hello again. you may have noticed that immediately after announcing i was restarting my newsletter, i stopped doing it. over the last month, i've been weaning off the last of my effexor script and am finally withdrawal-free, or at least free enough that the symptoms no longer greatly impact my day to day life. unfortunately, this is a development that took from november of last year to about last week. i have like 2-3 years of work to catch up on and i'm really upset about how much work i haven't been doing.

now i want to try to get off of my wellbutrin script, which is one i've been on for 10 years. this process, at least, has been much smoother compared to the nonstop log-flume from hell that was effexor. but i'm at a point where the medication is causing more problems than it's solving, which i think is "good" in that the original problems are no longer debilitating. unfortunately, the underlying issues  that lead to the need for medication were just sleeping and not dead. i have a lot of work to do.

but you guys didn't come here for medication gossip. i have fun things to show you! i think.

these round-ups are a little challenging because e-mail clients don't allow for video embeds. you simply have to click through and trust me if you see a description you like.

for some insane reason, the VR version of skyrim allows you to pick up NPCs like they're misbehaving pets, shove them out of the way, or slap them. it is, without question, the best release of a game that has been ported to every single device on planet earth. bacon_, a channel i've followed for a long time that uploads short clips of bethesda games breaking in funny ways, has been playing around with this feature by slapping people all over the place.

mugumogu continues to upload near daily videos of maru (the cat that loves boxes from the old internet), hana, and miri. this month, maru fell over twice while trying to sit in a strange shaped box.

uni, the cat famous for looking like a cat, turned 4 and wore a stupid hat. he's so cute. i love him so much.

a trio of delightful channels from an older man named barry enderwick who makes and eats foods in videos that are less than 5 minutes long each. on "sandwiches of history", he makes sandwiches from old recipes (adam and i recently tried gene kelly's greatest man sandwich in the world and it whipped ass). on "in the chips", he eats chips and reviews them. "barry is cooking again" features more complex recipes than sandwiches or chips. this man has the most complex collection of spices and sauces i've ever seen. where does he find these incredible sounding concoctions.

"something wicked" is a channel where a sculpture artist records the process of creating a weird little historical beastie and discusses the history of it in reasonably sized videos. i really enjoyed this one. seeing people who can work in a 3d medium is like watching a wizard work.

and for the long-form video fans: i recently blazed through the catalogue of "face full of eyes" who discusses the aesthetics of war/police games in a way that doesn't make me want to roll my eyes and groan. this is someone who is approaching the medium with an artistic/mechanical lens that's refreshing to see in discussions of a genre i personally am quick to write off as propaganda.

and lastly, billiam, one of the very handful of actually funny youtube pop culture essayist guys, has been talking extensively about spike TV in a tone that takes great delight in how deeply insane it was as a cultural project doomed to fail.

my very good friend r/l monroe is launching a project called "unprintable" (FAQ in the link), a public domain art hub where artists can share their work with one another for no reason other than "sharing art is good". this is one of those things where you should go click around and see the vibe they are cultivating in order to understand exactly how cool of an idea this is. putting fucking price tags on every single creative endeavor is ugly; i hope this takes off. look at this alligator experiencing feelings that lee drew:

check out the website here!

comics are good right now. one of my favorite comics is the secret knots, a collection of surreal vignettes revolving around human connection, history, and relationships. melancholy in nature without being a bummer, they make you feel like you're remembering a friend you made long ago as a child and have no memory of their name at all, only how they made you feel. they are genuinely works of narrative perfection. try this one for a sample.

the world of griz grobus is still chugging along, beautifully drawn and written, in it's third story "refugium" (the speed at which this comic is created is amazing to me). this is the kind of comic, along with ten earth shattering blows, that makes you remember comics are so good. pulp comics are so fucking good.

speaking of pulp, kayzig on tumblr is making "leige doomveil", a really delightful love letter to the unique cheesy charm of 1980s/early 90s saturday morning cartoons. it's so cute and i'm so jealous of people who can write in this kind of character tone in a way that feels like it came straight off of the screen (instead of filtered through years of nostalgia and pop culture references that enforce a more exaggerated memory of the genre).

heathcliff is on tumblr daily now.

last and absolutely not least, a very long time tumblr mutual is back into making comics and recently made a website for their comic "3MTIAE", which features weird little animal dudes having mild adventures, that makes me laugh every time. it's hard to describe why the light tone is so appealing to me (and presumably, to you). i like this comic where the artist was testing out the RSS for the website:

and me, i also don't feel so good.

but...i've been doodling for fun again after a long time. do you know how long its been since i've been capable of doing that?

for comic i've been slowly hacking away at AGS pages behind the scenes in preparation for my return to the site tomorrow. i'm so upset and annoyed that i didn't get any of the work done that i wanted. i'm annoyed that i'm no better off than i started despite all the time i've been taking off. meanwhile, the comic moves at a snail's pace as a consequence of work being very difficult and comics just kind of being like that.

writing-wise, i posted a huge dark souls post about velka, goddess of sin that people did not immediately poke holes in. i'm also going to spend a little time this weekend uploading the updated chapters of "you hunted" to the website. i took a long break on it after hitting a stopping point; if i find a place to jump off of the runaway bloodborne train, i have to take it.

this time the break point was only after wrapping up my thoughts on all of the stupid caryll runes. here is a .pdf of what will eventually become the first part of an appendix section of the final document. the most recent release of "you hunted" was in early february, but i have been hacking away at it in the background. the 5th chapter is almost done and the timeline had to be re-arranged after i realized my canon was broken.

before i go, the one thing i am really excited about when it comes to my comic is that i am finally in a position, as of last night, to stop and collect the story thus far and re-present it to the audience in a way that feel organic and not too forced.

i feel like i've been spinning my wheels for years, probably because i "had to" for plot/character/pacing reasons. jack had to find out a bunch of information from people without maxine stifling his access to it. its hard to ask people to stick with you, when the crux of the story thus far is the result of one character deliberately withholding information from the others (and by extension, the audience). i have been thinking "i really, really, really, really, really want to wrap back around to things" instead of drawing yet another page showing time passing or characters changing/establishing locations. at the end of the last chapter lily and maxine swap bodies for less than a minute and in order to build up what a problem this is to everyone involved, i had to jump back to maxine's POV back at the start of her solo adventure. so i can build that up. slowly. aaaugh! but i gotta do it!!! your villains can't just plainly state their motivations and methods of coercion. if i skipped all of this, they wouldn't be convincing "villains". or at least convincing figures of opposition.

at least i feel like i am refining this story. i know what i want to do and what i'm trying to say with it is becoming more clear as i look over my assembled cast members and their individual motivations and how it would all play out. i know what i want the final confrontation to be. my artistic progress is slow and clumsy, but not completely horrible (as it used to be). my writing is getting better (i hope). i want to do this.

its just going to take some time to get there. but god do i want to.

thank you to you all for your support, both financial and just being an open ear in this space where i can try to convey the frustration of creation. it is a joyful thing to engage in but man is it a different kind of struggle.

well, i'll see you all around next time. i'll try to keep in touch more often if for no other reason than because there are cool youtube videos and comics worth showing people. i hope you all have a good weekend. read comics!