Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

Birdman

1/12 Aries — apocalypseArisen —Aradia Megido  (Homestuck fanart)

and a self portrait.

I’ve been told that I wear hats.

2/12 Taurus — adiosToreador —Tavros Nitram (Homestuck fanart)

Pess the pie-eating champion of the world.

via Twitter:

A Bundt cake that hides a terrible secret

via facebook:

Japanese firetrucks!

http://scarygoround.com/?date=20110502

couple more things:

I want to tell more stories, and I want to do some in comic form. This character’s story will be in comic form, if I can ever get over this block. I am no good at pacing and layout for comics, no matter how many I read and try to study. Blah!

Her name is Marjorie and that mark on her forehead is intentional.

Hail Lord Monkeypig.

Though I walked ahead of Cefin and could not see him struggling, I heard increasing instances of dirt and gravel slipping under his feet. He needed to rest again, but would not admit it. He had walked for hours before coming to my home, and now I have made him walk several more.

“Let’s rest,” I said, and I heard him sit on the cave’s floor before I’d even turned around. When I did so, he looked tired, shaken, and cold.

I traded a packet of pumpkin seeds for a warm cauldron of stew. The seeds were an abundance afforded me by living near Dref Pumpen, the village Cefin presided over peaceably for a dozen years. The stew was a specialty made by a fire mage living in Tan from his abundance of rattlesnakes.

Years of knowing me and what I do apparently didn’t prepare Cefin for the sight of me removing a steaming black iron pot of food from a satchel that could easily hold no more than a couple books. I admired the look of shock on his face for a few brief seconds before I handed him a spoon and said, “Eat up. I didn’t get any bowls.” Thankfully he was hungry enough to not ask what the meat was.

I was not safe from the “Where’d you get it?” question that followed. I tried to dodge the query with a shrug and “magic.”

“Oh come off it,” Cefin replied. “You don’t have to tell me everything, can’t you just describe it a little?

“I suppose,” I replied, “That I could tell you about the craftsmanship of the box that contains the Meddyg magic without directly telling you what it is. But if I bore you to sleep I’m not waking you up.”

“I assure you that you’ll have every ounce of my remaining attention.”

“A couple thousand years ago, an Ofyddar, I won’t bore you with his full name, but we’ll call him Gallai, looked sideways at life and found an extra way to see things. He found that it allowed him to see other people looking at life sideways. They eventually worked together to hone their vision so that they could look and talk and trade sideways without doing it accidentally. Like now, I found someone who wants this empty cauldron, and she gave me some bedding.”

I didn’t hide the transfer from Cefin this time, but there wasn’t much to see. Where the cauldron once was, there were now two bed rolls. I continued, “Unlike a magician’s tricks, trading through the Leuni doesn’t need to be flashy. It just happens, everything is immediate. There’s no bang, there’s no light, there’s no smell of spent explosives.”

Cefin grabbed a bedroll. As he prepped it for sleep he said, “You could add some blast-caps to make it more exciting.”

“Some do,” I replied and prepped my bed. “The ones who want to locally swap entertainment for supplies. It’s a good thing if you’ve got nothing worth trading.”

“So this ‘loony’,” Cefin asked, “Can it handle some walls? We’re in a tunnel here and I feel exposed.”

“No, it probably can’t handle walls,” I answered, “But it can handle us. How do you feel about sleeping in a barn tonight?”

Older version of a character I previously painted.

Can’t believe I forgot to put this up.

Selected drawings from my visit to Dr. Sketchy’s Cleveland for Demeber 2010, model was Danielle.

Selected drawings from my visit to Dr. Sketchy’s Cleveland for Demeber 2010, model was Danielle.

Selected drawings from my visit to Dr. Sketchy’s Cleveland for November 201o: “Tiki Tease”, model named Jessica.

sometimes I paint

Outside the shop, a man nervously approached the door. He would take a few determined steps forward before losing all courage, at which time he’d stop, turn, and go back the way he came. This repeated several times as Darina watched. He made a small amount of progress with each attempt, small enough that she grew impatient watching him. She stood beside her bicycle and waited. He would enter soon, she was certain of it, his time was near. She was there to guide him, but she couldn’t do it until he went inside.

Darina screwed her face in annoyance and squeezed the handlebars on her bike. As they warped in her fingers, she heard a short gasp from beside her. There, on the bus stop bench, sat a young mother and her infant. “I’m not after you,” Darina said, irritated. The woman clutched the child closer to her breast. “Nor your brat, so don’t suffocate it.”

The door to the shop across the street had bells tied to the handle that jingled as the man finally went inside. Darina quickly collected her bicycle in her hands, warping and bending the metal effortlessly out of existence. She made haste for the shop front, pausing in front of the door to make sure the man was not looking out the glass. Currently, he was engaged in looking like a nonchalant shopper, though he still showed signs of anxiety.

Darina sighed and opened the door as quietly as possible, distorting the metal of the bells enough to prevent their announcement of her entry. It should not be this way, she thought. He has the blood of a great house in him, but houses were no longer powers in this land. Here was this man, distant ancestor of a great lord that once ruled half the State with his cunning and valor, reduced to robbing a shop just to afford a place to rest.

Desperation does funny things to people’s minds. She’d seen it before, in others she was sent to guide. It’s manifested itself to her has begging, bribery, and brutality. Most men knew, however, that when a Guide came to them, it was their time, and they were to accept it.

She made her way to a corner of the shop, stooping slightly to be out of the man’s sight. A few moments later, all other patrons had left, and only Darina, the man, and the woman behind the counter remained. The woman saw her, recognized what she was, and grew visibly tense. Darina shook her head slightly, hoping to indicate to the unlucky woman that it wasn’t her time today.

The man turned toward the counter and drew a firearm in one swift motion. The clerk seemed to have taken the hint from the Guide and ducked below the counter. The potential robber leaned over the counter to point his gun at her, but the weapon was quickly swatted out of his hand by the clerk.

Darina advanced as the clerk rose from behind the counter with an aluminum bat. The man dodged her swing by hopping back, but in his haste knocked over a product display. As the clerk retreated into the office to contact the authorities, Darina positioned herself in sight of the man. He looked at her, then looked around at the floor, the ceiling, trying to spy anything that could help him. He looked toward the counter, finding that clerk had come out of the office again. She was aiming his gun at him. Their eyes locked only briefly, and the woman fired.

The man turn as the bullet impacted with his shoulder. Darina caught him before he could fall to the ground. He looked up at her, and she graced him with a smile. She hoped that it would comfort him in his final moments. His death was imminent, predicted in the tapestries of time and life to be this day, this hour, this place. She awaited his final words…

“I hear you things bleed black,” he said as he smiled back at Darina. Her smile quickly faded, however, as she felt something sharp punch into her belly. Again, and again, she felt it. The pain was more than she’d ever felt before; it distracted her so much she barely heard the clerk fire the gun several times more. Eventually the man’s efforts to slay death ended as he succumbed to his new wounds.

The man and Darina fell to the floor in each other’s arms at that point, shock still dominating her facial features. The clerk grabbed the man by the back of the shirt and dragged his body aside. “Who guides you?” the woman asked, her voice faltering in confusion as she attempted to staunch the blood flow with her hands. “Who guides you, who guides you?”

“You,” Darina managed to say in a labored breath, “you . . . are Mi—“

“Yeah, I’m Mirna,” the clerk cut her off, hoping to save the dying Guide the effort of speaking. She removed the sweatshirt she was wearing at that time and placed it over Darina’s midsection, pressing it firmly. “You do bleed black,” she said as the blood quickly soaked through, and then, more to herself than to the dying, “Who’s going to take care of you?”

Darina struggled to speak, but managed in halting breaths, “I will never die.” She placed her hands on Mirna’s wrists and pushed feebly upon them. Mirna took the hint and released the pressure upon the wound. Darina took the blood-soak clothing off her stomach and tossed it aside before passing out completely upon the floor.

#

When the police and paramedics arrived, none knew what to do with Darina. Mirna listened as they discussed, but was involved in her own conversation with the police.

While explaining what happened, she caught some snippets. An officer insisted that the Guide be patched up. A medic said that they couldn’t treat the guide, citing her complete lack of internal organs as proof that nothing could be done. Another officer said that she should just be carted to the morgue along with the failed robber. The medic responded that he couldn’t do that because the “thing” wasn’t dead.

Calling Darina a “thing” didn’t sit well with Mirna. She called out to the group, “That ‘thing’ saved my life!”

“It also caused you to take another man’s life,” responded the officer interviewing her.

Mirna’s face went blank. She hadn’t yet thought of that. She was the one that shot the man to death. It was so easy to forget that the Guides did not kill, they were merely there when a killing occurred. But this time, this time the Guide was hurt. This time, Death was dying. Mirna had shot the man once in self defense. She killed him because he hurt Darina.

#

The authorities had finally decided that Darina should go to the hospital; they didn’t know much about Guides, but they knew that there were other Guides wherever death occurred. They were sure that one of them would know what to do with this one.

Mirna watched and waited as the Guide of the hospital came in to evaluate Darina. He stared at the open wound that was no longer bleeding like a tipped inkwell.

In a motion that made Mirna feel ill, he placed a finger inside the inert patient’s cavity, then to his mouth. He tasted it, and looked thoughtful about it. Mirna squirmed, and he smiled. “She should return to Yntraw,” he said.

“I can’t take her,” Mirna responded nervously. She lifted her hands so that the Guide could see they were bound to each other and then to her ankles. She was a murderer, but the peacekeepers felt she would not cause harm locked in a room with Death.

He smiled a mischievous grin that made Mirna even more squeamish. “She needs death to survive,” he said as he leaned toward her.

Mirna recoiled as if he’d advanced on her. His presence was overwhelming. She suddenly realized how horrible a plea it was when she asked to be alone in the room. She was now surrounded by two agents of death, one needing her to die to save herself. A darkness washed over her vision and she cowered.

The man (if he could be called such a thing) laughed. “I am Aras,” he said, “And I am not here to guide you.”

Mirna remained in a tight, fetal ball until she heard his footsteps retreat and the door shut. She crawled to the bed on which Darina was laid out. The hospital did not want to waste quality equipment on someone who would not benefit from their services, and so had given her a broken bed and some stained sheets. “Why is this happening?” Mirna asked aloud, expecting and receiving no response. She rose to her knees next to the bed and placed and elbow as best she could upon the mattress.

She looked up and found herself staring directly into the gaping wound. Before she could verbally express her disgust, she involuntarily touched the blood pooled in Darina’s open gut. It coated her finger like tar, far thicker than what had covered her hands and arms back at the shop.

Out of some warped desire to know what Aras had found so interesting about the flavor of this pitch-black liquid, she too placed her finger into her mouth. Her world rolled around her, her vision twisted and blurred. Everything in her body told her that she needed to vomit and to do it quickly. She was unsure if she ever did, because she soon blacked out.

#

Mirna awoke to find herself in a bed next to Darina, with Aras sitting between them. “Oh good, you are awake,” Aras said as he heard Mirna shift under her bedsheets while she looked around. “Your friend was awake.” Mirna looked to the other bed and saw part of it was melted and twisted near Darina’s hands. “She sleeps now, but soon we will take her to Yntraw.”

“We?” Mirna coughed. She could taste the stagnant stomach acid in her mouth. “I’m pretty certain I can’t go anywhere,” she said and lifted her hands. The cuffs and chains clanked.

“Darina will help,” Aras replied, pointing to a warped portion of the bed. “It will be wonderful. You will be a ravishing fugitive, I will be mysterious protector, and she will be our beautiful, haunted princess. It will be like a grand adventure that you only hear about in stories.” He smiled and turned to Darina. He placed a hand on her belly, caressing it.

Mirna shuddered. Everything about Aras made her uneasy. He was tall and unbearably thin. His skin was as pale as bleached paper. She could forgive appearances, though, if he’d just stop behaving in an inhuman way. And now he was telling her that he’d be kidnapping her away to the homeland of the Guides. His plan sounded terribly wrong in her head, but she had to consider her alternative: rotting a jail cell for however long they put murderers away for.

“That’s pure nonsense,” she said, “and I’m certain you already know I can’t refuse.”

“Of course.”

“How are you getting me out of here?”

“In a word, magic.”

(I’m done for tonight.)

So I just realized how much money I owe in student loans and how much it has INCREASED from interest being added to the principal.
And for that, I’m going to actually post a commission list.
[Example] One of these foam swords (please allow 1 week or more for fabrication): $25 + shipping
[Example] [Example] [Example] [Example] One of these up to 600×600 portraits: $7
[Example] [Example] One of these up to 64×64 icons: $2
[Example] [Example] One of these bonesaws (please allow 1 week or more for fabrication): $30 + shipping
Simple pencil sketches (see gallery and scraps): $3 (add ink: +$2)(add color: +$5)
[Example] [Example] A little more elaborate pencil sketch: $5 (add ink: +$2) (add color: +$5)
[Example] [Example] [Example] One of these full-body CG: $25
[Example] One of these simple full-body cg: $15
[Example] [Example] One of these outlines: $10-15 (depends on amount of detail requested) (add flat color: +$5)
So send some notes if you’re interested.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I ran through this several times with difference pieces of writing, and David Foster Wallace is the only one that came up more than once (three times so far). My fiction apparently reads like Rowling, Lovecraft, and a few others. Doesn’t surprise me!

(The result for the above text:

I write like
William Shakespeare

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

)

The next morning young Esben found his throat aching from all the talking he’d done the day before. He ate and drank in silence for the day until the Meddyg’s promised visit came. She brought with her this time another ofyddian dressed in armor and armed with a sword. He stood a foot higher than the Meddyg, but his horns were smaller and his eyes more sunken. Esben realized he was staring and turned his eyes to the more visually pleasing Meddyg (who, Esben considered, should she actually have hair, would make a wonderful wife).

Esben started to speak, and it came out first as a squeak. He cleared his throat and asked, “What have I done? To those crackpot cultists, that is.”

Meddyg Ibis sat herself next to Esben on the bed of his borrowed room. Her bulky ofyddian companion shifted to block the door. A sudden wave of dread washed over Esben as the supposition that the Meddyg and her mate were a couple of the crackpots. Seeing the discomfort in his face, Ibis (as usual) laughed. Esben smiled nervously and wondered if he would survive the jump from the second story window at this time.

The Meddyg spoke. “We sank that ship a thousand years ago in the deepest part of the ocean in hopes that history would be preserved until such time when the old gods and demons were no longer … desirable. It’s a terrible thing to destroy a story, so even I can’t forgive you for burning their books.”

Esben cowered slightly more than he’d already been cowering. “You—” he squeaked again, “You don’t look that old.”  Ibis gave him a pat on the back and laughed loudly. Esben flinched.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued, “I like you. You’ve done much. You’ve done what the Meddygon could never do. You’ve destroyed history, and prevented a future. A future no one would like, I’m certain of it, but that’s no matter now. Those were the only books and that order of idiots was never much concerned with sharing rituals verbally.” She gave him a motherly kiss on the forehead. “For that, I thank you.”

Esben, still quite nervous, blubbered. “I meant to p–properly dry those books,” he admitted.

“It’s no matter now, young man, there is only a story of it, and if you don’t tell anyone that your deed was all a mistake, no one will know. Now as for your dream of never lifting a finger for yourself again—” she turned to the door guard, “Dafyd, take Esben to the college, then protect him.”

The man spoke for the first time, his voice gruff like a man who’s smoked cigars since he was a teenager, “How long?”

“Until I need you again,” Ibis replied. The two men promptly vanished from the room, leaving the woman alone. She frowned.

—

Old Man Esben to this day tells of his heroic deeds for the order of the Meddygon and how he destroyed the order of Thedalavey (which he didn’t learn the name of until much later, but he’ll never admit that), ending a long and arduous battle of the cults.

Esben regarded his past as a series of trials to achieve his ultimate goal of never having to lift a finger for himself again. Having finally succeeded at this goal, he found he had far too little to do and spent most of his time regarding his past adventures. He found it much more fun now that he was old and grey to talk of these adventures rather than go on the adventures, and so Old Man Esben became his name around town and if you gave him a meal, he gave you a story.

The young ones of the village oft thought his stories false, because who on Earth could have done as much as he did?

Who could have possibly slain a dragon three-thousand times their own size, when there are so few dragon in the world? Old Man Esben did when he visited the Isla de los Dragones and defeated their great God-King Godofredo. Ask him, and he’d tell you how he went there looking for a piece of their wealth and found the dragons to be dirt-poor serfs  to a tyrannical despot. He relieved the King of his post (and his head) and left the island after a full year of celebration. With nothing to show for it, of course, but the memories as Godofredo’s body was completely destroyed in retribution and it turns out that the dragons didn’t hoard anything but sea-shells.

Who would possibly want to swim to the bottom of the ocean so search for riches? Old Man Esben did when he heard throwing coal into the deepest part of the ocean made pure diamonds appear. He swam after his coal after an hour and figured it was taking far too long for his liking, but came up a richer man anyway after raiding a sunken ship. It was too bad that the goods taken from the ship were nothing more than soggy old books, but he was sure someone would want them. And someone did, which is all the better for Esben because wet books are heavy and boring to him.

And who could possibly defeat an ancient and dark order of eldritch demon worshippers, or even get involved in that? Why Old Man Esben of course, after he offered his services to dry their water logged books and promptly burnt them to a crisp when they refused to pay him for his troubles of rescuing them.

Ask Old Man Esben what he did after that and he’ll tell you the next few years were terrible for his nerves. He did a lot of hiding, fleeing, and panicking, up until he made his way to an unspoilt village of happy people. These blissful people, seeing him in his weakened, disheveled state gave him food and a bed. They even had their Meddyg give him a visit and patch him up. Esben asked what could he give them in return for this much needed respite, and the Meddyg asked for a story.

Esben told her everything, just as he would tell anyone who asked in his current home town, because from that moment on he felt perfectly safe. He even admitted to her that his goal was to never have to lift a finger again for himself (she laughed) and it looked like he’d gotten to that point finally (she laughed again). Esben always though the ofyddians had a strange sense of humor, but he found himself laughing with her now.

She left him then, and promised to let him rest until tomorrow evening. “Then,” she said, “I shall ask more of your recent encounters. This dark order is larger than you may have realized, and you have done them a far greater injury than you can possibly imagine.” Esben swallowed air and half-choked upon it. She laughed again, more of a pleased grunt than anything, and left.