from working it: sex workers on the work of sex - matilda bickers (2023)

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One Nice Bug Per Day
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from working it: sex workers on the work of sex - matilda bickers (2023)
i just met an actual wizard on the train and im grieving because i know i’ll never meet anyone that cool for the rest of my life
artists rendition
the moment i first understood the myth of meritocracy i think was when i read the "Eragon" books as a teenager, and it said on the back that the author had started writing them at 15 and it became a bestseller. this stressed me out so much, I also wanted that kind of success in writing at such a young age & kept thinking I should also be able to do it, that I must be doing something wrong – and then YEARS later i found out his parents had a publishing company and financed him touring through the whole U.S before the books became successful
i think trans people need more fun stereotypes. so many groups get at least one that is like, offensive but also kinda baffling, like "gays walk fast" or "germans are obsessed with efficiency." all we get are like "evil sex predator" shit
we need to convince transphobes that trans women love to fish. so much that we will destroy our lives to go fishing. we will lose our jobs for the sake of a good reel. this is not based on anything but i think it would be funny
when i leave my family reunion i want my slightly shitty uncle to turn to me and go "hey, see ya by the riverbank," with a wry laugh that makes me have to awkwardly chuckle in return. i think this would be a fun reality to live in for a few weeks before i get tired of it
this is everything to me. this is my light in the dark. This is why I am still alive. If you want to find your local trans scene. Check out the independent fish stores. I have been given a new main story objective
My friend sometimes brings her six-year-old to our DnD sessions and my husband (the DM) lets her roll for all enemy attacks and sometimes he will show her a few figures and let her secretly pick what creature we meet next. Who needs encounter tables when you have a first-grader around
She cheers when the monster is winning.
DM: *places an ugly, slavering, repugnant, spine-tingling creature on the battle map*
Child who can barely see over the table: ᵗʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵐᵉ :)
The cameras were still rolling on "The Birdcage" when Robin Williams pulled Nathan Lane aside between takes. Nathan had just finished a particularly tense scene. He was anxious, his timing had faltered slightly, and his usual control felt off. Robin leaned in and whispered, “You were perfect. I just added chaos. That’s what I do.” Nathan smiled, a little caught off guard. Robin’s words didn’t come like notes from a co-star, but like an arm around the shoulder, silent, kind, and full of permission to breathe.
Filming began in early 1995 at Miami’s Cardozo Hotel and soundstages in Los Angeles. "The Birdcage", directed by Mike Nichols, was a comedy built on flamboyance and theatrical flair, yet layered with emotional vulnerability. On screen, Robin played Armand Goldman, a gay cabaret owner trying to pass for conservative straight to please his son's fiancée's parents. Nathan Lane, as the exuberant Albert, Armand’s partner and drag performer, brought flamboyant wit mixed with aching sensitivity. Their chemistry lit up the film, but it was their off-screen connection that gave the performance its emotional core.
Robin walked onto set carrying more than just scripts. Behind his trademark improvisation was the quiet grief of personal losses and ongoing mental health struggles. He was navigating emotional pain with humor as his lifeline. Nathan, on the other hand, was living with a deep fear. He hadn’t come out publicly and lived in quiet dread that the spotlight could expose what he wasn’t yet ready to share. He later said in interviews that the fear was constant during production. But when Robin stood next to him, that fear softened.
Crew members often recalled moments between takes when Robin would launch into absurd improv routines, not for the camera but for Nathan. A sound technician once described how Robin stood on a table and did a full Shakespearean monologue in the voice of Elmer Fudd, simply because Nathan had flubbed a line and looked close to tears. That single moment broke the tension, made the whole room laugh, and brought Nathan back into himself. These weren’t just jokes. They were quiet acts of care.
Nathan’s attention to detail and his need for control came from years of hiding his authentic self in plain sight. Robin never asked him about it directly. He didn’t need to. Instead, he listened, showed up, and created a space where Nathan could feel seen without explanation. Their late-night conversations, often taking place over coffee in the makeup trailer or walks around the studio lot, were filled with stories, insecurities, and mutual admiration. Nathan once said, “Robin had this way of making you feel like you were the only person in the room. And then he’d make the whole room laugh, and you’d wonder how one person could hold that much light.”
Filming wrapped with both men knowing they had done something more than act. They had held each other up. And in a Hollywood that could often feel isolating, especially for queer actors, Nathan walked away with more than a role. He had found someone who understood the weight of performance, not just for the screen but for survival.
When Robin passed in 2014, Nathan’s tribute came with no flourish, no long stories. Just a handful of sentences, quietly powerful. “He saved me in ways I didn’t even understand until he was gone. Working with him felt like being wrapped in a blanket, warm, chaotic, and comforting.”
What began as two actors cast in a comedy became something infinitely deeper. In a set filled with lights and laughter, two men found a private place of trust where grief, fear, and joy were shared quietly, wordlessly, and without condition.
i taught a baking class for 12 year olds today and we made your garden variety chocolate chip cookies, but i’m a big believer in Questioning Everything and the who/what/where/why/when/how behind things, so the first part of the class was purposely letting the kids do things the wrong way, to show and explain why we do things the way we do.
“why do we bake cookies at 180 for 9 minutes when we could do 400 for 2 minutes?” -enter the godawful lump of coal with a still gross wet and uncooked inside
“why do we have to scoop out little cookies instead of doing the whole tray?” -ok well that one you can technically do if the spread is even. you just end up with one giant, structurally unsound cookie. “PLEASE CAN WE MAKE GIANT COOKIES” (we did make 1 giant tray cookie)
we talked a lot about why consistency is important, but i don’t think it really hammered home until i said “okay everyone gets ONE cookie, that’s fair, right?” and then handed out cookies of hugely varying sizes. + baked one fat lump of a cookie that still wasn’t done at the 9 minutes, vs the regular one i put in that came out charred by the time the first was actually done.
we also made a row of cookies where each one had one single differing ingredient omitted, like a cookie with no flour, or a cookie with no butter, and laid them all out on a single tray to bake together to see how each ingredient affects the outcome.
two of the little girls added cocoa to their cookie doughs until it matched the colour of each others skin to make best friend cookies, and that almost made me tear up a bit 🥺
got briefly distracted (…for over half an hour…) talking about how eggs form when someone cracked an egg and it had 2 yolks
expertly tolerated being asked how old i am (just turned 31 the other day) which was immediately followed by asking if i watched the moon landing live on tv
was so focused on keeping track of all the kids that in the end i forgot to make a cookie for myself, but it’s ok because one of the girls gave me this
tiny……….
the class went well and they asked if i wanted to do another one in a couple weeks and i said yeah, and they’re taking uh… fuck, what’s the word for inventory when it’s people?? attendance?? whatever, they’re trying to see who’s interested to get a feel of if it’d be 1 three hour class again or if there’s too many kids so we’d do a couple classes. anyways, i love the emails from Concerned Parents.
“will there be knives involved?” we are baking cookies.
“what temperatures does the oven get to/will it be hot enough to burn?” we are baking cookies.
“will there be [insert ingredient used in cookies]?” we are baking cookies.
“are you using fahrenheit or celsius?” ??????? d-does it matter?? it’s going to get Hot. (also celsius; this is ontario)
“are the ovens childproof?” no?? i’m assuming you’re asking if i’m going to let your kids reach into the ovens while i’m staring out a window in another room. i will not be allowing your children to use the ovens. they will not be left unattended.
“why is the library baking class taking place at the high school?” the library does not have 10 ovens. the library does not even have 1 oven. the high school has many ovens.
“what if i don’t want my child to have cookies? can you let her make muffins instead?” this is a baking class for cookies. we are baking cookies.
“cookies aren’t healthy. why don’t you make [insert whatever]” do you know how many cookies i can make with a $40 budget and a trip to the bulk store? we are making cookies.
“who needs a class to bake a cookie, why not teach something more valuable?” IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE COOKIES, KAREN, IT’S ABOUT FAMILIARIZING CHILDREN WITH THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BAKING/COOKING/FOOD, ABOUT TRYING NEW THINGS, MAKING MISTAKES AND REALIZING THAT THE MISTAKES ARE NOT ONLY OKAY TO MAKE BUT VALUABLE IN AND OF THEMSELVES, FAMILIARIZING THEM WITH INDEPENDENCE, THE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THINGS CAN COME TOGETHER TO FORM A NEW AND BETTER WHOLE, ALL WHILE HAVING TRYING TO INJECT A MODICUM OF JOY INTO THEIR LITTLE LIVES. SORRY THAT THERE ARE CONCEPTS AT PLAY YOU CAN’T SEEN TO UNDERSTAND HERE. MAYBE YOU SHOULD COME JOIN AND I’LL LET YOU MAKE A FUCKING COOKIE.
my ancestors seeing me shrug off a diarrhea session
People in the notes confused because they're so accustomed to running water they don't know how close diarrhea might have otherwise come to killing them if they've had it even once lol it's killed more humans than just about anything in history
We’re the granddaughters of the bowels you couldn’t irritate
Mine would be baffled that I've gone 5+ years with bloody diarrhea. Inflammatory Bowel Disease has probably always existed, but they didn't have treatment.
I do want to specifically shout out Dr Thomas Latta, who is the person who gave us IV hydration, and pretty much magically cured cholera with it in his first attempt. From his diary:
I attempted to restore the blood to its natural state, by injecting copiously into the larger intestines warm water.. trusting that the power of absorption might not be altogether lost, but by these means I produced, in no case, any permanent benefit.. I at length resolved to throw the fluid immediately into the circulation. In this, having no precedent to direct me, I proceeded with much caution. The first subject of experiment was an aged female. She had apparently reached the last moments of her earthly existence, and now nothing could injure her – indeed, so entirely was she reduced, that I feared I should be unable to get my apparatus ready ere she expired. Having inserted a tube into the basilic vein, cautiously – anxiously, I watched the effects; ounce after ounce was injected, but no visible change was produced. Still persevering, I though she began to breathe less laboriously, soon the sharpened features, and sunken eye, and fallen jaw, pale and cold, bearing the manifest impress of death's signet, began to glow with returning animation; the pulse, which had long ceased, returned to the wrist; at first small and quick, by degrees it became more and more distinct ... and in the short space of half and hour, when six pints had been injected, she expressed in a firm voice that she was free from all uneasiness, actually became jocular, and fancied all she needed was a little sleep.
Diarrhea can very easily be death by dehydration, especially when you can't consume oral fluids (Cholera causes extreme vomiting as well). Not only did we solve part of the problem with clean water, the other half was learning how to put clean water into our bodies (with salt).
Also fun fact, Thomas Latta was active in England at the same time as John Snow, the father of epidemiology, also in response to the Cholera epidemics at the time.
Throughout history, so many people have worked so hard to alleviate human suffering, misery, and death. You will never know the names of all the people who have spent their life’s passion to take care of you, someone divided from them by decades, even centuries, someone whose existence they’d never know, whose name they’d never hear. But they did it, all the same.
I think this is an important thing to keep in mind.
I love how two of the greatest inventions in the field of medicine were soap and saline IV
Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later
Hollywood, call me. I can have this script done on a weekend.
Check out the bonus panel on the site!
SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE
Buy this comic as a print!
Three butch friends of mine finishing the basement of my first house around 1996. They worked for beer, and not even anything fancy.
babe are you okay you reblogged Three butch friends of mine finishing the basement of my first house around 1996 again
"People have a right to decide what to do with their body after they die."
Leverage Redemption S03E03 The Scared Stiff Job.
anyway sound off. at what stage do ppl think Han figured out the Force was real. the boring answer is after seeing Obi-wan vanish but i think he could rationalise that away as his eyes playing tricks on him. what do we think.
Let me demonstrate my answer for you:
That's it. That's my answer. Endor.
Please just take a look at Han's face right after witnessing 3po float. The man just had his entire worldview blown to smithereens.
that's so funny. that means he accepted Vader deflecting a blaster bolt with his hand as just something freaky government cyborgs can do, and stuck by Luke for multiple years as he tried to figure this Force stuff out, and just treated it like your friend getting really really into neopaganism to cope with a loss.
like yeah kid good job with the witching. i'm certain it will be more useful against your enemies than your sharpshooting. no i do not think your witchcraft is supplementing your aim but i'm not gonna argue about it.
yeah Luke was like 'I heard Ben Kenobi's voice in my head telling me how to blow up the Death Star :)' and Han was like 'kind of an unusual coping mechanism but I'm not gonna argue with him'
thanks to carbonite han not only misses learning about luke's training montage on dagobah, he's also half-blind during their whole escape on tatooine. luke's out there force-kicking henchmen with his gucci boots and doing flips and shit and han can't see a goddamn thing. now on endor luke's yeeting threepio with the power of his mind and han's just like 'the last time we hung out i had to stuff him in a tauntaun sleeping bag'.
idk why people photoshopped the crying cat meme on this pic when the unedited version is so powerful
why don’t they make a baby pope.
having to elect a new pope every ten years because they keep dying is super inconvenient. if it’s a baby that’s a solid 80 year streak right there. and a baby is basically a clean slate so he can be influenced by the forces of good and evil as he grows. we’ll see what god really wants
scratch that . better idea . make one of those dogs who presses buttons to talk the pope
ain’t no rule that says a dog can’t be pope
One of my fav authors just said in their authors note that Sam and Dean retire from hunting like Hayao Miyazaki retires from film making. Which is literally soooo perfect…
Like they are DONE. They are OVER IT. Dean gets a job at a garage and watches too much Food Network. Sam’s working on a dissertation on American folklore. And then he’s conducting an oral history section of his thesis and the “Sasquatch” sighting his subject is describing is REALLY starting to sound like a wendigo….
And of course there are other hunters and they could pass it off. But they’re so close and they basically did all the research already and the undergrad Sam hired for help w interview transcription is just gonna keep poking her nose in it if it doesn’t get taken care of soon.
Anyways, this is the last one. After this, they’re DONE. For real this time.
you get it :)
at first people try and be respectful about it, are like wow they got out! good for them!
and then after a couple times of them coming out of "retirement" everyone's learned to take it a lot less seriously. it's gotten to the point that people ring bobby first to ask if the winchesters are currently in or out, and also, could they maybe get assistance? or at least a lore check?
sam and dean really do mean it the first, oh, half dozen times they retire. then they mean it slightly less, or have less expectation about it lasting. sam gets a call about a possible hunt and holds the phone away from him to ask dean, "are we retired right now?" because he honestly doesn't remember. they did that rash of salt and burns down the coast, but they hadn't had to dig any graves so he's not sure it counts.
"for what?" dean asks.
"vampire-"
"pass. we're so retired. never been more retired."
"-werewolves."
he blinks. "like. vampires and werewolves working together?"
"like a vampire that is also a werewolf," sam says.
dean brightens. "hell yeah. who is that? give me the phone. fuck retirement, we're forty, not eighty."
"you're forty," sam reminds him, but surrenders the phone easily.
dean elbows him in the side, ignoring that dig in favor of interrogating the hunter on the other end for specifics. sam goes to their room to pack.