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[gwenstrikesagain]

someday there will be ronance in the ao3 ronance tag again i just know it

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someday there will be ronance in the ao3 ronance tag again i just know it

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Nothing we do is hetronormative.

We are lesbians.

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i need nancy to get her gun

stupid homophobes not letting me read my bedtime stories about my little gay people

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trust me, this american works at a high school and i still have trouble figuring out their timeline

figuring out the stranger things timeline takes so much brain power holy hell. i was happily writing away and then remembered how fucking big the gap between the end of s1 and the start of s2 is and now im gonna have to reshuffle everything in my fic. goddamnit

don't even get me started on figuring out everyones school years in relation to eachother. americans. why does every year have a funny name. why.

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At five years old, Robin Buckley says her favorite color is pink when asked by her kindergarten teacher.

It seems like the right answer, it's what all the other girls say (except for a few who say purple, but Robin thinks of the flowers at her grandma's funeral earlier that year that were a sickly shade a mauve), so it must be hers as well.

She doesn't mind wearing it, but she thinks it's bright, easy to call attention to. She gets scolded in second grade by Tammy Thompson when she says it's really just a shade of red, after that she decides she doesn't like it as much anymore.

In fourth grade she says it's green when her mom asks for a color to paint her room. It's the color of outside and Robin likes to play there.

Her favorite shoes are forest green and she sits in the green section at lunch with her best friend Barabra Holland. It's a good fit.

But in sixth grade Tommy Hagan tells her it's a boy color and if she likes it then she's a boy. And so Robin changes it again. This time it's yellow.

Yellow is a safe color, neither gender seems to claim it and it's the shade of the sheets on her bed where she spends most of her time now that Barbara seems to prefer hanging out with Nancy Wheeler.

Yellow is the color of the stray cat that she feeds eyes and the shade of the lamplight she likes to read under at night.

She changes it to red in tenth grade when she hears Tammy Thompson say she likes it (even though she got mad at Robin for her earlier suggestion of pink being a light shade of it), and she really thinks it's the right one too.

It's the color of her beloved converse and the shade of the only makeup she owns, the scarlet lipstick her aunt got her for her fifteenth birthday.

It's a color of her Scoops uniform and the dry erase marker she uses to mark down Steve Harrington’s numerous fails at flirting.

It's the color of blood staining her shirt and dripping from Steve's face on the Fourth of July, 1985. The color of fireworks being thrown at a monster made up of red flesh and the color of the ambulance lights that flash as she sits in it.

After that she doesn't have a favorite color. It changes whenever someone new asks, alternating between the ones of her past.

It's green to Steve and pink to the mother renting a movie for her daughter. Yellow for Dustin and for a project in English class.

It's never red though.

But then 1986 rolls around and it's suddenly blue. The color of the sky and her favorite shirt is navy. The color of a denim jacket and the waters of Lovers Lake.

The color of Nancy Wheeler’s eyes looking at her in the library. Cerulean in the sun and cobalt as they trek through hell.

Bright azure when reflecting fire and the sparks of flying bullets. Soft maya blue under hospital lights.

They're shining admiral when they meet hers outside the Wheeler house two weeks after it all. Her tears match the rain when they kiss. Baby blue when they finally part.

It's blue when Nancy asks as they lay together in their apartment just outside of Boston. She jokes it's for the ocean that they had visited that summer, but later she tells her it's for her eyes.

It's blue like the ring she proposes with, cheap but full of meaning. Blue like the lilies of the Nile and bellflowers of Nancy's bouquet she tosses in the air.

Sapphire like their daughter's name and the chair Robin sits in when she reads to her. The color of her cookie monster cake for her first birthday and the rims of Nancy's reading glasses.

Blue like the dress she's buried in.

Blue like the flowers on their side by side graves.

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mermaid bar

- maya hawke

live in washington dc

plus, her beginning monologue on auditioning for the little mermaid, not getting it, and writing a poem about a mermaid movie she’d want to make but ✨ logistics ✨

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maya hawke - therese tour

washington dc - night one

photographs by me

performance of ‘to love a boy’ by maya hawke

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this is furthering the brain rot of “i need the suffer brothers to acknowledge nancy and her plan failing and the psychological consequences of that”

#RONANCE time skip sketches. I am a sucker for post-battle moments for the girlfriends.

Twitter | Instagram | Ko-fi  

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93k words later…

“the way you make me feel” is now complete!

Ballet Ronance au 🩰

The party is accepted into the American Ballet Academy, a prestigious ballet school that feeds directly into the American Ballet Company. The only problem? Openings are sparse, competition is tough, and emotions are high.

They fall apart, and fall in love, all at once.

Tags: forced proximity, enemies to friends to lovers, hurt and angst/comfort, happy ending

TW: heavy themes of eating disorders, depression, and anxiety

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and nancy recognizes robin’s breakdown as the one she herself had when she lost barb and helps robin start the healing journey. bonus if they talk about barb

y'know what I want? I want Robin to lose it. Let her go apeshit and smash and break and run her knuckles bloody. Let her get all her trauma and anger from Starcourt out with wild swinging and screaming. Let her break down and build herself back up.

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do my fellow writers ever work an epilogue on a fic you’ve been working on for months and feel like you’re in mourning? just me? aight.

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vecna slash henry slash one

S4:E8

When Robin starts to rant about how they were wrong about Vecna, she refers to all of the names we know him as:

Vecna.

Henry.

and One.

Robin asks what they're calling him now, and I think it is interesting who picks which name.

Erica calls him Vecna.

Dustin and Lucas call him One.

Nancy calls him Henry.

So why are they picking each of these names? and why is that interesting to us as viewers?

First of all, up until this point, Erica has been shielded from most Upside Down gore. She saw El's leg in S3, but she never saw the Mind Flayer in the mall, nor did she see a Demogorgon. She was told what was happening by Dustin. The story was laid out for her, a story that she hasn't lived yet. Dustin acted as a DM for her, laying out the story.

Canonically, Erica is still 11 years old. At her age, Erica's brain will protect her from trauma by considering these things a game, or relating them to a game. Which game would she relate the horror she's hearing about and seeing? The one she has become so passionate about since S3 and the one that directly correlates to the victory she just had. She calls him Vecna, because in her mind they've already defeated Vecna. It is the safest option for Erica.

This is why the very end of E9 is a transforming moment. When Erica breaks into the attic and finds Max dying in her brother's arms, there is a dramatic shift we can see in her eyes (serious kudos to Priah, she's incredible). In that moment, the gravity of the Upside Down hits her as she sees it cause the death of someone she loves in front of her eyes. For the first time, it isn't a game anymore.

Next on the docket: Dustin and Lucas. Unlike Erica, they have seen the gore and horrors of the Upside Down first hand. They have seen the Demogorgon attack and El kill in S1 and the Demodogs that almost killed them in S2. In S3, Lucas sees the Mind Flayer several times. He throws fireworks at it, cuts it off of his friend, and watches it possess and kill his girlfriend's brother in front of her. Meanwhile, in S3, Dustin sees the gate opening, and knows that the roaring he hears over Cerebro promises imminent death for his friends. For those two, and the others, this battle is no longer a game or a comic book.

Dustin and Lucas have seen Eleven defend them on countless occasions. They have seen the power she holds first hand. For Lucas, he has even been on the receiving end of what her powers can do. For those two, and the kids who aren't present, One is the most familiar and understandable way to refer to and understand him. To them, El is their superhero, and One is the villain. Much like the comic books they read, and the games they play, he is a big bad that the good guys will overcome. They've saved the day every other time, and they will do it again.

They have a lot of trauma in their past. Compartmentalizing and placing One in the same box as Eleven is the most comfortable option. One is the big bad, and El is their hero. It is the safest option for them.

Also, they themselves are 14/15. Developmentally, Lucas and Dustin will rely on the familiar as a coping mechanism. Comic books and D&D are the reference they will rely on. In those, however, death is not final. No 14/15 year old boy acts in self preservation. Mortality isn't real to them. Just like in the comics and in their games, danger is not real. They won't die, nor will their friends. In their stage of life, death isn't an option.

But, in E9, they both lose. Dustin loses Eddie, and Lucas loses Max. Both of them watch as the big bad wins, and the ones they love most die in their arms. This is no longer a comic book with classic heroes and villains. They have escaped relatively unscathed in the past, but now? Now the danger is in their faith and it is throwing their mortality in their faces. Not only is death final, but it is personal. This is human, and this battle is no longer safe.

Finally, Nancy refers to him as Henry. When she is cursed by Henry, he shows her his childhood. Specifically, he shows her what he looked like as a human child. In S3, when Max and Mike are arguing, Nancy reminds Mike that El is her own person in control of her own decisions. In the moment, we get a glimpse into how Nancy sees El. Unlike Mike, she doesn't look at El and see a superhero or only her powers. Nancy sees that El is a kid, and a young woman making her own decisions. In the same way, Nancy sees Henry as a boy who has made his own decisions.

To Nancy, he is human. He isn't the antagonist in a D&D match, or the supervillian in a superhero's comic book story: he is Henry. Nancy sees Henry as a man who has chosen evil, and has chosen to torture.

She never had the luxury of seeing this as a game, or heroes verses villains, like the others. This has been human and real to Nancy from the moment Barb disappeared. She never had the luxury of ignoring mortality. Her best friend was killed at the very beginning of all of this.

Developmentally, at 17/18, Nancy is coming to terms with adulthood and what that means for her. With it, she is facing the fact that she is mortal, and her decisions will influence her future. The college she goes to, the friends she choses, and who she decides to love are things that do not feel safe: they feel vulnerable.

Of them all, Nancy is the most in tune with what they are facing. As such, she immediately jumps into action. Nancy makes the decision to go into the Upside Down, to allow Max to be bait, to assign Eddie and Dustin to distraction duty, to step forward and pull the trigger on someone she sees as a man, not a monster.

Nancy is the leader this season. Robin says it herself, Nance is in charge. That responsibility, and the choices that came with it, will haunt her. She made the plan, and assigned tasks just as she would at the school newspaper. The deaths and injuries that occurred under her orders will follow her, just as Barb's death had followed her.

Next season, it will be interesting to see if the group unites in what they refer to Henry/Vecna/One as. Will they be a united front, facing an enemy they see in the same light, or will they still be divided?

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Rewatching S3:E8, Battle of Starcourt, and noticed something interesting about Eleven:

El knew about the exit inside the Gap when the others didn’t. (Mike pointed to the stairs, and Max didn’t think of another option)

As someone who worked in a mall, the exit that El, Mike, and Max use is not a public exit. That hallway they end up in is an employee-only area. We see it when Steve lets the rest of the party in the back to sneak into the movies, but El never sees that. Mike might have told her about sneaking around with Steve’s help, but she couldn’t have known exactly where that was.

Here’s the thing: those doors are almost always unmarked. They aren’t true exits deserving of exit signs because they dump into a maze of corridors. In an emergency, it’d be the worst evacuation route, which is why they often remain unmarked. We don’t see exit signs above the door in the Gap or the door in Scoops. El had to have seen an employee use that door and recognize its use when she was in the mall with Max early in S3.

All of this means one thing: El is always looking for exits.

Whether it was subconscious or not, El was keenly aware of a way out of the Gap. She was with Max, a safe person, and away from the lab, but she still noticed an unmarked exit well enough to recall where it was days later.

She was locked away her entire childhood. It is reasonable to assume that El would look for exit routes in any space she was in.

In S1 we know she escaped the lab through the pipes. In S2 we see her escape from the police raid on Kali using an alleyway she had to know would lead away from the cops. But, in S4, we are instead shown El’s desperation for escape: in the police transport, when she first sees Brenner, when she’s trapped by Vecna’s vines, etc.

In S4, her means of finding escape routes was taken from her and her friend.

We know that El looks out for and protects her friends. She couldn’t help Max escape, and we see her still looking for an escape route for Max when she tries to find her in her coma. But, she doesn’t find one.

So, in S4, El loses not only the battle with Vecna, but also a comfort in finding escape routes for herself and her friends.

I’m curious to see how El handles that guilt and potentially forces friends to escape in S5.

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happy new year, nerds

a thought, because i’m drunk, but has anyone ever fan casted ST characters into chicago? specifically cell block tango?

it’s a tradition in my house to watch chicago on new year’s eve (don’t ask, idk how this started) and my drunk ass had this idea

i’m writing a center stage au rn, but i feel like a chicago au is in order to be written next.

ronance chicago au anyone?

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A New Life She Has Found

An excerpt from Chapter 36 of "the way you make me feel" on ao3:

As the ballet ended, the exhausted and enthused gasp that escapes Max nearly sounds like a yelp. She is held up by the others, suspended in the air as though she is running downstage to free herself from a memory: those memories of Billy, and regret, and guilt.

...

The others motion for Max to take her own bow. She steps forward, bowing again and looking out into the audience instead of focusing on the other dancers around her. As she does so, she sees them.

Beyond the cheers, and beyond the lights, she sees Lucas standing on one foot and cheering for her with his hands clasped around his mouth like a megaphone. Max blushes, knowing she’ll have to smack him for ignoring his injury to make such a scene.

Beside him, Max spots Jane. Jane is cheering louder than Lucas, if that is even possible, allowing her voice to reach Max. “I knew you could do it!” And there it was, the words that Max so desperately needed and the ones that had carried her all the way here.

They knew she could do it, and she had.

She made it through this year.

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it took me exactly 5 seconds into watching center stage to say: hm, but what if this was fruitier?

i present the beginning stages of my new fic:

the way you make me feel

ch 1-4 are posted and more is coming soon!