#draeven

                   he’s older now, and his tastes are less influenced by others and more his own. music included. finding hangman’s joke had been somewhat of a game changer in terms of mike’s music tastes. that’s not to say he didn’t enjoy the bops on the radio, or the songs they played over and over again on the staticy speakers at the arcade. but this rock band got him through hard times, harder than anyone could have ever known. the deeper songs, the ones that made mike feel like he wasn’t alone, are the ones that got him through.

        blurred & tear-soaked gaze is set vacantly ahead, slightly in front of her feet. unfocused. the ice-cold sense that’ll hold her in place is coating her ribs, shallowing her breaths, wrapping itself like malicious hands across her windpipe. what’s wrong? everything -- everything is wrong, this isn’t real, she still doesn’t know what day it is -- the house had never been there -- it was there -- she was inside before she could think about it -- “i -- i-i-i h ... i heard her. she --” a shaky, panicked gesture to just behind her ear. “sh-she’s ... still. still here. i - i heard her. i heard her.”

first off, thank you so much for sending this in! i’m desperate for any reason to meta about shelly, esp regarding canon.   SECOND!   i’m going to focus on the canon of the film/comics as compared to the tv series, seeing as they? kind of change eric’s reasons for still being on earth in the tv series lmao. 

she wouldn’t equate eric to their attackers:   yes, he is doing some pretty horrific things.   tin-tin and t-bird’s deaths in particular are graphic   . . .   shelly can’t bring herself to have a lot of sympathy for them.   besides being shelly’s personal attackers, they were murderers & r*pists in general.   they inflicted terror on others without a second thought, every day of their lives.   & there may have been circumstances that brought them to that life, shelly doesn’t know.   what matters more to her is that they made the choice to inflict the worst kind of pain onto others, & never regretted it. 

however:   she is worried about him.   before their deaths, shelly knew eric for years.   he isn’t the kind of man that would take pleasure in stabbing a man’s organs in alphabetical order   . . .   yet that’s who he became.   shelly doesn’t entirely blame him; the people he’s doing this to, again, are atrocious.   beyond that, they killed her.   they hurt her:   that’s an immediate no-go for eric and shelly knows it.   combine that with the trauma of his own death and resurrection, and she knows he’s in a state of mind fueled by anger and agony.