Stuff I Want To Remember

Some desperate remnant of his soul knows what he needs. As soon as his debt is cleared, he goes on to live what many would call an utterly charmed life: working no more than 20 hours a week, travelling and spending time with friends (which he, at $150,000 a year and no mortgage, has ample money to do). He has a loving relationship also.

But his brain is so rotten that he cannot understand happiness anymore. He is incapable of conceptualising it other than in money.

A man who has everything except the ability to feel it.

How poetic.

Which means that when he says he regrets the months he didn’t pick up more hours to earn more money, what he’s describing here is boredom. He’s doing it in the crassest, shallowest, most income-obsessed and unattainable for most of us way possible, yes. But this man is expressing that once he achieved a certain financial goal he relaxed, enjoyed himself, got bored, realized on some level he was understimulated, and then started working more hours to meet whatever stimulated activity threshold he personally needs. 

This is infuriating because this man experienced the counter-argument to that nonsensical talking point that if we meet people’s financial needs with a universal basic income they’ll grow lazy and won't do anything. 

Anyone trying to develop $200,000 in passive annual income is not working three minimum-wage jobs to live paycheck-to-paycheck. This man’s basic financial needs were met. Working more hours to make more money is just his own personal code for ‘I still needed to use my mind to do things’ (using what might be the only metric of personal achievement he might actually have). This man lived the argument for universal basic income and I genuinely don’t think he realizes that. Once his basic income needs were met he still needed to do things to keep himself stimulated and engaged with his own life.

Queen of the Dead part 2, 59

Queen of the Dead part 2, 124

In The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter herself takes Demophoon from the hearth and places him on the ground when Metaneira interrupts the ritual, which implies that this magic could only be worked in secret. It says nothing about the child dying. However, some scholars argue that the hymn-poet clearly alludes to his approaching death by using the word aspaironta for when he is left gasping on the floor, a word used elsewhere of dying heroes. In other versions of the story, the child is immediately burnt up in the fire when the ritual is interrupted (Apollodorus Bibliotheca 1.5.1 and Orphic frag. 49, 100ff). In Hyginus Fabulae it is the father, here named Eleusinius, who interrupts the ritual. He was killed by the angry goddess, but the child (who here is Triptolemus) was honored by Demeter and was given her chariot with flying serpents to spread the cultivation of grain to rest of humanity.

Queen of the Dead part 2, 125

In the Hymn, when speaking about Demophoon's everlasting honor, Demeter says: ... "the sons of the Eleusinians will join in war and dreadful battle against each other forever" (Athanassakis, 2004). It is thought that this refers to the Ballétys, a local festival involving a mock battle among the young men of Eleusis.

Queen of the Dead part 2, 127

In the Hymn, Demeter demands that the people of Eleusis build her a temple and an altar on the rising hill above the Kallichoron well. Keleos summons the people and make sure that this is done. Demeter then withdraws into the temple. I didn't include that part of the story for two reasons. 1. In my comic Demeter already has a temple and cult in Eleusis. 2. Building a temple takes a very long time. In the Hymn it almost sounds like that all it took was a day's work, but building a temple, at least a big one, normally took several years.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

One more time with feeling

In the first version of this it was pointed out to me that Splinter’s teeth were wrong. So fixed them and reposting

From my Yakuza AU world. So Mikey has always been a chaos goblin. Getting out of bed in the middle of the night, hanging from sewer pipes, it is a wonder Yoshi didn’t go grey early. And the bigger problem was Mikey didn’t want to listen to Master Splinter when he tried to correct him. So, Splinter made this stuffed octopus (who still needs a name and I am open to suggestions). Mikey climbed up on the bookshelf? Octopus could convince him to get down. Mikey won’t eat his veggies? Octopus says he loves veggies so Mikey will give them a try. And as with all well loved toys sometimes kids love just a little too rough so he needs repairs over the years.

So I don’t usually do backgrounds like this. This was supposed to be just a sketch. Then it was supposed to be just flats. Then my SO convinced me to do the whole thing lol