Blue Milk Special

Just an FYI as it applies to the production of BMS: I have been in intense physical pain all week. My herniated cervical disc has flared up and for the first half of the week I could barely move. Multiple painkillers, neurological and muscle relaxants later, I’m doing ever-so-slightly better, but stuck with a heavy duty neck brace and struggling to find a sitting or lying down position which doesn’t make me groan in pain. I can no longer drive and my time in front of the computer is very limited. Leanne is doing an excellent job of looking after me, but it’s very stressful on her as we try to get through the next couple of weeks with pain management assistance and a visit to a neurosurgeon neck specialist.

I just want to say really quickly, that there are a number of our readers who are extremely supportive and encouraging and who have been a joy to please over the years. BMS continues to exist because of you guys.

Readers need to understand how petty some of the feedback and comments have been lately. The Yoda finger debacle; being told we don’t try hard enough and could do better; criticizing Leanne’s art or my storytelling; as well as the trivia and corrections, which really don’t apply to a cartoon parody whose main purpose is humor–not 100% accuracy! It’s a real shame that so many fandoms are afflicted by a small group of people with no life outside of the minutiae of their favorite subject; be it Star Wars, Doctor Who, or whatever. The result is some really insensitive feedback from people who seem to lack a sense of humor. If we’re letting these people down then why do they keep coming back each week?

You can’t blame Lucas for going back and making certain changes, considering the things that BMS is starting to get picked apart over. It does start to get annoying… While I’d be willing to ignore a lot of these nitpicks, when it keeps getting pointed out it starts to feel like a burden waiting to be addressed. Our enthusiasm has taken a few blows lately as a result of these trivialities at a time when we have larger and more important things to worry about in our lives. You don’t need this sort of crap marring one of your chief diversions.

I’ve always known it would be tough trying to complete our epic parody of all three movies in the original trilogy. I’ll try to keep BMS going (and there have been difficult times in the past), but I may remove the comments option for future strips.

It could be that we now have so many readers that it is inevitable that many of them take Star Wars way more seriously than we personally think is healthy and as a result the over-analysis is more frequent? Perhaps obscurity isn’t so bad after all!

In any event, we have a small number of strips that are ready and scheduled for the rest of this month, but the future of BMS depends entirely upon the happiness of Leanne and myself. I have removed the donation feature as I don’t want to feel that I still owe our faithful more strips if they’ve made a recent donation. I want the flexibility of being able to put BMS on hiatus, if necessary, without feeling I’ve let anyone down. Your thoughts are welcome in what is probably the last strip with a comment thread for the foreseeable future.

Come to BMS with a sense of humor and if you don’t like it, “move along… move along”.

Thanks guys. We should have a new festive themed Voting Incentive for you shortly.