#Jim Nix

[convexly]

Pad Thai by Jim Nix Via Flickr: Portland, OR

[spirkme915]

Watching Those Old Scientists with an 8 year old Trekkie in training:

- Spock “laughs” at Boimler’s joke when they’re by the portal and she screams - legitimately screams - whips her around toward me and says, “What is happening? Why is Spock laughing? I’m scared! That’s so scary!”

- (I have to pause and rewind because she’s completely missed Boimler’s reaction. I’m desperately trying not to laugh)

- Chapel and Boimler are in the turbolift talking and after Boimler says he’s afraid he’s messed up Spock, she says, “Wait. Does Spock have a crush on Boimler?”

- (Spoimler nation rise. Even an eight year old sees it)

- Turbolift conversation ends and she looks at me, brow furrowed. “Spock shouldn’t force himself to be human. He’s Vulcan and human. He should be himself.”

- (Out of the mouths of babes, right?)

- Mariner and Boimler are in Pike’s ready room and she’s nodding along as Mariner talks about Hot Spock. “It’s the ears,” she says confidently. “But he shouldn’t smile. That’s creepy.”

- (Gold star analysis. No notes)

[thaliaisalesbian]

i get myself twisted in threads

Chapter 6: with your golden notebook

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

“The kids are going home for the night, Steve.” She’s not sure why she’s telling him this. “Will’s staying, of course, and I think he and El would try to sneak in here to spend the night if Jonathan and I hadn’t already claimed it. Owens is coming tomorrow, he’s bringing another doctor, too. Just in case.” Nancy talks to Steve for another few minutes, running her fingers through his hair—if he were awake, he’d have a fit over it. It’s greasy and flat, and there’s Upside Down goo in it. She feels like she should pour shampoo over her hands and hope that it will help.

Maybe if he wakes up a little tomorrow, she can wash it for him. That might make him feel better. More like himself, at least.

Maybe he’s not going to wake up again. A little voice whispers, and she shuts it down.

She has to. She can’t think about him like that, not now, not ever.

Especially when they’re going to learn more tomorrow. Owens won’t be able to magically fix it all, but he’ll be able to do something.

��Nance?” Jonathan’s setting up an air mattress on the floor. It was either them or Joyce or Hopper staying in here tonight, and Joyce had given them a knowing look when they’d practically begged to stay. “Are you okay?”

She inhales, shakily, and realizes that she’d stopped talking and started crying.

“Is it bad? That I miss him while he’s still here?” She whispers. “It feels like this might be it. The plate, that was bad enough, but this—this feels more real.”

Jonathan knows she means more than right now. It's been months; months she can’t take back.

“I know.” He looks up at her, nothing hidden on his face, not the way Steve tries to hide what he's feeling with his sunglasses and snark. “He’s not going to die overnight.”

Hopefully. He might get a fever, though, or infection might set in, or any other number of horrible things that she knows aren’t likely to happen but her mind keeps coming up with them anyway, shoving them to the front of her brain, making it hard to think about anything else.

Owens will be here tomorrow. If Steve gets an infection, he’ll be able to treat it.

It’s the only good thing she has to think about right now.

She’s missed Steve for longer than just tonight. She’s missed the way he was so good at making her feel better when she didn’t even realize she was sad. She’s missed the way he talked to her, about everything, late at night when neither of them could sleep.

Jonathan doesn’t do that. Not the same way Steve did, and it’s different, a good different, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss Steve.

He’d made it all seem so easy, and in hindsight maybe it’s that she hadn’t seen him struggling because he’d been so focused on her, because he hadn’t wanted her to worry.

“Nancy, it’s late. We can sit and talk to Steve tomorrow.” Jonathan guides her down to the air mattress, holding her tight.

They don’t talk, but they usually don’t need to; it’s like one look explains everything.

Tonight, that’s more true than it’s ever been:  Limbs tangled together, faces wet with tears, a horribly injured Steve Harrington tucked into Jonathan’s bed above them—that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t need words.

finish on ao3

<- 5 7 ->

[dopescissorscashwagon]

Lovely sunset light at Moraine Lake in the Canadian Rockies

📸 Jim Nix Photography

[tozettastone]

Fantasy Novels Recommended By Vibes

A note about warnings and assumptions: I have given no content warnings, but most of these books have them, usually for violence or sexism. Except the middle grade books. I have assumed everyone knows who Tolkien and Jordan and Le Guin and GRRM are and does not require me to recommend them once more. I have also assumed that everyone following me has read and enjoyed the trashiest of fanfiction at some point or other.

Now, let's go.

"I want something that feels like reading the unhinged fanfiction of a 16 year old girl, but written by and for adults so the sex scenes don't make me feel deeply uncomfortable."

Oh boy. Okay. Don't worry, I've got you.

The Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop. High fantasy. If you like to categorise things you will love the worldbuilding in this. Weird and gender essentialist, although not in the way you might expect.

The Merry Gentry series by L K Hamilton. Urban fantasy. Degrades in quality over time. I would say: read the first two, and then continue at your discretion depending on your tolerance.

"Do you have a version of this that is not quite so focused on sex as worldbuilding?"

I do, I do. Not everything that reads like unhinged fanfiction must automatically contain smut.

A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. It's billed as adult fantasy, but it reads like YA. If you like 2010s fanfiction and wish it were better written more often, you'll love these two.

Any book by Mercedes Lackey will read exactly like fanfiction. I make no comments as to technical quality, but if you like hurt/comfort idfic, you will like these. If you're looking for a zero-romance, one-book introduction to these books, I'd try Brightly Burning.

"That's still a bit too adult. I want something that's fine to read with kids, too!"

Sure! Fantasy loves YA and kids' books, haha.

The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Middle grade fantasy, leaning heavily on English folklore.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. Young adult urban fantasy. Concerned with the legacy of slavery in the US.

The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix. Young adult high fantasy. The pacing is strong, the worldbuilding is rad.

Tithe by Holly Black. Young adult fantasy. Her later books are better loved but I reread Tithe and then went and read The Cruel Prince for the first time this year and Tithe is better.

The Tortall books by Tamora Pierce. I like The Immortals, but reasonable minds will differ on this one. Middle grade high fantasy.

The Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan. High fantasy, young adult.

"Okay, now I want young adult fantasy like that, but weird."

Weird. Hmm. Okay. Try:

The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce. Horror and fantasy, young adult, but not like... too young an adult. Give it to a 15 year old, not a 10 year old.

"That's... too weird. Put some weird back. I want something suitable for teens that's committed to the aesthetics of weirdness, but is not actually weird."

Alright, here are a couple:

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz. Historical fantasy, definitely young adult. The grizzly aesthetics of 19th century graverobbing are a gossamer veil over a cute, but not particularly sophisticated, YA novel.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Middle grade fantasy. Less weird than it thinks it is, but still fun to read.

"Enough kids' stuff. I want fast-moving urban fantasy!"

Urban fantasy occupies a weird nexus between fantasy and detective noir, which I'm kinda into. Here are my suggestions:

I think everyone who wants urban fantasy is probably aware of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, but I'll put it here anyway because there's a big fandom for the Dresden Files so if you stick it out for a bit you get access to all the fics. The first one will take you 3.5 hours and if you don't like it, move on — the writing doesn't really change. Also has a TV series.

The Felix Castor novels by Mike Carey. Urban fantasy, a little more grim, but definitely better written.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Urban fantasy. Main character is a police officer. I recently finished the first of these books and it was pretty fun, but I can't speak to the remainder of the series.

"Tozette, I fucking loved True Blood."

You're in luck, I can make this a whole category.

I bet you've heard of the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris already, but if you haven't, it's what the TV series was based on. Urban fantasy, but actually kind of rural.

Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter by L K Hamilton. Urban fantasy. Another LKH series that starts fun and degrades rapidly. The first three are fun, they come in an omnibus. I was obsessed with this series when I was 17, which both is and isn't a recommendation. Again, this series has a large fandom.

Dime Store Magic and Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong. Urban fantasy. The rest of the Women of the Otherworld series is hit or miss for me, but I do recall liking No Humans Involved.

The Blood Books by Tanya Huff. Urban fantasy. Read if you've ever wished Harry Dresden was female. Also has a TV series!

"Do you have some traditional high fantasy recommendations that aren't Tolkien, Robert Jordan, GRRM, or Ursula K Le Guin? Please?"

Absolutely. Of course. One hundred per cent.

The Elenium trilogy by David & Leigh Eddings. High fantasy. Technically there's also a sequel trilogy, but it's not as good.

The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. High fantasy. Lots of high fantasy politics.

Urshurak by The Bros. Hildebrandt. High fantasy. Extremely Tolkien inspired but with more amazon women in metal bikinis.

The Books of Pellinor by Alison Croggon. High fantasy. There's four of them and while I wouldn't say they're my favourite books ever, I do think they're a solid, competently written high fantasy series that will stop you from contemplating the horrors of reality for at least three days.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. High fantasy. A great rearrangement of European folklore. I struggled with the representations of women, personally, but they're well constructed stories.

"Recommend something that's fantasy but feels like a totally different genre."

Okay. I can do that. Here you go:

The Chronicles of the Crystal Singers of Ballybran by Anne McCaffrey. It's a trilogy that's set in space and therefore engages with a sci-fi kind of vibe, but if you scratch the surface, the trilogy is fantasy all the way down.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by HP Lovecraft. Horror, but also historical fantasy.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. The first three books of the Thursday Next series are gold, actually, but start here. This is about a literary detective living in an alternative history setting. Fantasy, but ideal for people who are going to get the rapid fire literary references.

"Tozette, what if you just recommend a single fantasy book, writer, or series, with your whole heart?"

My WHOLE heart? Okay. Here:

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, and Johannes Cabal: the Fear Institute by Jonathan L Howard are each different subgenres of fantasy, and all three of them are absolute fucking bangers. They are the best books on this list according to me. I love them.

[terminusantequem]

Jonathan Meese (German, b. 1971), FAST NIX GEHT MEHR, JAVA JIM!, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 120.5 x 100.3 cm

[book--brackets]

Author Stats for BFB

When putting together the Best Fantasy Book polls, I noticed that a lot of authors were popular choices, so I thought I'd do a little post about our most popular authors from ones that are in the list only twice to the most common author we have!

The preliminary round for BFB starts tomorrow!

2 Times

J. R. R. Tolkien

Erin Morgenstern

Cassandra Clare

Eoin Colfer

Terry Pratchett

Laini Taylor

Jim Butcher

Robin Hobb

R. F. Kuang

Samantha Shannon

Shannon Hale

Jonathan Stroud

Seanan McGuire

Enid Blyton

Clive Barker

Alix E. Harrow

Scott Westerfeld

Raymond E. Feist

Wayne Thomas Batson

Xiran Jay Zhao

Lloyd Alexander

Meagan Spooner

Katherine Addison

Christina Henry

Gene Wolfe

N. D. Wilson

Emily Rodda

Jude Watson

Ellen Kushner

Cliff McNish

C. J. Cherryh

Garry Kilworth

3 Times

Rick Riordan

Roald Dahl

Brandon Sanderson

Cornelia Funke

Gail Carson Levine

Garth Nix

T. Kingfisher

Patricia C. Wrede

Robin McKinley

Kieron Gillen

Francis Hardinge

4 Times

Holly Black

V. E. Schwab

Naomi Novik

5 Times

Diana Wynne Jones

6 Times

Tamora Pierce

9 Times

Neil Gaiman

Mercedes Lackey

[nixnephili]

Hey Nix!! Just wanted to say that i love LOVE both this au, the lore in it, and your style because 🤌 ITS JUST AMAZING!!

curious about one thing: how would Atsushi address others? ive seen your post about how everyone would address Atsushi but how would Atsushi address others????

anyways i hope you have an amazing day and hope the world of Fyo!Atsushi AU expands <33

What Atsushi calls his superiors:

Nikolai:

• I honestly think he wouldn't address him tbh. Unless necessary, case in which he would use either "Nikolai", on a personal basis or "Nikolai-san" in a public space to display a formality. But otherwise he tends to avoid most interaction or assigning honorifics to his name, as Atsushi deems them undeserved.

Sigma:

• He would address him, politely. Mainly based off genuine respect and gratitude for being allowed in the library at all hours to read. Sigma is kind to Jim so Atsushi addresses him with "Sigma-san" on a regular. In the beggining he would say "mister" or "sir"--> yet again a level of courtesy Nikolai did not earn himself due to his brash behaviour towards the little tiger.

• As far as nicknames maybe a shortened "Siggs"?

Bram:

• Ummm...he would probably just address him as "Bram" or "Bram-san" .

• When in the form of a bat maybe even "Stoker". Atsushi would prefer to set that line between Bat!Bram and normal Bram.

[breathtakingdestinations]

Kvernufoss - Iceland (by Jim Nix) 

[rain-on-wax-feathers]

part one of artfight attacks! chronological order, left to right, top to bottom,

coen for @moookar

slidecat for @indigo-piplup

smiley and tops for YourLocalPlatypus (artfight)

skorp for @eskiinox

aurel for Rakuuu (artfight)

futoculi for @whittingsonder

maera for hxppyhxt (artfight & instagram)

solo for desertangelic (artfight & instagram)

haruhi and adam for anothafell.a (instagram)

nix for euli0s (artfight & instagram)

tak for Beetlord (artfight)

sage for Starburst66 (artfight)

the forsaken for @bonesthebeloved

lola for Auqost (artfight)

henri for @stradiivarrii

dahlia for cumeulus (Instagram & twitter & artfight)

astrid for Starburst66 (artfight)

jim for @lemoonz

wind god design for PersoniPhy (artfight)

cynthia / design an oc for nursebf (instagram)

moon for Froggy_Donuts (artfight & Instagram)

wěi for L3m0nFanta (artfight)

blaire for ParkDoesStuff (instagram)

cadence for @cott-creature

all of these were super fun to draw !!!

[drconstellation]

Gabriel as a Shoulder Angel: S2 Study

Part 3: Ep.6 Every Day

We are on the last leg of our study of Gabriel as a shoulder angel. He tends to be a left-side angle, but he also likes to take the center spot light at times, which should not be so surprising. Let's see what happens in Ep.6

Jim the assistant book seller keeps to the left-side, as usual, as he helps Aziraphale prepare the bookshop against the demons gathered outside.

Even when he is in the background, Jim is still over Aziraphale's left shoulder.

Jim doesn't take part in the fighting, but has a good view of the action.

He's still hovering in the back-left as they retreat to safety upstairs.

As Shax taunts Aziraphale about going native on Earth, Jim is sent off to his room to get him out of the way. He can't do anything else to help at this point, and may actually be a hindrance.

I've gathered all the relevant screenshots of Gabriel's trial together, rather than treat them in appearance order, just to make things flow a little more smoothly.

While the archangels have their meeting, they are shown projected to four corners of the room. For us as the viewer, though, Gabriel is still positioned on the left-side. So is Saraqael at the start, you might note.

Nah, I'm still demonically-sided.

Even the appearance of the Metatron isn't going to change which side he appears on - he's still the most demon-aligned of them all. You should not be surprised at all by this point. But Saraqael, in her position as "executioner" for the Metatron, has moved the Metatron;s right-side.

Hmm, so he was prepared to be turned into a demon for real, but Metatron and Uriel nixed that idea, and they were merely going to demote him to Scrivener, 38th class. Interesting...

Once he makes good his escape and solitary way into the elevator to Earth, he is on nobody's side. - until he gets inside the book shop.

Once Crowley returns from Heaven with the other archangels, and the demons from Hell appear, we find Crowley, Aziraphale and Jim standing in an arrangement we've seen before, with Crowley on the far right, and Jim on the far left, the opposite of what we might expect. On a larger scale, which can't be seen in this shot, thought, Jim is standing in the middle of the gathering.

Jim approached Beelzebub from their angel-side.

Then takes center stage again as he re-integrates his memories.

Oh, hello! We are now in Gabriel's memories. This is the first time we see Gabriel meeting again with Beelzebub after the fiasco at Tadfield and he is on the angelic right-hand side.

But the next time they meet to negotiate he is on the left-side again. Last time Beelzbub had called the meeting, but this time Gabriel had arranged it, and has a proposal to make - no Armageddon, no war. It's a deal.

It's a date at the cemetery in Edinburgh. Gabriel is admiring himself. Can he get any closer to center stage? Can Beelzebub look at two Gabriels at once?

Beelzebub agrees it is a good likeness, as they stand on the right of screen.

"Sometimes I come here for hours and just...look at it."

If I could find the GIF I would have 1827 Crowley saying "Probably comes here to stare at it. Marveling at his own beauty." That's why Gabriel is slightly to the left here.

There is actually a three-set parallel here, starting from Before the Beginning, with Crowley uttering "You're gorgeous" and Aziraphale giving him a jealous look, then then a similar thing happening as they appraise Gabriel's statue in 1827, then this sequence in the present with Gabriel and Beelzebub - only Beez looks bored to me, not jealous!

Then Beez says "lets go to the pub," leaving the Supreme Archangel gazing at himself... (This is one of the small Aziraphale parallels Beelzebub has in S2, to match with the larger Crowley/Gabriel parallels that are going on.)

They order food and drink together

This is one of the few times we see money exchanged in S2, so Gabriel is doing it right.

Ooh, Gabriel! You're being wicked, miracling all the records in the jukebox to the same thing, just to please your demon!

Once they have their order for goblets of intoxicating liquor, and a packet of crisps, they sit down together, order restored, to talk further.

Back in the present, a restored left-sided Gabriel acknowledges Aziraphale.

And remembers Saraqael - with a bit of help.

Then the right-sided Supreme Archangel turns to find his demon counterpart on the other side of the room.

Gabriel crosses his hands over his heart as he sees Beelzebub, copying the patterns on his vest - the OXO pattern the creator put in to mimic angel wings and halos.

But Gabriel soon switches back to the left-side. If we haven't already mentioned it here, Beelzebub sometimes acts as an Aziraphale parallel, so they need to stand on the right angelic-side, and Gabriel being the Crowley parallel needs to stand on the left demonic-side. Makes sense now, doesn't it?

And off they go in that order, together, into the universe.

We've come to end of the four-part series on how Gabriel appears in scene blocking in S1 and S2. The idea was to look at how often he appears on the left-hand side of the blocking, and how infrequently on the left as a righteous angel. In S2 he spends a just as much time in the center as he does on the left, even hogging the limelight on occasions.

This series moves on with a two-part meta looking at how Gabriel and Crowley are both parallels and foils to each other in Season 2, and by understanding that Gabriel tends to end up on the left in the scene blocking as a demon helps us understand that sometimes he's also standing where Crowley once did - or could. Either way, it gives us a better understanding to both these complex characters.

This meta is part of a series on Gabriel:

Gabriel as a Shoulder Angel: S1 Study

S2 Study Part 1: Ep.1 The Arrival and Ep. 2 The Clue

S2 Study Part 2: Ep.3 I Know Where I'm Going and Ep. 5 The Ball

First Order Archangels Part 1: Maybe You'll See An Archangel

First Order Archangels Part 2: Foils of War

[spirkme915]

i just realized that 2009 star trek starts on jim's bday and star trek: beyond ends on jim's bday. so, if those are the only aos movies we get, it's full circle.

[thaliaisalesbian]

i get myself twisted in threads

Chapter 5: sitting as usual

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

She doesn’t know how Steve manages to stay awake all the way to the Byers’ house. It takes them at least an hour and a half to get there.

It feels so much longer. Maybe it was; even if she had a watch on, Nancy wouldn’t be checking it now. Because they keep stopping to make sure he’s not going to bleed out. They have to. Jonathan uses one of their stops to wrap his jacket around Steve’s torso, pulling it as tight as he can. He ties the sleeves in a knot right above the wound.

Nancy thinks she would have screamed, if someone had done that to her. But Steve is either out of enough that he doesn’t feel the pain, or he doesn’t have the energy to do more than mumble.

Which he’s doing an awful lot of.

The rambling mumble he keeps up is actually calming, in a way. It makes it easier to know he’s still alive, for one, and he’s talking about the kids, everything he knows they like and don’t like.

At least, she’s pretty sure he’s talking about the kids. It’s hard to tell. Half of it is too quiet to hear properly, and slurred on top of that. She’s too terrified, too worried, to pay much attention to what he’s actually saying.

Dustin, Lucas, and Mike are waiting in the yard with the first aid kit when they get there. Joyce and Hopper are just getting out of their cars, parked haphazardly in the yard. Nancy wants to collapse when she sees them; she barely registers that Will, El, and Max are joining the huddle with the others. She does collapse when Hopper lifts Steve up and carries him the rest of the way into the house.

“We’ll come get you when you’re allowed inside. If your parents start calling and asking where you are, you’re going home. I don’t care if you’ve seen him or not.”  Joyce takes the first aid kit from Mike and gets the door for Hopper while he addresses the kids.

“Is he dead?” Dustin asks, staring after them, and, god, she’s too tired for this right now. She can’t handle the kids’ questions and fears when she hasn’t even started to handle her own.

“No, he’s not dead.” She says. “He was still talking to us.” Not coherently by the time they’d gotten here, but he’d been talking.

“Hopper said we shouldn’t be inside for this part.”

“Hopper’s right.” Jonathan sits on the ground, ignoring the blood on his clothes. She’s covered in it, too.

It doesn’t look good.

What if they were too late?

"But we want to see him!"

"Not now." Jonathan glares. "Mom and Hopper have to clean him up first."

"That's a lot of blood." Will points out quietly.

"He'll be fine." Nancy comes far too close to snapping for her comfort; she doesn’t want the kids to catch on just yet that she's not sure Steve will make it this time.

"Nancy, Jonathan? If we could get a little help in here? I'm not exactly big enough to help move Steve." Joyce's voice comes through the door, and they’re both reaching for it before she finishes her sentence.

Jonathan has proof on his clothes, all over his body, of how much blood Steve has lost.

Of how bad the injuries are.

It doesn’t prepare him for how pale Steve is, or the amount of used gauze and bandages on the floor.

How much blood can a person have in their body?

Jonathan tries to remember, but he can’t. But Mom and Hopper’s faces aren’t grim enough for this to be… they’re not going to tell them he’s dead. He’s not dead.

“What do you need?” He asks. The kids are trying to get in, but Nancy is already locking the door behind them.

They don’t need to see Steve like this. Jonathan’s not sure he wants to see Steve like this; bloody and barely-alive. Not when he’s always thought of how he looked on that night, bursting back through the door to save them, swinging the bat like he was planning to hit a grand slam.

Steve’s hand had been warm when Jonathan had grabbed him to pull him away. Since then, he’s had the on-and-off thought that he wants to know if Steve’s hands are always that warm, or if it was just because of the adrenaline rush.

Nancy brushes her hand against his when she turns away from the door. He wants to hold onto her, but they’re both tacky with drying blood.

Of course, a lock won't stop El if she really wants to test it, but something makes Jonathan think that she won't. At least not right away. 

“We really do need help moving him, and I thought you’d both like to change.” Mom manages a half-smile.

“How bad is it?” Nancy’s voice is as steady as she holds her pistols, like she’s prepared to be told Steve will die tomorrow.

(He doesn’t know how she manages it. Right now, his heart is in his throat and he can't get any words out past it.)

“He’s not going to be doing anything for a few weeks.” Hopper says. “If it gets infected, we'll have to take him to a hospital, but Joyce and I did our best. He’s not actively bleeding out anymore. Once we get him into bed, I'm calling Owens.”

A non-answer.

continue reading or finish on ao3

“How bad?” He has to swallow three times before he can repeat Nancy’s question. What if he doesn’t wake up again? “We’re not the kids, Hopper, you can tell us.”

“Honey,” His mom says, softly. “I think he’s lucky to have any flesh left on his right side at all. I don’t know how you got him here alive while walking.”

“He was awake.” Nancy whispers. “The whole time. He kept mumbling, something about the kids. And—Jonathan, you didn’t see the wounds, but he was bitten in the Upside Down too. On his legs. He walked on those for days.”

“He climbed trees, too.” Jonathan adds. “He was sleeping in them.”

“We can rehash that later.” Hopper says. “For now, let’s put him in one of the bedrooms.”

“Mine.” He says immediately. “My bed is big enough.” When he’d outgrown his mom, she’d given him the bigger bed. “And it's the closest.”

His mom—she has the least amount on her of all four of them—goes to change the sheets and clear a path first, while he, Hopper, and Nancy try to figure out how they’re going to carry Steve without bumping him into walls, or waking him up, or dropping him.

Somehow it’s harder than him and Nancy carrying Steve from the lab all the way here.

It takes a few minutes, but they work it out.

“Go shower up, you two.” Hopper says. “Joyce and I will handle the living room mess and the kids.”

“Just don’t take too long, okay?” Mom winks at him, and he knows he’s bright red when they leave the room. He knows she trusts them, and of course they’d never even think about anything like that while Steve is maybe dying on his bed.

“I know she’s joking, but I honestly can’t even think about that right now.” Nancy leans her head on his shoulder. “We have blood everywhere.”

Jonathan feels like scrubbing his skin raw until he doesn’t see Steve’s blood on his hands ever again, but he thinks that’s going to take a while, so he settles for washing Nancy’s back clean for her before she does his.

“Do you think Steve would fit in your clothes?” She asks, pulling on one of his shirts and a pair of pajama pants that she keeps here. “I have a few here, but he certainly doesn’t, and he’s going to need something to wear.”

“It might.” Most of his stuff is a little big on him, it would probably fit Steve. His pants might be a little short, but that will just make checking his ankles easier. “I don’t think putting a shirt on him is a good idea right now though.”

“The kids are going to want to see him.” Nancy takes his desk chair, watching Steve’s chest as he breathes.

They’ll break down his door if they don’t get to, probably. Especially after they locked the door, kept them out.

“Yeah, but what if he starts bleeding again?”

“Just put a blanket over him.” His mom’s in the doorway, holding a trash bag. “We’re not going to be able to save your clothes.”

He tosses their ruined clothes into the bag, trying not to think about how much blood is on them.

“Do we need to take him to a hospital now?” Jonathan’s not sure they can, honestly, because of the nature of the wounds. They don’t have bears around here, and even if they did he doesn’t think this looks like an animal attack.

They also might not be allowed to see him if he's in the hospital. His parents will have to be notified, and then they’ll be in charge, they’ll be free to move him somewhere far away if they want to.

“If things get really bad, we will.” His mom answers. “You know I went to nursing school for a couple of years, and Jim has done field medicine before. He’s trying to get in contact with Owens right now.”

“How much worse is ‘really bad’?” Nancy’s got her arms wrapped around herself. He’d hug her if he thought she’d accept the touch right now.

“I don’t know, honey.”

He looks at Steve, almost as pale as his sheets, torso wrapped in bandages with drying blood still visible on his upper chest.

“What about his ankles?” He can't let himself think about what will happen if Steve dies. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to sleep in his bed again, knowing his friend had died there. In this room, probably. He’ll have to move in with Will or take the couch. Seal it off, only to come in when he wants to regret everything he never said all over again.

“We took a look at that too; cleaned them up a little and rewrapped them.”

“Why can’t we see him?” He can hear Dustin from here. The kid’s always been the loudest of the bunch, but he’s not sure he’s heard him this distressed in a while.

He doesn’t catch Hopper’s response, too busy staring at the blood and thinking about how close they came to really losing Steve this time.

Because he was willing to sacrifice himself for them. Again.

He'd hardly talked to them, but he’d still been ready to die if it meant they escaped. 

Jonathan had had to practically shove Steve behind him to keep him from using himself as a human shield.

He thinks about Steve’s face, the way he’d pulled that cocky mask back up so quickly when he’d overheard the conversation he and Nancy were having that day.

There’s none of that now, wasn’t any of it in the Upside Down, just a certainty and a protective edge that made the kids feel safe, that made him feel like everything was going to be okay, even if he didn’t know how or when.

It’s not something he’s felt often when dealing with the Upside Down. 

He slides past his mom to the bathroom, soaks a washcloth until it’s dripping, squeezing all the water out multiple times to give himself an extra minute. 

He probably uses too much force to get the blood off. He wishes Steve would complain. He’d be awake, at least. 

When he’s done, Nancy covers Steve with a blanket and sits on the edge of the bed carefully instead of going back to the chair.

“Jon,” she’s staring at Steve still, making sure he’s still alive. “We need to tell him. I can’t—We can’t lose him. Not like this.”

“I know.” He sits opposite her, finds Steve’s wrist under the covers, feeling for his pulse.

It’s there. A little slow, maybe, but it’s there.

“I can’t stop thinking about it.” She admits, “He looked like he was going to cry, and then it was just— gone. He was back to being an asshole and it was like nothing ever changed.”

“He heard the wrong part of that talk,” Jonathan agrees. It’s on a loop in his mind, everything they could have—should have—done differently. He could have caught Steve’s hand again, pulled him in to tell him the truth.

Right now, Steve’s colder than he was the last time Jonathan held his hand.

“Steve?” El’s peeking around the door, eyes wide, and suddenly all he can hear is the way she screamed for him before Nancy had gotten her through the gate.

“Come here, El.” Nancy might be thinking the same thing, because she tucks El into her side. “He’s going to be okay, see? Joyce and Hopper know what they’re doing.”

“I know.” She says. “It is still scary.”

“You’re right, it is.” He knows it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the kids figure out El’s slipped away from them, before they come in demanding to be allowed to sit around him and wait for him to wake up.

For now, they’ll keep this odd, almost grief-like, quiet for just the four three of them.

<- 4 6 ->

[claygoestothemovies]

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Greg Berlanti’s FLY ME TO THE MOON had my theater cackling, myself included. Unfortunately, the rom part of this rom-com crashes on take off. Thankfully, this screenwriter (Rose Gilroy, based on a story by Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein) at least appears to know how a cat acts in real life, unlike another recent film.

The razor sharp caper follows Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson playing Don Draper if he was fast on his feet and had a sense of humor), a marketing genius who’s “encouraged” by a man working for Nixon (Woody Harrelson) to take on a job in Florida. What will she be marketing? Why, the moon, of course! America is deep in the Space Race, and NASA needs a social facelift if it’s any chance of succeeding. On the more technical side of making Apollo 11 happen is launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), and the last thing he needs is a smart and attractive woman making distractions, or something like that.

The big hook of the film is that in order to ensure that the moon landing goes off without a hitch to the American People and the world, they have to take measures to fake it. The comedy of all of this is hysterical. I haven’t laughed so much at a con since DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS. The jokes consistently land, and make fantastic use of Tricky Dick being in office. Scarlett Johansson is at the top of her game here, more films should let her be funny! Give us a ScarJo/Rachel McAdams buddy comedy, someone! Rose Byrne can come, too! Tatum is fine, and he handles the comedic elements satisfactorily. Harrelson and the rest of the supporting cast seem to be having a marvelous time, especially Jim Rash as the high strung director brought in to make the top secret film. Ray Romano also gives a warm turn as Henry Smalls, a fatherly figure working at NASA. A delightful black kitty is also featured. What a year for cats in cinema!

If this had just been a comedy, I would mostly give it top marks. Although I would definitely deduct points for that inexcusable runtime, no comedy - romantic or otherwise - needs to be 132 minutes long. But it’s not just a comedy. It’s a romantic comedy, and in that department, it somehow fails entirely. Everything about the romance, except for maybe the meet cute, feels so utterly forced I never bought in for a second. It’s the Sixties, I should be feeling Doris Day and Rock Hudson levels of sexual tension between these actors! Johansson could have chemistry with a napkin, yet Tatum seems like he could be her character’s brother; romantic sparks are not the vibe they give while sparring.

While overlong, and that could have been fixed by Nix(on)ing (sorry) the romantic plot, and my issues with the romantic aspects aside, I still had a great time with this one! I laughed a lot of that runtime, enjoyed some possibly revisionist history, and got to see ScarJo rocking period costumes and hair while making all the men around her look dumb. It’s not rocket science, but as far as popcorn entertainment goes, you could do a lot worse.

3.5/5

[aloneinthehellfire]

GOH: The Adults

Gates Of Hell

"Uh, I want you to forget about sales and come work for me at the Hawkins P.D."

"And have to look at your face everyday? I don't think so."

I have written up a quick description for them, including a little backstory and a song (spotify link) I feel represents them in my fic.

JIM HOPPER

The parent should never outlive their child. That's the thought that rolls through his head when he thinks of Sara, a pit of despair in his stomach he can't seem to fill with alcohol. For years he succumbed to his own depression, and for years he was hurting himself even more by pulling away from the one thing he should be most grateful for; you.

Now with El in the picture, he wants nothing more than to be a family again. But he knows he has to prove his love for you never faltered.

song: can't pretend by tom odell

JOYCE BYERS

Joyce Byers has been called many things in her life. Unconventional, overprotective, crazy. But she will never be a bad mother. Her duty is to her kids, to love and protect, and she will let nothing stand in the way. But can she learn to let them fly on their own when it's the only option left?

song: mad woman by taylor swift

taglist: @toomanyfandomsimfanvergent . @sheisjoeschateau . @kthomps914 . @curled-hair-red-lips . @nix-rose .

@palmtreesx3 . @kryztalglear . @sattlersquarry . @hey-barnes-stole-a-jeep . @sadslasher13 .

@iliveonteaandbooks . @innercreationflower . @newyorkangelbaby . @totally-bogus-timelady .

@pansexualhoor . @kitdjarin1 . @chiliwhore .

[heystovepipeboys]

back on my bullshit again with some new WIPs and old faves I've been working on during nano this month, so it's time for another round of...

WIP Ask Game

RULES: post the names of all of the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

-I'm in love with you,- David finally said

black widow babe

Dumb boys

have you done this before?

How to Guide Tertius

Howl

In Haguenau, Ron starts to spiral

Jim's bruises were an ugly yellow-green

Law and order rehab

Learning

let's try this again and again and

Lip doesn't notice at first

mean

muzzle

Nix ruins parties

put it to bed

rock and a hard place

Sentinel & Guide webgott

Sledge was asleep under water

soulmates (nix is stupid)

Starsky doesn't call Hutch first

the bends, the shakes

When Lewis was small, Stanhope brought him a girl

Who the hell is Lew?

Aaand let's see... Tagging @ronsparky @lamialamia @malarkgirlypop @georgieluz @lewis-winters @almost-a-class-act @merriell-allesandro-shelton @rosesthistlesandclovers @mads-weasley @gudetama-tamad @lieutenant-speirs @dusty-jump-wings @vera-keller @land-sh @mutantmanifesto @freebooter4ever @educationalporpoises and if you wanna say I tagged you then go for it!