#is this something they factor into the scheduling??

[lullabyes22-blog]

Snippet - Mad Maxxing - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Just your average Zaunite road trip...

Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

"You're smiling," Sevika says.

"I know."

"Why?"

"You'll know soon enough."

And, daring, he lays a hand on the headrest of her seat. Nothing else. Just his hand, and the flying kiss of her hair against his knuckles.  But he can feel the border between public and private dissolving like a chalk sketch in the rain.

The subterfuge, he senses, has become a game of chicken. Sooner or later, one of them will break. The thrill is in feeling the tension ratchet higher and higher.

In bracing, as a magician prepares for the big reveal, for the pure, unbridled shock of inevitability.

A burst of white arcs across the horizon. The flash, so close and bright, nearly blinds them. A boom, seconds later, cracks the darkness open, from north to south.

Cursing, Sevika slams the brakes. Tires screech. Silco, jolted forward, catches himself against the dash. The entourage, likewise, rumbles to a halt. The air thickens with the scent of burning rubber. Silco hears, through the open window, the crackle of radios, and the rumble of idling engines, and the thunder of boots as a phalanx of blackguards swarm from their cars.

A second flare goes up. The light bathes the flatlands in a scorching flash.

"What the hell," Sevika mutters, and thumps a fist against the steering column. 

The radio crackles. She snatches the receiver, and the distorted squawks resolve: the scouts on duty, reporting back from the perimeter. The soundscape beyond the vehicle is a chorus of shouts and loading guns. At the horizon, a dark line bleeds into unreal brightness. The night's torn open. And spilling forth, by inches, is a row of armored vehicles.

"Shit," Sevika breathes, and turns the ignition.

"What is it?" Silco demands.

She jerks the gearstick. "Eramis."

"Ah."

Silco smiles.

There's the diversion. Right on schedule.

Sevika relays orders into the radio. The entourage rolls headlong into the fray. Silco, no longer smiling, keeps low in the seat. He'd anticipated that Eramis would retaliate to his township's takeover. That he's responded, so soon, with a show of force bodes well.

It means the bastard's rattled, and ripe for the picking.

Sevika, in her element, steers the entourage with ruthless efficiency. Over the radio, she raps a rapidfire succession of orders to the scouts, and relays a series of tactical maneuvers to the blackguards. Eramis' convoy is a dirty-dozen. Six motorcars are equipped with gun nests, and six semi-trucks are laden with canons.

A formidable force, if it weren't for one factor.

Sevika's own fleet has sevenfold the firepower. And, more importantly, she's got her finger on the pulse of Eramis' psyche.

"He's trying to pull a feint," she says, as she takes the first curve at full speed. "He knows his toys are no match for ours. He's planning something. I can feel it."

"So can I." Silco stares out into the jagged horizon. "The ravine's up ahead."

"He'll try to force us there with an arrowhead move, and pin us against the ridge. Then the trucks will roll in, and the canons will start blazing." Her face is set in grim concentration, and her hands move with the surety of oiled sprockets. "We'll split the caravan. Meet his charge with the first half, send the second half around. Box him in, and cut him down."

"Are the scouts prepped for the maneuver?"

"Stocked, locked, and ready."

"Then, by all means," Silco says, and his teeth cut bright as a blade in the dark. "Show him how it's done."

A third flare bursts overhead. In its brightness, the dimensions of the battle emerge. Eramis' troops, advancing steadily, have already breached the midway. As Sevika predicted, they are aimed for an arrowhead formation: six motorcars, at the vanguard, flanked by two semi-trucks. The canons, mounted atop the flatbeds, are armed and ready to rip.

Eramis himself will keep behind the convoy, in the biggest motorcar, until the battle's won. Then, the spoils will be his to collect, and the Ditch his to reclaim.

Except the spoils, and the Ditch, are already in the Eye's safekeeping.

The only thing waiting for Eramis is the long drop—and the short stop.

Sevika calls the entourage into formation. The two four-wheelers, armored and bristling, ride shotgun. The ten scouts, on the bikes, veer out, circling to form a blockade. The remaining entourage, zooming towards the arrowhead, cuts the distance in two.

As the gap shrinks, Eramis' troops open fire.

Machine-gun blasts rip through the night. The scouts, zigzagging across the plains, dodge the barrage with practiced ease. From their holsters, they unload, not gunfire but canisters, which they toss at the approaching motorcars. A shower of smoke pours from the canisters, and a thick miasma of smog rolls forth. The arrowhead, blinded, slows and stutters, losing momentum.

The blackguards, from the motorcars, make their move. Riding with the wind at their backs, they, too, split off and peel towards the arrowhead. Eramis' troops, struggling through the smoke, fire wildly. The air lights up. Bullets strike off the armor-plated cars. Divots ping against reinforced glass and alloyed chrome.

The entourage is undeterred.

With a surge of tremendous speed, the motorcars barrel forward. Then, at the last moment, they trifurcate into a three-pronged charge. One, a split-second ahead, veers sharply to the left. The second, at the rear, swerves hard to the right. The third, in the middle, plows forward, and drives the arrowhead broadside.

Gunfire cuts a wedge into the enemy's charge, and drives a spike through the core.  Eramis' troops, blindsided by the assault, struggle to hold their ground. Sparks fly and metal groans. The arrowhead becomes a sloppy arc, swinging wildly to and fro. Three of Eramis' motorcars begin fishtailing, then flipping, end over end, into the smoke. A truck skids to dodge the wreckage, and the canons, tipping with their weight, tear loose from their bindings. The vehicle tumbles, wheels-over-axels, and crashes into the dirt. The remaining three motorcars, screeching to a halt, are swallowed by the smog.

Meanwhile, the second prong of the entourage has circled around. It begins closing, by degrees, for the rear. The third, too, is closing in, from the opposite direction. As the smoke begins to clear, Eramis' troops find themselves pinned. Trapped by the wreckage and the Eye's encroaching riders, panic sets in. Retreat would be the sensible choice.

Eramis, tragically, is not a sensible man.

The remaining four semi-trucks, lagging behind the convoy, begin rolling full-tilt into the melee. Their canons, fully-operational, swivel and aim into the eye of the storm. With a deafening BOOM, the sky erupts. The force of the explosion splits the airwaves into a thousand screaming fragments. A  fireball rockets into the fray. The impact is a cataclysmic shockwave.

The Eye's entourage is thrown into disarray. One of the motorcars skids with a metallic screech, and rolls onto its side. A second, flipping, smashes head-on into the smoking hulk of Eramis' downed semi. The third, veering, narrowly misses a collision with a jutting boulder.  Three scouts, caught in the blast, are flung from their bikes. They land in the dirt, only to be crushed under the wheels of Eramis' advancing trucks.

Cursing, Sevika wrestles the wheel. Flaming spiders of debris pinball off the Humvee's windshield. A strip of metal, long as a broadsword, caroms off the hood and embeds itself in the asphalt. Silco braces himself against the dash. His ears are plugged as if with cotton. All he can hear is a high-pitched aria.

The curving sky beyond the glass is red with fire.

In her seat, Sevika stays centered. She's seen this scale of devastation before, and dished out worse. The canonfire is nasty, but its underlying impetus is a dead giveaway: Eramis has no clue what he's doing.

His only recourse is to run the field red. And take anyone and everyone down with him.

"Bastard," Sevika says, and floors it.

Tires shriek, and the Humvee shoots forward like earthbound lightning.  The road ahead, a patchwork of craters, is an obstacle course. But Sevika doesn't slow. She weaves, darts, and dodges, taking the terrain like a rampaging juggernaut.

When the chips are down, she's the best damn driver in the Fissures.

Over the radio, she shouts for the remaining troops to fall in. The second and third prongs of the entourage, shaken by the blast, regroup to surround her.  One, two, three, four, and they're rolling hot. The motorcars, pocked with scorchmarks, are still operational. The four-wheelers, similarly singed, have the treads to weather the worst. The surviving seven scouts have revved their bikes and are closing the gap.

"They're reloading for a second blast," Sevika shouts over the radio. "Don't give them the chance."

A chorus of affirmatives crackles over the line.

Silco keeps a steady grip on the dashboard. The road unspools beneath the tires. The night's clogged with fumes. But his adrenaline is redlined, and with it comes an absolute clarity of purpose: the cold-edged readiness for the kill.

The four semi-trucks, bearing down on them, are a wall of steel, with armor-plated grilles, battering-ram fronts and spike-studded chasers. Their canons, pouring smoke, are swiveling into position.

In Silco's own crosshairs falls a dinged-up Model T, fishtailing badly on its rightmost tread. It stays well back, behind the semi-trucks, and seems content to hang in the periphery. The glass is tinted and there are armed gunmen crouched on built-in platforms at either side of the hood. The passenger's an unknown quantity, but Silco recognizes the flashy gold-plated ornament winking on the bonnet: a gaudy pair of brass knuckles.

Eramis' calling card.

"Sevika," Silco says.

"I see the swine."

"Our priority target. The rest are window-dressing."

"Window-dressing with a side of canonfire."

"I've got a plan."

Sevika's eyes, in the rearview, cut him a glance. "Is it a good one?"

His lips tug, and Silco feels the smile down to the bone. "It will be."

Sevika listens to his terse instructions, and nods. With a flick of the radio switch, she passes the order along. 

The bikes, zigzagging in formation, break off from the Humvee's flank, and close the gap with the trucks. The canons, reloading, pivot to keep the bikes within their sightlines. Their artillery shells are the size of beer kegs, and the blast radius could level a railway. If the bikes get caught in the crossfire, they'll be obliterated.

"Stay tight," Sevika orders on the radio, "and keep a bead on the canons."

The bikes, in response, fan out, and close the gap further. They're a whirr of black chrome and flashing silver, their riders hunched low. The canons, tracking them, prepare to launch the second salvo. Sevika, watching through the rearview, grits her teeth.

"That's it," she mutters. "Just a little more..."

The canons' barrels swivel. A series of sharp clicks sound, as the mechanism locks. The gunners, braced, prepare to fire.

The scouts, a split-second in advance, make their move.

As one, they break formation, streaking off in separate directions. Reaching into their jackets, they lob a volley of little black spheres, which strike the semi-trucks with a resounding series of pings.  Each sphere is the size of a peach pit, and the surface is studded with tiny beads. As the spheres make contact, they burst, and a dark sticky webbing explodes from the center, adhering to the truck's wheels.

In an instant, the webbing solidifies, and the treads are locked into place. With a jolt, the semi-trucks lose traction. The canons, locked in position, are thrown off-balance—and wildly off-target. One truck swerves on its axis, and smashes broadside into the adjacent one. Its own cannons, ripped from their bindings, fly loose and pinwheel in a massive crunch of metal and sparks. The third truck, struggling to break, rams its cab into the wreckage. The canon arcs high and ejects a premature round. The shell, careening skyward, belches a rainbow of sizzling sparks.

"Now!" Sevika orders.

The bikes, dispersing, fall clear as the canons' artillery shell drops and detonates in mid-air—a moon-white zit swelling to swallow the stars. The concussion shears the night into pieces. The Deadlands are swallowed by a searing white light. As the heat washes over the plains, the air itself seems to liquify.

Silco's fingers, folded into Sevika's good ones, are the only anchor.

Her cybernetic handstays locked on the wheel. The Humvee's course is locked straight and steady.  As the blast ripples and ebbs into a distinct stink of ozone, the road resolves once more. The enemy's trucks are a wreckage enrobed in flames. Their canons are smoking hulks. The scout's bikes are circling in a tight formation, and the men, unharmed, are riding high.

All that guards Eramis' Model-T is one lone semi-truck.

Its treads are gummed up with the scouts' webbing. But its canons are intact. And the gunners, though shaken, are scrabbling along the flatbed, and struggling to reload a fresh round of shells.

The Humvee's wheels, spitting gravel, barrel straight ahead.

"Silco," Sevika says, and squeezes his hand before letting go. "In the back."

"The back?"

"Jinx. She left it there."

"Left what?"

"A parting gift." Her eyes lock on his in the rearview. "She must've stashed it, before she sailed off. I saw it in the backseat, when I went looking for you. Maybe she figured you'd need it."

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Silco turns, and reaches to the rear. His fingers grope blindly along the upholstery, until he finds the compartment beneath the backseat. Inside is a small wooden crate. It's wrapped, tightly, in canvas, and there's a note scrawled, in Jinx's unmistakably loopy handwriting.

Semper Paratus

XOXO

Silco pops the crate's lid. Inside, nestled on a bed of straw, are stacks of grenades. Chemical aerosols, shockwaves, incendiaries. And, a few rows down, the real gem: a trio of Chompers.  They're hand-tooled beauties, each with a detachable detonator that, at the squeeze of a button, will unleash a payload of barbed-wire shrapnel at a wounding radius of forty feet.

Silco chooses the biggest, and holds it up to the light. The canister's spraypainted with blue and pink stripes. The clockwork mechanism is crafted into a shark's pointy-toothed grin.

Silco's own grin threatens to split his face in half.

It's a as real as the risk. Real as the battle beyond. Real as the bloodied heart of Zaun waiting in the wings. 

Real as the girl who, wherever she goes, will always have his back.

"Sevika," he says.

"What?"

"Cut in close. I'm going to need a clear shot."

"Like hell," she says, not breaking her stride. "You stick your head out the window, they'll rip it clean off."

"I've no plans to stick my head out."

"Then where—"

"Eramis." He holds up the Chomper. "He deserves the honors."

It takes a moment for Sevika to catch on. When she does, a smile carves the stone of her features. Then, her hands a blur on the wheel, she cuts a hard left.  The Humvee accelerates to the head of the pack. The rest of the entourage follows, kicking up a roostertail of dust. Over the radio, Sevika issues her last orders.

"Blackguards," she raps, "engage. Scouts, with me."

As one, they blaze down the road.

Ahead, the sole remaining truck is struggling to regain traction. The treads are still gummed up. The axels are grinding, and the engine's whining at top pitch. But their artillery, as Sevika advances, is slotting into place. At a hundred yards equidistant, Eramis' Model-T is well out of range. But for the first time, the passenger window is rolled down. There's an unmistakable rotund silhouette peeking out at the advancing storm.  His guards, at the front, are already priming their weapons.

His cannons, finally reloaded, swivel and aimed square.  

"Ready?" Sevika calls.

Silco steadies himself against the seat. "Floor it."

Sevika veers left. The Humvee, swinging hard, cuts a diagonal, and closes the gap with the Model-T. Three scouts, in close pursuit, form a barricade at each flank. The rest of the entourage, in a V-formation, zoom straight for the truck. From beneath the chassis of each motorcar, a row of  cartridge ejectors emerges. Each is mounted with a nozzle, trigger, and a set of canisters.

"Blackguards," Sevika orders, "on my mark."

The canons hum. The blackguards' trajectory is a perfect bullseye.

"Fire."

The motorcars, in unison, unleash their payload. A thick cloud, acid green, spews from the nozzles and billows over the battlefield. Spreading, it envelopes the semi-truck in a haze. It is not the same smog the scouts used earlier to blind their foes. Rather, it's a concoction of potent Fissure gas and nitrous oxide that, in high concentrations, can induce delirium, dizziness, and, if not treated promptly, a long and lingering narcosis.

Both Jinx and Silco have used it: twice, to great effect.

That Sevika—both times—was the target only lends the moment an extra-personal piquancy.

The haze engulfs the semi-truck. The gunners, clinging to the flatbed, cough and cough. They cannot man the cannons. They cannot aim at their targets. They cannot even breathe. Their faces go bright-red, then purple. Their bodies, convulsing, drop like dominoes. A split-second later, the blackguards converge on the truck. As the last man falls, they disembark, masked and armed, and storm the flatbed. Their boots thunder across the metal, and their war-whoops fill the air.

Silco hears none of it.

All his attention is funneling into the distant speck of the Model-T until it swells to fill the glass. Sevika's foot is jammed hard on the gas. The Humvee leaps like a bucking bronco down the mythic Shuriman plains. At its flanks, the scouts keep pace. They are a tight, cohesive unit. Their bikes, like the spokes of a wheel, revolve around a single fixed point.

The Eye and his hand-delivered retribution.

Eramis' guards have already opened fire. The .50 caliber slugs, ripping through the night, land helter-skelter. Bullets zip off the Humvee's enforced plating, and drill small craters into the fender. The scouts, on either side, swerve and spin to evade the strafing. One bullet ricochets off a scout's helmet but doesn't penetrate, a tiny spiderwebbing of cracks fanning across the polycarbonate. Another, zinging past the rearguard, clips a second scout in the shin. He fishtails, but manages to regain control.

The Humvee is undeterred. Sevika keeps a deathgrip on the wheel. Beneath her boot, the accelerator is flush with the floor. The Model-T, with Eramis inside, is a hundred feet away. Then fifty. Then thirty. Then it's there.

Behind the glass, Eramis' face is a ballooning white moon. His eyes are the size of planets. He is howling like a madman.

Sevika relays the signal over the radio.

"Scouts," she shouts. "Break off."

The bikes, as one, peel off the Humvee's flanks. As they do, Sevika yanks the wheel hard right. The Humvee, braking, slides at an angle. Grit fans out. Tires shriek. The rear, jackknifing, cuts a precise U-turn. The momentum sends the guards tumbling over like bowling pins. Their guns go flying. Their bodies roll across the gravel. An unlucky few catch the full brunt of the Humvee's weight, and are crushed underfoot.

As the dust settles, the Humvee is poised, nose-to-nose, with the Model-T.

The two vehicles are separated by mere feet.

The scouts, circling, blockade the spaces in between. Each one is poised on their bike, guns leveled. They are prepared, at a moment's notice, to mow down any survivors.

In the Model-T, Eramis is still howling. His face is a mottled caricature of terror. 

The Humvee's door swings open. Silco slinks out, and steps into the descending silence.

The air is clogged with the stink of cooked rubber and creosote. The moon, cutting its delicate incision through the clouds, unveils a scene of utter carnage. The six motorcars are reduced to flaming heaps. The semi-trucks, gutted and overturned, are a twist of mangled metal. Men are laid out in coffins of hardpacked dirt. Others, twitching feebly, are trapped inside the wreckage.

The final count will be a body-bag or a dozen.

Beyond the perimeter, blackguards, rifles poised, are securing the perimeter. They've already disarmed the straggling guards. The men, cowed, are being lined up against the hoods of their mauled vehicles. The few blackguards wounded in the fray are being hauled off to the medick's vehicle.

In the space of twenty minutes, the battle is done.

Silco takes a savoring breath.  It is a moment of rare serenity, before the next inevitable wave of violence.

But he's ready to meet it—and mete out worse.

With a measured tread, he approaches the Model-T. The windshield is a warped distortion of the smoke-scudded horizon. Behind the glass, Eramis is petrified. A pistol—gold-plated—is brandished in his meaty grip. The safety's off, but the barrel's too shaky to present a real threat.

It's the last showoffishish bluff of a man who's been beaten, and knows it.

"Eramis," Silco says. "Hello."

[dot-mp3]

how much time do hogwarts students get between classes? imagine u have divination first period and then potions second period. ur little button up wearin ass has to go from breakfast in the great hall, up about 8 stories worth of stairs??immediately after slamming a bowl of porridge??? and then after class u have to traverse down the same 8 stories, plus a few extra to get to the dungeons??? what if ur third period class is on the 7th floor? plus u just know snape was one of those ‘the bell doesn’t dismiss u, i do’ type of teachers. is there a spell equivalent to an inhaler??? bc my asthmatic ass wouldn’t survive all these fuckin stairs

[dykedvonte]

I just realized some people are confused about events in the alluded to past in Mouthwashing, particularly about how long the crew has been working together.

The only person who is truly new is Daisuke and it’s why his dynamic with the crew and role in the story is very unique and somewhat distant. Curly didn’t just get Jimmy this job on the Tulpar, he got him the job with the Pony Express. He’s been his copilot for probably a couple of years but still not as long as they’ve been friends. None of them are new with the freight industry, Anya and Swansea especially have been doing this for years, together.

Jimmy is the newest on the regular crew, maybe just a few assignments, but it’s not his first time working with them. I think it’s just something important because this isn’t just one bad mistake that snowballed with giving Jimmy the job. None of them thought Jimmy would do anything, no matter how off-put by him they could’ve been, since he hadn’t done a thing since being there. Generally unpleasantness isn’t a crime and he’d be aware of that.

It was a festering thing and a sort of forced trust they had to give him that he knowingly took advantage of. He was the black sheep and still a wolf under the wool. He expected when he lashed out, that he had been there long enough for it to be looked over completely. Got too comfortable in the space he inserted into and did a lot of damage with his claws when he felt he was going to get shaken out.

[lesbianredhoodedmercenary]

happy father's day i'm thinking about this outis line again

I always thought it was a bit out of pocket considering this isn't too long after the events of Canto III, even with how Outis was being harsher this Canto.

But I then I remembered that Outis' son is the same age as Sinclair.

Her son, who thinks that she died in the Smoke War (the in universe equivalent to the Trojan War as depicted in the Iliad and the Odyssey) because she hasn't been home in years. Her son who cannot cry out to her. And her son, who is currently in much the same position as Sinclair regarding his self-perception and ability to fight, as Telemachus refers to himself as "a weakling knowing nothing of valor" (Book 2 of the Odyssey, line number and exact wording depend on translation).

I think this line reflects more on Outis and her anxieties about her family thinking that she's dead, as well as a reference to Telemachus experiencing his own journey to manhood, much like Sinclair.

I think there's also things to be said for the parallels between Sinclair and Telemachus, even just the ones imagined by Outis. Hell's Chicken had her showing a very paternal worry over his diet (raise your hand if your dad has ever said you'll be short forever if you don't eat right). Overall, even though Sinclair and Telemachus only share the bones of a coming of age narrative, Outis is seeing connections there because she misses her family.

As with this one. Again, she's showing her hand more than she means to. Though she's talking to Dongrang, I think she's also talking to herself. Trying to reassure herself that home will always be waiting. Dongrang, however, decides not to return, but to pursue glory no matter who he hurts in the process. The Odyssey also contrasts the pursuit of glory with the desire to return home. Odysseus has to choose humility in order to return.

Outis has been keeping up a careful persona around us, but it's slipping. Her desire to return home is seeping through even as she tries to assert herself by clinging to the glory from a war that's long since ended.

[bulundu]

Things could potentially change for me at work. Nervous. Throwing up and shitting myself. We shall see.

[risingsunresistance]

twitter is entering their "rts > likes" phase now that likes are private after they spent years calling us ungrateful for being demotivated by ratios lmao

[orcelito]

Did driving practice today. Actually did parallel parking practice this time, even tho I really didn't want to still. Finally got it into my head that I can maybe do this.

SO......

I have scheduled my driving test. For November 13th, 3 weeks from today.

[thethingything]

anyway I guess if we suddenly start posting stuff that's extra unhinged or sounding really frantic or not making much sense or whatever, that'll probably be the medication side effects.

I'm saying this in advance just in case because I know sometimes when our psychosis gets really bad we start saying weird shit to people and not being able to tell how weird any of it sounds but still freaking out thinking everything we say must sound completely insane and I also know that if we try to be like "I'm manic/experiencing this delusion/having a really bad psychotic episode" while in the middle of experiencing it, that mostly makes us freak out more because our paranoia makes us think everyone's about to shun us over it and we start to feel like we're in trouble for it

[the-kipsabian]

i need to sleep but im so fucking anxious god i wanna die

[fideidefenswhore]

@katherynparr

Buuuut …….. AB fans like Elizabeth Seymour 😂😂😂

how dare you tell me something that is true.

[reckless-rider]

Have you ever explained certain things to someone and they go "hey I think you have this thing?" Then you cannot stop thinking abt it, like you research it and your like haha I relate to those certain traits but surely I don't have that thing my friend was talking abt. But still the thought just doesn't leave

[samuraisharkie]

girl help I’m experiencing that common yet elusive late night motivation to get my life together knowing it will fall apart in the morning </3 girl fucking help me

[kneworder]

so tired of seeing 'don't blame x blame y' about losing this election like i'm just exhausted can we please focus on the part where 51% of the country voted for a fascist instead of finding new ways to blame and turn on each other

[comicaurora]

Hey, sorry if you’ve been asked this before, but I have ADHD and I’ve been following your comic for years and just now have started to write my own comic (partially because you really inspired me). But I’m really struggling with staying on the project even when it’s boring and getting myself to work on it in the first place. Do you have any tips on how to keep your brain invested or just to make yourself do the work at all?

I have excellent news, I literally just figured out something really important about this.

So when you're an ADHD kiddo or otherwise have difficulty staying on task in a structured environment where Task is the Priority, the main way people try to MAKE you stay on task is by removing your access to anything that is not The Task. No phone, no TV, no doodling, no going outside, etc. In practice, this just makes us miserable because it takes the boredom that's always simmering around a 2 or 3 and cranks it all the way up to 11. In the same way that you would have difficulty staying on task if you were in physical pain, this crushing existential monotony makes it very difficult to work. The work might get done simply because you have no other options, but it will not be done quickly or well, and it will take a while to recover from how much it hurt.

What I realized earlier this week is I caught myself doing this to myself. I had 42 pages of background colors to do, and I thought to myself "this sounds really tedious, but I suppose I have nothing better I can do." And I realized what I'd just thought, and got very alarmed.

Because back when I was an ADHD kiddo imprisoned by school scheduling and a million little factors that keep children immobile and restrained, I couldn't stop thinking about how big and exciting the world was, and how much I wanted to be anywhere but here. When I was feeling really crushed in I'd pick a random spot on the maps on my wall and just imagine being there instead of my bedroom. This was the impetus behind almost all of my creative energy. I've said it before - anything is a prison if you can't leave, and being in a prison makes it easy to imagine how amazing things could be outside of it. Aurora's initial worldbuilding was forged in the crucible of fifth grade misery. My enthusiasm for art and my creative drive are inextricable from my sense of wonder and yearning for excitement in the real world. Not escapism, but appreciation. Wonders unimaginable are out there, and I gain just as much joy seeking them out as I do conjuring them up in my head and sharing them with all of you.

So now that I'm a grown-up with actual freedom in every way I've been able to get, the idea that I was staying on task by making myself believe the world was small and not worth seeing was extremely alarming. It could keep me on task for an afternoon, but at the cost of slowly extinguishing the thing that made me want to make art in the first place - the hunger to experience and draw inspiration from all the myriad complexities in the world.

So what I've been doing is I've been purposefully and intentionally taking excursions whenever I catch myself thinking "I could take a break but it wouldn't be worth it, it's the same outdoors as always, I'll be uncomfy and unproductive and tired." Because that is never true. Every time I've put down the stylus and gone out, I've been renewed in one way or another, and when I come back to comfort fully recharged I get a lot of shit done. Because it is easier to work on anything if you remember why you wanted to make it in the first place, and it is self-defeating misery to just lock yourself in with it and tell yourself you're a bad person if you can't get it done.

I honestly don't know how widely applicable this is. I have worse wanderlust than anyone I know, so for me this has always been modeled as imprisonment vs freedom. I've also been extremely lucky to find myself in a profession that lets me set my own pace on literally everything I do. But I genuinely believe that when it comes to making art with ADHD, you need to give yourself freedom to move laterally, not just in the direction of obvious forward progress. We don't think linearly in any other part of our lives - art is no different.

[xinganhao]

👾 wonwoo x streamer!reader.

the one where wonwoo is pretty down bad for you, a popular streamer. headcanons under the cut.

👾 new save file ?

game start. getting in to you had been an accident, really. wonwoo already had a relatively established list of streamers that he followed and subscribed to, but then he saw a clip of you dominating as gangplank and he just had to check you out. he didn't even start with one of your streams; instead, he sifted through a couple of youtube video compilations until he found one that wasn't too long. just about fifteen minutes. he watched that— only to find himself watching another one, then another, then another.

wonwoo is roughly three hours and eleven videos deep when he concedes: okay, maybe he should check out one of your actual streams. these video compilations are just a taste of the real thing, and he already likes what he's seeing. sure, you could probably use a bit of work when it comes to fps games, but you're a menace in multiplayer online battle arenas. and you have some pretty cute rpg/life simulation game content, too. he can get behind that, he decides.

when wonwoo finally finds time to tune in to one of your streams, he's absolutely floored. all those clips of you don't do justice to the real thing. you're engaging without being overbearing; you manage your chat and your stream like a pro. what really gets him, though, is your voice. he adores the accent, the cadence of it. he's convinced he can listen to it all day. without much thought, he's already signed up to subscribe.

level one. he starts with watching your streams when he catches them. maybe he'll tune in specifically when he hears you're playing a game he's particularly in to, like when you tried your hand at stray. wonwoo pays about as much attention to you as he does with the rest of the other streamers/content creators that he follows.

but that voice. you're easy on the eyes, sure, but it's that voice that always seems to just reel him in. it gets to a point where wonwoo will sometimes have reruns of your stream playing in the background, if only because he likes the sound of you. he might be playing a game of his own or doing something entirely different— whatever it is, you're a muted drone that offers a semblance of company.

wonwoo realizes he may be a bit screwed when he realizes he's started looking forward to your bi-monthly streams. twice a month, you're slotted in to his busy schedule. if he can't catch you live, he'll watch the replay. wonwoo tries to convince himself it's a hyperfixation; a passing thing, one that he just has to get out of his system.

check point. except it decidedly isn't a hyperfixation, because three years later, wonwoo is still subscribed, still racing to catch any and all of your streams. it's not something that the public is particularly privy to; it's one thing for wonwoo to be a fan of pro gamers and a completely other thing for him to be simping for a streamer. the boys all have varying levels of awareness as to why wonwoo is always glued to his phone on the first friday of each month, or where some of his hard-earned money goes— but, for the most part, this is just his.

this, as in you. mingyu is constantly exasperated about it, though it's something of a small and simple truth at this point: jeon wonwoo is a fanboy, and you are the object of his affections. you, with your comforting streams, your insightful commentary, your stellar gameplay. you give the idol a taste of his medicine. he understands, though you, what it means to be just a little delusional and parasocial.

mingyu is always saying that wonwoo ought to make a move, ought to make himself known. the truth? wonwoo is fine with this. he's not sure he even wants to meet you, if he's honest. he's okay with watching from afar, with the illusion of unattainability. there's already dozens of factors piled up against him to begin with. he's not about to complicate things, to hope for more.

wonwoo is happy to donate, to send you gifts, to participate as the nameless and faceless gam3bo1woo in your chat. he's happy to watch your streams, to see you grow in to yourself as a creator; to fail and get back up again, to succeed every so often. this is enough, he thinks to himself time and time again. you're already being selfish as is. this is all we can have, wonwoo, and it's enough. — ... right?

[maxwellatoms]

They left me no choice.

The animation industry is an absolute trash fire right now, and TBH... I don't think it's going to recover. Not in a form I recognize, anyway.

I could go on all day about the self-hating monster that is the Animation Business, but I've said it all before. Right now, none of the major studios are making much of anything, and almost all of what they are making is "library content". I'm currently doing storyboard revisions alongside a number of other former producers and directors, and I'm lucky to have the work. Once all of the mismanagement and the mergers get sorted, though, there should be plenty of room for more mismanagement and mergers. And the A.I. Don't forget the A.I.

It seems that I either give myself over fully to the souring corporate teat in the hopes that I can pretend that I still live in a world where "the grind" matters. Or I take a risk and make one big push to do... something.

First up:

Billy & Mandy vs. The Entertainment Industry:

This is my interview/reality/documentary show on the making of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy from stem to stern. I'll be talking to as many people as I can who worked on the show about all sorts of different parts of the process. We'll definitely get to voice actors, but the first segment is probably going to be about Billy & Mandy's pre-history and the Big Pick Weekend.

The Upward Expedition:

This is my pick for my indie show. I have a bible. I have a decade of ideas. Time to sit down and tell a story. I want to get some screen sharing going at some point. I'll definitely share artwork as well as the trials and tribulations of getting from There to Back Again.

I'd love to get a Discord server going and provide a place where people can talk about the stuff I'm making (and the entertainment industry in general). I still have enough Billy & Mandy swag left that I'm sure I'll factor that stuff in as well.

In the immediate future, the funding goes to securing a space to do the interviews and probably to banking money for voice actors. I'm still deciding on my update schedule, but it should start in earnest next week.

I'm excited. Pretty scared... but also excited.

More updates to come. Definitely let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to see on the Patreon!

As always, thanks for sticking around!