kal's word vomit

THE PARTY BAND AU

I don’t really like the band name but wtv, I'm also still skeptical about what they do in the band..

@nightnut’s post mentioning esotsm and cyrano troupes in the same sentnce made me #inspired bcs i remembered PATRICK💁💁 who parallels El

Even though El’s intentions are much different from Patrick’s, she still plays a similar role when it comes to substituting another character

In ESOTSM, Patrick wants Clementine to fall in love with him, so he tries to recreate her memories she has with Joel, except it doesn’t work because Clementine is in love with Joel. She’s in love with who he IS, not the role he plays in her life, meaning Patrick could never recreate that.

Cue Mike finding El in the woods while he’s looking for Will. Though it’s not Els intention, she starts to replace Wills role in Mikes life, but no matter how she fills that role, he still can’t tell her he loves her, because he loves the person she’s replacing. He loves Will, but he doesn’t feel like he can, so he redirects that to El. And even after Mike finds Will, he’s still looking for him in El throughout the entire show.

This is also why it’s important that El and Will not only parallel eachother story-wise, but also parallel eachother visually, down to their wardrobe, especially in shots with Mike. It’s showing us his issue distinguishing between the two of them and their roles in his life.

Then we have the cyrano troupe. In ESOTSM, Patrick rehearses the lines that Joel said to Clementine on the frozen lake so he can replicate that memory. Similarly how Will conveys his own feelings as El’s in the van scene.

Patrick also gives Clementine a necklace that Joel got for her, which also parallels the van scene, with Will giving Mike the painting on El’s behalf.

And then the void scene feels like three cyrano troupes in one, where El is reciting Mike’s words from the ily monologue back to him, which was Mike plagerising Will’s words from the van to El.

But that also wasn’t El in the void scene, and I can’t see it being Kali’s projection of her either. Which means it really is a manifestation of Mike’s fears of:

1. Not being enough (not being able to say ily)

2. Losing El

3. (In a weird fucked up sense) losing the person that allowed him to redirect his feelings for Will into something more “normal”

4. Facing the guilt of the consequences of making El an “idea” instead of humanising her (possibly meaning he couldn’t say “I love you” back because he couldn’t perpetuate this idea again and make the same mistake he did at the end of s4, lying to her in her last moments) leading his guilt to concoct this situation where El is telling him she loves him again, because he never got to tell her the truth and it’s too late now

He’s going to have to live with how he’s the reason she never got to be more than a Superhero and how he never got to tell the truth

But it’s interesting to me how after all of that, in the end he still tells her story in a way that dehumanises her, not even giving her the liberty of grief, instead creating a fantasy, because otherwise it would mean he’d have to acknowledge that it isn’t a happy ending. That he’s still stuck hiding from himself and not taking action in reality under the guise of hope and being a storyteller.

Anyway, a lot of substituting…..

-Byler, E-rated (later), b!Will / t!Mike -roadtrip, slice of life, grief, re-falling in love -major character death (Joyce Byers) -dialogue-heavy -Will, Mike, Jonathan, Robin-focused in 1st chapter, then Byler-only

First Byler roadtrip fic 🚗💙💛 https://archiveofourown.org/works/80823551

Chapter 1: New York to Indiana

still thinking about this drawing i made before the catastrophe that was volume 2 and 3 💔

will throws it up unexpectedly and tries to wash it down the drain without telling anyone, hoping it will just go away

but soon his friends discover it and they're not exactly sure what they discovered yet, just that there is something there and it's not like them

and mike's first instinct is to kill it and wack it with that lamp (internalised homophobia and repressing it)

but it stays alive and it keeps growing and looks more evil as time moves on (as the societal view grows, aids crisis, etc) and everyone is a bit scared of it and hesitant to trust it

but then it ends up saving everyone's life in the end (dart in the tunnel, and will using his love for mike to kill the demos)