fan account

lemme drag letitia again

she really had the audacity to tell them they could become british, that they could sever their ties to their motherlands like it wouldn’t leave them completely adrift. i’m gonna come at this from a different angle than loss of identity.

letitia was at babel when anthony faked his death. she saw how little anthony, a whole fucking babel professor, was mourned. she is also the same person who get fucking yelled at for sitting in evie’s seat even though she’d been in the ground for years. clearly between the two someone was considered british and it wasn’t anthony.

so tell me again how victoire, ramy, and robin are supposed to become british?

let’s say that wasn’t the case and proving themselves with their labor was valid. guess what, they’re still not british. letitia could’ve stayed at her father’s estate instead of coming to babel and she’d still be considered british without her productivity being measured. should victoire have to wear a badge saying how many match pairs she’s come up with so people treat her with basic human decency? no, but that’s the best chance she’d have. what about that screams acceptance?

and to go back to the evie bit, that’s part of why letitia’s interlude had me hot. yes patriarchy gives robin and ramy some benefits, but at the end of the day they could never become evie to babel. letita, however, did when she succeeded where evie failed and brought hermes down.

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (2022) by Rebecca Kuang

If this isn't Griffin

"This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances which demanded it."

- R.F Kuang, Babel

quoted from Isaac Asimov

happy belated birthday to my stupid babel sons robin and ramy :’)

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.

Not that it’s highly relevant, and yet it’s significant, I want to remind you that Bruce sang the title song “Streets of Philadelphia” for the Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia, which was the first mainstream movie about a gay man fighting with AIDS and employment discrimination for having the disease.

Also not relevant but significant, the above points out that Bruce has been married a couple times. Clarence was married five times. But they always had each other.

“Kissing Doesn’t Kill“ (Black and white postcard) from 1980’s ACT UP campaign for HIV/AIDS awareness.

This is the banner that was put up on buses to create awareness! a lot of companies cropped out the bottom so I thought it would be cool to share the full version

i feel this on every level

One of my top 3 books of 2022: Babel Instagram

This book has such great exploration of race and privilege. The way the characters balance guilt and gratitude for living among the upperclass Englishmen with the painful knowledge that they will never be respected by them spoke to me. And Ramy calling Robin ‘Birdie’ because they were both caged birds? 10/10

Low resolution, older cameras masked blemishes. Newer cameras make photos look better but people look worse.

“you have to go”

You’ve been causing me trouble and keeping me up.