If you vote for me at Top Web Comics using the little button thingy on the right, you can see Marin and Marisa looking...kind of sad, I guess. I last minute decided to change Marin's outfit in tomorrow's page when I was working on it yesterday, because sometimes I make bad choices and have to fix them. Yay. The Ross family dog is a girl and she's named Pumpkin. You cannot see it, but she's orange. This is a black and white comic, so use your imagination. You know you live in the Midwest when your characters' parents don't end up with fancy fancy jobs but instead are landscapers :). That's like, half my town. And the other half are the people who need landscaping done, so there ya go. (My alternative dream job is designing landscapes, so I'm just living vicariously through this comic in multiple ways, it's fine.) But yeah, I wanted to emphasize that the council is made up of regular people with regular people jobs. They aren't a court of judges, just people trying to make decisions collectively without fucking each other over. I was surprised everyone seemed interested in my werewolf...law...group thing! We'll cover the rules more as the story goes on, but from a writing perspective, I don't want to pack too much of that into this part of the story, because it's largely more of an issue for the second half of this whole...thing. It's the introduction to the B plot that leads into an A plot. Or something. Just file it all away for now! So, this chapter is finally my opportunity to push Elias forward a little bit. He's a generally happy guy, but he's so eager to please that I think his own needs usually fall to the wayside when it comes to his family. Basically, I wanted him to be the classic middle child who's overshadowed by his older and younger siblings. We've already briefly seen the little kid versions of his sister Maggie and brother Ezra, and we haven't met Patty at all yet. I'll shove her into this story somewhere eventually. (First I have to get my shopping montage in...and I totally figured out a way to do it. Yessss.) I think he sees his mom as being kind of terrifying, and he desperately wants her approval, but his version of reality is a little skewed. He has to work through some shit in the future. I've also gotten very used to drawing Elias sad and hunched over in these last few pages, which is very fun. Sad puppy :(. Anyway, Summer is here, or close to it ??? and I'm fucking exhausted! Summer heat makes me sleepy. Also, I've been knocking out projects around the house like a motherfucker because I can't slow down (or I'll be alone with my thoughts...whaaaaat). The other day, I managed to completely redo my front flowerbed, which is great because it looked...sub par. And it's prominently featured in the front of the house, so that's no bueno. So, what started as me planting some stuff to keep it from dying on my back porch turned into me digging out and properly setting the concrete blocks around my flowerbed, and then amending the soil and planting things and then moving some other stuff...and I skipped lunch because I have no common sense yay. What I'm trying to say is that I feel very accomplished but I hurt in places. But seriously, it's very hard to stay inside and draw all day when it's so nice outside! The whole reason I'm okay with forging through half a year of winter is that I get half a year of amazing weather out of it. Most of the plants in my yard and blooming, and the neighborhood smells amazing from all the flowering bushes, and all the trees are leafed out and green finally. I'm pretty sure I live my whole life for summers. I'm glad they don't last, though, because then I get to wait for them again. I have to get up to the beach this year. It's right there! Lake Michigan is RIGHT THERE, it takes me no time to get to it, buuut I never go. I have no idea why. I have the Indiana Dunes right nearby, for free, and I'm just like...I'll go next week. And then I don't. Granted, last summer was kind of gross and cold. Okay, I gotta go finish comic things and clean the house and enjoy the weather.