#(that stuff PILES UP over the years ok. if you wanna make sure you'll be able to find it again a decade later--curation is key)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

got a worm nibbling my brain. can someone help me find a piece of obscure media?

webcomic/indie comic from the 2010s. basically a sci-fi short story about a young girl (with red hair?) who was being raised by scientists as part of an experiment. she receives a haircut/has her head shaved, in preparation for her annual brain scan/testing. it is revealed that while her body is human, her "brain" is artificial, made of computer implants throughout her skull and spine. at some point her biological mother (also a scientist on the same campus?) encounters her and is repulsed, viewing her as a machine who has murdered her daughter.

it was very poignant and it bruised my heart and i can NOT find it anywhere

#i thought it was made by the creator of 'O Human Star' for some reason but apparently not? #goddammit goddammit goddammit #'i don't have to write down the title of this piece of media i encountered in my formative years bc i'll always remember it' #*cut to ten years later frantic googling* #fun fact 'a.i.' is now a completely useless search term #google in general is useless #and stuff i read 3+ years ago regularly vanishes from the internet #bookmarks are not enough! if you like indie media--download that shit! buy digital/physical copies while you can #save it to the cloud back it up and organize that shit!!! #keep a list of the stuff you read (organized by date/media type and possibly with keywords if you want it to be useful longterm) #(or a spreadsheet even if you're like me and rabidly consume short stories/comics like a pack of amnesiac piranhas on a feeding frenzy) #(that stuff PILES UP over the years ok. if you wanna make sure you'll be able to find it again a decade later--curation is key) #because art WILL touch your soul and then vanish into the void leaving naught but a 404 Error in its wake #i am an old man shaking my fist at the kids on my lawn but the kids on my lawn are me and my longterm digital planning skills circa 2012

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Actually, I hope you'll forgive me if I complain about one more thing

This is just kind of venting, so like, prioritize making sure you're rested and stuff over reading it, you know? Hope you have as nice a day as you can

About a week ago, have an appointment scheduled with a plumber to come look at the downstairs toilet. Leaking every time it flushes (had a huge mess cause my mom made such a pile of filth next to the toilet no one saw it was leaking till it wasn't flushing right, so she had me take a look and I'm like... it's dumping water every flush)

Anyway, grandma's agreed to help cover the toilet, but I'm wondering why the toilet is gonna cost $800, seems high to me. I say "wanna ask the plumber why that is, we've used them on the water heater, so I don't they're trying to screw me, but I don't get it"

Well, she starts freaking out a bit and being like "well it's hard for me to get up the stairs, so I've just been pissing in my incontinence pads, I think I'll die if this doesn't get fixed". First off like, don't fucking need to know that, second off fuck off, said I wanted to ask a question

Well, the son of a friend of my grandma's agrees with me, says he thinks he can fix it for cheaper, asks for a picture

My mom sends it, he sends back that he can't help cause it's looks like there's bad floor damage and that'll cost a lot more to fix

So now my mom's freaking out, just doom and gloom

I'm having to regulate her emotions for her, which I hate being forced to do. I'm pointing out "guy probably didn't realize previous idiot that owned this place laid particleboard over the good tile and put stick on tile on that, he's probably mistaking cosmetically ugly for damage, cause he's just going off a picture"

Also keep saying how "well, the plumber will be here noon tomorrow, I'll talk to him then, and we'll know what we know"

She keeps saying how "hope for the best, plan for the worst", and it's like yeah, but worst cause scenario isn't that the floor's fucked, it's that I decide I need to install a toilet myself instead of letting the plumber do it

Makes my night, and then also my morning hell. Like first thing she says when I get up is how she contacted habitat for humanity to see if they can help fix floors... when the floor isn't even fucked up, like I've felt the particle board and it's not mushy, and there's good tile under it... no, won't listen

Well how do you think it all turned out?

Oh, I was 100% right? Yeah, that's what happened. Talk with the plumber, find out that part of the cost is them warrantying both the toilet and their work on this (and I liked the warranty on the heater, come out and service it every year, so I'm ok with paying for it). Also it's not top of the line, but it's a bit better toilet than what I'm finding at home depot... problem solved

Floor? Floor is literally like I said it was, plumber didn't even mention it. Toilet was a different size which means now you can see the tile even better in the gap between it and the particle board hole

My mom? Zero apology, just kind of a "well, you know I tend to worry"

Yeah, well fuck you. I managed to leverage a small lump sum of money my great aunt left me, way less than what a house costs around here, into a house despite not being able to get any kind of loan. I've cleaned out your trailer. I've done all this shit, I've done so much

Least you can do is show me a little trust. Instead of listening to your mother, a person that we've agreed the correct thing to do is do the opposite of whatever she says cause she give the worst advice and is a panicky ass... instead of listening to her, you could trust me, someone who can go in that room and actually look at the floor

But no, you have to make my life miserable for a night and a morning, and then you can't even say sorry

...don't know, just still mad about that if I'm honest. So... sorry about this weird ask. Just... talking about my mom kind of made me think about this, and it's still pretty fresh, and it's not like I was able to do more than make some posts bitching on here, it's not like I was really able to talk to anyone

No, I get it. My mom always expected me to manage her emotions for her, too. I learned recently that when my grandparents got divorced, my grandma processed the ENTIRE THING with my 11 year old mother who still to this day insists that this was fine and healthy for her and not the literal definition of emotional incest, so I guess at least now I know where she gets it from. It's an infuriating experience, especially as someone like you or me who works destructively hard to regulate our own emotions, to have someone constantly leaning on us to manage theirs too, let alone a parent whose job was always to be that support person for us.