The two first image is going to appear in the next part. (Yeah, it's going to start with a flashback)

But serious talk tho. Honestly drawing the long comic format has been an unenjoyable experience for me personally. I specialize in making full scenic illustrations. Making comics which requires you to draw human figures again and again and again and again is simply something that I am not used to. I feel like a cog that does nothing but grinds, and the quality suffers as a result. I didn't even bother doing a second pass for cleaning up the artwork, as opposed to the usual illustrations where I would triple check every nook and cranny.

I am not happy with the quality, but then again, making every single panel be of my top-notch usual quality would be an enormous task. It probably didn't take you long to read them, but so far, there's a total of 68 pages with an average of 3.5 panels per page, so that's a total of 238 different images that I had to draw. They took time, and the insane standard that Webtoons have to be coloured to be able to compete well... Oh fun fact, this was also supposed to be released alongside the previous war chapter. So if you count that in, it would roughly amount to about 120-ish pages and hundreds more panels.

Next, making these are basically almost a suicide run for my financial situation lol. This took away precious time from better stuff that would objectively be a smarter choice financially. Previously, I mentioned that the reach for these specific long form comics totally suuuuuucks. If I just throw them in a public space like r/comics or other social medias like instagram or twitter, people wouldn't care. They don't know who these characters are after all, and you require some degree of familiarity with them in order to get attached to the story. So, this is a bad investment for my social media clout. I know this on an instinctual level, I've been in the mud and dirt for 8 years now, at this point I could tell whether a post would perform or not. (After seeing [how this performs](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1nho2ol/a_slice_of_life_a_sliced_soul_a_saviour_pt_3_my), I don't even feel like posting the next part anymore on the r/comic subs lmaoo. I didn't repost those here in my sub, I can't keep begging you guys to go there and rig the numbers for my sake. They're clearly not interested)

Next, the quality presented here are also subpar. It's a bit embarrassing to think that these are some people's first exposure to my art... So this is also a bad investment for my professional portfolio. I am heavily considering a return to the diary format. Where each episode would only consist of maybe three or four high quality images and a mix of few lower quality panels or potat images. While the bulk of the storytelling are exposition texts lmao. With this at least I would have something to show for my portfolio and each chapter is short and quick enough to cater to the dopamine-starved brains of the common 21st century audience. This is why most Webtoons canvas consists of short strip comics, they are simply more financially and socially sound to make.

About the story... Well its been a unanimous positive reception so far at least, so thank you for that... Just, thank you. It does make this feel somewhat worthwhile to make.

Hm? If I don't enjoy it, then why do I keep doing it? Hmmm, good question. its been 8 years since I started. Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm starting to be impatient. Maybe I'm getting restless, of seeing relatively small progress after that long. But I kept doing it. So maybe I guess I still enjoyed it? After all, this story won't write itself.

Nevertheless, don't expect the new chapter anytime soon. I'm looking on doing another project in the meantime. Ahh, I'm sorry for being such a sneering complainer. I wish I was better.

(Also sorry if you just joined here specifically after the Umamusume post. I'm sorry to tell you that I'm not a fandom artist >.>. That was just a one off thing. )

((But uhhh actually guys, those ARE the technically smart thing for me to make, so maybe I should...? but I don't want this place to entirely be... aaargh, idk, I'm going to sleep))

Do you guys prefer good quality but long updates or so-so meh quality but quick(er) updates?