Not even 30 years after the last time the D’Sev’s alternate history setting, Festival of Souls, was rebooted, it’s being remade again in what I must assume is a targeted action against elves like me who bothered to follow it.

“It’s getting a bit bloated,” W’Ayko’s Chief Editor, A’Far Reed’Un said in an interview. “The immortal freaks of Peldor might not get it, but 30 years is a long time. Include the original and we’re looking at over 70 years of content. We have seven made-up species the Imperium fought and conquered, we have interracial lineages, 30 new planets, some 700 nations, it’s getting to be an unnecessarily large barrier to entry for new readers. We want to avoid a ‘Far Reaches’ situation. 3,000 years’ worth of books, and it splits off into a dozen different continuities. I once tried to get into it, but I just couldn’t. The newer books expect you to have read the previous 50, I don’t have that kind of time.”

The criticisms against classical elven fiction isn’t new, but isn’t entirely invalid.

I’ve read the new FR novel and understood what was going on, but that’s because I’ve read the books for millennia. I also know the different continuities, and how new books slot together.

It’s not unfair to say that FR is a bit incomprehensible to aliens who can’t invest the time necessary to understand the setting and read all the books, and it makes sense for W’Ayko to keep things centered around a mortal perspective.

But I’m not a mortal, and I am deeply annoyed by the coming reboot.

I’ve given this company so much money, buying their products, that I was investigated by the Protectorate Marshals over it. And now all the books I own don’t matter. The setting is dead.