Sands - Librarian, sci-fi nerd, comics nerd, gamer, roleplayer, very amateur cosplayer, aspiring pilot, bibliophile, tea enthusiast. This blog is a poorly organised miscellany of the things i like.
I am deeply offended by this! I was reading thoughts on what D&D classes the characters of The Mummy (1999) would be, and there was a comment that Jonathan was obviously a rogue, but either a badly built one or one with shit dice rolls. And! Excuse you? Jonathan is a perfectly acceptable rogue! He rolls fine when heās actually attempting to do something!
In the first movie alone, some of his greatest hits:
Successfully pickpocketed Rick on their first meeting, without Rick so much as joining the dots until later.
Survives a pitched battle on a burning ship without a scratch, and somehow gets the key from a burning hook-handed enemy mook in the process. (āAnd did I panic? I think not!ā)
Survives a pitched battle in the Hamunaptra ruins while drunk, through liberal use of cover and picking off targets at range.
Rolls a Nat 20 on his deception check to avoid being massacred by a large group of hynotised enemies in the museum.
Survives the final pitched battle with the undead (again, through liberal use of cover, hiding and running).
Successfully makes his intelligence roll to translate the Book of Amun Ra (with the Help action from Evie).
Successfully uses the resulting control over the undead mooks to even out the battlefield, including the genius brain move of sending them after Ankh-Su-Namun to both save Evie and distract Imhotep.
Successfully pickpockets a lich while being strangled by him to regain the key and enable Evie to use the book to banish Imhotep altogether.
Yes, heās fairly flimsy in direct battle, and if at all possible refuses to get to melee range with anybody. So heās a ranged rogue, and has a tendency to use the environment to his advantage. But heās clearly designed around Sleight of Hand, Charisma, and a decent sprinkling of Intelligence, and prefers to use object interactions and battlefield control to even out his odds. For all that, though, he fully will stay in melee range if he has no other choice, and take the opportunity to pickpocket the BBEG while heās at it.
He's a perfectly serviceable rogue, heās just not optimised for straight combat. And even there, as the second movie shows, heās excellent at ranged combat. He just doesnāt like getting up close and personal.
Actually, going back and rewatching that final battle again ... I don't think that Jonathan stayed in range of Imhotep because he had no choice. He stayed in range specifically to pickpocket him.
I didn't realise before, but this whole battle starts with Evie telling Jonathan that the only way to kill Imhotep is to open the book and read the spell to banish him. Jonathan says it's locked, they need the key, and Evie then tells him it's in Imhotep's robes.
When Jonathan sends the priest mummies after Ankh-Su-Namun with the spell on the cover (saving both Rick and Evie in the process), Imhotep is coming right for him. However, Imhotep is then briefly disabled by watching the brutal murder of his lover all over again, and Jonathan ... could have run. There's a beat there where Imhotep is completely focused on something else, and Jonathan absolutely has the presence of mind to use that, but he doesn't. Imhotep, now incensed that Jonathan has murdered his lover, promptly spins back around and goes to murder him back, and is only stopped because Rick returns the favour from earlier and saves him.
At which point a lightly-strangled Jonathan stands back up and tells Evie he got the key.
He fucking stayed put on purpose because he knew they needed the key, that Imhotep had the key, and that he was the only person who could fucking pickpocket the BBEG mid-strangulation and get away with it, so long as someone could swoop in before the undead wizard actually killed him. Imhotep is immortal and immune to damage if they don't do something about that. This is a fight of attrition they cannot win. And his sister told him what they needed to stop it, so Jonathan went and got it.
He cheerfully calls himself a coward, and then he goes and fatally pisses off a lich as a distraction, and then stands still to be murdered for it in order to get close enough to pickpocket the immortal pissed off undead. It wasn't that he took the opportunity while being strangled, he set up being strangled in order to have the opportunity.
Say whatever the hell you like about that man, but he has never once failed to do something his family actually needed him to do.
the thing about the mummy movies is that you really spend most of the time thinking "wow brendan fraser's character is so cool" or "man oded fehr is so mysterious and heroic" when the fact of the matter is that these two
are the absolute most batshit insane heroes in the entire franchise
these two are intellectual loner siblings with archeology backgrounds who read and speak ancient egyptian, hire a dude directly out of prison to take them to a lost city of gold, and fight mummies literally with their bare hands. twice.
no one in these movies stands a chance against the carnahans. frankly they're lethal in how willing they are to make the absolute and most undeniably deranged decisions. jonathan pickpockets a dude on fire. evy's resurrected from the dead and immediately remembers how to use sai. they're racking shotguns from a cliff in this scene and then proceed to blow away half the antagonists.
Extremely correct response, leaving out the inevitable debacle over citizens declaring counterfeit genders in order to have rarer pronoun pins to sell to collectors in the underground pronoun market.
Dibbler, only mildly discouraged, eventually realizes he can sell embellishments for your pronoun pin, which he claims will upgrade your gender.
Also of note is that there are no cops present at Ankh-Morpork Pride. This is not because they aren't welcome (everyone knows Nobby is as kinky as they come), but because the festivities include throwing bricks at the City Watch building and they are busy trying to make sure they still have a place to work the next day. The Night Watch prepares each year with a barricade, and pre-marriage Vimes always collects the good bricks so he can save for a house. Nobody is really sure where the tradition came from, but it's good fun and usually nobody gets hurt too badly.
The bricks are provided by Vetinari, who considers it a good test of city infrastructure and training for the Watch.
Cheery would 100% march in the parade. She'd get Nobby to go with her, but Nobby would be completely oblivious as to why (he assumed she just wants company).
Moist von lipwig would have pride-themed stamps made; these would inevitably have some kind of issue, which would create some outrage and ultimately make the stamps more valuable as collectors' items.
I don't get the impression that Ankh Morpork ever had anti-sodomy or crossdressing laws, so I don't think the queer community's history with the police would be the same as it is in the real world. Especially because Cheery Littlebottom literally started the Dwarf trans/feminism movement as an officer of the Watch, with the Watch's support.
Dibbler would totally sell pride flags with the wrong colors (and then insist it was the "new, updated version" if anyone questioned him)
The nobility are all scandalized, meanwhile the Seamstresses Guild has a float in the parade
Adora Belle Dearheart is deeply involved with at least one queer organization and is one of the main organizers of the Pride festival, but refuses to answer any questions about why
Ridcully decides the wizards should be involved, and Ponder Stibbons should make a float and organize the refreshments for them to eat while riding on the float. Ridcully's concept of allyship is loudly saying, "Well done, that man!" and pointing at anyone he thinks is exhibiting particularly queer behavior.
Madam Sharn and Pepe release a whole new line of Pride-themed chainmail
Bengo Macarona is embraced as a gay icon
Reg Shoe decides the main pride event is too corporate, and organizes an alternative pride parade for the same time and place; this immediately gets subsumed by the main pride event. Some Omnians show up to Pride to protest and Reg is delighted to have someone to fight with.
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 hadnāt 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, weāre on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that sheās surprised the two of us arenāt up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.
āEveryone else?ā Goes I, āI thought they wouldāve shut that down already?ā
āOh no!ā goes she, āThe courts arenāt open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. Theyāre doing them all weekend long!ā
We didnāt know because social media wasnāt a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as Iād 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, itās a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but weāre 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 whoād 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.
āIsnāt City Hall closed on Monday?ā I asked. āItās a holidayā
āOh sure,ā they reply, ābut 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.ā
āOh cool,ā we go, āBackup.ā
āMake sure youāre here if you do,ā they say, ābecause the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.ā
And all this shit is super not-legal, so theyāll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.
00000
We donāt get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.
Itāsā¦ incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of othersā 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, āThatās Newsom.ā 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. Itās February, so itās only six or so, but itās getting dark.
āShould we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?ā we ask.
āYeah, Iām afraid thatās not going to be possible.ā One of the volunteers tells us. āWeāre not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. Weād 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 whoāre up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.
āUh.ā We go. āWhat the fuck is -this-?ā
So.
Remember why they werenāt 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 thatād gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.
Itās 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 werenāt 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.
Weāre in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. Itās around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and youāve got a makeshift raincoat! So youāve 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 theyāre 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 weāre sinning and to please donāt. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against Godās 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 āNot even DOGS do such things!ā Whichā¦ Yes they do.
A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that weāre willing to come out in the rain to do this while theyāre 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 weāre on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when weāre on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when weāre 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. Theyāve 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. Heās 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. Theyād started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.
The most perky energetic joyful woman Iāve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. Sheās their local friend whoād just gotten their message about what theyāre 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 whoād been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. āWe met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because itās our first love city.ā
āThen they announced -this-,ā the other one says, āand we canāt leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.ā
āI told them why,ā her partner says, āI donāt care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.ā
My husband-to-be and I look at each other. Weāve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? Weāre potentially taking a spot from another couple thatād been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.ā
āDonāt you fucking dare.ā Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.
āThis is as much for you as it is for us!ā says the lesbian couple whoāve been together for over a decade behind us.
āYou kids are too cute together,ā says the gay coupleās friend. āyou -have- to. Someday -youāre- going to be the old gay couple thatās been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.ā
We stay in line.
Itās while weāre 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. āCan we say weāre with you? His uncles are already inside and theyāre not letting anyone in who isnāt with a couple right there.ā āOf course!ā we say.
The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but thereās free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so heās having a great time.
We pass by a statue of Lincoln with āMarriage for All!ā and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.
Itās about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.
Theyāve promised that anyone whoās inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. Weāre safe.
We still have a -long- way to go.
00000
Theyāre 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 Iām not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.
Itās after weāve 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. āItās an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you donāt have to do it there!ā
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. Sheās done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. āOh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today Iām acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-ā
The guy behind the counter has been there since six. Itās now 1:30. Heās 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. āAlright, go to the Rotunda, theyāll direct you to someone whoāll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, theyāll direct you to -that- line.ā āCanāt you just mail it to us?ā āNormally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, weāre not going to be allowed to.ā
We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.
If youāve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, youāve 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.
Thatās for the people who didnāt bring their own wedding officials.
Thereās a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. Theyāre doing the whole damn thing. Thereās at least one more Rabbi at work, I canāt 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 canāt get the ring on my husbandās finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.
There really isnāt a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that weād made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands whoād cheered for us generally.
Then we're married.
Then we get in line to get our license.
Itās another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayorās 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 āTHANK YOU!ās 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 weāre 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, thereās 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. Itās no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. Thereās barely even any news vans.
We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading āCongratulations!ā jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.
Iām at the BART station, weāre waiting for our train back south, and Iām 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. āHey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I justā¦ Iām so happy for you. Iām so proud of what you could do. Iām- Iām just really glad, glad you could get to do this.ā
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.
Itās 4:30 and we are starving.
Thereās 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 weād 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 Newsomās 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. āNo! No one knew that theyād go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! Iāll just be there for the next one!ā
00000
It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didnāt even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was āmarriage really isnāt that important, aside from the legal benefits. Itās just confirming what you already have.ā
But maybe itās just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and Iāve never really come up with a better metaphor is, āItās 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 otherās 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. Itās been twenty years and weāre still together and still married.
We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. Weād done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husbandās 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 couldnāt 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 didnāt expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldnāt 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 Iād barely started by 30s. I never thought Iād be in my 40s and itād be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers wouldāve 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 Iād live in this world.
And itās 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 donāt have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you canāt 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 weāre resigned to doesnāt 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 whoāre against it will brave.
When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.
So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".
So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.
#jesus.#orpheus and eurydice#as a poem#using a poll#this is probably the greatest exploitation of mediums i have ever seen op#every reader has the chance to become part of the text by voting#not the subtext#the TEXT#and i love me some ephemeral works in concept#you had to be here for this one week#and then the text is locked#(barring any edits to the original post of course)#and i just think that's so beautiful#beauty springs from the simplest things viewed askew#and all you need is a poll that accepts long enough strings (via couchcrusader)
and then THE FINAL RESULT. where ālook behindā came so so so close to winning, but āi trust that she is thereā came out ahead by 0.1%. so maybe, maybe, we did it right this time. maybe this time we were able to save her.
My instinct is to agree with this, but like, when I really think about itā¦
No money, no credit cards, identification is all vocal/fingerprints/retinal, so no wallet.
Again, doors are voice activated, or just unlocked by entering a code.Ā No keys.Ā Ā
Communication devices are tiny and stick onto clothing starting in Next Gen.Ā TOS had bulkier communication that they carried around or kept in, like, packs and stuff, so the arguments for pockets is a little more valid, and if I remember correctly, those costumes didĀ have pockets, tho I could be wrong about that.Ā But anything post TNG, the point is moot anyway.
Tricorders and phasers are really the only thing anyoneās carrying around, and thatās usually on away missions where theyād be bring their packs/holsters or just have them out.Ā I mean, who wants to stick a phaserĀ in their pocket?Ā Ā
So, yeah.Ā Thereās not much little stuff people needĀ to carry around everywhere.Ā And if they are preparing for a longer journey or want to bring bulkier things, wellā¦just bring a bag.Ā It fits more anyway.Ā Ā Ā
Every time a member of the USS Enterprise has found a cool rock and taken it home, it has resulted in eleven deaths, six temporal displacements, the holodecks breaking again, and somebody getting turned into a lizard. Pockets are a privilege, not a right.
