I’ve spent my month-long leave from my legal services job doing um, writing residencies at various Manhattan eateries. Sitting at the Smith where there is no Wifi (indicating it’s not a place for writers to linger), and trying to squeeze my laptop onto a table with my outsized Shakshuka, for hours at a time, I’ve worked on my novel, fretted over a recent study that announced that British women with ADHD live approximately nine years less than those without, and fielded sometimes ten calls a day from my oft-confused 89-year-old mother. God speed to patient servers everywhere! At night, I caught up with Severance, took in the news and anxiously researched the distinctions between fascism/authoritarianism and oligarchy online as if this would provide me comfort. (It did not).

After being reminded how Americans during World War II were “sleep-marched into Fascism,” I will try to stay on my toes. I’ll notice when the NY Times and other journalists use hedging, cutesy words to downplay the abuses of Trump and his cadre. I’ll take my family to see the Anne Frank traveling exhibit now in NYC, go to this weekend’s Manhattan rally for trans youth with my son, return to my legal services job to help undocumented immigrants and others with employment issues and do my best to avoid empty virtue signaling (though, yes this entire paragraph clearly violates this goal).

But what else can we do? How lovely to learn that making art/crafting is on at least one person’s fascism-busting list! I recently read this interesting piece by an anonymous Jewish anarchist, that suggested that making art was essential during these wicked times. As another suggestion on this list (#1) is to “Do doikayt (hereness) within your one-on-one relationships” (basically, reaching out to loved ones), I argue that making hand-made valentines is not just recreational fun, it’s obligatory.

As I’m a new Severance groupie who has recently taken to drawing the characters as a way to practice my drawing at night, I decided to make Severance-themed valentines. To make them more fun, I added the scratch off material that I associate with lotto tickets. Who doesn’t like a good scratch?

I learned how to make these scratch off cards on this site.

You’ll need: 1) stuff to draw with. I just used a ball point pen; 2) some card stock or a thicker paper of some kind. I used watercolor paper because that’s all I had; 3) dishwashing liquid; 4) some acrylic paint and a brush; 5) a non-precious bowl or something for mixing; 6) clear packing tape; 7) scissors; 8) a coin for scratching.

P.S. Apologies for my shoddy photography.

1. Draw your image. I again apologize for the first drawing of Mark with the unevenly aligned eyes. I am going to blame my crappy vision for that. The second drawing of Dylan (below), one of my fav characters, is probably not much of a valentine but I had to throw it in because I like my drawing and anything that comes after the words rat fuck is funny.)

2. Put clear packing tape over your image. Try to put it on smoothly unlike what I did.

3. Mix dishwashing liquid and some acrylic paint well. Do 2 parts paint and 1 part acrylic paint. I had to make gray because scratch off cards always have gray spots right?

4. Apply the mix to your image. Paint your first layer over your image and let it air dry. Drying can take a little bit. My fairly big surface area took 20 minutes to dry. A small circle as seen on a lottery scratch card should take much less time to dry, maybe 10 minutes for each layer.Note: You have to put three layers on total, letting it dry each time.

5. The fun part comes now. Use your coin to scratch off the image. This is really satisfying ASMR shit! If you don’t care about mess, go crazy and use your fingernails like a rabid raccoon! (This is messy. Duh).

6. Ta-Da! (This could be cuter if you added more color and made a referential background for Mark, maybe drawing the numbers that appear on Lumen computer monitors).
7. This is perfect kid craft too. Easy and cheap.

Keep fighting fascism one craft at a time.

xoxo CrazyMCAsian