This is still being updated.
I had to go back and look at my social media posts and flickr uploads to find a lot of the correlations. In the tumblr era, he was referencing my uploads sometimes within a day, but generally within a few weeks, with exceptions for my scanned in family photos. He had access to my private photos on my flickr, which for a time included auto-uploads of EVERYTHING from my phone.
As my photography waned, he reached into my archives more and more. I’m rearranging this in chronological order as best I can wrangle. He deleted a lot of content regularly, reposted content repeatedly, and his tumblr is gone but for what is salvaged from the Way Back Machine. Stefan did not respect his own work as much as he should have, and took the shittiest of photographs, rather than scanning his work in properly (aside from when I made his website).
First, there are the drawings he’d done before we split, which I’d not realized were related to me. Then, it moved to tumblr, facebook, instagram.
Now that I realize he’d been drawing almost exclusively from my vast backlog of image files, his sudden radio silence when I challenged his restricting me on Instagram makes more sense. He was probably so terrified of my disapproval, but hey, I’m crazy too.
I love his madness brain. I know his relationship towards me was probably unhealthily obsessive, but have you met me?! I’m severely OCD, and I’ve been objectified, sexualized, drawn, photographed, posed, and painted since I was four years old. I am engineered since birth to be an artist’s muse.
This crazy love is my ideal. Everything about him was my ideal. Everything.
Please, just look through this overwhelming cascade of visual rage, competition, tribute, and longing, and just imagine what that kiss… that kiss in over ten years in the making would feel like.
The weight of that wish is crushing my lungs.
2009
I’d forgotten that this one was me.
Not my photograph, but his Halloween party I did not attend in 2009. The beginning of us being apart, and from one of his favorite movies Killer Klowns from Outerspace. This image is often reposted.
My face, his mouth, scarfed away chins.
Me as a child and a mural I drew while working at Starbucks. I had no idea.
I really love this one. He just took elements from different old photos I was scanning in at the time.
His own photograph, turning his friend holding him into me being held by him.
He actually explained this one to me, because at the time I’d thought the female Stefan was a drawing of the new girl, and asked him directly. I’d never known if he was truthful about that until I found the reference photo.
For each of these drawings, representing the torture he was in as we were splitting up, he used reference from the photographs I took of us on our very first time hanging out. Even the colors and the ghostly cigarette.
This image doesn’t exist online except a thumbnail.
His two attempts at Sticky Friends type stuff without me. He’d made me take down our photo with him shirtless, as he was already with the new girl. And of course, he was sure to get that pinky tat in the photo with her to rub it in.
2011
Realizing that Stefan thought these were both the same guy. I was wondering why he gave him earings, and the crossbones. I’d attended Chiller with the fellow on the left, and he and I both met and had a photo taken with two actresses from Killer Klowns from Outerspace. Totally done knowing that would make Stefan jealous, but that’s why the drawing is so good.
I was aware this was us.
But not this one.
Reposting my old Halloween photos of myself dressed up like Spike the vampire, immediately after, Stefan posts a selfie with a caption: “…I haven’t taken a picture of myself since I decided to after a five year old cried “Mommy Vampire!”, in public upon seeing me. I mean, I’m not exactly an extreme looking character these days, but I give off that “vibe”. Ugh…kill me. So, I left the house while still light out and I got the vampire thing twice in a few hours…”
And then he posts this image:
obviously not his nose, and used the curls of her hair and the “tattoos” on Jiz Lee’s chest in his hair. I can’t tell how much he’s purposely toying with me leaving clues, or his brain just absorbs and reacts and creates like this innately.
This one I noticed and he confirmed he used my grandfather as reference.
This one is beautifully weird.
Fox Fest!
No, I think he’s fucking with me.
This one is really quite brilliant. Using the pattern and color of the shirt for the fish, his hand for the tail, and posting him twice because it’s Tony Clifton.
Of course, he captioned it with: “I’m only drawing for clients tonight. So… here’s one of those drawings. It’s just concept art… not a polished product. Settle down.”
That time I caught Tony Clifton and Gary Busey catching up.
2012
screenshots from a video I’d posted online, and a drawing of mine.
He’d posted the above in 2010(?). He posted this updated version in 2012 with an underbite.
He captioned the drawing with:
“You may recognize this hot mama from an early (and more competently drawn) post.”
That “competently drawn” post uses a reference photo (my crying face) that is right next to this image from a trip to a graveyard Stefan and I took together:
What obscure madness. What the fucking fuck, you brilliant asshole.
The wings are from the tree in the background of the adjacent image.
When I think I’ve found an image that is not related to me, spelunking through social media history of posts from that same day/week can bring laugh out loud rewards.
hint hint, I’m watching you.
The color and patterns…
This one seems a stretch, but: his sleeves and the music stand mistletoe branches clinch it.
He posted his selfie shortly after my own.
His caption: “Don’t you post any serious pictures of yourself?” Someone asked. Umm…no. I’m not even sure what that means. Like, lifting my shirt up and flexing in a mirror? This is as serious as I get. Meaning….ridiculous. Take it or leave it facebook.”
What a dick.
2013
I attended an erotic art event in Florida as a photographer.
He often gives hints with color.
The red corresponding to the pink lighting on the guitarist, the skulls and green from the performance piece money, my then boyfriend as a skull in the foreground.
Or sometimes the hints are thematic, like feathers = bird.
(not my photo, taken by Jeff Moore)
Two weeks after I posted this photograph of me at WFMU, Stefan made a goddamn radio from scratch.
Well shit. Yup, I guess I’m Marilyn. Green background and everything. With black hair, no less.
I truly didn’t think that this could be me related, but I checked my facebook for the week it was first posted and…
posted the same goddamn day.
This could be an older painting?
2014
I posted a photo from attending a school dance with my female bestie, he posts a photo of his first time in drag.
From Quimby’s during our road trip to Chicago
June. I post myself at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. He posts himself working on Walking Dead.
I post a wall of portraits my mother drew. He posts a tattoo portrait.
I don’t think this is the right photo.
We start communicating via fb again.
right after posting this, he started redrawing our comic book Romance From Beyond.
2015
I love this one.
2016
(reposted)
Jan 10th 2016
When I had kidney stones in October of 2007, Stefan brought me to the hospital.
