#joyce frasier

[handleerz]

[erikiara80]

Hint in S3 that Joyce and Hopper were probably a couple in the original timeline

At the beginning of S3, Hopper asks Joyce out, but she declines. That evening, she watches an episode of the sitcom Cheers where a woman named Diane (like Hopper’s wife), tells her friend that a man, Frasier, asked her to marry him after he drank some Chianti. 

Screenshots credits to @chirpsythismorning​ Tagging you too @lilitblaukatz​ and @shippingfangirl013​ 

In the sitcom, Diane leaves Frasier at the altar. Joyce never shows up at the restaurant. And she and Hopper have been separated by everything, from evil scientists to time manipulation. 

But it’s the name Diane and the mention of Chianti, imo, the hint that Hopper and Joyce were together, and that they were a family at some point in the past.

Then there’s a flashback of Joyce and Bob. When I rewatched this scene, knowing what we know now about Vecna and timelines/time loop theories, I nearly spat out my tea.

Bob: They’re funny. I just wish they’d just get back together again already (Joyce: Me too)

He doesn’t say I hope they get together soon. They were a couple in the past. And Diane and Hopper had a child...

Also, in 3x02 Hop gets really drunk with Chianti. 

But there are many other hints.

Some of my favorite

This one is insane, lmao.

Joyce’s line in one of the S1 flashbacks: I don’t know who’s been raising you. Then the transition from Will’s drawing (the fireballs/cabbages) to a close up of Hopper’s eyes.

All the Will-Sara parallels in S1. But especially this one. It’s like Hopper is watching Will dying here.

This

Joyce calling Will, then Hopper. It’s interesting, because it really seems like she’s saying Will Hopper.

In 2x04, Will tells Joyce and Hopper that now he knows things that he never did before, and has memories that aren’t his memories. He’s talking about the possession, but if Jopper were together and then they were separated because of a time loop or brainwashing, this scene could be another way to hinting at the truth.

Also: My theory is that Sara is an altered memory and is actually Will or the combination of Will and El, Hopper’s kids, that the lab made him believe he lost. MKUltra was known for this kind of brainwashing.

Twin imagery. In every season. And always connected to Will, El, Joyce and Hopper. I think Jon is really Lonnie’s son-the reason he’s the only one who mentions him. And that Lonnie is the “Biff” of Stranger Things.

I also love that in S3 and S4 Hoppr and Joyce keep saying things like Let’s call our children, our kids are in danger... I mean, it makes sense, but IF Joyce and Hopper are Will and El’s parents, when we’ll rewatch the show, we’ll realize that the truth has always been there, from the beginning, like David said. And it’s beautiful.

Not a Willel twin post, but here some gifs of those moments: Joyce, Jim and their kids

The school scenes have so many hidden hints

Like the Wright Bros visual aid. So, Will and El are the (W)right bros. But we already know that they’re siblings. El lives with the Byers. Nothing new. So why these hidden hints if it’s something we already know? 

Another very interesting visual aid. Anton van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology. One of his main discoveries: spermatozoa. But there’s more. The shirt of the kid behind Will. Maybe I’m delusional, but doesn’t it look like a DNA filament? 

So, the (W)right Bros, DNA filaments, the father of microbiology, Will and El, all in the same shot. 

More hints because, why not?

A hidden hint at Will and Hopper connection at the end of S3 and S4

And after another mention of Chianti in 4x09, Joyce and Hopper almost make out in Russia and then they’re twinning.

Also:

This post about MKUltra, Joyce and Terry 

Also this post  

This one about El and the blonde sisters, or this one

March 22. Will’s birthday. Joyce says it twice. This could be a reference to Henry, who’s possessing Will in S2. But maybe it’s also a hint that another kid was born on that day? El?

Twin imagery everywhere. I’m sure it’s also related to the Martin/Richard Brenner and Henry/Edward mystery, and maybe a hint at different timelines. But Hopper, Joyce and their kids have been front and center from episode one. So this is about them too. It’s all connected.

And speaking of Russia and making out, lol.

At the beginning of S4, Joyce opens the doll that Murray says could be pregnant with an explosive device. A mom with her kids, a boy and a girl, stare at her, confused. 

A few episodes later, Owens says this: 

‘It’s a fancy bomb. We used to store them in these silos, but we haven’t used this one in years. In fact, there is no bomb here at all. So we repurposed it to hold something much more powerful than a missile. You.’ Oh, after jokes about working out of a shed.

So, Joyce has a doll that could be pregnant with a bomb but isn’t. And then we learn that one of the silos that were used to store bombs has been repurposed for El, who’s not a bomb but something more powerful.

Here the post

And the doll is actually “pregnant” with the proof that Hopper is alive. 

Imo, the mention of pregnancy connects Joyce, Hopper and El. And the boy and the girl that stare at Joyce when she breaks the doll could mean that Joyce was pregnant with two powerful children.

[tearsofperseides]

everytime I get a hyperfixation I want to make a Ronance AU out of it

Today's AU? Cheers AU

Robin as Sam

Nancy as Diane (I mean look at them)

Eddie as Carla

Mr. Hauser as Coach

Steve as Woody

Hopper as Norm

Joyce as Cliff

Jonathan as Frasier

Will I ever be making this AU in a fanfic? Absolutely not. Will I be posting about little scenarios and headcanons all the time? Absolutely yes.

Enjoy for the next month :) (I'm sorry)

[purpleplaid17]

Jess Watches // Fri 5 Jan // Day 105 Synopses & Favourite Scenes & Poll

Orphan Black (rw with mum) 5x07 Gag or Throttle

As Westmoreland demands a more aggressive approach with Kira, and Sarah fights to save her daughter, Rachel discovers a dark secret that makes her question her place within Neolution.

What was the wig budget for this ep? Rachel's past and present, Alison's new purple-tinted do, and my favourite, the dead clone's blue mohawk. I actually felt sympathy for Rachel, which is a credit to Tat and the writers. The realization that the neos never stopped monitoring her and that she will always be a test subject to them. I had forgotten how graphic the eyeball-cutting scene was. Ouch.

Frasier (with mum) 5x14 The Ski Lodge

Roz wins a weekend at a ski lodge, and trades it to Frasier. Daphne invites along her friend Annie, a swimsuit model. Frasier is taken with her, but she is interested in Niles.

Not surprising that this is one of the highest rated episodes. The scene where they're stood in a row each looking to their right at the person they want to have sex with but no one is looking at each other lmaooo. All ski lanes leading to Niles Crane. I thought Niles/Guy and Daphne/Annie made the cutest couples.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (rw) 3x11 Gingerbread

After discovering two dead young children and bearing a symbol linked to the occult, Joyce spearheads a campaign to rid Sunnydale of witches.

The young actors looked so familiar but I couldn't figure it out without imdb. The little boy was also Andrew in Desperate Housewives (Bree's son). I thought the girl looked a bit like Renne Rapp but the ages obviously don't match up so I was thinking older sibling/cousin maybe, but no. And Amy's goth friend is Blake Sennet of Rilo Kiley! 🐀

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters 1x09 Axis Mundi

Shaw and May search for Cate and make a startling discovery. Kentaro struggles with his loss.

So this is the Hollow Earth people in the tags have been talking about. The Titans designs are so cool I'd love to know more about the process of creating them. And poor little Hiroshi losing all the parental figures in his life at such a young age, but then repeating the cycle by abandoning his own children. Also, May being more concerned about finding cate than getting electricuted. Also also, the scream I scrumpt when [spoiler]. Is it next week yet?

[hannahhook7744]

Stranger things ocs part 1;

Name:

Tiffany Esther Hammond

Born:

April 29 1966-1967 five minutes after Steve.

Age:

16/17 (season one)

17/18 (season two)

18/19 (seasons three and four)

Aliases:

Tiff

Tiff the Metal Head

Tiff "The Rat's nest" Hammond

Tiffany "The Dreamer" Hammond

Tiff "The Gut Buster" Hammond

The Angel of Vengeance

The Swashbuckler

Captain Elora Everstone of the Stormbringer (DND character)

The pirate (graffiti name)

Residence:

Forest Hills Trailer Park at Hawkins, Indiana

Family:

Unnamed Mother

Benny Hammond (father)

Diane Hopper (God mother)

Jim Hopper (God father)

Sarah Hopper (God sister)

Jane Hopper (God sister)

Vance Hopper (God cousin)

Griffin Stagg (God cousin)

Friends:

Steve Harrington

Tommy Hagan

Carol Perkins

Eddie Munson

Robin Buckley

Argyle

Fred

Gareth

Jeff

Chrissy Cunningham

The Party

Erica Sinclair

Murray Bauman

Joyce Byers

Other:

Nancy Wheeler (frienemy)

Jonathan Byers (frienemy)

Billy Hargrove (arch enemy)

The Harrington Parents (enemy)

Neil Hargrove (enemy)

Keith (coworker and frienemy)

Vecna (enemy)

Martin Brenner (enemy)

Dr. Sam Owens (ally)

Claudia Henderson (acquaintance/parenal figure)

Jason Carver (sympathetic enemy)

Connie Frazier (father's killer/enemy)

Affiliation:

Corroded Coffin

Hellfire Club

Scoops Ahoy

Family Video

Benny's Burgers

The Party

Occupation:

Member of the Corroded Coffin (-1986)

Member of the Hellfire Club (1980s-1986)

Employee at Family Video (1985-)

Employee at Scoops Ahoy (1985)

Waitress at Benny's Brugers (-1983)

Owner of Benny's Brugers (1983-)

Student at Hawkins High School (1981-1985)

Gender:

Female

Height:

5'4 1/2 (177.8 cm)

Weapon:

Sword

Pencil

Fork

Lighter

Matches

Shoe

Frying Pan

Hobbies:

Playing with fire

Stealing small things

Reading

Drawing

Fencing

Archery

Listening to music

Playing the keyboard

Eating

Trying to cook

Playing video games

Playing board games

Playing card games

Role playing

Treasure hunting

Hanging out with her friends

Making weird food combos

Bad graffiti

Dying her hair

Doing stupid things with her friends

Street racing

Swimming

Collecting things

Playing dnd specifically

Personality:

Creative

Sentimental

Street smart

Slightly rebellious

Bit of a chameleon

Anxious

Playful

Protective

Constantly confused

Bit of a day dreamer

Bit of a smart ass

Temperamental

Annoying on occasion

Secret delinquent

Well-liked

Good in school and around most adults

A bit bossy at times

Tomboyish

Insecure

Outgoing

Vengeful

A bit of sailor mouth

Kind of a loud mouth

Almost zero brain to mouth filter

Open minded

Eccentric

Impulsive

Has a taste for justice

Bit of a punk

Bit of a metal head

Fan girl before it was popular

Fears:

Arachnophobia

Atelophobia

Musophobia

Autophobia

Theme Song:

Fight For Your Right by Beastie Boys

Relationship status:

single but crushing

Story:

Stranger Us

Name:

Misa Rosè Buckley

Born:

March 19, 1971.

Age:

12 (season one)

13 (season two)

14 (season three)

14/15 (season four)

Aliases:

Misa Madrain

The ranger

Bow Master Misa

Miss Popular (given by Mike)

Frasier (graffiti name)

Residence:

The Buckley House at Hawkins, Indiana

Family:

Minerva (grandmother)

Richard Buckley (father)

Melissa Buckley (mother)

Robin Buckley (older sister)

Susan Hargrove (maternal aunt)

Neil Hargrove (maternal uncle via marriage)

Billy Hargrove (Step-cousin)

Max Mayfield (maternal cousin)

Friends:

The Party

Erica Sinclair

Steve Harrington

Argyle

Chrissy Cunningham

Tiffany Hammond

Bob Newby

Other:

Eddie Munson (friend)

Nancy Wheeler (acquaintance)

Jonathan Byers (acquaintance)

Jim Hopper (acquaintance/parenal figure)

Joyce Byers (acquaintance/parenal figure)

Claudia Henderson (acquaintance/parenal figure)

Billy Hargrove (enemy)

Jason Carver (frienemy)

Vecna (enemy)

Scott Clarke (former teacher)

Martin Brenner (enemy)

Dr. Sam Owens (ally)

Demogorgon (enemy)

Connie Frazier (enemy)

Troy and James (enemy)

Demodogs (enemy)

Hospital Creature (enemy)

The Flayed (enemy)

Jake (enemy)

Troy (enemy)

James (enemy)

Angela (enemy)

Affiliation:

Hawkins Middle School Cheerleaders (former)

Hawkins High School Girls' Soccer team

Hawkins High Drama Club

Hawkins High Band

Hellfire Club

Hawkins High School Band

The Party

Hawkins Middle School AV Club (formerly)

Occupation:

Member of the Hawkins Middle School AV Club (formerly)

Student at Hawkins Middle School (1982-1985)

Cheerleader at Hawkins Middle School (1982-1985)

Student at Hawkins High School (1985-)

Member of the Hellfire Club (1986-)

Member of the Party (1976-)

Gender:

Female

Height:

4'11" (149.86 cm)

Weapon:

Pocket knife

Screw driver

Bow and arrow

Hobbies:

Archery

Gymnastics

Cheerleading (formerly)

Acting

Singing

Playing the Clarinet

Soccer

Taking care of her cat

Playing dnd

Graffiti

Street racing

Drawing

Listening to music

Riding her bike

Running from the cops

Stealing

Personality:

Cheerful

Cloaked smart ass

Has a lot of attitude

Creative

Smart

Good at blending in

Annoying when she wants to be

Street smart

Eccentric

Rebellious

Confident

Fears:

Cynophobia

Theme Song:

Material girl by Madonna

Relationship status:

Single but crushing

Story:

Stranger Us

[unblogparaloschicos]

TV: Michael

Al igual que en “Los años maravillosos” (The Wonder Years, 1988-1993) o “Everybody Hates Chris” (2005-2009), “Oliver Beene” (dos temporadas entre 2003 y 2004) retrata una época específica de la historia estadounidense (los sesenta) mediante el humor, cierta ternura y la voz en off del protagonista, ya adulto, narrando la historia (David Cross; en la versión infantil es interpretado por Grant Rosenmeyer). Hijo del Dr. Jerry (dentista, en la piel de Grant Shaud) y la ama de casa Charlotte Beene (Wendy Makkena) y hermano menor del muy molesto Ted (Andrew Lawrence), Oliver es un chico común y corriente que, junto con los habituales desquicios de una familia ordinaria, padece infortunados y embarazosos accidentes cada vez que aparece Bonnie (Amanda Michalka), la chica de la que está enamorado.

Afortunadamente, Oliver cuenta con dos amigos muy cercanos para ayudarle en el diario desatino de su existencia: Joyce (Daveigh Chase, más cerca de la Lilo de “Lilo & Stitch” que de la terrible Samantha Morgan de “La llamada”) y Michael (Taylor Emerson).

Ya desde su primera aparición, en el segundo episodio, se da por supuesto que el futuro de Michael sería con pareja masculina y bebé adoptado incluidos. En esa historia que introduce a su personaje, los padres de Ted y Oliver dejan a los chicos en casa para asistir a una cena y la noche sin adultos se vuelve caótica cuando aparece Harvey (A.J. Trauth, de la serie “Mano a mano”, o “Even Stevens”), amigo de Ted vetado de la casa de los Beene por sus desquiciantes bromas. Herido en su confianza por lo que considera una traición a la idea de pasar una noche de hermanos, Oliver invita a su mejor amigo, que resulta ser ese muchacho raro y afeminado, y que devendría en un personaje frecuente: con exepción del inicial, Michael aparece en todos los episodios subsiguientes.

Michael es el arquetipo del varón gay: modales delicados, afección por el showbusiness (admira a Rock Hudson, galán de la época que en 1985 manifestó su homosexualidad, obligado por el avance del VIH que padeció) y  gran interés por la moda. En un episodio mostró repulsión por las imagenes femeninas de una revista pornográfica y, cuando su padre tuvo conocimiento de su acceso a ella, tras preguntarle si le había gustado, éste contestó afirmativamente, recibiendo un abrazo instantáneo y ferviente, señal de que el hombre ya tenía sus sospechas sobre la sexualidad de Michael. Teniendo en cuenta que la historia transcurre en 1962 (y que faltaban once más para que le homosexualidad saliera de la lista de trastornos mentales de la American Psychological Association), podemos dar por sentado que su adolescencia, además viviendo en una familia con fuerte raigambre religiosa, no debe haber sido nada sencilla.

Michael es un personaje simpático, pero secundario, que gozó del honor televisivo de aparecer en los créditos principales en la segunda temporada de la serie producida por Steve Levitan, creador de hitos de la comedia como “Frasier” o ”Modern Family”. 

[joycefrasier]

Joyce Frasier

Joyce Frasier

[multifandomfix]

Who I Write For

Abbott Elementary: Barbara Howard, Melissa Schemmenti

Absolutely Fabulous: Claudia Bing, Edina Monsoon, Lulu, Patsy Stone // Eddy x Patsy x Reader

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A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Count Olaf, Esmé Squalor, Georgina Orwell, Justice Strauss

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Enola Holmes: Eudoria Holmes, Miss Harrison, Sherlock Holmes

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Frasier: Daphne Moon, Frasier Crane, Niles Crane, Roz Doyle // Daphne x Roz x Reader, Frasier x Niles x Reader

Friends: Janice Litman, Joey Tribbiani, Monica Geller, Phoebe Buffay, Rachel Green, Richard Burke

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Glass Onion: Benoit Blanc, Birdie Jay, Claire Debella

Good Omens: Aziraphale, Crowley, Madame Tracy, Shax // Aziraphale x Crowley x Reader

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Green Wing: Caroline Todd, Guy Secretan, Harriet Schulenburg, Joanna Clore, Mac Macartney, Sue White // Joanna x Sue x Reader

Grey's Anatomy: Addison Montgomery, Amelia Shepherd, Arizona Robbins, Catherine Fox, Cristina Yang, Derek Shepherd, Erica Hahn, Mark Sloan, Meredith Grey, Miranda Bailey, Teddy Altman, Tom Koracick // Cristina x Teddy x Reader, Derek x Mark x Reader

Halloween: Laurie Strode, Lindsey Wallace

Hannibal: Bedelia Du Maurier, Frederick Chilton, Hannibal Lecter

Harlots: Lady Repton, Lydia Quigley, Margaret Wells, Nancy Birch // Lady Repton x Nancy Birch x Reader

Harry Potter: Barty Crouch Jr, Bellatrix LeStrange, Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Minerva McGonagall, Molly Weasley, Narcissa Malfoy, Rita Skeeter, Severus Snape, Sybill Trelawney // Bellatrix x Narcissa x Reader

His Dark Materials: Lee Scoresby, Maggie Costa, Marisa Coulter, Mary Malone

Holes: Kate Barlow, Louise Walker

House MD: Gregory House, James Wilson, Lisa Cuddy

House Of The Dragon: Daemon Targaryen, Rhaenys Targaryen

I Dream Of Jeannie: Amanda Bellows, Evil!Jeannie, Jeannie, Roger Healey

Insatiable: Bob Armstrong, Coralee Armstrong, Regina Sinclair // Bob x Coralee x Reader

Just Shoot Me: Dennis Finch, Nina Van Horn

Killing Eve: Carolyn Martens, Eve Polastri, Villanelle // Villanelle x Eve x Reader

Last Tango In Halifax: Caroline Dawson, Gillian Greenwood, Judith Tyzack // Caroline x Gillian x Judith x Reader

Legends Of Tomorrow: Damien Darhk, Gideon, John Constantine, Leonard Snart, Martin Stein, Mick Rory, Rip Hunter, Sara Lance, Zari Tarazi // Leonard x Mick x Reader

Mamma Mia: Donna Sheridan, Ruby Sheridan, Tanya Chesham-Leigh // Ruby x Tanya x Reader

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M*A*S*H: BJ Hunnicutt, Charles Emerson Winchester III, Francis Mulcahy, Hawkeye Pierce, Henry Blake, Margaret Houlihan, Maxwell Klinger, Radar O'Reilly // Henry x Radar x Reader

Merlin: Arthur Pendragon, Gwaine, Merlin, Mithian, Morgana Pendragon, Morgause, Uther Pendragon

Mom: Bonnie Plunkett, Jill Kendall, Natalie Stevens

Mrs. America: Gloria Steinem, Phyllis Schlafly

Nanny McPhee: Cedric Brown, Mrs. Blatherwick, Nanny McPhee, Selma Quickly

NCIS: Abby Sciuto, Ducky Mallard, Jenny Shepard, Jethro Gibbs, Tony DiNozzo

New Amsterdam: Elizabeth Wilder, Iggy Frome, Lauren Bloom, Max Goodwin

Nine Perfect Strangers: Frances Welty, Masha Dmitrichenko

Ocean's 8: Debbie Ocean, Lou Miller, Rose Weil, Tammy

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Peaky Blinders: Aberama Gold, Alfie Solomons, Arthur Shelby, Luca Changretta, Polly Gray, Tommy Shelby

Penny Dreadful: Evelyn Poole, Vanessa Ives

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Hector Barbossa, Jack Sparrow

Prodigal Son: Edrisa Tanaka, Jessica Whitly, Malcolm Bright, Martin Whitly, Vivian Capshaw

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Scandal: Mellie Grant, Olivia Pope, Sally Langston

Schitt’s Creek: Alexis Rose, David Rose, Moira Rose, Ted Mullens

Scream Queens: Cathy Munsch, Gigi Caldwell

Sex Education: Colin Hendricks, Erin Wiley, Hope Haddon, Jean Milburn, Maureen Groff

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The School For Good And Evil: Clarissa Dovey, Leonora Lesso

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The Umbrella Academy: Five Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves, The Handler

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Wednesday: Larissa Weems, Marilyn Thornhill, Morticia Addams

What We Do In The Shadows: Lilith, Nadja, Nandor // Lilith x Nadja x Reader

Will & Grace: Beverly Leslie, Jack McFarland, Karen Walker

Xena: Warrior Princess: Alti, Aphrodite, Ares, Autolycus, Callisto, Gabrielle, Joxer, Xena // Xena x Gabrielle x Reader

Yonderland: Debbie Maddox, Imperatrix, Negatus // Debbie x Imperatrix x Reader

3rd Rock From The Sun: Dick Solomon, Mary Albright, Sally Solomon, Sonja Umdahl, Vicki Dubcek // Mary x Sally x Reader

30 Rock: Diana Jessup, Jenna Maroney, Kenneth Parcell, Liz Lemon, Lynn Onkman, Nancy Donovan // Jenna x Liz x Reader

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Other Miscellaneous Characters

[anotherlilyevans]

Pls, if you're part of one of this fandoms, let's be friends :)

- Star Wars

- Rise of the Guardians

- Måneskin

- HTTYD

- Pedro Pascal

-Taika Waititi

- Marauders

- Frasier and Cheers

- Alice in Wonderland

- Trollhunters

- Willian Joyce media in general

- Animation in general

- Fantasy books in general

- Cinema in general

[kaypeace21]

I believe that byler is an endgame

but why would they spend 3 seasons winding up with mileven?

People REALLY need to pay attention to the shows the Duffers cited as huge inspirations to them. Cheers,dawsons creek, freak &geeks did exactly what the Duffers are doing (and the Duffers said these shows inspired them)

. Cheers for over 5 seasons built up the pairing of sam and Dianne- had them break up in the s5 finale and then in the last 2 eps of the 11th season have them get back together and once again break up explaining for the 100th time they were wrong for each other and brought out the worst in eachother . Cheers would build up multiple pairings (Frasier /Lilith (s4-11/broke up in s11) , sam/Dianne (s 1-11, broke up in s11 permanently) , rebecca /sam (s8-10) Rebecca/robin (s8-9) -these pairings lasted for multiple seasons and they all broke up! They built pairings up for multiple seasons but showed throughout the show why those pairing in cheers could never work out in the long term. The same Thing happened with almost every pairing in Dawson’s creek (they’d build up multiple pairings up -sometimes for multiple seasons- sprinkle in good but also dysfunctional aspects of those relationships- and then break them apart for good ).

Also in Dawson’s creek 2 characters (a rich girl and poor guy with daddy issues) date and breakup- but both of their gay brothers get together and are endgame instead of them (cough jancy vs byler). One of the gay guys (the rich one with the book smart sis) even dated the main girl (Joey) for a while before admitting he was gay and that he was in denial (while dating the main girl for more than a season ). In D.C even the main guy(Dawson) / girl (Joey) don’t end up being endgame (despite teasing it for all 5 seasons) . They did this with a lot of couples in the show. Honestly, the Duffers pretty much borrowed this idea of showing pairings with issues and breaking them up -but toned down how long they’d bait them . Like 11seasons of showing dysfunctional couples date -ick. And Dawson’s creek ... my god it had a literal love octogon/ love webs (so many love squares/pentagons/ and on and off relationships). The 1 adult couple broke up and I’m not exaggeration 4 times, and Dawson got back with 2 of his girlfriends like so many times. And ugh I’d say each (of the 4-5) main characters dated at least 4 people -and each of those relationships lasted for like 20+ eps each... and then after all that build up -break up ). That’s not even including the people the main 5 or so characters would date for like 5-6 eps . Thank god it was toned down compared to Dawson’s creek or cheers. i can’t imagine the frustration watching those shows during its airing 😂

Freaks & geeks (set in the 80s)was also inspo.14 y old Sam who is bullied and called “homo” “queer” etc throughout the whole series - he also obsesses over a cheerleader girl for the whole series and in the second to last ep of the series- they finally start dating  and he realizes they have nothing in common and says “it’s boring. all we ever do is makeout.She likes nothing i like. We can’t talk to eachother. We never have fun.” And he admits he only keeps dating her cause everyone would call him “crazy” to not date her. sam and her are also said to be “from different planets” and “different species”  just like mileven in s3 lol.  The gf of  sam also says before they dated she saw him ‘like a sister’ (like El asking mike if he’d be her brother in s1, before they date). And after this sibling comment various characters -encouraged the couple and said they would be good together (before they dated-like what we’ve seen in st with mileven and other ships ).Sam eventually decides to not cave to peer pressure- and breaks up with her. Meanwhile sam’s sis (is a straight A student, who is initially into a popular guy and starts hanging with the cool kids).  After getting over the first (popular) guy, she later dates another guy- a music-obsessed-stoner-guy  with a cruddy dad...and she breaks up with him (like jancy?). That couple was even called ‘romeo & juliet’ before they broke up-similar to mileven being called “romeo & juliet’ before their breakup. plus r&j were never in love... just like mileven.

All 3 shows had the main guy/girl date but not end up with eachother in the end . And both shows -would build up several pairings that looked like endgame but would show faults in those relationships and would have them breakup (because those pairings were never that healthy together). Which I believe is what they’re doing with jancy, jopper, mileven and lumax (explained in my analysis here all the evidence for why I don’t think they don’t end up together). I mean there’s many reasons I listed in the analysis but you think it’s a coincidence - jancy, lumax, mileven , and Steve/rando girl who rejected him in s3-all incorportated spying on their love interest ? you think the duffers think that’s good to have all these romantic pairings spy on eachother? When in the show they canonically have the us gov (villains) spy via phone taps, and hidden recorders, and cameras? Brenner used El as a spy for his own gain ? they even call the mf a ‘spy’ (which the characters perceive as the  main villain)... i don’t think the mf is  actually villainous but that’s off topic).The point is narratively equating spying as something ‘wrong’ by characters our main cast of heroes is against. But having that same cast of heroes partaking in spying themselves … specifically on to their romantic partners- and not also showing it as a negative. But romanticizing it? Would be quite hypocritical. And a HUGE narrative oversight.

Also build up?

S1- mileven kiss right after el asks if he’ll be her “friend” or “brother”. Has others compare el to mike’s sibling /cousin. Hint Will is gay . Have hints mike is queer too/ and cares deeply about Will. Constantly mention how el physically resembles Will/a boy. Parallel mileven to ted/Karen who were “never in love”. Have Nancy and mike verbally compare the jancy/stancy love triangle to mileven/byler . And at the end of the season mike writes a story for Will that likens the 2 to han/leia. Flo says about jancy/Jon “ only love makes you that crazy and that damn stupid”. (Which flo wasn’t entirely right about since jon punched Steve for insulting his family- for Jon it was familial love -not romantic love. But put a pin in that phrase)

S2- was pretty much byler season (and mileven barely interact that season). Byler say they’d go “crazy together”. But el’s new catchphrase is she’s “not stupid.” They Compare mileven to luke/leia (siblings that kissed) . Ref ghostbusters and parallel byler to the romantic pairing of Dana /venkman (but have el just be a ghost and mike a ghost buster which isn’t romantic but the opposite) .parallel mileven to hopper/el. Have el spy on mike, el hurt a stranger cause of unhealthy jealousy, have mileven dance to a song about a possessive spying/Stalking ex gf . Throw in mileven burns like “they’re not in love they’re not even from the same planet.” (El being et ref) . Have mike say annoyed “a bond ?! (Scoff) cause you shared nougat?! “ (egos like s1 ) “. Mike saying after knowing max for a week “hate you? I don’t even know you?” (He knew el for a week too so no way he loves her -cause he doesn’t know el , just like max ) . mike even criticizes his friends’ instant attraction to max saying “you haven’t even spoken a word to her.”Dustin saying “ I don’t have to . I mean -look at her.” Which makes it even more suspicious that mike was into a girl who multiple characters said looked like a boy (specifically Will) in s1. Have El watch a soap opera (all my children) and mimic the scene of  erica kane and her love interest michael. Which in the soap opera-isn’t endgame, and ended with some stalking after their breakup.

S3- mileven is finally dating : multiple characters (lucas, Will, Hopper, dustin,Max, etc) in the show dislike and verbally complain about them together . In cheers all of sam’s friends hated him dating Dianne and would vocally complain about it (similar to joyce they even clapped/cheered after 1 of their many breakups) . Mike is horrified by the spying(that mileven fans romanticized in s2) , el is happier single and neither is heartbroken over the breakup. They date for 2 eps and then breakup . Mileven being together inhibits El’s character arc from s2 (aka she went from wanting to explore the world and leave the cabin in s2 to see her friends, to ignoring her friends and cutting herself off from the world in order to stay in the cabin all day to make out with mike for 6 months - she would literally lie to her friends about curfew to return to the cabin and kiss mike -going against her ‘friends don’t lie’ mantra from the past 2 seasons too ). Mike canonically doesn’t trust her / doesn’t believe in her ability to make decisions and lies to her and never apologizes for lying. And el doesn’t apologize for spying . They throw in more gay hints of mike & Will. Mileven is called “bullshit” like s2 stancy . And Both pairings in the show kissed a bunch and said “I love you” (but they weren’t endgame). They also contrast s3 mileven scenes to s2 byler scenes and have byler win out. And once again parallel mileven to hopper/el and Karen/ted. As well as paralleling and likening Mileven to stancy in numerous other ways (besides the “bullshit “ line) . They also parallel mileven to stobin (both are straight baits) .They parallel the stobin confession to the mileven one -both confessions have them sitting on the floor, both girls have bandages on their legs, and both confessions are interrupted by dustin. Also both Steve/mike use the terms “crazy & stupid ” to confess to robin/el. But unlike Will who agrees to be “crazy “ with mike .El confused , asks “ what makes you crazy?” And robin says she didn’t have a crush on his “stupid hair”. el even says in reference to mike “there’s more to life than stupid boys.” Showing how el/robin don’t have romantic feelings for the boys-like the flo phrase of s1. Unlike Will who after fighting with mike calls himself “stupid” over and over and rips up the photo of him and mike where they promised to go “crazy together.” Even Steve says in s2 stancy should should “pretend to be stupid teenagers” in love. Emphasis on “pretend”. And when el says she loves mike “the first I love you” plays -the only other time that song plays in s3 is when robin rejects Steve (cause she’s gay.) cough cause mike is gay too.

There’s a lot more in each season (that illustrates mileven was built up -but not as a positive couple but a problematic one that was never was in love to begin with ). But I’m trying to keep this short . You can read this post here where I go in more depth about all of this .

S1-2 builds up the problematic ships (but showed good and bad aspects of their dynamic) . like the spying of jancy, lumax, and mileven or the jealousy. of Hopper in s2. In the s2 finalie they have them kiss or hug/exchange romantic glances. And in S3 we see the after math of this with all the couples officially dating - and they show all the couples issues at the forefront . I already talked about mileven. But, Lumax broke up 6 times (they dated for 6 months- and every month they dated max dumped him ). Jancy fight in the opening of ep 1 and don’t understand each others issues (sexism/poverty-and Jon’s issues with his dad) . And neither supports the other in their passions of journalism & photography.Nancy is also called “nancy drew” who in 1986 (year of s4) before going to college dumps her long term highschool bf (who helped her in many of her past mysteries/novels ). Their relationship was also shown as complex and somewhat dysfunctional because of both parties -before nancy drew dumps him. And (even if not dating like the other pairings) jopper almost go on a date in s3. Joyce was trying to hide the fact she was moving, Hopper was horribly jealous, and all they did was yell and argue.Murray says to joyce regarding hopper “he’s a brute... probably reminds you of a bad relationship” (aka lonnie/Joyce) . They even have Joyce watch a cheers ep- which directly compares jopper to (dianne/Frasier) who weren’t endgame in cheers but a rebound .  Hopper /fraiser both drink chianti . Fraiser asks dianne to marry him/Hopper asks Joyce on a date-both women stand them up. Or when Joyce asks Hopper out she calls her self ‘detective byers ‘and Hopper name drops miami vice. Which had an on and off again relationship for several seasons- of the male /female detectives.The relationship faded out as Gina realized they mainly got together when one or both needed someone. Crockett was very protective of Gina, and had some jealousy when Gina was involved in relationships , but was the first one to be there for her when things went wrong. And they realized it was better to not be together romantically. Heck seems like all these couples have negative film/tv parallels... lucas in s2 mentions not liking winston in ghost busters cause he came ‘super late’ (like Max). in s1 disses michael myers (which Max dressed as). And at the end of s3- lumax dress identically to eric/donna from a ep of that 70s shows (in the ep  eric/donna were broken up).

 (s3 was marketed as the “summer of love” and “summer love” is a euphemism for flings that don’t last.) s4-5 Will probably show good healthy ships/break up the problematic ones from past seasons .

So first 2 seasons focus on the unhealthy ships / and the last 2 seasons focus on healthy ships. S3 the middle season would be considered the turning point -and why none of the popular ships (assumed to be endgame) came off looking that great (compared to how they were presented in s1-2) .

[kiara-carrera]

*slaps five dollars on the table* i would like anything and everything about kathleen goldman please and thank you

okay so kath has to be like,,,my most underdeveloped st oc i am terrible at planning but

an actual genius for real

worked her ass off to prove she was just as smart as any man

got her phd and then subsequently picked the worst job ever

i'm pretty sure she starts at the lab after all of the bs with one

started getting super attached and maternal towards el

brenner wasn't a fan of that, totally threatened to fire her over it

chose to flee the lab after el escaped and her whole goal was finding el before they did

in s2, she takes up a job at hawkins middle under the name kathleen frasier

when the party sees her, their little minds are blown

kath trying to reach out to mike if he needs support because she know he misses el as much as she does

absolutely blows a gasket when she learns that hopper's been housing el for months

mother daughter reunion is absolute perfection

between s2 and s3, el cannot understand why kath doesn't live with her and hopper

because in her mind hop is her dad and kath is her mom and like,,,why don't they all live together

el: mike's parents don't even like each other and they still live in the same house

hopper, choking on his chips: can i just watch miami vice in peace

hopper and kath are will they won't they on crack

they most definitely will

kath and joyce, besties confirmed

kath will kill a man for her family

moves to cali with the byers post s3 to give el a fresh start

there's definitely rumors in lenora that kath and joyce are together because the coparenting excuse just isn't sufficient enough for these nosy assholes

[strangertheory]

i’m sure this has been talked about somewhere but regarding the will has DID/created the upside down theories, what are people speculating the source of his powers to be? like was he experimented on at a young age, or did they come from lonnie/joyce, or what? this has probably been covered but i’m not sure where to find it

I can share with you the two hypothetical interpretations that I myself have considered for the source of characters’ powers in the Stranger Things universe. I don’t want to speak for any other fans that are discussing the possibility that Stranger Things is about a DID System because we all have our own unique thoughts on the way it might play out within the series, and I have yet to speak to a fan that is entirely enthusiastic about the second layer of hypotheticals that I’ve personally considered regarding where characters’ powers come from.

To me: Stranger Things is like an onion. This story has so many possible layers. And as we peel back the layers of what is going on in the story there are new possibilities revealed at every single layer.

I’m going to tell you about the two different layers that I’ve considered regarding where characters’ powers come from and how those powers manifest themselves within the story.

▪️ ▫️ ▪️ ▫️ ▪️ ▫️ ▪️ ▫️ ▪️

My “first layer” theory regarding where characters’ powers come from in Stranger Things is that they might be like the X-Men or the espers in Akira and have genetic mutations or evolutionary predispositions to developing their abilities. Agent Connie Frasier appears to be seeking to identify intelligent children in the Hawkins area when she asks Mr. Clarke if he has any students at Hawkins Middle that would be interested in an Indiana AV Club program. It’s implied that the Lab seeks out precocious children for their work because they believe there is a correlation between intelligence and psychic ability. Stranger Things basically offers us the “first layer” explanation that the events of the story are inspired by the historic experiments (and abuses) done by MKUltra on human subjects in the United States in its efforts to unlock the potential of the human mind and potentially control that power and wield it against perceived domestic and international threats. Within this “first layer” theory we can speculate that perhaps children with latent psychic abilities are more likely to learn to control their powers at an early age when they are pressured to do so under extreme circumstances. For El these extreme circumstances could be the abuse that she experienced at the Lab, assuming that she was there her entire life. For Will these extreme circumstances could be Lonnie’s abuse during his early childhood, or extreme circumstances that Will experienced elsewhere (perhaps also at a medical facility or at the Lab.) A person’s instinctive need to have control over their powers while responding to a threat (or after attempting to use those powers very intently and with deep focus within a perfectly calibrated lab environment?) could account for those powers being recognized, used, and trained.

Within the DID Theory the question of which circumstances were the origin-point of El’s powers becomes more vague. Was El created as an alter within the DID System while Will was being abused by Lonnie? Is the Lab and El’s backstory actually a distorted trauma memory that has been fictionalized by the DID System as a defense mechanism? Does the Lab exist as an explanation that the mind subconsciously invented in order to explain to itself the terrible things that happened in a way that it was willing to face and cope with? Or, perhaps, was there a point in time that El emerged from Will’s mind into the real-world and then  imprisoned by the lab and experimented on by Dr. Brenner? Do El’s memories of the Lab and Dr. Brenner reflect memories that she experienced as an alter in a DID System while she was still sharing the same body as Will, and Will’s consciousness was dissociating and depersonalizing a traumatic experience that would have otherwise been his own? Or are El’s experiences at the Lab completely separate from Will’s own story? 

Before I leap to my “second layer” theory, I’d like to comment that I strongly suspect that we will find out precisely how El and Will’s stories intersect in season 4. I believe that we will find out the way in which Will and El are connected to both Dr. Brenner and the Lab and each other. I look forward to seeing how the writers peel back that layer of the Stranger Things onion. I think it’ll be a huge plot twist and most fans will not see it coming.

Now. My “second layer” hypothetical regarding the way that characters’ powers may (or may not) work in Stranger Things is based on the circumstances that are often faced by alters in a DID System that are called "fictive alters.”

Fictive alters have a fictionalized sense of who they are that is not grounded in the rules that exist in our “real” world. Fictive alters may have superpowers. Sometimes they might be based on a character from a movie or a book or a song that the child was familiar with. The fictional aspects of their identities will be often very real and accessible to them when they are conscious within the internal worlds of the mind and inside the DID System. However, whenever a fictive alter is “fronting” (meaning: when they are conscious of the outside “real” world) then that fictive alter will no longer have superpowers: they will only have whatever abilities that they have learned as an ordinary human person in our world. Within the mind they have their superpowers, and in the real world when they are conscious they will not have superpowers because they are in an ordinary human body with the limitations of an ordinary human body.

Now: why am I summarizing information about fictives? Because one possible hypothetical scenario that I could see being the case with Stranger Things is that it is a story-within-a-story. Perhaps the story that we are watching, which has each of its episodes named as a “chapter,” is being written by a character within the Stranger Things universe. Perhaps this character is telling the story of “what happened.” Maybe what we see in Stranger Things is an imaginative representation of the experiences of alters in a DID System that is explained from their perspectives or explained by a friend retelling their story.

And if this is the case, then I propose a “second layer” hypothetical: perhaps there are no “real” superpowers within the Stranger Things universe at all, and the supernatural events of the series are either taking place within an internal world exclusively or some of the supernatural aspects of the series are supernatural because the character that is writing the story of “what happened” is embellishing the events with their own imagination as they write it. This could mean that although certain characters do have powers within the DID System, their powers only manifest when they are interacting inside internal worlds that exist exclusively within their mind. Or, as another possibility: perhaps their “powers” are merely imaginative explanations that the writer who is sharing “what happened” is granting these characters in order to explain circumstances that they artistically prefer to represent in a more fantastical way. (Ex. My mom threw a plate at me. vs My mom threw a plate at me with her mind.)

Am I effectively saying “many events in the show might simply be taking place within the mind of certain characters?” Yes. Sort of. Am I saying that all events in the show might only take place within the mind of certain characters? No. And even if they did: the “realness” of the story is still, to me, intact. Even if these events are taking place within internal worlds of a DID System the events that we are seeing in the story are based on real memories and experiences that the characters experienced at some point in the “real” world. In this “second layer” theory, I am proposing that characters’ real experiences and memories are being transformed into a creative and fantastical re-telling of “what happened.” This might be part of the mind’s way of coping with traumatic experiences.

I know that many of you reading this are probably thinking “No, no! That’s way too meta for my taste. We need more grounding in the story than creatively-embellished memories alone!” And I completely understand and respect that reaction. It would be quite a dramatic departure from what we currently understand as “true” in the series: even more than if we interpret the story as being about a DID System whose alters (and internal worlds) have supernaturally escaped the mind and become flesh and blood in our real world because characters have the ability to bring them to life.

Even when I do consider the more extreme “none of the powers are real” hypothetical I still think that many characters that we’ve grown to love would be introjects (or NPCs) based on figures that the DID System knows in their “real world.” I argue that those relationships would still have emotional weight and importance and meaning because they are based on real experiences and real feelings: but they might not manifest quite how we expect them to in future plot twists.

I understand if most fans visiting my blog prefer to take the “first layer” interpretation of the DID theory: that there are real psychic powers in the Stranger Things universe and that through supernatural means the alters from the DID System have escaped the mind and have become “real.”

But I wanted to address the “second layer” interpretation that I have considered because if we imagine that all the alters share not only one mind but also one body just like those who have DID in real life: how does that impact our interpretation of each of the events in the series when we re-watch it? To me, the incredible way that certain scenes in the series are transformed by this “second layer” theory’s lens make it worth contemplating this second layer as a possibility whether or not it’s actually what’s going on in the show. Many scenes in Stranger Things take on added depth if you watch them with this concept in mind. I think some scenes become much more powerful within the “nobody has 'real’ powers” interpretation, whether it’s what the creators of Stranger Things had in mind when writing the series or not.

Keep in mind that I entertain multiple hypotheticals at any given time, and sometimes my thoughts regarding what is happening in Stranger Things might appear to contradict each other. I like considering multiple possibilities all at once. I am not devoted to my interpretation that there are no “real” powers. I am equally charmed by the idea that there are real powers and that the alters have escaped the mind into the “real” world in Stranger Things.

Thank you for Asking!

[erikiara80]

These blonde women with the same haircut...

Connie and the woman Terry shows El in her message

Chrissy's mother in the family portrait, and Virginia

Blonde woman and old man who look a lot like Brenner (or Owens?) and Virginia/or Connie. I include her because I'm working on a post about cigarettes and drugs in the show, and these shots are interesting. At first, the woman is hidden behind the smoke, and behind Joyce, a woman is reading a magazine and this is what we see:

If you smoke, please try Carlton

The poster Ross posted a few weeks ago on IG

I said I'm not sure if the man on the plane reminds me of Brenner or Owens, because in S4 it's Owens who sees the photo of Connie's body

In 3x01 there's another subtle connection between Sam Owens, Joyce and Hopper, Diane and Connie Frazier (the lab/government)

In the episode of Cheers Joyce is watching, they mention Sam, Diane and Frasier

S4. Uncle Sam wanted Hopper to go fight some war in the jungle

Yeah. What truth, Sam?

[vfdarkness]

Love AVFD, the season finale was amazing and I can't wait to see what you do in season 2! I'm curious, what are some of your favorite horror podcasts?

Thank you! 

I’ll answer - at the same time - I’ll give the caveat that I’m less inspired by other horror podcasts for AVFD and more so by horror and other sorts of fiction (magical realism, weird fiction, surrealism) in other mediums. I might make a follow up post to this one in the future and list out a few books and authors that’ve been especially influential for the show. 

For podcasts though - 

Welcome to Night Vale was what got me to listen to modern fiction podcasts. It’s not horror per se, but walks a strange line that I appreciate and the single narrator radio host format is inspiring for those of us too poor to put on larger productions. I heard the show while living in Chicago back in 2013. At the time I tried doing a Twilight Zone-esque podcast called The Night NeverEnding (you can’t find it online anywhere anymore) but I was doing everything myself and the writing and narration quality just weren’t there.

I am in Eskew - I really love this show. It plays with so many themes and things that I’m also attracted to. After I’d been writing NoSleep stories for awhile and wanted to do something more, I heard this show, and again thought about making a podcast. So Night Vale and Eskew are probably the two biggest influences on AVFD coming into existence.

The Black Tapes - great production, exceptionally well acted, and some individual episodes and ideas that carry across the series are excellent. I feel this show has gotten enough praise elsewhere though that I don’t need to write further about it. 

Nightlight - I only started listening to this one recently, but it’s wonderful. Really well written stories, great narration. In particular, the last two episodes as I write this have been really good - if you’re looking for a jumping off point. Back in their first season they narrated a story by W.E.B. Dubois that’s just amazing. I had no idea Dubois wrote fiction. The story’s called The Comet - about NYC being destroyed and the only two people left are a poor black man and a wealthy white woman. This was decades before The Twilight Zone but it’s that same sort of story - using speculative fiction to smuggle in social commentary. 

The Magnus Archives - shortly into our series people told me our show reminded them of TMA. I’d not heard it before. I’ve since listened to the first several episodes, but stopped shortly into the first season - not even ten episodes in if I recall. It’s fantastic, I love it. But as I was writing the first mirror leeches story initially the second part of that story ended in an identical manner to a story TMA did. I didn’t want to be influenced to do - or not to do - stories based on another show so I didn’t want to listen further. I’ve had second thoughts on this though. Especially since I feel the world, direction, and mythology of AVFD is established enough in my head that it can’t be further influenced by other series.

Old Gods of Appalachia -  another exceptionally well-written story with phenomenal narration. I didn’t get very far into the first season for the same reason I didn’t listen much to TMA. I’ll probably listen further to this one too soon though.

Nocturnal Transmissions - I have to mention Kristin’s other podcast. He’s the best narrator in the business and he curates incredible stories. When I was contributed stories for NoSleep I got asked a dozen or so times to have my writings used by Youtube narrators and various podcasts. Most of these weren’t bad - but you could tell it was just someone doing it for a hobby. Kristin’s show is as professional as it gets - in terms of production value and his talent as a narrator. He asked to narrate a story I wrote - a quick, silly thing about a guy being upset that his neighbor is just a giant spider in a trenchcoat and no one seems to notice. Several months later, I was thinking of starting an audiodrama of some kind. I really liked the idea of a parapsychologist (Peter Venkman’s job in Ghostbusters) having Frasier Crane’s radio psychiatry job. I pitched him that and so we made AVFD.

Wolverine: The Long Night - Not horror, but I have to mention this. It’s written by Ben Percy who taught me creative writing in college. He had a huge impact on me. At that time, at the university, I was being led astray by the rest of the English dept - told that you couldn’t write speculative fiction stories - horror or weird fiction - and get taken seriously. If you weren’t writing about married couples having passive aggressive arguments where nothing really happens - then you weren’t writing “literature”. Not so in Percy’s class. He had us read Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joyce Carol Oates - authors celebrated across the globe as literary yet they wrote amazing mythic, strange, horrific tales. He had us read an anthology of stories put out by McSweeny’s where literary authors wrote speculative fiction - showing how to use literary techniques to write genre lit. Today, in 2020, that all might read as obvious - of course you can write literary speculative fiction. I’m 37. I was in college in the early 2000s. It was far less obvious then. Anyway, a lot of the best advice I got on writing came from him. A lot of authors who’ve influenced my writing - I was introduced to in his class. And when I went to create AVFD - I felt confident I could write in the audiodrama because I was taught by someone who’d already written a breakout series in the medium.

And finally I should mention The Storage Papers and Weeping Cedars. The first is about Jeremey, who purchases an abandoned storage space that’s filled with files on strange and horrific things happening in San Diego. It’s a really well-produced single narrator show. And Weeping Cedars is more in line with The Black Tapes in terms of medium - a journalist doing an audio documentary. in this case about a small upstate New York town. The show unfolds very slowly - like a long Stephen King novel. I recommend them both. 

[carol-effing-danvers]

knock me the fuck out (i dare ya, babe), part three

this is final section in part one of the series “run long, roam far, return soon” part two: “where we grew up” part three: “push me, pull you”

(click here if you’d prefer to read this in AO3′s format)

part one, part two

Billy has no idea what the fuck Steve is talking about, and he has no interest in anything that’s not their mouths touching each other, anything that’s not Steve’s lips and Steve’s tongue and Steve’s hands. 

Billy has no idea what the fuck Steve is talking about, and he has no interest in anything that’s not their mouths touching each other, anything that’s not Steve’s lips and Steve’s tongue and Steve’s hands.

There’s still some of that Old Billy left in him, a part of him that’s always a bit wild – a little blood in his eyes, a little fire in his heart – and it doesn’t usually require too much effort on his part to put that beast on a leash. But everything about his emotions goes out of control where Steve Harrington is involved.

Billy pushes him backward until he hits the wall, hands gripping his sides too tightly, and leans forward to drags his teeth across Steve’s bottom lip. Steve makes a soft sweet sound of startlement, and his hips jerk sharply. A thick hot ridge presses into Billy’s dick and holy shit that is actually Steve’s dick and he’s so big and so fucking hard.

A growl vibrates through his vocal cords and he pushes back hard, almost pinning Steve to the wall with his own hips, grinding against him with enough force to leave bruises on them both and pushing his tongue into his mouth with a wet slide. Steve makes a throaty provocative noise, a purring “mmm”, like he’s taken a bite of something really delicious, his fingers digging into Billy’s lower back to hold him there, blunt fingernails cutting gouges into his skin.

Again, they have to break away for air and Steve draws away with a gasped little “uh” that makes Billy feel so fucking dizzy with want, a string of saliva connecting their lips for just a second before Steve tilts his head back, red lips parted and throat bared as he gasps for breath. The temptation is too great for him – Billy traces over the beauty marks and creamy skin with kitten licks of the tongue, sinking back into his boyhood fantasy with relish, softly biting and sucking at every single one.

“Uhhh,” Steve moans under his breath, dragging his nails over his skin and pulling Billy’s erection into alignment with his own, and Billy is-Billy is gonna fucking explode-

"Ahem." There is a tiny cough, more of a pointed clearing of the throat than someone struggling through a late winter illness. 

The two of them probably jump about a foot into the air, scrambling around to figure who had witnessed them trying to all but fuck in public. Buckley was looking amused and very pleased with herself. Outright gloating, she says "I see I won't be grading any quizzes next year."

Steve is blushing hard, hair wilder than ever and lips kiss-bitten, tenting out of the front of his pajama bottoms with an obscene bulge that Billy needs to get his hands and his mouth on. "I-that-you-"

Robin hands him her purse, with a smug smirk. "Here, cover that before someone calls the cops on us," she says, hazel eyes dancing with laughter. "I told you he wouldn't hit you in the face. I can't believe the two of you had a crush on each other and it took you ten years to figure it out."

Billy whirls on Steve. "You-you had a crush on me, pretty boy?" 

Under normal circumstances, he'd be embarrassed by the way his voice cracks, like an acne-ridden boy, but this is an urgent question demanding an urgent answer. 

"You didn't tell him?" Robin laughs. "Oh, Steve. Honey, you can't let your dick do the talking for you."

"I disagree,” Billy says bluntly, eyes darting over his crotch – currently (tragically) hidden behind Robin’s purse.

“Of course you do,” she says in a tone of humoring him, still far too entertained and smug. “Seriously, Steve. You can’t manage one adult conversation?”

Even more flustered – my god, that pale skin gets so red – “I thought he was gonna clock me, I wasn’t about to have a heart to heart!”

“Why the hell did you kiss me if you thought I was gonna deck you?” Billy demands, skin crawling with the discomfort of old longing and older shame.

Steve shrugs rather helplessly, a very dissatisfactory answer.

“He likes to flirt with danger,” Robin informs Billy grimly, giving Steve something of a gimlet stare. “He’s addicted to risk.”

“Rob!” he yelps, looking harassed.

“Steve!” she mocks. “I’m literally gonna get old and die before you talk about your feelings! Hargrove, Steve-o had a big gay crush on you in high school-”

“Oh my god,” Steve moans, covering his face with his hands.

“Can I safely assume that you also had the hots for my man Steve-o at the time?”

“Uh…sort of, yeah,” Billy mumbles, shocked into near honesty.

She gives Steve a pointed stare. "I draw the line at asking him out for you, dingus."

Wild, terrifying hope surges in Billy. "You wanna go out with me?" 

Steve's big dumb doe eyes are directed at the checked linoleum floor. "You-you don't," he mumbles. "The whole town knows I'm a queer, Hargrove. You don't wanna go anywhere in public with me."

"Don't," he says softly, dangerously, boxing him in against the wall with a hand planted beside his head. "Don't tell me I want. No one tells me what I do with my time."

No one tells me what to do.

"If I say I want a date with you, I mean it." He's throwing himself off a metaphorical cliff here, but the memory of Steve Harrington's face has haunted him for ten years. After knowing his lips and tasting his skin, Billy's sure it will haunt him for thirty more if right now he does nothing. If after all that time, he has a real shot and throws it away because he'd rather stay closeted, if only in Hawkins, then he is nothing more than the scared boy still wilting under Neil Hargrove's control.

Robin, he sees from the corner of his eye, looks almost impressed.

There's a sweet, reluctant little smile tugging at Steve's lips. "Yeah?" With a bit of cheek, a bit of a flirtatious air, he tugs on Billy's button-down shirt. "Can I cook you dinner?"

His brows shoot upward. "Can you actually cook, pretty boy?"

"Say yes, Hargrove," Robin sighs. "If only so I don't have to watch him mope for the next ten years. Even if you don't bone, which is unlikely since Steve is a whore (“Jesus Christ, Rob!”), it’ll probably be the best meal you’ll ever eat in your life. Steve can cook his ass off."

"Wrong choice of words," Steve says dryly.

"Is it, though?" she counters. "If you play 'Hot for Teacher', I'm never speaking to you again."

"Shit, there goes that plan," Steve deadpans.

Billy grins, tongue held between his teeth. These two are great, he feels like he’s watching Frasier, but gayer and with swearing. "The two of you oughta think about getting your own sitcom."

"Saved By the Bell?" Robin suggests tartly. "Unmarried with Children? Friends But Gay?"

"Queers," Billy shoots back. "Like Cheers, Buckley, c'mon now."

"Hey, that's not bad," Steve says brightly. Then, shyer and quieter: "Do you like Italian?"

"The sky's still blue ain't it?" he answers, feeling his stomach do an anxious little flutter.

"Last I checked. Meet me after school this Friday, and be hungry."

Billy feels more daring, more confident, so he lets his eyes traveling up Steve's body. Sex hair, red lips, bright eyes, and a beard rash from Billy all over that snow white skin. "That ain't gonna be a problem."

Steve smiles at him, like he's charmed, like Billy's just charmed him. 

Billy wants to take a time machine, go back eleven years into the past and shake himself so goddamn hard. "Just wait!" He wants to scream in his 17 year old self’s face. "Don’t take it out on him, for fuck’s sake!! All you have to fucking do is WAIT!!"

But he can't do that, and he ends up standing in the store, dumb-struck, when Steve kisses him, fast and hungry, and Robin pulls him out the door.

El watches him at the kitchen door, grinning from ear to ear, looking like a cat that just ate a whole goddamn flock of canaries. "All right you little shit. You win."

"He likes you," she says, looking entirely enamored of this new development. "He really likes you."

Billy's heart goes double-time and his stomach flips all the way over.

Ellie grins even wider. Her chins rests on her fist and she gives one of her excited little wriggles, like a puppy whose seen her favorite person. “You should bring him flowers when you see him tonight.”

He makes a face. “You don’t think it’s too corny?”

“Steve is a romantic,” El coos. “He’ll appreciate the extra effort. And you think he’s worth extra effort, don’t you?”

“Well yeah!” he blurts out, and El’s face is terrifying. Jesus, she looks like a shark when she smiles that way, and Billy realizes that he’s been caught, yet again, havin’ feelings and shit. “I don’t wanna look like I’m coming on too strong. That shit makes some people nervous, you know?”

“Yes,” Eleven agrees solemnly, folding her hands together.

Billy looks at her sharply. “Yeah? What about you, Ellie? You and Max are out here trying to get me dates – you talked to any boy since you and Wheeler broke up?”

She stiffens, fidgeting slightly. “It’s-you know, it’s just more-more difficult because-” El touches the watch over her wrist, worn to conceal the serial number tattooed there. “And the town still think I’m a weirdo, and some of them don’t like me because I’m one of Joyce’s kids, and all of us love Steve. I really only talk to the-the Party-?”

She’s talking very, very fast and she’s tripping over her words and that’s how Billy knows that he’s stumbled upon something that El’s been holding close to her heart. “The Party, eh? Some nerd you-” and he’s falling into a trap but he still can’t see it yet “-got your eye on?”

Immediately after the words come out of his mouth, Billy realizes the black hole that he’s just opened up. The losers who fell into the weirdness of the Upside Down were not a large number. Wheeler, whose relationship with Ellie is over. Byers, who might actually be queerer than Billy himself. Sinclair, who still makes eyes at Max when her back is turned. And-

“Henderson?!” he demands incredulously. “Do you have a crush on Henderson?!”

Eleven, his poor Ellie, fiddles with her apron and stares at a point over his shoulder instead of looking him in the eyes. “I-I didn’t say that. I never said that.”

Oh, poor girl. She doesn’t even have to. El’s face is starting to look blotchy, like she might burst into frustrated tears. “El,” he says gently. “Ellie, any one of the nerd-herd would trip over themselves face-first for you. Ask the boy out – he’s gonna say yes and thank sweet Jesus for the chance.”

Looking outright miserable now, El says “I can’t.” No, she doesn’t just look miserable, she looks like she might be sick. “I’m-I haven’t-I don’t-”

Billy doesn’t really understand what she’s trying to tell him until El gestures at her lower body, quickly swiping angry tears from her eyes. “Oh,” he says, though he can hardly fathom it. “That’s-that ain’t that big a deal.”

“Do you know any other twenty-four year old virgins?” she snaps, flushed with shamed anger.

“Probably Henderson too?” he jokes, then feels like shit when her lower lip wobbles. “That doesn’t matter! Do you…want to?”

“I-I wasn’t ready. And now it’s probably too late. He’s had like ten girlfriends!” El wails, blotting her face again. “They’ve all been really smart and pretty, Billy!”

“Baby,” he soothes, heart breaking for her as he folds her into a hug. “You’re smart and pretty. And I need you to know that if he does anything to hurt you, I’ll take a psychotic level of pleasure in destroying everything he loves.”

A laugh escapes her, thin and watery. “Bitchin’.”

---

"Oh my god," Steve says on way back to the car. "Robin-"

"I know."

"He fucking said yes, Rob-"

"I know."

"I'm making him dinner."

"Mhm."

"Oh my god, what am I gonna do? I'm-I'm gonna fuck this up, Rob, I-" He pauses, taking in the look on her face. Robin is staring at him serenely, brows pitched slightly upwards. "I'm being an idiot again, aren't I?"

"Only a tiny one," she says, with great loyalty.

"Hurry up, I need to clean everything I own twice." Again, when he's sitting in the driver's seat, staring with blank disbelief out the front windshield. "He said he likes me."

"Yeah, babe," Robin says gently, reaching over to squeeze his hand. "He did."

This she won't make fun of. Whom Steve loves, he loves without caution, holding nothing back for himself, and with every expectation that his affection will be spat on and thrown back at him. It was heartbreaking to watch, and she'd seen it happen too many times. 

Trying to keep him from stumbling into a pit of his own anxiety and insecurity, Robin asks "So...is he a good kisser?"

Steve's face floods with heat and he breaks out into this goofy adorable grin. "Such a good kisser, Rob."

She smirks. "It sounded like you were being mauled by a wild animal."

Dreamily, Steve says "His lips taste like strawberry jam and he smells like a bonfire in a forest of pine trees. He can maul me any time he wants to."

"Oh, he wants," Robin drawls with laughter in her voice. "Trust me, he wants.”

He spends nearly a week randomly flooded with giddy anticipation and nervousness but by the time Friday actually rolls around, he kinda…forgets? It’s not that he forgot he and Billy have a date, it’s that when the actual agreed upon time comes around, Steve is a bit too distracted to notice.

---

Billy isn’t dumb enough to bring the flowers with him – there’s forward and then there’s forward, y’know?

Rather than being in his classroom, Billy is stopped short just before he turns the hallway down to the primary kids section when he hears Steve’s voice, quiet and very serious. “Why did you hit him?”

“He-he said I was stupid!” a little boy says, with all the blind impulsive fury of a small child. “Him and Hannah wo-wouldn’t play with me!”

Completely surprising him, Steve solemnly asks “So Denny hurt your feelings?”

A quiet sniffing, and then a mumbled “Uh-huh.”

“That’s wasn’t very nice of him to say, Martin,” he says sympathetically. “Do you want a ‘feel better’ hug?”

Even quieter, like he was scared to say it out loud: “Uh-huh.”

And when Billy peeks around the corner, Steve is crouched on the ground, hugging Martin Roberts as he snuffles into his shoulder. Billy is having an emotion, and it’s A Big One, even if he doesn’t quite understand what that emotion is.

“Do you feel ready to say sorry to Denny for hitting him, and he can say sorry for hurting your feelings like that?”

“Yeah.” Martin does sound much calmer, actually.

Steve stands and spots him, gives Billy a small smile, like he hasn’t just broken his brain a little bit. “Sorry I’m running a bit late.”

“Take your time,” Billy says, thunderstruck.

He wonders what would’ve happened, what his life would’ve been like if one of his teachers had been even half as patient and understanding as that with him. 

---

Billy says "Go ahead and unlock the door, I left something in my car."

Angie is his living doorbell, so as soon as Billy returns and opens the door, she's right there, wailing in her usual piteous manner. Steve already assembled the sauce for dinner, it just needs to be warmed up and the fresh pasta boiled to tender.

"Who is this?" Billy asks, amused.

"That's Angie. Pet her - she expects to be greeted at the door and she won't leave you alone until you do." Steve goes out to the hall and stares, owl-eyed.

In one arm, Billy has Angie who looks very smug at having seduced Steve’s man, and in the other- Dumbly, Steve asks “Did you buy me flowers?”

“Uh…” Billy says, uncharacteristically bashful. He lets Angie drop back to the floor with a heavy thump. “…yes?”

He could tease him – ‘is that a question or an answer?’ – the problem is that he’s stumbled and fallen face-first into a giant pile of infatuation. “They’re beautiful,” he breathes, eyes wide, tentatively reaching out to lightly brush his fingers over the petals. Billy bought him red carnations. Not quite as obvious as red roses and somehow both lurid and innocent. “Let me find something to put them in.”

He leans forward with head tilted, hand around the collar of Billy’s shirt, and gets halfway to kissing him when he realizes that this is maybe overplaying his hand. But like…Billy Hargrove bought him flowers? Fuck it, I’m gonna kiss him.

Gently, he presses their lips together and Billy let out a sweet little sigh, slipping his fingers through Steve’s belt loops to pull him closer. His mouth is soft, full, velvety, and discovering it again is so delicious that Steve gets lost in him. Billy licks his lips as they part. "Still having Italian, I see."

Steve blushes. "Uh, yeah." Quickly, he scrambles away with flowers in hand before he can do something incredibly dumb and classy like offer to make himself the first course. "Hope you're hungry."

"In many ways," Billy replies huskily, eyes shamelessly undressing Steve right there in the kitchen. 

So maybe he preens a little. So maybe he bends over a little too long as he grabs a vase from beneath a sink. It's been such a long time, he thinks wistfully, since someone wanted him in such an open, brazen way. He gets laid...well, not often but not never, either. But that’s quick, hurried fumbling in a bar bathroom of the next town over or fast hand jobs in dark places.

He doesn't get a bed, or lots of kissing, or arms to hold him afterwards. He doesn't get the next morning or lazy sex in the sunlight. Women think he's gay and men are scared shitless to be seen talking to him longer than ten minutes. He gets scraps and has to be happy with it because up until now, he understood that was the best he could hope for after being outed in a small town.

"You're a little cocktease," Billy rasps, eyes fixed rather desperately to the way his dark jeans are hugging Steve's ass.

"Can you blame me?" Steve asks with a smirk over his shoulder, letting Billy look his fill. "Spent a year watching you strut around without a shirt on, sweating and pushing me around. And I was such a dumbass, it took me a whole year after that to figure out why I was half-hard every time I saw you walk onto the court."

"Yeah?" Billy purrs. Oh, maybe Steve shouldn't be giving shit like that out. Too much ammunition. "Did I have you chubbing up your shorts?"

Steve rolls his eyes. He's sure that to Billy, he must've seemed terribly obvious. The hopeless bisexual disaster with his tenting shorts, either unable to figure out what he wanted or without the guts to do something about it. "You know you did."

"No," Billy replies quietly, with much more seriousness. "I didn't know."

Steve pauses to fill the vase. "...that wasn't why you were teasing me?"

"No. I teased ya because I wanted the prettiest boy in school to pay attention to me," he admits, an almost helpless note to his voice, looking genuinely pained.

Startled, Steve says "Okay, but I wasn't actually the best looking guy in-"

"My frigid ice princess, he froze me out in every direction, no matter how I pushed him. And when he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, I hurt him." Billy closes his eyes, as though the memory makes him sick, even now.

“I’m not cold,” Steve says quietly, setting the vase filled with lushly blooming carnations on the counter, and watches him practically do a double-take.

“That’s what you chose to take away from that?!” he demands.

Coldness reminds him too much of his parents. Looking at Billy through his lashes, Steve says “You already apologized for that years ago. But I resent being called frigid. I’m not cold.”

My frigid ice princess. He refuses to accept being called cold. But he doesn’t refuse being called Billy’s.

Billy’s stare is piercing and he lifts a hand to draw a rough thumb over Steve’s lower lip. “No,” he rumbles. “You ain’t, are you?”

Billy has always possessed this weird (well, it seemed less weird after he figured out he was attracted to him) magnetism for him, this force that draws Steve in. Time has not diminished that force.

Again, he pulls Billy in by the collar, their tongues curling around each other, and Steve gasps “I have to finish dinner!” with a ragged voice, even though his arms are still around Billy’s shoulders.

“Hurry,” he says in a soft burr, beard scraping over Steve’s neck as he nuzzles into him and sending a hot crackle of sexual tension through him.

“Who is a cocktease?” he demands weakly.

“Oh, I definitely am,” Billy says with a wicked smile. A daring hand cups the full expanse of one buttock and gives Steve a possessive squeeze. “Better feed me good – gotta keep my energy up.”

“Oh my god,” Steve says, face flushed as he turns back to the sauce on the stove. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“If you wanna play hard to get, I don’t mind a game of cat and mouse,” he says with a smile that’s positively predatory. “But to be honest, I don’t think you have that kinda patience in you, Harrington.”

Steve salts the boiling water and throws Billy his most heavy-lidded flirtatious smile. Subconsciously, he mimics Billy’s lip-licking motion. “If you wanna get in my pants, you’d better learn to say ‘Steve’.

Billy strokes his beard, letting him see the heat in his eyes. “Stevie,” he husks, his stare consuming Steve’s whole body like a physical touch. “Stevie-baby. Darlin’.”

He has to make himself keep focusing on cooking because he knows that if turns around right now, all this work will have gone to waste. “Make yourself useful,” he says hoarsely. “And grab the bottle of wine from the fridge.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he drawls, brows raised. “Holy shit, Steve. If the kids make you drink this much you might wanna consider a new line of work.”

“Most of those are nearly empty,” he says, rolling his eyes. The corner of Steve’s mouth lifts and he adds, “The kids are fine. It’s some of the parents I can’t stand.”

He sets his vase of carnations on the end table beside the sofa where they can be admired, and wonders if Billy’s already noticed that next door, Melanie Dohr’s class has twenty-four children but his classroom only has sixteen. Several parents were so outraged that he was hired on for the kindergarteners that they outright refused to allow their kids to set foot in his classroom.

Maxine van Haut had been one of only two parents to actually volunteer, in public, to put her daughter in his care. To his utter surprise and disbelief, his old classmate and former friend Carol Bainbridge had been the other parent.

Billy watches him drop nests of fresh pasta dough into the boiling water with fascination. Steve counts to thirty in his head before scoops the noodles, just underdone, from the water and into the sauces, adding a knob of butter before he lets the tomato, cream, and herbs meld together.

“How did you learn to do this?” Billy asks, as he adds a pinch of red pepper flakes and begins plating their pasta.

“Um…well, after my parents basically told me not to bother going back to their house ever again, I was sad and when you’re sad, you eat a lot. I became obsessed with making the most complicated, ridiculous things I could find. If I was focused on the food, I didn’t have to focus on why I was making it,” Steve says lightly.

He realizes too late that he’s probably oversharing. He does that a lot when he likes someone – Robin calls it his ‘Achilles heel’, whatever the hell that means. She says that once he’s attached to someone, he can’t let them go, even when it hurts, which is why Rob and Nance are still his friends. He doesn’t see the problem really. Who couldn’t use another friend? So it hurts for a little while, he still gets the rich reward of a friend forever.

“After I figured out how to make things that would break my brain, I started focusing on how to make them delicious. On that note: please don’t ever say the word ‘barbecue’ around Rob, that’s a ten hour lecture nobody needs to hear again, even though I only gave myself food poisoning.”

“You…gave yourself food poisoning?” Billy asks slowly, eyeing their plates.

“Yeah, who would’ve thought that grilling and drinking don’t mix.” Steve shrugs and grins. “Grab the wine and the glasses, I’ll get the plates.”

Steve has a reasonable level of confidence regarding his own skill. He still blushes to what he’s positive is probably a firetruck red when Billy takes his first bite and makes a noise that’s more suited to a man receiving a blow job than a man eating a meal. He whispers, “Holy fuck, Harrington”, eyes closed in reverential bliss. The rings on Billy’s fingers gleam, silver and gold and ruby, as he holds his knuckles to his mouth, as though he’s tasting divinity.

Steve grins at his fork. For a while, there’s no talking because Billy has zero interest in anything that’s not this meal.

They actually make conversation like real ass adults, which he will tell Robin about later because she’ll be proud of him for that.

It takes them until the end of dinner, laying back on the sofa and trying to not die because they are both full, that they get to a topic deeper than day to day activities. Because it’s sort of the elephant in the room with them, Steve decides to break the taboo and says “So…where did you go, when you left town back then? Max told us she thought you went back home to see your mom.”

It maybe wasn’t the thing to say, because for a moment, Billy’s eyes look flinty and cold. “No,” he says finally. “I never stayed in Bakersfield for too long. I only went to see her once. She-the way she saw the world was one way, and the way I saw it was another way, I guess.”

Steve’s nose wrinkles. “What does that mean?”

Billy’s jaw tightens. “It means that when you’re on your second marriage with a six-year-old kid at home and your first son shows up on your doorstep as a wild-eyed man fresh outta the hospital, you’re gonna call him a raving lunatic, slam the door in his face, and threaten to call the cops if he doesn’t leave you alone.”

Steve’s spine goes rigid. “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Steve blurts out. “Jesus, she sounds like a shitty parent. I mean, mine aren’t a whole lot better, but they wouldn’t call the cops on me.”  

Billy shrugs, though he can see the shadow of old pain in his eyes. He takes a sip of wine, probably to steady his nerves, before commenting, “Yeah, Max told me why you probably won’t run for mayor anytime soon.” Reflexively, Steve grimaces and Billy chuckles slightly. “Kinda sorry I wasn’t here for that.”

“For my public humiliation?” he says, trying to ride the fine line between bitterness and black humor.

“For your ‘awakening’,” Billy purrs. He’s looking at Steve’s neck the way Steve imagines lions stare at the necks of gazelle on the savannah. “I’m not the picture of class and taste, but I’m pretty sure I coulda gave you better than a coat closet.”

Steve can’t quite bring himself to look at him directly. “You were there for it, in a way. You were the reason that I realized I wasn’t completely straight.” It’s his turn to reach for the wineglass. “You raced out of Hawkins, and I realized that I had a meteor-sized crush on a boy I was never going to see again, and the last time I had seen him, he was dying in front of me.”

Even now, with Billy right in front of him, he can’t hold that memory too closely or he’ll just start bawling. It’s probably tied with his mother telling him Steve needs to stay with Robin and leave his keys for his most painful memory.

Keeping his head down, Steve adds “And I maybe didn’t deal with that too well, so after that was a series of really terrible decisions Rob is too nice to blab to other people about, but will never let me live down in private, all neatly wrapped up with outing myself to the whole town.”

Billy is very quiet and it takes a moment for him to gather the courage to look at him. Billy’s stare has become penetrating, and unwavering. Lowly, he says “Maybe we dodged a bullet with me leaving, then.” He smiles grimly. “Cause the person I used to be wouldn’t have been too nice about knowing you were willing to suck a dick and the dick wasn’t mine, Harrington. And I don’t just mean not nice to you. I woulda made the whole fucking town pay for that.”

Trying to hide his nervousness, Steve rests a hand on his elbow and sips from his glass. “I’m not exactly inexperienced, you know. What does the person you are now think about that?”

“I think…that I don’t really care what you’ve done before,” Billy says slowly. “Or who you’ve done it with.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence,” Steve observes.

“If you’re the kind of person who gets bored with having the same partner, you might wanna cut this short,” he informs him bluntly. “I don’t like sharing, and I try to be a better person than I was, but I’m not about to tell you I’m not a jealous possessive bastard, because I’m never gonna lie to you. I am.”

He leaves his glass on the table. “I’m pretty sure there’s this saying, ‘only boring people get bored’.” Steve leans his head back into cushions, feeling full and sluggish and maybe a little bit horny. He skims his fingers slowly up Billy’s thigh. “If you don’t wanna get bored, you have to put in the work.”

“Yeah?” Steve is transfixed by the way Billy’s tongue curls around his teeth. Teasingly, Billy says “You gonna work for it, baby?”

Steve kneads the muscle in his thigh, thick and warm beneath the denim, and feels heat begin to coil in his belly. “I think…you should let me worry about that,” he murmurs, tracing his thumb up the inner seam of his jeans. Billy’s breathing stutters and he smiles, slow and satisfied. “And relax.”

He swings a leg over Billy, settling on his lap and leaning in for a kiss as he unzips his jeans. Billy breathes “Shit” against his lips and starts unbuckling Steve’s belt.

Steve’s pants end up thrown over an arm of the sofa, where they’ll probably end up covered in black cat hair, and he opens the fly of Billy’s jeans so that their dicks only have two thin layers between them instead of four. It’s been too long and Steve moans “fuck” as he settles back down onto his lap. He can feel Billy pulsing, the wet spot forming in his boxers and Steve pants, open-mouthed as he grinds down, slow and lazy.

“No, c’mon,” Billy says raggedly, pulling at the buttons on his shirt. “Don’t just gimme half a show, baby. Let me see that body.”

Steve helps him, flipping his tie off and sending it to hang out with his slacks, and pulling his cardigan over his head. He knows when Billy notices what’s beneath the linen when his hands skim up Steve’s chest and pluck at his nipples, gently tugging at the medical grade steel embedded in his skin. “Oh, you’ve got goodies,” Billy groans, mouthing over the fabric. Steve hisses and arches up to meet the touch, lightly pulling at his dirty blond hair. “Naughty Stevie, trying to hide his goodies from me – oh. Baby, you are all grown up.”

“I shaved,” Steve chokes out, throwing his shirt to the side and trying to steer Billy’s mouth – his teeth, especially – back to his nipples. Billy strokes the dark thatch of hair on his chest, tantalizingly close to where he wants him. “In high school, I shaved it. I thought it was weird, how much I had.”

“Hmm,” Billy purrs thoughtfully, rubbing his face in it. Steve moans and squirms as the much rougher hair of his beard scraps and catches on the permanently sensitive skin. “Think I like it.”

“You,” Steve starts, hoarse and cracked, then swallows and tries again. He wants Billy, wants his sweat and skin and heat, wants all those things he never usually gets. “Yours too, Billy.”

“It ain’t pretty, Steve,” he warns.

“Do you really think that’s worse than watching it happen?” he whispers, pulling Billy in for a kiss, deep and intense. “It’s alright, c’mon.”

There are large scars, thick and deep and silvery, all across Billy’s chest and stomach, places where the Mindflayer tried to kebab him. Steve runs his hands across all of it – the scarred and the unblemished, the ugly and the statuesque – and bends to kiss him everywhere. None of it surprises him, and to him, it’s both terrible and miraculous. Every piece of logic in the universe says that Billy Hargrove should have died that day, and yet, here he is, warm and shuddering beneath Steve’s hands.

“I didn’t know why,” he continues at a whispers. “I didn’t understand why I had a hard time looking away from you. I remember watching the way the sweat dripped off you on the court.” He hums and traces a hand down Billy’s chest, over the muscles and scars, the same path of the sweat in his mind’s eye. “I was so stupid – I thought I was jealous of your looks. Nobody says that men look ‘beautiful’. But you were, and you still are.”

“Don’t need to sweet talk me,” Billy murmurs, nosing at his jaw. He pets at Steve’s hair, hand caressing all the way down his spine. “I’m a sure thing, sweetheart.”

“What if I just want to?” Steve says with a smile, bangs hanging into his eyes. “What if I think you need someone to be nice to you?”

“Is that what you think?” Billy asks, and plucks a flower from the vase. “Maybe I think that’s what you need, too.”

Gently, he uses the petals to trace the shape of Steve’s lips, his knuckles brushing the shape of his cock through his briefs. Breathlessly, he gasps “Billy Hargrove is a romantic. Stop the presses! Breaking news!”

“No one will ever believe you,” he says sweetly, clamping the stem between his teeth. “I’ve committed the perfect crime.”

He hauls himself and Steve from the couch, cackling as Steve yells and clutches onto his shoulders. He prays that Billy is as strong as he looks. “Turn left!” he yelps. “Bedroom is the last door.”

As soon as they are safely on the bed and Billy is no longer trying to bear both of their weight, Steve snatches the flower from his mouth to kiss him.

“You’re a madman,” he says with admiration, caressing his cheek with the petals.

“I’ve met Wheeler, you’re deeply attracted to the mentally disturbed,” he accuses, plucking at Steve’s piercings to make him squirm.

Billy draws his teeth lightly over his left nipple. “Yeah, like that.” Tugging gently on his hair and pushing his ass down on Billy’s cock, his limp fingers surrender the carnation back to him. The petals feel like velvet against his ultra-sensitive nipples and Steve chokes down his whines. “Bite them, please. Billy.”

He’s leaking all over his underwear, dick jumping and twitching with each little nip and sharp bite, mindlessly frotting with him, and Billy squeezes at his ass, rolls up his hips to meet him. “Fuck, you’re big.”

“I thought you’d want to top,” he gasps. “I don’t mind.”

He hums and looks up at Steve through his impossibly long lashes. His eyes are dark and glittering. “Maybe I just want to do this. Maybe I just want to see you fall apart on top of me.”

That flower – he’s still holding the carnation, uses the scarlet petals to paint a path down over his stomach, and swirls it over the wet patch of fabric where the head of his cock is trapped by the fabric. “Your hands,” he pleads, pulling lightly at his hair again, guiding his other hand, calloused and covered in rings, into his lap. “God, you have such beautiful hands, Billy.”

Billy gets his palm around Steve’s length and grunts as Steve turns his head and tugs on his earlobe with his teeth. “Imagine me jerking you off, like this?” he rumbles, rough skin grating over Steve’s cock. “Huh, baby? You think about me in the dark, when you were alone? Did you think about my hands?”

“Your hands,” Steve rasps, and kisses him softly. He can’t get his fill of Billy’s skin, rough, silky, smooth, and everything in between. “The way a cigarette looked in your mouth. You pressed up against my back. Sweat running down your body and Billy, how much I wanted to touch you-”

Billy cuts him off with a low groan, biting at Steve’s lower lip and abandoning the carnation to give his nipple a cruel twist, grinning against his mouth as Steve convulses. “I dreamed ‘a you, Stevie. I dreamed of your big heartbreaker’s eyes and your pretty lips.” He touches his neck and Steve realizes that he’s tracing the moles all over his skin. “I thought about the noises you’d make if I kissed you here. How you’d sound when you came. For me.”

“I’m gonna,” Steve croaks, sucking at Billy’s tongue. Imagining that he’s sucking something else. He’s sounded in the pine and bonfire smell of him, and his thighs shake around Billy’s hips.

“How you’d taste,” Billy growls, and Steve can taste him, the strawberry jam sweetness of him, and he could cry. “Don’t leave me waitin’ for it, Stevie.”

“Fuck, oh fuck,” he cries, trembling hard.

“Let me hear it.”

And Steve sobs “Billy. Don’t stop, Billy.”

“I got you, Stevie-baby.”

His body is liquid fire in Billy’s hands, fluid and burning ember-bright. Billy keeps kissing him, frantic and hungry, even while Steve is out of breath, and he doesn’t realize why until Billy starts squirming out his jeans and underwear and starts jerking himself off harshly, still kissing at Steve’s neck.

“Stop,” he slurs, and rolls on top of him, pinning Billy’s arms to the bed.

“Steve,” he whines. “Don’t be a brat. Just-”

“Let me do it, baby,” Steve murmurs, stroking his belly and throwing his best bedroom eyes. He strokes his hands up Billy’s thighs for extra insurance and licks his lips. “Let me get you there, Billy.”

“Fuck,” Billy whispers hoarsely, briefly closing his eyes. “Okay. Yeah.”

Just because he’s gonna do it doesn’t mean he’s gonna make it easy.

Lazily, Steve French kisses his way down Billy’s chest, treating the scarred skin the same as the silky-smooth muscles, taking his time to lick down his body, letting himself taste the salt and musk. He by-passes Billy’s cock, weeping all over his stomach, only stopping to lap up the little pool forming above the head.

“Steve,” Billy hisses. “Jesus fuck – PLEASE.”

He sucks hard on his inner thighs, biting at him until it will bruise. “I’ve thought of this so many times,” he admits, gently pressing his thumb beneath his balls, brushing his other fingers so achingly close to his cock. Billy nearly jack-knifes off the mattress, swearing at his as his fists pull on the sheets. “And it’s better than anything I could’ve imagined.”

“I wondered what you’d do,” he murmurs, kissing just alongside his cock. “If I was on my knees for you.”

“I’m gonna fucking die,” Billy gasps, touching his hair, stroking it away from his face. “Steve-”

He makes sure he’s watching, makes sure Billy’s eyes are open as he circles his fingers around him and s l i d e s his cock, hot and wet with precum, past his lips. He hums and groans at the velvety heat in his mouth and Billy bucks the tiniest bit, moaning like a dying man as his dick rubs over the silky slickness of his tongue.

“Steve,” he says, weak and reedy, “…sweetheart…”

He hollows his cheeks and groans again, giving Billy a come-hither stare. Billy’s head falls back onto the pillow, crimson lips parted as he pants, loud and desperate. Oh, Steve likes him this way. Billy’s beautiful. He’s always been beautiful, but he’s worn into this beauty, like the softest cotton shirt in the drawer.

Steve sucks him, slurping and sloppy and wet, presses his fingers ruthlessly to Billy’s perineum.

“FUCK,” he roars and grips Steve’s hair just this side of too tight. Shoves up into his mouth, always just shy of choking him, and begs softly. “Take me, gorgeous. Fuck, like that. Gonna come, Stevie, gonna come for your hot mouth-

He screams without making noise and Steve licks him clean, flicking the jizz from his lips like a cat licking cream.

“Jesus Christ.” Billy says, still breathing hard. “Stevie, you’re worth waiting ten years for.”

[mysterylover123]

My Top 10 Christmas Episodes

mysterylover123

Everyone has a favorite Christmas Episode. That time of year from your favorite shows where the characters celebrate the holidays along with you, usually accompanied by big changes in their lives, gaudy decorations, and creative traditions. I’ve included my top 10 here, along with some honorable mentions. I’ve excluded Christmases I liked from book/film/comic book series, thought I think in 2 years time there will be a grand new edition to the list (aka My Hero Academia). Hope you all like them and have a Merry Christmas! 

#10. Futurama “Xmas Story” Airdate: 12/19/1999

I don’t broadcast it much, but I love classic Futurama. This little gem of a Christmas episode - sorry, X-mas episode - is a common staple of “Best Christmas Episode” lists, and for good reason. It’s one of those “dark” Christmas stories, featuring a murderous Santa Claus robot, Fry dealing with being 1000 years in the future where his old traditions have died, and some good bonding moments among the cast of Planet Express. I particularly like the “gift of the Magi” joke with Amy and Hermes, and the Harold Lloyd reference with Fry on the clock tower.  

#9. X-Men Evolution “On Angel’s Wings” Airdate: 12/15/2001

X-Men Evolution is a nostalgic favorite of mine - my introduction to the X-men in high school, the first show I ever read fanfiction for, etc. It’s Christmas episode has a very warm feeling to it, a rare dip into sentimentality for the show. It deals with Scott and Rogue going to recruit Angel for the X-Men while the others are home for the holidays, and clashing with Magneto in their attempts to do so. I’m always down for an episode focused on Rogue, and her bond with Scott over being the X-Men without families to go home to is great. The little montage that ends the episode always puts a smile on my face.

#8. The Simpsons “Holidays of Future Passed”  Airdate: 12/11/2011

I heard this one was thought of as a potential series finale for The Simpsons, as a bit of closure for their premiere (another christmas Episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open fire”, which I like but find a little too ‘early Simpsons’ to make the list.). Honestly, I wish it had been. Modern Simpsons is generally such a mess, it would’ve been nice to see it get such a dignified end in Season 23. This one is a great little trip to the future of the family, and it really feels like a nice vision of what could become of them somewhere down the line. I like that this one gives Homer a chance to be a good grandad, and a bonding moment between Lisa and Bart. I hope this is where they really do end up.

#7. Frasier “Frasier Grinch” Airdate: 12/19/1995

Frasier is the only show that ended up landing 2 Christmas episodes in my Top 10. And I felt I still had to cut a few of them that could’ve made the list easily. This series really had a knack for the Christmas episode. My 2nd favorite, obviously, is this little offering from Season 3, which deals with Frasier trying to get Freddy gifts in time for the holiday when the ones he ordered got misdirected. It ends up touching on an aspect of the holidays I wish would get covered a little more often: when you buy others Christmas gifts, are you getting them what they actually want, or just what you think they should want? Overbearing Frasier has made this blunder, and the episode helps him learn that lesson. Though as usual Niles steals the show. Niles in a toy store trying out a doofy hat is more than worth the #7 spot.

#6. Friends “The One with the Christmas in Tulsa” Airdate: 12/12/2002

Friends has a lot of Christmastime episodes, but most of them are just kinda coincidentally set around the holidays. Only a few stand out as actual “Christmas Episodes”. While I enjoy “Holiday Armadillo”’s comedy and “Creepy Holiday card”’s sentimentality, my standout favorite is this one, the last Christmas episode they did, perhaps because Chandler and Monica are my favorites on the show and their romance is the OTP. This one deals with Chandler away from home, working on Christmas at a job he hates and being separated from Monica. Through some clips and a bit of soul searching, he decides to finally quit the job he hates and pursue something he wants to do. It’s a great example of how to do a clip show/Christmas episode well, move characters forward, and remind us of why we love these two together.

#5. Buffy “Amends” Airdate: 12/15/1998

This one would probably be higher if there wasn’t so much Bangel melodrama in the last 10 minutes (sorry fans, I really hate Bangel). But the rest of it is more than good enough to put Buffy’s sole Christmas episode at #5 for me. What I love the most about this one is, well, the ‘amends’ of the title. Xander starts making up for 3 seasons of douchebaggery by being a good friend. Willow makes up with Oz. Buffy makes up with Faith. That latter one puts the biggest smile on my face of the bunch; it’s bittersweet, given what happens, but when Faith shows up on Buffy’s doorstep with presents for her and Joyce, my small Grinch heart grows three sizes each time. Definitely a must-watch.

#4. Parks and Recreation “Christmas Scandal” Airdate: 12/10/2009

Parks and Rec has 3 Christmas episodes and they’re all pretty good. I debated between this one and “Ron and Diane”, but since that one is more about Ron’s award ceremony, I decided to go with Season 2′s. This one is a very “Parks and Rec” kinda Christmas, dealing with Leslie getting involved in a dumb sex scandal, the Parks department putting on a “Winter wonderland” on Lot 48, some dating drama about Ann and Leslie and their boyfriends (At this point, since Ben and Chris weren’t around yet, Mark and Dave), and a very cute hug between a pre-marriage April and Andy. The biggest win in this one is the sheer Christmas atmosphere. It practically glows off the screen.

#3. How I Met Your Mother “False Positive” Airdate: 12/13/2010

HIMYM is another one with a lot of candidates, but “False Positive” really stands out to me as something special. It’s essentially an “It’s a wonderful life”-style story (as they’re going to see the movie) where Lily’s false positive pregnancy test inspires the friend group to each choose the more responsible path in life of their two choices, only to chicken out when the false part of the title is revealed. The way the episode ends is absolutely spectacular, a standout moment to me among the series’ many strong character moments, and leads to strong development for all around going forward. Definitely a highlight of HIMYM’s 6th season, and an episode full of  Christmas imagery, soul-searching, and classic plotlines.

#2. Frasier “The Fight Before Christmas” Airdate: 12/16/1999

My favorite Frasier Christmas episode feels like it combines a little bit of everything that makes the other ones good: a KACL office Christmas party with a whacky theme (we finally see it instead of having it going on in the background!), Frasier being pompous about Christmas celebrations and ending up karmically punished for it, a comedic scenario which crafts a comedy of errors, Martin’s decorating. In many ways though, the highlight of this one is how deftly it handles the romance reveal from the previous episode between Niles and Daphne. in the midst of all the crappy Christmas rom coms, it’s easy to forget how strong a good Christmas set romance can be, and the moment of tension as Daphne tries to reject Niles but just can’t quite do it is a standout for me. Definitely my favorite of Frasier’s 8 xmas episodes.

Hon. Mentions: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Batman Christmas with the Joker and Holiday Knights, Frasier Perspectives on Christmas, Parks and Rec Ron and Diane, HIMYM How Lily Stole Christmas.

#1. Smallville “Lexmas” Airdate: 12/8/2005

This one isn’t just a Christmas episode. It’s pretty much the Ultimate Christmas episode. Where to begin? A fancy Christmas party jam-packed with colorful decor. Superman - Clark - delivering presents as Santa for the Daily Planet. Clark talking/saving a depressed mall Santa (or is he real?) from committing suicide with an emotional heart to heart. Sweet family Christmas  celebrations (right before tragedy strike in the next episode). But of course, the real highlight of this one is Lex’s Alternate Reality fantasy. After getting shot, the titular Luthor has a vision of what his life could be like if he did the right thing, essentially an “It’s a Wonderful Life” style alternate reality. However, that reality ends in tragedy, and the tragic twist of the episode is that instead of leading the Grinch’s heart to grow, the Christmas dream only serves to help solidify Luthor’s fall to the dark side. It is certainly juxtaposed with enough holiday magic and hope to offset that depressing ending, but I will admit to liking a bit of subversion in my stories now and then. Everything Christmas episodes could have is jam-packed into this episode.