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hopeswriting · 11 months

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was thinking about takeshi and how he's my favorite brand of unconditional devotion btw. the utter and absolute and all-consuming kind that runs so deep to the very core and is so intrinsic and fundamental to it, it can only express itself in the most casual and natural and certain way. without second thoughts, without any room for doubts or for any moral dilemma to be had over it, because of course he ought to always be breathing and living for his chosen person first and foremost. of course he ought to hang on their every word and make them true no matter what, no matter what he has to do to make it happen, no matter what he has to do to other people to make it happen, and no matter what it might turn him into in the process. because it's obviously the way the world should be for his chosen person. at their feet, ready to bend over backwards and break and build itself again to better answer to all their needs even if they don't ask it for it. it's the only right way it should be for them, and of course takeshi's going to do his utmost at all times to make it a reality as much as possible.

and his devotion comes out as naturally as breathing, comes out lighthearted and nonchalant like he might as well be talking about the weather, but it's not unaware of itself. it's not that takeshi doesn't know it's unhealthy and wrong and that he's willing to go entirely too far in its name for anyone's good. it's not that he wouldn't hear you out if you were to sit him down and explain to him just why he needs to tone it down a little (a lot). logically, he'd agree with you and know you're right. and then he'd tell you he's still not going to do anything whatsoever about it. that he's not bothered by it and doesn't feel the need to change anything to his attitude. makes it a point to never let anyone or anything sway him even an inch in the stand he took when it comes to that, no matter how many thousand of times you might go over the subject with him.

because the morality of his devotion isn't the point at all. is entirely irrelevant to it and doesn't affect the way he expresses it all. it's not the metric with which he draws a line in the sand to hold it accountable to. because the thing is, takeshi's entire world revolves around tsuna--tsuna is his entire world altogether, and it's just a matter of fact, that simple. to him it's a truth as unchanging as the sky being blue, and so being the way he is according to that truth is the only way he can imagine being that'd feel right to him. and so the actual and only metric that matters here is "would tsuna be happier if i were to do this?" and/or "is this something tsuna needs me to do?"

and like. i don't think takeshi ever stops being a kind person capable of compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness even ten years later once they became mafia through and through. and i don't think either he grows up to be feared and called a monster per se despite the things they inevitably had to do during those ten years (and the things they'll inevitably keep having to do as long as they keep being mafia), at least not in the way, for example, they'll never stop fearing and calling mukuro one. but i do think that among the tenth gen, he ends up being the one with the most ruthless, merciless and horrific blood on his hands of that particular and distinct loving kind. you know the one i mean, right? he comes to be the one most expected and the one first expected to be willing and to take it upon himself to go through with it when the need arises. and to think little of it after, if anything at all. all in the name of making tsuna's reign as easy on him as possible.

and it's to the point where it's the kind of blood that makes even mukuro pause at times. or, when takeshi is the one coming up with solutions himself during meetings, makes even reborn blink. not because it's unjustified or wouldn't be safe or efficient or anything of the sort, but because it is unwarrantedly thorough in its retaliation. and sometimes, at times like this, he's the one tsuna needs to step in for the most, because he's the only one who can reason with him that "yes, this would work in getting rid of our problem" but "no, please, don't do that takeshi". because if tsuna is the only thing that infers on just how much and in what ways he'll let himself be devoted to him, then of course, he's also the only one takeshi's willing to reign himself in for without second thoughts. because he'd hate to ever do something tsuna would disapprove of or wouldn't want him to do. or do something that'd make tsuna see him differently or love him back less even in the slightest.

and it's also like. his devotion isn't an undisciplined one. it's not one he doesn't have control over, the very opposite. it's a very purposeful and conscious choice he chooses to keep making over and over again every step of the way, and he taught himself to have control over it, to know when it's needed and/or wanted, and how much and in which ways it is when it happens, and to keep it down otherwise. and, yes, to also reign it back in at tsuna's request at times when it still slips past his control. because it's all about making tsuna's happiness easier and secure and long-lasting, and never about burdening him with just how committed he is to do that.

so it comes down to this: takeshi willing to go above and beyond and more for tsuna unless tsuna explicitly asks him not to. and to tsuna needing to ask him not to every now and then. and to other people pointing out to him how too many times tsuna's already needed to stop him, and that maybe there's a hint for him to take there. and to takeshi seeing the hint, looking it straight in the eye and recognizing it for what it is and just. deciding it doesn't apply to him because it's all perfectly normal behavior to him. because it's the only kind of behavior that makes sense to him and feels right.

and so—to circle back to my first point—he can only express his devotion as naturally as breathing, so casually, almost like it's something inconsequential and not worth talking about despite how unmistakably it couldn't be further away from being the truth. it's the only way he could have always known how to express it, because, after all, who has ever taken time to ponder about the details and the hows of the way they breathe?

and i, for one, absolutely eat that shit up every time, thanks for coming to my ted talk <3

#katekyo hitman reborn #khr #khr meta #can i even call this one?? well i'm going to anyway lol #yamamoto takeshi #sawada tsunayoshi #i've never been normal about devotion in stories and characters and won't ever be so sorry if this doesn't make sense #also this is not to say the 10th gen loves tsuna any less unconditionally this isn't a competition #it's just me saying the particularities and specificities of the way takeshi specifically does it appeal to me the most #which is one of the reasons why i have such a big soft spot for 8027 #and it's not a problem in their relationship either btw that's also not what i'm saying #like tsuna doesn't mind it and absolutely /does/ reciprocate it 100%#he's just careful to keep an eye out so none of them will lose themselves along the way #also this is within the context of me shifting canon slightly to the left in the way where the 10th gen loves tsuna /so much/#they could just as well actually and properly worship him as a god and it still wouldn't make a single difference #and me liking to lean into that fully and taking it to extremes and it inevitably becoming some extent of dark #because considering the environment canon makes them express it (the mafia) it's like. well how else are they meant to keep it alive #and make sure it survives through it without giving it sharp teeth and claws and jagged edges of its own you know?#so if you feel like this is some kind of ooc-ness you're not wrong #but also consider: i'm not wrong either <3 #anyway consider also: unconditional devotion running /so/ deep down to your marrow and to your very essence #even in the face of the whole world telling you how wrong it is and how insane and unhinged you are for it and condemning you for it #it still wouldn't so much as make you consider the thought they might have a point #and i genuinely EAT that shit up every time i love to see it <3

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ahsoka-in-a-hood · 1 year

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I'm always a bit surprised when I see hate for Shaak Ti based on her "Republic property" line like it's some kind of slam dunk statement of her views... have you guys seriously never had to speak someone else's language before? I'm not even trying to comment on her motives or beliefs here- but whether you read her as advocating for Fives or not, if she was 100% unambiguously advocating for Fives there that would still have been the right thing to say to the Kaminoans to get custody of him.

#this just seems like such an obvious thing to me #and i guess it bugs me because there's a lot of focus on people saying the right things and not enough on people doing things #you know in general. on planet earth.#and this is so clearly a place where virtue signalling on Shaak's part would have been 100% useless. The Kaminoans do not care.#she's lawyering. it's such a basic thing.#i don't really want to go into the thornyness of jedi-clone relations right now or what the council did and did not do for and to them.#i know i'm basically a pro jedi blog but I don't think it's perfectly rosy either but i'm tired #so i should probably leave well enough alone #but i felt like griping about this one specific thing #which is not evidence of anything except rules-lawyering #shaak ti

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heartbeetz · 7 months

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I NEED to get back into oc f/os. I just remembered my old casino themed anthro shark guy. He never got a solid enough ref sheet (or lore, really) for me to feel comfortable making him one of my f/os but maybe I should remedy that at some point. Big Jack.........

#his name is Jasper Roulette but everyone calls him Big Jack #he's a ''professional'' underground gambler and great white 'card shark'#insists he's an ex crime boss but won't tell anyone what that entailed #well... he WILL. but it's a different story every time. always a lie and often over the top #nobody knows for sure if any of it's true or not. but pretty much everyone either 100% believes it or is too scared to contest it #bc his persona around other casino goers is this rough and tough type guy and he has the looks and talk to back it up #really though even IF it's true he's pretty harmless now. his whole thing is ''yeah I used to do that but I'm turning my life around''#which others are skeptical about but is mostly true. he's kinda just chilling #he's a cheat and a showoff and an asshole but he's more intimidating than he is dangerous #and he has way more money than he cares to do anything with (where he got it who's to say) so he doesn't mind just handing it out #he was the first character I made for a little game / visual novel I wanted to make at one point but ended up giving up on #it was just about sharks in an underground casino #the idea was you could play little mini games and have conversations with them #and if you made the conversation go in the ''right'' direction there'd be little collectibles that opened new paths #but it never went anywhere other than some ideas and a very rough drawing of Big Jack (which actually came first lol)#unfortunately I designed him IMMEDIATELY before I got super into Sparker as one of my f/os so he got swept under the rug real bad #sorry sharky 😔#roz posts

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magentagalaxies · 4 months

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going to a comedy open mic tomorrow mostly to watch my friends (it's at a cool venue that my improv troupe performs at once a month and a few improv troupe friends are doing standup there) but when these friends were asking if i'd be interested in coming they were like "btw there's usually a ton of open spots on show days if YOU want to do something... and they're not strict about it only being standup either, people have done character pieces and sketches etc like they embrace the weirdness... and they're not strict about time limits you could probably do anything between three and eight minutes... sometimes if there's not enough people signed up they'll even let you go twice..." and i'm like god damn it i thought i was gonna take a break from aubrey but this setup is like tailor made for an aubrey appearance lmao

#still on the fence about it bc the burnout i experienced at the beginning of may extended to aubrey #especially bc so much of my aubrey stuff is comedy about gender and my brain was more in ''set everything on fire'' mode #and i think i've gotten to a good place with that burnout but i still haven't worked on any aubrey stuff since i got home from college #but even still even tho my mental health is better than it was a few weeks ago #recently i have had this horrible insomnia where i haven't been able to fall asleep at night in over a week #(i've made up for it with naps but still i am not mentally 100% rn. i've tried so many things and nothing has worked.)#so that's my justification for *not* doing aubrey tomorrow. however.#i reeeally need to get more performance experience bc there's only so much you can develop a sketch character without performing them #and this venue is so good. it's an art gallery like an hour away that's designed to be part gallery and part performance venue #especially for comedy. like the venue owner is this veteran comedian who used to work with bobcat goldthwait and a lot of other big names #and it's a low-pressure environment bc everyone there has seen me do comedy before with my improv troupe #but they still haven't seen me do aubrey at all so it's bringing a new side of my comedy to some of my main collaborators #like this is so much better than my previous aubrey performances bc they were all either #1. shows in CLASSROOMS with a bunch of my classmates who generally don't get my comedy (very clique-ish)#or 2. a guest spot on a show at a coffee shop where everyone knew each other except me #plus the biggest thing for me is the lack of a strict time limit. like as much as having a good 3-minute monologue can be #i think aubrey is a character you need to get to know a bit longer than 3 minutes. and a lot of my stuff is long while also being very tigh #like not every monologue is like this but my best aubrey monologues are almost like aubrey is telling you a sitcom storyline #and removing too many lines makes the whole narrative jenga tower fall over #and as much as i want to figure out how to make every monologue a good starting point #having the chance to perform multiple monologues if i get to go twice so that they can build off each other would be perfect #idk i'm not sure how often the open mics are there. at least monthly tho i might be missing next month's depending on when i'm in toronto #so like this wouldn't really be my only chance. but yeah i'm on the fence about whether to bring aubrey back for a performance tomorrow #i probably wouldn't do new material. i'd do the 5 minute version of my uncle reg monologue bc it's the one that's worked best so far #and if i get to do multiple. maybe i'd do the ''nom de plum'' monologue bc i think it's also very strong #and it has a good callback to uncle reg #but idk i also think doing the song would be very fun and on-theme since it's pride month and the song is a satire of rainbow capitalism #tho i'd probably have to rework the monologue that leads into the song bc even tho i loved the concept i don't think i articulated it well #or i could write an entirely different lead-in and make the previous monologue (''C/H/M'') a separate thing to revise later #which would probably go better and somehow be less work to write. but even so i don't know what the venue's sound setup is

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gideonisms · 2 years

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mandatory gender reporting time of the semester love that for me ! 🚫🙅‍♂️👎

#i'm sorry but the idea that in texas someone would be comfortable announcing they use they/them pronouns to an audience of 50 people #it was like. pass the index card with your info on it to the person next to you and *that* person introduces you 💀#in texas??? hello??#are we really 100% confident the person next to us who we've just met would represent us with respect #love the optimism here but.#had i explained my whole deal i would have been the only one to do so.#also the only woman. woman adjacent person. whatever. with short hair. hhjkkkk #like one (1) person in this class is slightly gnc. slightly #it's already like spot the homosexual in here and it's not hard to spot the homosexual #okay it wasn't 50 it was more like 30 my point stands it felt like a lot of people #it truly is hitting me i'm going to go into my field constantly having to either pick a work gender or say to everyone i meet Immediately #hi i'm abi i have a complex relationship with my gender!#you wanna hear about my complex relationship with my family next? my medical history? how about discussing the undiagnosed autism #let's do a deep dive on my sexuality after that when we get to know each other well enough to trade the tamest stories about our exes #feel like a bug specimen under a magnifying glass trying to go about my day #this is why i grew my hair out in the first place i remember now

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knifefightandchill · 7 months

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It's always a bit concerning when different meta turns into something akin to discourse.

#did i miss like a whole chapter of tumblr stuff while i was at con ??#i stick by everyone has their right to their own opinions and interpretations and whatever #but i dislike how one singular person is considered the expert and is put on a pedestal.#to the point that they're mentioned when someone doesn't agree with a take #unless they're the creator i'm not taking what they say as canon. at all. widely accepted or not. because it /isn't/.#because widely accepted doesn't equal accurate or right #no matter how well researched it is either. because i still don't think one singular person is 100% right when it comes to /everything/.#except the creator or creators themselves #popularity is just popularity #also yeah i'm bias too because i really really dislike a lot of their takes and could counter a lot of them too but it's pointless.#there can be good interpretations and shitty interpretations. but that's the beauty of fandom spaces #thank you for coming to my tedtalk #personal #i would love to post my own meta and probably will sometime when i grow a second braincell. so it's a little less jumbled insanity.#also it's mostly krauser centric so that has little to no bearing on leon.#also we're talking about a series that's almost as old as me #that has multiple timelines and retcons and inconsistencies and a novelization and live action movies.#like /come on people./#we all know where i stand when it comes to ID too tbh

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queerofthedagger · 1 year

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maybe that's just me being me but i think it's..... interesting, how much criticism/accusations/et al of the OTW recently is coming up so conveniently in that period between donation drive and election, argues so utterly in bad faith, and employs such a strong 'us vs them' rhetoric that is frankly baffling if it is actually coming from people who 1. have a basic understanding of the OTW's flat hierarchies and what that means for the workings of such a big org, and 2. have the orgs best interest and future in mind. none of this is to say that the OTW doesn't have its issues or room to improve, but you'd think that amidst the quick rise of fascism, purity culture, and their calls for censorship, people would take care not to present the bandwagon to those people on a silver platter, and also maybe........ bother 0.3 seconds to provide those annoying little shits called verifiable sources :))

#fandom wank #this isn't on one single thing either i've had SO much of this on my dash this last two weeks even THO my dash is VERY well curated and it'#like. yall. ik this is 'just' tumblr but come on now #sources!! they are a thing!!!! if you make accusations you gotta back it up!!#and frankly i care little when it's about fucking musk whether that one additional shit thing is true. eh. i'm not gonna reblog it either #without checking but whatever #but like.... the otw/ao3 are not made up of multi-million dollar assholes who we have to fight #it's. fellow fans #and yes it has its issues!! absolutely 100% this isn't to say it doesn't #but if i go to a blog and have to scroll three minutes till i find #'maybe this will finally get people to stop throwing money at them'#then. well you know. maybe it doesn't *actually* matter that they claimed not to be an anti #if it quacks like a duck etc etc

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trans-li-ling · 2 years

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I think we should give Zora a gun and whatever happens to the Shadow Decree happens

#dislyte #Listen I'm going to be honest. I like a lot of shadow Decree characters. But also.#Given the chance I would kill them off in story because of how much I hate them.#Mainly the fact a good chunk of them are like. Okay with child murder? Like hello #The union 100% deserves criticism (hi Luo Yan the cop who got fired bc he thought the law was beneath him what's up w u being here) and #Tiye's story is. Whoooo boy. The union definitely has An Interest In Branding #But again. Orphanage burning was A Thing That Happened #And ofc there's the meta view of like... What are the bad guys ideals? Are they only evil bc they're extreme? And I try 2 keep that in mind #But like the Shadow Decree is kinda... Just full of selfish people. Ofc some ppl are more sympathetic but all of them Are Selfish #Honestly Bonnie is like the only one who stands out to me as like... Yeah the union failed her community and she's rightfully mad #Most of the others lost like. One person either to the union or just thought the shadow Decree would let them get revenge and #It's a case by case thing like some of them probably feel like they have nowhere else to go and that's understandable but the initial #Actions they took were selfish and I feel like dislyte puts too much into making the characters surface level sympathetic (Ophelia) rather #Than grappling with if they view themselves as good people or if they're disappointed in themselves or if they don't care #(forgot to say earlier Jiang Jiuli n Jiang Man r valid in hatred though like the union directly fucked them over and it's understandable #That they fucking hate them so like it's more grey)#(also this is why like... Nicole n Cecilia r some of my faves they don't give a shit they just wanna fuck stuff up and I can respect that)#And Catherine is actually well done because she's full of hatred and even if she has soft moments shes just. Mean as hell!#LYNN I love Lynn but girl you know about the orphanage burning right???? Right???????#Anyway how well known is the burning of the union? Iirc it was both the HQ and the Orphanage so do ppl only know abt the HQ or both or????#Anyway the union is flawed but trying unaffiliated espers are similar and the shadow Decree is 90% people who are selfish and toxic and #Really fucking annoying. I fucking hate Ophelia so much you have no idea I want to throw bricks at her.#Anyways Zora is the best character and deserves free therapy and a lifetime supply or tiramisu and a gun #JASPER TRIED TO FUCK W THE UNION WITHOUT JOINING YHE CHILD MURDER ORGINIZATION

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autisticcassandracain · 2 years

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is it just me or is batman like. significantly more tolerable outside of gotham comics than in

#my laptop's still letting me use tumblr without major issues and i'll make that everyone else's problem #anyway. i'm not saying batman outside of gotham is never insufferable to read bc he absolutely can be #when they write him like a gary sue and pretend that he's the most powerful member of a justice league that includes you know #superman and wonder woman #but also from the admittedly limited justice league comics i've read so far as well as the cameos i've seen of bats in other comics #he's just like. 200% more likeable #this post is about wonder woman issue 293 btw #he's out there doing a group hug without major blackmail and not protesting when clark announces bats and he both love diana #he's also engaging in casual conversation and treating clark and diana as on equal footing with him #and he didn't even have to go through a 12 issue arc or have an emotional breakdown about any of it #it's like. gotham comics are almost 100% guaranteed to work their reality around him and make sure you know he's the bestest ever #and all the energy goes towards making him grim and serious and traumatized while also being cool in an action figure kinda way #meanwhile a lot of comics outside of gotham go more like. hey this is bruce. he's a cool superhero who's really smart and competent #he's also kind of a loser who takes himself way too seriously and like maybe two people in this building like him #and the rest are not afraid to make fun of him either to his face or the moment he turns around #i know this is not the case for all comics and there's still a very very good chunk of them that make him the Coolest Boy Ever #but like. even just. seeing him treat other people as being on equal footing with him or even better than him #just makes him SO much more tolerable #like tower of babel or whatever that arc was called had a bunch of rlly dumb takes on how bruce could 'outplay' the justice league #but like. bruce still treated the rest of the justice league as on his level or better. it's why he bothered to MAKE those plans #you just don't rlly get that in gotham. the closest we get is if nightwing shows up bc then we might get an 'oh he's the best of us'#inner monolgue about how proud bruce is of dick. sometimes we'll get an inner monolgue about the other heroes too #but those monologues are the exception not the rule and they are almost never said out loud to anyone #and if they ARE it's only after an arc of bruce being a fucking ass as an apology and it's. insufferable.#idk maybe it's just bc i read more batman comics than justice league comics but still.#bruce is usually just. SO much more likeable in basically any comic not set in gotham to me #i bet if you made him spend a few weeks in metropolis or something his mental health issues would go away actually #he's just vitamin d deficient and it's making him cranky #my posts #bruce wayne

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black-arms-hivemind · 2 years

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He created false memories in Shadow and plotted to kill Black Doom behind his back how are you fuckers letting Gerald off scott free like this and instead pinning everything on Doom

#yes of course Doom is far from perfect. he's a villain #but i think I've finally snapped #i am so done with everyone making Doom out to be this 100% evil and manipulative father #when he was clearly hurting too in his own way #yeah of course projecting his desire for revenge onto Shadow and lashing out at them at the end wasn't the greatest course of action #but he wanted what HE THOUGHT was best for Shadow #he wanted to provide for his people #THE DEVIL DOOM FIGHT ON DOOM'S PART WAS ABSOLUTELY THE WORST CASE SCENARIO OF A BPD MELTDOWN #at this point I'm starting to feel like you fuckers realize this but choose to ignore it #because of course a villain pretty blantantly having a very maligned disorder makes them MORE evil #that or you fuckers are too dense to realize there's ways of making characters BPD coded other than making them y*nderes #am I also letting my own BPD get the best of me rn? Yeah fucking probably!!#but honestly i don't give a fuck!!!#our bodily father doesn't fucking seem to care about us at all!!#our Black Doom fictive might as well be my ACTUAL father #SO SHUT THE FUCK UO ABOUT MY DAD DAMMIT #STOP FUCKING PUTTING RUDE ASS SHIT IN HIS TAGS LIKE HIS FANS EITHER DON'T GI THROUGH THERE OR DON'T EXIST #... I'm done now.#rant in tags #hive rose red #you know what. as revenge <3 #black doom

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televinita · 2 years

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Top 100 Ladies of TV

Looking at old blog posts, many years ago I did a "100 favorite female characters" list, but I have met so many wonderful new ladies now that it is quite out of date and needs a major update to accommodate them. International Women’s Day seems like the perfect time to do so!

Only this time I'm restricting it to TV characters, or I will die of Overwhelm.

NOTE: This list is not in any kind of order, I just wrote them down as they came to mind. I considered alphabetical, but found it was nicer to keep everyone from a given show together. And rather than starting from scratch, I kept as much of the original list as I could and just added newer favorites on at the end, if you're wondering why some of these Very Old Fandoms are clustered at the top.

Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

Donna Noble (Doctor Who)

Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who/The Sarah Jane Adventures)

Kimberly Hart (Power Rangers)

Katherine Hillard (Power Rangers)

Pamela Beesly Halpert (The Office)

Kelly Kapoor (The Office)

Angela Martin (The Office)

Amita Ramanujan (Numb3rs)

Abby Sciuto (NCIS

Ziva David (NCIS)

Abby Lockhart (ER)

Neela Rasgotra (ER)

Sarah Riley (ER)

Rachel Berry (Glee)

Quinn Fabray (Glee)

Tina Cohen-Chang, respect (Glee)

Marley Rose (Glee)

Juliet Burke (Lost)

Alex Rousseau (Lost)

Kensi Blye (NCIS: LA)

Nell Jones (NCIS: LA)

Marisol Delko (CSI: Miami)

Alexx Woods (CSI: Miami)

Calleigh DuQuesne (CSI: Miami)

Samantha Spade (Without a Trace)

Miranda Bailey (Grey's Anatomy)

Cristina Yang (Grey's Anatomy)

April Kepner (Grey's Anatomy)

Addison Forbes Montgomery (Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice)

Sara Sidle (CSI)

Jess Angell (CSI: NY)

Dana Scully (X-Files)

Summer Roberts (The O.C.)

Charlotte "Chuck" Charles (Pushing Daisies)

Olive Snook (Pushing Daisies)

Joan Girardi (Joan of Arcadia)

Kat Miller (Cold Case)

Tru Davies (Tru Calling)

Elaine Benes (Seinfeld)

Daphne Moon (Frasier)

Carla Espinosa (Scrubs)

Jordan Sullivan (Scrubs) -- it's either her or Ellie Torres from Cougar Town, real 6-of-1 situation

Donna Pinciotti (That 70s Show)

Jackie Burkhart (That 70s Show)

Kitty Forman (That 70s Show)

Kara Danvers (Supergirl)

Stephanie Tanner (Full/er House)

Grace Adler (Will & Grace)

Lexi Vaziri (Blood & Treasure)

Jaz Khan (The Brave)

Lux Cassidy (Life Unexpected)

Rachel Matheson (Revolution)

Julia Shumway (Under the Dome)

Nancy McKenna (L.A.'s Finest)

Paige Donohue (Scorpion)

Happy Quinn (Scorpion)

Max Black (2 Broke Girls)

Penelope Garcia (Criminal Minds)

Jennifer "JJ" Jareau (Criminal Minds)

Emily Prentiss (Criminal Minds)

Mae Jarvis (Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders)

Reba Hart (Reba)

Cheyenne Hart (Reba)

Jess Parker (Primeval)

Abby Maitland (Primeval)

Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones)

Tani Rey (Hawaii Five-0)

Kate Beckett (Castle)

Alexis Castle (Castle)

Kat Warbler (The Class) - FOREVER UPSET we were robbed of more than 22 eps of her snarky glory!

Ivy Lynn (Smash)

Elizabeth McCord (Madam Secretary herself)

Carrie Heffernan (i'm sorry i LOVE HER) (The King of Queens)

Frankie Heck (The Middle)

Sue Heck (The Middle)

Mindy Lahiri (The Mindy Project)

Lisa Miller (News Radio)

Beth of no apparent last name (NewsRadio)

Sabrina Spellman (the Teenage Witch, Good Version [WB])

Tia Landrey & Tamera Campbell (Sister, Sister) (I know it's rude but they're both aces and this way my list is secretly 101!)

Jade McKellan (Family Reunion)

Holly Tyler (What I Like About You)

Anathema Device (Good Omens)

Eve Baxter (Last Man Standing)

Sabina of no official last name (Siberia)

Ryan Clark (Off the Map)

Phoebe Buffay (Friends)

Monica Geller (Friends)

Rachel Greene (Friends)

Janine Teagues (Abbott Elementary)

Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary)

Barbara Howard (Abbott Elementary)

Ava Coleman (Abbot Elementary)

Molly Flynn (Mike & Molly, a terrible show made watchable by its women, though I only have room for 1 today)

Henrietta/Hetty Woodstone (Ghosts [CBS])

Shirley Bennett (Community)

Alex Russell (Maid)

Jenny Hoyt (Big Sky)

Cassie DeWell (Big Sky)

In conclusion:

#100 favorite female characters #quality data #more ambitious people than I would do gifsets or at least photosets about this but I am not that person #I have been wrestling with this for weeks and I think I'm finally happy with it but IDK #definitely still some I can see being replaced and that were arbitrary picks over women I like equally well and cut #RIP Community ladies but I realized I did not love them enough individually as opposed to part of an ensemble #especially after I was like 'Oh No i cannot possibly choose among the Abbott ladies'#same for the women of Bones #apologies to my Zoo family that Jamie did not make the cut either #encouraging my mutuals and other followers to do their own!!!#I know many of your faves but I am curious if and how you would ultimately narrow it to 100 #p.s. thank you to empress-of-snark for finding the illustrative gif I was looking for #p.p.s. last minute edit kicked Lizzie Maguire off and replaced her with Hetty because I finally caught up on Ghosts #and remembered she's AMAZING and also I have only seen like 3 actual episodes of Lizzie #p.p.p.s. NOPE removing Jenny Callender and Buffy too (sorry!) because I have not actively watched BtVS and I need the Big Sky ladies

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phantomrose96 · 7 months

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If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

#chrissy speaks #long post #-gestures broadly-

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neverendingford · 2 months

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#tag talk #I've realized that as I ascend the hierarchy of needs I get more and more picky and dissatisfied #and it's affecting my relationship with my partner.#I originally didn't give a shit about his appearance but as I feel emotionally fulfilled I start to realize more and more that #that I'm really only attracted emotionally to him. I don't like how he smells I don't like how he looks and I think he's abysmal at sex #and I realize that breaking up would be sabotaging the emotional happiness I feel with him but I'm 100% physically dissatisfied #so ultimately I know I'm not staying with him #he's great emotionally and I would ideally like to keep him as a friend of some sorts #but he doesn't want an open relationship and I would prefer someone I'm attracted to physically #so when the time comes I'm going to discuss either opening the relationship up or making a clean break of it #because I'm willing to overlook physicality when I'm emotionally unfulfilled #but when I get the basic needs sorted I start to look at the smaller concerns to get them sorted as well #and while it's lower on the priority list it's still a priority

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therealbeachfox · 7 months

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

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There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

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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.

#gay marriage #gay rights #gay history #gay

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