sounder (1972) / prayed for rain, paul cauthen / moonlight (2016) / and i said to my soul, be loud, christian wiman / dayveon (2017) / portrait of a boy with grief, wale ayinla / madonna and child, tyler ballon / living in color, frightened rabbit
One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.
Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.
It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?
Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.
consider the sperm whale and the squid. an ancient rivalry that dates back millions of years. we know the whales eat the squids. we know the squids do not make it easy for them. we know this because of the scars the whales carry, scars on the outside of their body, and on the inside as well. how badly must you want something to endure wounds inside your mouth? inside your gut?
consider the whale, who is harmed by what sustains her. consider the squid, whose flesh is soft and delicious but refuses to go down easy.
"It's fun and easy and important and good to dunk on Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling. But keep going and what you get at is: What about this story type and story telling resonates with you? Can you keep that while dropping all the things you know now cannot be maintained and should not be venerated? And is that a part of growing up?"
put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.
IM SORRY IVE BEEN BUSY MAKING THIS LEVITY RISES INTRO ANIMATIC
song by @maddiesmiles I love her she's so cool
Swaps to note from this:
Darlene // Paul Bunyan
(Yeah this does mean mason fails to flirt with him Paul, half because he knows he's a cryptid ithink. Paul probably turns into a blue minotaur maybe. As for Darlene, she's probably just a super frequent ad mascot)
Waddles // The axolotl
(the axolotl is called wades! Bc of this change, at the end of the summer Mason doesn't get his memories back immediately- it takes a few months)
Zombies // Gnomes
(I thought flipping the premise of the first episode would be fun, plus, tiny sentient zombies and tall garden gnome like cryptids that kinda stand there sound COOL)
I've been seeing the messages in the inbox, I'll get to answering them soon 😭😭😭
yk when you see someone share a finished handmade item that they clearly spent a lot of time and money on and it's just. The absolute tackiest thing you have seen in your life. And then you ask yourself why someone would waste all those resources on such an eyesore.
(no, of course you can't relate to that because you're a much nicer person than me)
In any case.
BEHOLD!
A wool coat!
The top fabric is handwoven and handspun, the whole thing is sewn by hand, too.
Leftovers. Barely anything, all things considered, which is very satisfying.
This thing took me well over 3 years to make, on and off. And now I'm done.
Whenever a person walks out of the accessible bathroom stall and sees me, a wheelchair user, sitting outside waiting for the stall, they often apologize.
In the beginning, I said, "No worries!" Because I was too scared to be confrontational.
Then I started saying nothing.
But after a while, I realized that some disabled people may be a portion of the people that apologize. And I never want to make an invisibly disabled person feel bad for using accommodations that they need. There are many different reasons a disabled person would need the stall!
(It is tiring waiting for ages while someone uses the stall to change, or do their makeup. It is not annoying for anyone who needs the stall to use it.)
So, I've decided to start saying, "That's okay! I believe every disabled person should be able to use the accessible stall!"
Because then, if they are invisibly disabled, hopefully that will put them at ease.
And if the person isn't disabled, it will remind them that the accessible stall is not just "the big stall."
Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will
she says he won't let her get a dog, which is fine, because they're in an apartment, and that's the kind of thing people say about their partners. he won't let me get a dog. and you're at a dinner party and you tilt your head a little to the side just like that dog he won't let her get, because is this the thing that's going to upset you? you don't know every corner of their relationship, she could be joking, they could have had so many healthy conversations about the dog, right, and maybe she's not letting herself get the dog because of money and time and whatever. but, like, she did say let
and she wants to move away from his hometown and he wants to stay and then he tells you with a wink and a conspiratorial stage whisper don't worry i'll convince her and she laughs about it - so clearly this is something they laugh about. but you do just stand there and stare at him like what the fuck, man. you can't say what you want to say which is why do you get the final say on everything because they're both obviously aware of the other person's stance on this and have obviously had private conversations about it and what are you going to do about it except make a scene and then he'll be mad at you and call you one of those bitches behind your back and she'll cut you off, which is a loss that doesn't feel worth it just because he makes you a little skeeved out every 3rd comment
and they both agree he just isn't the type to get flowers which is fine because everyone shows love differently, and are you really gonna judge someone based on their sense of individual relationship responsibility? maybe he's constantly cleaning her car and writing her poems and making her furniture or something. maybe she doesn't even like flowers and this is perfect, actually. and no you couldn't date him, obviously, ew; but like, she tells you she's happy. you almost send her a tiktok that says don't be 25 and the cool girl that doesn't need anything, you'll hate not getting flowers at 30, but that's like, starting drama & you shouldn't start drama needlessly.
and you're a little older than her but not so much older you can pull the whole trust me on this one babe thing and besides that wouldn't have worked anyway (when does it ever) and besides you have trauma so you and your therapist both agree that you're always looking for a problem even when there isn't one. and you tell yourself that just because you see them for 15 minutes every month does not mean you can identify every single red flag based on a single shitty half-joking(?) comment
and besides, what are you going to do? she says i actually wanted another stand mixer but thankfully he stops me when i'm about to spend too much money and you're standing there like are you okay? is this normal? is this just something people say? and again - what are you going to do?
to your therapist you try to language it - it's not, like, any of my business. but sometimes, doesn't it feel like - you should do something. there's got to be something, right? you've tried dropping little hints but they sail right through and you've tried having a single serious conversation and she got upset because why does it matter to you, yes it's different but we're happy, it doesn't need to make sense to you and you're like. really unwilling to push a boundary about it anymore; because the truth is that you know logically it shouldn't matter to you, as long as both parties are happy.
and besides, you've been wrong before. it's just... like, every time you see them both, something else happens, some kind of shiver down your spine like do you even hear each other when you talk. it's their strange, bickering orbit. just the way he's on his phone through dinner or watching sports instead of helping in the kitchen or, fuck, another one of these little throwaway comments he makes about we'll see about that, babe. she laughs when he calls her passions stupid shit and meanwhile she gets him tickets to see the knicks and he tells you well at least she's smart about something and still! it's none of your business.
you say get the dog anyway and she laughs. like, this is is you being funny. and not you saying - no really. get the dog. get the dog and get out of here. pack up and start running.
NO MORE ASSOCIATING THINGS WITH FEMMES ONLY BECAUSE THEY ARE PINK!HYPERFEM FEMMES ARE GREAT AND I LOVE YOU CAMPY FEMMES WHO EMBODY PINK BUT ALSO JESUS CHRIST CAN YOU GUYS NOT GO MORE THAN ONE DAY W/O TRYING TO SHOEHORN FEMMES INTO BEING ONLY PINK UWU BABIES. I AM FEMME AS IN GRASS AS IN DIRT AS IN TREE BARK AS IN WEEDS SPROUTING THROUGH THE SIDEWALK CEMENT. FEMME AS IN GENDER NONCONFORMITY AS IN FUCK YOU MY FEMININITY IS WHAT *I* SAY IT IS. FEMME AS IN DEPTH AND DARKNESS AND WARMTH AND TERROR. FEMME AS IN CAVES. FEMME AS IN LIGHTNING. FEMME AS IN AN AMALGAMATION OF TRAITS THAT I HAVE DECIDED ARE FEMININE REGARDLESS OF WHAT SOCIETY SAYS. FUCK IS IT THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!???