Man, I’m never going to write it properly because I don’t have the patience or time, but one day I’m going to talk about my Crazier Things roleswap au.
Where—
Joyce kicked Lonnie out much earlier, and, instead of getting work at Melvald’s, decides to angle for a better paying job at the police station. Nobody believes she can handle being an officer because she’s Joyce Byers and she’s tiny and lbr a woman, but through her ferocious tenacity when the safety of her boys is on the line plus a pathetically slim pool of applicants (and the fact that I am the god if this au and I want her and Hop to swap roles because I’m swapping all the mains), eventually she’s brought on in a trial capacity. She ends up sticking around when her skills as a detective become apparent (yes, she still faces sexism in the workplace on the daily, but she is legitimately good at her job).
Meanwhile, Sara died when she was 2 or 3, so Hop’s divorce happened earlier. El wasn’t an experiment in this au (though she does have latent powers), but through some situation, Hopper ended up with El being shoved in his direction when she was a toddler. He wasn’t really in a fit place to care for her, but (for whatever reason that I have not and will not figure out) he ends up adopting her anyway. He moves the two of them back to Hawkins, and picks up a job at Melvald’s, because it’s what’s available at the time. Because all the stress doesn’t actually help his substance abuse issues (and because I need a reason for other people to doubt his sanity/perception a la s1 Joyce being doubled), he still drinks too much, and he’s not in a very mentally healthy place at all, but he’s trying his best.
Mike Wheeler might only be a little kid, but there’s already something weird about him. Even as a baby, he gets chronic nosebleeds. The lights flicker when he’s upset. Sometimes, the tape suddenly skips to or repeats a song that he loves, despite nobody touching the tape deck. Ted doesn’t notice any of this as more than a strange coincidence. Karen does her best not to think about it, but she can’t help but worry about her son.
Mike and Will still meet on the swings when they’re 5, and within the day, they’re best friends. Within the week, they also meet El, and the three of them become best friends.
The summer after Kindergarten, Karen takes Mike to see a doctor because she’s worried that his chronic nosebleeds haven’t stopped. That’s how he ends up on Brenner’s radar. And just before the start of first grade, Mike Wheeler disappears without a trace.
Max moves to Hawkins that October, and she becomes El and Will’s friend pretty quickly (she also gets a front row seat to the slow progression of the two of them losing more and more hope that their third best friend— who Max never met but knows everything about because both talk about him constantly— is ever coming home).
Karen obviously fights to look for her son, and the searches go on for months, but they find nothing. With her money and connections, Karen actually gets the current police chief kicked out of the position, because she doesn’t believe he’s doing everything he can to find her son. That’s how Joyce takes on the role of Police Chief because she might be the best detective the station has, but she’s also a woman so the thought is that Karen will probably get HER fired as well which for totally unknown reasons is the most palatable option to a bunch of people with power over the station (//sighs in sexism). Joyce actually listens to Karen, though, and is as transparent as possible about the search, even though it’s very cold at this point, so despite being dissatisfied and upset, Karen at least believes Joyce is doing her best. And that’s how Joyce ends up police chief.
Mike’s disappearance puts added pressure on the Wheeler house, so Nancy ends up acting out more for attention which is how we get Nancy in Steve’s canon s1 role as the popular party girl (though she’s still Nancy— smart as a whip and ambitious as hell, it’s just hidden better). Meanwhile, Jonathan ends up in her canon nerd role (he’s studying hard for a full ride to NYU!) with Barb as his best friend. And Steve… well, Billy showed up earlier with Max, so he got to work putting Steve down long before Steve’s rep was secure, and Steve is now something of a loner. He’s still a jock, but he does solo stuff like track instead of team sports. The upside is that this means he and Robin (who mayyyy or may not be the cool anti-establishment teen running this universe’s Hellfire Club, when the canon era starts) became friends earlier.
Steve and Jonathan know each other loosely, and are assigned to do a project together (Jonathan’s a nerd who’s taking a class above his grade level and Steve had no friends in the class so they got paired up by default), so Steve goes over to Jonathan’s house and sees Will, El, and Max huddled over their first dnd manual. Somehow (Steve doesn’t remember exactly how, but he’s pretty sure El and Will’s twin puppy dog eyes had something to do with it), a simple “oh, dnd, huh?” comment turns into thirteen year old Steve agreeing that the kids can use his place as a quiet place to play (his parents are never around anyway), and maybe he’ll get his cool friend who knows how to play to stop by and help out if they need it, and telling Joyce that it’s fine he wouldn’t mind babysitting because, really, he’s really bored a lot of the time in his big, empty house. And from then on, Steve’s place is this version of the Party’s Wheeler Basement.
Lucas shows up in fourth grade, and joins the Party. Obviously this changes his dynamic with Max— they get a slower burn in this one (and I’m still undecided whether it would ultimately end with El/Lucas/Max or Dustin/El), but he gets accepted really readily.
So… on November 6, 1983, the Party bikes home from Steve’s place after a session, and El vanishes (which is Will’s actual worst nightmare because now BOTH of his Kindergarten best friends have vanished without a trace). This leads, ultimately, to Will, Max, and Lucas going looking for El in the woods the next night. They don’t find her, but they do find a very bewildered boy with black, shaved hair and dark eyes, with the number 014 tattooed on his wrist.
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