A Shitty Week ft. the Coolest Illustration I’ve Seen All Year and Probably Ever

Morning. Or, Morning! if you’re feeling perky. I was until I sat down and now it’s just like an earlier version of the two o’clock slump which is not how I was planning my day off.

I’m not sure how many regular/committed readers there are still here, but if you’ve been following my posts as they go out, I suppose there’s an elephant in the room. Well, small dog. Well, small dog no longer in the room. We had Donnie put to sleep the week before last. I know that not everyone is particularly bothered about their pets, but I am not one of those people. Not having him around is strange and horrible and I keep forgetting and looking for a second dog and I’m paranoid Fred is pining and it’s odd only feeding one dog and I miss how he used to bark at literally everything and snore with his eyes open. I don’t miss the last couple of days of his life when it became abundantly clear that he had had enough. A lot of people say they fell guilty for making the decision to end their pet’s life, but I think I couldn’t have lived with myself if we’d made him hang on any longer when he couldn’t really walk and didn’t want to eat anything.

But I’m more interested in remembering the snoring and the ridiculous woofing, so maybe animal euthanasia is a subject for another day.

A non-sequitur that’s actually absolutely relevant if you live inside my head (a non-non-sequitur?): the next chapter of The Prince in the Tower, from The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes is available to patrons today. It’s relevant because a) there’s a dog called Bean in The Prince in the Tower, named after Donnie. He used to do this dancing, jumping thing every time he was about to go for a walk or get fed, so I used to call him a jumping bean. Which became Bean and then Bean Sprout, then Sprout and honestly what is up with pet owners and nicknames. Anyway. Point b) is that I got to hang out with my friend Tatchiana the day before Donnie died and she gave me a very cool illustration from The Princess and the Dragon that was a huge bright spot in an appalling week. Spoiler alert there’s a dragon:

girl facing giant blue dragon in cave

So you guys who aren’t patrons need to become patrons so we can make an ebook from this story and I can commission more artwork because it is seriously the coolest, coolest thing seeing your story interpreted in someone else’s art! It’s very nice knowing that I can support someone else’s work at the same time as doing something fun and promotional for my own work. It feels very eco-system-y. (I am paying Tatchiana for the piece, although she wasn’t convinced I needed to which is very friend-y. When I am feeling less bereaved and more awake we should have a conversation about paying friends for work. It’s a lot like euthanasia in that no one wants to talk about it but we’d probably all be better off if we did. God what a sentence). Oh, I’m also paying Tatchiana using money from Patreon. From your investment in my fairytale. How cool is that? We’re starting to accrue enough to pay my proofreader, Maria, as well. THE PLAN IS WORKING.

You can find links to Tatchiana’s other work here and buy her coffee (please do!) here.

Right, I’ve got patron letters to write and some Etsy orders to package. See you soon.

I Was Thinking About Sherlock‘s Imminent Return and Had a Mild Epiphany…

Then I remembered some blue paper that’s been crying out for something blog-y and decorated my room:

Blue Rookie Mistake

Very tempted to make it the first ever piece of Indifferent Ignorance merch, though it’d be limited edition because I only have one pack of the blue paper. Or maybe if other bloggers who can also claim blogging superiority wanted, I could do a custom thing and put their logo where mine is and send them it in nice paper? Let me know your thoughts!

Oh by the way, there will be a cool thing on Christmas Eve. Ahh, I am so ready to eat my weight in turkey. Don’t let me forget about the Awards either; my friends have suggested some excellent people – if I’m not in a Christmas coma, the post might even be out before next June…

No Site For Weaklings

We’ve started the religious experience topic in RS, and today we looked at proof. Here is an extract of my notes:

If someone experiences an entity, then the entity exists. (I have conversations with characters, then the characters exist…)

It took me a few minutes to figure out why Thank You God was playing in my head.

Speaking of characters I want to talk to, one thing lead to another yesterday. No regrets (I had just finished an essay on William Blake, okay, and football was the only thing on TV. Plus there needs to be somewhere in my imagination where di Angelo doesn’t need a hug).

Question: should I have tagged this post not safe for work? Because thinking about it, I should probably tag every Tim Minchin video or even some MCR posts NSFW, for the language and whatnot. But then, is my language crossing the line? What is or isn’t “safe for work”? Surely that depends on your job?!

I mean, I don’t much like censorship, which is one of the reasons I run this thing by myself, and it’s not like I’m one of the people Google’s blocking… I don’t want to get younger readers into trouble for having adult words or links to questionable fan art – but that’s not my fight. I just write this and it’s up to you, reading this, whether or not you read it. If you don’t want to then click exit. If you don’t want your child to read it then click exit for them but please remember that if they like this sort of site (as in, not space bar games or celebrity forums) then they’re probably going to find another way to read.

I don’t label atheism-related posts “GOD-HATING NEARBY, PIOUS PEOPLE BEWARE”, so should I label a link to a drawing of two dudes kissing “homophobes your eyes might fall out”, or “in the movies this would be a 15”? I mean, Perks wasn’t a 15 and Steve Chbosky got in about 85% of the book’s content.

Is it just enough that I say “headphones are a good idea for this song” or to clearly label links? Maybe I should do a little thing on the sidebar: “oh hey I’m a teenager and if you’ve met one of those you’ll know that they talk like sailors and launch very different types of ships”?

(You shouldn’t be reading Indifferent Ignorance at work anyway, although if you can please notify me of your occupation.)

Introducing My First Ever Piece of Non Satirical/Deadly Serious MCR Work.

I wasn’t going to blog any more this year, but then I finished some stuff I’ve been working on since May or June, and thought I’d share it with you lot as a happy new year gift. Or, alternatively, a ‘hope this makes your gloomy January better’ present.

You want to see each piece separately? Of course you do (click to enlarge to full-sized glory).

There is a lyric from every original song in there, I think, but one of them is wrong. I did redo it (twice) but then I remembered that age-old saying “Would you destroy something perfect in order to make it beautiful?” and watched television instead.

If any of you could suggest proper titles for each piece, as well as a collective title, I’d appreciate it, because at the moment they are up on my DeviantART profile with really lame names. The only thing I can come up with is ‘Spot the Mistake’, which isn’t the most promotional title out there…

I really won’t blog until 2012 now.