#i dont know how to make these shorter

[bluedalliances]

My steddie TOP 10+1 of January

Here are some of my favorite readings of January in no particular order and with some things that are not trigger warnings but I usually like to know. 

Take the money and run by thisapplepielife

This is the first fic I read this year and it became one of my favorite ever. Eddie and Steve go on a road trip and fall in love across the country. It’s sweet, it’s funny, the characters are on point, and every detail is considered. I can’t explain how good this is.

ALSO, THE REFERENCES ARE AMAZING. 

140k / period-typical homophobia - internalized homophobia / Happy ending / Rated E

that'd be the end of the last man on earth by pbandjeremiah

Years after everything goes down, Steve is in a plane from San Francisco to Chicago and Eddie Munson sits by his side with his two kids. Four hours of softness, good care of children and Stevie craving a family.

I actually cried with this one because of how beautiful it is and how nicely it portrays the wishful daydreaming of being a part of something. 

9k / Happy ending / Rated M for like two seconds

Promise To Try by LocalCryptid7

Steve finds out the kids are hanging around Eddie and doesn’t want them to get in trouble. So he helps him get a job and graduate. They fall in love along the way. 

This has everything. A slow burn canon rewrite, with realistic temporal setting, lovely Wayne Munson and great relationships, soft moments, fun moments, hurt moments, comfort moments, the whole deal. There are some heavy themes, tho, so mind the tags, they are great tags. 

84k / Happy ending / Rated M

The Sun Is Gone, but I Have a Light by OfmdLins

THIS VAMPIRE AU IS LITERALLY SO GOOD. I’d pay for more of it. It’s wonderful, cute, funny, good consent talk, spicy time, and amazing ending.

“Chicago, Illinois, 1993. Eddie follows the recommendation of another vampire to visit a 'donor,' a human who lets vampires feed off them for a living. What he's not expecting is for said donor to be a ghost from high school past in the shape of Steve Harrington.” 

I’m begging you, read this. 

10k / Open but really good and soft ending / Rated E

A Hawkins Hallmark Christmas by Appledagger

They play Secret Santa and Eddie is decided to give Steve the best gift of his life, but to do it, he has to get to know him. Chaos, family time, pining and going around forgotten secrets. So good it hurts. Also! It has pretty good communication, I always enjoy that.  47k / Happy ending / Rated M

nothing quite like this by ashleigh

Wayne doesn’t like Steve. But maybe it’s a matter of time. A study of Steve Harrington and his relationship with Eddie from Wayne’s eyes. Steve is the softest boy ever and he grows into people. 

5k / Happy ending / Rated M

waters so inviting by monstrousfemale (stresslinesandcigarettes)

Steve teaches Eddie how to swim, but no time is enough if it is by his side. So, pining, they both think it’s unrequited, swimming, softness, smut, what else do you want?

28k / Happy ending / Rated E

We'll Know for the First Time by Kikiz

They are friends. But one day, Steve realizes he’d choose Eddie over any date. Until then, oblivious boys pin for each other and share platonic intimacy. It’s very fucking cute. 

This is a fix-it post-canon fic, slow burn, pining, fluff, smut, a homegrew graduation and all the love Eddie deserves. 

41k / Happy ending /Rated E

I've been trying to figure you out, tell me then would you lend a hand? by eloquent_fairy

Where Eddie discovers Steve is not what he thought and wants to understand him. From preseason 4 to fix-it fic. He’s stubborn about it, but gets there. I laughed, cried and (mentally) screamed with this one. So many feelings and such a wonderful character study.

FOUND FAMILY MY FRIENDS

30 k / Happy ending / Rated T / Part of a series! 

linger by yournowheregirl

Alternative universe. College Au. Rivals (kinda, not realy) to friends to lovers. Classic misunderstandings and angst. If you feel like stressing out with a lovely fanfic amazingly written, this is for you, my darling. 

They fight for the same desk at the library and somehow become suddy buddies, but then become more. Idiots in love and protective ronance <3 

45k / Happy ending with lots of angst before / Rated T 

some nice young satanist by heuniversesaidiloveyou

It's 1991, Robin and Steve have moved to the big city and have an annoying metalhead neighbor. That’s how they meet Eddie again after 5 years. Ft. going out, experiencing queer joy and falling in love while trying to get over their past.

This one has angst and people getting hurt from internalized homophobia. Mind the tags!

 40k / Happy ending

[stellewriites]

trans!soap who buys one of those dick molding kits and drops it in ghost’s lap, asks him to do it so he can have a braw cock to fuck his new girlfriend with.

“need something that’ll leave her weak-kneed, ya ken? an’ i know from personal experience that yers’ll do the job, lt.”

[skitskatdacat63]

DTS S6E1 "Money Talks" - Fernando Alonso & Lance Stroll

[always-a-joyful-note]

More music-based media and music in general needs to take a page out of Revue Starlight and make their songs at minimum 6 minutes long. Intersperse it with dialogue or intrumental breaks if you want, but I expect it to drag at least 8 minutes in length

[vigilskeep]

quastion. do you guys think wyll is tall. this isn’t about game models this is about what you believe

[yellowocaballero]

i simply must ask- what makes an OP character (protag or otherwise) *work* for you, vs what doesnt?

Hi! This is a very astute and good question.

It's tension.

When a character is in a fight scene, the basic question and source of the tension is "Will they win?". Logically, they're probably going to win, they're the hero - but there should be a push and pull within the fight, where the audience pinballs between "he's going to win!/oh no, he might lose!".

You can't do that with an OP character. There's never any question. He's going to win. So the tension has to come from someplace else. You have to ask a different question.

The question can vary. "Will he win under his self-imposed constraints?" (e.g., your OP character is a pacifist and wants to win without shooting his gun). "Will he win without going Sicko Mode, which is bad and distresses all of us?" (e.g., your OP character is only OP when he unleashes the Demon Self, which is bad for him). "Will he win without revealing his identity or secret? (e.g., your OP character has to win a fight without using his OP powers, because otherwise he'll face social repercussions).

Alternatively/in addition, you change the type of conflict. If your character is guaranteed to succeed at every physical fight, then the primary/'real' conflict should be on an emotional, intellectual, or psychological level. The story can no longer be about the physical fights. They have to be won through intellect or cleverness. The path towards victory has to be through intelligence, kindness, self-actualization, etc.

But absolutely most importantly: watching the OP character be OP should be fun. It should make us pump our fists in the air and go 'fuck yeah!'. It should be thrilling, exciting, and a spectacle. We know the detective is going to catch the bad guy - we're watching for the how. We know the clever protag is going to pull one over on the bad guy through sleight of hand and trickery, we're watching for the reveal of what exactly they did. Don't neglect the joys of watching Mr. OP be delightfully OP. But that is the payoff, and we need sufficient buildup to get there. Watching Mr. OP go sicko mode is the joy, but it's not the path. It's no longer about the if they're going to win, it's about the how. And that should be fun to watch.

My friend @lazuliquetzal has good commentary on this, as usual: that when we say "a character needs to have flaws to be interesting", what we really mean is "a story should not bend itself to accommodate a character". A character without flaws is fine, actually. But the story shouldn't backflip to give them everything they want. This is all really simple. For some reason people act as if this is extremely hard.

TL;DR: Watch Mob Psycho 100 and then sit and figure out why Mob Psycho 100 is one of the best anime of all time. Between One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100, ONE understands how to do this.

[starsheet]

GUYS I CAN STILL DRAW I PROMMY

(not intended nor drawn as a ship but idrc if u see it as that at this point. i think they're good buddies and i love them)

bonus version without all the very. drastic shading/lighting under cut

(they look BALD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

[rxttenfish]

so, if you've been talking to me on discord, you'll know that the 10ft measure for miranda has been inaccurate for some time now

mostly it's a holdover from an earlier iteration of her design and the fact that the numbers are the last thing that i do in the process of designing (on top of being bad at eyeballing distances too). she used to be more humanoid in stature, so i went with 10ft for length when i added her tail, and haven't really touched it up since.

however, her design has shifted pretty far since then, and it's been very clear for a long while that the 10ft estimate wasn't holding up. in the old days, i didnt have a reference for miranda to compare against, so it was fairly hard to come up with concrete numbers anyways. but, since i now have an actual reference with a height comparison, i decided to test it out and try to measure her for real

and it turns out that, yes, miranda's not really 10ft.

she's actually 19ft long.

(i used the little person here because i was using the heights comparison website to get an accurate guess on the lengths involved. each person here = 1 foot, and i have another to represent inches)

since i had this out, i decided to do some other measurements.

miranda's head is 1 foot and 7 inches long, for a total of about 19 inches.

i've always estimated her claws to be around 3 inches long, but here i can confirm that they're 4 inches, not accounting for the curvature (which will add length)

but moreso than just this, i haven't actually been happy with miranda's height lately. in general i've just really wanted to mess with merfolk sizes, because their distribution didn't feel right to me and i wanted something that felt more right to where they are currently. even moreso i feel like i keep making merfolk heads too small (they're intended to be huge, as one of their primary sources of interaction with the world around them, and also because their bite is so important), so i thought, hey, why not see how big miranda would have to be if her head were a full 2ft long?

as it turns out, she'd be about 5'6" tall.

which also puts her at around 22ft long.

so, yeah! merfolk measurements! and a confirmation that 650+ lbs for miranda's weight is absolutely lowballing it, and that needs to be the next number i find something better for.

[satsuha]

[good-beanswrites]

I can't stop thinking of Kyanako's Order of Attack au... there's something so moving to me about how things getting so much worse could be what finally causes Amane to get better -- seeing Fuuta dying may be the final straw of getting her to rethink her rejection of medicine. Been a while since I've attempted something whump-y, this was fun to work with.

Tw for mentions/contemplation of death. I don't go into detail about the cult but the doctrines are implied through it all.

Fuuta was not a big fan of dying.

When he imagined his own death, he always pictured it as something dramatic and fast. Action heroes going out in a show of explosions and gunfire. Fantasy characters meeting the shining end of a blade. Even when he accepted his place in Milgram, it filled his mind with images of gallows and electric chairs. 

Whatever this slow, lengthy fever was, it was pissing him off. 

He’d lost all sense of time. He could no longer tell which hour the prison bells were marking -- morning and night blended together. Dreaming and waking blended together. His head injury and broken leg and broken bones blended together. It was all just pain at the end of the day. He had nonstop visitors that kept him awake and asked him too many questions and prodded his injuries and made his head spin. Somehow, he was simultaneously alone every time he rolled over to talk to someone. Painfully, suffocatingly alone. 

If Kotoko was going to kill him with those ridiculous emo boots of hers, she should have just done it. He was losing his mind here: devoid of all energy, suffering through broken bones and a cracked head, and boiling in an increasingly fiery fever. Maybe that was the reason he stopped commenting when he watched Amane pocket the medicine Shidou had left him. Maybe that was why he’d stopped following Shidou’s instructions himself. Even after losing an eye and taking a beating herself, Amane always looked at peace. He was tired of dealing with all of this. He wanted a bit of that peace.

Regardless of why, it was working. His fever had quickly gone from the biggest pain in his ass to the very thing that dulled his racing thoughts. 

He awoke suddenly, or maybe he’d already been awake. He couldn’t feel anything in his limbs. There was only a breathless heat around him. He raised himself into a sitting position, looking for a drink. Moving his head felt like one of those glitching computer windows that leaves a trail of copies behind it. The room swam around him. His eyes moved absently around him.

Fuuta picked up the glass that someone had left him. His fingers were clumsy, and it immediately went crashing to the ground. He hardly heard the noise as it broke apart on the concrete below. 

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. He’d just go get a drink himself. Shidou told him not to get up without help. But what did he know? Thinking of the man ordering him around only drove Fuuta to step out of bed even quicker. He cried out, pain shooting through his leg. That was right, it was broken… 

Fuuta looked down, finding himself on the ground. It was so hot. Maybe this is what she felt, he thought numbly. Was it this slow for her too? Probably not. She had no regrets to fill the time like he did. The heroes got quick, beautiful deaths, and it was the villains who had to suffer the long ones. 

He lifted his right palm from where it had caught his fall. The shattered glass on the floor had cut into it. Shattered glass? What had broken? He stared blankly at the blood dripping down. 

He didn’t have the strength to raise himself up. He was burning. Why was he on the ground? Was he bleeding? He could barely breathe. What was he doing here, anyway? He just wanted to curl up and sleep. He was so weak... just to lie down... he wouldn't have the strength to get back up again. Was that such a bad thing...?

A voice caught his attention. His eyes struggled to focus on the figure who’d come running into the cell. He couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but he was happy when she pressed her cool little hands against his forehead. 

He allowed her to prop him up next to the bed. She held onto his hand, squeezing it tight. Why was she holding it like that? That hand was bleeding. When did that happen?

Her arms wrapped tightly around him. He wanted to shove her away -- it was too hot -- but couldn’t. In his ear, he could make out her words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, Fuuta. Don’t leave me alone. I’m so sorry...”

As she pulled back, he recognized Amane. Her uninjured eye was filled with tears. Was she upset? He thought he’d been making her happy. He wanted to keep making her happy. He’d never made anyone happy before. 

He opened his mouth to say something, but no words would come out. They all scrambled up in his mouth. He felt the cell swirling around him.

Amane raised her voice. She looked desperately upwards. “This can’t be --! This isn’t right!” 

Fuuta looked up at the ceiling. There was nothing there. 

“I can’t do this anymore.”

She continued talking. Fuuta was too busy studying the ceiling. She was shouting. Or maybe crying. Fuuta didn’t like that she was so upset. Huh, had there been someone there? He surveyed the empty cell. What was he doing on the ground?

He looked down at his hand. The sheet from his bed had been pulled down and wrapped hastily around it. Why? His eyes felt sticky as he blinked. Everything hurt. It was so hot. What was going on? He was so angry. He was so scared. He wanted to cry. Why was he here? Why couldn’t he just hurry up and die already?

The next time she entered, Fuuta recognized Amane instantly. Her one hand pointed to him, the other held onto someone else. The second figure hurried over to him. 

Fuuta was not a big fan of dying. Shidou reassured him he wouldn’t.

—

“You’re wearing the eyepatch,” Fuuta observed. 

He was playing a dangerous game, drawing attention to it like that. He was too exhausted, and his curiosity won out over his better judgment. If Amane was going to explode with one of her typical speeches, he’d just let her.

She didn’t. 

Amane’s hand drifted up to her eye. It had been hastily covered before, but now it was cleaned and wrapped in professional-grade materials. She simply said,  “Kajiyama Fuuta. How do you feel?”

“Like shit.”

“But--”

“-- But I’m better, yeah.”

Amane nodded, her shoulders releasing. 

“Oi, I haven’t seen you in a while. Not since…” He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. Shidou had told him what happened, but it was difficult to believe. He couldn’t quite trust his own memory of the night. No matter how much clearer his mind felt since receiving proper treatment, those days of fever still muddled together. He heard that Amane had up and switched her beliefs overnight -- she was now complacent about all of Shidou's treatments -- but Fuuta knew people didn't just change like that. He wanted to hear it for himself.

She lowered her gaze in shame. “I… I thought you hated me.” Her voice was steady. “As you should. I almost killed you. I accept any ill will you may feel.”

“I -- what? You’re wrong. You… it wasn’t…” He grabbed his head, grunting in frustration.

After standing awkwardly in the entryway the whole time, Amane took a few steps inside. She made it to his bedside when he finally collected his thoughts. 

“It was your fucked up family or whatever that caused everything. They did this. And I went along and made things worse.” He looked away. His next words felt stupid to say to a little kid. He felt like the most pathetic, weak, loser. But it was too important not to say.

“They almost killed me. You saved me.”

[bunnihearted]

☁️🌷

[thedrotter]

redrew a few old expressions from february!!! one never notices how much their art style changes in some months till you compare side by side www

(the old ones for comparison ↓)

[carcarrot]

do i really want to make individual drinks again

[skunkes]

I mean this vent completely neutrally and as an observation rather than Woe is Me negativity but going ham in my sketchbook has been Fun but along with not really Learning anything (tho historically no art knowledge ever sticks to my brain) I'm no closer to understanding how I WANT to draw! if that makes sense.

I dont really identify with or want to continue any of the patterns I try (nor do they get any more muscle memory-y, in the fundamentals area).

Its fine as long as its Fun but I really feel the aimlessness. Like I'll keep going but I've also. Been doing that. All I do is Keep Going, when does it all tetris together!

[jawbonejoe]

There, I’ve read A Coney Island of the Mind

[marcmorrigan]

i have decided this year is His Year so i guess i have to learn to draw water and also finalise his outfit designs. smh. the things i do for love.

OC: shaide (he/him)