#long post /////

[fishfingersandscarves]

they've never had sex

[cosmique-oddity]

Phew, my last weeks of work are now complete >:)

I loved Dratchet and Ratchlock since the very beginning of my attachment towards Transformers, first TFP Ratchet…..but yeah….two of my favorites character….plus Keferon’s Mech AU…..I had to make my own thing about it.

A story….no…an illustration ! I couldn’t choose. So I did both :}

—————————————————

That was not the first time Ratchet came back to his private lab angry, but this time, yelling at his superiors, and at the system, and basically at evverything that could be yelled at except the pilotd while leaving the manufacture, was certainly the last. He quit. That was enough,

you don’t win a war with feelings they said

well yes,

exactly,

but you win a war with soldier, and frying their mind before they have their first fight because you want them to be more perfectionned ? That was a little counter productive.

So he gave up. They are on their own now.

The lightly humming of his car was barely enough to keep him awake, it have been a long time since he last returned home, usually, he stayed at his work place, to have more time to sleep, but then, he was sleeping even less. An endless vicious circle, things were often like that.

But all of that was over for him.

He granted these young greenhorn with his experience, and what did they do ? Ignored his advices. Sending pilots to death. So now, he had himself out of the infernal machinery. This mindless waste of human life, even where this is what they tried to save was absurd.

In the middle of his quiet and late ride, he heard a noise. Rumbling, was it the engine ? As he stopped the car backroad to check, the noise wasnt stopping. Came from the sky, military patrol ? He raised his two tired eyes on the sky and saw a shining rail approaching his forest, falling fast. Not quintesson shaped, and with the gaze of an experimented biomechanist, Ratchet identified a mech.

At this moment, its violently crashed on the ground, behind the trees at maybe three or four miles away. No matter how hard he argued with the scientist sooner this day or how bad he wanted to say fuck to all of this death industry who killed young soldiers, he could do something for the one trapped inside the mech....maybe.... the man regained his car as fast as possible and urgently headed for the crash area.

Deafened sound of tires on the damaged road. Ratchet was already projecting, mentally stocktaking the tools he took with him, and lucky enough for the poor pilot, he quit with almost all of his material, and even if it was mainly mechs repairing material, he also bought some instruments which were used for the subtle neuromedicine between human and mech. Could adapt some of it and stabilize the pilot....then he may have the time to go home and grab proper materials. If there was life there was hope.

" bold of him to crash himself just the day i insulted all of his hierachy".

He frowned. Almost there.

The trees nearby were crushed and uprooted. A flickering pink light catched his gaze.

Almost immediately, the Ratchet analyzed the mech. It was different. He didnt know in wich country it was made but that almost looks alien. The curves and shapes, busted and burned on several places were demonstrating an incredible display of genius ingeniery he could just admiring. But time was not for being amazed on plating.

Someone was trapped there.

He stopped and parked his car in front of a fallen tree, rushing to the car's trunk, taking few indispensable objets, including some of them to help a safe disconnection between pilot/mech. In case he wasnt out already. And a crowbar, the cockpit might be stuck, seeing all the damages the mech has taken...

The sound of slightly wet grass under his feet was covered by a frenetic noise of aeration. Ratchet listened to it, while cautiously approaching the unknown mech. It almost sounded like a breath, but was certainly a depressurisation issue. The mech had fallen from so high on the sky....

The damaged plating were hot, probably from atmosphere friction. He raised his crowbar and his eyes followed the curves of the chestplates, searching for a familiar shape, that could lead him to the injured pilot inside. His gaze stopped on a deep wound, that might have cut through the cockpit.

The engineer stepped on the hot metal, his thick boots preventing him from feeling the heat, and he started searching for a hint....anything that could be a mechanism, anything that could open this damn mech !

Ratchet considered the damaged chest plate he noticed earlier. The surroundings of the wound were leaking bright pink, a very unusual color for fuel. Another of these definitively strange things about the mech. Again....not the time for that. Maybe if he could widen the gap, then he would be able to have an idea of what was going on under this armor.

He tapped the plate, -it was starting to cool down- with one of his finger. It was a very little tap, but the whole mech startled. A hiss of pain, recognisible easily by an emerite engineer-but-i-fix-people-too, it had come from the head of the mecha. Was this modele controlled from the head, like Vortex ? But Vortex was insanely huge for a mech, way taller than this one. He moved careful, noticing the shaking of his support.

"You hear me, kid ? Its going to be ok. You crashed in a safe area.".

He spoke in his medic tone, wich mean, of course brusque, serious, but also reassuring and calm.

He mumbled about the mech's features and tiny words of comfort while reaching for the head.

A red light, not regular and rather epileptic was coming from the head, and while he was almost there, on all four of his limb to keep balance, Ratchet saw it.

A spectacularly humanoid face, with sculpted nose and lips was tensed in a painful expression, frowning, but the thing who trapped his gaze was the two optics....

....staring back at him.

Mechs dont stare. Their eyes are glowing, oftenly to mimick human face, after all, human are pretty prideful creature, no point in piloting big ass metal titan if no one could tell these where their creation.

What human couldnt mimick with technologie, on the other hand, was the subtle expression between trying to evualuate a threat, his own injuries, and looking rather on the verge of death but also ready to tear any enemy's limb appart with its teeth.

With just one....very long....look at the other's eye, Ratchet was suddenly understanding what was going on.

Well....probably not but he knew what he had to save.

The pilot, the pilot he had to save.

The mech was the pilot.

He was the one he had to save.

He stopped trying to -certainly- open his chest. If it wasnt good for human it probably wasnt for living technology.

The giant technological humanoid seemed in a high distress, exhaling a lot of air from his vents, his eye still intensely staring at him and the engineer doubted his usual technique -including trying to make himself as small as possible- would work.

"Its going to be okay Kid. I can help you. There is nothing here that want to harm you".

He did his best to convey all of these emotions with his facial expression and gaze, still firmly watching back at him.

"the world better wait till im home and officially retired before killing me".

The mech's gaze -damn it was so more living than ANY human made machinery- seemed to soften a bit but still radiated with suspicion.

Deadlock had been in several bad situations. It happened quite a lot when a specie of giant aliens with tendrils tried to invade your homeland, and he was ready to it.

Trained to kill, and to do it efficiently.

And he was *good* at it.

This time was just another of these ‘i went too far in my excitation’ moments, and he has crashed on a random planet he hoped was not inhabited. He landed hard, and pieces of his ship must’ve been thrown near his location.

And now, now there was an organic like no one he ever saw, and the organic was on his *lap* and he had the kindest warmest eyes he ever saw.

And these eyes were directly looking at his own eyes, and the well named ‘Deadlock’ was starting to wonder if he finally had reunited with the Allspark. His pained and tenseful grin faded a little and he tried to move his head forward, searching a better point of view to watch the singularity in front of him.

Ow.

Moving hurt.

Some sound came out of the organic’s mouth, probably a language. He didn’t had the proper tools to decode it but the tone of the language was extremely….comforting ? Soft ?

This was scary.

He wasn’t used to be welcomed like that after a fight.

Usually it was either another fight, either the yelling of a superior, either nothing at all. But this actual living being was carefully examinating his chestplates, and he recognized the gestual of someone who was used to heal. A medic perhaps ?

He tried to move something, maybe a hand, to reach for the pale organic, to be sure he was real, but his body was rather uncooperative, from what he could say, one of his legs was missing, and a lot of wound were releasing energon on the ground he couldn’t saw.

The high probabilities of bleeding out and crash was an issue.

He let his head hang, too tired to watch for every moves of the organic, and barely aware of his environment.

There must be a big problem somewhere….

He confusely thought, while watching the stars.

Must be a bigger injury I haven’t saw……..

Ratchet saw the bright light coming from the alien’s eyes slowly fading, and cold swear ran through his back. Yet, he could still say the soldier was alive, the lights of his body were shining, not a lot, but it was enough. He looked at his first aid kit with disappointment. That wouldn’t be very efficient since the form of life he was trying to preserve wasn’t a tiny human. The nearest thing he could compare the Mech to was….well their own mechs, or eventually….Quintesson. An horrible mess of organic and technology. It was partially thanks to their weird constitution that Ratchet had been able to make sense with the ‘he is alive’ thought.

At this moment and with this material, he couldn’t help the kid, and didn’t possess enough knowledge to tell if he was even dying or not.

He had already an idea of what to do….to fix him, at least trying to, but it involved several objects he hadn’t right now. Leaving to search for these so called objects was risking to let an injured alone, he couldn’t take that risk. He was trapped with the mech, and had to hurry and find something. He stood and reached for more adapted material in his car, trying to find something…. Anything.

Surprisingly, the most useful artifact he came across was his electric screwdriver and a bunch of screw along with a long metallic cabke. A parallel between human stitch, with sewing threads and the material he had with him right now. He could manage something between human fixing and mech repairing, that was what the ‘bio’ in bioengineer stood for.

The kid would be ok. He would live and tell Ratchet why he fell from the sky, and maybe if he saw his friend Jazz….out there…….

.

.

—————————————————

:)) @keferon

(I swear I’m not insane, your AU is just kinda giving me infinite drawing stamina lmao)

[rokonrrc2]

Learn More

first vs last appearances

[hydrattan]

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

[climbingthefloors]

obsessed with this baby hippo from thailand's khao khew zoo.. she has been so utterly betrayed by the world

[whiteshipnightjar]

Zoozve, my beloved

[crunchynoodle]

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.

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.

00000

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.

[valdotpng]

an accomplice turned victim his apology, long overdue

[nondivisable]

I need to say something and I need y'all to be calm

if it isn't actively bad or harmful, no representation should be called "too simple" or "too surface level"

I have a whole argument for this about the barbie movie but today I wanna talk about a show called "the babysitters club" on Netflix

(obligatory disclaimer that I watched only two episodes of this show so if it's super problematic I'm sorry) (yes. I know it's based on a book, this is about the show)

this is a silly 8+ show that my 9 year old sister is watching and it manages to tackle so many complex topics in such an easy way. basic premise is these 13 year old girls have a babysitting agency.

in one episode, a girl babysits this transfem kid. the approach is super simple, with the kid saying stuff like "oh no, those are my old boy clothes, these are my girl clothes". they have to go to the doctor and everyone is calling the kid by her dead name and using he/him and this 13 year old snaps at like a group of doctors and they all listen to her. it's pure fantasy and any person versed in trans theory would point out a bunch of mistakes.

but after watching this episode, my little sister started switching to my name instead of my dead name and intercalating he/him pronouns when talking about me.

one of the 13 years old is a diabetic and sometimes her whole personality is taken over by that. but she has this episode where she pushes herself to her limit and passes out and talks about being in a coma for a while because of not recognizing the limits of her disability.

and this allowed my 9 year old sister to understand me better when I say "I really want to play with you but right now my body physically can't do that" (I'm disabled). she has even asked me why I'm pushing myself, why I'm not using my crutches when I complain about pain.

my mom is 50 years old and watching this show with my sister. she said the episode about the diabetic girl helped her understand me and my disability better. she grew up disabled as well, but she was taught to shut up and power through.

yes, silly simple representation can annoy you if you've read thousands of pages about queer liberation or disability radical thought, but sometimes things are not for you.

[thankstothe]

folk hero really

[firstk1ndred]

@entities-of-posts the vast?

they removed posting from tumblr. now there's only scrolling down through the vast blank expanse. great

[artsymeeshee]

Haven’t collabed with @renconner in a long while for a mini comic (minus our big one, Instinct). We were talking about one of Stan’s lowest moments involving being outside with that damn sign, so we decided to make a comic with Stan remembering it. I’ve also kinda of assumed Filbrick would lie to Ford about what’s going on with Stan (Stan probably did too to some extent).

[sirfrogsworth]

The short answer is... a tilt-shift lens.

The slightly more complicated answer is... Mister Rogers.

Depth of field is the area in front and behind your chosen focus point that remains in focus and then slowly gets blurry as you get farther away.

Shallow depth of field only has a narrow slice of the image in focus and gets blurry super quick. This is caused by a large lens aperture and being close to the subject.

Deep depth of field can extend through the entire picture if your aperture is small and you are super far away.

Usually the depth of field lines up with the image sensor of your camera. So if it is tilted forward, the plane of focus matches.

The stuff outside the green area would be blurry. The edges of the green would be slightly blurry. And the dashed green line would be the sharpest area of the photo.

But the tilt-shift lens allows you to create chaos with your plane of focus. In most cases, you would use this to flatten the depth of field so you can get a 2D plane entirely in focus.

If you were to use a normal lens, the bottom left and top right would be blurry.

But with a tilt-shift lens you can do this.

The green area is taking a little nap on the floor.

However, there is an unintended side effect created by this lens. (The "Scheimpflug intersection" if you want to go down the rabbit hole.) You can choose absolutely wacky planes of focus that create a very narrow depth of field over a geographically large area.

Believe it or not, this is when psychology comes into play.

And possibly Mister Rogers.

Our only reference for such a large area having a shallow depth of field is our memories of miniatures on TV. So Mister Rogers and Thomas the Tank Engine trained our brains to see this effect as... small.

Depth of field shrinks the closer you are to something. And when filming miniatures, you are placing the lens close to the scene. But the scene represents something big in our minds. We buy the effect, but not 100%. That blurriness wouldn't be there at a regular scale. So our subconscious remembers we are watching small things pretending to be big. It just files that away in the back of our mind.

And then when we see something like this...

Our brain is all, "Look at all that tiny shit!"

Without Mister Rogers, our brains may have never made these connections and tilt-shift photography may just make us wonder why everything is all blurry. That connection to past experience is vital for this effect to be convincing.

Brains are neat.

[sayruq]

Some quotes:

[nuttersincorporated]

Some of you have only watched The Muppet Christmas Carol, not read the original story and it shows. I LOVE The Muppet Christmas Carol! It is be far the best movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol but the original story is still superior.

Listen, you can’t compare Scrooge to modern CEOs. He was ALWAYS better than them, even at the start of the story where he’s a jerk. No, Scrooge did not need to see people happy at his death before he was willing to change.

Seriously, the story is public domain and not that long. There are free versions online to read and/or listen to.

The original story does a better job of showing how Scrooge became the man he was and how the Ghosts helped him change for the better.

In the book, young Scrooge was basically abandoned at school by his father, who was a cruel man. He was the only child left at school over Christmas, so never had the chance to celebrate it. He read fairy tales and dreamed of mythical characters.

When old Scrooge saw his younger self alone at Christmas, he thought about a boy who’d been carolling at his door earlier. He wished he’d been kinder to that child.

One year, his younger sister Fran (the one family member who ever truly loved and who he loved) came to pick him up. She said their father had changed for the better and he could come home. His younger self was overjoyed.

Scrooge used to love the Fezziwig Christmas Party. The Ghost of Christmas Past pointed out that it wasn’t a very expensive party but Scrooge said that wasn’t the point. It was kind and fun and… oh, suddenly he wished he could have a word with his own employee.

Scrooge used to love Bell but became more and more money focused so she left him.

When the Ghost of Christmas Present came along. Scrooge learned how wonderful Christmas could be. He saw people being kind, even though they gained nothing from it. He saw people in need and realised he had the power to help them. He had his own cruel words thrown back at him and realised how horrible they were.

When they went to Fred’s Christmas party, Scrooge had a wonderful time. He didn’t even take officen when – in the guessing game – Fred referred to him as an ‘unwanted animal’. He could tell it was all in fun and that Fred was serious when he said he really wished Scrooge would accept his invitation one of these days.

By the time the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come came along, Scrooge had already decided to become a better person.

Scrooge didn’t immediately make the connection between himself and the dead man everyone hated because he assumed that his future self was off somewhere else doing good deeds. He kept looking around for his future self, to see what good he was doing. It was only at the graveyard he realised this was what his future would have been if hadn’t already made the decision to change.

TL;DR the last ghost might be needed for modern CEOs. However, I doubt all three together would make a difference because they are worse than Scrooge. Also, while the last ghost reenforced things, Scrooge had already seen the error of his ways and decided to change.