Was Wishing There Was A Positivity Post For Original Fiction Writers Since I See So Many About How Fanfic

Was wishing there was a positivity post for original fiction writers since I see so many about how fanfic writers are doing so much for their communities even when they're not actively writing, and then I thought:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

So this is a positivity post for the writers out here who are working very hard on stories with no established community. Who can't talk about their blorbos and plot lines and brainstorming to anyone and expect them to know what any of it means. Who don't have much to share publicly, but are hoping they will one day.

You're doing a lot of hard work, and I recognize and appreciate what you're putting into the world, even when you're resting.

I literally hate getting wet 99.9% of the time but today was a weird day so I biked in the rain. 10/10 would recommend. Don't know what it was about intentionally getting soaked, but great vibes, really.

In other news the next installment of Werewoof Undies is set to post tomorrow. I'm overly excited about that.

Did a random animation because I am still figuring out Procreate Dreams. This is a metaphorical representation of a random side effect of using a blood magic in my current WIP - whatever color your eyes were, they get redder and brighter. One character's eyes are bright orange, like this animation. I have another animation in progress that also shows this effect a bit, but who knows when I'll finish it because it is far more complicated than this one was.

Really rough storyboarding for a minicomic I am working on. That second panel is a giant glass gate, which is going to be a pain to draw...

I've finished writing my current work in progress, and now it is time for editing. Which means that I once again am reminded why I always avoid editing

The Bite

Ethan amused himself in the least amusing of ways. Jake thought so, anyway. He had nothing to do, so of course he was staring at Ethan from behind the curtains. Being so close to the window at night made him a little chilly, but it was worth it. After all, watching Ethan read an academic article without knowing anyone was watching him – that was the peak of amusement. He made no expression, he did nothing out of the ordinary, so Jake knew for a fact that he didn’t know that Jake had been hiding in the curtain since before Ethan had gotten back to their shared apartment.

If that wasn’t entertaining enough, the third of their trio, Max, wasn’t home yet. That meant that Jake would be able to watch him unseen while he was watching Ethan unseen, if he was lucky. He actually wasn’t sure where Max was, so it might not be for some time that he would get to watch the two of them, but it was worth the wait. Jake just had to be still enough not to alert Ethan, but to be honest, Ethan was too absorbed in his article to notice some slight curtain rustling.

Soon enough, though, he made quite a bit more than a little curtain rustling. It was unintentional, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. After all, he had just heard a scream, and it sounded close by. It startled him so thoroughly that he fell out of the window, his fall being slowed, though not stopped, by the curtain. Nevertheless, the ‘thud’ at the end of it, plus the earlier scream, were enough to pull Ethan out of his article and force him to acknowledge Jake on the ground, still tangled up in the curtain.

“How long have you been in that window?” Ethan asked, not seeming surprised in the slightest. That irked Jake, who had only stalked people from behind a curtain a handful of times so far that year. He was about to make a snarky comeback, which would have been immaculately articulated and would have put Ethan to great shame, but Ethan was saved by the sound of something large hitting their door.

The couch, where Ethan sat, was positioned with its back to the door, so Ethan had to twist around to glance at it. Jake had fallen to one side of the armchair that sat in front of the window, and he was lucky that it was the door-side, affording him somewhat of a view of the front door from his position on the ground. With both of them staring at the door, the sound of rustling metal made the situation more ominous. First the scream, then something hitting, and now what? Chains? Coins? Nunchuks? Jake couldn’t tell, but it was sure to be sinister.

Unfortunately for the pair, the door then began to open. Since it was locked, that meant it must have been a lockpick set! Jake thought. Now some murderer was going to be in their home, and Max would come home to find them both dead. If he was unlucky enough, he would come home just in time to witness the murders, causing the murderer to kill him also, leaving no witnesses to the crime.

When the door opened, however, Jake was disappointed to see that the murderer was Max. Or rather, it was Max instead of a murderer. That spoiled the whole event. What’s more, Max didn’t even have an opportunity to be confused or amused at Jake’s position on the ground. After all, he was dripping blood all over the floor, so he was really in the stranger and less explained position, between the two of them. Also he probably needed some first aid.

Though Ethan’s position was worse for viewing the front door, it was better for reaching it, so he got to Max and closed and locked the door before Jake could finish untangling himself from the curtain. Jake was not unused to detangling himself from curtains, however, so it was only a moment until they were both fussing over Max.

“What happened? Are you okay?” Ethan asked.

“NO! What do I look like, do I look fine? I am not fine, Ethan! I am staining the floor red and we aren’t going to get our security deposit back and I’m freaking out!”

“Let me see it,” Jake said, holding out his hands to take Max’s arm, which Jake assumed to be the source of the blood based on how tightly Max was curling it into himself. Max was refusing, still in a panic, trying to get the words out to explain what had happened.

“I was just trying to take a walk and all and it’s a nice time of year for that and all, but then I’m dying, so maybe it wasn’t a nice time of year for it after all! And I’m gonna lose my arm, and DON’T TOUCH IT JAKE THAT HURTS and I can’t even go to the hospital because they’d kill me or something and I didn’t want to be bitten on a nice night, why couldn’t it have been some other night so it didn’t get all ruined by this?” Max said in a rush, starting to sob a bit.

“Bitten?” Ethan asked. “By what?”

“Um…by a…skunk,” Max said. Both Jake and Ethan were suspicious of that, but decided in tandem not to push the issue before the wound was treated. Jake ran into the bathroom and came back out with a first aid kit while Ethan guided Max to the couch so he could sit down.

“You have to let me see it or I can’t help you. You want to stop bleeding, right?” Jake said, unintentionally imitating his mother when she faced a similar situation with child Jake. Though, Jake considered, he had never bled this much from any wound he’d had. It worked, though, and Max held out his arm. The damage was bad, not just a couple of punctures, but some ripping, like Max had forcibly freed himself from the jaws of a creature much larger than any skunk. Jake scrambled to find enough disinfectant to cover the wound, wondering if he should take the time to wash it out first.

“Well, you don’t have the…skunk, with you, so you’re going to need to get rabies shots,” Ethan said.

“What? Why? It wasn’t rabid, I don’t think,” Max said, distracted from his hysterics by the introduction of the topic of rabies.

“You don’t think,” Ethan said. “That’s the problem. Rabies can sit dormant for years before making an appearance, and once it does, that’s pretty much curtains. You can’t afford to gamble on it, and they can’t test the animal for rabies since you lost it, so you can’t forgo the shots. Besides, rabies causes an increase in the instinct to bite, so going straight to biting is more or less an indication the animal may have been rabid, at least if it was showing any other symptoms. Point is, unless you can prove the animal did not have rabies, you need the shots. Don’t avoid them.”

“I can’t, no, I can’t go to the hospital,” Max said. Jake thought he was calming down slightly, starting to come down off the adrenaline high caused by the animal attack. Jake worked a bit faster, trying to get the ointment on and the blood stopped before the sensation of the wound being touched started to really become painful. Oddly, though, as Jake had started treating the wound, he found out that it wasn’t bleeding all that much anyway, which is why he hadn’t been rushing to stop the blood first thing. Max must have gotten lucky with where the teeth had hit.

“Why can’t you go to the hospital? Give me a good reason by the time Jake has that bandage taped up or else I am driving you straight to the ER,” Ethan threatened.

“NO! Don’t do that! It might still be outside, and besides, I cannot go to the hospital!” Max protested.

“You’ll need a better reason. Look, Jake has those little bandage scissors out. He’s already cutting the tape. I’m going to go get my keys here in a second,” Ethan said.

“Alright, alright, don’t do that! Sit down, I don’t want you to freak out and pass out and hit your head and make Jake deal with me alone. Just promise me you won’t tell anyone else. You have to absolutely promise me,” Max said. A concession just in time, since Jake was just tightening and securing the tape, earning a yelp from Max, who really was starting to feel the injury now that he was in safety.

“I promise,” Jake said, though Max was directing his attention to Ethan, the less likely of the two to make that sort of promise before he knew any details about a situation. Ethan sighed.

“Fine. I promise. Unless you’re in danger of rabies specifically, I won’t tell anyone anything, and even then I’ll be light on the details. Now what happened?”

“Could that be any looser? That really hurts,” Max said. Jake raised an eyebrow and pointed to the drops of blood everywhere, which made Max drop the issue. “Alright. So I was taking a walk.”

“Skip to the biting part,” Ethan said.

“Fine! So there was like a dog and I said something to it because I thought it was friendly but it was back in the woods and it was not a dog it was actually a werewolf and it bit me and now I can’t go to a hospital because they don’t have shots for lycanthropy like they do for rabies and I’m pretty sure my life is over anyway. Happy?” Max said, all in one breath.

“What.” Jake said.

“Lycanthropy isn’t like rabies at all. Well, except the mode of transmission,” Ethan said, thinking.

“Well, if there is a way to prevent it, please do tell,” Max said.

“There aren’t any reported sightings of a werewolf in this county, right?” Jake said. “I don’t think there are any werewolves close enough to have bitten you.”

“Then what the HELL happened to my arm, Jake?” Max said, giving Jake the dirtiest of all looks.

“Hold on, I’ll check if there have been any recent sightings,” Ethan said, pulling out his phone and going to the official government sight where sightings of supernatural creatures were reported. Jake decided to beat him to the punch using an unofficial website, remembering that the government sight had no good search features, unlike the version he used, which filtered by creature type and recency of the report. Unfortunately, Jake had forgotten that he had blood all over his hands, so he got it all over himself. Also, the fingerprint verification didn’t work due to the blood, so it took him extra time to unlock his phone, and he had to clear the screen of blood to see the dropdown menus. Those were hampering him.

“Just tell me if I’m a werewolf now, please,” Max said, staring at Ethan in desperation.

“Got it, got it! No werewolf sightings, like I said,” Jake exclaimed, more excited than the situation befitted.

“Hold on, not every report shows up on the unofficial sites. Just give me a moment,” Ethan said, still scrolling through an unfiltered and unordered plaintext list generated by the unmaintained government site. Tax dollars at work, definitely, especially considering the unofficial site was maintained by one person, who didn’t make any revenue. It was just a passion project, and still better than the official site. “All right, I have to agree. There haven’t been any werewolf sightings in the area in quite a while.”

“So that means I’m okay? What was that thing, then?” Max asked.

“Not necessarily, it still could have been an unreported werewolf. They hide more easily than other supernatural creatures,” Ethan said. “It’s possible you’re the first to sight it.”

“So I should report it,” Jake said.

“NO!” Ethan and Max shouted simultaneously.

“This is an instance where reporting what happened will get Max in hot water. It’s not worth it. There are rumors about the government agency that deals with all the supernatural stuff, but it is definitely true that werewolf sighting lead to a lack of werewolf in the area. And they can’t exactly get relocated, so what happens to them is a mystery. You can’t report this to the government,” Ethan said.

“I was going to report it on my site. The guy has an email account you send the sightings to,” Jake said, having stopped just after tapping the contact button.

“Don’t do that either. You promised, remember,” Max said.

“Oh, right. Well, okay, I won’t. But it’s still a full moon and you look human still,” Jake argued.

“Is that a good thing?” Max asked Ethan.

“Like any disease, it takes time to replicate and cause a bodily response. The immune system can sometimes fight it off, causing symptoms like the common cold for a few days. Otherwise, you’ll probably have to wait until the next full moon to be sure,” Ethan said.

“Then what am I supposed to do right now?” Max asked.

“I don’t know,” Ethan shrugged. “Try not to think about it, hydrate, and get plenty of rest.”

“I can get you some tea,” Jake said. “I think we might have some Monkshood herbal somewhere.”

“Yeah, tea sounds good. Ow. You know, it really doesn’t feel great, but it’s still not as bad as I would have expected,” Max said, tenderly poking the bandage on his arm.

“Jake,” Ethan said. “Don’t make Wolfsbane jokes at a time like this.”

“What? Jake, that’s insensitive!” Max protested. “When did he make a Wolfsbane joke?”

They continued to try to calm Max down and comfort him in their own ways until Max was finally tired enough to fall asleep, which took extra time given the fact that he was concerned about waking up as a werewolf in the middle of the night. However, eventually, nearing two in the morning, they finally coaxed Max to sleep, allowing them to get some rest as well. It was a good thing it was a Friday night.