tattoo artist who can encode magic into tattoos but doesn’t want people to know she can so she just puts low-level luck spells on her clients’ bodies without telling them
jeweller who makes body jewellery and pendants which have amulet properties and draw love and luck and happiness to their wearers without them realising it
piercing artist who keeps the remnants from her piercings and puts them all in little jars in the back of her shop to work sympathetic luck spells on all her clients
and then all three of them slowly realise what the others are doing and end up in a poly relationship living in a little shop in the shitty end of town, which gets curiously less shitty the longer they stay, and people think it’s just the development of the area but the three artists know
and they’re never rich and they’re never famous but they’re always happy because they have everything they need
they have the shop and they have their customers and they have each other
and when their customers are happy and content, they pack up and move on, all together now, to find another space with skin to be coloured and jewellery to be made and magic to be done.
this is beautiful
DETROIT – The three body modification artists were arrested today on charges of voluntary manslaughter after a past client suffered a fatal stroke, allegedly due to thaumo-alchemical interactions between her prescribed potions and a luck charm that had been placed on one of her tattoos without her knowledge.
…
“Some potions and drugs are known to react with common charms, which is why it is absolutely essential that your doctor and pharmacist have a complete and accurate list of your active enchantments,” says pharmacist Patricia Patil. “Putting an enchantment of any kind, no matter how minor, on someone without their knowledge or permission is playing Russian Roulette with someone else’s life.”
…
The victim, Carmen Jackson, was 36 at the time of her death and is survived by a husband and 4 children.
“#death tw #yes this #I did not think this *exact* thing #but I did wonder why we were assumed to sympathise with people tricking others into taking spells”
Because consent isn’t part of our cultural narrative. Patriarchalism is – people assumed to be “wiser” doing what’s Best for other people without needing input from those stupid lower-class people who would reject the help out of fear and superstition and who never know what’s Actually Good for them.
Us, the lower classes and poors in this country, we know we’re shat on, but it’s still a long row to hoe challenging this internalized narrative, that if somebody who Knows Better than you (upperclass, educated, ~the Wise~) is doing what’s Good for you, they don’t need your consent or even to tell you what’s going on.
In skiffy, there’s a trope of the person who has to Decide The Fate Of Others angsting about it, feeling unworthy, actually addressing the fact that they’re making big honkin’ decisions about people’s lives without their consent… but the angst isn’t about whether the decisions should be made (and in skiffy there generally isn’t time or any achievable way to get everybody’s input), but over whether THE PERSON ANGSTING is “worthy”, is Wise enough, because they weren’t brought up to feel that deciding the fate of others is their job, they feel it’s the job of those higher up the totem pole who’ve done the deciding on the person’s own fate. If they had more time, the ability to consult, it’s not suggested that they should take the opinions of the people whose lives will be affected, but of their superiors who have more of a “right” to fuck with people’s situations.
Perhaps so, although I distrust anything involving the word “internalised” for actually pretty much the same reason: it tends to carry a very similar note of “we know you better than you know yourself, if you disagree with us on what’s Actually Good for you it’s only because you lack insight* into your problems”. There’s no defence against a charge like that. (You’d think “I’m second-generation social justice; sure, I had some contact with other, patriarchal subcultures, but I’m not a proverbial fish and my native tongue does have a word for water (you should know, it’s the tongue you’re speaking now)” would have at least some effect, but nobody ever really seems to notice when I say that. Besides, we born-and-raised types are rare enough that everyone else routinely forgets we exist, and other people deserve not to have that pulled on them too.)
*Here used in the psych jargon sense of “awareness that something is wrong with your mind”.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #my issues with sj let me show you them #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost
Brinens and Things 