A Goodbye to 2020

It is the last day of a long, weird, often terrible year.

The passage of time has felt strange and elastic this year; it's like we stretched March out never-ending until it was thin enough to see through. And then we blinked, and October, November and December had all passed in a flash. It feels as though I have done a hundred things - and at the same time like I have gotten absolutely nothing done. I have slept worse this year than I have in years, and the inactivity resulting from holing up at home and avoiding the literal plague means my back isn't in the shape it should be.

But I'm hanging in there.

Being creative this year has been a struggle - but at the same time, making things has been a way to keep my head above water. And thanks to you all, I have had the privilege of actually doing that on a regular basis.

This year, your support enabled me to do a whole bunch of things.

Your votes in the character design polls resulted in a bunch of pictures of Hades and Persephone - and in an artbook for a mecha anime that doesn't exist, but really should.

Four more NPCs joined the Tome of Friends - a pirate-turned-bartender, a tiny summoner, a spell-crafter and a melodramatic actor.

I released the Dark Below-supplement Shades and Echoes, and the games Haecceity, And You Shall Shatter Temples, Sägner and Dust of the Traveled Road.

I did vis dev for a bunch of different things - the Forest Witch comic (which kinda turned into a big sprawling thing that is now its own universe because I don't know how to stop myself), various ttrpg characters, a frankly embarrassing amount of drawings of Pharos, etc.

... and I have finally rebuilt my Grassblades-buffer to the point where it is actually returning from hiatus. Soon.

... I am very grateful. You all make a world of difference. Thank you, everyone of you, for sticking around, and for pitching in to support me.  <3

But this year is finally ending, and it is time to look forward again. After the immense mental and emotional strain of 2020, I am going to be a bit cautious about making any big, definite resolutions, but here are a few of the things on the horison for me and you:

There is the next character design project as voted on by you all - which, it turns out, is a witch and their familiar. I'm already making plans and digging through references.

... and yes, both Arthurian knights AND buff catboys are going on the next poll. If anyone has any additional suggestions, feel free to tell me! XD

I have a skeleton draft of a new ttrpg, this one a correspondence game intended to be played by post (real mail, or emails, or chat messages, or however else you feel like safely leaving messages to people in this second year of our plague). No ETA on this one, but I've got the outline down, and I just need to nail down the sequence of play properly, and do some scenario writing.

Grassblades. At long last, I can say "it's coming back" and MEAN IT. It has been a long, strange, unintended hiatus - caused first by injury, and then by the sheer weirdness that is 2020.

Yes, hello newcomers, for those of you who joined at any point in the last /checks notes/ year and half? I have an ongoing comic project. It's a whole thing.

One thing that WILL be changing about Grassblades is the update schedule. What remains of chapter ten - which got interrupted by the injury-hiatus - will be posted on grassbladescomic.com according to the old schedule, one page a week until it's finished. After that, beginning with chapter eleven, I will instead be shifting over to a less regular schedule.

I will post a small handful of pages, and then take a longer break, and then post another small handful of pages. So each update will have more stuff in it, but the time in between will be longer. I have no set schedule for these breaks, as they are meant to accomodate my work-schedule outside of Grassblades, but we'll see how it goes. Also: from chapter eleven onwards, pages will be available for the Tea Leaf Reader/$3 tier+ patrons here on Patreon first, and then the posts will unlock later for everyone else - and likely uploaded to the website as well. Then, once the chapter is completed, it will be collected and released on Gumroad as a PDF for a few dollars. Patrons on the highest tier will, as usual, get the PDF edition as part of their pledge.

So, you'll still be able to read it for free, if you're patient, but it won't be weekly, and the collected editions will be for sale on Gumroad.

This change is due to the fact that I can't handle a weekly schedule, on top of all of my other projects, and my freelance work. It simply isn't possible, especially since I draw a little bit more slowly now, even with the injury healed.

We are still a few months away from chapter eleven, so things won't change immediately, but that is what is in the cards right now.

... and those are the things I can say for certain will happen.

I do have a whole pile of other things I would LIKE to do, but we'll see how the year turns out. I've got some pending freelance work (2020 turned out to be the year of endless rounds of "thank you for your patience, I was delayed by Big Life Events" emails), but hopefully I can get that squared away soon, and start picking up new stuff in 2021.

Which is still a number that feels incredibly weird to type.

But it's here. Soon.

May it be a kinder year than the last, to all of us.