#documenting love

[pygmalionsmarble]

Jimchi

My grandmother passed away, maybe 8 years ago. Has it been a long time? Or do I just not care enough to remember the exact time that has passed since her passing? I think more likely than not, I have been avoiding it.

My grandmother lived estranged from me. My parents moved to America to make a better life for themselves, leaving their old lives, including my grandma, in a country nearly 7,000 miles away. After my birth in America, every 4 years I traveled to my motherland and was forced to meet my grandmother again. And every time, even though I grew in ways that made me irrevocably different from when she last saw me, she still recognized me. She gave me the widest, creasiest grin, which I remember thinking made her uglier. She would clasp my hands, which much bigger and ganglier than mine, and I took note with a hint of disgust of how her hands felt more weathered than the last time I held them. She stuffed me food that I didn’t like: “pass him the jimchi— he’s growing so he needs to eat a lot”. I inwardly sneered at the way she pronounced kimchi. I thought that it made her sound so uneducated and uncouth.

I remember the last time I saw my grandmother. She was in the hospital, with seemingly millions of tubes protruding from her arms, her torso, her mouth. I remember before she was fully admitted to the hospital, our family had a final meal with her—her favorite food, since she wouldn’t be able to eat real food anymore. And even though I can’t remember what we ate, I remember wishing that she had chosen something a little more appealing to my taste. It felt like she was always feeding me food that I didn’t like.

When my grandmother passed away, I saw my dad with tears silently staining his red eyes. My dad was a figure of power, the immutable and unstaggering rock of my family. Seeing the person that I believed to be the strongest existence in the world look so feeble shook me to my core. I loudly shed tears. Not because I was sad, but because I believed that was what was expected of me. I remember feeling a pit in my stomach as I wailed, from guilt, from shame, from fear of being “found out”.

This guilt lived on with me for many years. I often questioned how it was that I could cry so fervently about people in movies that didn’t exist in real life, but how I couldn’t grieve my own grandmother. This guilt became a part of me, time trudged forward, and the details of my grandmother and her passing subconsciously was pushed further and further into the back of my mind.

Tonight, at dinner, my dad asked me to pass the “jimchi”. The word was uttered in a fleeting moment in the tumbling flow of his request to pass him food. Most people would have missed it. But to me, hearing that j instead of the k made me think of my grandmother. My grandmother with her rough hands from countless hours of farm work to care for her children and buy her grandson some snacks. My grandmother with her wrinkled grin, her mouth lines creased with age and happiness from seeing me. My grandmother who, at her last meal, sat next to me and made sure I ate all my food because it was healthy. Did she choose her last meal for herself, or was she thinking about me till the end?

As I write this, I am shedding the tears that young me felt like I should have shed all those years ago when she first passed. But more than sadness from her passing, or regret that I could only see her surface-level ugliness in my immaturity, I feel a deep love. My grandmother’s love lives on in the speech of my father, her habit of saying “jimchi” being something that he picked up from her feeding him the same way she fed me. Jimchi being a word that will always remind me of my grandmother, her sacrifices, and her love.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

they tried to rebrand as The Criminals but riz is literally the city council's treasurer and also turns out people in their late 20s don't really name their friend groups. so now they're The Intrepid Heroes

[mipmoth]

The pokemon museums always dealing with some ancient curse or other.

HE KEPT THE JOB!

[pebbleaf]

Little vampire aventurine and werewolf ratio doodle from @havanillas au !!

Did this instead of paying attention to my lecture oops

[womanman]

"I've been thinking recently about the first ever trans space I was ever actually a part of, Bigender.net. My experience was primarily with these forums in ~2009, but I came back to peek in later years, and am trying to regain access now. There's a lot of bigender cultural things there that would probably never be known about or archived somewhere easily accessible unless someone talked about what they saw there, and I wanted to share some things.

+ A Lot of people used two or more names that they switch up, use in different contexts, and that often align with specific genders. Names are essentially changed like pronouns are for many people.

+ Most bigender people seemed to experience some kind of fluidity or flux of gender, and it was rarer for people to feel like 100% both at all times. This seems to be more often where people label themselves androgynes.

+ The language of "en femme" and "en homme" was used to describe both how one was presenting (similar to the modern boymoding/girlmoding) and to how one felt their gender on a specific day, which is what makes it different from girlmode/boymode. It wasn't just about presentation regardless of gender, but presentation as related to gender.

+ Plurality became so common over the years as a framework of bigender expression that a whole subforum for plurality emerged on these forums. Lots of plural bigender folks would experience having a "girl side" and a "boy side" in a dual system.

+ There were just as many bigender folks who experienced a neutral/other/middle gender experience besides just being male/female. It really wasn't limited to 2 genders, even if at the time it was very male/female bigender focused."

Aster, Bigender Culture

[worfsbarmitzvah]

there’s such an attitude among ex-christian atheists that religions just spring up out of the void with no cultural context behind them. like ive heard people say shit like “those (((zionists))) think they own a piece of land bc their book of fairy tales told them so!!!” and they refuse to understand that no, we don’t belong there because of the torah, it’s in the torah because we belong there. because we’re from there. the torah (from a reform perspective) was written by ancient jews in and about the land that they were actively living on at the time. the torah contains instructions for agriculture because the people who lived in the land needed a way to teach their children how to care for it. it contains laws of jurisprudence because those are pretty important to have when you’re trying to run a society. same for the parts that talk about city planning. it contains our national origin story for the same reason that american schools teach kids about the boston tea party. it’s an extremely complex and fascinating text that is the furthest thing from just a “book of fairy tales”

[owlyjules]

Since I am getting ready for Artfight, I decided to make some quick character sheets! Both of them are in the same Universe! Feedo (Cursed human and ex-hound of the Horned King wild Hunt.) is an advisor and occasional bodyguard of the Changeling King and important member of his court.

[kinstein-art]

sanji's weird

[no1deahow]

A day at Baltigo

[happyheidi]

𝟪𝟪 𝗒𝖾𝖺𝗋-𝗈𝗅𝖽 𝖬𝗂𝗌𝖺𝗈 𝖿𝗈𝗎𝗇𝖽 𝗁𝖾𝗋 𝗈𝖽𝖽-𝖾𝗒𝖾𝖽 𝗄𝗂𝗍𝗍𝗒, 𝖥𝗎𝗄𝗎𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗎, 𝖺𝖻𝖺𝗇𝖽𝗈𝗇𝖾𝖽 𝗂𝗇 𝖺 𝗌𝗁𝖾𝖽 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇 𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝖺𝗌 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝖺 𝗄𝗂𝗍𝗍𝖾𝗇. 𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝗍𝗐𝗈 𝗊𝗎𝗂𝖼𝗄𝗅𝗒 𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗆𝖾 𝗂𝗇𝗌𝖾𝗉𝖺𝗋𝖺𝖻𝗅𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗂𝗋 𝖿𝗋𝗂𝖾𝗇𝖽𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗉 𝗐𝖺𝗌 𝖽𝗈𝖼𝗎𝗆𝖾𝗇𝗍𝖾𝖽 𝖻𝗒 𝖬𝗂𝗌𝖺𝗈’𝖺 𝗀𝗋𝖺𝗇𝖽𝖽𝖺𝗎𝗀𝗁𝗍𝖾𝗋 𝖬𝗂𝗒𝗈𝗄𝗈 𝖨𝗁𝖺𝗋𝖺, 𝖺 𝗉𝗁𝗈𝗍𝗈𝗀𝗋𝖺𝗉𝗁𝖾𝗋. (x)

‘𝑀𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑔 𝑀𝑎𝑚𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐹𝑢𝑘𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑎𝑡’ (2011)

[bog-mob]

Starting off the month strong let's see how long that lasts 🗣️‼️/silly

Was inspired by the way light sometimes shines thru windows in the Parable (⁠◔⁠‿⁠◔⁠)

[myokk]

a little family🥹

[psychicbby]

kinda obsessed with when dan jokes around and acts like he’s this huge slag bc like babygirl…you’ve been sucking and fucking the same man for the past 15 yrs bc you’re in love with him. you have intertwining careers and a forever home together. if ur man even HINTS at another dude being attractive u get visibly jealous. it’s okay, darling. no one’s judging u for being the literal champion of monogamy. you’re still edgy and cool baby it’s okay <3

[cosmicdreamgrl]

𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘫𝘬 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: (105/?)

[sunnymainecoonx]

I know damn well I misunderstood the assignment but we roll, I'll understand it some day

It's killer and dust btw. If you couldn't tell. Which you probably couldn't.. forgor to say but shhh 🤫 Killers having a convo with himself..

..I kinda wanna change my url but idk to what

[falloutnewnobody]

how van buren joshua graham looks at you after ruining your reputation with all of the in game tribes, insulting every neutral npc within a 15 mile radius, and giving you negative luck within the first five seconds of joining your party