Blog Features

Blaugust 2024 Is Coming

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Good Morning Friends! It is that time again, time for another Blaugust. Last year represented the tenth running of the event and it was an extremely successful time. It was the first time running the event in our currently deeply fractured social media landscape. Blaugust was an event born largely on Twitter, and it was a little weird entering a post-Twitter world where while the platform still exists… folks like me have spread out and adopted other platforms. Things seemed to move forward without a hitch, and I think in large part this is due to our thriving Discord community that we have cultivated over the last decade. I am hoping in part for this year’s Blaugust to be a little bit more low-key, at least in the amount of stress that it places upon me. It’s been a busy year and as such I have not actually created new assets yet for some of the things like Blaugcheivements. That said as always I am extremely excited to see who all decide to participate this year.

What is Blaugust?

For anyone arriving here for the very first time Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. Above all the goal of Blaugust has always been to prove to folks that they can in fact sit down every day and create something fresh and then share it with the world. Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past. Our hope is to create a nurturing environment where Veteran bloggers can help those just getting started and the cross-pollination of ideas can create something truly spectacular. Your blog gives you a permanent foothold on the Internet that you own and have complete control of, and that is a really good feeling in the midst of shifting trends.

Why Blaugust?

In April 2013, I made a decision that would ultimately dominate the fate of this blog for the last decade. I decided that I would force myself to write something and post it every single day. It wasn’t necessarily an easy challenge but for roughly three years I posted something every single day without pause. This forced me to get over some of the self-doubt that had kept me mired for years. I started this blog in 2009, but would often go upwards of six months without a single post. Each time I would lapse… it felt like I had to do something really special when I started blogging again or at least apologize for my absence as though there was some imaginary person out there disappointed in me. Forcing myself to “just hit publish” got me past a lot of those hangups and now I can bang out a post in my sleep… and often do consider I write around 6 am each morning. Blaugust came about originally because I wanted to share this revelation with other bloggers, that forcing yourself to write something every day can be liberating.

So I hatched the idea that if I challenged folks to make 31 posts during the month of August, and called it Blaugust… it might help others get over their own fear by immersing them in a pseudo-competition. The thing is… I learned that this maybe wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. For some folks writing 31 posts is a rather daunting feat and failing to accomplish it was just one more setback in a line of setbacks that were keeping them from blogging. So nowadays the original concept is still there, but mostly I just want folks participating to focus on “blogging more” not necessarily conforming to some mad schedule I devised. After three years of daily blogging… I needed a break and eventually landed on the schedule that I have now of trying to knock out a post every single weekday. Even then there will be times when I give myself a pass because I am just not feeling it… but the key is to get back on the schedule as soon as you can.

The Core Challenge of Blaugust

Blaugust at its heart has always been about celebrating the creation of content on a regular schedule. The original challenge was to post 31 times during the month of August which is 31 days long. This can be posting every day or doubling up on some days to make the schedule a bit easier. However, we also want to award anyone who starts down this path, because deciding to blog in the first place is a victory in itself. As such we give out awards based on the number of posts that you manage to knock out during the month of August. Again the idea is to spark creativity and get folks to create more content, not necessarily grinding them to dust on the millstone of some lofty goal. Here are the guidelines for each of the awards that we give out as part of this original challenge:

  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You joined Blaugust for the very first time and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result, we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2024.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2024.
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2024.
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the original challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2024.

The First Post of Blaugust

Something this year that I am really wanting to focus on is the community aspect of Blaugust even over the number of posts that are being made. That is the piece of Blaugust that lasts long after the final day of August has finished and all of the posts have been tabulated. We have created this community of bloggers and it gives us an interesting group of folks that we can rely on. In order to support this effort this year I am creating the “First Post of Blaugust” initiative. The idea is that for your very first Blaugust post you take a bit of time and introduce yourself and your blog. Granted this can feel a bit odd if you are one of us who have been doing the same thing for a few decades, but realize that not everyone knows who the heck you are. While I am not going to make you wear nametags to orientation, it would be lovely if you spent some time with that very first blog post to introduce yourself and the kind of content that you create.

Scaffolding for Success

Over the years we have added a bunch of features of Blaugust and the goal behind all of them is to create a structure that folks can lean upon when the well of inspiration runs dry. These are of course completely optional activities and only serve as some general guidelines that you can follow if you feel you want a bit more structure. Everything from this point forward until the recap below should be considered voluntary content. I will be honest there are folks who seem to thrive on this structure and then there are folks like myself that completely ignore it. Which path you take is entirely up to you.

Weekly Themes

These were created many moons ago, and the idea behind them was to template out some general themes for blog posts. As Blaugust outlived a number of similar initiatives I adopted some of the focus of those into themes and began publishing them each year. Generally speaking August spans five weeks and as such we have five different broad theme categories. Again no one should feel under any obligation if they do choose to write about the themes, to actually make an entire week’s worth of posts. Here is a quick rundown of the idea behind each of the themed weeks:

  • Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st – August 3rd) – The idea behind this week is to give a specific time to be actively talking about Blaugust and welcoming new members to the fold. This could also count as promoting Blaugust for the “Spreading the Madness” achievement. The hope is that drumming up some heavy activity of talking about the event might allow us to pick up a few more stragglers.
  • Introduce Yourself Week (August 4th – August 10th) – The idea behind this week is to have some structured time around getting to know the other bloggers. I realize that those of us who are veteran bloggers might have already written half a dozen introduction posts by now, but it is a great time to share anything interesting you might have in your arsenal.
  • Creator Appreciation Week (August 11th – August 17h) – Developer Appreciation Week or the D.A.W. was an event that took place in the blogging community independent from Blaugust but eventually died out. The more modern idea is to show appreciation for the things and creators that we love. This could be authors, musicians, developers, artists, or even other bloggers, with the focus being on sharing something that we love so that maybe others might appreciate it as well.
  • Staying Motivated Week (August 18th – August 24th) – As we get towards the end of the event, the activity can often trail off a bit. The goal of this week is to share some of your own tips surrounding how you keep motivated and stay focused on creating content. If you are new to the event, you might share some of the things that have helped you stay engaged during Blaugust.
  • Lessons Learned Week (August 25th – August 31st) – This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences.

Prompt List

2020 was a weird year in which we technically ran two different Blaugust events… largely as a way to distract ourselves from the awkward locked-down state of the world. The Promptapalooza event that took the place of the normal Blaugust, was a bit of an abject failure. However, it did create a list of topic prompts that I have recycled and moved forward to help anyone needing inspiration. This is absolutely optional content, but feel free to grab one of these topics and write about it when you find yourself particularly low in inspiration or motivation.

Blaugchievements

In 2022 I wanted to spice things up a little bit and add something new to the mix. Some folks are deeply motivated by achievements, specifically in video games. I have one friend who obsessively tries to 100% every single game. I am not one of these people. However, in an effort to create new objectives for folks to focus on in order to make their way through a month’s worth of posts, I introduced “Blaugchievements“. These represent a series of optional objectives for you to check off, and with them comes a little toast image that you can use on your blog if you are so motivated. I’ve not created brand new ones yet this year, but who knows I might feel particularly creative before the month is over. You can find the full list and images associated with them over on the Blaugchievements page, but here is a quick rundown of what they entail.

  • Reading the Manual – Read the introductory blog post with the rules of the event.
    • Grats if you are reading this blog post you have already gotten your very first Blaugchievement.
  • Joining the Cause – Sign-Up for Blaugust.
  • Recruit a Friend – Convince another blogger to participate in Blaugust.
  • Spreading the Madness – Promote Blaugust on your blog or through your social media of choice.
  • Friend of Wumpus – Join the Blaugust Discord.
  • Sharing is Caring – Post your content in the “Share Your Content” Channel.
  • Forum of Friends – Take part in a discussion on the “Post Discussion” Channel.
  • The Pet Tax – Post a picture of an animal friend on the “Stuff and Things” Channel or create a blog post about them.
  • Friend Like Me – Answer a question posted on the Blagust Discord or help out a new blogger.
  • Shared Thoughts – Comment on a blog post from another Blaugust participant.
  • Federation of Bloggers – Sign up for a Fediverse account and follow the official Blaugust account.
  • Getting Inspired – Write a blog post inspired by a post from another Blaugust participant.
  • Pickup Group – Play a game or take part in an activity with one or more Blaugust participants.
  • Hot Topics – Write a blog post based on the Blaugust Prompt List.
  • Welcome Wagon – Write a blog post based on the first week’s theme of Welcoming Folks to Blaugust.
  • Introduce Yourself – Write a blog post based on the second week’s theme of Introducing Yourself.
  • Creative Appreciation – Write a blog post based on the third week’s theme Appreciating the works of some Creative or Company.
  • Staying Motivated – Write a blog post based on the fourth week’s theme of how you have managed to Stay Motivated.
  • Lessons Learned – Write a blog post based on the fifth week’s theme explaining some of the Lessons you have Learned through Blaugust.
  • Going Platinum – Complete All of the Blaugchievements for Blaugust 2024.

The Recap

That my dear friends is a rundown of what Blaugust is and all of the associated kitsch involved with it. I feel like it is very important to state that Blaugust is what you make of it. If you want to sign up, make a few blog posts, maybe participate in a few threads on social media… and call it a day, we are absolutely cool with that. You should not feel the need to go for 31 or more, because there will absolutely be someone this year that does something silly like 60+ blog posts. Over the years I have de-emphasized the competition aspect because really this should be way more of a collaborative event than a zero-sum experience. When this event first launched Gold was the award for 31 posts, and I eased up considerably on that concept to make it a bit more liveable… then of course added in Rainbow to recognize anyone who really went for the gusto.

Anyways for anyone who is prone not to read all the things like myself… here is a quick recap and “call to action”.

  • The Sign-Up Form for Blaugust 2024 can be found here. Since logging in with a Google account has been a source of consternation for some, I have removed that functionality. If you still cannot for whatever reason sign-up but want to participate please let me know. Only those that I am tracking will be assigned awards.
  • The invite link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in Discord is entirely optional but also a great way to bounce ideas off the existing community.
  • If you feel inclined to do so please use the hashtag #Blaugust2024 for tracking purposes and to make your content easier to find for those watching the proceedings.
    • We also highly suggest that you utilize the Share Your Content” channel in the official Discord.
  • We have an official Blaugust social media account over on Gamepad.Club a Fediverse/Mastodon server that I help admin. During the event, I will be watching the above hashtag and boosting all of the posts.
  • Mingle with the participants of Blaugust 2024. Get out and see the blogs, read the posts, and comment frequently! These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I deeply value the ties I have made with other bloggers and started this process as an attempt to cement those and build new ones.
  • If you are so inclined there is a “Gaming Together” channel on Discord for those impromptu grouping activities. I believe there was even some discussion of doing a one-shot D&D adventure this year.
  • If you find yourself getting stuck at any point feel free to rely on the weekly schedule or the prompt list for inspiration or you can hop on Discord and talk through your issues.
  • You can also check out the new Blaugchievements list for anything that might spark your creativity and check one of those off.
  • Welcome to Blaugust 2024. As always if you have any questions please feel free to ask. My door is always open but I might be slow to respond because I have a bad habit of idling on pretty much all the social platforms at once.
  • If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such from this year or past years of Blaugust, please check out the Blaugust Media Kit page.

The Official Social Media Account

Last year we created an official social media account on Gamepad.Club who is run by a Blaugustan named Gazimoff. I help Gaz administer the server and fellow Blaugustans Scopique and Aywren are moderators. So suffice to say Gamepad has some seriously deep Blaugust roots and as such it made so much sense for me to standardize on that server and platform. If you are on the Mastodon or any other Fediverse platform you can follow the account and I spend most of the event heavily promoting the #Blaugust2024 hashtag through it. However this year we have a few options that make things a bit more tantalizing.

Bluesky

If you are on BlueSky I am utilizing the Fedy Bridge and syndicating everything from the Blaugust Mastodon account over to the BlueSky Network through this @blaugust.gamepad.club.ap.brid.gy. If you are on BlueSky you can follow that account and see all of its content. If you follow @ap.brid.gy it will allow you to create a bi-directional communications path with the Blaugust account and everyone else on the Fediverse. This will essentially give folks who are most comfortable on BlueSky full access to everyone on the Fediverse and I will be able to promote blog posts on both networks through the bridge.

Threads

Threads is a little less than ideal, but technically it also has connectivity to the Fediverse. It is an opt-in service and you will have to go into your profile and enable Fediverse Sharing. Once you have done so you should in theory be able to follow the official account over on Gamepad, and I will be able to follow your threads account and promote your posts. The communication is read-only, unfortunately, but at some point, I believe Meta is planning on making this bi-directional.

Everything Else

You are of course more than welcome to use any Social Media platform of your choosing. I am focused on the Fediverse and the things that have connectivity with it. I will likely not be actively promoting posts on any of the other networks, because I just don’t really use them often enough.

Final Thoughts

I said this last year, but without you, Blaugust would be nothing but a weird word that I smashed together in my head. It still rings extremely true as I sit down this morning to make the annual post… that always seems to overstay its welcome. If you’ve made it this far in the post I commend you, because these just seem to keep getting longer. Blaugust is a lot of things to a lot of folks. If you just want to sign up to participate in a community of bloggers, that is absolutely cool even if you make zero posts throughout the event. If you want to grind away and try and complete every blaugchievement… that is also absolutely a way to experience this event. Blaugust is what you want it to be, and I hope you have as much fun during this event as I always do. You have all of my love and gratitude for keeping this as active as it has been over the last decade.

Regularly Playing: June 2024 Edition

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The Regularly Playing Widget

Good Morning Folks. Over the fifteen years of this blog, I have attempted to create a good number of reoccurring posts. In all cases, I have failed to maintain them for very long. However, one of the series that I managed to keep going relatively frequently was “regularly playing”. The idea behind this is that every few months I would update the similarly named widget in my sidebar showing what games I could be found in. If you mouse over one of the buttons, you get a popup indicating how you can find me in said game. If you click on the button it transfers you to the game page, or better yet if a profile system exists it links directly to my character profile. However this only really works if I update things frequently… and I have not made one of these posts since October 2022. At some point along the way I updated the sidebar and just did not make a post… poor form Bel. Yesterday I updated my bar again and this morning I am going to finally acknowledge the proper format and make a post.

Traditionally these posts have been broken down into four categories:

  • To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
  • To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
  • To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
  • Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.

Since I am largely “off the format” I am not going to attempt to catch up from the last post in October 2022, but instead talk about changes in the bar that I made yesterday.

To Those Remaining

Diablo III – PC

I have to be honest, we are not starting off with the strongest footing. Diablo III is likely hanging by a thread at this point. I have left it installed and very rarely poke my head into the game, usually for the first weekend of a new season… only to disappear rapidly. Diablo III is sort of my baseline ARPG at this point and the bare minimum amount of joy that a game needs to give me in order to engage with it frequently. There has been a lot of innovation in this game over the years since it has launched, but honestly, after getting into Path of Exile it feels extremely simplistic. There are times I want that, but I am not playing this nearly as regularly as I think I probably should.

Diablo IV – PC

For the longest time, Diablo IV was also hanging by a thread, but I feel like with Season 4 the game has redeemed itself. I have at least as much fun as I do playing Diablo III during the start of a new Diablo IV season. I still do not consider D4 to be a terribly brilliant game. Many of the features are “aggressively fine” or more likely the bare minimum needed to make something enjoyable. Blizzard has lost the plot. What I mean by that is that Blizzard games used to have a clear focus and a clear vision, and now it feels like they make the safest possible decisions. The content updates they have added to Diablo IV are uninspired, and essentially the most basic iterations on the same general themes. They are no longer “bad” and I hope over time they will actually start being “good”. For as much as I disliked the Necropolis mechanic in Path of Exile, it was at least really interesting and attempting to do something cool. Diablo IV feels like the content diversity found in a McDonald’s menu… where everything sort of feels the same.

Fallout 76 – PC

Fallout 76 is a game that I enjoy greatly… when I remember to play it. That probably sounds harsher than I mean it to, but I always seem to have objectives in other games that I am working towards and sort of forget to log into this game instead. I think the challenge is that when I do play Fallout 76 I need large blocks of uninterrupted time because the world is extremely unpredictable… or at least I am not seasoned enough to make it FEEL predictable given that I am still leveling. I know my friend Nimgimli is playing a lot of this game right now and it would be fun to run around with someone else… save for the fact that my level range is probably too low to reasonably link up with anyone. I know Thalen also plays this game fairly regularly and I would probably feel way more comfortable imposing upon his grace to drag me along through content. Anyway, it is a super interesting game that gets a shocking amount of updates, but also sort of quietly just exists in the background doing its own thing.

Guild Wars 2 – PC

I’ve had a series of sort of lackluster game discussions here in a row, but now we reach Guild Wars 2 which has been one of my primary games for a while now. My history with GW2 is pretty wild given that I was an alpha tester… resigned from said alpha test… and then struggled with trying to get into the game from launch until 2017 when I finally began to grok it. However, since 2018 I have been properly hooked on the game and now spend 99.9% of my time on my Norn Longbow/Greatsword Power Soulbeast Ranger. I know those are a lot of words to be said in a row, especially if you know nothing about the game but essentially that told those who do know what I run around with build-wise. This past year I have crafted two legendary weapons, thanks in large part due to the headstart boxes that you can get through the Astral Ward chores. I’ve been working towards crafting a third one, but need to do a full world completion and farm up a gift of battle before I can craft it. Damned fun game and especially great for drop-in gameplay without the need for other players. However, I do want to get into organizing Strike and Fractal groups on “the regular” so that I can expand my horizons.

Last Epoch – PC

Last Epoch is another game that I am deeply devoted to. I am pretty much going to play every new cycle that releases, which is the name for their seasonal content loop. There is one starting in early July and I am pumped for the additions to the game that it is going to bring. Last Epoch and Diablo IV are an interesting contrast game-wise because they are both games that are “just starting out” which means they lack some depth of content. However, everything that Eleventh Hour Games introduces is deeply interesting in some way. The new patch is adding even more systems to the game and for the first time feels like something Grinding Gear Games would have created as a league in Path of Exile. If you have not had a chance to watch the Harbingers of Ruin trailer and are in any way a fan of ARPGs I urge you to check it out.

Path of Exile – PC

Friends… this has been my “main” game for the last few years. It took me four leagues to finally really begin to grok how to properly play this game, and even then… I tend to prefer tanky “zdps” builds. While I have a mountain of complaints about various aspects of Path of Exile, I love it so freaking much. I am uncertain there will be a time when I am not playing this game at league start, and it would take a heck of a lot to draw my attention away from it permanently. For the last five leagues I have earned a totem pole for my hideout and I feel like I want to keep that traditional rolling. Necropolis is a league where I checked out fairly early, but so did most of the player base. That is not to say that I won’t be there with bells on when the next league launches sometime in August. Do I recommend this game to other players? Honestly not really. This is quite possibly the most obtuse mess you will ever encounter, but if you can climb that mountain and reach a point of understanding… it becomes deeply rewarding.

To The New and Returning

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

Folks I am so happy to add Final Fantasy XIV back to my list of games, because with it has come a pretty significant change in my perspective. I’ve had this mental block against grouping with other players… and more specifically against tanking for strangers. I can’t really trace it back to a single incident that led me down this path, but it was that way for several years and recently I was able to return to doing the thing that I love the most… tanking. Nothing makes the heart grow fonder than being isolated from FFXIV for two days… and now I am pumped as heck for the drop of Dawntrail tomorrow. I am really looking forward to leveling through the content and then starting to get up so that hopefully I can do the raid when it launches. I am also super pumped that my friend Ace is equally bought back in and it is going to be a blast doing nonsense like roulettes with them.

World of Warcraft – PC

I’m also tentatively adding back in World of Warcraft to the list. I came back several months ago and played through the Dragonflight campaign and largely enjoyed it. Then I played a little bit of Plunderstorm and really came back properly during Pandaria Remix. It was all of the grouping with strangers in PMIX that I feel probably got me over my mental block of grouping with strangers. World of Warcraft can have some pretty toxic players in random grouping, and honestly… everyone in Pandaria Remix was delightful. Maybe this was an anomaly or maybe I just built up the negativity of strangers to a fever pitch in my mind and it did not necessarily represent reality. Maybe the WoW community has just aged to the point of maturity and they are less awful than I remember them being. Whatever the case I enjoyed myself and plan on giving War Within a shot when it drops. I doubt I will ever go back to mainlining this game but it is fun enough to visit from time to time.

To Those Departing

Honkai Star Rail – PC

This one had been hanging from a thread for quite a while. It seemed that I was only logging in during a major announcement to soak up some free pulls and spend zero time actually playing the game. I uninstalled this yesterday and decided that I am finally going to stop pretending I am actually engaging with it. I am not dissatisfied with the game, I just haven’t been in the mood for it. I had a heck of a lot of fun playing it for a while, but “Space China” and how much content was contained within it and the constant need to keep going back there sort of killed the pace for me. The first two “planets” were freaking great, but things bogged down in the Luofu. I am sure at some point I will return when I am in the mood for turn-based combat, but for now I figured I would reclaim the disk space and the mental bandwidth.

New World – PC

This was honestly the game that prompted me to update my sidebar yesterday. I think I am officially done caring about New World. The recent marketing debacle has led me to believe that the game is no longer going in the direction I want it to be going. Yesterday I made the step of uninstalling the game for the first time in three years and reclaiming the large amount of disk space that it was taking up. It is an interesting game, but it has gone the way of Bungie and removed content that I liked from the game… namely First Light turning into the expansion zone for Angry Earth, and now Cutlass Keys being consumed to build a zone for the upcoming Aeternum rebranding. I checked the fuck out of Destiny when they started vaulting content, and what they have done feels pretty similar to that. I get that they are struggling and this whole ARPG rebranding nonsense is a last-ditch effort to become relevant… but discounting the few players who were playing your game is the wrong way to get there.

Wrapping Up

Maybe I won’t wait a year before making one of these posts again. I seem to have settled into a series of forever games once more. I have my cycle of ARPGs that I shift between each time they release new content, and then I have a few MMORPGs to bounce back and forth between. I am pretty happy with the state of things because there is almost always something that I want to be doing in each of them. There will of course be single-player games that I spend a weekend and play through like I did with Horizon Forbidden West when it was released on PC, but really… very few of those last long enough to ever make it onto one of these posts. For now, I am really looking forward to Dawntrail dropping tomorrow and then the Harbingers cycle in Last Epoch in early July.

Fun With Query Loop Blocks

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Some years ago I started creating “Game Tools” pages for the games that I care an awful lot about. These were partially simply a way of collating the links and resources that I was using while playing said game in an easy-to-find format so that I could jump to it whenever I returned to a game. The problem with bouncing between games is that my aging mind can’t always remember the tools that I utilized when I last played that game. The Game Tools pages give me a point of reference so that I can hop back in and see what external tools or add-ons that I was using the last time I played. More than that however the internet has become a very fickle place, and tools and resources can often get buried in a deep stack of SEO-optimized click-farming bullshit. By documenting the resources I am using, I am also giving a hand up to anyone who happens to come along behind me.

Weirdly enough these pages seem to gain traction over time as a landing page for folks looking for information for that game. Thing is… I was doing myself a bit of a disservice because I never really included my own content in the list of things that I had been linking to. I kept thinking that there had to be an easy way to embed the content for that specific topic in a page so that folks could easily jump off to the latest posts that I have released in a given category. Enter the Query Loop block, which essentially does exactly this. You can embed it in an existing page and either sort by taxonomy elements and pull in posts that belong to specific categories or have specific tags, or you can do a free-form keyword search that queries the text of all of your blog posts and returns the latest that have those specific keywords. For me, it was pretty easy given that I have fairly structured categories and I’ve been going through and updating the individual game tool pages with a content block filtered to the most relevant category. This makes me contemplate how I have my menu structured though and maybe have higher blocks for ARPGs for example that links to content for ALL of the ARPG games that I often write about.

There are a good number of patterns that you can choose from when displaying the content block, and for the most part, I have landed upon the large left image with the content snippet. However, I think at some point I will probably create my own custom block because I would rather have the snippet and title justified on the left border and the image floating off to the right. If they have premade patterns there has to be a way to craft your own, so that is something I will dive into at a later date. For the most part the existing patterns work well enough.

The end result works well enough, but I do not love the fact that it overflows the boundaries of the content block for my blog. I might see what I can do to reign that in a bit or instead shift to one of the other patterns. For now, I am calling this good and have updated all of the fixed tool pages to follow this format. Mostly I thought I would share this for any WordPress self-hosters so you can play with it as well. I have no clue if the query loop block exists in the dotcom version of WordPress but I would be shocked if it did not.

The Dark Tower Thoughts

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The Dark Tower is above all else a book about obsession, and this month I have been on my own obsessive journey. After wrapping a very short read for reasons beyond the scope of my understanding I landed upon the first book of the Dark Tower series for my second read of the New Year. I started with The Gunslinger on January 2nd and wrapped the seventh book in the series on January 27th. The time between I existed in a world parallel to Roland and his Ka-Tet. This is one of those unwieldy foundationary mythos that I had been interested in for decades, but never really sought out to complete on my own. I had read some of the comics associated with this series, and read a few novels that are adjacent to this tale but never really dove headlong into the abyss that is The Dark Tower. I should warn you that from this point forward, there will be spoilers regarding each of the seven books in the series.

The Gunslinger

I have to be honest… I did not really think much of that very first book. It felt like a novel compiled together out of bits and pieces of disconnected story. That makes sense I guess given that it was originally published starting in October 1978 and continuing intermittently through November of 1981 in five separate chunks in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Like all science fiction and fantasy of the 80s and 90s… it has some problematic elements. It is weird to me how much the cultural landscape has changed, but if I had to peg the story it felt like a Sergio Leone movie… which also makes sense given that was a large chunk of the inspiration. It is a tale of very one-dimensional characters set against the backdrop of an epic quest… that felt a bit hollow. I remember questioning friends’ sanity over the years when they talked about The Dark Tower like it was this holy grail of fiction. Was this paper-thin story that I was reading really worthy of so much praise and adoration?

The Drawing of the Three

To be perfectly honest… after finishing that first book it was a bit of a coin toss if I continued forward. It was mostly out of sheer laziness and not wanting to try and figure out a new book series to read that I continued forward and in truth I am glad that I did. The Drawing of The Three is the book that begins to allow some color to creep into the otherwise sepia-toned visage of the Gunslinger’s world. This transformation is brought on by the introduction of three characters: Eddie Dean, Odetta Holmes, and Detta Walker. These characters begin to influence and expand the persona that is Roland of Gilead slowly sanding down the sharp edges and turning him into a begrudgingly likable character. The tale of this story is a bit of a meandering mess but it somehow worked. This tale is filled with broken people who strive to improve themselves.

The Waste Lands

Blaine is a pain. The third book in this sequence was the one that almost broke me. There are some aspects of the book that I greatly like and other aspects that were a bit much for me. The tale largely revolves around redemption and Roland making up for the mistake of the first book… aka when he betrayed Jake and let him fall into the abyss. In the second book, Roland goes out of his way to keep Jake from dying in the “real world” which causes a schism to form… where Roland and Jake are torn apart by the knowledge of him dying and also living being in constant conflict. The summoning of Jake as the third member of the ka-tet makes perfect sense and quite honestly… had this book entirely focused upon that quest it would be whole. Instead, the quartet continues forward into a future “Not-New-York” in the form of Lud and then ventures across an imaginary Kansas in an AI-controlled Monorail that wants to kill them where the story just sort of abruptly stops.

I cannot imagine how livid fans of this series were at the time. Six years pass until the story picks up again with Wizard and Glass. The Waste Lands feels like a bad case of editing. It seems like there was more than a book’s worth of content here and should have been kept to a tighter scope. Maybe that would have meant that there were eight books in the sequence rather than seven, but it would had a better flow to it. That is not to say that I did not enjoy the book greatly. There were moments in the book that were the best yet, and I really liked the world-building that this novel added to the story… but it was still a bit of a mess. It very much still felt like King wrote himself into a corner and then did not know how to proceed and simply just stopped the story as a result.

Wizard and Glass

This is the least favorite book in the entire sequence. I think part of the problem is that you have the conclusion of The Waste Lands just sort of crudely tacked onto this completely different flashback story. There is this night’s palaver around a campfire as Roland attempts to explain who Susan Delgado was… and that just sort of consumes the majority of the novel. The things I liked about this novel are something that I have loved about the series as a whole. I like the language of this book and the Mejis region’s particular curious dialect. I think my biggest issue is that I did not think that Young Roland, Cuthbert, or Alain were particularly likable characters. I liked Susan Delgado quite a bit and as far as I am concerned she is the primary protagonist of this tale. I also particularly liked Sheemie aka Stanley Ruiz and thought him one of the most sympathetic characters to date, but got somewhat frustrated that he kept getting entangled in the mess.

I feel like this is supposed to feel like some grand love story… but instead, it ends up feeling like a tragedy brought on by the naivety of youth and the hubris of Roland’s obsession. There are many a character to outright hate in this novel so there is at least a bit of joy in watching them all get their just deserts. I think the other issue that I had with this novel is that I could see the shape of the tale before it was truly started. Partially this is the fault of it being a flashback and partially due to bits of details from the other books… but on some level, it felt like King was just going through the paces and writing out of obligation more than love of this particular tale.

Wolves of the Calla

This is without a doubt my favorite of the novels of the entire sequence. I think this is because it is the first time that the group actually acts like the “Arthurian Knights” that they purport to be. Once again I love the language of the series and the dialect of Calla Bryn Sturgis. I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that I myself come from a backwater town in the middle of nowhere where most of the locals speak a specific way… and it just seems fitting to have these towns develop their own detailed mannerisms. I like the folk of the Calla and the simple mission of trying to stop these invaders from stealing the children and doing god knows what manner of experiments on them before returning them “roont”. This is also the last time that the Ka-Tet is whole, and as a result, it sort of serves as the payoff before the fall. The Dark Tower is a series where there are no truly happy endings, and as a result, we all knew that there would be no lasting peace.

Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you.

Son of Susannah

Being perfectly blunt… this is a book that I did not like terribly much. It is a tale of things slowly falling apart. I am not sure if Mia the entity that is now possessing Susannah is supposed to be sympathetic or not. I did not find her particularly so and mostly just hated her single-minded focus. The book serves to flesh out some more of the cosmology of the world and how each particular “when” fits into the puzzle, but it was largely just a letdown after how damned good Wolves of the Calla was. I think another problem is around this point… I was just ready for it all to be over. I was six books into a series that I had been shotgunning book after book and was growing tired of living in this world’s particular headspace. This felt like something I had to endure to get to the end, which is sort of sad considering how much I loved the character of Susannah Dean across the rest of the books. The title of this book feels like a lie though, because this is less the tale of Susannah and more the tale of Mia.

The Dark Tower

Regardless of anything else… starting this book felt like an accomplishment because I would finally be finished with this series. I am not entirely certain what I think about this conclusion to the tale and from what I understand at the time it was rather controversial amongst King fans. I think the piece of this tale that I like the least is how Roland of Gilead begins to unravel. What I mean by that is that during this tale he had begun to grow as a character and take on some measure of emotional connection to his Ka-Tet and in the end… that all sort of drains away and all he is left with is the obsession that started the entire story in the first place. It’s a bit tragic I guess, that at the end of the day… the only thing that matters to Roland is his Pyrrhic quest for the tower. The Ka-Tet is truly broken and this novel sees the death of Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers and the escape of Susannah Dean leaving him only with the quest and a particular Deus Ex Machina required to allow him to accomplish his goal.

I think the frustration with this novel is that there are a lot of things that are set up as epic story arcs that just sort of fizzle out. For starters the child Mordred seemed like we were heading towards an epic battle between the aging Gunslinger and his cursed heir. Instead Mordred seems to exist just to remove one more member of the Ka-Tet as Oy takes the death that was intended for Roland. Then there is the battle with the Crimson King… which gets resolved by the “magical art boy” costing neither of them anything in the process. The piece that does not bother me in the least though is the causality loop that Roland and his quest for the tower end up being. There will always be a Gunslinger, Tower, and Man in Black that fled across the desert and I am okay with that. Given the tragic nature of this tale, it seems fitting for his quest to never be completed and for him to leave nothing but death in his wake.

Final Thoughts

Was this worth a month of my life? I am honestly not sure. I am not as connected to this tale as many of the diehard fans who joined in along the way and anxiously awaited the next chapter. I don’t think this is the work of genius that many folks seem to think it is. I think it is a flawed tale that somewhat developed a life of its own as it went. It is a colossally untidy mess. What it feels like is a pen-and-paper game where the Gamemaster did not have enough time to prep for it… so they just sort of winged it and made things up as they went. I’ve done this a few things and while there are moments of genius inspiration that come through that process… there is a lot of muddling about which seems rampant in this tale. I think the whole is definitely better than the sum of the parts, but The Dark Tower is still a bit of a mess.

Do I regret shotgunning my way through this series book after book over the course of January? Absolutely not. I am happy to finally understand the scope of this tale after having seen its evidence for decades. The piece that will stay with me though is the language of this tale. I will likely incorporate “Thankee-Sai” and “Say True, Say Thanks” into my ongoing melange of linguistical scavengry from assorted pop culture icons. In spite of my criticisms… I liked the tale quite a bit and it had moments that I will cherish from this point forward. That said, I am not exactly certain I would recommend the experience of slogging through these seven books to anyone else. Like most everything else I have consumed in my life, I will hold a timeless love for the best bits… and jettison the lesser debris.

Did I miss the point? Do you feel like my assessment of the whole was unfair? Drop me a line below. Truth is it won’t likely change my opinion of the tale but it might make you feel better at expressing yourself. After all, I am just some random dude on the internet with a blog that is entirely based on my personal opinions and doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.