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thankskenpenders · 6 months ago

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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.

#tkp post #tlsc #tlsc beginnings

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caffeinewitchcraft · 8 months ago

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Everything I've Ever Written (on Tumblr)

I have been writing online since 2016. As a result, I have quite the few short stories listed below! They're all from different parts in my writing journey and I hope you enjoy.

If you'd like to read what I currently put out, please consider supporting me on Patreon (X)

Cinderella Doesn't Believe in Fairy Tales

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Part 4 / Part 5 /Part 6

Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9

Destiny Universe

You Are the Demon King

The Hero and Hope (part 1) (part 2)

Being Villagers

Heroes and Villains

Therapist for Villains

Juniper and Discus

Self Destruct Villain (flash fiction)

Dandelion (A Villain Story)

You Help Kill Heroes

You are the Shark Hero

Mist into a Tempest

The Civilian and the Reluctant Hero

No Heroes Here

The Spoiler (humor, flash fiction)

You are Legacy

Hero in Title

Dark Lord's Former Coworker

One Minute

The Fae:

You Become Powerful

Your Friend Takes Your Name

Larkin and Yvette

Debt Must Be Repaid (humor flash fiction)

Going to the Hill

The Fae are Free

When They Don't Know (submitted to elsewhereuniversity)

The Chosen One

The Chosen One's Parents

Fate and Mercy and Dead Girls

Amulet to Save Her

Hero's Apprentice (Flash fiction)

The Aftermath of the Chosen One

Wizards Stole My Brother

You are the Chosen One's Knight

The Chosen One is a History Major

You are the Most Powerful Magic User

Time Restarts and She Remembers

Better the Witch than the Kid

Witches

It Was in a Name

The Good Witch of Hawthorne

Berthe the Green Witch

Cursed Mold (flash fiction)

Love isn't Enough

I Can't Believe it's not Proper Adjudication

Devil Deals

The Devil You Know

The Ritual

They Summoned Her on Halloween (flash fiction)

Fairytale Retellings

Ariel and Ursula (age appropriate)

The Gods

Zeus' Son

Faith in Technology

Sci-Fi

Six Red Bulls and Persistence

The Sound of Silence

Emmaline and the Apartment

Humans are Vengeful

Humans Know War (that's why we have diplomacy)

Criminals Forced to Live on as AI (flash fiction)

Misc Fantasy

Wind-Speaker

Wind-Speaker and Her Wife

You Will Become

The Sirens and Leona (flash fiction)

Eldritch Princess (flash fiction)

Princess Maria and the Dragon

Princess Maria is Kidnapped

Immortals are Afraid of Change

Fiona the Dragon

A Violently Won War

Meta Stories

An Abstract Concept

Narrative Town

Narrative Town: Uncle Ralph

Princess Phaedra Breaks

You are a Horror Movie Villain

Ghost Stories

Malevolent Spirits

Your House is Haunted by an Anime Pillow

Don't Open the Door

Grandma's House

Who Is? (flash fiction)

A Face (flash fiction)

Misc.

You Choose Your Fate in Hell

Time Paradox (flash fiction)

You are an Assassin

Multiple Dimension Serial Killer (flash fiction)

An Exercise in Mary Sue

She Comes Back from the Hospital (tw eating disorder)

Roses and Evil (mental health flash fiction)

Big Brother

A Conversation About Anger

Punching Depression

Two Sides (flash fiction)

Immortal Serial Killer in Prison

Theater Romance (flash fiction)

The Lady and the Knight (flash fiction)

Different (flash fiction)

#gonna post this now and then edit before it consumes everyone's dashboards #long post

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blackberry-sage-tea · 18 days ago

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"The Dalish gifted an Eluvian to the Grey Wardens so we can get in Weisshaupt" is just so emblematic of my problems with the game, because you can tell--it feels to me--that the thought process was "We need to have an Eluvian in Weisshaupt, Eluvians are an Elven(TM) thing, the Dalish are the Elven(TM) faction, so let's just say they were the ones who gave one to the Grey Wardens".

The Dalish have been established over all three games as a people who have spent the last thousands of years desperately scrounging for whatever scraps of their culture they can find, a struggle that has cost them dearly as typified by Merrill's plight trying to restore a single Eluvian which had previously Blighted two of her clan mates (an Eluvian that she can't open or use, and doesn't actually know what it's for by the end of her quest line). Multiple Dalish in Inquisition are killed trying to regain their history ("The Knight's Tomb") or trying to prove themselves by regaining even a talisman related to their culture ("Someone to Lose"). They are an insular and guarded people because outsider interactions frequently invoke a heavy toll in Dalish lives, up to and including entire clans. And yet, we are supposed to believe in a single throwaway piece of dialogue that in the 10 years between Inquisition and Veilguard, the Dalish have (offscreen) gained enough access to Eluvians as a piece of technology that they can afford to just "gift" one to the Grey Wardens without explanation.

There are constant revelations of this kind where pre-established parts of the lore are just thrown out the window. Things that had great emotional weight or impact in previous installments of the series are used for cheap thrills or plot-hole fills without explanation, justification, or even gravitas from the game. You have a moment in one of Emmrich's quests where you stumble through a portal directly into the Fade that Hezenkoss opened in Blackthorne manor, and you're tasked with closing it again. All of this is done entirely without the Anchor or even an implied blood sacrificial ritual, and it is never commented as anything particularly groundbreaking (when going into the Fade physically through tearing a hole in it was a Big Fucking Deal in Inquisition). You encounter a Compassion spirit in a side quest investigating the deaths of citizens in Tevinter who were murdered by a demon of Despair, and it is strong enough to not only retain itself through sensing the (unanswered!) suffering that these people experienced, but it also resolves to protect others to keep them from the same fate (when Cole was so traumatized by a single person's death that he completely reshaped his entire being around them). So on and so forth. Don't even get me started on Bellara's comment that the ancient elves "made most of their buildings in the Fade".

I'm not asking for someone to hold my hand and spoonfeed me information. I frankly don't care if an obscure codex entry, a reddit AMA question, bluesky tweet, or headcanon exists somewhere to patch in or bandaid over all of the jarring details like this, because it doesn't change the fact that the game itself should be doing this. The game itself should be taking the time to explain this in a way that is not missable, the game itself should be taking these things seriously, it should recognize when it is doing contradictory things and rush to justify itself accordingly, because these are things the emotional beats of previous stories hinged on. Like, when the game has Taash say a line like "The Qun isn't a prison, you can leave if you want", it's the responsibility of the writers to show that this is Taash being misinformed, not because I'm too stupid to headcanon that this is the case, but because this line is a symptom of how the entire game's writing seems to have forgotten about the Ben-Hassrath as a thing that exists in this setting.

Previous Dragon Age games are no stranger to "We quietly removed Solas' network of agents and spies offscreen"-style writing, but it usually didn't feel like a constant deluge periodically uprooting my emotional investment and immersion. There's only so much I can take in good faith before I realize that this game was just not written with any care towards ensuring that the worldbuilding made sense and felt right to the player, leading to awkward backpedaling in reddit threads like "no the Crows haven't changed as an organization, these are just the unique Good Crows and we forgot to mention it".

I just can't look past this shit anymore.

#this is not what i made my blog for #so i won't say anything else #waving hello to my single follower #you and me we're holding hands in hell together #veilguard critical

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bitchimasnake-sss · 3 months ago

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☆ hubris! ── a blue lock fanfiction. // where you come to wreck the blue lock boys but end up ruined instead. [find part 1 here.]

synopsis: when ego jinpachi asked you to be the ruination of the national japanese football team, you gladly accepted. how hard could it have been? ruining a couple of men was child's play. but what a fool you were, because now you lay in front of the same people you vowed to ruin, and you knew they were about to devour you whole. pairing: afab!reader x multiple men [aged up isagi yoichi, rin itoshi, hyoma chigiri, meguru bachira, rensuke kunigami, nagi seishiro, reo mikage.] // gang-bang. it's implied that the reader has slept with them all previously [in part one]. also, yes! this is consensual. no dub-con or non-con going on, dw!! cw: DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT. [this means the story contains themes one may not be comfortable with. if you find yourself growing uncomfortable, please click away.] NOT PROOFREAD. WRITTEN DURING A DELUSIONAL PHASE. MDNI. nsfw concludes: OVERSTIMULATION!!! BLINDFOLD!!! MARATHON SEX!!! GANGBANG!!! penetration, doin' it raw, cunnilingus, blowjob, teasing, nicknames, slight bimbofication, overstimulation, praise, marathon sex. my digital footprint goes craaaazy :) wc: 1.2k words m.list

you had believed you would ruin the blue lock boys. you had believed that till the end, till you entered your last prey's room: reo mikage's room. one after the other, you knew you had the boys in your palm. with just one more to conquer, you were utterly confident.

perhaps that hubris is what brought upon your destruction.

reo's request was a bit strange, sure. he had asked you to put on a blindfold, asked you to do nothing else but follow his voice. strange, but nothing you weren't well-equipped to deal with.

what you weren't ready was for all the blue lock boys to corner you like some helpless, little ragdoll.

"you're being too hard on her," rin itoshi commented, looking at how meguru bachira ruined you at the mercy of his tongue. the pink muscle fucked into you, lapping up the dripping juices like it was bachira's only focus in life. rin tsked, "slow down, bachira."

"hah," rensuke kunigami found himself scoffing, looking at the way rin pushed his erection past your lips and fucked your mouth with reckless abandon. the orange-haired man teased, "bold words from you, itoshi. look at what a mess you're making of her."

by mess, the muscled man meant how your chin and lips were dripped in drool and everything that tasted of rin itoshi. you were running out of hair as the star player pulled your mouth up and down his hardened cock.

"ugh, clear up." nagi seishiro quipped up next, stretching his arms as if he wasn't seeing the most lewd display right in front of him. you laid on reo's bed, eyes blindfolded as they men devoured you one after the other. meguru bachira was hooked on your core, eating you out, while rin itoshi fucked your mouth and hyoma chigiri played with your erect nipples, tugging and licking them. nagi huffed, "when's it gonna be our turn?"

"patience," reo mikage reminded the snowy-headed man, "you can have her next."

the men seemed to converse within themselves, only bringing their attention back to you as you gagged on rin's dick. gasping for air, you blindly clawed at his thighs and the hot-headed itoshi finally gave you some mercy. as he pulled out of your mouth, your throat felt strangely empty, almost as if the footballer had made you his own cocksleeve.

"move," isagi yoichi huffed, "it's my turn."

"you had her not even five minutes ago," bachira whined against your puffy, glistening cunt and you heard hyoma chigiri finally let go of your tits with a resigned sigh, "yeah, fuck off, isagi. you just had her."

"and i wanna go again," the raven-headed muttered impatiently, his razor-sharp tongue ready to fight whoever necessary. but kunigami interfered, laughing as he traced the outline of your body with his hungry eyes, "can't blame isagi. i mean, jus' look at her."

see, you would have paid attention to all their bickering if you weren't losing your mind right this second.

all you could feel were hot licks against your clit and a tongue fucking you senseless, you could feel rin— oh, wait. no. from the scent of his soap, it was nagi, now. you could feel nagi push his tip past your wobbling lips. you could feel chigiri play with your nipple, reluctantly sharing another one with reo (if your guess was correct.)

a crazed lick went down the side of your waist, followed up sweet kisses on your thighs and hips. who was that, now? kunigami, or isagi? or wait... did bachira switch with someone else now?

you could swear you were losing your mind, you could swear except you weren't sure you were cognitive enough to think of anything right now.

"gotcha. finally." isagi husked, and you felt him push his erection past your puffy folds and into your velvety hole.

"oh—" you moaned against nagi's shaft, words nothing but senseless garbage that mimicked the human tone. and as act of benevolence— no. as a sadistic act, nagi pulled himself out of your mouth and hummed, "sayin' something?"

the room grew quite, the chattering men that were all over you just a moment ago waited for your answer so patiently. too patiently.

"i-" your throat was sore, words almost dying before they ever got uttered, "n-no."

"no?" bachira mimicked, laughing thereafter as you lay there confused, unsure of their next moves.

"are you tired, pretty?" kunigami rasped, and you would have falsely assumed that they actually cared if it wasn't for the fact that they all went to their administration immediately afterwards.

"a-aah," you panted, mouth falling open as isagi fucked into your overstimulated cunt, "y-yoichi!"

"switch, you bastard." reo's voice dropped down many octaves, a hoarse rasp, and you felt your cunt emptying for just a few moments before it was filled by the mikage industry's heir.

moans tumbled out of your mouth before you filled by someone else. kunigami hissed as you sucked on his cock, taking him so well, "jus' like that, go on."

with his praises, kunigami pressed a harsh hand to the back of your head, making you choke on his length. somewhere along the line, you felt reo abandon your sweet cunt and someone else take his spot. from the man's tight grip on your hips and fast snaps of hip, you assumed the man to be hyoma chigiri.

honestly, you were all but falling apart on their fingertips, and aching cocks. your body was abandoned for a few fractions of a second before a second man laid claim to you. if you could have comprehended, you would have heard their ragged and heavy breaths, pussydrunk words as they passed you among themselves.

as hyoma's thrusts grew in intensity and speed, the coil in your stomach grew tighter and tighter and tighter— and oh my god, you felt something snap within your body. your head was thrown back, back arching so dangerously as your thighs shook, your mouth fell open and screams tore past your larynx. the next minute, a harsh stream of juices erupted out of your overstimulated cunt, drenching you and everyone around in your glistening juices.

"shi—" rin hissed, almost transfixed at the women utterly ruined under them.

"shit, right?" chigiri almost moaned, looking at the rapid, erratic rise and fall of your chest. your body was marked purple and blue, the men already leaving a mark on you. white, milky streams covered your chest and thighs while your face and neck were painted a reddish hue.

"that was so fuckin' hot." nagi rasped, words raw and twisted.

"hey," isagi mumbled, his words so soft as he finally took off your blindfold, "you good?"

the room was too bright, and above you towered men of colossal intentions, naked and still hungry. as the world above you started making sense, you saw bachira pumping himself leisurely, saw rin map out your body nonchalantly. the rest of them were in similar disheveled states: hungry, lust-filled eyes, flushed faces and erect cocks.

your eyes travelled from one till the other, half of them still splashed with your residue from your earlier orgasm. you found some strength within your tired throat, humming out, "y-yeah."

"ya sure?"

"hm." you nodded, your rapid breathing slowing down and dropping down to a steady crawl.

"good," reo rasped, and bachira finished the statement for him, "cause we're not done with ya."

a/n: let me repeat, DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT! it has potentially non-likable content, so, if ya don't like, don't read!! okay, that's all. sleep well tonight xoxo tagging: this one is for @5hoe1 @mininji @palegardenrebel [yes, i just needed someone to give me an excuse to write this filth] 🤭 m.list

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bimbosandbubbles · 6 months ago

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All Consuming

Starring Yandere Siren Gojo and Geto

Synopsis- Two months ago you became a sole survivor to a supposed animal attack on a lake trip and because of that you’ve become alienated from everyone else in your much too rural community. However,you’re finally not so alone when two mysterious men are way too interested in you…But something’s a little off about them..

Fic for my Summertime Slashers event!

Warnings-mates,Geto and Gojo kinda have a feeding kink in this(they like seeing you eat bcs they only eat human flesh and obviously you don’t 😭), stalking,cum marking(you’ll find out), voyeurism,mirror kink,mutual masturbation,biting,oviposition,icky flirting(they’re very confused on the fact that humans don’t just mate like sirens do), dubcon,borderline noncon,multiple sex scenes,leg worshipping?,manipulation(you’re very vulnerable in this and they take advantage of that),abuse of super natural power(not clearly stated but implied),panty sniffing,lots of breeding kink,and ofc and always CHUBBY READER!

An explanation on sirens and how I tweaked them from traditional folklore! Just so you can have more understanding on why things happen in this fic! So Sirens typically are beings that lure men in with their beautiful voice and then capture them with their magical touch! This is kinda like that but not really! Geto and Gojo are male sirens so they usually target the opposite sex! Their siren voice isn’t necessarily singing it’s just something they can activate in this fic! Also they can go on and off land if they’re well fed! In this fic I imply heavily that sirens take mates like many other sea life!

WC-6.9K/6,925

"Can you give a description of him?"

"Them." Is all you can answer. Seething hot acid pulls at the back of your throat,begging to come out on the steel table. Your quaking hands grip the very edge of the table for some kind of support—a sense of grounding in this situation.

"Right,them. My apologies. The descriptions though,(Reader)?" You gulp,"Well one was taller than the other had these piercing blue eyes,almost like light itself. The other had these soulless black ones...emotionless and empty kinda."

In front of you there's this quiet man presumingly sketching away the description. "Anything else?" You bite your lip and glance down at your scarred fingers but you quickly look away because the memory of just why those injuries remain are there is much too fresh. "I don't know...everything was a blur. I can't remember a thing other than seeing them..."You swallow a thick wad of spit before you utter another word,"tear into my friends."

The officer in front of you stares into your glassy eyes that you bet are red and bulging to the point it looks like you've been choked instead of crying. He sighs,"Look,(Reader) you seem to be a nice enough girl but these details are just not enough to drive this case. This is the third time we've invited you down to the station and you've said nothing to make us believe two men did this to your friends."

"Please! I saw them! I really,really did! I swear! I wouldn't lie about seeing those—those monsters!" The officer sighs and ounces the bridge of his nose,"Let's be real,when the attacked happened you were intoxicated,right? You were out having fun with your girlfriends and probably doing other substances. Or maybe the shock of seeing your friends mauled by an animal got to you. Whatever the case may be I know it's not two human men who ate your friends in front of you."

You clench your fists in pure disgust at the audacity this person has in front of you. He's not the one who had to see it,he's not the one who had to watch your friends cry and beg for help and couldn't do anything about it, and he's certainly not the one who had to live through their constant cries of pain. You finally raise your voice an octave,"I know what I saw and I won't suffer through some accusations pushed onto me because this story isn't believable enough for you!"

The officer doesn't take lightly to your shouting and doesn't remain so calm with his doubt. "I'm tired of listening to your bullshit anyways! There is no man eating monster with glowing blue eyes! And there definitely isn't another soulless black eyed creep!" He takes a deep breath and stands from the metal chair. You sit there in silence fighting back tears and you have no clue why the liquid is fleeing your eye ducts.

It's probably anger or sadness,or both whatever the reason might be you curl up into yourself and sob in front of the two cops. "(Reader), I apologize...but I can't take this case serious. I know you're hurting,losing your friends in an animal caused massacre but you're wasting resources and precious time for cases that actually need to be solved. So just go home and get some therapy,yeah?"

Through teary eyes you gaze at the officer in his harsh eyes and you're left wondering why does no one believe you? It's been two months since the attack and you're doing all the right things;therapy,self groups,going back to normal life,yet you're treated like some crazy person. You've never been the type to lie. Never been the type to abuse someone's trust,so why?

Why are you so unbelievable? Are your tears not mournful enough? Is your slowly deteriorating appearance not evidence enough? Is the scars on your body just too artificial looking for people not to believe the truth?

With your head hung low you whisper,"Sorry officer,I'll go home."

▂▂▂▂

"Oh my god is that her?" The whisper flows through the dining hall. Another answers,"I think she's totally crazy." Then another,"Oh be nice,her friends got mauled by some kind of wolf in front of her." "I heard it was a bear actually."

You chew on your mediocre sandwich trying to ignore the constant voices mumbling about you. It's the first week you've been back at uni since the attack and it's not going so well for you. People only pity you or look down at you for not just dying with your friends. Some people think that you're even responsible for their deaths. But it won't be much longer until you're free of the university gossip due to the fact that summer break is nearly two weeks away. And even with that time frame people are already leaving the dorms entirely.

And what makes it so unfortunate is that no one's in your corner anymore. Your parents have turned their backs on you because it's like a sin to have a child struggling with their mental health in this godforsaken small town. And your friends well...gone because of that very event. And you can't even dream about making any new ones because now you're looked at like some disease instead of a victim of a horrifying crime.

But it's okay,that's what you tell yourself. And that's the mantra that keeps flowing through your brain as you take bite after bite into your too cold food. You people watch from the wooden eating area—turning green with envy as you glance from after people enjoying each other's company.

That was once you, eating and laughing among your beloved closest companions. You don't wish to be bitter for others happiness but it's hard not to when you're actively being shunned by your whole town basically.

You glance down at your depressing looking tray of food and decide it doesn't even look edible to you anymore. You debate whether or not you should throw it away or just eat it. Simply because you haven't been eating much since the incident. You nimble on your lip and decide you shouldn't force yourself to eat food you don't even like.

You arise from your seat and wish you didn't because now all eyes are on you as if they weren't before. You sigh and walk all the way to trash trying to power through all the chatter and seething stares. They all look at you like some parasite slowly infecting them with your presence alone.

Sure,you've been stared at before being that you're a bigger girl in a hick town but this is something different. Something crueler...and more hurtful. It's so hurtful that you're just probably going to skip all your lectures and run away into the comfort of your home.

However your mind sets that aside once you see two strangers sitting at your once empty table. Your brows raises as you walk confusedly back to the table to retrieve your book bag.

Once you come closer you're shocked to be met with eyes black as the night...eyes that are so eerily familiar. "Oh I'm sorry we didn't know anyone was sitting here!" His voice is calm and gentle,gentle to the point that you'd melt into the his arms right now because the longing for comfort roughly tugs at you. Pathetic,anyone would agree to that,however you're just so entirely vulnerable for any type of interaction and touch at the moment. Then you take a look at his face and you're shocked to see how handsome he is.

His long raven locks go past his broad shoulders that is covered with a loose breathable crew neck. Not only are his eyes pretty in color but the shape as well;his kind monolids gazing at you right now practically has you flustered. "It's alright..I was leaving anyhow." You mumble with a nervous smile.

"Nooo! Stay! This table has so much room!" A chipper,more energetic voice adds in. Your attention is turned to the voice and this time you're even more shocked at how good looking this man is too. He has snow white hair that frames his pretty face along with eyes so blue they're almost hypnotizing. But again something in your belly finds those eyes too familiar almost like you've met the men before.

"Oh no you wouldn't wanna sit with me...people will start talking about you too." The black haired man smiles,"Let them talk," he extends his long arm on the back of the seat next to Gojo,"sit." Gojo moves from that seat to make sure you're the one in the middle of the two men. You shyly nod,"Thank you."

You sit down and feel a sudden presence of something....something intense between the three of you despite just making their acquaintance. "My name is Suguru Geto,"he points to the other man beside you,"This is Satoru Gojo." He smiles and waves,"What's your name cutie?" The white haired man peers at you as he awaits the answer to his question. "(Reader Full Name),nice to meet you guys."

The both say it's nice to meet you also and you guys chatter about each others day,major etc. "Have you eaten yet?" Suguru asks. "Umm kinda,the food I got wasn't very good so I just threw it away." Gojo say,"Oh no,eat with us! Me and Guru always eat good food so you'll like it for sure."

"No no it's okay! I wouldn't wanna have you guys pay for anything from the food bar." You used the word pay because all the good food you have to pay for instead of meal swipes. And because you're suddenly shunned from this town you're naturally unable to keep a job anymore,therefore making you broker than a joke. "I'll pay." Gojo says.

"It's o—" Gojo interrupts,his big hand managing to fully wrap around your plump upper arm,"I'll pay." He affirms. You just nod silently and watch as he walks up to the food bar to buy the items. Geto looks at you and smile,"So what's a pretty girl like you sitting all by herself for?"

You look down and feel your tummy doing backflips for two reasons;the compliment and the question. You're nervous to explain just why you're being ignored and you're nervous you'll mess up the chance of making new friends. However,you go for being honest and not lying,just to see if they'll actually be someone you'll want to have as companions.

"Well two months ago an incident happened at the lake with my friends. They were attacked by two monsters and I was the only one to make it out alive. But the weird thing is...I wasn't attacked at all...they just ignored me and only went for my friends. But after they were done they looked at me in this way—this way that was so,"you pause,trying to find your bearings,"haunting. Not like they wanted to eat me but something else entirely..." Your rub your pudgy fingers as you explain and Geto does something surprising.

He grips your hands to stop the constant movement. His smooth fingers rub soothing circles on your now healed skin. And it feels so good to be touched with affection, so good that you almost forgot to finish your story. "I went to the police as soon as it happened and I was told it was probably an animal attack but I know what I saw...I know wholeheartedly. And that's why I was sitting alone,everyone thinks I'm some crazy person making stuff up." Your bottom lip begins to tremble as you feel tears begin to pool in your eyes.

"And you probably think I'm crazy now too..." Your voice breaks and your brain is working overtime. How humiliating that you're breaking down to a total stranger in public too! God,why are you so pathetic? So vulnerable to the point you easily melt into the arms of an unknown person. Has your sense of self truly scrambled that far away from you?

Geto extends his arm to wrap around your supple body,he's warm and smells like ocean breeze mixed with sandalwood. "I don't, I believe you." It's a whisper yet the impact is like a loud shout. "You do?" He gets closer,his soft pink lips muttering so close to the shell of your ear,"I do." You shiver involuntarily,your body unable to contain the way his coo affected you physically.

"Thank you." It's a mumble but still Geto acknowledges it with a soft squeeze on your body.

"I brought the food!" A happy voice interjects. Gojo sets down loads of plates of delectable looking food. And suddenly your tummy rumbles just looking at the many options of food.

Gojo hears it,"You hungry now?" You nod shyly and can't help but look down at the very good options. After weeks of eating too cold food and mess hall trash seeing the hot bar meals would make anyone hungry. White hair bobs as the tall man takes his seat next to you.

"Go on,eat." He smiles a toothy grin. His hand extends to your lips with a forkful of pasta that smells so good you literally inhale it. You instinctively open your mouth only to quickly close it. Because oh my God were you about to let this stranger feed you? Has hardly any human interaction made you so compliant?

Gojo pouts,"What's wrong?" You quickly try to reassure him,"It's nothing...but I can feed myself,y'know.." You almost forgot Geto is still holding you,the only cause for remembering is strictly based on the firm squeeze he gives your upper body. "Eat." He asks,more like demands.

Despite how demanding he sounded it was still gentle? Almost like a calming song in an odd way. You open your mouth and Gojo happily stuffs the fork in your mouth. You chew and melt into the flavors of the yummy dish but you can't fully enough it because the men you're sitting next to are quietly observing you.

Another bite is feed to you and another,then another until the pasta is all gone. Every single time you took a bite Geto and Gojo all watched in admiration. Geto,who still has you in a half embrace would caress the supple skin of your bare arms that are free from sleeves in your cotton cami. The texture of the pads of his fingers would rub you as you ate.

And Gojo would clean up your chubby face if he missed your mouth just a little bit. He'd use his thumb to wipe away the evidence of the mess with his oddly sharp and long tongue. His other hand also stayed close and near to the pudge that hangs low on your abdomen,practically cupping the fat that adorns the area.

And all while eating you didn't realize how intimate this interaction really is. Two men watching you as your spoon fed by one and both touching you so...personally;this is not a normal interaction between strangers. You know that,yet it feels too good to tell them to stop. You haven't been touched with affection in so long so why fight it when two handsome men are practically draped all over you?

"Would you like some dessert?" Geto asks. Gojo chimes in,"You should absolutely have some dessert. I got these cute cakes for you to try." You look down in embarrassment,"I don't know if I should...I just ate the pasta." Gojo quirks his brow up in confusion,"So? You can't have dessert too?"

You smile,"I guess I can." Gojo grins brightly,"Atta girl,open wide." Already with spoon in hand and a sweet treat in it, he moves it to your mouth. Of course you accept and chew happily on the sweet treat until a thought interrupts this indulgent interaction. Why haven't they eaten? You've been here,being fed and talked to by these for at least an hour or more,but they haven't eaten? Why come to the lunch hall then?

You quickly swallow the treat,"Aren't you guys hungry?" Geto answers,"Oh me and Gojo were earlier but watching you eat has satisfied our appetite." His response is followed with an enthusiastic nod by his blue eyed friend,"Mhm! You eat so cute it's hard not to get full."

You make a face full of doubt,"Umm,I dunno if you guys are trying to be overly nice to me but I don't believe that for one second." You push away Geto's hold on you and Gojo's slight grip on you to scoot away from the pair. Suddenly,you've fully realized that this whole thing is really weird even though you truly are enjoying the attention from the very good looking men.

But that enjoyment isn't enough to just ignore how fast and dangerous this all could possibly be. You don't know how you just dazed off and forgotten all about that. You stand up and urgently say,"Look,you guys have been really nice to me and I totally appreciate it but this is just all really weird for me so I'm just gonna—"

Geto stands up with such a quickness it's almost supernatural,"Shhh...you don't mean that sweet girl. Just come and sit with me and Saturo,yeah? We'll make all that confusion will go away,okay?" His words are so sweet,so soft and gentle;inviting to the point you almost relax back to the seat but you don't.

"No—can't. This is so personal and you guys don't even know me...plus everyone can see you behaving this way with me." You go to grab your bag but Gojo stops your exit this time. "C'mon cutie,it's okay. It's just me and Sugu,we wouldn't wanna do anything to hurt our lil pretty new friend. If it's the people watching...we can take you up to our dorm and continue this there."

Geto adds,"That's a good idea, all these people shouldn't be watching you anyways." You look at them in confusion and seriously debate if going back to their dorm is actually a good idea at all. "Don't treat your new friends like this;we're not gonna hurt you." Friends? Are they really calling themselves friends?

You bite your lip and glare down at your beat up sneakers,"I don't know.." Gojo pulls you close to him by gripping your soft hand,"It's okay,cutie. It's just me and Geto,we won't do anything."

You bite your lip,stumped with providing them with an answer,it's useless though because an arm links with yours and already starts ushering you along to exit the mess hall. "W-Wait!" You try to pull yourself away from the limb but it's like forged iron. Geto utters,"It's okay. Just come with us. It's just us."

You were panicked,worried,anxious to the point of feeling like throwing up. The feeling washes away as Geto soothes you with his words;odd considering the fact that he's not explicitly saying anything too calming. He's just talking,yet his syllables feel like warm chamomile tea that just eases your mind and heart.

It feels magical...too artificial of a feeling it's almost like being on a high. The feeling only increases when Gojo joins his friend in talking to you;literally and metaphorically syncing with him as he also links his arm with yours.

The longer they talk the more woozy you begin to feel. Your walls of distrust and logic melt away like rapid candle wax,so much so that you begin teeter into their touch.

Your mind is confused and vulnerable to the point you don't realize you're in front of their dorm room until Gojo pulls you into the room. They both free you of their hold and suddenly you feel more conscious.

"Why'd you take me here? I didn't even get a say.." Geto rubs the apparent flesh on the back of your arms,"It's alright...you'll enjoy being with us." Your brows scrunch and you want to spew something aggressive but his touch and his voice are just too...distracting.

"G-Geto.." you whimper. You don't know why you say his name,it's just the only thing your mouth will allow you to say. "Yes, tell me what do you want?" You snuggle closer into his touch,breathless and confused,"I don't know..." Gojo then walks closer to you,taking up the front portion of your body. His hands cling to your wide waist;digits dig into the dough like flesh.

"Would you like for us to give you an option?" The long haired man whispers in your ear,his lips practically pecking the shell of the cartilage. You're weak and feel all too needy. Needy for what is the real question though.

"Please,yes.." you lowly whimper. With that the two men place you onto a soft bouncy mattress,leaving you without the their touch for a few minutes but that doesn't last for long. Gojo already has his hands on your tummy,practically massaging the flesh with his hands. He leans forwards and starts suckling on the skin of your nape.

He starts thumbing the beginning of your loose fitting shorts,"I think these should come off." You gulp and grip onto him,"I-I haven't shaved just so you know." Gojo starts pulling down the waistband to the point he could see your bellybutton,"I didn't ask if you shaved,I said these should come off." You gasp as you feel a new pair of hands on your thighs—pulling down the bottom half of the outfit.

Geto looks up at you from the position of him being on his knees;slotted perfectly in between your big thighs. "I agree with Saturo,everything should just come off you." Gojo starts pulling off the hem of your panties and once they're low enough Geto grabs the material and carefully slides them off your legs. He does something unusual,by bringing the damp material to his face and taking a deep inhale. He groans into the panties,eyes closed in bliss and a deep harbored groan flees his lips.

Gojo looks down in jealousy and whines for his other half to hand him the undies. You watch as Geto begrudgingly passes him the undergarment. Gojo brings them to his face and his bright blues eyes almost glow with light as he huffs in the smell of your pussy. "Mate smells so good. Fuck..." You brows furrow in confusion,what did he mean by mate? It's such a primitive and almost animal like to refer to you as that. You don't have much time to think of it though as demand takes all your attention.

"Spread,so we can see that pretty pussy..." The ravenette orders you. You're about to do it but insecurity nags at you,the condition of your unshaven and wild looking pussy drains away at your confidence. What's the point of spreading anyway? The fat of your lips and hair will block the view of anything worth looking at.

"Spread." Gojo repeats. You shake your head no;embarrassment and now common sense are starting to grow back into your brain. Both of the men huff,annoyed with the fact they can't just view the pussy they can smell from miles away,even in water.

For two months since they last fed,they've been so stuck on finding this woman with an unearth like aroma. The being smelt of brown sugar and sweet honey. They've been so determined to find the owner of the scent they've enrolled in this stupid college and kept tabs on you for so long.

Now they have you,almost bare,snagged in their hypnotic touch,yet you won't even let them see what rightfully belongs to them? No. That just won't do.

"Gojo,bring the mirror over here." Immediately the man sitting next to you stands up and retrieves a long floor length mirror to right in front of the bed. You observe yourself in the mirror,tired eyes that look bothered, your flustered face and your slightly messy hair,all the way to your bare lower body.

Why bring the mirror though? Your question is answered when Geto suddenly arises from the floor,taking the space the former was sitting on the bed. His strong hand grips the fatty flesh of your thigh,placing it on his lap. Gojo,now sitting on the opposite side does the same action. You fluster,"What're you doing?" Gojo hums with a happy expression,"Spreading."

They both extend your legs further til your pussy is completely exposed to them in the view of the mirror. "Perfect." Geto says lowly into the cusp of your neck and shoulder. "So pretty,I just wanna lick it." You tensed at the admiration for such a private area,a private area that four pair of eyes are constantly eyeing hungrily.

"So many things we could make you do..." The white haired man suggests. "Mhm,but right now I wanna see her play with it." Geto answers. "P-Play with it?" You try to close your legs back but their grips are too strong on your legs. You couldn't do that—not in front of them. It's embarrassing;being open and exposing yourself raw like that.

Gojo whines,"You're so mean. Trying to close what's rightfully ours. Just play with it...you wanna make yourself feel good,right?" His words and his touch feel like the law,like you have to obey. He didn't say anything overly convincing,yet your body can't help but comply.

Your pudgy digits reach down in between the plump lips—traveling way down to the pulsing hole. The fingers circle the entrance,barely touching the wet flesh. You huff at the light touch,already feeling needy. "It's alright,you can put one in." Geto urges.

You gaze into the mirror,observing the sight of your finger so easily sliding into the welcoming hole. A gasp flees your lips as the appendage starts moving in and out of you. "There you go...keep going."

You obey,moving the lone finger faster and harder than the first few movements. "Fuckkkk,that looks so good. Mate looks so good playing with her pussy." Gojo howls out. Playing with your pussy is not the only view you're able to see in mirror. Gojo and Geto's are in the displaying glass as well;their hard cocks out in the open as they go up and down at the same pace as you.

You bite your lip,immensely turned on by the view of the two men bringing themselves sweet undeniable pleasure. Their hands wander up and down your legs,holding tight the excess flesh you have on the limbs. Geto groans,"Your legs are so pretty,just like the rest of you. So plump and soft. Perfect for giving you so many pups." You moan at his words,adding another digit for the adding bliss.

Blue eyes close in joy,"Oh? You like that? Wanna get pregnant with me and Sugu's babies? Wanna be full of pups?" His hips stutter up into his o shaped hand,"F-Fuck,say yes! Tell us how badly you want that." A whine falls from your babbling mouth,"Want! Need it so bad." Geto groans as he reaches over you to bite into the soft skin of your neck;sinking his teeth in so deep you can feel the light liquid of blood dribble down. Your back arches at the strange sensation that hurts,yet feels oddly so good.

Gojo also goes for a bite,lower though,he finds the spot of your plump shoulder to be perfect. "Mm,you're gonna take it so well when me and Gojo fuck you." The ravenette mumbles into your flesh. His hand travels down to the pouch of your fat that rest slightly above your uterus,he gives it a harsh grasp;fingers digging into the moldable skin. "Perfect,so perfect for giving babies."

Your digits curl into the wet cavern and your body almost folds itself just trying to reach that special spot that resides so deeply in you. You whimper in frustration,your average sized fingers not being just enough to reach that oh so very special spot.

Gojo laughs,"Can't reach? It's okay cutie,me and Sugu will be touching you there all the damn time. Just continue making yourself feel good,yeah? Want you to cum all over your little fingers so I can lick it off." With that bit of encouragement,you thrust deeper;curling the digits so far they're like hooks going into your sloppy cunt.

"Mmmm,look at your cute face. Making such adorable faces in the mirror for us.." Geto hums in your neck,lapping up with rouge from his bite with his slender tongue. Gojo grips your chubby face in his palm,"Right,look at those pudgy cheeks,just wanna bite em." He releases his hold and goes for a gentle nibble on the fat,almost suckling on it like a baby.

With a loud moan,your hand darts out to get a hold on Geto's hair;an action he revels in,loving the harsh pull on the silky strands. "Feels so good." You stammer. "Yeah? That feels good?" Geto purrs. You nod furiously,too caught up in your own pleasure to chatter anymore.

Geto and Gojo experience the same feeling—their eyes are shut in pure anticipation,their pretty swollen tips throbbing to let out the milky substance. You moan louder at the reflection in the mirror;the glass showing you the two men who are so close to falling off the brink of pleasure. The men who just look so desperate to spill all over your spread form.

Faster,harder,deeper is all the thought your mind allows you to even think. Your fingers are working overtime,trying to get over that brink of sweet ecstasy. With one hard thrust,your essence splays all over the mirror,distorting the clear reflection of the glass.

Geto cums soon after,then Gojo. As they do,they make it obvious the cum is all over your body. It mostly splatters on your thighs and your tummy.

You breathe heavily and look at them in astonishment,"Oh my God..."

You couldn't believe it,couldn't believe cumming in front of people you just met,couldn't believe letting them cum all over you,couldn't believe hearing them call you mate and say things like mate—isn't that really weird? You sit up away from the duo and look at them suspiciously. And again you feel more conscious without their touch on you. More like you can clearly think and think logically.

"Why'd you wanna do this with me?" It's accusing,the question,it practically spews suspicion if it wasn't obvious enough. Geto reaches to touch your thigh,but you move away. "Don't touch me. I dunno what's going on with you two...but it's weird."

Gojo chuckles,"Aww,cutie are you feeling nervous? It's okay—" You cut him off with a desperate shout,"Answer my question! Please! Why?"

They look at each other for a few long seconds,thinking about what to say. You know they’re probably thinking about some elaborate lie that won’t even begin to fool you. How could you be so stupid? So easily wooed to do something so very intimate with these strangers? God,could you be anymore stupid?

They don’t give you any answers—no,the much bigger men tackle you onto the bed. Their hands grab all and any appendage that could fight back.

There it is again…that strange drossy feeling. It returns with a revenge time,it no longer feels like a light enjoyable feeling. Now it’s overtaking all your senses,stealing away your conscious mind.

“Sleep. You want to sleep. Sleep. You want to sleep.” Both of the voices chant to you,repeating the phrase over and over again. No! You don’t want to sleep,yet the more the repeat,the more they tell you what you want,the more your eyes begin to sag and you no longer see anything more.

Black.

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“No,Su’ you’re not covering her enough!” The annoyed voice of blue eyed man shouts. Geto huffs,”That’s all we have left in us. We could rub it in to scent her further. Calm down.”

Lips pout out in a childlike manner,”I’m just sayin so we can be careful. So many will probably want out mate,she’s so perfect for pups after all.” A chuckle follows,”You’re so possessive sometimes. No one will want her since we’ve marked her.”

“Oh,I’m possessive? You’re the one who said we should eat everyone just because that little guy friend of her touched her while making an escape. I—“Gojo points to his chest proudly,”just wanted to eat two or three but you got all murdery after he touched her.”

Geto rolls his black irises so far they disappear into the white of his socket,”Whatever. You would’ve ate them all anyways because you’re so damn jealous of others having her attention.” Gojo gasps,offending greatly,”Am not! I don’t get jealous like you!”

Geto laughs amused,knowing exactly how his life long friend works,”Alright,you win.” The white haired man hums triumphantly. Physically saying,”I know that’s right!”

“But are you sure we shouldn’t cum a little more on her?” Gojo cranes his head to look next to him,”No,we have to save some when we cum in her so we fertilize the eggs.” He nods,accepting the answer.

▂▂▂▂▂

When you wake up you’re greeted with the sight of loitering heads hanging above you.

You attempt to yelp only to have a hand roughly clap against your mouth. “Shhh,the yell will only echo in the cave.” A high voice says. Cave? Last time you checked you weren’t in a cave;the last location being a college dorm rooms.

The now known voice of Gojo exclaims,”I’m so happy you’re up though! Me and Geto were getting worried that we’d have to give you pups while you were asleep. Which is no fun cause we can’t hear your pretty little moans like that.” You cringe at his explanation—the thought of being used unconsciously giving you the creeps.

You get more creeped out though,the view of your surroundings not seeming so promising. There’s visible peeled human flesh in the cave,scattered around the stone. And the smell of old iron and rotten flesh takes over your nostrils. Oh God…you fingerfucked yourself in front of a bunch of monsters. And they probably want to eat you next too,just like your friends! Once they’re tired of you, you’re definitely on the menu.

Tears start streaming down your chubby face and your body begins to shake. “Just eat me already! Please don’t play with me and just eat me!” Your pathetic cries are met with laughter. This pauses your sobbing because why are they laughing at you?

“Oh my God! You’re so cute! Eat you? Noo!” Gojo folds over clutching his bare abdomen. Geto joins the laughter,”You’re so silly,we don’t want to eat you! You’re our mate! Imagine that,Gojo? Eating all our future pups like that!” Mate? Pups? These words sound familiar,like the ones they were saying the last time…intimacy happened.

Now that you look them in their true form you see why they chose the verbiage. They have scales matching their hair colors coating all four of their limbs,paired with gills on the neck’s and sides. As they laugh they also show their three rows of flesh piercing teeth. They were definitely some kind of animal like creature. But what?

“So you’re not gonna eat me?” You ask tentatively. Geto nods,”No,we want to make you our mate. That’s why we went through all that trouble of getting you.” Gojo urges in agreement,”Mhm! We just wanna fill you with pups and live with ya forever. And actually,”he lowers his hand down to his bare crotch gripping his already hard cock,”We’ve been meaning to do it soon as we brought you here. But you’re such a sleepyhead we had to wait til you woke up.”

You watch as he gives it a good stroke,looking you up and down as does so. And that’s when you realize you’re completely bare too;with some white milky substance coating your whole body. Another voice joins in,”Mhm,we’ve been dying to get inside you. And I don’t intend on waiting any longer.”

“W-Wait!” You try to protest but it’s no avail,Gojo is already on top of your naked body. Grips and gropes are felt all over from the monster,your chest,your plentiful body,your wide supple hips that sting as his hold won’t get any looser. He licks and bites every fiber in skin in front of him,everything being marked by his rough movements.

Geto comes in front of your laying position,stroking up and down as he watches his companion go feral with his urges. “Warm her up,Satoru. Make her feel good first.” He doesn’t respond verbally,his actions speaking loud enough for him;his mouth moves to suckle on the hard bud on top your breast aching for some type of stimulation.

You moan at the sensation only to be silenced by a passionate kiss from the long haired man. His tongue intertwines with yours creating a languid dance with the pink muscles. Gojo pops off your breast,sounding breathless and needy.

“I don’t wanna wait no more..Wanna be inside.” He whines,already lining up his cock with your soaked entrance. Geto sighs,”Maybe I should fuck her first…I’m more patient.” It’s a loud protest,”NO! Me! Please I want to first.”

You interrupt,swollen mouth readily to spew exactly what you want at this moment,”Just do it. Fuck me.” You don’t know what came over you to say that. Maybe it was their hypnotizing touch? They’re intimidatingly now known power over you? Or perhaps after months of being so harshly ignored you just needed this. Needed to be molded and groomed just to be something again…Whatever it is leads to the man on top of you finally giving into his desires.

With a shaky groan he impales you with his cock. He doesn’t halt nor wait for you to adjust—his urges of breeding being too strong. As he bucks into you he reshapes your legs to his satisfaction,bending them all the way against the fat of your stomach;indulging in the way the soft flesh jiggles with each rough piston of his hips.

“Good! Feel so good!” He howls into the echoing cave. “Look at you,taking it like such a good mate.” Geto purrs,rubbing his now scale textured palm on your soft face. “You see all the faces she makes when you’re fucking her,Saturo?”

“Y-Yeah! So cute!” He thrusts harder into your welcoming cunt,contorting himself to almost nuzzle your face every time he goes in and out of you. You whine and grip onto him,feeling an orgasm coming soon. You face twists into one of awaiting pleasure;the orgasm just teetering away from you.

“She’s about to cum! Go faster!” Geto encourages. Gojo,obliges,each of his harsh thrust definitely leaving bruising marks on the back of thighs and asscheeks.

Every movement is like a symphony—coordinating your final path to pleasure. The instruments? The clapping noises of Gojo prodding your hole roughly and passionately. The applause? The sweet noises you’d let fly past your tongue. And finally with one last shove into you,the orchestrater of your orgasm allowed you to sing his high praises.

You see white,yet Gojo doesn’t stop his hips—No he goes faster until he oozes into you hot white sticky semen. He stiffens for a second then reels back into the cavern,to the point his tip kisses your cervix. He stays in you until an odd sensation travels through your walls.

Orbs or something resembling a sphere fight against the strict wall of your womb. It starts with one,then the second,the the third,and the fourth is when you start to feel the invasion of whatever is being deposited in you.

“W-What’s going on?” Geto leans down and kisses your plump cheek,”Gojo’s giving you his pups. Don’t worry it’ll only hurt when they try to get into your womb,but you’re such a good mate you’ll take all of them.”

“A-All of them?” The reparation doesn’t help with understanding the idea. “All of them! And then you’re gonna take Sugu’s too! Isn’t that great?” Gojo joyfully informs you.

Your brain and body hurts so you simply just nod,pretending like you know what they mean. You’re tired. So tired that you lean into Geto’s gentle cupping of your face,closing your eyes;letting the two beings do whatever they want at this point.

Allowing yourself to be totally and wholly consumed by them.

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED 🫶🏽🫶🏽 tysm for reading

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cheeseceli · 7 months ago

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When you struggle to eat

Pairing: Ot8!skz × Gn!reader (individually)

Genre: hurt/comfort, fluff, reactions

Request: reader thinking she eats "too much" and decides to eat way less for her body image, and how the skz boys would react to that.

Warnings: eating struggles will be discussed; reader has body image issues; mentions of food multiple times; use of petnames in Chan and Changbin's

Disclaimer: this was made with the purpose to comfort anyone who's going through a similar situation. If I made a mistake and made someone uncomfortable/aggravated the situation, please do tell me and I'll correct or delete this post immediately, whatever is preferred. Topics related to eating disorders will be discussed here, please don't read if that's something that triggers you.

Bang Chan - is ready to listen to all your worries

‌We all remember Chan's Room right?

‌He's ready to spend hours if needed just to understand what you're going through ‌and where your insecurities are coming from

‌At the same time, he will never judge you

‌So you know he's your safe place

Constantly checks up on you even if he's far away through texts and calls

And if there's someone who's aggravating the situation or making you insecure, you can bet he's gonna solve the situation himself

"Talk to me baby. What's going on in that mind of yours, hm?"

Lee Know - eats with you

Probably the first to realise something's off, considering food is almost his love language atp

Likes to have as many meals with you as possible

‌He usually makes a mountain of food in his plate, so you don't worry about the amount of food in yours

‌And he also runs errands with you

‌Especially those like buying food

‌You don't even gotta ask, he would be volunteering on the first opportunity

‌Also cooks for you, whatever you want

"Do you want to eat anything? I can cook"

Changbin - Hype man

‌Your personal hype man fr

‌Is ready to compliment you in absolutely everything

‌The best part is that you know that his compliments are always genuine

‌What do you mean you didn't like that trousers?? You looked fantastic in it! That shirt made you look even more gorgeous

‌He has known you for so long and still, he always finds something new to compliment you on

But even if after all the reassurance you want to change the way you look, he will be by your side to help you do it in a safe and healthy way

"You look perfect, baby. I promise. Actually, I still don't believe I managed to pull someone so beautiful like that"

Hyunjin - has all meals with you

‌And with that, I really mean all meals

‌Breakfast, lunch, dinner, you name it

‌Even if you can't really get out of your work place or your university, he's going there then

‌He just doesn't want you to be by yourself

‌He also always has something to say during those meals

‌News about their comeback, gossip at jyp, stories from his childhood...

He never fails to admire you a lot in those moments as well, never letting you forget how much he loves and appreciates you

‌He does that hoping it will distract you from the food, so you can be more at ease

"Have I ever told you about the time Kkami bit my ankle? I think I still have the scar."

Han - makes you feel beautiful

‌He truly doesn't understand how you don't think you're the most beautiful human being to ever set foot on this earth

‌In his eyes, you were born perfect

‌So, naturally, he makes it his mission to make you see yourself in his point of view

‌Compliments and adores you

‌Will make you feel beautiful, pretty, sexy, cute... Whatever you wanna be

‌Above all, he'll make you feel loved

"No matter what size, you'll always be my love. Don't forget that."

Felix - distracts you

‌With that, I mean that he tries to take your attention off food and body image related subjects

‌Before and after eating, he will always bring you along to activities where your mind can be turned off

‌So many fun dates!!

‌Even during the meals he'll have a similar idea to hyunjin and simply won't shut up

‌Most of his compliments don't involve around your body, so you really don't think about it

"I love this hairstyle of yours. It looks wonderful"

Seungmin - protects you

‌In a sense that no one even dares to comment on your looks/habits

Even if he isn't there with you

‌That because he made it very clear that everyone should watch their mouths around you

‌For as long as he's around you, he will do his best and more to protect you from harmful comment

Also tries to experiment a lot of different foods with you all the time, so you never feel like that's a burden or a bad thing

"Hey, have you heard about the new restaurant close to home? The food is peruvian. We could have dinner there tonight."

I.N - physically reassures you

‌He loves you and every single part of you, including your looks

I believe he was a bit lost in the beginning, not exactly sure on how to help you

‌But even if his words aren't exactly his biggest strength, he still wants to reassure you as much as he can

‌So he does that with his touch

‌Holding you on his lap, kissing all of your "imperfections" and tracing patterns in your skin

‌Anything that can ground, reassure and give you comfort at the same time

"Have I ever told you how perfect you are? I should tell you that more."

Masterlist | you'll probably like: when you're overworked (ateez comfort)

Thank you for reading<3 I hope this was able to help someone

» I won't put the taglist on this one as I don't want to tag anyone in something that can possibly trigger them «

Dividers by @/cafekitsune, images 1 2 3

Thank you so much for the beta readers: @duhgurl @beebee18 @applekiwi3202 @elqivxstxr @mrsunshine999 @msauthor

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 2 months ago

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sebek and his big ol' heart

Y’all thought I would be writing an extensive analysis on [REDACTED] or Skully but JOKE’S ON YOU, I love my lame idiot child Sebek 😭

When I tell you I actually CRIED MULTIPLE TIMES reading his Nightmare Suit vignettes… because all the pieces fit together SO well…

Before reading this (long) post, I’d like to ask that you also take your time to read this analysis and this analysis. They will help you understand some of the points I made later regarding Sebek and his internalized racism + how he expresses himself.

Have your recommended reading done? Great, then let’s hop to it!

***Spoilers for Sebek's Nightmare Suit vignettes, book 7, and various other Sebek and Silver card vignettes.***

Sebek is one of those characters that lives in infamy for how much time he takes to get warmed up to. He presents himself as loud and brazen, with these traits often earning him the ire of both in-universe peers and irl fans alike. Worst case scenario, Sebek can be seen as someone who is outright hateful. He’s rude to most people (including Silver, his childhood friend, sometimes), denounces humans, acts like Malleus can do nothing wrong, and doesn’t seem to respect his own father.

Well, I’m here today to tell you those claims are false and that Sebek is actually capable of so, so much love. All you need to really do is look at his Nightmare Suit vignettes—and how well they connect with the rest of his lore—to understand what I mean.

The vignettes start with Jack Skellington finishing a bento that Sally made for him. Sebek tells Jack that he should now return the basket that the bento was delivered in to her and to let her know what he thinks of her meals, but Jack says he can’t because he’s busy with Halloween preparations. Jack asks Sebek and Azul to return the basket in his stead, which they do. (These vignettes appear to be following Trey’s Nightmare Suit vignettes, as those open with Sebek and Trey seeing Sally jump out of a window with food with Jack. Sebek points out to Trey that Sally wants to hand deliver that food and says he believes there is some other reason than just being nice to Jack.)

They aren't allowed to see Sally because Dr. Finkelstein has locked her up for misbehaving, so they leave the basket. Azul advises that they also pass along Jack's comments (he had called Sally smart, thoughtful, and kind; he often forgets to have meals when he's absorbed with his work, so it's generous for her to prepare a delicious meal like this for him). Sebek loudly refuses, as he believes that hearing these grateful words from Jack himself would be much more meaningful to Sally.

He later confronts Sally at Town Hall and asks to speak with her privately (in an ALLEYWAY lol). There, Sebek flat-out tells Sally that such roundabout tactics will never help her feelings reach Jack because he's way too dense. Of course, she reacts with denial which sends Sebek into a passionate speech about the lengths Sally will go to for love (short of actually speaking about it). She literally threw herself out of a window and put herself in bodily harm to get to Jack when Dr. Finkelstein locked her in her room. She deliberately disobeyed her guardian and brainstormed a way to get out when theoretically she should not have been able to move around freely. If that's not motivated by love, then what is? Sebek declares that it's really annoying to watch Sally dance around the issue and to see her devotion go to waste. IT'S LIKE HE'S WATCHING/READING A ROMCOM AND THE TWO MAIN CHARACTERS KEEP PLAYING THE "WILL THEY, WON'T THEY" CARD... She admits that she can't share her feelings because Sally thinks she's not worthy of someone as impressive as Jack... They're not compatible. And you know how Sebek responds??? BY TELLING SALLY ABOUT WHAT IS BASICALLY TWISTED ROMEO AND JULIET... Sebek reading tragic romance confirmed 😭 He describes the story as one of two lovers whose families do not approve of their union. In desperation, the lovers try to elope--but their plan fails and they return to their warring families. Instead of committing dying like in the original tale, the lovers live the rest of their lives lamenting the outcome and how they can no longer see the person they love most. Sebek shares his own interpretation of the story and its moral: because the lovers gave up hope that they could get their families to accept one another... because they never tried to get their families to get along... because they could not properly articulate their feelings to their families... the lovers could not be together. He is convinced that if they had communicated better, the story would have a happier ending. Sebek is of the firm belief that a story itself cannot come to be without the author wanting to share their own thoughts or feelings; he even suggests that maybe the author of Romeo and Juliet experienced something similar--a regret that resulted from neglecting to express deep-seated feelings. It's not just this book either, Sebek claims to have many stories with a similar theme or miscommunication leading to conflict.

Above all, Sebek stresses to Sally that she must believe in herself and take swift, decisive action. And why does Sebek whole-heartedly throw himself into this belief? Because his own family is living proof that a happy ending is possible if you try hard for it.

If you've paid attention to Sebek lore prior to this, you'll know that he has a human father and a fae mother. Their marriage faced opposition and scrutiny in Briar Valley, a country which is isolated from the rest of the world and suffered greatly from human invaders pilfering the fae lands for resources. One of these sources of opposition and scrutiny is Sebek's own grandfather and his mother's father, Baur. Apparently, Mrs. Zigvolt married Mr. Zigvolt against the wishes of her dad.

Sebek shares even more details with Sally in his Nightmare Suit vignettes. To this day, Baur does NOT approve of his daughter's marriage--but Mrs. Zigvolt doesn't let that get her down! No, she does everything in her power to prove to her father that she made the right choice and she's perfectly content with her life. She'll send letters enclosed with photographs of her family, take her children to visit Baur's home, and invites him to join family dinners. Sebek adds that he's sure his mom made other efforts too--all to try and get Baur to acknowledge her marriage. More recently, Baur seems to have lightened up a little... as in, he always used to turn Mr. Zigvolt away at the door, but now lets him in about once a year (though Baur still avoids eye contact with him and continues to frown). Mrs. Zigvolt stubbornly believes that if she keeps this up, her dad will one day change and bless her marriage with the man she truly loves. Sally commends Sebek and his mother's ability to speak their minds loudly and proudly, but then disparages herself again by saying she can't do the same. Sebek then confesses that he can relate to Sally's frustrations. He related her feelings to his own inadequacy in serving Malleus, the powerful and noble king-to-be of his country. That feeling... Sebek describes it as akin to heartache. But instead of wallowing in that heartache, he pushes himself to close that distance between himself and his idol. If he keeps hesitating, then there is absolutely no way he can catch up to where Malleus is! Sebek must dedicate himself to becoming someone worthy of serving him. He encourages Sally to do the same through both her words and her actions! At that moment, Jack walks in and Sally makes good on Sebek's advice. (This part isn't important to the analysis on Sebek's character, so I'm glossing over it.) The vignettes end with Epel complaining about Sebek being loud as per usual. Sally doesn't take issue with his volume though. She simply giggles and informs Epel that Sebek speaks so loudly and clearly so that his words can resonate with others--like how his words gave her courage.

We have learned new lore about Sebek's grandfather and mother. What does this tell us about Sebek? A lot, actually--if you slate it with all the other lore we have on hand.

We see just how strong of a woman his mother is. I suspect this is where Sebek picked up a lot of his hard-headedness, as well as the tendency to express himself very overtly, from. However, it also speaks to the loving environment he grew up in.

His mother seemingly never questioned her own life choices and never gave up fighting to prove her happiness to a father--and likely an entire community--that rejected her marriage, her husband, and maybe even her children. She fiercely loves and defends her family and the life they have made for themselves. Sebek states that he looks up to her for her magical strength, but that he also admires her principles and strong convictions. Indeed, it was her who ardently pursued Mr. Zigvolt and did not allow naysaying to deter her.

Then there is Mr. Zigvolt. In Sebek's Birthday Boy vignettes, he describes his father as "a strange man" who is "magically deficient" and "never lets his smile fade, no matter what I say to him [...] he defies comprehension." Though Sebek doesn't seem to hold the same amount of respect he has for his mother for his father, we don't hear Sebek openly insulting his dad, just expressing confusion about him. When asked about it, Sebek denies depending on his father--but it's clear there is a fondness there that he's not addressing. Mr. Zigvolt is impressed whenever his children use magic, buys them snacks they never asked for, and talks with them for long periods of time in a calm, patient manner. His father, too, has given Sebek so much compassion and understanding.

We don't know a lot about Sebek's siblings, but they seem to get along fine! He has mentioned going to parks with them. They've also gone fishing together and witnessed magic competitions, which they were all amazed by. The Zigvolts in general (or at least the parents) seem to be accepting too, as they volunteer to take Silver in whenever Lilia is unable to take care of him.

And you'd think that's where it ends, but NO. Baur ALSO has a lot of love to give. Despite not approving of his daughter's marriage, he doesn't actively despise his grandchildren. Quite the opposite, in fact! Though he's rough around the edges and looks scary, Baur doesn't fault any of his grandchildren for being born half fae and half human. He actually makes it a point to bond with them, and especially with Sebek. It was Baur who taught Sebek the language of nocturnal fae and instilled in Sebek his love for reading (as he bought many books for him and tells many stories himself). He also personally reached out to Lilia to train Sebek, as the young boy (at around age 7) expressed an interest in martial arts. Sebek has a love for salmon carpaccio because he and his siblings would fish at Baur's house and then prepare the dish for him--Baur was so happy about it. Additionally, Baur values getting a good education and was proud when Sebek shared with him that he was invited to attend Night Raven College.

Sebek grew up in a country that dislikes humans, but he was raised in an household where he was loved unconditionally and provided with all the resources he could need to get a good education and become someone who is physically strong. So of course he becomes frustrated when he sees Sally, who is so nervous to act on her feelings. What would have happened if Sebek’s mother had been like Sally, thinking she and her now-husband are incompatible? If she didn’t try pursuing her feelings at all? Sebek, as the youngest of three, might not event exist. His parents may not still be together… or maybe they wouldn’t have gotten together in the first place. It’s exactly because Sebek knows what love is supposed to be like--courtesy of his own family—that he can see it so well in others, and wants them to act on it. His very existence is proof that love is possible, and it transcends arbitrary labels like race that serve to divide people into categories.

One quirk of Sebek's is how he's always dishing out back-handed compliments or making comments that come off as rude but aren't at their core. He can't seem to help but say a good thing that sounds like something bad. His Diasomnia classmates, usually Silver, have to translate these Sebek-isms for others, who misunderstand him or interpret his words in the worst possible way. For example, from one of Silver’s Fairy Gala lines; “Sebek said to me that no self-respecting disciple of Lilia’s would dare get a single stain on this clothing. That's his way of encouraging me.” In Silver's Dorm Uniform vignettes, Sebek tries to reassure his friend and tell him to not let other people's opinions hurt him--but he phrases it as, "Hmph, ridiculous! I see no reason for you to heed a few random comments from some humans." The duo is also shown to be competitive with one another in training; it's never malicious, they both want to prove themselves as the superior knight, and the other serves as motivation to improve and/or a means of measuring one's own growth against a fellow disciple. When the mostly elderly population of Harveston is in need of physical labor, Sebek comments "[...] the humans in Harveston are woefully out of shape," yet he insists he "still [has] energy to burn" (as if to volunteer himself to do more work) and calls such tasks "simple" (as if to point out how easy it is for him to do, so don't worry about troubling him). He hauls apples and helps the villagers with whatever they need, declaring that they should "be grateful"--but if he truly did not care, he could have stopped at any time or settled for just making fun of them. But Sebek doesn't, because he DOES care deep down. This aspect of Sebek is made even more obvious in Fairy Gala: What If. He appears at Ramshackle and opens by declaring, "NO! I am by no means worried about anyone! [...] Don't mistake my intentions. I am NOT here to help! If your mission doesn't succeed, the repercussions will definitely affect Malleus and Lilia. Hence... I shall lend you uneducated humans my aid! [...] You're welcome to weep with joy at my magnanimity..." Time and time again, we see Sebek demonstrating a lot of kindness, but deflecting or not being totally transparent with his intentions due to pride or embarrassment. This behavior is very reminiscent of Baur, the grandfather that Sebek loves dearly and spent so much time with. Baur, too, can be very passionate and loving, but struggles to speak of those feelings openly. Just look at how the man deals with Mr. Zigvolt. The behaviors of the family, then, imprint on Sebek and influence his behaviors--and being that Sebek is from such a loving group, it follows that Sebek puts out a lot of love into the world too.

A lot of times when the fandom discusses Sebek's attitude, I feel it's from the context of him being hateful towards humans. I'm not going to deny that Sebek has said some pretty nasty things about half of his own identity. The point I would like to make here is that Sebek can love just as strongly.

The most obvious thing that supports the claim that Sebek is capable of strong love is how he views Malleus. It's no great secret that Sebek practically worships the ground his dorm leader walks on. That's essentially Sebek's key defining character trait. What I'll ask you to consider instead is the nature of Sebek's love--not the obsessiveness of it, but rather the unconditional nature of it.

In Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas, Skully laments that Sebek has not been disappointed by his idol, Malleus. Sebek actually corrects him by saying that love isn't imposing your own views on your idol, it means preparing to accept them, flaws and all. He says the same of Malleus; should the time ever come where Sebek's expectations of Malleus falter or their paths have to diverge, then he will still embrace his young master, never once turning his back on him. And where does Sebek gets this from? His parents. The father who loves his children no matter how critical Sebek may be of him. The mother who remained so strong in the face of her friends and family being against her life choices.

A common fandom sentiment regarding Sebek is that he blindly follows Malleus--and to be fair, he does for a large part of the main story. But when speaking about his idol to Skully, Sebek says that agreeing with someone and continuing to love them are different things. You can disagree with someone's actions and still continue to love them and accept them. This follows what Sebek does in book 7 and likely alludes to the character development he goes through during + following book 7; though he is betrayed and hurt by Malleus turning his powers against the world, Sebek does not let up on the hope that he can bring his young master back. He even sillily calls the yet-to-be-hatched Malleus tamago/egg-sama, showing even an infant form of Malleus great respect after witnessing his OB. Skully took the opposite path that Sebek did; when he realized that his own idol, Jack Skellington, was not as he imagined him to be, Skully became enraged and lashed out over it. Sebek points out Skully's inadequacies as well, which ties back to how he spoke of his own drive to improve in his Nightmare Suit vignettes. Skully confesses to trying desperately to emulate Jack--so much so that he breaks down when Sebek's UM destroys his iconic shades. He wallows in his current state and doesn't make efforts to change or to be better; the past and his own vision is where he's comfortable. It's a strong contrast to Sebek, who has made it clear he will continue to train and work hard to prove his merits and to be someone worthy of protecting the great Malleus Draconia.

It is Sebek's passion and boundless love that makes him a hero both in Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas AND in the main story's book 7. He serves as a foil to Skully in the former and actively saves Silver when he's on the brink of despair in the latter. After learning that his biological father is the man responsible for killing Malleus's mother and leading the Silver Owls' onslaught on Briar Valley, Silver despairs and comes to the conclusion that his father must loathe him. "He could never love the son of the man he despised! He has to hate me! He has to!" Sebek rushes to Silver's side using Living Bolt, a UM he has yet to master (thus causing residual damage to him when he casts it), to correct him:

"You have this much strength... and you dare to say you weren't loved?! That you were hated?! [...] If [Lilia] hated you, he didn't have to give or teach you anything. He could've just raised you into a dimwitted coward and made you a servant. But he didn't--and look at you now. Even alone and helpless, you stood firm. You spoke up, unfaltering in the face of our liege's madness. Even trapped in the darkest despair, you kept on fighting! Who raised you to be so strong? LILIA DID! Why don't you see? Why do you doubt? You should have understood years ago! What can you call your strength, if not the direct result of Lilia's love?!"

WHETHER SEBEK REALIZES IT OR NOT, A LOT OF WHAT HE TELLS SILVER HITS HOME FOR HIM TOO... Like, thinking about it... Sebek must have faced a lot of prejudice from his community because of who his father is. He might have grown up thinking he, too, was hated, had he not been protected by his loving mother, father, and, yes, even grandfather, who is still struggling to accept the human in their family. Baur must have been feeling very complicated emotions upon meeting his half human grandchildren for the first time... but even though he dislikes humans, he could never find it in himself to dislike his grandkids. If he had hated Sebek, he wouldn't have wanted him to get a good education. Baur wouldn't be happy that he got into NRC. He wouldn't personally ask Lilia to train the grandson who expressed an interest in combat. He wouldn't buy so many books for Sebek or read with him or tell him stories or teach him his language. He wouldn’t spoil Sebek by giving him sweets (which, by the way, Baur himself dislikes). But Baur DOES do all of these things, because deep down he loves Sebek no matter what he is. You can hear it in the hurt of Sebek’s voice when dream!Baur reacts to him coldly. That isn’t the grandfather he is used to. Though it’s said that Baur doesn’t exactly welcome his grandchildren with open arms, he definitely loves them and cares for them in his own way. If it was anything less than love Baur felt for his grandson, if he decided to neglect his grandkids, then Sebek would have grown up as some "dimwitted coward". IT'S ALL CONNECTED.

And now here Sebek stands, able to tell others that they are loved and should be cognizant of that love. He reminds Silver that Lilia loves him. He advises Skully to reevaluate how he sees his idol. He tells Sally to speak honestly about her feelings, because it was his own mother speaking honestly about hers that led to Sebek and his entire family being as happy as they are now. He shouts at people to act and to speak their minds because he doesn't want them to live with regrets, because he doesn't want to see them be weak and timid--a version of himself that could have resulted if he hadn't been loved so strongly.

You can say many things about Sebek: that he's loud, that he's rude, that he's a fanboy, that he has big muscles. But of all those muscles, Sebek has a very big heart too. And what made him so strong? All the love he received from his family, despite growing up an environment that surely invited hatred for humans.

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ovrour · 6 months ago

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-YOU SHOULD BE WITH HER, I CANT COMPETE

✮𝑺𝒀𝑵𝑶𝑷𝑺𝑰𝑺• Matt's been getting multiple DMs from one particular girl. You're worried he'll leave you for her.

✮𝑷𝑨𝑰𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑮• Matt sturniolo x Insecure!gf reader

✮𝑮𝑬𝑵𝑹𝑬• fluff, with a little bit of angst, suggestive smut! established rls

✮𝑮𝑬𝑵𝑹𝑬• Insecure!reader

✮𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑫 𝑪𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑻• 0.8k

𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠...♪𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐖 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐁𝐘 𝐉𝐎𝐉𝐈

You were scared.

Scared that Matt would leave you for the prettier girl.

Of course you knew that Matt loved you. You didn't have to question it at all. But, even then you were still scared. Matt treated you like the princess you are but, there was still so much you were scared of. Getting cheated on being the first. In your past relationship, it was extremely toxic. Anything you did it seemed like it was all wrong to your boyfriend. Even when everyone warned you about him, you ignored it because you were too in love with someone who didn't love you enough or not at all.

That was until you met Matt, he loved you like no other. You felt like you meant something, or that you were worth it. Meeting Matt was possibly the best thing that happened to you. You finally felt special to someone after so long. You felt like you didn't have to worry about anything. That was until Matt posted last month.

There's been this girl sliding up on his stories, complimenting him Every time he posted on his story.

Today, you and Matt we’re going to a dinner he planned for your birthday. He bought you a beautiful black long sleeve maxi dress, and a necklace with his Name on it, in gold.

You thought the dress was beautiful but, when you went to put it on it wasn't hugging all the right places, it felt too tight. You wanted to cry, how could he be with someone like you? “Baby, are you ready to go?” Matt walked into the bedroom. He stood there, admiring you. “Yeah, I'm ready.” You responded, catching your tears with your index finger. Hoping Matt wouldn't notice but, knowing him, he was a big observer.

“H-hey baby, what's wrong love?” He walked up to you, turning you around.

“It's nothing really.” Matt knew you were lying, you had this look on your face Everytime you lied about something. Especially your feelings.

Matt walked over and sat you on the bed, sitting next to you. “Baby, talk to me.” “It's not-” “don't lie to me y/n.” Matt never called you by your name unless he was serious, wanting whatever he was saying to get through your head.

“It's just, I hate the way I look. I can't seem to look good in anything anymore.”

Anymore? What did you mean by that? Matt thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world, and he always told you that. Every day, every night. Matt would've thought by now that you thought the same thing. But even if you didn't, he’d be patient with you the whole way through.

“Love, you look beautiful in anything, and everything.” Matt admitted, You may have not believed him but, what he said is true. He truly thought you looked good in absolutely everything.

“No I don't. I mean, have you seen the girl in your DMs? You have to be texting her when I look like this.” You spoke, trying to stop your tears from ruining your makeup.

“Baby, who are you talking about?” Matt asked, confused with who you were talking about.

“That brunette chick. I don't know her name but God, she's so much better looking then me.”

Immediately when you said that, Matt took out his phone and pulled up Instagram. He handed it to you, “Show me and then block her.”

“W-what why?”

“Because if someone is making my girl feel this way. There's no way I'm letting them be in my DMs much longer at all. If anything, you're the only girl I need and want complimenting me every time.” Matt admitted.

He wanted his girl to be happy all the time, and if someone was making you feel this way. He didn't want to know about them at all. Matt just wanted to make his girl happy. You slid through his DMs until you found the girl you were talking about. You held Matt’s phone up to him.

“Her. That's who I'm talking about. I mean she's so gorge-” Before you could finish Matt cut you off.

“Baby, block her. Please.”

You did as he said and blocked her. You sighed, a feeling of pressure coming off your chest.

“Baby, there's no other girl that will ever be as gorgeous as you. You're the prettiest girl I've ever laid my eyes on, Since we met in Boston.” Matt told you, his hand coming up to your thigh.

You smiled, your insecurities slowly washing away. “You promise?"

“I promise.” He stood.

“Now how about we go to dinner? Then after I can show you how beautiful you are.” Matt smirked, picking you up bridal style.

“I'd like that.” you replied looking up at him.

“Don't look at me like that baby.”

“Like what?”

“Like that.”

You felt so loved, and maybe just maybe Matt loved you more than you had thought.

a/n: thank you guys sm for 200+ followers. I genuinely appreciate you guys so much. In honor, I wrote this little blurb. I hope you enjoy it! Love you all.🩷

lots of love, alondra🪷

taglist!!: @bernardsbendystraws @flouvela @sturnthepot @sturniolosarethebest @soupuurr @missmimii @conspiracy-ash @nickgetsmewetter @luvs4matt @luverboychris (if you would like to get added pls lmk!!)

#Spotify #writers on tumblr #chris sturniolo #matt sturniolo #chris sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo x you #matt sturniolo fic #matt sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo x you #christopher sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #angst #fluff #chris sturniolo smut #sturniolo smut #smut

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ccsainzleclerc5516 · 9 months ago

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Stay With Me

Pairing: Lando Norris x reader

Warnings: none

a/n: sequel to Try Me; in this one Carlos' appendix and Lando's crash happened at the same time

"Guys, don't let him fool you. He was horrible to me when we were kids" You joked taking a sip of your beer.

"That's one big fat lie you just said" Carlos defends himself.

"I'm sorry y/n, but I just can't believe that, he's so protective of you, you know just like an older brother should be" Kika commented on your accusations.

"Well he sure wasn't like that when we were little. One time he slammed me so hard against the door that I almost broke my hip! I was bleeding!" You say making everybody's jaws drop and listen carefully to what was coming next.

"Slammed you..I didn't slam you, I pushed you a little and then you threw yourself against the door just to make me look bad" Carlos rolled his eyes at you as you mockingly mimicked his words.

"You scarred me for life! Literally! I still have a scar from the cut!"

"What cut?" Lando asks coming back from the toilet and taking a seat between you and Charles.

"We were just talking about how Carlos was violent towards me when we were kids..so much that I have a visible scar because of him!" You explain.

"Oh the one on your right hip?" Lando blurts out and at that moment everyone falls silent staring at the two of you.

It was a calm relaxing night. Kika, Pierre, Charles, Carlos, Lando and you were hanging out on a yacht. You were drinking a little, talking, laughing, the music was playing in the background and you were all enjoying a race free weekend.

Somehow you got on the topic of your and Carlos's childhood so you decided to tell them some interesting stories. Lando didn't know about the story you just told them, but of course he saw the scar on your hip the first time he saw you naked. He traced it with the tips of his fingers and even kissed it before going down on you multiple times..

"How would you know that she has a scar on her right hip?" Carlos asks furrowing his eyebrows at him. Your breath caught and your heart rate quickened. No one said a word waiting with wide eyes for one of you to give an explanation.

"I-I.." Lando stammered glancing at you. Both of you were so caught off guard that you didn't know with what lie to come up with. You kinda knew there was no going back from this now. There was no point in lying actually because none of them were stupid. Everybody knew how he must've found out, but still, you couldn't believe your brother was going to find out this way about you two.

"Are you sleeping with my sister?" Carlos growls angrily clenching his hands.

"Carlos, calm down okay? I can explain-" Lando tries, but is soon cut off by Carlos getting up from his seat and gripping the collar of Lando's shirt.

From a pleasant and relaxing evening, things quickly got out of hand. Kika and you both let out a scream as Carlos pounced at Lando and Charles and Pierre quickly intervened pulling Carlos away.

"Carlos, stop!" You shout your chest quickly rising up and down as you stood in front of Lando who put his hands on your shoulders to calm you down because he could feel how scared you were.

"What are you doing?! Get your hands off her!" But Carlos was seeing red. He was so angry that one of his friends disobeyed his rule about staying away from his little sister.

"Stop it right now! Yes, Lando and I have been seeing each other for quite some time now and there's nothing you can do about it!" You declare confidently, but quickly blinking to stop the tears from rolling down your cheeks. You were disappointed and embarrassed with the way he overreacted. He acted as if Lando was a drg dealer or something not his friend. You always knew all Carlos wanted was to protect you and your feelings, but this was completely unnecessary.

"Estas loca o que?!" Carlos snaps at you. "There's no way I'm gonna approve of that!" Are you crazy or what?

"I don't care! You don't get to tell me what to do with my life! Stop treating me like a child! I don't need you to protect me!" You bark back frustration bursting out of you. "Besides, Lando is your friend! What is wrong with you to act like this?"

"Baby, calm down, please.." Lando mumbles quietly, but loud enough that Carlos hears him too.

"This..this is the last time you see her. I don't ever want you around her ever again."

But of course it wasn't like that. You weren't even thinking about breaking things off with him. You two cared about each other way too much to let it all go to waste. Although you agreed to let the situation settle down a bit so you didn't see each other for 2 weeks, until the next grand prix in Las Vegas.

You missed him. You weren't used to not seeing him for more than 3-4 days, and now it's been more than 10 days since you last saw each other. You missed his touch, you missed his kisses, his warm hugs that always made everything bad go away. And he missed you too, even more than he thought he would. He realized in that relatively short period of time that he doesn't want to be without you anymore. He also realized that, to him, nothing will ever make sense if you're not there.

You took the opportunity and went with Carlos to Las Vegas to be as close to Lando as possible even though Carlos never let you out of his sight. Since Carlos got his appendix removed two days before the grand prix, he wasn't able to race so you two were following the race from the Ferrari garage.

You were feeling kinda strange that day. You couldn't explain it, but your gut feeling was telling you that something was just off that day.

You had a great need to go to Lando before the start of the race and tell him how much you miss him and how much you are in love with him. But since you didn't want to cause problems with your brother who came out of the operating room two days ago and was still in pain, you decided to keep everything you desperately wanted to say to yourself.

Everything about your gut feeling became clear as a day when while following the race you saw a McLaren car snap out of control and heavily crash on the third lap of the race.

Your heart dropped and your legs went numb looking at the screen before you.

"No.." You whisper to yourself putting your hands over your mouth and turning to your brother who went pale. "Is-is that Lando?" You ask, your voice breaks as Carlos pulls you to him and wraps his arms around you.

"Shh, he's going to be fine, okay? Everything's going to be alright." Carlos eyes were stuck on the screen as he was comforting you rubbing your back and you cried into his chest.

All the worst possible scenarios went through your head at that moment. The very fact that you could lose him scared the life out of you and you didn't even get to call him yours yet. You couldn't bear it.

"I need to see him. I want to be by his side." You said and Carlos just nodded. All the anger and rage quickly evaporated from him when he saw his best friend crash.

When Lando was taken for precautionary checks in the University Medical Center, you were in his driver's room pacing back and forth waiting for him or any kind of information about him. And then finally, after what seemed like years later, there he was entering the room after being told that you were there waiting for him.

"Lando.." You stopped in tracks at the sight of him in front of you before running into his arms. "You scared me so much you don't even know.." You said leaving gentle kisses over his cheeks, jaw and lips.

"I'm here, baby, it's okay" He said burying his face into the crook of your neck inhaling your scent as his arms tightened around you.

"I missed you, I missed you so much.." You say sobbing.

"I missed you too. I couldn't concentrate on anything, I just kept thinking about you the whole time" He admits looking deep into your eyes wiping your tears away with his thumbs. "Will you stay with me tonight?"

He didn't even have to ask. There was no force that would separate you from him anymore. From now on it was two of you together through everything and anything.

"I'll stay with you forever, baby" You smile softly as he leans his forehead against yours.

"I'll hold you to that"

#lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #lando x reader #lando norris smut #lando norris #lando norris fanfic #carlos sainz #charles leclerc #f1 #f1 fanfic #f1 fic

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azrielbrainrot · 5 months ago

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Silent Voices Speak

Pairing: Azriel x F!Reader

Description: Both you and Azriel find yourselves with some sleep related problems. Who would have thought you could be each other's remedy?

Warnings: barely any angst

Word Count: 3400

Notes: I can't believe it took me so long to write a new story in the healer!reader universe, they're my first babies. Hope you enjoy!

Healer!Reader Universe Masterlist

The killings hadn't stopped. The, by now, tripled security slowed them down and allowed the Inner Circle to be made aware of any disturbances quicker, and the bodies hadn't been found by any innocent civilians since then either, thankfully saving a lot of fae from having to witness such gruesome sights, but the killings hadn't stopped.

Your research has given you some clues as to the motives behind the murders, though you still can't fully understand the ritual behind them. None of the information you've gathered has helped in stopping them from happening or finding the people responsible for them. Amren has traveled to the Day Court and is now searching the High Lord's extensive libraries to try and find more information on a lead she got but, for now, there wasn't enough to make anyone feel safer.

The streets of Velaris felt lifeless, bars and restaurants closing earlier than usual given the unofficial curfew every fae seemed to have set for themselves. The City of Dreamers, heart of the Night Court, was scared of the dark. Apart from the killings, that was what weighed the heaviest on the Inner Circle's minds.

Feyre and Rhysand had been forthcoming with information, letting the public know they were actively searching for the killers and sharing some of the details as a means to stop the rumors that kept going around that were only exaggerating the already awful murders the more they spread. Of course, they'd been careful not to reveal any of the more gruesome details, or the fact that everything pointed to the murders actually being sacrifices to what could be an old God or even worse.

Those had been the details keeping you up at night as you were now, sipping on chamomile tea in hopes of relaxing your body enough to get some sleep without any unwanted thoughts filtering through and spoiling it once again. You wanted to help as much as you could, and weren't considering talking to Rhys and backing down as Azriel had suggested multiple times, but you weren't used to witnessing this much cruelty, not like this.

When you'd been stationed as a healer during the war, you saw a lot of awful things, some of them you won't ever forget, but this felt different. Everything about these killings and the motives behind them had set off every alarm in your body.

The cup was empty before you realized, bringing it up to your mouth only to be met with nothing. You let out a sigh and look over to the comfortable bed, knowing you had to at least lay down and try to fall asleep, no matter how frustrating it was to toss and turn for hours on end or get woken up by terrifying dreams. At least this bed was a lot more comfortable than the one you had at home, it almost made you want to ask Rhysand where he got it from although you probably would never be able to afford it.

You're not entirely sure what brought it on but, after coming back from yet another fruitless mission, Azriel asked you to stay in the townhouse with him. You tried to decline, not entirely comfortable with staying at the High Lord's house indefinitely. You've spent some nights up in the House of Wind when you were helping with research, but this was different. You didn't want to take advantage of Rhysand and Feyre's kindness, but Azriel insisted, a tormented look you weren't used to seeing painted in the shadowsinger's face, and so you ended up accepting.

Just remembering your talk that night made you feel hopeless, wanting nothing more than to make him feel better and take some of the unbearable weight off his shoulders somehow.

“I'm not sure this is necessary,” you try to reason with him, “There haven't been any attacks in the city, with so many eyes on the streets it would be impossible.”

“It also seemed impossible for them to be able to hide for so long but even my shadows are blind to them.”

“I can't stay at my High Lord and Lady's home."

“I can't sleep not knowing you're safe,” the admission feels heavy between you, prompting you to study his face carefully, taking note of the fear and desperation behind his request. “I wouldn't forgive myself if something happened to you.”

“Azriel…”

You don't know what to say, not sure what this means for the two of you.

“Please.”

But with that little word he convinced you, not caring if it was Rhysand's house you were going to sleep in, or anyone else's, as long as it made Azriel feel at least a bit more at ease.

Your relationship has been changing ever since that fateful night when he kissed your cheek goodnight. It's a silly thought even now, that something so inconsequential as a peck to the cheek would end up meaning so much for the two of you.

Ever since that day your talks have gotten longer and more frequent, Azriel has also flown you to and from work a few times, has taken you on multiple outings that you can only classify as dates at this point. But things hadn't gotten further than that and more chaste kisses on the cheek.

The timing wasn't right. Not with everything that has been happening and the troubles filling both of your minds, the long hours Azriel had been putting his body through trying to find even the smallest clue about these murders, and your assistance in any research the Inner Circle needs as well as providing mental and physical aid to a terrified city.

Your feelings for him were impossible to deny - even though you've certainly tried to when everyone else asks about him, especially your High Lady, who you've come to learn is an avid busybody, - and you were more than confident that he cared for you just as much, but the timing wasn't right, and so you've been stuck between acting like friends and so much more.

You were still thinking about the shadowsinger when your head hit the pillow, making yourself comfortable and letting your thoughts wander around warm hazel eyes and shy smiles, hopefully lulling you into a peaceful sleep at last.

Rushed murmurs and harsh breaths take you away from the soft grasp of sleep. You try to ignore them at first but as the words grow louder, you try to decipher them confused. A flurry of shadows filters into your room, flying over you when you open your eyes to try and ascertain the situation. You can barely see them with the low lights the moon rays covered by dark curtains provide, but it almost feels like they're tugging at you, urging you to get up.

The thought that Azriel could be in danger makes you leap out of bed, foregoing your robe or slippers as you follow the frantic shadows to his room next to yours. Only hesitating at the door for a moment, knuckles raised against the intricately designed wood as you considered knocking before barging into his room unannounced, but another string of groans and panicked breathing assault your ears, prompting you to open the door.

Your eyes land on the shadowsinger immediately as he lay restless on his bed, blinking a few times as you adjusted to the dim lighting, his room being even darker than yours. A small sigh of relief escapes you when you find him unharmed, although you soon realize that the noises you heard were the result of what appears to be a particularly consuming and terrifying nightmare.

He had struggled so much in his sleep that the sheets were completely thrown off, laying by his feet as his body tossed and turned uninterrupted. A light sheen of sweat covered him, telling you he'd been at this for a while. There was a familiar glint of blue on his nightstand, as Truth Teller and two of his siphons lay close by. You tried not to linger on the fact that he didn't appear to be wearing anything else aside from underwear for too long.

Some of the shadows that swirled around the room meet the ones that had brought you here, moving over you once more as if asking you to save their singer. You wanted to help them, but you're not entirely sure if you should be seeing him like this, if he'd want you to see him so vulnerable.

Aside from that, waking up someone when they were so immersed in a dream, especially a nightmare, could be dangerous and bring more harm than good. Still, you couldn't leave him like this and go back to your room, so you decide to try and call his name softly, hoping the noise or familiarity will be enough to help him wake up in a more organic way.

“Azriel?”

You hesitate in the doorway, feeling like you were already invading his space, but as another weak cry escapes him your body moves on its own. You're at the edge of the bed before you even notice, repeating his name and shaking him softly so as not to startle him too much.

The pain was evident on his face. You didn't know what he was dreaming of but you knew you had to pull him out of there fast. You've never seen him so distressed. Watching him like this felt like a chain was tightening around your heart and lungs, making it hard for you to breathe or think.

At a slightly harder push, his eyes open, one scarred hand moving to grab your wrist, stopping you from touching him as the other went to the nightstand, finding the hilt of his dagger. His hazel eyes were open wide, clearly disoriented by not only the nightmare but also having someone in his room. You expected nothing less from the Spymaster, of course he couldn't be so easily caught off guard even in his own room, but the tight grip was becoming too much, and you knew it was bruising, not being able to stop yourself from cringing softly at the pain.

As he understands the situation, wide eyes blinking multiple times as the waking world comes into focus, he drops your wrist and pulls away from you, sitting up and almost bumping his head against the headboard in his rush.

Neither of you moves or speaks for a moment, his heavy breathing the only thing that can be heard in the dark room. You wanted to turn the faelights on, to properly check on him, but Azriel always prefered the dark, feeling much more at ease surrounded by it. In fact, his shadows had hurried to him as soon as he woke up.

When his wide gaze settles into a frown, hazel eyes dropping to your wrist, you decide to speak up. You know that look and this was not the time for any other worries that might be growing in his mind, certainly none that concerned you.

“Azriel,” you whisper, not wanting to startle him, “Are you okay?”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No-”

“I shouldn't have hurt you,” he says, more to himself than to you, haunted eyes never straying from your wrist. You had only wanted to help, but now it feels like you made it worse by coming here.

“No, it's my fault. I know better than to wake someone up from a nightmare,” you swallow, throat suddenly dry, “but it looked like you were in pain and I couldn't leave you like this.”

He seemed unwilling to listen to you, a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head the only answer he gave you as you told him it wasn't his fault. Azriel is always too aware of himself, never allows himself any mistakes, as if he thinks he has to prove himself worthy of the life he leads. You don't even want to know what's going through his head now that he's convinced himself he hurt someone he cares about.

You let out a sigh when it was clear he wasn't going to say anything or acknowledge you further, you could almost see him receding into his own mind, getting consumed by his betraying thoughts. If you had listened to your training, you might not have ended up in this situation.

Slowly and very carefully, you move closer to him, giving him time to push you away or stop you if he wanted to. You only stop when your bare knee brushes his thigh, the warmth of his skin spreading through yours. Reaching for his hand, you interlock your fingers and squeeze softly, his eyes finally meeting yours.

“I shouldn't have grabbed you like that.” The pain was evident in his face, and it hurt you far more to think he was beating himself up than your wrist ever did. “I'm sorry.”

“There's no reason to be sorry,” you smile up at him, trying your best to soothe him, “You were disoriented and moved to protect yourself, that's all.”

He still looks unwilling to let go of his guilt, but you can see him settling back into himself, his usual calm expression falling over his beautiful face. He lets go of your hand in favor of cradling your wrist, carefully inspecting it as if he was looking at a broken bone and not at a bruise that would be completely healed within the hour. Caressing the soft skin with his thumb lightly, the scarred skin and affection behind the movement causing goosebumps to erupt.

“You didn't answer my question. Are you alright?”

Azriel looks up at you then, a conflicted look falling over his face once more. It seems he had been too focused on your wrist to remember the nightmare, and the fact that you'd seen him like that. You're almost positive he hates the fact that you've seen him like that even more than whatever haunted his nightmares. He's always been an extremely private person, so you can't even imagine what it feels like for him to be seen in such a vulnerable light by someone he barely knows.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” the expression on his face telling you he doesn't believe it, “You didn't. I've been finding it hard to sleep with everything that has been going on.”

“You're safe here.”

“I know, I've just had too much on my mind.” It feels like you're doing this wrong, you're the one that should be worried about him, not the other way around. “Your shadows came into my room and I heard movement so I came to check on you.”

Disapprovement flashes in his eyes, directed at his shadows of course. You'd find it adorable how he treats his shadows like misbehaving children if it weren't for the situation. Hopefully he won't be too harsh on them, you can almost feel the lecture coming. You're not entirely sure how much they can feel, if they can at all, but they had done good in going to find you, even if Azriel reprimanded them for it.

“I didn't know they could do that without you being conscious. They were very helpful,” you smile down at the dark wisps stationed over his shoulders. He clearly didn't agree with you, a soft scoff escaping his lips, but you hope this is enough for them to know they can come to find you in this type of situation from now on. You don't want Azriel to suffer on his own when you're there for him.

“Thank you,” you look up at him in surprise, “You didn't have to come. It was only a nightmare.”

It's not as surprising that he doesn't want to tell you what the nightmare was about, or even change the subject. If he wants to pretend this never happened come morning, you're more than welcome to oblige, as long as he feels better and knows you're always ready to lend a helping hand.

“You can come to me for anything, Azriel,” your hand finds his once again, thumb caressing the scarred skin on the back of his hand. “I'll always be here for you.”

He holds your gaze in an intense stare, the swirl of emotions written in his eyes becoming almost too much to bear, and still you're unable to break away from the all-consuming hazel. It seems like the world stops around you for a moment, and there's only you and him.

As your surroundings return slowly, you suddenly become too aware of the position you're in, of what it would look like if someone walked in. They would find you sitting on his bed, right next to him, lost in his eyes, hands clasped together between you, disheveled hair and half lidded eyes. The lack of clothing only added to the sight, you had never been so conscious of how short and thin the nightgown you wore to sleep was. You can only be grateful that Azriel doesn't sleep completely naked, though his underwear barely leaves anything to the imagination, and your imagination is desperate to run wild.

Heat rushes to your cheeks as the thought settles in your mind, clearing your throat softly to try and break yourself out of those thoughts. Looking up at the suddenly captivating pattern painted on his dark navy walls when his gaze becomes too much. You could swear you saw the corner of his lip rise as he likely noticed the effect he had on you. This was a good thing, it was like the Azriel you're used to, but you needed to get back on track.

“Do you think you can go back to sleep?” You try to untangle your fingers from his but he holds onto your hand, unwilling to let go of you just yet. “I can get you some tea to help you relax if you can't, or maybe we could go for a walk instead?”

Tiring him out could be a good idea, although his body is probably beyond exhausted from the long hours he's been putting himself through. Maybe tea was the best option.

“Can you stay with me?”

His words cut through your racing thoughts, your lips parting in surprise. You had half expected him to kick you out of his bedroom when he came to, inviting you into his bed was the last thing you would have seen coming.

“What?”

“I think I can sleep if you stay,” he whispers, “but if you don't feel comfortable-”

“I don't mind staying,” you rush to assure him with burning cheeks, thankfully matching his own, “You just caught me off guard that's all.”

Azriel offers you a tired smile and, with a wave of his hand, fixes the sheets, moving to the middle of the bed so you have enough room to settle next to him. Your movements are painfully awkward as you lay down next to him, all too aware of every inch of your body, heart beating out of your chest.

While you're in the middle of deciding how to safely position your hands, stiff body frozen in place, he takes matters into his own hands, an achingly fond smile playing at his lips, his hand falling to the small of your back and pulling you in closer to his body, his scent enveloping you.

Azriel closes his eyes, breathing out a soft, “relax.” Your hand finds his chest, body slowly but surely melting into him as you do as he says and will your mind to stop wandering. Letting the soft beats of his heart calm yours, you decide to listen to your body, and fall into him, arm wrapping around his waist as you inch even closer, your chest finding his, tangling your legs until you can't know where you end and he begins. His grip on you tightens as a satisfied sigh escapes him, one heavy wing falling over your body, until you're impossibly close.

Your face now only a breath away from his, your nose bumping into his chin as he drops a soft kiss to your forehead and nuzzles into you, breathing you in. You almost catch yourself purring as you lay in his arms, completely surrounded by Azriel.

Tangled up in each other's warmths, sleep found you both easily, finally allowing you a few peaceful hours of sleep after the grueling weeks you've endured.

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