(Reposted from DA)

Today marks the last strip in the Woods for the Trees storyline "Twisted Sisters" - a story about Isabel and her sister Janine's never-ending sibling rivalry.

Now lets talk smack about it.

I first wrote this story about two years ago (yes, that's how far in advance I write them) and at the time it was little more than a mini-story with ideas above it's station. I wanted to show Isabel in a more fragile state than we're used to seeing her - ie, a mental psycho no-one in their right mind would talk back to. Originally it was only about 20 strips long....the final story ended up being twice as long as that.

How did this happen? Well I added another mini-story into it, which was about Ria's jealousy of Isabel hanging out with Jess - which became the side-story....only problem is, I really don't know what I'm doing and personally I think it shows.

I edited this story on the fly, changed the ending multiple times, changed character dialogue mid-cartoon, cut out exposition, added new exposition....basically doing what I should have done in the two years between writing the first draft and bringing it to air (so to speak)

When you work on your own, as I do, there's a tendancy to think "Well I know what's happening," without taking into reguard whether anyone else will. As a result I had to backtrack, re-read, change jokes, re-write stuff that was semi-offensive (there was a lot more "dyke" talk in the original script....foshame on me).

For example, the original merged script had Isabel kissing Janine rather than Sandy, and Ria smelling that they were sisters and realising that Jess had her pretend. Janine would then run away scared and Ria would then state that she's fine with Isabel hanging out with Jess and la-la-la happy days. This I realised about half way through the story would have been such a stupid ending considering everything else we learn of Janine and Isabel's relationship that it would be so out of character it might break the world....

The second draft of the ending was that Janine would just wonder off after Isabel kisses Sandy and that the story would end with a "isn't Sandy a ditzy retard" joke....which I realised about a week ago was a) lazy and b) nothing to do with the story at all and kind of a cop-out.

Which brings us to the actual ending, which was more a comment on my creative process than it was a deep Ozy and Millie-esque observation on the Zen relays of lay-lines and all that new-age mumbo Mcjumbo.

In conclusion, I'm not very happy with the story. I think it had a few good jokes in it, some quite decent art at points, and character building and plot-device....I'm already editing and re-editing my next main story, but that'll come after X-mas. So enjoy the next few weeks of me doing joke-a-day and mini-stories until the Annual X-Mas Colour Strip.....also this Wednesday is the 400th strip, so expect a special colour strip for that as well.

Right, I'm off for a fag.