Where pop culture meets geek culture and they make out a little.
Posts tagged The Digital Age
Because We Don’t Get Enough Site Views…Plus, I’m Kinda a Dick
Mar 11th
So the other day Tengu sends me the following e-mail, posted here in its entirety:
So when is the good old NR going to start doing reviews like PA’s so you can get free swag like them?
Bookishness is in my blood…god help me
Feb 18th
I mean, I have a master’s in English, an MFA in creative writing, teach writing and I work in a bookstore. You all (all six of you) know this. Everyday, though, I am starting to become ever more concerned about the state of publishing/books/literacy in this country.
Remember the HarperCollins is just Harper’s thing from last week? Well, I currently (stupidly) hold a “supervisory” style position at the bookmines and everything I keep hearing from further up the chain is…what’s bleaker than bleak? My particular bookmine is actually not doing too badly, but my bookmine is also at one of the most affluent malls in north america. Even when the other 99.9999999 percent of the country has no extra money OC asshats driving BMW’s will still drop money at my mall. Now that’s good for me personally because it means I keep getting checks from bookmines inc., but in general the company is expecting things to get a lot worse. What’s bad for us, the humble bookminers, is even worse for the publishing companies because we also sell other shit that isn’t books. Hell, our “stationary” division is one of the most profitable parts of our business.
So I’m idly waiting for the inevitable implosion of the NY publishing industry when I happen upon this (thanks mojo), which I’ll now share the most important (I think) excerpt of:
If King, Dan Brown, JK Rowling and Patricia Cornwell were all to decide to move to selling their books online themselves, rather than going through a publisher, they’d certainly benefit financially. Typically, an author only receives about £1 for every copy of their book sold. Rather than relying on a publisher, big-name authors could afford to simply employ an editor, a PR person, a typesetter and a designer. They could price their books at only £2 or £3 and still make much more money than under the current system.
But without the revenue from these authors underpinning the publishers, the current system would be unworkable. And what would happen then? It’s hard to know. Clearly publishing houses would have to become much smaller, and authors who aren’t international bestsellers wouldn’t be able to benefit from the useful upfront advances. It would be harder to keep writing as a midlist author if you didn’t have a private income. People would still want to seek out great new writers, and so the brands of well-known publishers would still be valuable, enabling readers to sort the wheat from the chaff. But Penguin, Harper Collins and Random House could just become badges on ebook aggregator channels rather than the book-production engines they are today.
In a lot of ways, I would like to see the major houses crumble. If stroll through the “Fiction” section of any bookstore you find (there are exceptions, of course) a lot of novels that sound alike, look alike, and are written alike. Say what you want about music labels stifling the evolution of music (indie labels/bands have been making and selling music for decades) it is WAY harder for a small publishing house to sustain itself. God help you if you are an author with even wisps of non-traditionality in your writing (again, there are always exceptions). In my mind, I see the crumbling of the NY publishing houses as a way of freeing writers, both artistically and logistically. Maybe it would be harder to make money as writer if Stephen King were to self publish, but last I checked it’s nearly fucking impossible to make money at it while he isn’t self publishing so from where I stand it’s no different.
One thing it would definitely change, though, is book retail. If the larger houses no longer accounted for a majority of fiction sales in this country (if all the major writers followed the above formula) then retailers (if there were any left) would be more free to stock their stores as they saw fit. Either that or every non-used book store in the country would just fold up as well.
Anyway…
On a slightly related matter, click this link and vote for Knights of the Cornerstone for Best Fantasy Novel. Even if you haven’t read it!
Kate Nash — We Get On
NR ReadyToRock 2009
Jan 1st
‘Allo all,
Just dropping by to let you know that we hope everyone has enjoyed their wintery holidays, and despite the lack of updates lately (things like Kilian finishing his Masters degree, and oh, having a new child ((congratz and well done Katrina, Kilian and little Bella there)) kinda’ got in the way along with the regular holiday shenanigans) but 2009 marks a brand new year and we’re just getting started.
So thank you to all the awesome Normalinauts who’ve supported us through our first 1+ year as a webcomic experiment, we look forward to putting together some new stuff for you, and making the site and the NR experience even better. But most of all thank you. There’s no way that we could’ve kept it going and gotten NR this far without each and everyone of you.
I know it’s not a comic, but I did want to provide something visual here (as you can see slightly clipped above). For the full version you can either select the comic above or just click the thumbnail below.
Cocked, Locked and...
We love you all,
–Aleister
Deltron 3030 – Positive Contact
Today in “The Slow Demise of All Media Not Digital” Google Books
Oct 29th
See, the thing is, when you have more money than almost anybody (or any company) you can decide to blatantly disregard existing laws and do what you want.
So, remember when Google said it would start scanning books into an online digital database that anyone could access for free? Well, even though most of what’s in there can’t be seen completely (mostly you get “previews” of books, unless a particular work is out of copyright, then the whole thing is there) the Association of American Publishers and the Author’s Guild both decided to sue Google. It was announced today that Google has reached an agreement with both parties.
I miss Goliath still…
Aug 18th
Greetings faithful Normalinauts,
Gilgrim here… and sadly I have to admit that we have been really, really, really bad about updating the site as of late. I see that Kilian has made a public apology, but honestly aside from his insane devotion to the on-all-accounts-inferior-Liverpool-football-club, he has little to apologize for. I am sad to say that the majority of the blame lies firmly on my own shoulders.
While I can (and actually will) shift my personal blame to that of my day job, it’s still been up to me to at least keep in better contact and make sure that I tell everyone what’s going on. Right now, I am once again separated from Goliath and have been for a painful amount of time. This painful separation doesn’t seem to have any immediate end in sight, which only makes the sitation even more painful. I’m trying my damndest to get this thing resolved and fast, however, there are a lot of flaming, shit-smeared hoops to jump through yet until proper resolution becomes a reality.
Not to be too cryptic, but my additions to our beloved digital home are monitored by certain overlords, so I will not give out details, but let us say that things have been put into motion. I’m not going to talk directly about my exact situation here, frankly it’s unprofessional and inappropriate, no matter how classless the “other side” may be. But, perhaps when things are settled, and the dust has cleared to reveal a world in proper working order, I will be able to wow you with the heebie-jeebie-inducing tales of intrigue, lies and assorted retaliations (and other related wholesome and infantile goings-ons). Let us hope that that day is not too far off.
In the meantime, I offer you this, my peace offering, which should hopefully help to illustrate exactly why I’m currently on pause as far as contributions go…
With a heavy, guilty (for neglecting all you wonderful Normalinauts)-heart,
–Aleister
Demon Hunter – Disbelief
Gilgrim’s Machinations…and Other Thoughts
Jul 25th
I’ve done it. Against my better judgement I finally “twitted” (is that the proper past tense of ‘to twitter’…i’m not sure). I originally signed up soon after gilgrim did, but actually did nothing with the service(?) due to my fondness for annoying people by not doing what they ask…in this case, not “twitting” because gilgrim said I should.
See also: the copies of Green Street Hooligans and Firefly sitting in my house, unwatched and with only each other’s company to keep them warm at night.
I must, sadly, disagree with Nick Hornby.
Jul 14th
I came across this Nick Hornby article (I would have found it eventually, but I’ve been remiss in not reading his blog in a while) by way of Mojo…by way of The Times.
I’ve discussed eReaders here before, but now that Hornby has weighed in, I’m going to bring it up again.
Well look who’s here… or is he?
Apr 16th
‘allo to all! Yes I know I haven’t really been around much lately, but I have the greatest excuse ever! No seriously, it really is, short of my own death, I think the birth of my own son would be the only acceptable reason for me to be so blatantly absent from the beloved Normalinauts. At any rate, I am returning, there are certainly webcomics in the future and of course, if at all possible I will be uploading some picks of the incredible monkey-toed life form what came from APrilhead’s belly on April 6th 2008…. he’s adorable, so wait for it – Salem Ezra Grey!
In the meantime, I’ve been asked (oddly enough) what it is I actually do for a living. Good question, erm, not entirely sure exactly what to say to that other than the fact that I work in the vid-game industry, specifically for a company known as NtreevUSA (which by the nationalistic abbreviation at the back-end I’m sure you can deduce that it is part of another company, that being Ntreev proper/[Korea]). What we do is publish online vid-games, specifically Trickster Online Revolution and Grand Chase. While I’m sure not everyone is an avid gamer, or particularly interested in PC/online titles themselves… someone did ask, so this is what I do. I’ve made the comic guides for both games live on the relevant websites thereof, and until the end of 2007 committed a full color, weekly webcomic known as MegaloLife for the TricksterOnlineRevolution website (it was cancelled – still not sure ‘why’ exactly… let your imaginations run wild as you will).
But all of that aside, one of the other things I do, is sort of ‘cool hunting’ to quote Gibson, which is looking for current trends as well as predicting plausible projections both short and long term for the vid-game industry itself. One of the ways that I do this is to watch the current stable of industry spurned news from across the internet. I do this every. single. day. without fail, and over all it does a nice job of at least keeping me up to date on the current stories of interest. And since I figure that there are likely some other vid-game enthusiasts out there in Normaliland I thought it might be fun to try posting some of my little findings here on NR proper. This is an experiment and may or may not be continued depending on interest. After all, if no one cares about this, I won’t be hurt, but I’m not going to keep throwing it in your face either. So here it is, my lovingly titled GameNewsOfInterest (or GNoI) for today, April 16th, 2008, unabridged, unedited and all for you:
Welcome to the wonderful world of GNoI, your daily source for the industry news you crave, without all of the pesky, time-consuming and likely damage-inflicting and possibly dangerous web browsing. That’s right, we take the damage for you, so you don’t have to. Think of GNoI as your own personal meat-shield in the dangerous abyss of the vid-game industry news and more… but don’t think that hard, it is afterall, time to read some news:
The EU has finally approved Vivendi to fully merge with Acitvision. The apocalypse is nigh to be sure, and EA really has to be feeling burned on the whol being snubbed by Take2 thing now.
The Sims (combined of course amongst all iterations) has passed the 100m mark in worldwide sales, which is really, and simply crazy, because it’s, well, the Sims… /sigh
Variety is getting in on the GTAIV fever, and has predicted a return of $400m in the first week for the title. Gee, um thanks, Variety, now how about that whole Firefly show that you essentially ignored and helped to kill….?
NC Soft has just introduced their own online currency, the NCcoin. A little astonished that it took them this long to come out with a real micro-transaction currency all of their ownsome.
Dev house and notable game creator of yesteryear, Petroglyph in partnership with TrueGamesInteractive will be creating and releasing f2p games with the usual micro-transaction model attached.
CCP is all over the recent leak of the source code for EVE, and is making sure to a, well, assure the players that even though the code is out and can be manipulated, it won’t present any unfair advantages for hackers in-game.
The unlikely and uncanny VW juggernaut, BuildABear is still at it, making even stronger ties and tie-ins between the created v-space and the real-world stores. Currently on offer is the ability to watch supermullet-Cyrus-spawned-Hannah-Montanna footage… this is why we don’t have teley in the Gilgrim household.
Animax has announced a new Branded Entertainment Div, to work in conjuncture with UInplugged TV and create Animax Unplugged. The hope is that this will allow a better focus both on internal IPs as well as expansion into multi-platform[media] outlets and tie-ins down the road. Like we need more Ty crap anywhere let alone online…
And now to conlude today’s daily GNoI report, as we do every day in honor of the proud tradition of one John Stewart, here it is, your moment of zen. Today’s zen includes, Yahtzee, YHTBTR, Special-kiddie-firendly-Sonic-smokes and a little bit of Bailey.
Begin Zen integration now:
YouHaveToBurnTheRope a simple game with a great ending theme.
Sonic is all about promoting youth tobacco use… next up, Night Train?
–Aleister
My Chemical Romance – Thank You For The Venom
PS
Kilian has an original piece of artwork that I made for him on his birthday (when the drunken Cranium was played) and he’s supposedly looking for a scanner to use in order to share it with the digital world at large… If you want to see it, pester him, or give him a scanner. And if you’re giving away things, don’t forget me, I want things, I have a kid now afterall…
More Rowling and the Nature of “Ownership” in this, the Digital Age.
Apr 15th
First off, thanks to c and Kerri. How did I know that the Normalinauts would have my back?
Although, as I watch the site views continue to bump up I was hoping that more people would leave comments. As I said to gilgrim earlier today (via gchat) it’s good for the soul to be told to take your own head out of your ass. And I really do believe that.
But I’ve been thinking more and more about this whole thing because, as an aspiring writer, how this lawsuit plays out may (godz willing) one day effect me and my own “intellectual property.”
Now if this isn’t about the money, as Ms. Rowling has said (and I don’t entirely believe that), and it isn’t about her work being “perverted” in some way (since the HP Lexicon is, essentially, a catalog) then the only thing it can be about, as c mentioned, is control.
Rowling stated in her testimony that the HP books felt like her children. Now, I’m not sure what her children think of that, and by the way it took me nearly a decade…admittedly I wasn’t consistently writing that whole time…to finish my first novel and guess what, given the choice of having to burn the only copy of my book and getting my daughter, guess which one I’d choose in a heartbeat. But that seems like an odd metaphor to me. The fact of the matter is, every writer writes so that people will read his/her writing. It’s that simple. You create something to, essentially, give to other people…and hopefully make a few bucks while you’re at it. Tim Powers (we all know of my love for Powers) says that he is skeptical of any writer claiming not to care how big his audience is. Every writer wants as big an audience as possible. But something odd happens once the writer has finished writing and that manuscript has now become a book that people buy and read. And now I’m going to excerpt from another one of my personal lords and saviors, Neil Gaiman:
(Quick note, the italics are mine)
I once – at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, in Florida, some years ago – went to a presentation of three papers on my work (one of which is reprinted here), and after each paper was presented, I was asked if I would like to make some reply, which is honestly a bit like asking someone who has just undergone an autopsy if he’d like to talk about the experience. (My replies varied, at least in memory, from “Er, thanks. That was very nice of you,” to an “Er, with respect, if you read the issue you’ve cited, I don’t believe it actually says what you think it does”. But possibly I just smiled and nodded.)
Those were, however – with the exception of pointing out the occasional objective mistake – simply my opinions, and I don’t consider them to be privileged. Once you’ve written something it’s not yours any longer: it belongs to other people, and they all have opinions about it, and every single one of those opinions is as correct as that of the author – more so, perhaps. Because those people have read the work as something perfectly new, and, barring amnesia, an author is never going to be able to do that. There will be too many ghost-versions of the story in the way, and besides, the author cannot read it for the first time, wondering what happens next, comparing it to other things that he or she has read.
That comes from Mr. Gaiman’s forward for a book of scholarly papers written about the Sandman. And while Gaiman is addressing a different topic altogether, the sentiment, I think, is the same. I tried unsuccessfully to find an interview I read some year’s ago with George Lucas. I’ll have to paraphrase, but basically Lucas said that, upon the original publication of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye he realized that the universe he had created was much larger then he thought, and it contained many more stories then he could ever tell, and people wanted to hear those stories. In the same way that Gaiman stated that, once you publish a novel, it’s no longer yours, when you are a George Lucas, or a JK Rowling, you create something so large and complex that connects with people in such a way that you cannot ever be the only one to “control” it.
In her testimony Rowling said that if the HP Lexicon were published that she would then be very discouraged about completing a reference book on her own, and my response to that is, “why?” If anything, I would think that it would motivate her that much more, in an effort to publish the “official” reference guide to HP. Or maybe that’s just me…
But let’s change gears for just a moment. We live in a time when broadband internet connections and digital content are the norm. Consider the digital distribution of both Radiohead’s and NiN’s most recent albums. Both of these groups have fan bases that can be described as “dedicated” (although, rabid might be a better term). I would hazard a guess that the HP fan base is at least as dedicated. Did Radiohead or NiN lose money by releasing new albums for free? No. Did they make as much as they might have by going a more traditional route? Who knows. But what I do know is that each of these bands successfully recognized that we are no longer in a black and white “copyright” world. Are these two instances directly related to the current Rowling v. HP Lexicon battle…no. But I think they are instructive. People are going to (more and more as the years go by, I’d wager) increasingly see copyright and ownership of intellectual property as a negotiable state of existence whether or not Rowling wins this case.
Again, I’m going to refer to Gaiman. His publisher recently agreed to host, for an entire month, a freely accessible full digital version of one of his novels (it was American Gods, his largest by far). You know what happened during that month? Sales of the book spiked!
The HP Lexicon, I am convinced, would not take away from Rowling’s potential to continue earning money off of her intellectual property. That will be, trust me, the defining characteristic of copyright law/decisions in the years to come. Not, did that person use your material, but did that person in some way cause you to lose revenue off of your material. The fact of the matter is, HP does not belong to Rowling alone. It belongs to every one who has read and enjoyed the books. She may feel that the books are “her children” but to the rest of us, they are our friends, and as much as she wants to control them, she can’t. It isn’t the 1800’s and you aren’t Dickens, Ms. Rowling.
My guess is, if the HP Lexicon is allowed to be published it will sell decently, but if you, Ms. Rowling, do actually finish your own HP reference work, that one will be gobbled up like mother fucking manna from heaven!
Ms. Rowling, you created something so unique and special that people connected with it in a deeply emotional way. Take a cue from Lucas, Radiohead and Trent Reznor and let go. You may find it quite freeing. And if that doesn’t help, you can always cry yourself to sleep on a mountain sized pile of $100 bills.
You may have noticed some changes…
Mar 10th
So if you are reading this and thinking to yourself, wow the site looks different, that’s because it does, in fact, look different. Early (about 1 am) Saturday morning something happened to some of the data on the server, and by data I mean files that wordpress needs to, oh what’s the word…right, function. So if you tried to visit the site anytime between 1 am and 9 pm on Saturday the only thing you got was a blank white page. See how jacked stuff was? It couldn’t even generate a 404 page!
Luckily exsulis (when half drunk, no less!) discovered a quick fix. That being, essentially, reinstalling wordpress over the old files. Of course, wordpress installs with a number of subdirectories already built in, which had the unintended consequence of replacing some folders with the same folder, but with much less “stuffs.” Case in point, the comic archive is gone (again), but that’s not such a huge loss since it is backed up on my laptop. The uploads folder, on the other hand….well I don’t want to talk about that right now.
Gilgrim’s artwork still exists on the server, though, so that is very good. Visual type stuff won’t be up again until later tonight or tomorrow.
I guess one good thing to come out of this was that I was getting fed up with the theme we were using anyway, so I thought I’d try this one out…let me know what you think.
For all the (six) regular Normalinauts, I’ll ask that you scroll down and check out the post that went up 20 minutes before the site went down…
Let’s just say that it was a less then impressive way to “launch” a new feature of the site. If you’ve stumbled upon this and you’re looking for the interview with James Blaylock, just scroll on down friend.
Some Musically Related Stuffs
Mar 4th
Alan, over at the Newswire got to posting this before me, so I’m compelled to give him his due…
Basically, Nine Inch Nails purposely released to BitTorrent the first in a four part series of instrumental albums. You can download the whole four part series for a paltry 5 bucks right here, though the $300 Ultra Deluxe version (which I believe came with a naked picture of Trent Reznor, but I could be mistaken) is already sold out…
I’m not a huge fan of Radiohead, so I didn’t download their latest effort…but I AM a fan of NiN, so you can bet your sweet-ass I’m grabbing this tonight!
I like that we are seeing more artists embracing digital media and distribution and realizing that money (it’s an important piece of the equation, after all) does not necessarily have to be made in the same ways that it has been for the last 100 years. Certainly, bands like Radiohead and NiN can get away with stuff like this because of the large and loyal fanbases each band has. A new or up and coming band would be hard pressed to find success doing the same thing, and so I think we will see record labels (if they’re smart, which isn’t something we should assume…) start to be more of a vehicle to launch careers as opposed to being a vehicle to sustain careers. Larger acts will, I guarantee you, begin to take more control over the production and distribution of their content and the leverage that a record company has will only be applicable to a group who does not already have a large and dedicated audience…at least, that’s my theory…
And this is just a really good song (and interesting video) that I wanted to share…
I’m DRUNK! Ha!
Jan 6th
Actually, if you wish to get technical, I’m very middenedly-buzzed off of Trader Joe’s 2 Buck Chuck! Sadly, I would have preferred a Merlot or Pinot, but this 25 proof grape juice, Sauvignon will have to do… by the way, this is entirely April’s fault.
And on we go to the Saturday embedded video post. I’m not saying this as some sort of homage or even copying in format of Ellis’ 4AM, because I really don’t know if this stunt will repeat itself anytime soon. But while we’re all here, and I have a captive audience, I will abuse it. And by abuse, I mean subject you to at least one video.
April found this video, as it is from a band that she at one time had a single album from, and has since lost it, or misplaced it, or simply had an extremely difficult time finding it ever again. While showing me the band in question, we had a discussion about what ‘type’ of music they would be categorized as in relation to the era in which they could’ve likely hit airwaves or mainstream media. Darkwave/Newwave seems to be the best fit, and in the search April found a connection between this weird musical troupe and one of my favorite movies of the 80’s/horror genre in general, which is Manhunter(!).
The band, Shriekback, did do at least one piece on the official OST for Manhunter, but it was not the video which will be posted below. And here is where you, hopefully far less drunk, Normalinauts, come into play: the following song from the band Skriekback, was hailed as their lead single from their album Oil&Gold, and both April and I are at least somewhat convinced that we’ve heard the damned thing in a film somewhere… yet Youube seems to be of no hope or help. So do you brave Normalinauts remember this song? Do you know where you might have heard it (aside from here of course)? Let us know!
Click-y Here For the Official Song In Question
Help us please, where has this song been featured???
Thank you, I will continue to drink now,
–Aleister
Shriekback – Nemesis
The settling of the dust
Jan 4th
‘Allo Normalinauts! Sorry, I’m not sure what new moniker to give to our loyal, almost double digit readership here, but for now, I’m throwing Normalinaut into play to see how it fairs. Anyone else who has a better one they’d like to throw down, by all means, please do.
Ok, so we’ve been on a fairly serious bent it seems for the last couple of posts, and with good reason, as what’s currently going on with the Presidential race will certainly effect not just the US but peoples in any other country where our nation’s sticky tentacle pull any sort of influence. So thank you for indulging us (and specifically, the more activist minded Kilian).
Now I’m not saying that this trend of seriousness, when serious issues come up will not be coming back to the forefront here on the old Normality, but I did want to take a moment to touch on some of the not-quite-as-serious things that have also been going on. Not to bend this to a completely egotistical outing, but there it is anyway.
So firstly, for anyone interested, and I assume that we’re seeing some new faces around here from ye olde MyTrix community as well as from Trickster Online Revolution in general, let me take this opportunity to say thank you very, very, very much for all of the truly heart-string-strumming comments on the final Megalo Life that went up this last Monday on the official Trickster Online Revolution website. I meant every last word that typed out in the episode’s commentary and a lot more that would really not be appropriate or in anyway professional for me add as well. I really did love (and hate using the past-tense) working on the strip week after week, and it is my belief thatthe silly little comic outing worked great to promote not only the game, the company, the community and to shed some light on the fact that the game is brought to its loyal players by real people who are weird, wonderful, falable and overwhelmingly human. This was, to my thinking, something that really set us apart from other games and communities that are out there. Obviously, there are games with better graphics, mechanics, support or any other individual component that you could name, than TOR, but I always held the belief that the strength of the title despite the uphill climb against newer, flashier titles and the seemingly endless stream of even-newer-debuting titles, was the community and the way it could interact with the company behind the game.
For me, Megalo Life was one of our several pronged efforts to create and sustain that sort of unusual community/company involvement, and in the passing of the comic, I am bitterly happy to see that I wasn’t too far off the marks in my thoughts. As it turns out, the community does seem to have enjoyed the comic. I never made the thing to have people start clammering that it was the greatest thing to hit the internet since porn, or even the best webcomic out there. It really was, at its inception and at its core, a means for those of us behind TOR to pull back the OZ-like curtain and say, ‘No, it’s ok, there is a man back here, it’s cool,’ and then /wave in a friendly manner. For whatever reason, it was pulled, canceled or decidedly ended… however you want to put it, it doesn’t matter the ultimate outcome was/is the same: the series is no more.
But as I said, the one really positive thing to come out of all of this, especially as the title to this post might suggest, is that when the air started to clear and emotions could be stowed for a bit to re-asses the aftermath, there was nothing more evident than the fact that the fallout of the series has shown what I might humbly term as overwhelming community support for the strip and my efforts.
Again, for anyone interested, especially those from the TOR community, I am deeply thankful that you enjoyed the series, and I am very, truly moved by the outcries of support and even unhappiness to see it/me go. So thank you. I don’t know a better way to express it, than to just keep saying thank you over and over again.
I suppose that it was something of a pipe-dream to think that overwhelming outcries from the community would possibly spring some sort of rethinking to the cancellation decision as the evidence mounted to the fact that strip (like some of the other efforts, such as the now still missing GM Blog) actually did work. It did encourage interaction and involvement in the community and for the game itself. It was a useful effective tool to help set us and our collective efforts apart from the other, and oft-times behemoth-y-juggernaut-like competitors in the online gaming world who always have more money and resources to throw at things than we could dream of. Because of the players, the Tricksters, the community members and the readers of the Megalo Life series that returned week after week, and especially have been showing their support in the final installment, I think it is now assured that the points have been proven. There should no longer be a question as to whether or not it was effective, useful, and basically a good thing.
Doubt can no longer be attributed to the quantifying of the effort – and no question can reasonably be raised as to whether or not the series itself was a much needed bridge between players and corporation.
Thank you once more, sincerely and whole heartedly to every single one of you Tricksters who have come forward in the comment section on the final Megalo Life and in the My Trix thread to show your support and even your surprise at the sudden ending of the webcomic. My heart’ still heavy from the ending of it all, but I can watch now with a smile on my face because I know that I did make a difference, and I made that difference because you let me. Thank you.
The decision always has been and is still now, out of my hands. If I could change it, I would, and perhaps I thought naively that you could effect change as well. Maybe that will still happen, at this point my crystal ball can’t see quite that far into the future ^__^ but I’m glad to have your efforts behind it just the same.
As Megalo Life has ended, in a somewhat traumatic sort of way, suddenly, and without any real warning (announcements, or even being posted on the normal day of the week) I will be taking this week off to finish recuperating from what can only be described as a tumultuous, emotional, rollercoaster of crazy bat shit, and will not be posting a new strip for NR today. I should be able to return to form once more next week, and in the meantime I offer some other stimulus for visual trauma:
If you’ve noticed on the top right side of the NR site here, there is a new section added, along with the Comic Archive, and the Vote Campaign for TopWebComics, and other information, there is a new section (still being polished so be nice, please) titled Gilgrim’s Artwork. So if visual stimuli is what you crave, as they say, buy the ticket, take the ride.
Cheers,
–Aleister
KMFDM – Last Things
Well, I didn’t want to take down gilgrim’s post (since it is well written and heartfelt) for one quick thing…so anyway, read this and let your imagination pique at the possibility…
And I, for one, vote for Normalinauts!
–Kilian
An End of a Year : An End of an Era
Dec 31st
This was completed last Thursday, and seems to have finally gone up today… all in all I was surprised by the cancellation of the series, but the reasons for the cancellation are, well, not evident at this time. However, I was lucky enough to be able to put together one final strip in order to say goodbye to all of the wonderful readers who stuck it out and came back week after week for the 30+ installments. To all that have been reading the series and allowed me, April, Wednesday and even our son, Salem, to be a part of your lives – and to all of those who enjoyed the strips, thank you, very, very much.
So here it is, the final installment of Megalo Life – for Trickster Online Revolution.
And so 2007 closes today, and with it this weekly webcomic serial. Thank you again to everyone who showed their support, if you would like to leave comments for the series itself, please do so in the actual comments section for the Megalo Life series at the bottom of the URL link as I will be reading them there.
See you all next year!
–Aleister