#epub book

[sides4peace]

[uhcasual]

All illustrations for The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Russian Edition Exclusives, Volume 5

Finally got my hands on the russian истари/Istari publication volume 5 for Mo Dao Zu Shi, so here are high resolution scans of the art exclusive to this particular edition. The art here portrays events that occur in the post-storyline extras.

Full resolution available for download here (tumblr compresses images a little)

Illustration Artist: Marina Privalova (Baoshan Karo)

[Vol. 1] - [Vol. 2] - [Vol. 3] - [Vol. 4] - [Vol. 5] (part 1)

[crustaceousfaggot]

Legitimately obtained ebooks will kill the patient. He needs dubious PDF download links to live.

[iniziare]

Download: Dragon Age (.PDFs)

With my return to Dragon Age, I've sought to get my hands on copies of some of Bioware's written works until I'm able to get my hands on the physical copies. And honestly, who would I be if I didn't share them with the community? So here I am, with some December offerings a little ahead of time. Please know that this post will be updated over-time with the franchise's complete written works. But without any further ado, have some Google Drive links— and if there's any issues with the DLs, don't hesitate to let me know.

Book: World of Thedas (V1, V2)

Book: Tevinter Nights

Comics: The Missing (P1, P2, P3, P4)

And as per usual, a reblog is appreciated to help spread this to people who might find use!

[navramanan]

ok i'm curious,

[muffinlance]

Hi! Hope you're doing well! I just wanted to check in and see if there is an ETA on epubs for anyone who's ordered them recently - I ordered epubs of both Fox's Tongue and Kirin's Bone, and The Skin Stealer's Son on the 31st of May but haven't gotten them yet. No pressure! I totally understand if you're just inundated with orders or busy, I was just curious 🤗 Anyway, thank you so much, hope everything is going good!

Very very soon! I ran into some issues with a corrupted file, which meant I had to go back to the version before that, which didn't have the final typo fixes because of course it didn't so I've been cleaning those up all week, blerg. I'm 90% done now--hoping to finalize the epub tomorrow and start getting them out the day after, assuming my computer doesn't eat things again. Since I'm now compulsively saving to three locations every few hours that should hopefully not be an issue again.

Sorry for the delay, and thank you for your support!

[miiju86]

****************************************

[gothicprep]

i'm currently reading a book called "you are what you watch" by walt hickey. the chapter i'm on right now is called "commerce and culture and commence", and what hickey is describing in this chapter is something similar to a flywheel – the idea of a book or movie or tv show leading to people buying merchandise, which in turn leads to them going to amusement parks. he's zeroing in on a very specific part of pop history that i had completely forgotten about, the warner brothers' studio store. it's discussed as the missing link between the entire history of pop culture before the 90s and everything that's followed since then.

hickey explains that, before the wb store was innovated, pop culture merch was for children. tv shows about batman, for example, didn't lead to adults wearing shirts about batman. it was all targets to kids. disney locked in on this idea of connecting merchandise to films very, very early. the empire strikes back was the one that really capitalized on this in particular, but star wars in general realized again that you can sell toys to children based on the thing they'd seen. but the thing that warner bros studio store did is that they tapped into the aging boomer audience that had money and were nostalgic. bear in mind, this is 1991, so boomers at the time would have been in their 30s and 40s.

after batman came out in 1989, it was the biggest movie of the year, so wb produced a little bit of adult merch for it, and it sold out almost immediately. then they quickly realized that there was a big demand for batman pins and memorabilia from those boomers. this wasn't just nerds in fandom spaces, these were genuinely mainstream individuals. again, this was the biggest movie of the year.

if you look at the warner brother's library, it's not the cuddly mickey mouse stuff. it's the snarky looney tunes stuff. so wb thinks to themselves, "hey, we're in the 90s. this could work." hearing the people interviewed in the book talk about the development of the store is so interesting because they immediately realized where their strengths were – ignore kids entirely, try to poach people from department stores and design studios instead, and make the kinds of things that people will want to actually buy, except it has daffy duck on it.

what really jumped out to me was that the pop culture artifacts became representations of identity, and wb basically discovered this accidentally. there's a moment in the book about the specific looney tunes characters being targeted to specific groups of people. the consumers didn't want all the looney tunes on their shirt, they wanted one specific character. they had no idea this identity component even existed until they started selling stuff.

the architect of this was a woman named linda postell, who's interviewed in the book. she mentions that, early on in development, all the men who would buy foghorn leghorn stuff would all basically look the same. if they bought harley davidson, they were a taz guy. etc.

there are a lot of looney tunes characters, and wb mined their archives to appeal to more people. before the store concept, marvin the martin was only in about 20 minutes of the cartoon in the aggregate. they slap him on merch, and suddenly, the IT guy has him on his mug because he's persnickety. within a few years, marvin is refereeing space jam. the people who pulled this off were fucking geniuses. you're not only evoking memories of someone's childhood, you're doing it in a way that articulates something about that person in the process.

i'm a millennial, and my generation sorted itself into one of four hogwarts houses. we had that burst of post-apocalyptic fiction that required people to sort themselves into one of five classes. there was star wars and their weird "are you the light side, or the dark side?" campaign. this strategy has been employed by people in the entertainment industry where content design is all a downstream of this.

this next bit isn't in the book at all. it's just my hot take. but i feel like this has been actively destructive to the world of culture criticism, consumption, and enjoyment in very real and specific ways. in what we see in so many of the arguments over things like star wars, there's this thing that's like "star wars is my identity, so i have to defend what i believe to be the correct version of star wars". or, "marvel is my identity, and i can't stand dc people". or vice versa, "dc is my identity. i love zack snyder movies. these marvel movies are trash. put them on the curb". the adaptation of culture around this tribal behavior, imo, has made it very difficult to actually make culture that's resonant while also not allowing itself to give in to that competitive nature.

if you were to consider the release pattern and the mentality around the snyder cut, it becomes difficult to disentangle it from this. there was an underdog perception around it, despite the fact that these are fans of one of the two biggest comic book universes in the world. "i have been wronged. i have ought to be compensated for this in the form of a film made to my specifications."

there are elements of it that, ugh, good isn't the word... i guess allowed us to understand a deeper reason why some things resonate with us and others don't. with sitcoms and relating to a specific character, rather than the entire ensemble cast, is sometimes how people get clued in on a specific show. that was the case with friends and cheers. having on-ramps into pop culture for different people isn't the worst thing in the world. and understanding that people do take this seriously enough that they can articulate an element of their identity through it is not bad.

that being said, these are publicly traded corporations that have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize value. as a result, sometimes we're gonna get things that play off this instinct in a way that are unhealthy for pop culture and culture as a whole.

so, impressive as the development process was was, they were cracking something open there in the desert that cannot be put back.

[brainrot-mx]

Bro... the Dragon Half-Blood... *SPOILERS FOR NOVEL*

MY BABYYYYY, MY BABYYYYYY. YOU'RE MY BABY <333

WHEN HE LOOKS AT CALE AND DECIDES HE WANTS RED HAIR LIKE CALES INSTEAD OF HIS 'FATHERS' WHITE STARS RED HAIR 😭😭😭

WHEN HE WORKS AND LIVES LIKE A NORMAL PERSON FOR SIX MONTHS EVEN THO HE'S IN IMMENSE PAIN AND DYING

WHEN HE SEES A NEW SIDE TO LIFE AFTER CALE RESCUED (Well more like captured him, but Cale didn't act icy cold and he didn't torture DHB because he realised he was a victim to WS, even if he wasn't welcoming because DHB is still someone dangerous)

WHEN HE ENJOYS MUNDANE TASKS BECAUSE HE'S NEVER DONE THEM BEFORE

WHEN HE'S THANKFUL TO CALE DESPITE EVERYTHING AND HE UNDERSTANDS WHY THE WHITE DRAGON AND THE BLACK DRAGON (raon and his mom) ARE WARY OF HIM

WHEN HE- WHEN WHEN... WHEN HE IS- HE JUST- WHEN HE. HE JUST- HE- WHEN.. WHEN HE- WHEN, WHEN- WHEN HE IS. WHEN HE. HIM. HE.

[markiafc]

very kindly tagged by @donnapalude @gabriestat @utenah 🙇‍♂️❤️

9 books from my 2025 to-read list:

people like us: sexual minorities in singapore

exhale: an anthology of queer singapore voices

the legal status of transsexual and transgender persons

the woods all black

lost souls

the sparrow

introduction to transgender studies

cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime

mobilizing gay singapore: rights and resistance in an authoritarian state

tagging to see other people's beautiful collage of book covers: @rinbylin @lizzieshelby @normalbrothers @kindnessinsilver @monstraduplicia @gromky @thefinalpaperheart @susiejj @persephonethewanderer @bredforloyalty @heavenrings @thefebruaryfriday @borgialucrezia @awildwickedslip (apologies if anyone's already been tagged...!)

[sketchydmitrix]

free access digital library

hi everyone i have been collecting pdfs/epubs/mobis recently and have been considering compiling them all into an online library (through MEGA)

would anyone be interested? so far I have books on social justice theory, short stories, computer science books, language books and art theory books!!

[sides4peace]

[girlwilde]

the picture of dorian gray—book cover redesigns

[fictionadventurer]

So many types of books that have strong summertime associations that I spend all my time cycling through cravings for certain genres or books.

Within the last month, I have wanted to read/reread:

Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery

The Electrical Menagerie by Mollie E. Reeder

Valiant by Sarah McGuire

Retellings in general (especially Cinderella retellings)

Golden Age mysteries, especially Josephine Tey and Agatha Christie

The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart

Books set in locations that are not America or England, especially warm climates

Books set in wintery/cold weather settings

Science fiction/space opera

Superhero stories

Civil War history/Presidential history

D.E. Stevenson books (and other mid-tier vintage light fiction)

Wilkie Collins books

Graphic novels

And I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting

[valeries-creations]

The Thrill of the Chase

Covers by @valerieovertherainbow for The Thrill of the Chase by @silverstuff50

Primary Cover (Author´s Choice)

Secondary Cover

[everygame]

"One of the finest of his generation of critics"—Kieron Gillen (Die, The Wicked + The Divine) Fifty-two essays composing the very best of veteran video game developer and writer Mathew Kumar's "Every Game I've Finished" project, published for the first time in print with commentary from the author. Releasing October 21st, 2024 in print, and available for pre-order now for Kindle or as epub/pdf. Games covered include legendary icons (Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord), indie darlings (Papers, Please), beloved obscurities (Attack of the Friday Monsters!), Triple-A franchises (Mass Effect) and modern classics (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). Essays take the form of everything from straight critique to strategy guide, and represent an overview of the state of the art in video games across its history distilled into ten years of highs and lows. A book that takes video games as seriously as any art form and as deserving of collected criticism. “Mathew’s project, to finish the games he plays, and to write about those he finishes, can be simply stated but it represents a noble act of critical commitment. When taken in concert, these reviews –– unflinchingly acerbic, truthfully stated, and deeply unconcerned with external factors of fashion or consensus –– provide both a diary of criticism, and a long view of the judders and lunges of this still-evolving medium; A charter, too, for what we might cherish, and what we might disdain, in this emergent art form.”–Simon Parkin (A Game of Birds and Wolves, Death By Video Game)

---

Phew! When I announced exp. 2601 I mentioned it was the ten year anniversary of Every Game I've Finished in 2024 and that it might be important, and here it is, a celebration of my last ten years of writing that you can buy as a book that you can own in your house. I didn't originally plan it this way! I intended to release Every Game I've Finished 14>24 as a (somewhat) quick and dirty ebook release, and I did the majority of the work at the beginning of the year pre-exp. 2601, but after realising it would only take a "little" more work to self-publish the book physically I decided if I was going to vanity press, I might as well do it for real.

Of course, it's taken a lot longer than I expected, but I finally have a proof in my hand that I'm satisfied with, and it really does look very nice. 

Vanity press or not, there are a few vectors to this release. Firstly, if you've ever enjoyed any of my writing of the past ten years, here's a nice way to support me and either get a lovely physical or handy digital edition. Secondly, if you haven't, here's a way to immediately get fifty-two of the best articles I've written which you can peruse at your leisure.

Thirdly, I just honestly think that there should be a culture of criticism around games just as there is for literally every other art form, and I think that this book existing makes as much sense as, say Clive James On Television, so I'm just fucking going for it.

That all said, Every Game I've Finished 14>24 is being released on October 21st 2024, and is being released in print on Amazon. I'm no happier about this than you are, but it's the simplest method. I would love to offer copies here on Ko‑fi for launch day, but they (sneakily) give author copies a long lead time and (of course) it's impossible to compete with Amazon's postage rates.

Amazon also--for bafflingly unclear reasons--won't allow me to offer a pre-order of the print edition, so please mark the date in your calendar or follow me on Bluesky or (spit) Twitter if you want to get a copy.

However! If you're just looking for the ebook, you can pre-order it on Kindle or epub/pdf right now! Subscribers will receive their shop discount on the digital edition, so don't forget you can support me for just $1 a month. This release has been, and I know it's a cliche, a real labour of love, just as Every Game I've Finished has been a labour of love for video games (even if it doesn't always read like it.) I can't wait for you to get your hands on it, and I'm so thankful for all of you who have joined me on this journey.