Chapter Text
Thank you to arbedsghost for the absolutely stunning artwork for this and a total banger of a soundtrack. You caught my vision so perfectly, and I am crazy grateful for your excellent addition to this story!
(Sing If You're) Glad to be Gay Spotify Playlist
It would be a much poorer story, also, without the fantastic beta work of sidekick-hero and Tinytalkingtina. Y’all made this so much cleaner, clearer, and all around stronger. I would be lost without you. Thank you!
I have so much appreciation to genesisofrhythm, who was my sensitivity reader for racial themes. You are amazing!
Thank you, also, to the Stranger Things Writers Guild, who provided so much encouragement, vibe checking, spot beta work, resources and fact checking, and plot untangling / wrangling. Y’all are the absolute best! <3
Notes / warnings on this story:
The first chapter of this story is the most divisive thing I’ve ever written. Half the people who read it loved it; half thought it was too dense and poetic. So the first chapter is a “choose your own adventure” style. If you want to read this chapter in the way it was originally intended, head to chapter 2. If you would like the streamlined, straightforward prose more in line with the rest of the story, skip to chapter 3.
I’ve used “Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings” for this fic. There are no character deaths except characters who died in the show. If you would like explicit spoilers on who dies, you can message me on Tumblr.
This story does contain explicit sex between a character who is seventeen and one who is eighteen. There is a discussion about previous dubiously consensual sexual experiences they had with older people when they were 16-18, including semi-explicit references, but all sex depicted and referenced is legal and not underage according to Indiana laws. There is also a discussion around what constitutes rape and whether their experiences count. Sex and kink are both undernegotiated.
There are realistic depictions of period-typical homophobia and references to period-typical racism.
There is graphic human vs monster violence and less graphic human vs human violence, including conversations around that violence.
There are depictions of and discussions around bullying.
There are references to physical child abuse, emotional neglect, and child abandonment.
There is explicit suicidal ideation and discussions around suicide / indifference to survival.
There’s show-standard underage drinking and recreational drug use (cannabis and references to cocaine). There’s also one instance of drunk driving and references to previous instances of drinking and driving.
The unreliability of the narrators is pervasive.
The D&D used in this story is largely AD&D Second Edition, which is slightly ahead of when it came out, but the Duffer Brothers made Erica a rogue, which weren't introduced until 3.0 in the 90s, so... The big thing to note is that skills roll low instead of high to succeed.