#fred benson ref

[aemiron-main]

realization about eddie’s death

ok so remember when the duffers/st team said that eddie’s death would have major implications/effects for s5?  this might be a stretch but i think those implications could actually tie into a.) gay mike reveal and b.) mike getting vecna’d in some way (not necessarily in the typical way but yknow).  i’ve talked abt this in other posts, which i cant find rn so im gonna explain it again, but mike’s feelings for eddie are also paralled to his feelings for will via the soundtrack and the video store movie poster choices.

  long story short: in s3 and s4, the video store posters each represent a character. Mike’s poster is “coca cola kid,” but WILL’S is “teen wolf,” and the character parallels will in many ways, especially in the way that being a werewolf is DIRECTLY paralleled to being gay in the movie, like the main character literally ‘comes out’ as a werewolf and his friend is like ‘are you gonna tell me you’re a fag?’ and the main character is like ‘no im a werewolf actually.’ so, how does this tie to eddie? teen wolf. teenage werewolf. ‘i was a teenage werewolf’ by the cramps is one of the songs that plays during eddie’s cafeteria scene. but the other song that plays is ‘fever,’ also by the cramps. imo, ‘fever’ is about mike’s crush towards eddie, esp considering the lyrics about love and kissing that play during scenes with mike and eddie specifically, demonstrating that attraction, but then ‘teenage werewolf’ links that attraction to Will, too, and how mike feels the same way about Will that he does about Eddie- caveat, Mike is not ‘in love’ with eddie, but IS with Will, but ‘feels the same way,’ simply in terms of being attracted to both of them/thinking gay thoughts LMAO. plus, there’s also a MOVIE called ‘i was a teenage werewolf,’ just like the song, and just like how teen wolf is a movie. 

and so, i think that the feelings of attraction are shared but also therefore that the feeling of GUILT about both will and eddie is also going to be shared. not just guilt for being interested in will/eddie/guilt for being gay. i don’t think that’s enough for mike to come out/be targeted by vecna and possibly OUTED, something i also talked about in this post in terms of why mike likely wont admit his sexuality and may end up being outed and how that ties into a mike fake death. 

anway, it’s not just guilt over mike’s feeling for will and eddie or his guilt for being gay because imo that’s not quite enough for vecna to end him:  it’s guilt over eddie and will’s disappearances and deaths too.  think about it. two people that mike had gay feelings for. both having died/disappeared due to the upside down. troy’s comments about ‘fairyland’ and tying the deaths of people like will and eddie to queerness. mike, who has enough evidence from lonnie and the bullying to suspect that WILL was gay, and in mikes mind maybe could’ve been targeted for that gayness outside of mike’s feelings for him- but mike doesn’t have much reason to suspect that EDDIE was gay/queer. So, in mike’s mind, if being targeted/killed by the UD is associated with queerness, then where does the queerness come in? oh right. from mike’s crush on him. it’s mike’s fault, in mike’s mind.  Mike, finding out about Eddie’s death in s5, trying to talk with Dustin and Lucas about it, and Dustin’s guilt because he was THERE, trying to save Eddie, and Dustin and Lucas not understanding why Mike seems to feel so guilty, and Mike can’t say it, can’t explain his guilt, so it just festers inside of him just like it did for Max and Fred. 

Vecna’s victims all seem to have some sort of guilt, but the way that vecna approaches people like Fred and Max, who have guilt related to somebody’s death is actually different from the way that he approaches people like Chrissy, who don’t have that guilt related to somebody’s death (and we don’t see his interactions with Patrick, but we do see that Patrick’s guilt/suicidality is tied to disappointing his family and his father’s abuse towards him, rather than towards having been responsible for anyone’s death)  When it comes to Chrissy, he talks about just bringing her suffering to an end. He says “don’t cry, Chrissy. It’s time for your suffering to end.”  When it comes to Max and Fred, though?  To Fred, Vecna just says “I want you to join me.”  To Max, Vecna says “Time for you to join me.” 

People who have guilt about somebody’s death get ‘asked’ to join Henry, but he’s not really asking, he’s TELLING, he’s saying that he wants fred to join him, that it’s TIME for max to join him. And I think that Mike is going to be one of those people, and that Henry is going to ask mike to ‘join him,’ and how that ties into something else I talked abt in this post about how I think that we’re going to get a scene where mike ‘chooses’ to die, so that his suicidality is narratively tied up without having to show him making a typical non supernatural active suicide attempt, and so that Mike gets to fulfill his hero complex. It seems like a choice for Mike, like he’s getting ASKED to join henry, but it’s not really a choice at all, it’s the illusion of choice. Which ties into something I’ve also talked about in regards to mike being suicidal but also pushed towards that suicidality by the actions and attitudes of his family + by the homophobic rhetoric he’s internalized + by the bullying. It’s like how he makes the CHOICE to step off of the cliff in s1, but he’s verbally pushed towards making that choice by the bullies, it’s like the bullies irl who bully queer people to the point of suicide instead of actively murdering them.  We also see a LOT of the red-blue light imagery around mike specifically during the hellfire game: the same red-blue light imagery that we see in eddie’s trailer, and specifically behind eddie, actually, the night that chrissy dies. But why am I bringing this up if i’m saying that Mike is going to get attacked in a different way than Chrissy was/that chrissy’s isnt tied to somebody’s death and Mike’s is? Because it’s an EDDIE death flag, not a chrissy one. Chrissy was already screwed by the time we see those red and blue lights in the trailer, and we see them RIGHT behind Eddie’s head specifically. And so, Mike having that same pattern of lights behind HIS head during the hellfire game? Not only is it a mike death flag tied to Vecna, but it’s a mike death flag tied to EDDIE, the same death flag as eddie, which doesnt mean that he’ll die in the same WAY as eddie, but instead, that Mike’s death will be tied to eddie’s somehow, which fits in with what i’ve said about mike’s guilt about eddie’s death and the links to other deaths + mike’s queerness/feelings for both eddie and will.  It’s also interesting to me that Barb got killed by Henry, but Nancy did not. In terms of queerness, Barb was the one with a crush on Nancy, and it got her killed/targeted by Henry. Mike had a crush on eddie/is in love with Will, and so it may very well result in the same thing, in terms of Henry attacking Mike. 

and again, like i talked about in this post, mike is linked to will’s disappearance via his queerness in terms of being the ‘other queer’ that troy talks about and how the other queer is also henry, yes, but its also mike, and how the ‘flying around in fairyland with all the other fairies’ scene serves to demonstrate that the reason that mike is tied to will’s disappearance via the ‘other queer’ comment and how the bullies start targeting mike right after they talk about the ‘other queer’ and how the scene finally focuses on mike after that to, isnt because mike is the other who kidnapped will, but rather, because he’s also queer. the ‘other fairies’ comment serves to expand the idea of ‘other queer’ beyond Henry, and into people like Barb, too, with the ‘other fairies,’ comment, which means that Mike can be included in ‘other queer/other fairies’ and paralelled to that without ONLY being paralleled to henry bc again the point isnt ‘mike kidnapped will/is like henry,’ the point is ‘mike is also queer.’ As well, with that inital parallel between mike and henry both being the “other queer,” it narratively ties mike to a sense of responsibility/guilt for will’s disappearance, esp since it was mike’s house that Will left, even though it wasn’t his fault. So, Mike’s queerness is tied to will’s disappearance already via Troy’s dialogue choices and the choices of focusing on Mike in those scenes every single time that ‘other queer’ or ‘other fairies’ is brought up. like it doesn’t even focus on mike’s reaction when troy says that will is dead during the first homophobic bullying scene (the one where mike gets pushed), but it DOES focus on mike IMMEDIATELY after queerness is brought into the conversation. again i go into this in way more depth in that linked post.  So my point is: there’s already an existing narrative link between mike’s queerness and will’s disappearance and a sense of guilt. And I think that the same is going to apply to Eddie after Mike finds out about Eddie’s death. And like I talked about in one of the posts I linked, Mike imo is more likely to be outed than to come out on his own terms I think, esp in regards to the themes of his character and his queerness and what his character represents in those regards. So, Vecna attacking Mike based not just on his feelings for Will, but instead his queerness as a whole + a mike fake death? It addresses Mike’s suicidality, it addresses Mike’s sexuality outside of Will, which ties into gay mike and the milkvan breakup and into Byler getting together, but does it in a way where Byler getting together isn’t JUST tethered to the revelation of Mike’s sexuality and instead gets to stand on its own and be about Mike and Will’s love as individuals instead of just ‘oh yeah mike is gay and hes getting with will because will now knows mike’s gay despite the unresolved interpersonal tension between them regardless of sexuality’.  Like again- Mike being queer IS paralleled to the cause of Will’s death/disappearance during those death scenes in S1. The ties are there, not just to Will’s queerness playing a role in his vanishing, but MIKE’S too, with him being featured as soon as the ‘other queer’  is mentioned, or the ‘other fairies,’ are mentioned, and how using both ‘other queer’ and ‘other fairies’ means that mike isn’t SOLELY paralled to henry/his queerness isn’t SOLELY tied to will’s vanishing, but it is tied to it in ADDITION to being tied to the ‘other fairies’ and positioning Mike alongside the victims (like barb and will) instead of just positioning him alongside henry (the other queer comment and the framing of mike immediately after that’s said and how it ties him to henry/ties mike’s queerness to will’s disappearance). 

(obviously mikes feelings for will are way way deeper than his ones for eddie and he just had a crush on eddie but still.) Anyway! Much to think about. 

[hello-fred-barnett]

Halloween is right around the corner, holding a knife. My YA (young adult) stories illustrated by Anita Benson.

Halloween is right around the corner, holding a knife. My YA (young adult) stories illustrated by Anita Benson.

https://www.amazon.com/Bug-House-Fred-Barnett-ebook/dp/B07595FQKY/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

MIDNIGHT

Laszlo kicked Boldizsár’s bony ass all over the churchyard until he could kick no more. After a short rest and a drink from his flask, Laszlo dragged the broken parts back inside the mausoleum, dumped them back inside the coffin and took a few  cellphone photos —  one of an inscription on the wall above:

[aemiron-main]

it’s interesting to me that Mike has fried chicken on his tray, whereas Dustin has pizza, and that the other two characters in the cafeteria with fried chicken are two extras who look eerily similar to Barb and Fred. Why is this interesting to me?

This is interesting because fried chicken is what we see at the Hollands’ dinner table in s1, where Nancy doesn’t eat any of the fried chicken because she excuses herself from the table due to her guilt about Barb, where we then get that scene of her mourning Barb in the bathroom/feeling guilty about her death.

So, first of all, that extra who looks similar to Fred is a way of foreshadowing Fred’s death and paralleling his death to Barb’s and to Nancy’s guilt about both of their deaths, since Nancy asked Fred to come to the trailer park and then asked him to wait where he was, just like she asked Barb to come to the party and then told her to go home. In both scenarios, one of Nancy’s friends died (at the hands of vecna too since imo Barb was absolutely not taken by an actual demogorgon) after Nancy brought them somewhere with her + then told them to do something. Nancy even argued briefly with Fred in the car about Jonathan, paralleling how she argued with Barb in Barb’s car briefly about Steve.

Second of all, though, its VERY interesting to me that they’ve put Mike in this cafeteria scene with fried chicken + therefore paralleled him to people that Nancy’s lost. Not only does this tie into Nancy’s vecna vision about Mike’s death + operate as a Mike death flag, but it also ties into Mike’s own guilt about losing people. He says himself in Lenora to Will that he “felt like I lost you or something,” and so, especially considering the other parallels between Barb’s disappearance vs Will’s, and between Nancy’s grief for Barb vs Mike’s grief for Will (theyre paralleled but not identical bc Mike is in love with will whereas Nancy wasn’t in love with Barb), I think that Mike’s fried chicken is largely representative of his guilt about his relationship with Will and feeling like he’s lost Will again.

Plus, in terms of Mike’s food issues, I’ve talked abt this a bit before, but I do think that part of his issues/lack of eating stem from his guilt/depression/anxiety, as well as his repression of his sexuality and guilt about that and how things like the wheeler dinner table are a source of conflict for him, and I need to make a proper post abt this, but there’s definitely existing links between food and queerness in ST. Theres a bunch of examples of this that need their own post, but one of them is the scene with Hopper in the prison where he offers food to his fellow prisoner and the other prisoner says “im no fairy,” and rejects the food. Food is directly tied to queerness in this sense, as the prisoner sees rhe food as something that’s being offered in exchange for gay activity. (however like im gonna talk abt another post I think its tied to queerness via being tied to themes of freedom and not being repressed anymore and so for some people like Mike, embracing that queerness is part of that freedom.) Plus, the mike-el pizza scene is interesting to me because Mike doesn’t eat the pizza, hes still repressed, he’s still not embracing his queerness, hes still not free, he’s still having other people force things on him/tell him what to like. You can’t force freedom onto people, truly cant force them out of the closet because even if you out them to other people, they still may not be out to themselves, may still deny it to themselves, so El cant force Mike to eat the pizza or embrace his freedom. Mike has to do it himself.

And so, not only is food (fried chicken in this one example) tied to greif and loss, but it’s ALSO tied to freedom and queerness: which seems contradictory until you remember what I’ve been talking about in a bunch of posts lately with how Mike’s queerness and his guilt about other peoples’ deaths/getting hurt is completely intertwined, and how its likely going to be used against him in s5. So, even the food choices in the show reinforce that link between Mike’s guilt over losing people and his queerness, as food is associated with death/loss/guilt AND with queerness/freedom.