Hi there! Oh dear, time to call myself out, isn't it?
(In the spirit of full transparency I must admit that I actually use YouTube for music a lot more than spotify, so my answers are kind of skewed since spotify doesn't see my full music history/engagement and most of my playlists are over on YouTube because I'm too cheap for premium and also it's easier to add parody songs/covers to playlists over there)
HOWEVER
11. are your playlists in alphabetical order or sporadic?
They're 100% sporadic. Unless there's some kind of alphabetization program built into the app?
15. are you a shuffler or listen in order?
I'm usually a shuffler, especially when it's someone else's playlist. If I listen to the same playlist in order it gets to the point that if I hear one of the playlist's songs out of context I'll get really thrown off if the other songs don't follow it!
18. what artist do you anticipate at the top of your spotify wrapped this year?
Probably Hozier. His music's in almost every one of the playlists I put on, and it doesn't help that I listened to his "This is" channel for awhile! If not Hozier then probably U2 or Lord Huron since those are comfort artists for me and I regularly seek out those playlists with every one of their tracks.
There's a version of the "don't go grocery shopping while hungry" rule specifically for writers where you should never under any circumstances be allowed to touch your draft within 3 hours of reading a really good story. Because sometimes when you read something great your head goes "fuck this is so much better than my stuff I should make that more like THIS instead!" Look at me. That's the devil talking and you should close the document NOW.
the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.
sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.
you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.
it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.
but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.
they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.
they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.
barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.
and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.
but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.
they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!
this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.
i will say. even before shmi was tortured to death, even if you don't process the harsh slave labor or literal implanted explosive device to keep her from running away, shmi is a body horror character because her pregnancy is not consensual. obviously lucas is recalling mary and her immaculate conception but mary was TOLD what was going to happen. she was told she was carrying the child of the lord. that is an essential part of the story. and shmi was not!! she just woke up one day and was pregnant. she didn't know anything about the force. she probably knew next to nothing about pregnancy. she had to carry and give birth in the unimaginable conditions of slavery, with no idea what was happening to her . that's the kind of fear i don't think could ever be tackled properly in a kids movie (esp with it's real world parallels) but that it's not even discussed in fandom is unfortunate
I see a lot of posts about Danny seeing Jason and immediately thinking he’s a baby ghost and wanting to adopt him but what if it’s the other way around?
What if Jason sees Danny and is hit with oh my god that’s a baby, who left a baby unattended out on the street?? He needs help, gotta protect him, mine, yeah he’s mine now, I got u lil guy don’t worry
Meanwhile 15 yr old Danny is like um hi?? And promptly gets kidnapped. But he just lets it happen because he’s actually feeling the safest he’s ever felt in his life with this guy, and Danny’s core immediately recognizes Jason as parental figure and just relaxes Danny 100%
Jasons feeling like Danny is a helpless baby while Danny feels safe, protect, calm, safe, relax, and he just lets Jason take him home. Neither are really sure why or what is going on with them but they’re not gonna stop it.
I think it’s because Danny’s own parents kinda suck and any other ghost that he’s interacted with he’s had to fight in some capacity or has been spooked by them. Jason’s the only one who 1) wanted to parent him and 2) has good vibes. Danny’s usually waiting for fights to happen and he’s very stressed. Jason calms him down so much he probably falls asleep before they even get to Jason’s apartment, full trust that Jason will take care of him.
Meanwhile Jason never really connects with his pit side, but really wants to find some way to have a truce. Cue Danny, and both Jason and the Pit turn to protectiveness and so the rage becomes more protection and Jason yk, might be kinda lonely and wanting something to take care of. He was probably thinking about getting a cat and not a kid but he’s not complaining
my knight-monk agenda strikes again, but this was less of a 'I read something that made me experience several emotions and a strike of inspiration at once,' and more of a 'wouldn't it be fucked up if the bejeweled skeleton saints came to life and and started. eating people. or something. in revenge. medieval catholic horror, or an older horror of not being buried right. zombies, even. a complete bastardization of holy visuals. zombies.'
it's a far away idea, but I still wanted to play around with font layouts. like, if I DID make it into a full comic: these would be visual vibes, perhaps.
it's also a little bit about the kind of intimacy that these kinds of spaces provide, or in the case of this monk: the heavy trauma of war and the death of your brother, the escape to a secluded monastery, spiritual brotherhood to make up for your dead brother, but your role as a physician keeps pulling you back to this violence you want to escape. physician, heal thyself, only you have a holy calling to serve those in need, so instead: physician, open up your wounds again. saint jude, patron saint of lost causes, give us a fucking hand here, man. amen.
Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and Artistic Expression, James M. Saslow
and this one is about earlier history than the medieval period that this comic is set in, but the monk character is sort of an exploration of earlier themes. a little bit. I like overlapping eras with each other, I've done it before and I'll do it again. this character is an exploration of some other stuff too, but mostly this book was interesting to read
From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity, Andrew T Crislip
Sooo I wrote a…weird little thing, a certain comic by @mayhemchicken-artblog got my creative juices percolating and under the press of staying up far too late for several days this came to fruition, enjoy!
you know what’s absolutely terrifying???? having to cut a baby’s nails………
Katsuki has to cut your baby’s fingernails when he discovers a tiny little scratch by her eye one morning. it’s barely there, a small thing, but it’s there, marring her little face nonetheless. he frowns at her when he holds her the next morning, her dreamy eyes alert and blinking up at him, she smiles.
“Now I gotta cut yer claws down,” he mutters to her, voice quiet as to not wake your sleeping form in the bedroom. he pads throughout the house with her chubby face resting on his shoulder, her gums gnawing at his bare skin, but he doesn’t seem to mind it.
he finds himself in a conundrum though, once he realizes just how fucking—how sharp the damn clippers are. they’re tiny, lavender in color, but they’re meant to cut though the nail with such precision. and yes, he’s a pro hero, has had to adopt the title of EMT, firefighter, emergency surgeon a few times in his life when need be.
but…those people weren’t his baby girl. they weren’t this tiny and precious, and they never looked up at him with a face so similar to his, it makes his heart squeeze tight in his chest. he frowns at her again, even deeper, and this makes her hiccup a little giggle, gummy smile spreading wide.
“You’re only gonna wear mittens from here on out,” he grumbles after a while, finally daring to pick up a tiny hand that she instantly curls around his thick finger. it’s the cutest image, he thinks to himself, but he catches sight of the jagged nail, the culprit. his heart squeezes even tighter though, when he realizes that he can’t protect her from every hurt in the world, even if the hurt comes from her own hands. and the realization is an aching one, but he tells himself that he, at least, can patch her up.
you walk in minutes later, find Bakugou curled over your daughter in the rocking chair he built for her room. his tongue pokes from the corner of his mouth in concentration, his eyebrows furrowed. your daughter babbles to him the whole time, her sweet voice cooing the softest little noises that he responds back to.
“I know, I know,” he mumbles to her. “Ya don’t like baths, and don’t like your nails cut, either. What other shit do you hate, huh?” he asks, and she seemingly responds with a long, sighed out coo. it makes him smile, despite the way his hands slightly shake when he cuts the next nail. he’s terrified, of somehow hurting her even more, of cutting too close, of scratching her. but he treks on, and kisses her fat little fingers every time he clips another nail.
i. about 2 weeks ago, i was told there's a good chance that in 5 or so years, i'll need a wheelchair.
ii. okay. i loved harry potter as a kid. i have a hypothesis about this to be honest - why people still kind of like it. it's that she got very lucky. she managed to make a cross-generational hit. it was something shared for both parents and kids. it was right at the start of a huge cultural shift from pre to post-internet. i genuinely think many people were just seeking community; not her writing. it was a nice shorthand to create connection. which is a long way of saying - she didn't build this legacy, we built it for her. she got lucky, just once. that's all.
iii. to be real with you, i still struggle with identifying as someone with a disability, which is wild, especially given the ways my life has changed. i always come up against internalized ableism and shame - convinced even right now that i'm faking it for attention. i passed out in a grocery store recently. i hit my head on the shelves while i went down.
iv. he raises his eyebrows while he sends me a look. her most recent new book has POTS featured in it. okay, i say. i already don't like where this is going. we both take another bite of ramen. it is a trait of the villain, he says. we both roll our eyes about it.
v. so one of the things about being nonbinary but previously super into harry potter is that i super hate jk rowling. but it is also not good for my mental health to regret any form of joy i engaged with as a kid. i can't punish my young self for being so into the books - it was a passion, and it was how i made most of my friends. everyone knew about it. i felt like everyone had my same joy, my same fixation. as a "weird kid", this sense of belonging resonated with me so loudly that i would have done anything to protect it.
vi. as a present, my parents once took me out of school to go see the second movie. it is an incredibly precious memory: my mom straight-up lying about a dentist appointment. us snickering and sneaking into the weekday matinee. within seven years of this experience, the internet would be a necessity to get my homework finished. the world had permanently changed. harry potter was a relic, a way any of us could hold onto something of the analog.
vii. by sheer luck, the year that i started figuring out the whole gender fluid thing was also the first year people started to point out that she might have some internalized biases. i remember tumblr before that; how often her name was treated as godhood. how harry potter was kind of a word synonymous for "nerdy but cool." i would walk out of that year tasting he/him and they/them; she would walk out snarling and snapping about it.
viii. when i teach older kids creative writing, i usually tell them - so, she did change the face of young adult fiction, there's no denying that. she had a lot more opportunities than many of us will - there were more publishing houses, less push for "virally" popular content creators. but beyond reading another book, we need to write more books. we need to uplift the voices of those who remain unrepresented. we need to push for an exposure to the bigotry baked into the publishing system. and i promise you: you can write better than she ever did. nothing she did was what was magical - it was the way that the community responded to it.
ix. i get home from ramen. three other people have screenshotted the POTS thing and sent it to me. can you fucking believe we're still hearing this shit from her when it's almost twenty-fucking-twenty-three. the villain is notably also popular on tumblr. i just think that's funny. this woman is a billionaire and she's mad that she can't control the opinions of some people on a dying blue site that makes no money. lady, and i mean this - get a fucking life.
x. i am sorry to the kid i was. maybe the kid you were too. none of us deserved to see something like this ruined. that thing used to be precious to me. and now - all those good times; measured into dust.
/// 9.6.2022 // FUCKING AGAIN, JK? Are you fucking kidding me?
Oooo starstruck dee has little stars at the bottom of her feet! Are they just aesthetic or would they make imprints into the ground? (like pawprints)
exactly like that! though she's not the only one...
edit: might need to add some additional dialogue to this to make it more clear, but a clarification in the interim; he knows about his own footprints. he's just surprised to see something similar already there when he knows he's only just landed. he lifts his own shoe to confirm that they're not identical (and also to reveal this to the viewer). seems his stoicism beat off the clarity in this one, sorry 😭