Thoroughly Mopey Millie

 (I have to admit that I don't actually remember exactly when I wrote this story. Unfortunately when I got a new PC in 2020 and transferred all my files over, for some reason, all of my Word documents obtained the date they were brought to the new PC as their "Created On" date, so I have no reliable way to definitively date any pre-2020 stuff besides my memory, blog posts, and in the case of stuff that got into the Neopian Times, the year in which it was published in the NT. But I'm reasonably certain I wrote this shortly after Return to Lynwood in 2017, so I'm going with that unless I find evidence to the contrary.)

As I worked on Return to Lynwood, I had so much fun writing the Browning family that I really wanted to do more with them. Millie was a grey Ogrin out of sheer happenstance - I'd randomly selected the species and colour of all the family members as neither trait would be important to the plot - but I found I wanted to explore more of what being grey (and mature for one's age) might mean for a tween dealing with increasing social complexity among her peers.

In canon, grey Neopets are generally depicted as rather depressed and morose, but I wanted to try a different take on grey-ness--Millie's personality suggests that grey Neopets are just quieter, more thoughtful, and less emotive than the norm. Her levelheaded demeanor helps to balance out her rambunctious younger brothers, at any rate.

Also, I was a lot like Millie when I was her age; I was quiet, bookish, reserved, and on a totally different wavelength than the other preteen girls around me who always seemed to be screaming about something. I wanted to write a story validating quiet, brainy kids, and help them see that the things the other kids currently don't understand about them are actually strengths that they'll be respected for someday. (Just don't expect to be respected for anything until college. Adolescence is an absolutely insane time for everybody. Just grit your teeth and get through it.)

To be honest, this got rejected from the Neopian Times and I never bothered to re-submit it; I suspect it got rejected because the general plotline isn't all that unique (main character feels like an oddball in her peer group and then wins acceptance). But I'm still fond of the story, I think it has important things to say, and I just really enjoy writing the Brownings as a cute little Edwardian family living somewhat normal lives in the midst of ghosts and curses.

(Also, Frances and Eldritch the Gremble show up in future stories, so I thought it important to include their debut in the corpus. Grembles are kind of a running joke in my Neopets work for some reason.)

Millicent Browning was not going to boarding school.

“Absolutely not,” Mother had assured her the first morning of summer holiday, after Millie had been promoted from primary school, as the family sat at breakfast. “They’re horrid places full of cliques and gossip and mean-spirited pranks. I wouldn’t wish one on any of my children, even if we could afford it.” Mother was a beautiful red Kougra lady who seemed to have a natural grace about her. She also wore a necklace of fangs given to her by the Werelupes, for helping them on an adventure. Truly she was not a woman to be trifled with.

 Yeah, with Oak's characterization in this comic, I don't think he wants to make a Pokedex just to collect information on Pokémon.

 You say "K-Pg extinction" and this is just where my mind goes.

 I had a lot of fun taking Oak's actual in-game dialogue at this point in the game, and building a more unhinged narrative around it.

... I might need new hobbies.

As a malevolent eldritch entity, Oak has resorted to seeking out new Pokémon Trainers and trying to convince them to give him their tasty Pokémon. If you're just starting out on your Pokémon journey, be warned.

Also, Oak can't pass through a doorway unless you invite him in.

Return to Lynwood, Chapter 19

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14
Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19

“Those of you staying in the Haunted Woods, I ask that you return this loot to the towns you stole it from,” Isengrim said, looking around at the piles of ill-gotten goods. “To the best of your recollection, anyhow, and without anyone seeing you. Let Lynwood lie in its memories, and go back to your old territories.”

He folded his arms behind his back. “Those of you who would like to join my pack, step forward now.”

A surprising number of Werelupes, over half of Vakhtang’s forces, moved closer to Isengrim, including the two patrollers, and the pair that had accompanied Vakhtang in the woods the day that Isengrim had first met him. Some wore uncertain looks, but they all seemed to believe that this was the right choice for them.

Isengrim’s eyes widened. While he knew he could be charismatic when he wanted to, he wasn’t expecting to have quite this kind of clout. Instinctively, he glanced down at Terra. She gave him a confident grin and squeezed his paw.

 His heart swelled. Perhaps he really was not just a Werelupe King, but the one and true Werelupe King, the only one capable of ruling his kind with fairness, compassion, and order. Neopets like Vakhtang, who used a claim to kingship as an excuse to simply amass power and control others, could never be rightful rulers.

 I mean really, all I can think about is the utter weirdness of this mysterious old guy showing up in a white void in your dreams, and then the next day you go to run an errand and there he is. #ReadingWayTooMuchIntoThis

 No offense, Youngster, but if you're battling it out with a level 4 Rattata on one of the earliest routes in the game, I'm not sure too much is at stake. Maybe lunch money or a few marbles at the most.

 They grow up so fast these days, don't they? One day they're hatching from an Egg, and the next, you've used a Water Stone on them and they're off to college.

 I've always loved marine biology, and the weirder ocean life is, the cooler it is, in my opinion. Deep-sea fish have some amazing adaptations for their environment that make them look like some of the most alien things on the planet, and I'm not sure science fiction could ever have come up with a concept as strange and wonderful as the barreleye fish (which you may be familiar with if you play Animal Crossing).

One of my goals with my Redbubble store is to give more love and merch to species both extinct and extant that aren't as well-represented in general culture, but are beloved by science nerds. If you search "dinosaurs" on Redbubble, you'll probably get about a million designs featuring T. rex or Velociraptor or Stegosaurus. But what about people who love Scutellosaurus? What about people like my friend Maggie Jo Widdicombe who are over the moon for Pachyrhinosaurus? Nature is so varied and amazing in all its facets--I think we should be celebrating all of it, not just the species that have made their way into the common vernacular.

So I'm spreading the love for the barreleye, the most optimistic creature in the sea!

Return to Lynwood, Chapter 18

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14
Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19

“Search every corner of these quarters!” Isengrim barked as two of his packmates hacked down the door. “I want Vakhtang found!”

The sounds of fighting in the hallway rang in his ears as he and his thanes pushed into the headmistress’s old rooms, another contingent of Werelupes covering them from behind. As Isengrim thought, most of Vakhtang’s pack hadn’t been difficult to convince, but there was still some resistance.

But perhaps, Isengrim thought as he and his squadron fanned out to start searching, as soon as they dragged the false king out of his nest, the others would surrender.

 

 Having Pokémon with you would honestly make the DMV more bearable.

 I drew this graphic for my Redbubble store, because I thought it would be a funny visual pun. Albertosaurus's species name really is sarcophagus (which literally means "eater of flesh", so it's fitting for a theropod), so I couldn't resist the wordplay. (I know what is depicted here is a funerary mask and not an an actual sarcophagus, but Tutankhamun's funerary mask is what most people immediately think of when they think Egyptian mummies.)

The lettering is based off demotic, the everyday script of ancient Egypt that arose in the mid-first-millennium BC. Which, yes, is anachronistic because Tutankhamun dates from about 800 years earlier, but demotic was a more intuitive script for me to work off than hieratic, which is based on hieroglyphic. 

(Just wanted to cover all my bases for any Egyptologists out there. Apologies for going into pedantic detail about a silly doodle.)

T.K. Arispe and the Overused Middle-Grade Fantasy Clichés

I’m not really sure what got me on this subject. Maybe I’ve just randomly been thinking about the middle-grade books of my youth. Maybe it’s stemmed from seeing what my niece has been reading these days.

Regardless, lately I’ve been pondering the weird world of middle-grade fantasy fiction and thinking about what ultimately turned me off the whole thing when I was a kid, and what I’ve been trying to do differently in my writing which is why publishers don’t like me (which is fine).

This essay is one part rant, one part literary analysis, one part a deep-dive retrospective on Harry Potter. I dunno. Personal blogs are for odd stuff like this.

 

 I'm not really sure how many people are actually interested in my My Little Pony doodles... but I had fun with this one. I know I'm not the best pony artist out there and I'm in awe of people who are actually good at drawing ponies. But I've just been having a lot of fun with this fic I've been working on and I thought this concept sketch didn't turn out half bad. I know probably nobody is interested in this sort of thing, but I guess I just didn't want to leave this floating around on my tablet hard drive. 

If you couldn't care less about cartoon doodles and just want to see paleoart, I advise that you just click that handy "Paleoart" link on the top navbar and it will just show you everything tagged as paleoart. But hey, I'm interested in other stuff too. I love paleontology but it's not my entire life.

At any rate, here's mirrorverse Emperor Sombra without his armor. After absorbing the evil from Mirror-Celestia and Mirror-Luna so they would turn good, Mirror-Sombra became an even bigger and badder Big Bad than regular Sombra, turning his Crystal Empire into a desolate wasteland overrun by umbrum oppressing their pony underlings, and heightening his dark powers until he has started to look downright demonic. Now the emperor and his evil forces are locked in war with Mirror-Celestia and Mirror-Luna, and neither side can manage to gain the upper ground... but all Mirror-Sombra cares is that regular Celestia is safe.

Except, she decides to return to the mirrorverse and save Mirror-Sombra from himself because she misses him too much. Friendship is magic!!!!

With this design for evil!Mirror-Sombra, I tried to really distinguish him from regular Sombra to show how much more power he's accrued (which is also evidenced by his title of emperor rather than king). It was also crucial, story-wise, that he look significantly different from regular Sombra, because a reformed regular Sombra accompanies Celestia to the mirrorverse, and it would have introduced too many complications to the plot if he'd gotten mistaken for Emperor Sombra. (Which, yes, in itself would have been interesting, but I felt it would have unduly shifted the focus away from the main thrust of the plot which is Celestia trying to help Mirror-Sombra find a different solution to their multiverse dilemma.)

 That guy on Route 29 who's just always hanging out under that Berry tree.

Always.

 I apologize if this scares anyone... but it sure was fun to put together. I didn't realize Pokémon was a jumpscare game! (Honestly, sometimes random encounters can be kind of startling!)

 If you can't tell, that's supposed to be a Mega Ring and a Mega Stone.

I imagine all these crazy battle gimmicks that keep being introduced in later generations would make no sense to characters in the universe of the earlier games. Those were simpler times.

 Yeah, so by this point the whole "Professor Oak is an insane supernatural creature" thing is firmly embedded in comic lore. So much so that I was able to use it to add a new, unhinged layer to the originally simple narrative of a kid getting her first Pokémon to run an errand for a neighbor.

Because that's what comics riffing on video games are all about.

Return to Lynwood, Chapter 17

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14
Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19

The heavy doors slammed open with such force that the walls shook and dust sifted from the windowsills. The entry hall was dark, lit only by weak shafts of daylight from the windows. But that was more than enough for Werelupes to see by.

This place did look vaguely familiar, Suhel thought as dust tickled her nose and made her cough again, her sore ribs protesting. She did sort of remember coming through those doors as a girl, and back then the hall was filled with other students gossiping and teasing each other. Now it was dark and silent.

“Watch your step,” Isengrim said. Suhel saw why—parts of the floor had given way, both here and on the storey above them. Although the exterior of the building had held up well through the years, it seemed some of the wooden floorboards had begun to rot.

Several pairs of eyes suddenly caught the dim light, and a chorus of growls rose around them. “Hold!” a Werelupe barked, lifting her sword as she stalked toward the group. “No one enters without King Vakhtang’s approval!”

Isengrim looked around at their welcoming party. “Last I checked,” he said, “Vakhtang did not own this place, and he’s got no control over you, either. Why don’t we put an end to his silly charade?”

The female seemed to ponder his words, then her muzzle wrinkled and she bared her fangs. “Get them!” she said to the others before turning and running up the large staircase at the far end of the hall. “Intruders!” she bayed. “King Vakhtang! We’re under attack!”

 

 I wonder if Mr. Pokémon has an army of tiny creatures with flowers on their heads that he uses to find his "discoveries"? :)