Monstrous Seais mine.
Imadeit, not the other way around.
It’s not a parasite, or an obligation, or a destiny.
It’s a monster.
It’s mine.
And I have a battle axe waiting for it.
MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS
USER PROFILE
LadyConstellation **
Admin
AGE:18
LOCATION:Indiana
INTERESTS:Drawing. Walking my dog. Eggs. (Also, still riding sea monsters.)
Followers6,340,228|Following0|Posts6,979
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Aug 25 2017
Go here. Read this. Thank me later.
monstroussea.com
EPILOGUE
Ishow Max and Emmy the pages before I put them up, of course. I’m not a completely terrible friend. Max demands I put them all up right away. Emmy is freaking out too hard about the ending to tell me to do much of anything besides fly out to California with a gallon of ice cream and hold her.
I don’t look at the comments. I don’t go to the forums. I don’t want to see what people are saying about me or my story. I’m not ready for that yet, but I am ready for this to be finished.
Max and Emmy watch the boards, and Wallace reports back to me on the status of the fans.
“They’re going fuckingnuts,” he tells me the night the pagesgo up. I have his webcam feed in one window and Minesweeper open in another. He looks off to the side, clicking through theMonstrous Seaforums. Behind him is a small dorm room, a bed lofted with his roommate’s desk beneath it, and a TV perched precariously atop a dresser strewn with ramen noodles and open cereal boxes. I’d like to blame the mess on his roommate, but if it’s food, it’s probably Wallace’s.
“More people are reading it every day. Way more than were ever in the fandom before. And the people who wrote articles about your identity back in May—they’re talking about this now. That the comic’s coming back, that it’s ending. It’s athing, Eliza. ReadingMonstrous Seais a thing people do. Not just people who like comics but—but everyone. It’s all over the internet.”
I clear out a corner of the Minesweeper board. “Imagine what they’re going to do when they hear about your transcription.”
Wallace beams.
“My editor says we’re in really good shape to have advance copies of the first book ready before the con.” He starts clicking through something on his screen. “Here she said, ‘Your chapters were already so clean, the line edits will be pretty light.’ And she keeps asking if I think I’m going to have time to do my edits with all my homework.” His smile grows. “Like my professors could even assign me enough homework to keep me away from this.”
“If they do, I know some people who might be willing to help with that.”
“I hope you’re not talking about outsourcing my homework.”
