Oops! Late two months in a row! I don’t even have an excuse this time - other than the fact I wanted to spend my Halloween weekend high out of my mind. Anyway, this month has been great and I’m excited to talk about it. In last month’s intro I talked about how I was really really excited to talk about how October had been going for me so far and what I had been up to for those first two weeks. But now, if I’m honest, I seriously have no fucking clue what I was talking about. I truthfully cannot remember what I was getting up to so early in the month I was already excited to talk about, but I’ll do my best to remember.

The EVIL Work Situation

Okay, I talked a bit about the evil work situation that happened late September early October in last month’s report. However, I am now excited to finally say its resolved! Basically, to summarize what had happened. My job is to create a logo, animations, t-shirt designs, and a whole host of other shit for a tech conference that changes its theme every year. There is a large group of projects that needed to be finished by mid-October, the most important of which was the logo, since I couldn’t start working on anything else until AFTER that was finished. So even though the hard deadline was set for mid-October, I decided for myself it should be finished by early-mid September. It was right when I was finished with the logo concept I had thus created that suddenly I was told to completely pivot into another direction from a team of people who are not my superiors and have no say over what I do and have no graphic design experience. Our superiors though sided with them and not me, despite the concerns I raised for the new direction.

I have to be careful with how much I say about the details on this as I don’t want to dox myself, but if you know me feel free to reach out to see what I’m talking about in more detail. But basically, the new logo concept they wanted me to move forward with basically had nothing to do with the brand identity we had built up up to that point. We had all worked together to create a short list of concepts and ideals that the logo should represent. This new logo represented literally none of them. When I asked how the new logo represented the brand as we had defined it, I was given no answer. I asked several times in very direct ways but it just straight up didn’t embody anything we had talked about up to that point. I fought for the old logo that I had finished because I genuinely believed it was a better fit in every way, but being able to keep this job as a good reference and as a reoccurring gig mattered more than being right.

The whole thing was a bummer because I took the change more personally than I should. But it didn’t help that I wasn’t listened to and none of my concerns have been addressed, even now. The logo is worse in every way and I think its so plain and boring and corporate looking. No one will ever wear a t-shirt with this design because they think it looks good. But, a job’s a job and no one has to listen to me if they don’t want to. The new logo is finished and the other projects were technically finished on time. I say technically because I’m planning on going back and fixing one of the other projects. It was absolutely positively needed before the logo was even finished so I had to throw something together that didn’t contain the logo but still somehow represented it. The result isn’t great because of that, obviously. But I just needed something to exist, not to be good. But! The worst part is over now! I no longer will spend my evenings sobbing because of stress because the other team isn’t causing me to be over a month late!!!

Red vs. Blue

Michaela held me and Evan at gunpoint and forced us to watch 13 seasons of the best worst show I’ve ever seen. We wrapped up the show a couple of weeks ago after a few weeks of watching it season by season and it is definitely one of the most interestingly good-bad shows ever. I can’t recommend it, not if I’m being honest with myself. But it has so many high points that its genuinely insane. It’s simultaneously far too long and far too short, but it balances comedy and serious plot weirdly well?? Most of the characters are really well written, but the ones that aren’t have almost no personality traits besides “stupid” or “asshole” but usually both. But also it contains one of the best representations of characters with dissociative identity disorder than I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s actually good. It isn’t botched at all, a character just actually has alters and it’s really fucking good. When this was revealed I waited for a punchline at his expense, or some horrible mischaracterization of the disorder, but it just never happened. But then the show goes on to make a joke about OCD being the “really really clean disorder”????

THIS SHOW BAFFLES ME!!!!!!!!! IT’S SO CLOSE TO BEING GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!! AND IN MANY WAYS IT IS, BUT IN JUST AS MANY WAYS ITS KINDA GODAWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!

If there was any niche TV show with a cult following and extremely dedicated fandom that deserved a reboot to have the entire plot fully rewritten with hindsight, it’s this show. If the plot was actually planned from the beginning and the bulk of blood gulch was cut it would genuinely be one of my favorite shows ever.

Twin Peaks: The Return

I have officially finished the last of Twin Peaks television. Basically, the show originally aired in the early 90s and only had the original two seasons. Due to some studio fuckery, David Lynch and Mark Frost, the creators, writers, and directors of the show, couldn’t continue with the show and it got cancelled. They were pushed into revealing the answer to the show’s main mystery, which more or less killed their original vision. After that, it had nowhere else to go and kind of meandered until it ended with an insane cliffhanger. Besides the movie, Fire Walk With Me, there hasn’t been any more Twin Peaks on television. That isn’t to say there hasn’t been more Twin Peaks media as there’s several books (I’m reading through The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer now!!) but there wasn’t anything else.

Until, Twin Peaks: The Return!!! Or as fans call it, Twin Peaks season 3. And it is just as good, if not better, than the original run of the show. It captures the same exact vibe without answering too many questions. Despite being a mystery show, it isn’t really about solving mysteries It’s about Twin Peaks. It’s about the people within Twin Peaks. It’s about forces that are larger than people. I don’t want to talk too much about it as I would love other people to jump down the Twin Peaks rabbit hole with me. I know the ship has probably sailed at this point, anyone who would’ve had any interest in getting into it would have by now given how much I can’t shut up about it. But The Return has some of my most favorite moments and has moved me so deeply. So far, the final episodes are the only thing that made me feel the same way I did after watching Fire Walk With Me - which probably doesn’t say much given I only watched FWWM for the first time like two months ago, but its still incredible.

Well, that’s not totally true. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer has made me feel worse than FWWM. I didn’t think that was entirely possible, but the only thing worse than the events of Fire Walk With Me is knowing exactly what Laura was thinking during the years leading up to it. I’m about halfway through The Secret Diary and I’ve had to take a couple weeks break from it because it’s just so miserable. It’s beautifully well written, but it’s miserable.

“It’s Me, Ringo Starr, From The Beatles!”

This month has been awesome for goofing off in ttrpgs. Which is kinda funny, given I haven’t been able to GM anything in awhile. First for Cass was dying reasons, then for I was dying at work reasons, and now it’s just a matter of already having pre-made plans on Fridays that took precedent over my campaign. But that’s irrelevant, what’s actually important here is the sheer amount of time I’ve spent laughing around a table with my friends.

First, Kalyn’s campaign The Southlander Chronicles has been on a short hiatus while he prepares the next leg of our adventure. In the meantime, we’ve been having lowkey game nights and random one shot adventures on the same night we normally play his campaign through. The first one shot we had was Carver’s character, Vidar, going on a mercenary job with some oddball cannon fodder characters meant to be his meat shields. Kalyn instructed us to create characters that we would grow attached to that we could use as backup characters for adventures our main characters wouldn’t be interested in going on. I had other plans. I didn’t want a backup character. I wanted to make 5 really shitty joke characters that would do nothing but make my friends laugh. I made insane Hero Forges that Michaela actually printed, which I think permanently tainted his resin printer, because it had to produce Fred Durst, Ringo Starr, Shakira, Pitbull, and Barak Obama as miniatures. And now I own them forever and will (theoretically) paint them one day.

Screenshot from Heroforge of Fred Durst flipping the viewer off with both hands and an angry look on his face. Screenshot from Heroforge of Ringo Starr playing invisible drums with drumsticks. Screenshot from Heroforge of Shakira dancing and looking up to the sky. Screenshot from Heroforge of Pitbull smirking while holding a broken bottle in one hand and a full liquor bottle in the other. Screenshot from Heroforge of Obama smiling at the viewer confidently with his hands in front of him, standing up straight.

We also had another session, this time hosted by Carver in the Cities Without Number system. I didn’t go as zany this time of course, but the entire party is made up of shitty New Yorker mobsters who are all middle aged dads who are really into truck nuts, PBR, and Marlboro reds. This session was so much fun my face hurt from smiling after. While it is fun to play serious campaigns with a character you can really get into, it is just as fun to play a murder hobo who only wants to kill people in the dumbest ways possible. In this instance, I was rammed at a building while holing up in a dumpster and shooting through the lid blindly. It was fucking awesome!!

Finally, Michaela and I also did some side adventures without characters, Larry and Javier. I’m not going to talk as much about it here as I should probably save it for Javier’s recollection, but it was fun and I love those two little freaks. The hardest part of having drawn so much art of them and written so many short stories is having to let the slow burn burn slowly. Anyway, here’s a non-canon doodle of them. We joked that Larry realized he was attracted to Javier only after Javi was able to actually bathe and groom himself to look nice. That, and also he borrowed his brothers clothes which of course were just a few sizes too small. This is important to the plot!!

Digital sketch of Javier and Larry having a conversation. In the first panel, Javier stands with his hands on his hips with a disapproving look on his face. Larry is slouched over, arms crossed, and is clearly looking at Javier's chest, which stands out from the deep V-neck in his shirt. This is made clear with bright red lines going from Larry's eyes to Javier's chest. Javier says 'Why in the world are you out so late?' In the next panel, Javier points to his face and says, 'My eyes are-' before being cut off by Larry who says 'Huh?' Suddenly looking Javier in the eyes.

Halloween Party

That’s more or less all I wanted to talk about! But there’s also a handful of other things! Such as the Radio Tower Halloween party. Rachel came down and stayed with us and we got extremely drunk! I don’t super remember the bulk of our activities, but we played board games, ate tacos, and I forced a LOT of people into hugs and conversations about how much I love them. And Michaela went on a sidequest with me to see the penis fountain.

Blurry image of a small lake at night. There are houses surrounding the lake. In the center of the lake is a lit up fountain in the vague shape of a penis with a larger stream of water in the center and smaller jets on the left and right of the larger stream.

Conclusion

That’s basically it! Well, and one more thing that technically happened in November, but I’m posting it here because it just came in last night and I’m so excited, but WE FINALLY GOT AN UPDATE ON THE LARRY AND JAVIER COMMISSION!!!!!!!! The artist was having some personal issues so communication stopped, but he’s still working on it and I’m so happy with it so far!!! And this still isn’t the finished result, it’s going so well. He can take years and years if he needs to I don’t care.

Digital painting of Javier and Larry holding each other in an embrace.

Anyway, yeah. Sorry this post is also late, but it’s better than the last one! Still in the swing of figuring out how to fit in all my hobbies and things into my new work schedule. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before or not, but I’m actually working 4 days a week now! I have 10 hour shifts from Monday to Thursday. I absolutely love it, but I don’t really have energy for anything after work other than to make dinner and watch a movie. I tend to not plan my weekends as much, but I think I’ll have to commit myself to working on hobbies and things through them more. While I do like bumming around and doing a chore or two, it would feel nicer to be more creatively productive. But yeah! Here’s the link to the photo dump!

Image of a tabby cat laying on someone's lap. She looks annoyed with one leg sticking out. Image of a tabby cat attempting to climb onto a desk, but looking confused. Image of a tabby cat curled up in a ball on a blanket.