#every time I see arguments for a mike who likes girls its always because they don't want el to be hurt + like elmike or are bi themselves

[alexthefunniest]

Funniest mileven arguments to why byler won’t be endgame

I’m sorry if there’s any grammar errors or mistakes, I wrote this angrily at 2 am when I couldn’t sleep.

1. “Its the 80’s”- as if there isn’t any movies that have happy queer endings that were made/set in the 80’s, yall are just lazy and don’t want to actually do any research.

2. “It’s a Netflix original”- ok? And? Like we literally get a new mlm/queer show on Netflix every year, byler is a mlm relationship which Netflix has a lot of, young royals, heartstopper??? Are you guys ok?

3. “Cuz it’s too popular” - we already have over two queer confirmed characters in stranger things, the show that’s about fighting forced conformity ?? The show that focuses on nerds, losers and people that don’t ‘fit in’ ? And y’all find it so hard to see ur two main characters being gay? Read the room respectfully.

4. “It’s one sided” - if it was one sided they would make Mike tell Will he doesn’t like him in s3 and give Will a new love interest in s4 (it has been confirmed that there will be no new characters in s5 and that the producers want every character to have their ‘perfect ending’) Will believed he was a mistake and thought he wouldn’t fall in love, because he is queer so he most definitely will have a queer love interest and it will be Mike.

5. “Mike is in love with el”- is he tho? He never actually said he loved her to her face without the world and her life depending on it, he’s been pressured to say it twice and when she told him she loves him back the man didn’t look happy but conflicted.

6. “Mileven endgame” - it’s really not, the amount of symbolism that points to their downfall (such as everyone calling them the ‘star crossed lovers’ which are basically lovers deemed to fail, and more) is HUGE, they have too many familial parallels it’s insane, why parallel the it couple with family themes and relationships? Another problem I have with this it’s the fact that it’s very rare for the first ‘original’ pairings to stay together till the end of the show (like with Bob and Joyce or Steve and Nancy)

7. “Byler wouldn’t make sense to the plot”- watch the show again, just because somethings more subtle, doesn’t mean it’s not there, y’all will always say that about queer relationships but whenever u guys see a straight relationship in these subtle moments you jump into conclusions that they might end up together, it’s called being a hypocrite.

8. “Mike isn’t gay” - it’s what he’s been telling himself too, the guy was obviously made fun of and called slurs like Will, everyone already thought and knew their relationship was ‘special’ and everyone suspected something, that’s why Mikes own dad was surprised and said “our son, with a girl?” Also your so called straight Mike has a room filled with pictures and posters of buff men, he’s never shown any interest in girls or women (except el who’s been said, looked like a boy in s1) not to mention the first song on his official Spotify playlist being “small town boy” (yk the song about a young gay man running away from his homophobic small town??).

9. Mikes love confession- if u call that a love confession I wouldn’t wanna date u brother, he was pushed to say ily by Will, the same Will that was in the frame of Mike lying when he said that his life “started” when he found El in the woods, which was obviously a lie because Mike called El a weapon and said he’ll “send her back to pennhurst or wherever she comes from” after they found her, also if the love confession was honest why would El be still upset with Mike and not talk to him after??

10. “El wasn’t upset at Mike but was sad about Max” - me when I’m in denial, she wasn’t sad about Max until she found the coke bottle underneath her bed, then we get the flashbacks of her and Max having fun in s3, she wasn’t thinking abt Max before that, its called common sense and logical thinking skills.

11. “There would be no time for byler to develop in s5” - it might seem crazy what I’m about to say, they were literally childhood best friends and it’s been confirmed that Will had a crush on Mike since s1, they literally started to build their romantic relationship MORE in s4, with all the ‘[emotional, tender music playing]’ and parallels between byler and jancy, also even if they haven’t started to build their relationship up in a romantic way in s4, y’all remember how in less than a season Jonathan and Nancy slept together or how Max and Lucas got together in a spawn of a season (mind u they met in the same season). Byler knows each other since little kids and always had potential y’all are just in denial.

12. “Why make Mike queer” - why not? Do y’all actually believe that one of the main characters plot line is just about getting with the girl at the end? Even if it was (which lets be so fr now) why would Mike get with El from the first season (they kissed in s1 and basically u can count that as they’re together wtv) if that was his main goal as a character? Well written shows have something called a “character development” which the producers of st love apparently, so why make Mike just a bland character that just gets with the main girl character, and why have El date the first guy she ever met, I just think it would be very shallow.

That’s all, this was written in a silly way cuz it’s basically me talking to myself, it’s okay if u ship mileven I just really don’t like disrespectful fans that yell at bylers and call the ship disgusting, I don’t care about what who ships as long as we all just have fun and not yell at each other 🫶🏻

[trans-wojak]

I swear to fucking god, do people even listen to themselves these days? Another stupid girl posting on Facebook that she’s supposedly “agender” but ain’t ever going to inform her parents about her precious gender identity because they won’t understand. That she will die without them ever knowing.

Do you know how privileged that is? Literally, your parents won’t even give a fuck. Why? Because you aren’t actually going to transition. Do you know what happens to ACTUAL transsexuals? We get kicked out of home, we get abused, our parents disown us. I was NOT put in conversion therapy and pushed back into the closet for fucking 9 years then made homeless just so some stupid girls can think “oh but I don’t feel like a girl, I’m fine with my sex tho” is on the same level as me.

My parents originally fucking were horrible to me, they put me in conversion therapy and you what that lead to? Me having such low self esteem that I believed being abused was normal, so normal that I got into a domestic violent relationship that lasted for 9 years. Conversion therapy actively encourages you to consider suicide as an option if you can’t live as your assigned sex. They break down your spirit, they basically try to convince you that you’re delusional. Leaving him meant I was left with NOTHING but not only that, I had already started testosterone and the changes were beginning to get too obvious for my dad to ignore. He literally made me homeless cause he refused to have me live with him until I could get my own place. Because now I wasn’t just looking like a dyke, I was now showing signs of true transsexuality.

Both my parents are better now, they have a lot of regret about treating me so poorly over my gender dysphoria - but they are not perfect. My mum will still run away and hide from people who knew me prior to my transition if I’m with her because she doesn’t want to defend me if they are nasty when they realise it’s [deadname] as a man now. My dad still uses she/her pronouns for me even though it makes people think he has dementia lol. He constantly thinks I’m going to kill myself because I will eventually regret my transition. He also thinks everyone can always tell that I’m trans even though I’m stealth in real life. He lets it slip that he thinks I will never find a partner, constantly tells my mum that he wishes I “just stayed as a lesbian butch woman**”. My mum thinks [deadname] and Mike are two different people, she thinks she lost a daughter, but gained a son even though I am the same person. She has said before that I killed her first daughter when we have arguments.

I am so sick of this non binary craze bullshit. Y’all don’t understand that transsexuals do not get the same benefits you do, you can hide being “trans.” You can put on your they/them pins at LGBTIBBQ meet ups but take them off to go back to your cis life. I cannot. My life is forever shaped by this bullshit, I am struggling so hard to change my name legally so EVERY TIME I do anything that requires that nonsense - people treat me like fucking shit. Cause they see a bloke in front of them but a legal female name, they know. Nurses are absolute trash to me if I ever go to the hospital because of my legal name. They use he/him until they see the paper work then do a condescending smile and use my deadname, she/her etc. Its rare that I have a decent nurse or doctor who ACTUALLY continues to treat me correctly.

Your non binary identity is based all on fucking sexist gender roles and without those, you wouldn’t have an identity. Mine is based on the fact my brain sex is male but my body was born female and I’m actively changing that to male.

We are not the same.

[ronancebrainrot]

more dumb ronance/stranger things headcanons

- dustin and robin get really close after teaming up to bully steve

- robin loves ducks. like loves them so much to the point where whenever she sees a duck she tells nancy to take a picture of her and said duck

- nancy is a “oh look! cows!” person

- robin drinks boiled water and pretends it’s tea and nancy constantly tells her that they have tea bags

- nancy is skeptical of birds and thinks they aren’t real but robin Loves birds

- robin makes flower crowns for nancy and they always break the second nancy puts them on her head because robin makes them so small

- robin eats kids cereals and stays up till 2am watching cartoons with steve

- have the Longest arguments about the Stupidest stuff because robin loves arguing just for shits and giggles and nancy is just tired

- nancy hates cinnamon

- robin hates neon colors so for her birthday max and steve bought her a neon paint set (nancy had to hide it from robin so she didn’t get angry)

- robin always steps on the back of nancy’s shoes whenever the girl is walking in front of her

- robin loves kicking the back of steve’s knees

- robin tells steve curse words in french to help him flirt with girls and one time a girl who Knew french got mad at him and smushed her ice cream into steve’s shirt

- robin does not know how to use a map

- robin secretly thinks all of her friends are gay and claims that she “was the blueprint”

- sometimes when nancy speaks, robin just copies her for fun and nancy thinks its annoying because robin always makes her voice Insanely high pitched

- nancy calls robin robbie (i saw a post ab this idk whose it is) and robin Despises it

- one of robin’s biggest fears is cracking an egg and a baby chick being there

- nancy loves singing even though she’s terrible at it

- one time robin and nancy had an argument so mike handcuffed them together in a room because he was tired of their bickering (he lost the key so hopper had to come help them)

- steve : nancy’s gonna say no she’s already said no like 4 times

robin : let me ask

robin : nance can we-

nancy : yeah of course !!!

- robin goes to watch lucas’ basketball games with steve after they graduated and keeps asking will what’s happening even though he has no clue

- robin has a Stash of fuzzy socks and nancy always steals them

- nancy never liked hugs until robin and her started dating and now every opportunity she gets, she hugs robin

- whenever someone gets hurt robin always makes ambulance noises as nancy cleans up the person’s wounds

- nancy and robin call will mr bowlcut

- steve and dustin literally Never leave each other alone and robin finds it weirdly cute

- nancy gets bored so easily but never with robin

[cupidsmoonlight]

middle child // steve harrington

(steve harrington x fem!wheeler!reader) 

(billy hargrove x fem!wheeler!reader)

A/N: this starts from season one and progresses on to four. in chronological order! does this make sence? i dont even know. basically its steve and your relationship through the seasons. you get it. i’ll go. 

Summery: nancy’s little sister has been, and always will be in love with steve harrington. 

Word Count: over 1000

Warnings: jealousy, semi-public sex scenes, overall roughness, controlling!steve, etc...

steve harrington. you had been in love with him for as long as you could remember. well... since your sister started dating him during 10th grade. being introduced to steve harrington was like a light finally shinning in your life. he was the first person ever to treat you like you were your own person. being the middle child of the wheeler family, you really were only known as nancy's younger sister or mike’s older sister. steve always called you by your name. no matter who he was talking to. he never made you feel like a failed varient of someone else. steve harrington was a breath of fresh air. 

in some fucked up way, he made you whole. sadly, your sister felt the same way. thats why for years you kept quiet, listening to the golden child of the wheeler family complain about him, fight with him, cry to him. it didn’t stop there, because nancy was only one year older than you, you were a freshman when she was a sophomore. that basically meant that not only did you have to wake up to steve sneaking in the window to “study” with nancy, but you had to see them all throughout the school. 

one thing you love about steve is that he always made sure you felt included. always invited you to the parties, always let you tag along as the third wheel(er)(lol). steve was always good to you. kind to you. made you feel special on your darkest days. until sadly, one day steve stopped coming around. and nancy got more uptight. you loved your sister, you did. but part of you never forgave fate for nancy meeting steve first. when you finally asked your sister what had happened, she just cried into your arms. you held her as she sobbed, and you kept quiet. 

you and steve just kinda...stopped talking after that. your friendship was gone. you never saw him anymore. it was like a wall had been put up. every time you saw him the two of you could even make small talk without a cloud of awkwardness floating over.

frankly, because you two stopped talking, you were quite surprised to see how upset steve got when he saw you and billy kissing in the alleyway behind the gym after the “big game”.in fact, he got really upset. so upset he pulled you off of billy as soon as he saw the “traumatizing” sight. he dragged you by your arm all the way to the empty girls locker room and fucked you over and over again until you both finally got your whits about you, quickly got dressed, and drove to his house. let’s just say you did not make it home that night. 

you two were in love immediately. nancy was fine with it because she didnt love steve. not like you would. not like you always did. the world was finally back on its axis. y/n wheeler and steve harrington were soulmates. everyone knew it. as people came and left her life, and steve graduated and she became a junior, as the school year passed, and you were both still more in love than ever. 

even with steve working at scoops ahoy and you life-guarding at the local pool all day, your relationship thrived. well, it was thriving until billy started working at the pool and steve got jealous. he would come visit you on the weekends with the kids, (mike, dustin, lucas, eleven, and will), and if he saw billy standing too close, a screaming match would begin. although you loved how each argument ended in angry sex, you resented how jealous he got. it kind of hurt your feelings, i mean, he was your first... everything. did he really not trust you at all? when you confronted him about your feelings, he completely understood. he tried to explain how he did trust you, it was billy. billy could be a snake, steve knew that. he just wanted to protect you. 

until he lost you. he was on his way to pick you up after work, as he does most friday’s. he was horrified when he didn’t see you waiting in the usual spot. he immediately parked the car and began to look around, calling your name. he couldn't loose you, not with everything that was about to go down in hawkins. he swore he almost died as he saw you and billy making out in the alleyway between the shed and the fence. 

“y/n?” he called to you, his tone almost at a whisper. you and billy didn’t hear as billy reached his hands under your t-shirt. steve called out to you louder as his face turned to a pained expression and his eyes began to tear, “y/n?” 

you finally took notice of the boy standing on the grass, looking at you like you had killed his puppy. you turned to him, “what?” you truly had just ripped his heard out and took a bite. steve didn’t understand. all he could do was stand there as you looked at him. he could physically feel his heart breaking deep inside of his chest. as his tears poured down like an april rain shower, he spoke up, “n-nothing.” he let out a dry chuckle, turned, and left. 

if only he had known what he knew now. if he had known that you were going to die in the slimy tentacles of the mind-flayer. if he had known that it wasn’t really you making out with billy that night. if he had known that you hadn’t actually been you for a long time, maybe you would be alive right now. maybe you two would be cuddled up watching “top gun” and laughing as you both tried to imitate the stupid volleyball scene. 

he couldn’t even say goodbye. he didn’t even get to hold you in his arms as you passed. he couldn’t tell you he loved you. you couldn’t tell him that you knew, and even though you weren’t yourself, you were always with him one way or another. he couldn’t even see your body. the police didn’t find it. it was like you had upped and disappeared into purgatory. 

if only he knew the truth. if only he knew where your body went. if only he could tell you those three words, eight letters, and three syllables, just one more time. who knows? maybe, one day, he will...

AUTHORS NOTE: omgggg another postttt!!! i came up with this idea at like 5 in the morning and wrote it down in my drafts. i’ve been working on this all day and i hope yall liked it!

*not my gif

[lesbianrobin]

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity. 

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax. 

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind. 

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective. 

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow? 

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally. 

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.” 

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway. 

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season. 

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still. 

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered. 

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

[stateofloveandnegan]

Alcohol - Eddie Vedder

Could you write an Eddie vedder one shot where he and the Reader argue because the reader has drug problems or bad drinking habits or something like that

it has literally been months to a year since i’ve written a one shot or anything of the sort, so pleaase, bare with me! I do hope you’ll enjoy this and don’t hesitate dropping a request if you’d like an idea of yours to be written by me!

Requested by: anon

Trigger warning(s): alcohol addiction, a bit angsty

It isn’t easy, to have a boyfriend who’s a famous singer in a very famous band. It’s very hard, actually. Sure, he cares for you, he loves you. And the rest of the boys and their partners do, too. But sometimes, the burden of the fame takes its toll on you. Hence why you started drinking in the first place.

The alcohol, it just gives you a better feeling. The feeling of not fully being in control anymore; you like it.

It’s only recently that Eddie’s realised what you’ve been doing. That you’ve been drinking the thoughts and weight away. And he doesn’t really approve, at all.

But every time he mentions something of the sort, you manage to sneak out of the conversation and continue your life as if nothing has happened.

   “(Y/N), Eddie’s been looking for you.”

Stone speaks as he finds you in the treehouse. You and Stone built it when you were younger, and Stone knows this is your spot when you want to be alone or have things on your mind.

But, like often these days, he sighs as he sees you. Drunk out of your mind, half asleep on the beanbag you once placed in the house.

With a weak wave of your hand, you brush it off.

   “Let him look, I don’t wanna see him now.”

The main reason you don’t want to see him is, well… jealousy. Eddie’s been getting so much attention from other girls and it sucks. It truly sucks.

Deep down, you know it’s not his fault for looking so damned gorgeous and being such a sweetheart. But he doesn’t really know how to handle the attention, so he often just lets the girls say inappropriate stuff, especially towards you.

They’ve said things about you that you wish you’d never heard. They say such mean things out of jealousy. At least you know better than to drag others down, instead you just sulk on your own, with a bottle of whiskey. Or whatever strong liquor you can find.

   “No, (Y/N/N/). You’re gonna get up and come with me. You can’t keep doing this.”

But really, who is Stone to tell you what you can and can’t do? Okay, so he is your best friend. More your brother than anything, to be honest. But still, it’s your life and you are old enough to decide what you want to do with your own life. Even if it is messing it up with alcohol.

And so, Stone leaves. He knows he shouldn’t cross any lines with you, especially not if you’re drunk.

Days pass and you’ve been avoiding Eddie like the plague. You know he’ll speak up about it once he sees you. And instead of facing that conversation, you feel like avoiding Eddie and drinking more and more is the better choice.

Sometimes, your mind doesn’t work very logically. Even though, in your head, it makes sense to go for this option instead of facing your boyfriend of a year and a half. It’s the idea that it’d most probably turn into an argument that has you drinking even more.

Just to drown all those annoying voices and thoughts in your mind.

You manage to avoid Eddie for an entire week without him finding you. But then, one night, when you’re sitting in the Tree house once again, three bottles of wine, some beers and a bottle of vodka around you, Eddie comes up.

Feeling your heart clench when Eddie’s face comes into your view. Stone must’ve told him about the spot.

It’s funny, isn’t it? That you and Eddie have been together for over a year and this is the first time he ever sees the tree house. You always made sure to keep it a secret, because everyone needs to be alone every now and then, right? You didn’t want anyone but Stone to know about this place. To avoid moments like these…

Where you desperately want to be alone. But there your boyfriend comes up. And as much as you love him and want to kiss and hug him. You just want to be alone, because seeing him makes the jealousy return and you hate the feeling.

   “Stone told me you’d be here.”

He doesn’t sound very pleased. And as you squint your eyes, you can see the look on his face. Which is even more displeased than his voice.

   “Babe, c’mere.”

You mumble. Maybe it’ll help to just act like nothing’s wrong?

   “Missed you, wanna cuddle…”

Holding your arms out and making grabby hands at him as you have a drunk smile on your face, albeit it being fake.

Eddie takes a moment to look around, letting out a very agitated sigh at the mess of empty bottles.

   “Is this your new lifestyle, then? Getting drunk every fucking day and avoiding everything and everyone.”

The tone in his voice stings a bit, it’s harsh. Sighing dramatically as you move to sit up a little, but it doesn’t go without a bit of trouble.

   “Don’t act like you never drink, Ed. You’re not a saint, either.”

Your voice now a lot less friendly. Even though you’re rather (very) drunk, you still know pretty much everything you’re saying and it comes out well. Moving to stand up in front of him.

He isn’t much taller, at all. He’s rather short for a guy. But that’s one of the things you love about him, that he isn’t much taller than you. You love his height, you love him. Everything about him.

The words you said to him make him even more annoyed, hand moving up as his finger points at you.

   “Don’t pull that shit on me. I almost stopped entirely for you, (Y/N). Because you didn’t like me being drunk so often, and look where we’re at right now? The tables have turned. And for what? Tell me, (Y/N), just please tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

His voice isn’t as angry anymore, more a bit pleading now. He really just wants to know what’s wrong so he can help you. So you can work past this. Even if it won’t be easy.

Taking a step closer to you, he reaches out for your hands, but you push his away, not wanting to be held. Even though you desperately want to be held by him. It’s hard, isn’t it? Not knowing exactly what you want. Wanting two exact opposites at the same time.

   “Please talk to me, sweetheart…”

And that’s when you break, the lump that has been in your throat for so long finally too much to handle. Tears form in your eyes and spill without any warning.

   “I can’t do it anymore, Eddie! I just can’t… the fame, it’s too much for me.”

His face goes quite pale at that, that isn’t what he expected. Though he knows you’ve always been one to live a quieter life and be more in the background of things. Not for a second did it ever cross his mind that his job, his life was too much for you.

Soon, he grows rather annoyed again. At the way you’ve been acting and the way you suddenly throw this onto him instead of just talking to him like a girlfriend would do.

   “So instead of telling me, you avoid me for days, a week!, and become a drunk bitch that doesn’t give a shit about anyone anymore?”

Okay, yeah, he crossed a line by saying that. Shaking your head in disbelief, eyes full of tears, your bottom lip quivering. But no words come out. Your throat is too dry to form any.

Eddie realises he went too far with that, and you can see him opening his mouth to say something. But honestly, with the haze that’s your mind right now, the pain in your heart and the heavy weight of his fame, this is the drop.

   “A year and a half, that’s what you just threw down the drain.”

Clumsily grabbing your jacket, you make your way to the exit, but it’s a tree house… and you’re drunk. Getting back on the ground is quite the challenge.

But you manage to do it, without Eddie following you. He knows you, he knows the worst thing to do right now is to follow you. First of all, your emotions are all over the place. Second of all, you’re drunk. You need time to sober up and process it all.

A week passes before you manage to find the courage to face Eddie again, dressed in one of his hoodies as you make your way to the studio you know he’ll be in with the boys.

Breaking up with him was the wrong thing to do, and you’ve signed yourself into rehab to get rid of the addiction. Next week, you’ll leave to go there.

Swallowing thickly, you open the door and make your way inside, soon spotting the band. Most guys smile at you, a bit sympathetically, but Eddie, he doesn’t seem very happy to see you. In fact, there’s barely any emotions on his face, and that’s very unlike Eddie.

Opening the door to the area they’re sitting in, you smile a little before you speak up.

   “Hey, Ed, can I talk to you?”

Voice soft and quite vulnerable.

He doesn’t really react, which stings, but you don’t show it. It’s Mike who eventually gives Eddie a push.

   “Don’t be a child, go talk to her.”

With a roll of his eyes, he gets up and moves passed you into the hallway. At least there’s some privacy.

Nodding at the boys, you send them a bit of a smile before following Eddie and closing the door behind you.

   “I just wanted to say sorry, Ed… I didn’t mean what I said and it was a mistake. I’ve signed myself into rehab, to stop the drinking. And I want to start seeing a therapist about what’s been so hard on me. We can get through this, I promise.”

It’s silent for a moment after you say those words, as if Eddie’s trying to find the right words to say, and maybe he is.

But what he eventually decides to say, breaks your heart into a million pieces.

   “I don’t want to be with you anymore. The breakup wasn’t a mistake.”

Your whole world seems to fall apart at those words, eyes looking at Eddie as if he’s turned into a ghost.

   “B- But… Eddie, c’mon, it was a mistake. I know I’ve been acting like a bitch and I should’ve talked to you about it, I know that. But I’m going to fix this, I am!”

His expression doesn’t change and he merely shakes his head.

   “It’s too late, (Y/N). I realized I’m better off without you.”

Not able to face him any longer, you turn around and make way for the exit, leaving the studio as quickly as you can.

There’s only one place to go to now; the tree house.

Getting into your car, you practically race towards the woods, parking the car at the nearest parking lot before making your way through the trees towards the right one. Climbing up into the house before you let all your walls down. Everything coming out all at once, all the emotions.

You’ve never been so heartbroken before. Feeling like your heart has been stabbed through with a knife.

That night, you fall asleep in the tree house, on the bean bag. Fortunately, you always keep a warm blanket in the tree house in case of emergency. Right now is an emergency.

The next day, you wake up feeling sore and broken. The events of the day before replaying in your head over and over again.

Okay, yeah, most of it is all your fault. You are the one that didn’t cope well with things in the first place. But you’re working on it. Not everyone just signs themselves into rehab. It’s a big step to acknowledge the addiction. And you took that step.

If only you’d known this would happen… then you would’ve done all of this much sooner. Like you should have, anyway.

In the days that follow, you make sure to stay away from any of the boys, not wanting to be confronted by any of the pain. But that’s not a very easy task, since you’re all in the same friend group and such. Their favourite spots are yours, too.

Eventually, much like you tried to avoid, you spot the boys sitting at one of the tables in the bar you always go to.

They don’t spot you yet, so you decide to use that to your advantage, especially when you hear your name being mentioned.

Sitting down at a table nearby, but not close enough for them to notice you, you try to listen to what they’re saying. Mike’s voice comes through first.

   “You do realise we’ll be gone on three weeks, Ed? If there’s any chance left to fix things with (Y/N), you need to do it soon.”

They’ll be gone? Where would they go? Before you can think more, you hear Eddie groan, one of those groans that tell you he’s having a hard time thinking of the right thing to do.

   “It’s better like this, isn’t it? Us going on tour won’t do her any good. I won’t be around and she needs someone that can support her, especially now she’s going to rehab.”

On tour, that’s where they’re going. They’re going on tour- wait, is that the reason why Eddie acted so cold? Why he said he didn’t want to be around you anymore? Because he wanted to protect you from him being away?

Before jumping into conclusions, you decide to wait a bit longer, ears still entirely focused on the boys’ voices.

   “She loves you, Ed, don’t be so fucking dumb. She loves you and she needs you. Of course, it won’t be easy with you two being so far apart, but there’s phones, isn’t there? What if you just call every day? Or as much as you can.”

That was Stone’s voice, oh how you love that boy. Even though he isn’t really a boy anymore. The closest thing to a brother you’ve ever had.

   “You love her, don’t you?”

Dave chimes in. Woah, you didn’t know that guy could still talk. But Eddie’s answer distracts you from the thoughts about Dave.

   “I do, yeah. It felt so fucking awful to push her away like that…”

Possibly the biggest smile ever enters your face and you can barely contain your excitement. Slowly and carefully standing up, you make your way over to the boys’ table, standing right behind Eddie.

   “I suppose we can still work it out.”

Your voice soft and gentle, a small smile on your face as the other boys already look at you, smiling too.

Placing your hands on Eddie’s shoulders, you feel him tense up a little, but then relax. He slowly turns around, those beautiful eyes of his meeting yours.

He swallows, his throat a bit dry from your sudden presence, before he speaks.

   “You mean that?”

Nodding, you give him a genuine look.

   “If you can forgive me for how I’ve acted, I can forgive you for pushing me away. And if I recall it correctly, I just heard you did it only to protect me. Even though you should have given me the chance to make a decision. I understand why you did it.”

He stands up, taking your hands in his own as he looks deeply into your eyes.

   “I love you, (Y/N). but I do think we have to talk about some stuff before we can continue.

   “You’re right. Let’s have a chat.”

[pynkhues]

Why do you think good girls don’t kill off white people ?

Ah! Well! That’s a pretty loaded question, haha.

I think there are quite a few things to unpack within it, particularly around how this show handles race and violence more broadly, and I’m going to do my best to offer an answer to that for you here, but before I do that, I want to start with the fact that I’m not the best person to ask.

Honestly, it’s a conversation I struggle with because while I do read, listen and try to think proactively about media, criticism and the voices of BIPOC writers, audiences and critics, I’m also white and I’m Australian, so presenting myself as anything close to an authority on the subject of race and storytelling in America feels wildly irresponsible at best.

(When I say that too, please don’t get me wrong and think I’m excusing Australian media from similar conversations – Australia has a deeply racist past and present, but the context of that past and present is very different to the experience of BIPOC in America, and to equate the two would be diminishing to the nuance of both conservations).

My point is that if any other bloggers feel comfortable and want to speak to this, or to what I write below, please do! And please tag me so that I can see and reblog, because I know I’m not the best source for this conversation and because I’d love to learn more myself and amplify the voices of people with more informed points of view!

But! You asked me and I don’t want to dodge the question either or thrust responsibility onto others!

So!

I personally think the issues of race on this show vary not just character-to-character, but writer-to-writer, which is indicative of a broader problem with the show I’ll talk about a bit later. Right now, I want to talk about the fact that there have been episodes where I think race has been handled in a way that feels thoughtful and considered. In particular, I’m talking about 2.06 which really paralleled Turner and Stan as Black men working for law enforcement, a conversation that was revisited in 2.09 during the lie detector test when the strength of Stan’s character was contrasted with the self-interest of Turner’s. The latter episode was also bolstered by Ruby and JT’s push-pull which came to a close by spotlighting a class issue often tied to race – under-resourced school districts. These are rounded episodes that touch on the nuance of complicated issues, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both episodes were written by Black writers, Des Moran and Carla Banks-Waddles.

That said, that nuance is too-frequently missing.

I think there are a lot of occasions where the show removes race from character and context in a way that is detrimental to not just those characters, but to the show overall. One of the clearest examples of this is – as @foxmagpie pointed out just the other day – the inauthenticity of the show presenting Ruby’s experience of invisibility as the same as Beth and Annie’s, something that the show does more or less every episode. Her experiences would not be the same as theirs, and to present it as such diminishes her arc, her relationship with Beth and Annie, and the show’s themes overall.

That removal of race from character and context is often a key issue that the show has with how it depicts violence. and I’m going to circle back to this point in a moment, but I just want to clarify something else quickly.

The show has killed off white people.

In fact, prior to 2.13, most of the characters killed were white (Eddie and Jeff), although not all (Ruby’s dad), and all the characters who experiences violence were white – Annie was almost raped, Mary Pat was raped, Dean was shot, Big Mike was shot, Ben’s bully had his finger broken, and Boomer was hit over the head with a bourbon bottle, held hostage in a treehouse, punched, manhandled and hit by a car. Marion was also killed off in 3.08.

I’m bringing this up not to diminish the violence that Ruby, Rio, Turner and Lucy have experienced on this show, but rather to emphasise my point above. The show, I think, wants to treat all of this as the same. It wants Ruby, Rio, Turner and Lucy’s identity and race to be incidental in these moments when it can’t be, because it’s not. Because ignoring the social and cultural history of the violence that these characters experience is not only inauthentic, but a part of a pattern of storytelling that brutalises BIPOC bodies in media.

None of us live in a vacuum, and context matters. Context is important. Context is what all of us live with, and on paper – in a vacuum – a man being shot by an ex-lover after he kidnaps her is very different to the contextualised image of a white woman shooting her Latino ex-lover – a sequence of events that conjures racist stereotypes, tropes and historic cultural violence. Similarly, a woman being murdered after being used by a colleague and then coerced by a gang is different on paper to the image of an Asian woman being used by a white woman and then murdered in a country where anti-Asian violence is at an all time high, and when Asian characters in Western media have historically been treated as disposable.

We don’t live in a world without context, so the stories we consume shouldn’t ignore that context irresponsibly.

I also think there’s something to be said here about the salacious presentation of certain acts and the lingering camera on certain moments. The scene with Rio being shot is graphic in a way no other violence on the show has been, with the closest to it – I would argue – being Boomer’s attempted rape of Annie in 1.01, which is a whole other kettle of fish (I have very mixed feelings about how this show uses and talks about rape, but that feels like a whole other post, haha). Similarly, the camera lingered on Ruby’s shot leg (and the story’s stayed with us longer than Dean’s shot chest), and Turner’s body, while Marion and Eddie were both killed off-screen. At the same time though, there’s an argument to be made that the show’s treated the violence against these character’s a lot more seriously than it’s treated, say, Boomer being carted off in a bag after being raped in prison to presumably be further brutalised in some way, or Dean collapsing at Boland Motors halfway through a Fortnite dance.

My point there is that we shouldn’t ignore that white characters on the show are killed and brutalised too, but we also need to acknowledge that these scenes are entrenched in different contexts, which means that the way that they play out has a really different impact, and the show trying to divorce these acts from race is ignorant and irresponsible.  

In that sense, I don’t think the show’s trying to be harmful or deliberately relying on racist tropes. I think it’s made active efforts to rectify certain problems it’s had historically (half of s3’s episodes were written by Black women, a marked evolution from 0 in s1), but it’s one that, in my opinion, doesn’t treat race as central to its story in the way that it should, particularly as a relatively diverse show that’s concerned with class, family, poverty and crime in America. And that is why I think the depiction of it varies writer-to-writer, and it’s why I think the show overall can be thoughtless with how it depicts scenes of death and violence, and that is a top-down problem that Jenna and the PTB need to address.

After all, death and violence are always going to be a part of a show like this – particularly a show that has such a small, insulated cast (ergo limited characters to depict as both victims and perpetrators of that violence in meaningful ways), but it’s the thoughtlessness for me that steeps the show’s most racist scenes, and in 2021 that’s really not acceptable and the show should be held accountable.

[theyaskedmeto]

what i think each og new direction member's social media presence would be like

basically i’ve been doing nothing all day and i’m way too addicted to social media and i started thinking about this so here we are. also i’m just gonna pretend social media was a big thing when they were at school (it obviously wasn’t but lets pretend this is set in like 2016 or smth)

rachel berry

lets be honest rachel would be so damn annoying on social media (not like that’s a surprise tho she’s annoying anyway)

she’d definitely use instagram the most

she’d post photos of her and finn holding hands and caption it like ‘My world, I love this boy 🔐❤️🌏✨’ and then deletes them all when they break up

EXCESSIVE use of emojis 

posts selfies and quote song lyrics in the caption

posts what she’s listening to on her stories (usually boradway) and feels very entitled because of it

posts singing videos 

santana and brit probably bully her in the comments of her posts lbr

honestly i can’t see her having any other forms of social media tbh, she just always uses instagram

auto caps stay ON at all times bc it’s ‘against the rules of basic grammar’

tries to talk in the nd groupchat but no one likes her or listens. like ‘What song should I do for a solo this week’ and then it starts a massive argument

finn hudson

one of those boys who just takes photos of The Scenery™ and no photos of him

maybe posts some photos of him and rachel when they’re together though

actually he probably does the same thing as rachel like ‘Can’t believe this girl is mine 😍💗’ and commenting ‘Love You ❤️’ on her posts but it just seems v high school

probably not very active but uses instagram the most

does a lot of those ask thingys on instagram like ‘send me an emoji and i’ll say what i think about you’ LMAO

i feel like he’s not very involved with it because he prefers video games more lol

uses ‘😂’ unironically

auto caps on and doesn’t even know having them off is a thing

noah puckerman

USES SNAPCHAT. nothing else. but he does have insta

has sent streaks to everyone he’s friends with on sc and will continue to until he’s like 25 

posts way too many mirror selfies with the flash on without his shirt off (ew) 

literally never talks in the nd groupchat

auto caps on - actually he probably Types Like This All The Time

has A Rule that if he’s talking to a girl he has to not reply for at least 2 hours but if it’s a guy then he has to reply asap (bros before hoes type vibe)

blaine anderson

i really don’t think he’d use it that much??? i feel like he’d get too overwhelmed ahdkjhdjs

WAIT APART FROM TUMBLR

he’s probably very involved with tumblr and is part of the star wars fandom/marvel fandom

his ao3 history is between him and his computer only

ppl wanna be his friend on tumblr because he’s just nice and kind 🥺

he’s probably quite popular on there - has a lot of followers

but he doesn’t really use any others - has an instagram but there’s no posts on there

maybe he tries to spread awareness on his insta stories???

hates snapchat with a passion 

uses :) :( <3 ;_; way too much (he’s on tumblr)

has auto caps off. like he’s a fanboy okay he’s on TUMBLR fgs. 

occasionally talks in the nd groupchat but is normally a bit intimidated by all the arguments it causes 

v open about his sexuality on his insta (has a 🌈in his bio🥺)

brittany pierce

she uses all of the main ones (insta and snapchat)

posts loads of photos of lord tubbington on there and adds loads of gifs on her stories

such!! a wholesome!!! insta page!!!!!

lots of mirror selfies with the flash on

bad spelling 😔

tries to do those story bingo things but gives up when she gets confused

also has another insta account to build her fondue for 2 channel 

auto caps OFF

uses all the pretty emojis way too much like ‘went to the park 🏞 it was so ✨💗 fun!!! 🌸🌈☀️ we had a good time 😍’

is the QUEEN of the nd groupchat along with santana. tbh her and santana would just use it as their place to talk about everything rather than private messages

santanna lopez

her whole instagram is just selfies

uses snapchat quite a lot but when she gets older she stops completely and deletes it ‘snapchat is for straight ppl’

cyberbullies rachel ajhfdsjhd

does ops on her story and is just brutally honest to everyone who asks 

auto caps stay on but sometimes she forces her keyboard to type all lowercase

NEVER uses emojis. not even :( or :) she just never uses them ever

has a tiktok addiction for when she gets sad about britt (especially s2 when britt isn’t with her)

kurt hummel

uses instagram to show off his outfits 

especially when he gets older and lives in ny!! 

there’d be such cute lil videos of him and blaine on his story like taking videos of his ootd and then blaine photobombing and then he zooms in on him and laughs ok i’ve thought about this too much

compliments all his besties on their photos like ‘So gorgeous 😍’

auto caps stay religiously ON but uses a lot of abbreviations like ‘btw and ily’ etc

in the early days of him and blaine being together, he’d be quite private about it but around the time just before he leaves for ny they get more public

only uses emojis for reactionary purposes eg. to compliment friends

posts photos of anything. honestly i want to see his insta it’d be so cute

has a private instagram for his close friends where he shitposts his whole life like ‘Dad’s taking us to get mcdonalds!!!!’ with blaine

sam evans

posts shirtless pics and all the girls thirst over him ajdhksjdk

uses insta more than snapchat but always sends streaks (maybe when he’s younger tho like around season 4 i don’t think he would be anymore)

also v wholesome though??? like i think he’d post pics of what flowers he got his mum for mothers day 

posts pics of mercedes on his story when they’re together 🥺

posts his favourite songs on his story

auto caps ON bc he doesn’t know having them off is a thing lol

uses 😂 unironically

mercedes jones

doesn’t post much on any social media platforms but is always liking everyone elses posts and complimenting her friends

posts more on her story than anything else

when she gets more confident in herself tho, she posts more (especially when she moves to new york)

occasional photos of sam when they’re dating with a lil love heart emoji on her story

lots of emojis but she uses them when necessary

auto caps on!!!

tina cohen-chang

THE SAME AS RACHEL WITH MIKE but like 10 times less annoying and people actually care

literally the cutest couple on instagram with the new directions group

uses the nd groupchat quite regularly bc people actually LISTEN to her there

has a cute lil gc with sam and blaine with some weird ass name

switches to auto caps off after she goes through her goth phase 

uses :) and :( and also a few pretty emojis eg. 💗☀️✨🌟💐🍬 to make her captions looks pretty

v quick replier

quinn fabray

this bitch has too many emotions for social media ok?

just watches tiktok to cheer herself up but it makes her more sad

has an instagram but never posts on there

if you wanna message her just text because she’ll never reply otherwise

disappears off the face of the earth during her skank phase. deletes her instagram and everything

auto caps on but it doesn’t even matter because she never even needs to use her keyboard 

(we’re talking s3 tho. in like s1 she’d have been into it to keep up her persona lol. her insta would’ve defo had over 1k followers)

mike chang

uses insta more than sc and posts photos of him and tina on his story 

fast replier - loyal king

fully ignores the nd groupchat because he avoids drama 😌✨

non caps because it ‘looks friendlier and not like you’re shouting’

will help you with your homework if you have any questions 

like ‘hey have you done this english homework?? i can’t find any good quotes that’ll help with the question’ and he’ll reply fast with a whole list bc he’s an academic KING

would love to post some dancing videos but gets too scared :(

artie abrams

has no social media and is rlly annoying bc its so hard to contact him

auto caps on. i mean like how would u know having them off was a thing if you don’t have any socials

fully punctuates every text

[darlingsdevil]

Of The Valley (Joel x Reader)

Chapter 2: Bullet Memories

Summary: Life in Jackson is never easy. Consoling angsty teenagers, wading through the mysterious waters of Joel’s romance language and with a child of your own on the way? Life is about to get a lot harder.

Chapter summary: A test is administered. Did you fail?

Tag list (please comment to be added or removed): @sidepuff @joelsheartache @fangirl-inthe-us @cowboyfrazer

RDR2 Masterlist

Of The Valley Masterlist

A/N: Hi everyone. I’ve been really happy with how this story is going so far! I hope you will stick around!

Please tell me if you see any ‘Mike’s’ — I keep accidentally writing Mark’s name as Mike lol.

:readmore:

•••

You rode in silence for the rest of the way. That didn’t help with calming you down either. Every inch of you was burning up at the thought of being outside Jackson again. Having to relive that nightmare all over again. At least it was nice out, but the hollowed out homes and burnt cars were anything but soothing.

Joel’s silence was disheartening. You knew he was upset at you. In truth, you hadn’t really talked to anyone you were close with in the past three months. You blissfully shut out everyone you were close to and had meaningless conversations with mere acquaintances at the bar. People came by and checked in on you, but you almost always pretended you weren’t home, or you lied and said Mark was sleeping.

Joel deserved an explanation for your disappearance, you were avoiding him, but you weren’t avoiding him because of something he had done. The explaining section was the hard part, you weren’t sure where to begin or even when you should. Joel would listen. That was given, you just weren’t sure you were ready to open up just yet.

When you finally arrived at the nest after a solemn ride, your breath hitched at the side of your old spot. It had been longer than three months that you had been there. It was your favorite nest to shoot out of. Secluded, hard to get to, views of all roads leading to the small perch.

Joel hopped down from Caesar and hitched him on the tree, you followed suit. You took a small sugar cube out of your old saddle bag and gave it to her. Levia was a spoiled horse.

You walked up the steep hill to where Tommy was waiting, when you finally saw him you smiled. Your worries drifting away momentarily.

“Damn girl, didn’t think you would ever show up,” Tommy joked, holding out his arms for a hug.

“Didn’t think I was going to either. Maria convinced me to,” You laughed, hugging him tightly.

“My wife is a convincing one, that’s for sure,” Tommy chuckled as he began walking over to the nest. Joel leaned against a tree watching you two interact. Tommy nodded to Joel. You pulled the rifle off your shoulder and kneeled down on the wooden hut that was on the side of the hill. Tommy kneeled down next to you. The rifle’s weight was strange and clunky. It used to feel so natural in your hand, but now it felt like you were holding a stick.

“See them over there?” Tommy pointed towards the tree line. You pulled out your binoculars and looked at the group of infected. A couple of runners and two clickers.

“That’s all of them?” You hissed out. Why were there so few?

“So far. Spotted some more earlier, but they disappeared into the forest, we might be able to draw them out from the gunfire.” Tommy eyed you, speaking quietly.

“There’s six infected and it’s a two man job? Come on Tommy, you could have taken these out within ten minutes,” You huffed, pulling your rifle up to your shoulder and looking out the scope.

“I promise there’s more. I saw at least three.”

“Three? There’s only three more?” You stared at Tommy. Things were beginning to make less and less sense..

“There’s more by the north lookout,” Tommy explained. You sighed and picked up a bullet from the box Tommy had brought over. Feeling a bullet in your hand sent your nerves racing. There was suddenly a loud buzzing in your ear, growing increasingly louder and louder.

“You have to stay silent. If they see you, they’ll kill you.”

You blinked and it was gone. Whispers of a memory that would forever be etched into your mind. “Tommy, will you, take the first one?” You looked up at him with wide eyes, your voice vacant. Tommy nodded with an understanding look and took his own rifle and lined up his shot on a runner near the tree line. He pushed out the breath from his lungs and shot. You looked away, wincing, as the bullet hit its mark.

“Your turn,” Tommy said, resting his rifle on the wooden perch.

You gulped and slowly picked up your rifle, hiking it up to your shoulder. You gently picked up a bullet from the box without looking, you loaded it into the chamber. You looked out into scope, staring down at the infected below. It had been a while since you had seen infected. They were almost hard to look at, their bloody torn faces and mechanical moving bodies. It was saddening. They were people once too.

You lined up your shot. You let out all your breath, your finger over the trigger, and pulled it. You felt the recoil before you heard the shot. The burst of noise sounded like a scream. A warning. You weren’t supposed to be out here.

You immediately pushed the gun down, you fell back to the floor, crawling away from the gun. Panic rose in your chest, you tried your hardest to quell it, but nothing worked, fear outweighed everything when there was nothing else there. Tommy rushed to your side, he was concerned.

Your eyes were wide, and terror ripped through you like a wave, pulling you under. Joel noticed too, he came over quickly. Joel or Tommy asked you something, but you could barely hear. It was too loud, the ringing in your ears sounded like a terrible screaming alarm.

“Oh my god,” You choked out, eyes unfocusing. Tears threatening to spill from your eyes in heavy droplets.

“Hey, hey, snap out of it,” Joel gently shook you. You pulled your arm away from him quickly. You glared at him without thinking.

“I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened,” You said, you put your hands on the cool grass in an attempt to ground yourself.

“Well it’s okay, I think we’ll head back to the north lookout for a little while, until you calm down, that okay?” Tommy asked you, looking at you with sympathy.

You still weren’t calm, it felt like a scream was waiting to be pulled out, but if you tried, no sound would come. Instead there was silence. Not a single sound in the world.

“Yeah, yeah,” You replied quickly, springing yourself up from the ground and brushing the dirt off from your pants. Tommy and Joel shared a look. Tommy picked up the guns from behind you, you reached out to take yours but Tommy resisted.

Joel unhitched the horses for you while you waited, holding your arms and taking in deep shuddering breaths. You knew exactly what came over you, it was foolish to agree to this stupid patrol. Tommy could have easily done it himself and you wouldn’t have had to make a mockery of yourself.

Joel led Levia over to you, and helped you up to the saddle. You had something to hold on to now, which was much better than before. Tommy got on his own horse and waited for Joel to hop on Caesar. When everyone was situated, you headed off towards the north lookout.

•••

The ride was silent on the way there, luckily it was only an hour away. Anymore silence would have made your head hurt. You still weren’t entirely calm, you were still outside of Jackson, your job wasn’t done here yet.

When the large building came into view you suddenly remembered all the good times you had there.

You hitched Levia at the front of the lookout and walked in, Joel and Tommy following you.

“You wanna tell us what the hell happened back there?” Joel asked while you walked down, setting your bag down at the table.

“No. I don’t want to talk about it,” You sighed. You weren’t in the mood for another argument. Why did Joel always have to pry?

“Okay well, Joel and I will get out of your hair for awhile, I think Ellie should be nearby, actually, we’ll go get her,” Tommy said from behind you. He hit Joel on the arm for that last comment.

“Ellie’s nearby?” You asked, plopping down on the couch. You noticed her guitar then.

“Yep, she’s been waiting to hang out with you, you know? Been awhile since she’s seen you,” Tommy responded, you could hear him grabbing something from the kitchen.

“She has?” Both you and Joel said at the same time. You glanced over at Joel, your eyebrow raised, he simply shrugged.

“Course she has. You’re like a mother to that girl,” Tommy said, looking through the cabinets. That was true of course, when things got rough in general for her, Ellie was the one she came to talk to. Someone who wasn’t related to Joel — or an in law, someone who wasn’t close with her friends, just an outside force in her life. It was good to have someone like that.

Tommy threw something on the couch next to you, you were startled for a moment. Upon examination, you realized it was a candy bar.

“Found Mark’s stash up here a few weeks back. Hid it for you,” Tommy told you. Joel was silent.

“Thanks.” You opened up the candy bar. It was Mark’s favorite. He always said that a person could be having the worst day of their life, and all they would need was a candy bar to make it good again. You weren’t sure how true it was — but candy did make you happier.

“We’ll be going out now, you best not go anywhere, alright?”

“I won’t be going anywhere, Tommy.”

•••

“Seriously Joel? The hell is going on with you two?”

“Ask her. She’s only avoided me for the past three goddamn months, and suddenly on my first day off in weeks, I have to escort her to a place she knows damn well where it is? Seems pretty damn fishy to me,” Joel scoffed. Caesar galloped besides Tommy’s horse, they were getting closer to the Ottawa Lookout, where Ellie was at.

“You know what today was supposed to be for her, Joel?” Tommy asked Joel.

“No, you really think I’m told much of anything that goes on about her anymore?”

“Today was supposed to be a test. See how well she could do back on patrol, ease her back into this, and Joel, you aren’t making this much easier for her,” Tommy glared at his brother as they traveled across the forest to the lookout.

Joel’s brow furrowed, “A test? The hell for?”

“You really are as dumb as rocks, big brother. It’s not my place to say. Maybe you should confront her about it instead of bickering and causing her to panic. Even a goddamn clicker could see that you were making her uncomfortable.”

“And you think I haven’t tried asking her where she’s been for the past three months?”

“Knowing you Joel, I’m sure you didn’t ask. More like yelled,” Tommy bit back. Joel was more than willing to continue the argument, but the Ottawa lookout came into view. It was a smaller building, that was once a home, on a steep hill that faced Jackson.

Ellie’s horse, Shimmer was waiting outside. Ellie was on the front porch with a journal.

“Hey guys,” Ellie called out.

Joel and Tommy waved to her as they got off their horses.

“Let’s go inside for a bit. Got some things I want to discuss,” Tommy said.

“Sure,” Ellie grabbed her notebook and headed in. She sat down at the table that faced the many windows, Joel and Tommy pulling up a chair to sit with her.

“How’d it go? Didn’t expect you guys to be back so soon.” Ellie rested her hands on her thighs, waiting for an answer.

“Can’t say it went well so far. I think we’ll go back out tomorrow, or maybe later today,” Tommy shrugged. Ellie gave him a knowing look.

“Wait, you’re telling me Ellie’s on this too?” Joel asked, leaning forward onto the table.

“Yeah? I mean, I thought you were too,” Ellie said, raising her eyebrows in confusion.

“Maria decided two people would be enough. She wanted to ease into it, get her around people who don’t piss her off immensely,” Tommy replied, glancing over to Joel.

Joel huffed before replying, “We butt heads sometimes, sure, but I don’t piss her off all that much.”

“All that much? Joel, I saw how uncomfortable she was riding with you.” Tommy shook his head. The sun was high in the sky now, the windows allowing light to come through.

“And Mark couldn’t have come out here instead of me, why?” Joel asked Tommy. He was only becoming more and more confused.

“Mark’s out of commission right now, but it don’t matter. I know you care about her Joel, I know she cares about you too but Maria just wanted to test the waters first. It was supposed to be your day off too, she didn’t want to assign you to a small job like this.”

“Yeah, why are you even here?” Ellie said curiously.

“Maria asked me to escort her. If Maria didn’t want me out here, why’d she ask me to come?”

“Y/N insisted you come. Maria told me that she said that she needed someone she could trust out here. Someone who she could count on,” Tommy said.

“Count on? And she can’t count on you guys?”

“She can’t count on us in the way only you could,” Tommy replied slowly, he leaned back into his chair.

Joel nodded, it was all starting to click in place.

“Still doesn’t make much sense why she doesn’t want to go on patrols anymore.”

“I’m not really sure either,” Ellie chimed in.

“Not mine or Maria’s place to say. If you want to hear why, maybe ask her, but be careful, I hear it’s a delicate subject.”

•••

[soulwillower]

living with bill, richie, and stan

i’m not saying i got inspired while watching new girl but that’s exactly what i’m saying in fact this is almost all directly from new girl

first off, this apartment is a serious fucking nightmare

obviously bc college/early 20′s stan, y/n, bill, and richie.... you guys are crazy 

it’s terrifying

you had to beg stan to live with you guys bc you were afraid you were going to die if left with just richie and bill 

he agreed bc you guys gave him the biggest room

OK so 

richie sings in the shower. 

loudly

stan hates it, especially bc you guys have one of those bathrooms that has a stall and urinals with a curtained off shower

so stan will be organizing his body care stuff 

naturally,,

and richie will be screeching rich girl by hall and oats or some shit

stan’ll get so annoyed he’ll start chucking things into the shower

you prob have to break up an argument between them like once a week, and its idiotic bc stan will be flustered and throwing stuff at richie, who’s all sudsy and can’t see at all w/o his glasses

lmao

bill thinks its so hilarious

so stan’s an early riser

you wake up to breakfast waiting for you almost every morning

richie drinks so much coffee but stan drinks even more than him, bill will only have it if you make it because he likes the way you do the ‘frothy milk’

you’d have family dinners all the time and bring the other losers over to eat with you

eddie, mike, bev, and ben basically live with you guys

 bc you have a loft

it’s a pretty big apartment

stan and bill start a garden on the roof of the building!!!!

i feel like bill gets intense about cooking

you’d think he’d be bad at it 

but that boy goes crazy in the kitchen, and tbh it scares the rest of you

speaking of bill 

bill does innocent and sweet things all the time

like he picks up rubber bands on the sidewalk for you

not the kind for hair, but like literal rubber bands 

omfg ahahaha

“f-for your ponytail”

it’s so sweet but you can’t use those obvs. 

so you’d just throw them out when he’s not looking

oh my god my boy 

you most certainly all have a douchebag jar 

most of the money is from richie, some from bill

richie complains that half of his rent should be taken off every month bc of how much of his income goes into that jar

but you guys always take the money from the jar every few months and have a ‘fancy’ dinner 

IMAGINE THE DRINKING GAMES agh

true american?? yeah

beer pong because bill and you are the perfect team

ride the bus? hell yeah dude!

so many parties, holy shit the four of you throw fuckin bangers

but on your more tame days 

bill is a writer so he’s home a lot

richie works as a bartender and you guys get free drinks

stan goes into the office and you have to teach him how to tie a tie on his first day

omg for the holidays, you guys have friendsgiving

 bill, eddie and mike spend all day in the kitchen 

most of u don’t want to go home for the holidays, so you all stay at the apartment and celebrate all your holidays together, bev ben eddie and mike staying in the living room or in your rooms with you

stan makes you guys matzo ball soup and holy shit that’s why it’s your favorite time of the year 

ugh !!!!! :D

you have some intense board game competitions 

you, ben and stan have wine nights

 you try to do it when bill and richie are gone because they always fuck around

teasing each other about your weird hookups

dude richie will seize any opportunity to pretend he’s your guys’ disgraced lover

like, if stan or bill or you have a person over that you’re trying to get to leave

richie will be all dramatic and hell, maybe he’ll throw in tears and yelling and it’s impressive

 it works every time 

oh my god richie fredo-kissing all of you (like from the godfather yk?)

like stan tells him about his new job or whatever and richie jumps across the table, kissing stan aggressively

and stan screams, he’s so annoyed

“YOU GOTTA STOP FREDO KISSING ME TRASHMOUTH”

you guys have stupid artwork, posters, and photos of the losers when you guys were younger all over the place

richie’s pretty big on pranks, naturally

but stan... oh man

stan either goes way too small or way too big. 

he almost killed bill once when he put peanuts in his salad

knowing that bill’s allergic

but another time he put a capped pen onto one of your pants

... that’s it, that was the prank

he lost his mind laughing and u guys were like... what

u have very little privacy but you love it that way

ok hear me out!!!

 u guys all actually bird watch together 

on your balcony

stan secretly loves it when you guys pile out there early in the morning, with sleepy smiles and coffee in your hands, smothered in blankets

bill sketches the birds you see

richie narrates stupid voices for them

but he does it quietly so only you hear it 

and you think it’s so funny

stan loves it so so much

movie nights where you all fall asleep on your couch piled together

just having a really fun and wild and wholesome living situation

[nametags]

But her emails...

I aim to be a woman of integrity. I’ve sat on the content I’m about to share for almost 6 years in part because it originally was a private conversation between me and a friend. A friend who happens to be a lead singer of a band, but a friend none the less. However the way people have been speaking about him and what’s been going on in the world lately, I couldn’t let this stay hidden anymore.

I’m tired of people claiming that because Patrick no longer uses social media (and hasn’t for damn near five years at this point) that somehow he doesn’t “care” or isn’t doing anything right now to help the Black Lives Matter movement. I’m also incredibly tired of people ignoring/belittling the fact that Pete Wentz is a biracial/black man in America. You really do not want the social media person in charge of Patrick’s account tweeting things out. It would be hollow and fake.

Below is both a transcript of the conversation I had with Patrick on 12/06/2014, a follow up message he sent to me 08/25/2015, and the accompanying screenshots. Unfortunately I do not have the tweet(s) that prompted me to contact him in the first place nor can I find screenshots of them to provide that context. An image of me and my younger brother Jacob when we met the band at Boys of Zummer will also be attached to demonstrate one of the people I was concerned about in my original email. 

The only redactions made were my personal email address and the name of a friend I referenced. Patrick deleted his email account at some point between late 2016 and early 2017. It’s only left in these screenshots as proof for those who knew the address before to see these were legitimate messages. I hope the content reveals not only where his heart lies not only then but where it is now. 

Allison White: So I caught the insanity way late, but it's a tricky spot to be in with what's going on. For most of my life, I didn't even identify with half of my race. I was raised with my mom's side of the family and it just didn't click for me. It really hasn't been until teen years and onward that I've opened my eyes to it all. And with that, I began to grow wary of authority in a way. Like I still believe that people go into law enforcement for the right reasons. The few times I have dealt with police officers personally I haven't been concerned, but I have noticed in the past few years that when I spot a police car on the road or an officer just out in public somewhere is if I look "white enough" or do I actually look like an adult who belongs in whatever space I am in. I know Trayvon Martin was murdered by a vigilante and not an actual officer of the law, but that was when I first started to fear for my little brothers. I knew both of them were the sort of young men that could get targeted and most likely justice would not be found for them. And then there comes this summer. With both the Mike Brown and Eric Garner cases coming back with no indictment, it makes it feel as if it's just open season for black people to be hunted by cops. Which is hurtful for the cops who are actually in it to protect and serve, and every citizen who now has to wonder if they are next. I hope that your cousin is doing alright. I hope that people aren't making his job harder right now. Just I know for me right now with all that's going on I am definitely on the side of the protesters.

Patrick Stump: Brief for now; I'm sorry in all that you didn't notice that I'm squarely on the side of the protestors too. That's a failure of my wording

PS: The problem is that I so poorly expressed myself, people thought I was balancing the empathy to be spread across the black community and cops. That's a mistake on my part. I'm angry.

I'm angry that Mike Brown's case didn't yield enough evidence to indict. But that case was a very complicated one...Brown had just (allegedly) committed a violent crime and information was murky. As sure as I was that Wilson straight up murdered the Brown, I understood the limitations of the american Justice system given how little evidence there was. That's the unfortunate reality of justice is that it needs to be just. It needs to be 100%. We can't go in with "I know in my heart." And so that case pissed me off, but I understood it. 

With Eric Garner however, this just feels so flagrant. By no accounts was he violent, wasn't he doing anything that could even be misconstrued as life-threatening enough to even imagine defending the usage of deadly force. He was cooperating and they choked him to death on camera. That's fucked up. I'm pissed. I tried to be polite and sit back and not say anything, but I'm pissed.

However, my reason for discussing the side of the police as well is that human beings are complicated. When we boil people down to simplistic stereotypes, when we create a narrative of "Us VS them," we lose sight of the humanity of it all. You can't reason with a "Them." You can only reason with a person and it works better when you remember they're people.

I don't believe in enemies. I'm not religious but I love the way Jesus preached "Love thy enemy." That's hugely influential to me. Hugely important. That's the empathy I mean.

The other night I was holding my son and I thought to myself about a black girl I used to date. And how, we could have had a kid together. Maybe a little boy. And how, that boy could (by no action of his own) be killed just for the color of his skin. Like, I've heard and read words like that before, but to actually connect with it (on as small a scale as that) was horrifying. Gutting. For a little moment I thought, all this joy and all this beauty and somewhere, someone's having a black baby boy, loving him and feeling all the same things I feel for my son. But I wondered if in between their tired diaper changes and their burpings, if they were saying a silent prayer "I hope you don't get killed by a cop." If they say it constantly because they know how possible it is. Or even if he lives to be a 100, what black man won't have an unjust run in with the law? Not to make it exclusively a male issue but seriously, how many black men are in prison right now in America? That's a disgusting thing. The young parent of a young black boy probably considers that and that's maybe the most depressing thing I've ever tried to understood. That's a horrifying thing. There really still is a racial divide in this country, and to not be black is to not say those little prayers. We live in a supposedly free country. What about the pursuit of happiness? Who's defending the right of that little black baby boy born somewhere in America to just be an adorable little baby without any pretense? And when that baby grows up, who's defending his right to walk down a residential sidewalk and not expect to get pulled over and frisked? Maybe worse? 

So I'm angry. Just plain angry. But I didn't want to offend anyone so I expressed my anger in the lightest way I could think of. 

I'm not sorry for having an opinion, I'm sorry I explained it so poorly that you didn't know what it was.

AW: All of this is hard, and there is so much anger. You shouldn't ever be sorry for your opinions, and I am pretty sure you yourself have told people only be sorry for how you express your opinions. I wasn't upset with you or what you said, I just felt compelled to share that for me there's a knee jerk reaction to the image/idea of police and why.  This whole situation has been tough and it's been inspiring watching people across this country let their anger show and demonstrate in the streets against it. It makes me wish I was brave enough to take part in it out in the streets and not just online. 

I hope this collective anger and protest leads to real change. That in 2014 we are able to do the things they were aiming for in 1964. I mean recently the full letter the FBI sent to MLK to urge him into suicide was released and it just highlights the divide between how much has and has not changed. There's a lot of value in what religion is supposed to teach. Love thy enemy, love thy neighbor. True love and care for those around you is a great thing and certainly something I'd hope people identified with. 

The past nearly seven years there has been this push for hope and change. Maybe the country is finally reaching a point to make it happen?

PS: I have a funny feeling this is civil rights part 2. I'm proud of the protests. I'm so grateful our generation is angry about something it should be angry about for a change.

AW: An argument can be made that our generation (or just post baby boomer generations in general) have been taught and fed nonsense to keep us compliant, but that veers into a territory that I am not completely sure or comfortable with. Overall I do think that this is heading a direction that the powers that be are not ready for in the slightest.

PS: Where did I go wrong? What do people think I said? They're so mad at me, and none of the people have said anything I didn't mean. I'm not getting angry right-wing stuff, people are just calling me a racist. What did I say that was racist? What do I think that's racist?

AW: There's a strong immediate reaction right now of if you sound slightly in favor of the officers that did wrong that you are racist. The swift reaction and need to dogpile on is kind of crazy. I think people took the initial comment to mean "not all cops!!!!" In the same vein as "not all men!!!" and that's where the rage is coming from. 

AW: Just to be clear, those who matter know you're not racist. You have shown both in your words and actions where your beliefs lie. I don't know how to calm the masses right now because at least for the time being its not going to get through :(

AW: You could try a blog entry on tumblr?

PS: Nah, I think I've done enough damage for one lifetime. I think I'll keep it to myself but I appreciate your talking it through with me. 

AW: No problem. I am always willing to be a sounding board for that stuff if you need it.

PS: I re-read my stuff; "I support our police," is the worst things said. I meant "I support the idea of police and the need for a police force we can trust on a national level," not "I support the police in NYC who are killing people and attacking protestors." That sucks.

AW: If you wanna try to clarify now you can. At least in your Google alert it only had one mention of he mess and it was a tumblr user supporting/defending you. 

PS: There's no fixing it. The Internet is unforgiving I think and the reality is, I said that. I didn't mean it in the way that it so obviously sounds, but I said that. So I deserve everything I get.

AW: It will most likely go easier if you let it ride out instead of trying to go out and fight it. That just gives the "he doth protest too much" air about it. Hopefully the energy behind letting you know you said something like that will dissipate sooner rather than later. And that it won't get big enough for someone to write a story about it. 

PS: Yeah. It'll sound like back-pedaling and glad-handing. Anyway, thanks for talking it through! 

AW: You're very welcome! Thank you for hearing out my side of it this morning.

PS:  I never would've ignored your side.

AW: Which is very much appreciated

AW: I say that because in the past two weeks I have lost a handful of friends because of all of what's going on and them being unable to understand how and why their words hurt me.

PS: Well that's awful and unfair

AW: It was but they were all from the "when I look at you I don't see black, I just see Ally" camp and then would go on to say things about stereotypes and "thugs"

PS: Yeah. Thug. "Oh that's so ghetto." Bullshit.

AW: When someone says "thug" it's always clear they wanna say the n word

PS: Or even if they're the kind of "Well meaning," person who knows enough not to say that word, they mean the same thing

PS: "Not like you. You're good"

PS: White America just needs to know what it doesn't know

PS: Or rather, understand that there are things they (we) will never understand. Not from a first person perspective.

AW: It always makes me want to scream. The erasure of identity so then the people known to them stay safe. It reminds me of something I witnessed the other day. My friend [REDACTED] from junior high is now an established lawyer. Needless to say he has been keeping up very much with the recent events. He made a post about it and one of his friends commented with "I wish you would go back to being my friend [REDACTED] and not my black friend [REDACTED]." Mind you there's no denying [REDACTED] is a black man. He can't pass in the slightest so the comment shocked and saddened me. Thankfully [REDACTED] handled it with poise and grace. 

PS: If you have to say you have a "black friend," then you probably don't. That's fucked. I guess I just genuinely didn't imagine how pervasive this stuff really is. Like, Pete and Joe and I have been talking a lot today. I was under the misapprehension that we grew up in a decently inclusive area. Just come to find out, nobody used those words around me. The whole time they were heckling kids like Joe and Pete. I thought racism was this thing that doesn't happen here. It's scary how much it's come out post Obama's election. Elected officials sending out mass e-mails of pictures of watermelons. I just didn't get it. Ignorance is bliss.

AW: It knows how to hide in plain sight, which is a lot of the problem. People are taught "don't be racist!!!!" Without being told exactly what racism is. People (myself included at times) aren't aware of words/phrases/ideas have nefarious ties until too late. 

PS: I think we get too caught up on words and not enough on what they imply. "Thug," means a prepackaged idea of a black male. It instantly limits his perceived intelligence, his perceived trustworthiness, his perceived value to society, and his perceived prospects in life. That's so fucked. We expect black men to go to prison. Not be doctors and lawyers. When a black man is a doctor or lawyer, we treat him like such a cool novelty. When a black woman asserts herself, she's so "Sassy." "You go girl." 

These little words and phrases feel harmless. They never were

AW: Those are the positives. Usually assertive black women are angry, mean. It's so fucked all around. 

AW: I really owe Pete for helping me be informed on Ferguson. He tweeted the hashtag the night the protests started in August and it helped me dive in. I am sure tumblr would have got me to it eventually, but seeing it from day one was a definite help. 

PS: You know part of my problem? I'm just not brave enough to say what I think. I'm just scared of offending people. Pete's not. He doesn't care. That's powerful

AW: It takes a lot to just put it out there. I am not sure if I had the amount of eyes on me that you do that I would be so "fuck you I will do/say what I want" as I am. Hell I become such a shadow of myself when at work with how quiet and polite I am. I mean I am still pierced and tatted with short hair so visually I say a lot, but then I watch my speech to make us for it. 

(Follow up on 8/25/2015)

Patrick Stump: That is amazing and I'm very flattered. By the way; Been thinking about our conversation from a year ago a lot. The takeaway is this: Saying "All lives matter," and "Not all cops," while literally true are contextually horrendous. Really awful. In retrospect I feel pretty awful about saying both. Specifically because "All lives matter," can carry a lot of implications. Who's lives? I meant by it that Latinos and Muslims are also unreasonably targeted/mistreated/murdered by cops. But is it as systematic or blatant as it is with darker skinned Americans? Not remotely. Furthermore, as a white man, I just need to remember how fucking easy I have it. It's easy for me to preach peace and unflinching patience when I've NEVER been a victim of the War On Drugs or the aftermath of straight up slavery. So there's a lot to think about in terms of what I, a white guy, have to say and do about the situation. But not a lot I have to say about the way it feels to be oppressed to the point of feeling like less than a citizen of this country. I shouldn't have spoken about it because I don't/can't know. Well-meaning white folks get to talk about policy changes and do everything we can to help, otherwise we should get the fuck out of the way. I'm sorry, really REALLY sorry to the world that I ever said either of those things. It's more than "Fuck the police." It's "Fuck this whole system." And as aware as I'd been, I hadn't realized how complacent in it I was. Anyway, disgusted I said what I said. Sorry to the whole world for being part of the problem

[fruitpunchninja101]

Slow Dancing In The Dark

Characters: Hanji Zoe x Levi Ackerman

Genre: Romance/Fluff

Rating: T

Here’s part 1 of my gift for  LeviHan Eggscghange 2020 :) I hope my dear giftee enjoys this.Part 2 will be out in a couple of days!

You can also read this on AO3

 @levihanweek

Working for Sina Industries has always been a life long dream for Hange.As a wide eyed child,she would always watch live broadcasts of their space launches and tell herself one day shes gonna be there.Standing in mission control smiling as she watched one of her creations get sent to a different planet.Armed with a degree & a determined heart,she applied as an engineer.You could imagine her disappointment when she was crammed into an 8x12 cubicle in the basement to design and develop circuitry which their boss greedily takes credit for all the damned time.She's pretty good at keeping a front that shes a pretty chill with all her bosses bullshit but she finally lost it when he started harassing a temp.Hange bravely spoke out and got into a heated argument with her boss.She got supended for a week after that.

It took almost six months before she was promoted to another 8x12 cubicle.Only this time,shes moving up on the infamous 17th floor.The place where they flung all the adept yet problematic employees.Its pretty much the same,shitty boss,intricate work but now on a higher pay grade and a lot more hearsay about her reputation.Its not so bad though,despite the lack of recognition and grueling work hours she met a handful of wonderful coworkers who shared the same pain.

Mike and Nanaba were sort of the required stable couple of the group.She met them a month after the big promotion when she caught them making out in the copy room.She's probably standing there for an entire minute awkwardly making fake cough noises to alert them of her presence.Enter Erwin Smith,he casually strode up by the couple and grabbed the box of printer ink Hange desperately needed.He's like freaking Captian America & Superman combined except he has a mind of a slytherin.Not that it was a bad thing.

And then there's Levi,The crabbiest member of their little group,Mr.I-look-very-angry-and-irritated-all-the-time-but-inside-lies-a-total-softy.He’s a clean freak who befittingly,is a sanitary engineer.Rumors say that Levi had tendencies with violence and had to be sent at 17th floor for precaution.There used to be a time when they didn't get along.She'd been very welcoming towards him but hes always been aloof and cold.She didn't mind it at first,but after a while it kinda got into her nerves.Til that christmas party back in 2017,where she had a few drinks and sort of confessed that she liked him and it really bummed her out that he didn't feel the same way.For the first time,she saw something other than disinterest and irritation on his face...she saw confusion.He asked her what shes on about,then reminded her that he just made her chocolates for valentines day when she won't shut up about craving something sweet.He doesn't do that kind of shit just for anyone and after that,hange was pretty sure they've become best friends.

Their friendship was forged in companionship in misery but as time passed they became her second family.

One of the things that Hange looked forward to is hanging out with them every Friday night at a dive bar a few blocks away from their office where they get shit faced and let off some steam from their work.Hange was preoccupied with the jukebox when Mike arrived with his arm slung over Levi dragging the smaller man into her space.”You'll never guess what happened.”The man announced and before she could answer the man screamed."Someone got asked for a date!"

"Ohoho!Whos the lucky girl?"Nanaba came out of nowhere carrying two mai tais and handed one to Hange before heading over at Mike's side.

"Petra Ral."Erwin chimed cooly while sipping a glass of scotch.His blond hair still laid perfectly even after a long tiring day at work.

"From PR?Holy shit!Good job!"Hange said slapping Levi’s shoulder hurting her hand in the process.The man didn’t even falter from where he stood,all he did was stare straight at her before scowling."It's not a big deal.”He said settling his gaze on his side.

Hange smiled.

He’s shy.Levi Ackerman is actually being shy about getting asked out by an adorable strawberry blonde colleague.Isn’t that precious?She’d never seen him like that before.Heaven knows how much she wanted to tease him about his situation but she can clearly tell by the way he clenched his jaw and the deep creases on the space between his brows that if she says anything,he'd run straight to the wall to escape,cartoon style.

Mike started telling the story and Levi sneakily started edging towards the exit.Before the questions came flooding in,Levi was already gone.

“I think I should follow him.“Hange announced.

"Try to convince him to go out with Ral!"Mike shouted which prompted Erwin to take his drink away from him."I think you had enough."

"Goodluck!"Nanaba raised her drink at her.Before helping Erwin keep Mike's drink away from him.

#

Hange found Levi brooding on the sidewalk while smoking.”Can I get a light?”She asked.

“Its cold.”He said,which also translates to she should go back inside or she’ll catch a cold.Levi’s nice like that,it took everything in her to hold back and not make a snide comment.He alwas hated it when he gets called out for being considerate.

“So Petra Ral huh?”She started.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“We don’t have to,If you don’t want to.”Hange calmly took a box of cigarettes from her pocket and stood a bit closer to him.

“Good.”He said before tossing her his lighter.

Hange bit her lower lip to stifle a smile and Levi was already armed with his grumpy face.He's getting a little agitated.She let the silence drag on for a while as she started to giddily shift from where she stood.Unable to contain her curiosity.

“But its Petra Ral...The Petra Ral!Our company sweetheart.”She exploded.

“I barely know her.”

"Isn’t that what dating is for?!Besides,She probably just needs to get dicked down."Hange said casually."Go for it!Have a little fun.What’s there to lose?"

"Yeah well...I don't think I could."Levi started bouncing his leg.Is he nervous?Agitated?Both?It seemed like he's trying to say something.

“Levi,you know we wont judge you if you’re gay right?You don’t have to hide it from us.”

“Why would I be hiding that if I was?”

“Then what are you nervous for?"

“I’m not nervous...I.."Levi paused as if he's considering if he should tell her."I haven’t...I...”

“You're acting like you've never been out on a date."she said.

Levi visibly stiffened and averted her curious eyes.From where she sat,she could see how levi clenched his jaw and feel him hold his breath.No?It cant be...

"Oh.Its been a while for you huh?like 6 months?"She tried to take a wild stab but was met with silence.Hange sobered."You’ve never been on a date before?"she repeated a little louder than she meant to and not soon after she found Levi's hand over her mouth.

“You wanna scream that a little louder?“

“EVER?!”She peeled his hand off her face and asked.

“Tch.I dont need this.“Levi rolled his eyes and started leaving but hange caught his arm.

"Hey!I'm sorry.I didn't know.Its nothing to be embarrassed about.Its just,its a little uncommon you know.I'm really sorry.I didn't mean to be a dick.”

She assumed that its not because of the lack of people who wanna date with him.Believe it or not,this whole quiet mysterious guy persona is a total chick magnet.She even had several people from the office ask about him every once in a while.So what happened?Is it trauma?Is he aromantic?Holy shit!How could she be so insensitive?

“Stop looking at me like that.”He frowned.Snapping her out of her thoughts.

“Sorry,I was just thinking...”

“Don’t think of anything.Just mind your own business and let me be.”

“What kind of friend would I be if I let you be?”

“A good one.And stop drawing conclusions!I can practically see the thoughts up your head.I'm not anything I just...dont know how.”

“why are you so intent on giving up?!I thought you like her!”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Oh please Ackerman!How can you not?She's the perfect mix of adorable,kind,fiesty and beautiful...she’s perfect for you!”

"What do you want me to do?"he asked,in his how can I make you shut up tone.

"What if I help you?You could...I dont know...practice with me?I could help you with the whole dating thing!"Levi looked at her as if she grew another head.Honestly shes just happy he didn't look disgusted with her proposal.He gave her a once over before pinching the bridge of his nose.She knows this maneuver.Its the what-have-i-gotten-my-self-into or holy-shit-am-I-actually-considering-this move.“Are you sure about this?”He asked.

Hange made a gesture of crossing over her heart and raising her right hand up and levi scrunched his brows together.

“Quit downplaying this.I’m serious.”

“I wont offer it if my not 100% I’m serious. The last guy I went out with was a total disappointment and Petra deserves better than that.You know she helped me last Christmas...”

“Yeah,yeah she helped you change your tire."He supplied,refraning hange from tellong the story again.

“And in exchange I'm gonna help you be more fun and well rounded for your date!It's the circle of life!”Hange enthusiastically smiled.

“Alright.How do we start?”Levi asked.

"Ask Petra to reschedule your date for next week,Then we can take the whole week to practice."

#

The harsh sun bore down on Levi as if reminding him never to indulge Hange with her antics again.Aparrently,she found Petra's online journal and identified that she had two dream dates.One is a carnival date (which explains why he is standing in line for cotton candy out in the middle of the goddamn afternoon.) and the other was spending an evening at a local jazz bar in the city.

Levi doesn't know how she successfully lured him out.You see,he liked his comfort zone and for some unknown reason Hange always challenged him to take a step out of the little box he created around him.And although there are times when she proved that taking a risk was worth it,Levi never really appreciated getting stuck in very shitty situations like now.He doesn't know how she seemed fine with all these shitty conditions.Maybe because she's been busy talking about her new droid remodel.

"Hey Levi are you listening to me?"

"Yes."He said exasperated.

"What was I saying then?"She folded her arms and raised her brows,challenging him.

"You're planning to replace fiberglass with aerogel as insulator on your next shitty droid."He said which earned a bright smile from her.Tch!He rolled his eyes at that and stepped forward after the couple infront of them was served with an unreasonable amount of cotton candy.

"I'll get the giant sunshine surprise."Hange said and the vendor then started shaping the cotton candy into a big daisy.Hange looks absolutely delighted.

"That will be 50 dollars."The vendor said offering his open palm to him which prompted him to turn towards Hange."Oh!let me get my wallet!"Hange started going though her bag and for some reason he felt chills run through him.WheN he raised his head,he noticed that people around them started glaring at him.Oh great he forgot!He's in a fake date.He assumed people still think he's obligated to pay.Tch.So fucking primitive.Although he's never the guy who gave much fuck about what others think,he didnt want people to think Hanges being mistreated.Begrudgingly,he paid for the goddamn cotton candy.Hange took that opportunity to talk about how expenses should be handled during dates,she personally likes going dutch but immediately started going on about some studies that says women generally like it when the males carries out the expenses.

Hange's like a battery that never runs out of energy.She wanted to ride every possible attraction from the carnival!Beads of sweat are starting to form on her forehead but she never seem to notice,he started leading her to a park bench to rest for a bit.He appreciated how much she prepared.She was very keen on citing the psychology articles and some magazines she read to help him be better at dating.He doesn't even know why would anyone even exert that much effort for him.

She really is something.

He pulled out his handkerchief out of his pocket and started gently dabbing it on her forehead.

She smiled.

#

Hange didn't really need to teach him much.Despite the seemingly abrasive qualities Levi possess,the man is a very courteous guy.He said thank you,please and treated the park employees with respect.Shes pretty sure he wouldnt have much trouble impressing a girl."You never told me why you've never been out on a date."She started.

"I was never asked."Levi shrugged as if telling her its no big deal.Hange was shocked at his honesty but appreciated his straight answer.

"Based on my observations today I'd say all those girls that didnt ask you out missed out on a good time."

"Tch!Quit bullshitting me."

"It's true!You diligently listened to my stories, joined me riding all the  and most importantly,you bought me an unreasonably overprized cotton candy."

Levi let out a soft chuckle at that and Hange immediately panicked.This is the first time she ever made him chuckle and goddamn it was glorious.It's like his features lit up and made him look years younger.She had to bit her lower lip to sort of calm her wild heartbeat.They stayed seated on the bench for a while when Levi surprisingly asked her to walk around some more.As they started to amble along the park,an idea popped on her head.

#

Her hands gently crept on his wrist and made way to cup his hand "what the..."He glared at their joined hands,but didn't find the need to pull away."You're sticky."He remarked

"Does sticky hands really matter if youre holding hands with your crush?"She asked.He kept his eyes on her and he saw blush creep up to her face."I-I mean not me...I meant Petra...which is basically me because im her placeholder at the moment and..."

"Hange."

"Hm?"

"Shut up."He slipped his Fingers against the gaps of hers and continued wandering around the park.

[iridescentides]

hi again dia! happy first day of december ❤️💚 i wanted to ask you what, in your opinion, are the 5 most underrated dcoms? i remember you saying before that you've watched all of them so i'd love to hear your opinions 😊 - 🎅🎁🎄

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH secret santa you are so good! asking me all the best questions 💜

okay so i literally had to make a list of all the dcoms i consider underrated and then narrow down a top 5. theres lots of dcoms that i love, but that i think got the right amount of attention and care (like lemonade mouth and the teen beach movies, for example), so this list just focuses on ones that deserved more hype for their quality level.

5. The Cheetah Girls: One World (2008)

okay so even as i type this i feel like a hypocrite. i have only watched this movie one time. BUT i can acknowledge that its one of the most criminally underrated dcoms ever, tons of people didnt watch it simply because raven wasnt in it. thats why i avoided it as a child, and i didnt get around to watching it until i did my big dcom binge in 2016. and it was so good. theres a really long post floating somewhere around tumblr full of specifics on why its actually the best cheetah girls movie (my favorite is the second one purely out of nostalgia), so to paraphrase some points from that post:

its a solid example of cultural appreciation, rather than appropriation, as the girls go and learn about bollywood and indian culture together

the indian characters arent treated like props or unimportant sides, they get their own agency and storylines that are important

the songs are good!!!

basically this movie was overlooked and slept on even though in terms of role modeling and social value, and just like the first two cheetah girls movies it was important and impactful.

4. Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure (2011)

okay so as someone whos very neutral and occasionally negative-leaning towards the hsm franchise (mostly bc its overhyped and not really representative of all dcoms), i was pleasantly surprised by sharpays fabulous adventure. this is another one that i know lots of people skipped right over and dont hold with as much esteem as the main hsm franchise, and that doesnt sit right with me.

i do not agree with the “uwu sharpay was the real victim in hsm” arguments bc in their efforts to look galaxy brained the people who say that overlook the fact that she was a rich white woman who used her power and status to exercise control over opportunities that should have been fairly and freely available for all; they were not “making a mockery of her theater” in the first movie, they were literally just kids who wanted to try out a new school activity that everyone was supposed to be allowed to participate in; and despite allegedly learning her lesson and singing we’re all in this together with everyone at the end of the first movie, she literally showed no growth in the second movie as she fostered an openly hostile environment and favored troy so heavily that it literally cost him his friends, all as part of yet another jealous plan to take things away from people who already have less than her. she was NOT the victim in the main franchise, and she did not seem to exhibit any growth or introspection either.

and that!!! is why sharpays fabulous adventure was so important. in focusing on sharpay as the main character, they finally had to make her likeable. they did this by showing actual real growth and putting her outside of her sphere of influence and control. we saw true vulnerability from her, instead of the basic ass “mean girl is sad bc shes actually just super insecure” trope (cough cough radio rebel), and this opened us up to finally learn about and care about her character. throughout the movie we see her learn, from her love interests example, how to care for others and be considerate. she faces actual adversity and works through it, asking herself what she truly wants and what shes capable of. and in the end, when she finally has her big moment, we’re happy for her bc she worked hard to get there. she becomes a star through her own merit and determination, rather than through money and connections. this movie is not perfect by any means, but it is severely underrated for the amount of substance it adds to sharpays character.

3. The Swap (2016)

okay i know im gonna get shit for this but thats why its on this list!!! just like sharpays fabulous adventure, its not perfect and definitely misses the mark sometimes, but it deserves more attention and love for all the things it did get right!

the swap follows two kids who accidentally switch bodies because of their emotional attachment to their dead/absent parents’ phones. and while i normally HATE the tv/movie trope of a dead parent being the only thing that builds quick sympathy for a young character, they definitely expanded well enough to where we could root for these kids even without the tragedy aspect. we see them go through their daily struggles and get a feel for their motivations as characters pretty well. as a body switching movie, we expect it to be all goofy and wacky and lighthearted, but it moves beyond that in unexpected ways.

the reason the swap is on this list is for its surprisingly thoughtful commentary on gender roles. its by no means a feminist masterpiece, and its not going to radicalize kids who watch it, but it conveys a subtle, heartfelt message that deserves more appreciation. the characters struggle with the concept of gender in a very accurate way for their age, making off-base comments and feeling trapped by the weight of expectations they cant quite put their finger on. we watch them feel both at odds with and relieved by the gender roles they are expected and allowed to perform in each others bodies, and one of the most interesting parts of the movie to me is their interactions with the other kids around them. as a result of their feeling out of place in each others environments, the kids inadvertently change each others friendships for the better by introducing new communication styles and brave authenticity. 

the value of this movie is the subtle, but genuine way it shows the characters growing through being given the space to act in conflicting ways to their expected norms. ellie realizes that relationships dont have to be complex, confusing, and painful, and that its okay to not live up to appearances and images. jack learns that emotional expression is good, healthy, and especially essential to the grieving process. one of the most powerful scenes in the movie comes at the end where, after ellie confronts jacks dad in his body, jack returns as himself to a very heartfelt apology from his father for being too hard on him; the explicit message (”boys can cry”) is paired with an open expression of love and appreciation for his kids that he didnt feel comfortable displaying until his son set an example through honest communication. this is such an empowering scene and overall an empowering movie for kids who may feel stuck in their expected roles, as it sets a positive example for having the courage to break the restrictive societal mold. for its overall message of the importance of introspection and emotional intelligence, the swap is extremely underrated.

2. Freaky Friday (2018)

this is my favorite dcom, and probably my favorite movie at this point. ive always assigned a lot of personal value to this movie (and i love every freaky friday in general), for the message of selfless familial love and understanding. i know i can get carried away talking about this topic; i got an anon ask MONTHS ago asking me about the freaky friday movies and i wrote a super super long detailed response that i never posted bc i didnt quite finish talking about the 2018 movie. and thats bc on a personal level, i cant adequately convey all the love i have for this movie. so i will try to keep this short.

first lets state the obvious: the reason people dont like this movie is bc its not the lindsay lohan version. and i get that, to an extent, bc i also love the 2003 version and its one of my ultimate comfort movies, and grew up watching it and ive seen it a billion times. i even watched it a couple days ago. but the nostalgia goggles that people have on from the early 2000s severely clouds their judgement of the wonderful 2018 remake.

yes, the 2018 version is dorky, overly simplistic plot wise, a bit stiff at times, and super cheesy like any dcom. the writing isnt 100% all the time. the narrative takes a couple confusing turns. the song biology probably shouldnt have been included. i understand this. but at the heart of it all, this movies value is love. and its edge over all the other freaky friday movies is the songs.

on a personal level, the movie speaks heavily to me. i cried very early into my first viewing of the movie bc i got to see dara renee, a dark-skinned, non-skinny actress, playing the mean popular girl on disney channel. that has never happened before. growing up, i saw the sharpays and all the other super thin white women get to be the “popular” girls on tv, and ultimately they were taken down in the end for being mean, but that doesnt change the fact that they were given power and status in the first place for being conventionally beautiful. so, watching dara renee strut around confidently and sing about being the queen bee at this high school got to me immediately. and in general, the supporting cast members of color really mean a lot to me in this movie. we get to see adam, an asian male love interest for the main character. we have a second interracial relationship in the movie with katherines marriage to mike. ellies best friend karl is hispanic. and we see these characters have depth and plot significance, we see them show love, care, and passion for the things they value. the brown faces in this movie are comforting to me personally. additionally, the loving, blended family dynamic is important to me as someone in a close-knit, affectionate step-family.

but on a more general level, this movie is underrated for its skillful musical storytelling and the way it conveys all kinds of love and appreciation. in true freaky friday fashion, we watch ellie and katherine stumble and misstep in their attempts to act like each other. its goofy and fun. but through it all, the music always captures the characters’ intimate thoughts and feelings. the opening song gives us a meaningful view into ellie and katherines relationship and the fundamental misunderstandings that play a role in straining their connection. ellie sings about how she thinks her mom wants her to be perfect, and her katherine sings about all the wonderful traits she sees in her daughter and how she wants her to be more open and self assured. this is meaningful bc even as theyre mad at each other, the love comes through. the songs continue to bring on the emotional weight of the story, as ellie sings to her little brother about her feelings of hurt and abandonment in her fathers absence. the song “go” and its accompanying hunt scene always make me cry bc of the childlike wonder and sense of adventure that it brings. for the kids, its a coming of age, introspective song. for katherine who gets to participate in ellies body, its a reminder of youth and the rich, full life her daughter has ahead of her. she is overcome with excitement, both from getting to be a teenager again for a day, and from the realization that her daughter has a support network and passions that are all her own. today and ev’ry day, the second to last song, is the culmination of the lessons learned throughout the movie, a mother and daughters tearful commitment to each other to love, protect, and understand one another. the line “if today is every day, i will hold you and protect you, i wont let this thing affect you” gets to me every time. even when things are hard and dont go according to plan, they still agree, in this moment, to be there for each other. and thats what all freaky friday stories are ultimately about.

freaky friday 2018 is a beautiful, inclusive, subversive display of familial love, sacrifice, and selflessness, and it is underrated and overlooked because of its more popular predecessor.

1. Let It Shine (2012)

this is another one of my favorite dcoms and movies in the whole world. unlike the other movies on this list, it is not the viewers themselves that contribute to the underrated-ness of this movie. disney severely under-promoted and under-hyped this movie in comparison to its other big musical franchises, and i will give you five guesses as to why, but youll only need one!

let it shine is the most beautifully, unapologetically black dcom in the whole collection. (i would put jump in! at a notable second in this category, but that one wasnt underrated). this movie was clearly crafted with care and consideration. little black kids got to see an entire dcom cast that represented them. the vernacular used in the script is still tailored mostly to white-favoring audiences, but with some relevant slang thrown in there. in short, the writers got away with the most blackness they were allowed to inject into a disney channel project.

the story centers on rap music and its underground community in atlanta, georgia. it portrays misconceptions surrounding rap, using a church setting as a catalyst for a very real debate surrounding a generational, mutlicultural conflict. this was not a “safe” movie for disney, given its emphasis on religious clashes with contemporary values. it lightly touches on issues of image policing within the black community (cyrus’s father talking about how “our boys” are running around with sagging pants and “our girls” are straying away from god), which is a very real and pressing problem for black kids who feel the pressure (from all sides) of representing their whole race with their actions. its a fun, adorable story about being yourself and staying true to your art, but also a skillful representation of struggles unique to black and brown kids and children from religious backgrounds.

on top of crafting a fun, wholesome, thoughtful narrative and likeable protagonists, let it shine brought us what is in my opinion the BEST dcom soundtrack of all time. every single song is a bop. theyre fast, fun, and lyrically engaging. “me and you” is my favorite disney channel song of all time due to its narrative significance; i will never forget my first time watching the movie and seeing that big reveal unfold onstage, as a conversation and a plot summary all wrapped into a song. the amount of thought and care that went into the music of this movie should have been rewarded with a level of attention on par with that of other musical dcoms.

if disney channel had simply cared about let it shine more, it couldve spanned franchises and sold songs the way that other musical dcoms have drawn in success. i would have loved for a sequel that explored and fleshed out cyrus’s neighborhood a little bit more, and maybe dipped into that underground scene they caught a glimpse of. i wanted a follow up on the changed church community once cyrus’s father started supporting his sons vision. i want so much more for these characters and this world than disney gave them in just one movie.

for its bold, unabashed representation of blackness and religion, subtle, nuanced presentation of race-specific issues, strong, likeable characters, and complex, thoughtful songs, let it shine is the most underrated dcom.

and because i made a full list before i started writing this post, here are some honorable mentions:

going to the mat (2004)

gotta kick it up! (2002)

tru confessions (2002)

dont look under the bed (1999)

invisible sister (2015)

[stevesnailbat]

Hey!! Can you do a fic where (y/n) is Steve’s little sister who is friends with the Party and is rlly protective over her bc their parents are trash so he feels like he has to take the father position?? Somehow involve a family history w examples of him doing that and then leading up to something during s1 where he learns ab the demogorgan?? Like a “why didn’t u tell me” situation?

warnings: nothing really, some swearing and some of old King Steve’s attitude, but mainly just protective!Steve.

word count: 1.4K

a/n: Requests are open, please send me ideas for any ST character you want!

Being King Steve’s little sister had its perks, but some of the time it sucked more than it was good. People were always nice to Y/N in class, usually asking about Steve or talking about how good he played at the basketball games; they never really asked about her. Steve soaked up all the attention, a cocky grin growing across his face whenever she would complain about boys only talking about him to her on their way home from school. He would usually end up feeling bad for her having to put up with the annoying people at school, so he would make it up to her by taking her out for ice cream or dinner. Y/N had grown to appreciate the times her and her brother spent together alone, because when they were in public was when he would turn into a grade-A douchebag.

Even though Steve played himself off as a cocky, popular dude in school, he was still a sucker for his little sister and would do anything to make sure she was safe. He always made sure she got home safe after school, always checked up on her when she was feeling down, and to her annoyance, always made sure she went to bed before ten on school nights. Steve felt obligated to take over as a father figure for Y/N when he got into middle school and began to notice his parents not picking up the slack like they should have been. He realized that they didn’t pay attention to either him or Y/N, but it took more of a toll on her, since she was younger.

The only time their parents seemed to be around was for their so-called “family dinner” they would have twice a month. Steve saw it as their way of saying they were good parents who didn’t just order pizza or have them make microwave dinners every night, which is what they did every other night besides these two days out of the month. Their dad would grill Steve and Y/N with random, awkward questions about school, sports and clubs because he had no idea what they were actually doing outside of going to class.

“So are you still in that...video thing, Y/N?” their mom asked one time, trying to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Yes mom, I’m still in AV club.” Y/N replied in a shy voice, knowing what was coming next.

“You’re still hanging around all those boys every day after school then? The weird, nerdy ones who ride their bikes around all the time?” their dad would chime in, disappointment prevalent in his tone.

She only nodded, not really knowing how to defend herself against her judgmental parents.

“She like the kids, so why does it matter if you think they’re weird? It’s not like they’re hurting her or anything.” Steve replies in a protective, yet casual way.

Both of their parents become flustered yet annoyed, deciding to drop the conversation with a quiet ‘guess it doesn’t matter’ from their dad. Conversations like this seemed too common at the dinner table; they would make some snide remark about what the kids were doing and either Y/N or Steve would stick up for the other, trying to make them feel better. It got old after a while, but it just seemed to be something to get used to.

Y/N was the only girl in her friend group, the party, but she didn’t mind; Steve minded, though. Steve noticed one of them, Dustin, always making eyes at Y/N and would tell him to back off every once in a while. When he would come pick her up from the Wheeler’s and Dustin would walk with her to the door, Steve would give him warning looks which would cause him to call Steve an asshole under his breath every time. Y/N would try to give Steve a taste of his own medicine when he started hanging around Nancy, giving her dirty looks when she would see them together. It didn’t work, though. Y/N grew to like Nancy because she thought she made Steve better, into more of a normal boy and into less of a douchebag-ish King Steve.

Everything took a turn for the worst when November hit. Will went missing and things got rocky between Nancy and Steve. Steve reverted to his old, douchebag self to save the family’s reputation from being tarnished and left his sister in the dust. Not that she even realized it, though. She was busy looking for Will every night. When they met Eleven, Y/N would stay at Mike’s house trying to comfort her or get some information out of her. The two grew closer as time went on, Y/N seemed to be the only person besides Mike that Eleven would even speak to. Lucas and Dustin would play some games or nap in the basement while Y/N and Mike would talk El’s ear off, trying to make her feel comfortable, for hours until Steve would come pounding down the door looking for her.

“Why are you going over there so much anyways? You aren’t playing any campaigns right now obviously.” Steve snapped when they got back to Loch Nora from the Wheeler’s as Y/N sat in the passenger seat with tears in her eyes.

“I miss my friend okay? Me and the party actually want to find him or find out what happened to him! You don’t care that one of my best friends just disappeared into thin air and you don't even care that Barb disappeared from our house that night. All you care about is mom and dad finding out about the beers and cigarettes you had, you jerk. I thought you would be a helpful and understanding older brother in situations like this, but obviously not.” Y/N says before stomping out of the car as Steve parked in the garage.

He doesn’t follow her, doesn’t try to apologize, doesn’t leave the car. He had no idea what to say, but he begins to realize what an asshole he really is. But that didn’t stop him from avoiding Y/N the next morning or from getting the living shit beat out of him by Jonathan Byers the next day during their argument.

Things grew clearer to Steve when he tried to apologize to his girlfriend and ended up having to fight some crazy ass, other world monster in the Byer’s house with a nail bat. He had come full-circle in a week and realized how shitty he really had been, to Y/N especially.

Being reunited with Y/N in the Hawkins hospital was emotional for both of them. Steve rushed to there as soon as the god awful monster was taken care of, hoping and praying that Y/N was okay. When he got there, he saw her along side the party, huddled against each other. When she makes eye contact with Steve, she runs to him with tears brimming her eyes. Y/N sobbed in his arms, her body weak from exhaustion as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Steve held her close and kept repeating ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ to her over and over again as he rubber her shoulder soothingly. After a few minutes of hushed crying and whispers, Steve pulls them apart and holds her cheeks in his hands, wiping some of her tears away.

“You got the shit beat out of you.” she says, touching the bruised pink and purple skin near his eye, making him flinch lightly.

“Yeah because my little sister decided not to tell me that there was a monster on the loose in Hawkins.” he jokes in return, ruffling her hair lightly.

“I don’t think those are from a monster, I think you actually got beat up and just don’t want to admit it.” she remarks, eyes narrowing as she speaks.

“That...isn’t important right now. Why didn’t you tell me about what was actually going on?” he says as a slight tinge of red graces his cheeks from embarrassment.

“Because I knew you would freak, like you always do.” Y/N jokes.

Steve rolls his eyes and pulls her into another hug without saying another word, taking in the moment one last time. He was glad that he realized how much of an ass he really had been, but more importantly, he was glad that Y/N was safe. He could go back to being her protective, overbearing older brother who only wanted what was best for her, even if she couldn’t see that.

[bleufrost]

Crawl Home to Her || A Ben Hanscom Series

Chapter Four: Not a Stranger

a/n: aaand we're back! let's see if I can get y'all back into this like im getting myself back into writing it (:

thank you all for being patient with me, if youre still here reading I love you so much.

masterlist

summary

rating: m for graphic depictions of violence, gore, and adult themes

The few feet between Ali and Ben feel like miles as her feet push her forward. Ali was refusing to bother with words, knowing exactly who this man was and how desperately she had waited for him all these years. His arms part instinctively, holding her to his chest as if it were the safest place in the universe and he was determined to protect her. Although years were spent apart, the feeling of being strangers was lost on both Ali and Ben; instead being replaced by the knowledge that they had not only grown up together, but had also been a saving grace for each other. 

Ali’s breathing becomes unsteady as she feels Ben’s hand slide up to her neck. She isn’t afraid of him by any means, but the realization that somewhere in her life she forgot about him makes her uneasy; guilty in more ways than one. Tears spring to her eyes and a panic she has not felt since childhood comes upon her suddenly, causing Ben to pull back and look her over quickly in search of the cause of her distress. 

“Hey, what’s wrong? I know I look different, but I swear I’m not a stranger.” Ben laughs nervously, trying to lighten the mood while also allowing her a moment to breathe. His hands never leave her, part of him unwilling in the event that she might slip away from him once more. 

“I tried so hard for so long to remember you, but I never could. Ben, I forgot about you and I know that sounds awful but I swear I never meant to. You were always there, right at the edge of my mind, but I could never reach you. I’m so sorry.” Her voice shakes as she speaks and Ben has the overpowering need to hold her again and reassure her that everything was perfectly okay. So, that’s exactly what he does.

His thumbs brush across her cheeks, wiping away the tears that slipped past her eyes. “It’s not your fault, Ali. I’m sure Mike will explain everything, but from what I heard you aren’t the only one who’s had some missing pieces from their memory. It’s okay, we can catch up and everything will feel like we never spent a second apart.” Her breathing is still heavy, but a small smile finds its way upon her lips. He reciprocates and there is nothing he wants more than to kiss her in that moment, but he knows that he can't. She just admitted that she had forgotten everything for the longest time, throwing something like that on her now when she was just starting to get her life back was unfair and selfish. He had waited years, a little longer would be no problem at all.

“You ready to go in?” His voice was calm and patient, letting her know that she was allowed to take as much time as she needs. She was ready now though, something deep within her telling her that she could do anything now that the piece she was missing had been found. The pair begin to walk closer to the entrance, taking comfort in the close proximity of their bodies. 

Standing right in front of the door was someone that they both had missed severely; even if Ali just now was remembering that she did. Ben reaches down, giving a reassuring squeeze to her hand and smiling toward the girl that had been his first official crush. “Is there a password or something?” Ali laughs beside him, Ben really was proving himself to be the master of throwing back phrases at people. It just further solidified what Ali already knew: they all meant something extraordinary to each other. 

Recognition does not dawn on Beverly Marsh’s face as quickly as it did Ali’s. She turns and stares for a moment. “I’m sorry?” The wrapper crinkles in Ali’s hand as she tears it off and slowly pops the candy into her mouth. Beverly watches her and slowly, her face begins to change with a sense of recollection. 

“New Kid?” His voice is hopeful as he says the nickname aloud for the first time in forever. The redhead’s eyes scan over Ali and Ben a little longer as the gears work in her head. “Ali? Ben?” Ali smiles excitedly and Ben lets out a relieved puff of air. While she nods her head, smile still beaming back at Beverly, Ben lifts his arm gently in an attempt to welcome Beverly into a hug. Bev comes forward, wrapping her arms around the both of them quickly and laughing. 

“Oh my god!” The three stand there for a while, hugging in a way that feels familiar to each of them. Ali never enjoyed being touched by other people, she shied away from hugs and general contact because it always felt so wrong to her. This though, felt right. She felt comfortable for the first time in as far back as her still-hazy memory could go. 

“it's been so long.” When Ben says this, it sounds less like a sad regret and more like a happy reassurance. It had been so long, but the wait was over at last. 

"You guys look great!" Seperating, the trio find the source of the voice in the form of who could only be Richie Tozier. He looks down at himself and scoffs. “What the fuck happened to me?” 

Once more, Ali finds herself closing the distance between herself and her old friend. Images flash before her eyes, showing her of a time when her and Richie would get into arguments, sometimes heated, that would always end in rolling eyes and smiles. He had kept her on her toes as a kid, but sometimes things like that only prove to strengthen the bond you have with someone. 

Part of Ali was expecting to see someone else walk up with Richie; she doesn’t know why but the distinct recollection of his lovestruck face brings itself to the forefront of her mind and she is almost disappointed to find him alone. 

“Hey Trashmouth!” They all laugh while Ali and Richie hug. The nickname definitely came easy to remember. “Are you fucking serious? I escape this shit for years just to come back and immediately get fucking ridiculed. That’s unreal, Ugly Duckling.” Ali pulls back from the hug and stares at him with shock on her face. Now that was a name she hadn’t heard in forever. 

Ben almost intervenes, afraid that maybe Ali won’t receive the banter as such. It takes a moment, but the shock slowly slides into amusement. She shoves his shoulder and hugs him again; she really had missed them all.

The rest of them greet each other with warm smiles, Beverly and Ben also fall victim to Richie’s incessant need to say whatever’s on his mind, and soon it is time to go in. 

With shaky hands, Ali follows the group to the entrance of the brightly lit restaurant. She falls behind a bit, trying to hide behind the rest of them as Richie continues to lighten the mood with his voice. It takes only a second for Ben to turn and notice how quiet she has gotten, and in that same second he halts his walking, waits for her to catch up, and falls into step alongside her. 

Their shoulders bump as they walk and Ali finds the feeling of warmth radiating from his open palm to be immensely more inviting than the illuminated building. His knuckles graze hers gently, as though he is calling her toward him in a way. She takes the invitation as soon as he is willing to give it, slowly sliding her hand into his larger one.

Ben doesn’t look down when he feels her soft hand find his own. He simply takes it and wraps his fingers in hers, driving away the cold of her palm with the comforting heat of his body. The nervous trembling doesn’t stop, but it does subside and that is more than Ben could ever ask for. 

Finally looking down, Ben catches the twinkling lights reflecting in Ali’s eyes. Smiling felt so foreign to him until today, and he feels his eyes come alight for what very well may be the thousandth time since arriving. Her own mouth curves up into the smallest of smiles as she notices him staring, and Ben can’t help but think it is the most beautiful sight he has ever seen.

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a/n: as always, i greatly appreciate every read, like, reblog, and comment so much! feedback is always happily welcome and i hope you guys liked this chapter.

this is a side blog so i cant respond to comments (although i love to read them!!) but if yall ever wanna talk just shoot me an ask or message me! I love talking to yall <3

coming up...this meeting of the losers club has officially begun.

[screensirenfic]

Menthol Cigarettes - Chapter 2

dinThe future had come to Hawkins, and it came in the form of shining neon and All American capitalism.  

The Starcourt Mall was open for business, offering every category of Hawkins’ favourite pastimes, from a brand new multiplex movie theatre, to a sprawling food court that offered the chance to stuff your face with junk food from the world over.

And of course; there was shopping. Shoe stores, clothes stores, jewellery stores, record stores, and just about every store you could think of all under one roof.

It was consumer culture at its finest, and a big part of me was still struggling to see the appeal of it, but apparently the rest of Hawkins wasn’t so much, having already embraced the Starcourt corporation with open arms, judging by the near impossibility to get a parking spot out front.

Still; the Wheeler kid was late, and the last thing I wanted to be doing was traipsing through half a mile of badly parked station wagons and sedans just to get to the front door.

Instead I rolled straight up to the entrance and parked on the sidewalk, because what were they gonna do?! Call the cops on me?!

Mike wasted no time, hopping off the back  of my bike before it was even stationary to run up to a familiar gaggle of misfits waiting outside the front doors.

“You’re late!”

I could already hear the disbarring voice of Lucas Sinclair as he began lecturing Mike from the moment he was in earshot.

“I’m sorry-“ - Mike began to apologise; having given up on arguing back weeks ago.

“Again!” Lucas continued; not willing to hear the twentieth excuse Mike had for ditching his friends for my baby sister.

Still; I could understand Lucas’ frustration; after all, the world didn’t stop the moment you started smacking lips with someone on a regular basis.

“We’re going to miss the opening!”

Jonathan’s little brother; Will interrupted, clearly more concerned with missing out on vital minutes of Hollywood magic than any relationship troubles, but even I could see that whether they wanted sweet or butter popcorn was the last thing on these kids’ minds.

“Don’t worry shit about it. I’ll get you in.” I assured him, already beginning to lead the way into the mall, with a hopefully silent entourage following in my stead.

Starcourt was sprawling; gargantuan, really. An ever stretching multi faith temple dedicated to the gods of Pepsi Co and The Coca-Cola Company.

Over processed perms bounced around the place in a sea of pastel prints, congregating around artificial plants and real life water features.

People ate, drank, shopped and gossiped beneath the starlit sky of a state-of-the-art glass roof, complete with shiny new escalators and even shinier tile floors.

The whole thing seemed very big city and entirely out-of-place in the proverbial toilet stop of a town that was Hawkins.

Still; the young and wide-eyed population of Hawkins flocked to it like rats to a garbage truck and the kids were no exception; even if they insisted in spending half their time bickering in it.

“Let me guess, you were busy...” Lucas complained; finishing off with a trail of sucky noises which I guess was meant to pass as kissing.

“Yeah. Real mature Lucas.” Deadpanned Mike, clearly having had to put up with this for the whole of the summer, perhaps longer.

“Oh; El, I wish we could make out forever and ever and never hang out with any of our friends” Lucas mocked in a high pitched voice and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes back into their sockets; because were kids really this petty?!

“Lucas; stop-“ Max cautioned; the spritely redhead always the voice of reason in these situations.

“Will thinks it’s funny...” Lucas remarked, drawing attention to the quiet kid trailing at the back of our convoy.

“Because it is!” Will stated, heralding our entrance to the main foyer of Starcourt.

I could already spy our ticket in on the floor below; I just wish these damn kids would shut up long enough for us to get there.

“Yeah; it’s so funny to want to spend romantic time with my girlfriend.” Argued Mike; and really?! That’s what he was calling it now?!

“I’m spending romantic time with my girlfriend right now-“ Lucas pointed out, throwing his arm around Max’s shoulder in a move that was far too smooth for a fourteen year old.

“Will you guys please shut up!” I exclaimed; already having heard enough of every side of the argument on the Mike and Eleven dating saga, and really wanting to think about something else for once.

The kids conceded; smart enough to know it was never wise to piss off their ticket to sneaking into the movie theatre, and I led them down the packed escalator to a chorus of “Excuse me’s” and “Sorry’s”.

After narrowly missing barrelling into a crowd of preppily dressed preteens and Max practically towing Lucas away from a very immature verbal spar with his little sister, I led the party into the pastel striped lair of our unknowing key master.

———————————————————

“Hey Robin!”

I called out, leading the kids into Hawkins’ first nautical themed ice cream parlour, “Scoops Ahoy!”

Behind the counter, slinging cheap gelato was the less than shipshape form of Robin Buckley; a surly looking freckled brunette who I vaguely knew from English and History Class.

Still; I could understand why the girl was pissed off half the time, considering company policy required her to dress up like the corporate equivalent of Olive Oyl every day.

“Hey Lola; what can I do to float your boat on this fine day?” She asked, flashing one of those rare dry smiles that reminded me that she wasn’t all rainclouds and thunderbolts.

“I need a favour...” I began, leaning on the edge of the counter, and already Robin knew exactly the kind of favour I was looking for.

“Hey Dingus! The wife and kids are here!” Robin called out, turning to the back of the store, where said Dingus appeared from behind frosted glass slide windows.

“Really; Lo?” Sighed Steve; looking equal parts hilarious and adorable in his matching Popeye shirt and shorts.

I just shot him a smile, knowing that despite his protests, Steve would help me out anyway.

After all; what are friends for?

TAGLIST: @lemonypink @daringvixon