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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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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?

It definitely wasn't your fault, Chrissy. You weren't reasonable to be targeted.

[But that's not all of it. That's just leading up to Chrissy's involvement.]

We thought we had it stopped then. Billy was dead, despite our best attempts. But we had peace, finally. Steve and I bonded, the Byers left for safety for Will, and so many other things happened because we thought we'd get to live our life again.

[Which hadn't happened.]

We didn't know anything was wrong until... What happened to you.

[ She hopes they do get to have that break back home sooner rather than later. A permanent break from all the weird shit, a chance to do what they want and not worry about what shoe is dropping next. ]

Definitely a 'going from zero to one hundred' kind of way to figure out something's off again. Sounds like that's The Hawkins Way now, which still isn't fair to you all.

[ It had been worse for them than her. She only had to deal with it for a few minutes before she died and didn't have to worry about anything any longer; they had who knows how long after to still deal with the bullshit. And in fact are still dealing with it back home. ]

Maybe a weird question, but I have to ask.. how you all dealt with Jason and whatever group he surely gathered up, because it sounds like he made everything more of a pain in the ass for you all than not. Steve's exact words about him were him going ‘completely psycho’, which isn't new - so I have no reason to disbelieve him, but still. I definitely missed that part, so I have to assume it was pretty quickly after my whole dying to a psychic monster thing. We just didn't really have the time to elaborate further, but I'm also guessing that means something to the effect of he either didn't like any explanation about Hawkins's weirdness over the years but still decided the best idea was to go find and fight a murdering, powerful psychic monster on his own with something as useless against it as a firearm probably is. Or wouldn't hear one, and instead tried to get the police to follow you guys around on suspicion of being batshit crazy by inciting panic or something.

[ Both of those would fit the description of ‘completely psycho’, she's pretty sure. ]

Basically, I'd never be okay with myself if I didn't ask which brand of completely psycho you guys unfairly got from my more direct circle, because they have no chill, among other things, like the inability to have decent personalities.

[ There's a lot of flawed logic ("logic") for once here in her attempt to piece together more stuff. For starters, she can't help but feel like whatever it was that they'd been subjected to had been both partially her fault (because if she didn't die, then they wouldn't have had to deal with it in the first place), and partially on her to answer for because of her associations with said group (some sort of guilt by association type of thing), and also partially to make sure she's able to show she's really not as much of a loose cannon as the group she's hung around with for the past few years or assumed to be as such. She'd hate if that reputation clung to her too. And secondly, the reason she didn't guess the obvious one out of the ‘completely psycho’ scenarios is she's assuming that when you get killed by a thing like that -- which on top of something like Vecna being something that exists to begin with, is ALSO from a nightmare alternate version of Hawkins -- your body probably doesn't exist anymore in the real world because of ✨✨weird magic bullshit✨✨. And the fact that Hawkins has had a missing people problem anyway over the last few years, so what's another one in that long list? They're always assumed dead, and sometimes do turn up actually dead later. So of course it could happen with her too. ]

[Oh god. Robin doesn't want to talk about this part. This is the worst part. She'd been intending to brush over it.]

Chrissy... You were attacked in Eddie's trailer. He ran off screaming in fear, so you were found the next day by his Uncle. And the cops did the cop thing and also interrogated your boyfriend.

How do you think Jason reacted? Especially given how most people at school see Eddie and his club? Especially given no one would ever believe you were there to buy drugs?

[It was a witch hunt of the worst sort. And Jason... didn't survive it.]

Honestly? I had some hope that death by weird supernatural horrors meant your body just kind of. Vanished. Probably into whatever hell dimension the thing came from, since Hawkins is apparently a sci-fi movie where no one alive or dead catches a break now.

[ Now it's her turn for another drink. ] Definitely would have been worth every broken bone in my hand to punch him in the face for being like that about it, though. [ She's just saying. The him in question being Jason, obviously. ]

Here's hoping for the future, you guys befriend someone who can communicate with the dead so that any future mysteries of missing or murdered people of Hawkins doesn't turn into even more of a mess. [ Look, with all the weird things going on there, coming across someone with that ability probably isn't THAT far fetched as far as potential possibilities go. ]

Sadly no. Well, apparently in the first year or two yes, because they were hauling people into the upside down. But that wasn't what happened with you and the others. So Eddie had to hide from the town, but especially from Jason and the basketball team.

[And it nearly got Max killed. Had likely helped get Eddie killed. It was bad.]

And it's not even over yet.

Given the options, I think the first one would have been better. They're both terrible, but.. [ she means in the sense if it HAD to be one or the other for her, she would not have picked the way it went for her. ]

So what happens when it is? Over. And I guess I mean for you specifically — [ since Robin is the one she's taking to right now, she's the one she asks about ] — because you better be telling me your plans are to move far away and never look back. [ somewhere she can be okay and away from everything that had happened there. ]

I don't know.

[Robin sighs and shakes her head.]

Sort of hard to think about the future when the world is falling apart around you. When people are dying. When you don't know how anything is going to work. Plus I can't afford to move, not without college. And leaving Steve behind would be hard.

Also totally fair. [ It's not like there's an answer that's clearly 'right' or clearly 'wrong' with the question. ] I think it'd be the only thing keeping me sane, thinking about what to do after, just any shred of positivity or hope in a situation so lacking of it.

[ When you're not accidentally on team 'ignorance is bliss', that is. ]

I suppose we haven't really thought about it really ending. Not yet. Until we stop Creel, I don't think I can think about the future.

[And will she after? She doesn't know.]

As long as it involves scenarios as far away from that one as possible, I'll hope you get whatever that one is. [ She quickly smiles; if anyone deserves the good ending of whatever fresh hell the universe is tossing at them, it's everyone left in Hawkins. ] At least I guess there's this place? When it's not having said stuff follow you here. [ what a caveat. ]

There is this place.

[A place where she can see Chrissy, and Max isn't in a coma, and Eddie is alive. Small things that add up to a lot.]

Yeah, when it's not following. Which was so bullshit. But hey, I reinforced my throwing arm, right?

[ small things really do add up. for better or worse, but thankfully at least in this case, it's for better. ]

Your throwing arm will be unstoppable now, so watch out, everyone. [ She nods slightly. ] Remind me to hide behind you next time if that happens again. [ mostly joking. ]

Hide behind me?

[Robin looks really flustered by that statement.]

Uh, you might be better with Steve for that. He's really good at fighting.

What? You just said it! And nope, no take-backs, I'll take a reinforced throwing arm over a bat if I had a choice. [ this seems like better logic to her ok. ]

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work_wife - 2024-02-07 18:58 (UTC) - Expand

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

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this one might be approaching a good wrap point

yep!

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