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The smell has abated somewhat. I can still catch hints of it randomly around the house, but it’s not the intense smell it was at the peak. It’s still very annoying, and I want to find out what exactly it is so I can stop it, but I still can’t find the source. I have air filters in all my spaces and they can’t filter out whatever it is. They’re for larger particles though, so maybe they just aren’t capable of filtering out whatever it is. I vacuumed
out the filters just to be sure they weren’t clogged.

My back is alternating between being perfectly fine and scream inducing cramps. That’s an improvement since it wasn’t alternating at first. Once my muscles settle into being upright or horizontal I’m fine. The transitional period is the time that sucks though. I can lay down and be fine in a matter of minutes, but going from laying down back to upright takes as much as an hour to adjust back to. I’m not sure my core strengthening activities helped at all. It fells like they didn’t but maybe it would have been worse if I hadn’t been doing them. I’m going to keep doing them regardless since it helps with breathing if nothing else. I just sort of expected better results after so many months. I’ve always had problems with maintaining core strength. My arms and legs have never been an issue, and they bounce back a lot faster than the rest of me even now, but my torso never really becomes muscular even after intense use. Maybe it’s just some kind of odd quirk I have because of my general hormone imbalances. For the foreseeable future it’s going to remain a mystery though.

A night or so before the smell returned I was in the basement putting my old floppy comics into the long boxes I bought so I could get them off of the shelves. I was sorting them into piles and I swear I have no idea what 90s J.T. was thinking. I have several issues of Tomb Raider. I’ve NEVER liked Tomb Raider. Not the games, the movies, and I sure as fuck didn’t like the comics, so why did I bother buying them? It makes no fucking sense. I guess I was just caught up in the hype surrounding comics of that time. The thing is I remember buying other things ON PURPOSE. I bought Deadpool because he was cool in X-Factor and hadn’t been turned into the much shittier modern version of himself yet. I bought Harley Quin for basically the same reason… Except the ongoing series was basically the beginning of the ruination of one Harley Quinn. Still, whatever, it wasn’t just instantly awful in either case. It took some time and effort to fuck Deadpool and Harley all the way up. Even now I don’t think they’re unsalvageable. Meta commentary Deadpool isn’t always terrible and sometimes people accidentally write Harley well in spite of themselves. The Ultimates universe was generally okay. Even the death of that version of Peter Parker when they first started trying to make Miles Morales Spider-Man seemed like a decent progression in its way. Unfortunately Miles will always be Miles first and A spider man second. His function as a character relies on his identity too much for him to ever truly be THE Spider-Man. Which is a shame because he has been a good character in the hands of good writers. Spiderverse Miles is easily one of the best characters Marvel has managed to conjure in the era of cultural cancer. He’s written with a clear voice compared to the wavering characterization of Miles in comics over time. I think he should have been allowed to become his own character the way Venom and other spin off characters have, with an identity unique to him. Now he’s forever stuck as Great Value Spider-Man. At the same time him existing in this “Peter Parker is Spider-Man, Miles Morales is Miles Morales” dichotomy has sort of given him a unique status compared to Jessica Drew, Julia Carpenter, Mattie Franklin, or even Eddie Brock, Gwen Stacy, and Ben Riley. I think of all those characters Ben has the most in common with Miles in at least so far as he replaced Peter as Spider-Man in a capacity that eventually managed to damage the character as a monolith. The clone saga tore the fandom all up at the time. Now we can look back at it as an interesting time for the brand the same way people remember the Star Wars prequels much more fondly after a lot of time has passed. By comparison the controversy of Miles replacing Peter in the Ultimates universe was a blip. Having the Ultimates universe already established as its own thing probably mitigated things a lot.
I hope that someone eventually chronicles the story of the American comic book industry in a truthful way. The reality of what happened versus the version agenda minded people push was so much different. After the boom of the 90s there was such a shift in quality and content it really should have some kind of age delineation. Maybe the copper age. Right now I think we might be in the aluminum age. The lack of money industry wide and Hollywood trying to pick the corpse of American comics clean of any valuable thing has left it in quite a state. The internet opened the doors so wide that talented people didn’t have to tie themselves to predatory companies like DC and Marvel anymore. It shrunk the pool of talent down over time so much that if it’s still a pool it’s one only big enough for wading. Comic “professionals” beg for rent and medical care on a monthly basis now. I look over there from my tiny cave in webcomics and think “there but for the grace of god, and my patrons…”

The ironic thing about mainstream comics now is that so many writers seem to want to tell deeply interpersonal stories about the human experience, but they are stuck doing it in this realm of superheroes where it just doesn’t work the same way. They want to be doing what I’m doing, except in their case nothing is stopping them. They could jump into my arena today if they wanted and we could duke it out for attention. I couldn’t do that. In spite of my success in this space the gatekeepers would still keep me out. The reasons would be very different from when I was younger, but the fact remains that where I exist is still basically wild and untamed, and no one can stand in their way, while they themselves would keep me out of their arena. And they would be right to do so, because I would be a danger to their continued success. I don’t want to give the best ideas of my life to a corporation that doesn’t care if I can pay my bills though. I don’t want to create in an industry where you have to take your employer to court just to get 1% of what would be considered fair compensation in any other industry. I can do poorly without the aid of the Walt Disney company. Considering I’ve been out here on my own for nearly two decades I feel like I’ve done pretty well. Plus, all my beloved characters are mine and mine alone. My precious creations are mine to toy with as I see fit. No one gets to tell me how to tell my story. I can noodle around for years at a time exploring these minute nothings of the human experience as much as I want. What a paradise. I would rather die than leave it. Even at the worst times webcomics has been a wonderland for me.
They say that if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life, but that’s actually not correct. If you love what you do the work will become what you want. It will still be work, but the toil won’t be a punishment. If I could give every human a taste of what that feels like I’m not sure that I would, because how could you ever go back to working for someone else after tasting that glorious nectar?
Those of you who come down here to read my ramblings, and give me money to keep telling this strange tale of nobodies doing nothing, hand me the most valuable thing you can give to anyone: freedom. I treasure it above all else. It is so precious to me I could never express my thanks clearly enough to make you truly understand. Thank you for keeping me away from the thieves in the world outside. Thank you for protecting me from the villains in suits who would steal the best ideas I have.

Thank you for my freedom.