Going Critical: Constructive vs Destructive

I have a rather lengthy story I wrote not to long ago sitting on my hard drive.  I think it's pretty good and have considered posting in various places, here and deviant art for example.  I don't not because I'm afraid people will say it's awful, or say nothing at all.  No, I'm afraid of four words:

"Great job.  Post more!"

Afraid because that is utterly useless to me.  It doesn't help me improve my work at all, and worse, it might encourage me to keep going with terrible ideas when they should be reigned in.  This phrase, these four words and its various forms, is a form of destructive criticism.

It's not alone of course, and the reason this kind of "encouragement" exists is because of the weakest of the three major destructive criticisms:  The troll.  Trolls, in internet parlance, are people who spout off insulting comments for no other reason than to make people respond to them, and then they can say more.  The vast majority of trolls are, well, obvious.  There are good trolls out there, that can play a community like a fiddle and drive them into frothing at the mouth rage, but most are obvious, terrible, and not worth the time.  If someone is discouraged by one of these, then they probably have greater problems than just what's in the piece.  At the same time, sometimes trolls can reveal potential problems on accident, and might be useful, but they should only be taken with a grain of salt.

Still, the internet is full of touchy-feely people who believe everyone should be encouraged, so they post things like "Great job.  Post more!"  The reason it's useless is because it doesn't say WHY it's great.  What worked to make the commenter enjoy it?  Why did the commenter enjoy it?  It says nothing.  It is meaningless, meant only to counter trolls whose opinions are meant to simply hurt.  The result is most of the comments on any given piece of work is utterly worthless to improving the comic.

And what's worse is that the creator might start buying it.  Hearing everyone and their uncle say "great job" does have a positive impact, right up until someone counters it.  Then the creator goes ballistic.  How dare someone counter their work that everyone else claims is the greatest thing EVAR.  I've had that happen once.  Remember back when I was talking about Dreamfall I mentioned I wrote a fanfiction for the series.  I was posting it to a particular board, and others were writing stories as well.  I wrote a critique on one, and while the details are fuzzy, the result was that it wasn't all that great.  The author came unglued on me, and I left the board, and stopped writing that fanfic because of it.

Finally, the last form of destructive criticism comes from the nitpickers and grammar nazis.  Their problem is they focus on things that, in the end, aren't important at all.  To a point, some of these things are important, and useful in refining a work, especially on the grammar end.  The phrasing and wording can change the meaning of a piece easily, but it's not that important in the earlier drafts.  Same with nitpicking plot elements.  It's unnecessary criticisms that, while they might be useful, often miss the point of improving a piece, instead beating on the little things.

My Not-So-Wild Review of Schlock Mercenary got this treatment from a commenter.  Considering I write most of these articles kind of off the cuff and do no editing whatsoever (because I'm lazy), I'm sure those errors are there, but it didn't affect the substance of the article, so what good did it do in the long run?  I'm not unappreciative, of course, but it doesn't help me work on expressing my ideas better.  He did follow up by saying he agreed with my ideas, but didn't add in if he had different thoughts.

Meanwhile, my brief discussion about Sinfest a bit ago resulted in a much more constructive comment.  The commenter disagreed with my suggestion that maybe something deeper is going on.  I didn't reply to the comment (sorry!) but I suspect he might be right and if I do a follow up, I may quote him on it.  That comment added to my ideas in a way that quoting off all my grammatical errors did not.

So what makes criticism constructive?  That's easy, answer one question:  Why?  Why is it good?  Why is it bad?  Why did I enjoy it?  Why do I want read more?  I say easy, of course, but it's not.  In trying to write my Supermassive Blackhole A* RE-Review, I had to struggle with why I wasn't enjoying it.  Eventually it came down to bad pacing, and a character that was a little too perfect for my tastes.  It sounds quite harsh, and it is, but I hope it comes across that I didn't HATE the work because of it, I just didn't enjoy it.  The next step is to try to present options to fix it, which I only half did, but we're not all perfect.

The point is to make the product BETTER.  But as I've said, criticism is practically a dirty word, even the constructive kind.  I'll explore why it might be next week.

Going Critical: Introduction

With 4 years behind me, I think it's time we talked about what I actually do here.  See, I'm technically a critic.  Oh, it says "reviewer" at the top, but that's not actually what I've been doing all these years, mostly.  No, I'm being a critic, not just of each comic, but the entire industry.

Considering myself a critic means I have to think differently when I read a comic, but exactly what that is might be a bit hard to describe.

But the word also carries a lot of baggage.  People don't like critics, for lots of justifiable reasons.  Often the idea is that those who can, do, those who can't, teach and those who can't teach, criticize.  This often makes critics as lesser people in this chain of creation, lumping them in with lawyers and corporate executives, groups that most people wouldn't mind seeing just simply vanish from the face of the Earth, preferably via cannon.

And yet criticism is, in and of itself, not a bad thing.  In fact, I would argue that it is a good thing, a great thing even, and vital to the evolution of art, politics, and everything else.  Criticism isn't about putting something down, or saying it's not good enough, it's about championing good work, and encouraging weaker pieces to be greater.

It is about pointing out mistakes, as necessary, but it's also meant to show how to correct those mistakes.  The issue is that it is often confused with trolling, entertainment and simple positive reinforcement.  These cloud real criticism, burying it underneath insincere comments, jokes, and well intentioned but meaningless comments.  It's so bad that finding actual, honest criticism, especially online, is difficult.

And worse yet, even the best critics often fall prey to their own biases or focus on the wrong things.  Instead they savage the topic because they don't like it and nitpick things that, in the long run, don't matter whatsoever.

It all adds up to critics being viewed as horrible people when really we just want to help.  It's getting past those issues, both on ends, that is a task worthy of effort.  With that said, this begins yet another series of articles which I can write in a week and post for a month or so.  Here I will try to explain what criticism really is, how to give it and receive it, and how to identify and avoid false criticism.  I'm not an expert in this, of course, but I'll do my best and use my own reviews to help define the point where applicable.

Next week, constructive and destructive criticism.  See you then.

Fourth Anniversary

You know, last year I kind of skipped an official Anniversary post and instead had a new patch of reviews.  This year?  Yeah, not so much.

Actually, quite a bit.  The last month and a half have been mostly prepping for this anniversary.  The site redesign, the New List, sorting comics, looking at old favorites, all of this has been about this anniversary.  I've been doing reviews of comics for over 10 years now, and only the last 4 have been with this blog, but it still feels like I'm just getting started.

And yet, I apparently have a following of sorts.  I never really paid attention to the stats Blogspot keeps on traffic, mostly because it really didn't matter to me.  I was posting this stuff for myself at the very least, somewhere to vent my ideas and try to get out the things I wanted to talk about.  Looking now, though, wow do I have a lot of people visiting my site.  I mean, I'm not bringing in thousands every week, but even 50 or so is more than I'd expect.  So I want to thank you all for reading.

Which means I need to return the favor a bit.  I really, REALLY haven't looked at the back end stuff for Blogspot until now, and missed things like, a way to catch all the comments made on my blog.  As in I generally miss them all.  My apologies about that.  I still find it hard to remember that this is MY site, not some other site that happens to link everything I read in one convenient location.  So I will make an much more concerted effort to keep up on comments, even if they are few and far between.

On top of that, there really isn't a great way to send me suggestions or other things.  As such, I've created a new gmail account just for this site.  It is wildwebcomicreviewer@gmail.com  This will be linked on the About page so that should make it easier for people to contact me.  Do note if you send a suggestion, or are promoting yourself, my method of reviewing might mean it takes a great deal of time for it to get on the site.  New comics will suffer great deal from this as I prefer to give them time to take root before I dive in.  I don't always, but I do try.

Finally, you probably noticed a new addition to the site.  Yeah, those are ads, I signed up for Ad-Sense..  I probably wouldn't do it, but not to long ago I was on a computer that was not my own and randomly googled for "webcomic review."  I was fourth on the list.  Not fourth page, fourth.  That may mean nothing, there aren't a lot of webcoimc review sites out there (Webcomic Overlook is at the top, BTW, go El Santo), but it does mean something to me, it means I might actually, you know, get something out of this site besides satisfaction.  I've been unemployed for almost a year now, and any form of income, even the few cents a week this site might bring in, would be helpful.  I'll try to place the ads so they won't be too intrusive, but tell me if you find it so and I'll look to move it around a bit.

Again, I thank all of you for visiting my humble little page.  Which is getting a lot less humble now that I think about it.  Still, I will try to keep weekly updates going, even as I plan a month long trip to Texas of all places (it's a job hunting trip).  I'm taking my laptop, so I will still be updating with something.  Next week I'm driving out there, in fact.  It's a hell of a way to celebrate my birthday, which is the birthday of this site as well.  Officially that's the 16th by the way, but I update on Fridays, and I don't intend to change that.

Until next week kiddies, and for as long as I'm able.

Rebooting

The word "Reboot" has become the rally cry of many a Hollywood and Television executive, and I think I understand why, and it's not just that they've run out of ideas.

Two things play into it.  The first is the need to extend a franchise, but the original cast and writers are getting older and older, to the point that they simply can't act any more, or are dead.  Have you seen Leonard Nimoy recently?  Long running franchises like Star Trek can't rely on their original casts any more, so there are two ways to go:  The Next Generation angle (new ship, new crew, new adventures) or just start from scratch and build a new group of actors to take on iconic roles.

The other reason is, well, people don't really WANT new things.  Claiming they have no ideas isn't the issue, the issue is that WE don't really want something new.  Would you spend money to see the next Star Wars movie, or some other sci-fi film you know nothing about?  They have the numbers, and the numbers say the Star Wars movie would win.  Statistics is an awful thing sometimes.

Okay, so that's why Hollywood, television and gaming companies do reboots.  Why do comic artists do reboots?  And I won't talk about DC and it's issues here, because I don't read comic books.  After all, comic characters don't age, so that's not a reason.  And most comics don't have big enough audiences, or the resources to track stats like big studios do.

For Commander Kitty, it was more necessity than anything else.  The previous version of the comic had been more or less lost due to host failures, and so much time had passed that it was easier to start over again.  The artist even considers the original comic to be more of a "rough draft" and I can see where he's coming from there.  Not much was really lost in the reboot, of course, the characters stayed more or less the same, their relationships reset, but that was likely for the best, and the story was begun anew, and it ended up being much better for it.

There really aren't a lot of comics that do a full on reboot that I've read, but one is, technically, a kind of reboot:  Dumbing of Age.  The whole time I was reading it, I kept feeling like I had seen the art before, and I had, in ads for Shortpacked!, among other comics.  Which I didn't realize until a couple months after I started reading the comic.  The point of Dumbing of Age was to bring together his many characters (there are at least 4 comics this has roots in) and put them "in college, minus fifteen years of baggage."  Again, the rebooting here was less about the quality of the work, and more wanting to tell a different story but with similar characters.  In a way, it actually does fulfill the desire for people to have the same old thing, but in a new, and actually interesting way.  The fact that I didn't feel like I had missed anything is a testament to the writing allowing for the clueless, like me, to get into the comic without even knowing there were other comics.

I rarely see comics do any kind of reboot, they either keep going with what they have, or maybe go back and redo the art (that's very common).  But the stories, characters and whatnot remain the same.  I suspect the reason is more pride than anything else.  This was something they worked hard on, and they don't want to throw it all out and start again, even if it could be justified.  Sometimes, though, the result is much better than the original.  I have not read Shortpacked!, but I have a funny feeling that it probably won't be nearly as strong as Dumbing of Age when I do, despite having several years on it's younger sibling.  And my memory of the original Commander Kitty is dim, but I'm pretty sure the current version is much, much better.  Both should be considered successful reboots, at the very least.

Next week, it's anniversary time.  Until then kiddies.

Wild Webcomic RE-Review #1

I currently have 245 comics on my list.  Of those only a 23 actually appear on my Non-Read list.  Does it mean these comics are bad?  Well, sometimes.  Still, I'm not one for just letting things go, so as a service not just to me, but these comics, I'll give them another shot and see if they've improved enough to be moved to the read list, and it has happened.  The World Explodes, now sadly inaccessible (aside from one awful strip), turned into something so much more when I re-reviewed it, and I love finding that.

Of course, this first time I'm going to cheat a bit.  One of these comics was never really ON my Non-Read list, one I've been intending to re-review for some time, and only the third actually fits here, but then I like to do things like that.  So without further adieu, the Wild Webcomic RE-Review:

89.  Gun Street Girl

Original Review - No, your eyes don't deceive you, this comic is on the same site as No Stereotypes, but this is completely, totally different. There are guns and violence, magic and mystery, and another pair of lesbians. Shit, did it again. Well fuck, if you're going to wonder off every time I say that word, I'll just sing a little. Or not. This isn't a strip, and there are no long story arcs, just short little pieces written more like mini-comic books than anything else. So don't let the style turn you off, or you'll miss the fun.

RE-Review - It's funny how I always think of this as one of my earliest reviews, where the next comic is going to be much earlier.  Still, I have fond memories of finding it, and it is one of the few strips that I actively missed reading.  Why wait to go back so long?  Not sure, because it is still as good as I remember.  This is the perfect definition of Urban Fantasy that I think I can find out there right now, but without it being some kind of epic fantasy piece.  All the stories are short, almost one off tales that do tie into each other a bit, but not nearly as much as it would be expected from this.  Though I haven't read it, I suspect fans of the Dresden Files would enjoy the hell out of this comic.

In short, it is the tale of Eddie, a low level mage, and Liz, his Gun or muscle, and the various small adventures they have trying to keep the supernatural in check in 1990's London.  I say small, and I mean it, I can't recall a single time when they dealt with anything big enough to threaten more than a couple dozen people at a time.  Hell, usually THEY'RE the ones in trouble.  The scale is actually quite refreshing, and the fact that each story is more or less self-contained means it doesn't matter that the comic doesn't start from the beginning of their relationship, but does show it growing despite that.  The only thing that bugs me whether the comic is still updating or not.  The artist and writer both have active twitter accounts of all things, and the artist has a big old side bar featuring Liz on that page, but I remember even when I was actively reading it, it only updated rarely.  I don't want to call it dead, but I'm afraid I may have to.  Still, as a warm up for the re-reviews, it was a nice to come back to this comic, and I will recommend it.

28.  Commander Kitty

Original Review - After the headache of Small World, I needed something funny. And Commander Kitty was there! This is a funny strip, there are no buts about it. Every page has at least one joke, if not more, and the bulk of them will drop you to the floor in laughter. The only strip I know of that beats it consistently is 8-Bit Theater, and that's only because 8-Bit has been around longer. If you read any of this batch, read this one, you won't be disappointed.

RE-Review - This is not the same comic I reviewed back then.  I mean, the original Commander Kitty is gone, the comic I read in 2003 isn't even in the archives of this comic.  The reason is pretty clear on the first page of the current archive:  He didn't want it to get confusing with the new version, a reboot of Commander Kitty.  The only thing I really have to compare it to is my own memory then, and what I remember of the original CK was a comic that was both funny, but disjointed and confusing.  Random is a good word, lack of a direction is a great phrase, and while it made the jokes funnier, it didn't help the comic long term.

The current version though, that's a whole different story.  Comparatively, it's a tight story, with a solid direction and movement.  There are a few new characters, but the original core cast is still there, still has their own issues, and play off each other rather well.  It's not the greatest comic ever, but it's actually quite good, and I was surprised how much I was enjoying it despite not having contact with it in several years.  At some point, I would like to see the old CK again, just for comparison sake, but I think I won't find the old comic as good now thanks to the current version.  The update schedule for CK is kind of wonky right now so it'll go in the Monthly list, but it's still worth reading.

201.  Supermassive Black Hole A*

Original Review - This is not a webcomic. Then what is it doing here? Well, it presents itself (and advertises itself) as a webcomic, but it isn't, it's an animation series. Yes, it has a "webcomic" version, which is just stills from the animation, but like Lizzy, at best it can only give you an overview of the story. Without watching the videos, much of the action is flat and uninteresting. The fact that the art is heavy black and white, getting any sense of action from the stills is difficult at best. It does get better (the still version) but it's still just not quite right. So is it any good? Well, I think the story isn't too bad, but again, half the action is in the animations, and due to issues on my end, I didn't get to watch more than a few minutes of the first one, so I can't say for sure. Due to this nature, though, I'm not going to be following it.

RE-Review - Alright, I'm taking a back the "not a webcomic" statement.  This was actually completely true for the first 7 episodes of the comic. After that, there aren't any videos any more, so it is a proper webcomic now.  I still haven't sat down and watch more than one video because I'm both lazy and a comic reviewer, not a video reviewer, so I won't comment on the quality of the work in that aspect.  In any case, in re-reading it, I can declare that it's better than I remember, but not that much better.

I will say that this has some of the best science fiction (yeah, fiction) that I've seen in a long time.  It really takes the given technology and explores the implications of using it quite well.  It also ends up being quite good at world building and I'm rather intrigued by the universe built for it and almost want to see the final result.  One issue is the main character, or the current one that is.  There are two, the original one, Vero, was actually an interesting character.  A good guy at heart, smart, but not too smart, and he often screwed up more than he succeeded in his goals, a very human character and I found myself rooting for him after a while.  The problem is he was replaced, by Selenis after episode 10.  I don't like her.  On one hand, she is, technically, a villain, so I guess not liking her is the point, but I can deal with that, but as a character I find her uninteresting.  She's harder to relate to than Vero, mostly because of the interesting tech thing going on, but also because she always seems on top of what she's doing, too talented and skilled, almost to a fault.  It grates me wrong I guess.  I could overlook it though, if it weren't for the real problem.

I will say now, the art is actually quite good for a monotone style, and the character designs generally work rather well.  However, the updates come one panel at a time.  I've talked about Pacing before, and this comic has a weird issue with it.  It's both fast, each strip is a quick read, and slow, you need multiple strips to play out a scene, at the same time.  Simple sequences, like a conversation, happen over the course of a week, with one side talking one day, and the other the next.  This makes an archive dive a long, drawn out process.  The most recent chapter has 130+ panels.  No, not strips, these are individual panels, and to read each one it's one click at a time.  This is really annoying when very little, if anything happens in a panel, with the worse moment coming when the panel was just BLACK because of a power outage in the sequence.  It's like reading a book and every page having one sentence on it, it gets old quick.  For a comic like this, I really can't see myself reading it day after day to keep up with the single panel updates, or reading it weekly and cycling back five strips to see what I missed.  In short, I find the comic kind of a hassle to read with a character I don't really enjoy following, despite having an interesting premise and some well thought out ideas and decent art.  As such, despite it being better than what I remember, I still won't be following it.  Just not worth it to me.

And that's it for this round.  When will I dive into another group of RE-reviews?  No idea, but I'll see what comes up.  Until next time kiddies.

Touching Base #14

Still getting used to the design?  I know I am, I almost forget I'm looking at my own site.

Anyway, as I said last week, I found more than a few dead comics as I was shuffling through that were, in fact, updating.  That's not to say I didn't KNOW some of these were updating, I did, but a few caught me off guard.  Most of the stuff in this edition of Touching Base is about them, but not all.

Before I get to those comics, I would like to mention that The Devil's Panties has setup a Kickstarter for. . . Devil Girl dolls.  Huh.  Not something I'm interested in, but I'm betting fans of the comic are wetting themselves over it.  Still, at least it's not issues with publishing.

Twilight Lady has been featuring an alternate day comic called Vine for the last month or so.  It's a black and white urban fantasy type thing that I've only been half following.  It's weird, so far, but nothing really stand out to me.  I'll keep tabs on it, but don't expect it in a review in the near future.

Vampire Cheerleaders went off on a brief tangent after the crossover, and then dove right back into the crossover.  Um, this is supposed to be vampire cheerleaders, right?  Not the Paranormal Mystery Squad, right?  We'll see how it all pans out, I guess.

Bug officially changed it's name (and url) to Bug Martini in order to better control the brand and such.  This was a bit ago, but I have updated the links in The New List and in the side bar.

I haven't been following any of the branching strips from Out There, mostly because I have a full plate, but also to give them some strips to gain traction first.  That said, I'm still on the fence as to whether the switch from a daily, 3 or 4 panel strip to a weekly full page/color strip was a good fit for Out There.  I don't know if the comic really gained anything in the transition.  I'll give it a bit longer, then read In Here and Cliche Flambe and see how those two work.  I suspect the move for Out There was specifically to power up the other two, so maybe that's what was gained.

Okay, enough of that, let's talk about the comics that aren't dead any more.

Okay, first up is Marry Me, which I've know has been back in action for a bit now.  I stopped reading because it ceased updating and because the main story was kind of over.  I wasn't strictly in love with the sequel/prequel story, but I was willing to give it a chance, and still am.

Our Time in Eden has been updating MUCH longer than Marry Me, but I just never got back to it.  It went on hiatus for a couple years, and I kind of gave it up for dead, but it did come back, last year.  I knew it was updating, but with so much on my plate, I just didn't want to spend the time reading it again.  Of course, now I do, so it'll be back on the read list.

The biggest surprise is Gone with the Blastwave, which I never expected to update again.  Oh, it's slow (probably end up on the Monthly list), but it's updating.  I love that.

Same with the Perry Bible Fellowship.  I was sure at one point the artist declared it dead, but apparently not.  It updates very slowly, like bi-monthly, but it does update.  Will I follow it?  Um, yeah, for a bit, at least until I can't stand the long wait between updates any more.  Only a couple comics get away with it, and I'm not sure PBF deserves to.

Another surprise return was On The Edge.  It went on hiatus for quite some time, due apparently to a good job offer for the artist (I approve of these kinds of hiatuses, BTW), a house, a marriage and something about cakes (I also approve of cakes).  It's back now, looks to be on a weekly-ish schedule, and I'll be following it almost immediately.

Way back in 2006, I found two comics and a webcomic reviewer on a single site, and enjoyed all three.  The reviewer is Tangents, and the comics are Gun Street Girl and No Stereotypes.  Then that single website kind of fell apart.  Tangents I managed to keep following, but No Stereotypes kind of vanished, and Gun Street Girl moved to another site, and I kind of stopped following it.  Well, doing up the list meant I spent some time checking in on Gun Street Girl, and it added at least few extra stories, but I'm not sure it still updates.  Still, I think I should re-read it, but I can't just leave it with it's old review, but a new review, a "re-review" as it were.  I'll set up a group of comics for a re-review in the future, and Gun Street Girl will be there.  No Stereotypes also reappeared, and the archive has been slowly been recreated, so I might do that as a re-review later, but not until it's caught back up.

The oddest return, though, was Angels 2200.  It was a year and a half between the previous update and the current update, which is already almost 2 months old.  No news posts saying what happened, no comment from the creator at all in fact.  It's almost as if it was an automatic update or something.  Given that lack of information that it will be back, I'm going to have to leave it on the dead list for a while because, well, I have no idea where to put it.  Hiatus maybe, but I'm not so sure it will ever update again, and Non-Read is reserved for comics that are active, but I don't read.  So I'll go ahead and leave it dead, but I'll have to check on it once in a while because who knows, maybe that update in June was a sign of things to come.  Or it the scheduling got messed up and it posted it 18 months too late.  We'll see.

And that's about it for this week.  Until next time kiddies when I have, um, something.

Something's Different

Can't quite put my finger on it. . .

Just kidding.  Well, what do you think of the new look?  It's been LONG in coming.  As in, the day after I created the damn thing.  I held off because I had a dream of making a decent logo image for the name and base the look off of that.  I didn't, so I didn't change the look, until now.

Why?  Well, a couple of reasons.  One, the green/brown/white combo was getting old, but I just said that.  No, the real reason is The New List.   The table format I used on it looked like crap on the old site design, on this new one it looks OH so much better. Look at it, is it not magnificent?  I wasn't kidding when I said a lot of links.  245 comic links, 49 review links and 21 assorted links put on that page.

Sadly, 24 are dead and gone, missing from the internet.  That said, counting my hiatus comics, I read 90 comics right now.  I shouldn't be surprised at that number, but I am.  Dumbfounded even.  It's less than half, sure, but with 34 complete comics, I'm damn near close to half of all my reviews being at least worth reading, if not active.

I spent a lot of time rechecking links and, much to my surprise, some comics I called dead AREN'T any more, ones I like even.  So next week, I'll be doing a Touching Base and bringing back comics that I thought for sure were gone forever.  I'm actually kind of excited by this.  Almost want to just do it now, but there are other fish to fry.

I made one minor change to the Newspaper List, removing Buckles.  Never thought I'd see a DEAD newspaper comic link, but there it is.  I think a lot of it has to do with the syndicates (King Syndicate specifically) and how they wrangle their comics.  The strong strips can keep and maintain their own sites, but the weaker ones (like Buckles) are at their mercy.  Or the artist is just too damn lazy to update the site.  Likely a bit of both if the few news posts there are to be believed.

I've updated the Categories Page to more accurately reflect the proliferation of labels for my various articles.  Specifically, I made a handy link for things like The Standard series amongst other things, and any future series will have a link there.  I've added a lot of links, refined some, and updated some other stuff (at one point, there was 2 Touching Base #11's for some reason).  I even broke out my Nothing posts because it makes it easier to sort in the background.  I've thought about adding more series links in the future, generally on similar topics, but for now this will work.

There is another minor change to come, but I'm saving that for the anniversary.  It's nothing major, but something I probably should have done a while ago.  Next week, Touching Base wherein I resurrect some long dead favorites.  Until then kiddies.