Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?
Ok, so... when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.
All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it's just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)
But here's the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like "hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?" It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like... I was gonna figure it out. Don't mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.
But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many "platonic best friend/roommates" I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I'm saying.
I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like...I dunno, 11? 12?
It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying "Johanna, honey, it's getting late", that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there's only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.
Anyway. I think it's a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it's embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you'd figure it out on your own.
Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, my Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a "Lesbian Dude Ranch" out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained "traditionally, most lesbians don't have a lot of money" so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)
Nothing I’ve read has changed me more than “you do people a favor by accepting their help” like I repeat this constantly to so many people because it’s true!!! People like to feel useful, they like to feel kind, they like to feel like they have an ability to impact people’s lives so just let them!! Not everything is a thing to be owed back — accept people’s kindness without making a competition out of it
If you say “I’m not voting ❤️” your excuse better be not living in America, under 18 or you legally cannot vote for whatever reason. Now is not a time to be apolitical.
ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO OWN ANY PHYSICAL COPIES OF ANY RECENT VIDEO GAMES
Ever look at the cover art of your case and think “wow this looks super generic and uninspired”?
I’ll use Doom as an examlpe:
FANTASTIC game. SHITTY cover art. Looks like a cod clone.
A lot of games suffer from this,
HOWEVER
recently I’ve noticed that many games have a little secret inside the box…
You see, on the inside, when you open the case, some of these titles will have an alternate box art!
Simply open the case, *carefully* pull out the paper…
And on the other side…
:O
Now doesn’t that look like a much better representation of what playing DOOM is like!?!? The best part is theres no mountain of text on the back, the art just keeps going!
Best DOOM cover ever.
Other examples include Final Fantasy XV, The Last of Us, The Evil Within, Fallout 4, etc.
Not all of my games had this, but the ones that did had such cool art. I love the lack of “advertising text” on the back. Some of the alternate box art just paints a scene from the game so well you dont even need the title to know what it is.
Reblog to save a life! You might have some badass alternate box art in your games and you just never knew it :D