My Colourful World

Here is “Knot”, a short comic I drew to sell at Mocca and TCAF this year. The printed version is going to be SO PRETTY. I’m in love with the cover (which I will post later).

I just wanted to do something fairy-tale-like that talked about doubts and frustrations and how to deal with them. I’m really happy with how colorful and adorable the story turned out to be. 

SNL - Cut for Time: My Little Step Children

Nettie is eating ice cream. The cold burns against her silver incisor, but feels good against the small cut inside her mouth she’d gotten last week. It’s an even trade.

Nettie is all about even trades.

Most think that they liked to be paid in money. Old money, sure, gold and silver that doesn’t have the same sort of inflation risk as paper, but that implies that they have something to spend it on.

No, Nettie’s maybe the only one who knows what sort of things monsters like to be paid in and is willing to provide it. Which is why she’s sitting in the middle of a park at 3 am waiting for her contact to arrive.

At 3:03, her contact’s preferred meeting time, the fog rolls in. Nettie rolls her eyes as it creeps through the sparse trees ahead of her, turning the grass silver under the moonlight with precipitation. So dramatic and not at all secretive. Her eyes flick up to the security camera mounted on the lamppost across the street. She wonders when the government will admit they see monsters at night. She hopes it’s not in her lifetime.

That’d be bad for business.

The outline of a tree several yards away from her begins to waver. It looks like someone might be behind it, a darker band appearing around the trunk as if someone is hugging it. Then they’re gone and the same wavering, black shadow appears behind a tree several feet ahead of it.

Nettie watches and eats her ice cream, glad that her leather jacket is hiding the way her arm hair is standing on end. She’s never been the type to hide her fear.

Then she met beings who enjoyed it.

A dark pool in front of her widens, the shadows twisting upwards. She calmly takes a  bite of the cone as the shade forms, the shadow creature not stopping until it’s reached its full height at seven feet.

She feels the sensation of pumice in her mind and frowns. “Gren? Where’s Mandy?”

The shadow figure ripples, for once not kicking up a fuss at her nicknames for them. An orange light flares briefly in what one might assume was its hand but she knew to be its mouth.

Her spine snaps straight. “What?”

Not because she ever ruled the world, or shrank the moon, or defeated every hero in her path. She’s still sorta new to this, even if she’s taking to it really well. But she’s well known as the world’s greatest villain… to work for.

Henchmen and henchwomen all over the world flock to her once news got out she wasn’t executing them for failures, that they got full benefits, dental, and a pretty fair cut of the profits. Working hours were really flexible, and even the more ridiculous demands were given a much more reasonable timeframe - even the top shark tank maker in the business has named her his favorite customer, because she actually understands it takes time to wrangle the best sharks, and to make those things shark-proof, and that sometimes the sharks just aren’t in the mood at the moment.  She talks to her people like, well, people, even the janitors (especially Rodney, the guy who deals with radioactive waste, also one of the best in the business).

It’s not all roses, and she does lose her temper, but she’s still never executed a henchperson out of rage. She got betrayed once and flared up, interrogated him until she found out that his family was being threatened - she got the crew, rounded up the heroes threatening his family, let him push the button on the shark tank, and compensated him and his family for the trouble. That news got out, and now she’s got practically all of the henchpeople community rooting for her.

Of course, that sorta miffed the rest of the villains, and that’s how she got taken down, villains and heroes working together to take care of a shared inconvenience. They had her in the cell for about 2 days and then she got sprung out - by the whole friggin’ prison. Word is she’s already got her empire back up and running.

#NeverAgain

Survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting announce the ‘March For Our Lives’ on March 24 in support of gun control

Oliver Willis at Shareblue: 

A Florida teenager who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, issued a rousing call to action at a rally against gun violence.

Emma Gonzalez declared that the shooting at her school should be “the last mass shooting.”

And she responded directly to Trump’s tweet, which blamed students at the school for not reporting on the shooter’s behavior before the event.

“We did,” Gonzalez said, “time and time again, since he was in middle school.”

“We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue,” she continued. “He wouldn’t have harmed that many students with a knife.”

“How about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the shooter’s fault?” she demanded, and called out those who do deserve to shoulder that blame.

“[The people] who let him buy the guns in the first place. Those at the gun shows. The people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic. The people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew that he expressed homicidal tendencies. And I am not talking about the FBI. I am talking about the people that he lived with, I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.”

And Gonzalez again did not let Trump’s responsibility go unremarked upon

“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy, and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us that nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”

Gonzalez then called attention to the $30 million spent by the NRA in support of Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and how that translates onto each life lost to gun violence.

“That comes out to being $5800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?” She asked.

“To every politician who has taken donations from the NRA: Shame on you!”

The crowd erupted into a loud chant, echoing her cry: “Shame on you!”

Emma Gonzalez and her Florida community are not allowing Trump, the Republican Party, or the NRA to intimidate them into silence. They are speaking up to defend their families, and shaming those who enable this epidemic of violence.

The video of the full speech by Emma Gonzalez, via CNN’s YouTube:

When you see an animal with its eyes set to the front, like wolves, or humans, that’s usually a predator animal.

If you see an animal with its eyes set farther back, though—to the side—that animal is prey.

Now look at this dragon.

See those eyes?

They’re to the SIDE.

This raises an interesting—and terrifying—question.

What in the name of Lovecraft led evolution to consider DRAGONS…

What species glorifies the slaughter of dragons as the sport of kings?

Dear people of Tumblr and beyond,

Your friend/coworker/relative that knits or crochets is NOT a way for you to get knitted/crocheted items at inexpensive prices.

Handmade custom pieces (even small ones) require planning and supplies and time, and our time and effort is worth something. Just because I “can knit real fast” (not my words) doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be compensated properly.

When you come to me asking how much I’d charge you for a particular piece, and before I answer, you start telling me that you’re asking because you don’t want to buy one at x store because “that’s just too high for that”, please don’t be offended when I laugh in your face. If you won’t pay for machine knitted, mass produced work, you’re certainly not willing to pay me.

Stop insulting craftspeople by asking us to spend our time and effort for basically nothing.

it’s time to #SeizeTheAwkward and talk with friends about mental health.