Tales of Kenah

Author notes

Bye.

XeaRi

on June 11, 2010

Well, the weekly sketch thing died fast.

I'm not sure what to say. Evidently I need more practice drawing dragons (I already dislike this sketch; think what it'll be like a couple hours I post it), and I'm not very good at planning out comic pages, and I don't have the mental integrity to write a high fantasy in a coherent, complex world.

I guess, in a way, I'm giving up. I may be capable of doing ToK justice one day, but not now. I'm going into university for art. I'll learn tons of things, I'm sure, and maybe when someone pays me for my skill I'll have enough confidence to come back to something like this.

I told myself yesterday I was giving up on ToK entirely. Well, today I was looking through my old writing, and I realized just how much I love the characters. I don't think I can let them go. I still really want to write ToK - maybe my eagerness to draw the comic has died, but I still want to get the story out. I just think about everything I have to do, all the work that needs to be put into a single world, and I shut down.

I can't do it justice now. Maybe, if someone out there was somehow as interested in ToK as I am, we could work together to make it happen. But I don't think I can do it alone. Look around us, at our own Earth. Can you imagine deriving an entire other planet, with different species, climates, cultures, morals, politics, and more? Can you invent a dozen or more different relationships between groups, who is allied with whom, what kind of food they eat, the settlements they make, their economy, their power structures? If you can, congratulations. I look forward to reading your story.

I can't - or, rather, I don't have the motivation to. ToK can't take place in an undeveloped setting. It's a high fantasy story, and I can't make it any other way. I can't extract the characters into an easier setting. It's all or nothing, and right now I have to go with nothing.

Honestly, is there someone out there who's as interested in ToK as I am? Readers of the comic have never read the full written story, but at this point I won't be letting it loose because I wrote it a very long time ago and the events have changed somewhat since then, so it's inaccurate and unpolished. Okay, listen, I don't even have all of the plot down, and I enjoy making plot. How can I make something like a world, which I'm only mildly interested in?

Anyway, I guess this is goodbye. Thanks for holding out. Sorry my hiatus amounted to nothing. Sorry I never got to show my storytelling and drawing improvements. I might come back, under a different guise. Maybe not. I'll probably still draw my beloved characters. I think my priorities have moved on. I draw less situational art and more pinup-style stuff. I write less fantasy and more romance. I've changed, I suppose, and ToK has remained the same.

Well, this is my last rant. Have a good life, whoever and wherever you are, and sorry to add to the pile of webcomics that dropped dead.

- Hex