Hi rose!!! đ€đ it's been so long đ„ș I hope you've been having a good summer!! ty for the ask hehe!
I'm rewatching stranger things (for some reason) right now so here's a long snippet from a fic I started that would take place mid- and post-season 4. It was planned to go back and forth between prior to the season and post season canon divergence and focuses on a kind of friendship/mentorship between Max and Eddie since they were neighbors :)
Mostly this was an excuse to dive into Max's headspace and how she was dealing with Billy's death and how she might react to losing Eddie (spoilers sorry lmao). Snippet below the cut!!
Moving takes two full days. They donât even have that much shit, but slimming everything down from their three bedroom to whateverâll fit into their single-wide takes forever. Her momâs still clinging to the hope that her stepdad isnât gone, and it makes her reluctant to add anything to the donation pile that her dearest Neil might come back for. Like heâll miss his old Monkees record and remember that the two of them exist on his way back to Hawkins to pick it up.
It makes Max hate him, for what he did to her mom. It makes her hate herself even more, for being glad heâs out of their lives.
In the beginning it hadnât been so bad. Her stepdad knew how to put the charm on anyone, for a little while. Heâd taken her skateboarding, said he wanted to spend some time with his new step-daughter. He took her and Billy to the movies once, but Billy wanted to see The Swarm, and threw a tantrum when Neil told them Susan said no.
The cracks started to show after that.
Ungrateful boy. You ruined your sisterâs day. Weâre not going home until you fix it, hear me?
Billy had cried and shouted until his dad knocked him upside the head enough that he finally just looked mad.
He'd apologized to Max, bought her ice cream with his allowance, but he hadnât looked any less angry. She can hardly remember a time after that when he looked at her with anything other than resentment.
Except maybe last summer.
She hates thinking about it, but it shows up in her dreams more often than not.
Sometimes itâs Billy dying, exactly like it happened. Sometimes she moves quicker, sheâs there in time to help him, and he dies anyway; that same look of resentment in his eyes. You didnât even try did you? He taunts her until her alarm sounds or the throbbing in her skull finally rouses her.
Theyâre gone, both of them, like she wanted. But theyâre still here.
â
The neighborâs dog is barking again. Max has a feeling theyâve given up on feeding it all together. Maybe they figured if it wasnât dead by now it must be getting food somewhere else. Or maybe they up and left, didnât care to clean out the trailer or take the dog to a shelter. She hadnât heard anybody talking about the Millers moving, but then, she guesses, she wouldnât. Nobody gives a shit when you disappear from Forest Hills.
Sheâs got meatloaf for him tonight. Not the best, but her mom slathered the top with ketchup and that had made it go down a little easier.
âHey, hey there, sorry Iâm a little late,â she whisper-speaks.
The muttâs wagging his tail and jumping at the fence, so she considers herself forgiven.
Itâs getting colder at night now. It feels like it barely turns to September before the chill sets in. Max pulls her jacket tight around her body, and warms her free hand under the back of her knee; switching when the hand holding the plate gets too red with cold.
âBuddy.â
Max jumps. She whips her head over to see a dark, lanky figure hovering by the trash one trailer down. The Munson Boy, her mom calls him. Max hasnât seen him much, other than when his van screeches in past 11 just as sheâs drifting off to bed. Lucas hangs out with him sometimes, she knows. But she thinks that has more to do with them being in the same club than actually being friends.
He lifts the lid, drops something small into it and shoves his hands into his pockets, sauntering a little closer to the fence Max is kneeling in front of.
âWhat?â she asks.
âThe dog.â He nods his head to the ratty thing. âMiller calls him âBuddy.â Seems kinda stupid for a dog he barely lets in the house but what do I know?â He smirks at Max then. âYouâre Maxine, right?â
âMax.â
He holds out his hand, âEddie.â
Max stands, but doesnât take his hand. âI know,â she says. âYou play Hellfire with Lucas.â
âOh shit, you know Sinclair?â
âWhat are you doing out here?â she asks. Not touching that question.
Eddie holds up his hand, thumb and first finger pinched together and mimes smoking. âLittle nightcap.â
-
end
I do have a bit more of this one written hehe but it's unfinished! Like I said in this version he does die, but I think I probably would have brought him back somehow? Never got to that part so who knows haha
Nobody cared but I am posting more of this bc I like it ASDKFJ continued below the cut!
One Thursday in October theyâre sitting in their usual spot behind Eddieâs trailer. Max tried to ignore the way the wind was biting at her. Forest Hills is flat, and trailers are few and far between so it always whips across the grass a little faster than it did at her old house.
âBe right back,â Eddie says, passing Max the joint and stumbling inside for a minute.
He comes back out with a white crew neck. Raisin Some Dust! is splashed across the front, Max raises an eyebrow. Eddie rolls his eyes, but extends his arm to hold it out to her. Itâs only a few yards to her trailer but, what the hell. Max takes the sweatshirt and throws it on. Itâs cold in that way that clothes sitting at the back of a drawer get when they havenât been worn in a long time.
âI have a boyfriend, you know,â Max says when theyâve both settled back into their chairs.
Eddie smiles, takes a long drag. âYeah?â He says after he blows the smoke out. âMe too.â
âIâm serious.â
âSo am I.â
Max whips her head to him then, scrutinizing.
âYouâre kind of scary, you know that?â Eddie says, scratching at his cheek.
âYouâre not bullshitting me?â
âNo bullshit.â
Max doesnât have anything to say to that, so she just leans back in her chair. Eddie looks at her after a moment, then holds out the joint to her. Sheâs not sure if he means it as a challenge but just in case she takes it and pulls a long drag. Eddie laughs. She snuffs it out when he doesnât take it back.
âWhyâd you tell me that?â she asks.
Eddie shrugs. âDunno. I guess against my better judgement I figured I could trust you.â
Max nods and pulls the sleeves of his sweatshirt down to cover her knuckles.
âI wonât tell anybody,â she says. It comes out a little more meek than sheâd like, but sheâs glad she says it.
Eddie just smiles, rocking back onto the hind legs of his chair. âItâs cold as shit. Iâm going in.â
the thing about the other bennet sister that i dislike is that it's not really about mary bennet, the character from the page - it's an audience's projection onto her from a modern lens. mary is annoying. she is written that way on purpose. she is not ignored by the family - over and over again in the book, in fact, austen makes a point to mention that mary is "too busy" to join her family in activities they do together - and she certainly isn't shy. like!!!
here she is insisting on performing at a party in an effort to quite blatantly show off ("Elizabeth was in agonies" lmfao):
just to pull the most significant line: "such an opportunity of exhibiting was delightful to her" (emphasis mine)
here she is saying that most girls are boring and basic and thus uninteresting to her:
here she is reacting to lydia's elopement with a moral judgment on female virtue:
(for context, this is literally right after they find out lydia's run off and everyone's freaking out about where she is and if they've married or not)
and here's her ending, in which austen basically says that now that she's the last unmarried daughter she kind of has to socialize more, but now that her sisters aren't around to make her feel insecure she's fine with it:
(all text from the gutenberg project)
and i mean. there's nothing wrong with changing a character for your own purposes when you do spin-off/adaptations/reimaginings like this. but i think it's a fundamental misreading of the text to claim that mary is the overlooked, ignored sister, because she's not as pretty or charming as her sisters. austen is very clear that mary herself knows that she's not as conventionally beautiful, and as a result has wildly overcompensated by competing with everyone around her to constantly be the most intelligent in the room. mary is, in her own way, as rude as lydia and kitty. she's portrayed as rather obtuse, insensitive, insufferable. and she's definitely not quiet or shy, which is where the other bennet sister really loses me lol.
it's like the "i'm not like other girls" trope blown up and portrayed as empowering, but that's really still what it is, at its heart. and i, personally, just find that rather boring. like if it were me, i'd want to read a love story about this mary, who's purposefully oblivious to social graces and sort of impolitely blunt and judgmental and antisocial. she's great fun, when she shows up randomly to just say something incredibly insensitive and then disappear again - it's really so funny.
and this is one of my favorite moments, also:
mary thinking that mr. collins would be a fine husband to have because he's definitely smarter than her sisters, but he'd have to study very hard and catch up to her level so he can have a hope to be as smart as she is. like, that's hysterical. she's fucking hilarious. but also think about that for a second: austen is comparing mary to mr. collins, but she's saying mary is worse, lmfao
of course this is a very pointed satire of a very context-dependent sort of personality, which in regency novels are often referred to dismissively as "bluestockings." feminist scholars have debated mary bennet for a long time, over how to take this exaggerated portrayal of a female intellectual, and i think you're free to take your own reading of it from our modern perspective, about a young girl who's acutely aware of her beauty (or lack of it), and how she reacts to the culture she's raised in as a result. i think a feminist reimagining of mary would be amazing, but personally i don't think the way to do it is to round off her sharp edges and turn her into a poor sad neglected nerd girl. (like, if i can think of any direct parallel to mary, it's not elizabeth or charlotte, it's caroline bingley. you know, the other character who expresses her insecurity by projecting superiority constantly?) that's not at all who she is, and i don't think it's particularly empowering to sand down a female character into something more palatable in order to give her her own story. that, on principle, offends me a little.
anyway, that's why i don't like it, since a couple people have asked. no shade though i'm sure it's a very fun show and what room do i have to talk, i've been reading bodice-rippers about georgian-era batman all weekend
This is our most popular post and we've seen more than one person tag it as "unreality." We understand why one might think that but we assure you: it was not.
These facilities chew you up. They suck the life from you and grind your body to dust to extract every ounce of profit they can.
These places destroy the body, the mind, and the soul.
You can make a movie with where the only white character is a man named Ray Cism whose one line of his 16 seconds of screen time is âI seriously hate women and minorities.â and youâll find fifty bajillion reader x Ray Cism fanfics and renaissance style drawings of him with a halo of golden light
marauders/harry potter fans who "don't agree with jk rowling" are like if people loved the leopard mascot for the leopards eating peoples faces party so they wore all the merch and drew art of the mascot and talked about the leopard mascot all the time but don't worry! they don't support the leopards eating peoples faces party! they're just completely indistinguishable from people who do because they both love the leopard mascot and make loving the leopard mascot 99% of their personality, "why do people feel unsafe around me when i very clearly don't support the leopards eating peoples faces party?" says the person in the leopards eating peoples faces party merch (don't worry they bought it second hand so the leopards eating peoples faces party don't get any money from them)
you have to understand that my body does not work by default. âohhh so many medications means so many chemicals inside you. i could neverâ well if i did not take these things i would not be able to function. i respect and have made peace with the chemical. Get out of my face
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