Did A Random Animation Because I Am Still Figuring Out Procreate Dreams. This Is A Metaphorical Representation

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.

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.

The Government (Part 1)

For the trio, things went back to normal on Monday morning, and it was almost a shock to see Max without all the fur and the tail, but they quickly got used to it again. Even going to work wasn’t a worry, and Ethan assured them that there had been no reports of werewolves in the area. One month down, no issues.

Now that they knew the only danger brought the full moon was the threat of exposure, they weren’t focused on any sort of preparation, and they were able to go back to a kind of normal similar to what had been before Max got bitten by Adrian. They were concerned about the new policies when the new year came around, but Ethan continued to check for any reports, finding none each time.

For Ethan’s cousin, Andrew, the new year started a little differently. When the government announced that there were changes in effect to the policies on reporting supernatural creatures, his only initial thought was that it might increase the volume of reports available to view, which would help him write some of the papers on his syllabus for his next semester. He was taking a Comparison of Modern Supernatural Entities to Their Historical Records, which typically went by the slightly disappointing acronym CoMSETHR. It wasn’t meant to sound good, it was mostly meant to make it possible to use the name of the class in normal conversation. But in any case, he had to use primary sources for the modern supernatural creatures, which would most commonly be interviews from people who had encountered a supernatural creature or their official reports. Occasionally students had been able to use their own accounts, but that obviously wasn’t as common.

His first paper was on one supernatural creature currently in existence, one of his choice. He had been rolling around all the different options in his head, but a few days after the new year, he was looking through the official and unofficial reports to see what kind of entities might be common in the area. That would make it easier to get enough sources. He saw several which had been labeled unreliable, including one vampire sighting which, upon investigation, involved several bloody mary’s on both sides of the report. After all, vampires no longer even existed. A few others were labeled unreliable for other reasons – previously diagnosed schizophrenia, head injuries, etc.

The ones labeled reliable or confirmed fell mostly into the typical categories. There were many gnomes, which were really just a nuisance that involved pest control services. They popped up whenever someone neglected their garden, mostly, unless the person involved false gnomes in preparation. Gnomes were mildly territorial, after all. There were two recent golems, which were always interesting. The modern ones were significantly different from their historic counterparts because they were significantly easier to create in the days of AI. A person no longer had to summon a spirit and bind it, they only had to link an AI to a body and animate that body. But because of the obvious changes in them, they would almost certainly be the topic of someone else’s paper. Even though there were only five students in the class.

As he got to the bottom and saw the hag that had been reported nearly a year prior, he thought about the fact that the monetary incentive must not be working yet. After all, there wasn’t a single werewolf on the list.

That made him think about something he hadn’t thought about for quite a while. His own encounter – one he had put aside due to a lack of certainty about what it was he saw. He had thought it had been some blond guy being bitten by a werewolf, but he had been in his car on the road, about to pay a quick visit to his cousin Ethan, and hadn’t been able to put too much focus on the sight as he was driving. In addition, investigating a werewolf was a bad idea, since even some of the strongest humans weren’t as strong as a werewolf, and he wasn’t one of the strongest humans. In fact, he had abandoned the trip entirely and kept driving, not wanting to risk encountering the werewolf.

He hadn’t reported it because he wasn’t sure he had enough details to report – it could even have been a wild animal attack, which wasn’t entirely unlikely. But just then, another event popped into his mind, one he never would have considered to be related to what he’d seen that night before, but that he now realized must be connected. Ethan had asked him about werewolves.

The werewolf attack had been very near Ethan’s house, which he shared with two roommates Andrew had met before, at least briefly. One of Ethan’s roommates was blond. And Ethan had taken notes. Initially he assumed it was a personal interest that brought about the line of inquiry, but now Andrew realized that it was a bit out of character for anyone to be so interested in what he studied.

Andrew rushed to open the official reporting website and type in what he knew. If Ethan’s roommate was a werewolf now, Ethan would be safer if the situation were investigated properly, but also, only official reports were usable for his paper, so unless he made his report, he wouldn’t be able to use it for his paper. Of course, this decided the topic of his paper for him, and since it was due at the end of January, he was glad to have a solid course of action, even if the paper wasn’t the most intensive that he had to write for the class.

He entered in the information required for the monetary bonus, a nice little cherry on top of the whole thing. Not once did he consider how werewolves were dealt with in the modern age. That would be a question for when he did more in-depth research for his paper.

-:-

The government outsourced most of the investigations of supernatural creatures to the police. Then they outsourced most of the actual dealing with the problem to whatever organization was best suited to it. Sometimes that was pest control, sometimes animal control, sometimes the police once again, occasionally other private organizations that were equipped to deal with a situation. The government offices that dealt with the reports of the supernatural did hardly any work except organizing these efforts.

There were a few exceptions, which were the source of the rumors about the secret government organization that experimented with supernatural creatures, or hunted them, or cured them, or whatever else the rumors might say. One of the most notable examples of the success of one of these endeavors was stopping the only ever vampire incursion into the united states, which they did primarily by observing the situation and quieting down rumors after the fact. Their success was so great that it was commonly believed that vampires did not exist, though that was, as far as anyone knew, currently true.

The existence of this organization, as it was rumored, was entirely uncertain, but the clerks who dealt with the reports of supernatural creatures knew that there were specific sets of circumstances that required passing the report up the line to some people they never saw. What happened after that was never public, so no one knew for sure what those people did, but it often led to an absence of the reported creatures involved. Hence the rumors.

Those kinds of reports weren’t overly common, partially owing to the fact that there were hardly ever any secondary reports. The creatures were dealt with before that could happen, possibly, or the creature was isolated to the point that no one would run across them. But the procedure for identifying the cases that should be passed up the line was simple, though it was also put in the form of a list of known possibilities. In general, transmissible curses and deadly, malicious creatures were passed up to the higher authorities. Vampires would easily qualify for both reasons, some supernatural artifacts could lead to one of these kind of reports in rare occasions, but the most common one was werewolves.

Werewolves were commonly considered to be rather dangerous, and the supernatural disease was transmissible to the degree that they were hard to eliminate, so reports of them weren’t unheard of. At the same time, any given region might not have any reports of werewolves for a few years or a few decades. Such was the case with the region Carl worked in. He had expected the job to be far more interesting than it had turned out to be, and he had hoped the new laws would make it a little more bearable. But he was sorely disappointed when the number of reports hardly went up, and there wasn’t a rush of good reports from before the policy went into effect.

So, as he opened a new report, his expectations were low. That was, until he read that it was a report of werewolf activity. He didn’t want someone to poach the report, so he tried to contain his excitement, but he enjoyed the mundane tasks associated with the report far more than he had the entire time he’d had the job. He extracted the information on the region, description of the victim/possible werewolf, and any other information, filling out the necessary forms for each. The last step was to notify whoever would deal with the investigation –

Except that Carl would likely never hear about the case again. His excitement plummeted, and he put his head in his hands, frustrated that the only interesting thing that had ever happened to him here was now being taken away from him. And yet, when he had gathered himself, he submitted all of the information, including the full report and the forms he had filled out, straight to the higher ups. And that was that. There was nothing else he could do for that report.

He hoped the next report might be a parallel report, a second sighting of the werewolf event, perhaps even from the victim. He was once again disappointed when he opened the next report and read it.

Gnomes. Again.

Carl really wished he could afford to quit his job.

Original Stories

I made this blog so that I had a place to share any comics, short stories, novellas, etc. that I don't have a better place for. The only one I can think of that's locked and loaded is called Werewoof Undies, and it's a campy werewolf novella, urban fantasy, short little lighthearted story. I'll be posting that on here as I figure out how this whole blog thing works, so if you're interested, be on the lookout!

So I am aroace, and that shows up more prominently than I consciously intend in my writing. Which is to say that I have no problem with romance in stories and no theoretical problem with writing it myself, I just have very little to say about romantic relationships as compared to other kinds of relationships. I do think I have a unique perspective because I don't have all that sexual and romantic attraction muddying the waters, but really the main reason I focus on mostly platonic relationships is that I love them. I want to have close friends and repeated acquaintances (like my baristas, for the several coffee shops I am a regular at, who I don't know well enough to call friends but that brighten my day).

I have a previous post about inseparable duos, and while I do think some of these are romantic (and that can be very worthwhile to depict) the ones I have in my writing tend to be shades of platonic. I have Tye and Gio, Rowan and Sanc, and Kel and Dale. They are, respectively: the best of friends who have a deep understanding through similar trauma, mutual mentors (that bit's complicated) and accidental found father and son, and a slightly undefined pair that will follow each other anywhere, mutually protecting and trusting each other. I also have Liam and Winston (in a barely started book on the backburner), a set of childhood friends who fall further and further into different social circles and eventually different sides of the start of a kind-of war, but don't let it get between them.

Now, all of these I would say are more complicated and nuanced than your average friendship, and they're kind of hard even to explain, which is part of why I explore them in my writing. All of them also are kind of meant to fly in the face of the assumption that romance is the deepest kind of relationship. There are deep interconnected romances, but two people being "more than friends" makes no sense. More than two people who will always be there for each other, always seeking to accommodate each other through the rougher moments of dealing with trauma, being willing to do anything to ensure the other's wellbeing? More than two people who have spent much of their lives trying to teach each other how to live, how to move past mistakes, how to accept themselves for who they are? More than two people who trust each other so implicitly that they will open their minds to each other in such a way that permits no secrets, showing each other every emotion and embarrassing memory without worrying that their relationship would waver? I just don't see how you could have 'more'. Different, yes. And other kinds of relationships are also good. But don't put down these platonic relationships as if they are lesser.

So yeah, as someone who does not want any romantic relationship, I want to explore all the different ways people can be close, even incredibly close, without romance. For other people, who want romance, I wish you luck in finding in. But don't put down platonic relationships.

In regards to the character songs I have been working on (by the way I am not a songwriter this is just for fun) they have really taken me by surprise. For example, one turned out to be some kind of anxiety rap. Another turned into this long thing that I can't get out of my head (I guess I find it catchy). That one is Tye's, and since he is raven themed, so is the song. I feel like talking about that, so I will.

So the nursery rhyme "One for Sorrow" has inspired a lot of people and a lot of things. It's an old rhyme, so it's been around. There are even multiple versions of it, though they are somewhat similar. The idea behind the rhyme is that the number of magpies (yes, originally it seems it was magpies) would indicate something positive or negative. One and two are very established - one is BAD. Two is GOOD. One for sorrow, two for joy. This actually has roots in some actual bird behavior because a lone magpie means something about bad weather, I think, so it actually does hold that seeing single magpies is a bad sign compared to dual magpie action.

Now not everyone has magpies, but the practice of counting corvids holds true across a broader geographic range. So people "counting crows" is a part of that, though often in North America, people are looking at Ravens. It all falls into the same category, really.

I really find this a compelling concept because it really has a vibe. A single raven signifying sorrow? Poe loves it, too. The band Counting Crows obviously agrees with me. So Tye as a character is kind of the 'lone raven', and has to come to terms with the fact that he can't ever signal anything but sorrow: he can't ever be two ravens, so he'll never signal joy.

He also has a sort of obsession with counting crows (backstory reasons). As such, the song has several references to specific numbers of ravens. They also often vascillate between good and bad omens if you take away or add just one, so that's a repeated theme in the song. One verse goes "Five ravens, one flew down. I begged him not to do it, may as well have made no sound". For those of you with some familiarity of the rhyme, you may wonder why he's begging that one raven to stay - it's because in an earlier version of the poem, it reads "Three for a wedding, four for a death", so when it was five ravens, the omen was just about silver. With one fewer, it signals death.

If anyone has any interest in the lyrics I wrote, maybe I'll post them. Maybe I'll record the actual song, too, we'll see