#If you still can't find it... take a look at the cityscape. More specifically the building on the far right

[stardestroyer81]

I've been on a Super Mario Bros. kick lately from having snagged a copy of the standalone game at a game store in-town (Now, I have three versions of SMB on NES!), and seeing how the simplicity of the game's visual style has grown on me, I wanted to attempt spriting in its style... and who better to sprite than myself? 💖✨

But that's not all! Not only was I able to craft a SMB-styled sprite of yours truly, but I also went the extra mile and designed an entire NES black box for a StarDestroyer81 twist of Super Mario Bros... Super Star Sisters! There's a lot of little details to share about the above three images, though I'll save those for the tags! Seeya down there if you're interested in reading on!

[munson-blurbs]

Hey my love I have a request for you, I'm a sucker for the one bed trope so I hope you forgive me. I was thinking maybe of a reader who's been Corroded Coffin's manager since high school, where she was just booking their gigs for free, but now that they've made it big it's more serious. She takes so much on and gets everything the guys need or want, no matter the effort, until she fucks up one night and has a breakdown. She accidentally books one less room than she meant too, a small thing, but she's been under so much stress that it causes her to crack. Eddie comforts her and she sleeps in his bed with him, where they might admit their feelings?

Sorry if this was too specific

Not too specific at all! I love it!

Warnings: language, bed sharing, no smut

WC: 1.5k

--

"This is it, baby!" Eddie says as the taxi van pulls up to the hotel. "N-Y-C! We made it!" His smile is so wide, you're worried it might fall off of his face. "Who would've thought that four schmucks from Hawkins, Indiana would be playing Radio City?"

I always knew, you think. You've been managing Corroded Coffin since high school, first booking gigs at school dances and local hole-in-the-wall venues. You'd assumed that the guys would find a new manager once they signed with a record label, but they'd insisted you stick around.

"I can't wait to wash the airplane stink off of me," Jeff complains. "What are the room arrangements again?"

"You and Gareth, Eddie and Trevor, and then me," you tell him.

Gareth audibly groans at the assignments. "Why do you get your own room?" he whines.

"When you have boobs, you can have your own room," you retort, and you hear Eddie's laughter hum through the car.

"She's got ya there, dude," he ribs him. "Now help me get all of this shit out of the trunk."

You pay the cab driver and thank him as the guys unload the luggage and instruments, still arguing over the rooms.

"Welcome to the Cityscape Hotel," a bored-looking receptionist drones from behind the oak desk. Her silver-plated name tag reads Faye. "What name is the reservation under?"

You give her your name as she looks it up in the reservation book. "Yup, I see it here. Two king rooms, correct?"

"Um, no," you stammer, palms sweating. "Should be three rooms: one king and two queens."

Faye clucks her tongue and tilts her head, rereading the entry. "Mm, nope. We only have you down for the two kings."

"N-no, I'm sure I booked..." You feel your cheeks burning as the guys stare at you. Fuck. "Do you have any other rooms we can book?" You have the record label's credit card in your wallet, so you could pay any price.

"We're completely sold out this weekend," she informs you, not an ounce of remorse in her voice. "The rooms have pull-out beds that fit one, though."

"See?" Eddie chimes in, throwing an arm around you comfortingly. "It'll all work out. We'll just re-arrange things."

"Who are you gonna bunk with?" Gareth asks you pointedly. "Looks like your boobs aren't getting you out of this one."

You huff, trying to blink away the tears. You had one fucking job and you blew it, the weekend of their biggest gig yet.

"I'll stay with her," Eddie offers, "if that's okay with you," he adds, gazing at you with his chocolate brown eyes.

"Y-yeah, that's fine," you mumble. The thought of sharing a room with Eddie makes you hot all over. You've had the fattest, most embarrassing crush on him since high school; now, five years after graduation, you'd never so much as considered telling him.

"Great! It's settled then!" Eddie grabs your room key off of the desk and motions to the luggage on the ground. "Let's get this shit unpacked so we can get something to eat. I'm starving!"

After chowing down on some incredible pizza--no one does it like New York City--you all head back to your rooms. Traveling always exhausts you, and you're desperately craving a good night's sleep.

"I'll take the couch," Eddie tells you as he unlocks the door. "You can have the bed."

"Such a gentleman," you tease, "but are you sure? I'm not the one playing Radio City tomorrow."

Eddie nods. "Positive." He starts to pull out the sofa bed, groaning when the spring sticks. Re-adjusting his grip, he tries again, to no avail.

"Everything okay?" you ask, grabbing your toothbrush from your suitcase.

"It's, uh, it's broken," he laments. "You wanna try?"

"Sure," you shrug. You give it a shot, but you're just as successful as Eddie was. "Fuck!" you cry out, kicking the leg and wincing in pain. Tears spill over your lashes as you plop down onto the bed. You rest your head in your hands as the sobs wrack your body. "Nothing is going right!"

"Whoa," Eddie breathes, sitting down next to you and rubbing your back. "It's totally okay."

"No, it's not!" you protest. "I wanted everything to be perfect, and I ruined it. I'm so sorry, Eddie."

"Ruined--sweetheart, without you, we would never have even made it this far," he brushes a lock of your hair behind your ear. "You're the one who got us that meeting with the label exec, remember? We owe all of this to you."

You sniffle and rest your head on his shoulder. "You're just saying that so I'll stop crying."

"Nope," he gives you a small smile. "We'd still be playing to our crowd of five drunks at the Hideout if you weren't our manager." He stands up and offers his hand. "C'mon, let's get ready for bed. The lack of sleep probably isn't helping."

"B-but where are you gonna sleep?" you ask quietly.

He frowns, crinkling his nose. "Maybe we could share the bed? No weird stuff, I promise." He holds up his hands in surrender, making you giggle.

The two of you wash up before bed; the whole routine seems extraordinarily domestic for people who aren't in a relationship. Eddie nudges your hip while you brush your teeth together, and you flick his bicep in retaliation.

"Nice pajamas," he jokes, pointing at the oversized Corroded Coffin t-shirt that covers most of your shorts. "Are they any good?"

"Eh," you shrug. "They've got one or two songs I like. I actually found this shirt in the dumpster."

Eddie gasps in mock-offense. "How dare you!" he bellows, and you shush him before any of the other guests can make a noise complaint.

You turn off the lights and climb into bed. Eddie gets in next to you, wearing just his undershirt and boxer shorts. You feel the heat radiating from his body, and you wish you had the courage to snuggle into him.

"Good night," you say softly. You're so tired; you should fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow, but the nerves coursing through your veins have other plans.

"Hey, Y/N?" Eddie muses. "Can I ask you something?"

"Mm?"

He sighs. "How come you're only managing us? Not that we don't want you to," he adds hastily, "but you could be doing anything else. Managing much bigger talent, to be honest."

"I love being your manager," you tell him. "It's been amazing watching your dreams come true. My little rockstars are all grown up." You wipe an imaginary tear from your eyes.

"I'm serious!" he whines, and you realize he's inched closer to you, his chin resting on your shoulder. You can smell the minty aftertaste of his toothpaste on his breath. "I can't believe you've stuck with us this long."

Because I love you, you think, but you push the idea aside. "I never thought I'd make a career out of it, but maybe I could. I can make business cards and everything!" The thought excites you; you'd been toying with the idea of being a professional manager, but it sounded silly until Eddie said it.

"B-but you wouldn't stop being our manager, right?" Eddie stutters. "Because I-we still need you." He rubs his his face. "Fuck. I'm really nervous right now."

You nuzzle into him. "You have no reason to be nervous, Eds," you reassure him. "You're gonna kill it out there tomorrow. This city isn't gonna know what hit 'em."

"No," he shakes his head, his mop of curls tickling your face. "I'm nervous because--because I really, really fuckin' like you, Y/N. And being next to you in this bed...God, this is gonna sound so lame, but I just wanna hold you." He gives a short laugh. "Prettiest girl in the world is in my bed, and I can only think about being a big spoon."

"Technically, you're in my bed," you correct him playfully. "But I'd like it if you held me. And I'm definitely more of a little spoon, so it sounds meant to be." You shift so your back is against his chest, his strong arm draped over your torso. After a few minutes, you feel him press soft kisses to the nape of your neck, and your heart flutters.

"'M sorry," he pulls back, realizing what he's doing.

You turn to face him, bringing nose to nose. "Don't be." And before you lose your courage, you bring your lips to his. His hand instinctively flies to your face, cupping your cheek as he deepens the kiss, breaking it only to take a breath.

"All right, rockstar," you say sleepily, kissing his nose before settling back into your cuddling position. "Get some rest. You have a big day ahead of you."

"Yeah," Eddie mumbles into his pillow, rubbing his thumb along your arm, "like I'm really gonna sleep after that."

--

[coffee-cait]

Hi there @tea-n-ink !

Figured it'd be easier to try and answer this as a post rather than in comments. I'll try to answer the best I can but in all honesty I'm not entirely sure how to answer this question in a way that will be satisfying or insightful. Because while I have an education in visual media and work in the field (which contributes to the studying and progress), a lot of my personal work has been (for lack of a better way to phrase it) "fucking around and finding out" for better AND for worse. A lot of how I work is both in contrast to what's required of me of my job but also based on habits built to perform that job. So I'm not confident in how much I could recommend approaching art the way I do or how applicable it will be. I can only speak to my own experience. Everyone will want to achieve and pursue different things with their art so I don't think there's going to be a specific answer of exactly what to do. I think I can only recommend some amount of framework to consider at best? I'm also not a good writer and struggle to articulate specifics especially when it comes to my creative process because it's very uh…. soupy? unstructured? But I want to make an attempt! I'm so sorry if this ends up being a rambling mess.

I haven't done studies/ brushing up on basics for a few years and I'm actively feeling the limits of how I draw because of that. So I absolutely would recommend brushing up on the fundamentals and doing studies every now and then to help prevent that kind of rut. I feel like it's something to do relatively consistently? It's like stretching and exercising a muscle to keep it in shape. However, how much and how frequent a person does that is going to be up to them based on what their lifestyle is and I feel this is more of something to consider to do long term over time rather than in short term bursts. But if you have the time to do a lot in the short term and won't impede life responsibilities then that's great! Just remember to take breaks because sometimes what you've learned and observed needs time to sink in. But also to protect your hands and physical health.

As for the "just do studies" / what studies to do, I guess a bit of a combination answer incoming? Because of the nature of my job (what is asked of me and MIGHT be asked of me), doing studies is going to be of the vague/broad variety because of how much possible ground I might need to cover. So I've done studies, sketches, looked at reference material etc. of a bunch of different things for years. A majority was outside of my comfort zone and I think it's important to try to to challenge yourself in such a way every once in a while. And definitely trying to explore many different topics (people, plants, architecture, animals, etc) will give more knowledge and possibilities of things to draw. However, it's also not very realistic to expect anyone to study everything to its minutia. I sure can't! I can try my best to draw some basic structures but I don't have enough knowledge and practice to make a convincing cityscape. And even with all the dabbling in different topics I've had to do, I still focus in more on the most likely things that's required of me or what I personally enjoy to draw on my free time. That tends to be characters. So when I do need to brush up I lean towards anatomy, musculature, human observation, that sort of thing. And I feel regardless of what anyone's style is, If you want to draw figures of any sort, practicing and revisiting that is always helpful! Also doing studies of specific things you want to improve on or things you are aware are your weakness is also an avenue I recommend. I think the last studies I did was of hands because it was something I wanted to improve on at the time. And I think it's high time I give buildings another shot.

As for style it wasn't something I actively worked on or envisioned. Rather, it was the inevitable mishmash of the aesthetic choices I liked in the artwork I enjoyed, habits I formed and not wanting to draw how I needed to during work hours. And this was a slow and gradual process over my whole life so far and it'll keep on going as long as I continue doing art. And I wouldn't consider it a linear progression either as there were many points where I backpedaled on certain choices because I didn't want to do things like that anymore and went another direction. As for how to develop and refine this actively, I can't say for sure. But what I can say is a person's style will be a love letter to the things they enjoy. Inevitably you'll be influenced by the things that speak to you and you might not realize it until years down the line. In my case, Jet Set Radio was something I played as a kid and it deeply impacted how I drew and what art I gravitated to for years before I realized how formative it was. The more you consume what you enjoy, the more it'll show in your art whether consciously or not. I suppose a potential exercise that can be done is maybe looking at several pieces of art you enjoy and trying to figure out exactly what it is about them that you like? Especially if maybe you find a common element to their styles that really speaks to you that you'd like to incorporate into your own art? While I can't say how effective this'll actually be, if I were to say, "Jet Set Radio, The World Ends With You and Dogs: Bullets & Carnage are things that had a lasting impression on me," and then you were to look at my art I think that statement would track.

But I also want to note that when I create I'M ACTUALLY VERY UNSURE OF MYSELF. I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT IM DOING WITH COLOURS AND I'M CONSTANTLY JUST HOPING FOR THE BEST EVERY TIME EVEN THOUGH I DID GO TO SCHOOL FOR WHAT I DO AND I SURE DO WORK HERE NOW. I rely a lot on my gut for things and end up trying over and over, sometimes fully scrapping and then unscrapping before my art gets to whatever I post online. And many things just never end up online. Sometimes things don't work out, and that's ok. And sometimes it feels like things won't work out but then they do. So don't feel discouraged when things don't work out the way you planned. I've found for myself, having a plan in my head of how i want to progress would just contribute to my already abundant anxieties so just letting things happen as they do was really helpful (outside of actual critical deadlines and professional responsibilities). There's always chances to try again and sometimes all you need is a break and to come back to what you were working on with fresh eyes.

I dunno how well this answers your question but I hope you were able to find something helpful amongst my brain soup.