LNH/LNH20/JE/8FOLD/MISC/PRECOG: State of the Jeanne

STATE OF THE JEANNE

Valerie Halla, an artist I follow on Patreon, has recently been doing 
process posts about her ongoing projects and how they've developed. 
She's been very open about the difficulty of keeping up her original 
ambitious plans and adjusting her projects to things she can actually 
finish, and I find that super relatable.

There's a real struggle for ADHD/autistic/otherwise brainweird creators 
where we keep starting new projects, getting super excited about them, 
burning out completely and then only being able to get back onboard by 
starting a new project, where the cycle continues. I've been slowly 
learning better to manage that, but it's been a real struggle what with 
juggling that with writing for my academic career and wrestling with the 
academic job market, which is a whole other job in and of itself. 
There's also winter depression, COVID depression, politics depression, 
trans depression... So yeah.

But! I've been gradually getting better and better at this. Writing The 
Hermetic Garbage of Jenny Everywhere has been a real turning point in 
terms of just being able to Get Stuff Done on a consistent level. I'm 
hoping that, whatever happens in the world/my life, I'll be able to 
carry this forward into the new year.

And I've really been encouraged by the little burst of activity we're 
having now. It's exciting to have new posts from Dave Van Domelen, 
Amabel Holland and Ben Rawluk again, even as I'm still so busy it's hard 
to keep up.

So with that in mind, I'm going to do a brief inventory of my own on the 
various RACC stories I started, where I'm going with them and how soon 
they'll (probably) get done.


THE HERMETIC GARBAGE OF JENNY EVERYWHERE:

This is my current #1 priority and it's been amazing in terms of 
progress. My big reason for writing this was to learn to just keep 
writing consistently no matter what, and it's worked. I have a backlog 
of posts because I have stretches where I write a bunch at once, and 
that allows me to revise it a little bit as necessary. The story as a 
whole is currently 5/6 or so done, I'm hammering out the climax of it 
right now.


HUNGRY, HUNGRY SABERTOOTHS:

This is also slowly but surely getting closer to done. Drew and I are 
working out how to do the ending, refining ideas we've had earlier. It's 
been hard to figure out how to satisfyingly end a story that began as a 
reflection of the general state of the world when it's been spiraling so 
much out of control, but we have a good idea of the general shape of it now.


THE LIMINALS:

The next issue of The Liminals is mostly written and will go out 
whenever HHS is done (because I don't want to mess up the timeline even 
more than it already was).


VICTORY:

This is probably the series I'll get back to soonest. Writing the next 
couple issues has been hard for the exact reasons it's important to me: 
it gets into deep feelings about being queer and trans and about 
superhero stories. It took a while to figure out how to write this issue 
in a way that worked, but now I have. I will get the next few issues out 
whenever I get to a lull in my work load.


LNH20/JUST IMAGINE/ULTIMATE MERCENARY:

After finishing HHS, Drew and I mean to take a crack at finshing the 
Spoon of Destiny saga and Just Imagine at long last, as part of a big 
initiative I like to call "LNH20+10: You Can (Not) Finish the Story". 
The final issues of Spoon and Destiny are partially written. I also will 
be working on wrapping up Ultimate Mercenary's story with an 
appropriately titled limited series called "The Last Days of Ultimate 
Mercenary," which will be written in short and frequent posts similarly 
to THGJE. It will finally wrap up his story after, Jesus Christ, almost 
20 years.

As for the present and future of LNH20, well, that's all very up in the 
air. I know Drew has ideas about how to wrap up the Age of WHATEVER arc, 
but we'll see how that all turns out in the end. LNH20 was heavily 
planned out in its early stages and then we collectively switched to 
playing it by ear when that didn't work out. I honestly think that's 
part of why LNH20 is so fun right now--after all this time, it's still 
in the process of discovering itself.


CHICKS IN SPACE/RETCON YEAR:

Both of these stories I have really fun ideas for and want to get back 
to, but it might be a while because well, you can see I have a lot of 
stuff on my plate both in and out of LNH. Luckily, they both should be 
easier now that I'm used to writing in the structure of writing in 
shorter bursts.


TERRA ALTER:

The story will conclude for now in backup stories in upcoming issues of 
Victory, after which I have a couple other ideas for how to continue it. 
Likely it'll be in self-contained shorter stories which add up to a 
greater whole.


STAR CROSSED:

IDK if anyone other than me even remembers this, but those characters 
mean a lot to to me, so it will exist definitely in some form. But it 
probably won't be called that anymore. There are now too many stories 
using that title. Ah well.


LNHY/DEATH OF TROPHY WIFE:

God only knows where this is going. Well, He doesn't, because He's dead. 
I know Drew has some other partially written issues. My feeling is when 
this story is over, that should be the end of LNHY, and it works better 
as a story with a definitive end. But... Anything's possible, I guess. 
Even finishing off Death of Trophy Wife.


Besides all this, I have other stories that may or may not end up being 
posted here, but I'll wait to say anything about that until I can do 
that. For now, I just want to thank everyone who's still writing and 
posting here.


Jeanne Morningstar