Today's voting incentive is the thumbnails for this week's pages, which are kind of interesting because I ended up totally redoing this page from my original plans lol. I enjoy writing these two because everyone else is pretty nice to Malaya, except for coffee guy. Charlene pushes Mal to test her limits, Elias tries to mentor her (and even with their age difference, he kind of babies her), and Vincent attempts to protect her. Marin and Marisa are a gentle, older guiding force. But, Malaya is slowly coming into her own, so all those relationships will have to evolve. Aubrey, on the other hand, is meant to be a foil for Mal: her family life sucks, she was raised as a werewolf with some understanding of what that means but not the skills, and she's very much a leader (or tries to be). Where Malaya is succeeding, Aubrey is failing. Aubrey and Malaya are also really similar, though. They are two sides of the same person attempting to challenge themselves. They kind of get each other in a way nobody else does...or at least, they will. They don't have to back down from each other, even if they aren't physically matched, and that makes a difference in how they relate. Anyway, I like how this page turned out. I actually prefer the uncropped version that'll eventually get printed, just because I like the extra space where it usually feels superfluous. In terms of coloring things, I've given up entirely on worrying about what color things are supposed to be. I work best in really limited palettes, so now trees are blue and so is grass, I guess. It definitely feels like an average, cloudy Midwestern spring day, and that's what I was going for, I guess. Just two randos, standing and talking in a field. So, I keep adding a million things to my plate and constantly pushing them back because I can't mentally deal with the world lately. I'm going to try and add merchandise so ya'll can buy stuff that'll help support this comic and also because merch is neat :). I'm not doing a great job of actually achieving that goal, and it's not a hard goal, but once summer is here and the weather is warm consistently, I'll feel a lot better. Anyway, what stuff would you guys think you'd want to buy? I'm aiming to go through sites that do print-on-demand, so something like Redbubble that'll do tshirts and bags and whatnot. I don't like their print quality as much, but I like the range of the options. There are a couple sites I'm looking at, so we'll see. If there's a place you really like to buy stuff from, let me know! Feedback, everybody! I need me some feedback. I'm a babe in the woods. My mental health is all over the map lately. I went kind of manic yesterday trying to get my house somewhat pulled back together after getting the floors done, and managed to knock a quart of white trim paint (nice paint too!) all over the damn floor. MY NEWLY REDONE FLOORS. And it splashed all over the vacuum, so that looks quite artsy now. The good news is, when I'm already in a manic cleaning episode (and I don't use manic loosely here), I'm hella efficient at cleaning just about anything. I made good time on that paint, and you mostly can't tell it was ever there except for a few small spots where it wouldn't come out of a knot in the wood flooring. Looks okay, regardless. Thank you, three coats of polyurethane. You saved my life. But, if you're worried about me, don't be. I'll be okay by next week and right back here in a month...almost like my body is ruled by a cycle. A womanly, hormonal cycle. And also that our current political situation has turned into a surreal political dystopia which is ruining my ability to focus whatsoever. YAY.