Update #17 - September 2020 (Patreon)

Hello, Patrons!

This update is late, given that we are now two-thirds if the way through October; I apologize for this.

Before I start, thank you to everyone who has continued to support me, and thank you to my newest supporters: Lunaris Pathfinder, Kel Bachus, and Kèro Tide!

Thank you all so much; it really means a lot to me to have your support!!

WHAT HAVE I BEEN UP TO?

This month has been largely uneventful on the personal front! I’ve continued my roller skating, but that’s about it other than...

Caterpillars!! 

I found a caterpillar on my parsley plant after moving it indoors, away from the frost.

 I made the caterpillar a habitat in a washed out mayonnaise jar and named him Kewpie.

After a bit of research, I identified him as a black swallowtail caterpillar!

I found a second, smaller, spikier caterpillar, also a black swallowtail, on my parsley. I named him Mayo and added him to the habitat with Kewpie.

They both ate lots and lots of parsley.

Mayo (right) grew until he resembled Kewpie, and Kewpie (left) doubled in size.

As Mayo (right) caught up to his brother in size, Kewpie (left) prepared to turn into a chrysalis. 

Kewpie turned into a chrysalis! Now Mayo is getting ready.

The two chrysalises are different colors; Kewpie (left) is brown, and Mayo (right) is green.

I removed all the parsley and cleaned the dirt, and replaced the sticks into the jar. I've relocated the jar from my bedroom to the basement, which is the coolest part of the house. I'm hoping the chrysalises will get the correct signals from the temperature, and overwinter rather than turning into butterflies. If this happens, they will come out next spring, when the weather warms up.

They've been down there for a bit over a week as of writing.

I really enjoyed caring for them; watching them grow from day to day (the entire process took less than a month) was amazing, and I've grown incredibly fond of them.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN WORKING ON?

As usual, I continued with my daily comics during September!

I also made progress on the short comic I discussed last month; currently, six out of ten pages have been pencilled and inked.

For October, I’ve decided to take a break from my usual work and focus the bulk of my energy on Kloktober, a 31-day drawing challenge centered around the Adult Swim animated series Metalocalypse. I’ll talk about that more in my next update, but if you want to see how that’s going, you can check it out here!

WHAT HAVE I BEEN CONSUMING?

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

I spent most of the month listening to this audiobook; it was a bit of a slog to get through at times.

The format was very intriguing, though I wish the footnotes were more clearly delineated. (I liked the approach that A Visit from the Good Squad and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel took, where each footnote was prefaced with ‘footnote one,’ ‘footnote two,’ and so forth; it may sound cumbersome, but in practice, it makes it much easier to follow the train of narration from main text to footnote and back again.)

The intertwining of the themes of capitalism, colonialism, trans bodies, queer sexuality, intellectual property, etc and their parallels in Jack’s story and Dr. Voth’s footnotes is done very gracefully for most of the book; this could easily have become cumbersome and tilted either towards oversimplification or unintelligibility. Towards the end, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit too far for my tastes, but I imagine this is fairly subjective.

Both main characters have a deep reverence for women that I admire but do not relate to.

Listening to the bits about the plague during our modern pandemic is surreal. The book was written in 2018 so the author couldn’t have known, and I do imagine it would not have been portrayed the same way if it had been written in 2020.

Some of the scenes were INCREDIBLY hard to sit through, as a moderately squeamish person. If gore, unsanitary situations, or descriptions of surgical procedures are something you find upsetting, this is probably not the book for you.

Ultimately, while it wasn’t at all a bad book, I wouldn’t say the overall experience of reading it was enjoyable. Although a plot element explains a seeming problem with the narrative I’d been wondering about in a very clever way, which would usually make me want to reread it immediately, I don’t think I can stomach a second go-through any time soon.

THIS MONTH’S MUSIC

Summertime Sadness - Hildegard von Blingin’

I love listening to bardcore, and I’ve been obsessed with this song in particular.

The Snake - Mediæval Bæbes

My partner, Aidan, bought me The Rose, a Mediaeval Baebes album, as a surprise! The whole album is good, but this is my favorite track, which I’ve been replaying non-stop.

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW!

If you have any questions or stuff you've wanted to talk to me about, do leave a comment below!

Hope you're doing well!

<3,

Dave