#joyce horowitz

[queenbruv]

joyce and lonnie fascinate me. the fact that she called him. in season 1, after he was already out of their life (and we never find out whether he left or was kicked out, but the evidence is pretty strong that he was the one who left, considering he has a new girlfriend), when she felt like there was no one she could turn to and no one listening to her, joyce called lonnie. and it wasn't the first time she called him in the season, either!! she called him about will and he didn't even bother returning the call. but when she called asking him to come, he did.

i just want to do an autopsy on what happened there. obviously lonnie sucks (and if you go by first shadow canon, he has Always Sucked) but he's still a whole guy. he had a whole relationship and marriage and two children with joyce. what the hell went on there. did joyce see something in him that no one else could? did she get knocked up young and feel pressured to marry him? was he more tolerable before he had children who didn't live up to his expectations? lonnie was and remains a terrible father, but he must think he cares about his family. he came when joyce called. he talks about jonathan visiting more and tries to parent him even when jonathan repeatedly dismisses and berates him. clearly some part of him "cares" about his family, he just doesn't actually care about them, he cares about the imaginary versions of them that he's constructed in his head who rely on and look up to him. he doesn't care that will doesn't like baseball, he doesn't care that jonathan doesn't want him there, he doesn't care that joyce is better off without him. he chooses to believe he is valuable and important to the byers family unit. why? how does he convince himself of that, when joyce and jonathan have both made it clear it isn't true?

he must have had the occasional moment of being sweet or charming or seemingly a good father, right? because joyce isn't an idiot or a pushover, we know this. but we also know that joyce knows that lonnie called will gay slurs and had no idea where jonathan had wanted to go to college since age six. so there must have been something about lonnie. or maybe it was something about joyce. obviously the relationship was dysfunctional, but then, all throughout season 1 we keep hearing that joyce has "had anxiety problems in the past," that she's been "a few steps" from "falling off the edge" for "awhile now," and also that something runs in her family ("remember your aunt darlene?") - maybe paranoia, maybe schizophrenia, maybe hallucinations, maybe just severe anxiety, but something. jonathan knew it, and lonnie did too.

we meet joyce in season 1 at a point in her life when she generally believes she and her sons are better off without lonnie. ("oh, brother, i have not needed you for a long time.") but we don't meet her at a point where she's sure about that. because she did call him, still. at her lowest. and he, thinking finally he could step in and restore some order and normalcy to the shitshow that had become of the byers name since he left, came to her. maybe a part of him came for the money. but i think a part of him felt so self-important, too. and on both counts his motivations for coming back to hawkins were not related to actually caring about joyce or jonathan. his twelve-year-old son died and he took that as an opportunity to insinuate himself back into their lives. telling himself yes, it took a tragedy, but they had realized their mistake in letting him go. that they were finally willing to accept that boys need a father to model masculinity and a woman needs a husband to keep her crazy quiet. i would never justify lonnie byers, but i can't deny his characterization intrigues me. he's the best kind of villain because it is so clear he think he's right, and that makes him suck even worse.

did joyce stay with lonnie so long because he was already used to her "crazy"? was it inertia? did he convince her that no one else would love her if not him? did he make her believe that when the whole world turned on her, only he would be there? because the whole world turned on her, and she called him. and i want! to know! why!!!!!!!!!

[keykey613]

Joyce ✨Maldonado✨

So Joyce has probably Spanish/Portuguese heritage! And apparently it's also a Sephardic surname, so now I present to you my new headcanon: Sir William es sefaradi 🥰✡︎

[rqnanced]

am i tripping or was joyce’s maiden name horowitz

[nates-oreos]

stranger things character and their flags (imo!)

part 1!

[writingjoycebyers]

I come with three wounds

- a Joyce Byers GIF songfic -

Llegó con tres heridas:

la del amor,

Love was not romantic dates to Joyce, not Valentine’s Day, not cheesy cinema dates or red roses. Not anymore. Love were her arms around him, tight and strong but yet so exhausted and weak. Love was Enzo‘s, love was hope.

la de la muerte,

death had crept quietly into Joyce’s life when she had buried the allegedly dead body of her youngest son, quiet and serious, but ripping her apart on the inside. Death was not funerals or black clothes or flowers left on a grave. Death was everyday she thought of him, death was seeing visions of him at night. But suddenly - death was also hope.

la de la vida.

Life had been this current up and down for Joyce, childhood, her teenage years, then Lonnie, the boys. The boys. The boys were her life. Her life between a constant battle against a man who did not fight, a man who did not care. Lonnie was not her life, Melvald‘s was not her life, not even Hawkins. Hope was life. Others needed air to live or water, some needed sleep. And when Will vanished, all Joyce had needed to survive had been hope. Ever since that her trip had not ended. She was alive.

Con tres heridas viene: la de la vida, la del amor, la de la muerte.

Con tres heridas yo: la de la vida, la de la muerte, la del amor.

Song by Joan Baez: „Llego con tres heridas“ (I don’t take credit for the song!)

[jxpper]

Hopper: Honey?

Joyce: What?

Hopper: Where is my uniform?

Joyce: What?

Hopper: Where. Is. My. Uniform?

Joyce: I, uh, put them away.

[Owls swarming around Eleanor Gilesspie’s head outside]

Hopper: Where!?

Joyce: Why do you need to know?!

Hopper, ripping through drawers: I need it!

Joyce: Uh-uh! Don’t you think about running off doing no derring-do. We’ve been planning this dinner for two months!

Hopper: The public is in danger!

Joyce: My evening is in danger!

Hopper: You tell me where my uniform is, Horowitz! We are talking about the greater good!

Joyce: ‘Greater good?’ I am your WIFE! I’m the greatest GOOD you are ever gonna get!

[bardbreakfast]

When Karen and Joyce first kissed Karen was wearing cherry chapstick and from then on the smell of artificial cherry always made Joyce’s stomach fill with butterflies

[serotoninking]

A snippet from a Jopper fic I’m working on

Hey, I’d really really appreciate some feedback on this from you guys, please and thanks. It’s obviously not done, and that’s not even all I wrote, but I want to see if this is a thing you guys would be into.

It started in school, that was when she noticed the comfortable feeling she got as she snuck out of class to meet him in the back, her cheeks heating up in excitement. Some would say that they were sneaking off to sleep with each other, that they were dating, that Jim Hopper and Joyce Horowitz were in love and going to get married when they got out of school, but that wasn’t the case at all. They found solace in each other without having to feel the other up. At the time, it was a friendship that they both needed, laughing together under the bleachers with cigarettes providing minimal heat in the type of cold that made their noses turn pink.

Maybe they were in love.

When school ended, Joyce went and married Lonnie Byers who had convinced her that she knew what love was, that love was what they had. It made sense at the time. Lonnie was the one that she dated for most, if not all, of the end of her high school career, then suddenly they had Jonathan in their life. That was love. The moment that that nurse had handed her their first born son, she knew what true love felt like, and it was a tiny baby boy who scrunched up his nose too much and whimpered as she cried and held him close. Those were the good times, that was when it was easy to convince herself that she was in love with her husband. They were good together.

It took a little longer for Jim to find Diane. After school, after he watched his best friend get married to a guy that he didn’t quite like, he had gone off to the war and spent his nights trying to remember the last words that he had ever told the people he had loved before he had been shipped off. When he did meet Diane, however, he knew that she was it. She was the one he wanted, and it was a whirlwind romance that he promised himself he wouldn’t screw up. New York had a way about making people from small towns feel like everything there was magical. Diane was magical. Then Sara was brought into their lives, and he knew for sure what true love felt like, and it was a tiny baby girl who had the lightest curls and loved to suck on her own fist. It was like everything in his world had fallen in place, and for a while, he had forgotten the small town of Hawkins and the people in it.

Joyce’s world had started to fall apart as their new addition to their family, a grinning boy who had the world’s brightest imagination had started to decide what he did and didn’t like in the world. Will was what Joyce felt like their tiny family needed, and Jonathan was so happy that his countless birthday wishes had finally worked and he had a brother, but Lonnie… well it started to become something he didn’t want any longer. They all could tell from a young age that Will wasn’t going to be the man that his father wanted him to grow to be. He loved bright colors and always talked about his best friend, Mike, who let him keep his yellow crayon when his own had broke and held his hand when he was scared, but they were innocent and didn’t know better. That didn’t stop Lonnie from shouting at his wife, like it was her fault. He started staying out later, sometimes even leaving his two boys alone while Joyce finished up her shift at work only to come home to find her five and nine year old eating cereal for dinner. That was the first time in awhile that she questioned whether or not the love that she held for the other man was real, or if she just let herself and her husband convince her so much that she had forgotten the truth.