Sophie │all pronouns │ asiandramanet │ my fics │ my gifs │ Sauntered vaguely towards a good omens obsession which has taken over my life and this blog - reluctantly still into Grindeldore (fuck JKR) - also the occasional mdzs/doctor who/lotr/star trek ... you know what? let's just call this a multi-fandom blog and call it a day
Tags: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Reincarnation, Tattoo Artist Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Tattooed Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Dreams and Nightmares, Past Lives, trauma discussions, Mutual Pining, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Chronic Pain, First Time, Body Worship, Non-Penetrative Sex, Happy Ending
Summary:
It starts with a harmonica, rabbits and a stranger standing in Wei Ying’s tattoo parlour.
He asks for a sun over his heart and a dizi player, blue gentians and calm waters over the scars marring his back.
And Wei Ying? Wei Ying tries his best to pretend he hasn’t seen it all before.
Written for the MDZS Big Bang 2021
The wonderful art you will find embedded in this fic (featuring a shirtless Lan Zhan being drawn on by Wei Ying, just to entice you ;)) was made by @inyourorangeshirt 💙 I honestly couldn't be happier with what she created! head over to her blog and give her some love!
Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
Here is an article from NPR about it (May 22, 2026):
Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click.
"Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said.
Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from.
"If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."
And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):
While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.
Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.
And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:
When Google first started implementing AI-assisted results, news publishers warned of “catastrophic” impacts on the industry, much of which relies on Google search to drive users to their websites.
Last year, news websites saw significant traffic declines as chatbots increasingly replaced Google search as the primary way to find sites and ask questions.
Small businesses also noted drops in traffic to their sites from Google, which has traditionally delivered customers.
Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy & research at Amsive, a digital marketing agency, warned as early as last year that Google’s planned changes to search are “going to have a devastating impact on the Internet.”
“It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.
Heh Fine so it’s time to stop using it completely. I hope were all serious though and they will face a decrease of use of their search at least the size of this post’s note count?
i'm starting to wonder if maedhros either a). didn't know about celegorm and curufin's assault of luthien, or b). never actually sent communication to doriath demanding the silmaril, with celegorm and curufin being the main ones behind it instead. yes fandom has soured me toward the character, but i don't think he's meant to be taken as enough of a sheer moron to expect cooperation from a kingdom after his brothers tried to rape their princess. nor do i think he's written unsympathetically enough for tolkien's intent to have been to make him a rape enabler/apologist who genuinely doesn't care about celegorm and curufin assaulting a woman -- so either c&c lied about what they did and he took whatever version they told him at face value, or he never actually gave his approval for whatever letter was sent to doriath. and the silm does say "maedhros and his brothers had before sent to thingol" and that "maedhros made no answer" after thingol refused the feanorians' demands, which to me is as good as confirmation that maedhros was involved in the exchange. so maybe celegorm and curufin really did keep the true story from him. ...or maybe fandom's fixation on maedhros being some long suffering goodie two shoes is still skewing my perception of him without my realizing and he actually is the kind of person to brush off celegorm and curufin's rape attempt
my reading of that particular scene is that maedhros did in fact know, and he made some very deliberate (and disastrous) choices there, in choosing to let celegorm & curufin off the hook - and also i think he very much did know what happened to luthien
for one, there is no way that thingol did not allude to it in his reply to maedhros - which maedhros receives, even if thingol's previous letters do not go through. for another, i think the animating factor in this decision is this "For Maedhros and his brothers, being constrained by their oath". he is not purely operating from the position of political savviness, but from the position of one placing the oath first (consider also: he perceives morgoth can be assailed only after luthien and beren have stolen a silmaril and not before, when fingolfin was suggesting they unite their forces to fight morgoth. i think there's something very operative in what is driving maedhros' "hope" here and its not a good thing)
but also on an ideological level, this is going to sound really ugly, but i genuinely think maedhros didn't think much of what curufin & celegorm did to luthien and i think that ties back to the fact that a) both the sindar and noldor are deeply patriarchal societies that see women as "belonging" to men and are given from one group to another on marriage (more or less textually confirmed in NoME), b) beren and luthien having both been on a mission to steal the silmarils, which at this point are not just feanorian heirlooms but which have been rhetorically identified by feanor (in his tirion speech) as being symbolic of the noldor identity vv creation through craft (and finrod's aid in that is explicitly narrativised as a betrayal of that noldor identity and of his identity as one from the line of finwe), c) the marriage of aredhel having been treated by curufin as her being "stolen" from the noldor ("those who steal the daughters of the Noldor and wed them without gift or leave do not gain kinship with their kin") and d) feanor's speech in tirion where the noldor are mobilised to go to middle earth both to escape the tyranny of the valar and to protect their "heirloom" of "arda" against "possession" by a "lesser race" ("no lesser race shall oust us")
working backwards from these four facts - i think it is not unlikely that maedhros may have held similar thoughts about the situation to his brothers. beren and luthien stole something that rightfully belonged to the sons of feanor and to the noldor. luthien is a sindar princess and the sindar have already stolen something precious to the noldor before i.e. one of their princesses, without so much as a by your leave (or exchange of wealth as is implied by the "gift" curufin refers to). furthermore luthien is a sindar princess seeking to marry a man (we already have a sense of what the elvish perspective on this is re. thingol's own disdain for a Man seeking to marry his daughter) and this man has stolen a silmaril, which has made feanor's fear re. the elves being ousted by a lesser race and their birthright being stolen by them come true. therefore, his brothers were not wrong to evoke the oath and its call for vengeance in both deposing finrod (who has betrayed the noldor) and in seizing luthien, because if a silmaril is a fair bride price for luthien, then luthien is a fair exchange for the idea that someone else (and racially constructed as lesser) could assert a claim to the silmaril and who else could be worthy except someone from the line of finwe, from the noldor who are greater than the sindar king who cannot hold his own. since no "actual" rape has taken place, i think he would have found it very easy to both a) rationalise it to himself in these terms of theft, racial supremacy and gendered control and b) that no rape would have actually taken place, because his brothers ultimately would have waited for thingol to sanction permission to marry luthien (and that would have been fine and dandy).
because even without all the context of c&c's wrongs to luthien, maedhros sending that letter demanding the silmaril from thingol is incredibly stupid as a diplomatic move. at the very least he has to know how much luthien has risked to retrieve it at literally any point at which he sends it - and therefore what this might mean and symbolise to thingol. it displays a sense of complete arrogance and entitlement, i think, which is evinced elsewhere (which eol also refers to v.v. these used to be teleri lands and now you can't move freely through them because the noldor have occupied it; which like, he's not the most reliable narrator, but also its not a grouse without a cause!) and which ultimately reveals the union of maedhros as something that bakes in the assumption that the noldor are the ones who ultimately "rule" the place and will therefore hold ultimate power over that land; rather than a genuine union to overthrow morgoth for the freedom of all races. which is, ultimately, what feanor was calling for when they left valinor - and which finds its final, ultimate ugly outworking in the oath.
oh this is so cool! i had considered how, if maedhros did know about celegorm and curufin's behavior, he might be operating under some notion of racial superiority and "us" vs. "them" entitlement that c&c also seem to subscribe to, therefore making him not really opposed to or even particularly concerned about their actions with luthien. but i didn't consider how the oath partly as a representation of the noldor's political project (reclaiming the silmarils -> defeating morgoth -> being the primary race on arda; going back to feanor's "no other race shall oust us" line), and how beren and luthien's story as a rejection and insult against that political project, would also factor into his attitude. the double whammy of those two things (maedhros believing in the noldor's superiority and seeing the sindar as lesser + maedhros perceiving beren and luthien's actions as a spit in the face of the noldorin political project that his father brought up and that he and his brothers, and to a lesser extent the other exilic noldor, are working towards) also would go a long way in explaining why maedhros would be thoughtless enough to demand anything from doriath after what his brothers did despite him showing at other points that he's willing to work with humans and dwarves and sindar. which was my main confusion that i was trying to rationalize when i wondered if maedhros didn't know about what his brothers did
#there's also A LOT to be said for fingon not punishing c&c#and that also ultimately sabotaging any help that might have come from nargothrond#bc at the very least the usurpation of one of his vassals by other ambitious princes#sets HORRIFICALLY bad precedence for literally everything#even if he felt betrayed by finrod implicitly declaring his father king over fingon#anyway those few lines setting up the nirnaeth betray some of the most ugliest deliberate choices on the part of maedhros & fingon imvho#<- prev tags#also i love these!#like i mentioned in the og post maedhros is someone who the fandom loves to water down and whitewash but imo fingon also gets#this sort of treatment. to a lesser extent than maedhros bc fingon dies a better person than maedhros becomes but still his involvement#in the first kinslaying is v downplayed from what i've seen#and if he also knew about c&c's actions and didn't do anything about it that also makes him culpable in driving doriath further away#and also i love this breakdown of the union as something with intentions obscured by the supposed veneer of 'let's all band together#and defeat morgoth!' bc like. ok. what then. what will you do after you defeat him?#i think that's also v relevant to my frustration at fandom for harping on doriath not joining the union. they have very little reason to#trust something organized by the noldor and most especially the feanorians!#one day i'll talk about how in the eyes of the iathrim the noldor may have been close to just as much of a threat and a danger to them#as morgoth is#anywayyy that was a lot of tags but ty for this addition!#tolkien ref#tolkien meta#maedhros#celegorm#curufin
@tobermoriansass this is the best analysis of the Nargothrond debacle I've seen to date. Thank you for that.
I’d like to add a few things which I think are in line with what you’re discussing:
We must remember that Maedhros and Fingon are warlords. In such a political and societal structure diplomacy doesn’t quite work like we understand it in the modern sense. To a war lord the highest quality in a potential ally is military strength, above all.
This is particularly important in the context of the post-Bragollach state of affairs: the continent is burned, relationships are tight, communication probably extremely limited, refugees are fleeing, and battle never stops. People tend to portray the Bragollach as a one and done ordeal, but the burning lasts for a full season (in some drafts a full year) and then conflict never stops, namely: Sauron takes over Tol Sirion, Barad Eithel is under siege 7 years later, the Orcs make it all the way into the plains upon Hithlum, Morgoth causes a plague that eliminates a lot of Fingon’s mortal allies. On the Marches of Medhros the picture is not much better - Himring is an isolated point of defense. There’s constant pressure to survive on both ends, and when defense is clearly not feasible (given all of the above), the only logical strategy to a war lord would be to muster the strength and attack rather than wait and die out slowly. You could claim there are other options, but again, space is limited in Beleriand, allies are few, and the Noldor have already established societies where the strongest hand leads.
If military strength is the most desired characteristic in an ally, then Fingon and Maedhros would have little interest in negotiating with Thingol who has never expressed interest in changing his isolationist policy, not to mention his involvement with the Feanorian Oath and the added weight of the first kinslaying.
Likewise, Orodreth seems set on an isolationist policy after Curufin and Celegorm manage to petrify the people of Nargothrond:
And after Celegorm Curufin spoke, more softly but with no less power, conjuring in the minds of the Elves a vision of war and the ruin of Nargothrond. So great a fear did he set in their hearts that never after until the time of Túrin would any Elf of that realm go into open battle; but with stealth and ambush, with wizardry and venomed dart, they pursued all strangers, forgetting the bonds of kinship. Thus they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old, and their land was darkened.
Orodreth's refusal to join the Nirnaeth later, is explicitly stated as his refusal to join the sons of Feanor.
On the other hand, Celegorm and Curufin do provide military strength, as is later seen during the Nirnaeth. In the context of warfare, and the stirring of the oath with the theft of the Silmarils, they are the more logical ally, as brutal as that sounds.
What is more, as tober summarized quite nicely, many of the Feanorian followers would see Finrod’s involvement with the quest for the Silmaril as a betrayal of the Noldorin identity. I would bet that many at Himring would be up in arms were Curufin and Celegorm to be prosecuted (unfairly in their mind). In times of crisis, the last thing you want is civil strife among the few people you do have. A war lord will prioritize military unity.
Lastly, it is questionable how much authority the High Kingship has over other realms. It certainly is not a supreme authority (e.g. when Fingolfin wanted to fight, no one other than Aegnor and Angrod would back him up, and he could not command other realms to do as he wished.) The authority of the High Kingship likely diminishes even further under Fingon, who inherits a complete disaster of a realm to rule be it from an environmental, economic, political or civic aspect. So I wonder how much authority he had to judge and prosecute even if he tried.
Maedhros and Fingon take a gamble. They choose as a war lord would: the maintenance of military unity for the sake of survival in times of active war. And they screw up, big time.
Although, in the grand scheme of things, it would have mattered little. The narrative is pretty clear that without the aid of the Valar, there’s no defeating Morgoth:
This counsel was wise according to the measure of [Fingolfin's] knowledge; for the Noldor did not yet comprehend the fullness of the power of Morgoth, nor understand that their unaided war upon him was without final hope, whether they hasted or delayed.
The way I read it, Fingon and Maedhros’ biggest mistake is not realizing that there is no way into Angband via the way of battle. The only ones to succeed ever were Luthien, and once Fingon, with a song, not a sword.
the thing is. any character who expresses discomfort with or behaves in ways unsupported by Standard Heterosexuality is going to be open to queer readings. but they're almost always going to be open to *multiple* queer readings. this character seems uncomfortable with the concept of marriage and never has a love interest: is he ace? aro? gay and closeted? trans and closeted? bi or even straight but unwilling to pursue a relationship for other reasons? too misogynistic to want to share his life with a woman (an uncomfortable reading, but often a valid one)? some combination of the above? very often, you could make an argument for any of these interpretations, and your argument would be supported by the same pieces of textual evidence.
similarly: this woman rejects all the men who express interest in her and seems exhausted by the whole affair: is she a lesbian? aro and/or ace? trans? bi or straight but with standards that no one has canonically met? someone who values her autonomy and knows how much that will be curtailed if she gets married? unless the text is very explicit about her reasoning, we don't know, and it could again be any of the above or a combination.
now, sometimes the text *is* very explicit and people still ignore it. I see this very commonly with ace and/or aro characters where fandom loves to ignore the character's own stated feelings and preferences to make them more shippable. this sucks. or there's instances where a character has an opposite-sex love interest and people really let their misogyny show by claiming that she never really mattered and you can/should completely ignore that relationship and not make it a part of your character analysis. this also sucks.
but. in many/most cases, there are multiple readings you can take from a given text. obviously people have their own preferred interpretations, but it's important to remember that other people can look at the same text as you and draw different conclusions that are just as well supported. the canon itself exists in a sort of nebulous state of quantum uncertainty where The Character could be any one of a number of different identities, and while any given transformative work is likely to collapse the waveform to a singular interpretation, that doesn't undo the ambiguity present in the original text.
Some things about this post since getting quite a few notes:
1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!
2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.
3. I think there are times where scrolling is fine. Right now, for example, I'm being connected to a machine for two hours to donate plasma and platelets. Yes this is a brag but it is also a time where scrolling is one of the few things I can do. (Though I will probably also read or watch something on phone lol)
Big shoutout to anybody who's fucking struggling right now
who having just a real dogshit trying time right now
anybody who's staying alive
anybody who's staying sober
anybody who relapsed but is moving forward
anybody who is choosing harm reduction
anybody who is seeking support when they need it
anybody who is trying their best
anybody whose best doesn't look that pretty right now
anybody who's fucking sick and tired and doing it anyway
shoutout to the weirdos, to the struggling, to the dykes, the fags, the queers, the trannies and the cripples
shoutout to those flaring up and forced to cope
to anybody who would really like to just not give a fuck but knows thats not an option
to anybody who's exhausted
to anybody who's alone or feels alone
to anybody putting off the bad shit for just another day
to anybody who's taking a nap instead of doing something permanent
I love you, the world's a fucking mess but it's a fucking better place with you in it
My hope for whoever is reading this is that your life starts making sense and coming together. I hope the good days are right around the corner for you.
i have a mass in my uterus i need removed but it costs $400. it's caused nothing but agony, physically + emotionally. it would help ease the flare-ups for my chronic pain in my hands + wrists, knees, back, that leave me bedbound & hardly able to hold a spoon to eat. please help in any way you can, i'm desperate for relief.
Maedhros. the Tall
"There Maedhros in time was healed; for the fire of life was hot within him, and his strength was of the ancient world, such as those possessed who were nurtured in Valinor. His body recovered from his torment and became hale, but the shadow of his pain was in his heart; and he lived to wield his sword with left hand more deadly than his right had been"
You Are On Native Land collects stories and art donated by some of comics' biggest Indigenous creators such as Jon Proudstar, Maria Wolf, and Steph Littlebird. Tales of Native resistance; family and kinship; love and grief fill this beautiful collection, which includes a special reprint of TRIBAL FORCE #1, credited as the first comic to feature a superhero team made up entirely of Indigenous heroes.
GUYS THIS COMES OUT SEPTEMBER 2026 I NEED EVERYONE TO PULL THIS IT LOOKS SO PEAK
EDIT: since this is getting so many notes now i wanted to say, you can pre-order this comic from Simon & Schuster, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon!
So I know I don’t post much anymore but I thought I’d give it a shot. About a month ago my mom was basically forced into retirement by her boss. I haven’t been able to work in the last few years because of various medical ailments so we’ve really depended on her income. She started a new job this week (thank Christ) but she’s having to take about a 1k a month pay cut with it so we’re trying to be careful financially. We’ve had some stuff going on with one of the dogs and three of the cats so we’ve had some surprise vet bills, and our credit card is maxed out due to my medical issues so it’s been pretty tight. I made an amazon wishlist with a few things that would be nice to have and would help us be able to save money for things like our medications instead. Thanks for reading ❤️
Okay so it’s a little worse than we originally thought. The owner moved mom to salary instead of hourly so she’s losing closer to $1500 a month. We added up our bills and her salary and we’ll be about $100 short per month. That’s just for bills, that doesn’t include groceries, gas, medications, cat and dog food, or any unforeseen expenses. I updated the list with the hope that maybe some more people could help. We are so incredibly grateful to everyone who has been able to help already, and honestly it feels really shameful for me to keep asking for more and more. Thank you for helping and for reading ❤️
