If you vote for me at Top Web Comics, you can get a preview panel from tomorrow's page :D. Maybe one day I'll make it above the 20th spot! It's my dream. Well, Mal's having a hard time. This whole werewolf thing isn't really working out well! That's too bad. But hey, I drew a werewolf again, finally! So fluffy. I don't think I really know how to draw werewolves that aren't fluffy. It's menacing fluff. This whole sequence has been...interesting to plan out. I don't think my methods would work well for an actual job where I theoretically would actually get paid to write comics! There's a reason this damn chapter is going to end up being like, sixty pages. Even though I know what's going to happen next when I go to write a chapter, I very much follow my gut in terms of pacing. You go too fast, and none of your emotional beats connect. Go too slow, and your audience is ready for things to move on already. This particular sequence...is basically a panic attack. It was going to be five pages, but the transition felt too abrupt, so now it's six pages. Might end up being seven. If this were a normal comic that had to be written, then drawn, then published, I doubt they'd be cool with me rushing in after the art was done and saying, "Nope, nope...we gotta rework this whole part, it needs to slow down!" No one would ever pay me, so I guess I'll keep this method just for me. A lot of the emotional resonance for the rest of this chapter, and kiiiind of the rest of this story, relies on this bit hitting the right notes, so I've been pretty careful with it. We'll see. I have the feeling I won't stop being nervous about it until it's done and over with. Most of this sequence won't make sense until you can read all the pages together, unfortunately. In fun TV news, I've apparently run out of attention span for normal television, so I've been watching Rachel Maddow clips on Youtube, interspersed with documentaries about cults on Netflix. I'm a normal person, I swear. But I find cults and religious extremism really, really interesting. You can probably see some of that in the way Connie's pack generally operates, actually. I think it's natural to believe that our mind is solely our own, that we're rational and unswayable people with strong constitutions and a fair idea of what's wrong and right. I think we're generally delusional about those beliefs, though. It's fairly easy to change how someone thinks, what they believe is true, how they perceive the world. That's fascinating to me! And a little terrifying. I also watched the documentary Sexy Baby. (Which was made like, five years ago or so, and reminded me what Facebook used to look like...hm.) It's not quite the same idea as cults, but it's all about how (generally white, American) women are shaped by cultural expectations of beauty, sex, gender performance, etc. It followed three women of different ages (one was only 12 when this started). Kind of terrifying! Still, it paints a pretty clear picture of how we're all influenced by what we deem as normal versus abnormal. Okay, I'm off to eat breakfast and continue staring at what I've got written for these next few pages like I'm going to discover the secrets of the universe.