Y'all, can you believe there are only four more pages to go . . .

I've been busy with lots of errands recently, mostly related to the ever-expanding lists of places I need to update my legal name, and I worry it's starting to wear me down. I experienced an uncharacteristic burst of energy and optimism a few weeks after top surgery and have been motivated to put myself out there in various ways, but that's been waning this week, and I think it might be due to the errand grind.

It might also be due to the intermittent heat waves we've been getting here. I don't yet know how to dress casually for hot weather post-top-surgery? I used to go out in an open button-up over a sports bra, but it feels weird to be totally shirtless under an open shirt, and buttoning it up feels too warm? IDK, I miss winter! 

Originally, I was going to have Jekyll and Lanyon stay in touch through one of Miss Flowers's mechanical spy beetles, because yeah, I'd used from from time to time earlier in the story, so why not here? And then someone in my writer's group gave the very important note of, "Oh, so they're going to stay in touch via the steampunk equivalent of Zoom meetings? That's . . . not very romantic . . ." Only then did I remember that pen and paper existed.

On an unrelated note, I spent the weekend and most of the week before writing up a series overview for a theoretical Lucy and the Forty Elephants spinoff. It will almost certainly never get made (Hollywood is buried under unproduced series overviews) but it did get me thinking: What do you call a lesbian harem anime? I kept wanting to call it a reverse harem, but the love interests are still girls, so that's not right. Is it just "lesbian harem anime?" Are there lesbian harem animes? Either way, I don't think my manager will know what I'm talking about.

Oh no oh no oh nooooooo I'm sick again. 

In the before times, I usually got sick about twice a year--during quarantine and a few years after, I typically got sick once a year if at all. This year feels like making up for lost time, like I need to build my immunity back up again. I also wouldn't be surprised if the particularly rough flu season + top surgery have just done a number on my immune system. But I've gotten the flu three times in the past four (maybe five?) months, and I can't shake the fear that this is just what my life is going to be like, now. 

Normally, I like having an excuse to slow down and just vibe for a week or so, but coming out of recovery and the last time I was sick, I am impatient to get moving--and also to avoid the particularly nasty depression that hit two weeks into recovery + isolation. I'm trying to split the difference by limiting myself to dull but necessary tasks that don't feel too taxing on my --let's see how that shakes out.

I actually really enjoy writing Rachel and Hyde's dynamic. I kept fantasizing about writing a little side adventure taking place before the main TGS timeline, but it turns out I more or less need someone pointing a gun at my head to find motivation around short-form projects, so it sadly never happened.

Glad I got a bit of space here to give them a moment of resolution, at least! I got a little stuck in my own head over the two of them back when I was still finding the occasional discourse post about how Rachel is Manipulative Because X or Jekyll is Selfish Because Y. Not that there was ever a ton of those posts to begin with, but I had to almost entirely disengage from fan content because it made me a worse writer. There's a kind of story where you get the sense that the writer is desperately trying to convey who are the Good Characters We're Allowed to Like and who are the Bad Characters We're Supposed to Condemn, and I've recently had to admit to myself that I find those stories . . . kind of boring? And I would much rather read books with titles like Horrible Selfish Trans People Ruin Each Others' Lives On Purpose. 

SHOP UPDATE: My extra copies of the Glass Scientists: Volume III Pre-order rewards have arrived and are now available for purchase! If you missed the pre-order campaign, or if you're an international reader who wasn't able to receive physical pre-order rewards, now is your chance!

As always with pre-order rewards, supplies are limited. Once they're gone, they're gone! Additionally, if you're an international reader who pre-ordered Volume III and would like physical copies of your rewards, please email me with proof of purchase and I'm happy to send them--I would just ask that you cover postage.

(These rewards actually arrived a few weeks ago, but I've held off putting them on sale due to movement/weight restrictions after top surgery. Now that I've gotten the green light to lift up to 25lbs, I can finally lift these big-ass prints!!)

As a side note, this week was exhausting as hell at work, but largely for good--or at least, self-inflicted--reasons. After 2025, I'll pick a stressful work day over unemployment any day! Bonus: all the stuff going on at work, plus an unexpectedly strenuous hike with Dad, left me no time at all to feel bad about being single on Valentine's Day. 

For those curious: Yes, I did go back and add a brief appearance of the Sommeil de la Mort potion into the print version of Chapter 13 so there wouldn't be a whole volume between the (extremely brief) setup of the potion and its payoff. Definitely more of a band-aid solution--this definitely isn't my favorite bit of writing in the series, but I hope it's not too distracting!

I'm pretty sure the embalming practice Lanyon is referring to in panel 2 was commonplace in England by the 1880s. Pretty sure. Not 100%. I know the practice became popularized during the Civil War to aid in the transport of dead soldiers back to their families, so it had probably become the industry standard a couple decades later . . . ? Feel free to fact check me on that, though.

Top surgery recovery update: My two-week check-up went well, and I'm back to my regular diet! Had a couple rough nights sleeping on my back, but it's gotten a little easier overall, and I only have  a couple more days to go for that, hopefully. On Tuesday, I should be able to start lifting up to 25 pounds, which isn't nearly enough for me to go back to the gym* but will help me feel a lot less restricted in day-to-day movement. I'm feeling slightly more pain? Nothing terrible, though, not even so great I feel the need to take pain meds. They're mixed in with some . . . funky sensations? Itching and tingling, that sort of thing. I'm hoping that's the first indications of some sensation returning, though it seems early for that.

*Luckily I was able to cancel my gym membership last month. Wasn't planning to do so, but my old gym (Gold's) sold all its old locations to EOS but cheekily kept my membership fee at its old, twice-as-expensive price. When I tried to correct this, uh, "oversight," EOS told me, "Oh no :( It's impossible :( You'd have to cancel your entire membership and lose all your benefits :(" So I was like, "lol fine just cancel it then." Long story short: fuck EOS, and maybe this is my time to finally switch to the YMCA. 

Top surgery diary week 2: My follow-up appointment went well, so I was able to get my drains taken out before flying back to LA. Pain has been manageable, to the point that I've been doing without painkillers for the last few days, and on the whole I think my fatigue and muscle weakness have been receding at a good rate. Sleeping on my back has been rougher this week, though--I think the pain meds made me drowsy enough to get to sleep without much trouble, but without them, the back pain and general alertness that comes from sleeping in a position that my brain registers as "time to get up! also think about your tummy and how you might be hungry, kind of?" has been keeping me fairly sleep deprived. I've tried a few different pillow positions without much success. An unexpected heat wave in LA hasn't helped. At least I don't have to go the gym--working out with this kind of fatigue is a recipe for injury.

The low sodium diet has also been absolutely nasty--it's hard to eat enough when everything tastes like cardboard!--but as of this writing, I've got less than three days left, and for my last few meals, I finally landed on a recipe that doesn't suffer too much from the omission of salt. At least I can still have coffee! 

He's alive! I must extend my thanks to everyone who already read the print version and have had to keep their lips zipped for the past couple months. 

I'm also alive! My top surgery was last Tuesday, and I've spent the week recuperating at my friend's home while my aunt and uncle kindly brought me food, sometimes multiple times a day--I'm truly humbled by everyone's generosity. I'm a little apprehensive about the results. though?? My chest has been wrapped up in super tight padding and bandages all week, so I really have no idea what's going on down there, and I have no memory of meeting with the surgeon to discuss results after the procedure (I also have no memory of receiving the anesthesia, or of changing back into my clothes afterwards). I hope things went well, but if they didn't, I'd have no idea! Hoping my follow-up appointment today goes well, but regardless, I'll be heading back home this evening.

WHOOPS I got wrapped up in top-surgery pre-op plans and forgot to upload this week's page!! Man. I almost made it this entire comic without missing an upload day--I had a couple instances where I accidentally set the posting time too early or too late, but I've never straight-up missed an upload week . . . until now!! 

This trip has been wild already--after patiently waiting for my cold symptoms subside, my sinuses decided to go completely haywire all of yesterday as I was flying up. Imagine waterfalls. Geysers. Rivers of the stuff. Things seemed to calm down by the time of my pre-op oppointment today, and the surgeon doesn't seem concerned, but for most of yesterday I was fully like, "I think I have to cancel my top surgery?? Because I can't?? Fucking breathe??" 

A couple bookkeeping announcements:

1. A reader informed me that the Glass Scientists storefront was down--I did intend to close it over the holidays but thought I had reopened it after January 1st. This issue has been fixed, so the store should be back online now! 

2. I've received several emails from readers who have received incomplete or entirely empty pre-order rewards packages. I'm not sure why this is, but I am currently working through things with the publisher. If you have encountered a similar issue, email me so I can make sure you get your rewards! Please use the subject line: Missing pre-order rewards.

This page is comics art on HARD mode: a giant group shot of (almost) every secondary character in the story, who need to read as a single unit but each have unique costume elements (which are nonetheless different from their standard costume elements, so you can't go off memory), who are all dressed in black but must be lit brightly enough that they won't devolve into a formless black blob in print (going too dark looks soooooo bad in print), but not so brightly lit that they read as brown or grey or yellow-ish online because they're supposed to be in mourning so it is in fact story-relevent that they are dressed in black specifically--

*BIG breath*

A more conscientious artist might have planned out a composition that avoided this problem altogether, but I can't even spell "conscientious" without looking it up first. I'm not sure I can even say it. 

I'm thinking of doing a "my year in review" type post on the newsletter this week, and if I'm lucky, I might actually do it. I've always felt a bit envious of people who could make really polished year-end wrap-ups of their art or life or whatever, but I've always struggled to self-reflect in a way that didn't fall into the traps of aimless negativity (most of what I post here) or social-media-friendly, kinda-fakey positivity (the press tour of TGS Vol 1, if I'm being honest).

I would like to make a #EFFORT this time to write something decently self-reflective that actually sounds like I wrote it. If I manage to finish it in time, I'll be posting it on my newsletter. It's not TGS-related exactly, but if you'd like to know what I've been up to this year, please give me a follow!

This year, I was invited to create a guest comic for the sex and gender education comic Oh Joy Sex Toy! I just learned that the comic was posted last week. You can read it here! It's about my experience on low-dose testosterone. (Please note: While my comic does not have any explicit material, much of this site is very much NSFW.)

Anyway, back to the comic: This version of the Time Traveler hails all the way back to the highschool roleplay that inspired The Glass Scientists. I always had vague plans to bring him into the story proper at some point, but his appearance is--almost by definition--so disconnected from and disruptive of the main plot that it never ended up happening. But here he is, sliding in right before the finish line! Say "hi" to the Time Traveler, everyone!

This week I learned that my legal name change has been processed, which means--that's right--it is now illegal to deadname me! The woke mob will send you to prison for 1 million years if you do not refer to me by my preferred name and pronouns! (This is a joke, in case it wasn't obvious--I still haven't gotten around to changing every instance of my name as it appears on *checks notes* this very website.)

The thing to do now is to start updating all my important legal documents and accounts to my new legal name. For that, I will need certified copies of my legal name change . . . court order? Declaration? Thing? Which prompts the question: 1) What is that? 2) Where do I get it? 3) And how? None of these questions were answered by the minute order (which is different from the court order, apparently) I received informing me of this whole thing, but I'm hoping I can get this all figured out this week. 

I want to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who pre-ordered The Glass Scientists Volume 3--as well as everyone who's participated in the pre-order campaigns over the last three years! As a quick reminder, your pre-order rewards will be shipped separately from your books, so if you haven't received your rewards yet, don't worry!

To offer a rough timeline, I believe the domestic pre-order rewards are scheduled to be shipped out within eight weeks, while I'm aiming to have the digital international rewards shipped out within one week. I was hoping to get the ball rolling on those earlier, but last week ended up caught up in a lot of family plans and holiday shop orders--hoping to get caught up starting this week! Thank you to everyone for your patience!!

Hey all! It is the very! last! day! of the final Glass Scientists pre-order campaign! Don't forget to pre-order at the banner link below and fill out your pre-order gift forms before midnight tonight!

To highlight the pre-order rewards one final time: For this campaign, you get a signed bookplate and three full-size, 12x18 prints featuring new original artwork.

On top of that, you'll get early access to the final pages of The Glass Scientists and the exclusive epilogue story, which is very Frankenstein and Jasper focused and they!! do not!! get along!! And TBH it's a bit of a bummer to me that it's a print-exclusive story because I'm curious to hear what people thought about it. If you read it, let me know your thoughts!

I just got a lovely surprise--it turns out my enamel pins are going to be delivered much faster than I thought, so I'll be able to offer them in time for the Christmas season! I'd recommend snatching them up quickly--the Jekyll remainder pins sold out quite quickly last time, and this will likely be the last time I can stock them.

They're available now in the store!

This scene may or may not have been inspired by an actual funeral I attended. Can't say more for obvious reasons, but I will add that complaining about the sermon is such a big part of my family's churchgoing habits that it feels as mandatory as the Nicene Creed. 

The final chapter starts today!

It's the final chapter cover reveal, which means it's my time for me to tell my final tale of woe about how I planned out this illustration thinking it would be super easy--literally just a gravestone and some flowers!--only to get completely lost in the weeds, miss my deadline, and end up haunted by it through the entire end of 2024. For one, I find simplicity often quite challenging--with so few elements, any flaw in execution is going to stand out. And while a lot of the elements depicted here are pretty easy to do, they're tough to do well. In particular, I find gradients on flat surfaces and shallow engravings particularly grating when done poorly--they remind me of early 2000s Geocities websites, but not in the fun nostalgic way. 

By the way, I realized I've forgotten to post some of the Volume 3 promotional work that I've been adding to Instagram and my newsletter--we're less than a month away from launch day, so for now, here's the reveal of the full spine design!

If you want to see the original illustration the spine draws from, please check out my newsletter post on the subject! And as always, please don't forget to pre-order and fill out your pre-order gift forms at the banner link below!

This concludes Chapter 17 of The Glass Scientists! Tune in next week for the start of the final chapter!

Shop update: Charms are back in stock in anticipation of the holiday season! This may be one of the last times I restock the charms as the comic nears its finale, so if you've been thinking of buying, now's a good time!

I'm sick!! Normally, I almost enjoy getting sick because it gives me an excuse to slow down and just vibe, but I had a scheduled get-sick-slow-down literally last weekend when I got my flu/COVID shot, and now this is feeling less like slow-down time and more like being extremely bored but too exhausted to do anything about it. Plus I had to cancel a hangout with friends I hadn't seen all year and I made a special batch of pumpkin spice latte for it but it's fine!! it's fine!! I can see them another time. I'm just mad about it right now lol.

This does make me a little nervous about top surgery recovery next year. I've heard that you need to come with a whole arsenal of shows, games, and other distractions to keep restlessness at bay, but what if I fall into this nasty limbo state where I desperately need mental stimulation but am way too physically exhausted to do anything about it? (Also I still haven't even begun to start practicing sleeping on my back, but that's a whole other issue . . . ) Top-surgery-recovery-enjoyers, or anyone with experience with recovery really, please let me know any tips you might have in this arena!

We're really nearing the end now . . .

I hope everyone had a good Halloween! This was my first year where I couldn't just say, "Oh, I'm too busy with comic work to plan anything," and I was pretty worried that I wouldn't know what to do with myself! When you're constantly busy, you don't have to deal with all the little discomforts like planning around people's shifting schedules or finding out that something you were looking forward to isn't as great as you thought it would be. That second one is a weirdly a big anxiety/depression trigger for me!! I will put off doing something or buying something for months (if not years) for fear that it won't be as nice as I hoped it would be. Combine that with a mortal fear of waste (i.e. maybe if I never ever throw anything away or do anything frivolous I can stop global warming single-handed) and it can really turn into a headache. But those little setbacks ended up being pretty easy to work around, and I was able to have a pretty nice October!

Thanks to everyone who submitted to the TGS Halloween Fanwork Festival! I was absolutely blown away by everyone's creativity and charm--Click here to see all the submissions!