• Fight or Flight is now available to read.

Thoughts

These thoughts sections have been rather barren for a few months. This will be about Fight or Flight, but first I want to talk about something else.
Last week, our episodes (of both Wishes of the Altar and Heartripper) opened with a dedication to my late friend Lee, who passed away from no fault of his own just around the time we began producing “The Chase”, next week’s episode. The dedication was added with the consent and permission of his partner.
We didn’t know what happened to him for almost two weeks. We assumed he was busy with his nursing school finals.
With me, Rook, and Glowie feeling the way we did, we could not produce “Machine Girl” as our 37th episode as intended. Instead, it was moved to 38th, and “Tenet”, originally envisioned as an intermission, was made into a full episode within a night. We then took the remaining time off and only worked on Heartripper, as such a strategy was not feasible with that comic. I was advised by… everyone but myself to just delay both episodes, but this is the biggest deal I’m willing to make of my personal problems.
I think Lee would have wanted me to take a break and not release anything. I’m sorry that I didn’t.
He was a very kind, supportive, and sweet person. Often busy with college, he’d take any chance he could to come offline and show us what we meant to him, and to be his truest and dearest self. He helped me through the worst and through the best. He mattered a lot to those of us who were close to him. He was excited to see me thrive, to see my work persist. When I believed even my own friends didn’t care about my art, he showed me support I desperately needed before he even knew how I felt.
He was like that for everyone.
So the rest of my work will be made for him. Heartripper, Wishes of the Altar, and what I intend I will make when they are done are my monuments to Lee and who he was. To persist even when I think nobody is there to lean on. If I can’t make it for you, for my friends, or for myself, I make it for him.
I will continue to create, because he wanted me to. Rook will learn to tune their anger and emotions, because he wanted them to. Glowie will be her truest self, because he wanted her to.
The few others who knew him, I suspect, feel the same way.
The last episode he read was “The Watcher”, and it aches me much that he didn’t get to see “Specific Heat Capacity - Part 2” on account of his college work, because it features all but one (Holly) of his favorite characters. At least he got to see the concept art for it.
It’s bittersweet to me that today of all days I am releasing “Fight or Flight”. This episode was one of the very first written for the comic, and some of our earliest concept art dating back over a year centers on Yarn and Madeline’s strength struggle, Madeline being insecure about a mechanical object beating her (because surely she’s not worried about any other ones doing that…), and the power love has to prevail over any conflict.
He was excited to see it.
Fight or Flight is a benchmark episode in the keystone story of Better Halves. It’s only the start of the fun this group will get to have. Anyone have a guess on what problem is about to come knocking on their door next?
Thank you for sticking with me all this time. And, oh, you should read Heartripper. It's character driven instead of story driven, so it's a lot easier to pick up.