#maybe that's controversial here but it Is my blog. so.
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Sorry but am I the only one that thought that episodeā¦sucked? Like it was straight up bad. Horrible pacing, no wrap up of all the random characters and plot lines theyāve thrown around all season (the tuskegee airmen, Westgates spying, literally all the guys beside like the main 4). (Seriously it makes me so mad that the three redtails got all of 5 seconds of screen time, almost no lines. Literally what was the point of introducing them other than to pretend the show was iNcLuSiVe) Even at the end of BoB and the Pacific you get a much better idea of what happened to all the remaining guys. In this theyāre like what happened to DeMarco or Hambone or Brady or (insert character here) we donāt know! ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ The concentration camp scene felt shoehorned in compared to how it was done in BoB. Unless that actually happened to Rosie (which i havenāt heard anything about) but it was just like.. ok? It all felt so rushed and emotionless to me. Maybe Iāve just fallen out of love with MoTA but itās been downhill for me since episode 6 or so.
i already made a little (read: long) post-finale write-up here, where i talk about the use of the tuskegee airmen, l'sandra, and overall editing/pacing issues i felt the show had. but i don't agree with the notion that adding the redtails was in any way insincere or trying to halfass being "iNcLuSiVe", i just think they suffer from this show's obvious time constraints. and to summarize what i wrote in my linked post, there's a limit to what white writers/directors/producers can do when creating a story about black people. there are some stories i'd feel uncomfortable with them telling on their own, truth be told. dee rees wasn't the sole nonwhite director, but she Was the only black one. i think she did her job well given the limitations and i appreciate that they let her direct those episodes, rather than leaving it up to a team of white people trying their best to tell a black story.
the worst i can say about the finale is that it didn't feel like That strong of finale, tho i wouldn't go as far to say it "sucked" or call it "straight up bad". i liked it plenty, it's just the weakest of the hbo war finales imo.
as for the concentration camp scene, artistic license was taken with both shows. unlike what's seen in the BoB, easy company wasn't the first to arrive at kaufering, and there's 0 mention of the all-japanese american 552nd who helped them liberate it). similarly, rosie rosenthal did assist in liberating those camps, though it would've been after the events shown this episode. idk if he saw one in that up-close way seen in this episode, but he could've (i should research this when i have time). plus, it would've felt weird Not having him acknowledge them at all. "shoe-horned" is an odd term to use here imo, as both scenes more-or-less center a jewish character (BoB's liebgott and MotA's rosie). the former show has survivors the characters can help, the latter shows no one left to help. the former has all of easy company there, the latter has rosie there all alone. rosie's scene felt deeply personal in that way. at the end of the day, both scenes are communicating different things. that doesn't make one better than the other when they aren't trying to be identical. (disclaimer, i'm not jewish, so i'd be interesting hearing from the perspective of someone who wrt whether or not they felt it was "shoe-horned")
i can understand if you've disliked the show post-episode 6 (and episode 6 was a very strong episode i'm ngl). eps 7 and 8 were weaker in many ways, even to me, so i get it. everyone's entitled to their own opinion (i'd be a hypocrite saying otherwise). just understand that this blog is run by someone who overall enjoys this show despite its flaws! basically, i encourage you to take this energy and make your own posts.
#masters of the air#hbo war#e9#asks#long post#masters of the air spoilers#mota spoilers#all the hbo war finales are different. i don't think MotA's is as strong but like#my fav hbo war show is still BoB and even Then i don't think it has a better finale than TP. and i dislike a lot of TP! like A Lot!#and Even Then we don't get a good idea about what happens to a lot of the minor-er characters in TP once they leave#anyone who isn't sledge or leckie (rip basilone) is hand-waved-'they went home'-away#not every show needs a sandlot ending w/ a voiceover going:#'[NAME] got really into the [INSERT DECADE] and no one ever saw him again' like they did to webster (rip webster)#and again! i'm mixed about the redtails. but i can Very Clearly See this show getting released without including them#which wouldve left many people (justifiably!) upset that they weren't shown when they were Literally there in the same pow camp#i'll give the hbo war team a lot of shit about a lot of things (despite the enduringly positive energy i try to keep up here)#but i Have to give MotA props for Trying. i don't see faux inclusion i just see it as not quite hitting the mark but an attempt was made#and i think that's worth Something given neither BoB or TP bothered trying#(like i think there was a missed opportunity in TP not mentioning what's happening to japanese americans on the home front)#this got away from me (i'm also opinionated) but while i can agree with you about how the show feels rushed#i do take issue with the idea that they were pretending to be inclusive. i'll blame money time and covid19 before i blame bad intention#maybe that's controversial here but it Is my blog. so.
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#i have to let it out of my chest because today was fucking rough on here#itās been for a few days actually because Iāve received much hate and I tried to ignore it as much as I could#between my blog being exposed by a huge other blog and getting dissed and then the controversy of my opinions on here#it was rough but I dealt with it. Today was different#i know I shouldnāt care about these thingsā¦ I know itās silly and all but#to read someone is ādisgustedā by my work and they wouldnāt read it because I should be āashamedā made me cry#i wont deny it lol I cried becauseā¦ idk why would you be so nasty and cowardly send hate#not everyone has to like my story#damn not everyone has to read it#like i completely understand an historical AU with philosophy and slow burn is not everyoneās cup of tea#but like to be so nasty and make up lies only because you dont like what I said? idk#maybe I cant understand this behaviour because i would never in my life for the love of me#do this to any other person. not even the ones that I donāt like#but anyway iāll be girl-reblogging any comfort content from Louis tonight#i know this wonāt make any difference but it would be nice. it would be nice
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i just. remembered again that i have a fembaru fic but also the premise is. Very Messed Up hah and also it was written before the canon genderbent au with its official genderbend names for everyone so its also outdated on top of that T^T i had like. Genderqueer subtext going on too. but i also wrote this fic like almost two years ago and havent touched it in forever so im unsure if i should go back to itā¦. o.o but i would love to finish it one day if only for my own satisfaction hahā¦ i had a very detailed outline for ch 2 (its a twoshot) and several scenes written already anyway!! (and also i would probably update those names, make minor edits, etc etc hmmā¦)
#just thinking about this wip againā¦ā¦ā¦ā¦ mmmmā¦.. not super confident in my older ao3 fics but the premise for this one was like. i think i#ended up brainstorming it with a friend or two and then i was like wait holy shit howd this play out. and then i took about two weeks to#write ch1? :o#and then i like. REALLY got into revolutionary girl utena after finishing ch1 so like that def bled into um. the themes.#just. thimkingā¦ā¦.. bc ive had so many ideas to explore like. themes regarding gender and misogyny and Choice and destiny and queerness and#all sorts of thingsā¦.. bc rezero Touches on them and is even Detailed on them sometimes and id Love to go in depth. but im also a bit#nervous to bc 1. writing fic isā¦.. so much work sometimes fr and i am but a lazy writer and 2. the slight anxiety of what if i get flamed#o.o wild to think aboutā¦..#like. i have ideas for emilia fics that are. definitely darker maybe a bit controversial but i will go off the walls with writing for the#sake of answering the questions of. can this be done. and is it possible to narratively critique canon and fandom treatment of emilia. that#sort of thing.#not that im the best writer ever akdbdnd but i do like darker fiction sometimes. and i also like being meta about things in fiction. and i#also like writing to get out a tiny bit of salt. etc etc.#i tried to write these kinds of thinngs with my atm sole emilia centric fic that i wrote. uhhh more than a year ago? and i would love to try#again one day bc ive def improved and changed as a writer since then. u know what i mean?? :o#just like. rezero and queerness is very interesting to me.#suffaru post#saving this on the blog bc i talked Too Much about my writing process here HAH#my writing process being: HOW FAR CAN I TAKE THIS IDEA AND HOW OFF THE WALLS CAN IT GET????#in reality tho im really just a massive nerd whos gone down a massive rabbit hole of writing anime fanfic. ššššššš#if you actually read all these tags big thank you HAH
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congrats to everyone that is still following me after I saw I had way too many followers to not have at least one antisemitic person following me, the fact that you don't think I murder children for fun is truly a comfort
#I wish this was /s but no genuinely#Had 22 followers. Every time I reach past 20 at least one is antisemitic#I now have 15 followers#thanks for not hating me for being born in a country once btw#Like listen I don't mind if you mass reblog propal stuff. That's good#Just please make sure it's not the posts that talk about how israelis are all evil and want to murder everyone#And maybe reblog. One post about how there's a lot of antisemitism in propal spaces#And how you don't want to make the jews on your blog scared or uncomfortable over that#Just one post. It doesn't have to be praising israel bc fuck knows I hate our current government so much#But I see posts about how secular jews in israel are actually european colonizers roleplaying#And I think about how 100 years ago my great grandparents moved here#And how I'm genuinely scared for my sister who is visiting friends in the uk in a month#And how I'm scared for myself if I ever leave this country again#Because apparently me not wanting to die is controversial in all my political spaces#Except for pro israelis leftist spaces#And that's really sad#That I don't feel safe with yall anymore#Idk#I once joined a mcytblr discord server#The first day I'm there someone asks to ācensor i/pā and gets the response ājust don't look at the vent channelā#So. I looked.#Not a single person in that server cared enough to say ābut it's not all israelisā at the people raving about i/p#Like people out there saying I on a personal level would be happy to murder people because of where I was born#I still get squirmy killing spiders that have rather painful bites. I could never hurt another human on purpose#And they just kept agreeing with each other in the most echo-chamber-y way#So. I left that server#And now I barely do mcyt fandom stuff because I'm scared of getting attention#I don't want attention on my blog or on me as a person#Because at least one in 20 followers will cheer if I get murdered#And that's fucking heartbreaking
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Cat Tumblr Dashboard Simulator
šļø meowful-musings Follow
šļø birdwatching Follow
what's wrong with dry food??? my humans feed me it all the time and i think it's fine
š elusivehider-deactivated948204
op wheres the natural feeding option
š² outdoorsy Follow
you guys are getting fed?
#im a barn cat so maybe im missing something here #meowtthew don't look
7,192 notes
āļø pawsitive-affurmations Follow
ITS OKAY TO BE A MOGGIE
ITS OKAY TO BE A MOGGIE
YOU ARE NOT LESS VALID IF YOU ARE NOT A SPECIFIC PEDIGREE!!!!!
āļø pawsitive-affurmations Follow
extra special shout out to cats who have "common" coat colors. grey tabbies and black cats i am rubbing against your head affectionately <3
šŖ¤ m0usetrap01 Follow
as a grey tabby i really needed to hear this :"3
#i feel like i never see positivity posts for moggies even tho we're the most common type of cat....
154,688 notes
šµ rage-against-the-meowchine Follow
i cant believe there are cats ACTUALLY advocating for kittens to be separated from their mothers before 12 weeks??? kittens still need to learn how to interact with other cats before being placed into their furever home omg you guys know you're advocating for undersocialized and aggressive cats right
ā¤ļø loving-paws284 Follow
um op some of us??? matured early??????? i was separated from my mother at 7 weeks and i turned out fine... interesting how you assume that kittens being separated from their mothers at a younger age will lead to the degeneracy of the next generation...hmm i wonder where i've heard that before...
š fluffy-the-cat Follow
OP got bit too hard during a play-fight as a kitten and it shows XD
š tunafeesh Follow
also op have you ever considered that just because somecat is kind of scared and unable to deal with strange cats or humans, it doesn't mean they don't deserve to be adopted?? you sound like a vet psyop honestly
šµ rage-against-the-meowchine Follow
oh meow god saying that kittens should be fully weaned before leaving their mother is NOT veterinarian rhetoric and i never said that they deserve to be euthanized!!! my mother literally died when i was 3 weeks old and it seriously messed up my development so stop putting words in my mouth, thanks
anyway friendly reminder that underweaned kittens are prone to illness and often struggle with basic cat behaviors like litterbox usage, and in some nyavinces it's even considered kitten abuse
#discourse #cant believe "kitten abuse is bad" is controversial now
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š naturalliving Follow
BORN TO DIE
WORLD IS A FUCK
ē«ē„ Kill Em All 1989
I am trash cat
410,757,864,530 DEAD BIRDS
#outdoorliving #outdoorcats please interact #outdoorcat friendly
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š£ salmonpurina Follow
can't believe cats are uncritically reblogging that born to die world is a fuck post. i know it's funny but op is literally an outdoor cat truther
#like cmon now you just have to go to their blog #lulu speaks
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š tabbystripes-deactivated098712
gentle reminder that pushing cups off the table is not cute and can cause a lot of distress in your human!!!! gentle reminder that our teeth and claws can easily hurt them more than they can hurt us!!!!
š° evil-tabbystripes Follow
evil reminder that the cup should always be pushed off the table. evil reminder that you should always bite and claw at your human no matter what. you can do whatever you want forever
š tabbystripes-deactivated098712
make your own pawst
š laser-point-deactivated8574721
umm i know a tomcat who did that and his human ended up putting him down so...
š¬š» nyasunaruenjoyer Follow
Nyaverage shelter cat behavior
#not nyaruto #re-nyab #pickles shut up
545,460 notes
š nyaoi-warrior Follow
saw two male cats sleeping together on the porch today. homeow behavior imo
š” discourse-meows Follow
hey um what the fuck??? it's really not okay of you to go assuming other cat's sexualities, especially cats you don't even know???? as a queer cat i'm VERYY uncomfortable. real-ass cats didn't consent to your nyaoi fetish, thanks
š nyaoi-warrior Follow
1. i was making. a joak
2. i'm literally gay???
#literally what's your pawblem
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š© amazingcatshow12 Follow
reblog if you've ever caught the laser pointer
š© amazingcatshow12 Follow
i know you fuckers are lying
š gaykittens Follow
this tom hasn't caught the laser pointer
š© amazingcatshow12 Follow
shut the heull up
988,653 notes
š¾ b-e-a-n-t-o-e-s Follow
grey toebeans >>>>>>>>> pink toebeans and don't let the haters make you believe otherwise
š ladymouser Follow
op shut the fuck up ALL toebeans are beautiful!!! just bc you're miserable and insecure doesn't mean you can bring others down based on things they can't control
š¾ b-e-a-n-t-o-e-s Follow
oh so the cat-human separationist wants to preach to us
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The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review
The day has finally come. Many, understandably, thought we'd never get here. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten here. We've been through so much. Lawsuits, reboots, redesigns, unreleased NFTs, empty legal threats over the fact that movie Knuckles has a dad, an attempt to license out Scourge the Hedgehog to fans that immediately got canceled (in both meanings of the term), and many, MANY idiotic Twitter controversies. But now, here we are.
Thirteen years after first announcing it in the middle of his legal battles with Archie and Sega that changed the American Sonic comics forever, former writer Ken Penders has released the first part of his new series: The Lara-Su Chronicles.
Yes. I had to buy the book. I had to take one for the team. Look at the fucking URL of this blog, a blog I've been using to talk about the American Sonic comics for nearly a decade while the specter of this book loomed in the distance. The one time I've actually been paid to write an article about anything in any professional capacity, it was an article about the Penders lawsuits. I'm cited on his Wikipedia page. There was no way I was going to skip reviewing this, and there was no guarantee that scans would ever turn up online given the incredibly small audience for this trash. (Only 166 people preordered this, and even that number feels way higher than it should be.) No, I had to preorder it to ensure I could get a copy and cover it for the blog... even if that meant my name would be forever immortalized in the list of "supporters" in the back of the book. These are the sacrifices I must make as a woman who stumbled ass backwards into being an amateur Archie Sonic historian.
So, what exactly is in this book? How much of it is new? How bad is it? How did we even get here in the first place? How can this exist without Sega pursuing legal action? What happens next? And, most importantly... why are there multiple depictions of an Archie Sonic character breastfeeding in this book?
I'm here to answer those questions as best I can, and in agonizing detail.
First, for those just tuning in to this decades-long saga or those who maybe don't know the full story, here's a refresher on the background info.
"What the hell is this?"
The Lara-Su Chronicles is Ken Penders' long-dreaded long-awaited continuation of his 1994-2006 run on Archie Sonic, ignoring everything written after he left by other writers like Ian Flynn. In particular, it picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the 2003-2004 arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later," which was set in what Ken considers the definitive canonical future of the series. It stars Knuckles' daughter from that future era, Lara-Su, among other new and returning characters. The project was first announced near the start of Ken's legal battle with Archie in 2011, and he's been posting WIP previews online for about a decade. Now, after all this time, a Lara-Su Chronicles book finally exists.
We'll get to the actual contents of that book in a bit.
"He can do that without getting in trouble with Sega?"
Believe it or not, yes, he can.
Thanks to the outcome of Archie Comics' woefully mismanaged lawsuits against Ken (yes, they sued him after he started filing for copyrights, not the other way around), he now has full legal ownership of every story he wrote for Archie Sonic and every character he created for the series. This was explicitly granted to him in the terms of the settlement between him and Archie (acting on behalf of Sega). He can even reprint his old Sonic material as-is to his heart's content. The main catch is just that he can't write new stories featuring Sega characters or trademarks, and his new stories also have to be distinct from Sonic at a glance to avoid confusing readers. As such, reprints can't use Sonic iconography on the cover, a few Sega characters (mainly Knuckles) have been renamed and slightly redesigned in the new stories, and the art style has been changed to less closely resemble Sonic. But otherwise, he can do whatever he wants with his own characters.
All of this is because Archie lost the original copy of Ken's work-for-hire contract that signed over the rights to his work. Without that (or any alternative that was considered permissible in court), his comics and characters are the property of their creator by default. Yes, those old comics are full of Sega stuff, but Sega doesn't automatically own the copyright for every drawing of Sonic in existence. And Sega put their stamp of approval all over those comics and let them get sold at retail for decades, even though (in the eyes of the court) there was no legal paperwork granting them ownership of any of it. It's almost like they were unwittingly distributing a fan comic for years and declaring it a fair use of their property, and now there's no takesies backsies. It's a strange and unique copyright situation. Again, they worked all this out in the settlement. And, yes, fans have long speculated that Ken stole and destroyed his own contract to regain the rights to his work, but frankly Archie was so incompetent throughout the lawsuit (it went so bad that they had to fire and replace their lawyers midway through) that I completely buy the idea of them just losing important legal documents.
Also, in case it needs to be spelled out: while Ken's a weirdo, it's ultimately a good thing for creatives everywhere that Archie lost their lawsuit against Ken. We do not want to live in a world where corporations can claim ownership of peoples' work without the contracts to back it up. That would be an incredibly dangerous legal precedent to set. And more comic creators, and artists in general, should own their own work! Corporations are not your friend! They'll delete your work for a tax write-off in a heartbeat! It's just bewildering that this guy, of all people, was the creator who ended up successfully getting his shit back, and that this is what he's doing with it.
"What about his old collaborators? Are they involved? Is he paying them?"
Ken is mostly doing The Lara-Su Chronicles solo, though he has, in fact, talked about compensating the artists involved in any material he's reprinting. The ones who give enough of a shit to get paid for a small scale reprint of something they did 20 years ago, anyway.
On the subject of his collaborators, it's also worth pointing out that Ken's wasn't the only contract that was lost. Most of the early Archie Sonic writers from before Ian Flynn's time seem to be in the same boat as Ken, with the ownership of their stories and characters defaulting back to them. Again, Archie fucked up big time. But like I said, most of them don't really seem to give a shit. For most of them, Sonic was just a random temporary gig they took to pay the bills while Marvel was busy going bankrupt in the '90s, not the thing that defined their entire careers.
The only other Archie Sonic contributor who's tried to do anything on the level of what Ken is doing was writer and editor Scott Fulop. In 2016 he attempted to sue Archie for the unauthorized use of what are now retroactively considered his copyrighted characters and stories, and he even announced a standalone comic about his most famous Sonic character, the recurring villain Mammoth Mogul (sort of a pastiche of DC's Vandal Savage and Marvel's Kingpin, with wizard powers added for spice). However, Fulop lost his lawsuit because he didn't put together a particularly compelling case. Since then he seems to have wiped all traces of his ill-advised Mammoth Mogul comic and his company, Narrative Ark Entertainment, from the internet. For now, this leaves The Lara-Su Chronicles the only project of its kind.
"What about those other Archie Sonic reprints he just announced?"
At the time of writing, Ken is once again claiming that he's trying to get the band back together to reprint all of Archie Sonic, now under the bad new banner "Floating Island Productions: MOBIAN LINE" that I can't imagine he consulted literally anyone else on.
So, like, look. As we've established, Ken can reprint his own stories. And if he can work something out with the other contributors whose contracts were lost, he can print their work, too. But there is no fucking way he's getting his hands on Ian Flynn's run, which Sega undoubtedly holds the copyright for. Even if they don't, Ian needs to maintain a good working relationship with both Sega and IDW if he's to keep his job, so he'd never go for this. Not to mention that Ian and Ken just... don't get along! Ken's whole plan here seems to be predicated on IDW going out of business (a thing he REALLY wants to happen) and freeing up the Sonic comic license, after which he knocks on Sega's door and goes "hey I've still got dirt on you guys," blackmailing them into giving him the Sonic license back so that he can reprint the later comics. Every step of this plan is ludicrous. It's never gonna happen.
He's been saying he wants to reprint the whole series for a few years now, though. This isn't really anything new. And despite his lofty plans that set Sonic Twitter ablaze, he quickly backpedaled. The only specific things in the works right now are a "two-volume omnibus" of all of his Knuckles stories and a collection of artist Scott Shaw's work on the very early Archie Sonic issues, since they're on good terms with each other. I have no idea how Ken plans on packaging these when he can't put any Sega characters or the Freedom Fighters on the covers, but these projects are small enough in scale that there's a decent chance they'll see the light of day. Scott Shaw only did like five issues. But anything beyond that? I'll believe it when I see it.
Or, y'know, this could've all just been a publicity stunt for his new book. I wouldn't put it past him. Let's just focus on the book that actually exists.
"So he finally did it? He made a whole Lara-Su book? It's out? He finished it??"
Yes and no.
The book that's out now is The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings, a prologue for the series of seven graphic novels Ken somehow plans on making, even though it's taken him 13 years to put out literally anything new. I don't know whether or not this counts as book one of seven, because it only features 30 pages of new comics. 30.5 if I'm being generous.
Most of the book is actually just a reprint of his infamous Archie Sonic storyline "Mobius: 25 Years Later", which ran from issue #131 to #144 in 2003-2004. (Again, yes, he can reprint this, he just can't put Sonic on the cover.) Why's it infamous? Well, Ken had been building anticipation for this future era of the series for basically his entire run. We kept seeing King Sonic and Queen Sally from the future. Knuckles' entire backstory hinges on his dad having a vision of this future. Several years before Silver the Hedgehog was created, it was Lara-Su who was Sonic's equivalent to Future Trunks, the cool-looking child of one of the main characters who traveled back in time to try and prevent a dark future. Believe it or not, yes, there was hype for Lara-Su. And then we finally got M25YL, and none of that cool stuff happened. Instead it really ended up being about how unbearably boring the middle aged Sonic, Knuckles, Sally, and co. are in this peaceful future where Robotnik is dead and they're all married with kids, forced into traditional nuclear family gender roles. Lara-Su is present, but she mostly just does generic teen girl stuff and complains about how Knuckles won't let her do anything even though she REALLY wants to be the new Guardian of Angel Island, like, super bad! Come on, dad!!!
In its original printing, this meandering arc ended on an abrupt time travel cliffhanger that Ken was never able to follow up on before he left Archie in 2006. This new printing slightly changes that ending, using the unresolved timey-wimey shenanigans as a convenient excuse to alter the entire timeline. This creates the slightly different world of The Lara-Su Chronicles, where the few relevant Sega-owned characters have been replaced and everyone is ten times uglier.
After this, we finally get two short new stories picking up where M25YL left off: "The Storm," starring Acorn Kingdom super-spy and known creep Geoffrey St. John, and an early release of the first chapter of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows, the first full TLSC graphic novel.
And now that we're all on the same page about what we're looking at, let's actually talk about the book!
The cover
Let's start by beating a dead horse. The cover art: it's still bad! But why is it bad?
The cover is, of course, based on Patrick Spaziante's cover from Archie Sonic #131, the start of the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" arc. (Ken did the layout for that cover, though, so in the eyes of the law he's the original creator who owns that cover.) That cover was, itself, a tribute to the iconic cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum, the issue that introduced the version of the team with Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, etc.
Ken seems to have forgotten that the point of both these covers was to hype up the arrival of a new cast of characters. The new guys are supposed to make a dramatic entrance front and center. That's the focal point. Meanwhile, the cover for Beginnings has the old timeline versions of the cast from Archie Sonic dramatically bursting out of a shattered crystal ball, while their new counterparts look on in mild bemusement - if they're even bothering to look at all, since most of the characters here are just copied and pasted from their profile pages. That's just not how you do this particular homage! The point is supposed to be "out with the old, in with the new." And why are they using a crystal ball to view the past? Hell, why are they even using a crystal ball at all? The original arc was presented as a magical vision of the future courtesy of Tails' uncle Merlin (don't ask), but the new story leans all the way into being futuristic sci-fi.
Of course, there is no real artistic intent at play here. The old versions of the characters are placed front and center in the crystal ball simply because Ken traced over Spaziante's original art of Lara-Su and Julie-Su (the only two characters on the Sonic cover he owns) and threw out the rest, ruining the composition in the process. Look at the awkward empty space where Sonic, Sally, and Rotor once were, and the new drawing of The Character Formerly Known As Knuckles who's no longer properly centered between his wife and daughter. Even if Ken can claim ownership of the cover because he did the original layout, this all just feels scummy and lame.
And, yeah, if it needs to be said, the new characters and Ken's new rendering style look like absolute fucking dogshit. Putting new Lara-Su directly next to old Lara-Su does her no favors. The shattered glass effect looks absolutely atrocious. I could go on, but we'll have plenty of time to talk about the art style when we see how bad the stories inside look.
Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"
Overall, 99% of M25YL is presented identically to its original printing. Sonic, Sally, Knuckles, et al. are still present with no changes to their names and no tweaks to the art. Even the original cover for issue #131 is included only a few pages into this book with its Archie, Sonic, and Sega logos still intact and everything. Again, because of the weird copyright situation described above, these preexisting comics can be released without any changes.
There is exactly one bizarre change to the art, though, where a hand drawn shot of Angel Island is replaced with an unfitting photo background and the ugly Floating Island photobash that Ken has been using as his personal logo for decades. I think he only did this as part of a test for his motion comic app that nobody asked for. I don't know why this had to make it into the print version. It's like the book is firing a warning shot for what's to come if you keep reading.
The new content begins on the final page of M25YL. In the original wet fart of a cliffhanger ending, Sonic and co. accidentally alter the timeline with an old time machine of Robotnik's and Lara-Su begins to fade away. Then, after everything goes white, we just cut to the present day heroes going "gee, you ever think about the future?" In this new printing, that last bit has been cut, and the rest of the page has been awkwardly shrunk down so that Ken can fit in a new panel. We now see the hands of an off-screen villain, seemingly named "Override," proclaiming that "the Praetorian" (Knuckles) has messed up the timeline again and that they'll finally get their revenge.
Who is this Override? I have no fucking clue. The new stories in this book make no mention of them. You have to buy the next book to find out.
My confusion over the identity of this villain overlaps with another big problem: name changes. So many names and nouns have been arbitrarily changed in The Lara-Su Chronicles, even ones Ken didn't have to change for copyright reasons, and I only know what half of them are replacing because Ken's been tweeting about this shit for years.
The echidnas are now a totally original alien race called "the Echyd'nya." Even in flashbacks to events from M25YL attempting to mimic the old art style, if it's on a new comic page, they're gonna call themselves "Echyd'nya." Evil echidna faction the Dark Legion is now the "Cyberdark Dominion," hailing from the "Cyberdark Colony." The Brotherhood of Guardians is still the Brotherhood of Guardians, but now the main guardian is called "The Praetorian." Angel Island is still called "The Floating Island," like it was in the older Archie comics, but it's ALSO sometimes called "Avion"? When I read this I wasn't sure if he had randomly renamed Albion, the other echidna city from the Archie comics. But no. Now we have an Albion AND an Avion. Sally is mentioned simply as "Princess Acorn," while Sonic is referenced once as an unnamed "blue-spined Erinaceinae," using the scientific name for hedgehog to make it sound more sci-fi. In an incredibly ballsy move, Ken even mentions Robotnik as "the Insurrectionist Kintobor," retaining his original surname from the Archie comics that's just "Robotnik" backwards. Guess Sega never trademarked that one.
Aside from every name change being a downgrade, this leads to confusion when you're not sure if something is supposed to be new, or if it's just an Archie thing you're supposed to recognize despite having a new name and design. Is "Override" someone I'm supposed to know already? Am I just supposed to have read a fucking tweet from Ken where he said he changed the name of some existing villain to "Override"? The answer is no, but I had to term search his Twitter just to verify this.
Moving on!
New story #1: "The Storm"
If you've been following the WIPs, this is that story about Geoffrey St. John that Ken's been posting previews of for almost a decade. The title page copyright dates it to 2015, and that absurdly long gestation is probably why the art is so inconsistent here. Even the style of speech bubbles and the font change between pages two and three.
This is a problem when there's supposed to be a deliberate and noticeable change in art style here signaling the moment where the time travel stuff alters the timeline, replacing the Archie Sonic world with the Lara-Su Chronicles world. If you don't already know that's what's going on, the idea isn't conveyed clearly at all. It just goes from one hideous art style to a slightly different one with no explanation.
The main problem here is that Ken has hitched his wagon to a franchise about anthropomorphic animals when he can't draw furries to save his life. (Though a bit later in the book we'll also begin to wonder if he can even still draw humans.) He's shifted away from the cartooniness of the original designs and given them more human proportions and facial features, but this just ends up making them look incredibly uncanny and lumpy and gross. With some designs he's trying to lean into more of a Star Trek alien vibe, but then he still insists upon retaining the giant Sonic eyes on most characters even though he has no idea how to make them emote.
The rendering of these godawful designs doesn't do them any favors, either. Ken's going for more of a painterly look now, but it almost seems as though he's shading everything with Photoshop's burn and dodge tools that are designed to darken and lighten select areas of a photo. The result is a muddy, smudgy look that makes it feel like the color layer has been smeared in vaseline. And it only looks worse after coming off of 14 chapters of M25YL that have way more palatable art.
The backgrounds, too, are a complete mess, a jumble of low res jpeg photo elements (sometimes with extremely noticeable pixelation), stock textures, and smooth digital gradients. There's no real sense of place here, and it gives everything a surreal, dreamlike quality when you can't really tell where anything is supposed to take place. This first story is seemingly set in a high-tech stronghold below Castle Acorn called "the Bunker," but it could just as easily be confused for the bridge of a spaceship. This whole story features characters speaking to each other over floating video displays and hologram projectors from three different locations, but without a hologram effect and without a clear sense of where the characters are it often feels like they're just in the same room as each other. Characters will be in one location on one photo background, and then the camera angle changes and they're in a completely different place, because Ken just uses mismatched photos off of the internet. It's been like 25 years since he first tried using photo backgrounds in the Archie comics and he hasn't gotten any better at it.
When I had my boyfriend read the book to see if it made literally any sense to him (it didn't), Anthony said this: "This is the kind of shit I'd see linked on a Second Life world that hasn't been touched since 2004." I think he really hit the nail on the head. Now, there's actually a contrarian part of me that thinks that might theoretically almost be kind of cool, in sort of a messy counterculture way. I love weird indie shit. I was a Homestuck reader! But this isn't a scrappy mixed media zine, or experimental outsider art from someone just messing around with Photoshop, or a loving throwback to weird old internet art, or even something intentionally bizarre and offputting like Xavier: Renegade Angel or a PilotRedSun video or whatever where the fact that it's weird and ugly is part of the humor. This is supposed to be a sincere sci-fi epic drawing on Star Trek and Jack Kirby comics, made by a guy who's been drawing comics professionally since the '80s. This is supposed to look good. This is supposed to compete with mainstream comics that are on sale right now. He thinks any day now IDW's gonna go out of business and Sega will come crawling back to him so that he can stamp the Sonic logo on shit like this. It just doesn't work.
But, okay. It's ugly. We knew it would be ugly. But that ugliness would be much easier to accept if it was in service of an otherwise genuinely good story. So what about the writing? After all this time, how does Ken choose to kick off this new saga? Well, credit where credit's due. "The Storm" feels like a proper continuation of Ken's writing style from M25YL.
Because it's eleven pages of characters standing around and talking while nothing fucking happens.
Here's the synopsis: A dog woman named Brownie, an ensign in the Royal Secret Service fresh out of training and the only character who's almost cute, walks up to Geoffrey to deliver a report. He's immediately suspicious of her, asking who let her in and if she's a spy for Elias (Sally's brother, if you're new here) or Alicia (Sally's mom). The art style suddenly shifts when the timeline is altered, but the scene continues uninterrupted. Geoffrey points a gun at Brownie when she won't say whose spy she is. Geoffrey is distracted by a call and proceeds to have a conversation via a mix of holograms and video screens with Remington (head of Echidnaopolis security), Spectre (Knuckles' great great great great great grandpa, the one with the helmet who always looks evil), and a new scientist character named Dr. Zephyr/Zephur. (The spelling of this character's name changes multiple times throughout the 11-page story, because I guess nine years wasn't enough time to spellcheck this shit.) They say a bunch of made up technobabble nonsense about how it looks like the timeline was just altered and Knuckles and co. seem to be involved. It's complete drivel that I'm not even going to try to make sense of. Everyone decides to investigate further, and the conversation ends. Brownie tells Geoffrey she's his spy, then walks out and implies she's actually Alicia's spy in her inner monologue.
To be continued!!!
Yes, that's it. It's really just a bunch of technobabble where some characters talk about how it seems like the timeline has been fucked with. That's it. The whole time Geoffrey doesn't even get up out of his damn chair, which he's of course sitting in backwards to show how cool he is. It's just 11 pages of Geoffrey sitting in a chair and talking to people and looking uglier than he's ever looked. Nothing happens. Nine years for this.
I'm also struck by how meaningless all of this is to anyone who hasn't read Archie Sonic. The added context from M25YL may help a little, but "The Storm" focuses on characters who weren't in that arc, and the story does very little to introduce who any of them are. Brownie could've been super useful as an inexperienced point of view character who's only meeting the others for the first time here, but instead she's really just a passive observer who's here as part of some kind of 4D chess game between Geoffrey and Alicia, an off-screen character whose motivations in this era of the story are completely unknown to even returning readers. Who are the good guys and bad guys here? What are the conflicts and the stakes of the story moving forward? What do these characters want? Basic questions like this aren't really answered. I can't imagine a new reader being able to make heads or tails of this. Hell, I can't really imagine a returning reader who hasn't been following the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets about this story making heads or tails of it, either.
...Maybe more will happen in the next story?
New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter
After another message from Ken, the story of The Lara-Su Chronicles proper begins with the redesigned Lara-Su walking along a jpeg photograph beach at sunset and crying while thinking about how Knuckles - sorry, his name is K'Nox now - is dead.
Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!
Look, I'm the last person to complain about writers getting super personal and drawing from their own baggage in their writing, but Ken's just no fucking good at it. There's no nuance, nothing interesting to say. He just keeps writing mediocre-to-horrible dads whose misdeeds are always justified by their "good intentions," and then sometimes they die and their kids are like "we may have fought but actually you were the bestest dad ever and I'll miss you forever, I'll never be able to fill your shoes!"
This is the only part of the new material here that feels like it has any heart behind it, because I know how much his complex relationship with his late deadbeat father means to Ken (there's an author's note in this outright saying as much). But the guy died 42 years ago, and it doesn't feel like Ken has had any new thoughts about this part of his life in those four decades. He's just not an introspective or self-aware enough artist to actually mine his personal baggage for anything beyond "father knows best."
Anyway, so then it jumps forward in time(?) and now we're following this human guy who looks like this.
Previously, Ken got a lot of shit for literally just using the likeness of Anthony Mackie for this guy, based on his IMDB profile photo. Ken has thus redesigned the character... and by that I mean I think he looks more like Ernie Hudson now? Ken's clearly just working off of photo references (if not straight up tracing), given his face is the most detailed and realistic-looking thing on any page where he's present.
But you may be wondering: who is this, and why is he here? Well, for one, he's here to run around in front of some low res space photos while making trite references to things like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek. Haha, he makes a joke about red shirts! Original!! But beyond that, Commander Mykhal Taelor (yes, that's really how he chose to spell it) is a human... from Earth! Archie Sonic readers are probably confused, because in those comics Mobius is Earth in the distant post-apocalyptic future. Well, despite being a Planet of the Apes fan, Ken always hated that particular worldbuilding decision from Karl Bollers, always preferring to think of Mobius as a separate alien planet. And now he gets to make that canon in his own stories and throw out Karl's ideas. So Mobius is basically just, like, a Star Trek planet now, with its own alien creatures that sometimes just so happen to look like anthropomorphic Earth animals.
Also, at one point Taelor wonders if the inhabitants of the dead Mobius might have been human, and the alien ally he's talking to over the radio says it's unlikely. "I don't understand why your kind has a problem understanding you're a minority within a minority." Perhaps poor wording for a line said to the only Black character in the story.
Anyway, Commander Taelor here seems to have discovered the uninhabited husk of Mobius after the vague time-space cataclysm everyone was worried about in M25YL has come to pass, and he finds an audio log from Lara-Su that I presume will explain what happened. I guess those are the titular Lara-Su Chronicles. In theory this flash forward establishes some sense of pressing danger, but when the threat to the planet is so unclear and technobabble-y it just kind of lands with a thud.
It doesn't take long before we get back to Lara-Su being sad about her dad. A good little chunk of the chapter is spent with this new timeline's Lara-Su recalling moments in her life, including echoes of the original Lara-Su's memories from M25YL, which feels redundant coming hot off the heels of a straight reprint of that entire arc. And boy, for anyone who read the later Archie Sonic comics, the protagonist having vague memories of the old version of the series from before a lawsuit-related timeline reboot sure does sound familiar, huh?
The art inconsistency somehow becomes even worse in this story, with Ken flip-flopping on whether or not he wants to use outlines, with the no-outline art managing to look even worse by relying entirely on Ken's awful rendering. By this point in the book, readers are also likely to start noticing how often Ken reuses art from previous panels. This is a shortcut that tons of comic artists use, of course. Invincible famously did a joke about this. It's often understandable. But, again... it sure does stand out in a book that took 13 years to make with only 30 pages of new art. Amusingly, Ken even manages to combine his inconsistency and recycling problems by reusing the same art with and without outlines. And, of course, any time Ken tries to draw the Archie era designs it's just... the worst.
And, yes, it's in this dreamlike montage sequence of Lara-Su's life that we get...
The uncomfortable family nudity scene, followed by the dual timeline Julie-Su breastfeeding scene.
Yeah, you might have heard about this one already. If this incredibly eerie presentation of Lara-Su's hazy memories of the two different timelines make it hard to tell what's going on, don't worry. There's another, clearer version later in the book as part of Julie-Su's character profile, because I guess Ken was just so proud of it.
(I censored these myself because I'm not playing Russian roulette with Tumblr's inconsistent nudity rules and risking getting banned lmao)
Like, okay. Is a mother breastfeeding her child really that shocking of a thing to see in a story? No, not at all. But, like... when it's two characters who you previously created for an officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comic for 7-year-olds... and some of those officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comics for 7-year-olds are reprinted in the same book... and when it's drawn like this... yeah, it's kind of a shocker.
It just looks so unnatural. Julie-Su is posed very deliberately so that you'll see both of her breasts, and in the new timeline version she's barely even holding Lara-Su so you can really get a good look at her supermodel body, showing zero physical signs that she just gave birth. Most people will immediately jump to this being Ken putting his fetishes in his work (a type of criticism that I'm incredibly tired of - it's 2024, all the cool artists are blatantly putting their fetishes in their work now). And my immediate response is that, no, this is probably just Ken trying to come off as really mature on a surface level, a thing he's been obsessed with since the Archie days. Free from the shackles of writing a licensed children's comic, of course he's going to jump immediately into depicting some nonsexual, artistic nudity to try and prove he's A Real Mature Artist For Grown-Ups who just thinks the human body is beautiful and breastfeeding shouldn't be a taboo etc. etc.
But then, like. You look at some of the other character designs. Like Espio's daughter Salma, who's now this horrifying alien lizard person who's always nude, and her scale pattern puts scales exactly where her nipples should be. Or you look at his comments about the Echyd'nya age of consent. Or you look at how he keeps drawing Lara-Su in this. Like, does the shuttle really need this, like... reverse chaise lounge thing in the cockpit? So that we can keep getting these shots of the 16-year-old Lara-Su lying on her stomach and posing with one of her legs kicked up, her naked ass in plain view?
The vibe isn't great, is what I'm saying!
I'm not going to try to ascribe authorial intent here. I don't know. I'm not a psychic. Given his very blatant reliance on photo references elsewhere in the book, it's entirely possible he just referenced some figure drawing photos that were maybe just a little too sexy. And also, he's an American comic book artist, and a boomer one at that. Those guys tend to draw women a certain way, even when it's not supposed to be sexual. I don't fucking know. It just sucks. I'm not gonna make some hyperbolic statement about how this makes him a literal pedophile who should be in jail, but it is deeply offputting and objectifying.
But if you already knew about the nursing scenes and were hoping there was some other really shocking stuff in there for me to talk about in this review, sorry to disappoint, but nope. That's the only shockingly weird new thing in here. Once again, not a lot happens in this story, and what does happen is pretty boring.
Once we get past the recap stuff and the human guy, the plot developments boil down to this: The timeline was altered at the end of M25YL... but not as much as you might think. In the new timeline, Knuckles ("K'Nox"), Cobar (now looking significantly younger), and Rotor (now a rhino just called "The Emissary") still traveled via shuttle to go find a time machine in the Badlands and fix the time-space continuum, like in the climax of the original arc. This time, though, Sonic wasn't there, and Lara-Su came along without having to stow away. Lara-Su watches the ship while the grown ups go deal with the time machine, and then after a couple panels Not Rotor comes back with Cobar and is like "Hey, Cobar got hurt, we gotta leave. Dunno what happened to your dad." And then they just, like. Presume that Knuckles must have died. Even though we have no idea what happened to him. And then they just fly away. And then Lara-Su is sad that her dad died.
And that's pretty much it!
This is supposed to be a really emotional sequence - it's literally the scene where Lara-Su learns that Knuckles is dead - but instead it comes off as unintentionally funny because of how poorly it's portrayed. Not showing Knuckles' actual disappearance is a huge misstep, for one, making his uncertain fate more confusing and anticlimactic than dramatic. But also, Ken keeps just using the same two drawings of Rotor for two pages, so he doesn't really seem to be emoting at all, and he's in this spacey hazmat suit that honestly just makes him look like fucking Moltar from Space Ghost. So the whole time I'm just reading his dialogue in Moltar's deadpan voice as he's like "I dunno. We did what we could. Anyway, let's leave."
After this, we get a two-page spread previewing the rest of the story from Shattered Tomorrows. It's basically like a trailer in comic form. It has one of the most mystifying layouts I've ever seen in a comic book. I have no idea what order I'm supposed to read this in.
Yeah, I kinda have a feeling this is the full extent of what Ken has drawn for the rest of that book. I'd love to be wrong, but I fear that I'm right.
Bonus material: Data files
These are mostly very dull, recapping a lot of events shared between Ken's Archie run and the new Lara-Su Chronicles timeline. It seems like almost his entire run is still considered canon to the backstory of the new timeline, just with some names changed, and things only really diverge at the climax of M25YL. But I'll share the interesting stuff here.
Lara-Su
The main thing you'll notice in Lara-Su's profile is the massive, unreadable wall of text where Ken felt the need to list the entire Knuckles family tree, split across both pages.
This is literally so long that Lara-Su's personal history has to awkwardly cut off mid-sentence and be continued on the final page of the book, after the rest of the data files.
Also, please note that this list gives Julie-Su's mom's full name as Mari-Su of the House of Atrades. Incredible on all levels.
There's also a reference to the dark timeline Lara-Su was originally supposed to come from. You know, the one where Julie-Su is the leader of a rebel movement fighting against a Knuckles who had gone mad with power? The timeline that would have been way more interesting than the one in M25YL? Here it seems to have been written off as the result of another "timeline disruption." Lara-Su allegedly has vague memories of this timeline, in the same way that she has vague memories of the M25YL timeline.
Geoffrey
Geoffrey's bio mostly recaps events from the Archie comics, which means the Sonic/Sally/Geoffrey love triangle has to be alluded to. His rivalry with Sonic is described like this:
"He would later resurface when Kintobor was transporting his latest hi-tech weapon, the Dynamac-3000. It was during that mission he discovered a rival for the Princess' affections. Whereas the Princess would be one of a line of conquests where St. John was concerned, the blue-spined Erinaceinae who protested doth a bit too much regarding his affections for the Princess for St. John's taste would prove to be a source of great sport and amusement."
Yes. It's gross. Saying that Geoffrey saw Sally as "one of a line of conquests" is gross. Ken writing this and then still treating Geoffrey as the coolest badass ever is gross. The "Princess Acorn" is also first on the list of Geoffrey's "female relationships" elsewhere in his bio, though I suppose how much of a "relationship" they had is left vague. Honestly, at this point the fact that Ken didn't explicitly confirm that Geoffrey took the underage Sally's virginity in the book comes off as a display of restraint. The bar couldn't be any lower, I know.
Remington
His bio is, frankly, shockingly long for such a minor character, though I guess he does get a large portion of the word salad dialogue in "The Storm." There's a lot of stuff here about how the identities of his biological parents are shrouded in mystery, a plot point that fans have long speculated Ken just straight up forgot about in his time at Archie. (Ian confirmed that Kragok from the Dark Legion was Remington's dad, though, so this isn't really much of a mystery.)
Lien-Da
She gets a bio even though she's not present in the two new stories, just so we get to look at her awful new design and compare it to how Steven Butler drew her earlier in the book:
Commander Taelor
We get to see two drawings of him with the same exact Ernie Hudson face side by side! That's fun.
Julie-Su
She gets a list of "known friends," but the only character listed is Knuckles' mom. Poor Julie-Su.
Also, Ken feels the need to reiterate that Knuckles and Julie-Su are still distant cousins. He made a whole new timeline where he can change whatever details he wants, but THAT had to remain canon. Thanks, Ken.
And then after the data files we get the special thanks page, listing everyone who preordered the book and/or bought TLSC merch from Ken.
With my name on the list. Because I had to buy a copy to cover it for the blog.
My name is on the very next page right after the breastfeeding panel in Julie-Su's data file.
Yep. He got me.
Is it at least a well put together book? Like, in terms of manufacturing quality?
Its physical quality is... fine. It's a nice, sturdy hardcover. The print quality seems fine, though mine does have a bit of smudging from some sort of printing error on one page. The pages don't seem like they'll fall out on me. The image quality is crisp. The colors are vibrant. This is a low bar, but this is one of the few places where I'm able to give this book anything resembling praise.
The formatting and graphic design work, on the other hand...
(I didn't crumple those page corners, it came like that.)
For one, the placement and sizes of the M25YL pages is inconsistent, largely due to the fact that the book doesn't actually match the proportions of a comic. A lot of pages aren't properly centered vertically. Some pages go all the way up to the top edge of the paper, while others leave a visible gap of about half a centimeter. Every page has a 1cm gap to its left and right, which is sometimes filled in with a solid color or gradient that doesn't quite match the page it's surrounding. I have to assume Ken didn't have any sort of source files or original artwork to work off of, as those ideally would've had more generous bleed to account for slight shifts in printing. It kind of seems like he just got the highest resolution versions he could find of the digital releases online and printed those. The colors are a dead ringer for the digital versions, which have always looked slightly more saturated and pastel than they did in print.
I can't say this bodes well for his further plans for Archie Sonic reprints - sorry, Mobian Line reprints. If they ever come out, please, for the love of god, do not buy those. I don't care how much you love Archie Sonic, they aren't going to be good reprints. For comparison, IDW's similarly priced hardcover Sonic collections have none of these formatting problems, because they're made by people who know what they're doing with access to the actual source files.
The book also has its fair share of text-focused pages, split between the data files and messages directly from Ken about the history of his career and this project, and these are formatted in the most amateurish way possible. Just massive walls of Arial text over either plain white backgrounds, simple gradients, or faded photos. I've seen school yearbooks with better graphic design. Even ignoring my subjective feelings about the art and stories within, this book does not feel like it's worth $36 USD.
It's frankly shocking how shabby he let this thing look considering it's supposed to be his baby. And doesn't that really sum it all up?
Closing thoughts
Obviously, I did not expect this to be any good. But I'm still left kind of dumbfounded by it.
I think what really strikes me about it is that Ken had a blank check to do whatever he wanted here. He got an opportunity many writers would kill for when he gained complete ownership of his most famous work. He's free from the limitations of a monthly licensed comic book for children, free to make whatever creative decisions he wants without editors or other writers or Sega to worry about, free to completely reinvent the series to his heart's content and finally tell the story of his dreams. And with that opportunity and 13 years of his time, he made... this. A direct continuation of "Mobius: 25 Years Later" that barely changes anything about the characters or world beyond their awful new designs, even though much of the word count is spent rambling about how the timeline has changed. A story that makes zero concessions for new readers, or even returning readers who don't already have the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets explaining his creative decisions burned into their memory. 30 pages where nothing really happens and the story barely moves forward an inch despite the decades-long wait - but maybe something will happen if you buy the next book!
Who is this for? Maybe this really is a project for no one but Ken. Maybe he just really, really wants to finish the story he started, a story that's personal to him due to the family history it evokes, and the number of people who enjoy it or buy it beyond that is irrelevant. I think that many of the best artists are incredibly self-indulgent ones working with that exact mindset, artists whose enthusiasm for their own work jumps off the page or screen. So, if that's the case, then why the fuck isn't he telling the damn story? What's stopping him? Why is he still spinning his wheels? Where is that passion for his own work? Because it sure as hell isn't there on the page. There's a huge part of me that really wishes I could say "Man, what a weirdo, but you do you, Ken. You tell your weird little story." But there's barely any story here. It's like he loves styling himself as a storyteller, but he's terrified of finally having to actually tell a story after all this time. He's still stuck in the exact same mode of writing he was in almost 30 years ago when he was doing 6-page backup stories about Knuckles, just killing time and stringing readers along until he's eventually able to truly realize his vision. If not now, then when, Ken?
Even the back cover blurb is mostly just a dry recap of the history of this thing. It was a Sonic comic, the original arc was published in these issues, it went unfinished, Ken left Archie, the lawsuits happened, now he's continuing the story. There's nothing about why anyone should give a shit about this as its own story, even though Ken has spent years trying in vain to convince people TLSC is its own beast that shouldn't be judged as a Sonic story. I think deep down he knows that there's no pitch for this beyond the novelty of it originating from Sonic. And that's why, despite declaring that he'd leave the site, he's still on Twitter riling up Sonic fans. It's the only attention he gets at this point.
Maybe this is too harsh when those 30 pages of new comics are just intended as a preview for the "real" book. But the elephant in the room is that we have no idea if that "real" book will ever actually come out, let alone the entire series of seven graphic novels that will supposedly complete this saga.
Ken is undeniably a complete jackass and all around unpleasant, vindictive person who's rightly become an industry pariah. He's a self-proclaimed paragon of progressive values who'll send Comicsgaters after his successors for the crime of not worshiping the ground he walks on, and then turn around and announce he's going to reprint their work without even consulting them. He's a sore winner who already won his copyright battle on a level most comic writers would never dare to dream of, and yet still won't truly be satisfied until he sees an entire major comic publisher go out of business, putting god knows how many people out of work, because he thinks this would get him back the license to a video game franchise he doesn't even like.
But I still have to pity him.
As an artist, the trajectory of his life is my nightmare. I think all of us fear dying before we can tell all the stories we want to tell. There's simply never enough time to do everything. And here's Ken in his 60s, talking about how he's still planning on making his magnum opus all by himself out of stubbornness and pride, despite demonstrably proving he can't handle the workload, and also talking about how if he dies before the project can be finished he'll have to pass the torch on to his kids and get them to finish it for him. It's so grim. Even just typing that sends a shiver down my spine. It took nine years of his limited time on Earth to finish and release an 11-page comic about Geoffrey St. John sitting backwards in a chair.
This is a purgatory of his own creation. And yet... I'm not sure he's ever been prouder. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
I guess if I want people to take anything away from this review, it's this:
Lesson one: If you're an artist or writer of some kind, or an aspiring creator, don't wait around. No one else is going to tell your story for you. Start writing that novel. Start drawing that webcomic. Start making that game. If Penders can put out this damn book that no one asked for after 13 years of work, then proudly proclaim that he's still going to make six or seven more books and also reprint hundreds of comics he doesn't have all of the rights to, then show up to cons with that foul Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows banner and sit in front of it beaming with pride, fully aware of his critics but saying "fuck 'em, I know I'm hot shit," then you can do fucking anything. Tell the weird, sincere, cringe story of your dreams. If Ken Penders doesn't have imposter syndrome, then nobody should.
And lesson two: Don't buy Ken's books.
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Synastry indicating obsession
Hi friends! Today weāre looking closely at synastry indicating obsession or infatuation with someone. Not necessarily only romantic! Please like reblog & comment to boost this blog š
Venus 1hā Infatuation with how the Venus person carries themselves. You want to know how they style themselves, how it looks like itās made for themāthe clothes they wear, hair, makeup, etc. they have what you want which makes you even more attracted to them. This can also turn into idolization for the Venus person. In your eyes the Venus person is talentedāskilled and charming. Its as if the Venus person has no flaws. This can easily turn into self comparison with the Venus person which is unhealthy.
Moon 8hā First it feels fated. It feels as if yaāll have known each other for a long time. Deep innate curiosity to learn more about each other, yet there is so much that remains hidden. Disillusionment within each other is common here, both people may not know who they really are and self sabotage comes up in the connection to be healed. This type of synastry is deep and reignited past pain and trauma. Old attachment styles come upāmaking it harder to leave the moon person. The moon person can shut off emotionally from the house person, leaving the house person craving more connection. Lack of boundariesāthe house person may not leave until there is significant emotional hurt. The connection also struggles with being hidden or people cant know about it. An aspect will always remain hidden. Emotions or not wanting to put a label on the connection.
Saturn conj. Venusā Hot takeāI know a lot of people see this as a marriage indicator. And maybe it is, I wonāt deny that fact. From my observation, Iāve had this synastry twice and did not necessarily lead to marriage, just lessons to be learned. Usually the Venus persons old attachment style gets triggered. They feel alone and unfulfilled in themselves, not necessarily because of the saturn person. But their inner child is wounded & so they look to the saturn person for stability, strength and protection. Codependent behaviors can be enabled because the venus person does not know how to create internal balance. Father wounds come out in this type of synastry the most. Saturn person can also shut off emotionally from the venus person and be avoidant towards intimacyāfeeling afraid to be āvulnerable.ā
Venus-plutoā The venus person feels instantly attracted to the pluto person. Or vice versaāboth people are affected. Chemistry, sexual tension. Yet underneath hides pain and traumaāwhich controls the two in the connection unless both heal from it. Very possible both carry pain regarding toxic masculinity & toxic femininity. But still feel drawn to each other because it replays their pastāwhich the two got too comfortable with. It became easy to settle with what they knew than to find actual safety. Lots of transformation, personal power can result from this. Usually this connections ends in shambles, disgust, or never talking ever again. Usually the pluto person ends up hurting venus personācheating, spreading rumors, jealousy, etc. so much more! Its as if they both cannot get enough of each other yet its āforbidden,ā or ātabooā to be in the connection. There is an aspect that the connection has to remain hiddenāuntil it becomes revealed.
Jupiter 8h, Jupiter 1h, and Jupiter 4h- Controversial, but Jupiter can indicate our indulgence. If Jupiter sits in these places especially the 4h its likely the house person will automatically crave a bond and connection with this person. While its sweetāthis can turn sideways. The house person becomes comfortable in their old ways and habits, because the Jupiter person can enable their codependency. An indulgence of self victimizationālearned helplessness. Jupiter 4h makes house person crave a family they didnāt have, so they cling to the fantasy of it all. Dismissing red flags from the Jupiter person. Jupiter 8h makes the house person want to be consumed by the idea of unveiling the Jupiter person. Wants to know all their secrets, and analyze everything of them. Too much to the point of neglecting themselves. If the Jupiter person leavesāhouse person will adopt their traits and such. Its a way of holding onto what they wish they had internallyāthey project their desires onto the Jupiter person.
Planets in the 12hā Immediate attraction & curiosity. The connection can feel fated, or meant to be. The two experience intense highs and lows in the connection because of the lessons. Almost always its a lesson of boundaries and saying no. Usually in these connections, there is a lack of commitment or unavailabilityāyet the house person craves the moon person for that ādeep connection.ā The house person feels understood in ways they never had before, so they cling hard to what they receive, even if its unhealthy. Periods of no contactāavoidance, shutting down emotionally is common. Usually the strength of the connection is also tested by people around them or external factors. Gossip, rumours are spread to distort both perceptions of each other in the connection. Eventually one person realizes someone is not being who they say they areāand leave.
Sun 1hā House person is drawn to the way sun person carries themselves. Idolized them, places them on a pedestal. Gives the sun person the privilege of being seen as āmore,ā even though we are all equal. The house person can strive to be as unique and talented as the sun person & can overdo it. Easy for the house person to compare themselves especially if they are struggling in an area where the sun person is great at. This has potential to become an amazing connection, however.
MarsāThe house person can feel isolated or lonely simply because the mars person can come across aggressive. Yet the mars person is captivating, exuberant, and full of life to the house person despite the toxicity. There could be misogyny, sexism, manipulation tactics here. Lots of sexual undertones as wellāsince it represents action. The house person feels āaliveā with the mars person because of their energy, and finds themselves being pulled in very fast. Instant attraction vibes. The two can play a game of āplaying hard to get,ā which makes it more thrillingāyet there was no commitment to stay in the connection at first. The house person is enamored and hooked onto the charisma of the mars personāwilling to toss away their boundaries. The mars person can reenact a lot of toxic behaviors the house person experienced, finding themselves all over in the same position. Lots of competition between the two, to be better or higher than the other. But both are constantly on each otherās mindāwhich is where the obsession starts.
Thanks so much for reading yaāll! Highly appreciated it. Hoping to hear yāallās perspective kindlyāI love listening! I love these flower pics. Ima use it again sometime lol.
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bc i'm an idiot who craves discourse completely not related or even understandable to me, i'm up at fucking 1:37 am reading some dumbass discourse about an internet subculture idek existed until 3 secs ago and i have opinions about it
#mostly that this one person i vaguely know the existence has some miserable opinions about stuff i think they know nothing about#this person made that one post that equally pissed off and resonated with many ppl here on tumblr dot com#i don't think i've seen a post that controversial in my time here lol#i actually thought and maybe would've appreciated it if i saw it a few years ago but i didn't#i saw it now when i'm at a part in my life where it doesn't apply/relate to me#so i'm kinda neutral about it#but but but but i kept checking their blog from time to time to see.... idk i just liked the controversy surrounding their blog lol#and now they're like ''oh it's wrong to do that actually'' and i'm just ???#ik i could just block them but i really really love the drama their blog always has#now they're talking about [redacted] and i wanna see how that's gonna go lol hopefully there'll be a new post or smth in the morning#maybe i should sleep actually oof#i feel like more than half the things i said didn't make sense lmaoo#rav: personal
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I'm going to start this off with saying it hurts. It fucking hurts. It hurts so, so much, and there's parts of me that still desperately want to look for a way out, to make him not the bad guy, but there isn't one.
Wilbur Soot is a fucking asshole. A piece of absolute trash, and it hurts. Because I've looked up to him for so many years now. He's been such an inspiration and comfort in my life, from dealing with issues I have myself, and giving me all the more reason to stay here. And now he's turned out to be like this. To anyone who's been following what I reblog about him, it's conflicting, because my thoughts seem to change by the minute. But I'm hoping in saying this I can clear my head and make a definite decision.
I will never be supporting Wilbur ever again. No matter how much better he gets, I don't care. What he did was unexcusable, and if you think otherwise, you can fuck off of my blog. His "apology" wasn't an apology, and for the most part all he did was defend himself. The responses from other content creators have pushed me to agree that yes, fuck Wilbur. He's an ass. I think I've stated this a couple times.
What he did to them, especially Niki and Tommy was inexcusable as well from what we know, and since Tommy is going on tour in about a week (if he's still going/up to it) PLEASE no one harass him with questions, or how he feels. Please, just leave him alone. I'm sure it's a lot to process for him too- even more than us.
I've seen some posts saying how we should be angry at other content creators for not speaking out sooner, but some of them have hinted at it/tried. And others haven't known enough, or didn't want to start causing something against him. The same reason Shelby didn't want to say his name. Maybe they couldn't. Please leave them alone.
The last thing I would like to say, is maybe controversial. If you disagree with me, I don't care, this is purely my opinion.
You can still enjoy his character. Your stories, your artwork, all that you've done with it. Don't feel bad about keeping it up, because that's yours now. You've worked so hard on it, and cared for that character so much that it's become far more yours than his. In regards to his music, I know his songs have provided a lot of us with comfort, including me. It's going to be really hard for me to stop listening to something I loved, but I'm going to make the effort- especially with his solo albums. Also, please don't harass the other members of Lovejoy. From what we know, they're lovely people, and if you're going to stop listening to them, great, do that, but don't harass them. Please. And if you do choose to listen to them, there's ways you can listen to music without supporting him- in my opinion covers are the best way to do that, but that one is up to you.
To wrap this up, I'd just like to say...please don't send death threats, or threats in general to anyone involved in this situation- including Wilbur. Leave them alone. Please.
This is subject to change if we get more information, but for now and the foreseeable future, this is my stance. I wish everyone hugs and comfort. This sucks. I'm sorry.
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WELCOME! āØ
IT'S A SOLOMONOMENON!
hello there, my name is solomon but you can call me sol
a passionate part-time writer | an amateur tarot reader
this is a nsfw blog, focused mainly on skz, so minors please do not interact (I hate children btw). I'll be writing smut (and maybe angst), doing headcanons, tarot reading, and many more I cannot think of yet. please bear in mind that nothing on here is fact even if it's a reading based on their birth chart. this is all for fun. enjoy!
ps. if you're curious, feel free to hop into my inbox
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It's fucked up that apparently people are calling you slurs and I hope the actual harassment ends soon!!! And it sucks that people are making things up about you to malign you; things should never come to that.
But I do feel like it really would be good to address the genuine criticism instead of just painting everyone who has questions as being just harassors? Like. You started posting about how non-transfems always have a "trump card" over transfems (one post specifically mentioning "cis intersex women") very shortly after Imane Khelif got harassed over the mere assumption of her possibly being intersex and or secretly trans, where her AGAB didn't matter to the bigots one bit. In fact, the mentions of TMA/TME terminology ONLY started appearing on your blog immediately after the Paris Olympics. For me, that was extremely eyebrow-raising.
I appreciate that. It's largely died down for the moment but I'm not sure if that's just momentary or not. Here's hoping.
I wasn't painting anyone who had questions as being harassers, that's very extreme language to use and I'd appreciate maybe reading my posts thoroughly before accusing me of things like that.
I said the people sending me slurs and messages simply calling me names and intersexist were harassers, I also explicitly said anyone who had questions or actually wanted to discuss the issue should still feel free to send me asks or whatever.
I also was not asked even vaguely about what you're talking about. I was only told that I was intersexist for blocking two intersex blogs and then I was accused of claiming something to do with intersex people and autism.
I had two people in my inbox mention the possibility people were upset that I discussed transmisogyny, but neither of them were sure and only guessing, so I didn't want to throw guesses out. [I did get a more concrete mention of this late last night tho from an anon!]
But no one else said any of the shit you're talking about to me.
I don't remember mentioning cis intersex women in particular but I might've. I had a lot of questions from people about transmisogyny but I did definitely say that anyone who isn't TMA or transfeminized does definitely have leverage explicitly over people who are in the context of transmisogyny. That's true and literally how every type of bigotry works.
I'll address the Imane Khelif bit in a second but first, I do want to point out that my blog started around that same time, Anon.
I didn't start posting about transmisogyny because of the Paris Olympics. I started this blog around that time and transmisogyny is one of the issues I've reblogged posts about and afterwards, gotten many questions about, that's all.
It had nothing to do with the Olympics; I don't watch them and while I paid attention to some of the issues that arose from them [the blatant ableism, sinophobia, COVID issues, intersexism, racism, etc], I didn't make any posts on my sex education blog with the Olympics in mind.
As for Imane Khelif, I do want to mention that what happened to her was not solely about the possibility of her being intersex and/or secretly trans, nor is it true that her AGAB didn't factor into what happened.
What happened to Imane Khelif was very explicitly intersexist but it was also extremely racist. I mention that because it's very important that's not left out of the conversation. It's a very common racist, misogynistic tactic that has been revitalized in current politics and to ignore the racism is to ignore a good part of the picture.
I also don't want to ignore your claim that her being not-transfem had no affect on what happened with her.
To ignore that transfems were largely disallowed from competing in the Olympics at all is absurd and to insinuate there's not privilege in being allowed to compete is not a claim that should be made. If not being transfem didn't affect Imane Khelif at all, she wouldn't have even been in the Olympics.
Nor would it have been as "controversial" as it was [because they likely would have had genuine evidence], nor would she have been allowed to compete afterwards, nor would she have the legal standing to be able to sue people for accusing her of being intersex and/or transfem.
I do understand being wary but absolutely nothing I said had anything to do with Imane Khelif or even vaguely denies or belittles what she and many other people have had to go through because of racism, misogyny, intersexism and transmisogyny.
Just to be absolutely clear, because the poor are absolutely drenched in piss from the way people keep trying to misinterpret my posts:
I did not make any posts on transmisogyny to argue that what happened to Imane Khelif was not awful, nor did I make any posts to insinuate cisgender intersex women do not experience oppression, nor did I start posting about transmisogyny because of the Olympics.
But if that's what people are upset about, I appreciate you letting me know, fr. It's absurdly convoluted and feels like a lot of assumptions were made but it's very kind of you to tell me and I always appreciate people coming into my inbox to discuss things.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. <3
#sex education#asks#imane khelif#intersexism#olympics#transmisogyny#guys#the poor are drowning#please stop
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This will be my single controversial rant about Gladiator and its sequel (specifically my thoughts on Maximus being retconned as Lucius' father), and then I will be silent on the matter because this blog is meant to be A Good Time and I just enjoy sharing my love for Gladiator with everyone on here :)
KIND OF SPOILERS FOR GLADIATOR AND THE SEQUEL (BUT NOT REALLY) BELOW
As everyone knows, Ridley Scott made the choice to reveal in Gladiator 2 that Lucius is actually the son of Maximus from a secret affair with Lucilla. In G2, it's apparently implied that Lucilla was trapped in a bad marriage, fell in love with Maximus, and kept the truth about Lucius' father a secret. Lots of viewers have been split about this, with some thinking that plot point was implied in Gladiator and others feeling that it contradicts what was established in Gladiator.
I am strongly of the opinion that this choice was a bad one, that it does interfere with the integrity of the original film, and that Gladiator 2 would have been much better without that change. I'll give my reasons below.
1. Yes, rewriting Maximus as a cheater does destroy his entire character arc in Gladiator.
We've all seen Gladiator, right? The one where the hero has everything life can offer but longs only to return home to be with his beloved wife and son? Carries their figurines with him into battle, cares only for them when his own life is threatened, lays down to die by their graves after he finds them dead? Spends the whole movie only wanting to meet them again in the afterlife and only gets peace once he's there.
Yeah. Apparently that guy cheated on his wife with a princess. His son and Lucilla's sons are the same age, which means Maximus would have to have been married to his wife while also sleeping with Lucilla.
Maximus' entire character arc relies on his pure, unconditional, self-sacrificial love for his family. Take that away, and you have a generic action movie about a guy who wants revenge because the Emperor tried to kill him once. Even when Maximus has lost everything inside himself and cares about nothing else, he still honors the memory of his family and fights to avenge them as well as join them. He is shown still talking to his wife in the afterlife through prayer and believing she can hear him. As @streets-in-paradise pointed out, it's the equivalent of having Aragon or Hector of Troy cheat on their wives ā it's just painfully out of character for them.
There's also an element of Maximus' love and respect for his Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, another driving force in his characterization. I think Maximus has too much respect for Marcus to have had an affair with Marcus' married daughter, even if he knew Marcus maybe would have wished Maximus had married Lucilla. We never get much insight into that part of the past, but if we go by the virtues Maximus upholds throughout the movie, I just don't think Maximus would have considered sneaking behind Marcus' back to sleep with his daughter.
Either way, the emotional heart of Maximus' character is his love for his family, and retconning that so your sequel has a "bigger emotional impact" is nothing short of undignified and sloppy.
2. All the conversations between Maximus and Lucilla in Gladiator imply that they did have a romantic relationship ā but that it was public (not clandestine) and took place before either of them were married.
Yes, Maximus and Lucilla definitely were in love at some point. Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen have great chemistry, and their conversations (both of them) hold so much weight with "what could have been." Lucilla talks about how she wounded Maximus deeply as he did her, and their conversations are full of things like, "Is it so terrible seeing me again?" The weight of their previous emotional attachment pervades the movie in a way that is inextricable from the plot.
BUT. Maximus and Lucilla had their relationship A LONG TIME AGO. This is very clearly established by the way they talk to each other. Maximus has been in Germania for twelve years (taking breaks only to go home, but NEVER to visit Rome). He and Lucilla presumably met sometime before that, probably while the royal family was visiting some city where Maximus was serving in / commanding the army. The details are never established.
However, Maximus and Lucilla clearly had a public enough relationship that Marcus and Commodus knew about it, but there is never the slightest mention in Gladiator that Lucius might be Maximus' son ā something Commodus surely would have exploited had he known it was a possibility.
Maximus and Lucilla were in love, but it was before they married other people. They were probably teenagers or young adults who fell madly in love, wanted to marry, but were stopped for whatever reason (probably Maximus not wanting to play politician's games, as he implies). Maximus met the woman he eventually married, Lucilla married Lucius Verus, and they carried on with their lives until they met again at the beginning of Gladiator.
Also, Maximus talks about the respect he had for Lucilla's husband (a far cry from what Gladiator 2 implies about Lucius Verus), and she talks about how she mourned Maximus' family. Sure, you can read into the script and find stuff about how Maximus could have been Lucius' father, but it explicitly goes against the values and implications of the overall acript.
Connie Nielsen stated that she played her scenes thinking that Maximus was Lucius' father. She's an actress, and she plays Lucilla brilliantly. But she's not the scriptwriter, and no matter what her intentions were, the script implies that their relationship took place much longer ago, before either of them were married. @becomelions made a great post about how Lucilla, too, can wish as much as she wants that Maximus was Lucius' father, but he couldn't have been. Not unless you retcon all of Gladiator as fanfiction.
3. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are not meant to replace those he had with his wife and son ā they are meant to be reflections of some of the bigger themes of the film.
With all that said, this is not a hate post about how Gladiator should have been about Maximus and his wife and son, and how I hate Lucilla and Lucius' story and think it contradicts that blah blah blah. NO. The storyline with Lucilla, Lucius, and Maximus is one of the strong points of the whole movie ā but not as a replacement for the family he has lost.
In a lot of ways, Lucilla represents Rome as the ideal Maximus always believed in: beautiful, noble, and proud. When he becomes disillusioned with Rome, he becomes disillusioned with Lucilla; when he starts to believe in the hope of Rome again, he starts to believe in Lucilla again. They're always linked. Lucilla is not the woman he wants to start over with and marry now that his wife is gone. She is an old friend and ally whom he eventually learns to trust again.
Lucius, on the other hand, represents what Rome can be again. Lucius is the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, and I think Maximus longs to honor his mentor by preserving the life of his last living heir. Lucius reminds Maximus of his son, yes, and he brings out the protectiveness and the desire to do for Lucius what he couldn't do for his own son. But that doesn't mean Lucius has to be his son for that relationship to have emotional impact, as I will explain further in point 5.
4. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are genuinely integral to the film, but as they are ā not as what they could be.
Again, I absolutely love the dynamics between Maximus, Lucilla, and Lucius throughout Gladiator. Russell and Connie play off each other so well with those "I remember how you used to be but that was a long time ago" vibes. Russell and Spencer Treat Clark only share one scene, but it's one of the film's most memorable scenes.
However, we are not meant to question those relationships as "oooooh but what if Lucius is actually Maximus' son????" Maybe Ridley left that door open for the audience to consider, but again, I feel like the film contradicts that by implying that Lucilla and Maximus loved each other much longer ago.
When you make Lucius Maximus' son, Lucilla's seeking out of Maximus as his savior becomes less interesting. It becomes "I'm calling on you to save your son even though you don't know he's your son" instead of "I'm asking you to act out of the goodness inside you to save a boy who doesn't deserve to die any more than your own son did." The version we see in Gladiator is so much more impactful.
It also cheapens what Lucius' journey could have been in Gladiator 2! Again, @streets-in-paradise pointed out how much better the sequel could have been if Lucius had been acting in the shadow of a brilliant man who captivated the city of Rome but also was his friend for a little while. As I'll discuss in point 6, having the reveal of Lucius as Maximus' son is just the laziest possible route for a sequel, and it certainly drags down the dignity of the relationships we see in Gladiator.
5. One of the strengths of Maximus' choice to fight for Lucius' survival in Gladiator lies in the fact that he doesn't have any familial obligation to him.
This is one of my favorite points, because I do love the dynamics between Maximus and little Lucius! Maximus has a bone-deep obligation to save his family ā he rides for days and nights to get home and save them, but he misses them by a matter of hours. He wrestles with guilt and misery because he feels like he failed them. He was supposed to be their protector, and he couldn't save them.
BUT. Maximus has no such blood ties to Lucius. This kid is the son of Maximus' ex, the grandson of Maximus' dead mentor, and the nephew of his most hated enemy. Maximus doesn't have an obligation to Lucius as his father: he doesn't even know him until Lucius approaches him in the arena.
And that's what makes his decision to fight for Lucius so powerful. Maximus sees Lucius as the hope of Rome, and he decides that's still worth fighting for ā something he had given up on before. Even though he has no obligation to save Lucius as his son, he wants to save him as an innocent young boy caught in political matters over his head.
Again, making Lucius Maximus' son cheapens the impact of that decision. Ridley Scott built up so many amazing plot points and relationships, and it really disappoints me that he just cast them aside to make some easy money by relying on the success of the original.
6. Relying on such a trite, overused plot point to make up the emotional foundation of your sequel can only weaken your sequel and ruin the dignity of your original film.
My final point is simply that Gladiator 2 could have been really well done. They could have done something original with it (or something totally off-the-wall like Russell Crowe's vision LOL). But I think Ridley Scott was banking on that nostalgia factor, and he chose a plot point that he knew would be easily marketable ā the hero of the second film is the hero of the first film.
We've seen it done literally hundreds of times, from Star Wars to Superman to Toy Story, and having that be the big reveal of Gladiator 2 is just lazy writing. To have Lucius trying to live up to the legacy of Maximus the hero would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of literally anyone else would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of Maximus is an eye-roll-inducing move that should have been trailer bait and nothing more.
Primarily! Because it can't be the emotional foundation of the movie! Lucius has to have his own journey if it's his movie; he can't just walk in Maximus' footsteps and be like, "Father, speak to me," if he's not going on his own individual emotional journey. We as the audience have to relate to our hero because he's our hero, not because he's the son of our hero.
I'll be honest ā I probably wouldn't go see a sequel to Gladiator no matter what it was about because I think Gladiator is a perfect standalone movie and should have stayed that way. I just don't think you can recreate the scale and impact and simplicity of Gladiator in today's film industry.
However, I could at least have had respect for a sequel to Gladiator if Ridley Scott had shown some respect for his own movie. I just hate the fact that Maximus' noble, honorable character is reduced to a cheating husband whose only character trait of note is that he served Rome. Maximus is one of the best characters of the 21st century, and I love him too much to support a movie that trashes that legacy (as well as tries to replicate the beauty of my favorite film of all time).
Final thoughts:
Gladiator is a movie. You can read into it whatever you want, and it doesn't hurt anyone.
I love Gladiator more than I can say, and it's really important to me not just as a cultural icon but on a personal level as well.
Anyone who knows this blog knows how much I love Maximus Decimus Meridius, and Ridley's choice to change Maximus' character so drastically is one that really just ticks me off.
To me personally, Gladiator 2 is not canon, and I will never consider it so on this blog.
#i woke up this morning and chose literary analysis#i've been drafting this forever but now it's coming to your dashboard#enjoy my passionate defense of gladiator and maximus#as always this is not a hate post for anyone who enjoyed gladiator 2#this is my reasoning for why i won't consider it canon#but like i said this is my one contoversial post and i'm now done talking about it#except maybe in a few tags if i'm in a feisty mood#this is a happy blog where i come to obsess over maximus and gladiator and russell crowe's other movies#anyway thanks for reading if you read it#it's a monster of an analysis and i wrote it in an hour#probably not gonna look at it again either because i don't want to think about it#gladiator#text posts#maximus#maximus decimus meridius#gladiator 2000#russell crowe#connie nielsen#lucilla#lucius verus#ridley scott
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hi! i saw on your shipping chart you had meenah and cronus as moirails and noted 'would have prevented all problems' and ive never really seen that take before. id love to hear your thoughts on that if you wanted to talk about them, your analysis in general is always amazing
Sure! I know this one's going to be controversial, but TBH I'm kind of fascinated by their dynamic. So please bear with me here and come into it with an open mind; I was also really surprised when I noticed what was going on.
Also, standard disclaimer that nobody has to agree with me or ship my ships, I literally don't care, HCs are valid, death of the author, etc. etc. This is just a canon discussion blog, and there's kind of a weird amount to read into in the canon between these two.
Okay, so, first of all, quick refresher on moirallegiance: it's not necessarily about being BFFs, it's very specifically about pacifying each other, keeping each other calm and stable, and preventing each other from causing harm to oneself or to others.
Ergo, the marker of moirallegiance rests not on "do these two get along as BFFs?" and instead on "do these two keep each other calm and/or mitigate each others' harm".
So with that out of the way, Cronus and Meenah. We know that Cronus has a redcrush on her, echoing Eridan's redcrush on Feferi, and that Meenah is not interested at all. Cronus shoots his shot with her, she's like ick, no & leaves, and that's that on that. Cronus then rounds on Mituna and says some unbelievably cruel and shitty stuff, but here's Point #1 - Meenah shows up again, and Cronus stops immediately, and then is noticeably calmer and friendlier to Mituna. Compare:
CRONUS: you are a brain damaged reject on a team full of rejects. a rejects reject. i vwould havwe culled you myself if that vword meant vwhat it should havwe on our planet.
-
CRONUS: vwell, this is clearly absurd, but nyeh, vwhat the heck. CRONUS: mituna, i just cant take it anymore. i think my ghost is going to kill itself. MITUNA: WH0W4H L375 FUCK!!!!! CRONUS: vwait... CRONUS: really? MITUNA: N0 0Y0 P135H3 0FF 1ND107 FUGG1NG G4R484G3 Ā #FUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0U CRONUS: oh.
So at the very least, SOMETHING conciliatory seems to be happening here, whether that's pale or ashen. But I'm going with pale, because it continues.
Their second conversation together is really interesting - not only has Cronus stopped redflirting with her, but he no longer even seems interested. Compare this to the section with Mituna above:
CRONUS: oh sure. no grub sauce on your hands! MEENAH: wow you did it MEENAH: ampora you totally changed my mind about you lets start makin out immediately Ā #not CRONUS: just admit it. you havwe it vwithin you to be just as harsh to our behelmeted buddy as i am, if not more
Like, he doesn't even ACKNOWLEDGE the "let's make out #not". Not even in an indignant "see, you keep playing with my collapsing and expanding bladder based vwascular system" kind of way. Literally just breezes right by it, which says to me that he isn't even really that into her concupiscently.
But more interesting are the actual contents of the conversation. Cronus is the only person on the entire team who's able to make Meenah have misgivings about how awesome the Condy is.
MEENAH: man MEENAH: a girls gotta have fuel for her pimp ride know what im sayin MEENAH: like MEENAH: i probably took care of him good MEENAH: you know how it is someones gotta take care of the guy anyways MEENAH: and... yeah #38(
This is the first and only time that Meenah even acknowledges that the Condy - herself at her worst - is kind of shitty. This is the first and only time she's ever expressed any emotion for the Condy other than fangirlish admiration or rage against Caluborn for enslaving her. For whatever reason, she actually listens to Cronus when Cronus takes her to task, and he's actually able to make her genuinely reflect on her worst tendencies.
But maybe more damning is the fact that in their first real conversation together for nearly an eon, she almost fixes him:
MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn. MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo
[...]
CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up.
Cronus's fundamental emotional problem is a sense of purposelesness and ennui. Born into a caste of high privilege, with his identity overshadowed by said position, he's been handed an unpleasant cocktail of entitlement, lack of true emotional support or connection, and lack of a real, authentic personal identity - especially because the thing he DID seem to derive a sense of identity and purpose from - his little Harry Potter wizard backstory - was driven out of him. In other words, he's kind of a shitty rich kid that doesn't really know who he is outside of that, and his humankin stuff is an attempt to fill the wizard hole without addressing his real underlying issues. It's a Bad Thing for him to be doing, and something he should drop in order to start addressing his genuine insecurities, feelings of emptiness, and lack of identity or purpose. In other words, it's harm he's performing on himself, and a single conversation with Meenah being enough to make him reconsider it? Hmmmmmm.
In fact, I'm not the only one picking up on the pale vibes. The specific way that Kankri interrupts the two reads as incredibly pick-me in pale:
KANKRI: Listen, I was d9ing y9u a fav9r. Y9u d9n't need t9 6e dating any9ne wh9 can't appreciate y9u f9r wh9 y9u really are, 9r m9re imp9rtantly, which fantasy versi9n 9f y9urself y9u m9st str9ngly identify with.
[...]
I just wanted y9u t9 kn9w that I'm here f9r y9u, and am prepared t9 lecture t9 y9u extensively, I mean, listen t9 y9u extensively, a69ut y9ur ultra-imp9rtant pr96lem.
"Don't take Meenah's advice about your problems! Take mine instead, I care about you sooo much more than she does!" lol. I have a whole essay on how Kankri and Cronus are actually super toxic for each other, in an interesting foil to Karkat and Eridan, which I'll link here in a bit (I'm on mobile RN and it's hard enough C/Ping my sources).
In any case, Kankri slides in at exactly the moment where Meenah's about to fix Cronus, and proceeds to make Cronus worse. The details are in the Cronus and Kankri essay, but TL;DR it's kind of implied that Kankri is the one who talked Cronus out of the wizard stuff in the first place, which pretty much disqualifies the two's relationship from pale, given how harmful that was. This whole thing is pretty reminiscent of Gamzee coming between Karkat and Eridan when Eridan is trying to comfort Karkat about Sollux dying, because it's implied Gamzee has a palecrush on the guy. That might be subjective, though.
What isn't subjective is the fact that Meenah unironically defends Cronus's wizard beliefs when Aranea starts shitting on them.
ARANEA: Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought [Cronus's wizard beliefs were] all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I........ ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line.
She doesn't do this for anybody else. Not long after, it turns out she's absolutely joking about defending Kurloz:
MEENAH: wow serket MEENAH: just wow so rude MEENAH: poor clown ARANEA: Don't give me that! I seem to remem8er you having more than a few unkind words for him 8ehind his 8ack. MEENAH: yeah im messin witchu he sux
And even proceeds to shit on HIS spiritual bullfuck:
MEENAH: )(ONK ARANEA: Honk honk! ::::) MEENAH: lol im glad we can both agree that clowny fuckin soda cult is the dumbest shit ever
So... weird, huh? Seems like she gives Cronus special treatment for some reason.
That's it for the diegetic stuff to go over, which, yes, means that there's a bit of non-diegetic stuff to discuss. It's not much, but here's Hussie's commentary from the Act 5 Act 2 book, on Mindfang's journal entries about Dualscar leading up to the 3x showdown (emphasis mine):
In the end, even though violets are the ruling class, she doesn't care much about them either. All she cares about is keeping her stranglehold on power with this complex, staggered, oppression-based sort of pyramid scheme. Note how it says the Condesce doesn't even know who Dualscar is. That's how insignificant he is, ultimately. Similarly, all Eridan was to Feferi after a while was a tiresome pest. The way that situation played out could also be seen as long-delayed karmic backlash for Dualscar's irrelevance to her, at least from a very Amporan point of view.
Now, while the specific context here is about how, from the point of view of a shitty entitled guy, Eridan killing Feferi is kind of a retribution for the Condy not giving a shit about Dualscar, all of Hussie's commentary is meant to be interrogated just as much as the base text, and it just makes me wonder. The dancestors very much treat their Alternian counterparts as alternate versions of themselves, consistent throughout their interactions, meaning we ought to consider Duascar and the Condesce to be versions of Cronus and Meenah.
If it is, in fact, the case that Cronus and Meenah would've made for excellent, harm-reducing moirails for each other, then murderstuck being a karmic backlash for their ultimate irrelevance to each other takes on a much greater implication - one that traces back to Cronus's classpect.
Bards start off massive karmic chain reactions, resulting in improbable victory or abject defeat, sometimes both; Hope is an aspect whose main application is making fake things real.
So I'm not saying that Cronus believing that an evil wizard attacked him when he was younger but was inadvertently sealed away and that Cronus was therefore karmically destined to defeat this wizard, but then having his beliefs shattered halfway through, led to him karmically contributing to the eventual creation of LE via his Hope abilities "inviting destruction" by making only the first half of his fake prophecy true, but - oh, no, wait, I am saying that. Man, that really sucks for everybody. If only Cronus had a friend who was, for whatever reason, willing to stick up for his dumbass wizard faith.
If only.
#homestuck#cronus ampora#meenah peixes#look i AM exaggerating when I say pale cronah would have prevented EVERYTHING#the dancestors have a massive list of problems and cronus and meenah are just two contributers#(though meenah is probably the largest single one)#but it probably would've helped a lot of they had gotten together pale because#for Some Reason#meenah actually listens to cronus and feels bad when he calls her out for being an asshole#and cronus really values her opinion and she's willing to stick up for him#maybe it isnt pale like i said you dont have to agree with me or ship my ships idc#it is literally not that serious#but at least i think we should take notice that they seem to be good for each other as friends#and they're a lot closer than they let on
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Heylo! I wanted to ask about your experience post initiation if that's alright .i recently did a tarot reading and got told that to please spirits in order to begin a good working relationship, i must contemplate and be ready to be Changed. there were lots of signs that it could lead to feelings of isolation, and otherness but it will lead me deep into myself (sry if this is too long.) i want to know if u went through something similar, or something else, and is it worth it personally for you. I would also love some pointers as to what I'm supposed to contemplate about. I don't mind the isolation but maybe I'm not understanding some key aspect of it. anyway thank you and i love your blog it's an irreplaceable resource for me. :)
Hi :)
Spirit-lead initiation into witchcraft is a controversial topic, I think in part because it can be very uncomfortable to discuss.
I have been relatively open on my blog that my initiatory experience was extremely painful and required a level of sacrifice and transformation that I was too immature to comprehend at the beginning of the process. Even now it's not something I'm sure I could articulate.
For me it was a process that lasted the majority of a decade. I think this is a relatively average timeline - which I just bring up because I think it's useful to point out that if you are facing the same sort of thing that I faced, it's not just going to be over in a few weeks or months.
Was it worth it personally for me? I don't know. Right now, my answer is that I love who I am and I like my life, and I wouldn't be who I am or have this life if I didn't go through that process. I used to say I'd never do it again if I had the choice. Now, a few years after the fact, sometimes I say I'd do it again. Maybe in a decade I'll think it was worth it.
It's my belief that the sort of initiatory process I, and others, have gone through, isn't necessary for most people to form a good working relationship with the spirits.
I believe that if you have the choice, you should very, very carefully contemplate initiation and only agree to it after a prolonged period of reflection.
So, what's there to contemplate? I dunno. Otherness on the path to spirit-working was a major part of my trip, so if we are kindred, here's maybe something to contemplate:
You are a boulder. You are a very nice boulder in the wilderness. You're composed of many varieties of minerals and metals. You are a gorgeous boulder, glittering in the sunlight, hosting a unique map of inclusions and ore veins unlike any other boulder in the world.
You sit high up on a mountainside. A few meters behind you is a river. Below you is a dry valley.
The waters of the river are pressing up behind you. They rush past you, sweeping by, continuing their eternal circuit in the mountain-range, but rarely trickling into the dry valley below.
One day, you gain an interest - as some boulders do - in allowing some of the water to trickle past you into the valley below. The secrets of nature will allow you to sometimes let water to lap up over your sides, and through narrow crevices, to water the plants you find to be most beautiful, and provide drinking pools for the little animals you hold most dear.
Little by little, the valley beneath you begins to change as you apply yourself to learning the secrets of nature and letting the water flow past you.
After some time, the water begins to whisper in your ear. It appreciates your interest in its flow - it likes your focus on the river. A deal can be brokered:
The river will dissolve only some of the minerals and inclusions that run through you, creating hollow tunnels. Through these tunnels, the water can flow much more easily and rapidly.
But there are conditions.
The conditions are that whatever is washed away can never be returned. How could it? What force in the universe could restore the crystalline structure within you once the waters have carried it away?
And, the river chooses which inclusions will be removed. The river is very wise in these matters; it knows better than anyone how water can best flow through any boulder. It isn't up to you to choose what leaves, and it isn't up to you to choose the nature in which the water will flow through you.
Finally, if you use the secrets of nature to ever stop the flow of water through the new inclusions, you are at risk of crumbling away. The empty caverns within you will dry up and leave you empty in places that should be whole.
The river asks you to contemplate and return with an answer.
Of course it leads you deep into yourself. The river is going to run right through you.
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REQUESTS ARE OPEN
Hey there, welcome to the-astral-express-archive, an unofficial fanblog for official Honkai: Star Rail resources. Everyone can call me Seven or Sev, and I'm also the owner of genshinresource (now a retired blog). This post might be long so Iāll keep the main content under break.
Below are a few things everyone should keep in mind before following/interacting with this blog:
Please avoid bringing up all kinds of real-life related controversies in reblogs. I believe people who come here all want to have an enjoyable time looking at their favorite scenes and characters and maybe, just for a moment, forget about the difficulties they have to go through in life, and this also applies to me as well as a person. While I'm really thankful when someone shares their creations or translations for non-English contents in the reblogs, sometimes the negativity coming from people who hate on some characters for how they look or act, which is seen as "controversial" in real life, affect my mental state a lot. What I wanna say is, If anyone wants to vent their frustration over fictional characters then for God's sake, please do it somewhere else, don't do it here, I really appreciate it.
This blog is NOT spoiler-free but I'll try not to post any directly without prior warnings, especially in-game contents like story CGs and such. If youāre not comfortable seeing any content(s) here, please consider blocking/muting/filtering respective tag(s).
I also don't post leaks or any content related to leaks. All contents you see here were officially released by miHoYo/HoYoverse/COGNOSPHERE and/or their respective owners in-game and/or publicly by the time they are posted.
I usually don't reply to Ask messages aside from questions, feedback and requests to minimize clutters but rest assured, I read and really, really appreciate every single positive and encouraging message everyone sends to me. They're the energy and motivation I need to keep running this blog for as long as I can. Thank you so so much, everyone.
NAVIGATION
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[Outdated/Being reworked on] Masterlist/Tags page: This page is the main masterlist of this blog. All tags assigned in this blog are grouped into categories and thereās a filter at the top of the page if when you want to see specific groups of tags.
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Last updated: July 3, 2024
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please could we get cuddling headcanons for gojo geto and nanami. seriously though i love your blog your one of my new favourite writers!
Oh reader, that is so sweet of you to say! Thank you so much Dear. and flattery will get you everywhere around here <3 that being said,
Now Presenting...
Starring: Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, Kento Nanami, and Ryomen Sukuna (I had to cast him, I'm sorry!)
Satoru Gojo
His love language is physical touch, so you know this man is a massive cuddle bug! If you have the opportunity, you guys are cuddling.
This may be controversial but I stand by this next take: He is the little spoon. Like, Heāll be the big spoon, but he 100% prefers to be the little spoon
Heās a soft boy that just needs a hug ok? Protect him!
His favorite date nights are stay at home movie nights. Not because he likes movies, he does, but itās not why. Heās excited to hold you close while you drift to sleep, the soft sounds of you snoring reminding him that there is beauty in the small moments of life.
I feel so bad for you guys in the summer, because it doesnāt matter to him how hot it is, heās going to cuddle with you. Youāre going to pass out tangled in his arms and wake up tangled in them. Who needs his giant California king, if he has it his way, y'all take up only enough space for a twin
He just wants to hold you while the two of you whisper about your future together. The colors of your wedding, how many kids the two of you wanted, where youād move your family once it was all said and done.
Itās all fantasy, of course. The equivalent of making up the most dramatic scenarios to soothe yourself to sleep. But still, it gives him a fleeting sense of comfort. Late at night, when itās just him and the sound of your steady heart-beat, it gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, one day he wonāt just be playing domestic with you. He can actually be domestic with you.
Maybe that's why Gojo values cuddling so much. Heās intimacy starved and needs to create it in anyway, ya know?
Anyways, moral of the story is: Satoru loves cuddling, and I hope you do too!
Ā Sidenote: I just know this man gives the best hugs/cuddles. His arms are that long for a reason god damn it.
Suguru Geto
ā¦..Heās not a big cuddler- HEY HEY, PUT AWAY THE PITCHFORKS, LET ME EXPLAIN-
Heās not a big cuddler! Itās hot, he doesnāt know where to put his limbs, and his arm always falls asleep.Ā
Which is why when you insist on cuddling with him and he's actually comfortable itās kind of a big deal for him. (See? Put down your torches.)
He still doesnāt want to admit that he likes cuddling though. At this point itās like, almost a pride thing. So heās a sneaky cuddler.Ā
Youāre watching Hulu on the couch when suddenly there's an arm around you. You go to sleep on separate sides of the bed but wake up tangled in his arms. Youāre quietly reading on your front porch and suddenly his arms are wrapped around you, asking you about the book.
My point being, He never directly asks for cuddles, he just kinda cuddles you then reads your body language to see if heās welcome or not, ya feel?
I will say, and yall should see this coming, the only time heās openly receptive to cuddles is when heās showing you new music.Ā
Heāll hold you close, playing with your fingers while the two of you discuss lyrical meanings and parts of the music you like.Ā
Heāll tap out the beat of the song on your thigh while he holds you what feels impossibly close, kissing the top of your head. You could feel the vibration in his chest as he hummed along to the melody. Music will always be how Suguru feels intimacy.
I really do always bring it back to music with him, donāt I?
Kento Nanami
Nanami honestly feels neutral about cuddling. If you want it, cool! If not, also cool. He doesnāt crave it the way Gojo does, but he also isnāt against it the way Geto is.
The exception being after a mission. Especially the missions that take him away from home. When he gets home from those, heās dropping his bags on the floor then holding out his arms and making grabby hands.
Missions always suck for Nanami since he started dating you, because now heās scared of death. Donāt get me wrong, beforehand he wasnāt suicidal or anything- he for sure wasnāt going to make stupid moves or put his life at risk. But death also didnāt scare him, it just came with the job.
But now youāre here. And he knows that if he dies, Itās going to destroy you. He canāt have that, so his already stressful job just got 10000 times more stressful, because literally every mission is a brush with death for a first grade sorcerer.
So when he gets home, The only thing he wants is to collapse on your shared bed, and hold the person he does all of this for. Itās the reward he gets for making it this far.
Itās quiet too. Nanami is not one to talk about his work, but you can tell how stressful it was by how long he insists on cuddling with you. Only an hour or two? Eh, probably not that big of a deal. But one time he literally held you until you both fell asleep and well into the next morning. Satoru let you know that Nanami actually almost died that night, and only survived thanks to Shoko being a healer.Ā
Nanami almost killed him for telling you. He never wants you to worry.
Also heās definitely the big spoon. Look at him. Tell me Iām wrong.
He just takes comfort in your presence, knowing youāre there and you love him helps.
Someone give Nanami a hug for me, thank youuu
Ryomen Sukuna
Oh Ryomen, my boy. What are we going to do with you? Youāre not a part of the request and you donāt fit it, but I have to force you into all things, donāt I?
As a heads up, Sukuna comes with a slight nsfw warning. It is suggestive.
Sukuna is not into cuddling. Really, heās ambivalent at best, against at worst, any touch that doesnāt lead to sex.
That doesnāt mean he doesnāt cuddle though. If youāre watching tv or going to bed and it's convenient, whatever. He wonāt push you away.Ā
Heās not going to hide anything that pops up either if you get what Iām saying. Heās less of a āoh my badā type of guy and more of a āand what are you gonna do about it?ā kinda guy.
Now, all of that being said, Iāve said before that Sukuna lives in a domestic delusion with you in his head. So if you go too long without asking him to cuddle up with you, he gets angry about it. Like, what, is he not good enough to cuddle you now?! Get over here and accept his affection!
If that sounds confusing to you that's because yes. It is!
Really, the tragedy of Ryomen is that he craves intimacy and affection, but he can never bring himself to admit that because that would mean weakness and vulnerability. He wants you to recognize that he needs these things without him telling you. Like, of course he likes cuddling! He doesnāt kill you when you cuddle him, does that not make it obvious! It shouldnāt matter heās told you he doesnāt like it!
God I feel so bad for all the Sukuna girlies out there.
Me, itās me. I may be Gojos-Thot-Patrol, but I am 1000% Ryomens thot š«
Oh, as a final bit, his favorite part about cuddling with you is your warmth. You heard me. Heās always cold as a curse, and canāt really generate his own body heat. So yours is intoxicating. If he could spend eternity basking in your warmth, he would <3
#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#ryomen sukuna#satoru gojo#nanami kento#suguru geto#sukuna x reader#gojo x reader#nanami x reader#geto x reader#satoru gojo headcanons#nanami kento headcanons#ryomen sukuna headcanons#suguru geto headcanons
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