I Bet The Dick Is Insane

teenage taylor dressed up in vintage ball gowns and was shamed by men in her personal life for not being mature and then she stopped the ‘fairytale’ stories in her head to try and prove herself. now she’s made her way back into the fairytale for a song about coming out of a relationship you didn’t feel appreciated in and learning to appreciate yourself, childlike tendencies and all

something something the trend and fear about not having wrinkles or lines on your face and doing pre emptive care to not look like you're aging. i can't wait to look my age when i get older. i want to look at an old scrape and remember how i was so busy talking that i lost control of my skateboard i want to look at and feel my hands and how i took care of myself and others with them. i want to have laughed and been so happy that i have lines around my eyes. my ancestors had their life tucked in scars wrinkles hair just their skin, i want that too. i want to look my age and look at my body that has the evidence of life because what else reason we have to even be here than to live

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.

Goodboy takes the train

Are you a "Mike pays special attention to how much Will talks" truther or a "Will is much more talkative around Mike" truther?

Today I'm here to talk about how from season one we are shown how Mike was forced to grow up and mature at a very young age given the dysfunctional dynamics of his family, the neglect he was put through and how he's been left to fence for himself as if he was an adult.

There's many scenes where Mike's attitude and behaviors make a contrast from Dustin and Lucas, even though they are exposed to the same situations. For example, when Hopper questions them and Dustin and Lucas start bickering over whether Mirkwood is a reference from the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, Mike is sitting in the middle trying to convince Hopper they can help as well and that they should be out there to find Will. This isn't because Dustin or Lucas don't care about Will as much as Mike does, but immediately we see Mike taking over the role of leader of the group with a much serious approach to the situation.

Where this is even more evident is at the beginning of Episode 2 when the guys bring El to Mike's basement and interact with her. Here is how that goes down:

Mike: "Is there a number we can call? For your parents?

Dustin: "Where is your hair? Do you have cancer?!"

Lucas: "Did you run away?!"

Mike: "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Lucas: "Is that blood?" *reaches out to touch the blood*

Then Mike stops Lucas saying he's freaking El out. When things get complicated over what to do with El, Mike immediately comes up with a plan for the next day so they all stay out of trouble and can go out there the next night to go and find Will.

Now, keeping in mind that these are twelve years old we are talking about, Dustin and Lucas' reaction to El make sense with how a kid could react. A bit of curiosity, a bit of hesitance and awe, asking questions like of El has cancer because her hair is buzzed and trying to touch the blood on her clothes. Mike, however, takes the approach I would expect from an adult, immediately asking for a number to contact and if the strange girl he found in the woods is okay or in trouble. Instead of giving into his curiosity and awe like Dustin and Lucas, Mike pushes that away and gets to the point in order to help El and learn more about the situation so he can understand how he can solve it.

Then when El tries to take off her clothes we again see this contrast. Dustin and Lucas freak out and turn away, both probably embarrassed and weirded out that a girl just tried to take off her shirt in front of them. And honestly, it makes sense for Mike to feel the same way, but he still instead reaches out to El to kindly stop her and show her the bathroom where she can change. He steps up in the situation and takes control of it. Then when El tells her she doesn't want the door closed, Mike is quick to learn how to communicate with her in order to make her feel comfortable around him (like a protective figure would).

Once Dustin and Lucas leave his house, Mike shows El where she will sleep and they sit down to talk. Now, this is an interesting part of their dynamic because THIS is the first time since meeting El that Mike allows himself to behave like a kid just like Dustin and Lucas had been acting before. When Mike sees El's tattoo he drops trying to control the situation like an adult would and reaches to touch the tattoo because he is a kid and he's never seen another kid with a tattoo, it's something new that surprises him and he acts on that surprise. And then El pulls away and Mike is quick to apologize and pull back as well, and just like that he's back on seizing control of the situation and acting like the grown up between them.

The next day we see Mike also allowing himself to behave more his age around El, showing him around and making impressions for her with his toys, but El is mostly uninterested going around on her own and looking around the house. (This because, in my opinion, El from the first moment is more interested in a parental/protector type of relationship with Mike since she doesn't know what a friend is and doesn't know that type of relationship can even exist. Then El learns about what a friend is but by then Mike has been pushed into a romantic type of dynamic with El by Lucas and Nancy). And then El sees Will's picture and she reveals she knows Will and saw him, and Mike is back on being the leader, the one that makes the plans and doesn't allow himself to be surprised over small things or get distracted with toys and games when his best friend is missing.

So, yeah. Mike has always been in a rush to grow up, but during the first and second season I see it more being an unconscious process for him that comes from being neglected by his family. Then, by season three, Mike takes an active role in wanting to grow up fast and leave all the "childish" things behind in order to fill his role as El's boyfriend.

It's interesting to think how running out of time is Mike's thing in ST, and how that's linked to Mike rushing through life as if he had no seconds to waste because he is either after something or something is chasing him.

I see how El exacerbates these feelings in Mike, that also link to him wanting to pretend to be someone else that's worthy of being with El, from season one when Mike tries to lie to El about the wound on his chin because he doesn't want El to know he gets bullied at school, to Mike wearing that outfit at the airport that's a knockoff of real brands and that, we know, is not his style at all.

Now, of course I HAVE to link this to Byler. And, well, just thinking how Mike was forced to mature at a really young age, how he's pushed into thinking he should be embarrassed about the things he enjoys, about how he thinks he has to pretend to be someone he's not in order to get the "normal" everyone seems to want. And how then there's Will, the one person that tells Mike things don't have to be like that, that on this the rest of the world is wrong because yes, they can stay in Mike's basement and play games for the rest of their lives, they can keep on enjoying their favorite board game, they can make plans to retire at a young age and play Nintendo for a living. Will tries to tell Mike that it is okay if he wants those things, that it's nothing he should avoid or feel ashamed of, that they don't have to stop being kids because the world and the Upside Down keeps making them soldiers, fighting battles they should've never had to fight.

Because Will wants all of that, and Mike wants it too. But Mike knows he's not supposed to. He knows he should want something different, something like what the rest of the people want because otherwise he'll be different. And for now, it is Will the one that's okay with being different because Mike is there, and Mike makes Will feel like it's okay being different, that he shouldn't feel like a mistake at all. And I think Mike has put so much effort into not being different, that he hasn't stopped to think that maybe it could be good, until season four happens and the van scene happens.

There's a TON more of this I wanted to write about but this will do for now.

Anyhow, love Mike Wheeler and how disturbed he's on the inside.

Women in Shakespeare

youth have a right to be educated about the world regardless of what their parents/caretakers believe. youth have a right to learn accurate information about the world for themselves, including information that allows them to disagree with their parents/caretakers. we have got to destroy this mindset that everyone under 18 is essentially sentient playdough for parents to mold however they want and its violating "parent's rights" to allow their children to be educated on basic facts of the world (like that queer people exist or that america is founded on genocide) because it would mean they lose the slightest bit of control over their child's reality. imo schools have a moral responsibility to protect youth's right to knowledge and freedom of thought over their parent's "right" to control everything they know. your children should be allowed to fucking disagree with you, and restricting their access to knowledge in order to prevent that is abuse.