Just Wanted To Give A Shoutout To @greenscrunchy! The Mun Is Super Nice And Has Made Me Feel So Welcome

💭 + mementos of childhood

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

HER FULL SET OF NANCY DREW MYSTERIES. those are precious to her and she keeps them well past adulthood and collects every one for as long as they’re published. 

a whole stack of little diaries with the worst locks of all time as clasps. you know the ones. she never wrote in them regularly and mostly copied passages from books and little poems that she liked in between actual thoughts and doodles. (only when she had good hiding places for her diary did her real thoughts come out.) all the identical cheap metal keys live on a frayed green ribbon necklace that chrissy used to wear “just in case anyone tries to steal my secrets”. 

lisa frank pencils and sticker covered notebooks. she kept a few of her favorite pencils whole and unsharpened and they live in her desk. same with several novelty erasers that have since dried beyond usability, but are just fun to look at.

teeny tiny scrunchies from when she had less hair and her wrists were smaller. their shrunken size doesn’t make them any less sweet and she enjoys keeping track of her favorite colors through the years.

a decorated shoebox full of ribbon bows, with notes and letters from cheer coaches past who always had lovely things to say. 

stuffed at the back of one drawer is the ace bandage from her first cheer injury - a rolled ankle. 

several shoeboxes full of makeshift scrapbook pages she tried throwing together as a little girl that never looked anything except disorganized. but she had a pretty solid eye for color grouping and aesthetic building, all the pages just looked messy. she keeps them as a reminder of how much she’s improved her approach.

then, there’s different boxes filled with victorian style cutouts of animals, angels, hearts, bows, gifts, phrases, and symbols of all kinds that she’s either saved or collects to use for cards. her valentines are stuff of legend. and lace. lots of paper lace. there’s also plastic gems she pried out of costume jewelry that get glued here and there onto the paper designs. more punchy than glitter, and far less messy. 

"I wouldn't want to bother anyone," I say as the thing inside of me eats me alive.

𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼 𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ'𝕊 𝕄𝕀𝕏𝕋𝔸ℙ𝔼  X  𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎   ( @hellmartyr​ )

i just want you to know who i am ( iris - goo goo dolls )  /  chase the water racing from the sky ( under a glass moon - dream theater )  /  i can tell that you notice all the things i keep down ( free them - one ok rock )  /  city in the rearview and nothing in the distance ( next in line - walk the moon )  /  i promise that i’ll never let you feel alone ( won’t go - snuffles )  /  tell me your love is still only mine ( eddie my love - the chordettes )

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔸𝕊ℍ𝕋𝕆ℕ 𝔽𝕆𝕎𝕃𝔼ℝ                                     (blueminke​)

@greenscrunchy​  asked:   “ i’ve been having weird dreams. i wondered if maybe the right album would help. “   /   chrissy to ashton   !

HE WASN’T THE BIGGEST FAN of the black and blue uniform that he was required to wear at the record store. It’s no secret that he’d rather be in his leather jacket - and if you ask him, that’s still a perfect fit for selling music. However, he desperately needs to keep this job, so… uniform it is. There’s a little chime at the door as she enters, which is what first grabs his attention - and then he sees just who is stopping by, which truly is the catalyst that has him approaching her. While the two weren’t very close, OF COURSE he knew the face of Chrissy Cunningham. Hell, he’d recognize most of the Hawkins faces, but hers… has him grinning as he slides his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It usually works for me - and that’s not a sales pitch, it’s just the truth.” Words are interrupted by a light laugh. “You want somethin’ relaxing or that kind of music that just makes you let it all out?”

chrissy had been trying a different approach to small talk lately, at the behest of ms. kelly: even when admitting the entirety of how she felt seemed dangerous, hiding just a little bit of honesty here and there would lighten the load of keeping up appearances. ms. kelly promised others wouldn’t show her their backs so quickly if chrissy just gave it a go. so this was her giving it a go. with the guy at the record store. and it....worked? 

                         ❝ yeah? ❞  if consolation were a lipstick shade, she’d be wearing it. her smile stretched beyond the measurements of conversational to something appreciative. thankful. status as the perennially bright face of school spirit aside, the square footage of the high school appeared paltry in comparison to the places chrissy wanted to be cheerful just because. if she’s lucky, maybe the pleasant feeling she’d grasped would follow her outside into the clean air. because of music. she could talk about music. there’s more than enough material here and if his nameplate is to be believed, “ashton” actually has some salient thoughts on the topic.  ❝ i like options, ❞  the array of which is probably in the hundreds; it’s exciting. if this works, she’s going to sail into the land of nod quicker than a blink. at least, quicker than she had been.  ❝ maybe one record to dance to, and then one with lots of instruments?  ❞

one particular i adore about chrissy is that she’s so deeply not into profanity - not necessarily because she feels shame, but because the very sound of curse words is grating. it’s ugly to her 9/10 times spoken and heard.

there is a little baptist guilt in there thanks to a childhood of being dragged to church on sundays and her mother’s ever present televangelists on the tv, but it takes a back seat to the sound of curses.

yet with eddie or the party…..it’s still ugly, she still doesn’t like it, but with them it’s a sign of something honest and genuine. eddie especially. she gets the impression that the more he swears, the more he means what he says.

of course the freshman doing it so often is a little jarring, but she will make exceptions for them. they’re just so cute when they’re excited.

Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966)

💭 + what she wants the most in life

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

oh man, this was diiiiificult for chrissy to nail down until midway through high school. laura cunningham had a laundry list of short term and semi long term goals that she wanted chrissy to meet, and as the good daughter chrissy adopted them as her own goals. they weren’t what she wanted, though. 

she first starts thinking about long term to life during junior year. it’s when everyone is clamoring their way through college apps and visiting campuses and collecting patches from universities they like and bragging over where they think they’ll get in. for everyone else, college is a vehicle to thinking about what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives. chrissy knows her vehicle to college will be cheer, but goodness knows she’d rather not do that for the rest of her life. no way she could! teaching cheer, though, that could be something. actually.......

surviving the upside down sends her into a state of mental disarray for weeks afterward as she tries to come to terms with what it means to be peeled from the edge and come away alive. but once the fog lifts, a lot more clarifies in its wake. first, she wants to live. actually live and be happy. she doesn’t want to be miserable. figuring out how to do that is step one. step two is how to earn a living while getting better and becoming happy at the same time. something that helps people. she keeps thinking back to cheer coaching, but more and more layers of that are peeled away and she finds herself thinking about teaching. social studies or history or even math. she’s always been good at math and wonders if there isn’t a way to get a job helping kids learn the most challenging yet the most logical of subjects. problem solving. helping people. helping kids.

chrissy realizes the core of everything while knee deep in college, taking a somewhat ill-advised “elective” psychology course: she wants to stay close to the most difficult ages in youth and keep an eye out for who needs a little extra attention or an offer of help. there’s no time to wonder who could have stopped her from becoming weak enough to fall prey to vecna, but regardless if vecna still lives or not, she’ll be watching. and she’ll be happy. that’s her promise to herself, her greatest desire: to get out of hawkins and find what makes her happy out there. she can’t help others if she can’t see beyond her own discontent. and she’s going to help someone if it’s the last thing she does, starting with herself. 

@v1ctimplagued / @godstrayed - cont. from here

It wasn't as if he was keenly aware of many secrets. He heard gossip here and there but he wasn't too close to anyone to have many wanting to confide in him. The last thing Billy inspired was trust or a sense of safety. Rather it was quite the opposite. "Should I pretend that I know what you're talking about? Color me amused. What secrets does Chrissy Cunningham know?"

what a way to kill an already limp mood. and how is she supposed to answer such a targeted barb so quick on the heels of dismissal? it's not like she’d never been rebuffed so thoroughly before; getting shrugged off was a fact of life with jason and chrissy learned the ins and out of how to sidestep his proclivities quickly. a private little list of rules she walks around with inscribed inside her skull and carved by half moon nails in her palms. she’s prepared for a jason anywhere. however, none of hawkins was truly prepared for the hellion hurricane that was billy hargrove. including chrissy. 

his effect was like a slap in its suddenness. chrissy’s body was decidedly at school, yet the walls of home were a noose drawing in closer around her, her previous interest in gently examining billy’s persona further, almost fully dashed. a quotidian familiarity she liked even less than the immediate one pricked tender bits of her brain she’d rather leave alone completely. 

( i’ve laid awake at night, starting to wonder if going home at the end of the day feels the same way for you as it does me. dread. pure anxiety. feeling sicker the closer you get. how’s that for a secret, billy? but i won’t be telling you. )

instead, chrissy blinked, then squinted like a lamb in the sun. she knew her role to play in this conversation with certainty now.

                       “if you don’t actually care, then it doesn’t matter how you find out. word spreads fast enough. if not by tonight’s game, then tomorrow,” she added with a shrug. light, airy, careless – hoping for no fire to follow. billy’s moods were less an open secret and more like a guarantee. “i’m surprised jason hasn’t acted out more in front of you or steve since he wants the captain spot next year. but … you know, if you don’t care, that’s probably better.”

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙎. 𝙎𝙐𝙈𝙈𝙀𝙍𝙎                         (blueminke​)

@greenscrunchy​​     /     chrissy   &   kacey   !

SHE’S THE LAST ONE IN THE CLASSROOM, which isn’t too far out of the norm, carefully placing her belongings into her purse - pencils, pens, wallet, car keys… she swings the bag’s strap over her shoulder as she’s preparing to head out for the day. It’s then that the door to the science classroom peeks open, causing her head to reel to the entryway. OH, CHRISSY… Painted lips curl into a pleasant smile as she stands up from her desk chair to approach the young woman. She knows that it’s been more than difficult for the poor girl to readjust to her life in Hawkins after everything that’s happened, but in the very least, she’s happy to be supportive. “Are you okay, honey?”

chrissy still heard the bats. no matter that she was in the right-side-up now, demobat screeches hid beneath the otherwise inoffensive chirping of nearby birds. the stratified sound grated against nerves in her spinal cord more frigidly than avian silhouettes on a powerline after watching the birds for the first time. hitchcock, for all his mangled and twisty brilliance, could never have fabricated a fear that clung close as breath itself.

rich sunlight washed into ms. summers’ classroom with all the syrupy golden ease of late afternoon, bouncing cheerfully against zeus’s terrarium. the corn snake lounged on a rock feature close to the glass wall, tongue tasting the air now and again. but suddenly the snake’s head turned toward chrissy still at her desk. creature and human locked eyes for a moment, transfixed, until the snake opened his mouth and hissed that time was up. 

the words seemed to come from miles away. chrissy still jumped and surrendered to a moment of spiky adrenaline which forcibly brought her wandering mind back to attention. it wasn’t zeus at all but ms. summers closing out class discussion. chrissy blinked wildly and organized her assignment folders, stuffed her backpack, and walked out like a zombie in a fog.

that was yesterday. 

today the smell of smoke follows her everywhere like it’s trapped in her nostrils. she waves at her friends with a weaker arm than last month even though graduation creeps ever closer. her grades are getting better by centimeters. except life, existence still doesn’t feel grounded when she keeps the truth of the upside down held so close. and it is the truth. but how real is the truth when almost no one knows?

                       ❝ trying. ❞  pathetic. chrissy can do so much better than whispering from the crack in the door.  ❝ today was okay. i’m going to my friend’s house later to help with cleaning up the last of the rubble on their street. ❞  one shoulder has ticked up as she tries to pour her discomfort somewhere else.  ❝  i just....i wondered if i could ask you something? about the earthquake. and....why i got lost. because there’s parts of what happened that scare me. ❞  please, her brain begs as chrissy finally dares to look her kind, pink-cheeked teacher straight in the eye. please don’t think i’m crazy.

chrissy is at heart a profoundly private person who tires in social situations far quicker than she lets on and will never admit. this becomes especially apparent once she leaves hawkins for college and then for good. (her one exception is cheerleading.)

she’s also the type that will invite friends who don’t have a place to go for the holidays over for thanksgiving and christmas and new years and easter and whatever. you don’t have family or a place to go for the holidays? now you do. you don’t want to deal with your family? come over to her place instead. she gets it.