And before you say anything, I warned you about tl;dr. I'm one heck of a windbag.

An extremely popular webcomic generates a lot of pressure for the person writing it. The more they care about their fans, the greater this pressure is.
Realize that missing a single update generates hundreds of comments– so many Tessa regularly locked website posts from further comments– asking where the update is, in good humor or not.

Comprehend that for a second: One update, one day late, hundreds of comments. From the comic page itself to her fanpages to her dA to the official Hanna Facebook.

On one hand, that's a massive show of support for her comic. On the other hand, every single one of those comments is pressure to perform. Pressure to make sure the art is up to your usual par, pressure to make sure the story is good enough, pressure to make sure you satisfy these hundreds of people that wants what happens next to be as cool as it can be.
"But she's TESSA STONE! Of course we're going to like it!" Being the artist? It doesn't always feel that way.

Go back to that comprehension of hundreds of comments. Some of them are funny, some of them are understanding, some of them are less than cordial. The range of emotions here, how much psychological weight all of these would carry to someone that cares about their fans, is enormous.
Put yourself in that situation: You are very intimate with your fans, your most important critics. If something isn't interesting enough, hundreds of people will be thrilled to tell you so in varying degrees of civil & helpful. If it is, hundreds of people will be thrilled to tell you so and say how much they can't wait for the next part that promises to be super-interesting, right?
It better be. Look at all these people depending on you, who either hate you and make you feel awful; or tell you it's okay and pat your head and make you feel awful you weren't good enough for them either way.

That's not what fans intend; to someone in a crisis or just someone with low self-esteem (I'll get to that), that's how it can feel. It's vulnerability, and vulnerability means taking a lot of things drastically the wrong way.

People who've met Tessa say she's "shy". Realize "shy" is a cute way of saying "self-confidence issues". She's consistently shocked people like anything she does; a lot of creative types are, usually the best of the lot.
Combine this knowledge with the hundreds of comments. The picture of "PRESSURE. EXTREME PRESSURE." focuses. It doesn't matter how many "we love you, Tessa!"s she gets; that's just how it is.
To someone struggling, being loved can mean you have to keep up the status quo to keep being loved.
I don't think I need to point it out but I will anyway: That's. scary.

Armed with this knowledge, realize how hard it is to potentially let down an entire fan base.

When you're overwhelmed for any reason- physically, emotionally- all you want to do is hide from people that want to demand things from you. Anything else that could potentially make you feel like a failure, anything else that could potentially flood you with demands for a reaction (even just a 'thank you'), seems virtually impossible to go up against.
As someone who has been through a major personal tragedy, I can attest that for some people, there comes a point where even hearing sympathy for your situation is something you can grow to hate on some level. You don't want to have to answer the phone even if it is someone saying "If you need anything..." That's a demand for your attention and your emotion, you five minutes and your thanks and you actually listening, that you just don't want to handle. Even if you don't answer the phone, that's 10 messages you know you have. Even if you unplug your answering machine, you have this bugging innate knowledge of people calling, people you're letting down.
And for someone whose absences are very obvious and public? Every little thing you do is scrutinized, telling anyone anything at all starts to feel like an invasion of your privacy.
All you want to do is be left alone and not have any responsibilities except those you specifically choose to undertake. Every time someone pops up asking you "Hey what about this?", you just want to scream.

Healthy? Absolutely not. Is that what can happen? Absolutely yes.


The long&short of it:

Self confidence issues + so many fans that you care about + physical/emotional burnout/tragedy ––> You have have hundreds of people that you care about expecting something from you when you don't think you can perform


I take this moment to reiterate that I'm not saying this excuses anything, or even that I'm right; it's just another viewpoint.

This goes way beyond the fact she's shy. This is a natural human instinct to want to hide from something overwhelming when you don't feel capable.
In the face of any major life event, you end up prioritizing. This scale isn't just based on what matters to you the most; it's also based on whether or not you think you can handle it. It's not a matter of her not caring. Sometimes its what you care about the most that suffers the most because the weight of caring so much is devastating.

It can take an EXTREME amount of strength to be able to come out of that to say three or four words to people.
Some people have that sort of strength innately; they're workhorses, powerhouses, have a lot of willpower and strong senses of self.
Not everybody is like that. For a lot of people, it takes a very, very long time to build up the strength to speak. Tessa also had an entire life outside HINABN; what responsibilities did she have out there that she's struggling to cope and deal with?


In the face of a major personal crisis, six months is a joke. That's two emotional seconds passing. It can take you six months just to stop being a lunatic, then six more months to put yourself back together again in something resembling functional, then six more months to sort out the mess you made of just the life that's right in front of you, then six more months to figure out what from your old life (because the time before the crisis really does become Your Old Life, trust me) still matters for you, and six months again to question everything you're doing because of how badly you screwed up when you were being a lunatic, and–

I think you get the picture.


So before you defend her saying she's shy, realize if she is in a rut, she does actually need to pull some strength up or she'll be stuck there forever.
Before you feel entitled to an answer, realize that if she is struggling, how hard it is to pull that strength up at all.

And before anyone brings it up, because someone inevitably does, I am aware she fell through on business obligations relating to HINABN, too. Everything I just said also applies to that, if not more so, because money and contracts can be horrifying.

Like I said, I'm offering this as much as a mass lesson in life as I am an explanation about Tessa.
So if your best friend's mom dies and suddenly she's acting like a lunatic and not answering your calls and screams at you when you ask her about it in school the next day, it's not personal.
If your co-worker is having huge struggles at home and suddenly she's not quite as reliable as she had been on your company project, it's not that she doesn't care about her end of the project.

For anyone that actually read this far, thank you so much for your attention, whether you think this could be what's up or not.
If you think this has any merit at all, please pass it down along the line. Thank you again.