#barb and max: commentary

[emblazons]

“She was perfect, you know. And then she died. It wasn’t an easy death. She suffered. I knew the risks, but…then (she) left me.”

- Jim Hopper

El Hopper & Losing Max + Jim Hopper & Losing Sara aka: loss leading to the end of romantic relationships + mlvn breakup subtext (inspired by @heroesbyler)

[atsadi-shenanigans]

What Shall We Become 14 - Kevin Bacon

Y'all talk about space dongs, before being rudely interrupted.

On AO3.

Your mouth tastes real weird when you wake up. And you’re more tired than you were when you went to sleep. Like that line from that Bilbo Baggins guy about being butter scraped too thin.

You lie on your stomach, numbed arm beneath your cheek (all of it crusted in drool), and the other arm twisted up all weird beneath you.

“Mgrghngh,” you say as you roll to your side.

You’re more tired than you was when Astarion pulled you outta the river he left you to drown in.

A voice lilts all pretty nearby. Speaking of. The man (elf vampire) sits a few feet away, needle in hand, working surprisingly quickly for a man with no sight.

Oh fuck. You lost your whole, entire corn-husking mind last night. And he fucking heard you do it.

“’M good,” you manage and reach for your bag for a dirt potion.

 And then wait for him to respond. Because he’s the type of asshole that relishes in the kind of barbed commentary that comes from watching somebody lose their whole corn-husking mind. Only he sits quiet. Sews a couple more stitches before tying off his work and snipping the thread with his teeth.

It’s your pants (trousers). He’s slit the sides and rigged them up with leather cording. It’s a real Mad Max kinda biker look, but it’s so much better then running around a refrigerator cave in a shirt and a fucking breechcloth (that shit was for summertime in fucking North Carolina, goddamnit).

“Try these on,” he says and holds it out. His back is mostly to you.

You stand all awkward. One knee cracks. And you shuffle over as pins and needles sweep up and down both your arms. Astarion sits all placid, tucking his needle into…is that a sewing kit? Man’s got a sewing kit? It even kinda looks like a goddamn cookie tin.

You slip one leg through, then the other. Gotta fiddle with them laces, and in the end, they really are side chaps.

“These’re great,” you say. You can even wiggle around without it pinching nowhere. It’s a little loose in the crotch, but that don’t even matter. Only thing it don’t got is pockets.

“I have something else,” he says. And reaches into his back and pulls out…

“Panties,” you say, in fucking Chondathan (at least he told you that’s what it was, this time).

He grins. “Well done. Now, I only had enough material for three, and you’ll need to belt them, but it should be more comfortable than stuffing that bundle into your trousers.”

That sounds like an innuendo. Shit, man made you panties. It’s the most weirdly personal gift you ever got in your whole life.

Great timing, too, if the general achiness curling low in your gut is any indication. Bitch is late. Not surprising, given all the fuck shit that’s happened. But still. She was gonna show up at some point.

What he made is kinda like ancient Roman bikini bottoms (which was a thing). Ties on each side and still a little baggy, but weird, old-fashioned granny panties is still panties that you didn’t have a minute ago.

You consider tapping his shoulder and thanking the man. Wonder briefly at how you’re more comfortable in your own head about like, physical affection with everyone else (imagining swooning against Karlach and frenching Shadowheart when she closes gashes you didn’t even notice). But when it comes to him, you just…can’t. Can’t even entertain the idea of joke kissing him, not even in your own head. It feels…weird. Like standing on the edge of a cliff.

“I did make a few hasty modifications,” he says as you start to unlace them trousers so you can slip on the panties. Which is when you catch his smirk. You seen that smirk before. That one’s goblin shit, right there.

“What did you do?” you say.

He waves a hand. “It’s merely cosmetic. And not my finest work.”

Did he leave one of them panties crotchless or something? Rig it to rip up the—

Nope. They’re all solid enough. And decorated with a simple piece of sloppy embroidery. Heat rushes up your face and you almost cringe away, until you realize that he wasn’t putting a dong on each one, but what you think is supposed to be a mushroom.

Because he’s a fucking goblin and is incapable of passing up an opportunity to poke at you.

“Cute,” you say.

“Aren’t they just?” He grins wide enough to show off his fangs. “I felt we should commemorate your first brush with hallucinogenics, darling. Consider it a souvenir.”

“And you thought the best thing for that was stitching them into my new drawers.”

“I had to contribute something.”

You stare at him for a long moment.

This all reeks of guilt. The whole “cutting you loose” thing. And goddamnit, it’s working. You still ain’t sure what you should be feeling about that. What the just thing is. Part of you thinks you should be pissed. Any maybe you are? But he’s also just…it’s difficult. It was a shit decision. Making it would have been a shit decision either way. And what saved you wasn’t him or even you; it was your bag getting caught up in some rocks. Ones you might not have come near if he hadn’t cut that rope. And then you woulda drowned for sure and been a bare-assed ringwraith in a fucking cave forever.

This might be him manipulating you. Making sure he does nice things so you don’t get mad—cause he ain’t fessed up on it. You noticed that.

Then again, he was acting all weird about this whole thing even before that cavern, when he realized he couldn’t see and you realized he’d have to rely on you. He really doesn’t like owing people.

What a fuck shit mess.

“Everything all right?” he says because you been quiet for a solid moment.

You wriggle back outta them trousers, pluck them up. Eyeball the tent. “I’m gonna go get changed, and then what’s say we get the hell outta here?”

***

You got three dirt potions left. You been down here, on y’all’s own for about three days already, you think. You should start rationing the fuckers. When you tell Astarion your plan, he starts speaking Chondathan at you. And he’s somehow even more pedantic about it than Gale makes you repeat yourself over and over until he’s satisfied with your inflection (fucking language rolls its goddamned r’s, which you was never good at).

After thirty minutes of you spitting all down your chin like a dumbass, he finally lets up.

He’s so quiet behind you, after that. Man’s got his pickup lines; can turn on the sleaze in less than a second. But casual conversation that ain’t complaining about something or imagining killing something or someone?

“So,” you say. Go for the tried and true, “You got any hobbies?”

“What, aside from murder and picking locks?”

Jesus, he ain’t never gonna let that go.

“Yeah,” you say.

A long pause. The cavern y’all are in now is lit up a little by them mushrooms. Y’all skirt around another bigass crystal somehow lit up from within. Probably some bullshit magic. It’d all be pretty if it wasn’t a giant cavern filled with fuck-knows-what hiding in the deep dark between the glowing fungi.

“No, not really,” Astarion says.

It takes you a second to connect it back to your last question.

“Huh,” you say. “That sewing was damn good for a man that can’t see. Better than most who can, I reckon. A fuck of a lot better’n what I can manage.”

“Considering your solution was to simply wrap a cloth around yourself, that’s not really high praise, darling.”

“Take the fucking compliment,” you say. “It’s good work. Even if them mushrooms look like dicks.”

His footsteps fucking trip. He sputters. “Excuse me? They look like what?”

“It ain’t really your fault. Technically, that’s what all mushroom is, anyway: space cocks.”

He makes a kinda muffled “ugh” sound.

And then a thought hits you. “Does your language have different words for genitals depending on the vulgarity? Is it even a vulgarity to y’all?”

“I…yes, actually.”

And the word he used translated to “cock.” Possibly the most vulgar, but also the least casual. Interesting. You do notice he don’t actually use hard swears (or whatever translates to hard swears). Combined with his fancy pants accent, you wonder what he was before that whole fuckface turning him thing.

“You know,” he says. “I didn’t expect this sort of conversation out of you. Though you do have a fine phallus of your own, so color me wrong.”

“Back to them space cocks,” you say, in an attempt to cut him off before the teasing can creep back in. It ain’t fucking weird having a goddamn sex toy. You’re a grown ass fucking adult.

“Space cocks. Do tell.” He literally purrs the last part of that. If y’all wasn’t walking, you’re sure he’d prop his chin up on one hand.

“Pretty sure I was babbling about them last night. But the parts we see, the parts that grow above ground? That’s just the reproductive parts of the organism it grows from. Which I always thought was funny since a lot of them look pretty phallus-like. When they ain’t being a cosmic horror and all.”

“And this amuses you, being a connoisseur of cocks, does it?”

Ooh, he’s digging.

“I seen enough,” you say. You ain’t folding that fucking easy.

“Forgive me darling, is there a point to this topic of conversation, or did you just really want to talk about cocks?”

“I want to talk about how weird mycelium are. You don’t need to—”

The rope tugs on your waist and you turn. He’s stopped. Grin dropped. Eyes open and unfocused, staring hard out into the darkness.

“Do you hear that?” he says.

You do not. There’s the hollow echo of the huge fucking chamber, your own breathing, and y’all’s footsteps crunching about in what has turned into dirt (must be the mushroom’s doing).

But his head tilts, and you know he’s tracking something. Intently. And the shadows around y’all become real dark.

“What is it?” you say as quiet as you can.

He don’t answer. Just frowns. Head turns this way and that, eyes darting around. Until his frown deepens. And the man looks down.

“There’s something beneath us,” he says.

A hidden chamber full of albino orc people your brain throws at you because it’s a motherfucker.

Then Astarion’s face goes blank in a distinctive way that opens ever, single floodgate of adrenaline you got into your circulatory system.

“It’s coming up beneath us,” he says, right as y’all both reach for each other’s hands and you holler, “Run!”

You catch the sound, now. Thunder shimmies up your shins through the thin soles of your stolen boots. With a couple steps, the ground shakes so bad you stumble. Astarion’s iron grip is the only thing that wrenches you back up.

“There’s a rock ahead,” you pant. Your throat already burns. “Next to a cliff. Mushroom…big’un. Growing on the side.”

The two of you stumble sprint over. Hit the edge of the rock right as the ground six inches from your heel erupts in a spray of dirt that knocks you to your knees.

Astarion manages to keep his feet. Once again hauls you scrambling up to the top of the stone as something roars behind you.

You don’t look. All effort is focused on the edge of the rock and the leap you’ll need.

“Three foot gap!” you gasp. “Plenty wide—”

“I can’t—” Astarion starts.

And you shove aside all your cringing and grab the man’s shoulders and point him in the direction he needs to go. But it’d be terrifying to leap without seeing. You remember the cavern where he found you, all the times he touched something. He needs guidance.

“Gimme the stick,” you say as a roar rumbles the air so hard your ribs rattle. You finally glance back.

Something big with a huge fucking mouth.

You barely fumble the stick, barely manage not to drop it. Skirt around Astarion. Judge the distance and leap. And it’s only once you’re airborne that you wonder if that bigass shroom can take your weight or if it’ll snap clean off the cliff like a rotten tree branch.

You land hard enough to go down to one knee. The shroom is squishy, yet firm enough that it only shivers under your weight like a hard mattress.

“Eleanor?” Astarion says, voice sharp.

You whack the cliff with your stick, at foot level, just beside you. His face snaps to that direction.

“Three feet! Here!”

He gives a single nod, waits for you to tap again—the thing below roar and its bulk moves up the rock oh fuck.

Astarion jumps. Lands right next to that sound, and you reach out to steady him and pull him further onto the shroom. Right as the big fucking monster comes bounding up the rock after him. You all but drag the both of you back, fall on your ass (Astarion stumbles over you) and scoot further away.

Up until your hand hits the edge of your little platform.

“Fuck oh fuck fuck.”

Somehow, it did not occur to you that the fucking ground monster might, like, climb.

Now you’re gonna die. Torn apart by a fucking armored hippopotamus-mouthed fucking tank of a thing that snarls and snaps…from its perch on the rock. Three feet of air between y’all.

Astarion claws into your shoulder. “What’s it doing?”

Big fucking monster makes a low sound. Paws at the edge of the rock. Then its head twists left, then right. It’s got little, beady motherfucking shark eyes on either side of what’s actually a massive, fuck off beak. It leans forward, one stubby foot reaching…

But then it pulls back. Makes that sound again. Leans real far forward to…nibble at the edge of y’all’s shroom and then make what you can only describe as a disgusted sound.

“Well?” Astarion says.

“I…” you say. Watch the thing growl and snuffle around. “I think it’s afraid of the mushroom.”

“What? What is it?”

“The fuck am I supposed to know?”

And the blind man rolls his fucking eyes. “Yes, yes, you’re a yokel from another plane. You’re sure it’s not about to pounce on us?”

It fucking stares at you, is what it does. Stands motionless, maybe a total of eight feet away, just fucking staring with its dead eyes.

Every muscle in your body goes limp and you almost swoon.

“I think we should be quiet,” you whisper.

To his credit, Astarion frowns, but crouches down to whisper back, “What does it look like?”

Stumpy legs, thick body, all of it plated in some armor looking hide. Big bitch has a face halfway between a shark and an African hornbill. All of it about the size of a rhino.

Which you tell him, leaving out the animal names. And to which he swears.

“You’re of no help, dear,” he says.

“You fucking asked me—” And cut off as the birdshark snorts. Like a cat watching a squirrel and dreaming of murdering the ever-loving shit outta it.

“We should stop talking,” you say.

“And what would you,” he starts. Seems to reconsider. Then lowers himself to sitting pressed against you. You manage to contain your fidget away. Mostly. And you both settle in for the worst staring contest of your life.

***

Birdshark gets bored after what has to be an hour. Huffs and moans, and then ponderously half slides back down to the ground. It gives you another glare. Then turns nose down, makes a chuffing sound, and all them armor plates fucking buzz and the big bitch slides into the dirt like it’s a fucking cow pond.

“What was that?” Astarion whispers.

The ground don’t move again. The buzzing stops. The whole cave falls silent.

“It went back underground,” you say.

Then Astarion starts to stand. “Well then, we’d beset get out of here before the beastie changes its mind.”

But you’re still staring at the dirt. You grab the bottom of his leather armor to stay him. “Did you hear it leave?”

The man pauses a long moment. Then sinks back down, silent as a whisper. “No.”

It hunts from underground, don’t it. It’s got eyes, and it for sure saw you, but sound seemed to really set it off. And the fucker is down there, buried, and it’s mcfucking waiting for you, ain’t it.

“It’s fucking Tremors rules,” you say. “Fuck me.”

Astarion shifts. You turn and catch the most baffled expression on him.

“It’s a story,” you say. “Monsters show up in a desert town. Big worm things. Hunt from underground. We can’t get on soft ground without it knowing and coming up right between our legs, I bet.”

You didn’t even know the man could get any paler. Granted, it’s like the difference between eggshell and dairy cream at some fucking hardware store paint aisle, and you can only tell the difference by holding up them swatches next to each other under the glare of a noon day sun. But it’s still impressive for a guy whose complexion can, at best, be charitably described as corpseriffic.

“Perhaps your people’s stories aren’t as fictional as you think,” he says.

Which one: they got them the concept of fiction vs. non-fiction and you got to learn how to fucking read here, hot damn, and two:

“I’m really starting to wonder,” you say.

So tremors rules. Fucking waiting at the base of that rock. You scan around the expanse of gloom and flat ground. Them other mushrooms is too high to climb, and you ain’t putting it past birdshark down there to uproot the damned thing and bite y’all’s legs off when it topples over.

But then, off in the distance, the color of darkness changes. You can barely see it (can only see it by looking around it), but there’s a slash of black about a hundred feet to the right. Beyond that, the soft glow of more magic cave mushrooms, all about level with the floor here.

“I think that might be a crevasse to the right,” you say. Scan it again to try to tell if it’s maybe just a ditch. No, no, you think the light reflects off stone on the other side, like a sheer cliff. Goddamn, it’s too dark. Fucking caves.

“What of it?” Astarion says.

Birdshark didn’t wanna leave that rock. It was only a short hop to get to y’all’s tender ass meat, but it seemed nervous. It would make sense for a subterranean predator to be skittish of open air.

“I don’t think it likes being away from the ground,” you say.

You can feel the man lift an eyebrow.

“Or we can stay here until I starve to death. You can feed on me if that happens, and good luck after that.”

For just a second, he looks at you like you done slapped him with a trout. Then he’s back to his usual sass and an eyeroll.

“Fine,” he says. “We’ll have to run for it. I can’t see, and I’m rather sure it’s faster than the both of us. What’s your plan for that, darling?”

You think back to that movie, and remember some of the goodies y’all still got left over from that goblin camp that you are one hundred percent sure Astarion commandeered.

“You still got them bags of spark powder?” you say.

[heelhausen]

#20 I need crashmax first kiss STAT

((Kiss prompts))

If you asked Max afterwards what had driven him to do what he did, he would have pleaded insanity.

Across the ring from Crash, he watched that stupid fucking smirk tug at those stupid fucking pretty lips with each bit and barb he threw at him. Crash was a brick wall in the face of Max’s increasingly desperate attempts to get under his skin. The promo spiralled further and further out of Max’s control with each passing second that he failed to get a rise out of Crash.

Only when Max was breathless from the tide of his own insults did Crash finally smile, raise his own mic, and respond to him.

“Did that help you get it out of your system, Maxie-darlin’? Or are you still feelin’ cranky with me?”

“Oh, don’t you fucking play smug with me, you concussed Canadian cuck!” Max snarled. “You wipe that shit-eating grin off your face before I do it for you!”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Crash chuckled, his voice low and gravelly.

Max glared at him in enraged voicelessness, finding himself only able to pant heavily into the mic.

“Honestly Max, you wanna kiss me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

If you asked Max what drove him to do what he did, he would’ve blamed Crash for putting the idea out there in the first place.

Crash turned his back on Max, moving to exit the ring and let Max stew in his boiling rage. Had Max let him go, then Crash would have gotten the last laugh.

Crash could NOT be allowed to have the last laugh.

In a heartbeat, Max had dropped the mic to the mat and surged forward, seizing Crash by the upper arm. He could feel Crash jump slightly at the unexpected contact, could feel him begin to turn to ask Max what the fuck he thought he was doing. Max used Crash’s own movement to yank him back around and close the distance between them. In another heartbeat, he had… well…

He had practically crashed himself into Crash, locking their lips together in the very kiss that Crash had just teased him about. Max could feel Crash going still against him in his surprise, freezing up like a deer in the headlights. God, the look on his face when Max pulled away was going to be priceless.

But before Max could step back and get a good view of how grand a job he did at wiping that grin away, he felt Crash’s hands come up to pull him even closer. Crash was moving once more, bringing his hands up to cup Max’s jaw and softly brush his thumb over Max’s stubble.

In an instant, Crash was kissing him back. Crash was holding his face and kissing him back and leaning in close and kissing him back and biting at the bottom of his lip and kissing him back and—

Holy fucking shit, he was still kissing Crash.

Somewhere behind him, Max could hear the commentary table collectively loosing their shit. It was heavily muffled by the sound of blood rushing in his ears and the erratic, ecstatic beat of his heart, but it was there and it was present because commentary was there and the audience was there and Crash was missing him back and they were on live TV and— FUCK.

They were on live TV!

When Max finally forced himself to pull away, he couldn’t even take victory in the look of shock and genuine awe on Crash’s stupid fucking face, because he knew he was mirroring that same goddamn dumbstruck dead-fish expression right back at him.

With the mics discarded, the next words that Crash spoke were heard only by Max.

“Jesus fuck man, you kiss me like that again and I won’t be able to pretend like I haven’t been in love with you since we met.”

And with a statement like that, well. Max had already fucked up by kissing Crash in the first place. The rubicon was crossed. The bridge was burned. The line had been stomped out of the sand.

Max put his hands on either side of Crash’s stupid stunned face and pulled him back in so he could kiss him again.

[steveharrington]

can u elaborate abt s4 not feeling like st? i don't disagree but i'm curious what ur thoughts are. i also felt s3 really didn't feel like st, like it's such a tonal shift from the first two seasons (and it has a LOT of issues) but i kind of love it anyway so.

before i try to put it into words i have to issue a disclaimer so here we go: i’m not trying to suggest that stranger things was ever like an indie show or underground or had a small fanbase at all, i know that it’s been insanely popular ever since s1 like i fully acknowledge that. however. s4, to me, feels like it was written to maximize online buzz instead of prioritizing the story, more so than any other season, and it worked which makes the fanbase feel different.

the first three seasons were obviously insanely popular and they did have these big moments that became referenced to death. i mean s1 alone spurred the whole barb obsession, the pink dress blonde wig el halloween costumes, the recreations of joyce’s light wall, the eggo jokes, plus people just went crazy like inviting david harbour to their weddings and shit. but that was all…natural. prettymuchit’s eric striffler talked about this in their stranger things commentary track so i’m ripping from him but he essentially said, in reference to s1, it’s insanely impressive how effortlessly the show managed to create iconic imagery that feels like it’s from an 80s movie in 2016. the duffers know that, so every season they ramp it up more and more to try to capitalize off that success. and sometimes i don’t mind it! i know people took issue with steve & dustin in s3, complained that their dynamic was being strung along just for memes or whatever, but to me their bond still felt genuine and authentic in that season so i personally was cool with it.

s4 just feels…rushed. which is insane because they had 3 years to work on it. purely speculating here, i think perhaps the duffers and netflix knew that it’d been forever and people were starting to forget stranger things, so all those rewrites and added content were kinda written with the idea of maximizing viewership in mind. that’s how we get ideas like: creating a fan favorite character whose imminent death is shoved down your throat so hard that the actual moment just rings hollow, shock killing and then un-killing max, bringing stancy back out of nowhere, starting and then dropping multiple storylines as the season progressed, giving el and hopper the exact same storylines they had in season two, having brenner take up insane amounts of screen time, etc etc etc. just…bad choices! and bad choices that you can tell were manufactured to either go viral (eddie and max) or start debate (stancy) while basically forfeiting the quality of the show in the process.

okay here’s where i’m gonna get bitchy. again i know the shows always been popular, and i like eddie, but eddie….took away a lot of the fun of the fanbase. and this is coming from someone who writes eddie fic!! i love him!! but i hate when any one specific character just completely monopolizes all content and conversation about a show, and among casual fans eddie completely 100% did this. you cannot see a single tweet about ST without thousands of replies all being like “is eddie coming back??? is eddie alive?????” and it just annoys me! i don’t like it! it makes the fan reaction and aftermath of this season just…different than the others and a lot less fun.

i think for me the different vibe all comes down to the fact that i didn’t like season 4. i was really disappointed after i finished it and honestly very sad i remember texting em being like “i don’t want to admit i’m disappointed because then that makes it real” but it’s been 5 months now and i can fully say: i was disappointed. it wasn’t what i was expecting, it wasn’t what i wanted, it was just not the quality of the show i know and love! which again is all subjective! and there’s a lot of good moments from it, but s4 just doesn’t hold a candle to the other 3 and it’s somehow impossibly made me …. not excited for s5. which i didn’t think was something that could happen!!

[ronanceautistic]

The last of us au director’s commentary?

TEEHEE thank you :3

aw man TLOU Nancy is so precious to me :C My commentary will b about chapter 7. I said this in the end notes of the chapter, but Barb was originally intended to be a real person Nancy grew up with the way Ellie & Riley did. But in the end I wanted to sort of emphasise how isolated Nancy has been her entire life, and I think the idea of Barb just being a straight up imaginary friend really did. I love the frustration and anger Nancy feels after having a generally good day. The 'none of this is real, it's all in my head' feeling, which as a kid who had maladaptive daydreaming disorder, I felt constantly.

It also is on line with how nervous Robin, Max, and Steve make her at the beginning. The only person she's interacted with since she was ten is someone she has complete control over. She dictates what they say, where they go. And now there's real, unpredictable people that she desperately wants to connect with but connecting means losing control.

And Nancy feeling like her only worth is her immunity :C Robin spending months trying to convince her she's doesn't have to be worthy to be loved my gawddd.

Sorry for putting her through hell she's definitely the Nancy I've whumped the most.

[fastcardotmp3]

.meta

[back to main masterlist]

I had too many links when I combined my ficlets and meta into one post so now they're getting separate ones, babey! This includes both meta about my own fics and meta about the show/characters at large. (mostly for my own organization and sanity, but hey, you can use it too mwah!) full-length fic masterlist ficlet masterlist ao3

re: main fics

METAMPORPHOSES porch blurb

METAMORPHOSES bonus thoughts and background

METAMORPHOSES director's commentary (1)

METAMORPHOSES director's commentary (2)

METAMORPHOSES director's commentary (3)

METAMORPHSES director's commentary (4)

METAMORPHOSES epilogue talk

that's just wasteland, baby! director's commentary

"someone else's favorite song" slice of life

“The White Rabbit” playlist discussion

Stranger Things Meta

Upside Down meta and lore speculation

Brenner's resurrection

Bloodshed as a character study

Hopper's S4 Rewrite

Eddie Munson

Young Eddie blurb

Eddie's tattoos

Eddie and Contentedness

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy and her gun

Nancy the Storyteller

Nancy and the tragedy of survival

Nancy and the tragedy of survival (version 2)

Nancy & "bullshit"

Nancy's S5 catharsis

Nancy & Barb

Steve Harrington

Steve and pottery

Steve and Lover's Lake

firefighter Steve

Robin Buckley

Robin and Erica friendship

Butch Robin

Argyle

Argyle the Celebrity Chef

Jonathan

Jonathan's S4 plotline

Kali

Kali & Abby (TLOU) meta comparison

The Party

elumax meta

Nancy and Max parallels

Max the Courageous

Will "the heart" Byers

Lucas S4 meta

El's many older siblings

Stobin post-drugging trauma

Stobin and the choice of soulmatism

Steve & Max

Erica & Dustin dream team

[chillisreal]

Each episode of fallout I watch has me more flabbergasted than the last.

Also maxwell, max. I love you

Commentary on suggestive scenes and general episode below cut

Bro really said "wanna make my cock explode now? :D"

I'm not even done with the series don't kill me now PLEASE LMAO

I was really not liking Maxwell before but he's starting to grow on me, especially with this episode omg,,, he got so pampered,, good for him good for him.

Lucy fr trying to make a move, failed miserably, and was having a moment of realization right when Maxwell was finally chilling like omg

I'm still not over the "Then they pop like pimples" BAJAHFJSHFHWHHAHAHAHAH

On another note tho that vault is so messed up but then again so is a lot of the other vaults, I understand why Barb was so stressed about getting them into a specialized vault ough

[allelitewrestling1]

AEW REVOLUTION

March 7, 2021

Jacksonville, FL - Daily’s Place

Commentary: Jim Ross, Tony Schiavone, Excalibur, Taz, Don Callis

Attendance: 1,300

Buy Rate: 135,000

THE BUY IN PRE-SHOW

-Britt Baker & Maki Itoh d. Riho & Thunder Rosa

PAY PER VIEW

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH

-The Young Bucks (c) d. Chris Jericho & MJF to retain the titles (3rd defense)

CASINO TAG TEAM ROYALE

-PAC & Rey Fenix won the 15 team Casino Tag Team Royale. Other teams included: Santana & Ortiz, Private Party, John Silver & Alex Reynolds, Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus, Evil Uno & Stu Grayson, Alan “5” Angels & 10, The Varsity Blonds, The Natural Nightmares, Bear Country, Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian, Matt & Mike Sydal, Austin & Colton Gunn, The Butcher & The Blade and Peter Avalon & Cezar Bononi

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE MATCH

-Hikaru Shida (c) d. Ryo Mizunami to retain the title (8th defense)

-Miro & Kip Sabian d. Orange Cassidy & Chuck Taylor

BIG MONEY MATCH

-Hangman Page d. Matt Hardy

FACE OF THE REVOLUTION LADDER MATCH/#1 CONTENDER FOR AEW TNT TITLE

-Scorpio Sky won the Face of the Revolution Ladder Match. Other participants included: Cody Rhodes, Penta El Zero Miedo, Lance Archer, Max Caster and Ethan Page

STREET FIGHT

-Sting & Darby Allin d. Brian Cage & Ricky Starks

AEW WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP/EXPLODING BARBED WIRE DEATH MATCH

-Kenny Omega (c) d. Jon Moxley to retain the title (2nd defense)

[sparksofdaylight]

At least you don’t have to deal with the California traffic. 

[grey-sides]

Hey!! About your recent post.. I truly don't think the Duffers dislike Billy. They're just NOT great writers.. Also, stranger things is a plot driven show, not a character driven show... Look at how many other characters are so often sidelined for the sake of the plot (look at Will, at Lucas, at Erica, at Steve even! Literally any character) What are they actually doing? Are they actually growing as people?? I don't really think so... They grow some and complete regress the following season. Anyway, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. But I just see so many people mad about "wasted potential" of Billy's character. I just don't think it's their intention. It's just how the show works. I was 100% convinced Billy was Vecina when I saw the trailer and yet even before the show premiered I got less and less sure, until I was confident it was Peter (just from seeing the actor at the premiere) so I really wasn't expecting anything enough to be disappointed in the end... Idk.

Hi! Well, I read your message and couldn't go back to sleep until I responded because it made me think thoughts haha. I want to be clear, I'm not angry with the show or what happened this season and I'm not angry with you. I'm not angry at all, actually, and thoroughly enjoyed this season!

When I say the Duffers dislike Billy, I mean that in interviews and discussions about the show, they have always been clear about what purpose Billy serves. He was a bully who got somewhat redeemed by his ending actions, but that was always his purpose. They don't like Billy because Billy is a bully-character, a character whose purpose was to be an antagonist and no one on the writing team seems to love antagonists the way so many of us do on the Internet.

You're not wrong about all the characters getting sidelined for the sake of the plot. But the other characters mentioned are all still alive with potential for further growth or fleshing out. I guess in this way, I could make a post about Bob Newby or Barb Holland, the difference with Billy is we got him for 2 seasons instead of 1. So the feeling of wasted potential is a little more real.

I also latch onto Billy's lack of growth because the Duffers and other members of the creative team have boasted so much about Max's story line this season. And it's good! Again, it did make me cry which was the intention, but they could have done more to make that story line impactful. More emotional or just more of an arc for her, that's all.

I know the show is plot-driven and not character-driven. I also made a post about that because it's a growing "issue" in our media landscape. Post-MCU (yes, it's still happening but it's post), almost all media is plot-driven because the MCU is plot-driven. Ironic, given that comic books are largely a character-driven genre.

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, anon, because I don't disagree with you and I'm not angry in any shape or form. But for me, engaging in meta commentary or criticism of something is one method of showing love for something. If I hated Stranger Things or the choices the show made, I would just stop watching. I see an endless amount of potential for the show and I like to talk about it. Stranger Things makes me want to write my own screenplay or start a Youtube channel where I could talk about this with a better way to convey my tone.

I love Stranger Things, I think it's a great media franchise with a lot to offer. I wish it was done differently sometimes and I wish the show runners saw the opportunities that so many in the fandom see. But I don't hold a lot of "faith" about what will happen, I am a fairly cynical consumer so very little actually disappoints me.

This has gotten long and rambly and that's evidence that I need to go back to bed. But I simply had to respond because, again, I love media criticism a whole lot. I will also say, I just won't write something I like off because the writers aren't very good. I think the Duffers are decent writers, I just think they are creating in a time where it's better to mass produce than it is to produce quality content. All Netflix shows have this problem because character-driven stories don't tend to be seen as very exciting. And when they are exciting, people complain about them not being understandable (such as The Green Knight).

Anyway, I'm off to sleep again! Thank you for your thoughts, anon, I hope with this longer post I've explained myself a little bit more.

[emblazons]

so I posted about how the mlvn breakup + Max talking to her mom leading into a Vecna vision making to clear the scenes were at the very least thematic parallels (while mentioning 2 other scenes where the track was used) but I got a couple of asks requesting clarity about what I thought the connection was, so!

Here's a video with all 4 uses of the alt-Eulogy included, with notes demarcating elements that make it clear they're the same.

the scenes are:

El losing her connection to Terry Ives in the Void in 'Will the Wise'

Hopper reaching out to El via radio when she's gone in 'The Spy'

The Mlvn Fight in 'The Monster and The Superhero'

Max's time with her mom turning into a Vecna vision in 'Dear Billy'

Each of these scenes has a familial love undertone (including the mlvn fight if you take all of my other 'parentified mike' commentary at value) while also carrying some element of loss of connection or emotional distance—aka an relational loss to the "actual" loss of death we see for the uses of actual Eulogy (which plays when Nancy cries over Barb while at dinner with her parents, and when Mike is talking about how a recently-dead Bob started the AV club).

TL;DR: when you look at all the other times this track has been used in the show, it becomes clear that its use for the mlvn fight is a coded signifier of the fact that Mike's "care" (and later 'love') for El is platonic-familial, rather than romantic—which is why he struggles to say it to her when she wants him to say it romantically.

Given the fact that in S1 we started with "will you be like my brother," them giving S5 being like 'S4 & S1 had a baby," it is clear with this (along with 4899273 other bits of evidence) that rounding back to the start with these two means we're getting breakup-meets-familial vibes from mvln come S5. Which, if you know El's arc is about found family rather than romance, makes complete sense! lmao

[stoprobbersfic]

director's commentary on we together share a limb!

so really the genesis of we together make a limb was the desire to get back into nancy's head after the end of vol. 2. i had already written bowstring to address what i saw as her being so incredibly tightly wound during volume 1 from a combo of missing jonathan and, you know, all those people dying and her having to fight monsters without her most trusted monster fighting partner, but volume 2 was also super striking to me because, well, they lost. they lost hard.

nancy's never lost like that before. season 1, the demogorgon dies and will comes back. season 2, she successfully exposes the people behind barb's death and helps save will. season 3, they defeat the flesh monster/mind flayer again. and of course every season comes with its own set of losses - barb and to some degree el in s1, jonathan moving away in season 3 - but from an accomplished monster hunter perspective, nancy wheeler has been a winner. and now all of a sudden she's not. hawkins is split into 4. vecna is extremely not dead, despite her best sawed off shotgun efforts. max is body broken and in a coma. and jonathan is still nowhere to be found.

i felt like when we saw nancy 2 days later, right before the reunion, she's put on her patented Nancy Wheeler Brave Face - she's determined to help, to be together, to be a solid presence in the face of all this disasterness. and then her reaction to jonathan's return was just like the clouds cleared from her entire being. her entire BODY seemed lighter. when they got to the cabin she was optimistic. finding cleaning supplies, determined they can make the decrepit space liveable again. even in her convo with jonathan, even as they danced around issues between them, her face was so open, so light. she affectionately joked about argyle. she talked about "our big plans."

and so i wanted to explore what those two days must have felt like to her. the worry about jonathan and mike, but also processing her defeat, finding the strength inside herself to force herself to buck up and DO something instead of simply wallow, and finally the oh thank god feeling of jonathan being back. because it just seemed like 100 lbs. had been lifted off her shoulders. like her partner was there to help her carry that weight again, to help her be the nancy she always knows she can be. she just needs that support. he's, well. he's the other part of her limb.

and i had been listening to the decemberists a lot because idk why, it just sort of popped back into my head, and that whole verse stood out to me as a very THEM verse. i've always loved "red right ankle," it's a great song i play often, but specifically that line "whatever differences our lives have been / we together make a limb" really jumped out because that's what it felt like nancy was feeling at the end of vol. 2. like the broken parts of her were reunited with the broken parts of jonathan and they were starting to heal and knit back together into a stronger bone, as such.

if there's anything more specific you wanted to know, please ask! but that was sort of where my head was at when i wrote it - the desire to get into nancy's head and into her complicated, messy, inconvenient feelings.

[ohbeauregard]

A Summary of the Season 6 bluray extras:

Gag Reel

Featurette Litchfield to the Max (interviews with cast and crew) | Part 1 | Part 2

Commentary for episode 8, "Gordons", with Sian Heder (director), Vega Santamaria (writer), Laura Gomez (Blanca) and Susan Heyward (Tamika).

They all love the theme song.

The new set made everyone feel claustrophobic. Not just the cast, but the writers and the crew, they didn't have the freedom to move around that the old Litchfield offered.

Sian felt like she came back to her family (she left the show after S3).

Daniela (Zirconia) broke her leg while kickboxing but her character was supposed to be injured in the other leg. She showed up on set with a cast on her opposite leg and there were a lot of discussions about how they'd deal with that and if the fans were going to notice.

Danielle was actually smoking that blunt (Sian: "not real, of course"), by the end of it she had tears streaming down her face, her throat was closing. The scene where they're stoned and dancing around was improvised by Danielle and Susan.

Susan and Danielle Brooks knew each other before OITNB, they went to the same art high school in South Carolina, and that translates into the relationship their characters have.

Laura Gomez also knew Selenis from theater, and that friendship translated on screen as well.

Alex coming into Piper's bunk, at first it was decided Laura had to stay by the door to abide by max rules, they tried to keep her with one foot by the door. (unsuccessfully lol)

The "I told you she was a wily no-goodnik" line was added by Jenji.

Taylor and Laura have developed such a great rapport over the years that by now their characters back and forth truly feels like they are an old married couple.

They switched a lot of extras because most of the times some of them looked like they couldn't even hurt a fly and now in max they needed people that looked tougher.

The writers' room enjoyed how well received Carol & Barb were by fans.

The Nicky and Blanca insemination storyline was the writer's way to try to get back at some of the fun they had at minimum where some of the old crew was always coming up with some hair brained scheme.

Sian had to direct Laura G and Natasha in the insemination scene right after Lionsgate made them spend an hour having sexual harassment training.

By this time in the season they missed writing scenes between Nicky and Red, it wasn't easy to get them together because of max, so that scene was a little moment to tide them over until Nicky and Red are able to cross paths again.

Matt Peters was stressed about the scene where he had to dance, so much that some of the writers asked Jenji and Tara to bring someone to give him dance lessons but Jenji refused, said everyone should come up with their own moves in that scene.

They didn't want to make Aleida's storyline of getting involved with a pyramid scheme a case of just "look at Aleida's bad idea", they wanted to show how someone who's struggling with employment or trying to make ends meet would look at it like a good solution and get all caught up in it.

The scene with Taystee and her lawyer was filmed in a real prison and there were times when a bell would ring and they had to stop what they were doing, close themselves into a room and duck, because actual prisoners were walking through that hall.

Sian Heder: "There's always been a line walked by this show where it's never been didactic, the fear of writing a prison show is that you're saying something about prison or you're basically offering a whole political commentary on the state of the prison system, and what the show's done so well is being incredibly entertaining and kind of back you into those issues without you even knowing you got there." She was moved by the speech, by the writing and Danielle's performance.

Vera, Sian and some of the actors got trapped in a real prison, they wandered off from where they were filming and ended up in gen pop.

There are scenes that are always surprising, because they take 1-2 pages in a script, but the actual shooting can take up to 12 hours.

One of the joys in the writing room during the development of season 6 was coming up with and writing new pairings.

The scene where Taystee comes out of her cell and asks Tamika if there's mail for her was supposed to be the last scene of the episode. But then Sian talked with Vera and asked her to switch the scenes and use the flashback to close the episode instead.

Tamika's line about her mom was something they talked a lot in the writer's room, they wanted to show Tamika had someone waiting for her, wondering where she is, and Taystee doesn't, and that could've been the life changing thing that sent them in two different paths.

 The final scene felt like the most important scene and they wanted to show them going in different directions, it was the last moment Tamika and Taystee were connected and together and that was the moment where life would take them in different paths that were irreconcilable.

Commentary for episode 13, "Be Free" with Nick Sandow (director) and Brian Chamberlayne (writer).

Taylor got so comfortable that she fell asleep when they were filming the first scene for ep 13. It was an early call time and she'd fall asleep between takes.

It was Laura and Taylor last day of filming.

They had a lot of conversations whether to shoot above or underneath the sheet. Nick didn't want to because of the complications of having to shoot underneath the sheet, but Brian won that argument, they had to pull the bed out and place it in another space to be able to shoot underneath the blanket.

Uzo is unbelievable, she always does something specific that the writers are not expecting, but they love it and ends up being better than whatever they had pictured.

Brian was happy he got an opportunity to work with Laverne.

Nick and Brian got choked up several times when they were filming the trial.

The coffee beans scene: Laura and Taylor had a lot of discussions with Nick about that scene because so many different feelings needed to happen and they conveyed that beautifully. They were asking Taylor to hit a lot of different notes and she really pulled it off.

The "I can't believe you were gonna ditch all us poor losers without saying goodbye" was ad-libbed by Natasha

Nick thought Yael was a treasure in the wedding scene and they could always cut to her for comedy because she started crying from the moment they started filming, Nick knew her reactions were going to be gold

Nick as a director was a bit scared because the scene was so long, and there was so little action/movement and he thought he'd have a hard time figuring it out but the actresses carried it and it made it easy.

The wedding scene took 8 pages in the script (in this show one scene usually takes 2 or 3)

Laura and Taylor brought the weight of it, they knew it was a moment that was building up for so many seasons of watching Vauseman's relationship come together, and they carried it.

Natasha was so focused because she had the most dialogue and she had to lift the scene up, she killed it because she brought so many different levels (she made it funny but also brought a lot of feeling) to it.

Brian fel a bit overwhelmed at first, because he had to write three speeches for the scene, and it was for the main relationship between two leads that has been building up for years, he thought it had to be momentous & big.

Since the wedding comes in the middle of the episode, in a strange way it worked like a nice intermission from all the gang stuff and the heavy scenes with Taystee and her trial. Brian: "It was a nice moment between these two that you have been rooting for all along".

Nick and Brian were wowed by Taylor's acting during the vows.

It was nice to have Flaca and Cindy come in, because they wanted a bit of the OG crew, they wanted that feeling from the first few seasons of the old crew coming together and holding little events that was lost since they came to max because it's such a harsh environment.

Bottom vs. Bottom is an actual court case.

They loved the scene with Luschek and Gloria in SHU, Selenis was so powerful and so intense in her performance that they all were drained by the end of it.

Taystee's verdict: Danielle was given a standing ovation after they did the take that was used in the episode.

From the beginning of the season they knew they wanted to address the immigration detention center problem.

Yael was hysterical after they finished shooting the scene where Lorna's bleeding and being dragged to the infirmary, Nick had to hold her while she cried and told him that was an awful thing to have to imagine.

Brian felt so stupid for writing that, but it was a storyline they already had thought of before they knew she was pregnant irl

Shooting the kickball scenes was a nightmare because it snowed the day they were supposed to shoot, so they rescheduled for the next day but it rained at night, so the whole field turned into a swamp and it was absolutely freezing, Nick swore he wouldn't go back to Staten Island after that.

Uzo nailed the kick in every single take.

Brian was flattered that he was given the episode where Piper gets out because it's such an iconic moment in the series.

[toongrrl-blog]

Part One of Barb Series: Why Barb Died (Character Device Talk)

*Please watch the Betty Draper Francis video first, for extra credit, check out the channel’s vid on Jack Dawson and come with knowledge of Beth March*

Happy end of the 2010s! Before I discuss what Barb could have brought to the Party in Stranger Things I need to discuss how as a character she needed to die.

1. Beth March

In one scene in Little Women, the girls and Laurie discuss their ambitions for adult life. Oldest sister Meg wants to marry and have kids, oldest middle sis Jo wants to become a known and successful writer, youngest sister Amy wants to become rich and famous as an artist and maybe a socialite, and middle child Beth wants things to stay the way they are for her, with her loving family at her side. What’s wrong with this? What the other three sisters have in common is that they are hoping for adult lives which include a lot of change, responsibility, independence (either as a career woman or running a household with little kids underfoot), new experiences, and even new people in their lives (Meg would need to meet a guy to marry and have kids with him, Jo would need to meet people in her professional life, Amy would entertain guests and appeal to patrons). Shy Beth is a talented pianist, vet, and doll collector and is very charitable but she doesn’t seem to want to take the risks it would take to grow as a person and thrive and mature or be noticed for her own merits aside from “Angel of the House” and the future looks pretty hostile; so by the end of the novel, Beth has died in her early 20s while sisters lives have changed (Meg married and had children in a cottage while gaining confidence as a homemaker, wife, and mom; Jo sells her writing and meets a professor who wants to start a school where she becomes headmistress after they marry; Amy goes on a Grand Tour of Europe and marries wealthy and happy).

The series Stranger Things, on a whole, is a coming-of-age series that borrows from the John Hughes and Steven Spielberg films of that era that captured the joys and pains of growing up, while Joyce’s and Hop’s storylines borrow from conspiracy thrillers around that era and somewhat from Hitchcock films. All these films captured ordinary people undergoing extraordinary (E.T., North By Northwest, The Goonies, The Stepford Wives) and life altering events (Jaws, The Breakfast Club, Silkwood) that force them to encounter challenges and make decisions they wouldn’t normally make in their mundane lives. Joyce ends up facing a monster with an axe and even makes demands of people who could wipe her off the Earth, the boys have to ride their bikes to evade murderous men in vans and hide a young traumatized girl, Nancy has to learn to create and use deadly weapons and use her skills of sneaking out for something besides sex, Jonathon has to cut his and another girl’s hand to lure a monster to their trap, Hop sneaks into a morgue just to slit a dead boy’s corpse and find cotton stuffing, Will has to use what knowledge and skills he has to survive another world filled with creatures out to kill him, most of the kids throughout the series have to lie and break laws to save their town. 

While the official guide does list Barb as being a varsity softball player and a mathlete and Shannon Purser concurs that Barb would have been the Velma of the group if she lived, there is one big thing that separates the Velmas from the Barbs and Beth’s of the world: Velma takes risks, she would trespass private looking property and dilapidated buildings to solve a mystery. Barb is a loyal friend and honest and studious and smart, but she’s ultimately the good girl archetype: cautious, obedient to her elders, predictable, conservatively and femininely dressed, chaste. An archetype that Nancy is trying to flee (not that the alternative of being a girl who sneaks out with her boyfriend to makeout is going to help Nancy at all) to avoid ending up like her mother. Barb has the fangs (talent and means) to be a Party member, she just lacks the nerve to jump and sink those fangs.

2. Commentary on the Patriarchy and the Tyranny of Beauty Standards

Most of the female characters in the series don’t fit the strict criteria of their Reagan era Indiana small town regarding what makes a good woman. Joyce is a single mother who doesn’t come with well-coiffed hair and she appears to be hysterical and is a working mother in a time and place where all these factors would label her a “bad mother”, Nancy is a frank young woman who takes risks and even asserts her sexuality and herself when plenty of people (like the shitheads at Hawkins Post) would prefer her to be a delicate virgin in pastels, El is physically stronger than the boys with her powers and she is very direct in her manner despite her soft-spoken demeanor, Max is a girl who is interested in arcade video games and skateboarding and brightly colored summer clothing and reads her Mom’s Cosmo cover to cover and is assertive, Erica is an assertive young girl who can talk truth (and shade) to adults and has a knowledge of My Little Pony and Cold War Politics, Robin is snarky and has a style that makes her stand out from most girls in Hawkins and is a teen genius, Kali’s rage and Joan Jett-esque appearance would make the preppy and pastel and autumnal tone wearing residents of Hawkins in Cardiac Care, Suzie has defied notions about girls in science and math and even the Mormon beliefs of her parents by french kissing and dating a non-Mormon boy like Dustin, and Karen despite her appearance of hot housewife perfection is dissatisfied with her marriage and comes close to cheating on her husband. 

In contrast Barb is pretty much the most conventional character: she dresses conservatively in ruffles and pink, she is seemingly chaste, follows the rules diligently and worries about getting punished by the Holland and Wheeler parents, and has a more common body type found in cis-gender women (correct me if I’m wrong, hopefully I don’t offend trans pear shaped women) and not often found in the older members of the female cast. But despite Barb’s body being common among women in general and specific to her region (the American Midwest is noted for starchy and creamy and fried foods and is historically farming country, where pioneers would find her strong for work in and out of the log cabin and give birth to the necessary amount of children i.e. extra hands for work), the delicate and slender builds of Joyce and Nancy, the classic proportionate and slender grace of Robin, and the leggy and toned image of Karen are closer to the female standard of beauty in the 1980s. In Barb’s lifetime (1967-1983), the image of beauty was dominated by leggy, toned, slim, busty women or lean women with minimal breasts: no room for tall, broad, pear shapes like herself. And in 1983, Molly Ringwald wasn’t yet a household name that freckled redheads with dry wit and atypical images could look on with pride. Hell I remember reading a copy of Color Me Beautiful where they recommend that women with heavy hips and small waists (similar features of Christina Hendricks and Shannon Purser) shouldn’t cinch their waistlines, the celebration of Marilyn Monroe pinups with round hips, pillowy thighs and tummies, rounded tushes were long gone by then. Basically Barb being her natural self, was not seen as “feminine enough” and combined with her glasses and style (any plus sized or early developing gal can tell you that it is hell to find junior styles that suit your body size and shape) have ruled her as “uncool”. 

There is also that Barb does a lot of things that the boys do: being slightly geeky, a loyal friend, has innocent and wholesome interests, chaste, and is quiet (like Will) but she still gets killed. One can sense that #JusticeForBarb came out of an anger with misogyny in media and society that tells women to be a certain way and punishes them whether they fit a mold or not. Women are still underpaid in the workplace, underrepresented in government, still deal with unequal and toxic relationships, are shamed for being virgins or for having sexual experience (Carol pokes fun at the idea of Barb finding the sex sounds too much and yet contributes to the slut shaming graffiti of Nancy), are told on one hand to look a certain way to attract the male gaze and shamed when they indulge in sexual desire (something Nancy can attest to with her glamorous mother who offers to lend her black heels and focuses on Nancy’s beauty before a funeral, the same mom who was angry her daughter had sex), they are either too fat/skinny/busty/flat/frizzy/straight haired/pale/slutty/prudish/dark/feminine/masculine/full-butt-ed/quiet/loud/naive/cynical/smart/dumb/angry/happy, and they deal with a media that sells a very narrow standard of beauty to the point that when they see a drop dead gorgeous actress or model with similar features they feel seen.

Oh Bondage, Up Yours!

*Read this is not a “Barb is a slut shamer!” piece yes that was shitty but she was a teen girl in a small 1980s town and she ISN’T starting a (paraphrasing Kimberly Nicole Foster quote) “no whores allowed campaign” OR trying to pass a law that demands women keep their ectopic pregnancies to full term*

3. End of Innocence

When Barb died, it marked the end of Nancy’s childhood and her needing to grow up. That was the night Nancy went straight from childhood (Barb), teenager (sex with Steve), and then shortly became an adult when she realized that Barb had disappeared. For many women (like myself at ages 9 and 10), the moment they get their period or grow breasts or reach a certain age, marks a dramatic end of their childhood. Suddenly many are told to police their behavior and language around boys, even policing the food they eat or their bodies. There is also extra responsibility and stress, demogorgans being one of them. Nancy is now having to deal with the sorts of issues that adult women dealt with on Mad Men along with scary monsters threatening her town and the fact her parents are not as happy as they look to the world, there is a gap between the experiences of her and Mike, she has a baby sister who probably was conceived to save the marriage, and Nancy can’t confide or trust either of her parents (who are absorbed with their own issues). Now Nancy is making big decisions that Barb, with the sheltering and seemingly close parents, will likely never deal with. Nancy is even taking fashion risks with clothes that are more functional, stylish, show off her figure, and can even withstand flayer blood and exorcising her boyfriend’s little brother.

4. A Huge Threat

Barb was intended to be a character that we connected with, someone to be built up somehow. There was a character like this in a movie: her name was Marion Crane. She was a secretary who has been supporting herself and her little sis since their parents died, patiently waiting for her boyfriend to make more money at his job so they can marry and stop sneaking around sleeping with one another, in desperation she steals a lot of money from her workplace, drives to California where she meets a mild-mannered but strange young man who manages a distant motel in the vicinity of a Victorian house where an older woman is croaking about promiscuity, after talking with him over a dinner of sandwiches in his taxidermy themed office, she goes to take a shower and has decided to return to Phoenix to return the money, then a strange figure comes with a large butcher knife in horribly out of date clothes and starts stabbing her to death.

This was from the Hitchcock film Psycho, the forerunner of the slasher genre that dominated the earlier half of the 1980s, and it premiered to shocked audiences in 1960. The meaning of the grisly murder of Marion, a character the audience was following from the beginning of the film, was that Norman Bates was a huge threat and intensified the need for Marion’s killer to be brought to justice.

The same thing can be said about the deaths of Benny and Barb, to show how much a threat the demogorgan and Hawkins National Lab were to the townspeople of Hawkins (and the world as a whole), basically such big threats that a little boy can be kidnapped from the safety of his home, a young teenage girl could be snatched up and killed from a suburban swimming pool, and a kindly cook and owner of a local diner would be executed for knowing about a runaway child. 

5. The future of Women in Stranger Things

Not all is lost, Barb’s death forced the Duffer Bros to take a look at how women were written and treated in their series, and even helped spurred tv viewers (who ordinarily wouldn’t pay attention to social issues) to take a deeper look and interest in how people especially women are treated. For some reason I like to think: Max, Robin, Erica, and Suzie are a way of recognizing Barb’s potential within the series and even what viewers saw. 

Now stay tuned to where I figure out how Barb could have been beneficial to the party.

[long70s]

THE EXORCIST

William Peter Blatty received his M.A. in English from Georgetown University, served in the U.S. Air Force's Psychological Warfare Division, published several humorous novels, and collaborated with Blake Edwards on the screenplay for the second Pink Panther movie, A Shot in the Dark (1964) before writing The Exorcist in 1971.

The novel about the performance of an archaic Roman Catholic ritual that frees a 12-year old American girl from demonic possession was an unlikely bestseller. Warner Brothers hired Blatty to write the screenplay and William Friedkin, the recent winner of the Best Director Academy Award for The French Connection (1971). Given the grisly nature of the material, however, no major stars would go near the project. Against the studio's wishes, Blatty cast respected actors Ellen Burstyn and Max von Sidow and two novices, Jason Miller and Linda Blair, neither of whom had acted before.

The production itself seemed cursed. The special effects caused the set to burn down. Burstyn and Blair were both seriously injured during physically grueling stunts. Delays in shooting caused massive budgetary overages. A box office catastrophe was averted last minute cuts that saved the film from receiving an X-rating. When the film opened on the day after Christmas in 1973, these trials were amply were amply rewarded. Although it opened the mixed reviewed, The Exorcist quickly broke attendance and box office records. To date it is the 9th most profitable film ever released, earning close to $1 billion adjusted for inflation.

The Exorcist was more than a blockbuster success. Like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the film's theatrical run became an event in and of itself. Audiences were instantly warned that this experience would be like no other: the film begins immediately after the title alone appears on screen with none of the customary opening credits. This device is commonly used now, but used for the first time in The Exorcist, its rejection of traditional cinematic conventions unnerved audiences. This was just the beginning, however. Evening news reports told of viewers waiting in lines for hours only to flee, faint, and/or vomit once inside. Air-sickness bags were distributed in theatres. Pregnant women were said to have miscarried during the film, while other viewers went into cardiac arrest. Parents were urged to leave children under 18 home. The hysteria surrounding the film amounted to a massive cost-free advertising campaign, building up expectations of horror that were not disappointed.

Over the course of six years, a group of critically-acclaimed films including Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Wild Bunch (1969), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Dirty Harry (1971) and The Godfather (1972), had incrementally shifted the parameters of acceptable violent content in the name of art. Each step had also been decried by pundits for coarsening the popular culture. The Exorcist, which featured the explosive combination of the perversion of religion and the violation of childhood innocence, did away with the parameters altogether, relentless subjecting audiences to every imaginable abomination, blasphemy, and affront imaginable, violating taboo after taboo.

Offended, shocked and disturbed, audiences couldn't get enough of the diabolical machinations of the demon Pazuzu. Seen on screen for approximately one second, this ancient spirit of the underworld was no comicbook villain in a red jumper with a barbed tail and pitchfork. Capable of speaking Aramaic backwards and a master of visceral psychological warfare, Pazuzu is bad news and he's only a demon, not the Dark Lord himself. Few critics have noted that the exorcism's effectiveness against the demonic is never proven. Incapacitated by the titanic struggle, Father Merrick is unable to complete the ritual and Father Karras tricks the demon into quitting Regan, then does away with the new host. Mobsters can be gunned down, the droogies sent to re-education camp and the shark blown out of the water, but, Blatty’s text suggests, there might be no antidote to evil itself.

The Exorcist's grand guignol horror was so extreme and took such an unexpected hold on the public imagination that for a long time it was assumed that Blatty's narrative was a profound commentary on modern society, worthy of study and debate. The nature of that social commentary is in ways more disturbing than demonic possession. Burstyn's character Chris is a divorced, liberal actress, with openly gay associates. She is in Georgetown, the ground zero of the alleged leftwing elite, shooting a movie about campus anti-war protests. She is a allegorical personification and cariacture of counterculture values. The film strongly implies that her self-indulgent, secular life style and slack morals are have prepared the way for the demonic possession of Regan. Blatty believed the various social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s invited evil into the world.

That evil expresses itself as bizarre lewdness, both spoken ("Your mother sucks cocks in hell") and physical (masturbating with a crucifix, the sexualized desecration of the statue of the Virgin), recalling the Silent Majority’s disapproval of Lenny Bruce and Love-ins. Even priests are not always reliable. Unlike the saintly Father Merrick, Karras' faith is shaky and he practices that most secular and modern of professions, psychology. Despite his heroism, the flaws doom him in the film's rigid moral universe.

The devout Catholic Blatty coyly hedges his thesis by opening the film at an near eastern archaeological dig where Father Merrick appears to unleash Pazuzu inadvertently, but this red herring is quickly forgotten as the film goes on to demonstrate how the wages of the sins of Chris' self-indulgent generation are paid by the next.

The film's solution to modern depravity and immorality is less ambiguous: established religion alone has the moral force sufficient to purge society of sin. As Pauline Kael pointed out at the time, despite its full-frontal assault of the standards of decency of the day,The Exorcist amounts to a surprisingly reactionary apologia for the Catholic Church at its most arcane and medieval. This irony was lost of most observers. Just as the putative diary of a drug user Go Ask Alice became required reading for high school students, The Exorcist was for a while adopted by many a school district for its cautionary value.

[shipcestuous]

My Thunderman ship is more like a fleet battling on the sea. The twins are at the top obviously!! I never ship f/d but for some odd reason I ship the heck out of Hank & Phoebe. Don't know why. I also ship Max & Barbara. I thought a lot of interesting fanfictions can be written about them. I ship Billy & Nora. Phoebe & Billy. Max & Nora. And I also ship the 4 siblings as swingers. I have a problem. Need to re-valuate my life but I mean a whole incestuous family with a secret?

Anon, you are precious to me. I really like a person who can take a look at a family and say “Everybody with everybody!”

Each of those ships really does make sense in their own way, particularly Max/Barb and Max/Nora, I think. And the sibs swinging - I mean, why not? 

Every once in a while this happens to me when there are four siblings or maybe a cousin or two in the mix. I am very happy with the way I end up pairing them off (and it’s usually whatever makes the most sense, and it’s not like I choose, it chooses me), but there’s a tiny bit of regret about having closed the door on the other possibilities so you just gotta add at the end “…but they swing sometimes”. 

Same person. Loved your whole wedding Thundermans thing btw. I guess you are really creative when you are bored. :) I can totally see Hank telling Phoebe she could do better and Barb going crazy with “My babies”. All the characters are so in character. Job well done. Happy shipping!!!

[x]

Thank you! When I first saw that picture, for some reason that was the first thought that popped into my head. I thought it looks exactly like an engagement announcement. The rest just fell into place.