Lydia is a queer femme who writes an acclaimed personal style blog, Style Is Style. She’s been featured in BUST and Rookie but this is the very first official interview where she’s talking about coming out and being queer! Also her style is AMAZING. Prepare to fall in love.

Brush up on this year’s biggest news so you can impress that cute girl at your New Year’s Eve party.

Inside: more event invites than you can handle, a lot of worthy causes, a historical case of The Unicorn, and the delicious taste of Republicanism slowly, slowly dying.

“There are a thousand ways to die from being trans. But they’re only included if they can be made as sensationalist as possible. Never mind that all these things kill you just the same.”

Like, hopefully someone will come out or something.

A #herocrush isn’t romantic or sexual, it’s about people you admire. People you’d love to work with to dismantle systems of oppression. This year most of my #herocrushes happened to be trans women.

There’s a lot to say about religion and queerness and how the two can (or cannot) interact, which is why we put together this roundtable with 12 different perspectives. We hope you share your own thoughts and beliefs in the comment section.

“For me, reading and speaking body language is like communicating in any foreign language — I concentrate hard, stumble, and make embarrassing errors. Turns out other queer autistic people have this problem too.”

“This would be a great time to merge an app review with how adorable everyone is with their perfect humans because everyone who works here is a total critter.”

Keep an eye out for the queers on the tour, and let them know you’re here!

If any of you have ever experienced homophobia in the workplace or queer-related adversity in your personal life and moved on (ahem, way too many of us), then you need to know Rochelle Diamond’s life story.

Because nothing powers you through the holidays better than caffeine and chocolate.

I hope you like dad jokes, because this recap is chock full of them.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that not ONE of these witches has made a Diana Ross Supremes joke. Not once. And they say “Supreme” every five seconds. OPPORTUNITY MISSED.”

Melanie Gillman’s webcomic As the Crow Flies tells the story of a young, queer girl of color trying to find her place at a Christian camp filled with people she can’t relate to.

She didn’t say “I have suspected this for years and I still love you.” It went more like a Scared Straight kind of thing but instead of scaring me about drugs and a life of crime, she wanted to scare me straight, straight. “Just Say No to Lesbianism” straight.

We got chills and teary eyes in the first session when leaders from the southern based LGBTQ advocacy organizations we invited told us simply that we didn’t have to leave the south. I can’t remember ever having heard anyone tell me that so plainly before.

If you’ve got an existing smartphone or computer, here are a few apps that’ll make life a bit easier for the next few weeks.

“You may have lost someone who may have meant different things to you than they did to other people, but at the end of the day you know who they were to you, and perhaps what they meant to your community of queers.”

“I am 24 and my partner is in her fifties, and I really really want to talk about my experience in an age gap relationship.” We chatted with Connie, a first generation Asian American currently living in New Mexico, about this and more!