If you're in the US, now is a great time to talk to the young people in your life about the US military:

All of this!

If you want an organization who WILL tell you the truth about your rights to conscientiously object, how to legally get out of the DEP (Delayed Entry Program) or about any of your other rights in the military (whether you’re enlisted, thinking about enlisting, or a family member or friend of someone enlisted (or thinking about enlisting)), who will do it confidentially & for free, you want the

GI Rights Hotline

run by NGOs & non-profits, which has been counseling folks for DECADES now:

Or by phone:

1-877-447-4487

Even if all the person you're speaking to cares about is the money, the money sucks.

Minimum wage in California just went up to $16.90. You need to be rank E4 or be E3 with at least 3 years of service before you're making more than the CA minimum wage in the military.

You will literally get better pay and benefits working at a costco. (And that's not even accounting for the fact that the military isn't a 40 hour work week, your entire life is on the clock)

I cannot emphasize this enough, if you're a desperate young queer person you will make better money, get better healthcare, and have more affordable options for school if you move to California, get a job at costco, live with roommates, and go to community college than you will have if you join the US military.

This comic makes me so stupid emotional. She might have never known.

[Image Description: two panel comic of a angler fish that has washed on shore. The first panel focuses on the sad and dying angler fish as she lays out in the sand, thinking "It's so beautiful." Second shot pans away to show the island before her, with cliffs, palm trees, and a setting sun. The angler fish continues to think "I might have never known." End I.D]

Random story thought: What if a fantasy story where there's humans and elves, who are less like different nationalities and/or "human, but in a different font", but more like the difference between dogs and wolves? Like they resemble humans, but are very, very clearly not human. And half-elves, like wolfdogs, are known to be theoretically possible, but so improbable and rare that they might as well be a myth. Like everybody's school had that one kid who loves lying for attention who keeps insisting that they actually know somebody who's a real half-elf for real.

And in the extremely rare case where their friend of a friend who's "totally actually a real half-elf" even exists at all, 99 times out of 100, the aforementioned suspected hybrid is just a 100% full human who's unusually tall, beautiful and autistic. Something that can definitely fool someone who's never seen a real half-elf, and is willing to believe that this friend's mom actually for real fucked an elf (instead of getting hunted for sport, and possibly eaten, which is the more likely outcome of encountering elves in the wild). But it's almost always just a full human with vaguely 'elvish' features.

But once in a blue moon, there actually is a real half-elf, and once you've seen one, you won't mistake a full human for one of them again. They're gangly, not just tall but long-limbed in a way that humans are not, their speech is strangely composed as if they learned their first language as a second language, and their eyes are piercing, wild, inhuman eyes, with a gaze full of strange instinctive wisdom that humans were never meant to know. Secret elvish thoughts that even they, personally, wish they didn't have.

And it sinks in to you that elves, that are so alien to you, would also find this poor creature just as strange and unsettling as you do.

My favorite transfem separatist is General Grevious

General Grievous when she sees a "cis" Guy in the women's deodorant aisle.

General Grievous when the pharmacist misgenders her gf again

General Grievous blocking people who ask her what TME means

General Grievous when she sees someone on lex offering queer-friendly housing for an AFAB roommate