#letha mondragon

[buildarocketboys]

Hurt/Comfort Bingo Fills Masterpost for @sweetspicybingo

1. Punch in the face to teddy bear: wanna sleep on every piece of fuzz and stuffing that comes out of you (Fall Out Boy, peterick, 2,153 words)

2. Mind break to "You can rest now.": one more off-key anthem, one more troubled soul (Fall Out Boy, peterick, YBC-verse, 2,653 words)

3. Self harm to words of affirmation: troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match (Fall Out Boy, peterick, ED tw, 2,587 words)

4. Cheating to "Can I give you a hug?": behind my back I already am (Fall Out Boy, peterick, 2,639 words)

5. "I can't breathe." to gentle touch: alone together (Fall Out Boy, peterick, 1,058 words)

6. Hypothermia to good night's sleep/emergency room to "It's okay, let it out.": so damn cold, like twenty below (The Indian Lake Trilogy, Jade/Letha, 955 words)

7. Touch starved to chicken noodle soup (alt hurt prompt used): like a heart first-aid kit (Glee, Blam, 2,788 words)

8. Missed call to bridal carry (alt comfort prompt used): speak now (Fall Out Boy, peterick, 1,242 words)

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

Do you ship it?

[homosekularnost]

nothing but respect for MY final girls

[luthorcorp1313]

I finished The Angel of Indian Lake recently and there were so many feelings. I was originally just going to say a couple of things and it got away from me so I just did it this way. If you want to read my rambling, cool, if not, long story short: Stephen Graham Jones is fucking awesome, Jade Daniels is 100% my Final Girl of all final girls, and the Indian Lake Trilogy is such a good read on so many levels so everyone should read it.

There is an amazing amount of depth and heart to it that you just don't usually see in horror fiction and on top of that, the trilogy starts out as a total love letter to 80s slashers and final girls, with the real surprise being the protagonist, half-Blackfeet and full outcast Jade Daniels, the rebel girl who is always in trouble for something and has memorized everything about every slasher film (up to that point) while praying for a real slasher to hit her town of Proofrock, Idaho, but be careful what you wish for, right? Love her!! Lots of subplot about the colonization and takeover of Native lands, as SGJ is a Native American writer and that figures into his work. So much depth. Anyway, did I say this was the short version??? Just read the books! 😂🔪🖤🫀🩸

[peerless-cucumber]

has anyone else read stephen graham jones don't fear the reaper yet

[chainsawcorazon]

tbh the writing on that twist is so insane. i honestly thought letha and hardy were misconstruing the situation, but they were dead right. graham jones really had jade talk that shit away to the point where i thought rexhall was the rapist 😭😭 im just glad she can admit it out loud now that she doesn’t wanna die anymore. even gladder that she didn’t kill him, but letha instead, cuz sometimes divine punishment for raping your daughter comes in the form of her bestie bashing your skull in with a wooden board

[destroyscout]

stephen graham jones I want this DESPERATELY: a certain former teenage slasher seeks out a certain former final girl slash high school history teacher to finally end him

[brightbeautifulthings]

But that's just it, isn't it? They were plural, not singular, that's where horror movies have it all wrong, that's where the slasher lies: it's not about a lone girl carving her way to daylight, is it? It's about two girls making it across the ice together.

Stephen Graham Jones, Don't Fear the Reaper

[graciecatfamilyband]

The Info-Dumpers who Love Characters Website is totally sleeping on the best Info-Dumping Character of All Time:

Jade Daniels, the 17 year-old half-indigenous girl from Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart is a Chainsaw.

In everyone’s defense, character-driven slow-burn literary fiction that is also a slasher (stab stab 🔪🔪🩸) is a hard genre to sell. Many of us who love one part of this equation don’t love the other.

But Jade has captured my whole chainsaw ♥️, and I CANNOT be normal about it. Jade has never met a person at whom she wasn’t willing to spout random facts that they have exhibited no interest in. She can bring ANYTHING back around to connect to her hyperfixation which is, coincidentally, slasher movies. And she is the most vivid, alive, real-to-me protagonist I have ever encountered. Because of the way she hyperfixates and info dumps, not in spite of it. (Which surely says something about me but again, I am among friends on this webbed site!)

Jade makes completely normal, totally hinged choices like:

(When we the audience are first introduced to her) Going up to a group of construction workers having a trash fire in the middle of the night and being like, “If we were in a slasher right now, this is what the plot line would be. Also, have some random slasher movie facts.” (Their response: Are you okay? You seem like you are not okay.)

Writing extra credit essays for her history teacher about the tropes and conventions of the slasher genre. For four years. Not what he asked for, but what he got. (These essays are included in the book and are a godsend for those of us who are not already slasher fans! They literally help the reader understand the story beats as they unfold, while simultaneously giving life to Jade’s voice and helping us understand what makes her tick.)

Deciding the New Girl At School has all the qualities of a Final Girl, the slasher film trope in which there is one girl left alive to confront the killer and stop the slasher cycle.

Trying to warn the New Girl At School that she is going to be The Final Girl, by putting a VHS copy of the 1971 slasher Bay of Blood and all of Jade’s slasher extra credit essays in her mailbox. With a note. A note that says that she is going to be The Final Girl in a slasher cycle that seems to be starting up. (Jade is just trying to help! So helpful.)

Of course, the core of this novel is: What is going on with Jade? After all, she actually wants a slasher cycle to start in her town. (She also wants the slasher cycle to be stopped at the proper moment, to ensure that the vengeance of the slasher is balanced by the justice of the Final Girl.) She does not see herself as a possible Final Girl, but she is willing to help the richer, prettier, more appropriate classmate who she thinks is that girl. Why, why, why?

To be clear, the novel does not posit that something must be wrong with a person to be intensely, obsessively interested in something or for that thing to be horror- even slashers! But Jade’s behavior is, like I said, not entirely hinged, even for a slasher fan. Something must be up.

The novel gives us all the clues we need to peel back the layers of what’s really happening, and when truths are revealed, everything just *clicks.* Themes are introduced and then reinforced on multiple levels. There is a bear. 🐻 (The bear is the not the slasher.)

And throughout, Jade gets to be fully-human and fully seven-fucking-teen. Even though she is on the cusp of adulthood, she is still a child, and a wounded one at that. (Her wounds in no way fucking diminish her.)  Her judgment is often impaired. Her actions are often questionable. Her hair-dye jobs gets so bad, even she thinks its gross. She is so alive, and so deserving of love. 🥹 

I love her.

I would fight for her.

I desperately want to make soup for her, and let her tell me about the Scream franchise (I do not care about the Scream franchise), and give her a safe place to sleep. Even if doing so makes it way more likely that I’m about to get murdered.

Jade Fucking Daniels. My chainsaw-hearted, info-dumping hero protagonist. I salute you, my final girl.

[buildarocketboys]

Truly gonna have to make a post promoting/begging people to read the Indian Lake Trilogy when I've finished the final book, aren't I? Not enough (read: basically zero) people have read this book and they NEED to GOD I am DYING over here

[beauzos]

My Heart is a Chainsaw is a fucking mess, but i will say i actually am very compelled by what's going on with Jade now that i understand what Her Deal is. i think it's profoundly clever using third person limited from Jade's perspective, because the reader still doesn't know almost anything about her until the very end despite it. Jade sees herself as someone who exists in the margins of life, and even when the thing she always wanted (in a way) happens, all her slasher film knowledge becoming necessary when her town is besieged by what seems to be a real slasher, she still doesn't even let herself get involved.

instead, she prepares a random girl she latches onto to be the protagonist of Chainsaw. she doesn't even know this girl. they aren't even friends. but Jade cannot conceive of a world where she has enough value on her own to be the protagonist, or, in this case, the "final girl." she seems herself as fundamentally broken, dirty, and ruined, so she projects everything she wants onto Letha; the ideal protagonist, the ideal teenage girl, someone she can use an extension of the escapism she gets from slasher films.

Letha is just another way for Jade to escape everything wrong in her life, everything wrong about her, and it crushes her every time Letha doesn't do what she wants her to do. Letha can read her like a fucking book, and it leaves Jade on the defensive while still trying to cling to this false narrative of Letha as the final girl. and, in the end, she realizes that no one is going to save her but herself, though Letha is still there too. moreover, it's more about Jade accepting that her life has value in and of itself. she's more than her trauma, self harm, and the slasher films she has made her entire life.

there are people who genuinely love and care about her, and would do anything to help her. but she helps herself first, and it's kinda the first step. she can't accept anyone's help bcs she doesn't see why anybody would bother with a broken girl. i don't plan on reading the rest of the trilogy, but i hope Jade heals up from all the bad in her life. i mean, there's gonna be more serial killers n stuff but like aside from that, i hope Jones gives her a personal win KRJF.

[omegasmileyface]

"when you say 'girl help' its not any particular girl its the concept of Girl—" WRONG. tbe girl is Letha Mondragon

[setaflow]

Horror movie protagonists WISH they have what Jade Daniels and Letha Mondragon have. They fucking WISH.

[clonerightsagenda]

Additional thoughts on Don't Fear the Reaper:

First, interested in the inclusion of Armitage as a critique of Those Horror Guys. I wonder if he'll still be in play in the final book or if Gal will have handled him in one way or another.

I'm not 100% sure which twin did what and I'm not sure whether that's because I read through the last chunk too quickly or if it's intentionally ambiguous. The characters seem certain, but the characters aren't always on the right track.

Really enjoyed getting more of Letha's interiority. While I'm not the ideal person to unpack it, I feel like there's a lot going on with her interactions with Jade, especially when it comes to both their positionalities. The Mondragons are a wealthy Black family building on Native land, but we see how precarious their position ends up being, and in Letha's book 2 pov she's aware of that. Which is perhaps why she's the one who spots what Jade is hiding, and why Stacy Graves can touch her but doesn't kill her. And in the sequel she's watching slashers to cope but at the same time taking her immunosuppressants on schedule because sometimes your body's reaction to something that hurt you in the past only hurts you more.

They really haven't known each other that long when you consider how compressed the book timelines are, so I hope we get more of their dynamic in the final part of the trilogy.

[chainsawcorazon]

the other thing im enjoying about my heart is a chainsaw is how blatantly jade is transferring her trauma onto letha, despite letha being her perfect final girl. and why wouldn’t she? no one else in her town’s punishing her father’s pedophile bestie. why wouldn’t she rely on a vengeful serial killer to make amends for her when her own parents seem to care so little for her? i still don’t think jade is the killer like our kid in night of the mannequins, but i do think that whoever killed those foreign exchange students is willfully tapping into jade’s hatred of her town to then use her as a conduit for all the killings.

[kinetic-elaboration]

September 13: Jade/Letha/Banner (1?)

Indian Lake Trilogy, canon-complaint through Reaper with one obvious difference. I really wanted to write a threesome, is the thing. But that's not what this is.

~780 words, 30 minutes

*

This time, when Jade's released from prison, it's Banner who picks her up outside the gates and then insists on taking her home. He means his home but says it like it's hers too, which is of course a lie. She puts up a fight about it that's more than token resistance but not much. He answers like he's tired and maybe a little bored, like he'll break soon just to get her to shut up, except that he doesn't stop answering, doesn't stop, doesn't stop, doesn't stop, until they're back in Proofrock again, and then she lapses into silence and pretends this isn't letting him win.

In his new truck that looks a lot like the old one, except the headlights aren't smashed in and the color's a bright alarm red instead of black, he takes her down Main Street, silent, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She can feel it. Maybe after tangoing with two killers—hell, more than two, but two massacres, two horror shows—she's just got an extra sense for a pair of eyes trying to drill into the side of her skull, with the same intensity of an actual bone-shattering power tool. Or maybe it's just him. Some sort of bond they’ve got or something.

"Are you a real deputy now?" she asks, to make conversation when they roll on past the dollar store.

"I'm the whole damn department," he answers. Then: "Me and Meg."

It's not snowing this time but it's not spring either: the second week of February, frigid blue-cold with a knife-like wind and that same old snow perma-frosted to the ground. When that wind picks up it blows snowflakes wafting over the crystalline, clear snow mounds, the ones that were probably sparkling in this morning's sun. Now it's early dusk and only bruises of purple shadow shade on down the sides of them.

The Tompkins house looks like it always did on the outside, must have been transformed on the inside, because the decor is all Mondragon. Like they've split the property right down the middle. He maintains the outside; she transforms the in. Most of the rooms are dark, feel like they're shrouded. Jade makes out the details of the front hallway, the living room, the kitchen as she glimpses it through a doorway. The living room's the easiest because they linger there a while and because one of the lights is actually on, sending out ever-fading circles of concentric yellow-white. A girl—Gal, must be, because she looks about the right age and somewhat familiar—is sitting at the edge of the couch, in the brightest part of the spotlight, holding Adrienne asleep in her arms.

She turns her head around halfway, half-upside down, doesn't move otherwise, exchanges information with Banner in low tones while Jade stands awkwardly in the worst light and tries to take the place in.

There's got to be some kind of metaphor here, about where the light touches and where it does not.

She tries to center it, herself, tries to find the start of this thread. First dials back to last December and then even further, further. Goes too far and comes back and then wavers and settles on the exact, precise, specific moment when she first saw Letha: the girls’ bathroom, Henderson High, senior year. When she knew the most important piece of the narrative puzzle was clicking right into place. There's a skip in the tape here. A bug, where the audio cuts and the video stripes over with static—maybe it's more like a DVD with a scratch on it and it just repeat and repeats and repeats. The bathroom stall door swinging open and Letha stepping through.

And again.

And again.

And again.

The only thing Jade had really wanted to know, what she'd kept on harping about to her lawyer, since she was going back to prison and there wasn't any way around that, was is Letha okay?

Fast forward the tape through all the gory parts—you've seen them all anyway, the fake stuff and the real, and the blood and guts aren't the core of the story anymore, never were—and what you've got is this. Jade, orphaned, untethered in the middle of a not-quite-familiar living room, her hands deep in the pockets of the coat she hasn't taken off. The living room isn't home but there are other living rooms, other houses, that are farther still from the ideal. She's gotten her second get out of jail free card. There aren't any left. Letha is somewhere upstairs, out of the hospital, home, and Banner says she's been waiting impatiently just to see Jade again.