State of the Serial - October 2025

No art this month— mostly because I commissioned art that's technically spoilers. However, there is a Hina Sunspot and Ivy Drakemont arm wrestling art in the works, yootie-approved. That's gonna be public, so keep an eye out for that.

Anyways, this month's State of the Serial will touch on Arc 3, some potential rewrites, and a new Patreon benefit!

Arc 3 Continues

Arc 3's been looong. And it'll go a while longer, with patrons getting the end of it next month, and the public reaching the end in January.

I've had a lot of time to think about it, and a lot of time to think about earlier arcs, but we'll get there later.

Honestly, I'd probably change how the arc is structured, looking back. The Delving components are fun, the fluff is fun, but the arc takes a long time to get going, and there's a lot I could have done with that time that I didn't. Set up Verity's martial skill, perhaps— a sparring session rather than that first bath? Things like that. If TDoC ever goes and gets published, I'll definitely do some retooling.

For now, I'm just putting that forward into my work on arc 4. I'm hoping to make that arc tighter, narratively.

Potential Rewrites

Looking back on arc 1, it needs... significant polish. It promises a grittier world than Drake ends up showing, and while there will be grit, we're getting that in later arcs. As such, I'm thinking of doing some rewrites of arc 1.

I... don't have the time for that, in practice. I'm a pretty slow writer, unfortunately.

But. Following the end of arc 3, there'll be a one-month slowdown. Expect some art, fluff pieces, and intermission content, but no full-length chapters. In that time, I plan to overhaul 1.1 at least, with 1.2 and 1.3 also being on the chopping block.

And I'll repeat this after every arc, going forward. That's the only way I'm going to find time for this, and given that most of TDoC's stumbling blocks are in arc 1, it'll be a good thing for the story's health.

Speaking of story health, though?

New Patreon Benefits

I like writing. Stopping for my break week isn't always what I want to do. So, rather than burn myself out by focusing solely on plot content, I'm going to be writing fluff pieces.

Patrons of Mageblood rank and up will get to vote on what I write. Patrons of the Delver tier? You get to suggest premises for the fluff pieces, though that is subject to my veto.

Our first fluff piece has already been voted on via Discord: "Verity can cook, apparently"! Future votes will be done on Patreon.

Look forward to that first piece... sometime this week! Not sure when, but sometime.

Conclusion

I'm bad at writing conclusions. That's why I write web serials! So, yeah, thanks for reading, see you next month!

Regards,
Origami Narwhal