If you’re going through a transition with your natural hair, getting acquainted with the new set of tools you’ll need to manage it can be tough. With days of relaxers, blow dryers and other heat tools in your past, you’ll likely have to endure the trial and error phase of spending on products you’ll love and ones you’ll regret the moment you use them.

To make sure your hair is set up for its beautiful transition, here’s a list of 9 tools key to the care and keeping of your curls.

1. A Spray Bottle

Keeping the strands of your natural air moisturized is imperative from the start of your transition to end of it. Most natural hair care stylists will recommend that you always keep a spray bottle with your favorite oil and another one with water nearby to spritz on your hair in the morning and before you go to bed. For the best outcome on your hair, load up your bottle with a mix of your favorite oil and water, then spritz on your hair from root to end.

2. Bobby Pins

Whether you’re in transition or have already gone through the big chop, know that bobby pins will still be your saving grace. These classic pins can be the perfect accessory and tool when you want to create updos or sections in your hair. Pro tip: be sure to search for snack free larger pins to help you to better manage your thick hair.

3. Applicator Bottle

Just because your days of straightening and or relaxing your hair are behind you, it doesn’t mean you get to neglect your scalp. One of the easiest ways to get direct access to your scalp through your tresses is to part your locs into sections and then use an applicator. Single tip pointy applicators will be your best in getting through your curls and straight to the root.

4. Rattail Comb

Ah, that rat tail comb. It might give you a few shivers down your spine on sight and send you through flashbacks of the days your abuela used to whack the side of your head with them when you didn’t sit straight, but never fear. It’s a new era for you and your curls, and you got this! This time the rat tail is here to be your friend and make things easier for you as you part and manage your coils.

5. Speaking of combs, don’t forget your  Wide Tooth

Detangling your natural hair from end to root can be tricky, but it’s essential for your effort in going natural and keeping your hair healthy. While detangling as much as you can with your fingers is great, never forget the damage an unattended to knot can do. Unless you’re actually going for a loc look, consider giving your tresses a good comb with a wide tooth.

6. Control Clips

Now, before you go running out to the store, remember that your goal is maintaining healthy hair. That’s why I recommend going for a set of clips that’ll be less harsh on your wet coils as you style your hair. Use them to part, detangle and style your hair.

7. Microfiber Towel

Nope, microfiber towels aren’t just for the carwash. Now, this one might catch you off-guard, but you know how sleeping on a cotton pillow cover is a big no-no? How cotton dries out your hair? Welp, it’s the same for those cotton towels you use to dry your hair. Microfiber towels create less friction which means less freeze and breakage.

8. A Good Conditioner

Key to managing your curly hairs, particularly keeping them hydrated and free of frizz. A good conditioner that adds extra moisture to your rizos will not only help you to detangle your curls but will also help you to define them.

9. A Reliable Strengthening Shampoo.

The key to long hair? A good shampoo that not only cleans your hair but helps to fortify it. Of course, everyone has their preferences when it comes to brands and shampoo types but FAST shampoo has become particularly popular in recent years. Also be sure to check out shampoos from Ouidad and Deva Curl!

Over the weekend, at Comic-Con in San Diego, our queen Tessa Thompson dropped some huge news about Valkyrie –– the character she plays in the Thor films. Are you ready?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will get its first LGBTQ superhero in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder. 

“First of all, as new King  [of Asgard], she needs to find her queen,” Thompson said during a panel at Comic-Con. “So that will be her first order of business. She has some ideas. Keep you posted.”

Thompson alluding to the LGBTQ storyline was met with roaring applause and left many MCU fans wondering about her role as Valkyrie. Marvel president confirmed Thompson’s statement, making Valkyrie the first openly LGBTQ superhero in MCU history. 

“The answer is yes,” Feige told io9 of the LGBTQ character and storyline. “How that impacts the story remains to be seen with that level of representation you’ll see across our films, not in just Thor 4.” 

For diehard MCU fans, this should come as no surprise because the comic books depict Valkyrie as bisexual.

However, the films were notorious for only glossing over this backstory and simply flirting with the fact that Thompson’s Valkyrie is bisexual. 

“In the canon, [Valkyrie] is bisexual. You see her with women and men, so that was my intention in playing her,” Thompson told Variety earlier this year. “Obviously, at the forefront of most of these stories is not typically their romantic life. They have big stakes, like saving the world, so that tends to sort of trump.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, it’s also important to emphasize the fact that Valkyrie is the first “openly” LGBTQ superhero. 

“The ‘openly’ matters when it comes to visibility. Valkyrie in the comics is bisexual and Thompson has been vocal about that fact on social media. However, when it came to Thor: Ragnarok, a scene was cut in which a woman would’ve been seen sneaking out of Valkyrie’s bedroom and the film, instead, flirted with sexual tension between Valkyrie and Hemsworth’s Thor,” writes Nick Romano for Entertainment Weekly. 

Aside from Thompson’s Valkyrie becoming MCU’s first openly bisexual superhero, Marvel made other important announcements showing the latest efforts to diversify their films a lot more.

52-year-old Salma Hayek becomes the first Arab and Mexican actress with a main role in the MCU. It was also announced this weekend at Comic-Con that she’s set to star as Ajak in The Eternals. The Lebanese-Mexican actress will star alongside Angelina Jolie talk about a dynamic duo. 

She announced her latest role in the new Marvel film on Instagram, saying: “I’m so excited to join the Marvel family as Ajak, the mother of all Eternals. It used to be the father of all Eternals, but girls… this is OUR time!!!!!” The film is set to release on November 6, 2020.  

Basically, Lena Waithe summed it up for us. “Captain America is black. Thor is a woman. the new Blade got two Oscars. 007 is a black woman. And The Little Mermaid bout to have locs. Shit. Just. Got. Real,” she tweeted. 

In case you missed it, in Avengers: Endgame, Thor passed down the mantle of King of New Asgard to Valkyrie. Now, in Marvel’s Phase Four lineup, we’ll follow her journey as King in Thor: Love and Thunder. The latest Thor installment will also see the return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster to wield Mjolnir. Although it won’t hit theaters until November 2021, these latest teases and updates are enough to hold us over. 

Of course, Twitter went wild with the news that Thompson becomes the first LGBTQ superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Last year in a profile from Net-a-Porter, published toward the end of Pride Month, Thompson also subtly came out and put rumors to rest surrounding her sexuality. “I can take things for granted because of my family –– it’s so free and you can be anything that you want to be. I’m attracted to men and also to women. If I bring a woman home, [or] a man, we don’t even have to have a discussion.” 

And don’t think for a minute that any of us missed the big MCU switch up.

The new movies are set to be packed with a whole lot of women.

And literally, everyone has an idea of who Valkyrie’s queen will be.

Literally, we’ve been stanning this relationship for too long.

We can’t wait to see Thompson’s Valkyrie also have that type of freedom in the upcoming Thor movie –– especially given the fact that there’s been a lack of LGBTQ representation in comic book movies. 

According to Entertainment Weekly, Joe Russo portrayed the first openly gay character in the MCU with his appearance in Endgame and Zach Barack became the first trans actor to appear in a Marvel movie (Spider-Man: Far From Home). 

It’s about time for this long-overdue representation.

Oh, and who will play Thompson’s queen? We can’t wait to find out.