What Am I Doing?!?

I don’t know, and neither do you!

[willjulep]

Bro, we are cooked. The knight that dogs the prince's shadow like a dark and silent wraith just knelt to press his forehead to the prince's hand. Yeah, now he's uttering a prayer whose recipient is ostensibly God but in reality is the deified version of the prince that exists only in his mind. Aaand the prince just caressed his cheek to preemptively grant him absolution. I gotta... I gotta get out of here.

[dwynartist]

we ride for hope and joy and to thrive, however the world may be

[beardedmrbean]

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.

[dykeselfcest]

I understand the urge to comment on recent trends in which people seem to want increasingly sanitized media compared to the recent past, but when you say things like "people used to just shrug and move on when there were books and movies that made them uncomfortable" it's like...well. actually people used to convict artists of obscenity in a court of law.

[datadegroove-deactivated2026042]

I will NEVER deactivate. and how DARE you

[mobjack878]

and on the pedestal these words appear: "i am Ozymandias, King of Kings. look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair." nothing beside remains.

[jaubaius]

[aeforvirra]

Aw he’s just looking for love

[oarfjsh]

are you his beautiful wife? you are not his beatiful wife? sad snooting

[circusbutch]

Desire (2025)

22.5 x 31.5 in

Ceramic, soda fired earthenware

[teaboot]

what annoys me about explaining evolution to people who don’t think it’s real is that everyone’s idea of how it works seems to be from this

Whereas the reality is far more like

[teaboot]

Was not expecting this many of you to resonate with Millennium Death Plinko

[sufficientlylargen]

One of these days the horse is gonna come out of pinko with opposable thumbs, and then we're all in trouble.

[shedanceswithdemons]

Your Honor, They're all Autistic

Please gather round while I scream about my dearly held headcanon that the 4 sons of King Daeron II Targaryen are ALL autistic as fuck. Seriously, you can pry this hypothesis from my cold, dead hands. Unscrolls my completely normal number of notes on the topic.

Maekar

Maekar was the canary in the coalmine for me. That man is neurodivergent as hell, and you can take that to the bank. He's prickly, not charismatic, and known as "stern and unforgiving". Maekar is extremely blunt and a very black and white thinker. Seriously, in the show Maekar says it's not Lord Ashford's fault the king told them to attend his "miserable little circus" right in front of Lord Ashford AND his daughter. Jesus Maekar.  Tell us how you really feel dude.

He doesn't seem to accept easy answers, questioning the High Septon about the will of the gods- Maekar wants TRUTH, not flowery words. He also supposedly has a "sour" demeanor- Maekar can mask but only to a point and he thinks it's an incredibly stupid exercise.

Rhaegel

We don't know a lot about him, but Rhaegel was know as "sweet and gentle". There were also rumors that he "danced naked through the halls of the Red Keep". That's... a very weird and very specific rumor so there's probably some truth to it imho. I think this could easily be explained as stimming, possibly spinning around in circles, and not wanting to wear clothes that scratch, itch, or are otherwise sensory nightmares. So, why not just rip them off right off? He's a prince, who's going to stop him? Rhaegel would be considered level 3 or very high support needs today. Do we really think a high support needs autistic individual would not be called "touched by madness" in Westeros?

Aerys

Aerys is pretty self-explanatory, I think. His love for reading was well known but it honestly went beyond love. It was WAY more obsessive. Aerys would become so focused on what he was reading/researching he would literally forget to change his clothes! Can anyone say hyper fixation with me? Aerys would probably be considered someone with level 2 autism- he would need a good amount of support mostly with atypical social behavior, high interest in specific topics and distress with change or disruption. 

Baelor

Baelor is a bit trickier. At first glance, he seems almost neurotypical. But if you look a little bit beneath the surface, I think it becomes clear he's low support needs but still an autistic king amount men. The ring spinning, anyone? Oh, that man found a socially acceptable way to stim and regulate himself. But even better, the eye contact?? Jesus take the wheel.

Someone clearly told Baelor as a boy, you HAVE to look people in the eye when you talk to them, you don't have a choice, stop looking away, stand still, and LoOk ThEm In ThE eYeS!! So, Baelor trained himself to always maintain eye contact but it's definitely not natural. He just…maintains the most intense, focused eye contact and never breaks it. It actually works for him in the end, unnerves people and throws them off guard almost like he's doing it on purpose when he's just trying maintain "normal" levels of eye contact.

The strong sense of justice? Knightly honor? I would argue perhaps a bit of a hyper fixation on jousting, history nerd facts? Yeah, that man be an autistic who's learned to mask very, very well through necessity. 

(I would argue Dunk himself is very autistic coded and that is why Dunk and Baelor fit so well together and why they seem so drawn to each other. Have you ever met a fellow neurodivergent in the wild?! It's a religious experience. But that's a post for another day.)

[nickyandmikey]

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

[nickyandmikey]

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

[irrelevantlyvalid]

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

[chokolattejedi]

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

[executeness]

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it

[ramshacklefey]

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

[jbbartram-illu]

I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3

[eregyrn-falls]

Just to add to the pile: this was the cover of Springsteen’s break-through album Born to Run, in 1975:

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

There’s a lot more online if you search. They’re all pretty amazing. But the photographer is right, the one chosen for the album cover just pops.

[thirstkanaphan]