#the upside of falling

[darkacademiaestheticx]

[kattiereads]

—The Upside of Falling (Alex Light)

[princessofbookaholics]

24 Hour Readathon Wrap Up

I managed to read 3 books and a manga so I'm pretty proud of myself!

Better than the Movies by Lynn Painter: it was the swooniest young adult romance I've read in a very long time (5 stars) 🎥

Whiteout by various authors (anthology): it was a good one but I really loved their previous anthology, Blackout, much more so would recommend that over this one (3 stars) ❄️

The Upside of Falling by Alex Light: a cute young adult romance with fake dating and the nerd girl/jock guy cliche which I'm a sucker for lol (4 stars) 🏈

Spy x Family Vol 8 by Tatsuya Endo: the family goes on a cruise in this one! It was really fun and better than the previous few volumes (4 stars) 🔪

It was a productive 24 hours and I'm looking forward to doing it again soon! 💙

[extravagantplant]

I feel nothing and everything

[sweetchildofrocknroll]

[maddiesflame]

The Upside of Falling headers

like/reblog if saved © maddiesflame

[lapieldelmal]

this quote describes how i feel right now, that I’m not well yet and that’s okay🪄

[pagesthatspeak]

“People leave. It's not our fault for not giving them a reason to stay. It's their fault for not finding one.”

— The Upside of Falling, Alex Light

[gabeswhiterose]

so i’ve been reading a lot recently so this is my honest thoughts on the last books i’ve read this month (these have all been some sort of romance and this is just my opinion)

Not here to stay friends, by Kaitlyn Hill:

LOVED THIS BOOK- like the trope, the dual perspective, the make protagonist, it was all exquisite and just a good time. The only thing I didn’t like was how rushed the ending felt. 4/5 read

The Upside of Falling, by Alex Light:

yes, just yes. It was a little predictable at times but I related to some of the characters and I just loved everything about it. Honestly I adore the fake boyfriend trope and this delivered. 4.5/5 read

Tweet Cute, by Emma Lord:

So I started reading this thinking I was going to hate it. Boy was I wrong- I loved the fact the main character realized that if she had communicated everything would’ve been easier. The main characters are amazing and not one dimensional, there’s representation, and it’s easy to visualize people in your life that are like those characters. 5/5 read

The Spanish love deception, by Elena Armas:

Most definitely an acquired tasted. Had high expectation for it and was , to be frank, a little disappointed. Catalina is one of the most obnoxious characters I’ve encountered in a while, girly needs to calm down. Thought I’d love it, didn’t really enjoy it- way too overrated. 2/5 read

[anakinfavgirl]

“Read to me.”

“Why?”

“Because you go somewhere else when you read. I want to go there with you.”

[tjmystic]

Oh, and following up on this post, that might also explain why Vecna didn’t show up till now, too.

We know he was working on creating the monsters and landscape in the Upside Down into something new well before Eleven reopened the gate. We don’t know how long it took him, or even if he’s the one responsible for making the Upside Down look like Hawkins in the first place. We also don’t know how all of the Upside Down became a hive mind. Was it like that from the beginning? Did Henry infect them all with the Mind Flayer’s essence to connect them? Did he infect the Mind Flayer itself and then everything else with something of his own essence? Who knows.

What we DO know is that, regardless of how responsible he is for the Upside Down’s appearance and behavior, Vecna did something. He made the Mind Flayer into what it is. He found a way to hook himself up to the Upside Down’s mainframe (if that’s what’s happening when he’s hooked up to all of the vines, anyway—it’s just a theory, but it’s the only one that makes sense to me). That had to take a lot of energy, especially since he’d spent something like 20 years before that being totally incapable of using or even accessing his powers.

Just compare that to Eleven. At the age of eight, despite never having used her powers effectively before (minus beating Two during their duel), she was strong enough to create a rift in time and space and send a whole other human being into it. And then it took her four more years to be able to so much as crush a Coke can with her mind.

(Granted, shortly thereafter, she accidentally reopened the Upside Down, but we need to highlight the word “accident”. Like both Henry and Kali told her, their powers work best when they’re using them from a place of emotion. People are rarely more emotional than when they’re battling life-or-death scenarios and their fight-or-flight kicks in. This is also why Eleven is so much more impressive as of the end of Season 4, because this is the only time she’s been able to use her powers this effectively on purpose and without needing to be backed into a corner to use them. Yes, Mike definitely helped with the love declaration, but everything after that was purely her.)

We also know that using that much energy takes a lot out of them. Both of them have a tendency to pass out when they use too much of their powers in one go. Vecna’s older, but he isn’t necessarily more practiced, because Brenner planted that chip in him at a pretty young age.

Taken together—the things Vecna may or may not have been doing in the Upside Down during that four year gap, the amount of energy it needed, and the toll it would have taken on his body—I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that Vecna was catatonic in Season 1. There’s no way he could have planned for Eleven to reopen the gate when she did. In fact, from the way he was talking about using the Upside Down to recreate the world the way he wanted, we can infer that he was planning on opening a gate of his own at some point from the inside. It was only after he realized Eleven was involved at all, in the year between Seasons 1 and 2, that he amended his plan to focus on getting revenge against her, too. And it wasn’t until he saw her close the gate when he was piloting the Mind Flayer that he changed that plan again to using her powers to heighten his.

TL;DR—Vecna didn’t plan for anything that happened in Season 1 to happen, and he was likely either physically passed out, mentally checked out, or some combination of the two for the whole week that everything went down. And it probably wasn’t until Eleven went into the Upside Down herself at the end of the season that he “woke up” and/or realized she was responsible.

Plus, it would have taken a shit-ton of energy for him to manipulate both Will and the Mind Flayer the way he did by Season 2. Same for Billy and everyone that contributed to the meat-monster version of the Mind Flayer in Season 3. He was only strong enough to get personally involved by Season 4 because he had Eleven’s powers to bolster him.

[citylightz]

Love. It’s easy to ridicule it when you’ve never felt it.

The Upside of Falling by Alex Light

[princess-tempest]

[princessofbookaholics]

The Upside of Falling by Alex Light (2020)

[gryffindordaughterofathena]

Book 32/100 of 2022 done!

Okay yes I am admitting I read these books a month ago and forgot to update because I immediately shifted to another book. Anyways, I didn't like much of this book but it was a good 2-3 hours spent not thinking about existential stuff about my soon to academically change life

[ellanainthetardis]

« People leave, Brett. It’s not our fault for not giving them a reason to stay. It’s their fault for not finding one. You know? »

The Upside of Falling - Alex Light