#its-celery

oooh it's wheeler time... you're right that holly's kind of a non-presence at this point, so there's not a lot to go off of. I've started wondering if having food problems is a wheeler child trait in general, since family meals are always a disaster and mike and nancy start avoiding them as early as season 1. during the breakfast scene at the wheelers in season 4, dustin was the only one eating. nancy max and holly didn't even get themselves a plate (max gave her dinner to her neighbour's dog and nancy is often shown having meals ruined for her). holly has been shown thinking meal times are really scary since she was literally 3 years old because everyone's always yelling and arguing and making loud noises (thanks, dustin), so if she already has a fucking eating disorder at 6 years old I'm going to kill her parents. like actually. I'm gonna leap through the screen and climb out of their walls

when it comes to MIKE and holly... this is like, really petty honestly, but my main thought is that... mike knows what it's like to be ignored by an older sibling and just treated as a nuisance, right? so I think he'd try his best to be the opposite of that for holly. as well as the opposite of their parents, but that's not new for him. nancy seems like she forgets that she even has younger siblings, which makes sense for her character — nancy is very ambitious and gets quite self-absorbed by what she wants to be. it's why she's such a good balance to jonathan. jon puts his own goals aside to care for other people, nancy forgets to care about other people in favour of her own goals. mike, meanwhile, is super focused on other people to the point that he neglects himself in the process. and considering how mike was with el in season 1 (who was directly compared to holly), I think he'd probably be really good with holly

real thing that happened on the multiplayer farm with @its-celery

she would not stop. cutting down trees. she somehow did not run out of energy despite it being the first week.

thoughts on that s3 karen/billy arc that happened?

I'm not a guy but sure!

umm. well for one thing it's convenient that the person who was on his way to ruin mike's family (via the family member mike has the strongest relationship with and would have felt the most betrayed by) got into a car crash. it's also convenient that the person who was making one of mike's best friend's lives a living hell got into a car crash (probably at around the same time mike was crashing out in a car with hopper). double convenient, one might say. especially with max later revealing that she would pray for that exact thing to happen. I know the point here isn't mike, but like... are we sure? are we SUPER DUPER sure??? this is yet another instance of the plot lining up way too closely with what mike would want out of any given situation: the guy who's trying to fuck his mum and has a history of hurting max goes away. the intersection of those two interests is just... very mike. I don't know who else could fit them both

anyway. to be less predictably myself now: karen continuing to be closely tied to the supernatural plot despite supposedly being irrelevant to it. she literally could've died confronting billy at the pool. then mike and nancy would've been even more insane, and like - let's be real, ted would NOT step up as a single parent the way joyce did. he's barely there as a married parent

it's also generally continuing the trend of wheelers being trapped in romantic relationships they don't want to be in for a variety of reasons - nancy, mike, and karen, are all, at some point, either lying to themselves or just used to settling, and they all get these moments of 'well, I can't leave them, look how pathetic they are...' because they're compassionate people, and somehow that ends up feeling like they owe their partner a relationship. they don't owe, of course, but karen also confirms that no matter how unhappy they are, cheating is a step too far because these three wheelers are generally very caring. they all have their blind spots, but it's still true. steve and nancy broke up before anything happened with jonathan, karen decided against meeting billy, and mike is too caught up on his fears of hurting/losing el to even consider moving onto anything with will for the moment

I thiiiiiink they have the most interesting family dynamics and specifically Ways Of Being Impacted By Their Family Dynamics on the show and both of them are very very very underrated in that aspect. I think it's because genuinely engaging with it would require nuance and letting characters they might like and want to be 'good' parents have flaws. but their actual situations are genuinely FASCINATING and people want to give all their interesting character traits to less interesting characters sooooo badly

what would your recommendation be for a potential hedgehog fan!!

ouuu god um to be honest I am still getting myself into it all .even though it's been Months BUT I can give some recs on what I think you should look into ^_^ ,of which I have to very much recommend you play or watch someone play Shadow generations because that game is so good and also it's Shadow

any input on how el and jonathan think of each other/interact/etc?