Welcome to the traditional end-of-arc author’s note for Arc 4: The Cutting Edge! There’s a lot to cover, but here’s the TLDR:
Sunspot is going on hiatus until probably December 6 so I can plan and make significant headway on arc 5
Arc 5 is titled In The Flesh and will be relatively short (10-12 chapters)
I have art to share!
Onward to the meat.
First off: One final apology for all the delayed chapters during this arc! This was the first arc where I had a full-time job to juggle with writing Sunspot, and it kind of kicked my ass. It was extremely difficult week-on-week to keep up my writing schedule. To my readers, thank you for your patience every time I had to delay a chapter by one day that turned into one week. It was very frustrating for me, because I really, really want to keep Sunspot going! I’m looking forward to each new chapter as much as you are, and whenever I had planned to make progress on the manuscript that night but found myself too busy or too exhausted, it made me pretty upset. I’m awestruck by my fellow authors who can keep up 5000+ words a week (often more!) while also working 40 hours, especially since all things considered my job isn’t terribly strenuous and my commute is quite good compared to many.
Not to make this a pity party; I’m very proud that I got the arc done to what I consider an acceptable level of quality, and it has been incredibly gratifying to see readers continuing to enjoy every new chapter and being endlessly forgiving when I overran the deadlines I promised. I’m incredibly fortunate to have such a genuinely supportive community and I feel like I’ve managed to deliver this arc well enough to do you all, and the story, justice.
But the cracks are there. I feel that this arc suffered from relatively poor large-scale planning and there’s a strong argument to be made that the arc should have cut off at the end of the hospital fight instead of continuing through these recovery chapters, if only so I could take a break sooner. I miscalculated my long-term stamina and the last five chapters of this arc were very difficult and feel a little scatterbrained in the larger structure of the story, especially since we now have a lot of conflict threads running that don’t have immediate momentum. Issues like those are obviously much larger in the author’s eye than in anybody else’s, but combined with the proliferation of delays in the back half of the arc, one thing is clear: a weekly schedule isn’t sustainable for me at the moment.
For the sake of maintaining my love for the story and executing it to the standard it deserves, I have to be mindful of avoiding burnout. It makes me angry—furious, frankly—that Sunspot is the thing that must bend in that equation, not my job. In a perfect world, I would make enough money from Sunspot that I wouldn’t need a second job, but it’s both more complicated than that logistically and to an extent I fear that writing this story exclusively full-time would kill some of the joy I find in it. And it’s especially frustrating for me because no matter how patient you’ve all been, I still think that a regular weekly schedule creates a far better reading experience than intermittent updates.
So here’s the solution I’m going to try for the next arc: I’m gonna take a longer hiatus where I can write quite a bit further ahead than I’ve ever attempted before. The entire arc, ideally, though it’ll be much shorter than this one; I estimate no more than 12 chapters. The working title for arc 5 is In The Flesh, and I’m currently aiming to drop 5.01 Sunday,December 6 and release weekly until the arc is done or until I hit a wall in the writing, in which case I will take another proper hiatus to figure it out instead of another series of sliding chapter delays.
That’s pretty much everything regarding scheduling. Let’s talk a little about the arc itself! The Cutting Edge was long, and had the most chapters of any arc so far but by wordcount it’s not Sunspot’s longest. RR has what I think is probably the most accurate wordcount per arc thus far:
From On High: 120,991
Trick Of The Light: 123,924
Threading The Needle: 73,488
The Cutting Edge: 114,336
Accordingly, there was a lot going on, which can be roughly broken into three sub-arcs:
Ez figuring out masks, growing closer with Hina and Izumi, figuring out its rain step, spending more time in the doll and joining Boobs Club, culminating in the dream with the Vaetna.
The reveal of Ebi’s origin and nature, the hospital and all the horror therein, Alice wrecking shit and her subsequent dragon-ka.
Healing, Tamamo-no-mae and the continuing hunt for Sugawara.
I’m pretty pleased with all of those individually and for the most part they all cohere pretty well despite my frequent fretting while writing each chapter. This is also the arc where Ez broke a lot of the ice regarding the Radiances’ dubious polycule and really began to become entangled with that more completely. It also lost its virginity nearly offscreen, which I think is fun. I know a lot of readers really enjoyed the smuttier sections near the end of the arc; some say it took them by surprise, which is totally understandable, given that I think it took the characters by surprise too. I intend to keep those sorts of scenes coming where the story feels like it wants them, though ideas that don’t naturally fit into the story will be relegated to smutty side stories (from now on I’m thinking of calling them “interlewds”, though that doesn’t necessarily indicate canonicity). There may be one of those during the hiatus!
As for the other side of the “depictions of sex” coin—I’m also very happy with Yuuka this arc. I knew from her original character concept that digging into her history and trauma, especially so upfront, would be nasty and very difficult to write, and I’m pleased to say that I think I succeeded. The hospital sequence was some of my finest magic and character work yet and probably the highlight of the arc for me, grisly as it was. It was very difficult but very rewarding, and I couldn’t have done it without the beta readers giving me excellent feedback at every turn. I feel like I learned a lot from it. It had a lot of really cool individual moments for Ez as well, and I haven’t had a chance to share a commission of mone of my favorites until now. Here’s Ez with its flame-armor (By LeChatDemon):
I also have some chibi art of a good chunk of the cast, including the first-ever official art of Izumi over on the left (by cloudyaa):
I’m hoping to use these for some banner art and such, and of course to get some made for the rest of the cast in due time. As it is right now, a few characters absent from this lineup were also rather absent from this arc—Ai and the chatroom in particular deserve a lot more time in the sun(spot), which I’m hoping to rectify next arc. And we could certainly do with more Ebi now that we have a better idea of what her deal is. I’m gonna have fun making them a bit more prominent, I think.
I know Arc 4 still doesn’t have an actual cover. I’m hoping to get one made during the hiatus, though I’m not sure if Arc 5 will also get one before it actually begins. I enjoy commissioning art but it’s quite a lot of work, especially for something at the level of quality I want for the covers. If you have artists you think are up to snuff, then by all means, send them my way!
Sunspot is a relatively mature story by webserial standards now (over two years running and over 5000 readers between RR and Scribblehub) and it amazes me that I haven’t lost my love for it or gotten bogged down in the logistical challenges of juggling the gradual increase in scope. It’s also wild to me that the community is still growing. That’s thanks to all you readers—to everybody who’s supported the story, whether it be by reading, proselytizing to your friends, or directly giving me money. It all means the world to me and I’m endlessly grateful. The Discord is closing in on a thousand members, so if you want to join the community or bring your friends in to catch up while the story is on hiatus, now’s a great time. We’re going to run beta reader applications there during the hiatus, as usual.
That’s all for this arc! I hope you’re as excited for arc 5 as I am. I’m going to do my best to help Sunspot reach new heights of quality and I hope you’ll be there to join me after the break.
An extra special thank you to everybody who reads on this site rather than RR or Scribblehub!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other Sunspot readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and read chapters ahead of public!
