San Francisco Bay's barren Alcatraz Island, long nickname The Rock, was originally a fort and then served as a military prison from 1859 to 1934. With the arrival of social upheaval and rampant crime in the 1920s and '30s, the federal government chose Alcatraz as the perfect site for an escape-proof prison that would strike fear into the hearts of criminals thanks to the isolated location and the swift currents surrounding the island.
From the time Alcatraz became a federal prison in 1934 under the stern and watchful eye of Warden James A. Johnston until it closed in 1963, its steel doors clanged shut on then 1,000 hardened convicts, criminals, and would-be escape artists.
From the start, the most incorrigible inmates from across the country were sent to The Rock. Each train that arrived in San Francisco to dispense prisoners seem to have a "celebrity" of sorts on board. Among the first inmates were Al Capone, perhaps the most famous gangster of all; Doc Baker, the last surviving member of Ma Baker Gang; George "Machine Gun" Kelly, the privileged son of a wealthy Memphis family who became one of the Prohibition period's most notorious gangsters; Floyd Hamilton, a gang member and driver for Bonnie and Clyde, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, a Canadian-born former Public Enemy No. 1 who arrested by J. Edgar Hoover himself; and Robert Stroud, the amateur ornithologist who would later become known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.
Noteworthy or not, the inmates found that Alcatraz was a place where they had but five rights-food, clothing, a private cell, a shower once a week, and access to a doctor. Their methodical daily routine never varied.
While the cells the prisoners lived in were barren at beast, they must have seemed like luxury hotel rooms compared to the punishment cells. In these, men were stripped of all but their basic rights to food-and even then, they barely survived. Confinement in the single Strip Cell was punishment for the most severe violations. In the Hole, the name for cells in the bottom tier of the main cellblock, the punishment usually included psychological torture, and sometimes physical torture as well. In D Block, inmates in cells above the Hole couldn't escape the screams of those imprisoned there. Prisoners who emerged from the Hole would often be senseless or sick and bound for the prison's hospital ward. Others never came out alive.
Even worse were the dungeons. A staircase in front of A Block led down to a large steel door, behind which were catacomb-like corridors and stone archways leading to the sealed-off gunports from the days when Alcatraz was a fort. In the dungeons off the corridor, the prisoners were chained to the walls, their screams unheard in the rest of the main cellblock. Food and sanitation in the dungeons were minimal, dignity nonexistent.
Early Ghost Activity
A number of guards who worked in Alcatraz between 1946 and 1963 experienced the strange and the unexplained. From the grounds of the prison to the caverns beneath the buildings, they heard people sobbing and moaning, smelled strange odors, discovered cold spots, and saw what they described as ghosts. Even families who lived on the island and the occasional guest claimed to have seen the ghostly forms of prisoners or phantom soldiers. The sound of what seemed to be gunshots mdae the guards think prisoners had escaped and obtained weapons.
A deserted laundry room would sometimes fill with the smell of smoke, though nothing was burning. The guards would be sent running from the room, only to return momentarily and find the air clear. Like the other mysterious happenings at Alcatraz, the phantom fires were never explained.
Even Warden Johnston, who had no time for those who believed in ghosts, once heard the unmistakable sound of a person sobbing in the dungeon as he led a group of guests on a tour. The sound was followed by an ice-cold wind felt by the entire group. Johnston could never arrive at an explanation for this weird occurrence.
During the twenty-nine years Alcatraz operated as a prison, there were at least fourteen escape attempts. Almost all the prisoners who tried to flee were either killed or recaptured, and only one is known to have made it ashore. The most traumatic and violent attempt, later dubbed the Battle of Alcatraz, took place over two days in May 1946.
What started as a well-planned breakout from the "escape-proof" prison turned into a disaster when the six inmates involved saw their plan fall apart. Realizing they couldn't succeed, they decided to fight it out. Before it was over, they had taken a number of guards hostage, killed three of them, and wounded several others; two of the guards were murdered in cold blood in cells 402 and 403 (later renamed C102 and C104). The failed escapees fared no better. Three of them climbed into a utility corridor to avoid the constant gunfire, only to die after being hit by bullets or shrapnel.
An escape attempt in 1962 was later documented by Hollywood in the film Escape from Alcatraz. Released in 1979, the movie was a big hit in the box office, but the prison had closed long before. Too expensive to renovate and properly secure, what could be called the world's most famous prison shut its doors for good in March 1963.
Mysteries of Cell 14D
In 1972, the federal government put Alcatraz Island under the purview of the National Park Service, and after opening to the public, it became one of the part service's most popular sites. While in the daylight hours the old prison teems with tour guides and visitors, at night it is filled with mystery. Many believe that the energy of those who served time on The Rock remains, making the Alcatraz complex one immense haunted house.
Night watchmen patrolling the main cell house, divided into A, B, C, and D blocks, say they've heard the sounds of what seems to be running coming from the upper tiers. Thinking an intruder has gained entry, the watchmen investigated the sounds but always found nothing.
One Park Service employee reported that on a rainy afternoon the sparse number of tourists allowed her some time off from guiding tours. She went for a walk in front of A Block and was just past the door leading down to the dungeons when she heard a loud scream from the bottom of the stairs. She ran away without looking to see if anyone where there.
Asked why she didn't report the incident, she replied, "The day before, everyone was ridiculing another worker who reported hearing men's voices coming from the hospital ward, and when he went to check the ward, it was empty. So I didn't dare mention what I heard."
Several guides and rangers felt something strange in one of the cells in the Hole: Cell 14D. "There's a feeling of sudden intensity that comes on when you spend more than a few minutes around that cell," one of them said.
Another guide described Cell 14D as "always cold. Sometimes it gets warm out here-so hot that you have to take your jacket off. The temperature inside the cell house can be in the seventies, and 14D is still cold."
The tour guides weren't the only ones to have strange experiences there. Several former guards at the prison have told of terrifying incidents that took place near the Hole, and in Cell 14D in particular.
During one guard's stint in the middle 1940s, an inmate was locked in 14D for some since forgotten infraction. According to the officer, the man began screaming within seconds of being locked in. He claimed that a creature with "glowing eyes" was locked in with him. Yet no one took the convict's cries of being "attacked" very seriously, probably because tales of ghostly presence wandering the nearby corridor were a continual inducement to practical jokes to the guards. The man's screaming continued into the night, until finally there was silence. The following day, guards inspected the cell and found the convict dead. A horrible expression was frozen on his face, and there were hand marks around his throat. An autopsy revealed that the strangulation couldn't have been self-inflicted. Some believed that the man might have been choked by one of the guards, who had been fed up with all the screaming, but no one ever confessed to the crime.
On the day following the tragedy, several guards who were performing a head count noticed that there were too many men in the lineup. Then, at the end of the line, they saw the face of the convict who had recently been strangled in the Hole. As they all looked on in stunned silence, the figure abruptly vanished.
Banjo Strains
A park service employee who worked at Alcatraz in the late 1970s had a weird experience in another of the main cellblock's chambers. He was down near the shower room when he heard something he couldn't explain.
"It was banjo music," he said. "The room was empty, but I definitely coming from there. Maybe back in the days when it was a fort or army stockade, there was some guy here who played that instrument."
What the employee didn't know was that during the most traumatic days of his life, Al Capone, rather rick going out to exercise yard with the other inmates, would sit in the shower room strumming on his banjo.
Perhaps this lonely and broken spirit still plucks at the strings of a spectral musical instrument that vanished decades ago. Even today, tour guides and rangers who walk the corridors of the prison alone occasionally building. Could Al Capone be its source? Or could it be another of the countless ghosts who continue to haunt Alcatraz year after year?
regarding dr ratio's team join voiceline with aventurine
idk where it originated from but i've been seeing this notion that the ENG voiceline is horribly mistranslated and ratio is much more caring and friendly in the original CN. THIS IS LITERALLY NOT TRUE HE IS JUST AS BITCHY IN BOTH LANGUAGES
as a native chinese speaker i actually really love hsr's localisation and i would like to clarify the misconception + explain the cultural nuance/context behind this particular voiceline
i think this tweet might've been the original source for this misconception? op's translation of the CN line is very literal and completely lacking in cultural nuance. while the sentence 管好你自己 does literally translate to "take care of yourself", it lacks the automatic positive connotation that this sentence has in ENG. CN is a high context language -- aka the meaning of a sentence can be totally different based on context clues like tone, body language, etc.
ratio's tone in this line is not the tone of someone who is concerned for a friend. it's standoffish. when said in this kind of tone, the meaning of 管好你自己 is closer to "mind your own business", making the ENG "keep to yourself" a more accurate localisation.
in addition, the word 管 has connotations of controlling/managing something -- directly translating this to "take care of yourself" means it's missing a lot of important nuance.
granted, the second half of the line is a bit unnecessarily aggressive in ENG. the CN is more like "I have no need for your concern", and explicitly saying that he believes aven's concern to be "false" in ENG is definitely a lot ruder than the original line.
However. in my opinion it's not Too far off base. the way he emphasises the second half of that voiceline in CN carries an implication that he actually disdains aven's concern; we can extrapolate from context clues that he feels this way because aven's concern is just an act. tldr; eng line explicitly saying "false display" does make it ruder than CN but it didn't just come from nowhere -- the implication is already there in CN
this is not to say that ratio doesn't care about aven or see him as a friend. imo the reason ratio is so standoffish in this line is because any display of concern from aven here has the clear intention of teasing ratio. they both know ratio can take care of himself perfectly well. this is just how their dynamic works -- aven makes silly playful comments and ratio deflects them by acting cold.
in conclusion: ENG voiceline is not a mistranslation. hsr localisation is definitely not perfect but in this particular case i feel they've done a fairly good job of conveying the original meaning. thank you for coming to my ted talk
Hey girl hey ;) could you do a Phillip Graves x reader smut where Phil is picking on the reader all day (like touchin her behind, kissing her, etc) then he finally gets the reader to himself?? 🩷🩷
''𝘜𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴, 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺. 𝘛𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘦-'' The words came out as a growl from the back of his throat, hands roaming to your hips, gripping and guiding, showing you what he craved most.
once again i was fueled with coffee (did not sleep the whole night) but this time i doodled college au to cope bc ofc i did (also did not feel like sleeping wooo)
dostoevsky was so funny in the sense that he’ll start a story/novel by saying “and please forgive me if i’ve omitted important details or facts, but if i mention everything with full explanation i would fill a very large volume!” and then describes every little thing, emotion, feeling and thought his characters are having like yes king !! go off the rails !! oh you’re saying 400 pages aren’t enough for your little story?? no worries!! cause we don’t mind reading a 700+ page retelling of a story !! people in their teens and 20 somethings yearn for your writings !!!
Lying beneath the forests and hills of central Kentucky is the largest known cave in the world. Mammoth Cave became a National Park in 1941, and now welcomes some two million visitors annually, but humans first explored its endless paths, passages, and tunnels as long ago in 12,000 years. Indigenous peoples used the cave as a burial for their dead, and several mummies have been unearthed here over the years.
The first owners of the land mined the save for saltpeter (essential to the production of gunpowder) until demand dropped off at the end of the War of 1812. It was then that the owners opened the cave to tourists, and it became more and more famous as the nineteenth century progressed.
It’s hardly surprising that an underground world of dark corners, shadowy crevices, and black waters have given rise to a number of ghostly tales, and those said to have taken place in Mammoth Cave span several generations. For every tourist who has no understanding of the natural phenomena of caves and consequently interprets an occurrence as “weird,” there is a knowledgeable park ranger, guide, geologist, or spelunker who has encountered things that cannot easily be explained.
I’ve visited Mammoth Cave several times and have talked with many of the people who work there. Most of the park rangers are reluctant to discuss ghosts stories, but a few don’t laugh off the odd tales and will share their observations of strange phenomena. Among those are three ghosts who are particularly noteworthy: a slave who had the distinction of being the first man to map the cave system, a girl spurned by her beau, and a onetime owner of the portion of the cave system known as Crystal Cave.
The Slave Stephen Bishop
In 1838, landowner Franklin Gorin introduced Stephen Bishop, a sixteen-year-old slave, to the cave. Bishop would become the first man to explore and map the cave system. He served as an expert guide there for the rest of his life, and so loved the dark underground world that he purportedly turned down a chance for freedom because it would mean leaving Mammoth Cave behind.
Science teacher Larry Purcell, of Bowling Green, Kentucky, worked as a summer guide at the cave for a number of years and had some strange experiences, one of which could have been connected to the ghost of Bishop.
One day, Purcell was on a tour when the group stopped as another guide delivered his regular talk. The lights were all off, and it was Purcell’s job to go down the path and turn them back on.
“As I was walking along, I saw a black man with a woman and two children,” Purcell said. “The man had on white pants, a dark shirt, a white vest, and a white Panama hat. The people were real enough that I walked around them. But when I turned on the lights, they were no longer there.” The late 1880s attire worn by the vanishing man was from Bishop’s time, so who knows whether Bishop might have been in the mood to conduct a family tour of the cave.
Purcell isn’t the only one who may have encountered Stephen Bishop. Other visitors have reported seeing a man of the former slave’s description and have assumed him to be part of a historic tour, perhaps playing the part of Bishop. When they’ve asked about the man or have looked for him again, he is gone.
Spurned Melissa
Another cave ghost more famous, probably because her story was told in “A Tragedy in Mammoth Cave,” an article that appeared in Knickerbocker magazine in February 1858. The central character is a girl named Melissa, who lived near Mammoth Cave. The article states that she told the entire tale on her deathbed before succumbing to consumption-the affliction now known as tuberculosis.
Melissa had fallen in love with her tutor, a young Bostonian named Beverleigh. But the tutor rebuffed Melissa’s affections and began courting a neighbor girl instead. So Melissa plotted her revenge.
Familiar with the twists and turns of Mammoth Cave, she lured Mr. Beverleigh there for a “tour.” At Echo River, an underground stream deep in the cave, she vanished into a side passage, leaving the poor man to find his own way out.
Days passed without any sign of Beverleigh. A despairing Melissa, who had intended only to play a cruel trick, began to make daily treks underground. She searched and called out to the object of her affection until she was hoarse, but Beverleigh would never be seen again.
A few years after the tragedy, Melissa was diagnosed with consumption and died a short time later. It is said that she never recovered from her guilt over her tutor’s death. Many believe that her ghost is still seen and heard in Mammoth Cave, desperately searching for the unfortunate Mr. Beverleigh.
The story has its share of melodrama, but don’t dismiss it too quickly. Gary Bremer, a former Mammoth Cave guide, says there may be something credible about the tale. Several years ago, Bremer and four others were in a boat on Echo River. One of men left to get another paddle for the boat, and Bremer remembers what happened next: “Those of us in the boat all heard a woman calling out. It wasn’t screaming. It was more like she was looking for someone.” It wasn’t until the next day that Bremer first heard the story of Melissa.
This wouldn’t be Bremer’s last encounter on the Echo River. A short time later, he was there with a new employee who had never seen the river before. She suddenly turned and grabbed his shoulder. “Did you hear a woman cough?” she asked. Bremer felt a cold chill. Melissa had died of tuberculosis, he remembered.
The other employee verified Bremer’s version of the experience and added that she had also heard garbled voices wafting through the cave, and on another night believed she heard someone whisper her name.
A Ghost Named Floyd
Not all of the weird tales from Mammoth Cave are set in areas accessible to the public. Many of the strangest come from Crystal Cave, once believed to be a separate cave and operated as a private attraction. It is no longer open to the public, yet the stories that surround this portion of the cave are too mysterious to ignore.
Most of these legends involve the ghost of W. Floyd Collins, an avid cave explorer and the former owner of Crystal Cave, which he had discovered by accident in the winter of 1916-17. He and his family opened the cave in 1918, after which Collins constantly sought a commercially exploitable hook that would ensnare tourists.
His explorations led him to a hole on a nearby farm that the press would later call the Sand Cave-in reality, a series of narrow, twisting crevices that Collins sought to expand. What he thought could be a commercial boom actually become his undoing. While working at the site on January 30, 1925, he was trapped in a small passage after part of the cave collapsed and his foot became wedged under a rock.
Despite a massive effort, constantly shifting earth prevented searchers from rescuing Collins, who was trapped for two weeks before he died.
A few decades, a group of Mammoth Cave employees was on an after-hours excursion in Crystal Cave when they noticed an old whiskey bottle resting on a rock ledge. One of the men in the group picked it up, looked at it, and put it back in the same spot. The group then walked on deeper into the cave.
Later that evening, one of the men was walking back toward the cave entrance and was passing the bottle when he heard something. “It was just behind my ear,” he stated. “I heard as though someone had flicked a finger against glass . . . a clink. I turned around just in time to see the bottle hit the ground.”
Another man who was with him jumped back in shock. He claimed that the whiskey bottle hadn’t fallen but instead had come straight out from the ledge and just dropped! “That little clink was loud enough to make me look back toward the ledge,” he remembered, “and as I did, the bottle actually came out and then went right down in front of me. It was very bizarre.”
Could the ghost of Floyd Collins be responsible for this strange occurrence? The men involved wondered whether this was the case, but a later event took place in the area would have a more direct connection to the man.
In July 1976, a former Crystal Cave employee named George Wood filed a report saying that he and another employee, Bill Cobb, spent a day checking springs for a study on groundwater flow. They didn’t make it to the last spring, which was near the abandoned Collins house on Flint Ridge, until after dark. Cobb went to the spring while Wood waited near the truck. After a few moments, Wood heard the sound of a man crying out. At first, he thought it was his friend calling for help, but the voice seemed too high-pitched. It was also so faint that he had to listen carefully to hear what it was saying.
The voice called out over and over again: “Help me! Help me! Help me, I’m trapped! Johnny, help me!”
As wood stood there on the edge of the truck of a dark road, he felt a cold chill as he recalled hearing about how Floyd Collins was trapped-and where he was trapped: In Sand Cave, only a short distance away.
A few minutes later, Cobb returned to the truck and Wood asked him if he had been calling for him. Cobb said no, and that he had heard nothing while at the spring. But after hearing his friend’s account of the cries, Cobb admitted that he was spooked. The two men didn’t waste any time before driving off.
Could the spectral voice have really belonged to Floyd Collins? And if so, could the “Johnny” heard in the mysterious cry have referred to Johnny Gerald, a friend of Floyd’s and the last person to speak with him before the cave collapse sealed him off from recuse? Is his spirit still trapped in the cave, or could the sound have been merely an eerie echo of yesterday?
A Media Circus
The determined but failed attempted to recuse Floyd Collins became a national sensation even without the aid of TV. Radio and the press were enough to keep the public fascinated by what was happened. In fact, it could be said that the story reached historic proportions. Louisville Courier-Journal reporter William Burke (”Skeets”) Miller, who interviewed the trapped man several time, won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage. Years later, the drama surrounding Collins’s death inspired the 1951 movie Ace in the Hole (originally titled The Big Carnival), and famed author Robert Penn Warren based his novel The Cave (1959) on the event.
Two years after Collins died, his family sold Crystal Cave to a local dentist, who would cash in one the media circus surrounding the death in a rather macabre way.
As part of the property transfer, the dentist gained the right to exhume Collins’s body and move it to Crystal Cave. It was placed in a glass-covered, bronzed metal coffin that would be set in the middle of the tourist trail leading to the cave’s main concourse. Thereafter, guides recounted the former owner’s exploits as wide-eyed tourists gazed at Collins’s waxen face.
In 1989, W. Floyd Collins-cave explorer, businessman, promoter-found his final resting place at nearby Flint Ridge Cemetery. Today his memory lives on in the Floyd Collins Museum, located in Cave City on Old Mammoth Cave Road.
OOOEEEEEOUUUUUOOUUU SMILING FOR THE FIRST TIME TROPE + ALMOST KISSED TROPE + LOVE CONFESSION + "I LOVE THE YOU IN THE FUTURE" TROPE + TIME LOOP / TURNING BACK TIME TO INFLUENCE THE FUTURE TROPE OOOUUUIUUUHEJJEEEUUUUU INJECT THAT SHIT INTO MY VEEIIINSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you sm for the ask!! 💕 i’m glad you enjoy my posts and it is not a strange request by any means!
note: this is merely my read on gale’s sexual preferences/kinks. i don’t want to police anyone on their headcanons or claim they are “incorrect”. since the game doesn’t provide too much detail, many things remain up to interpretation. (and lest we forget fanfiction has always encouraged the exploration of dynamics that may not be present in canon.)
gale is a character who isn’t interested in walking the straight and narrow route. he is all about new experiences, favoring non-traditional means, putting his own spin on things, and the thrill of seeking the forbidden. the sheer romance of the uncharted and the unknown. he is enthusiastic in almost every aspect and possesses an infectious zest for life. in regards to his sexual preferences, this translates into an eagerness to explore, witness new sensations, and reach new heights together. while approaching the topic of sexuality with a generally playful, adventurous attitude.
if you’re looking for harder kinks, however — i don’t believe gale is the character for you. and in case it needs to be said again: there is nothing wrong with being vanilla.
initially, i see gale as a switch, who gravitates more towards assuming a dominant role, due to his ever-present desire to give and to impress. i do think he enjoys giving up control, yet you still have to actively convince him to let himself go and be spoiled for once. his first focus will always be to fulfill his partner's needs and drown them in his all-encompassing love and adoration. i also believe that gale will grow more comfortable with being the center of attention, once their relationship has reached a point of total security (and he had ample opportunities to show in just how many ways he can wow them). gale is not a strict dom, nor a sub. in his ideal relationship roles would be discarded entirely, deeming them too restrictive in his expression of intimacy with a trusted partner. it’s all about variety and ridding oneself of the shackles of the worldly, after all. melting into one perfect whole, not knowing where he ends and his partner begins.
gale: we are all sensual vessels. illusory magic lets us sail farther, and feel more deeply.
gale: [..] i could use the weave to make us feel sensations beyond reckoning.
based on what we know about gale, these could be some of his kinks:
lots of praise (this is non-negotiable), sensation/temperature play (waxplay, electrostimulation/all the many perks magic has to offer), sensory deprivation, light restrictions and bondage, the occasional roleplay, katoptronophilia (self-explanatory), altered mental-states (hypnosis, psychedelics), orgasm control & denial, body worship, olfactophilia and given his propensity towards verbosity: narratophilia and some very inventive dirty talk. as for my own self-indulgent take: due to the recurring emphasis on hands during his romance, as well as his being the main tool in how he shapes and navigates the world: quirofilia.
nodecontext: flustered, standing in front of his romance partner in bondage gear. not necessarily uncomfortable with the bondage aspect, just trying to stay focused.
now, what are gale’s hard-limits?
gale, after the player received loviatar's blessing: your hide, your choice. not quite my cup of tea though.
while projecting your own kinks and fantasies onto fictional characters is fine and well, disregarding and ignoring the source material (and the character's stated boundaries) is another matter entirely. fanon!gale is rather ooc and very different from his canon portrayal, which is something that tends to irk me. although this remains a common fandom phenomenon.
personally, i don’t see gale as someone who enjoys pain of any kind, be it giving or receiving (with the exception of spanking and light choking, if a certain mood strikes. although it is kept mostly playful). contrary to what fandom may claim, having self-worth issues, being loquacious, emotionally expressive, and vulnerability-seeking (as well as being commonly perceived as arrogant and insufferable) doesn't automatically equal having repressed masochistic tendencies. he could be convinced to dip a toe into sadism, but only upon his partner’s insistence. although i doubt he himself would find enjoyment in that.
the same applies to degradation/humiliation. i doubt that a character who is still very much struggling with inherent self-worth issues and a general feeling of being defective/not worthy would derive sexual gratification from being degraded. yes, it can certainly be healing for some, but gale doesn’t strike me as someone who would find particular enjoyment in that. quite the contrary, actually. nor would he like to do the degrading for that matter (he would vehemently refuse. all he wants to do is sing your praises.) gale wouldn’t enjoy being leashed and/or collared in any way either. the prospect of being tied up or restricted is rather intriguing, cause it serves to center one’s vulnerability while also allowing for more intense sensations. anything that taps into the puppy play/slave territory tho? he would find it demeaning… and, quite frankly, silly.
gale is also not a voyeur, nor a cuck. the entire scene with the drow twins leans way too much into dub-con territory for my tastes. the only way you can get him to participate at all is by rolling a persuasion check with DC 25. in every other dialogue option, he immediately (and explicitly) declines. even if you do manage to pass the persuasion check, he is still very hesitant about participating.
gale: i might enjoy watching you tangled up with the drow, as long as i was five paces back.
he then immediately runs from the room, because sending a simulacrum in his place was the only way to somewhat remove himself from the situation while still being able to please tav. because of course he wants to please and clearly this is important to tav so he might just… have to discard his reservations and... just go through with it?!
gale: well i suppose it would do no good to back out now. let us begin this little anthropological study, if we must.
i am aware that fandom uses the fact that his “orb lit up in telltale excitement” as a justification that persuading him was the right choice, as well as confirmation that he was secretly into it and “just needed a little push" to explore his desires/get out of his comfort zone. that implication alone is very suspect and goes straight into the sort of logic abusers often use. you can be physically aroused by certain scenes, images, or sounds, even while being visibly uncomfortable with the presented scenario. it is a natural response that you can’t often control. which is what he is showing throughout the entire scene: discomfort. he was coerced into this situation, without any prior discussion or an opportunity to talk about his boundaries. furthermore, this is what he has to say if you approach him after the threesome:
gale: ahem. i hope you're not here to ask about our recent, erm, activities. i'd rather those were consigned to the footnotes of our romance, if it's all the same with you.
since he is strictly monogamous, any arrangement involving another person is also a no. he made this rather clear when tav sought him out after receiving halsin's proposal. him being monogamous isn't solely rooted in his trauma, it isn't something he has to “overcome” in order to heal, nor does it mean that their relationship is any less fulfilling. call him greedy, stubborn, or old-fashioned, but he cannot comfortably agree to that.
It has come to my attention that SOME OF YOU who read my last Byler post remain UNCONVINCED. So I'm gonna tack onto it this:
I'm older than fucking God and air, and I've been out and proud since 2007. Yes, I know what homophobia is, and yes, I know what queerbaiting is. I know about Supernatural and Teen Wolf and Sherlock and blahdyblahdyblah. No new ground is being covered here. I thought I made that clear in the original post, but, clearly, I did not.
I am aware of queerbaiting and homophobia, and I'm still wholeheartedly certain in Byler being canon anyway.
Okay, so there are three types of relationship I want to discuss when it comes to queerbaiting. They're all, like, "queer relationships that could have happened, but didn't".
First off, queer-coding. This isn't really a thing so much anymore, but it still crops up every once in a while. I'd argue it probably happens most with male-male relationships in family shows these days. First example that comes to mind is Mr. Smiley and Mr. Frowny from Steven Universe. You can't make a relationship canon because some shitty overhead bastard overhead said no, so you get as close as you can without compromising the show. Can't make someone gay? Well, now their comedy routine is a blatant allegory for a romantic relationship. Boom-shaka-laka. This is something I don't see being a problem with regards to Stranger Things, but I want it to be there as contrast, a demonstration of one of many things queerbaiting is not. However, one could argue that, thus far, Will Byers is, canonically, queer-coded. It's pretty fucking heavily implied in the show, and the creators have confirmed it, and you're gonna be able to see it if you're not FUCKING BLIND, but word of god is not technically canon which means that interviews don't technically make something canon, blahdyblahdyblahdyblah, technicalities, Robin has been explicitly stated in the text to be queer while Will has, thus far, not, outside of good ol' Show-Don't-Tell. Of course, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell that that's going to change by the end of Season 5, but, hey, for what it's worth, I'm throwing this out there.
Alrighty, Thingamajingama Number Two: "Oops, I accidentally made the greatest love story known to man." AKA, a genuine, honest-to-goodness mistake. Unfortunately, we do live in a heteronormative society. Sometimes people who don't think about being gay much write a friendship that's incredibly compelling and don't even consider the possibility that it could have been read as romantic. Something something Top Gun something. This is, again, not queerbaiting. This is Steddie, this is Ronance, this is Elmax, this is your favorite flavor of non-canon ship this week, this is not Byler. The creators know DAMN well what they're doing. They've talked about it. We know this. Nothing new here.
Which brings us to the topic of discussion here. Actual queerbaiting. This usually starts out as an "accidental greatest love story", and then reacts to fan response. And when I say "reacts", I mean like a goddamn chemical reaction. Like bleach and ammonia, bitch. It's noxious and it's gonna kick your fucking ass without mercy. This is when a creator is like, "Hey, let's get our queer audience invested, but we're not actually going to give them what they want because our straight audience isn't here for that/we personally think it's gross/we don't give enough of a shit to want to research a goddamn thing to write a real gay character," blah blah blah whatever excuse they want to come up with this time.
And when you think "queerbaiting", I want you to think "bullying". Because that's what it is. It's lucrative bullying, like beating us up and taking our lunch money, but it's bullying all the same. And it's a real goddamn thing, even if people misuse the word a lot, often when they mean one of the two above, sometimes when they mean "bury your gays", which is another homophobic thing entirely that I'm not going to get into here. Queerbaiting is the thing we're focused on, and it's real, and it's bullying. And here's the reason I want you to think of it as bullying:
They
Think
It's
Funny.
They are actively making fun of us.
That's why Dean had the "Cas, get out of my ass," line in Supernatural. It's why the "Do you like boys?" line happened in Teen Wolf. It's why "Lie with me, Watson," happened in the RDJ Sherlock Holmes movies. Because "It's just a joke, mate." "It was just a prank, bro." "You didn't really think it would happen, did you?" "You should see your face."
So here's probably the biggest reason I don't think it's specifically queerbaiting in this specific instance of Will Byers and Mike Wheeler.
Stranger Things has never, not once, made a gay joke. Ever.
Every single time queerness comes up, it's dead serious.
Lonnie calls Will a fag, and the show is not at all reluctant to show what a goddamn horrible person he is. And when Hopper latches onto that, it's not as "Hahah, is he gay, though?" It's because he's trying to determine a potential motive for Will's disappearance, and even if someone had interpreted it as a joke, Joyce immediately has a line that functions as snapping her fingers in front of the audience's face and yelling "FOCUS" when she says "He's MISSING." Basically outright saying "This isn't funny!"
Troy calls him a fairy, along with targeting Lucas and Dustin for their skin color and disability respectively, and Mike gets damn near murderous. Troy is portrayed as a goddamn monster and the show portrays it as justice when El makes him piss his pants and later breaks his arm.
Steve calls Jonathan "queer" as a slur and gets the shit beat out of him for it.
Billy's father is revealed to be homophobic and abusive in the same breath.
Mike says "It's not my fault you don't like girls!" and we're shown how devastated Will is and Mike immediately follows him to beg for forgiveness.
There is a joke in Robin's coming-out scene, but it's not at Robin's expense. It's at Steve's. Specifically for being heteronormative.
Jonathan has multiple scenes where he's trying so hard to tell Will that he's always going to love him as he is, whether he's gay or not, without pressuring him to come out before he's ready.
Even when there's a little bit of ribbing at Robin's expense, it's always because she's an awkward nerd who's nervous around pretty girls, just the same as Lucas and Dustin are teased when they both first develop crushes on Max, and even then, even then, it always comes as a package deal where they make fun of Steve's girl problems at the same time.
Stranger Things is an emphatically pro-gay show. It may not be the core point of the show the way it is in, say, Our Flag Means Death, but there is nothing less than respect for its queer characters. Its queer characters are always taken completely seriously. No one is making fun of us. They never have. That's why I have serious doubts that this is queerbaiting. It would come completely out of left field for the bullying to start in Stranger Things' final season.
So it's not at all likely to be queerbaiting because queerness is taken completely seriously. The creators have talked about Will's queerness, at least, so it's not an accident. And queer-coding would be silly to expect from this show when it's already on its final season. Like, what is Netflix gonna do? Cancel it? Not to mention all the explicit queerness that's in there already. And no one's gonna "What about the children?" a show that's had sex scenes in it since the first season.
There's no fakeout here. It's gonna happen. Breathe.