Farewell and Thank You, from the Rathe Times

In my five years as editor for the Rathe Times, I've worked with dozens on authors to hone their articles for publication here, and what I've seen across hundreds of articles validates what I've found to be true in my own work: the hardest part is the ending.

When you're starting out, you have so much passion to fuel you. Everything is exciting, the possibilities open and waiting to be discovered. And while the blank page has a well-earned reputation as a daunting prospect to be overcome, in the end you really just need to lay out a welcome mat and make sure no one trips across the threshold.

The middle - the real body of the work - sweeps you along through it. A writer finds a rhythm and the words simply flow. If I could be in the middle of writing something perpetually, I'm sure I'd never do anything else! Yes, the content needs to be rich and well-developed, presented in an engaging and readable fashion, but this is, ultimately, what motivated you to sit down to your keyboard.

But how do you know when you've reached the end? You look for signs of faltering momentum, or thoughts that no longer seem bound to your central conceit. Perhaps you recognize when you've lost the audience's attention. Sometimes, you've simply run out of time. Hastily, you write "Conclusion", and reverting to your grade school essays, you simply restate your main points and call it a day. Or you recognize that you left questions unanswered, and in an acknowledgement of your limitations, simply posit those remaining questions to the reader. Occasionally, you tie a neat bow on your writing: a callback to an opening metaphor, or an overarching theme is finally stated clearly.

I've spent the past five years writing the body of this project, and now the task is mine to write its end.

To address the question outright, the Rathe Times is shutting down for a number of reasons, none of which would have done it on their own, but taken together proved too much to overcome. 

When we began this project, we had a vision of providing a platform for a diverse array of voices. The idea was that the Rathe Times wouldn't rely on the expertise of any one person, but would instead act as a central location to find new perspectives - and always presented in well-written format. Reading the Rathe Times was supposed to feel like a snapshot of the wider Flesh and Blood community, and having your work published by us would ensure you found your audience.

A lot has changed in five years, and not just within the Flesh and Blood community. When the Rathe Times launched, we were coming out of a global pandemic. Due to restrictions on public events, FAB tournaments were being run online, with prize support mailed directly to players from Legend Story Studios. LSS was also gearing up to launch the Monarch expansion, and players were panicked that there wouldn't be enough printed. Speaking of speculation, we had a recurring article series by Ada Korman on the financial side of collecting Flesh and Blood. We also had regular updates on the growing body of lore from Kale Brenzi. Joey Senart's writing helped start local scenes across the globe.

The Rathe Times was home to all of these things because, at the time, there wasn't really another home for them. The 'Purple Discord' had not yet become the central hub of the community. LSS wasn't publishing weekly articles. YouTube's FAB offerings were paltry, and Metafy was still years off. (Hell, Michael Hamilton published his deck guide for Wounded Bull Iyslander with us!)

As the community grew, the landscape changed, and with it the role of the Rathe Times shifted. Where we used to be a primary source for thoughts on the game, we eventually became one of many. While I'm proud to say that many of our authors went on to be recognized by LSS for their talents, the uncomfortable truth is that we were losing authors to their recruitment, and this hurt us a lot. LSS had a budget and funding that could pay the authors what they deserved, something we have always struggled with. For LSS, their articles can be viewed as a loss leader, or simply a supplemental resource. For us, our articles were everything. 

But more significantly, the barrier for reaching your audience has been lowered. Once, we gave platform and compensation to the brightest minds in the game; now, those minds have direct paths to their audiences, and socially accepted tools - Patreon, Metafy, and advertising revenue, to name a few prominent ones - to monetize their efforts.  We believe firmly that contributors deserve to be paid for the content they write, and so a monetization plan was always core part of the project. We experimented with various ways of doing this, trying to hit the sweet spot of serving the community while also having incentives for supporting us. As it turns out, monetization is a hard task, and calibration nearly impossible. We backed the wrong horse in our subscription model; Metafy has shown that the community's preference, for the moment, is pay-per-article.

I'm sure some of you have felt that we've played our cards wrong on this front before, but do understand that we tried.

I proudly stand by the continued quality of our written work - our articles are some of the most polished pieces out there, and our archives cover most of the game's history. But tastes have changed, and writing is no longer the default method of sharing information.

I don't want to linger too long in this place. You'll forgive a writer for resenting the rise of podcasts, but I also must admit their utility. I listen to FAB content doing dishes and driving to my local Armory. And I read articles on fabtcg.com - in fact, I once did Skirmish coverage for the site. I love this game so deeply, and for five years, I got to feed other people's love for it too.

That will still be an aspect of my life, but how it will look is about to undergo a major transformation. I oversee my local Flesh and Blood community, which has had both incredible retention and encouraging growth. I've brought my daughter into the game, and at 8 she's already competed in dozens of Armories and even a Pro Quest. In person, my ties to the game are strong. 

But online, I'm losing that megaphone to broadcast my thoughts to the wider community, the role I point to when introducing myself. Perhaps worse than that, I'm losing the tool I've used to support so many. Browsing channels on the 'Purple Discord', I no longer carry the tool to amplify that voice of potential, that spark of interest. "That idea is really unique, would you consider writing more about that for the Rathe Times?" I reveled in the validation those invitations could offer; I loved facing down imposter syndrome beside a brilliant mind who just hadn't realized yet what they were capable of.

Because that was me, once, too. Back in 2020, I was a brand new FAB fan looking for ways to engage with the game. I found fabdb.com - the original fan site for FAB deckbuilding - and from my inexperience and passion I pieced together an article. And somewhere in that Kirk Bushell saw potential. So much potential, in fact, that he built the Rathe Times to stand on its own as a home for written FAB content. And he asked me to join him as equal partner in that project, to act as editor for everything the site would publish, to find talent and maintain relationships. I cannot thank him enough for seeing that in me; Kirk and the Rathe Times project we embarked on have changed my life in profound ways.

One of the treasures of acting as editor has been the close proximity to these incredible people. The Rathe Times has served as introduction to amazing players and strategists, and I've not only read their work first, I've been able to press them further on the best parts of their writing. There is nothing more satisfying as a reader than to find yourself with an unanswered question and have an avenue back to the author: "Explain this to me; expand on that thought; would you consider a follow-up piece?" The role often felt more like a gift to me than work.

Many of these people have gone on to do other things in the space of FAB content creation. For those that haven't yet, I truly hope that you try. I hope that the Rathe Times built confidence in your voice and validated your thoughts. I know it did that for me.

So how does it end?

I think what we all hope is that, secretly, it never does.

Sure, the words stop. You save the document and step away from the keyboard. The article goes live, and your thoughts are frozen in amber.

But I don't really see that as an end. 

It's the end like hanging up the phone after talking to a friend. That conversation is done. But that friendship continues to develop.

It's the end like a song coming to a close, an album reaching its final track. The music has stopped, but the relationship between the listener and the artist grows.

The Rathe Times is over. But what it meant to me - and, I hope, what it meant to you - continues to thrive in some corner of your connection with this amazing game and the incredible community built around it.