I know it for a fact because the vaccine for the sleeping sickness came out when I was ten, and she cried. When she was a kid, parents would have Sleep Overs whenever someone caught it, in the hopes of spread it around - children were statistically more likely to be woken up by "True Love's Kiss" from a parent or family member, after all, whereas if you caught it when you were older, things got more complicated and if you were old, you might be the last one in your family left.
(There’s more to it than that, I know, I've tried reading the papers, but I barely passed biocurse with a C+, and don't even get me started on organic curses. Those two classes were enough to kill any hope I had of becoming a fairy godperson.)
So, when the vaccine against the sleeping sickness came out, my stepmother cried, and my father got me on the list right away; I wasn't high priority, after all; I was young, there wasn't an active outbreak in my school district, and I was otherwise healthy. But they put me on the backup list anyway, so if there was one, just one available, I could get it.
When the fairy godperson's office called, my dad was at work, but my stepmother bundled me up and drove there so fast I thought we were going to be pulled over. (Later, I found out that she'd gotten an automated ticket from one of the red light cameras, a fact that she hid from both me and my dad.) They called my dad, of course, and he left work, but he also gave the okay for my stepmother to be my medical proxy in case he was delayed.
Vaccines don't last forever, and it was decided that I would be given it without him there. At 100 minutes, my stepmother would try kissing my forehead, and if it didn't work, the office would set me up for the 100 hours it would take before my dad could try.
Magic can't be ignored, but it can be tricked.
It didn't matter. At 100 minutes post-vaccine, my stepmother kissed my forehead and I woke up.
So. I know she loves me.
My mom would have been there, if she could, but she died when I was five. She'd gotten Rapunzelean cancer in high school, but she'd beaten it! She was one of the successes!
...Until it came back.
I don't remember much about her, but I remember that she loved me. Even as the golden tumors grew from her bare scalp and sucked the life out of her, she would sing to me, and she wrote me a series of letters for me as I grew up, just in case.
My stepmother took me to her grave sometimes. My dad does too, but it's nice that my stepmother is willing, you know? I had a breakdown one year when I couldn't find my mom's favorite flowers to take to her burial site, and my stepmom drove me all over town until we found one store that had them in the right color. (My dad was at the fairy godperson's office to get some pre-wards before we went to the cemetery. I found out later that his father had caught a curse shortly after my grandmother passed away, specifically geriatric onset donkeyskin, and my father was paranoid of following in his footsteps.)
My dad and my stepmom shuffled their shifts, so that one of them was with me in the morning before school, and one of them was there after, and then both were home for dinner. When I told them I wanted to study to be a fairy godperson, they took me seriously, even though I had wanted to be a pilot and a vet, and and a lawyer and and and - they always supported me, and soon I was being gifted books on the history of magicomedicine and cursebreaking. Some of them gave me nightmares - siren's disease freaked me out for a long time; something about the tongue swelling so much you would suffocate, and the agonizing images of ancient "cures" where the victim had to get their tongue cut out so they could breathe. I don't even know why! There were much worse ones! But something about that was so visceral to me. For the next month, any time my feet hurt even a little was convinced I was coming down with siren's disease.
I worried my parent's so much that they took me to Fairy Elena, my PCFP, and asked if she would be willing to go over how siren's is treated now. She gave me a quick rundown on intubation, pain medication, and told me about Prince's Blood Donations.
It was the first time I learned that magic can be tricked; according to legend, siren's disease could be cured by killing someone's true love and smearing their blood over the patient's legs. At least, that was one line of thought; another line of thought argued that it had to be the blood of royalty. Some fairy godperson and magicoresearchers got together in the '80s and decided to research it methodically, going through every known case of siren's disease & what worked and what didn't. It turned out royalty was the key, but then it became a question of ethics. I didn't care too much at the time, that was all boring, grown-up stuff, but finally one researcher decided to just make a blood bank company, call it Prince's and see if that worked.
And it did.
Magic can be tricked, and my mind was blown.
I also asked my dad if we could put that book away for a little, because it was too scary. He agreed, and we put it on the top shelf, where all the scary books went. I reread it recently, and honestly? I don't remember what I was so afraid of.
Things started changing when I turned 16.
For one, my hair, which had always been brown, started darkening to black. For another, I stopped being able to tan. It was like a light switch went off; magic was determined to turn me into something, and I hated it. My PCFP really went to bat for me, getting insurance to cover the cost of cosmetic glamours and professional tanning sprays. She wanted me to tell my parents, but I didn't want to, not yet, and she was bound by her oath to protect my privacy.
She was right. But... I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to pretend everything was fine.
I didn't want to lose another mom.
And it worked for a while; managed to get to my senior year of high school before the world broke.
Stepmothers don't have the best reputation.
It fucking sucks, and it's not fair, but enough stories have been told about them that magic took an interest, and began manifesting curses that warp stepmothers until they follow the story.
We thought we were safe. My stepmother didn't bring any children into the marriage, so she was safe from the ash-girl curse variant, and I was a tanned brunette, so we were safe from the snow-daughter variant.
And she loved me.
She hid it too, I think. Not intentionally, but some of the symptoms are paranoia and anxiety.
I've done a lot of research. I don't think I'll ever be able to be a fairy godperson, but that doesn't mean I had to stop caring. I swapped my focus to researching curses from the history and literature side of things. I still work with researchers, we just come from different angles now.
Anyway, no one realized anything was wrong until she was french braiding my hair and the next thing I knew, she had locked herself in the bathroom sobbing while EMTs took me to the hospital for overnight observation. I don't actually know what happened. She turned herself over to the cops as soon I was loaded onto the ambulance, and she was taken to a hospital herself. She was sedated at first, as she was so wound up that she was hurting herself, and the hospital couldn't scan her for curses. Once she came out of sedation, she immediately called my dad and offered a divorce, he could take everything, she would leave immediately.
But we'd gotten the results of the scans, and I was fine. As best that the fairy godperson's could tell, the magic was frustrated that we didn't want to go down the snow-daughter route, and had lashed out in an attempt to force it. That was apparently what knocked me unconscious; magic poisoned the comb my stepmother was using in my hair.
That didn't mean she didn't feel guilty - but so did I. If I had told them earlier, would things have changed? If I hadn't tried to hide the signs that magic was fucking with us?
They don't blame me, and I don't blame her.
She loves me. I know she does. We still talk, as best as we can. She can only hear my voice for ten minutes before the curse starts taking over. We can email, though, as long as the orderlies can prescreen the email for any curse triggers. She also can't hear about me directly, but my dad will go and visit her, and tell me how she's doing. He refused to divorce her. His insurance still covers her hospital stay. He says he's married, and wears his ring.
When I applied to college, I wrote about all three of my parents, and how much they had all taught me.
How much they all loved me.
Someday, my stepmother will get her curse lifted, I have to believe that. I've joined a multidisciplinary group of researchers based in the EU. Some of us are looking at ways to trick magic, some of us are looking at ways to rewrite the stories of the wicked stepmothers, and create a new path for the magic to follow. One group of researchers is looking into ways of simulating the punishments that stepmothers receive at the end of tales to see if "punishing" stepmothers would break the curse. Actually going through the punishments would cause any ethical review board to remove someone's license, and there's no way I would want my stepmom to dance in red hot metal shoes.
But lately she's been getting hot stone foot massages before I call her; that's how we got to ten minutes before the massage took hold, and next week we're going to see if holding her feet in a hot bath lets us video call. Maybe someday we'll be able to see each other in person again. Maybe I'll be able to take her home where dad and I can cook dinner for her, and we can be a family again. My family has an apple pie recipe, and we never made it - I understand why, now, but maybe someday we can laugh at this and all make it together. To make your own apple pie, you'll need...
I thought I'd do better but there were just some things that apparently never crossed my dash. However, as a smut writer in good standing, I have to dust my shoulders off a bit at my results.
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Climb aboard, then!” But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown. “Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“I can’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”
___
…But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the frog felt a subtle motion on its back, and in a panic dived deep beneath the rushing waters, leaving the scorpion to drown.
“It was going to sting me anyway,” muttered the frog, emerging on the other side of the river. “It was inevitable. You all knew it. Everyone knows what those scorpions are like. It was self-defense.”
___
…But no sooner had they cast off from the bank, the frog felt the tip of a stinger pressed lightly against the back of its neck. “What do you think you’re doing?” said the frog.
“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
They swam in silence to the other end of the river, where the scorpion climbed off, leaving the frog fuming.
“After the kindness I showed you!” said the frog. “And you threatened to kill me in return?”
“Kindness?” said the scorpion. “To only invite me on your back after you knew I was defenseless, unable to use my tail without killing myself? My dear frog, I only treated you as I was treated. Your kindness was as poisoned as a scorpion’s sting.”
___
…“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
“You have a point,” the frog acknowledged. “But once we get to dry land, couldn’t you sting me then without repercussion?”
“All I want is to cross the river safely,” said the scorpion. “Once I’m on the other side I would gladly let you be.”
“But I would have to trust you on that,” said the frog. “While you’re pressing a stinger to my neck. By ferrying you to land I’d be be giving up the one deterrent I hold over you.”
“But by the same logic, I can’t possibly withdraw my stinger while we’re still over water,” the scorpion protested.
The frog paused in the middle of the river, treading water. “So, I suppose we’re at an impasse.”
The river rushed around them. The scorpion’s stinger twitched against the frog’s unbroken skin. “I suppose so,” the scorpion said.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Absolutely not!” said the frog, and dived beneath the waters, and so none of them learned anything.
___
A scorpion, being unable to swim, asked a turtle (as in the original Persian version of the fable) to carry it across the river. The turtle readily agreed, and allowed the scorpion aboard its shell. Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell. The turtle, swimming placidly, failed to notice.
They reached the other side of the river, and parted ways as friends.
___
…Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell.
The turtle, hearing the tap of the scorpion’s sting, was offended at the scorpion’s ungratefulness. Thankfully, having been granted the powers to both defend itself and to punish evil, the turtle sank beneath the waters and drowned the scorpion out of principle.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” sneered the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back.”
The scorpion pleaded earnestly. “Do you think so little of me? Please, I must cross the river. What would I gain from stinging you? I would only end up drowning myself!”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Even a scorpion knows to look out for its own skin. Climb aboard, then!”
But as they forged through the rushing waters, the scorpion grew worried. This frog thinks me a ruthless killer, it thought. Would it not be justified in throwing me off now and ridding the world of me? Why else would it agree to this? Every jostle made the scorpion more and more anxious, until the frog surged forward with a particularly large splash, and in panic the scorpion lashed out with its stinger.
“I knew it,” snarled the frog, as they both thrashed and drowned. “A scorpion cannot change its nature.”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. The frog agreed, but no sooner than they were halfway across the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown.
“I’ve only myself to blame,” sighed the frog, as they both sank beneath the waters. “You, you’re a scorpion, I couldn’t have expected anything better. But I knew better, and yet I went against my judgement! And now I’ve doomed us both!”
“You couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion mildly. “It’s your nature.”
___
…“Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“Alas, I was of two natures,” said the scorpion. “One said to gratefully ride your back across the river, and the other said to sting you where you stood. And so both fought, and neither won.” It smiled wistfully. “Ah, it would be nice to be just one thing, wouldn’t it? Unadulterated in nature. Without the capacity for conflict or regret.”
___
“By the way,” said the frog, as they swam, “I’ve been meaning to ask: What’s on the other side of the river?”
“It’s the journey,” said the scorpion. “Not the destination.”
___
…“What’s on the other side of anything?” said the scorpion. “A new beginning.”
___
…”Another scorpion to mate with,” said the scorpion. “And more prey to kill, and more living bodies to poison, and a forthcoming lineage of cruelties that you will be culpable in.”
___
…”Nothing we will live to see, I fear,” said the scorpion. “Already the currents are growing stronger, and the river seems like it shall swallow us both. We surge forward, and the shoreline recedes. But does that mean our striving was in vain?”
___
“I love you,” said the scorpion.
The frog glanced upward. “Do you?”
“Absolutely. Can you imagine the fear of drowning? Of course not. You’re a frog. Might as well be scared of breathing air. And yet here I am, clinging to your back, as the waters rage around us. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that trust? Isn’t that necessity? I could not kill you without killing myself. Are we not inseparable in this?”
The frog swam on, the both of them silent.
___
“I’m so tired,” murmured the frog eventually. “How much further to the other side? I don’t know how long we’ve been swimming. I’ve been treading water. And it’s getting so very dark.”
“Shh,” the scorpion said. “Don’t be afraid.”
The frog’s legs kicked out weakly. “How long has it been? We’re lost. We’re lost! We’re doomed to be cast about the waters forever. There is no land. There’s nothing on the other side, don’t you see!”
“Shh, shh,” said the scorpion. “My venom is a hallucinogenic. Beneath its surface, the river is endlessly deep, its currents carrying many things.”
“You - You’ve killed us both,” said the frog, and began to laugh deliriously. “Is this - is this what it’s like to drown?”
“We’ve killed each other,” said the scorpion soothingly. “My venom in my glands now pulsing through your veins, the waters of your birthing pool suffusing my lungs. We are engulfing each other now, drowning in each other. I am breathless. Do you feel it? Do you feel my sting pierced through your heart?”
“What a foolish thing to do,” murmured the frog. “No logic. No logic to it at all.”
“We couldn’t help it,” whispered the scorpion. “It’s our natures. Why else does anything in the world happen? Because we were made for this from birth, darling, every moment inexplicable and inevitable. What a crazy thing it is to fall in love, and yet - It’s all our fault! We are both blameless. We’re together now, darling. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”
___
“It’s funny,” said the frog. “I can’t say that I trust you, really. Or that I even think very much of you and that nasty little stinger of yours to begin with. But I’m doing this for you regardless. It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s strange. Why would I do this? I want to help you, want to go out of my way to help you. I let you climb right onto my back! Now, whyever would I go and do a foolish thing like that?”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Come aboard, then!” But no sooner had the scorpion mounted the frog’s back than it began to sting, repeatedly, while still safely on the river’s bank.
The frog groaned, thrashing weakly as the venom coursed through its veins, beginning to liquefy its flesh. “Ah,” it muttered. “For some reason I never considered this possibility.”
“Because you were never scared of me,” the scorpion whispered in its ear. “You were never scared of dying. In a past life you wore a shell and sat in judgement. And then you were reborn: soft-skinned, swift, unburdened, as new and vulnerable as a child, moving anew through a world of children. How could anyone ever be cruel, you thought, seeing the precariousness of it all?” The scorpion bowed its head and drank. “How could anyone kill you without killing themselves?”
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river.
“To be honest,” said the desert rain frog. “I’m the wrong kind of frog for that.”
“Oh,” said the scorpion.
“I was hoping to find someone to carry me across, myself.” It admitted.
“Oh,” The scorpion said. “Well, we can wait together.”
And they sat, and spoke, and when a turtle happened to pass along, they both ventured together, and the scorpion was too busy sharing words to ever think of stinging.
—
“Actually,” said the scorpion, as it climbed onto the frog’s back, “My sting is harmless.”
“Oh really?” Said the frog, as it began to swim.
“Yes,” the scorpion waved the small stinger about. “The poison is useless to anything larger than a beetle. I can’t threaten you with it at all, you see, so you don’t really need to worry about it at all.”
The frog, now freed from the fear of death, began preparing to dive.
“Although,” the scorpion continued as it felt the frog slow down, “do not think me entirely defenceless.”
“Why not?” Said the frog. “All you have is your claws. And they aren’t sharp enough to pierce my skin.”
“No, they are not,” agreed the scorpion, getting a good hold of the frog’s shoulders. “But they are strong. They need to be, to hold my prey so my weak venom has time to work.”
“But they will not kill me.”
“No. But there are other ways to hurt.” The scorpion tightened its grip, letting the teeth of its claws sink into the skin.
“You will drown me, of course, but my claws will remain locked. My drowned corpse will hang over your shoulders, right here, claws buried in you. And everyone who sees you will see it. And they will see my frail little body, and my weak little stinger. And you will drown me, yes, but for the rest of your life everyone will know that you took the life of a creature that was no danger to you for no greater sin than that you did not want to grant them passage. You will never escape the weight of me on your back, waiting to be carried to the afterlife you delivered me to.”
The frog was silent, for a while, before it continued to swim. “I think I would have preferred you with a stinger that worked.”
The scorpion relaxed its grip. “And I would have preferred to not have to use it.”
—
“Do you know how many times we’ve done this?” Asked the frog, eyes flicking back to its passenger. “I can’t remember how long it’s been.”
“A million lives.” Purred the scorpion, claws nestled up to the frog’s neck. “A million lives now, with this one. And it never matters until we’re here.”
“I’m glad it’s us.” Said the frog, letting the tide sweep it away. “I’m glad even after a million lives, we always find each other.”
The scorpion clung tight, even as the water seeped into its carapace. “I’d never die with anyone else, my love.”
Hopelessly entangled, they faded into oblivion.
—
A chicken stood at the edge of a road, watching the cars go by.
“Is this all there is?” It asked.
“I don’t know.” Said the fox across from it, brushing some grass from it’s foot.
“But it might be nice to find out.”
—
-but no sooner had the frog gotten halfway across the river did a great catfish rise up, mouth so wide they could not escape.
“Oh, foolish frog and foolish bug.” It said, voice full of pity as it swallowed them both. “Your eyes glued to the most obvious threat, did you never think there were greater things to fear in a river as deep and wide as this?”
And the catfish swam off, to find more frogs to devour.
—
“Sorry?” The scorpion paused, confused. “Sting you? Why on earth would I do that?
“Well,” said the frog. “It’s in your nature to, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all!” The scorpion said, voice tinged with insult. “We don’t run around stabbing everything we see. That’s a good way to start a fight you can’t win. A stinger is just for catching food and fending off predators, really. It’s no more my nature to sting everything as it is your nature to drown everything. And you don’t do that, do you!”
The frog scowled, petulant at the tone. “Well, the scorpion I usually see here almost always stings me…”
“That seems like you’re projecting problems with one scorpion onto every scorpion you meet.” Said the scorpion. “I’m not really sure I trust you to take me across the river, frankly. Do you know if there’s another frog who could help?”
The frog grumbled, and slipped into the water.
—
The chicken stood on the banks of the river with it’s children. A fox sat on the other bank, with a bag of corn.
“Hoy, chicken.” Shouted the fox. “Do you ever think you might be stuck in a rut?”
“What’s it to you?” The chicken said, flapping a wing in annoyance. “My life is my own business, fox.”
The fox shrugged, pawing at the corn. “I just feel like I can’t get out of this cycle,” it said with a sigh. “Like my life is stuck on rails.”
—
“On rails?” The scorpion asked. “What do you mean?”
“My whole life is just this river-”
—
“This road-”
—
“This boat-”
—
“And it feels like it doesn’t change. It feels like I’m always just here. In the river, with you.”
—
“Is it such a bad place to be?” Asked the fox.
“With me?”
—
“How long do you think the river has been here?” Asked the scorpion.
The frog thought about that until the poison had seeped into its bones.
“As long as us,” it whispered, as its lungs gave out. “As long as we’ve needed it.”
—
“You’re not swimming right.” Said the scorpion, pinching the frog’s arm.
“You need to kick round with the back legs, push with the front, like this-” gently, it pushed the frog’s limbs into the correct position.
“Oh, thank you.” Said the frog. “I’m no good at this. I’ve never been a frog before.”
“You’re doing brilliantly, my dear.” The scorpion said, trying to reassure. “I would have taught you earlier if I could have.”
“And I would have taught you to walk.” The frog laughed, kicking much stronger now. “If only I’d known you didn’t know! I saw you stumbling over the sands there.”
“I’ve never had so many legs!” The scorpion wailed. “How do you manage them all? And the eyes!”
They were not making it across the river very fast.
“I don’t mind only having two eyes.” The frog admitted. “I could get used to it.”
Despite the tutoring, the frog was getting exhausted, weak muscles failing in strong currents.
The scorpion tried to kick at the water, but its frail carapace only dredged in the currents, dragging them both down further.
“Oh, we’re no good at it this way around.” The scorpion said with a shake of its tail, claws clinging so strongly to the frog’s gossamer skin that it ripped open, spilling the entrails like ruby ribbons into the depths.
The frog laughed, choking on the water it didn’t know how to breathe. “I can’t swim, and you won’t sting! Oh, how our natures fail us still!”
And the river claimed them both once more.
—
“Do you remember a time before the riverbank?” Asked the fox.
“Do you remember anything after it?” The Chicken countered, head stuck in the bag of corn as it ate its fill. “Is there anything but the pursuit of what we will never grasp?”
“Maybe we will grasp it,” the fox’s voice was tinged with hope, tail tucked tightly around its legs. “Maybe one day, we will be more than our natures, and we will not have to cross the river again.”
“I like the thrill of it.” Said the chicken. “I’d miss the thrill of it.”
The fox sighed, and lowered its head down to the chicken, already doomed to bite. “But still, wouldn’t it be nice?”
—
But alas, the rains had been heavy, and the river bank had become swollen and wide.
The frog kicked for what felt like an eternity, the scorpion holding steady on its back.
Eventually it could swim no longer, and its legs seized up, as it gasped for air.
“I’m sorry, my love-” the frog wheezed. “I don’t think I can make it-”
“It’s okay.” The scorpion’s voice was soft with sadness, knowing now that it was doomed to die. “I didn’t know it would be so hard. I’m sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
“It’s not your fault,” said the frog, as the currents began to sweep them both downstream. “I wanted to help, I- I really thought I could get you there, I, we were so close -”
“We really were, weren’t we?” The scorpion’s hold on the frog was loosening, as its head swam from lack of oxygen. “We almost made it, we really did…”
The frog wailed in grief as the scorpion’s body was torn away, swallowed by the churning rapids.
—
A scorpion walked across an old riverbed. The smooth pebbles had long laid bare, the river dried up thousands of years ago.
It paused in the middle, overcome with a strange pain in its chest, and decided to turn back.
It felt wrong to cross this river alone.
—
“Where do you think the cars go?” Asked the fox.
The chicken watched a car drive by, seeing the shadowy shapes move within. “I try not to think about it. I want to be happy with my lot in life.”
—
-and no sooner had the frog gotten halfway across the river when the scorpion tapped its stinger against the frog’s back to get its attention.
“Hey,” said the scorpion. “I’m not really in that much of a rush, and it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we just go up the river instead? I’ve always wanted to try standing on a lilypad.”
“Sure, if you’d like.” Said the frog. “I don’t have any plans for the day.
And while the river remained uncrossed, neither of them were unhappy about this.
—
“When did you know you loved me?” Asked the turtle, as the scorpion clung onto its back, hiding from the deep currents of the river.
The scorpion winced as a wave shook them. “Oh, from the start.” it said, shaking water from its tail. “Or near enough. I’d never met a frog before. And even though you didn’t know me, you laid your life on the line for me. For hope that the impossible was possible.”
The turtle considered that, thinking back across its many lives.
“I don’t think I knew I loved you until recently.” The turtle admitted, lifting its head from the water so its voice could be soft. “It took time, I think, to know. But that said, why else would I come back, time and time again to the same spot of the same river?”
“You have a world of rivers you could be in, my love.” The scorpion agreed. “And yet I always wait for you here. And you always come.”
“I’ve never been as vulnerable as I’ve been with you.” Even as the water licked up its shell, the turtle continued to swim. “I’d never trust my life to anyone else.”
“Here’s to us,” said the scorpion, raising its stinger. “And the river.”
“Here’s to us.” Said the turtle, raising a flipper to sting. “I hope we always find each other.”
—
“Well here we are,” said the frog to the scorpion. “The other side.”
“Here we are.” The scorpion agreed, slowly climbing off its back. “Thank you, for all of this.”
“Thank you for choosing me.” Said the frog. “Thank you for chaining my lives together. For helping me remember the infinity of Us.”
The scorpion didn’t answer, simply looking up, letting the sun warm its carapace.
“I’ve never really left the river.” The frog took another step onto the bank. “It’s… nice.”
The scorpion turned. For a moment, the frog felt the surge of adrenaline as it felt a pinch on its skin, only to find the scorpion had clasped its claw around their hand. “Come with me.” It pleaded, voice soft with urgency. “Come with me, and don’t say no. I won’t leave this river without you. We can see the other side together.”
Those claws could slice, but they were only firm. The river was only the river. But from the banks the frog could see a jungle of lush green, vibrant with life beyond its knowledge. It laughed. “I’ve always wondered what it was like out there.”
—
And the river was silent, with no moral questions to burden it.
I was high off my ass last night and had this dream where I was in this dense ass forest and sitting there was a tall woman. She was so tall I couldn’t see her face but she was wearing gold and I was like “uh…hi?” And she said “I made you, do you know that?” And I nodded and she was like “I hear your thoughts. Why do you hate my creation? Why do you try to destroy yourself? I made you perfect as you are. Please don’t break my heart”. Then she started crying and it flooded and I woke up with fucking heart palpitations like what does it Mean™️????
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.
“Nobody’s going to want to sit on high-speed rail for fifteen hours to get from New York City to LA.”
Me. I will sit on high-speed rail for fifteen hours. I’ll sit on it for days. I’ll write and read and nap and eat and then do it all over again. I’ll stare out the windows and see America from ground level and not have to drive. I’ll see the Rockies and the deserts and cornfields and the Mississippi River and your house and yours and yours too. I’ll make up stories in my head about the small towns I see as we go along. I’ll see the states I’ve yet to see because driving or flying there is a fucking slog and expensive to boot. I’ll enjoy the ride as much as the destination. And then I’ll do it all over again to come the fuck home.
Someone I respect and consider an intelligent, capable scholar has just told me that she uses chatGPT to write parts of grant proposals, and suggested that I do the same. This is like existentially horrifying.
Not only because chatGPT has gotten that good that fast, not only because it means most of the jobs I’m qualified for will be nonexistent or much diminished in a few years, but because this is saying the quiet part out loud. That the things we’ve been writing were always mostly bullshit and never really mattered. That grant proposals were always just about gabbling out the correct buzzwords, and so were conference abstracts and grad school applications. That this goes beyond academia. That both the public and the private sector is employing huge crowds of people to write meaningless text. That my inability to care about my work is not wholly a personal failure, that nobody cares, that nobody has cared for a long time, that people value their own work so little (or are forced to value their work so little, through impossible time pressure) that they would happily replace it with a passable okayish replica.
I’m not a great writer, and when I’m on here, writing inconsequentially, for my own enjoyment, I am often thoughtless. But writing is still my self. And I think anything that goes out into the world as written word has a value, it is important, and the writer is responsible for it. Of course I’m a nervous wreck who is paralysed by the thought of writing anything for publication, or even to be read by anyone else irl, and that’s not healthy either. But I can’t handle the idea of people not caring for their own writing at all. I am disgusted by the idea that we can just push a button to make soulless shit pseudotext, and it won’t even be that much of a change because we already had been making soulless shit pseudotext anyway, not caring, or not being allowed to care.
Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.
another addition as far as physical media goes there is the encyclopedia of national dress (that i still need to buy myself bc this kind of thing is super important to my sort of fantasy designing) but yes i do agree i wish there was EVEN MORE documentation on this
Here's all my Nerdy Prude Must Die paintings in one set! These teens live rent free in my head for all eternity. I think i have the show memorized at this point for how much I watched it while doing these.
Yes I redid Richie's painting Don't look at me . (and shout out to @to-our-own-fairytale for the banger quote suggestion)
Edit: By popular demand, I have added these as prints to my store! Find them here!
>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
Seriously, get and run PiHole if you can. It changes your internet experience so much for the better. I get shocked when I visit a website when I'm someone else's network, by just how many ads the internet is flooded with now. Take back control.
