[A Video Starts, Red Robins Face Incredibly Close To The Camera As He Whispers Into The Microphone.

Keeper -- a short comic about an angel meeting a robotic lighthouse keeper that doesn't know the world has already ended. Made in about 18 hours for a 24-hour 24-page* black and white comic challenge (that I arrived late to, ha.)

*the actual submission does not include the cover, which was created after the fact for this post.

This was a really great learning experience as someone who's... never really made a completed comic. I ended up really attached to the story by the end of the project (possibly due to all-nighter deliriousness lol) and ultimately am very proud of what I made.There are some things I'd still like to change, particularly text placement, but in keeping with the spirit of the challenge I've elected to leave it as is.

PROOF IN CASE YOU NEED IT

The best crochet creation

sometimes when I’m being especially self deprecating and convinced no one likes me I have to tell myself “you’re being goob. you are being goob right now”

I recently found out why my mom would never sleep around me when I was a kid. Like she’d never let herself take naps or sleep if I was awake, ever. Or if she did, she would lock her bedroom door. So when I was 6, I was asleep in my bed in the middle of the night when I hear a loud bang, like a pot being dropped and come out to the living room to see my mom standing by the window, with just a huge pile of spaghetti all over the sill, and a pot on the ground, and I ’m like “Are you gonna eat all that?” And ya’ll she get’s BIG MAD and yells at me and chases me to my room but then a little while later a bunch of cops show up and ask me a bunch of random ass questions about my art? Like this one cop lady keeps asking me to draw dragons for her?! And they seem mad as hell

I didn’t want to get arrested so I just never asked my mom for spaghettis after that. Lesson, learned. Don’t ask mom for spaghettis or she’ll call the damn police on you. 

So I have this memory in my head, and it goes unquestioned until I say it outload for the first time a few months back and as soon as I say the words “When I was six, my mom called the cops on me for asking for spaghettis” My adult logic slams into place and is like “Hang on. Your mother definatly did not call the police on a 6 year old for asking for spaghetti.” 

So obviously that’s not what really went down. I call up my mom to tell her how I remember it and on top of her figuring out why her kid has always been really cagey around spaghettis for the last 3 decades she tells me what really happened. 

So on that night, a man tried to break into our house through the front window. It was just my mom, and her kids so she did what she felt she had too and shot him in the head. He’d been wearing a helmet, which landed on the floor under the window.

Now I just want ya’ll to put yourselves in my moms shoes for a minute here. This woman has just taken a human life. The trauma of that- the instant agony, the panic, the guilt, the fear- all of it hitting her at once, her only solace the knowledge that her children are safe. She protected her daughters. No matter the cost to her soul- her children are safe.

Then she looks up and sees her six year old staring at the inside of this mans head before saying “Are you gonna eat all that?” 

I've been scroling Hella turtle tots lately and just had to draw some!

sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

I am not immune to magical animal transformation fics. Also, my cat!Danny agenda. So, like, Damian finding a magically transformed Danny, mistaking him for a regular cat, then sneaking him into the manor obviously tickles my fancy. But also, Cat!Danny winning Alfred over by being a complete narc every time one of the bats try to do something stupid while injured is just... *chef's kiss*

Bruce- *trying to sneak down to the batcave while injured* Danny- *looking for mischief, sees injured Bruce swaying in hallway* Mrow? Bruce- Shh. Danny- *slightly louder* Mrep?! Bruce- I will give you all the tuna in the world if you- Danny- *air raid level yowling*

I want a kid, a love, a life, but I'm so utterly terrified of losing it all that I hold myself back. I can barely make ends meet as it is and adding anything feels like im going to topple my janga tower until all the broken peices are laying around me while I look on helpless

I guess I had so completely absorbed the prevailing wisdom that I expected people in bankruptcy to look scruffy or shifty or generally disreputable. But what struck me was that they looked so normal.

The people appearing before that judge came in all colors, sizes, and ages. A number of men wore ill-fitting suits, two or three of them with bolero ties, and nearly everyone dressed up for the day. They looked like they were on their way to church. An older couple held onto each other as they walked carefully down the aisle and found a seat. A young mother gently jiggled her keys for the baby in her lap. Everyone was quiet, speaking in hushed tones or not at all. Lawyers – at least I thought they were lawyers – seemed to herd people from one place to another.

I didn’t stay long. I felt as if I knew everyone in that courtroom, and I wanted out of there. It was like staring at a car crash, a car crash involving people you knew.

Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.

As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth a deep personal embarrassment.

Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.

Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.

In one of our studies, we asked people to explain in their own words why they filed for bankruptcy. I figured that most of them would probably tell stories that made them look good or that relieved them of guilt.

I still remember sitting down with the first stack of questionnaires. As I started reading, I’m sure I wore my most jaded, squinty-eyed expression.

The comments hit me like a physical blow. They were filled with self-loathing. One man had written just three words to explain why he was in bankruptcy:

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

When writing about their lives, people blamed themselves for taking out a mortgage they didn’t understand. They blamed themselves for their failure to realize their jobs weren’t secure. They blamed themselves for their misplaced trust in no-good husbands and cheating wives. It was blindingly obvious to me that most people saw bankruptcy as a profound personal failure, a sign that they were losers through and through.

Some of the stories were detailed and sad, describing the death of a child or what it meant to be laid off after thirty-three years with the same company. Others stripped a world of pain down to the bare facts:

Wife died of cancer. Left $65,000 in medical bills after insurance. Lack of full-time work – worked five part-time jobs to meet rent, utilities, phone, food, and insurance.

They thought they were safe – safe in their jobs and their lives and their love – but they weren’t.

I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.

Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.

– A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren, pg. 34 - pg. 36

(Bolding mine)