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miraculouslbcnreactions · 5 months ago

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Since you've mentioned Scarlet Lady in one of your posts, what's your opinion on it?

I've mentioned before that I'm a big Scarlet Lady fan, which is the only reason that I'm comfortable answering asks like this one. I don't publicly criticize the content of hobby creators. That's wildly inappropriate! Punch up, not down.

The linked post was a general discussion of the adaptation process and how @zoe-oneesama did a fantastic job, so for this one, I'm just going to do some general gushing because I do actually like praising and enjoying things!

Scarlet Lady's chosen format (comic) allows it to have this wonderful conversation with canon where it can rely on the framework of canon to tell it's own story while also using canon for jokes and meta commentary. This means that Scarlet Lady is about as close as fan content can get to a direct reboot because it's able to have moments like this one from the comic's first post:

[Image description: Adrien standing in his room after transforming into Chat Noir for the first time. He is beaming and his eyes are shining with excitement as he exclaims, "This is gonna be awesome!"]

A single picture that communicates everything we need to know about Adrien getting his miraculous. When I've done this same thing in fanfic, I had to write out the full scene because that's how novels work. You have to give the full picture. With a comic, you can just quickly acknowledge this thing that we all already know and then move on to the new stuff. A picture really is worth a thousand words! (Or, in my case, more like two thousand...)

This allows Zoe to keep the same akumas that we get in canon without her story feeling like a boring rehash because she can focus on what's different in her version. A novelization of the same content would have to show both the stuff that stays the same and the stuff that changes for it to be coherent. That's a lot less fun to read and write. It's why I basically never revisit canon akumas in my own stuff. It's just too derivative for the written word.

This is one of the big reasons that I loved Scarlet Lady. Because it was able to have that more directly conversation with canon, it was able to take canon and say, "hey, why don't we embrace the tone that you established in season one and retell the story with that vibe?" That's something that I desperately wanted to see, but that is totally unsuited to my chosen artistic form. It couldn't be a novel. It had to be a comic.

If you want to know what a true formula show version of Miraculous would look like, Scarlet Lady is it. It does everything that Miraculous should have done:

Sticks to a lighthearted tone where nothing is ever super serious

Keeps Gabriel entirely unsympathetic

Has slow character development and background hints at a bigger plot as the only serial elements, allowing the individual episodes to be their own story while never feeling incomplete or rushed

Allows characters other than Marinette to shine while keeping Marinette as the clear main character

Makes Adrien narratively important

MAKES THE LOVE SQUARE CUTE SO I CAN ACTUALLY SHIP IT

Understands that Lila and Chloe can't coexist as antagonists

Reverses the love square, which is the best way to tell their story. Yes, I will die on my "love diamond" hill. It's a good hill. Come join me. I'll bring cookies.

I could keep going, but you hopefully get my point. While Scarlet Lady is certainly not the only way to do a formula version of canon, it's proof that a formula version does work! You don't have to go the serious route for Miraculous to be successful.

I want to take some time to gush about the ending, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll put that gushing under a "read more" in case anyone hasn't seen it. I'll finish out this less spoilerish section with this:

I feel like some people are surprised when they learn that I love Scarlet Lady because - as some of you have probably picked up - it is quite different from my ideal version of canon. I'm not sure why that would stop me from enjoying a thing, though. It's important to remember that our personal ideals are not the only way to tell a good story. There are lots of ways to take what canon gave us and make something wonderful! It's part of the reason that I enjoy being in a fandom.

If I only wanted to see my ideal take on canon, then I'd stick to writing/imagining my own stories. But I don't want that! I like seeing alternate takes, too. Scarlet Lady is one of my personal favorites. It's completely different from anything that I'd ever think to write and that's why I'm so glad that it exists! I like being entertained just as much as I like creating my own entertainment and I don't want to only read stories that look like something I'd write. That's boring!

Spoilers below:

I've mentioned before that there are many, many ways to properly handle Chloe's character and Zoe did such a good job with her take on that! Chloe isn't absolved of all the things she did wrong, but she's also treated as a young woman with the ability to change.

While the comic bares the name of Chloe's alter ego, she was the never the main character. She never went on a journey. The story kept her to her shallow season-one self: a petty brat who just wanted attention. It did this because that's who Chloe was in canon and who Chloe needed to be for the comic to work.

The first time we see any complexity from Chloe is in the comic's final few episodes, which was absolutely the right call for Zoe to make! In a recent post, I talked about how the end of a formula show is the only time when you can break the formula in catastrophic ways and that's what Zoe did. She kept Chloe static until it was time to end the story and that's when the formula breaks. That's when Chloe gets depth because, once she has depth, the formula doesn't work.

That depth is not used to redeem Chloe, but to show us that there's hope for Chloe. That this petty brat who we've been dealing with has some serious issues and needs help. Help that she's going to get far away from the people that she's hurt because her issues aren't an excuse for what she's done. They don't erase the harm that she caused. At the same time, understanding her issues makes us hope that she can be better now and Scarlet Lady took a moment to give us that hope. To show us the START of Chloe's true story.

That is the kind of ending that I have wanted to see in so many properties!!! It was so wonderful to finally get one that did this right. A story that understood that full redemption to the team and damnation to death/suffering are extremes on a scale of possibilities. You don't have to go to extremes! You can fall in the middle and the middle is a perfect, natural place for Chloe to land in this kind of story. Fully redeeming or even fully damning Chloe simply doesn't work in lighthearted formula content. It's too big a lift as canon has already demonstrated.

I also loved Zoe's take on Emilie. I've mentioned that I don't like evil Emilie in part because it makes her revival feel like the start of a new story. She's back and she'd bad, so we have to take her down now! But I don't want that. I want the story to end when Gabriel is stopped. Zoe does this by giving us an Emilie that is another perfect middle ground. She matches canon's uncomfortable implications without feeling like a true villain who is a threat to society.

#blackmonarque #scarlet lady praise #scarlet lady comic

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thankskenpenders · 16 days ago

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Thoughts on two specific areas of the writing in Sonic X Shadow Generations

The best new 3D Sonic game in over a decade (or even two, depending on who you ask) dropped late last year. And I didn't write anything about it! Sometimes life happens. Well, I've finally sat down to finish Shadow Generations, and by now everyone has already been singing its praises for three months. This is the rare instance where the entire Sonic fandom, and even mainstream reviewers, are in agreement on something. The level design is the best it's been in a long, long time and the cool factor is off the charts, embracing Sonic's peak cringe era in an incredibly confident way. It's great. If you're even reading this post, you probably don't need me to tell you that. So I won't!

No, what I'm really interested in here is the writing. Because this is me we're talking about. But I actually don't want to talk about the main narrative of Shadow Generations, which is really solid little story about Black Doom trying to mold Shadow into his perfect soldier. No, I'd like to zero in on two other aspects of the writing here: the revisions made to Sonic Generations, and Gerald Robotnik's unlockable journal.

The updated Sonic Generations script

The new package mostly presents Sonic Generations how you remember it. There are some tweaks, but it's not a major overhaul. Graphically, I don't think the game has been touched much, if at all. I certainly can't notice any difference without a side-by-side comparison, despite playing it on a PS5. The most notable update is that the game's script has been rewritten by Ian Flynn.

Naturally, this caught my attention. Generations always had a nothingburger story, so with Ian rewriting Pontac and Graff's lame dialogue there was nowhere to go but up. (I don't like to pin the blame for those games' stories entirely on them, as a ton of it was dictated to them by Sonic Team, but, well, I don't think they're very good dialogue writers.) But it's less a complete rewrite and more like Ian was brought on as a script doctor for some minor touch ups here and there. Many lines of dialogue are completely identical to how they were originally written in 2011, and many others only have slight wording changes. Ian was clearly not allowed to request additional scenes or extend the ones that already existed. He has to match the original beat for beat so that they can reuse 99% of the cutscene animations. Don't expect it to be a whole new experience compared to the original.

Still, I think the new script is an improvement, albeit a minor one. Various things have been tweaked to maintain characterization consistency. Cream calls Sonic "Mr. Sonic" instead of just "Sonic." Instead of calling Sonic "buddy," Rouge uses the pet name "Blue," like she tends to do in things like the IDW comics. Espio doesn't have to remind you in the dialogue that he's a ninja, and he no longer has a line making it sound like he has some kind of soul reading power. I also like that Modern Sonic now actually has responses to what his friends say when he rescues them, rather than being silent like Classic Sonic. They won't blow you away, but they make Sonic feel a little more engaged with everything.

In general, the altered dialogue just seems tighter to me, and some of the more childish or trite wording of Pontac and Graff's script has been altered. Here, let's actually make a direct comparison, just because this stuff is interesting to me as a writer. Here's a couple lines from after the Egg Dragoon fight late in the game, in the original script:

Modern Eggman: Ooooh... I can't believe this! I was supposed to beat you this time. Modern Sonic: Aw, I'm sorry! I didn't get that memo. I beat you every time! [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat this guy every time. It's like it's our job or something!

This is a simple exchange. Eggman is mad that he lost. Sonic is unflappably confident because he always beats Eggman, and he explains this to his younger self. But the wording here isn't particularly good. Eggman's simple and direct wording makes him come off like a little kid who's mad because his older brother beat him at Mario Kart, rather than a mad scientist who just had his plans foiled. It's making light of the situation.

And I've never liked Sonic saying "It's like it's our job or something!" That doesn't feel like a thing Sonic would say, it feels like a thing an outside observer would say about Sonic. This is a frequent problem with so-called "MCU dialogue," where quips meant to echo the commentary of a casual, somewhat disinterested audience are inserted into the story itself so that the writers can be like "See? We get it. We're genre-savvy, too!" It also just reminds me of bad Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric lines like "Rings! It's like they're made for me!"

And then here's Ian's rewrite:

Modern Eggman: I recalibrated everything! This was supposed to be my time! Modern Sonic: Oh, please, keep dreamin', Egg-head. I beat you every time. [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat him every time. Our score card's flawless.

Eggman's still mad about his defeat, but the line "I recalibrated everything!" makes it more specific. He put all this work into the engineering side of his latest scheme and got tunnel vision, thinking if he got his creations just right there'd be no way he could lose. "This was supposed to be my time!" also turns it into a time travel pun, which is a bonus. He's still pitching a fit over losing, but it feels more like Eggman pitching a fit, rather than sounding childish.

And then instead of saying that beating Eggman is "like his job or something," Sonic says he's got a flawless score card against Eggman. He doesn't take Eggman seriously as a threat—at least, not to his face. He acts like it's all a game. But he conveys this in a way that feels truer to the character, rather than feeling like the words of a real world observer poking fun at the tropes of the Sonic series.

Is this amazing, A+ dialogue that blows me away? No. Again, it's not a completely different scene from the one we already had. Ian had to fit the beats of what was already there. He couldn't go all out and write an all new story confirming his longstanding headcanon that the Time Eater is a remnant of Solaris or whatever. But the wording here makes the existing story land a little better and feel truer to the characters in subtle ways.

But to me, the main change is that the Sonics and Tailses seem to have a more solid understanding of what's going on with the timeline and the Time Eater, compared to how idiotic they sometimes seemed in the original game. Which is good! No more standing outside Green Hill and wondering why it seems so familiar. Thank god. As part of this, yes, there are a few more references to past games in the dialogue, like Sonic briefly being confused about the fact that they're time traveling without the Time Stones, or South Island and Westside Island being acknowledged as the normal locations of Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Yes, ha ha, insert joke about how Ian loves references here. Look, it's Sonic fucking Generations. It's a game built entirely out of nostalgic references. Just own it! And, again, in this instance Sonic and Tails come off as less stupid when they make it clear that they do, in fact, remember their adventures from presumably less than a year ago in-universe.

Eggman, too, seems to have a better understanding of the powers he's toying with. Where in the original vesion his focus was simply on going back in time to undo his previous defeats and he seemed kind of oblivious to how much the Time Eater was actually fucking up the universe, here Eggman says he wants to use the Time Eater to give himself complete control over the entire timeline. Eggman also makes way fewer references to his own failures and shortcomings. Of course he won't admit that Sonic has defeated him time and time again. To him, he's never truly lost—Sonic just keeps delaying the inevitable total victory for the Eggman Empire.

So, yes. The new Sonic Generations script is better. It won't blow anyone away, but it's better than it was. It's been elevated from "kinda lame" to "fine." No, if you really wanna see Ian flex his ability to breathe new life into old Sonic stories, look no further than...

Gerald Robotnik's Journal

Hoo boy.

The story of what happened aboard the ARK has always been... a bit confusing, to say the least. Fans with encyclopedic knowledge of the script for every route of Shadow '05 may disagree, but it's the truth. We've had all the pieces to understand the story for a long time now, but that info was given to us out of order by a pair of unreliable narrators—Gerald, who became a vengeful lunatic shortly before his death, and Shadow, who was subjected to multiple rounds of amnesia and altered memories. Some of the ambiguity left by Sonic Adventure 2 was cleared up in Shadow '05, but that game also retconned in a bunch of new elements to Shadow's backstory (aliens!) that lead to further confusion. Not to mention the fact that that game had multiple routes and only revealed the truth about Shadow if you sat on the ultimate final boss battle for WAY longer than the fight would normally last. Or the fact that Sonic X made its own tweaks in its telling of the story. Or the fact that none of these things ever had the best English translations. I can't blame anyone who hasn't played those games in two decades for not remembering the truth about these characters and getting some details mixed up.

What we needed was something to piece together all of the info we have into one coherent backstory, told in chronological order. And thanks to Shadow Generations, we have that, in the form of an official journal tying together what we knew from Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow '05, and Sonic Battle into the tragic tale of Gerald's rise and fall.

Ian Flynn was the perfect man for the job here as the guy who started his career by tidying up the mess that was the first 159 issues if Archie Sonic. This is what he excels at: taking disparate bits of weird Sonic lore from multiple different sources, boiling them down to their most interesting elements, and connecting it together in a way that will make the audience see the dramatic potential he's always known was there. Rather than feeling like a cynical exercise in franchise building, going back and explaining things that never needed explaining so that people can add more bullet points to the wiki, he puts a new spin on things that retroactively enriches those past stories. The story here means something to the characters involved and gives us a better understanding of them as people, rather than as plot devices to motivate Shadow.

(And, of course, Ian didn't do this journal alone. He wrote the story, but I also have to give a huge shout out to Evan Stanley, who made the final product. All of her handwritten journal entries, sketches, and "photos" included throughout. The physical damage done to the journal over the course of 50 tumultuous years, passing from Gerald to Eggman to a certain special someone at GUN. The way Gerald's handwriting gets less and less legible as his mental state declines. So much love was put into what could have been a mere text dump in a menu, and it really elevates it to the next level. Congrats on officially getting hired by Sega, Evan, you've sure as hell earned it!)

The main idea the journal conveys is that Gerald was under a lot of pressure from a lot of different parties—GUN, the President, his colleagues aboard the ARK, Black Doom, even his own family—and boy did it get to him. The known incidents aboard the ARK mentioned in previous games are put together here to form a story where everything slowly spirals out of control as Gerald keeps compromising his morals to further his research, thinking he'll eventually find some way out of all this because he's a genius. I won't recap that whole story here (if you haven't already played the game and read the journal entries, I would highly recommend at least reading it on the Sonic wiki), but I'd like to highlight my favorite elements of the story, as Ian tells it here.

1) The Eclipse Cannon

Here's something that never quite made sense in Sonic Adventure 2: why does the ARK have a laser that can blow up the Earth built into it? It was supposed to be a peaceful research colony. Sure, Gerald went crazy and swore revenge on the Earth, but, like... when did he have an opportunity to go back up to the ARK and modify it? Did he have someone else do it? How? The ARK was raided by GUN and shut down! And then they arrested him, held him in prison for an unclear period of time, and executed him by firing squad when he was no longer useful! It doesn't add up. Shadow 'the Hedgehog '05 would give its own answer by introducing the Black Arms and saying that the Eclipse Cannon was always supposed to be a secret trump card against the Black Comet. But, like... we know that's kind of a bullshit answer, right? You don't need enough power to blow up a whole planet just to destroy a comet.

Well, the new journal retains what we already knew, but it paints a much more complete picture.

See, long before Gerald ever made a Faustian bargain with Black Doom, he had already made one with an even greater evil: the military. GUN gave Gerald much of the funding for the ARK, Gerald's personal utopian research station in space, but it didn't take long for GUN to start pressuring him to design them weapons. Gerald tried to get GUN off his back by personally contacting the President of the United Federation, and the President gave him an alternative: how about, instead, you just use your genius brain to figure out the secret to immortality for us, so our soldiers can be immortal? Gerald was initially sickened by the notion and found it completely absurd, like chasing a shadow... but given no other option, the sarcastically named Project Shadow soon began in earnest. (Maria would later put a more positive spin on the name after Shadow's awakening, pointing out that a Shadow can show us the direction of the light, like she says in the game itself.)

Of course, this search for the ultimate life form didn't go very well, and without any results on that front GUN kept hounding him for weapons. Gerald would throw them a bone here and there to get them off his back. His research on Chaos resulted in the Artifical Chaos prototypes, which he worried would be used for warfare but could at least theoretically be used for search and rescue missions in floods, in his mind. But that wasn't enough. So he gave them Chaos Drives to power their mechs. And that still wasn't enough. He's got Emerl. He'll give them Emerl. They're not impressed by Emerl. They'll shut the whole ARK down if Gerald doesn't give them something big.

Fine! GUN wants something big? Gerald builds a huge fucking laser cannon into the ARK. However, as a middle finger to GUN, Gerald makes it so powerful that it would destroy the Earth if it was ever fired at any target on its surface. In other words, GUN now has their ultimate weapon of mass destruction, fulfilling his contract, but they can never actually use it. Oh, the delicious irony. (And also Shadow will blow up the Black Comet with it in 50 years yada yada yada.) Is this perhaps extremely shortsighted and naive of Gerald, to believe that such a weapon would never actually be used just because of the risk? Of course. But hey, that's Gerald for you. And I love this as an answer.

(Also, this, uh, kinda echoes something from real life! Remember the bit in Oppenheimer where he says all nuclear war will become unthinkable, and Edward Teller responds "until somebody builds a bigger bomb"? Yeah, Teller went on to conceptualize a superweapon codenamed Project Sundial that would have been able to kill all life on the planet, as the ultimate deterrent for war. This was never made for obvious reasons, but hey, there's a basis for this sort of thinking outside of heightened sci-fi! There's a whole Kurzgesagt video about this if you're interested.)

2) The Biolizard

The Biolizard is, of course, brought up as the initial failed prototype of the ultimate life form, from before Gerald met Black Doom. We don't really learn all that much about it that we didn't already know, but I just love the way it's framed in the story.

As you can see above, we actually get to see a picture of Maria holding up the cute little salamander that would end up mutating into the Biolizard through Gerald's experiments. (Researchers want to figure out how to replicate salamanders' regenerative abilities for humans in real life, too, so this was a natural starting point for the project.) And then, after it grows to a monstrous size and goes out of control, Gerald has to lock it away in an unused sector of the ARK. He needs to keep the poor thing alive for his research into harnessing Chaos Energy, building life support systems directly into it, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Maria what happened. So it just becomes this first dark secret weighing on his conscience. The Biolizard becomes Gerald's Tell-Tale Heart beating beneath the floorboards of the ARK. I love that.

3) Lost Impact was the breaking point for the ARK

Remember the level Lost Impact in Shadow '05? The flashback level on the hero path where Shadow is running around fighting Artificial Chaos enemies on the ARK 50 years ago? Yeah, that wasn't just a random incident. That was important, as we now know due to its placement on the timeline.

See, Emerl's rampage aboard the ARK that was chronicled in Sonic Battle and Dark Beginnings set off a domino effect. Emerl riled up the Artificial Chaos, causing Gerald to lose control of them. They became violent, and so Shadow had to stop them, as depicted in Lost Impact. The thing is, that incident sent an SOS signal to GUN telling them that shit was going down on the ARK. Gerald didsn't fully understand the trouble he was in and assumed that he'd simply be reprimanded by the higher ups, or maybe face legal action. But, well... the next time he heard from GUN, armed troopers were raiding the ARK.

So Lost Impact was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just really like that detail.

4) Maria

And, of course, there's Maria herself. Maria has often been more of a symbol than a character, this perfect embodiment of everything that's good and pure in this world who gets killed to motivate Shadow and Gerald's revenge plots. But I really like the wrinkles this journal adds to her and Gerald's story, and their relationship. This is the most fleshed out they've ever felt.

For one, the journal leans into the idea of Maria's intellectual potential. The rest of the Robotnik family is all geniuses, after all, and she was proving to be a really bright kid. She excelled in her studies on the ARK, and she even helped design Shadow's jet skates and inhibitor rings. When Maria died, the world didn't just lose a symbolic personification of purity. She genuinely could have been a hugely influential scientist who did so much good for the world. That's what Gerald wanted for her. But we'll never know, because GUN killed her.

Speaking of her family, their presence isn't just mentioned for the sake of fleshing out the Robotnik family tree. It's mentioned that as Gerald struggled to find a cure for Maria's illness through his genetic research, he faced mounting pressure from his family. They didn't want Maria to be up on the ARK forever. They wanted Gerald to hurry up and find a damn cure, or otherwise just send her back home to Earth so she could be with her family again. She'd been up on the ARK for so long that Gerald's coworkers started thinking that she had been born up there. Eventually she gains a baby sister on Earth who she's never met. A rift forms between Gerald's two sons, and he's unable to really deal with it because he's so consumed by his work. There's this sense that the family is falling apart, and that everyone is dreading the possibility that Gerald will never find a cure and that Maria will just spend her final years up in space and die far away from her family, because Gerald just couldn't let go. If that happens, it'll break the whole family. But he can't stop now. So he just keeps working. Curing Maria is the only way to win his family back, in his eyes. It can't all be for nothing.

But my favorite detail regarding Maria is this one paragraph:

Maria is growing into a lovely young woman. It breaks my heart that someone as bright and energetic as her is diminished by disease. There are no visible effects, and I've caught my fellow researchers muttering to each other, doubting her illness. It is infuriating. I find all my reason and restraint vanishes when she's slighted.

This is SUCH a great addition to the story! It's always been true that Maria doesn't really seem all that ill, just looking at her in cutscenes. With this one little comment, Ian flips that issue on its head and turns it into a story about invisible disability. She doesn't act like she's in chronic pain, so she must not be, everyone thinks. And this really, really gets to Gerald, as does the pressure from his family. He's dedicating his whole LIFE to saving her, and they think she's faking it?! It's such a small addition, never referenced elsewhere in the journal, but it adds so much flavor to the story, as does the implied family drama. It grounds Gerald and Maria and makes them feel more like real human beings, rather than being pure archetypes. It's just enough info to let my imagination run wild filling in the blanks.

You also get the feeling that Maria being such a walking ray of sunshine was the only real source of joy Gerald had left in his life before Shadow was awakened, and the only thing keeping him from snapping under pressure sooner. All this stuff just keeps piling on, everything's spiraling out of control, but at least Maria is keeping her chin up, right? It makes so much sense that losing her would make him go off the deep end when it's framed like this.

It's just... man, I never thought I'd care so much about Gerald and Maria. But that's the Ian Flynn touch. After years of less than stellar Sonic writing that seemed to be embarrassed of itself, I'm so happy to have new games coming out that fully embrace the history of the series like this, making its world feel so rich and real instead of just serving as an excuse for a string of platforming levels. I don't even like Shadow '05, but I'll be damned if Ian and the rest of Sonic Team didn't make something amazing by "yes, and"-ing Shadow's cringe past here. Sonic has truly reached levels of "we're so back" never thought possible.

#tkp post #other media

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haihoneys · 22 days ago

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Dressing Room Shenanigans

Summary: The one where Mingi is just a little obsessed with Ateez’s new makeup artist.

Word Count: 3,963

Pairing: Song Mingi x Fem!Reader

A/N: hiiiiiiiii :) I haven’t written anything in YEARS but I worked up this incredibly self-indulgent Mingi fic the other day… I kinda want to do a bit of a series with makeup-artist!reader x Mingi…

Warnings: not proof read. poor grammar in all kinds of ways. smuttttttt - fingering, unprotected sex (WRAP IT BEFORE YOU TAP IT KIDS), penetrative sex, he cums inside reader, slightly dom!mingi, reader has freckles, i probably missed something so just let me know!

Series Masterlist | Full Ateez Masterlist

————

Mingi felt like he could peel his skin off. He’d been on edge since he first opened his eyes that morning, hard and aching for a body he’d never felt in his waking moments. He took care of that problem in the shower, steam and his unrestrained moans filling the room as he came in his own hand.

When he finally caught his breath and finished his actual shower, he turned the water off and wrapped the fluffy white hotel towel around his waist. He swiped his phone off the nightstand and his heart dropped to his stomach when he saw a text from her flash across his screen when the device woke up.

Good morning, sunshine!! That new product I special ordered came in this morning. Would you mind meeting with me around noon for a makeup test? xx

Mingi groaned and threw himself face-first onto the bed. He didn’t have it in him to be around her today. He really didn’t. Especially not after having yet another dream (and a shower jerk off session) where she featured as his own personal pornstar.

He took several deep breaths, willing himself to calm the hell down as he reached out and patted around the mattress in a blind search for his phone.

Sure thing :)

————

And god damn it, she just had to go and look a little extra pretty today: short plaid skirt and sheer black tights underneath, and her hair was tied up in this messy knot thing, and he could still see her freckles through her makeup…

When she noticed him standing in the doorway, she gave him this blinding smile, and for a split second Mingi felt the tension in his shoulders dissipate. But it was back again when she rushed over, smiling up at him like he hung the moon and stars as she took his hand and tugged him over to her makeshift makeup station.

So now here he sat, grip on the chair's armrests so tight his knuckles were turning white. A placid smile plastered onto his face and nodding along as she told him about her morning doing similar test sessions with Hongjoong and Yeosang. He was willing himself not to get hard, to not think about the dream he had the night before and how she’d been on her knees for him…

Mingi bit down into the fleshy insides of his cheeks, willing the sharp sting of pain to ground him in reality. He could not think about that right now. But she was making it so fucking difficult.

Her skirt was just so fucking short. At one point, she leaned over the vanity, rooting around for god knows what in all the shit she had spread out in front of him, and that fucking skirt rode up the backs of her thighs… the bottom of her asscheeks peeking out at him and he almost groaned at the sight.

He wasn’t strong enough for this. He thought he might just die right here. Y/N and her short little skirt and cute freckles were going to fucking kill him.

But no, that wasn’t what did him in.

She was struggling to open a jar, the lid screwed on too tightly, and Mingi had just opened his mouth to offer to open it for her when the plastic finally gave and the lid came free. As did a majority of the powder. Right into his lap.

Y/N gasped, eyes going so wide it would have been comical at any other time. She discarded the packaging and kneeled down to start scooping the powder into a cupped palm, profusely apologizing as she did so.

“Oh god, Minnie,” she said, her voice small and embarrassed, and he had to look away from her crouched between his legs before he had a real problem on his hands. “I’m so sorry. Please tell me you have a change of clothes with you… I don’t think this will stain, but it won’t come off with the dry tissues I have in my kit.”

She was still mumbling her sweet little ‘sorry’s when her hand brushed right over his stiffening cock. And without thinking, he moaned at the barely-there contact, his head tipping back and eyes slipping shut.

Y/N sucked in a sharp breath and then the room was completely still, the tips of her fingers still hovering over him. And he knew he was a fucking goner. There was no recovering from that. She was gonna think he was such a perv now. She was never even going to look at him again.

“Fuck,” he said, his own cheeks flushing as he straightened up in the chair. He needed to get out of this room before the floor swallowed him whole. “God, I’m sorry. That was gross of me. I wasn’t thinking and I’ve been so pent up and-”

But slowly, much more tentatively, she reached out her hand again and traced over the bulge she found there. His eyes fluttered shut again and he resisted the urge to buck up into her touch. “Y/N…”

Her name was a sigh on his lips and she decided she wanted to hear him say again. And again. And again. So she applied a little more pressure to his covered cock. But a quick hand shot out, long fingers wrapping around her wrist in a grip tight enough to bruise. “Don’t start something you can’t finish, princess.” His voice was deep and guttural, like it had grown talons and ripped its way free from his chest.

Wide eyes snapped up from his grip on her wrist to meet his hard gaze. “Who said I can’t finish it?” It was a sudden burst of confidence, one Mingi found incredibly arousing, so different from the way she usually spoke with him. The words were soft and breathy, and Mingi would be lying if he said they didn’t send the rest of the blood in his body rushing to his cock.

Before she could even process what was happening, Mingi was standing from the makeup chair, his proximity forcing her to lean back into the vanity behind her. He leaned forward, bracing his hands against the countertop and effectively caging her to him. She took her time meeting his gaze again, raking her eyes from his crotch up to his chest and neck and finally to his face.

The look in his eyes stole the breath from her lungs. He looked almost feral, as if he could devour her in a few bites. And she wanted him to. She wanted him to claim her so completely she’d be ruined for any other man.

Without another word, she gripped the fabric of his t-shirt and jerked him forward. Mingi came to her willingly, leaning down to hover his lips just over hers. All the teasing, all the subtle (and not so subtle) flirting they had been doing over the past few months had led them to this exact moment.

Mingi closed the distance between them, gentler than she had been expecting, given his reaction moments ago. The press of his mouth to hers was slow and deliberate, like he wanted to savor every heartbeat, every breath.

One of his hands found her hip, the other sliding up to cup her cheek, thumb softly brushing over the heated flesh he found there. The intimacy of it all had her melting into him, sighing into his mouth as she slid her hands up his chest and around his neck.

His tongue traced over the seam of her lips, and she instantly granted him full access to her mouth, moaning when he licked into her. Mingi pulled back just enough to breathe onto her still-parted lips, “Keep making noises like that and I’ll have to bend you over the sofa.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?” She leaned in and started pressing wet kisses along his jaw, trailing them down the column of his throat and focusing on the spot just below his Adam’s apple when he groaned above her. The hand on her cheek had found its way into her hair, and he gripped it just tight enough to get her attention as he pulled her away from his neck, her lips wet and shiny from the mark she was working onto his skin.

“I have a feeling you’d like both options,” his voice was low and gravelly with need, his grip on her hair tightening ever so slightly just to test the waters.

She grinned up at him, eyes bright. “Why don’t we find out?”

Yeah, he was utterly fucked.

He slid his hand from her hip to the hem of her skirt, slipping underneath and bullying his way between her thighs so he could rub and tease her over her tights. She gasped at the contact, hands fisting in his shirt again.

“Fuckk,” he groaned when the pads of his fingers made contact with the dampness he could feel even through the fabric. “You’ve already soaked through your panties and tights, huh baby? You that needy for me?”

Mingi slowly, lazily, traced his knuckles back and forth over her slit, pressing them harder into the fabric when they caught at the slight dip into her entrance. She buried her face in his chest, whimpering with every torturous stroke. “Please,” she whined, “Minnie, please…”

Had he possessed even a fraction less willpower, he would have dropped to his knees then and there and offered her anything she wanted. He would have offered up his very soul to her to hear her beg for him like that again.

“Please what, baby? Gotta tell me what you need if you want my help,” Mingi pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, knuckles still working over her clothed pussy.

The sweetness of the kiss compared to the sticky drag of his knuckles against her cunt was jarring. It had her head swimming. Y/N whimpered again, grip tightening on the front of his shirt. “Needyoutofuckme.”

Mingi smirked, he heard her well enough but he wanted to tease a little more. “Hm?” he hummed. “What was that? Use your big girl words.”

She groaned, leaning back just enough to pout up at him with glassy eyes. “I need you to fuck me, Mingi. Please.”

He chuckled, the sound sardonic and almost cruel. But he pressed another soft kiss to her hair and sighed, “Only because you asked so sweetly, princess.”

He kissed her again, more urgently this time, and his hands slipped around to her ass, groping and squeezing at her until she was whimpering into his mouth. God, did he love the taste of her. If her mouth tasted this good, he couldn’t wait to bury his tongue in her cunt. But there wasn’t enough time for that right then. He knew he would be fully and utterly obsessed once he got a proper taste of her; he wanted to be able to spread her out on his bed and lick and taste her for hours on end.

He started walking them backward, his hands and mouth never leaving her. He broke the kiss just long enough to spin them around and lead her around to the back of the black leather sofa.

Their reflections stared back at them from the vanity mirror directly across the room. Mingi had her trapped, his chest flush to her back and the fronts of her thighs pressed tightly to the heavy piece of furniture in front of her.

“You sure you wanna do this?” He asked her, eyes finding hers in the mirror as his hands settled on her hips. As much as he wanted it, wanted her, he would stop immediately if she asked him to. He could suck up his pride and ego for her.

Y/N held his gaze, taking one of his hands and dragging it up her body to her mouth. She pressed a soft kiss to his palm before resting it at the base of her throat, her hand laying on his. “I’m sure, Minnie.”

He flexed his fingers around her throat, not even enough to really apply any pressure, but her eyes still fluttered shut at the movement.

A strong, firm hand pressed between her shoulder blades, urging her to lean forward over the low backrest. Mingi slid his hand to the small of her back, and she instinctively arched as much as she could given the position. He hummed in approval, “There’s my good girl.”

Gooseflesh erupted all over her body. She shivered at his praise, leaning into his touch and damn near purring for him.

Mingi smirked down at her, feeling fucking euphoric at the reaction a simple touch and a few words earned him. He nudged her feet a little further apart, stepping forward to press himself flush against her ass and grinding into her. “Stop teasing,” she whined. “Need you inside me.”

He couldn’t help but groan as he stepped back just enough to flip her skirt up, the fabric bunching above her ass as he traced his thumbs down the seam of her tights. He gripped the thin, sheer material in his hands and gave a hard yank andthefabric gave easily. A sharp, staccato rrrrip sounded through the otherwise quiet room.

Y/N gasped and looked over her shoulder at the sound, and Mingi swore he was looking into the face of an angel. Her pupils were blown so wide he could barely see any of the color of the irises, a pretty pink flush on her cheeks, her swollen lips jutting into a pout he wanted to kiss right off her face. “These were my favorite tights.”

He couldn’t help but snort out a laugh as he leaned down and nuzzled her cheek with his nose, pressing a few soft kisses to her neck before mumbling, “I’m sorry, baby. I’ll buy you three more pairs, okay?”

She made a little humph sound, mumbling something about yeah, you better as she turned back around. Mingi cupped her pussy then, teasingly sliding his fingers against her clit over her black thong before he hooked his fingers into the damp fabric and jerked them to the side, finally baring her to him fully. He stepped back and groaned at the sight of her, bent over and glistening pussy peeking through the plush of her thighs.

He made quick work of unzipping his jeans, shoving them down along with his boxers just enough to free his aching cock. She glanced up into the mirror just in time to see Mingi spit into his hand and give himself a few quick strokes. The lewdness of it sent a fresh wave of wetness to her cunt. He met her gaze then, smirking when he noted her already fucked out expression. Hard cock still in hand, he closed the small distance between them, bracing the opposite hand on her hip and hissing as he dragged the tip of his cock through her folds.

He lined himself up with her entrance, sliding in barely an inch before stopping and pulling back out. She whined and rutted her hips back into him, desperate for any sort of relief. Mingi shhhed her, trying to soothe her with comforting strokes of his thumb against her hip. “I’m really thick, baby,” he paused when she gave him a humorless snort in reply, still wiggling her hips.

“Listen to me,” he pinched at her ass then, hard, lips tugging into a pleased smirk when she squeaked. “Don’t be a brat. I’m not bragging about it… I just don’t want to hurt you.”

The words were said with such tenderness she couldn’t help but melt in that moment. Any thoughts she had of self-preservation had completely flown out the window. She stilled and let herself go completely pliant under him.

Mingi hummed, satisfied with her reaction, and slid back in just a bit more than he had the first time. Y/N whined, the sound high and keening, and it had Mingi pushing in just a little more.

He was thick. Really thick. And the delicious, slow stretch was going to drive her insane. It felt like hours, days even, before he finally, blessedly bottomed out with a deep groan that had her clenching around him.

Mingi was ready to get on his knees and thank every god he knew for this moment. The tight, wet heat of her pussy was absolute nirvana, everything and so much more than he had dreamed it would be. He didn’t know what good he had done in a past life to be granted this utter bliss, but if he were to die right now, he knew he could wish for no better way to go.

He gave her a heartbeat, then two, then three, to adjust to him before starting to pull back but she stopped him with a sharp, wait! Mingi felt his heart seize in his chest, immediately panicking that he truly had hurt her.

She threw her hand back, finding and gripping his wrist before digging her nails into his skin. “Wait… I… I just wanna feel full of you for a second,” her voice stuttered and garbled like she was having trouble stringing thoughts and words together.

He hissed at the sharp sting of the pain from her nails biting into him, but his heart started beating again. Her grip loosened as he breathed a soft, yeah?

Mingi leaned forward, resting his weight on her, “That feel good, baby? Being stuffed full of my cock?”

The new angle and added pressure had her knees going weak as he started grinding his hips into her, the head of his cock rubbing right against that spot inside her that had her seeing stars. “God, yes.”

He pulled out then, just enough to slam back into her. The force of it knocked the breath from her lungs as he set a brutal pace, fucking into her with such primal need that she lost her ability to speak, to think, to do anything but closer her eyes and feel him driving her closer and closer to her oncoming ecstasy.

Then there was a firm arm wrapped around her sternum, tugging her backward until she rested against a hard chest. “Open your eyes, baby,” Mingi hummed, his breath hot against her neck. “Want you to watch how good you take my dick. Look at how pretty you are all fucked out for me. Perfect fucking pussy, my god…”

She couldn’t manage a response other than to keen and whine some garbled form of his name, her hands coming up to grip onto his forearm as she finally opened her eyes to look at their reflections in the mirror. She was already dripping for him, she could see it running down the insides of her thighs. “Gonna,” she cut herself off with a moan so loud Mingi had half a mind to stuff his fingers in her mouth to quiet her. But she turned her head towards him, eyes wide and a little frantic, “Gonna make a mess, Minnie.”

“Yeah?” His grin was feral as he slipped the hand still on her hip to her clit, “Gonna make a mess on my cock? Gonna cum real hard for me like a good girl?” His fingers started rubbing ruthless circles against her, quickening their pace as she squealed and jerked in his grip.

Then she was soaking him, the wetness leaking from her like a broken faucet, the force of it pushing his cock from her. His fingers started flying against her clit, slipping and sliding against her effortlessly as he tried to drain every drop from her. When it finally ebbed, her body jerking and spasming in his hold, he slid his fingers from her clit down her slit, gathering the wetness and bringing his fingers up to her mouth. She opened without him having to tell her, taking his fingers into her mouth and licking them clean of her.

Mingi had just found his new favorite hobby. He wanted to make her do that again. And again. He wanted to get on his knees and burry his face between her thighs and drink her. He would definitely be making time for that later.

He lined himself back up and slipped inside her with ease, her nails bit into his forearm as she whined his name, her cunt fluttering and squeezing around him so tightly his vision went white for a heartbeat.

“Shit,” he hissed, “if you keep clenching like that, I'm gonna bust inside you.”

“Do it,” she turned her face up towards his and licked at the underside of his jaw, reveling in the way he shivered as his eyes fluttered shut. “No one’s ever cum in me before.”

At the thought of getting to claim her in such an intimate way, of being the first to do so, Mingi snapped. He drove his hips up into her, setting his original brutal pace. Y/N gasped, her sensitive pussy still fluttering from the intensity of her orgasm. It didn’t take him long, only a few more thrusts before he was spilling into her with a guttural moan.

The sensation of it all, paired with the lingering aftershocks of her first orgasm, triggered another, weaker one. Her knees turned to jelly as she all but collapsed against the sofa. Mingi went with her, the weight and warmth of him against her back a comforting presence as she came back to earth.

He kissed her once, twice between her shoulders before he slipped out her with a hiss, his softening cock still sensitive. He pulled her back upright, turning her to face him before urging her to rest against the hard edge of the back of the sofa.

He brushed her mused hair back, cupping her face before peppering her cheeks and nose and forehead with feather-light kisses. “Let me clean you up, hm?”

He tucked himself back into his jeans, before rounding the sofa and heading for her kit to find the tissues she kept there. He grabbed a handful and came back to her, crouching in front of her and gently spreading her thighs apart again.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, voice so soft it nearly broke his heart. Y/N reached to take the tissues from him but he pulled away, just out of her reach. “Really Mingi. I can take care of myself.”

His brows furrowed, confused as to why she was hesitant to let him take care of her. “Y/N, baby, you just let me fuck the shit out of you and cum inside you. The very least I could do in return is clean up the mess.”

She started to protest again but he shhed her and wiped away the drying cum from her thighs and pussy. He hooked his fingers into the side of her thong and pulled it back into place before pressing a soft kiss over the fabric.

They were both so utterly done for.

————

“And then he made me cum so fucking hard that I told him he could cum inside me,” She said, slightly mortified that she let that happen in the heat of the moment. But, in her defense, it was the best orgasm of her life. Truly, she considered calling the Guinness World Record people.

Wooyoung looked disgusted yet oddly… satisfied.

“First of all,” he paused, wagging a finger at her, “that’s gross. We all have to use that room, Y/N! That couch needs to be disinfected now! But… I have to tell Jongho. We’ve had a pool going for weeks. He owes me $100.” Wooyoung says, pulling out his phone from his jacket pocket.

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