#shirey crain

[resplendentgoldenwings]

About Steven Crain

I’ve always been something of a contrarian even as a girl. If my old sister loved strawberries I loved blueberries. If she hated raisins I loved them. It was never personally I have simply always preferred to something different from what the others around me are doing.

The more different things we are doing as individuals in a group the greatest number of experiences are open to all of us. Imagine for a moment that you have a group of five people and five different paths in a forest. All the paths go to the same place, but each takes a different route. Now If all five group members take a seperate path and meet at the end of the day to share their experiences then it’s as if each member of the group has been in five different places all at once. This variety in taste and preference and response enriches us.

And so it is being this person that I am I find myself defending Steven Crain.

Over this last week I have been rewatching eipsodes of The Haunting of Hill House, limiting myself to one a day and taking it in much more slowly than the original ten hour Saturday binge. And in this second watch not only do I find myself not hating Steve I am actually find him a likeable and flawed character much like his siblings and pretty much every other human being in existence.

Spoilers follow.

It is very much Shirely’s response to Steve in the very first episodes that I think heavily influences fandom’s general opinion of the character and his actions. Shirely calls Steve selfish,accusing him of being a poor elder brother and insists that she is the one to take care of everything. Yet the actions of the rest of the family demonstrate something different.

The flashbacks of Nell, Luke and Theo show us a Steve that is caring and heavily involved in the lives of his younger siblings while Shirley actually features very little, except you know to make Luke leave his twin sister’s wedding so she believes he wasn’t there for her. Moving right along.

Steve is the very first person Nell calls when she reaches her breaking point, she calls Shirely when she can’t get ahold of him. When she finally speaks to her father her father directs her back to her eldest brother and then calls Steve immediately despite the late hour.

Now to be fair it was partially because she lived closest to Steve, but it’s telling that Hugh doesn’t pay Steve’s objections any attention or even know that Steve and Leigh are seperated; Nell can’t go to his house because he no longer lives there. Steve’s support and availability are taken for granted by the dad and the rest of the family.

When Steve finally does return to his apartment he finds Luke robbing him. He doesn’t react with anger, he gives Luke more money and let’s him keep some of the stolen items. He also doesn’t challenge Luke’s statement that the money isn’t for drugs. Instead he asks Luke if he’s cold, because he remembers that Luke told him feeling cold is a symptom of withdrawal, such a small detail of his brother’s life to recall two months after they discussed it.

When Luke has actually earned a day pass after completing a month of rehab he doesn’t visit Shirley or Theo or his own twin instead he choses to take Joey, an important friend to have dinner with Steve and his wife. Like Nell Luke knows that it is Steve he can reach out too  --not Shirely despite her insistence-- no matter how many times he messes up.

They do argue during this visit, but it is only as Steve rather adroitly points out that Luke should be wary of Joey, because she might burn him, which of course she does. To be fair he did it in a very irritating elder sibling way, but again it comes from a place of caring and Steve wanting Luke to succeed.

Even Hugh seems to lean heavily on the eldest Crain sibling, because it is Steve who is with Hugh at the lawyer’s office when they are children. Iit is Steve who has to hear his father say that he won’t fight to keep his kids with him and he won’t take any of the steps the lawyer is advising to keep the family together.

This seems less and less like the actions of a man who only looks out for himself and more and more like someone whose support, care and availabilty are so consistent that it is always taken for granted by his family. This is so much the case that they can rage at him about his book, calling him names, embarassing him in front of his fans and he still gives them the promised royalties and shows up when they need him.

Now about that book. I can’t even bring myself to condemn him for writing it. Now his siblings have every right to be angry at him because they don’t like being portrayed as mentally ill, but let’s pause here. Unaware of the supernatural events around him Steven Crain sees him mother succumb to mental illness and depression and kill herself. In this time of crisis his father provides absolutely no leadership for the family whatsoever and he watches Theo, Nell and Luke sink further into various mental illness as they age. 

Luke becomes addicted to drugs,Nell struggles with deppresion, PTSD and perhaps other symptoms to the point that no one is suprised by the idea that she went back the house and killed herself as well. And even though Theo functions she is completely, emotionally walled off from everyone she loves. 

Steve percieves a family in crisis, people that he loves in crisis and no one is doing anything about it. No one wants to name the illness, no one wants to get help. 

Now since his family has been so scarred by what happened at Hill House he writes a book about it and uses that money to get all of them a better fucking life. They may not have healed from the tragic events that took place there, but the story can pay for all of their dreams Shirely’s funeral home and her charity cases, Theo’s Ph.D and subsequently her practice, Luke trying over and over again to go for rehab and Nell’s therapy and pretty much anything else she wanted. 

The fact that Steve had  a vascetomy is perhaps one of the most telling things about his character. It tells us first and foremost that he sincerely believes what that the family is ill and in need of help, but more importantly it also show just how deeply affected by the events at Hill House he is.

Of all the children Steven Crain is the eldest he would have the strongest, clearest memories of not only his mother, but his entire family before that summer and so he can most clearly mourn for who they were, the promise of who could have become before that summer at Hill House. And I think he just could not bear the idea of having a child and watching them sucumb the way his mother did and the way his siblings seem to be.

And this is also yet another thing that no one else in his family seems to know about him.

The younger siblings feel a certain ownership of the family’s experience at Hill House. Steve is excluded from this in spite of the fact that he was there, he witnessed it and was as deeply affected by what happened as the rest. It silently tragic that his understanding of the events seperates him from his family as surely as Theo’s walls seperate her from everyone that she loves.

Steve isn’t perfect none of the Crain siblings are they all do crappy things to each other and make mistakes, this is the inevitability of life. But I think if you simply dismiss Steve as selfish or gaslighting his siblings you're missing out on a huge chunk of the characters and a huge chunk of the story.

[darling-i-read-it]

Nell’s Wish

Luke Crian x reader

Word Count: 900

Warnings: death, spoilers, grief, talks of drug addiction 

Author’s Note: This ended up being more angsty than I thought it would be lmao. I hope you like it anyway!

Requested: by anon, Let's try again! 😅 If its not too much trouble, could I request a Luke Crain x fem!reader one shot or headcanons where she was best friends with Nell (met in college or somethin) and she and Luke has unspoken feelings for each other? And she comes to Nell's funeral? Just sad comfort fluff or smthn. Maybe throw in some mistletoe if you're feeling festive lol but definitely end with a kiss? pretty pretty pretty please 🙏 thank you so much!!!!

Summary: the request 

Genre: angst/fluff

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director 

(not my gif)

The Crain family stood around the room in various places. They were all there but they were all semi arguing. Theo held her glass tightly, her gloves allowing for a bit more grip. She glanced over at the door as it swang open, letting all the cold air in. She stood up straight to try and see who had just joined them.

Theo glanced out in the main room where the family all sat. She did a mental head count. Yeah, all of them were there, one in a casket. Her eyes went back to the door where you had just stepped in. It had begun raining so you had out your umbrella which you took down and placed gently by the door. 

When Theo met your eyes, threw her half drunken gaze, she could not recognize who you were. Not part of Shirley's family. She wondered for a moment if her father had brought you but no, you were her age by the looks of it. 

You approached her nonetheless.

“Am I early?” you whispered. All the family in the chairs turned around. Shirley stood up and walked over to you. She put on her mask of a face and held out her hand for you to shake which you did.

“The funeral isn’t until tomorrow but you’re welcome to see her if you want,” she said.

“Who are you?” Steven asked harshly. Shirely turned her head quickly to him and gave a hard look.

“This is Y/N. She went to college with Nell. She’s in Nell’s will,” Shirley explained. You did a half wave. You had heard about everyone in the family but you had only actually met one of them. 

Luke stood at the front of the room and he let out a small sigh upon seeing you. You had always been so nice to him. He thought it might be because of how close you were to Nell. He thought you might have picked up her kind nature. Either way, whenever he came to visit Nell you and him were able to hang out and enjoy each other’s company. Nell always told him that you had a crush on him but he ignored her. He couldn’t see someone like you liking someone like him.

Either way he was glad to see you. You would be on his side no matter what.

You thanked Shirey quietly and walked up to the casket. You looked down at your friend and held back tears. You had loved her so much. She had been your best friend for years and just like that, she was gone. Luke stood beside you and gently placed a hand on your shoulder. 

You leaned into his side and he was able to put his arms around you completely. You let out a small sigh and then buried your face in his chest. There was no need to say hello. Luke was one of those people who you had felt like you’d seen the day before even if it had been years.

You let yourself wallow for a moment and then pulled away from him a bit. You looked up at him.

“How are you?” He was amazed how quickly you had shoved away your grief to make sure that he was okay. 

“I’m here,” he muttered. You nodded and glanced back at Nell. You and Luke stared at her. 

In the back of the room, Theo and Shirley still stood. Shirley was watching the interaction happen with very close eyes. It was interesting. She had never really thought that Luke could ever have someone who liked him romantically. He was just so much to handle sometimes. But something told her that you didn’t care. Something told her you wouldn’t want to lose both of the twins.

“No one told me that Luke had a girlfriend,” Hugh said quietly. 

“None of us knew,” Theo grumbled. 

“None of you?” Hugh asked but was looking at Steven. He shrugged, hands shoved in his front pockets.

“It’s not like we saw him that often when he wasn’t shooting up,” Steven muttered. 

“Nell would be happy about it,” Theo admitted. Shirley nodded.

“At least she got one thing she wanted.”

[resplendentgoldenwings]

joyreneseul replied to your post: I’ve always been something of a contrarian even as...

Thanks for this post, I kept seeing Steve defense posts that just completely went off the mark in defending him that made me low-key hate him more. But this was a great defense. TBH, I still don’t like Steve as much as the others, but I don’t hate him. I don’t hate any of them. Also I’m surprised there aren’t more posts about hating Shirley cause I thought SHE was way more of an asshole than Steve was.

It’s funny i was just sympathizing with Steve when I started writing this post, but by the time I got to the end I started to actually love the character. :D I’m glad I could offer a perspective that let you like him.

Shirely did some messed up stuff and I find her more difficult to sympathize with than Steve, but I don’t necessarily think she was wrong in her reactions. The cheating was obviously wrong as was trying to control her siblings, but controling her siblings is as much a reaction to the trauma as Theo’s walls, Nellie’s depression and Luke’s drug use, and Steve’s denial. 

I think Shirley’s story is kind of an interesting metaphor for how you can’t control things that are alive and free you can only control and perfect the dead. Anything that is alive changes and makes mistakes, ugly mistakes sometimes. 

I think what makes her hypocrisy difficult is that it doesn’t seem to connect to her trauma at all, it’s just something she did because she was bored with her marriage. I feel like there might be a connection, but I can’t manage to see it or find it. 

Maybe  should rewatch Shirley’s episode. I skipped it because I love cats.

I want to know if there is anyone out there who hates Nellie. I love Nellie, but she seems like one of those characters that if we didn’t have all this back story on a lot of people would hate her and find her completely unsympathetic.