Eddie posts a Tiktok, talking about how Steve isn’t a big texter - he’s something worse, a caller - but when he does text Eddie, half the time it’s incomprehensible. The background of the video is a screenshot of a text conversation that starts with Steve sending Eddie a mermaid emoji. Eddie responds like, what does that mean???
Eddie gestures to where he blacked out the picture Steve sent him, “This is a picture of him in the bath. He wanted me to join him. How was I supposed to get that from a mermaid??”
Dustin stitches the video with a screenshot of a conversation he and Steve had a few weeks ago. Steve sent him a picture of a lizard one of his students found and asked, “Who is this?”
Dustin says in text and in the video that it’s ridiculous that Steve just assumes he knows the names of all the types of lizards out there. It’s also annoying because *Dustin moves to reveal the part of the conversation where he tells Steve that it’s an Eastern Fence Lizard* “I did actually know what kind of lizard it was.”
Dustin ignores the part of the conversation where Steve asks if it’d eat a cat.
Robin wordlessly stitches a screenshot of Steve asking, “What does it mean if a student called me based? Is that good?”
Mike stitches Eddie’s original video with a screenshot of his last text conversation with Steve where Steve says that he can’t do movie night. He’s having a Michael. Mike responded to this unprovoked attack like, “…Did you serious name your migraine after me?”
Will stitches his video and tells them to stop. Steve doesn’t have Tiktok and can’t defend himself. Meanwhile, his background is a screenshot of a text where Steve sent him one of those ‘I’m in your walls’ memes and says “You in 83. Lol.” He sends another text five minutes after saying, “Sorry if you’re still sensitive about that.”
<- Last Post | Next Post ->
3K notes
·
View notes
RIP Mike Wheeler’s heterosexuality
“Is being gay contagious?”
Steve stares at his phone groggily before putting it back against his ear. “…Mike?”
“Is it?”
“It’s three in the fuckin’ morning is what it is.” He rubs his nose, Mike’s words finally catching up to his brain. “Seriously, Mike? No it’s not fucking contagious, you’re not gonna get the gay disease or whatever from me. I promise you’ll keep liking girls.”
He’s a little hurt, even though he knows the question is innocent. They’ve been asking a lot of questions, like the inquisitive little assholes they are, but none of them had seemed like they weren’t okay with it. Until now.
“…that’s not what I meant,” Mike says. Steve realizes that his voice sounds shaky, even over the phone.
“Then what—“ he cuts himself off, realizing halfway through his bitching that there was only one reason Mike would call about this. “Oh.”
“Can you pick me up?”
“It’s three in the morning,” he repeats, even as he starts wondering where he left his keys. “Your mom…”
“Steve,” Mike pleads. “Please?”
He sighs. “I’m on my way.”
Mike is sitting on his doorstep when he pulls up, head in his hands. Steve doesn’t have to get out of the car, he stalks to the passenger door with all the vitriol of a boy with too many emotions to hold in, and wrenches the door open hard enough that Steve worries he’s going to break it.
“Watch it, noodle arms,” he says, trying to pretend this is normal. Maybe if he acts like it’s not well past midnight, Mike will relax.
It doesn’t work. Mike slumps in his seat, not bothering with the seatbelt. “Can you just drive?”
Steve drives. Doesn’t really know where they’re going, but it doesn’t matter. Just away seems to suffice.
He eventually pulls into a side road
“I’m scared to even touch another guy now! Because apparently hugging is gay when you’re older, and so is sleeping in the same bed, and telling your friends you love them, and…and I’m fucking scared all the time, ‘cause what if they’re right? How do they know? How can they tell by just fucking looking at me? It’s bullshit!”
“Shit, kid,” Steve says, heartbroken. “Shit. C’mere.”
He pulls him close, and Mike turns his face into the crook of his neck, shaking. His shirt collar starts to get damp.
“I don’t know what to do,” he cries. “I thought it was normal, I thought everyone was just…so scared all the time, and we just didn’t talk about it. But then you said that thing about being afraid and pushing it down, and I didn’t— I tried to ignore it. I tried so hard not to think about it, Steve, I swear I tried.”
“I know you did,” he says quietly. It hits him that he might be the only one who really gets it. Eddie gave up denying it long ago, deciding to evolve into something else for them to focus on. Robin’s a girl. Which doesn’t mean jack shit in most cases, because being a lesbian fucking sucks in a town like Hawkins, but girls aren’t as obsessive about it. Sometimes when they compare notes, Robin will just stare at him.
Mike shakes his head. “I don’t know what I did wrong,” he mumbles tearfully into his shoulder.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Steve says with a surprising amount of vehemence. He grabs Mike by his scrawny little shoulders, pulls him away so he can look directly into his bloodshot eyes. “Not a damn thing, do you hear me? There is nothing wrong with you, and anyone who tells you otherwise deserves a swift kick in the balls. Got it?”
Mike responds by bursting into loud, messy sobs.
Steve just keeps holding him, running a hand through his hair and soothing him gently, like he wishes someone had done for him or Robin or Eddie when they were young. Finally Mike pulls away, embarrassment starting to set in.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Steve asks instead of a meaningless platitude he knows Mike wouldn’t accept.
Mike gives him a suspicious look. “I guess.”
“I’m scared too. All the time.”
“No you’re not,” Mike snorts. “You don’t need to make me feel better just because I’m a pussy.”
“I’m not joking,” he says. “Why do you think I dated girls? Why do you think I went through so many lengths to hide it? It’s fucking terrifying, man. But you know what makes it less scary?”
“Dating girls? Marrying a woman?”
“No.” He pokes Mike’s chest, right over his heart. “People. Friends who love and accept you. Friends who know what you’re going through, even.”
“Do you…” Mike chews his lip. “Do you think Nancy would be okay with it? With me?”
“Absolutely I do. She was okay with me, wasn’t she? And I was her boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but it’s different when it’s your family, right? Sometimes people don’t care if someone is… people don’t care until it affects them. Do you think Nancy is like that?”
He knows Nancy isn’t like that, but that's a talk they’re going to have to have themselves. “I really don’t,” he encourages. “I think she’d be really glad to know this part of you, actually. She loves you.”
“…I know,” he says, shifting uncomfortably. “I don’t… we made this dumb no secrets pact the first time the Upside-Down happened, I don’t know why. It’s stupid. But…I don’t want to keep secrets from her anymore.”
519 notes
·
View notes
so about the header that proceeded today's statement:
Viability as agent: Low
Viability as subject: None
Viability as catalyst: Medium
i didn't know what to think of this part of the entry at first, but the longer the statement went on... was the institute in this universe trying to manufacture avatars?
the dice can't do anything without someone to use them, they can't be an "agent" by themselves, but might be capable of manipulation, so in that aspect their viability is "low."
the dice could be a "subject" in the sense that they could use further studying, but the statement itself was a very thorough investigation of their workings, so in that aspect their viability is "none."
the dice seem to influence their holder to roll them, or at least find more victims to roll them, and could therefore be described as a "catalyst" for someone's becoming. but, as seen in the statement, their owner can give the dice to someone else (albeit not without consequences), so in that aspect their viability is only "medium."
so what about the line following all this, what does "Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment applicability assessment" mean? if we go by this interpretation, i'd say it could mean the institute wanted to find a way to make the dice even more potent as an artifact, maybe even remove that pesky ability for their owner to reject them.
imho all of this this brings a whole new level of context to the events of episode seven, of unknown violent agents going after an influx of objects that seemed straight out of artifact storage. was that the nature of the titular "magnus protocol" first mentioned in episode four, the one that involved the starkwall group? containing or destroying potential artifacts before the institute could get their hands on them?
it also makes their "gifted kids program," and sam's link to it as one of the kids being studied, all the more horrifying to think about. was it not just avatars in general they were after, but child avatars specifically? no wonder gertrude got so defensive over the possibility of sam and celia dragging gerry back into the institute's business last episode, we all picked up on her clearly knowing more than she's letting on but now we might know the shape of that information a bit better.
and one final bit of food for thought... this statement had a lot of familiar themes, didn't it? free will or the illusion of it, gambling and not-so-random chance, the statement giver being done in by one final hit from what feels like a bit of an addition... all hallmarks of a certain mother of puppets. doesn't it seem fitting that "chester" would use this kind of statement to warn sam about what harm pursuing the magnus institute could bring to him, considering the one his voice might draw from? and doesn't it seem so painfully ironic that his warning seems to have only driven sam further into that web?
308 notes
·
View notes