@mist-fire is usually where I reside, though it's mainly Doctor Who
169 posts
Latest Posts by mistfire24 - Page 2
Jennifer Saunders, from “When the Guest Speaker Told Us“
We have 30 days until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) laws are rescinded. This is the 50-year bedrock of American conservation. Normally, these actions take years but the administration has provided 30 days for public comment gutting clean water and clean air. Drop what you’re doing, before you make any more calls or read any more social media posts, please populate the Federal Register with dissent.
A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations
B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .
C. Fill in your comment, and info at the bottom, and SUBMIT COMMENT.
i ship shadowroot but in like a toxic way that would require a diagram to explain
bellaleaf for skyclan deputy so she and cloverfoot can be cute girl deputies that have no chance of becoming leader together. and also they can kiss each other
In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.
P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3
EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings
EDIT: I made an LGBTQIA+ version with a focus on trans and intersex folks, it's on my pinned if you prefer this version of the acronym.
Hey. International people.
Keep calling it the Gulf of Mexico or whatever your term is for it. Do not allow the Republican regime to label that body of water the Gulf of America to the world. The name came from a the term Mexica, what the Aztecs called themselves. It’s been called the Gulf of Mexico since the 1600s.
Keep calling it Denali. The original name before it was Mount McKinley. Don’t let the Indigenous Peoples/First Nations be erased.
It may sound stupid and petty. But it is an attempt to rewrite history and make us forget the origins. It is a literal white washing of history. This type of censorship is a beginning to greater evils.
Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.
If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.
Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.
Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.
I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.
“Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
— W.S. Merwin, from "Separation, The Moving Target (Macmillan Pub Co, 1963)
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.
I'd love a little something Buffy/Faith with the prompt "you need me"
News about the reboot got me motivated to finish this little thing, which has been sitting in my drafts for forever. Thank you for the prompt!!! 💜💜💜
Season 7 (forgive me, pls) canon divergence. The crew doesn’t act like a bunch of clowns and vote Buffy out. Faith wrecks them for thinking about it.
-
Faith’s not a good person.
She’s trying. She’s really trying, actually, in the painful, cringe-inducing way—she did prison, did repentance, did the whole soul reclamation bit with Angel as her angsty guru, all mournful eyes and gelled hair and shirtless Tai Chi. Now she’s here, acting as B’s literal and metaphorical punching bag, trying to be a fucking mentor and saving her rage for the gym and the spiral notebook that’s sitting at the bottom of her duffel. She’s writing things out, being honest—what a fucking nightmare—and resisting the urge to burn the pages immediately so that no one in this fucking house can ever see.
So yeah, she’s trying to be a good person, to make amends, to really think before she acts. She’s trying to “be mindful,” as a pouty, brown-eyed vampire had put it as he meditated with her in his broody little hotel full of rejects and freaks including, somehow, Cordelia Chase who no question counts as both of those things these days. Jesus fucking Christ.
Okay, so. She’s trying.
But the trying, it takes time, that same cultish fuck she somehow counts as a friend told her, and she’s not there yet. She’s not there yet, so she’s not surprised at the feelings of satisfaction and vindication that bubble up in her stomach when B starts catching shit from the potentials and then from her own precious Scoobies. Her lips twitch a little, pulling against the skin, barely closed from Buffy’s fist in that alleyway, and yeah, this feels good.
The part of her that’s still seventeen, vengeful and ashamed and so fucking lonely, is basking in B’s confusion and anger. She knows what this is—the self-righteous Scoobies interrogating her after a hard decision, a mistake; Giles’s disappointed dad vibes; the scorn and judgment and isolation. It’s about fucking time.
Faith’s not a good person, and it feels like something she deserves when iron bursts bright on her tongue as she licks at her lip, fully split again from the smile she couldn’t quite suppress.
The guy next to her, Robin, who has been here for like fifteen minutes and somehow feels like he’s got a right to call shots, says, like he matters, “So we vote.”
There’s a flash of something in B’s eyes before she can tamp it down, and Faith’s suddenly back in her cot at the prison, tearing at her blanket and throwing her book to the ground as she falls out of a vision, hands and nails aching from clawing at velvet and wood and dirt, lungs screaming from deprivation. She remembers the stiffness and tingle of unused muscles, the panic and confusion and pain, her whole body like a raw nerve, consciousness yanked roughly back into the world and met with what she knows now was a closed coffin six feet under still.
She’s in front of B before she can really process what she’s doing, body coiled and voice steady and dangerous as she says, “Enough.”
She whirls at the hand on her bicep, snaps lowly at Buffy before she can get out whatever obnoxious bullshit she’s definitely going to throw at her, “I’m with you, B, so shut the fuck up for once, okay?”
Like a fucking miracle, she does, jaw snapping closed so tightly that Faith could’ve heard it even without her slayer senses and hand dropping back to her side. She shrinks a little, and Faith is reminded of how young she is, how young they both are. Not children, no, and Faith was never really a kid anyway, but still.
She turns back and eyes Giles, ever the Watcher, and lets her lip curl as he stares at her, opens the door she’s gotten real good at keeping closed in her murder rehab. She feels something in her stretch like a panther in one of the nature docs they showed at the prison–strong and hungry, lazy and confident, lying in wait. He flinches and the monster flashes its teeth in approval.
“Enough,” she says again, and lets her gaze cross the room. The Scoobies are unsurprised, which stings a bit, but this version of her, dangerous and defensive and slayer, even if nobody wants to admit it, is new for the potentials, and she clocks their reactions, which run the gamut from wide eyes and open staring to attempted nonchalance. She’s made it most of the way across the room, eyes lingering on Dawn and the little bit of hope in her eyes, the little bit of gratitude, when a voice sounds out beside her.
“Faith.”
This fucking guy. Her eyes narrow as she turns to Robin, and she knows she’s doing it right when he takes half a step back at her glare.
“Listen, Robin?” She says it like she isn’t sure, derisive and dismissive because his ego’s fucking outrageous, and she’s stretching muscles she hasn’t gotten to use in a long time. When he frowns, offended but clearly aware he can’t make a big deal of it, she bites back a smile. She doesn’t let it go further because she has a goal here, and she is trying, fucking still, can feel Buffy behind her waiting on shit to go sideways. Faith has no interest in proving her right.
Faith is not a good person, but right now, in a coincidence that works out super well for Buffy Summers, the not-so-good parts of her and her better Angels (gag) are leading her to the same result. She’d rather hurl herself through the front window of the house and do a coordinated dance routine with Drusilla’s bleach-blonde creep than feed Buffy’s superiority complex one more tiny morsel, which means she’s keeping her shit together.
“Robin,” she says again, with more certainty, her fit-for-public-consumption adult voice in place. “Gimme a minute here, okay? I think I deserve that.”
He nods, like it was really a question, and she lets him, because growth and not proving Buffy right and also helping Buffy. What a mindfuck. She imagines how good it will feel to let loose on the punching bag later.
Nobody has moved during their little exchange, and pretty much everyone is still avoiding eye contact. Faith can see Kennedy in the corner of her eye, her back and shoulders kept rigid with unearned confidence and entitlement, but Faith doesn’t take the bait. All she wants is attention. She can get it from Red.
Instead, Faith takes a second to think through how to do this, can feel Buffy’s anxiety rolling off her in waves. B hates the loss of control, but she’s not an idiot, never has been, and it seems like she has processed that Faith’s doing her a favor here.
“We don’t need a vote. B’s in charge.” She sees some shuffling among the potentials, Giles’s ever-present furrow getting deeper, Willow’s frown comically pronounced, Robin’s feet moving half an inch toward her. She breathes out, filling space like it’s hers, and it is. It always is, but she rarely reminds people of it, these days. And anyway, even when she wasn’t trying to be a good person, she didn’t love making the wrong people feel afraid.
Her shoulders roll back, her feet spread just shy of a fighting stance. A reminder. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“You broke out of prison.” It’s immediate. Faith hasn’t spent much time with Anya, but the literal answer, the deadpan delivery, both seem pretty on target with what she’s got so far. She fights an eye roll. Red doesn’t, and she feels a small, terrible burst of solidarity.
“Yeah,” she acknowledges.
“Where you were because you killed a man.” Anya’s voice has an edge to it now, and Faith’s patience is wearing thin.
“Right again,” she says, instead of telling her to go fuck herself, letting the potentials’ reactions to the exchange roll off of her. “But before that…” She catches Red’s hand grasping Anya’s forearm when it looks like she might speak again and the bite of gratitude is annoying as hell. Respecting her is one thing, but Faith’s nearly certain they’re going to be friends.
That’s for later. She focuses up. “You know the whole deal. Into every generation, a slayer is born, one girl in all the world, whatever whatever.”
Giles pulls some kind of face. She fights the urge to say something just to piss him off more, misquote the sacred misogynist texts or talk about the Council, maybe, while she stares him dead in the eye. I know who you are, you old fuck. I remember just as much as you do. She might call Angel after this, to brag on herself and her self-control.
“One girl. One slayer. Then she dies, usually pretty quickly, and another girl gets called.” Robin’s tense now, arms crossing, and ah. Maybe that’s it. Some slayer connection. Poor bastard. “That’s the drill. And we all know B’s the slayer. The one girl. But see, I’m a slayer, too. And I’ve never been great at school, but the math on that is easy enough.” She doesn’t look back as she asks, “How old were you when you died, B? The first time.”
“Sixteen,” Buffy answers, voice flat but clear.
“Sixteen,” Faith repeats. She eyes Dawn as carefully as she can, but small fry notices, because she’s no dummy. She’s got her jaw all clenched, looks so much like the little teenage shit she is, and the monster in Faith bristles in a mostly new way. Protective. She’s so angry, but not just for herself anymore. Dawn gives her a tiny little nod. “The Master drowned you, yeah? After taking a bite? Ugly fuck.”
The hum of affirmation isn’t loud enough to be heard by anyone but Faith but that one was rhetorical anyway.
“So one dead slayer means a new one gets called. But still not me. Not first, anyway.”
“Kendra,” Buffy says from behind her, loud enough to be heard by the rest of the room, but barely. Faith turns her head enough that Buffy can see her dip her chin in acknowledgement. She understands. Buffy needs to say her name. Faith does, too.
“Kendra. Kendra and Buffy, even though there’s only supposed to be one. But then Drusilla killed her.” William the Bloody’s been smoking cigarettes in the front yard, but she’s not sure that name will mean anything to them.
“Only some of them know,” Buffy says lowly, mind meld in full effect, and it makes her skin crawl as much as it feels like a warm blanket.
“A vampire with a special flavor of crazy,” Faith adds to the group.
“Do you have a point?” It’s Robin, arms crossed tighter and looking like Faith has personally kneed him in the balls, which she has spent serious time not doing, actually.
“Who even are you? You’ve been here for, like, five minutes.” It’s Dawn, lip raised in a look of disdain so purely Summers that Faith can’t help but smirk. Her split lip splits a little more, and she licks the blood away as she watches Robin try to figure out how to answer.
Buffy, uncharacteristically, remains silent, although Faith can practically feel her desire to rein Dawn in, can see in her mind the exact face B’s making, the pout of disapproval, eyebrows lowered in judgment.
“You know who I am,” Robin says, like small fry was being literal.
“Yeah, my principal. And that’s not what I meant, anyway.”
“What did you mean?” His tone is somewhere between genuine and careful, young lady, and yeah, a principal for sure. Gross.
“I meant,” Dawn says, words slow and deliberate and condescending, and Faith fights a snort as she watches Robin realize he’s miscalculated, “that I would rather hear from the actual slayers in the room. Faith’s talking. You should listen.”
She’s done with the conversation, which she signals by turning away from Robin and back to Faith. It’s impressive, given that she can’t actually turn fully away from him, but the vibes are there loud and clear. A big, teenage fuck off.
Dawn catches her grin and one corner of her mouth tilts up just a little and Faith can’t believe how much she likes Buffy’s only-still-kind-of-a-kid sister.
“My point,” Faith says with a measured look at Robin, “is that Buffy got called, alone, when she was fifteen years old. Then she died. She died saving all of you, even though none of you had any idea, because a group of old fucks decided she was expendable. That we all were.” She looks Giles dead in the eye because she’s never been very good at the passive part of passive-aggressive. He looks like he’s sucking a lemon. Good. “And then she got brought back, and she kept going. She got Kendra and lost her. She kept going. She got me and I was a massive fuckup who tried to kill her.”
B doesn’t interrupt her, but Faith senses the movement, slow and deliberate, and then there’s a small, warm hand on her back, a gentle press that stays there.
“And then she was alone again. And she kept going.”
“She wasn’t alone.”
Faith doesn’t want to fight with Xander. She doesn’t. But he’s wrong, and he needs to know it.
“She was, actually.” It’s Willow, looking at Xander with understanding and maybe pity, tone familiar and kind but not uncertain. “We loved her. We helped where we could. But neither of us is chosen. We could have walked away whenever we wanted. We still could.” Her face shifts and she’s looking at him almost the way she did when they were in high school, the way she probably has for all of their lives, if Faith’s got it right. It’s a kind of gentle that’s a little embarrassing to watch, even if it’s more complicated, more grown-up, than the half-love-struck thing it used to be. “It means something that we stay, but it’s a choice she will never be able to make. And the one time she tried to make it, we stole the choice away from her.”
It’s the last bit that does it, that keeps Xander’s mouth shut and makes Willow’s eyes tear, and sends Buffy’s body rocking just enough to let Faith know she wants to move—to go to Willow or to bolt or to punch something—but won’t. Willow can tell too, maybe, because she turns to Buffy over Faith’s shoulder and smiles at her, real and hard and unconcerned with anyone else and shit, yeah, they’re gonna be friends.
“She died again,” Faith says, carefully as she can. “Gave herself up for everyone again.” There’s a flash of pain at the memory of it, the burst of light from nowhere and the certainty that she was the lone slayer in the world, the certainty also that no one would be coming to tell her anything more. “How old were you that time, B?”
“Twenty.” Flat but clear.
“I don’t think dying repeatedly is a great argument for leadership.” It’s Anya again, and she sounds almost apologetic, but she can’t quite stop herself. Willow might murder her, if looks are anything to go by, eyes flashing dark and dangerous. Faith’s adding points to the Red column by the minute.
“She sacrificed herself.” Dawn’s voice is sharp, though not as sharp as it had been with Robin. “The point is, she chose to give up her life to save everyone, which she did, and then she was brought back against her will and is still fighting. It’s about why she died the second time. And what she did when she got brought back. Again.”
“What small fry said,” Faith offers with a nod, and Anya is quiet again. Faith gears up to give a speech that’s going to make her feel disgusting. “The point is that B is the only one who has been tested in the ways that this is going to test us, and she’s the only one who has made the choice to end her life for everyone else, and she’s the only one who has shown that she’s willing to do it again and again. I’m not saying we don’t need teamwork.” God this is so gross. She’s going to annihilate a bag later. “I’m just saying B is and always will be the leader of this team. At least as long as I’m on it.”
And there’s the threat. She can see them all process it, can feel Buffy behind her, palm flattening against her shoulder blade. Her body reacts the way it always has to affection from Buffy, but she doesn’t bother to lie to herself about what it means anymore. There are lots of things she wants and can’t have. She’s trying not to run toward mess these days, and anyway, this is bigger than that.
“We should keep a vote on the table.”
Her patience snaps, and her head turns slowly to Robin, arms easy at her sides, eyes running him over in a lazy calculation. “You still think we’re at the same fuckin’ table?”
His eyes widen, a little, but he looks like he might square up. In other circumstances, Faith might be impressed by the audacity. Now, though, she just lets her bleeding lip curl and tracks his eyes as they watch the red spread.
“Faith is right.” There’s not even a hint of disgust in Red’s voice, though Faith knows from personal experience how much that must have cost her. “Buffy’s the leader of any team I’m on.”
“Me too,” Dawn says, followed quickly by several potentials.
“We need a plan.” It’s Giles this time, and Faith watches relief flood Robin’s face, irritation making her skin crawl.
“We’ll make one.” Xander says, and then looks at Faith, past Faith, at the body that steps up beside her, close enough that their elbows are brushing. “Right, Buff?”
“We’ll make one. I’m not…I’m not the best at asking for help but I know I…” Faith begins to tune out, exhausted, and the hero’s back, her job done, but the minute she tries to take a step back, Buffy’s fingers are around her wrist. It’s a hold she could break easily, which they both know, and Buffy’s still talking, not acknowledging the conversation her body is having with Faith’s, but her thumb and index finger squeeze gently, a request. “I’m sorry.” Faith has no idea whether the apology fits with whatever else Buffy had been saying. She stays.
Later, forearms pressed against the porch railing, Faith flinches briefly at the creak of the back door and then relaxes again, scooting slightly to the right to make space for the reedy arms that settle near hers.
“I’m afraid we’re going to be friends.”
Faith snorts. Sighs. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”
Willow’s profile is as sharp as ever, but the curl of her lip is newly affectionate. The door creaks again a few minutes of quiet later, and Willow moves, body replaced by one Faith has never known quite what to do with.
“Thank you.” It’s real, makes Faith want to say something unserious and possibly offensive. She doesn’t, because growth, but she does let herself smirk, is rewarded with an eye roll. “And I’m sorry. About your lip.” Before Faith can figure out what to say to that, she adds, “About a lot of things.”
“Yeah,” Faith tries. “Me too.”
“You’re different.” It’s not a question. “I mean, I knew. But you’re…” Faith waits. She’s good at quiet now, when she needs to be. “I feel like I’m not as different as I should be. From the way I was then.”
“Yeah, well, I had a lot more room to grow. You weren’t out there staking humans.”
“That was an accident.”
Her immediate response, her certainty, is relief on a wound so constantly sore that it almost makes Faith gasp. “Thanks,” she says simply and without a struggle, “but what came after wasn’t.”
“No.” It’s a concession, not a dig, and Faith isn’t sure how much longer she can take this level of earnestness, this kind of honesty. “I can’t do this without you.”
Well, shit. But at least it’s a lie.
“Of course you can.”
“Okay.” Another concession. “But I don’t want to.”
“You saying you need me, B?”
She isn’t. What she’s saying is about a thousand times scarier. They both know it. Maybe a good person would reach for the truth. Maybe a good person wouldn’t run, wouldn’t hide behind a joke. Faith isn’t a good person.
“Maybe,” Buffy shrugs, pressing her forearm against Faith’s. It’s something, to know she isn’t the only one who needs a little distance from the full truth, good person or not.
She presses back into the contact and lets it lie.
mark, my words. *mark brings me my dictionary* thank you mark
IT'S THEIR DAY
This Was Supposed To Be My Town (Consequences)
Faith Lehane never had a chance.
Put yourself, if you will, in Faith Lehane’s shoes. You are seventeen years old. You have no friends, and in fact never seem to have had any. You grew up poor, neglected, and physically abused by your mother. Said mother dies when you are still a child, but you are taken under your wing by another woman: your Watcher, who reveals to you that you are a Chosen One - granted the power to fight vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness. She then also dies; violently murdered in front of you.
So you move across the country to another town, where you meet someone just like you. Like, freakily like you. As if you are her mirror image somehow. She is exactly like you, except she has friends, a loving mother, a living Watcher, and a warm three-bedroomed home to return to every night. You have none of these. You live in a run-down motel that you can’t afford. You have to feed, house and clothe yourself, and none of the adults in your friend’s life make any attempt to rectify this situation, including the one that’s meant to be acting as your Watcher. Again, you are seventeen years old.
But you carry on. You become good friends with this mirror-girl. Perhaps you even have a bit of a crush on her. You think you are inseparable, until you find out she has been secretly keeping her ex-boyfriend in a mansion. At the same time, you get another new Watcher who promises to take care of you, and you start to look up to her. Then she betrays and tries to kill you. And then dies. You spend Christmas Eve with this girl, but again she disappears to look after her ex who’s trying to kill himself. You carry on getting closer with her, finally feeling in tune with another human being who’s coming around to your way of thinking. Then a strange man basically runs into your stake and, oops, you’ve taken a life and might be facing manslaughter charges. It feels like everything in your life other than your freedom has already been denied you, and now you might lose that as well.
What I’m saying is: you wouldn’t have reacted that great either.
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@lgbtqcreators creator bingo: lgbtq headcanon + team colors -> buffy & faith; bad romance because they're just really good "friends"
I just read that Donald Trump and his circus took down a website called reproductiverights.gov
This was a website to help women learn about their reproductive rights in the US and to find health care.
This is absolutely disgusting so I’ll share in this post some resources in case you need them:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER REWATCH -> Revelations (3.07)
An important PSA to remember!
[ID in Alt]
— Margaret Atwood, Late Night
Nikita Gill, from Your Heart is the Sea: Poems; "The Difference Between Alone and Lonely,"
being self aware suuuucks like yeah this thought pattern/behavior is stupid and pointless and a symptom. i know this. [does it anyways
Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.
If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."
We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.
And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.
grief is so crazy like what if i forget what her laugh sounds like. does she know i loved her. i miss her so much. i catch myself doing things she used to do. i wish i could call her. i miss her so much. i do a crossword puzzle. i cry while washing the dishes. does she know i loved her? my heart feels like a hummingbird. i miss her so much. what if i forget what her laugh sounds like. what if i forget.
when i tell you i had an aneurysm
Victoria Chang, Obit
something about you, and your voice, and your hands.
to be honest for a while now the world has passed over me in static. i feel it rumble overhead, unruly and unhappy, tire tracks over skin. when i close my eyes i see only refracted light and rain. no matter how much i sleep, i am exhausted over and over again. i have tried everything. girls and pills and makeup and prayer and chastity and sobriety and violence and tearing off a fancy dress and putting it on again. i might just be permanently shaped like this.
something about you, though. you cut into the soft bits. everything turns color-swift and loud. like you can push your hands through the fabric. like you can find me and pin me down. like all the running and fighting and biting down was pointless; i'd been home for longer than i'd counted. the first time you looked at me - really looked, caught my anxious eyes like a bird - i felt some little rabbit kick her legs, bound up somewhere in the razorwire radio silence dominating my heart.
i can't be known like that. i can't be touched like that. you can't love me like that.
i'll simply come apart.