#superpower byers fam

[spectraling]

From @twilight-byers​

Wait whoa hold on a gd minute. It was 100% confirmed that Will had powers in the original script of Stranger Things???

[pterawaters]

Read it on AO3 (now complete!)

After her first year at Northwestern, Nancy figures that being hired to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances in the mountains outside Salem, Oregon beats any summer job she could find back in Hawkins. Being able to bring Jonathan and Steve with her just sweetens the deal. The road trip they take out west feels like the beginning of a new chapter in their relationship – one where they get to live together all the time from then on out. Except the more Nancy and the boys look into these disappearances, the more they appear to be connected to everything they thought they left behind.

Words: 85,398, Chapters: 21/21 (complete), Language: English

Series: Part 12 of Mr. Sandman (316k words)

Rating: Explicit

Characters: Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers, Steve Harrington, Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers, Joyce Byers, Mike Wheeler, Jim “Chief” Hopper, Original Female Character(s)

Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Jonathan Byers & Will Byers, Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler

Additional Tags: Road Trips, Mystery, Science Fiction, Established Relationship, Polyamory, Family Drama, Jonathan Byers Has Powers, Will Byers Has Powers, All the Byers Have Powers

[nancykali]

episode 1x08: The Upside Down

things of note: 

I will never get tired of that scene between Joyce and Brenner. She fucking kills it. She destroys him. While handcuffed.

And the dialogue! She is immune to his bullshit. He starts spewing bullshit at her and she just goes “Stop.” That is the most iconic moment in season 1 among all of the older characters. Joyce telling that evil man to stop his bullshit and then call him on it. Just like Hopper does to the other shitheads in the very next scene.

“El needs to be recharged!” Bless Dustin for considering the important things.

God that scene when Jonathan, Steve, and Nancy are following the lights as they blink gently through the house, echoing Joyce in the UD, is so beautiful. I truly believe the Byers have powers and can affect the lights across dimensions, all of them. @kirabook already pointed it out, but Jonathan is the only one who senses it’s not the monster, and is the only one who hears Joyce answer him. And Hopper doesn’t hear Jonathan, only Joyce does.

I think I was on the edge of tears when El was being held by Brenner and she calls him “bad” and reaches for Mike. But it was when El and Mike reach for each other on the table, and she asks him “Promise?” that it really started hurting. And when she gets up to kill the Demogorgon after the slow motion? The music, the constantly blinking lights, the silence between the music, her eyes, her expression, the raw strength of her wrath against that thing, to protect her friends - the only people who have truly cared about her (save for Joyce)! Mike’s tears… That scene is masterfully written and performed and I legit cried. Tears falling down my face crying.

And the way the kids protect El! Mike saying they’d have to kill them first! Them struggling the whole time El was being held by Brenner! They are her protectors as much as she is theirs! I’m not okay!!

I love El so much and I need her to have hope at the end of season 3, whatever heartbreaking shit happens. We need hope like we got at the end of season 1, with Hopper leaving the food in the woods. Otherwise I’ll be devastated. In a bad way. As in “this is shit storytelling do not hurt me like this duffers I don’t need this after  two years of waiting” bad way. Please no.

[will80sbyers]

idk i feel like will and el being blood related sort of undermines the whole found family trope i love so much about the byers/hoppers fam also idk what it would add bc he already thinks of her as his sister it’d just be like.. okay 👍 cool.

it would be more about explaining why Will has superpowers if he has them! also they are found family anyway because they didn't grow up together in the end and didn't even know so I wouldn't mind it 🤔

[dgalerab]

Hello ! I hope you're having a good day. What do you think of an AU where El and Mike swap their place? PS : I love your madwheelchair drawings and AU, thank you for sharing them.

thank you!!!

oh man where mike’s an escaped experiment and el is the one who finds her? that’s really interesting and there’s a lot of ways to do it but i like my own madwheelclair/jopper spin on it where el is hopper’s adopted daughter, maybe from an abusive family, and joyce and hopper have their unspoken Thing and so she’s close to the byers fam when will goes missing

and so that’s why she starts investigating and ropes lucas and dustin in with her. lucas is still very, very suspicious of the newcomer bc while he isn’t as jealous as he would be of el, he’s still really worried about will and worried by this new guy with superpowers. but on the other hand mike with powers would be 100% more likely to knock himself out being protective and is 100% less subtle too so the minute the gate comes up he’s just like “NO!!!!” and then wears himself out trying to keep them from going after it and so lucas is just like “dude come on pull yourself together, we have to find out friend” and mike’s like :((((((((((((((

also i feel like if mike isn’t literally her first foray into kindness she wouldn’t immediately interpret it as romance so maybe mike kisses her and she’s like “ummmmm” and he’s like “oh oops sorry i thought that was the thing we were doing here” and THEN they become brother and sister bc she and hopper set out to make sure he’s okay and hopper sets up the cabin for mike and el’s the only one who knows about it but is sworn to secrecy

and in this scenario lucas is the one who angsts about whether mike is okay or not, but he doesn’t realize he has Feelings, which is why he still falls for max. and also, the minute things start being weird, mike would break in an instant - he’s a lot more stubborn but less aggressive than el so i think he’d just straight up radio lucas after one (1) fight with hopper and so he finds out everything about will and all like midway through season 2 and doesn’t ever meet kali which is good bc he and kali would immediately kill each other. she just does her revenge thing in chicago, it’s cool

and then during all of season 3 it’s just an army of flayed people out to get mike while lucas tries to figure out if he likes max or mike more (trick question the answer is both)

[spectraling]

El and Will doin’ a heckin’ concern about their weird, psychic brother.

WIP

[spectraling]

Jbb!!! 🥺🥺🥺 Maybe I will bc you're asking so nicely!!

Fanfic ask game: M,N

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?

Already answered M here, but another premise I want to get to is an idea I had for a multichapter called Perspectives where each chapter is a different character’s POV on Jancy, except for Jancy themselves. So Joyce’s thoughts on Jancy, Will, Mike, Karen, Ted etc etc maybe including as many characters as possible.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

I need @spectraling to continue her superpowers Byers fam fic!!!

[that-thing-that-feeling]

Jonathan's gonna be so swole by season four he'll be able to flick the MindFlayer and it'll die

lol byers fam superpowers confirmed then💥

[nancykali]

I need El Hopper and Will Byers comforting each other and finding solidarity through their trauma and PTSD and a mutual understanding that the supernatural has affected them against their will and also made them outcasts and becoming closer through all of that and if the duffers don’t give that to me in season 3 they deserve fandom wide condemnation not fawning over meme!Steve mkay

[nancykali]

#Jonathan's been saving will and now it's Will's turn (via @nervousalligator)

if the duffers fail us we need someone to write that fic

really all I want is this Will in the rain shot to be a hint about Will having superpowers, he deserves them. 

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Fanfic ask game: M,N

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?

Already answered M here, but another premise I want to get to is an idea I had for a multichapter called Perspectives where each chapter is a different character’s POV on Jancy, except for Jancy themselves. So Joyce’s thoughts on Jancy, Will, Mike, Karen, Ted etc etc maybe including as many characters as possible.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

I need @spectraling to continue her superpowers Byers fam fic!!!

[spectraling]

WIP

[spectraling]

Charlie Heaton:

Me:

[spectraling]

Me before s3: Ah shit what if the canon becomes so good and detailed that I won’t have any motivation to work on my superpower Byers fam fic anymore, I mean they’re professional writers I’m sure they will develop canon and the UD and make some interesting choices

Me after s3:

[spectraling]

The first thing that happens when Jonathan realizes he has fire coursing through his veins is to severely hurt one of the few people he loves above all else, and I am a terrible, mean writer.

[spectraling]

Talk about your Byers super powers series, please!!

:DDDDDD

I should preface this by saying that I haven’t abandoned the series, I’ve just…had a lot of roadblocks with it.

The whole theory fascinates me and allows for more supernatural shenanigans without having to force new lab “subjects” into the plot, bc they’re right there in the story already! In characters that we already love! No need for yet more characters in an already crowded show! (take notes Doofuses) And plot twist they kind of had the same thing in them as El did the entire time! Aside from all the weird stuff the Byers do in S1 (and Will in S2), it also lines up perfectly with how El has been suspiciously absent/disconnected from them until basically the end of S2. Stranger Things takes a lot of its inspiration from The Montauk Project, where one of the crucial ways to instigate supernatural powers is through another psychic.

It started out as a oneshot based on an ask I got that described El helping Will to get in touch with those powers while being blindfolded and had a sudden cool idea of Jonathan accidentally astral projecting/talking to El telepathically while in the darkroom prep room at school. The combination of the environment (pitch black darkness), handling photos depicting people (needing to picture who you’re going to contact) and the kind of focused mind you need to handle materials while preparing film blind made up a feasible scenario where this could happen. Then I thought it would be fun to write El (and Will’s) reactions to this afterwards and their conversation stirred up even more ideas and suddenly I was analyzing the show for any and all clues and details. There was a lot of little snippets that I wanted to write: how would Joyce react and what happened to her that caused this, would they get into trouble, would the government find them, would the UD be involved, how would the characters handle something so foreign to them, etc, etc. I made a point to keep it to snippets so I wouldn’t have to create an entire plotline for so many characters (that’s why it’s divided into parts and not chapters), but we see how well that went lol

Since I didn’t plan at all before starting it’s been a bit rough bc I just had to build on what I initially never planned to delve further into (why does Jonathan know astral projection? Does any of his other family members? What defines what kind of powers you develop? Would it be boring if everyone had the exact same powers? (It would)). That’s why it’s been so long since I published the last part - I simply had to sit back and realize that I’m going all in on this thing and needed to set up an actual plot. I also have a tendency to plan projects backwards (I am a highly disorganized individual and have never taken on a big writing project lol), so by now there’s a ton of cool ideas, details and moments, but the overarching plot is the least firm thing about it.

The basic idea is to keep it as canon compliant as possible and make it feel like it could’ve been a natural continuation of where the show left off in S2. There’s mystery, investigation, going back to points and details established in earlier seasons, plot twists, etc. Also horror. Psychological horror. And monsters. New ones even. And most importantly: our beloved characters fumbling to understand what the shit is going on with whatever means they possess as just fairly regular people lol

Canon provides so much vagueness and details that it’s really easy to take them and go in a lot of different directions, which is both a blessing and a curse lol I have a couple of plot points that can go different ways depending on…well, what’s more fun, really. Also there’s been a bunch of side merch that attempts to do similar things as I (the Will comic, the novel about Terry), but I’ve decided to treat them as…inspiration, rather than full canon. Eventually most of the core characters are involved in this and it could potentially become even bigger of a project where an entire hypothetical season or more could be written, but…it would take a lifetime for me to finish it! Hence why it’s mainly written from Jonathan’s perspective and centers around the Byers and surrounding characters (also bc Jonathan is my fav character and I love writing his perspective which is woefully underrepresented everywhere else).

In the end it’s just an incredibly indulgent thing that I love to write and think about bc it’s so fun. The biggest hurdle right now is just to make up my mind about things and kill my darlings in favor of a good story, but I honestly don’t know which ones to kill bc I’m so mysterious about the whole thing that I have nobody to really brainstorm with. I’m a writer baby lol