Vorti

Reticulated Giraffe:

blog this is a museum

of my interests

All of the Prehistoric Pride guys in one collective post to celebrate pride month. Choose your fighter and have an awesome time :D

me: Ah fuck. I think it might be 792.....4?

me: Actually no I think it starts with a 2.

me:

my boss: Wait, what?

me: Yeah, like they had knives and shit and it was kind of stressful so I just told them that my contact’s name was David Johnson. Really sorry about that.

boss: We don’t have a David Johnson working for us. Are you thinking of James?

me: 

Enemy 2: We got nothing. All they did was ramble on about their childhood trauma for two hours.

Enemy 1: Hmm. maybe lower the dose of the truth serum next time.

“Asexuality” is a sexual orientation describing little to no sexual attraction

“Ayyyyy, sexuality!” is a guy at a bar imitating Chandler from Friends while talking about sexuality

“Aye, sexuality,” is a pirate giving his kids ‘the talk’

ARO DOES NOT EQUAL ACE.

ACE DOES NOT EQUAL ARO.

SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE BOTH. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE THE SAME.

AROMANTIC AND ASEXUAL ARE DIFFERENT, AND SHOULD BE RESPECTED AS SUCH.

• pre- or non-hrt trans people

• genderfluid/non-binary people who want hrt

• genderfluid/non-binary people who don't want hrt

• pre- or non-op trans people

• tall transfems

• short transmascs

• fat/plus size trans people

• fem trans men

• masc trans women

• transmascs who don't/can't/won't bind

• transfems who don't/can't/won't tuck

• transfems with wide shoulders

• transmascs with wide hips

• genderfluid/non-binary people with facial hair or tits

• genderfluid people whose presentation is static but their gender is not

• non-binary people whose desired presentation is how society says their agab should present

• transmascs who bind but still have a visible chest

• non- conventionally-attractive trans people

• non-conforming trans people

• non-"passing" trans people

• non-stereotypical trans people

We don't all fit into cisnormative society's bullshit stereotypes!

Reblog if trans men are REAL, VALID AND HANDSOME MEN, NO MATTER HOW THEY CHOOSE TO PASS

Reblog if trans women are REAL, VALID, AND BEAUTIFUL WOMEN, NO MATTER HOW THEY CHOOSE TO PASS

And finally, because it's a part of my argument for this point, and also because they are,

embalming, the process of chemically preserving a corpse, is typically not required by law. unless you need to transport the body long-distance or postpone the burial, it’s 100% a vanity thing.

a body still rots in air-tight conditions. so “protective” or “sealed” caskets are basically a scam, and anything fancy like metal is a waste of money.

want a beautiful casket for a viewing, but think burning or burying an expensive piece of hardwood is a waste of money and trees? rentals exist.

you don’t need a coffin for cremation. the minimum requirement is that the body be in a “cremation container,” which is a simple cardboard box.

home funerals are an option. you don’t need to hand the body over to a funeral home, and you can keep their involvement to a minimum.

natural burial sites exist. you can have your unembalmed body straight up thrown in the dirt to be tree food, if you want.

there are a lot of funeral homes that will prey on your ignorance and vulnerability in order to get as much money out of you as possible. they may imply optional certain services are legally mandatory, steer you away from cheaper options, charge additional costs for what’s supposed to be all-inclusive services, etc.

—cremation and burial are not your only options. Some states now offer aquamation (basically your body is put in a special brine that breaks it down into nothing in a few hours) and terramation (aka human composting; your body is put into a dedicated pod with plant matter that accelerates the decay process and turns you into nutrient-rich soil in about six weeks). You also have the option to donate your body to a body farm or medical school. Check your state’s or country’s laws, and if you don’t see the option you want, contact the Order of the Good Death to find out who’s advocating in your area. If the answer is nobody, YOU can always be the person who starts the ball rolling.

—“bury your cremains in this fancy urn and you’ll become a tree!” is a scam. Cremains contain no organic matter. If you want to be a tree, go for terramation or natural burial.

—“turn your loved one’s cremains into a diamond!” is a scam. While you can technically turn cremains into a zircon (artificial diamond), the result is likely to be EXTREMELY ugly due to the amount of inclusions. If you want to wear a loved one’s cremains as a memento mori, you’re far better off speaking to an artisan jeweler about getting a modern version of one of the glass rings or pendants that were popular in the Victorian era. There are likeminded people out there who will absolutely do this for you in a beautiful and compassionate way, but the “it’s diamonds!” techbro startup thing is not the way to go.

—what is and is not respectful to the dead will vary based on culture, but the one constant should be consent of the deceased. What do THEY want to happen to their body? Have this conversation with your loved ones while they’re alive, and make sure the answers are written down. I know my sister wants a traditional Jewish burial—“just put me in the dirt and forget about it,” in her words—and she knows I want to be terramated. I know my dad wants to be buried next to my mom, although I need to check in with him if he wants his body buried or if he wants to be cremated first. Destigmatize this talk. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable—making sure your loved ones know exactly what you want takes a burden off them in the future, and making sure YOU know what THEY want will both help you when the time comes and provide the comfort of knowing you’ve fulfilled their wishes.

And finally:

The reason I’m such a staunch Caitlyn evangelist is because there is a nonzero chance one of her videos saved my life. My mom died sometime in the night between the first and second of January, 2021. Because travel for large amounts of people was off the table, my dad opted for two small funerals—one here with a funeral home that refused to handle her body without a showing (unfortunately this was part of Covid price gouging—there was literally nowhere else capable of taking her), and one with our proper family funeral home in our hometown. Because of Covid, this meant it took A FUCKING MONTH for my mother to be buried, and that shit is absolutely scarring. I’d recently watched Caitlyn’s “what does a full embalming look like” video, and her partner for that video said she likes to bring the family in to assist in helping with the deceased person’s hair, makeup, clothing, any part of the process they’re willing to do, because she feels it helps with the grieving process. I was ready to grasp at anything that would let me feel like my mother wasn’t stuck in an episode of American Horror Story, especially after the shitshow that was the funeral home here in Arizona. With this in mind I called the family funeral home and asked to do my mom’s makeup; while I personally shudder at the thought of a traditional American burial, it’s what she wanted. Nancy—our family’s mortician for the last 40 years—readily agreed.

And so I went in, put on some of my mom’s favorite old country singers, and did her makeup exactly the way she taught me when I was sixteen, with her own cosmetics instead of what the funeral home had on hand. Her hair was thin and fragile from her last illness and I couldn’t curl it, but I fixed it up as well as I could, and painted her nails.

And let me tell you something.

The other mortician lady was right.

It was a massive comfort to me when Nancy took one look at my mom and said “oh, when you said she did her makeup differently you were right. I never would have guessed to do this.” (I don’t know where my mom learned to put on blusher, but she did basically the exact opposite of every makeup tutorial I’ve ever seen, and her method of doing eyeshadow was extremely 1940s.) Every single person at the service kept saying she looked exactly like they remembered from so-and-so’s wedding, such-and-such’s graduation, this-and-that’s honorary party. It wasn’t a vague “oh she looks so good”—she looked LIKE HER to those who remembered her. People who knew I’d done her makeup said they could tell it had to be someone who’d known her well. I remembered her horror at seeing unfamiliar makeup on her own mother’s face, and it was a massive comfort to me to know she was turned out exactly as she would have liked. And my dad? My dad hadn’t even cried yet. But he cried when he saw her in the same makeup style she’d worn at their wedding. He was finally able to cry and connect to my mom, his wife and beloved, and begin to find closure, seeing the woman he knew instead of a tired, worn body that bore little resemblance to her. It mattered. To him, to me, to my mom’s friends. It mattered a lot.

I don’t know that I would have ended up suicidal if not for that hour alone with my mom and Charley Pride and a stack of Bare Minerals compacts. But her death hit me hard and the month that followed was a special circle of hell, and I think I might have. Every time I think of her death and her burial, I think of that video and I’m insanely grateful it exists. (Incidentally, Nancy agreed. She said she thought she might make it an option for other families, after seeing both my response and the response of others in our family circle.)

Had lunch with my dad today. He wants a casket, and was surprised when I asked if he wanted embalmed because it’s not actually the law. He said he’ll have to think about it and get back to me later, because he had no clue it wasn’t required—it was necessary for my mom because of the long delay between her death and an open funeral/burial date, but those were extenuating circumstances.