Charlene has this game down. When faced with a bunch of clueless werewolves, so long as you really sell it, they will believe you, apparently. I just liked the idea of her mom teaching her about making creepy illusions to freak people out. Good clean family entertainment. I have spent so much time watching House and so much time drawing trees, that now the two things are going to be forever linked in my brain. Watching House now conjures up the countless number of trees I had to reference over and over to learn how to get better at drawing trees. They are not hard to draw, but you can always get better at drawing something. Reference is your friend. Speaking of watching way too much House, I'm kind of tiring of this version of writing where to make your characters "real," you make them flawed and edgy, but they're still supposed to be nice people. But like, REALLY flawed. I count the fact that they keep bringing up that 13/Dr. Hadley is bisexual, because they really treat that as her flaw. Like, she's slept with a lot of people and that's her flaw. Most people you meet are probably fucked up in some way or another, but I hate that I'm supposed to relate to characters who, by and large, are jerks to everyone they know? Most of the people in my life are pretty straightforwardly nice, uncomplicated people. They still have flaws, but it's not weird stuff like "cheats all the time" or "used to be a felon." Their flaws are more like, "has anxiety issues" or "can't stand up for themselves" or "has body image issues" or "has problems with over-controlling parents" or "used to be in an abusive relationship." These things are infinitely easy to relate to even if it doesn't make them "edgy" or "dark". I don't write characters who are meant to be edgy. People aren't edgy. Even the biggest bad ass on the planet is still going to have to shop for groceries amongst the regular folk. Day-to-day life is mundane to some extent for everyone. That doesn't mean a character with a mundane life has to be boring, or that making a character edgy and gritty improves the quality of your content. In completely unrelated but excellent news, I won an open-box designer kitchen faucet on ebay yesterday for $200. It normally goes for over $1000 and it's the one I've had my eye on for years! My kitchen is going to come out looking super cool...eventually. It's a slow process.