Vote over at TWC and you can see Elias's nerd face from tomorrow's page :). (It is his regular face, because he's a nerd.) Well, I hope ya'll like awkward, slow-burn B-plot gay romance, because this is gonna take me forever. Nothing in this story happens quickly, I don't know if you noticed. My go-to favorite pairings have always been the up-beat happy one (who's usually secretly tortured) paired up with the emotionally stunted one. (I relate to this, because I'm the emotionally stunted one yaaaaay.) My not-so-secret goal is to keep giving Vincent random hobbies throughout this story. You'll know I've run out when I get to like, competitive butter sculpture. (Fuck, so Midwestern.) I was trying to figure out what sport Elias could reasonably play as a child, and his only options are no-contact sports. Maybe Track and Field, but let's be honest, that'd just be glorified speed walking for a werewolf. Baseball it is! Vincent plays for his team at the university, the Ospreys. I wanted to find a sufficiently obscure Great Lakes bird that could still look bad ass as a logo. My other option was the Herons, but that doesn't sound cool. Does this mean they'll bond over baseball in the future? Yes. Obviously. Fun fact, this was supposed to be the last page of this chapter. Not literally THIS page, but we were supposed to be done by now. Other fun fact, there are three more pages left! Because like I said, nothing in this story happens fast. Brevity is not one of my skills. Also, starting a new chapter means making a new chapter cover, and as I'm finishing up three commissions this week, I don't have time to make that cover! So...I might have milked this last leg of the story for my own scheduling purposes. You benefit by getting to enjoy extra pages of awkward conversation! So, we've all had a weird week, probably. I'll save politics for twitter where I can rage in real time reaction to the hour-by-hour horror show that is the news, but right now, I'm thankful for this comic and my dog. I'm thankful for my dog, because otherwise I'd have nothing to get me out of bed in the morning until the cats decided their hunger overcame my interest in never leaving bed. They're not as persuasive as a 60 lb dog smacking me in the head with her giant dog claws, though. And I am thankful for this comic, because it gives me something to focus on every day. It gives me people to talk to, people to listen to my twitter rants and retweet my retweets, and gives me a purpose outside of politics and world issues. My ultimate goal is to grow this beast (puns!) into a comic powerhouse, something tons and tons and tons of people have read and enjoyed. That goal is slow-going, but it's coming along. I didn't start off with a horde of devotees, so for someone as obscure as me and starting for scratch, I think I'm doing pretty well. My two year anniversary is actually on Thursday! I need to like, make art for that? But I don't think I have time, so I'll just dedicate my Chapter 7 cover to my two year anniversary. Yes. Anyway, I'm glad to have this comic because it has given me a purpose other than dog walking and sleeping. It might sound funny, but I think we were always going to end up here as a country and as a world. There's been a lot of apathy brewing, and a lot of anger from all sides, and regardless of who would have won the presidency, we would have ended up here eventually. Maybe with a four year delay, but what vitriol would have grown, undetected, in that time? Yet the last few weeks, we've all gotten a crash course in civics. There have been daily protests, people coming together at an hour's notice...people voluntarily going to the airport. We're learning and connecting and donating. We're getting less polite, but more honest, maybe. I've been connecting with family members and friends I haven't seen in years. I've been more involved in my community and local politics than I have been in the past, and I'm pretty involved compared to most people. I don't know if this is where I want us to be, but here we are, and maybe here is where we would have been regardless.