Now I’ve written the whole thing.

Kerry Guinan

Artists, 2019

Series of six blank canvases (70x70cm) signed by the factory workers that made them in Daler Rowney, Free Industrial Zone, La Romana, the Dominican Republic.

Images: Photograph of 3 canvases from the series in the solo exhibition 'Our Celestial Sphere' at Pallas Projects, Dublin, 2019.

Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick Institute of Technology, and Fingal County Council. Images: Pallas Projects/Studios & Kerry Guinan.

(Original caption from artist’s website)

And after contacting the Irish Museum of Modern Art and being referred to a curator (!), they provided me with the caption information that was used when displaying the work for the Staying With The Trouble exhibition in 2025 (thank you so much IMMA staff!!)

Artists is a series of blank, square canvases, each signed by a staff member in the manufacturing facility that produced the canvases in the La Romana Free Trade Zone, the Dominican Republic. The manufacturer, Daler Rowney, is a popular supplier of art materials in Ireland. The artist coordinated the project remotely by contacting the facility manager. The signatories volunteered to take part in the project upon invitation. They are Johan Rivera, Carlos Roa, Aneury Rondon, and Orlando Saldivar.

Geralt and the other witchers, who when allowing Ciri the choice were well on their way to turning her into a witcher

Geralt's hansa, who are all invested because they recognize that Geralt will stop at nothing to rescue his daughter from those that will harm her

Yennefer, eventually, though she had initially agreed that Ciri's value was in her uterus she eventually came around to valuing Ciri as a person and telling her she could be anything she wanted (except a witcher, because that ship had sailed)

Anyone who knows who Ciri actually is refers to her as "the witcher girl". Ciri herself, when she's not actively in hiding, loudly calls herself a witcher at every oppurtunity even though she's technically not because she never went through the Trials. She never wanted to be a sorceress and she rejected being a princess before Geralt even knew who she was. But ever since she had a choice, she has chosen to be a witcher.

She knows it's dangerous. She knows the risk is steep. She knows the process is not easy, is painful even. She knows her little witcher family has intense trauma around their childhoods and she knows they are trying, trying, not always succeeding, but trying to do better. Ciri doesn't want to leave the fortress. She doesn't want to be a girl. She doesn't want to be raised in a temple or a magic school. She wants to be a witcher, just like Geralt, just like Eskel and Lambert and Coen and Vizimir. She wants to eat the masculinizing mushrooms. She wants to undergo the Trial. She knows she has a 10% survival chance and wants it all anyway.

I'm thinking of that moment before they left, when she falls off the ledge and Geralt just barely manages to catch her, and she wails and screams and cries into his chest as he hugs her tight, and he just whispers apologies to her because he *knows* she doesn't want to go but he didn't choose this life and he's afraid choosing it for her will hurt her the same way it hurt him just like Triss said it would.

air travel is a mess? shortage of air traffic controllers - for some mysterious reason

logistics a mess? shortage of truck drivers - for some mysterious reason

public transit can't meet demand? shortage of bus drivers - for some mysterious reason

We even mysteriously have shortages of doctors, nurses, teachers... FOR SOME MYSTERIOUS REASON

Own Voices was coined by author Corinne Duyvis in the 2010s to describe autistic representation by autistic people, in a time when the bulk of fiction about autism was by Autism Mom types. I’m pretty sure she was riffing on the slogan Nothing About Us Without Us, which is best known in disability rights circles in English.

Because it was a twitter hashtag it VERY quickly took off in the midst of (extremely necessary!) discussions by members of groups like We Need Diverse Books, who were advocating for the inclusion of marginalized authors in publishing, particularly publishing of children’s literature.

HOWEVER. The problem with hashtaggable slogans is that they are just. Not very nuanced! Even Duyvis herself has expressed frustration with some of the directions the hashtag ended up taking, eg publishers wanting work by marginalized authors ONLY as OwnVoices, which is to say, ONLY if they were Dealing With Their Marginalization. Black author but the book is just a fun romp and it isn’t about Black Issues? No thanks. Queer author doesn’t want to come out of the closet? Well then it isn’t OwnVoices is it? Better harass them out of the closet to make sure we are doing Rep correctly.

And as this thread calls out, the trend did not take into account that having an identity may not equal being knowledgeable about that identity (of course also because Identity Categories are not monolithic!).

asfdh thank you for sending an ask, I got this and then promptly got stupid busy.

8. Who is your favorite character and why?

...Just going for the throat, huh.

They're all my favorites because they're all me, and of course none of them are me, but there's some core essence of me that I poured out onto the page. Not their mannerisms or anything that would fit on a character profile, but some deep down insecurity or hope.

ANYWAY. I'm going to be basic and say my current main character is my favorite. Oisin really is That Guy. He's a bitch. He's a lover. He's way smarter than I am. He's so so stupid. He believes he is fundamentally unlovable, but that's not going to stop him from demanding the respect he is owed. He calls a fairy prince ugly to his face on accident and then doubles down. Writing him is like being strapped to a very horny cannonball and I'm having the time of my life.

11. If your WIP was a cocktail, what would it be and why?