I gave New Computer another update — this time making a point of backing up a bunch of stuff, just in case I had to do another reinstall from scratch.
Not only did the process go fine, the camera works again!
(This update was only released a couple weeks ago, and the camera-breaking update was a couple months ago, so it’s not like I could’ve just done that from the start. Someone on the development end had to fix what they broke.)
…so, ah, fingers crossed that it’ll fix the other weird problem, where the computer spontaneously decides it wants to reboot into a diagnostic scan. Which always finds no problems, just like all the previous scans.
Plot twist: I paid more attention to when these happen, and the last 3 times were on Thursday afternoon. So this past Thursday morning, I shut down the computer completely, then headed out to work.
I get home, and it’s on this screen again. Something in here didn’t just reboot the OS, it autonomously powered the machine on.
I mean. What even does that?
The camera-fixing update was later that evening, so I guess we’ll find out “did it also fix the spontaneous diagnostics?” next Thursday.
Had an extensive dream that was an AU of The Secret Garden, but Mary Lennox was a tween necromancer, Gideon the Ninth style.
…and now that I think about it, the parallels are there? Not to Harrow, I mean to Gideon’s backstory of “was a small child when a fatal affliction swept through the whole group around her, later retrieved after being discovered surrounded by bodies.”
Maybe I’ll request it for Yuletide, or something.
It’s that magical time of year when I put Kickstarter logos in all my social-media icons, re-re-proofread all my ad copy, and anxiously look up how much it costs to ship a 5-pound box to Germany.
Please click that link and hit the “Notify me on launch” button, if you haven’t already!
And folks, I am so close to the weight where, if someone wants All The Leif & Thorn Books, the cheapest method is to pack them in a Flat Rate box. 4 books isn’t quite there — but at 5 books the flat rate is cheaper, and at 6 it’ll be much cheaper, and once we get up to 9 it’ll be astronomically cheaper.
…when we get to 10, they won’t all fit in a single box. But that’s a future problem.
(Not that I’m going to do this, but: there would be something really satisfying about drawing enough to fill 9 books, and then stopping the comic, just so it’s a perfect fit for the boxes.)
There’s a thing I regularly hear people say about Terry Pratchett, even across wildly different contexts…
“Was he always perfectly sensitive about my identity? No. Would he even really understand my life and experiences? Probably not. But if I got to sit down and talk with him, it feels like he would genuinely listen. And take what I said to heart. And support my right to live an authentic and fulfilling way, whether he got it or not.”
Life goals, seriously. I can only hope readers in 50+ years will be saying the same about me.
N.K. Jemisen, 2013: “All mythological creatures have a real-world root. Dryads are trees + humans + magic. Mermaids are fish + humans + magic, or maybe porpoises + magic. Unicorns are deer or horses + magic, maybe with a bit of narwhal glued on. Dragons are reptiles + magic, or maybe dinosaur bones + magic – paleontology. So again: what are orcs supposed to be?”
Tamsyn Muir is doing a whole extra Locked Tomb novel. We’re getting a 4-part trilogy, folks. Can’t think of another ongoing series I’d be happier to hear it for.
8tracks is shutting down. In 3 days. They did install an automatic “save playlist to Spotify” button to back up everything before they go…so I guess I’m finally getting a Spotify account, huh.
* * *
I got a delightful Yuletide fic!
It looks like this:
curiosity and candy (makes the world go round) (3481 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Pet Shop of Horrors Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Count D/Leon Orcot Characters: Count D (Pet Shop of Horrors), Leon Orcot Additional Tags: Swearing, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Levels Of BDSM References, yes this is a tag now, Yuletide, Supernatural Elements Summary:
Word has gotten out that Leon is D’s new chosen mate, and the supernatural is pretty eager to test out his worthiness for the role.
Shame that Leon hasn’t been informed of any of this.
I also gave one, in a niche-enough fandom that it’s barely gotten any attention — but, listen, the recipient liked it, so it’s a win.
Slowly working my way through the rest of the archive, but I have a bunch of pre-Yuletide fic recs that I haven’t even queued yet…so the rec posts of not-for-me Yulefics may take a while in coming.
* * *
I subscribed to Hulu With Live TV for the month, purely so I can watch the new Steven Universe episodes before the internet has a chance to spoil them.
Seriously, the speed at which people can draw fanart of totally-new character designs is unreal.
And during the rest of the eek, I’m trying to make the most of the subscription by bingeing as much other Hulu-exclusive content as possible. Caught up on Archer and a smorgasbord of superhero movies, still working through Family Guy and The Resident, got an apprehensive eye on Stargate Universe.
Surprisingly entertained by Gary And His Demons. (Satirical commentary on Chosen One narratives, Rick-and-Morty-type dysfunction-based humor, our hero has a magical-girl-style transformation sequence for which he sings his own theme song…it’s a lot.)
…they have over 300 episodes of ER. And it’s excellent background-watching-while-making-comics TV. I may or may not end up going another month with this.
* * *
Speaking of avoiding spoilers: I saw Frozen 2!
It was enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but also awfully weird. Go watch Jenny Nicholson’s review for a good, thoughtful, funny breakdown of a lot of the reasons why.
Haven’t been any other movies since Endgame that I was really determined to see in theaters. Considered it for Star Wars: The Final Movie For Real This Time Really, but at this point I’ve been spoiled for enough of the reveals that, eh. Might as well wait until it’s out on streaming, and pick that time to do a free Disney+ trial period.
* * *
Decided to bake cookies for Christmas at the last minute, which had me trawling the internet for “recipes that can be made using the ingredients currently in my cupboards” on Christmas Eve.
Sidenote: I have seen so many retail outlets this year advertising “our stores are open on Christmas Eve! and will even have limited hours on Christmas Day!”, and, guys, that is not something to brag about. Go watch one of the thousands of adaptations of A Christmas Carol, then swallow your profit motive for a couple days and give your people the time off, already.
So I wasn’t going to go buy late-night groceries, because I am not a monster, and here’s the recipe I was able to make. It’s just flour, butter/margarine, brown sugar, and vanilla. Plus a bag of butterscotch chips, because I do what I want.
They were a hit at the family dinner! Then a hit again when I brought the leftovers to work. Go make ’em some time. Mix up the base with your own (premeditated or improvised) favorite add-ins.
* * *
WordPress was offering a deal on paid blogging plans, and it was cheap enough that I sprung for it.
…only to find out it doesn’t include any customization that wasn’t already in the free version. You have to pay twice as much to control your own CSS.
Oh well. I’ve gotten enough value out of WP over the years that they’ve probably earned the donation.
Prompted me to finally look for a new theme, too. Took way too long to find something that was (a) 2 columns, (b) didn’t collapse to 1 column when you weren’t practically fullscreen on desktop, (c) had spaces to keep all my widgets and menus, and (d) didn’t have clashing colors in places that non-paying users weren’t allowed to customize.
The theme is Bouquet. The header image and the purple background are customizable. All the pink is one of two pre-set options (the others are blue and orange), which thankfully coordinates with the header pretty well.
Apparently it’s also infinite-scroll and I don’t know how to turn that off, but oh well, you can’t have everything.
* * *
Bumped up to the next-higher dose of Wellbutrin a couple months ago, and it’s been a smashing success.
Before the switch, it had gotten to the point where I was sleeping 10+ hours a day, and could feel the not-getting-anything-done. (Doesn’t help that I have a longer Day Job workweek these days — it’s great in most ways, but having it eat up all my awake time was a bit of a drawback.)
First week on the new dose, I felt refreshed, could focus way better, and was able to draw more than I got to do in probably the whole month before.
Turns out taking the higher dose too many days in a row leaves me not sleeping enough…but by now I’ve got the hang of swapping in the lower dose before I start to feel too wired, and it’s balancing out really well.
* * *
The last Leif & Thorn Kickstarter alternately feels like it happened forever ago, and like it just ended last week.
The first unbound proof arrived a whole month ago, in November:
I ended up tweaking both files, and asking for a new proof of just-the-cover. (There was some tricky color correction involved — you don’t know exactly how it’ll come out in CMYK until you see it in person.)
So the new one arrived…and somewhere between the file I sent and the paper coming out of the printer, the colors got changed in ways I didn’t do. Not in a way they would notice when quality-checking, either — it looked perfectly-balanced, which is the problem, it’s supposed to have a purple tint.
(Volume 1 was pink-tinted. Volume 3 — the one with the magic vine attack — will be green. Volume 4 is shaping up to be red.)
The company blamed an equipment failure, apologized, and sent a free replacement. I now have 3 separate copies of this cover, and the books themselves are gonna be in production…any day now. Depends on when people come back from vacation.
Then decided the events of those pages should be bumped back to happen after other events. Which leaves me in the fascinating position of “two pages of scanned and fully-polished lineart, still hasn’t gotten me ahead re: the page I’m supposed to post on Monday.”
…One of my New Year’s resolutions is to actually finish the series in 2020. Fingers crossed.
* * *
Marshmallow Fluff continues fluffin’ along.
I did a family visit that left him alone for the weekend, and he seems to have coped just fine:
No special Christmas dinner for Fluff, because he started turning up his nose at canned food a while back. I figure it’s a good thing — he’s no longer afraid of imminent starvation, so he feels secure enough to be picky — but it really cuts down on my “treats to provide for special occasions” options.
He also sometimes sits on one end of the couch while I’m sitting on the other! And almost relaxes. I get the joy of having a judgmental mop staring at me.
You know it’s the last day of a Kickstarter when you start having dreams about canceled pledges. And then a dream where a backer managed to pledge “-$1”.
Tiernan is Thorn’s soulbonded therapy cat in Leif & Thorn. She provides emotional support, help recovering from PTSD flashbacks, and general adorableness. Also, she cuddles up to Leif at every opportunity.
Patrick is the puppy-shaped starring shapeshifter of But I’m A Cat Person. He’s nervous, determined, eager to please, and always ready to show off his prowess in a fight! …much to the distress of his new pacifist millennial Master.
The pins have black metal outlines and screen-printed spots, to really capture the style of the comics, like the characters just popped off the page.
The poses were voted on by Patreon supporters — and a good thing, too, because the ones I would’ve picked by instinct were…not necessarily the ones that turned out to be the fan favorites.
You can get either pin alone, both of them together, or all kinds of digital bonus packages. (If you’re not a pin person, but still want the project to succeed, you can get a digital-only bonus package!)
And I really do want this to succeed. I have a mini con coming up in September, and could use some variety on the table between the prints, books, more prints, and more books.
Here’s that link one more time. Deadline is 11:59 PM, US Eastern — and there’s less than $100 left to raise. Check it out, tell your friends, get a pin for yourself maybe?
Or, heck, get a pin for a friend. They’re designed to be so cute and full of personality that you don’t even need to know the comics to appreciate them. (Though it sure doesn’t hurt.)
Which is why I’m raising the funds to do a print run on Kickstarter. Back this project, and you can get your very own copy of Leif & Thorn Volume 1, plus all kinds of other cool rewards. You can get wallpapers. You can get postcards. You can get custom art. You can get yourself drawn into the strip!
(Not in this book. In a future book.)
I kept the budget modest, so if we get funded, I get to print a short run of books. And if we get OVER-funded, I get to print a LONG run of books.
