Missing The Familiar

[Aurica]

This series has been a truly unique experience to me, and reading the various comments here makes it even more clear that I wish Xanther, Anwar, Astair, Cas, Jingjing and all the others were still continuing on their assorted and intertwined journeys today as they should've been... (except Luther, he can go sit on a cactus)

Looking at the original release dates, we would've been at around TF9 or 10 by now. I wonder what could've happened in "season 2?"

TF has affected my creativity and way of story-telling in a way that few other things have!

[DJay32]

I miss excitedly ordering the new volume and getting that heavy little package in the mail. I miss reading through the whole thing in a few days' fevered haze, feeling increasing dread at the significance of all the "coincidences" raising and increasing love for these characters full of surprises and brilliance. I miss basking in the painstaken visual direction oozing out of every page and every collage of images to interpret. I miss putting the volume next to all the others and letting it add to the greater mental picture of The as a unit!

I have come to appreciate this hiatus for giving me the time to sit with Season 1, at least. I wasn't quite ready to take it all in when they were first coming out. Season 1 by itself is still a marvelous work, a massive achievement, a testament of dedication to humanity's arts. It is worth getting some time to itself, so that when any future seasons come, we will know just how big of a deal they are; rather than feeling like they're just "another five volumes in an unbroken stream of releases," they are a complete unit: so fragile, so rich, made with the ever-present awareness that we might not see any more. I think it's possible that The will benefit from having this break, even if it's just a change in how its audience sees it. I know I'm more ready for a Season 2 now than I would have been at the original planned Volume 6 release date.

The is incredible, and even if it never continues, it has made an impact on lots of people that will take time before becoming clear. But I'm optimistic that we haven't seen the last of it.