Making thee blog space a worse place

Be loose as hell and do thumbnail sketches, making sure they're dogshit detail-wise but rich with motion, weight, and. stuff. Then, try to eyeball the thumbnail sketch with a very rough draft. THEN clean it up.

Featured top-left, thumbnail sketches. Featured to the right: Snorp the YCH. Take it away, Snorp!

If you can make a stick-figure show gesture and motion, you can bulk that stick figure up with proper detail until you have a finished drawing with gesture and motion.

Revenge #5 for @bowelfly!

further project hail mary + textposts (this time featuring grace as well!)

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

I'm happy to announce that, together with a roster of great artists, writers, and actors, I've been secretly working on a huge multimedia podcast project. And it's called:

The city of Palmyra has been cordoned off, deemed contaminated. Supposedly, everyone's been evacuated. But we know it's not true. Inside the Exclusion Zone, the Feds, shady companies and hateful militias vie for control of the city, and strange horrors straight out of nightmares lurk around every corner. Meanwhile, those who got left behind are just trying to survive and stick together in this hellscape.

This project will smuggle information out of Palmyra. Apart from the many stories found in our podcast, you'll find recovered footage and documents belonging to different factions and survivors within the city. You can now listen to episode 1 of the podcast!

You may also presave the Kickstarter so you'll be notified when it goes live in a month! We'll be using it to fund our first season and make zines! In the meantime there will be plenty of extra content and cool art coming for you! Follow us at @american-abyss for our first batch of stories! I'm so excited to show more over the coming months! Please dig in and stay tuned.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the horrors I've worked on so far:

Something foul grew within our city, it poisoned the water in the well. Out of the festering growth, a homegrown militia with stockpiled weapons emerged. The Federal government rushed in to contain the tendrils of insurrection, but they failed. The rot went deeper than they realized. A botched raid turned into an all out civil war. As explosions and fighting rocked the city, the National Guard was summoned to facilitate an evacuation. Endless fighting engulfed the streets, and you and I were caught in the crossfire.

Then, one night, "The Flash." Stars cascaded out of the sky, leaving behind streaks that burned bright and brighter. Until the entire city was subsumed in light. As quickly as it came, the light vanished, leaving behind only uncertainty. Chaos followed. No one knew if this was some new horrible weapon, or an unseen phenomenon. That night was one of the longest of our lives.

In the morning, we woke up, expecting evacuation, only to find that the city was cordoned, quarantined, cut off. Communities were ripped apart as the border wall fell between them. You ventured out, with the noble pursuit to protect our neighbors. I asked you to stay. I don't know if you heard me. And then the power went out. I tried to find some comfort in the silence. The momentary ceasefire.

But in the darkness, I only found your empty shape. I ventured out into the night to return you to me- But I left too late. I searched. And I searched. But you were always out of reach. And I was so scared, and so tired. I returned home, and hoped that soon you would too.

You didn't.