If I Should Stay
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Steve, Robin, Nancy, Jonathan, and Eddie exchange looks. “Can you tell how long?” Nancy asks.
“Less than a day,” El says, sounding apologetic. “Other than that…” she shakes her head and slips the blindfold off. “I am sorry.”
“You’ve done more than enough, El,” Robin soothes. “Thank you.”
“We have to go after her.” Nancy looks pleadingly at Steve. “You want to save her, too, right? Not just Will?”
“I do,” Steve nods. “I didn’t know how long we’d have. I’d hoped we’d have more time, but it looks like we’ll have to go in twice: once for Barb and Will, and once to kill Vecna.” He looks around the room, focusing on the three boys. “I know Will was the artist, but Lucas, I know you can draw too. If we get you a map, can you find points and direct us?”
Lucas sets his jaw and nods. “I’ll do my best.”
“Okay. Here’s the plan, then: you three, stay here with El.” He looks at Dustin, Mike, and Lucas. “We’ll have walkie talkies, so we can keep in constant communication. El, how long can you stay in that space?”
She looks at him steadily. “I can do it.”
Steve looks at her, then nods. “I trust you. Robs, you’re with me?”
“Just try and get rid of me, Dingus.”
Dingus? Jonathan mouths to Nancy, who shrugs.
“Nance, Jon, and Eddie. You’re with us. We’re getting in and out as fast as we can. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have two more people coming with us on the out. They’ll be weak, but between the five of us, we can and will get them out safely. Robin, you stay here, direct the weapon-making. Make sure I get a bat. I’m going to go get walkie talkies, masks, and a whole lot of first aid supplies.”
“Got it,” Robin nods, then points at Eddie, Jonathan, and Nancy. “You three, with me.” She leads them to the backyard, and Steve knows she’s bringing them to the shed, where his old sports things and various tools are.
He looks to the boys. “Keep working on those plans. We’ll need them for the second attack. El, do you want to rest before we begin?” She considers it, then nods. “Okay. You know where the bed is. I’ll be back in less than an hour, alright?”
She nods and begins climbing the stairs. Steve looks around once more, taking stock, then grabs his keys and walks out the front door.
He gets to the store no problem, walks inside and starts filling his basket. Seven walkie talkies, seven masks, seven pairs of goggles, antibacterial cream, bandages, a suture kit, some ice packs. Two bottles of pain pills. He thinks about it, then makes his way to the front desk, smiling at the employee. “Hey, could I use your phone for a minute, please?”
He looks at Steve, unimpressed, then shrugs and gestures towards it. Steve thanks him and dials his home number.
“Hello?”
“Dustin. Do me a favor and get Eddie?”
“Yeah. One second.”
He hears Dustin yelling for Eddie as he walks outside, then a minute later, Eddie’s on the line. “Hello?”
“Hey, Eddie. I grabbed some pain meds, but I’m wondering if they’re going to be strong enough. I can pay you, but could you…”
“Yeah, no, I’ve got it. And no, dude, you’re not paying me. Not for this. I’ll head home and get them right now.”
“Perfect,” Steve says. “Thanks so much, Eds, you’re a lifesaver.”
“Uh, y-yeah, no problem. I’ll, uh, go now.”
“Okay. I’ll probably beat you back. See you there.”
“See you,” Eddie agrees, and they hang up,
Steve looks around for a few more minutes, finds a package of nails, adds those to his basket and goes to check out.
He’s well aware he probably looks like a serial killer, but he knows from experience the cashier is blindly scanning his items.
His luck runs out when Chief Hopper walks in and ambles towards the checkout counter. Steve does his best to keep the sigh internal. “Chief,” he says, giving him a little nod. The chief returns the greeting, peering over into Steve’s basket.
Steve suddenly becomes very interested in the gum options.
“What’s all this?” Hopper asks, inclining his head towards the basket.
Steve shrugs. “A few different things.” Please accept it, please accept it, please accept it-
“Like what?”
Dammit. “Uh… well, I noticed I didn’t have a first aid kit, and I figured I probably should, y’know? And I wanted to do some work around the house.”
Hopper grunts. “The masks and walkies?”
“Um.” Steve blanks. “It’s for a game with my friends?”
Hopper sighs. “If I get a call from your neighbors-”
“You won’t,” Steve says. Promises.
“Fifty-one sixty-four, sir,” the cashier says. Steve’s never been more grateful to be interrupted.
He pays, grabs his things, and sends Hopper a salute on his way out the door. He notices Hopper watching him as he leaves the parking lot, and he forces himself not to speed on the way home.
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This may be a controversial opinion but we need to normalize and have more “bitchy” girls in media who aren’t complete assholes but labeled bitchy by everyone else because they have a rougher attitude than most people. We need more girls who don’t have to become nice by the end of the story to get their happy ending.
I don’t owe anyone niceness. I owe them respect and decency. Those things do not equate to niceness. Maybe it’s the depression talking but I cannot be upbeat and happy all the time. I shouldn’t be expected to greet everyone with a hello and a smile at my workplace. But especially in retail if you so much as say hi with a straight face you’ve got attitude or are being mean. Take it from a childhood people pleaser, I lost my sense of self trying to be nice and perfect for everyone. Doing so was one of the reasons I got so burnt out at my last job. We don’t owe you niceness.
The few girls in media I can think of off the top of my head who fit this:
Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You
Tibby from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Paris Geller in Gilmore Girls (I haven’t finished this show and while Paris is irrevocably horrible to people in some instances she still isn’t made to be nice to everyone and people accept her even when she’s not happy).
Julie Powers from Scott Pilgrim
April Ludgate from Parks and Rec
Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family/Wednesday
Edit: MAEVE WHITMAN from Sex Education also!
Any recommendations people have with women who fit this as main/sub protagonists would be greatly appreciated!
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what about five made him ur blorbo…
Man, what made Five my guy.
There’s the surface level stuff – he hits a lot of tropes I love. Asshole with a heart, competent in everything but people, an assassin who gets cool fights to good music, teleports, last man in the world, has a fucked up wife situation. He’s a fifty-eight-year-old man who looks thirteen, that concept right there has so much to work through, all by itself.
All of that is really fun stuff, but under all of that, I think I can sum up why Five hit so hard with just that he has heart. The show could have gone the route of comic!Five – unredeemable bastard of a tiny man. That would have been fun, I love comic!Five, but he works better on a comic book page, where things can be more 2D. The change the show made – maybe on accident – is that show!Five loves an incredible amount, and that’s what hooked me hard. Sure, some of this is fan interpretation, but I think it’s got moments in-show to back it up. One of his first moves he made, when stuck in the apocalypse, was to make Delores – he has her within a few days of landing there. She says so much about him the second we meet her in the show - shorthand to tell us just how bad the apocalypse was, and that, when faced with nothing, Five makes a person he has to take care of. With that, he survived four decades as the last person on earth in dystopian hell before he could get back to save the world – so he says, at least, but he has always prioritized his siblings. They're his world. He’s not great at saying it, but he’s a man of action and his actions speak very loudly.
With all that love, comes a lot of grief, which is actually what keeps me going with Five. I’m pretty open that I’ve had a lot of grief in my life. I’m doing better, it’s been a number of years now, but grief doesn’t go away, and Five is an incredible vehicle for playing with and processing grief. Experiencing it, growing from it, moving on with life around it. And Five has so many layers of grief to play with. There’s the grief for his family who he found dead when he was 13, grief for the world because it all ended, grief for the life he lost, grief for the life he had to live, grief for what he’s had to do, grief for his body and his situation. How do you keep going and move on after experiencing such loss? I find it both cathartic and motivating to think about and sit in that space.
He's a walking tragedy and I adore him for it. Character of all time.
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