#i wrote like 25 pages for a final

[nmtltlz]

peak self indulgence, let me have this

[shannonsketches]

he's so important to me

[quatregats]

Morning update: Got up early, am packed and ready to fly, my professor is letting me submit the one paper for both his classes, and I have a nice long stretch now to sit in the library and finish my archaeology essay. So I think we will survive and be fine, and I will probably not be here until I return from India—just putting this so you guys know it all worked out, thanks for bearing with the absolute chaos that was yesterday :')

[unboundbnha]

I’ve started *gags, chokes* writing….again….*spits out blood, gasps and gurgles as I fall to the ground*

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What the hell is this?"

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

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

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

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes and no.

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

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

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

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

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

The cover

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

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

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

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

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

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued!!!

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

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

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

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

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

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's pretty much it!

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

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

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

Bonus material: Data files

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

Lara-Su

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

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

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

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

Geoffrey

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

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

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

Remington

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

Lien-Da

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

Commander Taelor

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

Julie-Su

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

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

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

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

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

Yep. He got me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closing thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I still have to pity him.

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

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

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

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

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

[spirk-trek]

Sharing the Sunlight Fanzine & Novel | Drawings by Chris Soto, 1992

Entire work available to read here!

Editorial note from author Jenna Sinclair:

"I have been in love with the Star Trek universe and its characters for twenty-five years now. I wrote my first 'novella' in the seventh grade. Over the years I wrote sporadically, mostly in my head, never, ever satisfied, knowing that there was an elusive 'something' I was unable to grasp. But then I discovered K/S! Unbelievably, it took me a good twenty-three and a half years to do it! I felt as if I had been working on a puzzle all that time, and finally the pieces flew naturally into place. Like just about everybody else, I became obsessed. In six months, I read about 200 zines (yes, I was broke and suffering from eyestrain), and then I sat down to write an established relationship short story, as a way of saying 'thank you' to all the K/S authors, artists, and editors who had given me so much pleasure. That story refused to be written, and this first time novel came flowing from my pen instead. The first 120 pages were composed on a 25 year old typewriter which lacked a 'k,' a '/', and a '-'. You try writing a novel with Kirk, Spock, and other fairly essential words without a 'k'!"

[wandamaximoffsbadgirl]

Let's Talk About That

I saw the end when we began (1)

Psychiatrist!Avenger!Fem!Reader × Wanda Maximoff

Summary: You are the young psychiatrist for the Avengers, and you take your job very seriously, but what happens when Wanda joins the team, turning your life upside down?

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: legal age gap r is 19 w is 25, talks of death and grief, a bit of angst, therapy sessions

A/N: I had this idea for a while and wrote it a while ago, but spruced it up for publishing. I hope you enjoy it!

May 7th-10th 2015

The only sounds to be heard were the scratches of your pen against paper as you wrote down notes the old fashioned way and the hum of the AC unit installed in your office. Tony let you have a nice corner of the tower where there was sunlight and windows. You had gone with a soft gray for the walls, an L-shaped mahogany desk that had both a desktop computer and your laptop. Across from your desk was two couches and a coffee table between them with an assortment of fidget toys, a succulent, a handful of magazines, and a box of tissues. 

Everyone had been away on an important mission and normally you’d go with, but you'd been recovering from a previous injury, you still are when you hear a knock on your door, 

"Open." You let them know and just from their aura you can tell it's Tasha, but she's with someone else, an aura you don't recognize. You look up to find a girl with chestnut colored hair, and a dark aura around her. "Hey Tash. I'm glad you're all home safe. I'm assuming we'll restart our sessions?" You ask the red head. 

"Yes. We can resume them. Tomorrow. Today I need you to have a talk with this one." Tasha helps her into the room and gestures for her to sit down, Tasha walks over and hands you a large file. "She came from HYDRA, they had a lot of info on her, she had joined us in the fight against Ultron." Tasha tells you before lowering her voice, "She lost her twin brother during the battle. So maybe you can get her to talk." You smile at Tasha and then look past the red head. 

"Yeah of course we shouldn't have any issues Tash. Leave it to me." You tell her as I adjust your glasses, quickly looking over her file as Tasha exits, closing the door behind her, "Wanda Maximoff, 25, born in Sokovia." You say out loud as you walk around your desk to the other couch across from where she's sitting criss-cross. You take notice she's taken her shoes off and smile, taking note of the fact that she’s comfortable enough to do something like that. "I'm Dr. Y/N Y/L/N. I'm 19. I'm also an Avenger. I have a power that allows me to see auras and emotions. I can also influence people's emotions and use my voice to influence others around me." You tell her a little about yourself first to help make her comfortable with talking about herself.

"You're 19? How are you a doctor?" She finally talks and you can hear her thick Sokovian accent which is like music to your ears. 

"I'm very smart. Graduated high school at 12 finished my Doctorate last year for psychiatry and Tony took me in as the Avengers Psychiatrist shortly after that. Everyone here needs a little bit of help and that is what I'm here to provide for you." You smile at her as you open a fresh notebook for her, choosing a red covered one noticing that she was wearing Tasha’s red leather jacket. "So tell me a little about yourself. Anything you want." You ask as you jot down her basic info on the first page. 

"I love American sitcoms." she tells you first. You smile and look at her over your glasses. 

"Why is that?" You ask as you jot down her words. 

"We used to watch them as a family every night so we could learn English." She tells you making a smile appear on your face. 

"When you say we who does that entail?" You question the Sokovian wanting to get to the root of her problems. 

"My Mama, Papa, and Pietro..." She tells you solemnly. 

"Who is Pietro?" You inquire, looking up from your notebook. 

"He is...was...my twin brother." You jot down everything she says during your session and she does open up a little bit with some persuasion on your part, but that isn't unusual for your sessions. 

"Well Wanda thank you for opening up to me. Your aura is looking a little warmer from when you first walked in. How about you come back in three days for another session?" You tilt your head as you grab a little card for her. 

"Why three days?" She asks nervously, tugging at her sleeves attempting to cover her hands, but the jacket doesn't budge. She starts picking at her nails as an alternative, chipping the black nail polish further. 

"I like to have frequent sessions the first month. Then we'll have them weekly just like the others." You let her know and she nods her head as you write the date and time for her to show up on the card for three days from now. Standing up with her, "I offer a high fives, hand shakes, fist bumps, or a hug at the end of sessions. Which would you like?" You ask and she's thrown off a bit by the statement at first but then answers. 

"Hug. I could use a hug right now." You open up your arms and let her come to you. She ends up crying in your arms as you sooth her, letting her know it is okay to cry. 

"I'll always be here for you Wanda. I'm always on your side." You whisper to her and she holds you tighter at the words.

You sat back down at your desk after Wanda left, feeling a mix of emotions swirling within you. Empathy for Wanda's pain, determination to help her heal, and a lingering sense of dread about what HYDRA had done to her. But you pushed those feelings aside, focusing on the task at hand.

As the Avengers' psychiatrist, it was your responsibility to help your teammates navigate the mental and emotional toll of their work. Sometimes that meant delving into painful memories or difficult emotions, but it was a role you took on willingly. After all, you had your own share of struggles, and if you could use your powers to help others, then it was worth it.

You glanced at the clock and realized it was almost time for lunch. You decided to take a break and head to the common area, where you found Tony tinkering with one of his suits.

"Hey, Y/N," he greeted you with a grin. "How's it going?"

"Good," you replied, sinking into a nearby chair. "Just had a session with Wanda. She's been through a lot."

Tony nodded solemnly. "Yeah, losing her brother and all that HYDRA stuff... it's rough."

You sighed, running a hand through your Y/H/C hair. "Yeah, but she's strong. I think she'll come through it."

Tony gave you a reassuring smile before returning to his work, and you took a moment to appreciate the camaraderie of the team. Despite your differences and the challenges you guys faced, you were a family, bound together by our shared experiences and our commitment to protecting the world.

After a quick lunch, you headed back to your office to prepare for your next session. As you reviewed your notes from Wanda's session, you couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to her story, something hidden beneath the surface. But for now, all you could do was continue to offer her support and hope that she would find the strength to confront her demons and emerge stronger on the other side.

With that thought in mind, you square your shoulders and prepare to face whatever challenges lay ahead. As an Avenger, a psychiatrist, and a friend, you were ready to do whatever it took to help your teammates and protect the world from whatever threats may come our way.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Three days passed in a blur of meetings, training sessions, and the occasional emergency mission. But today, you were back in your office, eagerly awaiting Wanda's return for your second session. As you sat at your desk, reviewing your notes from your previous meeting, you couldn't help but feel a surge of empathy for her. Losing a loved one in battle was something you could relate to all too well.

Before you could dwell too much on your own past, there was a soft knock on your door, and Wanda stepped into the room. Her aura seemed a bit brighter today, though still tinged with sadness. "Hey, Wanda," you greeted her with a warm smile, motioning for her to take a seat. "How are you feeling today?"

Wanda hesitated for a moment before answering, "Better, I think. Thank you for... everything last time."

You nodded, understandingly. "Of course. It's what I'm here for." You gestured toward the notebook on the table. "Shall we pick up where we left off?"

For the next hour, the two of you delved deeper into Wanda's past, her memories of Sokovia, her time with HYDRA, and her experiences with her brother, Pietro. With each word she spoke, you could feel her emotions swirling around you, and you did your best to guide her through them, offering comfort and support where you could.

As your session came to a close, Wanda seemed visibly lighter, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Thank you, Y/N," she said softly, wiping away a stray tear. "I didn't realize how much I needed this."

You smiled back, feeling a sense of fulfillment wash over you. "Anytime, Wanda. Remember, I'm always here for you."

Before she left, Wanda surprises you by reaching out and giving you a tight hug. "Thank you," she repeated, her voice thick with emotion.

As you watched her leave your office, you couldn't help but feel grateful for the opportunity to help someone in need, to make a difference in their life, even if it was just one session at a time. And as you glanced down at the Power Stone embedded in your chest, you couldn't help but wonder if perhaps this was the true source of your ability to connect with others on such a deep level. But for now, all that mattered was that you were making a difference, one session at a time.

[sideprince]

Eileen Prince

I'm relentlessly curious about how a witch from Slytherin, a house that values cunning and ambition on paper, and bloodlines/nobility in its culture, ended up living in a muggle slum.

Unfortunately for me, she's a barely mentioned character written by an author who consistently fails to portray female characters with depth or dimension. The women in Harry Potter are portrayed as either maternal or villains, or, in Ginny Weasley's case, as redeemed by their masculine traits (because Rowling's Thatcher era feminism dictates that equality for women = emulating patriarchal ideas of manhood). About as much as you can expect from an author who's as unable to acknowledge the personhood of trans women as she is to write women as actual people. This leaves a lot of room for interpreting or delving into what Eileen Prince's life may have looked like, and how that would have affected her son's development.

There are three direct mentions of Eileen in the text :

“The picture showed a skinny girl of around fifteen. She was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a long, pallid face. Underneath the photograph was the caption: Eileen Prince, Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Team.”

HBP Ch. 25

“I was going through the rest of the old Prophets and there was a tiny announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement saying that she’d given birth to a" “ — murderer,” spat Harry.

HBP ch. 30

“Harry looked around: he was on platform nine and three-quarters, and Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him.”

DH Ch. 33

(Shoutout to Harry James Potter, who didn't recognize Eileen's fifth year photo despite her resemblance to Snape, the teacher whose classroom he got his used Potions book from. Shoutout also to Harry James Potter who didn't connect the dots between the Prince's handwriting and Snape's, a teacher who regularly wrote instructions on the board. "I needed to make the plot work, ok?" - JK Rowling, probably.)

Other relevant excerpts:

“Snape staggered - his wand flew upwards, away from Harry - and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner ”

OoTP Ch. 26

“Harry delved into his trunk and pulled out his copy of Advanced Potion-Making before getting into bed. There he turned its pages, searching, until he finally found, at the front of the book, the date that it had been published. It was nearly fifty years old.”

HBP Ch. 16

Supplemental material re: Gobstones from JK Rowling:

"...it remains a minority sport within the wizarding world, and does not enjoy a very ‘cool’ reputation, something its devotees tend to resent. Gobstones is most popular among very young wizards and witches, but they generally ‘grow out’ of the game, becoming more interested in Quidditch as they grow older.  ... Gobstones enjoys limited popularity at Hogwarts, ranking low among recreational activities, way behind Quidditch and even Wizarding Chess." [There's an additional sentence on the Harry Potter wiki's Gobstones page: "...it is also known as 'the thinking wizard's Quidditch.'"]

A few conclusions can be drawn from what little information we're given about Eileen:

She's described as "cross and sullen" around the age of 15, and as "sallow-faced, sour-looking" when she's older.

She's captain of the Gobstones club around her fifth year, so she likely marched to the beat of her own drum - given that Gobstones isn't particularly popular - and owns it proudly enough to take, or even seek out, a leadership role.

The sport is described as "the thinking wizard's Quidditch" which would imply Eileen was more interested in intellectual challenges and was clever (and can be paralleled with a young Severus' comment about "if you'd rather be brawny than brainy" to James Potter when they first meet on the Hogwarts Express).

Her marriage and the birth of her son are both announced in the paper, which might mean the family she came from was of some importance or note, or perhaps something else... but we'll get to that.

If we assume that Severus' secondhand copy of Advanced Potion Making was originally Eileen's (reasonable, though there is no textual evidence) then its publication date is likely around the time she was a sixth year, given that this particular text was specific to students beginning to prep for N.E.W.T. exams. Harry begins his sixth year in 1996 when the book is "nearly fifty years old," so we can assume Eileen was 16 years old sometime not long after 1946. Severus was born in 1960, which would mean Eileen was in her mid-late 20s at the time.

Her marriage was dysfunctional at best, abusive at worst. As per a Pottermore post that is still up on WizardingWorld.com: "...the desperately lonely and unhappy childhood [Severus] had with a harsh father who didn’t hold back when it came to the whip." Based on this, we can assume Tobias was abusive, and given Eileen's cowering as he shouted at her, she presumably feared him.

From these bits of information emerges the image of a woman who either had a surly personality, or at the very least was guarded, though perhaps just formal. There isn't really any difference in how her face is set when she's in an everyday setting like King's Cross, or when she's having her picture taken for the Gobstones Club. It's possible she was a stern, unsmiling person, but it's also possible - given that her wedding and child were announced in the paper - that she came from a family of some standing and was raised to conduct herself with hallmarks of British class, such as dignity and unaffectedness. After all, there are several wizarding families - such as the Potters - who are wealthy purebloods with social standing but are not part of the Sacred 28. Additionally, the Gobstones Club portrait would have been taken around the mid-1940s, when portraits were formal and their subjects did not often smile, and given that we see only a snippet of Eileen, we don't have enough information that she was unhappy or sour. It's also important to remember that we see her portrait and Snape's memory of her through Harry's perspective and, like his perception of Snape himself, this may convey Harry's biases.

We also know from the text that Snape had a house in a deserted part of Cokeworth, a fictional Midlands town that presumably had a collapsed milling industry, at the end of a street called Spinner's End. There's a great thread that goes into details about the kind of 2 up 2 down house it would have been, and we can assume that this is Snape's family home given that we know he and Lily grew up in Cokeworth. For all intents and purposes, the conclusion we can draw from this being the Snape family's home in the 60s is that they were working class and cripplingly poor. Most estates like this had been cleared by the 60s, and no longer exist today.

This begs the question: how did a witch from a possibly well-off family end up in an abusive marriage in an irrelevant slum?

Buckle up kids, we're leaving the world of textual references and veering into deep meta territory now. I won't label any of this as head canon because I'm not set on these interpretations, and am just drawing conclusions from the text, but some of it may be a bit loose even for meta.

If Eileen was 16 years old not long after 1946, then she would have finished school in the late 40s, possibly even 1950. While some people (including past me) posit the theory that Tobias may have been injured in WWII and his injuries debilitated him, forcing him to go on the dole and affecting his mental health, I'm increasingly skeptical of this theory. It would make more sense if Eileen had known him before he was drafted/enlisted and had committed to a relationship with him, which would then have changed when he came back from the war and was altered. If we assume Eileen's age based on the idea that it was her own copy of Advanced Potion Making Severus used, then she would still have been at school during WWII (which makes an interesting parallel with Severus' own experience of spending the bulk of the first wizarding war against Voldemort as a student at school).

I do think, however, that there's merit in the theory that Tobias suffered some kind of altering injury and that he wasn't necessarily abusive before Eileen committed herself to him. It makes little sense for a Slytherin graduate who was confident and self-posessed enough to be the face of an unpopular club to be drawn to a partner so abusive his shouts caused her to cower and who whipped his child freely. If, however, he was a charming, happy man when they met who suffered a life-altering injury, the trauma of which left him a shell of his former self, then someone like Eileen might stick around for the sake of the parts of his old self she can still see in him.

It's interesting that she didn't seem to use her magic to protect herself or her son, or even to dress her son in clothing that fit, but we know from the text that depression can cause a wizard's powers to wane:

“...it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that can happen”

HBP Ch. 13 (Dumbledore talking about Merope Gaunt)

The fact that the Snapes retained the house in Spinner's End seems to indicate that they continued to live there even when the local industry dried up and the slum was cleared as workers were moved to other parts of the country where they were needed (presumably what happened given *gestures at British history*). The most likely explanation for this would be that Tobias wasn't able to work, and perhaps did suffer an injury, only it was at work, and not during the war. This would mean the family lived on the dole (ie. welfare) and also that he would have spent a lot more time at home. It would also explain his anger and frustration that led to abusive behavior (which isn't to say that disabled people are abusive by any means, but it would have been emasculating for a man who considered himself the breadwinner in the 60s, and chronic pain coupled with limited abilities would give anyone a short fuse).

Moreover, this living situation seems to indicate that there is no additional support coming from anywhere. Where is Eileen's family? Why were they not helping? There's no indication in the text that there is any connection with them at all. We can infer from Snape's memories that, as a child, he learned what he knew about the magical world from his mother. This implies that she talked to him about it a fair amount, and his conviction that he and Lily were going to Hogwarts well before they got their letters also implies that Eileen expected him to go there and was set on her son having a magical education, despite how little she seemed to use her own powers.

Severus knows a lot about the wizarding world as a child, including that prisoners are sent to Azkaban and that it's guarded by Dementors, Hogwarts' house structure and what to expect when he and Lily get there, and about the Statute of Secrecy and the laws around it. When Lily asks him if it makes a difference being Muggleborn, Severus hesitates before replying no, presumably because he's aware of pureblood bias being a part of wizarding culture.

Perhaps that's the reason Eileen's family doesn't seem to be in the picture. My own theory is that Eileen hadn't planned to commit herself to Tobias long-term, and Severus was an accidental outcome of an innocent tryst in which a young Eileen, an educated witch from a well to do pureblood family, was having fun slumming it with a working class muggle and ended up pregnant. While we don't know the wizarding world's attitude around pregnancy and abortion, we do know it's a conservative and classist society that parallels muggle British culture fairly closely, and that the late 50s/early 60s were a time when an out of wedlock baby would have been considered a disgrace.

Add to that the anti-muggle bias of a pureblood family and it sounds like Eileen was disowned her for her mistake (and don't @ me, but even though I know that not all Slytherins are purebloods, it does seem to be a persistent cultural value of the house reaching back to Salazar Slytherin himself, so Eileen's being sorted into it can reasonably be taken as an indication of her blood status). Perhaps the marriage and birth announcements in the Daily Prophet were put in by Eileen herself, if she was a woman from a family where this was customary. It may have been her way of letting her family know of the events, or even of asserting herself and even deliberately defying them, announcing to the whole wizarding world that a Prince married and had a child with a muggle. It makes sense that the girl who wasn't just in the Gobstones club, but became captain, would also say to herself, why shouldn't I have my marriage announced in the paper like everyone else in the family?

It's worth noting that mid-late 20s is pretty young to have a baby in the wizarding world, where the life expectancy and child bearing years are much longer than they are for a muggle. According to the Harry Potter wiki:

"Wizard life expectancy in Britain reached an average 137¾ years in the mid-1990s, according to the Ministry of Divine Health ... Wizards in general have a much longer life expectancy than Muggles, usually living two or three times as long as their non magical counterparts, some living even longer than that depending on circumstances. In addition, seeing as James Potter's parents had him "late in life,” witches likely have significantly longer childbearing years than Muggle women."

Although we see several characters in Severus' generation getting married and having kids not long after leaving school, there's a mention in the text that a lot of people were doing this during Voldemort's reign, as the fear he inspired made people more eager to get a move on with life since they thought they might die any day (I think Mrs. Weasley says this but I can't find the quote, @ me if you do). It's clear this wasn't the norm in the wizarding world. Eileen was a Slytherin, a house that values cunning, ambition, and strong wizarding heritage. Something must have gone very wrong in Eileen's life for her to end up having a child so young and living in a muggle slum.

And so it's possible Eileen Prince found herself pregnant and alone, having been disowned by her family to save face in light of her disgrace, and dependent on the only person she was still close to, the father of her child. It's the kind of storyline that Rowling would write, and it would parallel fairly closely the story of Voldemort's mother, thus adding another to the long list of similarities between Voldemort and Snape.

Lorrie Kim makes an interesting point when she talks about how Snape has a strong reaction to other people having a love life or romantic experiences (the context being Rowling's intention of his love for Lily being romantic and unrequited), but doesn't react particularly strongly to mothers sacrificing themselves for their children, whereas Voldemort does. Her insight, and I think it's a reasonable one, is that Severus accepts the idea of mothers making sacrifices for their children, whether it's Lily giving her life for Harry or Narcissa risking all she did to ask for his help in protecting Draco, because his own mother protected him from his father as much as she could.

There's a lot of room for interpretation on what Eileen's relationship with her son looked like, and what it says about her own state. She may have prioritized not angering Tobias to protect Severus, who as a child might have perceived her actions as a form of rejection. At the same time, she seems to have prepared him thoroughly for life in the magical world, perhaps in the hope that he would find his place in it and escape home. Perhaps she missed it and told him so much about it so she could live through her own memories.

The only time we see her argue with Tobias, in Severus' memory, she's cowering as he shouts. We know from JK Rowling that Tobias used corporal punishment liberally, which implies Eileen didn't stop him despite her magical abilities. We also see in the text, however, that while at school Severus stood up for himself against bullies and fought back, and that he was an exceptionally clever and powerful wizard. As an adult he was brave enough to face Dumbledore when he betrayed Voldemort, and later fought against Voldemort right under his nose (or lack thereof). So it stands to reason that at some point Severus began to stand up against Tobias too.

How much of that was Eileen's influence, or the result of Severus seeing her acceptance of her fate and rejecting it for himself, is hard to say. As for what happened to Tobias and Eileen that their house was Severus' by the mid-90s and they were nowhere in sight, I don't think there's enough information in the text to infer.

[marlenesluv]

Paper Rings. (DR)

summary: posting book content and drawing is your job, reading and drawing is luckily two of your favorite hobbies. y’know, besides posting your boyfriend, daniel.

warnings: none!

pairing: daniel ricciardo x book!reader (slight mention of reader being an artist as well)

note: not sure, but i might make this a thing with every driver..? idk. it’s tempting for sure. also, slight age-gap in my mind when i wrote this. daniel is 34, i was imaging reader as 25/26. another thing, lmao, and this pertains to all my daniel stuff, im just writing as if he’s in redbull. im missing redbull era hard.

masterlist here -> masterlist link

^ check my list for all posts! ^

liked by: danielricciardo, carlossainz55, and 782,577 others

y/n.user: midnight runs and cute annotations🎀

view comments…

danielricciardo: i look quite handsome

|> maxverstappen1: you’re cocky

|> y/n.user: he does look handsome, though

|> maxverstappen1: wow, she compliments and is smart, how tf

|> danielricciardo: 😇🖕(ily y/n!)

|> y/n.user: 💁‍♀️ (ily too!)

bookstergram: have you seen the movie ‘pride and prejudice’? or are you waiting till you finish the book?

|> y/n.user: ive seen it! (a thousand times lol) i’m rereading it rn

f1.editpage: you guys are my parents, you just don’t know it yet :/

wag.off1: our book barbie 🎀💐🩷🩰

|> y/n.user: EEK 🥹

|> danielricciardo: what am i??😁

|> wag.off1: you’re just ken

|> danielricciardo: 🙁

|> y/n.user: but you’re keneough for me 😔❤️

|> danielricciardo: i will happily be your ken❤️😇

user55: do they make us feel single on purpose…

_______________________________________________

liked by: y/n.user, georgerussell63, and 1,067,190 others

danielricciardo: my multitalented gf🎨

view comments…

francisca.cgomes: wow, your gf is so so pretty

|> danielricciardo: i know😁

|> y/n.user: my heart 🥹🫶 i love you kika (and daniel ofc!)

|> danielricciardo: 🤨 come give me kisses, that was mean

|> y/n.user: fine🙄😚

scottyjames31: wow, didn’t realize you ran a fanpage

|> danielricciardo: for my girl? of course i do

fanpage.f1: i need someone who posts me like this

user93: where tf do i find a daniel??

|> user35: for starters, im gonna need to be a little richer LMAO

|> user74: well, daniel and y/n grew up together, so just grow up with an f1 driver LOLZ

wagsoff1: our wag is looking so beautiful and creative in these

y/nfanpage: she’s so pretty wtfffff

booklover98: my book content mom🤗

_______________________________________________

liked by: danielricciardo, haleypham, and 814,134 others

y/n.user: italy, i love you

view comments…

danielricciardo: but you love me more

|> y/n.user: of course i love you more, danny 😌

wags.f1: you guys are so cute

book.lover: these pictures are so aesthetic UGH

des.sidster: what book are you reading??

|> y/n.user: the duke and i!

|> des.sidster: omg! finally starting? lmk🫶

|> y/n.user: ofc!🫶

y/n.fanpage: i need more y/n content. her page is j danny and books

|> user45: maybe that’s because she loves daniel and her books LMAO

|> danielricciardo: hmmmm🤔

dannyric.fp: the danny content? mother is feeding us🤲

pierregasly: we are also in italy??

|> y/n.user: are you asking me…?

|> pierregasly: why haven’t you asked to hangout with me and kika?

|> y/n.user: do you guys wanna get dinner tonight?

|> francisca.cgomes: yes! text our gc!!

user92: they have a gc??

|> daniel.y/n.fp: daniel mentioned in an interview once that he, y/n, kika, and pierre have one where they plan hangouts!

_______________________________________________

liked by: y/n.user, carlossainz55, and 1,110,924 others

danielricciardo: i’ll marry you with paper rings (did i do it right, babe?)

view comments…

y/n.user: you did so good, love ☹️🩷

|> danielricciardo: 😁🩷

user11: this post is calling me single in every way possible. wtf

f1wags: the first picture is so sweet, but the second⁉️ i’m sobbing

maxverstappen1: i always think i’m following a fanpage when i scroll through my instagram and see these, and then i realize you’re just down bad

|> danielricciardo: sue me for being in love

|> y/ns.fanpage: i’m about to, you guys make me feel lonely

user46: the way he supports her reading addiction, posts her, and loves her more than anything ☹️

|> user16: we’re all living vicariously through them

danric.edits: we are NOT skipping over the fact that he just said that he would “marry her with paper rings” are we???

|> y/n.photoshoots: fr, like, are our parents finally gonna get married?

bookster.gram: my book mom 🫶

_______________________________________________

liked by: danielricciardo, lilymhe, and 1,162,935 others

y/n.user: bro ☹️🥹 how do i not violently sob rn

view comments…

danielricciardo: i violently sobbed when you said ‘yes’

|> y/n.user: i’m gonna sob again

des.sidster: omgggg, congratulations!!🩷

|> y/n.user: thank you des!🩷

y/nfanpage: change ur user now??

|> user04: she’s prolly waiting till they get married

saracarrolli: congratulations, pretty girl!! you guys are adorable together

|> y/n.user: thank you sara! :’)

books4life: mom and dad are getting married guys😭🫶🥹

bookofthemonth: congratulations to one of our favorite couples!! expect book mail <3

|> y/n.user: aww, haha, thank you!!!!

pierregasly: wow, he actually proposed. congratulations!

|> y/n.user: thanks pierre🙄

|> pierregasly: watch it or i wont come to the wedding

|> y/n.user: who said you were invited?

|> pierregasly: excuse me😦

|> danielricciardo: shes joking😶

_______________________________________________

liked by: y/n.user, maxverstappen1, and 1,924,035 others

danielricciardo: i love you, thank you for saying yes to forever❤️

view comments…

y/n.user: i love you more❤️

|> danielricciardo: impossible❤️

ricciardo.fp: they are too cute, your honor

charles_leclerc: congratulations, mate!!

|> danielricciardo: thank you!!

user82: mom & dad are so cuteee AHHHHHHH

dan.ricccc.fp: you didn’t marry her with paper rings tho!

christianhorner: congratulations, daniel and y/n!!

|> y/n.user: thank you, christian!! (from me and dan)

maxverstappen1: congratulations, guys!!!

|> georgerussell63: maxiel is dead now

|> danielricciardo: thank you max! and maxiel will never die

|> maxverstappen1: so true

bookk.gram: my roman empire fr

_______________________________________________

(reposts, comments, and likes are appreciated!^-^)

[flanaganfilm]

You have spoken about dealing with addiction in the past (congratulations on your sobriety, btw), and Hill House, Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep, etc, all feature characters struggling with addiction. Do you find a sort of catharsis in writing those characters and their storylines, and do you find that having gone through that affects how you write those characters and their stories? p.s. if the question is too personal, I apologize. You are, of course, free to ignore it.

Happy to talk about it. I was writing about addiction long before I admitted having a problem. Looking all the way back to my student films, many years before Absentia, I can see myself starting to pick it apart. The fact is I was a really shitty drunk. I was absolutely a problem drinker. It was always that way, going back to school - I was never able to handle it, and there were times throughout my life starting very young when that thought would occur to me, and I'd get scared, and then I'd convince myself I was being dramatic and that I had no problem whatsoever.

The truth is that I didn't have an OFF switch, I was inclined to hide my drinking, and the older I got the more self-destructive I became when I was under the influence.

But I was also very committed to the belief that I could handle it, and that I didn't have an actual problem, so for years I'd coast by, telling myself whatever issues I may have had weren't so serious. "Nine times out of ten, I'm just fine - I'm the life of the party," I'd think. I wasn't, though, and soon enough it was 50/50 whether I'd have to make apologetic phone calls on a given hungover morning. And those stretches where'd I'd really let go and drink hard, the person who emerged was less and less like me. It got to the point I didn't recognize him at all - there was this stranger who lived inside, and if he got out, he was could destroy everything I held dear, and he didn't give two shits about it. Looking back at the last decade of my work with the perspective I have now, I can see an escalating subconscious urgency in the way I was talking about alcoholism and addiction. My 2003 student feature Ghosts of Hamilton Street features a wanna-be writer with a horribly self-destructive alcohol problem. The people in his life begin to physically disappear, and the world around him resets as though they never existed at all, so he's the only who notices. I was 25 years old when I made that movie, and looking at it now, the addiction issues are a huge blinking red light all over the movie. At the time, I thought it was just interesting context for the character.

I wrote the opening scene of Midnight Mass (which features Riley Flynn waking up from a blackout drunk driving session to find that he's killed someone) all the way back in 2010, eight years before I finally sobered up. That was always something I was absolutely terrified of - not that I'd die because of my drinking, but that I'd kill someone else and live with the consequences. That was probably my biggest fear for most of my life, if I'm honest. And there were mornings I'd wake up at home and wonder how the hell I'd driven myself there the night before. I remember those mornings with a stomach-turning degree of terror and shame.

It was always somewhat cathartic to write about characters with addiction issues. There's a long stretch between Absentia and Hill House where it appears that I'm not dealing with those themes in my work (though I'd argue there's a subtle addiction meditation at play in Before I Wake that I've only recently noticed), but I was also secretly working on Midnight Mass that entire time, and just pouring all of my thoughts and anxieties about alcoholism into that story. So while Oculus, Hush, Ouija: OOE, and Gerald's Game don't seem to dwell much on addiction, that's really because I was spending my nights pouring all of that into the pages of Midnight Mass, which existed alternately as a novel, a screenplay, and then a series during those years.

Working on Doctor Sleep is what brought it all to the surface for me. Stephen King's novel deals thoroughly with the theme of recovery (The Shining is about destruction of addiction, and Doctor Sleep is about the journey and reality of recovery), and a lot of people in my cast were sober. It was while we were shooting that film that I realized I needed to make a seismic change in my life.

My wife will say that reading the scene in Doctor Sleep where Dan sits at the Gold Room bar in the Overlook was when she knew I was reaching a critical moment. That scene isn't in King's book, and my first draft of that conversation between Dan and Jack was almost fifteen pages long. It's basically a prolonged argument between the addictive and sober voices in my mind, and writing that scene shook something loose in me. I stopped drinking just a few days before we filmed that scene for that movie, and I haven't had a drop since.

But for catharsis, Midnight Mass truly is the most personal piece of work I've ever made. Riley is a very thinly disguised avatar of myself. I look at that series and I see several distinct versions of myself in conversation with each other over more than a decade. I'm glad it took so long to get that show made, because if I'd made it in 2016 like I wanted to, I wouldn't have done a good job - there is no way I could have told that story until I was finally sober. If you listen closely to the AA meeting scenes between Riley and Father Paul throughout the series, you're basically looking directly into my conflicted brain over many, many years.

This year is my fifth year sober, and I spend my days happy, busy, and so grateful that I was able to make those changes before my drinking destroyed my career, my marriage, and my life. I was lucky. I am lucky. But since I finished Midnight Mass, I haven't felt that pull when I'm writing. I haven't felt those themes elbowing their way into my work. That part of me is still in here (it always will be), but I feel like I was somehow able, over many years, to coax it to sleep. I'm sure I'll return to those themes over the years, as I hope to learn more about myself and have more to say... but for now, those voices are peaceful and quiet. I have projects on the horizon that will touch on some of those things (if I'm able to make The Dark Tower, there's some wonderful elements with Eddie's addiction issues that I look forward to exploring) but it feels different.

One of the things I hold onto when I look back at that time is the hope that the work can be helpful to someone else who may struggle in a similar way. And talking to fans, I've heard here and there that it has, and that means the world to me. I think storytellers can't help but use their stories as a mirror, it's one of the ways we take ourselves apart, look at the pieces, and put them back. It's one of the only ways we can see ourselves clearly.

Sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it. It's only looking back that we can see ourselves, and our work, with any real clarity.

[rentsturner]

If you’ve a lesson to teach me… - AT

professor!alex turner x fem!reader

Warnings: established student/teacher relationship, smut, spanking (with a riding crop), oral (male receiving), tiny bit of face fucking, bdsm undertones, unprotected piv sex, sir kink, alex has tattoos, aftercare, teensy bit of angst but lots of fluff, cuddling.

A/n: this is from a request where reader gets a bad grade and Alex ‘punishes’ her. It’s very smutty, but there’s fluff at the end I promise. Thank you as always to my bestie @martinipoliz who wrote like 25% of this fic and is always putting up with me and my moods, couldn’t do it without her. As always, if you don’t like it, don’t read it :)

Today is the day.

The day that you’ve been dreading all week and wishing it wouldn’t come, but it still has.

Last month, Alex gave your class a task which was due last week, and you had barely submitted it on time. Three minutes before the deadline, you were just so relieved that you finished the essay, but not without receiving a disapproving look from Alex as he took the paper from your hands.

To say that you’re nervous about your grade would be an understatement.

You’re fucking terrified.

It was unlike anything Alex had ever given before, and you’re not going to deny that you did struggle a bit coming to terms with some of the subject matter, so that it took you way too long to finally understand it, and even longer to come up with sentences that didn’t sound like absolute dogshit.

You had even tried asking Alex to maybe help you in some parts but then immediately backtracked when he gave you a stern stare that meant you can do this yourself, and so you accepted your fate and gave everything you could and hoped for a miracle.

And who are you kidding? That miracle did not happen.

Because the essay lands on your desk, a large red B- staring up at you, and suddenly getting swallowed by the ground doesn’t sound too bad at the moment.

For you, a B- isn't necessarily bad, but it’s not as good as you usually do. And you know for certain that Alex is not happy with it, by the way he sighs as he hands you the paper and looks down at you pointedly. He taps the ‘B-’ with one long finger.

“Not quite up to your usual standard, sweetheart.” he mutters, quiet enough just for you to hear, and your ears turn red in embarrassment.

And then he’s off, hurriedly handing out the rest of the papers and giving praise to other students, and your heart sinks. To top it all off, you hear him saying “good job, darling,” to the girl sitting at the front while you got nothing. Not even a mere good job too.

You rifle through the pages of your essay, reading Alex’s comments written in red pen. Most of them are constructive criticism, things that you can improve on quite easily, except for the note at the bottom of the page: ‘SEE ME AFTER CLASS’.

You sit through the rest of the class nervously, hands fidgeting, struggling to keep still. Alex notices your restlessness and sends you a stern look from the front of the class. Your stomach twists and clenches just thinking about what he might have planned for you, it’s making you hot and bothered just thinking about it, as well as incredibly nervous.

Alex has talked about punishment before, it’s come up a few times in the relationship that you’ve been having for the past four months. He’s rather very good at communicating and negotiating stuff with you, telling you to be open to him without feeling any shame, and you did.

You told him about the things you wanted to try out and he listened, nodded, indulged your fantasies without making you feel judged or walking on eggshells. Your confession ranged from giving him full authority over you during sex, to negotiating what kind of punishments you’d be comfortable with when you misbehaved. It seems that conversation will be coming in useful now.

Finally, Alex wraps up the class and dismisses the other students. You slowly pack up your notes and pens, waiting patiently for everyone else to filter out the class before making your way to Alex’s desk.

He’s piling up his papers, the sleeves of his white dress shirt neatly rolled up to the elbows.

When your shadow crosses over his desk, he looks up at you. His eyes are soft, but you can tell he’s disappointed.

“I know it was a hard paper, but I did expect better from you, darling.”

“I tried, Al, I promise, I just -”

“Maybe you need a reminder of how hard you should be working. You don’t get to coast in this class just because you’re fucking me. Handing it in with 3 minutes to go wasn’t acceptable either.” He raises his eyebrow at you before going back to stacking his papers.

You stay quiet, guilt and embarrassment rolling in your stomach. He’s right. You’re usually better than this, maybe you have taken your foot off the pedal the last few weeks. It wasn’t like you to hand in papers late, or struggle to write about a subject that you love. But you had been tired recently, it was getting to that time of year where everyone starts to burn out, you included.

Alex seems to notice your silence. He stops messing with his papers and places one hand on your shoulder, brushing his thumb gently along your skin.

“Look, I am a little disappointed in you, darling, and I admit that I expected better. But don’t mistake my disappointment as me being mad, because it’s different. If I was mad at you, I would’ve already bent you over this desk.” He chuckles at that, and you manage to crack a smile too, a jolt of electricity running through you from the thoughts that that comment incites.

“But, this is just me reminding you that just because I’m your boyfriend, that doesn’t make me any less of your teacher.” Alex squeezes your shoulder and you nod at him, understanding what he’s saying. Because he’s right, Alex is still your teacher, and you want to impress him with your work, not coast through his class.

Alex continues marking papers for a bit while you do some revision, taking your usual spot at the end of his desk. He notices you yawning and losing focus after a while, so he offers to order you an Uber back to his flat. You’re practically living at Alex’s place at the moment, half of your clothes and toiletries are there, and it’s a lot easier to go to and from school from his.

Alex walks you to the pick up point, one hand planted protectively on the small of your back - he’s planning to stay on campus for a little longer to finish marking, as he wants you all to himself when he gets home later.

When the Uber arrives, he grabs the door for you, ushering you into the car while he whispers, “I expect you to be naked and kneeling by the bed when I get back. If not, then you’d find yourself in more trouble than you already are.”

You shiver a little at his words, suspecting there would be some element of punishment involved tonight, but now that Alex has confirmed it, you’re incredibly excited. This is something you’ve wanted for a while, and obviously you didn’t want to do badly on your paper, but maybe something good can come out of it…

When you arrive at Alex’s flat, you manage to have a quick nap in an attempt to calm your nerves.

An hour later, you’re kneeling on the floor, ready and waiting. Your skin is coming out in goosebumps, partly from the cool air on your bare skin, partly from the anticipation of Alex arriving home. You rub your thighs together, trying to create some friction to ease the ache in your cunt. The sound of the door opening and then slamming shut startles you a little, your stomach dropping in excitement as you realise Alex is finally back. You hear him drop his bags in the hallway, then his long strides echo through the house as he makes his way up to the bedroom. The suspense is killing you now, you're practically shaking as you wait in your kneeling position for him. You just hope he’s impressed.

The door swings open and Alex enters, a smirk growing as he takes you in, naked and kneeling for him. You swear you see his pupils dilate, his hands clenched into fists at his side.

“What a sight to see, really,” he comments, leaning down fully and pressing both of his hands on his knees to meet your eyes. “If only I get to see this every day I come home. Would you mind it, darling? Would you mind if I ask you to be in this exact position every day, naked and vulnerable, waiting for your Sir like a good girl?”

You shake your head, then open your mouth to speak. “I wouldn’t, sir.”

“Good. Because it’d be such a shame if you do,” Alex flashes you a smile, leaning forward to peck your lips. “But let’s not forget why you’re currently here in that position now, yeah? Can you tell me? Tell me the reason why I’m punishing you, wanna hear you say it.”

“I –” your lips quiver, gulping down hard. “Because I got a B- on my paper, sir.”

“That’s right,” he nods, now standing up straight and fixing his posture. “And what am I gonna do to you exactly?”

“Straighten me out?”

Alex laughs softly at your reply, bringing one of his hands up to pet your hair gently. It’s a small gesture yet still manages to make your stomach erupt with butterflies. “Not the words I would use, but sure, darling – I’ll straighten you out.”

Alex quickly discards his suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves, exposing his arms. You feel yourself gush just looking at them, the veins snaking across his pale skin, marred only by the intricate tattoos extending from his wrists up into the sleeves of his shirt. You think about how the patterns curl around his shoulders, spreading into wings across his back, how you trace them so gently when he’s sleeping, admiring the beauty of him.

Alex interrupts your thoughts, opening his wardrobe and rummaging around in there for a bit. You squirm with anticipation, having no idea what your boyfriend might have planned for you, only knowing that it’s going to be intense.

Alex turns round to face you, a menacing grin plastered across his face, and your eyes are immediately drawn to the object in his hands – a long, slim riding crop, the end a double fold of stiff leather. Your eyes widen, your heart racing as you watch Alex tap the end against his hand.

“What do you think of this, baby? Think you can take it?”

You nod again, but Alex needs more this time”

“Need your words for this, love. What’s your colour?”

“G–Green, sir, so green, please.”

Alex smirks. He takes a few strides so he’s standing over you, stroking your hair gently, and you can’t help but nuzzle into his palm.

“On the bed, baby. You know what to do.”

He points the crop to the king sized bed behind you, following you as you stretch your stiff legs and make your way over. You sink slowly onto the soft mattress, knowing exactly what position Alex wants you in – ass up, face down. You stretch your arms out in front of you to support your head and try to relax your thighs, presenting your bare cunt and ass to Alex. You can hear his breathing quicken as he takes you in – he’s just as excited as you are.

“I want you to count these out for me, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

You feel the bed dip behind you as Alex takes his position, then hear the swoop of the riding crop through the air, then a burning sensation on your left ass cheek. God it hurts, but it feels so good at the same time, sending a jolt right to your cunt as you cry out.

“One, sir.”

He lands another one on your other cheek, you whimper as the burn spreads across your skin, and manage to whisper out a ‘Two, s- -sir.”

“Colour?”

“Green, please keep going Al – Sir, more please.”

Seems like Alex doesn’t like the way you accidentally addressed him by his name, and so two more quick swats land on your cheeks in quick succession. You bite into the pillow, feeling the tears welling up as you muffle your scream. It fucking burns. You’ve always been so used to his hands spanking you but never leather.

“Forgotten how to count already, princess?”

“No – no, Sir, just –” you sniffle, swallowing down the sob threatening to spill. “Three a–and four.”

“What’s that? Let me hear you –” he pauses, you try to look back in confusion, but before you can see what he’s up to, he’s already bringing the riding crop for another lash on your ass – much harder than the last four. “– say it fucking louder!”

“Five!” You scream, burying your face into the mattress and pulling your lower torso away from the sheer pain, but Alex places his hand on your waist to pull you back closer. “F–Five, Sir, that’s – that’s five, please, it hurts –”

“Does it?” Alex mocks. “You know deep down in yourself that you deserve it, so count properly unless you want me to bring the number up.”

You can’t bring yourself up to speak since you’re already shuddering from your sobs, your skin burning in pain, just adding to the overwhelming pleasure coursing through you. It was so much, all at once.

You took 5 more strokes from Alex, forcing out the number and a thank you each time, until the 10th blow had you collapsing onto the bed, shuddering and crying.

“Alright, I think that’s enough, yeah, baby?”

Alex places one hand on the small of your back, rubbing up and down your skin in an effort to calm your shaking form.

“You did so well, baby, I’m proud of you.”

Alex’s voice is softer now, and you suspect you’ve got past the worst of the punishment. His words fill you with warmth, and you nod and hiccup into the duvet, reaching one hand back to grab at Alex’s. He intertwines your fingers, letting you find comfort in him for a few moments.

“Good girl. But we aren’t done yet. Need you to make me feel good.”

You roll over, wincing as your raw ass rubs a little on the sheets. You aren’t going to be able to sit down for a few days, that’s for sure.

Alex shuffles to the end of bed and sits back on his heels, beckoning for you to come over, a growing bulge glaring obvious in his navy pants.

You crawl over to Alex, swaying your hips seductively as you move, knowing it will just turn him on even more.

You unbuckle his belt and pull down his fly, your hands shaking a little in your eagerness to please Alex. You’re practically drooling at the thought of his thick cock in your mouth. His fingers card through your hair, gathering it into a ponytail in one hand. He pulls your head back a little from his grip on your hair, until you’re looking up at him. His eyes are dark, pupils blown from anticipation, his chest heaving up and down under his shirt. God, you wish you could just rip the white fabric off him, run your hands over his shoulders and chest, feel the solid muscle under his smooth, pale skin.

“Slow down, baby, we’ve got all night, yeah?”

You nod your head, taking a few deep breaths before tugging on Alex’s boxers. He helps you pull them down, his cock slipping out, already thick and hard, a dribble of pre-cum leaking from the swollen tip. You wrap one hand around his length, feeling his velvety skin under your fingertips. Alex’s deep groan fills the room as you drop your head to lick slowly along the underside of his cock. His grip tightens on your hair as you suckle gently on the tip, tasting the saltiness of his precum when you flick your tongue over his head. He sucks in a harsh breath, pulling on your hair.

“Don’t tease me now, darling, you’ll just make it worse for yourself.”

You smirk, giving him your best doe eyes, before ducking your head down to try and take him fully into your mouth, feeling his tip hitting the back of your throat and trying to swallow down a gag. You wrap your hand around his base, pumping what you can’t fit in your mouth. You continue looking up at Alex, his face blurring as a film of tears cloud over your eyes.

Alex groans, the deep sound going straight to your cunt and you try to rub your thighs together for a bit of friction, but Alex is quick to put a stop to that.

“Uh uh, darling, none of that. You can have your pleasure when I’m done, alright?”

You just whine around his cock, bobbing your head and taking as much of him as you can. There’s drool dripping down your chin and tears slowly spilling from your eyes. Even after numerous tries, you don’t think there will be a day in your life where you can fully take his whole nine inches down your throat without choking yourself to death – but whatever, that’s one good way to die.

“Fuck – so good baby, so good to me.” Alex pants, hand fisting your hair roughly as his hips buck against your mouth. You choke a little at the action and your own hands go to grip his thighs for support, a trail of spit dripping down your chin and onto the floor as the fat head of his cock hits the back of your throat again. “Yeah, darling, fucking choke on it – take it all, fucking take it all like the good girl you are –”

You moan at his words, feeling his cock throb in your mouth, so hot and heavy on your tongue. He’s close, you can tell, so you hollow your cheeks and suckle fervently on his length, getting Alex to his climax the only thing on your mind. Alex growls and you feel a tug on your hair as he pulls you off his cock, and you peer up at him, confused. A string of saliva still connects your lips to his cock and you can see it twitching in front of your face.

“Want to come in your cunt, darling.” Alex declares in between pants.

You nod your head eagerly. “Please, sir, want your cock, please.”

Alex nods, pushing you back until you’re lying back on the soft pillows. He grabs your wrists and puts them above your head. “These stay here, okay?”

You nod again, although you're desperate to touch Alex, you know it's better to do what he says. The cuddling can come later.

Alex drapes himself over your body, the fabric of his trousers brushing against your skin as he nudges your thighs apart, his hand dropping down to spread your folds.

“Fuck, baby, so wet for me, you just fucking love getting punished, don’t you?” One long finger flicks over your clit, spreading your slick over your hot skin. He’s right, you're soaked, a result of the spanking and having his cock in your mouth, so ready for him to have his way with you. And so is he, you can feel his hard cock pressing against your leg, still sticky from a mix of your saliva and Alex’s precum. You moan as Alex’s two fingers press roughly into your cunt, scissoring and pressing against your walls, trying to find that special spot inside you.

“You’re lucky I’m giving you some prep, baby, bad girls don’t get stretched out before they take my cock. But you’ve done well for me so far, so I’m gonna be generous.” Alex pants into your ear, his hot breath causing goosebumps to spread across your skin.

He pulls his fingers out, bringing them up to his mouth and sucking on them. Your eyes widen as his face contorts in bliss, licking all of your juices off of his digits. His eyelashes flutter as he looks down at you, his eyes are dark, lust completely overtaking any semblance of reason.

“Gonna fuck you now, darling.”

You both groan in unison as Alex nudges his cock against your clit, grabbing himself at the base to push slowly inside of you. Despite how wet you are, and the few moments Alex spent stretching you out, there’s still a sharp burn as your walls try to accommodate his girth. He’s hot and heavy, throbbing inside of you, and you swear you can feel every ridge and vein as he slowly bottoms out.

Your whole body is trembling, your eyes rolling back into your head, the feeling of Alex so deep inside you almost enough to send you over the edge right there and then. You clench your fists, trying to keep your hands in the position you left them in, fighting the urge to rip Alex’s shirt off and scratch your nails down his back.

“Look at me, baby, look at me while I’m fucking you.” Alex practically growls, grabbing your chin in his hand and turning your face to him.

“Please move, Al- Sorry, Sir, please move.” The feeling of being full is so overwhelming, you need him to move or you might just combust.

Alex just smirks. “I really don’t think you're in any position to be making demands right now, darling. Remember why you’re here, yeah?”

You just whine and nod your head submissively, trying to keep your gaze on his. He lets you suffer for a few moments before finally moving his hips. He pulls out until just his tip is left snug in your hole, then slams his hip back forwards. You scream as his cock drags along your walls, his pelvis rubbing against your clit and his balls slapping against your still raw ass. Within seconds, the fire in your belly is reignited and you can feel yourself approaching your orgasm. You feel like you've been on the edge the whole night, and now, finally, you might get your release.

Alex pounds into you, his face buried in the crook of your neck, his gasps and moans coming in time with his thrusts. You can feel the sweat dripping down his brow onto your chest, the fabric of his shirt rubbing roughly against your nipples. You’re desperate to touch him, to run your hands over his shoulder, his neck, his hair, and you can’t hold it back anymore.

“Please, sir, p–please can I touch you? Please, I need to.”

Alex lifts his head from your neck, one sweaty lock of hair falling over his forehead as he looks down at you. “Oh really? You think you’ve been good enough to touch me?”

“Y–Yes, please, I’ve been a good girl, I have.”

Alex shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Good girls don’t get bad grades, do they?”

You’re truly on the edge now, can feel your orgasm approaching like a runaway train, and you squeeze your eyes shut to try to fend it off, not wanting to come without your arms around Alex.

“You close, baby? Gonna come for me?”

You shake your head desperately. “Please, sir, need to touch you, please.”

“You wanna touch me?” Alex smirks, breathing hard as he drives his cock even deeper, loving the way your walls clench around his length everytime he hits that special spot that never fails to make you fucking shake. “If you wanna touch me, you better cum around my cock and maybe I’ll think about it.”

Now that’s something that’s not very difficult to do. With a sniffle and a loud whimper, you crack open your teary eyes and look at him. He’s watching you very carefully. One of the few things you’ve noticed at the start of your relationship is that he never takes his eyes off of you when you’re cumming – whether it’s around his cock or his fingers or even his mouth, his eyes will always find their way to look at your face as you crumble down from both his generosity and cruelty.

Your vision tunnels to just Alex’s face, his dark eyes, long lashes, pale skin, the little scar under his brow, and you come. The emotions of the past few hours finally catch up with you and you shake and shudder under Alex, clenching and milking him for all he’s worth. He groans and his hips stutter as he reaches his climax as well, a warmth filling you as he empties himself deep inside of you. You sob and bury your face in Alex’s neck, which is damp from sweat. His chain presses against your cheek, cold against your burning skin.

“Fuck, baby, such a good girl, so good for me. Come here, love.”

And finally you move your stiff arms to wrap yourself around Alex, curling your legs around his waist, his softening cock still inside of you. You tug at his shirt, whining into his neck and Alex immediately knows what you want, pulling back for a moment to peel the shirt off his shoulders, flinging it to the other side of the room. His pants are also discarded within moments, until he’s left just as naked as you are. His chest is sweaty and if you aren’t so tired from getting dicked down within an inch of your life, you would’ve taken your time admiring it and maybe leaving a very funny comment that would surely make him laugh.

But unfortunately you don’t have the energy to do all that, you’re sure Alex will understand.

“Tired?” He croons, pressing his hand on your cheek, loving the way it’s burning and still a bit wet from your tears. “You wanna shower, baby? Need your answer here, don’t leave me hanging.”

“No,” you whine, pawing at his shoulder and pulling him closer, purposefully draping his whole body on top of you and putting his head in the crook of your neck. “Stay here.”

You hear him chuckling, his hot breath tickling your neck as his hands then move underneath your back and wrap you up with his body like a big weighted blanket. “You wanna stay like this? All night? You sure I'm not gonna crush you or something?”

“No, you’re warm.”

Based on your short responses and clingy attitude, Alex comes to the conclusion that you’re in one of those moods again. You often get clingy and a bit out of it after a good orgasm, but not entirely in subspace. He would’ve known the tone of your voice if you were, but right now he thinks you’re just a bit floaty, and you think you are too.

“Is there anything you want to do after, baby? Take a bath? Sleep? Order a takeout?”

You don’t know. You’re still very much intoxicated by his scent especially since he’s closer to you than he has been all day. Alex’s aftershave mixed with his sweat is practically making you mewl like a kitten, and you have to stop every urge not to rub your cheeks against him like one.

“How about just lie here for a bit, then take a bath, then order a takeout, then sleep?” You suggest, voice hoarse and raw from getting throatfucked earlier. Wonderful. “And I wanna…” You trail off, a hand snaking up to play with his hair.

“Wanna what?” Even though you don’t see Alex’s face, you can practically visualise in your head that he’s currently holding up his confused expression. Raised eyebrow and all. “You wanna go for another round or something?”

“No!” You giggle, slapping him slightly on the shoulder, which earns a quick nip on your neck and a chuckle from Alex. “Well, not that it’s a problem. But that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what?”

“Wanna apologise.” There it goes. Your voice sounds a bit teary and sad, no doubt Alex picks up on that. “I didn’t… mean to have that kind of grade, you know that. It’s just everything has been stressing me out lately and I haven’t really figured out how to fix it yet. I guess overthinking about making it all better kept me from putting all my focus on that paper. I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time, I promise.”

Alex doesn’t answer for a bit and you think that maybe he’s thinking if your excuse is good enough, but luckily that’s not the case when you feel his lips pressing soft kisses on your neck and up behind your ear. You flinch a little from being ticklish, a giggle spilling out of your mouth.

“I know you will,” Alex finally says, pulling his head back and looking at your face. “I know you’ll do better, sweetheart. You always do. And I love you for that. You know that if there’s something bothering you, you can always just ask me for help, right? I’m not a mind reader, darling, that’s why we need to communicate. I’m not always with you when we’re in school so I have no idea what problems you might be facing, but if there’s something I can do to help, then please tell me. Okay?”

He’s right. He always is.

“Okay. I understand. I love you too,” you give him a smile, now feeling a little shy under his stare as he brushes your hair out of your face. “I’ll tell you about my problems next time. Would you still help me if it was about your subject, though?”

Alex laughs cheekily at your question, leaning down to kiss your nose. “I’ll think about it. Still depends if you’d be willing to give me something in return.”

“Oh yeah?” You quirk an eyebrow, a playful grin making its way on your face. “And what’s that?”

“What do we say about roleplay –”

You push his shoulders before he can even finish his question, barking out a laugh when Alex only scoops his arms underneath your back again and pulling you closer to him.

“Absolutely not!”

[jalenay]

Nothing's Wrong with Dale - Publishing Update May 4 2024

So my work work is starting to relax - it'll be 'normal' working hours after May 15, but i'm manifesting some early additional free time (by ignoring some of the things i still have left to do) and i thought i'd give an update on my current NWWD plan to fill you guys in (if anyone wants to know) and to motivate myself to, you know, do it.

let me know what you think and if you have any questions! or if there's anything else you want to know!

So the overall plan is as follows:

First Rough Edit - this is basically just changing the POV from 2nd POV to 3rd POV. This is very tedious and currently what I'm doing right now. I'm also making a list as I go for high level updates/changes i want to make. Just thinking about the story as a whole and what tweaks i want to make now that the whole thing is finally done (primarily moving exposition around, if there's anything extra i can remove, timing of when certain things are discussed, and so on).

My Main Edit - this will be more time consuming but probably more fun as i do my main revise and edit of the story as a whole. i'll likely print the entire story out, make edits on hard copy, and then type up all the edits. I will also probably be sending the updated chapters to my main beta, for her opinion. (this would be the person i first texted about Dale in Dec 2021, she deserves first look lol)

Editor - After I'm happy with what I've done, i'll send the entire thing over to my editors, the main ones who worked on DSM. This will likely take a good amount of time (DSM took one month) but in many ways involves less effort from me lol. Just nerves.

Cover, Self-publishing Details - while my editors have the manuscript, I'll be narrowing down what I want the cover to look like and hiring a cover artist. (i've got a short list of artists right now, but i'll probably continue to refine that). I'm bad a visualizing covers and so this will be hard for me, although i have some basic ideas. i'll need to gather reference photos too and then work with the artist. I also want to publish more widely than just Amazon and will hopefully get DSM out to other places as well as a test run before NWWD. Look into more marketing? This is the most miscellaneous of the steps.

Process Edits - actually go through all the edits and notes given to me by my editor. This takes a lot of time (and is mentally taxing - no one likes to read pages of people telling you what you need to fix about what you wrote even if its overall extremely helpful and necessary)

Finalizing - I'll send the edited version to my first beta and another ARC reader/friend. I'll work on the formatting for the book. Coordinating where it will be published and when.

Publishing!

This is a loose list of steps that I mostly defined right now, but are similar to what i did with DSM. As i said, I'm in step one, currently just finished Chapter 25 of 36 of that rough edit.

I'll try to provide some updates on the process at it moves along, if people are interested in hearing about that. I'll most likely keep those updates on this blog, along with any other publishing specific commentary. if any one has any questions or thoughts on the whole thing, please feel free to send them to this blog or comment on this post.

I'm very excited to really dig into publishing NWWD and looking forward to sharing it with you!

Thanks to everyone for all their support - I wouldn't even be considering this (i probably wouldn't have even had a finished draft) with you!

[sadboytournament]

ROUND TWO

Propaganda

Read more added due to the length

Anthony Lockwood: (via @its-your-mind)

Simon Petrikov: (via @transgendersimonpetrikov) "...

Simon. Simon is not initially introduced as Simon, rather is introduced as Ice King, an insane and Really out of it "villain". Throughout almost all of the first 3 seasons, you ONLY see him being weird and getting beat up a lot but under all of it is incredibly sad for reasons he can't distinguish aside from crushing loneliness. Until the Christmas special, they pull a COMPLETE 180 on ice kings character and reveal his backstory - and just to shine some light on this, up until this point in the show, Finn is the only CONFIRMED human in the show. All others are assumed to be extinct. Simon's/Ice King's backstory reveals a few things to the main characters and the audience that makes the characters see him in a new, sympathetic light - he was a human antiquarian with a fiancee (named betty) who just so happened to put a cursed crown on his head as a joke to amuse betty. And then boom! He's cursed. Unlike some other, admittedly limited amount of characters, however, after putting on the crown, he does not immediately go insane. It happens over the course of a few years (which in itself implies he has insane amounts of willpower, even still coming through with Ice King given that the crown tells its users to freeze the whole world with themself inside) .

So, he's cursed, and betty supposedly left him, as that's to what he's known. He assumed he scared her and she ran away and doesn't love him anymore, and spends years grieving over that. But in the few years after putting on the crown and before fully losing his mind, he has to take care of a girl after a goddamn war (where the climax is a detonated mutagenic bomb that makes radioactive zombies and shit) that he found crying in the middle of the street. So, if his mental state was already declining BEFORE, it sure as hell is now because he has to wear the cursed crown more and more to protect himself and this girl and the effects of it clearly show every time he puts it on in flashbacks with himself in Clear distress over the effects of it . So after a while he is scared for himself, and, to quote him, "I fear my thoughts are no longer my own". So then he begrudgingly leaves the girl he cared for over the course of several years before he goes fully mad and loses himself. So then aside from some mentioned stuff that happens before his insanity fully sets in (like being hypnotized which surely did not help his already deteriorating mind) and then for a thousand years he's just pretty much Gone.

In season 4 episode 25, "I remember you", he goes to marceline (the girl he cared for, though he doesn't remember that) and asks her to help him write a song to draw in the ladies. I won't go through the whole episode, but the song they end up making is not anything like that - he took over notes and pages from a scrapbook and Marceline found some he wrote before he fully went mad while desperately trying to get him to remember who he was, and they turned the notes into a song. There is a lot of crying from marceline, meanwhile Ice King has zero fucking clue what's going on there and just thinks they're having fun. The entire episode is up on YouTube, and I would recommend watching just to get the idea.

Near the end of season 5, he gets a brief moment of lucidity and return to his former self, and he makes a time portal to say sorry and goodbye to betty, and she jumps through only to discover that without the crown Simon is dying. He says later in the episode that he'd rather Die than go back to being Ice king. She wants to find a way to help him so she gets him turned back into ice king so she can find a way to cure him, with her going insane by gaining magic in the process (by proxy of mms, which is a whole thing itself).

Series finale rolls around, he's finally back, but in a chaos deitys "stomach", which reverted him and betty back to their sane, non magic selves. Their moment is short lived by the "stomach" closing in on them, about to crush them to death. They've seemingly accepted their fates, and embrace before their impending deaths, but they're given a way out, betty staying behind despite his pleas and using the original wish state of the crown to wish Simon safe and thereby fusing with the chaos deity and leaving. The next scene is Simon breaking down and crying where she previously was.

So, 12 years pass between the finale and the spin off, and he's just absolutely tired with everything. Hes a 20th century man frozen in time and thrown into into new world after living 1000 years insane and sad without the love of his life with him and he has to deal with that. He is constantly barraged with people talking about a story he wrote when he was insane, saying that it was great, wishing he'd write more, etc etc. Even saying he was cooler when he was insane. Still grieving betty, he tries to Actually Perform A Ritual That Could Destroy The World just to see her again. It goes wrong and the 2 main characters from the story he wrote while insane pop out of his head. After a bit, he finds out that they're not fiction and instead a universe planted in his head . Their magic was stripped from their world when he was reverted back to himself and since he's wallowing in so much misery he decides to find a way to go Back to being insane and commit the equivalent of suicide and perform ego death once again for people he just met because he felt his life was worth so little that serving any purpose even if detrimental to himself would give himself a meaning to live. Just as he's about to finish this, he finally gets to talk to now-chaos-deity betty, and she gets it in his head that his life is worth living and then sends him off to live his life after an emotional scene of them finally ready to let go of their losses..."

[doy-doy]

ASK "Error and the kitten" (Part 1)

I'M NOT AN AUTHOR!!! I'M JUST A TRANSLATOR!!!

Part 1 (you here) | Next | Final

Author's VK: https://vk.com/club147908813

Comic's albom: https://vk.com/album-147908813_249835073

I'm not a professional translator, so the translation really won't be very good, but... yeah, at least it's something

ЬЬЬХ?!? WHY THERE IS 10 IMAGES LIMIT IN TUMBLR?!? Like, I prepared 25 pages (to be fair, there wasn't that much work to do, given the style of text in the comic, but!) for the first part, but then there is THAT thing :/ Like, there was a perfect place to end a first part and... aghhhh. Considering that, next 10 pages will come out in two days and also I will try to clean another five to release another ten pages after next 2 days. And also I will try to prepare more pages in these 4 days to release in school time.

But let's not be sad! :D It's a comic from which the cat from that legendary Halloween meme came from] I think some might have recognized the art style. I wanted to release a page with the cat's name in the first part, but the restrictions of tumblr do not allow, as I said above. At first, the comic may seem boring, but then, I think, it will develop and become more interesting ^ -^

Also, as you can see by looking at the date in the right upper corner, this ask is pretty old :D So prepare for Errorink, fannon Error's character and a lot more. But this comic still remains a huge contribution to the russian part of community ^ -^

Also, removing the text and applying its English version was really relaxing, because the text in the comic is written very simply, as you can see, and I tried to stick to the original style :^

Well...  translation of this one certainly will be long, depending on the size of the original comic. I will try to release parts often, but I don't think I'll really succeed, considering the beginning of school

Also the first page was originally in english, so that isn't a translation. The question for the second picture was: "What would Error say if he was asked "Do you play with your cat"?

...

...

Why did I wrote that much -. _-.

And please, tell me if there are any mistakes in the translation it will be intresting to know :D

[the-painted-siren]

Anything At All

Summary: Lloyd is an adult who’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself—or so he wants Zane to believe. Good thing Zane doesn’t believe. Notes: A little thing I wrote for Round 1 of Who Wrote That in the Ninjago fic server I’m part of. Decided to polish it off and post it bc I had a good time writing it.

“You’re upset.”

It’s a statement, not a question. 

Lloyd glances up, his expression one that Zane knows all too well: brows creased, face pinched, eyes gleaming with a sheen of exhaustion. Lloyd leans back in his chair, an irritated grumble rumbling in his throat. 

“I am not.” Lloyd throws his pencil onto the stack of scrolls before him. The names of each of his students lay across the pages, accompanied by notes, diagrams, and schedules. Eraser shavings and crumpled-up papers overflow on his desk. 

“It's normal to be upset,” Zane says. “You're stressed from a long day.” 

Lloyd waves him off, yawning. “I’ve seen worse days,” he mutters. “I can get through this one.” 

“Have you eaten today?” 

Lloyd combs his fingers through his hair, a heavy sigh rolling out of him as he sinks down into his chair. He doesn’t look at Zane for the longest time, but the corners of his mouth turn to a pout like a child that’s been caught stealing sweets before dinner. 

“No,” he finally admits. “But it’s fine. I’ll find something to snack on later.” 

“You should eat,” Zane comments. “I can make something—”

“That’s nice.” Lloyd rises to his feet, a scowl flitting across his features as he pushes Zane toward the door. “But I’m a grown-up. I can feed myself.” 

“But I—”

Lloyd gives Zane a proper shove out into the hallway. 

“I appreciate it, buddy, really, but you can’t help this time.” 

———

Zane doesn’t believe that. 

He plays many roles within the team—medic, builder, analyst. He was built to protect and repair. And while he can’t traditionally repair Lloyd’s struggles, he figures he may be able to lighten them. He can take some of the weight off of Lloyd’s shoulders. 

Because Lloyd works—he works and he trains and he fights. Mostly because he loves doing it. He loves protecting Ninjago with every ounce of his bleeding, golden heart, even if he never says it. 

Deep down, though, Zane suspects it’s also because Lloyd doesn’t know how to do anything else. 

Zane figures he’s approximately 25% responsible for that. Less, if he takes Nya and Master Wu into account. More, if he considers the many times he’s recklessly thrown himself into battle, almost died protecting those he cares about, and never opened those vulnerable parts of himself for others to repair. 

Terrible examples that Zane knows Lloyd has internalized. 

Though, FSM forbid he ever point that out—Lloyd would have a fit.  

That leaves Zane the only option of supporting Lloyd through less direct means, which he remembers how to do with his favorite pastime. 

Cooking tethers Zane to his sense of self. It goes beyond a set of calculations that his superhuman brain can produce in seconds. He considers it an art and one of the few things that call for his opinion and not cold, hard facts—it’s something he knows he can always use to comfort his family.  

For Lloyd, Zane brings out a recipe of deep nostalgia and laughter. 

A noodle soup with a rich, golden broth flavored by an assortment of spices, ginger, lime, and cilantro. Traditionally made with beef or chicken, Zane has since changed the recipe to favor shrimp instead, as Lloyd proved to have a taste for it as a child. 

A few hours later, Zane sweeps into Lloyd’s room and sets the piping hot bowl of soup down on his desk. Lloyd looks up and immediately scowls. 

“Zane, I told you to leave me alone,” Lloyd snaps. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” 

Zane doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he scans the contents of Lloyd’s desk.  

“You are working on customized training programs for your students?” Zane asks. 

“Yes.” 

“You teach them because you care about them?”

“ Yes, ” Lloyd hisses. 

“If teaching is your way of expressing love, then cooking is mine,” Zane asserts, “and you are not the only one who is allowed to express their love here.” 

Lloyd looks gobsmacked that Zane would dare speak to him that way. He opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water, spluttering for words that simply won’t come. Eventually, he scoffs, picks up a fork, and stabs at the food. 

Despite Lloyd’s agonizing display, Zane reckons that everything will turn out fine. He followed the recipe he wrote to the letter, the same as always. It’s never failed before; it shouldn’t now. 

Still, he finds himself watching with anticipation rushing to his head.

Lloyd shoves a forkful of noodles and shrimp into his mouth and chews—quickly first, then slowly, before he stops altogether. 

A shot of icy panic spears through Zane’s mind. Surely, he hadn’t made a mistake? Unless Lloyd had grown out of enjoying his food? Did Lloyd not like it—

A soft rumbling sound touches the air, familiar in every way. 

It takes Zane a moment to process what it is, but when he does, all of his doubt melts away. 

Purring. Lloyd is purring.

His pointed ears—from his supernatural heritage—flick once, ever so slightly. Then again, and again, until they flutter like the wings of a butterfly. Lloyd leans over the bowl, a content smile pulling at his lips as he swallows and dives for the next bite, slurping up noodles with reckless abandon. 

A cool sense of relief floods through Zane’s body at the sight. 

Ever since the Merge, Lloyd rarely seemed joyful. It was as though the years of loneliness had left him struggling to reconnect with even his closest friends and all the more desperate to assert his independence. Especially since his responsibilities had grown to include two—no, three, Zane recounts—kids and a busier monastery to maintain. 

To see Lloyd smile again soothed Zane more than words could explain. 

“Be sure to bring your bowl back to the kitchen once you’ve finished,” Zane says as he takes his leave. “I can serve up seconds for you too, if you wish.”

Lloyd suddenly spins around in his chair, eyes wide. 

“Uh, wait, Zane!”

Zane pauses in the doorway.

“Um… I know this might be a lot to ask…” Lloyd stumbles over his words, eyes darting away. “But… you know those spring rolls you make sometimes? The ones that have shrimp and pork and all that—” Lloyd makes a vague gesture with his hand. “ —green stuff you put in it. Could you…?”

“Of course,” Zane answers swiftly. “I’d be happy to make some for you.” 

Lloyd beams—soft and relaxed against the golden light of dusk pouring into the room. 

“Thanks, Zane,” Lloyd says. 

Zane merely smiles, happy to be of assistance. 

Anything at all to make his little brother smile again.

[intervalart]

I absolutely love your art of Sundown, he’s one of my favorites (next to Akira) 🙂 honestly he’s hilarious in the Dominion of Hate, he’ll literally fight Akira for no reason, he’s got this “tired single dad handling 6 kids” energy to him, and he even like…scolds Oersted? It sounded like? (His voice actor, Reagan Murdock, played Aki Hayakawa in this anime called Chainsaw Man, so i guess he has experience with voicing a guy who needs to wrangle teenagers 😅) do you happen to have any hcs for him?

I'M SO SORRY IT'S TAKING ME SO LONG TO GET TO THESE ASKS, i'm packing to move, so that's taking up most of my time and energy ;;;v;;;

BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH WAAAAAAA, I'm glad you like how I draw the schüt man <333 (who has somehow accidentally become The Muse, whoops lol)

Sadly there are currently no in-game dialogues showing how he interacts with the other party members (party banter like octopath is a common DLC request), but Mad Dog has a line about Sundown "being bad with the little ones", which is either Mad Dog's interpretation based on what he wants to see, or Sundown's stoicism and bluntness really does tend intimidate the kids. (I don't watch CSM so I will take your work for it... But I'm sure Mr. Murdock does a great job! He has a great voice for it...)

But from what we do know for sure (from his recruitment quest and his dialogue to Sin when out of the party of the final 4) is he is very tired, and wants nothing to do with you.

tbh that's part of the reason I'm fascinated with him, is in a whole party full of spunky/quirky anime youngsters who have Psychic powers, martial arts, laser canons, ninja powers, etc. (the oldest being Masaru who's usually hc'd at 25 years old for the meme).... there's just. A guy. Maybe late 30s/early 40s. With a gun.

People joke about Masaru being the Straight Man (which is true to some extent), but I feel like he handles the weirdness a bit better than Sundown does, just on account of his adaptable nature. If Mad Dog's reaction to O. Dio's true form was any indication, supernatural stuff is... Not normal for their time period. So I think Sundown is much more the Straight Man in the DoH just cuz he stands out so much from everyone else. (not that he isn't silly in his own way... he's based on Clint Eastwood ffs lol)

...and I wrote all of this text without even getting to my headcanons, so if that isn't any a warning for how much I can ramble about him at length, then let this cut should tell you. (you asked, sorry not sorry lol)

So warning in advance, there's gonna be a teeny bit of overlap with Mad Dog hcs on some of these because of how much the two intertwine with each other. They kinda come as a package deal.

Some of my hcs you've probably seen in this comic. Most notably; not just the survivor's guilt, but also in the panic of the raid on the town and the flurry of using the Hurricane Shot, he's not entirely sure if he only shot the invading bandits. :( He worried he might have gotten some townsfolk in there too. (Mostly illustrated on pages 5-6 when all the figures kinda blend together)

At the time I made the comic I thought it was just a theory that he'd placed the bounty on himself, I somehow missed the fact that it was canon. But the fact that it is canon definitely drives home both the survivor's guilt, and him fearing death despite having a death wish. (There's much easier ways to off yourself homie, you don't gotta have a bizarre death ritual with randos obsessed with fame and glory... </3)

On the earlier topic, he might not so much be bad with kids, as he is... blunt. He doesn't sugar coat stuff, and he's probably very hands-off. If he really was the respected sheriff of [Unnamed Town], he probably had some experience with kids in the past, but I suspect between the trauma and some degree of wanting to keep everyone else safe, he's cold and aloof on purpose. He was probably more sociable before The Incident. (Much like a certain blond knight)

But he does work well with others in the DoH and is brief but polite to everyone, even the younger characters. (I cry every time he says "thanks" or "sorry" when another party member heals him... TT0TT)

All that aside, some of the more domestic hcs:

• I think Sunny is very skilled at sewing!! Living out in the wilds and not having access to new clothes very often/if at all means he had to get good at repairing his own clothes. And between sleeping out under the stars and the bullet holes, he has plenty of practice... (MD called him girly for it once, and with a completely straight face, Sunny said "Why do you think being self-sufficient is inherently feminine...?". MD never mentioned it again.)

• The trade-off however is that he's... Not an amazing cook. Everything is either eaten raw or roasted over a fire, and he doesn't have a ton of access to spices and herbs in the wilds... Very utilitarian in his cooking methods.

• That ties into the next point; the dude's got a cast iron stomach. If the guy can canonically down an infinite number of glasses of milk (LONG after most adults develop lactose intolerance), the guy can eat pretty much anything. Including whatever rattlesnakes (and cactus) he found to eat.

• Sunny is probably a very skilled dancer! If for no other reason other than dodging bullets for years lmao. MD catches a glimpse once. Sunny looks him dead in the eyes and says "No one will ever believe you."

• I've already discussed this, but Sunny probably used to be left-handed, and either due to societal necessity or an injury, he became ambidextrous!

• Now that I'm thinking about it actually, I drew Young Sundown in the comic with much less facial hair to just make him look younger... But it actually makes sense that between the depression (and possibly self loathing), he kinda uses the facial hair as like... A mask? Like, so he doesn't have to see himself in a way? (I might be reading too much into it, the OG art does show he shapes his scruff and it's not completely unkempt, so maybe it started as Depression Scruff, and he just shaves it as best he can with a knife lol)

• I used to hc that he didn't name his horse because he didn't want to get attached. (He just calls it Horse) But after talking to another Really Cool Wild West Artist in the JP fandom, it's not impossible that he could have had the same horse the entire time... So that's not a hill I need to die on lol.

• For obvious reasons, he's a hard guy to get to laugh. If he does, it's usually wry and understated. But on the rare occasion he does genuinely laugh, he's more inclined to stifle it at first, more out of habit than anything else. It takes a lot to get him rolling in the aisles.

...But that's getting into BBFF territory, which is a whole 'nuther post, and definitely not something I have rambled about at length and stored on a hidden discord server.

AND that's not talking about my Mad Dog hcs......

-gripping you anon- Do you see why I am in hell.