*VIOLENTLY CRIES*

Honestly... words can not describe how much Rick Riordan's books have meant to me and continue to mean to me, including the man himself.

He's not performative about his allyship, and it shows in his books. These vast fantastical worlds of gods and monsters and mythology and adventures, with characters who just ARE without the narrative focusing on their identities, if you feel me. A hijabi valkyrie, a gay demigod, a trans viking, a jewish legionaire in the most recent book. Immigrants and third culture kids and the blatant bisexuality of the major Greek god Apollo, not to mention the depiction of kids with ADHD and dyslexia as their own brand of heroes that modern society just refuses to see. And uncle Rick handles it so well; he acknowledges the pain and hardships that these things evoke in a euro-centric world, but the pain is never who they are, and they always rise above it, and it's always depicted as these beautiful parts of these characters that make up a part of their complex 3-dimensional personalities. Apollo's attraction to everyone regardless of gender in ToA is described with sophisticated opulence in flashbacks to his godly days and now he's a blushy fumbling pubescent teenager. When Magnus asks Sam how she juxtaposes her faith with being a valkyrie for Norse gods, she tells him that it reinforces her faith because it shows her how wonderfully complex and beautiful Allah's world is. Frank Zhang in the HoO series explores what it's like to have one's cultural heritage clash with their cultural upbringing, and the issues that immigrants face in the west, combined with his own issues of inferiority and self-doubt implied to stem from these factors, and yet he zoomed through the ranks to the very top faster than anyone the legionaires had ever seen before.

And Alex? Alex is special to me. Alex was the first transgender character I encountered that wasn't trauma porn for cis people, and it made me realize how bad our representation is in the media. I kept waiting for the ball to drop, for some sort of "hoohoo actually it's a phase/actually they're evil/actuALLY-" narrative to play out, but it never did. No one questions their genderfluidity, and I thought making them a shapeshifter was brilliant. My own and a lot of other trans folks' fantasies have involved making ourselves shapeshifters so we could take charge of our own perceptions, and Alex lives out our power fantasy.

Because that's what Rick's characters are. In a world where the media tells us we're inferior and that our lives are nothing but hardship and trauma, Rick said "I disagree. Also, fuck you" and gave us all power, respect, prestige, healing, happiness, longevity, prosperity, and everything in between in his world of fantastical adventure and mythical trial. And I'm so, so happy that kids of these walks of life today get to see themselves respresented in a way that I never got to. Because if I had Alex to see myself reflected in, I wonder if I would have felt as isolated and alone as I did. I wonder if I had been able to cope at least a little bit better.

I know they're kids books, I know they're written on a lower reading level than what I'm capable of, but they'll always have a special place in my heart, and I'll never stop reading them. Because Rick Riordan really is the ally and pseudo-mentor that I wish I had.

A: I don’t think I’m worth all this

B, already advancing: Bold words for someone in the hugging range

Bnha | Dabi and Hawks | Animation (part 1)

I tried haha

bench trio :)

Back at it again with the retro wave generator

I am on a lot of cold medication right now

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*In a group chat*

Kaminari: lol I’m dying help

Sero: oof same

Ashido: me af

Kirishima: rip, what’s up man?

Bakugou: Good.

Kaminari: no like I’m legit dying

Kaminari: some guy stabbed me in a McDonald’s parking lot

Kaminari: the lol is a habit

Kaminari: *sends a blurry picture of himself dabbing in the ambulance*

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small suga icons because it’s his birthday (o´▽`o) ♡

Pretty wallpapers

love poem, by denise levertov