#Robin Ann Rice

[cmatain]

Publicado el número 28 (2024) de «La Perinola. Revista de investigación quevediana» (ISSN: 1138-6363)

Se acaba de publicar el número 28 de La Perinola. Revista anual de investigación quevediana, correspondiente a 2024. Este año el volumen se abre con la sección de «Estudios», que forman un monográfico dedicado a «Sátira política y clandestina en el mundo hispánico» y que ha sido coordinado por António Apolinário Lourenço, Valentina Nider y Robin Ann Rice. Tras un prefacio, a cargo de Ignacio…

[fanaticsfiction]

Authors Convinced Fanfic is Illegal/Requires Permission

Terry Goodkind: “Copyright law dictates that in order for me to protect my copyright, when I find such things, I must go out and hire lawyers to threaten these people to make them stop, and to sue them if they don’t.”

John Scalzi: “Let's remember one fundamental thing about fanfic: Almost all of it is entirely illegal to begin with. It's the wild and wanton misappropriation of copyrighted material”

Diana Gabaldon: “OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I know it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.”

Robin Hobb: “Fan fiction is like any other form of identity theft. It injures the name of the party whose identity is stolen.”

Anne Rice: “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.”

Anne McCaffrey: “there can be no adventure/stories set on Pern at all!!!!! That's infringing on my copyright and can bear heavy penalties…indiscriminate usage of our characters, worlds, and concepts on a 'public' media like electronic mail constitute copyright infringement AND, which many fans disregard, is ACTIONABLE!”

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: “No. Absolutely not. It is also against federal law.”

Lynn Flewelling: “Whether you are writing about Seregil or Fox Mulder or Sherlock Holmes, if you do not have legal permission from the author, their estate, or publisher, then you are violating US copyright law. It is creative piracy. Doesn't matter how many disclaimers you put on, or if you're being paid. It. Is. Illegal.”

Someone Else, elaborated in the notes

[eliotdrawings]

charm 10 out of 10

[marypsue]

Ahh also as an addendum to my previous ask about the age swap (which I might’ve accidentally labeled as the body swap fic due to the foibles of being awake unexpectedly early ), I was curious what your criticisms are regarding Robin and Will’s treatments by the Duffers? I know you’ve alluded to being bothered by both but I’d be curious to hear more ( if you have the time/hankering!)

Hooboy. Okay. Buckle in. 

Obviously this is going to be a combination of actual literary analysis and Big Feelings That I Have, so like, please don’t take this as any kind of moral dictum on what to or not to watch, or how to or how not to interpret what you watch. Also, a lot of what makes me uneasy and unhappy about how canon deliberately handles queerness (as opposed to when it does queer things apparently by accident, which as you may have noticed, I have considerable amounts of fun with) has to do with behind-the-scenes context I’ve read about, so there’s a certain degree of Telephone involved. And I’m still only halfway through season four. There’s just so fucking much of it. 

With all that said. 

The behind-the-scenes context I’m most specifically concerned with are the season-one pitch bible(? I think that’s what it’s called) (which, it should be noted, ended up diverging in some quite significant ways from what ended up in the show) where the Duffers first raised the possibility that Will might be gay, and the anecdote that Joe Keery and Maya Hawke were the ones who decided Robin should be queer and had to really push for it and wrote and choreographed that scene in the bathroom. Put the two together, and it tells you that the Duffers planned that there would be One (potentially) Gay Character in their show. 

And that character was the one they spent an entire season directing violent, vicious, eventually outright murderous homophobic hatred at through the mouthpiece of a couple of bullies. You can say what you want about revenge narratives and those characters ultimately getting their comeuppance, but for Me Personally, it sucks all the fun and escapism out of season one to watch it thinking that those bullies only got punished when they aimed that vitriol at someone to whom it didn’t literally apply. Also I still have to sit through however many episodes of that vicious homophobia onscreen regardless, so, like, that’s a walk in the park anyway. /sarcasm 

And then there’s that whole bad business in season three, where it’s never been quite clear to me if we’re supposed to see Mike as having been in any way in the wrong. Kind of scuppers the argument, to me, that we’re supposed to be on Will’s side. And season four, which so far has had Will tagging along after people who are supposed to be his best friends but mostly don’t seem to give a single damn about him, doing absolutely nothing but looking morose and sullen and tragic and *coughcough* Artistic, and causing Problems for the nice straight couple. 

(Tangential to the point I’m coming to, but also, my son deserves better than to be reduced to a soggy cardboard standee with ‘GAY’ scrawled across it in magic marker the way season four seems to be angling toward. All the Byers, but especially the Byers boys, deserve better than season four seems interested in giving them. But I digress.) 

Also. I love Robin. If you follow me, you probably know that. I’m a hardcore, ride-or-die Robin girl. But. With Robin, from what I’ve heard of the context, the Duffers never intended for her to be queer. They wrote a girl who was smart and funny and sharp and talented and a little bit mean and a little bit insecure and a little bit weird but in an interesting, endearing way - as a love interest for Steve. 

And then, as soon as season four rolled around, once they’d been pushed into making her canonically, on-screen queer (in a beautiful, tender, heartfelt, true-feeling scene that they didn’t fucking write), suddenly she’s had a complete personality transplant. Suddenly, she’s an awkward, bumbling, annoying loser who’s only funny when she’s the butt of the joke, who’s no good at anything and who nobody really likes except maybe for Steve, an outcast even amongst the freaks. When she does do something smart or competent, everyone around her reacts with shock, like it’s wildly out of character instead of how her character was originally written. One of these versions of Robin was written with ‘gay person’ in mind, and it unfortunately wasn’t the one we were obviously supposed to like. 

In both cases, I get the feeling that the storytelling issues stem from this like...assumption that queerness equals isolation and misery and tragedy, and that there’s nothing to queerness outside of that. That there’s something inherent to queerness, something pitiable but repulsive, that causes the isolation and misery and tragedy (not that those things are imposed from outside, by, say, violent homophobia). That it would be absurd to imagine that queerness could ever be joyful, or playful, or that someone might ever, given the chance to choose, not choose to be straight instead. Or that there could be enormous friendship and community and heart and pride in queerness, or even that queer people might find friendship and community and strength in each other. Or even fucking talk to each other, ever. 

Which is especially infuriating, because the whole central theme of season one (besides surface appearances being deceiving) is that community and care between people who are very different but discover they have more in common than there is that separates them is what saves the day! That love comes in all kinds of forms, and they’re all important, and that love can be stronger than fear! 

But apparently, according to the Duffers, queer love doesn’t count and queer community doesn’t exist. It’s just isolation, misery, and tragedy, and I guess we the watchers are supposed to sit outside of it and pity Them for it (and be quietly, sneakily, a little bit nastily grateful that it’s not happening to Us). Because of course nobody watching the show is queer. Of course. This show is made for normal people. 

It’s part of the same attitude I’ve also seen play out with the Duffers’ inability to just let a white dude be bad. Oh, they want to talk a big game about how they’re on the side of the freaks, and bullies are bad, and everybody should be respected and appreciated for who they are. But when it cuts down to the bone, when applying that precept to a girl or a person of colour or a queer person makes a straight white guy come off as a monster, they keep trying to dodge it. 

The more antagonists they try desperately to rehab without ever acknowledging why they were antagonists in the first place, the more it starts to look like they simply don’t really believe that the people those antagonists hurt really matter. That, somewhere deep down where the assumptions that are so baked in you don’t even realise they’re assumptions live, they don’t really believe that girls, or Black kids, or queer people are as fundamentally human and deserving of respect and compassion as their beloved awful straight white men are. That what they really think about bullies is that bullies are bad because the bullies picked on them, instead of the kinds of people who deserved it.

(See also: that time a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Sadie Sink didn’t want to have to do a kiss in the Snow Ball scene, so the Duffers, who had just been joking about having her do it, actually made her do it. For multiple takes. Specifically because she didn’t want to. And then later related that anecdote to the press. Because they thought it was funny.)

Anyway. Personally, I’d prefer canon just never say anything definitive on the matter of Will’s sexuality and stop trying to push the narrative in that direction, so I don’t have to watch the Duffers spectacularly fumble yet another attempt at Writing About Marginalised Groups. 

(Also, this is absolutely not me saying Watch A Different Show - I’m here writing fanfic for this stupid show, it’d be pretty fucking rich of me to try to tell people to stop watching it. But I’d really love for many of its fans to get some more exposure to less-mainstream, more deliberately queer literature and film, so y’all can see what it really feels like to be seen and acknowledged and loved by a story, on purpose. I get it! I do! I too have wanted very badly to feel like something I loved, loved me back. 

But you don’t have to content yourselves with scraps. And you definitely don’t have to be so concerned with those scraps that you blame your friends, cousins, siblings, brothers in arms for ‘stealing’ some kind of ‘representation’ from you by asking to be seen and acknowledged and loved as well. The bastards who’ve been withholding that recognition from all of us would love nothing more than to watch with amusement, gorging themselves on a banquet, while we tear each other apart over a couple of discarded bones. Don’t give them the satisfaction. We don’t have to be isolated, pitiable, pathetic, miserable tragedies. Put the hollow promises of exclusionism and respectability down. There is queer art and literature and film and community and joy and love in abundance that you don’t have to beg anyone for, and you are invited to participate. This is me inviting you to participate. 

And cordially inviting the Duffers to meet me in the woods behind the 7-Eleven.)

...

tl;dr the way the Duffers treat queerness when they do it on purpose feels like a combination of othering, contempt, and misery porn, and I hate it. And that, in a nutshell, is the rant I’ve been sitting on for the last two-and-a-bit years. I’m getting down off the cafeteria table now. 

[stevieschrodinger]

"Robs I've got to stop staring. Make me look away."

"Errr...no. I'm staring too."

"But why?"

"Trying to work out what the fascination is. He looks like the love child of Ozzy Osbourne and an Ann Rice vampire."

Steve sips his drink, "he's not even that good looking," he says, distressed, "I just can't look away...there's just...something."

"Is it how pathetic he is?"

"He does walk like a baby deer on ice." And it's true, the guy is so uncoordinated. He clearly doesn't know how long his arms are, and keeps nearly taking people out by accident. There's just something... fascinating about it. "Oh my god Rob, make me look away, I'm being a creeper. This is so inappropriate, he must be about twelve years old."

"Steve. He's holding a beer, so even if he is just 21, that actually means there's only ten years between you."

"Only," Steve snorts with derision, "only she says. Who is he anyway."

"Wayne Munson's plus one."

"Wayne Munson the engineer guy?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't know he swung that way-"

Robin hits him with her purse, "it's his nephew you fucking dingus. Didn't you pay any attention?"

"No. Not really, you know I hate this shit."

"You can get through one company BBQ Steve, you won't die. Maybe you'll get introduced to him."

Steve makes a noise. A noise he really shouldn't make and definitely not in public. Because he wants to do mean, awful, terrible things to that boy. He wants to make him come until it hurts. Until he's sore and red and begging and trying to cry but he can't because there's nothing left because Steve has removed every drop of moisture from the boys body via his dick and he has got to stop staring.

"Robin, walk me to the bar. Walk me to the bathroom. Walk me to my car. Walk me to the ornamental fucking fountain so I can ornamentally fucking drown myself but please I am begging you. I have got to stop staring."

"Okay," Robin grabs him by his arm and turns them fully in a circle, and then starts marching him across the lawn towards the Munson's.

"Robin. Please. No."

"Shut up you big baby. Besides, he needs help, there might be things living in his hair."

"I can definitely fix him."

"That's the spirit."

Part Two

Read what happened next on AO3

[sevenoclock-lancelot]

and a bountiful whisker jar also to you

[duckprintspress]

Queer Horror Stories to Celebrate Mary Shelley’s Birthday!

Today, August 30th, is Frankenstein Day and Mary Shelley’s Birthday! To celebrate the first horror novel, we decided to ask our contributors about their favorite queer horror novels and ended up with 28 titles for a very spooky end of summer. Contributors to this list are: Shadaras, D.V. Morse, Nova Mason, Terra P. Waters, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Nina Waters, Meera S., Shea Sullivan, Owl Outerbridge, Sanne, Tris Lawrence, boneturtle and an anonymous contributor.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

The Devourers by Indra Das

Into the Drowning Deep & Rolling in the Deep (Rolling in the Deep series) by Mira Grant

What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier series) by T. Kingfisher

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

Sixteen Souls by Rosie Talbot

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zi Xu

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

The Hills of Estrella Roja by Ashley Robin Franklin

The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles series) by Anne Rice

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren

Pet Shop of Horrors by Matsuri Akino

Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love by Aruma Arima & Masuku Fukayama

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

Fate/Stay Night by Type-Moon

Umineko When They Cry by Ryukishi07

Case 00: The Cannibal Boy from Sounding Stone

Welcome to Night Vale

The Silt Verses

What are your favorite queer horror novels? Tell us in the comments!

Want to chat your favorite reads with us? Join our Book Lover’s Discord server!

Update your Goodreads TBR with any of these books by visiting our queer horror shelf on Goodreads!! Or, jump onto Bookshop.org and browse these books on our queer horror list!

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Steve secretly reads Dracula and Anne Rice. He secretly likes vampires. Man. Woman. He thinks they're hot. Now imagine Eddie coming back as one, and Steve is just showing as much skin as possible to let him know he's available for biting. He stretches his neck out, dragging his fingers across his skin. He's literally doing anything to let him know he's available for biting. Steve literally circled the moles on his neck that look like vampire bites. Meanwhile, Eddie is struggling because he can smell his arousal and is trying to play hard to get with Steve. Finally, he storms into Robin's room, stressed.

"You said playing hard to get would be fun!" Eddie exclaimed. "This is NOT fun!"

"Oh, yeah, no. It's fun for me," Robin said casually as she popped a piece of candy in her mouth.

"Why did I come to you?!" Eddie asked.

"I don't know, why did you come to me?" Robin asked.

"You know, you're pretty relaxed around a vampire who has the power to kill you," Eddie said.

"Oh yeah. Do it. Kill me. I dare you," Robin said, staring him down, and when he collapsed on the floor, she smiled. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

It all gets resolved when Steve and Eddie get together. They do get back at her by giving her bad advice with Vickie, which Vickie later thought was funny. Robin did not.

[gothiccharmschool]

Can you share the titles of your top 20 favorites from your vampire bookcase?

Whooo, that's a tough one. After staring into the depths of the bookcase, in no particular order:

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice

Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice

The Delicate Dependency - Michael Talbot

A Dowery of Blood - S.T. Gibson

Beguiled by Night - Nicole Eigener

Dark Dance - Tanith Lee

Personal Darkness - Tanith Lee

Darkness I - Tanith Lee

Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite

Voice of the Blood - Jemiah Jefferson

Gothique - Kyle Marffin

Covenant with the Vampire - Jeanne Kalogridis

Those Who Hunt the Night - Barbara Hambly

Traveling with the Dead - Barbara Hambly

Vampire Kisses - Ellen Schreiber

Anno Dracula - Kim Newman

Sunshine - Robin McKinley

Dreams of Decadence - anthology

[poppletonink]

Book Recommendations: Vampires

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

The Lost Boys (Comics) by Tim Seeley

The Vampire: A New History by Nick Groom

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Certain Dark Things by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

The Awakening by L.J. Smith (and the rest of the 'The Vampire Diaries' Books)

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman

Already Dead by Charlie Huston

My Roommate Is A Vampire by Jenna Levine

Empire Of The Vampire by Jay Kristoph

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

[seraphtrevs]

Since I’m a huge fan of your writing, I’m curious: who are some your favorite writers and what are some of your favorite books or short stories??

Oh man, I've done so much reading over my life that it's hard to narrow down. Like I'm for sure going to leave people out.

For fiction: some of my favorite authors are the Bronte sisters (slight preference for Charlotte - Jane Eyre was one of my first loves and hugely shaped me as a reader and a writer), Daphne du Maurier (favorite of her books - Rebecca), Sarah Waters (can't decide between Fingersmith and The Paying Guests), Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber), Susanna Clarke (Jonathon Strange and Mr Norell), Toni Morrison (Beloved), Robin Hobb (the Farseer trilogy and Fitz's further adventures, but I've heard good things about the Liveship Trader books!), Terry Pratchett (the Tiffany Aching books are particular favorites), and Anne Rice (well, depending on the book tbh, she's not very consistent lol - the first three Vampire Chronicle books are my favs from her), with special shout-outs to Robin McKinley (Beauty), Avi (The True Confession of Charlotte Doyle), LM Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), Frank L Baum (I have read every single Oz book - there are a ton of them!) and Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), who were my favs when I was a kid (along with the Babysitter's Club book lol - but they're mostly ghostwritten so I'm not sure who to credit!)

Right now, I'm re-reading (for the millionth time) The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, which is a collection of fairy tale retellings - but that feels like a really inadequate way to describe it. It's very visceral, primal, and poetic. My favorite story from the collection is "The Bloody Chamber," which is a Bluebeard retelling. Bluebeard is one of my favorite fairy tales, but it understandably doesn't get a lot of adaptation. (I'm very curious what Disney's Bluebeard would look like lmao)

I'm also listening to the audiobook of The Vampire Lestat, which is the reason that Anne Rice is on that list. She really lost me with her later books, but listening to TVL reminded me that actually, she can be very good! She really excels at evocative descriptions and conveying emotion - she's very shameless, in a good way. A woman who always writes with her entire pussy, whatever else you might say about her.

But I actually read more nonfiction than fiction. I'm a big fan of memoirs - not celebrity memoirs (although Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died was probably my favorite book I've read this year), but memoirs that are more about someone grappling with the human experience - like, sometimes the author has been through something horrible and they've done a lot of mediation on what they've been through, or sometimes the author is just a very astute and entertaining observer of their own (and other people's) ridiculousness. Some of my favorites are Mary Karr, Caroline Knapp, David Sedaris, Cheryl Strayed, Jeanette Walls, Tara Westover, and Allie Brosh.

If I had to pick one to recommend - all of David Sedaris's books are extremely funny. He writes humorous personal essays, so I guess his books aren't really memoirs exactly (google says he's a humorist), but he usually writes about himself so I'm lumping him in this category lol. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good place to start with his stuff - you will cry laughing.

I also love pop science and pop history - Mary Roach is a super approachable science writer with a quirky sense of humor. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is so funny and candid - she asks every question you've ever had about dead bodies and then some. I also love Bill Bryson - another very accessible and funny writer - I really loved his A Short History of Nearly Everything, which covers exactly what it says. I ADORE Oliver Sacks - he was a neurologist who wrote so movingly about what it means to be human through the experiences of his patients - The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat reads more like a book of short stories, and I weep like a baby every time I read it (I actually started tearing up thinking of a few cases.) (Btw he's also written beautiful memoirs but I like his science writing best so I'm putting him here. Bill Bryson has written memoir too.) Carl Sagan is also approachable and humane - This Demon Haunted World is my favorite of his. Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression is required reading for anyone who's dealt with mental illness, although it's difficult and painful at times (his Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity is also really good, but also difficult and painful - but worth it!)Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses has gorgeous prose and is a great book for artists and writers imo - it gets you thinking deeply about how we interact with the world.

For history, I am obsessed with this book called "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow - it will completely upend everything you think you know about the history of homo sapians. Mike Duncan got his start podcasting - his series Revolutions is about major world revolutions and is essentially like listening to an audiobook, so it's not a surprise his books are pretty fun too. Sarah Vowell has some really fun books about quirky historical topics - her Assassination Vacation is great (she goes on a roadtrip to visit locations in America where famous assassinations took place).

And here are a few other miscellaneous non-fiction writers I enjoy - Sebastian Junger (just finished his In My Time of Dying about his near death experience - super thought-provoking - but it was A Perfect Storm that made me love him), Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild), Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)

This was a fun question to think about! I hadn't realized I had such a strong preference for female writers until I actually listed all my favs out, which is an interesting thing to know about myself, so thanks for asking!

[averyqueerhalloween]

Horror & Thriller Books with Queer characters: 🏳️‍🌈🎃

The Girls Are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh

Ace Of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Burn Down, Rise Up by Vincent Tirado

Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

The Coldest Touch by Isabel Sterling

Murder Takes The High Road by Josh Lanyon

A Dowry Of Blood by S.T Gibson

The Taking Of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

Catherine House by Elizabeth Thomas

Manhunt by Gretchen Felcker-Martin

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala

A Lesson In Vengeance by Victoria Lee

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The Route Of Ice And Salt by José Luis Zárate

The Dead And The Dark by Courtney Gould

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Queen Of Teeth by Hailey Piper

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher

The Cabin At The End Of The World by Paul Tremblay

It Came From The Closet by Various Authors

House Of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

What Moves The Dead by Ursula Vernon

These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall

Night Of The Living Queers by Various Authors

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

They Drown Our Daughters by Katrina Monroe

Graveyard Of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe

The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew White

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew White

Dead Flip by Sara Farizan

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya Macgregor

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

Everything The Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

Into The Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht

White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

The Promise of Lost Things by Helena Dunbar

Prelude For Lost Things by Helena Dunbar

My Dear Henry by Kalynn Bayron

All The White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

As I Descended by Robin Talley

This Is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau

[cursemewithyourkiss]

The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on your fingers...

I. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

II. 1×07: The Thing Lay Still, Interview with the Vampire (2022—)

III. Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin

IV. 2×05: XIII, Black Sails (2014—2017)

V. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

VI. Citizen Kane (1941)

VII. The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice

VIII. 2×07: The Greatest Enemy, Robin of Sherwood (1984—1986)

[wishingwrites]

Hello, Writblrs!

Hey, everyone! After lurking around writblr for a bit I'm going to give jumping in a try. If it looks like I don't know what I'm doing it's cuz I don't.

I'm Cam, and I write mostly fantasy, usually with some fluffy romance thrown in. Definitely lots of queer characters, though that's hardly a surprise on here. I get lots of inspiration from fairy tales and myths, especially stuff with the fae, witches, gods, and magical animals.

My favorite authors are Marissa Meyer, Jim Butcher, Robin McKinley, N.K. Jemisin, Heather Blake, and Anne Rice. If anyone has book recs I'd love to hear them! Especially queer fantasy with wlw and nonbinary characters in the main cast. I feel like my own taste is kind of going stale at the moment...

What else? I like to play video games, especially Hades, Pokémon, Slay the Spire, Inscryption, Hollow Knight, Dark Souls, and all the LoZ games. I'm finally finally finally learning how to play the Pokémon card game after all these years lol.

But enough about me, I want to hear from you guys! My dash is empty, so I need writers to follow! Especially if you write:

Sapphic or wlw fantasy, but any queer fantasy in general

Vampires (don't judge me pls)

Strong platonic relationships as well as romance

Deities as characters who interact with the human ones

Have cool creatures or lovable animal characters

Funny dialogue

Anything really--part of why I'm here is to improve and broaden my horizons!

I'm totally open to asks and tag games!

So I only really have one atm. It's called Girlfriend of the Gods. A silly title I know but it's a pretty silly story.

It's a Cinderella-type tale about a girl who doesn't fit in and accidentally gets the attention of the goddess of death and her brother the god of wind by making a wish. It's got a magical shapeshifting chameleon and an evil book. See? Silliness. I'll get around to making a proper introduction for it if anyone's interested.

That's pretty much it. I look forward to meeting people and making some friends to grow along with.

[olderthannetfic]

Is it just me, or is a lot of the negativity about AI regurgitating Robin Hobb, Diana Gabaldon, Anne Rice, and Jo Walton's anti-fanfic rants wholesale (that is, when not spreading technical misinformation instead)? I can't muster that much empathy for writers feeling all nauseous and stuff about "their babies" getting appropriated when, uh, they gleefully did the same to the IP holders already! “TV show Friends with guest star, Sephiroth” is textbook transformative, not plagiarism or theft.

--

The future of corporate misuse of AI is daunting, but yeah, people ~stealing my babies~ is not why.

[penny00dreadful]

Return of The King - Part 8

So it begins.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 9 AO3

Cold and damp.

That’s what the Upside Down had always felt like.

Cold and damp.

And Vecna wanted to like… what? Remake the world to look like this or something? Was that even his plan? Eddie wasn’t sure. If it was, it was a stupid fucking plan. This place looked like shit.

He hadn’t exactly been paying attention during the spring break from hell and after that no one really wanted to talk about all of this unless they had to, so he just kinda… guessed what Vecna’s maniacal bad-guy plan was.

He glanced around at their group. Everyone had their determined face on. Steve’s hand was tense in his, like he was scared that if he stopped touching him, Eddie would disappear into dust. 

Eddie couldn’t exactly blame him. He fucking hated the idea of bringing Steve back here. They were so close to that spot already. Where he’d died and came back.  

He still wasn’t exactly sure what that had been like for Steve. 

When had he regained consciousness? Was he awake and aware the entire time his body was knitting itself back together? Could he feel the transformation? Could he feel his human body dying and reforming while he was paralysed? Trapped in his own head? All on his own?

Anne Rice would have a field day with all this. 

There was some kind of terrible anticipation in his blood, a sense of doom hanging over him. 

Each step Eddie took brought him closer, brought them all closer.

The trailer was already behind them, they had already begun walking through the barren wasteland of the Upside Down. 

One more corner and they’d pass it. 

The spot where Steve had died.

Even though he was 99.9% sure that Steve was here and he wasn’t some kind of shell puppeteered by Vecna, that this was their Steve, his Steve, the hand in his own belonged to the ex-King, the babysitter, the Hair, the biggest dork out of all of them… there was still that irrational fear in the back of his head.

The image of Steve’s body had been burned behind his eyes for the last month, it probably would be with him forever. It wasn’t easy to let go, even if he was leaning heavily into Steve’s side the closer they got, like he could bury himself away from the sight.

The image of Steve’s body wouldn’t just go away.

So, even though he knew it wouldn’t be there, he was still terrified to see. 

Because what if it was there?

What if Steve’s body was still there?

Grey and rotted and bloated and torn and disrespected by the process of death itself.

What if Steve was here, next to him, with their hands intertwined but still there too somehow?

It didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t making any sense but sense seemed to have left him the closer they got until he’d all but convinced himself he’d turn his head and find Steve’s decaying body on the ground and Steve’s rotted corpse next to him, holding his hand.

And it was like his whole fucking body shuddered with relief when he did find the courage in him to look over and he found nothing but an empty space surrounded by rotting demobats.

Except now he couldn’t look away. 

He couldn’t take his eyes off it because he was standing where he’d been standing a month ago, trying to get Dustin out, get Robin out, get Nancy out, leave Steve, leave him behind, never to see him again, last image of him with half his neck ripped out, leave him to rot like a discarded apple core, how was he going to explain this to the rest of the kids? How was he going to hide this from Wayne? Would he have to organise a memorial service? Who were Steve’s other friends? How would he contact his parents? His aunts and uncles? His cousins? Did Steve have any pets that needed taking care of now? What were they going to do when Vecna inevitably came back? Why did it hurt? Why did it hurt so much? Who punched a hole in his chest? Why was his throat so tight?

“Eds.”

Everything around him was blurry, he couldn’t see anything. Was he losing his vision now, after everything? His lungs burned, he couldn’t breathe and there was a hole in his chest, it hurt, it hurt so much-

Baby, look at me. 

Steve’s voice forced itself into his brain, compelling him to tear his eyes away from that spot on the ground. He looked over, met with those yellow cat-like eyes that hadn’t seen a hint of brown since they entered the Upside-Down. 

They were almost glowing in the dim light. 

There were warm hands on either side of his face, tangled back into his hair and Eddie came to the horrifying realisation that he was crying.

Not even just crying, he was sobbing. Body shaking, hyperventilating, unable to properly breathe and making his head swim type of sobbing.

Maybe he hadn’t been holding together as well as he thought he’d been for the last month.

Maybe it had all been building up like rotting garbage in a landfill and chose to come spilling out at the worst time possible.

“You’re okay.” Steve whispered to him, kissing his cheek under his eye. “It’s okay.” He moved over, kissing in the same place on the opposite side, kissing the tears away. “I’ve got you.” He kissed Eddie’s trembling mouth and it must have been disgusting, he was probably leaking from everywhere but even so Eddie couldn’t find it within himself to care.

He wrapped his hands around Steve’s wrists, trying to keep him in place for a little longer. The kiss was forcing him to breathe through his nose, as blocked up as it was, but it still helped to get his breathing under control.

He broke the kiss, taking a shuddering breath in but didn’t pull away. He buried his head into Steve’s neck and pulled him as close as he could possibly manage. Steve’s hands were gentle but consistent as the rubbed up and down his back and Eddie’s breathing finally began to even out.

If he could just get a handle on himself, then they could fucking continue on. They could get through all of this. And if they could get through all of this then he could go and have a proper breakdown in private. 

There was sure to be more trauma coming at him today so he’d have plenty of material to freak out over once all this was done with.

He’d have to drive to Indy first to get his hands on a fucking bucketload of weed. His and Rick’s stash was long gone. Even Argyle only had a joint or two’s worth left.

Eddie lifted his head, just slightly, enough to peek out over Steve’s shoulder expecting to see the rest of the fellowship nearby, trying to pretend they weren’t paying attention to what was happening, awkwardly averting their eyes or staring up at the sky like it was telling them a story.

Instead he found them all a respectful distance away, huddled in their own conversations. The only ones who were looking in their direction were Wayne and Robin.

“I’m okay.” Eddie muttered, rubbing his face into Steve’s shirt like some kind of cat, drying himself off. 

Steve let out a light little laugh but didn’t push him away or tell him to stop. Eddie was mostly sure Steve would let him dry his eyes in his hair if he’d asked. 

Mostly.

“You’re okay.”

Eddie stepped back, shaking his limbs out and keeping his back to the spot Steve once lay dead.

“I can have a better breakdown later. Handkerchief and all.”

Steve ran a hand through Eddie’s hair, scratching just a little at his scalp. “I’ll be sure to bring one.”

“Do you actually own one?”

Steve didn’t answer, just pursed his lips and Eddie smiled. Of course Steve owned a handkerchief.

He latched onto the idea likea lifeline, using it to drag himself as far out of the depths as he could manage. Humour was always easy to hide behind, andit did make him feel better. If he forced enough smiles, eventually he would start actually smiling.

“Does it have lace? Is it monogrammed?” Eddie poked him. “Can I stuff it into my corset when I’m feeling a little naughty? Can I hold it to my breast while you joust?”

Steve huffed, clearly humouring the distraction Eddie had come up with for himself. “Suppose it’s yours to do whatever you want with once I give it to you.”

“And you give it to me so good.” Eddie bumped their hips together, relishing the exasperated look he received. 

“Wait, did you use your Command on me?”

Some of the colour drained from Steve’s face and he looked suddenly apprehensive. 

“I- I did. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have but- it was like you couldn’t hear me and you were just staring off, you looked gone and the kids were starting to freak and I didn’t know what to do-”

“Stevie, sweetheart.” Eddie placed a hand on Steve’s chest and Steve fell silent. Eddie understood, he really did. 

You looked gone. 

He’d looked like Chrissy, he’d looked like Nancy, he’d looked like Vecna had taken him and the kids had seen and were scared and Steve had done what he could. 

“It’s okay. I get it. And I trust you. You wouldn’t do anything bad to me. Unless I asked you first. It’s okay.”

“You sure?” Steve was still frowning, a little wrinkle between his eyebrows, looking like a sad kitten.

Eddie gave him his softest smile. “I’m sure.”

“Okay.” 

He took Eddie’s hand again before tugging him forward, towards the direction of their friends. 

Nobody mentioned the hand holding or the kissing they maybe might have or might not have seen, everyone just moved forward without bringing it up. Eddie was grateful. They could all have these conversations after. 

They were walking together for a few minutes before he noticed the increasing tension in Steve’s shoulders the closer they got to the woods. The same tension seemed to be reflected in Will.

“Everything okay?” Eddie shook Steve’s hand slightly, both to get his attention and to remind him he was tethered here, if he needed the reminder.

“Yeah, uh,” Steve paused, “it’s just weird being back here, I guess. It’s like… It feels like something’s watching us. Or trying to… I don’t know? Communicate? Push through? But it’s like whatever it is is speaking a completely different language.” He shook his head. “I can feel it throughout my whole body. But it’s different too. Like the Upside Down is radio static but this feeling is more like tv static? It feels the same but different.”

Different but the same. Not the Upside-Down so… “So it’s not like, Vecna watching us?”

“No.” The answer didn’t come from Steve, to his surprise. It came from Will. “I can feel it too. It’s not Vecna.” Will turned his head towards his sister. “Right, El?”

El turned her wide eyes towards him. “I can’t feel anything.”

“Wait.” Mike stopped walking, halting everyone else. “You can’t feel what that is?” El shook her head. “But it’s not Vecna?” El, Steve and Will shook their heads. “Then what is it?”

“I’m not sure.” She answered. “What does it feel like?”

Steve and Will looked at each other. 

“It feels like-”

“-a cloud?”

“Like the cloud I saw in your head?” El asked, tilting her head in Steve’s direction.

“Maybe.” Steve shrugged, glancing around like the cloud was going to pop out of the woods at any second.

“Then why’s Will feeling it too?” Dustin planted himself between Will and the woods after noticing the way Steve was looking into the trees. It made Eddie’s heart ache. 

God, why did the kids have to get involved in the first place? They were just kids! It was all so fucked up.

“What do you two have in common?” Lucas asked, looking between Will and Steve.

Eddie’s fucking insane intrusive thoughts were digging to get out. 

They both like boys, it said.

Now is so not the time, he grumbled back at his own brain. I like boys too. So do Nancy and Max and El. Some of the others might too so that’s definitely not it, you tit.

“You’ve both spent…” Nancy paused, trying to figure out how to not say it in the worst way possible. “…extended amounts of time in the Upside Down.”

“We’ve both been changed by something here at one point or another.” Will crossed his arms over his chest tight. “The Mindflayer has been in my head and Steve was brought back by… something.”

All eyes turned to Steve who looked like he wanted to wilt under the attention, but refused to let himself, standing as tall and as firm as he could. 

Eddie squeezed his hand a little tighter and got a little squeeze in return.

Will’s eyes flicked down, as though drawn in by the tiny movement and his arms relaxed around himself ever so slightly.

“So why can’t El sense anything?” Mike asked, looking around at all of them before his eyes landed on her. “You’re just as connected to this place as anyone else, right?”

El shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not exactly. I sent Henry here, but I think I could have sent him anywhere. Like a lottery. This was just where that gate opened up to. It’s all very…” she frowned, trying to find the right word.

“Incidental.” Dustin supplied.

“Yes, that sounds right.” She nodded.

“So it’s definitely not a coincidence that the two of you are feeling something, then.” Robin spoke from Steve’s other side, looping her arm in with his.

“No.” Will shook his head. “I think in a place like this, thinking something is a coincidence is probably more dangerous than normal.”

“What do we do now, then?” Jonathan asked, placing his hand on Will’s back while Argyle just dropped his hand on top of Will’s head. Not even ruffling his hair, just letting it sit there. 

It got Will to crack a small smile.

“I could look into your minds?” El offered. “See if we can get more information on what it is?”

Mike opened his mouth to say something but then paused, closing it again with a glance between Wayne and El.

Wayne seemed to be handling this talk, as well as being in an alternate dimension and the information dump he just went through, remarkably well in Eddie’s opinion. 

But he’d heard the stories from his uncle about Vietnam, even though he was pretty sure those were sanitised to hell and back. 

Maybe Wayne was just really good at going with the flow. 

Eddie had to get it from somewhere.

“I think you can do it.” Mike muttered in an unusually reserved voice but the smile El gave him was blinding and Eddie could practically see her inflate with it.

“I can do it.”

Steve held onto Eddie’s hand tighter as he leaned down while El reached up. She placed one hand on the side of Steve’s head and one hand on the side of Will’s before the three of them closed their eyes and a tense silence spread throughout the entire group.

Eddie could feel Steve’s hand rhythmically clench tighter around his as El delved deeper, as though he was keeping himself grounded, reminding him that he was here.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before a bunch of things happened all at once. 

El wrenched her hand away from Will’s head and Steve whipped his own hand out, grabbing tight at her wrist and shoving her behind him, shouldering his way in front of Eddie, baring his teeth and snarling in Will’s direction.

Will snapped his eyes open with a great gulping inhale, like he hadn’t been breathing the whole time, staring around at them with a wide, wary look. 

One eye, his usual hazel, the other a bright cat like yellow.

“Will?!” Jonathan wrenched Will around by the shoulder to look at him, darting his gaze between his eyes. When Will just blinked at him Jonathan took both shoulders in his hands and shook him. “Will, tell me you’re in there. Please.”

Will looked up at his brother with wide eyes before stuttering out. “I’m- I’m here Jon. I’m here but- but it’s not j- just me.”

“What does that mean?” Jonathan whipped his head around. “El? What does that mean?!”

Jonathan was looking between his sister and his brother desperate for answers while the sound of Will’s voice seemed to have pulled Steve back from his intense state.

“I don’t know.” El answered, poking her head out from behind Steve’s shoulder.

“They’re… they’re using me to speak because… because the last time they tried they hurt me.” Will spoke, halting and stilted, like he was repeating something back to the ground that was being spoken to him. “They didn’t mean to hurt me, they just didn’t know… how we functioned.”

“Who’s they? Will? Who’s they? Are they hurting you now?” Jonathan asked, still gripping tight to his shoulders. 

“No, it’s- the- the Mind Flayer. I can talk to them now.” Will had to hold his hands up in surrender to try and calm Jonathan down when he started to freak out, quite rightly in Eddie’s opinion. “No, no wait!” He shouted. “They’re not hostile! They never were!”

“Not hostile?!” Jonathan screeched. “They took over your body, Will! They melted dozens of people in the town! They nearly killed us all at Starcourt!”

“That wasn’t them! That was Vecna!”

“Oh, bullshit. Will,” Jonathan grasped at their side of his brother's face. “The thing is lying to you.”

“No, Jon, please, I swear.” Will was pleading. “They’re not evil. They’re not good either. They just… are. Vecna forced them to take shape, that’s why they look like that weird spider thing. Vecna loved spiders, right? El?” He turned to his sister with a wild look in his eyes, like he was begging someone, anyone, to believe him. 

“Yes. He did. He does.”

“Right.” Will almost sighed in relief. “Listen, I swear I’m not being lied to, I’m not being manipulated. I know this creature better than any of you, even more now. They just want our help. They want Vecna out. They want him gone. And they… they’re trying to help.”

“Help.” Jonathan scoffed. “Help how?”

Will’s eyes darted over to Steve.

Eddie felt his stomach sink and heart flip all at the same time. He grasped Steve’s hand tight between two of his own, kind of wishing he could burrow back into his neck and pretend none of this was happening. But they’d already done an awful lot of everything in front of everyone and probably revealed a little more than they wanted to but no one had mentioned it yet.

Will’s eyes darted down to their hands and then back up, lightning quick.

“The Mind Flayer brought me back?” Steve’s voice was a little strangled as he squeezed Eddie’s fingers. “Why?”

“They say… that they’ve been trying for years to gain… homosapien allies.” Will spoke as though relaying a message through the telephone. “We’re the same creatures as Vecna, we should be able to more effectively fight each other. They needed someone they could… bolster in the fight. They tried with Hopper but even though he had the mental fortitude, his body was…” Will blushed, “undesirable.”  

“What does that mean?” Dustin asked.

“Means he was out of shape and full of too many substances, at a guess.” Eddie shrugged, using the movement to pull himself a little closer to Steve until they were both practically nestled into each other's sides.

“Then they tried with me but… though my mind was able, my body was too ‘immature’. They’ve been hibernating in the back of my mind… waiting until I was ready, but they were out of time and another was brought forward. Mentally able. Physically at peak. And then removed from Vecna’s sight by his own sudden death.” Will glanced up at Steve again. “A perfect candidate to defeat the interloper.”

Eddie scoffed. “Charming.” 

Fuck it, he didn’t really care about the others seeing anymore, they could all fucking deal, so he laid his cheek down on Steve’s shoulder.

“They’re trying to find a better way to say it but they’ve never spoken before, they don’t know how it works really.” Will said, trying to placate everyone, tracking Eddie’s movements with his eyes. “That’s why they’re using me to speak for them.” He shook his head. “Maybe another word for Steve, like a- a-”

“-a soldier?” Steve sneered, disgust written across his face.

“No.” Will shook his head. “More like a… Paladin.”

“A Paladin?” Steve asked, confused. “The hell is a Paladin?”

“That’s you, baby.” Eddie tilted his head up just enough to meet Steve’s eye. “That’s so you. Loyal-”

“Just-” Dustin put in.

“Dedicated-” Will added.

“Strong-” Lucas nodded along.

“Super fucking religious?” Mike snarked, scowling after Max flicked his ear.

Steve scowled. “When’s the last time you saw me being super fucking religious, Michael?”

“Whatever.”

“So,” Eddie cut in, trying to head off that argument before it went any further. “The Mind Flayer wants to help us get rid of Vecna?”

“They already have helped us, they say.” Will shrugged. “They gave us back Steve. So now they want us to help give them their world back.”

“And our world?” Nancy asked. “What do they want with that?”

Will squinted. “Nothing. It’s too hot, too noisy, too bright. It all keeps leaking through the cracks and it hurts them. They just want all of us gone, the gates closed and to be left alone.”

“Okay but… once Vecna’s gone and the gates are closed and they’re done and we’re done…” Eddie rubbed his hand up and down Steve’s arm. “What happens to Steve?”

“They’re… not sure. They survived in me for a while. And there is a piece of them in Steve, but it’s a dormant piece. So if Steve wants to go back to his world and continue to live like he is now, he can.”

Steve shuffled a little in place. “Don’t suppose they have any ideas on how to make me human again?”

Will shook his head. “No. Sorry.”

“S’okay.” Eddie squeezed Steve’s arm. “We’ll figure something out.”

“And Henry?” Nancy took a step forward. “Do they have any advice to deal with him?”

“They say they’ve been conceding control over to Vecna for a while. They’ve let him think he’s taking it by force, but they’ve been given it willingly, hoping they can surprise him when it doesn’t work during the last stand.”

“Okay.” Nancy said. “Okay, we can work with that.”

“Oh.” Will muttered, with a frown on his face.

“‘Oh’? What’s ‘oh’?” Eddie asked.

“There’s other humans here coming through the cracks. With weapons. They’ve already made it to Creels House. I think… I think it’s the military.” Will blinked a few times, the yellow fading from his eye until there was no more left. He shook his head a little then looked out at the rest of them, ready to move forward.

“Shit.” Nancy scowled. “Shit shit shit. We need to go. All the military has ever done is fuck things up. They’ll definitely cause the fucking apocalypse if we leave them alone for too long. C’mon.”

The group of them took off at a brisk walk in the general direction they needed to go.  There wasn’t a moment to lose.

It was always a little difficult to navigate down here without any sun, moon or stars to go by. Or even a working compass, considering it would probably get fucked up by the magnetic fields. 

Steve was still tense, coiled up like a spring and constantly casting his eyes around, into the woods, up and down the road, into the various houses. 

He was radiating predator energy.

It was kinda hot.

But now was not the time.

They still had their hands clasped together. 

“Everything okay, sweetheart?”

Steve didn’t look at him, just continued to scan the treeline as he answered. “I can sense them. Now that I know we’re… connected, I can sense them, kinda.”

Eddie swallowed. “The Mind Flayer?”

“Yeah. And the demomonsters. They’re part of the Mind Flayer too, it seems. It’s like,” Steve took a deep breath in and out, “you know when you can sense someone standing behind you? Like you know someone’s there without even looking?”

Eddie nodded and Steve nodded back.

“It’s like that, but everywhere. Throughout this whole place, hidden in the trees, prowling.”

“Okay, well that’s good, right? You know where they’re coming from, we can’t be ambushed-”

“No, it’s not good Eds. It’s very not good. If I can sense them then they can sense me.” Steve tugged him closer, practically tucking him under his arm. “They’re waiting for an opening. They’re waiting for me to leave. Because they know they can’t hunt all of you while I’m here. And they want to. I’m like a shining beacon calling out to all of them. They’re circling like hyenas.”

“That’s a misconception.”

Steve and Eddie jumped as Dustin seemed to manifest out of thin air next to them.

“Hyenas don’t just scavenge. They also hunt. It would be more accurate to say the democreatures are circling like vultures.”

“Okay.” Steve sighed, landing his hand heavily on top of Dustin’s head, messing with his hair. “They’re circling like vultures trying to eat all of you.”

“Wait a minute.” Mike slowed down so he could walk on Eddie’s other side. “That doesn’t make any sense. If the democreatures are acting like vultures then that would mean they think Steve is going to kill all of us, feed off of us and then they can swoop in for the leftovers-”

Eddie could hear Steve mutter ‘leftovers’ to himself in exasperation.

“Maybe Steve was correct when he referred to them as hyenas in the first place?” El asked.

“It does make more sense than vultures.” Lucas nodded.

“And the democreatures do hunt. We know they hunt.” Will added.

Dustin just scoffed.

Eddie shrugged, deciding to see if he could stir the pot a little more to keep the kids distracted from the horrifying predator-circling-hyena-vulture facts they all just learned.

“Vultures are cooler than hyenas anyway.”

“What?”

“They are not!”

“Uh, yes. They are.”

“In what universe are vultures cooler than hyenas?”

“Uh, in every universe?”

Eddie smiled to himself and squeezed at Steve’s hand, happy enough for now that the kids were arguing like kids. As they should be. They didn’t really have to worry about volume anymore, now that they knew they were being watched the whole time, regardless, from just beyond the darkness.

Steve was still looking pensive, like he was getting lost in his own head. Eddie slowed their pace ever so slightly, so their whispers couldn’t be overheard by the bickering of the kids.

“Anything else on your mind?” Eddie muttered, running his thumb over the back of Steve’s hand.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Something… something’s just occurred to me.”

“Okay.” Eddie waited, letting Steve get his swirling thoughts in order.

It was only a few seconds before Steve opened his mouth.

“All these vampire powers, all the things I can and can’t do now. The sun is stronger for me than it used to be, but I can still go into homes uninvited, I can probably still eat garlic, I can cross running water and I don’t have to pick up rice and all that other nonsense.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “What if the only other things that stick around from vampire lore are the blood drinking and… and immortality?”

Eddie hummed, nodding. “You do make a very strange vampire. You don’t follow a lot of the rules.” He pulled Steve closer by the hand. “Love that about you, by the way.”

Jesus H. Christ not the ‘L’ word, dial it back. Dial it back!

“A lot of people would give anything for immortality.”

“Immortality is a fate worse than death.” Steve huffed, scowling and angry but underneath it all, Eddie could see his boy was terrified. “What am I supposed to do? Just happily go about my life in the body of a nineteen year old while watching the kids and Robin die of old age and I’m just supposed to carry on?” Steve squeezed his hand again. “And what about you? How long are you going to be able to put up with questions and side glances about why there’s some barely legal nineteen year old living with and sleeping in the same bed as someone who’s fifty? Sixty years old? Do you want people calling you my dad?”

Daddy.

Eddie mentally slapped himself. Hard.

Stop that for fuck sake, he’s scared and spilling his guts to you, dipshit.

“Dunno. We’ll figure it out, sweetheart. We’ll get you back to good old boring human some way or…” He chewed his lip but decided to barrel on anyway. “Or you could take me with you.”

“Where?”

“To immortality.”

“You think you could handle that? Seeing the Corroded Coffin boys die? The kids? Wayne?”

“I think statistically I’m going to see at least one of those deaths whether I want to or not.”

Steve didn’t answer and Eddie didn’t try to push him again, knowing Steve hated the response he’d just given, knowing that turning Eddie would probably be the last of last resorts.

He didn’t really care what other people would say about having someone who looks nineteen in his bed. He’d hold onto Steve as long as Steve would let him.

When the Creel house started to become visible through the trees, the sight came with a group of scowling, angry men stomping around with guns and barking useless orders at each other. There were only four of them but that was four too many.

Everything in Eddie’s body was telling him to turn and leave. Nothing good had ever come from circle-jerk displays of masculinity, conformity and government funding. And the military was a big fat three in one. 

Amongst the buzzcuts and guns and camo shuffled a shorter man with a clipboard of all things, in a plain blue button up and khakis.

Steve’s hand was getting tighter and tighter around Eddie’s the closer they got before he unwound their fingers, dropping his own hand back to his side.

“Don’t want to crush your hand.” He muttered.

If Steve hadn’t been so worried and wound up on the walk over here, the calm almost light way he said that wouldn’t have set alarms ringing in Eddie’s head but as it was, the alarms were fucking going.

Steve’s face and body were unusually placid and composed in comparison to every-shitting-thing he had displayed before and it put Eddie’s teeth on edge.

Underneath everything, he could feel the energy Steve was radiating. The others in their group didn’t seem to notice, but the way the soldiers turned to face them as they crossed the street towards the dilapidated house told him they felt it as well.

Maybe if he wasn’t so in tune with everything Steve was he wouldn’t have felt it either.

But Steve felt dangerous.

Far more dangerous than he had ever felt before. More than he had when the van was being chased by the demogorgon, more than when the earthquake hit. The tranquillity radiating off of him felt extremely tentative, like he would be ready to pounce and tear these soldiers to shreds at the slightest provocation and nothing anybody said or did would be able to hold him back.

And if the stories Eddie had picked up from the kids and the older teens over the last month were anything to go by, he wasn’t sure he would even try.

Guns were raised against them the closer they got, every single one of them trained on Steve, like the waves of predatory danger coming off of him were almost visible, the soldiers following line of sight to point at the threat.

As the kids, the older teens, Wayne and Eddie stepped forward to put themselves between the soldiers and Steve, Steve pulled his lips back in a vicious snarl, his elongated canines and bright, glowing yellow eyes making him look alien and beautiful all at the same time. 

Eddie wasn’t even sure if Steve would be able to speak in the state he was in. But he was proven wrong almost immediately when Steve noticed he was relegated to the back, with everyone standing in the proverbial path of bullets.

Eddie could see it happen before it did. Steve’s eyes were swirling. He was so far gone he was going to use his Command on everyone to get them to move out of the way and the only person it wouldn’t work on was Robin and Steve might very well pick her up and toss her to the side if she refused to move on her own.

Steve opened his mouth. “Don’t-”

And Eddie did what Eddie does best.

“Listen boys!” He used his vocal training to project his voice as loudly as he could, placing one hand against Steve’s chest. “Nothing good will come from those guns being pointed at us. He is not your enemy,” he gestured back at Steve, “unless you make him your enemy. Neither are we. But if you hurt one of the kids, there will be literally nothing anyone can do-”

“Not quick enough, they won’t listen.” Nancy cut him off, raising her own gun towards the soldiers and narrowing her eyes. Eddie could hear Wayne at his side let out a stressed sigh of “Jesus H. Christ, pointing guns at the military.” But he raised his own weapon beside Nancy.

“Drop your weapons or you will be made to drop them.” She continued.

The soldiers, at least the largest amongst them, laughed and Eddie grimaced as one of them took a step towards Nancy with a pitying smile on his face.

“That’s a mighty big gun for such a small girl. Why don’t you put that thing down before you hurt yourself, dollface?”

“Jesus, you’re just digging your own grave here, man.” Eddie muttered mostly to himself but still loud enough to be heard.

Steve and El were having some kind of silent conversation between the two of them which they ended with a short nod to each other.

Nancy must have been able to sense it behind her with her powers of fucking badassery or whatever because as soon as a decision had been made between the two she spoke again.

“You have three seconds.” Her aim didn’t waver, her hands didn’t shake, her face barely even changed from the hard look in her eye, keeping her angry gaze on the guy that approached her. “Drop them and step away or it will be done for you.”

The guy opened his big stupid mouth again but Nancy cut him off. “Three.”

He gave her what he must have thought was a placating smile and shrugged, holding onto his gun just as steadily as he had before.

“Two.”

The rest of the soldiers were stepping up now, flanking their idiot and spreading out behind him, looking thoroughly entertained. 

“We do not take orders from civilians.” One of them scoffed. “Least of all a bunch of kids.”

“You will.” Robin piped up, one hand on Steve’s arm, trying to keep him grounded where Eddie couldn’t.

“One.”

A second of tense silence passed, just enough time to make sure they weren’t going to comply before a deep, dangerous, rumbling voice washed over Eddie, giving him goosebumps. The Command bypassed him and shot straight towards the group against them.

“Drop your weapons. Safely.”

The difference in the way some of the soldiers reacted was startling. Because apparently the word safely could be left up to interpretation in their heads as to how they followed.

The one who’d squared up to Nancy merely crouched down and placed his gun on the ground.

Another clicked the safety back on before following suit.

But the other two soldiers began to disassemble their weapons, removing their magazine, removing the chambered round, double checking there was no bullet left before removing the barrel from the body and laying everything out on the ground in straight lines and stepping back as though waiting for inspection. 

Those two, Eddie liked those two and Wayne agreed if his grunt of approval was anything to go by.

The man in the plain blue button up and khakis even placed his clipboard and pens on the ground and Eddie couldn’t decide if it was poetic or ridiculous that this man considered those his ‘weapons’.

Once the Command wore off, Eddie expected them to be snatched back up straight away, screaming, shouting, things to go terribly wrong like they always seemed to fucking do, but everyone stayed unusually still.

Glancing around he saw Eleven had a small trickle of blood dribbling out of her nose.

The only one she didn’t seem to be holding back was clipboard man.

“Fascinating.” He muttered, picking his clipboard and pens back up and staring at Steve. “Last I heard, you were dead Mr. Harrington.”

Steve’s eyes snapped over to him and he had the good sense to flinch under the stare but clearly his curiosity was getting the better of him.

“Dr. Sam Owens.” The man said, gesturing at himself. That was definitely a name Eddie had heard before. Owens continued on. “And you are back from the dead now, I assume? Considering your changes? I would be delighted if you would consent to an interview? Maybe even a few tests-”

“I won’t be experimented on.” Steve growled.

“Experimen- oh no, no, no! Nothing like that!” Owens looked scandalised, like the idea of human experimentation was shocking to him, which… like, okay dude. El knew you for a reason. “Just pure academic curiosity. What you can and can’t do. How and why you came back. What is keeping you in your current state? The possibility of reversal-”

“Reversal?” Steve’s eyes flickered, the yellow almost becoming brighter somehow. “You think you could change me back? Make me human again?”

Owens looked lost for words for a moment. “Oh, uh. I can’t promise anything without proper examination, but it could certainly be an avenue for exploration.”

Steve chewed on his lip, darting his eyes around at everyone to take in their reactions, landing last on Eddie who tried to look as supportive as he could.

Because he would be. Whatever Steve wanted, vampire or human, he’d be beside him. No matter what.

“Okay.” Steve nodded.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 9 AO3

@romanticdestruction, @darkwitchoferie, @justforthedead89, @didntwant2come, @estrellami-1, @warlordess, @goodolefashionedloverboi, @weeennussy, @studentlife-with-sassyaf-friends, @bestwifehaver

Thank you ever so much to @hbyrde36 for your beta work on this