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finntheehumaneater · 3 months

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These dirt roads are empty, the ones we paved ourselves

part two

Just a short little thing so that I can’t panic and back out of finishing this fic. Based on this post by @eddie4bat-president. And I hope it was okay that I wrote it, it just SPOKE TO ME

title from “A House In Nebraska” by Ethel Cain (as always 🩵)

Steve knew that Nancy wasn’t going to work out. He knew, but he was holding onto what little hope he had left that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. That maybe this would last and he wouldn’t have to end up alone again—crawling back to Tommy like a fucking obedient dog because even though he was friends with Billy, he was still all Steve had left.

Carol didn’t talk to him anymore. She went off with her friends. Nancy said that was a good thing—that he was away from Carol and Tommy and that he was friends with Jonathan now, even though he and Jonathan only ever hung out when Nancy forced them too. But she didn’t understand. Tommy and Carol may have been assholes, and he had always known that, but he had been one, too, but they knew too much to just drop him like they had.

It hadn’t been easy. There had been yelling and fighting when they all met up at Steve’s house the next time. Tommy had thrown something—a vase, maybe—and Steve had gotten in trouble for that when his mom had gotten home. He had told her that she had broken it. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had said it had been Tommy, but he didn’t want there to be a chance. His mom was bad, but Tommy’s mom was worse.

“Steve?” A voice cut through the fog shrouding him and he turned, his eyes searching Nancy’s face. She had that look in her eyes—like she was mad at him. He didn’t know what for. It was expected and annoyed, and it made his shoulders drop.

He cleared his throat.

“Yeah? Nance?”

“I asked if you brought your things?” She repeated, slowly. Like she thought that Steve wouldn’t be able to hear her if she talked normally. It stabbed through him like a knife—but he wasn’t mad, he knew she was just annoyed and she didn’t mean anything by it. She was just…like this.

“I, uh…” he spun around, looking over his shoulder and nearly bumping into something. Lots of faces. Loud. Lockers….oh. School hallway. Right. He forgot it was Tuesday. “No. No, I left…my backpack in the kitchen.”

Nancy scowled, and Steve wanted to be anywhere but at school. The people here didn’t like him anymore, not since Billy. He didn’t want to be shoved around by people who thought he was worthless now that he wouldn’t make fun of people.

“You left it in the kitchen,” she repeated, her eyes narrowing.

Steve nodded, his face flushed. It wasn’t his fault. She had practically thrown herself at him near the counter, pushing him against it with something desperate in her kisses and her touches, smoothing over his arms and his chest and his shoulders. It hadn’t really seemed like she was into it, but she had started it, and he knew better than to ask—just going along with it and letting her have what she (maybe) wanted from him. Anything if it kept her close and (maybe) happy. “We were…we were kissing, I…”

“You forgot it because we were kissing?” She sounded accusatory now, her fingers twitching from where they were digging into her white cardigan, arms crossed over her chest. It was one of the ones with little pink flowers—that he had gotten her from Christmas—laid over the long green dress that sweeped to her ankles, winched at the waist and sort of pleated, the cotton scratchy. His mom had bought that for her after she found out they were dating. Said she deserved something nice from her since she seemed like such a nice girl. And she was. She was a nice girl.

“I got distracted,” he whispered, stepping forward and cupping his hand around her elbow, knowing that she kind of hated when he got touchy in public now—didn’t get why because she used to love it—because he just needed to touch something or he was going to lose his mind among the kids smoking over by the bathrooms and the girls chatting by his locker. One of them was leaning against it. He was dreading asking her to move in a minute. “I-it’s fine, though, Nance, really. I have all my books in my—in my locker. I’ll be okay.”

He watched careful, cautiously, when the corner of her mouth quirked up and she breathed out a laugh, pressing her hands to his shoulders and pulling herself up onto the toes of her sneakers to press her lips to his cheeks, murmuring, “what am I going to do with you, Steve Harrington?”

Steve smiled, wrapping his hands around her waist and shrugging, feeling her hands press down a bit harder when he did to keep herself steady. “Dunno, Nancy Wheeler.”

She scoffed, leaning back slightly and falling back to flat feet, slipping her hands down to his chest, lightly gripped at the fabric of his t-shirt. An old one that he let her take without asking because that’s what girlfriends and boyfriends were supposed to do, right? She never wore them out in public like Carol wore Tommy’s clothes, though. But Nancy was different. “Don’t call me by my full name.”

“But you can call me by mine?” He teased lightly, pressing a kiss to her hairline, moving down to her eyebrow and only stopping when she laughed and gently grabbed his jaw, pushing him back. His hands slipped from her waist.

“Yours sounds better.”

“Mmm, does it?”

She nodded, crossing her arms again. “Yeah.”

“I mean—Nancy Harrington…kinda sounds nice, don’t you think?” He was only joking—and he didn’t mean to make her upset by it, honest, it was a joke—but he watched as her shoulders rose up to her ears, tense and tight, shrugging and looking away. Towards one of the posters for that weird club her younger brother wanted to join. They didn’t take middle schoolers, though.

“We should get to class. Steve,” She whispered, saying his name as an afterthought, like she forgot who she had been talking to. She reached out to brush her hand down his arm quickly, fixing the sleeve of his t-shirt from where it had hiked up before she turned. He didn’t follow her for a moment.

He didn’t know how he had fucked this up so badly. She had her future all planned out—and apparently she didn’t know if he was a part of it. She was going to go to some fancy college up north and become a journalist. And he fit in there somewhere if he was still around.

He had thought that she was in his future, too. A house, six kids, long drives on the coast to beaches that would leave sand in their shoes for years…he hadn’t told her that, though. She wouldn’t have liked it. Called it what it was. A dream. Because who would want kids with him? Everyone turned into their parents. And six controlling and manipulative people was six too many. Seven too many if you counted himself. It was only a matter of time before he started to enjoy those meetings he was occasionally dragged to. Before he would cut his hair short—buzz it, even—and marry young. Get rich. Get hateful. Get sick. Spend the rest of his life wishing and hoping that things would work out when they wouldn’t.

That’s what was in store for Steve Harrington. Never Steve Wheeler.

He asked the girl leaning on his locker to move and she did. Her hair was cut short, to her shoulders and light brown. She had been talking about band practice. Trumpet, maybe? He grabbed his books and walked to the classroom door. He stood outside and waited. For what? He didn’t even need to finish highschool. He could drop out. Work for his dad. Run away into the woods. Drown in the ocean with sand in his lungs.

Someone pushed past him, arms full and frizzy hair down past her shoulder, twisting and curling in a flash of deep, rich brown. Her leather jacket rubbed against his arm and she muttered something. Maybe a sorry, and then there was a thud, but she didn’t stop to pick up whatever she dropped—maybe she didn’t notice?

Her voice was deep. Pretty.

“Eddie!” Someone called, and he turned to see where she went but she was already gone. The thing was still there, though. A notebook. It looked a bit fancy, like she had spent a lot of money on it.

Eddie The Banished, it read on the first page. There were some notes, half-assed and not at all coherent. But mostly it was covered in drawings. Of things with horns and claws, people with pointed ears and flowing dresses, swords. Lots of swords. So many swords to the point that it was kind of concerning.

He picked it up. He would have given it back, but…the girl was gone. And he needed a notebook anyways…he’d find her after school. Besides, how many Eddie’s could there be? Maybe she belonged to that demon club thing. It seemed…like a place where people who really liked swords would hang out.

He slipped inside the classroom and gave Ms. Click a smile and a wave. She smiled and waved back, didn’t comment on how he was late or tell him to do better. Just watched him until he sat. The trumpet girl was behind him, glaring at him. That didn’t matter because Nancy was next to him, tugging the notebook out of his hands. “What’s this? I thought you left yours?”

He grabbed it back quickly, shrugging it off and setting his books down next to him. “Found a spare in the locker. Don’t use this one all that much. Dad bought it for me.”

Nancy eyed him suspiciously, like she didn’t believe him, but she dropped it. He looked up as the door opened and that red head walked in. Tam….Tammy? Tammy. Yeah. Her. It wasn’t like he hated her or anything, she was nice. But she was too optimistic. A total dud. Wanted to move to Nashville and become a singer. She couldn’t even sing, god, it was like she was tone deaf. And, because she always was, she was humming as she sat at the desk next to his.

And I need you now tonight….

And I need you more than ever…

He opened the notebook after giving her a small wave and a polite smile. He had forgotten lunch in his backpack, too. But it was good that he didn’t have a class before this today, because otherwise he would have been too tired. It was his off day from sports. To relax and hang out with his girlfriend.

He was going to miss his bagel, though. They were the highlight of the school day.

It was hard to find a blank page in the notebook, but when he did…the one next to it looked…great. He would have never been able to draw a hand that good. The lines were smudged, like the person was in a rush, and the page was crinkled slightly. He smoothed over it, careful not to damage the drawing further.

The hand was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He saw a lot of hands in basketball. A lot of hands everyday. But there was a small dot on the side of the pinky. The hand was curved, like it was throwing something up and out. He looked down at his left hand. There was a dot there, too.

Next to the hand drawing was a shoddy person, just a shoulder and shirt collar with some curved lines for tousled hair at the neck. There were dots on that drawing, too. He felt behind his jaw, over the thin raised line from shaving yesterday morning—when Nancy had told him that his stubble had gotten too bad and it felt weird to kiss—and…shit, there were moles there. Three. Like in the drawing.

He flipped the page before anyone could see the drawing—didn’t need to be made fun of for being a nerd and for being soft—and tried to focus on Ms. Click as best as he could, all while feeling the piercing glare of Trumpet Girl and Tammy’s soft gaze. Nancy’s side-eyes as she made sure he was looking up towards the chalk board when Ms. Click wrote. His hands kept drifting back to his jaw. His mind kept drifting back to the drawing.

It was weird that the person in the drawings were (maybe) him. But it made sense. Girls at this school liked him. Tammy liked him. Trumpet Girl didn’t seem to, but he didn’t care. Nancy liked him. She did. She told him she loved him so she did, she wouldn’t lie about that. Not to him.

Maybe it was the same with that Eddie girl. Maybe Eddie liked him, too. That wouldn’t be surprising. He might be soft, but he still had great hair.

DISCLAIMER: this is not a Nancy hate fic!!! I love Nancy!!! Her and Steve are just not meant for each other :)

also I love fics where Steve seems Eddie briefly and goes “woman :)” and then meets him and goes “wait. No. What. Not a woman?”

Permanent taglist: @anne-bennett-cosplayer @estrellami-1 @here4thetrama @goodolefashionedloverboi

people who might be interested…?: @jadeylovesmarvelxo @precioussteveharrington @himbosandhardwear @steddiewithachance

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the-entity-down-the-street · 3 months

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"Splice" is a better Frankenstein adaptation than "Poor Things" because:

SPOILERS FOR BOTH FILMS

A) the mad scientists face consequences for their unethical genetic fuckery instead of dying peacefully. Elsa is left traumatized, with her loved ones dead as a result of this experiment. Sure, she's getting a lot of money, but that's not going to undo the mental scars that will no doubt haunt her to the grave.

B) The female monster is actually fucking monstrous. Dren does have some typically attractive traits like symmetrical features, smooth skin, etc, but still. If you're going to make an abomination against science, MAKE THE ABOMINATION. Don't give me some pretty girl in a frilly dress and call that a monster, okay? Cowards.

C) They don't frame the dubious consent/noncon as liberating. Elsa is disgusted with Clive for sleeping with Dren, and when Dren assaults Elsa in her male form, it's a traumatic experience. Bella's assaults (because that's what they are. She has the mind of a literal toddler. I don't care if she is enthusastic about it if she doesn't have the cognitive capacity to understand what's happening.) are framed as sexual liberation and it makes me want to hurl a chair at somebody. Calling sex "furious jumping" because she's not mature enough to fully understand sex. The fact that her fiancé wants to marry her when she's a fucking toddler. Gross. Disgusting. I hate it.

D) Splice is a true gender swap of the Frankenstein narrative, because both the scientist and the creature are female. Clive helps, but let's be real, Elsa is pulling the strings and convincing him to go along with it. Splice doesn't claim to be a feminist retelling like Poor Things does, but it's more narratively driven by women who are allowed moral complexity and agency. There's no bullshit girlboss moment either (the goat brain swap).

E) This one is just a personal gripe, but the whole "bringing back a dead woman with the brain of an infant she was forced to carry" thing? And somehow, this is a feminist retelling? Hate. Get it away from me. Not saying Dren was created ethically (Clive didn't even have fully informed consent because he didn't know it was Elsa's DNA), but goddamn, at least the mother of the child had agency in the child's creation. There is absolutely nothing feminist about using an unwilling woman's body as a vessel for the baby she didn't want. What in the pro-life bullshit is this? Ew. Ew. Ew.

Rant over. Thanks for coming to my Tedtalk.

#rant post #poor things #poor things spoilers #splice 2009 #splice 2009 spoilers #dren splice #bella baxter #tw sex assault #tw rap3 #unethical science #frankenstein #feminist retelling my ass #hate #hate hate hate #splice is better y'all #film critique #criticism #discourse #mad science

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