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[ video ] » ❝my patience is waning; is this entertaining?❞

OOC: assume a 100% chance of Stranger Things spoilers in the comments.

[ What's up, network at large? ]

So, after that disaster, I just have a question: Is anyone here from an actually normal, at least relatively not messed up, kind of place?

[ Honestly a serious question. Brought to you by someone from an absolute dumpster fire of a town. ]

Because aside from being home to everything in every HP Lovecraft story apparently, where I'm from is where dreams and ambition go to die, in the makeshift graveyards of its flat lands and corn fields. It's really great if you're looking for a quiet small town to raise a nuclear family and mind the business of everyone except yourself. Oh, and you'd better have an easily malleable attitude about it and enjoy your new home of a suffocating box, otherwise if you show even a hint of personality that doesn't fit into that idea — forget it, you're so screwed.

[ Is someone finally getting mad enough about her own suffocating box? MAYBE SO. This is how she's trying to light it on metaphorical fire. mic drop, truth bombs deployed, et cetera. ]

Which almost makes me wonder if the cosmic horrors are actually worse than everything else about it. [ It should at least be very close. ]

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[ she's been trying to find her way out of her own mind for *checks notes* 18 years, but ok sure!! she passes the bottle back to Robin. ]

I think I might have had fun. Not because the horrific creatures that also feed off trauma or the whole Upside-Down place sound fun in a full dose, but doing all that would have meant the chance to become actual friends with you all. People who are calm and normal compared to people obsessed with who can become the most popular the fastest. Here I'm still just kind of the person who died before stuff got cranked up to eleven. [ accidental pun is accidental. and she doesn't even know it. ]

[Friends with all of them? Robin needs a moment to process that. Sure, maybe she interacted with Steve some, and clearly with Eddie. And she gets wanting to be friends with Steve. She's done that and really actually loved his dorky dingus self and all the kindness and warmth in his heart. But if Chrissy had been aware of Robin, it could only have been as 'Steve's female appendage that he's either not dating or she is okay with him dating other girls too' that people assume her as.]

I'd hardly call us calm and normal, but I can see why someone would think that way. But I can say that you'll find great friends in Eddie and Steve if you've always wanted that.

[Not including herself due to the aforementioned belief that of course Chrissy wasn't even aware of her.]

You're not the only one that happened to actually. From what I've heard, the first person that died because of all of this... Remember Benny? The guy that ran the diner? Killed by evil government dudes. Which I guess is almost the start of this. Um, it all kinda starts years ago, but where it's relevant to us starts the night Will Byers went missing.

[ Look, Robin got cool points by association too. That's just how it goes. ]

You're not allowed to sell yourself short. [ Gosh, Robin don't leave yourself out!!! Rude!! ] I've already seen enough from you here to know you're kind and smart, and probably carry around a good sense of humor.

[ Spoken like it's a Fact™. Because it is. ]

Why do I feel like you're going to tell me Will wasn't actually just lost in the woods or hitchhiking across the state?

[Spend a few hours with Steve in full dork mode and maybe Robin will seem cooler. It's and absolute truth.]

I'm not selling myself short. I'm just aware that until recently I'm pretty sure I never really crossed your mind. And that's okay, Chrissy, it really is. I'm not bothered by it. I was never someone searching for popularity and recognition, so I really don't mind. But I am smart, I have a good sense of humor, and I'm kind when it suits me.

[She's also sharp and sarcastic and sometimes mean when it suits her too.]

Uh, do you have a spare shirt or something around? I need a visual aid here.

Proving my 'normal and calm compared to the people I used to hang out around' point, without even trying. [ A quick, small smile appears at the edge of her lips. ]

But yeah, shirt, hang on. [ she has no idea why a shirt helps, but, she digs around for a second and hands one over to her. ]

[Okay, that's fair. She chuckles, but wow, that's a whole take on her.]

Alright. So it has to do with those gate things here. So... [She holds the shirt on her hand and touches the surface of it.]

So this is Hawkins. Right here. This is the ground and the town is on it and all the people and all of our lives. But it turns out that isn't the only dimension.

[She puts another hand inside the shirt, touching the inside.]

This is something else. Somewhere else. We call it the Upside-Down. It's like Hawkins but not. And see how my hands can't touch, because there is a barrier between them. There is supposed to be. The two sides, they aren't supposed to touch. Ever.

[ it's all meant as a positive - it's refreshing to be around people like that, especially after so long of, well, not. ]

So, when the barrier gets broken..? And how?

[ At least the name makes sense, if it's a Hawkins but not. Some jumbled mess of a Hawkins. ]

Okay, so apparently the better metaphor is a string, because it explains the demogorgon but let's ignore that. The way for us to get between the planes is with a LOT of energy. Like... Like stabbing through the fabric. Now you can move between the two sides, right?

So there's... Well, there is this young girl. She was basically raised as a lab experiment and she's got these powers. She can move things with her mind, or find people with her mind. And apparently once she was tricked by this evil guy named Henry, into basically taking the restraints the government had on him off. And he killed everyone else like them. And was going to kill her. But She's really powerful. And in her grief and anger and betrayal, she sorta became the knife that pierced through the world. Sent him packing to the other side and closed it up.

But of course the government being what it is, they wanted to keep seeing what she could do, if she could do it again, if what's out on that other side could be useful against communism because blah blah blah Russians who we will get to later.

[ She might be more surprised by a psychic girl if she hadn't already seen what she has and heard the bits and pieces that she has. But honestly? It's not the weirdest thing in that group of information (that honor probably goes to being psychically murdered), so she just rolls with it. ]

So, young girl with powers accidentally breaks the universe basically, and the US government is like 'hey, I know what's a great idea and not a further violation of human rights or other general ethics: using our literal human experiment to do it or things like it again'.

[ @ the government: BITCHES, PLEASE - you can't do that and say communism is bad in the same breath.

The good sign is that Robin hasn't lost her yet. ]

So the Henry guy, he's also US government? Or Russian? Or something else?

That sounds exactly like the government. I haven't been fond of any of their types we've had a brush with. And...

You ever hear about the Creel murders, back in the day?

[Geez, she's jumping around worse than the kids are. How is it even possible?]

For whatever truth is actually left in that story, sure, vaguely I guess. [ one of those things that sounds so fake after a while because people add a lot of ~flair~ to it to make it into a spooky story or urban legend. ]

Well, uh... I met him actually. Mister Creel. He didn't kill his family. His son did. His son Henry.

[And surely Chrissy can put that name together with who Robin said had killed her.]

He's the one that killed the kids in the government facility. He's the one behind everything else that happened. So keep in the back of your mind that everything that happened was sorta just because of Henry Creel. I'll get to why he went after you later.

So, in the course of the research the government was doing, they were putting this psychic girl in a sensory deprivation tank to make her spy on people a long way away. And that's how she discovered a demogorgon, accidentally reaching across dimensions. It noticed her. In her fear she accidentally tore a gate open to the Upside-Down all over again. Something she'd forgotten she'd done in all of the mental trauma of basically everyone she knew getting murdered. And that creature escaped. Looked for its first victim... It kidnapped Will Byers.

[ She digs around for something else while Robin finishes speaking — she'd wanted to take in as much as she could before actually getting up to find a notepad and pen. Yeah, it's note taking time, otherwise she WILL get lost. ]

Henry equals Vecna, yeah? [ She's heard his other name before. Look at her little out of context puzzle pieces fitting together like that. ]

What did he want with Will? Will's not psychic too, right?

[Maybe go for the rum, Chrissy. Robin sighs and looks at her nails, looking like she might bite at her cuticles just because she's anxious even talking about this.]

Yeah. Henry is Vecna. Also known as One. He was the first child experimented on. They tattooed the number on their arms. So far as we know, he's one of only three survivors, because eight escaped when she was a kid, and the girl, eleven, survived one and she escaped the facility.

As for what it wanted, we don't know what it wanted originally. But it rig Will up to some thing in the Upside-Down Library when it caught him. And then... well, we'll get there. So anyway, the demogorgon actually killed a lot of people who died in 'hunting accidents' and other things like that. Barbara Holland... she was taken by the demogorgon from Steve's poolside. It's part of why he got dragged into it.

Well if it goes up to eleven that you know of at least, that's already eleven too many. [ It just sucks only two of them made it out from the sound of it. ] So, in other words no one's died of natural causes in Hawkins for the last three years or so, got it.

[ She wonders mostly now if the people that were killed were just in the wrong places at the wrong time or if there was more to it. While she goes mentally through trying to remember names of people who died and then maybe questioning the explanation behind it given at the time. ]

You're not wrong. So many children tormented for their horrible experiments. And maybe some people died of natural causes, but less than it seems. So, uh, Nancy Wheeler's little brother and his friends, they found this girl, and wanted to protect and hide her. Meanwhile you heard how Jonathan was found to have taken pictures of Nancy? Well, he got a picture of the creature that kidnapped Barb. And that got them trying to figure things out.

Meanwhile Will Byer's mom started talking to Will because Will found out you can use electronics to communicate a bit, because he was hiding. And Chief Hopper, he's alive by the way, he started investigating the Hawkins Lab. So yeah, ultimately people started to put things together and tried to stop it. Nancy and Jonathan lured the beast, which Steve got pulled into and helped with, Chief Hopper and Joyce Byers went to get Will, and the kids tried to hide the girl, who ultimately killed the beast. So that saved the world the first time.

[Robin sighs. There is so much more to explain.]

I need some of the rum.

[ She pushes the rum back towards her. She'll have more later, now is writing furiously time. ]

That's a nice change - someone assumed dead but actually alive. [ She means it. That's not a common theme in this explanation, but she's glad to hear it nonetheless. Yes, more of that. ] I assume you were helping out Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve? With the monster luring part of the plan.

[Thanks Chrissy, for being so kind. Robin takes a serious swig.]

Yeah, it was good. I wasn't involved then, though. Though, I've thought back on it a lot of times. I was biking home, the night Will Byers went missing. And I heard something in the forest...

[What if the demogorgon had taken her instead? She'd be like Barb. She knows it.]

Anyway, from what I hear it all seemed to settle down for a while until about Halloween the next year. Because the big gate thing wasn't actually closed, and so the Upside-Down was slowly undermining everything. And the big evil spirit thing on the other side, the Mindflayer, it started trying to possess Will Byers to be its eyes, it's agent on this side. Which it succeeded in. You know how in our junior year all the pumpkin farms got ruined and there was this whole 'the other farmer poisoned my crop' thing? Upside-Down. And the attacks by rabid dogs? Demodogs that were sneaking out from these underground tunnel things.

That's about when Nancy and Steve broke up. [And she's not explaining why. That's not Chrissy's business.] And when there was work to get that story published to blame the lab for Barb's death. Which was true in a way. But they did help. They tried to help. There's this scientist, Owens, he's important. He tried to help Will. So many of his men and scientists got killed when the Mindflayer used Will to summon demodogs to attack people. So the girl with the powers and this group of kids Steve babysit set out to save the world by closing the gate. That night was when Billy and Steve got in their big fight that the whole school heard about.

Apparently Billy was looking for his little sister, but she was with the other kids and Steve was keeping them safe while the gate was being closed, because the house was a target. And Billy didn't know and they couldn't tell him and I think Steve's better to ask about all of that. But while Billy was unconscious the kids stole his car, put Steve in it, and went to the tunnels to try and stage a distraction while Joyce and Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler drove the Mindflayer out of Will and the girl and Hopper closed the gate. So, you know, the world almost ended THAT night as well.

Oh, now I really wish it was just farmer drama with the pumpkins. [ Because famers shit talking one another and getting crop revenge is more normal compared to reality, and honestly? A little hilarious for a small town, because it's very small town stakes. Big cities have their ... big city drama. ]

So, Owens is a good scientist. Not the nefarious ones? How'd that not get confusing fast? Because I don't think I would have trusted any one of them. [ government related scientists = automatic sus label. ]

And Will's okay now, still?

[ Please tell her the Byers get A God Damn Break from life life-ing all over them. ]

Trust me, I know what you mean. Pumpkin wars would be so much less scary than the truth is. I think the tunnels have been sealed by the government now though. It's hard to tell what they do and don't do. I got into all of this after even that point and Hopper was the main communicator to the feds, and then he was dead, but he's apparently not and it's complicated.

But Owens was semi-nefarious and has since come to support us a number of times. But it is confusing. Because you have to trust the government, but the government caused all of this. I hate it. The stacks of paper they made us sign are so insane.

[But she's got to process the last question. Will Byers. Robin... Hasn't really seen the kid in so very, very long.]

Yes. Last I really heard of it, Will is okay. But he's got this connection now, he can sense when the thing shows up, which was important for what happened the summer of the Starcourt fire. That's when I got involved. Let's see, um, so two or three things were going on at once. That's when I started working with Steve, and Erika Sinclair kept harassing us, and that matters. And Dustin Henderson, he was there too. I'll get to it. But basically apparently Russians were responsible for Starcourt getting built, because they wanted to open the gate to the other world, maybe to weaponize it? Or get the evil creatures.

It being hard to tell what they do or don't do is probably exactly how they like it, too. And I'm sure the thought of all of you out there doing stuff involving all of ... this ... makes them not the happiest. Which I love the thought of them being nervous about it, honestly.

[ Maybe it's good Chrissy wasn't there; she would have burned the NDAs, fuck that. The truth may suck, but it deserves to be heard, if you ask her. Case in point: this discussion. ]

So he's okay but still like an alarm system for it. [ That sounds like a recipe for a backfiring disaster considering their current luck from the sounds of it, but she still hopes it's not going to turn into a disaster mess. ]

Honestly, if I wanted to distract a small town, I too would build a flashy mall with shops to keep them busy and no reason to question what I was looking for.

[Yeah, it did deserve to be heard. But being in jail forever wasn't great either.]

I guess sort of a detector of when it's active around him, yes. It's not easy on him, which is why the Byers moved, but that's later. So, um... the mall.

[God that's where she came in.]

The Russians opened this gate again, and that meant the bit of the Flayer that was in Will and they drove out sorta started looking for someone else to use? It took over rats first, and made them eat fertilizer and chemicals to break it down into some form where it could rebuild itself and make itself a body. We don't know how, but it got Billy Hargrove, and did something to put, I don't know, itself in his mind? It possessed him. We know it used him to capture people, to make them more pieces of itself. To make them eat things to break down their bodies when it needed it.

Of course I wasn't there for any of that because Dustin Henderson discovered a secret Russian broadcast and because I was so tired of my work and annoyed I decided to help them translate it. I discovered what the thing said, Steve figured out it was coming from the mall, and I ended up figuring out that it all led to a secret base underground. Which, like geniuses, we got ourselves and Erika Sinclair stuck in. Which is how we found out about the gate. We tried to get Dustin and Erika out and Steve and I were... captured.

[Tortured. Steve worse than her. The drugs. The whole night was so bad. Robin shivers. They are memories she doesn't like to linger on.]

[ she's never going to look at rats the same way now. she'd gotten some details from Billy -- not in depth and not much, of course -- but enough that those pieces now fully fit.

She almost wonders if she needs to be asking be asking who hasn't been possessed by something in some form (it might explain a lot), or how there's nothing to apparently stop that side effect. Because, if there's creepy science about alternate dimensions, there should be creepy science for anti-possessions tools. ]

And I guess that's how the mall became no more - once you guys were on to them, they had to cover their tracks and run back to Russia, because they got embarrassed by mostly high school badasses?

[Yeah, Robin probably wouldn't either, and she'd only heard of it second hand.]

Not exactly. See, that thing made a thirty foot monster, the Mindflayer like we fought on the other side of the portals here. It used Billy to try and get to the girl with powers. Dustin and Erika, they got us out, and we tried to escape the mall but the Russians were trying to stop us. And we got saved by the girl.

That's when the other showed up. They had been stalked by Billy to get the girl, and her powers were beyond strained so she couldn't defend us or her from the creature. But Hopper and Joyce Byers went underground into the base and were going to blow the gate stuff up, which is what ultimately destroyed the mall. And the creature was killed when the gate was destroyed.

[She sighs and looks down at her hands then.]

Before the end, El broke Billy out of possession, as he was trying to feed her to it. I don't know how. But he stood up. He faced it. He... tried to stop the thing. It...

[It killed him. Robin's shaking. She remembers it. The way he screamed his defiance. The way he had bled out. The way Max had shouted in grief. It was so bad. It was so damn bad. And Robin wanted to cry.]

The military came in then. They got us all out. They made sure the fire took the rest of it after.

Remind me not to not get on the wrong side of someone with anything in the mind powers realm. [ Again, more accurately. She's done it once already. ]

For what it's worth, it sounds like you all handled it the best you could with what you had at the time. [ It doesn't fix what happened, or anything like that, but sometimes the reminder is good. She also is still holding on to a few questions, about things that happened after she had her Vecna encounter, but they'll get there. Right now Robin looks like she needs a massive hug before any more talking. ] Do you take hugs?

punching myself in the feelings la la la

oh look, i'm tripping over Robin mood

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