#if you aren’t gonna acknowledge mike as a person don’t talk about him

[wibble-wobbegong]

okay i never check the tag or confessionals so im only experiencing via mutual posting but i cannot believe there are people who don’t think mike is a dynamic and complex character. MIKE WHEELER.

i’d say he’s literally the most complex character in the show. i know i say this all the time but mike isn’t the embodiment of any singular experience because he’s written so human. he’s got a strong will and he’s hard pressed to give up hope. he’s bad at talking to other people and expressing himself and people will follow him anyway because they see his determination and love and it inspires them too. like that’s LITERALLY what happened in season 1. mike’s moral compass leads him to think violence is wrong unless it’s in self defense against violence which is why he reacted so harshly at rink-o-mania. mike admires when violence is used to protect but he’s afraid when violence is used to harm first and that’s absolutely a result of troy and probably lonnie.

mike has an incredibly complicated relationship with el that cannot be divided into whether or not he loves her. he cares about her so deeply that it’s practically love but it isn’t familial or platonic or romantic but something else that came as a result of the things they went through together, good and bad. he wants to be her friend because he isn’t. he doesn’t have a relationship with her but he knows that at her core she’s very similar to him; protective and loving and strong willed. he admires her! but they don’t have a relationship. he wants a friendship, but he has to unpack a lot of his current perception about el and detach himself from her.

mike’s relationship with lucas and will and eddie and dustin and max are all like this too. he has complicated and different relationships with everybody. he’s angry with lucas for joining the basketball team, part of him understands why and part of him wants to be like lucas too. he’s angry with himself about it. he’s constantly being pulled apart in his relationship with will, having built a completely different perception of what he thinks will is saying versus what will thinks he’s saying and it’s caused massive communication issues and neither mike nor will are at fault for it. mike absolutely had a crush on eddie and wanted to accept himself the way eddie did, and i’d say a lot of his admiration had to do with the way eddie pulled him out of his isolation problem after the byers moved. eddie’s death is gonna crush him. mike and dustin haven’t gotten much time together over the course of most of the show but right now dustin is probably the only person who has any idea what’s actually going on in mike’s head because dustin has become a safe place. dustin still wants to play dnd, so mike has someone to lean on without being terrified of exposing himself while he regains confidence in his freak status. dustin and him don’t have deep, hard conversations but mike does tell things to dustin and wants him to do the same. mike’s relationship with max in s2 and s3 literally deserve their own post. like that dynamic is deeply rooted in mike’s insecurities and grief

mike himself has intense struggles with his mental health because of how aware he is. he understands his own feelings and what they mean, he has known he’s had feelings for will for a long time and has struggled with it constantly. he’s struggled with his sexuality because he’s aware he’s gay and can’t love el the way he’s supposed to no matter how hard he tries. he’s aware that he can’t stop loving will no matter how hard he tries. he’s aware of the fact that he looks at boys and never looks at girls because he’s been aware of who he is since at least post s2 and he’s tried to fix it and can’t. he started accepting himself and then the entire thing with s4 was him thinking will was returning his feelings and he was ready to break up with el at sbp and pursue that friendship but then he felt like he had to give el what ‘she’ needed and erased so much of that progress

mike was way too willing to walk off a cliff for dustin. you’re gonna look me in the eye and tell me the boy who set up that sauna plan in under five minutes, who managed to understand a hivemind he’s never directly interacted with, who managed to discover an alternate dimension just to save the people he loves couldn’t find a better way to diffuse that situation??? that he couldn’t even try? the mike we know would never have given into something like that so easily if he didn’t want to. part of him was doing it to save dustin, but he could’ve saved dustin another way. mike had just lost will, el, and lucas. he puts pressure on himself to save everybody and he ended up losing everyone and now dustin is in danger too. he needs to save dustin or else he’ll feel like a complete failure of a person. it’s about saving dustin, but it’s also about the fact that he doesn’t see value in himself outside of other people

i can’t even list everything here but mike is SO complicated. he’s hope and he’s tragic and he’s human. people just don’t want to admit that they refuse to try and understand difficult storylines and make you look outside of the norm you’re forced to look through. it’s about defying norms until you have to defy your own norms.

[glisten-inthedark]

STanon, just finished episode 7

so they establish that love makes El stronger and the scene of her getting the strength to banish One from the memory of her mother telling her she loves her directly parallels Mike trying to give her strength and saying ily, right?

well they can’t rehash that in season 5. aka they aren’t gonna have a scene where Mike declares his love for Eleven to give her strength to defeat Vecna once and for all. so. if they wanted that scene of Mike telling her he loves her to result in M*leven being endgame, then they would’ve saved it for season 5. because it’s not like his ily speech fixes their relationship. they aren’t talking by the end of the season. they could’ve ended the season with Mike still being unable to say ily, or maybe there just isn’t a speech at all, maybe just Mike and Will and Jonathan hold her hands and say “hang in there” and “we’re right here it’s okay” and they just fully focus on Eleven and Max and don’t try to make it a speech moment.

and then end season 4 with M*leven broken up or not talking still and have Mike’s ily speech be the big sweeping confession of love that gives El strength. that’s what makes sense if you want to parallel love giving El strength if you want that love to be coming from Mike.

but they didn’t do this. so I think love defeating Vecna is going to come from a different source. either familial love for El or Byler’s love, or maybe both, and maybe love from the others’ relationships.

but not romantic love between M*leven.

Hello!

That's one of the main things I keep coming back to, as well.

If they wanted Mike and El to be the endgame couple, they should have left that speech to season 5.

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm still convinced Mike's speech would have been way more usefull if it focused on his platonic love for El.

There's no really small letters in the contract that claim only romantic love works. If we think about it: Joyce's, Jonathan's and Mike's love for Will helped him break Will from his trance, Max's love for Lucas and for the party helped her break out of Vecna's hold, Billy's love for his mother and even for Max (as twisted as it was) was what broke him out the mindflayer possession, so clearly is not only about romantic love.

He could've told her he was an amazing person, could've told her about finding her in the woods and about how much she means to him and it would have worked, we all know this.

So if they wanted to give El and advantage and keep this big moment for the last season they could have and they would have, but they didn't, instead they used during season 4 knowing fully well a next season would exist.

And while Mike's speech may have worked (rereading the scene and the situation) it didn't have the full effect we know it could have had considering this El we're talking about and that it took way too long to work.

And exactly this, if the problem- the real problem that is - is that Mike couldn't tell El he loved her, he did say in the end, like 890 times. So, that should've fixed them, right? That should've been enough for her to be like Yay!

But instead she doesn't speak to him, doesn't acknowledge him at all, and even seems a bit pissed tbh. So how exactly did it help their relationship issues?

I even made a post about how I think Will's love Will play into deleting Vecna, but I also believe that if they want Byler to be endgame, they might subvert our expectations and have that big moment coming from Mike instead.

P.S: I just noticed that instead of deleting Vecna my auto corrector went for deleting and I thought it was too amusing for me to correct lmao

[bad-luck-clover]

SPOILERS FOR STRANGER THINGS SEASON 4 VOL. 2

Okay I haven’t posted in forever but but I was literally crying this morning over the Stranger Things Finale before I even watched it so here are my two cents:

Why the fuck is the message of season 4 “don’t be honest about who you are or what you’re struggling with or it’ll hurt/kill you no matter what you do?” Because that’s the point this finale seemed to make.

Will started to open up to Mike about his feelings, albeit in a very indirect way, and that just resulted in Mike pursuing El even further. And even after all of that Mike and El still aren’t actually talking and Will has still been demoted from main character and plot catalyst to the sad gay side character that’s sometimes a monster detector??? So I guess Will just has to continue hiding who he is while he watches his sister and friend/crush continue their codependent and ultimately stagnant relationship and he’s once again being tossed aside in favor of a character that was supposed to die season 1. I mean I love El, but come on, they’re treating Will like he’s completely irrelevant now.

Max started coming to terms with her trauma and mental health, started opening up to her friends finally and was rekindling her relationship with Lucas. She was obviously hurting after Billy died and it was even mentioned that she was suicidal, but she fought to stay alive and get back to her friends who she loves. It was such an obvious metaphor of battling mental illness and Max’s character arc in the first part of the season was so amazing to watch. But no, apparently it doesn’t matter if you fight through the struggles of mental illness and seek help from your support group, the trauma monster is just gonna torture and literally break you anyway, sorry.

And Lucas, despite finally standing up to Jason after trying so hard to fit in and be part of his group, got beat up and then watch the girl he clearly loves be mutilated right in front of him and then put into a coma.

I mean even Robin, who’s still understandably deep in the closet, started to open up a tiiiiiiny bit and had hope for her potential relationship with Vickie and then immediately saw her kissing a guy. But the second she gives up on that and steps a bit further back in the closet? Oh, Vickie broke up with him, thanks for not coming out Robin, you get a cookie.

And Eddie. I do not understand how they could kill the one character who was always 100% unapologetically himself the entire time we saw him. He was labeled a freak and later a psychotic devil-worshipping murderer and yet he never changed who he was to please anyone or even lashed out at the people who wanted to hurt him. Not to mention he’s queer-coded as hell and I seriously doubt that was unintentional. I mean if you’re writing a period show and you do research about 80s culture and especially subcultures and outcasted groups for Eddie specifically, why would you give his character a black bandana in his back pocket if you’re not trying to imply that he’s queer? He was always true to who he was, he protected the kids who reminded him of himself when they were lost and being picked on. He was nice to everyone as long as they weren’t an asshole and he ultimately fought to save his friends and all the people who hated him. And what did he get? He got brutally, painfully killed while the entire town still believed he was a monster and no one besides Dustin and his uncle, not even the other people he fought with in the upside down, mourned or even acknowledged him.

It’s so infuriating that Max and Will (and Robin and Lucas to a lesser extent) suffered and were hurt because they were beginning to open up. But Eddie has always been open and nothing was going to make him start pretending to be someone else so he just straight up died. The one person who was always honest and never lied about who he was and they killed him for shock value. Like am I just reading into this too much or does that literally send a message of “if you start to open up you’ll get hurt. And don’t even try to fully be your true self, because look what’ll happen”

And yeah, sometimes life is cruel and you get hurt unjustly for just being who you are. But this is a fictional tv show where children fight off monsters. A show who’s main audience are the very outcasts they’re now sidelining and killing off in favor of more conventionally “typical” characters. I relate to Will, Robin, Max, and Eddie the most out of all these characters and now I’m being made to watch them suffer for all the reasons I relate to them so much.

Mike and El are still in a pretty unhealthy and unbalanced relationship and they’re fine. Jonathan and Nancy are still lying to each other and refusing to communicate and they’re fine. Steve, as much as I love him, is still pining after Nancy without actually directly talking to her (which, sidenote, is just a huge disservice to his otherwise fantastic character arc imo) and yeah he’s hurting seeing her with Jonathan again but he’s ultimately fine. The only people who really suffered are the only ones who have stopped lying about who they are or what they’re struggling with or who never did so in the first place.

How can you write the line “Forced conformity, that’s what’s killing the kids. That’s the real monster” and then punish the handful of characters who are trying to break away from that conformity? Why the hell, in a show that used to be all about outcasts forming relationships and fighting monsters against all the odds not in spite of being different, but because they’re different, are those very characters being hurt and punished for not being like everyone else?

Like, I’m just so fed up and tired. This show is legitimately ruined for me now, and it’s not because a character I liked died or the ship I was rooting for didn’t happen. It’s because I look at these characters I relate to being tormented and hurt for being queer or neurodivergent or having trauma, things that I experience/struggle with myself, and the message I hear is “What you are is wrong and bad things will happen to you because of it. You deserve to hurt because of what you are and you will never be safe or happy.” And that fucking kills me, especially since this was a show I loved so much just yesterday and now I can’t even stand to watch it.

[carol-effing-danvers]

but i think you’re wild

(we’re just doing lowkey bondage, lowkey femdom, and high key heart attacks)

Watching the Hellfire Club is a whole new different experience for Chrissy. Dustin is very enthusiastic about helping her to understand what it is, exactly, that they do here and seems very excited in general at the idea of her playing with them.

Naturally, he tells her, she needs to have a character. It won't be her, obviously, Dustin assures Chrissy quickly, but it could be like her. It can, in fact, be anything she wants. Her character doesn't even have to be a girl, if she doesn't want to play one.

From her understanding of it, Dungeons and Dragons is half game played with dice and half live theater - except that the only one who has the script is Eddie.

Who is Eddie playing?

He's the Dungeon Master, Dustin explained. So he isn't playing so much as running things in the game, moving the world around us. It's mainly his job to keep things interesting.

That, as Chrissy soon realizes, is an accurate statement but also wildly underselling everything that happens.

In the Hellfire Club, Eddie may as well be god. He is the creator of the world they play in, both everything and nothing.

“I’m not gonna go easy on you guys just because you’ve got my girl in your party,” Eddie warns them, with a wicked grin, reaching out to quickly flip the end of her ponytail.

Chrissy smiles, a blush staining her cheeks. “Who, me? I can’t be your girl - I’m Nierys Moondrinker, level nine Druid.”

Dustin grins and shakes playfully at her shoulders, taunting Eddie: "She's gonna help us kick your ass."

God, he loves this little shit.

"-I want to convince the witch to tell me where he went," Chrissy says, shaky but confident. The longer she's played, the more calm and certain she's getting. It's sort of fantastic to watch, actually.

Eddie lifts his eyes, holding her gaze and purrs "Give me a persuasion check."

Chrissy bites her lip as she lets go of her dice. "...fourteen?"

"The old witch describes a trail to you…"

When he introduces Vecna amongst the hooded cultists, her male teammates begin screeching in horrified excitement, and Chrissy assumes from the panicked wails and frantic flailing that this is the Really Bad Guy. They aren’t exactly in top form, either. “You are scared. You’re tired, you’re injured,” Eddie coos, though he is completely solemn. “Do you flee Vecna and his cultists? Or do you stand your ground and fight?”

The poor boys are all panicking, she can tell. But as somber as Eddie looks, Chrissy has watched sports for long enough to spot a trash-talking challenger when she sees him. The others gape at her as she stares him down and smirks at Eddie. “We fight.”

Dustin practically bounces in his seat, shaking Chrissy’s shoulders again with a massive grin, hooting his support for this plan: “-to the death!”

The other boys bang on the table, hollering “To. The. Death! To. The. Death!”

Eddie’s smile is positively devilish as he drops back into his seat, nodding as he acknowledges this decision.

What follows is something of a bloodbath. They don’t actually have a cleric - the person who heals you, Dustin had told her sadly, our only cleric was Will and he isn’t here - so apart from their own buffs and abilities, they don’t have much ability to bounce back from the damage they take.

Mike, who is supposed to be the paladin and tanking for their team, is taken out almost immediately - looming over the board like the dark, malevolent god that he is, Eddie swats his figure from the table with a careless sweep of the hand and poor Mike moans piteously with his face in his hands.

In the end Chrissy and Dustin are the only people still left standing and Gareth tries to talk them into backing down. “You need to roll a Nat 20 - that’s 20 to 1 odds-”

Chrissy, intensely absorbed by now, won’t even hear of it, shaking the dice cupped between her palms. “To the death!” she snaps, and lets it go, breathlessly waiting for it to stop rolling.

Eddie leans down to watch its path, his serious demeanor breaking down into a wide smile. "Twenty," he crows, with a little leap she can’t help but find adorable, clapping his hands together. “Victory belongs to Nierys Moondrinker!”

The boys all absolutely lose it, going bananas around her - screaming, cheering, jumping up and down. Dustin shakes her so hard that Chrissy nearly falls over and she can't help herself from bouncing along with them as she hugs him back, grinning like an absolute lunatic all the while - which might literally be Eddie’s favorite thing ever.

The boys are on a sugar high and on a winning high and immediately go outside to shriek their victory to the night, chatting excitedly with and at each other.

Chrissy doesn't seem that much different as the munchkins all go home, chattering excitedly with him in the back of the van with a packet of Twizzlers in her lap. She isn't ready to go home and so he assumes that's a code for "I don't wanna wreck this good mood by having to talk to my mom right now, please feed me sugar and tell me I'm pretty". (Always a safe assumption - plus he would do it anyway.)

But he's not entirely correct.

Her lips on his taste like strawberry licorice - super into that, wow - and right away, Chrissy is tugging at his vest, tiny hands splayed warm over his club shirt.

Feeling naughty. Super into that, too.

Oh he doesn't know the half of it, yet.

She pulls insistently at his shirt, too, plucks and tugs until he obliges her nonverbal persistence and pulls the thing over his head. Shirtless in the yellow-orange light filtering in from the streetlamps outside the van, Chrissy’s eyes go wide and confused, Eddie looks down and then grins.

"Forgot about that," he admits as she stares at the little silver bars decorating both of his nipples. "Had those for the past couple of years."

"You…why?" she asks, genuinely quite puzzled.

He shrugs. "Feels good? Well, not right away, they have to heal up, but then…" She looks even more confused by this and a thought occurs to him.

Eddie slips his hand beneath her bra and pinches gently, until he can hear the soft, sweet sound of her whine. Rolling it between his fingertips, he murmurs "Feels good, hm?"

"That's…but I-I'm not a…man," she gasps quietly, encouraging his other hand to touch her, too.

"Girls and guys aren't that different, here," he tells her, pulling down the front of her shirt to kiss and lick where his hands have touched.

Her shirt will end up so stretched out she'll never be able to wear it anywhere decent again, but Chrissy doesn't even care, shifting up higher on her knees and curling her fingers through his hair to feed him her own flesh. Her panties grow damp, his teeth hungrily scraping over her chest and she forgets what they were even-

It's his bare skin against her hands, the smooth skin of his long back and the uneven pattern of black ink across it that brings her back to her original desire. She has enough breath and sense left to gasp "...no!"

Eddie quickly moves his hands from her body, repeating “No?” in a tone both bewildered and mildly alarmed.

Without his head bent forward, Chrissy has a much better view of his chest, and now that she isn’t so distracted by the surprise of his piercings, she can see the ink all over him.  

On top of the bats, the demon-puppet, and the wyvern all over his arms that she’s seen before, and the burning black sun just beneath his collarbone that he'd flashed her the first time they really spoke to each other, Eddie also had a large crow, wings spread, across the left side of his rib cage. It led all the way to his heart and the crow plucked there with his sharp beak, opening up the crack inked there. There was another tattoo on his opposite side, a knife that followed the crest of his hip, made whimsical by a cluster of strawberries and their blossoms twined around it.

"Oh." It was all she could say, because it's so beautiful in its own way. Or rather, he is beautiful, because they are him, aren't they? It's all Eddie, just Eddie.

Eddie shifts uneasily, realizing that they maybe should have had a little chat about this beforehand but…he kinda sorta forgot? He lives with them every day, sees them on his own body constantly, so he pretty much forgets that they exist in the same way you don't consciously think about your own fingernails or eyelashes.

Chrissy has been extremely go-with-the-flow about all of this so far, but this is definitely another Very New Thing for her. Which is why Eddie just about has an entire out-of-body experience when her hands slowly brush over his chest, stroking down his skin. His eyes snap down to her face. Chrissy is looking up at him through her lashes, biting her lower lip. It’s never happened to him with a girl before, but Eddie suddenly feels like he’s being…seduced.

Oh, little girl - I am the fucking surest of sure things around, I promise you.

Though Eddie doesn’t know it, Chrissy is currently living out one of her most cherished fantasies right now, gently pushing him back and back and back, until she’s made him recline back and she’s practically resting in his lap. His brain fizzles to a literal standstill when her mouth gently touches his chest to follow up on that hint Eddie gave her earlier.

Her own curiosity leads Chrissy to open her mouth and use her tongue, intrigued by the strange contrast in texture between the warm firmness of his flesh and the cold firmness of the steel bar, the studs unyielding against the roof of her mouth.

It’s interesting and she doesn’t hate it - even if she did, she’d still keep going because she really, really likes the noise Eddie makes, a low “mmmph” that he sighs as though trying to hold it in.

She can’t help but get a little distracted, gently scraping her fingernails across his chest as she traces the sensual curve of the crow’s wings and arching neck. Distracted enough that Chrissy doesn’t realize that she’s used her teeth.

“Oh, fuck me,” he groans with quiet intensity.

He tries to reach for her, tries to touch her, but as much as Chrissy wants that, she refuses to let herself be distracted. Catching his wrists in her hands, Chrissy pulls his hands above his head rather pointedly. No, you keep these right here.

Eddie wonders if Chrissy has noticed the handcuffs hanging on the back of his bedroom door - or more importantly, what those handcuffs are for.

Eddie wonders if he has actually died and this is now his heaven.

Either way, he keeps his arms over his head, draped on the van’s floor like a good boy because that is what his lady wants.

If he hasn't died already, he's pretty sure he's going to when Chrissy's mouth keeps moving - lips caressing black feathers, fingertips trailing down his sternum, tongue swiping over red-ink strawberries and gray-ink knife. When she moves to unzip his pants, Eddie thinks he might literally and figuratively explode.

No matter how good his imagination is, he has to admit that it's never been this good.

She has never told him so, but Chrissy is pretty sure that she's good at this. Or she hopes that she is - Jason thought she was really good, but she already knows that he and Eddie are very different. She's never minded doing it too much either, though she knows some girls do. Honestly, when she was dating Jason, she preferred it. For her, it was so much less messy or painful than actually having sex.

Until, well...

Sex with Eddie has never been painful but it's usually very, very messy.

Eddie feels her tongue slide along his dick, sucking him down with an easy, practiced motion that steals his next breath right away from his lungs. She's - fuck, she's actually really, really good at this.

She gets a tiny bit distracted again - and unknowingly causes Eddie some significant agony because of it. There's just so much newness. So much to feel and touch and look at. Chrissy teases him with torturous licks of his cock and the strokes of her hands over his stomach are delicate but profoundly affecting. She can feel Eddie's legs trembling and although their positions are reversed, there's something about this that feels very similar to their first time together. It hasn't happened too much since then, but he feels like he's holding himself in check again. Like he's mentally and physically trying to restrain himself.

He also isn't really quiet - Jason was, and it actually used to make her nervous. More self-conscious. She was never completely certain she was doing it right. He would be silent, make that stupid facial expression, and then it would be over. Eddie isn't quiet. He moans, he sighs, he murmurs "What're you doing to me, little girl?", which has her rubbing her thighs together for reasons she doesn't totally understand just yet.

Beneath the tips of her fingers, she feels Eddie's abdominals continuously rippling and a glance through her eyelashes gives her a view of his face, tipped back as he tries to breath in and out a regular, controlled pace. Watches the muscles in his arms tense and relax, still raised above his head where she put them. Tense and relax, tense and relax. She watches the ink across his body shift with him.

Just to see, she sucks - a long, slow slide because she might not consciously realize it, but she kind of wants to break him, nails gently scratching into his thighs through the denim.

She can feel long muscles in his legs jerking but Eddie doesn't dislodge Chrissy from her perch on top of him.

"Ho-lyyyyy shit, Chrisssss," he hisses, teeth clenched together. But he doesn't lower his arms and he doesn't tell her to stop, which Chrissy takes to mean that he still wants her to keep going. Chrissy controls her own facial muscles so that she doesn't smile and wreck her goal here, instead trying to build herself a rhythm.

Eddie's reactions are so very well worth her efforts. Twitching near-constantly, as though he's receiving electric shocks, he pants and swears and pleads for the mercy of his immortal soul, but he never demands that she stop. She inhales the heady smell of male and sex and squeezes her legs together again, absently scratching gently at Eddie's chest again.

He smells like a person, like a sweaty human being and not the overwhelming scent of the men's fragrance section at a department store - unlike Jason's silence, this is something that she never even realized until this very moment that she'd always found deeply uncomfortable and unsettling.

But she pushes that thought away, as revealing as it is, and concentrates instead on the feel of his cock in her mouth, the shape sliding over her tongue. And something even more shocking occurs to Chrissy: this could be inside you.

It shouldn't be surprising or novel - she HAS had sex before, even if not with Eddie - but the rush it sends through her is some kind of revelation. It's one thing to know that you are capable of having sex and another thing completely to crave one specific dick with everything that you are. Or more importantly, the specific man attached to that specific dick. EDDIE could be inside of her. Chrissy moans at the very idea. Oh, she's ready. She's so ready-

"Fuck, Chris, you're gonna make me cum," Eddie confesses in a panicked burst, palms braced on the floor as he tries to pull his hips as far back from her mouth as he can. He assumes that she isn't going to be okay with swallowing, and that's fine but he's really serious about the cumming. "Chrissy-"

Until whatever afterlife that waits for him descends upon Eddie Munson's black soul, he's going to cherish the memory of his little girl swallowing him down with her eyes closed as though she is absolute rapture because his girlfriend is clearly a perfect angel from heaven above (obviously, duh). He manages to heave a heartfelt "Holy fuck, Chris."

She releases him with a loud pant, lips swollen pink. "Can-can you, please-?"

Eddie's not sure what she's asking for as she tugs at his wrist, until she presses his fingers beneath her skirt. She's soaked, Chrissy fucking destroyed her own panties, and he swears that he blacks out a tiny bit as Eddie realizes that the moaning was probably not just a technique to make him feel good. "Jesus, Chris," he whispers, fingers shoving the wet cotton aside to feel her slick and hot in his hand. She whines. "You really like makin' me squirm, huh, little girl?"

"Please hurry," she begs.

It's reckless of him but Eddie pushes three fingers into her right away - it's stupid and he shouldn't fucking do that, he's never had her take more than two before but luckily Chrissy only moans into his belly, sending residual shivers through his body with her mouth on the treasure trail leading down to his cock as she arches her hips into the touch.

Gripping one of her thighs, he pushes his fingers in deeper, thumb free to play with her clit. Her whines turn into more insistent, heartfelt whimpers, mostly "Eddie", "please", and "yes" - music to his goddamn ears - and he let her move whatever way she needed to until she's just fucking herself on his fingers.

He isn't sure she notices the way he shudders when she kisses the dagger on his hip.

One day, not today, but one day, Eddie will tell her that the strawberries are newer than the knife. The only color in his constellation of ink, placed there for a girl with strawberry blond hair and strawberry shampoo.

[mikewheeler]

Vent o’clock: People need to understand that shipping will and mike is fine, but it’s truly (and I’m sorry to say this to Mike and will fans) not gonna happen. Not only is it too late to develop a relationship like this in the last season of a show. But also, There has been no indication AT ALL of mike returning wills feeling and a script that however way you interpret it isn’t proof because the millions of people who need to know these indications aren’t gonna read the script, if they were to want to drop hints at this “developing relationship” they need to make it clear for everyone not 1% of the audience who read the scripts. Moreover, people seem to interpret mikes insufferable (I don’t personally find him insufferable but I can see how other maybe do) character traits on him being secretly closeted which I know for a fact is not the case and NOT because I think it’s impossible for mike to be gay and there can only be one gay character in the whole show but because and talking from a writing stand point it would be too late in the show to establish it (look at how much it took them to establish will). What’s so annoying to me and what I see people putting as *proof* is whenever anyone talks about wills sexuality they always take it as confirmation to mike and wills relationship and it’s what started the *queer baiting* nonsense. Like wills SEXUALITY is established not mike and wills relationship, I swear I’ve seen people use Noahs interview from when he confirmed his sexuality and being in love with mike as proof for byler and it’s like ??? This is actually disrespectful to will, that his own sexuality and him coming to terms with it is always lumped with a non existent relationship (smh) And the main reason why they won’t happen is because they’ve always and I mean always said that Mike and eleven is their main couple they want them to be Superman and lois lane or iron man and pepper potts, leia and Han it is very clear that they want them to be like that iconic sci-fi couple that can be remembered till the show ends and years to come (whether they successfully make an iconic relationship it’s not the point but I’m talking about their intention). Anyways that’s my rant, I’m just so annoyed that people think that people who want eleven and mike to stay together are just “Milevens” like I’m not a shipper and I don’t care I’m just a fan of the show but my social media has been full of byler content and I’m just confused like there’s a difference between interpretation and just blatant delusion. Byeeee thanks for listening xoxo

Yeah I mean all of this discourse very much exists only inside the fandom bubble, I think that’s the most important thing to remember. No matter what our opinions are, we’re all weirdos that spend a lot more time than the average Joe talking about stranger things. That’s the first thing to remember lol.

Genuinely I do not think anyone outside the fandom really saw what went down in season 4 and thought mike has feelings for will. The “mike fighting homosexuality” theory very much exists only in the fandom space… nobody outside of tumblr/tik tok saw will crying in 4x08 and mike not even noticing and thought “damn mike is in love with will but just can’t acknowledge it.” I think a good portion of the GA was annoyed with mike bc they’re protective of will and thought he was a bad friend (and imo they’re wrong lmao but that’s a diff issue) but to the millions of ppl watching this show, the issue of “will mike and will get together?” is nonexistent.

Truly everyone is entitled to their opinion, I think that needs to be reiterated. There’s nothing weird or wrong about shipping Mike and Will. But I do get that it has gotten a little out of hand, post vol 2 especially, so I get the need to vent. Like some people have been disrespectful and frankly a little wackadoodle in the way they’re treating others. So long as everyone stays in their lane and nobody annoys me with their opinions (e.g. reblogging my gifsets with ur paragraphs long b*ler analysis in the tags), I’m cool.

[itsonlystrange]

I’d like to point out that the “it’s all just a bunch of coincidence” argument is very poor. People say that about anything they don’t like. If we’re using this argument then I could say that everytime Mileven accidentally held hands or touched or any of that lovey dovey stuff that the Mileven fandom goes nuts over is a coincidence, but I have 0 evidence that it’s a coincidence, I’m just saying it is because that’s how I, a biased person on the side of byler, sees it. And I love the Milevens that actually respect us, it’s just the toxic ones that stomp on us or rain on our parade that irritate me.

So I ask skeptical Milevens, why do you think it’s all a coincidence? Because the Duffers have gone on record multiple times saying that nothing in their show is a coincidence, so it’s odd of you to assume that it is, when that goes against everything the duffers have said.

I see a lot of people claim that all of Bylers very romantic coded scenes are just coincidences with out any real evidence solely because they want them to be coincidences.

Reminder that the duffers had to write, revise, have Noah and Finn read at the table read, rehearse, and then film all of Bylers romantic coded scenes. And do you seriously believe that nobody stepped up and said, “Hey, I think some people will start to ship this if you make your two male characters hold hands and look at each others lips.” Like on paper, that sounds romantic. And on screen, it looks romantic too! If the duffers didn’t want byler to be shown as romantic they wouldn’t have put all of that effort into Mike and Will’s romanticly coded scenes in season two. And sure, one could say they were oblivious and didn’t realize that this relationship could be seen as anything more than romantic and that one of their 100 other writers and revisors and producers didn’t step up and say “Is this really what we want to be conveying in this show when they’re just supposed to be friends?” (Which I doubt. The duffers and everyone else on the writing crew knew exactly what they were implying. And if the duffers themselves didn’t, I HIGHLY doubt that someone didn’t step up and point out how romantic some of these scenes are, especially considering multiple of their writers are apart of the lgbtq community which makes it highly more likely that someone would have realized as I’m sure their gay senses are much stronger than those of the cishet writers on the squad. ) However, byler kind of blew up after season two, so if ST didn’t mean for Mike and Will’s relationship to be seen as more than platonic, then why did they continue doing it in season three? And the thing is, we’re not “delusional” for thinking this. Hundreds of thousands of millions of people have pointed this out across all platforms. It stops being a problem with us and “seeing what we want to see” when millions of people see the same, and it becomes the writers problem for even implying that in the first place.

Here’s an example: take Lucas and Dustin. Sure, there are definitely people out there that think or head canon as either as gay, but not nearly as big of a community as the Byler community. The reason is: Lucas and Dustin don’t have queer coding. They haven’t been painted the same way as Mike and Will’s relationship has. Or Jonathan, yeah, people may head canon as him as gay, or even think he actually is, but he doesn’t have any evidence that really points up to the fact that he is, or that he could be.

The duffers aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t have written byler this way if they didn’t want people shipping it. The official ST writer account has acknowledged byler multiple times, before st3 even started filming. They knew what they were doing. If their goal was to portray Mike and Will as a simple platonic friendship, and that all of their queer coded scenes in st2 were just a coincidence, why would they continue to do it in season 3? Queer baiting is real, yes. However like I said before, the st writing team has a lot of queer and lgbtq+ members themselves, not sure why they would want to queer bait when they’re gay/lesbian/bisexual themselves.

The truth is, byler would have never made it this far if it wasn’t meant to be shipped and portrayed like more of a romantic relationship than a platonic one. They would have shut it down awhile ago. They wouldn’t be so ominous about it. Noah and Finn wouldn’t constantly dodge questions about it unless they legally weren’t allowed to answer them. The duffers wouldn’t have been so vague in the ending of season 3 or in any interviews regarding season 3 about byler. Mike and Will wouldn’t have gotten a whole segment in the official ST book, they wouldn’t have held hands! Seriously! They held hands. Did someone seriously not point out how non platonic that was?———

And use the excuse all you want, “Will was just scared. That’s why Mike held his hand.” Okay, well Max and Lucas held hands when they were both scared in the exact same episode but I guess that doesn’t count because they’re a boy and a girl and Mike and Will are two boys. ———-And it’s funny because you KNOW that if Mike promised to go crazy together with El, that would he in every Milevens Instagram bio, it’d be on merchandise, it’d be everywhere. If Mike said meeting El was the best thing he’s ever done, people would be going bat shit crazy over how romantic that is and how they’re so in love. If Mike and El fought and he ran out in the middle of the rain looking for her when he couldn’t even apologize to his real girlfriend who dumped him just hours prior, people would say that Mike was in love with El and how much he cares about her yadda yadda. But that’s the thing. It’s two boys, so apparently it has to be platonic. Because that’s just how it works in their cishet minds. ——I’d like to see a better argument then “it was all a coincidence.” Because that’s not valid. Why? Why do you think it’s all a coincidence? It’s all just fake? Please. Elaborate. Because if these romantic scenes involved Mike and El instead of Mike and Will, then they’d see. Because they didn’t have Finn and Noah rehearse all these romantic coded scenes multiple times for nothing. They literally wrote, revised, edited, rehearsed, and filmed ALL of these scenes and still went through with it. And even in season three when people really started shipping byler, they STILL directed Finn and Noah to look at eachothers lips. They still filmed the rain fight. KNOWING byler shippers existed and KNOWING this would only heighten the amount of byler shippers there are.

The duffers aren’t stupid. This isn’t a surface level show. Everything they do is intentional, they’ve said it themselves. And yes, I agree that some byler proof COULD just be apophenia, but stuff like this? Crazy together? Looking at eachothers lips? Holding hands? I’m the only one that cares about Will? Mike keeping his eyes open in the final Mileven kiss, those aren’t small little things. You’re telling me that they couldn’t find another take for that final Mileven kiss? No. Finn kept his eyes open because he was directed to do so. The duffers are writers and directors for a reason. They went to school for this. So please, I’d like to see some actual argument against byler other than “they said they loved eachother!” “It’s all a coincidence!” I’d like to see people actually counter my arguments with actual evidence. Not just “Finn says they’re in love” not just “Millie ships it!” Because interviews are not evidence. They’re instructed to create hype for the show. If David can lie about hopper being dead, Finn and Millie can lie about Mileven being in love. I don’t want the argument of “it’s been built up for 3 seasons so they won’t destroy it now.” Stancy was built up for 2 seasons and see how that turned out. And Mileven fell more in season three than it went up.

Anyways,, if you’re a polite Mileven, this isn’t for you. I love you with my whole heart. If you’re just vibing, I love you. Ship what you want to ship! Feel free to counter my argument! However, If you’re someone who calls us “delusional”, leave. The doors right there. The cast has talked about how much they hate the ship wars in our fandom, so if you’re just gonna say how stupid we are, don’t let the door hit you on the way out:)

Sorry for long post lol. Love you all

[mrslackles]

what do you think are gg's biggest flaws?

Ooh, Anon! It’s like you’re in my head. 

I’m busy making a video (that will probably never see the light of day) about this --  my distance from the show has really helped with some super objective clarity -- so I’ll use my notes from that to help me answer. 

I’ll preface this by saying what I was most shocked by after putting down all the points was that Rio isn’t even mentioned until really far down??

Anyway, let's get into it.

These are Good Girls' greatest flaws in my opinion (and relative to season 1 -- while I think it had its flaws too, the list is far smaller and I think that's a separate post)

1. It didn't stick to its guns

What set this show apart from others in the 'Everyday person does crime (poorly)' genre was its comedic lightness, strong friendship element, relatability and emphasis on girl power.

a) By season 2, the lightness was already slowly disappearing to make way for season 3's darkness. (Quite literally; this show said sunlight scenes for WHO.) It also stopped being as fun. Remember how it genuinely used to be fun? I mean let's not forget The Best Scene Ever where Ruby shoots Big Mike by accident and we all laughed our asses off. (Compare and contrast to a similar-in-tone-and-context scene -- or even the whole episode -- like Boomer popping up behind them as Rio's package in season 3.) I think season 3 had some great lines and laughs, but in general, the fun element was completely missing for me.

b) As was the friendship. We already know Annie and Ruby basically became Beth's backup dancers in season 2, but at least then they still seemed to have some type of agency. In season 3, they rarely question Beth's (truly questionable) decisions, don't talk to her about shit like why she's still with her horrible husband and have very few true friendship moments as they did in season 1.

c) Which made it less relatable, but what also contributed was the major plot holes (it's less easy to relate when you're constantly having to remind yourself to suspend your disbelief). And, to be honest, their stupid actions. Just the most common-sense things weren't followed, like not taking your children to a crack den or not putting a hit out on a gang leader. It's frustrating watching a TV show -- where characters are supposed to learn things, have arcs and improve over time -- and feeling like you have more logical sense than all the main characters in every scene. (WHO would think a hitman was going to use a sniper rifle on people in broad daylight on the side of the road???)

d) You don't have to look any further than the title or the stans who shout "THE SHOW IS ABOUT THE GIRLS" -- or, hell, the first 10 seconds of the show where Sara is literally talking about the glass ceiling -- to know that the main characters being women is very important to the show. If not formally feminist, it was at least supposed to be empowering or feel like "girl power" (a term I hate, but we won't get into that now).

And I think it did it pretty well in season 1 -- it actually played on my favourite theme of the show, which is the world's perception of these women being what ultimately allows them to get away with so much. (Rife with opportunities for commentary about white privilege, but also a genius way to upend patriarchal beliefs.) But more and more it seemed like the show was asking you to accept empowerment as simply "these things are being done by women, yay".

And, well.

2. Its marketing

I'll keep this one short because I think we all know how messed up this situation is. Basically they're selling a show (every week!) that they're not making while ignoring all feedback on every social media platform. Which brings us to...

3. The marriage of Death

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times -- Beth's character development starts with getting rid of Dean. Her growth is stunted by him on multiple fronts and it's frustrating to viewers since she's constantly put forth as the main character. Not to mention how the audience, separately from Beth, was originally conditioned to see Dean as the scum of the earth (think of scenes like him crashing his car because he was perving on a woman jogging) so keeping them together is really... a choice. To actively root for this marriage (which seems like what the show wants, at least for the protracted moment) means either thinking Dean is a great person (which, as I said, we've only seen the opposite of) or believing he's all Beth deserves. Which leads me to...

4. Beth's (socio)path(y)

Is sociopath a 'good' word? Probably not. Have I seen dozens upon dozens of posts talking about whether Beth is one? Yes. And I see it from a huge variety of people -- from viewers who just binged the show last weekend to those who've been watching for years, the question keeps coming up. And I entirely blame the writing of the show that, by the way, I don't believe is deliberately creating Beth to get this reaction. I think she's written (and, to an extent, acted) in a way that is much too aloof and I'm not convinced it's meant to come off as cold and unfeeling as it does. Everything else leads me to believe that the audience is supposed to root for Beth, but it's just so difficult.

Beth does a lot of messed up shit that requires dialogue to sympathise with her and the inner workings of her mind, but in the later seasons Beth rarely gets to express herself verbally. And every time she does get to speak about her emotions, the dialogue is a pick-your-own-adventure between "She's in so much denial", "This person feels no emotions" and "I'll go find an analysis/fic later to explain this" (scenes like "Nothing" or "I was just bored"). Compare and contrast with some of the great scenes in season 1 where she emotes, like her paralysing shock after they first rob the store or admitting she enjoys crime, or (one of my favourites!) the one in the park where she's mimicking the other mothers beside her.

5. Brio

I said in the beginning that I was shocked Rio doesn't get mentioned until this point and that's because I've always felt like he was an integral part of the show. When people say the show is about the girls, they're truncating -- the show is about the girls getting into crime. That crime is represented by Rio over and over again -- they never bring in another criminal at his level (which is another one of its flaws, but that's also a different post); Rio is it.

And though I stand by Rio's importance, the truth is that Brio isn't as essential to the show, by which I mean that if all of the above were done well, it wouldn't be as sorely missed. In lieu of riveting plot, a fun friendship, character development and empowerment, most viewers have glommed onto Brio like a lifeboat (or ship, heh).

Unfortunately it's also what the show has most stubbornly refused to develop significantly.

It's honestly a toss-up for why I feel Brio is a flaw: is the flaw that they got together? That they never got together well enough? That the writing keeps bringing in these 'chemistry-filled' scenes that are ultimately filled with air?

I don't know. Maybe all of them; maybe just one, depending on the day.

6. Its criticism falls flat without intersectionality

This is a big one because Good Girls is *trying* to do something very clever. As mentioned previously, my favourite theme of the show is how the women's apparent innocence/vulnerability in the eyes of society is their biggest strength. The show plays with this and other interesting themes with varying levels of success, but ultimately they all fall a little flat when they don't feel intersectional.

When Ruby gets sidelined. When Turner, who sees and all but calls out by name Beth's privilege, is portrayed as the villain. When Rio is told he's gonna "pop a cap" in his young child's "ass". When the racist grandma becomes a sympathetic character whom we must later grieve. (And she really didn't have to be racist, now that I think about it? It was just that one line for laughs and that was it.) When, despite the real-world implications, Dean can loudly announce in a store that he's buying a gun to kill someone with and the show just glides past it. When Ruby has to grovel for forgiveness from Beth for trying to protect her husband and family from the system, with no acknowledgement from Beth about how their realities are different. When Rhea gets booted off the show as soon as she's done serving Beth's plot. When Rio gets treated like a prostitute for absolutely no reason. (Oh, and is accused of raping Beth and is literally spoken of as an animal and starts only existing in zero dim lighting as a one-dimensional stereotype... the list goes on.)

7. PR/The actors

I'll risk my life here to sprinkle this in because I do think it's a massive problem. The Manny/Christina of it all is just the tip of the iceberg (although wtf Good Girls? There's nothing you could do to get these two into an interview together??). The main actors do the bare minimum to promote the show and it's weird. I also think it's the height of unprofessionalism to keep characters on the show against the wishes of the majority of the audience just because you enjoy their actors (Boomer confirmed; Dean highly suspected). While, on the flip side of the coin, limiting a character's screentime because you aren't best buddies with them. Having less and less Rio when he's such a fan favourite is dumb; as is not including him in any series marketing material. It feels personal and that isn't how a TV show should be run.

8. The entire hair and wardrobe department needs a stern talking-to

[remmushound]

Beyond the bay part 16, What Lurks?

Summary - Leonardo assesses Mikey’s physical and mental state. 

Tags - @selfindulgenz @brightlotusmoon @ilo-artistry

Content warnings: Medical exams, medical assessments

Everything was wrong. Wrong and so very dark. Mikey felt as if the clouds had fallen from the sky and come to settle in his mind; yet, despite the mental lag that weighed on him like lead, his body felt impossibly light, almost drifting. He had to find them; he had to find his team! But he felt like he was suffocating, like there was hundred pound weight bearing down on his chest. There was… something that he was wading through. Something that shifted and rippled and flowed around him like a cool, moving blanket.

He had to find his team. He had to get back to the mission! He had to find that mutagen and he had to find his way! And… he had to wake up…

“Ow…?” Mikey opened one eye, and then the other as he was suddenly and acutely aware of strong fingers digging into his muscles. His head was throbbing with a steady thump thump thump.

“Mike.” Donnie’s voice was breathless and urgent, but nonetheless gentle as he momentarily paused his massage in favor of more important exams. 

“Ah— again with the light?” Mikey whined and raised a hand to cover his eyes as Donnie shined his flashlight in them.

Donnie returned to the painful massage. “Do you know your name?”

“Mikey…”

“Do you know where you are? Do you know what happened?” The more questions Donnie asked, the more pressing his voice became. When Mikey didn't respond, Donnie repeated himself louder and clearer.

Mikey could only sputter. He knew he should know those answers, but when he reached out to grab them, they slipped through his fingers like sand. His eyes grew wider, and he shook his head. Why couldn’t he remember?

Leonardo was there too; Mikey didn't notice him until the red eared slider moved directly in front of him and waved a hand. The motion made Mikey focus on him, though at the time there seemed to be more than one of the blue-clad ninja, like Mikey was seeing double.

Leonardo, as opposed to Donnie’s bombardment, only asked a single question. “Can you tell me who is best turtle?”

Mikey’s face wrinkled in his concentration, and then split in a grin. Now that he could remember! “Trick question, it’s me! I’m a triple threat: brains, brawns, and a dazzling personality.”

Leonardo couldn’t have smiled wider if he tried. Now that Mikey could focus better on the room around him, which slowly came back to him as the infirmary, he finally located the source of the thumping that he had thought was just in his head. He saw Donatello hanging in the background, the young mutant looking blatantly bored, like he’d rather be doing anything else at that moment. He was bouncing a tiny, purple ball against the wall, catching it, and then bouncing it again in a steady rhythm. Unlike the other turtles, he didn't seem to notice nor care that Mikey was awake; his only acknowledgement was to Mikey’s self-declaration of being best turtle.

“Well that is too bad, because I am a quadruple threat.” Donatello bounced the ball one last time, then caught it as he made his way over to the group. “Strong, funny, amusing, and hilarious.”

“Aren’t three of those just synonyms?” Donnie questioned without looking up from Mikey’s tensed muscles.

“You.” Donatello said. “I do not like you.”

“But I like the confidence!” Leonardo declared, and held out his hand to Mikey. “High three!”

Mikey was all too glad to meet the inviting gesture— that is, until his hand seemed to faze through Leonardo. Mikey frowned, and then he tried again with the same result. He missed? If Leonardo noticed Mikey’s confusion, he didn’t show any reaction to it. Instead, he grabbed Donatello’s ball, much to the grievance of his twin, and tossed it up in the air a few times.

“D’ya wanna play catch?” Leonardo offered, his smile slight and soft. He grabbed the ball between his thumb and pointer finger, showing the tiny rubber toy off to Mikey. “Might help you concentrate~”

Having something to do with his hands did help. Mikey nodded eagerly and held out the arm that wasn’t currently being assaulted by Donnie’s therapeutic rubbing. Leonardo swung his arm back and forth a few time, allowing Mikey the chance to focus before Leonardo tossed the ball with a careful swing. Mikey’s eyes followed the ball as it glided smoothly through the air, and he raised his hand to catch it. It slipped right through his hands. 

Mikey blinked. His eyes pinched together as they searched and eventually found the ball on the floor rolling away from him. He missed? Again? Now he had a tight pain in his chest, one that refused to go away. A ball of discomfort and anxiety and fear that grew bigger and bigger, trying to force itself up his throat to choke him.

“Are you playing tricks?” He didn't know why his voice sounded the way it did, like a child who hadn’t yet found the confidence to speak up.

Donnie frowned at the weakness of the voice, gently cupping Mikey’s head in a hand to tilt him back and examine his throat. Mikey gave a low churr of disapproval, but didn't resist.

“No tricks!” Leonardo said, and he held up his hands as a show of surrender. He held that stance for a few seconds more before gathering the ball from where it had fallen and placing it back into Mikey’s hand. “Okay, now you pass it to me.”

Donnie backed away from Mikey to let him have space while the younger box turtle stuck out his tongue and tried his best to focus on Leonardo’s shifting figure. It was like a filter had been laid over Mikey’s vision. A filter that made Leonardo seem as if he were in constant, blurred motion and made his voice like something at the end of a cavern.

“Whenever you’re ready.” Came the echo of Leonardo’s voice, so distant and lost to Mikey’s ears. The tunnel was so dark, and the sewage was up to his knees and uncomfortably warm. He breathed, but it burned so he did it as little as possible. For the republic, he had to keep moving. Mutagen was fuel, mutagen was life, and there was mutagen in this dark place. He just had to get back to Commander Mozar and find it. Mozar would know what to do. He was hand-picked by the prime leader himself!

There was someone calling his name. His commander? No, someone more familiar, more like a brother. Zog? No… no that wasn’t it either.

“Leon…?” There was a slick, cool hand pressed over Mikey’s forehead.

“Hey, bud.” Leonardo said, and he was smiling; Donnie’s face was turned into a tight frown. “You zoned out for a sec. All good?”

“Head hurts…” Mikey swatted Leonardo away and tried to sit up.

“Hey hey hey hey!” Leonardo didn't let Mikey get very far, “Easy. You need to lay now.”

“No… no we need to find him!”

Leonardo cocked his head. “Find who?”

“I… him!” Was all Mikey could offer, “He’s scared and alone.”

“Where is he?”

“I… I don’t know!” Mikey knew he should know but he didn't, and in retaliation against his own mind he began to repeatedly strike himself right between his eyes. Donnie intervened before he could hit himself more than twice, forcing Mikey to lower his arm but only making the box turtle more frustrated.

“Mikey, take it easy.” Donnie tried, but Mikey didn't seem to care about doctor's orders. He started to try and resist Donnie’s efforts to keep him still. “Little help here?”

Leonardo was hesitant to lay a hand on the thrashing Mikey, but when he finally found a hold, he pressed down firmly on the older turtle. His attempt to restrain the mutant wasn’t very effective, and when Mikey was able to stand, Leonardo pulled back and simply let Mikey leave while Donnie kept trying to stop him.

“Ge’ off!” Mikey shook his shoulders trying to dislodge his brother.

“Mikey, what—?” Donnie was unrelenting.

“GET OFF!”

Mikey got as far as the doorway before he was picked up around the middle and carried back inside by Raphael, holding the shinobi like he was nothing more than a child throwing a tantrum. He laid Mikey back down on the bed and Donnie skirted around the snapping turtles shell, grabbing Mikey’s arm to keep him still while Mikey tried to shake the grabbing hands off of him.

“Mikey, if you don't stay down I’m gonna have to strap you down.” Donnie said with a voice even and placid.

“What happened?” Raphael’s lips pulled into a frown, his hand going down to feel Mikey’s forehead.

“I don’t know, he just freaked out.” Donnie said calmly. He ran his hand across Mikey’s cheek and made soft, shushing noises intended to sooth. “How is Yoshi?”

“Yeah, he uh… he’s fine.” Raphael said absently, his head nodding along with his words, “Just hate to think how long he was alone for…” 

“Mikey, do you know where dad went?” Donnie asked softly; Mikey seemed calmer now, no longer resisting his bedrest, but his teeth were still bared to show his discontent. Donnie sighed. “Guessed not.”

Raphael laid a hand on Donnie’s shoulder and prompted the box turtle to look up at him. “He can’t have gone far. Maybe he just wanted to explore a bit.”

“He wouldn’t just leave your father here alone.” Donnie sighed, shaking his head.

“You’re probably right.” Raphael admitted. “Your Leo’s probably going crazy.”

Donnie closed his eyes and, ever so slowly, leaned his head back as he sucked a deep breath through his nostrils. Then he lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to nurse a growing migraine.

“I’ll go talk with him. Can you sit here with Mikey?”

“Of course.” Raphael said with a patient nod, sitting beside the bed and resting a hand over Mikey’s plastron.

Donnie left the two younger turtles in charge of his brother while he left the room in search of the oldest. He first found Michelangelo and Raph in the exercise room; the massive box turtle practically had steam rising off of his muscles from the heat of his body, slick with sweat and eyes focused determinedly on the ceiling above him as he worked his reps. Michelangelo wasn’t exercising, but he seemed to be having a good time hanging onto the bar while Raph lifted it so he could dangle and swing like a monkey. Donnie felt his migraine only worsen as he slumped against the doorframe, rubbing his eyes with enough force to make stars dance in his vision.

Raph had been in that same spot since they had made the discovery of their fathers absence several hours before, and Donnie could practically smell the frustration and understand it too, because he felt the exact same way. He needed to go and find his father before something awful happened, but he couldn’t leave with a clear conscience with Mikey in the state he was in. When it came to the choice of which was more important to him…

Donnie shook his head. Mikey would always come first. He and his brothers had agreed on that when they were little, and that agreement would live as long as they did. Splinter was strong and Splinter was capable, and right now Mikey needed them more. All of them.That didn't make the worry for his dad any less burning.

“You gonna say something?” Raph’s voice rumbled, “Or just stand there starin’?”

Donnie laughed, but it was a half-hearted and weak laugh. He shook his head and didn't bother to answer the question verbally. He simply walked into the room to stand over Raph; the middle child didn't pause his reps, not even for his brother.

“How’s Mike?” Was Raph’s next question.

Donnie almost naturally reached out an arm so that Michelangelo could climb onto him, and Michelangelo was more than happy to do just that. He swung on his friends arm with happily, monkey-like giggles while the other brothers retained composure and hardly reacted to the childish games.

“Awake.” Donnie said, “Confused. Raphael and the other Leonardo are with him now.”

“Good.” Raph kept pumping, eyes focused.

Donnie sighed. He carefully picked Michelangelo off of his arm, one of his hands enough to completely engulf the box turtle's plastron, and placed him on the ground. He stepped over the smaller mutant and grabbed Raph’s bar, yanking it pointedly from Raph and replacing it on its shelf. Raph’s eyes sharpened, snapping to Donnie and ready to give him hell before he saw the icy, cobra look in Donnie’s eyes. Instead of yelling, or saying anything, Raph simply sat up and shouldered his way past Donnie. They didn't need to exchange words for Donnie to know where Raph was headed.

Donnie shook his head once more before grabbing Michelangelo, who had his arms up asking to be held. He carried Michelangelo the rest of the way back to the infirmary; Raph was there, kneeling on the ground beside the bed and holding Mikey’s hand in his. He was talking slow and soft words to his youngest brother, words Donnie couldn’t make out, but the intent was there. Donnie plopped Michelangelo down on the floor and turned back around, leaving the rest of his family and continuing his search for Leo.

He found his eldest brother in the zen room; the room itself wasn't very well-maintained, once teal paint peeling off the walls and plants that were either overgrown and swallowing the walls of the room or dead at the root. The dead ones were the fault of none— being so low in the sewer, access to any sort of sunlight was a scare rarity that growing such plants were always difficult. For the rest of the plants, it was sheer neglect that led them to grow as immensely overpowering as they had, seeking any glint of light to sustain them. Leo sat in a lotus position in front of a green pool, just as neglected and forgotten as the plants, though it seemed to be from natural deterioration and not any contamination from the sewage around them. 

“Hello Donatello.” Leo said without bothering to open his eyes or drop his position. “How is Michelangelo?”

“He’s okay.” Donnie sat beside his brother; his long legs weren’t built for the lotus position, so he just sprawled out and got comfortable. He had the feeling he was going to be here for a while. “Are you?”

Leo took his time to consider the question, rolling potential words around on his tongue before he settled for something that felt right. “I am dealing, considering. If Michelangelo is well, then we should think about going after father. Is that why you’re here?”

“Yeah.” Donnie nodded, “Everyone’s sitting in with Mike to keep him company.”

Leo nodded slowly and finally opened sapphire eyes. “Then perhaps just us two should go. Let Raphael and our friends stay here with Mikey. We can move faster on our own.”

Donnie couldn’t help but agree with that, but there was still a twinge of doubt that refused to be ignored. “These aren’t our sewers, Leo. We should bring at least one of the Hamato’s to lead the way.”

Leo considered. “Alright. We’ll take the other Leonardo then. Perhaps his sense of direction is as good as mine.”

Leo’s sense of direction had always been advance, far more than his brothers. You could place him in the heart of a maze and within minutes he would be able to find his way back out again. He knew he would be able to navigate these sewers even with what little knowledge he had of them, but Donnie’s anxiety was never something to ignore. Leo took a final, sharp breath before standing, inclining his head ever so slightly toward his brother.

“Let’s go now. No time to waste.”

“But— but Leo, we can’t take both me and Hamato Leo, we need a medic here in case Mikey has another fit.” Donnie reasoned.

“Fine, then we’ll take the other Donnie.” Leo decided promptly, waving for his brother to follow. Donnie obeyed.

“What about other Raph? It might help to have some extra muscle if we find ourselves in a pinch.”

“Uh.” Leo looked down at his bicep and, just for good measure, he flexed to make the muscles more defined.

“You know what I meant.” Donnie’s eyes rolled, but he pursued the issue no further. There was very little time to do so even if he wanted, because already they were entering the med bay.

Mikey had his eyes closed, lips pulled down in a tight frown as he stretched his head back as far as his neck allowed. Despite the position, Donnie knew he wasn’t asleep; he knew his brother too well to assume such things. All eyes turned to them as the two entered, and both older Splinterson’s could feel the shift in energies tingling their skin. 

“What’s up?” Leo asked. 

Donnie’s instinct was to immediately go to Mikey, doing a quick check of his vitals and finding them as steady as they had been when he left. Donatello seemed to be the only one of the turtles who wasn’t entirely on edge, taking the time to yawn and stretch before pulling out his phone and pulling up an article. He held his phone out where the older brothers could see that it was a current article posted just hours before, the headline bold enough to catch anyone's attention.

DINOSAUR SEEN IN SEWERS

[diana-berry]

Hey! Real quick this turned out longer than I expected it to but I kind got on a 10 foot tall soap box and it took me a bit to navigate my way down haha. Okay, onto the discussion.

Ada looks so cool oh my goodness! She is most definitely a villain, even if she is a survivor like Freddy. But I swear all those who hate freddy are gonna love her cause she’s a pretty girl. If you like her that’s fine, I like her! She’s pretty (y’all know I like pretty girls)and looks like a really neat character! But she absolutely does not seem like a good or moral person. I need y’all to acknowledge that.

Like freddy, she’s not a good person, and it’s okay to like characters for being unlikable! I love good villain characters, and Ada definitely seems like she’s gonna be one of those. But please don’t try to excuse her actions! I know most of y’all certainly aren’t excusing freddy. Everyone always talks about how they hate him, and for good reason! Freddy is not a good person. He’s manipulative, cold, conniving, smug, heartless (like literally that is one of his traits), I could go on. He only cares for what he wants and doesn’t care who he hurts in order to achieve what he wants. I mean who supports that? I know I certainly don’t, but what most people ignore is the fact that he is indeed a well written character. I mean the fact that so many people hate him goes to show that. Not to automatically say that all hated characters are well written as that certainly isn’t the case. I’m just saying in my personal opinion and analysis that freddy is indeed well written.

But often the more conventionally attractive characters like Chloe, Edgar, Aesop, Norton, Mike, etc’s horrendous actions are excused in favor of them being ‘pretty’ or ‘hot’. Not kidding here, I was talking about why Chloe is a bad character morally and someone’s argument was “well she probably smells nice”. NO JOKE. This is a rather popular thing that happens in the fandom very often, and it’s...ugh honestly. Also I’m not saying those characters are automatically bad (EXCEPT FOR CHLOE BUT IF YOU KNOW ME YALL KNOW IVE GOT PERSONAL BEEF WITH HER), I’m simply saying their actions are often looked past because of their appearance. I actually think most of those characters are very interesting and I appreciate them a lot. Anyways this strayed pretty far from Ada I can just see people angelizing her already.

I could be wrong about her being the villain but it’s seems very likely that she is, especially based on what we saw in freddy’s second birthday letter. She makes me very uncomfortable with how she’s viewing Martha, yikes. Martha clearly has actual concerns about Freddy and his behavior, and Ada just writes it off as ‘pregnancy anxiousness’. I mean just look at Freddy’s second birthday letter and her information.

I mean- yikes. Hypnosis, bondage, not to mention that psychotherapy at the time was very much not what it is today. It was much colder and morally wrong, much crueler and just torturous.

Anyways, to close this off, Ada seems like a very interesting character and I look forward to learning more about her! What do you think about her? Do you think she’s gonna be a villain? Or will she shockingly be more of a protag? Feel free to let me know!

Also here’s a doodle I did of her! Her outfit was very hard to draw haha

[cyclogenesis]

i have to tell you that the second i saw cal and ash on that mountain getaway a couple weeks ago, i thought about how desperately i would love a sequel to your turks & caicos fic set during that trip. (this is not a request, i promise, i just wanted to tell you bc that is one of my fav fics of all time)

Aw anon!! 🥺 Gosh I hadn't even thought about that when I was in my feelings about the mountain getaway pictures, which is wild because I am just remembering now that I started a fic after the honeymoon comment initially happened (like, very soon after, because @elliebirdthings was at that show and told me about it and we were freaking out haha), before we knew that they went to Turks & Caicos, and I had them taking that trip to a cabin in Maine.

Just for kicks, because this message made me smile and I love you for that, here's the beginning of that fic. It's unfinished obviously (not even any kissing!), but there's some nice stuff in there I think. This fic was going to be titled A whole fucking lifetime of this after the American Pleasure Club album which was a title I should have kept, goddammit. Also randomly in here I have them driving to the cabin while listening to My Bloody Valentine, who Ashton later called out as one of his main influences for Superbloom.

1600 words of unfinished Cashton under the cut! 😘

The day after the last meeting about the promo schedule the dressing room conversation turns, as it does, to plans for the break. It’s a month out, but they’ve to a man developed a fetish for planning their free time carefully as soon as the schedule’s set. Planning things makes Ashton feel like a grown-up. He likes renting cars. Sometimes he scrolls through AirBnB for hours just to see what’s out there.

“I’m going straight back, we got Dodgers tickets,” Michael says.

“I remember when you used to say ‘we’ and it meant you and me,” Calum says. He wiggles a little from where he’s snuggled against Michael on the couch like he wants to get away, but of course Michael doesn’t let him. Ashton thinks he probably wasn’t really trying.

“Aw, you’ll always be my first love,” Michael tells him, squeezing Calum to him more tightly. “You wanna make out just for old times sake?”

“I do not,” says Calum, but he lets Michael give him a big kiss on the forehead, his face squinching up happily.

“I just wanna get away for a bit, no work or social media or anything,” says Ashton, ignoring their tomfoolery. “A little cabin by a lake somewhere.”

“Oh yeah?” Luke says. “Where are you and Cal going this time?”

“Maine,” Calum says, at the same time as Ashton says, “Why would you assume we’re going somewhere together?”

A small silence falls over the room.

With dignity, Ashton says, “Calum and I are going to Maine.”

“Just get out in front of it this time,” Michael advises. “Let everyone know it’s another honeymoon. Take control of the narrative.”

“How many times can you go on a honeymoon before you have to acknowledge that you’re married?” Luke asks nobody in particular.

“It’s a bro trip,” Ashton says firmly. “For bros.”

“It’s very bromantic,” Luke says. “It’s okay, I’m not hurt I wasn’t invited. I love going back to LA and jerking off alone.”

“It’s nice that we’ve all got plans,” Calum says. He’s settled peacefully back against Michael, Michael absently petting his hair.

“It’s not a honeymoon,” Ashton insists.

*

Whatever, Ashton called it what he called it, okay? Might as well control the narrative.

Over drinks at the bar after their last show Calum asks, “Where would you want to go on your honeymoon, anyway? Somewhere new?”

Ashton pokes at the ice in his cocktail with his straw. Aren’t they supposed to not be using straws anymore because of the ocean or whatever? Ashton loves the ocean, it’s very important to him. Also this cocktail sucks. “Can I try your drink?” he asks. “I don’t love mine.” Calum has something with ginger in it, and bubbles. Calum slides his obligingly over, and Ashton passes his own over to be fair.

“I like yours better,” Calum says after a sip. “You wanna trade?”

Sometimes Ashton does believe in soulmates. “Yes, thank you.” He takes a long drink. “It would be nice to spend more time in Italy. Not one of the tourist-y parts though, somewhere quiet. Up north, maybe, one of the smaller towns.” He tries to picture what it would be like: olive groves, blue skies, stone churches. An old villa with lemon trees and a view of the hills. He’s so used to traveling with the band or just with Calum that it’s hard to picture anyone else there with him. They’re all as prone as anyone to get swept up with girls to the exclusion of most everything else, but Ashton can’t really imagine a future without seeing Calum all the time, without talking to him every day. Maybe he and Calum could just get married around the same time and they could all go on a honeymoon together.

“Yeah, that’d be pretty nice,” Calum says, looking wistful. Ashton wants to take a picture of him, capture the way a curl rests against his temple, how the blue neon lights behind the bar hit the glitter he let Ashton smear on his cheekbones before the show. They made a no social media pledge for this trip but Ashton’s bringing his camera anyway. He has to keep in practice, doesn’t he? Anyway, it’s important to capture these memories.

“Maybe we should just go,” Ashton tells him. “Why not? Who knows how long it could take for me to fool someone into living with this forever?” He sucks down the last of his drink, feeling sorry for himself now. What if he falls in love and she moves in and Calum stops coming over in the morning to walk to their favorite coffee shop together, and stops picking Ashton up so they can go hike Runyon, and stops bringing Duke over like he owns the damn place and doesn’t care about the dog hair that Ashton has to hoover off his couch pillows? That would be terrible. Worst of all, what if it was Ashton that suddenly wanted those things to stop?

“I’ll live with you forever,” Calum says, too busy flagging down the bartender to intuit Ashton’s emotional crisis. He gestures to Ashton’s empty drink. “Another one of those, right?” His own is still half full. Maybe he didn’t really like Ashton’s better after all.

“Yeah, thanks man,” Ashton sighs.

Calum bumps his knee against Ashton’s, the barstool squeaking beneath him. “Ash, you’re gonna find somebody if that’s what you want. Anyone would be the luckiest person alive to be with you. Maybe we could do Italy after the tour wraps, we’ll finish in Spain so it won’t be far.”

The thought cheers Ashton a bit; that’s a decent amount of time to get on AirBnB and see what he can find that’s available. It’ll be nice to have something to look forward to, Italian sunshine and limoncello and the quiet.

“Mike and Luke will definitely give us shit though about planning another honeymoon while we’re still on this one,” Calum says.

“Let ‘em,” says Ashton.

*

It’s not a long flight but it’s a bit of a drive from there to get to the cabin. But Calum said he wanted something remote and quiet, so it’s worth the wait, the drive in the dark. There’s moonlight, anyway, and Calum took the wheel, getting them the rest of the way there in their little silver Prius rental. He puts on My Bloody Valentine and sings along, low and comforting to listen to after so many days straight of playing, of promo. Halfway through the trip Ashton thinks he sees a shooting star, maybe thought he dreamed it until he felt Calum’s soft nudge of knuckles against his arm, heard his quiet, “You see that, bro?”

The way gets bumpy, thick with trees, dark and hard to navigate once they turn off the main road. At the end of it all there’s the cabin, looming in the dark, lights left on for them and the key exactly where it’s supposed to be. It’s past one a.m. but they still give the place a wander, stopping at the largest bedroom facing the lake. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows Ashton sees trees, darkness, the black glitter of water under starlight. Calum asks, “You want this one?”

Ashton looks further and just sees more darkness. “It’s kind of unnerving at night,” he says. “Anyone could be out there.” The other bedroom has smaller windows, but the point stands. “Do you wanna just watch TV or something in here and then decide?”

“If we get axe murdered here I hope our ghosts come back and leave a one star review,” Calum says, but he’s already shrugging his duffel off his shoulders and kicking off his shoes.

The host left them a bottle of pinot grigio so Ashton pours up a few glasses while Calum strips down to his boxers and gets in bed. The boxers have cartoon pugs all over them. “I can’t believe that’s the lingerie you’re wearing for our honeymoon,” Ashton says, handing him a glass. “I also can’t believe those boxers even exist.”

Calum raises it to him in a salute and takes a sip. “These boxers are fantastic, but I guess if you want me to take them off…” he trails off, eyebrow raised, thumb hooked in the waistband pushing them down past his hipbone, then further until Ashton can see the crease of his thigh.

“No, no,” Ashton says hurriedly, “I’m just saying, what’s wrong with a nice pair of footie pajamas? Keeps you warm. Keeps you modest.” Nevertheless he shucks his own clothes except for his own (very grown-up, perfectly normal, in a flattering shade of dark green) boxers and joins Calum in bed. Calum’s already stopped paying attention to him, too busy trying to figure out how to work the remote. He finally gets the screen to flash on, and Ashton stays quiet, sipping his wine while Calum flips channels, finally landing on something in black and white. Cary Grant comes on screen but Ashton still isn’t sure what movie it is; Calum seems interested enough, setting the remote down between them, so he doesn’t complain. The wine goes down easy and Ashton does too after not too long.

He rolls onto his side and sees that Calum’s eyes are already closed. It doesn’t look like he’s asleep yet; it always takes him a bit, leaving him in a dozy stage for about ten minutes during which he might respond crankily to any communication or with adorable mumbling affection. Ashton turns the sound down and says, as quietly as he can, “TV off?” Calum’s eyes don’t open, but he nods a little. “Okay. You want me to go sleep in the other room?”

Calum moves then, a sleepy shift of his body, fumbling a hand up and blindly patting the sheet until he makes contact with Ashton’s hand on the remote and squeezes it, links their fingers together like he can’t quite figure out how to make it work. It feels nice. “’S’okay,” he murmurs. “Stay here.”

Ashton didn’t feel like getting up anyway.

[gayenerd]

This 2009 interview with Billie is from something called Urban Male Magazine (lol) which is apparently a defunct “men’s interest” magazine in Canada.

In this interview Billie Joe Armstrong talks about his new album ‘21st Century Breakdown’, about the band and his family; how his boys keep him young, and how he’s living his dream.

Here, in the middle of a dilapidated looking industrial zone, only separated from San Francisco by the Bay Bridge, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool have established their headquarters, composed of countless rooms for living, working and playing, protected by an automatic gate and barbed wire.  As we enter the 37 year-old Billie Joe's room to talk to him about the new album '21st Century Breakdown', he is sitting at the piano, now black haired following a brief blonde phase, playing 'Last Night on Earth', one of the new songs.

Billie Joe, we have never heard you so romantic. In this piece you sing “You are the moonlight of my life”, and “I'm sending all my love to you”. How touched is your wife Adrienne in light of this declaration of love?

Billie Joe Armstrong: She should be moved by this song, which she is.

Who do you spend more time with? With your wife or the band?

BJA: With my wife. Without a doubt. I mean, I sleep with her. I don't sleep with Tré and Mike.

You have been together for over 15 years.

BJA: A hell of a long time, I know. Adrienne is my closest ally. She is also a very good barometer in respect of my songs. She has a different kind of distance, a different way of approaching our music. She is always pretty objective and honest about what she thinks of our songs.

Your sons Joseph and Jacob are 14 and 10. How do the two of them sharpen your understanding for youth culture?

BJA: At the moment I find it incredibly exciting how my oldest son is negotiating his way through puberty. I think that being a young person today is more stressful and complicated than it was in my day twenty years ago. The Internet has won so much control over the way kids live their lives, it's almost frightening.

You yourself were quite a tear away, a head through the wall type, am I right?

BJA: Right. But my boys are not like that, they are somehow…brighter and more hard-boiled than I was at their age. Their world is significantly larger than my world was back then.

You look 15 years younger than you are. How do you do that?

BJA: When we aren't touring I go to bed at the same time as my sons. Rarely later than midnight.

People, and presumably your children too, now prefer to download their music from the Youtubes and Itunes of this world. And now you come along and release '21st Century Breakdown', a monumental, approximately 70 minute long concept album consisting of 18 songs and encompassing every imaginable style of music. Have you lost your mind?

BJA: I write songs as if my life depended on it. The last album 'American Idiot' provided us with an opportunity, the opportunity to record another really powerful and ambitious album. We didn't want to miss the chance this time around. We had to overcome our uncertainties and really pull out all the stops to complete this album. But that was what motivated us. We weren't interested in shying away from success again, as we did with our albums at the end of the nineties. Now I can understand it when people say that we started pulling our punches after 'Dookie' (the 1994 breakthrough album with 'Basket Case'). We are proud of what we have made out of Green Day.

In 'Horseshoes and Handgrenades', you sing “I am gonna drink, fight, f**k and push my luck”. As one of the biggest rock stars on the planet, do you still have time to rip it up?

BJA: One should always make time for a bit of excess. However, I have become more cautious. A sense of responsibility towards myself and my family.

When was the last time you were drunk?

BJA: The day before yesterday (laughs).

It has taken you three years to write this album and record it with the help of the Nirvana and Garbage producer Butch Vig. Was completing the follow-up to 'American Idiot' something of a Herculean task?

BJA: Yes, it was. '21st Century Breakdown' demanded much more from us, was far harder to realise than 'American Idiot'. Originally we had the idea of shooting an animated film with us as the main figures, and then write the soundtrack to it.  In the end we didn't do this. Instead, we set off to climb new creative heights and to write the best fucking songs we could.

The songs have turned out very musical and melodic. Much of it is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, and even Meat Loaf.

BJA: We acknowledge all our influences and really enjoy painting with a broad palette of colours. John Lennon, Bob Marley, U2, The Clash and many more. Songs are the result of patience and concentration. You never know when a song will gently tap you on the shoulder or hit you on the back of the head with a lump of wood. I get my ideas for songs everywhere - when playing the guitar, in the shower, on the toilet or when going for a walk.

The central line in the title song '21st Century breakdown', says: “My generation is zero. I never made it as a working class hero”. Isn't that a damned pessimistic view on life?

BJA: You should view it a little more discriminatingly. The song is about the American Dream, which says that you can make it if you really want to, if you push yourself. Society is increasingly trivializing this dream of our forefathers. Today it is only about winning the next Lotto jackpot and becoming stinking rich. That is not enough for me. What I miss is people striving to be better, to perfect themselves, this sense of hunger.

Have you realised your dream then?

BJA: One hundred percent. I am the happiest boy in the world. I love my band and my work. If there wasn't Green Day, then I would be washing plates.

Is society, especially in light of the current economic downturn, too materialistic?

BJA: No, I don't think it is. I don't have anything against prosperity. This pursuit of money regularly lands our country in trouble. But it also helps us to pull ourselves out of trouble again. America is very inventive when it comes to generating wealth. However prosperity should only be one aspect, a society built exclusively on money will break down. But I'm not pessimistic. We now have our first Afro-American president, which is a tremendous thing. And in the long run this means that the voice and the desires of the people will not be ignored.

What will Obama achieve? Save the world?

BJA: He won't save the world, especially not on his own. But this is the best thing that has happened to America in a very long time. There is a new crisis every week, a new catastrophe. However at the end of the day the central statement of the album is: There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Is Billie Joe Armstrong in 2009, what Bruce Springsteen was in the 80's or Bob Dylan in the 60's?

BJA: I can't deal with that. I don't want to be the voice of a generation. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a label like that. I want to speak for myself. However, if people discover something in my songs for themselves, then I have succeeded in what I set out to do.

Are you secretly thankful to George W. Bush? Ultimately he inspired 'American Idiot' and played a considerable role in its success?

BJA: That may be true, but no! Not at all. Thank Bush? That would be really beneath me.

[lavenderek]

I love when you fix twilight. It's obviously not fix-able completely, but you make it way better. What do you think about how she calls her parents by their first names?.

i think bella’s relationships with her parents are super weird and sometimes even unhealthy. 

some of the things i’m gonna say, i’ve already said before, and they are VERY VERY LONG, but i’m gonna say them again anyway and i’ve watched jenny nicholson videos for like three days straight, so i’m gonna do it in.... a numbered list!!!! 

seriously it’s super long don’t open the readmore unless you want to look at a super long post

1. bella calls them by their first names, but only in internal narration. 

most teenagers don’t call their parents by their first names, so this is odd and distances the reader from her. i’m not sure if it’s supposed to humanize her parents?

her parents would be humanized if they were acknowledged by the role they’re supposed to be playing in bella’s life; most of her readers would be seeing her as The Typical Teenage Girl, so having her parents be seen as entities separate from her who operate as peers instead of parents is bizarre. 

furthermore, she never does this in dialogue. she only does it in internal narration. 

so is this supposed to make her seem more mature and independent? bella isn’t independent; she’s provided with all her needs by her father, including emotional needs. when edward leaves her in the second book, her father takes care of her and ultimately considers having her go back to live with her mother again, because clearly bella is in need of some parental support. put a pin in maturity, i’ll get back to that in a second. 

if it’s not to make her seem more mature, then it’s just a weird stylistic choice so that the reader knows her parents’ names, which - why? i’m sure when chief swan is talking to his friend and his friend calls him charlie, we will understand through context clues that his name is charlie. also, us knowing her parents’ names doesn’t add anything to the story. bella treats every side character as an obstacle in her life, so we gain nothing from knowing her dad’s name. 

it makes sense for her to call her stepfather phil, but she should call her parents mom and dad. 

2. bella is “super mature” 

ouch! i pricked my finger on the pin i put in maturity. yowie!

we hear a lot about how mature bella is. she condescendingly tells us that her mother is stupid and describes her father’s inability to feed himself. is this true? 

her mother got married and has begun a life with her new husband. her father is a grown-ass man who has kept himself alive for what, forty years? they never do anything particularly immature except one time stephenie meyer has her dad accidentally microwave a can of soup at some point (has he never had soup? in the whole decade since he and renee got divorced, has he been soupless the entire time?). i don’t know that fucking up a can of soup is immature so much as a mistake, but go off i guess. 

so maybe she’s not more mature than her parents, but surely she is just mature in her own right. let’s see all the mature decisions bella makes just in the two years we are present for. 

bella gets a head injury in a car accident. she resists the advice she receives from a medical professional to rest, and plans on not telling her mother about it. she’s even pissed at her dad when he tells her mom. 

bella meets edward and senses from the jump that he’s lying to her. he gives her mixed signals that make her uncomfortable. he and many people in his life talk often about how he could kill her, how much he wants to kill her, but that he is holding back. she decides that she is safe based on her own feelings (she is objectively incorrect about this, by the way, regardless of how her story ends) and chooses to date him anyway.

bella catches the attention of a man who wants to kill her specifically. she does not tell her father. instead, she insults him and runs away from home. she then runs away from the people who are assigned to protect her, because she believes she knows better than they do. 

edward breaks up with bella. i think most people after the ending of a relationship would go to their room and cry and process those feelings of sadness and abandonment. but bella’s not like other girls. she’s mature and has deep emotions. she refuses to accept the breakup and spends hours wandering around in the woods, forcing everyone in her town to go around in the night looking for her. okay. 

she gets a part-time job at some point. but so does her classmate mike, and also 55% of teenagers in her age range (when the book is set, which is in the mid-to-late 90′s). 

oh, but wait, then she withdraws all her savings and uses them to purchase and fix up a motorcycle - a thing she is specifically not allowed to do - in order to spite her ex boyfriend. at this point she has abandoned her plans to become a vampire, so there’s no reason to assume she won’t be going to college in a couple years. with what savings will she be paying the tuition? i’m sure her school counselor will understand when she explains that she spent it all on a motorcycle. 

we are told bella is very mature and stephenie meyer clearly expects us to draw this conclusion based on how bella does her chores without being asked; but when it comes to major decisions about her safety, her future, and the effect she has on others, she repeatedly makes selfish and childish decisions. she hurts her parents, her friends, and herself, a lot. she does all of this based on her own intuition.

and actually, a lot of it tracks with her being a teenager. teenagers are not adults. they biologically do not yet have the full capacity for decision-making. that’s why they’re not adults. bella is not more mature than her parents and her belief that she is is demonstrably dangerous. she really needs more discipline in her life. 

3. bella and her mom

bella is very sad in the beginning of the book. she loves her mom and sees her mom as her best friend. 

she demonstrates her closeness by: 

lying to her mom that she wants to live with her dad, because she believes renee will be happier without bella, her supposed best friend. renee does not notice that bella has lied or question this decision. 

putting off emailing or calling her mom for several days, which makes renee angry. when she finally does, she basically just lists the things she’s done and logs off. 

refusing to share information with her, including that she was injured in a car accident, because she believes renee will be upset. her dad calls renee anyway, and bella is angry and is incredibly reluctant to call her back and talk to her. 

ignoring her emails for months when she’s sad over her breakup. 

visiting her exactly one time in the whole two years spanned in the books. her mom is also never invited to come visit bella in forks. 

renee’s absence from bella’s life actually works for the plot, as she can’t interfere with bella’s duplicity, while leaving the option to add an element of guilt from afar. but it doesn’t make sense as a character decision. 

i think it would make way more sense if bella and her mother aren’t close. bella wants her mom to show interest in her life. she suggested moving in with her dad in the hopes that her mom would be like, “no, honey, stay, i’ll miss you if you go,” but renee doesn’t even question it, she just books her a ticket. 

bella checks her email immediately when she arrives, and hasn’t heard from her mom, so she sends her an email herself, to which she gets a response like, two days later. 

bella calls her mom and gets her answering machine. renee is on her honeymoon and she and her new husband are in the process of moving to another state, so bella reasons that her mom is just busy; but she is also dealing with the knowledge that she’s just not a priority for her mom. 

yeah, this is very sad and makes renee seem like an asshole, but maybe she is an asshole in this version. it would neatly remove renee from the plot, it would explain why bella is so bummed about living with her dad, and it would lay the groundwork for why bella is so gutted when she perceives edward breaking up with her as being abandoned. bella believes she is not worth staying for. 

4. bella and her dad

i don’t even know where to start with bella and her dad. he seems great to me. 

he is the chief of police.

he knows and is respected by everyone in town.

he has friends and hobbies. 

as i said before, he has fed and clothed himself his whole life - at the very least in the decade since his divorce.

...so he seems like a reasonable person and member of the community. 

he treats bella with respect and offers her privacy, but he is always available when she needs help.

he notices and tries to intervene when she’s struggling. 

he has an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and they communicate about their daughter regularly. 

he bought bella a truck and put chains on the tires so that it would be safe for her even when it’s cold and wet out. 

...so he’s clearly an involved and caring father. 

bella goes through a serious depressive episode in new moon after her breakup with edward, and her dad responds to every bit of it. 

he wants to find out why she is upset. 

he is aware of how she’s doing in school and whether or not she’s seeing her friends. 

when bella has night terrors, he jumps out of bed to comfort her. 

when jacob deliberately lashes out at her and triggers another depressive episode, he immediately steps in and calls jake’s dad. 

he is told bella is at fault, but he takes bella’s side and chooses to believe her side of the story. 

throughout her depression, he never once judges her for it. 

after what he perceives to be edward hurting bella and being a bad boyfriend (which - he is observably not wrong about that), bella’s dad is openly against bella dating him again. 

...so he cares for and advocates for bella’s emotional state. 

if bella expresses gratitude or appreciation for any of these things, it’s sort of bitter and backhanded, like “at least charlie leaves me alone.” he fucked up trying to make dinner one time, to which she responds by refusing to let him cook ever again. bella dates edward twice before eclipse, and both times she went missing and then came back injured; so chief swan tells her he doesn’t think she should be dating edward again, at which point she puts down ultimatums and threatens to leave. bella ignores his rules and requests, keeps secrets from him, and runs away from home a few times because she believes she knows better than he does. 

no matter how many times charlie proves himself, it never changes bella’s opinion of him. there’s no arc there. bella arrives thinking her father is incompetent, and she leaves thinking her father is incompetent. 

making bella disrespect her father does benefit the narrative by enabling her to be secretive and makes her feel even more isolated in her experiences. it also makes stephanie have to write about less characters. but bella being secretive and isolated just results in her being stuck in the same situation for like 75% of each book. i think it would make sense for her to want to fix things, even just a little bit. 

there’s no reason for her to disrespect charlie, so her unfounded feelings of disdain toward him are confusing and just make her look like a dick; and furthermore, not giving him a character arc just makes him a boring obstacle. he might as well just be a door that gets stuck shut whenever it rains. 

i think it would be a better idea, for character development, for bella to grow closer to her father over the course of her stay with him. i would like, at least two of the times bella disobeys him, for her to ultimately conclude that he was right and she shouldn’t have done the thing. i would like her to eventually open up to him about some things. 

she doesn’t have to share that the cullens are vampires, but of all the people in her life, who has experience with having a romantic partner with whom he envisioned a future break up with and leave them? it would make sense for her to confide in him - or at the very least, seek comfort from him. 

bella trusting her father’s judgment and showing caution dating edward again after the events of new moon would also be better for the story, and i have more thoughts about that but that’s for another post. 

and probably biggest of all, your only tenuous link to emotional acceptance and fulfillment should not be your romantic partner. that’s so weird and unhealthy. bella is a teenager who, in general throughout the books, feels unmoored and stressed out. she needs someone sturdy and reliable who she can trust to protect her, even if it’s only emotionally. this would also give bella someone to bounce her thoughts and feelings off of and reduce the monotony of the narration a little bit. 

her father is an excellent choice for that. he repeatedly demonstrates that he is in her corner, and her corner alone. (i also think vampires should be just a little bit easier to kill, so that chief swan can protect her just a tiny bit.) 

5. why

stephenie meyer has children herself and it’s so weird to me that she would write a teenager deliberately disobeying and lying to her parents and consequently placing herself and many other people in grave danger, and framing it as a good thing. she makes it clear that bella was correct in doing this. 

bella’s not the only one, either. edward allegedly sees carlisle as his father figure, but A. this was not consensual, and he is frequently unhappy that carlisle bit him and made him a vampire; and B. he often disregards or gets angry about carlisle’s advice. 

wouldn’t stephenie meyer want to know if her son was hurting, or in danger? wouldn’t she want her son to respect her? wouldn’t she want to be able to share her wisdom and help her son make safe choices?

she does make it clear in interviews that this is pretend and she doesn’t believe readers should be seeing her characters as role models; but she made her characters teenagers on purpose, and it strikes me as kind of irresponsible to act as if she assumes her young readers won’t try to identify with them. 

bella’s relationships with her parents are boring and unusual, and the older i get the more frustrating they are. they stifle the characters and make the plot repetitive and tiresome. these are relatively small changes that i think would benefit the story overall. and that’s my opinion, thanks guys

[beatriceeagle]

Gonna toss off a couple of Good Place thoughts that aren’t quite formed enough for a full blog post:

I liked the idea of what The Good Place did with Simone and Chidi in the most recent episode. Simone is a character that we, the audience, fundamentally sympathize with, presenting an argument that I think the writers felt was missing from the show’s moral argument: Why should you go out of your way to help bad people?

In particular, Simone isn’t trying to answer that question. She’s introducing it. She’s problematizing the entire foundation of the The Good Place, a show about how people can become better by reaching out to each other. Simone is saying, “Well, wait. If I’ve given this guy chance after chance after chance to treat me with respect, and he’s never done so, what reasonable ethical code would require me to risk my life for him?”

And The Good Place, to its credit, doesn’t argue her down or explain her away. It recognizes her perspective as valid, if irreconcilable with its own. That’s why she and Chidi leave things the way they do: “I respect your position.” “And I respect yours.”

This is a vital piece of perspective, if you’re going to go from having four basically good-hearted fuck-ups gel as a team to trying to redeem The Face of Trump’s America. But there are two problems that keep this plot turn from really functioning effectively.

First, it’s just not set up very well. Simone’s ethical perspective has gotten exactly one episode of air time. She spent the first two episodes of the season in a solipsistic haze, then she was backgrounded almost entirely while we focused on Michael-and-Janet shenanigans, and finally we got her showdown with Brent in episode 6. But up until that point, Simone could hardly have been said to have a perspective. She was, in fact, the least developed of the experimental subjects, in the sense that I couldn’t have told you what she needed to improve upon. Simone and Chidi’s break-up, and Simone’s principled split from the group, should hit with the kind of inevitable-in-hindsight freight train oomph of—well, maybe not the season one reveal, but a baby version of that. Like getting mowed down by Thomas the Tank Engine. There should be a specific history to Simone and Brent, and Simone and Chidi, and Simone and Eleanor, that led us to this moment. This break should matter. Simone should matter.

Simone should matter. And she doesn’t, either to the emotional narrative of the show, or, if you really fundamentally dig into it, to the ethical narrative. Because Simone runs off in Brent’s Escalade, leaving Brent to his doom, and Michael and Eleanor lose their minds because oh no, oh no, we’re fucked, the humans didn’t overcome their basic selfishness to save the complete and total asshole, and nobody in the room stops to think that maybe Simone was right. I mean, Chidi says that he respects her perspective, but Chidi’s just a human. Michael and Eleanor are operating as higher beings, here. They don’t get to see the points, but they know the points exist. They know how they’re divvied out. They have some sense of what actions get them, and what don’t. But more to the point, they’re the people who designed this whole damn experiment. They’re the people who set its parameters. And the parameter they set was: People are going to make other people better.

And the thing is, I don’t think that Simone is inherently opposed to that idea. Her argument is that it’s unfair to ask her, specifically, to take on the responsibility of making Brent, specifically, better. Because why should that be Simone’s job? From Simone’s point of view, Eleanor and Michael are the authority figures, and she and Brent are either their charges or their victims or their subjects, depending on whether this is The Good Place or The Bad Place or some kind of weird experiment, but no matter what, Brent is their responsibility, not hers. Aren’t Eleanor and Michael people? Aren’t they the ones in charge here? Why aren’t they doing the work of trying to change Brent?

And of course they are, but the inherent weirdness of season four of The Good Place is that they’re trying to do so almost entirely through the medium of the other experimental subjects. There’s a weird mismatch of scope here, and it leaves Simone out to dry: She hasn’t done anything except try to protect herself, and argue, not incorrectly, that a man who has repeatedly insulted and demeaned her is not her responsibility—but the narrative requires that, in doing so, she doom humanity. It requires that she be wrong, even if Chidi says that he respects her position, because what we really need right now is a big point boost, and points come from selflessness, no matter the context.

The Good Place is a show whose societal and individual ethics are sometimes hard to disentangle. The first season is basically just about how to be a good individual person. But as the show has progressed, and its world has expanded, it’s become unavoidable that its ethical questions have become larger: What is an ethical system of punishment? How can “goodness” really be measured at scale? Is it possible to be an ethical individual when the consequences of our choices are so complicated that they are unknown to us?

Season four is addressing a fundamentally societal question—is ethical rehabilitation possible?—but it’s placing the burden of that work on the shoulders of four individuals. And by that I don’t just mean that Simone, Chidi, Brent, and John are the test subjects; I mean that they are being asked to do the work of rehabilitating each other.

But in a society, it is no one person’s responsibility to rehabilitate any other person. We do—we should—have a responsibility as a community to rehabilitate rather than take revenge, but we need systems for that, and volunteers, and procedures. Asking a random woman like Simone to live with and rehabilitate a random man like Brent isn’t just horribly unfair to Simone; it’s almost certainly going to fail.

Eleanor and Michael represent the authority, here, both within Simone’s point of view, and, to a certain extent, in reality; they set the parameters of the experiment. It was their responsibility to rehabilitate Brent, not Simone’s. These four people didn’t need to cohere as a group; they needed individuated therapy. Brent needed to be told he was in the Bad Place, and forced to accept (measured) consequences for his actions; Simone needed basically that one conversation with Chidi; Chidi needed to talk to Eleanor and/or whoever and get out of his shell; who the fuck knows what John needed, that character was barely part of the plot. Eleanor and Michael forcing everyone together was a failure both from Simone’s point of view (in that they’re not doing a good job of addressing problems within the neighborhood) and their own (in that they’re not effectively rehabilitating people).

None of which is to like, tear down Eleanor and Michael, who are very pointedly fallible, and who are trying their best to do right by all of humanity, including Simone. It’s just that as much as I appreciate the idea of Simone’s story, as much as I like that the writers of The Good Place saw the potential response to their moral argument and sought to acknowledge it, I think she represents more than an alternate perspective; she represents a real failing on the show’s part to separate “what we owe to each other” in an individual sense from “what we owe to each other” as a society.

(And this is all with the caveat that The Good Place doesn’t bring this all up and hash it all out in the next episode, of course, of course. But I suspect they won’t. Mike Schur is really all-in on altruism, and “I respect your perspective” had the ring of a thematic statement.)

[hawkinslibrary]

i love hearing what you have to say about season 4!! i promise it’s not too long lol, anyway i have a question for you: what do you think the next season holds for mike & el? i’m a little worried tbh

ahhh thank you !! same rules apply: spoilers ahead, so please read no further and blacklist/filter out the ‘s4′, ‘st4′, ‘spoilers’ tags if you don’t want to see anything !! 

i’m going to talk about them both as individuals and as a pair but first, i have to say that i don’t personally feel like you have to worry about them breaking up or anything again this season. i think s4 is really going to establish romantic jopper and once that happens, i don’t see them, mileven, or jancy not being endgame unless someone actually dies. which -- i’m not going to think about the possibility of anyone dying until i’m forced to confront it, so. this is fiction and it’s already unrealistic and i’m gonna take my ‘everyone survives, happiness all around, time to relax’ endings and go. anyway, i would love to add lumax to this list but i honestly think it could go either way depending on what happens in s4. that’s a different essay, though.

i tend to think that the most important dynamic on the show is the one between the whole group and i just don’t really see them spending much more time trying to develop romantic relationships outside of the ones set up since s1/2. maybe steve, robin, and will get love interests, maybe they decide to develop dustin and suzie more, maybe suzie is never even mentioned again, idk. but these will probably all be secondary -- as in less screen time, not less important than the main romances, but probably still less developed. unless it happens to be a new person added to the main cast. which, as of now, the only new mains are brett and priah who has gone from recurring to regular. so.  

i think s3 showed how messy and complicated romantic relationships (or, really just relationships in general) can be. everyone was arguing, there was miscommunication all around, everyone thought they knew what was best, no one was seeing eye to eye. but when it comes down to it, they would do anything for each other. they understand each other better than anyone else ever could. i can’t see them spending another season on breakups and romance drama after the ending of s3.  

mike and el have already been separated once before. this time, mike knows for sure that she’s alive and that’s she’s with the byers. this time, el won’t be kept completely isolated away from everyone else. they’ve made plans to meet for the holidays. they can still call and talk to each other as much as they want. i’m hoping they handle being separated this time better than they did in s2. i don’t want mike to be moping and i don’t want el to spend a lot of the season thinking about how much she misses him. in fact, i think in their case that some distance could be good for them. the same for jancy and jopper, too, honestly. it’ll be nice to see them existing outside of these relationships while still acknowledging how important they are.   

as far as i know, the byers and el stuff has not started filming yet so all there is to speculate on are rumors, the audition tapes, and logical guesses about where the story goes after s3. el obviously moves away with the byers. we still don’t know where. she’ll still be mourning hopper and trying to figure out life without her powers. and, of course, she’ll be in a long distance relationship with mike. i think she’ll be having a hard time and she’ll wish that mike was around, but she’ll realize she’s got a pretty good support system around her now with the byers, too. i’m very, very excited for more joyce and el content particularly, but there’s gotta be some great scenes with her and will and jonathan as well. 

there’s only one audition tape that i can confidently tie into the byers + el plot(s?) and it’s the queen bee/mean girl character ‘angela’. if we’re running with the whole ‘there may be some truth to the audition vids’ thing, then this one teases that el will be going to school and that angela will be bullying her. this is something she would probably want to talk about with mike (b i g troy s1 vibes) but i don’t know if she actually would ? so this is probably more a thing that el and will could bond over or that she could talk about with joyce or maybe jonathan. i do think there will be at least a few calls between the two of them before the action really hits and the whole group is (hopefully...) reunited.

so, el -- at least in the beginning of s4 -- will be going to school where ‘angela’ bullies her, forming a bond with joyce + will + jonathan and becoming part of the family, mourning hopper (+ hopefully having conversations about him + his past with joyce), missing her friends back in hawkins, continuing to learn how to navigate life without her powers, and trying to maintain a long distance relationship with mike. 

mike... i’ve been seeing some wild theories about him today but they aren’t really that far-fetched i think. first, going back to the audition tapes, the ‘eddie’ audition i saw makes it seem like mike is going to be part of the hellfire club with dustin. i’ve recently learned that there’s another version of the scene where ‘eddie’ is only talking to dustin and mike might not be a part of the club after all. if he isn’t part of the club, then the basketball v. hellfire, jocks v. nerds thing turns into lucas v. dustin and mike’s probably there just caught in the middle while max is off distancing herself from everyone.

at this point, i really want mike and max to become good friends. i think the end of s3 gave them the perfect opportunity. s4 max has s2 mike vibes. it’s not the same situation at all, but he knows kinda what she’s feeling and they could connect through that + the fact that they’ll both be missing el. i also just really want... some wheeler siblings content. i’m hopeful that s4 gives us good nancy and mike scenes bc there’s no reason not to give us good nancy and mike scenes (+holly!). however...

while there’s proof that gaten and sadie and natalia and priah have all been filming since production restarted, and while i have reason to believe that caleb has been filming a lot inside/at the studio recently... there’s no evidence that finn has been on set. there’s none for maya and joe, either, but people have said that finn isn’t even in atlanta right now. maybe he is and maybe he just hasn’t been seen and maybe he’ll pop back up tomorrow. or, maybe he already filmed whatever he needed to film for hawkins before production stopped.  

the wild theory that’s popped up today is that everything gets to be too much for him in hawkins and he just... hops on a train to go visit el + the byers. i don’t know if i buy it, but it is interesting to note that he was sitting with them at the table read. and since we can guess that steve and robin will still be working at the video store, robin and nancy will be investigating pennhurst together, lucas and max may have some angst, joyce and murray are probably teaming up for the finding/saving hopper plot, and el is going to bond with will and jonathan, it seems like the order might mean a little something. i’d even bet that dustin and erica have scenes with them bonding over d&d.    

now this theory pretty much only exists because no one’s seen finn on set and one of the paps posted some pics of some trains. there’s also always theories about how there will be issues at home with the wheeler fam and if that’s going to happen, what better time than in s4 when all of his friends are pulling away and el’s gone again. so if he is missing el (and will) that much, and if he has any reason to worry about her and how she’s doing, or if the party becoming distant and issues at home are weighing on him and he feels like he needs to get away, he’s absolutely the type to venture off on a train by himself. i don’t know how it would work since he’s definitely supposed to still be in school and his friends/nancy at least would notice he’s gone, but.. it’s fun to think about and we’ve got zero actual content to go off of right now.  

another way i could see mike’s plot going is that he’s the one trying to keep the party together this season. playing mediator with lucas and dustin, becoming better friends with max, being the connection between the hawkins plot and the byers plot (along with nancy). 

there was also talk of him joining the track team bc the track has been set up with hawkins high colors for filming. but mike ‘this isn’t a stupid sports game’ wheeler? i don’t think so... basically, no one knows at the moment what’s happening with mike wheeler in s4 lol.

s4 mike is just like s4 byers fam -- a complete mystery to me currently. i don’t personally think that he’ll be leaving school and hopping on a train to visit el. i think he’ll be a part of the hellfire club with dustin, or that he won’t and instead will be attempting to keep the party from completely disbanding. i hope that we get wheeler siblings scenes and that max and mike have a breakthrough and become better friends. i also feel like he’ll be having some complicated feelings about hopper, the last interaction they had, etc. and, again, the whole long distance thing with el. 

so... mike and el broke up in s3. it was messy. but then they reconciled. and then hopper “died”. s3 ended with them at this weird place where she’s heard him say that he loves her and she’s told him that she loves him back. things are a little awkward in the scene bc everything has changed at this point, but a kiss, an ‘i love you’, planning to meet up on the holidays, and promising to call frequently all sounds like they’re back together and going to try making the long distance thing work to me. 

i think they’ll be together when s4 starts. i think that we’ll probably only see them talking on the phone or their radios for the first few eps. maybe we’ll see flashbacks or something to them being together on the holidays. the distance might be hard and they’re definitely going to be missing each other. like... el doesn’t have mike or hopper with her now and i’m thinking the party is going to be drifting apart, plus they’re both probably going to have other personal issues that have nothing to do with each other or the party. maybe they’ll be experiencing some emotional distancing of their own while dealing with the aftermath of hopper’s “death”, the move, and whatever’s going on with them at home and at school. i think that once they reunite (probably not until the last half of the season), they’re likely to be stronger than ever. 

now, onto personal theories that have zero basis. for some reason, i can’t get it out of my head that this season might dive into psychological horror a little bit ? like a greatest fears type of thing ?? and i keep thinking about brenner popping back up and using the people el loves to get to her or something and 👀👀 

[5sosbitchfest]

Reactions to Luke’s IG Story 6/14/2020

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I hate her as much as the next person but bi people in straight relationships are still bi

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I call bullshit on Messy being bi. Sorry, if she was bi, why didn't she come out earlier? Her 'haters'? Where? Also, Luke needs to learn the difference between supporting Pride and celebrating it while PR dating a fake ass 'bi' woman.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I also don’t think it’s fair to say Sierra has never been in a same sex relationship we really don’t know who she’s dated. This is a big problem in the LGBT community, when a bi woman is in a relationship with a man her bi identity gets erased. Halsey has actually talked about this a lot. While I agree that Lierra is not a queer couple, that does not erase Sierra’s identity as a queer woman, and pride is absolutely still for her to celebrate too 🌈

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: *i understand that it was Luke’s post but obviously she had input to post it.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Does Messy’s journey of her sexuality excuse her transphobia? Bc I don’t think so. She sure is selective about who and what she celebrates then. She posted that picture for attention, like everything else she does. It sounds harsh and if she wants to share her journey then great but let’s recognize and call it out for what it is. She doesn’t need to have Luke in a post to talk about her sexuality. Happy Pride Month to that person she purposely misgendered and attempted to invalidate.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: It’s not about disliking Sierra anon. She has only officially came out in a reply on twitter that she later deleted. That’s the only time it’s been mentioned. People struggle to come out and she tweeted and deleted it as if she actually wasn’t saying it. And now her boyfriend is the one essentially coming out for her? That’s what the issue is anon she has never openly said she was bisexual and now that it’s pride month she is? This is just the first time it’s being brought up& it wasn’t even her

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I don’t care that Luke posted good on him but him posting something for pride halfway through the month makes the other boys look inconsiderate for not posting anything

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I'm the anon that said the thing about "lets not make this into a mikey situation" I agree that it was a complete distraction tactic, and I also can not stand Sierra I was just trying saying that even with those two things in mind the post isnt harming anyone and so we shouldn't get mad at luke for making it.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I hate to admit it but I don't see Lierra ending anywhere near soon. Yes, couples don't last forever and still I don't think they will but let's be honest, he cares about her. Idk how things are in their life, and I hope he's happy, but I think she will stay around for this year and maybe a bit of 2021. 🙄

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Okey but was the "biracial" necessary? It made me cringe...

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I know luke can be cringy when it comes to Sierra but cmon haven’t we learn by now all the cringy stuff if from Sierra being on his account lol

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Sierra wrote that ... no caps, her grammar, fave chosen emojis etc totes her 10000000000% although glad acknowledging bisexual biracial but Angel? Angel by day and to stans but I thought she was the “late night devil”

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Something about Luke’s ig story doesn’t sit well with me... the fact that he felt the need to state that she’s biracial and bisexual just makes it look like he’s treating her like some kind of a trophy to show off, idk it just doesn’t feel right

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Why do L and S feel the need to make everything about S? This isn't about you, so shut up and actually get a job.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: “beautiful bisexual biracial angel” i’m gagging and laughing so hard yeah he 100% wrote and posted that himself /sarcasm

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I love luke and I'm happy if he's happy but the way Sierra clings to him in that photo is so gross. It really just feels like she's using him to do her dirty work. Like that post didnt feel genuine at all and it really seems like luke isnt even trying to convince us anymore he just does the bare minimum to make her happy. I dont blame him tho. Just feels icky.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: As a straight person, I hate straight couples and hope to never be cringe.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I'm sorry but that Instagram story that luke posted talking about his "beautiful bisexual biracial angel🥰🥺" does NOT (capitalize, underline and bold) sound like how luke would type something. The first part where he talks about how far we have to go sounds like him but not that that part.. not even close. Want to bet either sierra typed it, gave him the idea to say that OR did both cause we know she monitors him like crazy

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: "Bisexual biracial" is so unnecesarry. Luke, hon, shut up. People are out here fighting for their rights, and you feel the need and have the audacity to make it about your crazy ass girlfriend? Don't get me wrong, I love the boys, but making every fcking thing about your girlfriend-particularly luke- is not the point of these movements. So stfu Luke, stfu Sierra, stop making everything about S. That pisses me off, sorry I just needed to rant somewhere.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: is it just me or does the whole “beautiful bisexual biracial angel” not sound like him or something he’d say??? idk I’m kinda new to the fandom but it felt cringey reading that come from him

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Did you see what luke posted on his story? Seems him and Sierra are getting along great, smh. Also she's confirmed bi as well I guess. That's cool. Hope she doesnt use it as a weapon to defend criticism tho. Also did luke redo his hair cuz it seems very white again. Idk. Seems fishy. What are your thoughts? Do you think he was told to post that to distract from mike?

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: just when I was starting to forgive luke for his “response” to messy’s MESS, he goes and posts this... I’m TIRED

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: ok but as a lesbian it makes me sooo happy that Luke is celebrating pride and he's supportive of her sexuality 🥺 men never take bisexuality seriously and I love that he respects that. YET as someone who doesn't like s I'm like why....... like this week has been so frustrating and we were all like "they don't defend m bc they're in a sm break" and now he comes to post this and doesn't say anything? i just :(

allisonscarlett said to 5sosbitchfest: Honestly pride month came just in time cause I remember some stans saying that sierra is probably not bisexual and now there's luke insta story. I'm not trying to erase anyone's sexual orientation, I'm bisexual myself and I've found it weird that in the past years sierra didn't anything about her sexuality during pride month (and don't remember when she tweeted about being bi but I don't thing that it was in during pride month)

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: is anyone else getting"i can't be racist/homophobic because my gf is biracial and bisexual" vibes from lukes ig story or is it just me??? does he know he's digging a hole???

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: should we assume luke posted that in response to the insiders muke information? interesting timing on his part

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I honestly can't stand Luke rn. Angel? Angel???? ANGELLL????????????

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Okay but I don't think that counts as a "a straight couple thinking pride is theirs to celebrate". Just cause Sierra is in a straight relationship doesn't take away from the fact that she's bi, or mean she can't celebrate pride. And I think Luke wishing her and everyone a happy pride is actually a really supportive thing for him and again doesn't really count as a straight person thinking pride is theirs to celebrate, because he's focusing on her, not himself.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: “my beautiful biracial angel” i hate it here

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Gonna say something to MAYBE make some people happy. That picture was taken at a PROTEST. So they probably aren't together 😂😂 they were just together for the protest

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: The biracial part of his story post is feeding into him being a king for dating a mixed person

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: ok luke did look very cute tho

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Every single time there’s any drama in the fandom, a new “cute” picture pops up and some people really think that’s goals? Like in what world is now the time for that kind of post, if it isn’t a direct pr response to the twitter mess of the past few days? Smh they’re not even trying to be subtle anymore

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: i think it’s fine for straight couples to go to and celebrate pride when one of them or both of them aren’t straight.

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: I was reading this blog a few hours ago and I read a post where someone said that everyone basically assumed sierra was bi bc of a comment and now Luke comes out calling her "bisexual" as if he was confirming it...Idk felt weird lol

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest:  Bisexual biracial angel😭😭 who made him write that and thought people will take it seriously

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: have you seen luke’s story? “especially to my bisexual biracial girlfriend” i fucking CACKLED like is it how she’s supposed to be known for?

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: thank you luke for that ig post for it will keep messy ass kissers away from m mentions for a while

Anonymous said to 5sosbitchfest: Funny how you just brought up everyone saying that Sierra was bi just cause she said she loved men and woman and woopty do guess what luke put on his insta story. “My beautiful bisexual biracial gf” Luke I love you but 🤢

[iheardarumorxxx]

Midnight Sun, Chapter 5 - Invitations

This chapter opens up with Weirdo doing what he does best, whining.

In particular, he’s whining this time about how school is hell. Oh, it’s not boring anymore, not just a coma that he has to suffer through to appear normal, but actual genuine hell. He has to be around Bella all the time, you see. He has to exist in the same space as her and it is just misery and woe.

Except, and this is a point that I was going to make back in chapter one when Jasper was doing his freaky little spazz thing about all the tasty good hoomans around them, the Cullens don’t actually HAVE to suffer through the inane slog of Forks High. Think about it for a second. As far as anyone in town knows, Carlisle is a respected doctor (Dr. Kevorkian, but so far he hasn’t been that bad here), and Esme is a soft delicate happy homemaker mama. So why the fuck do they bother going to the public high school? Why would it be out of the realm of posibility to say that Esme home-schools the kids? It keeps them away from the teenagers who could be in very real danger having a bunch of Pire classmates, and it literally leaves them to their own devices. If they wanna spend a week up in Alaska (Weirdo) then no one is going to be the wiser, because they live on the edge of town and the only one with any actual ties to the community at large is Dr, Carlisle. 

Maybe they do it because they get bored just being around one another all the time. But everything we’ve seen in the text tells us that even at school, they only hang out with each other and go out of their way to avoid the rest of the school population. It tracks as yet another selfish thing that the Cullens are doing, putting the teenagers of Forks High at risk because they wanna go to normal school, even though they don’t have to.

I’m not even a paragraph in and I just ranted for two. This chapter recap might be a long one, guys.

I'd comforted myself with the fact that her pain would be nothing more than a pinprick - just a tiny sting of rejection - compared to mine.

This is one of those lines that SM uses to hammer home the fact that her Pires are OH SO MUCH better than you. It’s such a blatant ‘Oh, my pain and sorrow and misery is just SO BAD compared to Bella with her weak human mind and weak human emotions. She couldn’t possibly be as hurt as I, the great Edward Cullen, am.’ And it’s trash. It hasn’t been overt enough yet, but there’s still a rant coming about vampire instincts, with which I hope to point out exactly how this sentiment is wrong. 

If I was destined to love her

This is one of the main reasons why I just don’t buy the love story aspect of this series. They never talk about love in anything but ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’. Love is hard work. It’s building mutual respect and trust for one another and learning little quirks and habits along the way. It’s bumpy and messy and gross and wonderful, and most of all, it’s a choice. A choice to get to know someone, to spend time with that person and understand their hopes and dreams and wants and needs and fears and all of it, but in Twilight, it feels like the choice is taken away. Alice with her magic future power divines that Weirdo and Bella are gonna be in love, and instead of Eddie boy taking note that he barely even knows Bella, and has spent the better part of the few weeks he’s had with her making wild assumptions about who she is and what she’s like, he just goes ‘Ope, well, I guess if the future says I love her, I love her’ and that’s it. And the worst part is, even after their relationship actually begins, they don’t even try to do that getting to know and trust and respect one another thing, they just flat out keep their wild assumptions about one another throughout the entire series and rely on this ever subjective future that Alice has seen.

Wow, I’m ranting a lot today in this one. I’m not even a third of the way into this chapter yet.

Who would have ever dreamed that such a generic, boring mortal could be so infuriating?

We’re shitting on Mike Newton again, and I have to point something out yet again. Eddie, baby, sweety. You are outright ignoring Bella and treating her like she doesn’t matter in the slightest to you. You stated just before this that you were going out of your way to outwardly ignore her, even while you obsess over her in your mind. You have given only the outward indication of, if not outright disdain, then at the very least indifference to this girl and yet you’re giving Mike shit for having a crush on a girl and actually fucking acting on it. He talks to her, he attempts poorly to flirt with her and ask her out, even though we all know that she’s just as obsessed with you and compares Mike to a dog (because Bella is a piece of shit, too, so at least you have that in common). So stop shitting on poor Mike, who’s only crime is liking a girl who isn’t interested in him.

He'd created a Bella in his head that didn't exist

WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU’VE FUCKING DONE, EDWARD. And honestly? Yours is even worse because you don’t even BOTHER trying to FUCKING TALK TO HER TO GET TO KNOW HER. You just spy on her conversations with other people and assume that you know everything about her! Bella goes out of her way to put on this fake little show for her classmates and lie to them about everything she feels and thinks about them, but at least they FUCKING TALK TO HER! So yeah, I agree, Mike doesn’t have the full picture of who Bella really is (and if he did, he absolutely would not still have that little crush on her because Bella is a big fucking jerk), but at least they’re MAKING THE EFFORT!

Bella was good.

This is just not true and I have four books worth of canon to prove it.

I frequently amused myself by imagining backhanding him across the room and into the far wall...

“It helps if you think of them as people.” Remember that, Eddie??? Now here’s the thing. We’ve all had those fantasies about people. Wanting to throw them across the room or punch them in the face or whatever. The difference here? Edward is well aware that his Magic Pire Strength would genuinely hurt Mike, so much so that the very next line is about how it ‘probably’ wouldn’t hurt him fatally. Meaning that Eddie is well aware that it would hurt him, probably even break a few bones, but hey, he probably won’t die! Fuck you, Edward.

For all I knew, she never thought about me at all.

Pointedly gonna look over at Twilight now and see just how fucking much Bella is obsessing over Eddie, to the point where any thought not centered around her Woobie Pire is glossed over and ignored.

Eddie is having a jealous baby fit and once again thinking about how he would just love to hurt poor Mike for having the gall and audacity to ask Bella out. I already ranted about it up there, and I’m too tired and annoyed to do it again. Just know that Edward is a fucking asshole and poor Mike doesn’t deserve any of the shit that gets forced on him in this series.

Eddie is finally paying attention to Bella again, and wondering what she’s thinking, and he does that a lot in this book. I know that it’s supposed to be because he’s relied on his shitty vampire super power for so long, but considering how often he demanded (yes, demanded) to know what she was thinking in canon, and wouldn’t let up until she caved and told him, it feels like he’s trying to monitor her thoughts. She can’t be thinking anything that Daddy Ed doesn’t approve of, after all.

I picked the correct answer out of his head

But the Cullens are just super smart and know things and definitely aren’t cheating cheaters who cheat to get perfect grades in school.

"Are you speaking to me again?"

This is a problem with this canon. These people have had TWO conversations. In one of them, it was banal and inane small talk about the fucking weather and why Bella moved to Forks, and in the other, Eddie was gaslighting her to make her think she was wrong about what happened in the Van Of Doom(tm) crash. They haven’t talked like, at all. They don’t know anything about one another besides what they’ve crafted in their own empty heads. Bella is obsessing about how Eddie must hate her and Eddie is obsessing about how this version of Bella he’s built up in his head must be so amazing and wonderful and touting about how he loves her. There isn’t love in this relationship. There isn’t even a relationship. These people are obsessed stalkers.

I managed not to laugh.

This is another example of Edward being just... the biggest fucking jerk. Clearly, Bella is upset. She’s jumped to the wrong conclusion, and assumes that Eddie just wants her to fucking die or whatever, but she’s clearly upset and annoyed and Eddie is treating her feelings like a joke. He does that so often in the series, but hearing it from his own perspective really drives it home. 

Edward is being extremely shallow watching Eric and Tyler asking Bella out. He makes a rude comment about Eric’s skin (he’s a teenage boy with acne, oh GOD) and outright calls Tyler ‘average’ as if he knows anything about him. This is another problem with Ed and his magic surface thought listening power. I’ve already pointed out that he’s created this image of who Bella is in his head based on absolutely nothing, but he’s done this with everyone around him. He assumes what kind of people they are based on the very bare, surface thoughts they have. He doesn’t consider the people around him complex, because he isn’t diving into their more complex thoughts and emotions, and that’s just so gross and shitty.

How was I any better than some sick peeping tom?

We know what this is, right? We’re witnessing the birth of Eddie breaking into Bella’s house and watching her sleep. He’s once again acknowledging that he shouldn’t be doing it, and he knows that its wrong, so of course, that means he can just keep on doing it anyway. 

I was not the one she was destined to say yes to.

This is such a ham-fisted attempt at keeping the ‘will they won’t they’ illusion up, because its been made so obvious from the word GO that there’s never going to be anyone else for Bella. Even the attempt at a love triangle doesn’t work in the series because SM made it so clear all throughout New Moon that Bella would never choose Jacob if Edward was a choice. Everything she did in New Moon was to keep the illusion of Edward up in her mind, and even spending time with Jacob was a means to that end goal. Its not a compelling love story because, as stated, there is no love here because they haven’t spoken to one another, but their sick, driving obsession with one another is going to guide them all the way to the end. Edward and Bella are not a good couple, and I wish very much that that line up there was the truth, and that Bella discovered who she was as a person and found someone to compliment her.

My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?

Left that full for context. This is our title drop, and as someone who has read all of Twilight, who has seen all of the horrible title drops in them, I honestly think this one might be the worst of them all. It’s just this affected way that SM writes and it really, really irks me to see it so blatantly on display combined with a ‘hee hee, Midnight Sun, get it~’ on top of it.

My self, also, had frozen as it was - my personality, my likes and my dislikes, my moods and my desires; all were fixed in place.

This has a lot of implications for the Pires that SM never even bothers to explore because she doesn’t actually realize the potential in it. According to canon, right there in that sentence, when they’re turned Pires STOP CHANGING. They don’t develop new interests or hobbies, they don’t change their taste in music, film, anything. They become truly frozen in time. That means that the Cullens should not be driving cars, or wearing the clothes that they wear. They should not have picked up all of these skills that immortality has allowed them to pick up. The should be the exact same as they were the day they were turned. There’s something really dark and genuinely heartbreaking about that, and a better author would have explored it. Unfortunately, we don’t have a better author.

if I were going to attempt any kind of relationship with her

Edward refuses to take into account that that is not solely his decision to make. Pretend for a second that Bella is a normal human with normal thoughts. All she has seen of Eddie is this hot and cold thing were he does a nice thing or has a nice conversation with her and then ices her out for days and weeks at a time. He is, by all accounts, a total jerk and kind of a weirdo. Why the hell would she (again, if she were a normal, rational person) want a relationship with him?

Strange, unfamiliar reactions stirred deep in my forgotten human core.

AKA, Eddie just felt the first stirrings of being a horny teenage boy. Gross. 

The chapter ends on Eddie asking Bella to let him drive her to Seattle. I know I’ve already made this point, but if Bella were a normal teenage girl experiencing all of this shit from Eddie, she would have absolutely laughed in his face and told him to go fuck himself on a cactus or something. He’s proven to be volitale, rude, condescending, and just an outright jerk. There is no reason a sane, rational person would want to go anywhere with him. Would want to spend any time alone with him. If anything, Bella should be thinking that Eddie wants to get her alone to murder her or something based on the way he’s acting. It’s creepy and weird. Bella, unfortunately, eats this shit up and is so excited about her date with him. 

That’s it. Chapter over. Sorry this was such a long one, folks, but I’m not sure they’re gonna get any shorter. This story makes me angry, and when I get angry, I rant. Feel free to reach out in messages or DMs if you wanna chat more about this book or offer suggestions for the next one I should do after I finally put this one to bed. 

You can also buy me a snack if you want, I have my CashApp tag in my bio. Until next time.