#I’m frenemies with it

[etre-grantaire]

I relistened to the episode again today to try and wrap my feelings around it but I really just can’t? In a very positive way though

The tragedies that are unfolding are really getting me, and the fact that they’re barreling down like a freight train and we can’t avoid them

Link was completely right that if Scary left I think she would have been too far to reach, but that came at the expense of Taylor who had just seen his dad killed in front of him

Normal’s home life is literally in flames and the one stable thing he’s had to hold on to and a major source of his identity has just been stolen from him by someone he thought cared about him (and isn’t that a just a kick-in-the-pants recurring theme for him)

Link can’t process everything that’s happening to him so he’s just shutting down entirely and modelling himself after Scary because, as he sees it, she’s the only one who is confident in what she’s doing so she must be doing something right even if she’s following the wrong people

Taylor finally got physical proof that his absent father loved him and thought about him while he was gone, but this only came after his friend killed him. And then his other friends side with and protect the person who killed his father, and expect Taylor to put aside his emotions in favour of hers (and maybe he’s “not really dead,” thanks Normal, but that doesn’t really change the fact that he is now just a torso floating in space and also that Taylor thought he was and thought that he watched him die)

And Scary… Scary seems to be torn between two sides where she feels unwanted and unwelcome now (putting aside the other teen’s actual feelings it’s clear she doesn’t believe they care about her, even at the end of the episode) but it’s maybe easier for her for right now to be with the teens. She might feel safer with them than with Willy right now but I don’t think she feels back in the fold and I think we’ll start to see some repercussions from that. I’m also absolutely terrified for her for when she next goes to sleep if Willy realizes she’s on the teens’ side

[deathnguts]

Academic rivals to lovers Bartylus, my interpretation yippee

Regulus is the golden spare child that needs to be number one to convince himself and his family he’s worth anything, let alone nearly as much as his brother was, and is constantly working himself to the very bone to try and prove to literally everyone watching that he’s something. He doesn’t have real friends, his family barely acknowledges him anyway, he doesn’t have a single hobby that he doesn’t turn into a competition with himself, all he has is results. Everything he does, he needs to win. Everything he does, he never does well enough. He’s a tortured student/artist who knows how to play every instrument, memorized every dance, studied for every test, and made it all look flawless just so that no one would see how hard he had to work to be flawless. No one can know he isn’t actually good at anything, not to himself anyway, not right away anyway. Not in a way that matters anyway. And people are blinded by gold, so he’ll get it every time to distract them. And it works. People love the idea of regulus, he’s popular for his name and for what he’s accomplished and people find how driven and mysteriously closed off he is endearing. He knows this, people liking the look and first taste of him has always been the norm for him, it’s just part of his life. Part of the image that’s built itself for him as he just helplessly watched.

Barty who’s the only child, the perfect son, who has just always been number one. He was never challenged academically and never thought it needed to challenge himself, who needs to do that? Things are easy for him and they always have been, he takes pride in that. Getting everything right and being told how good he did is his norm. He’s always glazed past average, and never broken a sweat, He understands and excels at everything the first run through, he flashes a smile and people fall in line, he plays a ditz or oblivious to make it fun, but he knows what he is. Everyone sees the brilliantly bright boy, the minister’s perfect son who would surely never step out of line and surely acts with the good intentions his father surely has and passed down to him, and he lets them believe that. He molds himself so they will, actually. Work is easy, interaction isn’t. Numbers are easy, people are not. That’s the challenge. And he doesn’t know how to rise to it. Everyday is a battle for him to desperately keep a delicately sifted image together and puppeteered to perfection every single day. No one truly knows him, he’s not even sure he truly knows himself. He just knows that if anyone did, they’d run. There’s something wrong with him and he knows it, he just can’t let anyone else catch on.

So you take these two absolute messes who no one else even suspects are messes and you put them in a room and they sniff each other out immediately. No one else has ever looked beneath their surfaces and no one else has ever done it so well, and that’s terrifying. They look at one another and they see a threat to eveyrthing they’ve built for themselves. They look at each other and they see how one carelessly excels where they desperately claw to be average at and they practically itch with hate.

Regulus meets Barty and his fists clench with how easily everything comes to him and easily the praise follows. Barty meets regulus and his eye twitches from how easily people fall in line around him and he won’t fall in line for Barty. Barty’s the first person Regulus has met who’s undeniably considered his level without working for it or even taking it seriously. Regulus is the first person Barty has met who has seen right through him and glared back into the void that is himself instead of running away.

They hate it. They hate being seen this way: at their truest, at their worst. And they take it out on each other. It turns into not only a game of who gets first place, but who can expose the other as a fraud first without ruining their own reputation in the process.

It’s starts as childish and purely spiteful with little to no actual ammo from either side because all they actually have on each other is a ‘bad feeling.’ But their weird obsession with one another quickly leads to them learning things and the using that to either beat them or embarrass them. Sometimes it’s a battle of words, sometimes it’s sabotage, sometimes it’s socially networking a downfall, but it’s always reliant on wits. As they get older it goes from blind seething rage to just the status quo. It’s known they don’t like each other but it’s more a running joke to everyone watching. It’s never a joke to them but it does start to become just an idea. They go from fighting like cats when in the same room to biting but playful banter when left alone together.

Because there is something in being seen. It’s scary, but it’s not anything anyone else will give them. Being perfect is tiring, being themselves is tiring. Sometimes it’s actually nice to know in full confidence there is someone out there who knows you aren’t and will act the same as they always have in the face of that. Begrudgingly, they understand each other and that leads to an understanding that no one else does and no one else will so who cares. They have their perfect images, the poke at each other and always take the opportunity when it comes to mess with them, but when they’re alone they feel more real and strangely comfortable than ever. It’s hard not to crave that, or at least take solace in it.

So when they have this realization, at first it’s polarizing on both sides. They don’t want to acknowledge their feelings might be changing or at least softening over time because that would be admitting they were wrong. About each other and about themselves and about everything they’ve done. So they don’t, for a really long time. But they do come to a silent and sobering agreement in inadvertently searching for one another in crowds at parties and then disappearing together to get away from them to just breathe. They do learn that the other is actually an invaluable ally to have in many places, and they learn on top of that they’re actually privy to that help now.

Since when, who knows, and it always comes with jabs and smirks and rolling eyes to match, but deep down they’re craving that too? They like being around each other, both for the release it offers themselves, but also for the release it offers the other? They like being safe to someone, especially if it’s them? They like letting the other win sometimes because they like seeing their smile? They like being teased when it’s them because they like talking to them? Fuck… they’re in deep shit, aren’t they?

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

on a scale from 1-10 how likely is it that lassiter and nick conforth (played by ralph macchio in 5x13) used to date at the academy

i’m gonna say 11

[chellodello]

Slumber party in the Voot.

[total-mkulia]

Julia is so hard to handle once you realize she has no friends

[weirdgirl92]

I think the most interesting thing about Invader Zim to me, is that Zim and Dib are both losers, yet they hate each other.

[aengelren]

“I hope he’ll be okay”

[boydykedevo]

Haha great post op! However you insinuated that there is a canon in Cats that cannot be violated and so I shan’t be reblogging

[malrie]

this is probably true though I’m welcome to be proven wrong but piper probably had the most beef with other females in the books than anyone. like what was that. I need her to have a boy enemy for real and not in a romantic booktok rotted way in an actually she irks them and they genuinely think she’s a proponent of evil. and you know who we canonically got a taste of when it came to exactly that? octavian…

[marnz]

you can say whatever you want about sterek/teen wolf but stiles staring in shock at derek while derek, slowly bleeding to death, urges stiles to leave him and go save Scott and stiles almost refuses and then has to say goodbye for the final time?? It is so fucking compelling and makes absolutely NO sense in the show narrative unless there are romantic feelings involved. queerbaiting level absolutely off the scale

[khaothanawat]

i just need to put it out there that i hope tinn and sound’s stupid rivalry continues on in the background of the show forever and ever

[aphrobites]

yeah they can tongue onscreen i’m not getting queerbaited by marvel again. whoever said it’s like losing at chess to a dog was right.

[cartoonscientist]

in case you were wondering how people in california are doing with the nuclear fallout from oregon

[damonalbarnsgf]

does him not getting into a relationship and practically refusing relationships back and forth mean ANYTHING

[worth-the-chaos]

I don’t really draw so please don’t come for me, but here is my concept for an OC to add to the Stranger Things universe. In my mind, she’s Dustin’s babysitter and her storyline is tied to Steve’s. When he shows up at the Byers’ house to talk to Jonathan, she also shows up because she’s looking for Dustin after he’s snuck out while she’s looking after him. She’s feisty and smart. She’s working her ass off to try and get scholarships so she can go to college. Her and Steve kind of have a frenemies type relationship where they hate each other but fight like hell when each other gets in trouble. They both occupy the babysitter role and are quite the badasses. In theory she ends up becoming Steve’s romantic interest, with an enemies to lovers type dynamic. She’s alt and he’s a jock but they are the perfect foils to allow each other to grow.

Anyway, I’m just gonna leave this here and y’all can ignore it if you want to. Again, I don’t draw but was bored today so I made an attempt.

[foxglovecove]

This is their dynamic right?