#hell my dad introduced me to that song and he's Very straight xD

[weedle-testaburger]

I'm honestly not fond of the 'this piece of media is about the x experience so only x people can truly enjoy it' mentality bc the second part just makes it exclusionary. the point of media from a marginalised group's perspective should be to show the world what it's like rather than just going 'you wouldn't get it'

[kaypeace21]

Mike Wheeler and other queer subtext

How come no one ever talks about how just changing one word in his speech  makes what Mike said to Will sound like a marriage proposal?

“And I asked you to be my {friend} and you said yes ... you said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done”.

Is it just me? I mean think about all those speeches in the shed. Jonathan talks about the day their dad left (the same guy who called Will homophobic slurs) and lets be honest him thinking his son might be queer, may have been one of the reasons he left. Jonathan even mentions that ‘castle Byers’ was built after their homophobic dad left, the place where Will felt the most safe while in the upside down as he sang ‘should I stay or should I go’ was that place. He sings the same song Jonathan played for him when Lonnie didn’t show up for visitation and Jonathan told Will “He’s trying to force you to like normal things. And you shouldn’t like things because people tell you you’re supposed to ... especially not him.”

What makes Will feel safe is the antithesis of his father.Lonnie left when Jonathan was 10 so will was about 7 or 6 (maybe)? And it was on Jonathan’s 10th birthday when he was first taught how to use a gun, and was traumatized because he was forced to kill/shoot a rabbit to be “more of a man”. SO why does Will know how to shoot a gun when Lonnie wasn’t in his life at 10 years old ?! Can you imagine how much more shit he forced Will through (compared to Jonathan) if he thought he was queer and was forcing him to ‘man-up’?! 

So then, what Joyce says before Jonathan’s speech about his “rainbow ship” and “being proud” isn’t just an overt hey look Will’s lgbt+ ! Its makes narrative sense given what the family knows and we’re supposed to put 2 in 2 together.

So the fact that Mike’s speech about how they first met, is RIGHT AFTER Jonathan’s speech about their dad leaving is interesting? So let’s think about this ; WHY does Lonnie think Will is queer? Speaking from personal experience , to most straight people if you aren’t an ‘over the top stereotype’ (nothing wrong with that, by the way) no on believes you even if you say it to their face (although that may be more of a queer women problem, but I digress.) My point is Mike met Will at age 5, BEFORE Lonnie left. And I sort of gather that Will & Mike were probably very close (especially because they probably weren’t taught yet what was considered normal-friendship behavior), and Lonnie got suspicious about how close they were. In other words, Mike was the literal catalyst for Lonnie leaving! I mean if as teens, they are still more affectionate than what the 80s  deemed ‘acceptable’ who knows how they acted before being conditioned to be told what was considered ‘wrong’ and ‘not wrong’.

Essentially these stories tell us a chronological order of events: Mike and Will meet. Lonnie gets suspicious of their bond and his abuse escalates as he tries to ‘fix his’ “queer, fag” son, but he eventually gives up and leaves . Joyce even says  “You never cared about him” (because he wasn’t straight), when she learns Lonnie wasn’t mourning for Will’s death but simply using him to make a quick buck. However, Will  feels safer and happier without such a toxic individual in his life and his mom does everything to make up for the damage he’s caused- as she tries to support her son’s sexuality  .

Will and Mike being ‘suspiciously’ close actually makes a lot of sense if you look at what other characters say about the 2 in season 1. When Will went missing in s1 , Mike’s mom said “ What’s been going on with Will, I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you. I just ... want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to HIDE anything from me” (she even emphasizes the word ‘hide” it’s so heavily queer-coded and it makes me feel like she suspects something because she was around to see the interactions between the 2 we never did).

Even his dad jokes “Absolutely not” *turns to wife* “our son with a girl?”. If you rewatch the scene Karen doesn’t make eye contact and literally freezes at the comment and blinks rapidly (She’s clearly uncomfortable). Bisexuality wasn’t really something people believed in so it’d be kind of funny to think Mike’s parents thought he would turn out to be gay the whole time because of his interactions with Will.

Also, how come no one talk about that binder? You know the binder (from s1) that Mike keeps, filled with 100s of Will’s drawings. Think about that! Will has been giving his drawings to Mike for years! And Mike not only accepts them but treasures them so much he keeps every single picture Will’s ever given him . When Will is believed to be dead, we see Mike look through the whole binder, he even gently strokes the drawing of the cleric, probably thinking he’ll never get another pic from Will again. Also when Will ‘dies’, “we can be heroes” by David bowie (a bisexual singer) plays,  there’s no romantic lyrics in the song except one lyric “And we kiss as though nothing could fall and the shame” and this is the lyric that plays when Mike returns to his house and cries in his mother’s arms over the ‘death’ of Will. Do I have to explain how ‘kissing and shame’ are queer-coded XD

Hell, even when Lucas makes fun of his crush on EL, Lucas gets down on one knee  and says “ I love you so much, will you marry me?” and literally 1s later, we’re introduced to the bullies and the idea that will is ‘gay’, and Mike is in the forefront of the scene and unlike his friends he is physically assaulted (like a gay-bashing) . It’s supposed to subconsciously hint he has feelings for both of them. The first interaction with the bullies, they mention Will being ‘gay’ right after they mention Mike’s crush on androgynous El , Mike says to “ignore them” but is assaulted anyways. And when asked what happed he doesn’t want to tell El the details cause he’s ashamed . 2nd time the bullies talk about Will, Mike is once again in the forefront , as his friends are in the background , and the bullies say Will is “flying in fairyland with all the other little fairies”. Mike was literally on the verge or tears at this comment (despite being happy a few moments earlier telling the others to ‘act sad’ because they’d look suspicious other wise). But this is the comment where Mike snaps and pushes Troy back (because he took it personally) and El protects him in the end. Then the last time the bullies appear , Mike jumps off the cliff and “flies like a fairy” thanks to El saving him . Nancy even says says “I thought you were acting weird, but I thought it was because of Will” And Mike responds “I thought you were acting weird too I thought it was because of Steve ... Do you like Jonathan now”?” Nancy: “No, do you like Eleven?”. They literally compared the explicit love triangle between Steve/Nancy/Jonathan to the Will-Mike-El dynamic!

And since this devolved into me talking about the Duffers making Mike bi since the very beginning. Lets not forget when El was in her wig , he called her “pretty” and she looks at the mirror happily restating the word “pretty”. And after she lost her wig and broke Troy’s arm, at the police station he says “ Her head’s shaved she doesn’t even look like a girl”. And in the same episode, El looks in the mirror sadly and asks Mike “Still pretty?” And he say “Yeah, pretty, really pretty.” And they almost kiss! Note that 3 separate characters said El looked like a boy, but Mike doesn’t care he still wanted to kiss her! Even one of the men thought El might be the missing ‘Byers boy’. I’m not saying Mike has a thing for quiet-brunettes with super powers, and daddy-issues but ... wait that’s exactly what I’m saying. XD

I mean in season 1 when El asks him the difference between friends and crushes, Mike literally uses gender inclusive pronouns by using the word “someone” (3 times), and embarrasses himself because he can’t articulate the difference. When he could of simply given the 80s heteronormative  answer of ‘when a boy likes a girl’. 

Mike: “ you go to school dances with someone. You know someone that you like”

 El: “a friend?”

Mike: ‘not a friend uh ... uh someone like a” (gives up and kisses her)

And I mean the dance- we’d be here all day with all the hints! But, Will’s first instinct when asked to dance with a girl (who’s wearing a rainbow hairclip)  is to look at mike and say “I.. uh, don't”, and then after Mike forces him you literally see Mike’s shocked expression like  ‘what. why’d I do that ?’ After this, they show Dustin looking sad about Max/Lucas dancing and then they have Mike get into the frame (next to Dustin) and look sad when Will/girl are dancing in the same exact frame as Max/Lucas. They have 2 scenes of Mike moping - one where he's moping about El (and she shows up immediately to convey he was thinking about her) and another moping scene of him just looking at Will dancing with a girl.

Sorry for the rant but there’s just SO much subtext, a lot of which I didn’t even mention (like all the scenes that directly parallel byler and mileven ) and I’m really curious about what will happen between the 3 in later seasons, I want it to be July and until we get a teaser or something I’m going to bother people with content 😂  

[janiedean]

so admittingly I don't know much about springsteen but your top 5/10 springsteen songs and why?

WELL THEN HERE WE GO (sorry this required a long answer) (also if I start going like ‘this is it bUT IN THIS VERSION NOT IN THAT ONE it’s because actually he has wildly different version of the same song XDDD)

*cough* *drum roll* videos for the first five + links for the others as usual xD

one: the ghost of tom joad

I once ranted about this specific song in detail so here if anyone’s interested, but: it took me years to decide on which one was my favorite overall but then I went for tom joad because it has all. it’s a heartbreaking song that updates one of my favorite ever novels (the grapes of wrath) to current days situations and guys I swear to god the fact that he put to music tom’s speech to his mother in the novel at the end after rehashing the themes in a new light in the rest of it killed me and I want it tattooed, so. tom joad now and always thanks guys. I love this damned song to levels that are embarrassing as hell.

two: no surrender (in the live 75-85 version)

so: no surrender is originally on born in the usa and actually it’s my favorite song from that record regardless - like, it opens side two and I remember that the first time I heard it was on a tape a friend’s dad (haha) had lent me bc he knew I was into bruce and he was too and I turned it to the second side of the tape and played it and I was like holy crap this is it but then I heard the acoustic live version from the following tour and guys. guys. if you ever had friends you fell out of touch with but still remember fondly and/or friendships you know that even if you don’t talk for a while you’ll always be close when you meet again this is.. just… idk it hit me like a punch in the stomach and it never left. I cried every single time he played it live when I went to see him. no regrets. I love this song sfm and the melancholy in the acoustic version just destroys me.

three: for you (acoustic piano version)

I 100% realize this is probably a weird choice for top three, but: this was on his first album and the version on there is pretty damned good - it’s about a guy whose girlfriend tries to commit suicide and reminesces about their relationship - and you’d go like why, but: first of all he has some of his best lines in this (my electric surges free I just sdgsldjl) and the entire last stanza where he goes from where I found you broken at the beach to the end is just a knife into your heart, but this goddamned version here just goes and tears your heart out and stomps on it and I swear if there is one thing I want from bruce is that he plays this in front of me next time I see him live because for now I never managed and just - the slow piano kills me. I love it. the fact that when I asked brian fallon in a tumblr q&a his fave bruce song and he said this specific one just confirmed he’s a true intellectual. ;)

four: drive all night

or: this is the love song. I just. the first time I heard this I fell off the chair or something and it was the studio version which is nowhere near as heartfelt as the live versions and I swear it’s just - it has very lovely lyrics that perfectly balance melancholy and hopeful and don’t make it saccharine, the fucking sax solo destroys me every single goddamned time I hear it and when you get to the end and he says that she has his love heart and soul it’s The Most Heartfelt Thing I Have Ever Heard In My Life Or Close To It and I just, I love drive all night with every inch of my atoms, bye.

five: badlands

I ranted about this extensively yesterday here so I refer you to it for long rant about it, but tldr: this was actually the first bruce song I ever heard knowing it was by bruce - it wasn’t what got me on that train but it still was the first and like… I didn’t understand it for a long time bc my first run-in with bruce was a hit and miss but then I did and like, this song is basically quintessential bruce because it has all his themes rolled up into one, all the good stuff, everything that is good about his music and most of all live it’s a goddamned religious experience. 

so, that was for the top five, but top ten…

six: youngstown (click here for full rant from last year) which was a hard choice but this damned song slays me whether acoustic or electric and I love his use of language and how he built it and how he teaches you things in five minutes pretty much and how the music/mood matches the words in both versions and seems to mean different approaches but still doesn’t change the core of it, and is2g the last two lines and the second stanza and the line he recycled from the mahardige book he inspired himself with when he wrote this are just goddamned out of this world and like this one raised the ladder for years but I just, love it to pieces

seven: rosalita (come out tonight), or: bruce does serious and politics incredibly well but this one is just a delight from beginning to end, it’s fun, I could listen to it for a month without getting tired, it always puts a smile on my face and the entire last part where he tells her to inform her dad he has a record company now so no reason to hate that his daughter is with a moneyless musician is just… so… lovely and fun and lighthearted and I just really love this song a lot ;;

eight: highway patrolman or, there’s no way a top ten bruce songs has no nebraska material from me because nebraska Is A Damn Masterpiece and this one’s my fave off it, but tldr: the utter, absolute way this thing slays you with just voice and guitar and the way he makes you feel about the cop who ends up letting his brother with ptsd from vietnam escape after he accidentally kills someone is out of this world and I just, this one really has a way to make you empathize with the narrator and my heart ;_; (also the movie they made from it which is in that video is really good k viggo mortensen playing the brother with ptsd isn’t leaving me anytime soon)

nine: thunder road (rant attached to the link) or: this one is short and sweet but honest, it’s not The Definitive Love Song To Me just bc drive all night exists. this damned song is a masterpiece in itself. it’s flawless. it has the crescendo, it has the fact that at whichever moment in his life he sings it it works, ‘it’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win’ is the most iconic line that ever ended a song or close to it and it’s exactly the kinda love song you wanna hear if you want realistic love song material and just, legendary. okay? legendary.

ten: american skin (41 shots), or: this actually is what got me into springsteen bc I borrowed the live album it was published on originally after my first try with darkness went so-so, I listened to it and was like ‘okay yeah he’s good’, then I got to this one and went like ‘wait a fucking moment this isn’t just good’ (count that I was twelve and understood maybe 1/5th in the english songs I heard), I actually looked it up, went like woah wait aaand listened to it for two weeks straight, bought the record, translated everything by hand, started reading about what the fuck was wrong with the circumstances for which it was written and here I am twenty years later dying over bruce and having been introduced thanks to him to 80% of his country’s societal issues or I’d have had no idea that early in my life. anyway: other than the sentimental value, it’s honestly out of this world good and the live version just nailed it way better than the studio that was released years later and I love bruce a lot, k? k.

thanks for letting me rant ;)

[sherlockmonkeesstartrek]

So, I’ve seen a few people on here talking about their connection to the Monkees, and honestly, at this time I’ve also been left thinking about what has made the Monkees so important to me. I mean, to other people, when I say that they are one of my favourite bands, they wonder how the hell I was ever introduced to them, why as a teenage girl I prefer that kind of music over the popular stuff that comes out today. And I’ve talked about it before, in some of the Tumblr tags games and asks, but I sort of wanted to revisit my old memories, so I hope you don’t mind coming along for the ride. 

My first memory of the Monkees would probably be when I was very, very little. My Dad, a keen guitar player and avid Monkees fan himself, owned a lovely gold-coloured Fender guitar of some description (which he still owns and lets me play) which he would sometimes pick up when he got a moment alone. But in a home that housed me, my two siblings, my mum, Grandma and Grandad, you can imagine time alone was hard to come by. That meant my sister and I used to hear him playing guitar, and loving music, we would make him play to us. No matter which songs he’d play, we’d always end up belting out ‘I’m A Believer’ at the top of our lungs. It was the first song either of us knew all the words to. 

My Dad used to take us out on Saturdays; his only day off work. At first, he used to take us to Theatre school, then maybe to lunch afterwards. Later, when he left home, we would go and do many different activities, spending the whole day together swimming, rock-climbing, watching movies, sometimes all of those things in one day. And it was then, when he would drive us around, that we got to listen to the kind of music he liked. My mum or brother would often steal the CD player otherwise, and their love of R&B never quite rubbed off on us. Instead, we took a liking to the 60s best ofs he’d play. He would buy best ofs of certain bands if we took a particular shine to them, for example we had a Manfred Mann one, a Beatles one (literally called 1 XD) and we had the Definitive Monkees. The latter I remember we used to put in from time to time, and certain songs still remind me of those very early days. Songs like You Just May Be The One, I’m A Believer, Lookout (Here Comes Tomorrow) and A Little Bit Me were, to me, definitive 60s songs, sounds that defined the era.

Later, when I was in my 9th or 10th year of school, my Dad told me about the Monkees TV show and his description, though not quite giving us the right feel for what it was lie, intrigued us. He used to tell us of his childhood, when he used to watch the Monkees, and he remembered all the TV shows that came before and after it, like Tiswas and the Banana Splits. Eventually, I found a whole playlist of the old episodes of the Monkees on Youtube and downloaded an episode for my sister and I to watch on my phone. That day, we were going to see a play at the theatre with my Grandma (I think it was Gypsy- we used to go to the theatre quite a lot with my Grandma in those days) and we wanted something to do on the tube journey there. The episode was ‘The Case Of the Missing Monkee’ and least to say, almost straight away, we were smitten.

In the next few weeks, every day on our walk to school, we’d watch an episode together until we’d watched them all. It was a funny sight. Two girls, waddling side by side, trying to keep one eye on where they were going, the other on the four handsome boys on a tiny phone screen, and walking as close together so not to pull the headphones out of each other’s ears. 

Then came our traditional holiday away with my Dad, which was a common occurrence at the same time every year. But this year, it was a bit different because we had a new set of CDs to listen to in the car. My Dad had bought us a set of the first 5 Monkees albums. We listened to them on repeat that whole week. Songs like Peter’s rendition of ‘I Don’t Think You Know Me’ reminds me of driving towards our accommodation that we were staying in, and I recall walking several times back to the accommodation late at night, singing songs like ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ and ‘You Just May Be The One.’

Least to say, I have wonderful memories connected with this band, and am still making memories, as I continue to play their wonderful, upbeat tunes often. I’ll always wish and imagine being best friends with them, frequenting their pad and hanging out with them, whenever I need cheering up. Always I’ll connect them with innocent and uncomplicated joy, so to all the Monkees, Mike, Micky, Peter and Davy, I want to say a huge thank you!

I hope this wasn’t too long and dull!