#and as much as it would hurt mike to realize there's a lot of parallels between him and william here

[crumbleclub]

Conflicting dynamics between Michael and his siblings are so intriguing. I feel like a lot of people slant strongly one way or the other– he's either protrayed as a good brother who's been thrust into a parental role and does everything for his siblings, or as a complete monster of a kid who spends all of his spare time tormenting his little brother– but it's more interesting to me when it's both.

The Michael who cruelly locks his brother in a room surrounded by the things he fears most and the Michael who tries to redirect his father's abuse away from Evan and towards himself are the same person.

The Michael who did his sister's hair every morning is the same Michael who tore apart her toys when he was angry with her, and both parts of him were there when he found himself crying in her room at the realization she was never coming home.

On top of that, they probably had a lot of very normal moments, too. They played outside together in the summer and tried to pawn their chores off on each other. There was one song they all liked when it came on the radio, and they made fun of the adults they knew when nobody else was around. None of them knew how to talk about their feelings, but, when one of them had been having a really rough time, they'd find that the breakfast Mikey made the next morning was their favorite, or Evan's favorite show had been put on even when Elizabeth had the remote, or an anonymous party had left a really cool rock on Michael's bedside table.

It must have been strange from the younger kids' perspectives, especially Evan's. Your brother keeps making you cry on purpose, and he's so, so mean, for no reason at all, but you know the bruise under his eye had been meant for you.

#i love when things conflict without cancelling each other out #the rights don't undo the wrongs but the wrongs don't mean that the kindness meant nothing either #and as much as it would hurt mike to realize there's a lot of parallels between him and william here #mike hurts his siblings on purpose but lets himself get hurt for their sake because he loves them #where william hurts his kids without giving it much thought at all #but he still wants to love them. he's pretty sure that he doesn't but he still wishes that he did #shakes the concept by the shoulders. i love when everything is true at once #fnaf #michael afton #cc afton #evan afton #elizabeth afton #mike's actual writing #cw neglect #cw abuse #afton siblings

[carcrashscike]

how i wish scott and mike’s dynamic in tdas would’ve been written:

* note: this is given that the plot stays relatively the same, i would change a lot about this otherwise

mike is pissed at scott for what he did to him last season, and with this newfound control of himself and his headspace he isn’t as afraid to say it. he isn’t around scott much early on (being on different teams and generally avoiding each other like the plague) but in challenges mike, often alongside zoey who shares this vendetta to a lesser extent, gets super competitive when scott is around. scott plays this off in his scott fashion (“wow he’s really obsessed, must be in love with me or something”), and while he derives some surface level pleasure from getting mike’s niceness to crack deep deep deep down he feels guilty. he knows what he did last season was shitty, how could he not? it doesn’t help that it seems mike will never let him live it down, eyes burning into the back of scotts head at any and every given opportunity (a gesture reserved only for him). the early episodes show mike and scott generally staying away from each other, with only sparse moments of hatred from mike’s end.

their dynamic takes a turn once mal gets added to the mix. scott doesn’t realize that mike isn’t the one fronting anymore, but he quickly pieces together that “mike” has begun to sabotage others (including his friends), a revelation that fills him with pure glee. he’s been validated, mike wasn’t only mean to scott because he wronged him, rather mike was just as cruel and vindictive as he was all along and he was a hypocrite for pretending to be otherwise. scott misconstrues “mike’s” actions as him revealing his true self after playing the long con, rather then it not being mike at all. mal on the other hand is keeping an eye on scott, as while he isn’t his biggest threat at the moment he knows that he was able to make it far the previous season (that and he holds a tiny vendetta against scott for his previous actions… something something “no one will mess with us with me in charge”). scotts going down like the rest of them without a doubt, but he isn’t mal’s primary focus mid season.

scott sees through all of “mikes” subsequent actions of manipulation. oftentimes he chooses to say nothing as those actions rarely target him (he quietly prides himself on that, it’s their little secret even if “mike” doesn’t know he knows) and also often harm his competition. he begins to interpret “mikes” non focus on him as a sign of possible respect, putting the past animosity behind them like he knows scott is above such obvious manipulation tactics. while he’s still hurt by courtney’s chart when it’s revealed, he’s more curious as to how mike acquired it in the first place. he also doesn’t fall for mikes bid to get him angry at gwen, spinning the line of reasoning back on him again coyly (“you said it’s her fault, but weren’t you the one who exposed her chart?”).

with his newfound perspective on “mike” scott doesn’t expect himself to be a target until it’s too late and he’s dangling by his foot in front of a very hungry shark. maybe he taunts mike, comparing himself to him and finding similarities between their actions or maybe he proposes an alliance with the knowledge he believes he has. either way mal pushes him in front of his worst nightmare, paralleling scotts actions towards mike. its in this moment scott realizes what’s happening, the truth that the man in above him wasn’t mike at all. scott finds plenty of time to ruminate on this as he slips unconscious.

as he awakes he’s swept up into elimination. part of him holds out hope that zoey will do what should be the obviously smart choice, but the rest of him knows she would never betray mike, even if it isn’t really him. scott try’s to expose mal to zoey at this point, faking once it’s clear that zoey has already realized what’s up. scott’s final words curse out mal for wearing the skin of the man he wronged and for making him believe, for just a split second, that they would somehow get better.

#i hate these two both so bad #scott being actually delusional #“he isn’t trying to manipulate me because he thinks I’m special’ #girl your ass is NOT special !! he just does not care #total drama #td mike #td scott #tdi #scike #td scike #tdroti #tdas

[charlieslowartsies]

RAHH it’s so cool to see that other people are rereading kgau too, cuz it’s done nothing but lurk in my mind ever since I first found it a few years back, AND that’s what IVE been doing too and I’m having a blast!!

Any commentary on Danny or his character? Or how you came up with him as Jeremy’s kid? Idc I just love that little dude he’s so cool

I often wonder how many times people have reread. If we go by hit count on ao3, I THINK GS or DS has been hit the most? What's funny is they're older and they've been completed for a hit minute, and they're around 10k hits. LW is ongoing, incomplete, and arguably one of my faster completed fics and it's at 10k too lol. I have Danny Fitzgerald comments I suppose! I am VERY tired so I hope these make some semblance of sense xc

Danny was created because I kind of felt Mike had grown used to his surroundings very well. I liked that about Mike! One of the blanket themes of KGA is of course, Found Family. But...I also wanted to explore a more 'holy shit! living robots' reaction. I also needed someone Mike wouldn't LET the gang bully/be cold to.

While Mike worked on ridding them of that learned fear, in the meantime he focused on hiring people that were chill and wouldn't give him more headaches.

So I needed a teenager I decided. I was very hesitant to make him at all. I'm not a huge fan of OCs when it comes to my own writing. It complicates things, and if I wanted a story of OCs I would make that. (Reading them is more fun ^^)

However, the kga series proved I could make something I liked well enough from scratch. Like I've said before, the content we had for Mike Schmidt's character was, yanno, zilch. He might as well have been an oc for a while, until more games and lore appeared over the years. (Obviously KGA does not follow the 'correct' lore. I'm 100% okay with that.)

I hemed and hawed a lot with just keeping Jeremy alive and making Ghost Strings star him, but a fic I loved reading at the time also had an amazing Jeremy and I didn't feel I could write my 'own' version and do it justice. Jeremy as well, if anything, would have a much darker history with the restaurant. Danny was essentially a blank canvas, while still having a reason for being there. He was a fraidy cat--rightly so--but he was determined and he forced himself constantly out of his comfort zone. (I'm sure GS would have been a much different story if Mangle had been active/in the restaurant.)

So, Jeremy had to go. And then I realized I wanted to work on death and loss and that kind of pain.

Danny obviously joins the restaurant for deeply painful and close to selfish reasons, but he's still someone we root for. He's just a dumb teenager looking for something of his father's, not realizing he's the reason he has so little to remember the man by.

All we are made up of is memories. Ours and others, things we take from important people in our lives.

Danny's theme/lesson in GS was 'Even bad memories have a place in a Good life' after all.

Danny's presence in the story helped me explore that mystery, and grief, and what happens when we try to heal ourselves, or when we rely on others to help us, like Bonnie helped Danny. It became a great parallel for Michael/Max Afton, since we learn in Last Shift, YEARS later in the story, this wasn't the first time Bonnie kept something safe for someone out of sheer love and devotion, like Max's beloved cassettes and music-tastes. This was despite Bonnie and the gang being so deeply hurt by Max's attack on them, but he still held on to the Good alongside the Bad.

And of course, giving Bonnet to Danny seemed...so fucken cute and fun and easy. She needed someone, he needed someone, and they just clicked.

My favorite thing about Danny is that everyone liked him so much more than I expected, even just in his first fic. I pursued Finding Freddy with the best intentions, and as hard as that fic was for me, I do not regret making it a Danny!centric fic. It also helps that when he shows up in Lies Within he's clearly done lots of growing, but he's still very mortal and he's very able to die. He still tries to help the restaurant, choosing to embrace the mantle of Day Guard that his father held in the Toys' era. That continued loyalty to Mike ends up being a pretty powerful weapon against the Virus.

Also something I need to explore more is Max is such a puffy little trash cat over Mike when Danny comes onto the scene, although he does lower his hackles within a few months, (and by the time of Lies Within) he's guarded and cautious around Danny. However once Max decides Danny belongs with them, that's it and Max considers him family as much as he's attached to Mike.

One thing I hadn't expected was liking the broship between Ness and Danny that's cropping up in LW. I absolutely want to mull that over more! Vanessa obviously has different...ties and hangups... to Bonnie models, but they really are interesting foils for each other. Esp considering Danny's choices in his older stories and her choices now, including the ones she might still have to make ;)

#kga #knight guard au #ask #answered #phew #ok exhausted i need food then sleep #i wanna WRITEEEEE DX

[lupon]

I feel like a big part of the reason people believe El can’t be happy without Mike is because of how poorly “The Lost Sister” landed with the audience. El’s s2 plot wasn’t about the supernatural, it was all about who El is, what she wants, and how she feels. It didn’t really do much to push the main plot and is kind of more of a side story. I’ll admit, I’ve skipped it more then once when I’ve rewatched, but now after s4, I’m realizing how much that episode actually did for her character. 

What El wants most in life is a home and a family. It’s brought up a lot throughout the episode, and is the main reason why she runs away. She feels like she’s missing a family, which is why she leaves to find Mike, her mom, and then Kali. She’s looking for somewhere that feels like home. We get the parallel of Mike, Hopper, Becky and Kali all offered her a home, which was exactly what she wanted. Mike at the end of s1 said she could live with him in his house, and specifically mentioned his mom, another thing El wants. When Hopper first brought her in, he said the cabin would be her new home. Later, when he’s telling stories about himself, El asked if she had a mom, and started crying when he said she was gone. Then El finally finds her mom, and runs away to see her. Becky then shows her the room that was supposed to be hers, and says this would be her home. Even with Kali, she kept saying that their meeting was what her mom wanted, and also claiming she was home. 

Hopper betrayed her by lying and taking away her TV, she ran away. Becky betrayed her by calling the police, and she ran in search of a different family without a seconds thought. Kali betrayed her by trying to force her to kill someone, and by getting in her head and showing her Brenner. So she ran back to the first family she ever knew. El didn’t trip Max out of romantic jealousy, it was her feeling replaced and betrayed. That’s why the moment comes back when she’s thinking of things that make her angry when she tries to move the train. Every other memory in that scene is one of her feeling like she had her life taken from her, which is exactly what she felt when she saw Mike with Max. This also lines up with how Mike feels, he didn’t want Max in the party because he felt like he’d be replacing El. 

Also worth noting is the reason why she didn’t kill the man in the apartment. She saw a family photo on the ground. She was looking at the kids. She realized that if she killed him, she’d be taking away their father. Despite how much she hated him for what he did, she knows how much it hurts to lose a parent, so she refused to let Kali kill him as well. 

Then there’s the whole monster theme. El was watching Frankenstein on Halloween night, specifically the scene were a small girl is asking the monster if he wanted to play with her. El isn’t the girl in this scene though, she’s Frankenstein’s monster. Robin in Surviving Hawkins talked about the Frankenstein book, and it’s really cool how it parallels El’s story. Robin says the quote: “He (the monster) was scared and confused and left to fend for himself, which doesn’t excuse things but I think the whole point is that pretty much everyone behaves in monstrous ways” Similarly, El has hurt people whenever she gets scared or angry. Like Lucas in s1 right after he claimed she was a monster, he and Mike started fighting, so she threw him out of anger. S4 she hit Angela after she ruined her day, and later called herself a monster. Mr. Hauser then asked Robin who she thinks the monster in Frankenstein was. Robin then states: “Well, Frankenstein for starters, the doctor I mean, playing God like that pretending that scientific innovation is more important than humanity.” This is clearly talking about Brenner, as we see El face him and say she wasn’t the monster, it was him. Brenner pushed aside his humanity for the sake of innovation, stealing kids from their homes, numbering them, imprisoning them, and often hurting them when they disobeyed. All for the sake of making them stronger. 

Kali understood that others saw people like herself and El, as well as her band of outcasts, as monsters. Instead of trying to prove herself to anyone, she embraced it. Like El, she had been betrayed and lied to by people she called her family. She explained to El that no one would see her as anything other than a monster. Kali believed the only people who wouldn’t, were other people who society viewed as a monster. Which is why Mike saying she wasn’t a monster despite her throwing Lucas, and despite the fact that she opened the gate which took Will away, was such a profound moment in her life. For the first time in her life, El was treated like a person. That moment was a big part of the reason why she decided to go back. Because of that, she realized Kali was wrong, that there were people out there who would love her and see her as a person rather than a monster. Her last line in the episode was: “I’m going to a friends house. I’m going home.” Her whole s2 plot was her looking for a home, and she found it. 

This is why she doesn’t need to be romantically with Mike in order to have a happy ending. El’s goal in life was never to find romance. It was always about family, which is why she asked if Mike would be her brother right before he kissed her. If anything, him kissing her diverted her from the life she truly wanted. All she ever wanted from the start was a home. A mother. Friends. Family. To be normal. To feel like she belonged in the world. She wandered the Wheeler house envious of Nancy's life. She wanted to be pretty like her, with big family and close friends. The end of s4 is the closest she’s been to having all of that. She’s back at the cabin, her first ever home. Hopper is alive and is officially dating Joyce, her mother. She’s surrounded by friends and family who love her. The only thing missing is Max, the person who told her she could take control of her own life, and was the only one that made her feel normal. Mike may have been the one to tell her she wasn’t a monster, but Max was the one who told her she was human, hence the “Am I your pet?” line. Max showed her the world, how to discover what she liked, how to let go of all the stress and pressure and simply have fun, and most importantly, that El shouldn’t have to be afraid of what everyone else thought. They could be silly and weird together, simply because it made them happy. No one could control who they were or what they did, because they made their own rules in life. Max showed El that there was more to life than what everyone had been telling her. 

This opened the door to her realizing she didn’t need Mike. Mike was the first person to ever show genuine love and care for her (excluding Benny since he died so quickly) and she was attracted to that love. She spent her whole life being abused and scared of people, and couldn’t remember a time when she knew kids her own age. So to feel like she was loved and safe for the first time ever, of course she’d want to stay close to him. She spent that whole year thinking Mike was the person for her, because she wasn’t allowed to go out and discover who she was. Mike was all she really knew, other than couples she saw in soap operas and romance movies. Max was the very first person to say she didn’t have to be with Mike. We even saw El looked at a picture of Karate kid, showing that she was starting to show interest in people other than Mike. Her world was expanding outside of him for the first time. This was progress for her. Seeing the world outside of Mike meant she was discovering new interests, such as Wonder Woman, photo booths, shopping, games, and dressing up. She was learning about herself without him because she couldn’t do that while she was with him. 

El needs Mike in her life in order to have a happy ending, but they don’t have to be together for her story to have a satisfying end. El can have everything she ever wanted out of life without dating Mike, or anyone. 

#I love el #her story is so well done #I want to see her with a bunch of new hobbies at the end of the series #she just wants to try everything #Not a monster #el hopper #eleven #mike wheeler #byler #elmax #kali stranger things #the lost sister #milkdud bones #anti milkvan #platonic elmike #elmike

[alreadycrazystuff]

Is it just me that think Mike and Will talk about "what if they don't like the truth" is more for Mike and his relationship with Eleven than for Will?

I mean, it works for Will and his lack of interest in girls, but for Mike it works so much more.

Mike at S3 said "I love her and I can't lose her again", in front of other people, in front of his sister and i was okay with that. Then we have the final scene and she says "I love you too" (so that means she knew). Why bring this subject back on the S4?

The fact that has been years we've been talking that he didn't say "I love you" back in the moment that she declares herself, like??? I understand that it's not an easy thing and that he might have been confused or surprised but bring this discussion up again?

They're dating, and she was literally begging him to tell her he loved her. She was in pain. He was hurting her, HE DIDN'T EVEN WRITE IT IN THE LETTER, ON A FUCKING PAPER!!!!

And let's not forget that Eleven was begging for an "i love you" and only came later with her mother saying "i love you"!

Sometimes we expect love where it doesn't exist, it doesn't mean we are inept to be loved, to feel loved.

She expected a romantic love from Mike, but maybe the truth could be different, it doesn't mean he doesn't love her or doesn't CARE about her.

Let's think it's the first time a girl is interested in him, that declares to him, so it's amazing. She's beautiful, she has superpowers, his friends like her, it's all great. So why after all this time he still doesn't say he loves her? 🤔

It would be really dumb if after all of this he comes up with a monologue saying he loves her, and also every season or they're fighting or they're separated.

About the season 4, I was surprised that they brought Mike still not saying "I love you" to El. It would have been so much easier if they had used what Mike has said before in S3 and move on with the story. But why?

Why would it be hard to tell the truth? If the truth is that he loves her.......unless he doesn't.

There's no other explanation, he threw the last letter she wrote away, even though he knew he might never see her again. Weird.

Also, can we talk about Jopper and Lumax?

They didn't have a kiss, Jopper isn't even a couple yet but of course they like each other, Lumax broke up and even though they weren't together, they had important and romantic scenes.

And can we talk that Mike could have said something else instead of saying "I love you"? There are other ways of saying, of showing that he loves her, but he doesn't.

I'm still 100% sure on canon Byler, it might not be the way we think, but i still think it will happen.

I also don't think Will will confess 😅, maybe he will say or show that painting and maybe MAYBE we'll have more hints and Mike will realize that he doesn't love Eleven.

I hate an open ending but that's what I think will happen at the end of vol. 2. You know like, "are they 👀 you know 👀 in love 👀?"

And finally, what the fuck will happen on the S5? It feels like this season is the last. What will be the plot of the next one? It seems a bit repetitive yk.

Don't stop believing because of that leak. It's kind of ambiguous and vague. The ones we can't mention (melvins), interpret everything in their way, without seeing the details, parallels and stuff, like the airport scene. So everybody calm down!

There's still a lot to happen.

#so yes i believe we will not have canon gay Will in this season #i do believe in canon Byler #I still don't know how they're going to do it but I still believe #byler #will byers #mike wheeler #byler is endgame

[writingonesdreams]

Thoughts update

BOOKS: Ember Blade started great, I loved the parallels with the dictatorship regime, the divided society, the occupational forces and the choices of playing along and surviving vs rebelling and risking everything. Esp I loved the central duo of friends of course, but turns out one will die at the end and I hate it enough to refuse reading any further.

TV SERIES: The legal drama Suits is currently giving me everything I was looking for in all the bromancy fantasy books of the summer. Great great mentor/friendship, the protectiveness, Harvey is the coolest “I have no feelings but I'm fair ruthless ace” and Mike is the naive emotional genius getting invested into everybody. They make the best duo - Mike cares about people and finds unfairness and Harvey gets dragged along, cause he likes the kid and helps him win the case with his ruthless methods. Perfect. Also apparently pretending not to care, cause it's a weakness, behind a assured charming predatory smile, is still as addictive for me as it was 5 years ago.

AUS: have been doing Suits AUs for the last week, finally have lots new to think about! It kinda gets mixed with the Ukriane war, since I have been reading about it a lot as well, so Zephyr is either a soldier, or diplomat or lawyer trying to get more weapons and support from America, ach jaj.

SONGS: I'm missing new songs to listen to. Always get a crisis when I can't find new good songs to daydream to. Thank you for the playlist @sleepyowlwrites how did you know I would need it?

WRITING: I have realized I won't get the guilty pleasure scenes I want to read from anywhere else, but writing them (duh). I have collected some dialogue prompts for this purpose. But then @tryingtimi and @ren-c-leyn encourage me with writing the "official" hurt/comfort scenes for Tears of Iron, so I have some on mind as well:

A dive into Hal's POV and some emotional comfort from Zephyr (that poor Sasuke never got)

The elemental fusion exam where the main trio turns into an element, but turning back and being human turns quite difficult and painful afterwards.

Still have the Soft secrets scene for Skye to dive into her concerns and insight of Zephyr

And the new character intro with Wolf and finally seeing some of the blow up Zephyr is heading towards

I’m having a bit of a crisis of realizing for the first time this summer that I didn’t enjoy the fantasy elements as much as I usually do. They actually felt like a waste of time? Like there wasn’t much to take away from it. Really interested in wars, dictatorships and regimes right now, with the rising threat of everything. Maybe it’s time to get back to other genres again. I do want my happy endings and true friendships and loyalties though - not likely to find those there. 

#writeblr #spilled ink #writer things #thoughts update

[beepboop358]

My Byler theories/predictions for S4

Since s4 is already confirmed to not be the last season, I don’t think Byler will officially get together in s4. I do think that we are definitely going to get a large amount of Byler’s development in s4 though, we just aren’t at the finish line yet. Since Byler has been being developed all through each of the seasons, I think the writers are playing the long game with Mike and Will. I really appreciate a queer romance that is so well developped, especially in something so popular! I think the season will end on a note where it’s understood what Mike has been struggling with, It’s made known that Will is gay, and that Mike has feelings for Will, and Will has feelings for Mike.

My predictions/theories for Byler in s4:

Mike might be acting a little off at school and Dustin is going to notice his odd behavior and ask what’s up

I think Mike will be getting in trouble at school and at home (based on whenever he doesn’t have Will/El around he does stupid things - like graffitti the bathroom wall, plagiarize essays, curse at adults, etc.) I don’t know if Mike knows about Eddie dealing drugs, but he might and he might get drugs from Eddie and do them to cope with everything he is struggling with. His parents might ground him for doing drugs, and forbid him from going to visit the Byers, and then we could get our runaway smalltown boy montage! LOL

Lonnie might come to visit the Byers in California for Will’s birthday. He will probably show up because he thinks they have money now, or he wants to sue Starcourt like he wanted to sue the quarry in s1. Mike will also be there visiting for Will’s birthday. Lonnie will mock Will and make fun of him like he always did, but he will also hate Mike. Lonnie will definitely notice Will and Mike’s dynamics and he will definitely comment about it. He might even call them homophobic slurs like we know he used to do with Will when he was younger. Lonnie will probably make Will cry and Mike upset. Lonnie might possibly “out” him and Mike before they are out and confirm it themselves. Some of the movies on the stranger writers twitter for s4 also hint at this, as well as having the baseball references. There are also hints to Will’s birthday throughout the show: The rainbow happy birthday mug seen in the crazy together scene, the “sorry i forgot your birthday card” in Will’s room from Lonnie, and Joyce’s speech in the shed discussing Will’s 8th birthday and his “rainbow ship”. Jonathan also mentions how Lonnie made him kill a rabbit on his 10th birthday and he cried for a week after, just more hints that if Lonnie shows up for Will’s bday, it’s gonna be bad.

Mike might get Will a watch for his birthday. This would reference the clocks being central to the s4 plot, and “not wanting things to change/turning back the clock” in Hopper’s letter

Will is being homophobically bullied at his new school again, possibly references to Will having HIV/AIDS because the height of the epidemic was in the 80’s and it was very stigmatized

Mike will call Will more than he will call El. Will might be slightly surprised by this, El’s frequent calling will annoy Mike and he might turn off his walkie talkie. (basically the reverse of what Mike said would happen in the s3 ending mileven scene)

Mike and Will will be in the same location for most of the season, like s2. They will not leave each other’s sides for the majority of the time they are together.

S4 Group Predictions:

- El, Will, Mike trio together with Jonathan and Argyle. (we will get some obvious tension between El, Will, and Mike, and Mike will hate Argyle at first)

- Robin, Steve, Erica, Max, Dustin, Lucas, Vickie, Eddie, Nancy

- Joyce, Murray, etc?

- Hopper and the other Russians (Dimitri, etc)

The rift between Mike and El will continue to grow.

When Mike comes to visit, she will notice he seems much more interested in Will.

El will ask why the bullies call Will those things (queer/fairy/gay/homo, probably f slurs too), what it means and if he really is “a queer”.

I don’t know if Will is going to come out to El. They have never interacted before, and I doubt Will trusts her or really likes her much mainly, because of Mike. Unless they get super close during the time not portrayed on screen between s3 and s4, or by being all each other has in California, I don’t know if  he will come out to El. I could see this going either way depending on how their friendship develops. I definitely do not think Will is going to tell El he likes Mike, even if he does confide in her he is gay. I think she will find out eventually but in some other way, probably just from Mike’s behavior towards Will.

El will eventually realize she doesn’t actually love Mike and let go of the ‘romance’ aspect of their bond, but still highly value him as a friend.

Mike might be called homophobic slurs at school as well. Mike will definitely be teased (regardless of his sexuality) because he is in the hellfire club and since satanic panic is sweeping the town, people look at D&D as if it is a satanic game, and he will be teased because of that.

Based on the leaked bts pics, I have a theory a cheerleader, or someone else, might show interest in Mike.  Mike will not reciprocate and she will call him out for it asking why he doesn't like her because “any other guy at this school would” or something like that, maybe even ask “what are you gay or something”. It would certainly be good for Mike’s narrative but idk if it will happen.

Will may confide in Jonathan about his feelings for Mike and the things the bullies say to him at school. Jonathan will be supportive of Will, as will Joyce. I think he will also try to protect Will from Lonnie and they will both defend Will to Lonnie.

I think we need a scene of Mike with his Mom telling him to follow his heart, like who you like, etc. because life is too short to waste it being miserable or something like that. This could be inspired by Mike’s parents seperating, but idk. This could also encourage Mike to initiate more romantic things with Will.

I would love to get a scene of Will confronting Mike for “Joining another party”, after Will said he wouldn’t.

Will and Mike need to discuss what was said in their fight.

I think since Mike's been holding in a lot of turmoil and struggling with his sexuality for so long we might get a small breakdown scene from him, of him telling Will he’s really sorry for how he treated him last summer, and for all the things he said to Will. Mike will profusely apologize and also hint at how he’s confused and been dealing with a lot.

I think Mike will be the first one to break down and confess he has feelings for Will and has been struggling with coming to terms with his sexuality.

Once Will has confirmation Mike is also struggling with his sexuality, Will might come out to him. I would love for him to reference the fight being like “You were right. I don’t like girls.” (from @itsonlystrange ‘s 4x07 byler script it’s so good!) I don't know if Will will confess he likes Mike to his face or not. I don't think it's likely given how shy Will is and how afraid he is of Mike not reciprocating, but who knows.

Mike may initiate a kiss between him and Will - towards the end of the season probably (eyewitness parallel - explained in my byler proof google slides)

I think Mike and Will might write letters to each other, with some love-y connotations. There is a lot of evidence for this in the canon comics of them writing notes to each other, and that cryptic tweet from stranger writers twitter with a blocked out message and the date Will went missing saying it wasn’t about a couple or hopper. Maybe byler related? This tweet may not be a letter but it might be. The most popular theories are that the message is to Will, “love mike”, which I love. https://twitter.com/strangerwriters/status/1184945905973153792?lang=en

Will has a new haircut (bts pics) and Mike will gush over it. Maybe some gay-panicking too hopefully

I think El will be either physically or at least emotionally distant the entire season from the other kids (again following the pattern of even and odd seasons) El needs some personal development this season, since she didn’t get any in s3.

El might confront Mike and ask if he is gay and if he likes Will, which could be El’s motivation to go off on a journey of her own to learn more about her own life. I don’t think it will be a huge fight, but El might make some references to him always lying to her. I think Mike might just kind of try to talk his way out of it at first, but he will eventually break. This might be a two part discussion and Mike doesn’t admit she is right until later. I don’t think it makes sense for El to be heartbroken (explained in my byler proof slides), just slightly annoyed. This is based off of the movie Tootsie which they borrowed the “gift” idea from in s3 already. In the movie, the girlfriend then after receiving the gift asks “Michael” if he is gay.

I really think eventually El will realize it’s okay because she doesn’t love him romantically either, and once she realizes that her own personal development can really begin.

I think we will see a noticeable change in Mike’s demeanor. I think Mike will mainly just be trying to hide that he is gay now. He joined the hellfire club so we know he’s playing d&d again meaning he is reverting back to his true self, not the weird act he put on in s3 trying to be straight and change himself. He is still struggling, but he knows he likes Will. Regardless that doesn’t mean he is going to be super clear about how he feels. He is going to be extremely afraid of opening up and then getting hurt by Will. He will probably do some of his usual ‘lead Will on and then shut it down’ thing. And I really want Will to call him out on this. This could also lead to Mike breaking down in front of Will and confessing. I think we are going to get a lot of 'Mike gay panicking' moments, he's going to be extremely afraid of being found out/suspected.

Byler things I really want to happen that we may get because they would have narrative significance:

I really want flashbacks to those 3 months of summer between the starcourt explosion and the Byers moving, of moments between Mike and Will when they hang out alone together, with some obvious romantic tension. Like where they are super playful and almost kiss, or they are kind of touchy, or something in the realm of that. I think we need a flashback of something that explains Will’s flirty nature at the very end of s3 with Mike, because he doesn't normally act like that. I want noticeable “is something going on with them?” vibes. This could also happen during the thanksgiving/christmas flashbacks.

I hope we get flashbacks of Mike going to the Byers for Thanksgiving, and the Byers coming back to Hawkins for Christmas. Preferably of some Mike and Will moments that hint at Mike’s confusion or how he feels “so alone” without Will, maybe with some “crazy together” references too! I’d also love some tension between the 3 of them, maybe this is when El starts to get suspicious of Mike liking Will.

Hopefully we get some shots of Mike biking past the byers old house and going to look at castle byers and reminiscing.

I’d love to get a flashback of Mike the day the Byers moved away, of him crying or being upset, alone in his room/basement while looking at Will’s drawings or pictures of Will and him together. Mainly to confirm for people that Mike was upset about Will moving, not as much El.

This one does not seem super probable, but it is a very popular theory. Idk if it’s possible because of location logistics, but if they spend enough time together, I’d love for Mike to get to know Robin better, and Will too. Maybe once everyone comes together at the end of the season, she will notice their dynamics and could help guide and inspire them to be themselves. Hey maybe thats for s5 :) But I do think it’s a possibility that Mike may work at the video store with Steve and Robin, and she will pick up on Mike’s behavior and understand, whether she communicates that to him or not.

#byler #byler theory #byler is endgame #byler rights #byler is real #byler analysis #byler is canon #byler depression #byler prediction #byler obsessed #will byers #mike wheeler #eleven #joyce byers #stranger things theory #stranger things #stranger things 4 #st4 #st4 theory #st4 speculation #st4 spoilers #byeler #byler st4 #st #byler speculation #mike x will #mike wheeler is gay #will byers is gay

[lesbianrobin]

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

[kaypeace21]

I believe that byler is an endgame

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also build up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#byler #anti mileven #byeler #stranger things

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, so here we go!  Chapter 1 of “No Regrets”!  

There’s a few things I want to point out about this chapter, because both visually and textually, we get a lot of information about the Underground and Levi, and his relationship with Isabel and Furlan.  So I’ll just go through it.

The first thing that really caught my attention for this chapter was the opening page, which is a retrospective shot of Levi after he’s joined the SC, thinking about how he can’t ever know what the results of his choices are going to be.  He says here “I trusted in my own strength... I trusted in the decisions of comrades who had earned my faith...”  And this quote from Levi is really important in later understanding why he makes the choice he does, at the end.  He says he trusted in the decisions of comrades who had earned his faith, and that tells us that Levi believes in Furlan and Isabel, that he believes in their strength and their capability, that he believes in them enough to let them choose for themselves and trust in their judgement.  We’ll obviously delve more into this as it becomes more relevant to the story.  But moving on...

The next thing to catch my attention is the panels of the Underground we see.  These are probably the best shots of this place we get in the whole series, as it really depicts a place that is totally run down and dilapidated, with buildings falling apart and crumbling in disrepair, filth ridden streets with literal sewage water coming out of drain pipes, and a actual cave cover overhead, complete with stalactites, blocking out all sunlight except for few and far between pockets which break through holes in the rock ceiling.  The most telling panels though are the ones which depict the violence and poverty of the place.  We see a panel of a homeless man passed out on the street, painfully thin looking, and under him, two men in a fight, one beating the other violently.  And the next panel shows us a little girl, sitting barefoot on the ground between two men who have just blown each other’s brains out with guns.  Truly, this is a violent, dark, poverty-stricken place that breeds crime and depravation.  The pages before this say that BECAUSE of the splendor of the Capital city above the Underground, this place exists, and that’s accurate.  Because of the excesses and decadence of the rich and well off above these people rejected by society, that means fewer resources for the less fortunate.  It’s truly tragic.  

Alright, now I just want to move on to some small, but telling moments here while Levi and the others are being chased by Erwin and his crew.  

When Isabel is bragging about how the MP’s never learn, referring to how they’ll never be able to catch their gang, she asks Levi if what she said was cool.  Levi tells her “Don’t be stupid.”  This might seem like Levi just blowing her off, but the way I read it, it seems more to me like Levi is warning her not to be cocky, not to be over confident, because that’s the kind of thing that can get you killed, or caught.  Big Bro indeed!   We also see how mindful Levi is here as a leader, when he tells them they can’t afford to lead the soldiers following them straight to their hideout, and clearly they have a plan in place for just this sort of thing.

More importantly, Levi is fast to realize these aren’t ordinary soldiers after them, which shows his great instincts, but what’s really interesting is his internal thoughts here.  His logic is telling him regular MP’s wouldn’t work this hard to catch them, and that their skill with the ODM means they must be SC.  But Levi doesn’t really believe it which, given what we later find out about the deal with Lobov, and Lobov warning them of Erwin’s plans, tells us that Levi never really believed the SC would come after them.  He’s clearly surprised here.

Further, after informing Isabel and Furlan and confirming his suspicions, he tells Furlan that he’s got no intention of getting mixed up with “these guys”.  This tells us Levi never wanted to go through with Furlan’s plans, never wanted to join the SC, never wanted anything to do with any of it.  There’s further evidenced in this very chapter, which I’ll get to in a moment.  But it tells us a lot about the dubious feelings Levi had from the start, and how he probably would have simply been happiest to stay in the Underground with his friends, even though it was a hard life.  

Alright, so, this next part is a big deal, and it’s an overlooked detail which speaks volumes about the kind of person Levi is.  I didn’t even notice this the first time I read it, so I want to talk about it.  Levi separates from Isabel and Furlan, and takes Erwin and Mike on a wild chase through the back alley’s and narrow passages of the slums.  He really tries to give them the run around here, until he flips over a door, into another area.  What’s really important here is Levi’s dialog.  He says first “... Lost ‘em, huh?”  And then he says, “That got a little crazy...  I hope... none of them crashed.”  This is kind of amazing.  Levi is showing actual concern for the two soldiers who’d just attempted to catch him and his friends, who were doggedly pursuing them with obviously bad intentions of some kind.  And Levi, after having to resort to some serious ODM skills to shake them, says he hopes that none of them crashed.  He doesn’t want Erwin or Mike to get hurt, he just wants to get away from them.  Considering he doesn’t know either of them at this point, they’re just nameless, faceless military dogs trying to mess things up for him, that shows remarkable character.  

Of course, things go downhill from there, when Mike crashes through the door and tackles him.  All bets are off then, because Levi’s life is now in danger, and when that happens, he’ll resort to physical force.  Still, he only throws Mike off of him and once again attempts to get away, only for it to be Erwin who swoops down and cuts Levi’s cables.  This was actually really dangerous.  Given Levi’s momentum and position, he crashes hard into a nearby wall before falling to the ground.  So we already see some of that ruthlessness from Erwin here.  Of course, that spurs Levi into violence himself.  I have no doubt that when Levi lunges for Erwin and knocks his blade away, bringing his knife to his neck, he truly intended to kill him in that moment.  Levi’s compassion for these soldiers can only go so far, considering the desperation of his own circumstances.  If Mike hadn’t been there to stop it, I think Levi probably would have ripped Erwin’s jugular right out, and that would have been that, lol.  And then, it’s important to note too WHY Levi stops.  Not because Mike was able to physically restrain him, but because he tells Levi to look around himself, directing his attention to the fact that Furlan and Isabel have been caught.  That immediately stays Levi’s hand, and once again, we’re shown how Levi puts the wellbeing of his friends above himself.  He could have ditched Furlan and Isabel right then and there and escaped on his own.  Instead, he allows himself to be restrained and cuffed.  He refuses to abandon them.

Now the next scene is hugely important to a lot of stuff.

Erwin’s got Levi and his friends down on their knees, in the sewage, questioning them about their ODM skills, and the three of them stay silent, obviously defiant.  We really get a good look at Erwin’s abilities as a manipulator here.

He’s pulling the whole good cop/bad cop routine on Levi, when he tells him “I’d like to avoid any rough treatment if I can” before looking to Mike in a clear signal for Mike to pretty damn violently tear Levi’s head back by his hair before smashing his face into the sewage on the ground.  And this really IS sewage.  It’s not mud.  If you look at the panels, we see this brown muck coming out of drain pips attached to the surrounding buildings.  This water is probably, literally, dirty with feces, and Erwin has Mike put Levi’s face in this and hold it there.  Now let’s remember something important about Levi.  He’s a clean freak.  He obviously cares deeply about keeping both himself and his environment clean.  Erwin couldn’t know this about him at the time, but nobody of course would be happy about having their face shoved into literal shit.  But for Levi, I can only imagine this had to be tantamount to a kind of torture.  Erwin keeps questioning him, looking down at him without any kind of emotion, and Levi remains stubbornly silent, despite how awful this must truly be for him.  We get a close up of Levi’s eye in one of the panels, paralleled with Erwin’s own, and Levi’s expression really strikes me as one of awful humiliation.  He goes from looking up at Erwin in rage, to looking away, staring straight ahead, while Erwin keeps looking down at him.

Still, Levi says nothing, and it’s Isabel who finally cracks, telling Erwin that they didn’t learn to use ODM from anyone, with Furlan further explaining that they taught themselves as a means of survival.  He remarks that “anyone who doesn’t know what sewage tastes like couldn’t understand!”.  Clearly, both of them are really upset to see this being done to Levi, and I have to imagine it’s at least in part because they know how awful an experience this has to be for him, given that they know how much he desires to stay clean.  Their shocked expressions when Mike first pushes Levi’s face into the sewage says as much too.

But still, Levi remains silent as Erwin then demands to know Levi’s name.  What Mike does to Levi in the next panel is even worse.  He pushes his face into the sewage and holds him there until Levi literally starts to choke in it, for long enough that, when he finally does pull him up, Levi is gasping for breath.  I really don’t see people talk enough about this scene, but, well...

It’s a torture scene.  Erwin is ordering Mike to torture Levi here.  It may not be the most extreme form of torture, it isn’t the type of physical violence we typically think of when we think of torture, but that’s what it is.  It’s causing Levi both physical and mental degradation, as well as physical distress.  

Even with this though, Levi’s still silent and refuses to answer Erwin at all.  

It’s only when Erwin literally threatens the lives of Furlan and Isabel that he finally talks.  This is such an important detail.  Levi was willing to take what to him must have been truly horrific treatment, but as soon as Erwin gives the signal to the other two Scouts who have hold of his friends, we see Levi’s expression shift from defiant rage to wide eyed fear as they put their blades to Furlan’s and Isabel’s throats.  

Finally Levi talks, calling Erwin a “bastard”, to which Erwin simply asks him again what his name is, and after a slight hesitation, Levi finally gives it.  

I think this entire scene is vital in understanding WHY Levi was so violently pissed at Erwin, to the point of wanting to kill him.

I think it’s a combination of both the humiliation and torture he puts Levi through here, and, worse still, the fact that he threatens Isabel and Furlan’s lives.  Levi already feels looked down upon by Erwin here, he already feels humiliated and embarrassed and as though he’s being treated like he’s worthless, because Erwin IS treating him like that here.  All while Erwin stands there, expressionless, making statements like he doesn’t want to have to use any rough treatment, etc... while at the same time ordering Mike to do just that.  Already, Erwin is sending Levi the message that he’s a liar and a manipulator who thinks nothing of putting another human being’s face in shit.  And then, to top that off, he shows Levi that he’s willing to hurt, maybe even kill, his two friends to get what he wants.

Is it any wonder Levi hated Erwin as much as he did at the beginning?  After a lifetime in the Underground where, from the time of his birth, he had to deal with him and those he cares about being treated like worthless trash.  It would be a miracle if Levi DIDN’T want to kill Erwin at this point.  To have to then submit to him willingly, after all of that, must have been beyond humiliating for him.

Erwin continues to be manipulative here too, when after Levi gives his name, Erwin’s attitude suddenly shifts, and he smiles at Levi and gets down on one knee with him, in the filth, his entire demeanor seeming to shift into an abruptly friendly one as he offers his deal to Levi.  Again, that whole good cop/bad cop thing.  At the same time, he continues to threaten Levi by telling him if he refuses his offer, he’ll hand them all over to the MP’s and that, given their crimes, they shouldn’t expect to be treated with any kind of decency.  What’s kind of funny about this statement from Erwin is that up until now, Erwin and Mike have done anything but treat Levi decently. 

Okay, one more important point to make about this chapter, and it goes back to what I said earlier about Levi not wanting anything to do with the SC, and how that tells us Levi really didn’t want to go through with Furlan’s plans.

After Erwin makes his offer, we see Levi look over at Furlan, who’s giving him an intent look, and in the next panel, we see an almost surprised, or astonished look on Levi’s face, like he can’t believe Furlan is asking him to do this, before he grits his teeth in obvious frustration, and then accepts Erwin’s offer to join the SC.  What this tells us is that Levi only takes Erwin’s offer because Furlan wanted him to.  Because this was all part of Furlan’s plan, to go through with Lobov’s commission, to get caught by the SC, etc...  It’s clear Levi never wanted this, and he’s upset at having to do it.  But the fact he agrees after looking over at Furlan and seeing him implore Levi with his eyes tells us, once again, that Levi is willing to sacrifice his own desires for the desires of others.  That being his two friends.

For them, he’ll join the Survey Corps, even as every one of his instincts is probably screaming at him that this is a bad idea.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the first chapter of “No Regrets”.  There’s a lot more to unpack in this manga than I think people realize.  I hope whoever took the time to read my long ass post found it at least a little worth while.  I’ll be moving on to chapter two next!

#shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #No Regrets #acwnr #Levi Ackerman #Furlan Church #isabel magnolia #meta #snk analysis

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

How do you think the Will and the rest would react finding out Will made the upside down? I feel like they are going to feel betrayed and say heartbreaking things to him and Will might have immense self hatred.

I don’t think betrayal would be accurate. I think there might be some confusion, fascination, and fear. It’d be hard to see any of them outright blaming Will for it, especially given that he suffered from it more than anyone else. I can speculate as to some character-specific reactions.

Dustin would be curious and fascinated. He’d think it’s the most amazing scientific discovery ever, and he’d be thrilled to be connected to it. I think he’d just have a million questions for Will. I imagine Will would feel a bit overwhelmed by Dustin’s interest in it, though. He’s never really liked talking about it, except maybe with Mike.

Lucas might be the harshest, at least relative to the others. It might mirror his initial distrust of El. Lucas is a guy who prides himself on having control of a situation and having the answers. He doesn’t like it when things just don’t make sense, possibly owing to the fact that he tends to be the most down to Earth. He may be afraid of what Will may do, resulting in him needing some time and/or prodding to come around (just as he did with El). He might say something insensitive, but he’ll apologize when he’s reminded that it’s still Will.

El would likely understand the most. As stated above, she experienced being feared by her friends. It further builds on their existing parallels and gives them something besides Mike to bond over. Whether they’re two aspects of the same person, twins separated at birth, or whatever, they’re connected for a reason, yet we haven’t seen anything come of it after three seasons.

Joyce would be frightened for Will, not of him. She just wants all of this to be over for his sake. She may even feel guilt over him suffering so much that he unwittingly created a horror realm. Similarly, Jonathan would just want to protect him, and he similarly may feel guilty if he ends up thinking he could have prevented it all.

Mike would likely be in awe, but also be heartbroken. He loves Will unconditionally, even if he forgot that for a time, and it will hurt him to realize that Will has been in pain even longer than previously thought. It might be a good opportunity for a callback to “crazy together.” He’d feel very responsible for helping Will through this tough time, even though he’d be as clueless as ever on how to do it.

Will’s own reaction would be the most interesting to me. I can see him being crippled by guilt. He already blamed himself for a lot of what happened due to his possession. I can only imagine how guilty he’d feel if he found out that the Upside Down and everything in it was a manifestation of his own mind. It’s his own reaction that will be harshest of all.

#stranger things #will byers

[smugbugunderarug]

Smug Bug Reads: Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic #13

         Double Trouble introduces yet another villainous look-alike for Sonic... however, instead of originating from an opposite yet parallel dimension or from the lab of Dr. Robotnik, he comes from a power up most would expect to aid you instead of have a grudge against you...

         Script: Mark Millar          Art: Mike Hadley          Lettering: Ellie de Ville

         The first panel shows Tails losing his football (or his soccer ball, Americans) in a cluster of bushes whilst playing around in Emerald Hill. While rummaging about the foliage, he comes across what most fans that have played Sonic the Hedgehog can easily recognize -

         - one of these things. You’ve seen this before, right? An extra life tv box, a one-up, whatever you wanna call it. These are good things. Grab them when you can. They come in handy.          Now what Tails found doesn’t look quite as harmless.

         Granted, compared to Shadow or Metal Sonic, this “Sonic” does look a bit like the real deal (at this first glance close-up, anyways). He gives this story to Tails about how Robotnik trapped him in the T.V. box (later we find that that’s not entirely false) and that he had to press the button in order to get him out. Tails, completely falling for it, does as he says. The button is pressed, and “Extra Life” is free.

         I’m going to be honest, when I first saw this dude’s design, I thought of the werehog mixed with Classic Sonic. I still see it!          The shredded looking ears, particularly prickly spikes, harshly angled nose, sharp gaze, and spiked teeth are the details that separate this fake from the hero (at first, I thought he looked greyer than Sonic did, but later on when the two share a panel, both share the same blue). Tails is knocked out, and Extra Life is free to cause havoc.

         Close by, critters from the resistance are building a hideout in Emerald Hill that could hopefully keep them safe from Robotnik. It’s good to see them finally take some action in a sense; they havent done much except follow Sonic around, be saved by him, or be held captive by Robotnik and his creations. Now (or in this issue anyway) they’re actively helping out the... well, I guess you could call it the war effort. It’s good to see that!          But anyways, guess who’s headed their way...          Extra Life sees the group with their unfinished hideout and doesn’t hesitate to undo almost all their labor (while hurting and endangering a lot of them in the process).

         I really gotta wonder how fast one has to go in order to set fire to the forest. Like... dang. Well, it’s clear now that Extra Life can rival Sonic’s speed, so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that they’re equal in ability.          The critters believe that Sonic was the one who torched their hard work, and frankly, that wouldn’t be a bad assumption for them to make based off of appearances alone (however, by now they should know that although Sonic can be a jerk, he’s not villainous in behavior). Since Extra Life was practically speeding through the destruction, chances are none of them got a good look at him. A blue blur alone must have been enough to pin the blame on the hedgehog... but not the one they originally assumed.

        Although much damage is done, the real Sonic steps in to combat the fake. Since Sonic had the element of surprise, he found himself with the upper hand against Extra Life, and managed to send him flying out of sight... but then, the critters arrive.

        Sonic tries to explain that he wasn’t the one who trashed their efforts, but they deem him too dangerous and want him banished. I think maybe that was perhaps a bit too much and a bit too fast to do, especially after knowing what Sonic is really like (even with the more often than not sour attitude).          Anyways, unintentionally proving Sonic’s claim, Extra Life jumps back into their fight. The critters now realize he was telling the truth after narrowly dodging the storming fake.

         In the distance, Tails finally wakes up from being knocked out by Extra Life, and sees the terror going on further off. Picking up the T.V., he makes his way towards the scene...          Meanwhile, Extra Life seems to be winning against his brawl with Sonic,,,

         If Extra Life doesn’t fair well with a surprise attack, it would make sense that Sonic wouldn’t either.          We do have an origin story for Extra Life, anyway, so that’s neat. It really makes me wonder how long ago the doc turned evil if Extra Life was stuck there for years... So he was probably created some time after Sonic got his super speed, but before the incident happened with Kintobor, but that’s not really a time span that’s been explained in detail just yet. So yeah, really gotta wonder how long he was stuck in there for...          Another thing... how would the box work? Or rather, how was it intended to work? Was he really supposed to be just a “helping hand”? Not something that could revive Sonic if he died or was on the brink of death? Or maybe a more morbid idea; a replacement if the real Sonic truly died??? How does he know about all these things that happened anyways? He knew about Tails towards the beginning of the issue, and he knew about Kintobor going bad... he couldn’t escape his confines, and assuming they’re following game cannon at the time he should have been created before Sonic 1, so how’d he know about these things?          Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway since Tails comes in to set things right and save Sonic... wait... did I read that right? Yes! It’s time for Tails to save the day (woot woot)! He doesn’t do much, but not much needs to be done. All he needs to do is point the telly to the fake, press the button, and presto! The doppelganger is back in his digital cage.

         is this a jojo reference? Well, that’s the end of that. I doubt we will see Extra Life again since he was booted to the cosmos, but after all the trouble he caused, I don’t think they much care. After that, the critters apologize to Sonic for accusing him so quickly, and then the issue ends right there with all of them staring into the sky above.

         I can’t help but feel just a bit bad for Extra Life. The dude was created and (appears to be) sentient, but was kept trapped in a box against his will for years. He probably grew bitter over all that time. It’s not entirely explained why he turned bad since he was created with good intentions, but being abandoned for so long... probably was a main reason why. While this serves as an explanation for all the ruckus he caused, it’s still not an excuse. I guess banishment a la space is what was in store for him, but still... can’t help but feel bad...

         TL;DR: don’t do 1-ups, kids.

#smugbugreviewsathing #localbugreads #sonic the hedgehog #fleetway sonic #sonic the comic #sonic the comic issue 13 #tails the fox #miles tails prower #extra life #johnny lightfoot #porker lewis #sonic #dr robotnik #dr ovi kintobor #1/25/2021

[charlieslowartsies]

Director’s commentary on Freddy's realization that Vanessa is him back under the control of King? That's one of my new favorite scenes!

Ohh that's a fun one!

That scene was planned as early as Mike and Vanessa meeting in chap 9 of Lies Within. Quite often I get into this grove where I let the characters talk (or in Mike's case, he rambles) and then I go back later and either fluff up or trim the fat where needed.

Mike mentions that Freddy would like Vanessa, and later it struck me how interesting a statement that was to explore. What it could mean. It's no mystery Freddy has little patience for Adults, but as cold as he comes across, he also happens to care really deeply, sometimes a little too much, and I think it comes across at first glance as too stern, no fun, and old fashioned.

Freddy points out that Vanessa cares a lot too. Like himself, she wants to fix and run it all solo. He saw in her the same mindset all the way back in Devil's Spine, when he thought Max had betrayed and hurt them, and he thought the Purple Man's nephew was no good either. Freddy also didn't trust Marion much either, especially when he selected Schmidt as the next night guard to trust with the restaurant's secrets.

I wanted Freddy to be that way. He's kept his no-nonsense attitude but he's gotten a lil softer over the years--learning that outsiders and strangers are not all bad. I like seeing if characters can grow when faced against the narrative, or their own consequences. There's also the good old butterfly effect going on. If Danny hadn't brought Freddy with him, Freddy wouldn't have met Vanessa, and offered her some serious support she'll need especially in the last few chapters. His words are meant to be a catalyst for her as much as Mike's convos with her planted seeds.

Mike's initial comment on the two of them flowered into something further in my notes, and I realized the natural progression I wanted to push was 'new pizzeria, new night guard' while still leaning into the fact that the mall CANNOT be run by one person, or even one person with something strong as Marion. So, new security guardS. Max is obviously the other natural choice, but I didn't want him to be alone either.

Mike's story is narrowing to a close, shifting into the backdrop, but Max and Vanessa's stories are still being told, or still need to be told. Gregory's as well. One of Lies Within's themes is "when life gets us down, a friend will be there to pick us back up." Freddy seemed like a good character to fill that hole Ness in my story seems to need, especially with how Henry explains his personality in Last Shift.

Vanessa (and even Gregory, too) are the 'i don't need no one' characters that are learning to let others in--(And also meant to parallel Max and Scrap who walk in as nearly one person because they're THAT close, and their closeness is what's keeping the mall from collapsing fully into the Virus's control.) Ofc Ness is valid in her concern, since she let Glitchtrap in and got burned for it badly, but trauma can be healed too. Sitting and festering in it, she'd become like Freddy Fazbear. And he doesn't want to see that happen to her.

#kga #ask #answered

[lovedsammy]

All right. I’ve seen El Camino twice now because the first time I was way too emotional to really give my thoughts on it. The second time around, I really got to think about the movie as a whole. And I really, really loved it. 9/10 for me.

I love that this movie centers not just on Jesse, but those who’ve shaped him as the man he’s become by the end of the movie. Those people being Walt, Mike, Jane, Brock, and unfortunately Todd and his gang. The movie’s premise was about an abused man trying to escape the horrors he’s suffered and get to freedom. That was it. Would I have liked to have seen more? Hell yes. But then we’d have a 4+ hour movie (something I’d be okay with tbh) but just seeing the end to Jesse’s story was enough for me.

- I loved that Jesse’s PTSD wasn’t brushed aside. While it became less apparent throughout the movie, the implication is still there that Jesse is both literally and emotionally scarred for life. He’s going to have days where his torture breaks him. He’s going to take a long time to heal, if he ever does. But we’re left with hope that he’s going to be okay.

- Speaking of the PTSD, the abuse Jesse suffered was.... horrendous. The dark scares him. Hot showers are a trigger because he was subject to water torture. He has scars on his back from having to run around the lab with a harness strapped to his back yanking him painfully back and forth while his captors laugh. And I’m sure there’s a hell of a lot more that we didn’t see. But we didn’t need to. It was awful enough. I was crying so much seeing those scenes and didn’t know how I was going to get through the first 10 minutes at first. I kept pausing because I was crying too much. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to handle the entire movie if it was like that. Luckily it wasn’t.

- The ending was perfect and everything I wanted. He’s free, in Alaska, away from the horror of it all and able to be his own man. He can live in peace and quiet and try live a semblance of a normal life. Seeing his content smile at the end vs the erratic, crying/screaming reaction in Felina.. it was a striking parallel. Jesse was free in Felina, but only physically. This movie was him being free in every sense of the word.

- The plot, while not overly riveting, does just what it needs to. Jesse needs money. How does he get that? He remembers where Todd had it, because Todd was so careless to show Jesse his apartment. Todd didn’t think Jesse would ever try and escape and would never succeed in doing so. He could tell Jesse because Jesse was an obedient pet and wouldn’t go anywhere. All the while Jesse is trying to evade not just the police, but also the last of his kidnappers. The scene where he realizes the two weren’t cops and instead were working for Todd was nerve-wracking. Especially the one guy who built his literal shackles. He had to escape from that guy, too. Not just Todd and Jack’s gang.

- The shootout was badass. Jesse didn’t want to kill anymore but he had no choice if he wanted to be really free. Killing them was him killing the last of his demons.

- I LOVE the fact that it was Mike who made the Alaska suggestion. Jesse went there as one last attempt to honor Mike. Their relationship is one of my fave things about the show and I love that we see how Mike shaped Jesse. In the shootout scene, Jesse was very reminiscent of Mike, too.

- Jesse choosing to remember Walt as the kind family man who wanted him to go to college and not the asshole he became and tearing up at hearing his death... kill me. How is this boy still so empathetic and forgiving even after everything he’s been through? I don’t think he forgave Walt, not really, but he’s choosing to remember him in a better light and that speaks volumes about Jesse’s character.

- Seeing Jane again was so emotional, especially while Jesse is driving to freedom in Alaska. He’s taking her advice and going where he chooses to. He’s making his own way, his own path. Very fitting since the title “El Camino” can translate to “the path” or “the way.”

- I actually like that Ed (the disappearer) made Jesse work for his 2nd chance, even if it was frustrating. He wanted to see how badly Jesse wanted this, and Jesse was determined. When Ed is reading Jesse’s letter to Brock at the end, I think he saw some of the pain that Jesse’s endured and realized he needed a fresh start more than anyone. Jesse earned it.

- the letter to Brock hurt me. That is all.

- Skinny Pete & Badger are the best friends Jesse could ever ask for. They were so gentle with him and empathized and really tried to help him. I love them so much for that.

For those of us that love Jesse, I feel this film was not only essential but healing. I loved it so much. I can’t wait to rewatch it more and more.

#brba #breaking bad #el camino #el camino spoilers #jesse pinkman

[willthecleric]

Why I am now 100% convinced that Mike is gay with internal homophobia, deeply in love with Will, and using Eleven as a projection

Okay, so before I start this post, I want to say that this isn’t just me being a mad Byler shipper angry about Mileven. This is me looking at subtext within the show (and especially S3) and analyzing from there. I’ve done a lot of rewatching certain scenes and looking into things deeper. I’ve also discussed quite a bit of this stuff with @kaypeace21 and we agree on pretty much everything.

For the longest time I thought Mike was BISEXUAL with a crush on El, projecting it as being way more than it was (because the dude went from 0 to 60). S3... S3 convinced me that Mike is not bisexual after all... I am now 100% convinced that he is GAY and suffering from internal homophobia (seriously, looking at his actions in S3 puts his ‘oocness’ and over the top behaviour in S2 into a lot better perspective). WILL’S behaviour also makes a lot more sense when you look at him as being gay and deeply in love with Mike (I won’t get too much into that though, because most of the fandom already believes that he is gay and in love with Mike).

Before I go into things properly, I would like to say that I am not implying that Mileven doesn’t love each other... They do. What I feel is that they love each other PLATONICALLY (El might have a bit of a crush on Mike, but mostly I think she gets confused).

Season One

Okay, so there wasn’t a lot of Byler in S1 - it was more Mileven based, but still. There WAS Byler content there. To start with, I would like to say that... I don’t really buy Mike’s crush on El. It feels... weird and forced. It never really felt RIGHT to me, and I never really saw the chemistry. It was weird.

Now, a lot of people say that Mike wasn’t THAT determined to get Will back in S1... I disagree. I actually think that he and Joyce were the ones that were the most determined to get him back... in the sense that they NEVER GAVE UP ON HIM (Mike and Joyce are actually paralleled A LOT. Like... A LOT. When it comes to WILL - as in they BOTH LOVE HIM DEEPLY). MIKE was the one who organized the search party after Hopper told them not to. MIKE was the one who was most visibly upset when talking to Hopper in the first place (boy looked like he wanted to cry and seemed really annoyed by Lucas and Dustin bickering). MIKE was the one who noticed immediately when Will wasn’t at school and thought it was strange. MIKE also was the one who most adamantly denied that Will was dead. I don’t think he even processed his death tbh. His reaction was... weird. He seemed to be more mad at El for lying to him than sad that Will was gone. And we know Mike loves Will a lot so it’s not that he didn’t care. He cared A LOT. He just... could not process it properly. And then AFTER SEEING WILL’S BODY JUST BEFORE... he heard Will on the radio (with pretty bad reception) and IMMEDIATELY knew it was Will. Like... in no seconds flat he was alert. And that boy clung to the hope. He didn’t even think he was losing his mind or anything. He KNEW it was Will because he never processed that he was dead. He even said when he saw the body in the first place that it COULDN’T BE WILL.

Lucas was determined too and I give him lots of love for it... Dude is BRAVE and LOYAL and risked his life. But he also was way more accepting that Will was dead than Mike and Joyce.

And as far as Eleven in all this... Mike was IMMEDIATELY physically attracted to her. As soon as he saw her. While she not only looked like a BOY, but looked a lot like WILL. Seriously El and Will look similar! Hopper EVEN CONFUSED THEM FOR PART OF S1. That was deliberate I think, and clearly not because of Willel because Willel was never really developed. Mike only actually ADMITTED that she was pretty when she dressed like a girl, but he also started sending her heart eyes... like really quickly. When he barely knew her at all. It was... weird. And forced. I think he started seeing her as a projection for his love for Will (S3 strongly implies this to be the case). Naturally all of this was subconscious. Pretty much the whole series so far this boy is in denial. And a lot of people think Mike put El before Will... I disagree. Mike DID go to look for El, but keep in mind... EL COULD LOCATE WILL. At that point Mike was convinced he had a crush on her, but WILL was his priority. He KNEW El was crucial to finding Will. Think about this... they run charging into the gate... and end up in an Upside Down version of Hawkins with no real idea where Will is and a monster on the loose. Using El to find him was IMPORTANT. Notice how Mike was immediately back to wanting Will located as soon as she was with them again. How he wasn’t prioritizing her getting exhausted over her trying to find him. He even referred to her as someone they could use to find Will... multiple times. AND he told her that they could go to the Snow Ball when WILL WAS BACK. Mike didn’t forget about Will. Mike prioritized him! AND when they were in the hospital after Will was back... MIKE was the only person who was awake the whole time, eager to see Will, he was the first person in the room (that boy RAN and usually he can’t run for shit), and he put his head over his heart like he was checking he was still alive. People can interpret this as friendship... but I think S2 and S3 greatly contradicts this.

Season Two

I won’t touch upon this one too much, because it has been done to death... but this is the BYLER season. It was everywhere. And not in a platonic sense! Mike was... over the top protective of Will the entire time, and very affectionate. In ways that he is with no one else. I don’t think he ever was even like that with El. and there are SO MANY PARALLELS. With pretty much every ship that has been in the series. There are loads of examples. Most of the parallels were with Mileven... and I used to think that was a hint to Mike being bisexual... but now I think it is a hint to the LOVE TRIANGLE, not his sexuality. Mike was just... REALLY clingy to Will. He was basically attached to him the entire time AND they had a bunch of ‘romantic’ scenes.

Now, as far as El goes... Mike was WAY OVER THE TOP. Like... it was crazy. Very excessive (kind of like his behaviour in S3 but in a different way). At the end of S1 he was sad and missed her... but like a year later... he was... just  too much. He was OBSESSED with El. I always found it really weird. I get that they ‘connected’ but Mike was acting like she was everything he needed in life when he BARELY KNEW HER. And his never giving up on her? He called her every night and that is great. He is a loyal boy... but he did WAY MORE for Will in S1. Mike... thinks he sees her outside his window, but instead of looking for her in the woods (the logical place he could go, where he could find her), he mopes around and acts emo. When Will was in another dimension he did more. Also Mike heard Will on the radio and was right back into action... but he saw El and just thought he was being delusional. He also stopped calling her when Will was in trouble. I’m not saying this like Mike doesn’t care about El. I’m saying that Mike prioritizes Will when need be. He cared for El, but mostly she was someone who he could project his love for Will upon. He could be with her and have a heterosexual relationship and be ‘in love’. This was SUBCONSCIOUS of course. No way would Mike EVER do that knowingly. He isn’t like that. And when El was back... he was SUPER over the top about her. Like.. this guy has convinced himself he is in love with her despite barely knowing her. At all. And his looks at her are so FORCED.

Look at Mike’s ‘soft looks’ towards Will in comparison. They are a lot more natural.

Season Three

A lot of people think that S3 is pretty much the end of Byler, but I disagree. I think actually S3 confirms for sure that they are in love. I mean... to me it is so obvious. And it explains their behaviour SO WELL. I mean look at Will. That boy was incredibly jealous of El. He had no problem with Dustin and Lucas having girlfriends, but Mike??? Will got REALLY pissy and there were multiple times he looked upset over Mileven.

And Mike? WOW. S3... is when I KNEW he most certainly had to be gay for ANY of his behaviour to make sense. Mike.. was an ass. Definitely. BUT I think there was a reason for his attitude - not justifying it, just explaining it.

What started me off with wondering was @kaypeace21 posting analyses on Mike’s behaviour and... they made A LOT of sense to me. (They can be found here and here). People can easily dismiss this... but I actually think it is wrong to. I mean... Look at Mike’s behaviour in S3. How he treats both EL and WILL especially.

Mike is... distant with Will while he also still clearly loves him deeply. He isn’t visibly affectionate with him anymore, but look at how he was with him in the theater... SOFT and concerned like usual. Look at him after he upset Will during the DnD game. Wasn’t he MORE upset over that than he was over lying to El and hurting her? When he is supposed to be madly in love with El? That... makes no sense. A lot of people think Mike doesn’t care anymore, but I think he is actually realizing that he is in love with Will and is trying to squash it. Notice now, when they are GOING THROUGH PUBERTY (you know... a time when you really get a better sense of your sexuality) he is suddenly being off with Will. Will who he is used to be very affectionate with and had no issues with. Now he isn’t really like that anymore. And he is suddenly wanting to act VERY hetterosexual.

Maybe because he has internalized homophobia???

See how he is with El. It’s... not at all how he was with her in S1 and S2. I think it’s because now he is going through puberty and El is going through puberty... and she looks more and more like a WOMAN. I think Mike’s obsession with her was breaking because it became A LOT harder for him to convince himself he was in love with her because she was looking less and less ‘boyish’. I mean... look at his behaviour. He was being a dick. And sexist. I strongly believe that he was trying to emulate the heterosexual relationships of his friends and the feelings that they had... but he was overcompensating for it. And acting too much like I AM A BOY WHO LIKES GIRLS. I AM IN LOVE WITH EL!

This is also why Mike was REALLY going hard with how much he loves El in public... When the Byers moved he was really going with it when they were in the group, but when they were alone he didn’t act sad really. Then they were outside again and he was being lovey dovey. Isn’t that more proof that he is trying to convince everyone else that he loves her?

All they really did was kiss. He barely got to know her more as a person and didn’t like her going outside in the world. He saw her more as a possession. He wanted to be with her romantically but he DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO. And then he tried emulating the people around him and took it a step further. He went way too far. Even CHARACTERS IN THE SERIES thought it was over the top. I think... Mike was trying REALLY HARD to convince both himself AND everyone else that he was in love with El. Just look at that cabin scene. Mike went crazy there, said he loved El... and everyone reacted strangely. And then MIKE reacted strangely too. It was like he had NO IDEA why he said that. AT ALL. Then in the store when he was trying to confess to her... I’m sorry but I don’t buy AT ALL that he was nervous. He was... way too over the top and forced and I could literally feel him forcing himself with it. Like wow. He was really going hard while not being able to express how he felt. AND he said that to him love makes you CRAZY. (like this, perhaps???) Interesting that of ALL the sayings he could come up with, it was that love makes you CRAZY. There are loads of sayings about love, but to him it’s going CRAZY WITH SOMEONE.

Also... when Mike told El that she was ‘the most important thing in the world’ to him, the tone was weird. Honestly I think he was trying to convince himself that it was true. His speech to Will was a lot more honest and heart felt. I think Mike understood the implications of what he said to Will and then was trying to force it onto El. Mike loves her, but he sure hasn’t treated her like she is the most important thing in the world to him??? Sounded empty to me.

I will note that Mike seems to parrot a lot of cliche ‘love expressions’ with El in general. Like he is saying what he thinks he is supposed to. Acting like he is supposed to.

Also funny how... when they are at Will’s house... MIKE CAN’T REMEMBER SAYING HE LOVES HER.And he probably can’t remember trying to confess either. Soooooo he can remember meeting Will when he was FIVE and the whole ‘crazy together’ thing from the year before... but he can’t remember either saying he loves OR trying to confess to the girl he is madly in love with THREE MONTHS earlier??? That... isn’t suspect to anyone? Really? In fact... that entire interaction was suspect. Mike was odd. And the only time he was excited was when he mentioned Will... which he tried to play off as being casual. Why do that when it’s just a bro? (And speaking of bros.. why is he suddenly referring to Will as one? That is... odd. Suddenly when they are older and more mature Will is a BRO. Like he is wanting DISTANCE FROM HIM). The whole exchange with El was really weird and not at all romantic.He was shocked by the kiss, didn’t close his eyes, and looked confused afterwards. That five second exchange with Will had more love and happiness in it. And it was flirty.

That exchange... was them saying that they would always love each other. Mike was worried that Will would replace him and Will said he never would. Will said he would ALWAYS love Mike. Which he also said during their fight (that he had believed that they would PLAY GAMES FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES). And Mike will always love Will too... during that ‘confession’ when he talked about ‘going crazy’ with someone, he added in that he wanted to GROW OLD with them. Mike will always love Will too.

Another aside is that as far as Mike goes, playing games is associated with Will and growing up is associated with El... you know... the thing that  a man is supposed to do... find a girlfriend and grow up. I think the scene in the garage was Mike being defensive tbh. He was just crazy asserting that he was doing what he was SUPPOSED TO DO. And... when he wasn’t with El anymore, he started playing games again. He was doing what he WANTED TO DO. Playing games seems to be his natural inclination, but he is also curbing it... In that scene with El, he started talking about how he likes presents but then stopped himself and reprimanded himself. He wanted to sound more like an adult. To me it seemed like he was trying to force himself from what he wanted (Will) to what he was supposed to want (El).

Despite how awkward and not into it Mike was, he seems to be trying to cling to El still. To try and force himself back to how he was before when he was sure he was in love with her. I strongly believe that in S4 he will be with El again, but it will be like it was in S3. And if the Duffers aren’t cowards, they will actually have Byler in the end. Honestly at this point Mileven is just... it’s nonsensical more than ever. It’s a joke. I’m not sure how they can salvage it??? They... did not have good romantic chemistry AT ALL. I don’t  think they EVER even had real feelings for each other. And we are supposed to think they are soulmates and in love? Nope. I don’t think so at all. And I think Mike is definitely gay because he tries SO HARD to act like a straight guy. How many straight guys in the season thought he was weird and over the top? A NUMBER OF THEM. Because it was true. The boy didn’t know how to be with a girl once she started LOOKING LIKE A YOUNG WOMAN.

Was some of this me overthinking? Maybe... but remember... while the Duffers have really messed a number of things up with this show... they have generally been consistant With Byler. Also if this is baiting, it’s the worst baiting I have ever seen. They... have gone way over the top with this while developing Mileven very poorly. IDK why they would do that if it was their precious endgame. They might back out at the last moment because they are cowards... but at this moment in time I think this is legit. And they are endgame no matter what because Mike clearly is in denial. Like... his character makes a lot more sense this way.

Mike loves Will NOT El.

#wow that was a hot mess #and i probably missed things #and made little sense #but that is my take on things #in a long ass post

[whyaretheynaked]

What does Lucy learn from her experiences?

Bittersweet Candy Bowl has spanned about three years in the story, long enough for the teen-aged characters to have experiences that re-shape their personalities and behaviors. A lot has changed for some of the characters and Lucy must be the foremost example. Much of the series is devoted to Lucy’s personal turmoil at failing to become Mike’s lover and outright losing his friendship and her long-delayed return has touched off a sequel to those events. Lucy’s been through a lot so you’d expect her to have learned and changed in the way she deals with her relationships with others.

But did she?

In chapter 51 Lucy finally confessed love for Mike but was rejected.

She took it pretty hard and the next chapter Lucy is angered by what she sees as a flippant attitude towards her by Mike.

Look forward to chapter 97; Lucy has to reject Paulo, who is pretty upset by it.

So how does Lucy, who suffered so much from a rejection that made her feel insignificant and unloved, behave when she’s on the other side of the exchange?

She certainly isn’t any gentler on Paulo than Mike was on her; in fact, she’s harsher; while Lucy’s objection to Mike about her feelings happened a day after he rejected her, Lucy’s look-on-the-bright-side shtick happens mere minutes after she rejected Paulo. It’s very hard to imagine she’s taking Paulo’s feelings seriously when she tries to look back on a few hours of carnival games and junk food as outweighing what she should understand is a serious disappointment for Paulo.

It’s even worse if you consider the circumstances of these two exchanges. If Lucy was gutted to be rejected by Mike, it was unquestionably his prerogative to choose Sandy over her. Paulo, on the other hand, isn’t submitting himself to be accepted or rejected here; he’s under the impression he and Lucy are already lovers because of her deliberately deceptive actions at Sue’s play. It’s not just a disappointment but a nasty surprise. That Paulo misunderstands the situation because of what Lucy did in January comes up as a big part of the rejection scene so Lucy certainly knows the position Paulo is in but she still ends up at “whatever”.

Back to chapter 51: after being rejected Lucy pushes the issue with Mike, insisting on a comparison of herself and Sandy. It doesn’t go well for her.

In chapter 100 there’s a similar exchange in Lucy and Paulo’s argument over Augustus:

At best both responses could be considered brutal honesty, but as with the previous example the circumstances are different. In chapter 51 Lucy’s confession has just been rejected; the answer to her question was already implied and it was asked out of sense of wounded disbelief. Lucy has asked a question she doesn’t want to hear the answer to. Paulo in chapter 100 is not questioning Lucy’s rejection of his love but appealing to their existing relationship as friends. He’s also genuinely baffled because he knows none of the reasons for Lucy’s attitude towards Augustus. Lucy knows this and chooses to keep her secrets but doesn’t make any allowance for Paulo in the equation. As far as he can see he’s being punished for no reason. I don’t think it’s going too far to imagine she could have kept her secrets without insulting Paulo in the process but she doesn’t make the attempt.

In chapter 68 Mike responds to even the idea of continued friendship with Lucy with a hostile rejection:

This was part of Lucy’s most intense negative experience in the entire series. It should be absolutely seared into her memory.

Compare to chapter 100:

Mike’s words hurt Lucy a lot but they were apparently honest, if misguided. Is that the case with Lucy, who is avoiding an explanation of the situation to protect a secret? If she really doesn’t care why does she claim she was acting in his best interest when rejecting him at the carnival three chapters earlier? Or does her callous behavior then, as detailed above, mean she really didn’t care?

The details are becoming confused here but the parallel is very strong regardless. Both disappointed would-be lovers appealing to not their romantic feelings but to friendship and being harshly dismissed entirely. It’s incredible that Lucy wouldn’t realize the parallel herself.

Staying with Lucy’s devastating experience in chapter 68, Mike doesn’t like that Lucy is trying to act friendly and explodes in anger:

This is one of the single most painful moments for Lucy during the whole series.

Back to chapter 97:

Lucy doesn’t like that Paulo hasn’t fully accepted her rejection and explodes in anger.

The key similarity here is the escalation in temper. Lucy in the first instance and Paulo in the second try to keep a conversation going and their counterpart starts yelling to seize control of things. The difference is that in chapter 68 Mike had been hostile to Lucy for the entire day (not to mention the weeks before) and had only briefly relented due to Lucy’s friendly behavior. The purpose of his escalation was to, rather over-zealously, re-assert his original unfriendly attitude. In chapter 97 Lucy had been apologizing to Paulo over deceiving him but becomes enraged when he tries to talk it out instead of just accepting what she says. Mike’s attitude in chapter 68 is that he has legitimate grievance with Lucy while Lucy’s attitude in chapter 97 is that Paulo has legitimate grievance with her yet she’s the one getting angry. This impatience is rather churlish given the situation.

So far the object of Lucy’s parallel behavior has been Paulo. I think it’s worth pointing out that Paulo has been acted favorably towards Lucy for the entire series. Paulo has come to Lucy’s aid several times and it should especially be pointed he did so in the wake of Mike’s chapter 51 rejection, the event that sources two of the parallels here. It’s ironic that it’s him on the receiving end when Lucy flips the script.

The final example is a little different in that it doesn’t involve Paulo but instead Mike and Lucy switching roles.

In chapter 51 Lucy tries to speak to Mike but is contemptuously rebuffed:

In chapter 96 the roles reverse exactly:

The parallel is especially clear when both supplicants are challenged to speak but fail to do so:

This makes me suspect a little that this last parallel is intentional, but I’m not confident of it. It could just be a similar technique to showing someone unable to speak.

Aside from Lucy being very pleased with herself at telling Mike off, both situations are almost exactly the same. Both supplicants know why the other is annoyed with them (Lucy from her conversation with Zach in chapter 46, and Mike because it was obvious) and desperately want to talk out the situation but lack the courage to address the issue with their counterpart intolerant of this weakness. Lucy must consider her own actions in chapter 96 acceptable or she would not do them, but she also condemns Mike for putting Sandy above their friendship...but isn’t that why he acted like he did in chapter 51 and elsewhere, as he explained in chapter 68? Either both are acceptable or neither are. The parallel seems to boil down to mere tit-for-tat.

I can’t imagine that, on the whole, these parallels are intentional, not least of which because of the large amount of time in between them (for example, chapter 51 was published in 2009) and the lack of consequences of them in the story, but there’s a coherent pattern nonetheless. The signal events in Lucy’s story before her disappearance, which are all quite painful and should be very memorable to her, replay themselves after her return with her on the other side of the exchange, with Lucy acting much as Mike did before. If she took more from these experiences than memories of what she was feeling at the time, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t affect her behavior when she ends in very similar situations. The question ends up being not “what does Lucy learn from her experiences” but if she learns anything at all.

#Bittersweet Candy Bowl