#wow it's also been so long that i dont remember what the mindflayer looked like so

[bhargrovesb]

hey guys, ever since I watched the battle of starcourt i’ve been thinking how it would have played out if steve had gotten billy out of the camaro. i wrote this in january but only just remembered i had this blog and this story sitting in my drafts. i really liked it upon rereading so i thought i’d share (:

It happened in a span of seconds.

Steve gripped the steering wheel of the Toddfather, hard. So hard that he was sure he’d leave behind 10 crescent shaped indents in the leather. The sweat from his damp palms made the steering wheel slick. He couldn’t tell if it was fear, or the sweltering July night that had him sweating.

He dared a glance over at Robin. She held on to the door handle and gave him a small nod, like she could tell what he was thinking, and agreed that there was no other choice. A combination of nausea and nerves shot through him, and he resisted the urge to wipe his hands on his shorts. Instead, he flexed his fingers and pressed down harder on the gas. The car rumbled underneath him as it gave everything it had. 

His heart beat wildly in his chest as the other driver began closing the gap between themselves and Nancy’s car, with Nancy stood stupidly in the middle. The headlights of the car illuminated Nancy perfectly. He saw her face pull into a determined look as she raised her pistol. He also saw how close he was to losing her, again. This time would be permanent if he wasn’t quick enough.

A second before impact, he closed his eyes, something he learned from years of doing stupid shit with Tommy. An image of two ten-year-olds perched in the tallest tree in the park flashed through his head. A face full of freckles stared back at him in his mind’s eye.  

“It hurts less when you fall if you don’t see the ground coming”, the redhead said before leaping.

And then it happened. The Toddfather rammed into the Camaro with a sickening crunch.

The sound of metal scraping against metal sent shivers down his spine. His head whipped back and to the side as the car spun out. The smell of burning rubber was pungent. The smell evoked another memory, and he had just barely remembered to turn into the spin. The car came to a halt, and he dared to open his eyes. Steve blinked away the swirling lights and for a second everything was quiet. Quiet, except for the single ringing tone in his ear. He squeezed his eyes closed once again, wincing at the dual pain of his brain rattling around in his head and the pulsing of his swollen eye.

“You okay?” Steve asked in a daze.

He barely had enough time to process Robin’s reply of “ask me tomorrow” when the roar of the Mindflayer diverted his attention. The giant creature made its way toward them. Its massive body eclipsing the starlit sky.

Steve hurried Robin out of the Toddfather and into the trunk of Nancy’s car. The hatch hung open behind her as he looked back at the monster advancing on them. Steve’s eyes flitted to the caved in steel blue Camaro and lingered for a moment. Hesitation.

 It was now on fire. 

The fire came up from the hood and spread across the windshield, licking at the glass. And through the peaks and valleys of the flame, he could see the shape of the unconscious boy, slumped against the door.

He looked back and forth from Robin to the kids, to the monster, and then toward the blazing metal trap.

It only took him a second to decide.

He couldn’t leave him inside of that burning car. Billy Hargrove’s death would have been on his conscience. And no matter what he led Nancy to believe, he was already struggling under the weight of Barb’s death.

“Tell Jonathon not to turn around for me. Keep going.”

Robin looked back at him with furrowed brows, confusion etched on her face as he shut the hatch behind her and shouted, “Go, go, go”. And they were off before Robin could open her mouth to protest. Steve watched for a second as they pulled off before he remembered why he had stayed behind. Turning back to the flaming Camaro, he sprinted towards it.

The air around him got thicker and hotter the closer he got to the source. Steve stopped at the driver’s door, taking in everything around him. The flame that had started at the hood had spread. Above and below. He gave a wary glance up at the sky, worried about the monster’s next move. It moved fast, its massive spindles of legs contorting unnaturally. It scurried past the mall. He didn’t even think it noticed him. Or at least he hoped it hadn’t. It didn’t seem worried about leaving its host behind. It had its eyes set on another; Eleven.

Without thinking, he grabbed at the door handle. The handle was so hot it took him a moment to register the pain he felt crawl up his arm. Like hot needles slowly sank into his skin. Steve had spent the last couple of hours getting beat up by Russian spies and climbing up hilltops. Everything hurt.

He pulled his aching hand back.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he chastised himself, applying pressure to his burnt palm. He pressed the thumb of his other hand into his palm.

The fire grew, wrapping around the passenger side window and across the length of the base.

Realizing he was running out of time, Steve pulled the ascot from under the lapel of his uniform. He looped it around his now pink hand and tried again, the heat of the metal still singeing his fingertips. He gritted his teeth and yanked the door open.

Steve caught Billy’s dead weight as he fell limply from his seat.

“Shit,” he cursed, heaving Billy up by his underarms to get a better grip. He felt relieved that Billy never wore his seatbelt. That made it easier to maneuver him out of the burning car. But Billy was heavy, nothing but muscle, and the sting of the blisters forming on his burnt palm siphoned all sense of ease.

Steve positioned Billy across his back, the other boy’s upper body draped over his right shoulder with Steve’s arm around his waist. It was the closest he could get to a fireman’s carry. Steve stopped every few feet to readjust his hold, to catch his breath, to wince when Billy’s prone body bounced against the bruises on his torso. He remembered to plant his feet with every step. 

“Does that work when the thing threatening to knock you over is exhaustion?” He chuckled at that thought. 

He powered through it, edging closer to Starcourt’s doors when he felt a wave of heat against half of his back. He felt it before he could see it in the reflection of the glass doors. The Camaro had exploded. Steve opened the heavy door with his uninjured hand while the other clutched Billy, who’d began slipping from his grasp. He slid into the crack he’d made, putting them back into the (relative) safety of the building, only making it a few more steps before Billy’s weight was too much for him. Steve laid Billy down as gently as he could. The younger boy’s head bounced against the floor with a quiet thud. Steve was glad it had landed on the thick rubber doormat instead of the hard linoleum floor. Still, he ran a hand through the back of Billy’s blonde tresses, just to check for blood.

“What use would it have been to save him from a burning car if you’ve accidentally bashed in his skull?” he thought to himself.

Blunt force trauma- his brain supplied, unhelpfully.

Relieved to not find the sticky substance on his hands, he let out a breath. He continued to comb through Billy’s tangled hair.

Billy would never let his hair get this matted. Steve gave the hair one last brush through and stood to pace.

He thought on his next move. Where would he go? How would he get in contact with the team? He was about to head out of the door with a half formed plan when the prone body next to him whimpered and thrashed. Steve stopped himself dead in his tracks. His first instinct was to crouch down, to comfort the ailing boy, to shake him awake.

His second, smarter, instinct was to continue straight out that door, pray to the God he only sometimes believes in that the Toddfather starts and go.

But Steve had never made the smartest decisions, so he bent down anyway.  

[alltimewhat]

BRO I REALLY THINK S3 IS BASED OFF THE THING LET ME BREAK IT DOWN FOR U

putting under a readmore bc this is probably gonna be long im so excited over this i hurt myself flapping lmao (also its gonna likely be a huge mess bc im so bad at organizing my thoughts  lmao) ((also also there ARE pictures of the alien from the thing, which are quite... body horror-ish, so if body horror makes you uncomfortable please dont read or just be safe reading!))

-the thing has been referenced a few times in st so far, but unlike most other references, there hasnt been much in the actual PLOT thats thing-related, but it seems kinda odd for them to include it twice (mikes poster, mr clarke and his gf watching it together) if it wasnt intentional (as we know, all things in media are included for a reason)

-which also means the thing’s release date is perfectly a-okay to line up with s3 (1982, if you were wondering, but i mean. its already in the show twice so lol)

-idk if yall remember very well but at the beginning of promo and stuff for this season the duffers (or maybe shawn i honestly dont remember) said that the season was based on a film! they may have said released in 1985, if they did totally disregard this point lmao

-okok so. the thing obviously is about an alien creature that spreads like a virus and can assimilate human and animal lifeforces into itself and create a perfect copy of the creature, which obviously creates a lot of tension in the original movie but im gonna bring this back up later so

-okay so the thing is a huge staple in body horror films, as its one of the first to do a very good job of it (to be followed a few years later by the fly, which i thought may have been what s3 was based around at first until i realized it was released in 86) and the effects are very well done for what they were and for a budget of 15mil which is honestly more than i expected lmao

-why does that matter? well, another thing the duffers/shawn have said is that this season has a big jump up in the amount of gore! you know what’s pretty gory? assimilating humans and other animals into your virus-like lifeform! and eating the fuck out of them!

-another thing- the duffers have said a major character will die this season, and billy could be considered a major character, as well as being an antagonist. being assimilated into a virus alien does, in fact, kill you

-also, an important thing about the thing and its form is that the thing itself, like, the actual alien from the original movie, looks like this:

so the main like, design element im trying to point out w this... weirdly HQ image is the little crab legs, which repeat a few times in the alien’s design in the movie. the reason i point those out is because if you look at the monster in the trailer...

hmm wow those sure look like insectoid and/or crustacean-like legs dont they

and this isnt the only time the creature has spider legs in the movie if im not mistaken, and while this is from the newer thing movie and likely wont be used as reference, here’s the ice-block creature from the new thing, with the same belly legs as the new s3 monster

but, like i said, its highly highly unlikely thisll appear in s3, as its from 2007 i believe?? maybe 2011. but its still a similarity!

-aj, i hear u saying, are visual similarities and vague references all you have? kind of! but heres some more stuff: okay so the way the thing turns into creatures is by a virus-like assimilation, although the thing has to assimilate through digestion or otherwise dissolving, and i dont think this will be lifted as straight as some other pieces may be. BUT, we do know

1. there is an episode titled the bite

2. this:

so, likely, instead of needing to be dissolved to become assimilated, like the original movie, one just needs to be bitten. by what, exactly? rats, most likely. i think the creature has been assimilating rats which is why its “feeding time” and there are so fucking many rats, but also rats are known to spread diseas :-) (even though thats a stereotype, wild rats can transmit disease like any other small creature with teeth and the ability to carry a contagious disease)

-okay so lets say billy gets assimilated, so what? he gets eaten, and hes dead? that seems pointless. but no, remember that a huge amount of the tension IN the original thing comes from the fact that the thing can create a perfect copy of any creature it’s assimilated. yeah, that’s pretty obvious, so... it creates a copy of billy. thats a convincing disguise, sure! what else?

karen is attracted to billy. yes, its gross, i know, but it may have real ebaring on the plot, as much as its getting thrown around as a joke. karen is mike’s mom, mike is jane’s girlfriend. the mindflayer knows jane is its enemy.

the mindflayer uses a disguise it can pull off perfectly to get karen to give it the location of the kids (she did it once in s2, remember?), “billy” finds the kids, “billy” finds jane. the mindflayer reveals itself and tries to kill them all (lmao)

okay, that’s basically all i have to say about this lmao

i know its a HUUGE shot in the dark, seeing as there are a bunch of plot elements i havent been able to incorporate into this (the antenna, the carnival, why?? the mayor?? is trying to kill people??, why jon is in the hospital when the monster shows up, etc), but theres also a lot of evidence that i think points towards this! also, why include two deliberate, obvious thing references if theyre never gonna touch on it again, right??