𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                          

chrissy had paced the boundary of the football field for twenty solid minutes before feeling any modicum less like crawling out of her skin and leaving it behind on the turf. it would take more than twenty minutes or a half hour or hour or the rest of the semester to make any sort of harmony with the disastrous state of affairs back at school, but that was ticking time chrissy did not have. 

                            we’re so sorry, chrissy. you must miss him so much. 

a surge of petulance rattled so fiercely in her gut that chrissy kicked at a clump of damp soil and grass hard enough to send it flying, nearly sending her sneaker with it. 

                            it must be so difficult. i always envied you two.

yes, shedding her skin sounded perfect. she would leave behind the deflated organ like a trash liner, right there at the edge of the football field. someone would find it and scream in terror that “chrissy cunningham’s dead again!” and run away or even faint dramatically on the spot. but there would be no body, only the ghoulish sausage casing polite company called flesh. chrissy could walk away from the smiles that wobbled and wavered, the lips that gloss never stuck to, the cracked and dehydrated nail beds she had to mask religiously with stinging nail polish. off she’d go, nothing but muscles and tendons and trailing blood like bread crumbs, a devil straight from a nightmare. her mother would open the door in horror and chrissy would demand an answer. what about now, mom? will i fit in the dress now?

                            just the perfect hawkins couple.

❝ your boyfriend was adamant that you wouldn’t have gone to someone like young mr. munson for help if you were afraid. ❞  

hhmph. jason was more wrong than he knew.

❝ it’s what he wanted people to think. ❞ a hard blink; her lashes felt light without mascara.   ❝ ....and where is jason now? ❞  there had been a strange lack of visits from him - or information about him, which was arguably preferable to a visit. chrissy didn’t want to watch while jason pointedly looked away from her bruised eyes and joints and wrist and knee braces. she could see it now, his bald discomfort with her appearance, not so doll-like anymore. not head cheerleader material, looking like that, her mother had already spewed to an attending nurse when she thought her daughter couldn’t hear.  

chief powell swallowed and glanced away. avoiding. chrissy froze.

❝ ch - chief powell? ❞  

❝ i’m sorry, ms. cunningham. ❞  his posture had noticeably shifted as if a load were suddenly dropped upon his shoulders.  ❝ we found your boyfriend beside a fault line. it’s likely that jason was killed during the earthquake. ❞  

❝ .....oh.... ❞

then he isn’t my boyfriend anymore, is he?

                            it seemed like jason really loved you.

                            don’t you think it’s weird hanging with the freak after your boyfriend died?

                            you’re friends with the hellfire weirdos? what the shit, chrissy, since when?

that was it. she couldn’t hold in the storm a moment longer. 

with an unusually savage cry, chrissy unloaded every iota of frustration on an unlucky blocking sled the football team had left out along the touchline. she felt the drag of an angry yelp as it flew out of her throat. again and again and again. the pull of muscle was refreshing and nauseating in turns. a kick for every stupid comment she’d heard since resuming classes. a pitiful grunt for every time she let the cheer squad, her friends, every oblivious classmate at hawkins high believe a lie about her. another, harder grit of her teeth for every time she didn’t do a thing to make anyone assume otherwise, too petrified to admit to herself just how miserable she truly was. 

now, chrissy cunninham was paying for her stepford bullshit and plastic smiles along chewing gum-stuccoed hallways. a perfect picture never meant to last. everything she was told to work for, gone.

four oil painted smiles flashed across her mind’s eye, each one more painfully frozen than the last. on the left, the girl in pink’s eyes started to bleed.

                          freak, freak, chrissy, you’re a freak! 

her shoe flew in one more perfect arc, a final blazing strike for good measure.  ❝ UGH!! ❞  

“looks like it’s absolutely necessary.”       /      @tempesttragedy​‘s veronica sawyer

sounds of exertion pivoted from growls to a terrified squeak. that whole performance had been witnessed. oh god, oh god.  chrissy waited, all tension and electricity, for the derision or the utter shock and horror, but none came. instead, all she saw upon turning was an almost.....blasé pair of eyes.

                  ❝ o-h......um. yeah. ❞  dainty wrist shaking with adrenaline, chrissy tried to dab at her forehead with any elegance she had left. halfway through the motion she gave up, a regretful grin taking the worry’s place.  ❝ kind of. it got built up....over a while.  ❞

as i watch (and rewatch and rewatch) s4 ep4, it's impossible not to reflect on how each of vecna's victims may hazily or not so hazily represent different stages of giving up on life as a young person. across the board, all four teens presented flickering signs of internal turmoil that could have been clocked under a more watchful eye. but it's still those small differences, those small choices, that make a world of difference when it comes to approaching a struggling friend.

chrissy didn't truly want to die, just to escape. she easily could have been pulled out of her state of desperation if someone had truly stepped in a little earlier. the one helpful person she managed to confide in, ms. kelley, despite ms. kelley's valuable efforts, didn't have the time or the bandwidth for her she might have liked. the next person didn't know chrissy well enough to properly step in and intervene, even though he tried and came the closest anyone had so far. but before that, none of her peers had invested in her in an actionable way despite her tries to find her way through the cracks of her own self-made image and call for help. everyone assumed everything was fine, until it wasn't. because it was chrissy.

fred was the bottler, who channeled and ignored his way through guilt and grief to build himself a normal life out of ruins. and it worked! it worked until a trigger appeared. enough of a trigger to bring him back down. it started small, but grew more debilitating over a short period and sent him down a dark, consuming spiral that he all of a sudden couldn't escape from. he'd unintentionally isolated himself, and no matter who might have wanted to step in for him in his time of need, they were too far away. fred didn't truly want to die either. but once his trigger became too close and suffocating, he lost his way.

patrick was the wilter, who incrementally became less and less of himself among his family and friends. the way his father treated him ground down his self esteem and warped the voice inside his head until it became nothing but his father's unkind words. unfortunately, the descent was so gradual that all his friends adapted until suddenly it was long past too late to pull patrick from the depths of his sunken self worth and tell him he deserved better.

then there's max. the avoidant. the stoic. she plugged along, trying to pull herself up and out by her own bootstraps. but the biggest difference here was the open investment her friends maintained in her life. they were willing to bend over backwards to remain by her side until she reached out a hand for help. they tried and tried and tried until it was almost too late, but by then, they'd done enough. max saw just how much she was watched over. she saw her friends' concern for what it was: love, not nagging complaints that she "wasn't who she used to be". they cared more for her well being than to where the old max had disappeared. they paid attention to what mattered to her and offered it when she was finally ready. at every turn after the graveyard, she worked to accept more help and they did the work to understand what kind of communication max needed so that she could continue trusting they had her best interest at heart.

td;lr - love your friends loudly. you never know who might need what.

Supernatural & Paranormal Sentences, Vol. 4

(Sentences from various sources for muses exploring the unexplained. Adjust phrasing where needed)

"So, at this point, we have no human suspects?"

"We're going to a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere?"

"That's a superstition. It doesn't mean it's true."

"You can't tell me that what happened didn't freak you out just a little bit!"

"What could you possibly be looking for by probing up there?"

"I can't follow any of this!"

"People believe what they want to believe."

"Look! It's a spaceship!"

"Did it just get cold?"

"Maybe this is a sign?"

"The living and the dead belong in different places."

"Is there not just one tiny part of you that wonders if I'm right?"

"Call me crazy, but that looks just like an alien implant."

"I'm not sure, but I believe I was visited by a giant."

"Is there anything that you don't believe in?"

"It's definitely a spaceship."

"What I'm saying is, that ship didn't crash - it parked."

"It came down in the rock."

"I've never seen so many trees in my life!"

"What touched this place cannot be quantified or understood by human science."

"I have a gift. I look at people and I see things."

"What year is this?"

"I assure you, my intentions are pure."

"Some mysteries aren't meant to be solved."

"Is it me, or is this just... Wrong?"

"You look like you've paid a visit to the Devil himself."

"You can't charm your way out of a bullet."

"I've seen you in a dream."

"I'll advise you to keep your eye on the woods. The woods are wondrous here, but strange."

"Every place is dangerous to the ignorant."

"I am done being afraid. It's your turn now."

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙊𝙋𝙃𝙀𝙇𝙄𝘼 𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙍𝙔                               ( sainterror ​)

@greenscrunchy​ : “i always feel sad for the girl that i was.”

pleated skirt smooths out between fingers before her elbows move to rest on the sticky mall table. ophelia considers the weight of chrissy’s words, how they feel like an anvil pressing on her chest. she swirls the red straw around in her cup and brings the bottom half to her mouth, licking the strawberry smoothie off the end, “i used to.” the admission is bitter on her tongue, phe’s brown eyes flicker up.

stray glitter speckles across her skin like freckles, over her lashes and dusted in her hair; it was her armor that reflects back in the yellow lighting of the food court. “and then i just stopped.” 

re: swallowed it down. re: boxed it up. re: poured gasoline over the top and watched it burn. 

grief was not foreign to ophelia perry — it grew around her bones like ivy strangling an old house. which made mourning parts of herself easy. which made killing parts of herself easier. 

she sighs and scrunches up her nose, the watered down smoothie was beginning to look unappetizing the further she stirs the straw, “i thought to myself, phe, if that girl was any good, she’d be sitting here — not me … gotta gut the parts of you that don’t fit anymore,” pull at the sinew of it, tug the meat away, “that’s the only way we can survive all of this.” for emphasis she rolls her eyes around them.

chrissy has learned to like iced tea. she has. it’s got a...taste. something to latch her wandering thoughts to as she sucks what entertainment she can through the straw. phe has red, the same color as chrissy, but the shade appears more vivid plunged into the last dregs of a milkshake. 

a little more alive.

it’s jarring, perpendicular to the topical mood. one that’s less visible than a spider’s web but more present and more sour than venom. it’s the lemon in chrissy’s tea turning sour and warped with every pull of liquid.

                  ❝ you think that’s part of growing up? just.....having to leave everything we thought we were behind? realizing we’re someone else? ❞  

it doesn’t seem correct to have this conversation as a pair of seventeen-or-so year olds in early june. not in starcourt mall surrounded by neon and swinging plastine shopping bags and shrieks of every single kid under seventeen in hawkins  concentrated in the same place, apparently. 

all of a sudden chrissy feels too old for all of this.

how did they get here? to this mental doldrum of withering under the harsh sun of reality catching up to them, the great fibs of youth fading away to husks that befit the parched heart of autumn better than the apex of summer? their very presence, immersed as they are in gridlocked angst, feels obverse to the setting. chrissy did not come to the mall to feel like a square peg smacking at a round hole and yet that’s what happened. maybe phe has a point. maybe, lurking under all the attempts at making sense of lives half lived, this is all there is. 

a last smack of semi-sweetness hiding in her tea yanks at a bit of hope still left. maybe resignation isn’t the totality of their lot. that sure would be nice. 

                    ❝ i’ve got an idea - for when you’re done. something we can do. ❞

From one Chrissy mun to another; I want to give you a little reminder that your portrayal is one of a kind! You put so much into the writing and into making her your own version and it shows! (Plus you have great muse taste). I'm rooting for you endlessly and wish you a happy hump day! May the rest of your week go swimmingly!

^^^ me when you

in all seriousness, what a lovely thing to see today!!! it warms my heart so much to know chrissy has such sweet rep in this little community and your positivity in particular is a gift. 🧡 tysm victoria!!! keep on keeping on yourself, and cheers to spectacular muse taste ;)

much love from me to you 🧡💚🤍 team chrissy always

[hoarsely] is everyone ok

💭 + waiting

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

chrissy’s good at it. she’d rather not be. or, more specifically, she is veeeeeeeeery good at biding her time. 

internalizing is nearly her full time profession at this point, so she can keep angst and impatience down like an utter champ, enough that the urge to think about what she’s waiting on all but disappears. distraction is key to this, also. no one is better at keeping busy or looking the furthest thing from lazy. (laura has a different rubric for this but that different rubric could apply to the rest of chrissy’s life already, so it’s rather a moot point.) filling her meantimes to the brim is never a problem. it’s the ache of waiting and wondering, sometimes for something completely unnamed and indefinable, that hurts the most. 

chrissy hadn’t known, but she’d lived her youth waiting, plodding along to achieve each goal her mother set for her. those were bite-sized accomplishments that helped ease the hunger to move on in her life. maybe from hawkins, even if it was only for four years. lasting all the way through high school was a long, long wait and her time needed to be filled so it would fly by. 

up until the nightmares began, chrissy thought the easiest way to survive was to steadily outlast every struggle that showed its grim little face, waiting until it passed. but the nightmares and visions came on too fast and too bloody to wait out. for those she had no plan and no solution, save for opening up to miss kelly. but not even miss kelly could help with every unsettled matter up to that point that still hadn’t dissolved with inattention and patience.

after that, she wasn’t too keen on letting life drift past her anymore. there was much still left to wait on, but even more still to do. things to do immediately, without having to twiddle her thumbs. the most important of which became kicking high school to the curb and setting herself up for a successful college experience far, faaaaar away. 

my dear friend from high school just snapped me her joyce byers halloween costume that uses a jacket I GAVE HER and ngl, i’m kind of over the moon.

wait a minute wait a minute wait a minuTE WAIT A——

thank you thank you thank you. to the sender, to @strangerthingspositivity for being a beacon of kindness and light, to my incredible writing partners for allowing me to work out my ideas and for making me smile on the daily. we’ve created stories that transcend the source material yet still appreciate it and value it while making it stronger and more effective. every day that i get on my dash, you all have been the call to action to become an even stronger writer and a more creative thinker, and i cannot show you enough appreciation for that.

Shoutout to @greenscrunchy for such an amazing take on Chrissy. I get such a great depth of her warmth and kindness as a person as well as such well thought out and detailed headcanons. It’s a delight to follow this blog as it is to write with this take on her character. Also, really love the blog’s aesthetics as well. Just chef’s kiss. A+. Much love.