Hate's Iron Heart

So sothacid and I are back from visiting my parents. The trip was wonderfully relaxing, and I came home with a head full of ideas (mostly for Lament, but not all of them) and a chipper disposition (and also took my first ever ride in a taxi on the way home, because nuts to lugging around three full suitcases and a pair of backpacks over a half-to-full-dozen blocks). My parents are doing great--especially my dad, who's lost 70+ pounds, quite visible to anyone who saw/met him at the wedding--and enjoyed learning to play Arkham Horror. When we got back to Reno, most of the snow had, melted, too!

All this and we're back early enough to hit up the D&D thingy our campus club is hosting tomorrow. Piotra will bite all the mans!

Good trip, yo.

This morning I awoke to three e-mails in my box which assumed I was someone named "Lee" based out of Greensboro, NC. They wanted me to join the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce. I politely mailed back and noted that they would want to verify the address used, since if it's going to my box it sure ain't goin' to whomever signed up for their thingy.

The person who wrote me back was very polite and appreciative, although they wanted to know about my business. Since 1) I live on the opposite side of the country from the city of my birth and 2) I'm stuck in frickin' retail, it was kind of a weird question.

I guess that's better than the time someone kept sending me architecture specs. Wonder if it's the same guy they were trying to talk to (WRITE YOUR ADDRESS MORE CLEARLY, DOOFUS).

A set of prayers native to the Holy Order of Saint McGruder, AKA the Umerim Order that Pip's a member of (there's quite a few in the Umerim faith, considering how many saints they have floating around, but the Knights Ricardus, Mysterians, and Ladies of the Feather are the only ones who've been named yet, and I have no idea what the LoF even do). For the uninitiated, or those who simply can't keep up with the mountains of worldbuilding sothacid and I churn out each week, the Gruderians are teachers, protectors, and undead hunters who are famous for developing their own martial art. The Gruderians are also responsible for running the Inquisition, which exists to try and determine the difference between a valid splinter group and a bunch of dangerous cultist crazies, and is also responsible for punching people in the berries if they try to use Umerim doctrine for decidedly uncool purposes. They do, indeed, kick ass for the Lord.

Umerimaiy itself is sort of like Deist Christianity and sort of like Santeria and sort of a lot of things; it's a monotheistic faith with a possession-by-otherworldly-divine-beings bent that's generally pretty easygoing and interested in making the world a better place, but still has tons of weird religious paraphernalia. UMER is viewed as a loving parent who pushed the Big Bang button and has been watching all the different sentient species work their way up from unicellular creatures, though is often too busy trying to fix bugs in the universe to be able to directly intervene. Ever wondered how to transpose the concept of "created in God's image" when your fictional world has dozens of sentient species? I have, and that's why I can remember the history of multiple imaginary religious figures (you in the back, I heard that) and not where I left my car keys.

So without further ado, here's some stuff I wrote, in all its unedited glory.

Invocation of Righteous Wrath

Lord who is God, whom we call UMER with our worldly throats, I say to You that I must do the Work with great rage this day. Do not protect me from my anger, O God, but aid me in enduring it; I must master fury so that I have the strength to destroy and correct, but I must strive to never drown in my wrath. Let me burn when I must burn and remain cold when I must remain cold. I need no protection from my anger, but grant me the wisdom to know when I am forgetting the nature of joy, for my efforts are naught but impotent flailing if I cannot delight in the world which You have given Your children.

Invocation of Studious Mind

Lord who is God, whom we call UMER with our worldly throats, I say to You that I must do the Work with clear thoughts this day. Do not protect me from my doubt, O God, but aid me in understanding it; I must be cautious and skeptical to excise mistruths from the world, but I must strive to never become entirely blinded by disbelief. Let me study when I must study and be still when I must be still. I need no protection from my doubt, but grant me the wisdom to know when I am forgetting the nature of joy, for my efforts are naught but impotent flailing if I cannot delight in the world which You have given Your children.

Greater Prayer of Saint McGruder

UMER, my Lord God, creator of the heavens and the earth and all that lies above and below and within and without them, I beseech You hear my requests for guidance: guide my hand that I may pull away obstructions, guide my tongue that it may speak only truths, guide my thoughts that I may know and remember, and guide my heart that I remember to delight in the Work. As You are the teacher of the stars and the stones, allow me to teach Your children more of the world which we were granted in the moment of Creation. Let me bring to the world wonder at Your works in their infinite mystery, and wonder at the works of Your children in their fathomless complexity, and wonder at the ways that both are so very like one another. Let me clean the earth of those who should rest but do not, for they are either trapped and in need of succor or seeking to cause harm to Your children; give me the strength to lay them to rest once more. Mine is a heavy burden of knowledge and vigilance, O God, and my back bends nearly double, but I know none labor as tirelessly as You. Grant me the will to be like You in thought and deed. Grant me the love to continue the Work. Show me my flaws that I might correct them, for though no one soul is perfect, it is right to strive to be as God.

Lesser Prayer of Saint McGruder

O God, keep me from killing these idiots before I’m done teaching them.*

* No, really, the Lesser Prayer is actually in their prayerbooks. Saint Chester McGruder was kind of irritable at times, even after being martyred.

Finally, a lovely quote from drinky_lemur on how skepticism can encourage folks to be better people: "The value of anything measured against an infinity of nothing is priceless."

And here he is:



One of these days I'll learn not to have lots of little hair tufties on anything I plan to mask out and digitalize. One of these days.

I was also planning on giving him an additional sweatband on his tail, but completely forgot about it before I signed the pencilwork. As I have a little rule for myself that the only thing I can do to signed work is A) digitally edit it or B) erase stray pencil, it'll have to wait for another day.

CHECK OUT THIS WICKED SWEET UNICORN YOU GUYS

This is what it says on the tin: pencil drawings I did last week during two different Dungeons and Dragons sessions (two different editions, even, and nuts to the haters of either). They are a little bit big so behind a cut with them!
( No, really, they are kind of large. )

Both pictures have gray/blurry sections near the left side because a Levels layer can only do so much for scanning from a spiral-bound sketchbook, and since we're dealing with pencils I can't just go nuts with the white point and midtones. Darnit!

Still to be drawn are my Changeling character and the chieftain of my Mordheim warband, who may or may not be wearing a beer hat.

Last week sothacid and I went to a little pocket-sized convention on campus name of Shadows. While there was a lot of eye-rolling stuff there (ever seen an entire room of people do the Carameldansen thing at the same time? it's pretty freakin' creepy), we met the folks in the local game club, which has been scrabbling around trying to combine with the local chapter of the Camarilla (yes, the LARP thing) in the name of better numbers for funding, plus trying to get more people into the hobby. Sort of a Future DMs of America thing.

I've now probably got three different games a week set up (D&D 3.5, maaaybe D&D 4e, and Changeling: the Lost which I have wanted to tabletop so bad). We've made some cool new friends, are actually getting out of the house, and are scratching a pen-and-paper itch we've had for months. sothacid might even get to run that Paranoia game he's wanted to later on!

Expect to hear way too much about my characters in the future.

We were actually plotting how best to host games in our apartment, from setting up a smokers' deck to getting places for everyone to sit to cooking burgers on the grill.

This makes having to get a tow on my way to work Friday morning practically trivial in comparison! I'm adapting surprisingly well to waking up at 6:45 and working through noon (and did pretty decently aside from one horribly busy day in which I kind of wanted to hide in the bathroom and cry a little). I'll now work about 27.5 hours a week, give or take a few due to scheduling, and will actually be making enough cash to cover the rent again. We still have savings in the bank and a certain someone has been scraping together resources for his SMART paperwork, so things are looking up.

Week summary: SURPRISINGLY AWESOME

So this evening I realized that I'd never actually laid down Obayana's color scheme. One pencil doodle and some Photoshop later, this popped out. Some of you have already seen this dude else-Internet, but not everyone visits that particular den of iniquity regularly (or at all), so here he is for you fine people. I'm really getting my money's worth out of the Polygonal Lasso and masking tools.



King Obayana, Lord of the Mountain, has lost his shirt. Where did it go? What's over there? What's in the goblet? Nobody knows.

His torso is supposed to be that long, which means I have to put effort into drawing him misproportioned; he has nipples but no navel because being biologically confusing is fun. The fluffy thing on the tip of his tail (not pictured) is the same white as his hair. I've yet to draw a size reference of him with Tasha, but he's a bit over a time and a half her height when comfortably reared up, sitting around the 9-9.5' mark.

I totally slacked off on his hands and dreads here. My coloring is still kind of blowful, but I think I'm juuust so slightly improving.

Not entirely sure who/what I'll draw next, but they'll probably get the CG treatment, too!

This evening we were visited by a dog.

It started with sothacid going to fetch the laundry, as he'd noticed his grandpa-samurai robe was pretty stinky and figured a few more clothes in the wash couldn't hurt. A big black smooth-coated dog with white patches on his neck and chest bounded up to him; he had a collar on (the dog, not my husband) and was really friendly, waiting outside the laundry building while Cid pushed clothes into the basket. The dog--we called him "Buddy" for lack of a better name--had no tags on his collar but we'd both seen him before on one of the back streets near our apartment.

When Cid got to the door, he poked his head in and announced, "Look what I've got!" He was immediately followed by a bounding Buddy, who wanted to run around the living room and smell me and thankfully didn't knock anything over or pee anywhere. Buddy is a really big dog: he's about the size of a German shepherd but a lot wirier, with great big puppy feet, so when he throws his weight around he really throws his weight around. We shooed him outside and decided to go walk around the nearby houses asking if anyone had lost a pet.

Trying to walk Buddy was an experience: we don't have a leash since we don't have any pets, so the only way we could really walk him was to either A) let him run around like a spaz on his own (easier, but he risked getting into the street or barreling through the goathead spike-plant patch by the parking lot again; we had to pull spikes out of three of his feet) or B) grab onto his collar and pray. For a while I had to straddle this beastie and be dragged along, hoping I wasn't choking him. Even Cid had trouble, and Cid is built like a cement mixer.

We walked up and down a bit, knocking on doors and asking if anyone at the incredibly loud party at the Knights of Pythias building had brought a pet, but found no leads. We opted to put out some warm water for him and let him run around outside; he disappeared while we were filling the Tupperware for him, so we mentioned Buddy to some neighbors we saw relaxing outside and came home. Cid wasn't sure about calling Animal Control yet because he was worried that they might separate Buddy from his family, and since Buddy has no tags and there's no way for us to tell if he's chipped, he might disappear that way.

We hope he finds his family soon! He's a great dog and was fun to be around, even if he's way too active for our apartment.

I am waiting on a phone call before I leave for work. At the time of this posting, there's about three hours to go.

I am very, very excited.

Details forthcoming (and some of you already know what I'm talking about).

In other news, I really need to write more, and not just for Lament. Not that I dislike writing for Lament or anything, but I have so much in my head that just isn't on paper or kilobytes that it's kind of disconcerting.

EDIT: It's done. My interview is at 10 AM on Friday with Sierra Science, business casual, need to bring my design portfolio(!). They gave me a callback literally hours after I sent off my cover letter and resume yesterday; apparently I went to work and suddenly the phone rang. The minimum hourly wage is 33% higher than what I get right now, and if it's anywhere close to full-time then I can actually pay all of our bills without dipping into the savings account, and we might even be able to start saving for the future or having a little bit of an entertainment fund again.

Doesn't hurt that phoenixalpha has been talking about maybe commissioning me for some stuff again.

I am still so excited, you guys.

First off, sothacid is okay now. We were able to get into the HAWC low-income clinic as a walk-in to get the work he needed done done, and walked out with a bill we can actually comfortably pay.

It started yesterday, when I came home from work: he was standing near my usual parking slot, so close that I jumped in surprise when I got out of the car, and informed me that he was very glad I was home because one of his wisdom teeth had broken.

Apparently he was just doing some routine cleaning (being concerned about his dental hygiene in recent weeks due to a case of "stinktooth" where another wisdom tooth was emerging) when "a gray and white chunk" just fell out of his mouth, pretty much exactly like one of those anxiety dreams where your teeth peel away like layers of an onion or crumble like clay. This was hours before I came home; he told me it didn't really hurt, and if there had actually been serious pain he would've called me at work.

So we gather up the required documents (my three most recent pay stubs, proof of address, everyone's photo ID, plus a marriage license just in case since we have different last names and my pay stubs only account for single insurance coverage), looked up directions, and prepared for today. He wrote to his professor that he wouldn't be attending her class today on account of dental emergency, we were woken up bright and early by somebody's car alarm, and we called ahead to be sure all our information was correct.

The place was pretty easy to find. I brought Perdido Street Station, he brought Cryptonomicon; when in unfamiliar waiting rooms there's no reason to mess around when it comes to entertaining oneself for potentially hours at a time. He filled out the required paperwork (some of which he didn't need, as apparently the dentists use different forms from the doctors and aren't as concerned regarding when your last tetanus shot was) and we spoke with one of the processing ladies, who seemed very tired but also grateful that we said "please" and "thank you" and had all our assorted identification. We got our sliding-scale card and off we went.

The waiting room for the clinic was divided into halves: one side for medical, one side for dental. He checked in and filled out more paperwork (this took a few stages), and we watched The Incredibles on the monitor while waiting our turn. This didn't take too long. He was able to be seen some time around the Parrs' family meal, and came back out while Bob and Edna were discussing capes.

They extracted the entire thing. He's spitting a lot of blood, talking like a drunk fratboy, and is having to restrain the urge to poke at the hole, but he's doin' alright, all things considered. He didn't like me suggesting a tiny crab-claw cracker for extraction purposes, though. We then went shopping for a new coffee press and some birthday presents.

And that is the amazing tale of how sothacid was reduced to three wisdom teeth.

http://www.tijuanaflats.com/index.php

While it might be more enjoyable when not trying to wake up other people in the same house, you better believe I hit the "off" button on their music player with a furious passion.

"Rock Out with Your Guac Out." Classy!

Also of note is their hot sauce section.

I really wish I could sleep.

I'm hell of restless, despite waking up at a surprisingly reasonable hour this morning, so I've been screwing around in Photoshop.



Most of that stylishness is the font's doing, though I did spend a little while cleaning it up with a generic round brush. It's not perfect by a long shot, but I daresay I would wear a more polished version of this on a shirt or something.

I may do a Gloriaster version later or something.

EDIT:


Yeah, that looks okay, I guess.

DOUBLE EDIT:

Snakes alive but those colors look washed out on the laptop screen...

sothacid left about ten minutes ago for his work-study interview. After that comes his first day of classes (today it's Organic Chemistry, German, then the Organic Chemistry lab). I packed him most of a lunch--I wasn't sure about the entree while assembling it, which we decided this morning would be creamed corn with cubed, fried Spam--and wrote DO NOT EAT: CONTAINS POISON on it with marker after worrying people might giggle at me putting his name on it. He puts my name on my lunches, so...

I'm really excited for him! He's been getting fidgety the last few weeks with no class or work (aside from kgb_ stuff) to keep him occupied. We've also got my mom's old Organic Chemistry notes from when she was in school for reference.

Today's chores for myself: tidy kitchen, put things in dishwasher, put away laundry, doodle. Exactly what I'm going to draw I don't know yet, but I owe nornagest and kuniopt stuff, I've yet to draw my current Lament character, and various Varkhilm sorts have been crowding my head and putting their feet on the furniture, so there's plenty to choose from.

It's so damn weird being up before 10, but it'll be better for me in the long run. Less chance of tossing and turning all night because I'm not tired yet!

Also to do today, maybe: start rereading Lords and Ladies, since it's been years and I've already chewed through Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad. Once we finally run out of Pratchett I have no idea what I'm going to do; even money is on finishing Perdido Street Station or taking a shot at Cryptonomicon again.

So what's up with you, Internet?

It's that time again!


( Come on in, it ain't no sin. )

It's not a paying job, more of a portfolio-builder, but it's something.

It's a six-page self-contained story with original characters; sothacid and I decided on the story this evening (did we decide how a longer story arc using the same setting would end? OF COURSE WE DID), which I then wrote up and converted to script format, and I just now finished doing the page thumbnails. The actual art will likely take much longer, as aside from the fact that I have to cut the Bristol to proper comic size I'm going to be inking these using my hand-tone method, which will take damn near forever. But it'll look so good when it's finished!

Leaning towards hand-lettering for now, since ideally the only digital work I'd need to do is scan things in and adjust the levels, but this may change. I may draw the speech bubbles separately and add them in in post. Thoughts?

The finished product will probably be PDFed together for ease of portability. Juggling six different image files is annoying.

Oh man, I just realized I'll need to design a logo for a pseudo-cover (I guess copyright stuff goes on the pseudo-back?). Awesome!

sothacid, upon noting that the Dow has jumped 200 points today for "no readily apparent reason," has a theory.

"It's 'cause the stock market is playin' the mountain climber game on The Price is Right [Cliffhanger], and that one time we crashed was 'cause the little man fell off. [yodels the tune a bit] And it stayed down for a while 'cause they were banned from playin' it."

Makes enough sense to me.

Gregóri l'Matin (left) and Armande Gaudreau (right), both age Small and wearing expressions they're rarely seen out of. Both are high elves from Terrace d'Or, CUF, for those folks who either don't know or can't remember who they are; Gregóri grows up to be a photon elementalist/exorcist combo while Armande has a much more calm life as head secretary to the royal treasurer. Pencil with a little Photoshop for added pizzazz.

Greg's supposed to be in one of his parents' old tie-dye shirts (being hippies, they have a lot). Armande's parents don't know any better than to let their son wander around in capri pants and an absolutely hideous allover-print anime shirt, which technically isn't child abuse but maybe someone should start collecting signatures for that. Not pictured: hilarious accents.

Armande's left ear does that naturally. It's a very mild birth defect which he's extremely self-conscious about. Picture dates from before he got fat, of course.

Fun fact! Armande is a good eighty to ninety years older than Gregóri. How do they stand next to each other here? MOVIE MAGIC!

While Flash is still giving me headaches and Photobucket apparently ate my meticulously-crafted timing when uploading (I'm sure there's a way to overcome that), I was still able to put this together in about ten minutes. I think it worked out okay given that I did pretty much none of the things you're supposed to when animating. Marvel at the shape-changing pupil! Wonder at what kind of weird-ass eyelid only closes half at a time! Be painfully aware of the fact that I drew this on a sheet of typing paper with no pencil layouts or planning whatsoever!

I'll probably do a human eye later, when I feel like investing actual effort.

Short essays on various Varkhilm folks and things wrong with them.

MITCH: Validation

Martello Maleficcio craves attention. Not just people looking at or noticing him, either: Mitch needs people to be aware of his existence in a memorable way, whether positive or negative. He has to be touching people's lives constantly (and preferably in such a manner that means he doesn't have to deal with them one-on-one, if at all). Living in the shadow of his father has given him an almost pathological need to make something of himself; he was only able to gather the intestinal fortitude to take action a handful of times before summoning Helen, mainly in grafting his wings on and branding himself, but having a demon at his side has emboldened him considerably. While he is capable of wanting private time, and quite often does, when Mitch steps out he generally assumes he's going to be in the limelight, and will go to unpleasant lengths to take it from anyone he feels doesn't deserve it.

HELEN: Control

Helen must be in control. If Helen is not in control, there is a problem. Helen's idea of what "in control" means is highly flexible, but it generally means that things are happening because she wants them to, and if unwanted things are happening she's in a position to fix that (usually through excessive force or emotional manipulation). Being bound by Goetic contract is supposedly the best thing that's ever happened to her--she wouldn't exist without it, after all--but part of her brain seethes at the notion of being at the beck and call of someone else, and constantly tests the boundaries of her contract with Mitch in search of abusable soft spots. She also considers it her duty to "organize" things for people, effectively running aspects of their lives whether they want her to or not.

PHIL: Doubt

Philemon Tse is a lot more talented than you'd think he is, but in his opinion it's still not enough. Being born magic-negative in a family of traditional summoners and mystics was a crushing blow to his self-worth, especially since he's born a ways down the totem pole in order of inheritance. Raised bilingual by a temple guardian mother and a military father, he has the unfortunate trait of sucking at both his native tongues, especially when idioms are involved; he is terrified of public speaking because he's convinced he'll misuse a key phrase somewhere down the line. While he's getting rather good grades in his chosen field of magical theory (itself essentially one long hazing process), Phil is worried that he won't be welcome if he tries to return home to Seoul, further worried that he won't be able to keep his grades up, and even further worried about the fact that he likes an Unseelie girl. His life is one long string of neuroses, second-guesses, and pidgin English.

TOLYA: Defiance

Anatoly Wieskavich Balkav will be a member of the White Shield when he has finished his education abroad. He will not accept any other outcome. Coming from the fiercely traditionalist bosom of Mother Russia, Tolya tends to buck the trend just for the sake of being contrary: he keeps his ears and tail cropped, his hair short, and his dress sense relatively Spartan (for the son of an aristocrat, anyway), focusing on living a martial, independent life no matter how much part of him likes the idea of wearing fetching frock coats and riding a horse length behind his wife while hunting. While not so cartoonishly antagonistic as to pull on doors marked "push," Tolya gives one the impression of a man who makes elaborate mental checklists of establishments to challenge and gender roles to carefully avoid. Of course, this goes both ways, as he always has to hide his smile when people learn that such a well-groomed young man is a staunch Infernalist.

SKYE: Fear

Xyzeheef Blackdragondancer has more problems than just a stupid name: in escaping the DPCs beneath the surface of Oceania, he happened to cause a great deal of property damage and steal a great deal of money. Given that he was property at the time, he's also guilty of Grand Theft Hammerboy--and the trade secrets and engineering know-how in his head make him even more valuable. He only escaped through the kindness of the border guards and a great deal of luck; his citizenship status is very, very hazy. Skye loses a lot of sleep to the thought of being deported, getting kicked out of school, or (even worse) being found by his mother or her thugs. He walks a constant line of trying to achieve to remain on his various scholarships and trying to keep his head down so nobody can find him. Given his good grades, this may not last forever.

WIN: Burden

Winstar Llathwyn is a bit like Tolya, in that he both knows his chosen path and feels it; he's wanted to be a templar since he was a very young boy. He's loyal, kind, caring, and always goes the extra mile to help other people...often to the detriment of his own health and well-being. He's broken his arm at least three times rescuing cats from trees. His idea of doing good generally involves going cold and hungry a lot in hopes that someone else can be warm and fed. Win could be accused of having a martyr complex if he wasn't so damnably honest. He really does want to dedicate his entire life to the betterment of others', even if it kills him. Which it almost certainly will.

PIP: Distance

Brother Egwyre is a stranger in a strange land. Add to this the fact that he never felt entirely "right" at home, either, and you have an already unhappy camper; Pip is also all too aware of the fact that his effectively endless lifespan means that anyone and anything he could ever care for in the mortal world will wither and die in what amounts to an eyeblink. Egwyre spends much of his time feeling useless to his birth family and far superior to most things on his current plane, resulting in him burying himself in other tasks to distract himself from the inherent awkwardness of the situation. His naturally surly mood doesn't help things much. Unable to truly relate to his own kind (as he can't even talk with his parents for long, despite loving them both dearly), and unwilling to talk to mortals much (especially since they're frustratingly stupid most of the time), Pip keeps the entire world at arm's length. It's easier that way.

You people who follow our weird setting, y'all got any requests?

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR TODAY'S MUSIC.

I had a lot of stuff floating around the house with drawings on one or more flat surfaces, so I figured I'd compile some of the more interesting stuff. A lot of these were done in light pencil, or on paper not meant to be scanned for posterity, or otherwise required a great deal of touching up to be presentable. Most is from 2009 with a little 2008 in there in places.

Also, Photobucket resized the damn thing, so we had to make an ImageShack account just so it'd fit.



( This picture is hell of huge so behind a cut it goes. )