a begging to be believed

nancy wheeler, the girl with the gun.

[palmbled]

𝙿𝙰𝙻𝙼𝙱𝙻𝙴𝙳 ( previously journal1st ) is a mutuals only, highly selective & slightly canon divergent portrayal of stranger things's nancy wheeler.  —————                 ⁱˢ ⁱᵗ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ᵗʰⁱˢ ⁱⁿ ᵈᵉᵃᵗʰ'ˢ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ᵏⁱⁿᵍᵈᵒᵐ ? waking a l o n e at the hour when we are 𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜 / lips that would kiss / form ₚᵣₐyₑᵣₛ to broken stone . as investigated by lane. 25, she/her. ( be advised : n*ah schn*pp & br*tt gelm*n faceclaims, b*lly har*rove muses are not welcome on my blog. )

find me here : @maxinemayfield / @radiover

[palmbled]

spent the drive home pondering how much of nancy's guilt about barb's death was about her dying because nancy wasn't there vs. the fact that she was considering/starting to cut barb out of her life

[palmbled]

this hellsite is turning against me for some reason so please know if you see that we have suddenly broken mutuals, THIS IS TUMBLR'S FAULT !!! if i don't want to follow you anymore i will always hard block to avoid confusion. if for some reason i disappear from your following with my blog still viewable, that was not my choice. i would still love to follow you and interact. man i hate this website

[palmbled]

SEASON FIVE RE - WRITE: THE HUNTERS.

it's 9:49 pm on september 19th, 1986 when monsters finally invade what's left of hawkins, and when what very little suspension of disbelief most citizens still held snaps like a twig. suddenly, hawkins is under a full siege. the party completes their first successful crawl into the upside down, but the upside down crawls in after them. demogorgons, demo - dogs, and bats come pouring in through the cracks below their feet on all sides as shrill, inhuman screeches fill the night air; a poor substitution for the crickets that have long fallen silent. despite the overbearing military occupation, many lives are lost in the subsequent days, weeks, months, year leading up to the final fight with vecna. the army does not listen when the party desperately tries to warn them of what truly weakens the creatures and continues to fight almost exclusively with gun power. this gives the alien species practically free range to kill and maim innocents as the government proves to be much less invested in protecting the citizens of hawkins than they are in finding their " eleven ". to their very minimal credit, the military do use ultrasonic frequencies to scramble the bats' echolocation at night. eventually the bats begin to surface in the daylight instead, although the light and heat considerably weaken them. this sound doesn't help with the other demo - species. on nights when the crew is not organizing crawls, they regularly split into groups to hunt demogorgons in order to protect what's left of hawkins' rapidly dwindling population. they are caged prey in a lion's den, and the party takes it upon themselves to do as much as they can to prevent anymore death. nancy takes up candy striping alongside vickie, in order to monitor monster activity, any possible new vecna cases, and, of course, to keep an eye on max. the party is exhausted, spread too thin, and constantly on high alert. this is, of course, exactly how vecna wants them. practically powerless, and much too preoccupied, to see the next step in his plan coming. it isn't every night that the creatures show their faces. some nights are quiet, although it's never a safe decision to believe it will stay that way. the unpredictability, they decide, must be part of the madness. a false sense of security before they're robbed of it again, never something that can be planned for. it's a cycle built to wear them down, and it does - but not without impossibly furthering each of their individual needs to finally catch, and kill, the monster in control. it's because of this need to be everywhere, all at once that they are so woefully unprepared for the night the crawl goes wrong.

[palmbled]

the stranger things brainrot is triggering the lost records bloom and rage brainrot BAd

[palmbled]

please hard block me if you want to break mutuals i don't have a good memory :(

[leememes]

THE SOUNDS OF NIGHTMARES SENTENCE STARTERS .

a collection of roleplay / writing prompts , lifting quotes from " the sounds of nightmares " podcast based in the little nightmares universe .

" the look on your face says there's more on your mind . "

" would you like to talk about it ? "

" how are you feeling today ? "

" do you remember your nightmares ? "

" i remember ... everything . "

" i'm not sure that's true . "

" i woke up somewhere i didn't belong . "

" i don't quite follow . "

" can you try to explain ? "

" you can't understand . not unless you were there . "

" hey ! where are we ?! "

" they aren't children . not at all . "

" my mind was divided , and that's not fair to you . "

" everything is going to get worse from here . "

" help me ! please help me ! "

" who brought me here ? "

" i'll do everything i can to help you . "

" there's nothing bad inside you . nothing . "

" we're in this together . "

" take your pick . "

" sweets for my sweet . "

" do you know a way out of here ? "

" what are you working on ? "

" we're friends . friends tell each other things . "

" i'll play with you . "

" don't overdo it . "

" you were right there ! don't tell me you did nothing ! "

" you're upset with me , aren't you ? "

" are you going to leave ? like all the others ? "

" whatever you desire , it's yours . "

" everyone needs someone . "

" don't leave me alone ! "

" are you still angry with me ? "

" i'll protect you . "

" i hate being alone . "

" i understand more than you think . "

" you mean to escape , don't you ? "

" you're being unfair . "

" i can't help you if you hide things from me . "

" why did you bring me here ? "

" what do you want ? "

" why didn't you tell me ? "

" you promised me . "

" i don't feel like talking . "

" you never listen . "

" we can face these monsters together . "

" i need you . "

" i have nothing more to give . "

" take my hand again . "

" you abandoned me . "

" the more time you spend with someone , the harder it becomes to hide who you really are . "

[palmbled]

What advice would you give to someone new to rp?

run before they Get you.

no, on a serious note: don't let it overwhelm you! as hard as it may be to not compare yourself to other people, the beautiful part of rp is that there's someone for everyone. don't try to impress people who make you feel like you're living up to being associated with them. reach out to the people you're mutuals with! you are missing out on so many amazing friendships and connections if you let yourself be scared away before you even try. write what feels good to you. have fun, and don't let anyone start to make you feel like writing is a chore when it is something you picked up because you love it and are passionate about what you're doing!

[palmbled]

SEASON FIVE RE - WRITE : THE CRAWLS.

six months passed without major incident after the night the portals opened. no more brutal murders, no reptilian creatures appearing through the x that'd been carved through the town's heart, and no further nightmarish hallucinations. aside from the environmental destruction of hawkins, the upside down seemed eerily inactive. this gap in activity provided just enough time for the party to scramble to get their lives back in semi - functioning order. this time is when the byers moved into the wheeler residence, the kids finally went back to school, and people, tentatively, began to find a new normal. though wsqk was reclaimed by the party in april after its abandonment in late march, the crawls as we know them now were still a far - fetched dream. instead, a restless nancy wheeler threw out her own, far more manageable plan with so few resources and so little manpower available - nancy, robin, jonathan and steve begin their own experimental ( re : amateur and desperate ) crawls with nothing but the power of teamwork and a few flashlights each. nearly every night from then on out was spent canvassing a new section of town, eventually requiring overnight trips to other sections on new sides of the rifts. split up, take different parts of decimated buildings, and use your lights to hunt for any flickering sign of the supernatural. these crawls went on for nearly two months before the first step of many was taken toward a less time consuming search method. robin took over the airwaves as the party worked out a code system for secret messages, different party members worked regular reconnaissance on the mac - z base by feigning illness and / or purposely getting caught to study the inner workings of the area and establish a proper schedule of when crawls were set to occur. the half - standing library provided blueprints and maps of hawkins, and murray provided necessary contraband and more accurate crawl intel as burns became more frequent. longer, still, before they successfully smuggled hopper onto a military truck headed for the upside down. it's september 19th, 1986 when they plan and execute their first successful crawl into the upside down. although the search comes up empty, our crew celebrates the dawn of a new era. any day now, they think, they'll find him. the pats on each other's backs and traded congratulatory remarks were cut short with the sudden sounds of otherworldly screeches that followed hopper out of the other dimension and into the normal world. unbeknownst to the members of the party, the hive mind's sleeper agent, will byers, had been awakened and was acting as vecna's very own personal walkie talkie. turned out, didn't appreciate coming over with no party invitation.

[byersarchives]

hihi everyone ! i made a sideblog for my portrayal of my darling darling jane el hopper <3 @halfinthevoid . i love her very much. i definitely wasn't held at gunpoint by lane no no what do you mean........ i will now lock in with my rewriting for will (& later on for jane) of season 5!

[palmbled]

wait guys why do i kinda want to write argyle. someone please take the computer away from me.

[nat2wenty]

THE ABYSS . A REIMAGINATION OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE UPSIDE DOWN.

Visit Original Link

the abyss lies beneath hawkins, across the expanse of the bridge that connects them together. a planet tucked somewhere in some distant stretch of the universe far, far from earth, yet tethered to the town through a shortcut in spacetime. a vast, frozen wasteland, the abyss is a landscape of blackened ice, largely resting at the same elevation throughout, though the jagged uneven nature of the terrain would by no means be considered flat. massive structures rise out of the ground like giant spikes, icicles frozen sideways along their surface. the sun rarely rises in the abyss, shrouding the planet in near-eternal night — what little light occurs naturally on its surface rises from rifts in the ground or bioluminescent formations somewhere beneath the ice which ebb and flow like the breathing of some animal. far in the distance, light moves suspended in the air, attached to something unseen which slowly marches along in search of something gullible enough to wander closely. 

even when some distant star rises on the abyss, it offers little relief from the darkness but a dim, grey cast. there is no sky but the thick grey stormclouds which roll and twist abovehead, never resting or ceasing. the air is thick, difficult to breathe and the surface is blanketed in fog, muffling the sound of all that traverse it as if inside a small padded cell. in fact, the silence which falls over the abyss is heavy enough to be oppressive. there are no birds. there is no rush of wind. even footfalls, even screams cannot reach far in this atmosphere. it’s a silence which presses on the eardrums, on the mind. a silence which is only broken within storms that roll slowly along, yet stretch on for miles. these storms, which pour down freezing rain and carve through the landscape with impossible winds, tear flesh from bone and build tombs of ice to be swallowed once more by the fog. once caught inside, it may be days before it passes completely.

though time, in the abyss, is of little consequence. without a sunrise or a sunset to signal a new day and with what little visibility its atmosphere offers, time slips away from anything with a mind to hold onto. one might walk for hours to find they’ve barely moved at all, or only for minutes to find themselves miles away from where they’d started. one’s sense of direction is easily distorted; they might walk forward only to end right back where they started from as they might lose their way in one turn, never to find familiarity again. one’s mind, should they still have one, begins to deteriorate in the abyss. images in the fog which are not truly there, sounds which no one else can hear. one’s mind turns against them in the empty, frozen darkness of the abyss. one’s mind turns against their allies. one’s mind is easy to infiltrate, to manipulate, especially should they be all alone.

there is, however, life on the abyss. things which roam the surface aimlessly, hungrily. things which thrive beneath it, safe from the hungry things above and the freezing rain and the violent wind. and the mind flayer, which sits dormant for much of its life, intruding upon the minds of the others. using them for its survival. an apex predator which understands fear, which hungers for it, which lives to control. to consume.

[palmbled]

SEASON FIVE RE - WRITE : HAWKINS ECOSYSTEM, SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT & MILITARY INFLUENCE.

it's march 27th of 1986 when nancy wheeler decides it's officially the end of the world in hawkins, indiana. each rift separates hawkins entirely, isolating family & friends from one another. it takes roughly two days to make it from one end of town to the other without military interference. poisonous spores release into the air, red storm clouds that occasionally rain sticky, burning black ichor take up most of the sky, and the military swarms in - but if that's the worst of it, nancy thinks, then thank god. at worst, the rest of the hawkins population will flee and relocate, rebuild elsewhere in a town that isn't thought to be cursed. nancy herself was even in the middle of convincing her parents to abandon what was left of their broken town for a fresh start ( with the intention to follow suit only after ensuring, one last time, that vecna's poison wouldn't reach beyond city limits ) when the barricades came down. no one in or out, in an effective city - wide quarantine, complete with a strict, military enforced 7 pm curfew. in light of the curfew, military patrols are constant throughout the night. those caught out after dark are faced with anything from a monetary fine to up to a month in jail, depending on the severity of recurrences. the revelation of the toxins in the air was harsh and quick after a large wave of citizens report to hawkins general with various symptoms of the same illness nearly a month after their first exposure to the ash flakes. the military put out a warning, advising mask usage while outdoors, and started mandatory monthly check - ups to monitor citizens' health. the first person to be caught in a red storm was admitted to the hospital with second and third degree acid - like burns. another bulletin posted : wherever the clouds are, you should not be. the storms were unpredictable at first, but through several weeks of observation, our party ( alright, mostly dustin ) made several deductions : three rounds of thunder, twelve minutes apart, signals incoming danger ; the black liquid ( most accurately comparable to tar ) only damages living things, no other material or man - made objects suffer corrosion or burns ; the storms themselves last anywhere from five minutes to three hours. if the people of hawkins suffered, the wildlife and very ecosystem managed to suffer more. the upside down poison spread from the fissures like rot in a decaying tree, unstoppable until it's removed at the source. this, at least for the first few months of decay, made farming and gardening outdoors and hunting altogether practically impossible, leading to a sudden food shortage in which the military supplied rations via mre packs to the public. expedited shipments of more supplies were rushed in in the weeks following, with supply rationing handled entirely by the military. due to these restrictions, there are no open convenience or grocery stores in hawkins. although starvation no longer posed an imminent threat, the social damage had already been dealt. hawkins citizens have, for the most part, entered a survival state of mind - self preservation is at the forefront of everyone's mind, leading to frequent attempts at stealing and hoarding necessities. hawkins, once a small town in which any neighbor would be likely to lend you a cup of sugar, has taken on a new mindset : survival of the fittest. the fissures themselves are not able to be covered, a constant open wound. the metal plate idea was attempted and rejected by the rifts themselves, as though they carried their own force of gravity that expels rather than attracts. there is no covering it, but the military does frequent burns to try and keep it contained. the burn days are even more hazardous to be outside in.

[palmbled]

do you remember what you did, nancy? or have you already forgotten?

[thatmansplayinggalaga]

[palmbled]

yeah i might be standing on this hill alone but i will not shut up about how nancy getting with jonathan was an act of self sabotage after barb's death. sorry but i'm literally never letting go of him taking pics of her undressing . that was the worst and most vile way to kickstart a ship. but anyway, even outside of that, jon was the Anti of everything she wanted to escape. he's the brooding mysterious loner who seems to be suffering as much as she is now. he doesn't believe in the nuclear family ( tbh i don't think either of them even really believe in romantic love in the "yeah. it's bullshit" scene of s1 but i digress ) and he's just... he's everything a 15/16 year old cookie cutter kid thinks of when they think of rebellion. and nancy, the one who feels silenced and ignored and wants to burn the world down ( herself included ), the one harboring all of this guilt and anger that's balling up into absolute resentment toward everyone not acknowledging barb's death and nancy's grief etc? she's burning bridges first.

steve, who isn't outwardly eaten alive by guilt about barb, catches nearly all of nancy's anguish because he was the only one she could take it out on. she took it out on herself: didn't make other friends, didn't reach out to anyone else for help, visited barb's parents ( to check on them yes but also, imo, to punish herself again, to remind herself why she's not allowed to be happy ) and cried in their bathroom, melted down on steve, then threw everything else out of her life except for the mission to take the lab down for what they did. anger that's absolutely justified this time, but no more healthy to dwell on ( closing it down helped her cope a little, helped her feel like she'd done something in barb's honor at least, but it definitely didn't heal her ). she stays with jon through a, lbr, miserable relationship in season 3 because he is the only thing left in her life. again, still no socializing among her peers, nothing more to her life except her work and her boyfriend. she puts all her focus on the rat thing for many reasons, but part of it was that it was a distraction, it was a lead to chase, it was something bigger than her again. solving that pretty much on her own ( even while being ragged on by both jon and the rest of the men at the newspaper -- jonathan also telling her she was crazy and her just being fine w that ?? does that SOUND like nancy wheeler to you ????? ) was, like, almost certainly the first thing that made her start to feel like herself again. too bad that also ended in trauma surrounding the upside down.

anyway, skip ahead to post - cali move. you see nancy acting more like herself than she has in a long time. that anger is almost entirely gone, she's interacting with students in the newsroom with at least some level of familiarity. she's not healed entirely yet, but she's healing. i fully believe that if vecna had decided to snatch someone in s1-3, nancy would've fit the bill. her arc about accepting barb's death is literally thrown in thanks to him. the 'did you forget what you did nancy?' because no, she hadn't forgotten, but she was letting it go. she was moving on. to me, that's also part of why she didn't really mind jonathan not being there for any of it. falling back in love with steve & her calling robin her friend in s4 both happen because she is healing and forgiving herself !!!!

[palmbled]

steve sent :  [  SAVED  ]:    having believed they were both about to die, the sender says “i love you” to the receiver, only for both of them to be spared at the last minute and left to process the not-so-final last words of the sender.

snarls erupt from the night around them, a darkness otherwise so eerily silent that even the crickets have taken to silence. nancy has a theory they’ve finally taken note of the major disruption in whatever balance hawkins’ ecosystem had managed to keep since that first rotting portal; since that first rip through the earth that’d torn their world apart. for the first few nights after the earthquake, they were still there -- filling the deafening silence between conversations nancy couldn’t take part of yet. they, like the rest of the living who'd been damned to stay in hawkins, were trying to pretend it was still normal. on the first night that the first monster crossed the threshold of their new gateway into the real world, the chirping stopped. monsters crept out of the shadows and into the light, much the opposite of what they do now, the sound of claws scraping against pavement punctuated by sickening noises of splintered faces opening and closing. shadows move rapidly around them, sharks circling their prey. she’s backing herself further into the corner they’ve stumbled into, cursing herself over and over for landing in a dead end. she knows this street better than the back of her hand; not in the way she may have claimed to before. before, of course, nancy still would’ve claimed the same thing. there wasn’t much in hawkins she had missed, growing up here her whole life -- the one thing she wouldn’t be able to pinpoint back then were the party spots. that felt like a given. but now? now, nancy has committed every inch of this pavement to memory. every loop around, every dead end, every house and every door left unlocked. holy shit, they’re learning their routes, aren’t they? “steve?” nancy’s voice is a cry, body scrambling back as she searches blindly behind her. hand makes contact with his forearm, clutches around it as she stumbles into him. “steve,” her tone says something else now, something even nancy isn’t sure she understands. she spares a glance toward him when she loses sight of the last demodog. terror has an iron grip on her lungs, breath coming in ragged, irregular waves as it begins to sink in. she thinks of the trusty nail bat, split in two after a particularly difficult encounter only twenty minutes earlier. she looks at the shotgun in her free hand, officially rendered useless after exhausting the last of its ammo on ( what they’d thought was ) the last demo of the night. there were never this many together. they’d been packing to go home. they’d been ambushed. there’s no getting out of this one. “i’m sorry.” it says too much, yet she knows the second it hits her ears it’s not nearly enough. it’s an apology that spans years, an apology for everything she hasn’t had the courage to address. for the fact that she never will. it’s an apology to herself, too -- for wasting so much goddamn time.  slick black flesh finally steps into the low light in front of them: one of the demodogs that’d been pursuing them since cherry lane. only one. taunting. but they’re both too smart to assume the others are gone. just as the thought crosses her mind, nancy hears chittering coming from closer than before. coming from somewhere in the shadowy yard on their right side. in the same moment, she hears a crash to the left. the creature in front of them begins its slow descent upon them. nancy abhors the knowledge that, somewhere in the pits of hell ( the upside down is practically synonymous with it, at this point ), henry creel is laughing at them. if there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear about that demon’s mentality, it’s that he enjoys the chase. he enjoys the fear.

“i love you, nance. i’ve always loved you.” it’s such a blatant admission, one that steals her breath entirely as wide eyes find the back of his head. he’s saying it like a reminder; as if this is something she’s always known, as if it’s as natural a choice for his final words as any. steve says it while standing in front of her, one arm stretched uselessly in front of him as the other reaches back, holds against nancy’s waist. he’s doing his best to shield her from the encroaching beasts. she recognizes the gesture, as futile as it seems, as an act of that love. take me first, it says, take me first to spare her the pain, even if it’s for a split - second. and she can’t believe it’s taken her this long to hear it. she’s never been so infuriated and so stunned at the same time. “i--” whatever response she was about to give ( it would’ve been a surprise to each of them, because it’s gone again in the flood of relief sweeping through her body ) is cut off by the squeal of brakes, by the sight of headlights slicing through the dark. the danger around them is revealed to be even more than she’d anticipated; practically a pack of the unnatural animals flanking them from each side. they’re undeterred by the new arrivals. “hey, assholes!” dustin’s voice rips through the air as glass makes contact with the ground a few feet away from the furthest demodog, and the flames erupting are enough to grant them a reprieve. several strange heads swivel toward the impact, just enough of them abandoning their mission to go after the truck waiting at the end of the cul - de - sac to leave an opening. one opening. one chance. nancy uses the hold she has on steve to push him through first ( she really doesn’t have the time to consider how hard that was, how solid, how sturdy he’s become in their years apart ) with the intent to follow directly behind. there’s a brief pause as she repositions the shotgun in her hands, firearm turned blunt weapon as she tees up and swings. the smile on her face shouldn’t be as excited as it is once the butt of the gun makes contact with a closed - mouthed demo, sends it skittering across pavement just long enough to give her room to follow the path she’d forced steve through. she finds the warmth of his hand in the dark as if it’s calling out to her.

                                            •·················•·················•

                                            •·················•·················•

they’re seated in the bed of the truck before she finds it in her to speak again. her eyes haven’t left his face for a multitude of reasons ( gratitude -- more than anything, it’s gratitude -- that he’s still here, that they’re both still here ), but only one of them shone through to her expression. unadulterated rage. “what the fuck was that, steve?” is how she breaks the silence, and she tries not to seem affected by the look he gives her in return. “you can’t-- you’re not allowed to just--” what she wants to say and what she is saying won’t align, but since when has that come naturally to her? “that was unfair.” it’s a lame finish to such a harsh start, but there’s little she believes he could do to truly make her angry. frustration dissolves easily into open relief, and nancy is almost thankful the moonlight is muted by the unmoving clouds spreading the upside down’s pollution into their world. it means he doesn’t see the moment she begins to cry. there’s a warm hand on her calf, soothing in a way it has no right to be. of course he knows anyway. he’s steve. lately, she’s had the terrifying, nagging thought that he knows her better than she knows herself. 

"nance, i--" his voice starts, too gentle for its own good. he doesn’t get the time to respond, nancy decides, because he’s already said enough. he’s said more than enough. she slides easily across the small distance between them, loses her fingers in the hair at the nape of steve’s neck as she draws him closer to her. “shut up,” is the last of her muttered words before she’s pressing a searing kiss to lips that might argue, and jesus is it difficult to ignore the sigh that deflates her rigid posture as she melts into him. i love you, too. i don’t know if i stopped. i don’t know if i could now, even if i wanted to, she thinks. just give her time to say it.