(Firstly: yes, I never got to upload that thing I promised to upload. That other project I was working on ended up eating up every last minute of time I had before leaving - seriously, I got about two hours of sleep that night - so I didn't even have time for as measly a task as scanning it. It might go up later, depending on the opinion of it's very mysterious contributor.)
Kitaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa~!
I'm in Japan. I'm really,
hontou ni in Japan. And it's just awesome. Sure, I'm still jetlagged as hell from the plane trip here (Japan is seven hours behind Denmark), and I'm supposed to be fit for climbing up Mount Fuji tomorrow, but still - wheee!
Sigge and I've beenhere in Tokyo for four days, and we've already managed to see Asakusa, Ginza and some of Harajuku, get lost in Shinjuku, and, most importantly, drool all over Akihabara. I will return as a broke woman.
On he Magical Girl front (since that's what this title partially claims that I should inform you of), well, Pretty Cure is everywhere. Seriously. Okay, it's not as omnipresent as Hello Kitty, who is whatching you from so many places that I get flashbacks to 1984, but still. I saw a Pretty Cure TEA SET today!!! XD In Akihabara, though, said omnipresence is taken over by Nanoha StrikerS (where else in the world is the first thing you see when exiting a train station huge Nanoha posters?), which seems to scare Sigge quite a bit.
Well, that's all for now, since my internet cafe time's running out. I'll be back sometime after the 3rd with... stuff from Kyoto.
PS: Dumbledore is really Hermione's father's third cousin's schoolteacher's owl's father!
Well, I AM an über-geek. Did you really expect me NOT to be standing in line tonight? ;3
So, I got it. The most anticipated, currently most sought-after and most predictably bestselling book of 2007. And this is where the trouble begins. Y'see, I bought the book to read on the plane to Japan (and I'm too busy packing to read it before I get on said plane), so I won't be opening it before Wednesday. On the other hand, ze interwebz will have read and started spreading spoilers everywhere it in approximately six hours from now, which of course means that I'll haveto either (argh!) avoid the internet for the next few days or alternatively be very, very careful with what I read online from now on. Which will be hard, since I'm bad at avoiding spoilers normally, and in this case, the spoilers will most likely be much more widespread than, say, spoilers for Lyrical Nanoha (really, who the heck
watches Lyrical Nanoha? Well, except me of course - that show feels like it was made solely to pander to my most obscure trope 'fetishes'...) In any case, difficult internetting ahead. -_-
On the comic side of things, a friend suggested me something to upload while I'm in Japan, so there might be some updates during this hiatus after all. The 'thing' isn't ANT-related at the slightest, but it
is comic-related (see if you can figure out what
that means!). Whether it will go up or not depends entirely on whether or not I'll have time to scan and upload it between packing and that other project, which is why I'm not revealing any more about it - information will be given if and when it's up in the upload queue. ^_^
...
Oh, to hell with it, if I can't avoid being spoiled, I can just as well spoil you guys too: In the end, Harry finds out that
Snape is really his father,
Hagrid is his mother and
Hedwig was Voldemort all along!!!1!!
Note: the above spoiler is bullshit.
(The last three Catnap pages ARE uploaded, but Siteadmin is down currently, so I can't upload them. They should be up tomorrow at the latest. -_-; )
Let's get the really bad/annoying/IdaSucksMajor*ss part out of the way first:
This comic will be on hiatus from today till' Monday August 27th. This means that there will be no regular updates until then, though there might be some other content, depending on how things go. And yes, I know that that really, really sucks, especially since updates have been so rare lately, but I have three (to me at least) very good reasons why it has to be like that:
1) In two weeks exactly, on June 25th, I'm going to Japan (yes, that Japan) to travel around the country with Sigge, and we'll be home on August 22nd. During that time, I won't have access to a scanner, and I'll most likely be more interested in exploring Akihabara than drawing pages, so if I was to update during that time, I'd have to churn out six full updates in less than two weeks, which I can't do because...
2) There is another (secret) project I really, really want to do, and it has to be finished before I go to Japan. Now, theroretically, I
could probably stress up, burn myself out and do both things, but I won't do that because...
3) Honestly, I'm completely burned out. This is probably the main reason for the hiatus and the reason I'm not just putting up an excuse and some lame promises I can't keep: I'm not enjoying making the comic currently, and I'm afraid that if I don't give myself a break now, I might not be able to enjoy it again. Eventually, I
can see myself giving up on the comic if I don't start enjoying it again, and though that's a far-off situation, I just don't wanna risk it. Part of the blame for my feeling this way of course lies with the exams - I'm still more or less burned out from them, so stressing over the comic instead of truly relaxing is pretty hard on me - but a lot of it is, I think, welled-up frustration form all the times I've been behind schedule and/or missing updates, as well. The problem is that when I think about the comic, the first thing I think about isn't that I'm going to draw a story I love and share it with the world; I think about missed deadlines, about how much behind my original schedule I am, about how I'm going to disappoint you, the readers, once again - in short, the comic's becoming a source of stress rather than a source of relaxation, and I can't stand that anymore. So I need a break. And I need a REAL break, not the sort of pseudo "I-promise-to-update-soon-but-actually-it-takes-forever"-break I've been taking so far, because even though the end result is the same - no comcis for you poor neglected readers - there is the distinct difference that while I spend a pseudobreak stressing over the fact that I'm not updating, a real break actually allows me to think about other things with a clean conscience. And no, I haven't had a break like that for the last three years. What I'm hoping to accomplish with this hiatus is to give my brain a much-needed rest from worrying about schedules and deadlines, allowing me to remember exactly WHY it is I draw this comic. Essentially, it gives me the time to miss doing this. ^_~
...and I think these three reasons also explain one part of why it took me so bizarrely long to draw these relatively simple crossover pages (the other part being, of course, my exams). To everyone at Crossover Wars: Sorry for the delay, sorry for the lack of information, and sorry for the mention of fursex-related words nobody should ever have to lay eyes on. ^_^; I can almost promise you that if you ever do anything with me again, I won't be
this horrible again. ^_~
By the way, just because I'm on hiatus, that doesn't mean I won't be around to chat on the tagboard, post on the forums and answer your emails, at least not while I'm still in the country, and even when I'm in Japan, I plan to check back regularly and post about my adventures in the land of magical girls. ^_^
Finally, in a vain attempt to at least keep you slightly entertained while you're technically NOT being entertained by this comic, I'm going to run a little contest during the hiatus: the
Design Lisa's Awkwardly Fugly Dress Contest! The rules are as follows: As stated on the last crossover page, Lisa will have to go to the summer ball in "the old dress". Now, this dress is by no means pretty or fashionable, but just HOW ugly is it? That's up to you! Send me your sketches of truly fugly dresses
before August 27th, and I'll elect the absolutely fugliest and put that in the comic (the dress will appear on page 103), and the winner will get a commission of his/her own choice from me. ^_^
That was all, I think. Have a nice summer, everyone, and try not to hate me
too much. Hating me a little is all right, though.
