This is another one of those moments where I start to have mixed feelings about the whole writing process. I mean, yes, Kestrel brought all this on himself, but I'm the one who made him the way he is, right? I'm the one who forced the confrontation back on page 222 that's turned Kestrel's life into a living nightmare and triggered this outburst. And why? Why did I do it?

     To write a little piece of what we used to call "blood poetry," mostly, the kind of verse that comes spurting out like arterial spray. This particular example consists of three sestets, each made up of three couplets written in a sort of dactylic tetrameter catalectic: basically, 23 dactyls with a final strong beat at the end of the whole bunch to conclude the stanza with a solid thump.

     So, am I saying that I've manipulated everything in this comic going back to at least, say, page 109 in order to cause a situation that, if page 249 is to be believed, has placed Terpsichore--and probably most of our other regular characters, too, since they're all heading the same direction--into mortal danger just so I could write some poetry? Is that what I'm saying?

     Well, yes. After all, that's what being a writer is all about: coming up with characters, building their various personalities, getting to know them and understand them, and then tipping them over into the metaphorical blender to see what comes out the other end. In the best cases, it's an interesting story. In the worst, it's a sort of fictional blood slurry. But again, I just want to assure everyone that this's all gonna come out OK if I have anything to say about it. It'll take till the end of the year, I figure, but I'm drawing as fast as I can...