#rita asks

Oh my God, thank you so much???

You really make my day!

And, yes! That song goes so well with Alastor! As soon as I heard it, I had to write something right away.

And I feel you, I'm super obsessed with him T.T

oh boy buckle in for this one

do not go into depth on her trauma alongside the other crows as if her's wasn't important compared to others. like,,, she didn't get kidnapped and nearly sold for being a grisha to have her trauma not explored to its fullest potential

make her mean and coldhearted without having any explanation or reasoning as to why. like maybe she's ruthless and cutthroat for a reason??

downplay everything about her. her grisha power, her storyline, her backstory, her anger, etc.

tackle her relationship with kaz in a not so delicate and intricate way where they disrespect both of their trauma and their character development

reluctant allies to semi decent friends with matthias??? nope that doesn't exist

also reluctant allies to basically best friends with nina??? exists and hardly shown/discussed or not at all, there's no in between

sidelined to kaz ( i love him but yannoe it's still happens )

would not explain why it's dangerous for known grisha to be in ketterdam and how it affects rita,,, a known grisha in ketterdam.

her hatred and disdain for ravka that's extremely justified??? nah she's retconned to be pro raising kids to be slaughtered in wars :)

“These not for talking to Upside Down?” El asks, a frown furrowing her brow as she holds up a pile of very tangled Christmas lights I’d found in the makeshift basement storage below the floor. I have to laugh a little, shaking my head. 

“No, El. No-one worth talking to is stuck in there anymore. These are for the Christmas tree.” I pad across the carpet barefoot towards her to retrieve the lights. 

“Christmas… tree?” Her frown deepens in even more confusion. I’d only been a year or so older than she is now when I too was completely baffled by the festivities and traditions of Christmas. I’d had to hide my confusion though, trying not to let the Millers realise that their ‘daughter’ was an outsider. Here, El can be openly baffled by the world outside Hawkins lab. 

“Christmas tree!” Hopper announces, the door crashing open as he tries to squeeze an enormous fir through the doorway. “A little help here El?” He asks breathlessly, clearly struggling. 

El folds her arms over her chest and huffs in protest. Hopper and I cast a glance at each other, a little bewildered by her refusal until a second later her face splits into a mischievous grin. 

“You little horror.” I say as she holds out a hand in front of her to move the tree through the door and into the corner we’d cleared out for it to stand in. She turns to stick her tongue out at me. I’ll have to thank Erica Sinclair for teaching her that trick. 

“Thanks kiddo,” Hopper says, flopping down onto the couch to catch his breath. El sits down on the floor in front of the box of decorations and begins to rifle through it. She pulls all kinds of faces at reindeers with legs missing, scratched and dented baubles and a rather terrifying angel. 

“Pretty…” She says, and it’s the first time I’ve heard her be sarcastic. I burst out laughing, and so does Hopper. 

“Yeah… these decorations are a bit well loved, Hop.” I agree, handing him the lights to untangle while he’s sat down. “But I guess they suit us, mismatched and a little bit wonky.” I wrap some tinsel around El’s neck like a scarf and then myself. El giggles, a sound I’m still getting used to hearing. A sound that makes my heart feel light as a feather for the first time in years. She jumps up and onto the sofa with another length of tinsel for Hopper. She tilts her head in the direction of the record player and Elton John’s ‘Step Into Christmas’ starts playing. 

I can’t stop the grin that spreads across my face even if I wanted to. I reach out for El’s hands and start to spin her round, as Hop sings along, trying not to laugh at his ridiculous little misfit family.

You're absolutely right, life is one and we should live it to the fullest and with happiness. I called our local anti-violence hotline, and I hope things will improve…

hi babe! so i answered a couple of asks like that here, here, and here, but i’ll add some more because i added/changed a few things! ( also, may contain spoilers from the books! )

so rita’s backstory has been figured out! she’s a grisha, a squaller to be exact. when alina wanted the kids at the school to leave os alta in case the darkling would attack in s&s, rita fled because she realized how corrupt ravka is and she no longer wanted to, eventually, be a soldier for a country that raises kids just to be slaughtered. ( also keep in mind she’s like 14 at the time ). so my little baby decides to go back home to try and see her family beyond the fold at novokribirsk. she knew something had happened post s&b and she wanted to see if they were still alive. so she snuck onto a skiff, made the journey, and found out her family was dead. 

there’s more to her backstory, especially how she ends up from novokirbirsk to ketterdam, but i think i wanna reveal that journey in the story itself! but as for her powers, obviously being a grisha in ketterdam isn’t safe. while she works under kaz, she keeps her powers hidden for the most part, but when she’s alone or with kaz, inej, and sometimes jesper, she likes to play around with the wind on her fingers just to feel the surety of using her abilities again. also, when jesper finds out she’s grisha, they both bond over that and it’s cool and cute, we love our bicons being best friends. ( also, there’s def some tension between rita and nina for a couple of reasons ).

this is going to be complicated as fuck bc there’s a lot to unpack

rita and kaz are two sides of the same coin with their respective differences ofc. they both grew up very different lifestyles, but they end up sharing similar motives and desires

she’s one of the dregs and eventually becomes one of kaz’s most trusted. in the books, he trusts people, i.e. jesper and inej, in many ways, but with rita, he finds himself telling her things he doesn’t tell others because he knows she wouldn’t look at him any differently or try to change him

also, vice verse when rita ends up telling her about her childhood and the trauma she endured on her journey to ketterdam when she was close to fifteen

they show each other their scars, emotional and physical, and they don’t judge each other for it like they’re extremely understanding and never pry. they respectfully wait until they were ready to share what they want to share

definitely takes a long while and a lot of trust before they let their walls slowly come down

whenever kaz tries to engage in minimal physical contact on his own accord, rita never pressures him into doing more. she lets him go at his own pace because she understands how hard it is for him

rita has outsmarted kaz more than once, and even pitpocketed him without him noticing. and lets just say after kaz told her to stop, he couldn’t help but be impressed by her

rita always presents different versions of herself around everyone so they never get to see the real and vulnerable side, except kaz. and she never realized why until it smacked her in the face and she acknowledges her feelings for him

um okay… so YES PLS !!!!  just look at these two together, super cute. Rita would absolutely adore how much Darcy loves Dustin, wishing that she had a sibling who loved her that much

ugh same, I have absolutely no time to write for my own enjoyment at the moment but she is tempting me over to the dark side of procrastination on a whole new level… OK SO, Rita was taken from her family as an infant (about a year old) after showing signs of having ~abilities~ which border on mind control, but that aspect of her power is pretty weak - if someone’s will is strong enough she can’t control them. More specifically, she can control people’s memories: erase them, change them, even create false ones. Her memory itself is pretty exceptional, except from the fact that she doesn’t have a single one of her family, even though she can remember snippets of her infancy (which is obviously rather abnormal). 

After breaking out and following Kali away from Hawkins for a few weeks she ended up heading back to Hawkins, wanting to keep an eye on the goings on of the lab. She’d keep in touch from time to time with Kali to make sure she was still alive but the two weren’t ever particularly close, if they hadn’t been in the same situation they’d have never been friends. She’d been told El was dead after an experiment gone wrong, but something always told her that ‘Papa’ was lying about that. 

She manipulated herself into the memory of the Miller family who moved in next door to the Wheelers a week or two after she came back to Hawkins. They think she’s their middle child and Rita has two ‘adopted’ brothers - Thomas and Eric. She became instant friends with Nancy and then Barb, being a pretty similar kind of person to the two of them, and rather intelligent with a supernatural memory. No-one really notices her at school or anything but that’s pure bliss in her eyes after years of being made so aware of how different she really is. She’s had a crush on Steve from the moment she laid eyes on him (like every girl at Hawkins High, duh). She’s underestimated as being sweet and that type of girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly but if you cross her… say your prayers. This is essentially just an extension of what I’ve already posted about her… but if you have any specific questions about her PLEASE fire away!!