I made up this guy a while back and put him on Azariel’s character sheet a while back, but now I finally got around to actually drawing him!
This is Mervin Etchingham, Merv for short. He’s a half-orc mercenary that often finds himself on the same merc gigs as my Tiefling Barbarian Azariel. As a result, she and Merv have a very close, forged-in-fire bond that tends to result in romance whenever they reunite. However, neither of them feel ready to settle down yet, so they see their romance as rather casual. The tooth around his neck is that of a juvenile Displacer Beast, a souvenir of the first gig they handled together. Azza has its twin.
Looking past his rough orcish features, Merv actually prides himself on his charismatic and eloquent personality, often waxing poetic or penning prose, as well as showering Azza with sweet flowery nothings that he works very hard on. He is happy to bust heads, sure, but his true dream in life is to become a great thespian someday, pouring his heart out in heroic roles and writing the next great drama. Unfortunately, when he tries out, he tends to be typecast as brigands and mercenaries, or worse, relegated to heavy lifting. Despite these shortcomings, he always has a smile and a playwright’s wit for those who would call him friend.
Waves of Americans are refusing to go on working terrible jobs for insulting salaries, and Conservatives are not happy about it.
Now they try to go about their daily ritual of driving their truck up to a window and screaming at it until a chicken sandwich comes out, and when that doesn’t work, because all the employees are gone, they take to Facebook: “What has this country come to?!” “What happened to the days when Americans would work long hours without complaining about things like…a living wage or basic human dignity?”
And you hear this and you’re just like “Man, y'all just really want slavery back, huh? Y'all still miss slavery that much?”
What is this insistence on licking the boot of these corporate overlords? Why is it so hard to understand that if they want people to continue sacrificing their health, time, and sanity by working for them in a pandemic, then they can compensate them commensurately for it—which, and I know it’s a novel concept in this capitalist Hellscape, means paying people enough money for both food andshelter.
And if they need to sell off an art wing or a racehorse portfolio to do that, so be it! If they refuse to do that, then they can hang up the “For Sale” sign and shut the fuck up. That’s how shit works. There’s nothing un-American about any of this.
The movement isn’t lazy, it’s necessary.
And I just think it’s funny that it’s happening at the same time as thousands of Conservatives are walking away from their jobs…because of their inalienable right to cast the plague onto your grandma!
That’s right: apparently, if you leave your job because you’re tired of being a faceless cog in an inherently disrespectful machine that refuses to acknowledge your worth as a human being, that makes you lazy and entitled. But if you leave your job because you refuse to take even the most basic of precautions in the middle of the greatest global health crisis any of us have ever known, that makes you a “Patriot”, and a “Freedom-Fighter”.
These people think they have the fundamental right to endanger the health and safety of those around them, because they find that wearing a mask makes it a little harder to mouth-breathe, and then they call everyone else entitled? My ass, man.
But ultimately I hope that both sides continue to leave their jobs; the former because it’s the right thing to do and the right message to send, and the latter ‘cause we don’t really need them dumbin’ up the works anyway.
![historyarchaeologyartefacts: Vintage Chinese children’s’ hat. (early 20th century) [339x320]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ba74b56a4f098db50ad158938b09e146/tumblr_poqhvhspgW1vx1np0o1_400.jpg "historyarchaeologyartefacts: Vintage Chinese children’s’ hat. (early 20th century) [339x320]")
