Sydney’s comment about Trent being male makes me wonder if there’s ever been a transgender Tentacle Monster. Or even if they have a gender at all, really. I guess I’ve given a lot less thought to tentacle monsters than I have to succubi. Well, I’ve known about succubi a lot longer. I don’t even know where I first heard of them. Must have been the original Monster Manual. Tentacle monsters are a more recent creation.

Sydney maybe could have pursued Cooter, but what would she do once she caught up with him? She needs both the force field and the flight orb to maneuver and not be crushed and drowned and all that pesky stuff. If she let go of the fly ball to grab him with the lighthook, she’d bob straight up to the surface. She could maybe drag Cooter along with her, but he might pop on the way up. The team knows nothing about what protections Wyrmil would provide him. Though hopefully for Coot’s sake, some sort of cold resistance is part of the package.

Maxima would be the best choice, as she can survive the cold and pressure and still fly around underwater, but it’s really dark at that depth. I mean if it was daytime outside, there’d be like 3% of sunlight penetrating to 1,000 meters? But it’s night time anyway, it’d be pitch black. She could make her hand glow like she was about to deliver an atomic bitchslap, but that wouldn’t penetrate very far.

Trent looks really small there on the couch compared to the volume he appears to occupy in the vault. It’s safe to assume he can squeeze down a bit, but also there’s like 400 square feet of floor space occupied by tentacles, just out of panel. :)

Oh and if you don’t follow me on twitter I do occasionally tweet stuff related to the comic. This one is just me showing the flats of the first panel compared to the nearly finished shading, for those of you interested.

So Patreon. I should make a bigger post about this at some point but it’s late and I can sum it up in a few sentences. Well, first off, I should say to all the people supporting me there, thanks so much as always! It’s incredible I get to work on this comic full time, almost entirely because of you guys.

That said, Patreon is making some changes to its billing. I don’t think it’s gone live yet and it’s possible they’ll recant these plans because there’s been a fair amount of grumbling about it. The short version is that each pledge processed will have a $0.35 processing fee, and I think a 2.9% fee on top of that. The bad part about this is the fee is charged to the patron, it’s not taken out of the money coming to the people you’re supporting. On its face, that would mean more money going to creators – you pledge a dollar, we get a dollar, but it means you pay $1.35 (plus the percent amount but that’s pretty small so let’s ignore that for now for the sake of easy math.) As someone who supports one or two people myself, I don’t mind that. If they do stuff I like I can swing a few cents more. The issue some people are having with this new system is that if you support 20 people to the tune of $1 each, now you’re paying $7 extra a month, which starts to add up. That’s like a monthly streaming service subscription (not Netflix, but like, Britbox, or I think the CBS one). As a creator, I’d much rather eat the processing fees. 1,000 people dropping a buck a month in the tip jar is more stable feeling than 20 doing $50. Not that I don’t love the high rollers too. :D Plus, you know, I just like knowing so many people are enjoying the comic. It gives me the fuzzies, much like a wedge of blue cheese that fell behind the fridge.

Anyway, the point of writing all this is to let you guys know I’m aware of this stuff and while I’m not going to ditch Patreon, I am keeping my eye out for alternatives, especially ones that work better with low dollar pledge amounts. Kickstarter is creating a Patreon competitor. (I’m shocked it took them this long) and there’s one or two others I’ll look into as well.

Huh, I guess that was more than a few sentences. What? Dave’s being super verbose? How weird right? :P

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.