Why Am I Still Here?

Late night snack stop

subway au!harringrove

“You two make a cute couple.” 

Steve nearly misses the comment, his airpods just loud enough to drown out most sound on the subway. But the girl smiling at him had said it with deliberate volume, over the roar of the car. 

He blinks up at her from his copy of IT, tugging a pod out before he looks rude. 

“Sorry?” He asks, confused momentarily until the weight on his shoulder jostles just so. A turn in the track. 

The head on his shoulder had been a surprise at first, but Steve’s steadily forgotten it for almost ten minutes now. It’s not like his neighbor is a stranger.

They’ve been riding the same stops for months now. It’d been a nice surprise when Steve started riding the subway to class when his car bit the dirt. He’d expected to spend the ride with his eyes on the ground. 

But then he’d seen the most beautiful man step onto the train beside him and he’d been unable to ignore him. The height, broad shoulders and curly blond hair. Fit in every sense of the word. His silent subway crush is always dressed casual for class, but never goes the same way Steve does on campus. Steve thinks he might be an engineer, spotting an electronic engineering textbook on more than one occasion. Back and forth they’d gone, for months, clearly taking classes the same time of day. Day after day. Steve just never got up the courage to do anything about it. 

The logical thing would be to ask his name. But he only knows him as the ‘hot subway guy’. 

Robin ridicules him constantly.

“You two.” The girl motions to his sleeping companion with the phone in her hand, then her eyes are back on Steve. “You’re sweet together.”

“Uh.” Steve wants to say they’re not together, which would make sense because they’re not. But because of the way the sleeping man on his shoulder makes him feel needed, weighed down by a simple touch, he doesn’t say anything. He laughs, soft, and feels his face heat at the cheeks. “Thanks.” 

L.S. DUDES COLLAB!!! 

both @the-ria and i have been enjoying past lives very very very much (i don’t know about u, but it’s going straight to the top of my spotify wrapped this year) and we really wanted to do something fun and a bit different to commemorate it. so here u go! something a bit more editorial bc, why not? enjoy!!

Random sketch of my “Stilinski Twins Mafia AU” as a warm up

I fogot to post this here...

Anyway, since the Mafia Twins AU idea came out, someone commissioned me to do this.

There will apparently be a part 2 of this piece that is more... Revealing...

stranger things, beach episode

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.