so. a strange journey has reached it's...first big stop.older readers among you knew this for a while but sunstone was , a long time ago conceptualized as a four arc story.each arc named after the central couple's safewordsunstone- ally and lisamercy- alan and annejasper- marion and jamesand still unnamed for structural reasons fourth arcwhen i say sunstone is over i don't mean that ally and lisa's story is over, just the sunstone arc. now, here is how things go from here onanne and alan's storyarc mercy is next. this storyarc will provide us with it's own unique narrative. anne a bi girl who gets interested into this whole bdsm business through influence of her friends, and alan a dumbassthrough the course of mercy, we will in depth explore also the friendship alan and ally formed, their college years, the workson the flipside we get to see anne and cassie become friends , expanding on the whole relationship with tom, and anne becoming a tattoo artistanother unique thing about their story arc comes from alan's involvement with harper and the opening and involvement with the crimson bdsm club. unlike ally, alan spends a lot of time interacting with other practitioners which will enable me to remove an aura of no true scotsman from the depiction of bdsm shown so far.truth is there are different approaches to it, we have seen our core group's idea of what it is, but it would be disingenuous to show only one side of the 20-sided dieas mercy progresses on it will catch up and move forward events of sunstone and subsequently jasperas for ally and lisa... well, the fourth arc comes back to them as there is a wedding that i have...subtly hinted at XDnow, i plan on taking a month break from strips, there will be silly stuff posted here, a few illustrations, stuff like that but generally mercy will kick off early decemberi promise you laughs, tears, and missed self imposed deadlines!so, you know....business as usualin the meanwhile i'm off to wrap up reformatting of chapter 5 for print as that goes out in december....oddly fittingi will wrap this up with a bit of a celebration of fan creativityfeel free to link me stuff that i missed and i'll add them to this journal. (i'm trying to have one per deviantartist)thank you everyone for these four amazing years, let's see what shennanigans we can pull off in the next four XD