Oh, that Beck! She’s quite the optimist, isn’t she? Of course when you’re facing arrest, imprisonment, death, or any number of other dangerous situations as often as the Sand Spiders do, you have to at least be a little optimistic. Unless you’re Rook, in which case you’re not.

So, it’s been nearly a month since we posted anything, and over a month since we posted a new page. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I can’t even begin to express my gratitude for your patience this last holiday season–it’s been the worst we’ve seen, and for anyone who was around to read the final third of Chapter 2 in real-time as it was posted, you’ll know that we’ve changed our policies around a little bit with regard to how we publish pages. Since we’ve received a handful of comments about our update schedule this time of year, I figured I might offer a little insight into why.

A bit of context first: Rachel has a part-time retail job, and when the holiday season revs into gear on the day after Thanksgiving here in the States, a hefty number of hours are added to Rachel’s work schedule. This effectively turns her part-time job into a pretty grueling full-time job.

During the holiday season of 2014, when Quinlan was locked in a life-or-death struggle with Feyn atop the rain-soaked parapets of Deltrada Garrison (gosh, was it really that long ago??) our policy was to release anything we could as close to “on time” as possible. This led to more than a few pages in the latter sections of Chapter 2 lacking final lighting passes, being comprised of flats, or sometimes even being posted as raw inks with no color at all. This kept the story moving, but constantly pushing to get the pages done was exacting a pretty demanding toll, which we then felt in the last several weeks of Chapter 2 (covered, thankfully, with some pre-release posts about Song of the Eastern Sands).

We got lucky with the timing of the 2016 holiday season, as Chapter 3 was just beginning and a lot of time had been spent on those early pages in terms of thumbnails. We even had a bit of a page buffer in those early days, which let us stave off hiatus weeks for a good period of time. But it reared its head the next year and led to some discussions with Leah Briere, who would come on board to produce The Scholar and the Seawal and give Rachel some much-deserved time off from the comic. And then this holiday season rolled around and was busier than any in previous years.

I know how tough it is to wait for new page updates, so our deepest apologies to any and all readers affected by these delays. I also hope that I’ve been able to explain a little bit about our annual schedule to help all our readers understand why these things happen, and what we do to mitigate them.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to reveal that, yes, we are indeed planning for there to be a new Song of the Eastern Sands-sized story by Jerome Jacinto following the completion of Chapter 3. This is meant to give Rachel an appropriately-sized work break, and also to allow for hassle-free pre-production work on Chapter 4. We’ve still got a little ways to go with Chapter 3, but work progresses on the new side story in earnest. I won’t say anything about it just yet, but it’s proving to be a fun addition to the world of the Western Deep.

Also, quick Kickstarter update: our physical proof pages were passed on to manufacturing last week, and they should be shipped out for Rachel’s hands-on analysis in just a few weeks. Assuming all goes well there, we’ll be moving into full book production shortly thereafter!

For anyone who watched the 2018 Video Game Awards, the big final reveal was that Joker, protagonist of Atlus’ PS4 JRPG Persona 5, will be appearing in Smash Bros. Ultimate as a DLC character. Funnily enough, RM Fung, who has sent in some great Western Deep guest art for us in the past, sent in this piece one day before the VGAs were broadcast featuring a fun Western Deep/Persona mashup!

I do always love seeing Quinlan’s “modern day” AU interpretation, and someday I think I’d really love to make hoodies like Quinlan has here! But then, I love hoodies in general so any design would work for me. Making hoodies is pretty pricey though, so that particular piece of merch might have to wait for another Kickstarter.

Thank you for the awesome piece, RM! Makes me think how awesome it’d be to have the gang appear in their own JRPG–or Smash Bros for that matter!