#most i've written like ever man

[captain-evil-bastard]

honestly i don't think mileven is endgame at all. like little to no chance. byler though is either gonna be open ended, hinted, or explicitly shown and i'm 100% sure of that, although i REALLY think the focus of s5 will be them mending their platonic relationship further. i think so there's less backlash they'll attempt to let general audiences see how they work as a pair EQUALLY unlike mileven, as well as showing that they work together on more levels than instantly getting into a relationship (ik they've been friends for years but the duffers have to make up for how mike was to will in a good chunk of s3-4).

overall i think the ACTUAL chances of the 'byler kiss' are pretty slim, but i'm not opposed to being proved wrong. we have to remember that this show has a shit ton of characters despite the focus on will this season and that they ALL need to have some loose ends tied up still as well (praying on that hopper and el duo and dustin angst arc loll)

i don't think many people will actually be upset by the implication of byler in the show aside from hardcore mileven shippers (nobody really had heavy backlash for will crushing on mike so...). i can tell you that most fans are ship neutral, if not against mileven because of their related breakups.

so overall? byler will be canon one way or another, but realistically it's not gonna be super-duper lovey dovey (considering mike is still theoretically deep in the closet). and honestly? that's still really satisfying for a mainstream show to have a significant, well built-up queer arc.

ALSO while i consider myself to be relatively objective and logical i could be wrong. argue with me! tag this when s5 rolls around and it's revealed that will is actually vecnas son and mike was a mass hallucination from stranger things fans!

[seventh-district]

again and again i find myself lamenting that audio roleplay isn't taken more seriously by some people. like yeah, they often have a romantic element, and by nature they usually directly involve/address the listener- and i totally get that those things aren't to everyone's taste. no art or entertainment is universally appealing, and that's okay! but.. it still makes me a lil sad that the "cringe" reputation of asmr/audio rp precedes it. there's a whole lot of talent and creativity being poured into these audios by so many people that i feel goes unrecognized and/or disrespected simply due to the medium that the stories are being told through.

[memento-morri-writes]

writing share - body horror edition

So, the lovely, amazing @space-writes expressed interest in reading my fucked-up body horror that I wrote last night/early this morning, and who am I to deny a friend? So, here you go:

A brief bit of context: Just under two days ago, Sigmar, Rook's beloved mentor and kinda-sorta father figure, ended up being revealed as a corpse being puppeted by the BBEG, Dr. Purity. The rest of the party brutally killed him while Rook watched. (Via tooth and claw, and also a sonic shockwave from a magic guitar.) And just today, Warren, the party gunslinger, a werewolf and Rook's other kinda-sorta father figure, died (like perma-forever, never-coming-back died) in order to save Rook's life. (Or rather, in order to resurrect Rook, since he was dead at the time.) Now Rook is extremely sleep-deprived and also being affected by mind-altering parasites, two factors that are working together to give him some pretty vivid and fucked-up hallucinations.

(fair warning, this isn't written out fully to the best of my abilities because this scene hasn't happened yet. So this is just my description of what Rook will be seeing and hearing, not a full prose write-up with his internal thoughts and all that. I will almost certainly do that after next week's session, though, so let me know if you want to see that then.)

major tw for extreme body horror under the cut (also emotional manipulation/guilt-tripping)

Rook hears a strange sound, like clumsy, disjointed footsteps. He looks around wildly for the source of the sound and freezes. Out of the hallway we have just come from looms a horrible sight: Sigmar's corpse is lurching towards him, somehow propelling itself on shattered limbs. All of his joints are dislocated, giving his body a freakishly elongated appearance. His shredded clothes are soaked with blood, and every inch of his skin is covered in hundreds of claw and tooth marks, which are weeping blood. Black ichor drips from his mouth, and a web of dark black veins branch out across his face. Every inch he moves closer leaves a trail of blood behind him. He reaches out towards Rook with jagged, broken fingers, and says "Rook... your friends killed me. Slaughtered me like an animal." He takes another staggering step towards Rook, who backs away, shaking. "You promised to help me. You said you trusted me." He points an accusing finger at Rook. "I should never have come to you. I should have burned down Warren's house with you still inside. It's what the two of your deserve." As if on cue, another shape lurches out of the shadows of a hallway across the way. It's Warren. His chest has been blown open, his ribs pointing in every direction and the remains of his guts are dripping from the hole where his stomach used to be. Every inch of him is splattered in gore. He's missing one of his hands, the arm ending in a jagged point of bone instead. He opens his mouth to speak, revealing a mouth of pointed canine teeth. "Rook, you stupid bastard. I died for you. You." He bares his teeth and snarls at Rook, an animalistic sound that rattles him to his core. "We should have left you to rot in that fungi-infested hallway. You brought him to us," he glares pointedly at Sigmar. "You're the reason those two attacked us, attacked Cherry. You're the reason I'm dead. The reason Cherry won't ever have a father." Sigmar steps closer, looking Rook up and down. "Speaking of fathers, yours was right. You are a useless piece of shit." He spits in Rook's direction, then takes another step closer. Across the room, Warren moves to match him. "Traitor." "Liar," Sigmar adds as the two stalk closer. They're so close now, Rook can smell the scent of Warren's burnt flesh, of Sigmar's spilled blood. They're right in front of him now. He tries to shrink away, further into the corner, but to no avail. His limbs refuse to obey, and he stays frozen in place.

[drawnecromancy]

Sometimes a silly bird disguised as a human sits on a dragon's hoard of gold and tries to seduce him.

Community label for it being vaguely suggestive I guess.

Art taglist : @jezifster @isabellebissonrouthier (feel free to ask to be added to the list!)

[the-haunted-office]

( @5mind - Continued from here!)

Doom is pretty pleased with the way her risque get-up turned out, if she might say so herself. It's certainly not what she's used to wearing - it's... more than a bit tight in certain areas - but hey, if it gets the desired results, then it'll be more than worth it.

It doesn't seem to be getting the desired results yet, and that's a bit disappointing. Not as disappointing as this nasty-ass carrot she's standing here gnawing on, but disappointing nonetheless. She'd forgotten how bitter raw carrots can be - in her opinion, at least - but that can be easily remedied, and perhaps she can also use that to her advantage to try to get more of a reaction out of Blue, since her reaction seems to be a little... flaccid so far.

She doesn't hear any whirring fans, at any rate.

Smirking, Doom pushes off from the wall she was leaning against and spawns in a bowl full of ranch dressing and slowly... dips the carrot into it... swirls it around a few times... brings it to her lips... licks it a little bit... then takes a bite out of it.

Snap, cronch.

Smiles.

"Nope, no convention. It's hot as fuck outside, haven't you noticed? I mean," she pauses to swallow, making it as noticeable as possible. Then does the whole routine with dipping the carrot and biting it all over again, "that suit was really hot."

This bunny outfit is hot too, but that is beside the point.

She continues casually. "Besides, if I'm gonna be out here fighting crime with you, it's high time i got my own strapping outfit, right? I was thinking of Black Rabbit of Death. What do you think, eh? Too much? Or should I get rid of something?"

And then she goes in for more of that carrot and ranch dressing.

Snap, cronch.

Grins.

[000marie198]

I find it interesting how the short movies such as GotNF, Book of Dragon, Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon and Dawn of the Dragon Racers all perfectly adjust in with the cartoon series and keep the characterizations accordingly intact as if they are part of this ongoing continuity but the main movies later on don't do the same. I mean, the 2nd one does but not THW. It doesn't line up with anything that happened in the series, not the events, not the themes or characters or character developments or characters' experience etc. With the second movie, not including those side characters didn't make much of a difference because whatever was going on and the plot and action and storyline didn't go towards that, it wasn't necessary and the movie was great either way. It didn't even ruin the characterizations of side characters that much even with what they were doing.

But THW just... (What was the word? Can't remember) removed everything that happened in rob/dob and RTTE and it didn't make sense with the storyline. Like, what happened to the rest of the vast archipelago? The edge? The VARIOUS habitats of VARIOUS species, so many allies, so many islands, so many characters, so many gained experiences after dealing with villains far more dangerous and smarter than whoever that guy was I don't even remember the name of, what happened to that all of a sudden? It just makes zero sense and the plot was all over the place. No offense to THW fans but, there were just a few good things in the movie but a lot more nonsensical events and solutions which were absolutely ridiculous what with already established canon throughout the rest of the franchise

[shoechoe]

the fact that a large portion of Vento Aureo fans mostly just like la squadra is kinda weird to me. it's like we're looking at the same picture but we enjoy completely different things about it

[cartoon-skeleton]

a lot of my teachers this year have randomly complimented me on my writing even when the class largely has nothing to do with it and tbh??!??! it's really nice and it makes me want to write more?!?!?!!?!?!

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Break 🤝 Ebisu - waiting for years to die and then realizing when the time comes that they want to live...

anon i don't know who you are or what prompted you to send this, but....... yes, I suppose? but also Ow why did you have to make me think of this

[frnko-mars]

man ls dunes just keeps making posts about recording those two songs huh

[spring-lxcked]

btw i love that everybody ( including myself ) decided that william immediately sits on the edge of henry's desk nearest him the second he enters his office. man who legally must get in the way and demand attention.

[livvyofthelake]

utterly cannot stand the type of post thats like "what are the female characters you like" and i KNOW it's not the fault of the people who make those posts i know they only do it because 95% of this site's blorbos are men. but i hate it anyway. like really the only way you can get fandom people to talk about women is to explicitly tell them to talk about women. and it always comes off so disingenuous because i KNOW most people reblogging those posts would never say those characters on a generic "what are your favorite characters" post. like it's all just so bleak :/

[bonestrouslingbones]

suddenly realizing that for the reboot one of the things that i think i Have to hammer in a bit more is the concept of LV as like. just a straight up addiction

[keeps-ache]

oh brother. kinda sucks to have multiple creative interests and you can only do One but it's not the one you want to do at the moment </3

[jesterbabey]

This man is the most boring man alive. This man is the human embodiment of one single hiccup. This man looks like a default digital avatar. This man’s soul is beige. This man, spiritually, is carpeted stairs. This man nods to music on the least intuitive beats. This man has the same vibe as the part of a piece of lined paper that is to the left of the vertical line, where you don’t write and don’t use except for the holes to attach it to a binder. This man is a marshmallow, if a marshmallow tasted like nothing. This man was probably born wearing khakis. This man has a noncommittal buzzcut, because heaven forbid any element of his appearance allude to some kind of personality. This man talks all day long every single day and somehow, against all odds, manages to say absolutely nothing. This man is an unsalted saltine cracker. This man is like if you searched a city for the most boring square of sidewalk, and then picked the second-most boring one, because even being the least remarkable would be a distinct trait. If the eyes are windows to the soul, this man’s windows are placed directly in front of a beige painted-over-brick wall, rendering them pointless. This man will not shut up about people being in a robot state and not paying attention to their surroundings, which is the absolute dumbest, most basic thing to talk about. This man seems to be labouring under the delusion that one hundred words is sufficient for a full literary passage. Were the sky paper and all the sea ink, this man would write a dry ass usage manual for something entirely unnecessary. This man’s voice is so uninteresting that not even the sharpest detective alive could pick him out of a lineup. This man is the worst.

[therealbeachfox]

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.

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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.