encouragement

[scarfman]

Tuesday night I tweeted, "The obvious thing to do, given the date, is to redraw the ultimate X-Files four-panel gag strip for the 3Faces chronological index." The Hero of Three Faces screen-per-panel format suits it: see here. (For those of you who dislike the triangles, the original's here.)

But doing the work to pull off the conversion had its unintended consequences. After uploading it I tweeted, "The effort I put into tonight's 3Faces makes me realize how much I've been slacking off on AKOTAS. (what with the spousal cancer and all)"

Today for awhile I seriously considered bringing AKOTAS to an end at the end of this year when the Grailquest is complete. As I've written before, I often fear I'm no longer doing the project justice, between reallife concerns and my greater affection for franchise fanfiction. Many - I'd guess a majority - of this year's AKOTAS cartoons have been cut-and-paste art whether they are officially filler or not, and during the year of the Grailquest which is one of the high points of the story. I'm not sure when I last enjoyed putting as much work into an AKOTAS as I enjoyed Tuesday night reworking an old fanfiction gag into a triangle version (though a gag that's always been a favorite with myself and the readers). This realization seemed a compelling argument that continuing the AKOTAS project is counterproductive.

Then I stopped to wonder what the AKOTAS readers would think about the project ending this year, unfinished.

Then I wondered how I could find out how the readers would feel. I could ask. In a filler cartoon maybe. But that would feel, and look, too much like sucking around for an ego boost, which is genuinely not what this was about. I decided I needed another way to try and figure that out. So I looked at my hitcounts for the history of AKOTAS, noting the top monthly count and the bottom monthly count for each year, to judge whether to continue based on 1) current absolute count volume 2) whether volume is increasing as the years go by.

This is the table I got.

2012 4176-5942
2011 4161-5366(9142)*
2010 4278-5237
2009 4216-4919(6668)**
2008 3779-5778
2007 4416-5193
2006 3831-5217(6150)***
2005 1146-4514
2004 421-1309

* Figures in parentheses are anomalously high monthly counts that I felt needed to be dropped out of consideration in the present exercise. In October 2011 I got my highest monthly count ever to date from, apparently, drawing a guest pun at Irregular Webcomic.
** The second highest monthly count I've earned to date seems to have been for the Vlad the Impala pun. I assume this was the result of some second party linking to it, but I couldn't tell who.
*** The third highest monthly count was from Websnark linking to the Salisbury Plain pun.
(These three statistics strongly suggest that I ought to do puns every day.)

Tracking the highest monthly count each year seems to show, even though I believe the cartoon's quality is declining, that readership is growing. Unless it's five thousand brand new readers cycling through every year, that means people are sticking around and new people start sticking around all the time. It means the overall original purpose of the project, exposure for the characters, is being served even when to continue I have to remind myself things like I'm proud to be an amateur and that each day's work is the best work I had in me that day.

And it means I'm not planning to pull the plug after the Grail year at this time. Let's see if I can come up with a Grailquest pun for tomorrow.

The gripping hand is, tomorrow morning qtrhorserider goes in for her first scan after this year's round of chemo, and depending on those results all bets may be off.

Comments

[sabremeister]

This is by far the most accessible and accurate source of Arthurian Myth ever. If you stop, how are people with no access to libraries going to know the full story? If you stop, how are people with learning difficulties going to find out the tale? Spiffy as Merlin is, it bears as much relation to the original tales as U-571 or Braveheart do to historical accuracy. You're providing a public service, as well as some damn fine entertainment, and that unfortunately means that the rewards are not commensurate to the effort put in. So don't you dare end AKOTAS early! Thank you.

[scarfman]

Thanks for reading.

[sidhekin.livejournal.com]

Do not doubt that it is valuable. Do not doubt that people will be disappointed if it comes to an early end, though I'm sure we'll understand. Regret, but understand.

Whether continuing is worth your time and effort, only you and yours (and, I suppose, circumstances) can decide, but do not doubt the world is a better place for having AKOTAS.

And yes, puns are always welcome. :)

[alienfish.livejournal.com]

I'm with the person above. This has to be something you do and get some joy out of it. We can all survive if you do not continue, but will be much happier with AKOTS in our lives.

[scarfman]

Thanks for reading.

[scarfman]

Thanks for reading.