Hey, listeners. It’s Danny, your DM. It has been… a year, there’s no sugar coating that. This will just be a quick statement, as well as a schedule for our return, so if you only catch a part of this, I hope it can be this first bit.

Depression has made creating really hard for me this year. A lot of creators struggle with depression, anxiety, ADHD, and neurodivergence in general. A lot of creators push through these boundaries and come out on the other side, but there are still others who try to push and push and end up burnt out, uninspired, and out of love with their project. And honestly, that’s where I’ve been for the last year. Between that and the next prong of our announcement, working on Tapestry has been hard if not impossible.

The second half of our announcement is a pretty big one, but for personal reasons, we have asked Jordan to leave the podcast. Please respect our cast and do not ask for more information, as this is something that was decided by the table for the health of the table. Their last episode will be midway through Chapter 4, A Sealed Fate, and in Chapter 5, we will be introducing a new cast member—one who is very dear to us and who we are excited to welcome onboard: Our friend, Alec. We know this is a big change, and honestly, it’s one that’s stopped me from working on the project for a whole year now.

Those of you in the Discord know that I nearly put Tapestry on an indefinite hiatus, due to how rough my relationship with the show had gotten. But in the same ways it’s been painful, it’s also been healing. Tapestry is a story full of characters who must come to accept what is healthy for them, and who must come to allow emotional vulnerability in the face of global turmoil. They have to accept that caring for themselves is important, even with the cataclysmic circumstances that surround them.

The finale of Chapter Three, The Idol and the Marigold, is very important to me—and not just because it’s a finale. It’s because it tells the story of a group of friends who try so hard to communicate through a veil of distrust and paranoia. It tells a story of people who are just people at the end of the day—whose circumstances are no doubt very grand and unusual. But in the finale, we see attempts at understanding, guilt, anger, and hurt take the center stage, alongside the reveal of just who the Marigold is.

This story and its players are important to me. And the people who take their time to listen are important to me. Tapestry began as a project that was started to desperately keep ties in a tumultuous time. It was at the start of 2020, when so much was in flux. And now that I’m healthier, it has become an art project with friends I truly value, that I’m proud to look at and know we made. Atticus and Bianca have made The Last Tapestry something I love and cherish, and there’s no way the project would be what it is without them.

And for those of you who have listened, I want you to know that there’s no way that it would be what it is without you, either. You listened to the wild stories I told, even when I had no audio experience and a bad set of headphones, and a computer that crashed every few minutes when I’d try to zoom out on the waveforms. So, thank you. Your time and support means so much to me.

For our schedule, we will finally be releasing the “Dropped Stitches” episode next Tuesday, December 20th. This will be a fun holiday-adjacent one-shot where the Fate Gang visits a thread store to pick up thread for Archie. This is a standalone episode, and isn’t completely necessary for listeners, but there may be some in-jokes such as Marjorie and Elijah referring to each other as siblings that continue appearing in the show.

We are also going to release a Recap of everything that’s happened up until this point on Tuesday, December 27th, so that you only have to listen to one episode in order to be caught up. It’ll be written and sound designed just like an audio drama, so no need to worry about it just being me, reading 25 pages of text for an hour.

Lastly, we will be releasing the finale of The Idol and the Marigold on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023—a full year after our last release. And after that, fingers crossed, we will be returning to our normal biweekly schedule, releasing on every other Tuesday!

To sign off here, I just wanted to say one more time that I appreciate all of you who listen. And if it happens that you, too, are content creators, I want you to take this moment to think about how you’re taking care of yourself. Have scheduled breaks, try to get enough sleep, take your meds, keep water at your desk, look away from your screen every twenty minutes, and—when you start to feel burnout—take a break from what you’re working on.

I know that content creation is something almost wholly dependent on the algorithm, and that breaks are something that is punished by the algorithm. I know that you get a bigger audience with consistency, I know that continuous work can be rewarded. But forcing yourself to be head-down when you’re already struggling can also destroy your love for something. It can ruin your relationship with your art, and there’s no guarantee when it will come back.

It can be hard to remember to take care of yourself when faced with the capitalist hustle culture. Everything can feel so pressing, and with the addition of everything going on in the world, our needs can seem so small. But what’s important is you.

Make sure you hydrate before saving the world, y’all. And remember that it’s okay to not be okay sometimes.