I Want You Soooo Bad (a Carefree And Joyful Outlook Towards Life)

Mike “my boyfriend is mad at me I hope I die” Wheeler and Will “omg you’re so dramatic” Byers

boris: [putting out cigarette in the ash tray, hasn’t showered in 2 weeks, vomit on his shirt, black out drunk, calling popchyk slurs]

theo: the way boris leaned over, collarbones creating dark pools at the base of his neck. his nose a strong aquiline with the barest suggestion of having been broken like some ancient bronze statue of a greek boxer. he seemed to me like a divine being who had come to earth only by mistake, perhaps as a punishment for some heavenly crime or another. anyways, I tried writing a letter to pippa the other day but had nothing to say so I gave up.

A lot of people seem to cite Boris as the character who gets Theo into drugs and kind of brings about his subsequent drug addiction, but this is ignoring that by the time he meets Boris, almost every adult who is supposed to take care of him has already drugged him.

Page 111, "Mrs. Barbour had started giving me a little green pill called Elavil that she explained would keep me from being scared at night...(it strikes me now, though it didn't then, that Mrs. Barbour was well out of line by giving me unprescribed medication on top of the yellow capsules and tiny orange footballs Dave the Shrink had prescribed me.)"

His caretaker, Mrs. Barbour, teaches him that he should treat his grief with drugs. His mental health care team assigned by the state treats his grief with drugs (I think Xanax, which is pretty addictive.) Granted, he's in therapy at this time as well, and I'm not trying to malign the sometimes necessary decision to put minors on prescription drugs for mental health, but combined with Mrs. Barbour, it contributes to the sense that adults give him drugs for being sad.

Page 218, just a couple hours into his father's custody of him (and after his father and Xandra have already once let him get drunk), his father and Xandra see he's scared in the airport, link it (partially correctly) to his trauma from the museum explosion, and conclude:

"Why don't you give him one of those, you know."

"Got it," said Xandra smartly, stopping to fish in her purse, producing two large white bullet-shaped pills. One she dropped in my father's outstretched palm, and the other she gave to me.

By the time Theo meets Boris, every adult responsible for him since his mother's death has seen his grief and trauma, and told him, through their actions, that medication is the answer.

When Boris gives him alcohol and drugs, he's doing it for similar reasons, (page 333-- "I slightly wished we had picked another night to take them, but Boris had insisted it would make me feel better." and page 351, offering him coke, "It'll make you feel better!") But Boris is about the same age as Theo, and, like Theo, has learned to self-medicate from the adults around him. Out of everyone who offers Theo drugs (actual prescriptions from Dave aside in this point), he's the only one who believably doesn't know better.

But one key difference is that Boris, of all the people who give him drugs, is the only one who really engages with and witnesses Theo's grief and trauma. Getting drugs from Mrs. Barbour and from his father are both intended to dampen his outward symptoms because they are inconvenient to others. It's to help him push everything down. When Boris gives Theo alcohol, it actually brings out his true feelings, and Boris never seems inconvenienced by this or unwelcoming of it (page 280-281, "Sometimes, in the night, I woke up wailing...Happily, Boris never seemed annoyed or even very startled when I woke him").

So, while Boris imparts bad drug and alcohol use habits to Theo, he's not the one who gets him started self-medicating. Of all the people around Theo, he has the most limited resources by far (financially, psychological coping mechanism-wise, etc). In fact, he needs help himself that he never really receives. Despite this, he's the only character who really hears Theo's experience and offers all the resources he does have to help.

I'm so miserable that I can relate to a sad gay paranoid kid trying to convince himself he's not gay while getting high with his friend.

open.substack.com

Your phone is why you don't feel sexy

Eros, desire, instinct, eternity

Eros—carnal desire—is an embodied experience, and our phones do a terrific job of getting us out of our bodies and into our heads. In the digital age, we often neglect our bodies entirely, and use them merely as a way to transport our heads to meetings. (The rise of rave culture and physical fitness programs since the 1990s is perhaps evidence that we feel the need to fight against this.) No one feels connected, present, alive, embodied, or sexy when they’re on their phone all day.

And our phones don’t just move us out of our bodies, but they have become something of a second brain, a second body. You don’t have to remember something if you can record it, photograph it, or type it into your notes app. You don’t have to look good in person if you look good on Instagram. Our phones not only hollow out our true selves, but are starting to replace us.

First time I’ve been tagged in something like this! Thanks!

1. I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain - Andrew Bird ft. Phoebe Bridgers

2. Like a Villain - Bad Omens

3. Damn! - Rex Laurent

4. My Body is a Cage - Arcade Fire

5. TEARS! - 5sos

Tagged: @donatart

Just for fun! I just tagged my one mutual who hasn’t done this

list 5 songs you like ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ

ty for the tag @fear-is-truth :p

clay pigeons ۶ৎ Micheal Cera

spvtw ruined a generation of women ۶ৎ negative XP

pepper ۶ৎ butthole surfers

tuesday ۶ৎ Evan peters

why do I cry ۶ৎ Margo Guryan

no pressure - @bl0odguy @lisboncy @lostreverb @lonelygworl @casimirsstache @slut4evanpeters @vrtualvr @vi0l3tluvsu or anyone that just wants to do it :3

but! we! cannot! simply! sit! and! stare! at! our! wounds! forever!

i want a penis but also i would get a boner from a stiff breeze. i would get hard from biting a particularly crisp apple

When Mike packs up his room to move out of Hawkins with Will at the end of ST, I want the one way sign to point out of the closet as a wink and a nod that yes, we did all of that on purpose and some of you got it, congratulations, we made this show for you.

u used to be able to put a dvd in your computer. and then u could watch it