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Phoenix

A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon soon 😊

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i love sinners and the discussions being had around it but i haven't seen anyone dig a little deeper into the "i know how you like to be licked" line. it makes remmick feel that much more sinister and cruel when you really think about it.

first off, let's start with the line itself. this is a stranger coming up to grace and talking about committing a sexual act on her, insinuating that she should join him because he already knows her through her husband's knowledge of her. but it's more than this as well, it's beyond violating, he knows her intimately and without her consent. this isn't even someone who's watched her through the window, remmick can "remember" having sex with her that he never had, parts she never wanted him to see. he doesn't just know what she likes, he already knows what she tastes like. it's also a threat, it shows his plans for her once she's turned. this is him telling her that he will eat her out and she will like it, regardless of how she may feel about it in that moment.

secondly, the fact that he said it in her native tongue so no one but her could understand. this way of saying it shows her that he means it. ive seen a lot of people mention that when remmick and his vamps dance, only irish culture gets represented, it's the only culture he truly cares about celebrating. but the use of her native language shows his true intentions, he wants to use them, steal the parts of them that benefit him and discard the rest. it makes it clear to grace that he never meant a word he said to them, he was only there to use them. just as he threatens to use her, sexually.

lastly, i think it's a great portrayal of the sexualisation and dehumanisation of asian women. remmick could have said anything to her to prove that he knows her through her husband, he could have actually tried to get her to join him. this was a moment between just the two of them, the use of her native language in a low whisper ensured that. but he used this, instead, to sexualise her. he immediately violates and threatens her, notice how we never see her tell any of them what he said, she only mentions that he said it perfectly. she is being humiliated and sexualised by this white man who just killed her husband. she is nothing but a sexual object to him and her sexuality is being directly associated with her chinese heritage.

i just think it's a perfect encapsulation of remmick as a character and another example of how he's no different than the colonisers of ireland that he despises so much. a lot of people are focusing on the forced assimilation aspect, and that part is important, don't get me wrong! but this line represents the abuse of women that comes along with colonisation as well and an aspect of it i havent seen anyone mention when talking about sinners. i know it's one line, but it's an important one, it's the catalyst to grace breaking and inviting the vampires in. i don't think the amount of terror packed into it is getting the recognition it deserves and id really like to know what other people think

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My hot take is I hc maul as bi, but repressed. He considers himself above the temptations of flesh. Mere distractions he’s learned to eliminate, of course. He totally doesn’t feel panic and shame at the rare, wayward thought of “oh damn, my assassination target is kind of-“ that manages to break free of containment

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Emergency Commissions and/or Outright Charity

You be the judge!

So, I broke one of my front teeth a week ago. Went to the dentist, had it patched hoping to have it last until we had dental insurance (later this month), but it did not. Last night, the patch broke. Which meant today I had to spend almost $500 I definitely did not have to fix it more seriously. (See below.)

I chucked it on a credit card, but obviously that is a Bad Row to Hoe because in a month, interest will kill me. Public servants don't make much money and I'm frankly already slowly drowning. This is more like-- idk, fate holding my head under water.

On top of that, though, we're also getting ready to see our sixteen-year-old beagle off. He is a blind old man whose quality of life has fallen far enough now, and he's hurting enough his regular pain medication's only just keeping it bearable, so my wife and I both feel it's time to send him off. That, however, is also not cheap as the earliest regular appointment with his vet wouldn't be until into July.

No kidding. So, in order to see him off sooner, we'd have to pay for the 'urgent care' fees, which are Not Cheap. Think to the tune of about $500 total. <- This decision was made before my tooth rebroke last night, by the way. And does not include cremation.

In light of all of the above, I'm taking emergency commissions, either direct here or via Ko-Fi. My going rate is $25 an hour. Regular portraits take about that time, in black & white. More detailed or larger pieces take longer. If you're interested, you can contact me for a quote. If I've worked for you before, you don't have to pay until you receive your work. If I haven't, you will have to pay half the quoted price up-front.

If you want to donate straight up, my paypal is: https://paypal.me/steelandfic, or you can go through ko-fi's front page (which I'd update regardless), though they take a fee. OR you could buy pretty things my wife makes on her Etsy shop. Or, given how much Etsy takes out of every sale, if you see a piece, you can also contact her directly at erinjean@gmail.com and buy it from her that way. She ALSO takes commissions, though please only ask for one if you intend to follow through, since she works with physical materials and would be out the cost.

Only help if you can and wish. <3 I normally hate asking, and indeed go years where I don't and don't have to (and am making enough to give to others instead), but between making substantially less and everything costing notably more, then one emergency after another, this past year has been kicking my ass so hard that I feel like I'm staring at the world upside down.

Here's a picture of the blind old man back in better days.

If you can't help, please signal boost? And thank you.

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so fire is REALLY hard to paint, yeah? I’m still not completely happy with it but I TRIED!

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maul + hunger

i'm counting sidious because he was starving, but more so because i like the imagery of it. i don't care that it was a fighting technique. him biting his master who starved him for years is SYMBOLIC TO ME.

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quick sinners fanart to get it out of my system

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I can't get over how Sinners is such a rich text on assimilation and whiteness and the dangers of "civility" and music as a way to look both forward and back

And it's also a phenomenal vampire movie where a lot of hot people get covered in blood and there's a B plot about eating out girls

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remmick and the vampires present a false dichotomy

Hogwood (the man who sold the twins the mill) and the KKK are very obviously bad, they are outright malicious bigotry, they use the n-word and plan to lynch the moore's and their community, they are so blatantly racist and hateful it's unavoidably obvious

remmick and the vampires however say that they believe in equality, say that they want to create a community, and yet remmick's goal throught the movie is to both metaphorically and literally steal sammie's ability for his own goal of reconnecting with his irish ancestors, a white man wants to harm a young and upcoming black man and use talents for his own goals without giving any regard to said black man's autonomy or agency

when sammie sings 'I lied to you' in the juke joint and calls forth the spirits from the past and future, it's a blend of cultures; west african, east asian, native american, and african american song and dance blend together across time and space to tell the stories of blues; where it takes its inspiration from, the music genres it then inspired, the complex history of black american culture and its intersections with other peoples of colour in the USA

when remmick and the vampires kill and turn the people in the juke joint, and then perform rocky road to dublin, only remmick's irish culture is on display, there is no influence from the black and asian people he has forcibly assimilated into his song, it's juxtaposition with the earlier scene is blatant, remmick is more than happy to assimilate people of colour into his 'community' of 'equals', and yet its only whiteness that is celebrated, that is normative

remmick claims that he's doing people a favour by turning them immortal, conviently ignoring that he literally has to suck the life out of them to do so, trapping their spirits on earth, he claims that he's the good guy, that the KKK were gonna come and lynch everyone at the joint in the morning anyways, conviently ignoring that he's doing the exact same thing; a white man leading a mob to kill a bunch of black people

in the final confrontation with sammie remmick repeatedly dunks him into the river, a forceful baptism. both the celtic irish and enslaved west africans had their religions suppressed and destroyed by colonialsm, had christianity forced upon them by the british empire, and in that scene we see remmick repeating that cycle, using christianity to inflict harm, and sammie reclaiming christianity, despite all the complex emotions he has arround it, as many colonised peoples have and still do, when he recites the lord's prayer

remmick and the vampires are no less racist than hogwood and the KKK, are no less predatory or evil, they're just less blantant about their bigotry, they represent the system, the normalised white supremacy that is seeped into the very foundation of culture in america, the point isnt that remmick would call any of the black characters in the movie the n-word, i dont think he would, the point is that his exploitation and desacration and inserting-himself-into-when-he-wasn't-invited of the juke joint is a microcosm of what white people have done to black american arts and culture since ever since there have been black and white people in america, and even before that

theres a reason vultures are shown early on in this movie

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my thoughts on the news in the group chat

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Remember you are one

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you are a tar pit.

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wo jak

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BoJack Horseman, "The View from Halfway Down"

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Help a starving artist

Or, at least, one who is trying quite hard not to.

As people relatively close to me know, I lost my job last July. It was a shitty situation all around, but I survived on savings and unemployment. But frankly, having been a toilet scrubber for most of my life, I never had a huge amount of savings and now unemployment has run out; did last month, in fact. I've sent out well over a thousand applications. I've rejiggered my resume, asked people for letters of recommendation, wrote too many cover letters, etc. I was hired for a job in early January and did my drug test two weeks ago, but I still haven't heard back from that employer, so I'm now staring down the barrel of ah, as if I somehow forgot what terror and poverty felt like again. Delightful. 0/10, would not recommend, though honestly, a lot of people I know already know the feeling.

What can you do?

You can subscribe to my Substack as a paid subscriber. Not only do you get my hopefully entertaining writing in your inbox -- which is free to everyone anyway -- you also get to request things if you're a paid subscriber. If it's monthly, every three months you can request a sketch or a specific comic review or even a fanfic review for yourself or someone else (within reason, like under 10K words). If it's as a founding member, you can request something every single month in the same vein. (Believe me, you're getting a bargain on those requests.)

You can commission me for art. I'm a decent artist. My rate is $25 an hour and I am not swift at it, but I am pretty damn okay and certainly cheaper than a professional artist. To give you a rough idea, that half-body pic I did of Guy was about ten hours, where the one I did of Ted was more like 15. A really good portrait sketch is probably about an hour. The more detailed, the more time.

I might be talked into writing commissions, depending on the writing. You can absolutely talk to me about hiring me if you want me to write your cover letters, because it's a hateful task, but I'm not too bad at it.

I can design letterheads like a boss. I was a printer for over sixteen years.

If you just want to throw money at me, I mean-- who turns that down? (Though I tend to prefer to do something for it, which is probably more evidence than anyone actually needs for what kind of childhood I had. HA!) But my paypal is:

paypal.me/steelandfic

Current utility bills under the cut. Like-- that's not counting groceries, pet food, the roof over my head, the filling in my tooth that I'm waiting for the bill for or anything else. That's just utilities.

And if you can't do anything else, please consider signal-boosting? Thanks.