UPDATE: Yes, The Kittens Do Live Next Door. We Had No Idea!

Also, my two cents, it's amazing what happens when I go and do a little light manual labor. Raking leaves, washing dishes, weeding the garden... and suddenly the ideas and solutions start moving again.

Hey, sorry if you’ve been asked this before, but I have ADHD and I’ve been following your comic for years and just now have started to write my own comic (partially because you really inspired me). But I’m really struggling with staying on the project even when it’s boring and getting myself to work on it in the first place. Do you have any tips on how to keep your brain invested or just to make yourself do the work at all?

I have excellent news, I literally just figured out something really important about this.

So when you're an ADHD kiddo or otherwise have difficulty staying on task in a structured environment where Task is the Priority, the main way people try to MAKE you stay on task is by removing your access to anything that is not The Task. No phone, no TV, no doodling, no going outside, etc. In practice, this just makes us miserable because it takes the boredom that's always simmering around a 2 or 3 and cranks it all the way up to 11. In the same way that you would have difficulty staying on task if you were in physical pain, this crushing existential monotony makes it very difficult to work. The work might get done simply because you have no other options, but it will not be done quickly or well, and it will take a while to recover from how much it hurt.

What I realized earlier this week is I caught myself doing this to myself. I had 42 pages of background colors to do, and I thought to myself "this sounds really tedious, but I suppose I have nothing better I can do." And I realized what I'd just thought, and got very alarmed.

Because back when I was an ADHD kiddo imprisoned by school scheduling and a million little factors that keep children immobile and restrained, I couldn't stop thinking about how big and exciting the world was, and how much I wanted to be anywhere but here. When I was feeling really crushed in I'd pick a random spot on the maps on my wall and just imagine being there instead of my bedroom. This was the impetus behind almost all of my creative energy. I've said it before - anything is a prison if you can't leave, and being in a prison makes it easy to imagine how amazing things could be outside of it. Aurora's initial worldbuilding was forged in the crucible of fifth grade misery. My enthusiasm for art and my creative drive are inextricable from my sense of wonder and yearning for excitement in the real world. Not escapism, but appreciation. Wonders unimaginable are out there, and I gain just as much joy seeking them out as I do conjuring them up in my head and sharing them with all of you.

So now that I'm a grown-up with actual freedom in every way I've been able to get, the idea that I was staying on task by making myself believe the world was small and not worth seeing was extremely alarming. It could keep me on task for an afternoon, but at the cost of slowly extinguishing the thing that made me want to make art in the first place - the hunger to experience and draw inspiration from all the myriad complexities in the world.

So what I've been doing is I've been purposefully and intentionally taking excursions whenever I catch myself thinking "I could take a break but it wouldn't be worth it, it's the same outdoors as always, I'll be uncomfy and unproductive and tired." Because that is never true. Every time I've put down the stylus and gone out, I've been renewed in one way or another, and when I come back to comfort fully recharged I get a lot of shit done. Because it is easier to work on anything if you remember why you wanted to make it in the first place, and it is self-defeating misery to just lock yourself in with it and tell yourself you're a bad person if you can't get it done.

I honestly don't know how widely applicable this is. I have worse wanderlust than anyone I know, so for me this has always been modeled as imprisonment vs freedom. I've also been extremely lucky to find myself in a profession that lets me set my own pace on literally everything I do. But I genuinely believe that when it comes to making art with ADHD, you need to give yourself freedom to move laterally, not just in the direction of obvious forward progress. We don't think linearly in any other part of our lives - art is no different.

::Post is about spiders::

So I'm just sitting here at my computer, scrolling Tumblr, when a little male Giant Brown spider hits the bottom windowsill behind my screen. Almost immediately a HUGE female Giant Brown scurries up to it. They sit there listening for each other for a moment, then the female moves closer, feels the male trying to get away, and pounces on him, grabs him, and carries him off out of sight.

Spider procreation is so distressing to see.

Also, I need to deep clean my room.

I volunteered last year with a retired engineer who once transported a space probe instrument from San Antonio, Texas, to Berne, Switzerland, in a series of inanities that would make an incredible Wes Anderson movie.

When Kyana was sitting up on that spire, and Davian flew by in his Hummingbird, and they had a little conversation, I really enjoyed the moment the two characters had. It was one of the most interesting and satisfying one-on-ones in the first campaign.

I like to think that at some point after the Beastlands, Davian visited the Grand Arena, and ended up facing Kyana. Kyana didn't quite roflstomp him -- Davian drew a little blood, from the one hit he got in, and Kyana had it treated nonmagically, so she could bear the scar as a memento.

Oh, good, this is one post I don't have to make myself! Thank you!

As for Moxxie, I think he'd probably want the kid, but wouldn't be realistic or mature about it. We've rarely seen that side of him not being Played For Laughs, but he can be obsessive, overly sentimental, and tends to overthink things excessively. I think Millie needs to emotionally process this news, and come up with a game plan, before she tells Moxxie.

But like @uselessalexis165 wrote, couples can have unplanned pregnancies, as in, they are completely unprepared to raise a child. And this is Hell, not Earth. And they're imps. The idea that there's a safety net for unprepared imp parents is... a bit of a stretch.

As other people are pointing out this week, any pregnancy can be scary. Millie might just be terrified and... well, not overreacting, but reacting extremely.

Y’all, it hasn’t even been a day yet and some people are already theorizing that Millie cheated on Moxxie and that the baby isn’t his

You guys do realize that married couples can experience unplanned pregnancies, right?

Or, that maybe Millie is worried about how having a baby could affect her job?

Shit, maybe she’s worried that she won’t be a good parent if she does decide to keep it because of her own family issues

I could even go as far to say that maybe she’s worried if she does decide to keep the baby, something could go wrong and the baby ends up dying during the pregnancy

And I’m just saying all of this without knowing what Moxxie’s point of view is going to be like

beavers have the lifestyle that most children dream of. dig and travel through underwater canals. dam a river and flood the local woodlands. stomp mud into dam to seal. swim to flooded trees and destroy them. live in a secret hideout with a underwater entrance. full ownership over an engineering project

My spicy take on Studio Ghibli movies: Joe Hisaishi's jazzy piano solos are jarringly incongruous to the movies' fantastical tone and vibe, and they're also a little tacky.

I have successfully resisted the urge to use the phrase "well-placed bazinga" suggestively. You're welcome.

they dont want you to acknowledge this, but a well-placed "bazinga" is actually the funniest and most lethal thing on eartj