Stephanie O'Brien's Blog

Excerpts from Catgirl Roommate

10/9/2022

You know what I haven't done in a while? Shared excerpts from Catgirl Roommate!

Time to remedy that. =^_^=

“The chances of this NOT being a trap are as good as your chances of making the football team.”

“I’d rather bathe a tiger than join our college’s football team. Not that I see a difference between the two.”

“You WOULD say that, you weenie. But I bet the option you’re taking is just as bad.”

His best frenemy’s words rang dimly in Sam’s mind, bouncing off the new blank spaces in his brain as he stared at the spectacle in the centre of the living room.

At the time, Sam’s insistence that he knew what he was getting into had seemed perfectly sane.

Now, it was just another echo in the cacophony swirling through his head: a chorus of inane questions, obvious statements, and random vowel noises.

In a distant corner of his mind, Sam was aware that the door was sliding closed. It would be easy to escape, but somehow the sound of it clicking shut felt like a signal that he’d just been locked in an asylum and was expected to run the place.

“Hi.”

The word left his mouth before he could quell the social reflex, and panic slugged him in the chest, as if his heart had decided it was tired of living in a body with an idiot and was trying to punch an escape route through his ribs.

If you enjoyed these mini-excerpts, you can read a longer excerpt and grab your copy of Catgirl Roommate here.

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Touchpad Doodle Dump: Visit to the Grandparents Edition

27/6/2019

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While I was visiting my grandparents this week, I showed them some of my symmetrical patterns, and they started making art requests. These are the results, and the stories that go with them:

Grandpa asked me to draw a deer, which I attempted here - the key word being "attempted", given the lack of references in their internet-free house and the fact that I was doodling quickly with a touchpad. The result is anatomically terrible, but still oddly pretty. It's red because that's the color Grandma requested.

This picture started with Grandpa asking what I'd draw if I was making the decal for a vehicle's door, and then it snowballed from there. It began with lightning on a purple gradient, and then my grandparents asked for mountains, clouds, and a cabin with the lights on.

Grandpa also implied, but did not confirm, that he wanted me to strike the cabin with lightning.

The third picture is Grandma's second-ever attempt at digital art. The touchpad gave her some trouble - she's never owned a TV, computer, or smartphone of any kind - but I encouraged her to keep trying and showed her three different ways to make the touchpad draw, then I took a break to go to the washroom.

While I was in there, the world outside the washroom turned into an audio comedy routine of delight, confusion and alarm. "Oh, it's doing it! Eeee! Oh, no, what did it do? Honey, where did it go? What did you do? Do that thing you did again."

By the time I left the bathroom, my grandparents had managed to accidentally zoom in to 9,000% magnification, they'd inadvertently opened a program I didn't even remember having on my computer, and Grandma had signed her name.

I am proud of her for continuing to try after her confusing and discouraging initial attempts to use the touchpad. Next time I visit, I'll try to remember to bring the mouse - maybe that will be easier for her.

Who knows - if I get her into digital art, she and Grandpa might even disprove my theory that they were going to go to their graves without ever owning a screen-bearing machine more complex than a phone with call display. :P It's never too late!

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Infinity War Fan Art: Cloakie's Had Enough of Your Crap

3/2/2019

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After watching Dr. Strange and Infinity War, and becoming aware of the existence of this meme, I couldn't help but love the idea of the Cloak of Levitation getting sick of Ebony Maw's crap and going for his throat.

Don't mess with the Mom Cloak or its favorite sorcerer.

...Or try to convince me to draw ALLLL the little details on the cloak or Maw's outfit, because at this point I could almost swear that the Marvel costume designers are deliberately trolling their fan artists. :P

If you want to get early access to my completed art and exclusive access to works in progress, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

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Don't Starve Fan Art: Inktober, Day 19 - Scorched

19/10/2018

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Today’s Inktober is based on a true story. The first time I survived long enough to get a fire hound in Don’t Starve, it was killed by a spider off-screen, so I didn’t see it turn into flame. I had NO IDEA why the world was suddenly burning down around me.

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Nyla the Catgirl Just Got Interviewed! Link Inside

17/8/2018

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Have you ever wanted to watch a person with the ears, tail and mindset of a cat get interviewed?

Whether this is something you've always wanted to see, or it's a weird but tantalizing concept that you never knew you needed until now, you can see Nyla's interview on The Protagonist Speaks by clicking the button below.

Go here to read Nyla's interview!

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Fan Art: The Obvious Right Answer

2/8/2018

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As you could probably guess, there's a story behind this one.

A few days ago, my dear friend, Mica Kole, sent me two pieces of great news:

One was that her short story had won second place in the Sapiens Plurum contest.

The other was that her boyfriend had proposed to her, and she'd enthusiastically said "yes" - by throwing him in the lake and then jumping in after him.

As the icing on the cake, all this happened just in time for her birthday. And what better way to celebrate her birthday, her engagement, and her literary victory than with a piece of fan art that includes an in-joke from her proposal story?

To my delight, she enjoyed the picture, and gave me permission to share her birthday gift and her great news with my readers.

Here's a version without the dialogue, in case you prefer that:

If you want to get the context behind this picture, you can read the 3,000-word short story for free here: http://sapiensplurum.org/2018-2nd-place-winner.html

It's about a man whose inability to make basic day-to-day decisions wreaks havoc on his personal life, until he buys a flying robot named Tempest to make those decisions for him. The robot's good at her job, but even she can't do everything for him. Eventually, he's going to face choices that he has to make on his own.

How much of this picture is based on the story and how much is based on the proposal, I won't say right now, because SPOILERS. Just go read the story. Go do it. Shoo.

And if you want to get early access to stories like that, as well as useful writing tips, don't forget to support Mica on Patreon!

Speaking of supporting people and getting cool rewards...

If you'd like to get early access to art like this, and exclusive access to works in progress, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

If you want me to draw something for you, you can see my commission prices and policies here.

And if you want to get my art on your bedding, mugs, wallpaper, or other physical items, take a look at my print-on-demand store on Society6.

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Undertale Handplates Fan Art: Papyrus Wants a Hug

8/7/2018

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More Handplates fan art, this time starring little Papyrus.

The foreshortening didn't go as planned, but meh, it's lazy late-Saturday side project and I really don't feel like tinkering with it further.

I'm starting to give myself permission to work on side projects until I lose interest, and then call them done, rather than daunting myself out of starting them by saying I have to bring every single artistic whim to my closest semblance of perfection or else not do it at all.

I'll save my perfectionism for Just Cause, haha.

To get early access to art like this, and exclusive access to works in progress, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

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Undertale Handplates Fan Art: "You Shouldn't Have! ...No, Really, You Shouldn't Have."

20/6/2018

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One of those lucky instances where even though this is fandom-specific, there are no spoilers, and the joke requires no context to be understood.

Be nice, Gaster. I know this isn’t the best thing you’ve ever come home to, but he’s trying so hard, and he did it for you.

This is based on the “Babyplates” version of Zarla's Handplates AU. They aren’t babies anymore, but they’re still young enough that “I made (insert life form here) pretty” is automatically bad news, haha.

I wasn't sure whose style to use for this one, so I ended up doing a hybrid of my style and Zarla's.

Since some of her readers will probably be wondering, this wasn’t inspired by the printer incident. I thought of it when one of my siblings told me about a parent who discovered that their child had painted the kitchen with butter. BUTTER, of all things. >_<

The animal suits, on the other hand, were totally based on this Handplates comic and this Handplates side comic.

I probably should’ve drawn this in time for Father’s Day, but I didn’t. :( Oh, well.

If you want to get early access to art like this, and exclusive access to WIPs, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

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Undertale Fan Comic: Just Cause, Page 28

13/3/2018

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Whew! When I first scripted this 42-panel beast of a page out, I thought Darn, my readers are going to be waiting all month for this next update!

But it went a lot faster than I expected, so here we are, just over 2.5 weeks later. :)

The brothers were supposed to be packing their stuff in preparation to evacuate Snowdin with the rest of the monsters, but there's always time for Papyrus to yell at Sans and Sans to antagonize Papyrus. :P

To get early access to completed pages, and exclusive access to works in progress, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

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I Blame This On a Crappy Star Wars Drawing, the Pregnant Pet Rat of Prophecy, and a Conversation About Poop

6/2/2018

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So, here I sit. As I write these first few words, it's 11:07 on a Monday evening, I've had next to no free time today, and it's looking like free time will not be a thing for me until tomorrow evening.

Hence me writing this now, even though it's going to be published on Tuesday, because otherwise my weekly blog post will be posted at stupid o'clock at night, and I try not to do that too often.

Gotta give the people what they want, at an hour when they might be awake to read it. And I'm just going to make the crazy assumption that a trip into the weird side of my subconscious is what you want, because why the heck else would you click on a blog post with this title?

This won't be the last blog post I need to write tonight, either. Heaven help me.

For the current state of my to-do list, and the fact that so much of it is not done at this time of night, I partly blame a semi-accurate replica of a Star Wars rebel pistol I drew, a conversation about poop, and an imaginary pet rat with a prophecy attached.

Welcome to my Sunday night.

Just because I spent over an hour on this doesn't mean it has any business haunting my dreams.

It began like many other nights. It was stupidly late, and I hadn't slept a wink. Par for the course, for me.

Maybe I need to start a trend like Thinspiration, but instead of giving people self-destructive diet advice, it's sensible and healthy and aimed at knuckleheads like me who consistently stay up too late.

"Do you want an extra hour of art time tonight, or sixteen hours of not feeling like crap tomorrow?"

But that's a topic for another blog post. Back to the stupid night I had because of something I drew and a couple conversations I had.

Once upon a Monday night...

Yes, it was still Sunday night, and the entirety of Monday was still ahead of me. Not that I remembered that.

In the bizarre hellscape my mind had decided to create, it was Monday night, I hadn't slept a wink on Sunday night, and my ENTIRE Monday to-do list was still not done.

And now I couldn't sleep.

Great, I thought, now I'll have to do all of my Monday work on Tuesday, with TWO sleepless nights behind me.

Ha. As if that was the worst bullcrap my subconscious could come up with on that particular night.

Enter the perilous pregnant pet rat of prophecy.

Apparently, for the mind of an author who writes a lot of angst, the appropriate response to my brother saying he was thinking of getting pet rats was to add said brother into my dream, and have him tell me that he'd had a vision where I was killed by a rodent and/or something else.

I forget what the something else was. The something else wasn't what came into my imaginary dream bathroom while I was taking an imaginary dream crap, and have imaginary dream babies all over the floor by way of splitting open and just unceremoniously dumping them out.

Never mind the fact that my brother was planning to get male rats, and have no females involved specifically to avoid the possibility of babies.

If mpreg body horror is what it takes for my subconscious to fulfill its fictional prophecy, that is what it will stoop to.

Such terrible literary standards. Subconscious, I'm disappointed in you.

Now, as for the improbably birthed litter of death-babies on my floor, I should mention now that I'm not normally afraid of rats.

But when they're involved in a prophecy that ends in my death, and they just came spilling into the world chestburster alien-style, my irrational dream self has a hard time bringing herself to touch them, climb off the toilet while they're in the room, or otherwise risk drawing aggro.

So there I was, trapped on my toilet by a bunch of possibly diseased rat babies who were theoretically going to kill me because my brother had had a prophetic dream within a dream.

My version of Inception is so much less cool than the movie.

Now, not only was my to-do list not done, but I couldn't go to sleep until I'd somehow managed to get rid of every single rat, preferably without touching them.

At least the rats weren't werewolves, right? HA.

At this point, art took a break from imitating life long enough for life to imitate art by dragging me into wakefulness for a trip to the real bathroom.

At least I didn't dream I was peeing and act accordingly while still in bed, so I suppose I should count my blessings.

Admittedly, that kind of math is hard to do when you have a long to-do list for tomorrow, and you just woke up after four hours of sleep, with a low probability of getting back to sleep in time to avoid having several extra hours of work due to sleep-deprivation-induced slowness.

To my surprise, after I'd finished shambling to and from my prophecy rat-free bathroom, it only took a little over an hour of tossing and turning before I managed to re-enter the absurdity my subconsciousness had decided to weave for me.

Once again, there were furry animals and echoes of a real-life conversation involved. Only this time, as you probably guessed from the headline, the animals were werewolves, and the conversation was about poop.

Did you ever take a crap so big that your pants fit better? Apparently a friend of mine did, and he felt the need to tell me about it.

I also felt the need to show him a semi-accurate drawing I'd made of a Star Wars blaster pistol.

Both of these things are fine by me.

The fact that my mind decided to blend them into a werewolf infestation in my basement, when the only weapon I had was a crappy little blaster pistol that was designed to break up unflushable poop rather than giant carnivorous creatures of the night, was not.

And you know what?

As if that wasn't bullcrap enough, it was STILL Monday night in my dream, Monday's to-do list was still not done, and now I couldn't go to sleep until I dealt with the damn werewolves.

I wasn't even scared. I was just so annoyed that the werewolves wouldn't let me go to bed.

Kind of like that time when I dreamed that my paraplegic cat was going to take over the world, and my biggest fear was that, in the process of dragging himself across the globe, he would accidentally lose his diaper.

My dream self has some interesting priorities.

Eventually, my alarm clock rescued me from my nonsensical fantasy dreamscape.

By "rescued", I mean it dragged me into a real world where I had 20 minutes to haul my sleep-deprived self out of bed, visit my rat-free bathroom to take a dump that would hopefully not require a sci-fi weapon to get rid of it, and throw some leftovers in the toaster oven before it was time to get to work.

Almost 12 hours later, here I am, finishing up tomorrow's blog post, with another post still waiting to be written, because apparently I have strange priorities even when I'm awake.

Why am I sharing this with you?

Because I needed content for my blog post, it's late at night, and I'm getting revenge on my subconscious by sharing its crappy flash fiction with the world.

Also, if I have to deal with my dream world's bad werewolf fic and poorly-implemented fictional prophecies, so do you.

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<<Previous

Excerpts from Catgirl Roommate

Touchpad Doodle Dump: Visit to the Grandparents Edition

Infinity War Fan Art: Cloakie's Had Enough of Your Crap

Don't Starve Fan Art: Inktober, Day 19 - Scorched

Nyla the Catgirl Just Got Interviewed! Link Inside

Fan Art: The Obvious Right Answer

Speaking of supporting people and getting cool rewards...

Undertale Handplates Fan Art: Papyrus Wants a Hug

Undertale Handplates Fan Art: "You Shouldn't Have! ...No, Really, You Shouldn't Have."

Undertale Fan Comic: Just Cause, Page 28

I Blame This On a Crappy Star Wars Drawing, the Pregnant Pet Rat of Prophecy, and a Conversation About Poop

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