I only drink hot chocolate.I don’t actually like coffee or tea.I’m Ace.It might have been faster to start with that.
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Latest Posts by icannotspelldefinnnately - Page 3
I just read that Donald Trump and his circus took down a website called reproductiverights.gov
This was a website to help women learn about their reproductive rights in the US and to find health care.
This is absolutely disgusting so I’ll share in this post some resources in case you need them:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn
Mexicans in the United States now have a direct line to consular assistance at their fingertips. Juan Ramón de la Fuente Ramírez, Mexico’s Foreign Minister, has introduced “ConsulApp Contigo”, a mobile application designed to provide immediate support in emergencies, including detentions. The app connects users to consular services, offering legal guidance and critical resources in real time.
Los mexicanos en Estados Unidos ahora tienen a su disposición una línea directa de asistencia consular. Juan Ramón de la Fuente Ramírez, Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de México, presentó "ConsulApp Contigo", una aplicación móvil diseñada para brindar apoyo inmediato en situaciones de emergencia, incluidas las detenciones. La aplicación conecta a los usuarios con los servicios consulares, ofreciendo orientación legal y recursos críticos en tiempo real.
My personal brand of humor is "horrible, useless advice delivered in an authoritative way" and this is the result of it
BABY RIZ TIME
Taking a break from the Gob Squad OC's for some lil baby man Riz sketches.
One is for @whatisamildopinion 's Aasimar Riz AU, and really they all could be, I just wasn't bothered to draw his markings on all of them because I got too complicated with them and I'm lazy lol.
But ye, lil baby Riz like
Crawly scuttly bugs: FOOD
Nutritionally complete apple flavoured paste: What is this poison mother
And his ears are so big and heavy he can barely perk them up, they fold over like elephant ears. This boy is 20% ears by weight.
Also he likes his Griffon plushie but get that Baronies Doll the fuck away from him.
Selkie Fabian with selkie Hallariel au you see the vision
Bill accidentally stole Hallariels pelt while he was pillaging in Fallinel and Hallariel fucking hunted him down
Bill fell in love the second she took his eye out but Hallariel only married him because he promised her a life of freedom and adventure on the sea something she’d never had before and she fell in love with him along the way
Telemaine was extremely protective of his daughter because he knew that like a half elf half selkie wouldn’t be very well received in Fallinel so she always hid her selkie-ness up until she left and stopped giving a shit about what Kei Lumennura thought
Part of why she left was because Telemaine refused to let her near the sea (he insisted that her mother learned to live without the sea to keep herself safe so she could too) but he finally caved after Bill stole her pelt because “I’m in danger either way at least I’m not miserable at sea”
She planned on only marrying Bill for a few years before going back home until she actually fell in love and then got pregnant
Fabian was allowed a lot more freedom than Hallariel had growing up but he was still told a bunch of horror stories about selkies getting their pelts stolen so he is very protective of his pelt
Like so protective that the Bad Kids didn’t even find out until like halfway through sophomore year (he only told them because Riz jokingly tried it on when they were all hanging out and Fabian snatched it away in a panic)
The main reason they have as big of a pool as they do is because Hallariel insisted on having someplace her and Fabian could shift
Fabian still misses the ocean terribly and travels down there on weekends he can get away
When Kalvaxus set their houses on fire he had to stop himself from running to check his room and find his pelt because his parents were in danger
When he got home after prom Cathilda immediately handed his pelt to him because she knew he’d be panicking about it
Cathilda knows about Fabian being a selkie (of course she does she practically raised him) but he didn’t realize she knew until he was about 12 (he thought he was being sneaky) so it became sort of a game for her to see how much she could tease him about it before he realized she knew
She insists on washing his pelt because he insists on storing it with the rest of his clothes and she doesn’t want it to get dirty (she always framed it as something similar to giving his selkie form a shower) but she has a rigorous washing process that she insists on doing every time despite it taking like an hour each time
The first week after she gets sober Hallariel takes Fabian down to the beach and gets in the ocean for the first time since she had him
Before Fabian she always insisted she would not become some trophy piece lying around Bill Seacasters house like most of the selkies she’d heard about who married pirates (and the she had Fabian and then…yeah)
Fabian and Mazey have a tendency to borrow each others clothes and it’s all great fun until Mazey takes his pelt without realizing thinking it’s just a regular coat (he is scared to death of telling anyone he’s romantically involved with that he’s a selkie cause, y’know, horror stories) and he has a genuine panic attack when he can’t find it
About an hour after this happens Riz (who Fabian had asked to find the pelt) shows up at Mazey’s doorstep demanding the pelt back and Mazey is just so confused
Fabian finally tells her like a week later and she feels just so bad
Hallariel doesn’t fully trust the Bad Kids until she learns they know Fabian is a selkie
Gorgug starts joining Fabian on his late night oceanside trips after they all find out (he says it’s because it’s not safe for Fabian to be out there alone but it’s really because he just wants to hang out with his friend)
So so many beach trips with the party over summer after junior year (would’ve been sophomore but yknow night yor-*I am shot in the head by Riz Gukgak killing me instantly*)
Kristen challenges Fabian to an underwater breath holding contest and like just to freak them out he just kinda stays under for like 5 minutes
He can stay underwater for a while when he has his pelt but when he got possessed on Leviathan sophomore year he had to leave it behind and when he doesn’t have it he’s kinda shit at holding his breath naturally (he never trained it because he assumed he wouldn’t have to deal with being in the water without his pelt a lot but he started training it after that)
He has control over how much he shifts when he’s in the water with his pelt so unless it’s been like a while and he’s craving the ocean he’ll usually go for just like patches of seal fur along his body and occasionally he’ll let his feet turn partially tail-like if he feels like swimming a lot
The Bad Kids think his patchy form is just so adorable (he would be fully human around them since he’s still not fully comfortable with it but the halfway form is kind of the lowest he’s able to dial it when he has his pelt in the water)
Jawbone finds out partway through junior year (Adaine makes an off handed remark about Fabian’s pelt and he was just very confused) and once he finds out he immediately starts researching the shit out of selkies
He finds out that there’s a support group at Aguefort for selkie students and he gives Fabian the information
Fabian very reluctantly goes and actually enjoys it a lot (it’s less like a support group like it says and just kinda like a place for selkie students to hang out and bond with other selkies) so he keeps going weekly
They were all very skeptical of him when he first showed up (I mean the most popular kid in school who is also the son of a world renowned pirate showing up to a selkie hangout when nobody knows he’s a selkie feels like a red flag) but he brought his pelt with him just in case to make sure they knew he wasn’t an enemy
At first he has a bunch of people giving him pity because they assume Bill basically abducted his mom but he shuts that shit down quick (“if my papa tried to abduct my mama she would’ve taken out his other eye and slit his throat”)
They are all so jealous of the fact that he actually lived on the sea for most of his life (they have a monthly trip to the beach because most of them aren’t able to go out that much and a good majority of the people in Elmville have lived there all their lives or most of their lives)
Ok yeah that’s it for now I just got selkie Fabian in my head and couldn’t get it out
GREEN NERD SHOWDOWN! THE ABSOLUTE FINAL!
RIZ GUKGAK (DIMENSION 20: FANTASY HIGH) VS LUIGI (MARIO) VS FERB FLETCHER (PHINEAS & FERB)
reblog to diminish the horrors from the person you reblogged from
Absolutely insane that the only modicum of sexual desire Riz ever expressed was for the sexy rat
Since it's coming up on the first anniversary of FH: Junior Year, I've been thinking about that hypothetical (probably unlikely) fourth season, and I really think it should be set during the Bad Kids' High School Reunion. Especially after MisMag 2, I feel like the storytelling opportunities just compound if the Intrepid Heroes had the space to let the Bad Kids' circumstances change more drastically than they would if they did a Senior Year or even a Homecoming.
Like, you could totally still have the first episode set in their Senior Year, and have it be on their Graduation Day. The Bad Kids could have all of their sweet, sentimental moments that you'd want to see (while also setting up the season's Big Bad, ala The Seven) and have the six of them (Fig crashes the Grad Party) take a group picture photo.
All of them are filled with so much hope and aspirations before hard cutting to ten years later and meet all of them in their late twenties (thirty for Fabian), and they are doing... not horribly, but we've seen what Spyre's like for teen adventurers. What's it like for a bunch of adults who used to or still do adventure??
How much have the Bad Kids grown? How much have they backslid into their old ways? How much do they keep in touch, and who are the ones who are still closest after high school?
How does Fig feel about getting older and maybe losing some of that teenage rebellion? How does Kristen deal with actually having a congregation that's counting on her? How often does Gorgug think about killing his new boss, Arthur Aguefort? How exhausted is Adaine in the midst of the Wizard equivalent of a Doctorate (and her mother still evading her and Aelwen)? How badly does Riz need this reunion because adventuring without his best friends just isn't the same? AND most importantly...
How many divorces is Fabian Aramais Seacaster on, and why is it two?
Also @dullgecko put me onto the Aasimar Riz AU series by @whatisamildopinion and I am going quietly insane over it so here please have some fanart for it and go read it it's fucking amazing
Battle of the Gingers Bracket C Round 3
Fiona (Shrek) vs Kristen Applebees (Dimension 20: Fantasy High)
First art of 2025 and it's me getting sappy as FUCK about Riz and Penny.
Been watching the campaign of the Seven Maidens while at my GF's place over New Years. The more I see Penny the more i just want to see her and Riz interacting, because so much about his worry over her makes perfect sense once i see her fleshed out character.
You KNOW that boy was absorbing her personality, these little anxiety rogues are good friends and I like to think she says he's not allowed to grow any bigger because she always wants to be able to pick him up and swing him around (And she's one of the very few people he likes to picked up and swung around by).
Extremely good sappy energy, your honour i love them.
You get clean line and underlined version cause @dullgecko liked the coloured underlines
I love a good class swap au and because they have been on my mind and won’t get off it recently here is some of my favourite class swaps and how they change the bad kids early story’s.
Artificer Gorgug - he got his rage under control much earlier in life meaning he wasn’t as scared to break things smaller than him. This lead him to watching and helping his parents a lot more with there tinkering. When it came time to join Aguefort he did not feel forced into being a barbarian due to his rage and became an artificer.
Paladin Kristen - not much change her except she’s not the chosen of Helio (probably still favoured by him but not the chosen one) which means that so much less pressure is put on her. I also think that she would start questioning her faith sooner not having the entire church’s focus on her.
Monk Adaine - her anxiety issues where a lot worse in this version (sorry Adaine I don’t see a way in you changing from wizard without bad things happening) so bad that she couldn’t even cast spells. Not surprisingly her parents are not happy and force her to mediate and trance most of her time. Eventually she manages small arcane workings through intense focus (Ki). After failing to get into hudol even worse than in canno she joins Aguefort as a monk.
Rouge Fabain - his training was just one more thing put onto Cathilda’s job list. She takes his training seriously, training him how to fight like a pirate causing him to become a rouge (with the swashbuckler subclass later)
Sorcerer riz - one simple change here, being born with the shadow cat in his system causes some of her magic to be infused into him. Shadow sorcerer Riz is just as sneaky as rouge Riz if not more as most of his spell are focused on infiltration and support (misty step and invisibility are his main two)
Ranger Fig - after her tiefling nature shows itself her parents don’t have a massive fight and somehow resolve it peacefully (Sandra-Lynn had told Gilear fig might not be his way earlier in Figs life). this causes her family to be a lot more stable and results in Fig asking there mum to train her rather than locking herself in a room with her guitar.
Ooo i love these.
fabian deserves to kill his mom too. as a lil treat
If fantasy high goblins also originated in the feywilds, then lived primarily in the mountains of chaos and then started coming to solace, given that Sklonda seems to be a second generation immigrant (when asked says she's from bastion city, likely born and raised there) and Pok (I believe) is a first generation immigrant (might be misrememberin), chances are there is very little left of fey related cultural knowledge by that point, or maybe it's just disconnected from its original source (for example giving out full, true names is a big no-no, but it's considered a cultural/manners thing, without the immediate fey connection). The magic, while diluted over generations, does carry on and with it certain beliefs and behaviours (being careful around promises and gifts)
What I'm saying is, Riz, having little to no reason to pay attention to other people's contracts, might not be aware that contracts are not in fact all magically binding. Him or his mother being involved in one just makes them so and that's all he knows until idk Gilear gets scammed again by someone breaking a contract or something like that idk
best friends forever
The Bad Kids in a The Good Place AU would go crazy. I have no idea why all of them get sent to the bad place but it would be great
Thinking so deeply about Evan basically going "i wanted to live in a magical treehouse with the three of you forever" and the way it made me feel the exact same way as I did when I heard the "everyone will find someone that matters more to them than you" quote out of context from Fantasy High (i still havent even seen it i really need to). It speaks so deeply to me as an aroace person in a way that i cant fully explain. I'm never going to have a family in the way that is expected, and to me it feels so incredibly likely that everyone I know and love will have someone else to go back to, some other better, realer, relationships to fulfill. Having those childish dreams in your highschool years where you're so sure that all of your friends are going to be by your side forever, and that they're always going to be the same people with the same interests (like how Evan placed them all into neat distinct categories of sports and shadows and sparkles and pink) because you're so scared that everything is changing and before you know its going to be gone. And you know that once that's gone for you, you might never find anything like it again, because you're fundamentally different, maybe even fundamentally broken, and maybe that's okay because your friends deserve something you can't really give them.
Hey, the ACLU is getting people to send letters to your Reps to have Congress pass the No Kings Act.
This act would make constitutional amendments to ensure that even sitting presidents are held liable for their actions. That NOBODY is above the law.
Their goal is 150k messages sent and at the time of writing this they're about 2.1k off from that goal!
ACLU gives you a prefilled message that you can edit to send to make the process easier, and will send it out for you.
This only takes a few minutes!
IT'S DONE, its finished.
for my followers in the states—please vote. “boycotting” an election is not a viable strategy to enact any meaningful change besides clearing the way for some truly horrific people to get into positions of power. we know how bad it got last time. now imagine the sheer damage that could be done now with a precedent.
Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.
It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.
To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.
This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.
Join me below, if you would.
2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.
Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.
It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.
But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.
The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.
“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”
“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”
We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.
"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?
The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.
We had slightly miscalculated.
Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.
“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”
“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”
“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”
“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”
And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.
00000
We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.
It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.
At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.
Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.
So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.
“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.
“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.
Monday is the last day to do this, after all.
00000
So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.
The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.
“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”
So.
Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?
Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.
It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).
Then it starts to rain.
We had not dressed for rain.
00000
Here is how the next six hours go.
We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.
Everyone is so happy.
Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.
People online start making delivery orders.
Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.
A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.
The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.
A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.
Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.
00000
We have Line Neighbors.
Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.
The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.
Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”
“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”
“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”
My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.
“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.
“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”
We stay in line.
It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.
The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.
We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.
It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.
They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.
We still have a -long- way to go.
00000
They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.
It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”
We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.
We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.
I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.
The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.
Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.
The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.
A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“
The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”
We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.
If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.
That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.
There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.
We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)
I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.
There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.
Then we're married.
Then we get in line to get our license.
It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.
Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.
We make it to the marriage records office.
I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.
It's almost 3PM.
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There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.
We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.
I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”
He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.
Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.
We get back to our car and climb in.
It’s 4:30 and we are starving.
There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.
We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.
We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.
The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.
My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”
00000
It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”
But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.
It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.
I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.
We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.
Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.
It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.
Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"
And that was that.
00000
When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.
I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.
I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.
I never thought I’d live in this world.
And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.
I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.
The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.
And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.
but on the real though, here is your guide to assyrian rice preparation from your friendly neighborhood assyrian:
start wanting rice. (or, if you are traditional, simply recognize your constant desire for rice.)
measure out two cups of rice. then one more. then two more. then another. this seems fine. you love rice. there is no way that this will backfire on you.
remember that your great-great-uncle’s recipe says it should be soaked overnight.
become consumed with despair.
decide to soak it for half an hour instead, acknowledging that the final product will be inferior and anger your ancestors but will still satisfy your now almost-overwhelming need for rice to be inside your body much faster.
remember that you should have set the water to boil when you soaked the rice. goddammit.
once the water boils, put the rice in until it is half-cooked. the eyeballing or intuitive method is less effective than a timer but that’s how your aunt does it so you feel compelled to meet her standards.
now that the rice has fluffed up, realize how much rice six dry cups really is. holy shit. you’ve fucked up immeasurably.
take a minute to dwell upon your failings.
grease a baking dish with butter. this will never be as elegant as you want it to and your fingers will get greasy, but the slightly shameful, self-indulgent joy of licking your fingers afterwards will make up for it.
pour the rice into the dish. wonder immediately if you actually buttered the dish beforehand and if you’ve just fucked up.
melt approximately one thousand pounds of butter in the microwave and pour it over the rice, pondering your imminent death from rapid-onset arterial clogging. put a small pat of butter on the top to properly gild the lily.
put your pan into the oven, which you have absolutely preheated after your previous lack of foresight. shake the rice once or twice while it bakes to make sure the butter is well distributed. resist the impulse to climb into the oven with the rice. for the last ten minutes, sit next to the oven and count the seconds until it’s done.
remove the dish from the oven. shed a tear or two at the perfection laid before you. if you are dining with others, this is the time to serve the rice while making passive-aggressive statements about how oh no, you don’t need any help, you just made dinner all by yourself, you can serve everyone as well. (this is still fun if done alone, but optional.)
CONSUME THE RICE.
realize that you have eaten half of the dish in one sitting. no matter how much rice you made, this will always happen.
put the leftovers away, if there are any, and enjoy a cup of chai while marveling at the amount of food you have just eaten. if possible, fall asleep in an armchair, sitting up, head tilted slightly back, like a grandpa.
for the rest of the evening, think fondly of how much rice you have in the fridge now and how many meals it will supplement, refusing to acknowledge that you will almost certainly eat the rest of it in a few hours for a midnight meal.
Lol it’s all ‘we should center the voices of the victims of Imperial core’ till people here realize that this has to be a sustained effort that would need the same energy from beginning to end, no matter how many days, months or years go by. Really crazy that just when so many Gazans are on the site trying to reach out to us, Palestine seems to be falling out of relevance because the coverage of protests in the imperial core has begun to die down
Can we boost this one until it reaches the Oklahoma City Tumblrites? This seems like something this website could rally and solve. Help save all this genetic information? I messaged them to offer to consult with the entymology lab near mine to see if they could store the bugs with us, but they are VERY far away and would have to drive long distance to us.
Watch me get progressively lazier with the backgrounds on this one 🙈
Read “How to be a Dragon” on Webtoon!
girl who loves her friends so much but is so bad and awful at messaging them back for some reason even though she really really wants to talk to them
i like him