#i've put an actual effort into this by looking up and downloading fonts are you proud of me

[maybeher0]

i communicate with tumblr exclusively in weird niche memes lately

[inolienkiki]

Double update: Matt Wondra is the site admin. This is why his name ends up on the link. Ted Sanders and his wife really did slap this together themselves, with help from a friend with tech knowledge.

This is especially interesting in light of the actual, HarperCollins website used to promote the books. While I was grabbing assets off tedsanders.net, I decided to go back and scour through thekeepersbooks.com, the "official" official website that was taken down quite a while ago, but is still available to visit thanks to the Internet Archive. What I found was... well, kind of laughable?

- The graphic at the top of the page does not work. Maybe this is because of Internet Archive, maybe it never worked, I don't know? But the mistakes in it are even more blatantly clear when the cover is shown without Horace or the box- the shadows of the birdcages (that aren't there) are big and noticeable on the walls, and you can clearly see the outline of Horace's head in the middle of the glowing region. Without knowing it's just the same cover with stuff photoshopped out, it looks really weird.

- Each of book 2 and book 3 have two cover pictures uploaded on the website. These are called, respectively: "1.jpg", "2.png", "1.jpg", "2.jpg". The lack of care is kind of annoying, since it goes toward demonstrating how little effort HarperCollins put into sharing these books. Meanwhile, the Ted Sanders website has file names like "Book-3-Cover-FINAL.jpg" and "SYNY3.png"... you know, things that have a sense of humanity, and also make me REALLY CURIOUS about the earlier drafts??? - Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that all the headers are also pictures. Yeah, every heading on the website is a screenshot of some words. They stopped making these once they finished the first version of the website and moved on to using lowercase headings in a completely different font. For context, the Keepers font (Neutraface Text Book) can be freely downloaded online, and I did just that when I added it to the wiki. Why is it apparently easier to make transparent pngs of words typed out in that font, with shadows added and everything??

-And yes, there was useful stuff! I found big images of Horace and Chloe, the background pattern used on the book spines and the official website, and big pictures of The Find and Leaving Home illustrations. Maybe big enough for a poster...? I've wanted one for ages, but Iacopo Bruno didn't respond when I asked if I could have bigger images, so this might be my day.

tl;dr almost completely unrelated rant

The Keepers website was taken down sometime in the last few days. I don't know exactly when, because I don't remember the last time I checked it, and our fandom is so small that it could easily have taken months to notice if I hadn't needed to reference something for the wiki.

It's not really a logistical problem; thankfully, the Wayback Machine has a recent scan of the website that covers everything- all the text, all the files. I've downloaded all the assets to my computer to make sure I have it personally backed up. (Let me know if you'd like any in particular.)

Nonetheless, the whole situation has left me feeling really... empty, I guess. For years, the Keepers website was basically the only thing left to anchor this story in the present. Almost everything about the series- initial announcement, anything from the original book tour, early author interviews, the HarperCollins webpage- was already gone soon after the series wrapped up. But now, all those links are gone, and the series is out of print, and the fandom is a few people on Tumblr who occasionally think about it, and vam, and me.

In just five days, the first Keepers book will reach its nine-year anniversary. But I don't feel like celebrating, because I feel like my favorite books are part of history now. Books are supposed to be timeless, but so few people are ever going to pick up these books again. Even so, I'm always excited by forgotten books- but Keepers doesn't feel exciting in the same way, because it's in the process of being forgotten, and because I know it could have survived if it had just reached its target audience.

The books are gone- out of print. The author is gone- he's said he wants to write another children's series, but he hasn't posted anything in several years, and his one last link to Keepers just went down. The people who read these books when they came out, the children in the school tours and the positive Facebook commenters and the one student who made the 3D-printed Fel'Daera, they're gone too, because Keepers likely isn't part of their story anymore. So, I guess I'm glad that it's part of mine.

I know this is a very specific feeling, and I know all 4 of my followers are already aware of the Keepers series, and I don't need to be telling you about it. But I guess what I do want to tell you is: Let's talk about Keepers. Let's draw and write and think about Keepers. Let's keep our memories of this series alive, and let's share it with our friends and through that let's send our problem into every other universe. God knows, we all deserve these books.

I'll see y'all later this week with a map of the Great Burrow.