calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.
over the last 2 weeks, i've seen countless patients walk into my urgent care center, symptomatic for so many things, refusing to get tested for covid and flu, citing that they don't want to knowingly bring it to their holiday tables. i had a patient tell me, verbatim, "i don't want to test for covid, because i don't want to be the asshole who brings it on a plane."
i understand that - i understand that holidays are times where people look forward to meeting loved ones that they might only see once a year, or where they get a break from the hectic back and forth of their lives.
but here's the thing - whether they get tested or not, they will bring whatever they have to their holiday tables. it's pure recklessness to know that you're sick, and walk into someone else's house spreading the disease.
today, january 2, i saw 91 patients, many of them who have tested positive for covid and flu. many of these patients are the same ones who didn't want testing 3 days ago, until their events were over, and now, they will have to reach out to everyone they know to let them know that they were positive because they were showing symptoms well before their event.
the next week or two? we're going to see many, many more, all people with symptoms that started around christmas. these are the only two viruses we test for rapidly in our office, but they are potent and can be fatal in many people.
so here's why i wrote this post, and maybe it's a little late, but - if you care about your loved ones, please get tested if you know you're sick. it doesn't have to be at a clinic if you don't want it to, because the over-the-counter tests work just fine too (if you test within 5-7 days of symptom onset). just...please don't try to run from the knowledge that you might have covid, because immunocompromised people, elderly people, people with co-morbidities like asthma, pregnancy, diabetes, etc...many of them may not recover. and they may not be sitting at your holiday table in the future because of it.
I love the duo, both the historical setting and modern AU. Does Vasco ever go to confession while Machete is running it, just to 'confess' to something they did before as a way to tease?
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
steddie fake dating au that starts because robin’s mom keeps pushing for her and steve to get together and robin gets so fed up that she yells, “it’s not gonna happen because some people are gay, mom!”
and upon seeing the utter horror and fear on her face, steve swoops in and says he’s the one who’s gay. cue mr. and mrs. buckley, local hippies, attempting to show how supportive they are, and all the while steve gets eddie to agree to fake date to get the buckleys to prove they’re safe, so that robin will feel comfortable enough to come out to her parents.
yes it's one of the best and horniest metaphors for penetrative sex I've ever seen but even without the subtext, just textually, he wanted to be held by this man so badly that he goaded him into stabbing him. he wanted to be held in the arms of this man so badly that he demanded he run him through with an entire sword. and now they get to be boyfriends and probably get pirate married next season. ed and stede everybody.
There's a level of Hell that Constantine loves and hates in equal measure.
The Level of Lust and Debauchery.
He loves it for what it is, but he also really, really hates it. The beings in it are unhinged at best, completely insane at worst. Stronger than Demons, but weaker than Gods-it's always more stressful than fun dealing with them.
So needing to summon the King of that level is...well. John can already feel the exhaustion.
But instead of exhaustion, he feel rage. Disgust.
The King that shimmers into existence is a fucking child.
And John honestly loses some time after that.
He comes back from ranting with the tiny King forcefully yanking him to a stop.
"Wait, you thought the Infinite Realms were what?"
Turns out, that wasn't the Level of Lust and Debauchery at all. Turns out, the Infinite Realms has a Red Light District.
Turns out, that is a very, very small part of the Infinite Realms, and this tiny child King had no idea it was there, and now he has to explain what a Red Light District is to an increasingly mortified Royal Teenager.
All around, it's not a fun time for anyone present.
"I hated Harrow so much at the beginning" could NOT be me. She has flair, she has panache. She stays up all night scrabbling in the dirt burying bone fragments just for the drama of the reveal. She stabs herself in the cheek so she can sign in blood. She is a control freak who puppets her dead parents around and bullies Gideon into a vow of silence. She is a singleminded swot who maps out all the doors in a massive decaying mansion the very first night. She makes herself a bone cocoon before passing out. She leaves bread in a drawer. You don't see a grimy little freak and want to put them in a blender??
I drew the same comic twice because I didn't think the first one was funny enough. I don't know if the second comic is funnier though??
Here's both of them
Side by side because i couldn't decide which one to put first - knowing the punchline changes the experience?? pick your adventure. read either one first.
You! Internalize that you do not always need to "improve your art/craft" now! It's great to learn and develop your skills, but you do not need to come from a place of hating where you are now! You certainly do not need to force yourself to improve if it is coming in between you and enjoying the things you do. Improvement for improvements sake does not have to be the only goal, nor the only one that "should matter"
You are allowed to have motifs, enjoyment, ameturism, and "less skill." Kill and devour the capitalist in your head that dictates that you must always improve for everybody else's sake and your "productivity."