#I drew a tiny thumbnail at work and I went to stick it with all my other work doodles but then I decided to redraw it

[sokumeii]

Marcille and her feral cat

[turtlepated]

When it Rains in the Valley

Stardew Valley fic - ShanexFemaleFarmerOC

NSFW - One shot

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You could have happily stayed curled up in bed for another hour or more, but even though your eyes were still closed and your body still relaxed and warm below the quilt your mind was dragging itself awake.

Sighing softly through your nose, you burrowed deeper into the mattress and allowed yourself just a little bit longer before getting up and beginning your day. Eyes still shut, you began to mull over the plans that had begun forming the previous night as you dropped off to sleep. The wheat field would be ready to harvest soon, and there was the irrigation system to fine-tune before replanting with a new crop. Rows of corn stalks packed with ears that would need to be picked before the crows got at them. And of course there were the chickens that would need feeding and cows that would need milking. 

The list was never ending, crops to tend to, repairs to be made, wood to gather, fruit to be made into jams and jellies, vegetables canned and preserved. You were proud of your modest little farmstead, even if it did require all the work and attentiveness you could muster. 

With another gentle sigh you began building up the will to hoist yourself out of bed, going still when a soft, rhythmic sound met your ears. You stilled, frowning into the pillow, recognition coming slowly into your still-sleep-muddled brain. Just as you worked out what it was, you felt the mattress shift beside you as a heavy form settled at the edge of the bed, an arm reaching across you to brace against the comforter. 

A familiar scent and a waft of warm breath across your cheek as a kiss was pressed there, the ticklish scratch of stubble against your skin that made goosebumps sweep up your arms. You didn’t open your eyes, but you couldn’t contain the smile that stretched your lips as another kiss landed on your temple. 

“It’s raining.” Humming, you rolled onto your back, caged between the arm braced against the mattress at your side and the warm, solid body that perched on the edge of the bed. Even in the semi-darkness of the stormy, pre-dawn morning you could see him; his dark hair damp and sticking up oddly in a few places, his ratty blue Jojamart jacket nowhere to be seen. He smelled faintly of rain, crisp and tangy mixed in with the rich, earthy aroma of clean hay and the heady, somewhat spicy scent you’d come to associate with just him. As you were taking him in he did the same to you, his forest green eyes roving your form with avid interest and a profound fondness that made your breath catch in your throat. When your eyes met he grinned lopsidedly, lowering his face back to yours and favoring you with soft, languid kisses to your cheeks, your chin and nose and forehead, not stopping even when you giggled and squirmed at the tickle of his scruff. 

“I thought that’s what it sounded like,” you murmured in response, curling a hand around the top of his shoulder as he drew back enough so you could look at one another. Shane shifted then, reaching up with a hand to brush a stray fall of hair off your forehead. 

“I had an idea,” he said, his voice soft and low, making you shiver. You raised your brows at him, an invitation to continue. 

“You won’t need to water the fields today,” he went on. “And I just came in from taking care of the animals. I know you wanted to fix up the irrigation in the wheat field, but you can’t do it in the rain…. So the morning is pretty wide open...” You were grinning now, the hand on his shoulder gradually working its way up the curve of his neck while his own hand likewise began to wander, feeling for the top of the blanket and peeling it back enough to find the hem of your sleep shirt which had ridden up in the night. 

As his fingers splayed across your stomach, sliding in no particular hurry up towards your ribcage, your hand caught him by the back of his neck, urging his head down to you. You could see and hear him swallow as he complied, not quite able to shake his nerves even though this had been his idea. Craning your neck, you kissed the tiny furrow between his eyebrows, soothing away the worried lines on his features. “What did you have in mind?” you teased, able to discern the flush creeping up his neck and blooming on his cheeks even in the low light. 

Abruptly the large, warm hand on your torso slid up to cup your breast, kneading gently, the short, blunt thumbnail toying with your nipple until it hardened. When you let out an appreciative purr and reciprocated by raking your nails through the fine, buzzed hair at the base of his skull, Shane shuddered and dove down to capture your mouth in a heated kiss. You broke apart long enough to kick yourself free of the covers as he clambered fully onto the bed, toeing off his wet shoes before settling at your side, supporting himself on one elbow so he could lean over you. 

Things stilled for a moment between you. Excitement was sparking through your body, waking you fully, every inch of skin prickling attentively in anticipation but you were transfixed by the awestruck look on his face, as if he still couldn’t believe something like this was happening to him. His eyes were riveted to you, flitting all over, seemingly unable to settle anywhere for long. You watched his tongue dart out to wet his parted lips, his chest rising and falling quicker despite the fact that all that had transpired so far was a hot kiss and copping a feel. 

Shane tended to get lost in his own head, and for most of the time you had known each other that could be a treacherous place. But you knew just how to bring him back to the here and now. Smiling, you reached up to touch his face, loving the rasp of his whiskers against your palm. He turned to press his lips into your hand, a rush of warmth spreading from the center of your chest outward. 

“C’mere,” you breathed into the space between you, meeting his mouth halfway as he leaned down to kiss you. You sighed into the kiss, drinking in the smell and taste and feel of him in the soft give and take that followed, quickly growing more demanding and desperate as you all but tugged him bodily on top of you. Fingers delved into his hair, scratching his scalp as your legs tangled together: yours bare but for cotton sleep shorts, his in old jeans from where he’d gone out to the coop and the barn. The rough texture against your calves and thighs was rapidly causing arousal to pool, bubbling like molten metal, in your pelvis. Shane had rucked your shirt up practically to your neck, squeezing and massaging your chest while breaking off from your lips to kiss a chain across your cheek to the sensitive spot behind your ear. 

“Fuck,” he gasped, hot breath blasting against the side of your neck. “You’re so beautiful. How are you so beautiful?” You felt yourself flushing under his murmured words of praise, struggling to get your shirt off and out of the way. Noticing your wriggling, Shane backed off and took the bunched material in his hands as you sat up enough to slip your arms and head out. His lust-blown eyes grew impossibly larger as he distractedly dropped your shirt and lowered himself, chest to chest, pressing you down into the mattress as he ravished your exposed neck and collarbones and shoulders with single-minded attention; lips and teeth and tongue, a mix of heat and chill as his breath ghosted over the dampened skin before pressing hot, open mouth kisses anywhere he could reach.  

You mewled softly at his ministrations, your blood scorching as it roared in your veins, your pulse thumping in your chest and in your ears and between your legs. Sighing his name you tipped your head to one side, offering him more room which he gladly accepted as he sucked marks along the column of your throat. You crossed your ankles around one of his, gripping his leg between yours, an exhilarating swooping sensation in the pit of your stomach at the prominent bulge that pressed into your hip through layers of fabric. 

“Mmm, too many clothes,” you managed to say, your hands fumbling for the bottom of the ill-fitting polo shirt he still insisted on wearing, saying it was a waste to wear anything else because it would only get dirty. Shane sucked in a breath as your hands tugged the hem from his waistband and you felt him tense all over. 

“Wait, wait,” he stammered. “Just… gimme a second, okay?” 

You let out a sad little huff as he lifted himself off you to sit uncertainly back on the side of the bed, sitting up to fix him with a knowing look as he dithered about looking anywhere but at your face. As many times as you had seen one another naked, Shane still got self-conscious sometimes about his physique. As a former athlete, he was even more uncomfortable with the soft chest and rounded stomach that had resulted from the hours he’d logged in the corner by the fireplace at the Stardrop Saloon. You didn’t mind it in the slightest, point of fact you had found him incredibly attractive ever since your first meeting when he waspishly snapped at you to leave him alone. Telling him that you liked the way he looked was all well and good, but he never quite seemed to believe you. 

Anyway, showing him was much more fun…

The line of his shoulders was tense as you rose onto your knees, scooting your way across the bed to him. You felt him jump slightly as you leaned against his back, your face angling into the curve of his neck as your arms wound around him. After a beat he relaxed into your embrace with a long sigh, distracted from whatever train of thought was trying to steer him away from you. 

“Let me help?” you mumbled against his neck, asking permission but also assuring him that it was what you wanted. You smiled when you felt and heard his breath hitch slightly, your lips ghosting across his skin as he swallowed and nodded his consent. Fingers spread to caress his chest, you slid your palms down the curve of his abdomen towards the bottom of his polo, which was still partially guarded by the arms folded over his middle. 

You paused when your fingertips met his forearms, chuckling under your breath and shifting closer, pressing more firmly against him and resting your chin on his shoulder. 

“Shane? Honey?” you whispered, tucking your face into the side of his neck and kissing softly at the space behind his ear. A tiny moan issued from between his parted lips, but you had his attention again. “It’s okay.” Slowly, he allowed your fingers to delve past his arms to the hem of his shirt and beneath. 

Working slowly, keeping up a steady stream of praises and confirmations muttered into his ear and neck and the side of his head, you shucked off his shirt and cast it aside. Without the fabric separating you, your breasts flush against his bare back, your hands skating up and down his stomach and chest while your mouth worked along the curve of his shoulder, Shane couldn’t keep himself quiet; moans and gasps and whispered curses. 

Grinning wickedly against his heated skin, you took a bit of his neck carefully between your teeth while raking your nails through the dark hair that dusted his pecs, circling his nipples and experiencing a sense of satisfaction when the dual sensations drew a choked off cry from him, his back arching and his head falling back over your shoulder.

Your ploy worked, but your triumph was short lived. With his inhibitions now thoroughly forgotten, Shane spun in your arms and caught your lips in a searing kiss as he surged forward back onto the bed, driving you ahead of and then under him as one arm encircled your hips while the free hand kneaded at your chest. Another thrill went through you at his sudden ardor, your hands resuming their stroking and petting as he again broke off the kiss to nip a matching mark on your own neck that made you hiss. You shuddered afterward as you felt his tongue, hot and wet, gently lapping at what would surely be a bruise. 

“Hah, still too many clothes,” you breathed against the shell of his ear with a grin. You felt him hum into your skin as an answer, shifting to get his hands and knees under him to raise off of you. His eyes were practically glued to you as you shimmied out of your sleep shorts and underwear, smiling coyly at him as you dropped them carelessly over the side of the bed and lay fully naked before him. For a beat all he seemed able to do was simply gape at you and a nervous flutter started up in your stomach. 

In the next instant he settled himself beside you and you threw a leg up and over his hip, pulling flush against him and a little thrilled by the fact that you were now bare while he was still half dressed. Shane began moving, himself and you, scooting his way to the center of the bed and then rolling onto his back and pulling you with him so that you now straddled his waist. His hands both came up to grasp at your ass, fingers digging deliciously into the flesh before sliding up the curve to grip your hips, holding you tight against him as your mouths moved against one another. 

You hummed into him as one of his hands roved back over the curve of your ass, the other pressing into your back, holding you to him. The wandering hand didn’t stop at the crest of the rise, continuing on downhill and between your legs where you were already growing pleasantly wet. Two fingers brushed at your lips and you felt Shane smile into your kiss as he noticed it as well, pressing them in just a little further. You gasped into his mouth at the minor intrusion, feeling the rumbling from deep in his chest as he chuckled. 

In revenge for his teasing you rolled your hips, grinding against his pelvis and grinning at the groan that escaped him. His hands immediately left your body and fumbled with his button and fly, squirming to work them down his hips without unseating you. Your grin widened at his desperation, but you obligingly raised yourself up onto your knees so he could lift himself off the bed and work his pants down. 

His stiff cock bobbed as it slipped free of the constraints of his clothes, coming to rest flush against his soft stomach. You eyed it hungrily, glancing at his face through your lashes. His cheeks were reddened, the fringe of hair over his forehead already sticking to his skin with sweat. When he saw the look you were giving him his blush darkened and he swallowed hard. 

Without further stalling you took him in your hand, hearing him suck in a breath through his teeth as you gave him a squeeze before settling yourself down beside him and wrapping your lips around him. Shane’s eyes shut and his head dropped back against the pillow with a muttered curse as you languidly sucked him, lavving the flat of your tongue against the underside of his cock, humming as you went. 

“Ah shit, baby, just like that!” he gasped, one hand burying itself in your hair. He shuddered when you took him in deeper, hollowing your cheeks and earning a drawn out groan as his fingers tightened against your scalp. You pulled your head back, letting him slip from between your lips and replacing your mouth with a fist, stroking his spit-slick member until his hips began to judder. Abruptly his hand flew to yours, stopping your ministrations. 

“‘M not gonna last long if you keep that up,” he rasped, his chest and shoulders pleasantly flushed. “It’s your turn. C’mere.” 

As you repositioned yourself, Shane kicked himself free of his pants, reaching up to discard the pillow under his head and guiding you to straddle his face. “If you need to stop, let me know,” you urged him, but Shane needed no concerns. Raising his head he stroked your slit with his tongue, from cunt to clit, making you gasp at the contact. 

From then on he dove in headlong, mouthing your mound with his lips while his tongue sank through your damp folds. He sighed through his nose and groaned into you, the vibrations making your insides clench deliciously as you breathed his name. Shane teased your clit with the tip of his tongue, tracing around and around it until you keened and gripped his hair. You were sopping by now, between his mouth and your own arousal, and ready for more. 

You batted his hands away from where they held you in place by your hips, moaning for him to stop, that it was becoming too much. He let his head fall to the mattress, his chin coated in your slick and his own saliva, his chest heaving almost in time with your own. 

“Wanna come with you,” you managed to say, reaching down to tenderly glide your fingers through his hair. He leaned into your touch, nodding once. Raising yourself on trembling knees you scooted back down his body until you straddled his waist. Shane tensed when you took his cock in your hand, stroking him lightly as you lined it up with your entrance and sank slowly down onto him. Your moans tangled together until you were seated against his pelvis, taking a beat to catch your breath before you started to move against him. 

The burn, the stretch of his cock filling you were delicious, scratching an itch that had been building since he first woke you up. “So good,” he hissed. “You feel so good, baby.” 

“Mmm, so you do,” you purred, rocking in his lap. His hands gripped your thighs, fingers clenching against the plump flesh. Your own hands smoothed up his stomach to his chest and back, stroking and petting as you rode him a little faster, chasing the finish you were both desperate for. 

Shane didn’t seem able to keep his hips from rising to meet you, with each upward thrust his cock struck at the perfect angle that made you moan. Your head lolled back on your shoulders as you picked up the pace, feeling his body tensing under you. “Are you close?” you asked, looking down at his flushed and sweating face. He nodded, releasing your leg with one hand and bringing it up to his mouth. Licking the pad of his thumb he reached between your legs and circled your clit. The added stimulation made you moan obscenely and increase your pace even more. As you rutted against him Shane grunted with each stroke, his thumb unrelenting in its teasing of your already sensitive clit. 

Pleasure had built to a fever pitch in your body as you lost your rhythm completely, thighs screaming from the exertion as you bounced up and down on his cock. “Fuck, Shane! Fuck, baby, I’m coming!” At last the tightly wound spring in your pelvis broke loose and you cried out as waves of euphoria swept through you, your pulse thumping and your muscles aching in the best way. 

As your pussy clenched and unclenched rapidly around him, Shane came right behind you with a hoarse cry of his own, his whole body going rigid for a moment or two as he rode out his release before he finally relaxed, sagging into the bed and gasping for air. When you trusted your rubbery legs to support you, you swept yourself up and off his hips, his softening and leaking cock slipping from you as you settled down at his side. 

He wound an arm around your neck, tugging you closer for a lazy, sloppy kiss that you happily returned. 

This was why you loved the rain. 

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Just something that always crosses my mind when it rains in Stardew Valley. Thought I’d share! 

[bagels-and-seagulls]

does badboy Matteo paint his nails? (for some reason I’ve been imagining him with black nails every time I read your hcs)

i’ve been thinking about this for a while, just like his appearance in general beyond the nails thing, and i have some ideas but i feel like it’s split between bb!matteo with bb!david and bb! with hj!david. so here are both!

bad boy matteo and bad boy david

-matteo once had an occasional client that was a piercing apprentice at a tattoo shop that couldn’t always front the bill for adderall pills that matteo sold her for half the price of her doctor’s office, so sometimes she would front the bill by offering a piercing and a drink to matteo with a smile that said she knew she was pushing her luck. matteo ends up getting an orbital piercing when he’s just a little bit drunk, two helixes in his other ear when he’s cross-faded, and the left side of his nose pierced when he’s black out. he wakes up the next morning each time with a piece of paper neatly folded into his pocket of the jacket he’s still wearing about how to take care of each one of them, and he keeps up with it fairly well, all things considered. he puts a silver hoop in his nose, and hans is the only that says anything about it, calls it cute and pinches his cheek like he was a baby. 

-the boys, after their first year at university, feeling a little bit nostalgic and a little bit melancholic for something that they couldn’t quite put their fingers on, all decide to get matching tattoos with a sudden burst of confidence and boldness. then they figure out how much good tattoos actually cost and end up looking up how to do stick and poke tattoos while in the bathroom of hanna’s new apartment after smoking a bowl like they were still all seventeen and knew what they were doing. they end up as garbled messes that no one can really make sense of, and no one agrees on what they’re supposed to be. jonas says it was a blunt, because that’s how they all became friends, and carlos always buts in to say that it was a beer bottle. abdi is confident that what he drew was a lion’s head, and that just confuses everyone, because why would they decide to get a lion’s head together? and matteo, well, he was really along for the ride anyways. now he just has a black mess on the the soft spot of his ankle that has a semi-funny story to go along with it. 

-hans would cut matteo’s hair for him for the low price of one dinner hand-made by matteo himself, and it’s nice because keeping up with an undercut takes a diligence that matteo did not realize the first time he let some girl shave the back of his head at some party ages ago. after a while, hans gets crafty with it and can cut little designs into it made with geometric lines.

-one day, matteo and david are in bed, and david is running his fingers through david’s hair. it’s getting long back here, david says, not meaning anything by it really, just wanting to say something because the way matteo was looking at him like he was something to be admired and hung up in a museum was making him a little overwhelmed. and matteo purses his lips up, like he has something to say but thinks better of it at the last second. what? david asks, with his interest peaked. you wanna do it? matteo asks, and david agrees easily enough because it can’t be that hard. 

-having matteo sit on the floor in the bathroom in front of him while he cards his fingers over his scalp to brush off tuffs of hair feels like a religious experience every time.

-david learns that hans can do designs with the razor and makes it a personal mission to be better at it for some reason. matteo doesn’t really care, doesn’t see the point of the effort when it’s just going to grow out in a couple weeks anyways, but he likes the way that david’s fingers feel gentle around his ears and on his neck. so he sits quietly for as long as david wants him to. 

-matteo colors his nails in with markers and pens and sometimes pencils when he’s in class because the teacher drones on sometimes, and drawing tiny little trees on his thumbnail seems far more exciting at the moment. one day when he’s at david’s apartment, poking around the living room while david is on the phone with laura, talking about what they had in the fridge for groceries, matteo finds a bottle of black nail polish that matteo picks up to spin around in his hands, and the urge to open it and use it on his thumbnail is so strong, that he ends up doing it without even realizing. are you going to do the rest of them? david asks from the doorway, and matteo looks up like he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. sorry, he says and goes to put it down because he always had a problem with touching things that weren’t his. no, no, it’s okay, david says quickly. you can do the rest if you want. laura won’t mind. i probably use the black more than she does. and matteo stares down at the bottle and then looks up to david and sees that he’s serious, that he doesn’t care if matteo wants to do this or not. i don’t think i would be very good at it, matteo says, and david smiles and walks in the room and says, i can help. 

-matteo starts painting his nails off and on, without any conviction either way. he does it when he thinks about it and the option is there, and let’s it peel off and flake away completely before he does it again. david buys him his own bottle of jet black and puts it on his desk without him even noticing. 

bad boy matteo + hot jock david

-matteo has unruly and floppy hair that mia cuts for him once a month when he remembers to ask her. she doesn’t do anything too special, and he doesn’t ask for anything more complicated than off his neck and shorter around his ears. she always smiles at him when she’s done and ruffles his hair to get the last couple of strands out, and he smiles back and tells her that he’ll buy her a round the next time they’re out together.

-it’s getting kind of long, isn’t it? david asks one night when matteo is over, and he’s tried to push his hair out of his face at least six times since he started doing his homework. david tugs on one of the strands that fell in between matteo’s eyes, and matteo bats him away. mia’s been busy. i didn’t want to bother her, he says and goes back to his book, pushing the hair back like it’s muscle memory. i could ask laura if you want. she cuts some of her friends’ hair sometimes, david hums, and cards his fingers through the the hair at the back of matteo’s neck. i don’t want to bother, matteo says again, and david says that it’s nonsense and rolls out of bed right then to go and see what laura is doing. matteo trails after him and says that it isn’t a big deal, but his whispers are stopped short when they’re standing in front of laura on the couch, scrolling through her phone. would you mind cutting teo’s hair? david asks, and tugs on matteo’s arm until he’s standing in front of him, his hands on his matteo’s hips to keep him standing right there. laura doesn’t even stop looking at her phone when she answers, sure, right now? and matteo ends up sitting on a stool in the middle of their bathroom with laura cutting his hair with a pair of scissors that look like it was actually made to do that. and she’s chatting with david casually where he’s sitting on the counter, and matteo is just sitting between them, caught up with nerves about something he can’t quite place, feeling a little like he was going to throw up and gripping onto david’s ankle, trying not to move at all. 

-laura ends up cutting matteo’s hair once a month in a way that makes him look like he actually takes care of his it, and matteo doesn’t know how to repay her, offers to buy her dinner or something each time. and she always laughs a little bit at him and says that his company is payment enough, that she enjoys the little moment they get together. but matteo still always brings over her favorite type of cookies the next time he’s over anyways. 

-matteo has the right side of his nose pierced and a frontal helix on his left ear. david asks when he got them at one point, and matteo says that he doesn’t remember, that he went out one night, trying to sell some joints, and came back home later with a text from a number he didn’t recognize and two piercings that he only noticed because they hurt the next day still. he texts the number asking if they knew anything about the piercings, and never gets a response. he looks up how to take care of piercings online and ends up putting a silver stud in his nose. 

-matteo has two tattoos. one is a stick and poke on the inside of the his right ring finger that’s supposed to be the two dipper constellations together, but it’s so light, that it kind of just looks like a series of freckles. it takes david about a month of them hanging out for him to even notice it. he was playing with matteo’s fingers when they were sitting out on a balcony somewhere together and ran his finger over the dots, just to have matteo laugh and tell him it tickled. the other tattoo is a crescent moon on his left thumb. he gets that one done legit, from the same girl who does the stick and poke. she does it for a couple of euros for letting him practice on him unofficially when she was trying to get the gig she has now, and he tells her to call him when she gets a little bit better because he might have some ideas in the works. 

-matteo ends up walking in on david hanging out with sara and leonie at his apartment. he apologizes in the doorway and says that he must have gotten the time wrong, that he can come back later if they want. and they all tell him that it’s fine, and he should join them. david pulls him onto the living room floor to sit up close to him before he goes back to painting sara’s fingesr a bright blue while leonie is doing hers a deep red. did you want to join? leonie asks when she sees the way that matteo is eyeing her drying fingers. no, it’s alright, matteo says and shakes his head. you sure? leonie asks. it’ll be cute. you could do a blue or a red, and i think it would look really good with your skin tone. oh, maybe a green, she says and starts holding up some bottles near matteo’s hand, and he eventually agrees to let her try because she just seems so enthusiastic about it all of a sudden. and matteo hasn’t been able to get a read on if david’s friends liked him or not, even though he so desperately wants them to like him. david curls in close once he’s done with sara’s hands and wraps his arms around matteo’s stomach, who’s trying not to knock leonie’s work. he kisses matteo’s shoulder and murmurs, that’s a good color, into the fabric of his sweater. 

-leonie ends up painting matteo’s nails every time he ends up interrupting their little hang out, and matteo gets a little bit sad every time they end up chipping off within a week, not that he tells anyone that, not that david didn’t notice anyways. 

-i can get you some, if you want, david says to him one day with his hands on his face and his lips on his forehead. i’ll get you every color in the rainbow. you can paint them a different color every day if you wanted to. a different color for each finger, even. and matteo just shoves his face into david’s chest, feeling found out for some reason, and just goes, yeah, okay. 

[moodybluthcomic]

From Thumbnails to Comic Page

This is the second in my series of Behind-The-Scenes posts about Moody Bluth: Anti-Neoliberal Sleuth. Next full page is scheduled to go up December 30th- I will let you know if that changes, which it might since December is a busy time of year! For this post I wanted to run through the process of deciding what goes on a comic page. I presume that are much- much- better and more controlled ways of doing this that what I’ve done. Personally, for other comic projects after this, I would do way less scripting and thumbnailing and save those for later in the project, starting instead by just laying out how many pages each major plot point should take up, and which actions should happen on each page. Then I would make looser scripts and thumbnails for guide, to give myself more flexibility in changing the script later, and to keep the page count from getting too big.

Buuut. I didn’t do that here. I did something miles more convoluted and indecipherable. So here I’m going to run through page 21 (read the finished page here) from my first scripts to the full page. I thought this would be a good example page to use since it barely even existed in the first iterations of the script and has changed a lot since then. 

I wrote the initial script for Liptstick Don’t Lie in summer 2018. I kind of knew what all the central plot points would be (or so I thought) but not having drawn a lot of comics before, I had no idea how much action/dialogue I was going to be able to fit on a page and have it be readable. I went about figuring this out the most time consuming way possible: by starting at the beginning and working my way through the story making full-size stick-figure sketches of each page and hand-writing in the dialogue. I knew I wanted the comic to be printable on 8.5x11 paper so I just took 8.5x11 note paper and drew two pages per side. This was a slow process, often interrupted when I would turn to a fresh page to start drawing only to realize that I’d left myself an awkward amount of action or dialogue for the next page and I had to go back and re-sketch pages. I would stop and make quicker, smaller thumbnails for the next several pages, and then thumbnail in those pages larger, and then still find myself going backto revise the whole thing. I would scan those in, type out the script above, send it to Margo (my research supervisor and editor, god bless her soul), and then go back and revise the whole thing again. I don’t remember the details of this process, but I know there was a lot of change, hashing and re-hashing of just what the plot points and dialogue would be. 

{Image Description: Two numbered images:

1. A scanned script document containing a 4-quadrant chart. The top two quadrants contain scripted dialogue for two pages in which Moody wanders lost around the Disability Services Centre saying things like, “Am I imagining things? It’s like I’m walking in circles,” and, “Celebrated Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Way Out Of Administrative Building.” The bottom quadrants of the chart contain scanned illegible thumbnail drawings of layouts for the above pages, with Moody wandering through empty hallways. The gist of it is that these scripts and pages hardly resemble the finished page at all. There are also a number of sketches of Moody’s face, eyes, and facial expressions in the margins that don’t look much like current Moody.

2. A pencil sketch of a page layout done on lined paper. This page has Moody standing in an empty hallway with a chair and two doors, looking down the hallway purposefully with their hands on their hips, walking around a corner, and then standing with their hands in the air in front of a wide open space full of trees and obstacle course equipment.} _____

Parts of the initial script have stayed the same from the very beginning, but parts of it are unrecognizable. Page 21, the one in question, didn’t even exist there in its current form. In fact, most of the second half of the comic didn’t really exist. Initally I had Moody simply getting lost in a maze of unending hallways in the Disability Services Centre. "Remember the scene from I Heart Huckabees where he’s running through this white hallway and there just keeps being hallway and he keeps running and it keeps being white and it there just keeps being hallway?” I asked everybody who read the draft script. I wanted it to be like that. (Nobody remembered.)

The closest thing I can find in that initial script to the current page 21 is Figure 1, above. Some of the dialogue that happened on those two page now happens on page 21. Some of it happens other places. Some of it I’m pretty sure no longer exists. Those two pages had Moody essentially wandering through the hallways of the disability services, becoming more and more lost, and beginning to feel desperate. That script was a whole was a bit longer than I had hope, but still comfy at 28 pages - the two pages pictured were pages 15-16. Now, the action and dialogue of those two pages is interspersed with other things across many many more pages in the final comic, from page 18-ish or so to page [SPOILERS REDACTED]. But that didn’t happen until later.

First, the initial, white-hallways-only version of the script went through many edits and revisions. Margo and I sent it to friends and family members for feedback and sensitivity reading and suggestions on how to make the disability theory and anti-neoliberalism read clearly. We finalized the script- there were a few sticking points (I can’t remember what they were) but we seemed almost ready to move on. 

And then, in early August or so, at a meeting about one of those final revisions, I had my Great Big Terrible Horrible Very Good Idea. What if, instead of hallways, I had Moody wandering through impossible, magical rooms: like the fairground, the obstacle course, and [SPOILERS REDACTED]. This seemed like such a better choice metaphorically and artistically and theoretically that I knew instantly it was now the only option. Not wanting to add too many pages or revisions, I frantically took the already finished and proofread script and tried to fit the existing dialogue to new thumbnails- which became Image 2. above. 

You can see in Figure 2 above, we have something at least with the same basic premise as the current page 21. Moody is in a hallway that looks just like every other hallway, they turn a corner, and then find themselves in the forest with the obstacle course. This version only has 4 short dialogue lines for the page: “Wasn’t I just here,” “I must’ve gone the wrong way,” “what?” and, “Where the heck am I?” In that version of the script this was page 17, but I had managed to move and condense things to keep the script still at around 28 pages.  I scribbled those revised pages in the back of a notebook and then left them there. “That will be good enough,” I thought, “I’ll worry about that later.” It was the end of the summer, Margo and I were no longer having regular meetings, I wanted to start drawing. I pushed the later pages to the back of my mind and started at the beginning. I designed the characters, I figured out fonts and line weights and style guides. And then finally I started drawing.

{Image Description: Four numbered images: 1. Two stickynotes showing tiny sketches of a revised page 20-21, labelled Autumn 2018. 2. More stickynotes showing a revised pages 20-25, labelled Feb 20, 2019} 3. My big wall of stickynotes containing the whole comic laid out in 2-page spreads. 4. Stickynotes with a once more revised pages 20-23, labelled present (Nov 2019)}

_____

I drew. I moved across the country. I drew. I, unbelievably, began preparing to move houses a second time. I kept drawing. And then, sometime between moves, around October 2018- Panic! I realized that somewhere in the kerfuffle of moving, I had ended up referencing a wrong, older version of thumbnails. At this point I had completely finished drawing 8 pages, and at least a couple of them had mostly-correct-but-just-wrong-enough-to-be-a-problem layouts.  With comics, it is important to maintain rhythm: for example, a big surprise reveal will feel wrong in the middle of a page- it should come at the bottom of a page, or at the top of a new one. And in the careful dance of condensing pages without messing up those rhythms, my little errors was going to throw off the entire rest of the story. I stayed up that night with a pack of stickynotes, moving around pages until I got something that worked. It was, if I remember correctly, around 34 pages or so long. It was going to take me a month or two longer to draw, I was tired, but this was fine. It was fine. That reshuffle was where page 17 became page 21 (Figure 1). At this point, this page has moody tumble through the door from the fairground, and dust themself off, and then much like the previous thumbnail sketch the script is:  “Wasn’t I just here?” “What?” and, “Where the heck am I?” as they presumably move around the hallway and then enter the forest. 

I kept on working and thinking and over time and a number of minor changes and re-shufflings ensued. I have a bunch of scanned images saved in my computer of stickynotes dated to February 20th, 2019 that include more re-working this section, moving around panels and dialogue (Figure 2 above). They are pretty sparse to look at, but I could remember what they meant. (Or so I thought.) These stickynotes have the action of what is now page 21 spread across 3 pages: 21-23. Since I always wanted the comic to be printed as a booklet, from the very beginning I was always planning all the pages in facing 2-page spreads. And in this case, I thought it was important that the big reveal of the massive forest view come either at the top or bottom of a new spread, not in the middle of a page somewhere. I guess that moving around panels on the pages before this must have pushed this action forward into it’s own spread, which explains why this version has “Where the heck am I?” on it’s own page- so that a big, full-page climactic view of the forest could close out those two facing pages. Interestingly, in these layouts, the line “Celebrated Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Way Out Of Administrative Building” was still on page 25, somehow. I can’t remember if this iteration of edits made the page count longer or shorter. I think around here was when it reached it’s longest- a devastating 36 pages. 

There were more shiftings and shufflings and the final page count is back down currently to 31(ish) pages as per the massive pile of stickynotes currently sitting on the wall above my desk (Figure 3, above). Somehow, even my most current stickynote iteration (Figure 4) doesn’t have page 21 correct, with “Where the heck am I” still a line, and it’s accompanying reveal of the forest still taking up most of page 22 as opposed to it’s final place on page 21. 

{Image Description: Two numbered images: 1. A digital sketch laying out the panels and action for page 21 in transparent blue. 2. The final completed page 21 as it appears online.}

_____

So when I finally sat down to draw this page a couple months ago, I was faced with, mostly just a bunch of illegible stickynotes and an inaccurate script from over a year ago. You can see I relied heavily on going back to those lined-paper sketches from last summer, although I added several more panels to make the layout more dynamic and accurately convey the space within the hallways that Moody is walking through. I knew I wanted them to be able to be walking to the right so it would look like they were venturing forward down the hallway and into the forest space. But I also knew I wanted them, when faced with an identical hallway from last time, to try walking in the opposite direction. (You’ll notice on page 19 they walk to the right of the chair to get to the double doors that open to the fairground, so this time I needed them to walk to the left. But walking left on a comics page reads a lot like moving backwards. You can make it work, but in this case I thought it would disrupt the forward-motion that makes this page feel adventurous and like you are moving energetically through the space.) 

Dusting off the cobwebs from the only thing I learned in that one film class I took in school in like 2014, I knew I didn’t want to jump too quickly from left-facing to right-facing because that could be visually disorientating. Instead I added two new extra panels to give the framing a camera-panning-like quality. We see Moody from the front, then they turn to look down the hallway as the camera pans around and above, and then down behind them, following them around the corner until ultimately we see them from right side of their body, so that we can still see them walking to the right of the page in a way that reads as going forward, while knowing that they actually walked in a different direction than before. 

When I did the final layout sketches for this page (figure 1 above), I actually also did the layout sketches for the following 2-page spread as well. That’s not my typical workflow- I usually try to work one spread at a time, otherwise it gets hard to post new pages on a regular schedule- but at this point it felt necessary to understand how Moody was going to move through the forest and obstacle course on the following pages, before I could know what it looked like and thus be able to draw it from above. It ended up being simpler than I thought, since the part of the obstacle course that Moody climbs through in page 22 didn’t really end up being visible from here, but I still was glad I planned it out. 

Working on that blue layout sketch is where the dialogue got finalized for this page. The text layers are turned off in this screengrab, but I actually laid the whole text out here so I could make sure it fit and plan the drawings around it. I also had to come up with more dialogue to fill this page and make sense with the action, since the 4 sad lines of dialogue I’d been moving around on sticky notes weren’t really cutting it for me any more. I went back to that original script from last summer to check if anything important was missing, and decided to add the line “What’s wrong with me?” back in from the original script. I think that was when “Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Own Way Out Of Administrative Building” finally made its way to its rightful place on the page as well. I’m pretty sure I came up with the lines “Nancy Drew on a sweet blue roadster-- what is going on here??” on the fly as I was laying out the panels for this page. In the back of my head I had always known “Where the heck am I?” was a placeholder line because, since Moody doesn’t say any real-word curse words in the comic, I knew that at some point I was going to have to come up with something else clever. Some other time, I’ll do a post about going from a layout sketch like this one to a finished an inked page. But for now this has gone on way way long enough. ANYWAYS. This is a very long post. If you read this far, I hope you gained some understanding of the the convoluted decisions that get made while working on a comic over time. And also a good idea of some things to absolutely not do (Spend too much time on the initial script and thumbnails, leave yourself indecipherable notes, move across the country and then move again two months later...)

As I’ve worked on this comic, these kinds of edits and changes have become a necessary part of the process. Not only am I working from scripts and thumbnails that might as well be inscrutable runes, I’ve also had new ideas, made interesting mistakes that need to be fixed, and learned new drawing skills that have changed what I can and want to do. As I’m writing this blog post (in mid-November- a bit ahead of time), I’ve just had to recently re-organize, re-thumbnail, and re-work dialogue for most of the next five pages of story, just because of accumulated errors and changes from previous pages (ie: some of the dialogue I was planning on using for a page I accidentally used elsewehere...) or changes in what I can do (ie: wanting to fit more action on a page now that I have better drawing skills). That’s a part of why I’m sharing these behind the scenes posts- to buy myself some time to reorganize and get these next pages right! As always, thanks so much for reading and supporting Mood Bluth! Talk to you soon :)

[blackmanorcastleinthesky]

Garrett repressed a slight shudder while he waited for Exalted to finish his business with the wives. Of all the horrible places in the palace, he hated the wives’ wing most of all. The wives had the entire northern wing entirely to themselves, including a secluded inner garden. There were no men other than Exalted allowed inside, for all the good it had done him thus far.

And for all the success he hadn’t had in producing an heir, Exalted continued to provide the wives with every luxury available to them in their frozen country. They were taken care of, pampered and fussed over by their own personal group of older female attendants. Fed and bathed, housed and kept warm, protected by the solid palace walls and Exalted’s elite army of guards, including Garrett himself.

None of which explained the bizarre, unsettling feel of the whole place.

Garrett didn’t believe in ghosts, but if he did, this was the sort of place they might linger. Sucking all the warmth and color out of everything. Turning a life of privilege into something closer to a nightmare.

But…

Sometimes, in the dead quiet of the night, when Garrett patrolled the halls around the wives’ wing, he could hear the soft, keening sobs of the women inside. He thought of Exalted’s flat, reptilian eyes and fought off another shudder.

On occasion, he’d gotten a few glimpses inside while on patrol as the attendants came and went from the double doors. Inside, brightly wallpapered walls and plush looking carpets. Exalted spared no expense on their comfort while they carried his children.

Garrett wondered where Exalted got them, where all of these women came from. If they volunteered for the honor of carrying Exalted’s child, or if there were parents who sold their daughters to him. Garrett wasn’t sure which was worse.

Exalted hadn’t had a single one of them give him a viable heir. If they made it through the pregnancy to term, the child was stillborn, ending in the woman’s demise shortly after. As in the case of the last delivery Garrett had seen a few days previous, many of the children were hideously deformed. It was as if Exalted was never meant to father a single child. Perhaps for the-

Garrett nearly jumped out of his skin and to attention when the door next to him swung open. An apology was already halfway to his lips, guilt driven by his blasphemous thoughts. As if the man could read his mind. “Exalted-”

But it was one of the wives standing in the half-open doorway, her mouth curved into a wicked grin. “Try again, sir.”

“I- my apologies.” He took in the girl staring up at him. Her big eyes as round as her belly. Her face hadn’t even lost the softness of childhood yet. Garrett swallowed against a surge of revulsion.

“No need to apologize,” the girl said cheerfully. “I was just looking for one of the Mums.”

“Mums?” Garrett repeated, stupidly, unable to stop himself from frowning.

The girl gave another laugh. She nodded, leaning a little further out of the doorway. “It’s what we call the ladies who serve us. Since they’re all older than us, and they take care of us. Like our real mums. Well, some of our real mums.” She shrugged.

“That… makes sense, I suppose.” Garrett tried to coax his mouth into a friendly smile, attempting to mirror her expression. It felt wrong. The girl arched both eyebrows at him and snorted. He snorted back. “What?”

“You look constipated,” she said plainly, making him choke. Then she grinned. “What?” she said, throwing his deadpan tone back at him.

Garrett furrowed his brow at her. “I do not look-” He coughed. “Constipated.”

“You don’t smile a lot, do you?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “How can you tell?” he growled.

But she just chuckled. Again. “Well, maybe you do have a sense of humor, Mr. Grumpyface.”

“Garrett,” he said. “And it’s technically Captain.”

“Oooh, fancy.” Her laughter was starting to get to him. There was a strange, bubbly lightness in his gut.  “Sorry, Captain Grumpyface.” She smiled wide as he grunted. “I’m Elena. Nice to meet you, Captain.”

Garrett opened his mouth to reply when a female voice piped up from somewhere behind Elena, its owner out of sight. “Close the door before he sees you.”

Elena glanced back and rolled her eyes. “Clearly, his majesty is busy.”

The female voice turned sharp. “Lower your voice before he hears you. And close the damn door.”

Elena shot a look back up at Garrett, simultaneously crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue. “Some people just hate fun, Captain Grumpyface. Do you hate fun, too?”

Garrett sighed. “Probably. Now close the door before you get us both into trouble.”

Elena sighed heavily. “I’m surrounded by fun-sucking vampires. Bye, Captain.”

“Goodbye, Elena.”

The door closed and Garrett breathed a sigh of relief. He listened to Elena’s chirping voice fade away as the other woman obviously herded her away from the door. It was an unspoken rule that the wives stayed within the confines of their wing. Garrett wasn’t sure what the punishment would be for any of them that disobeyed.

Well, knowing Exalted… it was difficult to say. Even if they were carrying his seed.

Garrett shook himself firmly and replanted his feet, schooling himself to stillness as he carefully cleared those thoughts from his mind. Exalted would finish soon, hopefully, and even if it wasn’t soon and Garrett waited for hours – it didn’t matter. He would wait. Exalted would want to know what his scouts had found.

-

Charlie turned the pocket knife over in his hands before flipping it open with an easy flick of his wrist. Frowning at the dry blood beneath his thumbnail, he ran the tip of his knife underneath, scraping it away.

“So,” he said casually. “We can do this the hard way, or the easy way.”

His captive whimpered around the gag in his mouth.

“I know, I know,” Charlie said soothingly. “You’d love to do this the easy way, am I right? So if I take this gag out of your mouth, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know, right?”

Another whimper.

Charlie smiled. “Good.” He yanked the gag from the man’s mouth, not surprised when his first move was to spit directly into Charlie’s face.

Luckily, Charlie had been expecting it. And luckily, Charlie had an easy way to defend himself. Just a simple shield. The gob of spit hit the invisible barrier in front of Charlie. The man watched in utter confusion blooming into horror as it slid down the shield and dropped to the floor, hitting with a rather anticlimactic splat.

“Abomination,” the man hissed.

Charlie shrugged. “Probably, but really? You should be trying to make nice with me, not call me names. You don’t want to hurt my feelings. Trust me. I’m not a nice man once you’ve hurt my feelings.”

His prisoner was squirming in his seat, wrists working against the ropes that kept him tied to the chair. There was real, genuine disgust creeping into his expression now. Charlie felt a single painful beat of his heart. Fear, he could handle, even understand. But the disgust?

He gently put the tip of his knife under the man’s chin. “Listen to me, you little fuckweasel. I control your fate right now. I suggest you pull yourself the fuck together and tell me what the fuck you were doing creeping around the Lady’s hall. Before I take this knife and sink it into your tiny fucking brain.”

Behind him, a voice tutted, low and a little amused. “Charlie. That’s no way to talk to our guest.”

Charlie didn’t look back at Leon. Didn’t want to see the trace of true, mild alarm in his best friend’s eyes about his interrogation methods. “Uninvited guest, Leon. There’s a difference.”

“Fair enough.” Leon came into view on Charlie’s periphery. To his right, standing straight-backed, hands casually tucked into the front pockets of his slacks.

Leon’s ridiculous height and broad shoulders made a lot of men sweat, but his face was too aristocratic and stupidly handsome for him to be intimidating. Between the soft gray-blue eyes and the mouth that was made for smiling, Leon inspired loyalty by merely existing. And when he used the gifts that their new friend might consider an abomination? No one could tell Leon no.

Charlie sat back on his stool and went back to scraping the dry blood out from under his nails. Listened to the gentle, rhythmic tone of Leon’s voice as he knelt down in front of the captive. The man’s eyes were still as wide and round as saucers, his respirations quicker than they had been, but Charlie didn’t trust him not to spit in Leon’s face. He put a thinner, tighter shield over his friend’s face as Leon worked his magic.

“...you know you’re going to tell us. You have to tell us, right? We’re not going to hurt you if you just tell us what you were doing here.” Leon probably wasn’t lying, but he couldn’t promise shit for Charlie. The fucker wasn’t going to leave this cell alive if his intentions involved Witch in any capacity.

Charlie would burn an entire city to the ground for Witch.

The prisoner’s lashes fluttered. “Your… Lady,” he said, lips curling into a sneer, “is a filthy fucking monster that should have been smothered in the cradle.”

Charlie felt the air come off of Leon as the redhead drew back a fist. He didn’t have time to call his best friend off before that fist met the prisoner’s face with a thick, meaty sound. Charlie flinched.

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Charlie said into the silence that followed. Their prisoner was knocked the fuck out, head lolling around on his neck like a soft doll.

Leon stood up, frowning. He flexed his fingers, cracking his knuckles. “He pissed me off.”

“I could see that.” Charlie didn’t move from his perch. “That’s gonna be a pretty bruise, my friend.”

“There’s something off about him.” Leon shook his head. “I was pushing pretty hard.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t get into his stupid head either.” Charlie tucked away his pocket knife. “But he’s human. I’m pretty sure.”

“Me, too.” Leon sniffed and glanced over his shoulder, into the corner of the room. “My Lady?”

Witch stepped forward, as if materializing out of nothing from the shadows. She came to stand between them, arms loosely crossed over her stomach. “Human, certainly. But something else has a hold on him.”

“You can’t push through it either?” Charlie said.

Witch smiled wryly. “Not my kind of magic, love. More yours, I would think.”

Charlie looked away from her. “Yeah, well-”

“I’m only teasing, Charlie.” Witch touched his shoulder. “We’ll figure this out.”

Leon gave a nod of agreement. “Can’t win them all every time.”

Charlie wrinkled his nose, looking back at their unconscious friend. “I hate to lose.”

“We haven’t lost,” Witch said gently. “We’ll let him sleep off Leon’s fist.” She cut a look at the taller man. “Lost your temper, did you?”

Leon had the precious grace and decency to look embarrassed. “Yes. He called you-”

“I’ve been called worse,” she said. “By worse men. Come on. We all need a break.” Witch sighed and flicked her fingers at the prisoner, floating his knocked-out-cold body over to the cot in the corner.

Witch led the way out of the dungeon, Leon trailing her. Charlie followed close behind, trying not to let the prisoner’s seemingly unnatural defenses against all of their gifts get to him.