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colleendoran · 3 months

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Great Big Good Omens Graphic Novel Update

AKA A Visit From Bildad the Shuhite.

The past year or so has been one long visit from this guy, whereupon he smiteth my goats and burneth my crops, woe unto the woeful cartoonist.

Gaze upon the horror of Bildad the Shuhite.

You kind of have to be a Good Omens fan to get this joke, but trust me, it's hilarious.

Anyway, as a long time Good Omens novel fan, you may imagine how thrilled I was to get picked to adapt the graphic novel.

Go me!

This is quite a task, I have to say, especially since I was originally going to just draw (and color) it, but I ended up writing the adaptation as well. Tricky to fit a 400 page novel into a 160-ish page graphic novel, especially when so much of the humor is dependent on the language, and not necessarily on the visuals.

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Anyway, I started out the gate like a herd of turtles, because right away I got COVID which knocked me on my butt.

And COVID brain fog? That's a thing. I already struggle with brain fog due to autoimmune disease, and COVID made it worse.

Not complainin' just sayin'.

This set a few of the assignments on my plate back, which pushed starting Good Omens back.

But hey, big fat lead time! No worries!

Then my computer crawled toward the grave.

My trusty MAC Pro Tower was nearly 15 years old when its sturdy heart ground to a near-halt with daily crashes. I finally got around to doing some diagnostics; some of its little brain actions were at 5% functionality. I had no reliable backups.

There are so many issues with getting a new computer when you haven't had a new computer or peripherals in nearly fifteen years and all of your software, including your Photoshop program is fifteen years old.

At the time, I was still on rural internet...which means dial-up speed.

Whatever you have for internet in the city, roll that clock back to about 2001.

That's what I had. I not only had to replace almost all of my hardware but I had to load and update all programs at dial-up speed.

Welcome to my gigabyte hell.

The entire process of replacing the equipment and programs took weeks and then I had to relearn all the software.

All of this was super expensive in terms of money and time cost.

But I was not daunted! Nosirree!

I still had a huge lead time! I can do anything! I have an iron will!

And boy, howdy, I was going to need it.

At about the same time, a big fatcat quadrillionaire client who had hired me years ago to develop a big, major transmedia project for which I was paid almost entirely in stock, went bankrupt leaving everyone holding the bag, and taking a huge chunk of my future retirement fund with it.

I wrote a very snarky almost hilarious Patreon post about it, but am not entirely in a position to speak freely because I don't want to get sued. Even though I had to go to court over it, (and I had to do that over Zoom at dial-up speed,) I'm pretty sure I'll never get anything out of this drama, and neither will anyone else involved, except millionaire dude and his buddies who all walked away with huge multi-million dollar bonuses weeks before they declared bankruptcy, all the while claiming they would not declare bankruptcy.

Even the accountant got $250,000 a month to shut down the business, while creators got nothing.

That in itself was enough drama for the year, but we were only at February by that point, and with all those months left, 2023 had a lot more to throw at me.

Fresh from my return from my Society of Illustrators show, and a lovely time at MOCCA, it was time to face practical medical issues, health updates, screening, and the like. I did my adult duty and then went back to work hoping for no news, but still had a weird feeling there would be news.

I know everyone says that, but I mean it. I had a bad feeling.

Then there was news.

I was called back for tests and more tests. This took weeks. The ubiquitous biopsy looked, even to me staring at the screen in real time, like bad news.

It also hurt like a mofo after the anesthesia wore off. I wasn't expecting that.

Then I got the official bad news.

Cancer which runs in my family finally got me. Frankly, I was surprised I didn't get it sooner.

Stage 0, and treatment would likely be fast and complication-free. Face the peril, get it over with, and get back to work.

I requested surgery months in the future so I could finish Good Omens first, but my doc convinced me the risk of waiting was too great. Get it done now.

"You're really healthy," my doc said. Despite an auto-immune issue which plagues me, I am way healthier than the average schmoe of late middle age. She informed me I would not even need any chemo or radiation if I took care of this now.

So I canceled my appearance at San Diego Comic Con. I did not inform the Good Omens team of my issues right away, thinking this would not interfere with my work schedule, but I did contact my agent to inform her of the issue. I also contacted a lawyer to rewrite my will and make sure the team had access to my digital files in case there were complications.

Then I got back to work, and hoped for the best.

Eff this guy.

Before I could even plant my carcass on the surgery table, I got a massive case of ocular shingles.

I didn't even know there was such a thing.

There I was, minding my own business. I go to bed one night with a scratchy eye, and by 4 PM the next day, I was in the emergency room being told if I didn't get immediate specialist treatment, I was in big trouble.

I got transferred to another hospital and got all the scary details, with the extra horrid news that I could not possibly have cancer surgery until I was free of shingles, and if I did not follow a rather brutal treatment procedure - which meant super-painful eye drops every half hour, twenty-four hours a day and daily hospital treatment - I could lose the eye entirely, or be blinded, or best case scenario, get permanent eye damage.

What was even funnier (yeah, hilarity) is the drops are so toxic if you don't use the medication just right, you can go blind anyway.

Hi Ho.

Ulcer is on the right. That big green blob.

I had just finished telling my cancer surgeon I did not even really care about getting cancer, was happy it was just stage zero, had no issues with scarring, wanted no reconstruction, all I cared about was my work.

Just cut it out and get me back to work.

And now I wondered if I was going to lose my ability to work anyway.

Shingles often accompanies cancer because of the stress on the immune system, and yeah, it's not pretty. This is me looking like all heck after I started to get better.

The first couple of weeks were pretty demoralizing as I expected a straight trajectory to wellness. But it was up and down all the way.

Some days I could not see out of either eye at all. The swelling was so bad that I had to reach around to my good eye to prop the lid open. Light sensitivity made seeing out of either eye almost impossible. Outdoors, even with sunglasses, I had to be led around by the hand.

I had an amazing doctor. I meticulously followed his instructions, and I think he was surprised I did. The treatment is really difficult, and if you don't do it just right no matter how painful it gets, you will be sorry.

To my amazement, after about a month, my doctor informed me I had no vision loss in the eye at all. "This never happens," he said.

I'd spent a couple of weeks there trying to learn to draw in the near-dark with one eye, and in the end, I got all my sight back.

I could no longer wear contact lenses (I don't really wear them anyway, unless I'm going to the movies,) would need hard core sun protection for awhile, and the neuralgia and sun sensitivity were likely to linger. But I could get back to work.

I have never been more grateful in my life.

Neuralgia sucks, by the way, I'm still dealing with it months later.

Anyway, I decided to finally go ahead and tell the Good Omens team what was going on, especially since this was all happening around the time the Kickstarter was gearing up.

Now that I was sure I'd passed the eye peril, and my surgery for Stage 0 was going to be no big deal, I figured all was a go. I was still pretty uncomfortable and weak, and my ideal deadline was blown, but with the book not coming out for more than a year, all would be OK. I quit a bunch of jobs I had lined up to start after Good Omens, since the project was going to run far longer than I'd planned.

Everybody on the team was super-nice, and I was pretty optimistic at this time. But work was going pretty slow during, as you may imagine.

But again...lots of lead time still left, go me.

Then I finally got my surgery.

Which was not as happy an experience as I had been hoping for.

My family said the doc came out of the operating room looking like she'd been pulled backwards through a pipe, She informed them the tumor which looked tiny on the scan was "...huge and her insides are a mess."

Which was super not fun news.

Eff this guy.

The tumor was hiding behind some dense tissue and cysts. After more tests, it was determined I'd need another surgery and was going to have to get further treatments after all.

The biopsy had been really painful, but the discomfort was gone after about a week, so no biggee. The second surgery was, weirdly, not as painful as the biopsy, but the fatigue was big time.

By then, the Good Omens Kickstarter had about run its course, and the record-breaker was both gratifying and a source of immense social pressure.

I'd already turned most of my social media over to an assistant, and I'm glad I did.

But the next surgery was what really kicked me on my keister.

All in all, they took out an area the size of a baseball. It was hard to move and wiped me out for weeks and weeks. I could not take care of myself. I'd begun losing hair by this time anyway, and finally just lopped it off since it was too heavy for me to care for myself. The cut hides the bald spots pretty well.

After about a month, I got the go-ahead to travel to my show at the San Diego Comic Con Museum (which is running until the first week of April, BTW). I was very happy I had enough energy to do it. But as soon as I got back, I had to return to treatment.

Since I live way out in the country, going into the city to various hospitals and pharmacies was a real challenge. I made more than 100 trips last year, and a drive to the compounding pharmacy which produced the specialist eye medicine I could not get anywhere else was six hours alone.

Naturally, I wasn't getting anything done during this time.

But at least my main hospital is super swank.

The oncology treatment went smoothly, until it didn't. The feels don't hit you until the end. By then I was flattened.

So flattened that I was too weak to control myself, fell over, and smashed my face into some equipment.

Nearly tore off my damn nostril.

Eff this guy.

Anyway, it was a bad year.

Here's what went right.

I have a good health insurance policy. The final tally on my health care costs ended up being about $150,000. I paid about 18% of that, including insurance. I had a high deductible and some experimental medicine insurance didn't cover. I had savings, enough to cover the months I wasn't working, and my Patreon is also very supportive. So you didn't see me running a Gofundme or anything.

Thanks to everyone who ever bought one of my books.

No, none of that money was Good Omens Kickstarter money. I won't get most of my pay on that for months, which is just as well because it kept my taxes lower last year when I needed a break.

So, yay.

My nose is nearly healed. I opted out of plastic surgery, and it just sealed up by itself. I'll never be ready for my closeup, but who the hell cares.

I got to ring the bell.

I had a very, VERY hard time getting back to work, especially with regard to focus and concentration. My work hours dropped by over 2/3. I was so fractured and weak, time kept slipping away while I sat in the studio like a zombie. Most of the last six months were a wash.

I assumed focus issues were due (in part) to stress, so sought counseling. This seemed like a good idea at first, but when the counselor asked me to detail my issues with anxiety, I spent two weeks doing just that and getting way more anxious, which was not helpful.

After that I went EFF THIS NOISE, I want practical tools, not touchy feelies (no judgment on people who need touchy-feelies, I need a pragmatic solution and I need it now,) so tried using the body doubling focus group technique for concentration and deep work.

Within two weeks, I returned to normal work hours.

I got rural broadband, jumping me from dial up speed to 1 GB per second.

It's a miracle.

Massive doses of Vitamin D3 and K2. Yay.

The new computer works great.

The Kickstarter did so well, we got to expand the graphic novel to 200 pages. Double yay.

I'm running late, but everyone on the Good Omens team is super supportive. I don't know if I am going to make the book late or not, but if I do, well, it surely wasn't on purpose, and it won't be super late anyway. I still have months of lead time left.

I used to be something of a social media addict, but now I hardly ever even look at it, haven't been directly on some sites in over a year, and no longer miss it. It used to seem important and now doesn't.

More time for real life.

While I think the last year aged me about twenty years, I actually like me better with short hair. I'm keeping it.

OK. Rough year.

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Back to work on The Book.

And only a day left to vote for Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, and Sandman in the Comicscene Awards. Thanks.

#good omens graphic novel #good omens #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #dunmanifestin

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mockerycrow · 11 months

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Hello Dearest!

May I request König (I love this man) and the 141 squad (separately) where fem! reader catches them staring at her joocy ass as she's slightly bent over a table, translating some papers for them, and when she turns to see if they're listening she catches the way their eyes panic and look elsewhere.

Please my lord, I'm on my knees

-juvia

Fem!Reader Catches The 141 + König Looking At Her Ass

cod masterlist

I’m having a 400 follower celebration!

A/N: i hope you enjoy!! also this gets a bit dirtier than i intended,,,,

You’re standing up with your hands on the table, slightly bent over it with your eyes scanning the documents in front of you. The words that flood these pages hold valuable information and it’s a language none of the main members of the 141 understand. Your their main translator for any documents and prisoners as you’ve studied and have become fluent in a variety of languages. Your eyebrows furrow as you lift one of your hands and move the document a bit to the side to reveal the one underneath it, and then that hand hovers over the laptop you have set aside to type up your translations. Your back is arched in such a way where your ass is slightly bending outwards. “Hey, where did you guys say you got these document from?— What Country?” You pick the document up that caught your eye and your eyes scan every word, muttering quiet translations. You notice he doesn’t say anything, causing you to look back at him. “Hey, are you listening?—“ Suddenly his head looks the other way with a clear of his throat and you’re left confused. Did this topic make him nervous? Did something happen when they got these documents for this reaction to occur?—and then it hits you. He was staring at your ass. “Were.. were you looking at my ass?”

-> John Price

He clears his throat and his fingers go to his chin, rubbing at it nervously. Price hoped you didn’t notice him staring; he couldn’t help it. The way your back is arched just puts your ass on the most perfect display, and the way your pants are hugging your ass?? God, it’s like you wore them to kill him.

He can’t deny it, not when you so clearly caught him red handed. “Guilty.” He responds, his eyes darting anywhere but you. He’s being careful, as he knows this could very well go a way he didn’t want. “I’m sorry.”

Price has always noticed you around base, always thought it was a pleasure working with you. Your skills and talents in quick translation always impressed him. Your quips and your remarks have always intrigued him as well. It’d be a lie to say this is his first time staring.

“I don’t mind.”

He nearly asks you to repeat yourself but the glint in your eye, combined with your eyelash batting and the way you’re sticking your ass out even further, openly letting him take it in.

You then turn back around to your work, purposely bending your leg to stick your ass out into such a glorious pose, causing him to swear under his breath.

-> Kyle Garrick

He laughs with a nervous hue, his hands behind his back, one hand gripping the wrist of the other. Kyle can feel his heart pounding through the pulse on his wrist. His face feels hot from embarrassment as he clicks his tongue and rocks on the balls of his feet for a second, avoiding any eye contact with you. “Nope.”

You smirk because you know he was, you saw that split second of enthrallment, admiring the way your pants hug your ass, curving in on the underside, folding in such a perfect way, showing off how grabbable it is, how the meat of it would sink under his fingers. His face begins to heat up as his fingers twitch, the want to squeeze filling his gut.

“Mhm, sure.” You didn’t sound mad, in fact you sound.. amused. You turn back to your work, but not before pulling your pants up even further, digging into the crevices of your muscle. You pretend you don’t hear the quiet, shocked “damn” come from his lips for his own sanity.

-> John MacTavish

His cheeks are red while his hand scratches the back of his head, which he does when he’s embarrassed. Soap hesitantly looks at you again after a second of not responding. You look back at him with a smirk curled on your face, tilting your head as you oh so innocently change poses by leaning your back more into a down position, arching your back ever so slightly more than before.

Okay, now he was definitely obvious with his staring. Soap has to admit that he’s glanced once or twice before, but he never stared when he thought there was a chance where he could get caught.

You hum and turn back to the documents below you, and Soap thought that was that for a moment—oh, how he was wrong. You begin to talk.

“I know you were,” You quip. “How long?” He jolts ever so slightly, offering a nervous chuckle. You note his accent seems to thicken and drip from his voice like thick honey now. “What d’ya mean?” You look at him with a raised brow, and he gives you a smile that shows his gums. You roll your eyes playfully.

“Y’know, if you just admitted it, I would’ve let you touch.” Wait, what?

-> Ghost

He weighs his options and lets out a heavy sigh with an admission of guilt which you grin at; it’s not easy to get Ghost to admit to something like this. Admit to a mistake made on the field, sure, no problem, he’ll take full ownership but fuck, this is different.

You tread carefully, but you bite your lip, keeping your eyes on his. You notice the way his eyes are slightly wider than normal and he’s looking away; you guarantee that he’s blushing under that black grease and dark skull mask and you love how nervous he seems.

“It’s alright to look.” You murmur, and you turn your head back to the papers in front of you. As soon as he knows you look away, he looks back at you, and more specifically your ass. “I know these pants are tight, hm?” You can’t help but tease him about it, bending your spine so your ass is out more. “I beg your pardon?” His words are slow and connected in a swift sentence, his voice slightly tight.

You don’t respond verbally, but you shoot him a look over your shoulder that says it all, and he returns a lidded look that involuntarily pulls a grin from your lips.

-> König

“I apologize..!” He blurts out as he looks away, his fingers intertwining nervously. He did not mean to stare, really, but your pants are so tight and he’s usually really respectful and he doesn’t usually stare, and he can usually keep his eyes from wandering—

You tilt your head as you notice the man just lock up in place and you can’t help but bark out a laugh, causing him to glance at you before glancing away, pure shame radiating off of him. “König, it’s fine, I don’t care,” You begin, the corner of your lip lifting in amusement.

König keeps his eyes off of you even after you say you don’t mind as he doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but that doesn’t stop his mind from wandering. He wondered if those pants fit you that tight everywhere? Did you own any pants that fit you tighter?

His eyes do end up on your ass again as he wonders if you own any tight leggings, the type that are sheer and and hug your legs and waist tight. The type that leave little to the imagination as it hugs the swell of your ass and the roundness of your cunt—

“König.” “Es tut mir Leid!!”

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brokehorrorfan · 9 months

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Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror will be published on October 3 via Random House. It's curated by filmmaker Jordan Peele, who also provides an introduction and serves as editor with John Joseph Adams.

It features short stories by Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L.D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

The 400-page book will be available in hardcover, e-book, and audio book. The synopsis is below.

The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation. A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world... and redefine what it means to be afraid.

Pre-order Out There Screaming.

#jordan peele #horror books #horror anthology #get out #nope #us #black horror #monkeypaw productions #random house #book #gift #horror book #tananarive due #nalo hopkinson #tochi onyebuchi #rebecca roanhorse

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omenarchive · 2 days

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C3E091 True Heroism

The Archivists have been hard at work gathering Episode 91 data. You can visit our site for a fuller picture, but some highlights are below, starting with some statistics about our beloved Faithful Care-Giver:

FCG dealt 967 points of confirmed damage over the course of the campaign, with their top damage episode being C3E057 The Sorrow of Molaesmyr, when they did 150 points of damage.

But, as we know, his greatest strength was in protecting his friends. Across 91 episodes, FCG gave 1,452 points of confirmed healing. Their final episode, C3E091 True Heroism, was also their top healing episode with 286 HP.

Additionally, FCG used Transfer Suffering to mitigate 243 points of damage across the campaign. Of all the Hells, he most frequently took damage for Imogen, and took the highest number of points for Fearne.

Appropriately, their favorite spell was Guidance, which they cast 140 times. Their other top spells/features included Cure Wounds, Transfer Suffering, Enhance Ability, and Channel Divinity (Sympathetic Binding).

At the time of their death, FCG had taken more damage than any other PC: a whopping 2,062 points of damage over the course of the campaign.

He got three HDYWTDTs, wished people a smiley day 51 times, and made (or inspired) 66 unfortunate references to having a flesh tongue.

He was made of metal and wires, but he was alive, and because of him, his friends are too.

Visit our site for the rest of our FCG highlights, as well as a special tribute that you should make sure to click. As for the Legend of the Peaks, some truly frightening highlights:

Otohan Thull dealt 847 points of damage. With four attacks per turn, they were likely a level 20 Psi Warrior fighter. She had two legendary resistances, and she took a total of 501 points of damage, 299 of these before exalting.

At 399 damage, Otohan took a health potion and healed 66 points. She then took 63 additional points of damage before FCG made their sacrifice.

Presuming that Otohan was not resistant to the damage from FCG’s explosion (79), which seems likely given the particular arcane nature of FCG’s core, that puts her total HP somewhere between 400 and 475 points.

For comparison, these stats put her in the same HP range as a Forge Guardian, the demon prince of undeath Orcus, or an Ancient Dragon Turtle, with more multi attacks and damage resistances than any of them. Terrifying!

Visit our Episode 91 page here for more detail about Otohan, and check out our homepage for some additional highlights.

#the omen archive #critical role #c3e91 #c3e091

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zvaigzdelasas · 2 months

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President Joe Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency,” according to a final report released Thursday by a Department of Justice special counsel.

But special counsel Robert Hur said he was declining to prosecute Biden over his handling of that material.

The FBI found that material in the garage, offices, and basement den in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home. It included documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Biden’s entries about national security, the new report said.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur wrote.

“He knew he kept classified information in notebooks stored in his house and he knew he was not allowed to do so.”

But that evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” the special counsel wrote.

Hur in his nearly 400-page report wrote, “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report said. [...]

Hur was blunt in detailing lapses in Biden’s memory when he was interviewed for the probe.

“He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report said.

“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him,” Hur wrote.

“In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,” the special counsel added.

Biden in a statement said, “I was pleased to see they reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach – that there would be no charges brought in this case and the matter is now closed.”[...]

Trump was charged in June with 37 felonies, including willful retention of national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act.

Trump had hundreds more classified documents in his possession than Biden did — more than 300 in total, including 102 that were seized during an FBI raid on Trump’s Palm Beach resort home in August 2022. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Hur’s report Thursday said that the materials recovered from Biden spanned his career in national office from 1973 when he became a U.S. senator, and through his two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama from 2009 through early 2017.

Biden during his career “has long seen himself as a historic figure,” and during that time collected papers and artifacts that were connected to “significant issues and events in his career,” the report said.

“He used these materials to write memoirs published in 2007 and 2017, to document his legacy, and to cite as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber,” Hur wrote.

Well we're officially never gonna hear the end of this one huh [8 Feb 24]

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