Luck, Fortitude, and Unrelenting Cynicism

IM still NOT OVER IT ahhhhh they make me sick

genuinely this website is horrible. every few days they totally nuke another random popular trans girl who has never ever broken a rule, and everybody but trans girls shut up about it and forgets immediately. like HELLO???? Charlottan was banned for literally NO REASON why am i not seeing hammer car explosion 2??? why are the majority of TME people just ignoring that trans girls are absolutely being specifically targeted for removal with no excuse??? does nobody else care any more????

In 2022, Tumblr settled with the New York City Commission on Human Rights over discrimination allegations involving moderation disproportionately affecting LGBTQ+ users.

The NYC Commission on Human Rights has a form for reporting discrimination. I'm sure they would love to hear that Tumblr is continuing the discriminatory behavior. They don't know what's going on unless we tell them. Administrative work like reporting these things is how we turn anger into activism. File a report if you have time. Let's get the ball rolling on fixing this site.

They stopped replying.

there’s a guy at work who’s forcing everyone in the breakroom to gender me right by yelling my name at any given moment 

he also said he was sorry he read my deadname on the worksheet but was “going to get black out drunk and probably forget dw” 

edit : im a trans guy, im out and on T but im very short that’s why my buddy asserts my gender for me i repeat he’s not outing me he’s doing it to keep me from being misgendered

expanding the coworker universe

happy pride month to THIS POST

Above image is a pride flag with every color band represented by a NASA image. White is Earth clouds, pink is aurora, blue is the Sun in a specific wavelength, brown is Jupiter clouds, black is the Hubble deep field, red is the top of sprites, orange is a Mars crater, yellow is the surface of Io, green is a lake with algae, blue is Neptune, and purple is the Crab Nebula in a specific wavelength.

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 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

I’m having some emotions about it!

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.

today is video games’s birthday.

Happy birthday videogames

Dark side of the loom

underrated trope: “i’ve lost my memory and idk who you are but i just have this feeling that i’m supposed to trust you”

This - but the feeling is absolutely, completely, 100% wrong.

Person 1: “I don’t know what it is about you…I just know that I can trust you.”

Person 2, their actual, literal worst enemy: “Excuse me, what?”

Cue enemies to friends to lovers speedrun.

very funny that the solution to shatner and nimoys feuding and ego problems behind the scenes was send them to the yaoi mines until they worked it out and this was suggested by acclaimed science fiction writer isaac asimov they will stop fighting over lines and spotlight if you always place the characters together and make their relationship central to the show one cannot think of spock without kirk and kirk without spock and next domino falls slash fiction is invented..

i want you to know i do not lie.. and then they heeded his words and sent them to the yaoi mines for the season 2 premiere

ISAAC ASIMOV: Why not make Kirk and Spock a closer working team? THEODORE STURGEON, SCRIBBLING NOTES: Kirk... will... throw... his career ... away for Spock, yes, got it.

ISAAC ASIMOV: Well, I -- sure. Just have them face threats together! THEODORE STURGEON, NODDING VIGOROUSLY: Threats like 'Spock needs sex to live' a threat that can only be resolved by rolling and writhing in the hot, hot sand, with Kirk ISAAC ASIMOV: Uh, I was thinking more like 'they save each other's lives' THEODORE STURGEON, TYPING FURIOUSLY: So you know the potion that Juliet takes to seem dead so she can be with Romeo what if that but it's Kirk and there's a happy ending. But first, Spock thinks Kirk is dead and just like Romeo is like 'I will soon also be dead'. Do you think that establishes enough that they are close ISAAC ASIMOV: ... ISAAC ASIMOV: *quietly leaves to go and harass some women* THEODORE STURGEON: You're right, it's missing something. THEODORE STURGEON: *gasps* An improvised titty window!

Update from earlier today:

I found @netherworldpost's new role model.

bonus:

I’ve never seen this with the update and it makes it so much funnier