I got an comment on a post on DeviantArt overnight. Viewers on DA are extremely non-verbal (that's the charitable take, we'll go with that), so actual comments are few and far between. To be fair, when they do arrive, they've always been positive. The worst I've ever gotten is a "this is not my thing" remark. Given the horrific comments some folks get constantly on DA, I should probably be thrilled with what I get. And I am. But ...

This was a comment praising an image I posted back in August 2020. More than five years ago in calendar time; more than half a century ago in "learning to use Studio properly, accumulating sufficient resources to do it well, and eradicating all the rookie mistakes" time. In other words, by my current standards, the image is crap.

That's not actually quite true. It was always one of the ones I was more pleased with from the Hotel Eleusis era, it's held up reasonably well, etc. But my god, I can do so much better now.

When someone takes the trouble to explicitly like an older image, I'm certainly not going to piss in their mouth. I'm glad they liked it; I don't take any of the older material down for exactly that reason (and the slow, but continual, stream of favorites and traffic to the older images tells me there are plenty of people still looking at it). But there is also a part of my brain that wants to shake them by the shoulders and say "Why aren't you looking at the good stuff?"

This is particularly germane at the moment, since I am now several pages into the remake of the first Quitclaim story, "The Void Eaters" -- only the second time I have decided that one of the long-format stories is absolutely unsuitable the way it was originally done. The other, not coincidentally, is the first Sleeper Squad. With Quitclaim I think I managed to reasonably hit stride by the third story; with Sleeper Squad I usually mark #12 as the "OK, all the bones are where they should be now" point. But I don't plan to remake any of the other Sleeper Squads from #2 through #11 -- with the possible exception of #6, and that's another story -- nor will I remake the second Quitclaim -- in fact, I reread it yesterday and though I can see each and every one of its faults, I think it holds up.

That's the real question -- does it hold up? Even though it's not up to my present standards, is is still entertaining? Is it readable? Is it good enough?

With "The Void Eaters," it wasn't just a question of the faults being painful to read. Actually, I'm just reusing many of the images from the first go-round; they were fine. The thing that really pushed me over the edge is that I made some stylistic choices that actually interfered with the readability of the story. Most notably, the style of bubbles used for radio comms. Since the story is set in a space station that has no atmosphere, most of the key conversation is over radio, so if those bubbles aren't readable, that's a big deal.

I'm not actually nearly as picky as I may sound. Many Sleeper Squads, even recent ones, have reached the point which we in the software industry refer to as FISI (Fuck It, Ship It) -- that is, OK, the perfect is the enemy of the good, we're gonna let this go out with bugs because we need to send it out and be done with it now. There is generally at least one typo in every story. In some scenes I find a clipping issue or a graininess problem where I just shrug and let it go. If the story is compelling enough, it won't matter. Where it's a deal-breaker are the scenes where readability is compromised, or where it's just not possible to tell what's going on. One of the problems I have with Sleeper Squad #6 is that in some panels you wouldn't actually be able to tell what was supposed to be going on in the panel -- I mean physically -- unless I told you with a caption. There's a fight scene in there which is just about incoherent.

I'm aware that in the comparatively short life of this revived journal so far, the "Fiction Factory" tag has surely been the one most-used, by far. I haven't counted; I don't need to. In other words, I talk about story process an awful lot. Well. There are two reasons.

First, story process is what's taking up the bulk of my brain a lot of the time. I mentioned the other day that right now I'm on a chain-smoking approach to stories; as soon as I finish one project I start the next, trying hard not to leave a gap in between. This is what I do. This is pretty much the key part of my life, do you understand? I tend to my day job fitfully; I tend to the daily business of my life fitfully; I watch a TV show two nights a week and a movie once in a blue moon; I eat, I sleep, I shit, I go out for a long walk and lunch twice a week, I doomscroll for an hour or so most days. This is it. This is the good bit. And even if nobody is reading any of these stupid stories, I'm still going to make them, because:

Second, making stories is all that's saving me. I am actually not a depressed person most of the time, but the reason I'm not is this compartmentalization. The world would kill me right now if I let it, so I don't let it. I have to be able to lock the trashfires in a box for a while and do something else. This is the something else.

I don't know how much longer the stories in comic format will last. The current plan is to take Sleeper Squad to #100 if I can manage it, and then we'll reassess. I won't run out of stories before I die, but I will run out of energy.

And there's also, with the comics, some technical limitations that have a clock ticking on them; we'll reach a point this year where I will probably have to freeze the render computer in time, not upgrading anything, running it exactly the way it is, if I want to keep making these images in the way I have become accustomed. But I'm also well aware that's a stopgap. Nothing lasts forever, and in technology, nothing even lasts a long time. Maybe something better will come along (doubtful until the Altman types stop trying to cram generative art down our throats, though; we are in a deliberate cessation of forward progress at this time).

Ideally, a decade from now, I'm writing a journal entry about "Why are you still favoriting stories from 2026? Why aren't you reading the good stuff?"

One can hope.