Mya. 29. Queer. NYCRHPS. Certified travel nerd. Concert junkie. Typical fanatic: Teen Wolf, Supernatural, Torchwood, Carmilla, Orphan Black, Dr Who, WTNV, Star Trek, HP, most things Marvel and animals, all the animals although it's kinda just become trash....
all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.
why have multiple people reblogged this with some horse-assed "um actually most of these people are bi or pan" did I fucking stutter I said they like girls. what is your point. I'm going to kill you.
@santaclausdeadindian "What the fuck were those streets before cars, fucking playgrounds?"
Yes, actually.
[description: a black-and-white photo from the 1900s of a group of girls in pinafores standing in the middle of the street; according to the website I found it on, this is a 'street dance'. The girls are talking to each other in small groups. end description.]
Children used to play in the street all the time. And for most of recorded history, that was relatively safe. Running into someone on foot is not going to kill a child, and horses - let alone carriages- were relatively rare.
Streets used to be public spaces. People would hang out and talk in the middle of the road, or set up shop with a little cart at the side of the road. "Right of way" used to mean "your right to take up space on the street, because you are a free citizen and free citizens get to use the road."
[description: a black-and-white historical photo of two children in the middle of a mostly empty street. One child is sitting in a wagon, and the other child is standing, ready to pull it. End description.]
It wasn't until the 19th century that it became common enough for your average joe to own horses that it was unsafe for kids to play in the street (and they still did anyway!). And it wasn't until the early 20th century that people got cleared off of the street in favour of cars- before then, people and horses and carriages had to share the road, and carriages had to go at the same pace as whatever was around them.
We laugh at the insanely low speed limits of the 1910s and 1920s - really, cars can only go at 3 mph?- but they were there for a reason, and that reason was "to keep the roads safe for horses and pedestrians". If cars could go at top speeds on city roads, they'd only be safe for cars, and people couldn't use their public spaces anymore. But thanks to lobbying by the auto industry and a whoooole lot of PR spin, that's exactly what happened.
I'm going to leave you with two pictures. The first is Mulberry Street in NYC, according to wikipedia, in 1900. The second is Mulberry Street today.
[Description: two photos of city streets. The first photo is sepia-toned, from the 1900s. It shows a city street full of people and carriages. The foreground of the photo is taken up by a group of vegetable sellers, and a group of men and young children standing beside them looking at the camera. The second photo is a modern photo of the same street. It is a heavily decorated tourist district, but most of the street is taken up by cars. The sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians, but they're shoved off to the side. End description.]
Little Italy is a tourist district. It is meant to be walkable so that tourists can browse and look at all the little restaurants and window-shop. And yet 75% of this picture is taken up by a fucking car canal, and people- the people this street was built for - are shoved off to the side, so as not to get in the way.
People got forced off the road in favour of cars. People got forced out of public space in favour of cars.
Hello, I was curious to know more of your thoughts about Billy and Max, especially about what do you think their relationship will be like after they are reunited and how "defeating Neil" will fit into that. Thank you! <3
Oh my, you just asked one of the BIG questions! Haha my answer is gonna be longggg~~
Well, before we can predict what their relationship will be like, we have to establish what their relationship has been like so far. That may seem unnecessary, but imo people misread it pretty badly. As it turns out, Neil is central to their dynamic; Billy's fear of him colors everything, including how he treats Max.
For all his protests that "she's not my sister," Billy absolutely views Max as family. He sees his mother in her, and that drives his actions in S2. We know this from several pieces of evidence, most of which didn't become clear until we saw his memories in S3.
1) These two moments parallel each other.
In the first shot, Billy is standing behind his mom, looking past her at Neil. His mom has just thrown a plate to defend herself, but it didn't accomplish anything, and now Neil's poised to attack her. Billy's rushing forward to stop him.
In the second shot, Billy is standing behind Max, looking past her at Lucas. Max was just yelling at him for some reason - Billy doesn't know why - and now Billy's bristling. In the car, he fixates on one question: "Is he causing you trouble?" When she doesn't answer truthfully, he gets angry and orders her to stay away from Lucas. "There are certain types of people in this world that you stay away from. And that kid, Max? That kid is one of them."
Is this a racial comment? You can interpret it that way, and sure, racism could play a part somewhat. Given how "Neil-haunted" this scene is, though, I don't think racism is the main source of Billy's fear. He doesn't mean "certain types of people" as in black people. He means men who upset you, attack you, make you feel unsafe. If Max had been arguing with a girl, he wouldn't have reacted so strongly.
In an aggressive, emotionally-hamstrung way, he's trying to save Max from his mother's fate. She's young, meaning there's still hope for her. If he can pass on the lessons he's learned, teach her to take no shit and treat men with suspicion, maybe she'll be okay.
Runaway Max supports my reading:
Billy talked to me, but in this sly, confidential way, like there was something important he wanted me to understand. It was like he hated me, except for the way he went out of his way to make me just like him. Any hint of softness and he would never let me forget it. (p 52)
Sometimes, though, Billy acted like we were in on some big, crucial secret together. Like we understood each other, like he was so worried about me. And that was worse. I knew he wasn't really worried. He'd just found one more way to mess with me. (p 129)
The second quote comes on the heels of Billy yelling at her about Lucas. It tells us Max senses his worry, even though she writes it off as an act.
And then there's this...
2) Billy's relationship with Neil haunts the entire Byers house sequence in S2.
Let's set the scene. Neil has just punished Billy for failing to watch over Max. Billy rejects responsibility, arguing, "She's thirteen years old, she shouldn't need a full-time babysitter!" We can detect some resentment here if we remember how quickly Billy was forced to grow up. (He definitely didn't have a babysitter at age thirteen.)
Still, earlier scenes have informed us that, on some level, Billy's always afraid for Max's safety. He's convinced men will hurt her if he doesn't intervene. So getting chewed out by his father for failing to protect her has to sting.
When Billy arrives at the Byers house, he's carrying a toxic stew of anger, resentment, and fear. And who does he see first, standing at the door, blocking access to his sister?
Steve. A young man Billy's age.
This is where Billy really starts to lose it. As he talks to Steve, he's physically trembling and twitching, like he's feeling a slow-motion explosion of rage. (Watch the clip carefully and you'll see what I mean.) A lot is going on in his head, more than he understands, but his dialogue clues us in to some of it.
"This whole situation, Harrington, I dunno. It's giving me the heebie-jeebies."
"Oh yeah? Why's that?"
"My thirteen-year-old sister goes missing all day, and then I find her with you, in a stranger's house... and you lie to me about it."
Kill mode engaged.
Picture the situation from Billy's perspective. He has no clue about the Upside Down or the Mind Flayer. As far as he's concerned, Steve and Max shouldn't even know each other's names, let alone hang out with each other. So, with the understanding that Billy suspects men - all men - of secretly being abusive pieces of shit, we realize he's not just blowing smoke here. He believes Steve is an actual threat to Max.
This taps into Billy's deepest fear: that Neil was right about him. He failed to protect his sister, just like he failed to protect his mother... because he's a pussy.
"What, did I raise a pussy for a son?"
That's why he goes bonkers. Shoving Steve down, antagonizing Lucas, and finally attacking Steve outright. He's lashing out, desperate to prove Neil wrong. He's not a pussy. He can protect his family from harm. He can.
To further explain his emotional state, Neil and his mom are echoed viscerally throughout the scene. In his actions, Billy replays things he's seen - and felt - them do.
>>Billy slams Lucas into a shelf. Neil did the same to Billy earlier.
This tells us Billy lumps Lucas in with men like his father. Subconsciously, he's doing what he wishes he could've done to Neil: turn the tables. Slam him into a bookshelf. Yell at him to "stay away from her!" (his mom in the past; Max in the present).
"Stay away from her. You hear me?"
>>When he's backed into a corner, Billy throws a plate at Steve like his mom did at Neil.
This tells us two things: (1) Billy lumps Steve in with Neil too, and (2) he's flashing back to that memory, whether he realizes it or not. It's seared so deeply into his mind that he can't help but relive it. And here, he feels he's in the same position as his mother, defending herself against an abuser.
It's easy to miss all of this. On the surface, Billy's just a bully who's making our heroes suffer. But beneath the surface, his motives are nuanced, complicated, even tragic. That's why he's such a compelling character.
He doesn't hate Max. He wants to protect her against a world he sees as cruel and untrustworthy. Sadly, he's so broken that he doesn't know how to do it without hurting her. His fear of monsters has driven him to become a monster himself.
It makes me think of Kali's speech to El:
"I decided to play the part [of a monster]. To stop hiding. To use my gifts against those who hurt us."
In Billy's world, as in Kali's, the only way to survive is to play the part. And just like Kali tries to teach El this lesson, he's trying to teach it to Max.
--
Okay wowwww, my answer got even longer than I expected. 😅 I'll end it there and pick it up again in a reblog or stand-alone post. So keep an eye out for that. ✌️
when a film or tv show takes place somewhere where you have been, it is your sacred duty as viewer to say “i’ve been there” every time you recognize a place
No because pride and prejudice isn't "I changed myself for you so you would love me back." It's "your blatant rejection and disdain for me made me realize things about myself no one had ever been bold enough to tell me so I sat down and evaluated all my behavior patterns and why they came about and came to the realization myself that I had to work on myself. Also I don't expect you to love me now that I'm a work in progress, so I'm just going to do nice things for you because I don't like seeing you hurt." No wonder P&P fans refuse to settle.
And it is also not "now that you have proven yourself to be less of an asshole I will give you the second chance you deserve." It's "you were rude to me once, so I was very ready to believe the worst about you. But now you're opening up and I realise that, while you definitely have flaws that you need to work on, they are different and less fundamental flaws than what I thought. So I'm going to sit back and reassess on what I actually see and not just what confirms my preexisting bias. And in doing so I realise that at your core you are a very good person."
i love dean cause someone will be like hey remember when cas did some genocide? dean’s like well we all make mistakes. he’s just a little guy. cmon. and then cas lies to him about something and dean is like so you’re basically telling me you hate me and im worthless and i should kill myself. fuck you.
yousharknotpass
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2087
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dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
areudirty
