This weekās writer spotlight feature is:Ā @stevestark ! With fourteen Stranger Things fics and twelve in the Steve/Eddie tag, their charming works make waves in the fandom!
Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by @stevestark:
they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential)
i think your house is haunted (your dad is always mad)
i was hitting my marks ('cause i can do it with a broken heart)
Eddie and Robin's Very Real Heterosexual Adventure
itās hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound (itās hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you)
Whether their fics are under 5k or over 10k, their world-building is so good! they have a way of making our boys feel so natural and the progression of the relationship always feels realistic. they were one of my favorites back in 2022 when s4 dropped, and they've made a sudden return to the fandom this year with new stories that are just as good if not better than what they had written back then! I'm always so excited to see they've posted something new, no matter if it's a new chapter or a whole new story. -- anonymous
Below the cut,Ā @stevestark answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!
Why do you write Steddie?
After watching ST4 Vol. 1 I was obsessed. Steve Harrington was one of literally two characters I loved from the very first time I āmetā them (the other being Jim Hopper, which is why he tends to feature heavily in my works as the resident Dad) but I had never really been into any ships for him up to that point. The immediate chemistry he had with Eddie Munson though? Woof. I knew I had to write them, and it honestly was like I blinked and had suddenly churned out multiple fics. I stopped writing in general around the end of 2022, but when I got fired from my job in April, I got bored and reread my own works, which drew me right back in, especially because I had already written about 10,000 words of they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential) but had yet to finish it. I wanted to read the ending so badly myself that I simply picked it back up, and then next thing I knew I was writing more and more.
Whatās your favorite trope to READ?
Thereās so many. Iām always a sucker for some good old fashioned Hurt/Comfort or Angst With a Happy Ending, but I think my all time favorite has to be Enemies to Friends to Lovers.
Whatās your favorite trope to WRITE?
Definitely Angst With a Happy Ending. I donāt think I really know how to write anything thatās just straight fluff or even straight smut. There has to be some angst in there, and Iām not really one for an unhappy ending. Iāll maybe do ambiguous, but I was raised on Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers āøŗ weāre happy ending girlies.
Whatās your favorite Steddie fic?
The One In Which A Time Loop Is Fucking Exhasuting. by badpancake on AO3. I think about that shit daily. Every part of it is absolute perfection, and I'm in love with it.
Is there a trope youāre excited to explore in a future work but havenāt yet?
Fittingly with the last question, time travel! I have a title for a time travel fix-it already, I just need to let it ferment a little in my mind so I can figure out how to do it in a way that feels at least somewhat unique.
What is your writing process like?
Step 1: Put Taylor Swiftās folklore on repeat. Step 2: Open GDoc. Step 3: Stare at GDoc. Step 4: Start writing the first thing that pops into my head and hope it comes out coherent in the end. Step 5: Publish and then immediately reread my work after itās already live, and pray I only find minor mistakes that I can quickly fix before anyone else reads the fic and spots them.
Do you have any writing quirks?
I always have the title before I even know what the fic will be! 99% of my fic titles are Taylor Swift lyrics, and itās usually a process of me hearing a specific phrase and thinking āThis is so Steddie coded.ā After that, I begin the above process, and hope I do the lyrics justice, because I tend to choose the ones that are the most poetic to me personally.
Do you prefer posting when youāve finished writing or on a schedule?
Definitely when I finish writing. Iāve tried holding myself to a schedule before with multichaptered fic in other fandoms, and it just never works out the way I want it to. I actually have an ongoing Steddie WIP that I havenāt touched since April, because Iām waiting for the next chapter to come to me fully before I start writing it, and I do kind of regret posting it as a WIP in the first place. I feel much more accomplished when I can just push the whole work out at once, i.e. my season 2 rewrite where Eleven is found and taken in by Eddie and Wayne, which I had debated posting as a multichaptered fic as I wrote chunks of it at a time. I talked myself out of it though, and despite the fact that it took me weeks to finish, once I got there it was so satisfying to hit that publish button.
Which fic are you most proud of?
Definitely i was hitting my marks ('cause i can do it with a broken heart). Thereās a whole entire 58 track playlist to go along with it that I carefully researched and curated before writing even a single word of the story, broken down into specifically themed mixtapes in a GDoc; it's linked at the end of the fic, with a breakdown of which mixtape each set of songs belongs to, and it is my absolute pride and joy.
How did you get the idea for they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential)?
I had a passing thought one day about the fact that Steve seemed to just tangentially know who Eddie was by the time we met him in canon, and wondered what it would be like if he had actually sort of known him, and what that would look like. Then I thought about the legend of King Steve, and the fact that he probably did know Eddie, if only as a dealer, and the whole thing sort of wrote itself after that.
When writing they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential), what was something you didnāt expect?
Definitely how long it ended up being! The plot was truly just a passing thought, and I honestly believed I would write little vignettes of the two of them getting to know each other at parties over the years, but what actually transpired was some deep character work and a true slow-build to anything substantial between Steve and Eddie.
What inspired i think your house is haunted (your dad is always mad)?
Honestly the title itself! Sometimes, when I pick a Taylor Swift lyric and decide it would be a pretty fic title, thatās where the inspiration ends. With this one, I thought about the fanon (and somewhat canon) belief that Steveās parents are assholes who donāt really love their son, and even though Iāve known the lyrics to folklore backwards and forwards since the album dropped in 2020, for some reason that line hit extra hard in April of this year, and all I could think about was how badly Steve Harrington wants to be loved and wanted, and I just started writing and didnāt stop until I was satisfied.
What was your favorite part to write from Eddie and Robin's Very Real Heterosexual Adventure?
The entire thing. Iām not just saying that, either. Sometimes, such a good idea falls into my lap that I actually do a proper outline, and with this one, I fully had little sketches going on and everything. I meticulously planned every date they would go on, and I knew exactly how it would end. Though, if I had to isolate any single part that was the most fun to write, it would be the last few lines. Just pure chaos. It makes me laugh every time.
How do/did you feel writing i was hitting my marks ('cause i can do it with a broken heart)?
That was one of my favorites to write, and it flowed out so easily; I had just finished rewatching all of ST, start to finish, for the first time since right before ST4 Vol. 1 dropped. And the only thing I could think about after finishing was that even though it made sense for Max to be cursed, it would have made infinitely more sense for it to be Steve. All we ever see in canon of Steve Harrington is his insecurity and feeling that heās never enough for anyone; season 1, he thinks Nancy is cheating on him with Jonathan, and they try to keep him out of the Upside Down stuff. Season 2, Nancy actually leaves him for Jonathan, and tells him that he āøŗ and his love, and loving him āøŗ is bullshit. Season 3 is literally the story of how King Steve became a nobody who never wins a fight and falls in love with people who will never love him back. Even season 4 āøŗ when Dustin comes rushing into Family Video to try to track down Eddie somehow? Steveās immediate reaction is āOh, your new best friend Eddie who you think is cooler than me because he plays your nerdy game.ā Heās never not a mess of insecurity and self-loathing, and nobody around him ever really does anything to rectify that feeling for him, so heād be perfect Vecna bait. And the whole thing started with the playlist, really, because I had this idea that Steve is a vibes guy for music, rather than a style or genre guy, and then it was just a matter of writing around the mixtapes Iād mapped out. Which, naturally, led to breaking my own goddamn heart writing what I think it feels like inside his head, because I wasĀ āøŗ and still very much am āøŗ that person in the friend group. Never the first pick, always an afterthought, the one people always think is fine but never bother to actually check if they are. So, I guess, it felt cathartic to get it all out somehow, but it was also just so deeply sad, because that feeling never really goes away completely, and I hated doing that to Steve.
What was the most difficult part of writing itās hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound (itās hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you)?
Probably just the physical aspect of shotgunning, honestly, and also trying to accurately describe the high. Weed doesnāt do anything for me mentally, and I donāt like what it does for me physically āøŗ to the point that I actually wonder if I have a mild allergy to it āøŗ so itās not really something I can pull from personal experience in regards to describing it, which made it more difficult than I was prepared for.
Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?
Definitely the opening bit of thereās something about you in the moonlight (but your eyes go so well with the day). Both the Eddie intro and the Steve intro. It was just so fun to tap into that feeling of being a kid and getting hit with the lightning bolt of why people have crushes, but I especially have a lot of love and fondness for the way I described Steveās desire to find his perfect match, and how itās not rooted in sex like people thought of King Steve, but in his desire to find someone heād have fun with forever.
Do you have any upcoming projects or fics youād like to share/promote?
Iām currently working on a multichaptered fic where Eddie lives, but leaves Hawkins the very night heās released from the hospital without telling anyone; he does stay in contact though, and he and Steve end up falling in love through letters and phone calls, until, eventually, Eddie realizes that he ran away from the one thing that made him feel the most alive. At last edit, which was yesterday, itās at 15 chapters and 18,000 words, and Iāve only just gotten to the point where Eddie and Steve are playing phone-tag. Also, if anyone is interested in a non-Steddie but still relatively Eddie-centric fic, I rewrote the entire season 2 canon in are we out of the woods? (are we in the clear yet?) and I am currently working on a season 3 rewrite, which will be followed by a season 4 rewrite, wherein Steddie will become canon. Itās definitely for the long-haulers, but I think itāll be worth it. Actually, despite being non-shippy so far, itās probably my favorite thing Iāve ever written. Thereās just something about Wayne Munson as the worldās best dad that does it for me, and, as weāve seen in canon, Eddie is surprisingly really good with kids. I like to think that heād have been an excellent brother, and I got to explore that with him and Wayne deciding Eleven was theirs.
Thank you to our author,Ā @stevestark, and our nominator! See more of @stevestark works featured on our page throughout the day!
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