The older I get and the more years I've had without contact, the more I appreciate how hard my mom was trying to be a good mother, to keep her family together, to share love with us, with me.
I went no-contact in 2010 and my life got substantially better but my heart still hurts.
She wasn’t a bad person, though she did bad things.
She was mentally ill and traumatized an...
2023-05-14 06:50:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Remember that baller Consentacles and Consenticles faux-Ancient-Greece disk painting-thing I did for my friend, Clare?
Clare requested illustrations of two characters: Consentacles and Consenticles, deities who provided consensual tentacle and testicle touching, respectively. Origina...
2023-05-11 04:32:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's my round-up of projects and posts from April!
Y'all ready for so...
2023-05-05 06:20:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Sometime after I moved to Portland, I bought my first sleeping bag. Considering that that was 17 years ago, this guy has held up really well! But time comes for us all and the case-thing that keeps it wrapped up tight has developed two spectacular tears with frayed edges that are large enough that they're actually getting in the way of stuffing and hauling the rolled up bag around.
2023-05-03 06:13:21 +0000 UTC
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Lemony Snicket is my potted Improved Meyer Lemon tree that I got abouuuuut…. three years ago? Oh wait, it was not too long before the pandemic, actually. I remember because we had a couple stay at our house for a few days and we had to relocate Lemony from her spot at the dinner table so all the humans could sit together. We were supposed to have more houseguests later but then quarantine happened not long after that first batch of friends and then we didn’t have anyone stay with us for y...
2023-04-23 22:29:21 +0000 UTC View PostWell, I finished them!
My 18th century pockets, I mean.
They’re ‘sposed to be worn like this ⬆️ underneath all the skirts and whatnot, with a slit in the outer layers to allow access to the pocket. (Above photo from the 2023-04-22 07:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Y'all ready for some Vintage Erika Comics? This one comes fresh out of the oven circa 2003ish, when I was experiencing my very first heartbreak as a 19/20-year-old.
2023-04-20 21:36:15 +0000 UTC
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Today is Friday, April 14th, and I am walking my cat on her leash around the yard. Literally, right now, as I write this, I’m typing with my right hand on my phone while the loop of her leash is hanging on my left wrist.
But that’s not what this post is about.
This post is about what I found in the newest grow box that Matt built for me and I sowed with sugar snap pea seeds several we...
2023-04-18 03:44:18 +0000 UTC View Post
I did it! I drew all 171 word prompts that you guys shared with me for the Joy Project! (This is a giant collaborative fiber art piece illustrating the things that bring people joy)
I numbered each of the words that were submitted. Here's some of the sketches.
114 Floating
...
2023-04-12 23:36:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's all the posts and projects I got up to in March!
I Still Stand By This (drama-alert) (🔒 Private!)
Locked because the internet is literally insane and I needed a place to talk about it.
The Joy Project
First video update on...
Ok, so I was sitting on our couch just now and the setting sunlight was casting the most amazing shadows through our thin white curtains. There's this curvy little crabapple tree dead center in front of the living room window. The trunk and branches aren't, like, gnarly, but they're lightly swoopy and the twisting shadows they cast are even more pronounced.
Writing this now, I just realized why those shadows triggered an intense sense-memory of being a college st...
2023-03-31 05:11:11 +0000 UTC View Post
I did my first creative work on the Joy Project (working title)! You remember? That collaborative project that I used to lure a bunch of you into signing up to this Patreon? Yeah! That one!
Watch the video above or just read this transcript of what I say in it below as Youtube-Erika:
2023-03-26 04:34:32 +0000 UTC
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In my last post, I mentioned that my recovery from COVID has been rough, but I didn’t really get into details. And even here, now, where I’m posting the photo/text updates I shared privately with my friends-only list on Instagram, I still don’t really express just how shockingly bad this has been for me and- by extension- Matt, who has to deal with me losing my fucking mind this last week.
Honestly, it’s been scary and also really demoralizing. Like, I went through 2023-03-21 07:18:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Winter is over when I can turn the external water supply back on 🙌 (If this collection of footage looks completely random to you, you probably live in a climate where your pipes don’t freeze)
COVID has completely derailed my life for the last few weeks and honestly it’s been a rough recovery, both physically and mentally. Yesterday the sun came out, though, and I just couldn’t let the opportunity pass by to put my fingers in the dirt for the first time this season.
2023-03-20 05:13:00 +0000 UTC
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Matt is an avid climber (indoor bouldering, specifically). Even though he's invested in pants specially made for the activity, he climbs so zealously that he regularly reduces them into scraps.
After some small mending jobs, his pants were getting so threadbare that just attaching new patches would...
2023-03-15 20:23:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt found some photos he took of me (on film!) in 2005.
I was 21, an American spending her semester abroad in France while he was a 19-year-old student in England who had been reading my comics on LiveJournal for a couple years already.
We met in London over a weekend, te...
2023-03-13 19:38:32 +0000 UTC View Post
This is my first day of feeling comparatively better since I got knocked off my ass by Covid (first time around for me! I only coughed up a little blood, hardly worth mentioning U_U)
You remember that I am obsessed with the late 1980s fantasy princess doll, Lady LovelyLocks, right? I've got that whole Instagram account documenting my totally healthy and normal collection of ...
2023-03-08 06:31:38 +0000 UTC View Post
(Cross-posting my essay from the Oh Joy Sex Toy Patreon! For patrons on both accounts, this one has some minuscule tweaking. See if you can spot it!)
----------------
Two years ago, Let's Talk About It debuted. This is the comprehensive sex and relationship book that ...
2023-03-03 05:38:34 +0000 UTC View Post
What the hell happened last month? Let's recap.
New eBook added! (🔒 Private!)
Oh Joy Sex Toy: Volume One joins the collection of eBooks that Bookworm patrons get to download for their reading pleasure! There's now six books availa...
2023-03-02 01:14:29 +0000 UTC View Post
I squawked in delight when I spotted the beginnings of tiny white flower buds on Lemony Snicket, my potted Meyer lemon tree!
January 29
Her last two batches of flowers blossomed and died without producing any fruit, even though I diligently hand-pollinated them with an old paintbrush nearly every day. I shouldn’t get my hopes up for this batch but oh no, too late.<...
2023-02-24 19:11:52 +0000 UTC View Post
In the 18th century, dresses had pockets. And I don’t mean, like, little pockets that can barely fit a chapstick. I mean, they had industrial-size, heavy-duty, strap-on pockets the size of bread bags that were tied on to the body separately from the dress itself, which simply had discrete slits cut in on the sides that the wearer would plunge their hand through in order to access the cavern bag hidden beneath.
2023-02-17 23:59:19 +0000 UTC
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Ok! So!
My collaborative fiber art project proposal was... very successful. Way more successful than I anticipated.
In the end, 171 contributions were submitted by you all. Cool!!! ....Now.... how does one... begin turning 171 words into visual icons so they can be combined o...
2023-02-09 21:15:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Two years ago my dear friend, Clare Bayley, made the mistake of commissioning me to illustrate an inside joke.
At the time, she was still a new friend, still in the early stages of becoming-a-friend, and I absolutely choked on drawing her idea (THAT SHE PAID FOR [Well, "donated to two charities ...
2023-02-07 02:07:25 +0000 UTC View PostSunday, January 29
Dude, occasional drinking is where it is AT. It’s like, once every few months I get to feel like just ~magic~. People who drink regularly? They don’t even know. They’re immune. But when you only drink a handful of times a year, it just makes your body glow and it feels like you’re standing in this pleasant river of warmth and it’s magic, it...
2023-02-01 06:17:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Sunday, January 22
Hoisting the Tig out of the shirt drawer. Her little arm all jutting out as she resists. She likes to nest in there, digging up the folded shirts, leaving carnage in her wake. Such a goblin. (She takes after my side of the family)
Monday, January 23
2023-01-29 01:49:48 +0000 UTC
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The following comic was made for Oh Joy Sex Toy's big fundraiser-thing in April, but I'm sharing it here with you guys because I want to and I can U_U Obviously, please don't share this one!
2023-01-25 08:10:00 +0000 UTC
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Sunday, January 15
Matt has a bunch of friends he’s made at his climbing gym, but they’re all gym-friends not real-life-friends. UNTIL TODAY, that is. One of his gym-friends (who had just moved to the area a few months ago and therefore hasn’t built up a solid friend/support network yet) told Matt that his girlfriend of four years had just dumped him a couple days ago and...
2023-01-22 06:47:50 +0000 UTC View Post
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I went to bed with this Patreon still needing three more sign-ups before I could start the big collaboration project I had proposed, and this morning I woke up to that goal number not only having been met but actually surpassed. (I mean, surpas...
2023-01-17 23:27:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Sunday, January 8
Very domestic day! Laundry folding and then cooked a whole-ass chicken casserole to deliver to one of my Helioscope studiomates who is recovering from surgery. See? I can be a decent human being. Occasionally.
Monday, January 9
2023-01-14 23:06:37 +0000 UTC
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Every so often I do a daily self-portrait project for a set period of time. Once I did it a whole year but this time I’m gunna stick to just January. Every picture is taken on my phone with a remote timer in my hand.
Sunday, January 1st
First boba tea of the new year, hellllll yeahhhhhhh. I was filling out some of the Unravel sheets (see 2023-01-08 04:50:48 +0000 UTC View Post