You think since El went through Billy's memories, she would have seen Karen flirting with Billy and that whole scene with them in the pool storage closet?
Obviously, she wouldn't know what was going on at all, she's a kid who got out of a lab. Idk just something I was thinking about
oh, i love the way relationships develop their own personal language of love. when all that joy shows the way they love you. i love when it is a little icon to who they are, to how you get along with them.
my sister takes a picture of a dead bug and sends it to me - this is you. my friend asks me how the move is going; she put a reminder in her phone to check up on me. i put a piece of ice down my friend's back, he returns the favor by holding my phone over my head and making me jump to catch it. jason and i scream-sing green day while going all of 15 miles an hour down country roads. molly is who i go to for a quiet night in with 5 dollar wine.
i go out for dinner with them and have to step outside to take a phone call; when i come back they've ordered my favorite appetizer without needing to be asked. andrew and i have a long-standing tradition of him picking me up to spike me directly into the first soft-looking surface around. i don't even need to speak to my best friend - she and i will just look at each other and have an entire conversation. burst out laughing at 3 PM, high and cackling like we're evil witches. i just moved by myself into a new city - my brother keeps introducing me to his friends that now live close to me. he always says - oh yeah, this is sibling and then pretends to ignore me. for days now, my family has been in and out of my apartment, just tinkering with things; making sure i am settling in nicely.
i usually have watermelon instead of cake for my birthday; kim forces a full yankee candle into the rind so i can have something to blow out and wish on. for 20 minutes on a saturday, all us grown adults crawl into one bed to have a cuddle puddle like we're in high school again. every 20 seconds someone starts giggling, and then we're laughing again. nick calls me from california; we both groan about the price of tickets, agonizing. miranda and i meet up in the city for the first time in years - without discussing it beforehand, the minute we lay eyes on each other, we both strike gruesome little gremlin poses instead of waving. dean always goes for the hug. joe always does a single firm handshake. sometimes i think about my friends and get so happy i just start crying.
oh, how wonderful to live in a world where affection is biologically ingrained in us. how wonderful that affection helps us build our single greatest strength - community. how wonderful that affection is our body's way of saying - thing is good, let's keep. how wonderful, this language, this skein we weave! to show the other person - i might not always say it. but i love that you live in me.
it has come to my attention that most works of art are bad. it has also come to my attention that most works of art are loved. and therefore that most works of art are good
People who are starved out of conversation will approach it as if it was sacred, people who are starved out of touch experience any touch given to them as the highest form of intimacy, people starved out of gentleness will react to it as if it’s an invasion, an attempt to break them down, and people starved out of a community will approach it as if it was a minefield.
there’s something about the events leading up to billy being flayed that i can’t stop thinking about
like you’ve got this 17 year old who gets sent out to look for his little sister and he winds up at a much older woman’s house where he essentially has to flirt with her to get the information he needs and she reciprocates, all while knowing he’s underage
then the whole situation at the byers happens and no one sees it the way billy does, no one except for him seems to realise that it’s fucking weird for steve to be in the middle of nowhere with a group of kids while lying about it, no one believes billy and he still comes out worse in the end with him being even more isolated than he already was
and then you move onto season 3 and you have the first episode where a newly 18 year old billy is introduced by being sexualised and objectified by a group of women way older than him, karen included, and it’s made obvious that they had to have learnt his work schedule by the way they talk and that they do this often which.. yeah
then billy goes up to karen and she reciprocates his flirting once again and agrees to meet up with him later with the full intention of having sex with him out at some motel somewhere, despite knowing his age
and it’s so wild to me that all of this predatory behaviour is what actually lead to billy crashing his car - he was literally on his way to see karen when it happened, that’s the only reason he was ever there - and that all of this grooming is essentially what lead to billy being attacked in such a brutal way that is so reminiscent of sa
then there’s the scene after he gets dragged to the basement where he manages to call 911 and he doesn’t answer when asked what his emergency is because he doesn’t know what to say/doesn’t think he’ll even be believed which is all too common among victims
and then you circle back to the night at the byers, the night where billy’s seen as irrational for thinking anything’s off, where he ends up being the person ‘in the wrong’ and where all of that happened right after karen started being predatory towards him and the first time he was (unknowingly) in a situation relating to the upside down
i have a lot of thoughts
something about the chain of events leading up to billy being flayed, about how everything is so interconnected and how that works when you’re looking at it in this specific way
something about grooming, something about victims not being believed, something about billy in particular never being believed and people blaming things on how he acts rather than seeing that the way he acts is a direct result of things that have happened to him
something about how he’s immediately isolated after the fight at the byers, something about how isolated he is after he’s attacked, the way his demeanour changes when he leaves karen’s house, how his behaviour seems to change after the byers, and how his behaviour changes completely once he’s attacked
how all of it fits this allegory, right from the start
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