#mike is not homophobic for real in that bit he’s just still working through some thought patterns

[ohfallingdisco]

heyy, here’s a little 1070-ish word self-indulgent thing about mike and nancy and the vanishing of (sibling) wheeler! sorry! i couldn’t stop myself! hope you enjoy, you get this first, ao3 gets it in the morning if I have the will to format by then lmao hope you like

“BULLSHIT!” 

Mike sensed, more than heard, Nancy slam the door behind them. The glass rattled bad, but no one followed them out, so at least there was that. He made it to the edge of the porch, and Nancy’s hand fisted in the back of his shirt, yanking him back. 

“Stupid little shit,” she groused, steering him to the stairs (which he hadn’t realized he was about five feet from) and marching him down. He shrugged her off as soon as it wouldn’t damage his windpipe, and barely held off from damaging some other part of his body by elbowing her. The memory of what had just happened was still too fresh. 

Nancy apparently agreed, letting slip a little huff as she marched off into the woods. Mike followed her, at a respectful distance, anger still burning white-hot and blinding behind his temples. He was getting a headache. 

Either she comes back alive, or Holly is already…

Murray was going to burn for that. Mike was going to burn him. He had to drag him into the Upside Down, and leave him there tied to a tree. Several trees, in pieces. That was his fucking little sister, damn it…

All of a sudden, Nancy screamed, at the top of her lungs, and turned to kick a tree. She flailed when she bounced back, running smack into Mike’s chest and nearly knocking them both over. He managed to stay standing, pushing her back the other way to counter the momentum, and that had Nancy whirling and grabbing his arm. 

Except, she wasn’t mad. She was strangling his bicep like an evil snake, but her face was more…lost. 

Mike was speechless. He didn’t know what to do with this sister acting like this. 

Gently, Nancy ran her fingers through his hair, ruffling his curls gently. “Idiot,” she scolded, but it was quiet. “Watch your step.” 

Mike bit his lip. “Your mouth moves too much when you talk,” he bit back, not sure why. 

She smiled, suddenly, and her whole face lit up. His sister’s eyes crinkled, an old trait, and something in his chest caught. 

Their sister was out there, alone, alive, somewhere, she was too little, she was still just a baby…

He knew his face must’ve crumpled, because Nancy was pulling him into a hug. Her arms wound around his back, fingers clawing into his favorite blue sweater. 

Mike let himself accept the hug, sinking into her shoulder with a quiet, shaky breath. She held him for a while, almost like she didn’t want to let go. He let himself believe that was true. That, maybe—even though he was a lot more of a pest, and definitely a pain—his big sister still loved him sort of like he loved Holly. 

“We’ll get her back, Mike,” Nancy promised, her nails digging into him even harder. “You and me, and everyone else. He can just go fuck himself.”

Mike hissed a laugh. “That’s gay,” he joked, earning a sharp pinch to the ribs. He jerked back, glaring, but she was returning the glare. 

“Michael,” Nancy stressed, “we agreed.” 

“Agreed what?” He wracked his brain, trying to remember. 

Oh. Nancy had told him something funny earlier? Well. Implied. 

Mike just rolled his eyes. 

She blew out a sharp huff, shoulders slumping. “No more reasons to draw attention, Mike. If you can’t be nice about—gay people, can’t you at least pretend?”

“Fine,” he agreed, folding his arms. “I’m not not nice, Nancy. But fine.” 

“We need to be on the same page,” she stressed, backing off easily. “Just be nice. For Holly.” 

“For Holly,” he agreed, glancing off into the trees. 

They were nice trees. Pretty. Strong. He wondered if it would hurt to kick one. 

“Don’t,” Nancy muttered, and Mike hadn’t even seen her mouth move. He glanced over. She was frowning, a little. “Limbs to yourself.” 

He wanted to laugh. That was awfully hypocritical of her, after just giving him a hug, but he understood. He thought. “I wasn’t going to,” he argued, but Nancy just crossed her arms. 

“Of course not,” she agreed, because that was what she always did. 

Nancy—this was Nancy, and Holly was gone, but they would find her. Together, with their friends, they were going to rescue her, and then the three Wheeler brother and sisters were going to live out the rest of their days in relative quiet. He and Nancy were always going to pull each others’ hair, get on each others’ last nerve over nothing, but she was his big sister. They were both usually going to get along with Holly, but she was so much younger than them, and it was sort of easy to pull her along in that he knew he was only lovingly getting judged. 

Mike loved them, he couldn’t stand them, sometimes he couldn’t stand to see them succeed. But he needed his sister back in a way that felt like a hole was constantly burning through his chest. 

“We’ll get her back,” he breathed, assuring himself as much as anyone. “She’s okay. If she wasn’t, Will would have felt it.” 

Nancy gave him a funny look, but she didn’t say anything. 

“Come on,” she said instead, turning to head back to the house. But not to the cabin. To their house. 

“Is this a good idea?” he said dryly, even as his heart jumped. 

“I don’t give a shit,” Nancy assured him, weaving her way through the forest. 

Mike decided to follow. He still didn’t feel like going back, yet, and walking out their anger would probably do them good. Besides, they could look for clues, on the way. 

“Nance?” he asked, falling into step behind her with his hands tapping his thighs. 

“Hm?” she said, absently. 

“I.” He swallowed, determined to get it out. “Thanks. For You know. Things.” 

Nancy didn’t say anything for a moment, and he thought she wasn’t going to. That would be fine. But—

“What else are sisters for,” she said quietly, leading the way. 

And Mike. Mike had never been more glad to have a sibling like that, ever. He reached out and touched her arm, briefly, just a thank-you. 

She tapped his fingers as he released her, softly. Nancy knew. They could count on each other, no matter what. 

Once a Wheeler, always a Wheeler. Holly was no exception. Soon enough, they would prove it, and be able to truly say it. 

Mike, Nancy, and Holly had each other. They would get her back. 

[numetaljackdog]

WILT 1/8/2024

spotify//youtube

Limp Bizkit - Leech: trying to get some of my friends into lb and this is the song that sold it for at least one of them

Nirvana - Been A Son: may well be my favorite nirvana track. every single lyric is like. owwww

Daniel Johnston - Walking the Cow: i have been on my bullshit about this whole album for like a full month. trying to learn this one on the piano

Daniel Johnston - Keep Punching Joe: i like the slightly more upbeat, almost kind of bluesy feel he put into this one. it feels very character-driven and humorous while still being a... unique exploration of victimhood

Breaking Benjamin - Polyamorous: this seems like it would be soooo fun to sing live. i just love all of ben's little enunciations and syllables here, his unique voice is so dear to me bc of how long i've been listening to bb. also god forbid poly bitches do anything

Suicidal Tendencies - Suicidal Failure: have also been on my bullshit with this album. i don't really want to talk about this track though, i don't feel like getting too personal

Nirvana - Rape Me: this one also feels weird to talk about publicly. but i've been listening to a lot of in utero tracks, not necessarily the album front to back but just my favs and this is definitely up there. an infamously raw and real record at perhaps its rawest and realest

Gene Wilder - Pure Imagination: i saw the new wonka movie in theaters and was surprised to find i actually enjoyed it a good bit. that nice warm feeling led me to listen to some of the soundtrack of the original and remind myself of how much i love it. i could have easily put the scary boat song on here too

Suicidal Tendencies - Subliminal: i don't really care that much about the actual message of the song pertaining to subliminal messaging in media, i think there are other takes on that subject that have done it a lot better than mike's clumsy rambling. but i do identify immensely with just the feeling of sickening paranoia that the song captures. maybe it's not coming through the television but SOMEBODY is fucking with me. subliminally...

Daniel Johnston - I Am a Baby (In My Universe): okay i won't lie this one is kind of funny. like openly funny and ridiculous rather than the more layered playfulness of the rest of the album. oOoOoOoh i'm only 22........ i'll live forever ^_^ idk. it's still real as fuck though, i feel like a dipshit baby all the time

Kurt Cobain - Rehash: when you listen to home tapes like this, i feel like it really gives such greater dimensions to who kurt cobain was as an artist. in a way, it feels not dissimilar to something like the scrappy brilliant work of an indie pioneer like daniel johnston, which makes sense considering kurt was a fan of the guy's work. at the same time, this particular track is kind of silly and has him doing that voice that i hardly even recognize as his. i've been wanting to watch montage of heck, and this one is here as a marker of my love for the sounds of these home recordings more generally

Korn - Faget: there's a lot of discussion to be had around when it's okay for artists to use this word, but in general i tend to find that alternative artists who use it in a way that identifies with it is something i can't really be mad at. korn, and more specifically jonathan davis, is a freak show of alternative music that appealed to other freak shows. the fact that jd chose to identify himself with the word "faggot" in this song due to his experiences as an outcast and victim of bullying is at worst misguided, and i bet it made a lot of other outcasts and victims in 1994 feel seen, feel less alone. i think that's worthwhile. however it is also funny that a few years later korn would release "all in the family" which is like if someone decided to drag out the meager concept of a homophobic slur into a full album track

The Romantics - What I Like About You: was rewatching pat finnerty videos and got this stuck in my head from the bit where he talks about this song in the dani california video. not much to say except it's a tune! also goes in the file of songs that seem very fun to sing live

Metallica - Wherever I May Roam: oh yeah now we get into the rock adn roll babey 🎸🎵 i mentioned in an audio ask that i've been really indulging in the dumb rock music and 90s metallica is like the prototype for all meathead rock that followed. it's solid though, there's a reason why it got so popular. this is a good track, i really like the prechorus

Puddle Of Mudd - Blurry: possibly the dirtbaggiest of all the dirtbag rock. that's not true actually there's still shit like theory of a deadman and fuckin buckcherry and whatever, stuff that even i don't touch. but idk puddle of mudd just hits now and then with the scratchy yucky vocals and stupidass riffs and this is hands-down one of the best songs off the album. it's at least kind of about something. and ngl everything is pretty blurry nowadays

Tom Petty - Love Is A Long Road: shoutout tom. was listening to full moon fever again and realized how much of a tune this was. big chorus with the good good blend of new wave and americana rock that he always brought

Muscadine Bloodline - Me On You: with country being as big as it is right now and me trying to connect with that sort of honest and grounded feeling that rock and roll gives people, it seemed natural that i would make another attempt to properly get into country. i came across this one on a country rock playlist i was exploring and took to it because of the nice growl in the singer's voice and the rapidfire delivery of lines with some tasty internal rhymes. nothing special but it rips. i am a little wary of the "bloodline" part of these guys' band name but i looked them up and couldn't find anything that immediately sent me running? idk i hope they aren't shitheads

The Offspring - D.U.I.: the drunk driving fandom is dying, can't imagine why. discovered on the soundtrack for "i know what you did last summer" which i picked up on cd at a thrift store

3 Doors Down - Kryptonite: okay these guys actually do suck major shit. and so does this song actually. but it's on here bc i've heard it a million jillion times and have been listening to it a lot again, after watching the pat finnerty video about this. man i feel like i'm cheating on todd this month or something wtf. anyway i discovered not long ago that i've been mishearing the lyrics to this song my entire life in a pretty major way. honestly it's overdue for its own installment in my little series where i explain my misheard lyrics and the much better implications i derived from them. basically i always heard the chorus as "i'll keep you by my side, you're my superhero man/my aching kryptonite" which is WAY more words than are actually in the chorus. the singer just chews on the syllables so much that i always heard them as separate words. but i always thought it was a song about a kind of shitty guy who was trying to be better and act like a superhero for his partner who he viewed as his own super savior, as well as his weakness (kryptonite) because of how much he loved them. i thought it was a really sweet song. but it's just about a douchebag guy who acts like a douchebag to his partner who he doesn't seem to actually like very much. it's not a good song. but again, butt rock. sorry

[light-lanterne]

hi!!! love the darkest eyes with my whole heart!!! i was just wondering how much joyce knows about mike and will’s relationship?

hi hi !! i'm glad you like it~ !!

the official version (aka, what hop knows) is that she doesn't know anything. she's been working hard on giving the kids some space now that things are safe, so it makes sense that she'd miss some things, right ?

the version mike and will know is a little different, though. she knows will is gay~ after jonathan, she was the first person will told (el doesn't count since she guessed it herself) and she loves him very much and has been nothing but supportive from the get-go. sometimes, will has to stop her from going on a rampage to eliminate all the homophobes in the town because even hop wouldn't be able to help her with that x.x

(owens would and he owes her that much, she'll reason as will tries to coax her into smoking a cigarette to calm down)

however, she is not supposed to know about mike because he's still working a bit through his internalised homophobia and self-loathing so they're waiting to tell her. also, mike is a little nervous she'll make some connections and realise he's one of the reasons will's been sad in the past and suddenly she'll hate him and mike doesn't want to lose her.

(not that he'll tell will about this x.x)

that said,,, the real question is: knowing how clever joyce is and how much she knows them both,,, is it really possible that she doesn't know the whole thing already ?

i'll let you be the judge of that hehe

thanks for the question~ !! hope you have a lovely day or night~

the story || masterpost

[irandomblogfulb]

FATE: What happens when you get a bunch of middle aged white guys to adapt a cartoon for girls

Well, I just went through 6 hours of fate and I have a lot of opinions on it. Yeah, this is going to be long (slightly under 3k words) so putting it under read more and obvious spoilers.

PSA before delving right in:

1) Yes, I will be comparing to the original. Any comparisons are not through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. There are parts here and there that I genuinely think were done better in the cartoon on a writing standpoint.

2) This is purely my opinion and overall negative. Don't like it? Don't read. I'm all up for discussion but I don't want another person crying to me about how I “ruined” their experience of the show.

3) If you like Fate then good for you. This isn’t me bashing people who like it. 

I've spit it up into sub sections just for my own convince.

1. The problem with the 'I'm not like other girls' trope

This pertains to the entire Bloom-Sky-Stella love triangle. I wasn't as pressed about it compared to other winxers (and I loved Stella's and Brandon's relationship on my rewatch). In fact, I was okay with it. But then I sat down and watched the show and there's a lot of underlying problems with the love triangle. Particularly pitting Bloom and Stella against each other for Sky's affection.

Now this part of the love triangle I already didn't like. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I dropped the OG Winx after season 5 but the Winx while they did have their conflicts and arguments, never fought over a boy. I really appreciated that from the cartoon so seeing that live action would fall into that trap – I was mildly annoyed at that. Then it hit me. It's Bloom and Stella.

The seemingly ordinary girl vs the pristine princess of Solaria. If the title didn't give it away, you should get the point by now. Others have already called it by now but the "I'm not like other girl's" trope in itself, while seemingly feminist is actually misogynist. Saying the more masculine type of girl is better than the feminine is inherently misogynist. Stella, the prime princess, girly and feminine, is villainized by the love triangle. Sky's and Stella's relationship is toxic and Stella's overt co-dependence and jealousy are already big fat red signs - but Sky's and Bloom's relationship is built on how she's "different". Bloom isn't like Stella, she's "real".

2. Am I supposed to like Riven?

As the title puts it, wtf am I supposed to feel about Riven. Is he supposed to be a good guy? Do I root for him? Is he morally ambiguous? Because holy shit compared to OG!Riven, this guy is diabolical and much much worse! OG!Riven is an asshole and he teams up with the trix but his arc was very simple and easy to understand. He joins the bad guys, distances himself from the good guys, the trix betray his ass, he self-reflects in the dungeon - escapes and redeems himself. Net!Riven is so bad to the point where you can't redeem him and the writers don't even try. Freddie Thorp is good in his role. (however, he definitely doesn't pass for a 17-year-old. He's 26 and it shows) and he actually makes the cringe dialogue work. But he's way too diabolical and downright predatory. The scene where he forces Dane to gulp down his spiked drink - it’s worse seeing it than reading it. That grossed me out more than the gore.

What makes it worse, nobody properly calls him out. Beatrix kinda does on his homophobia – “Homophobic bashing by GIF” - and Sky does chastise him, but they still tolerate him. It is kinda funny in a way Sky has a whole ass arc about how he's enabling Stella's problematic behaviour by still dating her after she blinded her friend but doesn't realize he's doing the same for Riven.

The only person that really puts her foot down with Riven is Terra and nobody takes her seriously about anything she says.

Everyone is very laissez-faire around him and that's not how you respond to your friend being problematic. (Hey, kinda like the other girls sans Aisha are with Bloom!) Everyone surrounding Riven is so disgusting and the notion of him supposedly being a good guy is very hard to buy into. His whole relationship with Dane has a section of it’s own because there’s just a lot to unpack.

3. Stella I am so sorry

I'm also in the majority hating how they've tarnished Stella. Basically, they turned her into the stereotypical rich bully with mommy issues.

I get that Stella has an abusive mom but that’s no excuse to be a total bitch to her roommates. And no, her roommates shouldn't accept her back with open arms. And she doesn't even redeem herself - the girls just accept her back after her mom pulls her from Alfea.

And this is also another issue with the writing were the characters suddenly just change their opinions on a whim. Suddenly Stella likes the winx, suddenly Terra misses Stella even though having that girl literally gives her anxiety. Suddenly Aisha's on Bloom's side in the end.

This isn't me simping for the cartoon out of nostalgia. I was mostly okay with the idea of Stella and Sky hooking up. But Looking at it from a creative standpoint - looking at the source material, and the many paths you can take this character, the best thing Brian Young and co. can think of for her was turning her into the stereotypical rich bully that we've seen time and time again? No deconstruction no meta take, it's played out exactly how you’d expect it.

Again, this isn't me simping for the show. Purely from a creative standpoint Stella was such a major let down. There's so much to the character and Brian Young took the easiest, saturated path.

4. That one scene with Bloom's parents

You know the one. Mike unhinges Bloom's bedroom doors and Vanessa cusses out and insults her child like a petty teen bully. Forgetting how utterly cringey that scene was, you can't have her mom go batshit insane on her child, then act like she's this loving parent that cares so deeply about her daughter. Screw that! Vanessa deserved those 3rd degree burns! She invaded her daughter's privacy. Bloom didn't even do anything wrong!

I can't buy into this narrative of Vanessa and Mike being loving parents when they do something like that. Seriously who thought that was okay?

5. Pity Parties for everyone.

I already discussed this in Stella’s section but I don’t like the “it’s okay for me be a shitty person because my life sucks :)” narrative Fate tries to pull. They did it with Stella, Bloom, Riven.

What I liked about the first season of Winx Club is Bloom’s arc and her character as a whole. Because while she went through shit, from the Trix, to finding out she was adopted, her existential crisis, not feeling like she belonged, losing the dragon flame, she went through a lot. She didn’t throw a pity party. She didn’t whine, bitch and complain. She allowed herself to feel upset, took it as it is and tried to make lemonade out of lemons. And I respect that.

Net!Bloom is agrevating. She does some dumb, reckless stuff but it’s excused because she’s the protagonist? She let the war criminal out, the school gets taken over by the bad guys because of Bloom. Faragonda fucking dies because she let the war criminal out! The burned ones attacked the school because she let the war criminal out!!! But no, Aisha’s villainized for calling Bloom out because Bloom’s existential crisis is more important then anything else.

Getting to Sky, he isn’t as bad as the others. He doesn’t become a shitty person because of his problems. (Though lowkey flirting with Bloom while he hooks up with Stella is uh not good.) But he does come across incredibly whiny. Because of the cringey dialogue and the unnecessary swearing  I can’t take his speech on opening up to Bloom seriously. I laughed throughout the whole thing and Bloom leaving his unconscious body there was the icing on the cake.

One of the few characters that deserved a pity party is Terra. She’s very much like OG!Bloom in a way. She is bullied by Dane and Riven, has body insecurities, anxiety, nobody listens to her and at most only tolerates her. Despite all the crap that is thrown her way she still reminds humble, kind, and respectful. And she is one of the few characters that deserves more support than what she got out of the season.

5. Bloom, Aisha, Tokenism and their awful relationship

I’m going to be upfront, their relationship sucks. The core of their dynamic is what Aisha can do for Bloom. It’s very one-sided. Bloom only goes to Aisha to help solve her problems, which Aisha gladly does – but when Aisha disagrees with Bloom or says something Bloom doesn’t like, Bloom suddenly goes off and Aisha’s made to be the bad guy. Even though she’s right? And Aisha has her own problems as well, shown to also struggle with her powers. But nope, that’s pushed to the back burner because Bloom needs help.

I am all for creative freedom. I can stomach Stella x actual Sky. I can stomach turning Stella into a rich mean girl. I can stomach the dark academia aesthetic but what Brian Young and co. did to Aisha is just plain racist. Screw the “it’s an adaptation” excuse. Turning this character who had a rich storyline and was a princess into a white girl’s magical negro who fixes all her problems is racist and by definition tokenism. And by whitewashing the other two characters of color, making Aisha the only poc in the group – that’s the worst thing you can do to her.

And frankly we need more black princesses on screen.

6. Dane and the homophobia of the show

Towards the show’s climax it’s revealed Dane is helping Beatrix because she accepts he’s “different”. Not only does this go back to my pity party rant but like bruh,

1)      Beatrix never really did anything for Dane? She hung out and smoked with him a bit, but that’s all. You’re telling me Terra wouldn’t accept Dane? Beatrix never helped him and he never really opened up to her about his struggles.

2)      Nobody else, not even background characters bully or harass Dane for being “different”. It’s only Riven, the guy he’s crushing on. The whole falling in love with the bad boy/abuser trope is bad in a hetero relationship and that still stands for a gay one. And I know damn well if Dane was a woman half of the shit Riven did to Dane wouldn’t slide.

It makes no sense for Dane to side with the bad guys when Riven’s the one bullying him and Beatrix is complacent in the bullying. Oh, and having your second black* character who’s also lgbt+/potentially questioning be a villain? Not good.

I’m all for gay and poly rep, but not like this. If Stella and Sky’s toxic relationship is going to be called out for what it is, why not Dane’s?

*Idk if Theo Graham is light-skinned black or biracial so I’ll just refer to him as black.

7. The plot

It’s very predictable. Personally, wasn’t fond of the ‘twist of a twist of a twist’ style of writing. The story tries to be nuanced and deep but it’s not. Common sense is treated like a big revelation. Not trusting the war criminal you barely know isn’t as big of a take that the writers try to make it out to be.

8.  Everything else

·       Beatrix is fine. No Icy but did like the gothic bookworm aesthetic.

·       Sam is just there to be Musa’s love interest and provide some dumb drama between Musa and Terra. I thought they’d go the Edward/Bella root – Musa’s drawn to Sam because she can’t sense his emotions for some reason. Nope, they just get together for the obligatory make out sessions. Don’t care much for the relationship or the character.

·       Since the powers are all elemental shouldn’t there be classes purely for an elemental? Classes purely for fire fairies, etc?

·       Musa’s powers are confusing. If she has no control over them and they are “always on”, shouldn’t her eyes constantly be glowing purple?  Very wishy washy. Sometimes they overwhelm her and other times she has complete control. Her character is just there for plot stuff.

·       Terra is one of the better characters but can’t enjoy her knowing about the whitewashing. Why can’t we have a plus sized character just exist and not have body issues?

·       Sky doesn’t feel like a prince. Characters treat him like his dad is a war hero and not the King of Eraklyon. There was a point where I thought I misheard and thought his dad was just a war hero and not a king.

·       Why try to justify Rosalind’s war crime if she’s going to be the big bad anyways?

·       The way the characters treat death/act around death is very weird. Musa and Terra see a pile of dead bodies and they’re unreasonable calm. Especially Bloom an “ordinary teenage girl from earth”, reacts very nonchalant when death and war crimes are brought up. Doesn’t help the show tries to push this “they’re kids fighting a war” narrative.

·       Can’t buy into the girls’ friendship. The Aisha/Bloom dynamic is centred on what Aisha can do for Bloom. Bloom only cares about herself and only goes to her friends to help with her problems. Most of Musa’s and Terra’s interaction centre around Sam. Stella didn’t care for the girls until her mom showed up and pulled a 180. The girls were quick to turn on Aisha when she sided with the adults.

·       I have no problem with technology existing but why do they have Instagram, Tiktok and Tumblr? The otherworld is a completely separated from Earth, why do they have the same technology?  

9. Brian Young, what do you mean by mature?

I grew up on the 4kids dub before transitioning to the Nick dub for season 4 and 5 then dropping the cartoon for good. So naturally on my rewatch of the cartoon I decided to go watch the RAI dub since I heard it’s more accurate and 4Kids are infamous for their horrid localisations straying too much to the source material. Upon finishing season 1 and currently watching season 2, a few things took me by surprise. For one, the cartoon is surprisingly dark. The schools are at war with the Trix and their army of Darkness, Sky almost dies in Season 2, Riven almost dies and the Trix thinks he suicided, it’s heavily implied in Season 2 Darkar murdered some of the pixies, the paedophilic undertones of Bloom and Avalon’s relationship, the list goes on.

When the interview with Brian Young came out, he said Fate would be a mature take on the cartoon. And I wondered, what did he meant by mature? Was he going to delve deeper into the darker aspects of the show, or did he mean he was going to have the girls swear and have sex? Watching Fate, I found my answer.

If you take out the gore, swearing, drug and alcohol usage from the live action, the maturity is on par with the RAI dub. The difference is in the presentation. This is what sucks about the mentality surrounding live action remakes. Because the OG!Winx was colourful with glittery transformations , was super girly and overall had a positive upbeat tone (not forgetting 2D animated) - it can’t be taken seriously. You have to strip all that, the colour, the kindness, the femininity in order to be deemed mature.

10. Wrapping up

I went into Fate expecting the worst and honestly, it wasn’t that bad. There were things I liked about it. The show looks pretty, and I did like what they were trying to do with Sky’s arc. The actors did what they could with the material. Freddie Thorp made the cringe dialogue work and Abigail Cowen proves she can carry a show as the lead.

Fate is your generic, YA, dark academia show. It follows all the tropes of the YA genre to a T. If that’s your niche, then you’ll love Fate and I’m not bashing anyone who liked it.

For me, as a creative, it doesn’t capitalise on the strengths of the source material. I’m not asking for Winx Club again, as I’ve reiterated, I’m all for creative freedom. But Brian Young, Iginio Straffi, whoever worked on this – they could’ve created something new, innovative, something that stood out from the hordes of other YA shows. They had good material in their hands! But what I got -  I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen it done better. That’s a major disappointment.

As a winx club fan, don’t bother watching this. It’s a very diluted version of the Winx. In trying to capture the interest of the adult fans who grew up with the franchise – Iginio showed how out of touch he is if he thinks this is what they wanted.

[adultswim2021]

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law #1: "Bannon Custody Battle" December 30, 2000 - 4:30AM | S01E01 Welcome to the first episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, the first show on Adult Swim’s roster that I rejected as a substandard product. It should’ve been the Brak Show. In the opening episode, Birdman takes a case from Dr. Benton Quest, better known as Jonny Quest’s father. Race Bannon is fighting for custody of the boy, arguing that he’s a much better, much more present father figure to Jonny. Harvey Birdman was first conceptualized with an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In the episode “Pilot” we’re shown a supposed disastrous pilot episode of “Coast to Coast” where Birdman was originally attached as the star. Birdman, a depressive, out-of-work super hero, utterly botches the job as his inability to host a late-night show due to his deriving all his powers from the sun becomes more apparent. The character recurs a few more times, most notably in the episode “Sequel”, where Birdman guest-hosts the show. Still, to call this a proper Space Ghost spin-off requires carrying a big asterisk along with it. The character name “Harvey Birdman” was invented for Space Ghost, but besides both being based on the old 60s Birdman Hanna-Barbera show, they have little to do with one another. One would get almost nothing out of watching the original Space Ghost episodes before watching this (except for, you know, getting to see episodes of a much funnier show).

So in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law you have one 60s Hanna-Barbera character as a lawyer taking court cases from various other Hanna-Barbera characters, usually of a similar vintage. In this particular episode we’re treated to a lot of jokes about the homoerotic subtext of Jonny Quest, specifically the relationship between Race Bannon and Benton Quest. The writers decide to tastefully side-step the seemingly pederast relationship between Race and Jonny. Watching the original Jonny Quest with the same attempt to subvert and recontextualize the relationships between the characters through a modern lens, a certain type of observer would probably note the amount of shirtless roughhousing Race does with Jonny. Speaking of watching Jonny Quest: I have to admit something: I never really watched Jonny Quest at all before writing this blog. I’ve had an interest in older shows and cartoons my entire life, but the entire genre of action cartoon didn’t appeal to me whatsoever when I was a kid. So last night I watched my first episode of Jonny Quest, in glorious 1080p on my new 4K television; a format it was never EVER intended to be viewed in. Jonny Quest is objectively junk. It’s fun, boyish, escapist entertainment, and there’s a lot of good irony in it, especially with it’s antiquated portrayal of other cultures from a bygone era when we were far less connected to the rest of the world. It has limited animation and simplistic design. The backgrounds look like they were painted on a post-it-note and most of the men are drawn to look like reskinned versions of Race Bannon. But there’s at least something a LITTLE charming about it. In fact, there was one moment of beautifully scripted action that absolutely won me over: Race and Jonny’s speed boat goes airborne briefly and crushes the bad guy’s boat from above as they speed towards one another. I nearly cheered when it happened. I knew The Venture Bros took liberally from Jonny Quest, but the coolest action sequences on that show seemed to be striving for the same exact visceral reaction I got from seeing Race crunch up some lizard men on a boat. Birdman is a similar deal: He was a cookie-cutter imitation of comic book heroes from the silver-age of comics (the obvious comparison here is DC’s Hawkman). I actually did watch a Birdman adventure late last night as I was falling asleep to follow up on Jonny Quest, but it felt less important. I can remember checking out the original Birdman on DVD not too long ago. Also, your typical Harvey Birdman usually focuses on jokes about shows other than Birdman. Still, it’s neat to see those characters in their original context, as well as that Hanna-Barbera stock-explosion animation we all know and love from Space Ghost blowing up Zorak on Coast-to-Coast. Also the episode I watched will be heavily referenced later, but not for this. I only watched the first episode of Jonny Quest taking a cue from my friend Kon who noted that most of the references in “Bannon Custody Battle” are directly from the first episode. The most specific (and funniest) scene in the whole show involves the Lizard Men, the main villains of that first installment. Other characters show up very briefly, and are all ones that appear in the opening sequence. Unless I find out differently (I’ll probably try to make my way through the rest of Quest in preparation for Venture Bros.), it really does seem like the writers just watched the first episode of Jonny Quest to write this show. Watching this episode of Harvey Birdman was like batting away an existential crisis. I remember vaguely at the time not being SUPER hot on this show, but I cut it a lot of slack and trusted that it would simply get funnier. I wanted to love all the shows on Adult Swim. Anyway, I went from being lukewarm on Birdman, to hating it. Reading my own earlier review of Birdman I blasted this episode for being homophobic. I used to have a very low tolerance for gay jokes, back when they were highly in fashion. But now that we live an era where there’s an arms race to find new ways to scold one another for perceived slights gay jokes can sometimes, NOT ALWAYS, be a little refreshing to hear. The fact that my stance on gay jokes can change as long as it’s in direct-opposition with the rest of the world is at least a little troubling. Does this mean I’m an inauthentic reactionary? Yes. Yes it does. There, I admitted it. Now, let me off the hook, please. I say that sorta jokingly. The gay jokes in this are mostly pretty lame, and come off like Mike Scully-era Simpsons gay jokes. The early scene at the beginning where Birdman eyes widen when he’s misunderstanding the nature of Dr. Quest’s and Race Bannon’s relationship really does come off as early 90′s homophobia. I remember it seemed out of place at the time. I’m sure it played just fine in the midwest, but the show didn’t really put it’s best foot forward with that. Speaking of lame jokes, this episode has a few that have nothing to do with insulting gay people. One of my least favorite bits involve the specific gag of undercutting a dramatic moment with characters fumbling around awkwardly in true-to-life fashion. Why, if a person tried to recreate a dramatic sting you’d see before a commercial break in real life, you’re right, it’d probably go awkwardly! But this 11 minute show has at least 3 explicit examples of this, and it’s only mildly amusing once:

Bannon dramatically walks out on Dr. Quest, after announcing his intention to take Jonny with him. He awkwardly comes back because he forgot his keys

Birdman dramatically argues with a rival prosecutor and summons his personal digital assistant, and then awkwardly fumbles with it

Birdman proves that the Race Bannon on the witness stand is actually a robot by unplugging him, but he accidentally pulls the wrong cord and has to spend a few seconds untangling and retracing the correct cord.

Another thing about Birdman is that there is usually a lack of strong jokes. The show usually includes a layer of comedy where there are simply characters who simply have odd, scattered speech patterns or odd ticks. The rival lawyer in this slurs his speech in a particular way: cut to the jury looking confused. That’s the joke. The Judge grumbles in an ornery fashion and generally acts like he doesn’t wanna be there. He says stuff that sounds like bad improv. That’s the joke. The show will only ocassionally come up with jokes to justify these character traits. It’s just silliness that doesn’t usually go anywhere. But, I do kinda like some things about this episode. It was animated by J.J. Sedelmaier, known for early digital animation seen in the crude era of Beavis and Butt-head and SNL’s TV Funhouse. They really do have their own style of comic timing, and there are some gags in this where the animation works in their favor. There are some jokes where the drawings really sell the comedy. I’m not sure if I liked this animation better or worse, but it does match the oddly-stilted Jonny Quest animation better than the episodes that came after this would have. Oh, one of the funniest bits not on the show was when I popped in the DVD I forgot that the menu music is Wesley Willis’ “Birdman Kicked My Ass”. If I were in high school when the DVD came out I would have loved it just for that reason. Same could be said “Jonny Quest Thinks We’re Sell-Outs” by Less Than Jake. I was an easily impressed kid.

[multimetaverse]

Jamie Johnson 5x08 Review

Tonight was one of the best, if not the best, Jamie Johnson eps so far. Dillon faced some of his toughest obstacles yet in his coming out journey and we got some sweet Delliot moments. Let’s dig in!

This British kids soccer show continues to make history. We saw some very nuanced and mature discussions between Dillon and Elliot about being gay and coming out; how often on tv do two gay kids actually discuss their sexualities?  Elliot gave Dillon some great advice and perhaps more importantly told Dillon that he was in fact brave and a winner on and off the pitch

You’d have to be daft to deny that Dillon and Elliot have crushes on each other after this ep. Seeing both Dillon and Elliot trying their best to look nice before meeting up with each other was cute and their handhold at the pitch was very sweet. Lots of soft smiles and longing glances and we even got a hug before Elliot left

Laquarn has confirmed that he’s not in any more S5 eps and doesn’t know if he’s back for the yet to be filmed S6. I can only hope he’ll come back. It would be a waste of great chemistry and an engaging character if Elliot was just meant to help Dillon with his sexuality before passing the torch to Ruby. He clearly left the door open for a future reunion when he told Dillon to call him when he was ready. Patrick confirmed in an interview today that he’ll be back for S6 and presumably Dillon will be playing for Foxborough or some other pro team. Being in a relationship would certainly be a good spur for Dillon to come out more publicly. And Elliot’s love of astronomy is a perfect set up for a date under the staahs

It’s true that the show has not really focused on ships in a big way; the most we’ve gotten was Boggy and Nancy and the low key Jack, Jamie, and Michelle triangle. But at the same time if Dillon can take Indira out and kiss Sienna then he should be able to date a boy he likes. It would be tragic if the closest Dillon gets to having a boyfriend or kissing a boy is Liam outing Dillon and claiming that Elliot was Dillon’s boyfriend and that he thought they were gonna kiss

And it’s a bit shady that Eric of all people is suddenly getting a female love interest out of nowhere. I just hope when the show eventually ends that it doesn’t turn out to be another Andi Mack where Cyrus was able to kiss a girl twice and go on dates with a girl and use the word girlfriend when none of that happened with a boy

Jamie Johnson really covered a lot tonight with Dillon. We had a very helpful run down of Dillon’s past with girls and the show carefully explains that Dillon never liked Sienna like that, he never wanted to kiss her, he never had a crush on anyone else like she thought, and he never liked Ruby as more than a friend (at least Duby shippers still have Alba and Liam for an Osborne-Simmonds ship). It wasn’t subtle but I think it was necessary to really drive home that Dillon is really gay and there’s no going back. And we got confirmation that Elliot was Dillon’s first crush, he’s obviously never beaten anyone up on this show and the way he phrases it makes clear that he’s never really thought about liking boys that way until very recently

And boy did this ep ever tackle homophobia. Graham Simmonds was seriously out of order this ep. He clearly didn’t want to believe Liam but Dillon using his aftershave already primed him to believe he was trying to impress someone, he just assumed it had been a girl. He really ran through the homophobe’s greatest hits collection: blaming Ruby’s gay parents, saying being gay was a choice, saying that being gay would end Dillon’s career, and disowning and kicking Dillon out for being gay. I suspect that quite a few of the parents watching JJ with their kids hold some of the same views or act the same way and this ep really holds up a mirror and reflects how ugly that kind of behaviour is. We also see Graham praising Dillon’s accomplishments and character right before Liam outs him which just exposes his hypocrisy even more. I do give the show credit for not shying away from Graham’s awfulness, it’s not going to be a quick change for him to suddenly accept Dillon and I’m excited to see his journey to atoning for his mistakes

Thankfully Mrs. Simmonds returned from her banishment to the shadow realm to tell Dillon she loved him and to tell him to return home. Shaun Duggan said he hoped this ep would be a lifeline for kids watching who may be living in homophobic homes (he also mentioned that CBBC rules don’t allow eps to allow on cliffhangers so he has to end an ep showing that the characters are at least physically okay)

It also challenges the audience, most of whom are probably young boys and men, as to whether they will suddenly stop liking Dillon just because he’s gay. It was a real gamble on the show’s part to have their fan favourite character and the effective second lead of the show come out as gay but it has the tremendous pay off of really making the audience question their assumptions and hopefully for some of them it will change their world views

Dillon and Elliot also discussed homophobia in sports. Dillon correctly notes that there aren’t any out players in the top professional teams. Shaun Duggan mentioned in a BBC interview that they like to bring on professional soccer players when they’re having the kids going through things but this time he wasn’t able to have anyone come on to help Dillon because there are no out players. So it falls to Jamie Johnson to basically create that reality themselves by telling Dillon’s story

Patrick Ward did a phenomenal job tonight and he really is the best of the kid actors. He’s mentioned in interviews that he did a lot of research by watching shows and movies with similar gay story lines. In particular his breakdown set to Behind Blue Eyes by the Who was very well done (and once again the show has great taste in music). And of course, Shaun Duggan did an amazing job writing this ep. He’s openly gay himself and that makes all the difference in bringing an authenticity and depth to this story line. On Andi Mack of the 5 textual gay eps only one, 3x11, was written by a gay man and not surprisingly that was the best written by far of those eps

We were 19 minutes into the ep before Jamie himself briefly showed up. And he was 5th in the credits tonight with Dillon and Elliot taking the number 1 and 2 spots. Actually this whole ep had a very small cast and only a few locations, it really helped focus this ep on Dillon. Having Dillon seek out Jamie is interesting in that they’ve been foils for each from the start. But also because it sends a message to have Jamie Johnson himself praise Dillon, it’s a way for the writers to speak directly to the audience through the title character

We’ll doubtless get some more development on Dillon’s story line in the rest of the season but they’ve done historic work so far. A lot of what we’ve seen so far: the depiction of homophobia, coming out to parents, and two gay kids discussing their sexualities has yet to happen anywhere on Disney. Hell this ep alone had more uses of the word gay than Disney has yet to have

I loved how extra the black and white boxing match cold open was. Not surprising that Dillon sees Mike as the supportive (and non homophobic) father figure he wishes Graham was

This was a big step backwards for Liam’s redemption arc tonight but at least at the end he didn’t seem to buying into his dad’s bullshit about them being the only men left in the house. Liam is by no means blameless but he’s also a victim of his dad’s emotional abuse and his pitting his sons against each other. That little meet up with Eric was interesting because they’re foils for each other in some ways and I’m curious to see what lies ahead for Liam and the U13 crew and for how Liam makes this up to Dillon

Looking Ahead:

Finally we get back to the real meat and potatoes of this show; online gaming! Looks like Mike is bored of gardening at the allotment and wants Jamie to get back into real soccer. We’ll see if Jamie makes into the online tournament

Again, not really sure why Eric suddenly needs Ayesha but we’re getting some Freddie anger over Eric choosing lasses over lads

Until next week Jamie Johnsoners

[onlyssca]

Would you date me ? // byler fic

Summary:  Mike asked Will to be his fake boyfriend at a relative's wedding, so he could piss off his homophobic family. And if they're going to pretend to be boyfriends, might as well act like real ones right?

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22338424?show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#main 

“I’m gay”

Those 2 words sucked all the noise of the room, making it an agonizing silence longing between the two boys. It wasn’t the first time Will had said those words out loud but, this time he felt a lot more nervous. Probably because it was his opinion that he valued the most.

The first person he ever came out to was his mother. He and his mother were always really close. He knew she wouldn’t be mad but it stayed tough to admit. He then planed on coming out to his brother, Jonathan, but didn’t have to. Jonathan had made it pretty clear in the past that he was aware of his attraction to boys and was okay with it. Will knew he knew, and that was good enough.

He wanted so bad to tell his sister as well. They had grown really close and were almost inseparable. And this part of him he wasn’t sharing with her started to create a gap. El was somehow aware of it but also of the fact that Will wasn’t ready to explain why, and she respected that.  But it felt wrong to come out to her before him.

Him being Mike Wheeler, of course. His best friend. The person he told everything, maybe more than to his own mother. Mike, the one boy who was always by his side, the boy who stood up for him, the boy who was always there when Will needed comfort. Mike Wheeler, the boy who he was madly in love with.

So yes, coming out to Mike was difficult.

They stayed silent for a couple of second, Mike lying on his belly on Will’s bed, him sitting legs crossed a foot away from him; and right before Will started to regret his confession Mike spoke.

“Okay”

Will looked up to meet his eyes. Mike almost looked emotionless; like Will had just asked something as mundane as if he wanted mustard or ketchup on his hotdog. “You- you’re not mad?” Will stopped pulling the tiny part of skin near his fingertips.

“Mad? Will, why would I be mad?” Mike sat up, ruffling the paper sheets next to him. He gave Will a reassuring smile.

“I don’t know, some people would find me disgusting if they knew and I don’t know I-”

“Yeah, but I don’t. To me you’re still the same” He smiled and put his hand on his best friend’s. “It doesn’t matter who makes you feel fuzzy. Boys, girls who cares right?” Will wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction. He had hoped with all his heart that Mike would be accepting but his speech was weirdly open minded, too open minded.

“Are you…” He couldn’t be but Will had to be sure. “Into boys as well?” He finally found the courage to ask.

“Who me? No.” Mike said shaking his head. He didn’t sound offended. He even smiled. “Why? Are you interested?” Mike teased Will, oblivious that the answer was a big fat yes.

“N-no! It’s just you seem so chill about it, sorry”

“No it’s cool” He casually said.

“Cool” Will repeated.

“Anyway, what’d you got for question 5?” Mike simply went back to their homework as if that conversation meant nothing, or never even happened.

“Um, 25”

“Shit I got 56”

Years passed but Will’s crush didn’t, it was slowly turning into something more intense. Back in 10th grade, he tried dating a boy he met at the arcade to get over his best friend. It didn’t work. Will didn’t date anyone else after that. Mike on the other hand, had become quite the womanizer. Will couldn’t blame him; he went from a soft cute child to the hottest boy in the whole school.

So yes, Mike dated a lot. Always coming back to Will at the end of the day, saying that he’ll never find the one. Will’s heart sank when, one day, Mike mentioned that he’d need someone like Will. And of course both of them acted like Mike had never said that. It took a couple of other months for Will to inform the rest of the party that he liked boys. Everyone was accepting and supportive.

***

“Would you date me?” Mike asked out of the blue. Will who was inconveniently drinking at the same time choked a little on his drink.

“Excuse me?” Will managed to say after catching his breath. He placed his glass on the coffee table.

“I mean hypothetically would you?” Mike still had that serene expression when evoking that kind of subject, compared to Will whose head was always on the verge of exploding.

How was he supposed to answer that? Saying yes would mean hinting his attraction towards the boy, too close to the truth, saying yes meant danger. But saying no would mean lying and risking to hurt Mike’s feeling.

“I mean yeah” Will said after almost a minute of reflection which might have been worse than answering right away.

“Cool… because there’s this wedding I need to attend and I was hopping you’d be my date” Mike saw Will’s confused expression and clarified his proposition. “like pretend to be my boyfriend?” Will couldn’t believe what was happening. His heart was going full speed at this point.

“I mean yeah but wouldn’t it be easier to find a girl? Also more believable” Will tried to reason Mike but more importantly, himself.

“Well maybe I’m into boys as well as girls” Whatever was going on inside Will’s mind seconds ago got deleted by this one sentence. “I mean Johnny Depp’s pretty hot but so is Phoebe Cates, you know what I mean?”

“Not really but-”

“And I mean it’s not like I’ve never… you know” Will’s mind was a total blank at this point, still not processing the idea that Mike could like boys the same way he did.

“I really don’t” Will said.

“All I’m saying is that there is not much differences between kissing a boy and kissing a girl” Mike said and that was what broke the glass wall Wil was hiding behind. The wall that would hold the informations from going to Will’s brain. He stayed silent for a moment still in shock, but tried his best to keep a straight face.

“I guess, although there are differences” Will added.

“Oh yeah I know” Mike said, a little bit, too confidently. If Will was shocked before he now had lost the ability to function. Body frozen, his brain overheating as he tried to connect the dots. And the conclusion he came to kind of scared him for some reason.

“Wait, just so we’re clear. Are you telling me you’ve had sex with a boy?” Will didn’t know if he wanted the answer but his mouth was faster than his brain.

“Not all the way but, yeah pretty much I guess” Mike said nonchalantly. “So what do you say?” Mike changed the subject, looked at him right in the eyes.

“Sure,” Was all Will could say. “When is it?”

“Next week, 21st of July” Mike said.

“Okay, do I need to wear anything in particular?” Will had never been to a wedding.

“No, just a button up shirt I guess. You don’t have to go full tuxedo, unless you want to” Mike said.

Will went home that day looking for an appropriate outfit. He looked through his clothes but he found nothing he liked. He thought of asking his mother but went to look through Jonathan’s old clothes. He had left for college a couple of years ago but some of his stuff were still around.

“Hey buddy, what are you doing?” Will jumped not expecting anyone home. He turned around and saw his brother, leaning on the doorframe of the room.

“Jonathan! I didn’t know you were coming back for summer break!” Will said going for a hug.

“I told mom on the phone a couple of days ago. Didn’t she tell you?” He hugged his brother back.

“I guess not... El’s at Max’s but I can call if you w-”

“No no, don’t worry I’m staying so I’ll see her later”

“Okay” Will said enthusiastically. He had missed his brother.  Jonathan looked over Will’s shoulder and noticed the box of clothes on the floor.

“What’s all this?” He asked, his head nodding towards the box. Will turned around.

“Oh um, I’m looking for a button up shirt, a nice one” Will replied.

“Why? Do you have a date?” Jonathan smiled and lifting his eyebrows up. Will blushed.

“Oh no! Just going to a wedding” He explained, although his brother looked even more confused. “Mike asked me to be his date for one of his relative’s wedding” He quickly regretted his choice of words seeing the facial expression of his brother. “Don’t give me that look it’s, it’s not like that. He asked me to be his fake boyfriend.”

“Fake boyfriend? That’s pretty odd… why not just ask you to come as a friend?” Jonathan asked really confused. Will frowned. Somehow, in his state of ethereal panic when Mike asked him, he didn’t realize how weird it was.

“I-I don’t know…” Will looked down feeling like an idiot for still being in love with the same person for almost 10 years and them not reciprocating the feelings.

“I’m sorry” Jonathan put his hand on Will’s shoulder giving him a pitiful look. He knew. “Come on let’s find you the most stunning shirt we can!”

***

On the 21st the Wheelers came to pick up Will. Nancy couldn’t make it, which was why they only took one car. Mike got out of the car and walked to the Byers-Hoppers’ front door. Will opened the door to see Mike who was wearing black tuxedo pants, a light blue, almost white, shirt with a loosened navy tie. Will was wearing dark grey pants, his shirt was white with a red tie around the collar, and a dark grey vest matching his pants. He held his tuxedo jacket in his hands.

Will didn’t have time to greet Mike because as soon as the door was open and he was reachable, Mike slid his hand on Will’s wait bringing him closer. He leaned in and kissed Will right on the lips. Taken aback Will almost dropped his jacket on the floor. The kiss lasted about five seconds. Will couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes like Mike did.

“Why did you do that?” Will asked, eyes so wide.

“We’re supposed to pretend to be boyfriends, might as well act like real ones” Mike explained. “You look great by the way” Mike said before taking his hand and leading him to the car. Will forgot to thank him as worry started to take over his shock.

“What about your parents?” Will asked.

“They’re cool with it” He said climbing in the vehicle. Will following him and sat next to him as he greeted everyone.

“Hello kid” “Hi Will!” “Hello honey” All of the other Wheelers said at the same time. “Come on boys buckle up we’re a bit late” Karen said.

Will was a bit surprised by the fact that no one was bothered by the fact that Will was dating Mike. Mike explained, that he himself had thought his father would’ve been angrier about it but he simply didn’t care, totally unaware of the fact that his parents knew that if their son had to date a boy it would’ve been Will.

A moment after they had started driving Will felt Mike’s hand slid in his. He gazed at their hands then at Mike’s face. He was smiling at him. Will took a deep breath then relaxed into the touch and even leaned onto Mike’s arm. If he was going to pretend to be his boyfriend, he was going to enjoy every second of it because as soon as this day ends so does this.

They drove for about forty minute and finally arrived at the venue. The biggest area was outside where all the chairs and tables were, for the reception, as well as a dance floor with a faux ceiling of fairy lights. The place was huge and beautiful. Everything looked expensive and screamed ‘we have money’. Will knew the Wheelers were wealthier than his family but even the extended family was rich.

They entered the room where the ceremony would take place. Still holding hands Mike and Will followed Karen leading the way to the 5th row. They all sat down but Will felt nauseous all of a sudden. He felt stares on him and Mike and whispers here and there.

At first he thought that he was being paranoid, when they stood up for the bride’s entrance he met disgusted faces looking at them.

“Um... Mike?” Will tugged at his sleeve.

“Yeah?” Mike looked at Will giving him all his attention.

“Is your family homophobic?” Will asked the question that was bothering him as soon as he sat down on the white velvet chair.

“Uh yeah, some of them, why?” Mike said eyes wandering around the room.

“And you didn’t tell me?!” Will scream-whispered.

“Didn’t I mention it?”

“No you didn’t!!!” Mike didn’t understand why Will was so mad.

“Well, that’s kinda why I wanted you to come, so I could piss them off. My uncle’s a homophobic asshole so I thought I’d piss him off if I had a boyfriend.” Mike said calmly.

Will’s heart stopped. His shoulders dropped and he felt something in his stomach. His guts getting heavy. Was it the only reason? It would explain the ‘fake boyfriend’ thing… Will thought.

“Hey what’s going on?” Mike noticed Will’s sudden change of mood. He approached him, looking at his face closely trying to figure out the reason his best friend looked so down.

“Mike we could get hurt…” Will said and yes it wasn’t the main reason he felt sad but it was a big concern of his at this moment.

“Will look at me” Mike said lifting Will’s chin using his hand. “I will never let anything happen to you, you understand? Never” Mike said so seriously and with such sincerity in his voice. Will looked at him and saw the boy he fell in love with, and all his worry vanished.

“Okay” Will said nodding and smiling.

After the ceremony all the guests were invited to go eat the meal followed by the party that started right after the now married couple’s first dance together. The whispering and weird looks continued but Mike did everything he could to distract his boyfriend, and that meant kiss him by surprise, asking for, no, drag him to the dancefloor to swing to the music.

Will had seem to be distracted enough to forget all about it. Until one of Mike’s cousin, he assumed, went up to them.

“Hey Michael! I didn’t know you were a fairy?” He said supported by his friend’s laugh behind. Will let go of Mike and took a step away from him. Mike instantly put himself in front of Will, protecting him.

“Do you have a problem George?” Mike almost spat out.

“Yes actually. I don’t want faggots at brother’s wedding” He walked closer to them.

“Take that back!” Mike shouted over the music.

“No, you see I’m quite surprised. You don’t look queer” He said poking at Mike’s shoulder’s multiple times. Then pointed at Will. “Him on the oth-” Mike’s fist interrupting his cousin’s mouth.

It happened so fast that Will didn’t registered the action until he saw the man on the floor, lip bruised and already bleeding. He got back to his feet and punched back. Will was petrified and felt powerless. He watched the scene screaming in his head for them to stop.

His voice finally coming out when his eyes fell on Mike’s bleeding lips and red cheek. “Mike!” The fight didn’t go any further as people went to separate them. Will threw himself at Mike. He took his face between his hands.

“Are you okay?” He asked voice shaking, translating his worry.

“Sure! Never been better” Mike tried to lighten the situation with a joke that did not make Will laugh. Karen arrived near them and brought them in the kitchen of the venue to get some ice.

***

“Ouch” Mike winced as Will placed the ice patch against his cheek. Mike was sat on a counter, Will standing between his legs. They were no stranger to proximity and closeness, but this night, it became so natural for them, as if they were magnets.

“Sorry” Will said mimicking the boy’s facial expression.

“It’s okay” Mike said placing his hand on top of Will’s. They stared at each other’s eyes for god knows how long. They leaned a little eyes going down towards lips. Hearts racing but abruptly stopped when a member of the staff passed by, making Will drop his hand and them break eye contact. They waited to be alone again before they started speaking again.  “Please don’t say it” Mike said.

“Say what?” Will asked.

“I told you so” Mike replied

“I told you so” Will did it anyway. Mike gave him a small smile. “You didn’t have to do that you know…” Will softly said.

“Do what?” Mike asked confused.

“Getting beat up just to defend me” Will looked down.

“Hey no! I couldn’t stand there listening to that asshole say those things about you, about us.” Mike placed the ice patch next to him and took, between his hands, Will’s face, who winced a little because of Mike’s frozen hand. His burning cheeks helping the hand getting warmer.

“Don’t ever do that again. Promise me.” Will looked so serious.

“No I can’t promise that, I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you and I meant it! You’re so important to me okay!” His brain was so dazed from his swollen lips and bruised cheeks, pain radiating in his whole face, which was why he had let this information slipped out of his mouth. Even though they both knew it, hearing Mike say it out loud felt different.

“Mike you don’t understand, I got so scared when I saw him punch you I… please” Will’s eyes getting wet as his voice was shaky. Mike licked the blood on his lips, thinking.

“Okay”

“Promise.” Will held his pinky finger in front of them. Mike looked amused, it’s been so long since they pinky promised something. They used to do it all the time when they were kids. Mike locked their fingers together.

“I promise” His hand quickly moved to hold his entire hand instead of just his pinky. His other hand on the back of the smaller boy’s head, bringing it closer allowing Mike to kiss his forehead. He stayed like this for some time, Will felt his whole body melt. He wiped off the blood stain after his lips left Will’s skin.

He looked around them, checking if anybody could see them, and no, no one was looking. He looked up and saw a bloody smile.

“You can stop pretending, no one’s looking” He took a wet cloth and gently rubbed the blood off Mike’s lips, which was useless as it was still bleeding a little.

“I’m not pretending” Mike said, putting Will’s hair behind his ear. The light touch made Will so weak. His heart was pounding in his chest; it was almost painful. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“Please stop, I’m begging you” Will desperately said avoiding eye contact.

“Stop what?” Mike got worried for half a second.

“Making me feel like this” He said. What do you mean? Was what Will could read on Mike’s face when he finally decided to raise his head. “Like I have a chance, like you could actually love me back”

“Back?” It was Mike’s voice’s turn to shake.

“Yeah Mike. I’m in love with you, have been for years. I honestly don’t know how you never noticed because I’m so weak for you” Will admitted. He was expecting a shocked expression painted on Mike’s face but his eyes met the boy, beaming at him. Will’s eyes flutter out of confusion.

“Why are you smiling?” Will asked.

Will started to panic. Was Mike gonna laugh at his face because of how stupid he was to love someone who will never love him back? He regretted telling this, he regretted coming to the wedding, he regretted agreeing to all of this. He… He tasted blood on his lips.

In his panic state he didn’t notice Mike leaning in to kiss him. Will closed his eyes and they moved their lips together spreading the iron taste on Will’s tongue. Will wasn’t aware of it but his whole body was shaking lightly. The kiss was slightly painful for Mike who didn’t kiss him for too long. They parted but stayed close nonetheless.

“What was that for?” Will said finally coming back to reality.

“For loving me back” Mike said softly.

“B-back?” A glimmer of hope shined in Will’s eyes.

“Yeah I did actually notice you loved me. It just took me a long time to fall for you too, or rather realized I had already fallen” Mike took Will’s hands in his. Will felt like he was floating on a cloud, not even noticing when staff members passed by anymore.

“When did you realized that?” Will had a lot of questions but this one came out first.

“Last year” Mike said looking down. Will let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. A mix of anger, sadness, confusion but mostly frustration took over Will.

“So you knew I was in love with you for years, then realized you loved me back but did nothing for a whole year?” He exclaimed, raising his voice a little.

“Yeah but I actually thought your feelings were gone because you dated that boy and… there’s college approaching and I don’t know I-” Mike struggled to explain. Will listened and waited for Mike to be finished, then waited a little longer, installing a silence between them.

“Now what? What do we do?” Will asked rubbing his thumb on Mike’s knee.

“I don’t know…” He looked at Will whose eyes were stuck on his own thumb drawing circles on Mike’s pants. “What I do know is that I love you.”

“You do?” Will glanced up, finding Mike staring directly at him, smiling.

“Yes! Hell, Will, you’re the love of my life, always have been, always will be, even though the love wasn’t romantic at first it sure is now!” Mike said like it was the clearest thing in his life, because it was. The words made Will melt into Mike’s arms. They also felt like a breath of fresh hair, like Will had been waiting all his life to hear them, like he could finally breathe again.

His eyes sparkled. “So what do you say? You want to give this a shot?” Mike asked, looking at Will through his eyelashes.

“Yes!” Will almost didn’t let Mike finish his question. He crashed his lips against Mike’s, who winced and pulled back.

“Ouch” Mike went to touch his bleeding lip.

“Sorry” Will’s awkward smile grew wider when he felt Mike’s lips back on his own.

[mitchsmarners]

semi charmed life | chapter nine | 4.8k | teen|

“You guys have kept in contact this whole time?” Bill asked, brow disappearing underneath hair line as he looked like his old friends in amazement. “And you guys are.. what? Room mates?”

Eddie avoided looking at Richie as he answered. “Yeah, uh… room mates. Something like that.”

[or: the adult!losers reunion, done 2000s sit-com style, just like we all deserve.]

PREVIOUSLY ON SEMI CHARMED LIFE: “I’ve always wanted you.” Ben said openly. “and I will always want you.” Beverly cupped the side of his face and brought their lips together.” “Wait, Ben Hanscom?” Eddie squawked, shaking his head as Richie nodded. “That’s not going to end well.” |  CUTEST COUPLE. Richie traced his hands over the words, smiling softly as he took in the appearance of himself and Beverly Marsh at fifteen. | “It’s like… sometimes…” Mike exhaled hard. “Sometimes I feel like he’d rather me be in Derry, a place I’ve always hated, with him than out here doing what I love. He’s just… waiting for me to come back. I don’t think he thinks this is real. Permanent. He’s waiting for me to come back.” |  “So tell me, good pal,” the man smiled, giving him a golden toothed grin. “You wanna pack or deliver?” |  “You almost destroyed me,” Richie snapped, eyes blazing. “I couldn’t go to school, I couldn’t even graduate. I almost had to stay in this absolute hell hole, just so you wouldn’t have to admit failure. So fuck you, Stanley.”

“Look who’s cute!” Richie called happily, coming into the dark light cafe with little Frankie perched on his shoulders. He had promised Beverly that he would come see her at work on her first day, before he dropped Frankie off at home and went in for his own shift. After Beverly had seen her outfit, she’d wished that Richie would’ve forgotten all about that promise. He was here, though, with a toddler on his shoulders and a shit eating grin on his face.

Beverly flushed. Her black shirt buttoned all the way up to her mid-neck, and her pants were yanked up nearly to her breasts. With a belt. It sort of hurt to breathe. She wanted nothing more than to take it all off and walk away, but she knew that she couldn’t afford to do that. Without Tom in her life, Beverly had spent the last month milling around in Eddie and Richie’s apartment, jobless and mooching off of their kindness. It wasn’t a life that she could live forever- nor one she wanted to- but it certainly didn’t seem to help anything with Eddie’s sudden awkwardness around her. After a few days, Beverly had managed to pluck up the courage to ask about it and Richie had dismissed her. Claimed that Eddie had had some sort of weird experience at work, and that it wasn’t anything she had done. Beverly wasn’t entirely sure she believed that, but she was willing to give Richie the benefit of believing him. No doubt he knew what was going on in Eddie’s mind space better than she did.

“The only cute person is here is that little princess on your shoulders,” Beverly said happily. In the month since she’d moved in with Eddie and Richie, she’d really grown to adore their little daughters. She thought they were possibly the best child to ever grace the present of this planet- and made her reconsider her lifelong declaration to never have children. Then she remembered that time that Frankie had taken her baby sister right out of the stroller without her noticing, and resolved to sit with simply baby sitting Richie’s little girls with Ben.

And Ben… things between them were great. She knew the rest of her friends were skeptic about their current relationship- Mike had made it obvious with his expressions, and Eddie had straight out told her as much, but she felt that things were going amazingly. She knew, of course, that she ever wanted to make things any more serious that she needed to get into contact with Tom, at least serve him up with divorce papers, but she couldn’t be bothered to think about that just now. Things were going smoothly in her life right now, outside of the tension between herself and Eddie, and Beverly didn’t think now would be a good time to do any boat rocking.

“Hey!” Richie snapped his fingers under Beverly’s nose and waggled his eyebrows at her. “Stop thinking about Ben when a handsome man is already here visiting you.” Richie shot her that toothy grin that instantly brought her back to looking at braces and beyond freckled cheeks, and her stomach leapt the way it always had.

She shook her head and looked away. “You’re alright. Shouldn’t you be getting that little girl home for bed now?”

Richie made a mocking offended noise. “You invite us down here to see you and you’re immediately rushing us out the door. Here I thought you loved us.”

“Well, I love Frankie.” Beverly said with a smirk. “You still fall under the ex boyfriend category, you’re on probation for love.”

Richie gasped, pressing a hand that wasn’t necessary to hold Frankie up to his chest. “How long until I can be accepted back to love status?”

Beverly hummed, trying not to break into a smile. “How long ago did Bill and I break up? Sixteen years ago? Seventeen? I’m starting to considering letting him back into love status.”

Richie made a wounded noise and shook his head dramatically. “I let you into my home, let you eat my food, and this is how you repay me? I’m hurt, Beverly. I will just take my daughter and my company elsewhe-” The ringing in Richie’s pocket yanked them both away from the conversation. Richie rolled his eyes. He was one of very few people Beverly knew that actually had a cell phone- claiming that he needed it for work related situations- and he seemed to despise the thing. “Hello?” He answered, then quickly frowned. “Billy, what… What? Yeah, I do but I have to work- okay, okay, okay. I have Frankie with me so we can… Oh?” Richie’s face crumbled up and he gave Beverly an odd expression. “Then you need to give me a chance to drop her off a home. Then I’ll come get you, don’t go anywhere.”

Richie snapped the phone shut and tucked into his pocket, giving Beverly a long look before sighing. “I’ve got to go. I need to get Franks home, and cover my shift apparently.”

“That was Bill?” Beverly asked, rubbing at her bare arm a little awkward. She didn’t like the troubled look in Richie’s eyes. He could barely look at her, a sign she remembered well from the youth. It meant that Richie’s thoughts were moving faster than his brain could keep up with it, and it always spelled disaster. It meant Richie punching Patrick Hockstetter in the face for homophobic comments or pulling the fire alarm to keep Henry Bowers at bay during an in-school attack. Bad outcomes from good intentions. “Is he out drunk and needs a ride?”

“No.” Richie replied with a small shake of the head that might have been an unconscious twitch. “He’s… I don’t know. I need to go get him, or… whatever. I have to go…”

Beverly nodded firmly. “Yeah, yeah. Go!”

Richie seemed to bounce in place for a moment, before turning and moving quickly through the empty diner. The bell dinged as he left and Beverly exhaled hard, a sense of doom settling in her stomach. She wasn’t sure what the night held, but she knew that it was only quarter to eleven and it was just starting.

→  →  →

Mike tapped his hands against the steering wheel of his rental car as he pulled past the Derry town sign. It had been an incredibly long week, and even though Pearsons had started to pull up on his treatment. Kay had been a godsend but after just the general roughness of his first exhibit, all Mike wanted was the comfort of his boyfriend. It was been a slightly spur of the moment plan, encouraged mostly by Kay after seeing how drained Mike had been all week, and they’d come up with the idea to simply surprise Alexander with his presence than go through the whole process of trying to turn into a plan.

Mike turned down the radio as he started down the back road that lead him to his childhood home. He felt a little bit of sadness in his gut at the FOR SALE sign he knew he was going to see as pulled up in front of it. By the time he’d left for New York it hadn’t gone up yet, and he’d yet to see it. His father wasn’t going to be there, they’d been filtered out the animals for the last few weeks and he knew most of the things he’d always known about Derry would be gone. As soon as Mike could figure out a solution to his spacious problems, Alexander would be packing up and coming to New York and this old place would just be a part of Mike’s past.

It wasn't, however, the sight of the FOR SALE sign that sent Mike’s heart lurching up into his throat as he pulled up towards his driveway. It was the unfamiliar car that was parked beside Alexander’s outside their house. HIS house. Mike placed the car into park and took a second to steady his breathing.

→  →  →

Stan pulled his sweater tighter around himself as he made his way through the dark streets. The nights were getting progressively warmer as summer came in, but he found that he might have wanted to wear his windbreaker this night. The weather outside hadn’t exactly been the first thing on his mind as he left his apartment at nearly eleven, barely stopping to give an explanation to Patty as he rushed out into the night.

He hadn’t personally heard from Bill Denbrough in almost eleven years. They’d been friendly enough at the reunion, classic adult behaviour he supposed, but Bill had made it pretty clear to everybody whose side he was on once everything went down between Stan and Richie. Stan supposed that everybody had leaned more towards Richie’s side of things, but Bill and Eddie had been the two who openly expressed it the most. Everybody else had the slight decency to pretend not to pick a side- and it was easy enough with them all leaving Derry- but Stan and Bill’s friendship had never bounced back. So, yes, Bill Denbrough calling him in the dead of night for help was out of character and worrisome.

He sped up his steps once he saw Bill standing at the end of the street, pacing in front of the street sign. Stan walked quickly up to him, placing a hand on Bill’s elbow. Bill let out a loud shout, and quickly yanked himself away. He stumbled and Stan had to move quickly to grab hold of his arms and steady his old friend on his feet. “Are you okay?” Stan asked, taking in Bill’s disheveled appearance and wide eyes.

“I…” Bill cleared his throat and looked around, nose twitching. Even in the darkness of the night, Stan recognized that look as Bill getting caught on a word. It was strange, when they’d all met up in Derry Bill had barely stuttered at all. Whatever this was must have been really getting to him. Stan rubbed gently at Bill’s shaking arms and watch as the other boy worked through his own tongue. “I-I’m in t-t-tr-trouble, Stan.”

Stan was seconds away from some sort comment that would be the equivalent of duh, when a car came roaring up to the curb. Richie Tozier leaned towards the passenger seat window, scowling slightly at the sight of Stan standing there as well. He shook his head, closed his eyes and jerked his hand towards the back seat. Bill jumped to action, quickly launching himself into the backseat. Stan let out a half-aborted protest before getting into the passenger seat beside Richie.

Richie gave him an awkward closed-mouthed smile that Stan nervously returned before spinning around in the backseat to glare at Bill. “Care to fucking tell me what was so important that I had to call into work to come get your ass at the side of the road? And why bird boy is here with you?”

Stan wanted to be offended, but he supposed of all the things Richie could’ve called him, that was pretty tame. Bill seemed to be openly trembling in the back seat, eyes jerking around nervously. Stan sighed “He called me at home, said he was in trouble-”

“Didn’t fucking ask you.” Richie snapped, not even bothered to look at him. Richie drummed his fingers against the steering wheel while maintaining direct eye contact with Bill. Stan watched how Bill squirmed under Richie’s gaze, and couldn’t help but think that Richie had never looked more like a father than he did in that moment.  Stan had to bit his lip to keep from trying to give Richie a satisfying answer to his well asked question.

“I…” Bill flushed deeply, Stan could see that even in the dark car. Maybe part of Stanley Uris had never forgotten about to read his old friends. Bill scratched at the back of his neck, clearing trying to avoid meeting Richie’s gaze. “I’ve g-g-gotten involved with some guh-guh-guys…”

Stan felt his heart plummet into the pit of his stomach. He felt that maybe some part of him had been afraid of that this whole time. He hadn’t been able to deny the nerves he’d been feeling. He looked away from Bill and towards Richie. Richie was practically burning holes into Bill’s head, silently urging him to continue.

Bill cleared his throat once again, one of his oldest tricks to helping with his stutter that he’d always found didn’t really help at all but he’d always resort to when nothing else was working either. “I-I-I-I k-k-knew it was a b-b-b-bad i-idea but I-I-I nuh-n-needed money. For the b-b-b-b-b-b-baby.” Bill was staring stubbornly at his hands now. Richie was shaking his head slowly, eyes closed and Stan. Well. Stanley felt like he was moments away from opening this car door and throwing up into the street.

“I-I-I-I didn’t fuh-fuh-feel right about i-i-i-it!” Bill declared. “I-I-I was truh-try-trying to get o-o-o-out! They d-d-d-didn’t luh-luh-like that.”

“No, I imagine they fucking didn’t!” Richie let out a frustrated grunt, and smacked his hand a little bit harder against the steering wheel. “God damnit Denbrough. When did you get so stupid?”

“We always did stupid shit!” Bill argued, suddenly stutter-free. Suddenly sounding angry. “The three of us! Getting into trouble, barely getting away with it. Come on, you can’t deny it was always epic.”

Richie and Stan both shot Bill looks of contempt so eerily similar that Bill sunk back in his seat. Stan was truly considering breaking his silence that came from fear of Richie’s anger and giving Bill a piece of his mind when the night was suddenly cut through with the ringing sound of gunshots. Stan let out a startled gasp and Richie’s eyes blew wide behind the lenses of his glasses.

“Is that for you, Denbrough?” Richie screamed as another shot went off.

“RICHIE! FUCKING DRIVE!”

→  →  →

Beverly wiped down the counter for what was easily the tenth time that night. It wasn’t dirty, she hadn’t served a customer beside the man she was pretty sure was homeless drinking a cup of iced water in the last two hours. The last people Beverly had interacted with had beyond single word sentences had been Richie and Frankie, and she was trying to push off the lingering feeling of anxiety Richie’s phone call had left her with.

“Hey, sorry, I know it’s late but I-” A terrifying familiar voice called, following in the singing of the bell above the door. Beverly turned slowly, the dread settling in her gut. Tom Rogan the same as he always did, he might have even been wearing the same shirt he’d had on when she’d left him for her Derry reunion.

He looked as self shocked to see her as she was him. “Beverly, you’re… back in New York.”

She cursed herself for never considering that she’d run into her husband in New York. She’d chalked up to it being a large city, and if she stayed away from the places she knew that he frequented, then it wouldn’t happen. Part of her had known that she’d see Tom again one day, but she chosen to believe that it would be more on her own terms. Not nearly this unexpected.

“Uh, yes.” Beverly replied awkwardly, wiping her hands on the blue cloth. She placed it back into the sanitation bucket and took a step around the counter to her husband. There was no avoiding the situation, so she might as well face it head on. “I got back about a month ago. I’ve been staying with some friends. They’ve got cute kids.”

Tom gave her a confused look. “Bev, you hate kids.”

“I don’t hate kids.” Beverly argued immediately, thinking about Frankie’s cute little pigtails and Marty’s tiny little hands. Tom gave her a disapproving look, and she had to admit that she’d turned Tom down on kids many times during their marriage. “Well. I don’t hate their kids.”

“And you’re working here?” Tom looked around the diner with a slight turn up of his lips. It was fair, she knew. This wasn’t any high end type of diner, hence the only late night customers she’s getting being people she believed to simply have no where else to go. But maybe Beverly was one of those people who didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Well, I couldn’t just keep crashing at my friends house without giving any sort of help.” Beverly said with a shrug. She almost wished a customer would come into the store now, ask for something complicated that she probably didn’t even know how to make and Tom wouldn’t have a chance to keep talking to her.

“You never had to stay with your friends,” Tom said, sadly and quietly. He looked down at his feet and Beverly felt a quick pang of sadness for him. Maybe she’d been feeling unhappy in their marriage, but it wasn’t as though she’d ever told him that. She’d simply sat on her feelings, ones that she’d barely even known that she felt, and then she’d taken off at the first chance and never looked back. Never tried to talk to him, didn’t tell him where she was going, what she was planning. “You could have come home.”

Beverly bristled. Home. Was the fancy apartment in the West Side that belonged to her and Tom in their marriage home? No. It didn’t feel like home, had stopped feeling like home long before she’d left. Was home Eddie and Richie’s townhouse? No. Maybe at first she had hoped it do be, but she knew that that was a family of four, she was just living there. She didn’t have a true home living with Eddie and Richie.

Beverly sighed and shook her head. “I haven’t found my home yet,” she told her husband honestly. “I’m still working on that.”

Tom walked up to stand beside Beverly by the counter, resting his elbows onto it. He sighed. “Beverly, I don’t understand what happened. One second you seemed perfectly happy, then next you walking out on me. On us. On everything.”

Beverly tried to give him a sympathetic smile. “I wasn’t happy, Tom. It took me a long time to realize it but I couldn’t… I couldn’t help it after that. I had to get away.”

“Why couldn’t you have talked to me, Bev?” Tom asked quietly. He was fidgeting with the tips of his fingers the same way he had before he’d proposed. “We could have talked about it, I could have tried to be better.”

“It’s not like that,” Beverly said slowly. “I had to question myself and my wants, what I needed. I had to go to my reunion, and I wasn’t ready to talk to you about any of my thoughts yet, I’m still not really ready to. While I’ve been staying with Richie-”

“Wait, Richie?” Tom’s voice cut through her, sounding more angry than sad now. “As in your high school boyfriend that you lost your virginity to? That’s who you’re staying with?”

“Yes.” Beverly said with a frustrated sigh. “Did you miss the part where I said I was also staying with his spouse and kids? It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Oh.” Tom laughed humorlessly. “I’m just supposed to believe that you took off from our marriage, moved in with your ex boyfriend and you haven’t done anything with them?”

“I haven’t done anything with Richie since junior year!” Beverly said sharply. “I’m not going to stand here and argue with you about this bullshit.”

“So you’re telling me that in the two months since we’ve been separated you haven’t hooked up with anybody?” Tom asked her dryly.

Beverly bit her lip, thoughts of Ben’s cramped apartment and his cool sheets against her back burning in her mind. She could practically smell his skin where she’d pressed her face into his neck. Tom was raising his eyebrow at her challenging and she knew that now was that this was the make or break moment of her relationship.

“I haven’t done anything with anyone since we’ve been separated.”

→  →  →

Mike walked calmly into his kitchen and poured a glass of cold water from the tap. Alexander came in behind him, wrapped up in the house coat that Mike had given him for his birthday last year. The man who had been in their bed was also by his side, still shirtless and covered in marks. Mike’s stomach was churning but he forced himself to look at Alexander.

“Okay,” Alexander cleared his throat awkwardly, looking around their once shared kitchen. “I know this looks really bad, Mike. I do. And it is, but it’s been hard for me. You left, and I had to stay behind for god knows how long! I could have handled this better, I know-”

“I’ll say.” Mike responded, not sharply, not angrily. His voice was calm and cut off. He was already shutting it out. Disconnecting himself from it completely. He pressed his knuckles into the counter behind him and leaned against it. “I’m not sure you could have handled it worse, frankly.”

“Everything was so up in the air!” Alexander cried, tears settling in his eyes. Mike had to fight not to roll his own, feeling it was nothing more than act now. Alexander didn’t feel bad, he didn’t regret anything. Mike could see it all over the place, and looking back at the way his boyfriend had been acting the last few weeks he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it coming. “Mike, I didn’t know what was going to happen for us-”

“You think I did?” Mike snapped before pinching at the brim of his nose. “But at least I tried! I was looking for a better place for us, I wanted to make it work! I was trying, I wasn’t sleeping with somebody else and pretending that would help! In what world does being afraid of what’s going to happen in our relationship mean that you should cheat on me?”

“Mike, I’m so sorry.” Alexander said, wiping at his running nose. Tears were falling down on his cheeks and Mike simply couldn’t bring it in himself to care about the obvious distress Alexander was feeling in that moment. If he let that guard down, let Alexander’s feelings means something, that Mike would break.

“I’m going back to New York.” Mike said, placing the now empty cup back on the counter. “But you need to be out of this house by morning.”

“What?” Alexander gasped. “Mike! Where am I supposed to live?”

“I was trying to find a place for us both to live,” Mike snapped a little spitefully, but still right. Knowing he was right, because Alexander swallowed loudly and looked away from him. “That’s not my problem anymore, but you’re not staying in my family’s house. I’ll be calling the realtor tomorrow to make sure the house is emptied.”

Alexander was still making half-aborted arguments and pleas while Mike turned and left his home in Derry forever.

→  →  →

Richie turned his car angrily into a back alley and parked. He and Stan both slammed back into their seats, breathing heavily. Stan began rubbing his hands over his face as Richie yanked the car door open and rushed out of it. Stan and Bill looked at each other quickly before both fumbling out after him.

“Richie…” Stanley asked softly as Richie whipped around, glaring at them both.

“Bill, what the fuck are you going to do?” Richie cried, running his hands through his hair. He started shaking his head and he gaped at his friends. “Somebody just fucking shot at my car! You could have gotten us killed!”

Bill let out an obviously nervous laugh, starting to ring his hands. “Dude, come on. We u-u-u-used to do st-st-stupid shit all the t-t-t-time.”

Richie walked forward quickly and shoved Bill up against the brick wall behind them. “We’re not fucking teenagers anymore! We’re not just throwing our own lives away!” Richie backed away from Bill, hands shaking. “What? What? You’re just going to go to my house and look my toddler in the eyes and tell her that her dad isn’t going to be coming again? Or would you leave that for Eddie? After you explain to him that he’s now raising two kids on his own because you got yourself in over your head with some fucking druglords?”

Stan wrapped an arm around his stomach and pressed his hand over his mouth. He’d never heard Richie angry like this. Not even after everything that happened between himself and Richie all those years ago, had Richie yelled at him like that.

Richie’s eyes caught Stan’s and he almost gave out a growl. “And what about Stan, William? You just going to go up to Patty and let her know that instead of planning a wedding, she’ll be planning a funeral?”

Stan had to fight back a dry heave as he turned back to Bill. Bill was pressed up against the brick wall just as had been when Richie slammed him up, even though Richie’s hands were no longer holding him there. Richie shook his head. “Grow the fuck up, Bill, and get your fucking shit together.”

Richie turned and started walking back to his car. He stopped with his hand resting on the drivers seat door and looked up. “Uris! Are you coming?”

Stan looked back at Bill one last time before climbing into the car after Richie.

→  →  →

Beverly walked slowly to Richie’s car when he finally showed up to picked her up. He was silent and sullen when she opened the passenger seat and sat down. He didn’t start the car, didn’t look at her. “Richie?” She said tentatively.

Richie hummed.

“Tom showed up at my work tonight,” She said quietly.

Richie jerked to look at her, eyes wild. She noticed then that his hands were shaking. “How did he know worked there? Is bastard stalking you? Beverly, I swear to God-”

“No, no,” Beverly started quickly shaking her head. “He seemed just as surprised to see me as I was him but we talked. He thought you and I were hooking up.” Richie let out a startled laugh and Beverly smiled. “I told him I hadn’t been with anybody since I left him but I…”

“Lied?” Richie suggested, raising his brow. There was still something off about him, something that was leaving Beverly confused and on-edge. She wanted to reach out, maybe take hold of him. Make him feel better about whatever was wrong.

“Yeah…” Beverly sighed out. “I lied. I don’t even know why I did, I don’t want to go back to him, I like being with Ben… I’m just so confused, Richie! I don’t know what’s the best thing to do.”

Richie gave her a half smile. “The best thing you could do is be with whoever makes you happy, Bev.”

And Beverly had no idea what took over her in that moment. Her stomach clenched up and she stared at Richie for a moment. She felt as though every possible human emotion that was able to felt was deep in her gut and she didn’t even notice she was moving forward until she was kissing him.

→  →  →

Eddie rolled over as the bedroom door shut. It was quiet, but Eddie never failed to wake up when Richie came home. He’d tried to stay up for Richie tonight, knowing that he was going to help Bill rather than work, but he’d fallen asleep. His husband was quiet as he came in, not looking towards the bed, and his heart rushed a little bit.

“Baby?” Eddie called towards him, putting his hand up towards his mouth and nibbling at his cucital. “Are you okay?”

Richie turned to him and Eddie could see that Richie was pale even in their unlight bedroom. Eddie scrolled closer to the edge of the bed and held his arms out. “Baby, what happened?”

Richie let out a shaky breath and Eddie knew he was about to start cry. Richie dropped down onto the mattress beside him, and Eddie wrapped Richie up in his arms. “Eds… fuck. Fuck. So much shit happened tonight, fuck.” Richie mumbled into Eddie’s collarbone. “I know we don’t keep secrets, I know. I promise I will tell you fucking everything in the morning. But there was a point tonight when I thought… fuck… I thought I wouldn’t be making home at all. So, can we just… cuddle? Sleep? Please?”

Eddie’s heart got shut in his throat and he imagined for a short moment walking up and Richie having not come home. Not getting to see Richie again, and he knew nothing could be worse than that.

“Yeah, Rich. We’ll go to sleep.”

Richie hummed as Eddie laid them down, feeling how Richie was trembling. “I love you, Eddie.”

“I love you, too. No matter what.”

[official-brennivin]

Until Dawn review

I’ve recently finished my full playthrough of Until Dawn and after going through the main story of the game multiple times and experimenting, I’ve compiled my thoughts! This action-visual novel was extremely interesting to play.

Firstly, the game is marvellous in terms of atmosphere. The sound design, acting and music all create a very strong mental image of the cold environment and the intensity of the action sequences. This game has hit the nail on the head in terms of tone and setting. The environments are crafted wonderfully, and a lot of the gameplay segments feel relatively realistic. When a character pulls off a feat, it’s never unfeasible or totally impossible in real life. When a character is hurt or feels the cold, they react in a pretty normal way. The choice of a ski lodge during winter as a setting really enhances the tension of the story, and even with occasional slivers of dark humour the tone is very much under control. I never felt like my immersion was broken because the game became “too ridiculous” and this can happen with action-VN games. From the moment the opening theme started and that intense and overpowering “Oh Death” started playing, I was hooked. It was amazingly put together.

The decision to use the wendigo as the antagonistic species was a bold move. It’s not often that we see the wendigo adapted to games or films, and I think the decision to use them instead of werewolves or some other cryptid was extremely creative. I already have an interest in wendigo from playing RPGs and reading myths about them, so seeing them in media always makes me happy. The wendigo were also animated in an extremely masterful way. They’re absolutely terrifying. The gory deaths they cause are extremely creative and intense, and they pose a very real threat. One wrong move and the wendigo can easily be the end of you. Those that know me through this blog are aware of my penchant for creative and unique gore, so naturally this made the game very captivating.

Onto the game design, I thought that even though there were a lot of playable characters it was handled quite well. No matter who I was playing as I never felt like I switched control too quickly, or like it was jarring. Each segment was introduced with care and getting into each character felt organic. I do wish that the game was not divided into arbitrary chapters, though. The reason I say this is that whenever I wanted to collect an item I’d missed I had to replay an entire section of the game right from the beginning. Other Action-VNs and even regular VNs either allow you to skip segments of dialogue you’ve already been through or to jump into different sections of a chapter to get to specific points more quickly. Having to play through an entire chapter again just to get a totem that is right at the end of the chapter is very tedious. This did make the game frustrating at times, as the gameplay is so unforgiving and precise that it’s very easy to make mistakes and miss the item you’re looking for. That means starting the whole chapter again and again.

The game is difficult, and I like that about it. It doesn’t hold your hand and doesn’t give you arbitrary button presses all the time. The quick-time inputs feel natural because the button that you will have to use often corresponds to a direction. (for example, if you’re climbing then triangle will be used while launching yourself upward whilst X and square will be used to control your legs) Sometimes, the best thing to do is also nothing - not acting on a quick time event can save your life, if the action is too dangerous. This was also very well-implemented.

My absolute favourite game mechanic is the “stay still” mechanic. Wendigo can not see you if you stand still, so the game requires you to hold your controller very still to avoid detection. Not only is this a very unique way to use motion controls, but it’s also very well-tied into the lore. This is an example of an innovation that pleasantly surprised me. The tension it creates is unparalleled by any other horror game mechanic I’ve seen. The first time I encountered it while facing a wendigo, my heart raced. I genuinely felt fully immersed in the fear of the situation. This was an amazing choice that ultimately made the game for me.

I also loved how the game adapted to me as a player. During the “therapy” segments of the game, while you’re being psychoanalysed by Dr. Hill, the decisions you make influence the game you’re playing. The fears that you express towards Dr. Hill will impact the scares used in the game. This is really interesting and I was really pleasantly surprised by it as well. Games that adapt to your psychology are far and few between, but I think analysing the fears you have and changing the content accordingly makes for a really unique experience for each player. I loved this personal touch.

The characters in this game are fantastic. They’re all very balanced and unique. Not one of them is an all-round likeable person. They all feel like very real young adults with flaws and their own motivations. The way they react to certain interactions is very natural and organic, and I’m really impressed by how well they are characterised and developed. Throughout the story their emotions and experiences feel very relatable and human. Their personalities are all so unique and fun that I found myself quickly latching onto certain characters such as Chris, Josh and Jessica. I really cared about what happened to them, and the way they were written influenced the way I played quite a lot.

My feelings about the dialogue are complicated. On one hand, I love that it was written as a homage to corny 80s horror films. That was a great touch. However, some lines felt off. Sometimes characters would say things that didn’t feel natural. For example, I don’t think it would be typical for an 18-year-old boy to call his girlfriend “hon”. I also didn’t like Mike’s little “oh hell yeah” catchphrase whenever something suggestive happened. Talk about cringeworthy. The dialogue corresponded quite nicely to the characters’ personalities and was believable for American suburban teenagers, but there were points where it felt a bit jarring. Another thing that stood out to me as irritating is that Mike makes a pretty tasteless homophobic joke at one point and it’s not addressed as bigoted - the other characters just kind of let it happen. It’s only one short moment, but I hated it. Whilst the dialogue is quite flawed and I can see a lot of players finding its corniness annoying, it had its charms.

The acting in this game is phenomenal, and it’s clear that the actors had a great time working on it. Everybody on the cast of this game loved being in it, and believed in the project’s creative vision. The facial and physical acting is extremely well-performed. The voice acting is spot on, and they portray their young and naive characters very well. Rami Malek did an especially good job at portraying Joshua Washington, as the role had a lot of emotional range to it and I can only imagine how much work he put into that performance. I also want to mention Peter Stormare’s portrayal of Dr. Hill, which was mindblowingly intense and extremely intimidating. He is a phenomenal actor and the way he pulled off the character’s mystery and powerful aura was amazing.

Overall, while there are times that the game feels corny or unappealing in its dialogue or slightly tedious to replay, it’s very worth playing for those that enjoy horror and/or action-VNs. The very first playthrough is always an intense experience. Even my partner, who normally hates action-VNs enjoyed it purely because the horror was that effective. This game was a really unique experience, and one of the better action-VNs I’ve played. If you haven’t played it and you’re interested in experiencing a creative and wild horror plot with very interesting execution, go ahead! I highly recommend it.

[hanzi83]

Suspended from Twitter Again from Organized Harassment

The thought of catching up scares me and it keeps me going back to check what happens on reddit etc and then I fucking just don’t want to write even though I am acting irrational on twitter more than usual. I then start commenting on twitter more than focus on my personal journal and I am prompted with people trying to trigger me because they sense vulnerability in me, and I feel these people are employed to do this kind of behavior, as you can tell from my plethora of videos, blogs, tweets, instagram posts etc. I have angered so many people in this world, where there is a team dedicated to fucking with me and tarnishing my image, and instilling paranoia in me, and since the Stern Show, I feel is responsible, even though I cannot confirm 100 percent, they have dedicated an obscure subreddit dedicated to me claiming they are working to get me banned from twitter, and other social media outlets, hinting my family and friends are in connection with government agents, because I am technically on a watch list, or at least that is how I see it, and they have limited my movements and since I have angered people in my life with jabs because I feel a lot of them are in connection with people behind the scenes. I know it sounds crazy that this type or organization is going on for an individual, but there are teams dedicated to doing this to others. People in the system, mostly public figures, have been targeted, and some of them behind the scenes are organizing teams for employed fandom to take over the internet, depending if that person is supposed to be popping.

I have been pointing out this for the last several years how this is going down or at least putting theories, that have not been officially backed up specifically, but there are plenty of articles in prominent news and media outlets that have shown you what the capabilities are based off what has happened in the past, and because I am not partaking in sports tribalism, and people knowing it might bother me because this type of pretentiousness bothers me when people make these sporting events seem like some great moment for history, as we are currently becoming America light, and since a lot of this is predetermined and is supposed to propel this city into the upper echelon, I feel like people are blinded by this, and not focusing on the political shit involved with all of this. I am glad Toronto is in the championship, it is cool, despite me being irrational and wanting to hate it because people who love it have contributed into hurting me behind the scenes and stumping my growth, and have stolen everything from me.

I am not allowed to even express any of my irrational behavior to help me to cope because by letting me speak out, people see me as a threat because I bring transparency into the system, and even though the people in charge, hypothetically, have tarnished my image from being credible, and being seen as someone in his mom’s basement who spews out conspiracies and is obsessed with pro wrestling, and he doesn’t want to get laid because he feels he is not mentally capable to satisfy women, and also believing some of them could be agents, but they will label me an incel, when the people they work for in the upper echelon are the ones who treat women horribly and basically bribe them to give them good PR and then when they are allowed to disclose a horrible scenario involving one of those men, then they are seen as crazy. These people have been entitled, and hell they don’t put men or women on a big stage unless they had to compromise themselves physically and mentally. I point that out and I am seen as the bad guy, and now that people are still tuning into seeing me, even by suppressing the views, so people can watch it by other means, in a group setting, because a lot of people online are a part of groups that gossip how to fuck with people, because they are given incentive, the system has bribed these people with perks and access and makes their lives a lot more comfortable, when they can’t suppress my views they will actively cut short some of my periscope sessions. I will do 20 plus minutes and these people will somehow make it 4 minutes or something.

More Whack Packers are dying and the ones alive are dealing with harassment are prompted to kill themselves and being harassed with the worst type of shit imaginable, and threats of doxing and instilling fear that Howard is going to kill me or that Vince McMahon will kill me, because I speak out on horrible things they may be accountable for even though they will never take accountability and they are protected, and so are the people who are attached to them, and now I feel they have constantly being fucked with me because they want me to be put in a hospital or they want me to attempt suicide, and the movements and transparency in my life seems people who are supposed to be close to me help in that regard, and it is much more important to be connected to what everyone else is doing that is popular, and stick by the official narratives, they would do it at the expense as someone who is supposed to be their friend. Social Justice Warriors, who claim to stand up for injustice, and some of them put their money where their mouth is, but others are just there for the limited narrative and they act outraged when they are told to, so it looks like they are speaking out against racism, when they ignore the larger chunk that is going on systemically. I spoken out how other Whack Packers could be sacrificed for their fame or what they contributed to the system, and Tan Mom and Marfan Mike are hospitalized, and people capitalize on that conspiracy and hint that I am the next Whack Packer who will die.

I have one asshole who is clearly obsessed with every move and speech I make and talks about it nonstop and misrepresents it and if I don’t give this dude and his group of people the entertainment, and for me to take the barrage of harassment about where I am in my life and how everything I am saying is delusion, but then I analyze them and this person in particular about what his life must be like, because he has made grand announcements he was done watching anything I do on periscope, but then constantly does it and then hints that people are after me, and it is clear this person is bought off because I can’t imagine anyone being this obsessed with me for fun. He is obviously protected and he makes claims that people in my life had people look into him for harassing me, just to make it seem like he is dealing with some harassment to take the fact off that I am dealing with the real deal.

No one with a platform is allowed to speak, and even anything that I write, this particular agent just takes everything I say and misrepresents it as delusion grandeur when I am not the only one going through this and the ones that are, are too afraid to address it because it makes them look crazy and I am a bigger target because I was on of the biggest radio shows in the history of radio. I got active mob bosses in this system trying to silence me, and they know by suspending my social media, I will implode, and I know people in my life are probably hoping for that too since everyone fucking hates me.

I know when I write this blog, barely anyone will care because people are only invested when I am mentally breaking down and not being able to fucking handle any of the backlash and it becomes great entertainment for them to get to interact with a whack packer from the Stern Show because they are more invested in harassing me or harassing Wendy because it does not have to focus on their shitty lives so they attack people within the system, even wrestlers go through this targeted shit, but I don’t know if they realize they system they are emboldened to, are probably the ones organizing it since the people in charge exploit anything while pretending they care about these social issues and mental issues, while helping perpetuate the harassment, and when people like me speak out, and even as irrelevant I seem to be, I still anger a good chunk of them and they are constantly coming for me. and they will not stop until I am completely self destructive and kill myself, and the fact that people in my life could be helping with that just so they can have access to these institutions  and all the industry sex workers they could ask for because they are that easily compromised, but they are doing it at my expense, when me being a public joke for the Stern Universe and the Wrestling Universe to get a hold of, they have profited off of it behind the scenes more than anyone and will never admit anything.

They will never stop and it is fine if 10 people read this, I hope that some people who do read this actually know what is going on and please let it be known that this is happening as no media outlet will fucking care about this, because they are told when they can start going after stories, even as truthful some of the leftist ones are, they have to be compromised a little bit, even with the conspiracies, you would think someone on the Stern Show would attract these people to see what I am thinking right, but even they are limited. Only when some vindication occurs, or if I implode and something horrible happens, then after the fact they will care, they will not see my growth and exposing the way the system has manipulated us into hating each other and being more racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and presented it as the cool thing to do because I bought into it for a good portion of my life, but these people who have the chance to do it, don’t because they would limit their discussion and not have nuance and pretend they are speaking out on something big and powerful, when it is merely just calling out one person in the system who said something racist, and people behind the scenes don’t care, it is meant for a limited narrative and because I am sick of the status quo, and have constantly spoken out on shit that I have to say are theories, because I can’t prove a lot of it, they still see me as a threat and will continue.

Normally I write down my thoughts privately but even that is not 100 percent private, it is constantly hacked and people move my cursor around when I spew some venom just to get it off my chest and since I have not written down anything it is getting difficult to know what is in my fucking mind. They will keep fucking with my mental health and it will never stop. I am clearly not high on anyone’s list to help out, even though I have taken on big wigs like Stern. I don’t care how irrelevant he seems to be to the culture, he has pull behind the scenes, even the negative he still controls I think, he can easily have it seen as the people who hate him are the republican Trump supporters, while also being a secret Trump supporting, but somehow on this endearment tour he is going out on, he has convinced people he has secret information about Trump not wanting to be the president, which would beg the question, why did he not say anything before the election? He is in bed with Trump, and he is protected as long as Trump is in power, but no one can see this and the ones who can, are not allowed to say anything. They have managed to censor me during the Raptors game, because it hurts people locally to know that I point out that this is all predetermined, and maybe it is my irrationality and insecurity that I did not connect with my city, and someone who has sold their souls have more respect in this city than someone like me, who did not want to partake in rituals that compromised another life, and then later on have a rabid fan base attack those people and make them seem crazy. Maybe with all my flaws, I still have a fucking soul and actually don’t want people to be discriminated against or oppressed.

People will sacrifice their own loved ones to be part of the upper echelon and it makes me not want to be part of this world, because as far as I am concerned I was never loved, all through my life they have made it known how they treat me, even back in high school or now because Stern has allowed them to be trolls in the system who can put me down because they resent me for being someone who blew up and I can see what their intention is, and when they got what they needed, they sold me out and exclude me from anything that does not benefit them because they secretly hate me. So why don’t you just end me, you won’t though, because I have been told I am needed here, I need to be mentally tortured and limited, as long as pretentious people in the system and in my life prosper and can control me. I don’t want any part of it. Let me die. Come on Howard, sacrifice me, like you supposedly sacrifice other Whack Packers, and then your sick fan base can claim “HE GAVE THEM FAME AND WITHOUT STERN THEY WOULDN’T BE KNOWN” while allowing a sick fan base to treat us like shit and then you make all the fucking profits. Fuck you.

Anything I have said I don’t have factual proof. I will never have it, and if I did they would certainly fucking kill me, and until then they are hoping they fucking I fucking kill myself because it would fit into their narrative better, maybe pat themselves on their back for feeling bad for this torture while they helped create it. They torture everyone in the fucking whack pack and no one cares. We are all lower than filth to these pretentious snobs. Fuck each and every one of you that have allowed this to happen. I hope you catch and become riddled with herpes from all the orgies you sold your souls for. I hope everything around you crumbles, and even if I will never become vindicated from any of this and continuously be mocked by an obsessive troll who is showing off the harassment he can do under the guise of “calling me out on my bullshit” since I did not embrace him, because these sick people want to be producers of mine for a podcast or be a co host, and I don’t want to be with anyone, because I think you are all government agents. Fuck each and every one of you for doing this to me. It makes no difference because you will be coddled within your group chats, where you sick fucks are taking bets on which whack packer is going to die next. Fuck you all.

[scphialillis]

byeler prompt- all the boys are at mike’s for a sleepover and dustin and lucas are suspecting that will and mike have crushes on each other and they over analyze every move they make. do whatever you’re inspired to do to make that into an actual story with an ending

ok. 1) i really liked this prompt and i wish i could have done it the justice it deserves, but instead i got this, ughhhh. 2) i’m sorry it took so long at that it sucks, but something came up and i’m pretty stressed!! so i hope u enjoyed this at least a lil bit :)

words: 1986

warnings: none, i think? swearing i guess. 

characters are 16!

Lucas and Dustin usually hummed theme songs from cartoons and quizzed each other on movie (or video game) knowledge when they were on their way to Mike’s place to keep things from getting too quiet, but today they didn’t. Today an odd silence fell between the two boys, the only sounds coming from Dustin’s bike chain and their shoes scraping against the road. Dustin pushed his bike and walked next to Lucas, since Lucas had a flat tire. At first he offered to give Lucas a ride on his bike, but it didn’t really work out, so they just walked.

Dustin’s mind was focused on one particular topic that afternoon, and he’d finally had enough of keeping it in.

“Lucas?” He asked, kicking a small pebble from in front of his foot.

“Yeah?”

“I think… I think Will likes Mike. And that Mike likes Will.”

“What?” Lucas stopped, and put his arm out to stop Dustin too. Dustin did so, and looked at him. “Where did that idea even come from?”

Dustin moved Lucas’ arm and started walking again, Lucas following.

“You don’t see it? Of all people, Will is the only one Mike never gets frustrated with, the only one he’s never shouted at, ever-”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he has a crush, Dustin,”

“Uh, I’m not finished.” Dustin scoffed, Lucas rolling his eyes in return. “As I was saying. Mike has never yelled at Will, he never gets mad at him.. and he’s really, especially, uh gentle? And nice with him, you know.. I don’t know how to explain it..” But to be fair, he didn’t think he would have to. Lucas spends just as much time with Mike, he should’ve been able to tell as well.

“He’s got heart eyes for Will, real bad. The way he looks at Will.. that’s not the way I look at you. Or how Mike looks at me, or how you look at El. You’re telling me you’ve never noticed it? Not to mention, they’ve been spending a lot of time together, alone. More than usual. Making random excuses to have places to be? Sometime I think they forget we go to the same school, and I know damn well they don’t have that many projects. And when we are with them, it’s like they’re off in their own world.”

“But.. Mike’s not gay. He likes girls, he’s had lots of crushes on them. He literally kissed El and went to the snowball with her.” Lucas said.

“You’re right,” Dustin shrugged. “But have you ever heard of the term bisexual?” Lucas shook his head. “Steve told me about it, his roommate in college is bisexual—bi for short. It’s where you like boys and girls.”

“You can like boys and girls?” Lucas was definitely intrigued now. “Like, for real?”

“Totally,” Dustin nodded. “I think Mike is.. and I really think he likes Will.”

“But what about Will?” Lucas asked, but he knew the answer. Will never had a crush on a girl (or at least never told the party), he never even talked about the girls in movies like Lucas and Dustin did sometimes. Lucas supposed that maybe that had been the reason boys at school called Will homophobic slurs and not the other boys. Had it been obvious? If so, what about Will made people think he was gay? Lucas never even thought about it until now.

“I don’t know.. he’s not really into girls. He doesn’t even talk about them.. like, ever,” Dustin shrugged. “But I think he likes Mike. I think he’s liked Mike for a while.” Dustin was the one to stop now. And Lucas did the same. “He trusts Mike the most, obviously. And he’s closest to Mike… How haven’t you noticed yet? The way he smiles at Mike is all “Mike! Mike, I love you! Marry me, Mike!”. You know? And Mike looks at him all like, “Will are you okay? Is there something wrong? I’ll hurt whoever hurt you, Will! I’ll risk it all for you, Will!” Yeah?“

It didn’t take much convincing to get Lucas’ mind twirling around the topic.

He thought about it for a minute. He thought about how Will only ever called out for Mike when he was having episodes, how Mike got to see Will’s drawings before anyone. How Mike was the only one who had a sleeping bag just for him at Will’s house, tucked neatly under his bed. How when Will got scared or was in trouble, Mike was the first one there. Holding Will in his arms, telling him it was okay, that they were okay. How Will would stare at Mike for no reason. How they would brush hands occasionally and let them linger for much longer than Dustin and his own hands ever did. And now he was thinking about the heart eyes, like Dustin had mentioned previously. And it made sense. Mike looked at Will the same way he looked at El, if not with something…more.

"Shit,” Lucas mumbled under his breath. “I think you could be right.”

Dustin grinned and nodded, “Hell yeah, I am.” The boys started walking again.

“So, what are we gonna do? Should we say something?” Dustin asked.

“Absolutely not, are you crazy? We don’t even know for sure…” They were now approaching the Wheeler house, and lowered their voices.

“Then we do some investigating,” Dustin said.

Lucas only nodded, and Dustin dropped his bike on the lawn before the two entered the house.

“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler,” Lucas said as they passed her in the kitchen.

“Hi, boys! Mike and Will are-”

“Downstairs, got it,” Dustin finished and they went down to the basement. When they arrived, Mike and Will were sitting on their knees looking through movies silently. Dustin nudged Lucas with his elbow eagerly and nodded his head at the other two boys.

“Yeah, I see it,” Lucas rolled his eyes and Will turned his head at the voice, before waving.

“Hey,”

Dustin stood up straight, “Hey. What’s up?” Lucas sighed at his weird behavior and sat on the couch, Dustin followed him.

“What about the shining?” Mike asked, looking at Will. Dustin looked at Lucas expectantly and Lucas raised his eyebrows as if saying “I see.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Will said. He put the other movies back on the shelf while Mike put the VHS in. Mike grabbed four cans of soda and a bag of chips from the table where the played D&D before passing them around to the other boys. Will and Mike would be sleeping on a pallet made of blankets on the floor; Dustin and Lucas taking the couch like usual. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was tradition.

When Mike and Will sat on the floor, Dustin and Lucas watched the two of them, trying to see how they’d position themselves. Mike grabbed a pillow and put it against the couch, pressing his back against it. Will laid flat on the ground, propping his head on a pillow. Probably not the best idea, because he couldn’t see very well.

“Can you see, Will?” Mike asked softly. Lucas and Dustin leaned in to hear them better.

“Not really, I should sit up-”

“No, look,” Mike placed a pillow on his lap, “here. It’s the perfect height and you can still lay down.” He smiled gently and Will’s cheeks turned a light shade of pink as he rested his head in Mike’s lap.

Dustin started slapping Lucas’ arm in excitement, and Lucas smacked his hands away.

The boys made eye contact and Lucas mouthed, “Will is blushing,”

“He’s rushing? No he’s not-” Dustin whispered.

“I said blushing, you dumbass.”

At first Mike didn’t know where to put his hands but at some point one ended up near Will’s head, his fingers gently twisting the ends. Lucas did this with Max. Was Mike doing that on accident? Maybe. But he didn’t accidentally offer to let Will rest his head on his lap, that was for sure.

Dustin and Lucas started analyzing everything the other did even closer now. When something scary would happen in the movie, Will would flinch and Mike would use his free hand to rub his arm or chest soothingly. Once Mike grabbed his hand and Dustin almost pissed himself.

Lucas wondered if Mike and Will had always been like this, in a friendly way, and if he and Dustin were just looking too deep into it. That idea went out the window when he saw Mike looking down at Will, a small smile on his face and his eyes holding the softest look Lucas had ever seen. Yeah, maybe that have always been like this, but not in a friend way. It’s the heart eyes, Lucas thought. Dustin was right.

When the movie ended, neither Mike or Will moved for a bit because Will was almost asleep. Dustin got up to turn the light on, but Mike stopped him. “No. Will’s asleep.. or he’s about to be. Leave it off.”

Will sat up and Mike grabbed the pillow from his lap, laying it on the ground where Will’s head would be, before laying his own pillow down and getting comfortable. He pulled the blanket up over him and tossed it over Will, before mumbling a quick goodnight to everyone. “Night, Mike,” the other three said in unison. Lucas and Dustin stayed up a little later, trying to see if Mike or Will did anything else. When Mike faced Will in his sleep, Dustin slapped Lucas’ awake, and they watched Mike’s hands barely reach out, one lazily landing on Will’s forearm and latching on to it.

That was the last thing they noted before knocking out.

Lucas woke up before anyone, and his eyes practically fell out his head at the sight on the floor in front of him. Will had his head resting on Mike’s shoulder, arms across his chest, and their legs were barely tangled together. Mike’s arms were wrapped around Will protectively. Lucas shook Dustin awake and they stood infront of the two boys, Dustin having a smug grin on his face.

“I told you, they’re totally into each other,” Dustin said. “I can’t believe this. I hate to admit this, but you’re right. Look at Mike, holding onto Will like he’ll lose him.. he’s got it bad.”

Dustin’s grin only grew and they walked upstairs for breakfast.

Will opened his eyes. Their voices woke him up; he was a light sleeper. He tried to wiggle out of Mike’s arms, but he only got pulled in closer. Mike was awake now, but he didn’t open his eyes. “No…” Mike mumbled. “Good morning,” Will said and got no response. “Mike? You awake?” “I wanna sleep longer…” “Just stay up for a second, alright? I need you to or else I’ll leave-” Mike squeezed Will harder and tightened his grip. Will smiled.

“I’m up.. just don’t go yet.”“Lucas and Dustin know.” “Know what?” Mike asked, voice slightly muffled because he tucked his face into Will’s neck.

“They know about us. Well, kind of. I think they had a bet over if we liked each other or not, I heard them talking about it just now.”

“Well they’ll really lose their shit when I tell them you’re my boyfriend, won’t they?” Mike hummed absentmindedly.

“Boyfriend?” Mike froze, eyes shooting open, his hands that had been gently tracing random shapes on Will’s skin had now stopped. Will pulled away to look at him, raising his eyebrows. “Who said I was your boyfriend?” Will teased, doing his very best not to smile.

Mike saw the humor in Will’s eyes and his stomach dipped in relief. He smiled a bit before pressing his lips against Will’s gently and quickly, because he knew Will wasn’t into morning breath kisses and honestly he wasn’t either. He tucked his head back into Will’s neck, his eyes fluttering shut. “I did.”

so like i said. i didn’t do this prompt justice. sigh. i’m sorryyy :( it deserves better

[kasprak]

for the angst prompt: reddie “can you come get me?”

because you’re young, he’s a gun (x)

→  word count: 2,152

→  teen richie and eddie, hurt/comfort, richie gets into trouble

→  warnings: angst, swears, mentions of violence due to homophobia

Eddie stared up at his ceiling with bloodshot eyes. His face was pale and blue in the light that leaked in from his bedroom window, making the shadows under his eyes all the more noticeable. It was late. He didn’t know how late, exactly, but it was too late for this shit. He lay sprawled on his back, all his blankets and covers sitting in a twisted heap on the floor beside him. One hand rested on his stomach and the other underneath his pillow, enjoying its coolness.

The phone’s gonna ring again, he thought to himself.

The phone rang again.

“Fuck me,” Eddie groaned, and rolled off of his bed in one surprisingly fluid motion. He’d been expecting this. The phone had been ringing for the last twenty minutes. It would ring, and ring, and ring, and then stop for what felt like five heavenly seconds at best, and then it would ring again, somehow louder than before. He kept hoping his mom would finally wake up and answer it. He loathed answering the phone like he loathed Henry Bowers, or hornets, or going to the hospital. If it were one of his friends, it would be a different story. But he couldn’t be sure it would be one of his friends. It could be a telemarketer from another time zone, or some twisted serial killer (he wasn’t sure which he feared more). Sonia Kaspbrak’s bear-like snores drifted through the house, and when the phone rang for the nth time, the thought of being murdered suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

Eddie pulled on his house coat and padded across the room, his slightly oversized flannel pants dragging on the floor. He stopped at his dresser, took the watch that was resting on its surface, and fumbled with it for a few seconds until he managed to get it on. 1:28 am. He closed his door gently and paused outside his mother’s room, listening for a lull in her snores. Nada.

The phone stopped ringing when he was halfway down the stairs. He made it the rest of the way and ambled into the kitchen, feeling the cool linoleum under his bare feet. “I swear to god if I came down here for nothing…” he muttered scoldingly. Just my fucking luck. He was about to sit at his kitchen table when the ring came again, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Muttering a string of curse words, he rushed over, nearly knocking over his chair, and fumbled the phone out of its cradle. Deep breaths, Eddie, it’s probably just a creepily persistent wrong number.

“Hello?”

“Eddie!” The voice on the other end was all too familiar, and apparently very excited to hear his voice. Relieved, even.

“Richie?” Eddie’s dumbfounded tone quickly switched to frustration. “Richie! I swear to god if you’ve been trying to prank call me this whole time I will come over there and fucking strangle you with your own phone cord —”

“C-can you come get me?” Richie’s voice sounded shaky, and Eddie felt his heart twinge unpleasantly at the sound. He sounded scared and a bit like he’d been crying, and even worse, he added a timid, “Please?”

Eddie’s tongue pressed to the side of his cheek and he rubbed at his neck, casting a cautionary glance towards the stairs. He lowered the phone from his ear, listening for his mom. Surprise, surprise, she was still out cold. He raised the phone back to his ear. “What happened?”

Richie hesitated, Eddie could hear it in the hitch of his breath. He hated how distant his voice sounded right now. Crackling, full of static, miles away. Hell knows where and hells knows in what situation, in what state. “I’m at that one payphone, sort of near the train tracks? I, uh,” he said, and then in a more ashamed tone, “I got into a fight.”

“Shit,” Eddie exhaled, shutting his eyes tightly, “Okay. Stay right there. I’m on my way.”

He hung up immediately, just catching the beginning of a ‘thank you’.

Eddie stared at a chip in the wallpaper for a few seconds, trying his best to collect his thoughts and form some sort of plan. His mom noticed things. Too many things. She would notice that the gas in her car was missing, or that his shoes were dustier than the day before… and if she woke up in the middle of the night and found him gone… he could kiss his friends and freedom goodbye.

Fuck it.

He turned, snatched the car keys from the kitchen counter, and grabbed his jacket. He placed his bathrobe on the hook in its place, and was out the door seconds later. He braced himself against the wind and climbed into the driver’s seat of his mom’s Mercedes Benz. The keys were in the ignition before you could say ‘grounded’. He didn’t look back.

The drive there was tense. He could drive, sure. Mike let him borrow his truck for impromptu lessons as much as possible. They would spend a couple hours working on parking, reversing, turning, the works. Mike was a lifesaver, since those occasional Saturday afternoons were the only real practice he could ever get. After all, his mom was deathly afraid of letting him drive, a shame because he was good, actually, damn good. A real natural, even if he didn’t technically have his license. ‘You could make a living out of this, y’know,’ Mike commented once. Eddie only stuck out his tongue in disgust. Sounded like hell.

Don’t worry, Eds, Richie’s voice echoed in the back of his thoughts, one day you’ll be tall enough to reach the pedals. This only made him more nervous. He could only hope that, whatever was going on, he wasn’t too late.

The train yard couldn’t come quickly enough. He checked near the phone booth first, but wasn’t particularly surprised to see that Richie hadn’t stayed put. He knew he wouldn’t, and kept on driving until the tracks themselves came into view.

As he drew closer, his headlights fell on a familiar figure. Richie was facing away from him, sitting on the train tracks with his knees pulled up to his chest. Small trails of wispy smoke billowed from his lips, and from the lit cigarette poised between his fingers. Eddie sighed with relief, and parked a few feet away. Richie tilted his head as the sound of gravel crunching beneath Eddie’s shoes grew louder.

“Hey,” he said simply. There was an almost guilty quality to his voice. Richie still faced away from him, clearly hiding something. Eddie shivered and yawned all at once, and through his yawn he replied with a ‘hey’, just as simple. Eddie kneeled beside him, ignoring the fact that he was getting his pajamas dirty. Not saying another word, he reached out and gently cupped Richie’s chin in his warm fingers, turning his head towards him.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

Richie’s bottom lip was split and puffed into a pout that Eddie had to admit was still somehow attractive. Dried blood clung to his skin in a dark trail that led from his left nostril to his upper lip. Thankfully, it didn’t look broken, but still damn near. His right eye was bruised a deep purple. Richie smiled apologetically, his cigarette hanging from his lips. He reached up with a trembling hand and removed it from his mouth, grinding the ashes into the rocks beside him. His knuckles were bruised and bloody. “Pretty cool, huh? Battle scars,” he mused.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

Richie’s lip twitched, and then he grinned even wider. “You should see the other guy.”

Eddie only frowned in response. He stood up suddenly, and began to walk away, storming off as fast as he could. Richie’s head whipped around and he rose to his feet. His long legs carried him to Eddie faster than the short boy could escape. “Eds, I’m fine, really,” Richie laughed, “I can barely feel a thing. It was just some stupid homophobe again.”

Eddie spun around, scowling. “You’re not fine! Look what he did to you!” he shouted, hitting Richie’s chest, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to show how angry and helpless and frustrated he felt. Not with Richie, but with the world. And then, not knowing what else to do, he threw his arms around Richie and hugged him as tightly as he could. “This isn’t fucking fine,” Eddie whispered into his shoulder.

When he let go, his hand slid down and interlaced with Richie’s. Wordlessly, he tugged him towards the passenger’s seat, and helped him in. Though he hadn’t mentioned it, Eddie could tell by the way Richie walked, slightly bent over, that he had taken a few good licks to the stomach.

“Buckle up,” he reminded him before closing the door. He walked around the front of the car, and as he did so, Richie watched in smitten admiration at the way Eddie absentmindedly traced his fingers along the hood. When he reentered in the driver’s seat, Richie was still staring.

Eddie was too busy thinking to notice.

As they pulled out of the train yard, he gripped the steering wheel and focused his eyes ahead, hard. His brow was furrowed and he kept chewing his lip, a detail only Richie would notice. Richie watched him intently, wondering what was going through his head, and Eddie could see in the corner of his eye that Richie’s face, though out of focus, was worried. He kept his eyes trained on the road ahead of him, refusing to return the gaze.

He was afraid he would burst into tears if he did. The silence was suddenly tense, and Eddie wanted it to stop but couldn’t bring himself to look Richie in the eye. He knew it wasn’t really his fault, but resented him in some small, weird, confusing way for scaring him like this.

The quiet stretched on too long. Richie decided to break it.

“I’m sorry, Eds,” he said softly, turning to face out the window, “I shouldn’t have called you.” Eddie was about to say something when Richie pressed on. “I, uh, heh, put the coins in and I dialled your number first, and there was no answer, obviously. And then I thought, well, ‘I should call one of the others. Maybe Bev will pick up. Or Ben, or Mike. He has his truck’. But…” He shook his head and shrugged limply. “I don’t know, I just kept calling you.”

Eddie glanced at Richie this time, then reached out and touched his shoulder. The contact was brief, Eddie didn’t like to drive with only one hand, but it was enough. Richie turned towards him again, and their eyes finally met. “I’m glad you called me,” Eddie said in a warm voice, and smiled a bit sadly, “And I’m not mad at you. I just, I-I, I worry about you so fucking much. I don’t like seeing you get hurt and —” Eddie interrupted himself with a sudden snort of laughter. “— God, I sound exactly like my mom.”

Richie laughed loudly, clapping his hand over his mouth. “Oh my god, you do.” He didn’t mean it in a cruel way, and Eddie knew, and grinned in spite of himself.

“Shut up! That’s like, my worst nightmare.”

“Aw, I don’t know, I think you acting like your mom is kind of hot. She’s a catch.” Eddie howled with laughter and made a gagging noise, wailing a small ‘gr-o-o-oss’. Richie reached out and pinched his cheek as Eddie fought him off with one arm.

“Are you trying to make me crash this car?”

“Then we’ll have matching shiners!”

They both laughed for a long time after that. Eddie had half the mind to realize it wasn’t even funny because the joke was funny, but because they were both tired as shit. According to the little digital screen of his watch, it was almost 3 am. They kept laughing anyways.

Richie’s house was close by.

“Seriously though,” Eddie said, “if you’re going to get the shit kicked out of you, call me first.”

“Why?”

Eddie flashed him a devilish grin. “So I can come back you up.”

Richie grinned at his lap. His house came into view, and then it was gone. “Eddie, you missed -”

“I know,” Eddie said, not missing a beat, and kept driving forward, “Sleep at my house tonight.” Richie blinked at him, half-smirking, not sure how to take this. Eddie looked at him with raised eyebrows and shrugged. “What? It’s the only way I can keep you out of trouble.”

Eddie watched the road from then on, and Richie watched him, wondering with a stupid sort of giddiness — despite the ache in his skull and the blood on his tongue — what he ever did to deserve a boy like that.

[floralreddie]

The Unfairness Of It All (Part 6)

bro wtf i’m so sorry guys this went for 0 to 100 real fucking fast

AO3 link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12248406/chapters/28214214

Pairing: Richie x Eddie (Reddie)

Warnings: Swearing. Sexual implications. Child abuse (severe violence). Homophobic slurs. They’re seventeen. 

Summary: It was a Tuesday, and it was officially the worst day of Richie Tozier’s life. There were two reasons that contributed to this fact, and these are those reasons. The first was that Eddie Kaspbrak had a girlfriend. A quiet girl that was in Richie’s Biology class, but a fucking girl all the same. The second was that it was the first time in Richie’s seventeen years that his father hit him.

Richie is sitting outside of Eddie’s house on his bike with the others, and they’re all patiently waiting for the asthmatic boy to hurry the hell up. Bill had called them all, separately, to ask if they wanted to go to the Aladdin and watch some new action film.

Everyone, of course, had agreed.

It’s been a week since Eddie Kaspbrak told him he loved him, and Richie is trying this thing called patience. He is patiently waiting for Eddie to break up with Susie, because he knows it’s coming and he has to be there for Eddie when his mom asks why the hell he did that. When everyone asks.

Because, as Eddie had said, they were going to tell everyone soon.

And Richie can’t fucking wait.

He’s getting real, real fucking tired of having to treat Eddie like a best friend. He’s getting real fucking tired of not being able to kiss his hair and tug at his hands and call Eddie all the pet names in the world because, shit, he’s waited long enough to get to the point in which he can.

Then Eddie is slamming his front door and wrenching his bike off of the ground, and they can suddenly hear Mrs Kaspbrak shrieking from inside the house for her son. Bill sighs from next to Richie, muttering a low, ‘H-here we go’.

They’re pretty used to Eddie’s mom’s hysterics at this point, but Richie is suddenly nervous as shit, because there’s only one thing Eddie could have told her to make her go that insane at the moment.

Eddie’s wearing a pink polo shirt and black shorts, and he throws himself onto his bike and says roughly, already biking past them, ‘I’d get going if I were you guys. Especially you, Richie. She’s gone fuckin’ mad’.

And Richie gapes, long legs either side of his bike, and fumbles to bike after his somewhat boyfriend as the others scramble to follow, none of them fond of the idea of having Sonia Kaspbrak shouting after them.

They bike only around the corner, before Eddie is landing on the green where a hill slopes down to a few benches, and it’s kind of cold out today so none of the kids of Derry are out. Mike, Stan and Bill look at each other in confusion as Richie throws his bike to ground next to Eddie’s and hurries after the boy, his glasses falling down his face.

‘Eddie!’

Eddie turns, cheeks pink and eyes wild. Richie is really fucking worried he might cry as the others dump their bikes in the pile (Stan keeps his propped up, of course), but then suddenly a manic, relieved grin is spreading across Eddie’s face and he is laughing.

‘What the fuck?’ murmurs Stan.

‘I have no idea,’ replies Mike.

But then Richie is pushing up his glasses and a smile is twitching at his face, because Eddie looks free. ‘I fucking did it, Richie,’ he breathes, giggling and running a hand through his once neat hair. ‘I fucking told her. She looked horrified. It was great’.

And Richie knows. Eddie told his mom about them. Eddie told his mom he was gay.

‘Told y-you mom w-what, Eddie?’ Bill asks, stepping forward to stand beside Richie. Richie looks at him, catches Stan’s eyes, and fights a small smile when Stan gives a small eye-roll and a nod. ‘She didn’t s-s-sound happy’.

Eddie scoffs. ‘She wouldn’t do, I guess. I told her that I broke up with Susie, and that Richie and I are together now, and that I am very, very gay’.

Richie stiffens and whirls round to stare at Eddie because, shit, he didn’t think his Ed’s would blurt it out like that. Eddie stares at him, grin wide, and Richie wants to pepper kisses all over his face, because Eddie is free and saying whatever the fuck he wants and Richie is totally living for it.

Slowly, he turns to look at the other three.

Bill is gaping, Mike is pulling a half-impressed look, and Stan is staring at the tree behind Eddie with a half-bored expression.

‘O-oh,’ stutters Bill, cheeks pink as he blinks hard. ‘Well, I-I…shit, I’m actually n-n-not that surprised’.

‘No, right?’ Mike mutters, crossing his arms and turning to Bill.

Stan just hums in agreement and rolls his eyes again.

But Richie is too busy staring at Eddie. ‘You broke up with Susie?’ Eddie nods, slowly, and Richie is grinning like the sun. ‘Fuck yeah, Ed’s!’ Richie whoops, and then his long legs are taking him to Eddie and Eddie is rolling his eyes as Richie gathers him in his arms and plants a solid kiss against Eddie’s cheek.

Eddie is blushing and looking over at the others, but Mike is merely grinning from ear to ear as Bill stares at the sight with pink cheeks and says, ‘In r-retrospect, it k-kinda feels like you guys have been d-dating for years’.

Stan scoffs. ‘Because they have, even if the idiots didn’t realise it’.

‘You’re so utterly rude, Stanley,’ Richie quips, leaning away from Eddie but keeping his arm thrown over the shorter boy shoulders. ‘So, we good?’

‘We good,’ Mike grins. ‘Are we seeing this film, or what?’

‘Patience is a virtue, Mike. Jesus’. But Richie grins down at Eddie all the same as the others move to grab their bikes, and with their back turns he plants a peck on Eddie lips and tells him, ‘I’m proud of you, Ed’s. Really’.

Eddie snorts. ‘Don’t be a fucking sap, Tozier’.

-

The film is dumb as fuck, but Richie can’t help but enjoy the way he makes Eddie snort every time he leans over to point out another dumb part of said film. The others ignore them, as they usually do, and Richie thinks that he’s never really been this fucking content in his life.

He’s sure that’s why he goes home after kissing Eddie around the corner from his house, out in the open, with the intent of telling his parents about his boyfriend.

(He tells Eddie to call him when he gets home, and Eddie says he will after he speaks with his mom. She won’t hurt him, Eddie assures Richie. His mom loves him, she just won’t understand why he’s doing this to him).

His dad is in the kitchen when he gets home.

He doesn’t look a lot like his dad, he knows. He looks like his mom, with his pale skin, red lips and dark hair, he has that softness that his mom used to have. His height and eyes, though, he gets from his father.

He usually storms upstairs whenever he comes home, so even his dad looks half-surprised when Richie meanders into the kitchen. His pop’s is sitting at the rickety kitchen table, a beer in hand as he stares out into their overgrown garden. His moustache twitches as he considers his son, his eyes already half hazy. He’s not drunk, Richie knows. Just tipsy.

‘What do you want?’

Richie wants to snap that he hasn’t wanted anything from his father in years, but refrains. Instead, he steps onto the laminate flooring in his Docs, and breathes in deeply through his nose. He thinks of Eddie, who told his ma about them without fear and without trepidation, and Richie knows he’d be a dick to not do the same.

If he does this, they’re free.

If he does this, all they will have to worry about is the dick kids around Derry taking the piss, but that they can handle.

‘Dad,’ he says, fists clenched. ‘I have a boyfriend’. He doesn’t say he’s bisexual, because his dad is a small-town idiot and Richie doesn’t think he’d understand the very simple intricacies of what a bisexual is.

His dad pauses in drinking his beer and peers at his son over the top of his can, and Richie breathes in lowly when he sees dark eyes so like his darken that little bit more. And, he thinks, fuck. ‘No, you fucking don’t,’ Went Tozier snaps, slamming his drink onto his table. ‘No, you fucking don’t, son’.

Richie steps back, but keeps his chin held high and his eyes narrowed. Slowly, he clenches his fists some more. He knows, now, that his dad won’t hesitate in hurting him. ‘Yes, I do. I have done for a few weeks. I’m telling you now because people are gonna start talking around town, and-’

‘My son ain’t a fucking fag, Rich,’ his dad growls, and suddenly his clambering to his feet and he’s so much fucking taller than Richie.

So much bigger.

But he’s Richie Trashmouth, so he doesn’t back the fuck down. ‘I am actually,’ he grits out, pushing his chest out and staring his dad down. ‘Your son is a big old fag, pops. And proud’.

‘Who? What little shit have you been fucking around with? That Jewish kid, because I swear to God-’ He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t let Richie speak either. ‘You’re a fucking fuck up. Disappointment after disappointment. Your fucking mother is going to-’

‘I don��t give a fuck,’ Richie snaps, and then his dad punches him.

It’s different than last time, because Richie knows that even after the first punch, it isn’t going to be the last. His dad grabs him by the shoulder as Richie sputters and blinks away the pain, and his glasses fall to the floor with a clatter. His dad holds him in place, and then suddenly there’s a blinding, spreading pain in his stomach and he knows that his dad has clenched his fist and punched him there.

He swears and shout and claws, but his dad doesn’t stop.

‘My son,’ his dad grunts. ‘Is not going to be a fuckin’ fag’.

Even though he knows he shouldn’t, Richie replies. ‘Too fucking late’.

That earns him another punch. This time it’s to his still healing nose, and there’s a crack and a spurt of blood, and Richie knows that this time it’s broken.

He thinks of Eddie. He thinks of his brown eyes and his cinnamon freckles, and he somehow thinks that this is worth it, because what the fuck is his dad going to do after this? He’ll know about them, and he’ll stop caring, like he does with everything Richie does. His mom probably won’t even give a fuck.

His dad doesn’t really care, Richie knows, his dad is just angry at the world.

So he takes the punches, and after his dad stumbles into the living room after hacking up some spit onto Richie stiff and shaking form (because suddenly he’s lying on the floor) he clambers to his feet and stumbles over the kitchen phone and dials Bill’s number.

‘Hey, Big Bill,’ he mumbles, and his mouth sounds like it’s full of cotton (blood, he realises, it’s blood). ‘Do you think you could borrow you dad’s car and come and get me? I think I might need to go to the hospital’.

Bill’s hanging up and saying yes before Richie can even comprehend what’s happening (he knows Bill knows what’s happened, because Bill knows everything), because his head is starting to feel a little heavy, and he’s eyes are starting to feel like they’re weighing him down (and, fuck, why can’t he see anything?). So, he wipes away the blood on his nose, holds the aching of his ribs, and winces as he stumbles past the living room (where the TV is blaring) and out the front door.

He trips over a good five times because he can’t fucking see.

He sits on the porch, head between his knees, for only six minutes before he hears a car engine stop and footsteps running toward him, and with one look up he sees big brown eyes and tear stained cheeks.

‘Hey, Ed’s,’ he murmurs, because even through the horrendous blur, he knows that pale skin and dark mop of hair anywhere.

‘Richie,’ the voice sobs, and cold hands are finding his aching jawline and pain blooms there, there, and everywhere. Still, though, he leans into the touch. ‘What the fuck happened? Bill – Bill, go find his fucking glasses! We need to get him to the hospital-’

He doesn’t hear the rest, because suddenly the buzzing in his ears because far too loud, and he’s passing out in the arms of Eddie Kaspbrak.

tagges list: @edskasqbrak, @reddie4love, @toopunktolivetooemotodie, @arielgirly, @trashmouth-smashmouth, @mzcescapie

[assholemurphy]

Ever Fallen in Love (With Somebody You Shouldn’t’ve)

Also on AO3

Stranger Things

Steve/Jonathan 

background: Jonathan/Nancy

Summary: Steve sits in homeroom and reflects on his unrequited love and how much he wishes he could have Jonathan even though he knows he never can, because Jonathan is happy with Nancy, and Steve would never do anything to jeopardize his happiness, even if it means he has to suffer in silence.

Rating: General

Word Count: 1753

Warnings: Homophobic language

Steve was fucked. Royally and truly fucked. It wasn’t like he had planned to go and do something that stupid, but he had, and it wasn’t fair. Why did he have to be so easily swayed? He’d just gotten out of a relationship, too, and it hadn’t been his choice to end it, therefore he felt he shouldn’t have gotten over it as easily as he had. But that was where the irony of it came in. Not only was he in love with someone new, but he was in love with the person who was the reason for his last relationship ending, which made it all the more stupid, he thought.

Jonathan fucking Byers. The asshole who had stolen his girl had now managed to make him fall for him, too. What a joke. It just wasn’t fair. There wasn’t anything special about him, not really. So, he was cute, and sweet, and talented with a camera, and his loyalty to his family and friends was probably one of the most admirable things Steve had ever seen, but that didn’t make him special. All it made him was a pain in the ass.

It wasn’t entirely Jonathan’s fault, of course, but Steve liked the idea of blaming someone other than himself for once. Jonathan wasn’t responsible for how easily he fell in love with people, or for his intense trust issues that meant the second he did trust someone he began to idolize them in some weird way that made telling whether or not he loved them for real or just liked that they cared about him an impossible task. Though, if he thought about it hard enough, he was sure his attraction was genuine, because it wasn’t like the time he’d had a crush on Tommy in the sixth grade after he’d sat with him at lunch for the third week in a row until he showed himself to be a massive prick by pushing another kid on the playground and calling him a queer before spending the rest of the day talking about how gays were gross and wrong. That had stopped Steve’s attraction dead in its tracks.

But Jonathan wasn’t like that. Jonathan was sweet, shy, and he’d never think Steve was gross for liking him. He’d never stop being friends with him over him liking guys, too. That didn’t mean that Steve planned on telling him anytime soon, however. No, he’d much rather suffer in silence than say something that could upset Jonathan or disrupt their friendship. Jonathan’s friendship meant too much to him.

He’d spent the past four months since the demodogs fiasco hanging out with Nancy and Jonathan. At first, it kind of hurt to be around Nancy after everything, but that feeling went away after a couple of weeks, once he realized how happy she was with Jonathan. He loved her enough to value her happiness above his, so he wasn’t going to let his feelings get in the way of being her friend. Just like he wouldn’t let his feelings now get in the way of being Jonathan’s friend.

He truly did care for both of them, but he couldn’t keep himself from imagining what it would be like to have Jonathan, to be allowed to tell him how he felt and hold him. It was a fantasy, and he did his best not to entertain it, but sometimes the thoughts slipped through and tortured him with things he couldn’t have.

Even if it weren’t for Nancy, he couldn’t have Jonathan. Jonathan was straight, Steve was sure of it, no matter how often he and his former friends had called him otherwise. That was another reason he couldn’t have him. They had too much history, too fucked up of a past. Sure, they were getting along now, but he could tell Jonathan was still a bit wary around him, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it broke his heart. He knew it was his fault, he could have stopped Tommy and Carol, but instead he’d gone along with it. He’d played the part of King Steve, jackass extraordinaire, and he’d played it well, so well that even he had believed it was him.

And wasn’t it? He hadn’t felt guilty until Nancy, until he’d gotten to know her and then almost lost his chance with her. He had been perfectly fine with not only hanging out with Tommy and Carol, but leading them, and everyone else. He was popular, he had friends, and he hadn’t wanted to risk that just for some freak. Why should he have? He never claimed to be that good of a person. And Jonathan was well aware of that. It didn’t matter that he was trying now, he doubted Jonathan would ever forgive him for what he’d done to him. He’d deserved it when Jonathan had beat him, he’d been an asshole and Jonathan had had every right to hurt him back.

He couldn’t have Jonathan, it just wouldn’t happen. So, he would suffer in silence.

And suffer was exactly what he was doing. Every time they watched movies and he had to sit quietly as Jonathan and Nancy cuddled up together as he tried to focus on the movie, but it was so hard when all he could think about is how much he wanted to be the one that was wrapped up in Jonathan. Every time their hands brush as they reached for the same thing it sent a shock up Steve’s spine and he had to force himself not to make some embarrassing noise. Whenever Jonathan teased him about his music taste with that adorable little smirk that made Steve want to grab his collar and pull him into a kiss. It was torturous. All Steve wanted was to have him, even if just once, to know how it would feel, but he couldn’t. He’d resigned himself to that.

But that didn’t make it hurt any less to hear him laugh with Nancy, to see him smiling at her and in love with her. It made him want to scream. Why couldn’t Jonathan just be in love with him? Why couldn’t he see how much Steve cared about him, how much he meant to him? It wasn’t fair that he had to watch him be happy while he was dying inside. But he would never ask that Jonathan give up anything for him.

And so, Steve had thrown himself in everything he could to get away from the feeling. He’d been with six different people, five girls and one guy, since falling for Jonathan, but none of them had made him feel quite right, none of them had erased Jonathan from his mind. Still, he tried, because he knew he had to get over Jonathan. He couldn’t have him, so he may as well find someone he could have, even if they weren’t half as beautiful, funny, or gentle.

He’d thrown himself into his school work, too, much to Nancy’s shock and pleasure, and he was pretty sure at this point he’d have a halfway decent college essay written by the end of the semester. Not in time for early selection, but he still had hope. He still wasn’t sure where he wanted to go, however. Nancy had decided to follow Jonathan to NYU and they both had been hounding him to at least apply there, even though he was sure he’d never get in, and truth be told, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He wasn’t sure he could take another four years of pining after Jonathan while he and Nancy were happy and in love. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to lose what little he did have of Jonathan. Maybe he’d follow them, maybe not.

Steve sighed and turned his attention back to his homeroom class. He’d gotten his homework done last night, so there wasn’t much for him to do this hour except think about Jonathan, that was why it was currently his least favorite when it had previously been the one he enjoyed the most. There was about four minutes left on the clock before his next class. Math, with Jonathan. Maybe he’d skip it. His grade was a C, still, so he couldn’t afford to miss it. It would be higher, but he sat next to Jonathan now and that was quite the distraction. But, he’d do his best to focus, they were covering material for the test, so he really needed to pay attention. Though, worst case scenario he could always ask Jonathan to teach it to him after school. He’d probably say yes, but since Nancy was babysitting Mike after school because her mother was visiting relatives and they didn’t trust him home alone currently, not after his behavior at school the past year, even though it had gotten better with the return of El, he was still in trouble, the poor kid.

He’d be alone with Jonathan. That was a terrifying and enticing thought. He could only imagine all the chances he’d have to say something, and knowing how chatty he could get when he was nervous, he’d probably spill everything, but at least Nancy wouldn’t be around to hear it. No, he probably shouldn’t be left alone with Jonathan, but he did need to study. Maybe that girl- what was her name? Martha? Maria? He couldn’t remember- maybe she would help him study. But, really, was he going to pass up a chance to be alone with Jonathan?

No. No, he wasn’t. But he’d behave, keep his mouth shut and do his best not to stare at the older Byers too much.

He’d make it work. He’d tortured himself over someone he loved before, what was another one? Jonathan Byers remained far out of his reach, and he could deal with that. He loved him, but Jonathan would never love him back. But Steve was used to that. He loved too easily, too quickly, and most were scared away by his intensity, if he ever got that close. No, his love wasn’t requited, but it wasn’t going to be wasted, either. He’d pour every ounce of it into being the best friend he possibly could be to Jonathan, because even if he could have him as a lover, he had him as a friend, and Jonathan’s friendship wasn’t a consolation prize. It would hurt, maybe for a long time, but he’d rather Jonathan be happy, even if it wasn’t with him.

[motorcyclegirlfriends]

Why do you think Kara hasn't told Lena the truth about her being Supergirl?

So many understandable possibilities, which is why I’m always annoyed when fic writers have it actually just be because Lena is a Luthor. (And after Kara was seen punching cement blocks over other people assuming Lena was bad because of her family.)

Reason #1:

Lena’s mother wants Supergirl dead.

If Lilian ever found out that Lena knows who Supergirl is when she’s not saving the day, both Kara and Lena would be in danger.

Kara, for obvious reasons. Lena wouldn’t even need to actually tell Lilian for her to find out through Lena, all it takes is a little spying.

And Lena is in danger, because what if Lilian does ask her. Kara doesn’t know how willing Lilian is to actively hurt Lena for information, but she knows Lilian left Supergirl and Lena in Lex’s vault to die.

And then, of course, if Lilian found out who Kara is, she could endanger the other people that Kara loves to get to her.

Reason #2:

Kara likes being just Kara Danvers, reporter and friend, with Lena.

After “Kara Danvers, you are my hero.” Kara would likely love that a version of herself is appreciated, because it’s a version of herself that she isn’t gifted with by the sun.

Kara has expressed these thoughts in her own words, when she lamented the loss of her job,

“Supergirl is what I can do.Kara is who I am.”

Interestingly, even when she loss her job, she didn’t lose the role of Kara Danvers, because she had Lena. 

Lena is the only person who only knows that side of her, which gives Kara an opportunity to enjoy it and not be distracted by her other roles.

When Kara helps Lena, it’s with her words and her friendship. Her self. Hell, this version of herself that Kara gets to be is pretty close to Kara Zor-El, too. Because she so often draws from her full experiences, which includes the loss of her family.

But the one thing she doesn’t have to talk about is being Supergirl.

It’s kind of like... going on tumblr, as a bisexual, and only talking about girls.

I don’t need to talk about guys on here, because I am able to talk about them everywhere else. Everywhere else, people prefer me to talk about guys. This is often just my space for loving women. So much so that people assume I’m a lesbian. 

In fact, in a lot of ways, the rest of Kara’s reasons for not telling Lena draws parallels to coming out.

The Coming Out Story™ that it’s actually probably least like is the sexuality story (I think it’s perhaps something of a cross between coming out as a minority and coming out as trans- for reasons that I’ll maybe describe elsewhere) but because the coming out story I know best is my own, I’ll use that as a parallel.

Reason #3:

Kara ‘coming out’ as Supergirl would just take a minute. 

Just like it did in my case, and does in many other cases.

It doesn’t always matter who it is or if you consider yourself ‘out’. When you meet a new person, the clock starts over. The clock moves faster the more confident you are in yourself, but there’s still some time before you tell someone something like that.

It took me two years to come out to the friends I met back in college. Not because I thought they would judge me, but because it's just something you don’t get to know until you’ve leveled up in friendship. Now, with new real life friends, it’s closer to a month before it comes up. 

But Kara also isn’t really... out. It’s generally a secret. So she’s not where I am.

“Okay, but hasn’t Lena proven herself as a friend? Even if they haven’t known each other that long, shouldn’t she be ‘leveling up’ by now?”

Well, this brings me to,

Reason #4:

Lena has proven herself to be a good friend. She has proven herself to be a good person. She has proven that she doesn’t want harm to come to aliens.

But she hasn’t proven that she isn’t, to some degree... xenophobic.

“But you just said Lena has proven that she’s a good person! She can’t be a good person and be xenophobic!”

Well, there are degrees of these things. Most people have some shitty belief on some level. Xenophobia in the real world can range anywhere from “I want them the fuck out of my country” to "Well she’s Asian so she’s prolly smart, right?”

I didn’t tell my friend Mike that I was bi for a while after I really wanted to. A girl in one of our classes had said, with the kind of put-on pride that just dares people to say something, “I’m a lesbian”. 

Afterward, he had said to me, “That was weird. Wasn’t that weird?”

I didn’t know what to say.

Did this mean he was one of those people who is like “I’m okay with people being gay, I just don’t want it in my face?” (Which is a quick way of saying “I’m not homophobic, but I’m homophobic.”) 

Did this mean that he didn’t mind being told, but didn’t understand why she was defensive in that setting? (Which while isn’t necessarily homophobic, this at best hints at a lack of empathy for her, and at worse hints at “Did she just assume I’m homophobic?” which is the kind of rhetoric conditional allies use before going on about how nice they are to the gays, rhetoric that gays know to fear as “if you’re not nice to me, I’m just gonna go be homophobic instead.”)

I knew Mike was a nice guy. He was liberal, spoke against wrongdoings to minorities, never said anything I considered to be “problematic”. And he was a good friend.

He probably just meant that it had been an awkward situation and that she had said it kind of out of left field.

But I didn’t know for sure. And at that stage in my life, I had to know for sure.

Kara doesn’t know for sure.

“But Lena saved the aliens! Kara should know she’s not xenophobic!”

Well, that is definitely in the pro-column. But there is also a con-column, and it contains the alien detection device Lena made. 

Kara gave some leeway with Lena about ‘protecting yourself’ from aliens. Well, for maybe a day. She had been drawing kind of a false parallel between her hatred of Daxamites- who had actual slaves, mind you- and the people’s generalized fear of all aliens they don’t know.

But by the end of the episode, Kara was back to being pro-all aliens. And likely back to realizing that forcing aliens to out themselves is a shitty idea. 

One that Lena was into.

So then, like I did, Kara has to ask herself, “What are the connotations of this? How deep does this go?”

Is Lena just scared because aliens have power that she doesn’t?

(And Kara asks- Would she be scared of me?)

And that leads to other questions.

Does she on some level hate that we’ve made her life dangerous? Is this hate made stronger by how she grew up? Her family is xenophobic, so what did they tell her growing up? Did she grow up hearing them say things that are different are dangerous? That different things are bad? Wrong? Gross? Would she be grossed out by me? How I eat so much? The ways my body is different? Would she find my religion to be weird? My favorite memories, with my family on my planet- would she have to get over some knee-jerk disgust before she could appreciate them? She’s nice to Supergirl, but is that just because she knows she’s supposed to be? That it’s obvious because I’m a Super that hating me is becoming like her family? Would she feel the same if she only knew me as an alien?

And Kara calms herself, because she knows Lena is good and knows she is trying to be better than her family. That Lena has a good heart. That Lena would ultimately and fully accept her in the end. 

But there’s a part of Kara that fears what Lena has to overcome within herself before she makes the right decision. That spilt second of fear. Or revulsion. That split second of anything other than complete acceptance... is terrifying.

But that’s okay, right? To have shitty thoughts a second before the good thoughts? We’re all works in progress.

But so is Kara. She’s not going to have perfect confidence all of the time, and it’s unreasonable to expect her to take this risk right away.

They have time. Lena can prove to Kara a little bit more, conversation by conversation, that she doesn’t think of aliens as bad. And if there’s something that’s off, Kara can help her get to the right place (because, as Kara knows, it’s a lot easier to protect others than it is yourself, easier to argue with fervor on someone else’s behalf than on your own).

And then, over time, Kara’s fear of whatever secret negative feelings Lena might have will be outweighed by how much she wants to share her full self with Lena. And she’ll tell her. 

Unless, of course, someone else tells Lena first...

[lindyhunt]

Does Bryan Singer’s Film Bohemian Rhapsody Deserve to Get Awards Love?

The ranks here at FASHION are not filled with men. Shocking, right? But there are one or two (there are actually, literally, two). Naturally, when a question about male/female dynamics arises it’s only fair that one of them stand in for the members of his gender and provide some insight. Our last topic of conversation was about controversial Christmas song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and today we’re discussing whether Bryan Singer-directed Bohemian Rhapsody should be snapping up any prizes this awards season. Two of our staffers—from the men’s corner, Greg Hudson, and from the women’s, Pahull Bains—talk it out.

PB: When Bohemian Rhapsody won the Best Picture (Drama) award at the Golden Globes last weekend, in addition to perplexity from critics who had largely panned the film, there was a fair bit of outrage on the internet. Evan Rachel Wood tweeted, “So we just..we are all still supposed to be pretending we don’t know about Bryan Singer? Cause it worked out really well with #Spacey and #Weinstein.” Now, I’m all for men finally getting their comeuppance but I also think it’s unfair that the entire cast and crew of a film be punished for the misdeeds of one person, whose shadiness wasn’t known until the #MeToo Flood of 2017. Or so I thought.

Yes, in 2017 Singer was fired as director of the film partway through shooting for causing “on-set chaos”: showing up late, being unavailable for days at a time, disappearing without the studio’s permission. Just a few days later, it emerged that Singer had been accused of rape by Cesar Sanchez-Guzman, who had been 17 at the time of the assault in 2003. So, I thought to myself, production on this film began before this news came out, so we can’t blame the team for working with him. I’m no fan of the movie, but let them have their moment of glory, thought I, wee innocent one.

As it turns out, allegations against Singer—who has directed films like The Usual Suspects and X-Men: First Class—go way, way back. In December 2017, IndieWire published “The Bryan Singer Timeline: a History of Allegations and Defenses, from Troubled Films to Sexual Assault Claims,” and lets just say it’s not a short list, going as far back as 1994 and ranging from allegations of sexual assault and rape to accusations of filming minor boys naked without their permission.

So, now that we’re caught up on Singer’s problematic history, what does it mean for Bohemian Rhapsody as an awards contender? No one was expecting it to win two big awards at the Globes, which has led understandably to increased scrutiny as we make our way through awards season, with the Critics’ Choice Awards, the SAGs, the BAFTAs, and of course the Oscars ahead of us. Do you think the film’s shot at these shiny statuettes should be diminished because of Singer’s involvement?

FIRST REFORMED, but about Ethan Hawke struggling to find hope in a world where Bohemian Rhapsody is probably gonna be nominated for Best Picture. pic.twitter.com/dI4D7kxfJ7

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) January 4, 2019

GH: Before I single-handedly bring down Bryan Singer with my rhetoric and rage, I just want to point a couple of things out that are probably not all that relevant. Why do this? Because I’m a man, and we enjoy talking like experts on subjects we just did some half-assed internet research about.

Point 1: The Golden Globes matter to the Oscar race about as much as the Iowa Caucuses do to the Presidential election. You’ll recall, being the astute political observer that you are, that the Iowa Caucuses happen early in the American election cycle. That’s really the only reason they are covered so closely every four years. Sometimes they are a predictor of who the eventual nominee (and president) will be, but often not. Just ask Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz. And, similarly, the only reason the Golden Globes seem important is that they happen early in award season. But they are judged by such a niche group that their picks can seem downright baffling at times. Remember the 2010 flop The Tourist starring Johnny Depp? That was nominated for best picture at the Golden Globes. Have you ever seen Mozart in the Jungle? No! No one has! And yet, it’s a Golden Globe-winning television show.

So, do I think Bryan Singer’s creepiness will effect Bohemian Rhapsody’s Oscar chances? No. I think the fact that it’s a paint-by-numbers musical biopic will hurt its chances. (Seriously, the movie could have been called Walk Hard 2: This Time the Rockstar is Gay). I mean, Rami Malek and his mouthguard might still get a nod, but if you want a good Oscar predictor, the TIFF People’s Choice selection has a better track record. (So, get ready for a lot of Green Book hot takes!)

Point 2: Though she has already addressed and expressed regret about it—and she did so even before #MeToo made it a thing—Evan Rachel Wood starred in a Woody Allen movie in 2009. As with Singer, the allegations against Allen were pretty well-known even back then, but she still worked with him.

I’m not saying Wood is a hypocrite, or that her outrage is disingenuous. Not at all. I bring it up only to say that Wood clearly understands that sometimes actors work with gross directors, even if they should—or at least realistically could—know better. So maybe cut the cast a break when they celebrate what was clearly a huge surprise.

But 2009 was a very different time. And that’s good! If Bryan Singer never works again, that’s awesome. (Even if he happens to be innocent of all the many, many, many allegations–no one should be able to make the garbage Superman Returns and escape with their career). The real problem that’s complicating how we view Bohemian Rhapsody is that Singer is trying to get attention from it. If he didn’t rear his Botoxed head to claim credit for the Golden Globe, we might all be cool with forgetting he was a part of the film at all. Even if he kept the directing credit.

My question that rises from all of this is: why haven’t there been the public apologies and disavowals from actors who have worked with him in the past, the way there were for Woody Allen? So many of Allen’s former collaborators spoke out about how much they regret working with him, and how they’d never do it again. Actors who didn’t, or who expressed ambivalence toward Allen earned their own blowback. But no one is reaching out to Oscar Isaac or Jennifer Lawrence or, I don’t know, Stephen Baldwin, and asking them how they feel about having worked with an accused sex offender.

My theory: it’s because he, and his alleged victims, are gay. After all, it’s easier to ignore crimes in marginalized communities. Maybe there’s some discomfort because straight folks think they don’t understand gay sexuality in the first place—isn’t that normal for the gays—which, yes, is totally a homophobic holdover from when homosexuality was unfairly associated with pedophilia. And while I tend to think the retroactive shaming of actors is mostly performative, it’s still fucked up that we let Singer be Singer for so long.

PB: Hmm, I don’t know. Kevin Spacey’s accused of similar crimes and he’s been getting plenty of heat. I mean, he’s basically radioactive to anyone in the industry now. (Just for the record, though, Singer is married to a woman with whom he has a child, and has said publicly in interviews that he’s bisexual.)

I think maybe the reason Hollywood was slow to cool on Singer is because some of the allegations against him were dropped. As TIME notes, “he has faced two civil suits alleging sexual assault, one of which was dropped and one of which was dismissed.” In the wake of those lawsuits though, a bunch of stories began coming out about sordid “sex parties” Singer either threw or was present at but nothing was ever conclusively substantiated. A Buzzfeed story from 2014 details how Singer was brought “into regular orbit with 18- to 20-year-olds at parties sustained by large amounts of alcohol and drugs — edging precariously close to the line between legality and illegality,” but most of the sources quoted in the piece are unnamed and Singer wasn’t directly accused of misconduct. I think that sort of gave people the license to pull the whole “but nothing was ever proven” card.

Thanks to this latest lawsuit from 2017, though, which is ongoing, people are being denied an easy out. There is now a young man on the record claiming that he was raped by Singer, so there isn’t really any room for equivocating. Also, like you said, the climate has changed a lot in the past couple of years and stories that have been circulating on the whisper network for decades aren’t quite as easy to ignore anymore.

I know you brought up how Globe results aren’t a good indication of what’s coming down the pike—mainly because there’s no overlap between HFPA voters and Academy voters—but the film is still getting a lot of recognition from prestigious awards bodies. BAFTA noms came out yesterday and Bohemian Rhapsody features prominently on the list. So I’m just wondering—what’s an organization to do? I don’t think the film’s going to snag any more big prizes going forward; the backlash from the Globes has been substantial and other awards bodies probably don’t want to be tainted by a similar response on their big night. (By the way, did you see how poor 15-year-old Elsie Fisher, star of Eighth Grade, was dragged on Twitter for congratulating the team on their win?)

Why is everyone being so mean about this? I’m genuinely sorry if I did something wrong :(

— Elsie Fisher (@ElsieKFisher) January 7, 2019

Anyhow, I think what’s going to end up happening is: Malek’s going to continue getting recognition and maybe even some awards for his work, and the rest of the film is going to be shut out from any major wins. It’s the easiest way for them to award the film without really awarding the film, you know? And I don’t think anyone’s going to begrudge Malek a win. He’s got a ton of goodwill in the industry as well as critical praise for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury.

What I do hope for though—especially because we still have many, many awards shows and appearances ahead of us—is for everyone involved to get together and figure out how they want to address the elephant in the room. At the press conference after their Globes wins, the team flat-out refused to answer journalists’ questions about Singer. “That’s not something we should talk about tonight,” said producer Graham King, while Queen member Brian May quipped, “Good question though.” Malek then stepped up, saying, “I will take this one. There’s only one thing we needed to do, and that was to celebrate Freddie Mercury. Nothing was going to compromise us and giving him the love and celebration he deserves.”

They’re going to have to do a bit better than that. Don’t you think?

GH: It always baffles me when public figures don’t have thoughtful, satisfying answers to obvious questions. What are their publicists doing? Actors might not be the best at answering thorny ethical question on the spot (who is?), but they are pretty great at memorizing a script. Someone write that cast some talking points!

Having said that, I don’t really know what the satisfying answer would be. Because I realized, too, after you challenged my interpretation of the case, another reason why there hasn’t been the same retroactive hand-wringing from actors about having worked with Bryan Singer as there was about Woody Allen: It’s because it’s Bryan Singer. Woody Allen is an auteur—being in one of his films was an honour, a sign that you had arrived, or were at least arriving. Bryan Singer made some crowd-pleasing pictures, but no one is calling him an auteur.

I can’t decide whether that makes crafting an appropriate response easier or more difficult. On the one hand, because “working with Woody Allen” was such a cliche Hollywood status symbol, it was easy to understand when actors worked with him, despite credible allegations. Singer doesn’t have the same reputation. No actress has gushed about being granted the opportunity to be in an X-Men reboot. In that light, working with Singer seems less understandable.

But, that also could make it easier. And this seems to be where the cast is headed: you lean in on the Freddie Mercury Tribute and imply that, in the shadow of such an amazing performer, the director is practically immaterial. Bryan Singer? Who’s Bryan Singer? This was basically directed by the spirit of Freddie Mercury!

Also, lingering in the back of my mind, there’s that nagging concern that being fired or denied work because of an unproven allegation is a little dangerous as a precedent. After all, some of the rumours around Singer aren’t about illegal activity so much as being gross in a decadent, predatory, Hollywood way. Of course, the “nothing has been proven in court” defence is the least satisfying argument.

So maybe honesty would be best. Something that says they understand why people might feel ambivalent about the film, because of the director. That that is something, as a cast, they are dealing with, too. But, while we don’t want to shut down the conversation about how we should feel about problematic artists, the opportunity to celebrate Freddie Mercury is an unalloyed good. Then go on to talk about all the things Mercury did for human rights and the LGBTQ community.

And then just ignore the fact that the movie changes so much of Mercury’s story that it’s questionable whether it celebrates the real Freddie Mercury, or some postmodern, nostalgic construct we call Freddie Mercury.

But hating on Elsie Fisher? Let’s get some perspective people. The Oscars have a way of bringing out the darkness in people. That can be good (holding Casey Affleck to account for bad behaviour) and some can be not so good (rage-tweeting a teenager you don’t know). What should award bodies do to mitigate this? Should they vet nominees? And if so, what behaviour is disqualifying? What’s the statute of limitations? Or do problematic award winners just need to give better answers?

PB: Award bodies haven’t had to deal with a lot of scrutiny until fairly recently, so they’ve been able to skirt some of these issues without really shouldering any blame. Now though, their feet are being held to the fire and it’s not going to be as easy to just sit by and say nothing. It’s tricky; there’s certainly no one-size-fits-all solution but in my opinion, nor should there be. We’re dealing with complex issues here and I think everything needs to be addressed on a case by case basis. I really appreciate the diversity requirements the BAFTAs put in place last year: for the two awards categories specifically for British films (Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer), they’re only accepting films that meet two of the British Film Institute’s quartet of core diversity standards.

But of course, different award bodies have different nomination processes. The Academy, for instance, has over 8000 people who submit their nominees for various categories, which then cycle through some complicated process before the final nominees are selected. Because there are so many people involved, it’s easy to play the avoidance game. Who do you hold accountable? But if the final list of five or ten nominees includes some problematic faves that have been in the news for x or y reason, I think it’s the award body’s duty to call for a meeting of their board to figure out the steps forward. Interestingly, I just Googled “Who is BAFTA president” and it turns out it’s Prince William, since 2010! Obviously he can’t weigh in on this stuff but there are other people who can, namely the VPs for film, television and games (?). The Academy, meanwhile, has a Board of Governors that includes Whoopi Goldberg, Laura Dern and Steven Spielberg.

Whatever these governing bodies decide, it’s something they should be able to defend when asked about it. Because they will be asked about it. Sorry guys, changing the subject isn’t an option anymore.