The Sorceress at the End of Time: Season Two is officially live on Kickstarter!

Back it now

Plus, read more below about my new reward structure: GO MAX.

Season Two continues Leo and Rina’s story as they’re pulled deeper into the mystery of the Sorceress, the meteor and the destiny that seems determined to drag them towards the end of time.

Don’t miss the next chapter of this time-bending epic. Back Sorceress #2 now >

A new reward structure: GO MAX

Alongside Season Two, I’ve made a pretty significant change to how I’m approaching rewards.

Over the last two years, my Kickstarter campaigns have accumulated more and more books, and so the reward combinations are getting a little more complex too.

A Collector’s Edition ‘BUNDLE’ is typically a hardback book + print + bookmark. Another tier might add a bookplate. Another might swap in a different print or collectible.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that – and I love making all that stuff(!) – but for Sorceress #2, I wanted to bring the focus back to the thing at the heart of the campaign:

The book itself.

If you’re buying a premium Collector’s Edition, I want the book you pull out of the package to immediately feel special.

So rather than making the premium tiers about adding more and more separate items, I’ve put that energy into making the books themselves as beautiful, premium and collectible as possible.

And that’s where GOING MAX comes in.

Below is a summary of the max additions, and what it means for each book type - digital, softcover and hardcover.

What does GOING MAX mean?

The old Collector’s Edition-style bundles have evolved into MAX upgrades – enhancing the book itself rather than bundling it with lots of separate items.

MAX rewards are easy to spot – just look for MAX in the reward title.

DIGITAL MAX
Collector’s cover upgrade • Illustrated endpapers • Printed Signature & Head Sketch Page

SOFTCOVER MAX
Foil cover embellishments • Illustrated endpapers • Printed Signature & Head Sketch Page

HARDCOVER MAX
Foil cover embellishments • Illustrated endpapers • Printed Signature & Head Sketch Page • Collector’s dust jacket • Bookmark ribbon

So when you GO MAX, instead of receiving the standard book alongside a collection of extras, the book itself becomes even more collectible.

I want these to be editions that feel meaningfully different from the standard versions – foil catching the light on the cover, exclusive artwork when you open the book, a dedicated signature and head sketch page, and, on the MAX collectors editions, a Collector’s dust jacket and built-in ribbon bookmark.

Essentially, I asked myself: if I could make the ultimate version of a book, what would I put into the book itself?

MAX is the answer.

Check out the MAX rewards now >

What about prints and the other collectibles?

They’re not going anywhere!

Prints and other extras are still available through Add-Ons, so if you loved collecting those during Season One, you can still build your Sorceress collection however you like. The difference is that they’re now optional, rather than determining which version of the book you need to pledge for.

Want the MAX Hardcover and nothing else? Done.

Want the MAX Hardcover plus your favourite print? Just add it.

Want to keep things simple and just grab the standard book? Sure thing.

It should make choosing a reward much easier, while granting the freedom to make the premium editions themselves something genuinely special.

Ultimately, this is about celebrating the thing that matters most, and concentrating more of what makes these campaigns special into the thing we’re all here for – the graphic novel itself.

I’d love to hear what you think of the new approach - feel free to comment below and let me know.

And as ever, if you have any questions or need my help with anything, just DM me on Kickstarter, comment on this post or email support@amco-studio.com anytime.

Hope to see you hop on board with Sorceress #2 (and #1 if you missed it!).

Cheers, Amrit

✨ The Sorceress at the End of Time: Season Two

I’m excited to share the key art for Season Two, launching September 2026.

Following the shocking ending of Season One, Leo and Rina are pulled deeper into the mystery surrounding the Sorceress, the meteor, and the destiny that binds them.

As the truth behind The Sorceress begins to unravel, the story expands into a much larger adventure filled with new allies, impossible choices, and revelations that will change everything.

The #2 Kickstarter launches this September - and you can Follow the pre-launch page now.

🚪 Something New... Room 3036

Room 3036 is a dark anime psychological thriller - a very different kind of story than anything I’ve released before.

Room 3036 is a haunting psychological mystery exploring guilt, identity and how we can fracture our own realities. The story follows a respected marriage counsellor whose secret affair slowly unravels both his life... and his reality.

Inspired by psychological thrillers such as Shutter Island, Breaking Bad, Black Swan, and the psychological philosophy of Carl Jung.

More will be revealed very soon. Follow the pre-launch page here.

🏛️ The Forsaken Palace #1

Fulfilment for The Forsaken Palace #1 is now well underway, with books being shipped readers as we speak.

Issue #2 launches this October, continuing Aria’s journey as more of the Palace’s forgotten history begins to emerge - and not all of it wants to stay buried.

Follow the pre-launch page here.

⚔️ Scarlet Resonance #3

Scarlet Resonance #2 is almost ready to head into fulfilment, with shipping expected to begin next week.

Thank you again to everyone who backed the campaign. I genuinely think Issue #2 raises the bar in every way - more pages, bigger battles, deeper character development, and plenty of surprises.

And if you’re already wondering what comes next...

Scarlet Resonance #3 is currently planned for an October/November Kickstarter launch and introduces a new character: the beautiful, eccentric and dangerously unstable Saeko… totally turning life at the academy on its head.

Follow the pre-launch page here.

That’s it for now. As ever, any questions just drop me a line.

Cheers, Amrit

👉 Read more & back the campaign.

Our biggest issue yet is here - 60 pages of explosive battles, shocking revelations, and the long-awaited introduction of the mysterious Kira.

As Aren and Nyra’s mysterious bond deepens, the truth behind their shared past - and the ancient world itself - finally begins to emerge.

If you’re a fan of anime-inspired sci-fi, action, romance and a little spice, I’d love for you to check it out.

👉 Read more & back the campaign.

The Real Villian… is Pride.

For most of Breaking Bad, Walter White believes he is the hero of his own story - and so do we.

A brilliant chemist overlooked by the world. A husband and father dealt an impossibly cruel hand. A man willing to sacrifice everything for the people he loves.

It’s a narrative that Walter tells everyone around him, but more importantly, it’s a narrative he tells himself. The genius of Breaking Bad is that it spends five seasons slowly dismantling that story piece by piece.

Every opportunity to walk away is refused. Every compromise becomes another step deeper into darkness. Every justification grows thinner. By the final season, the show is no longer asking whether Walter White is a good man.

It is asking whether he is finally willing to confront the truth about himself…and his pride.

The Death of Heisenberg

Walter’s defining flaw was never greed. It was pride.

From the very beginning, Walter is presented with alternatives. Gretchen and Elliott offer him financial help. Legitimate opportunities arise to provide for his family. Time and again, there are exits available to him. Yet Walter refuses them all.

The reason is not necessity. It is pride. Accepting help would mean admitting failure. Walking away would mean accepting limits. Remaining anonymous would mean accepting a life that fell short of his ambitions.

The drug empire is not simply a source of income. It is the first place Walter feels respected. Significant.

That is why his confession to Skyler in the finale lands with such force. When he admits, “I did it for me,” it is the first truly honest thing he has said in years. The audience already knows it. Skyler knows it. Deep down, Walter has known it too. But for the first time, he stops hiding behind the mask of self-sacrifice and accepts what has always been driving him.

Ironically, that moment of honesty allows him to do the one thing he claimed he wanted all along.

Provide for his family.

Walter realises there is no future in which his son willingly accepts money from him. The White family can only move forward if Heisenberg remains buried. And so Walter does something that would have been impossible for him earlier in the series. He allows somebody else to take the credit. Gretchen and Elliott become the vehicle through which the money reaches Walt Jr., while Walter himself remains invisible.

For a man whose entire journey has been fuelled by a desperate need for recognition, it is a profound act of surrender. The money survives. The family survives.

But the legacy belongs to someone else.

Jesse Pinkman: The Boy Looking for a Father

While Walter’s story is about pride, Jesse’s is about belonging.

Throughout the series, Jesse repeatedly searches for father figures. He craves approval, guidance, and the reassurance that someone believes in him. His biological parents reject him. Walter manipulates him. Mike becomes the closest thing Jesse ever finds to a genuine mentor, only to disappear from his life as well. Again and again, Jesse forms attachments to older men who ultimately abandon him.

Underneath the bravado and self-destruction is a frightened young man desperate to feel valued.

Viewed through that lens, the final episodes take on a different meaning. Jesse’s captivity at the hands of Jack’s gang is not simply physical imprisonment. It is the culmination of a lifetime spent under the control of others. Every major relationship in his life has left him trapped in one way or another.

Which is why Walter’s return matters.

Not because it redeems him. Nothing can erase the years of manipulation, betrayal, and emotional abuse. Walter remains deeply responsible for much of Jesse’s suffering. Yet when Walter returns to the compound, his motivations are different. Jesse is no longer useful. There is no money to be made. There is no empire left to protect.

For perhaps the first time in the series, Walter acts with Jesse’s interests ahead of his own.

The moment that follows is even more important. Walter offers Jesse the gun and effectively gives him permission to kill him. Earlier versions of Jesse might have done it. They might have sought closure through revenge or validation through Walter’s approval. But Jesse refuses.

It is a subtle but powerful rejection.

Jesse finally stops defining himself through the expectations of father figures. He no longer needs Walter’s approval, Mike’s guidance, or anyone else’s permission to choose his own path. When he drives away from the compound in the final moments of the series, he is not simply escaping captivity.

He is escaping the need to belong to someone else.

For the first time in his life, Jesse is free.

Skyler White: Living With the Consequences of Pride

Skyler is often discussed as a supporting character in Walter’s story, but by the final season it becomes clear that she is one of the show’s greatest victims.

Where Walter’s pride drives the narrative forward, Skyler is left to live with the consequences of it. She spends years trying to rationalise the irrational, convincing herself that cooperation is the safest option and that some version of her family can still survive. Like Walter, she becomes trapped by denial. The difference is that Walter derives power from the lie, while Skyler is slowly destroyed by it.

By the finale, there is nothing left to salvage.

The White family has been shattered. Hank is dead. Walter Jr. despises his father. Skyler exists in a state of exhaustion and quiet grief. When Walter visits her one last time, the scene is remarkable for what it does not attempt to do. There is no reconciliation. No rekindling of affection. No suggestion that things can be repaired.

Instead, there is only the truth.

Walter finally gives Skyler the honesty she deserved years earlier. In return, she gives him something equally important: acknowledgement that the performance is over.

Their marriage ended long before the finale. This scene simply allows both characters to stop pretending otherwise.

Hank Schrader: The Other Side of Pride

Walter is not the only proud man in Breaking Bad.

Hank Schrader is driven by pride as well, but his pride manifests very differently. Walter’s pride is rooted in ego. It tells him that he deserves more than the life he has been given. Hank’s pride is rooted in duty. It tells him that some things are worth standing for, regardless of the consequences.

Yet both men share the same inability to back down.

As the final season progresses, their collision becomes inevitable. Walter cannot surrender because doing so would mean accepting defeat. Hank cannot compromise because doing so would betray everything he believes in. Neither man is willing to abandon the principles that define him.

The tragedy of the desert confrontation is that both characters are, in their own way, exactly who they have always been.

Walter’s pride built an empire. Hank’s pride brought him to its doorstep. And neither could survive the encounter.

Why Ending Worked For Me

Many television finales attempt to redeem their protagonists. Breaking Bad understands that redemption is not always possible.

Walter cannot undo the lives he destroyed. Jesse cannot recover what was taken from him. Skyler cannot rebuild the family she lost. The show never pretends otherwise.

Instead, it offers something more honest: Recognition.

The ending works because every major character finally sees themselves clearly.

Walter stops hiding behind excuses. Jesse stops searching for validation. Skyler stops clinging to illusions. Even Hank, in his final moments, refuses to become someone he is not.

The truth emerges, and the consequences are laid bare for all to see.

Final Thoughts

At the beginning of Breaking Bad, Walter White believes his tragedy is that the world never recognised his greatness.

By the end, he discovers something far more painful.

His greatest enemy was never cancer. It was never Gus Fring, the cartel, or the DEA.

It was the part of himself that needed to be recognised in the first place.

And tragically - only when he finally lets it go does he accomplish the one thing he claimed he wanted all along: providing for his family without needing anything in return.

Back Forsaken Palace #1 now

At its heart, The Forsaken Palace is a dark fantasy mystery about a young woman who awakens trapped within a vast, impossible palace with no memory of who she is - and only the fading memory of a man she once loved.

The combination of mystery, romance, stunning artwork, and a world filled with secrets has clearly resonated with readers, and we couldn’t be more grateful for the support.

The response to this project has been genuinely overwhelming - and we’ve unlocked every planned stretch goal, including:

✅ Premium Matte Laminate Upgrade on all physical books
✅ Two Exclusive Metal Print Add-Ons
✅ The Palace Archives (bonus story and lore pages)
✅ Silver Foil Gemstone Upgrade
✅ Sapphire Memory Shard (1 of 6)

If you’ve been waiting until the last minute, this is it :)

Back Forsaken Palace #1 now

(and if you’re a Sorceress #1 backer, you can also get free or reduced shipping - more below).

Sorceress Backers: Save on Shipping

If you backed The Sorceress at the End of Time #1, don’t forget that many Forsaken Palace rewards qualify for reduced or even free shipping.

Both projects are currently scheduled to ship together in July, allowing us to combine fulfilment and pass those savings directly on to you.

So if you’ve been considering adding Forsaken Palace to your collection, now is the perfect opportunity.

Check out the latest update over on The Sorceress campaign for access to the secret links which deduct shipping.

What’s Coming Next?

With Forsaken Palace entering its final days, I wanted to share a quick look at what the next quarters releases will look like:

JULY

Launching in July:

Scarlet Resonance #2

In a world where elite pilots battle monstrous Echoes through psychic synchronisation, rivals Aren and Nyra find themselves bound together by a forbidden Scarlet Resonance that neither can control.

Issue #2 picks up immediately after the events of the first book as the pair are thrown into an emergency deployment against a powerful Echo long before they’re ready. As old rivalries resurface and hidden truths begin to emerge, both discover that the connection between them may be far more dangerous than anyone realised.

Think Evangelion meets High School DxD - an 18+ blend of action, romance, rivalry, mystery, and giant bio-mechanical monsters - it’s audacious and unapologetically anime.

Follow the pre-launch page and be notified the moment the campaign goes live.

Shipping in July:

📦 The Sorceress at the End of Time #1

📦 The Forsaken Palace #1

AUGUST

Launching in August

The Forsaken Palace #2

Aria’s journey deeper into the palace continues.

With new mysteries uncovered and dangerous truths beginning to surface, the impossible halls of the Forsaken Palace start revealing fragments of a forgotten past - one that may completely change Aria’s understanding of who she is and why she was imprisoned in the first place.

Prelaunch page will launch next month.

Shipping in August

📦 Scarlet Resonance #2

SEPTEMBER

Launching in September:

The Sorceress at the End of Time Season Two

Following the shocking revelations of Season One, Leo and Rina are drawn deeper into the mystery surrounding the meteor, the sorceress, and a destiny that seems impossible to escape.

The story expands. The stakes rise. And the answers waiting at the centre of the mystery will change everything.

Follow the prelaunch page

Shipping in September:

📦 The Forsaken Palace #2

The Future of AmCo Studio

For the last fifteen years, AmCo Studio has been my creative home - a business created to deliver artwork, visual development, and storytelling for publishers, entertainment companies, agencies, and global brands including Disney, Netflix, Ubisoft, Adidas, Fanta, Penguin Random House, Hachette, Walker Books, and many others.

We’ve worked on everything from bestselling books and video games to advertising campaigns, television productions, and high profile creator-led influencer projects.

And…that side of the business isn’t going anywhere - we’ll continue partnering with brands, publishers, agencies, and entertainment companies to help bring their worlds to life.

But over the last few years, something else has been happening alongside it.

I’ve been building worlds of my own.

Today, AmCo Studio is evolving into something more than a creative service studio.

Alongside our client work, I’m collaborating with an incredible network of writers, artists, editors, and creative partners to develop original stories and intellectual property of our own - stories told in graphic novel form, but designed from the ground up with animation and screen adaptation in mind.

Projects like Rid of You, Aglow, The Sorceress at the End of Time, Scarlet Resonance, and The Forsaken Palace are just the beginning.

My goal is simple: To create unforgettable worlds people can lose themselves in, and flawed characters they can see themselves in.

If you’d like to explore our latest releases and upcoming projects, visit:

amco-studio.com

That’s all for now. As ever, drop me a DM or email if you have any questions :)

Cheers, Amrit

Tomorrow sees the launch of my brand-new dark fantasy comic series, The Forsaken Palace #1.

You can follow the pre-launch page here.

Set within a vast palace, the story follows an amnesiac woman named Aria, uncovering the truth behind a forgotten love, a divine curse, and the catastrophe that nearly ended the world.

It’s a slower burn, more atmospheric mystery than my other books, packed with secrets, twists, and world-turning revelations.

Follow The Forsaken Palace prelaunch page

🚀 The Sorceress at the End of Time

✅ Fully funded. Final edits are underway, and we’re currently awaiting Kickstarter funds to clear before sending the book to print - a process that typically takes 2-3 weeks after a campaign ends.

So, assuming everything stays on schedule, I’m aiming to send the book to print during the third week of June, with fulfilment and shipping beginning in July.

As always, I’ll keep everyone updated as production progresses.

I’ll also be keeping late pledges open until around mid-June.

🔴 Scarlet Resonance #2

For those following my other projects, work is already underway on Scarlet Resonance #2.

We’re currently deep into production and, if all goes to plan, we’ll be launching the next chapter in late June or early July.

More on that very soon. Follow along here.

❤️ Projects I Love

One of my favourite things about crowdfunding is discovering and supporting other creators doing great work.

Death Deserved

Gary Chudleigh’s Death Deserved looks fantastic.

Pitched as Hellboy meets Saga, the story follows Aranea, the last survivor of a spider-born race, on a relentless quest for vengeance against the General who destroyed her family. Along the way, she discovers the assassin cult that raised her is built on lies, and soon finds herself hunted by the very people she once trusted.

Gary has spent over 15 years making comics and previously adapted Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time, so this is definitely one worth keeping an eye on.

👉 Be sure to follow the Death Deserved pre-launch page

Moonshine Saloon

Many of you will know Maddie from our work together on Aglow.

It’s been genuinely exciting watching her continue to grow as a creator, and seeing some of the readers who first discovered her through Aglow continuing to follow that journey with Moonshine Saloon. The project has become her largest-scale solo launch yet, which is nothing short of fantastic to see.

If you enjoy fantasy, westerns and ragtag, wisecracking outlaw energy - it’s well worth checking out. Just a couple of days left to back:

👉 Check out Moonshine Saloon

Hope to see you tomorrow at The Forsaken Palace launch!

Cheers, Amrit

Check it out

If you’ve been waiting to jump in, this is genuinely the strongest version of the campaign it’s ever going to be.

Literally all stretch goals have now been unlocked, including a bunch of free collectors items for backers too. (Images of the rewards are further down the page).

✨ Available Book Editions (100+ page full colour graphic novel)
• Digital Edition
• Softcover Edition
• Collector’s Hardcover Edition
• Ultra Rare Hardcover Edition

Check it out >

✨ Stretch Goals Unlocked FREE for backers
• Matte laminate cover upgrade (printed copies)
• Physical sketched remarque (digital art provided for dig backers)
• Starsea Trio digital artwork featuring Aradia, Lila & Rina (free digital copy for all)

Check it out >

✨ Collector Add-Ons
• Lore Companion
• Official Soundtrack
• Acrylic Glass “Starsea Trio” Wall Art featuring 3 women from my projects: Aradia, Lila and Rina
• Hand-signed sexy FOIL Rina print (limited to just 25 - and they’re going fast!)

Check it out >

✨ Other series, including:
• Rid of You Seasons 1-3 (Anime Dark Fantasy - 560 pages)
• Aglow 1-2 (Gothic Fantasy - 220 pages)
• Scarlet Resonance #1 (40 pages, 18+ rating)

Check it out >

Some of the products/rewards available:

Hope you’ll join me for this EPIC ride! The Sorceress at the End of Time is something I’ve wanted to create since 2014, even before Rid of You, so if you’ve liked my previous work, I recommend checking it out.

You can find out more and back Sorceress here.

Any questions, email or DM me anytime.

Cheers, Amrit

When Tenet released, much of the conversation revolved around whether people actually understood it.

People debated inverted bullets, entropy reversal, temporal pincers, and whether the film was too cold or too complicated to connect with emotionally. Entire diagrams were created just to explain individual scenes.

But I think most discussions around Tenet missed the thing that makes the film genuinely fascinating. Because beneath all the mechanics, Tenet is not really about time travel…

…It is about determinism.

More specifically, it is about the terrifying possibility that the future already exists, and that human beings are simply moving through events that were always going to happen.

The film tells you this repeatedly. “What’s happened, happened.”

At first, the line sounds reassuring, almost practical. But the deeper the story unfolds, the more unsettling the phrase becomes. Because Tenet is not presenting time as fluid or changeable. It presents time as fixed.

The characters are not altering history….they are fulfilling it. And once you realise that, the entire emotional meaning of the film changes.

This idea fascinated me while creating The Sorceress at the End of Time (‘Sorceress’).

Not the mechanics of inversion or espionage, but the emotional implications of determinism itself. The idea that the future may already exist somewhere ahead of us, and that people continue loving, sacrificing, and searching for meaning anyway.

Where Tenet approaches determinism through systems, causality, and espionage, Sorceress approaches it through memory, fate, and emotional distance. But both stories are interested in the same core fear:

What does it actually mean for us…if destiny is real?

If you enjoy stories like Tenet, or my analysis in this article - you might want to check out my latest graphic novel: The Sorceress at the End of Time. Currently live on Kickstarter.

Neil and the Emotional Weight of Inevitability

Neil becomes the emotional centre of Tenet once you understand the full structure of the story.

For most of the film, he appears calm, witty, and strangely detached from the chaos unfolding around him. But by the ending, we realise he has been carrying the emotional burden of inevitability long before the Protagonist understands what is truly happening.

For the Protagonist, their friendship is beginning. For Neil, it is ending.

That reversal transforms every earlier interaction between them. Conversations that initially felt casual suddenly become loaded with hidden melancholy. Neil already knows where events lead. He already understands the cost of the path they are walking.

And yet he continues forward anyway. That is what makes him tragic - he acts without regret, only acceptance. There is something deeply human about that idea. The understanding that certain outcomes may be unavoidable, while still choosing loyalty in spite of them.

This is one of the key differences between Tenet and many traditional time travel stories. The film never really indulges in the fantasy that destiny can be escaped through cleverness or emotional force. Instead, it asks whether meaning can still exist inside inevitability.

Neil’s answer is yes.

That idea shaped some of my approach to Sorceress as well, although emotionally the stories feel very different. In Tenet, inevitability feels cold and existential. In Sorceress, inevitability feels melancholic and intimate. The focus is less on systems and more on the emotional pain of moving toward outcomes that characters may already sense are waiting for them.

But both stories are ultimately interested in the same tension, which I distilled into one core idea for Sorceress:

if destiny cannot be changed, do our choices still matter?

If you enjoy stories like Tenet, or my analysis in this article - you might want to check out my latest graphic novel: The Sorceress at the End of Time. Currently live on Kickstarter.

The Illusion of Control

The Protagonist spends most of Tenet believing he is reacting to events around him. By the end, he discovers he orchestrated many of them himself. He is not outside causality…he is a core part of it.

And that revelation reframes the entire narrative: because the story stops being about preventing the future, and becomes about participating in the inevitability of it.

This is one of the reasons Tenet feels emotionally unusual compared to more traditional science fiction. There is very little triumph in the film. Even its victories feel predetermined. The characters move through events almost like people uncovering memories rather than shaping outcomes.

The future casts shadows backward through the narrative.

I think this is also why the film feels so emotionally distant to some viewers. Most stories teach us to associate agency with emotional satisfaction. We want characters to overcome destiny. We want human will to triumph over inevitability.

Tenet almost purposefully denies us that. Instead, it suggests something more unsettling: Perhaps free will is not the ability to escape fate, but simply the ability to define who we are within it.

And that idea, is one of the thematic foundations behind Sorceress too.

The story constantly circles the tension between inevitability and emotional choice. Characters struggle with the possibility that events may already be written into history, while still desperately trying to hold onto meaning, identity, and connection.

Because even if destiny exists, human emotion still feels real.

Love still feels real. Loss still feels real. Fear still feels real.

And perhaps that emotional reality matters more than whether the ending can actually change.

Why Deterministic Stories Stay With Us

I think deterministic stories resonate because they externalise something many people already feel subconsciously about life itself. In hindsight, life often appears strangely inevitable.

Relationships feel destined only after they happen. Entire chapters of our lives seem to point toward moments that had not happened yet. We look backward and construct narrative from chaos because it helps us emotionally process time.

The future already exists. The ending is already waiting somewhere ahead. And yet people still continue forward anyway.

They still love, sacrifice and search for meaning.

That is why deterministic stories rarely feel nihilistic when they are done well. In fact, they often become strangely hopeful. Because they suggest meaning was never dependent on escaping fate in the first place.

Perhaps meaning comes from something smaller and more human than that: The choices we make while moving through it.

If you enjoy stories like Tenet, or my analysis in this article - you might want to check out my latest graphic novel: The Sorceress at the End of Time. Currently live on Kickstarter.

Visit campaign now

Here are just a few cool things to look forward to:

✍️ Day One FREE Head Sketch Signature

Everyone who backs within the first 24 hours will receive a FREE head sketch signature inside their book – worth £25.

🎨 Cover Variants

Two awesome cover choices!

🃏 New Arcana Club Tarot Card – RINA

Our newest gold foil tarot card features the female lead herself: Rina.

✨ Stretch Goals

And yes… there are plenty of stretch goals still waiting to be revealed :)

You can check out the campaign here.

Cheers, Amrit

One of my favourite kinds of stories is the kind that plays with time – Interstellar, The Fountain, Terminator… yes, Tenet too.

And personal favourite: Final Fantasy VIII.

There’s something about the way that game handles time, love, memory and destiny that really resonated with me, especially as a younger man.

But although it’s my favourite game, I’ve always felt like it never fully took advantage of its incredible premise – a sorceress from the future, the compression of time, and the emotional effect that would realistically have on the people trapped within it.

So I set out to create something that explored some of those ideas more deeply, along with my own, in a very new way.

I wanted it to be a story about time and the way it shapes our choices, our relationships, and the futures we believe are waiting for us. And ultimately… if it is that destiny cannot be changed, do our choices even matter?

Naturally, it draws inspiration from the works above, and probably many others too. That’s true of almost every “new” creation, consciously or unconsciously.

But the goal was always to build something original.

Early on, some of the feedback I received about the key art was that it looked too visually similar to FFVIII. Personally, I disagreed with some of that criticism - which I do admit, could easily be reality distortion on my part. But feedback matters, and it made me stop and think.

My intention was always homage, never imitation.

The more I reflected on it, the more I realised something important: the story itself, the characters, the themes in my story – they’re already very different. At a certain point, leaning too heavily into the visual homage was actually doing a disservice to the identity of my own work.

So I made a number of subtle (and some larger) changes to the artwork and presentation to move it further away from those original comparisons.

The story remains the same.
The emotional core remains the same.
The visual style remains the same.
And the homage is still there.

But hopefully now, the framing feels less visually derivative to those who felt that way previously, and more like its own thing - which is just what I wanted it to be.

I don’t doubt some people will still make the comparison, and they’re completely free to do so. But I’d encourage them to give my story a read first – and hopefully support a fellow Final Fantasy fan trying to create something original from a small thread of inspiration that meant a great deal to him.

The Inception of The Sorceress at the End of Time

Ironically, this entire project - at least partly - exists because I genuinely think there are some fantastic stories that could be told around the world of FFVIII.

I’ve got a few great ideas fully plotted and fleshed out. Not sequels, necessarily, but companion stories that expand the themes, deepen the mythology, and offer new perspectives on the characters and ideas already there.

If I ever had the opportunity to sit down with SquareEnix and talk about those ideas, I honestly think I could surprise them.

And along with my creative production, illustration and art direction background for large publishers and major brands, I could bring them to life as vibrant and exciting graphic novels.

I did try reaching out to SquareEnix through my agent at one point, but from what I understand, Final Fantasy development remains very internal to Japan, with little Western outsourcing on the creative side.

I suppose, a part of me thought that if I pushed the homage just enough, maybe it would catch their attention.

But then, not all attention is good attention.

So before launching Sorceress tomorrow, I wanted to make some visual adjustments and ensure that this project stood firmly as its own original story.

Because ultimately, it’s creating original stories is what keeps me going. It’s the thing that fuels me…and I’m so incredibly excited to finally release The Sorceress at the End of Time, which at this point is shaping up to be at least a trilogy.

Still, the impossible dream remains. So maybe one day, it can serve as a calling card to SquareEnix, for some of the FFVIII ideas still living in my head.

If it never happens, at least I’ll know I gave it everything I had. And if it does… well, that’d be pretty cool too :)

Sorceress is launching tomorrow on Kickstarter.

The project means a lot to me and I think is my most ambitious story to date. If you haven’t already, I’d love it if you could follow the prelaunch page, so you get notified when it goes live tomorrow.

There will be a lot of options to read the book - from digital, to softcover and collectors hardcover (and so secrets yet to be revealed).

Follow along here.

Hope to see you there!

The Sorceress at the End of Time, a sci-fi fantasy graphic novel (SET)

I’ve pushed the launch slightly to May 7 to ensure Aglow 2 rewards have been shipped and had a chance to arrive with backers.

Rest assured: Next week, I’ll be sharing a closer look at the SET collector’s edition covers and other really cool additional Kickstarter rewards – so keep an eye out.

In the meantime, you can still follow the pre-launch page and check out the animated trailer here: Follow Sorceress

Aglow Season Two - shipped

All rewards have now been dispatched or delivered. The final few parcels should be arriving over the next week or so. I really hope you enjoy the epic finale :)

Huge shout out to Maddie for handling the bulk of fulfilment on this one – absolute hero.

Scarlet Resonance: Episode 1 - fulfilling now

Currently fulfilling orders right now.

Most orders should be shipped next week (assuming printer deliveries stay on track). If you missed it, late pledges are still open for a short time longer: Back it here.

Scarlet Resonance: Episode 2 - June 1st launch

Launching June 1.

Each issue spotlights a new character from the world of Scarlet Resonance. Issue #2 introduces Kira – a gifted and enigmatic young woman whose calm exterior hides a dangerous edge. Intelligent, fiercely capable, and impossible to fully read, she enters the story as both an ally and a wildcard… in an already volatile situation.

Follow the pre-launch page now.

The Forsaken Palace #1 - Launching soon

“If the world has forsaken you…can you still find worth within yourself?”

Something new we’ve been quietly building… launching later this year. Issue #1 is nearly complete and the first arc will be 6 issues.

Think NieR: Automata × Hollow Knight.

Aria awakens – forsaken in an empty palace, with nothing but the memory of him.

Can she defeat its guardians, unravel its secrets… and survive the truth waiting beyond its gates?

An ethereal dark fantasy set within a vast, abandoned palace of crystal and silence – where memory is fractured, truth is buried, and nothing is as it seems.

Follow the pre-launch here.

Arcana Club / Tarot Cards - ready to ship

These have packaged today and should be picked up by the courier tomorrow. I’m hoping they’ll be with you within the next week or so.

More soon – especially on Sorceress - next week.

Cheers, Amrit

My next graphic novel will be launching at the end of April 2026.

“You’ll find me here… waiting for you.”

Think Final Fantasy meets Interstellar.

The Sorceress at the End of Time is an anime-inspired graphic novel blending the emotional romance and action of classic anime, with the mind-bending scale of time-bending sci-fi.

Get project updates

When a routine mission to transport a sealed sorceress is sabotaged, a hardened cadet is forced to protect a mysterious girl whose connection to time itself threatens to unravel reality.

A time-bending, action-packed magic love story...and more.

Created by me: Times-bestselling illustrator and writer Amrit Birdi, whose work spans film, games, publishing and global brands including Disney, Netflix, Ubisoft and Penguin Random House.

You can follow the launch here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amrit-birdi/sorceress-end-time

There is a particular kind of story that doesn’t rely on spectacle to leave an impression, but instead lingers because of the questions it asks long after it ends.

These are stories that use time not simply as a mechanic or narrative device, but as a lens through which to examine something far more human - memory, identity, and, most of all, love.

I have always found myself returning to them.

From Final Fantasy VIII and its exploration of time compression and memory erosion, to Interstellar and its framing of love as something that can transcend dimensions, there is a shared philosophical thread running through these works. They are not really about time travel in the conventional sense, but about what happens to human connection when time itself becomes unstable, unreliable, or even irrelevant.

At the centre of all of them sits a deceptively simple question: What does love mean when it cannot change the outcome?

Living in a Story That’s Already Written

In most narratives, time is treated as a linear progression…a sequence of cause and effect where choices lead to consequences, and where characters grow by shaping the future through their actions.

However, the stories that have always resonated most with me tend to reject this structure entirely, instead presenting time as something closer to a closed system, where the beginning and the end coexist, and where events unfold less as a result of choice and more as an expression of inevitability.

Films like Arrival approach this idea through the viewers perception, suggesting that once time is understood non-linearly, the concept of “choice” begins to shift. Rather than asking what will happen next, the narrative asks whether knowing what will happen changes anything at all.

Similarly, Steins Gate explores the tension between determinism and resistance, where attempts to alter the timeline only reinforce the very outcomes the characters are trying to avoid.

In Final Fantasy VIII, this idea reaches its most abstract form through time compression, where past, present, and future collapse into a singular point. What is fascinating about this is not the spectacle of the concept itself, but what it implies: if all moments exist simultaneously, then the future is not something that can be shaped - it is something that is already there, waiting to be experienced.

This reframes choice entirely, and suggests that our actions do not create outcomes, but instead, simply reveal them.

The Sorceress at the End of Time launches April 30th 2026. Follow the prelaunch page for real-time updates straight to your inbox.

When Love Doesn’t Change the Ending

If time in these stories represents inevitability, then love often emerges as the one force that refuses to be reduced to logic.

What makes works like Your Name or Clannad: After Story so emotionally resonant is not that their characters succeed in overcoming fate, but that they continue to reach for one another even when doing so appears irrational, or even futile. The emotional weight of these stories comes from the tension between what the characters know - or come to understand - and what they choose to do anyway.

In Interstellar, Cooper’s journey is not driven by certainty, but by conviction. He cannot fully comprehend how his actions will resolve, nor whether they will change anything at all, and yet he acts as though they matter.

In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall’s arc is defined not by his understanding of time compression, but by his refusal to retreat from connection, even when faced with the possibility that everything is already decided.

This is what gives love its thematic power in these narratives. It is not presented as a tool to alter fate, but as a response to it. Love becomes an act of defiance - not against time itself, but against the meaning that time imposes.

The Cost of Becoming Something Else

One of the most compelling through-lines across these works is the relationship between memory and identity, particularly when memory begins to erode under the weight of power or circumstance.

In Final Fantasy VIII, the use of Guardian Forces introduces a quiet but devastating consequence: the gradual loss of memory. This is not treated as a central plot twist, but as an underlying cost that subtly reshapes the characters’ sense of self.

Similarly, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the deliberate erasure of memory as a means of escaping pain, only to reveal that it is precisely those memories that give relationships their meaning.

In Erased, memory becomes the thread that allows the protagonist to navigate time itself, anchoring his identity across shifting realities.

Across all of these stories, memory is not just a record of the past, but the foundation of who we are. When it begins to fracture, so too does the self.

This raises an unsettling question: if you lose the memories that define your relationships, do those relationships still exist in any meaningful way? Or does identity itself become something fluid, shaped not by continuity, but by whatever fragments remain?

The Desire to Escape Time

If the natural response to time is acceptance, and the human response is defiance, then there exists a third path that many of these stories explore - rejection.

At a certain point, the burden of time becomes too great. Time creates distance, and distance creates longing; time creates change, and change creates loss. It is, in many ways, the root of suffering. The idea that everything we love is temporary is not just a philosophical observation, but an emotional reality that these stories confront directly.

This is where many of their antagonists emerge, not as embodiments of evil, but as individuals who have reached a different conclusion about how to resolve that suffering. Rather than accepting time or resisting it, they seek to eliminate it entirely - to collapse all moments into one, to remove distance, to erase the possibility of loss.

However, what these narratives consistently suggest is that removing time also removes the very conditions that give life meaning. Without change, there is no growth; without distance, there is no longing; without an ending, there is no value to what comes before it.

In attempting to escape time, these characters often end up erasing the very thing they were trying to preserve.

The Sorceress at the End of Time launches April 30th 2026. Follow the prelaunch page for real-time updates straight to your inbox.

The Sorceress at the End of Time

It is within this philosophical space that my next graphic novel series - The Sorceress at the End of Time - sits.

Rather than treating time as a puzzle to be solved, the story approaches it as an emotional and thematic constant - something that shapes its characters in fundamentally different ways.

At its core, the narrative is built around three contrasting perspectives: one that sees connection as a risk best avoided, one that embraces it despite the cost, and one that has lived long enough to see time itself as the true source of suffering.

These are not just character traits, but distinct ideological positions. Each represents a different answer to the same underlying question:

If destiny cannot be changed, do the choices we make still matter?

The story does not attempt to resolve this question through mechanics or exposition, but through the trajectories of its characters - how they respond to inevitability, how they relate to one another, and ultimately, what they are willing to sacrifice.

So… Do Our Choices Matter?

What these stories suggest, collectively, is that the answer depends on how we define meaning.

If we expect our choices to change the outcome, then perhaps they do not matter as much as we would hope. But if we understand meaning as something derived from experience rather than result, then choice takes on a different significance entirely.

You may not be able to alter where the story ends. You may not be able to rewrite what is coming.

But you can decide how you move toward it.

You can choose to love, even when you know it may end.
You can choose to stay, even when leaving would be easier.
You can choose to reach for something, even when it may already be slipping away.

And perhaps that is what gives these stories their enduring power. Not the illusion that fate can be changed, but the insistence that, even within its boundaries, our choices still define who we are.

Final Thought

There is a tendency to view determinism as something that diminishes meaning, as though a fixed future renders everything insignificant. But these stories argue the opposite - that inevitability does not erase meaning, but sharpens it.

If every moment is already there, waiting to be experienced, then the act of choosing - of feeling, of connecting, of holding on - becomes more significant, not less.

Because it is no longer about changing what happens.

It is about choosing to live it.

If you’ve found yourself drawn to stories like Final Fantasy VIII, Interstellar, or Arrival, then The Sorceress at the End of Time sits firmly within that lineage - exploring not just how time works, but what it does to us.

And what, if anything, we choose to do about it.

The Sorceress at the End of Time launches April 30th 2026. Follow the prelaunch page for real-time updates straight to your inbox.

Because love doesn’t arrive when your life is ready for it. It arrives when it wants to – and sometimes, that moment can’t hold it.

Here are five of my favourite tragic love stories:

1. Eren & Mikasa – Attack on Titan

Eren and Mikasa aren’t pulled apart by distance…it’s direction that separates them.

Mikasa’s world closes in around Eren. He’s her constant, her home, the one thing she can rely on in a world that keeps collapsing around them. Everything she does, every decision she makes, traces back to him.

But Eren is moving in the opposite way. Outward. Forward. Away. He isn’t trying to preserve what they have – he’s chasing something beyond it. Freedom, purpose, something he believes is bigger than both of them.

And the tragedy is that neither of them is wrong.

Mikasa knows how she feels early. She’s clear, grounded, emotionally aligned from the start. Eren only understands at the very end – when he’s already crossed too many lines, already made too many choices to come back.

That final alignment, when they finally see each other clearly, comes at the exact moment their lives can no longer exist together.

Why I like this story
Because it’s brutally honest about how people change. Eren doesn’t just drift away, he becomes someone else entirely. And Mikasa is left loving a version of him that can’t exist anymore.

Why it’s on this list
It shows the most painful version of bad timing – when you only understand your feelings after your choices have already made them impossible to act on.

New comic series Live on Kickstarter now - Evangelion x Dxd: Scarlet Resonance. Check it out.

2. 2B & 9S – NieR:Automata

This one isn’t really about missing the moment, but rather being trapped inside it.

2B and 9S meet, connect, fight alongside each other. There’s a rhythm to it – a familiarity that builds quickly, like they’ve done this before.

Because they have. Their relationship is way worse than mistimed. It resets.

Every time 9S gets too close – too curious, too aware, too emotionally aligned – the truth surfaces. And when it does, 2B is forced to act.

She kills him. Then it starts again.

Same connection. Same bond. Same slow drift toward something deeper. But only one of them carries the weight of what came before. Only one of them knows how it ends.

Their timing is designed to be wrong. Every version of their relationship is cut short at the exact moment it begins to matter.

Why I like this story
Because it turns love into something cyclical. It’s not just about losing someone once – it’s about losing them again and again, while still caring deeply.

Why it’s on this list
It’s the purest version of mistimed love not because they meet at the wrong moment, but because the world they exist in won’t allow them to ever exist at the right one.

3. Takaki & Akari – 5 Centimeters per Second

This is the most understated entry on the list – and maybe the most recognisable pattern of behaviour.

There’s no single moment where this romance fall apart. No betrayal, no argument, no clear turning point. Just distance, growing apart and growing up.

Geography at first, then emotional distance that slowly replaces it.

They begin with something real. First love that actually feels mutual, grounded, sincere. And for a while, that connection holds.

But life doesn’t stand still.

They move. Their routines change. The space between them grows. Messages become harder to send, then easier to delay, then eventually… unnecessary.

What makes it hit is that nothing is explicitly broken. If anything, the feeling is still there – just buried under time, under everything else that’s come in since.

By the end, they’re not choosing to let go. They’re just no longer the people who could hold on.

Why I like this story
Because it feels real. There’s no villain, no big moment to point to. It’s just how life works sometimes – things fade, even when they mattered.

Why it’s on this list
It captures the most common kind of bad timing – when nothing goes wrong, but it still doesn’t last.

4. Kousei & Kaori – Your Lie in April

This one hits in a more contained way…that you really don’t see coming.

There’s no confusion between them. No missed signals, no emotional delay. When Kousei and Kaori meet, it works immediately. She pulls him out of grief, out of silence, out of a version of himself that had completely shut down.

With her, he feels again. Plays again. Lives again.

Everything about their connection feels right. Natural. Effortless.

Which is exactly why it’s so difficult to watch it end.

Because it doesn’t end due to conflict, or choice, or anything either of them did. It ends because it was always going to end. The timing isn’t wrong in the sense that they met too early or too late – it’s wrong because there simply isn’t enough of it.

What they have is real. It just isn’t given the space to fully become what it could have been.

Why I like this story
Because it shows how powerful a short connection can be. Some people come into your life, change everything… and then they’re gone.

Why it’s on this list
It shows a different kind of mistiming – when love arrives at exactly the right moment, but doesn’t stay long enough to grow into what it could have been.

New comic series Live on Kickstarter now - Evangelion x Dxd: Scarlet Resonance. Check it out.

5. Mia & Sebastian – La La Land

This one feels the closest to real life, and perhaps similar to 5 Centimeters per Second.

There’s no external force pulling them apart. No tragedy, no dramatic interruption. What separates them is direction – the shape their lives start to take as they move forward.

At one point, Mia and Seb are completely aligned. They support each other, challenge each other, build something together that feels solid.

But over time, that alignment shifts.

Their ambitions grow in different ways. The paths they choose start to demand different things from them. And slowly, almost quietly, staying together becomes harder than moving forward separately.

That’s what makes it land.

They don’t fall apart because they stop loving each other. They fall apart because the life they’re building doesn’t have space for both of them in the same way anymore.

And that final sequence – the version of their life where everything works – makes it clear. It wasn’t a failed relationship.

It was just the wrong time.

Why I like this story
Because it’s honest. It doesn’t pretend love is enough to solve everything. Sometimes life pulls you in different directions, and that’s that.

Why it’s on this list
It captures the most grounded version of bad timing – when two people work perfectly together, but not in the life they’re building.

Closing Thought

Loving someone at the wrong time isn’t rare. If anything, it’s the pattern most of these stories circle around – not because love fails, but because life doesn’t pause for it.

You see it everywhere:

In The Garden of Words – where connection exists in a moment that can’t survive outside of it.
In Toradora! – where feelings take too long to surface.
In A Silent Voice – where love is tied up with guilt, timing, and who people used to be.

Even in my original graphic novels: Rid of You and Aglow.

Most of the time, it’s not one big moment that pulls people apart.
It’s timing. Growth. Distance. Priorities. Choices.

Every now and then, you meet someone where everything feels right… except the moment you’re in.

Some people are right for each other.
Just not at the same time.

Did i miss anything from the list? Comment below :)

New comic series Live on Kickstarter now - Evangelion x Dxd: Scarlet Resonance. Check it out.

Love, Fear, and Human Connection in Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion is often described as a psychological deconstruction of the mecha genre.

While its surface narrative focuses on giant bio-mechanical weapons and apocalyptic threats, many have noted that its true subject is human emotion.

And I agree.

More specifically, Evangelion explores how people seek love and connection while simultaneously fearing the vulnerability such closeness requires.

Rather than portraying love as a healing force, the series presents it as a source of anxiety, conflict, and emotional risk. Through its characters and its central philosophical ideas, Evangelion argues that human relationships are shaped not only by desire for intimacy, but by trauma, fear of rejection, and the instinct to protect oneself from pain.

Love: A Psychological Need

From a psychological perspective, human beings possess a fundamental need for connection.

Attachment theory suggests that early experiences of care shape how individuals approach relationships later in life. Secure attachment fosters trust and openness, while insecure attachment often leads to fear of abandonment, avoidance of closeness, or emotional volatility.

In Evangelion, nearly every major character displays patterns consistent with insecure attachment.

Shinji seeks approval and reassurance but withdraws when intimacy becomes possible.

Asuka craves attention and admiration yet reacts aggressively to emotional vulnerability.

Misato substitutes physical closeness for emotional openness.

Rei struggles to understand intimacy at all due to her fractured sense of identity.

These patterns reflect how individuals who associate love with loss or pain often pursue connection while unconsciously sabotaging it.

Love - in Evangelion - is a psychological survival strategy.

The Fear of Emotional Exposure

A recurring theme in the series is the terror of being truly seen.

To be emotionally close to another person requires revealing weakness, insecurity, and personal history. For characters shaped by trauma, this exposure feels dangerous.

Rejection becomes not merely painful, but threatening to one’s sense of worth.

This fear explains why moments of tenderness in Evangelion are frequently followed by withdrawal or conflict. Characters approach intimacy, experience emotional discomfort, and then retreat to regain a sense of control.

Rather than moving steadily toward connection, relationships oscillate between closeness and distance.

This pattern reflects real-world psychological behaviour in individuals who desire love but fear vulnerability.

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma as a Model of Relationships

Early in the series, Evangelion introduces the philosophical concept known as the Hedgehog’s Dilemma.

Hedgehogs seek warmth by huddling together, but their sharp spines cause pain when they get too close. Humans, likewise, need emotional closeness yet hurt each other through misunderstandings, insecurities, and defensive behaviours.

This metaphor serves as the emotional framework of the series. Every major relationship follows the same cycle:

• desire for closeness

• emotional pain

• withdrawal

• renewed loneliness

Evangelion does not present this cycle as failure of character. It presents it as an inherent tension of human connection.

Love involves risk.
Risk invites pain.
Yet isolation brings emotional emptiness.

A ever-ending cycle of loneliness.

Instrumentality and the Fantasy of Pain-Free Love

(This section contains spoilers).

The Human Instrumentality Project represents the ultimate escape from relational suffering.

By merging all human consciousness into a single collective existence, individuality disappears. Without separation, there can be no rejection, misunderstanding, or loneliness.

From a psychological standpoint, Instrumentality reflects an extreme avoidance strategy. It is the desire to eliminate vulnerability by eliminating the self as a separate emotional being.

Rather than learning to tolerate the discomfort of relationships, Instrumentality offers a world without emotional boundaries at all.

The series presents this as seductive, but ultimately hollow.

Connection without individuality lacks meaning. Love without vulnerability lacks human authenticity.

The Exposure of love

Many narratives portray love as something that fixes emotional wounds. Evangelion challenges this assumption.

The series suggests that relationships do not automatically heal trauma. Instead, they often bring unresolved pain to the surface. Intimacy magnifies insecurities before growth can occur.

This is consistent with psychological research showing that close relationships frequently activate attachment fears, especially in individuals with histories of emotional neglect or loss.

And Evangelion portrays this process honestly:

People push away those they care about most. They misinterpret affection as threat. They retreat when they feel emotionally overwhelmed.

Rather than idealising romance, the series portrays connection as difficult, unstable, and deeply human.

The Series’ Position on Human Connection

Despite its bleak portrayal of relationships, Evangelion does not advocate isolation. Instead, it argues that pain is inseparable from genuine connection.

To live alongside others means risking rejection, misunderstanding, and emotional suffering. Yet without connection, the self gradually erodes into loneliness and meaninglessness.

The series ultimately suggests, rather positively in fact, that imperfect relationships are preferable to emotional emptiness. Vulnerability is the cost of being human. Pain is not a sign of failure, but of engagement with life.

Conclusion

To Evangelion, love is courage.

Courage to be seen.
Courage to be hurt.
Courage to continue seeking connection despite fear.

By framing relationships through psychological realism rather than romantic idealism, the series offers a deeply resonant portrayal of human intimacy. Its characters reflect real emotional struggles shaped by trauma, insecurity, and longing.

In doing so, Evangelion delivers a powerful message far beyond God-like mechs and the end of the world:

Human connection is painful, fragile, and uncertain, yet it remains essential to identity and meaning.

To love is not to be safe.
It is messy. Intrusive. Disgusting.

It is to be alive.

If you’ve been waiting, this is it. The campaign for our gothic anime inspired graphic novel series closes in just 2 days - and the finale is bigger, darker, and more emotional than ever.

👉 Get your copy now

Don’t miss out on:

🔥 The epic finale - watch the trailer here
✨ Lila x Elion Ultra Rare ‘Enchantress’ Hardcover (limited edition)
📕 Collector’s Edition Lila Hardcover
🃏 Gold Foil Trading Card Game Tarot Cards
💫 Sexy gold-foil Lila hand-signed print (limited to just 25)

And yes -- Season One is still available if you’re jumping in fresh.

👉 Get your copy now

🌌 Also available: my complete 560-page anime-inspired epic, Rid of You - the full trilogy in one emotional, dark fantasy romance saga.

👉 Jump in here.

✨ And one more thing…

The official Sorceress at the End of Time: Season One key art is now revealed.

Launches April 2026 - follow along here:

👉 Follow project

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is often remembered as a story about physical deformity and social cruelty…but that reputation understates its ambition and vision.

Beneath its gothic imagery lies one of Disney’s most unsettling examinations of power, righteousness, and the ease with which moral authority can disguise violence.

Through Frollo, the story draws a bold line between those feared for their appearance and those never questioned because they seem moral, revealing how harm takes root when outward virtue goes unexamined.

The Moral Camouflage of Frollo

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, first published by Victor Hugo in 1831, is often remembered for its imagery: the twisted bell ringer silhouetted against cathedral stone, the roaring crowd below, the firelight and shadow that seem to breathe through Paris itself. Yet beneath its gothic spectacle lies a far more unsettling concern. The novel, and later its most famous animated adaptation, is less interested in physical monstrosity than in how societies decide who deserves that label.

At the centre of this question stands Frollo.

Unlike Quasimodo, whose body marks him as other in the eyes of the city, Frollo appears immaculate by comparison. He is learned, disciplined, and outwardly pious, a man entrusted with moral and institutional authority. The danger he represents does not arise from chaos or savagery, but from order. Frollo believes himself righteous, and it is this belief that allows him to commit acts of cruelty without ever recognising them as such.

In Hugo’s novel, Frollo is a scholar-priest whose fear of disorder gradually curdles into obsession. In Disney’s adaptation, that fear is reframed through the lens of state power, transforming him into a judge whose authority is enforced by law rather than scripture alone.

The shift is significant, but the core remains the same. Frollo does not experience his actions as moral failings - he experiences them as necessary corrections to a sinful world.

The Justification of Desire

What separates Frollo from more conventional Disney villains, is that he does not revel in evil, nor does he ever name it as such.

Instead, the film consistently frames his actions as acts of displacement. His desire is treated as an external corruption rather than something that originates within him, and his obsession with Esmeralda is recast as a moral trial, one in which she, rather than he, must be punished.

At every turn, the film shows him avoiding the one act that might interrupt this cycle: looking inward and accepting responsibility for what he wants.

The Hellfire sequence in Disney’s adaptation makes this internal logic explicit. Frollo does not deny his desire; he denies responsibility for it. He casts himself as a passive participant in his own corruption, pleading for purification while demanding punishment for the object of his fixation.

What’s most disturbing about this is not the desire itself, which the film correctly treats as fundamentally human, but the refusal to accept it as such.

Frollo would rather see the world burn than admit that the darkness he fears resides within him.

Quasimodo and the Inversion of Monstrosity

This stands in stark contrast to Quasimodo.

Where Frollo’s identity is constructed through repression and projection, Quasimodo’s is shaped by vulnerability. He has been taught to see himself as a monster, and initially accepts that judgment without question. Yet his actions consistently undermine it. He shows compassion where it is not required, restraint where violence would be justified, and, crucially, the capacity to let go.

The relationship between the two is therefore not simply one of master and servant, but of inverted moral trajectories. Quasimodo’s arc is one of painful humanisation. Frollo’s is one of gradual self-dehumanisation.

Quasimodo learns to love without expectation; Frollo convinces himself that loving someone grants him authority over them. This distinction becomes clearest in their respective responses to Esmeralda.

Quasimodo’s affection is defined by protecting her - he risks his life for her safety, even when it means relinquishing the possibility of being loved in return. Frollo, by contrast, treats rejection as an injustice. When his desire is denied, annihilation becomes acceptable. His fixation escalates not because he loves too deeply, but because he cannot conceive of love without control.

Here the story draws its most decisive line between man and monster. Humanity, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is not measured by purity or righteousness, but by the ability to accept limits. To recognise another person as autonomous. To endure desire without allowing it to metastasise into entitlement.

Where Quasimodo’s succeeds, Frollo fails on every count.

The Collapse of a Lie

What makes Frollo endure as a villain is how recognisable this failure is.

He is not an outsider to the system; he is its enforcer. His monstrosity is not a deviation from social order, but an expression of its darkest potential. He demonstrates how easily morality becomes cruelty when it is stripped of humility, and how power that lacks accountability, begins to mistake itself for divine will.

When Frollo falls, the film allows his actions to speak for themselves. There is no final speech, no moral reckoning offered by the world around him. His authority fails him, and his certainty does not save him. He is undone by the same violence he has spent the film justifying.

The bells of Notre Dame ring on. Quasimodo remains, battered but human, while the man who believed himself pure disappears into the fire below.

Hugo’s Frollo vs Disney Frollo

Hugo’s Frollo is, in many ways, more tragic and more insidious. His descent unfolds slowly, rooted in intellectual arrogance and fear of disorder. He believes knowledge itself should impose control over the world, and when it fails to do so, he responds with obsession and violence. His monstrosity feels inevitable, the result of years spent mistaking repression for virtue.

Disney’s Frollo is sharper, colder, and more immediate. By removing the priesthood and elevating him to a judge, the film positions his authority as explicitly political. His actions are sanctioned not just by personal belief, but by the machinery of the state.

This makes him less inwardly conflicted, but more frightening in scale. Where Hugo’s Frollo corrodes himself from the inside, Disney’s version weaponises ideology and law to impose his corruption outwardly.

Both, however, share the same moral failure. Neither can accept that their desires are human, and neither can survive the idea that righteousness might require restraint.

Man and Monster in Aglow

This distinction between outward monstrosity and inward corruption runs directly through my latest graphic novel series, AGLOW.

Check Aglow Season 1 & 2 out on Kickstarter now.

Much like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Aglow is not ultimately concerned with whether its characters flirt with darkness, but with how they relate to it. The series consistently asks whether power, grief, and desire are confronted honestly, or whether they are justified through narratives of necessity and protection.

What separates characters like Lila from figures such as Frollo is not innocence, but awareness. Where Frollo refuses to look inward, Aglow insists on that confrontation. It treats the abyss not as something external to be destroyed, but as something internal that must be acknowledged and integrated, at great personal cost.

In this sense, Aglow extends Hugo’s question rather than answers it. It suggests that monstrosity is not a state one falls into, but a series of choices made while convincing oneself they are unavoidable. To be human, then, is not to be free of darkness, but to recognise it without letting it justify harm.

If Frollo represents the comfort of believing righteousness absolves responsibility, Aglow is concerned with the cost of refusing that comfort, and attempting to remain human anyway.

Check Aglow Season 1 & 2 out on Kickstarter now.

Order your copy now

💡 Launch bonus: Back within the first 24 hours and you’ll receive a free head sketch signature in your book (worth +£30). 👉 Check it out.

How Far Would You Go to Protect the Ones You Love?

AGLOW is an anime-inspired dark fantasy graphic novel duology, spanning 180+ pages across two volumes (seasons) - Howl’s Moving Castle meets Castlevania.

(Left: Standard softcover / Right: Collectors Edition Over-sized Hardcover).

In Aglow Season 2…

…The story gets darker.
The cost gets higher.

A gothic fantasy about legacy, where love and betrayal awaken not just the monsters outside…but the ones within.

Available digitally, in softcover and collectors edition hardback.

Order your copy now

The epic finale of AGLOW pushes Lila beyond fear… beyond reason… and toward something she may never come back from.

The tension gets hotter. The story gets darker. The stakes get higher.

Aglow: Season Two is an anime-inspired dark fantasy graphic novel about legacy, love, and the ultimate cost of power.

Howl’s Moving Castle x Castlevania.

Launching on Kickstarter next week. Click to follow the prelaunch page.

(This game is closing in on 30 years old, but on the off-chance it’s still on your ‘to play list’, this article contains many spoilers).

A Story That Begins After the End

Final Fantasy VIII unfolds as though its conclusion already exists, shaping events long before the characters themselves become aware of it.

From the opening moments, the player is presented not with prophecy or destiny explicitly stated, but with an emotional aftermath we’re not yet aware of.

Squall begins the story withdrawn, isolated, and resistant to connection. He is competent, disciplined, and capable - yet fundamentally disengaged, framed as his very state of being.

As the narrative develops, these traits reveal themselves as consequences rather than personality quirks. Squall’s detachment stems from childhood abandonment, compounded by memory erosion linked to Guardian Forces. His emotional distance is not a defence he consciously chose, but rather a condition formed before he had the capacity to choose otherwise. His present behaviour is already the result of a past he cannot fully remember.

This pattern - consequence preceding awareness - recurs throughout the game.

Meaning in Final Fantasy VIII is revealed retroactively rather than prospectively. The orphanage revelation does not redirect the story forward; it reframes everything that has already occurred. Scenes once understood as spontaneous or coincidental are revealed to have been necessary steps within a closed causal loop. The characters do not gain new freedom from this knowledge. They gain belated understanding.

From early on, Final Fantasy VIII positions us - the player - as someone uncovering a path that has already been walked.

This framing gives rise to the game’s central philosophical question:

If destiny cannot be changed, does choice still matter?

Fate Is a Condition of Reality

In Final Fantasy VIII, fate is not personified by a god, prophecy, or singular antagonist. It does not announce itself with spectacle or moral absolutism. Instead, it is embedded persistently in the systems that govern the world.

Sorceress power is inherited rather than chosen. Edea becomes a sorceress without consent, and Rinoa later inherits that same power through circumstance rather than intention. Neither actively seeks the role, and neither is given the option to refuse it. The position persists across generations, indifferent to individual desire, binding each successor into a historical chain they did not initiate.

Guardian Forces operate under a similar logic. They grant extraordinary power, but exact a cost that is neither immediate nor dramatic: memory. The more the characters rely on these forces, the less access they retain to their own pasts. Identity becomes fragmented, shaped by necessity rather than continuity. Characters quite literally sacrifice self-knowledge in order to function within the world.

The orphanage revelation crystallises this worldview. The characters discover that their lives are bound by a temporal loop: future actions influenced past events, which in turn shaped the present. There is no clear point of origin. No moment where the loop could have been broken cleanly.

Fate, in Final Fantasy VIII, is not something imposed from outside.

It is the framework within which existence unfolds.

If this article - or Final Fantasy VIII - stayed with you, you may enjoy my next original graphic novel series, The Sorceress at the End of Time. Follow project.

The Narrow Scope of Choice

Although the player exercises significant agency at the mechanical level - junction systems, combat strategies, character optimisation - narrative choice is tightly constrained.

Squall does not choose his emotional detachment; it is the product of early loss and suppressed memory. Rinoa does not seek sorceress power; it is thrust upon her through proximity and circumstance. Even SeeD itself is structured to recruit children into military roles they barely understand, reinforcing cycles of duty rather than self-determination.

The assassination mission against Edea illustrates this constraint with particular clarity. Squall believes he is acting decisively, participating in a plan designed to stop a looming threat. Only later does he learn that Edea herself - influenced by future events - enabled the very mission meant to oppose her.

What appeared to be choice is revealed to be maintenance of the timeline.

The Outcome is fixed. Unchangeable.

Choice exists, but only within boundaries that do not permit deviation from fate’s structure. The game repeatedly presents decisions that feel meaningful in the moment, only to later reveal that their significance lay not in altering events, but in sustaining the world as it already is.

Emotional Choice in a Deterministic World

Where Final Fantasy VIII most clearly preserves the relevance of choice is not in altering events, but choices driven by emotion.

The game repeatedly places characters in situations where outcomes are already constrained, yet foregrounds the decision of how they respond internally. These choices do not change fate, but they determine whether characters participate fully in their lives or retreat from them.

Early in the narrative, Squall treats emotional distance as a survival strategy. He follows orders efficiently, fulfils his role as SeeD, and later accepts the position of commander with minimal resistance - but also with minimal investment. Leadership is treated as obligation rather than connection, another role imposed upon him rather than something he actively embraces.

This detachment is not framed as strength or stoicism. Instead, it isolates Squall from meaning. He functions effectively, but without orientation toward anything beyond duty.

A significant shift occurs when Rinoa falls into a coma after being possessed by Ultimecia. Squall cannot fix her condition, undo her involvement, or halt the larger forces at work. He is confronted with the limits of action in stark terms.

What he can choose is whether to disengage emotionally or remain present.

His decision to stay with Rinoa - to watch over her, speak to her, and refuse emotional withdrawal despite her unresponsiveness - represents a choice made in the absence of agency over outcome. Nothing about the plot changes. Rinoa remains unconscious. Time continues forward.

What changes is Squall’s relationship to inevitability.

This shift is reinforced during the space rescue sequence. Rinoa is drifting away, oxygen is limited, and the physical constraints of space impose strict boundaries. Squall’s pursuit is a huge turning point for his character - an absolute refusal to remain detached from it any longer. The attempt itself carries meaning regardless of success.

In both cases, Final Fantasy VIII emphasises that emotional choice operates independently of narrative causality. Squall does not change what is happening - he changes how he participates in what is happening.

Within a deterministic world, emotional commitment becomes the primary form of agency available.

Love as the Only Variable

Within the rigid structure of fate, love emerges as the only element not governed by inheritance or time.

Love does not exist in Final Fantasy VIII as a force that alters history. Time compression still occurs. Memory still fades. Separation remains unavoidable. The game is explicit about this - no romantic connection prevents catastrophe or guarantees permanence.

What love changes is experience.

Rinoa consistently chooses emotional presence. She encourages connection, refuses withdrawal, and remains engaged even when she herself becomes a source of danger due to her sorceress powers. Her willingness to remain open does not resolve the larger conflict, but it resists emotional erasure.

Squall, in turn, chooses involvement over isolation, despite knowing that attachment does not protect against loss. These choices do not alter destiny, but they reshape the internal landscape through which destiny is encountered.

Love introduces variability into the meaning of the situation, but not the outcome.

Two characters may face the same destiny, but they do not experience it in the same way.

If this article - or Final Fantasy VIII - stayed with you, you may enjoy my next original graphic novel series, The Sorceress at the End of Time. Follow project.

So… What Is Love For?

Within this framework, Final Fantasy VIII offers a restrained answer.

Love is not salvation.
Love does not break fate.
Love does not guarantee permanence.

Instead, love provides significance.

It gives texture to moments that would otherwise collapse into inevitability. It allows recognition across memory loss, distance, and time - even when continuity cannot be assured.

Love functions as the medium through which choice retains meaning in a world where outcomes are fixed.

If destiny cannot be changed, love explains why emotional engagement still matters.

So…Does Choice Still Matter?

Final Fantasy VIII offers a careful, unsentimental conclusion.

Choice does not matter because it can change destiny - it matters because it determines how destiny is lived.

Characters cannot choose their endings, but they can choose whether to remain emotionally present as they approach them.

In a universe where the future already exists, freedom is found in choosing to participate in a meaningful way.

The journey is more important than the destination.

Final Fantasy VIII ultimately suggests that if destiny cannot be changed, choice still matters - not because it saves the world, but because it ensures the path toward the inevitable…is not a lonely one.

If this article - or Final Fantasy VIII - stayed with you, you may enjoy my next original graphic novel series, The Sorceress at the End of Time. Follow project.