee Mohamed

Veris is ordered into the north woods to find the Tyrant’s lost children. Inside are tricks and monsters. She has one day.

8/10

🇨🇦

library book

Baking Imperfect - Lottie Bedlow

A cookbook that encourages bakers to embrace mistakes and imperfections.

8/10

library book

The Teller of Small Fortunes - Julie Leong

Tao is a travelling fortune teller content with small fortunes, but she can’t help being drawn into bigger things when she meets a thief and a mercenary seeking a lost child. Out in November.

7/10

Chinese-coded protagonist, Chinese-coded minor characters, Chinese-American author

reading copy

The Mars House - Natasha Pulley

A ballet dancer fleeing climate disaster finds himself a second-class citizen on Mars. Fortunately—or not—a xenophobic politician needs a husband to raise their polling numbers.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (queer), 🏳️‍🌈 major character (ungendered), major character with prosthetic leg and PTSD, major Indo-Martian character, largely ungendered society, largely Chinese society

warning: xenophobia, police brutality, riots

library book

The Forest of Vanishing Stars - Kristen Harmel

A woman surviving in the Polish wilderness puts her knowledge to use aiding Jews escaping the Nazis.

7/10

largely Jewish cast, author with Jewish heritage

warning: Nazis, antisemitism, the Holocaust, kidnapping, death of child and parental figures

library ebook

The Honey Witch - Sydney J. Shields

Marigold becomes her grandmother’s apprentice as honey witch, even though it means never finding love. Unfortunately, there’s a very pretty woman in her new town who doesn’t believe in magic.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (bisexual), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (lesbian, pansexual), Black secondary character

library ebook

The Monstrous Kind - Lydia Gregovic

Merrick returns to her family estate following the death of her father. She expects to take up the fight against the fog and the Phantoms (and her sister), but stranger things are afoot. Out in September.

6.5/10

dark-skinned secondary characters

warning: child abuse, fire

reading copy

Picture Book

A Crocodile Should Never Skip Breakfast - Colleen Larmour Crocodile’s late for his job as a ferry so he skips breakfast—but then he gets hungry while carrying animals… Out in June.

Reread

The Book of Margery Kempe - Margery Kempe

The memoirs of a 15th-century Englishwoman who is sometimes proud, sometimes pious, and definitely determined.

warning: marital rape, antisemitism, violence and torture, possibly mental illness stigma

off my non-TBR shelves

DNF

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn - Mark Lawrence

A girl ripped from her desert home and a young man trapped in an enormous library find themselves in the crosshairs of destiny.

library ebook

Currently reading

A Bouquet From France - Wilfred Thorley, translator

A collection of French poetry from Middle Ages to the 1920s.

off my TBR shelves

Steampunk - Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, editors

A collection of steampunk stories, old and new.

warning: misogyny, child abuse

off my TBR shelves

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts. The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 9 + 2 Yearly total: 51 Queer books: 2 Authors of colour: 2 Books by women: 8 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1 Classics: 2 Off the TBR shelves: 2 Books hauled: 4 ARCs acquired: 6 ARCs unhauled: 3 DNFs: 1

January February March April

[decadentworld]

Hi, thank you for reaching out. It means a lot to me especially because this is something I enjoy doing. I like learning about people and their behaviors and their opinions. I have a lifestyle that makes it complicated to reach out to others and have honest discourse.

I ask very open ended questions. Some of the questions may feel like they have little direction on how to answer them but I hope to get some great results with them.

In person I am really friendly, but for some reason I can come across kind of robotic on the computer. I believe the main reason for that is I became a customer support agent and use to answer emails from people all day. My literal requirement was to answer 100 emails to all sorts of emails so my typing became very...tense. I am unlearning some habits so that I may have my writing reflect my personality better. If something comes across cold please know that I don't mean to offend or trigger. You are free to not answer any questions that result in that emotion and I want to apologize if anything I say upsets anyone. It may be helpful to read through all of the questions before responding or only choosing to answer ones that you read and instantly want to rant about. I want whatever answers you have to give. Don't hold back on opinion or page numbers :)

If you want to be anonymous I am A-Okay with that friend. I would still like you to answer the questions honestly. Please leave out any information that you feel would unveil you mask.

So on to the questions.

Would you be willing to share a little background about yourself? I am interested in what you would share when asked to describe yourself in terms of a person being interviewed about art. What background information do you think relevant to this interview?

Do you do art purely as a hobby or work or a mixture of both? If you do sell your art what is the price range of your work? You can be general here. I am looking for brackets of what type of artists I am working with.

What type of mediums do you work in? Do you stick to certain genres or themes? Are there any the frustrate you but you still enjoy the process and end result?

What compels you to work on art?

Do you have a process in how you get yourself set up to work on art?

When do you consider a piece done?

Do you seek out other artists to befriend? How do you interact with other artists?

What hot topics are making you excited in the art world?

Is there anything new in the art world you would like to share with other people?

Do you consider the environmental impact that art has on the world? This can be in general or your art specifically. Please consider that if you are a digital artist you have an impact with electricity types and server usage.

These next set of questions might trigger those sensitive to AI.

What is your opinion on AI?

If AI is here to stay, do you think there will ever be a happy medium between AI usage and artists?

It has been suggested that some companies use AI but hire artists to train them. If a company approached you with a business model where you create assets for a hypothetical project but then wanted to use those assets to also train an AI "artist" so they could continue to create with your style, what would your response be?

What if you were paid royalties? Does your answer change?

I may come up with more questions but I am going to start off with these. If you would like to be contacted with more questions for possible future editions of this please let me know. If you would like to be tagged in the article I write or DMed a copy please let me know that information as well. Again, thank you for taking the time out of your day to participate in something as random as this.

Helloooo! I’m so glad you reached back. I absolutely did not see your writing as cold or robotic at all! I actually thought it was very well articulated and straightforward, which I appreciate because sometimes I cannot understand questions very well :-)

Q & A time! (warning for some triggering topics)

Would you be willing to share a little background about yourself? I am interested in what you would share when asked to describe yourself in terms of a person being interviewed about art. What background information do you think relevant to this interview?

I think a person’s background is almost 100% of what makes up their person, isn’t it? My upbringing was very violent and I feel like this has influenced a lot of my art, be it the process, the results, and the themes or topics chosen. I was exposed to violence and thinly-disguised neglect as a child, and I turned to NSF-W and gore media as a sort of escapism when I was as young as 7. I can recognize now that that had a negative impact in my way of thinking. That combined with me knowing I was queer on the down-low from a young age didn’t really help my situation, so I would lash out in specific behaviors. I was the weird kid and I’m still a little bit convinced I might have some low level of autism, but I’ve never been one to self-diagnose. I was raised Evangelical but to my own shock I was never really one to Bible-thump onto others, even with how easy it was to fall down that alt-right rabbit hole. I think Tumblr had a lot to do with that. If I hadn’t found it in the moment I did, I’m afraid to think I’d be one of those right-winger youths we have nowadays. I went through the religion resentment phase for a long time but surprisingly I’ve found faith once more a couple of years ago, in a critical way of course. I love God but not the church, and I feel like most Evangelicals have lost the plot long ago.

I started drawing at a very young age, probably before I even had a conscience. I went through many phases. One of the most influential ones in my life was fantasy art, specifically dragonsonas. I remember it as being longer than it probably was, though. I went through the manga/anime phase. I went through the typical vent art phase, the literal one in terms of my then works being ‘what you see is what I mean’ pictures: edgy, gory, ‘I want to die’ messages all over the page, etc. I think from the moment I was like 16 and onwards I started focusing more on realistic human art. And I think my art might reflect my progress as a person in a way? I’ve evolved backwards, but not in a necessarily bad way. When I was young I acted an adult because I was forced to grow up too soon, but now I’m 25 and I act more like a kid because I’ve started finding the whimsy in life. I think my art might reflect that because I now draw the things that make me happy, not the ones that make me sad.

Do you do art purely as a hobby or work or a mixture of both? If you do sell your art what is the price range of your work? You can be general here. I am looking for brackets of what type of artists I am working with.

I do it as both a hobby and a side job, hoping one day for it to be more like a main job. The thing is I’m not famous enough yet lol, and I am open to suggestions of websites where you can find those kinds of work more easily.

My ranges vary wildly because I work with different styles, some of which will take me a lot longer than others. For reference my least expensive style starts at 40 USD but in a very near future I’m going to open a new, more accessible tier that’ll probably start at 25 USD. There is no definite maximum in the range I work because that will be defined by what the client wants me to do, but for reference my more expensive styles can start at +100 USD; the priciest thing I’ve been asked to do was 460 USD and it took me a bit less than a month. I’d work faster if I lived on my own though because I take so long due to all the things I’m made to do for others (a life I didn’t choose).

What type of mediums do you work in? Do you stick to certain genres or themes? Are there any the frustrate you but you still enjoy the process and end result?

I do all my work digitally, but a lot of the time I try for it to emulate a traditional medium, such as making a semi-realistic illustration look like an old oil painting. I used to work on paper and pencil but I found a lot more agility in digital mediums since I can’t really ctrl Z or distort a pencil drawing lol.

I typically like to draw humans and humanoids mostly because it’s what I’ve had more training in. I’m also getting more interested in interior design due to a better understanding of Blender and how you can use it to easily lay out the basis of an interior. As for themes I’m not really sure if there’s any recurring one. I guess if you could count NSF-W as a genre then that’s one I aim at more, lol.

I think any style or theme could be frustrating enough if you get to a tricky part you can’t advance in. I find that mostly one of my styles, which tries to emulate a “poster” or “Marvel comic” drawing is the more difficult one since it’s hard to place a black shadow in a way that doesn’t eat at important parts of the drawing, but the hard-worked result is what makes it worth it. In terms of genre or theme I think I’m kind of fried if I have to be creative and think up intricate designs, for fantasy characters and landscapes alike. I feel like my creativity in general started drying out some years ago.

What compels you to work on art?

Usually fandom and specific existing characters. I feel like that’s the one thing I’ve always looked forward to, since I was really young and found fandoms such as the Avengers. I’m not sure if it’s the want for a sense of belonging, the need to see an idea on paper, or both. I’ve had maladaptive daydreaming for the longest time, thinking about my favorite characters/fictional crushes as an escapism, and this is probably one of the ways I’ve had to turn that into actual scenarios and stories, which is why I also started writing at a young age. It’s stupid to me when people say fanart and fanfiction aren’t valid forms of media, because I think they’re a valid, low-stakes outlet you can have, both to give tribute to your fictional muses, and to improve your art in a way that no one can really critique, since you’re doing it for free and for the love of those characters.

Do you have a process in how you get yourself set up to work on art?

If it’s on a topic or a character/s that I don’t know then I’ll start looking for a lot of references, both appearance and information, especially if this is a commission, just in the case I’m being made to draw something against my terms of service unbeknownst to me. Actually, I’ll look for references even if I know the characters or subjects perfectly, because you never know if taking your last memory of them as reference can turn into a ‘broken telephone’ sort of situation.

When the general idea is laid down in my mind, I’ll open up Blender and set up a scene with OpenSource 3D models. Sometimes this might be time-consuming instead of just starting with a sketch but I find this helpful in order to find the perfect angle and ‘camera’ rotation, something that would be a lot harder to do from zero. After this the process will follow according to the style chosen and will most likely involve sketching 100% of the times.

When do you consider a piece done?

This varies a lot from work to work, but the timing is usually long, because I’m too much of a perfectionist. There’ll be a point where I think the piece can’t be improved any more, and at that point I’ll probably distance myself from my computer for some hours or maybe even a day and come back to the piece, to see it with fresh eyes. If the style is similar to a sketch then the process to the finish line won’t be that much of a problem because it’s a sketch after all, but I’ll pour all my effort when it comes to more complex pieces like a semi-realistic. I think my signature has the final word in it; after I’m done with all the possible FX and filters, when I put it in a piece it’s like putting the bow on a giftbox, it gives me a sense of finality.

Do you seek out other artists to befriend? How do you interact with other artists?

I have to admit that I don’t usually seek up people with the purpose of looking at their art or for them to look at mine. If I find art I like it’s probably because I got it recommended on a page or I was looking at specific fandom tags and a piece from that fandom caught my attention. But when I find artists I make sure to interact with their works and leave them nice words.

What hot topics are making you excited in the art world?

To be honest I don’t follow much of what’s ‘hot’, I usually just do my thing or what clients want to see. I’ve been tempted once or twice to recreate art trends just for the clout but I can never connect with them fully, I feel like it’s too artificial of me. But never say never because I might find one I like in the future.

Is there anything new in the art world you would like to share with other people?

Not exactly new but for those who use Paint Tool SAI and don’t know, there’s a SAI 2 version that’s been out since 2020 and it has a lot more cool features like rulers, perspective grids, Bezier curves in linework layers and more.

Do you consider the environmental impact that art has on the world? This can be in general or your art specifically. Please consider that if you are a digital artist you have an impact with electricity types and server usage.

Not really, unless we’re talking about AI, which I’ll state down below. In terms of what it can do for the world then I think there’s a lot of value in impact works that serve to bring awareness to environmental issues. I did a digital piece for a university assignment last year about the desecration of wetlands and it really stuck to a few of my relatives who weren’t even aware of that issue.

In terms of how digital work affects electricity, I would say it doesn’t, much. The amount of energy a person uses to draw something in their tablet can’t possibly equate to how much electricity big corporations use for their own nefarious purposes, and I feel like this is probably something they’ll use to guilt-trip us into lowering our own usage, just like they do with plastic straws for contamination.

These next set of questions might trigger those sensitive to AI.

What is your opinion on AI?

I hate it, and I can’t even resignedly accept it like I did with NFTs. One of the things I hate the most about it is how it’s changed the vision of non-artist snobs, who are now like “I could have easily made that in 5 seconds with Midjourney,” when you show them an amazing piece made by a real artist. It’s like they said: in the future we’ll build robots to do our jobs so we can make art, but it’s now the future and they’ve built robots that make our art and we still have to do our jobs.

I wouldn’t hate it so much if it was only public domain paintings that were fed into it, or drawings from people who were paid and consented to it, but they had to go and steal hard-work from people and they still have the gall to call those amalgamations ‘theirs’.

I think it won’t stay for too long, though. One of the deterrents of AI even snobs can’t deny is how much electricity and water it consumes. Not even a session, but a single command consumes as much as dumping a bottle of water on the floor or something like that. Over time whoever runs those servers won’t be able to, anymore.

If AI is here to stay, do you think there will ever be a happy medium between AI usage and artists?

I personally don’t think so. I think any self-respecting artist wouldn’t want to get associated with that. Some people try to start the argument that for example being against AI is ‘ableist’ because AI helps people with physical disabilities with the process of their art, except it’s not like that. I’ve seen people without any limbs drawing with their mouth and while I believe comparison is the mind-killer, I think this argument is just plain stupid, because AI isn’t helping you. It’s creating for you, and that’s what has people so angry. It’s not a tool, like 3D posing programs to get pose references, or automatic perspective grids to make the process faster, or the likes of those. I don’t think there’s any value in just stating your idea and just letting something else create it for you, unless it’s to hire a real artist who can see your vision and who you can bounce ideas off of.

It has been suggested that some companies use AI but hire artists to train them. If a company approached you with a business model where you create assets for a hypothetical project but then wanted to use those assets to also train an AI "artist" so they could continue to create with your style, what would your response be?

No, I don’t think I will. I know that styles don’t ‘belong’ to a person in particular, but regardless of that, like I said, I don’t think any real artist would want to go through that. It just serves to perpetuate the idea of AI ever staying for good.

What if you were paid royalties? Does your answer change?

As much as I need money and as tentative as the idea could be, I wouldn’t, because it would be short-lived if I did. You get a hefty paycheck from a place like Outlier.ai for training their machine baby but have to walk out of it knowing you’d be appropriately ostracized by your fellow artists if your name ever came out of that site. And when the money runs out, what self-respecting client would want to hire you after knowing that?

[dashawfrostart]

This... Month? In "Time & Again" #20: Die Herausforderungen des Schreibens 📚 - und mehr

Here, I thought I'm finally coming back with some truly awesome news quite shortly - but alas, it turns out it's been roughly a month. Sounds like the frequency of my overly giant posts is rigorously dropping... But I intend to let it simply flow, following its own pace, so I write whenever. I have probably already mentioned that writing doesn't always go buttery smooth for me (and I'm pretty sure I said that somewhere before; it's not just the title of this post signifies that). If the posts do not form in my head - then I simply don't write, and I don't force the process either. The spark is very, very important when creating.

But enough of digression, let's get straight to the business! First things first!!! And the news is truly fab!!!

Chapters 1, 2 and 3.1. of "Time & Again" now exist in the physical world!!! 🥳🥂

This is so cool, I cannot contain myself!!! 🤪 This is a very odd and somewhat awkward feeling, to hold your own book in your hands. Back in the day, I started working on it as an exclusively digital release - and yet, I designed it (just in case!) as a book almost right away, with the covers, inner artworks, and the proper page count that was suitable for physical printing, if need be, although without the bleed areas.

Well, turned out the "if need be" situation happened in the end. And after all, it's just very nice to have a physical copy of your own work on hand... Well, because I'm an old-school person and I love paper books. Once the entire story is done, I will definitely prepare and order a hardcover copy just for myself. And if the local (and beyond local) readers so desire, I'll print some for them, too. But that is just a potential plan for the future consideration 😁 Right now, the succulently depressing Chapter 6 is waiting for me.

Preparing it for the physical printing was a bit of a struggle - the topic I already mentioned in one of the previous posts. I have spent a month working on all of that, plus refining some little things and adding "Notes, Commentaries & Hints" section to each one of the chapters. Ordering prints, unfortunately, was also a struggle, in an odd way.

But I succeeded. And now I am very happy.

Please note that I also added a QR code that leads to the landing page with all my art links and socials for everybody to explore. That was also yet another one little thing I've worked hard on for a while last month. It even has a link to my Doomworld profile 😁 *a happy smiling and spinning cacodemon smiley should go here*

Now, I am ready for yet another one juicy announcement on today's agenda:

The script for Chapter 6 is finally done!!! Yaaaaaay!!!11!!1!1!!! 🥳🥂

Revisiting the fruits of my labour yesterday, I can say I did good. It made me happy. And that's saying something. Chapter 6 is going to be very, very wordy (thank you Lothar for thinking non-stop). 19 pages with approximately 12500 words sure will make a big impression on some readers, I'm certain... However, a large part of that whooping page number is actually commentary only. But there's still a little more reading than in any average previous chapter. Now, off it goes directly to my editor-in-chef for the proofread. Which means that incredibly soon I will finally be able to start working on the page templates for the actual release. Excited. Chapter 6 is going to be highly experimental and daring. ... and unbearably dark, too. Darker than Chapter 5.

Returning back to our aforementioned topic of the writings, as well as the ultimate torments and tortures of the process, I must share something that you might find interesting to clarify the situation - or at least entertaining to some extent. Yet again: writing does not always go smooth for me. In the previous post I have shared my fears and concerns in regard to Chapter 6 in general, particularly the writing. Well, here's the full story for a disclosure: back in the day, approximately around the time I created Lothar (and shortly Jeanny), sometime in 2015, I attempted to write a large novel about the catpeople named Freia and Fjolvarr. That story has never been finished, and the problem with it happened to be, as I ponder now, the lack of self-organization of the author. Meaning, I could write separate notes for the story in multiple notebooks, because a lot of different ideas and thoughts would swirl in my imagination, so, like fools, I would try to save them all. Which was a good tactic - and I still think it is!.. The real problem, however, emerges from the depths of creative process later on, when it's time to stitch everything together into a logical and consecutive narration. I ended up with a lot of parts that were very difficult to tie together. Usually, when I used to write my text-only stories, I went with the flow and let the logic of the characters' conversations circulate naturally - and in most cases, it yielded great result. But with the things written split in parts right from the start, finding the right chain link to link them all together into a naturally flowing conversation was... a nightmare to say the least. Perhaps I was not persistent enough, or maybe the amount of work was a little too much, for that story was supposed to be, well, at least 200 pages in total (I approximate), therefore there as a lot of unrefined material to work with. As for "Time & Again", I definitely didn't want it to die in a swamp of creation that went awry. "Time & Again" bears ENORMOUS importance to me. I could not simply let it disappear into nothingness, because that would've been easily the most disappointing thing in my life. By the time I sat down to get to finishing up and polishing the script in July, there were indeed parts of the dialogues and Lothar's delirious monologues that required connection links. I cannot really say that I dreaded working on it. But I had fear that it might end up being as unfinished as the aforementioned catpeople story. This time I was aware of the weaknesses and failings of my previous, almost 10-year-old outdated approach. So I was ready to embrace a potentially tremendous amount of works that was waiting for me.

And I did really good this time!

Have I ever told you that narratology interest me very much? Narratology classes were something I've never taken. The same with psycholinguistics and the its lesser known, more targeted subdivision called ethnopsycholinguistics. And now I feel like I have missed out on INCREDIBLY MUCH. For a language nerd such as myself, it's shameful. But nothing's impossible (am I, like, in the mood for Depeche Mode quotes today or what?..), and there are lots of books available on the above mentioned topics, so I am not sad one bit. I love sciences 🤓 And I am always up for self-education (basically almost everything I've learnt very willingly was thanks to self-education alone).

I thought I wanted to mention some other fun topic, but I no longer remember what it was. That's alright; chances are by the time I decide to return to make another post, it will shape itself a tad better anyway. So I'll save my currently improperly shaped thought for later.

See you soon! 👋 I really gotta pick up the slack and start posting more frequently 😅

[woundedheartwithin]

I'm kinda hoping that Tango Gameworks reforms under a new name outside of Bethesda/Microsoft with a good chunk of the employees. I know that would mean they wouldn't necessarily be able to work on past IPs. But the Evil Within games are reasonably well liked in terms of horror titles, I really loved Ghostwire Tokyo and Hi Fi Rush didn't necessarily sell badly - it just didn't happen to sell the same sort of numbers as say Call of Duty or something like that. In terms of a middling "AA" studio, they could do those games. They seemed to only be closed because they weren't selling AAA numbers on AA games. Those middle of the road games between Indie and AAA are important to.

I hear you, but unless Microsoft starts laying off Bethesda employees (which isn't unlikely but also isn't something I would wish on anyone), I just don't see it happening. At the end of the day, GWT and EW were both cult hits, and in the case of Ghostwire, as much as I truly adore that game and think everyone should play it, I feel like I'm maybe being a bit generous there. For Evil Within... yeah, it's really not that great of a game (though it was incredibly fun), and I think the only reason it actually did garner a cult following was because of Shinji Mikami. So at the end of the day, since the remaining Tango devs were dispersed within Bethesda, I don't see them risking relative job security without someone like Mikami at the helm, and he actually left Tango last year before shit hit the fan. I'm not sure if he has anything in the works, but who knows, maybe he'll come up with yet another new studio and poach some of his old employees from Bethesda

But Hi-Fi Rush... I'm pissed about that one specifically because it is honestly a case study in how fucked the industry is right now. Matt Booty literally said, right after nuking Tango, that Xbox needed more small, successful titles. This comes right on the heels of Starfield, a highly anticipated and expensive ass AAA Bethesda Game Studios title led by Todd Howard, fucking bombing, mind you (which lol. Lmao even)

long winded, rambling, barely coherent rant below the cut

Now, it's difficult to gauge success in the gaming industry these days because the metric is changing as major subscription services become popular, but we do have some promising numbers on Hi-Fi Rush that should have set an expectation on how titles produced by Tango might have performed beyond it. The old metric on judging the success of a game was to look at how many copies had been sold. Well, now that GamePass and services like it are a thing, folks aren't buying as many games because it is cheaper to just pay the subscription fee and get a bunch of games packaged in, so companies are now looking at number of players, as well

I wanna stop here and say that I am not an expert on this. I know a lot because I read a lot, but I'm not a consumer analyst and I'm not involved in the gaming industry in any meaningful way outside of being a consumer myself, so take all of this with a grain of salt

Anyway, let's look at Hi-Fi Rush's numbers. There aren't many concrete sources on this simply because Bethesda doesn't like to share their numbers unless they're staggering, but based on my cursory research, insiders and consumer analysts have estimated somewhere between 300,000 (Steam only) and 2 million (gross) copies sold. That's a huge discrepancy, and really not one that matters at the end of the day. It's unlikely that a great many people actually bought the game simply because there was no physical release (despite promises that one is coming), and the game was listed on GamePass the same day. Why pay $30 for one digital game when you can pay like $20 a month and get a bunch of digital games including Hi-Fi Rush (aside from the obvious downside of when it's inevitably rotated out and you can't play it anymore, but y'know)? People love to feel like they're making a good deal. But if you look at the number of players the game boasts total, it's a whopping 3 million, and that is confirmed. The current average number of players for the last 30 days according to Steam Charts (which we'll assume is roughly half of the player base) was 362 players, with the peak being 974. The all time peak for players at one time for Steam players was 6,043. Not fucking bad for a small game made by a niche studio that had little to no commercial campaigning, and that's just on one platform. I couldn't find any concrete numbers on the Xbox player base, but if we assume, again, that Steam makes up roughly half of Hi-Fi Rush players, then we see some impressive numbers.

So yeah, Matt Booty's right, Xbox, and indeed the entire gaming industry, needs small, quality titles made by small, dedicated dev teams. That's the heart and soul of the industry, and with the closure of so many subsidiary studios under BethSoft and Microsoft, we're losing that. And a lot of that is hinging on Microsoft's insistence on holding onto permanent exclusive titles, despite both Sony and Nintendo loosening their stance on the same in recent years. Because exclusive titles that never release outside of the platform it was made for simply don't make as much money as cross platform titles by their very nature, and this strangles small studios.

For instance, let's look at Starfield. Starfield, which was highly anticipated since it was announced back in 2018, is a hilarious example of how big a fucking mistake it was for Microsoft to buy Bethesda (which I think they're learning). First of all, Bethesda has never been a good company. Their games are fun simply because they're broken as hell and oddly charming, and that makes them actually kinda good. But Starfield was literally billed as "Skyrim in space" since day one (seriously, Todd really said that). They spent a fuckton of money and time on this game and ended up with a piece of shit that had all the graphical errors of a BGS Elder Scrolls game or Fallout game and literally zero of the charm. And it's numbers, considering it is a AAA title developed by Bethesda's main studio, are abysmal.

Let's look at sales first. Now remember, this game DID get a physical release. Bethesda has not released the numbers on number of copies sold, but consumer analysts project about 2.5 million copies sold gross. Remember, analysts projected Hi-Fi Rush sold 2 million gross. Obviously the total player count is going to look very different from Hi-Fi Rush's because the game is more accessible and more well-known by virtue of being a AAA title. Starfield's player count for the last 30 days averaged 7,386, with the peak being 14,258, and an all time peak of 330,597. Again, these are Steam numbers only. I couldn't find a total player count. Since it's not fair to compare a AAA title to a small studio game, let's compare it to one of Bethesda's own blockbusters, indeed their most successful title to date: Fallout 4

So we all generally agree that Fallout 4 sucks, especially compared to previous installments, but it is a fun game and it performed extremely well. It's also not quite as overrated as Skyrim is (much as I love both, and I truly do, they both are overrated and terrible, I mean FO4 even has a tv adaptation now, which has probably skewed current numbers but y'know), and hasn't been rereleased a billion times over three generations of consoles, so I think it makes a decent point of comparison for a game the Toddster claimed would be Skyrim in space. Hey, if you're gonna make a claim like that, we might as well put it through its paces, right?

lmfao

Last Sunday, there were a grand total of 11,185 Starfield players, a game that isn't even a year old yet. It was outclassed by Fallout 4, a nine year old game, at 37,963 players. That's fucking hilarious.

Now let's look at Fallout 4's numbers. Fallout 4 sold 12 million copies in the first 24 hours after release, and has gone on to sell 25 million copies. For it's player count, according to Steam Charts, last 30 day average was 28,690 with a peak of 52,978, and an all time peak of 471,955.

Just for comparison's sake, let's look at Skyrim. Skyrim sold 7 million copies in the first week of release, with a total of about 60 million copies sold since 2011. For player count, according to Steam Charts, last 30 day average was 17,205 with a peak of 27,296, and an all time peak of 69,777

Here's that handy little comparison chart with Skyrim added

Like that's just embarrassing. But yeah, Bethesda was such a great acquirement wasn't it, Microsoft???

And before anyone says this isn't fair because Starfield's player base was reduced thanks to exclusivity, that's the fucking point, isn't it? Literally they are digging this grave themselves. They bought Bethesda because Skyrim is a so-called 10 year game and they thought they'd make a bunch of money and get to say they own one of the most well known studios in the industry, then cut their player base literally in half and expected Skyrim in space to do numbers

The point is, exclusivity obviously does large studios no favors, but it straight up destroys small studios, and we've seen that with Tango and Arcane. They never had a chance because this was always going to happen. Microsoft acquired a publisher because of its success and then willfully took away the exact thing that made it successful, and then they were surprised when they were no longer successful. And this is a bad environment for developers these days because job security is nonexistent, big publishers are choking their studios by imposing arbitrary deadlines on games that already don't have adequate budgets and then laying off employees before release so that they make more money (looking at you, Bioware and Rockstar), so I'd imagine forging on to create a new studio is the last thing on most developers' minds. They're gonna keep their heads down and hope they don't end up in the same boat as the Dragon Age devs, and the RDR2 devs before them, and countless others. The only way we'll see folks bailing is if they have the opportunity to follow a name that has enough clout to keep them safe, like Mikami. And that fucking sucks because it's such a waste of talent, and it's completely unfair to everyone involved. And like, it puts even big studios and publishers like Bethesda in danger, too, though I'd be willing to bet Bethesda will pull up stakes and leave long before Microsoft drives them totally into the ground. Todd Howard is many things, but he's not stupid.

So TLDR, the whole situation is fucked and I hate it :(