𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼 𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ,                           

💭 + mementos of childhood

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓸𝓷𝓼 — send 💭 + a topic to receive a headcanon about said topic.

HER FULL SET OF NANCY DREW MYSTERIES. those are precious to her and she keeps them well past adulthood and collects every one for as long as they’re published. 

a whole stack of little diaries with the worst locks of all time as clasps. you know the ones. she never wrote in them regularly and mostly copied passages from books and little poems that she liked in between actual thoughts and doodles. (only when she had good hiding places for her diary did her real thoughts come out.) all the identical cheap metal keys live on a frayed green ribbon necklace that chrissy used to wear “just in case anyone tries to steal my secrets”. 

lisa frank pencils and sticker covered notebooks. she kept a few of her favorite pencils whole and unsharpened and they live in her desk. same with several novelty erasers that have since dried beyond usability, but are just fun to look at.

teeny tiny scrunchies from when she had less hair and her wrists were smaller. their shrunken size doesn’t make them any less sweet and she enjoys keeping track of her favorite colors through the years.

a decorated shoebox full of ribbon bows, with notes and letters from cheer coaches past who always had lovely things to say. 

stuffed at the back of one drawer is the ace bandage from her first cheer injury - a rolled ankle. 

several shoeboxes full of makeshift scrapbook pages she tried throwing together as a little girl that never looked anything except disorganized. but she had a pretty solid eye for color grouping and aesthetic building, all the pages just looked messy. she keeps them as a reminder of how much she’s improved her approach.

then, there’s different boxes filled with victorian style cutouts of animals, angels, hearts, bows, gifts, phrases, and symbols of all kinds that she’s either saved or collects to use for cards. her valentines are stuff of legend. and lace. lots of paper lace. there’s also plastic gems she pried out of costume jewelry that get glued here and there onto the paper designs. more punchy than glitter, and far less messy. 

Strength is light ☀

well well well. some of the lotr fandom has shown their true colors. i'm both surprised and not surprised at the frankly outlandish amount of complaints that dwarves and elves and hobbits of color seem to have elicited. the rage is more outlandish when you discover the reasons for these complaints are 1) tolkien on occasion neglected to describe skin color which apparently renders everyone pale or 2) nostalgic attachment to the peter jackson films makes it unfathomable to picture the above listed races as anything other than pale/white.

here is all i’ll say about it: A WORLD WITH ONLY WHITE SKIN IS AN INCOMPLETE ONE. yes, even a fantasy world.

𝙒𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙄𝙎 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙍𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝘼𝙍𝘾?

𝓇𝑜𝓂𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒 / 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓅 𝒶𝓇𝒸. you started this story a little hard, or awkward, or stubborn. that's okay. it's harder than it should be to admit, but what you really want is love. that's what your story is all about - not just the act of loving, but the allowance of it. the confession that you do not want to fight or bleed or save the world, but to simply feel the way two hands fit so easily together. you will have two chairs and a table and you will shut your blinds, and you will say the word love without faltering. this is a happy ending, and you do not need to feel guilty. it hurts our hands to fight - never to hold.

𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮: @manaborn​  ♡ 𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙜:  whoever is curious!

💭 + what kind of jewelry Chrissy likes to wear most.

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓸𝓷𝓼 — send 💭 + a topic to receive a headcanon about said topic.

small and tasteful. classic and classy. arm her with a pair of diamond studs, pearl studs, a little gold hoop set, and the most subtle dangly earrings with...maybe...a bunch of flowers as the charm and she’ll be set for life earrings wise. if she’s feeling particularly snazzy, either white pearl or yellow or pink pearl studs. studs are her preferred simply because hair gets stuck in them less when she’s flying around during cheer, and don’t often get caught on her clothing. 

necklaces, she goes for gold more than silver. chrissy can pull off both metals equally well but finds herself drawn to gold more for its warmth - and how well it works with her hair. her favorites are long statement necklaces with skinny chains and a statement charm or little ones (like her ‘86 necklace) that twinkle neatly at the base of her neck. a little sparkle is preferred but nothing too eyecatching. or too big. her mother loves chunky statement jewelry and not only are they not chrissy’s style, she just can’t stand the look of the damn things. so ostentatious.

if she ever wears rings it’s one at a time so she can mess with it and nothing that can snag or else her mother will have a mini-fit. but she does enjoy wearing them when she isn’t cheering since they help with nervous energy. weirdly, she gravitates toward silver rings over gold, but has collected a few of both. the silver are another reason she only wears one at a time: so they don’t clash with whatever else she’s wearing. 

bracelets are hit or miss. she tends to go without, sticking to hairbands or scrunchies instead. you’ll sooner find her wearing an anklet during the summer or a friendship/woven/beaded bracelet than anything resembling a bangle.

her little jewelry box at home is chiefly her favorite thin and short chain necklaces with tiny charms, some simple rings, lots of studs, a couple small hoop sets, and one charm bracelet. 

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           ( alwaysrevvedup​ )

Fairytale? Abrupt, airy laughter escaped him, and hands burrowed themselves further into his pockets. Well—at least she hadn’t laughed. Normally, Eddie didn’t whip out such eloquent descriptors for anything besides Hellfire’s DnD campaigns. After all, what was a good campaign without a good story? But there was a certain ease that came with being around Chrissy, strangely enough, and here came a sentimental ode to autumn tripping of his tongue. 

For a guy like him—a guy of his lower social standing in the high school food chain—he should be on egg shells around her, anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. But he wasn’t. If anything, he felt lighter than he had in weeks. 

“Yeah, it is pretty. As pretty as Hawkins gets really.” Silence fell briefly as he searched for what he wanted to say. “You got big plans for Halloween?” he asked conversationally, a brow quirking as he glanced sidelong at her. “Or are you boring and just pass out candy?” The teasing was obvious: from his tone and how his elbow gently knocked against hers. 

                            ❝ so.... ❞  it was almost idiotic how hard she was trying to come up with a good retort, but at first all she could scavenge was an embarrassed, if wholehearted and helpless, giggle. chrissy kept pushing her steps onward through the leaves as though that cycle produced the electricity powering her train of thought. if she could keep moving, she could come up with an answer that sounded distinctly not boring but also reasonably cool.

funny  —  she’d had her expectations, then so did eddie. clearly they were catching up to him, judging by the bony echo of his elbow’s collide against her arm. and he didn’t even seem all that mad about it.

                            ❝ my little brother is going trick or treating and i’ll walk with him for a while. he’s twelve and my parents don’t really want him to go by himself yet. he’s stuck with me, but he still gets to go. i just stand on the curb and look at all the costumes. it’s really cute to see what everyone comes up with. ❞  chrissy shrugged like it was all simply business as usual, pausing to unsnag the toe of her sneaker from a clump of dirt. she’d have to clean off her shoes at school before heading home. coach tweedy wasn’t such a perfectionist that she’d call chrissy out on a smudge or two, but her mother would certainly notice. white reeboks were nothing to be trifled with. she had an image to uphold. an image that only spotless reeboks would support. 

                           ❝ i did used to go to my friend tina’s house after matty was done and she’d split her candy with me while we watched a movie, but she left for college last year. ❞  another shrug. nothing to bother dwelling on since nothing about tina’s absence could be altered. but enough about me. a small smile bloomed as chrissy made a pin-sharp pivot on her left heel to tread backward. now eddie was locked in her sights.  ❝ do you have big plans? ❞

it sucks beyond belief, the tug of war her mind anxiously wages against her body absorbing anything that might remotely help her survive the day without feeling like she will pass out. the peanut butter was supposed to help settle her stomach, not plow across her thoughts like a divining rod of judgment deeming her too delicate to eat without her silhouette tattling and too unworthy of a source of fuel besides tab today. the thought alone makes her feel nauseous again, but another can of it is all she can reach for at school until dinner. just one more setback she has to muscle through, today - one more thing to make her stronger. she hopes. it better.

but the other shoe always drops.

                      ❝ thought i was by myself. ❞  chrissy makes quick work of grabbing toilet paper to make herself decent while contemplating the pros and cons of exiting the stall. had she really been so lost in miserable thought that she’d failed to sense an entire person walking in? hard to call this girl’s presence intrusion when there wasn’t a sign on the door. sorry, i’m puking my guts out, come back later! yeah, right. like that would ever fly. the passing concern is embarrassing enough.  ❝ i don’t need the nurse, it’s fine. my mom just...packed something past the expiration date. ❞  

disloyal knees shake when she stands to reach for the flush, sheltering in the clatter of porcelain and pipes for too-short moments. after that, all bets are off. chrissy inches closer to the stall door but stops with the tip of her nose nearly kissing it, her fingers wobbling over the cold metal latch. it’s a small, grounding mercy.  ❝ it wasn’t cafeteria food. just in case you wondered. ❞

june doesn't know who's in the other bathroom stall. she just knows that the girl is retching up a storm and it sounds absolutely awful. as she exits the stall and washes her hands, the vomiting continues from the stall with the mystery girl inside and she feels her skin crawl. something just doesn't seem right and, while june is not the type to normally care much, she can't help but to feel obligated, "hey, are you okay? do you need the nurse or somethin'?"

@greenscrunchy liked.

Tell me how do I know that i’m alive...!!!!

Instagram 

black.

black for miles. a single speck of it for eternity and no more than the size of an atom.

white - but just a flash. 

as soon as it disappeared, she found herself remembering it, holding the memory steady in her mind’s eye like a precious gem. white in a stitch. the gleaming curve of a coffee mug. pristine starched polyester blend. ceiling.

the inside of her eyes.

red.

it’s everywhere, it’s coming to choke her and she’s screaming, she’s screaming, she’s  ————

breathing.

the air was unnaturally thick and the moment it touched her throat she felt the pull of her abdomen, the revolt of her lungs. what she vomited out was all but discernible and only fractionally thicker than the very air that choked her.  

ropey growths were receding from splayed out limbs, almost hissing in their eagerness to withdraw and disappear. quicker than a startled snake, the vines were there and gone. but by then there was no time to notice that nothing remained to keep her upright. before she knew it, the charcoal ground was racing toward her at breakneck speed. 

the thud of her knees and meat of her palms colliding against the solid surface below rang agonizingly through dead air, knocking any hopeful gasps clean from her lungs. on all sides, the wash of blood-tinged rage surrounded chrissy in a bubble of fear. something like a gunshot tore through claggy air to rattle her eardrums to the point of pain. whatever she had fallen upon shook to the rhythm of each shot.

all chrissy could do was count one pang after another that rippled through her muscles. she could unmistakably sense herself gagging between every breath, but nothing came out. 

more shots. 

heat. strong, aggressive heat, like someone had thrown a lit match into spilt gasoline.

a roar, brimming with not just shock and pain, but fury. chrissy’s whole body shook fearfully, though it didn’t get much time to do much of it. after what seemed like only a few seconds of half-consciousness, the world once again emptied to void.

forever passed, all in a sliver of a second. 

then she split her lids to a deep shade of navy. 

opening her eyes fully right away seemed a feat too ambitious. chrissy cunningham (that was her name, wasn’t it?) trembled on what she could only hope was brittle grass. fingers hungry for something recognizable wove unsteadily through strands dryer than even the hawkins football field in summer. one mississippi, two mississippi, you can do this. four mississippi, five mississippi, you can do this, come on. you’re supposed to be tougher than a few bumps. 

the tail end of the thought sounded suspiciously like her mother and that shouldn’t have been the voice that propelled her to all fours, but it did. height did not agree with her stomach at first, nor did her fluttering muscles react with enthusiasm to being strained. every movement shot lightning through through her limbs, forcing chrissy to grit her teeth against the discomfort.

part of the storm above her had gotten itself stuck inside her body. the dead girl swore she could hear identical thunder hiding in her head behind clouds of confusion.

confusion that did not abate when she at last managed to stand to her full height. 

everywhere, in every direction, wasteland. a half-hearted impression of hawkins. derelict rocket playground in view across the street and with woods to every side, chrissy gulped almost without realizing. that could only put her at one place in hawkins.

the murder house.

turn around, chrissy. you were dead a minute ago. just turn around. 

after another eternity of of shaky stalling, chrissy completed a heel rotation. and screamed. shock knocked her back a few stumbling feet until she’d collapsed on her back again, all of her hard work to get upright undone.

it wasn’t only the murder house. 

interrupting her view of what used to be a glamorous home were four trees that absolutely were not present in the real hawkins. two on each side of the creel’s front door, now smashed almost entirely off its hinges. at the bottom of the stairs spread a charred circle of earth burnt bald. smoke still faintly drifted from the spot as if chrissy was only just barely too late to arrive for all the action. adding insult to injury, the sight of the house was far from the worst part.

the tree closest to her boasted a hollow eerily in the shape of a small human body. a knowledge chrissy had no place for rustled in her chest, sinking to the base of her spine: if she stood again and spread her arms across the trunk, she would fit inside that hollow with an accuracy that belied a supernatural force almost too horrendous to consider for a moment longer. wood yawned in a frozen howl, sending her eyes frantically skipping to the next tree. and the next. where the bodies of fred benson and patrick mckinney hung as warped trophies to sadism and the kind of eternal grudge encountered only in fiction. 

this tableau was the farthest thing from fiction if the pounding in her head was any proof. here were preserved testaments that fear remained the ultimate weapon.

a girl’s helpless sobs rent the air. because that was all chrissy was: a helpless, weak, lost girl. nothing was making sense. chrissy collapsed against the pedestal that would have held her broken body akimbo had something  —  someone?  —  not broken apart his hold on the last of her very soul. a miracle, maybe. was that possible? even as she wearily succumbed to a tsunami of tears, a rebellious flare of hope ignited at the sight of the fourth, empty tree. patrick and fred hadn’t managed to run free, but someone else had. like her.

with that thought, she gasped for a square breath, determined to pull together enough to leave this horrible place. one proper step at a time.

much easier said than done. 

every step seemed to shoot fire directly through her bones to inflame her joints, the cause utterly mysterious until she looked down. the sight sent shaking hands flying to her cardigan to whip it off and investigate more thoroughly. elbows. shoulders. wrists. knees. ankles. hips. all of them bruised so deeply that her body seemed to halfway disappear into the sickly mauve landscape. the skin under her eyes, too, felt tender and puffed. when her hand withdrew from prodding them the tips were covered in rusty flakes. she flicked them away and they listlessly drifted away like ash. blood, long since dried.

a wet sigh slipped from lips edging closer to dried, mangled flesh than anything that could be mistaken for something alive. she really had been dead, hadn’t she? or something too close to death. chrissy certainly felt weary enough to have startled from a slumber she’d never been meant to wake from. and here she was, painfully awake and alive in a place fit for nothing but dead, quiet things. a living nightmare. 

somewhere she would rather die than remain in for much longer. again. 

well... freedom was no closer the longer she huddled here in terror. 

weak breaths came in quick succession as chrissy cunningham put her back to the ghost of the hawkins murder house, limped down the steps, scurried past the playground, and let the main road wind ahead of her and lead her anyplace else. 

hopefully home.

maythememebewithyou​:

White Christmas (1954 film) 

“My dear partner, when what’s left of you gets around to what’s left to be gotten, what’s left to be gotten won’t be worth getting, whatever it is you’ve got left.”

“Pushing, pushing…”

“What is this, the best two out of three?”

“We’re practically strangers.”

“When I figure out what that means I’ll come up with a crushing reply.”

“____, if you’re ever under a falling building, and somebody runs up and offers to pick you up and carry you to safety, don’t think, don’t pause, don’t hesitate for a moment, just spit in his eye.”

“That’s ridiculous, even if it made any sense at all.”

“I think it’s impossible, ridiculous, and insane! And I wish I’d thought of it first.”

“How do you do?”

“Don’t just stand there – how do I get off?”

“You ought to be horsewhipped. First you, and then you, and then you again.”

“Please, don’t quote me the price when I haven’t got the time.”

“Well, it’s not good, but it’s a reason.”

“Mutual, I’m sure.”

“Oh, that’s very funny. Ho, ho, ho.”

“I’m not the marrying kind. I’m not the engaging kind, either!”

“We ate, and then he ate. We slept, and then he slept.”

“Are things really that bad?”

“Troops ready for inspection, sir!”

“Oh, no. You wouldn’t do this to me…”

“I don’t know what you see in this long drink of charged water but honestly, after you get to know him, he’s almost endurable.”

“It’s probably just a small internal muscular hemorrhage, sir.”

“Well, you’re not exactly Superman, but you’re awfully available.”

“That’s right, ideal. That’s exactly the word we used, too: ideal. We looked at this big ski lodge and we said ‘Isn’t it ideal, absolutely ideal,’ didn’t we.”

“That’s not the way back to headquarters.”

“Wouldn’t do what?”

“Don’t you think we ought to…kiss or something?”

“Looks like it’s absolutely necessary.”

“I’ve got a feeling I’m not gonna like it…”

“Let’s just say we’re doing it for an old pal in the army.”

“Look who’s talking about guilt!”

“I want you to get married. I want you to have nine children. And if you only spend five minutes a day with each kid, that’s forty-five minutes, and I’d at least have time to go out and get a massage or something.”

“Let’s face it, ____, you’re a lonely, miserable man.”

“She’s always felt that she’s mother hen and I’m her little chick. She’ll never leave the roost until I’m taken care of.”

“____, you know that, and I know that, but ____ doesn’t know that. At least he won’t for about an hour and a half.”

“I just dropped by to thank you for saving my life.”

“I guess I’ve always been a silly school girl…you know the bit, the lady fair and the knight on the white horse.”

“Well, it was a life worth saving.”

“What’d you have for lunch today?”

“Well, break your arm, or your ankle, or your neck, but don’t break anything valuable, huh?”

“We’ve established that the lodge is ideal.”

“Well, then you’re happy for the wrong reasons, and that’s the same as being lonely and miserable, except it’s worse.”

“You know, in some ways, you’re far superior to my cocker spaniel.”

“Oh, my word, if I wasn’t such a mean old biddy, I’d break right down and cry.”

“Vermont should be beautiful this time of year: all that snow.”

“Let me tell you something, it’s kinda dangerous, putting those knights up on white horses. Likely to slip off, you know.”

“Well, I guess that’s the end of that.”

“It sounds very… Vermonty!”

“Why is everybody so concerned about my eating habits? Why don’t people just leave me alone?”

“I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna hate it.”

“How much is ‘wow’?”

“Last night, she couldn’t sleep. Today, she won’t eat… she’s in love.”

“Since you saved my life, you decided you have a right to run it.”

“It’s right between ‘ouch’ and ‘boing.’“

“Well, I like that! Without so much as a ‘kiss my foot’ or ‘have an apple!’”

“We like to take care of our friends.”

“I’m more of the ‘I don’t mind pushing my best friend into it but I’m scared stiff when I get anywhere to close to it myself’ kind.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s always that she’s been kind of a mother hen.”

“We wanted the mother hen to leave the roost so that the little chick could… oh, I guess we laid an egg.”