As I mentioned last month, I’m in the process of moving overseas.
Right now, I’ll probably take my one-way flight around late January or early February, which means the next couple of months are going to be busy between the holidays and the move. But since I last posted, a few things we were waiting on fell into place, so now real plans can be made instead of waiting to see what will happen. I still haven’t heard anything about my citizenship, and the house still hasn’t sold, but now at least I don’t need either of those to happen in order to move. So a lot of the past week or so has been things like informing my active clients, continuing to finish anything I can ahead of time, and generally doing what I can to prepare for a huge life change.
Which means I haven’t been thinking about the holidays much, to be honest. Usually I’m pretty excited about them (especially since my birthday is right before a major holiday), but this year my present will be “moving to the UK.” Which, since it’s the country my mother was born in, has me pretty excited already. It also means I’m not thinking of what I can buy friends or family either, because… well, we need the money to move. In fact, if all works out as planned, we’ll be sitting in a largely empty house on Christmas. That said, it has gotten me thinking of the wide variety of intangibles that make good gifts. I love audiobooks, for example, since I can easily upload them to my phone to enjoy. I also invested in a Steam Deck, so I can play a wide variety of video games without needing a disc. And of course I’ve been reading digital books and comics for over a decade.
That’s the power of digital media, in a way. I can ship 90% of my belongings in a crate overseas that I won’t see for a few months, and still have hundreds of books to read and listen to, as well as games to play. And that’s not counting things like streaming services and podcasts, which also provide endless entertainment and education without needing anything beside a phone or tablet. Sometimes I get maudlin about the impermanent nature of some of the work I do, but in situations like this I’m glad I can create things to entertain people in the most unlikely of places.
News Roundup!
What do I have going on aside from moving overseas?
Remember when I said that major Pugsteady moves were in a holding pattern for the foreseeable future? Well, that’s changed too. I have a big announcement — so big that I’m going to wait and release a separate newsletter later in the month to talk about it. Keep an eye on your inbox, and if you know someone who has been on the fence about subscribing, now’s the time for them to sign up!
There’s a big sale of Trinity Continuum books happening right now. I was one of the developers of Trinity Continuum: Aberrant, and you can get the rulebook for just $2 in PDF! If you prefer physically-printed books, Indie Press Revolution has made a lot of their Trinity titles half off. These are amazing prices, so go them these sales out while you can!
Due to the… well, let’s say “interesting” choices going on over at Twitter… I’m exploring other social media platforms. Nothing official yet, but I have set up personal accounts at Cohost and Mastodon (specifically, mastodonapp.uk). If either works out well for me, I’ll set up official Pugsteady accounts there to, but I’m still shopping around and trying things out. For the time being, my Twitter account isn’t going anywhere.
My Media
I’m still working my way through my backlog of audiobooks, although some sales at Big Finish massively added to that backlog. Naturally I could recommend many, many Doctor Who audio dramas there (I’ve been a fan for nearly two decades of their work), but their Sherlock Holmes range is also quite good. A lot of other Holmesian audio dramas emulate the radio plays of the previous century. That’s not bad — I like a lot of them myself — but it’s a style that can feel outdated. Big Finish structures theirs more like their other formats: A big release every year or so of about 3-4 hours of story, usually as part of an ongoing narrative. Most sets are relatively self-contained, but also have ties to previous releases. So it’s a bit like watching a TV series, except it’s all audio and each “season” is only a few episodes long. (Which means it’s a lot like BBC’s Sherlock, come to think of it.)
Of course, if you really want a nice Doctor Who recommendation that’s a little outside the usual, pick up the Gallifrey series. It’s a fantastic political sci-fi series with a ton of high concept nonsense and a strong, women-led cast of characters.
As for video games, the one that’s eating up the battery on my Steam Deck right now is Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I was exposed to the Yakuza series a couple of years ago, and I picked up a bundle of them on sale. I really enjoyed playing Yakuza 0, as its blend of crime drama, combat, and weird side hustles appealed to me. However, as I moved on to the rest of the series, the button-mashing combat got to be a bit of a grind, so I put it away. So when I heard Like A Dragon was a soft reboot of the series and moving to JRPG design to boot, I picked it up on a lark. And it has been a load of fun.
It has some rough edges — most games do, to be blunt — but it’s actually interesting to play an RPG where the protagonists are middle-aged men rather than teenagers. Plus, the main protagonist (Ichiban) is not only ex-Yakuza but also a big Dragon Quest fan, so he actually sees the world as one large JRPG, which makes the various game mechanics and elements somewhat diegetic. It’s a fun blurring of the lines between game and narrative.
Speaking of which, I need to raise some more money to help out my failing confectionary store before I beat up some thugs with my barbed-wire baseball bat. See you in the new year!