I've polled a few readers anonymously for the most heroic and upstanding characters in HoH!

If you're curious about the results, check the new vote incentive on top web comics!

Hey Hohers!

I realize I've not updated the news page since I got hospitalized in November!

I wanted to just pop in a quick update I've been doing way-way better since all of that transpired.

Long story short: I had 1.5-2 years of unexplained intense pain that was causing massive weight loss (like 20kg in 2 years) & sleepless nights. The original diagnosis was acid reflux, but medication barely seemed to help with it.
One hospitalization + jaundice later, it turns out it was actually due to bilestones.

Anyway, as this all happened I also had to deal with some very unpleasant personal drama (I'll not go into details, but one ex-friend with feelings for me basically wished hell upon me whilst my health was imploding, which was great for my mental health while I was already doing miserably).

All-in-all the entire thing took me quite a while to really get over. After a few months now I've noticed that I've started definitely healing from the entire thing. My physical health has been good for months & my mental health is slowly but surely recovering from it all. I've also been managing to stabilize my HoH buffer updates enough to avoid buffer shrinkage over the entire ordeal.

Beyond that I've been spending more time being social, making friends locally & playing the badass game 'Blood on the clocktower' as a way to aid my mental health journey in overcoming what's probably the darkest and most unpleasant year and a half in my life. :p

I wanna thank everyone who's been keeping up with HoH for all these years & also the new readers who have joined recently! It really makes me happy how many readers have followed my story for such a long time!

Kind regards,

Neorice/Guido

Hey, as observant readers might know, I've been dealing with recurring stomach problems for a while now. Things have finally escalated to such a point I ended up being hospitalized today due to the severity of my symptoms at this point in time. (jaundice, malnutrition)

Because of my massive buffer this shouldn't affect the update rate, but it's why the comment boxes might be left empty/look a bit dreary, as I don't really have the energy to add additional flavor text to every page I post.

They're finally doing thorough research into what might be going on with me, and hopefully it may result in some changes, cross your fingers for me.

Kind regards,

Neorice

But is it really twisting your words?

Enjoy!

I know there's some site issues right now.

It should be possible to view the comic normally using the underscore link:

https://www.neorice.com/hoh_latest

https://www.patreon.com/posts/jsp-agent-4-1-10-95387301

At the request of Eve (whomst people may know from the HoH discord) I've created the first 10 pages of our little Hohverse D&D one shot that takes place in Haven and made them available as a public post on Patreon.

You can check it out on patreon, they're public posts.

Happy Holidays!

I just realized the latest update on the news page has been that kinda depressing burn out issue for ages now.

I've been feeling a lot better so I'm posting a new news article just to bump it down.

Those who follow me on patreon I've already informed about this, but I figured I'll make a news post because I'm going to be (hopefully temporarily) return to the 3-page a week format.

Since late autumn I've realised I've been dealing with pretty intense burn-out issues due to work (I'm a teacher professionally), this is part of a longer ongoing issue but I've not really recognised it for what it was until around Autumn.
Some of the stuff I've been dealing with is pretty intense emotional instability, near-constant exhaustion & severe sleep issues.

I've been working the last few weeks on adjusting my patterns regarding work, sleep etc to return to actually functioning properly, but the process is incredibly slow and any time I'm optimistic about actually making progress I feel any source of unexpected stress at work sets me right back to where I began. The moments I'm not working, the days where I'm not working, there is a pretty big chance I'm so tired I can barely drag myself out of bed.

Despite this total lack of energy & the stress issues I've been having I've tried my best to keep producing my comic at the rate I have been, because it's always been one of the biggest sources of joy in my life. I enjoy seeing people discuss it, I enjoy seeing people have fun with my characters and ideas & I enjoy actually putting ideas I've had in my head for years actually appear on the page as part of a story.

I've never considered my comic a source of stress & it's not at all the reason for my burn-out problems, I want to make that clear. I do the chapter drops & stick to a daily update rate because it's the speed at which I enjoy releasing content, not because I feel obliged somehow.

That being said, I've been on such low fumes for such a long time now, that even reminding myself to tick that manual update box 4 times a week for the "extra" days can feel like a chore. I feel that, until I start to feel actual progress in my general mood & energy levels I want to throw the comic back to the classic pace.

Hey Ciel! Been a long time!