Things To Do On A Hot And Sunny Day

Well, it turns out the problem with my PC I was talking about on Monday may not have been anything to do with Neverness To Everness after all. I logged out of EverQuest II yesterday and the same thing happened, only this time I couldn't get the machine to wake up again. 

I spent most of this morning trying every fix Gemini, reddit and YouTube could suggest, including but not limited to reseating the ram, swapping it around, reseating the GPU, changing cables, changing monitors and removing and replacing the CMOS battery. Nothing had the slightest effect. 

So here I am, blogging from my old PC, which works fine (Fingers crossed, touch wood...) It's still on Windows 10 but I'm good for security updates until October, when all support ends, so it'll do me until I either get the other repaired or replaced. It's still under warranty but it's back-to-base of course, which is pain. I've submitted a request so we'll see how that goes.

The only real drawback of (Temporarily.) reverting to the old PC is that it won't run Neverness To Everness. I'm a bit surprised because it ran Wuthering Waves flawlessly and I wouldn't have thought there was that much difference. I think it's one of those annoying hard-coded blocks, where the launcher checks the exact specs of the machine and refuses to go on if they don't meet the minimum. I'd much rather they just let me try it and find out. I've run plenty of games perfectly well on machines that didn't meet minimum spec before.

Actually, I just googled (Yay! Live blogging!) and it isn't that at all. Apparently NTE does run on sub-standard hardware, so I need to look into why it's not doing it on mine. 

It'll be a shame if I have to stop playing for a while, not only because I was really enjoying it but because I was up-to-date, for once. I've finished all the main story quests that were in the game at launch and I was ready to start on whatever comes with the new update, Dreamwalk Corridor, which lands on June 3. 

And the live blogging continues... I looked into it and NTE runs on Google Play Games for PC, which I have installed on this old machine already although I don't think I've ever used it. And i'm not using it now, either.

I tried it and it told me I wasn't entitled to play games with Google because I don't have hardware virtualization enabled. Also, while it was pointing out my deficiencies, it told me my graphics drivers were out of date.

I just updated those the other day on the new machine and when I swapped to this one I also moved the good graphics card across so I knew where to go and which ones to get. I did that and then looked up how to enable hardware virtualization, which requires going into BIOS and flicking a switch.

I powered down and restarted and... nothing. Well, something. I got as far as the Windows logo, then a spinning circle and then nothing. I tried doing that a few times until the fun wore off, then I tried booting into Safe Mode and that didn't work either because there didn't seem to be any such option.

I did manage to get into the BIOS, though, by accident, so since I was there anyway, I enabled hardware virtualization. Then I got on the laptop and looked up how to enter Safe Mode now there's no sign of it at boot-up. It's a good job there are three PCs in the house, isn't it? (Actually, I think there at least five that work. Well, four now, I guess...)

I followed the instructions on how to get to Safe Mode, which are ludicrously complicated these days. The walkthrough is literally a 12-step program, which is what you're going to need if you try and fix your own computer problems. At the 11th step, whoever wrote the list whispered an aside ("Isn't this so much easier than pressing F8 on start-up?") Litotes and irony! Gosh-wow! They really must have been pissed.

Anyway, at least it worked. I was able to get in and roll the video drivers back to the last ones. You know, the ones that worked. 

And now I'm wondering if that could have been the problem with the new PC. When did Forza Horizon 6 come out? 19 May. I have a feeling I updated my GeForce drivers the same day, although not for that reason. Which would have been about the time I started having problems...

Tempted though I am to open the cases and swap everything around again just to find out for certain that it wasn't the reason, I have a better idea. I'll stick an old Radeon card in there instead and see if that works. It's not going to use the GeForce drivers so it should, if the drivers were the problem. Hang on...

Nah. Wasn't that. Never thought it was, really. The PC also has integrated graphics that don't use Nvidia drivers as far as I know and they weren't working either.  Still, nice to be sure.

Getting back to the main plot, once I was able to get in again, I went back to Google Play Games to get NTE and bloody Google told me it still wouldn't let me play because my CPU wasn't up to the job. Well screw you, Google! Just because it's, like, a decade old...

It's looking like no Neverness To Everness for me until I get my PC fixed or replaced but the good news is I just got confirmation that the company I bought the PC from is happy to look at it under warranty.  Even if they can fix it, I very much doubt they'll do it in time for the big NTE update, especially since I don't even have the boxes to send it in yet. They want me to send it back in two boxes, one inside the other, assuming I didn't keep the original packaging, which of course I didn't.

As it happens, I did keep the box. It was a nice, big, solid one and I thought it might come in useful for something but luckily it hasn't so it's just sitting there, waiting to be used. Believe it or not, though, I don't also have a second, slightly smaller box to go inside it or indeed a second, slightly larger one tp put it in. I'll have to get one or the other before I give a date and time for the courier to collect it.

And that was how I spent my day. Aren't computers fun? 

Luckily, it was only the second-hottest of the year, after yesterday's record-breaking hottest Spring day ever. (33C in the shade in our back garden. I took a theromemeter out and measured it. Don't tell me I don't know how to have a good time!) Nothing I like better than doing several hours of fiddly tech stuff with sweat dripping off my nose into the electrics...

For the time being, I imagine there'll be a pause in posts about Neverness To Everness, which will probably come as a relief to some readers. On the other hand, they might be replaced by posts about Wuthering Waves, if I decide to get my anime fix there instead for a while, so don't get too comfortable.

Or I might just play EQII for a bit. I was doing some things there before NTE knocked me off course. At least my old PC can run that one. Suck on that, Google Play Games!  

 

Notes on AI used in this post:

Three images from the AI-generated suggested prompts I use every day to get my daily done at NightCafe. I never even look at the details beyond checking if there's some kind of animal involved and if there's neon or cyberpunk or noir in the description. I also never change the model so I guess it's whatever I used the last time I cared. Since I'm burning up the planet making these things, I figure I might as well get some use out of them. 

And they are quite pretty. Particularly the fox. I really like that fox, with his waistcoat and his weak left eye. It's not his fault he's artificial...

This Is Your Situation

Jack Emmert, CEO of Cryptic and one of the names behind a whole slew of MMORPGs you'll have heard of, if not played, including all his current studio's titles and also City of Heroes and DCUO, gave an interview to GamesIndustry recently that seemed to me to be at one and the same time both clear- and short-sighted. His thesis is that there's a pent-up demand for MMOs that's currently going unmet and his primary evidence for it is the number of people who bought New World, apparently estimated to be a staggering 10 million.

First, ten million? Really? The source quoted by GI is Video Game Insights, whose website comes under the umbrella of something called SensorTower. It seems to offer a service very similar to what SuperData used to trade on so give it whatever credibility you used to give them, I guess?

Ten million sounds like a lot of customers to give up on, though. Impressive chutzpah from Amazon, throwing that many under the bus. Jack's explanation for that is "I don't believe that the infrastructure and the strategy was there to sustain it" although if Amazon don't have the infrastructure, who does? Still, even if it was actually "only" half of what VGI claim, jack's right. That's a lot of players willing to give an MMO a go.

But not to stick with one, obviously. Just like the millions who didn't stick with Lost Ark or any of the other big ticket launches of the last few years.

Jack also cites the continuing millions believed, if not proven, to be playing World of Warcraft and "the Daybreak games, or whatever" as proof the interest is still there. All of which is uncontroversial enough, I guess, although I'm not entirely convinced it means a huge pent-up demand so much as a lot of people stuck in games they used to love, now finding themselves unwilling to move on...

I'm more interested in his analysis of why the demand, if we accept it exists, isn't being met. Apparently it's because the new games are simultaneously empty of meaning even while being overfilled with content.:

 "These new MMOs or MMO-adjacent games become so watered down by the expectations that it's got to be everything. And so you see games that are basically features, but without any soul... And so they fail, and you've seen it over and over again."

I think he's talking about what Wilhelm often complains about with games in development - that desire to be everything to everyone rather than sticking to what you're good at. "Feature creep" as it's sometimes called. Jack goes on to explain that when he was designing Neverwinter Online, he had a simple mission statement: "Kill shit and take their loot."

He doubles down: "That was it, over and over again.". Then he adds, almost as an after thought, "And make it fun." The fact that NWO is still running is cited as proof the concept worked. 

A lot of MMOs are still running, though. As has been noted many times, they're harder to kill than cockroaches. I could log into half a dozen I can think of immediately that have been up as long or longer than NWO and I'd lay good odds I'd be one of fewer than a dozen players online in any of them. Persistence is evidence of something but I'm not sure that something is demand.

My real problem with Jack's thesis, though, isn't the existence of a substantial demographic interested in massively multiple online games. Undeniably, there are tens, maybe hundreds of millions of people playing MMOs of various kinds. 

If we assume Jack means the kinds of games he makes and that he's name-checking, though, all of which are MMORPGs, not just MMOs, I'll still allow it. Lots of people do play those, albeit nowhere near as many. And logic does suggest there are orders of magnitude more players, who used to play games like those but don't any more.

Where I diverge from his argument is that what the people, who currently aren't playing MMORPGs but might one day, are impatiently awaiting are games where they can

 "run the same goddamn dungeon a hundred times" 

so they can get better and better loot, progress their character and improve their playing skills, which is what Jack thinks is needed to bring those lost sheep thundering back into the fold.

"It's not that I need a gajillion number of dungeons. What I need is to make sure the progression is worth it. In fact, I enjoy doing things a gajillion number of times, because each time I get a little bit better, and then all of a sudden I'm an expert and I'm telling other people what to do."

I'm happy for Jack. He's like Mark E Smith from the Fall. Well, in one way. They both dig repetition. 

I do, too - in music. In games, not so much. I'm over here, in the camp Jack dismisses as irrelevant:

"But other people will say, 'Well, that's impossible, people get bored or whatever'.

Oh, god yes. Try to make me do that and I will get bored. And leave. But appraently

"That misunderstands the point."

Sorry? What point was that, again? It was the lack of any need for variety or content in a new MMORPG.

"The launch does not need to be everything with an MMO. It does not need to be 200 hours of unique content. It just flat out doesn't. Running the same dungeon multiple times is perfectly fine at the start, then three months later there's something new, and three months later there's something new… And once you do that, the players are sold."

Except that the evidence of numerous Steam Charts past is that by the time you get to that first, quarterly content drop, 90% of your players will have left. And few of them are going to come back to see what else is new three months later because by then your game is going to be just some old game they wish they hadn't wasted their money on. The demand may be there but the patience sure as hell is not. 

You may be able to frog-boil WoW vets into running the same content over and over and over at higher and higher difficulty forever and ever but that's a form of conditioning that takes years to induce. It's not going to bed down in a couple of weeks, which is, at the outside, about as long as you'll have before the players get bored and wander off to find  something less tedious.

The two genres that have been eating MMORPGs lunch for half a decade now are Survival-Crafting and Open World RPG Gacha. One of those does indeed exemplify Jack's wish to "focus on economical use of assets and environments" and reliance on repetition, although the repetition in question is rarely if ever multiple dungeon runs. The repetition has more to do with creativity than compliance.

As for the other, it's the total antithesis. Pure entertainment. Also a six-weekly content cadence that leaves players struggling to keep up rather than lost for new things to do. 

What neither of them rely on is running the same goddam dungeon over and over and over until your eyes bleed, just so you can add 0.1% to your Critical Chance stat, if you're lucky. There are people who like doing that, true, but I suspect very, very few of them are actively looking for a new game that will allow them to do it. They're being very well-served already in a number of games that were last truly popular at least a decade and a half ago and most of them are not going to be moving unless that game actually shuts down.

None of which is to say Jack doesn't have a good business plan. He has. It's very realistic. A lot of developers would do well to follow it.

"I'm a niche developer in the grand scheme of things, because I identify... something with a passionate fan base, and then I try my best to create an authentic experience."

There's the future of the genre in a nutshell for you: niche product serving a pre-existing fanbase. I'm not going to argue against it. It'll work and if someone cares to apply the method to an IP I care about, I'll play it, too.

I'm just not sold on the idea that there's some larger, untapped, unsatisfied audience out there, desperately waiting for someone to make an MMORPG that will let them run the same dungeon over and over and over... 

Or maybe I just hope there isn't. God! that would be depressing...

Vibe Blogging

Today's post is going to be a bit of a mixed bag, I think. 

Not a Grab-Bag. I have a sort of format for those and this isn't going to fit it. It's just a few things I wanted to post about that probably won't make full posts of their own. 

Then again, maybe one will blow up into something bigger as I write, in which case I'll just come back and delete this introduction and no-one will ever know! <Twirls mustachio. Supervillain laughter.>

Always On

First, something that definitely isn't worth a whole post. I just want to moan about it. Unlike some people, Nimgimli for one, I've had absolutely no technical problems with Nevernesss To Everness so far. No bugs, no UI glitches, no performance issues. For me, playing on PC, it runs as smoothly as any viscous liquid you care to name. 

Playing is no problem. The problem comes when I stop. In the last few days - I bet since one of the frequent updates, although I couldn't nail down exactly which - whenever I log out of NTE, about half a minute or so later Windows tells me it's "run into a problem" and needs to reboot. That would be annoying enough but it turns out Windows can't reboot and I end up staring at a black screen until I switch the power off and restart, after which everything works perfectly until the next time I stop playing NTE.

Apart from being annoying, I worry all this sudden stopping and starting will damage something, so I googled for explanations and fixes. First, I did it the old-fashioned way. I checked reddit threads and watched YouTube videos but no-one seemed to have the exact problem I did and nothing they suggested seemed particularly helpful, so I thought I might as well let Gemini have a go, since it kept on offering.

Gemini was extremely co-operative. It asked pertinent questions, gave me lucid explanations, offered fixes, walked me through what to do when I had difficulties implementing them and basically acted like the best kind of IT department I've ever had to speak to (And I've spoken to plenty.)

All of which would be great if the solutions Gemini provided had worked. They did not. Oh, they worked in the sense that all the commands and instructions were accepted when I followed them and they did what they were supposed to do. It just didn't stop NTE crashing my PC on exit.

But then, neither did any of the non-AI fixes and suggestions I tried. If it was a football match it'd be a no-score draw. (But then, I just used Gemini to fix a perpetually annoying issue I have with Blogger getting the color of links wrong and it sorted it out perfectly in ten seconds, so I guess AI wins in injury time.)

Of all the various possible reasons offered, by far the most likely seems to be a conflict with the Anti-Cheat software NTE uses. From long experience with online games, the most likely fix is going to be putting up with it until the developers patch again and it magically goes away. Until then, I might just try shutting the PC down immediately I log out to see if I can beat the crash. That'll be fun. [Edit: Tried it and it works so that'll be my temporary solution for now.]

Had Gemini's fix actually worked, I might have been here today singing AI's praises. That'd be a popular post, I'm sure. If anything, anti-AI sentiment seems to be growing. It used to be mostly in my gaming and music feeds but now it's increasingly present in just about anything I read. As for positive sentiments regarding our would-be artificial overlords (That's Google and Amazon and whatever Elon Musk is calling himself today rather than the inert and blameless software itself, of course.), those seem to be very thin on the ground indeed. 

 

Search Me 

All of which does make me wonder, even more than usual, how this is all going to pan out. I heard the rumor that Google plans to replace search entirely with some kind of Agentic AI (I do love that word - Agentic - don't you? Doesn't it just ooze futurity? Algorithms never had that kind of PR.). It sounded a bit worrying so I checked (Using Google Search, inevitably.) and it turns out to be the usual kind of hyperbolic over-exaggeration humans have been using to get Eyeballs or Clicks or whatever the metric is these days since at least the day Buzzfeed went live. Which was exactly twenty years ago. I just checked. (Google>Wikipedia.)

In fact, Google Search continues as before, according to a statement Google gave USA Today, who bothered to ask them, but there will be a new All-AI front end as well. That, inevitably, will be Google's new focus and I'm sure it will be the first/main thing you see, which means most people will use it without thinking any more about it. I imagine their hope is that Search itself will wither away from neglect and disuse and they'll be able to discontinue it at some future date when no-one cares any more.

Will that happen? Hard to say. How did Google take over from all those other search engines - AltaVista, Netscape, Yahoo and the rest - in the first place? It was faster, more accurate and more comprehensive, that's how. People used it, found it did the job better and stopped using the older search engines. 

Have people changed that much in a couple of decades? If they find the new AI Agents are worse than the search they had before, will they not move away from Google to something that gives them what they want? Isn't it just handing a huge opportunity to a new "Traditional Search" provider to come into the market? 

Or, much more likely, will most general internet users find AI means much less fiddling about and reading websites and a lot more getting quick answers that work well enough, often enough, which will be plenty to keep almost everyone at least happy to go along with it? Too much effort just to get back to something they probably won't miss anyway.

So, yes, I imagine AI Agents are going to replace search if only because I'd bet the huge majority of users never really liked searching to begin with. It was always a necessary inconvenience for most people and I'll bet they'll be glad to see the back of it. People who actively enjoy searching as we've known it have to be a pretty small minority of web users, surely?

I'm kind of on the fence about the whole thing. I definitely don't hate AI. I just wish it was better. Maybe it will be, one day. Or maybe the current technology, which seems to be part brute force and part black magic, is a dead end and it'll never be entirely reliable. I suspect that's more likely but it's too soon to jump one way or the other. 

You Want Me To Draw You A Picture? 

All of which brings me to a little discussion that took place in the comments on a post over at The Friendly Necromancer, where Stingite was talking about feeling guilty for using AI art to illustrate his (Other.) blog, rather than, for example, hiring an actual artist to do it.

I said in the comments that it's a notional argument. No hobby blogger is ever going to commission an artist to provide illustrations for posts except on an absolutely exceptional basis. I must have read tens of thousands of blog posts now and I can't remember ever seeing it done. It didn't happen before AI so AI isn't stopping it happening now. No artist is starving because a blogger stopped commissioning spot illustrations for their posts. 

Very, very occasionally I have seen someone commission a piece of art to be a permanent feature on a blog. I remember Belghast doing it for a masthead a couple of times and I have a vague idea one or two others may have done something similar. But no-one who posts several times a week is going to pay a commercial rate to a professional artist for even one illustration per post, let alone the half-dozen or more most people who use pictures at all like to throw in

And that in turn got me thinking about The Olden Days. I'm not talking about Ye Olde Webbe of Yore that so many people, most of them barely old enough to have experienced it the first time around, seem so struck on bringing back. I'm talking the way things were before the worldwide web even existed.

When I came back from college in the early 1980s, one of the first things I did was start a comics fanzine with my then-wife, a friend of ours and the guy who owned the comic shop I worked in. We put out seven issues over two years and then our friend took over the editing and publishing of a bigger, more successful 'zine, which he eventually turned into a semi-pro operation. I switched to writing for that and we pulled the plug on our own zine.

Every issue of our original zine was stuffed with what we called "Spot Illos" - either decontextualized images, used to break up the text, or more targeted images, intended to support it. We also had comic strips sometimes and full-size cover art for every issue.

A minority of the pictures were drawn by my wife, who was a great comic artist and should have made a career out of it, but most were done by people who read our zine and who were active in comics fandom at the time. Some of them already had a foot in the door of professional comics publishing, some went on to be professional comic artists later, but most remained hobbyists and amateurs.

Whatever their status and ability, no-one got paid a penny. No-one expected to be paid. Paying people for art that wasn't going to be sold for a profit was not a thing anyone did, wanted to do or even thought about doing. All people wanted was to see their work and their names in print. If they did have professional aspirations, they'd add it to their portfolio so they could at least show potential employers something they'd had published but most of our contributors weren't even that ambitious. They just liked to draw and enjoyed sharing the results.

If something similar was part of blogging culture, the way it was always part of the 'zine culture I grew up with, no-one would need AI to draw them a picture. There'd be no shortage of people happy to provide it for free. We always had far more submissions than we could use. 

And we had a smaller readership than many hobby blogs, too. From memory, I think our print run was about 300 at the peak although the semi-pro zine my friend ended up editing and publishing ran to ten times that eventually. And I don't believe he ever paid anyone anything, either, until a bigger publisher picked him up and gave him a budget to go pro with an actual comic.

There could be a place on the web where bloggers could ask for images to illustrate posts and artists could supply them for nothing more than credit and a link. The technology has been in place for years to allow something like that to grow into a global free exchange of talent. Granted it would never be quite as instant and frictionless as generating an AI image but the results would be so much better it would be worth the wait. Probably. Although now I think about some of the pictures we published, let alone the ones we didn't...

Maybe something like that does exist already. I know it does for paid, commissioned art. If it does, though, the evidence has never shown up in any blog I ever read. And I'm certainly not offering to set up any such kind of website myself, although ironically I imagine I could get an AI to to code it for me if I was. They're supposed to be good at that sort of thing.

And even if someone else did all the donkey-work, it wouldn't be great for me as a user anyway. It would better suit people who write their posts with at least a little lead-time. I tend to bash mine out on the day and I don't think there are many artists out there who'd be happy to get a request after lunch asking them to knock out half a dozen pictures before tea. 

That's how AI wins, I guess. It may be soulless but it sure is fast and it never complains or makes excuses. It never says "Do it yourself. I'm busy." Or fobs you off with "I've just got to walk the dog and do a bit of shopping. But I'll get to it as soon as I can. Promise!" 

And yet, I don't use a lot of AI art here any more. It's not even because readers don't like it. When I do drop a few AI illos into a post, most people just ignore them, I think, assuming they even notice. As Stingite says, AI's much better at doing art than it used to be so it doesn't stand out the way it did.

No, it's more that I find it a bit dull, now the novelty value isn't there any more. I'll use it if I need to but it's purely functional, not the crazy thrill-ride it could be a few years back. I get better results dicking around with images in Paint.net, anyway, and that feels a lot more creative than writing prompts. I'm not at all sure it is but it feels that way.

Hmm. I seem to be wandering away from whatever point I had. Not that I expected the post to go anywhere but at least I got a few things off my chest. I had a couple more somewhat-related topics to talk about, too, but since this has clearly gone on long enough already (More than, probably...) I'll save those for another time. 

Now... shall I use AI to illustrate this post? Would that be ironic? Post-modern? Provocative? 

Or just plain lazy? 

Free Comic Day At DCUO

I don't really play DCUO any more. It's arguable whether I ever did, really. I leveled to the extremely low cap of 30 a couple of times, which is tantamount to boasting about having completed the tutorial in any other MMO. And even that was many years ago. In recent times, about all I've done is log in when there's some new freebie to collect or if something's going on that I think might make a blog post.

And that's kind of what's happening today. Only this time I don't even need to log in! 

As you may have noticed (If you've been paying attention to anything I've been saying.) there's a new Supergirl movie out this summer. Next month, in fact. June 26 to be precise. I posted about it here and here which, since I'm talking about it again today, makes this three months in a row. DC should be paying me!

It's not so much the movie this time as the opportunity it represents. Digital Ink, the Daybreak sub-studio responsible for DCUO has, unsurprisingly, thrown itself headlong onto what it hopes is going to be the Summer Supergirl Bandwagon. If I had to bet, I'd guess the movie will be an artistic success but a commercial failure but until it comes out, its success or lack thereof is conveniently unsullied by either reviews or box office receipts so why not make the most of it while it lasts?.

There is, naturally, an in-game event based around the movie. There's even a (Not very good...) trailer, which you can watch below, although if I were you, I probably wouldn't bother.

I've completely lost track of how these things work in DCUO any more. There used to be Chapters and then there was some kind of multi-part story set up and now I don't know what they're doing. It must be well over a year since I last logged in and a lot longer than that since I played for more than half an hour before I got bored and logged out again.

Of late, I haven't even bothered to go in and get my free stuff. There's always free stuff but if you're not playing, what are you going to do with it? And I got a bit annoyed when I bought a new Hideout and instead of ending up with two, it lost me the one I already had. Which I never got back. Not that I'm bitter... 

I tried to redecorate the new one but my heart was never in it. Anyway, enough of that. For this summer's Supergirl event there's a freebie you don't have to log in to enjoy. And it's a good one, too. If you like Supergirl and superhero comics, that is. Which, obviously, I do.

To cut to the chase (In the skies above Metropolis, likely as not.) DCUO is "giving away" six issues of Supergirl's comic to promote the new Children of Krypton: Shadows Over Argo event. 

I say "giving away" but it's more like "Giving you a lend of" as we used to say when I was at school. And when I say "comics", I imagine no-one really believes they're going to send you half a dozen printed copies through the mail. No, what they're giving you is limited-duration access to selected digital issues through the DC Universe Infinite portal. You do have to sign up and register an account at DCUI but it just asks for your age and an email and password but it only takes like thirty seconds.

The most interesting part of all this for me was learning that DCUI is now available in the UK. Has been since 2022, in fact. I completely missed the Bat Signal on that one. 

Several times, back in the twenty-teens, I tried to sign up for the service and was repeatedly rebuffed. I wanted to give them my money but they wouldn't take it. I kept checking back to see if they'd expanded into my region and they hadn't but then, some time during the pandemic I think it must have been, I happened upon a website that gave me free access to what seems like every comic ever published and I forgot all about DCUI. 

The six Supergirl comics you can read for nothing right now.

I've used that website, sporadically, whenever there's been something I particularly wanted to read.  I assume it's some sort of pirate operation so won't link it here but really I have no clue what it is. At no point has anyone ever asked for any money or indeed any personal details, You don't even need to provide an email address. It's as easy to access as Wikipedi and as public, which seems a bit of an odd way to do piracy.

Still, I prefer not to pirate if there's a legal alternative. FFS, I don't even like playing pirate-themed games! Pirates of any and all kinds are the antithesis of cool as far as I'm concerned. Bad pirates! Pirates bad!

The upshot of which is that, having been alerted by the DCUO promotion to the fact that DC is now willing to take my money, I will very soon be giving it to them, not least because the monthly subscription is an extremely cost-effective £6.99. For reasons that are anything but rational (Or indeed sane.) I feel it would be foolish to give them that money before I've read my six free issues, so I'll probably start subbing next month. I fancy the idea of reading comics on my tablet in my lunch hour at work. You can download them and read offline with the DC offer so I won't even have to contend with our crappy wi-fi.. 

The one thing that's putting me of a bit is that, having read one of the issues on the DCUI platform this morning, the experience doesn't seem to be anything like as good as it is with the pirate version. I was only saying to someone at work this week that I now find reading comics on a screen considerably more immersive than reading them on paper but that certainly wasn't true of the one I read on DCUI today. I hope there are better ways to display and turn the pages hidden in the UI somewhere because the default option felt really clunky.

The six free issues are mostly very recent, including the first in the current run that's been so highly rated by Anj at Supergirl Comic Box Commentary. Anj's reviews are so incredibly thorough that you could just read them and not bother with the comics at all. I have to skip most of what he says about anything I have any intention of reading. The word "spoiler" doesn't seem to feature in his vocabulary.

340 more Supergirl comics you could read for just £6.99 a month. 

Having read that one, I can confirm it's excellent but also probably of more interest to long-time fans of the character than casual readers. I guess that's likely true of most of the others but I would recommend anyone with more than a passing interest, especially if they have any plans to see the movie, to take the opportunity to read the free copy of  Issue #1 of Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow, the full graphic novel version of which I wrote about at some length in one of the posts I linked earlier.

Ah, yes. Issue #1 and only Issue #1 for free. That's worth noting because of course the hope is that, having had a taste, you'll crave more and be willing to pay for it next time. Remind me again what profession uses that sales model?

I was curious (Read: suspicious.) that the free Supergirl comics were just the regular free tasters on offer over at DCUI. Well, I was once I remembered that, when I was checking the platform out all those years ago, giving away free issues was a thing there. So I went there directly to check, using a different browser, and they're not. 

Not the same, I mean. There are six free comics anyone can read over there, just not the same six. And none of them feature Supergirl, which seems odd now I come to think of it. Why would they miss a chance at cross-promotion? Free Supergirl comics coming to all in June, I'll bet.

Thinking about that, it occurred to me to wonder just who it is that can access this offer. I got an email but whether that's because I'm a Daybreak All Access customer or because I have a history of playing DCUO so Digital Ink has me email address I couldn't say. Well, I probably could, if I dug into it a bit but I have better things to do with my Saturday afternoon. It's not like I'm a journalist!

In that spirit, I offer the information, for what it's worth, "as seen." If you play DCUO or have played it, maybe you can read six Supergirl comics for free, too. Or maybe not. If you care enough, I imagine you'll go find out, now I've brought it to your attention. 

And if it turns out you can't... well, there are other ways. 

Same Old Song

This might be the least original music post I've ever done. The last one was a couple of weeks ago and among others it featured Charli xcx, Olivia Rodrigo and Mike D. Guess who's in this one?

And guess who else is in it? Gracie Abrams, Westside Cowboy and Blondshell. Anyone getting a sense of déjà vu here? 

Yeah, I know, but what am I supposed to do? People I like have albums coming, they put out singles to promote them, the songs are great... I'm supposed to just ignore all of that? Pick a bunch of second-rate stuff just to be edgy? 

OK, I could do that. Alright then, I have done that! In the past, though. In the past! Look, it's called evolution. Or emotional maturity. Something like that. I think it's meant to be a good thing?

Whatever it is, it's what's coming next so best get on with it. It's not like I have anything else. Unless anyone wants another post about Neverness to Everness? I have plenty more of those I could write.

No? Alright then. Here we go.

Kick Stones (The Boys) - Westside Cowboy

Spoiled for choice when it comes to bangers this time around. As will soon become obvious. I might ought to have saved this for the end, now I come to think about it. It has that manic, driving, end of set energy. Reminds me a little of Tom Verlaine's  Breaking In My Heart that the Blue Aeroplanes always used to end on. 

Reminds me of a lot of other things, too. That rhythm has done much service over the years. No surprises there other than to hear it again in 2026. 

Westside Cowboy are a true surprise, though. Attentive readers may remember I only came across them as the best of a really bad bunch of applicants in one of Glastonbury's increasingly disappointing Emerging Artists comps. Yeah, well, maybe the organizers of that bunfest did know something after all because I've liked everything I've heard by the band since then and this might be their best yet.

And y'know what the best thing about it is? That female vocal, way down in the mix all the way through, until it comes up at the end or rather stays where it is as everything else drops out. That's novel. I like that a lot.

 SS26 - Charli xcx

Charli's causing all kinds of chaos with her New Direction. The last single was called Rock Music and a lot of people who like rock music got all upset about it. Whether it was rock music is up for debate (If you missed it, let me redirect you to my last post so you can decide for yourself.) and I guess the same arguments are going to get trundled out for this one although not by me. I've listened to a lot of rock music over the years. It sounds like Westside Cowboy and it sounds like Charli xcx does now. And it sounds nothing like either of them. 

Not that I don't like putting everything in the right box as much as the next pedant but maybe just have a bigger box marked "Good" and when you've boxed everything, stick all the boxes with stuff in that you like in that?

 the cure - Olivia Rodrigo

When I logged in after breakfast this morning, this was in my feeds. I watched it. It had just over half a million views. I notice these things. Then Mrs Bhagpuss and I took Beryl for a walk and when we got back I started writing this post, went back to YouTube to rewatch it and grab the link and it had 1.6m views. People really like Olivia Rodrigo. 

Even rock fans like her. She's like the acceptable face of pop for people who need the cover. She's smart and funny and she knows the things she needs to know as well as a lot of other things as well. She knows, for example, that when some people see she's done a song called the cure it will immediately make them think of the band The Cure and remember how they saw her bring on Robert Smith at Glastonbury and how he's been in the studio with her for her new album and they'll jump to conclusions that are not at all going to be justified when they hear the song but by then she'll have them anyway.

And she hasn't lowercased that title by coincidence, has she? And I'm not even sure it's a coincidence that she's playing acoustic guitar in the video like she was on stage with Bob although it's not the same guitar and now I'm starting to think I overthinking things. But that's the sort of associative thinking you get from rock fans, isn't it? No wonder they like her.

I wonder why they don't like Charli? She's smart and postmodern too, isn't she? I dunno. I guess you'd have to ask a rock fan.

 Hit The Wall - Gracie Abrams

I don't think there's much chance of anyone calling what Gracie Abrams does "rock music". Pop is the new rock anyway, isn't it? 

The thing that interests me more is how really similar so many pop songs sound now without being in the least obvious or repetitive about it. It's like how all funk sounded like funk once but every song was different. Very much that, actually, rather than a couple of decades ago when all "R&B" sounded almost identical to me and I didn't like any of it. That was a bleak time in popular music. Well, for me it was. I honestly thought we were done at one point. I thought it was all going to be like that forever. 

And then one day nothing was like that and hasn't been since and instead almost everything was better and keeps getting better and now it's the best it's ever been. Maybe someone should tell Jack Antonoff.

Things I've Killed - Telehealth

Oh, look! Here's someone almost as mad at modern life as Jack! If I understand correctly, the lyric consists of a list of things Millennials rendered untenable. I read that somewhere. I've forgotten where. It was definitely something a human wrote though, not an AI, so it must be true. Everything said by humans is true and everything made by humans is good.

Telehealth self-evidently wish it was 1978 though, so I'm not sure we should be listening to anything they say. I mean, I was there and it wasn't that great. Now is better. Musically, I mean. Not anything else, obviously. Well, not everything else.

Goes out. Comes in again.

Heart Has To Work So Hard - Blondshell

Sometimes I wonder if Sabrina Teitelbaum might not be working on some kind of performance art project, the way Poppy uses music or used to before she went all metal. First Sabrina was Baum and she sang big songs with a big soul voice then she went grunge and invented Blondshell and the first album had loads of tunes you could hum, like you could if it was something Dinosaur Jr might have done.

Then there was the second album and I think it might have had two actual tunes on it although the only one I can remember and sing would be 23's A Baby. And now she releases this as a taster of the third album and it's literally her intoning one note for most of the running time like some kind of Tibetan chant. 

And I love everything she's done. All of it. I just love her voice. It doesn't matter how few notes she makes it do. It's the timbre. I'm not saying I wouldn't mind a melody, once in a while. It's  not like she can't hold a tune, either. She fucking kills on the covers she's done, where she has to sing someone else's melodies. God - maybe she'll do a covers album some day...

Excuse me. I need to go lie down for a moment...

EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WANTED 

Tiffany Day

Really, who even wants a melody these days, anyway? They just get in the way, don't they?

Also I really am going to have to do a whole post on smoking in pop videos one of these days. I need to start making notes for that although I could probably just throw a stone at YouTube and hit a dozen. I just googled it though and it looks disturbingly like something the alt-right is stressing over. (Are they even alt these days? If so, alt to what, exactly?). If I did post something, is it going to align me with some terrible doomsday clique? 

Then again, if it's all part of a terrible conspiracy to Bring Back The Good Old Days when you were Free To Do What You Want, you'd think the billionaires would be all for it. Maybe it's just that smoking looks hella cool even now, when almost no-one does it but really poor people? Maybe it's really that simple. Because almost no-one does it but really poor people, even.

Anyway, if I don't stop I'm gonna be writing the post right here so let's move on.

 DANCE - Slayyyter

I'm sorry. I was sleeping on Slayyyter. I'd love to say it won't happen again but there are a lot of really great new acts coming up all the time (Cf. Gracie Abrams commentary above.)   Who can keep up?

I only caught up with Slayyter because she was at Coachella and I was on the stream looking for Blondshell. I watched three or four numbers from Slayyyter's set, where she was absolutely killing it with a huge early afternoon audience that apparently knew the songs and wanted to hear them. 

I know! Unheard of at festivals in general let alone at the laziest, most uncommitted of them all, Coachella. For calibration, Blondshell played a bigger stage a couple of hours later to what looked and sounded like half a dozen uninterested passers-by and a dog. (I don't think they actually allow dogs into Coachella, do they? I mean, it's not like a real festival. I once watched two panicking dogs that had got siamese-twinned while mating, as dogs do, carve their way through a festival crowd like a chain mower... Now that was a real festival!)

Slayyyter did this one on Jimmy Fallon a couple of days ago but whoever uploaded it to YouTube had the volume down too low. Great visuals, shame you can barely hear her. As for the Coachella set, if you care to watch some of that you will see Slayyyter is absolutely, unequivocally playing Rock Music. Boundaries redrawn.

 Requiem For A Dying Day - Francis of Delirium

Yes, yes. Bootlegger turn, I know. Where was I going to put it though, eh? It's not like it was going to fit in better anywhere else. 

As Chandler would say, could it be any more Nick Drake?

 The Standard Model - MORN

The post-punk avalanche is stuttering to a standstill now, I think. A couple or three years ago half my feeds sounded like this. Now they sound like Gracie Abrams. Room for both, I'd say.

Two or three more and we're done, I think. There's a couple in my YouTube subs I haven't even listened to yet. Talk among yourselves while I check if there's anything good there... Hmm. 

Tiger LeFlor and Goldie Boutlier and they both sound exactly like they should but I'll pass for now. Tiger's just a little too authentic 'sixties this time around and Goldie's new one is great but she'll be back with a video, I'm sure. I'll wait for that.

Oh, wait... haven't checked my other account... Aha!

 E8/N16 - M(h)aol

It's the video more than the song. Not gonna lie.

Kiss Goodbye - Sad Happy Birthdays

Almost as new to me as it is to you. Saw the thumbnail back when I was grabbing the address for Charli at the top of the post and thought it looked worth a click, then I got distracted and by the time I got down here and wanted it, it had vanished and of course I couldn't remember the name of the song or the artist. Took me about a dozen pokes of the algorithm to get it to spit it out again and it was worth it.

And finally...

 What We Got - Mike D

Did you miss the Beastie Boys? I did. 

That's lucky thirteen. I'm done. 

Getting Into Character In Neverness To Everness

Just as an FYI, before we get to the post proper, I wanted to say I'm aware that some blogs aren't updating in the Blog Roll at the moment. It's a known issue and apparently Google is looking into it. I imagine first they'll have to find someone who remembers what Blogger is and then that person will need to find someone else who knows how it works but eventually I expect something will be done and everything will go back to normal. Or what passes for normal these days, anyway.

And now, on to the scheduled program, which today is another post about Neverness To Everness. Oh, joy! What's more, it's a particularly self-indulgent one that I'm mostly writing for my own amusement. So, nothing new there, then...

In a reply to Nimgimli in the comments to yesterday's post, I mentioned I was thinking of doing "a post on the characters and what I think about them" and guess what? This is that post. 

First, I guess I ought to figure out just who I mean by "the characters". In any gacha game there are several kinds:  

• Playable Characters - major characters you can have in your team  
• Supporting Characters - significant characters you can't  
• Walk-ons and Cameos, color and flavor but still a speaking role
• Everyone Else, the extras, the NPCs, the hordes

Supporting Characters can and sometimes do convert to Playable Characters. For example, Akane, who I mentioned yesterday, most likely will convert. She has a lot of dialog, a well-delineated personality and is already something of a fan favorite. Nothing has been announced but she's an odds-on bet to become playable at some point. Lacrimosa, to whom I dedicated a whole post a while back, has already been slated to become playable in the near future, as has Chaos, who I haven't mentioned before but who features heavily in the chapter of the main storyline I started this morning.

I'm not going to talk about any of them today, nor about any of the many minor characters that crop up in the story or make themselves known as you wander around the city, even if some of those are potentially as interesting and engaging as the leads. Hethereau is a big place and if you spend as much time there as I've been doing you'll run into a whole lot of people with stories to tell. We'd be here all week if I tried to give space to them all.

No, for this post I'm going to stick to Playable Characters only and even then only the ones I've seen enough of to form some kind of opinion. There are currently eighteen Playable Characters according to the NTE Characters List, which despite the name and internet address is not an official source. But it's good enough.

The eighteen are, in alphabetical order, Adler, Aurelia, Baicang, Chiz, Daffodil, Edgar, Fadia, Haniel, Hathor, Hotori, Jiuyuan, Mint, Nannally, Sakiri and Skia. 

Numerate readers, which I assume is everyone, will immediately have noticed there are fewer than eighteen names in that list. That's because a) I have left out Lacrimosa because she's not going to playable until next month and b) I have also left out the two, gendered iterations of the Player Character, known variously as Zero, The Appraiser, CoCo or Precious, depending who's talking.

That leaves fifteen, at least three of whom of which I have barely met and have nothing to say about, so we're down to a nice round dozen. Still a lot. I might have to break this post into two parts. We'll see how we go.

I also have absolutely no intention of discussing any of them in terms of their combat effectiveness, whether they're A or A Class, what practical benefit they bring to a team or any of that boring old guff. Plenty of places you can go look that stuff up if you care. 

All I'm interested in is who they are, whether I like them and why. I said it was going to be a self-indulgent exercise! I will say that my team so far has mainly been Mint, Adler, Hotori and very occasionally Skia, so it's conceivable that some element of those particular characters' combat effectiveness may have bled over into how I feel about them but I doubt it. Not the way I play. I am going to say if I'd want each of the twelve on my team but I'm basing that decision on whether I could stand to spend time with them, not how useful they might be.

And with that unnecessarily lengthy introduction, let's get to the characters who, again, I'll present in alphabetical order or else there will be pouting and possibly fist-fights. Yes, I am looking at you, Sakiri!

Adler: Eidon's butler, Hotori's amanuensis and protector and winner of the Hethereau Poker-Face Award for Lack of Affect three years running. Well, he would be if there was one. Adler is the exemplary professional servant from every costume drama since Mr. Hudson in Upstairs Downstairs. Unflappable, emotionless, impossible to read. I did not like him at all at first and even now I can't say I'm fond of him. I do, however, respect and admire him, although not for anything he's done or said in the game. He shows a very different face in one of Hotori's vignettes (Included in a previous post.) and having watched that, I see there's a lot more to him than the cliche. Still don't actually enjoy his company much, though. It's like teacher's come back into the room every time he appears. He can be a bit of a downer, if I'm honest. Already on my team, even though I can't remember ever inviting him. 

 

 Baicang - Baicang is a devious, smarmy, patronizing, narcissistic jerk. Oh, sorry, was I being too nice to him? Yes, you're right. He's worse than that. God, he's annoying! I want to reach through the screen and punch him every time I hear him talking down to Flora. There's an outside chance something deeper might be going on with him but with a surface like that, who's ever going to dig down far enough to find out? I'm a bit confused about his status, too. It seems like the BAC has quasi-military ranks and Baicang is a Captain while Skia is a Lieutenant but Skia seems to be in charge. Then again, who'd ever put Baicang in charge of anything? He'll join my team the day I uninstall the game. No, actually, not even then. 

 

Chiz - Chiz barely makes it onto the list for the simple reason I've only met her once. She makes an impression, though. Pronounced "Cheese", as she's quick to tell you, Chiz is a representative of the Pink Paws Bank, where the dress code apparently includes going to work in whatever you slept in, even when that was hardly anything. Someone who looks less like they work in a bank would be almost impossible to imagine. Then again, if you call your financial institution "Pink Paws" you're already good with confounding expectation, I guess. I She's very bubbly although in this game there's plenty of competition when it comes to bubbliness. I'd have her on my team in a heartbeat. 

 

Daffodil - Eidon's enforcer.  Tough as nails, taciturn, dresses all in black, wears a business suit even when she's fighting. Even the ichi-daime of the Colluccis calls her Master... and yet she's actually quite diffident and unsure of herself in private, I think. She's rather sweet in a mildly terrifying way. A potentially intriguing back-story feels like it's just starting to develop in the quest I'm doing so maybe there's more to her than the hardened exterior suggests. I'd take her onto the team either way. At least she's quiet. 

 

Edgar - The enigma. Edgar presents as a small boy in what looks like a parody of Edwardian dress but he talks like a college professor. He has a pleasant, unabrasive personality, which makes for a fine contrast with the two girls he hangs out with. Even though he's unobtrusive and quiet, he rarely seems intimidated by anything, least of all Sakiri and Nanally, in whose company he comes across as being more long-suffering and tolerant than put-upon. It's almost as though he's secure in some world of his own, observing the chaos around him with an academic curiosity. I'd be very happy to have Edgar on the team. I feel like I might learn something. 

 

Haniel -  OMG! Haniel! It makes me tired just thinking about her. Haniel almost literally never stops. She openly despises sleep. She works a full shift plus overtime then goes clubbing 'til the early hours and when you blearily open your own eyes far too early next morning she's there, bright as sunrise, demanding you get up and start all over again. I'm convinced she's on drugs. She probably doesn't even think of them as drugs because she's so clean and nice but it'll be little pills she keeps in a bunny-shaped box or maybe she has an Oddity at home that makes her feel Fresh! and Bright! whenever she strokes its rainbow fur. It's got to be something. Sugar and caffeine will only take you so far. Haniel is exhausting but I'd have her on the team all the same. She's Fun with a Capital F. 

 

Hotori -  I think I've already made it clear how much I like Hotori. She's my favorite character by a margin. She's the owner and boss of Eidon Antiques and she presents as a lazy, sleepy, lush, which is fair because she does as little work as possible, sleeps all the time and drinks like several fish, if fish drank wine not water. Hotori, however, like all the characters or so I suspect, is More Than She Seems. For one thing, she's incredibly powerful. She can literally stop time. She also knows everyone who's anyone and from the reactions of powerful people she's a Power To Be Reckoned With in her own right. When we visited BAC HQ today, junior staff were starstruck and in awe. She either was or still is a Captain in that organization and the Director takes private meetings with her. Hotori is a fully realized character with a deep backstory we've only glimpsed and Lindsay Sheppard, her voice actor, does a brilliant job of putting all of that across. Hotori is on my team already and I'm extremely glad to have her. 

 

Jiuyuan -  Hotori's equivalent at Sterry Express and something of a rival. Possibly a frenemy. Jiuyuaan is cool and somewhat haughty and I don't feel I know her at all. She gives the impression of being considerably older than she looks, although since everyone looks so young that's a hard one to read. Her speech patterns and tone make her seem like she might be in her forties at least, though. I don't really have much of a take on her yet. I'm not sure I trust her. I definitely don't know whether I like her. Would I have her on my team? I'm not sure it would be my choice. If she wanted to be there, that's where she'd be. 

 

 

Mint - Lovely Mint! Mint is quite possibly the friendliest person you will ever meet. Mint makes up nicknames for everyone she likes and she likes everyone. She bases the nicknames on what people smell like. She calls Flora CoCo. Are you whimsied out yet? I'm not but then I have a high threshold for whimsy. Mint also lives in Flora's apartment for reasons unclear. Flora invited her over to see it and Mint just never left. She wanders around in her night-clothes, making little "Umm" and "Ahh" noises for no apparent reason and now Flora is wondering whether it mightn’t be time to start looking for that second apartment after all. Mint is second only to Haniel in terms of energy and enthusiasm but she does at least take a day off once in a while. I don't think she's on anything. She's just perpetually high on life. She was the first person Flora met in Hethereau and the first to join the team and she's extremely welcome to stay as long as she wants. In the team, that is, not in the apartment... 

 

Nanally - Aka the Ichi-Daime of The Colluccis aka The Tiger aka Natalie. Not sure when she changed her name or why. Nanally is an Esper of uncertain age (Aren't they all?) but probably somewhere in her teens. She lives at Eidon Antiques, where she works as an Anomaly Hunter, dealing with the less dangerous commissions. She speaks in a voice so high-pitched only bats can understand her, which can be a tad irritating at times. She appears to have based her entire persona on an anime movie (Or possibly TV series.) called Sin City Chronicles. This is a fictional IP within the NTE universe, not any of the several real-world versions that do in fact exist. Like Adler, Nanally's backstory is only alluded to in out-of-game media, which is a shame because it fundamentally shifts her personality away from annoying fantasist to something much more sad and emotive. Her relationship with Hotori is unclear. Are they Mentor/Mentee? Employer/Employee? Guardian/Ward? More information needed. I'd take Nanally onto the team without hesitation. She's enthusiastic, loyal and a great fighter. Also, she can run up walls, which could be really handy. 

 

Sakiri - Hmm. Hard one. Not Sakiri herself, although she sure would like you to think so. No, Sakiri's a bit of a mystery. She seems to be very young, possibly a child rather than a teenager, but then we know Esper abilities can affect aging so it's impossible to tell how old an Esper is by looks alone. She behaves like a hyperactive ten year-old some of the time but as Nimgimli says, like a psychopath at others. I find her antics highly amusing, She's like a firework, going off in all directions. She seems perpetually angry or outraged. She finds everyone around her annoying and irritating. Her main Esper ability seems to consist of summoning an Oddity called Kiramourou, who presents as some kind of all-devouring demon. She treats him like a badly-behaved pet and yells at him all the time but he looks like he can take it. When Sakiri is on stage, everyone else takes a supporting role. She's a tiny force of nature. Once again, though, in the out-of-game media featuring her, she comes across as someone who has her own demons, not just a pet that looks like one. I'd love to find out more about her and I'd welcome her onto the team any time. Kiramourou too. 

 

Skia - Last and, frankly, least, we have Skia. Literally the only vaguely interesting thing about Skia is that he looks like a werewolf. He isn't a werewolf. That would be genuinely interesting. He just looks like one as a side effect of his Esper ability. (That's also why Nanally and Mint have tails and Sakiri has horns, I believe.) Just about the only amusing thing I've seen Baicang do is tease Skia about how soft his fur is and what a pity it is he can't use his nose to track things like a real wolf. And come to think of it, that's not even funny, either. But it does establish that even though Skia looks like a wolf he's just a human. And a dull one at that. I had him on my team briefly but I dropped him. Not keen to have him back.

 

And that's the lot. I left out Hathor, who's basically Skerry's version of Dafodill, and Aurelia and Fadia, neither of whom I can actually remember meeting. And now I'm off to have lunch.

That was a morning well-spent!