it was a wild and wonderful couple of days in maine at furcationland, i made a little bit of money towards the repair bills, and now i'm home. it's taken me a bit to unpack and get caught up on chores, and now i wanted to write a lil.

but first: my friend who hosted me over the weekend, Rick, has their dream comic project currently funding on kickstarter!! by all means please check it out and pledge a little if you can. not just because rick is a sweetheart, but i have been following the development of this for a while now and i'm excited to see it come to life. i think it'll be well worth investing in.

and second: convention stickers & zine overstock and discounted paintings going on in the shop. pls help fund our car repairs! ty!!

so, to get back to discussing the furcon - i was vending in the artist alley both saturday & sunday, and while i saw a few familiar faces it was mostly new people. i hosted/organized the artist alley specific stamp rally which, considering i have -no- experience in doing so, went really well!! it forced me to make new friends and
break the ice with other artists and vendors, and i think in a strange way also helped my social anxiety by giving me some menial way to prove myself to strangers.

but before i go Off abt how i did the stamp rally, i have uploaded con photos to kofi. fursuiters i could identify are free to view, but other stuff is paywalled unless you've (ever, at any point) given to my kofi account. or you could give like 1$ if youre new and get access that way! zanyway, stamps.

i had three days with 11 participants spread out in 2 day groups, so i used 3 different colors of baggies to organize prizes. but because there was no way to -get- the prizes from everybody before the actual convention hit, what this REALLY meant was i was running up and down the back alley wall first thing friday, then plopping down on the floor and rapidly sorting things into 50 baggies -per day- then handing each person involved four or five baggies.

then the next day, folks handed me baggies back and i shook them all out and redistributed them into THAT days prize bags (and sundays) and did it again

and then sunday i did it again, but ALSO at the end of the day dumped ALL the prize bags out and sorted them BACK into individual piles to return to their makers/creators, so i wasnt running away with their inventory... and though i did miss a few, literally everyone was so lovely and just thanked me for hosting it.

the only hitch was one of the artists, Roh, made an incredible unique-to-the-year sticker seal for winners... and we didn't have NEAR as many as 50 winners per day lmao i VASTLY overestimated our needs. we handed some of the seals out to the artists involved as thanks, and still had a bunch left. so our current plan is: hold onto them for next year, and offer them as one of the charity auction items for 2026, to raise money for Short Folks for Hope.

see, this is everything i missed about convention and artist culture :,> i'm really glad i went. i'm glad i organized the stamp rally, and i'm glad folks felt it went well enough for them on investment vs return.

so: i WOULD run a stamp rally again, for sure. i'd also do several things differently, just to see what changed.

my neighbors were Soggy (i was losing it at the number of times people were saying 'shitsplosion' bc of one of their stickers lmfao) as well as Scaredy Cat Pottery and Xoloco - a fursuit maker with a really really cute red panda partial for sale. all of whom tolerated my turnicated conversations very well lmao

unfortunately i didnt get to see as much in ways of panels or what have you, cuz i was vending and solo at it - alph stayed home both for work and to watch the cats. but i still managed to see the tetris attack tourney, fursuit a little bit, and meet up with a lot of friends i'd honestly lost contact with since i left xitter in the shitter. i wish i'd had more time to be with them all, but even just that moment is a huge breath of fresh air in hard times like these.

i also finally got to try donuts from the holy donut. ...yom :v

though i was chronicly under-rested and dehydrated, it was a wonderful time just like the year before. i really hope i'll be back in 2026. i fell asleep to the sounds of rick and redacted_cat playing eachother in NES bomberman on sunday, spent the day on trains and was home by kittycat dinner time on monday.

the car is out of the shop, which is a relief, but we're still feeling the sting of the cost of it. but given the trade war kicking off, i think repairing was the correct thing to do.

today i went out to get smoothies/coffee w a friend and catch up, since she just moved back to the area. and tho times are absolutely fucking tough, it felt good to sit and talk trash on her ex and walk in the sun. shes also an artist!

so. the country is going to shit but what else is new. it felt good to ride my scooter home, it was a comfort to see buds beginning on trees. i've caved and like every aging millenial resorted to watching columbo to soothe.

but i think as long as there's people willing to give me a chance, people who smile and laugh and want to catch up even after a long while or even if meetin gme the first time... i think i can survive.

i truly hope you, reader, can find what helps you survive as well.

unless you're trump or musk or lick such boots. in that case it will be my absolute pleasure to embroider your death shroud.

stay in the fight yall. love ya.

here we are in march... another month of america having the copper pipes & wiring torn out of her rotted basement and sold. sheesh. i decided to watch that HBO chernobyl miniseries from last year and also the Ukranian documentary Chernobyl.3828 and hey, so, like, this sense of everything being /very dire/ but everyone in power acting like it's no biggie and focusing on red tape & decorum is really very familiar. hm.

uhh unrelated to pervasive anxiety, got half my wisdom teeth removed last monday & i'm healing up good from that. they didn't put me out, tho for the other half i get to try nitros oxide. that'll be later...this month i think? i guessed i wouldn't be too bothered by the pain of extraction, but everyone talked a lot abt their pain afterwards so i was a bit concerned. shouldn't have been! as usual, didn't even need painkillers. seriously, i think i'm allowed to just say i don't need them now that i've had a double masectomy to remove stage 3 cancer with sentinal node biopsy and was up and walking around within 6 hours and refusing pain meds because i only felt "a little sore."

the True source of this, i think, is that when you're born with the kind of body that subjects you to monthly periods, you're absolutely trained to ignore debilitating pain. i had friends who literally fainted from their cramp pain, in the street. but i was never given any care response to my pain (probably PCOS, when they did remove my ovaries there was a lot of scarring evident from cysts rupturing on the outside. yep, just rupturing cysts inside on top of my gonads once a month) i learned to force my mind past it. this was also helped by the fact that since i was a /very/ little kid i was absolutely smitten with the idea of "mind over matter" in response to pushing your mind to overcome physical limits. so pain that probably would have hospitalized someone who wasn't born with an innie was just dissociated past every month of my life for a good 25 years.

it does make me wonder what a traumatic breaking bone feels like (i've only ever had surgeons break a bone, to fix the onchondroma on my dominant hand index finger) and what being shot feels like. but, given how america is headed, i may find out about that sooner rather than later...

wow, dark tone. i am sorry yall. i know this is far from the first country to witness fascists seize power and throw what was an obvious slow crawl of death to an accelerated nosedive decline. it's as they say - the old world is dying, the new world is struggling to be born. this is the time of monsters.

painting (ive been posting them in the shop) has helped a lot. i grabbed some cheap acrylic paint pens and have been mixing them with my tube acrylics on small canvases. it's been cheaper and more theraputic than trying to explain to a cisgender heterosexual trauma therapist what it feels like to be me right now. it still feels a lot like 'family abandons you because you noticed the sky was on fire' but like. what can i say. that'll be their sin to carry into the future, they've chosen to be haunted by me and so it will come to pass. my father, who right until trump years i could only ever praise, has got it into his head that because i told him it's dangerous to misgender me (with examples of why!) in the deep south, i've called him a transphobe. i have never called him a transphobe, but he's decided i have. he picked that mantle for himself. and he'll also tell me he's 'used' to not talking to me now and so doesnt need me in his life..... then message me on a holiday to wish me well? literally what am i supposed to do besides go "ok, boomer" and move on with my life? it's like entirely his choice at this point, entirely out of my power, and so really doesn't involve me in spite of being about me (like a lot of choices current elders make for those below them...) pretend i inserted a series of shrugging emojis here.

so emotionally: times are tough
physically: sawrite. itll be cool when all the wis teeth are out.

socially??? it seems like most of the people around me, in shops or whatever, since i can't help but come across Really Queer? they seem like theyre trying to be nicer. like, it seems like the temp of the average american wrt this administration is: they're shocked, they didn't actually think it would be -this hostile- and they're sorry they underestimated it.

it's easy to quote the leopards eating faces thing, certainly, but for those of you not american (or young american) lemme explain a thing to u - normally shit moves so slow. normally your political figure makes outlandish overblown claims during election season, and everyone sort of smirks and nods and goes 'yeah, right, so like 10% of that is really what they mean' and 10% of their word is what you get. like i have rainbow obama stickers floating around but barry didn't make it illegal to withhold medication to trans prisoners in federal prisons. so this kind of like 'we are gonna round up all the brown folk and throw them over the border' talk ... they didnt take it serious cuz theyve been indoctrinated /not/ to. decades of indoctrination. decades of training in complicancy and believing a political candidate will not keep their promises.

here we are, usa. fucked around n found out huh.


anyway i highly reccomend calling anyone flying trump flags a nazi because they really dislike that. maybe even let the whole world know theyre a nazi somehow.

i'm sitting here with a plastic bag of my teeth and a plastic bin of paint and a cooling cup of coffee and what i really wanted to say with this entire long ramble was... i haven't heard from my prison penpal in weeks. if our rights are looking bad on the outside, i want you to think about folks who already are having their human rights withheld. she also got some bad news recently (not unexpected, but still) and so i worry.

oh. right.
and there's this whole thing.

did you know that as of mmmm *checks watch* now, you can no longer use your united states birth certificate as a form of valid united states identification, UNLESS it has the FULL NAME of BOTH parents on it?

yeah. that one ties to trying to entrap migrant families with natural born children. source: the memo circulated to my spouse's boss and her peers, postmasters of USPS locations, urging them to snitch on any migrant family trying to get a child a passport.

i'm struggling to get my Papers, Please in order because of this and it's only a little bit deeply concerning.

tho i was relieved to see zelenskyy walk out of a bad deal. you don't make a deal with a bully and a terrorist. especially when they refuse to give you assurances the abuse will stop. shame he had to wait this long to learn the obvious lesson - that he was only ever a pawn to our leaders - but at least he's smart enough to say Fuck This and Fuck You For Trying It. hang in there, eastern europe. hang in there.

a friend abroad asked what they could best do to help vulnerable americans right now. frankly, that's a big question. we've been brainwashed into believing in rugged individualism and believing that the rest of the world hates us, so to be vulnerable enough to ask for help is quite a task. and WHAT to ask? i feel like that is going to vary for individuals. but i would say that offering a sympathetic ear is probably the best place to begin. listen carefully, learn how to let go of the anxiety we share but hold to the tangible problems that maybe can be solved. for some folks that may be a need for money, because cost of living is about to skyrocket. for some folks maybe it's more like information like 'where do i begin to immigrate' (spoiler: The Embassy/Consulate. you always begin here with immigration questions. call them right up and just ask no joke. if ur abroad u seek the american one and if ur in the US u seek the one of the country you want to go to) - basically, just try to make a show of being here as an ally, because the average american is suddenly getting a crash course in how it feels to be an average russian.

listen. we -are- in this together, if we -elect- to be in it together. and we are stronger together. white americans, especially, lack a sense of true community and unity and this is why theyve been so easily splintered off and turned against their own interests. you are not alone in it, many folks have been in this fight for years before you. its okay to be horrified now the veil has fallen from your eyes but do not let it paralyze you from finding some way to join the fight and learn how to best use your unique skills and assets. it begins with learning to live with being wrong without having to act like a kicked puppy abt it, it moves up when u learn to accept suggestions from people who have more experience in a crisis than you on how to use the resources that have been dispreportionately afforded to you. in this realm we have no room for personal swan songs. there is no more time.

be sorry, do better, move the needle.

if we all make it out alive, then there'll be time enough later listen to people who want forgiveness.

fml ive been writing this for ages and i havent even got to talking about working on hi res versions of arc 9 or getting a sunday AA slot at Furcationland or going to the indie horror convention or anything. i guess i felt like addressing the heavy mood was more important.

but i look forward to the snow melting, because i have flowers to grow.

i'll see you again, then, reader.

this year's inhuman-verse sketchbook pdf is out for download btw


hey, hi
so oh my god this month has been a little crazy. not just MICE, but after MICE getting everyone's cards mailed (i hope you all liked them when you got em) and trying desperately to get book 5 out in print before the month ended. in that last one, i failed. the factory shut for the holidays so there's nothin i can do. but these are all learning experiences. a project in late autumn may snafu thru winter. fortunately all this has meant really is that my studio is crammed full of a bunch of packages that are all unsealed awaiting one goddamn comic book before they can be released into the world like a flock of doves or some shit

it'll be nice when it's printed tho.

in retrospect i still did a lot this year. i started at ANE with a really rough drafted final print copy for the last arc of inhuman... i changed printers. i got chapter 4 out in print. i made a queer birds zine thingie. i did daily draw for pride. i visited furcationland in maine! i vended at my first street faire w worcester pride! i did another daily draw, made another book (bug pokemon lol) and THEN wound up vending at MICE!!! a total bucket list dream convention!! i got a fucking 06 yamaha vino moped that makes me feel a sense of self assurance i've forgot what it was like to have. i started therapy, i quit therapy, i learned after 3 trauma specialists in therapy that my family is in fact the fucked up social circle living in gilt denial and comfort, i'm not broken for noticing. i learned from those same therapists i apparently really have helmed this ghost ship masterfully. i avoided my family at all costs. i realized how much easier it is to stay on track when they aren't involving themselves and randomly making me feel awful and doubt my perceptions. i started a sticker club.

i hit the halfway point in being FUCKING DONE with taking my cancer med for ten years. still spike every empty bottle of tamoxifen into the bedroom carpet out of spite. five years. halfway.

i got my work displayed in the local crystal-headshop! nothing sold from there but, display is cool. i got back into painting (vs digital) and the vent
relief from it is amazing. some even sold.

i tried to arrange to like, DO things. we went to a (rainy) ren faire, a titanic artifact exhibit, friendsgiving card games....

this last holiday my friend rick even came down and hung out for a few days just chilling out with the cats. for me, for setting goals and achieving goals and trying to hang out with people who are cool more, i feel like i did real well this year. it was a lot of stress too, a lot of anxiety over a lot of different things. but i lived almost out of spite for the society that wishes i hadn't. and i intend to keep that momentum up.

so i'm hopeful about 2025 on my personal side. i want to make a sketchbook thats even gayer and hornier than this years. maybe even a full on comic out of horny spite. i want to make some autobio comics. i want to visit more places, i want to make more things, i want to meet more people. i can do all this in an n95 with a knife in my pocket for any shithead bigot who wants to go, but the only ones interested in starting shit seem to all be like 75 anyway. i'd like to grow tomatoes again.

sometimes even in losing things we rediscover pieces of ourselves and i feel like that was a great deal of this year for me.

i look forward to what more i can uncover in 2025.

*shameless need to survive capitalist hell still voice* and if you'd like to join me, consider monthly support on patreon or ko-fi. for $6.50 a month on kofi you can join the sticker club and get a little surprise sticker every month too. like a gift that keeps giving as long as you keep subscribed. or you can show some one-time support and buy something from the shop, and it will be very good.

that's all i have for everyone today. i hope to see some of you at Anthro New England next month! i'm only vending on Friday so i won't be around much after ...the hotel prices are just outrageous x.x

see you in the new year.

hey reminder there's an amazon worker strike going on right now. do not cross the picket line. but also just dont use amazon in general anyway if you can avoid it. sux, i wish other sites still allowed people to create wishlists!!

i'm still biting my nails counting hours before MICE. i've got my print book mostly in order, minus like three or four pages. everything except a tablecloth has showed up in the mail. i need to create a standee for sticker display still, but ... i think im mostly ready o.o i am very impatient and waiting will be the hard part.

yesterday was american thanksgiving, a holiday which generally brings on dark feelings for me. so alph and i spent it visiting w new friends leor & newt & squeek and we all played card games and petted cats. it was a good time! i often forget that my instinct to just take a jump socially is really the correct one... that most of my self doubt is just because of years of weird stalkers or family bs. learning to stop second guessing my instincts is difficult.

i suppose if therapy has given me one good thing, it's that validation. like the old edgy 90s tshirts said, it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

still have to send out a bunch of holiday cards, and i haven't even begun to write them x.x i'd rather just huddle for warmth and try to figure out how to line things with a cheap brush and little pot of ink. that, and play final fantasy xiv.

speaking of card games... the phone pokemon card game has this great looking mewtwo card in it where it's all greenlit and breaking out of a window from team rocket hq. can we PLEASE get that made into a real card?? asap??

waiting on arc5 prints still, i missed the thanksgiving weekend deadline with a proof so rip i may not have those on hand for MICE. ah well. i'm trying. hope to see some of you there!!

halloween not over until i say it over!! i wish.



trick or treaters came and went - tho it is a hell of a thing to budget for, its very worth it to me to watch their faces light up (or their parents faces!) when they discover there's full sized candy to be had. some kids would get real ambitious and ask if they could take from each bucket (toys, fruit candy, chocolate) and i was just like... yeah sure go for it. our street is no longer 'officially' part of trick or treat so the ones we get deserve a reward for their effort. lotta teens this year, some little ones. i did get one mom saying "this house goes all out!" as they approached which is fun to me... especially cuz most of the decorations are just ones that live in storage and many were bought at the dollar store. i just get creative with them is all! i'd discuss what my big decoration was this year, but considering my stalkers have flown all the way from the west coast to my back yard, and that they parked outside my house years ago, i'd rather not share yet. my hope is the one who parked outside the house won't remember which house it was (it's pretty likely) and i'd really like to /not/ look out my front window and see a familiar party parked facing the wrong way on the opposite end of the street staring at my house. again. they're also the reason i'm not going to furpoc - please don't give raizap/sdamned/chu/slightly damned your money thanks

election anxiety is in the extreme. me & alph already voted by mail (confirmed it online) but the prevelence of trump signs with full on white supremacist slogans on them like "america first" or "take america back" in this ostensibly blue state of massachusetts worries me deeply. i'm not excited for the coming week, at all.

i think ren's picked up on the anxiety and has been the MOST fussy baby the last few days. primarily she just wails and wails that like... blankets in the cat bed are not folded to her specification. or that breakfast is not being served an hour early. or that dinner is not being served an hour early. or that i am sitting outside giving out candy. she's just an elderly baby, and she has WANTS. she's going to be a nightmare tomorrow when the clocks roll back and suddenly breakfast and dinner are an hour LATE to her.

okay so back to halloween - we finished watching senritsu kaiki file/cho/world kowasugi and damn i WANT MORE. alph said they were just hitting the perfect stride with the characters and I AGREE lmao watching ichikawa duck kudo and punch him in the armpit was amazing. ichikawa's acting is so, so good. it's understated but it's so funny if you're watching for it. anyway it's a great 'horror documentary' style fiction series and i highly reccomend it. "world" has a pretty heavy sexual assault trigger but if you can handle disembodied voices speaking a horrible memory and implied threat, nothing happens on camera besides a bad guy being hit with an aluminum bat. and there are, of course, evil interdimensional worms. becuase it wouldn't be koji shiraishi without evil interdimensional worms. i really hope more kowasugi comes out soon. it's great stuff.

i also found another slow burn haunting/horror podcast (presented as 'this is rly happening and i have to record it u guys) that i've been getting way into called "I'm Probably Going to Die" which is just a great example of how you don't need a huge budget or elaborate production to make something creepy. a great deal of its horror comes from giving a (very real sounding) anxiety disorder from trauma a paranormal twist, but delivered by a very friendly sounding irish fellow's voice it goes down smooth as silk. there's only 7 episodes so it's easy to catch up. honorable mention too to the podcast "this house will devour you" which is a 1920s supernatural series told via letters between a couple after wwi. though the sound mixing can be a bit janky in season one (sometimes horses completely drown out the narration) it's got everything you'd want from haunted mansions of europe. i've only just started season 2, but s1 was a great ride.

after giving out candy i joined in a furcadia event at the dry lake dream where we all shared pumpkins we carved (or drew) and prizes and digital goodies got passed out. i won a door prize of one of the newer feral wolf avatars! i dont know, i really enjoy the like group of 20 people doing a digital party event thing. it feels welcoming and nostalgic and fun.

it felt good to carve a pumpkin in one go this year! nothing elaborate, just a cat face. but in the time leading up to cancer and for a few years after, it was too physically painful or draining to do. having it go really rather swiftly this year made it feel like my body is finally getting back to where it once was. sure my right side still gets tweaks of nerve damage and the petechiae from radiation sometimes itch still, but it's not like being stabbed in the shoulderblade anymore.

AND the FIVE YEAR MARK of cancer recover has OFFICIALLY PASSED!!!! that means i have only five more of taking tamoxifen to go!!!! i sure hope america doesn't descend into full on nazism and throw me in a concentration camp for being a sickly queer before that but haha. ha. hahahahaa.

imagine being so privileged you think you should abstain from voting or vote symbolicly for a third party while throwing people under the bus and placing them in clear, active, and very explicitly outlined danger just to feel self righteous. this year is not the year, numbbutts. like i said before - consider it a choice on the ground we have to fight on for the next four years. do you want ground favorable to our fight? or do you want it to be so hostile that those even talking about a fight get thrown in the concentration camps described in project 2025 and advocated for by trump? is /feeling/ like you used your vote to protest our stupid country more important to you than the lives of trans folk, immigrants, disabled folk, african americans, native americans, other queers etc etc etc? if so, stop even calling yourself an ally. you're not an ally. you're a virtue signaler. your npr totebag may make you feel like the smartest person at the neonazi bbq but you're still at a neonazi bbq.

ok now im just lowkey yelling at my own mom lol probably time to wrap this up...

i'm going to get back to scanning old comics into hi rez now that the backerkit finished occupying my inhuman brain space. only arcs 6, 7, 8 and 9 to go...

see ya round

hello reader...s? ha

it's the most chilling month of all, and my fav holiday coming up to boot. so i thought i should update this month with some reccomendations of things i've been into. or mini reviews. i'm an expert at tl,dr if the backerkit for arc 5 wasn't obvious.

(speaking of the arc 5 printing backerkit, it's in the final two weeks! backers at the 25$ or above level now also all get a set of pins, a sticker sheet, prints, a zine, and a final secret surprise added to their orders. so if you're an inhuman diehard, check it out asap before its gone!)

anyway.
( enter for some horrific holiday reccomendations! )

it's also a good time of year for me to promote the horror bundles on itchio that im in!! firstly there's the Queer Halloween Stories bundle which has over 90 games, 12 comics, zines and more in it! there's two payment options - Fright (60$) and Treat (10$).

the second is the all-comics Halloween Horrors Bundle for 35$ put together by members of the Cartoonists Coop! there's 50 comics in it, so that's a great deal. it makes me wish i had more spare time to read them all. but... gotta make that dollar.

speaking of making that dollar - i dusted off my patreon to mirror my Kofi, in the event that it's just easier to support via patreon for some folk. i'm still not a fan of the platform in general - kofi is /way/ more reliably functional. but yeap, folks can reserve monthly art commission slots on either one once more. also backing either one will give you access to the discord chat!

this month's sticker club sticker tho. get it exclusively thru kofi!

i personally prefer kofi for a variety of reasons, one of which is i can set up little galleries and post my october daily draws there for everyone to enjoy. this year i'm doing bug pokemon. just bug trainer brain, baby.

i also did a little bit of fussing around with the layout of demon-sushi.com, including the start of a classic 88x31 pixel banner button wall. if you've got a website and a button for it in that size, let me know and i'll add you to the list! the reasoning behind that size is very 1990s, because a popular web host (geocities) used to self promote with a button of those dimensions, and it sort of took off as a "professional" way to link back in the day to design yours in that same fashion. i'm really enjoying the rebirth of personal websites tbh. keep it up!!

i'm struggling quite a bit with fatigue after the last bout of covid (even though it wasnt symptomatic, it really clearly got to me if im falling asleep at 2pm randomly) but i'm slowly starting to get a sense of my own working capabilities /again/ and looking for part time work via my little scooter Red. so far, no luck. so online supporters really are important right now.

i haven't got a chance to set up halloween decorations yet, but i think this year's theme is going to be skeleton at the beach.

stay safe if you're in the southern US during this storm season, please. and if you're in the middle east, know that the jewish diasphora across the world is disgusted at what israel is doing. they are no different than nazis in their campaign of empire expansion and genocide and it's beyond shocking. i know they've been like this since before i was born, but holy fucking shit. i personally don't have resources to give, but i think its important other readers know gofundme campaigns for people in gaza are being very carefully vetted and you can rest assured they are all legitimate. you can also buy Esim cards to allow gazans to remain connected with the outside world. please help if at all possible.

and to my fellow americans - please vote. remember that this is less about finding a perfect immediate fix to our problems and more about selecting the terrain on which we will fight to solve our problems for the next four years. to abstain from voting shows a degree of self involved white moderate liberalism & privilege that i really and truly can not understand.

hang in there, friends. i'm thinking about trying to write more often. i've fallen off of it in the last 15 years as it was one of the very early complaints my stalkers made about me and i foolishly hoped it would placate them. but fuck those assholes. die mad about it.

time for me to finish this cup of coffee, this blog entry, and draw a shuckle.
love you, gracious and faithful readers. i hope more treats than tricks await you this month.

hello blog friends

it's august and i'm currently juggling a depression episode and also a wisdom tooth coming in (and it is ANGY) so this may be short. i was worried i was going to get symptomatic because covid hit my spouse this month (again, even tho we mask) but it seems to have not really laid into me this time. i felt like i had a mild head cold, and one day i coughed up some streaky blood, but that was it.

given the 2 week limited immunity following infection, we went to the gem & mineral show in springfield like we try to do yearly. it was fun, it always is. lots of huge fossils this year, and a few new folks selling less rock-related items like taxidermy & wet specimins. i generally feel like i pay the 10$ entry fee to touch all these things that ordinarily would be behind glass in a museum or are otherwise fully out of my budget. Touch that geode that's taller than you are. Poke one of those crystals that costs more than you make in three months. Do it.

i'm in the middle of working on some art projects for clients, but i'm also in the process of trying to get inhuman arc 5 into print.

yep... it's true. finally arc 5 is fully touched up and edited all nice. i added the web rez versions of this new edit to the site (replacing the old ones) as well as to the itchio archives, so you can read the "new" arc 5 right away if you want.

but to help arc 5 get to print: it'd really do me a solid if you went to this site and joined the crowdfund campaign mailing list.
>>Join The Mailing List, Pretty Please!<<

you don't have to commit to purchasing to join, and the metrics help me either way.

they've moved me to a trauma specialist with therapy, because growing up with a waffley narcissist having custody and then getting stalked for over ten years by ex-friends because you came out as trans & couldn't wish away depression will do that to you.

please also consider supporting me via kofi, especially if you're willing to make a recurring pledge like the Sticker Club tier. This helps me actually pay for therapy instead of slowly get into more debt because of it.

my support was seriously damaged when i got cancer 5 years ago (it's a big trigger, i understand why folks might leave me on my own for it) and then damaged again when i survived treatment (????? ok guess i shouldve died) and it has been a serious struggle since then. like 2/3 less income, for 5 years. so please help out if you once did before and/or if you are able to now. i am, no joke, more on my own to deal with shit than ever before. family decided partying with folks who want to deport me or whatever is way more fun than supporting my human rights, and close friends decided ketamine was a way better friend than i could be. or that i should be their new mommy/daddy in their 30s. it sucks. i'm tired. i just want to be able to get shit taken care of like a wisdom tooth without having to worry, or feel like i'm selling my soul to abusers and being berated just for needing help.

yeah. fun times.
i'll try to get streaming on saturday but my energy has been garbage for days. fingers crossed.
see you around...

hey hey team.
i just felt like i should check in and write a blog post halfway through pride here. well, a bit over halfway. it's heatwave indoors typing time yayyy

the Queer Birds production is chugging along - books are printed and i'll pick them up next week, feather pendants & stickers ordered. there's a slight hiccup on soap cuz effluvia's got a pet emergency so if folks have $ to spare surely buying her wares will help that out. i'm looking to ship sometime in the first 2 weeks of july at this point.

while i was out there ordering stickers for backerkit, i figured it would be a good time to launch the sticker of the month club where i mail folks an exclusive vinyl sticker design each month. and this month's OBVIOUSLY pride themed, and gonna be a loooong sticker. so if you like stickers, little surprises in the mail & can commit to less than the cost of a large iced coffee once a month, join the club!!! i really like stickers and i'm excited to make more!! haha

also, if you're an inhuman fan ... print issues of arcs 1-4 have been /finally/ printed and (re)stocked in the online shop. they look great, i'm super super happy working with this new print production company (printninja!)

i haven't really gone out much this pride, but this weekend we're going to see one of my all-time fav bands that i've loved since the 90s, cake! i can hardly believe it's happening. my skeptic spirit is strong because it doesn't wanna be let down by something going awry. lol

i'm still miraculously on track with daily draws for aquatic non-mammalian creatures done up as pride flag art. i've been primarily posting them on the fediverse but at the end of the month i'll put a pdf on itchio too.

speaking of itchio, have you checked out this year's queer games bundle yet? i'm in there but also so are like 400 other amazing game writers, designers, coders, artists and more. it's a grand itchio tradition to get all the queer folk using the platform paid a lil bit and it's great... but this year, probably most especially th anks to The Muskening, it's struggling compared to the last two in terms of numbers. so if you can, please help it out or share its social media posts!

uhh what else >.> alph and i have been watching thru the 07 gegege no kitaro anime /partly/ for nostalgia but /mostly/ because it's got one of the best theme songs i've ever heard in my life and it lived rent free in my head for the last ssssseventeen? years? i can't do math. but i know a good themesong when i hear one.

read a wonderfully? darkly expected article on the leaked confidentials of the titan submarine that imploded killing 5 billionares last year. it's exactly as bad as i expected it to be. okay, maybe i didn't expect the brand names attached to it but that really is the american experience anymore isn't it.

read an absolute solid destruction of known racist cartoonist scott adams creator of dilbert recently and it was in fact so good i had a moment of realization abt family conflict that helped me go forward a lil. lol. my new therapist seems ok, still very new to me so im still a bit nervous, but what can you do. its the work, right?

happy juneteenth babes. i need to go water my plants and draw an aquatic animal.

hoi babes lol
i am trying to update this at least a little bit regularly now.

i'm still trying to help recently unhoused SCP writer fairydoctor get life stabilized - please if you can, consider donating some funding to them. we're all doing our best out here!!
cashapp: https://cash.app/$fairydoctor
paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=VKAHDZ5WY7VRN
kofi: https://ko-fi.com/fairydoctor

i've been enjoying regular walks onto the abandoned whitney factory rail trail in the woods this spring. i've startled a couple creatures by accident, including one of the local beavers. i've crossed some rotted out train bridges, and i've picked my way around flooded and torn up parts of the path to discover beavers dammed upstream and that's why the path flooded. i still haven't made the full loop of the trail yet, so it's been nice. it's been fun. no one else is out there because of how poor the trail's shape is, so it's just me and the woods. this worries my elderly cool neighbor (carol) a bit, but i think it's fine. not like i'm out there hours at a time!!

the big news: i'm going to try to make a printed artbook copy of Queer Birds!

mostly i want to do this to learn the platform backerkit (instead of kickstarter or other crowdfunding project platforms) and because i want to be able to offer this art book for sale at cons. i think it's got broad appeal! and bloke appeal really. who doesn't like birds?

if you're reading this before may 8th, you can help the Queer Birds Printing project for FREE just by signing up here: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/a635af85-51a0-4816-b1e4-cb33ee77932e/landing

if it's after may 8th, the project should be live here:
https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/hekshano-industries/queer-birds-full-color-art-print-book?preview_token=t3a3Ojxo4Zk

either way - i'm excited to see how my first backerkit attempt goes.

spring flowers are blooming, and i've got a thousand ideas and so little time for them all!! see you when i see you.

hey hey, mostly i logged in to give a pre-birthday post-convention update, but i also see that dreamwidth is helping push back against these "parents rights" laws that are really just dogwhistles for legalizing child abuse. dreamwidth is a good blogging platform, if you're looking for one to join and support. they've been around for decades and aint goin nowhere.

so tomorrow is my birthday, january 28th! what the hell, i finished my comic before i died. this is such a strange feeling. i'll be 42, and i /was/ going to ask folks here to contribute to a fundraiser to help me get ren some meds as my gift request - but it was already fully funded overnight, so i dont even need to?! it's my first fundraiser in almost a year! hopefully my next one will be for arts and comics, though.

anthro new england 2024 was wonderful, even if i only was able to vend one day. as usual, the other vendors around me were just polite and sweet and communicative people who all had such amazing things for sale and were so clearly talented. pixel (ane's artist alley honcho) worked so hard and did their best to make everyone feel valued, welcome, safe, secure and just generally wanted. it was honestly one of the best experiences i have had vending with ane. like, they /fed/ us. we had a /lunch break/ if you can believe it.

because i was only vending the one day tho, i was able to catch up with a lot of friends. some couldnt make it to the con bc 2020 broke us all a little, so i tried to bring the con to them. my friend rey showed me their ham radio setup which i did not understand at all, but had been dying to see. as a precursor to the internet it fascinates me!

it was bitterly cold out in the boston harbor, so i was very happy to wear my fursuit head to and from the con space when i was not vending. every year there are so many amazing suiters i've never even seen before, and of course old friends too! it was exciting to hear pyrrah the charizard's creator is now on the board!

finally, after years of trying, alph and i were also able to join our friend rick at their fav hotpot resturaunt in boston. and ok i admit, i was afraid to try the hotpot cuz it was something new. but the menu had plenty of things that were still comfort food to me, so next year i'm up for something new haha. rick's finished scripting and laying out the first chapter of their upcoming scifi comic: Project Starlight. get hype cuz ive been peeking and it looks fun as hell.

thank you to everyone who spotted me or stopped over to say hello or bought something from me at ANE2024. you really make me feel like i belong somewhere, which is important to someones self worth. and this was my first year vending since covid began, so i was very afraid i couldn't do it or it wouldn't go well etc. but i had fun, i paid a lot of amazing artists for their merch with the money people gave me for mine, and i wasn't having /too/ much anxiety about leaving the cats alone. i can't wait until next year.

i've been testing for covid this week to be sure i didn't catch it at the con and so far all negatives! n95 masks work, that was a crowd of 3-4k people. we were, obviously, both very tired when we got home but that's kind of natural especially ....in your FOURTIES lmfaooooooo

i'm currently absorbed deep into zelda: tears of the kingdom, but when i re-emerge i'm going to add a subscriber commission slot thing to kofi since that's what appears to be what people miss most about my patreon. just gotta get in there and do the work.

and hey ps, if you still want to give me a birthday gift, why not support dreamwidth? you can buy me tokens or paid time or whatever (i dont even know what the difference is, ive been on a free account for years) which ultimately will just be me getting a notification you supported them in my name. my username on here is not_fun !!

right then. i need to go do laundry. but thank you, all of you, for being positive lights in my life. if i was able to make you smile and feel connected or heard or not alone, thats all that matters to me beyond what money i need to survive. to feel like a part of this species, and a part of a corner of this species that has its eye to the right kind of future... these are important to me.

douglas adams wrote the meaning to life, the universe and everything is 42. about to turn 42, i feel like i have my own answer figured out. and maybe that's what he meant. i hope i can continue to be part of the path that leads others to the answer too.

see you when i see you