Okay! It is 2024 and we are back!
So, a few things. The first is that if you have been wondering why I have not been responding to comments in a while, it was because every time I’d log in, I’d look at the most recent comic from the main page and be like…aww, comment count says zero comments. That’s sad, I hope people are still reading it, even if no one is commenting–maybe our readers are more of the lurking variety, like me? My schedule is packed, and that’s sort of depressing, so I never really bothered to click on the url for an individual recent page until right now, and can I just say that I feel really dumb for like…never questioning that constant zero? I am so energized to see people making ample use of the spoiler tags and bringing up past plot points and breadcrumbs that we laid out, and I’m so happy to see that people remember these plot points, especially the ones that were set up years ago in real time. I am absolutely going to start checking in with them/responding to them again now that I know that the comment count is actively lying to me.
Next up: We are going to try and maintain the once a week update schedule. Cory still hasn’t found a job–we are chasing multiple leads currently, and we WILL find something eventually, but until then, I am going to have to fill in the cracks with whatever I can. With that said, I have decided that in the coming weeks, I will be re-opening my patreon. I’m going to have to completely re-structure it, though, because it’s been so long that I both don’t remember how it works AND I am under the impression that it has changed a lot in the time since I abandoned it. I always really liked the IDEA of what you can do with patreon, but even when we had a lot of backers and a decent monthly payout there, it was deeply frustrating because it felt like putting work out into the void. Comments and interaction was rare, and I could never really be sure that any of the extras I was making exclusively for patrons were being viewed or downloaded, etc.–I was constantly wondering if all of the extra hours I was putting into it was something that patrons even cared about.
A big part of the restructuring I want to do is going to be figuring out how I want to approach it/the experience that I want to get out of it. I’ve toyed around with substack in the past in my quest to make a permanent home for STRIKE THE EARTH! so that the dwarf fortress wiki would stop listing it as unfinished/abandoned, and I really like the idea of maybe treating patreon like an extremely fancy newsletter with free ebooks/downloads/world building/etc. that doesn’t rely on dumping hours and hours into extras that nobody is asking for/downloading/ever wanted, and for which low interaction won’t feel quite as stressful for me. Anyhow, I’ll have more info for y’all when I’ve had a chance to sit down and sort through it, so I’ll tell you what’s up on that front next week.
Finally, what you’ll probably happier to hear is that over the course of December, I’ve actually finished drawing the rest of this chapter. The rest of it is inked and prepped for flatting, which I will be doing today, and aside from messing around with patreon this week, my main goal is to get the entire batch of pages coloured and lettered and popped into the queue so we can have our post-chapter meeting/pre-chapter planning session for the next chapter as soon as possible.
Anyhow, thanks again for your infinite patience! See you all next week.