What's wrong with Grave? (Patreon)

Just to address a question I've been seeing a lot: the time skip from Ep 25 wasn't that big. Grave and Ellie have been dating for about 4 months. They had their first date, then started dating enough to hold hands and be comfortable with each other, but that's it. Both of them, especially Grave, are super busy, so there have been weeks / a few months where they couldn't hang out. 

Grave is basically an armed detective. He finds people, but the people he searches for aren't always criminals. He mentions the missing persons case he's working on in Ep 11. You will learn so much more about that later on. Time has passed, but they're limited by how much they can actually see each other, so that's why Grave doesn't feel comfortable getting intimate with Ellie yet, even though he really wants her. Remember: this is a man who's grown up around war, grew up through an abusive foster care system, and lived on the streets as a teenager. Then he was thrown back into war against his own country as a young adult. He's not going to open up that easily, though I feel he's already told Ellie quite a lot.

I'm only on Ep 30. My comic has been going for a little over a year, and I didn't go full time until this year. Other featured comics have been going on for years and their characters still haven't done it. I can think of one that's super popular. It's been going on for 5 years and the characters just became intimate. I don't understand why people are frustrated with my characters, but not others. 

This isn't a matter of will they or won't they, it's—Grave is psychologically messed up and needs time.