#he needs to be indoctrinated into a cult for forced empathy bonding

[sandraharissa]

S2 prediction based on his recent breakdown lol

[reineyday]

ok ive reblogged this before but hear me out (buckle up, it's a pretty long point-form read lol):

billy had the same childhood as in canon: shitty abusive dad, mom that left, no support system, gets forcibly moved from cali to hawkins with his not-his-sister max

he gets indoctrinated into this cult in hawkins when he's still in high school; it's becoming a Big Problem but doesnt quite realize how much of an active negative force it's becoming in the town cuz it's a toxic environment, but it's also a better support system than he's had before in his life

umtil one day he finds himself in the local mall in his late teens facing down against a girl with empathy in her eyes--she looks familiar--max's friend? and there are people telling him he needs to get rid of her while they continue to terrorize this mall and suddenly he realizes, well shit, what the fuck am i doing??

turns against the cult, protects the girl, manages on his own pretty well but almost dies saving her and any of the other people that get caught in the crossfire

wakes up in a hospital with a huge healing hole through his midsection, staring groggily up at the chief of police and some guy from the government named owens

gets told that the girl is a runaway from the main section of the cult in which he took a large role by, yes, leading a branch but also he, yes, played a large part in dismantling that whole branch when push came to shove. also the girl is the chief's daughter now so he gets a gruff thanks, and then owens says, hey kid youre like eighteen, this cult is part of some super shady government shit with human science experiments actually, and you did really well and know more than u think. we could use someone like you. would u like to work for us?

and billy, who has nothing waiting for him in hawkins really except for his little sister that he saw crying for him in the mall for some reason, says yes just let me say goodbye to max and maybe that girl he saved. closure, or whatever.

turns out max knew about this cult from the girl's end cuz they are friends, amd even tho she's a minor, her and her nerd friends managed to help out at least a little with the whole shebang by keeping everyone important updated with information and also with some gadgety something or other that was pretty cool to try out. the fallen king of hawkins steve harrington was apparently involved in it, something about decoding russian intelligence (damn, this is international?) in the basement of the mall (damn, there's a secret bunker to this conspiracy????)

anyways he goes off to train and, with proper support and a safe personal space far far away from his dad, he excels and becomes one of the top government agents of the secret upside down division of the government, and finds himself working best mostly solo in different countries infiltrating and then dismantling cults and other such large and lethal organizations from the inside, with a small team that works with him

imagine his surprise the first time he heads back to the states on assignment and finds himself working with a bunch of familiar faces. what are the chances that everyone he remembers in hawkins ends up in the upside down? not least of which is his kid sister, who he shakes his head at--theyve kept in touch and bonded while billy traveled and he knew what she was up to--and also, one steve harrington of fallen high school king fame, wearing glasses that make him look very cute, eyeing him with an eyebrow raised from behind a laptop

"am i dreaming or is that you, harrington?"

steve, for his part, always enjoyed fidgeting with electronics. he was always all alone in his big house, had money to spare on several electronic systems and an excess amount of time and no company

it was a hobby, really. he never got great grades cuz he's an applied learner, but of he gets his hands on something and experiences firsthand how something gets put together, he finds that he's pretty good at finagling random shit into something actually kind of functioning

but he doesnt really do much with it once high school starts cuz hes busy trying to forget how lonely he is by making as many friends as possible and then opening up to a sum total of none of them--until nancy, whose pants he's trying to get into the day her best friend dies in his pool--or does she?

nancy, budding investigative journalist that she is, finds out barb's death was involved in some sort of secret cult in hawkins, and steve and his guilt and his loneliness-turned-people-pleaser-tendencies follows along and helps beat up some scary looking cult members who cant be reasoned with at jonathan byers's house, which for some reason is plastered with newspapers and red thread cuz his little brother died except his mom thought he was kidnapped and apparently she was right?? holy shit?????

so he stops caring about his high school social life. seems pretty uhhh not worth investing in after being sworn to secrecy by the government about the shady-ass people in his small town. some guy from california (hot but an asshole) comes in and makes a big deal about swooping in on his social status, except steve no longer cares, they have an altercation once and then the summer after high school he watches billy almost die in a mall after steve escapes from its basement and he thinks, hm.

(actually, what he thinks is, 'that was fucking terrifying holy shit a guy i played basketball with in gym class almost died from a fucking terrorist cult event at the mall because he saved el from almost getting rammed in the goddamn gut????' but like, the sentiment is the same)

steve goes back to the basement with dustin et al. and finds a whole lot of russian machinery and surprises dustin by being more than competent--kind of excellent, actually--in reverse-engineering the weird science machines the russians were using for whatever cult thing they were doing, and gets roped into the tech division of the upside down. he finds he's a better learner when he's had practical experience on how all the skills he was learning can be used, and ends up being a pretty great tech guy. he always thought he'd be more like the tom cruise of any missions impossible he comes across, but he finds it a lot more comforting to know he's supporting someone, loves feeling directly helpful to people whose lives he cares about

honestly sometimes it's like a grown-up tech-y babysitting job where he has to explain to the agent he's aiding over and over what not to do, where not to press, how best to use the gadgets he's giving them, and then watching while the agent does not listen to him in the slightest, so really nothing much has changed 🙃 esp when he's doing tech for the team that is mike, lucas and max with dustin as a second tech expert (honestly, in these cases steve is technically the second tech expert. dustin's 100p better at it, and steve is unironically so proud.)

(el and will do more intelligence gathering than active infiltrating; suzie is another tech expert that dustin meets online and then one day they meet in the office cafeteria and realize who each other is and it's all very cute. jonathan and his photography stalking skills also does intelligence-gathering, where he meets argyle who is really good at infiltration by way of being literally the most chill guy in the planet. that dude could talk his way into anything by seeming like he has no idea what he's talking about, and he's got a way sharper eye than youd think. nance is now officially an investigative journalist, and she's their go-to for exposing bad shit. robin is in intelligence, but the decoding part of it instead of the gathering part of it.)

anyways, this is all the background info. the fic itself would probably start with billy taunting steve the first time they see each other again.

"yeah, it's me, don't cream your pants."

and billy, with his short but still (stylishly) curled hair, does the tongue thing that steve found obnoxious and annoying in high school, but this time finds himself flushing instead.

and yes, there is a lot of UST, especially when billy manages to convince steve into regular sparring practice (all agents have competent self-defense training but as an active field agent, billy's not only more practiced but more comfortable) and billy does the whole picking steve up from the ground thing, telling him to plant his feet, etc etc

mmmhhh and the plot that's happening (that periodically flashes back to their pasts for maximum plot reveal and character reveal) would be that the cult seems to be rebuilding in hawkins with some guy everyone's calling vecna at the forefront

they have to find their way into his base, figure out who he is and where he's from. kidnappings are happening that are too obviously shady and the townspeople not in the know seem hellbent on blaming eddie munson for all the killings just because he's always been labelled a freak in the town, and he was the one last seen with the first woman to go missing

max ends up targeted at some point and billy fucking goes off trying to save his little sister

anyways, that's what ive got lol. if you got to the end, congrats and thanks for reading my messy headcanon(s) on this very excellent au prompt ;P

OKAY LOOK--

This Steve

with this Billy

in some kind of James Bond AU where Steve is like Q (but younger...) and Billy is a secret agent.

Here's a bonus quote:

Steve: Right. Now pay attention. I want you to take great care of this equipment. There are one or two rather special accessories... Billy: Have I ever let you down? Steve: Frequently.

@lovebillyhargrove ⭐ @youfuckingdonut ⭐

[republicstandard]

The Rot in Academia

“Unlimited tolerance is a paradox. We don’t have to tolerate the intolerant.”-Lindsay Briggs

The hostility toward the notion of individual liberty and freedom of speech is evident everywhere you look these days, perhaps no more apparently than on college campuses. With alarming regularity, from moral panics to “anti-fascist” riots to professors with ties to ISIS, it has been incident after incident illustrating how deeply corrupted academia has become. From the lunacy of a Vanderbilt professor blaming 9/11 on racism, slavery, and the Navajo genocide to a Diablo Valley College professor smashing someone’s head with a bike lock, the modern academy—with its Cult-Marx professoriate, bloated bureaucracies that ensure “compliance” with the ruthless efficiency of the NKVD, and SJW student-activists—is no longer the bastion of open inquiry and debate it was intended to be. George Waldner, president emeritus of York College, stated:

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In the last five years, we’ve certainly had an increasing number of free speech confrontations on many campuses across the country. Halloween costumes at Yale, the ‘Trump’ chalkings at Emory University …There have probably been 30 or 40 of these [incidents] in the last five years.

“All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” ~George Ciccarillo-Maher

I would venture it’s been many more than that, especially if you include the on-campus hate crime hoaxes. A university education looks ever-more like a combination of a Soviet re-education camp and a day-care. The student body seems to be regressing to a median age of about five, Marx’s dictums spoon-fed to them by doughy professional axe-grinders, agitators, and grievance-mongers. If sticks and stones break their bones, then words are what really hurt. As Jim Goad wrote in The Redneck Manifesto:

HATE SPEECH is the most Orwellian concept to emerge from the twentieth-century twilight. It is especially deceptive because it hides behind a Happy Face mask. Most people want to be on the side of love, right? Like all dangerous ideas, the notion of hate speech sounds good until dismantled piece by piece. The first problem is with the term’s vagueness. Hate speech, apparently, has become anything they hate. Through relentless exposure to well-meaning, soft-suds imagery, otherwise intelligent people have been brainwashed to believe that “hate” is a satisfactory explanation for any human action. Reducing complex sociopolitical struggles to a matter of “hate” is as simplistic as blaming it on “sin,” but they fall for it.

And boy are they falling for it. The omnipresence of “hate” appears to be the main preoccupation of the professoriate and the administrative commissars, and is certainly one of the central fixtures of campus life. Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams took to his Twitter account to use the hashtag #LetThemFuckingDie in reference to white males; similarly, former Drexel professor George Ciccarillo-Maher opined that, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” Texas A&M professor Tommy Curry advocated violence against whites as a corrective measure to perceived racism in a podcast interview back in 2012. Now-terminated Essex County College professor Lisa Durden taunted whites on Tucker Carlson when the host pressed her on her support for racially-exclusionary events:

“Boo-hoo-hoo, you white people are just angry you couldn’t use your white privilege card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter all-black Memorial Day celebration.”

University of Delaware anthropology professor Kathy Dettwyler declared on Facebook that Otto Warmbier “got exactly what he deserved” when he was tortured to death by North Korea because he was “typical of a mind-set of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males.” According to Boston University professor Saida Grundy, “White masculinity isn’t a problem for America’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.” John Griffin of the Art Institute of Washington believes that Republicans “should be lined up and shot. That’s not hyperbole.” Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar gloated over the death of Barbara Bush on Twitter (sic):

“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. I’m happy the witch is dead. Can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. Byyyeeeeeeee.”

Kevin Allred, formerly of Rutgers University, had the following to say on Twitter: “Will the Second Amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no …?” Another Boston University professor, Kyna Hamill, published a paper condemning “Jingle Bells” for its “racist history” as a jingle in blackface. Sarah Bond of the University of Iowa lamented the fact that sculptures from the classical world are now primarily associated with white marble. Princeton University Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor made the deeply revealing and insightful comments during her commencement address at Hampshire College that Donald Trump is a “racist, sexist megalomaniac.”

As Middlebury, Yale, Evergreen State, and Berkeley have shown, the students are just as eager to get in on the action. Lucía Martínez Valdivia, a mixed-race “queer” assistant professor of English at Reed College, had a lecture about Sappho disrupted by students protesting the college’s mandatory humanities class as “white supremacist.” Just when you think the Left cannot get any more preposterous, there you go—protesting a queer, mixed-race woman’s lecture on a queer female poet. The protesters also indicted Aristotle and Plato for good measure. Martínez Valdivia states:

Nuance and careful reasoning are not the tools of the oppressor, meant to deceive and gaslight and undermine and distract. On the contrary: These tools can help prove what those who use them think — or even what they feel — to be true. They make arguments more, not less, convincing, using objective evidence to make a point rather than relying on the persuasive power of a subjective feeling…Ultimately, this is a call for empathy, for stretching our imaginations to try to inhabit and understand positions that aren’t ours and the points of view of people who aren’t us. A grounding in the study of the humanities can help students encounter ideas with care and…realizing — and accepting — that no person, no text, no class, is without flaws. The things we study are, after all, products of human hands.

She’s absolutely correct, but the un-reasoning Left refuses to consider what is actually a very insightful commentary on the nature of creation so fundamental to the arts, and on the beauty and tragedy of a fatally-flawed humanity. This idea that empathy does not need to be divorced from logic and reason—that it is in fact inextricably intertwined and that rationality and critical thinking aren’t “tools of white supremacy” but are instead universally applicable and vital to processing the world and the people in it in all their dimensionality—is increasingly becoming antithetical to the deeply sentimental worldview of the Left wing, where the Western logos itself has become the enemy of emotive, panicked hysteria masquerading as a coherent set of principles. In this infantile worldview of good-and-bad, “hate,” as the Jim Goad quote discusses, is a sufficient explanation for people’s motivations, and for anything that falls outside the ideological confines of Leftist “thought.”

One thing is clear—dissent will not be tolerated. Will Creeley, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), expresses concern that the:

“U.S. Supreme Court’s stark warning in Sweezy v. New Hampshire will prove prophetic: ‘Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.’”

Though he is dead wrong about group identity and has of late turned into a bit of a Zionist shill, Dr. Jordan Peterson is a very astute observer of the Cultural Marxism that has taken firm hold of the university campuses in North America and beyond. Peterson refers to the Leftist buzzwords of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusivity” as the Unholy Trinity, and I might be so presumptuous as to add a fourth: trauma. This is the lynchpin of the push for safe spaces, the conflation of speech with violence, and the drive to dis-invite and de-platform speakers who run afoul of the egalitarians. Nevertheless, these poisonous ideas have seeped deep into the fabric of academia, where they are not only perpetuated and remain unchallenged, but spread into our society’s daily discourse as a direct result of sustained attempts at indoctrination in the academy, and increasingly even earlier in K-12.

The reason things seem to be deteriorating on campus has everything to do with its closed environment, where dissenting opinions are discouraged and forced out, and mutually reinforcing viewpoints are encouraged and advanced. Essentially you then have an echo chamber environment where bad or at least faulty ideas are perpetuated and due to viewpoint uniformity (and hostility to different perspectives) the ideas and suppositions advanced in the academy are never challenged, and in the rare instances where dissenting evidence emerges from the university setting (such as Dr. Richard Lynn’s IQ research), the data is suppressed and the individual responsible is punished or marginalized in some way. Political orientation is a pretty good proxy for worldview; for all of the talk of diversity, in this crucial area it is sorely lacking. From a 2016 survey, we see that liberal professors in New England outnumber conservatives 28-to-1. From a study conducted by UCLA published in 2012, we can see the growing uniformity among the professoriate nation-wide is approaching a totality of the profession:

CHART

By 2014, a mere 10% of professors identified as conservative. They remain largely confined to business and the hard sciences. In a sample of fifty-one of the top sixty liberal arts colleges studied by the National Association of Scholars’ Mitchell Langbert this year, 39% of faculties had zero Republicans, and out of a pool of nearly 8,700 professors, registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans ten-to-one.

As uniform in their beliefs as professors generally are, John Wilson, an editor of the AAUP’s “Academe” blog, believes that it is the administrators who are really the problem as the architects and enforcers of the censorship and speech codes that are so prevalent on college campuses. As one example of the blood-engorged ticks that are collegiate bureaucracies/administrations, the University of Michigan has ninety-three full-time diversity and equity staff, twenty-six of whom earn six figures, while nationally 49% of college classes are taught by adjunct (part-time) professors with no semester-to-semester guarantee of classes and no benefits (to their credit Ann Arbor only has 17% of its classes taught by adjuncts). Jon Marcus from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting illuminates:

The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures. The disproportionate increase in the number of university staffers who neither teach nor conduct research has continued unabated in more recent years. From 1987 until 2011-12…universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees, or an average of 87 every working day, according to the analysis of federal figures…“There’s just a mind-boggling amount of money per student that’s being spent on administration,” said Andrew Gillen, a senior researcher at the institutes. “It raises a question of priorities.” Universities have added these administrators and professional employees even as they’ve substantially shifted classroom teaching duties from full-time faculty to less-expensive part-time adjunct faculty and teaching assistants…Since 1987, universities have also started or expanded departments devoted to marketing, diversity, disability, sustainability, security, environmental health, recruiting, technology, and fundraising, and added new majors and graduate and athletics programs, satellite campuses, and conference centers… “It’s almost Orwellian,” said [economist Richard] Vedder. “They’ll say, ‘We’ll save money if we centralize.’ Then they hire a provost or associate provost or an assistant business manager in charge of shared services, and then that person hires an assistant, and you end up with more people than you started with.”

All of this should rightly beg the question of what purpose all of this administrative bloat serves. It certainly isn’t to benefit the quality of the education students receive, and it only adds to the onerous costs of attaining a college degree. The aforementioned AAUP is responsible for the 1915 document that still stands as the golden standard of the mission statement of what a university’s actual purpose should be:

To promote inquiry and advance the sum of human knowledge;

To provide general instruction to the students; and

To develop experts for various branches of the public service.

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Nowhere is there an imperative to produce “professional activists” or advocate for that most nebulous of terms: social justice. Public service in this context is to contribute to society in a productive and meaningful way, be it as an engineer, a rocket scientist, or a teacher. Instead, students learn the wonders of communism (according to a 2017 survey, 44% of Millennials surveyed preferred to live under a socialist system), whites learn to hate themselves, and everyone else learns to hate them. A recent event at The College of William & Mary sponsored by the ACLU entitled “Students and the First Amendment” was shut down due to Black Lives Matter protesters, who exercised the “heckler’s veto” and asserted, among the usual tripe, that “Liberalism is White Supremacy.” Where else can you go from there? What common ground can there be when the Left is saying its own professed values of pluralism and tolerance are white supremacy?

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