you can't die ... not you

sideblog for ST but mostly dusteve //on ao3 at sablesea // previously telemetrytracker

[crashoutqueenstevie]

my fic

okay im finally compiling all my fic for a pinned post. anyone new to my blog, hi! i ship dusteve and everything so far that i write for them is romantic so don't like don't read yadda yadda. everything is tagged with warnings and such on ao3

fic summaries and links below:

Rivers and Roads (WIP)

Steve and Dustin navigate their changing relationship during Dustin's freshman year of college. Dustin wants to move on from his childhood crush and embrace new experiences of college, as Steve starts to worry about being left behind by his best friend. Both grapple with the long aftermath of the Upside Down and fall in love along the way.

do i care if i survive this (everything returns to you somehow)

A smutty exploration of Dustin's self-destructive tendencies in the eighteen months between s4 and s5 and Steve's attempts to comfort him while dealing with his own jealousy of Dustin's love for Eddie.

how will i know (a collab with @kingdustin)

Dustin asks Eddie to help him test two hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Dustin is gay. Hypothesis 2: Steve Harrington is gay. Dustin thinks this may help him with his final (and most important) hypothesis: if both things are true, then maybe he has a chance after all. But Dustin may have forgotten some crucial variables. Namely, Steve’s feelings and his own. Emotional fallout ensues.

We're writing a sequel! Can't wait to start posting once we finish writing and editing.

a kiss with a fist

In the aftermath of the battle with Vecna, Dustin and Steve refuse to part from each other, choosing to recover from the wounds of battle together. Unspoken communication, adrenaline, the rapid changes in their relationship over the last few days, and final apologies pull down the last barrier between them.

let the world around us just fall apart

Dustin and Steve have repaired their relationship at the Squawk, but Dustin still harbors one more secret. He's in love with Steve. With the world literally collapsing around them, he doesn't know if he'll ever find a way to share it. Alternate s5 finale written before it aired.

This was my very first fic I published! I caught the bug and haven't let up since.

breathe easy

Steve and Dustin survive the final battle and start to find a way forward. A companion piece to "Let the World Around Us Just Fall Apart" picking up immediately after from Steve's perspective.

[dailyjoekeery]

Stranger Things - Season 4 Chapter 7 - The Massacre at Hawkins Lab

[averytauntingletter]

loser4loser lumax is sooo important to me. they met through an arcade game rivalry they are LOSERS. they are history math nerds. they nerd over comics together. i love them dearly.

[redstonedust]

unfortunately i dont think its queerbaiting if the creator is just so terminally heterosexual that they never remotely considered the same gender relationship their show is centered around could be read as romantic. it is deeply painful however.

[melanqueerly]

Maybe accidental queer baiting? The way someone may not mean to say something rude, but it may come off rude, so it's rude. Frustrating either way.

[phinarei]

Not being a dick, just a friendly clarification.

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

Doing it on accident sucks, but it isn't a tactic of capitalism intentionally intended to suppress queer representation while making money from queer fans.

[brionysea]

people can never prove they're friends with dustin normally, it's always 'let me jump off a cliff for you dustin,' 'let me throw a car at the evil russians trying to shoot you dustin,' 'let me bike eight miles for you dustin,' 'let me hear your voice from an alternate dimension dustin,' 'let me die in your arms dustin.' leave him ALONE why does he make everyone CRAZY

[jacksonseymour13]

I love shipping "problematic" ships that cause people outrage 🤭

[kingdustin]

stevie and dusty lesbian ST AU

tagging my dustevie friends who were yapping about this on the discord! this is a communal AU to be clear 🫶 @allsunshin3 @eviecraveschaos @vvasilisssk @crashoutqueenstevie @pingou7

Where we start… 

Stephanie aka Stevie Harrington – a preppy popular eleventh grade girl who plays all the varsity sports available to girls at Hawkins High: volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball in the spring, as well as the swim team. Her mom disapproves of how boyish her hobbies are but Stevie just could not enjoy doing cheer squad. She compensates for her more masculine interests by wearing lots of makeup and dressing very femme and preppy. When we first get to know her in Season 1, she speaks in a higher register with a lot of vocal fry and uptalk. 

Stevie hangs around mean girl Tammy Hagan, who she’s been friends with since middle school, and Tammy’s boyfriend Carl. Tammy has had a crush on Stevie since forever, and is very jealous of anyone who tries to get close to her. They practiced kissing together when they were younger, and Tammy sometimes pressures Stevie into making out with her at parties “to turn all the guys on, duh!” They are very physical with each other and Tammy is always gossiping and whispering mean shit about others to get Stevie to laugh. Tammy drags her meathead boyfriend Carl everywhere and they’re always making out with Stevie around, which Stevie just rolls her eyes about and doesn’t mind (she doesn’t realize Tammy is not so subtly trying to get them to have a threesome).  

Though Stevie has a reputation, correct or not, for being “easy” and having lots of boyfriends, she surprises everyone when she starts dating goody-two-shoes Ned Wheeler. Ned is an honors student who is different from her usual type– he doesn’t play sports and doesn’t seem very concerned about popularity. Ned has a shy, nerdy friend named Bob who has a not so secret crush on him that Ned politely ignores. Ned dating someone as popular, pretty, and affluent as Stevie makes his parents very proud of him– which chafes at Ned, since he doesn’t actually want to end up like his dad. 

The Party are all nerdy weird girls – Dusty Henderson, Michelle Wheeler, Lu Sinclair, and Willa Byers. Michelle is a huge disappointment to her mom because she’s so bad at performing femininity– all Michelle wants to do is play DnD and do A/V club stuff. Unlike Ned, who is the golden child of the family, Michelle can do no right. Willa is very quiet and shy, and she looks up to her sister, Joanie, who is an alt loner with a love for Sylvia Plath and Audre Lord, and considers herself a feminist. (No matter how feminist Joanie is though, she can’t help but despise the popular girls who parade about in the chains of femininity the way Stevie Harrington does, always sleeping around and “giving their power to men”– girls like that set the movement backward in her opinion!) Lu Sinclair is very loyal and headstrong– she is the oldest daughter and used to taking on more responsibility– especially with her kid brother Eric, who is such a handful– so she sometimes gets annoyed with Willa, Michelle, and Dusty when they are acting immature.

Seventh grade Dusty Henderson is a brainiac teacher’s pet who gets easily frustrated by the way everyone in society doesn’t expect girls to be good at science and math. On the contrary, like her favorite teacher Ms. Clarke, she is FASCINATED by scientific discovery! Ms. Clarke happily shepherds the all-girls’ A/V club. Dusty is by far the smartest student in her grade but constantly gets sidelined by people for being a girl, which makes her easily annoyed and eager to prove herself– she gets a reputation for being a loud mouth know-it-all, and the mean girls at school mock her mercilessly. Worth noting that due to sexism, Dusty knowing that she's right about things is seen as less charming than a boy doing the same. So she's even more acerbic/prickly and her friendship with the lovable and easygoing Stevie takes people even MORE by surprise when they hit it off in season 2...

(to be continued with season 2 thoughts on another post-- will be updating this)

(i was looking up vintage basketball photos and this girl is the stevie vibe imo!! i know both photos are blonde hair, i mostly am thinking of the energy they're bringing...)

and she probably still dresses very preppy otherwise-- clean cut and femme to compensate for the perceived dykishness of being a girl athlete.

i tried to look up some nerdy girl vibes for Dusty but honestly it was difficult (bc of stereotypes and misogyny) and tbh I think Dusty dresses very similarly to how Dustin dresses in s1 bc she doesn't care about being particularly fashionable or femme-- probably just has longer and even more unruly hair! but if i had to choose an inspo photo i would say dusty could perhaps have some similar styling and vibes to Suzie, though i'm partial to jeans/overalls and t-shirt girl Dusty...

[crashoutqueenstevie]

Michelle, Lu and Dusty find Eleven, a scared little boy in the woods who has absolutely very little concept of gender at all and loves hanging out with these weird girls (much like in the original version). He is fascinated by everyone's long hair and wants to grow his as long as Michelle's beautiful black hair because he's never had the opportunity to see what his hair even looks like since it's always shaved.

Stevie and Ned's first hook up goes somewhat differently in this version where Bob is less concerned about this behavior not being Ned but more that he is choosing to sleep with someone so easy. "Seriously, Ned? Stevie Harrington? She puts out on the first date." But Ned is eager and excited and he wants to lose his virginity and Stevie is confident and knows what she's doing.

When Stevie sees Ned hanging out with Joanie later on and assumes he's cheating on her, instead of painting the marquee and calling him a slut, she and Tammy spray paint and key his car or locker and call him a cheater or maybe go the homophobic route and call him a slur.

I think the camera breaking scene has a slightly different vibe as well where Stevie calls Joanie a creep and accuses her of trying to catch sight of Stevie as well as Ned. The accusations of lesbianism are a lot more intense in this version because it's seen as the ultimate insult and way to put down other girls and shame them. And she does break the camera of course, despite Ned trying to stop her more actively.

So the fight in the alley between Stevie and Joanie definitely includes Stevie calling her a lezzie, saying her family is a disgrace and Stevie slaps Joanie, only for Joanie to haul off and deck Stevie in the jaw. I just love the idea of Joanie changing the tenor of the fight immediately because she is not fucking around and beats the tar out of Stevie.

[crashoutqueenstevie]

Happy "you die, I die" Friday to all who celebrate

[procyonloser]

Steve Harrington went to the Jim Kirk school of being a romantic at heart, manwhore in action, and also he's a bottom bi bitch in the eyes of millions.

[crashoutqueenstevie]

Dusty sitting on Stevie's lap

Dusty laying her head on Stevie's shoulder and nuzzling into her neck and it's juuuust this side of being too intimate for being friends but Stevie let's it happen because it's Dusty and so she wraps her arms around Dusty anyway

[kingdustin]

trying to sleep but my brain is rattling w lesbian dustevie… stevie x dusty…. my girls…..

[letthefairyinyoufly]

Though deeply devoted to his studies… …he still makes time for the occasional adventure.

[emziess]

Joe Keery & Gaten Matarazzo on Joe Keery's last day on set One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 Documentary

[not-so-mundane-after-all]

# so did we, Dustin. So did we

[dustinn-henderson]

the best friendship ever.

[djo-e]

brothers

[mothmadds]

my babies🥺

[steveintheupsidedown]

Behind the scenes.