It’s 2023! Hopefully the first five days have been up to your standards, because I know I’ve already got plenty of stuff to talk about; strap in folks, this is a long one.
The newest Fifth Ace Showcase story began yesterday, featuring the new young hero Sable, though it was not the first thing to be uploaded this year. If anyone has been poking around the site since the calendar rolled over, you might have noticed a few new things around here. Right up there at the top, the main menu bar has been redone for a more streamlined experience; now instead of redundant links to the individual comics, they all have a dedicated landing page with links to the archives and some swanky new cast pages. There’s also an About page for a brief commentary on what this site is all about (I may jazz that up with a profile picture at some point), and a Gallery page with some miscellaneous artworks from the past few years that I’m particularly proud of.
The biggest update came through on Monday, which involved uploading 150 comic pages, plus thumbnails to match, so please look grateful; the entirety of Elements of Eve, all 9 issues, is now readable on this site. The first three issues were some of the first things uploaded here, and I fully intended to include the rest in short order, but I never got around to it. I was going to space them out over time, and somehow that extended into nearly two years; I took the plunge and just threw all of it up over the course of a day, just to get it over with. Feel free to check them out and marvel at what a mess my artwork was like ten years ago; I am still rather pleased with the writing, enough that I may even revisit it someday in the future.
As far as resolutions go, I’ve got all the standard ones lined up: exercise, healthy eating, etc. and boy do I need them, I’ve got holiday weight to shed. Additionally, something I’ve been trying for the last couple of years is a single tarot card draw for the year; I don’t necessarily believe in tarot as a mystical practice, rather as a means of organising the mind and drawing focus to what needs to be done. The draw for this year was the Seven of Cups.
The Seven of Cups represents a world of fantasy and imagination; it cautions against becoming lost in the idea of things, and dwelling on dreams instead of acting. Thus, it falls to me to be decisive, put things down on paper and make choices instead of just going with the flow like I always do. I’ve already made a start by getting my upload schedule back on track, but there was another choice that I made yesterday; it’s a decision I’ve been sitting on for five years, but the opportunity arose yesterday and I jumped on it.
Yes, that is a tattoo, and it is on my arm. I know that tattoos aren’t everyone’s thing, and may even be outrageous to some folks reading this, but rest assured that this is not something I have done lightly. I’ve been contemplating getting a tattoo ever since I left high school, but I held off because I wanted it to be something meaningful; it’s a big commitment, and I wasn’t about to spend money on something I would regret within a few months. It was several years ago that I finally settled on this design, and a lot of thought went into it; going into some heavy stuff in this next bit, so content warning.
The semicolon has long been a symbol for raising awareness about attempted suicide and suicidal thoughts; it represents moments where you could have put a fullstop on your life story, but instead of coming to an end, you came to a pause instead, and continued on. As someone who has battled depression for most of my life, there have been times when I wanted to give up. Thankfully, I’ve had a good support system of friends and family that have kept me grounded when things have gotten bad, and this is where the other part comes in. The icosahedron, or 20-sided Platonic solid, is the primary die used in Dungeons and Dragons; I truly believe that the friendships, creativity and experiences that I have found through role-playing games have saved my life more than once. Thus, this design incorporates some of the biggest aspects of who I am, and I’m proud that I can show it to the world.
So, with a year ahead that is bound to be filled with choices, I intend to make them decisively and confidently, and now I’ve got a reminder that I’m capable of doing so right there on my skin. Best foot forward for 2023, let’s kick this pig!