The beginning of the end of the beginning

Tonight I completed the last episode of Ursula Hitler's Head.

No, I'm not actually ending the series, not quite yet. But Xtranormal has been having huge technical problems for a couple of months, and the problems have gotten so bad and they've been unfixed for so long that I think it's only a matter of time before the site shuts down for good. I couldn't let this series end without a proper resolution, so I went ahead and made the last episode now so I'll have it ready to post, if and when Xtranormal goes away.

Sometimes when a TV series is filming its final episode, the very last scene of the series is not the last thing they film. Sometimes they film the last scene, and then they've still got days of other stuff to shoot. They've defeated the bad guy, said their tearful farewells, switched off the lights... but then everybody's got to come back the next day and film all the stuff leading up to the ending. They have to put their wigs back on, and be those characters that they buried yesterday.

I always wondered how that felt. Well, now I guess I sort of know.

It makes you feel like you've gone back in time, or you've had some kind of premonition. You've seen the future, in perfect clarity. You know who makes it to a happy ending, and who doesn't. You know that everything happening now is all just leading inevitably to the ending you've already seen.

I must admit, part of me is tempted to just post the final episode now. My page views are in the shitter, my personal life is in a shambles and I'm restless and frustrated, on the brink of some kind of huge change.

As much as I've enjoyed making this series, as much as I love these characters, there's no denying that it's time to stop. I mean, a lot of this site's traffic is literally confused Russians coming from some very weird spam sites. They're here for 15 seconds and then that's it, they're gone forever.

Whatever goofy dreams I had about this show becoming successful simply have not come true.

There are dozens of very good reasons to stop, and the only reason I keep going is because... well, because I just can't seem to stop. Not yet. At this point, this series feels more like a symptom than a cure. I should stop. I really should. But I'm not stopping.

I have seen the end, and I have said my tearful farewells, and I have buried the bodies. Someday, and probably someday fairly soon, I will post that final episode.

But not today.