Allie Brosh

1) The evilest thing I've considered doing is asking all of my readers to send weird things to one of my friends.

2) Yes. Please describe for me your attributes and shortcomings.

3) I wouldn't say randomly, but people do ask me about it. I don't mind at all. If anything, I like that they are willing to talk about it with me.

4) I was pretty shut off from the internet during most of that time, but I do have an incognito Reddit account.

5) My favorite food is definitely nachos. I also enjoy guacamole.

6) 16.154 pliestocenes.

But would you be able to SING erotica?

Absolutely.

I also invented a new type of nacho — the potato chips nacho — and it is way classier than you would expect.

I choose the ducks.

I would use diplomacy to get them on my side, then open the world's most homogenous petting zoo.

By my calculations, that would be about nine hundred million house minutes. I'm thoroughly impressed!

In the first stages of my depression (several years ago), there was a bit of self loathing involved, but anymore, it's just an emptiness and inability to engage with things. In other words, I have everything to be happy about, but when I'm very depressed, I'm far too detached to enjoy anything.

As for the self loathing, I definitely used to be a lot more anxious than I am now. And in a way, I think my depression cured my anxiety. I might be an emotionless wasteland inside, but it's really hard to upset me!

The best thing I can say is don't try to fix it for them. That can be hard because it's natural to want to help, but clinical depression doesn't really have a reason behind it or a clear solution, and all the helpful advice almost makes the depressed person feel pressured to pretend they feel better so they don't frustrate the people trying to help them.

It was incredibly relieving for me to know that I could just sit next to someone and watch a movie or eat dinner or whatever, and not have to worry about making them feel like everything was okay. Because it wasn't. And I didn't know when it would be again. But it felt nice to not have to pretend.

This is probably the most helpful thing that could have happened short of spontaneously not feeling depressed anymore.

Shit! Sorry!

I haven't had chocolate milk in probably too long. Perhaps I shall remedy that today, and then my answer to the question will be "right now."

I never went to the store.

But I did eat some raspberries in cream, and those were delicious! Almost as delicious as chocolate milk!

I'm glad that it made it easier to talk about!

As for the question, I'm going to choose the one shark bear sized Alot because shark-bears and Alots are roughly the same size, and fighting one of them sounds much easier than fighting a hundred of them.

Oh goodness.

It was definitely surprising when things started taking off.

I'm a bit reclusive, so I don't think I'll ever be one of those people who's constantly present on social media, but I'm also pretty emotionally stable (doubly so ever since most of my feelings melded into a single, flat anti-feeling), and that makes it easier to just take things in stride and have fun.

In the world of writing internet content, there's all this talk of "maintaining an audience" and "staying on the radar," but I'd rather just work really hard for a really long time on one thing that I feel really good about publishing. I know how much work I put into the things I publish, and I suppose that makes it easier to feel confident.

I seem to get the best ideas when I am nowhere near a writing surface (in the shower, when I'm on a ten mile run out in the desert, in the car going 80 miles per hour, etc), so sometimes I'll just go sit a long ways away from my paper and pens and see what happens.

Really, though, the best way I've found is to keep a collection of ideas and constantly revisit them. I'll often write something down that doesn't seem like it will go anywhere, then look at it three months later and suddenly know what to do because I have a different perspective on it.

What? Get out of here — those are real???

I've learned that I need to have the text of a post firmly in place before I start drawing or else I will end up being wildly inefficient and having to draw three hundred extra pictures because I decided to restructure the story eighteen times.

As I'm writing, though, I'll put in descriptions of the pictures I want to include. For example, here's a snippet from an early draft of my latest post:

I had never felt so powerful before. The feeling tingled at the base of my spine, slowly intensifying and spreading throughout my body. And as I stood there, the power surging through me like jolts of electricity, it became clear that I would need to find some way to use it. Any way. Immediately.

[Me, still standing there, looking sort of desperate] [Me, flipping out, other children running away] [One more frame with me throwing things, maybe?] [Standing in middle of room, looking crazed, teacher is saying "NO. This is not inside behavior!" I am not even aware she exists. I am a dinosaur]

I had completely lost control of my body. I was a mindless juggernaut, the puppet for a force greater than myself.

[Picture, me close up, looking over my shoulder as I'm scribbling on the walls with a giant handful of crayons. Crazed]

I do nice things so I can feel good about how nice I'm being.

Your face is a cop out.

It's okay. Everyone's face is a cop out sometimes.

I do that a lot. But then I found out about it, so I had to actually start doing nice things every now and then to disguise the fact that I wouldn't normally be doing them from myself.

Yeah. I'm always trying to pull one over on myself. I want to be a genuinely good person so that I can have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm like that, but there are too many slightly shitty parts, so I have to pretend so I'll believe myself.

Your face is amazing.

This insult template somehow doesn't work as well when applied to compliments.

My everyday life goes something like:

9:00 AM: Wake up, then lie in bed for several minutes, staring at the ceiling and thinking morning thoughts (the weird thoughts you have when you aren't fully awake yet).

9:10 AM Get up, stumble downstairs, make Irish breakfast tea with ludicrous amounts of cream. Walk back upstairs, probably dribbling tea everywhere because I filled the cup way too full and I never learn, and then lie in bed and drink tea and surf the internet.

Several hours later: need to take shit. Sit on toilet and read for half an hour.

Noon-ish: Feeling inspired by my bathroom reading session, decide to write.

9:00 PM: Entire day has been lost to an uncontrollable writing binge. Realize that I haven't eaten all day. Go downstairs, make nachos. Go back upstairs, continue binge-writing until too tired.

Rinse and repeat.

Of course, there are days thrown in where I do different things, like going outside. I like the days that I go outside.

Fierce Pajamas.

Holy shit — really?

Where do I get coconut oil?

I do, though.

I still have a stupid phone.

I'm unwilling to adjust to a new one, though.

Far out.

Hey! I'm glad to hear Very Serious is still out there, being anything but very serious. One of these days, I'm going to get on there again. I have such fond memories of the early days of that forum.

Lego bedroom set. All the way.

Does the mattress have to be made out of legos, though?

Hey man, getting there is a good place to be (at least relatively speaking). And I hope you do find your corn kernel (whatever form it takes).

I don't know why this happened to you, but I like that it did.

As for spices, I feel like my book would pair well with cumin.

I am eagerly awaiting your review of both the spice grater and the cumin suggestion.

I hope the president of the cumin industry gives me an award or something.

ROOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYY BIIIIIIGGGGGGGIIIIIIIINNNNNNNSS —

You'll never get away with this!

Yeah, I'm probably pretty low on his priority list with all the spice mongering that's been going on. If I wanted an award, I should have put my support behind a less prominent spice, like celery seed.

It took me awhile. The space is key.

To be honest, I'm pretty opposed to graters of any kind. I feel they are not advancing as fast as the rest of the kitchen gadgets, and I have spent too many angry, bloody-knuckled minutes attempting to use them.

He must be slacking. That number should be AT LEAST 99.4%.

That's it. The award now belongs to vendetta2115. I'll contact the relevant authorities who will then contact the cumin president.

I use a Wacom Bamboo tablet, but I used to just use my track pad. It was a dark time.

I've never been able to make option C work for me.

I fixed my refrigerator like that once. It was making this horrible screeching sound, so I figured I would try to play its game.

Oh my, I could spend entirely too much time there.

So I should have taken it into the bathroom before beginning to yell at it.

Oh my...

No I did not.

Perhaps you could ask me to post the picture I drew of you as a starfish. I mean, if you want everyone to see it.

As you wish: http://i.imgur.com/MnEeODY.png

(Black bar to protect Bevis's wretched privacy)

Bevis, what are you, a wild animal?

How am I supposed to open that image in RES? How am I supposed to open it, Bevis??? This is wildly inconvenient. It took three extra seconds, and I had to use an extra finger to click it, and then I had to avert my gaze to a different page.

You are a disgraceful creature (but you make a pretty starfish!)

There was almost definitely one of Bevis with a dick in his mouth.

On that note, if anyone else would like to make a humiliating picture of Bevis (he'll love it! I promise!), here is a template: http://i.imgur.com/aFD30s6.png

(He doesn't actually have a black rectangle attached to his face in real life, though. At least I don't think he does)

That is such a carefree little starfish!

It seems that she finally accepts this as her home. She still runs in crazy circles on the wood floors sometimes, but it's because she's feeling crazy, not because she's struggling to cope with change.

Is it afraid of balloons? And how afraid of balloons is it?

I'm still depressed, but how depressed I am varies, which is good.

Much of the time, it's a comfortable numbness that just makes things feel muted. Other times, I'm standing in the shower or something and I can feel the nothingness hurtling toward me at eight thousand miles per hour and there's nothing I can really do aside from let it happen and wait until it goes away again.

I had some health problems recently that made things feel a lot worse, but I'm slowly rebounding from that and just trying to do the things that help keep my head above water in little ways (sleeping enough, eating enough, going for walks or runs, making sure to not overextend myself, etc.) I'm trying to be patient.

Yes, I'm taking Wellbutrin. It works far better than anything else has for me, but there's still some poke-through. It makes it MUCH more manageable, though.

I don't know yet. Its main blood supply was taken out with my uterus/tubes, so I was told that it will take a while for it to kick back on again.

I have some sweet scars, though. It looks like I was abducted by aliens and used for research.

It made me really sleepy for the first couple months I was taking it (I was told it would have the opposite effect, but not for me!), and I still get really bad dry mouth, but other than that, I haven't noticed many side effects.

The worst part was how long it took to start working. It was MONTHS before I noticed a difference, which I think could have been extremely disheartening if the pharmacist hadn't warned me about it.

I had surgery in September, so I just started running again a couple days ago. I really missed it.

In an ideal world, I'd love to take another stab at running competitively, but right now I'm just trying to build back up to running regularly again.

I had my uterus, left ovary, and both fallopian tubes removed and also some scar tissue (my uterus was folded over on itself and scarred to my colon, and my left ovary had grown into the back of my pelvis).

Before surgery, we thought it was ovarian cancer (my OVA-1 test came back elevated and the mass on my left ovary looked suspicious), but it turned out to be stage IV endometriosis instead, which is still shitty, but much better than cancer.

I loved that one!

There's a hip hop group called Delinquent Habits that I've been really enjoying lately. Also I recently found an old Goldfinger CD, so I've been nostalia-ing out to that.

I hear it every now and again, and it surprises me every time it happens.

For example, I watch a lot of videos of people playing Magic: The Gathering (because some horribly delusional part of me thinks maybe I can be really good at this!), and I've heard the phrase a couple times during games ("Tap ALL the mana!" "Counter ALL the spells!" etc.)

I'm well aware ;) (but I haven't watched those videos yet).

I almost always post under my incognito account these days, though.

I mean, I'm good-ish at it (I win 8-4s on Modo with some regularity, but I'm not, like, on the pro-tour or anything), but I'm nowhere near good enough to justify how much time and money I spend on it, haha.

Modern is my favorite format right now, but I LOVED DGM draft. I haven't quite warmed up to Theros yet (it's hard readjusting after the smorgasbord that RTR block was), but I'll get there.

And Magic has definitely seen me through some rough patches. It reminds me of my childhood, and it's a great way to get lost in thought!

Haha, I watch mostly Twitch streams (Brian Kibler, Tom Martell, Paul Cheon, etc.) and CFB/SCG videos. I also watch GP coverage on the weekends, especially if it's Modern.

My favorite format is Modern, but I enjoy drafting a lot as well.

Not yet, but I'll check them out! I mostly watch SCG/CFB videos, and Twitch streams (Brian Kibler, Tom Martell, and Paul Cheon are my favorites to watch on there).

Oh man, LSV would feel so weird if he knew what a big part of my life he is. I often watch his videos while I'm falling asleep. His puns are like a lullaby.

And the video where he accidentally creates an infinite loop with Oblivion Rings and then Modo has absolutely no idea how to process it and just starts spastically moving things everywhere made me laugh so hard that I burst a blood vessel in my eye.

Who's your general?

The REAL Tom Martell?

Dude, I was just watching you stream the other day!

I owe a lot to Kibler. There's something about him that is just... comforting to me. I don't know whether it's because I watched a lot of his Twitch videos during a very good time in my life and I still associate them with happiness or because he's just so very much himself and it's infectious, but he got me through some rough spots for sure.

(P.S. Kibler made a game, and it's really fun too: http://solforgegame.com)

You'd either be really impressed or really scared by how many hours I've spent watching you play Magic.

In Modern, I play GB/x decks a lot (I keep trying to make BUG work), and I like playing tempo when it's viable.

My favorite color combination to play is probably UG. Beef and tricks.

Shit.

Lately, I've been trying to make BUG work. Before that, I was playing Junk a lot.

I have to ask: the fancy drawing over your lady friend's face — does it blink sometimes? I swear I saw it blink. Am I insane?

I draft pretty frequently, and I've been slowly coming around on EDH (I have a cheap Zegana deck online, and I'm thinking of building Sygg, River Cutthroat). I love watching Legacy, but I can't afford it yet.

I started playing when I was in fourth or fifth grade (1995 maybe?) and played until high school. I got back into it a few years ago.

I play paper Magic too (my LGS is awesome), but I mostly play online because I can play whenever I want and I don't even have to put on pants.

I was a bit hesitant about buying digital cards at first (it does feel weird paying for pixels of things I already own in real life), but I've come to really love playing online. It will never be a replacement for paper Magic, but it's a damn fine supplement to it! (Also, if you don't want to buy a whole new collection, you can just draft a lot. Or you can play Pauper! It will probably devolve into buying a whole new collection, though).

That's pretty much the approach I've taken too. Snapcaster Mage mimics the card advantage of the recently departed Bloodbraid Elf pretty nicely (though BUG plays out less aggressively than Jund, and the bobs feel a bit more dangerous when you don't have burn and haste-y card-advantage monsters to close things out).

I'm still trying to figure out how much countermagic to run. I definitely like at least 2 Spell Snares in there (and one in the SB), but fitting in Mana Leak can be awkward and pull you in two different directions (you want to land an early Liliana and build up your board, but you don't want to rely on Mana Leak in the late game). One solution I tried was running a couple hard counters instead (Dissipate when spirit Jund is popular), and that actually helped improve the Tron matchup a bit. It feels a little clunky, though.

I've also taken to running one Thrun, the Last Troll main deck, and that has been good.

Some other cards I've tried with varying degrees of success:

Jace Beleren (I really like him as a 1-of)

Jace, Architect of Thought (in grindier builds, he's awesome)

Kira, Great Glass-Spinner (Kira is awesome... except in the mirror. Abrupt Decay makes a mockery of her).

Spellstutter Sprite (works better in RUG because the burn helps close out games before our tempo creatures get hugely outclassed)

Shambleshark (Shhhh..... I'm trying to be an innovator! In my defense, this was when I was still trying to work around a much heaver countermagic suite)

Cryptic Command (I love Cryptic, but the mana is rough, and so is the CMC if you've got bobs)

Mystic Snake (my reasoning was that it's sort of like Cryptic Command except the second mode always gives you a card, and that card is always a 2/2 creature).

Simic Charm (I actually sort of like this, especially when UWR is a bigger part of the meta [counters removal, bounces Collonades, can almost act like a burn spell if you need to beat down])

Oh, and a piece of interesting tech I've been wanting to try is Oran-Rief, the Vastwood. In the mirror, it allows our Tarmogoyfs to swing through theirs with impunity.

JONAN!! Magic brother!

If I have any free time at all when I'm in Portland for my book tour, we are going to draft the hell out of that box, I assure you.

I haven't had any formal training aside taking art classes in school, but I've always enjoyed drawing.

Here's a digital painting I did of one of my dogs when I was trying to get used to using my new tablet: http://i.imgur.com/pJ27AIz.png

Thank you!

I'm not sure I would have wanted to know much about adulthood as a child because I would have just spent the rest of my childhood being afraid of my impending adulthood, but one thing that I think I could have learned sooner is "some people are dicks. Leave them be and try not to take it personally."

Thank you very much!

It's hard to pick favorites, but here are three books that made big impressions on me:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adadams

Rally Round the Flag, Boys by Max Shulman

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I also read a lot of Dave Barry and Calvin and Hobbes when I was growing up, but I wouldn't be able to single out just one of the books.

Whoa, how did those extra letters get in there??

Did you put them there?

I KNEW it!!

42

(And yes, I remember you!)

I'll be at WORD bookstore in New York on October 30th!

And whatever hilarity I manage to get across is almost definitely the byproduct of very purposeful struggling. I wish I could be accidentally funny more often.

I can only speak for myself, but there were a few defined stages, yes.

In the first stage, I was just excited that people noticed me. Then I got really, really, really self conscious. Then there were several hundred mini-stages where I alternated between not letting it bother me and extremely letting it bother me. Then I became horribly, horribly depressed (for unrelated reasons, and possibly not reasons at all) and I got a taste of what it feels like to not give a fuck about anything, which helped me be less anxious about everything and eventually led to the state I'm currently in, which is giving the appropriate amount of fucks and not stressing out.

The main bad parts are the times where I end up hating whatever I'm working on because I've been working on it too long.

Conversely, a very good part is reading something I wrote that I thought I hated when I wrote it six months earlier and actually laughing out loud at myself.

Most of the parts are a mix of bad and good. Like, I thought the last big push of finishing my book was a bad part (I was working 14 to 18 hours a day, almost every day for two whole months), but, looking back at it, I have this weird, Stockholm Syndrome-like fondness for it, so maybe it was a good part. That whole stretch of time was surreal.

Mo.

1) I wouldn't say it annoys me (I'm pretty difficult to annoy). I try not to judge because I never have all the information, and even if it sounds like someone doesn't understand, maybe they do and they just aren't explaining it well. Or maybe they don't, but it's really no harm to me either way.

2) I'm not the best artist in the world, but I can draw fairly well if I I'm trying. The crudeness of the drawings in my stories is purposeful. It's just the funniest way I could think of to draw things (funniest to me, that is). It actually takes a surprisingly long time to get even a crude drawing right, though. I usually have a very specific picture in my head of what I'm going for, and it can take a while to get there.

3) I'd need to have you go through my publisher for the official request (TouchstonePublicity@simonandschuster.com), but depending on when you'd want me to do it (the next couple weeks are going to be unbelievably busy), I might be game.

I don't actually have one, but I suppose I enjoy answering questions about details of particular posts/stories. Writing them is such a solitary process, and there are all these decisions and breakthroughs that never leave my head aside from influencing what the story looks like. I love when someone notices some little detail that I was secretly hoping someone would notice.

He's a huge, towering man. I think he's 6'4"? He doesn't work out or anything, but he does lots of construction-type stuff for his job, which involves a lot of lifting and carrying.

I don't even know what to say, aside from telling you that this made me feel really good and I'm so glad that you (and your patient) were able to find some comfort.

Depression is such an isolating experience, but no matter how far out in space you feel, there's always a tiny amount of comfort from knowing that someone else has been out there too (I mean, I never thought that writing about my depression would circle back around and make me feel less isolated, but in a strange way, it has).

I am!

(He was actually answering questions earlier, I think. I don't know what he said, though. Hopefully nothing embarrassing!)

If you did, though, I'm going to make a really obnoxious beeping sound for the rest of the evening to spite you.

The meme doesn't bug me. I'm happy that people are having fun with it.

It does bug me when it's used to endorse products or to promote causes I don't agree with (I don't mind people having different opinions from the ones I have, but I certainly don't want my artwork being used to promote, for example, pro-life or anti-gay viewpoints).

I promised I wouldn't, though.

The simple dog is named Kellie, but I almost always call her Roo (it just fits better). The helper dog was named Nyah by one of the shelter workers, and because she was in the shelter for so long (months), she learned to respond to it. We kept it the same because we wanted to limit the number of new things she had to adjust to. She also usually gets called by a nickname, though ("Toady." We started calling her "Nyote" because she sort of looks like a coyote, then that evolved into "Nytote," then we shortened it and it ended up sounding like "Toady.")

SARAH!!

I've been entertaining the notion of doing a national friend tour after my book tour. I hope to be able to make a long road trip out of it, and I assure you that if that happens, you will be the first stop!

And your god-dogs have TONS of nicknames. Kellie's get particularly ridiculous. Does Echo have weird nicknames yet?

• Leprechauns are sneaky.

• I drink white Russians and sometimes also screwdrivers or just straight up vodka. I used to love beer and many other malted things, but then I found out I have Celiac disease (I am told that I can still have scotch, but I'm not sure I believe it...).

• "Hey, let's be archenemies."

Your boyfriend's cleaning face is intense.

Was it the horror movie about the car tire? (I mean, there could be more than one...) I keep meaning to watch that.

As for causes, if you really want to give money to something, perhaps endometriosis research? It's pretty poorly understood, and it's hella painful and horrible. (I feel sufficiently thanked already, though!)

Solidarity fist.

I had everything except my right ovary taken out in September. Everything was all scarred together with my other organs, and my cysts were massive. The years before I was diagnosed were so frustrating and painful. I can't even tell you how many times I got the ol' "Oh, we all get cramps, honey. Just take an Advil." It's like they thought I was lying about how much pain I was in. It was so bad I would pass out and throw up! Morphine didn't even put a dent in it.

Anyway, it was really hard for me to find anyone who would take me seriously, and for a condition as serious as this, that seems unacceptable. I have permanent internal damage from going un-diagnosed for so long.

I'm glad it helps some!

Oh, she has her ups and downs, but one step at a time, right?

The blorst?

How did that L get in there, though???

I think humor is pretty much what got me through adolescence.

So my advice to teenage girls is to value the humor in the things that happen to you, and don't take yourselves too seriously. Someday you'll be adults and you'll be really, really embarrassed by how absolutely, extremely serious you were about all the things that feel like the end of the world right now.

When I'm depressed, I don't want to see anyone, but I still somehow like being around Duncan, so we watched a lot of movies and watched/played a lot of Magic: the Gathering online together. It's comforting when you can just be with someone and not have to pretend or feel pressured to feel better than you are able to feel.

It was a pretty dark time for both of us, though. I think he was also a bit depressed about things in his own life. We tried our best to be fair to each other and talk it through as much as possible. As long as you're being honest, fair, and communicating everything as clearly as you can, it's possible to make it through some very difficult things without putting too much strain on a relationship.

Maybe I can get him to give you a better answer from his perspective, though.

I think it's because it makes me feel insincere. On a cognitive level, I know that isn't true (it never bothers me when other people promote their things, and I know full well that I am being sincere), but I can't seem to shake the feeling of "everyone is going to think I've just been using them to make money this whole time!" I don't want to make anyone feel like that.

I guess it feels sort of like asking a friend for money. Even if you need to do it, you feel scummy about it.

1. Worst advice received: "You have to post something new every day — even if it isn't funny — because that's the only way to be successful with this." Worst advice given: "Do it. It probably won't hurt."

2. Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts by Less Than Jake.

Haha, one applied to being a successful blogger (sort of a quantity over quality mentality), and the other is what I said to my little sister before she grabbed a cactus for the first time (I was five, she was two).

Introvert, but well-socialized.

I think I was really good at hiding it, even from myself. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on.

Even now, I feel like everyone can tell (mostly because I feel like I can't possibly be generating the correct facial expressions without the normal amount of enthusiasm behind them), but I'm told that I don't show it.

Thank you for believing me.

It's hardest to fake genuine excitement and laughter, I think. I mean, aside from the absolute worst parts of my depression, I'm able to feel those things on some level, but it's not at a level that seems convincing to other people. I feel like I'm always sort of flat.

That's a good question.

It makes me very relaxed about everything. I can't muster the enthusiasm to get angry or upset, so I just stay neutral.

Also, trying to cope with it has helped me cope with stuff like existential pointlessness, and I feel like I take myself even less seriously now.

Haha, my mom would say it was when I started telling "Dark and Stormy Night" stories.

I was three, probably, and I would force my entire family (I lived with my mom, dad, sister, grandma, and aunt) to gather around and watch me act out stories with my toy dinosaurs. Most of them involved Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in some way (I didn't have a Rudolph toy, so he had to be played by a dinosaur).

Okay, the word "Rugops" is really, really fucking funny. I am laughing so confusingly hard at it.

I will never reveal my secrets about space bear!! (Okay, it may have had something to do with watching a bear documentary and then taking too much Benadryl).

But I will say hello to Logan.

Hi Logan.

Man, I miss you guys.

There are a couple new dog stories in the book, and I've got two I'm working on for the future (I don't know when they'll be done, but I know I want to do them at some point!)

Thank you for sharing this. I always have a harder time responding to the really meaningful stories (I feel like anything I could say wouldn't accurately reflect how much I appreciate them), but I wanted to say thank you.

To be honest, I have relatively little figured out. I just try to learn small things by observing myself, and I keep trying different stuff until something helps a little, but overall, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I wish I could be more helpful here. I can listen pretty well, though (if you want to PM me or something).

I don't know if it's possible to really know what you're doing, you know? It's possible to make it look like you do, but I have to wonder whether there's anyone who really, really does.

My crowning achievement!

Be a student of humor. Watch and read a LOT of comedy, and try to figure out what about it makes you laugh. Humor isn't something you can learn a formula for, but by paying close attention and exposing yourself to lots of it, you can internalize some of the patterns.

Once you start picking up on what makes you laugh, start playing around with it. Try to write something that makes you laugh while you are writing it.

It's a lot of watching and learning and trying things out for yourself.

Ninja edit: I just realized you might be asking how to break into comedy writing rather than how to begin writing comedy. Is that what you were asking?

All them DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSSS

My favorite story I've written is probably either The God of Cake, Depression Part 2 (because it took so long to write, and it felt really satisfying to finally find the right words), or a story I wrote for the book called Motivation (again, I had to work really hard to get it to come out sounding right, but once I got there, the feeling was very satisfying). And there are a couple others in the book that I had a good time writing and ESPECIALLY drawing (the last story in the book was an exceptionally fun one to draw).

Thank you for this!

Thank my dogs! We all suffered during that ordeal, but they suffered the most, I think.

The goose never came back while we were living there, fortunately. I was sure it would. It probably is terrorizing the current tenants as we speak.

There are some suspicious geese that live in the river near our current apartment, though.

That is an extremely accurate re-creation of that drawing! Your wife is good at cakes.

She still occasionally has episodes (most notably if we take her on trips to unfamiliar places with us), but she snaps out of them after a few days.

I'm actually going to try to get Matt to go running with me when I'm in Seattle in November. We've hung out a few times, and he's a really neat guy (I may have accidentally killed his fish with the strength of my pessimism, though). We've got a lot of weird similarities (we even lived less than 20 miles apart growing up. Which wouldn't be that weird if it wasn't in the middle of nowhere northern Idaho).

But I'm not going to pick a favorite web comic. I like too many of them! One that I feel doesn't get the love and attention it deserves, though, is Romantically Apocalyptic.

Nedroid, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, XKCD (you all know that one, though!), Buttersafe, Hark! A Vagrant, Oglaf, The Perry Bible Fellowship (not updated very frequently, but this comic is a goddamn masterpiece), Cyanide and Happiness, Dinosaur Comics, Questionable Content, Books of Adam, and Chickenmaker — a heavily (well, entirely) chicken-drawing-based comic by an old internet friend of mine who is STILL making different chicken pictures nearly every day (after three years. It's an amazing feat to behold).

He told me his fish was starting to float sideways near the bottom of its tank, but that it was probably just scratching its face. I said "sorry man, but I'm pretty much an expert on dead fish, and it's obviously dying." He was like, "NO! IT JUST HAS AN ITCHY FACE." But I knew the truth.

Then he texted me the next morning to tell me it had indeed died and I'm a horrible monster for not believing it back to life.

This isn't even the first fish I've killed with my mind, either.

Honestly, there's not much you can do aside from that. The big thing is really meaning it (and also being willing to give the person space if that's what they need. Sometimes it's exhausting being helped). It's such a relief when you find someone you trust enough that you don't feel like you have to pretend around them, and sometimes the best thing is to just be there and hang out and treat them exactly the same as before the depression.

Okay, about the centipedes: fuck centipedes. That is all I have to say about them (I do like your description, though. Nice turn of phrase!)

Perhaps the best way to put it is that I'm okay with how okay I am when I'm feeling most okay. There are times where I'm less okay, but I'm more relaxed about them now that I know that they are probably temporary.

Well shit, man, what if you love all the fuck straight out of it! :P

Naw man. It's cool.

I don't mind when people use my stuff for personal things (it's only a problem when they're stealing it or selling it or trying to use it to sell other things).

Haha, perhaps.

(P.S. I've got a book with your name on it. Literally).

I'm starting to go through some of the more buried replies, and I had to answer this one because it's about my mom and my mom is great. She's probably the nicest person I know. She's patient, caring, sincere, and she doesn't judge or hold anything against anyone. I am constantly grateful that I got to be raised by her.

And there are actually a few new stories starring her in the book! (My favorite one is about the time she tried to teach my sister and I about the miracle of nature and ended up getting us lost in the woods for ten hours).

Peter can sure ask a ruthless question!

I don't even know, man... I think it's Spiderman, but there's so much I don't know about the green Power Ranger. Tell Peter that the absolute best would probably be if Spiderman and the green Power Ranger combined forces and fought evil together!

That's sort of a cop out on my part, but hopefully he'll understand why this is such a difficult question to answer.