[Long description: A mock linocut print reading “My song is your song; my suffering is your suffering.” It depicts two yellow canaries singing in a birdcage, which is held aloft by a watchful figure in the shadows. A red 横雲/yokogumo-like motif wreathes the cage, resembling smoke or blood. In one variant, the canaries are instead colored in with the Philadelphia pride flag and trans pride flag.]
this started out as propaganda for my warhammer ripoff hahaha… It’s a reminder to the Manufactory that canaries (people with no biomechanical augmentations) work among them for a reason, and are the first to show signs of suffering when things are about to go sideways. this is one of the few spaces where someone’s vulnerability is an asset, but like most things in the Empire, it is only tolerated because it can be exploited.
then I started thinking about other institutions where someone’s suffering forecasts mass suffering. something something… a society is judged by how it treats its pariahs, scapegoats, and deviants. I don’t want to be a canary for you people, I didn’t ask for this, but it IS funny in a sad, morbid way that my suffering is tied up with the suffering of the masses. your own people will giddily burn you for fuel, not sparing a thought for the sparks at their own feet.
the song is inward and outward. we’re all in our own cages. sometimes it’s easy to recognize that someone shares a cage with you, sometimes it’s very hard. I don’t have a hopeful denouement for this like I normally do but I think the tiger poem will do
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these are available as shirts if you like. [women’s t-shirt] [men’s t-shirt]; [variant women’s t-shirt] [variant men’s t-shirt]
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