Epithet Illustrations + Sketches - [Batch C] (Patreon)

A new batch of illustrations by Bo for the upcoming museum arc book, Breaking Silence. Remember to click the images above for alt text about the production process.

See the others here:

Batch A

Batch B

As of last night (10/16/26) I have finished the final "big revisions" rewrite addressing all the notes I got from proofreaders and editors last summer. Now that there are some entirely new sections that are functionally "first draft" again, I have to go back and hit it all into place with a hammer one last time. Then I'm done! Wow!

The previous version of the book was very 1-to-1 with the animated series in a way that didn't serve the story well. Lots of visual gags from the original were there even though they don't really work in book format, and the whole thing was kind of dull. This is genuinely the most trouble I've ever had writing something for reasons I outlined in the last Kickstarter update.

As Yam put it, "I can tell you were bored when you were writing this. Except for the new chapter with Mera, that's good."

My goal on this last rewrite was to go back and make all of it that good. I'm pretty happy with it now. I still don't think it's as good as Prison of Plastic, but I do think it's finally good enough to be someone's introduction to the series.

There are some major revisions from the original even though the story is mostly the same. Mera and Indus's relationship gets a few tweaks for the better. We get to see more of their backstory. Sylvie is less of a brat this time and he gets a lot more focus this time around.

I've mentioned this on streams, but one new element of the story is that Sylvie is a system now with Beefton as an alter. I did a bunch of reading on the subject after I saw someone suggest it as a headcanon on Tumblr and I was like "Wow this actually works so well that I think I should just do it." It creates a more interesting dynamic between the two of them than "guy and summon".

I'll leave the specifics for the book, but Sylvie gets mega-bullied as a kid and Beefton appears as a response to intense stress. In high school Beefton appears to fight bullies. In college he appears to deal with academic crunch.

Sylvie is the kind of system who does not share memories with Beefton. They have to communicate with each other by leaving written notes.

The illustration above is from Chapter 4 during the first time the Beefton personality takes over and starts fronting. From Sylvie's perspective he just blacks out, wakes up, and suddenly everything around him is broken including his own body. The torn white line in the middle of the page is meant to represent the memory gap he experiences. I've been talking with a few people who have similar conditions (but, y'know, without the giant minotaur part) so I hope what I've written is accurate. I'll need to pass the final version out to some sensitivity readers before handing it to a publisher.

I'm trying to finish my work on Breaking Silence and move on to (working title) Cowboy Colors by the end of October.

No guarantees though: This next week has five more recording sessions for the Giovanni villain song, which has become a huge project all its own. Kyle was booked for 10 hours on this thing. He only spent 7 hours in the booth to record the entire original series! Crazy. I've got recording sessions with Wyatt (Car Crash), Cyrus (Dark Star), and Dani (Molly) this week on top of my own session as Ben.

Then after that they're doing a cast party for Calling All Villains, the Mr. Puzzles show I'm in that's coming out on Halloween. (I think it's going to be a huge success, which is scary after all the stuff the Digital Circus crew went through. Wuh oh.)

I literally just got my Permanent Residency status in Canada (extremely good news! this means I can live here and work here and I'm functionally done immigrating wow yay yippie that took 3 years!!!) but I still have to wait for the physical PR card to arrive in the mail if I want to leave the country to travel. If I get the card in time it means I can go to the private cast screening next weekend. If not, I can't. Which is sad! But I guess it means I have more time to work and also I don't have to get on an airplane.

I wanted to be done with this last month, but alas: That Percy/Rick merch stuff took 2+ weeks to make and advertise. This is why I don't like doing merch! It delays the main product! Oh well.

Anyways here's a preview of Monday's Star Bite. I'm finally doing a Yoomtah one. Illustration by FuzzyMinte.

I'll get the Star Bites up on the website and Patreon soon. I've been waiting for a free day to do it and I genuinely just haven't had one.

Speaking of, back to writing all day.