This Week (7/15/2018) (Patreon)

So, those of you still keeping up with the Essence story thread over on Sufficient Velocity will already have seen what an absolute mess last week's response to Tyranny 6.3 was. For those of you who don't, like I said, it was an absolute mess. 

Bad enough that the chapter itself gave me trouble and frustrated me, fought me every step of the way and caused delays everywhere, but the response from the readers was equally as troubled and frustrating and there seemed to be a lot of assumptions of characters' competence and their powers' proficiencies that came straight out of fanon and...

Well. Like I said, troubled.

But it only compounded the feeling I had when 6.3 was done of, "You know what, I don't want to grind out the small imperfections, I just want to be done with it." 

And that's never a productive feeling. It was made even worse by a speech I got from my grandfather on Independence Day (July 4) that basically boiled down to, "Your dreams will never come true, and if you don't go back to school and get a degree worth having, get yourself a real job, find a girlfriend, and start making some real money, you'll never amount to anything."

So, several people suggested, "Maybe you should take a break from Essence and work on some other things for a little while." When the storm that got kicked up lasted most of this last week, I decided, "You know what? I think that's probably a good idea."

This last week was spent without getting any work done. I just tried to unwind and relax and feel better about myself. 

The next couple of weeks, probably the rest of July and maybe into August, will be spent slowly piecing 6.4 together and maybe getting back to iron out the parts I didn't like about 6.3. While I do that, I'll also be working on some other stuff to release for you guys and the guys on the SV thread. Another couple of Alternate Essence shorts, including maybe a continuation of "Blood and Sunlight," more "Gold and Glory," and perhaps even one I mentioned on the Discord server, "Ink and Fantasy." 

Or maybe a look at Recursive Wisdom. A litmus test, to see how much everyone likes the idea.

Hopefully, we can get back to the regular schedule fairly soon. We're at my favorite part of Essence, the part I've been hinting at and waiting for since almost the beginning of the story. It's already taken a year to get to this point, and I don't want to have to put it off for too much longer.