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is this relatable to everyone or just me

Because my comics have gone around the internet, many people have asked if I’ve “gotten better yet”. The answer is a firm NO because that’s not how post-viral illness triggered by an infection that causes organ and brain damage works. Please consider your behavior and who you are leaving behind.

Check out the People’s CDC here where they provide weekly updates on the COVID situation in the U.S.

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Year of the tiger getting ready to hand things off to year of the rabbit! 🐯🐰 明けましておめでとうございます!

Sorry but if we want tumblr to hit the big time again one of us has to take the fall and steal human remains.

this might be because I’m a family law lawyer and also an old crone who remembers when marriage equality wasn’t a thing (as in, marriage equality only became nation-wide two months before I went to law school), but I have Strong Feelings about the right to marry and all the legal benefits that come with it

like I’m all for living in sin until someone says they don’t want to get married because it’s ~too permanent~ and in the same breath start talking about having kids or buying a house with their significant other. then I turn into a 90-year-old passive-aggressive church grandma who keeps pointedly asking when the wedding is. “yes, a divorce is very sad and stressful, but so is BEING HOMELESS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITAL PROPERTY, CAROLINE!”

“oh, he thinks a piece of paper shouldn’t define your relationship? ASK HIM HOW HE FEELS ABOUT BEING ON YOUR BABY’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE, PATRICIA.”

“oh, sure, it’s all fun and games until your estranged parents are making medical decisions for you and inheriting all your property, TIMOTHY.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tl;dr: if you want all the shit that comes with a marriage, good and bad, you need to tell the government that’s what you want. if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to do it, but you need to also be aware of what you’re potentially losing (in exchange for what you’re keeping). that should be an informed decision, not one you make for emotional reasons like “I just want everyone to know I’m only having sex with this person forever” or “our love is so pure it transcends legal boundaries.”

Is there any option other than marriage for telling the government you want this person to be part of your family? Like, can you draw up some kind of homebrew contract?

Short answer: No. If there was, queer people would have done it already.

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

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

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

I guess technically adult adoption is an option, in that it is what queer people did for a while in lieu of marriage, but it’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons (not least of which being that you can divorce a spouse but you can’t undo an adoption).

this, THIS is why QPR make me so fucking nervous. i’m not trying to shit on your beautiful poly aroace love affair, i’m asking you HOW WILL THIS RELATIONSHIP HOLD UP IN COURT. cause, news flash: it won’t.

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

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

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

if you don’t have that stuff, if you’re relying on your partners to do the right thing forever and be perfect people and never have a business collapse or a messy family situation or an accident or even to get sick … you’re being really, really naïve.

Okay I wasn’t going to say something about this but I’m angry enough that I’m going to.

It is so deeply and cruelly condescending to tell us that we’re naive for being in a relationship you don’t personally find compelling. To call it an “poly aroace love affair,” instead of validating is as a relationship. And I am not blind to the reality that it is rampant aphobia and infantilizing of aroace people so popular in the queer community that has kept anyone from pointing that out, and I want to lead with that before I go any further - I am EXPLICITLY including my solidarity with aroace people in this anger.

No one in a qpr is naive about our relationships. We know that they won’t hold up in court. We know! We fucking know, and we’re not children playing around. Many people in qprs do get married for that exact reason. “QPR” does not mean “two people who are not committed enough to get married,” it means a committed relationship that isn’t sexual or romantic. And just because there are many poly people in qprs does not mean that only poly people are - and us being poly does not mean that our relationships are trivial.

My partner and I have been together since 2018. We are in a qpr. Because of aphobia and the trivializing of qprs by people JUST LIKE THIS, they spent years feeling like they were failing me and our relationship. Even were we not poly, we couldn’t marry. I’m on disability and Medicaid. Does that mean that we’re naive? That I shouldn’t have relationships with anyone because I’m disabled and they won’t hold up in court? Because that is the ultimate outcome of talk like this. While this shitty, patronizing mentality primarily affects aroace people, it extends to so many groups of people who still do not have marriage equality. Saying that it’s naivete that leads someone to have a relationship the courts don’t respect is just rebranded homophobia.

Instead of condescending to us and saying it makes you nervous that people are in a type of relationship you don’t like - a relationship that does not mean “two people who refuse to get married just for funsies” - maybe work with those of us who can’t get married on expanded marriage equality until it’s actually fucking equal.

I drew these while thinking about that Cats trailer. It IS Caturday. We still do Caturday, right? Here’s some classic cats.. as Cats.

alcohol enjoyers are like i lovee things that taste so so bad

the horrors are returning everyone!!!! clap if you’re excited for the horrors

[weakly] did everyone have fun at the horrors

I'm not easy to love!!

This is how I decided to come out as non binary btw

Claude Monet, Edge of the Cliff at Pourville x I Saw Water, Tigers Jaw

Reblog to make the tummy not hurt of the person you reblogged from.

Universities love to make their websites a fucking maze

Universities websites love to tell you to email a guy who died 5 years ago

Nicknames: when you shorten someone’s name affectionately

Nicholasnames: when you elongate someone’s name affectionately

Nichard names: when you incorrectly elongate someone's name for humorous effect.

“I wasted my 20s”, cool man, just in time for all the gay sex and weird tattoos you’re about to have in your 30s

… In this political climate?

YES by gods yes. Especially in this political climate. Do not let them win. Resist with your pleasure and autonomy