20131006, 10:54 – Nanananaananananana SPACE PORN!
This is the last page of the chapter, the last page to be published with Movable Type, and the conclusion of ATC’s first chronological advancement since July of 2008.
The last time I wrapped a chapter of Transitional Voices, I followed through with a massive CMS upgrade and site reconfiguring, then the second edition of The Dualist, then I finished Dead City Radio and followed that up with Observer Effect. This installment got off to an absolutely hellish start, then eased into a metronomic deployment schedule around the time of ATC’s 10th anniversary. Saturdays and Sundays at first, then Sundays – a schedule I’ll likely stick to when production resumes.
Between this page and the next I’ll be migrating the site from Movable Type to WordPress. I’m doing most of my other personal sites first, in an effort to sort out all possible build issues in advance so that the transition is hopefully just a matter of putting the work in. After that’s been taken care of I’ll get back to writing – either “missing” parts of Dead City Radio or a final draft of TV.3. I don’t know which it’ll be at this point. I do know that production of Transitional Voices installments are typically fraught with strangeness. TV.1 ran in parallel with my sister signing up for the Navy and the rapid deterioration of my home life – after TV.1 wrapped I spent the rest of July and August of 2008 in a stressed-out nicotine fog, eventually moving out of my place on Carey Way an into an abject living situation that ultimately resulted in my flight from the South Side in early 2009. The second edition of The Dualist was completed shortly after I was laid off from CMNH, and the resumption and continuation of DCR occurred in parallel with funemployment and freelance efforts at Mechanimal/Mitosis and another M thing that turned out to be the worst year of my life to date – Q4 of 2008 was a three month orgasm by comparison.
TV.2 struggled to get off the ground in early 2013 and really got rolling after I resigned from a shitty gig – a gig so shitty that it dragged me into poverty and rewarded my continued tolerance of escalating abuse with suicidal ideation, alcoholism and a severe case of PTSD. As the stench of that torrential shitstorm began to clear I hit my stride and the pages began to flow. I’ve decided to stop here rather than plow on with TV.3 for a number of reasons, most detailed or hinted at above – comics are a lot of work, and the work I do for money is also a lot of work. Given the nature of my attention span and work ethic these concepts – work and ATC – are mutually exclusive. It’s literally one or the other, off or on, A or B. TV.2 was rendered in scenes, drawn in scenes, and trickled out after completion. Work on this installment was never continuous – I’d go at it for a week or two solid then focus on paying work for several weeks while slowly posting the results. I plan to build on that process with TV.3 and hopefully refine it so there are fewer visible gaps in deployment. As nearly all of TV.4’s asset requirements will be met during the production of TV.3 it seems likely that this will be the last large break in the production of Transitional Voices.
At this point the rest of 2013 is pretty clear. 2014 is totally blank. I have no idea what I’ll be doing for work in a couple of months. Hell, I technically run out of work next week. I do know that getting my web presence upgraded and sanitized is a big step in the right direction. The last time I had an expenses-are-covered-if-the-invoice-is-paid-in-time gap this big I shortened it considerably with whiskey and pissed away the time by drunkenly farming L4s in EVE Online. I quit EVE early this year and I haven’t had a drink since April – if I can continue to keep my shit together the next several weeks are likely to be very productive.
Mastering notes, 2016.12.21 – Moved the caption from the lower right to the lower left.
