MELANCHOLY [S.T. B. Hargrove]

final thoughts

the book is over! we made it!

i wanted to do this last little thing (it's a tradition for me now) and talk about some fun facts/last minute details.

this was my first stranger things fic despite being a fan since season 1 first dropped. i kind of felt like I wasn't good enough or prepared enough to write a book for stranger things since i'd never done anything with the multi-dimension trope before. but, I'm extremely proud of how this book turned out.

i have a tendency to write the first book for a fandom totally on what I wished would have/will happen and I think this one is a big sign of that. 

despite being latina, this was my first latina oc which is absolutely insane. I'm so proud of rocky and everything she is and what made her and how she turned out. i have literally cried over this actually happening because she means so much to me.

i was updating this book like 3-4 times a day and then when we got to the end, I got really sad about it ending and was like hmm if I don't write then it cant end- genius! lmao 

and now here we are.. finally wrapping it up.. it doesn't makes sense yet.

here's some little fun facts about the book/characters/process!

*Racquel is named after one of my favorite wrestlers, Racquel Rodriguez.

*I make playlists for all of my books and when I was making this one, I got my mom's help. She's a big metal fan from the 80s so she had a huge knowledge on it. I grew up listening to a lot of the music, too. But, I ended up finding "Love of a Lifetime" by Firehouse through my mom and it stuck as THE song for this book and rocky and billy.

*I sneak Dacre as a fc into every single one of my books somehow but this is my first time writing with a character he's actually played

*The end of the book is meant to mirror the letters Max wrote to rocky and billy when she thought she was going to die. instead, they are together and max can write to both of them at the same time while they finally get to write one for her

*i wanted the ending to be open because we're not totally sure about how s5 is going to end the show. i thought having henry be a part of eleven and her being a ticking time bomb would be suspenseful and give justice to the main show's cliffhangers

*for clarity- billy was possessed by henry through the mind flayer. his actual self was stuck in the upside down while there was a vessel of him walking around hawkins. billy was able to mentally travel (like vecna) and break the barrier between worlds which is how he got through to rocky

*i didn't intend for rocky and steve to be a brother/sister type but after writing the first couple interactions between them, they just fit together so seamlessly

*i wanted rocky to be very "feminine" and such as far as taking care of the kids like a maternal figure because of her trauma with her mother abandoning her and losing her little sister but I also didn't want her to be looked at as weak. feminity does not equal weakness and masculinity does not equal strength. i wanted rocky to portray a strong woman that still has feminine features

*despite how it seems like a 'seduction' tactic with billy/henry in the sauna- rocky told him that the manager asked about her virginity to trigger his anger because he knows the truth about her little sister who was SA'd and took her own life. after the situation with her sister, rocky refused to have sex because she viewed intimacy as a whole as wrong because of her trauma and pain

*i don't think I've ever felt as proud or Big Brain over a plotline than eleven and henry using billy and rocky's bond as a bridge. that is still my absolute favorite thing I've ever written (especially the 'tight jeans' part)