Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2025

 

This quarter, I wrote “Same War, Different Tactics” and “The Next Problem” as part of my Monthly Stories.  Again, there were only two stories because I was burned out.  So next year I’m doing something different, which I’ll discuss more when I put up my 2026 Writing Plans post sometime in early January.  My Ko-fi post for this quarter was my story “Sign of the Times.” And on one of my blogs, I posted the stories “A Collapse We Can Dance To” and “The Santa Shakes.”

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If I counted correctly, this quarter I posted two new microfiction stories while also reposting two.  I also posted six new haikus and reposted two more.  The microfictions can be found on my Untitled Works Page, and the haikus on my Haiku Page. 

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Last quarter, I wrote about hopefully polishing up a story to post on Draft2Digital, but that didn’t happen.  That’s now part of my 2026 plans, which, as I said, I’ll be discussing in a future post.

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Like most people, my 2025 plans were ruined by a handful of assholes.  Hopefully, 2026 will be the year we ruin their plans.

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Image from Pixabay.


Tuesday, December 9, 2025

A Stranger Things prediction

My plan had been to wait until early December then start my Stranger Things rewatch doing an episode or two each day so that I would get to the final episode just as it came out.  But I ended up starting early because I wasn’t feeling well and just needed to watch something.  I believe I was watching the end of Season 2 when the first part of Season 5 came out.  Since then, I’ve caught all up and watched some reactions to Season 5 as well as some theory videos.  While some of the theory videos I’ve seen have gotten close, I haven’t seen anyone actually predict this.

First off, at some point during my rewatch of Season 3, I wondered how the show would end and where would the characters end up.  And I had the idea of there being a bit of a time jump and we’d see what the characters were doing in a few years.  For example, we’d see Will going to college.  He meets his roommate, who is impressed with Will’s art or something, and then, somehow, we figure out the roommate is gay, and we’d be left with the idea that Will may have finally found someone. 

But after watching the first part of Season 5, I’m pretty sure Will is going to die.  Because I think either El or Will have to die for the show to show that it’s serious.  I think they are the only ones that could do that.  Killing anyone else – Steve, Joyce, even Mike – I feel would just be killing a character just to kill a character.  Like, Steve dying would wreck Dustin, but I don’t really see that as a big enough series changing event.

The reason I think it’s going to be Will, is I’m not sure Will is gay.  I think it’s possible Will only loves Mike.  Possibly not even in a sexual way.  I don’t want to try to label what Will is, because I’m sure Will doesn’t fully understand it, and it’s possible he could have met someone later in life that he could have developed similar feelings for.  But what I think will happen is Will will basically take a bullet for El, not so much to save her, but to save Mike the heartache of losing her.  I think that something that Capital T Tragic is the right amount of bitterness the show needs for a proper ending.  It ticks the box of a major character dying to show things are serious, and it’s a death that will affect a lot of people in different ways.  It will hurt Joyce and Jonathan the most, but then Hopper has a more or less stepchild’s death to deal with, Mike and El will have to deal with what he did for them, and Robin will have lost a burgeoning friend.  And if his death is somehow witnessed by the kids of Hawkins, they’ll have to deal with how they bullied this kid who still went on to save them.

Or, a better/worse than death way to do it, is they discover that to truly end everything, someone needs to seal the worlds off from one another.  And it can only be done from the Upside Down and whoever does it isn’t coming back.  El is going to do it, but while she and Mike share what they think will be their last embrace, Will rushes past and start closing it.  Possibly even singing, “Should I stay or should I go now?  If I go there will be trouble, And if I stay it will be double.”

Or maybe everyone dies.  I guess we’ll know in a few weeks.