thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.
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Ngl, I really think that these bylers that are crying 24/7 about "purity culture" or whatever, are playing dumb when they start with their "but Nancy and Steve were 16 and 17 in that scene of s1!!!1" like... We got introduced to these characters at that age and the people playing them were already adults. So yeah, sorry but I think it's easy to see why most viewers would be uncomfortable with a more sexual scene of Mike and Will and it's not automatically homophobia, I think that would be the case with any of the kids since we got introduced to these characters when they were 12 and the actors were babies as well. We literally saw those kids grow. And I'm not saying byler should only get to peck or hold hands, It'd be cool if they have their epic kiss or whatever, but Will hasn't even had his first kiss yet and some of these people are already talking about sex scenes, like... Be for real 😭
funny you should say that...because i've used the nancy was 15-16 in season one argument (last tag) before while also saying that i understand why people find the sex part of their sexualities uncomfortable to discuss. and i wanna reiterate that, again, i totally understand that people feel like they've seen them grow up etc etc and that they still think of the actors themselves as children even thought they're not anymore.
i don't think it's all homophobia because like you said, people would probably feel the same about lucas and max and discussions of sex (i don't know if anyone is discussing that because there's much less discourse to have there and you can't argue that people are homophobic if they disagree with you) but i don't think it would be justified either. the "but we knew the characters when they were little" argument makes me think me of an ancient disney channel/abc show that old people and girl meets world fans who watched it for the first time in the 2010s will know, boy meets world (1993-2000). classic comic of age show, look at these kids. and eric in the back (he's fifteen).
they're eleven at the start of the show and then, what happens in any coming of age story happens, you guessed it...
they grow up. this is them in the later seasons, when the main characters are still in high school i think. they grow up, they talk about sex and about having sex at prom in season five and then they don't have sex right away because they figure it's not the right time yet or something like that, and then they have sex later and get married, the details don't matter. but my point is, who watches a show for five seasons, over years and years and gets upset at the main characters having sex because "this is crazy they used to be children"? isn't that the point of coming of age stories that cover multiple years or that focus on the latter years of adolescence, that they're not children forever and that at one point the characters "come of age" which usually includes their first sexual experiences?
i don't think the having sex part is particularly important in stranger things but also it doesn't have to be for it to be portrayed (see jonathan and nancy), teenagers have sex, it's just the way the world works. i'm not advocating for sex scenes of any kind especially because stranger things isn't a show that features a lot of sex in general, the only "explicit" sex scene being nancy and steve in season one with cuts to barb dying, but i genuinely don't think the duffers would have any qualms about portraying teenage sexuality in general with the party. if they did, they wouldn't have included erica threatening lucas to tell dustin what she found under his bed (it wasn't the communist manifesto) and they wouldn't have had max looking at a shirtless steve for an amount of time that's supposed to make the audience laugh. it's been 7 years. if they do a time jump, the babies will be about 17, played by actors who will all be around 20, the age natalia was when filming season one. the characters are teenagers, babies grow up. it happens to the best of us. i get why people would find it uncomfortable and maybe i would find it uncomfortable too but i wouldn't be scandalized. the duffers had no problem having a child actor portray everything will goes through in seasons one and especially two, i really feel like sex is fine and...not traumatizing or hard to watch compared to every single thing will's gone through lol. and again, i'm not even expecting them to have sex lmao, but i wouldn't cry myself to sleep if they revealed that everyone in the party actually knows what sex is.
last question: do we have any indication that jonathan had talked to more than one other girl (the girl at the halloween party being the one girl i'm counting for him) before he got together with nancy. i'm just asking because of your last sentence, because if we don't he should have slowed down also😭
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3x11: Adam's Ribs
Dear Dad,
Remember that flu season back in ’32? When it felt like you were gone every night jumping to every single household with a kid in it because everyone all got sick all at once? And how it was after mom died but you decided that I was old enough to stay home alone, only for you to come back on that Tuesday to find me throwing up my guts all over the floor?
Good times. Terrible times, actually, but despite my pacifistic tendencies, I’d fucking kill to go through that again than the fresh hell that is my current hell. I nearly wrote you this letter from the latrines, which is terrible on multiple levels, especially considering I was actually looking forward to write to you this time.
I’ve said before that one of these days I’m finally going to snap, and even though I’m still in one piece, I’m not convinced that it’s an uncracked one. Eleven days. Eleven straight days of liver of fish, making our own damn never ending season of seafood up in Maine truly dwarf in size. Eleven straight days and I’m half convinced that each subsequent day was just the previous one’s leftovers! The fact that they’re serving us kidney at all blows my fucking mind, and over a week and a half of it for every meal has me half convinced that I’ve dreamt it all up.
They don’t tell you about how every grueling day feels like a dream, same motions, same food, same jokes, just different supporting actors underneath my scalpel.
On the seventh day God rested, and on the eleventh day Hawkeye Pierce fucking cracked. Like I said, there’s only so many days where a man can eat liver of fish. Trap and I made this ridiculous plan—honestly, dad, I didn’t think about it working or not. I just needed something to break up the monotony. Anything. ANYTHING.
You know the place in Chicago I told you about however many years ago? The one that had the best barbequed ribs in the entire country? Couldn’t remember the name at first, but it’s Adam’s Ribs.
Adam’s Goddamn Ribs.
A couple of pulled strings and a hell of a lot of favors somehow managed to bring us back to Chicago. Or I guess Chicago to us. It doesn’t matter- the only thing that mattered is that we somehow fucking managed to get Adam’s Ribs in the worst corner of all of Korea and Igor cooked them up and hell dad, they were the best damn things I think I’ve ever smelled in my life.
Course, ambulances poured in the second I had my hands on them, but it made for a hell of an OR session. That’s how they should be teaching speed for MASH surgeons. Nevermind the live rounds and constant shelling, just put the idea of tantalizing, edible food on a stick right above a surgeon and you’d get the fastest cutters in the West. East.
But, oh father, I know what you’re thinking now: why the reminder of the great flu season of 1932 when so far the only thing your dear child has spoken about has been spare ribs from the great state of Illinois?
Here’s where the story gets good. And by good, I mean fucking terrible.
Great OR session, by the way. Took out enough shrapnel out of intestines to build a full new bomb, and not a single patient lost. Igor reheated the ribs for me and Trap and we had what could only be described as the greatest midnight snack in the history of the entire war. Or not just in the war, but in the history of the entire world. We headed back to our bunks more full than after a Thanksgiving spread, and not even Frank’s sniveling could change a thing.
That is before a solid and conscience five minutes had passed.
Five minutes. Five lousy minutes of euphoria that just nearly made me forget about the terrible place that I’d been forced into. And then I spent the next hour and a half, throwing up every single bit of edible food. Made the worst flu pale in comparison, I’ll tell you that much. Couldn’t even make it to the latrine the first time, and I think I scared the wits outta Trapper since it probably sounded like I was vomiting up my organs right outside his side of the tent.
He’s a good man, Trap. Picked me up off the ground like you would’ve and helped me stumble to the latrines where I could continue throwing up every bit of goodness that I had managed to make for myself in this camp. Practically held my hair back like I was his girl, believe it or not.
I’m writing this letter from post-op, you know. Trap’s got himself convinced that I managed to get food poisoning from the long trip that the ribs made in order to get from us. Not sure how he’s reached that conclusion given that he has exactly zero symptoms, but hell, I’m not volunteering any other explanations to him.
Between you and me, I think I’ve become a bit of a cuckoo, if you can read between the lines there.
I mean, what sane person would practically stage a mutiny just to get food from a specific restaurant that he couldn’t even remember the name of in the first place? If Henry was just 2% more done with my shit, he could’ve gotten me in real trouble. Hell, if Henry was any other CO, I’d probably be on trial with a death sentence looming over my head for the shit I pulled just to get the first real food I’d have since stepping foot on that plane.
All that just to throw it up a few minutes later. I may not have snapped quite yet, but I’m cracking, dad.
I hope next flu season is kind to you up there.
Love, Hawkeye
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