Devil’s advocate: if you do things the legit way, absorb the ads or go for the pay tiers, do you think there’s ever a point the advertisers and platforms say “this is the right amount of ads.” ? Seems like it’s an infinite process of cramming in more garbage. Personally I’m happy to engage in the arms race because it’s not bothersome to me personally, and I’m fine with some “theft” as long as I’m paying back into the creators by whatever their preferred support structure is.

I have a feeling it would have ranked higher for me if I’d read it when I was younger. It’s not a maturity thing or quality of writing, but at some point it got harder for me to digest stories that have heavy doses of cruelty. I was really waiting for some kind of resolution very early into it.

I just finished reading The Eye of the Heron for the first time. To me it had a very similar feel, and in the back of my head I was thinking how you could totally headcanon your way into saying this could be another tale from Earth’s first (mis)steps into the cosmos and Hainish universe.