Vote at TWC today and you can see a finished panel from tomorrow's page of Malaya contemplating her issues with shopping. I had a very hard time getting this week's pages done, not because they're hard, but because I guess my brain hates me right now? I need to actually go get evaluated or whatever, but usually whenever the seasons change, I get ADD like a motherfucker. I have no idea why. My dad had a lot of issues with ADD, too, so I suspect it's just a family trait. Usually it's fine and I function pretty well, but not right now! Spring makes me happy, but it also makes me really restless like, all the time. Anyway, check out these nerds. A few people brought up how Vincent would've known that Elias was following him, and here is your answer! I initially tried to put it earlier in this scene, but it didn't work until I moved it to the end of the scene and made it the punchline. I touched on this a bit on twitter (you should follow me on twitter, obvs), but it's fascinating writing a story about early-mid 20 somethings when I'm about to turn 32. Don't get me wrong, Eli's feelings are definitely hurt being kicked out of his pack (or "temporarily sidelined for appearances" as his mother would probably put it), but he's also straight up complaining. His situation's not that bad. He went from living with his mom at 22 and being provided a job, more or less, to living with his favorite lesbians (where he already was crashing long term) who have the money to feed him and float him money if he needs it. The pieces of his issues will come together more with time, but his feelings are mostly intensified by his anxiety over his comfort zone being threatened. Malaya's comfort zone is firmly entrenched in the human world, where being a werewolf feels unfamiliar and scary, and her anxiety stems from pushing her boundaries regarding accepting her werewolf-iness. Elias's whole life has been structured around being a werewolf, and his comfort zone is within his pack (regardless of the fact that it's largely shifted around him, but at least he was able to stay attached to his mom). Now, he's being forced to evaluate his life path outside of that structure, in a much more human way. My point is, you gotta have balance, and for as fun and upbeat as Elias is, he's no more balanced than Malaya. They just have a different set of skills to learn from one another. (With Vincent largely being a grounding force for both of them...hmmmm.) Elias has a lot of shit to work through, too, and a lot of that stems from being a middle child who has issues with his mom. A lot of those issues are kind of unfounded, though, and he needs to get past them. All the parents in HTBAW are coming from different perspectives on parenting, and the only one who's actually bad at it is Connie. Mal's parents are sweet, but also overprotective and enabling a lot of her fears, because they're doing their best. Eli's mom raised four kids while heading a fairly huge pack while her mom sort of degraded into crazytown before running into the woods. She's not as sweet, but she tries to be fair, and she's willing to listen to Elias even if she can't do much to make him feel better. Anyway, I've had a long week (it's only fucking TUESDAY), my cat Rudy ate through the damn power cord to my fancy ass speakers and that turned into a whole ordeal yesterday, and I'm tired. (I tried replacing said speakers with a bad ass Sony Bluetooth speaker, but wouldn't ya know, Windows 7 has a hell of a time figuring out Bluetooth drivers, and my fancy ass sound card had no idea what to do with said speaker once I did finally get everything working. Nightmare. Ended up buying a $30 pair of regular desktop speakers and it worked immediately.) Tomorrow starts a new scene yaaaaaay.