80s New York Art Scene AU for @steddiebang
Now on AO3
Written by me with art by @melonalemonade & @dreaminginpencil
Beta'd by @lihhelsing & Nevertheless
If Eddie had known that sharing his art studio with Robin would include her buddy Steve, he never would’ve offered it in the first place. There. He said it. If that makes him a bad friend, so be it.
Because Steve is around all the time. Pastel and prissy. Sculpted from marble, yet dressed like a Macy’s mannequin. Always hovering.
They got Robin’s potters wheel up the stairs last week, a three man effort he can still feel in his lower back, and now she’s fucking teaching him. Full on, arms wrapped around his waist, hands guiding hands. Someone grab him a bucket, ‘cause Eddie’s about to throw up.
He’s not even good at it. Steve can barely get the hump of clay centered on the wheel and he refuses to get stains on his clothes. It’s fucking clay. It comes out in the wash. Steve’s shirtless approach to pottery is borderline offensive to the arts.
More information under the cut:
The posting date is less than two weeks away and I'm beyond excited to start sharing this fic with you guys! I've been working on it since January and it's the longest thing I've ever written.
This story is absolutely drowning in 80s neo-expressionist art, graffiti and street art. Think Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Everything about this fic is covered in paint <3
Posting Schedule:
Nov. 7: Prologue + Chapter 1 - "Takes One to Know One"
Nov. 10: Chapter 2 - "You've Done This Before"
Nov. 14: Chapter 3 - "The Boy From California"
Nov. 17: Chapter 4 - "A Regular Thing"
Nov. 21: Chapter 5 - "You Don't Have to Tell Me"
Content warnings for: Past abusive relationship, mentions of abuse during childhood, addiction, slighty toxic relationship, period typical homophobia and mentions of homophobic parents, mentioned death of a parent, explicit sex scenes with dom/sub undertones
I've got a little snippet for you here:
“Ta-dah,” Robin says with a big smile and an even bigger hand gesture.
She stretches her arms like a big reveal, which only highlights how small the studio is. Both of her hands almost touch a wall.
Eddie’s normally fucking proud of this space, but Steve’s presence is ruining it. It’s one of the reasons he hates rich people. The world always looks like shit through their eyes.
A crease forms between Steve’s eyebrows, an expression Eddie has seen him make several times in the thirty minutes he’s known the guy.
“This part is mine!” Robin says, sounding genuinely excited. She’s the only rich person Eddie respects.
He cleared out the room directly to the right of the entrance for Robin. It’s slightly smaller than his own, but she agreed to it before she left to spend all of June and July with her mother in California. She said it had better light anyway, which Eddie doesn’t give a fuck about.
There’s something twitchy about Steve’s movements. He baby birds his way across the space, like he doesn’t realize he has wings yet. Anxious, which, what the fuck? What did Eddie do to deserve that?
Steve’s nose scrunches like he smells something he disapproves of.
“I really don’t like this part of the city,” he says and he looks out the window like that proves his point. “Do you have to work here?”
Eddie bites the inside of his cheek. He promised Robin he’d play nice, but surely these are extenuating circumstances.
“We don’t all have daddy payin’ our bills,” he says with a pout and a lilt that borders on sexual. Just to piss him off. Just to make everyone uncomfortable.
Robin blinks a few times fast and shakes her head. Count that as a win.
“I don’t…” Steve stutters before collecting himself. “I just want Robin to have a nice place to work.”
“And I’d like a pony and a private jet, but we can’t all get what we want,” he says and he really should stop there.
But…
“Isn’t that right, pretty boy?”
He doesn’t even have to wink this time. A blush stretches all the way to Steve’s ears. His eyes deepen from shock to anger like a bruise turning dark purple on day three.
Yup. Worth it.
“Eddie, could you please just behave,” Robin groans. “We still have to get the rest of my stuff.”
“I can help you with that tomorrow,” Steve says, still flushed, but pretending like he isn’t. It’s a sweet offer until he turns to look Eddie up and down and adds: “So we can get out of here now.”
“That would be great.” Robin looks up at Steve. “I could really use a drink, you?”
There’s those puppy eyes again. Steve’s whole face lights up and he nods quickly.
“You coming, Eddie?” She wiggles her fingers at him. “First round on me?”
An offer to get drinks with his best friend and this random guy who makes him want to rip his own hair out? Fuck no. He has some sense of self preservation, thank you very much.
“I’m just gonna work on my painting for a bit.”
Robin rolls her eyes at him before pushing Steve back toward the front door.
“Go home on time, okay?” she yells over her shoulder. “The painting’s gonna be here in the morning.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
He waits by the door until he can no longer hear their footsteps on the stairs. Once he’s confident they’re gone, he grabs the sheet turned blanket from the crate behind his easel. He never bothers with pajamas, just unbuckles his overalls and lets the pants sag around his hips as he sinks into the couch. It’s easier that way. If Robin comes back he can just tell her he was taking a nap.
Sweatpants and a sleep shirt would be a dead ringer that sleeping here isn’t just a one off.
He’s been doing it since he got evicted in April, but what Robin doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
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'I've never been in a dungeon before' and 'Who's Ganon?' have literally made some of the BEST reaction panels in Lu I just-
They are very similar conversations- where a Link is pointing out/asking about something that the others have experienced and they haven't. Which is really cool to compare and contrast but they all just freak out about it
Genuinely some of the best conversations in Lu
The lesson here is that apparently the Links will always be freaked out when one of them has missed out on one of the Zelda Fundamentals™
.
Art by Jojo @linkeduniverse au :)
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will solace's aim is good with a gun instead of a bow:
- overdone
- doesn't make sense
- canon defiant
naomi solace protecting will and nico with HER gun:
- new
- innovative
- cool mom naomi cool mom naomi cool mom naomi
(DISCLAIMER: i am not trying to be rude to anyone who headcanons will being good with guns, i am simply presenting a headcanon i have in a slightly altered meme format. anyone who gets mad at me for petty reasons will be blocked)
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Red Hood Characterization
This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.
I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as i thought his stances on crime were, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?
This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!
tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.
Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero significant issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.
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okay first of all i love the “written by stevienicks” but i also need to talk bradnate!!
why do they scratch the brain like that!!!
REAL!! (also thank you!) I think it's something to do with that whole dynamic of the king and lionheart? It's a pretty compelling dynamic. like they're loyal to the core with one another but it's not so much spoken as it is shown.
They're both quite reserved about their true emotions, Nate's own reason for this being his job and Brad, I think, is also similar but also because it doesn't seem to be in his nature to really let himself be vulnerable with more 'mushy emotions'? (he's not very good at expressing directly what he really feels like when he was talking about his ex-girlfriend). He also tends to use sarcasm and such to communicate those feelings with the others (aside from Nate, which really plays into the trust between them).
Like, in that sense, they really get each other. The nature of their positions as leaders mean they have to hold back a lot and through the looks and gazes, it's like letting each other know that the other sees and understands on a deeper level. And like that speaks louder than words. They both see the human underneath and when they interact, it's the human underneath they're talking to and not the persona they each put up.
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Legend sick fics you say 👀
Well I don’t think I remember too many sick fics off the top of my head but weathered and wavering by Quirkle is very good.
Once you have a collection please do share with the class 🫶
Hehe yeah. Here is the original post about Legend sick fics. I got a lot of recommendations in the replies and reblogs that are so cool- seriously I read a ton of them and you guys are so awesome (/gen)
@uniquevoidflowers wrote this fic for me which is amazing of course- it has some of the coolest imagery with a flower thermometer which makes me very happy
Pretty much all of @skyward-floored 's sick fics are awesome, including this legend one that was instantly recommended to me by quite a lot of people lol (since it was posted very recently) (go read it)
Fill the cracks with gold by @sister-dear was so fun to read, it might be one of my favourites for Four
I loved Hiding behind plaster and ceramics by @occasionallyprosie -it had a lot of takes I hadn't seen before and was also very good writing
@arecaceae175 recommended down, a nine chapter sickfic that is really good, I loved reading it.
There's a lot of other ones, and most of them are in the notes of the post I made:
@the-au-collector made this reblog with a ton of good recommendations, and @hero-of-the-wolf reblogged with one I liked. Idk if the links can work like that but we'll find out
And my wisdom tooth surgery went well :D I've stayed off the internet for a bit of recovery. I'm good I'm just not doing too much interacting when I'm tired *shrug*. I was scared because my health is always so bad but it was ok. :))) I have definitely spent a lot of time reading- I knew it was a good idea to ask for sick fics for surgery week XD
So that's the lovely list of sick fics I've been reading- for when you get your wisdom teeth out. Or you're not feeling well, or you just feel like reading. Anyways.
Also my mind is still pretty tired right now but I wanted to answer this- I hope it's ok for everyone I tagged, and my phrasing and language isn't good right now, sorry. Love you guys /plat <333
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