Grass is green, water is wet, and Jonathan Byers does not like Steve Harrington.
These are known facts in the universe.
Computers were going to take over the world, a “mobile” phone was being invented, and Steve Harrington had lost most of his hearing.
These were unknown facts--rumors even, if you will. Eddie had never seen even a grain of truth to support any of them.
(Well, maybe the computer thing, but only because Grant and Dustin both had made a couple of convincing arguments.)
So he doesn’t think about it, when his freshman gang up on him.
Doesn’t even factor the “can’t hear well” thing in, when he was tasked (demanded, whined, bitched and moaned at) with helping them explain to Steve why going to the release party of the new D&D box set, located at a hobby store only a mere 2 hour drive away, was important.
Eddie’s not even sure how the little shits got him to agree to do it until he’s standing in the parking lot in front of the former King himself.
“The store’s leading up to the release with a handful of one-shots.” He’s explaining, unsure whether to pull out the bored act or play up his court jester persona, and thus mixing and matching on the fly.
He does not care if Harrington doesn’t know what a one-shot is.
“They’re releasing the set at midnight. You have to be there to get it though, you can’t have someone else pick it up for you because they only got a certain amount in.”
Harrington’s frowning (no surprise) but it’s not until Eddie is well into his spiel about how his van is already full with the elder members of Hellfire, and thus has no room for the freshmen, that he realizes Steve isn’t quite looking at him.
Is in fact, looking over his shoulder.
Eddie stops. Follows Harrington’s gaze.
Parked across from Steve’s Beemer, is Jonathan Byer’s barely working clunker car.
A handful of steps in front of it, and thus nearly right behind Eddie, is the man himself.
His hands are still moving, mouth shaping words silent as he goes, his gaze locked not on Eddie or the kids--but on Steve.
Who turns back around as Harrington’s eyes slide right back to him.
“And this is taking place next Friday?” He says, in that sort of annoyed but resigned way parents aim at their children. “After school?”
“I’d like to go during school, but the freshmen insist you wouldn’t let them ditch out.” Eddie tells him. “They had two separate arguments about it.”
Loud ones, that had interrupted the game and given Eddie a migraine.
Once again Steve’s eyes slide away from him, to Jonathan.
“They’re not skipping school.” He says suddenly, a glare forming and Jonathan makes an annoyed noise.
“They argued about skipping, they’re not going to.” He says aloud, and finally steps up so that he’s next to Eddie instead of behind him.
“Munson slow down, I can’t sign as fast as you’re talking.” He adds, in the hang-dog grumble he’s notorious for.
Eddie stares at him.
“Can he seriously not hear me?”
“No.” Steve and Jonathan answer together.
“I can kind of still hear,” Steve adds, gaze returning to Eddie’s face. “But its more loud music or noises. I can lip read, but you’re also talking too fast for that.”
Without pausing, he turns back to Jonathan and says; “Why can’t you take them?”
“It’s Friday.” Byers deadpans.
Eddie’s not an expert on sign language, but his hands somehow looked deadpan too.
He’s not sure how Jonathan did that.
“So?” Steve snarks back.
What follows is an argument that Eddie is not, at all involved in, mostly because he’s too busy handling the fact that Jonathan Byers has learned sign language, for Steve Harrington, apparently, and given the tone the argument is taking they still don’t even like each other.
Eventually the argument ends, Steve throwing his hands in the air and demanding that Jonathan owes him.
(Eventually Eddie will corner the ever so quiet Will Byers and ask why the hell his brother learned sign language for someone he clearly fucking hates.
“Oh they don’t hate each other.” Baby Byers would say, in that shy, quiet way of his. “I think they’re actually friends now?”
“You think?”
“Well--you’ve seen them.” Will shrugs. “I think being mean to each other is kinda their thing.”
‘What the hell.’ Eddie would think, right up until he stumbled across one of the kids sign language books.
Byers the Elder, he decides, isn’t the only person who should learn sign language to chew out Harrington properly.
The pay off is immediate.
Or at least, the pay off of watching Steve’s shocked face the first time Eddie signs something vulgar at him is, anyway.)
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“Shaking off the stink of … ‘when they go low, we go high,’” is how one Democratic operative put it, as they celebrated the sudden vibe-shift and re-energized messaging strategy within their party in the days since President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 race.
According to an Democratic lawmaker on Capitol Hill who is regularly in contact with Biden-Harris (now just Harris) officials, one idea fueling this push is to hammer home an easily memorable point to swing voters about how Trump, Vance, and the GOP and MAGA elite are a bunch of “weird, sick freaks who everyone hates, and who want to take basic rights away.”
The lawmaker adds: “Put it on a bumper sticker.”
Meanwhile: Trump tells Christians they won’t have to vote after this election.
WASHINGTON, July 27 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Christians on Friday that if they vote for him this November, "in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote."
It was not clear what the former president meant by his remarks, in an election campaign where his Democratic opponents accuse him of being a threat to democracy, and after his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat to President Joe Biden, an effort that led to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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Because of this post reminding me about the Bad Kidz Parent Polycule, I present to you the Bad Kidz Family Cluster.
[ID: A family tree of all the Bad Kidz and their parents using the updated official art. In the top right corner, Gorgug has a solid green line connecting him and Roz and Gorbag. A dotted green line connects him and Digby and Wilma. Roz, Gorbag, Digby, and Wilma are connected by a solid black line with a question mark below it.
Below that, The Applebees are connected to Kristen, Bucky, Bricker, and Cork by solid green lines. Kristen and Tracker are connected by a solid pink line with a red X crossed through it.
Tracker is connected to "Unknown Parents" by a solid green line. "Unknown Parents" is connected to Jawbone by a solid blue line, and Tracker and Jawbone are connected by a dotted green line with a question mark above it. Adaine is connected to Jawbone by a dotted green line, and Aelwyn is connected to Adaine by a solid blue line.
Jawbone and Sandra Lynn are connected by a pink line. Sandra Lynn and Gorthalax are connected by a pink line with a red X crossed through it, and Fig is connected to them by a solid green line. Gorthalax and Sklonda are connected by a pink line with a question mark below it. Sklonda and Pok are connected by a purple line that is bisected by the skull and crossbones emoji. Riz is connected to them by a solid green line.
Sandra Lynn and Gilear are connected by a purple line with a red X crossed through it. Gilear and Fig are connected by a dotted green line, and he and Hallariel are connected by a pink line. Hallariel and Bill are connected by a purple line that's bisected by a skull and crossbones emoji. Fabian is connected to them by a solid green line, and Fabian and Fig are connected by a dotted blue line. End ID]
Green means parents/children, Blue means siblings, Pink means dating, and Purple means marriage. Dotted lines mean non-biological. The black line means I have no idea what the Thistlesprings and Roz and Gorbag have going on.
I wasn't sure if Gorthalax and Sklonda are actually dating so I put a question mark, and I wasn't sure if Jawbone actually adopted Tracker or was just letting her live with him. Regardless, here's the full family tree. I hope it gets worse <3 thanks for your time.
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Gale's home was wiped out by drone strikes ordered by a much richer entity that exploits poorer regions, and he responded by designing bombs for use against civilians who are citizens of that entity. I think Collins meant to depict what causes young men to be radicalized into joining organizations that take violent action against the civilians of the powerful states that destroy their homes and kill their friends and neighbors. Collins comes from a military family. She wrote the books during the War on Terror. The metaphor is not subtle.
I think people reduce the character of Gale to a jealous pickme "Prim reaper" because he makes them deeply uncomfortable. His character is a stark, unusual and brutally honest depiction of how exploitation and drone strikes targeting civilian population centers might drive a survivor to want revenge.
But Americans do not want to see themselves as Capitol citizens. We want to see ourselves as the scrappy underdogs, so we relate to the District people. Thus the entire point of Gale's arc is overlooked, because we don't want to have to examine the metaphor and grapple with what it means.
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