A few months ago, I’d had a plan for the next few pages of the comic. It take place during Alice & Violet’s ride home after visiting Daisy, with Violet asking for (and getting) more information about the Disney incident. Three pages, one recyclable background, pretty simple. But also not very interesting.
I’d planned on drawing those three pages while in Michigan for the summer, but work and other things have kept me too distracted to do that. The same thing that has happened to me every summer for like the past decade, but hey, maybe this year would have been different?
One benefit to being kept away from the comic, is I’ve had time to improve on it. Instead of Alice & Vi’s ride home, the idea now is to pick up right where the last page left off, and have Daisy provide much of the information herself. The script isn’t all that different from before, though it’s quite literally back to the drawing board in terms of panel layouts. If I can re-use the backgrounds from the previous pages, it’ll be that much easier.
Because of how long this chapter has dragging on for, there are some segments that I’d planned but that will have to cut or repurposed later. One bit would have had Mary pop in for a visit, mostly as an excuse to tease more background detail about both her and Daisy.
Another would have had Daisy call or video chat two other friends (separately) – Mimi, and a girl I still don’t have a name for but have referred to as “chibi Hitomi”. Aside from introducing these characters, they would have provided some more world-building, but otherwise didn’t have much to do with Daisy’s burn-out.
A segment I’d felt I would need to cut, but don’t want to, involves an attempted robbery at the diner. In the past year or two I’d felt overwhelmed and just wanted to finish this chapter as quickly as possible, but this is one segment that simply can’t be spun off into a later chapter. And it would pay off a thing or two.
There is a completely separate story that has also been delayed for years, that I’m still trying to figure out how to finish & release. It would have followed up on some of the reveals from Toxic Candy, and delved a bit into how Candice’s family and business operate.
As a comic, the main thing that kept me from drawing this story is/was the backgrounds. Drawing backgrounds in general is one of my least favorite things, but in this case I simply couldn’t find decent reference for mansion interiors and the camera angles I’d had in mind.
At some point I’d decided that it might be much easier to release this story as a novella, either lightly illustrated or just as text. And one version of the story or another was posted for my patrons to read, and then I just forgot to finish it so that it could be released for everyone. I do think about it every so often, but it keeps getting pushed aside by higher-priority things.
