SonicRings8 @strawberrydemonsposts - Tumblr Blog

How it feels to watch the finale at cinemas and form your own opinions about the finale and the series itself without engaging in any online discourse or having others tell you the way you're supposed to enjoy the story

demilypyro

best case scenario Digital Circus gets remembered in a similar way as Steven Universe: a show that was Really Fucking Good and had nuanced characters and interesting things to say, but the audience wasn't quite ready for it and it imploded into a discourse ball. four years from now I expect to see lesbians drawing Jax like she's a renaissance muse the same way people still draw Pearl or Lapis

possumsarenice

Shout everyone else taking the vow of silence today

demilypyro

Digital circus' biggest problem is that it was written to be a niche show aimed at weird analytical queers with actual media literacy and it accidentally blew tf up and hit the mainstream and a bunch of people who have never had a second thought about anything got into it

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.

what-even-is-thiss

I just had an argument with someone who was like “why would we settle for food stamps when we could have universal basic income?”

And it’s just like. People need food right now you know.

what-even-is-thiss

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Hippie church moms donating quinoa chips to my local food bank have done more for me materially than any internet idealist ever has.

what-even-is-thiss

People get pissed at me for being a pragmatist in my political ideals but I’ve been in the position where I was out of food right now.

And who helped me with that? Not people calling for some nebulous revolution. Not people telling me that the system was useless. Not people preaching at me to grow my own food. It was a church food bank partially funded by the state of Texas that some southern hippies donated a bunch of Whole Foods nonsense to.

And you know what? I’m sick and tired of defeatism. What can we get done right now, huh? Are you gonna accept something a bit better to help people right now or are you waiting for your perfect utopia to come to you?

Yeah, UBI is better than the quinoa chips. Sure. But right now the quinoa chips are stopping people from going hungry and if all we can do is get the food bank quinoa chips to more people, then I say so be it. That’s something. I’ll almost always take baby steps over nothing.

I think it's important to remember that every single religion can be twisted for violence and oppression and abuse and control. Yes, including the one that you think can't be. But quickly, before anti-theists start saying that religion is an inherently evil violence accelerant, remember that this is true for any ideology, including anti-theism. Violence and oppression and abuse and control happens wherever there are people who think that those things will help them get what they want.

frogribbit

i wish people would stop romanticizing not eating breakfast and not getting enough sleep and being dependent on coffee to function and always being in a bad mood and treating yourself poorly because that behavior is very unhealthy for you

flameraven

He’s right.

sourcreammachine

children are annoying but you have to forgive them. like they just got here

mawofthemagnetar

What do you mean “chat” is now referring to ChatGPT and not twitch chat? What? What? What the fuck? No?

When I address chat I am speaking to a presumed Greek chorus of real human people shitposting on their lunch break, not a machine that devours lakes to covert electricity into slop.