The Five Of Swords

My grandfather and my godfather (a beloved neighbor and dear family friend) had a long standing bet- for one dollar- about who would die first. Both of them being slightly pessimistic (in the funny way), they both insisted that they themselves would be the first to die. Any time my grandfather had a health scare, he’d gleefully call up my godfather to boast that he’d be passing “any day now” and he was sure to win the bet. It was a big family joke and they were always amiably sparring and comparing notes about who was in worse shape, medically speaking.

When my grandfather was in hospice care dying of liver cancer, my godfather was quite ill also. It took him great effort to make the journey to see his dying friend. As he came into the room, supported by a family member, he shuffled to my grandpa’s bedside and silently handed him a dollar bill. He was ceding his loss of the bet, as they both knew who was going first. My grandpa had been in quite bad shape for a while and was no longer able to speak but let me tell you he snatched that dollar with unexpected strength and literally laughed aloud. He knew exactly what the gesture meant and he couldn’t help but find the humor within the grief. It was the last time any of us heard my grandpa laugh, as he passed shortly after.

When I talk about my appreciation for “dark humor” I’m not so much thinking about edgy jokes, but rather the human instinct to somehow, impossibly, both find and appreciate the absurdity that is so often folded into the profound grief of life and death. When I tell this story I think it kind of perturbs people sometimes, but it’s honestly one of my favorite memories about two men I really deeply admired. I could never hope for anything more than for my loved ones to remember me laughing until the very end, and taking joy in a little joke as one of my final acts.

all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.

Isn’t Lady Gaga bisexual?

yes that is indeed why she's on the list of famous women who like women

why have multiple people reblogged this with some horse-assed "um actually most of these people are bi or pan" did I fucking stutter I said they like girls. what is your point. I'm going to kill you.

#op probably has this post muted but the icon is too real.

the icon is because of this post

POV: you make a good post and then encounter tumblr reading comprehension

btw to just clarify for anyone who sees this reblog of this post

op is basically saying something along the lines of "yea ik taylor swift is bi but like. why is she y'all's only lgbtq+ pop icon when there are all these other lgbtq+ people in the pop scene???"

i might have worded this badly but hopefully i got the main point across

hi op here I certainly did not fucking say Taylor Swift is bi

Op is saying that liking Taylor for being QUEER or Lgbtqia+ is not a bad thing, but to also know she is not the only one.

He did not call anyone in the original post lesbian bi or pan.

He did call two people NB

you have to be fucking with me there's no way

#Op you gonna have to make a graph

on it:

#I think it’s so funny I got that damn Taylor swift ad underneath this#anyways this is reminding me of that makeup post from way back when#where someone was saying no makeup is a valid way to wear your face and everyone kept insisting that you only need like….4 products

yeah that was also my post

so, this is where you went.

come shadow, come follow me!

T.G.I.F !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank guns im friday. Last night.My husband went missing in the darkness but i found him flat on his back in a field. And all around him chunks of dirt were missing from the ground. Shephards pie for dinner

ok so like. imagine. you're a high-ranking government official and one of your colleagues has announced his decision to step down and retire, and named his successor, so you and your coworker-bestie-husband(™️) go on an official administrative business trip to go meet said guy. and then you arrive and you find A Cat in the bushes outside the office. it's in poor shape but its microchip says it actually belongs to your other colleague-and-friend. you are bullied into taking the cat to the vet AND letting it tag along despite your protests. and you finally find the guy you were supposed to meet and the cat is like. staying in the room. where you are supposed to conduct aforementioned highly confidential job interview. and you try to shoo it away but the guy you're trying to interview is like No i want the cat to be there. Because i'm nervous. About the job interview. Let the cat stay. I trust him because my pet bird loves him :). so the cat gets to stay. and then you keep going and you bump into yet another old acquaintance of yours (now retired and living her best hippie life) (which is highly frowned upon) and she goes Oooooh! Is that my cat you've found? :) and you're like, what the fuck is the deal with this goddamn cat, but you can't say that outright because you are a government official on a very important mission, so you go "i wasn't aware you even had a cat? also the microchip says it belongs to our other colleague" and she goes "oh well no i don't but clearly this cat is wearing the collar i give to all my pets so it must mean he's come from the future :) where i will own this specific cat :) hi little kitty! pspspsp!" and you're like, what the fuck is wrong with everyone today? and then the cat looks at you and says "she's right. i come from the future. where everyone has been turned into cats since the world ended. also i will kill you in about twelve thousand years from now. fucker."

if you told diogenes the cynic about being trans he'd be like "lol that's a sick troll you're epic" and you'd be like "diogenes no i'm serious" and he'd be like "lol that's even better lmao those guys are so mad about it" and then he'd start going by new original neopronouns every single day specifically to piss off the whole symposium

I just had an idea for a really dumb comedy sketch where a transphobe starts ranting about what really makes a women a woman, and diogenes returns each time with a different cis woman or outwardly femme intersex person that doesn't meet the criteria saying "behold, a man!"

"a woman has XX chromosomes"

*Diogenes with an androgen insensitive XY cis woman*: behold, a man!

"Nono, a woman can bear children!"

*Diogenes with someone who has medical complications associated with pregnancy*: "behold, a man!"

"nono, a woman produces the large gamete"

*Diogenes with a postmenopausal cis woman* "behold, a man!"

Trans Rights With Diogenes! coming to PBS

sorry to be a nerd here but this is a topic I love:

Diogenes was a Cynic, which was a specific philosophical tradition (which would later inspire the Stoics). Their whole thing was that, to find happiness, you needed to reject all the made-up needs society puts on you. This is why Diogenes was Like That. Cynics valued being shameless and questioning social norms (along with choosing to live a rough life: sleeping outside, going barefoot in winter, bathing your children in cold water, etc.) Which, on its own, would mean that Diogenes would see value in trans people's shameless questioning of the social construct of gender.

But also! One of my favorite figures from Greek philosophy is Hipparchia of Maroneia, a female Cynic and student of Diogenes. Her husband Crates and brother were also Cynics, and she was fully dedicated to the lifestyle: she wore the same clothes as men, lived as a beggar, had sex with her husband in public, and would attend symposiums alongside her husband where she got into arguments with assholes. She had her own writings, but none have survived.

The Cynic Epistles include a few letters attributed to her husband and Diogenes to her. She was told that women were equal to men, so there was no reason she couldn't fully participate as a Cynic. Her husband attributed her easy time with childbirth to her philosophy and the fact that, unlike most Greek women, she was physically active during her pregnancy. There is also a letter where Crates says he is returning a tunic she wove him (weaving was The Greek Wife Activity), saying: "I do so in order that I may cause you to desist from this task which you have undertaken with so much zeal that you might appear to the masses to be someone who loves her husband." The point being, there was already a precedent for (at least some) Cynics being down with questioning gender rules.

So, in all likelihood, Diogenes would probably would have been pro-trans & would have loved to see people shamelessly poking holes in arguments in favor of the binary. & in response to fearmongering about transition, he might quote himself: "One must proceed towards happiness, even if it is through fire."

(final fun fact: "Cynic" comes from the Greek for dog, for a few reasons, but this means they constantly were compared/compared themselves to dogs. So Diogenes is, canonically, a dogboy.)

me and the other tgirls at the party

image i am in love with

godtier tweet

I apologize for calling Macklemore cringe

Orphan of Kos 🩸 Bloodborne

my friend keeps posting their periodical spectacular culinary failures on twitter because they’re such a bad cook it’s actually comical but i think this one is the all-timer

it’s like literally actually some kind of condition they have

limited palette alisaie!

you have to stay alive. you're going to be such a beautiful middle aged freak. young freaks will see you in the street and know that things can be okay.

To add to this as a middle aged freak: being a middle aged freak is AWESOME. I cannot overstate how much fun it is to go out visibly freakish, have enough life experience to not worry about it, and get heaps of compliments from everyone but ESPECIALLY the other freaks.

You're going to make it and it will be GREAT.

I ALSO adore Alisaie. She is full of love. She is full of incredible violence. She signs her name as a lowercase “a.” She hates pirates. Pirates love her. She decided that the proper use of her magical talents is to make a sword out of her own soul and hit people with it. She hates being mistaken for her brother. She still has the same hairstyle as him. She insulted Zenos so hard he had a mortifying brush with self-awareness. She is also still the size of a middle schooler. She can breathe underwater. She keeps jumping off high buildings. She reacts to being given a sword like she just got a birthday present. She was ready to straight-up kill Urianger when he pretended to betray the scions. She sculpted the worst porxie known to man. She used her rapier like a longsword until partway through Stormblood. She tries SO HARD to be cool. She would not shut up about us to Tesleen ever. She fistfought G’raha. She’s even gay.