Local Stray Dog

as always l The Oatmeal l ⬇txt-edited

"I've lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you."

-

i finished Gideon the Ninth yesterday, and oh boy. that ending 😭 please no spoilers for the rest of the series, i am going in blind and i'm very excited

Hey, it’s #webcomicday, and I’d super love it if you checked out my second long form comic, SHOT AND CHASER. It’s set in May 2020 in the Texas panhandle and is about destructive forces like tornadoes and shame.

About 2/3 done at 164 pages, and for mature readers. (No sex, drugs, or violence, but it’s all about the complicated gray-area mess of life.) CWs: takes place in early May 2020. Also CPTSD/past religious abuse is part of the plot. SHOT AND CHASER is mirrored on Tapas and ComicFury at a long delay, but it’s best read on its own independent site with no ads. I anticipate finishing it sometime in 2025. Cheers!

My previous long form webcomic, THE LESS THAN EPIC ADVENTURES OF TJ AND AMAL, was written in 2008 and ran from 2009 to 2014. It’s 500-odd pages. It was always intended for print and is best read in book form (with improved art and all) but can be read for free at

TJ AND AMAL won the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for best LGBT graphic novel, the Harvey award for Best Graphic Novel-Reprint, and was a 2016 Eisner Award nominee (very proudly lost to NIMONA).

THE PREMISE: May 2008 - UC Berkeley med student Amal Chakravarthy hits a shit-or-get-off-the-pot point and comes out to his family. It doesn’t go well! He goes on a bender and wakes up the next morning with a raging hangover AND a stranger in his kitchen. Apparently while drunk he agreed to let said stranger tag along on his journey from San Francisco, California to Providence, Rhode Island, where Amal’s sister is about to graduate from college. Driving across the entire USA with a mysterious stoner weirdo suspiciously flush with cash? Sure. What could go wrong.

CWs: for adults. Contains drug & alcohol use and explicit sexuality. Homophobia, racism, and implied sexual abuse factor into the plot. Was written in 2008 so some shit hits different now (tho I can confidently say JKR would not approve of the use of her books here lmaooo)

As above, so below

Mamenchisaurus, Jiangjunosaurus, Sericipterus.

Patreon • Ko-fi • Facebook  • Twitter • Prints & Merch  

running into a trans girl while you're out and about makes the entire miserable errand worth it, whatever it was. like glancing upward at just the right time to see a shooting star. I spot a trans flag and it sincerely ceases to matter that the bus is crowded and it rained unexpectedly and my shoes are soaked through and my headphones are dead. I am happy to be on that specific bus on that specific day, because you're there too.

Forbidden Woods mood

Not sure if I posed this before, but if I did, I'll do it again

Helen and Lucie, drawn like that one meme ya kno

ala rat de cacti

SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE — [4/?]

It's cold in winter, but there is a solution Raha has a softer side (that is hidden from almost everyone)

---- More comics, werewolf & other art on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ndc1992

Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive

The GCs are Terfs. A specific type of transphobe. Quite a few British celebrity got recruited to their ranks and they have the money and clout to do a lot of damage unfortunately.

Terry passed away before Rowling started her downward spiral and played a significant role in creating the current toxic atmosphere around Trans rights in England . It is good to see that his daughter ,who is also a writer, stands up for human rights.

That’s despicable trying to “recruit” someone who’s DEAD. Not to mention there’s NOTHING in Pratchett’s books—including the ones of essays, articles, and speeches—to suggest he join in if he was alive.

And obviously his own kid would know his private opinions so hopefully the assholes will see her tweet and back the fuck off.

(GC stands for “gender critical”, when you see that it usually means that you’re talking to/about terfs who are trying to rebrand their image).

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Terf rhetoric basically revolves around throwing shit at the wall and then crawling around in anything that sticks, but the underlying transphobia is always present.

Rhianna Pratchett is the best.

“Terry Pratchett” is now a trending topic on twitter and everyone is just slamming the people who claim he would be transphobic. It’s been really nice to see

Also there’s this

And this. Bless @neil-gaiman

I’d already seen most of this on Twitter, but the Tom Hatfield tweet was new to me and got some laughs.

Also, this is the one that made me get all teary:

me and the five other people that didn’t see the northern lights are throwing a party and you’re not invited btw

saw Alien appear on my feed, remembered a traditional sketch I did couple of years ago and haven't posted

Shoutout to the folks who wish they could be feminine the way men are feminine, and shoutout to the folks who wish they could be masculine the way women are masculine.

Ok wait let her speak

Please give evidence beyond “I hate them” or “I like sleeping in” or “I have to get up early”, none of which is actual evidence

Signed

an actual morning person

Night person who needs to see a doctor/get your car worked on/go to the bank/buy groceries, etc? You're gonna have to sacrifice sleep for it. Because for some reason it was decided that most places of business should open in the morning and close in the evening. Fewer and fewer places are 24/7. Wanna go for a nice stroll in the park? Tough shit, they close at sundown. Hell, want to just go for a walk in general? Fair chance of being harassed by the cops because being out and about in the dark is "suspicious" behavior. Want something that's not fast food and don't want to/can't cook for yourself? Best we can do is a diner like Denny's or IHOP. Got a loved one in the hospital you want to visit between work and sleep? Either gotta get up early or stay up late to meet visiting hours.

And let's not forget, no matter how little you actually sleep and how much you actually get done, if you're not awake during certain hours it means you're a lazy good-for-nothing. Express a desire for more places open 24/7? Selfish and entitled. Complain about how noisy your neighbors are during your sleep hours? Well you can't expect the world to tiptoe around you. But also you'd better keep it down at night because other people are sleeping!

But don't worry! There are plenty of guides on how to "fix" your sleep schedule out there! You just have to follow a strict, often disruptive routine that you can never stray from even a little or else you'll fall back to your natural sleep schedule lazy, undisciplined ways.

And at that, good luck finding a job that doesn't expect you to be in by 9 AM at the latest. Which means getting up at 7:30 AM at the latest, earlier if you have a commute. Which means getting to bed at 11:30 PM at the latest.

Which means night owls have a straight choice between self-employment/freelance work, with all its insecurities, or constant self-torture. (Oh yeah, sleep deprivation does count as torture, per the UN.)

"you attract what you fear"

AHHHHHH A RICH BENEFACTOR WHO WILL FUND ALL MY WEIRD CREATIVE ENDEAVOURS NOOOOOO STAY AWAYYYY