The Mind Of a Writer

like, i know everyone just prefers to ignore it because stobin are platonic soulmates!! but i think it gives his reaction more depth.

it’s not just that some girl is coming out as gay. it’s that a girl he likes is coming out as a gay. and he still immediately jumps to reassuring her, and joking around, and dismisses the crush asap if it means making her smile.

(obviously that’s the bare minimum etc etc. but for a kid in the 80s, it’s pretty great tbh.)

it’s not just that his coworker who he’s kind of friends with is opening up to him. it’s that this girl that he likes, really likes since his bad break up last autumn, knows that he likes her, and is choosing to be open and honest with him when she could just lie.

steve’s crush, and robin choosing to come out knowing about it, and steve’s reaction is just so important to me in regards to the way stobin works. idk, it’s just that, they really do care so deeply about the other, and care about the others feelings, even kind of at the expense of theirs (robin is putting herself in danger!!! all because she wants to explain herself to steve. she doesn’t know how he’ll react, but she wants to honest!!!)(steve is into her!!! and he’ll totally repress that down if it means making robin feel comfortable!!! and accepted!!!)

part one

the body remembers - properthief set post-season 5 during the college years, in which robin is chronically ill due to the lasting effects of breathing the air in the upside down. i'm OBSESSED with this.

please turn those headlights around - sargeantwoof the fic that started my 24 hour spiral over time loop stobin. this is STUNNING. i keep coming back here. an insanely poetic, open ended fic about steve, robin, nancy, eddie, jonathan, and argyle stuck in a 6 week time loop where the world ends and absolutely losing it. insane. oh my god.

I'm worse at what I do best - fastcardotmp3 oooooouuuu such a good robin buckley character study. obsessed.

see you soon - fauchevalent a flayed robin oneshot in which ronance's daughter travels back in time to get her mothers from the past to save her mothers in the future - i'm not explaining this well but just know that i'm feral for this

there's blood on my hands (it's hanging over my head) - stardustandswimmingpools i'm stealing a direct quote from the author note to describe this because it encapsulates it perfectly. it's the perfect study on "cynical angry semi-suicidal max in the mind prison"

But they have the energy to take care of each other, because they’d do anything for each other.

Nancy stops taking care of her curls only a few weeks into college, and they get so matted she has to cut them all off. Robin keeps them neat after that. She reads articles about how to properly care for curly hair and does a ton of research, terrified to mess up her girlfriends hair. She makes sure Nancy’s hair is healthy, has all the right product in it, and is styled. Nancy feels so much more like herself with her hair being taken care of again.

Robin’s always been fidgety, but it gets worse after she leaves Hawkins. She bites her nails until they bleed, often not realizing until it’s too late. Nancy paints Robin’s nails for her every week, to keep Robin from biting them. Nancy’s hands are much less shaky than Robin’s and she has the patience her girlfriend doesn’t.

Nancy forgets to eat a lot, and even when she does remember she often doesn’t have the energy. (And let’s be honest, Nancy can’t cook for shit. She burned water last time she tried). So Robin cooks for her, and during the short time they date but live separately, Robin meal preps for Nancy so her girlfriend has meals she can take home and just pop in the oven or microwave during the week. When they start to live together, Robin doesn’t even bother reminding her, she knows Nancy will argue and grumble. So she just puts a plate in front of her girlfriend and walks away. An hour later, the food is always gone and Nancy is much less cranky.

Robin never schedules doctors appointments. She too scared of needles— and anything medical in general after being kidnapped and drugged by Russian’s— to feel okay going. Nancy schedules them for her, and attends each one with Robin, without even being asked. She holds Robin’s hands the entire time, squeezing Robin’s hand every time her girlfriend gets particularly nervous.

Nancy gets so caught up writing and working, that by the time she’s finished she’s too tired to move, let alone walk back to bed. Robin always comes and gets her in the middle of the night, carrying her back to bed with a small smile and fond eye roll.

Robin forgets things… like a lot. In the winter she forgets to put lotion on her hands, so they very quickly get dry and crack. Nancy notices this the first winter they live together, and puts lotion on Robin’s hands every morning and night. Robin also becomes a house plant hoarder at some point in their twenties— she loves those plants like they’re her own children… but she forgets to water them. After the first few die, and Nancy sees how sad Robin gets about it, she makes sure to water the plants once a week.

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

recycle your darlings