Reblog If You're Pan, Bi, Ace, Or Really Love Chicken Nuggets. I'm Trying To Prove Something.

❤️<—— awww ily too!

Your sixth most recent emoji is how your guardian angel feels about you

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re an 18-year-old teenager from a family living below the poverty line.  One day, you make a silly mistake and get a ticket for it. Nothing major - maybe you rode the subway without a ticket or smoked too close to the entrance of a building. Maybe you were loitering. Either way, one thing is for sure: you definitely don’t have the money to pay the ticket.  So you don’t.  Eventually, you miss the deadline to pay your ticket, and you get a letter in the mail that says you have to go to court. But your life is chaotic, and a court date for a missed ticket is the least of your concerns. Your family moves constantly, which disrupts your life and puts you behind in school. You have one disabled parent and one parent who is always working, leaving you to raise your younger siblings by yourself. You have no means of transportation. There is rarely any food in the cupboards. The utilities are constantly getting shut off. The week that you were supposed to go to court, your family gets another eviction notice, your cousin ends up in the hospital, and your parent finds out that their disability payments are being reduced.  So you miss your court date.  Since you missed the court date, you automatically lose your case - now you have no hope of arguing your way out of the ticket, which you still can’t afford to pay. You can do community service hours instead of paying, but you don’t have time to do that, now that you have to work part-time and odd jobs on top of everything else to keep your parents off the streets and your siblings out of foster care. You know that you probably won’t finish high school on time, let alone fulfill your hours. You might be able to explain your circumstances to the judge, but you have no idea how to go about doing that now that you’ve missed your court date, your literacy skills are years behind thanks to your constant game of school roulette, and even though legal help is available to you, you don’t know how to access it or if you can afford to do so. But that’s still the least of your concerns - since you missed your court date, the judge has also charged you with failure to appear. 

Which means you now have an active warrant out for your arrest.  And just like that, you’re now a part of the criminal justice system. A silly mistake that a middle-class teenager could have solved with Mommy and Daddy’s chequebook in a single afternoon has caused you weeks or months of stress and headaches over a process you don’t fully understand, and has ended in criminal charges. Instead of having a funny story to tell over dinner when you come home from college next Thanksgiving, you are now facing additional fines (that you still can’t pay), the possibility of a couple of nights in jail, the possible suspension of your driver’s license, and the possibility of being taken into custody any time you interact with the police. The next time your parent comes home drunk and violent, or someone breaks into the house, you think twice about calling the cops - you now have to decide if every emergency is “worth” the possibility of being hauled off to jail. And in the meantime, the circumstances that caused that first mistake haven’t gone away - you still don’t have the money to pay for the subway, you are still more likely to live in a house filled with smokers, you still can’t afford quit-smoking aids, you still live in a chaotic household that deeply affects your mental health, and you still don’t understand the legal system or who you’re supposed to talk to for information and resources. So while those other teenagers get to go through life believing that they were “good kids who sometimes made silly mistakes”, you now get to go through life thinking of yourself as a criminal. And that might be the most damaging thing of all. 

When I worked with homeless teenagers and young adults, I saw this process play out again and again and again and again. The kids often considered themselves “criminals” or “bad kids” because they had arrest warrants and criminal records, but few of them had ever actually committed a serious or violent crime - the vast majority were simply unlucky kids who did something stupid and didn’t have the skills or resources (or wealthy parents) required to get them off the hook. I had classmates in my upper-middle-class high school who did far worse things with far fewer consequences, because Mommy was a lawyer or Daddy was an RCMP officer, and some of those kids grew up to be lawyers or police officers themselves. The kids I worked with never got that opportunity. Second chances cost money, and the difference between a “crime” and a “mistake” has less to do with the offense, and more to do with the circumstances you were born into. 

So when we’re talking about crime, punishment and who is “worthy” of being helped, maybe keep that in mind.

interrupting your day to tell you to take a stretch break. big stretch. the peaceful kind you see cats do.

My favourite thing about the Xianle trio is just how sickeningly codependent close they are. Like, what do you mean you haven’t been friends in 800 years, your friend group fell out in the most painful and traumatic way it possibly could have, and you all have the absolute most reason to hate each other- but in The Cave Of 10,000 gods Mu Qing and Feng Xin were absolutely appalled at the disrespect to their prince. They were fiercely protective, refusing to let Xie Lian bear witness to what they thought was an incredibly perverted insult to his honour. They went toe-to-toe with one of the most terrifying ghosts who ever lived, all in defence of him, and did so without ever thinking twice. They dragged him through that cave system with desperately protective determination, caring for him fiercely despite being misinformed about the situation, and even though they had no obligation to. I’m biting people. Mu Qing and Feng Xin never stopped caring about Xie Lian. He’s no longer their prince, he’s no longer their employer nor even their friend, but they would still put their lives in peril for him. Even when they thought he was a violent criminal (Lang Qianqiu ily but pls kys) they visited his palace to give him medicine for his arm (something about Mu Qing brushing off his injury and saying it isn’t that bad cause all martial gods get injured, then being the first in line to go heal him is so sickening and vile I love him) and make sure he’s alright, then physically fought over the implications from each other about the other having been a bad friend. All of the bullshit trauma, all of the heartache, all of the reason they could have to not give a shit about him, and they were throwing hands over who was a better friend. I hate them. (I love them.)

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

so… how much should i procrastinate reading book 6 of tgcf? i’ve heard it’s very depressing… im more than halfway through book 5 but haven’t bought book 6… so given people’s answers i may wait longer until i buy the 6th

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

I love her. I’m in love with her. I have been for years. I want her, to have and to hold, for better and through worse, for the rest of my life. I used to say that I wanted to be a part of her, a heart, a lung, a leg, anything. Not because I wanted to be her, no, but because I wanted to know her, better than anyone, so I could know what she needed, how best to help her. I want to be there with her through everything. I want to come home from work and cuddle up to her on the couch, to listen to her talk about her day, or her dreams, or anything.

I want her in all the ways someone can want someone else. I want to be her best friend, her lover, her comrade. I want the be the first person she calls when she needs to talk, when she wants to share good news, or bad news, when it’s late at night and she can’t sleep. I want to kiss her, and hold her, and sleep under the stars. I want to tumble into bed with her, to tease her about her bed head in the morning. I want to learn to cook her favorite foods in a kitchen we share. I want to dance with her, to watch her trip over her own two feet and laugh at herself. God, how often I make a fool of myself to hear that laugh. I want to see every expression she can make. I want hear every noise. I want to see the most beautiful parts of the world with her, because she’s the most beautiful part of mine.

I want to hear all the family drama. I want to go to her family get togethers. I want her to come to mine. I want to show her off to everyone I know. I want them all to see how much I love her. I want them to tell her how every time I look at her my love is so apparent it makes them want to hurl. I want her to smile and laugh and agree. I want her mother to invite me into her family with open arms and I want her to be welcomed into mine.

I want to share my life with her. I want her to share her life with me. I’m in love with her, I have been for years, and I think I always will be. But I know these wants can’t come to pass. She doesn’t love me back, but it’s fun to dream.

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[Image description: a retweet by Emily Gwen. The first tweet, also from her, reads: "hey I have like $4 to my name and desperately need fuel and some groceries if anyone is able to help me out I would love u forever ko-fi.com/emilygwen". Her retweet reads: "Hi, it's me again, being very very annoying and begging for help because my gf and I are really struggling, esp with her too sick to work rn." The tweet was made 29th August, 2022. End Image Description]

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Big shout out to the coalition of Catholic nuns who just told the US bishops to stop being transphobic.

“As members of the body of Christ, we cannot be whole without the full inclusion of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive individuals,” the letter reads. It goes on to argue that “we will remain oppressors until we — as vowed Catholic religious — acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people in our own congregations. We seek to cultivate a faith community where all, especially our transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive siblings, experience a deep belonging.”

The letter also states transgender people are “experiencing harm and erasure” in various ways, listing daily discrimination, a groundswell of state-level legislation aimed at LGBTQ rights and “harmful rhetoric from some Christian institutions and their leaders, including the Catholic Church.”

Read about it here