Grass is green, water is wet, and Jonathan Byers does not like Steve Harrington.
These are known facts in the universe.
Computers were going to take over the world, a “mobile” phone was being invented, and Steve Harrington had lost most of his hearing.
These were unknown facts--rumors even, if you will. Eddie had never seen even a grain of truth to support any of them.
(Well, maybe the computer thing, but only because Grant and Dustin both had made a couple of convincing arguments.)
So he doesn’t think about it, when his freshman gang up on him.
Doesn’t even factor the “can’t hear well” thing in, when he was tasked (demanded, whined, bitched and moaned at) with helping them explain to Steve why going to the release party of the new D&D box set, located at a hobby store only a mere 2 hour drive away, was important.
Eddie’s not even sure how the little shits got him to agree to do it until he’s standing in the parking lot in front of the former King himself.
“The store’s leading up to the release with a handful of one-shots.” He’s explaining, unsure whether to pull out the bored act or play up his court jester persona, and thus mixing and matching on the fly.
He does not care if Harrington doesn’t know what a one-shot is.
“They’re releasing the set at midnight. You have to be there to get it though, you can’t have someone else pick it up for you because they only got a certain amount in.”
Harrington’s frowning (no surprise) but it’s not until Eddie is well into his spiel about how his van is already full with the elder members of Hellfire, and thus has no room for the freshmen, that he realizes Steve isn’t quite looking at him.
Is in fact, looking over his shoulder.
Eddie stops. Follows Harrington’s gaze.
Parked across from Steve’s Beemer, is Jonathan Byer’s barely working clunker car.
A handful of steps in front of it, and thus nearly right behind Eddie, is the man himself.
His hands are still moving, mouth shaping words silent as he goes, his gaze locked not on Eddie or the kids--but on Steve.
Who turns back around as Harrington’s eyes slide right back to him.
“And this is taking place next Friday?” He says, in that sort of annoyed but resigned way parents aim at their children. “After school?”
“I’d like to go during school, but the freshmen insist you wouldn’t let them ditch out.” Eddie tells him. “They had two separate arguments about it.”
Loud ones, that had interrupted the game and given Eddie a migraine.
Once again Steve’s eyes slide away from him, to Jonathan.
“They’re not skipping school.” He says suddenly, a glare forming and Jonathan makes an annoyed noise.
“They argued about skipping, they’re not going to.” He says aloud, and finally steps up so that he’s next to Eddie instead of behind him.
“Munson slow down, I can’t sign as fast as you’re talking.” He adds, in the hang-dog grumble he’s notorious for.
Eddie stares at him.
“Can he seriously not hear me?”
“No.” Steve and Jonathan answer together.
“I can kind of still hear,” Steve adds, gaze returning to Eddie’s face. “But its more loud music or noises. I can lip read, but you’re also talking too fast for that.”
Without pausing, he turns back to Jonathan and says; “Why can’t you take them?”
“It’s Friday.” Byers deadpans.
Eddie’s not an expert on sign language, but his hands somehow looked deadpan too.
He’s not sure how Jonathan did that.
“So?” Steve snarks back.
What follows is an argument that Eddie is not, at all involved in, mostly because he’s too busy handling the fact that Jonathan Byers has learned sign language, for Steve Harrington, apparently, and given the tone the argument is taking they still don’t even like each other.
Eventually the argument ends, Steve throwing his hands in the air and demanding that Jonathan owes him.
(Eventually Eddie will corner the ever so quiet Will Byers and ask why the hell his brother learned sign language for someone he clearly fucking hates.
“Oh they don’t hate each other.” Baby Byers would say, in that shy, quiet way of his. “I think they’re actually friends now?”
“You think?”
“Well--you’ve seen them.” Will shrugs. “I think being mean to each other is kinda their thing.”
‘What the hell.’ Eddie would think, right up until he stumbled across one of the kids sign language books.
Byers the Elder, he decides, isn’t the only person who should learn sign language to chew out Harrington properly.
The pay off is immediate.
Or at least, the pay off of watching Steve’s shocked face the first time Eddie signs something vulgar at him is, anyway.)
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Sukuna is Peak Gap Moe. I’ll never be over this. This bastard talks tough, eats people, and kills like a woodchipper and yet…he is a poetic little sap. Getting mad over an improper haikus, the misidentification of flowers…and confessing his feelings to Gojo Satoru under several layers of wordplay no one except those well-versed in ancient Japanese would catch.
I've been over this in greater detail in Sukuna's Negative Rizz, but @tangsakura added more context in the replies to that post, making Sukuna's use of 凡夫 (bonpu) for Gojo even gayer.
In summary, 凡夫 (bonpu) can be translated as painfully ordinary or unenlightened. But in the individual kanji readings, 凡 is mediocre and 夫 is husband. You could read this as Sukuna calling Gojo his mediocre husband. And that's just the modern readings! The ancient readings...
So you can read this line from Sukuna as the following:
“You were born in an era without me and hailed as 'The Strongest'
1) And yet you turned out to be…painfully ordinary.”
2) And yet you turned out to be…unenlightened.”
3) And yet you turned out to be…a mediocre husband/wife/spouse.”
4) And yet you turned out to be…the ordinary one who could stand by my side.”
Sukuna seems to be saying these things all at once. (It’s no different than the Megumi Activities wordplay he uses with Enchain. Alt. link if the Twitter dies.) Gojo apparently makes him feel very conflicted. He’s boring, he can do better, he shouldn’t even call himself the Honored One, he’s his equal, they’re married. The irony here is that no one except Sukuna can understand this.
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Hey. HEY. We aren’t good at understanding how bodies work. I spent five years in undergrad (I was indecisive; graduated with six years’ worth of credits), two in my terminal master’s program, four in med school, and three more in residency. I know a whole lot about how bodies work. I am qualified to tell you that we don’t know a lot more than we do know.
This means that, when you encounter a claim, you need to weigh it against what you have experienced.
I have met doctors who were sure fibromyalgia, or “muscle hurty disease,” from the roots of the word, was just women being crazy. Turns out it’s probably at least partly due to autoimmune dysfunction. Or maybe not! Sure would be nice if we knew! But I sure as shit know it’s real, because I have it and so do the women in my family. Our bodies don’t work right, somehow. They don’t work like other people’s bodies work. I experience more pain than I “should” based on what stimuli other people find painful. I have less ability to build and maintain muscle strength. This has not kept me from doing what I love most in the world, which is have opinions, to the point where I went through the horrifically awful process that is medical training in the US just so I could have opinions all day long and get paid for it. I gain nothing from saying I have it, and in fact risk the opinions of my professional peers if I do admit to it, since it is still seen as a disease of mental or moral weakness. I’m perfectly qualified to self-diagnose, as a board-certified family physician.
And yet I believed people in positions of authority for a long, long time who said it was a mental illness and not a bodily one. As if those even can be distinct, when our brains are part of our bodies and our experience of reality is filtered through their circuitry. But I believed that I was somehow to blame for being in pain.
Life has been better since I accepted that I just need to do some things differently. If I lift weights, I need to use machines, I need to start on the lowest possible setting, and I need to increase very gradually. If I do cardio, I need a low-impact model like an elliptical trainer; running outside, every time I have tried it in my life, results in incapacitating shin splints, even if I try to work up slowly. I no longer buy laundry bins that don’t roll. My home is all on one level. I go to physical therapy. I stash freezer dinners that contain (shudder) vegetables, my least favorite thing, so that when I do feel like shit, I have an alternative to starving (or eating a block of cheese that upsets my stomach).
Accommodate yourself. This society isn’t going to help much, if at all. In your good times and days, be the person whose help you’ll need in your worst days.
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genuinely just OBSESSED with this hc that apple is a complete and utter MESS when it comes to her relationship with darling.
like it's such a funny contrast for the people who know her because this is Apple White; she is calm and polite and put together, and in all the years she dated daring, she was so fucking chill about everything.
daring dating other girls? didn't give a shit. everyone's wondering why they aren't affectionate in public? well, they're just teenagers they have forever after yk. when will they go steady? they have the rest of their destinies to worry about that.
you get my drift; apple does not give a single shit when it comes to this relationship because she is so in control of it. the actual 'relationship' aspect isn't really important to her and as such she's so composed in terms of her relationship with daring.
but throw DARLING in the picture and then there's apple running around like a headless chicken, being absolutely CLUELESS about what to do now that she actually has feelings for someone.
i'd like to have an entire episode of darling and apple going out on a date where there's basically a reverse situation of the dexven date ep where raven keeps trying to hype apple up and keep her calm while thinking 'dear god was i really like this???'
meanwhile, apple's hyperventilating over here just thinking about what to wear, what jewelry will match with her dress, if she's overdoing it or not, whether she should get darling a gift or something, what if she's overdressed or underdressed, and will darling like the food where they're going, and if darling even likes her at all the way she likes darling-
in the end raven grabs dexter and she says fuck this shit you and i are going undercover and tailing them, im too worried for this lesbian disaster.
dexter agrees because he's just come from helping rosabella hide all of darling's armor and assorted weaponry and they had both enlisted the help of the wonderlandians to make sure darling didn't have a breakdown every 3 seconds every time she realized she was actually going on a date with apple.
shenanigans are ensuing and rosabella and raven are getting the worst of it by this point, but they love apple and darling too much so they put up with it.
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I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.
This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.
This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.
But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.
I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.
I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.
I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.
I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.
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