An aromantic mess

She is nearly 70 years old, with wonderfully brown gnarled, wrinkled hands and eyes that are creased from smiling. She hand-makes all of her own clothes and sews dolls for my little sister. Abuela is very lonely… her husband already passed and her kids live far away. She misses her grandkids. Abuela comes around our place for the company almost every other day.

So this morning, my little sister and I went to visit the Abuela to return the kindness of her vegetables with some homemade soup.

It’s a funny joke we have, that if you can make a perfect posole you are wife material. I was joking around with my friend beforehand to see if I was worthy of marriage, and my little sister thinks me failing is the best thing in life, so of course she wants to ask Abuela when we arrive.

We’re wearing masks and gloves and can’t give her the big hug like we want to, but Abuela is always happy to see us. We bring the pot of soup to her table. My little sis, the little shit that she is, immediately asks, “Abuela, is Reina ready to be a wife yet?”

And Abuela immediately shifts her entire mood. Her face literally becomes this:

Abuela’s look pierces through my heart.

“Who are you trying to impress? A man or a woman?” she asks, deadly serious. We have broached the topic of marriage. It is her domain now.

And I, Rei, gay as the fourth of July, cannot believe that either Abuela clocked me instantly or that she could possibly have a fascinating past of her own. 

I thought about lying, but my little sister was there and I don’t like to lie in front of her. So I was honest and said I was trying to impress a woman.

Without a response, Abuela carefully tries the posole. The room is silent.

“For a man, it’s good,” she says after a moment. “But, you’ll need to work harder to impress a woman.”

All I can do is politely nod. I have so many questions.

Now Abuela is tired. She wants to eat and relax in peace, so she waves us away. We make sure she’s settled, and then my sister and I go home.

not only did the grandma say bi rights but like

rick riordan's set-up for sally and gabe's relationship has misogyny baked into the premise. the idea that sally is not stupid, unlike all those other women, and of course she would never willingly marry such a bastard, because she is much smarter than other women - no, to pull this tragic backstory off, it will require that we make up some unfathomable reason for sally jackson to be trapped in an abusive relationship. we will have to create a reason that doesn't make her dumb, like all those other women who stay. it is unfair and inaccurate from the start. failing to recognize how this narrative subtly attacks abused women for having the audacity to be hurt means you cannot properly hold This Discourse, as you fail the critical thought test.

if sally wanted to leave, if sally wanted to get a babysitter for percy that wasn't gabe, what funds did she have and who did she have to rely on? because she doesn't have one singular friend in the text, anyhere. her entire family is dead. what funds does she have, when she dropped out of high school, the maxiumum education she could have is her GED, and she's stated as working retail jobs in TLT? how far do you think a retail job or three is getting you in new york fucking city? there's no way gabe wasn't paying for all of that, and clearly sally's situation was so dire she committed murder to get out of it. she couldn't "just leave" for a thousand reasons, even though she clearly wanted to. failing to recognize that generally things tend to keep people in abusive relationships, as the abuser wants, means you cannot properly hold This Discourse, as you fail the critical thought test.

i hate to tell you this but families are complicated. abuse in families is rarely if ever linear, and there's not always reason to assume that if a partner is hurting you, they are also hurting your child. that's not a statement you can make that is unilaterally true, because frequently abusive partners can and will draw the line at hurting children, because contrary to popular thought abusers don't fly into a rage and fail to control themselves. they know what they're doing the entire time they're doing it. they choose what they wish to hurt, and what they don't. in households with multiple children, not all abusers equally abuse every child in that household the same way, because unfortunately for your lack of critical thought, abuse is complicated because it is perpetuated by people. abusers behave the ways they do because unfortunately for us all, they are people, and like every person on this planet they are subject to complex internal narratives and justifications. abuse is not a thing a person commits rationally. two people can live in the same house, with the same man, and have shockingly similar experiences without ever realizing their experiences are similar at all. and furthermore this is why rick riordan fails at delivering a good faith rendition of child abuse, because he wrote gabe ugliano as a stereotype, and stereotypes are not abusers. there is none of the nuance and complexity that actual abused kids and partners grow up into. you think sally jackson should've just left because rick riordan did not write you an abusive partner, he handed you a cardboard cut out for what he thinks abusive partners look like and you bought it hook, line, and sinker. but abusers don't look like abusers. they just look like people. if your critical thought cannot handle thinking that there's a distinct possibility that there was a reason sally believed her experience of gabe was unique to her, because that would be exactly what gabe wanted her to believe and he's literally the only person her age she's ever demonstrated to interact with personally, and it would have been shockingly easy to convince a desperate, trapped and tortured woman of something she already wants to believe, you cannot hold The Discourse. you lose The Discourse rights.

i was prepared to make a bullet point that was a brief concession to the fact that sally could have sent percy to camp half-blood, but you know what i'm not prepared to make a singular concession. i'm not prepared to concede to the premise that sally married gabe purely to cover percy's scent, because it irritates me. and i'm not prepared to concede the idea that a woman who has lost every last shred of family she has, the one man who was kind of good to her, and endured years of abuse on top of that deserved to lose her son too. fuck that. fuck that, actually. i'm not conceding shit to you people. i lived something similar in my own actual life and i'm not conceding anything to you, because i think every point you make is fucking ludicrous. even if you go with the idea that sally only married gabe to cover percy's scent, what, did you honestly think one summer at a demigod summer camp is going to make a toddler capable of holding his own during the whole year? do you think she should have ripped out both of their hearts and left her kid at a summer camp year-round, deprived of the connection that is literally the center of his world because he's a toddler? do you have any idea the kind of permanent damage that does to a kid? what should've happened is that gabe shouldn't have been a bastard, but he was, and sally got backed into a corner and made choices. and i'm just not in the habit of criticizing a desperate woman who clearly adores her son, whose son clearly adores her, all that heavily for "mistakes" she made because she was failed by the world over and over and over.

Summary: My sister Sharmaine Ann Flores was diagnosed on Jan 2017 with Primary Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension it’s a well known life time disease. She was 23 years old that time and now 27. We have been providing her medical needs for almost 3 years which is a life time support of oxygen. The oxygen tank last a day or two depending on her condition. We have been asking funds here on tumblr for a year now since I don’t have a job anymore and the expenses is out of my hands. Both of our parents are getting older now and they just can’t provide more for us. So everything is up to me now. 

 Your Donations go through the following:

Oxygen Tank Refill - Cost 660 php+ 40php transport a total of 700Php A day or two. 

Medical Needs, her vitamins and maintenance 

Hospital Check ups, follow ups (Monthly) 

Our food and house expenses 

 As time goes by, I am saving up some cash to start a small business here so we can sustain on our own too. All of your help is put in good use. 

Reports regarding to our authenticity is already been verified by Gofundme, our account is already verified and confirmed on June 2020. 

About the way I send my messages to people/blogs, I am not a big account, I don’t have many followers and help is badly needed for me so sorry If I was forceful or eager somehow to ask, I just need help.

Again Proofs are on this blog.

FOR DONATIONS (If possible send to our paypal instead since we need some funds right away for our upcoming check up, gofundme takes some time to process.) Remittance/Gcash: Full name: Danneil John Tiano Flores Birth: December 3, 1996 Address: La Carlota City, Philippines Contact Number: +639506420580 Gofundme: Campaign Link Paypal: (just send on which one will work) [email protected] or use this link or [email protected] or use this link

All activists who you can name/you see make an impact are viewed as a threat to those in power or those who regard themselves as having power over minority groups. The more of these names I learn, the more I wait in anticipation to hear if they are still here or if their lives have been taken too soon yet.

Here’s a PBS article because I like to believe they’re less biased than most.

The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.

Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.

Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.

Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.

If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.

So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t stop”

This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.

When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.

A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.

disclaimer: I am east asian. if anyone who is not white sees anything wrong with my phrasing, inaccuracies, or insensitivity, or something I missed, please feel free to add on. I'm just one person with one perspective; none of what I say should be taken as The Singular way to draw an Asian character. if you havent done so already, please take the effort to expand your view of Asian culture outside this one tutorial.

Police have lost control of the city, and at least 12 police are in the hospital after altercations with protesters.

No one is talking about the situation. It is not trending. There is barely any media coverage for the situation, all information I have received has come straight from people living in Philly.

hi☂️ i dont like asking for help but im still raising funds for rent this month, i also need funds for food and inhalers for my mother and i.

anything would be greatly appreciated

i also have a cat whos gonna be in need of food soon

please help a black lesbian ⚠️SHARE + DONATE⚠️ (if you can)

GOAL- $550

currently: $2/550

venmo: wildesappho

share & donate ( if you can) !