Even with all these ideas churning, it's so hot that even at night it doesn't cool down much, so in turn I didn't get enough rest in the past couple days, just from staying awake past my bedtime or not being able to nap because of the heat so that I can get up later and write.

Also, I have to do adult stuff this week. bleh

I had a doctor's appointment to raise my antidepressant dosage, and tomorrow I go to the dentist for the first time in a couple years. They have to split the exam and the cleaning into two appointments because of how long I've been away. From there, I am 100% sure that they will find a variety of cavities, and I will also need a crown. I have a front tooth that apparently started rotting on the back side after the glue from my permanent retainer bar fell off, but I honestly wasn't aware of it until the last few months, and now it's hurting a bit. lol I dug my own grave with this -- I was sick of the dentist and hate flossing and love candy. wah wah I will be returning to an office I always liked but was barred from with my last insurance plan, and they're really nice though, so there's that.

Other good news though: we had three people quit at work in the span of 24hrs because they were little bitches who wanted to be spiteful instead of put in their two weeks like adults, so my managers are on the hunt for a new employee and have told me they want to meet my scheduling requests by the next new schedule (3ish weeks from now.) SO three-day weekends are underway and I WILL NEED TO START MAKING THOSE COMMISSION BUSINESS CARDS WOAH. ♥ ♥ ♥

Speaking of art, here's Lily and Mariam kissingggggg

lol I'm feeling gayer than ever before lately and they would make just as good a couple as they each would with their canon (straight) partners, "Erik" and Jeffrey, so. XD And it's been pointed out they have a very close relationship, a lot of investment in it, and not a lot of physical boundaries. hahah So if anyone was going to ship them, they have all the ammo to explain why! Yeah, but for real, I've been feeling pretty gay and have told more than one person that I would rather find a girlfriend, if I was interested in dating at all. But I'm not. The mere idea of it is exhausting with few foreseeable benefits. It's actually surprising to realize that the value I used to put on (prospective) physical contact has gone down the toilet, for unclear reasons.

Eh, but that sure didn't stop the dude at work who gave me his number yesterday, who's the FIFTH person from the same department to have a crush on me and act on it, I guess. Dear lord, what is it about me that appeals to them? The fact I wear basically the same clothes every day? My juvenile hair accessories? My flat chest? *blows raspberry*

meh

I'll tell you what I really want offered to me: to join a writer's group and get exposure/feedback/help. That would be rewarding. Not a dude.

I was talking about them and how fucked up they are, and, and,
You know, it just happened!



Do her legs make hella sense? Probably not. 
And it's always a struggle for me to know how to go about "Erik"'' booty? Like yeah he's lanky but he can have a small, shapely ass, right?

I like to make Lily act like "oh yeah yeah, no, go ahead. You and I, we are the same-- oh you wanna pick me up, how about that? Hm. Yes." When in reality this is all terrifying and she can't process that it's happening to her. I guess how many of us are with our first boyfriend--- OH SORRY I'm not supposed to call him that. 

I told myself I wasn't going to post until I did the last picture in this set, so whoops. It look me two weeks. lol

These are my OC's. And their parents. Because when you work on a story for ten years, you accidentally start developing past generations and get interested in them. Frankly I talk about Max like he is as legitimate as anyone else and it's getting ridiculous. I should post the one-sided discussions my friend and I have about all of it.

The images are actually pretty big, so if the html was done correctly you can click on them to see details. I just really liked having the grid!

 

So yeah, I'm really excited to have it done! The only thing is now I'm wanting to draw other family members, particularly Lily's father? And also the characters at different ages, like Phantom-obsessed 8-year-old Lily? Oh vey. 

Also, I put this together as a height comparison and holy moley is there a range. Mariam's mother is like a tree elf and frankly Max must be hitting his head in every doorway, I mean Jesus. The both of them are also taller than the other dads, although Lily's comes close since he is 6'. 

I took my own advice and haven't been trying to get anything done. Well, besides my taxes. I am scanning those documents as we speak to email to the tax lady. But honestly, who cares? I know I won't get a lot of money back.

It's kinda been nice, aside to popping Tylenol and Gas-X to deal with symptoms my meds should be handling? Lol I've been able to calm my brain about the story thoughts. I messaged GiAnna while I was crying about stomach pain and she started sharing songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend so I've been watching that at night and heavily enjoying it. I last-minute scheduled a massage, which was excellent. I had a soothing experience coloring this fanart of Kurama and Hiei being adorable.

It's just now that I'm not working on anything my creative urges are sort of jetting around like a pinball? One minute I'll think about how fun it'd be to get back into cosplay work, then the next I remember I was plotting the next chapter of Koenma's Closet... Then I'm wanting to at least work on some paintings for HT to deal with the inspiration that isn't going towards actual writing.

And then ANOTHER part of me thinks it'd be a fine time just to consume instead of produce. Last weekend I was going to go to the library and take home a stack of books that struck my fancy, if I hadn't been incapacitated by random pain and fatigue. Or, you know, maybe whip something out that I've read a long time ago that made me happy. I still wanna do that, and could now that the weekend starts tomorrow.

Ugh, but it's sad that I dread it starting, like my body knows "hey it's Jenny time. Let's ruin it!"

If I could just somehow trick it into thinking I'm still at work, then it'll be fiiiiine.

See, this could be fluff-central too easily for comfort. He already has all the hair Lily needs to play with

My arm is about to fall off because these images were created finger painting on my tablet. OW they're as done as they're ever gonna be.

Lily & "Erik" in costume, and out of costume...

Maybe I just ship them because they are so star-crossed???

Here I am imagining if he bothered to have lessons without pretending they're in a roleplay to get his foot in the door. It wouldn't happen and she was not about to think he's super attractive that way, but... *Sigh*

My friend made me think of writing an AU about them if he had just grabbed his balls and talked to her two years prior to the story, but I was like "no, I can't do that, it would turn into fluff-central and get so out of control."

If my body wasn't having a migraine marathon the past few days, I probably would have devoured half the Yu Yu Hakusho manga by now, because I downloaded some of it onto my Kindle and not only is it adorable, but the anime is adorable, and sassy, charming, unique, and interesting on so many levels. catches breath I watched this show as a young teenager (13-14) and a lot of what makes it so rich went over my head, I think. All it took was a little nostalgic feeling about it and I went and downloaded the whole thing, then couldn't stop watching. It kind of consumed me! I stopped writing just so I could keep up with it, and then I got to fanart, then to an aesthetic blog for Kurama, and even a few are encouraging me to cosplay, but I'm not so sure about that yet. The fandom at tumblr, I'm being careful about that since people ruin everything, but there have been some truly HILARIOUS blogs that made that fuzzy feeling for this show grow by ten-fold. Namely, yuyufashion and askdrunkyyh. Stuff that doesn't get too serious, y'know?


This is fanart of Kurama and Karasu's fight, which was... creepy in all the right ways. ;D

Needless to say, I fell in love with Kurama again. But to my shock, I also feel in love (in a more platonic way) with KUWABARA, CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT.



I wrote some less than savory things about him in the past, but it must have been because I was a shallow fucking numbskull, because he. is. just. delightful. I legit think he's a stand-up gent and he's made me laugh so hard I cried. TBH I even love his voice now - I think he's great at whining and freaking out, and also sounding like he's in pain ;O; which makes me sad because I don't want poor lil Kuwa hurting and would hug him if I was there. :(((( lol Listen to me, I'm ridiculous. No, but back to Kurama: yeah, it doesn't even matter if he's canonically inhabiting the body of a 15-18 year-old, the very concept of him in my head is an impossibly beautiful older man who constantly speaks in a bedroom-voice and HAS A WHIP AS HIS MAIN WEAPON.



I'VE BEEN A BAD GIRL, KURAMA.

This is kind of weird, but after starting an aesthetic blog for him, I've realized I love rose-gold. If I could afford it, I'd buy rose-gold shoes and a fancy ipod case and you-name-it.

Oh, right, right, I'm supposed to be rewriting a novel. Well, it was going well where I left off. Before I was distracted. Heheh. Even got some comments on the Google Drive docs, and I had some sweet conversations with a handful of readers I didn't even know before. So that was lovely. When I'm back to posting and can FOCUS... which should be very soon if I know what's good for me... then perhaps I can reengage with them about the material thus far. There hasn't been much feedback for ch6-10 yet, and that stuff I'm DYIN' to hear about since it was recently spruced up with the DESPERATE HOPE IT WAS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN LAST TIME, GHUUU.

No Yu Yu Hakusho, Jennifer. Little by little, at the most. It's not going anywhere. ;D

Well there's a PB&J callin' my name.

All of you, behave.

♥, J

The following painting is pretty much all of my creativity this week. I'm not getting anywhere with anything else, only talking to myself on the couch, while I sip my coffee, about the hypothetical day I get back to work on He's There, and what I will do first, second, and third within a given time frame. The goal is to finish ch11 and ch12 and revise the plot of the third arc by the end of summer. Hopefully I will do more than that, but this is a plausible goal given my condition.

So... work-in-progress "Erik" as a senior:





What makes this so fun to explore might be the fact that I'm trying to use his physical body the best I can to explain what he's going through, and I'm painting him like a human being. Nearly all my artwork of him the past ten years, save for a couple depictions from the final chapters, have been portrayals through the lens of Lily's obsession and awe for him. Portrayals of him the way he would want to be portrayed: as a stranger, a superhuman, a silhouette, a living doll, a "predatory bird" as one friend said... a phantom. Every scar covered, his face clean shaven and powdered, his hair always black from root to tip, brushed seemingly "a hundred strokes". He's the kind of man with a lint roller in his glove compartment! The way that he appears in my story's time frame is so polished and deliberate that I've almost had no choice but to conform to this intention, his intention!, any time I draw him.

But here, in this painting, he has not become himself. The catalyst (that is Lily) has not dropped into his life quite yet, so he hasn't made himself fit for scrutiny, nor capable of allure. He hasn't the muscle to fill the suit, the means to transform himself, or even the nerve to write to her. He's just getting by, probably on and off antipsychotics, so half his days he feels like the walking dead, and he hates it. He feels invisible and insignificant. He has no idea where he's going after this. Graduation, which he won't even be able to participate in, is like a wall he can't see around. Still, he sometimes has grand visions about himself and fantasizes about retaliating, rising above, breaking every rule. It may seem that he takes on "the Phantom" as a way to woo the girl, but it's just as much about indulging his own frustration with himself.

I was thinking, with regards to his bruises from practicing parkour, that he probably will injure himself in much more critical ways the more danger he puts himself in. I could even see him face-planting into the concrete and scraping the skin off around his eyebrows (since he later has an eyebrow that won't entirely grow back.) Maybe having to heal from that around the same time that he started taking the idea of himself as "Erik" so seriously is partly why he started cutting his face. I still haven't worked that out.

* * *

On a muuuuuch lighter note, I had to take a break from that after recurring thoughts of ice cream cones and Hare's butt, so the hot weather inspired me to whip out this:



Teheheheheeee~!

P.S. Rewrite's chapter seven has three, count 'em, three paintings!

Well, I am pleased to say that the creativity has went on for two days in a row. Might even keep up with it!

I decided I may as well draw if I can't write, and the website needs six profile images, two of which are now complete. Two of the characters getting profile images have never been drawn in detail and color before! I mean, Westin and Mr. Worden have been sketched, but that's it! I'm excited about Mr. Worden. He's but bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows and always looks irritated, so that should be fun.

So yeah, these girls!:





And, you know, since I've got their faces right in front of ya, why not throw in some charming interaction between them that nobody has read yet?

Her hands prodded through the notes again before she asked if she could read what he'd said that night from my phone, and I obliged, as quickly as I could, but she took her time answering. “So he made you go through all the trouble of meeting him somewhere else, but he didn't want Mariam to be there,” she clarified, just as Mariam returned, hearing her name and immediately interested in the context. I could feel my tenseness rising; I could realize in the back of my mind that something was off about this, but I would defend him, still.

“Who didn't want me to be there?” Mariam went straight for the onion rings again, sitting on her knees to reach them from across the table. I was swatting my hand like we should drop the subject all together, but Paulina had no discretion.

“Her Note-Sender.”

“He just said he was shy, is the thing, and she made him nervous. He only trusts me, he said,” and out loud the messages I'd received that day suddenly sounded strange. Or, at least, they did to Mariam and Paulina, judging by their expressions.

“So he was standing around in the dark and planning to come out all of a sudden, to meet you, if you were alone.”

“Wow wow wow, what are we talking about?” Mariam asked, and Paulina too seemed confused, I assume because she would have figured I'd told Mariam this story already. The glass light fixture above our heads became my point of focus as I clarified this admittance, but in my peripheral Mariam was just sitting there, with nothing to say. When I looked down, I could sense that Paulina wanted to say something, but she was never quick to jump to words. She finally formulated a question as Mariam had pointed her wide eyes and sarcastic grin to the table-top.

“How much evidence do you have that he's a part of that play?”
“She doesn't have any evidence,” Mariam answered for me. “And he won't give her any, either.”
“He could be in Stage Crew,” I offered.
“Maybe you should find out who he is before you meet him,” Paulina suggested. “And I don't mean asking. I mean finding out for yourself.”

“I agree. I mean we barely tried,” Mariam said. “But I watched that make-up closet constantly, and he never went in, and he never came out,” she trailed. I didn't know how to respond. The idea fleshed out in my mind of finally quelching this feeling of helplessness, of beginning something of an investigation about him, and in a way it seemed exciting. But was I the only one who gave him the benefit of the doubt?

“Well, I wonder if he stayed away from the house because he knew I'd recognize him. Or maybe Mariam would recognize him.”

“Maybe,” I answered softly.

“Yeah, but that means he doesn't want to be recognized. I thought the whole point of last night was that he would tell Lily who he is,” Mariam said, swishing her hand in my direction.

“It's definitely a little odd, but, again... if he's worried we'd recognize him, then he might be someone closer to you than you thought.”

“I bet you anything Paulina knows him; she knows everybody,” Mariam said, and although Paulina wouldn't quite brag about it, neither did she argue against it.

“Well, I'll tell you one thing: he seems like a senior. He even sounds older. Not that he is.”

The two of them were beginning to have ideas that I momentarily tuned out, simply getting lost in the notion of his age, and his intelligence. I couldn't admit it, or use it to mean anything about what I should do from there, but it attracted me and flattered me. Would either of them understand that the way he appeared... sounded... smelled... had already ensnared me, despite the peculiarities? Did I dare say it excited me that he wanted us to be alone, despite the dangers? I wouldn't believe yet that he was dangerous, and peculiarity – the very fact that we had to have a discussion about him to understand him better – was drawing me in every second.

Paulina took out a notepad, and she wanted to know everything about him. We went over every detail we could gather from the notes, and I started harnessing my smiles again, and everything remained on my mind even as the conversation shifted to other things.

On the ride back, Mariam complained she had eaten too much candy and gone to bed with a tummy ache.
“HA! Just as I had hoped,” I said.
“Shut up,” she answered, just as Paulina found herself with another question:
“You don't know anything about what he looks like... do you?”
“From what I saw of him, he's tall and thin. And I would think he was wearing something dark, but it was Halloween, so I guess that doesn't help.”

“Slenderman,” Mariam uttered, and I turned around from the front seat and slapped her on the knee just as Paulina pulled in front of her house. She faintly smiled before slinging her bag over her shoulder and stepping out. “Keep me posted,” she said with stern enthusiasm, even pointing a finger at us.

G'byyyyye! *leaps away*
-J

So the night before last, I had kind of a magical dream, a dream that was maybe supposed to remind me of something. It was a dream about two characters that I haven't paid any attention to since I was a teenager. (...) The dream I had was that they were waking up on the sidewalk under a blanket of snow, and Tilly was rising from it rubbing her eyes. She said that he could feel the fingerprints of someone else playing in the snow in the different place, like she could feel them drawing in the snow or making snow angels or something. Then she and Jo raced up and down the street, and they could run at super speed.

I had a story for them that I wrote maybe eight chapters for and only had one friend (Gianna) who cared to read it. But it bonded us for some reason. The two characters (Tilly and Jo) were 13 and 16, and orphans, and they sort of... travel the country by the kindness of strangers, or by sneaking onto planes/trains and the like. (Yes, when I was younger, I thought it was possible to sneak on a plane with today's security. I-I-I don't know.) Anyway, as implausible as they might be, they had very charming personalities that you could explore.

written some time earlier this month

Why am I writing about these two again? Here's what's been on my mind: I remember in 2010, I was sitting in a fucking hot car in a parking lot at the dock. I got a parking ticket from some douche cop who was trying to enforce that the whole lot be saved for boat trailers. The reason I was there is because during the twilight of my parents' marriage, things were too unbearable at home for me to properly focus on writing some heavy-duty emotional chapters of He's There (chapter 37 and 38, to be precise), I'd rather drip with sweat in my car as I carried out arguments between Mariam and Lily or "Erik" being particularly manipulative. At least, in there, I wouldn't be interrupted, I thought -- that stupid fucking cop...

Anyhoo, you can see now it's a habit of mine to expect myself to finish things long before I actually will, so naturally in 2010 I thought I might finish He's There. Because I was thinking ahead to a time when a new (er... "new") project might emerge, and because things like my Nosferatu obsession didn't exist yet, things were more up in the air. I was digging through old folders -- the same way I had been digging through them in 2007 and "rediscovered" He's There -- and I spent a small window of my time fixated on Tilly & Jo.

I wondered what to make of it, if anything. I could see that it needed not just improvement, but a full gutting out and reassembling. The only thing I ever really felt sure about was the title characters -  not even the main character, who was just a placeholder, just a "Bella Swan", if you will. But no, I just dropped it all over again. HT didn't wrap up. I started working on the AIW site. We dealt with the stress of selling a house before I went off to university.

* ~ * ~ *

I've still got a flame for T&J, though, as a much smaller literary project. It's not some psychological drama that must go day by day, built by the minutia of tense situations, dependent upon realism. It was supposed to be some simple message about how we can enjoy our life more if we don't live it inside of a box - the box of social expectations, of self-consciousness, of reservation, of fear, etc. etc. It was my nod to the 1997 animated film Pippi Longstocking, actually, except my own twist from that took a while to form.

Originally, the story was about Tilly & Jo positively influencing a girl named "Gina", whose entire being is still up for debate because she was so bland. They were best friends, she's a new friend of theirs, and they let her into their sphere. They were a less annoying and more benign version of a Hatter and Hare to her, as an Alice. But that seemed overdone and predictable very shortly. I'd done it before. Lily herself is a character with intrigue injected into her mundane life - I didn't even want to do it twice.

So I started working from a little seed I found inside the bond Tilly and Gina had, something she couldn't have with Jo, simply because he was a boy. Now, Tilly refers to him as her "Best Friend in the Universe #1", and because, as a thirteen-year-old, she is still afflicted with fantastical thinking, she sees him as her cosmic brother, a soul companion from many lives past. And although they get along like two carrots in a bunch, although no one will understand or appreciate their history but each other, there were things happening to her, new interests, new concerns that make life as, erm, "scamps" harder and more isolating for her than for him. She's more sensitive than him, more generous, more easily roped into giving more than she should, more gullible, and she realizes she needs more privacy than she thought.

I remember I was going to have Tilly divulge to Gina that she'd recently gotten her period and was quite upset about how she'd deal with it and how it might embarrass her in the future. Just simple things like "how will I carry tampons around?" "What if my clothes are dirty but I can't change them?" lol I know this sounds weird, but I still imagined it. So yes, Gina and Tilly had this "girl thing" going on, which Tilly has had with other girls, too, being that her and Jo have many friends around the country, and this need of hers to have different kinds of support seemed like a problem that would steadily grow from that point on.

Then we have Jo, a character who is hella smart and complex but doesn't advertise it. A character who just doesn't care whether anyone knows all the things he's capable of, or who he really is. He's secure enough with himself, but so introverted about it, that he seems aloof. He seems to be Tilly's sidekick, her muscle, her rock. Most people don't bother to try penetrating him, nor does he necessarily want to be penetrated.

She'll provide the sensational, magical version of the story, and he'll parrot it, but if he feels close enough to you, he'll tell the real one later.

And I wondered if I could go anywhere with that. I wondered if it could be a story that seems so light-hearted and jokey, but it's a little bit more about Jo recognizing that Tilly is a wonderful girl with an abundance of potential who can't flourish if she lives exactly this way with him much longer. That's all I've got, at the moment, though. I don't want some story about how he and (whoever else will be in this story/some evolution of Gina) convince her to search for a foster home. Maybe the smaller more ambiguous goal is to try to build her roots somewhere she'll be nurtured, if they could only figure out what she wants. This is the type of girl who hopes to be an actress, audition for American Idol, have a giant garden, become a fortune-teller, become a bee-keeper, own a Bed & Breakfast on the coast, design a fashion line, have a dramatic make-up/cooking/various anctics youtube vlog, AND become Jo's personal assistant because she insists he become a marine biologist, and her idea of marine biology in practice is doing a whole lotta scuba diving. ;)

Maybe I need to brainstorm what kind of third-party personality would work as a catalyst, here. What would work for her, what would work for Jo, to make something new happen.

I was telling A that I wanted to create a purple/gold film as opposed to the commonly used orange/blue, so I put together all the unfinished painting sprees I went on that conform to this idea. I agree that orange and blue can be a bit overdone and take away from a story's unique presentation. Colors have always been a reeeeally sensitive thing to me; even if it sounds weird, I've always been particular about knowing what set of colors (down to shade and saturation) define a story.

I don't know how it happened, exactly, but I adopted purple/gold for He's There's illustrations, at least the nighttime ones, which comprise most of what I draw. I actually wanted the daytime world to feel rather different, more normal, but when the sun goes down something happens to the atmosphere that makes it feel like there are stage spotlights and rims of light and just a sort of subtle magic? If I could imitate Murnau's films, the way he plays with light, I would, which is why I drew "Erik" standing like Orlok behind the theater.

As you might be able to see, green is a lesser color I try to incorporate - there's no getting around how green the Northwest is. Lastly, what I hope to do in other drawings is have bursts of rich, apple red. Not fire-engine, not maroon: apple. I want "Erik" to tie his notes with red ribbons (since, unlike Leroux Erik, he does not use red ink, but solid black.) Lily has had a pair of red flats in my imagination for years. Then, of course, there are roses (they are cliche but undeniable in a Phantom-related thing.) The bits of red I think I would keep in the daytime color palette as sort of a vivid reminder to Lily about what happens at night when she can escape life.

I think soon I'd like to paint day-time scenes... I'm wanting to draw one of "Erik"'s notes up close and come up with how his handwriting looks and put a texture and a tint on the paper he uses... things like that. For a while, I've also had this idea of doing something with the future site layout that reminds one of stationary: butterflies, dried flowers, etc. etc., but really dark, or inverted colors. And I always imagined "He's There" being something that's written out and then solidified as the title like this shitty attempt I made in Windows Movie Maker years ago:

( Read more... )

Only when I least expected it, when I had lost myself to an entire afternoon of retrospection, would Mariam cluster-text me about wanting to know what happened. I called, but she sent it straight to voicemail! “We were out at the farm,” she wrote. I knew right away what she was talking about: the last two years her family went on a two hour drive to get vegetables and homemade bread – I'd even had the fortune of coming along. I knew she was having fun there, riding the horses with her younger brother, having stew at the inn. “Text me all about it and ill answer when I can,” she said, “im just in the car coming back,” but I couldn't.
“Not through text.”
“please! anything!!”
“Call me when you get home.”
“when i get home im gonna shower because im gross and then im gonna hibernate”
“Mariammm, this is serious!”
“write it on LJ! i know its serious, i wanna hear! ill read it when i can”
“I'm not writing on LJ, I'm not telling anyone but you and Giry.”
“who the fuck is giry”
“Paulina.”
“uhh,” she wrote, and I face-palmed, too exasperated to even compose a message, but she answered again. “wait a min, paulina knows already?!!!”
“She answered her goddamn phone!”
“geeeez ill see what I can do, jesus"

Well, work today, two times. I haven't gotten any groceries in like... forever. We don't even have SUGAR. I've got to find my food handler's and other documents before orientation for my second job tomorrow. I've neglected to fold the laundry. I should have washed my hair yesterday, but hoping nobody notices.

♥, J

I know that it's my own drawings, but are they not adorable? They're adorable because of the show designing them, not because of me. I just took the screencaps and drew what I saw - that's all I meant... XD

[ 1 / 12  cast blurbs ]
[ 14 / 14  crew prop illustrations ] WHOOO!!
[ 16 / 16  crew blurbs ] WHOOHOOOO!!
[ 8 / 12   character profile illustrations ]
[ 1 dormouse & 1 Hatter and Hare drawing ]

The sombrero and yarn ball are for the Chiodo Brothers, who were responsible for the Cheshire Cat puppet, so those are some of his props. hahah The green hat is just something we see from time to time in Hatter's house, though ironically it was also in his grandfather's hat trunk that they found after going on a "treasure hunt". I guess Hatter kept it around afterward! Anyway, we used that to represent Lois DeArmond, who did constumes. I don't know if she designed the hat or if Kelly Van Patter did, since nobody ever wore it, but it was a clothing item that just popped in my head when I thought of Lois, and I knew I didn't want to redraw an item that the characters wore, since it's already represented in their profiles. Then there's the record player, which you can barely tell reads "Dinner Music", and it's for Mark Mothersbaugh, the music director. It was fun drawing that one because in order to get a good reference, I got to look at Hare having a difficult time with it. XD ooshkabooshka so cute.

So~ that just leaves two drawings for the makeup artists and the writers. I'm doing a collection of things: the makeup artists get three items from the Queen's table (a lotion dispenser, a hand gel bottle, and a facial creme container), and the writers are getting a stack of books seen in the show with one of them leaning against the stack with the cover 3/4 facing us. The books will be... the Large Print Dictionary, Hatter's Daffy Taffy book, the Red Pages, Field Guide to Wonderland Plants, Rip Roaring Rabbit Tales, and Diary of a Mad Hatter. It's between the last two which one will be facing forward.

When the props are done (hopefully today) I'll assign myself the cast profiles for the rest of the month. But then... I don't know if I can stick with this project next month. I'll be hyper-aware that it's NaNoWriMo, I'm already kicking myself all the time for the amount of time I've lost to write this year.... I still have no one helping me sort out my thoughts for He's There, so it still feels like deep space around here. Very stale air, nothing getting done.

I had high hopes this year, but I'm not going to have met any of my goals. Not a one. He's There won't be finished revising, I won't have a new AIW fanfic, I won't have done my own Script Frenzy for Nosferatu in Love, I won't have advanced my Orlok costume because the tailor I was talking to earlier this year seriously never got back to me with a quote and I don't know who else to go to. I've got nothing to be proud of except *maybe* this website. Maybe. I know I'll need another month on the site, but another month remains open if I can actually pull myself up to stance and do something. But what? And will it be next month?

I'm going to have to think it over. But if I decide to plot HT and get somewhere with it in November, I'll need help fast.

:/