things i know/things i want to learn
also on ao3 if you want the full smut experience, otherwise this stands on its own
He knows it's crazy. He knows it borders on batshit even. He knows it's weird and obsessive and, frankly, a little unhealthy.
But Nancy Wheeler started it.
Nancy Wheeler who is scary and prim and proper. Nancy Wheeler who had his hand in her lap last week, painting his nails a regal navy blue because it was the closest Nancy Wheeler had to black. Nancy Wheeler who spent the time their nails were drying chatting at him, like the Upside Down had spit him out solely so she would have a gal pal she could talk about boys with -- a first, he imagined, if his memory of Barbara Holland was at all accurate. Nancy Wheeler who said, "Jon is sweet, and he tries so I feel bad for even thinking it, but he just doesn't have as much fun when he's down there and you can tell. I mean, you know, when Steve did that thing he does with his tongue-"
Eddie has been running that particular sentence fragment through his head for the last week.
That thing with his tongue.
Has fun.
You know.
You know.
You know.
Cause the thing is, he decidedly does not know. He has never come anywhere near the realm of knowing. He would love to know exactly what he has done to make his new sort of friend, sort of nemesis and obvious flame of Steve's still burning affection think that he has any fucking inkling of a clue what kind of shit Steve 'always goes down' Harrington does with his tongue.
It's all he can think about.
Eddie is but a man. A man who has been forced by the fascist government and their pet doctors to stop smoking and give up most of the other addictive substances that he partook in for the sake of his admittedly shaky health. A man who has had these demands enforced by the much more effective puppy eyes of one Steve 'stop calling me mom, remember I was cool once' Harrington. A man who has an addictive personality, comes by it honest, and having given up smoking and drinking and the occasional bump -- anything from nature's bounty stays of course, he's not a total fucking loser -- has needed something new to latch onto.
Thank you Nancy 'I can only orgasm from oral' Wheeler for helping him straight onto the high that is staring at Steve Harrington and his pretty pink mouth.
I can tell he isn't having fun, not like Steve.
This thing with his tongue.
You know.
He wants to know.
The second thing, and it's barely a thing at all these days, is he does technically have some of the same shit going on that Wheeler does. A little bit less now. If there's a silver lining to this whole bat thing it's that, though he may be a nipple short, he lost enough of one tit to sweet talk his way into government funded top surgery, just to even things out. A just as silver lining, he was saved from the awkward 'guess what I'm trans' conversation thanks to the bat induced blood loss. When the older teens found him and Dustin, one of them in hysterics the other clinging to this mortal coil with both fists as best he could; and used the remains of a shirt that had seen better weeks to staunch the bleeding from his neck only to reveal that his own rippling pectorals had a different bounce than Steve 'at least I got to see his chest before I die' Harrington's. There wasn't any time for anything other than 'if he's still bleeding he's still alive let's move.'
They haven't talked about it.
He is fine not talking about it.
Prefers his acceptance this way actually. He knows he has a heating pad with his name, literally, on it at the Harrington abode, along with some other necessities. The only acknowledgement of his situation at all, that heating pad that's tucked away in the same drawer as Robin's -- also with her name on it like Steve doesn't trust them to share.
He would like to talk about it a little now. Now that he's been cleared for moderate exertion by a very mean physical therapist who enjoys inflicting so much misery on him that he's thinking of scrapping the black hanky all together. Cause he'd really, really like to know about that tongue thing.
Actually, first he'd really, really like to know why Nancy thinks he would already know. Maybe that's what eats at him the most -- second most the bats had actually eaten at him a lot, so he figures he can obsess about this for at least another week before it risks overtaking the literal eating -- that the woman who having had it all, having had Steve 'I know I saw you yesterday, but I missed you' Harrington in her pocket, and gave it away somehow sees something that makes her think Eddie is having sex with her ex-boyfriend on the regular.
She's supposed to be a detective, a real dateline NBC type. How on earth can she be looking at him and not see a starstruck virgin who, yes, is admittedly very, very in love lust with her ex.
And how is she okay with it?
Isn't there a best friend code or something? Not that Eddie would lay claim to that title, and it definitely feels weird ascribing it to Nancy when he's got the hellfire boys; but surely the regular friend code or the we survived a traumatic experience together and now we're inexplicably bonded for life code also has a byline about not sleeping with your compatriot's ex-boyfriends.
Even if she already thinks you know about how he gives good head.
So he just watches instead.
Watches him smile. Watches him pout. Watches him bite and lick and worry. Watches how they shine with something that's definitely more than just spit some days. Watches even closer to see if he can catch what Mabeline magic must be going on them.
He watches and watches and watches.
He has, by virtue of obsession, become the most studied observer of Steve 'absolutely wearing cherry flavored lipgloss' Harrington's mouth. He has also, by virtue of necessity, become the most talented reader of Steve 'seriously, Eddie, do I have something on my face' Harrington's lips.
Which provides him with a very interesting opportunity as he's browsing through the Family Video, looking for his pick for the weekly Big Kids Only movie night and not at all stalking Steve Harrington and his mouth.
"I'm going to ask him."
And Robin says something that involves an eye roll and a finger jabbed into a green polyester vest.
"I know I said it last week, but I mean it this time."
Her eyebrows are raised, so unimpressed she goes back to the counter to do whatever work stuff they supposedly do while they're here.
"I do mean it,” those cherry flavored lips pout, a dignified hand on his hip in the face of Robin’s clear disbelief.
She doesn’t open her mouth to answer this time but the arched brow and quirked smirk are clear enough that even he can make a guess at her response.
“I know I said that too, but I only kind of meant it last week. I actually mean it this time. “
She rolls her eyes, spitting out something quick and no doubt sharp and cutting with a slash of her hand.
“Just watch this.”
By this point Eddie 'hopelessly devoted to Stephan Richard Harrington’ Munson had actually stopped even pretending to be browsing the movie offerings of the sainted Family Video. He had in fact been standing with his hands wrapped around a copy of The Last Unicorn watching Steve ‘does this thing with his tongue’ Harrington and his stupid mouth while he gossips with his stupid friend -- sorry, Buckley. A fact Steve must have already made note of, since he’s locking eyes with Eddie from across the store and shaping those soft pink lips into, “Go out with me?”
And that’s…
He does this thing with his tongue, you know.
You know.
Maybe he didn’t then, and maybe he doesn’t know why Nancy ‘shit we might actually be friends, I can never let her find out about this’ Wheeler thought he already would.
But if he plays his cards right, he might find out very, very soon.
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Can we all agree that Raphie needs a mother figure the most?
Why would he need a mom when there's a perfectly good Leo right there?? Basically the same thing
Jokes aside, yeah most continuities I can agree. The one that needs an extra parental figure most is usually Raph. Though I believe all of them would've had a higher quality life/childhood if they had a mother. Mikey, Donnie, and Raph would be such momma's boys, and I think that would be so sweet.
But context and character dynamics are important, it really only works in theory. So most likely a continuity with a healthy relationship between Yoshi/Tang Shen and they got mutated together or they stay together after only one gets mutated. All things considered a single mom wouldn't fare much better then just Splinter. But a Splinter that falls in love after mutation could work well too. An unhealthy/toxic dynamic wouldn't help in the slightest.
April often "sort of" fills the mom role, mom role adjacent like older sister or loving Aunt, and is usually the best at nurturing Donnie more then anyone else. Casey is often helpful giving Raph a mirror and helping him regulate his temper, but he's not much a parental figure and usually an honorary turtle sibling. Plus the lesson is usually Raph teaching an adult to control themselves which isn't fair to Raph who is always a child. They all need one-on-one time with a parental figure that isn't meant to further their ninjutsu.
2003 Splinter is exempt, he's not perfect but the literal "has always been a rat, never human" Dad is the only one that regularly just hangs out with his kids and watches them play games or just watches movies/tv with them for fun. And if his kiddos are in danger he's absolutely right there trying to protect them.
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There's a tendency in modern fandom to rob Henry of his agency, like saying Anne "lured" or "stole" him as if he isn't responsible for his actions. What I find weird is that seems to have, to an extent, been the idea at the time. A hell of a lot of the Catholic/Imperial faction seemed to get the thought that well, all we do is get rid of Anne and everything goes back to normal. Like Mary and Chapuys act like they expect her to be princess and heir again as if nothing happened and the English Reformation will just stop there and turn back. I just can't get my head round how much people then revered Henry as king but then think he's some weak puppet Anne manipulated and who they can manipulate when she's gone.
Yeah, the thing is that...A) We haven't changed as much as we like to believe that we have, B) Obviously modern analysis of contemporary reports of this period is reliant on these reports, but has the benefit of hindsight (and yet when hobbyists without any background in history simply read these reports absent of any contextualization or expert analysis, they tend to take them pretty...literally? which dovetails into these fandom interpretations), C) That very double negative is the cornerstone of misogyny. Women are ultimately, even supernaturally, powerful but also ultimately powerless/weak, and/or exploit men's weakness, world's tiniest violin.
Misogyny alone is not enough to explain, there's also the political and religious at play with the psychological:
"Anne became [...] 'the evil counsellor.' In spite of Chapuys, the Emperor needed to maintain a civil relationship with Henry for his own purposes. He therefore chose to believe that Anne was bullying Mary (and Catherine) behind her husband's back. In a similar way Mary deceived herself into believing that it was not really her father who was subjecting her to such remorseless pressure, but the wicked woman who had acquired such an ascendancy over him."
+
"Her actual contribution to the 'scourge' of Lutheranism [...] was inflated to unbelievable proportions. Chapuys [went as] far as to blame 'the heretical doctrines and practices of the concubine' as 'the principal cause of the spread of Lutheranism in this country.' [This] created [...] a political/religious 'wing' of sentiment [against Anne Boleyn] that was [later] exploited by Cromwell [...] and it was a powerful obstacle in the way of Anne's acceptance by the (still largely Catholic) English people."
For me, what separates is that this subject (although more specifically on the mistreatment of Princess Mary, riffed on that here) is discussed as if it was an untapped timeline, and it's ...not? The events immediately preceding May 1536 do not vindicate or absolve any cruelty on Anne's part; by any means, but what they do prove is that Chapuys was wrong about her being the 'X factor' here, as it were. Once she's subtracted is when Mary's disbarred from succession in much firmer legal language by Parliament. Moreover, the Boleyn downfall was a watershed in court division and factionalism, its aftermath was not a period of 'relative' (or otherwise) tranquility but rather continuance, even amplification, of religious suppression for those that did not adhere to the tenets of the new Henrician 'supremacy'.
Also, let's not underrate the ambition of the 'Marian faction'. They wanted a return to the status quo, yes, we shouldn't discredit religious motivations either, but they also wanted to regain the status and favour they felt they had lost. They were bargaining on the future favour of Mary once she was heiress again, bargaining on the future of Henry having no other children by marriage (so, even Mary as Queen), that's generally forgotten because most of them did not survive to reap (and, arguably, Mary becoming Queen later had very little to do with her faction of the 1530s that had failed upwards, considering especially that Mary was not reinstated into the succession--conditionally, but still--until several years after the Exeter Conspiracy).
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