#and is…kind of the reason I don’t read a whole lot of wlw tbqh. just super not my thing.

[laundrybiscuits]

45 for ask game? 👀

Content note: mention of period-typical homophobia 

Can be read as taking place between this one and this (NSFW) one if you want, but I think it stands alone okay.

I know we’re supposed to be just friends / Miss Temptation I don’t think you know / you keep me waitin’ / know you like to take it slow / Miss Temptation you never let it show 

Eddie always hammers away at the back door like she’s trying to break it down. When Steph finally gets to the doorway, Eddie’s hopping up and down with her hands jammed in her armpits.

“Jesus, Harrington. Took you long enough,” she says, pushing past Steph to the living room. “I was freezing my tits off out there. Please tell me that fireplace works.”

Steph rolls her eyes a little, because it’s not that cold out. It’s only just started snowing, big damp flakes melting in Eddie’s hair. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “Never tried it. There’s some wood in the crate, though.”

“Never—seriously? C’mon, let’s figure it out, I bet we can get it going.”

Steph could point out that she’s got central heating, and that Eddie will warm up if she just waits like two seconds, but instead she just grins and leaves Eddie to it while she goes to pour some drinks.

A few minutes later, she hears Eddie crow in victory. She comes back in to find Eddie with her jacket discarded and the sleeves of her flannel rolled up, jabbing a poker cautiously at a crackling flame.

“Hey,” she says, tapping the wineglass gently against Eddie’s forearm. “That was fast.”

“Ah, you know. Wayne likes to go camping.” Eddie beams up at her. “Let’s turn off the ceiling lights, it’ll be nicer.”

It is nicer. Steph settles in next to Eddie, not touching but close enough to feel the warmth of her body, and sips her wine. The firelight makes Eddie look lit up from the inside; like all that golden warmth is coming from under translucent skin still flushed from the cold. Her red flannel shirt is open at the neck. It looks like something she might’ve inherited from Wayne, oversized and worn soft as silk, crumpling at the collar. 

Steph wishes there was some music playing, but somehow it feels like getting up to put something on would be too much. It would be the kind of dumb thing she’d do to set the mood with a guy, and that’s not what Eddie’s here for, obviously. 

As far as Steph knows, Eddie’s never had a boyfriend. 

It’s not a huge surprise. She’s never exactly been popular, plus she dresses like some burnout guy, all baggy shirts and jackets and beat-up jeans. 

Of course people call her a lesbo all the time. But that’s just normal teenage stuff; even Steph gets teased like that whenever she has a bad hair day or does well in volleyball or whatever. It’s just something people say, and then you say it back to them, and it’s normal. 

Lately, Steph has been trying to remember if there’s ever been anything more to it. Rumors, that kind of thing. Anything someone might’ve seen or heard that would make it more than words.

Steph’s always known gay people exist, she’s not stupid, but before Robin she’d thought of it as a city thing. Whenever there was something in the paper, her mother always used to say that it’s a real shame that in the city, boys who don’t have their families around can run wild. She never said exactly what running wild meant, and she never said anything at all about girls, except once, when she’d paused and squeezed Steph’s shoulders, bussing her hair, and said at least we don’t have to worry about that with you, darling.

Steph doesn’t even know how it works, with girls. She can’t picture it. Maybe Eddie would tell her, if she could find the right way to ask. If Eddie even knows—and there she is back at the beginning again, nothing figured out, just going round and round. 

So she doesn’t bring it up. Doesn’t even really know why, except that this way, nobody has to worry about anything. 

Beside her, Eddie drains her wine and draws her legs up, folding her arms over her knees. It pulls her flannel over her shoulders in a smooth line, like maybe she’s not wearing anything underneath. Which would be so stupid in this weather, honestly—Steph can’t imagine going out with just a layer of worn cotton and that leather jacket Eddie loves so much between the biting cold and bare skin. 

“You’re sleeping over tonight, right?” she says. “You’ll freeze to death if I let you head back out tonight.”

“If you let me, huh?” Eddie grins. “Can’t have my death on your conscience, I guess. Sure, Harrington, we can have a sleepover. You can braid my hair and tell me all about whatever cute guy you’ve got your eye on nowadays.”

That’s about as good an opening as she’s likely to get, if she can just find the right words. 

“Or you could tell me about any cute guys you’ve got your eye on,” is what she settles on.

“Please,” Eddie snorts. “The unwashed miscreants of Hawkins should be so lucky. Like I’d ever want a boyfriend—uh, from around here, anyway.”

“You don’t…get lonely?” Steph asks. It comes out a little soft around the edges.

Eddie leans her chin on her arms. After a moment, she murmurs, “I didn’t say that.”

Steph could probably say something back, she thinks. Some kind of response. Anything. 

They sit there, watching the fire as it slowly turns the logs to ash, for a very long time.

[tendercoretroglodyke]

... I’m interested in legitimately gay Reese (I assume one piece of evidence is “look at what they’re doing and tell me you’re not gay”)

okay this is like 2 days late but this is why reese malcolminthemiddle is legitimately gay:

(side note: did anyone need a queer media thesis paper or something... I am willing to share lmao)

so none of this is like... rock solid evidence or anything but I need to believe at least one main character of a show is gay and/or trans to maintain interest and reese is the most plausible gay character. also it’s early 2000′s so he just gets a lot of vaguely homophobic jokes lmao

first of all, yes, the biggest piece of evidence he’s gay is those lines from that episode I quoted the other day--thinking malcolm is gay, he tries to show his support by giving him a gay porno: “’Naught Pool Boys 3!’ I watched 10 or 12 of these, and this one seems to have the most stuff you guys like.” and when malcolm says he isn’t gay, reese responds “Malcolm. Check out what those guys are doing in that movie, and THEN tell me you’re not gay.”-- so, 1) reese sat down and watched like a dozen gay porn movies to ““find a good one for his gay brother”” and 2) he thinks malcolm would reconsider his heterosexuality if he watched what was in that movie, implying that HE reconsidered his sexuality after watching that movie, or at the very least found it hot

in the same episode, the character tricking malcolm into thinking reese is gay lists the following as evidence: he obsesses over his hair and his looks, loves his gourmet cooking, has a bunch of magazines covered in comically muscular men, and that he’s angry and acts like a jerk because he’s “dealing with something weird and confusing.” now obviously, the obsession with hair/looks can be chalked up to the fact that he’s a teenage boy, and there’s nothing inherently gay about enjoying cooking. the dozen magazines of muscle-bound men could certainly be taken as gay evidence, though, and it IS established in the show that his entire bully persona is his way of masking his inner feelings and insecurities. there’s literally a whole episode where he & malcolm realize they have no friends because they act like little shits to push people away because they’re afraid of rejection and/or abandonment from their peers. they ostracize themselves before they can be ostracized by the other students at school. I could probably write a whole other essay on reese’s psyche tbqh lmao there’s a shocking amount there!!

of the brothers who are actually old enough to be attracted to girls (reese, malcolm, and francis), he shows the least interest. now bear with me here. you might be thinking, “well, yeah, it’s malcolm’s show, we’re not gonna see things from other people’s perspective!” but that is actually surprisingly untrue, the show is very much equally shown from each family members’ perspectives. starting about s2, when malcolm is in early middle school, he starts getting crushes on girls and pursuing them. francis goes after a few women in the first couple seasons and then marries a woman we see a lot throughout the show. 

in the roughly... 130?? episodes I have watched so far, nearly all of reese’s “interest” in girls involve either: competition with malcolm, genuinely just liking her as a friend, or some completely ulterior motive. the only exception to this I can think of is in the early seasons where he has a crush on a cheerleader and tries to get on her good side by joining the cheerleading squad, which the writers clearly set up as a way to make gay jokes about reese. let me give you a few examples of his relationships with girls

the first relationship we see him in is with a “stupid girl” that malcolm tried (and failed) to date, and the main reason they get together is that they think on the same wavelength and genuinely seem to enjoy hanging out. they take breaks from their bro chats to make out every once in a while. eventually he gets her to break up with him because he doesn’t want to go to the school dance with her (he doesn’t want to go at all). years later, he’s dating some girl we meet for like 5 minutes, before he goes to confess to her that she’s the first girl he’s ever loved. she then breaks up with him. he’s sad, but taking it fairly well. he’s about to leave when he sees malcolm hiding under the bed, and learns that he stole his girlfriend. he then runs away to join the army. he was clearly MUCH more upset that his brother stole his girlfriend than he was that his girlfriend broke up with him. there are many more instances of him and malcolm competing for a girl’s affections, and he seems mostly motivated by the competition itself.

in addition to “stupid girl,” he also manufactures an “attraction” to his female army buddy in the last season. the premise of this episode is that his old army buddy (a girl he play-wrestles with and insults like he would his own brothers) comes to visit him, and malcolm convinces reese that she’s attracted to him, and that reese’s nervousness at learning that fact is proof he’s in love with her. there’s a misunderstanding where reese asks her if she has certain “feelings” and she says she does, but what she ACTUALLY means is that she has a crush on reese’s MOM. she’s a lesbian. reese later propositions her (saying he’s saved his virginity for this--he’s probably about 18 here), and when she says omg no im gay, he is HUGELY relieved they can go back to being friends. CLASSIC mlm/wlw friendship moment. 

there’s an episode where these cute girls pick up reese (& nerds) to kiss in front of their boyfriends to make them jealous. reese is all for it, and when malcolm argues that it’s not worth his dignity and the beating he’ll get from the girl’s boyfriend, reese counters that that’s WHY he wants to do this--he’s completely invisible at school, and thinks getting beaten up for kissing some guy’s girlfriend will at least make him known around school. at no point does he indicate he’s actually attracted to this girl, and when it comes time to kiss her, he finds the weakest excuse to run away at the last minute. 

im not gonna list all of these but there’s more lmao

the following is a random assortment of one-off gay jokes and out-of-context lines with gay reese implications, often homophobically bc its early 2000′s writing:

says “I’m gay” to a girl to give malcolm a better shot at her

(again in competition with malcolm) tries to flirt with a girl by spraying milk in her face as the punchline to a joke, which is. well. hm. self-sabotaging, to say the least!!

Reese: “Do you think it’s right to totally change who you are and turn your back on EVERYTHING you believe in, just to impress a hot guy??” [his dad gives a long, blank stare, before asking:] “...Burt Reynolds hot, or Sting hot?”

“YEAH I like clouds! I call them sky kittens :)” (I just think that one’s sweet!)

“Look, Christie, here’s the thing. When I first met you, I was just messing around. But we’ve gotten so close that, now... I really like you! I can’t keep this up anymore. I’m not the person you think I am. I’ve been pretending since the day I met you. It’s so hard having to constantly cover my tracks to keep my story straight... and I don’t WANT to anymore! I’m tired of living this lie! I’m done with it. I’m sorry.”

he catfishes some guy to blackmail him, but is implied to continue the flirtation even after the catfishing/blackmail is revealed

reese is, technically, married to a man. this particular plot point is played as a joke and manages to be both racist and homophobic, so I won’t go into it. but I believe he is still married to that man. technically.

reese takes care of a huge box full of caterpillars until they pupate and become beautiful butterflies. I feel like there’s some kind of gay coming out metaphor here somewhere.

I think there are a couple other times where he comments on a guy’s attractiveness but I couldn’t find specific instances.

In conclusion: Reese is a deeply repressed gay kid who was socialized SO thoroughly as an early 2000′s straight boy that, despite his attraction for men and his obvious compulsory heterosexuality, he still cannot admit to himself that he is gay even as he enters adulthood. Furthermore, his subconscious frustration about this fact is turned outward to form the “schoolyard bully” costume he uses to mask his insecurities and keep others from getting too close to him. 

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I could be convinced to come back for another talk about how Dewey is trans or about how each and every member of that family is neurodivergent in entirely different ways. Assuming anyone has read this far in the first place!!