#that’s just about how mike doesn’t have the greatest family and doesn’t like hawkins and how he pushes himself away from people | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sporadically-writing · 2 years

Text

Wendy Deakins

A/N: (I have only just started binging Stranger Things so I am very behind. I'm in Season 2 right now so I will update as I continue watching.)

Basics

Full Name: Wendy Ann Deakins

Nickname(s): Wenny, Wendz, Dee Dee, Annie, Darling (because of Peter Pan), Geek, Freak, Grease Monkey

Age: 16 in Season 1 of Stranger Things

Sexual Orientation: Straight Romantic Asexual

Appearance

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Skin Tone: Fair

Eye Color: Hazel

Hair Color: Golden Brown

Hairstyle: Side braided, occasionally messy

Build: She's a small girl, her arms are the only really built things about her, but when you help your mechanic father out, you end up lifting a lot of heavy things

Height: 5' 5"

Style: She typically wears old button down shirts, either with sleeves rolled up or cut short/off. She really likes browns, blacks and oranges. Autumn is her favorite season for a lot of reasons but one of the big ones is the colors. She also wears overalls a lot with one of her dad's old t-shirts or one of her sweaters.

Personality

General Personality Traits: Spirited, Curious, Kind

Strengths: Adroit, Astute, Resourceful

Flaws: Provocable, Can be snide, Competitive

Habits and Mannerisms: When she gets excited about something, she talks really fast, people have to tell her to slow down sometimes. The same happens when she gets nervous; Sometimes she fidgets with her braid, smoothing the end of it down, or running her hand through her hair and messing it up; She rolls her head before getting to work on something; When given a reasonable opportunity, she will sit on a counter with her legs crossed; She constantly does the rubber pencil trick/fiddles with her pencils

Secrets: She doesn't have a great relationship with her mom, that is not a secret but the backstory to it is. Wendy has never really run with the pack so to speak. She's more interested in working with her dad and her biology class than she is with certain other things. Her mom wants her to find a nice boy to settle down with and while Wendy does find certain boys cute every once and a while, she's never really liked them like that if you catch my drift. She also does not really want a nuclear family either. Why should she have to give up her dreams just because society says she should?

Regrets: She regrets not talking things through with her mom, not trying to explain that she doesn't appreciate being compared to other girls her age.

Skills/Talents: Fixing things; Figuring out how things work; Understanding animal behavior; Biology; Hiking; Explaining/Teaching others

Likes: Animals, Feminism, Candy Cigarettes (she thinks they're funny)

Dislikes: Being compared, Animal Cruelty (nature is violent, that's just the way it is but humans shouldn't treat animals poorly), Folks who are uneducated and refuse to learn

Sense of Humor: Wendy has a very Laugh-At-Life view of the world (at least pre-series). She is smart and loves learning and the way the world works. More often than not, everything is beautiful and happens for a reason so, when something happens it's best not to take things so seriously, whatever is going on in your life has a solution, all you have to do is find it. So in the moment, it's best to laugh at what you can and work your way towards a solution. That's not to say that she can't turn things serious on a dime when the situation calls for it, because she can definitely take charge of a dangerous situation if the need arises. (And it definitely will).

Guilty Pleasure: Popcorn and cute stuffed animals are her greatest weaknesses

Defining Moment: Piecing the Demodogs' behavior together while she and Steve essentially join the party

Relationships

Friends: Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Steve Harrington (eventually), Joyce Byers, Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler, Jim Hopper, Eleven, Max Hargrove, Robin Buckley

Family: Martin "Marty" Deakins (Father), Dorothy Deakins (Mother), Doc (Wendy's trusted Abyssinian cat companion)

Enemies: Hawkins Lab, Creatures from The Upside Down, Billy Hargrove

Lovers: Steve Harrington (eventually)

Relationship Status: Single

Reputation: She's a very intelligent and nice girl, she just strays slightly out of the social norms

Miscellaneous

Current Residence: Hawkins, Indiana

Collections: Biology/Animal books, Cat toys, Mechanic Equipment (including welding equipment), A walkman and headphones, Her dad's old truck

Accent: Midwestern

Voice: Spunky

Signature Quote: "Wicked... How's it work?"

Song: I’ve been looking for an early 80′s song that matches her vibe but I haven’t quite found it yet. However, her favorite song is Be My Baby by the Ronettes

Backstory

Wendy Deakins is a smart girl, always has been. She enjoys learning about the world and its many objects and what makes them work. When she was younger she had a knack for tearing things apart to see how it functioned before putting it back together. This skill followed her into her academic life when she became fascinated with animals and ecosystems. She wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up and dressed up like one for several Halloweens as a child. Her mother was not necessarily enthused by this. Didn't she want to dress up like a princess or something like that? Like what other little girls did? Her father however, could not have been more proud of his little girl. She's smart and has a passion for learning, not to mention she had goals in mind at such a young age. Something she wanted more than a white fence. He even let her into his shop at a young age, to see what he did for work. She thought what he did was amazing. Like a car doctor!

So, as soon as she was old enough, her dad got her some coveralls and offered her a job helping him around the shop. She did smaller stuff at the beginning. She was still learning what she needed to know for the job but she could fix smaller things and point people to the parts they needed while Martin was busy with bigger repairs. It made things more efficient and was excellent for getting things done. Not to mention, Wendy has always been a kind girl, so people were more than happy to take advice from the sweet girl who seemed to know what she was doing, rather than argue with her father. Not that Martin didn't know what he was doing, it's just sometimes people think they know better.

That doesn't mean that Wendy was immune to teasing though, her peers saw a girl their age that just didn't quite fit. She was a tomboy when that kind of thing wasn't necessarily the social norm in rural America. Her mother tried to steer her down the "right" path but Wendy always did her best to ignore it. She knew who she was, what she liked and what she wanted out of life. Her dad supported her and there was nothing that was going to make her change. She got along fine with other kids, she might not have been popular but that's okay. She didn't need to be, and besides, if some idiot wanted to waste their breath making fun of her for being herself, screw them. Some comments sting, but that's life, you file it away and you move on.

Wendy made contact with The Party while working in her Dad's shop. The boys had been riding around on their bikes and Dustin's chain broke, so they had to bring their bikes in. Smiling, Martin delegated the fix to Wendy and she did so faster than the boys thought was physically possible. They were amazed that a girl could do all that and Wendy thought the four of them were funny. She sent them on their way after teaching them a thing or two about bikes, already a little endeared by the kids.

That wasn't the last time she saw them however. She actually saw them rather regularly outside of the shop. She had a study hall around the time that the boys were in Mr. Clark's science class (not that she knew that at the time), she had been one of Mr. Clark's favorite students when she was in middle school and he her favorite teacher. She, frankly, wasn't really using the study hall anyway and decided she would ask if she could pop over to the middle school during the study hall and TA for Mr. Clark's science class, especially for harder lessons like labs. She even offered for him to call over to the High School to let them know that she had showed up for the class, just to make sure everything was above board.

So through these interactions, she made a semi-friendship with the kids, becoming a beloved NPC to their party if you will.

Then, of course, things got more than a little weird...

#wendy deakins #stranger things oc #st oc #steve harrington x oc #steve harrington x reader #hawkins indiana oc #stranger things x oc #stranger things x reader #oc bio sheet #my oc stuff #bio sheet: @shenanigans-and-imagines

24 notes · View notes

lesbianrobin · 3 years

Note

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

84 notes · View notes

hawkinsschoolcounselor · 4 years

Note

My friends and I occasionally play that made-up game called "Kerfuffle" - A bit like DnD but with everyday life tasks and not as nerdy (sadly :D). You pick a random politician, TV char., etc. and try to overcome some challenges in a way you assume they'd do it. Last time we played, I obv picked s.o. from ST - Joyce. That was when a random thought crossed my mind: If s.o. were to name each ST main character's greatest weakness/ strength, what would be the outcome? I immediately thought of you. :D

Ok, now that the election is over, and my anxiety has come back down to its usual “only a little high” status, it’s back to business here. This is an interesting question from my pal @sollody here. I’m not going to be able to go too much into depth given the breadth of the question here, but it’ll be a nice look at several characters. Perhaps this will result in requests for more in-depth looks at some of them individually. For the sake of having a defined meaning of “main character,” I am only going with characters who were in all three seasons and were directly involved in the action (sorry, Mr. Clarke). I will make an exception for Max, as she’s just too central to leave out.

The Party

Mike

Greatest Strength: Determination. Once he sets his mind on something, he does everything in his power to see that it happens. Do not try to come between Mike and his objective. God help you if you try to stop him when his objective involves Will or El.

Greatest Weakness: A lack of emotional intelligence. Mike reacts to his emotions as they come. There’s no apparent self-awareness, and this results in impulsive behavior that leads to negative outcomes for himself and his relationships. The feelings themselves aren’t the problem. Mike just doesn’t understand them enough to react appropriately.

Will

Greatest Strength: Quick thinking. I was tempted to mention his compassion, but really Will’s greatest asset is his mental acuity. Since season 1 he has shown an impressive capacity for quick thinking in stressful situations.

Greatest Weakness: Insecurity. Will has self-esteem issues resulting from not only the Upside Down situation, but also more mundane personal and family experiences. He worries about how people view him and fears that he’s being left behind. This leads to him keeping important things to himself, things nobody, especially a child, should be expected to deal with alone.

Lucas

Greatest Strength: Rationality. Lucas has generally been the member of the party with the most down-to-earth mindset. Regardless of all of the supernatural goings on, Lucas has tried to view things realistically. His approaches to the events of the series have typically been the most practical, skeptical, and grounded. Ironically, this actually does make him a good Winston, though I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him this.

Greatest Weakness: Overconfidence. Lucas is very sure of himself, sometimes too much so, even when warned off by others. From being sure that El was trouble, to risking a beating from Billy, to thinking he’s some suave expert on women, Lucas has made trouble for himself and his friends. He doesn’t meant to, of course, and a lot of this may come from some desire to “be a man.” Lucas needs to learn to accept himself as he is.

Dustin

Greatest Strength: Curiosity. Dustin is always looking to learn more about anything and everything. Nothing is too weird or off-putting for him. His knowledge has come very much in handy for the Party, and this general attitude has led to him accepting the supernatural events in stride.

Greatest Weakness: Recklessness. Dustin, in his pursuit of satisfying his curiosity, or some other goal, can fail to see clearly obvious dangers. Find a strange creature? Raise it yourself. See a strange growth in the underground tunnels? Go get a closer look. Find out about a possible Russian base in the mall? Let’s go check it out! His goals are often admirable, but his approach is often foolish.

Greatest Strength: Adaptability. El has managed to escape a government facility, survive in the woods, and travel to unfamiliar locations despite her young age. While she has been somewhat dependent on her powers, she’s managed to accomplish some impressive feats for someone who hasn’t had anything close to resembling a normal upbringing.

Greatest Weakness: Ignorance. This isn’t the “you’re so ignorant!” meaning of the word. I mean it in the truest sense of the word: El just lacks a lot of information in life. Most critically, she’s emotionally and socially unaware. A lot of her schemas for relationships come from TV shows and what little she picked up from Mike in season 1. She’s gotten somewhat better as the seasons moved on, but there’s just a lot she doesn’t know. This had led to her being suspicious, angry, and possessive (specifically of Mike), harming her relationships with others.

Max

Greatest Strength: Acceptance. Max doesn’t unduly judge anyone. Her issues with Mike stemmed from his treatment of her. Aside from that, some light teasing aside, she was more than happy to accept the Party as her friends. She didn’t let Lucas’ race get in the way of their mutual attraction, despite knowing what Neil and Billy would think about it. She wanted to be El’s friend from the start, and, despite being harshly rebuffed at first, she accepted El when she sought Max out in season 3. It’s really a testament to how determined she is to not continue the cycle that Neil and Billy brought into her life.

Greatest Weakness: Family. Honestly, Max’s biggest drawback is her home life. She’s worried that she may end up going down the same angry, abusive road as Billy and Neil. She’s mistrustful, snarky, and blunt even when not worked up, behaviors she likely developed due to exposure to Billy and Neil. She also seems to still love Billy despite his abusive behavior. This sort of family dynamic can be very damaging (and it was probably just as harmful to Billy). Hopefully, Max’s found family serves to offset the harm done by her “real” family.

Older Teens

Nancy

Greatest Strength: Determination. It must be a family trait. Nancy is relentless, and she will get to the truth of the matter, one way or another. Nobody, and indeed no monster, will keep her from what she’s after.

Greatest Weakness: Egocentrism. Nancy can easily lose sight of how things impact those around her. Her desire to prove herself has left her somewhat blind to the difficulties other people face. She has trouble relating to people from other situations.

Jonathan

Greatest Strength: Compassion. Jonathan has sacrificed a great deal for his family, and he’s apparent done it without any noticeable resentment. His treatment of Will resembles the ideal that a lot of parents hope for in their kids (though in reality Mike/Nancy or Lucas/Erica is the more realistic outcome). Jonathan just wants those important to him to be happy.

Greatest Weakness: Social Awkwardness. Jonathan has a great deal of trouble interacting with other people. This likely stems from his family situation, as his father leaving left his family as pariahs of sorts, and it also left him having to be a sort of father figure when he should have been able to be a regular teenager.

Steve

Greatest Strength: Courage. Yes, Steve has been freaked out by everything, but that’s irrelevant. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the ability to feel fear and not let it control you. Steve has willingly put himself in harm’s way for the sake of others in all three seasons. The only thing that scares Steve too much to overcome is social judgment...

Greatest Weakness: Insecurity. Yes, our buddy, King Steve, has self-esteem issues. This is why he’s always trying to play himself off as a hotshot. He’s simply too afraid to just be himself. Sadly, it’s only when he lets this guard down that he’s at his best. He’s made some stride at overcoming this, and I’m hopeful that he continues this in season 4.

Adults

Joyce

Greatest Strength: Ferocity. Do I even need to explain this? Do NOT threaten Joyce’s loved ones, especially Will. Just don’t.

Greatest Weakness: Emotional Reactivity. When stress hits Joyce, she reacts hard. It’s perfectly normal, given the level of stress she feels, but it leaves her seeming “crazy” and makes it hard for others to understand what she’s trying to get across. As a result, her message, warning, etc. is lost and her credibility is damaged. In less serious occurrences, she instead just comes across as belligerent or annoying, even though she’s generally right about whatever she’s on about.

Hopper

Greatest Strength: Compassion. Hopper is at his best when he’s trying to protect others. Despite having worked to close himself off from the world after his personal trauma, Hopper still feels compassion. He probably never wanted to feel anything for anyone again (perhaps why he returned to a boring town like Hawkins), but when tragedy struck it brought out the best in him. Though, that brings us to his weakness...

Greatest Weakness: Insensitivity. Perhaps ironically, Hopper’s weakness is the complete opposite of his strength. Hopper is a man who runs hot and cold. Which version of him that you get depends on his mood. If you get his bad side, prepare for harsh words, and perhaps harsher fists. This may help him get the job done at times, but it harms his relationships. He has a tremendous fear of loss, which results in him lashing out fiercely at those he cares for if they do something to that risks him losing them.

Ok, that’s the best I could come up with. I’d love to read other people’s thoughts on the matter.

#stranger things #mike wheeler #will byers #lucas sinclair #dustin henderson #eleven #max mayfield #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #steve harringrove #joyce byers #jim hopper

76 notes · View notes

hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

Text

A Stake of Holly in Her Heart Pt . 2

Pt. 1

At 6 in the morning, the time they had agreed upon years ago as their time to wake up on Christmas Day, it’s Susan who gently shakes Max awake, not Billy putting the blaring alarm clock up to his sisters ear.

But Max is already awake, her tears soaking the sheets on her brother's bed, wishing her mom would just forget to wake her up entirely and leave her there to weep.

The first “Merry Christmas” she hears is from Neil as he grabs beer out of the fridge, not Billy, who would’ve said it with as much sarcasm as possible as he shoved her out of the way so he could get to his presents first.

There’s no doubt in Max’s mind that Susan told him to say it, that he didn’t actually have any Christmas spirit in that Scroogey old heart of his to spread wishes of holiday cheer, which only makes the sentiment hurt more.

It’s her sitting on the floor by herself with a flashing camera in her face, tearing wrapping paper off of a bunch of pointless gifts with as little enthusiasm as possible.

She notices that, compared to previous years, there aren’t a whole lot less presents under the tree, and that only makes her feel worse about opening them without her Billy there to put sticky bows in her hair or toss wrapping paper balls at her.

By the time she opens half of her presents, including a makeup set she isn’t going to use, a cassette from a pop band she’s never even heard of, and a new pair of chucks she’s probably going to be made fun of for, Max feels her lip start to tremble, and her eyes blur over the multicolored lights on the tree.

The floodgates really open when, after lowering her camera, the dreaded question comes past her mother’s lips,

“What’s the matter Maxine, honey?”

That’s all it takes for her to be a bawling mess in the middle of a pile of wrapping paper and presents she doesn’t really want anyways.

Because there’s so much that is the matter in this particular moment that no answer any shorter than a 30 page thesis could even begin to describe what Max was feeling on that Christmas morning.

She wants to tell them that she doesn’t want these generic gifts from parents who know nothing about her, that she doesn’t want to be forced into the role of the perfect, cookie cutter family you’d see on a Christmas card, that all she wants is her brother back, but she's choked up, any attempt at speaking drowned out by a sob.

In this house, authority demands a response, an explanation is due for why their holiday is being ruined by such behavior, so Max has to choke back her sobs and whine out some pathetic excuse.

She comes up with something like ‘Dustin said he was getting a new Nintendo and I didn’t,’ but nobody really believes that.

They work it out of her eventually, earning a confession through threats of taking presents away like she was a toddler, and when that doesn’t work, a backhand to the face and a hand in her hair like she was any older than fourteen.

But telling them that she missed Billy a lot and that she felt guilty celebrating the holiday she knew was secretly his favorite without him around was apparently not the answer they wanted to hear, because Susan drops her camera on the carpet, and Neil leaves the room entirely.

She thinks of how the scene’d make the perfect Hargrove-Mayfield family photo.

The time between opening gifts and Christmas dinner at 3 o’clock was typically reserved for putting batteries in toys, plugging in new electronics to make sure they worked, and trying on new clothes and shoes, but Max’s meltdown under the tree had been enough to set the whole house on edge.

In the chair in the living room, where he always seemed to just sit around and scowl with a beer in his hand these days, Neil was that much grumpier, and Max stayed that much further away from him.

In the kitchen, Susan gets a little clumsier, the sound of her nervous hands clanging pots and pans together reverberating through the eerie quiet that’s come to settle over the house.

Max decides to go back to her room, to avoid all the noise and tension. She lays on her stomach across her double bed and grabs her walkie from where she left it under her pillow.

Tuning into the channel she knew would be occupied by her friends, she hears the boys and Eleven, who had come back with the Byers’ to Hawkins for the holidays, already on their own radios, talking a mile a minute about all of their presents.

That was supposedly a tradition of theirs, calling each other up to share the news of all they’d gotten, but she hadn’t been able to take part in it last year. She feels sick to her stomach thinking about last Christmas, the last one she would ever spend with her brother, so she keeps eavesdropping without telling her friends she’s there.

After so long, the boys all have their turns to gush about their new NES games and records, and in El’s case Barbie dolls and comic books, and the conversation slows down a little so Lucas can ask, “Has anyone heard from MadMax?”

All around there’s denial, and she hears Lucas sigh and say, “I’m getting kind of worried about her.”

A buzz of static from Mike's end, “She'll be fine, dude.”

“Way to be an asshole, Mike.” Dustin cuts in.

Defensively, Mike says, “What? I just meant that she’s like, super tough.”

Will tunes in then, the sound of his laugh cutting through the scratchy static, “Aren’t you not supposed to talk like that about other girls in front of your girlfriend.”

“What do you know about girlfriends?” Mike exclaims, clearly offended from the way his voice breaks.

And from there the conversation keeps on like that, just a couple of teenage boys loudly arguing over things that are not her problem, so she shuts the walkie off.

But, as she rolls over onto her back, what Mike said is really sticking with her.

Was she really supposed to be fine?

She couldn’t wrap her head around how everyone else was able to just keep on like normal while she was stuck mourning the greatest loss she had ever experienced on a day typically reserved for cheerfulness. It didn’t seem fair.

Staring up at her popcorn ceiling, she lets her thoughts drift back to times when Christmas wasn’t like this.

Her first Christmas without her dad, she remembers being upset the whole time, his singular gift he sent to her in the mail not really enough to make up for his absence. At the time she was too young to realize it, but Billy had put extra effort into cheering her up that day, letting her pick all of her presents out first, and giving her all the cookies that didn’t get burnt in the oven.

Now that Billy’s the missing piece, she has no one.

On Christmas Eve a few years back, Neil kicked Billy out of the house, and he had to spend the holiday at a friend’s place. He called Max that morning to tell her that she could open his presents if she wanted to, and to be careful around Neil. She understood that Billy was looking out for her when she saw her stepfather smack her mother for the first time under the mistletoe.

Last Christmas, her and Billy weren’t really on speaking terms, and just the thought of the way things were between them filled her heart with so much remorse. She thought she had all the time in the world to be angry with her brother, never in a million years would she have thought that Christmas of ‘84 would be his last.

In retrospect, knowing now that just months after the fact Billy would be gone, there was so, so much she wished she would have done differently.

Because he’d been trying to make up for it, had made his attempt at earning her forgiveness, and she’d rejected every last one. She thought he deserved it then, but she would give anything to be able to go back in time and accept his ride to the snowball, to drink the hot chocolate he made her instead of letting it sit until it got cold, to take new Christmas photos where she didn’t have a scowl on her face every time she was near Billy.

Before she can dig herself too far into her grave of despair, she’s interrupted by the dull tone of the ringing phone.

Without anybody even telling her to answer it, she knows it’s her Aunt Nicole, who always called her on Christmas like she was still a little girl because she wanted to hear what all Max got this year.

She sighs and wipes away any lingering tears from her face, dragging herself off the bed and trudging across the room as slowly and loudly as possible, just in case there was any question as to how exactly she felt about forced family bonding.

The phone she used to keep on her dresser had since been thrown out the window in a fit of Neil’s rage, so she has to go out to the kitchen to answer it.

Right now, listening to the shrieking and dehumanizingly pitiful voice of aunt Nicole was the very last thing she wanted to do, but Susan sends her a stern look from where she’s stood at the stove that tells her she has to.

“Hiya Maxie!” Every year she underestimated how loud her aunt was, and always had to pull the receiver back away from her ear. “How are ya?”

“I’m alright Aunt Nicky.” It had seemed like the right thing to say, nobody wanted to hear about her being all depressing anyways, but she regrets it the moment Nicole’s response comes.

“Oh, that’s great honey! You know, I would’ve expected you to be all mopey over Neil’s boy.” She chuckles at her own words, though through the static of long distance it sounds more like a cackle, and continues on, “Lord knows how emotional you get over such silly little things.”

Then, as though she hadn’t just doubly insulted her niece, she asks, “Anywho, did ya get anything good this year? Maxie?”

But Max doesn't even hear the question. She drops the receiver and walks away, entirely unable to stomach what Nicole said.

The phone is left dangling from its cord for her mother to pick up, as she blinks away the bitter sting of tears and marches straight through the living room.

But before she can escape back to her bedroom, Neil catches her wrist on the way through, his grip tight enough that she can feel her bones grinding together as he holds her there.

She hears Susan in the next room frantically trying to explain the situation to her sister, making up a more respectable excuse about boyfriend drama, which would’ve made Max pretty upset if the very angry step-father trapping her in the living room wasn't the greatest of her worries.

Once Susan is off the phone, Max gets herself a good old fashioned talking to, the same ‘respect and responsibility’ speech she’d heard a thousand times before, accented with a twist to the wrist if she doesn’t answer quickly enough or assuredly enough, or forgot the yes sir tagged onto the end.

After he’s confirmed it a good five times that Max fully understands the consequences of disrespecting her family, he squeezes harder and her wrist pops and her fingers go numb. Susan must decide that’s enough, because she asks for Neil’s help with something in the kitchen.

Without looking back once to see the scene she was leaving behind, Max seizes the opportunity to escape back to her bedroom, though she can feel Neil’s eyes burning a hole in her back as he watches her scurry away.

It’s with shaky hands that she locks the door behind herself, and she sits down with her back against it. She flexes her fingers to make sure they still work, and moves her wrist around so she’ll know if it’s broken, coming to the conclusion that, other than the dark red fingerprints blemishing her pale skin, she’ll be alright.

There’s a battery operated radio on her nightstand that she turns on to try to drown out the sound of the developing screaming match in the living room, since the topic of discussion is her, but the irony of every song telling of love and joy and peace on earth is too much, and she shuts it off.

She sheds a few tears for her childhood, for nostalgia of simpler Christmases as it fades away to the sound of her fighting parents, and for the ache pulsing in her wrist and other silly little things, but most of all, she cries for her brother.

Read also on ao3!

#max mayfield #billy hargrove #stranger things #ej writer #story by EJ!#sorry if this is repetitive I promise I’m getting to the point #I just wanted this to emulate the stuck feeling that happens when you lose somebody #but I realize that may have made my writing a pinch weaker #oh well! it reads well with the rest of the chapters anyways!

2 notes · View notes

frogfaceandzombieboy · 5 years

Text

@janebycrs made a post once upon a time asking for somebody to meta about the parallel between “should i stay or should i go” being will’s song, and “never surrender” being the song mike sings

now while i don’t particularly think there’s an outright or intentional parallel between those choices, mainly because s1 was infinitely more well thought out, cerebral, psychological and beautiful than s3, so i don’t think it was a conscious choice to have mike sing something that would eventually parallel will’s arc

HOWEVER-

the fact that it does exist, and bc byeler reigns supreme in literally ever facet of this show, there are some things that can be drawn. (the titles themselves are literal polar opposites which is telling in itself!)

should i stay or should i go is (for will) about confusion, safety, acceptance, and concern. confusion over what’s happening to him, his direct safety and the safety of his friends/family, acceptance of himself in his life/what happened to him/his trauma/who he is in relation to hawkins/the time period, and concern over his chances of survival in this unknown world.

all of that can be a metaphor for will’s sexuality. even the demogorgon, the upsidedown- it’s all an allegory for sexuality/acceptance/otherness. the demogorgon “attacking” and “choosing” will is not random, and instead a manifestation of will’s otherness, his queerness and the isolation/fear he feels regarding his connection to the “upsidedown” (a world inverted. this world, but one where he is alone, feeling left out.. hmm). i digress- bc we all know this.

so- should i stay or should i go, chalk full of confusion, torn up emotion, insecurity, does parallel mike’s hopeful song about “never surrendering”. paraphrasing the whole song: when the nights are cold and dark, no one can take away your light to fight. if you’re lost and all alone, never surrender. a little uncertainty can bring you down, but a little more time is all they’re asking for- time that could help open closing doors. with perseverance you can get things done. if your path won’t lead you home, you can still never surrender (home; the same home you left- joyce, jonathan, acceptance— you may never return to, at least in the same way, but you can’t quit because that path could divert into something better— happiness, love. different and new doesn’t always mean bad, even if it’s scary).

seems literally on the nose parallel of will’s song, right? now a million different things bombard my head when i read those lyrics: whether it be for will’s survival if we’re talking literally, or his internal struggle if we’re talking metaphorically- mike is will’s hope. he’s always been there as a guiding light, a solid foundation, a kind heart, optimisim. FW had even said directly that will brings mike back to the light in s2, so the sentiment clearly goes both ways. because if mike is suffering from the same internal struggle will is (his identity- i.e his ability to dip into the upsidedown to bring will back but never get stuck there) will helps mike too. and we’ve seen their connection displayed for seasons now so it’s not necessary to delve into that because it speaks for itself.

however what’s also telling, is that el didn’t like mike’s singing/the song. mike was being silly and he wasn’t singing to el, he was just singing and asked if she liked it. so- the fact that she didn’t not only goes back to how el really doesn’t like mike’s nerdy side- but also how the song wasn’t about her or to her. mike at his best is optimistic, brave, rebellious, accountable, confident, intelligent and heartfelt. he felt powerfully enough about this song to belt it out loud. where as will in a barely there whisper, muttered his song only to himself as he was struggling to survive. mike’s true colors, the fact that he’ll never surrender and never stop fighting for love, for strength, for what’s right- ends up directly paralleling will at his darkest, his greatest fears and insecurities. he’ll always be there to lift will up, to encourage him, and to love him.

they really are meant for each other.

#byeler #byler #theyre endgame you cant change my mind #janebycrs im sure you made that post 700 yrs ago but i just saw it so figured id blab about it a little

56 notes · View notes

kaypeace21 · 5 years

Text

‘Robin’ - is a codename, she’s Sarah Hopper, one of the numbers (Theory)

So I talked about why I believe Sarah was alive in a previous theory about a year ago, here, but after reading the prequel novel, more evidence was brought to light. So for those who haven’t read it, I’ll simply copy (from that post) all the proof Sarah is alive first, and explain after why I believe Robin is her.

In s1, Hopper first describes Sarah by saying “Sarah, my daughter … the galaxies, the universe, what not, she always understood all that stuff.” Then, in s2, when Hopper is referencing blackholes, he says “Sarah had a picture book about it, she loved it.” But, if Sarah had powers like Will and El, her extreme interest in the “blackholes” (*the void) and “the universe” (* the upside down) would make much more sense, since it’d be her way of rationalizing what she may have been experiencing/seeing- and making her less afraid of them.

I also have to point out that other posts have mentioned the fact that after her ‘death’, Hopper grieves on a very similar looking set of stairs (that appear to be in Hawkins lab). Is it possible someone tampered with the Hoppers’ memories or caused visual halucinations of her death-in order to kidnap her? Also the fact, that Hopper negotiates El’s freedom (gaining a daughter in the process) on a similar stair case (to where he lost his first daughter) could be more than simply symbolic.

When Terry goes to find Jane, we see her find Kali and a girl we are supposed to assume is El- but let’s be honest does this girl look anything like El? Or does she look more like Sarah?

Also, after Sarah’s ‘death’ Hopper states to Joyce “After Sarah, I saw her too and I heard her. I didn’t know what was real and then I figured it was all in my mind.”However in that same ep, Will literally uses all his strength and power to astral project and communicate with Joyce (to prove he was alive). El does something similar when trying to communicate with Mike, and Mike similarly confides in Will saying “Sometimes I feel like I still see her … sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy”.It’s very possible after Sarah’s kidnapping, and faked-death, she tried to contact her dad- but eventually gave up (which is honestly heartbreaking, if true).

However, I think the greatest evidence is in the symbolism, behind the fact that Will and El had stuffed lion-plushies while Sarah had a tiger doll.

As someone who wanted to be a writer, I can assure you this is most likely being used as foreshadowing or symbolism. So, I decided to look up mythology/symbolism based on these animals.

“Chinese guardian lions-are lion statues that are common guardians of villages (*Hawkins) and even private homes (*Castle Byers and El’s bed room). These lions can be a sign of protection of an individual or family. These lions are always depicted in pairs consisting of a male and a female, the female representing yin and the male yang, When, there is too great an imbalance between Yin and Yang, catastrophes can occur.”

I mean, that sounds pretty on the nose, don’t you think? XD

So, for consistency’s sake I looked up Chinese mythology/culture relating to tigers. “The tiger is personified by the constellation Orion (interesting given her interest in space). The tiger represents protection over human life (hmm?). Tiger charms were used to keep away evil and disease (that’s awful ironic if she died in the manner she did). In Buddhism, wearing tiger skins during meditations was believed to bring protection from spiritual interference and potential harm while exploring astral dimensions (ok, now I’m just screaming, since this makes too much sense XD).”

------So now for the new evidence, well... I totally called it about the tigers XD. In the prequel novel ‘Suspicious minds’, Tigers are referenced in relation to Kali (11 times!). Just some examples

Kali: “I was named after a goddess. She wore a tiger skin and was fierce in battle.”

Then Kali says to Alice (a women who can see future visions): “I love you, Alice. We can be tigers.”

This parallel (in relation to Alice) is fascinating because Kali actually uses her powers to fake Alice’s death- and to trick Dr. Brenner, and allow Alice to escape. The allusion was so realistic, that Terry could even touch the ‘dead’ Alice. So after Dr. Brenner realizes he’s been tricked, it wouldn’t be surprising after learning Kali could do this- that he’d use this power again, to his advantage. And Just like Kali & Alice are tigers together, so are Kali & Sarah (indicated by Sarah’s stuffed animal) their fates are forever linked.

Evidence Sarah Hopper is ‘Robin’

Now , my theory is that at the behest of Dr.Brenner she was tasked to follow El and Will ( and gather intel), and make sure the plan to take them to whatever lab he is now operating in, goes according to plan. And before you say, that’s ludicrous... Dr. Brenner has already used numbers to track and bring in those he suspects have powers.

Last week the first chapter of the number 6 comic came out. Here it was established that number 3 (was given a fake mom and ) was tasked at spying/observing Francine (to see if she had powers). She attracted Brenner’s attention, since before her parents won the lottery, they had only been off by one number, on multiple scratch off tickets . In the comic, He (number 3) actually believes he’s doing a good thing . Now you can call it stockhold syndrome, but both the prequel novel and the comic imply the other numbers (aka the ‘Indigo children’) are treated much differently than El & Kali (11 & 8). And this is because, 1-7, and 9-10 have much weaker powers. The prequel novel states this to be the case “ Eight wasn’t allowed to know there were other children here. They were all ordinary so far. He worried they’d infect her...Child shows gifts that require isolation from those who might weaken her...”. The book also implied that torture and traumatic events can strengthen powers, and that it was utilized more so on them- why Kali tells El to tap into her anger when using her powers. The comic alludes to this as well, the other numbers get to interact with one another, have lunch and talk, and even the guards are nicer and less dehumanizing towards them. Although, It’s mostly a facade.

So what number 3 tells Francine (number 6), may be how Sarah/Robin is seeing this mission. “ It was about protecting you. You can hate me if you want... it doesn’t change the fact that this is the safest place for people like us. Can you honestly say you’d rather be at home right now? Because I’m sure as hell glad they got you out of there.”

When Francine’s parents found out about her powers they became abusive when she couldn’t use them properly, and since both number 3 and 1 agree that this is the safest place- this is sadly probably a common occurrence for super-powered kids. So even though, Sarah didn’t have such an experience she probably has heard plenty of horror stories from the other numbers- and wants to protect these 2 kids.

So when she says this to Steve, it’s a joke- but she’s probably trying to subtly figure out if he’s also close to Dustin’s other friends (ie. Will & El)

- other evidence includes the fact that the new prequel novel ‘Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town’ confirms that Sarah’s birthday is on the 4th of July (the same time period s3 will take place in)! And I just find that really suspicious.

-Also, Sarah and Robin have similar facial features, and hair and eye colors. The comic even doubles down on the fact that El was supposedly blonde (yes, people’s hair color/texture can change... but it’s still suspicious). Robin’s wrists are also both covered- so she could easily hide her tattoo, and she’s referred to in her character bio as simply an “alternative girl.” And frankly, with such a huge ensemble cast it makes no sense just to add her , simply to be a love interest.

-The one flaw in this theory, is that in ‘Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town’ if we takes the dates accurately- Sarah would be about 15 (and Robin seems to be closer to Steve’s age). However, since the other prequel novel got El’s birthday wrong-it’s still a strong possibility. Even if Robin isn’t Sarah, she is alive and we will see her again- whether that is in s3 or s4 though... is yet to be determined.

* all the edited gif/pics aren’t mine- and are simply being used for visual evidence.

#stranger things theory #will byers #el hopper #kali prasad #stranger things robin

105 notes · View notes

willel · 5 years

Text

Will and El storylines

This is a straightforward picture of how I view their development.

El’s main antagonist is Brenner. Brenner is the one that has caused the series we call Stranger Things to happen. Due to his cold and endless scientific curiosity, he has forever tainted their world with the Upside Down. There may never be a day where they achieve peace because of him.

Not only did Brenner take El as a newborn, not even allowing Terry to hold or touch her own baby, he stripped her of her name and raised her mostly alone in a cold laboratory.

Although we don’t know the age at which the experiments and testing started, it is all El knew. The most warmth she’s ever had was 1 stuffed animal toy, occasionally getting a story read to her, and getting to draw 1 picture.

After Brenner caused El to open the gate into the Upside Down, El took her fate into her own hands and escaped. She ran as hard as she could and found two safe havens. First Benny, who was killed for trying to help her, and then The Party.

There, she continued to decide her own destiny. She put her foot down when she needed to, refusing to let Lucas and Mike inform their parents. But, she was also on her own mission. She was searching for someone, someone she didn’t even realize was associated with the boys who helped her.

The show doesn’t delve into how she knew Will before she met the boys, but the comic illustrates she caught a glimpse of him on the other side and vice versa.

Now with the pieces all in place, El, in her own way, tries to undo her “wrongs”. She wants to help the boys to find Will. Safely. In the end, she does. At a price. For a while, she can’t be with her friends and Mike anymore. She’s lost her safe haven, but soon finds another in Hopper.

As we know, things with Hopper aren’t all sparkles and rainbows. As time marches on, El grows more and more frustrated and she starts seeing things in Hopper she doesn’t want to see. She sees traits of Brenner and what he did to her. While Hopper is nowhere near as bad as Brenner, it’s easy to see someone who experienced as much trauma as El can see the similarities. So she ditches Hopper to find a new safe haven.

She finds her mother. Alive. But broken. Another piece of her life broken by Brenner that may never be fixed. She can’t fix this one, at least, not right away. Instead, she tries to follow her mother’s wishes, which leads her to her third safe haven. Kali.

Kali is just like her. They were tortured by the same man, both stolen away from their parents. They found a new family to feel safe with. But, there’s a key difference between Kali and El. Kali heart is hard as stone. She’s been hurt one too many times. Her fear and rage fuel her to be on the offence against the people who hurt her instead of the defense. El tries to follow in her footsteps, but she can’t. She doesn’t want to split up families like they did to her and Kali.

It happens again. Brenner returns, but it’s a manifestation of Kali’s powers. El and Kali are so alike, Kali knows El’s pain and can use it against her. It’s always Brenner who is her greatest fear. Her and Kali too.

When she closed the gate, who is it that pushed her over the edge to make one last huge push? Brenner.

It always comes back to one person. Brenner. Even when he’s supposedly dead, he has affected El’s life forever. If he is still alive, I think even the big bad Mind Flayer won’t personally affect El as much as Brenner has. Even when El inevitably has to fight the Mind Flayer, I just can’t see it cutting as deep as Brenner. She can fight the Mind Flayer. It’s just a monster out to destroy her world. Brenner? His pain cuts much deeper, fighting him isn’t as easy.

El’s foe is Brenner.

Will

Will’s antagonist is the Upside Down, and the embodiment of the Upside Down, the Mind Flayer. Of course, he shares this antagonist with literally everyone. The difference between the others and himself is they’re on the outside looking in, and he’s on the inside looking out. If that makes sense.

Will’s story will be a little faster to write. Probably.

Will was once a normal kid with a jacked up family. Despite this, he’s made the best of it. He has good friends. A good brother. And a very supportive caring mom. Good grades. Interesting hobbies. Although things aren’t great with his dad, I think Will was content with the life he once had.

But, everything changed when he ran into the Demogorgon that night. He was kidnapped to an alternate dimension for a week and somehow managed to escape death right up till near the end. He was saved thanks to El’s help.

Will comes back home, but things still aren’t the same no matter how hard he tries. He’s having visions. Nausea. Nightmares. Panic attacks. How many sleepless nights did he have? How many times did he crawl into bed with Jonathan and Joyce or vice versa? He’s 12 going on 13 year old and probably feels like a small child again. Despite all this, for a while, Will is able to gain at least a little normalcy.

As the anniversary of the events comes closer, all that normalcy is washed down the drain. The Upside Down came back for him and overtook him. “I felt it... everywhere. Everywhere...” Imagine how traumatizing that is, being unable to move as you’re overwhelmed with what looks like smoke. Possibly unable to breathe or scream. The torture didn’t end there. Every waking moment he didn’t feel right. Stuff that probably would’ve been enjoyable, like a hot bath, instills fear in him. But it’s not HIS fear, it’s someone elses.

Then he gets thoughts. But not his thoughts, someone elses. Memories. Visions. Feelings. Everything. All belonging to someone else. Feeling it all the time, unable to stop it. It’s worse than invasion of personal space, his person is no longer his own. Something or something else is in his body. The Mind Flayer knows everything about him and uses it against the people he loves. He no longer has control over anything, not even his own voice.

In season 2, slowly but surely, Will loses his fight against the Mind Flayer/The Upside Down. Once again, he is rescued by his mother and his brother through a painful and intense exorcism.

El seals the deal and saves everyone by closing the gate, locking the Mind Flayer out.

The Intersection

The part that interests me on a deeper level is not necessarily how similar El and Will are as people, which they are, but how similar their personal antagonist are.

Brenner and The Upside Down/Mind Flayer have both changed Will and El’s lives in personal irreversible ways. Yes, Brenner is technically everyone’s enemy. So is the Mind Flayer. But who have they done the most damage to? The answer is obvious.

Controlling. Manipulative. Forcing them to do things they don’t want to do. Knowing everything about them and using it as a weapon to cut deeper. Brenner and the Mind Flayer are big contributing factors as to why Will and El are so alike excluding their natural calm and quiet demeanor.

The Future

So what does this mean? Why does it matter? All of this boils down to how the cast are going to take out the two big bads. Brenner, and the Mind Flayer. I don’t think El can do both all alone and she shouldn’t have to. She has friends and family now to support her.

El is weak to Brenner, but with her powers can fight the Mind Flayer.

Will is weak to the Mind Flayer, but Brenner has no hold over Will’s psyche.

I think both these big baddies will need the whole group to help take them down just like the previous seasons, but I also think there’s some importance for the main people affected get the final blow.

El getting to slap or punch Brenner? El getting to throw him against a wall? El getting to tell him off to his face??? I want this to happen for her. I want her to get her chance to take down her big bad, the one person who ruined her life. She deserves her moment. Kali too, I’m not sure how Kali fits into this, but a team up of her and Kali getting a few licks in? That’d be good too.

As for Will, this place has been haunting him for years. It’s stolen years of his life and continues to bother him, his friends, and his family even still. I think Will deserves to have his winning moment as well. He’s not El. I don’t think any power he has will be able to do anything to the Mind Flayer. Not like El can. No, I want Will to be the one that crafts the ultimate plan that takes out the Mind Flayer for good. I want Will to be the brains, and for the others to use his blueprint to win.

I always visualize it as the Mind Flayer and Will on opposite sides of a chessboard. And on Will’s chessboard, El would he his queen piece, the strongest piece on the board. Oof, that’s so cool to me. It really ties into that scene with Joyce and Will at the table for lunch and in response to Joyce’s question, he says, “Sometimes, the bad guys are smart too.”

(note: I do think Will could help El with Brenner, but Brenner feels like more a Mike and Hopper problem for now)

The Powers

Onto the powers thing, my favorite thing to talk about. Over the last year or so, I’ve thrown out all kinds of theories about what powers Will could have and why. I probably have hundreds of posts, some serious, some not. As season 3 grows closer, I think I’ve settled on what they are.

Clairvoyance or the power to feel ones intentions. A general sensitivity to things. A heightened sense of empathy.

Something Upside Down related is headed towards Hawkins again? Will would be the first to feel it.

Something supernaturally bad is happening in Hawkins? Will could point out where on a map or draw it out.

Meets someone who seems sketchy? His gut would be able to accurately confirm or deny any suspicions.

Need to peek into the Upside Down (or possibly other dimensions?), Will can use True Sight.

True sight includes being immune to illusions, so Kali’s power might not work on him.

As you can see, none of these powers are out of this out of this world crazy or bonkers. None of them conflict with El’s powers either. These are all things Will has done before and while being possessed by the Mind Flayer. Season 3 will show us exactly how much is him and how much belongs to the Mind Flayer.

It’s also interesting to note that Joyce displayed a few of these traits too and she has nothing to do with the Mind Flayer. As season 2 has showed us with Terry, the writers are following the Montauk Project blueprint in how powers are acquired. Genetics. Trauma. And drugs.

Whenever I speculate Will’s powers, I never think about it as, “What power can make Will just as powerful as El or stronger?” It can’t work like that. You see, El was an experiment. Day in and day out, the laboratory focused solely on making her power stronger. It’s unnatural. There is probably no other psychic more powerful than El and Kali. They are the equals in that regard, not Will and El.

When I speculate about Will’s powers, I think, “What power could Will have that would fill in gaps El doesn’t so they can be a team?”

In season 2, El’s power revealed a huge gaping hole. She can only see the people she’s searching for or have met/seen before. So when they went to kill Ray, El did not know he had daughters and could not see them. This blindsided the gang and inevitably put a bigger target on their back.

So what power do I think could have helped El cover he bases better? Someone who can help her not just see one person, but maybe everyone in the area she’s looking at.

Think about what Will was doing while the Mind Flayer possessed him. It was kinda similar to El where he could remote view what was going on. But he didn’t need to know all those soldiers to see them dying. He saw the whole area, their whole trip down into the tunnels. The catch is, his vision was tied to what the Mind Flayer was seeing. The only time Will used their connection to see what he wanted to see absent of the Mind Flayer is during the search for Hopper.

So imagine this same concept applied to an El and Will team up. Will can see what El can see. She can go anywhere she wants if she knows the person she’s looking for, but Will, through her, can help see not just the one person, but everyone they’re with and their surroundings instead of a black void. A booster for El’s existing powers.

I imagine Will is a booster. Not particularly strong on his own like any other natural psychic, but with a skill set that boosts the effectiveness of other psychics. The team buffer.

I love the concept. I don’t think I’ve ever written about it here because I’ve been saving it for my fic you see. A fic that will take forever to write, so why not. The one time I’ve alluded to it is my Bathtub Theory.

The Ships

I just want to get this out of the way. Byler shippers? Mileven shippers? I’m not on either of your teams. My blog doesn’t exist to boost your ships. Whatever ship happens doesn’t really matter to me. At all. I’m agnostic. I’m not out to get you, but the posts I make also aren’t meant to be evidence for shipping.

I’m not crafting theories and posting about parallels because I’m trying to make Will and El compete for Mike. Or to make Will the one and only main character. Or to reduce the importance of other characters and story lines. I’m making these posts because I feel like these parallels and similarities are going to mean something for the plot against the bad guys and them as characters.

I make Will and El comparisons to Mike sometimes not even to stress how important Mike is to them, but to show how the characters end up treating them similarly because of their circumstances. I use it as proof both of them have an extraordinary role in the group on purpose. The two oracles. The ones the group will turn to when stuff starts going down.

This willel blog? It’s a sideblog. This is where I put most of my Will and El love. My love for other characters that aren’t the Byers/Hoppers are on my main blog which I don’t really advertise because that’s what what you’re here for. This blog is compartmentalized love for two main characters out of ... however many we have now. 20. I bet many of you didn’t even know my second favorite character under Will is actually my dearest action hero son Lucas Sinclair whose story line I can’t wait to see this season.

The only kid ship I KINDA care about is Luxmax. And that’s ok people. We don’t all need to care or love the same things, you know? That would make a boring uncreative fandom. It’s not about the ships for me. It’s not. It never has been. I made this blog because there were no Will and El blogs at the time, only ships.

Conclusion

I love my potential siblings. I think they have a lot in common and can relate with one another in ways the others can’t. They aren’t the same people. They don’t even have the same beef with the main antagonist of the series. They don’t have the same powers. They don’t have the same life experiences. They don’t have the exact same personality. Although similar, they don’t have the same trauma.

They’re parallels. The definition of parallel is “side by side and having the same distance continuously between them” or “a person or thing that is similar or analogous to another.” Or, analogous, “performing a similar function but having a different evolutionary origin, such as the wings of insects and birds.”

You see that? Side by side. Similar. Analogous. Not same. Carbon copy. Identical.

They’re twins. My mom and aunt are twins. They have so many similarities including their face, but are also have a huge gaping canyon between their personalities. They aren’t the same person and that’s never what I’ve pushed here.

Please understand, I love Will and El because well, I always gravitate towards stories like theirs. Two people completely unrelated and barely even know each other brought together by supernatural forces and managed to work together to take down the big bads with their friends/family. For me, it’s like found family to the extreme. I love it. I always fall for it.

I have so much fun crafting theories about their powers. I have fun coming up with fluffy or angsty headcanons about them. I have fun thinking of big family Hopper-Byers scenarios and making gifsets. This is what I enjoy personally.

I know you guys are having your ship war, but please leave me out of it. I’m not involved. Leave my posts out of it. Ok? I’m tired of it, you know? The other day it really depressed me. I felt like all my love for Will and El was being misinterpreted as existing only to stir up ship wars. I contemplated hiding my blog for a while until my rage passed over, but at the end of the day, I don’t have the energy to be mad. I’m just sad.

My one wish is for Will and El not to receive hate because of ships because you know what? That’s the worst possible outcome possible for season 3. They don’t deserve it.

#stranger things #will byers #el hopper #jane hopper

77 notes · View notes

pizza-is-my-buziness · 5 years

Text

Thanks for the prompt, anon! I have to say, I’m not really much of a smut writer so this fic is far from explicit. It’s definitely more implied. But I hope you like it anyway! Thanks again for the prompt and people should send me more prompts because I want to write more for this pairing so thanks!

They all go back to the Byers’ because it’s late and there’s the smell of rain on the lazy summer breeze and because El keeps sniffing and rubbing at her nose with the heel of her hand and Joyce keeps her wobbly lips pressed together in a thin line and keeps saying at random intervals “it’s okay” even though no one is asking and no one believes her. And because Nancy thinks it goes without saying that no one really wants to be alone right now.

Her body is tired. It’s sore. It’s hurting in ways that had previously gone unrealized because there hadn’t been time to sit and think and catalog. But now, sitting in the backseat of the car with Joyce driving, Nancy doesn’t have anything to do but sit and think and her body feels like one giant bruise that someone can’t stop poking. But her mind won’t shut up. It won’t rest, even though that’s all she’s wanted for the past several hours. For the past few days. She just wants to sleep, like she had been doing that night that the power went out and she didn’t have any understanding of rats eating fertilizer and people turning into a giant monster made of literal flesh.

Rather than try and close her eyes and coax herself into sleep, Nancy just rests her forehead on the window, watching the blurry dark of Hawkins pass by.

Everyone is crammed into the car so Jonathan’s thigh is pressing against hers and between him and the car door, Nancy has little room to maneuver, not that she minds. On Jonathan’s other side, there’s Mike and El and Nancy tries to focus on those things, the few little details that could possibly bring her comfort right now when she hurts and she’s tired and all she wants to do is close her eyes and imagine all this away. Her brother is safe. Jonathan is too. Nancy figures that she can count on those things to help her keep her hands steady enough to start putting the pieces of this shattered night back together.

Finally Joyce pulls into the driveway of the house and it’s dark, the porch light trying its vaillant best to welcome them back with a weak glow. Will gets out of the front seat to go around and open the back of the car for everyone else and it almost strikes Nancy as funny, how everyone sort of tumbles out of the back like they’re in a sort of clown car but she swallows her impulse to laugh. It’s easy enough, looking at the weary faces of the kids who used to be the bane of her existence when they were all younger and they thought the greatest thing in the world was sneaking around and trying to read her diary or otherwise annoy her.

They move silently into the house, weary soldiers, and Joyce methodically goes through all the rooms, switching on every single light. It might be dark outside but there’s an artificial day inside the Byers’ home and Nancy tries to take comfort in that. Even if the house itself, and the memories that come with it, aren’t exactly comforting. At least, over the past few months, she’s been able to make new memories here: family dinners with Joyce and Will and Jonathan or board games that no one really liked to play but Will but somehow his excitement made them almost fun. Or nights spent with Jonathan, when they thought they were being sneaky and quiet as they laughed and whispered under his covers or when they learned new ways to understand and orient themselves to one another's bodies.

This will just be one other memory to add to the “bad” column: all these tired and hurt faces and the things that aren’t being said. The names they aren’t being mentioned. Max, who keeps working her thumbnail between her teeth, looking skittish in the glowing lights of the living room. And El, who hasn’t said anything to anyone.

The younger kids get the living room, with Joyce talking enough for all of them, trying to fill the space and just making the silence echo even more. She lays down pillows and blankets, making a pallet and seemingly unable to keep her hand from lighting bird-like across the tops of everyone’s heads, like she needs the continual reassure that they’re all still there.

Robin and Steve get pointed in the direction of Will’s room, already bickering about who will take the bed and who gets the floor, volleying arguments back and forth at one another in a way that does more to lighten the mood than Joyce’s nonsense chatter ever could. Nancy feels her lips twitch into a small as she watches them, wishing that the rumors that she’d heard about Robin weren’t true, if only so Steve could find someone that made him forget things for a least a little while.

All the nights that she’s snuck into Jonathan’s room, either through his window or down the hallway in the dark, her feet trained to know which spots on the floor creaked, don’t seem to matter much anymore because no one, not even Joyce, gives them a second glance when Nancy follows Jonathan to his room. Maybe the rules are different. Maybe things like maintaining a facade stopped mattering when rats started eating chemicals and crawling into old ladies’ basements.

Jonathan eases the door closed behind them and locks it, though Nancy doesn’t know if that’s out of habit or some misguided idea that doing so is going to keep them safe against whatever might still be lurking out there.

Nancy doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to think about the uselessness of locked doors or parents who can’t really protect you or small towns that are supposed to be safe and the rules that she’d thought she could count on. Instead, she wants to pretend like the lock on the door will make a difference. That there’s someone out there who can keep her safe. That she doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore except coming up with a convincing lie about where she’s been, if her parents were to ask in the morning.

Instead, Nancy sits on the edge of Jonathan’s bed, feeling out of place and awkward, like she isn’t familiar with the space, isn’t comfortable with every inch of the room the way that she’s comfortable with every inch of the person who inhabits it. The fight that she had with Jonathan doesn’t matter anymore, if it ever really did, and Nancy doesn’t feel like they have to do that dance around each other, that what-are-we-now-I-didn’t-really-mean-I-still-care-about-you dance that she would have demanded self-righteously from him just twenty-four hours ago.

Nancy feels like the uncomfortable uncertainty that she feels settling over her shoulders comes more from herself and how she’s not entirely sure how to feel in her own body anymore. How everything still has that heightened-sharpened quality and how she aches all the way down to her toes and how her skin feels too tight and her eyes too dry and her heart suddenly too weak.

Jonathan does what Joyce had done, switching on every lamp in the bathroom, before turning to face Nancy and she can feel the awkwardness in him too, the uncertainty that keeps him standing a few feet from where she sits on the edge of the bed.

“What do we-”

“I guess we should-”

Just like they rushed to fill the silence at the same time, they both fall silent simultaneously, looking at one another in an encouragement to finish their statement.

“You go ahead,” Nancy says, just as Jonathan gestures at her to continue and she rolls her eyes because if she’s going to be awake all night long this is not how she’s going to spend her time. “I was just going to ask what you thought we should do now. I mean...what are we supposed to do? Just...try and go to sleep like everything is fine now? Just...pretend?”

Jonathan shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s pretending. I think it’s just doing what we always do...keep going.”

Nancy sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s total bullshit that this keeps happening. Like at what point do we get to have a normal year?”

Jonathan gives her a half smile. “How about a normal life? I think we’ve had more excitement than most people.”

Exhaling, Nancy flops onto her back, staring up at the ceiling of Jonathan’s room with her hands laced over her stomach. “As soon as I graduate, I’m getting out of this piece of shit town.”

“Then who will be around to shoot the giant monsters?”

Nancy knows that Jonathan means it as a joke but the idea makes her eyes wide and resigned horror settle over her like a way that makes her feel impossibly heavy. The idea that that could be her role, her purpose, for the rest of her life...it almost makes it hard to breathe.

“Hey, I was kidding,” Jonathan says quickly, sitting down on the bed beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t be trying to joke right now...I mean I’m not great at it under normal circumstances so…”

“No, you’re not,” Nancy says but there’s a hint of a smile on her face and it makes Jonathan smile too and that makes it a little easier to breathe again. “But I’ll let it slide.”

“How generous.”

It feels as stilted as it does normal and Nancy wishes that she could hold the two halves of these things in her hands and fit them back together the way she had tried to do once, when she was ten and Mike was six and he’d broken a lamp when she was supposed to be watching him and she’d desperately tried to glue it back together before their parents got home.

She’s having about as much success now as she had then.

“I wish it wasn’t like this,” Nancy says quietly, closing her eyes so that she stops tracing the whorls and divets on the ceiling behind Jonathan’s head. “I wish I could stop feeling like everything in my life was just a before and an after.”

“I think it’s always going to be like that,” Jonathan says. “With everything. All these little beginnings and endings.”

Nancy opens her eyes, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Can we maybe save the existential conversation for tomorrow morning? Can we maybe...try the pretending thing for a while?”

Jonathan blinks at her and she shouldn’t find his cluelessness as endearing as she does. “What do you mean?”

“I just want to pretend it’s like it was the other day,” she says, reaching out a hand to curl around the nape of his neck. “When all we had to worry about was that shitty internship at the paper.”

“To be fair, it wasn’t that shitty.”

Nancy furrows her brow. “Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one stuck getting coffee all the-”

Nancy forgives Jonathan for taking so long to get her point when he finally gets it and leans close enough to kiss her. And she forgives him for interrupting her because the feeling of his lips against hers still makes her feel a bit like how she imagines a star might feel: fizzy and bright and shining bright enough to be seen from millions of miles away. And it makes her feel like those two pieces of her life have snapped back into place, leaving one whole Nancy behind.

With Jonathan kissing her, with his hands on her shoulders and the curve of her neck and the small of her back, it’s easier for Nancy to believe all those things that she realized weren’t true when Barb died. With Jonathan holding her close, his breath whispering in her ear, his heart beating beneath her palm, she can believe that the world is safe, that there’s someone who will protect her so that she can lay the weight down, that the only monsters are the imagined ones under the bed that disappear when you shine a flashlight into the corners.

Nancy pushes everything else out of her mind. She forgets that her brother is in the living room with the rest of his friends because they’re all too afraid and too sad to be alone. She forgets that people have died, that she almost died, that she nearly lost everything. She forgets that the bad things never really die or go away, that only the good people do, and that there’s nothing that can ever really be done about that.

Instead, she pretends.

She pretends to be just a girl, in love with a boy, living in a world where nothing is stronger than that.

Nancy doesn’t protest when Jonathan’s fingers fumble to undress her, just lifts her hips enough to help him or pulls away long enough for them to tug their shirts over their heads and add them to the growing pile of discarded clothing on the floor. Nancy is certain that her skin smells of sweat and sulfur and fear and maybe even a little like that greasy mall food court smell, but with Jonathan kissing his way down her shoulders and collarbone and breasts and stomach, it’s easy to ignore all that too. It’s easy to pretend like this is the only thing her body has done, that her fingers were made only to twine in his hair or press half-moon marks into his shoulder blades. That her hands were made only to draw him closer to her. Her legs made only for him to fit between. Her skin made only to be blemished by his lips and teeth.

The routine is normal, developed and patented and practiced over nights spent in secret, when lazy kisses and careless touching turned into more but Nancy feels like there’s never anything routine about the way Jonathan kisses her, the way his lips against hers swallows up the sounds she makes or the way that he presses his face against her shoulder so her skin can do the same. Especially now, when everything is still sharp and heightened and her body aches in a decidedly more delicious way now, Nancy feels like she’s nothing more than just a girl. She never wants Jonathan to stop, to be any less close to her then he is in this moment, never wants to be without his arms around her and his lips against her skin and his weight on top of her.

She doesn’t want the world to exist outside of this room.

Their bodies stay tangled together, even as their movements slow and still and the only sound is Jonathan’s heavy breaths against the hollow of Nancy’s throat. Nancy closes her eyes, pressing her nose against Jonathan’s temple, breathing in the heady smells of him that make her feel safe and protected, the way his arms and weight do. Nancy threads her fingers through Jonathan’s hair and hopes that she does the same for him.

Nancy tries to hold onto those feelings later, after they’ve untangled and she’s dressed in a tee-shirt of his that’s too big but smells like him when she presses her nose to the collar. Jonathan brings her a glass of water and a report that their brothers and the rest of the kids are asleep in the living room, even Erica, sprawled out amidst the blankets and pillows and the coffee table.

The image makes Nancy smile around the rim of the glass and when Jonathan eases himself into bed beside her, she turns to him, tucking her body against his. The way that Jonathan’s fingers slide through her hair, tickling the nape of her neck, make Nancy’s mind feel tired in a way she had worried it never would again. Her body feels loose and heavy and instead of feeling like a bruise, she just feels like a girl who wears the memory of her boyfriend’s touch against her skin.

“Jonathan?”

“Hmm?” He already sounds half asleep, his chest vibrating against her ear, his lips against the crown of her head.

Nancy says, “Nothing,” because she’s not sure what she wanted to say after that, what his name was a precursor to.

Though, she thinks, maybe there was nothing she wanted to say. Maybe she just wanted to say his name and have him answer and know, with a certainty, that he was there. Still.

And, in a few hours, when they wake up and they have to stop pretending and she won’t be just a girl anymore and there will be a world outside of this room, Nancy knows that he’ll be there for that too.

#jancy #nancy/jonathan #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #stranger things #stranger things spoilers #fic #I love them and I'm not sorry and I want to keep writing fic about them and #I'm not sorry about that either

41 notes · View notes

lightsandlostbells · 5 years

Note

so, overall, what did you think of season 3 of stranger things?

It took me a while to answer this question because I had to sort out how I felt about this season! I guess if I had to narrow it down to an overall opinion: enjoyable, but very messy. Had some of the series’ best moments but also, while I was watching, I had far more grumbles and gripes than the previous two seasons.

I’ve never really been hung up on whether this show is derivative or plays too into nostalgia or w/e. Plenty of media does that. And despite all the time I’ve spent dissecting micro-expressions and weighty silences in European teen dramas that are filmed for the cost of a candy bar … I am way into genre films and TV shows. I love monsters and superheroes and spectacle! I watched Stranger Things the weekend it premiered because I love ‘80s movies about kids on bikes having adventures, I eat that shit up. So I don’t expect this show to be a hardcore deconstruction and re-imagining of those tropes (though that sounds like a pretty great show), I’m fine with it being what it is: a solid, spooky sci-fi/horror throwback series. What matters most is whether the story and characters work. Personally, I would say whatever criticisms you can make of S1 and S2, they had heart, and unfortunately I think some of that heart was missing from S3. Much of that, IMO, comes from sidelining some of the familial relationships that were at the center of the narrative in S1 and S2, like the Byers family and Hopper & Eleven, and to some degree the important friendships like the party, although there were other friendships introduced in this season so that wasn’t as glaring. It’s not a surprise that one of the best-received parts about this season, Steve and Robin’s friendship, is also responsible for one of the most heartfelt scenes Stranger Things has ever done.

There was also a way larger emphasis on comedy in S3. Comedy is probably my favorite genre, and I did laugh at a lot of humorous moments in this season. But I also felt like there was more comedy for comedy’s sake, like long sequences created intentionally to make the audience laugh. Whereas in S1 and S2, I can’t remember any scenes like that? The comedy was more understated and came from character personalities and relationship moments rather than joke set pieces. That’s perhaps another reason why S3 felt like it had less heart.

My hope for season 4 - and I am assuming there is a season 4, because apparently this show did mega ratings for S3 - is that they don’t add more major new characters (except love interests for the gay characters, go ahead with those, lol) and instead focus on the existing cast, which is already a very strong ensemble, yet many of the characters have gotten pushed to the sides. I would love if they added to the episode count: a lot of Netflix series drag out their seasons, like they have enough story for 10 episodes but have to stretch it out to 13, but Stranger Things has the opposite problem. I feel like if they had 10 (or 11, ha) episodes they could have more time for breather moments and more space for character arcs. This season was really fast-paced in my opinion, and although that’s a positive in many respects, I missed a lot of the down time.

Also, I think every season has taken place over like a week maximum, not including the epilogues, and like … you can make the story last longer than a week! Not everything has to go to hell in like a day or two.

Some more specific opinions underneath, obviously lots of spoilers.

First of all, I gotta say, I feel like a weirdo, because so many of the reviews for this season are like A RETURN TO FORM AFTER A DISAPPOINTING SECOND SEASON and UP THERE WITH SEASON 1 NOT THAT CRAPPY SEASON 2 THAT NO ONE LIKED and uhhhh … I liked season 2 just fine? It’s probably my favorite. There are things I don’t like about it, but the stuff I love is stuff I really, really love. Hopper and Eleven’s relationship, for instance. Steve and Dustin teaming up and Steve Harrington becoming a guardian to four children. Those are not just great elements to the series, but directions that I think only a second season could have taken - Hopper and Eleven’s bond wouldn’t have had half the weight if they weren’t established as traumatized, broken people in S1. Steve Harrington becoming a babysitter would not be nearly so delightful if we had not known him as the popular douchebag stereotype from S1 - if he were just a cool dude hanging out with kids from the get-go, the impact wouldn’t be as great. After S1 used Will Byers as a MacGuffin in S1, S2 gave Will a much larger role and that little actor acted his ass off. His performance generated a lot of genuine suspense and chills. There was Sean Astin being lovable! Paul Reiser’s character being a surprisingly good guy! Yeah, there are big flaws in the season, and you can argue it’s too much of a repeat of S1, but to me it was a version of S1 that made the characters more specific and interesting. I’m just … genuinely baffled by how it’s supposed to be demonstrably worse than the others. Because of the Kali episode? I didn’t think that one was terrible, either. I think it broke up the momentum of the chaos at Hawkins Lab, and Kali’s friends were obnoxious, it’s certainly not the greatest writing of the series, but as a whole the episode is like. Fine. It’s fine. It’s mediocre, not atrocious. It’s not the worst thing ever. It doesn’t ruin anything about the story or direction or the series. Most importantly it’s easy to ignore or skip on a rewatch if you don’t like it. The backlash was way overblown.

My biggest disappointment with season 3 was Hopper. Whaaaaaaat. Whaaaat did they dooooo.

Hopper in previous seasons is a flawed, messed-up human being, but I always knew where he was coming from. When he yelled at Eleven in S2, I still got why he did it. In this season he felt cartoonish. The overprotective paternalistic dad trope is annoying BUT I might have been less bothered had they connected it more to Eleven’s lack of experience with the world, less RAWRRRR KEEP BOYS AWAY FROM MY GIRL. Or if Hopper had not demonstrated like, actual rage toward Mike and we just saw him fuming about it to himself or venting to Joyce, if he was trying to keep that shit under control. (I did laugh at him singing “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” in the car, I gotta admit.)

But his attitude toward Joyce was what really bummed me out. I’m not into this show for shipping reasons, but I low-key enjoyed the possibility of Joyce and Hopper hooking up based on previous seasons. This season felt like they were writing a completely different dynamic for them, one that was much more aggressively obnoxious. I think their intentions were clear - they were going for a Sam-and-Diane relationship, something that was referenced early on in the Bob flashback - but the problem is that their relationship was not like that at all in S1 and S2. When I think of Joyce and Hopper from those seasons, I think about him supporting her after Bob died, or listening to her concerns about her son, or working together to find Will. They didn’t have this combative dynamic! Frankly watching giant-ass Hopper yell at tiny Joyce was viscerally unpleasant. (Side note but in the first trailer there was a shot of Hopper running at the Fun Fair with someone else who I assumed was Eleven, but no, turned out to be Joyce, Winona Ryder is just that tiny next to David Harbour.)

Also, considering this season ended with his death (and we all know he’s not really dead but OK) it’s such a waste that there were few Hopper&Eleven moments! Only the finale brought some quality content on that front. But otherwise their relationship was out of sight, out of mind for almost the whole season, which wasn’t a great choice, both to maximize the emotional impact of the ending, and to expand upon their situation post-S2. I mean, it’s been months since then, how has their relationship changed now? Hopper’s letter talked about the stuff he enjoyed doing with his daughter - why didn’t we see any of that on screen this season? It could’ve helped with the Mike angle, too, like show Hopper and Eleven watching TV together and laughing and having a good time, and then the phone rings and it’s Mike and suddenly Hopper’s watching TV alone as Eleven’s now focused on her boyfriend, we see his disappointment, etc.

Scoops Troop - Now they were a delight. They had such a ludicrous story but for the most part it worked due to the characters playing off each other and because the writing/acting/directing embraced the silliness.

Steve Harrington is easily one of the best characters on this show. I fucking love that guy. He’s consistently entertaining, he’s had possibly the best character growth out of anyone in the series, he’s evolved from a stock ‘80s asshole stereotype into someone who’s funny and sympathetic and likable. He’s this amazing blend of the ridiculous with the heroic. Steve and Dustin were great together, as they were last season, and I’m cackling that Steve acquired YET ANOTHER CHILD under his supervision without even trying. But the MVP of the season was the Steve & Robin friendship. Holy shit do I love that relationship. Holy SHIT.

Robin herself is a terrific new character, smart and funny and once you know she’s half-Uma, you can’t unsee it. I was loving her already and then the bathroom scene happened and I YELLED. I was so utterly overjoyed. If they had made Steve and Robin hook up, honestly … I would’ve been fine with it, like this show doesn’t need more heterosexual romance but at least they had a fun dynamic, but man, the friendship angle was so so superior. It’s a type of relationship that media is lacking, and the specific circumstances of this friendship made it genuinely moving to me. I keep wanting to write like a meta post devoted to just this relationship because I just have so many emotions about it! But they play well off each other as a comedic duo and as an odd couple friendship, and they’re really what each other needs, IMO. Steve needed this close friendship more than he needed a girlfriend; in this season he’s clearly adrift and we’ve seen the kind of shitty friends he had in like season one, is Dustin the best pal he had at this point? And I love Steve & Dustin but Steve needed a good friend his own age. Robin is a lesbian in small-town Indiana in the ‘80s, and she was clearly full of fear that Steve would hate her if he knew, and for him to accept her so easily, not even making a big deal about it? That’s kind of life-saving, really. I can’t wait to see more of them, if Netflix wants to make the half-hour Clerks-esque spinoff about them working in a video store and shooting the shit, I would be 100% down for that.

I have some mixed feelings about Erica because I think she could have benefited from getting the same humanization as the other kids (and I’m going to leave the discussion of racial tropes gently by the side at the moment but … yeah). The other child characters are played more like actual people with vulnerabilities, which has been part of the show’s appeal since the first season, and Erica was more like the sitcom kid who always has a snarky quip ready; however, she did make me laugh and I like that they tapped into her being a nerd, I wish they’d explore that in future seasons with the character. “I’m ten, you bald bastard” was one of my favorite lines of the season, I lost my goddamn mind.

Billy - Lmao, so Billy in S2 was the woooorst. This dude had ZERO redeeming qualities. His abusive dad creates a smidgen of sympathy, I guess, but Billy goes so far beyond normal teenage assholery that it didn’t make a dent in my opinion of him. You can redeem someone like Steve Harrington, first of all because Steve actually feels regret and works to correct his mistakes, but Steve also didn’t go to a point of no return in the first place. Billy did, for me. Physically and verbally abusing his younger sister? Attacking a black middle-schooler for the crime of being in the same room as his white sister? What a piece of shit.

With that in mind - I have no problem focusing on him as a villain this season, I really don’t. It justifies his inclusion in S2 other than as a human antagonist who’s ultimately not really connected to the main plot, as it retrospectively establishes him as an even greater threat in this season. I also think the actor did a good job with the material he was given. However, ultimately this dude’s arc was underwhelming. The thing is … I can tell they were trying to show Billy struggling with the Mind Flayer, but Billy is so lacking in any positive qualities that it’s kind of like, where does that struggle even come from? Yeah, even the worst people aren’t going to be wild about having a monster from another dimension hijack your body and use it to collect people for spare parts, but this is the same dude who was about to run over Mike, Lucas, and Dustin on their bikes last season for absolutely no reason. He beat Steve to point of unconsciousness and could’ve put him in the hospital. He assaulted Lucas. So I really need some evidence of Billy’s moral compass because it is not inherent and there’s in fact plenty of evidence that it doesn’t exist. I’m not very enthusiastic about redeeming a racist, abusive creep, but I also think if you’re going to go for him helping Eleven at the end … you have to show some current potential for goodness, not just “used to be a nice kid.”

A really glaring omission: the lack of any family/home scenes with him, Max, and their parents this season. We left off last season with Max telling him to leave her and her friends alone. How is their relationship since then? Is there still a lot of friction? Is there a tense peace? Has their relationship improved in any way? We really needed to see that follow-up. I get that Max crying over Billy this season makes sense in that he’s still her family and we can still have love for those who hurt us … but I also feel that we needed something between them to justify her pain, like even just the potential of their relationship being a fraction better, or the suggestion that Billy used to be OK to Max before he went full asshole. And I think we really needed to see Billy’s dad being currently abusive in this season - tbh, missed opportunity that the dad didn’t get flayed like, out of revenge (which would have been both satisfying and horrifying), missed opportunities for suspense when we think Billy might serve up Max and her mom to the Mind Flayer, etc.

Another missed opportunity: drawing parallels between Billy and Will. Both are possessed by the Mind Flayer. Both had shitty dads calling them homophobic slurs. Both could be read as gay (I’m not hungry to claim Billy as LGBT representation or invested in this interpretation but his scenes with Steve in S2 admittedly have that sweaty homoerotic dick-measuring vibe, if you want to take it there). Their names are both William, FFS. The difference is that Will is a sweet and gentle kid surrounded by loving family and friends who fought to save him, and Billy is a violent, cruel dude who probably doesn’t have any real friends, just shallow connections. You could show how the Mind Flayer could more easily possess and manipulate someone like Billy, but that wasn’t really explored.

Also, is anyone going to dwell on the fact that like … Max is living with an abusive man as her stepfather? He’s shown hurting Billy’s mom. Does that not concern anyone that he is very likely to attack either Max or her mom?

Oh, and thank God they didn’t take the Billy/Karen thing all the way. In retrospect, even weirder considering Billy’s mommy issues.

Joyce - I get that it’s a big leap downward in emotional investment to go from “must save my son” to “fucking magnets, how do they work” but I liked that she had her own investigation that wasn’t full of emotional turmoil. Winona forever.

Mike - Everyone is ragging on him but I think he was less terrible than people are making him out to be. He was bratty in a teenage way, but he wasn’t the worst kid ever. I didn’t take his now notorious line to Will (“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls”) as something intentionally cruel or homophobic, just something that came out wrong and that he instantly regretted, and he and Lucas did seem genuinely apologetic over the D&D game and went over to Will’s in the rain out of concern. And the reason he lied to Eleven was because SCARY ASS HOPPER threatened him??? Also, his concern over Eleven overexerting herself was not misplaced, lmao! It really took that long for anyone to go, “Hey, should we be worried about the amount of blood coming out of her nose? Should we be concerned about the effects on her brain?” Sure, Eleven has the final say in whether or not she uses her powers, but tbh… she didn’t have a normal upbringing and her view of her powers is probably skewed. Like, would Eleven have enough basic medical knowledge to be worried about brain damage or nosebleeds, or would that just be the norm to her? Is she making these decisions with a full grasp of the potential consequences? Anyway, I don’t have a more negative opinion of Mike after this season.

Eleven - I loved Eleven a lot in this season. I don’t know if it did a ton for her character arc, but it’s nice to see her slowly develop into more of a normal girl. And the season was rough for her in terms of getting her ass kicked, she goes through so much mental and physical pain! In the end she loses her dad and her powers!

Of course one of the bright spots was her and Max becoming friends! Not gonna lie, there was something a little … simplistic about some of that depiction of friendship for me - just that so much of it was SHOPPING and GIGGLING and BOY TALK, girls being GIRLS, when Max has been portrayed as a tomboy and Eleven is a telekinetic kid raised in a lab, that maybe their interactions shouldn’t have fit the mold quite so much - but it doesn’t truly bother me because they were so sweet and fun. I loved them tracking down Billy together and I appreciate that their friendship carried throughout the season, that Max was the person shown carrying an injured Eleven along with Mike, Eleven comforted Max after Billy died, etc. That was a definite sore spot of S2, the girl-on-girl jealousy and Eleven flat-out rejecting Max’s friendly introduction, and I do think they took that feedback into account for the better here. I also like that Eleven was clearly taking cues from Max, the more “worldly” of the two about boys and clothes and teenage attitudes in general - it gave their friendship a more specific shape.

I cannot WAIT to see her living with the Byers family next season. Like if they don’t spend significant time on that dynamic, it will be the biggest disappointment. There could be 8 episodes of just boring mundane Byers domestic scenes and I would love it, please inject it into my eyeballs, Duffer bros. I want to see her bonding with all of them, trying to fit in at school, attempting the most normal life she’s ever had. Also lmao, she and Will can finally have a goddamn conversation??? I hope they’ve been withholding that relationship because they were planning to go all out with those new sibling vibes in S4. They are the two characters who have been most traumatized by the Upside Down, we deserve to see them connect.

On that note, I have a lot of thoughts about Will in this season! Mainly - underused as FUCK. After all that trauma of being possessed by the Mind Flayer last season, they barely utilize this connection in the second half of S3. Even his Spidey sense hardly came in handy??? Now that was really weird, IMO, because the least they could do was have that feeling alert the others or be useful, but lmao it was practically pointless.

It’s weird because I’m not sure if they just don’t know what to do with Will if he’s not being a victim (which is stupid because there’s plenty you could do with him), but at the same time, he has one of the most poignant subplots of the season. From the reactions I’ve seen, Will feeling rejected and left out as his friends move on really resonated with a lot of viewers. But then this thread is abandoned after episode 3, for the most part. Will cries and destroys the place that represents his childhood, a place that was created specifically in response to trauma (mentioned in S2 that he and Jonathan built it after their dad left), this is very rich emotional territory … and then the show’s just like ehhhhhh moving on. He’s just hanging out in the background and touching his neck for the rest of the season.

And now I gotta talk about that other thing with Will.

I am so confused by what the Duffer brothers are trying to accomplish with Will’s sexuality, because on the one hand it seems like they have a really clear idea about it and on the other hand they’re just like¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The thing is … it seems very obvious they have always thought of Will as gay. This is blatant from the original pitch from the show as well as one of the S2 scripts (the only one that’s available publicly, so who knows what else they’ve written). I accept that people have different interpretations, but The Line this season is far from the only textual support for Will being gay, and I think it makes for a much, much stronger narrative if you read Will as gay in addition to not wanting to grow up as fast as his friends and being stunted from trauma - that is an entire meta post in itself, though.

What gets me about the ~ambiguity is that the Duffer brothers planted the gay hints in the first place! They are absolutely not there by accident! Like I’m not speaking for the teenage actors but lmao, the adults involved in the writing and directing of this series absolutely fucking knew how that “not my fault you don’t like girls” scene would be interpreted, especially considering fans were debating Will’s sexuality from the beginning, based off the many homophobic comments leveled at him in S1. There have been TV shows where fans latched onto gay “subtext” that was likely unintentional, but this isn’t one of them.

IDK, man, it’d just be nice to have some confidence in where this is going. I loved Robin and the bathroom scene made me think that yeah, they might do a decent job with Will’s sexuality, something I might have doubted before. Under no circumstances do I expect a Skam S3-style coming out arc for Will, but I’m also uncertain if I should expect anything from the show on this front at all or if they’ll play it coy to the bitter end. Though I guess I’d still take the ambiguity over giving him a female love interest after everything. Lol, that would be a giant oh-fuck-no.

Real talk, though, let’s discuss what an utter waste it would be to not write a scene where Joyce tenderly accepts her son when he comes out to her. You really aren’t going to bring that instantly iconic moment to life, assholes? You’re not going to provide that for Winona Ryder’s and Noah Schnapp’s Emmy reels? MAKE IT HAPPEN, BASTARDS.

Nancy and Jonathan have a reputation for the most boring plots but they’re fine, w/e. I’m not deeply invested in their romance but I don’t want to fast forward their scenes or anything. Nancy is an underrated character; she’s extremely proactive and always has been, and I enjoy watching her shoot things. I think the best thing they could do for both characters, though, is to separate them next season, not just physically but storyline-wise. Jonathan would be best in a subplot involving his family, because he’s at his most likable as a son and brother, and Nancy should either go off with Mike (a sibling relationship that is VASTLY undeveloped), or she should team up with Robin. I mean it, Nancy and Robin would be a power pairing, let me show you my manifesto. Both are smart young women who are good at solving mysteries. Would Robin think Nancy is a priss after Nancy unloads several rounds into the latest demogorgon chasing them? Would Nancy find Robin a refreshing alternative to the crushing suburban conformity that she claims to want to avoid? Oh, the possibilities. Meanwhile, Steve tags along in the background, all like OH SHIT, my lesbian BFF and my ex-girlfriend are in cahoots!

Lucas and Max were playing relationship counselors to Mike and Eleven through much of the season. Max still had a fair amount to do, but Lucas needs a meatier subplot next time. I feel like they’re not sure what to do with him? I would like to see him and Erica interact more since their dynamic so far is one-note.

There is one hell of a conversation to be had about the Evil Russians of this season, but I’m really not the person to do it.

Also about the depiction of capitalism this season. That’s more thinkpiece-y than I am equipped to do right now.

The product placement is something that should bother me more but I’m just like … shrug. Except that New Coke bit because that was an actual mood-breaker.

Could have done without Russian Terminator guy. That was a blatant ‘80s homage so I get why he was there, he just wasn’t all that interesting. And was that guy supposed to be superpowered or something? Was he getting jacked on Upside Down steroids??? What was his deal???

Alexei/Murray was the true OTP of the season, let’s be real.

The trend of lovable, doomed minor characters continued with Alexei. Props to that actor for making you root for the guy. He even made me kind of love Murray? I was very WTF over that guy encouraging two teenagers to fuck in S2, and I’m still not into his habit of telling people to bang even when they’re adults, but I guess he just needed a sympathetic Russian buddy to win me over.

There were a ton of moments where I felt like the characters made stupid choices as opposed to earlier seasons. Will getting dragged into the Upside Down in the first 10 minutes of the series is an impressive example of a horror movie character doing everything right and making good decisions - a 12-year-old, no less. And he was still overpowered by the demogorgon so it’s not like making good decisions will always save you! Whereas this season I was like LORD some of these characters are drinking dumbass juice.

There was also so much silly stuff happening, like things that are even more far-fetched than previous seasons, but I just kind of went with it. Yeah, of course there’s a secret Russian base under a shopping mall. Sure.

This season is objectively disgusting in terms of gore and yet I was fine with it? And I’m someone who was repulsed by Barb’s corpse in S1. The Mind Flayer being made of people was some nasty shit but effective horror. I felt bad for the poor little rats :( Oh, and the flayed humans, too. Some of them. Was sad to see Mrs. Driscoll bite it but FUCK those cartoon misogynists from the newspaper.

Visually beautiful! Starcourt Mall is an amazing set and I’m rather sad that the mall was destroyed, although that was basically a foregone conclusion. Some great cinematography, too. On a purely aesthetic level I had a great time just blasting this season into my retinas.

I have had the motherfucking NeverEnding Story theme song in my head for almost two weeks and I’m suffering.

#lillypedalsxx #replies #stranger things #also they referenced my university this season so i dug that thx 4 the shoutout

27 notes · View notes

nancynextdoor-blog · 5 years

Photo

what is your full name; if you have any nicknames, how did you get them? Nancy Wheeler, no middle name, hardly any nicknames. Some people call me Nance. Some people call me sweetheart, I learned how to shut that down, though.

when were you born? have you always lived in hawkins? what place would you call home? I was born and raised here. My mom is from the city, but when she met my dad and decided he would make a passable provider, she settled for Hawkins. Of course it’s my home. Although a million times I wished this town would free me of the title of neighborhood princess that it had slapped onto me, especially after everything that happened, I love this sad little down, and that is for the people in it.

describe yourself; hair colour, eye colour? My hair is mousey brown. I used to want to dye it all the time but now I like it. My eyes are blue. do you have any distinguishing facial features?

who are your friends and family? Who are the people you’re closest to? or wish you were closest to? I’m the oldest of three siblings. There’s Mike, my little brother, and Holly, our baby sister. Mom and dad of course. I’m closest to Mike, closer than I ever thought I would become again. We used to be pretty good friends when we were younger, and then something drove us apart... just the troubles of growing up, I guess. I’m glad we’re closer now, I just wish it would have gone differently.

I don’t really have a clique I stick to or anything. Incidentally, all of my brother’s friends seem to be mine, too, now, in a weird way. There are a few girls I hang out with at school.

There seems to be something unspoken between Steve and I, still. And honestly, I wish I was closer to my mother.

where do you go when you’re angry I guess I’m an angsty teen at heart. I’d go to my room and blast music.

biggest fear? have you told this to anyone? I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I’m terrified of something happening to people closest to me. I don’t think this is a secret, maybe only the extent of it. It’s the reason I didn’t consider moving away for college.

do you have any secrets? Well, yes.

have you ever been in love? or had a broken heart? My heart has been broken a bunch of times. There were so many nights I cried myself to sleep. But have I ever been in love? I don’t know. If I have to think about it this long the answer is probably obvious, right?

it’s a Sunday afternoon, what are you doing? Studying. Just because I don’t like law doesn’t mean I have to be bad at it.

do you have a strong childhood memory? I remember my dad promised me, and I quote, the biggest ice cream cone I’d ever seen in my life if I got the best grade at school. And what can I say? The cone was bigger than my head at the time. I don’t remember what flavor I picked, though.

whats your ideal night out? where are you going? with who? Getting in the car and just driving. With no destination. Stopping at a gas station for drinks and snacks. Stopping on random hills to get out and look around or marvel at the view. Sitting on the hood listening to music and talking about everything and anything. With who... hmm.

what do you consider your greatest achievement? Not giving up on Barb.

what is your idea of perfect happiness? Being loved and at the same time, supported, rather than told what to do, or pressured to fulfill expectations. Loved and still permitted to explore the bad sides of life on my own.

most treasured possession? Memories.

what/who is it that you most dislike? Everybody who put people down or ruin their day to make up for their own misery. People who don’t see that - I don’t know. There is no explanation for that.

which words or phrases do you most overuse? “It’s not like that” and “Listen”. It’s hard to be heard in this town, especially when you’re young and a suburban girl.

if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My perfectionism.

#hawkinshq;intro #hawkinshq;task

2 notes · View notes

creativeashproductions · 6 years

Text

Competition // Steve Harrington

Summary: A family dinner brings up pain Nancy has been hiding since you were both little. Twins that couldn’t be more distanced you see each other differently and when your boyfriend Steve comes for dinner, Nancy’s jealously builds too much. A little peep show Nancy watches between Steve and you is the catalyst to her quiet crush.

Characters: Steve Harrington x Reader, twin!Nancy Wheeler x twin!Reader, Ted Wheeler, Karen Wheeler, Holly Wheeler, Mike Wheeler and Eleven (mentioned)

Words: 3425

Disclaimer: I do not own Stranger Things or the characters involved. I only own the Reader and her plot. I also do not own any gifs or images that may appear in this either. The desktop theme provides the owner of the gifs.

Warnings: Swearing, jealously, violence, fluff, angst and smut.

Author: Caitsy

A/N: Heads up, some of our blogs fics have adult themes of sexual content and while we can’t control what you choose to read know that it was your choice to read smut and if you are younger than eighteen we are not responsible for your actions.

Master List

Prompt List

ASK US A QUESTION LIST

You never really understood the things that people did in their lives, from bullying and abusing others to letting that abuse dictate your life. It made you sound terrible but knowing how Billy’s dad treated him did open your eyes to life. The abuse that Billy faced wasn’t excused because it was something he had always known because it he could have taken it and ran with it in a more positive way.

You didn't have the greatest life either. You and Nancy were twin sisters that shared everything until high school began. You were casual friends with Jonathan Byers in a sense but you were a little more popular than your sister. In freshmen year you had broadened your horizons with trying to find your place in the school, were you a sports girl or a loner or even the cliques in between.

Nancy however became obsessed in a sense of getting good enough grades because in your teens you started to compete against each other. Nancy more so than you. Soon you were enveloped into a group of friends with Steve Harrington and the clingy Carol who self proclaimed herself as your best friend. You definitely did not like Carol or Tommy H.

Soon enough Steve was picking you up and going on hangouts that some would call dates but you truly detested the expected relationship standards America had demanded. That’s how Nancy discovered the boy with great hair who was a year older and when boys are older than you, it’s desired. She kept it a secret and pined for him until that one night when her crush exploded in her face.

“Please don’t make meatloaf.” You begged your mom as she went about in the kitchen cleaning.

“It’s good.” Your mom said sighing as she looked into the clear reflection of her face in the glass cabinet. With a swipe of her finger the smudged lipstick was fixed.

“What about your signature chicken?” You quickly replied.

“The price of chicken has gone up.” She spoke before your father from the living room spoke up.

“Karen, chicken sounds great. Mashed potatoes with gravy too but no mixed vegetables.”

“Ted!”

“What’s going on?” Nancy asked coming into the kitchen to see you groaning.

You were fraternal twins with only some similarities in your features and Nancy believed you were the prettier one while you thought it was the other way around.

 “Y/N is bringing her boyfriend for dinner. I insisted we meet him.”

“Boyfriend? Since when?” Nancy frowned thinking back on the few guys you had been seeing since you got into high school. Unbeknownst that there was nothing romantic with them.

“Apparently she’s been keeping this nameless boy a secret for six months now.”

“Who is it?” Nancy questioned picking up an apple from the table.

“It doesn’t matter. Please Mom?” You whined, “He loves chicken but I know you wouldn’t be caught dead with KFC on our table with a new guest.”

“Fine. Ted get the keys!” Your mom sighed, “Can you watch Holly for an hour?”  

“I actually have to meet him in a few minutes.” You hesitantly spoke.

 “Okay then Nancy can.”

 “But-“ Nancy started.

“Thank you sweetheart.” Your Mom said pressing a kiss to your cheeks and swiftly moving to the closet to grab her jacket and purse.

You followed soon after while Nancy retreated to her room to see who picked you up but you simply walked until you were out of sight. Nancy was very curious about who you had snagged from the school because while you weren’t as close as you used to be she did know that you would never go for a guy older than eighteen.

The King of Hawkins High had one hand nervously trying to light the cigarette in his mouth while the other wiped the clammy hand on his jumping leg. You had just opened the door when he jumped blinking up at you.

“Hey.” You softly spoke pressing a kiss to his cheek, “You okay?”

“I’m meeting your family tonight! Of course I’m not okay!” He wheezed while you carefully took the lighter from his shaking hand and calmly lit his cigarette.

“You’ll be fine.” You calmly spoke, “My parents will love you.”

 “You’re right.” Steve sighed leaning back, “Is my hair okay? Oh god it isn’t! I knew I should have sprayed it once more. We should go to the store so I can grab a new can.”

“Babe your hair is perfect. I didn’t think it could get any more perfect.” You soothed him kneeling on the passenger seat in his car.

“I don’t do this.” Steve huffed looking at you, “I don’t freak out over this kind of shit.”

“That’s because you had flings, nothing serious.” You calmly spoke shifting a piece of his hair out of his eye.

“See what you’ve done to me!” Steve exclaimed sighing as he put his head back on the seat, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re nervous. It’s understandable.” You smiled as he shuffled in his seat pulling at his shirt. You gently grabbed his hand to pull into into your lap, you placed circled gestures on his palm.

“Will Holly like me?” Steve took a deep breath in, “Kids have great judgement.”

“Holly’s three. She’ll be changing her interest multiple times.” You returned in the driveway of his house. On the way to your house he had done a u-turn to change his clothes again.

“I’m terrible with kids.” Steve shuddered looking at you.

“Have you ever spent time with children?” You questioned.

 “No.”

“Then we don’t know.” You shrugged, “Now can we go? It’s five o’clock and supper is six.”

“I’m already being a terrible-“

“Just drive Steve.” You laughed as he put the car in drive with shaky hands. Once parked in front of the house he cast a look to the house before hurrying to open your door.

“Whatever happens. I love you.” Steve whispered pressing a kiss to your cheek.

“I love you too.”

Steve took a deep breath before raising his hand to knock on the brown wooden door you had known your entire life. The door opened with your mom standing there holding Holly on her hip. She looked confused before opening her mouth.

“Why are you knocking? Y/N could have brought you straight in.”

“That’s not polite.” Steve replied waving to Holly, “My parents always taught me manners.”

 “Come in. We’re having chicken.” Mom smiled leading him to the living room, “You have a seat and I’ll call you in.” 

“Can I help you with anything?” Steve asked.

 “Could you watch Holly? I don’t like having her in the kitchen when I’m cooking.”

“Uh. Sure.” Steve gulped taking Holly from your mom. Holly gazed up at Steve with her hazel green eyes.

You retreated into the kitchen with your mom where your father was nursing a beer holding the newspaper as he attempted to help his wife. He wasn’t the most attentive father but he wasn’t terrible either. Mike was more than likely downstairs using his walkie talkie with his friends. Nancy was doing homework probably.

“He’s nice.” Mom said mixing the carrots on the stove.

“He’s here?” Dad said glancing up from the paper.

“He’s with Holly.” You mumbled glancing at your mom, “I knew that was a test.” 

“You’re smart. Go get your brother. He didn’t take the garbage out this morning.” Mom stated plating the chicken.

“Mike!” You yelled to the stairs earning a exclaimed remark back, “Take the garbage out.”

Mike quickly came up the stairs sulking to the kitchen before returning to the living room holding the black bag and staring at Steve. You shoved him to the door before kneeling beside Holly with her blocks as Steve cautiously helped build them.

“You were right.” You mumbled.

“It’s a test.” Steve hummed smiling when Holly giggled pushing the blocks over.

 “You passed.” You chuckled before your mom told you to go get Nancy from her room, “I’ll be right back.”

Steve nodded as you pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before hounding up the stairs to Nancy’s room across from your room. You shared a bathroom between you while Holly and Mike used the guest bathroom by their rooms. You saw Nancy was bent over her desk furiously writing.

 “Hey Nancy? Supper is almost ready.” You quickly told her. She nodded before motioning you to go.

When you got downstairs Holly was colouring with Mike while Steve was awkwardly watching the two of them. Grabbing his hand you pulled him up the stairs to your room keeping the door only slightly ajar. He nervously glanced at the door as you pulled him onto the bed.

“I don’t think we should be doing this.” Steve chuckled as you pressed a kiss against the corner of his mouth.

“You need to relax.” You wickedly grinned pulled him on top of you, “Besides who said my parents listen?”

With another kiss on his skin he succumbed to your advances and began to kiss you back with fervour. One knee pressed tight to his side as your hand gripped the back of his neck. Pressed impossibly close without taking clothing off you quietly moaned. Shifting his attention to your neck you arched up into him.

“What time is it?” Steve mumbled huskily slowly moving his hand to your other leg to tug it around your waist.

“We have time.” You mumbled back gasping when he nipped at that one place that drove you completely nuts. He pressed closer than before with enough dragging force to pull a deep audible moan from your lips.

“We should stop.” Steve moaned grinding down on you disregarding actually following his words. You shook when his jeans zipped strongly dragged across your engorged clit. You quickly moved your hand between your bodies.

You undid the button before you nabbed his hand to shove his finger in the front of your keys and just the brushing of his knuckles on your intimate body parts sent you over the edge. Mewling time and time while you grabbed at Steve’s unneeded belt, his jeans were well fitted and tight, to undo it while he pushed his pants and boxers down far enough over his ass to reveal his thick cock. His hands made quick work of your jeans.

Jeans at your ankles with you panties pushed to the side Steve slid into your tight cunt aided by the frequent trysts in the back of his car and your wetness. Holding still you breathed in sync before you pulled back and slammed back up. A moan released as he took over the movements with ease and familiarity.

You had been a virgin before Steve while he had experience under his belt as you had expected with his reputation. When you first began your relationship with Steve you had promised not to be another notch on his belt. You drunkenly threw yourself at him once and he didn’t do it even as drunk as you. That settled your feelings mutually and became exclusive.

“Oh god.” You moaned arching up with a beautiful perfect circle on your pursed lips. Steve had never seen someone as beautiful as you.

“Come on baby.” Steve moaned as he reached down to circle furiously on your swollen clit. Your vision shattered as he swallowed your scream and he reached down further to play with his balls. Energy deleted you weakly shoved his hand from his balls to fondle them.

“Just like that.” Steve grunted shoving harder into your tight, wet cunt. With a groan you in turn swallowed he pulled out and came inside your mouth. He never tired seeing your lips stretched around his impressive girth.

You happily sighed as Steve helped you up from the bed. You caught the disappearing flash of brunette hair but you dismissed it as your sister obviously walking past your room. Steve grabbed one of your mint green face clothes to clean you up as you fixed his boxers and pants. Panties shoved deep in the back of Steve’s jeans as you pulled up the new pair unbeknownst to Steve’s eye.

“I’m fucked.” Steve grunted looking up at the ceiling.

“Well I hope it was my boyfriend I just fucked.” You teased bending down to open the cabinet below your sink. You felt the distance slap of your boyfriends hand before you grabbed your desired objects.

“Fabergé Organics and Farrah Fawcett spray.” Steve marvelled at the objects as you grabbed one of your blue towels.

“You have five minutes.” You sternly said ushering him to the deep sink. He made quick work while you grabbed your soiled sheets off your bed and into the laundry basket. Thank god it was laundry day tomorrow and your day to do it.

It was ten minutes before Steve stepped out of your bathroom with his hair back to being perfect while the only evidence was your mutual swollen lips. You had managed to fix your makeup and hair in your small mirror while also praying that nobody knew what you just finished.

“Relaxed?” You murmured from the comfort of his arms.

“Thanks to you.” Steve happily sighed into your arms breathing in the newly applied fragrance.

“If you behave I may have a special treat in your car later.” You whispered in his ear as you dragged him to the set table.

“Just in time.” Mom smiled as you all took your seat. Nancy being the last to enter the room in shock at Steve.

“Steve?”  

“Nancy right?” Steve questioned sending you a loving look, “Nice to finally meet you all.”

Talk and homemade fried chicken were the present parts of the meal with Nancy pushing the mashed potatoes on her plate. She believed she had a chance with Steve Harrington while you had taken that away from her. All she wanted was to not be in your shadow but like always she never got what she wanted.

“Hopefully we’ll have you over again.” Mom said with her practiced smile that never looked even a hint fake.

Your dad spoke animatedly about sports that his family had no interest in to an equally animated teen holding your hand. Nancy was casting you glares every few minutes even if you were only looking at your boyfriend. Ever few minutes Steve would glance at you with this soft expression that Nancy was jealous about.

She wanted Steve to look at her that way. She wanted to be the girl he stupidly had sex with in her room with the door just a crack open with her parents downstairs. She wanted to the girl that he was happy to sacrifice a good example to her parents. Of course it was you who got to be that girl.

“What are your plans after high school?” Mom asked passing the mashed potatoes over to him. She had noticed that the mashed and chicken were Steve’s favourite on the table.

“I’m a junior at the moment so I’m still trying to pick my way through that. Y/N’s been helping me with that.” Steve grinned over at you.

“Are you going to be working with your dad?” Dad asked him with interest.

“No. I want to go to college but I want to earn it through a scholarship, I know my parents could pay for it but I want to do it myself.” Steve spoke after swallowing his food.

“Where are you planning on going?” Nancy coyly asked, “I could help you with school work.”

You easily recognized the seductive intent Nancy was displaying and while it annoyed you, it didn’t entirely bother you. Steve had openly admitted how in love with you he was and the future he envisioned. It was mutual so you were threatened by Nancy.

“Thanks for the offer.” Steve smiled, “But Y/N has a system that keeps me focused.”

“I bet.” Mike grunted pushing the food around on his plate. He was busy thinking about the girl in your basement only he knew about.

Nancy huffed leaning back in her chair not subtle in her glances at your boyfriend. When a simple pie was passed around for dessert you watched as Nancy became more open to flirting with him and Steve was oblivious.

“I’ll take the dishes in. Can you help Steve?” Nancy asked biting her lip.

“He’s the guest Nancy.” You rolled your eyes, “Besides it your dish duty.”

You gathered up some of the leftovers to bring into the kitchen to box them up, specifically making a plate in one for Steve. His parents were gone for the week up to a distant relative’s wedding and Steve had rejected the offer. He wasn’t a great cook so you knew he would appreciate the food.

“I’d appreciate it if you would stop trying to seduce my boyfriend.” You calmly said putting the leftovers in the fridge. Steve’s boxed food aside of course.

“I don’t know what your talking about.” Nancy mumbled scrubbing the plate.

“I don’t know what your deal has been lately. Actually since we got into high school but it needs to stop.”

“I don’t appreciate you taking everything from me.” Nancy exclaimed dropping the plate where it shattered at her feet.

“Excuse me?” You spoke up angered.

“It’s bullshit! All I ever hear is how you got a good grade, the beautiful drawing you did for Art class, being the DD at parties.” Nancy shouted, “How you always get any guy you want because you love having your lips around their-“

“Shut the fuck up.” You shouted clenching your fists, “Sorry I don’t plan on being around my textbooks every second of the day! Sorry I don’t want to let my friends chance losing their lives for being teenagers! I’m not a fucking slut either!”

“What about George, Thomas, Ian, Jackson and we can’t forget about Mr. West!” Nancy exclaimed as your parents and Steve ran into the kitchen. Mom seeing the shattered plate on the floor and the piece of mashed potatoes in your hand. You threw it causing it to splatter on your twins face.

“You fucking idiot! Thomas and George are gay! They’ve been hanging out with me to defuse the homophobic slurs! I’m the only person that doesn’t treat them as pieces of shit! Ian was my project partner in art! Jackson was just a jerk that kept hitting on me until Mr. West stopped it!”

“Why did I see Mr. West and you in his room?!” Nancy screamed wiping the food off her face. Dad stepped in as Nancy threw a glass at your face. Steve yanked you to his chest as the tears poured down your face and the blood oozing from a cut on his shirt.

“Nancy Wheeler!” Mom shouted with such fury it scared everyone, “You are grounded! No parties, you go to school and come home immediately! No television and no phone!”

“That’s not fair!” Nancy screamed, “She never gets in trouble! Ever!”

“Fuck you Nancy.” You coldly spoke twisting your head to stare at her, “I took the blame for shit you did growing up. I was the one who got groped by Jackson and Mr. West was the guidance counsellor who helped.”

“Go to your room! Y/N clean this up now.” Mom said before looking at Steve, “I’m so sorry you had to see this.”

Steve gently took the dust pan from your hands to clean the glass up carefully as you collapsed against the cupboards tearing up. It brought up memories of Jackson trying to force himself on you in the hallway and Mr. West stopping it.

“Are you okay?” Steve whispered cupping your face in his hands.

“No.” You admitted resting your hands on his looking at him, “My twin sister threw glass at my face!”

“I know.” Steve mumbled tugging you against his chest, “It will be okay. Remember what we talked about? Jackson is gone, you are safe and I will always be here.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too.” You mumbled blinking.

“I didn’t know she liked me.” Steve sighed, “Just know that I’ve never felt anything for her. My eyes and heart have always been transfixed with you. The most beautiful girl I have ever had the honour of meeting.”

“Can we go to your place?” You asked sniffling, “I’ll tell Mom Theresa is having a bad breakup.”

“Sure.” Steve whispered, “I can’t wait to get our own place together and build our own life.”

“Me too.”

Forever Tag List

@cityofsobbingfangirls @tas898 @barbidollash @trustnobodyshootfirst @winchesterfanfiction @deanwinchesterisamazing @oh-my-hecky-padalecki @padackles2010 @msimpala67 @deangirl5509 @heyitssilverwolf @therealme13posts @petlaufeyson @professionally-crazed @winterhurricane @tearsandbloodofmyenemies @blackwidow-romanoff @crazybarnes @marvelofcourse @takemetothefictionalworld @destiel67bellarke @ohmy-sammy @fightinthepain @vivabucky @waituntilthedustsettles @daydreaming1393 @cumonbucky @inhumans-of-shield @basicwhiskeyprincesss @soulfull-ofevans @spookass @glitterintheairblog @girl-with-wild-dreams @frickin-bats @darkestgrungeuniverse @shamvictoria11 @buckyappreciationsociety @sammysgirl1997 @fly-f0rever @archer-whovian-violinist @jenn0755 @anamarieswift2194 @unicornofdanger @ifyoudie @jealousbitxh @stormin-thru-glitter @sparklyaura @stilescstilinski @curlyxtomato @katshrev @its-sanaa-k @theoismydad @im-a-light-child @tmriddler @flirtswithdanger @divide-supermarketflowers @arkhamasylumpatient-blog1 @introverted-fandom-human @jennylj16 @potterandbucky @harleenq4life @runs-with-sciss0rs @superhero-lover101 @ridingmoxley @edward-lover18 @ridingmoxley

Stranger Things Tag List

@bilesmccall

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington x you #stranger things imagines #steve harrington #steve harrington x wheeler!reader #twin!nancy wheeler x twin!reader #mike wheeler #joe keery #stranger things season 1 #stranger things #angst #jealously #fluff

560 notes · View notes

loyaltyburdened · 6 years

Note

hc + family

send me ‘ hc ‘ + a word and i’ll write a headcanon about it regarding my character. // @trustbitchin

i’m gonna break this down from person to person for mike!

TED: mike has NEVER been close to ted. the most they ever bonded was when mike was a small child and would watch TV with ted ( usually sports because that’s what ted liked to watch and mike had no say in the matter ) but as mike got older, the realization of just how LITTLE the two had in common was undeniable and the wedge between them started. it only proceeded to get worse and worse as the years went on. ted never showed any interest in the sort of things mike liked. once it was CLEAR that mike would never be some star athlete, he might as well have become completely INVISIBLE to his father, unless ted felt the need to berate his son with a snarky comment or two. depending on the verse, if ted finds out about mike’s bisexuality things become basically irreparable ( not that they really had much of a relationship to begin with ), with the two already being distant and eventually falling out of contact completely.

KAREN: when mike was little he absolutely ADORED his mother. she took care of him, she loved him, and she made sure that he never went without. it wasn’t until he started getting older that their relationship started getting more strained. when he was little he probably told her a lot of stuff but started getting more and more secretive the older he got. and with her and ted’s deteriorating marriage, and her being so busy with fifty million other things and always having so much on her plate, their relationship unfortunately grew more and more strained. despite her telling him that he can talk to her about anything, and despite her trying to be supportive of him, he has a tendency to feel like she doesn’t understand him at all.

and in season two things just got worse. he couldn’t tell her WHY he was so depressed-- once again, despite her INSISTING that he could talk to her, he knew that he really couldn’t. she wouldn’t understand. so with mike’s bad attitude and karen’s continual stress of everyday life, their relationship, yet again, got worse. i feel like they probably butted heads a lot, similarly to how she and nancy had in season one.

mike LOVES his mother and he truly DOES wish that they could be closer. in fact, at one point, he asks her to teach him how to cook as well as she does. so she does, and it’s nice, but they still don’t get as close as a mother and son SHOULD be. and with mike’s added rebellion as he gets older, it doesn’t help any.

to top it all off, if mike chooses to confide in her about his bisexuality, they grow increasingly distant. that’s not to say that karen doesn’t still LOVE him, but i feel like she wouldn’t FULLY understand it and she’d be more WORRIED for him than anything. nevertheless, much like with ted, mike doesn’t speak to her for a while. then, i’d like to imagine that one day they actually DO manage to make amends and karen actually accepts mike for who he is.

so no, things aren’t PERFECT between the two of them, but they definitely get better.

NANCY: we all already know that mike and nancy don’t really get along in seasons one and two, despite caring very deeply about each other. they have that typical sibling relationship until nancy leaves for college. at first, mike is THRILLED to see her go, but after a while, he quickly realizes just how much he MISSES her and that’s when the phone calls start. it becomes a habit, after a while, for mike to call nancy AT LEAST once every two weeks, ( though sometimes quicker than that if something particularly noteworthy or shitty or exciting happened to him ) and the two actually start getting a lot closer. they both end up maturing a lot, nancy helps mike out with any issues he may have. ( nancy is the very first person mike confides in about his bisexuality and she helps him figure it out to the best of her ability. ) she gives him advice and they end up developing the kind of relationship that their parents could only WISH that they would’ve had in the past. mike would consider himself closer to nancy than anyone else. they still have their silly sibling quarrels, but that’s to be expected.

mike and nancy are already bonded over their traumatic events dealing with the upside down, and sometimes it feels like they’re the only ones they can turn to, so they end up talking a lot about that as well, right along with everything else. whenever she comes to visit they’ll sit and talk well into the night about their family, their lives, and everything in between.mike goes up to visit nancy whenever he can ( and it’s DEFINITELY a welcome break from their parents and hawkins in general ) and nancy always welcomes him with open arms. it always makes him happy to know that if he’s ever faced with any hardships and has nowhere to go, he can ALWAYS go to his sister and she’ll be there for him.

HOLLY: it’s always been a little harder for mike to connect with holly due to their age gap, but he still tries. he’ll listen to her babble on and on about the things that she likes, and they’ll cuddle together on the couch and watch tv shows and movies together. when she’s finally in school, mike helps her with her homework and projects, and when their parents’ marriage starts taking a turn for the worst, mike does all he can to shield her from it. whenever the rest of the party comes over, they’re all more than happy to include holly in their activities, and the basement ends up becoming one of her most frequented spots, even when the party’s not down there. mike ends up taking her down there most times whenever their parents start fighting and he lets her play with some of his old toys. when mike goes off to college, it’s harder for him see her and keep in contact with her, but he always manages to visit home on his breaks.

whenever mike FINALLY gets himself situated and holly is old enough to make her own decisions, if she ever started to feel miserable at home, mike would take her in with open arms. in another au, similar to that, nancy and mike end up winning custody of holly and taking it upon themselves to raise her, completely obliterating any kind of lasting relationship they could’ve ever had later on with their parents.

CHILDREN: mike loves children and wants at least TWO of them as he gets older. in most verses i have, he has two kids: eleanor nancy wheeler and william james wheeler. annnnd after a discussion with @promiseburdened we decided that mike and el would have a third kid named luke robert wheeler.

TL;DR: as mike gets older, he gets pretty distant from his parents. he grows increasingly closer to nancy and holly as the years go on. it’s not until nancy leaves for college that mike realizes how much he misses her and the two regularly talk to each other on the phone. he also goes to visit nancy and stay with her over breaks ( if she doesn’t come back home, that is ). mike also tries to always be there for holly whenever he can. so even though his relationship with his parents isn’t the greatest, his bond with his siblings is stronger than ever-- UNBREAKABLE.

p.s. he def wants to become a dad eventually because he loves children.

#trustbitchin #{ i could talk about so many different things with this but i'm gonna stop myself here lol }#&&.﹙incoming transmission﹚ ━ ASK PROMPT.#&&.﹙out on a quest﹚ ━ OOC.#&&.﹙over and out﹚ ━ ANSWERED.#&&.﹙all a part of the character﹚ ━ HEADCANON.#&&.﹙i’ve left the country﹚ ━ QUEUE.

4 notes · View notes

ghostiic2 · 6 years

Text

Happy Mother’s day

1985

The sun was shining into the cabin on a Sunday morning in Hawkins. The sound of birds chirping in the distance was peaceful. El blinked her eyes open, and let her vision adjust. Her eyes soon opened fully, and she scanned the room. With a yawn, she sat up and stretched. Her eyes landed on the analog watch on her wrist that Mike had given her (she never took it off). It read Eight-three-zero. 8:30 AM. With a huff, she moved her legs so her feet were touching the floor. She lifted her body from the bed and stood in her room. El smiled as she took in her newly decorated room. Hopper had said that she needed to have at least have a nice room.

El walked out of her room into the kitchen, opened the freezer to grab some eggos, and put them in the toaster for breakfast. She then took in the surroundings of her home. The cabin. She liked the cabin, even though it was her place of silence and time from her friends for almost a year. Hopper said that when he makes enough money,and after her time of hiding was over, he would buy them a real house. El smiled at the thought of a real house. A real life as a normal girl. Going to school with her friends and her.. what did Mike call it? Boyfriend.

El’s thoughts were interrupted when the eggos in the toaster popped out. El jumped at the sudden sound, but brushed it off, making a face at the toaster. She was about to take them out, but the sound of amused giggling stopped her. She turned around to see Hopper leaning on the couch.

“Morning, jumpy.” He said through a chuckle.

El felt her face heat up. “You saw me.. Jump?”

“Yup. Don’t worry, those things can startle ya.” He responded with a huff as he pushed himself from the couch.

El relaxed herself as he walked over to her and ruffled her hair.

She noticed Hopper wasn’t wearing his usual cop uniform. Instead he was wearing a plaid button-up shirt and pants.

“Why aren’t you wearing your cop uniform?” She asked, sitting at the table with her eggos across from Hopper.

“Well, i’m taking a day off. Oh and by the way, you gotta get dressed soon, kid.” Hopper responded looking up from his cereal.

“Why?”

“We’re going over to the Byers’ household today.”

El raised her eyebrows, and felt a smile appear on her face. She loved both Joyce and Will. Joyce was sweet and she had some special connection to Will. Her thoughts were stopped by a question.

“Why are we going over?”

Hopper looked up at her and smirked.

“Well, it’s Mother’s day, kid. I figured we could accompany Joyce for today.”

El furrowed her brows. ‘Mother’s day’?

“What’s Mother’s Day?” She asked, still confused.

Hopper looked up, and a sign of sympathy came across his face.

“Ah.. Mother’s day is when people celebrate their moms..” He said, a little uneasy.

El sat there silently, processing this explanation. Hopper’s uneasiness grew due to the silence. He afraid she would break down, considering she doesn’t really have a mom to celebrate, so he prepared himself to comfort her.

He didn’t need to.

“Oh. Ok.” El responded with a shrug, and took a bite of her eggo.

Hopper was surprised and a little relieved, though he could still sense that something was off, he brushed it off and ate his breakfast.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

El sat in the car next to Hopper as they drove to the Byers’. El looked out of the window and watched as the trees outside sped by. She was still processing the ‘Mother’s day’ information, not confused, but a little upset. ‘Mother’s day is when people celebrate their moms.’ That sentence repeated in her head. El wanted to take part in this special day, but she didn’t a have a mother to celebrate. Technically, she did, but mama was not all there in the head anymore. She wasn’t even capable of conversation, so there’s no use going to her to celebrate, though maybe later El will visit her to check up on her after they visit Joyce. She just brushed off these thoughts as the car drove into the Byers’ driveway.

El and Hopper were greeted with hugs from Joyce, and soon Will and Jonathan came out to greet them as well.

“Hey sweetie!” Joyce said to El will a happy grin.

“Hi Joyce!” El responded sharing the same smile.

El was then met with a hug from Will, and a pat on the head from Jonathan.

They were invited inside, and when they walked in, El noticed an empty house. She was expecting the rest of the Party to be here, so they could all hang out.

“Where are the others?” El asked, turning to Will.

Will’ expression turned into confusion at that question.

“What?”

“Where are Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max?” El said.

“Oh! Well, they’re spending time with their moms today, since it’s Mother’s day.”

El’s head lowered a bit at the answer. Of course they were spending time with their moms. They have moms to spend time with.

Will took notice at El’s disappointment, so he tried to reassure her.

“Hey! El, it’s ok.. You’ll see them again soon. They’re just busy is all..” Will said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

El looked at him, and forced a smile.

“Thanks, Will.”

“You’re welcome.”

El then heard giggling behind them, and saw that Joyce, Hopper, and Jonathan were on the couch looking at a book.

El and Will walked over to see what they were looking at, and when they saw it, Will let out a horrified yelp.

They were looking at old baby pictures of Will and Jonathan.

“Mooooom!!! Why did you pull that out?” Will whined, face red from embarrassment.

“Will, honey, i’m just showing Hop some old Mother’s day baby pictures from when you were little.” Joyce said, looking up at Will.

Will sighed and knelt down next to the book, and El did the same.

“D’aww.. I remember this!” Joyce said, pointing to a picture of Will as a baby and a slightly younger Joyce in a Mother’s day photo.

Hopper and El grinned at the picture. It was very sweet.

“Oh! Mom! Remember this one?” Jonathan spoke up, pointing to a picture of Will and Jonathan in matching sailors oufits with Joyce in a captain’s outfit.

“Oh! Yes! That was so sweet.. You two were the cutest little sailors!” Joyce said, gushing at the picture.

“Mom!” Will screeched. Hopper chuckled, followed by and ‘aye aye cap’n!’

Will looked down in embarrassment.

“Hey, buddy, it’s ok. I’m just kiddin’ with ya!” Hopper said with a reassuring smile.

Will smiled back. “Haha, yea.”

El grinned at the sight of her dad and close friend getting along. She liked it when her friends got along with Hopper. Especially Mike. She was happy there was no more tension between them.

They looked through a lot more photos, and there was much more laughter, embarrassment, and aww-ing.

El was enjoying herself, but the thought of Mother’s day still rang in the back of her head like a siren. Taunting her. She tried her best to ignore it, until…

Her eyes scanned a photo of toddler Will giving Joyce a drawing of the Byers’ family.

El looked closely at the drawing. There was little Will and Jonathan holding Joyce’s hands with smiles on their faces, with flowers around them, and a rainbow going through a blue sky. And above the rainbow in red crayon read ‘Happy Mother’s day to the greatest mom in the world!’.

El’s heart sank.

Joyce, Hopper, Jonathan and Will were grinning at the photo, and talking and laughing, but El couldn’t hear any of it. Her head was ringing. That siren in the back of her mind was now blasting into her ears. Her hands were trembling. Her lip was quivering. Her eyes stung.

Everyone stopped their laughing, and their expressions dropped.

Tears were falling from El’s face onto the book. She was lightly whimpering. Her eyes stayed on the photo.

Hopper felt his heart in his stomach at the sight of El crying. It was so sudden. He didn’t know what to say.

There was a beat of silence.. Then El closed her eyes, and ran outside onto the porch followed by a door slam.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was still silence for a few minutes after El ran off. Everyone was still. Not even Hopper knew what to do. They all shared concerned glances, and then looked down at the photo that El was staring at.

Joyce saw it, and thought about it for a second, and then realized what happened.

Without warning, Joyce got up, and walked outside.

Joyce walked onto the porch and looked over to see El sobbing into her hands on the porch swing.

Joyce got very concerned, and her motherly instincts were kicking in, so she started to walk over to the porch swing. Joyce took a seat next to El, keeping a bit of distance as to not startle her.

“El, sweetheart, what’s the matter?” Joyce spoke up, looking at El with worry all over her face.

El looked up with a slight gasp, and relaxed seeing it was Joyce.

“Oh.. umm… I..” El mumbled, looking the other way.

Joyce’s heart sank at the sight of El. Tears covered her face, her eyes were red, and her body was still shaking slightly due to how violently she was sobbing.

“It’s ok, honey, you can tell me.” Joyce said, scooting closer and placing a hand on El’s back.

El sniffled, and looked back up at her with glassy eyes.

“Ok..” She said, giving in.

El sighed, and fiddled with her dress a little before starting.

“You know how it’s Mother’s day?” El started off, looking at Joyce.

“Yes.. I am a mother so I should know.” Joyce said with a small smirk.

“Well.. It’s just.. I don’t have a mother to celebrate.” El said, with slight edge in her tone.

Joyce felt her heart stop for a second. El didn’t have a mother. How could she have been so oblivious? El saw that picture and it reminded her that she didn’t really have a mom. Joyce silently cursed herself for pulling out that book in the first place.

“El.. sweetie, i’m so sorry.. I should’ve known, and I never would have pulled out that book..” Joyce said with sympathy.

“It’s ok.. Joyce… I’m not sad about the book. I’m just sad in general.” El said.

Joyce looked at El, curious.

“How so?”

“Well… It’s just.. Everyone has a mom to celebrate, but I don’t..” El responded, looking down.

Joyce hesitated. “Is your mother.. Gone..?”

“No.. Just.. gone in the head.. and.. it makes me mad, y’know? My mama was taken away from me.. And now I can’t even celebrate with her because she’s lost in this other world. She’s not in touch with reality anymore.. Because of those.. those.. madmen scientists!” El shouted a little and the wind started to pick up speed. She realized this and calmed herself to let the wind slow down.

“Oh.. you poor thing.. I’m so sorry that had to happen to you. No child should have their mother taken away from them at such a young age.” Joyce said, rubbing circles on El’s back sympathetically.

“It’s ok, Joyce..” El said, looking up at her.

There was a beat of silence.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” Joyce said with confusion.

“I’m sorry. You’re supposed to be having Mother’s day with your family, but I had to go and make things.. Emotional..” El said, looking down.

“No, no, no, sweetie. It’s alright. And.. y’know.. if you need a mother to talk to or hang out with.. i’m here.”

El’s face lit up. “Really? You would be.. A mother towards me?”

“Of course, honey. If you need a mom, just come to me.”

El smiled, and hugged Joyce, burying her head under her chin.

“That would be amazing! Thank you!” El said, beaming.

“You’re welcome, El. Happy Mother’s day.” Joyce said, hugging her back.

At that moment, El felt the weight on her lifting from her, because she actually has someone to be like her mother. She felt like she had a real mother.

“Happy Mother’s day, mom.”

El’s first Mother’s day was her best Mother’s day.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHOOOOOOOO THAT WAS A LONG ONE-SHOT SORRY FAM.

Wanted to write something cute with Joyce and El for Mother’s day. Hope you guys liked this!

#stranger things #joyce byers #eleven #jim hopper #will byers #jonathan byers #writing

11 notes · View notes

trnstlanticism · 6 years

Text

frozen kisses & warm hearts

thanks @gaybabygeekboy for the inspiration. it’s the day after christmas but i HAD to write something for this. this is just soft christmas themed fluff

Mike knows that Christmas is hard for Will. Even though he hides it behind small smiles and agreeable responses when asked if he’s excited, he sees how he’s distinctively placed himself away from the conversation about gifts, celebration, and general Christmas cheer. It’s gotten worse with every year and Mike hates it. He remembers, before everything, how much Will had loved Christmas, probably more than anyone he knew. How brightly his face would shine when he showed off his modest pile of presents, usually all art related, and how excited he’d been talking about the own gifts he gave his family.

Well, this year would be different. Mike Wheeler is going to make sure that this would be Will Byers’ best Christmas yet.

Today they’re in Mike’s kitchen, making gingerbread cookies. Well, Jonathan made the cookies, they were on the table for the rest to decorate. This had become one of El’s favorite things to do so Mike always made sure his kitchen was free for one day so that they could do this. El was so terrible at decorating but she was always so proud of them and Hopper ate nearly every cookie that she brought back.

Mike smiles at the room, El and Max huddled close together as they carefully put icing on their cookies, Lucas snapping at Dustin for eating too many. Jonathan following Holly’s instructions as he decorated her cookie the way she wanted.

This is what happiness looks like, all his favorite - well almost all of them - gathered together, safe and full of cheer.

But there was someone missing.

Mike leaves the room quietly, heading out to the front yard. As he thought, Will is out there, bundled in his coat. His hands are outstretched in front of him and his face is tilted upwards, looking up at the gray sky. For one terrifying second, Mike is afraid that this is an episode, that Will is seeing something again. But the closer he comes he realizes that Will’s face isn’t that blank one he adopts during them but something softer, something sadder.

“You’ll freeze out here,” Mike says once he’s behind Will. Will doesn’t turn around but he lets out a soft sigh.

“I figured it was you,” he says. Mike takes another step forward, close enough to grab Will’s shoulder if he wanted to, turn him around and bring him into Mike’s arms like he wanted to, like he’s been wanting to for months and months. “Don’t worry. I’m always cold.”

Will sounds resigned and it breaks Mike’s heart. He wraps his arms around Will’s waist bringing him close so that his back is pressed against Mike’s chest. He places his chin on Will’s shoulder. “Now you’re warm. See?”

He sure hopes Will can’t feel his heartbeat thundering. Will is stiff for a moment before relaxing in Mike’s hold. “Dummy,” he says fondly. “You came out here in just your sweater.”

“Okay, so you’re keeping me warm!.

They stay there for a moment, basking in each other’s presence. Mike doesn’t want to break the silence, but he can’t stay quiet forever. “Come inside,” he murmurs quietly. “It’s lonely without you.”

He feels Will sigh, his shoulders lifting up in the movement. “Don’t lie, Mike.”

“Where did I lie?”

Will twists his head a little to meet eyes with Mike. Mike tries not to get caught in his gaze like he usually those but it’s hard when Will’s eyes are such a lovely hazel-green. But they’re also sad and it hurts. “Mike you know… the holidays are hard for me.”

Mike swallows. “I know,” he says quietly. “It doesn’t have to be like that though. We’re all here for you Will. We just want you to be happy.”

Will looks away again, staring back up at the sky. “Sometimes, it feels like I don’t know how to be happy anymore. Like it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not because I’m just going to bring everyone down.”

He tightens his arms around Will, like he’s afraid Will is going to slip through his fingers. He almost lost him twice so Mike has always paid special attention to Will. Kept him closer so that he wouldn’t lose him again. But hearing Will’s words, Mike feels like he’s failed. Even though Will is physically with him, Mike did nothing for his heart.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Mike mumbles numbly because what is he supposed to say? “But I promise none of us think like that. If you’re sad, it’s okay. We’ll find a way to fix it.”

Will’s breath hitches. “What if I can’t be fixed?”

At this rate, Mike’s going to cry. “Will - “

Will pulls away from him and starts walking down the street. Mike watches him go, feeling cold all over and inside his chest. What can he do? How can he fix this? All he’s ever wanted was for Will to be happy and by his side. Mike’s no fool - he knows that it’s not easy for Will. He knows about the nightmares, the anxiety meds, the way Will feels suffocated. But he’d do anything to make sure Will would be okay again. He’d wait forever.

So tell him, you idiot, a voice hisses inside him. Tell him, before you lose him again.

Mike takes a deep breath and starts after him. “Will,” he calls, a little desperate. Will ignores him and continues to walk. Mike’s heart sinks to the pit of his stomach when he sees his shoulders are shaking - is he crying?

That won’t do. That won’t do at all. Against his better judgement, he runs to catch up to him. This quickly proves to be a mistake because his boots slip against the icy sleet and he falls rather spectacularly. “Shit!” he grunts as soon as his back hits the cold ground, the icy slush seeping into his back.

Well this is… just perfect, Mike thinks to himself desolately staring up at the sky. He couldn’t even pull off the dramatic run up to the love of your life and tell him he means the world to you properly. It would be better for him to just freeze here.

The sound of hurried footsteps comes his way. “Mike?!” Will’s face appears in front of him. His cheeks and eyes are red, a sure indicator that he’s been crying, but there’s only worry on his face. Worry for Mike. “What happened?! Are you okay?”

“I fell,” Mike replies dumbly.

Will blinks at him incredulously. “Mike you - “ he starts but seems to think better of it, shaking his head and offering Mike his hand. Mike takes it and Will grunts as he helps Mike stand up. Really, it’s mostly Mike putting in the work but he clings to Will’s hand even when he’s properly up. “Mike?”

Mike squeezes his hand. “I need to tell you something.”

Will looks down at their joined hands with red cheeks. “I… okay.”

Okay. Here goes nothing.

“Every year, I see you get sad around this time. And even though I’m sad that you’re sad, I’m also not because you’re there.” Mike inhales sharply. “Every Christmas, you give me the best present just by being with me. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Mike feels Will’s grip go slack in his. Will slowly raises his head to look at him, a look of complete wonder on his face. Mike’s heart starts thundering again. He loves him. Oh god, he loves him. He loves him. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I love you,” the words slip from Mike’s mouth, clumsy but sincere, voicing out his thoughts. “And I would do anything for you. And you don’t have to do anything at all but just be here with me. It’s all I want.”

“Mike,” Will gasps, tears forming in his eyes again. But these are happy tears, Mike knows. He lets go of his hand to cup Will’s cold cheeks, leaning in close.

“Loving me back would be the greatest gift you could give me,” he says in a trembling voice. There’s a lot more he wants to say - about how important Will is and how even if Will doesn’t feel the same way as him, nothing will change how Mike feels.

But Will leans in and presses his cold lips against Mike’s and everything he was planning on saying disappears in an instant. He’s shocked for one second before he kisses back, slow and thorough.

They pull away because it’s Hawkins and it’s too risky to be pressed together so close but Will is smiling at him, a beautiful tremulous thing, and Mike feels so warm in his chest, he can barely feel the chill of his soaked sweater.

“I take it back,” he whispers. “That was probably the greatest gift you could give me.”

Will takes his hand again and Mike knows that this just doesn’t make everything better. This doesn’t mean that everything is going to be okay tomorrow. But this moment? It’ll be with them forever. Frozen kisses, warm hearts, and all. The perfect Christmas.

#byeler #man i've missed them #man i'm RUSTY!!!#i haven't written anything in forever ahhhh #fic stuff #that's my tag right #welp!!! pls enjoy #time to sleep

200 notes · View notes

multiple-fandomimagines · 6 years

Text

Steve Harrington Masterlist *updated 2/15/21*

NONE OF THESE ARE MINE!!! I did NOT write any of these! I believe they are amazing fanfics, written by insanely talented people, and deserve to be shared. ALL CREDIT GOES TO THE AUTHORS!!!

Steve x Billy

Bad by flippyspoon (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington)(Billy Hargrove & Eleven)(Billy Hargrove & Max Mayfield) Billy hates the cold but he takes walks in the snowy woods anyway. Never know who you’ll meet there.

Pain, Will You Return It? by shocked_into_shame (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) When Billy gets beaten to a literal pulp by his dad, the police get involved. Billy has to come to terms with what he has done to those around him. He doesn’t want to be like his dad. Especially when he sees Steve Harrington. When he sees Steve, he wants to be good.

Marquee Moons by flippyspoon (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) Billy helps out with some demodog bustin’.

Runaway by ohmbgosh (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington)(Billy Hargrove & Jim Hopper)(Billy Hargrove & Eleven) Jim Hopper just wants to find a Christmas present for his telepathic daughter. He didn’t ask for all these extra teenagers in his home.

Holiday’s at the Henderson’s by ohmbgosh (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) For some reason Steve really wants Dustin to get along with Billy. Since it’s almost Christmas, Dustin reluctantly gives it a shot.

To Build a Home by inkyreveries (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) In which Neil Hargrove dies and Billy and Steve go back to Hawkins.

Saint Anger by maikurosaki (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) Hopper sighed and scratched his beard. “Look, kid, the reason why I'm offering you a second chance is because you need it. You don't deserve it, but you need it. So I got your back.” Or how, on his harrowing road to redemption (because second chances don't come easy), Billy Hargrove loses a good-for-nothing father, but gains a tough little sister, a giant older brother, a preppy boyfriend, and an obnoxious pack of nerds, not necessarily in this particular order.

Angels Come To Us Disguised by AuthorsBane (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington)(Protective Parent Jim Hopper) It's a quiet night in Hawkins. That is, until Chief Hopper receives news he would have been able to live without. What follows is the worst night on call he can imagine once Billy Hargrove and Steve Harrington get involved.

"It's like the Body Snatchers!" by ChangeTheCircumstances (Billy Hargrove & Max Mayfield)(Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) Max wonders if her life will ever be normal again, if anything can be normal in a place like Hawkins. She doubts it but there's at least one thing she's sure of: the last person to ever realize what's really going on in this crazy place will be Billy. No way would anything supernatural ever happen to him.

Don't Tell Me There's No Hope At All/ Together We Stand, Divided We Fall by Straight_Outta_Hobbiton (Billy Hargrove & Max Mayfield)(Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) Billy's used to being afraid of his father, and he knows he's not the only one scared. But it's one thing to know your stepmother gets smacked around every once in a while and another thing completely to find her body on the bathroom floor.He's a mess, Max is even more of a mess, and Joyce Byers is a queen among mothers, she really is.

Hargrove by petersnotkingyet (Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) “Chief?” “Yeah?” Hopper responded. It was barely eight o’clock; he’d just made it to the office. “Principal Wallace needs you down at the high school. The Hargrove kid’s sleeping in his car again, and they can’t get him to wake up.”

stand (in the place where you live) by Boardingschooled (Billy Hargrove & Max Mayfield)(Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington) After the gate is closed, Billy Hargrove has to face the consequences of what he's done, and it's all thanks to Hopper and his habit of taking in strays. Alternatively: Billy becomes a good big brother, learns how to apologize, and makes some very gay mixtapes, not in that order.

Holding Out For A Hero by TumbleTree Billy had never cared for the kids Steve called his own. He had already started tolerating them for Max’s sake and not because she almost busted his nuts that one time with the baseball bat. But when Steve had looked at him with those big brown eyes, begging him to keep an eye on the kids while he was on some ‘vacation’ with his asshole parents Billy couldn’t say no.So fuck Steve for putting him in all the situations that followed that conversation. He owed him a ton of blow jobs for all the shit he had to put up with now.—Five times Billy protected their kids and the one time they protected him…sort of.

We Slip And Slide by CallieB It came from the Discord, y'all.Pure indulgent post-S3 fluff, including but not limited to the discussed concepts of: - Billy moving in with Joyce - The Jonathan/Billy friendship we all need - Grouchy Hopper - Jonathan and Billy smoking weed together and arguing about music. Because punk and metal are two different things. BUT they unite against Steve’s taste - Robin and Jonathan being excellent wing-persons - Hop and Billy teaming up against Mike to protect El - Shovel talks all round - Robin being clever and eating popcorn - The you rule/you suck board

the greatest adventure is the family you’ve searched for coming alive by ThePackWantstheD Billy spends a night fighting monsters with a crowbar in his hand after Harrington knocks him into the Byers’ fridge.In the aftermath, he and Max call a ceasefire.or: Billy Hargrove gets the family he deserves in the form of three children taking up the seats of the camaro, in the form of Billy teaching Max that she can be as badass as she wants without being less of a girl because Billy taking care of himself doesn’t make him less of a man, in the form of the blood and bruises and broken bones that Eleven and Billy share, in the form of Will Byers learning that he’s not the only boy in Hawkins who wants to kiss other boys.

The Great Escape by flippyspoon Hopper’s been in a cell in Kamchatka for three months. He’s got a routine and he takes it one day at a time. And then a certain blonde bad boy from Hawkins shows up.

Limits by That_Is_Americas_Ass Everyone has their limits.Max has just finally hit hers.She’s done with hiding behind closed doors listening to her step-father Neil hurt her brother, his own flesh and blood son, beyond reason and without remorse. She’s done watching her own mother cower in ignorance behind a mask of indifference. She’s done hiding in the dark while Billy takes the abuse to try and save her from the heartless man who dared call himself their father.Of all the monsters lurking in Hawkins, who would have guessed the worst of them all was living in Max’s own home?

Shovel Talk(s) by Invaderdumbass Max wasn’t a great sister, hell she wasn’t even a decent sister until recently. It took her brother dying, El spilling the secrets that lurk in her home, then him coming back to life for her to shape up.Or a bit of a Max Mayfield character study and everyones got an opinion on Billy and Steve getting together.

Steve & The Kids

A Chance To Heal by usa123 (Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids)(Protective Parent Jim Hopper & Steve Harrington) Missing scene from the end of 2x09 The Gate in which papa!Hopper is in full swing, Eleven believes Eggos can (help) cure any injury, and Steve gets all the platonic love and affection he deserves.

Found Families by darkangel86 (Jonathan Byers x Steve Harrington x Nancy Wheeler)(Protective Steve Harrington)(Steve & The Kids) One year and six months had passed since Lonnie had last set foot in Hawkins and in everyone's opinion that was still too soon for him to show his face again. So, of course the first time he shows up at the house, its Will who's home. Alone. For one of the first times since he'd been back from the Upside Down.

Misplaced Kids by StrangerStars (Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids)(Protective Steve Harrington) In which Steve can't find the kids and freaks the hell out.

The King of Hawkins High by el_spirito (Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids) (Protective Parent Jim Hopper) Just some missing scenes/an episode tag to the season finale because Steve got the crap beat out of him and there were just so many opportunities for our strange little family to bond and angst and persevere together. Featuring slightly-delirious-but-still-a-mom Steve, protective Dustin, snarky children, and paternal Hopper, among other things.

Common Cents by StrangerStars (Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids)(Parent Jim Hopper & Steve Harrington)(Joyce Byers & Steve Harrington) Making a will at eighteen seems incredibly morbid. The lawyer stares at him long and hard the entire time. She acts like he's contagious, like she might catch her death from him or maybe he'll ruin her rug by dropping dead in her office. Steve figures she has nothing to worry about. If anything's going to kill him, it's probably going to be a monster from the Upside Down. In which Steve hunts monsters, becomes a deputy, makes a will, and finds a family. Among other things.

The Steve Harrington Guide to Babysitting by UnoriginalToast (Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids) Steve has been tasked with babysitting El after the Gate is closed, which sounds like an easy enough job. After all, she's too tired to be much trouble, right? But what Steve doesn't factor in is the trouble her four nosey friends and that girl with the shitty brother can get themselves into.

Icebreaker by futureboy (Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids) Steve’s annoying new eighth-grader friends officially induct him as an ally to their party. It’s a prime opportunity for him to get to know that superhero buddy of theirs who keeps saving their skins.

"It's like the Body Snatchers!" by ChangeTheCircumstances (Billy Hargrove & Max Mayfield)(Billy Hargrove x Steve Harrington)(Steve Harrington & The Stranger Things Kids) Max wonders if her life will ever be normal again, if anything can be normal in a place like Hawkins. She doubts it but there's at least one thing she's sure of: the last person to ever realize what's really going on in this crazy place will be Billy. No way would anything supernatural ever happen to him.

proud by mercytio (scundtrack) (Billy Hargrove & Max Mayfield)(Steve Harrington & Max Mayfield) max graduates and steve tells her exactly what she needed to hear

Steve x Reader

I Want You To Show Me by v_writings (Steve Harrington x Reader) Steve finds you in your secret place after dropping Dustin off at the Snow Ball, and talking about how he’s feeling leads you to do something neither of you could have expected.

#archive of our own #masterlist #stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington masterlist #stranger things masterlist #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x billy hargrove #harringrove #strangerthings

44 notes · View notes