Hi everybody.
This is... well, writing this was not easy. I can tell you that much. This is a post that I've been meaning to write for a long time now, but put off every time because of the difficulty. Of course, doing so only made finally doing it that more difficult. But at this point, not writing it would have been worse.
Here we go: I've grown sick and tired of this. Not of the story, not of the characters, not of the comic itset. What I've grown sick and tired of is the running of a webcomic, of the keeping up with a schedule, and the apologizing and bad conscience every time I fail to do so, which has, truth be told, been more often than not for the last long haul. When I started this comic, I did so with the intention and will to produce a regularly-updated, high-quality webcomic that would hopefully be popular, or at least attract some readers. When I did so, I was also 16 years old, deeply ingrained in the webcomics community, had very few friends, and even less to do with my spare time. Now, I'm a few days short of 21 years old, and pretty much everything has changed since I started out: I've slipped completely out of the webcomics community, I don't really read any (other) webcomics any more, I have plenty of friends, and I have projects and work enough to fill a 28-hour day. And keeping a work-heavy webcomic regularly updated just isn't worth as much to me as it used to be.
Don't get me wrong here; I love this comic, I love making it, and I love to see it updated, but let's be frank here. I'm not going to make anything close to a living off of this, ever (not that that was ever my intention). I'm starting college next year. In other words, there's no reason for me to believe that balancing weekly updates with school, work and everyday chores is going to be any easier within the foreseeable future. And increasingly, I've felt that updating weekly was not only becoming impossible, but, possibly worse, it was becoming a chore, prohibiting me from working on the projects I really wanted to do, because there was always a deadline to meet first. It was becoming something that took away enjoyment rather than creating it. Something I did because I had to. Something I did for you, the readers, and not for me.
And as much as I love you, that just doesn't work.
I have to find a way to make this comic work with my everyday life, to make it not take away from my other projects, for it to be enjoyable again. Otherwise, I won't be able to see it through to the end.
So, I've been thinking. I've considered different possibilities - some with more, but lower quality updates, others with rarer, better updates, and some with no updates at all - but in the end, there was only one way to do it. The schedule has to go.
From now on, Mechagical Girl Lisa A.N.T will update whenever the heck I feel like it. It will be less often than once a week, but more often than never, and there will be no more filler. And the pages will be finished. Really finished. Every single one of them. This blog will be updated again. With comments. With completely off-topic stuff. But never again with apologies.
I realize that this is less than optimal for you, the readers, and I'm sorry about letting you down reapeatedly - first with the missing updates, then with the broken promises and then with the silence. This is so I won't have to let you down any more.
So this is it. No more promises. No more delays. No more apologies.
...but a buttload of mechagical girl action coming at you - when it's done.
Thank you for reading.
