#and then she and mike go onto have a complex relationship

[witchofinterest]

👀 + ur newest oc

ohhh, I think that’s miley??

background: Miley joins up w Mark and his followers (but also, every other follower is pretending to follow Mark) and she’s really the only person to believe in him, and he’s the only person Miley’s ever really felt loved by

Flash forwarded he’s murdered by Mike Weston and Miley makes it her mission to kill him, all through my s4.

[thewalrusespublicist]

Mike Tree's Adventures in Nutopia #2 : A HR Car-Crash in Slow Motion, aka Dealings with Yoko

This is the second of a three part series of a write up of the Mike Tree SATB interview. Part one is linked here. This second one is about Mike and Yoko's relationship and his observations of Yoko during his employment. I was going to do John next but getting the quotes have been more fiddly and honestly that dynamic is way less bizarre than what was going on here:

This is hands down the weirdest relationship discussed in the interview. It's pretty clear that Mike neither liked nor trusted Yoko. He considers her a 'chess master':

Yoko kind of treated people and treated life like a grand master chess player. She didn't play chess, but she was always plotting, if I do this, maybe I lose a pawn or a piece here, and then I can gain something elsewhere or trap someone else elsewhere. I wasn't really aware of this when I was working there.

SATB: 277: "Mike Tree" in Nutopia with Michael Meideros, 2024

He believes things like her relationship with Sam Green as part of a psychological game she was playing. The caveat to all this is that he somehow figured this out later, meaning he could very well be projecting what other people have told him onto his own memories and thereby rightly or wrongly colouring them in a different light.

Part of the reason for his mistrust is that he fully believes Yoko was coming on to him and trying to turn him into her version of May Pang:

Mike Tree: When in the mornings when I would meet Yoko, she was clearly used a vernacular hitting on me. I thought there was some sort of teasing going on, sexual teasing, which made me very uncomfortable. Rodriguez: Mm-hmm, like a flirtation? Yes, a flirtation. In the mornings at seven a.m. she would usually be wearing a very thin white gown, nightgown, hair loose about her shoulders and barefoot. Uh-huh. And this was very seductive. Yeah. I couldn't quite compute what was going on because I was just the tree man, as John called me.

Mike Tree: “In fact, one time I was in the bedroom looking after her Ming tree, or the Ming tree, and she came sweeping into the bedroom and bounced onto the bed with a giggle. Which made me very uncomfortable. I said nothing and left the room, just very shy.

SATB: 277: "Mike Tree" in Nutopia with Michael Meideros, 2024

It's really hard to tell what the hell is going on. Is it poor boundaries, is she just having a slight tease or is she actually hitting on him? Is it potentially also Mike being attracted her and projecting it back on to Yoko?

None of this is helped by John telling Mike that Yoko was in love with him and that he should talk to her more.

Mike Tree: Anyway, after she left the room, he says to me, you know, Yoko is in love with you. I was dumbfounded. Yoko is in love with you. He said, yeah, she always talks about you, Michael this, Michael that. Why don't you talk with her more? And I told him, John, I talked to her, but she always says, you know, I can't be on all the time. I'm busy or something like that.

SATB: 277: "Mike Tree" in Nutopia with Michael Meideros, 2024

Honestly I don't know why John is so chill about it considering his past paranoia. Thinking about how he is talking with May again, have they both agreed to have people on the side? Or maybe he's just joking and more means that Yoko likes him and that they should talk more (I lean the latter from his POV).

TBF mike is not the most loyal employee with the May Pang situation and Yoko seems to distance herself when he turns down the assistant role so it seems the situation was a bit more complex than the calculating seductress and the hapless tree man.

Outside of their weird little thing, there are more details about Yoko in the 70s that back up other reports. Yoko is back on heroin in the late 70s

“I'm not sure what exactly. But around that period, she started using heroin, snorting it. I can't say I saw her do it, but I certainly saw the effects. Her interior decorator, Sam Green, his assistant would bring Yoko in the mornings heroin, which she would then snort. I saw her in the apartment where she was very talkative and very friendly and smiling and it's like how unusual and realized that she was high. Occasionally, she would bump into the kitchen table or she would chain smoke cigarettes, but she would drop one cigarette on the floor and then start smoking another.

SATB: 277: "Mike Tree" in Nutopia with Michael Meideros, 2024

Bizarrely it's Sam Green who also brings someone to help get her off heroin when he realises shes addicted. What a thoughtful guy.

It's not a insider story of the Dakota era if we don't have another incident of Paul getting blocked from the place:

Mike Tree: It was maybe like five o'clock in the evening and I was going to go home, but I was finding every excuse to stay there. The concierge called up. Again, I don't know the exact conversation because I didn't hear it. I just heard Yoko saying, no, he can't come up now. I thought that was pretty cold. Rodriguez: This was Paul waiting to be admitted up to the Lennon apartment and Yoko shutting him down? Mike Tree: Correct.

SATB: 277: "Mike Tree" in Nutopia with Michael Meideros, 2024

The more you read the more it becomes clear that the frequency in which Paul saw John was not at all Paul's choice and that makes me incredibly sad.

Mike's reporting of Yoko's treatment of Julian post John's death attempts to be empathetic but is nevertheless critical. Yoko sends him away for the memorial and only meets with him in the presence of an attorney. In Mikes words 'not very nice, but Yoko was grieving as well.' In all honesty I am less sympathetic than Mike if this indeed did happen but Julian and Cynthia never discussed this so I'm not 1000 percent as to whether this is accurate.

Mike confirms Sam Havadtoy rapid move into the Dakota and Yoko going to eat at a restaurant close to the night John died. Both of these however are told far more sympathetically than in Seaman's account as the restaurant thing seems like a distraction from the horror of everything and Havadtoy seemed to be there as a crutch to help Yoko cope by taking charge of things. Far from the unfeeling ice queen from Seaman, everyone in Mike's account are taking it in turns to monitor Yoko on suicide watch.

The big incident at the end with Yoko asking for a lighter and making Mike chase around the room before directing him to a drawer with a gun in it I'll post on it's own as it's ... jesus. You can kind of see both Yoko being in a terrible, paranoid, grieving space when she does it but also why a grieving Mike would be so angry and never trust her again

So overall some confirmations of past stories, some different perspectives on known events and some batshit psychosexual drama! That's the Ballad of Mike and Yoko, next I'll move on to the less interesting albeit still revealing dynamic of Mike and John!

[love-byers]

I was never on board for m*leven as a ship because of season 1, what do you mean you’re gonna throw a super powered girl, who escaped from a lab, that knows nothing about the world into a romance???

It’s not healthy for her, she didn’t even know who she is as a person and only started exploring her identity season 2 on wards. Idk the shop never sat right with me because of that.

yep i 100% agree and i was only 12 when s1 came out

byler was not even in my stratosphere when i first saw s1, and i felt the same. completely honestly, i was hoping mike would be gay just because at the time i was tired of straight people and just wanted some queer rep. idk why i picked mike but i did lol

but i got over that quick and didn't hate mlvn or anything, i thought they were cute. but still i felt like their kiss came out of nowhere, like it genuinely shocked me. and i really don't know why, but i just didn't like the scene. something just felt off about them.

and overall i felt the same, that el literally knew nothing about the world or relationships and was jumping into a romantic relationship after being free for a week. it just didn't feel healthy. and at the time, i didn't like the scene where el asked mike if she was still pretty. i mean im not saying HORRIBLE TOXIC ABUSIVE like of course its not that, but in the long run for their relationship i just didn't like it. i didn't think el seeking validation from mike like that was setting up a long healthy relationship. like we see el see nancy's picture and call her pretty, and later she goes in nancy's room and looks at all her pictures from throughout her life, and it makes her sad. she wants to feel that way--like a normal, pretty girl.

then when mike dresses her up to go to the school, she feels pretty. she asks mike if she looks pretty, and he says yes. she's seeking validation from him. and later when her wig gets messed up and she looks at herself in the waters reflection and tries to put it back on, it infuriates her, because she doesn't feel pretty anymore. and when she sees mike again, she once again seeks out the validation. she was worried that mike wouldn't think she was pretty anymore. it really makes me think that el did not love mike, or the other way around. she latched onto him because he was the first person to show her kindness and make her feel normal. they kissed after a WEEK. thats not love, thats attachment. jumping into a relationship because of complex trauma and attachment without having time to consider their actual compatibility as a couple.

and yes yes yes i know they're 7th graders, they're not going to be perfect, but this is a television show. we only get to see a sliver of these relationships in the long term, so what we do see needs to be building them up and making them likable. there is no time to break them down and build them up again. thats just not how you write a love story.

[ifihadtopickadad]

you've made a mistake by telling me to go read up on the au- (/j)

anyway. susan refers to nessa and gregory as her children, so i assume this means she adopted nessa?? either legally or just emotionally, and considering she was homeless before henry gave them the afton house i am going to assume the us legal system wouldnt give her custody of nessa at all so its the latter.

WILLIAM FINDING REMNANT AS A TEENAGER IS SUCH A COOL CONCEPT ?!?!? like. him finding it post cc (i love how you call him benny btw. really cool name) or charlie's death is interesting, but the idea that he experimented using animals (AND HIS OWN FAMILY DAMN) and then moved onto children/humans once he- presumeably- did everything he could with being that didnt have the same level of sentience?? amazing. very evil-scientist core. love it.

remnant working similar to radiation is also an interesting idea, having to be stored carefully or it will 'possess' the objects around it. (imagine william tried to store it in a bucket one time and the bucket just. got possessed. what do you even do in that situation-) are there some materials that remenant is physcially unable to uh. meld itself into i guess?? like some resources are just remnant resistant??

will susan tell the kids about remnant? about everything (or even just some things) the aftons had going on? or is she going to try protect them from the truth?? DOES SHE FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO MIKE POST-SISTER LOCATION?? is the scoop canon to this au?? (if so my next question is how did faz ent get the sperm of a corpse but its faz ent. theyll find a way.)

the au seems great so far !! definately really interesting, will be Rotating It in my mind for the next several days and going mental any time you post something new for it lol

take care !! <3

It Twasn't a mistake. Twas a calculated risk.

I love people asking about the stuff I make. I'm out here stimming from excitement, you got me smiling so hard that my dimples are showing.

Emotionally and illegally. If there's one thing the lore has shown us about Henry beyond what we already know, it's that after William's bull-fuckery Henry had to be just as shady to bring the musty dusty purple Pringle down so paying someone to forge adoption papers was easy(I like to think he fnaf!Neil Caffrey to do it)

The concept of William discovering Remnant post-CC is nice but it never lined up quite right to me, I know way too much about how famous historical scientists studied the way stuff worked extensively to even begin experimenting with it to think that he discovered Remnant, and immediately started killing people to get results. William isn't on the Anti Social Personality Spectrum but he is an undiagnosed Narcissist with a God-Complex. So, William discovers Remnant as a teen and does smaller experiments to figure out how it works (this is one of my fnaf theories specifically around William's relationship to Remnant)

All the discourse about Remnant is actually what inspired the Radiation thing. Everyone, everywhere, was losing their minds over the insanity that is Remnant and I had a throwaway thought about how we've seen all this in fiction where Radiation is the given cause: the mutates in every Fallout game ever and the TV show, Spiderman, The Hulk, Corpse Mikey would fit right in in the Fallout-verse, etc. All fnaf does is take all of those concepts and shove them into one place and I love that. The only thing it doesn't do is bring you back to life and I think that's because you need internal organs for that. Mike lost his organs but not his brain so Remnant kept brain activity going.

The bucket thing did happen. It wasn't a bucket thought. It was one of those plain lunch boxes. He had one already but, he bought an extra to store the Remnant in. Long story short, it's early morning, and he's practically brain-dead as he gets ready for school so he grabs one of the lunch boxes without. Lunch in the cafeteria was legendary that day. The lunch box screeched, and he made up a half-lie about trying to invent a musical lunch box but grabbing the wrong one. He invented an actual musical lunch box that was fairly popular in UK for a while.

Yes! Funny enough Radiated materials are the only things Remnant can't meld itself to. He could never figure out why but, William's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He bought and repurposed multiple microwaves to act as radiated containers.

By the time they get to the house Gregory and Nessa are 10 and 14 respectively so she does tell them, they're also Geniuses ala Afton Genetics and they're also Peak Gremlins™️ so they'd find out anyway.

Everyone knows Michael Afton(legal name Mike Schmidt) as a Missing Person's case that's gone unsolved for decades by this point. The footage of him getting scooped was scrubbed as was his being worn like a meat suit. But there is footage of 'Mike' forcing himself up and to the Elevator. His organs were all gone by the time the Police got there but the blood muscle and other bodily fluids were still there. It's believed that Mike was lured to the scooping room through abuse and manipulation a fact further compounded by the bodies of the technicians being found hanging by police.

The general belief is that he died out in the wilderness but, his body was never found hence the Missing Presumed Dead thing. This all happened in 1986 when he was 17. Afton Robotics and Fazent shut down Circus Baby's officially and stopped renting out the Funtimes after this because they weren't fast enough to cover it up like with the Missing Children's Incident and the Bite of '83. And so began the downfall of Fazbear Entertainment and Afton Robotics.

So yeah, the scoop happened here, and since Remnant works with what's already there and Mike's practically made of the stuff because he grew up eating it, his sperm was kept intact ala Remnant(I mean he didn't lose his penis to the scoop.)

As for the name. I was watching the sandlot when I came up with it. (His middle name is Garret) I'm glad you like it.

[imthecleric]

Will is known for his love, what he gives to others. The thing is Will's love is not so as easily given as people think. We see him give his love to his friends. But these are people who like him who we know he has a history with as season 1 implicates. Where we see Will not easily giving out his love is in season 2 with Hopper and Bob.

Hopper and Will have criminally few scenes together especially for the guy that can't even fight Owens' comment of "pop" but Will does not remember him. Not even the idea of him. He seems so proud but Will not having a memory of him shows that the love isn't fully there. The only three people he remembers are the three we know he loves without a doubt, and that is Mike, Joyce, and Jonathan. Even if it is just the idea of them like "You're mom" he still remembers them.

But what about Bob you say? Bob is someone who is trying to earn Will's love. He works very hard, and we see Will eventually give it when he takes in the idea to say "Go away" to the Mindflayer. We also see it solidified with the drawing he does of him. Will uses art to convey his feelings most notable fear (the mindflayer), love (DnD), and hate (zombie boy). Arguably there is only one place for Bob to fall.

Now I know you are like what about Lonnie. Every child has a complex relationship with parents who are abusive. Even Jonathan who we know hates Lonnie and tries to instill that idea into Will, has a complex relationship with his dad. Go forth with that idea Jonathan RPers. Will however, so full of love, wants to please Lonnie even past the point of when Lonnie is more or less willfully giving up his rights because he is not trying to visit Will. Will still wants to love him. He still wants to acknowledge the roll Lonnie has in his life, and as much as I love Hopper he has not stepped into the role of dad for Will, not yet at least. Lonnie is still that to Will. And I know people are like he doesn't like baseball, but he has a bat in the one place he finds comfort, I think people often forget Jonathan does try to instill his beliefs of Lonnie onto Will. Will is if anything a people pleaser of course he is going to say what he did. What makes a real point though is what does Will have in the place he calls his, that he build with Jonathan. A baseball bat. Lonnie for as bad as he is still left an impact on Will, and that was Will having more interests than Art, he didn't do it in a healthy way but it still happened.

Last we have El. Will did not meet El in any form until the end of season 2. He spent a year listening to the boys talk about her, literally when he woke up some of the first things he was told was about El. Now granted he did more or less meet El in the upside down, but that is hardly a meeting if that makes sense. He didn't know who it was probably until later and he was told about what happened. Will from what we can glean did not get to really know El at all until she moved in with the Byers after Hopper was presumed dead. Will was likely jealous of her, not only because Mike talked about her alot and she had Mike's affection something he had wanted for a while, but because she replaced him in their friend group. The obvious example I use is that Will changed his DnD class. Before El he was a wizard, she came in and he changed to Cleric because she was the "mage" which in Advanced DnD (the version the boys would have played) is more or less a magic user aka a Wizard. Changing class or multiclassing in Advanced DnD is difficult and essentially resets the player back to level one until the reach the same level they were with their old class for them to access any of their old class powers and moves. So with the analogy that the Duffer's use of DnD explaining in base format the plot of the show, this explains Will and El before they get to know each other.

She had to earn his love. But once she had it he gave it to her freely. He wasn't afraid to give it to her. He did his best to make sure she knew he loved her. He did his best to make her happy at the expense of himself which is how Will opperrates. Others are okay at the expense of himself we see it time and time again with "Are you okay?" aimed at Jonathan in the end of season 1 while Will is the one in the hospital bed, "Close Gate" in season 2 while Will would die if that happened, "She needs you" in season 4, and in season 3 we see the consequence of Will wanting something for himself with trying to get the boys to play DnD.

Will's love given comes at a cost to no one but himself. He wont ever mention the cost because he views it as minute and inconsequential but it is still there, and its only a matter of time before someone realizes. Will's love is not as infinite as it seems. And Will doesn't just give it away. Sure he will empathize with people, like giving the crying girl the tonka truck, but that is not equated to Will loving you.

[camcat1320]

I only include the show in my headcanon. If it doesn't have Ehasz and Co. writing it, I don't want any part of it. Even though Mike and Bryan created the show, my personal belief is that they are mediocre at storytelling. It was the other writers that made the show so great.

In my Book 4 fanfic, I want to show the complexity of Azula and Ursa's relationship. How Azula sees her mother as a heartless and cruel woman but she doesn't understand what happened behind the scenes.

In my headcanon, Ursa saw the influence that Ozai had over Azula. Ursa was the one to advocate for Azula to go to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls as an attempt to reduce Ozai's influence.

But in Azula's perspective, she sees this as abandonment, Ursa shirking her motherly duties off onto a school. And with Ursa homeschooling Zuko, Azula sees this as Ursa playing favorites.

Then the deal between Ozai and Ursa would go just about the same as it did in the comics. Ursa wanted to take both Zuko and Azula with her into banishment but Ozai holds them as the children are his property. Ursa visits each of her sleeping kids to say goodbye.

As the siblings begin their search for their mother, Azula would find Ursa's old herbal medicine that helped with her depression. Upon reuniting with their mother, Azula would confront Ursa.

Azula would accuse Ursa of never loving her, that she was so quick to up and leave her, having a new daughter to replace her. Azula would ask about the medicine, asking if it was her fault that Ursa needed it. Was life really so bad with Azula that she needed it?

Ursa would plead, saying that Azula and Zuko were the only good things in her life. Then Azula would ask if Ursa stayed as long as she did because of some sense of duty or obligation. Ursa would deny it and plead to Azula to let her explain but Azula wouldn't have it. Azula runs away, abandoning Ursa before she has a chance to abandon her again.

After this confrontation, Ursa would be riddled with guilt and confide in Ikem. Ursa would blame herself for everything that happened and say she is a terrible mother. She'd say she should've done more, that she wasn't good enough. Ikem would offer words of encouragement to not give up on Azula and that Azula will understand eventually.

This would only be the beginning of both of their respective redemption arcs.

"We just need more scenes of Azula and Ursa interacting to really know for sure whether Ursa was abusive/neglectful/hated her daughter."

1) do you see how this is an insane argument?

2) more scenes will not fix the problem of people taking the scenes we do have completely out of context. Media literacy will fix that.

3) every time we do get more scenes, the "more scenes" people act surprised and enraged when the extra scenes don't contradict what was shown previously, i.e., don't make Azula out to be a poor victim of Ursa.

And on and on it goes.

[xoxo-sarah]

I Wanna Be Yours || Part 1

Series Masterlist | Part 2

↝a/n: my first Robin Series. Set in season 4.

↝pairing: Robin Buckley x fem!Wheeler!reader

↝ Warning:slightly proof read. Possible spoilers if you still haven't watched season 4, everything that happens in stranger things, slow burn, Vicky doesn't exist here, not because I don't like her, but because it's easier to write for Robin when she's not madly in love with another chick.

↝⎙ 6.24.23

Nancy jiggled her keys, annoyed with the mop headed boy. “Mike! Let's go.” She turned, looking at you with an irked expression. “This kid.” She opened the door, walking past you as you put your backpack on.

Mike rolled his eyes, hunching over the toaster, impatiently waiting for the pop tart to pop any second. “Jesus. How am I gonna survive a whole week without you guys?” You grinned as he walked past, handing you one of the warm pop tarts. “Besides you. You're cool.” He whispered before practically jogging to the car, where Nancy sat with her head thrown back in annoyance. You bid your parents goodbye before following him to the car, deciding you didn't have time to argue over who was getting in the front.

“So, Cali, huh?” Nancy glanced at you from the rearview mirror, a small grin making its way onto her lips. You two have tormented him for weeks over him going all the way to California for spring break. You did it more than Nancy though, only because you loved his grossed-out reaction when you'd turn around, acting as if you were making out with someone, hinting at the two.

“Yeah.” Mike grumbled, looking out the window from the passenger seat.

You nodded, not mentioning it for the rest of the car. At least, until you got to school.

“And then there's Heidi tomorrow night, but the problem with Heidi is that she's going out of state for college. So, it's like, do I really wanna start another relationship that has no point other than sex?” Steve continued to rant to deaf ears. “I mean, I don't know. Does that make sense to you?” He rubbed his forehead, glancing to his side, where Robin was putting on mascara, solemnly paying attention to the mirror and not to the man who was ranting for the whole car ride. “Robin, are you listening?”

“Uh, yes. I-I'm lis-”

“What did I just say?” Steve threw his hand up, shaking his head, unimpressed.

“Something about sex with…Linda.”

“No! I'm talking about Heidi.”

“Cut me some slack, please!”

Steve bit his cheek before rubbing his forehead again. “Well-”

Robin began to rant, “Your love life is one of labyrinthine complexity. And it is 7:00 in the morning, we have this stupid pep rally and I woke up looking like a total corpse.” She stretched her hands on the sides of her face, surely not looking flattering at all.

“Oh, you're worried about a pep rally? You expect me to believe that?” He glanced over again, his expression showing he absolutely did not believe that, not one bit.

“Yeah? So?”

“So, we both know what this is about. Okay, I'm not buying that bullshit. This is about Y/n.” He had met you a few times, when he was with Nancy and when you guys had to fight some ugly parasite looking monster. You were quick to catch Robin's eye in school, which, in turn, made her turn to Steve and tell him all about this girl. There were a few characteristics that led him to know she fancied you before she even told him your name.

“Absolutely not.” Robin couldn't help the blush that painted her cheeks, moving to do anything with her hands. She began applying lip balm, staring back into the little mirror in the visor.

“Yes it is. You know what else I think?”

“I really don't care-” Steve could go on and on. If you were to ask Robin what he said, she'd surely say blah blah blah with a roll of her eyes.

“I think you gotta stop pretending to be someone else when you're around her. You just gotta be yourself.” He had his hand out, motioning around absentmindedly.

“You're literally quoting me to me. You do realize that, right?”

“Well, maybe you need to listen to yourself. Ever think about that, smarty-pants?” Robin stared at him with a look that could kill. Was she this annoying when she scolded him, telling to get his shit together? "I listened to you and look at me. Boom. Back in business.”

“It's not the same thing, okay?”

“Well…"

Robin made a sound of disagreement at that, not letting him finish that thought. “You ask a girl out and she says no, big deal. Nothing happens. Maybe your ego is a little bruised.” Robin looked at him with false pity, before moving her hands around again. “But I ask out the wrong girl, and BAM! I'm a town pariah.”

Shaking his head, Steve understood where she was coming from, but disagreeing with how she was going about it. “Yeah, okay, I'd buy that, except Y/n is definitely not the wrong girl.”

“We just don't know that do we?”

"She returned Fast Times at 53 minutes, 5 seconds. Do you know who paused Fast times at 53 minutes, 5 seconds?”

“...”

“People who like boobies, Robin!”

“Ew! Gross! Don't say boobies!”

“Boobies. It's not a big deal, okay. I like boobies. You like boobies. Y/n likes boobies. Definitely.”

Climbing over the seat after Nancy parked, you patted Mike as he held the car door open. “Use protection at least.” Before he could reply or grumble, you were jogging towards the gym, finding some of your friends in the process.

“Got any plans for spring break?” Chrissy asked, trying to keep in stride with you.

“Not really.” You hadn't made plans, but you'd probably end up staying at one of your friend's house. After walking in, you turned towards her, grinning to ease her nerves. “Have fun. You'll do amazing.” She smiled back, giving you a quick hug before running off.

Turning back to the bleachers, you tried to look for an empty seat, which was becoming harder with the people trampling into the double doors.

Hearing your name being yelled, you looked around, stopping when you saw Steve. He motioned you over, making sure no one sat down beside him.

With the glare he could feel on the side of his head, he'd definitely be getting an earful from Robin.

He held his hand out, helping you step up the stairs with all the people walking around you to take a seat. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” He turned to face Robin, mouthing '53 minutes, 5 seconds'. She rolled her eyes before looking forward.

When everything started, he cheered with you as you not only cheered on your school, but your friends and all the work they put into the moves.

“And of course, I have to give a special shout-out.” Steve glanced over at you when he heard you scoff at Jason Carver.

“What? You don't like Jason?” His words were playful, already knowing you despised him for some reason, hearing it from Robin.

“I don't know. He loves Chrissy and shows it, but he's just a dick to everyone else.”

Jason continued to speak, “Chrissy…" He stared at her as they were the only two in the room. “Chrissy, I love you, babe.”

You made a gagging sound, only loud enough for Steve to hear it.

Jason went on to make another speech. “You know…I think I can speak for all of us when I say it's been a tough year for Hawkins. So much loss. And sometimes I wonder 'how much loss can one community take?' In dark days like this, we need something to believe in. So, last night, when we were down by ten points at half to Christian Academy I looked at my team and I said, think of Jack, think of Melissa, think of Heather, think of Billy.”

Both you and Steve looked down, searching for the red head you had seen climbing the bleachers to sit with your brother and Dustin. You both looked back at each other, taking pity on the poor girl.

Sure, you never got along with Billy. But you would've never wished that kind of death upon anybody, including him. Especially with the way it affected Max. You could tell she felt guilty. It wasn't fair for her; she was just a kid- a good kid at that.

"— Think of our heroic police chief, Jim Hopper. "

“You alright?” Chrissy almost walked past you in the hall, looking a little uneasy.

“Yeah, people died so they could win a basketball game. That's the reason.” You rolled your eyes, grumbling as you glared at the man screaming into the mic. “For a stupid trophy.” Sure, you will still congratulate Lucas if they do, indeed, win the trophy. But to say many people died for that was just ridiculous. Honoring the people who have fallen is different, but that's not what he's doing. Maybe Lucas would play in honor of them, but not Jason.

She blinked a couple of times before trying to smile. “Yeah-yeah. Of course. Just had to go to the counselor. I'm alright.” You slowly nodded, before wrapping an arm around one of hers and walking towards class. She had been acting weird lately. So you made sure to stay close to her, making sure she didn't do anything. “Would you like to do something for spring break?” You brought back the question she asked earlier.

“Like what?”

“I don't know. We could hang at your house-”

“No!” You looked at her, confused by her outburst. “Why would we do that when we have your house?”

“I mean, Mike's not going to be there, so sure.” You gently smiled at her, squeezing her arm affectionately when she stopped by the bathrooms. “I'll talk to you about it later, yeah?” She nodded before pushing the door open.

You began walking towards class, trying to wrap your brain around what was going on with her. She obviously wasn't okay.

•2021-2024 by xoxo-sarah on Tumblr•

•My work is not to be translated, copied, modified, and/or reposted on any other site without my permission. [!I don't give permission!]

[there-was-a-hole-here-itsgonenow]

[Split] Shades of Mike’s Heart

Adding onto THIS because for whatever reason I’m having trouble reblogging my initial post. The initial post:

The add-on with more Mike split-shading (left face uncovered - Will, right face uncovered - El):

(Not the best picture quality; sorry, but still serves its purpose)

This is right after Mike tells El he can’t lose her again, she almost kisses him, and then he watches both her AND Will get driven away to get the Mind Flayer out of Will and close the gate. For all Mike knew, this could be the moment he last sees either of them again. And resembles the way he watches them both leave at the end of season 3, just under less dire circumstances:

What these two shots have in common is Mike feeling like he’s losing both Will and El (just in varying ways). Both these shots also shade Mike’s face on the left side as it is during his monologue to El—on the side of the body where the heart is. He’s hiding the truth of his heart and feelings, but this shading directly involves Will in a way that is different to when the shading is Will-specific:

When Mike’s focus is on Will (Mike with Will), the shading may suggest he’s ‘hiding the truth of his real feelings for Will’ instead of being ‘torn between Will and El/ torn about how he should feel’ like in El-linked shading. In the shots where Mike is watching Will and El leave, it’s El-linked shading. This shows he’s torn in some way. In his monologue to her, he’s saying what he’s saying because he thinks it’s what El needs (while unknowingly piggybacking off Will’s feelings while also unknowingly responding to those feelings). We can clearly see just in his hesitating, voice, and facial expressions through this scene that Mike was battling himself the entire time.

Going back to when Mike says he ‘can’t lose [El] again,’ he says this in seasons 2 and 3, with the end of s2 being the start of their relationship and the end of s3 being this weird midway point toward the eventual end of their relationship judging by Mike’s response to El’s “I love you too” (along with what we get in s4 because there’s no evidence especially at the end of s4 that s5 will end with Midleven).

This is the shading on Mike’s face after he says he loves El and can’t lose her again:

Same side as when he says it the first time, indicating he’s torn and not being wholly truthful.

Additionally, a lot of scenes where it’s Byler-heavy/-indicative have the left side of Mike’s face uncovered (again, the left side of the body holds the heart) but I’ve noticed some complexity with Will-specific lighting too. Like in this scene:

The left side of his face is shaded, like in El-linked scenes, but, regardless, Mike has reached out into the light [on his left] and connected with Will. He’s mostly in the dark, but his body is positioned toward Will’s, leaned toward and partly into the light where Will is. This is the moment where we understand the shading on Mike goes from torn or hidden to known.

-

Posted this addition already but I must add here too because I’m just REALLY excited about it!

I remembered to go back and check out the “blank makes you crazy” scene. I had to see how Mike’s face was lit.

His face is not only split-shaded, but it’s the left side of his face that’s uncovered. The Will-specific lighting. During a scene Mike is trying to confess his ‘love’ to El (while it seems he’s just trying to get her to say the word so he doesn’t have to).

But it’s more than that. This scene is even more connected to “Crazy together” and “only love makes you that crazy.”

Mike has Will in mind—in heart—during this scene!

[dcbicki]

jesus h christ, it’s been years. aren’t by*ers tired of trying to make will into a knockoff of el, yet? they want him to have her powers. they think mike’s love confession to el was really to will in disguise. they tried to make hop’s heart to heart to el and mike about by*er and now they want the 3 inch rule to be about by*er too. like if you love a character/ship so much why do you feel the need to constantly try and take things from another ship/character? i’m so tired.

I feel like you didn't even scratch the surface of this issue with those examples; I've seen some insane takes that range from "Mike actually only loves her because she helped find Will" to "He loves her but he’s not in love with her" & "I think El would be happier if she let Mike go" and it's like... where do you think Mike is going??? He's got £3.50, a dream and a road map, and it always leads him right to her. He's tied to Eleven like a goddamn safety harness. If the past four seasons have proven anything, it's that he's not going anywhere — If anything, he's following her wherever she goes because that’s the path he wants to go down.

The grossest take by far is when they claim El needs to be independent *gags* as if women have to be alone to become their own person and figure out who they are, and/or that she shouldn't be in a romantic relationship until she's properly healed from her trauma. Then in the next breath, they’ll tell you Will has it worse — as if there's some sort of scale for measuring childhood trauma — but he would be perfectly well-adjusted in a relationship with Mike because Mike is a caregiver. This is the same Mike whom they loathe because he *checks notes* was a bad friend for *double-checks* ah, yes, wanting to focus on and care for his girlfriend who was raised in a lab and experimented on for 12 years, who wants to be with him in return because he makes her feel happy and safe and human, and maybe she deserves to be on the receiving end of all of that attention and love.

On top of that, like you said, they project El’s every character trait that make for an interesting, unique female heroine (powers, experiences, growth, maturing romance with her boyfriend, complex relationship with her adoptive father, whole storylines & scenes) onto a still-pretty-underdeveloped male character who is on his own journey of self-discovery and acceptance. From what we do know about Will, he doesn't like to be defined or babied by others, and yet it’s the one thing a lot of his stans — I won’t say all of them — do on the daily.

You can't advocate for a well-written storyline for Will and then just copy-paste a completely different biography onto his character, not when he still needs fleshing out in the first place and not when he needs to define himself. And what is it even done for? Representation that wouldn't even be good representation because it would come out of left field, confuse the larger audience, and wreck at least 3 relationships that have been set up since the first season in the process. That's not good writing. That's not groundbreaking. And not doing it is definitely not queer-baiting. These characters are more than the relationships they have projected onto them. Will’s story arc does not revolve around Mike’s feelings — it’s about how Will feels.

But while we’re here, it is kind of baffling to me that people will label Mike & El's relationship as being 'toxic' or 'boring' and then just straight-up want it transplanted onto their own ship? It’s almost like the problem isn't that they are any of those things, or that Mike & El simply don't work as a couple; it's that the relationship is hetero and therefore considered less than. Which is an absurd take given there's no dynamic quite like it in media; she's an (unconfirmed but widely accepted by the fandom) atypical, neurodivergent superhero with a 'straight man' boyfriend who serves as her primary caregiver, a role typically filled by a female character when the central protagonist is male *coughs up the Lois Lane reference*. There's nothing boring about that, or about the drama they have to endure. If anything, that's what is groundbreaking.

The key problems in this fandom seem to be that everyone is either too immature or unwilling to self-reflect and realize that their views have been skewed by being chronically online and/or too much time spent engaging in fandom discourse and speculation specifically, and now their grasp on what the main plot of the show was in the first place is completely gone. It's about love overcoming interdimensional creatures, you guys. — I promise you these characters aren't secretly wanting to kiss everyone in a one-foot radius as much as you've convinced yourself they are.

And then, you know, there’s just the age-old internalised misogyny when women get in the way of non-canon mlm ships, which isn't limited to this particular subset of fans or even the ST fandom in general. It's the oldest story in the book: get rid of the girl if she stands in the way of *checks smudged handwriting* yep, that was it, a headcanon.

[miralax-gatorade]

haha. I love writing. I love to yell my anguish at made up guys. Look at them go! Look at them all heal together! Even tho there’s sometime tragedy and broken off relationships! But nah every time I just try to have a normal Fnaf lore convo it evolves into “yeah here’s my version of The Guy and all the trauma I projected onto him” and then the other person will say the same thing 😭😭😭

also I love and understand the nuances and complexity of Elizabeth’s character. in fact, one of the reasons that she joins Cassidy in RtH is because of how Mike reacts to seeing her for the first time after he’s scooped. They find each other back in the bunker (Mike is looking for his dad’s blueprints and Liz is looking for spare parts after being kicked out of Ennard) so they’re both really on edge. Mike basically says he never wants to see her again and Liz tries to shift all of the blame for everything off of herself, so they are both in the wrong.

HOWEVER if someone tries to say that Elizabeth is awful and the villain I have no problem saying that she did nothing wrong. I will forever defend traumatized girlies who are hated by their fandoms for making mistakes 🙃

also one thing that really gets me about Mike. When he gets told that something will only hurt for a moment. And then it hurts him for the rest of his life. Especially over and over and over and over again. That fucks a person up.

My breakup ship ship and my comfort ship enjoy

[gayofthefae]

Was analyzing characters and their objectives and realized that Mike’s has always been comfort, the primary example of this being in season 1: When the adults and general people in his life were not providing good comfort, he took matters into his own hands to form a search party because he didn’t trust the police. 

In this season, he also latched onto El very much based on the comfort she provided in telling him that Will was alive. Not so much emotional comfort, but a sort of informational comfort.

And I could keep going through all the little things like how he tends to lash out when both Will and El feel inaccessible to him but the main point that I realized in listing all these things is that he has this tendency of emotional avoidance, but in a very specific way:

He doesn’t repress his emotions so much as he always solves the situation rather than coping with the emotions it brings up. Can’t cry about Will being dead if you find him alive first. (for example)

And that led me back around to his relationships with Will and El. We see in later seasons that Mike has an especially hard time in seeking comfort in season 1 because the person missing is the one he goes to for comfort. He even slips up and refers to him as a cleric or “healer” instead of a wizard (which is a big deal given that D&D is like...their whole thing). 

And Will IS the person who helps him to actually cope with the emotions rather than “fix” the situation. We see this most in the “crazy together” scene with that solidarity and the van scene, where Will doesn’t do anything to actually affect the current state of his El’s fight, but does assure Mike that it’s gonna be okay.

On the other hand, without this emotional comfort, he latched onto and became infatuated with El not just as the person who specifically helped him find Will, but as the person who gave him something to hold onto when he could not handle his grief of the potential situation. And this is also repetitive. He doesn’t have a saviour complex so much as he appreciates that she is able to “fix” painful situations whether that be by swooping in and saving the day or just providing hope. And hope is great. And not inherently bad, I’m not saying that. But the consistency at which he resorts to it and holds off processing emotions in search of it is becoming an unhealthy pattern.

And what I realized is this is yet another great example of how Mike - not just in sexuality - tends to lean into El as what he thinks he needs rather than what he actually does. 

They have a beautiful friendship, but this is another point on why their romance being the focus doesn’t fit the arc. If he has people in his life that can offer him help and comfort in the way that she does AND emotional comfort, he can find a balance and even grow into developing healthy habits in it himself. 

But his current issue is a lack of ability to confront his emotions in any way but in retrospect. He has gotten better at acknowledging them that way, but he still needs to improve at admitting when he is currently in pain or worry or whatever it is. Otherwise, his issues will just continue if he doesn’t share his emotions, they affect things, he apologizes and acknowledges them in retrospect but there is no future prevention. Even when he doesn’t lash out or anything, there are still hurtful affects like his inability to say “I love you”. So with his problem being in coping with emotions when the situation isn’t fixed, the primary relationship focused on in his arc cannot be a person who fixes situations for him. It is a positive thing and a positive relationship but not one that would be representative of his growth or help it along in that specific sense.

He needs to go to and have the narrative focus be on the person who helps him feel better even when nothing is fixed. And maybe we can see a demonstration - or maybe it can just show a promise of that helping him to cope himself that way too. Because sometimes things aren’t gonna be okay. Like right now. They lost. Sometimes you don’t need “you’re not going crazy” you need “so what if you are?” Things go wrong and it will still be okay is the message he needs to be sent.

Pt 2

[you-usuratonkachi]

I still don’t get why El should break up with Mike,she looks happy with him :/

For me the Duffers can’t write,that’s it

I would have agreed on S3, but S4 brought up the issue of Mike being unable to tell her he loves her and how she feels like he's just idolizing her for her powers and by how that whole issue was handled, it feels to me like his respose wasn't satisfactory in the slightest.

Not only was he unable to tell her he loved her as she expressed her doubts and cried in front of him when she was without powers, when he does tell her he loves her it's prompted by someone else, during a moment of emotional stress, quoting someone else, STILL talking about her powers, when she has her powers back. Not to mention, the whole speech is meant to urge her to fight.

That monologue didn't solve the problem AT ALL. If anything, it confirmed her fears.

Which is why, if I was her, I would break up with him. Because he doesn't seem to understand the problem and that alone would make me feel like he doesn't really love me for ME.

Not to mention his monologue paralleled what papa told her before he died. Since her whole character arc is to leave behind everything that trapped her in her life, to finally find herself, by the way they framed the whole situation with Mike, it also feels like she should leave Mike behind too.

I wouldn't be saying this if they handled S4 differently, but right now? They are not very good together.

I mean, Lumax had that super cute, super simple but meaningful scene where Max laughs after a long time and Lucas goes "I missed it. Your laugh" and it's so powerful because you can tell he SEES her, missed her, they aren't even shown half as much but their relationship got such good development.

Can you imagine S4 Mike telling that to El? Not once did he mention a personality trait or soemthing about her that didn't relate to her powers. He romanticized their first meeting (we see that when he says "It's not fate" too) and talked extensively about what she can do. And when it came to actually talk about who she is, he could only say she's a superhero. Which ties in with the whole am i a monster? doubt she had. Except she already solved that issue. She knows she's not a monster, she left the real monster behind when papa died. She didn't need Mike to tell her that, in fact, he had already told her that when they fought the first time. She needed Mike to love her for something OTHER than that.

He didn't.

He didn't mention one single thing that wouldn't make her doubt his feelings.

The issue she had with him at the beginning of the season? Still there. The difference between his arguments during their first fight and his monologue is just that he added "i love you" (prompted).

So yes, if I was El i wouldn't be happy with that. I would only feel like there's no return. He failed her. Romantically.

She's happy with him because she does love him, but the point here is: does that suffice to keep the relationship going? Is their relationship what she wants? And I think at this point it's not. It keeps falling short compared to her expectations. She feels like she has to be someone "cool" to keep him interested (she lied about her situation when she didn't have her powers).

So yeah, I think to fully find herself and her value beside her powers, she should break up with Mike.

I'm not saying Mike is a bad person (well he wasn't good either this season but that's beside the point), I'm saying he has overly romantizised circumstances (based on what he said) and his inferiority complex doesn't help their situation. They bring each other down without really intending to.

And that's not good for her. She's working on herself, but he needs to work on himself too, so right now they are onto two different pages, and that would most naturally lead to a break up to me.

[wibble-wobbegong]

feeding into your procrastination by asking what your favorite part of mike's character is (but seriously, go write your essay)

i’m super emotional over him rn so maybe i’m a little biased but i absolutely fucking his ability to have hope because of how much he loves people

in season 1 he refuses to stop looking for will even when the evidence saying he was dead was insurmountable. he had a sliver of hope, grabbed onto it, and ran with it until he brought will home

we see mike worried about losing lucas as a friend and we see mike protect el from the bad men too

in season 2 he has hope for will again and reaches out to him by using those emotions he’s started feeling. he stays by his side to keep him safe and make sure he felt loved and he was the one who made sure they didn’t end up killing will when they closed the gate

he had hope for el, for her to return even if he didn’t really believe it. he called every night for 353 days for a lot of reasons, and one of those reasons was because he hoped she was still out there and that she might be hearing him

season 3 is the one season we don’t see this hope and it’s also the season we see him try impossibly hard to pretend to be someone else. he still protects the people he loves though, he still fought against everyone else because he was worried about el and he still kept an eye on will

in season 4 mike doesn’t stop searching for el when he gets that sliver of hope even though it’s literally a wild goose chase and he also has so much hope around where his relationships with will and el are headed (until the very end)

mike just has so much hope and love in him even when he isn’t always good and even when he’s faced tragedies. he’s such a complex character and yet he continues to hope and love in every season and it’s just so. seeing a character that’s imperfect in so many ways still representing hope is just so cool to me. he can’t make those grand, uniting speeches. he fucks up a lot, he gets angry and he says things that come out the wrong way and he’s impulsive but he’s still good and he still stands and inspires other people by refusing to give up

lucas and dustin wanted to give up in s1 but they didn’t because mike refused to. mike was there in s2, wanting to help and guarantee el’s success so he figures out a way to do that and the party follows him. in s4 we see mike give will hope that they’ll kill vecna and we see mike being the one to get things rolling when it came to finding el and he just

mike’s written in such a way that you have to use his love for other people to understand him because he’s all about love and it makes me wanna burst into tears sometimes

[iamnmbr3]

Another day. Another questionable interview from someone involved with the production. This time the Director (who to her credit at least is better than Mike Waldron in that she is able to say she likes Loki’s character whereas his interviews drip with open disdain and disrespect and he can’t even pretend otherwise). (x)

Kate Herron: But Loki doesn't have many friends, you know? He builds this friendship with Mobius across the second episode.

Here again we get out-of-universe confirmation that the narrative framing of Mobius in a positive light is intentional. Mobius is not Loki’s friend. He’s his captor and his torturer. Loki isn’t on equal footing with Mobius. They don’t even have a boss-employee relationship. LOKI WAS MOBIUS’S SLAVE until he escaped. He was being held against his will and coerced under threat of death to work for Mobius and his organization without compensation. That is slavery. And it’s not ok. 

Mobius also berated him by telling him that he is inherently evil and monstrous - the very things that drove him to suicide. Mobius is complicit in acts of torture, genocide, murder, privacy violation, and  police brutality and shows no signs of having any problem with it. He’s no more Loki’s friend than Thanos or the Black Order are. 

When has he ever treated Loki with dignity or respect? Even if we ignore all the horrific stuff, he’s just plain not nice to Loki. He constantly mocks and belittles him and never takes his side. That’s not a how a friend behaves!  That’s how a bully behaves! Where is the basis for this friendship??!!

Kate Herron: “And obviously, we're seeing it through Loki and Sylvie's POV. You know, neither of them are good or bad. A complete, pure good hero would probably join the queue and be like, "Well, hopefully we'll get on the train." But they're not those characters. They're going to try and get on it.”

They snuck onto a train??? That’s what she thinks a grey character is? That’s so dull! Loki was a complex and grey character. Larry (as I call the tv show character) and Sylvie...got on a train without a ticket. That’s laughable! That doesn’t make me think about complex morality or issues. And c’mon. All the heroic Avengers have done that level of rule breaking MANY times and they don’t lose their “pure good hero status.” Tony Stark constantly does things like that! I want Loki back. HE is a grey character. But I haven’t seen him in the show so far. Instead I get Larry the watered down clown. 

Kate Herron: “When Loki and Mobius are at Pompeii, for example, that's shown through Loki's POV, right? He's joyous and he cracked the case. Pompeii was horrific, but we're seeing it through his perspective and he's in a completely different headspace.”

You know a scene can have more than one emotion right? Like he could be happy about solving the case but also horrified at the destruction of Pompeii? Instead he is laughing at the people who are about to die horrifically and seems to have no compassion for them whatsoever. Sure people can headcanon reasons why he behaved that way (and more power to them. Fixing dumb canon is what fandom is all about!) but the narrative framing is to me pretty clearly lighthearted and the director confirms that intent. There seems to be no awareness that by having Loki behave so callously it makes him come across as incredibly cruel. Far more than he ever was in canon. 

In Thor 2011 Thor is laughing while slaughtering Jotnar (as is considered appropriate in his culture) but Loki isn’t. He kills when he has to but he doesn’t enjoy it, something that’s unusual for the culture he was raised in. This Pompeii scene could’ve been a great time to see Loki’s more compassionate side as he looks at the people who are going to die. We could’ve seen some real conflict from him. And it would’ve been a great moment to start introducing the concept that he’s more than just a simple villain to more casual viewers. Instead, although they think they’re “redeeming” Larry over the course of the show they’ve made him far worse and more villainous. I wish they had hired an experienced Director who also understands Loki - like Kenneth Brannaugh!!! - rather than a Director who has never headed up a major project before. Though even the best Director couldn’t fix the abysmal and ooc script and story Mike Waldron came up with. 

Kate Herron: “I think that's the thing that's really key for her is that she's a completely original character, completely born out of our writers, and that, for me, was exciting.” 

Remember when I said Sylvie is the favored OC? Called it. 

Kate Herron: “The train scene I love because Loki doesn't get many wins and it's nice to see him having a nice sing-song. He's just enjoying himself. Because I think that's such a funny way, as well, to show the difference between him and Sylvie is that she's on a mission. She's like, "We're going to get off this moon." And when she's offered a drink, she's like, "No, thank you."

WOW. I hate this SO much. So suddenly Sylvie gets to act more like Loki and Loki suddenly doesn’t know how to be subtle and is just a dumb clown messing everything up. C’mon! This is absolutely ridiculous. This is not Loki silvertongue. This is not the Loki who tried to diffuse the situation on Jotunheim and almost succeeded. This is not the Loki who was always a restraining voice in Thor’s ear. They’ve turned Sylvie into discount Loki without any depth or complexity or vulnerability and they’ve turned Loki into discount Thor ft. dumb clown! Absolutely outrageous. 

Kate Herron: “everything is not what it seems and even in our design, people have picked up on certain things. Like the way that they dress, or the posters and that there's something a bit more going on there.”

If the TVA actually turn out to be twist villains I will laugh SO hard; I’d say that twist is too dumb even for Marvel but...it’s really not! Like. Guys. If they’re gonna be TWIST villains you have to not have them do obviously villainous things on screen!!!! BECAUSE THEN IT’S NOT A TWIST!!!!

From the moment we meet them we see them commit acts of police brutality, murder, genocide, trial without due process, enslavement, privacy violation, and torture IN ORDER TO ELIMINATE FREE WILL. Like. They are literally the most evil organization in the MCU. Even Thanos can’t compare. So having them be revealed as villains will fall flat. Because the twist isn’t the audience learning new information or the main character learning it. It’s just the narrative suddenly acknowledging it and treating their atrocities seriously. So the twist is in the real world not the show. And it’ll make Larry look like an even bigger idiot than he already does if he’s suddenly like “Wait the people who tortured and enslaved me are evil?! What?!??!” (I stg if he has to fight miss minutes in the end like I joked about I will lose it).

Also. Why make it a twist?! When you treat the villains as a joke it robs the narrative of tension. Their acts of evil should’ve been acknowledged from the beginning in order to create sympathy for the protagonist and tension in the narrative as we watch him try to escape this situation! Smh. The only funny joke in this series is how badly the writing fails. 

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Based on your head canon that Edward is a repressed homosexual riddled with internalized homophobia, how do you think Edward would react to Bella if she was a boy? I read your answer on the "if Caius switched places with Bella" question and I wanted to know if you think it'd be the same reaction with any guy.

I’d say it depends how much cis teenage boy Beauford is channeling.

I always picture Caius... not necessarily as screaming testosterone (but yes) but one of those unmistakably masculine guys. He’s not an intellectual, not a dude bro either like Emmett, but this guy is tough as nails and very... manly. It’s hard for me to picture a non Mycenaean warlord vampire Caius, i.e. the human Caius from the last ask, but I imagine, as before, the arts bore him and while not a football star he’s not an intellectual either.

Edward likes a few things about Bella. He likes her smell, her empty mind, her delicate frailty and feminine aesthetic, and what he can project onto her. What he chooses to project onto her is very telling.

She’s a gentle intellectual, well-read in mostly the classics, who has the disposition of a Madonna and is in desperate need of Edward’s protection from spiders and meteors.

By comparison, even before Bella became Bella to him, he finds most of the teenage boys in the school crass and beneath him. He also finds the girls vapid, gossipy, shrews but that’s a different story.

Point being, if Beauford’s a jock, if he thinks fart jokes are funny, or even if he plays a little too much Minecraft, Edward’s not going to be interested.

Edward has to be able to project a quiet intellectual onto Beauford the way he does Bella. Someone, perhaps, who is a little too sensitive to fit in with the bros. A gentle sort of man who is oddly like Carlisle, but even more so. He also can’t be too interested in women, as then he’d be just another Mike Newton. He also can’t be too blatantly interested in men because then Edward’s homophobia comes into play.

This was much the same with Bella, where part of her draw for Edward was that Edward imagined Bella was much too good for him and not attracted in the least. (He hopes, desperately, then is amazed, that Bella finds him hot. Meanwhile he loathes Jessica Stanley for lusting after him when Bella secretly does th esame damn thing.)

I also imagine that Beauford has to be a similar sort of frail pretty if only because Edward also has this protector and general inferiority complex. Edward’s the skinniest of the Cullen men and is very sensitive about this, as we see with Bella, he desperately wants to have a leg up on his partner and be the protector in the relationship. Edward would not do well with Rosalie, a woman who could carry his bleeding human carcass down a mountain.

So, let’s say Beauford checks all these boxes, which he very well might.

I imagine what we get is a very close “friendship” that’s actually really really really gay. Basically, it’s Bella and Alice’s Homoerotic Friendship II: The Quickening. And beautifully, just like canon, neither Edward nor Beauford realize they’re gay despite being in a committed relationship.

Edward takes Beauford to the meadow where he blissfully lays his chest across Beauford’s beating heart. Edward eats Beauford’s tear to keep him with him always. They do intellectual things like watch Romeo and Juliet together where Edward remarks he envies the ease with which Romeo can kill himself. After the James’ incident, Edward helps Beauford shower, then later draws erotic art that he claims isn’t erotic of Beauford in the shower. Edward openly remarks all the time that he plans to spend the rest of Beauford’s life watching him from the shadows as he marries some beautiful woman and has beautiful children. Beauford is his soulmate, an intellectual peer the likes of which the world has never seen, in a completely platonic way of course.

Carlisle remarks that he’s so glad Edward has finally found someone, Edward gives him this scandalized look. Ye gods, Carlisle, not like that! Wherever did you get such an idea? Carlisle quietly tries not think of the decades he spent in Volterra with ancient Greeks. It’s best Edward not know about that

All of Rosalie’s suspicions regarding Edward’s sexuality are confirmed, but she’s actually nicer than Edward makes her out to be, so she says nothing. She thinks it though, and Edward hates her for that.

Jasper’s just very confused and has to keep asking if Edward and Beauford have admitted this is all very romantic yet. The answer’s always no.

However, as Beauford can’t get pregnant and thus force the vampire issue, Edward likely doesn’t turn him and eventually devours him as he would have eventually devoured Bella.