Mental Health + Life Update + Content Moving Forward

Hi, Ashy here.

First of all, wanted to say I've more or less finished university. Those who have kept up with Twitter know I've more or less wrapped up my final project, and am basically just waiting for my supervising lecturer to get back to me with some more documentation before submission. Thank you to everyone who continued to support my Patreon throughout this past while. It means a lot.

Secondly, my mental health has, conversely, taken a nosedive off a cliff in the wake of this. I'm not super sure what happened, but it's been one of the rougher patches in my life, to be sure. I have plans to seek counseling or something like that, nothing concrete yet, but it seems like the right course of action.

However, these problems compounding, it's left me with trouble drawing, among other things. In particular, with the weight of expectations I've built up onto the Reed x Bagpipe comic (partially of my own doing, sorry), it seems unlikely I'll be able to draw it in its current form. Frankly, the ship itself was one I opted for mostly because I didn't know what else to really do for Reed, but it's become clear to me that drawing a long-form comic for a ship and characters I am largely ambivalent towards is not a great combination for motivation. Add onto that my mental health problems, and, well, it's been a bit rough.

With this in mind, I'm going to be shortening the Reed x Bagpipe thing. It might be only 2 pages, maybe even just one page, but I'll try to get at least something done. I posted the sketch a few weeks back to, in part, motivate myself to finish it, but it just seems unlikely. Additionally, in wake of this realization, it's likely that ALL future monthly poll rewards will be similarly shorter. I just don't have the motivation to make long-form works in the scenario characters I don't like enough win the polls, especially with strict deadlines in place.

However, in exchange, I'll try to draw the 4-page style comics, maybe even longer, outside of the monthly polls. These won't have a strict deadline, and will give me the freedom to use characters and ships I like as the topic of drawing. Hopefully, provided things go well, I'll be able to draw much better looking stuff with this formula. I'll also continue short single-page stuff as my mood takes me.

Overall, I'm really, really sorry. I understand many of you might've been excited for a Reed comic, given the reception I had to much of my queries leading up to the initial sketch. For that, I can't apologize enough for getting your hopes up for nothing. This announcement coming after I've already delayed the comic by a whole month to finish uni is absolutely not great, and honest to god, I'm just sorry. At the very least, as an apology to those who were excited for a Reed x Bagpipe thing, whenever I post it, it will be fully available uncensored, publicly on my NSFW Twitter, @darkersin31. I'd make it public here, too, but Patreon doesn't like that kinda content being fully open for viewing, so I'm limited on that.

To those who are still supporting me after this rough last month or so, and to those who continue to do so, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I understand that these kinds of serious posts from an NSFW patreon are somewhat out of place, and I've definitely had a few recently I feel, but I felt transparency about my overall mood and situation was for the best to clarify everything possible. I'll try to work on these issues privately from here on out, and limit any future announcements to being much briefer.

Thanks for hearing me out. Have a good day, everyone.