gorelord

[babysitters]

player info

NAME: Katy
CONTACT: PM preferably, if we have cr I am game to trade discos. I have a plurk (stalfos) too.
AVERSIONS: I just ask for noncon/suicide to have a clear TW. & in general as long as it has a TW, I'm coolies

character info

CHARACTER NAME: Steve Harrington
CANON: Stranger Things / Dead By Daylight #ItsComplicated
CANON POINT: End of Season 2 / Patch 9.02
POWERS: N/A
TOKEN: RB2140 Wayfarers

details

SUMMARY:

Steve Harrington is the bully jock that peaked in high school. He was a midsized fish in a small pond and loved it. Rich, handsome, popular. He knew what to do and what to say, how to dress and who to ignore to stay on top. He was happy to do it, looking the other way or actively being an asshole when necessary. He was on top of the world in Junior year, and then it all came crashing down.

He lost the girl to the town loser. Lost brain cells after running his mouth in an alley and letting his feelings override his better judgment. Lost his understanding of normalcy as an eldritch abomination crawled out of a wall in front of him. He could have run, but he didn’t, deciding to step up instead. It was the first step of many to try and be a better person, but that’s not to say the journey would be easy.

He lost the girl. Again. Got brutally shoved down the social ladder by a guy with a mullet. Ended up as an unpaid childcare provider. It’s weird how that ended up being something that felt actually important. Turns out forming genuine connections with people was more fulfilling than the superficial bullshit required to stay on top of Hawkins High. Who knew!

Believe it or not, there was risk of losing the girl a third fucking time. So why not go to the creepy broken down lab. What could happen? Besides being stuck in a murder dimension for a nebulous amount of time. In the fog, Steve continued on his track to try and protect people that needed it, course correct from being a bit of a douchebag. He’s not always great at it, but he definitely will die trying.

VALUES:

Steve believes in protecting the people that matter to him and it does not matter how many licks he takes or how badly he objectively sucks at it. He will do whatever he can to make it happen. In fact, he doesn't even need to be particularly close to someone to try and protect them if they need it, though this is notably for life-or-death occasions, not so much you-are-being-publicly-roasted occasions. He is loyal and forgiving, and maintaining relationships is important to him. He has a distinct sense of right and wrong and is getting better every day at doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. He's a recovering supporter of cruel social hierarchies, but still falls into it sometimes. He believes in making amends and trying to change, even though it really sucks having everyone remind him what an ass he was in high school.

DESIRES:

These days, Steve basically has two things he's concerned with. Protecting the people he gives a shit about to the point of taking bodily harm or even death, and trying to be less of a douche than he was in high school. Thankfully one of those goals is slightly lower stakes than the other. Not a lot going on there but to be fair, long term goals aren't really a thing when you are stuck in an endless death loop. Steve would never admit it, ever, but he hates to be alone and his standards can be perilously low when he's really hurting for attention. He's been known to look the other way to shitty behavior in order to maintain relationships he might be better off letting go of. Less embarrassing (but not not embarrassing), he loves to be in love and wants somebody to doki doki. He tends to fall fast and hard, though he's got a few hangups after the Bathroom Bullshit Incident.

FLAWS:

Steve still has a very strong sense of social hierarchy and despite "knowing better", can still make immediate judgements based on superficial and stupid bullshit. He has a temper and can run his mouth before his brain catches up. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. He is willing to put himself in front of the danger if it means protecting somebody else, which is very brave and everything but maybe the people who like him would rather he not be the meat shield, actually. He is horrible at talking out feelings and would rather try to pretend everything is normal over hashing out difficult things. Lastly, he has a tendency to give up on himself easily, accepting the status quo instead of putting in the effort to make a difficult change.

FEARS:

Steve is particularly tender to anything that has Upside Down vibes, think weird ashy air, writhing tentacles and faceless monsters with too many teeth. Pools aren't his vibe these days after a girl horrifically died in his. Overall, he's not a fan of monster/eldritch/abomination horror and finds the more simple guy with knife trope a little less disarming. He does not like watching other people get hurt and will usually bodily put himself in the way if he can. Feeling powerless in a life or death situation is truly his nightmare. You kinda have to dig for it but he definitely struggles with the feeling of not being good enough when he wants to be. And yeah, that whole does not like to be alone thing 🤠

MOTIFS:

The sweet chemical stink of too much hairspray. Cigarettes and cologne and underage drinking. Blood and bruises. Stained nailed baseball bat, but stained with what? The classic lines of a BMW, seatbelts on. Rainbow bandaids and flashlights. Incredible hair, acid wash jeans, sweaters his mom probably bought. Hands on hips. Team Mom.

BONDS:

— Nancy Wheeler. The Girl That Changed Everything. His ex, but he still tripped over his own feet to follow her into the Fog. Some unresolved feelings there, but he's happy to leave them unresolved.
— Jonathan Byers. The loner loser that stole his girl, only, he's not actually that bad a guy and if he's what Nancy needed, mostly he is just grateful. Ended up pretty protective of the guy when he ended up in the Fog, too.
— Fellow Fog Denizens. Steve has probably died for everyone on this list a handful of times. Probably watched them die in front of him way more than that. There are some on this list he is closer to (Claudette, Laurie, Quentin, David) and some he is less close to (me and my homies HATE Jonah). Still, they are all trauma bonded in one way or another and these faces are more familiar to him than faces from home at this point.
— Dustin Henderson. And the rest of his children, though at his canon point Dusty is his strongest connection. That said, anything small and child shaped will hit him somewhere soft and sentimental.
— Family. This is a fleeting, flagging bond, but technically it exists. Perhaps the lack of it is the takeaway here. Steve is a latchkey kid and his parents seem hardly involved in his life, but their expectations and opinions congealed into the form Steve has decided to take a step back from. He seems to be a mama's boy, and has never had anything nice to say about his old man.
— Billy Hargrove. Bond is a strange word for whatever is going on between these two, but after a guy nearly beats your nose to the inside of your skull, like it or not there will be a connection there. Billy is the one that really dethroned Steve from Hawkins High royalty. There was a lot of intense vibes between them, all this stuff about planting feet and creaming pants and again, nearly turning him into a vegetable — but instead of dealing with any of it, Steve decided to just get fognapped instead.

SERVITOR:

Monsters are so easy to spot. It’s a lot more tricky when you don't know you have a reason to be afraid. This servitor has a tendency to change appearance, depending on the situation. Small and meek, familiar in just the right way. Always turned away, perhaps fleeing or running without reason. Or lingering just on the peripheral, whimpering. Crying. Strange sounds that are close enough to human that it feels heartless to ignore. It is perfectly reasonable to draw closer, to try and help, to understand.

Unfortunately, that is when the glimmers of normalcy start to fade. What seemed like a person is instead something strange and wrong. No face, skin taught and stretched over nothing. No eyes or nose or features to speak of. Just mottled, bruised skin. The form will latch onto whoever was stupid enough to get close, and try to crawl inside of them. It is incredible how the solid form of its body can melt and shrink and slither, though it does kind of explain how it can change form so easily. And while entering someone through the mouth is its preference, it will make do with any hole it can find, tear it wider if needed. Make a new entrance if need be. It will determinedly tear whoever it finds to pieces in its attempt to slip inside of them, skin and flesh tearing and falling apart. Who knows, maybe there is a perfect fit out there and if it keeps climbing inside of skin suits eventually it will be found. What would that creature be like? Can you imagine it? A faceless, formless being with a voice you almost know wearing the skin of someone you knew? Is that why it managed to look and sound so familiar?

Whatever this thing is, it despises heat, and thrives in the cold. It is actively afraid of fire, and will stop attacking if it starts to burn. However, if the flesh burns clean through, the hole will peel open into a maw, lined with more teeth than one could ever count. Spiraling into darkness that somehow seems endless. The mouth is hungry and will attempt to consume anything it can catch, though admittedly once it gets to the formless damaged stage, it struggles moving quickly. Unfortunately, it isn't a Big Bad Wolf consuming situation. No, that’d be too clean, too easy. Instead it takes savage hunks of flesh, tearing and gnashing. Fighting only seems to tear the maw wider. The better to eat you with, my dear! Okay, a little like the Big Bad Wolf after all. Hard to say if there is much left to save at that point, but if you’re determined to try… since there's that big mouth, fire inside is worth a shot. Fire anywhere, maybe. Try chopping it into small enough pieces that you’d have a shot at running. Or just leave it to its meal; run like a coward to a place it can’t reach, and pretend you don’t hear the screams of someone slowly eaten alive behind your fleeing feet.

This servitor combines a lot of the eldritch horror of the Upside Down, which is the first image of monstrosity Steve was exposed to. It preys on his need to help and protect, projecting something alone and feeble and scared. It punishes his discomfort in the face of violence he can’t stop. It implies he has already failed people he cares about as it mimics and resembles those he’s lost. It emulates a desire to change and become something new, because what you are is so wrong and hideous and unloveable. Lastly, it is not something that can see reason or understand. It is hungry and it will not stop and it will consume you, one way or another. You cannot escape, simply delay the inevitable.

Comments

inventory 🎒

[babysitters]

– bloody prestige outfit, aka green sweater, jeans, and sneakers
– agnete's effects
——— ring of tenacity, makes the user unable to drop things
——— sickle, well used and well loved
——— cat brooch
——— mouth harp probably lost after the world's worst concert above agnete's watery pit
——— faz token
– a gentleman's club, a mace that can become larger and hit harder if you treat it right