Alright, news post time. First up, Eternal September pages 1-18 are now available to be read.

Next, some questions, and some answers for Eternal September.

• How does this relate to Burning Down the House? Well, if it helps, a while I was waffling between it being an intermission and a full-on spinoff. However, some theming and narrative developments has necessitated me keeping track of intermissions, so consider them sort of like Homestuck^2's bonus comics - side stories in the same world, using the same ideas and characters, that may intersect with the main story but probably won't.
• When will this update? Whenever! Obviously, BDTH has primary focus, so these spinoffs and side comics will update... whenever, really.
• There's more? Yeah! There's been a Patreon goal for a while (that is no longer around since Patreon decided it was too good to have features) for an Alternian mythology comic, that's still in the barrel. Doing this kind of side stuff has always been part of the plan.
• How long will it run for? Good question! I doubt Eternal September in specific will run very long - perhaps a decent few hundred. Again - before deciding it would be a spinoff, it was planned to be a (still admittedly rather large) intermission. But that September 1st, 2023 release date for a comic set on September 1st, 1993? Very alluring.

Lastly, the End of Act is almost done - I know I've been banging this drum for a while, but in sincerity, it only gets closer. It's been over a year since the last update, but I haven't stopped working on BDTH. Even on days where I can't draw because of the heat or long COVID or just plain old illness, it's buzzing around in my brain. There's only a few shots left. I don't want to go find the gauges and meters image I've been using, so we'll call it "mostly done". Any day now.

Happy 8/8!

It's my birthday, and the comic's birthday too! Funny how that works out. So let's talk plans for the rest of the year. It's just about time to get things going again, so let's lay out some dates!

Some time this month, come hell or high water: END OF ACT 1. You know it, you love it already. The animation is the last thing that needs to get done.

September 1st: The first update for ETERNAL SEPTEMBER. What's that, you may ask? Well, I don't quite think "spinoff" is the right word. I waffled about on whether it should be a standalone comic or an intermission for a very long time. There will be more details when that drops.

Then, the time between EOA1, ES, and the return of weekly updates will be spent building back a page buffer. For Act 1, I had a page buffer that consisted of the entire act, and that still wasn't enough to cover gamedev work. (Admittedly, this is because I was also redrawing it as I was putting it down.)

September 12th, then, would be the return of weekly updates with ACT 2, tentatively unsubtitled.

September 15th-25th is GBJAM 11. I do this every year, and part of why I want a buffer is so that I can do so GBJAM again without breaking update flow.

I've been climbing this hill for so long and the top is visible now. And I'm gonna get so much road rash when I skate down it and tumble directly into the parking lot.

Thanks for sticking with me, and can you please bring me some gauze and disinfectants.

A quick news post, since I've been neglecting it, and not everyone is going to go look at social media sites… (Especially now that sometimes they just can't, thanks Elon.)

As far as BDTH goes: the walkaround is almost done. It took way, way longer than I had ever anticipated, in part because I had a lot going on, in part because I spent a lot of that time recovering from the novel coronavirus. That shit messes you up.

I'd say it's about 99.99% done - a few conversations need sprite cues, and the whole thing needs a couple of once-overs to catch any stray glaring, game-breaking flaws. But after that, it'll be 100% done and ready to go. In terms of time to play, I'm calling the critical path - all the important stuff for the story - 45 minutes long. There's, of course, a lot more surrounding it, but it's largely me exhausting myself on fluff so that when the comic returns to regular updates, I will want nothing more than to get that rubber all up and against the road. So homoerotically up against the road.

In the meantime, I'm going to plug some stuff, since it's been over a year since the last news post:

• I drew a new splash page for the comic. There's a certain joy in webcomics where the quality of recent art is in immediate contrast with the quality of art at the beginning and I wanted to lean into that really hard.
• Since the last news post, I started working with Deconreconstruction on Vast Error! It's a lot of fun to work with everyone there.
• Friend of the show, KITTYQUEST wrapped up recently! I loved the ending a lot. KQ has been one of the most healing and cathartic post-game comics there is. I feel confident in saying if you like BDTH, you'll love KITTYQUEST.
• And lastly, I made a Cohost page! I really like Cohost, and not just because, in some impossible feat only I could manage, I snagged the name "victoria" on there for my personal account.

See you soon!