Images And Info Regarding The Explosion Today In Beirut, Lebanon, Please Add On In Notes And Share

ICYMI: During the fifth inning of a World Series game this weekend, activists unfurled a giant trans pride flag bearing the words “TRANS PEOPLE DESERVE TO LIVE” in the middle of the crowd. The group TransLatin@ Coalition was behind the flag, citing protests of Trump’s newest proposal to erase trans people; activists Maria Roman and Bamby Salcedo filmed themselves draping it in the stadium, where it stayed for several minutes. YES. (via PinkNews)

ANA AMARI  → BASTET 

A guard on the ground between them groaned, and in a flash, Ana drew her sidearm and fired a sleep dart into his neck. 

“You missed one,” Ana said.

Y'know, whenever people want to talk about why aspec people 'count' as an oppressed identity, they tend to go for the big stuff like corrective rape and conversion therapy. And like, we should absolutely talk about that stuff. Obviously those things are terrible and important and we need to raise awareness and deal with them.

But I feel like people often gloss over how… quietly traumatising it is to grow up being told that there is only one way to be happy— and that everybody who doesn't conform to that norm is secretly miserable and just doesn't know it— and then to gradually realise that, for reasons that you cannot help, that is never going to happen for you.

You're not going to find a prince/princess and ride off into the sunset. Or if you do, then it's not going to look exactly the way it does in fairytales. You're not going to get a 'normal' relationship, because you are not 'normal', and everybody and everything around you keeps telling you that that's bad.

You see films where characters are presented as being financially stable, genuinely passionate about their work and surrounded by friends and family, but then spend the rest of the plot realising that the real thing they needed was a (romantic and sexual) partner, to make them 'complete'.

You absorb the idea that any relationships you have with allo people will ultimately be unfulfilling on their side, and that this will be your fault (even if you discussed things with your partner beforehand and they decided that they were a-okay with having those sorts of boundaries in a relationship) unless you deliberately force yourself into situations that you aren't comfortable with, so as to make uo for your 'defects'.

You grow up feeling lowkey gaslighted because all the adults in your life (even in LGBT+ spaces. In fact especially in LGBT+ spaces) are insisting that it's totally normal to not be attracted to anybody at your age, and then you go to school and everybody keeps pressuring you to name somebody you're attracted to because they can't imagine not being attracted to anybody at your age.

And then you get older and realise that one day you're going to be expected to leave home, and that one day all your friends are going to be expected to put aside other relationships and 'settle down' with a primary partner and you don't know what you're going to do after that because you straight up don't have a roadmap for what a 'happy ending' looks like for someone like you.

(And the LGBT+ community is little help, because so many people in there are more than happy to tell you that you're not oppressed at all. That you're like this because you don't want to have sex, and/or you don't want to have any relationships, that your orientation is some sort of choice you made— like not eating bananas— rather than an intrinsic part of you that a lot of us have at some point tried to wish away.)

Even if you're grey or demi, and do experience those feelings, you still have to deal with the fact that you're not experiencing them the 'normal' way and that that's going to effect your relationships and your ability to find one in the first place.

If you're aiming for lifelong singlehood (which is valid af) or looking for a qpp, then you're going to have to spend the rest of your life either letting people make wrong assumptions about your situation (at best that your relationship is of a different nature than it actually is, at worst that the life you've chosen is really just a consolation prize because you 'failed' at finding a romantic/sexual partner) or pulling out a powerpoint and several webpages every time you want to explain it.

This what being aspec looks like for most people, and it is constantly minimised as being unimportant and not worth fighting against— even in aspec spaces— because we've all on some level absorbed the idea that oppression is only worth fighting against if it's big, and dramatic, and immediately obvious. That all the little incidents of suffering that we experience on a daily basis are not enough to be worth bothering about.

I mean, who gives a shit if you feel broken, inherently toxic as a partner, and like you're going to be denied happiness because of your orientation? Shouldn't we all just shut up and thank our lucky stars we don't have to deal with all the stuff some of the other letters in the acronym have to put up with (leaving aside the fact that there are many aspec people who identify with more than one letter)?

So you know what? If you're aspec and you relate to anything I've said above (or can think of other things relating your your aspec-ness that I haven't mentioned) then this is me telling you now that it's enough. Even if we got rid of all the big stuff (which we're unlikely to do any time soon because— Shock! Horror!— the big stuff is actually connected to all the small stuff) we would still be unable to consider our fight 'over' because what you are experiencing is not 'basically okay' and something we should just be expected to 'put up with'.

No matter what anybody tells you, we have the right to demand more from life than this.

Friendly Reminders

Nico had a life before the Lotus Hotel

Hazel was 13 when she died

Clarisse’s weapon has been dubbed “Lamer” by literally everyone at Camp Half-blood

Sally was trapped in the Underworld for over ten days

Leo ran away from multiple foster homes

Piper had to steal a car to get her father’s attention

Thalia has lost Jason twice, but this time he’s not coming back

Nico sometimes accidentally refers to Hazel as Bianca

Athena told Annabeth that she meant nothing to her

Tyson was attacked by a sphinx

Percy loves blue food because his mom was trying to prove a point to his abusive stepfather, not because it’s his favorite color

Percy had to sneak food from Gabe or else he wouldn’t eat

Calypso was trapped on and island for thousands of years, with no one except for the people who would become stranded there, who would also eventually leave her alone again

Every time Apollo looks at a Laurel wreath or a hyacinth he is reminded of someone that he loved who he couldn’t save

Hades is trying to make up for the way he treated Nico in PJO

Frank’s mother and grandmother are dead

Nico almost starved in an airtight jar full of poisonous gas with only pomegranate seeds to keep him going

Will became a counselor at the age of thirteen

Rachel has a life other than being the oracle

Rachel has done incredible things, she’s not a bad character for kissing Percy

Octavian launched himself into his own death

Nico felt like Octavian’s death was his fault

Reyna’s father was abusive toward her and Hylla

Hecate was afraid of Hazel’s powers

Nico probably has an Italian accent

Luke’s mother is baking cookies for a son that is never coming home

Hermes thought Luke died believing no one loved him

Chiron has had to witness hundreds, if not thousands of demigods die at Camp Half-Blood

Thirteen unnamed demigods died in The Last Olympian

Ethan Nakamura literally fell from heaven

Nico convinced Hades, Persephone, and Demeter to fight on the side of the gods

Nico probably hates Zeus for what happened to his mother

Percy is afraid of drowning

Thalia is afraid of heights

Nico is afraid of fading into the dark

wow such struggle much pain no but seriously it’s supposed to be that headcanon where Remus tries to find a cure for his affliction and surprisingly there is one person willing to help him and not trying to poison Severus at the same time :)

Meet Maiden & Princess, a children’s book set to launch in April 2019 about a maiden who falls in love with – you guessed it! – a princess. 

Maiden & Princess is intended as a companion to [author Daniel] Haack’s Prince & Knight, which was released in May as the inaugural effort in a new partnership between GLAAD and Bonnier Publishing USA. Acknowledging that both books “exist in the same universe,” Haack told HuffPost he was particularly excited about Maiden & Princess because he believes same-sex love between two women is even more underrepresented in children’s literature as compared to that between two men.

“We wanted to take that fairy tale structure with real human characters and tell a simple love story between these two women, complete with all the anxieties and excitement of first love that would resonate with kids,” Haack, who resides in Los Angeles, said. 

Beautiful. Learn more over at HuffPost. 

I love them so much

Soft Bois 

This adorable proposal.