the raven cycle, percy jackson, skam, harry potter (but not jk rowling), occasionally haikyuu, aftg, basically a blog where i rant about my latest obsessions
I don’t wanna be annoying in the op’s notes but @uncleshits YOUR MIND
[ID: Screenshot of a tumblr post by fromjuniper‚ which reads “its not gay if it happened in a timeloop”. Tags by uncleshits read “#holsom fic premise #<<<< OHO???????? #both of them are like ‘oh shit i’m in a time loop. I can do ANYTHING and no one will know once I get out of the loop’ #so obv they hookup (thinking the other doesn’t know about the time loop) but OOPSIE #they’re both in the loop :) and hooked up on the 2nd day. literally as fast as possible” /END ID]
#and it’s all about them realizing that like. they Want this to have consequences #and they Want a second day #and they can’t work together until they can admit that to each other… - @dykeseinfeld
a ransom who has dreams and hopes and ambitions and squashes them down because biology pre-med is practical and he's good at it and at least he still got to play hockey right he knows he likes that so what if he's graduated college and barely explored who he actually is so what if he never even looked at the other possibilities because there was never enough time so what if he never actually kissed his best friend at least they have an amazing friendship who really cares things are Fine they're Good Enough
a ransom who looks across the hall at the separate bedroom that his best friend who he's in love with sleeps in and is terrified he's lost his chance and that he's made the wrong decision dragging the past along with him for no reason
“Hmm. Jack, if you could have a superpower, what would it be?”
Bitty looked up from his phone to ask the question of Jack, who was making an omelet for breakfast. It was one of Jack’s favorite things, to cook for Bitty, especially when there was a morning when they could both sleep (or not-sleep) in, and then cook and sit and eat and drink coffee and clean up together before even considering starting their day.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “Mind reading, maybe? So people wouldn’t be so confusing all the time.”
Bitty considered the mess of motivations that had made him do anything from adding ginger to a peach pie to kissing Jack on the ice after he won the Stanley Cup.
“I’m not sure knowing what people are thinking would make things less confusing, sweet pea,” Bitty said.
“What about you?” Jack asked. “What superpower would you have?”
“Invisibility,” Bitty replied immediately.
“You didn’t even think about that,” Jack said. “Anyway, why would you want to be invisible?”
“Why not?” Bitty said. “If you’re invisible, no one can hurt you.”
“Huh.” Jack gave a dissatisfied sort of grunt, and turned back to the eggs.
Bitty didn’t know why Jack was bothered. He’d always thought invisibility would be the best superpower for him, ever since he first considered the question.
He’d been in high school, clinging to the end of the bench at the lunch table where all the misfits sat. Well, the misfits-but-not-outcasts. It had a couple of band geeks, the one cheerleader who never sat with the rest, the kid who was always the stage manager and never on stage for the drama productions. The only student in Bitty’s class who played on the rec league hockey team had invited Bitty to join them, and Bitty was doing his best to not be relegated (again) to outcast status.
One of the girls — Bitty thought it was the cheerleader, but his memory might be faulty — had read the question out of a quiz in a magazine, and most people had answered things like flying or having super strength or x-ray vision.
Then someone said they’d like to be invisible, in order to do whatever they wanted and never get caught, and Bitty had thought the idea of not being seen sounded like a kind of heaven. Not that he wanted to avoid the blame for any misdeeds; he just didn’t want to be seen. If the football players couldn’t see him, they couldn’t push him into lockers or trip him near the top of the stairs. His Algebra II teacher couldn’t call him to the front of the room to solve impossible problems. If Coach couldn’t see him, he couldn’t “playfully” cuff him on the back of the head and ask when he’d find a girlfriend.
He’d miss his mama’s hugs, he thought. But maybe the power would allow him to be visible when he wanted to be, or maybe mama would just understand, and hug him when he told her he was there.
Ever since then, “invisibility” had been his stock answer to the superpower question. Even though there were no longer any football players dogging his steps, the idea of going through life unobserved, and thus uncriticized, had a more than passing appeal.
Apparently, his answer sparked more than passing thoughts in Jack, who brought it up as soon as breakfast was ready.
“I’d really miss being able to see you, bud,” Jack said.
“Yeah?” Bitty asked, purposely looking up at Jack through his eyelashes. “See something you like?”
“Always,” Jack said, “But I didn’t mean like that. I meant, I don’t like the idea of a world where you just disappeared. And I don’t understand how you can say you would want that, either. You’re always out there, whether it’s online or on the ice. You figure skated. You did a sport where, literally, everyone was looking at you because you were the only one to look at.”
“And I stopped doing that sport, because when people noticed, they decided I’d make a good tackling dummy,” Bitty said. “Figure skating was different. When I was on the ice, I was alone, and no one could get to me. No one could touch me. And when I make videos online, it’s kind of the same. No one can hurt me. Even if someone is rude in the comments, I can block them and move on. Aren’t there times you would have liked to be invisible, with the way people have invaded your privacy?”
“Sure, sometimes,” Jack answered. “But not for long. And I remember that the problem is their behavior, not my existence.”
“I never said I didn’t want to exist,” Bitty said. “I just want people to leave me alone.”
“Even me?” Jack’s voice was small.
“Never you,” Bitty said. “Well … there were some times my freshman year. But not now. I want people to live my life and keep their nastiness to themselves. And my life includes you.”
“That’s good,” Jack said. “And for the record, I think it’s good that people can see you. I think they need to see you, because you are strong and determined and good. Sorry if that sounds corny. I don’t mean it to be. I really believe that you are good, and people need to see that.”
Bitty was nearly tearing up.
“Oh, come on,” Bitty said. “Don’t be so nice to me! You’re gonna make me cry. I do appreciate that’s how you feel. And maybe … maybe it is different now. Now that we’re together, and I don’t feel alone.”
“So, if not invisibility, then what?”
“Have you ever thought about what it would feel like to fly?”
Much of the supernatural horror that Will has to contend with works extremely well as a metaphor for his issues – the Upside Down is the closet, the monsters represent homophobia, his powers are as repressed as he is, yadda yadda – and in my opinion, this makes him a relatively easy character to analyze. Being able to draw on the supernatural stuff just gives you a lot more material to work with.
Mike, though? A goddamn enigma. He’s often present when supernatural stuff is happening, but he doesn’t interact with it to anywhere near the degree that Will does, and it’s much harder to fold him into the allegory being told here without reducing him to “Will’s love interest”.
And that’s interesting, don’t you think?
That the “stereotypical” gay boy who attracts homophobes like moths to a flame has had his issues laid out in code since the beginning? Whereas the straight-passing one, who’s so deep in the closet he’s probably not even out to himself yet, is so hard to read that most of the GA assume his bizarre personality change in S3 was a symptom of bad writing?
Figuring yourself out as a queer is a challenge even today, and part of the reason it’s so challenging is because heteronormativity steamrolls right over our right to know that being queer is a valid option.
The closet isn’t a queer space – it’s a queer-shaped void within a heteronormative space.
Stranger Things is full of examples of this:
Will isn’t shy about expressing his disgust at the thought of dating girls, but he’s dealing with a lot of childhood trauma so he’s just a late bloomer, right?
Will is jealous and upset about his new step-sister’s relationship with the boy he’s been attached to at the hip since he was five, but it must be because he’s in love with her or otherwise misses his platonic buddy, right?
El’s character arc is about freeing herself from toxic relationships with men, but her infatuation with the boy who puts her on a pedestal is the one exception to that, right?
Robin shows zero romantic interest in men before coming out, but she and Steve just vibe so well it’s reasonable to assume they’re love interests, right?
Vickie paused Fast Times at fifty-three minutes five seconds, but she has a boyfriend so she must be straight, right?
Over and over, the show presents us with an ambiguously queer situation and dares us to assume it’ll end heteronormatively.
If this were any other show I’d call it queerbaiting… but these situations just keep ending in a non-heteronormative way, all while symbolically dancing around Mike.
Granted, “non-heteronormative” doesn’t necessarily equal gay – El’s arc is more about independence and forging healthy platonic relationships than about replacing men with women – but she’s still on the path to breaking out of comphet, which is rather a queer act regardless of whether she’s literally queer herself.
But I’m digressing.
We’ve seen how Will is visibly queer and struggles with the trauma of being abused for it, and how his closet is symbolized by the existence of a literal alternate dimension full of monsters.
But Mike is invisible, so his closet isn’t represented by a metaphor at all, but by something more meta than that – it’s etched out in the negative space formed by the narrative itself. Only the audience can see it, and then only if we’re paying attention, tracing the edges of the story and feeling out the shape it results in.
These two different approaches in depicting the struggle of being closeted remind me of drowning.
In films, drowning is a noisy and dramatic affair, easy to identify.
But in real life, drowning doesn’t look like what we think it does – it’s silent and resembles calm water play. All too often, drowning victims will quietly slip under and succumb helplessly to the depths…
i will never cease to be fascinated by the kent/jack pre - overdose dynamic. loving someone while being jealous of them yet hating them because oh god he could be better than me needing them because they're the only person that makes you feel less alone and fighting with them because fuck him he doesnt know what real pressure is like and kissing them and finally feeling something and
ok so i was going through the entirety of omgcp tumblr, as one does, and i came across this post, which mentions a teen goalie in connecticut who wrote a letter to bitty
and being the check please hoe that i am, i immediately thought FANFIC
apologies if someone has done this already (also this is my first fic, so be nice!)
Hi, Eric!
My name is Jackson. I’m from Westport, Connecticut. I just turned 17, on April 6th.
I play at our local club. We’re kinda shit, but I love it. I’m a goalie. I love the excitement, when someone is skating toward me and there's a moment after they shoot, when everyone holds their breath. Like I said, we’re pretty bad, so I don’t do much saving, but it’s still fun.
You guys are great, though. Frozen four is fucking sick.
My sister told me to write you this. Not like she’s forcing me, but she suggested it. I didn’t really know who you were until like a year ago. When you kissed that dude on center ice. Pretty ballsy.
She’s the one who showed me. It was a gif on twitter. I like hockey, don’t get me wrong, but I was playing Madden when the cup final was happening. The Islanders are my team, ok? I’m not watching any Falconers bullshit (no offense).
Anyway, I was destroying my best friend Noah in Madden when Lindsay busted into my room, and stuck her phone in my face. And there you were, sucking face with Jack Zimmermann on national television.
And the weirdest part was, I hadn’t even told her yet. I hadn’t really admitted it to myself. I guess she just knew, even before I did.
I just keep imagining some teen boy or girl, scrolling through Instagram and seeing Luke prokop's bravery and authenticity and realizing they can do whatever the fuck they want, no matter who they love
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
baratheonpilled
dededos
jbbartram-illu
pixelskylines
annaxmalina
