“Back to Where You Began”
They’re destined to be loved for the blood on their hands.
It was delusion when he held you gently, when he smiled at you softly, when he kissed you like you were the very air he needed to keep his heart beating.
It was fallacy in its’ truest and cruelest form.
He held your hands as though they weren’t calloused from being handy with a knife; and brushed your hair away to see your eyes, as if there wasn’t a haunted glint behind them from all you’ve done.
He loves you.
He loves a you that you wish was you.
But they see you.
They see your red stained hands.
And they love your brutality, they love your agility, they love the purpose you serve.
To be loved just to be loved was a beautiful dream, but you’re destined to be loved for the blood on your hands.
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you're just like a river.
*Btw this is for stress relief. Drawing for me is addicting and i just can't function if i don't draw for a period of time. Now, if you excuse me, i'll get back to my exams:"(*
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?😳
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
op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light
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
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
Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.
I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3
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.
Spiderpunk's color and texture changes are used to indicate his emotions. He often turns pink near Miles. The color pink is symbolic for honesty, compassion, and playfulness.
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023)
dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K.
Finally some fire fam merch!🚒❤️
Finished!! Sticker sheets will be up on my Etsy tomorrow (June 10 11am MT)🔥
Anonymous
sent a message
Ooh how abut number '11. toothpaste kisses' for soft prompts! Love your writing
Send me soft prompts! Ao3 collection post here!
Eddie is going to make everyone late.
Look: he really thinks most of it isn’t his fault. He’d covered for somebody on B shift Tuesday, so he’d only had 24 hours off and he’d had to sleep through a good chunk of it, so laundry went a little by the wayside, leading to him tossing a frantic load into the washer at 5 am when he realized he had no clean work clothes. And, again, he’d covered that Tuesday shift after a 12 hour on Monday, so it’s reasonable that he forgot how dire the toothpaste situation was. The look Chris had given him when he said they needed to run to the store right now at bright and early 6 am would have withered a lesser soul, so at 6:04 Eddie, still in sweatpants and wearing ratty old slides is running down the block solo to grab whatever they have at the nearest corner store. He winces as he grabs the baking soda kind (Chris hates it) and books it back to the house, trying to breathe through the waves of oh god I’m a terrible father who left my kid alone and forgot about dental hygiene.
The house is considerably more crowded when he gets back to it. First, Chimney is lugging a dresser up the front stairs.
“What- hey- what-“ Eddie grabs the bottom of the thing, hastily shoving the toothpaste in his pocket. “What’s this?”
Chim tilts his head at him. “We were getting rid of it and you said you could use a new dresser, remember? I texted you I was coming to drop it off.”
Eddie’s phone is probably dinging away uselessly on his bedside table. “Right, yeah, sorry. There was a toothpaste emergency. Uh, thank you, we can just-“
Before he can come up with some way to finish that sentence, Carla opens the door. He hadn’t even seen her car, shit, he hopes there’s no calls right away when they get to work because he’s clearly not slept enough and should lay down again as soon as possible.
“Oh!” She says, surprised and cheerful. “Why don’t you bring that into the living room. I put your clothes in the dryer, Eddie, I figured if you were running the wash this early it was an emergency.”
Well thank god somebody has a plan and knows whats happening. He and Chim set the dresser next to a wall someplace as out of the way as they can get, and then Eddie points at Carla. “Thank you,” he says, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, before pivoting to head down the hall to find Chris. Its not a long journey, the kid standing right around the corner. Eddie hands him the toothpaste. “There you go.”
Chris scrunches his nose. “Baking soda kind. Gross. And I don’t need it, Dad, Buck brought the good stuff.”
“Buck?”
“Hey.”
Eddie pivots again to look in the kitchen, where the man himself is leaning against the counter drinking a cup of coffee out of his current favorite mug, the one with the squiggly little drawing of a frog and a chicken dancing together. “Hi.” Eddie supposes he isn’t exactly surprised he’s here, Buck is a feature of their household as much as the mug he’s holding is, but he is a little concerned about the amount of people popping out of the woodwork without him noticing. “Anybody else here? Why’d you bring toothpaste?”
Buck grins. “I think you’ve seen everybody now. And you were running out when I was here last, you’ve been busy, figured it might be helpful.”
Eddie nods, a little… wordless, maybe, a little bowled over. “I’m gonna…” he gestures towards the bathroom and limply leaves the conversation. By the time he’s brushed his teeth (it is the good stuff, the pricier name brand arctic fresh, Eddie usually goes for generic spearmint) Chris and Carla are ready to head out the door. Eddie is glancing at the clock and nervously calculating exactly how wet the clothes he’s about to put on are going to be as he says goodbye, leaning to kiss Carla, Chris, and Chim’s cheeks. “Ok, thank you, have a great day at school, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It takes a few seconds of staring at Chimney’s trying not to laugh face, and listening to Chris’s not-trying-not-to-laugh-at-all guffaws before his brain catches up to his actions. “Oh my god.”
Chimney grins and Eddie shakes his head futilely against the oncoming barrage. “I always knew I was your favorite.” He smacks a hand to his cheek and swoons, and Eddie rolls his eyes. “Everyone said it was Buck, but I knew the Han-Diaz love connection was just waiting to happen.”
Buck is laughing somewhere behind him, and Eddie wants to see what look is on his face, but instead he rolls his eyes again, harder, and says “I’m going to check on the laundry,” and shoos his son out the door before fleeing to the dryer.
Of course it’s all still fucking damp. They’re already pushing it on time though (maybe if all three of them are late they can unionize against Bobby?) so he shucks his sweats and shimmies his way into the unpleasant cool of his pants. When he emerges from his shirt, wincing, he finds Buck in the hallway with him.
“Chimney says we’re running late and if you don’t hurry up he’s leaving you for dead, no matter your new found love.”
“I know, I know, I just need to find my shoes-“
“I put ‘em by the door,” Buck smiles, and then the smile becomes a grin. “Hey, Eddie.”
“Yeah?” Eddie says with the right amount of apprehension for the situation.
“No goodbye kiss for me?” He tilts his head, grin thoroughly classifiable as shit-eating.
“We’re going to the same place, Buck. I’m probably gonna ride in your car.” He’s absolutely going to ride in his car, they both know it.
“Ah, so is Chimney, he got one.”
And Eddie could defend himself with the reasonable explanation that he just happened to be standing in a row next to the people he’d meant to press his affection onto, or the less reasonable explanation that he only gives goodbye kisses to people whose names start with a C, but instead he says “You want a kiss, Buck?”
And he’s moving before he loses nerve, and Buck is also moving, laughing at him, so again Eddie feels like it’s not entirely his fault when his kiss lands sort of on his cheek but mostly- it’s mostly on his mouth, which is soft and exhaling a little surprised sound against Eddie. They both pull back but maybe not as far as they probably should, if they weren’t them, if Eddie hadn’t spent the last few weeks or maybe years wondering how he could ask Buck to live on the shelf with all the mugs he’s cycled through as favorites. Then Buck darts his head forward, pecking another little kiss to his mouth, and Eddie chases him for a third, and Buck’s hand tangles in his shirt and he says “Oh” into Eddie’s mouth because the fabric is wet under his touch.
“Buckley, Diaz, I’m getting in my car, and I’m not going to defend you to Cap!”
Even at Chimney’s words they don’t entirely jump apart, just slide back a little, stand more firmly facing each other as the front door distantly opens and shuts.
“We’re gonna be late,” Buck says, an awed little smile pulling at his face.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, a little breathless. Maybe he can blame that on the cold clothes. “We should probably get going.”
Buck nods, and barely finishes the motion before Eddie puts his hands on his face and pulls him in for another minty kiss, firm, a promise. Buck is grinning when he backs off and Eddie is sure his face is a mirror image as he ducks around him to go find his shoes.
They’re late. But as Buck settles next to him on the couch, all pressed along his side despite the still damp clothes, Eddie thinks it was worth the wait.
bi buck demi eddie real
Eddie Munson & Steve Harrington
in STRANGER THINGS 4, VOL.2
spideypool AU and i'm starting to realize i make a lot of AUs sorry yall
I realize that's what's missing from "queer" gear these days.
The absolute pride in being a God damned freak. In being something society saw as wrong.
It's all uwu you're valid and society should accept you
Like no fuck your society. Your society is bullshit and relies on oppression to create its "norms". I don't want societal norms expanded to include me. I want to blow those structures the fuck up
yeah like when people say “normalise” about everything and I’m like, I don’t care how normal it is, I just want people to stop being punished for being weird. We can either attempt to normalise everything one by one, or we can do the whole thing in one fell swoop of “so what if it is weird? Nothing wrong with a bit of weird”
Gerri and Karolina's reactions to Shiv's eulogy
My father. My father. We-- We used to play outside his office. And I-- I think it was because we wanted him to hear. And, uh, he would come out, and he was so terrifying. Oh, he was... Oh, God, he was so terrifying to us. He'd come out and he'd yell at us to be quiet. You know, this-- this "Silence!" What he was doing in there was so important. We couldn't conceive of-- of what it was. You know, presidents and kings and queens, and diplomats, and prime ministers, and... world bankers.
And I don't know, yeah, he... He kept us outside. But he kept everyone outside. But when he let you in, when the sun shone, it was warm... Yeah, it was really... It was warm in the light. But it was hard to be his daughter. I can't not... You know, he was, it was... Oh, he-- he was hard on women. You know, He couldn't-- he couldn't fit a whole woman in his head. But he... did okay. You did okay, Dad. We're all here, and we're doing okay. We're doing okay.
So, goodbye... my dear, dear world of a father.
#a meal fit for a king
maybe the greatest gift those kids ever gave connor was the chance to be logan's only son again in his final months
At the end of the day, they're still just little kids making noise outside his office.
there might be some disagreements over shiv's character this last episode but what i rescue from this is that shiv, despite following the cycle and becoming her mother, has saved so her two brothers from it. i dont know what the agreement is on what is coming for kendall but she definitely saved roman. i think it was the bravest decision she has made in the entire show. and i think what i love about it is that she made it on her own. she might be caroline now, becoming a mother, her mother, but she played a part on saving, maybe the most affected child under logan's parenting. she freed roman from the cage.