Weekly Update - 91 (Patreon)

What seems to be going on here?

I'm not sure, but I've apparently started going blind in my left eye.  Little grey blind spots across my field of vision, some flashing when I walk from a bright room into a dark one or when I turn quickly to the left.  It feels like I should be panicking about it, but I'm really not.  My right eye is still fine.  My left eye has always sucked and the doctor was able to rule out the worst case-scenario of retina detachment.  I have some retinal hemorrhaging, and the veins at the back of the eye seem to be distressed for unknown reasons. There isn't really a way to put a band-aid on my retina though, so my only remaining options seem to be that it'll clear up on its own in a few weeks or that it's a symptom of some other underlying problem, requiring me to line up no shortage of additional doctor appointments so they can prod at me some more.  I'm generally pretty healthy, physically active with a mostly non-garbage diet and no other symptoms that are bothering me though, so it seems pretty unlikely that I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.  I don't feel like I'm under a lot of stress lately either, so I don't know.  It always seems worse in the morning.  Maybe I repeatedly punch myself in the eye while I'm sleeping.

I guess... guess I'll just keep drawing.

Comic This Week:  Yes.  It's nearly done, I just need to polish up the third panel.

Drawing: Page 124, 125, finishing Zephyr's character sheet.

Playing: Not sure yet.  Finally gotten bored with Rimworld and my 300 mods, maybe I'll go back to Cyberpunk this week.

Ramble:

Page 124 is again one of those pages I've been planning for years.  The start of a whole arc that I've been slaving over for years.  It feels so weird to finally reach this point.  To have the next 20 or more pages largely set in stone.  To have this upcoming scene written out exactly how I want it to be.  There's still some details to work out, of course, page layouts and such, so there's still some creativity to be employed here, but I hope that while I'm cranking out these pages, I'll be able to focus a lot of my creative energies towards what's upcoming in Part 2 of Kiva's story.

Now to watch as you all hate it!

Heh, I don't know if you'll hate it or not, but there's certainly still a lot of anxiety about that.  When the story takes a turn that I've been planning and building up to for so long, it's still a turn that a lot of people probably won't see coming.  A lot of people could potentially not like it.  Perhaps I didn't properly lay the groundwork to EARN such a moment in the story yet.  Perhaps my delivery of the story moment will be poorly done.  A twist is only good if everyone could have seen it coming, but did not.  A twist that comes completely out of left field is just bad storytelling.  There's a lot of places where I could simply fuck it all up, leaving a big scar on my comic and a bad taste in people's mouths for the rest of time.  It could even be that I'm undermining it right now with this ramble, tainting your opinions of the events to come with these very words!

But then I have to remind myself, these upcoming moments might not make or break my comic.  It isn't an all or nothing thing.  Plenty of webcomics before mine have had mistakes and missteps.  Every single panel I write is a mistake in a thousand different ways.  If I stay true to my characters, and to my universe, and if I don't try and walk back certain established points because they don't "jive" well with other people's expectations, then it is very likely those of you who are reading along because you enjoy it will eventually come to see it as I do.

You know, with one eye, because my other one is going blind.  0_-