PARENT: I got "rubber duck" for my child's "bath" and she loves it.
AUTISM RESPONSE: Rubber ducks and other rubber bath toys can accumulate mold on the inside because of small holes underneath where moisture becomes trapped. The mold often goes unnoticed because it's not visible from the outside.
CORRECT RESPONSE(?): That's nice, I am unaware of how mold could impact this situation.
I'm reblogging because I can't comment. Thanks for information about mold I'll still live rubber ducks (they are for decoriation not for bath in my case tho)
When I like some fictional couples I often think if they could have kids. I've had one of this OC's for about five years (I've changed her year of birth recently) and I made up the others in a few past weeks, after the series finale. That's just my fantasy, tou don't have to like it
Barbara Jane Byers: My first Stranger Things OC, she existed in my head since season 3, I wanted her to be from late 80's then but now I think she should be born in 1997, daughter of Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler-Byers, named after Barb and Eleven, looks like the female version of her dad but when it comes to character is deffinatelly a walk-em-down Wheeler, tomboy - looks up to 'aunts' Max and Robin a lot
Eliot Byers: trans boy, son of Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler-Byers and brother of Barbara Byers, born in 2001, quiet and artistic - deffinately a Byers, looks like a perfect blend of his parents' features, wants to wear long hair but is too afraid to be misgendered to try, his dead name was shorten to 'El' so he chose Eliot to keep it
William Sinclair - son of Max and Lucas Sinclair, born in 1996, his mum is the only one who calls him 'Billy' (he is mostly known as 'Bill')
I'm wondering if I should add Mike Wheeler's lesbian daughter since she's popular in fandom. If I added her she would be called Eleanor (after El ofc), probably the youngest in the group, already born in 21st century like Eliot, also if there's Eleanor group calls her 'Ellie' because Eliot claims to be 'the right El'
I think Holly would also have children but since she's 8 in the show I haven't thought about it a lot.
And here comes babysitter Steve:
He was the one who cut Eliot hair to give him boy haircut for the first time
When children visit him for weekend they always have a movie night
He and Robin are neighbours (after she graduated from university) so she and Vickie often participate in babysitting
Robin and Vickie have a cat and Steve has a big dog. Children love these pets...Nancy doesn't
And another Ohio experience I am giving to Billy and Max-
The Shed Incident
(Okay, fair disclaimer, this didn't happen because of Ohio specifically, but it did happen in Ohio and would have been impossible in our Cali home so it's an Ohio experience to me. Also, this post is long as fuck)
So, when we moved to this house in Ohio, my brothers and I were quite delighted to realize that our new home came with a free shed. We had never had a shed in California. The yard was too small and really, in that neighbourhood, having a shed would have been inviting squatters and meth cookers with open arms. The shed was a new concept to us- funny as this is, we'd never actually known anyone with a shed, so a shed was something we knew only from fictional media. This is what we were like when we were ten, newly eight, and five. We thought the shed was the coolest thing since Betty White. It was new, it was interesting, and it also came with other new and interesting things (storing the lawnmower outside, not in the serial killer room the Cali house has, and an old pile of fencing left by the previous owner Dad told us not to go near because he fears copperheads- another new concept, so very different from the hognoses we knew intimately, who will hood at you and make you scream to your mom because the only snake you know with a hood is a King cobra but who have no medically significant venom, and the rattlers we were aware of, who were blessed by the gods with a way to tell us to fuck off that we would likely hear before they bit us, while copperheads were not blessed with this power and will thus just fucking snipe you no warning no mercy. A silent dangerous snake, which was a new concept to us. But I digress.) After a few years, we eventually got used to the shed. After a while, it became as unremarkable to us as the grass it sat upon.
But wait, I hear you ask, why are you referring to the shed in the past tense? Did you guys get rid of it at some point?
And the short answer, my friend, is that yes, in a way, that is what happened. But it wasn't so much us getting rid of the shed as it was the shed getting rid of itself in a feat that baffled everyone. How was the achieved, you might ask?
You see, dear reader, quite simply; the shed flew away.
Yes. You read that right. Our metal shed flew away. Allow me to elaborate.
A few years ago, there were a few days were it was howling absolute gale. No tornado, just wind, but people lost fences, trees lost limbs, houses lost vinyl siding, and we lost a shutter. Just wind and not even that destructive. Or so I thought.
I was awoken by my brother's shout of "What the FUCK," then further roused by "Aaron, you might wanna see this."
I come downstairs to find him at the sliding glass door, looking into the yard. I ask him what's going on. He nods to the yard. "Do you see what I see?"
First glance, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. After all, the shed was as unremarkable to me as the tree. I barely even really registered it anymore. I told him I didn't see anything, and he elaborated; "What I should say is, are you not seeing what I'm not seeing?" I still didn't get it. He told me to look at the shed. I looked towards where I knew the shed had been for the past nine years.
I saw the slightly raised platform the shed sat on, and the ramp that led to the shed door. I saw the lawnmower, and other various yard tools I honestly hadn't even known the shed had contained.
What I did not see, at first, was the shed.
You see, that platform I just mentioned was wood, unsealed and gods know how old, so it was rotted. Probably an important factor here. However, the shed was metal- thin metal, but metal, and it easily weighed three of me. It was not a small shed.
My initial assumption was thus that someone had stolen our shed. You know that joke about the Amish fucking with people by going and moving their barns in the night via Amish barn-raising? That's what I instantly thought of. Someone- not the Amish, to be clear- had simply come along, ripped our shed from the platform, and carried it away. But before I could say "Someone stole the shed," my brother pointed, directing my attention to a neighbour's yard, the neighbour we're kind of back-to-back to. At first, I did not comprehend what I was seeing. I saw weird sheet metal wrapped around the playset he had in his backyard for his children- what little of the playset was visible over his completely intact and unharmed six-foot fence, but I didn't understand it at first.
And then I realized that that strange sheet metal
Was our shed.
Not only had the wind ripped our couple-hundred-pound metal shed from its rotting wood foundation, but it had somehow proceeded to deliver this shed over a six-foot-tall fence, leaving not so much as a scuff in the fence's paint, and slammed the shed into the neighbour's swingset so hard that the shed had effectively been turned inside-out.
My immediate response was to call the youngest brother down so he could see this shit.
The response that immediately followed that was the realization that I was the adult of the house at this time.
I haven't mentioned this, but both of our parents were away. Dad had a business meeting, Mom had a NAPO meeting, and both happened to be in Vegas. Vegas, which is essentially across the country. I was nineteen and the only legal adult in the house- middle brother was seventeen but very mature, youngest was fifteen. While both were very self-sufficient and required no massive effort on my part in order to remain alive, they were both not legally adults. I was the only legal adult of the family in that house and I was also the oldest person in the house.
So, naturally, this meant it was my job to handle this situation.
And that was the fastest call to Uncle Jerry I have ever made in my life.
Uncle Jerry (who, again, lives so close he could walk to our house and get here in under five minutes) got a phonecall from me- and I was absolutely losing it laughing, he probably thought I was in hysterics crying- telling him that our shed flew away.
"Your shed." There is no way to convey through text how completely and utterly lost he sounded. "Flew away."
I proceeded to try and give him the abridged version of what I just told you, that our shed had gone over the neighbour's fence and was in his yard. From the sound of his voice, I might as well have been trying to explain this in Xhosa, he was not understanding at all. So he quickly decides that he's going to come over and see whatever is wrong for himself. While this is happening, middle brother is trying to call our dad (who, realistically, could do fuck all but literally what else were we supposed to do here,) youngest was on with our mom (also capable of fuck all,) both also trying to explain this insanity.
Jerry arrives, and follows me into the backyard. He has been to our house enough to be at least somewhat aware of the shed- he's the one who helped our dad get rid of the old fencing. I point at where the shed used to be. I point at the twisted sheet metal on that swingset. I watch him look back and fourth like that woman from that math meme. And clearly the math ain't mathin'.
"How the fuck-"
He was pretty stumped, too. He wound up calling our cousin, who also lives nearby, for reinforcements, because cousin is very good at this kind of thing. He and cousin proceed to decide that the immediate course of action was to go and knock on neighbour's front door to inform him of the situation and involve him in fixing this. It was, after all, his yard and his playset.
This neighbour, by the way, is also a teacher. He taught me computer class in fifth grade. And now my shed is in his yard and two member of the Ohio Italian mafia (not really, but it's a running joke since we're Italian) are knocking on his door.
They got it sorted. It was obviously no one's fault but God's, there was no actual damage to his property so paying for that didn't need to happen, it was just the matter of removing the unsalvageable remains of the shed. He agreed to the plan of Jerry and cousin returning the next day with the rest of our uncles to disassemble the shed so it could at least be moved into our yard for further disassembling. Because I worked the next day I saw none of that happen, but by the time my shift was over they were done, the metal had been donated to Larry (he does construction) to use as he pleased, and the roof sat in our backyard for several months until it was figured out how we could get rid of it (cousin decided he wanted to build a shed on his property and asked for it since shed roofs are expensive, we let him take it, he built a shed that has yet to fly away) and killed the grass under it. We never got another shed because I do not think my heart can handle the stress of that happening again.
This was a novel, but I need you to understand the experience I am cursing Billy and Max with; Imagine;
Neil and Susan are off doing anything except parenting their fucking kids as they love to do, out of state, Billy is in charge. It's been howling gale these past few days- no tornados, thank God, he can deal with hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes but those clouds best stay in the sky where they belong- some minor damage, not really his problem.
Until Max calls him to the back door one day. Something is missing from their yard. Their complimentary midwestern shed had vanished from its foundation and he immediately thinks someone stole it. Not like these Hawkins people have anything more interesting to do with their time. Or maybe this was like, hazing. Not a big deal. He'll be in trouble but he's not fighting the Amish over a shed.
And then he notices something, and he realizes that no, the shed is not missing. It's not where it's supposed to be, but it's not missing. The mutilated remains of the shed are in the backyard of the neighbour they are back-to-back with.
For the record, Billy is not the adult here. He's the oldest at seventeen, but he's not a legal adult. This is still on him to fix, though (who else is gonna fix it, Max? Fucking unlikely.) Billy does not have an Uncle Jerry to call, he does not even have a trusted adult, he does not know anyone here above the age of nineteen. Billy is seventeen, his shed decided it wanted to be a fucking bird and accidentally killed itself in the yard of a neighbour he has never spoken to, both of his parents are out of state and he doesn't even have a guaranteed way to get ahold of them, even if Neil would help him figure it out (he would not.) The only way for a solution to be found is for Billy to find it.
In all honesty, he's freaking the fuck out. He prepared for medical issues, school issues, preteen girl friend issues, car issues, but he was woefully unprepared for his shed flying off. Never even considered it a possibility, he's actually struggling to accept that this is really happening because what the fuck.
In his panic, confusion, disbelief, and growing fear, there's only one thing Billy can do. He starts laughing.
At first, it's a terrified, helpless sound that barely passes for laughing and kind of sounds closer to sobbing. But then Max starts giggling, too. Then laughing. And his laughter is slowly growing less freaked out and more genuine. Until they're both in stitches. Max is on the floor, clutching her sides, and Billy is barely upright leaning against a wall, laughing so hard he's barely getting oxygen. It takes a long, long time for them to stop laughing, because every time they start to cool down they look at either the other or the shed and crack up again. Once they've finally gotten ahold of themselves, Billy feels a lot better.
He can deal with this. He's dealt with worse. This is really not even that bad.
"I'll go talk to them, try and get this sorted." It's the best he can do. Because either he goes and talks to them or they'll eventually see the carnage, connect it to Billy's missing shed, and come over here to talk to them, and he'd rather have the power of initiating right now. Worst comes to worst, whoever that house belongs to is not Neil. They attack him for this, Billy can fight them. He can take down people far bigger than him, he can handle anything some backwoods hick would try to throw at him.
He can handle this.
"I'll come with you," Max decides. To help him try to explain, help verbally defend him if needed, help defuse just because she's a young girl and people tend to be nicer when she's around than they would be to just Billy for reasons she logically knows but thinks are dumb, and just to be there for moral support. So he's not knocking on a stranger's door alone, not having this conversation alone. Plus, maybe, seeing that Billy is also dealing with being her pseudo-parent in this situation would make them more sympathetic. The same math she does in protecting him from Neil. He looks ready to argue, but she cuts him off with a shrug. "My shed too, asshole."
He calls her a bitch and also shitbird to let her know the first one isn't genuine. Together, they circumvent the block to find the right house (they have the same aversion to walking through stranger's yards that they have to stroking an angry King cobra,) and Billy rings the bell.
An old lady comes to the door- this neighbourhood is mostly old people, they're the youngest people for blocks by at least twenty years. In his best "talking to angry Neil" voice, polite and even and completely fake, now complete with him trying to hide the accent everyone thinks they have, he tells her about the shed, apologizes, sprinkles in endless platitudes of fixing or paying for damages (thank GOD he doesn't flirt with the lady, Max would die on the spot,) tells her his parents are out of town for business (so that's what they call "fucking like teenagers as if they don't already have kids" these days,) and that it's just him and Max right now, and even genuinely admits that he's not sure how to proceed here. He doesn't say the part about how this is straight from fucking Looney Toons and should not be a thing that can ever happen in real life, but Max knows he's thinking it.
And the lady... wow.
She's very shocked by the news of what happened to the shed and even tells them that's a new one for her, she's never seen or heard of this specific scenario and she's quite miffed. So miffed Max can tell she wants to go an verify the presence of the shed, but she'd trusting Billy and believing his outlandish (but true) claims. She doesn't care about damages, all that's in the yard is old play equipment from when her grandkids were little. The swings the shed was wrapped around hadn't been swung in years. It doesn't matter at all. Her concern is for Billy, trying to handle this situation without help, especially while also being in charge of his house and Max. She doesn't say it, but it's clear she thinks that's way too much responsibility, and that he's too young for this- which Max agrees with. Leaving Billy home alone for a week was whatever, he could very easily keep himself alive, but he also had to keep Max alive and that felt really stupid and also pretty mean to Billy (he's not her parent, after all, and she doesn't like him having to sacrifice doing things he wants to do, even if she doesn't understand his desires to party or go on dates or hook up with girls when they both know good and goddamn well he doesn't like girls. He takes more responsibility for Max than her own mother and it's not even by choice. He's forced to and she hates that but it's not like she can stop it.) She invites them in since it's dinner time, and Max's California gut feeling almost feels like a punch. Paranoia, probably. She probably had no ill intentions, people were just fucking weird out here. Billy clearly feels it too, because he lies about having dinner in the oven (he was going to order pizza and they both know it.) And the woman seems onto them, but she doesn't push. She accepts the lie, they discuss a bit more and it's decided the shed can stay until Neil and Susan are back, Billy gives her the home phone number, and she and Billy go home.
(Billy is halfway through ordering pizza when the bell rings. When they look outside, there's a home-baked pan of the really good macaroni and cheese on the step, so fresh that there are pot holder for them to use. Billy frets about poison or needles or razors ("Or drugs," Max adds, only for him to snipe "No one's wasting good expensive drugs by dosing us for free, shitbird," which is fair,) but they eventually wind up eating it anyways. It's the best thing Max has had since they moved here. The woman never even asks for her dish back, but Billy sneaks it onto her porch the next day after washing it.)
And yeah, Billy caught shit from Neil over the shed, as though he was supposed to fight God or something. But the night that they quickly know as The Shed Incident is a fond memory they bring up to make each other laugh.
Somehow, the shed was weirder to her than the demadogs.
The concept of the Hawkins gang forever being a little unsettling to outsider’s eyes.
There’s the obvious, of course, the fact that they are dangerous people who handle tense situations with off putting ease.
One parent gets a little violent mid baseball game and Steve is there, steady, voice firm, shielding the teen referee with his own body and there’s something about it that makes the man back off. Only after the fact does he seem to realize that he’d grabbed a bat, casually, as if ready to swing it if necessary.
They send little naive intern Nancy Wheeler to cover a student protest and actual war reporters think she’s one of their own within seconds of seeing her on the field. There’s something haunted in her eyes and a firmness in her stand, the way she eyes the riot police’s weapons carefully… like she’s ready to take them.
Robin seems like all rainbow and sunshine’s upon first meeting her but the first time her new friends take her to the club the can’t help but notice how her demeanor changes under the flickering lights, how her eyes dart to the exits and her body tenses as if expecting a fight. They assume there just aren’t any gay clubs in Hawkins, that maybe she’s still on edge.
It’s the teacher that notice something off with Jonathan, because he mostly keeps to himself. But there’s something in his scripts, in the images he pitches, in how he portrays horror and violence and pain that makes them worry. It’s the way he doesn’t flinch away from it, actually, that he forces you to look. It’s not even cruelty but normalization. But then he’s the nicest to other quiet or shy students, and makes a point to ensure everyone is accounted for after a night out with his few friends. They don’t know what to make of it.
The kids aren’t exempt of this either.
Mike’s is almost a given, as a writer, the horrors he builds in his world attract thousands of readers, but his mentors squirm and wonder where sharpness of his descriptions come from. People have commented on how he can describe the exact smell of fear and spilled blood.
Lucas’s is more quiet, the steadiness of a foot soldier. He’s all smiles and warmth with his new group of friends until he sees someone being pushed around from the corner of his eyes and he’s stepping in, a firm hand on a shoulder, a steady shove against a wall, a whispered warning that doesn’t require repeating. There are no empty threats there.
There’s something more eery about Will and his new friends definitely notice the way he seems to know where everyone is at all times, how you just cannot sneak up on him, how his eyes go distant sometimes like he’s searching for something he can’t quite reach anymore.
It’s Dustin who catches people off guard more often, because his outgoing and easy demeanor stands out the most amongst his nerdier colleagues, but he’s warm and sunny and makes a point to make everyone feel welcome up until the moment a line is crossed. That line is simple and it’s kindness and the moment it’s lost there’s a fire in the kid that turns him into the protector of the shy ones around him. It takes watching him throw a single punch to know it isn’t his first brawl.
Max on the other hand has always been ‘a handful’ according to every adult in her life and if they thought a year and a half in a coma would smooth down her edges they were dead wrong. If nothing else, she seems more reckless, more forward, particularly in the skating world she gains the reputation of being a little too fearless, like she forgets sometimes that she can get hurt, that she’s not immortalized in someone’s dream.
No one would dare mess with the girl from the cabin at the edge of town. She’s quiet and reserved and sweet… she still manages to make friends at the local tavern and becomes an excellent teacher particularly for kids who are struggling with language and learning, but there’s a sharpness in her eyes, like she can peek into your soul, that makes grown men weary and older women whisper about shadow dreams and dark paths.
And then, and then, things happen when you put them together in a room.
Most people wouldn’t be able to put into words what it is about them that sets their primal instincts off, like they are suddenly in the presence of predators. Hunters. Something in the way they eye the exits, how they stands shoulder to shoulder, how all their heads snap as one towards any surprising noise in the dark, how they seem to communicate with a look, how they fall in line like a platoon. A pack.
If they weren’t so young, some might think they are veterans, old war buddies.
But they are so young, from a small sheltered town in Indiana. What war could they have fought?
I understand where are you coming from and I know that having Steve as a favourite character might look like overlooking the minorities when they should be the main point of the show. I would like to show another perspective but not to make a fight. I fully respect your opinion and I agree that we should pay attention to outcast in the show of outcasts. Steve is the teen from a good house who fails to fit in his parents vision of "good life". He ends up hanging out with people who he is supposed to despise. Yes, he is white, cishet (most people don't see him as 'het') male but the money isn't his but his parents and he lost the money the moment he didn't go to university. As a most priviliged person in town he risked his life for the most hated and at the end of the day he chose his own path instead of working in his father's company. He makes people believe that they can be known from their actions not from their name. I think that people like him because he breaks the vision of a rich kid.
i need trans allies to really internalize the idea that masculinity in girls and women is punished by society. gender nonconformity is never rewarded. women being allowed in some circumstances to wear pants is not an example of "masculinity" being rewarded. women had to fight for a long fucking time in order to be able to wear pants and in many western households and non-western countries, women are still forced to wear dresses. we are still a long ways off from any kind of gender equality or acceptance of gender nonconformity.
If all that Duffers could give us is a bunch of coincidences I'll tell you what I noticed in the show (and they didn't apparently).
Will's name. I'm very interested in names genesis so I checked it. William derives from germanic words 'willo' (meaning will/desire) and 'helm' (meaning helmet/protection). The name mean's Esther 'someone who desires protection' or 'strong protector'. Both of it coresponds with the character in my opinion
El's names. a) The symbolism of the number 11 includes sin and mistake but in numerology it's a very positive number which is connected with enlightenment and finding your purpose in life. But to be honest I'd like to connect 11 with 12. 12 is the number of full. 12 months in year, 12 hours on a clock, 12 main greek and roman gods, 12 Jesus' apostles (you don't have to be Christian to know that Bible has a very big impact on the culture). 11 = 12-1. El opened the portal and created the Upside Down when she was looking for Henry sent by her to the X dimension. The Upside Down got destroyed when Henry got killed and El sacrifieced herself. 11+1 is full. I'm not putting the genesis of the name Jane here because it doesn't give us anything. The important part is that Jane is the name which is given to the unknown victims. 'Jane Doe' means 'unknown female'. So basically El's name is the name that points that he doesn't have a name. I know that the name Jane is given to children like any other and that Terry chose that name but I find the choice interesting.
Vecna's names. The name Vecna is of course given in the lore so we know. About 001 it is shown the he was first experimental object. Exceot this obvius fact 1 is the most perfect number which symbolizes universe, god and the first cause of existence. But 1 also can symbolize loneliness. In astrology 1 is connected with egotism (destructive aspect) and idividualism (constructive aspect). Also 11+1=12 as I wrote before. Henry derives from the Germanic name Heimirich which means 'ruler of the house'. Can you find better description for Mr. Whatsit than that?
I'll probably and more but these are first things I thought about. I'm passionate about symbolic meanings of things, name meanings and flower meanings so I can keep finding things. Also 7 on the dice was a stupid choice because 7 is another (next to 12) biblical numer of full. Will should have rolled 6 because 6 is diabolical number 7-1=6.
crazy that they decided Nancy's independence arc needed her single but Jane's didn't. especially when Nancy's relationship with Jonathan never impacted her independence, but els relationship with Mike ALWAYS impacted hers
snowghoul
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
titsay
germansingergirl
