#of a difference it makes for charachters of color to just have someone else be there like that rosa ep was... well. but it could have been

[oatmealdoodles]

Apology tour spoilers

I kept putting this off because I pretty much agree with everybody else's takes on this, but I just want to get my opinions out anyways

So right off the bat we get THIS line from Blitzo

wow, gee, i wonder how that must feel like. Oh how i wonder

Anyways Stolas goes on directly to say that he doesn’t want to talk to Blitzo right know.

And you know what, thats vaid. All Stolas is saying in this entire interaction is “It’s too soon and i still mad at you, leave.” And i’m sorry but thats not an unreasonable request, especially after a fight that big. I was actually really impressed with how Stolas voiced his feelings thorough the entire confrontation: “I don't want to do words with you, so how about you respect that” “Seeing you right know is hard” “I don’t want to feel worse than I already do” “Im uncomfortable with how you’re speaking to me” This is textbook definition of healthy language.

And Blitzo for some reason just can’t respect that. Because he’s so dead set on getting things back to the status quo, what’s comfortable and familiar to him: this transactional relationship with no feelings, that he ignore Stolas’s requests blindly.

I saw someone claim that the show was trying to make it seem like Blitzo likes Stolas’s abuse, and I don’t think that’s what’s happening at all. Blitzo loves Stolas, that much is clear. But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy. And sometimes going back to an unhealthy relationship can feel better than without it, because that’s what’s familiar, what’s comfortable. Even if it’s not good for you. Especially for Blitz who already has so many abandonment insecurities. This actually happens a lot in real life and Im glad that HB decided to explore it.

But Stolas doesn’t get off the hook that easily

My dude, WHAT? Listen, Stolas, you are my favorite part of this episode. Nay, this show. But JESUS CHRIST WOULD EVEN AN OUNCE OF SELF AWARENESS KILL YOU???? “Impish little plaything,” “itty itty imp,” “you are so cute when you are serious,” “Blitzy,” none of that ringing a bell? SERIOUSLY??

Ok in all seriousness I think this line really emphasizes that Stolas is completely ignorant to the very prevalent power dynamic between them. He has no idea that all these actions and things he says to Blitzo hurt him. And that doesn’t makes it ok. Listen, Stolas has demonstrated that he’s willing to put in the work to improving himself. Just now I mentioned how his language changed to be more constructive and effective. The Stolas from the pilot and the Stolas in the last few episode are drastically different people. What Stolas needs is his own call-out episode, someone to give him a slap in the face and say “What you did is F’ed up” and for him to APOLOGIZE to Blitzo.

Also my man ate up this entire exchange

I have a bit less to say about the Striker stuff, I honestly don't think t was too relavent to the conversation, it’s just more well-written angst with fantastic animation and expressions. And seeing Blitzo slowly realize he screwed up was great too.

Unrelated but this probably to the biggest laugh out of me this episode

Brandon Rogers and Bryce Pinkham continue to be the best voice acting pair I’ve seen in a long time

and guys we FINALLY got Blitzo airing out his feelings to Stolas, completely dumping everything on the table. And then he just backpedals so violently because he’s scared of letting people see his true self, in fear they might hurt him. Also Stolas’s face be like “that escalated quickly…”

To be honest i could go on and on about all the little charachter detains and mannerisms, the animation, and how BEAUTIFUL the colors are. I want to talk about the section at the party, but this is already long enough. I might make a part two if i find the time, but those were just my thoughts

[coffeeastronaut]

cathrine tate snapped when she played donna

[lady-of-lies]

A hate stronger than Hulk

A/N: This is day 9 of @sdavid09s writing challenge! I am actally happy with this one though it may not make any sence at all and may be a bit out of charachter for Peter... Thank you @deepestfirefun for giving me the idea for this, and as always I would like @gaia-writes-stuffs oppinion on this one. But any kind of response and comments are warmly welcome!

Prompt: Your character is willing to do a lot…except this. What is it and to what extents will they go to get out of it?

Warnings: Like one swear word, mentions of clowns and a dislocated shoulder. That’s about it. 

Word count: 1202 (what!?)

Peter Parker x reader

Peter considered himself to be a nice person, really, he did. But this was about it. When someone asks for a favour or help, you do it. That is common knowledge. That is, unless the favour involves this…

About a week ago Peter had been approached by one of aunt May's friends. They were sitting at the kitchen counter when Peter got home from school. Her three year old daughter was apparently the topic of the week. She kept going on about how there was no time and she was never going to find someone to do it. Do what? he had wondered. There was no need to wonder for long though, since the pair of eyes finally noticed him and almost attacked him with overly enthusiastic “Peter hi!” and “welcome home”. They wanted something, and if they were trying to get on his good side this early it couldn’t be good.

It turns out, when he agreed to help with the birthday party he had not been given all the facts. And as he and aunt May stepped out of the car and walked around the house and entering the backyard, he saw why. Peter turned and gave his aunt a pointed look. She had known and she hadn’t told him. She just gave him a apologetic look back that seemed to say “if you had known you wouldn’t have come”. And she was completely right. If it was something Peter Benjamin Parker in all his seventeen years of life hated more than bad guys and ill smelling brussel sprouts, it was the circus. Or more specifically the clowns that worked on the cirkus. But since it was kind of a package deal, he had from a early age formed a hate stronger than Hulk, for all things circus.

They were greeted by said friend of Mays, and led into the circus tent. For being a soon-to-be four year old girls birthday party they really went all out. Or overboard, depending on how you see things. The tent were filled with people dressed up as different characters who you might find at a circus. There was trapeze walkers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats and even a “lion” who was just a dog with some sort of wig on. Had this been any other situation Peter would have found it hilarious, but not now. The only thing he could not see, were the clowns. Were they really going to go all out like this and skip the clowns? He could only hope that was the case.

It was so not the case. He stared at himself in the full-body mirror. He looked hideous. Actually scratch that, he looked ridiculous and scary. Was it possible to be scared of your own reflection?. Those stupid oversized shoes and the idiotically colorful clothes and wig

and that scary makeup. Did clowns need to look like cheerful psychopaths just waiting for the right moment to shoot you with that gun they claimed to be fake? How anyone could find them funny he did not understand. He had to find a way out of this.

He gave it a lot of thought. What would be good enough a reason for aunt May to let if out of this? The Stark internship was out of the question, she would see right through that. Feeling sick was the oldest trick in the book and wouldn’t work unless he had proof. He could always try that fake barf thing, but it seemed a bit too gross. He was sure he had come up with, and, rejected every idea there was until his eyes landed on a wig walking with four legs…

The plan was simple, he would go over and play with the dog and get it to bite him. Just enough to get May to take him away from here. Anywhere but here. But as the first half of his day, Peter didn’t have any luck with him. In his excitement to get out of there and out of the stupid costume, he didn’t see the two men carrying the giant cake. Really? a party for a girl turning four and her midget friends and they get a big fucking wedding cake? He ran straight into one of the men, making him drop his end and letting the cake fall freely... onto Peter.  The weight of the cake made him tumble to the ground. He could just picture how this must look to everyone else. A person dressed in a clown costume, sitting in a sea of cake and looking three thousand and one percent done. Maybe it was funny, but Peter couldn’t see it. Trying, and failing, to get up he made a few more futile attempts before giving up and just accepting his frosting covered fate, laying still on the floor looking up at the tent ceiling.

Someone had at long last come to save him, it turned out to be aunt May's friend and she sent him to the bathroom to clean himself up at the best of his ability.

Fate had a strange kind of humour. Just as he was leaving the bathroom he slipped on a piece of cake that had been stuck under his giant shoe. Come to kids birthday party they said. It will be fun they said. It's a bunch of four year olds what is the worst that could happen? it will be a piece of cake!!!

they were right about the cake. On the way down he just kept thinking how that stupid piece of cake would be his downfall. Literally. peter tried to catch himself on the sink but just ended up turning himself in the air and landing hard on the tiled floor. After a moment of him catching up with what had just happened, he felt the pain. Peter pulled himself off of the floor with great effort and looked in the mirror for any sign of from where the pain was coming from. That's when he saw it. His left shoulder was visibly lower than the right. And judging by the pain, he came to the conclusion that he had managed to dislocate his shoulder.

Sitting in the hospital waiting room he thought back on today's events. Sure it didn’t turn out exactly as he had planned, but he got out of the clown costume (with a bit of help of course) and he didn’t have to ever set his foot in another circus tent again. He wasn’t completely sure that it was worth to actually hurt himself this bad to just get out of doing a favour, why hadn’t he just told them no? or refused to put on the costume? But then he remembered, he was a nice person and he didn't do that kind of stuff. This whole day made him rethink that pretty hard though. But there was one thing that this awful day day did remind him of. It had reminded him why, from a young age he had developed a hate stronger than Hulk for all things circus.

[triddlegrl]

I am not much involved in fandom these days, but my excitement for the upcoming season and the possibility of seeing more of Billy's character brought me to the strangers things tag. I feel I have to comment on this post. It's just my two cents, coming from personal perspective as a black woman very much not an "anti".

I have always interpreted Billy's actions towards Lucas in season two as racist. I have never seen nor read any of the scripts, scrapped or otherwise, and I don't need scrapped lines or plot points to inform me of what seems to me and obvious reality. You ask why can't Billy's line mean something else besides racism - and from the bottom of my frustrated heart, I'm just wondering why (generally) white fans love to treat this situation as if it is unreasonable to assume that Billy, an angry middle class white boy growing up in a more segregated and prejudiced time, is showing prejudice?

Again, I've not read these scrapped lines, but I assume they were even more explicitly racist. Of course I wouldn't expect anyone to canonize material that didn't make it into the script - but it's necessary to acknowledge that they give us a peek inside the writers minds as they were framing the character and this flaws. Will Byers is not canonically gay (yet), but there's a reasonable amount of insight to be drawn from earlier drafts of the charachter where he was explictly queer.

Removing non-subjective dialogue from Billy doesn't magically reframe his more subjective displays of prejudice. Especially as it doesn't appear the writers added something that would give his scenes with Lucas a different context besides the first one they were considering.

But you seem happy to do that for them. It's all well and good to assume that Billy is talking about "people who hurt you" whilst conveniently ignoring his own mental,emotional, and borderline physical abuse of Max; but it is not MORE likely than Billy being prejudiced. Judging solely on what we are given in the show I cant honestly say it qualifies as even JUST as likely. It's a nice theory that anyone is free to indulge in, but it's frustrating and problematic as hell (frankly) to act as if perceiving Billy as a racist is mental gymnastics.

It's a sad mirror of what it's actually like for many black people in reality trying to convince the world that prejudice leads to black deaths - the assumption that unless someone is riding around in a white hood or saying explicitly racist things, then somehow someway ANY other explanation (no matter how convoluted) is more likely than people of color accurately identifying subjective racism for what it is.

You can love a character for their depth and despite their flaws without apologizing for or white washing those flaws.

Billy antis will cite dialogue that was scrapped from the script so they can call him racist but don’t keep that same energy about Steve’s original plot line to literally SA Nancy. If it didn’t make it into the show or any other official media, then it’s not canon. Like I thought that was rule number 1???

Billy’s “a certain type of people you stay away from” line is always automatically assumed racist, in part because of said scrapped line. But if we line this up in the context of his childhood, then why are we not allowed to assume he simply means boys/men/people who yell at/upset/hurt you? He saw enough of that growing up and now within the first week in this new town he sees Max near tears after visibly arguing with a boy.

If it’s not this excuse then it’s “well he attacked Steve for no reason.” Like excuse me, Billy has barely known of Steve for like 4 days, then finds his sister being hidden in a creepy house in the woods and an 18 year old boy is trying to lie to him and tell him she’s not there. Billy has zero context to the situation so has no idea why Steve would lie unless something Not Right was going on. If you were their age and that was your little sister, what would you think? Yeah, if I thought an 18yo was trying to prey on my 13yo sibling I’d be throwing hands too.

If you want to hate him that’s your right, but y’all do some weird mental gymnastics to try to justify it.

Makes me hope twice as hard that Billy shows up in S4 just to spite the antis who apparently really hate characters with actual dimension to them.