Since telling my Mum that I considered myself ace, I already noticed that she was a bit… too interested, if you want to say it like that. Asking for “signs”, or how being ace feels like… I tried to answer her to the best of my ability, giving her links to websites that would explain better as I ever could.
Today she said, very quietly, “Do you think I could be ace, too?”
And I said very carefully “If you think it suits you, I don’t see why not”
And my Mum, my strong, self-confident Mum, who never once has ever felt uncomfortable in her own skin as far as I know, beamed in relief. Relief.
Because she never knew. Because getting married young and bearing children for her husband (meaning sex) was expected of her. Because everyone gave her the feeling as if something would be wrong or broken about her if she didn’t want, didn’t do that.
Because her whole life long, she thought there was something wrong with her.
I’m honestly torn between feeling happy and relieved for her, and angry that humanity has such trouble with showing some understanding to those who don’t fit in the boxes society has designed for all of us.
Update: My
Mum was getting ready for bed when I noticed her humming loudly around her
toothbrush and I asked her what the good mood was about.
She beamed
around a mouth-full of toothpaste and said, very proudly and deliberately, “I
think I like that, being ace.”
And continued
on with her brushing, humming a bit louder.
(Or in
other words, I’m more than a little bit teary eyed.)
I had almost the exact same conversation with my Mom. We were talking about the LGBT acronym and explained that it’s LGBTQ and that some people add the PIA at the end as well. And she asked me “What’s the a?” So when I explained it she said immediately “Me. That’s like me.”
This is why I get so mad at people who think this is all just trendy bs, people just don’t have the vocabulary or permission to describe their lived experience.
This is the most wholesome thing I’ve ever read, bless this post 🙌🏼
I just found the funniest fucking thingGGGGG it’s a website where you make fake simpsons synopsises and compile screenshots from the show that fit the plot, which is simple enough but this is the first one I found
This is a Jack Handey quote, actually. People talk about certain writers shitposting before shitposting was a thing, but Jack Handey practically invented shitposting. He wrote these short nonsense one liners and they published them in the National Lampoon and played them on SNL in the 90s. There’s a shit ton of them and they all sound like shitposts. Here’s just a few:
“I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they chose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.”
“Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It’s a shark riding on an elephant’s back, just trampling and eating everything they see.”
“To me, it’s always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, “Hey, can you give me a hand?,” you can say, “Sorry, got these sacks.“”
“If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I’d say Flippy, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong, though. It’s Hambone.”
“I think a good novel would be where a bunch of men on a ship are looking for a whale. They look and look, but you know what? They never find him. And you know why they never find him? It doesn’t say. The book leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide. Then, at the very end, there’s a page you can lick and it tastes like Kool-Aid.”
“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”
“If you’re an ant, and you’re walking along across the top of a cup of pudding, you probably have no idea that the only thing between you and disaster is the strength of that pudding skin”
“I wish I lived on a planet that had two suns—regular sun and “rogue” sun. That way, when somebody asked me what time it was, I’d say, “Regular time?” And they’d say, “Yeah.” And I’d say, “Sorry, all I have is rogue time.” It’d be fun to be a stuck-up rogue-time guy.”
“If you’re a cowboy, and you’re dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine.”
“I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you’re having a good idea but it’s just eggs hatching.”
“If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it’s okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But ONLY if you’re serious about adopting the vulture.”
“If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you’ll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.”
“We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can’t scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.”
There were so many of these, and they were all hilarious. Still are.
“It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.”
“The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.”
“I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every
culture, is the story of Popeye.”
“Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someones
neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh,
because what is that thing.”
“The memories of my family outings are still a source of strength to me.
I remember we’d all pile into the car - I forget what kind it was - and
drive and drive. I’m not sure where we’d go, but I think there were some
trees there. The smell of something was strong in the air as we played
whatever sport we played. I remember a bigger, older guy we called
“Dad.” We’d eat some stuff, or not, and then I think we went home. I
guess some things never leave you.”
from now on, until the end of my kickstarter, i will share daily time-lapse videos of each days work to keep my backers posted about the development of the project. to see the one video a day of my drawings back my project