Who's to Say?

Steddie where Robin and Steve work at the same school; Steve teaches P. E. and coaches the swim team, Robin is a history teacher.

They've just met that year, but they clicked and became fast friends. Steve is always talking about his husband Eddie, and Robin loves babbling about her girlfriend, Nancy. It's great! They never run out of things they can chat about.

One day, they are out having lunch when Robin almost gets hit by a crazy guy on a bike. Nothing happens to her, but Steve had stepped in front of her and taken the brunt of the impact and there's a horrible gash on his leg.

Robin panics. She takes him to the hospital, almost passing out at the sight of all that blood.

As the doctor stiches up Steve's injury, she calls his husband to tell what happened and where they are, since Steve wouldn't be able to drive with an injury that big and someone would have to fetch his car at the café parking lot.

It's the first time Robin talks to Eddie, but she could swear she'd heard his voice before. Or maybe not. Maybe she's still panicked about what happened and her brain is still not working how it should.

Half an hour later, Eddie Munson, Corroded Coffin's vocalist, bursts into the hospital in a hurry, and Robin can only stare in shock as the man comes straight towards her.

"Where is he? Is he discharged yet?" the man asks, frantic.

That's when Robin's brain finally connects the dots and she realizes that the nerdy dork of a husband her friend's been talking about for months is actually one of the most successful metal singers in the country.

What the actual fuck???

Dustin has reached the point of just walking into Steve's house whenever he knows he's home, so it isn't long before he walks in on Steve and Eddie making out on Steve's couch.

Steve has been trying to keep his and Eddie's growing relationship lowkey. He remembers how frustrated Dustin was when Mike was so wrapped up in his relationship with El that he was flaking out on group plans. He doesn't want Dustin to think that's what's going to happen here. As if either of them would forget about Dustin.

So when Dustin says he needs a second and steps out of the room, Steve's heart sinks. He's already been feeling that Dustin is starting to become closer to Eddie than him because they have more hobbies in common, so he's fully expecting Dustin to accuse him of stealing his new friend. However, when Dustin comes back in, his stern look is fixed on Eddie.

"Eddie, I'm only going to say this once. I know Steve can handle himself, but he's family and he's been through a lot. So, I like being your friend, but if you ever hurt him, I'll spend every day making your life a living nightmare until you make it right," Dustin warns him to Steve's absolute shock. "And if I ever see him cry because of something you've said or done and they're not happy tears, I'm throwing your favourite guitar into the quarry. Am I clear?"

Steve is oddly touched because he's never had someone give a shovel talk on his behalf before. Eddie looks half impressed and half horrified as he nods his agreement. Dustin's expression goes right back to normal as soon as he's sure he's got the message across.

"Right, now who's driving me to the arcade?"

SPIDEYTORCH but make it STEDDIE‼️

For my ST x Spider-Man AU ofc <3

eddie munson is not immune to the charms of a well groomed man

this is dumb but its been in my noggin for a while

yo…. when jet breaks in the tea shop and accuses zuko and iroh of beinh firebenders….

do you think any of the patrons looked at zukos scarred face - obviously done by a firebender - and immediately think jet was an asshole? like

jet: hes a firebender!!!!

patrons, thinking about the backstory they concocted for zuko and iroh where their home was invaded by firebenders and they barely survived with their lifes so they could come and have a peaceful life selling tea in a city the war doesnt touch:

Jet: He’s a firebender!

The Patrons to the Tea Shop internally: You fucking stupid, sir? I think you might be stupid.

THE TAGS

#if someone shouted something racialized at a food service worker and he pulled swords#if be like ‘yeah that’s fair’

He didn’t even use his own swords. He took them from a guard and the guards let him

i don't know how you can "the curtains are just blue! ACAB lol" fucking Death Note of all pieces of media

this is a show for thirteen-year-old boys. the only writers I've seen who are less subtle about what they're going for were fucking Victorians.

@rawr-monster and @eyestumblin asked me to elaborate so here goes:

Death Note is a show with a very clear central premise: no one should have the power to kill others without consequence. Not the cops, not corporations, not the Mob, not civilians, no one.

Even outside of the 2000s-era criticisms of the Japanese justice system, even if you're looking at it in a vacuum, Death Note makes it incredibly obvious what it's trying to say. It starts this off by making it very clear, right out of the gate, that the audience identification character really, really should not have this power.

For Death Note's original target audience, Light is everything you're supposed to be. He's smart, diligent, good-looking, athletic, popular but not too popular. He's The Perfect Middle-Class Japanese Teenage Boy. If you're the kind of edgy, smart Japanese teenage boy who would want to watch an anime supernatural crime drama in the mid-00s? Light is built for you to imprint on like a baby duckling.

...And then the show goes out of its way to point out, in the first proper story arc, that Light is the villain of this piece. From the introduction of L to the end of the Raye Penber/Naomi Misora arc, the show makes it very, very clear that Light is a hypocrite with a massive ego. Sure, he says that he's only killing criminals to make a better world. Sure, maybe he panicked and killed fake-L in self-defense. Sure, maybe the life of Reye Penber and any law enforcement chasing Kira were worth the clear drop in the crime rate. Maybe.

But then Light kills one of the very few unambiguously Good members of the Death Note cast, does so in a smug and cruel way, and the entire scene is framed as tragic in a way that none of the criminal deaths really were. The whole world goes quiet. And Naomi Misora stumbles off to commit suicide. By the end of that arc, even if you'd otherwise be sympathetic to Light- even if you're still rooting for him to get away with it- it's a lot harder to justify what he's doing. He's not just breaking a few eggs to make an omelet- at this point, he's actively happy to kill anyone who gets in his way.

So. Okay. The Perfect Japanese Teenage Boy (TM) can't be trusted with the power to kill indiscriminately. Maybe the problem is just that Light, as a person, is an asshole with impure motives, and if you gave the Death Note to someone who's a better person, you'd be better off. Maybe you could find someone who's motivated by love, and they'd do a better job with that power.

Everyone, say hello to Misa Amane, who is utterly driven by love and devotion, and probably one of the crazier/more evil characters on the show! She'd do anything, no matter how terrible, just because Light told her to do it. She is utterly without remorse, utterly without fear, and utterly driven by a darkly Romantic fanaticism.

Light gets to dodge what's coming to him twice because of Misa and love- once because Misa's love for Light lets him start the Yotsuba arc, and once because Rem's love for Misa becomes a diabola ex machina. In the world of Death Note, love is not a pure enough motive to let you kill indiscriminately - in fact, it makes you worse.

Okay, well, (our hypothetical edgy teenage viewer might say), cLEARLY the problem is that everyone here is too emotional, and you need to be able to detach from the situation to use the power of life and death. Of course you'd kill indiscriminately if you've got feeeeelings about it, but someone who is driven by Logic and Reason? Surely they'd never do anything wrong.

...And then L gets his hands on the Death Note, and immediately starts trying to figure out how to use it to prove that some of the rules in the Death Note are fake and Light is guilty. L's plan is to have a criminal on death row write in the Death Note and wait the 13 days to see if he dies. It's simple. Logical. Effective. It's also extremely reminiscent of the stuff Kira's been doing this entire time, and the implication is that, had L lived longer and used the Note more, he might become No Different.

(I think it's significant that in The Movie, L uses the Death Note exactly once, with himself as the victim, and he turns down the Death Note when it's offered to him. TheMovie!L is an unambiguously heroic character, and therefore, he will not kill without consequences.)

The power to kill without any consequence to yourself corrupts you. It makes you want to use it to solve more and more of your problems. It turns you into a fucking monster, one name at a time. And nothing can stop that process except refusing to use that power. Love cannot shield you. Rationality cannot shield you. Justice cannot shield you.

And every other character who gets the Death Note reinforces that theme. The Yotsuba Group? Big corporations should not get to kill without consequences. Mello? Criminals/genius detectives should not get to kill without consequence. Mikami? The Perfect Japanese Adult is outright sadistic about how he uses the Death Note. And on, and on, and on.

Near outright tells Light, in their final confrontation: "You are a murderer, and this notebook is the worst weapon of mass murder in the world." Using the Death Note is not justice; it's not going to bring about a perfect new world. It's murder, full stop. Light has become a mass murderer, a monster, by killing over and over again.

Death Note has a theme: no one should be allowed to kill without consequences, because it makes you a monster. It is not subtle about that theme. It is very, very blatant, and the only way it could be more blatant is if Near stopped to deliver an Atlas-Shrugged-style monologue about it.

and so seeing people reduce that to 'haha ACAB' gets my goat, because no. No, it's not just ACAB. anyone with the power to kill indiscriminately and without consequence- whether it's a cop, a megacorp, an autistic supergenius, a mob boss, or a perfect audience-insert- would become A Bastard.

this is a show that makes it abundantly clear that there is Symbolism and it has a Point, in the way that only stuff aimed at teenagers that's trying to be Deep can do. how you get through the entirety of Death Note and walk away with "there's no point! a cop's son decides to be the worst person ever! Light is Uniquely Terrible and that's all there is to it!" is fucking beyond me.

I was just going to blithely reblog this, and then I thought of something.

There is a category unmentioned here in the 'people who use the death note' and that category is the Shinigami. Yes, Rem's mentioned in the 'things you do for love' situation, tho she's not the only one who uses the Death Note in a selfless way (even under manipulation).

Because Rem and Gelus both use the Death Note to save Misa, and they both DIE for doing so. And that's an important context here, the Shinigami, the people who are MEANT to use the Death Note, are near-immortal immoral monsters. And the one way for them to be killed? Is to use the Death Note to benefit someone else.

Not only is there no 'good' way to use a Death Note, it was never INTENDED to be used for 'good', just as a way to elongate the lifespans of actual literal monster people in another dimension.

Death Note goes out of it’s way to have characters just straight-up monologue several times about how it’s the power to kill that’s evil and that corrupts anyone who accepts it, that there’s no good way or good person to have power over life and death. They even put the Death Note in the hands of someone who refuses to use it either directly or by proxy (Light’s father) and he gets to die peacefully with the belief that his son was innocent and Ryuk straightup explains this to the audience just to make sure everyone gets it.

You can really just sum it up with this:

y’all took off with the other post though it wasn’t finished 😭 very thankful for the love however

here’s the finished thing

Steve Harrington who just stops talking.

It's not something that he does consciously, it just happens.

No one takes his opinions seriously. The kids dismiss his suggestions, sometimes there's an ironic retort after he says something. He starts talking to someone just to realize halfway that the person isn't paying any attention to what he's saying at all; they are just standing there, waiting for Steve to be finished so they can go.

And you see, Steve's grandma passed when he was barely twelve, but he remembers clearly what she used to say to him, "Do not waste your words with people who can't even bother themselves to listen. They don't deserve to hear what you have to say."

So little by little, Steve stops trying.

He listens, agrees when it's needed but never contributes to whatever discussion is happening. After a while, keeping his thoughts to himself becomes second nature.

But then Vecna happens, and suddenly Steve is friends with Eddie Munson, who never seems to shut up. Even after everything is over, and Eddie is stuck on a hospital bed recovering from his countless injuries, he just never runs out of things to say.

It's cool. Steve likes Eddie, likes listening to his rambles and rants, likes when he puts Dustin in his place and knocks that attitude out of him with a snappish answer because Dustin really needs to watch that tone of his. Even if Steve doesn't say much, Eddie's incessant talking is kinda comforting.

When Steve's visiting one afternoon, however, this dynamic changes. It's just the two of them in the hospital room. Steve's pulled the plastic white chair closer to Eddie's bed and he's been listening to his friend as he munches on the strawberry cupcake Steve brought him and rambles about school and about having to go through a fourth senior year because he missed finals and failed again.

Eddie is mid-rant when he suddenly stops. A small tired sigh leaves his lips, shakes his whole frame and he chews the cake absentmindedly for a moment, until he turns towards Steve and asks, "What do you think I should do? Should I even go back? Do I really need this diploma, or am I just being a stubborn fucker here?"

And Steve stops. Freezes completely because that's the first time someone honestly asked for his opinion in ages and Steve is just not used to this anymore.

He opens his mouth to ask if Eddie means it, but closes it immediately because it's obvious that he does. Eddie is looking expectantly at him, his eyes focused on Steve and giving him his full attention, waiting for Steve's answer as if it's something important to him, something that matters.

Maybe it does. Maybe Steve finally has someone in his life worthy of his words and thoughts.

"I think that a diploma could make your life easier, depending on what you plan on doing afterwards, can open some doors to better jobs, but I don't think it's, like, necessary. If you don't want to go back, then don't. Especially if you're going to go through with that idea of using the money the government gave you to open your own garage. You don't need a diploma for that."

Eddie answering smile sends warmth all through Steve's bones. "See? That's why I like talking to you, Stevie, you always help me think more clearly."

It's hard to breathe with the tight lump suddenly lodged in his throat, but Steve manages it.

[Now with fic by @dreamsteddie]

Steve would be the first to admit, it’s a dumb habit.

Something he picked up over a decade ago, when his friendship with Tommy and Carol was still new. He didn’t believe the superstition … but it was hard not to.

“You know apples know who you’re gonna marry,” Carol said over lunch one day.

Steve looked up from his meatloaf. It seemed a little silly to believe, but he believed in love at first sight, so why wouldn’t he believe that apples could hold a truth like that?

Tommy, on the other hand, didn’t believe it. He wrinkled his nose, “No they don’t!”

“Yes they do!” Carol huffed. “My sister told me so. You twist the stem and after each twist, you say a letter of the alphabet, and when it pops off, that’s the first letter of the person’s name you’re gonna marry!”

“That’s not true,” Tommy said. “You’re making that up.”

Carol frowned. “Fine! Don’t believe me.” She picked up her lunch tray and moved tables, sitting next to Heather and Tina.

“That’s totally fake,” Tommy said.

“Right,” Steve agreed.

They sat in silence.

They both picked up their apples, twisting off the stems.

Tommy’s stem came off after three twists.

Steve’s came off after five.

All of fourth grade, Steve tried to figure it out. Could it be Emily or Elizabeth? Eleanor was a grade above him, and Emma was a grade below. He tried to figure it out, maybe even had a playground kiss or two, but nothing came out of his apple stem.

Maybe he did it wrong.

So it became a habit.

Any time he had an apple, he twisted the stem off, quietly reciting the alphabet until it came off.

Eventually, he forgot why he did it. Forgot to keep track of the letter he stopped on before taking a bite.

“Why do you do that?” Robin asked one day at Scoops Ahoy. “The alphabet thing.”

“Oh,” Steve looked at the stem pinched between his fingers. The reason was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew once he said it, Robin would find a reason to add another tally. He took a bite. “I don’t know actually.”

Robin frowned. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, caveman.”

Steve shrugged his shoulders, taking another bite of his apple. Robin dropped it, never asking Steve again.

But after Starcourt “burned” down, Robin picked up the habit too.

Reciting the alphabet as she twisted off the stem. She’d make it halfway through the alphabet before her stem would come off.

Steve’s stems never held on that strong.

Steve twisted the stem of his Granny Smith apple, the alphabet barely a whisper as the stem fell off.

“Is there a rhyme or reason for that?” Eddie asked. “Removing the stem like that?”

“Nope,” Robin said as she threw her stem towards Eddie. “It’s like playing with your food before you eat it.”

“With letters?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah,” Robin said. “I got to N. Steve hardly ever gets past E.”

Steve’s head shot up.

E.

It’s such a habit, he didn’t realize what letter he stopped on.

He turned to face Eddie and —

Yeah.

That felt right.

Eddie felt right.

“It’s a soulmate thing,” Steve blurted out, not realizing he was interrupting whatever conversation Robin and Eddie were having. “A — soulmate. Yeah. You — uh — twist the stem. And whatever letter you land on is the person you’re supposed to marry.”

The three of them sat in silence, the stem pinched between Steve’s fingers as the center point of attention.

He lifted it up for emphasis.

“E,” he said. “It landed on E. Always landed on E.”

Eddie’s expression was unreadable.

Maybe, Steve was wrong —

Eddie leaped halfway onto the kitchen island, yanking an apple from the fruit center piece and started to twist the stem.

“What are you doing?” Robin asked, exasperated by his antics. “Did you just miss what Steve said?”

“Yes Robin, I heard exactly what he said.”

Robin wrinkled her brow.

“Shouldn’t you be jumping for joy? Or you know, kissing him?”

Eddie raised the apple in his hands. “I gotta get to the letter S, give me a second.”

Steve found himself grinning over Eddie. A silly habit of picking apple stems actually paid off.

Or will.

Once Eddie kisses him.

Forget about Steve coming out to Robin and her ripping on his choice in men the way he did about Tammy. I think it would be infinitely funnier if Steve looks at Eddie doing something stupid, realizes then and there that he likes him, and roasting himself out loud because Eddie? The Freak? He’s in love with Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson? Jesus Christ, he doesn’t just sound like a muppet, he is a muppet.

freeing this old comic from patreon jail

steddie going to the movies! (which is totally not a date... or is it?)

check out my patreon for more comics (and my inconsistent art style)

Steve: *is sleeping*

Steve: *shoots awake*

Eddie: Babe…?

Steve: One of my kids is doing something stupid.

Eddie: Mmm, I’ll get the car keys.

He's just a little guy

halloween means season 2 AUs 🎃

yes... ha ha ha... yes!

forced to say “it’s okay!” Instead of throwing a fucking chair at their head

Why does your post have lingerie on

God forbid a bitch be feeling herself while mentally ill in this economy 😢

one thing about me is i was put on this god's green earth to draw same things again and again and again and you get it