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Okay back on my bullshit about episode 3x12.

The patient asks House, "has anything terrible ever happened to you?"

And House panics and sedates her when she says she's just trying to give him what he wants, a conversation that matters.

House goes to Wilson first and he's the only one who asks House, "has your life sucked?" Which is a completely different question than what his patient asked, but he at least asked instead of projecting. He gets to the heart of it, she wants House to be real, to tell the truth, and it scares House. Wilson wants him to tell the truth and overcome that fear and move beyond science, into the realm of emotions and feeling, a recurring theme in their relationship.

House goes to Cameron, "tell her your life has been good." House replies, "it hasn't been". "Tell her anyways, she wants hope, that what happened to her wasn't the norm, that things can be okay for her again." This is so inherent to who Cameron is, prioritizing false hope and comfort so people are buffered from reality for as long as possible. We see it in her patient this episode, the young woman she befriends who's going to die in an earlier season, her dead husband. Her life hasn't been bad, she's helped a lot of people, what's happened to her isn't normal, so at some point statistically things will get normal for her. She's fine (she's not), she'll be okay (she hopes).

House goes to Foreman, "tell her your life sucked." "It didn't." "Tell her anyway, she wants to know she's not alone, she wants to know she's going to survive this, that other people have been through this and worse and come out the other end. She wants to know she's going to heal. Act like you've healed." Again this is so indicative of Foreman's character. He's put up a lot of walls, and he's done whatever he's needed to and then some to get where he is today. Sometimes you've gotta lie to get ahead, it is what it is. He's self taught himself in order to get into college and med school, he's stolen people's articles, he's turned his back on his brother because if he turned his life around, why didn't his brother? It has to be inherent within himself. Sometimes things suck, but you pull yourself together and move on; if youre strong enough you can do this. People have gone through worse than him and come out the other side better than him. He's pretending this doesn't bother him. He does his best to pretend his feelings about this aren't complicated. He's fine (he's not), he's moved on (he hasn't).

House goes to Chase, "tell her...keep her asleep." Chase never got closure with his dad, never had a blow out argument about how shitty it was that his dad left him as a child in the care of his alcoholic mother. How damaging that was to him, and how it defined so much of his character. He now never will get the chance to talk with his dad, and his only option is to try to move on alone, truths unshed to the person he should have shared them with. Just...leave her asleep. He's fine, there's no other choice.

One truth, two lies, and an abstention as advice. There is no way for House to truly give a whole, complete, unbiased statement about the trauma he very much still has effects from so that this woman can extrapolate and apply it to her own life. As he tells Chase, there is a right answer, probably out there somewhere, but we just don't know what it is. House somehow wraps all of the advice he received into what he tells her. He initially tells most of the truth (Wilson), but he abstains from telling her it was his father (Chase). He admits that what happened to him, while it sucked, was not as bad as what he thinks happened to her - drawing from Foreman. He even tried giving her some hope if you squint - his parents never knew, and that's why they never stopped his grandmother. It's not like they're bad people (Cameron)! It's just so interesting to me how House decided to prioritize their advice into the answer he gave her but that's another post tbh.

Unlike his fellows House doesn't pretend to be okay, he's fundamentally not. He's not going to be okay, he can't pull himself together, he can't move on alone. His patient is the only one who doesn't let him slide, who doesn't take his lies, his deflections, his snide comments as an excuse to move on but continues to point blank ask him to be not okay with her. She doesn't want to be not okay alone, but then again neither does he. So he brings her to a jogging park where he watches people living a life he can no longer have so they can be not okay together - a jogging park that while both Wilson and Cuddy find him there, are willing to come to him in his solitude to be there for him, it's implied he's never mentioned it to them and he's never brought them there to share in his vulnerability.

Sometimes hope and healing looks like talking to a Dr. Stone in a hospital bed, and sometimes it looks like finding a person just as alone and sad as you, and him sharing a beautiful place he can no longer enjoy, where nobody is watching and there are no right or wrong answers because neither of you ask any questions.

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so maybe this was obvious to people with more media literacy than me but. house in the burning building is really house md's version of the reichenbach falls, right. right?

in the original canon, holmes fakes his death and goes on the run for three years, alone, because it's the only way that he can guarantee that he and watson will not be hunted down by moriarty's surviving agents. he deliberately chooses to keep watson out of the loop, deciding that it's in his best interests to believe that holmes is dead. by holmes's own account, the three years he spent apart from watson were quite enjoyable -- he travelled the world, and got to spend time on one of his favourite hobbies, chemistry research. the way he tells it, he barely misses him. the crucial thing is that this sequence of events happens relatively early on in the sherlock holmes canon. holmes is still young and closed off and unable to acknowledge the depth of his relationship with watson.

contrast this with house, whose reichenbach comes at the very, very end of the show. we hit the bottom of the eighth season with a character who has suffered misery and cruelty and addiction and is stuck in this cycle of depression because he's convinced that people don't change, that he can't change. when he did try to change, it worked, until it didn't, until someone he loved fell ill and his new coping mechanisms were not entrenched enough to prevent a relapse into the drug use that throughout the show has threatened to destroy his life and relationships.

then, he's confronted with his reichenbach. whilst holmes faced a physical battle with his nemesis, house fights a mental battle against his own worst enemy -- himself. the advantage that house has over holmes is that by this point he truly knows and understands the value of his relationship with wilson. they have had many long years together that holmes and watson could only dream of at this point. and so when house fakes his own death, it's not to save wilson, like in the holmes canon -- it's to save their relationship. to give the two of them, together, just that little bit more time.

there's something to be said here also about how water merely cleans whilst fire purifies and makes anew, but maybe that's a post for another time.

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2025 House MD Chase is a transgender woman. The whole team argues about whether or not it’s appropriate for House to perform her bottom surgery. Wilson is against it and Chase CLAIMS she’s against it but secretly she’s interpreting him doing it as approval from her dad boss for her transition. Taub doesn’t gaf, he’s just pushing Chase to get a boob job and leaving the cards of surgeons who will do that on her work area. 13 finds herself attracted to Chase now that she’s presenting fem and has a whole crisis where she sleeps with 12 blonde women in one week. Wilson and Chase make a bingo card of transmisogynistic jokes and tells House if he doesn’t get a bingo by the end of the week he can do the bottom surgery. He gets 3 bingos but all the jokes are about Cuddy so he argues it shouldn’t count.

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THE GLORIA SCOTT - now all in one place ! once again thank you to candy and also owl for yelling at me 💛

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Ok, so I need to rant about Oogappels. Its a dutch drama tv series that follows multiple families with teenage children that to me, is the show that most accurately depicts a ton of different family dynamics. I am currently watching it with my family, we are on season 6 and there was a scene that made my father who I have never seen cry at any tv show or movie shed actual tears. It is an amazing show and also has good casual queer representation.

I am not sure whether it is available anywhere with english subtitles but I would love for it to gain some more international recognition because I want to obsess over it online. I need more than just the two fanfics that are currently on ao3

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james wilson is so autistic to me. like look at this bit:

like what do you mean you follow a social contract, wilson. wdym you spend all your time ruthlessly analysing/scripting people's potential responses and reactions beforehand. wdym your entire life is a compromise to social expectations and arbitrary rules. wdym that you can't even pick furniture that you like because you are so far-removed from yourself that you don't fucking know what you like. wdym that house is the only person you can unmask with, wilson. wilson, tell me, what do you mean.

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modern-day house m.d. episode where the patient is transmasc and on T, and after house reads his file he goes in and is reading off prescriptions like "estradiol cream, finasteride, prescription face wash, prescription deodorant... god, it's like you don't even want to be a man!" and the patient says "just because i wanna be a man doesn't mean i have to suffer all the shitty side effects" and house goes "it's all shitty side effects! being a man sucks!" before tossing the file down on the little tray table thing and leaving.

chase and cameron exchange A Look in the room and then while they're walking down the hall cameron's like "we should talk to him about it - maybe he'd be... happier? if he transitioned?" and chase rolls his eyes and is like "just because he thinks being a man sucks doesn't mean he's trans, every guy hates being a man at least some of the time" and then cameron gives him Another, Slightly Alarmed Look

we cut to house and wilson and wilson's looking at him like he's insane, going "so you... told the patient that being a man sucks?" and house laughs and says "sure did! i wanna know which will take longer - cameron coming to me concerned about my gender, or chase realizing he should be concerned about his gender. her gender? eh, probably easier to just stick with 'his' for now." wilson accuses him of being a sociopath and house looks fake-wounded and says "you know, if i am a sociopath, you're being ableist by attributing my cruel actions to my sociopathy, and if i'm not a sociopath then it's even worse that you're accusing me of being one just because i'm mean."

cuddy approaches house later and tells him that she heard about what he told the patient, and she is required both to make him take sensitivity training and also to provide him resources on transitioning if he wants to pursue that. house asks if him being a woman would make cuddy bisexual, and she raises and eyebrow and says "that ship sailed long ago" and doesn't elaborate on whether she means she isn't into house anymore so it doesn't matter or that she already is bi. house starts cyberstalking her to try to figure out if she slept with any of the women she's friends with on facebook. the team comes in to tell him about a new symptom and he shows them a photo of cuddy from college with a hot girl at a halloween party and is like "do you think they ever fucked? i think they fucked. even if they didn't, i'm gonna imagine they did." foreman tries to get them back on track but chase leans in to get a better look at the photo and it turns out to be wilson in a costume. there's an awkward beat of silence before cameron goes "SO, back to the patient!" and house makes a sort of dismissive "huh? oh, yeah, go test him for [whatever]" while staring intently at the photo.

he confronts wilson about the photo, wilson admits it's him, house starts by going "oh, yeah, but i'm the one having a gender crisis" but accidentally says "sexuality crisis" instead and wilson is like "house do you... do you think i'm hot in that photo?" and then we cut to chase asking cameron if she thinks he could pull off an outfit like that and they discuss it a little while doing a blood draw or LP or whatever. the patient gives them both A Look and is like "you know, you can get wigs and breast forms pretty cheap these days..." and chase is like "hm? oh, yeah i guess one of those costume supply sites would probably have stuff like that huh," and the patient raises his eyebrows at cameron who just shakes her head a tiny bit.

house accuses cuddy of sleeping with his best friend in the clinic lobby and she drags him into her office to ask what the hell he's talking about and he shows her the photo. she's like "yeah, we were at a halloween party together in college, so what?" and house says that wilson makes a really hot chick and asks if that's what awakened cuddy's "bi side," and cuddy just rolls her eyes and tells him to stop projecting his sexuality crisis onto her just because he thinks his best friend is hot. house asks if wilson was at least a good lay and cuddy says "find out for yourself!" before kicking him out of her office again.

house goes back to his office and cameron is pacing outside the door, and she looks nervous when he walks up to her. she follows him into his office and she has clearly prepared A Speech about how if he doesn't like being a man he doesn't have to be, and he doesn't even have to be a woman either, there's options, and it's never too late to transition no matter what people say, and he cuts her off like "yes yes you're very supportive, you clearly aced sensitivity training" and then he has the episode's Epiphany and it turns out that the patient transitioned too early and there was some (largely made-up and not actually backed by irl medical science) complication from starting his transition as a teenager, and the patient is like "oh so you're saying i did this to myself?" and house says "well legally at least, either your parents or the governor of new jersey did it to you - depends on who approved the hormones."

wilson comes up to him at the end and is like "you know, it's okay if you think i'm hot. and it's also okay if you're a woman. if you... ever need any tips on passing as one, i'm happy to help."

the ending is left ambiguous as to house's actual gender identity and, much like the autism episode, it kinda feels like the writers' room was full of heavy debate about whether house should be trans or not. we also never actually circle back to the fact that chase is definitely trans, it never comes up again, and this move pisses off both trans people and allies who wanted it to become A Story Arc and anti-trans people who are mad it even came up in a single episode, absolutely nobody is happy about how they handled that subplot.

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if you ever watched house the medical drama TV show, know that dr house mean and rude to everyone and very insensitive.

season 3 episode 4 about a severely autistic nonverbal boy with behavioral issues and no way to functionally communicate

of course have bad aspects. filmed in 2006. have bad ABA elements and bad PECS and drills and doctors not knowing how to handle nonverbal autistic boy w behavioral issues. definitely not down playing that. (and some other bad things in the subplot not related to the boy)

but dr house out of all people. is one that actually figured out how to communicate with him.

in this post i talk about how house’s interaction w the boy demonstrates how to connect with nonverbal nonspeaking autistics (despite the “he won’t understand”), presuming competence, the nuance of autism parents, and functional communication. i use the show to go beyond the plot and talk about wider (level 1 speaking) autism community issues.

so even if you not interested in the TV show House. still hope you can read.

“nobody knew how to speak ‘autistic.’ “

procedure need anesthesia mask thingie. and kid screaming and no one can put mask on him and make him stay, everyone trying to hold him down. house came in made insensitive remarks as always, but modeled to kid what to do. house put the anesthesia mask on him and breathed for bit for kid to see until he stopped screaming, then put it on kid, then put on himself, then on kid who successfully went under anesthesia.

which was so important. meant so much to me. because kid so unfamiliar don’t know what people are doing to him, probably no one explain, may or may not understand what happening. everyone so impatient and don’t know how to get on his level, and so many people restrain him so of course want fight back. but house was only one who considered what the kid needs what he is feeling. house mirrored it showed him what will happen what to do to kid in a way he will understand. he was even gentle. he smiled a little.

yes house used rude monkey metaphor to explain reasoning. but does that to every patient nonverbal autistic or not. so really, for house he didn’t treat the patient any differently.

afterwards. house even critiques dr cameron’s construction of “normal” in a somewhat intersectional, race conscious way. and don’t pity the child at all. resisting the idea of institutionalization.

See, skinny, socially-privileged white people get to draw this neat little circle. Everyone inside the circle is normal. Everyone outside the circle should be beaten, broken and reset, so they can be brought into the circle. Failing that, they should be institutionalized, or worse, pitied.

So, it's wrong to feel sorry for this little boy? Why would you feel sorry for someone who gets to opt out of the inane courteous formalities, which are utterly meaningless, insincere, and therefore, degrading? This kid doesn't have to pretend to be interested in your back pain, or your excretions, or your grandma's itchy place. Can you imagine how liberating it would be to live a life free of all the mind-numbing social niceties? I don't pity this kid.

I envy him.

when the medical team was suspecting that parents slip kid alcohol to calm him down (which turned out to not true), house breaks down why martyr parents becomes martyr parents:

How would you know that? The kid can't talk. Why do you think I took this case? He's not going to give away the ending. They quit their jobs for him. Yes, they are everything you'd want in a parent. Unfortunately, their kid is nothing you'd want. When a baby is born, it's perfect. Little fingers, little toes, plump, perfect, pink, and brimming with unbridled potential. Then it's downhill. Some hills steeper than others. Parents get off on their kids' accomplishments. ...They'll annoy you with trophy rooms and report cards. Hell, they'll even show you a purple cow and tell what a keen eye for color their kid has. But this kid, he doesn't smile, he doesn't hug them, he doesn't laugh. His parents get nothing but the right to brag that their kid picked orange juice out of a lineup. So you figure they slip the kid a mickey so they don't have to deal.

i think show parents in dynamic way too. lots of ableism, for sure. the bad coercive compliance drill kind of ABA tactics, for example.

but fully shows how hard it is to raise a “severely” nonverbal autistic kid with behavioral issues and no functional communication. as much as autistic community like to deny it, it is hard. it is a lot of work. and recognizing and acknowledging that it is a lot of work whether because of inherent autism as a disorder or because lack of societal support, acknowledging this fact alone doesn’t make a parent a martyr parent, an autism parent. i think this is where the (level 1 speaking late diagnosed) autistic community get wrong.

the parents are desperate. they do bad things. they don’t mean to do harm to the kid, they think they’re doing what’s right for their kid. but they still do bad things. and they care for the kid, they celebrate the kid’s achievements, yes sometimes misguided but they want to do good. there is nuance to this. the parents aren’t vile. they aren’t evil evil ableist want to force their kid to be neurotypical against all odds regardless of well-being. most autism parents are more nuanced like this. the level 1 speaking autism community need to listen, too.

and the show ended with. as the family is leaving, the autistic boy voluntarily goes towards dr house. and hands him his video game console (like a switch but not a switch idk), something that is a part of his routine that he melts down when interrupted when grabbed, that he probably very attached to. he gave it to house. and looked at house for a long time.

yes, the eye contact part can be seen as the show over valuing eye contact. but. the bigger impact is the fact that. the show showed the boy connected with house. whether it is thanking him, feel safe with him, we don’t know because the boy have no functional communication. but the boy formed connection with house, and expressed the connection in his own nonverbal way. no “thank you,” no hugs, no conventional way, but the boy’s communication in his own unique nonverbal autistic way. looking at his parents’ reactions, this is incredibly rare, probably even first time, and the parents are crying.

and house was able to diagnose the kid because he actually listened to all forms of communication. he didn’t dismiss the kid’s repeated drawings as meaningless. he didn’t dismiss the PECS image the kid picked in response to his question as meaningless and incompetent even though it was not the image/answer he was initially suspecting. and both things were crucial to the correct diagnosis. if house didn’t listen to them, the kid would have died. house listened to all forms of communication. he assumed competence. he assumed the kid was trying to communicate something, he didn’t chalk the kid’s behaviors as meaningless. despite the “he won’t understand you” “it would work” etc throughout the episode.

but. also want to say. these forms of communication, albeit need to be listened to, is still not functional communication. and functional communication is important and should strive towards for a reason.

another thing the (level 1 speaking) autistic community get wrong is saying nonverbal nonspeaking autistics can communicate same way/as effectively as speaking autistics. that only person to blame is evil evil ableist people not listening to their behaviors. if only they listen!

but more nuanced than that. many many ways to decipher the kid’s repeated drawing, for example. house got it right. he assumed that drawing has connection to the kid’s medical symptoms, and that it is a worm parasite. there can be million other interpretation even if you take kid seriously. i thought it was a ocean wave, for example. thought the kid like waves like beaches like ocean.

if the kid had functional communication—and by functional communication, i don’t mean speech, altho that can be a form of it, i include robust AAC—he could have communicated. in words (spoken/typed/written). what he was experiencing. what he was seeing in his eyes, the swiggly worms he was seeing. and the diagnosis would have arrived sinner. been put through less danger. and if house wasn’t there and another another was there and the doctor didn’t pay attention to the kid and dismissed the kid, the kid would have died because he didn’t have functional communication to tell people what he was experiencing.

it’s not as easy as “just listen!!” and chalking everyone who don’t exactly understand the nonspeaker as ableist.

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Amber/Wilson QPR Rewrite‼️‼️‼️

Okay so I really like Amber and Wilson’s relationship, but i see them and a lesbian and gay man, respectively, so I’ve been thinking about how I would write their relationship in the show if it was a QPR instead.

I think it would start off how it does in the show, with them actually dating. I think they would both feel like something’s missing but not be able to pinpoint it because otherwise they’re the perfect partner. It would come to a head when House gets involved.

When House tells Wilson he’s dating the female version of him he starts to have a crisis about it. I think he and Amber got so close super fast, so they tell each other almost everything since they’re so close, so he tells Amber about what House said. She asks him why it’s bothering so much and he says he doesn’t know, but Amber hesitantly asks him if it’s because it might be true.

Wilson quickly denies it, but Amber comforts him and tells him that they’ll deal with it together. Wilson continues his crisis as House and Amber argue over him and one night, possibly after House gets Wilson drunk that one episode, Wilson confesses that he thinks he’s in love with House. Amber asks him if he’s gay and he says he doesn’t know and she finds she doesn’t really care, surprisingly.

Wilson tells her that he loves her too though, and she asks him if it’s actually romantic love and he finds he can’t answer her. They both lie in bed for a couple hours when, out of the blue, Wilson suddenly says, ‘I think I’m gay.’ She responds, ‘I think I might be too.’ They don’t say anything afterwards and just go to sleep.

In the morning they wake up and talk about it. Amber says that everything she was saying to Wilson resonated with her herself and basically did a diagnosis on herself after that. She still loves him but it’s not romantic. Wilson and her both sit in silence not knowing what they should do.

I think Amber is the one who says that they should still stay together. ‘We are both happy in this relationship otherwise and we make each other better. We both don’t have viable romantic prospects at the moment and the sex is good, so why not?’ Wilson is perplexed, but she confesses that she doesn’t want to be lonely and she knows he doesn’t either. They both like having another person in their life and they don’t want to give up their companionship.

After that, their relationship mostly stays the same, but with no pressure to be romantically attracted to the other. They still kiss and have sex but mostly because they like being physically close with each other. They both push each other to be better people, Wilson not bending to everyone’s needs as easily anymore and Amber realizing that she can be empathetic and it doesn’t make her weak.

I think pretty much everything else with the season is the same. They both pretend that their relationship is romantic to other people because they don’t want to explain what they have, as well as not wanting to have to deal with dating while coming to terms with their queerness.

The whole ending of season 4 is basically the same as well, it’s still Wilson losing one of the 2 people he loves the most in the world. She’s everything to him, she’s made him a better person and loved him no matter what.

(In my heart she lived and they both stayed best friends 5ever while also getting into relationships (Amber with Thirteen and Wilson with House‼️‼️‼️))

Anyways that’s my Amber Wilson QPR propaganda‼️‼️‼️ I love them both so fucking much my wives

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imagine being fully willing to TURN YOURSELF IN to protect your wife from being arrested for MURDERING A DUDE with whom she also had an AFFAIR and who she STABBED TO DEATH because she suspected him of doing the EXTORTION YOU DID TO HER FRIENDS to keep your FAILING FURNITURE STORE from going INSOLVENT because you need to provide for your GAY WIFE still pining over YOUR EX GIRLFRIEND who is now DEAD because gay wife ATE HER and your DAUGHTER WHO HATES YOU and looks nothing like you and instead like GAY WIFE’S CANNIBALIZED SAPPHIC SITUATIONSHIP but your wife doesn’t EVEN APPRECIATE THE FUCKING GESTURE because she thinks that you were CHEATING THE WHOLE TIME even though you are the ULTIMATE SELF DIAGNOSED MALEWIFE and OBSESSED WITH YOUR GAY WIFE and would never cheat and despite all that you are being OUT WIFE GUY’D by TAISSA FUCKING TURNER who RITUALLY SACRIFICED her son’s DOG in her BASEMENT and is CHEATING ON HER WIFE and somehow still a BETTER WIFE GUY THAN YOU. your name is JEFF SADECKI and your hairline is RECEDING.

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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.

[creepyalphabet]

I just spent the past two days bingewatching yellowjackets and I'm obsessed.

Thinking about how Misty performed a monologue from steel magnolia's about a mother that lost her kid and just wants to hit someone at Shauna's babyshower and Shauna later losing her kid and beating Lottie to a pulp.

[creepyalphabet]

tfw the house md brainrot is so bad, you look up “house” expecting to get images of the Man but instead, it shows you a bunch of random buildings and you stare at it for a good minute before realising it’s showing you HOUSES

[creepyalphabet]

which House MD characters are microwaveable?

Chase: becomes soggy if you leave him in too long. you can do it, he just won’t taste very good

Cuddy: no, but will authorize the microwaving of other characters if she thinks it’s in the hospital’s best interest

House: loves to be microwaved but immediately releases extremely toxic fumes

Taub: he’s literally the perfect size, the most microwaveable man i’ve ever laid eyes on. gets nice and crispy on the outside without becoming dried out

Cameron: melts

Foreman: it’s completely ineffective. you microwave him for an hour and he’s still the exact same temperature as before. he raises his eyebrow skeptically the entire time he’s rotating around in there

Kutner: catches on fucking fire and burns your house down

Wilson: labeled as ‘microwave safe’ but he starts making weird popping noises halfway through so you have to take him out when he’s still lukewarm

Amber: gets kind of burnt on the edges but she’s mostly edible. you’ve probably ingested some carcinogens tho

[creepyalphabet]

Pilot anniversary — November 16th, 2004

[creepyalphabet]

god okay so this quote by carmen maria machado from her memoir in the dream house -

“I had a room to myself as a kid, but my mother was always quick to point out that it wasn’t my room, it was her room and I was merely permitted to occupy it. Her point, of course, was that my parents had earned everything and I was merely borrowing the space, and while this is technically true I cannot help but marvel at the singular damage of this dark idea: That my existence as a child was a kind of debt and nothing, no matter how small, was mine. That no space was truly private; anything of mine could be forfeited at someone else’s whim."

- got me thinking about house likely not feeling ownership in his own home as a kid due to his dad's discipline methods, and the way he clings to his spaces as an adult (aka his apartment and his office)

and THEN it got me thinking about house getting kicked out of his and wilson's shared apartment in late season 6.

imagine, if you will. you're a kid with an abusive military father who makes it clear that you don't actually own anything and that you will only ever be a guest in his house. your father regularly takes away the roof over your head as a form of discipline. your father regularly violates your bodily autonomy by forcing you to take ice baths. your father's job means you spend your childhood moving from place to place without you having any say in the matter. your father shows you that even the food you eat is not an inherent right but a generous gift, and it can and will be taken away if you're late to the table.

so you grow up, and your spaces are really important to you. you stay in the same apartment and have the same office for years and years and you make both of them feel truly yours. they belong to you. no one can take them away from you anymore.

and then you make changes, painful ones. it's horrible and difficult and terrifying but it's worth it. and then your best friend offers you a new home, a space for you to share. together, the two of you make it yours. you live in a place that is owned by your best friend but it's nothing like living in the places owned by your dad. it's safe here. there's love here. this home belongs to both of you.

and then your best friend reconnects with his ex, and you're relegated to second place like you always are when there's a woman in his life, and he asks you to leave.

and you realize you had forgotten what it's like to be reminded that your home was never truly yours.

[creepyalphabet]

My house md fanfic for kutnermas

Merry kutnermas @coffins-and-marbles, I hope you enjoy: