#but at least i feel okay again

[a-s-levynn]

thank fuck i live in a large city because with the breakdown i had this morning, i would not have been able to make my grocery run. shout out to the delivery lady who was the first person today who was actually kind to me with her words. yes today is shit.

[ofswordsandpens]

I'm sincerely very happy for anyone who is enjoying the show but every time I see takes that the show has improved the book characterizations or that the book characters are underdeveloped in comparison to the show...

[unexpectedbrickattack]

babpy.

[deoidesign]

Adam's turn... <3

I really like doing portraits like this... if they didn't take so long I'd do them way more

[turtledotjpeg]

when ur squad is size small-medium-large

[turtleblogatlast]

Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.

Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.

You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)

The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.

Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.

And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.

For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.

“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.

And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.

Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.

[quins-makeshift-menagerie]

Gentle reminder that my kofi link is in my pinned post. While The Other Q’s ER trip won’t financially destroy us it’s still going to be a big hit on top of having to get some major repairs done on the car before winter hits

[m0e-ru]

did everybody remember when atlus finally restored the attendant social link in the steam port and how stupid it actually was

[sparring-spirals]

i still am processing. a lot of thoughts about this particular cameo and- similar to the C1 cameos have some reservations despite my overwhelming joy over these characters, but. But.

Being wildly, fully indulgent and just focusing entirely on Caleb and Beau, for a moment-

I am so deeply happy. That they came with each other. I am so glad that all these years after their stories ended, we see Beau pop up first with all her skills under her back and confident with Caleb watching her back. Im glad that the world has continued being a mess but they are still in tight lockstep with each other, referencing past triumphs and mistakes. I'm glad that they poke each other a bit, still, and keep each other in check, and that even as the world ends. Have each other at their elbow, and breathe easier for it.

Im glad that. After a campaign of lonely people finding each other and learning each other and not expecting to be able to keep it. We see them here, now, decades out and. They aren't alone. They have each other. Im glad.

[socksandbuttons]

looking and staring at the fact bloodmoons jealous of lunar being brought back but not him but also disregarding the entirety LUNAR was the one to promise him a body.

[a-s-levynn]

IV

[thegreatyin]

this nemesis ambition started out a little slow but I am getting closer to finding that bastard who killed my wife, and I’ll not rest a minute now that im far closer to on his trail

sorry got in character for a second

Anyways fun ambition so far very fucked up though

congratulations on joining the murder club anon!!!! depending on who you ask the name refers to either people who have murdered or people who have witnessed murder. usually both. actually extremely often both. it's a swell time you'll feel right at home (don't mind our collective skyglass knife collection in the back)

[c-is-for-circinate]

But anyway, Stranger Things Steve and Robin story where things are Pretty Bad in Hawkins for a while after season 4, to the tune of regular monster incursions and more bumps and bruises and stitches and possible concussions than generally standard

and maybe six months in, after graduation, as Hawkins has come up with more and more unlikely stories to try and pretend that they're not sitting athwart a rising apocalypse, after Robin has deferred college for a year, if they all even live that long, because she loves Steve with every last corner of her heart and she won't, can't leave him here

and it's been another bumpy week in a string of bumpy weeks, and Steve doesn't have another concussion, thank god, but Mike needed seventeen stitches and Nancy has a new burn scar curling up over her left shoulder--

Robin goes to find Steve somewhere in the middle of the third load of laundry in the house where his parents haven't set foot since the "earthquakes" happened. Where she has her own permanent guest room, but just crawls in with Steve most nights anyway, because she cannot handle going home to face her own parents and their questions and their 'constructive criticism' and their attempts to be helpful any more.

And she just immediately starts pacing, back and forth across the basement while Steve tries to fold yet another fitted sheet that she could definitely be helping him with, and she says,

"So look, I have been having this really crazy idea, and I need you to tell me that it's a crazy idea, and I should just forget it, except that every time I try to think down that path I keep thinking of reasons that it's not a crazy idea, and it's actually a really good idea with very minimal drawbacks, at least in the near or foreseeable future, and if it ever does start to have drawbacks we can just undo it, because Indiana's had a no-fault divorce law since 1973, and all we'd have to do would be filing some paperwork, and you're just looking at me like I'm babbling again."

"Just like it, huh?" Steve asks, eyebrows raised with a little bit of 'really?' and all the affection of his heart, and when she stops, giving him that slightly-desperate look, he adds, "So, who's getting a divorce?"

"Us," Robin says, planting her feet and looking straight at him. "Eventually. Hopefully. Someday."

"Ooookay, kinda worried you're already planning my eventual divorce when I haven't had sex since Vecna showed up," Steve says, still not really sure where this is going but willing to follow the train at least a little farther, and Robin just shakes her head, eyes wide and focused.

"No," she says. "I mean you and me. I think we should get married."

Yeah, that makes about as much sense as anybody's crazy plans these days. Steve misses the days when he would have been too confused to keep up. He's still confused, he just so rarely expects to be anything else any more that it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

"Robin," he says, a whole sentence in one word, and then she's pacing again.

"Look," she says, wringing her hands the way she does when she's actually pretty upset about something. "Look, I know it's a stupid, crazy, stupid idea, and this isn't me coming on to you, you know this isn't me coming on to you, this is actually a really hard and scary thing for me to think about asking, but it's still like fifty times less hard and scary than what we do every week just living in this town and knowing what we know, because one of the things we know about living in this town is how dangerous it is, how many bad things could happen at any time, and-- and-- and--"

"Robin," Steve says again, and puts down the sheet in a heap to get in her path. He doesn't usually cut her off, but when she gets so worked up she runs out of words, that's when it's time to help Robin get back out of her own way. She lowers her hands into his and Steve squeezes them. "Hey. What's going on?"

"I'm scared," Robin says.

"Yeah, me too," Steve agrees, easily, because the sky outside is a hazy sort of blue-green that goes red-purple at night when it's not black, and when rain falls it sometimes leaves streaks of slick grime on everything it touches, and there are bludgeoning weapons and loaded firearms tucked into corners all over this house. He's been scared more on than off since 1983, and he hasn't bothered pretending not know it since '85.

"I'm scared for you," she says. "And I'm scared for me. I'm scared that none of us knew what was up with Nancy at the hospital for two hours the other day, because her mom showed up for Mike and they told her everything and Karen Wheeler hates us."

"Nancy's fine," Steve promises; her left arm's gonna be bandaged for a while, but she can still steady a rifle, and sometimes he thinks that's two-thirds of all Nancy really cares about any more. It's probably close to half of what all any of them have time and space to care about these days, which is a pretty depressing thought. But that's not a forever state of events, right? "She just got a little banged up. She's okay."

"Steve, what happens if you get hurt?" Robin asks. "Like, really hurt? If you get sick, or concussed again, or you need surgery like Max or Eddie, and you're not conscious enough to make your own medical decisions?"

"I don't know, I guess they call my parents, don't get an answer, and then operate anyway," Steve says, blowing it off like he always does. "Robin, I'm fine."

She's shaking her head, though, no, "I've just, I've been thinking, and I've been reading, and you know how hospitals are, it's been happening all over where people get sick and their friends, partners, can't even get in to see them, and families they haven't even talked to in years get to make medical decisions, because they're not married."

And Steve's not exactly smart but he's not completely dumb. Robin leaves absolutely anything that might even suggest she's a lesbian at Steve's house so her parents won't find it at home, which means there's a whole pile of blurry xeroxed zines and pamphlets and gay newsletters on his once-unused bedroom desk, shoved under a Russian-English dictionary, three spiral notebooks, and a book by some guy called Jung-pronounced-Young. Steve isn't really sure where they come from, because they only make maybe one supply run to Indianapolis a week between the whole group of them and Robin doesn't even usually go, but the newsletters keep multiplying. He's glanced at them before. He's heard Robin talk. He knows what she's thinking about.

"That's not what's happening here," Steve says, promises. "You know that's not the same thing. Nobody's getting sick."

"No, just...torn up by demobats, or haunted, or possessed, or who knows what else," Robin says. "Steve, I don't want my parents to be the ones visiting me if I'm in the hospital. I don't want them to be the ones in charge of deciding what happens to me. I don't want to wake up from a coma one day to find out I've been transferred to some hospital in another state because they decided Hawkins was too dangerous and now I never get to see you again."

"So you want me to be the one doing that?" Steve asks, and Robin looks up at him, hands still tight in his, and she says,

"Yes," like it's obvious. Like it's everything.

For one brief, bright-aching moment, Steve lets himself regret. He's not in love with Robin. Not like that, never like that, but -- there was a minute, once, where it could've been, for him. And it never could have been, for her, he knows that, and that's fine, that's great, because Robin still loves him more than anybody else in his entire life has ever loved him. And it is everything, and it's never going to be like that, and probably nobody is ever going to love him like that even half as much as Robin loves him like this.

"Sure," Steve says.

"And -- and look, it's selfish, and it's stupid, and it's terrible and I hate myself for thinking it, but if you die out there, and half of us are basically living in your house, and I know your parents don't want this house but they can't sell it because it's Hawkins and the housing market sucks, and you don't technically own it but it's all tied up in your trust fund, and if we were married that would give us at least the length of a court case to figure out where else to go, and we'd be able to take care of Max, and--"

"Robin, yeah," Steve says. "I'll do it. Sure, let's get married."

"Wait, really?" Steve doesn't know why she sounds so startled when it was her insane idea, unless she really did want to be talked out of it, but if she'd actually wanted to be talked out of it she should've gone to Nancy. Steve's not the guy who talks Robin out of things. He's the guy who talks Robin into her own brilliant ideas and all the things she desperately wants and doesn't think she can have. "Like, really?"

"Yeah, sure, let's go tomorrow," Steve says. It's a Tuesday, the little gremlins'll all be in school and their shift at Family Video doesn't start until five. "Do we need to get, like, a license or something?"

It's not like Steve doesn't get that this is a weird thing to do, and not a thing that most people would do with their platonic lesbian best friends, but honestly...like, Robin hadn't wanted to say it, but Steve knows he's probably more likely to die in the next couple of years than most other people they know. Doesn't matter how much he plays it off, Steve's always going to be there sticking his body between whichever kid or girl or random civilian and the danger of the day. He's not always there, which is how Mike ends up with a gash up his arm that better not be getting infected with Upside Down rot while Karen Wheeler is too busy pretending that Hawkins is still a normal town, how Nancy gets caught in the blowback from a molotov cocktail thrown just a little too short. Sometimes it feels like Steve's blaming himself in the middle of the night for not being there a little more every year. But he tries.

And if it gets him killed, the least he can do is make sure his stupid trust fund goes to Robin instead of back to his fucking parents. He's not dumb enough to think him dying wouldn't wreck at least Robin, at least for a little while, but he has to figure a pile of cash would make it a little better. He doesn't think it would make things worse.

Besides, Steve lets him think for just a second, what if they do actually figure out how to stop Henry Creel and all his Upside Down bullshit? If they find a way out of Hawkins without leaving the kids behind to die, and move on with their lives? Would being super-platonically married to Robin actually be that bad? He could put her through college with that stupid fucking trust fund while she got whatever genius degree she wanted, maybe end up her slacker house husband and fold all the goddamn fitted sheets by himself while she's off at work. Adopt a couple of kids, maybe, if he could talk her into it. Road trip over the summer in that Winnebago.

Not like Robin could marry someone she's actually in love with. He'd make it clear to whatever girlfriend she gets in the future that he's just there as window dressing and live-in laundry service. Not like Steve's ever going to find a girl who loves him half as much as Robin does, who gets it when the nightmares jolt him awake at three in the morning, who'll believe a single thing he says about the waking nightmare that is Hawkins, Indiana.

Really, it just means that Robin can't leave him behind. Which isn't fair to her, maybe, but it's her idea. She'll be the one slapping divorce papers down in front of him if she ever gets tired of it.

"Um, yeah," Robin says, still a little surprised for some fucking reason, but starting to soften into that smile she sometimes gets when they're being sincere, every once in a while. "Yeah, we just need birth certificates and ID, and like ten dollars for the license fee, and we can go right down to the courthouse tomorrow. Be done in time for work."

"Honeymoon at Family Video?" Steve asks, and yeah, maybe it's not the wedding he once would've pictured for himself, but fuck that guy anyway. This is Robin.

"We'll put on Back To The Future and actually watch it this time," Robin says, and she's grinning now, and Steve is starting to grin too, thinking about the bright hazy beautiful parts of a godawful night, the worst best bathroom floor in Indiana, about marrying the who-the-fuck-cares-if-it's-not-actually-romantic love of his life.

"Throw in some popcorn and you've got yourself a deal, Buckley," he says, and Robin lunges forward into him, wrapping her arms around him. Steve's arms fold around her shoulders like she belongs there.

He's almost not even annoyed that they kick over the laundry basket and send the goddamn sheets spilling out over the floor in the process.

[deoidesign]

Thinks about my next series again... I drew the icon for it!

I'm planning to have it launched within a year! I'm hoping for summer 2025. I want to make a prelaunch page before Time and Time Again ends so people can subscribe if they're interested, but I'm worried the series return would be too early...

[skitskatdacat63]

"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."

+ process(tw blood)

Also, look at him, bloody little guy 🥹

This drawing was inspired by several matador pics :D here and here:

^ I don't think I'll ever live up to the second one ah. There's several pics of that specific guy just soaked with blood, and I'm uh a bit obsessed with then ITS FUCKED UP I KNOW OKAY! But I've not drawn blood in a while so it was a bit difficult so I added less than I would want to I guess. Also I'm obsessed with how often they kneel in bullfighting?? Like okay who are you arching your back and spreading your legs for-

[silverskye13]

NEW CHAPTER FROM SKYE “IM NOT POSTING ON FRIDAY” SILVERSKYE

STANDS ON MY SOAPBOX. SCREAMS

Constantly being reminded of how well you write fight scenes. Eating them up like cookies. The lights and the movement and the sounds all come to me so vividly and it makes me SO happy.

What an excellent chapter what a way to make me cry

As it turns out, I am not a knight! So I am allowed to lie :) just a little, as a treat, sometimes

I am sorry for the tears! But! Thank you for your kind words! I have! So much fun! Writing fight scenes! They are so so cool and important and fun, and are awesome literary tools when I can poke and prod them into the right places.