#fans don't make reboots happen

[baneonn]

People thinking rwby is going to get a reboot are hilarious

[alkeneater]

im with you 😭 i hate the reboot and the way it ruined the characters forever but theres some aspects of it which i really like and want to consider canon like cleo being explicitly wlw, some of the new characters and whatever the hell jfk and abe had going on, but there's other stuff which id rather forget or pretend isn't canon

I understand you bro! It's not like I hate everything about the reboot, it has some very interesting aspects and details and i do respect them. But yeaahhhh... Some things are just.... let's just pretend they don't exist <3

Honestly i rewatch the reboot more often than the first season and it is pretty fun in general, makes you feel strong emotions (ANGER IS ALSO AN EMOTION BTW), but i'm doomed to skip many scenes (or close my eyes during them lol) just because 1) they're not funny at all 2) they are disgusting 3) they don't make any sense and make me cringe

And if you ignore like 70% of the reboot suddenly it becomes easier to enjoy, funnier and doesn't suck that much <3

Anyways i still respect others opinion on the reboot, i know there are people who fully enjoy it or hate it completely, everything is pretty much subjective!!

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Fandom things I'm looking forward to:

Kingdom Hearts IV and Missing Link

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy IX Remake

Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster or Remake (whichever it is. I've heard both things)

The fourth Madoka Magica movie, whenever that comes out (seriously. Where is it? First it was announced as the Concept movie. Then it was re-announced years later with a new name, and it's still missing)

The Percy Jackson TV show

The Infernal Devices TV show

Maybe the Twilight TV show. Maybe.

The animated Smallville continuation that Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum are working on, whenever it comes out

I was going to put Baron and Toluca on this list (that's, like, a spiritual successor to the OG "Roswell" TV show. Majandra Delfino who played Maria in the show wrote the script, and she and Brendan Fehr who played Michael star in it. They're also planning for more Roswell cameos in later episodes), but it came out and I didn't even know it? But I have no idea how to watch it, though, as I guess it only came out in theaters in Albuquerque. Here's hoping it comes out on DVD or something...

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

The alleged Firefly reboot

The new Daredevil show

The Batman Part II

The next part in Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies

The DCU, starting with Superman Legacy in 2025

The Five Nights at Freddy's movie and Help Wanted 2

The Iron Lung movie

The TV show that it sounds like Markiplier will be working on after he's done with the Iron Lung movie

The next Bendy and the Ink Machine thing being worked on

MAYBE the Hello Neighbor sequel. I know. I KNOW! (It's really only because the second game had to end on a cliffhanger.)

Five Nights at Candy's 4

Frozen III

Disney's "Wish"

The next and final season of the Clear Card arc of Cardcaptor Sakura

The new Avatar series (the one about the third Avatar in the cycle: the Earth bender)

The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, perhaps

The Chosen season 4

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

The day has finally come. Many, understandably, thought we'd never get here. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten here. We've been through so much. Lawsuits, reboots, redesigns, unreleased NFTs, empty legal threats over the fact that movie Knuckles has a dad, an attempt to license out Scourge the Hedgehog to fans that immediately got canceled (in both meanings of the term), and many, MANY idiotic Twitter controversies. But now, here we are.

Thirteen years after first announcing it in the middle of his legal battles with Archie and Sega that changed the American Sonic comics forever, former writer Ken Penders has released the first part of his new series: The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Yes. I had to buy the book. I had to take one for the team. Look at the fucking URL of this blog, a blog I've been using to talk about the American Sonic comics for nearly a decade while the specter of this book loomed in the distance. The one time I've actually been paid to write an article about anything in any professional capacity, it was an article about the Penders lawsuits. I'm cited on his Wikipedia page. There was no way I was going to skip reviewing this, and there was no guarantee that scans would ever turn up online given the incredibly small audience for this trash. (Only 166 people preordered this, and even that number feels way higher than it should be.) No, I had to preorder it to ensure I could get a copy and cover it for the blog... even if that meant my name would be forever immortalized in the list of "supporters" in the back of the book. These are the sacrifices I must make as a woman who stumbled ass backwards into being an amateur Archie Sonic historian.

So, what exactly is in this book? How much of it is new? How bad is it? How did we even get here in the first place? How can this exist without Sega pursuing legal action? What happens next? And, most importantly... why are there multiple depictions of an Archie Sonic character breastfeeding in this book?

I'm here to answer those questions as best I can, and in agonizing detail.

First, for those just tuning in to this decades-long saga or those who maybe don't know the full story, here's a refresher on the background info.

"What the hell is this?"

The Lara-Su Chronicles is Ken Penders' long-dreaded long-awaited continuation of his 1994-2006 run on Archie Sonic, ignoring everything written after he left by other writers like Ian Flynn. In particular, it picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the 2003-2004 arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later," which was set in what Ken considers the definitive canonical future of the series. It stars Knuckles' daughter from that future era, Lara-Su, among other new and returning characters. The project was first announced near the start of Ken's legal battle with Archie in 2011, and he's been posting WIP previews online for about a decade. Now, after all this time, a Lara-Su Chronicles book finally exists.

We'll get to the actual contents of that book in a bit.

"He can do that without getting in trouble with Sega?"

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

Thanks to the outcome of Archie Comics' woefully mismanaged lawsuits against Ken (yes, they sued him after he started filing for copyrights, not the other way around), he now has full legal ownership of every story he wrote for Archie Sonic and every character he created for the series. This was explicitly granted to him in the terms of the settlement between him and Archie (acting on behalf of Sega). He can even reprint his old Sonic material as-is to his heart's content. The main catch is just that he can't write new stories featuring Sega characters or trademarks, and his new stories also have to be distinct from Sonic at a glance to avoid confusing readers. As such, reprints can't use Sonic iconography on the cover, a few Sega characters (mainly Knuckles) have been renamed and slightly redesigned in the new stories, and the art style has been changed to less closely resemble Sonic. But otherwise, he can do whatever he wants with his own characters.

All of this is because Archie lost the original copy of Ken's work-for-hire contract that signed over the rights to his work. Without that (or any alternative that was considered permissible in court), his comics and characters are the property of their creator by default. Yes, those old comics are full of Sega stuff, but Sega doesn't automatically own the copyright for every drawing of Sonic in existence. And Sega put their stamp of approval all over those comics and let them get sold at retail for decades, even though (in the eyes of the court) there was no legal paperwork granting them ownership of any of it. It's almost like they were unwittingly distributing a fan comic for years and declaring it a fair use of their property, and now there's no takesies backsies. It's a strange and unique copyright situation. Again, they worked all this out in the settlement. And, yes, fans have long speculated that Ken stole and destroyed his own contract to regain the rights to his work, but frankly Archie was so incompetent throughout the lawsuit (it went so bad that they had to fire and replace their lawyers midway through) that I completely buy the idea of them just losing important legal documents.

Also, in case it needs to be spelled out: while Ken's a weirdo, it's ultimately a good thing for creatives everywhere that Archie lost their lawsuit against Ken. We do not want to live in a world where corporations can claim ownership of peoples' work without the contracts to back it up. That would be an incredibly dangerous legal precedent to set. And more comic creators, and artists in general, should own their own work! Corporations are not your friend! They'll delete your work for a tax write-off in a heartbeat! It's just bewildering that this guy, of all people, was the creator who ended up successfully getting his shit back, and that this is what he's doing with it.

"What about his old collaborators? Are they involved? Is he paying them?"

Ken is mostly doing The Lara-Su Chronicles solo, though he has, in fact, talked about compensating the artists involved in any material he's reprinting. The ones who give enough of a shit to get paid for a small scale reprint of something they did 20 years ago, anyway.

On the subject of his collaborators, it's also worth pointing out that Ken's wasn't the only contract that was lost. Most of the early Archie Sonic writers from before Ian Flynn's time seem to be in the same boat as Ken, with the ownership of their stories and characters defaulting back to them. Again, Archie fucked up big time. But like I said, most of them don't really seem to give a shit. For most of them, Sonic was just a random temporary gig they took to pay the bills while Marvel was busy going bankrupt in the '90s, not the thing that defined their entire careers.

The only other Archie Sonic contributor who's tried to do anything on the level of what Ken is doing was writer and editor Scott Fulop. In 2016 he attempted to sue Archie for the unauthorized use of what are now retroactively considered his copyrighted characters and stories, and he even announced a standalone comic about his most famous Sonic character, the recurring villain Mammoth Mogul (sort of a pastiche of DC's Vandal Savage and Marvel's Kingpin, with wizard powers added for spice). However, Fulop lost his lawsuit because he didn't put together a particularly compelling case. Since then he seems to have wiped all traces of his ill-advised Mammoth Mogul comic and his company, Narrative Ark Entertainment, from the internet. For now, this leaves The Lara-Su Chronicles the only project of its kind.

"What about those other Archie Sonic reprints he just announced?"

At the time of writing, Ken is once again claiming that he's trying to get the band back together to reprint all of Archie Sonic, now under the bad new banner "Floating Island Productions: MOBIAN LINE" that I can't imagine he consulted literally anyone else on.

So, like, look. As we've established, Ken can reprint his own stories. And if he can work something out with the other contributors whose contracts were lost, he can print their work, too. But there is no fucking way he's getting his hands on Ian Flynn's run, which Sega undoubtedly holds the copyright for. Even if they don't, Ian needs to maintain a good working relationship with both Sega and IDW if he's to keep his job, so he'd never go for this. Not to mention that Ian and Ken just... don't get along! Ken's whole plan here seems to be predicated on IDW going out of business (a thing he REALLY wants to happen) and freeing up the Sonic comic license, after which he knocks on Sega's door and goes "hey I've still got dirt on you guys," blackmailing them into giving him the Sonic license back so that he can reprint the later comics. Every step of this plan is ludicrous. It's never gonna happen.

He's been saying he wants to reprint the whole series for a few years now, though. This isn't really anything new. And despite his lofty plans that set Sonic Twitter ablaze, he quickly backpedaled. The only specific things in the works right now are a "two-volume omnibus" of all of his Knuckles stories and a collection of artist Scott Shaw's work on the very early Archie Sonic issues, since they're on good terms with each other. I have no idea how Ken plans on packaging these when he can't put any Sega characters or the Freedom Fighters on the covers, but these projects are small enough in scale that there's a decent chance they'll see the light of day. Scott Shaw only did like five issues. But anything beyond that? I'll believe it when I see it.

Or, y'know, this could've all just been a publicity stunt for his new book. I wouldn't put it past him. Let's just focus on the book that actually exists.

"So he finally did it? He made a whole Lara-Su book? It's out? He finished it??"

Yes and no.

The book that's out now is The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings, a prologue for the series of seven graphic novels Ken somehow plans on making, even though it's taken him 13 years to put out literally anything new. I don't know whether or not this counts as book one of seven, because it only features 30 pages of new comics. 30.5 if I'm being generous.

Most of the book is actually just a reprint of his infamous Archie Sonic storyline "Mobius: 25 Years Later", which ran from issue #131 to #144 in 2003-2004. (Again, yes, he can reprint this, he just can't put Sonic on the cover.) Why's it infamous? Well, Ken had been building anticipation for this future era of the series for basically his entire run. We kept seeing King Sonic and Queen Sally from the future. Knuckles' entire backstory hinges on his dad having a vision of this future. Several years before Silver the Hedgehog was created, it was Lara-Su who was Sonic's equivalent to Future Trunks, the cool-looking child of one of the main characters who traveled back in time to try and prevent a dark future. Believe it or not, yes, there was hype for Lara-Su. And then we finally got M25YL, and none of that cool stuff happened. Instead it really ended up being about how unbearably boring the middle aged Sonic, Knuckles, Sally, and co. are in this peaceful future where Robotnik is dead and they're all married with kids, forced into traditional nuclear family gender roles. Lara-Su is present, but she mostly just does generic teen girl stuff and complains about how Knuckles won't let her do anything even though she REALLY wants to be the new Guardian of Angel Island, like, super bad! Come on, dad!!!

In its original printing, this meandering arc ended on an abrupt time travel cliffhanger that Ken was never able to follow up on before he left Archie in 2006. This new printing slightly changes that ending, using the unresolved timey-wimey shenanigans as a convenient excuse to alter the entire timeline. This creates the slightly different world of The Lara-Su Chronicles, where the few relevant Sega-owned characters have been replaced and everyone is ten times uglier.

After this, we finally get two short new stories picking up where M25YL left off: "The Storm," starring Acorn Kingdom super-spy and known creep Geoffrey St. John, and an early release of the first chapter of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows, the first full TLSC graphic novel.

And now that we're all on the same page about what we're looking at, let's actually talk about the book!

The cover

Let's start by beating a dead horse. The cover art: it's still bad! But why is it bad?

The cover is, of course, based on Patrick Spaziante's cover from Archie Sonic #131, the start of the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" arc. (Ken did the layout for that cover, though, so in the eyes of the law he's the original creator who owns that cover.) That cover was, itself, a tribute to the iconic cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum, the issue that introduced the version of the team with Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, etc.

Ken seems to have forgotten that the point of both these covers was to hype up the arrival of a new cast of characters. The new guys are supposed to make a dramatic entrance front and center. That's the focal point. Meanwhile, the cover for Beginnings has the old timeline versions of the cast from Archie Sonic dramatically bursting out of a shattered crystal ball, while their new counterparts look on in mild bemusement - if they're even bothering to look at all, since most of the characters here are just copied and pasted from their profile pages. That's just not how you do this particular homage! The point is supposed to be "out with the old, in with the new." And why are they using a crystal ball to view the past? Hell, why are they even using a crystal ball at all? The original arc was presented as a magical vision of the future courtesy of Tails' uncle Merlin (don't ask), but the new story leans all the way into being futuristic sci-fi.

Of course, there is no real artistic intent at play here. The old versions of the characters are placed front and center in the crystal ball simply because Ken traced over Spaziante's original art of Lara-Su and Julie-Su (the only two characters on the Sonic cover he owns) and threw out the rest, ruining the composition in the process. Look at the awkward empty space where Sonic, Sally, and Rotor once were, and the new drawing of The Character Formerly Known As Knuckles who's no longer properly centered between his wife and daughter. Even if Ken can claim ownership of the cover because he did the original layout, this all just feels scummy and lame.

And, yeah, if it needs to be said, the new characters and Ken's new rendering style look like absolute fucking dogshit. Putting new Lara-Su directly next to old Lara-Su does her no favors. The shattered glass effect looks absolutely atrocious. I could go on, but we'll have plenty of time to talk about the art style when we see how bad the stories inside look.

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

Overall, 99% of M25YL is presented identically to its original printing. Sonic, Sally, Knuckles, et al. are still present with no changes to their names and no tweaks to the art. Even the original cover for issue #131 is included only a few pages into this book with its Archie, Sonic, and Sega logos still intact and everything. Again, because of the weird copyright situation described above, these preexisting comics can be released without any changes.

There is exactly one bizarre change to the art, though, where a hand drawn shot of Angel Island is replaced with an unfitting photo background and the ugly Floating Island photobash that Ken has been using as his personal logo for decades. I think he only did this as part of a test for his motion comic app that nobody asked for. I don't know why this had to make it into the print version. It's like the book is firing a warning shot for what's to come if you keep reading.

The new content begins on the final page of M25YL. In the original wet fart of a cliffhanger ending, Sonic and co. accidentally alter the timeline with an old time machine of Robotnik's and Lara-Su begins to fade away. Then, after everything goes white, we just cut to the present day heroes going "gee, you ever think about the future?" In this new printing, that last bit has been cut, and the rest of the page has been awkwardly shrunk down so that Ken can fit in a new panel. We now see the hands of an off-screen villain, seemingly named "Override," proclaiming that "the Praetorian" (Knuckles) has messed up the timeline again and that they'll finally get their revenge.

Who is this Override? I have no fucking clue. The new stories in this book make no mention of them. You have to buy the next book to find out.

My confusion over the identity of this villain overlaps with another big problem: name changes. So many names and nouns have been arbitrarily changed in The Lara-Su Chronicles, even ones Ken didn't have to change for copyright reasons, and I only know what half of them are replacing because Ken's been tweeting about this shit for years.

The echidnas are now a totally original alien race called "the Echyd'nya." Even in flashbacks to events from M25YL attempting to mimic the old art style, if it's on a new comic page, they're gonna call themselves "Echyd'nya." Evil echidna faction the Dark Legion is now the "Cyberdark Dominion," hailing from the "Cyberdark Colony." The Brotherhood of Guardians is still the Brotherhood of Guardians, but now the main guardian is called "The Praetorian." Angel Island is still called "The Floating Island," like it was in the older Archie comics, but it's ALSO sometimes called "Avion"? When I read this I wasn't sure if he had randomly renamed Albion, the other echidna city from the Archie comics. But no. Now we have an Albion AND an Avion. Sally is mentioned simply as "Princess Acorn," while Sonic is referenced once as an unnamed "blue-spined Erinaceinae," using the scientific name for hedgehog to make it sound more sci-fi. In an incredibly ballsy move, Ken even mentions Robotnik as "the Insurrectionist Kintobor," retaining his original surname from the Archie comics that's just "Robotnik" backwards. Guess Sega never trademarked that one.

Aside from every name change being a downgrade, this leads to confusion when you're not sure if something is supposed to be new, or if it's just an Archie thing you're supposed to recognize despite having a new name and design. Is "Override" someone I'm supposed to know already? Am I just supposed to have read a fucking tweet from Ken where he said he changed the name of some existing villain to "Override"? The answer is no, but I had to term search his Twitter just to verify this.

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

If you've been following the WIPs, this is that story about Geoffrey St. John that Ken's been posting previews of for almost a decade. The title page copyright dates it to 2015, and that absurdly long gestation is probably why the art is so inconsistent here. Even the style of speech bubbles and the font change between pages two and three.

This is a problem when there's supposed to be a deliberate and noticeable change in art style here signaling the moment where the time travel stuff alters the timeline, replacing the Archie Sonic world with the Lara-Su Chronicles world. If you don't already know that's what's going on, the idea isn't conveyed clearly at all. It just goes from one hideous art style to a slightly different one with no explanation.

The main problem here is that Ken has hitched his wagon to a franchise about anthropomorphic animals when he can't draw furries to save his life. (Though a bit later in the book we'll also begin to wonder if he can even still draw humans.) He's shifted away from the cartooniness of the original designs and given them more human proportions and facial features, but this just ends up making them look incredibly uncanny and lumpy and gross. With some designs he's trying to lean into more of a Star Trek alien vibe, but then he still insists upon retaining the giant Sonic eyes on most characters even though he has no idea how to make them emote.

The rendering of these godawful designs doesn't do them any favors, either. Ken's going for more of a painterly look now, but it almost seems as though he's shading everything with Photoshop's burn and dodge tools that are designed to darken and lighten select areas of a photo. The result is a muddy, smudgy look that makes it feel like the color layer has been smeared in vaseline. And it only looks worse after coming off of 14 chapters of M25YL that have way more palatable art.

The backgrounds, too, are a complete mess, a jumble of low res jpeg photo elements (sometimes with extremely noticeable pixelation), stock textures, and smooth digital gradients. There's no real sense of place here, and it gives everything a surreal, dreamlike quality when you can't really tell where anything is supposed to take place. This first story is seemingly set in a high-tech stronghold below Castle Acorn called "the Bunker," but it could just as easily be confused for the bridge of a spaceship. This whole story features characters speaking to each other over floating video displays and hologram projectors from three different locations, but without a hologram effect and without a clear sense of where the characters are it often feels like they're just in the same room as each other. Characters will be in one location on one photo background, and then the camera angle changes and they're in a completely different place, because Ken just uses mismatched photos off of the internet. It's been like 25 years since he first tried using photo backgrounds in the Archie comics and he hasn't gotten any better at it.

When I had my boyfriend read the book to see if it made literally any sense to him (it didn't), Anthony said this: "This is the kind of shit I'd see linked on a Second Life world that hasn't been touched since 2004." I think he really hit the nail on the head. Now, there's actually a contrarian part of me that thinks that might theoretically almost be kind of cool, in sort of a messy counterculture way. I love weird indie shit. I was a Homestuck reader! But this isn't a scrappy mixed media zine, or experimental outsider art from someone just messing around with Photoshop, or a loving throwback to weird old internet art, or even something intentionally bizarre and offputting like Xavier: Renegade Angel or a PilotRedSun video or whatever where the fact that it's weird and ugly is part of the humor. This is supposed to be a sincere sci-fi epic drawing on Star Trek and Jack Kirby comics, made by a guy who's been drawing comics professionally since the '80s. This is supposed to look good. This is supposed to compete with mainstream comics that are on sale right now. He thinks any day now IDW's gonna go out of business and Sega will come crawling back to him so that he can stamp the Sonic logo on shit like this. It just doesn't work.

But, okay. It's ugly. We knew it would be ugly. But that ugliness would be much easier to accept if it was in service of an otherwise genuinely good story. So what about the writing? After all this time, how does Ken choose to kick off this new saga? Well, credit where credit's due. "The Storm" feels like a proper continuation of Ken's writing style from M25YL.

Because it's eleven pages of characters standing around and talking while nothing fucking happens.

Here's the synopsis: A dog woman named Brownie, an ensign in the Royal Secret Service fresh out of training and the only character who's almost cute, walks up to Geoffrey to deliver a report. He's immediately suspicious of her, asking who let her in and if she's a spy for Elias (Sally's brother, if you're new here) or Alicia (Sally's mom). The art style suddenly shifts when the timeline is altered, but the scene continues uninterrupted. Geoffrey points a gun at Brownie when she won't say whose spy she is. Geoffrey is distracted by a call and proceeds to have a conversation via a mix of holograms and video screens with Remington (head of Echidnaopolis security), Spectre (Knuckles' great great great great great grandpa, the one with the helmet who always looks evil), and a new scientist character named Dr. Zephyr/Zephur. (The spelling of this character's name changes multiple times throughout the 11-page story, because I guess nine years wasn't enough time to spellcheck this shit.) They say a bunch of made up technobabble nonsense about how it looks like the timeline was just altered and Knuckles and co. seem to be involved. It's complete drivel that I'm not even going to try to make sense of. Everyone decides to investigate further, and the conversation ends. Brownie tells Geoffrey she's his spy, then walks out and implies she's actually Alicia's spy in her inner monologue.

To be continued!!!

Yes, that's it. It's really just a bunch of technobabble where some characters talk about how it seems like the timeline has been fucked with. That's it. The whole time Geoffrey doesn't even get up out of his damn chair, which he's of course sitting in backwards to show how cool he is. It's just 11 pages of Geoffrey sitting in a chair and talking to people and looking uglier than he's ever looked. Nothing happens. Nine years for this.

I'm also struck by how meaningless all of this is to anyone who hasn't read Archie Sonic. The added context from M25YL may help a little, but "The Storm" focuses on characters who weren't in that arc, and the story does very little to introduce who any of them are. Brownie could've been super useful as an inexperienced point of view character who's only meeting the others for the first time here, but instead she's really just a passive observer who's here as part of some kind of 4D chess game between Geoffrey and Alicia, an off-screen character whose motivations in this era of the story are completely unknown to even returning readers. Who are the good guys and bad guys here? What are the conflicts and the stakes of the story moving forward? What do these characters want? Basic questions like this aren't really answered. I can't imagine a new reader being able to make heads or tails of this. Hell, I can't really imagine a returning reader who hasn't been following the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets about this story making heads or tails of it, either.

...Maybe more will happen in the next story?

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

After another message from Ken, the story of The Lara-Su Chronicles proper begins with the redesigned Lara-Su walking along a jpeg photograph beach at sunset and crying while thinking about how Knuckles - sorry, his name is K'Nox now - is dead.

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

Look, I'm the last person to complain about writers getting super personal and drawing from their own baggage in their writing, but Ken's just no fucking good at it. There's no nuance, nothing interesting to say. He just keeps writing mediocre-to-horrible dads whose misdeeds are always justified by their "good intentions," and then sometimes they die and their kids are like "we may have fought but actually you were the bestest dad ever and I'll miss you forever, I'll never be able to fill your shoes!"

This is the only part of the new material here that feels like it has any heart behind it, because I know how much his complex relationship with his late deadbeat father means to Ken (there's an author's note in this outright saying as much). But the guy died 42 years ago, and it doesn't feel like Ken has had any new thoughts about this part of his life in those four decades. He's just not an introspective or self-aware enough artist to actually mine his personal baggage for anything beyond "father knows best."

Anyway, so then it jumps forward in time(?) and now we're following this human guy who looks like this.

Previously, Ken got a lot of shit for literally just using the likeness of Anthony Mackie for this guy, based on his IMDB profile photo. Ken has thus redesigned the character... and by that I mean I think he looks more like Ernie Hudson now? Ken's clearly just working off of photo references (if not straight up tracing), given his face is the most detailed and realistic-looking thing on any page where he's present.

But you may be wondering: who is this, and why is he here? Well, for one, he's here to run around in front of some low res space photos while making trite references to things like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek. Haha, he makes a joke about red shirts! Original!! But beyond that, Commander Mykhal Taelor (yes, that's really how he chose to spell it) is a human... from Earth! Archie Sonic readers are probably confused, because in those comics Mobius is Earth in the distant post-apocalyptic future. Well, despite being a Planet of the Apes fan, Ken always hated that particular worldbuilding decision from Karl Bollers, always preferring to think of Mobius as a separate alien planet. And now he gets to make that canon in his own stories and throw out Karl's ideas. So Mobius is basically just, like, a Star Trek planet now, with its own alien creatures that sometimes just so happen to look like anthropomorphic Earth animals.

Also, at one point Taelor wonders if the inhabitants of the dead Mobius might have been human, and the alien ally he's talking to over the radio says it's unlikely. "I don't understand why your kind has a problem understanding you're a minority within a minority." Perhaps poor wording for a line said to the only Black character in the story.

Anyway, Commander Taelor here seems to have discovered the uninhabited husk of Mobius after the vague time-space cataclysm everyone was worried about in M25YL has come to pass, and he finds an audio log from Lara-Su that I presume will explain what happened. I guess those are the titular Lara-Su Chronicles. In theory this flash forward establishes some sense of pressing danger, but when the threat to the planet is so unclear and technobabble-y it just kind of lands with a thud.

It doesn't take long before we get back to Lara-Su being sad about her dad. A good little chunk of the chapter is spent with this new timeline's Lara-Su recalling moments in her life, including echoes of the original Lara-Su's memories from M25YL, which feels redundant coming hot off the heels of a straight reprint of that entire arc. And boy, for anyone who read the later Archie Sonic comics, the protagonist having vague memories of the old version of the series from before a lawsuit-related timeline reboot sure does sound familiar, huh?

The art inconsistency somehow becomes even worse in this story, with Ken flip-flopping on whether or not he wants to use outlines, with the no-outline art managing to look even worse by relying entirely on Ken's awful rendering. By this point in the book, readers are also likely to start noticing how often Ken reuses art from previous panels. This is a shortcut that tons of comic artists use, of course. Invincible famously did a joke about this. It's often understandable. But, again... it sure does stand out in a book that took 13 years to make with only 30 pages of new art. Amusingly, Ken even manages to combine his inconsistency and recycling problems by reusing the same art with and without outlines. And, of course, any time Ken tries to draw the Archie era designs it's just... the worst.

And, yes, it's in this dreamlike montage sequence of Lara-Su's life that we get...

The uncomfortable family nudity scene, followed by the dual timeline Julie-Su breastfeeding scene.

Yeah, you might have heard about this one already. If this incredibly eerie presentation of Lara-Su's hazy memories of the two different timelines make it hard to tell what's going on, don't worry. There's another, clearer version later in the book as part of Julie-Su's character profile, because I guess Ken was just so proud of it.

(I censored these myself because I'm not playing Russian roulette with Tumblr's inconsistent nudity rules and risking getting banned lmao)

Like, okay. Is a mother breastfeeding her child really that shocking of a thing to see in a story? No, not at all. But, like... when it's two characters who you previously created for an officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comic for 7-year-olds... and some of those officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comics for 7-year-olds are reprinted in the same book... and when it's drawn like this... yeah, it's kind of a shocker.

It just looks so unnatural. Julie-Su is posed very deliberately so that you'll see both of her breasts, and in the new timeline version she's barely even holding Lara-Su so you can really get a good look at her supermodel body, showing zero physical signs that she just gave birth. Most people will immediately jump to this being Ken putting his fetishes in his work (a type of criticism that I'm incredibly tired of - it's 2024, all the cool artists are blatantly putting their fetishes in their work now). And my immediate response is that, no, this is probably just Ken trying to come off as really mature on a surface level, a thing he's been obsessed with since the Archie days. Free from the shackles of writing a licensed children's comic, of course he's going to jump immediately into depicting some nonsexual, artistic nudity to try and prove he's A Real Mature Artist For Grown-Ups who just thinks the human body is beautiful and breastfeeding shouldn't be a taboo etc. etc.

But then, like. You look at some of the other character designs. Like Espio's daughter Salma, who's now this horrifying alien lizard person who's always nude, and her scale pattern puts scales exactly where her nipples should be. Or you look at his comments about the Echyd'nya age of consent. Or you look at how he keeps drawing Lara-Su in this. Like, does the shuttle really need this, like... reverse chaise lounge thing in the cockpit? So that we can keep getting these shots of the 16-year-old Lara-Su lying on her stomach and posing with one of her legs kicked up, her naked ass in plain view?

The vibe isn't great, is what I'm saying!

I'm not going to try to ascribe authorial intent here. I don't know. I'm not a psychic. Given his very blatant reliance on photo references elsewhere in the book, it's entirely possible he just referenced some figure drawing photos that were maybe just a little too sexy. And also, he's an American comic book artist, and a boomer one at that. Those guys tend to draw women a certain way, even when it's not supposed to be sexual. I don't fucking know. It just sucks. I'm not gonna make some hyperbolic statement about how this makes him a literal pedophile who should be in jail, but it is deeply offputting and objectifying.

But if you already knew about the nursing scenes and were hoping there was some other really shocking stuff in there for me to talk about in this review, sorry to disappoint, but nope. That's the only shockingly weird new thing in here. Once again, not a lot happens in this story, and what does happen is pretty boring.

Once we get past the recap stuff and the human guy, the plot developments boil down to this: The timeline was altered at the end of M25YL... but not as much as you might think. In the new timeline, Knuckles ("K'Nox"), Cobar (now looking significantly younger), and Rotor (now a rhino just called "The Emissary") still traveled via shuttle to go find a time machine in the Badlands and fix the time-space continuum, like in the climax of the original arc. This time, though, Sonic wasn't there, and Lara-Su came along without having to stow away. Lara-Su watches the ship while the grown ups go deal with the time machine, and then after a couple panels Not Rotor comes back with Cobar and is like "Hey, Cobar got hurt, we gotta leave. Dunno what happened to your dad." And then they just, like. Presume that Knuckles must have died. Even though we have no idea what happened to him. And then they just fly away. And then Lara-Su is sad that her dad died.

And that's pretty much it!

This is supposed to be a really emotional sequence - it's literally the scene where Lara-Su learns that Knuckles is dead - but instead it comes off as unintentionally funny because of how poorly it's portrayed. Not showing Knuckles' actual disappearance is a huge misstep, for one, making his uncertain fate more confusing and anticlimactic than dramatic. But also, Ken keeps just using the same two drawings of Rotor for two pages, so he doesn't really seem to be emoting at all, and he's in this spacey hazmat suit that honestly just makes him look like fucking Moltar from Space Ghost. So the whole time I'm just reading his dialogue in Moltar's deadpan voice as he's like "I dunno. We did what we could. Anyway, let's leave."

After this, we get a two-page spread previewing the rest of the story from Shattered Tomorrows. It's basically like a trailer in comic form. It has one of the most mystifying layouts I've ever seen in a comic book. I have no idea what order I'm supposed to read this in.

Yeah, I kinda have a feeling this is the full extent of what Ken has drawn for the rest of that book. I'd love to be wrong, but I fear that I'm right.

Bonus material: Data files

These are mostly very dull, recapping a lot of events shared between Ken's Archie run and the new Lara-Su Chronicles timeline. It seems like almost his entire run is still considered canon to the backstory of the new timeline, just with some names changed, and things only really diverge at the climax of M25YL. But I'll share the interesting stuff here.

Lara-Su

The main thing you'll notice in Lara-Su's profile is the massive, unreadable wall of text where Ken felt the need to list the entire Knuckles family tree, split across both pages.

This is literally so long that Lara-Su's personal history has to awkwardly cut off mid-sentence and be continued on the final page of the book, after the rest of the data files.

Also, please note that this list gives Julie-Su's mom's full name as Mari-Su of the House of Atrades. Incredible on all levels.

There's also a reference to the dark timeline Lara-Su was originally supposed to come from. You know, the one where Julie-Su is the leader of a rebel movement fighting against a Knuckles who had gone mad with power? The timeline that would have been way more interesting than the one in M25YL? Here it seems to have been written off as the result of another "timeline disruption." Lara-Su allegedly has vague memories of this timeline, in the same way that she has vague memories of the M25YL timeline.

Geoffrey

Geoffrey's bio mostly recaps events from the Archie comics, which means the Sonic/Sally/Geoffrey love triangle has to be alluded to. His rivalry with Sonic is described like this:

"He would later resurface when Kintobor was transporting his latest hi-tech weapon, the Dynamac-3000. It was during that mission he discovered a rival for the Princess' affections. Whereas the Princess would be one of a line of conquests where St. John was concerned, the blue-spined Erinaceinae who protested doth a bit too much regarding his affections for the Princess for St. John's taste would prove to be a source of great sport and amusement."

Yes. It's gross. Saying that Geoffrey saw Sally as "one of a line of conquests" is gross. Ken writing this and then still treating Geoffrey as the coolest badass ever is gross. The "Princess Acorn" is also first on the list of Geoffrey's "female relationships" elsewhere in his bio, though I suppose how much of a "relationship" they had is left vague. Honestly, at this point the fact that Ken didn't explicitly confirm that Geoffrey took the underage Sally's virginity in the book comes off as a display of restraint. The bar couldn't be any lower, I know.

Remington

His bio is, frankly, shockingly long for such a minor character, though I guess he does get a large portion of the word salad dialogue in "The Storm." There's a lot of stuff here about how the identities of his biological parents are shrouded in mystery, a plot point that fans have long speculated Ken just straight up forgot about in his time at Archie. (Ian confirmed that Kragok from the Dark Legion was Remington's dad, though, so this isn't really much of a mystery.)

Lien-Da

She gets a bio even though she's not present in the two new stories, just so we get to look at her awful new design and compare it to how Steven Butler drew her earlier in the book:

Commander Taelor

We get to see two drawings of him with the same exact Ernie Hudson face side by side! That's fun.

Julie-Su

She gets a list of "known friends," but the only character listed is Knuckles' mom. Poor Julie-Su.

Also, Ken feels the need to reiterate that Knuckles and Julie-Su are still distant cousins. He made a whole new timeline where he can change whatever details he wants, but THAT had to remain canon. Thanks, Ken.

And then after the data files we get the special thanks page, listing everyone who preordered the book and/or bought TLSC merch from Ken.

With my name on the list. Because I had to buy a copy to cover it for the blog.

My name is on the very next page right after the breastfeeding panel in Julie-Su's data file.

Yep. He got me.

Is it at least a well put together book? Like, in terms of manufacturing quality?

Its physical quality is... fine. It's a nice, sturdy hardcover. The print quality seems fine, though mine does have a bit of smudging from some sort of printing error on one page. The pages don't seem like they'll fall out on me. The image quality is crisp. The colors are vibrant. This is a low bar, but this is one of the few places where I'm able to give this book anything resembling praise.

The formatting and graphic design work, on the other hand...

(I didn't crumple those page corners, it came like that.)

For one, the placement and sizes of the M25YL pages is inconsistent, largely due to the fact that the book doesn't actually match the proportions of a comic. A lot of pages aren't properly centered vertically. Some pages go all the way up to the top edge of the paper, while others leave a visible gap of about half a centimeter. Every page has a 1cm gap to its left and right, which is sometimes filled in with a solid color or gradient that doesn't quite match the page it's surrounding. I have to assume Ken didn't have any sort of source files or original artwork to work off of, as those ideally would've had more generous bleed to account for slight shifts in printing. It kind of seems like he just got the highest resolution versions he could find of the digital releases online and printed those. The colors are a dead ringer for the digital versions, which have always looked slightly more saturated and pastel than they did in print.

I can't say this bodes well for his further plans for Archie Sonic reprints - sorry, Mobian Line reprints. If they ever come out, please, for the love of god, do not buy those. I don't care how much you love Archie Sonic, they aren't going to be good reprints. For comparison, IDW's similarly priced hardcover Sonic collections have none of these formatting problems, because they're made by people who know what they're doing with access to the actual source files.

The book also has its fair share of text-focused pages, split between the data files and messages directly from Ken about the history of his career and this project, and these are formatted in the most amateurish way possible. Just massive walls of Arial text over either plain white backgrounds, simple gradients, or faded photos. I've seen school yearbooks with better graphic design. Even ignoring my subjective feelings about the art and stories within, this book does not feel like it's worth $36 USD.

It's frankly shocking how shabby he let this thing look considering it's supposed to be his baby. And doesn't that really sum it all up?

Closing thoughts

Obviously, I did not expect this to be any good. But I'm still left kind of dumbfounded by it.

I think what really strikes me about it is that Ken had a blank check to do whatever he wanted here. He got an opportunity many writers would kill for when he gained complete ownership of his most famous work. He's free from the limitations of a monthly licensed comic book for children, free to make whatever creative decisions he wants without editors or other writers or Sega to worry about, free to completely reinvent the series to his heart's content and finally tell the story of his dreams. And with that opportunity and 13 years of his time, he made... this. A direct continuation of "Mobius: 25 Years Later" that barely changes anything about the characters or world beyond their awful new designs, even though much of the word count is spent rambling about how the timeline has changed. A story that makes zero concessions for new readers, or even returning readers who don't already have the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets explaining his creative decisions burned into their memory. 30 pages where nothing really happens and the story barely moves forward an inch despite the decades-long wait - but maybe something will happen if you buy the next book!

Who is this for? Maybe this really is a project for no one but Ken. Maybe he just really, really wants to finish the story he started, a story that's personal to him due to the family history it evokes, and the number of people who enjoy it or buy it beyond that is irrelevant. I think that many of the best artists are incredibly self-indulgent ones working with that exact mindset, artists whose enthusiasm for their own work jumps off the page or screen. So, if that's the case, then why the fuck isn't he telling the damn story? What's stopping him? Why is he still spinning his wheels? Where is that passion for his own work? Because it sure as hell isn't there on the page. There's a huge part of me that really wishes I could say "Man, what a weirdo, but you do you, Ken. You tell your weird little story." But there's barely any story here. It's like he loves styling himself as a storyteller, but he's terrified of finally having to actually tell a story after all this time. He's still stuck in the exact same mode of writing he was in almost 30 years ago when he was doing 6-page backup stories about Knuckles, just killing time and stringing readers along until he's eventually able to truly realize his vision. If not now, then when, Ken?

Even the back cover blurb is mostly just a dry recap of the history of this thing. It was a Sonic comic, the original arc was published in these issues, it went unfinished, Ken left Archie, the lawsuits happened, now he's continuing the story. There's nothing about why anyone should give a shit about this as its own story, even though Ken has spent years trying in vain to convince people TLSC is its own beast that shouldn't be judged as a Sonic story. I think deep down he knows that there's no pitch for this beyond the novelty of it originating from Sonic. And that's why, despite declaring that he'd leave the site, he's still on Twitter riling up Sonic fans. It's the only attention he gets at this point.

Maybe this is too harsh when those 30 pages of new comics are just intended as a preview for the "real" book. But the elephant in the room is that we have no idea if that "real" book will ever actually come out, let alone the entire series of seven graphic novels that will supposedly complete this saga.

Ken is undeniably a complete jackass and all around unpleasant, vindictive person who's rightly become an industry pariah. He's a self-proclaimed paragon of progressive values who'll send Comicsgaters after his successors for the crime of not worshiping the ground he walks on, and then turn around and announce he's going to reprint their work without even consulting them. He's a sore winner who already won his copyright battle on a level most comic writers would never dare to dream of, and yet still won't truly be satisfied until he sees an entire major comic publisher go out of business, putting god knows how many people out of work, because he thinks this would get him back the license to a video game franchise he doesn't even like.

But I still have to pity him.

As an artist, the trajectory of his life is my nightmare. I think all of us fear dying before we can tell all the stories we want to tell. There's simply never enough time to do everything. And here's Ken in his 60s, talking about how he's still planning on making his magnum opus all by himself out of stubbornness and pride, despite demonstrably proving he can't handle the workload, and also talking about how if he dies before the project can be finished he'll have to pass the torch on to his kids and get them to finish it for him. It's so grim. Even just typing that sends a shiver down my spine. It took nine years of his limited time on Earth to finish and release an 11-page comic about Geoffrey St. John sitting backwards in a chair.

This is a purgatory of his own creation. And yet... I'm not sure he's ever been prouder. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I guess if I want people to take anything away from this review, it's this:

Lesson one: If you're an artist or writer of some kind, or an aspiring creator, don't wait around. No one else is going to tell your story for you. Start writing that novel. Start drawing that webcomic. Start making that game. If Penders can put out this damn book that no one asked for after 13 years of work, then proudly proclaim that he's still going to make six or seven more books and also reprint hundreds of comics he doesn't have all of the rights to, then show up to cons with that foul Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows banner and sit in front of it beaming with pride, fully aware of his critics but saying "fuck 'em, I know I'm hot shit," then you can do fucking anything. Tell the weird, sincere, cringe story of your dreams. If Ken Penders doesn't have imposter syndrome, then nobody should.

And lesson two: Don't buy Ken's books.

[absolutebl]

2024 BL - Top 10 Trend Report

In last year's trend report I said:

"I think Taiwan has the chops to give us something as good as The 8th Sense or Old Fashion Cupcake but in their style, and I would like to see them exercise their talent for good rather than just profit."

And Unknown happened.

I asked for it, they gave it to me. I could not be more happy. So anyway, I just wanted to crow a bit.

And now...

2024's TRENDS!

1 Trope Subversion Levels Up

My Stand In went so far as to subvert the whole damn romance genre. But in general we saw a lot of BL recognizing, highlighting and calling out it's own absurdities and tropes. From Korea commenting on the Dead Fish Kiss to Wandee Gooodday actually promoting green flag behavior (the real deal).

It was an interesting year for meta commentary, it kind of whole scale left parody behind (say goodbye, Japan) and entered almost every BL from Thailand, even the ones who should have left it alone. (Side eyes Mame.)

2 Old Tropes Revisited

Unknown revisited the step-brother trope (as did Addicted Heroin of course). But there were other old ones we haven't seen in ages, like kidnapping for love, kissing on rooftops, and all the dub con (Blossom). Love Sick rebooted with very little modernization (except where it counted) right up to and including no kisses. Mix Up even did "trapped on the rooftop" which I haven't seen in over a decade.

And then Wimpy dropped. And it felt like I was reading yaoi in my tiny attic bedroom in the 90s.

3 BL Enters All the Workplaces

I love how many adult leads and sides we are getting, even from Thailand. By which I mean, BL outside of a school setting. We still have high school and university set stuff, but that used to be ALL we got. I don't mind school settings, but I like that we have some kind of balance going on these days.

We are starting to get not just cubicles and offices (as Japan foretold) but all kinds of workplaces from retail to authors to the film industry.

4 BL Passes the Sniff Test

He smells good has always been a trope that I love. It was one of my favorite things about Bad Buddy. But this year it felt like every third BL trotted this one out. I was delighted by it. Of course I was. But it happened A LOT.

Century of Love was a key use of it since smell is so coupled to memory, I thought they dealt with it particularly well. But even Japan and Korea deployed the sniff test.

(Seoul Blues)

(Blue Boys) Same actors, different characters.

Pitt Babe

Century of Love

Meet You at the Blossom

Soul Blues

Blue Boys

Dangerous Romance

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans

Cosmetic Playlover

Sunset X Vibes

Monster Next Door

Secret Love

Perfect 10 Liners (technically a 2025 show, but the sniff happened in 2024)

5 Fewer Shipper Characters within BL

Negative trends are always harder to call (it's easier to track the presence of something over the absence) but I'm still calling this one.

In a discussion of The Shipper @heretherebedork and I got into a discussion about this. It really seems like both we are getting less "female shipper" characters and/or they are evolving into overly interested but very supportive female friends instead. Softening, if you will.

I think partly this is because there has been a general decline in this archetype in yaoi over the past 5-10 years, but also they tend to incur pretty bad reactions in fans, and Thailand (especially) tends to pay attention to that kind of thing.

Unfortunately this also means we are seeing a worsening of the "no female representation at all" backbone of BL. We Are, which I loved, didn't have a single female character. Not even a throw away.

6 The rise of the green flag seme!

The seme (active attacker in the relationship) got a lot of green flag action this year. We saw lots of Dommy boys, Daddy types, and players asking for permission, trying to communicate, talking about safe sex. Particularly out of Thailand.

To make sure this is clear, green flag means he communicates about the relationship and sex, takes no for an answer, asks for permission for (almost) everything, and doesn't do things like (just spitballing here) take a hotel room key and go into the other mans private room when he's not around (or asleep). Okay? Christ on a cracker. (When it comes to flags Mame has red/green colorblindness.)

Some examples:

Alan from Pit Babe

God from Monster Next Door (except for the one journal reading incident)

Sun from Sunset X Vibes (almost too far)

Yak from Wandee Goodday

Latte from Knock Knock Boys

7 Japan Came to PLAY

Japan came to play and will not leave the field that they built. I may not always like JBL, but when I love it, I REALLY LOVE IT, and when it hits it hit hard (pain or joy). And even when I don't like it, it always gives me a lot to think about.

We had 19 JBLs in 2024:

Sahara-sensei to Toki-kun

At 25:00, in Alaska

Dominant Yakuza and Wimpy Corporate Slave

I Became the Main Role of a BL

Love in the Air: Koi no Yokan

Takara's Treasure

Although I Love You and You

I Hear the Sunspot

Living With Him

Love is Better the Second Time Around

Love is Like a Poison

Perfect Propose

Cosmetic Playlover

Sugar Dog Life

0.5D

Let's Eat Together Aki and Haru 2

Mitsuya-sensei no keimakutekina ezuke

Happy of the End

Ossans Love Season 2

Japan had 18 total BLs in 2023.

17-15 in 2022 (a couple I couldn't get hold of and a couple I just don't think are BL, so 2022 is vague).

7 in 2021. <- THAT was when the big jump occurred, 3 years ago. Which might have more to do with the pandemic than anything else.

But back to now: 19 in 2024 means they are actually just increasing their production gradually and in a steady way, as might be expected. In round numbers we didn't see anything unusual.

BUT

The series they've been airing in 2024 are running longer (for them) and being aired over longer periods of time. Not to mention getting better and quicker distribution.

By which I mean, Japan used to have more shorts and movies, less actual series with full run times (by their & Korea's BL industry length standard) on streaming platforms. So I think it's JBL runtime and distribution that is experiencing real growth. And the consistency of that runtime.

In other words, it feels like there are more JBL airing because we have access to most of them (for a change) and they're running long enough to cross into each other (which has been rare in the past).

What's almost more interesting to me is...

8 What the hell happened, Korea?

Korea cut back on their BLs in 2024. I am not sure if that's money drying up, a crack down within the industry over there, the political situation, or something else.

Still, it was wild to see such a stark fall off in production. They had 18 BLs in 2024 but fully half of them were shorts, and more than half were poor production quality than is prior standard. By contrast they had 21 in 2023, but only 1 was a short, and most were very high production (getting 8/10 or higher from me).

Since Korea tends to produce some of my favorite shows, it's no surprise I had no 10/10 BLs at all in 2024 with so little KBL's stepping up to the plate.

I sure hope this isn't a trend but it feels like it might be.

9 Why the hell is the not-kiss back?

Korea doubled down on being a pain in 2024 by bringing back the "they don't actually touch lips and we pretend they did by panning around the back of the head" with the camera. (Jazz for 2 sides, example. Yes, I'm still mad.)

Then Thailand did the with Addicted Heroin. AND with Love Sick.

What is this, 2016?

Color me annoyed. I thought we saw the last of that nonsense with Make It Right.

I remind you all, if they would kiss if they het but they don't kiss when they gay, it smacks of a phobia and I'm salty about it.

Yes yes, there are actor (idol, age) excuses in play. But they should cast differently if this is going to be a problem.

End of discussion.

No really, I don't wanna talk about it. I just want it to go away.

10 The rise of Great Grandmas

We have had cool grandmas before in BL but in 2024 we had so many of them. The Sign, Love for Love’s Sake, Monster Next Door, Jack & Joker, Every You Every Me, The Rebound, Wandee Goodday.

(thanks to @small-dark-and-delicious for bringing this one to my attention)

See the comments for additional discussion of the "why" behind some of these trends as well as a few I missed.

(source)

2023's Trends report here.

[makeyoumine69]

Farewell Serenade (Memory Reboot Epilogue)

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Patrick Bateman x gn!Reader

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: You and Patrick are finally reunited, but there are still so many secrets the two of you have to unravel, and some of them could be dangerous, especially when the echoes of the past are still haunting you like ghosts.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: Tainted love vibes, blood kink, oral sex, penetrative sex, body worship, hand jobs, anal fingering, cum shot, spanking, marking, teasing and humiliating, dirty talk and slurs, pet names, praise kink, dark themes, angst, hurt/comfort, obsession, self harm, mental issues, Patrick and reader are switches. I might have forgotten something because this chapter is long, so forgive me if I really did.

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒: 14k

𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐄𝐂: VØJ, Asketa — Farewell Serenade; Vowl.,Sace — 2000; FM-84,Ollie Wride — Running in the Night.

𝐀/𝐍: Hello everyone! I don't even know what to say except that I will miss this story so much, but it will always be in my heart. I want to thank everyone who supported me on this journey, I love you all!💕

𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒: [MASTERLIST]; [SERIES MASTERLIST], [CHAPTER 5].

When was the last time you traveled outside of America? You didn't really remember because you never really felt the need to, but after all the stressful things that had happened in your life lately, your subconscious told you that you definitely needed a break—a reboot that would give your life a fresh start. So after the drug case was over, with the help of Vincent and your lawyer, who came to New York almost immediately when you needed them, you and Patrick didn't think much about going abroad—somewhere far away where no one could find you. And so it was that Vincent's random story about his last vacation in Germany, to Stuttgart to be exact, became the deciding factor in your choice of where to go. 

The flight to Stuttgart went as smoothly as possible, since Bateman couldn't stand anything but a private jet or the most expensive seats in first class, and although it wasn't your first time flying first class, this time it felt so different, so special and memorable. The thing that surprised you the most was that you didn't really talk much about all the shit that happened between you two. Although Patrick tried to bring it up several times, but after you asked him not to dwell on it and just enjoy the fact that the two of you were finally... Finally what? Together? 

At first this new reality was very strange and confusing.

All the negativity, anger, and despair began to disappear as you realized that happiness and the freedom to follow your own desires was the memory reboot machine you both were looking for. That only by accepting your true selves could you finally break the chains of depression that had been biting at your skin for so long.

A soft, barely perceptible breeze fanned your face and the sun shone brightly over Stuttgart, the scenery unfolding before your eyes more like a picturesque frame from a romance movie than reality. Even after spending several days in Germany, you couldn't believe that all these things around you were not a dream, but your new life. The villa you stayed in was absolutely amazing, as it had two floors and a huge outdoor terrace with a large pool—Patrick enjoyed swimming in it so much that one day he told you he was going to buy this villa. At first, you didn't believe him until he took you to the bank to close the deal. Was that necessary? Was it an act to show off his wealth? You never really asked, because you were taught that sometimes asking too many questions could only complicate your life, and you didn't want to spiral and start the cycle that you managed to break.

Sitting on the edge of the pool, you splashed the water with your legs. The sun reflected off the water, making it shimmer as if someone had poured a bucket of little diamonds into it, and little ripples appeared here and there as Bateman swam around, ass naked, and you couldn't really remember how you'd imagined seeing something like that, nor did you imagine that one day things that happened in real life would outshine your fantasies.

"What are you thinking about?" Patrick's velvety voice stopped your train of thoughts, and before you could even react you felt him grab your ankle—he was half in the water, hot and pumped up after his heavy workout. "You seem...worried?"

You frowned, but then chuckled as he tickled your inner thigh. "Nothing special," you replied, looking at him and leaning down to stroke his wet hair. "It's just... don't you think it was a bit imprudent to buy this house?"

The man chuckled. "Why not?"

"Patrick," you cupped his face with both hands, forcing him to concentrate on what you were about to say. "You don't have to pretend...you don't have to throw your money around like you're trying to buy everything and everyone...you don't have to do any of that...not with me."

Bateman didn't say anything, his prominent eyebrows knitted together, and you already knew what that meant—he was already overthinking, overreacting, overstepping his own emotional boundaries.

"Hey," you tried to pull him out of his stupor. "I didn't mean..."

"It's my money," Patrick suddenly blurted out, still frowning. "And I can do whatever I want with it."

God, this man always made trouble out of nothing.

But he was right. After all, his money was his to spend, and you could only give him advice or opinions he would never really care about—such an attitude only irritated him—having the last word was something he couldn't live without. He was addicted to being in control of the situation, of the person he was interacting with. It felt as if he had the chance to control the whole world, he would, but who were you to judge him when you had already promised yourself never to try to change or fix him. Just because Bateman never really needed someone to fix him, he needed someone to accept him for who he was while he tried to fix himself.

"You're not listening? Again?"

Patrick let go of your leg and swam away from where you were sitting. Sometimes his childish behavior really got on your nerves, although you imagined you were in his place, acting like a fucking teacher trying to explain such basic things as being more human to a bratty kid who never really wanted to know—what it was like? Being more in touch with humanity.

"Oh, God," you almost cussed, splashing water with your foot. "Don't be like that! I didn't say anything..." a palpable irritation erupted from your chest. "Well, maybe I did, but you know I didn't mean to insult you."

Watching him swim as smoothly as a fish in water, you gasped without even realizing it, your eyes catching every glimpse of his toned muscles, his firm ass sinking under the water, but you could still see the outline of it—you wanted to fucking get a bite of it—but the moment was probably ruined by your rather offensive remarks.

"We're not in a school," Patrick answered suddenly from a distance. "And I'm not a schoolboy to be offended," his grumbling caused a soft, barely audible chuckle to fall from your parted lips, and at some point you caught yourself thinking that you were ready to admit that you were wrong, just to end this caricature conflict. "Will you swim for once? Since the first day, you just sit on the lounge chair or something, but you never go in the water," he added, and you crossed your arms in defense. "Are you afraid of water or what?"

Don’t even start it.

"I... I don't really want to talk about it," you stammered nervously, brushing your hair, hoping he would catch your eloquent gesture and change the subject. "The scars are still fresh..."

"Scars?" He repeated your words and swam closer to you, placing himself between your open legs. "This is getting interesting."

"No-"

"Oh, yes," the man snickered amusedly, stroking the inner side of your legs with his wet hands, causing you to shiver. "You can tell me...I promise not to...uh...I promise to take it seriously."

This liar.

With a heavy sigh, you took a moment to think about whether you should have opened up to him completely or if it was not the right time. Were you really ready for this?

"When I was a kid, I almost drowned," you confessed openly, but curtly. "And, you won't believe it, but I can't even remember the last time I talked about it with anyone...because...it's not the kind of thing you want to talk about."

Patrick didn't interrupt you. He listened carefully and rested his chin on your knee. You didn't even notice how you cradled his face and stroked his cheek, then the top of his head, how his brown soft hair was soaked in water, making it look even longer than it usually did.

"Was it..." he began to speak, cautiously, as if afraid to say the wrong thing—it amazed you. "Someone's fault or..."

You shook your head. "No! It was nobody's fault... I was just a reckless kid, but after that I have a terrible phobia of anything that has to do with water."

"You don't take baths?"

Rolling your eyes, you wanted to push him under, but his cocky, boyish smile made you stop, and instead of doing what you thought would teach him a lesson, you wrapped your legs around his shoulders, pulling his closer, the man purring in return, nuzzling against your skin.

"Of course I meant open water," you almost whispered, your voice getting deeper, softer, laced with not just arousal but pure affection. "That unfortunate day I was in LA with my family and there was a storm or something...but it didn't stop me from wanting to find some starfish...I literally ran away from my parents and got into the water...before I was washed away by a huge wave."

"I never thought you were such a bratty child," Bateman murmured, grazing the sensitive flesh of your thigh, his lips sucking the little marks his teeth left. "But now I'd remember that you can be even more foolhardy than you already are."

Bastard...my bastard.

Still amazed at his unnatural concern, you bent down to peck him on the forehead, but the moment you did, you almost slipped into the water, and Patrick, instead of preventing it, only helped you to literally fall into his arms, and once you were in the water, you squealed.

"Oh, GOD!" You panicked and began to wriggle nervously in the water. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"

To your irritation, Bateman just laughed and held you closer. "Shh, I've got you," he grinned and wrapped his hands around your waist, lifting you up a bit. "You don't have to worry when I'm around, you know?"

Reluctantly, you wrapped your arms around his strong neck and let him press you against his chest. "Really?"

"Any doubts?"

The water was so warm, but his body was much warmer, you could practically feel the tightness of his muscles as he swam to the side, still holding you close; his question was hanging heavy in the air as you didn't know what to say. Did you really feel safe in his arms? 

"Do you really care what I think?" You asked him back, your eyes wandering down to his parted lips.

"Answering a question with another question..." he whispered above your ear, his nose brushing gently, almost sensually, along your cheek. "...is a thing I hate so fucking much..." With that, Patrick grabbed your ass, his mouth so close to yours. "Have the guts to tell me you don't trust me..."

"That's not....what I wanted to say," you gasped into his lips as the two of you became more and more aroused, twirling in the water like a couple of swans. "I trust you, I really do!" 

"'But something's wrong anyway?"

"No..."

"Do you think I'll hurt you again?" Bateman asked, looking intently into your eyes, his arms wrapped around your shaking body, although you were no longer panicking. "Leave you? Fool you?"

With a loud exhale, you tried to push him away, but he wouldn't let you.  "Stop it," you replied curtly. "Stop putting words in my mouth, okay?" 

For a brief moment, the two of you just stared at each other, at your intertwined limbs, your naked flesh, the way your breath mingled in a rapid flow—you were more connected than either of you could truly imagine. But if you were about to admit it, you couldn't be so sure that Bateman felt the same way about you.

"Look, we never really talked about it," you continued after a pause. "We never talked about us."

Now it was his turn to turn away and distance himself from you, but as soon as he let you go, an icy fear paralyzed you and made you cling to his shoulders, no matter how pathetic you looked.

"For God's sake...you're not going to drown...it's a fucking pool!" Patrick's words hit you like a high-speed train, but you didn't let him go.

After a short sigh the man leaned his broad back against the wall of the pool, your hands were still on his shoulders and he didn't take them off—a good sign, you thought as you slowly and carefully squeezed his muscles. Patrick let out a shaky gasp, you smiled at his reaction, but you were still not ready to let go of the current conversation.

"Patrick," you began in the sweetest voice you could muster before gently kissing his temple. "I just want to know-"

"Know what? Do you really want me to... confess or something?" His face broke into a wry, nervous grin. "In that case, I've got some bad news for you."

Why can't he shut up for a few seconds?

Annoyed, you suddenly put your hand over his mouth, shutting him up completely, causing his eyebrows to arch in shock at your audacity. "I don't need any confessions, believe me," you muttered, pushing him harder against the marble wall behind him, completely forgetting that you were both still in the water. "I just want you to stop talking for me... and giving my words the wrong meaning. Is that too much to ask?"

When you removed your hand, you didn't really expect him to say no; you just crushed your lips against his, not even giving him a chance to react and take control back into his hands. But to be honest, Bateman didn't really struggle, on the contrary, he made a muffled sound as you sucked on his tongue, your mouth so eagerly dominating his hot one.

"Fuck," he cursed between kisses. "You're driving me crazy."

"I know," you replied, wrapping your legs around his waist under the water, his strong hands resting on the edge of the pool, watching you tilt your head back and almost immediately taking it as a call to action, leaning forward to kiss your neck. "Mhmm-we're not going to count that as a confession, are we?"

You could hear him moan softly in response, his soft lips pecking at your skin, sending tingles up your nerve endings, setting them on fire, but you did your best to keep yourself together, not wanting to give up first—not when you had another fight... or maybe this wasn't a fight at all?

Patrick didn't leave you much time to think, to breathe, to resist when his hands found their way to your body again, but this time he acted much more possessive, groping your curves with such a strong excitement as if he was doing it for the first time. Panting softly, you hugged him and pulled him closer to you so that you were literally hanging on to him with your hands and legs. The water supported both of you from underneath, giving you a strange feeling of weightlessness. It felt surreal and incredible. For a second, you stopped doing everything to just look at him, to make sure he was real. 

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" He asked as soon as he noticed your confusion. 

Damn all the nicknames he used, as well as his ability to use them. "Nothing...just making sure everything is real," you chuckled a bit shyly. "That I'm not sleeping."

"You're not," Bateman sneered, pushing his hips against yours to grind along your pubic bone - you almost lost it. "Because I'm going to make you feel much better than you can imagine in your dreams."

"That's very arrogant of you," you teased him back, but in the next second you moaned as the man subtly slid his hand between your bodies to rub your most sensitive spot between your legs. "But I... I like it..."

A low, soft chuckle escaped his chest. He was playing with you again, but only because you let him. At least you wanted to think so—it made you less embarrassed, but after all, there was nothing wrong with being obedient to a man you thought you were in love with. Especially if he didn't mind being a little submissive for you as well. 

A bit later, when your lips were puffy from the kisses and you were both so drenched in water that you were starting to cool down even though your bodies were radiating an immense amount of heat, Bateman lifted you out of the water without saying anything and placed you on the edge of the pool while he still remained in the water.

"Huh?" You huffed and looked down at him, confused. 

"Relax," he winked and spread your legs, stroking them as if preparing you for something bigger. "Told you, I got you. Always."

Always.

That one word stuck in your mind like an engraving you never asked for, but now you couldn't even imagine your life without him: his walnut eyes, his deep baritone and all those little moles that covered his perfect body... Everything about him was too much, it was overwhelming. If you could fucking drink him up like some kind of medicine that would flow through your system, if you could become one with him in the most direct sense of the word, to know his thoughts, to understand his mind...

It was never enough—you always wanted more, but now, when he was right between your spread thighs, his mouth exploring your tender flesh, inch by inch, his lips sucking and kissing you here and there, forcing you to shiver and grab his hair to bring him closer, and he didn't protest or scold you for pulling his hair—maybe you had a mental connection, an invisible thread connecting your brains, because Patrick could literally know exactly what you wanted. He knew where to pull and where to push, everything he did felt amazing, like he was inside your head.

"Patrick...fuck...it f-feels so fucking right," you whimpered before bringing a finger to your mouth and then having to bite down on it to stifle the moans as Bateman increased the pace of his caresses, his mouth relentless and his hands holding you in place—spread out and open for him. "Oh shit, keep going...please..."

Smirking, the man let out a wet pop as he pulled away from your core to look at you. "You don't have to ask," he licked his glistening lips, savoring the taste of you on them. "Though I do like it when you beg for me."

Of course you do, slut.

You didn't say it out loud, your finger was still in your mouth as you balanced on the edge of falling apart as Patrick went down on you again, helping himself with his hands as you trembled more and more—he wanted to see you unravel under his touch, collapse right into his mouth and you were more than happy to give it to him.

"A-ahhh...Pat-Patrick...mmm-yes...keep using your mouth like that," you encouraged him, quivering and barely breathing, your teeth almost sinking into your skin from how hard you were biting your finger. "Fuck...I'm so fucking close..." you pinched your hard nipple, your legs shaking in his grip. "Mmm...I love it...a-arhhh-fucking love it so much..."

An overwhelming pulse coursed through your veins, you thought you were going to faint, but Patrick's raspy voice became your anchor to reality amidst this madness, your heartbeat pounding against your eardrums like a hammer. One second—his mouth so hot against your flesh; two seconds—you couldn't control yourself anymore as his growl sent little vibrations that pushed you over the edge and then you finally imploded, letting a shock wave crush you. Bateman didn't stop even when you grabbed his hands from being too overstimulated, as he literally drank you dry. 

"Damn it, Bateman!" You yelled, staring down at him. "Slow down... do you want to kill me or what?"

Just as you said it, the man stopped and blinked several times—there was something off about his reaction, but when you tried to pull away, he shook his head as if trying to fight the sudden delusion.

"Are you okay?" Your voice was so shaky when you asked him that, but you were really worried.

Panting, Patrick wiped his lips with the back of his hand and finally got out of the pool to hover over you, lifting your legs with a practiced motion and bending them to press against your chest. "If I wanted to kill you," he said suddenly, aligning himself with your tight opening. "I'd kill you already...I've had so many chances."

"What? W-what are you talking about..." You wanted to ask him what the hell it was, but he never let you; the man was as selfish as ever when it came to fucking you.

Bateman pressed you harder to the floor, leaning on his hands, his biceps flexing as he began to move inside you, slowly at first, but with each passing second his thrusting became harder and faster, as if he was trying to lose himself in you. There was nothing gentle about it—you were facing the whole other side of him—you could tell by the way he was grinding his hips against yours. The level of penetration was so deep that you could feel the curve of his dick brushing mercilessly against the walls of your inner channel, causing you to literally writhe under him, not really knowing if you wanted to push him back or pull him closer.

At one point, his thrusts were so painful that you had to claw at his skin, but that didn't stop him, it just made him go faster. You could hear his balls slapping against your ass with such a loud noise that it made you close your eyes in embarrassment, and you weren't usually a shy person, but... dear God, this man was like a barrel of power and you never knew when it would explode and if you would survive.

"Patrick...mhmm...so deep...fuck!" You couldn't help but moan, your legs lifted so high that they almost floated over your shoulders. "Wait..."

You tried to call out to him, but he seemed not to be listening, his brain clouded with a crimson fog of rage, violence, brutality, and God only knew what else. But here, with you, he didn't dare to hurt you the way he always loved to hurt people and it made him sick that you became his personal kryptonite and if someone dared to touch you even with a finger—he would fucking destroy that person.

"FUCK," the man cursed loudly, as if he had finally come back to reality. "Why are you like this?" Patrick snuggled against you even tighter, pinning your wrists above your head and jackhammering into you with reckless abandon. "Why do you let me... do this to you... fuck... you're so fucking... mine... that it hurts..."

"Pat!" You squealed as you felt him push too deep into you, his dick definitely hitting your belly. "I want you to... listen to me," you blurted out in a breathless voice, the words coming out like a broken record. "...and calm down. Please!"

Bateman let out a guttural growl and wrapped his hands around your neck, not squeezing it, at least not yet. Whimpering, you wanted to claw at his flesh, even though you knew he hated any marks on his perfect skin, but now, when he was about to lose his mind for sure, you thought it was the right choice. Without hesitation, you grabbed his hands that were still around your neck, almost scratching him, and he hissed, but never really stopped pounding into you.

"I love you," you blurted out abruptly, losing your own breath as you realized what you had just said, but you didn't hesitate to repeat it again, more confidently. "I love you so much that I can't even find the right words to express my feelings!"

And now you finally managed to reach out to him through the red veil of lust that clouded his consciousness—the man stopped, his eyes searching desperately for yours only to look somewhere behind you—he was shocked, frightened and speechless. 

Maybe this was not the right time, but you couldn't rewind time.

After a short pause, Bateman shook his head as if trying to wake up. "These... sentiments..." he murmured barely perceptibly, still deep inside you but not moving. "I never thought you were capable of them."

"Why? Am I inhuman?"

"No-"

"So are you," you cupped his face, his skin literally scorching your hands with its heat - he was burning from the inside out, but you didn't care. "You're more human than you think...believe me."

For a gliding second, the two of you just stared at each other as he suddenly removed your hands and pulled away from you—it all happened so fast you didn't even have time to think. One moment you were one, and the next you were lying alone, naked and soaked with water, watching the love of your life walk into the house without saying a word.

Why does he always have to be like this?

Barely holding back your tears, you slowly stood up and, unlike Patrick, took the towel and wrapped it around your aching body. How could he leave you like that? You decided to open up and he just left? Without saying a word?

Crybaby. 

Your first thought was to follow him and confront him for acting like a fucking schoolboy, but you stopped yourself and decided it wasn't worth it—you would let him have it his way, because you didn't want to stoop to his level, you weren't pathetic. But if he wanted to be pathetic, you wouldn't interfere— being a babysitter wasn't appealing to you.

Later that day, as the sun began to set and it became a little cooler, you were still sitting outside, not really wanting to go inside, even though you were about to freeze to death, you preferred to be alone. Sitting on the soft lounge chair, you wrapped yourself in a white fluffy robe, even though you dried yourself, you still felt uncomfortable, as if Patrick's last words stuck to your skin like something slippery. Something you couldn't scrub off even if you wanted to. 

Trapped in your thoughts, you found yourself thinking about just going back to America. Yes, you could just leave this place without even talking to him and pay him back with his methods. The question was, would that make you feel better? You doubted it.

A short, refreshing breeze blew around you, making you curl up on the chair like a cat. Too overwhelmed with various ideas, thoughts, excuses you could find to somehow escape this whole situation, you didn't notice an approaching figure. Gracefully as ever, Bateman appeared right next to where you were resting. He was wearing nothing but white sweatpants, his hair still wet and slicked back. When you spotted him, you were not surprised—on the contrary, you expected him to come back, because this man was impatient and always craving attention, but this time there was something strange about him—you examined his posture only to see two glasses in his hands.

"Here," the man offered you a glass with a golden liquid in it—probably whiskey. "This will help you warm up."

Devoid of any emotion, you turned away from him, demonstrating that you didn't want to talk to him, didn't want to see him, and didn't feel like having a drink.

"Listen, I want to tell you something," Bateman continued his attempts, even though his agenda was still unknown to you. "You're going to need this." With that, the man placed a glass on the lounge chair next to your feet, before nestling into the chair on the other side of you. "One day I decided to go to the Tunnel, where I met a girl," he paused and took a sip of his drink, not really looking your way, as if afraid to meet your gaze. "She was pretty... not really beautiful, but pretty. And she was young, I could say she was very young...but already so wrecked."

The way he chuckled—the dark edge in his voice—made something heavy fall into your stomach and you took the glass of whiskey, your hands suddenly shaking, cold shivers running down your spine. The pause was getting too long, but you had no intention of rushing him. 

"So I took her back to my place, and she was drunk as hell by then," you could see his fingers tighten around the glass until his knuckles turned white. "The bitch couldn't keep her mouth shut for a second. And then we fucked, but I didn't feel anything until I finally got my hands around her neck."

Eventually, you were glad that he had given you a moment to digest everything he had said. A sudden numbness washed over you, making it difficult to bring the glass to your lips, but when you managed to take a sip, the sharp alcohol burned your throat. But it didn't help. Not even a little.

With a shaky gasp, Bateman dared to look at you. "The thrill of the kill... was the only thing that could make me feel anything, but when I thought I was going to end her here and now... I realized she wasn't fighting," he paused again to finish his glass in one quick gulp. "She was fucking begging me to kill her... can you imagine that?"

You didn't know what to say, you were literally at a loss for words as itching tears began to well up in your eyes, and it had nothing to do with fear, it was all about the pain—you could feel it in every word he had just said. The unbridled, raw pain of a desperate man you happened to fall in love with.

"Why... why did you tell me all this?" You asked in a raspy voice.

"Because," he turned suddenly in your direction, almost getting up from the lounge chair, his breathing labored and uneasy. "I want you to know who you're dealing with... since you said you loved me..." Every word he said sent a shiver down your spine, adding to the already cold air surrounding you. "It's not too late to take back your words..."

"No. Not gonna happen," you cut him off, sipping more whiskey. What the hell was he talking about, how could you take back your words when you were absolutely sincere when you said them? "Even if I had the chance to erase your memory or use a time machine and go back in time... I wouldn't do it. Because I meant it when I said it, I really did, and you know it! That's why you're trying to push me away now, right? With all these spooky stories?"

Bateman didn't flinch even when you literally snapped at him, towering over his seated form and nearly splashing the contents of your glass right into his blank face. And now he decided to act as if nothing had happened? Now? After he literally dumped all that emotional mess on you like a bucket of cold water?

"I know it was stupid of me to even mention love... feelings... but instead of all this nonsense, you could just tell me that you despise me," you croaked through the tears that were stuck in your throat like a lump. "Because what you said...it's not funny to speculate about it!"

"It's never supposed to be funny!" Patrick retaliated and stood up as well, now standing very close to you, your lips just inches away. "Nobody takes me seriously! I'm so fucking sick of it!" His furious temper seemed to finally take over, revealing the true side of his personality, and you risked being drawn into its darkness. "Believe it or not... but that day when you called me from Paul Allen's place... I was ready to kill that bastard if I found out he touched you with his finger!"

Bateman's cruel words triggered the memories you never really wanted to remember—that fucking party you went to at Paul's apartment, those fucking hookers or models...or whatever they called themselves. Those fuckers who drugged your drink and tried to get their hands on you. That one moment when you rushed into the dimly lit living room to pick up the phone and dial the only number you could think of to hear the voice of a person who hated you the most, but at that moment felt like the only lifeline you could dream of. And when Patrick didn't pick up, each beep was agonizing and heavy—you thought you would die without hearing his voice.

Astonished, you nervously fixed your hair and let out a heavy breath. "You would...you would do what?" Your question wasn't supposed to sound like mockery, but it probably did, because the next thing you heard was a muffled crunch. "What..."

You didn't finish your sentence because you simply couldn't comprehend what had just happened—that crunching sound was the glass that Patrick simply crushed in his hand while you tried to call out to him through the depraved prism of his twisted mind—crimson drops of blood painted the floor in intricate ornaments, forcing your stomach to churn.

Why... Why are you doing this? Why do you want to hurt yourself so badly?

"Holy Christ!" You finally managed to blurt out, taking his injured hand in yours to open it and see the wound. "Why did you do that?!"

"And why do you care?" Was all he replied, staring at you through his half-lidded eyes. "You think everything I say is bullshit. Maybe this is not real either?"

And then, all of a sudden, he grabbed your hand with his bloody one, you could feel the shards of glass almost sink into your flesh, and even though they never did, you could feel the pain—his pain.

Pain. Everything is about pain.

"Please, Patrick," you almost begged, but didn't take your hand away as you watched the scarlet liquid cover more of your own skin. "Let me help you."

Bateman's cheeks flushed, a thin sheen of sweat covered his beautiful face, but he didn't even hiss, as if he didn't really feel any physical pain—that was terrifying, but you didn't falter. Carefully, without any hasty movements, you forced him to follow you into the house, avoiding the broken glass on the floor. 

The man didn't say a word, he was in some kind of trance, you couldn't even remember seeing something like this before, but now was not the time to ponder about it, not when he was bleeding like this. You had to use the sleeve of your robe to keep him from gushing out and staining the house.

As you dragged him into the bathroom, you opened the mirror cabinet to retrieve the first aid kit and found some bandages, antiseptic and tweezers. Humming something to yourself in desperation, you glanced into the mirror to see him suddenly slide to the floor with his eyes closed.

"Patrick!" You yelled and ran to him. What if he had damaged the veins? What if you could not stop the bleeding? "Look at me, don't close your eyes!"

As soon as you touched his face, the man brushed your hand away as if swatting an annoying fly. "I'm fine," he said, gritting his teeth, but no matter how hard he tried to hide the tremor in his voice, you could hear that nerve—he was crying. "Just... give me the damn bandages. I'll take care of myself."

"Are you...crying?"

Gently, as if he were made of porcelain, you tilted his chin up and brushed his wet strands away, his usually sparkling eyes so dull and empty it made your heart shrink in pain, but you didn't give up. Ignoring the overwhelming fear, you unpacked the bandages and soaked one of them in the antiseptic before pressing it against the wound, but then you just poured the liquid all over his bleeding hand when you realized there were too many small shards embedded in his flesh.

Embarrassed, Bateman could only sob softly, and he didn't even try to pretend that his defenses weren't down with the first tear that slid down his cheek. "I'm sorry," he murmured abruptly, sniffling and shaking his head from side to side. "I didn't want it to end like this."

"Shh," you stroked his hair with your free hand. "Let's talk about this later." As you blew on his wound to soothe the itchiness of the antiseptic, you didn't even notice the way Patrick was looking at you under his messy bangs—he was looking at you like you were some kind of miracle—if only he could go back in time and not say all those things about him being a fucking psycho. But then again, would it be fair to keep that from you, knowing how dangerous it could be for you? "Uh, I'm not sure I can pull out all the pieces...maybe it's better to go to the hospital?

"Fuck that," Bateman snapped, swallowing his salty tears. "Not an option."

With a weary sigh, you took the tweezers and began to pick the pieces of broken glass out of his hand—if someone told you one day that you'd be sitting on the cold bathroom floor covered in Patrick's blood because that idiot forgot how to use the glasses, you wouldn't believe it. 

"You're the most stubborn man I've ever met," you said with a wry smile. "The most arrogant and self-centered and selfish..."

"Okay, okay!" Bateman held up his hand as a white flag. "I get it. No need to keep repeating it-uh!"

As soon as you heard him squeal in pain after pulling out the large shard of glass, you stopped in your tracks, barely holding the tweezers in your hand. "Oh, sorry!" You quickly apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'll be more careful!"

As you leaned down to better concentrate on your task, the man suddenly pulled you closer with his uninjured arm to press his heated mouth against yours. The kiss was nothing like the ones you had shared before—you could taste his tears, the saltiness of them, the agony and despair. At first you wanted to break away and scold him for being reckless and foolish, but he was the first to break the kiss, only to bring his bloody finger to your parted lips. On the verge of losing your grip on reality, you closed your eyes and allowed him to push his finger inside.

What is this madness with a copper-like taste?

Maybe this man was really a demon sent straight from hell to torment people and find out their most depraved desires, their true nature, which turned out to be something sinful and deranged?  Who else could he be if he could make you do such twisted things? If he could make you lose control and forget what the word "normalcy" even meant?

While you were busy processing the questions that would never be answered, the two of you were still pressed tightly together, the bloody kisses on your lips and then your neck only increasing the risk of losing your sanity here and now. However, the tweezers you held in your hand became your anchor to reality as the cold metal almost bit into your skin with its sharpness. 

"Patrick," you purred against his red lips, catching your breath. "Are we crazy? I know it's a stupid question, considering everything that's happened between us..."

"I guess you could say I've plagued you with my craziness...but I'm not sorry for it," he crooned in a mischievous voice, his lips curled into a slight smirk. "And I don't want you to take it as a joke or romanticize it."

How could he say that after he literally made you suck his bloody fingers? But wasn't it you who allowed him to do it? Who craved that in the first place? That thrilling aura of danger, mystery and darkness that always surrounded Bateman like a second skin. 

"I'm not gonna leave you," you said briefly, continuing to clean his hand of the shards. "I've lost too many people I care about."

Patrick listened intently without arguing, ignoring the urge to hug you again, to comfort you, to reassure you that you would never lose him, because this was not about him, this was about your safety. Your words about him being selfish stuck in his head like an obsessive melody. 

Selfish, egocentric, unsympathetic—a perfect bundle of traits for a psychopath like him.

The day you were about to leave and go back to New York, you couldn't sleep. When you woke up early in the morning, you rolled onto your back. The birds were chirping peacefully in the distance, and you were somehow jealous that you couldn't be as serene as those cute little creatures. Unlike you, Bateman slept like a baby on his side, holding a pillow and sometimes jerking slightly—probably having a vivid dream or something—his right hand was still healing, but thankfully the wound wasn't bleeding anymore. Although you were not well rested, you thought it would be more productive to get up and finish packing your things since you had a flight in the afternoon. Quietly, you pulled down the blanket and sat down on the side of the bed, but then you heard Patrick's muffled whimper, which startled you a bit.

Oh, no, not him having another nightmare.

Concerned, you crawled back onto the bed and hugged the shivering man from behind. "Shh, it's okay," you whispered into his ear, pecking the back of his head before nuzzling his neck—the mixture of his cologne and aftershave hitting your nostrils like an intoxicating haze. "This is just a bad dream."

Noticing that he was relaxing a bit, you slowly began to roll back onto your side of the bed, but suddenly his strong hands cupped yours, causing you to hug him tighter in a silent plea. This was not something he usually did—it stirred a deep feeling of affection in you—even in his sleep, Patrick seemed to have control over everything, including you, but now it was different.

For a moment you weren't sure if it was right to wake him up like that, but then you thought it was better than just shaking him and telling him he was having a nightmare. Also, how many times did Bateman not care if you were sleeping or not when he just got on top of you and started fucking you mercilessly? Well, you never protested or complained about it, but after all, you were not him.

When the man made the same sound again, you had to push all thoughts away—you would have plenty of time to think about things—now all you could think about was the softness of his skin, the shallowness of his breathing, the strong grip of his hands on yours. Patrick needed you, and that was the most tempting thing of all.

With a quick movement, you slid your hand under the blanket to caress his perfect tiddies one by one, the tip of your finger teasing his nipple with feathery touches. God, the things you wanted to do to this man frightened you in ways you never thought you could even imagine. 

Now was the time when you could finally agree with his statement about plaguing you with his insanity, for how else could you describe it? 

"Mmm," Bateman's low gasp that fell from his parted lips echoed through the bedroom as you lowered your hand and stroked his hard bulge in his Calvin Klein briefs. "I didn't kill her...I didn't," his mumbling was growing more and more erratic. "I just...wanted that bitch to shut her mouth..."

You couldn't hear it anymore. "Patrick, Patrick!" You called his name and shook him slightly. "It's just a nightmare! Please come back to me!"

Just as you said these words, his body went limp in your embrace, some cold buds of sweat sliding down his forehead as he opened his startled eyes and looked up at you. Bateman remained silent, his hands unclasping yours only to grasp the sheets in a violent grip. 

"What time is it now?" He asked as if nothing had happened.

"'Too early for you to worry about that," you tried to hug him again, but he pulled away. "You had a bad dream. Maybe it was not the best idea to watch horror movies before bed last night?"

Patrick sneered into the pillow, and although you couldn't see his face, you knew he was smiling. "I... I didn't mean to wake you."

"But you didn't-"

"I hate it, I fucking hate seeing any dreams," the man suddenly replied through clenched teeth, then Patrick looked at his bandaged hand—he was trembling. "Do you... do you see them too?"

"Most people do," you replied, planting a light kiss on his temple, his soft hair tickling your nose. "I think you just miss New York and your familiar surroundings. When we get back, you'll feel better, I'm sure. But for now, is there anything I can do to help you relax?"

Damn, that probably sounds so cheesy.

Finally, Bateman turned to look at you. "You can finish what you started," he replied with that classic boy-next-door smile that was his favorite and most useful weapon in seducing people, and you were no exception. Sometimes you hated being so weak to it, though. "I think I missed the moment when you became so bold, darling."

The air in the room was thick with tension, the little electric impulses cursed through your system by his raspy voice, which was nothing but a testament to his arousal and it only fueled your desire to make him moan, writhe like a caged bird, to make him cum on the sheets and still ask for more.

"Oh, I forgot the last time you called me like that," you droned, wrapping your hands around his waist and pressing against his tight ass. "Was it when I fucked you with that dildo I found in your little secret box?"

Meanwhile, you used the moment of his confusion to dip your palm into his underwear—his tender flesh was burning like fire—you had to use all your willpower to stop yourself from biting his neck. Patrick's panting became more uneven with each passing moment, but when you began to rub his swollen tip, smearing his thick pre-cum around it, he literally arched his back like a bowstring.

"You like it when I take care of you?" You licked his earlobe, then grazed it a bit, causing a low moan to erupt from his chest, but you needed more—you craved it like oxygen—the power he allowed you to bear was too addictive. "Talk to me... I want to hear my sweet boy."

Patrick groaned louder as you gave his dick a long, hard pump. "Damn," he closed his eyes and blushed uncontrollably. "Feels good... so f-fucking good."

Impulsively, you drowned out his moans with a lingering kiss, your tongue slipping along his in a relentless battle for dominance until he let you have your way and you sucked on his tongue with all your might, your hand massaging his tight sack, then switching back to rubbing his shaft and then his red-hot tip again. Eventually Bateman began to thrash around on the bed, thrusting into your hand, and you picked up the pace, jerking him off more vigorously, the wet, sloppy sound driving you both crazy. Each time the two of you had sex, the outside world ceased to exist; there was just the two of you, your inflamed bodies, your most sinful desires...

"Fuck," Patrick cursed, gripping the edge of the bed with one hand and pulling you closer with the other as you kissed again and again until your lips began to hurt. "How did you get inside my head... so fucking easy?"

It was not easy at all.

If only he could understand that.

With a mischievous grin, you nipped at his Adam's apple, then moved lower to his chest, flicking your tongue around his taut nipple and sucking on it with undisguised greed, but then you had to shush him with your mouth when he became too noisy.

"You've got a lot of secrets to unravel about me, baby," you sneered condescendingly and pinched his engorged peak, making him whimper so pathetically that you began to regret not taking that dildo with you. "Uh, you're shaking so bad already. Do you want to stain these expensive sheets again?" You teased him, your grip like a tight ring around his balls, squeezing them so perfectly that you could feel his dick pulsing in desperation for release. "Not that I care, but... I remember you telling me that you love to keep every drop of your cum inside me..."

With that, you gave his thick cock several quick strokes before letting go and moving your hand from his groin to his toned butt for a squeeze and then, before you knew it, you were outlining the rim of his puckered hole.

"Oh shit," Bateman bit his wet lower lip, his face flushed like fucking tomato juice. "You're not going to get away with this...you know that?"

You just giggled in reply. "Don't you think that's kinda irrelevant to say when you're lying here all splayed out for me like a bitch in heat?” You slapped his ass without a second thought. "I know what you're made of..." Another slap that made him moan. "I know what you want..."

"Oh yeah? And what is that... what do I want?"

By this time you were almost on top of him, grinding against his muscular body, but not afraid of him snapping at you, it took you several seconds to lubricate your fingers with your saliva before you plunged them into his tight inner channel, sending shivers right through his core, and it was fucking delirious to see him trembling like that and to know that you were the reason for it.

"This... this is what you want," you explained, pushing your fingers deeper before pulling them out and repeating the motion, stimulating his prostate with precise accuracy. "You're tired of being in charge all the time...and you wanted someone to take care of you without finding it your weakness."

And you were not even going to ask him to accept it—you just knew it was true—it was written in his every moan, every jerk of his hips as you were fingerfucking his ass. Everything was perfect the way it was—you were perfect for each other, no matter what flaws you both had, because ultimately these flaws were what made you you.

When there were no more words to be said and the sun began to rise, the two of you were still following the electrifying momentum of raw, unbridled lust. Moaning into each other's mouths, you continued to thrust your fingers as deep as you could, finding the best rhythm, while Bateman couldn't hold back any longer as he desperately jerked off in sync with your fingers until his whole body was strained to the point of exploding like a bomb. A loud moan of pure satisfaction pierced the room as he finally erupted in thick ropes that covered his flat stomach, but he never stopped pumping himself, not even when he began to suffocate.

"Good boy," you watched him convulse like a leaf shaking in the wind. "You're such a good boy to me. I love you."

For a brief moment, your heavy breathing was the only sound in the bedroom, as if everything outside it was nonexistent. There were no barriers, just you and him—his hand in your hand—his soul intertwined with yours.

Huffing, Patrick gasped greedily for air, but then, when your eyes met, he seemed to stop breathing again—the inner conflict could be seen behind those two dark pools that were his eyes. "I love y-you too...but if you ever dare to leave me again...I promise I will find you...and kill you."

Later that day, you took a cab to the airport. And even though you personally didn't care which class, business or first, you flew, Bateman grumbled the whole way, arguing that he hated being crowded.

"Next time we'll take a private jet," he grumbled, his hands crossed over his chest, the Rolex shimmering in the sunlight. "Why did I ever follow your advice?"

Rolling your eyes, you wanted to reply with something cocky, but then you noticed the way he fiddled with his fingers, nervously trying to hide his wounded hand. "Just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you have to spend it like crazy," you explained, gently taking his injured hand in yours. "But next time, I won't give you any advice. Deal?"

From the confusion you could read in his face, it seemed to you that Bateman hadn't expected anything like that from you, and you were so damned pleased with yourself, because you were finally on the right track to understanding how to treat him properly, so that he would reciprocate with the same attitude. But even the most perfect mechanisms could break down sometimes.

"Oh, well," he sighed, looking down at your clasped hands, but not removing his own. "I didn't mean that I don't like your advice..."

"Forget it," you cut him off, smiling as you frowned at your words. "Really, it's nothing. I'm not your Mommy or Daddy to lecture you about your money.” 

"I think I've heard that before."

"Maybe."

"Mommy and Daddy," Patrick suddenly laughed like a maniac. "You know... I can be your Daddy if you want..."

"Jesus Christ, Bateman! Don't even start!" You nudged his shoulder slightly, but it only emboldened him to scoop you into his arms and seal your lips with his soft, loving ones. "How do you manage to say the cringiest things at the most inappropriate times?"

"Cringiest things?"

Dear Lord, have mercy.

Just as you were about to answer, the taxi driver suddenly turned around and gave you both a cheerful, genuine smile. "Wir sind fast da." (We're almost there)

Confused, Bateman narrowed his eyes before averting them from the cabbie, pretending to look in the window. As much as you wanted to laugh and tease him for his childish behavior, you returned a friendly smile to the driver and murmured: "Vielen Dank! Was kostet die Reise?" (Thank you! How much for the ride?)

The driver pointed to the meter, you nodded, and pulled out your wallet. "Bitte sehr. Behalten Sie den Rest." (Here you go. Keep the rest)

The longer Patrick remained silent, the more he looked like a small child who was offended that no one was paying attention to him. When the car pulled up at Stuttgart Airport, you thanked the driver and got out of the car before Bateman could say anything.

After taking your luggage, the two of you entered the busy area of the airport, people were rushing here and there, which of course made Patrick even more annoyed.

"I didn't know you could speak German," he managed to get the words out, but he still looked insulted. "Was it necessary to act like that?"

Hello, my name is Patrick Bateman and I'm a 27-year-old kid who can't stand being ignored for five fucking minutes.

Irritated, you stopped abruptly and he almost bumped into you. "First of all, I studied German in college, and since the company I worked for in Chicago did business with a lot of German partners, I needed to revive my knowledge," you blurted out, extending a finger in a stay-the-fuck-up gesture. "Second, I've been speaking German a lot since we got here, and you never bothered to notice! Really, Patrick? And what do you mean, was that necessary? Paying the taxi driver and thanking him for the ride? Are you serious?"

"I was talking to Bryce." Bateman's sudden words hit you like an avalanche of rocks.

For a fleeting second, you didn't even know what to say. What were they talking about? Had Bryce told him about the night you had spent together? Or rather, the nights. Shit, oh shit. That was bad. You knew it was going to be so bad for you because you kept it a secret and hid it from Patrick, but on the other hand, it wasn't cheating because, fuck it, Bateman married Evelyn just to make you what? Jealous?

"When did you ever find the time to do that?" You asked, trying to shake the anxiety off your shoulders.

"When you were in the shower before we left," Patrick's eyes scanned your face with a mysterious interest that made you swallow hard. "He invited us to Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, the one on the eastern tip of Long Island. A fucking golf club, can you imagine? That blonde bitch has already changed him so much."

"Blonde bitch?"

"Evelyn Williams."

"Uh, oh, yeah, Evelyn," you made a thoughtful face as if you could hardly remember who it was, when in fact you knew everything all too well, starting with the fact that Tim and Evelyn had been fucking behind Bateman's back before they got divorced, since Bryce had told you about it when you met several times after Patrick and Evelyn's wedding. You and Timothy used to fuck until you witnessed Bryce's meltdown over his fucked up relationship with Evelyn Williams. "It's just... you talk about it as casually as if you weren't married to her once."

"Was I?" Bateman arched his eyebrows theatrically and rubbed his chin. "I don't remember."

"We're going to miss our flight if we keep rumbling like this," you complained, pointing to the large information board. "And...I didn't know you guys loved golf?"

The two of you exchanged a few sly glances before heading for the gate where your plane was waiting for you. A plane that would take you back to the crazy city life of New York, the city you swore you would never visit again, but as the saying goes—never say never. 

My life was like a comedy that turned out to be a drama and I was the director who screwed up the script.

Imagine yourself praying that today would be bad weather, rain, thunderstorm or fucking snow (even though it made absolutely no sense) and you wouldn't have to go to the golf club to see Tim and Evelyn and pretend that nothing happened. If Patrick could pretend that nothing happened between the four of you, why was it so hard for you, almost impossible? You also had to take into account the fact that Patrick still didn't know about you and Bryce, and you had serious doubts that he would be as indifferent about it as he was about Timothy and Evelyn's affair behind his back, or maybe it wasn't even behind his back and he knew everything from the beginning? This did not make it easy for you to understand how you all got into this situation. Why did he marry Evelyn in the first place? 

"Hey, are you okay?" a familiar female voice pulled you out of the swamp of thoughts and when you raised your eyes you saw her—Evelyn Williams in the flesh. Even though the last time you had seen her was at her wedding with Patrick, which seemed to be so long ago (but wasn't), the woman didn't seem to have changed at all. "The boys asked me to bring them some drinks... Do you know how to call the staff here?"

Stunned, you looked around—the two of you were standing under the big tent that was located not far from the big golf course where Patrick and Timothy were practicing their shots, because there was a rumor that Paul Allen was about to join your little 'golf party', and of course nobody was really happy about it—especially you, but not because you didn't like Paul, you just didn't want to dig into the dirt, preferring to keep it all in the past.

"Uh, I think Patrick has a phone," you replied a little awkwardly. "I can go ask him."

As soon as you started to move, the woman stopped you with a polite hand on your shoulder. "Actually, they asked us not to bother them for a while."

"Oh," you stammered, chewing nervously on the inside of your cheek. "'Something wrong?"

"No, not at all," Evelyn grinned brightly and poured herself a glass of orange juice from the large decanter that stood on the narrow table. "Want some juice? Patrick told me about your little trip to Germany! I tried to convince him to travel when we were... well... never mind, he always refused!"

The blonde let out a nervous chuckle and took a sip of juice, your eyes never leaving her slightly embarrassed face. There was something wrong with this whole situation, but you couldn't reveal your fear. 

"I wonder what exactly he told you, but... I don't mind talking about it," you crossed your arms and leaned against the table with the non-alcoholic drinks. "Ask away."

Meanwhile, two rich men, dressed in the most expensive polo shirts and shorts of some famous brand from the latest fashion week, were discussing the latest news of the financial world.

"Those bastards we had a meeting with last week are a fucking bunch of freaks and believe me when I say they're so deep in the shit they're going to fucking drown in it one day. Now watch and learn," Bryce finished his expressive monologue with a practice swing of his club. As the ball fell into the hole, the man lifted his sunglasses to wink at his friend. "See that, Bateman?"

"Nice shot," Patrick mimicked Tim's actions, adjusting his sunglasses as well. "Although I still don't understand why you chose a fucking golf club out of all the places we have?"

Leaning on his club, Bryce turned to look at the tent, and the moment he did, Evelyn began waving at him as if she were the most ardent fan and Tim the worldwide golf star.

"It was her idea," the man replied, stepping back to place the next ball for Bateman. "She was bored with regular dinners and going to some nightclub was out of the question after that... story that happened at Le Bain."

Patrick frowned and quickly picked up his club. "Le Bain? Really? What were you doing there anyway?"

Bryce didn't answer directly, instead he rubbed his head, marking time, and that didn't really look like the Timothy Bryce Patrick had gotten used to knowing. "What kind of shitty story did you get into this time, Bryce?"

"Nothing serious," Tim replied, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. "You got a lighter?" With a soft click, Bateman opened a white-gold Zippo lighter, and after Bryce took several drags, he looked back in Evelyn's direction before finally starting to talk. "Almost crushed some asshole's skull," he said so casually that Patrick could only smile like an idiot for a moment. "The guy asked for it, I swear."

"You did what?" Bateman questioned after a boyish giggle that escaped his throat faster than he could even suppress it. "And I thought after rehab people should be calmer and more stable."

"Oh, fuck you! That scumbag tried to rent Evelyn out like one of those hookers, well, you know, hookers, whores, you know better than me-"

"I KNOW!"

Bateman's reaction really amused Bryce, who couldn't help but grin as he watched Patrick get more and more flustered by the second. "So after this incident, Evelyn doesn't want to go to clubs...unless it's a fucking golf club!"

Now it was Patrick's time to sneer. "I didn't expect you to become a henpecked husband so quickly," Patrick joked, finally hitting a shot—two men watched as the ball flew until it landed next to the hole, but never fell in. "Golf sucks. I fucking hate it!"

"Don't cry, Bateman, shit happens," Timothy tapped Patrick's shoulder in a mockingly comforting way, but then the man suddenly became very serious. " So, have you had any success with your love adventures?"

"More than you can imagine," Bateman took off his sunglasses and fastened them to his polo shirt. "Why?"

"Sometimes I want to fucking sink into the ground when Evelyn starts whining that we're sitting in one place...that New York has become too stuffy and all that shit."

"Sounds like a casual day from my family life with Evelyn," Patrick started to say something else, but then he looked at his Rolex to check the time. "Is Allen really coming?"

"Oh shit, I forgot!" Tim cursed and quickly began to remove his leather gloves. "Honestly, I don't even know why he decided to come."

"I have an idea why," Bateman frowned as he heard approaching footsteps and as soon as the man turned to the side, you and Evelyn appeared on the horizon—your face was grim and tense, which spoke volumes about the complexity of the current situation and Patrick's need to solve it somehow. "And where are our drinks?"

"Sorry guys, we only have non-alcoholic drinks here," Evelyn blushed a little as the two men looked at her. "Patrick, can I use your phone? I am going to call the staff since Tim left his phone in the limo!"

Bryce finished his cigarette but didn't throw it away because he knew that Evelyn would bitch about him making a mess, blah blah blah, end of story. "'Screw this," Tim exclaimed spontaneously. "We can take a golf cart and get our drinks in the main building...and meet Allen there."

At the mention of Paul, you literally trembled, but Patrick almost immediately placed his hand on the small of your back. Slightly surprised by his affection, you didn't even say a word as Timothy and Evelyn exchanged goodbyes and walked toward the golf cart.

"Did you get sunstroke?" Bateman crooned as he stroked your cheek to get you to look up at him. "I told you to stay under the tent, not with us."

"I'm fine," you tried to reassure him. "It's just that I don't really want to see Paul right now," your voice trembled treacherously. "Not in the best mood for... social activities."

Without saying anything, Patrick grabbed your hand and led you back to the tent, where the two of you had some healthy smoothies that you never really liked, but since Bateman told you that they were pretty good for your health, you pretended to enjoy them. Afterwards, the two of you sat on the small but comfortable couch with the amazing view. The man rested his hand on your shoulders and occasionally massaged the back of your neck, causing you to close your eyes in pleasure.

"You and Allen," Patrick muttered abruptly. "What kind of relationship do you have?"

This is it—no way to run.

"Just business," you explained without a hint of doubt. "Listen...I don't want to see him, not because we had some drama...it wasn't Allen's fault that the party was messed up. Someone brought up the prostitutes...or maybe they were models. I don't know!" You paused to catch your breath. "All the memories are so cloudy...but the one thing I remember clearly is that I started to feel weird after I drank some wine...then everything came in torn frames. Some guy tried to get his hands on me and I didn't know where Allen was and some other guys from P&P but not Tim or Craig or David...I'm sorry I called you...my poisoned mind decided it was the best idea to call you."

The whole time you were talking, Bateman was stroking your back, but when you mentioned the call, he froze in place, and it looked so creepy. "You mean...you called me...that night?"

Tensing up, you gave Patrick a confused look, but instead of saying anything, you just nodded. The lingering silence between the two of you felt so heavy and suffocating that at one point you thought it was a bad idea to tell him what had happened that night at Paul Allen's apartment, but now it was too late.

"What happened next? Do you remember the person who tried to touch you?"

"Not really," you replied in a dull voice. "I think after I called you... Paul told me we had to leave and we left and... fuck!" You cursed and grabbed your head as if it could help you remember more details. "It all happened so fast...I'm sorry I bothered you with that call, that was really stupid of me."

"You really did call me," he repeated over and over, repeating the phrase like a broken record. "You really..."

Confused, you turned to face him, only to see his pupils dilated and his face covered in a thin layer of sweat. "I did," you said curtly. "But...what's so special about that?"

But your question seemed to fall on deaf ears, Bateman blinked several times, his hands trembling a bit as he removed them from your back, and then you finally realized why he was asking you these particular questions, but the way he smiled in relief, delusionally thinking he had found all the answers he was looking for, who knew for how long, it hurt so much.  But what could you do now? You both had already come to the conclusion that Patrick needed help, that he would soon start seeing a psychiatrist recommended by Timothy, and that he would also resume taking pills to help control his impulsive temper. So the choice was yours.

After taking a deep breath, you glanced at him again—the man was looking back so expectantly, there was a spark of happiness in his eyes—a long forgotten spark, but there it was, and you didn't want to ruin it, even though you knew that the bitter truth was always better than the sweetest lie.

I hope one day you will forgive me for this, my love.

"Everything will be fine," your reassuring words were not for him, but for you. "You will be fine," you took his large palm in yours and gave it a gentle squeeze. "But... there is one more thing I have to tell you."

"What is it?" Patrick asked almost immediately.

"I..." you stammered as his grin widened, making him look so boyish and... cute? Fucking hell, why do you always choose the worst timing? "I fucked Bryce...several times...after you married Evelyn...but that was just sex...I mean..."

Even though he was still smiling, something changed in the way he looked at you now. The man took a moment to process the information you had just given him.

"That didn't mean anything! I swear," you were the first to speak again. "We... we both just found ourselves in one of the most fucked up moments of our lives..."

"Listen-"

"Wait! Let me finish!"

With one smooth move, Patrick brought you closer, so that you were sitting on his lap, and the suddenness of it left you speechless, which Bateman used to his advantage.

"See," he began, hugging you tightly. "You didn't say anything I didn't already know."

What? WHAT?

He was bluffing, no way Bryce told him everything, he would never do that to you, but on the other hand—why were you so confident that Bryce wouldn't tell his best friend to save their friendship? Even though you and Tim were close, Patrick and Timothy had a much closer bond.

"Tim told you everything?" You asked, feeling defeated and devastated.

"Not directly, but enough for me to understand the hidden meaning of the references he used whenever we talked about you."

You talked about me?

"I'm sorry," you laid your head on his shoulder before hiding your face in the crook of his neck and wrapping both of your hands around it. "I should have told you sooner."

"You told me when you were ready," he murmured softly, rubbing invisible circles on your back to soothe you. "I suppose you and I are finally even now."

"I guess you're right."

You cupped his face, pecking his temple, then the bridge of his perfectly framed nose, bathing his jawline with small kisses until you reached his lips to kiss him as lovingly as you could, wanting to convey all the emotions you felt for him through that kiss. 

This moment seemed too perfect, so when you heard a loud laugh that belonged to someone you knew quite well, you weren't surprised at all, because things couldn't be that good—not in real life.

"Oh, there they are, look at these lovebirds," Craig chuckled and then added. "Long time no see."

And of course McDermott was not alone, soon you noticed Van Patten and Bryce. "Where's Evelyn?" You asked, dismounting from Patrick and taking the seat next to him instead. "And Paul?"

Bryce smiled mischievously and pulled two bottles of alcohol out from behind his back. "I told Allen there was no alcohol in here, so he changed his mind," Tim said, placing the bottles on the small table next to the couch. "And Evelyn...she told me that she actually hates golf and that she'd rather go to the spa with Courtney—I didn't interfere. So are you just going to sit here or will you give me glasses?"

"You know, I was starting to like this new version of Bryce," David joked, rolling a cigar between his fingers. "Still a bitchy asshole, but with new functionality in his arsenal."

Everyone except Timothy began to laugh, Patrick being the volunteer who had decided to bring the glasses from the table on the other side of the tent terrace. 

"Have you lost the last of your brains or something?" Tim growled, smoothing back his hair, which was blacker than charcoal. "That chick you're with now will be the death of you, remember my words."

Bateman returned with glasses in the middle of the most intense part of the conversation about David's new girlfriend, who turned out to be the daughter of a very influential politician, and who had just returned from Cuba with a limited collection of cigars that Van Patten was so arrogantly bragging about. And somehow, you could finally admit to yourself that you missed the old days when you were a part of Wall Street life, even though sometimes you really hated it. But now, sitting among your ex-colleagues and your lover, you felt like you were in the right place, and that feeling was the most tranquilizing thing you had ever experienced.

Almost six months later, you and Patrick went back to Germany to attend Vincent and Andrea's wedding. This time, you didn't stop Bateman from taking a private jet for the trip, and it was your first flight on such a luxury aircraft—its interior looked even more lavish than in glamour magazines about the rich and famous. 

Sitting in the comfortable beige leather seat, you looked out the porthole where the clouds looked like a creamy dessert—the sight was mesmerizing and breathtaking, even though you weren't a fan of flying, but at the same time you couldn't say that you were aerophobic—you were definitely somewhere in between. While Patrick was away talking to the crew about something you didn't know, you had already finished counting the number of diamonds or other jewels that were used like a fancy decoration—there were about a hundred small gems all over the interior and it was insane because why would you need all of them in a damn plane? It wouldn't get off the ground without them, or what?

"What are you thinking about, sweetheart?" Bateman's soft baritone echoed off the walls of the plane's interior. "You sure you don't want something to drink?"

"Yes," you replied and quickly adjusted the sleeves of your shirt. "I'm just wondering if Vincent and Andrea will like our gift."

"Who wouldn't? Everybody loves money," the man chuckled and sat down across from you. "I still don't understand how they decided to get married so quickly after dating for a few months?"

Frowning, you grunted. "They've been dating for more than six months now and they knew each other since childhood....Did you forget?"

The man just rolled his eyes and yawned tiredly. "Honey, I don't even remember Sean's birthday and he's my brother. What did you expect?"

Yeah, right, what did I expect?

"Uh, just don't say anything that will embarrass me at the wedding, okay?"

"I can keep quiet the whole wedding, it's no problem for me," Bateman winked at you and swirled his glass of scotch. " As long as someone decides to ask me some stupid questions."

"Like what?"

"Mmm...something Wall Street related," he purred in a sweet tone that was such a stark contrast to what he was actually saying. "’Oh, sir, are you really from New York City? I've heard a lot of stories about the bankers from Wall Street.’"

The way he tried to imitate a German accent made you slap his hand and shake your head in disapproval. "All the guests are educated people, stop acting like Europeans are less educated than Americans."

"I'm not gonna start this polemic," he chirped, suddenly standing up. "Sit here, I'll be right back."

And then he disappeared behind the elegant door, made of red wood, its surface shimmering from how polished it was, you could even see your own reflection, but you didn't see any reasons why Bateman was leaving somewhere again. Was there something wrong with the plane? Were we going to crash? A cold shiver ran down your spine at the mere thought of it.

Shake it off…just shake it off.

While you desperately tried to calm down, the door opened again, but you couldn't see anyone behind it. "Close your eyes."

Patrick's sudden order made you blink nervously in shock.

"Why?"

You heard him sigh in irritation. "Just do what I say. Is it so difficult?"

"Fine, fine! Just don't do anything crazy!"

"You'll like it, trust me," the man replied, closing the door behind him before coming closer. "Put your hands out in front of you."

Shit, shit, shit, why am I so nervous? What else can he do? He could just kick me off the plane... Jesus, what am I thinking?

Closing your eyes tightly, you obeyed and reached out to feel something soft, fluffy and warm. "Oh my God...WHAT IS THAT?" And then you heard a distinctive sound that you would never mistake for anything else—a meow. "Can I open my eyes? PLEASE?"

"Now you can."

As soon as you opened your eyes, you saw a little fluffy pile of black fur looking back at you with a pair of tiny blue eyes—you could barely keep yourself from bursting into tears. The black kitten meows louder as you bring it closer to peck its head and hold it gently.

"Patrick, I..." you could barely speak. "I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything—your reaction is enough," the man commented, sitting back in his seat. "I know we talked about you wanting a kitten...about you wanting to adopt a child," he paused, taking a moment to just admire your happiness at having one of your dreams come true. "I thought we should start with something."

This kitten was the most adorable creature you'd ever seen, so small, so vulnerable, that you would do anything to protect and care for it. "That's...you can't even imagine how much it means to me," you pecked the kitten again when you noticed something on its collar—something round and shiny—a ring...with a large diamond. "What an interesting collar decoration."

"Told you you'd like it."

"Wait," you stopped him. "Wait...is this...for me?"

"What exactly?" Patrick sneered teasingly and opened his arms. "This jet is for you...everything around you...is for you," he slowly got up and walked to your seat. "Including the ring. Will you marry me?"

Another meow pierced the room around you, and while you were still in a state of shock, Bateman didn't miss the chance to pet the kitten, whose little paws curled up to catch his finger.

Will you marry me?

This question suddenly reminded you of the countless times you had imagined him asking you this, and even though in your dreams you knew exactly how to act to make everything look perfect, when it finally happened in real life you were caught off guard, shocked, paralyzed.  With every second of your hesitation, Bateman grew more and more nervous. 

"Honey?" He called to you, tilting your head with his gentle touch to make you look at him. "Is something wrong? Don't you like the ring?"

"No..." you nuzzled against his palm, holding the kitten carefully in your hands. "It's perfect...everything is so perfect," and then you collapsed, letting the sparkling tears run down your cheeks. "Are you...really...sure you want this?"

To be fair, he was ready for anything, even rejection, but this—such a reaction was something beyond his understanding of human emotion—scared him to the point where he thought he might be doing something bad, something that would turn you away from him.

Still holding your chin, the man knelt down beside your seat. "How can you question my decisions after everything we've been through?"

"Patrick," you ran your hand through his slightly disheveled hair. "I just want to know that you're not doing this for me, but because you really want to."

The man paused and sighed. "Of all the decisions I have made, this is the most conscious," he murmured in a raspy voice. "Allow me to prove it."

Speechless, you could barely breathe, and when you nodded, Patrick carefully removed the ring from the kitten's collar and gently took your hand in his to place a ring on your index finger, then the man pressed a soft kiss on the top of your palm as if to seal the vow. 

"I love you, Patrick Bateman," you said as he stood and towered over you to press his forehead against yours, your noses rubbing against each other. "You are my greatest tragedy and blessing." 

With a soft chuckle, Patrick pressed you against his chest, hugging your shoulders with one hand and stroking the kitten with the other. "I'll take that as a compliment," he smiled, burying his nose in your carefully combed hair. "What are you going to name your new little friend?"

You hummed and looked down. "It's a boy, right?"

"Yeah."

"Mhmm...what if we name him Memento?" You asked, looking up at your fiancé. "Memento means memory-"

"Memento mori—remember you must die, I've heard it many times."

"Uh, yes, that remark about the inevitability of death. But before we die, we will make a lot of different memories...memories you will never want to forget....memories you and I will remember when we grow old."

You sobbed at your own words and Patrick had to shush you, pulling you closer into his warm embrace. "Shhh," he kissed the top of your head. "You're so full of sentiment, darling. That would be enough for both of us."

"We're going to live together for a long time, aren't we?"

"Of course," Bateman reassured you, stroking your hair. "And we will die on the same day. But before that, as you said, we would have a life to remember."

"And... if there is an afterlife?"

"Then I'll find you there," Patrick's voice was as calming as a mantra, enveloping you like a soothing mist. "But you don't have to think about it today. Or tomorrow, or fifty years from now. Right now, you better think about our speech at the wedding, because I hate the very idea of it."

Human memory is a very complicated thing—sometimes you want nothing more than to reboot your memory and erase all the bad memories from your head, but then you have amnesia, and people who suffer from it will do anything to get their memories back. Because memory is what makes us who we are, every little thing that happened to you in your life forms your personality, and sometimes a missing memory can feel like a black void inside your soul when you have a feeling that you forgot something, but you couldn't remember what exactly. After all, life is a kaleidoscope of ups and downs, a complex mixture of dark and bright colors, where every little detail matters. When you feel depressed, when you think there's nothing left for you to keep going—never give up fighting for your love and following your dreams, because we have only one life, and death is inevitable, but while you're alive, you're capable of doing anything. 

Memento mori, but never stop believing and living your best life.

P.S. Thank you for reading until the end! I don’t have a taglist. You can follow my writing community to know when I update!💞

[tossawary]

Recent "Star Trek" reboot universes have really tried to sell me on three different romances for Spock with other TOS characters whom he did not have romantic relationships (at least not positive ones) with in TOS, which makes it particularly annoying when some fans try to squirm away from the idea of ST ever doing a future reboot or remake in which Spock/Kirk are explicitly queer.

Like, "But it's not in the original! They want to be faithful to the original!" really, REALLY does not pass the "I think you might just be discomforted by queerness and you should work on that, rather than making appeals to the authority of textual accuracy to avoid being called a homophobe or transphobe" check here. Because it's not as though these reboots care about perfect faithfulness on pretty much any other front. We'll accept that the costumes and special effects get updated to move with the times, we'll accept wildly different characterization choices that essentially give these characters new personalities, we'll accept new timelines that change the entire political map of the galaxy, but you as a fan draw the line at "What if this character was bisexual this time?" Really???

To be clear, I am not trying to dunk on Spock/Uhura, Spock/Chapel, or Spock/T'Pring here, I am merely trying to illustrate a frustrating double-standard. TOS Uhura does notably flirt with Spock several times! I see it! I remember TOS Chapel's feelings for Spock being one-sided, but I also don't think it's a bad thing to try to update TOS's more misogynistic writing choices regarding female characters. TOS T'Pring did... kind of try to kill Spock because she didn't want to marry him, but again, I don't necessarily think it's immediately a bad thing to try to explore her as a character and her betrothal to Spock. It's fine! It's fine by me to explore new takes in new AUs.

It's just that none of that evidence from TOS for those relationships holds much of a candle to whatever the fuck Kirk and Spock had going on to inspire The Premise. "Amok Time" is an Experience. There's only so many times that Kirk can say something like, "The cost [of abandoning Spock] would have been my soul," before you want to put your face in your hands. They are taking shiny pebbles from TOS and trying their very best to sell them to me as the basis for romantic relationships in reboots, sure, while they are standing in the shadow of Spirk Evidence Mountain (TOS).

(Yes, I have seen the recent "Unification" short film. Yes, I enjoyed it. No, I will not consider Spirk "officially canon" until all plausible deniability for the squirmy folks has been completely, explicitly destroyed by a HUMAN kiss onscreen.)

And okay, I must admit, at the moment, I don't actually want Spirk to eventually happen in "Strange New Worlds" now that they've finally met. I'm mostly indifferent to their Spock and Kirk actors, personally, and the writing for every canonical romantic relationship in both SNW and "Discovery" so far has gotten a solid "well, they certainly are standing next to each other" from me. (Yes, even the gay marriage in "Discovery". I just haven't been into it so far.) I think the writers would fumble Spirk if they tried it in this specific show and then annoying fans would use the fumble as "evidence" never to try to do Spirk or queer retakes on other TOS characters ever again, or as "proof" against other queer ST in other shows characters generally.

I'm mostly just mildly annoyed that I have to keep watching Spock specifically, famously read by many people as a queer man, be straight and messy about it, especially when there has not really been a significant queer relationship onscreen in SNW yet, unless you count M'Benga's daughter Rukiya and her glow cloud friend named Debra, which I personally don't, honestly. I'd like an onscreen relationship with a main character with zero plausible deniability. There's definitely nothing yet that comes remotely close to the screentime that Spock/Chapel, Spock/T'Pring, and Kirk/La'an have all been given so far, unfortunately. (Sulu is not here yet. Scotty has just shown up. If Scotty gets to make out with a guy next season, or Uhura or Ortegas gets to make out with a lady, without it being part of some god-like-being's fantasy world, then I may be satisfied.) (Also, yes, I am aware of queer characters and relationships in other "Star Trek" shows, thanks. I very much enjoyed Mariner having her incredibly silly breakup with her girlfriend in "Lower Decks".)

"Star Trek" is one of those properties where some people's double-standards regarding romantic interpretations of the original series really jump out. "They can't do Kirk/Spock because they want to be faithful to the original!" Get real.

[parachutingkitten]

Just so everyone is aware, ayathefly, the account who claims to be a temp voice actress for Dragons Rising, is almost certainly my cyber stalker from last month.

She has almost the exact same story as one of the stalker accounts used to try and befriend me. Back then she was a 23yo temp voice actress named Maya who had a comedically whimsical story about her not knowing information about the ducktales reboot she was hired for. This time she's a 23yo temp voice actress named Aya who has a comedically whimsical story about not knowing information about the Ninjago reboot she was hired for. Both the accounts used generic profile pics from classic cartoons, reblogged posts of mine shortly after creating their account, and had this manner of speaking in their posts which immediately set off alarm bells in my head.

In case you are not privy to the saga, this person made a bunch of false accusations about me on one account while defending me on another in order to, I guess, try and win my favor. This after harassing, threatening, and otherwise pestering me on a number of spam accounts. This includes the full range of pretending to be a fan with a tragic story about a dead brother, to weird sex foot fetish fantasies. Since then I have received emails claiming to be showrunners interested in my feedback which I'm also certain are her.

I have also linked them back to the zanenindroid account, and the parachutingkitfanpage, both abandoned at this point, presumably because they didn't get traction.

I need you to understand I was on the fence about sharing this information. Even if they're making my life annoying, this person has at times claimed to be 16 in messages to me in the past (I figure it's possible that the 23yo thing might just be her pretending to be my same age) and I don't want to be the guy who calls out a kid who lied on the internet to try and get friends- even if what they're doing is ABSOLUTELY inexcusable, it's only really affecting me. I know how to use the block button. Turning off non-follow messaging and anon asks is annoying, but not that huge a deal if it means cutting off avenues for them to contact me.

But recently my MOTHER informed me that she got some strange messages from someone claiming to be a 23yo voice actress, and tried gaslighting her into believing she knew her mom from a writing group like 10 years ago (which is not possible btw), and should TOTALY introduce her to me, because we're the same age, and both interested in animation.

I can't not talk about this anymore. When you bring my family into this, you lose any attempt at mercy from me.

Especially given we have quite a few minors in the fandom, I feel obligated to say something. I would not feel comfortable with anyone I know or care about interacting with this person, regardless of how harmless this person thinks their intentions are. They have proved themselves to be a manipulative, lying, unhinged, and obsessive personality willing to put someone they presumably like through some of the scariest scenarios you can find yourself in on the internet- and then drag your family into it. I would ask that you do not interact, do not give them the time of day, do not try to reason with them, and try your best not to be fooled by new accounts that pop up a week from now with suspiciously similar behavior, because I'm almost certain that will happen if Aya goes silent.

Maybe you think I'm paranoid, and over blowing things, and that's your call to make, but I would not be making this post if I did not feel strongly about this.

Even if somehow this is not the same person, and I am falsely linking these two nearly identical identities, at the very least Aya is not who she proports to be. She claims to have provided temp voices for season 3 just this month (temp voices being temporary voice work done before the actual actors are able to record their lines), but Devon Mack (voice actor for Arin) has confirmed that he was in the middle of recording the official dialogue for season 3 back in January of this year. The idea that the production team would only just now be recording TEMP dialogue for animation that's going to release in just a few months is an absolutely WILD claim. I can not convey to you what an insanely truncated timeline that would be. I don't even think that Dragons Rising is a the kind of show to use temp dialogue, none the less have the budget and time to hire out if they did need temp voices, rather than just using production members like most temp work.

Please, be careful out there everyone.

I'm praying I never have to address this again.

[toopimpabutterfly]

mouthwashing headcanons and important NOTE. Being mentally ill/experiencing trauma doesn't equal it's okay you do horrible things / be a horrible person. You got that?

TW for certain headcanons and subject matter.

Jimmy

-CSA survivor, lived in a low income household, unstable life growing up

-This leads him into trouble in his younger life before Pony Express, IE violent outbursts , theft, ect. He didn't commit any acts of SA till onboard (Seriously guys one of the games points is capitalism is horrible but they're not going to allow a convicted sexual deviant onboard, especially not without informing his crew+Curly knew Jimmy before)

-The trauma of his childhood left him as aggressive, having violent outbursts, and undiagnosed schizophrenia and BPD, turns into the psychosis he experiences during the events of the game

-Speaking of Curly he is aware though that Jimmy is not well mentally but tries to see the best in Jimmy, believes Jimmy is more than what he was on Earth and whatever happened in his childhood (this doesn't work out obviously)

-Tried to off himself in early life multiple times (the reason why he was quick to try and kill himself the first chance he got when caught, and in the end)

-The way he grew up leaves him to not eat a lot, mostly to drink liquids or things on the cheaper side/off brand, he sees most things as luxury's one must earn, but at the same time sees them as not helpful in his situation

-malnourished and has been since childhood and growing up but has a beer belly tbh

-Jimmy is jealous of Curly as he lived the ideal life he wanted, went to school, had connections, went to University, got a high paying job, ect. Jimmy sees this as unfair for all the suffering he went through growing up

-Also he's Mexican don't ask

-His favorite movies are the Matrix Trilogy (the others suck and that's just true) ,Mysterious Skin, The Talented Mr Ripley, and Akira

Curly

-Grew up upper middle class, met Jimmy in elementary school

-He tries to see the best in everybody, a true everyman, believes everyone can let go of their past/can be rehabilitated

-His favorite movies are Starship Troopers, Back To The Future, Alien II, and Avatar

-Used to watch those true crime YouTube videos growing up and always thought they deserved souch better

-Bro has WAYY too much empathy and sympathy

Anya

-Favorite moves are Girl Interrupted, Good Will Hunting, Jennifer's Body, and The Shape of Water

-Grew up lower middle income, wanted to further her career to help people back on Earth

-Didn't have the cash to go to a proper university though

-She has the best movie recommendations 100%

-Really good at boardgames

-The SA leaves her split, her mind slowly cracking more and more

-She feels a hate towards Jimmy and Curly, Jimmy for assaulting her, Curly for enabling it almost

-Obsession with cleanliness after the SA and up to her death

-Had violent outbursts on the ship in the last months of her death

Daisuke

-Youngest of the crew

-Wanted to make his family proud

-I feel like he's a middle child tbh

-Really loves racing simulators

-Favorite movies are Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob Rebooted, Cheech and Chong, Mallrats, Idiocracy, Adam Sandler movies, and Lords of Dogtown

-Skater backhome

-LOVES to hosts movie nights

-Comic nerd, he's a DCU forever, Dark horse branch his shit specifically

-Loves techno and rave music

-Draws short comics

Swansea

-Favorite movies are Django Unchained, Hellboy, No Country for Old Men, From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, ect. Huge Tarantino fan tbh

-Was in ROTC in highschool, ran that shit like the navy

-He watches requiem for a dream to remember his alcoholism isn't worth it, trainspotting too maybe.

-He loved to get handmade gifts over bought ones, letters, arts and crafts, drawings, ect

-Woodcarver

-Former Red Cross Worker/Salvation army worker tbh

[zeroducks-2]

Do you have an essential Dick Grayson comics reading list?? Especially sladick related 👉👈 I feel like I’m always hearing about fun interactions between them, but no one ever lists from what comics 😭🥺

Of course!

You can find lots of good stuff in Devin Grayson's Nightwing 1996. I suggest taking a look at #80 to #83, Dick and Slade have iconic interactions in those issues. Like this one!

(from #82 specifically)

There's also the whole "renegade arc" which spans from #110 to #115, and it has stuff like the Message Received in Dick's bathroom, and "Nightstroke". I feel we don't talk enough about Nightstroke lol.

I really recommend Nightwing 1996 in general anyway. Not all of it is good (we could really do without the racism), but it does have some of the most Iconic Dick Grayson Moments, and it's really fun and engaging. The whole Tarantula thing happens in that one btw.

For some of the more Old School flavor of both characters, I suggest reading some New Teen Titans issues from the 80s, especially The Judas Contract (yep the one with Tara), since it has Slade's first apparition and some really badass moments.

I personally am a big fan of that brief but memorable time where Dick was Batman and Damian Robin - I feel Dick's storyline really peaked with that arc and we never got even close to that ever again (it would be Batman & Robin by Grant Morrison, and I also HIGHLY RECOMMEND Black Mirror by Scott Snyder). Slade and Dick have a couple of memorable interactions during that run but nothing too significant.

For something with a more modern flavor, unfortunately there isn't much except Dark Crisis. You know, from where the whole "You were always the trophy, Grayson. Why would I waste my time with anyone else?" gayass speech comes from.

(this one, from Dark Crisis #2 specifically)

And then there's also that whole part with Dick and Slade fighting as their selves from pre-N52 and all that. I mean I'm not a fan of Dark Crisis, but at least Joshua made it gay and I love him for it.

I wouldn't be able to tell you with absolute certainty what are the "essential" Dick Grayson comics to read though, because unlike characters such as Barry or Clark, Dick has changed SO MUCH post reboot, especially when it comes to Tom Taylor's run. And as much as I tend to shit on Taylor's run and many more modern comics, I can't in good conscience call out of character the past 15 years of Nightwing/Dick Grayson. I recognize that Dick is sadly not the same character he used to be preboot, so most of what you read from before the N52 is essentially obsolete when it comes to Dick's personality (also his competence and the respect the superheroes community had for him tend to be spotty at best).

But yeah my point is that my "Dick Grayson essentials" are oldies, but they're still some of my favorite stories and I would highly recommend reading those over the modern slop that has been the Nightwing comics for a while now.

So to make a quick recap, for any Dick Grayson fan I would suggest reading Devin Grayson's 1996 run, The New Teen Titans by Wolfman and Perez, and Batman & Robin by Grant Morrison. Black Mirror by Scott Snyder is my all time favorite Dick Grayson comic.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Ok, barring from a reboot (hard or soft), is there anyway a future MLB season can be... Good?

Like, if someone else were to take over the reins and got told "here, fix this mess with no reboots and as little retcons as possible", do you think it's plausible?

The only way I can think of is to just move on from the past seasons and say "ok, we can't fix the past seasons. So let's make sure the present seasons are really good". As in just giving up on the past and focus on the present.

The other way is more fan service than substance: a Marinette villain & health recovery arc. Because I just want her to snap one day and say "fuck all y'all".

But what do you think?

I'm inclined to agree. I think the show was damaged but salvageable after season four, but after season five? It's pretty much dead in the water. However, if someone forced me to fix it with no major retcons AND let me go as dark as needed to make that happen, then here's my pitch:

Make the Kwamis evil.

Gabriel really was a loving father, but Nooroo corrupted him.

Marinette keeps secrets to an absurd degree because Tikki is messing with her brain.

Fu was a paranoid recluse because Wayzz made him that way.

Fluff's chosen always end up trapped in burrows, watching the world pass by, banned from being part of it.

This takes us down a psychological horror route where someone on the newly made team notices that the team is acting strangely as their newly assigned Kwamis start to warp their minds. My gut reaction was Marinette or Alya, but Felix and Kagami may be a better choice as this could be a way to give their sentistatus meaning. Perhaps it makes them immune since the only way to control them is via their amoks?

This would lead to a reveal that the guardian order was made to protect the world from the Kwamis and not to use the Kwamis to protect the world, but Su-Han doesn't know what to do with the butterfly missing or something like that.

Not my greatest idea ever, but I don't know what else you could do to make sense of the nonsense that canon has laid at our feet and this would do something to explain all the inconsistent characterization. It's not bad writing, it's foreshadowing that something is wrong with the characters' minds!

You could also do something about Gabriel's wish creating a reality that needs to be undone and that's why things feel so wrong, but it's hard to pull that one off since reality was literally rewritten from start to finish so why would the characters even notice something was off? Only way I see that one working is if the people who save the day are from another universe. Like maybe Shadybug and Claw Noir pop in for a visit, notice something is wrong, and help out? But I feel like they've got enough bs in their current universe already. Still, the option is there since they visited the canon universe before the rewrite, met the main cast, and Shadybug read Marinette's diary, so they have enough knowledge to notice that something is wrong.

[yelldeadcellvrremix]

Random things and tidbits about Devil May Cry and its fandom that I find funny

The never-ending debate of which is the hotter twin (it's Dante btw)

DMC and DMC reboot fandoms being two entirely different fanbases and somehow not being able to reconcile this after 13 years come on y'all please get along

r/DevilMayCry trying really hard to be the next r/BatmanArkham but even hornier

Most Devil May Cry fans pre-DMC5:"man it sucks we don't know who nero is related to" Nero: (no mentions of having any biological relations to Sparda himself, Dante never proved that Nero could be his biological son, and Vergil is the only one who has conveniently not shown up for a while)

Speaking of, this made a lot of ship art/fics between Dante and Nero age like milk but then there's also the people who enjoy the ship because they're related

Tumblr user derelict-stranger. if you know who that is, you're braver than the troops

Bury the Light never getting a proper Spotify upload for some reason

The director of DMC2 removing Dante's snarkiness and one-liners because he hated it only for DMC3 onwards to make Dante the most goofy ahh protagonist imaginable

Speaking of, DMC3 onwards probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for 9/11. This one is a bit of a stretch but I'm not gonna elaborate.

The time Power Morphicon 2024 also became "the Devil May Cry 23rd anniversary convention" (I was there for it and IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. I MET A LOT OF DMC COSPLAYERS AND I ALSO GOT AUTOGRAPHS FROM BOTH VERSIONS OF VERGIL)

"Is Dante from Netflix Devil May Cry actually Nero?"

This list might expand later

[kruzbr]

hahh yea thats the stuff

rant time ig (and spoilers? idk if me just not being super happy with the new season/series is spoilers but just in case be warned)

idk man it feels like the show isn't even written by the same people as the original show. joanfk doesn't happen radada whatever but the writing just isn't the same either and I just don't find it fun anymore (sometimes I wish I could be one of u bleacher creature enjoyers, yall seem to be having the good time that I'm not having). the 'new crush of the week' shit that this show has become feels so juvenile and written like an early 2000s middle schooler it's crazy (it's a joke on dumb teen romances but what if I don't find it funny anymore? get a new bit please)

kinda just wished the reboot didn't happen, it feels like the writers are just doing random ass shit and forgetting the reasons why people liked the show to begin with lets not forget that a huge part of the resurgence was BECAUSE joanfk was so well loved and throwing that into the face of those fans is SUPER cool and does not make me feel so stupid for begging for a new season but whatever - completely threw away this chance of getting to continue this story that was ended too soon, which hey might just be a HBO thing but who really knows.

idk if this is gonna be the last time I'm doing fanart for clone high (after I finished this season I said I wasn't going to cuz literally nothing appealed to me to draw but quickly lied because I had some thoughts I needed to scream into the void lmao) but don't be surprised if that happens. sorry if none of this is coherent, very stream of consciousness and can't give more of a shit lmao

[tippenfunkaport]

Today Variety (see above) had an article naming Heidi Schreck as the new writer for the live action She-Ra series at Amazon that was announced back in Sept 2021 and, after seeing dozens of terrible takes and people who are fans of the Netflix's She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2017) freaking out, let's talk about this, shall we?

Disclaimer that I do not have any insider knowledge of this project specifically, this is just my educated perspective from my experience with IP and TV.

First and foremost, I will believe this project is actually happening when it is showing on my TV and not a moment sooner. Let's just say that.

Now assuming it IS happening, here's what you should understand...

IP is usually use it or lose it. If Dreamworks wants to keep the rights to make She-Ra content, they very likely must have something in active development or risk listing it. If Netflix isn't willing to make more of the animated series right now, then the Amazon deal is all they have or give She-Ra up entirely. 

If you're an SPOP (2017) fan, you're in favor of Dreamworks retaining the license over losing it because, so long as they have it, the door is always open for more of our SPOP in one way or another. This reboot doesn't negate the possibility of a continuation of the animated version or vice versa. (Fans of frequently rebooted properties like TMNT and MLP would be happy to tell you about how there's been content for multiple gens at the same time.) It's not like the new version erases the old. If anything, a reboot often makes it more likely you get content of a past gen because of renewed interest in the property as a whole.

"But what if it's sexist trash!" The biggest fear people had about this reboot was that it would be some male gaze disaster made to please the worst kind of people who hate all kinds of diversity. Obviously, we'll see what we get, but the fact that they specifically got a feminist playwright as the writer is a big thing should alleviate some of that fear.

"But will it be gay????" I've seen lots of freaking out that Adora's going to kill Catra and marry a man on her grave and other equally unlikely fears. And the fact is: We don't know if it will be gay! With this writer, the gay door certainly isn't closed, but that doesn't mean it's open either. But honestly the real question you should be asking is: will it be explicitly gay? Because the rainbow homo-eroticism is baked right into She-Ra OG so even if we don't get an explicit same-sex kiss on screen... it's likely still gonna be pretty gay.

Even a bad or infuriating reboot will revitalize the fandom and bring new fans to SPOP (2017) AND increase the chances of continuation. Say the new show is terrible. Say they annoy everyone by giving Catra and Adora a supercorp queerbaiting thing and then never make it canon or make Catra and Hordak in love and everyone is mad. (Which I feel obligated to point out is *extremely* unlikely as this is literally still Dreamworks' show. They are the same people that gave you the gay. They are keenly aware of what their audience wants so, even if they are reluctant to make it canon, at the least they are probably going to tease it.) But even in the worst case scenario of the straightest possible version of She-Ra, what are people going to do if the new show pisses them off? Turn back to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, create more fanworks, interact with what's already there, keep the fandom alive for everyone. You want that!

"Well SPOP (2017) was perfect and they should never be allowed to make another version of She-Ra again unless it's just like the thing we just got!" Wow, where have I heard something like that before? Oh yeah, that's exactly what the nightmare chuds said about Netflix's She-Ra and if they had gotten their way, we wouldn't have had this show we love. So maybe take a nice deep breath, chill tf out and look at that fact that there is no reason yet to see this announcement as anything other than a good thing for both this new reboot and the animated version's future.

[thankskenpenders]

There’s been some discussions on Twitter recently about if Blaze’s dimension is worth keeping around and expanding on or if it should be ignored/merged with Sonic’s world thanks to a Bumblekast clip. What are your thoughts on Blaze’s dimension as a story-telling hurdle/ alternate setting? I personally feel like it wouldn’t make a difference if Blaze was a princess from another dimension or a princess from the other side of the world, it would just be easier for her to show up if she wasn’t from another dimension, but I also think it’s be neat to expand on Blaze’s world as a parallel to Sonic’s.

I think there's a whole cottage industry of Sonic fans who just like to take things Ian says out of context so they can rile people up on Twitter, and the fandom falls for it every time, and it's extremely tiring

But also I think Ian is right

This isn't something I've really shared, but I actually have a document where I've kept ideas for what I would do with a hypothetical modern reboot of Archie Sonic where I'm allowed to start from scratch and change anything I want. (I might share some of this someday, perhaps with some character designs, but for now it's just a thing for me. It's not like I'm gonna do a comic or anything.) For Blaze, I immediately decided that all of the elements from the Sol Dimension should be merged with the regular Mobius. I would just say that Sonic and friends have all their adventures on one hemisphere of the planet, and Blaze is from the other. I mean, the Sol Dimension already has a heavy Australia/Oceania vibe. It'd be really easy. This way, there would still be some level of separation, and Blaze would still have her own territory where she gets to be the main hero, but it'd be WAY easier to actually use those elements. Characters can just show up on whatever part of the planet they need to be on for any given story

For some reason people seem to think that Blaze being from a separate dimension isn't a storytelling hurdle at all, and I really don't know what franchise they're following, because it sure as hell isn't the version of Sonic I know. Yes, in theory it could be as simple as just using a warp ring to hop over to the Sol Dimension whenever. There are ways to write around it. I'd love to see that happen so that we could flesh out Blaze's world some more. Give Blaze some more allies and villains of her own! Give her more to do over there, and more reasons for Sonic and co. to visit! But clearly Sega isn't down with that, considering the Sol Dimension has only ever been in one game and, what, two issues of the IDW comics for maybe ten pages total? Sega's just sitting on it, and it's impossible not to see the fact that it's a whole separate dimension as the reason.

Even if we were getting more stories about traveling to and from the Sol Dimension, it'd still be a hassle. You want to use the Chaotix in a story in the Sol Dimension? Wanna use Marine or Johnny or whoever in a story set on the main world? Well, you'd better think up an airtight excuse for why those characters are traveling between the dimensions and pray that Sega approves of it. And right now that seems to be one hell of an obstacle, given how little we see of the Sol Dimension even though I know damn well Ian and Evan would love to explore it more. It's gotten to the point that Blaze is now on an endless "vacation" on Sonic's Earth so that they can actually use her in stories. People have been acting like merging the worlds would completely take away everything that makes Blaze special as a character, when it would just make all of her personal story stuff infinitely easier to work with than it is right now.

"Oh but what about the Sol Emeralds?" There's no reason the Sol Emeralds couldn't exist on the same planet as the Chaos Emeralds. We've already got other magic rocks like the Time Stones, the Phantom Ruby, and the Warp Topaz. "But what about Eggman Nega?" I could not give less of a shit about what happens to Eggman Nega and Sega doesn't even use him anymore, but also he's already supposed to be from Silver's future, not the Sol Dimension. "But what about the plot of Sonic Rush where the whole point was that they had to stop the worlds from being merged because they thought it was a bad thing?" Yes, because Sonic has always been a series that treated canon as sacred an immutable, and Sega would never do something that contradicted a game from almost 20 years ago

Anyway, all of this is a moot point. It's not like this is going to happen. Ian just brought up the possibility on the BumbleKast as an "if I could change literally anything" type deal. Sega is not going to do this. He is allowed to have his own opinions on Sonic things without fans having to take it personally and scream and cry about it. You don't have to agree with him on everything. I've certainly had points I disagree with him on! It's fine! That's normal! He's only human. Yes, Ian is on the Lore Team, but he's just one voice in the room. He's not even the boss of that team. If Ian could get whatever he wanted, we'd have seen the Freedom Fighters and Sticks by now

[tenebraevesper]

Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 1)

Welcome to the first part of my personal elaboration on the topic of why ''Prime!Shadow is peak Shadow!'', or in other words, why Prime!Shadow is one of the best written iterations of Shadow's character.

Will I try to make proper arguments for his character writing? Of course. Will I also be biased as hell just because he's my favorite character? Absolutely!

So, if you can handle both of that, we should dive in!

Before I start, I suppose I should give a brief overview of Shadow's character and how he had been handled through the years. The general consensus seems to be that Shadow was at his peak as a character from Sonic Adventure 2 to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) (as well as Pre-Reboot!Archie Comics during Ian Flynn's run), being someone who was deeply traumatized by the death of his sister Maria Robotnik, had his memories manipulated to get revenge on humanity, only to sacrifice his own life to save the world Maria cherished, losing his memories in the process and trying to carve out his own path, only to finally solidify his role as a protector of the world, even if his methods aren't always the most peaceful ones.

So, where does the idea of edgelord Shadow come from?

Yeaaahh... let's just say that Shadow's own game, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), didn't do him any good in the character department, because it seems that all that people remember was that one time SEGA decided to give Shadow a gun and let him deal with an alien invasion. The confusing story routes didn't help either.

In time, Shadow's character went from a complex and layered character to something akin to Vegeta (no offense Dragon Ball fans!), much to the disappointment of everyone who understood character before he underwent this transformation. Also, I'm not counting Boom!Shadow in this because Sonic Boom is a different universe and its own thing, but I won't argue against the fact that Boom!Shadow's characterization as a complete jerkass didn't do Game!Shadow any favor either. That's not even mentioning the Sonic IDW Comics, where Shadow had many mandates tied to him that even the writers found it annoying to write him (although with the most recent arc where Shadow was shown, it seems that the mandates have loosened a little).

Of course, I might be missing out on some information, but this is the general gist of the history of his character. So, when Sonic Prime revealed that Shadow would be one of the major characters, you can bet that I was nervous about how he would be written and I decided to keep a close eye on his characterization; and honestly, I went from genuinely pleased to excited when I realized that Shadow was being written as a very compelling character. Not only that, but he also appeared to have gone through subtle character development over the course of the show.

Starting from the very beginning, I'm certain that you remember how Shadow's first appearance was basically him punching Sonic at the end of Episode 01: Shattered, a very impactful first impression that left us with more questions and headaches. The following episode, Episode 02: The Yoke's On You, gives us more details in regards to why he punched Sonic, seemingly out of the blue.

Shadow's proper introduction kicks off with him searching for the Chaos Emerald... and I have to ask, when was the last time we even saw Shadow genuinely smile? Was in the Mario & Sonic at The Olympic Games franchise? I don't really remember.

In any case, being clearly happy about finding the Chaos Emerald, he speeds off, only to suddenly sense that something is wrong and is met with a giant blue pulse of energy (released during Sonic's fight with Dr. Eggman) and a vision of Sonic using the Paradox Prism energy.

''Sonic!''

This expression just screams ''Something bad is going to happen and it's Sonic's fault! I'm going to kick his ass before he does anything stupid!''

We then follow Shadow as he searches for Sonic, clocking him square in the face for something he hasn't done yet. Eh, I'd say that this one wasn't really deserved.

Even before Sonic starts explaining his relationship with Shadow, we immediately get an understanding of Shadow's character. He is serious, works alone, quite fast and powerful, prefers to fight over talking things out, is willing to do anything to protect his home and clearly has a history with Sonic. Sonic proceeds to add how Shadow is his biggest rival, a buzzkill and that he totally roller-skates.

''They're air shoes!''

Did... Did Shadow just break the 4th wall? Did he just make a joke? Dude, not even Boom!Shadow got to do that and Sonic Boom was the epitome of wall breaking!

Yeah, let's just say that my jaw dropped when I heard this, realizing that Shadow's character in Sonic Prime will be different than what we got used to see.

So, after knocking the Rings out of Sonic (I mean that literally), Shadow questions him about what he has done, with Sonic pointing out how Eggman is the bad guy, clearly confused about why Shadow is attacking him.

''You literally shook the world!'' ''That's because I'm good! And powerful apparently! Jealous?''

After a bit of teasing from Sonic, he and Shadow get into a race, during which I had noticed something. While Sonic keeps teasing Shadow (and also having fun fighting him), Shadow tells him to stop and listen for once.

''Clearly you're angry, which is normal,... but I'm supposed to be on a bit of a mission here, Shadow!'' ''What mission?'' ''None of your business.''

Sooooo, have you noticed it too? Because there is something very telling in this interaction. If you haven't, I'll let it play out until the end. Anyways, to continue, Shadow knocks Sonic into a rock, with Sonic confirming another aspect of their relationship.

''Ughh, I know, we're fighting again. Don't worry guys, I'll calm him down.''

We now know that this certainly wasn't the first time they had a fight and it won't be the last time. Sonic points out that, whatever beef they have, they aren't going to settle it this way. While Sonic is right, I will admit, I had to gush over the excellent animation and fight choreography. X3

Sonic then hears an explosion from the cave where the Paradox Prism is and tells Shadow that he needs to get to his friends, only to get punched for his troubles.

''Learn to focus!''

Now that the flashback is over, what exactly is going on between the two?

First of all, the main thing I have noticed is that both Shadow and Sonic seriously have a problem with communication. Shadow knows Sonic is about to do something stupid, and from his actions (aka choosing violence over talking) he is trying to prevent Sonic from doing whatever he was about to do. It does paint Shadow as a bit of a jerk, but Sonic isn't completely innocent here either.

An observation I had made was that Shadow probably knows that if he tried to just talk to Sonic, Sonic would either blow him off and run away or just tease him back, which was confirmed when Shadow asks him on what kind of mission he is with Sonic responding that it's none of his business. I imagine that there were previous events where Sonic was doing something stupid and Shadow tried to stop him from making things worse, and that violence was indeed the answer to Sonic's antics.

If Sonic had explained to Shadow what the deal is, I'm certain that Shadow would help him out. Perhaps Shadow could've told him about his vision, but going by Sonic's behavior, Sonic would probably not listen to him.

This brings me to my second point - this moment establishes that, if there will be character development for Shadow, it will be mainly through his interactions with Sonic and them learning to work together and listen to each other, something I'm really excited to talk about in later episodes.

The flashback continues in Episode 03: Escape From New Yoke, where Sonic does the old ''Hey, look behind you!'' trick and Shadow falls for it, hook, line and sinker. Sonic knocks him into a wall and speeds off to where his friends are fighting Eggman, leaving Shadow to recover and follow him.

I do like how Shadow just shakes his head here. Even if he doesn't say much, you can clearly see what it is going through his mind. He's angry at Sonic, but acknowledges that this is just typical for his blue rival.

in Episode 07: It Takes One to No Place, we see that Shadow manages to reach the Paradox Prism cave, just as Sonic is about to shatter it.

''Chaos Control!''

Unlike Sonic's friends and Dr. Eggman, Shadow manages to use Chaos Control, preventing him from being shattered just like the others.

''Sonic!''

Instead, he finds himself floating in The Void. I'll leave what happened to him in The Void for the next part, but what is important to note is that he cannot enter the individual Shatterspaces, but he can communicate with Sonic every time the latter gains enough speed to use the Paradox Prism Energy.

''Sonic, it's broken! It's all broken!''

Sonic is at first freaked out, thinking he's just hallucinating. I suppose that explains why Sonic keeps ignoring him in any subsequent appearances, despite Shadow trying his best to contact him and trying to explain him what to do, like telling him how he's lost in The Void and for Sonic to keep moving and to not stop (which also leads Sonic to find out how he can travel between Shatterspaces).

I suppose this can also be interpreted as ''Sonic leaves Shadow on read''. X3

Once Sonic accidentally gets out of No Place in Episode 08: There Is No Arrgh In Team, he is confronted by Shadow, who is absolutely furious. Not that Sonic notices, given how he had a really rough day himself.

''Shadow? Ugh, I don't have time to deal with whoever you are. I just wanna go home.''

''Home? Home doesn't exist anymore BECAUSE OF YOU!''

Considering what Sonic had done, yeah, this punch was definitely deserved.

As I said above, the first eight episodes are here to establish Shadow's character, his relationship/rivalry with Sonic and his own flaws (mainly the lack of communication on his part, choosing to fight Sonic instead) and it is clear that in order to overcome those flaws, he will have to work with Sonic (calm down Sonadow shippers, we didn't get there yet), something I'm excited to explore in the second part of this analysis.

#Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 2)

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)