just found out that there is a sudanfunds website! like gazafunds, it is a compilation of funds for people facing genocide

Please don’t skip. 😭💔💔

I hope you are doing well ♥️

I am writing with a heavy heart because my family and I are going through an extremely difficult and frightening situation.

⚠️ Before the last storm, I felt afraid of what might happen, and unfortunately it came stronger than we could endure

⛺ Our tent was completely torn apart, and everything we owned was flooded and destroyed.

We are now without proper shelter and without blankets. The cold is becoming unbearable, and illness is spreading, especially among my children. I am deeply afraid for their safety. 😭💔💔

Another storm is expected soon, and our situation is very dangerous. 💔

This is not a random message, but a sincere humanitarian plea from a mother trying to protect her children. 🙏

The cost of one blanket is 30 dollars, and even a single blanket can help keep a child warm through the night. 💔

If you are able to help in any way, I would be deeply grateful. If you cannot donate, please consider sharing this post, as sharing can truly make a difference.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading, caring, and standing with us. ♥️

‏My campaign was vetted by @Gazavetters and my number on their list is #665

'Percy Jackson is queer-coded because he's constantly describing male characters as attractive'Actually pretty sure Percy Jackson is queer-coded because her gender is written as transfeminine even if it was on accident and she constantly describes male characters as attractive because there's a lot of male characters in Pjo like there are female ones and Pjo is a fucking book series.Also pretty sure said book series is aimed at children and you still listen to Drake

All offense intended,Percy is literally one of the most filterless and emotionally open and earnest characters ever so everyone who thinks the show having Percy tell Annabeth and Grover he'd burn Olympus down for either or both of them is ooc is a media illiterate nincompoop.They're also full of shit in their other Percy beliefs,hence the term choice.He could've said that during The Lightning Thief and it would've still been unmythologizably accurate Percy Jackson and i bet y'all got upset over 'I am Sally Jackson's son!' too seeing as y'all think Percy not liking and actively rejecting Poseidon isn't an important of his character.Spare me!And spare ALL of us that nonchalant Percy crap!

So many characters should be permanently disabled in multiple ways or AT THE VERY LEAST have severe chronic pain but everyoens a coward so no one writes the effects of the injuries they inflict </3

rereading Yentl the Yeshiva Boy and like... i forgot how trans it is. Like i knew very much how trans it was but at the same time paragraph 2 "On Sabbath afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror." cisgendered activities

for the record i do have a v nonbinary interpretation of the character evidenced by a variety of things the bluntest being "In her dream she had been at the same time a man and a woman, wearing both a woman’s bodice and a man’s fringed garment." cisgendered activities

“I’m neither one nor the other.” it's not even subtext at this point.

American Girl stories were the best tbh

Dude, read the books, she and her mom freed themselves in Book 1. We don’t disrespect American Girl in this house

Don’t you dare disrespect Addy, or any of my girls for that matter. American Girl used to be legit. Good stories, good dolls, good movies.

Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.

Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.

Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.

Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.

American Girl stories have always featured the very harsh realities of America through the years. But they’re always presented honestly, yet in ways that kids can understand. They just go to show that you don’t have to live in a perfect time to be a real American girl.

Dont you fucking dare disrespect the American Girls in my house. ESPECIALLY Addy!! That was my first REAL contact with the horrors of slavery, as I read about her father being whipped and sold and her mother escaping with her to freedom, but also how freedom was still a struggle.

A slave doll. Please. Read the books.

Don’t forget Kirsten, the Swedish immigrant who had to deal with balancing her own culture and learning the english language and customs of her classmates, or Kaya (full name Kaya'aton'my, or She Who Arranges Rocks) , the brave but careless girl from the Nez Perce tribe, or Josefina, the Mexican girl learning to be a healer.

And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or  Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or  Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.

These books, these characters, are fantastic pictures into life for girls in America throughout the years, they pull no punches with the horrors that these girls had to face in their different time periods, and in many cases I learned more history from these series than social studies at school. And that’s without even mentioning the “girl of the year” series where characters are created in the modern world to help girls deal with issues like friend problems, moving, or bullying. We do NOT disrespect American Girl in this house.

American Girl is probably going to be the only exposure young girls are going to get to history from a female perspective. This is actually kind of important considering that in history classes we dont really get that exposure. We dont hear about what women felt and endured during these time periods cause schools are too busy teaching us about what happened from the male perspective, which is not unimportant, but we need both. Girls need both.

These books were such a crucial part of my childhood and shaped my love of history, which still ensures today. These books can be a young girl’s first lessons in diversity and cultural awareness (hopefully burying that insensitive “we’re all Americans” tripe) and looking at history from more perspectives than just that taught in school. They also are an example of how women have ALWAYS been part of history, which some people would rather us not believe.

I think Kit and Kaya were the newest American Girls when I started “aging out” of the books, but hearing about some of these kinda makes me want to revisit them!

I wasn’t gonna say anything, but you know what?

Nah.

OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.

I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:

And they departed from the norm in Kaya’s doll to fit her culture! The other dolls all show their teeth, and Kaya does not because that is considered rude in the Nez Perce culture!

It is absolutely true that these books covered the stuff in history that was absent from our history books. I still distinctly remember reading about Addy being forced to eat bugs she missed on tobacco plants, and that started me out from a different perspective and made it easier for me to know to reject the sanitized version of the slave trade we’re taught in school. And these books are targeted at ages 8+, which is a pretty critical time for developing your own thinking and morals.

Reblogging for general awesome

when i was in 3rd grade i was reading the Meet Addy book at school & a couple boys made fun of me for reading a “doll book” - my teacher overheard & started reading Meet Addy to the class after every recess. everyone became extremely invested & by the end of the year we had read the entire collection of Addy books & did a presentation on the civil war at the end of the year that we all presented to the class one by one.

i think back on this & realize that as third graders we were talking about how awful slavery was & because we were simply innocent kids without any societal or institutional influence yet, all of us could kept saying “why would you treat a HUMAN like that ?!” this one girl for her birthday invited all of us for her party & she got the Addy doll - every single one of us (boys included) held her & was in awe of this doll - it was such a touching experience.

i went back home about a year ago & ran into my third grade teacher in the grocery store. she said that year opened up a whole new teaching structure for her. she now reads american girl stories to her students starting day one of class every day to calm them down after recess & she’ll get through maybe four or five sets of books a year. she has the dolls in the room with packets on information from the doll’s time period that her students can “check out” to take home for weekends to care for them.

we oftentimes overlook how powerful toys can be in influencing young children & american girl honestly knew that kids could read intense moments in history & synthesize the issues to learn how to be a better person. my grandma bought me my first doll, molly, when i was only six & the dolls became a huge part of my childhood. when i turned 21 a couple years ago - we were living in minneapolis - she took me to have lunch for my birthday at the american doll place in the mall of america & bought me the Addy doll for my birthday. it was such a powerful moment i hasn’t expected.

i’ve since gotten rid of majority of my childhood toys, but i still have every single one of my dolls & all the books that i plan on gifting to my future children.

I’m white and my first real introduction to slavery and the underground railroad was Addy. She was a young girl like me I could connect to and care about her story. American Girl does a great job of making history relevant to kids.

Also American Girl sells all sorts of books unrelated to the dolls. The Care and Keeping of You books were super important as I started puberty and were the most comprehensive, non judgemental account of what was going to happen.

They also have “the smart girls guide” series which covers topics like crushes, worry, middle school, drama and gossip, sports, friendship, the digital world, communication, money, confidence, etc.

Oh I had those too and I loved them!

I want to say I think there was an American Girl Doll magazine series that came out, but don’t quote me on that. there were lots of helpful girl guides that used the American girls as examples for doing good or learning lessons or trying to understand why girls did what they did

I learned a lot of my core beliefs from these girls.

I remember being very invested in Molly, Addy, and Kaya. Mostly cuz I look like Molly, and the other two had a lot of information on two of my favorite time periods. But I owe a lot of my personality to these lovvely girls

yo don’t forget my girl Caroline. Her father was captured by the British during the war of 1812 and she basically learned how to sail and rescued him herself.

omg yeah i love caroline

I can confirm that they really do their research - during the creation of Caroline the company called a museum I was associated with and quizzed them extensively about what sort of food kids would have eaten at the turn of the 19th century.

When i was like ten I wrote a letter to the American Girl magazine saying that the girls in their magazine were all really skinny and it made me, a chonk, really sad because it was showing that I couldn’t wear any of the outfits they suggested, and I got a personal letter back from the editor apologizing for making me feel that way and saying they would work on that. Dunno if they actually did, i can’t remember, but they did promptly personally respond to a letter about something that was not exactly on the radar for girl’s media in fucking 2002. So there’s that.

I’m happy to report that the messages from American Girl have only gotten better in recent years.

These are from one of their latest books, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Body Image:

They got a lot of flak from conservative parents for this and they did. not. back. down.

Their newest historical doll, Claudie, is a black girl growing up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her story is about Black artists thriving, and making a safe, beautiful place for themselves in a society that tries to reject them. It teaches about the NAACP’s protests against lynchings, in ways kids can understand, but there’s also so much Black joy and creativity showcased in her story.

Another historical doll, Melody, is growing up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. She faces the struggles and triumphs of attending a newly integrated school, and learns about the bombing of a Black church in Alabama that killed four little girls her age. Her stories show how black people found support and community within the church, as well as music— she loves to sing! If you have a free hour, I highly recommend watching her special on Amazon (free with prime). It stars Caila Marsai Martin from Blackish and it will make you weep.

The girl of the year for 2022, Corinne, is Asian, and her story touches on the issues of anti-Asian hate in the wake of covid. When conservative parents threw a fit about this, American Girl went ahead and made the girl of the year for 2023 Asian, too.

Any of their dolls can be customized with assistive devices like hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. They also have bald dolls, to include stories about girls battling cancer or alopecia. And it’s not just girl dolls— they have boy dolls now, too! And dolls with no gender assigned to them! People complained that they couldn’t find any dolls in the Just Like Me line that looked like them, so they now give people the ability to create their own custom doll, with tons of different options.

I’m not claiming American Girl as a company is perfect, but I am saying they’re important. Girl perspectives, girl stories, and girl communities are IMPORTANT. If there are kids in your life who would benefit from these stories, or if you’d like to read them yourself, you can find any American Girl book for pretty much dirt cheap on eBay, and libraries usually stock tons of them!

based on lwaxana in tng interacting with deanna, i think it's safe to infer that betazoids when talking to each other use only their telepathy and that this is more standard practice. which makes sense but it does begs the question of: why can betazoids even speak with their mouths?

like. it seems that telepathy is better and preferred, so verbal language should not be developing at the same speeds as the not telepathic species. humans have a complicated and vast language because it's all we have - but if you could just drop the idea if something into soneone's head, why bother naming it?

and obviously when we see telepathy communication on screen, it's shown as people hearing verbal language without the use of their ears. but if you really think abt it, then verbal language would be secondary to an all-telepathic society. thinking phonetics at each other makes little sense, most probably the process is more like sending each other ideas or impressions. it's also possible that BML (betazoid mind language) is being translated by the UT into sounds and this what we see.

anyway, here are some of my headcanons/theories:

1. betazoids don't have a native verbal language, at all. lwaxana speaks federation standard to deanna, or deanna's UT picks up the mind language.

since lwaxana is an ambassador it would make more sense for her to know several languages. but an average betazoid that doesn't come in contact with other cultures doesn't know how to speak with their mouths. it would be interesting to theorize if they would still sing, since the development of music is so closely tied to language. similarly, it would be interesting in this case to see what their writing system looks like.

2. there is a subset of betazoids that can't read minds, like deanna, and has always historically been present, and they use BVL (betazoid verbal language) like Deaf people on earth use various sign languages. (but by following star trek logic all planets have united into one state, so there is only one BVL). perhaps this language was taught in schools before first contact to accomodate that minority, or that minority is big enough that every family had at least BVL speaker. after first contact this language was adapted into use with other civilizations

3.1 betazoids do have speech and use it commonly, maybe for cultural or ceremonial reasons. maybe speech is older than the telepathic sense evolving somehow and was kept in use for tradition or communication in certain conditions (like over big distances).

3.2 betazoids had their first contact a very long time ago, or they're not the only species living on betazed. so the BVL did evolve to communicate with non-betazoids, but it didn't have to be adapted in recent history, it just naturally is a part of every betazoid's toolbox by now.

either way, i think it would be interesting to see a betazoid character that only communicated with telepathy come into contant with a species they cannot speak to (maybe for politeness reasons, or that species is all completely immune to mind reading and mind-speaking) and struggle to adapt to verbal communication. they would probably struggle to choose words and express thought in this form.

if they only used BVL/Federarion Standard/Any Speaking very sparingly before and started in adulthood then their muscles would probably be not well developed enough and they would have a speech impediment. actually it's interesting to think abt how the UT would translate someone who isn't speaking their language "correctly"...

technically, could you put your specific impeded speech as a "language" and have it come out as the "standard" version? it could be an accesibility tool then. on the other hand, if the UT couldn't handle your own non-standard input and wouldn't translate you, that'd suck - this is a common problem (also with certain accents) with modern speech to text & voice command technology, but it seems like it's not a problem in trek that we see.

In TNGs "Tin Man", it's established that Betazoids gain their empathy around puberty, or at least are not born with it. I think when Betazoids started to develop a society, they first put their thoughts into worlds to guide their kids. I think that would be sweet.

Sometimes communicating less information is actually good and more precise. Verbalizing a thought could be for a Betazoid like writing them down in a way. I also like the first contact theory!

I think with Lwaxana and Deanna the telepathy is a case of their relationship,,, unsure how their relationship is trurly like....

True also about the speech impediments... Yes star trek give us that... And write telepaths well ..

I didn't remember than about puberty! Interesting!!! In this case the verbal language would exist and be widely used - but could lack vocab from outside if the domestic sphere.

I wonder how that worked for Deanna - did she know how much mindreading would she get based on a medical prognosis/other half-Betazoid children? Imagine you're going through puberty AND all the people on your class also gain the skill to talk with each other in a way you can't hear. That's like being excluded from the groupchat Hell Version.

The War Is Almost Over… but Our Struggle to Rebuild Has Just Begun.

Every day here in Gaza feels like a year carved into our chests. The war isn’t like it was in the early days—the sky is quieter, the air carries less smoke, and the nights hold fewer explosions. But the pain… it still lives under the rubble, inside our memories, and in the empty spaces where our loved ones once stood.

I’m writing this today not because the war has completely ended, but because for the first time in a long while, it feels like the horizon is opening a little. A small space where we can breathe, gather ourselves, and try to rebuild what’s left of our lives. Yet every step forward feels like walking on wounded memories, and every stone from our destroyed home whispers stories we never got to finish.

We lived through nights so heavy we thought morning would never come. We lost things that can never be replaced—homes, dreams, pieces of our hearts. But we are still here… holding on, trying, fighting to stay standing despite everything.

And in the middle of this long road… there is a house. A house that once carried laughter, warmth, noise, and life. Today, all that remains is an image holding a memory—and rubble longing for the people who once lived inside.

Today, we are trying to rebuild—not just the walls of a house, but an entire life that was shattered. We are trying to create a new beginning, to live with dignity again, to give our family a sense of safety that we’ve been missing for so long.

We’re not writing this to mourn what was lost, but to ask for a chance to start again. We ask for your support because rebuilding after a war is not something one person can do alone—it is a human effort, a shared act of compassion. We need you. We need your hearts. We need your help to stand again.

Every contribution—no matter how small—makes a difference. It becomes part of our story, part of rebuilding a home, part of reviving a life that nearly faded.

The war may be almost over… but our journey back to life begins now.

🌿✨ Thank you to every soul who still feels our pain, and to everyone who reaches out a hand to help us rise again.

Percy Jackson moodboard

T4T Corawybie except Coraline is transmasc and Wybie is transfem and they unintentionally cracked eachother's eggs.Coraline changes his name to Owyn,keeping his theme of a common name spelt slightly different and thus pronounced slightly different and in-universe picked one with a 'w' in it because him and Evie,short for Evangaline,promised whichever names they chose would be chosen to reflect eachother's original ones as a sort of unspoken 'you helped me know me before i knew and placed a piece of you in me to complete me'.They also turn into the 'black baddie and her pet white boy' trope

Everything changed the day Amira was born. The world outside was collapsing — bombs, dust, screams, and fear. Yet inside a small room, by the dim light of a single candle, a new life began. While others were running for shelter, I was holding my newborn daughter, trembling, crying, trying to believe that something so pure could still exist in a place like Gaza. I named her Amira, because I wanted her to feel like a child of life —not a child of war.

  A year has passed since that night, but nothing has really changed Our house is still rubble, our streets still carry the smell of smoke, and the sky still echoes with sounds that make Amira flinch in her sleep. She has just turned one. She’s learning to walk, holding my finger with her tiny hand, laughing at the smallest things — as if she doesn’t see the destruction around her. She doesn’t know the word “loss.” She never met her father, but when she smiles, I see him there. Sometimes I watch her sleeping, and I wonder what kind of world she will grow up in — whether she will ever know what peace feels like, what home smells like. And yet, when she opens her eyes in the morning and says “mama,” everything becomes bearable again. I want to rebuild our home. Not just for the walls — but for her future. For Amira to have a small room, a safe place to dream, a life that belongs to her, not to war. I’m not asking for much. Only for a chance to give her a beginning filled with warmth instead of fear

 A Mother’s Message

To everyone reading this — thank you for listening to our story. Your kindness means more than words. Every share, every message, every donation — it all helps me rebuild not just a house, but a future for Amira. From the heart of Gaza, from a mother learning to hope again — we will live. And I will make sure my daughter grows up in a world that knows love more than war.

I thought this crossover would be funny

Iykyk

@maxarat

☙ 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑛𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑙 ❧

Pretty strong Miles Morales,Percy Jackson and Jason Todd vibes