#like i get st*eddie bc it’s too popular for all the wrong reasons

[messrsbyler]

y’all could’ve voted chrissy and eddie out (ew), alexei and murray out (LITERALLY ONE OF THEM IS DEAD), argyle and eden (love at first sight? REALLY?) and chose to vote stonathan out? that’s it now i have beef with y’all

[lesbianrobin]

Would you be willing to share any tropes or pet peeves you have with the fandoms intepretation of HOH! Steve? No pressure at all but I know it’s gaining popularity and that fandoms historically have a shit record with disability and you’ve spoken about your frustrations with that tag. Also thank you for sharing the link to the movie!! I’ve been wanting to watch more historical films especially ones that push back against assumptions of what the past was capable of!

omg YES thank you for asking!!! so to preface for anybody who doesn't know: i myself am hard of hearing and i used to post about steve being hard of hearing sometimes prior to s4, but i haven't posted about it much since it became a Thing in the fandom because i don't trust other people on my posts lmao.

so honestly this is gonna be less about specific tropes and more of a broad ideological discussion bc i don't usually read the hoh steve fics i scroll past and i don't want to act like i Know exactly what all of them are like based off just the few i have read. however, i Have seen the tags and summaries and read the first few paragraphs of a lot of them, and i feel like that's enough for me to have like. an opinion. so ANYWAY.

my first issue is just that pretty much everyone i've seen writing hoh steve is hearing themselves. there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the thing is that hoh steve is like. entirely a creation of fandom, yknow? there's not rly anything in canon that indicates steve has poor hearing--honestly, if anything, he seems to have rather keen ears (picking up on the background music in the russian code in s3, being the first one to hear dustin in the upside down in s4). you can certainly reverse-engineer it and argue that poor school performance can be an indicator of poor hearing, that his head injuries could potentially cause hearing loss, but neither of those are things where hearing loss naturally comes to mind without somebody looking for it, so this begs the question of why. what exactly is motivating these hearing people to write this character as hoh?

i've noticed some things that tend to go along with hoh steve. one is steddie, which is kind of a given in the st fandom at this point, but it's the things that go along with that which concern me. the "babygirl steve" thing where steve is woobified and feminized to the point of being nigh-unrecognizable seems quite common among these fics. steve often has other medical problems as well--he needs glasses, he gets migraines, he has memory loss, he's depressed, he's got chronic pain, etc, etc, and my disability is just another thing on a laundry list of issues that is seemingly employed for the sole purpose of making steve sad and hurt and pitiable so that (usually) eddie can come along and save him/baby him. i'm not gonna act like i've never tossed some shit at steve to make him suffer in a fic, but it's always for like. a Reason. and that reason has never once been just so i could ship him with somebody and make them into his savior.

i think a lot of people writing hoh steve just don't necessarily have great intentions with it, yknow? they see it as a way for steve to suffer nobly in silence and be self-sacrificial, or they think it's cute to make steve deaf since eddie plays loud music (???).

there are a lot of things i love about being hard of hearing. i love that i get to have a unique appreciation of sound that not everybody has. i love that i can take out my hearing aids when the world is too much. i love that i still discover new sounds at the age of twenty-two. did you guys know that dishwashers make noise? i didn't until today! my house was quiet and i kept hearing something strange until i tracked it down and realized! i love that i have a sense of wonder about every noise i hear! and while i don't begrudge anybody their enjoyment of hoh steve content, i have yet to see any that comes remotely close to capturing these feelings, so it's just not for me.

also this is a silly pet peeve but why is it that in these fics steve almost always learns asl and like rarely has hearing aids? like sorry but unless he's completely deaf that's out of character. steve harrington is not learning a whole new language unless he absolutely has to and has literally no other options. they had hearing aids in the eighties. c'mon people.

anyway. sorry that was so long lmao and thank you for asking!! also thank you for actually reading and caring about my within our gates post!! i highly recommend looking up some 1920s music to listen along with the film, though you can honestly listen to whatever you want--at the time, films didn't typically have dedicated scores, and individual theaters would provide their own musical accompaniment however they saw fit. oftentimes this meant a live musician would play piano during the film, and improvise to suit the mood/plot! happy viewing 💕

[thisultraviolet]

🔥 + ST

I love that you still sent this to the Taylor blog lmao but HERE WE GO

(Also a lot of these will be hot takes within the Byler community but may be agreed among other fans idk I’m just in this corner of the fandom 90% of the time)

Steve actually IS that good a character? Like I understand it can be annoying when he clogs up every tag and ship but there’s a reason he’s that popular. He was basically DESIGNED to be the fandom’s favourite and it worked, I don’t think anything’s wrong with that. I adore this funky bi himbo and his kids and lesbian bestie and loser bf. And I *will* continue to project parental issues on him based on like 4 lines of dialogue bc frankly in this fandom that’s so far from the biggest leap we’ve made it’s not even funny. He’s my second favourite character and if he dies I will be genuinely inconsolable.

The only Byler proof I need is the s3 finale moving scenes. Finn’s acting choices in the El vs Will scenes, the parallels to the quarry scene, the shot of him looking back at the house? That’s all it took to solidify it for me. And the master doc is fun but I do think a solid 70% of the stuff on there is a huge stretch and is honestly harming more than helping our case lmao. If I want to convince people I just use that one scene and it works 90% of the time.

If you ship H*rringrove I think you’re genuinely a bad person. He’s a racist abuser and I’m glad he’s dead <3

STEDDIE IS SO CUTE MY FAV STEVE SHIP EASILY? It’s such a fun dynamic to work with, Eddie is CLEARLY queer coded much more than certain other characters we will get to, and the tropes that emerged in the fics post s4 were super fun and also SO interesting. Genuinely some Steddie fics I’ve read are just some of the best fics I’ve read period. (If anyone wants recs ESPECIALLY if you love a time loop fic hmu).

I wouldn’t hate them bringing back Eddie if they could pull it off in a way that made it seem genuinely planned and not just fan service. His death actually did piss me off (not just bc I was sobbing lmao) bc it seemed so rushed, and only getting to see Dustin’s reaction just felt like either terrible writing or a very purposeful lose thread. Also I’m still thinking about the profile picture colours bc I feel like we moved on WAY too fast.

Stonathan is fine. Good even but I just don’t see the appeal the way the rest of y’all do. Same with Ronance, I just genuinely prefer their dynamic as friends. I do love Stoncy in theory but post s3 I just don’t see it really working anymore, early Stoncy fics still hit though.

Lumax>Elumax>>>Elmax. The girls are adorable together ofc but I think Lumax is easily the best written relationship in the show rn and completely ditching it just seems odd to me? Obviously ship whatever you want I just can’t imagine not liking them together? I’m not blanket stating it’s for racist reasons but we all know Lucas is treated like dirt by the fandom in a way none of the other kids are

Dustin is my least favourite of the kids. I still love him, I just find him by far the least interesting. I obviously adore him and Steve but I feel like separating him from the party really has put him at a disadvantage these last few seasons. I’m really hoping the loss of Eddie will take him in an interesting direction though.

I will be genuinely upset if Jancy aren’t endgame but also I’m equally worried their issues won’t get addressed next season, idk they were my fav couple in s1/2 so I just hold them very close to my heart.

Flickergate is the superior Bylergate, especially if I had to pick one to actually happen in the show, it’s so romantic it makes me want to pass out.

I definitely have more but this is already way too long and I have 1989TV Clownery to get to so take this mess I guess