GUESS I'LL DIE,¯\_(ツ)_/¯

nobody wants the shop icon where the account icon used to be 

nobody wants the new video player / image viewer (let us pause ! let us zoom !) 

the only good feature recently has been polls and even that took way too long to properly roll out 

we are STILL fighting in the trenches against spam bots 

so, I’ve gotten this question and similar ones before, and I want to use it to go into what marriage actually is.

so, in law, there are a couple of legal assumptions made when someone is a close family member, like a parent. the assumptions are that this person knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf in an emergency, supports or is supported by you financially, and, most importantly, that they are emotionally significant to you in a way that makes them different from a total stranger or a good friend. immigration law, for example, prioritizes families over people immigrating for jobs alone, because not getting a job doesn’t have the same emotional weight as never seeing your mom again.

the difference is that you don’t get to choose your family (outside of adoption and, uh, legally that’s not a bilateral decision). you do get to choose your spouse. the fact that you chose them is why they get priority for things like inheritance and immigration, even over your parents or your siblings or your grandma.

how does the government know that this particular person is someone you want to have as part of your family? you fill out a form and you tell them.

what happens if you don’t want them in your family anymore, and don’t want those assumptions made about them? you fill out a different form and you tell the government that.

the thing I think that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around – whether you’re a starry-eyed romantic or a pragmatic bitch like me – is that marriage isn’t an announcement of how much you love someone. that’s what a facebook status update is for. you do not need to be in love, or sexually/romantically monogamous, or be religious, or any of the other things people associate with marriage, in order to be married.

it’s a legal decision. it is choosing to get certain benefits (like taxes, because it’s assumed you’re financially supporting each other) in exchange for certain responsibilities (because it’s assumed you’re supporting each other, it stops mattering exactly who bought what after you got married, so divorce splits the whole pool of stuff even if one person bought like 75% of it).

you don’t get the one without the other, and you don’t get either if you don’t affirmatively say that’s what you want to have happen. it doesn’t happen automatically, or in every romantic relationship no matter how serious, because the choice is the point.

and, to be clear: if you do not want, or do not care about, the legal rights and responsibilities of being married, you should not get married. it’s a fucking legal contract that has serious legal implications! it’s not something you should be doing for funsies!

Long answer: That’s a little like asking “can you become a citizen via contract rather than going through the immigration and naturalization process?” Marriage is a legal status: you either are or you aren’t. Can you cobble together very specific stuff, like advanced healthcare directives and wills and whatnot? Yes, absolutely. But anything that requires you to be legally married as a status cannot be contracted away: you can’t file taxes jointly or sponsor someone for a green card or get someone’s Social Security benefits if they die if you’re not married to that person.

Now, to be clear: some things that often require marriage do not always require marriage. For example, usually you need to be married to have someone unrelated to you be on your health insurance, but my job’s specific health insurance plan allows coverage for domestic partners, which they define as a single person who has cohabitated with you for six months or more and is in a committed relationship with you. So even though my fiancé and I are not married yet, he’s been on my health insurance for the past year and a half, because we hit the six month mark of living together right around when I had to re-enroll in my health insurance for the year.

But if we’d gotten married sooner, he’d have been able to get on my health insurance right away (getting married is a qualifying event that lets someone get on a health insurance plan outside of the enrollment period), but since he’s just a cohabitating partner, we had to wait six months for him to get on my insurance. And if he’d moved in with me a month later, we’d have to wait a whole year before he could enroll with me on my health insurance. Even though it’s allowed, it still doesn’t have the same standing as a marriage.

if you have shared bank accounts and a house and a kid with someone who isn’t married to you, they can wipe you out – legally speaking – and you have no recourse. none. you will never see your kid again, unless you’re lucky and contributed half their DNA.

if they have a car accident and end up in hospital, you don’t have a legal right to see them. if they’re in a coma, their parents can pull the plug and adopt that child and you can do nothing.

queers wanted marriage equality not to Be Like Teh Hets, but because it is the most legal protection you can ever have against that bad stuff that comes (and it comes for everyone).

Because here’s the thing: children are not property.  Specifically, in estate law, children are not, and cannot be “Real Property.”  You cannot bequeath them like furniture, books, and bank accounts.   

“But my will states who I want as guardian!”  You say. Welp.  That statement is, in law, only a (strong) suggestion.  A judge still still have to rule on guardianship of your minor child, and you cannot, from the grave, dictate where they end up.  

Again: Children are not real property. If you are not their biological or legal parent, the state can remove them from your custody and hand them to someone more closely related, or not related at all but merely less gay, less queer, less “inappropriate” by your state’s legal standards.

The woman I knew back then was on good term with her not-quite-in-laws. Or thought she was.  Because as soon as her partner died, their tune changed 100%, they found anti-gay legal support, and they took that woman’s child from her.  Forever. 

I was expecting a like a Chart or two, maybe some written instructions. not Seventy Seven full color pages for One type of rose.

she has also made a website since the first post (link) the patterns are cheaper there and the payment is handled through PayPal (and I’m guessing she gets a Way bigger cut of the money than with her Etsy so maybe check out the site instead) of the Etsy listed above.

also quick faq below the cut bc idk, supporting small businesses ran by WOC is important and this lady is rad. I just genuinely love her products and want more people to know about them.

On top of that, Instead of donating our old unwanted stuff to places like Goodwill, which wildly mistreat their workers, Buy Nothing lets me donate things directly to my community, without the risk that the sorters at the thrift shop will just throw things in the trash. I've passed along open things of hair care products that I didn't wind up liking but that had nothing wrong with them. I've passed along snacks we didn't like, pet food we didn't wind up using, and all sorts of perishables that would have otherwise gone right in the garbage.

My local group even has regular meetups where people bring all their stuff at once, and it's like a giant garage sale where everything is free.

Allow me to break down my favorite scene in the entirety of Danny Phantom! This is from My Brother’s Keeper and I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is probably my favorite scene to ever relate to a superhero’s identity being exposed.

- That music at the beginning.

- The fact that Danny’s going through a really hard time. Jazz didn’t see her brother be revealed in an epic, victorious, win, like so many other superhero’s identities are revealed. She saw him in an average everyday fight and she saw him lose that fight, thus making him all the more human.

- A quick side-note: Sam and Tucker looking sad that Danny’s so down on himself. Great detail.

- The fact that Danny, being depressed, isn’t eating. It’s little details like this (details they forgot to add into later episodes) that fanfiction writers pick up and just maximize to their fullest potential.

- That MUSIC AT THE BEGINNING.

- The way Jazz awkwardly enters the room and the conversation, showing that for all of her psych-related studying, she’s still a 16-year-old who is in way over her head but trying her best.

- The fact that Jazz saw Danny Phantom get hit in that shoulder, so she instinctively touches that shoulder.

- The fact that Danny is sustaining injuries that are clearly hurting him hours later. Again, fanfiction writers have flourished.

- Jazz starting off by trying to compliment Danny, to make him feel more comfortable around her. She doesn’t just blurt out that she knows. In fact, she never blurts out that she knows.

- Literally the whole conversation is her telling him that if he ever needed to talk about something, she would be there and understand.

- The fact that he was actually about to talk to her.

- The fact that it shows very clearly that the reason Danny didn’t come out to his family was because he was afraid that they would hurt him. I cannot believe that they abandoned this subplot later on, it’s one of the things that made this show stand out from the other superhero stories. Danny trusted the villains to know how identity but not his own family.

- Jazz not pushing because she can understand why he doesn’t feel safe coming out.

- Seriously that score at the beginning has to be my favorite score in the entire show, I literally get it stuck in my head at times.

I just cannot believe that this scene was written, storyboarded, animated, acted out, and put into the final episode and Butch Hartman still has the audacity to dismiss any fans who see Danny as being a queer/trans icon, like my dude, you literally have a scene where the character’s sister tells him that he can come out to her when he’s ready and the only reason he doesn’t is because he’s terrified of his family, and this scene changes the entire dynamic of the show AND this scene begins, and I cannot stress this enough, with the most beautiful score! What did you think was going to happen? This scene has so much code that Tucker wouldn’t be able to hack it!

But seriously, the fact that this has always been my favorite scene, even as a kid, should have been an indicator… 

(Aka I finally got access to polls >:])

I tried to include as many ships as I could, and matched them up in a way that made sense to me. This is just for fun and to satiate some curiosity!

Round One:

Everlasting Trio (Danny/Sam/Tucker) vs Iambic Prose (Danny/Ghostwriter)

Swagger Bishie/Teddy Ghost (Danny/Dash) vs Pitch Pearl (Fenton/Phantom)

Goth Princess/Evil Alliance/Fake-Up Make-Out (Sam/Paulina) vs Pink Astronaut (Danny/Paulina)

Phantom Rocker (Danny/Ember) vs Savant Par (Danny/Tucker)

Gray/Grey Ghost (Danny/Valerie) vs Vengeful Babes (Danielle/Valerie)

Amethyst Ocean (Danny/Sam) vs Pompous Pep (Danny/Vlad)

Family Breakfast/College Triangle (Vlad/Jack/Maddie) vs Rich History (Clockwork/Vlad)

Dark Ages (Pariah Dark/Clockwork) vs Meddling Minutes (Clockwork/Dan)

Round Two:

smth smth the town is SO bizzare that arthur could say "i have a fragment of an eldrich god living in my head" and cecil would go "dont we all" like.

arthur: i was trapped in this enternal desert hellscape for months

john: shut UP dont tell them that-

cecil: oh yeah, the dog park

john: