GUYS, BYLER WON IN SEASON 4 By @taylorb6312 on Tumblr & Twitter DISCLAIMER 1: THIS IS A SHIPPING THEORY. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. DISCLAIMER
Okay, it's been almost a week and a half, and I've finally finished analyzing what happened in Volume 2 of Stranger Things 4. And it's really not as bad as what people are making it out to be.
the more time i spend in the mcr/fiat_ fanbases the less comfortable i get with able-bodied fans talking about stomachaches as a breakup album, and at this point even the “jokes” i see are in pretty poor taste. this would be less of an issue if the majority of the fanbase recognized and celebrated stomachaches as disability art, but this unfortunately isn’t the case and as a disabled person i gotta say it’s pretty fucking ableist.
stomachaches is about a lot of different topics; there’s no denying that. many of the songs are specifically about frank processing mcr’s band breakup or potentially personal breakups he went through at various points in his life. it’s also about mental illness, love, fears, loss, legacies, and self worth. all of these themes (and more) are prominent throughout the album, but to pretend as if those things are in any way equivocally important to its core disability narrative is incredibly naive and reductive.
i realize some people might not be aware of this, but the album itself was born out of one of the most difficult chronic illness flareups frank has had. he described the creative process for stomachaches as staying in his basement for months on end and writing down any scraps of ideas that came to mind while he was there, just so he would have something to do and something to show for it. he initially never intended to create or release a complete album, but his wife encouraged him to put it out there because she knows how happy music and performing makes him. erasing the main reason for stomachaches’s inception isn’t just ableist, it’s also poor reading comprehension of a fairly indiscreet work.
while stomachaches does explore depression/mental illness quite well, i need able-bodied people to understand that the same mental illnesses manifest quite differently for physically disabled people. refuting feelings of existential uselessness isn’t so easy when you objectively are unable to “contribute to society” in a way that’s socially acceptable or take care of yourself/your loved ones. frank exploring his own feelings of uselessness, believing he has no [perceived] personal worth after losing the one thing that gave him value (and therefore “the right” to exist in this world), and losing his support system (band, family, friends) after becoming isolated and unable to take care of himself/his family all take on a VASTLY different meaning when told through the lens of a physically disabled person. you actually can’t categorize these specific feelings/ideas as broader mental illness without the context of a physical illness impeding recovery, or even without challenging yourself on what “recovery” looks like for someone who will always experience physical limitations no matter what. tragician, neverenders, smoke rings, and guilt tripping are possibly the best examples of this concept, although nearly every song on the album plays around with this. here are a few select lines from some of the aforementioned songs that help illustrate this idea:
Tragician: “I'm sick of having you depend on me / Cause I'll let you down like I always do” + “Through all the times we've tried / I could never be what you needed of me / But I wish I were”
Smoke Rings: “You can't cure me / Drugs can't kill me / Love won't save me from myself” (strained coughing)
Guilt Tripping: “My body's weak / It gave up on me / This time I don't think I will get out from / What I'm underneath” + “I've felt so bad for so long / I'm scared I'm fine”
despite all of this, frank isn’t asking you to feel sorry for him, and he’s certainly not asking for you to turn his story into an inspiring tale of overcoming adversity. he’s asking you to see him exactly as he is, challenge yourself in being open to a specific type of grief you may not have personally experienced before, and feel even a fraction of the physical pain this album was born out of there with him. he invites you to join him on his journey and come out of it understanding a little more about who he is outside of being the rhythm guitarist from mcr. not because that isn’t important to him—it’s so, SO unbelievably important to him, and it’s the reason for much of the emotional pain he describes on stomachaches—but because he’s always been more than that. he’s a complete person with thoughts and feelings and dreams who happens to have an incredibly debilitating illness, and that’s shaped his life in ways most people would never think of until he put it out there for everyone to see. all i’m asking is for able-bodied fans to remember and consider this in your stomachaches interpretations, because frank hasn’t shied away from this part of his life and it shows a serious problem with ableism in a fanbase that largely refuses to acknowledge that.
the contrast between volume one being so interesting and well written and volume two feeling like a hastily written fever dream fanfic is so startling, it felt like i wasn't even watching the same season
i have much to say about mike, he was my fav character s1&2 and it's like if i dont recognize him DD: will be posting about this soon bc it actually annoys me
it isn’t about the ships at this point, it’s about queer characters’ feelings being used to ‘uplift’ the straight couple’s relationship.
as a queer person myself, will’s car scene has me sobbing all day. all day. and i know it’s “just a tv show” but honestly? it makes you believe that this is the most you’ll get. treating a queer character as a plot device and having them suffer, be ignored and left out is actually heartbreaking. we all know they can do better than this
is it just me having wayy too high expectation or was this season...not good ??
of course, SPOILER WARNING FOR VOL. 1 AND 2 OF STRANGER THINGS 4 !!!
im thinking and looking back at parts of the season and- so many inconsistancies plot holes and like just overall confusion ?? like forst that eddie is a super senior- but the missing poster shows that he's 17 ? or how when will gave mike the painting, mike didn't even think about how el said in one of the letters that will was painting something and he wouldn't let her see it ?? that she thought the painting was for a girl ?? or how nancy, steve and robin showed like 0 emotion after eddie died ?? dustin was the only one !!
idk, overall very confused by the ending, and just everything in the season. anyone else feel this way ??
its been awhile since i´ve interacted with the stranger things fandom, but GOD the brain rot has been ignited once more. will has powers and byler canon methinks
might come back to being active on here, i need somewhere to dump my brain rot
as my summer break started, hopefully stay tuned for more frequent oneshots !! :D i’m taking jus a couple of days to cool down from school in order to actually write, but mayhaps another oneshot soon ?? O:
look at me, not posting at ungodly hours of the night lol anyways
hey guys !! here’s a dadboyhalo and sapnap oneshot !!
yes, thsi is me letting my daddy issues show now SHHH AND ENJOY THIS
I'm Nothing Like You
“Bad!!” Sapnap yelled, backing away from his father when he saw him slowly get closer to him, hand coming between them. “This isn't like you!”
“Oh, really? Sapnap?” He raised his hands up in defense, anger visible in his eyes, “I’m just doing what’s best for everyone! I’m doing what’s best for you!”
Sapnap let out a laugh, shaking his head repeatedly, “Don’t- don’t come at me with that bullshit, Bad. You and I both know that what you’re doing is- is - is selfish!”
His father locked eyes with him. Sending fear down his spine as Bad stared him down with a look that could kill him in a matter of seconds. “Selfish? You think that what I’ve done is...selfish?” the space between them slowly trickled away as Bad got more and more angry. Scaring the son and making cowar more and more into the shell he hid behind.
“What have you done this entire time, Sapnap? You’re best friend turned out to be a war criminal who is now in prison, his lover is off sleeping to get away from the real world, one of your fiance’s disappears randomly; slowly seeming to lose himself each time he comes back, the other one goes radio silent and then reappears- challenging the thing I work for most.
“And what have you done? Your entire world is crumbling right in front of you!!” Bad grabbed his son’s shoulders, slightly shaking him as if he was asleep, “It’s all coming downhill for you, and you aren’t doing anything about it! I offer help. a way to fix your world, and I ask for one simple thing...and you can’t even do that.”
Sapnap simply stood there, his feet feeling frozen in place, tears pricking at his eyes the more he realized his father was right.
What was he doing? He’s simply been either running away from his problems or ignoring them, acting as though nothing was happening. Like nothing was going wrong in his life. When in reality, almost everything is wrong. “Bad- “
“Listen, Sap,” he let go of Sapnap’s shoulders, breathing in and fixing his composure before he continued speaking, “I know that can be overwhelming. Believe me! I know how it feels!” Bad ruffled with Sapnap’s hair, knowing how much he liked it as a child, “trust me, The Egg can fix all your problems...all you have to do, is join The Egg. That’s all you have to do…”
Sapnap turned to the tower, eyeing the red vines that surrounded it. Contrasting thoughts running through his head the more he thought about The Egg, Bad, his fiance’s, his friends- it all did seem overwhelming. But was it worth giving his mind and life over to some egg? Was it worth not knowing what would happen to the people he cared about because his mind would be occupied by something that wasn’t him?
If the egg really would grant him what he truly desires, then he wouldn’t need to worry about keeping everyone he loves safe. He wouldn’t need to keep running away from his problems- he’d just be handing them over to the egg…
He would just be handing them over to the egg…
Handing them over instead of just dealing with them…
Sapnap looked up at his father, shook his head, making Bad’s hand move away from his head and fall back to Bad’s side.
“No”
“No?”
He wiped the tear that accidentally fallen down, breathing in sharply before looking deep into Bad’s eyes, “No. I’m nothing like you. I don’t just hand my problems over to some stupid fucking egg to solve.”
“Sapnap.”
“When was the last time you asked me what I wanted? It’s always what you want!” Sapnap began to walk away, but came to a stop when Bad began talking again.
“You will regret talking like that about The Egg.” Bad put his sword back in the scabbard he had. Beginning to walk backwards towards the tower.
“You’re no son of mine.”
A sting went straight into Sapnap’s heart the moment those words left his fathers mouth. His hand went into a fist, nodding and finally leaving the other.
As he walked away, he felt the tears that managed to not come out start to spill from his eyes. Sapnap started to run when he deemed he was far enough from Bad’s vision.
He ran and ran, his head paying no attention to the time, and how heavy he was breathing, followed with the pain from his feet and chest. From time to time, his hands went up to his face to wipe away his tear stained cheeks. He was panting, gasping for air when he finally stopped running.
Structure after structure, memory after memory, Sapnap was straying farther and farther away from the Dream SMP. Paying no mind to his location at all until he could feel his legs and lungs give out.
Falling down to his knees, he hid his face in the palm of his hands, letting out choked out sobs. Sapnap looked around himself, feeling lost while his eyes scanned the snow filled biome he stopped at. His body felt hot in contrast to the coldness from the snowflakes that fell around him,
Feeling hot or cold was the last thing Sapnap could focus on. His mind was a kaleidoscope of all his problems. Flashing in front of him, full force with no stop in between for him to breathe. It was all too fast. Everything was too fast for him. No space to breathe. Only him. Alone.
“FUCK!!” He screamed, throwing a random fire charge at an innocent tree. Sapnap’s hands went to his head, to which he began to hit out of frustration. Kicking and shaking his head, he let out failed screams and cries.
He turned around and lied on the harsh freezing ground, colliding with his face that was scorching hot. The snow slowly began turning to water, mixing with his tears the more he cried. His arms longed for something- or someone to hold. So he hugged himself instead, thinking more and more about his fiance’s, best friends, and father.
“I want my life back!” he screamed in a whisper to himself, “I want my dad...I want Quackity, Karl, George, Dream, Bad, Skeppy, Punz- I want them all back!!” Sapnap’s hand unwrapped itself from his waist, only to hit the snow in front of him. Making it splash on his face, upsetting him furthermore.
“S-Sapnap?...”
Sapnap hid against his fists, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone. He shook his head and pushed it further into the melting snow, feeling no energy in talking.
“Sap...it’s me - it’s Quackity…”
Following the voice, his head lifted up, feeling lightheaded as he tried collecting his thoughts. “Quack?’
Quackity dropped the backpack he was carrying, he knelt down in front of Sapnap’s head and softly raised his hand, asking for permission to even get close to him. When the crying boy nodded, Quackity carefully placed his hand on top of Sapnap’s head, running his hands through his lover's hair. “Do you need a hug?”
Sapnap nodded quickly.
Understanding, he brought Sapnap closer to him, hugging him tightly. Quackity softly blew a breath to Sapnap’s forehead, knowing it helped him calm down. He looked up at Ossium and back down to Sapnap, kissing the side of his head as he continued petting it soothingly. “Hey, Sap, you want to go home?”
just finished writing this thing, lol, sorry about the lack of posts, writers block rlly said "fuck u alex lmaooo"
but anyways, heres a dnf thing lmao
Dream sighed, leaning against his chair as he looked at the ‘Go Live’ button on his screen. He could see the chat going crazy with messages like “WILL HE SRTEAM?!?!?” or “HELLO??? DREAM I MISSED YOU”, which were endearing to him. It brought a smile on his face to know he was able to make hundreds of thousand of people’s days better by just streaming.
The button went red. His livestream started.
After a couple of seconds, Dream cleared his throat and greeted his audience, “hello.”
He smiled at the surge of hello’s, smiley faces, and overall positivity his chat radiated, “uh, hello. Hello!” He moved around his chair and moved his hair from his face, tapping on his desk and reading the chat as fast as he could. “Um, decided to stream today. I have the time, and decided, why not?”
The chat was very happy to see Dream streaming, since the blonde didn’t really stream that often. He’d appear in other people’s streams and videos, but not his own content.
‘Thank you good sir for streaming, you have made my day better’.
“Aww,” Dream started up minecraft, covering his mouth with his hand as he read the dono again. “Glad I can make your day better, that’s like, the point of my content...thank you.”
-
“Bye!” he ended stream and looked at the time, cursing himself for streaming above two hours again. He raided Ranboo, stayed until Ranboo noticed and thanked him for the raid. Leaving when he realized he somehow missed a call from George.
Leaving the stream, he went on Discord and called George again, wondering why he had called Dream in the first place.
“YOU ARE DUMB. YOU ARE DUMB! YOU ARE DUMB! YOU ARE DUMB! YOU’VE JUST BEEN PRANKED!” George immediately left the call.
Confusion wasn’t even close to how Dream felt. He left out a small laugh, “oh that fucker better get back…” he mumbled to himself, calling him once again on Discord.
The british man answered after three rings, his laughter filling Dream’s headphone, “Oh my,” his own laugh caught him off. Dream could just easily picture George laughing to himself, alone in his room with his RBG lights he somehow refused to use instead of the green screen.
“You’re such an idiot,” Dream chuckled to himself, shaking his head as he leaned his arm against his desk, “you know that right?”
“Oooh Dream called me an idiot oh my god!”
“George!”
“Dream!” George dragged out, pronouncing the ‘r’ as a ‘w’ instead.
He rolled his eyes, looking at his monitor, then up at his webcam. Of course, he still hasn’t used it for streams or anything, it was mostly there for times like these with George. “What do you want, George?”
“I just got bored, Quackity is planning something for a stream tomorrow, Sapnap said he was going out somewhere right now?” George questioned.
Nodding, Dream confirmed it and said he wanted to get some more manga, or whatever he had said. “So you’ve chosen me to bother?” his eyes wondered to the bottom right corner of the screen, frowning as he remembered what time it was for George.
“I’ve got nothing better to do, so why not?”
Dream looked back at George’s profile picture, “George.”
“What?”
His eyes widened, as if George could see him, “Isn’t it like, almost one in the morning for you?”
George went silent, some ruffling of papers going on his side of the screen, “I mean, yeah- but I’m not tired! I wanna talk to you Dream.”
“Well,” Dream rolled up his sleeves, leaning against his desk once again amd looking around his set up, “can’t really argue with that incredible reasoning- “
“But with facecam…”
Silence filled the air once again. Dream’s eyes went up at his webcam, and back to George’s profile picture.
“Okay”
“What?”
Dream made sure his camera was ready to go, somehow feeling nervous turning his camera on, even though he’s done it before with George. Biting his lip with his mouse key over the camera option, he finally clicked on it. Smiling when he saw George’s webcam on.
His finally loaded, immediately feeling weird by looking at himself. “This is weird.” he said to hijmself, moving his hair and playing around with it, “how do you guys do it?”
Shrugging, George smiled, looking at Dream through his monitor, “i don’t know, all I know is that when you face reveal, the fans are definitely going to pop off with the edits.” he laughed and looked back down.
“What- What do you mean?”
“They always pop off with like, those cool edits, and they’re especially going to pop off with edits for you.” George went quiet as he reached the end of the sentence, avoiding Dream’s webcam in fear of making things awkward. “Y’know, because they’re all amazing editors…”
Dream agreed that the stans were amazing editors, but his mind wandered off by its own. He began to think about how the world is like currently, with covid and things. He’s glad that things seem to be getting better, Dream only wished that it could get better faster.
He wanted to meet fans, travel the world more, meet the rest of the Feral Boys and everyone from the SMP. Most of all, he really wanted to meet George. Meeting George was definitely what he wanted to do first. Just to finally get to see him in real life, and not through a Discord call like the two of them have been doing for the longest tme.
“What are you thinking about?’
Immediately getting pulled from his thoughts, he and George looked at each other through their screens. “Huh?”
‘You’re thinking about something,” George rested his head on the palm of his hand, “you have this look on your face you always make when you’re thinking about something…” he pointed out, smiling when he saw the blush rise on Dream’s face. “You like- have your tongue slightly poking out- and your eyebrows they like... like furrow a bit, y’know?” his hand made a gesture as he pointed to his own eyebrows.
Dream’s mind got clouded as he looked at George, the want- no, the need to just see him in person grew as the seconds went by. “Thinking about...the covid stuff, and how uh, we could meet for the first time,” his foot tapped rhythmically on the wood floor, feeling himself grow more and more shaky. “Y’know, like we- we could’ve met if covid wasn’t a thing.”
He nodded and took a sip from the water bottle he had nearby, “yeah- sadly covid had to ruin that, and countless other things for people…”
“Yeah…” that made Dream think more, “I wish we could be together…” he sighed, leaning against his chair, heart breaking as he saw George’s face sadden.
“Hey, when we meet, you promise to like- show me around Florida? We can go to…” George’s eyes wandered around his room, trying to come up with a place in Florida, “I-I dont know...a beach maybe?”
Dream let out a soft laugh, nodding and already imagining showing George the beach, and then the playground he used to play in. “I can take you to a park, tell you about how I accidentally kicked a kid’s arm in elementary.”
Immediately stifling a laugh, George’s hand covered his mouth, shaking his head. “God- does the park have a swing set? I love swing sets.”
“Yeah!” he sat up and began to move his hands around. “And like, you get the perfect view of a sunset…”
The words went through George’s ear and out the other as he imagined that scenario. Smiling to himself as he pictured Dream holding his hand while on the swing set, laughing together about stupid childhood memories only the two of them knew because they had told each other. Probably getting off the swing set and chasing each other around, their feet becoming too tired to hold themselves up so they decide to lie down on the grass and look up at the stars, forgetting the distance they had between them. Only thinking about that moment only. Their heart and souls staying there in that second with each other.
“Dream?”
“George?”
The two looked into the monitor, feeling connected to one another, but the only thing separating them being the screens between them. Wishing nothing but to be able to just simply reach through the screen and hold each others hand. If anything, just for a single second could be enough for them.
“I love you” George said, a soft yawn following behind him.
The blond smiled, looking deep into George’s brown eyes, “I love you too, George.”
“Good.” the tired one sleepily said, rubbing his melatonin filled eyes and yawning once more, “you better.”
“You better go to sleep, idiot.” Dream looked at the time once more, converting his timezone to George’s, “you need your rest.”
Finally nodding, George gave Dream a thumbs up and waved goodbye, “Bye Dream, goodnight sleepyhead…”
“Goodnight George.”
The sound of George leaving the call rang in his headphones. Leaving him alone. He turned off his webcam and left the call as well. Feeling blue, knowing it would be awhile until he actually got to hold George in his arms, but feeling happy knowing that George wanted that too.
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