it's not my main concern, it's just a sub-concern

i hope s5 is only winona ryder

i think lucas' parallels to nancy are so compelling, bc nancy wasn't cool and she just wanted to experience something and she didn't even notice the slide into harmful conformity and then later, lucas does it with a twist, not a boy but a sport, and he actively seeks the conforming.

but both start out in that unpopular place and then there's a girl and she gets into trouble and they each blame themselves for that moment where they were just teenagers. where they were young.

a lo-oong way off from posting bc i wanna get a headstart on some editing, but i'm trying to do a gif series of parallels - both within the show as well as (potentially) outside media, so if there are any parallels dear to you, feel free to drop 'em in the replies

when max or mike combine their powers of glaring with lucas' and dustin's powers of looking defeated by someone else's stupidity it's kinda lethal, ngl

pov the worst teens are judging you

no, because aro nancy in the context of hawkins. she needs to get the fuck out because she'll gladly have sex with people she likes, she enjoys it, and she wants nothing more than that. she doesn't want a relationship, she wants friends and she wants family and she wants to be surrounded by people who understand, she doesn't want a romantic partner. who's there every day and who kisses her just because and who's going to claim a monopoly on her.

but in hawkins, a girl, a woman, can't just do that. she can't just sleep with boys and not want more. because that's a loose girl. to be pitied because she wasn't raised right, to be scorned by the other girls and to be disappointed in by their mothers. to be called a slut at the entrance of the movie theatre so everyone knows what kind of girl she really is.

and nancy can't worry about that every time she has an itch to scratch. she can't worry about that if her unwillingness to enter a relationship, to get married, is who she is at her core, not a hang-up and not something subject to change.

aro nancy who the inhabitants of hawkins don't have a word for like they would if she were fooling around with other girls. but who feels it, who feels a similar kind of alienation. who's different not just because she's a woman but because it's something more, too.

is there a middle ground between 'the curtains aren't just blue' and 'this strand of hair symbolizes everything this gay relationship is about to be' bc i think we need to find it

aro nancy so beloved to me... a nancy who looked for romance when she was a teen bc she's attracted to people but then the actual romantic relationship just never works as well, never feels as fulfilling as it's supposed to. but she enjoys sex - wants to have it, is attracted to people on that level, it's just that other part of it that doesn't click... and she can see how it makes her different, how for her peers there's this wish for a partner. when she thinks about her future, really thinks about it, there's nothing appealing about having that. she wants to be a journalist and she wants to go out and have fun and occasionally she wants to sleep with people but it doesn't go beyond that. she looks at her parents and it feels so restrictive, but she looks at the sinclairs, too, who actually are happy and it still doesn’t feel desirable.

aro nancy wheeler who used to try to make it work when she was younger, who was a teenager looking for romance, but it just isn’t part of her and eventually she just stops. and she's happy.

#small

INVERSE

Rating: Gen Relationship: Erica Sinclair & Lucas Sinclair Notes: Post-Season 4, Erica Sinclair centric

READ ON AO3 HERE

“Erica!” says her music teacher and Erica doesn’t know why she sounds so surprised.

It’s not like she said anything that wasn’t true. She never does.

“Erica!” says Auntie Patrice and pulls her back by her collar.

Erica’s always thought that honesty is the good thing, the right thing, the thing other people would appreciate.

“Erica!” says Tanya on the playground.

She’s eleven and then she’s twelve and somewhere along the way it’s all changed. Her name become an exclamation she doesn’t get.

“Erica,” says her mom, says her dad, says Lucas, and Erica doesn’t know how to say that it hasn’t occurred to her for a second to do things any other way.

feeling quite ill about the way there's absolutely no triumph in el's escape from the nina project. she gets nothing from it, it's just another step in her survival. it's different from her breaking out in season 1 and different still from the hunt kali takes her on in season 2.

she looks so drained, so damned, so hollow when she brings down that helicopter. there's nothing when she leaves brenner behind.

easiest way i can describe steve's self-deception is that he thinks he's in a john hughes movie but really he's in a david fincher production

Hi everybody! So, in an attempt to get myself to write some shorter things I thought it'd be fun to do a writing bingo and it's always better when other people do it with you!

HOW IT WORKS

Your fics can be whatever length you'd like. I see no issue with combining prompts but maybe don't shove every prompt into a 700 word fic? Then again, if it works for you, who am I to stop you?

I hope this caught a few people's interest! Happy writing!

P.S.: You can find an example card under the cut

like, i do think lucas and dustin and mike don't realize it at the time because they're KIDS but harboring el, seeing what was done to her, protecting her, it must have done something with their trust in institutions, right?

mike was pretty quick to take on the idea of the bad men, but he grew up with a father who touts the virtues of their government. lucas' dad was in 'nam and lucas is predisposed to trusting the rules, that's just how he thinks. dustin in season 1 is the most apprehensive, the most careful.

if it weren’t for hopper, who fulfills this very stereotypical (and slightly problematic) role of the Good Cop, they likely would have lost all faith in cops and the military and why wouldn't they?

it's never outright explored in the kids' arc, which i get, but i do think it could have in the later seasons and maybe that would have kept the show more consistent. it certainly wouldn't have hurt lucas' character to be shown to adapt his understanding from idealizing to a more realistic view.

IS IT TIME YET TO TALK ABOUT THE SLUMBERING OPPORTUNITY OF BOB & JONATHAN PARENT/CHILD DYNAMIC DEVELOPMENT??

okay, no wait. i think bob's line, said to joyce without any qualifiers or any third parties present - that he said just because he wanted her to hear it, "that's what i love about you. you punch back." deserves some consideration.

because i don't know if joyce has ever, ever heard that from a romantic partner before. it doesn't seem like she was ever afraid to fight with lonnie, to get into screaming matches, to try and try and try. but i doubt he ever told her that he likes that about her.

lonnie has a deep-seated need to control perceptions. and he did that so successfully with basically all of hawkins, a town that saw (sees) joyce as this unstable woman who regularly works herself up over nothing.

and it's soso significant for bob to just outright tell her that he sees it as something to respect, to admire, to love. not even that she fights for her kids. or that she's "feisty" in general. that she has a righteous sort of anger that comes from years of being silenced and sidelined and ignored.

with no agenda other than to let her know. i don't think joyce has ever had that kind of acknowledgement before.

sometimes i need to go back to early season gifs in a blog to remember just how MUCH i adore joyce byers?? she's such a CHARACTER in seasons 1 and 2?

she's a great mom, she neglects her eldest. she's overprotective, she's fighting for a child who desperately needs it. she's barely holding on, she's the sanest person in the show. she's the person people trust in, she's the craziest woman in town.

literally no one did it like her.