Ossumsauce

i really wanted to get this out in the middle of the month, but it's taken a long time for others to do their parts... this has been a wip since the start of june so i'm glad it's done

things will be transcribed in alt text!

Of course he resents his wife. Of course he resents Mary. It doesn't justify his violent actions, but the dynamic remains: on a systemic level, they're the ones with the power. Let's take a peek at the "I pay for the house" situation. His wife is the one who lives there while he sleeps at the store. Why isn't she the one who moved out, if he's the one actually paying? This seems weird unless you consider who the legal system will side with in a conflict. Will it side with a black man who struggles with alcohol and may have done something violent, or a white woman in upper education who was potentially the target of violence? Obviously Clark's wife deserves safety and security, but there's still a very tense power dynamic at play here. There are real-world stories about the awful things that have happened to black men who were accused of wrongdoing by white women, even if those accusations were false. Clark is absolutely aware of that, and aware of what could happen.

So there's a whole racial background that Mary (a white female therapist) is missing. And there's another thing here: Mary has the power to have Clark institutionalized against his will. He asks her about that, when he brings the Backrooms map to her. She could do that regardless of race, but race adds another layer of potential harm. If Mary calls the police on him, Clark will at best be dragged to the hospital in the back of a cop car and have to endure involuntary hospitalization when the person with his power of attorney (his wife) is rightfully very angry at him. And, again, from real-life tragedies...at worst, if Mary calls the cops, Clark could end up dead.

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

A random person who had a moderately shady past or fucked up views before shouldn’t need to flog themselves to show how penitent they are beyond just doing better now, just to be able to live their life in peace, but if someone is campaigning to get political power and all they have to say for their life up to that point being a field of red flags, it isn’t enough for them to say “well I’m not like that now” if they haven’t actually achieved anything that makes up for it in the opposite direction.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

Part 1: Long masc hairstyles + playing with fades

Hi. Runaway to the Stars (the comic I've been posting) will be funding its print run on Kickstarter this April. Click the link to get an email alert when it goes live.

The moon’s not white! It’s concrete-gray! It only looks so shiny when compared to the void of space!

I don't normally do this, but I know a lot of people are biting their nails wondering how the conversation between Talita and Verengt is gonna go, so here's a WIP screenshot of a page from Chapter 11. Don't worry, I think they'll end up getting along just fine.

RTTS commercials if contact was made in the 60s I got inspired by someone's detective noir avian and it all blossomed into this These were fun to make