#this has been a wip for so long thanks to the background. I only continued it again since I wasn‘t in the right headspace to do uni stuff

[sableeira]

waiting for the day that soukoku will terrorize yokohama again

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What the hell is this?"

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

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

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

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes and no.

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

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

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

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

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

The cover

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

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

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

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

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

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued!!!

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

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

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

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

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

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's pretty much it!

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

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

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

Bonus material: Data files

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

Lara-Su

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

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

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

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

Geoffrey

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

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

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

Remington

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

Lien-Da

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

Commander Taelor

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

Julie-Su

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

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

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

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

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

Yep. He got me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closing thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I still have to pity him.

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

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

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

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

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

[losergames]

Chop Shop is strictly 18+ for language, themes, and potential explicit content. 

🔗 - Game Intro | Bug Report | Ko-Fi

Episode Four is now available! (+ 59,000) - PLAY HERE

Debrief after your meeting with Inez.

Steal... or don't!

Yvonne has a secret.

2 more achievements.

And more!

This update comes with a patch (Version 1.2.3) For this update you will need to start a NEW SAVE. An updated inventory macro has been implemented and is not compatible with old saves. I really wish you didn't have to but it's what's best for the game and its longevity!

Patch notes + author notes are under the cut. If preferred, you can access them in game in the start menu.

STORY

PROLOGUE:

General edits and fixes.

More vague, as to not elicit any emotional connection to the crew for continuity.

EPISODE 01:

Added a new set of personality building choices when meeting KJ, Jonno, Natasha and Aiden at the bar.

EPISODE 02:

Tweaked the conversation with Dilani in the closing scene to reflect more on the situation. Added some more fearful dialogue and flavour text.

Other general edits and fixes.

EPISODE 03:

Fixed gaps and spacing issues.

Minor phrasing and sentence structure changes.

Grammar and typo fixes.

UI + TECHNICAL

SETTINGS:

Changing the font size now only applies to the game text in the passages.

Added descriptions to the toggleable settings.

UI:

The background now changes colour dependent on what theme you are using, instead of the default black.

INVENTORY:

The inventory macro has been updated! Previously V2, now V3 of the ChapelR Simple Inventory Macro.

CREATE A SAVE

Modified the randomise PC choice, setting pronouns in 'sets' instead of randomising each pronoun separately.

GAMEPLAY MODE

Players can now choose a gameplay mode when starting a new save: Regular or Challenge.

Challenge mode disables the back button, disallowing players to return to the previous passage. Players cannot redo dice rolls or try out different choices for desired outcomes.

Challenge mode is not available in Create A Save. All CAS made saves default to regular mode.

AN: hello hello! it has been a while -- episode 04 is finally here!

this ep was a long one to get through but we finally made it out of the fog. i found that i wrote a bunch of stuff that just... didn't fit? but is hopefully going to be used later down the line, so it's cool i've got shells of scenes for later.

i can't find any game breaking bugs myself and my amazing beta testers have scanned through as many possible variants as they can! of course, if there is anything funky, broken, or maybe not triggering correctly, please submit a bug report!

again i will say that you will need to start a NEW SAVE for this update. unfortunately the updated inventory macro is not compatible with previous saves. i really didn't want this to be a thing when updating chop shop but it is unfortunately just the way for this update - apologies!! i know it's super annoying when games do this but chop shop is still a wip so there will always be some teething problems along the way.

as i look through my notes, we have now completed act 1 of my outline (AAAAHH) so soooo exciting. finally pc can stop wringing their hands about being bad and actually //start// being bad.

if you've made it this far -- hello and thank you! i'm so happy we're at the point where PC is making some real decisions, taking another step into their life of crime.

happy update day and happy reading!! thank you so much for the continued support and patience!!! i hope you enjoy the new episode! - becky :-) <3

[lo1k-diamonds]

A woman's best friend 💜 Part 2

PAIRING: Taehyung x (f)reader

SUMMARY: After falling into temptation once, you and Taehyung tried to navigate the aftermath as best as possible. It turns out none of you can handle it, so your friendship is bound to end one way or another.

WORD COUNT: 7,127 

GENRE: f2l, smut (uni AU setting)

RATING: R (explicit)

WARNINGS: mutual pining, angst, dirty talk, body worship, nipple play, oral (m receiving), fingering, protected sex

A.N. I know part 1 was bittersweet, and I am a sucker for happy endings, so here is part 2 with a shiny new ending for this couple 😚 I think it has the right vibe for Valentine's Day, enjoy! (Thank you to @eerieedits again for the awesome banner 💜)

Masterlist | Scroll my stories on Tumblr | Schedule and WIPs | AO3 | Wattpad

The rhythmic thud thud on the window made you pull the curtain and look out the window. It was storming outside, and the night lights glistened as cars passed in the roads below and people enjoyed their Saturday night. 

Not you, though. Once, you had two types of Saturdays: the ones you’d go out with all your friends and the ones you’d stay home hanging out with Taehyung. Lately, you had neither, and it was all your fault.

You still remembered a night like this one. Turning away from the window, you let your gaze wander your living room. Back then, Physical: 100 kept playing on the TV screen for a long time, serving as background noise as you stayed in Taehyung’s arms. You lost track of time, then, staying awake and worrying about what that night would change.

You never discussed it further with Taehyung. He had fallen asleep, breathing gently with his arms around you, and you stayed perfectly still, aware of every ticking second. The conflict inside your chest was paralyzing — you didn’t want that night to end, but you also feared it continuing. The more you touched or interacted with him intimately, the harder everything would get. 

Those thoughts kept you awake, staring at the ceiling. So you recalled when the TV timed out and switched off, prompting you to go to the bathroom and come back only to find Taehyung exactly where you left him, naked with a blanket partially covering him as he slept. You didn’t regret slipping back into his embrace; you’d never get another chance. He wouldn’t know you had decided to return to his arms or how much you needed his warmth to calm down and fall asleep.

When you woke up, you found out a summer storm had broken out. It rained so much, then, but the same thud thud from the windows was unable to draw you away from his arms. All you could do was linger in his warmth for one second longer while you worried. Dreading and fearing how you’d ever look at him and not remember. How you’d brush each other and fake not having butterflies in your stomach. What if you saw him with someone else? How were you supposed to be his wing-woman again?

Of course, Taehyung had reacted the way you expected him to when he woke up. He chuckled at the pouring rain outside, happy that he had his leather jacket with him, and smiled dazzlingly when he saw you in a robe with your morning hair.

Then, before he left, he reassured you again, “Don’t worry about it.”

But you were yourself, and you had been right to worry. The problem wasn’t that you had slept together but that it had changed something inside your heart. Those feelings you once thought buried refused to vanish, the hope you once thought dead was alive and kicking, and to make things worse, you couldn’t forget.

Taehyung invited you for an ice cream, and you remembered what his eating you out felt like. He told you about this movie he wanted to see, and you knew what his baritone voice teasing you would sound like in the dark. He was excited about the new classes he was taking, even more so because you were there, too, and you shuddered at the memory of him kissing you as he came deep inside you, holding you so close you felt like a treasure. He promised to take you home when your group of friends decided to check out a new club, and you dreaded the whole night, both because he could choose to hook up with someone and because you wished that person could be you. Finally, he invited you to work on a group assignment together, and as you listened to him passionately go on about the topic, you wondered if you’d ever be able to reel your feelings back in.

You screwed yourself up over that one single weak moment. That yes had turned your life upside down, and while Taehyung kept his promise of being your best friend, you couldn’t.

So you did the only logical thing — you started avoiding him. It was inevitable — if his proximity made it impossible for you to get over him, then the only natural solution was not to have him close.

You weren’t sure he noticed, but you knew he was understanding. He never mentioned the situation and treated you like nothing happened. He never pushed to know why you started saying no to night outs or confronted you about being tired every time he invited you over. You were never able to invite him to come over and be alone again in that very same living room, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why, so it didn’t surprise you never asked about it.

In the end, it hurt you more than anyone. You were frustrated with yourself; you asked for this, it was all your doing. But you were helpless. Sometimes, you could act normal, and your interactions were playful and warm, as always. He poked you under the table? You knew there was a joke coming. Or he’d lean into your ear to whisper something, and your heart wouldn’t somersault and expect a caress. However, other times, you couldn’t help but withdraw your hand or avoid sitting next to him and letting such interactions bloom. Because you’d read into them or remember or wish for things to be different, and you hated it. Hated it all.

You were about to turn on the TV and search for something that could take your mind off him when the doorbell rang. You wondered if the neighbor had put the wrong door number on the food delivery again, but Taehyung was outside your door like an apparition. 

Despite his black leather jacket, he looked drenched and dejected. He raised his dark eyes to yours. “Hi, can I come in?”

You didn’t hesitate to reach out to pull him inside. “Of course, let me grab a towel!”

You let him enter your place first and close the door behind him, then rushed to your bathroom to get a towel. Only when you came back to the living room did you realize it was odd that he was there.

“Weren’t you supposed to go out with the others tonight?” you asked as you threw the towel over his head to dry his dripping hair. “How come you’re here?”

He grabbed your hands and pulled the towel away so he could face you. “I can’t take this anymore. We need to talk.”

“Alright! Who wants to drink what?”

Taehyung barely heard Jimin's question as your group of friends sat around on the couches and loveseats. That was their corner; they always sat there, and as he waited for everyone to settle down, his heart dropped. The loveseat you always shared with him was empty. You weren’t there again.

Taehyung asked about you quietly, trying to conceal the way his heart was squeezing inside his chest.

“She’s not coming,” Jimin answered, then shrugged. “Something about being tired.”

“She’s always tired lately!” Hoseok huffed as he sat next to Jungkook, who hummed.

“Maybe she’s sick?”

“When’s the last time we’ve seen her?” Jin wondered, and Namjoon sat on a beige pouf.

“Couple of weeks? Anyway, why are you asking?”

“You would know better than us,” Yoongi croaked with a quirk of his eyebrow. “Don’t you have classes with her?”

“Aren’t you best friends?”

Taehyung nodded absentmindedly as they resumed choosing their drinks, and the weight inside his chest didn’t relent. Yes, he saw you; he should know about you. He should be able to understand, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t. You were slipping between his fingers, and he just couldn’t sit idly by and watch it happen anymore.

“I gotta go.”

He rushed outside without hearing their protests, and the pouring rain greeted him. It wasn’t enough to dissuade him; he raised his leather jacket’s lapel to cover his neck and made his way in between the people trying to reach the nightbars and get cover from the rain. You lived fifteen minutes away; you were just within reach.

It was all his fault. He should have thought twice about crossing the line with you, even when you said yes. Not just for you, but for his own sake. That night was branded in his memory, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move on from it. And he tried. He tried doing everything right. He tried pretending nothing happened, that he didn’t want anything more than friendship with you, that it wasn’t a big deal. He tried looking at you as purely as a friend would, and he tried looking at other people the way he knew he shouldn’t look at you. Yet, even in the few moments he was able to entertain the thought of someone else or get engrossed in a conversation with them, it was always the same. The moment you crossed his mind, he was reminded why it wouldn’t work. He’d be talking with someone clearly interested in him and instantly thinking about your kiss, your smile, your gaze as you kneeled before him, your teases. The person in front of him would touch his thigh, hinting at something more, and he’d instantly raise a wall. You were on his mind, and even if being friends was the only thing you wanted, it didn’t mean his heart or body wanted anyone else.

He craved you. That night wasn't just a dream or a type of heaven he wished had become permanent. It was a risk in every sense. He knew he wasn't just fucking you. He didn’t want just to leave you a slobbering mess, he wanted more. He wanted to look into your eyes and see it — the moment you'd realize how good you felt together. How perfect it was and could be. He wanted to look into your eyes and see the moment you'd fall in love with him.

And that was his biggest mistake. That one moment of pure greed — it wouldn't happen, he knew that. Even if you were curious about him, that wouldn't just happen. Best case scenario, you'd scratch the itch, be it for sex or curiosity, and move on. Worst case scenario, you'd regret it and never look at him the same way again.

He suspected the latter was happening despite his efforts. The whole night he had you in his arms, he struggled to enjoy it after the way you revealed your worries. His heart burned with a discomfort he couldn’t voice while he prayed that he wouldn’t lose you. That, no matter what happened, you'd stay in his life.

But he should have known. It was worse than a drunk one-night stand with someone from your friend group. You were best friends; of course, it was hard for you.

You started pulling away, and he instantly noticed. At first, it was the little things. You'd withdraw your hand from his or flinch ever so slightly when he leaned in closer. You didn’t invite him to spend time or the night in your apartment, just the two of you, and he understood why. The worst was that you withdrew from your typical antics and cut your smiles short. You’d be sitting next to him and not even look his way, and it withered his heart. Of course, when you did turn to him, he always had a smile for you. He wanted to be a comforting presence no matter how fleeting your interactions were, but still, it only got worse. 

It hurt when you avoided sitting next to him or dancing, and then you started disappearing. You didn't show up to all classes anymore, and you didn't hang out with your group of friends, at least not when he showed up. Then he'd text you to ask about it and notice that even through messages, things had changed. You texted less and less, and the distance was breaking his heart. 

He kept running through the stormy weather with his hair dripping down his forehead. He didn't care; nothing mattered at this point. It had been two weeks since he last saw you, and there were only three or four texts in between. What he feared was happening, it was undeniable, but he wouldn't go down without a fight. He needed to see you and try one last time. It would be his dying breath, but at least he'd try. For once, he'd bare his soul and hope you'd do the same and forgive him. He just didn't want to lose you. He loved you so much.

He crossed a delivery boy at your apartment building entrance and ran upstairs to consume some of that nervous energy. Then, he rang the doorbell, and you opened the door for him, and his heart convulsed. God, he missed you so desperately.

“Hi, can I come in?” he mumbled, lost in the sight of you in your robe that brought him such bittersweet memories. 

You pulled him inside without hesitating. “Of course, let me grab a towel!”

You closed the door behind him, and he took his shoes off so he wouldn’t make a puddle in your living room. Yet that was the last thought he had before where he was hit. That couch, that place. His heart ached again as he turned to you, and you threw a towel over his head.

“Weren’t you supposed to go out with the others tonight?” you asked as you patted the towel to dry his dripping hair. “How come you’re here?”

He grabbed your hands and pulled the towel away to face you. “I can’t take this anymore. We need to talk.”

He saw the second you tensed as the towel fell to the floor, but you didn't withdraw your hands, and he was not holding back.

“You said you didn't want things to change, and I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to hold onto you,” he said, pain lacing his voice. “But I can't if you keep pushing me away like this.”

He paused, looking at your startled and tense expression, waiting for you to say something, but you were frozen.

He lowered his hands but kept holding onto yours. “I'm sorry if I ever hurt you. If I pushed you to do something that made you uncomfortable with me. It's my fault, I got carried away with my own selfish feelings,” he confessed, tearing up with a sad smile. “I promise I won't ever touch you again or bring up anything inappropriate, so please.” He let go of your hands gently. “Please forgive me. Please say we can still do something about this because I can't— I don't want to lose you.”

His voice wobbled, and you frowned, shaking your head. 

“I’m the one who is sorry,” you managed to say despite the tears pushing to get out. “Because it’s my fault. My selfish feelings, not yours. I'm the one who said yes and then couldn’t handle it. I'm so sorry, I— I should have told you, but I— I’m so sorry—”

You stammered, rubbing your face in embarrassment, distraught. You needed to tell him; you couldn’t let him think he did something wrong. But what if he thought staying friends would worsen things and decided to end everything?

“Told me what?” he asked, anxiously stepping closer to you. “Please, tell me,” he requested softly, but you kept hiding your face. “Please.”

Your hands started shaking over your face, and he suddenly realized you were holding back your cry as you trembled.

His heart sank. “Did I hurt you? Fuck, I’m so sorry!”

You uncovered your face to look at him. “No, you didn't.”

He held his breath as he observed you cleaning your cheeks. “But you’re crying,” he pointed out, desolation tearing his chest. “I'm so sorry! I promise I won’t ever do it again!”

You wiped your cheek annoyedly and reached to grab his jacket. “Stop!”

“I never wanted to hurt you, I—”

“Stop it!”

“I won't ever touch you again, I just—”

“Stop saying that!”

He stayed put, no matter how angrily you held onto his jacket. “I’ll never forgive myself if—”

“STOP!” You had to shout and pull him to you so firmly that he stumbled in your direction. Desperation was taking hold of you as sobs shook you, but his disheartened eyes kept you focused. “You never hurt me, I don't want you to think that for a second!”

“But… you've distanced yourself from me.”

“I know,” you croaked, looking down at his lips curved sadly.

“You said you didn't want things to change.”

“I know…”

“You said you didn't want it to ruin our friendship.”

“I did…”

Taehyung waited for you to say something or look into his eyes again, but you didn't.

So he asked, “Did it?”

“Yes.” Your eyes finally rose from his lips, and you had to be truthful. “I can't be your friend anymore.”

Taehyung paled and stared at you, speechless, livid. His heart broke; his worst nightmare was—

“I look at you, and friendship doesn't begin to cover how I feel.”

“What?” He blinked, befuddled as his thought process stumbled on itself.

“I should have told you, but I never thought you’d— I knew it would be risky, but—” You licked your lips, having a hard time ordering your thoughts. “At that moment, when you asked, I just— Of course, I said yes, I— I’ve wanted you for so long, I— I should have known it would mess me up— I begged you not to let things change because I knew— I knew they would change for me, and—”

You were struggling to breathe and say everything you wanted, and he supported your arms as you held onto his jacket.

“You wanted me?” he asked softly, and you nodded. “What changed? Please… Please tell me.”

His gentle expression and supporting hands gave you the courage you needed. “Everything— everything changed,” you confessed. “I can’t look at you the same way. I can’t look at you without wanting to touch you or kiss you. I’m sorry, I—”

He cradled your cheeks suddenly and crashed his mouth to yours, and you whimpered ever so softly. You gripped him closer by his leather jacket and kissed him back, not hesitating for a second to meet his tongue with yours. You wanted to lick that taste back into your life, that warmth, that comfort you missed terribly.

You thought he felt the same way when he halted your kiss to a simple press of your mouths as though he needed to feel it. When he pulled away, his eyes were red and glistening, eying you with such emotion your heart trembled.

“You wanted to kiss me?” he asked, still cradling your cheeks.

“Yes.”

“To touch me?”

You nodded anxiously. “Yes.”

“That's what changed?”

“No.” You looked at his lips again before facing him. “I've always wanted to, but we were friends. Now, I just can't pretend anymore.”

“You mean… you don't see me as a friend?”

You shook your head still in his grasp.

“So you don't regret it?”

You could see him relaxing, his features soothing as you two talked, so you shook your head again. “I don't. Do you?”

“No,” he replied instantly, smiling. “I did when I thought you pulled away from me because I hurt you, but—”

“You didn't,” you assured again, pulling him closer. “Do you… Could you see us as more than friends?”

“Fuck yes,” he rasped, brushing your cheeks gently. “I want to be yours. I’ve wanted it for so long. There’s nothing else I want.”

“Really?”

Your eyes watered as you looked into his. Was this a dream?

He smirked. “Really. You better start believing it because if you let me into your bed again, I’m not leaving. Like ever.”

You chuckled and bit your lip. “If I invite you, I expect you to never leave. We cross the line and get rid of it. We say things that make us feel like more than just friends because we are more than—”

He crashed his lips into yours again, letting go of your jaw to pull you closer by the waist until your chests were glued. His leather jacket was still dripping from the rain, but you didn't care. If he kept kissing you like that, he wouldn't have it on for much longer anyway.

“Say it, then,” he mumbled between kisses. “You know the drill.”

You chuckled. “Do I?”

He hummed, chasing your lips.

“I only know the one to give you the green light to fuck me into a slobbering mess—”

His groan as he dragged his lips to your neck made you clench around nothing, and you bit your lip.

“But what if I don't want just to fuck?”

He pulled away to face you, with blown pupils and wet lips, held in check.

“What if I want to be yours?”

“I'll make you mine,” he promised, grabbing your hair on the back of your head so you'd face his dark eyes. “I'll make you forget ever not being mine.”

“In one of those five ways you thought of?”

Your whisper was not simply a tease, and you suspected he knew it when he groaned and leaned in to peck your lips.

“I've since thought of many more.”

He licked and nibbled your lips, and you had to close your eyes with the shudders.

“You thought about fucking me?”

“I haven't thought of fucking anyone else ever since I met you.”

Your cheeks burned as you snapped your eyes open. “What?”

“You heard me,” he murmured against your chin.

“But— I helped you— with that other guy—”

He shrugged. “Nothing happened. We got outside the bar and went our separate ways.”

“You never told me that!”

“Well, what could I say?” he said, speaking close enough to you that you could feel his breath on your lips. “That I wasn't really interested and went home to fuck my fist while I thought of you? I didn't think you'd appreciate that—”

It was your turn to grab his hair and pull him down to kiss you again, consuming just a little bit more. Your tongue darted out to lick, tease, and take, and he fought you with a low groan. Whatever you wanted, he wanted it too if it meant you were going to kiss him like that.

“You have— no idea— how much— that drives me crazy,” you managed to say between kisses. “The thought of you— thinking of me— fuck—”

He seemed to get an idea because his hands lowered to your ass to squeeze it, catching you when you jumped into his arms. You never stopped kissing, even as he walked with you in his hands, until your back hit a wall.

You didn't care how or where he fucked you as long as he did. Of course, your mouth was busy as you opened it more so he could deepen the kiss, so you couldn’t tell him. But you could show him in the way your legs wrapped around his waist, keeping him close. Your heavy breathing matched his as your hands explored and tried touching him everywhere you could, but his jacket was in the way. He likely felt the same, seeing the way he fought to open your robe and tried getting it out of the way so he could kiss down your neck into the cleavage of your pajama top.

You chuckled; the two of you were making things harder by trying to undress each other at the same time. His eyes crinkled as he matched your smile and gave you the lead. His lips trailed your jaw as you pulled your robe open and shrugged it back to give him access to your neck and collarbone. Your skin instantly drew his lips, allowing you to push his jacket off him while he was happily distracted. 

You tried to get rid of his sweater, too, but couldn't. As soon as his jacket hit the floor, he wrapped his arms around you again and buried his face between your tits, squeezing you to him so firmly you couldn’t breathe. However, you could feel the way he was rutting into you and it drew a quiet moan as you fisted his hair. 

Goosebumps ran over you as he licked your cleavage, dragging his tongue over every inch of skin he could reach, and you needed more. You released one hand to reach in between your bodies with the single goal of touching him, and it wasn't easy. His ruts were unpredictable, not leaving any space between you, but you needed to grasp his desire for you, feel it in the palm of your hand.

When he raised his lips to kiss you again, it gave you the opportunity to unbutton his jeans. His tongue pushed through your lips, deepening his kiss so much you moaned quietly, muffled. Yet it just complemented and amplified your urge to grab him, and you did.

Your hand finally reached inside his boxers to grab his dick and pull it out, and he groaned. Your hand clamped shut around him, fisting him unapologetically, and he had to break your lips apart to moan softly. You adored the way he held his breath, letting his forehead fall to yours as he closed his eyes, taking in everything you gave him. His sweet expression sparked your desire even further, so you kept pumping him, delighted with the precum dripping around your fingers and his knitted eyebrows.

You'd go to the last consequences of this with pleasure, but he suddenly grabbed your hand away and pressed himself to you. You were squished between the wall and his body, but you had zero reservations about it, especially when he kissed you like that. His mouth crushed yours as his hips thrust into you, jumpstarting a carnal hunger that consumed you. His hand dug under your pajama top, scratching your skin up to squeeze your tits, and you moaned, bucking your hips to match his. His tongue was so deep in your mouth that you were drooling, both desperate to moan and feel the tip of his cock rubbing against your unfortunately still-covered cunt. You were fucking desperate to have him, and you'd gladly cum right here and now if he filled you up.

“Tae,” you tried, barely able to part your lips from his. “I need you inside me, please.”

He moved in a flash, checking his pants were open enough to give him space before letting you stand to pull your pants down your legs.

You gripped his shoulders for support, then sighed when he leaned in to nip just under your ear. His fingers skimmed your wet folds before pushing two fingers in roughly, unleashing your moans as he touched all the right spots inside you.

You were so ready to blow you could feel the enthralling pleasure tingling in your nerve ends.

But somehow, you had a discerning thought. “Condom… Tae… Grab a condom.”

He stopped suckling on the skin of your neck to eye you with a lustful gaze.

“I'm not on the pill,” you whispered, brushing his luscious hair off his eyes. He looked absolutely dazzling, and you wanted him to fuck you till you couldn’t even stand, but you did not want accidents. Not yet, anyway.

He blinked, his hand pulling out of you to feel his pockets. “I… I don't have one. The last time… I never got another one.”

You chuckled and he pouted, and you could read his thoughts.

“Not like I planned for this to—”

You kissed him, then pushed him back to have space to move away from his hold. “I know, I'll get one.” He tried to catch you, but you jumped over your clothes gracefully, only turning back to tell him, “Bed. In my bed.’

You got to your roommate's room to search for condoms. Hopefully, she had some, even though she spent more time at her boyfriend’s than there.

It wasn't hard to find them on her nightstand, and you took the whole box with you. It was not like she'd need them tonight.

You wondered how Taehyung would greet you but still staggered at your bedroom's entrance. He was lying on his back, arms spread over your bed sheets as he stared at the ceiling. Having heard you come in, he raised his head and promptly sat up. 

Even though his pants were unbuttoned and his clothes drenched, nothing would have given away what you were doing just minutes before. Except perhaps his dark glistening eyes running up and down your figure before they set back on yours.

You were naked from the waist down, yet suddenly, it wasn't enough. His eyes were curious and electrifying, and you wanted to keep going. Your heart was thumping loudly inside your chest, the thrill of that moment making you tremble, but you waited.

He raised his hand for you to grab, and your heart finally settled as you took it. Your fingers fit in his perfectly, and as he hugged you to him, resting his head on your chest, you finally stopped trembling. On the contrary, you caressed his head calmly as he held you. It felt like reaching home at long last. It was the first time you were touching each other like that, with such vulnerability and with all the cards on the table, and yet it was the best type of feeling.

He pulled away to look up at you, and you caressed his face gently, letting that ease echo between the two of you. It was real — his hands on your waist, his sparkling eyes, and the adoration in them. You knew then that it was as validating and fulfilling for him as it was for you that you were finally in each other's arms.

“Did you find one?” he asked hoarsely, and you nodded. “Do you want to stop?”

“Hell no.”

You frowned, and he wetted his lips. “I don't want to move too fast and mess this up. I care so much about you.”

You brushed the back of your fingers down his cheeks sweetly. “Me too. But we're not moving too fast. Right? We've been friends forever, and we want to be more than that.”

He nodded, his eyelashes fluttering as he enjoyed your touch. “Please.”

“Then let's,” you whispered, leaning in to nuzzle him. “I don't want to wait.”

“Then we don't.”

He was ready to get up and touch you, but you simply smiled and pecked him before getting on your knees. You could see how his lips parted expectingly as his eyes transfixed on you, making you giddy. You gave him an excited smile and reached for the hem of his pants, and he helped you get them off. Then you bit your lip as you reached and grabbed his erection again.

His head dropped back at the softness of your touch as he mumbled your name, and you nodded. “I want to suck you off.”

You never thought you'd get another chance to grab that juicy cock, let alone delight yourself in its smoothness and taste. You would have admitted to Taehyung how much you thought and fantasized about a moment like that one, but the words evaporated from your mouth. Your only thought was his taste, and as soon as a precum drop glistened over his slit, you dove in.

You sighed as he groaned above your head, instantly grabbing your hair out of the way as you sucked. You didn't even realize how intensely you were doing it, bobbing your head so he'd touch the back of your throat, because you were out. His cock pushing inside your mouth made you anticipate how he'd feel inside your tight walls, and his moans made your mind soar high, elated. Taehyung, only the one you had wanted and had feelings for forever, was right there, losing his mind with you. Because of you. Because he wasn't indifferent to you. He actually wanted you just the same, had feelings for you, thought of you, longed for you—

“Fuck— Wait—”

His voice was strangled, but you weren't listening. You here so dazed, clenching around nothing and high on your desire, that you only realized the reason for his warning too late.

His warm taste invaded your mouth, and you moaned, gushing between your legs at the thought of him losing control. Yet, in a split second, his hand wrapped over yours around the base of his cock so tightly it was almost painful for you.

Only then did you stop blowing him and pulled away, confused, and looked between him and his delicious cock. You had tasted cum for sure, and yet despite the way his dick twitched in front of you, there was no more coming out. He was groaning harshly, almost frustratingly, but you knew by his expression that pleasure was assaulting his nerve ends.

When he finally stopped groaning, his dark eyes opened. “What do you think you're doing?”

His voice was quiet, almost annoyed, and you just blinked up at him.

“You didn't tell me to stop.”

“I told you to wait.”

You simply shrugged. “You did say something like that, I just… I told you I wanted to suck you off.”

“And I told you I'd make you mine.”

“You still can,” you argued as he grabbed your hands to pull you up and get you on the bed.

“Not if I came fully.”

You shrugged and let him pull your legs around him as you leaned back on the sheets. “We have all night.”

“We have forever,” he underlined, making you chuckle as he got on top of you in between your legs. “Starting right now.”

You could only be amused and giddy with his assertiveness about making you his, and he smiled too. He brushed his hands along your naked legs, then leaned in to kiss your neck as his fingers got tantalizingly close. You tensed under him, gripping his shoulders. You waited impatiently, expecting to feel his touch any second and wondering how he'd react when he found out how ready you were. 

“Holy shit,” he almost whined when his fingers slid along your slit. You moaned back, shuddering with his touch. You knew you were slippery and dripping, and now he did too. If the pool between your legs wasn't obvious, the sounds surely gave you away. “You're so ready for me.”

You moaned your agreement as you gripped the sheets. His fingers weren't eager like before; this time, he patiently dragged his digits along your folds, pressing gentle circles on your clit now and then. Your whole body trembled every time he did, letting his kisses and nibbles on your neck build you up so intensely that you didn't know what to do anymore. You were hot and trembling, and moaning just wasn't enough.

You gripped his hair in search of something, and his answer was to crash his lips to yours. The kiss turned consuming instantly, and you moaned into his mouth, completely overwhelmed. His fingers entered you and hooked, pressing into your sensitive flesh with lewd sounds, and you couldn’t hold on anymore. You tried whimpering his name in between kisses, and if anything, he firmly kept going with his fingers, both inside and out, over your clit. It drove you to pull his hair harshly back, parting your mouths with strings of saliva between you, yet you didn't notice. Your orgasm burst through you, and you lost sight of yourself, moaning desperately in his hold, gripping his hair so tightly, you surely pulled it painfully.

You noticed this when you came to, blinking at him sluggishly. Your fingers instantly relented their hold, yet absolutely nothing in his expression indicated any pain. On the contrary, he was enticed. He was looking at you as though you had bewitched him.

He raised his hand to brush the hair out of your face, careful not to use the fingers still covered in your slick. “You're so beautiful.”

You would have blushed if you weren't already hot and bothered. Instead, you met his lips with yours, kissing him more calmly than he was able to. You melted a bit more with how he matched your gentleness, careful not to push or impose. He was adorable, and you were not done yet.

“Too hot,” you whined when the kisses picked up steam. “Get rid of it,” you asked, pulling on his sweater.

He firmly pressed his lips to yours before rising to his knees and pulling the sweater off. Then, he saw you struggling with your robe and helped you. Your pajama top met the same fate as his clothes on the floor, and you giggled because before it could even happen, he was already grabbing your tits and licking a nipple wildly. 

Moans interrupted your laughter as he licked and pinched, slurping your hardened nipples inside his mouth one at a time. You squirmed under him, trying to both grab him close and escape the onslaught. The more you writhed, the more you felt his hard dick pressed to your thigh, leaking against it as he rutted.

It drove you fucking wild because no matter how much you enjoyed having him eat your chest, you craved him inside you so much more right now. “Make me yours,” you begged, locking your glistening eyes with his when he looked up from the drooling mess he was making on your chest. “Don’t wanna wait, I need you.”

You noticed the red spots his lips were leaving behind on your chest, but you didn’t care because, in an instant, he was kissing you again. He stole your breath, diving in while you relished his hands tracing your curves until they caught your legs, spreading them so he could press his dripping cock and grind against your soaked cunt.

You groaned, unable to control your bucking hips to match him. The quiet moans out of his mouth burned you from the inside out, setting you on a path that could only end in you both consuming that passion sizzling between you.

But he pulled away from your lips, hiding in your neck and panting heavily as you moaned. 

“Tell me where the condom is, or I’ll fuck you without it.”

You whimpered, feeling the way he slid across your folds length and rubbed your clit deliciously. “I’m so close.”

He uttered your name in a scold, the warning lingering as you kept bucking your hips. You opened your eyes to face him and bit your lip, so fucking close you could see it. You were tempted to throw all caution out the window and have him raw. To raise your hips so he’d get inside you right as you came around his thick cock, creaming him from tip to base. The very thought was risky; his current expression was already pure lust, holding on by a single thread. If you pushed him, he’d fuck you raw and right, just like you craved.

But you let your hips fall to the mattress and relented. “Right pocket of my robe.”

He felt the robe still under you and ended up raising his hips away from you before you’d both lose it. It made you sigh and feel beneath you as well, finally finding the crumpled part of the robe that had the pocket you both needed.

He tore the wrapper open with his teeth and got the condom on as fast as he could. When his eyes raised back to yours, and he grabbed your legs, pushing them to your sides, you clenched. His expression was dark and unreserved, as though the brakes had come off, and it made you shudder.

Yet when he aligned his dick with your entrance and sank in, he was nothing but respectful and careful, almost solemn. The way your tight embrace left him adrift was evident in the way his eyebrows knitted and his jaw hardened, but he didn’t ram inside you or let that feeling overcome his control. He waited for you to adjust to his size, but you kept clenching around him, prompting him to look at you. 

You had felt him before, but it was just as earth-shattering as the first time. You simply shook your head as you sighed. “You feel so good— Don’t hold back!”

He almost growled as he let his hips snap to yours, and you let your head fall back. Your hips matched his, increasing the intensity of each thrust, and it was wild. You got lost in the sounds of skin slapping and moans and the heat overwhelming you from the inside out. He adjusted your legs to bend further, perfecting his angle to one that simply unleashed your voice with every slam and let him guide you to the finish line. 

He knew you were close by the way your pussy sucked him in, tightening like a vice that barely let him move away. It made him tremble from head to toe as he groaned in your neck. “Just like last time— I've dreamed of this for so long,” he confessed, trying to kiss you, even as you both heaved and tried keeping that hallucinated rhythm.

“Me too,” you whimpered, searching for his eyes in the midst of it all. His hand wrapped around your hair, keeping your eyes on his as though he needed to look at you, too, and you squirmed with watering eyes. This time, you didn’t need to hide. This time, you could lose yourself because he was yours. “Please.” 

You mumbled his name between moans as you begged, and he listened. He was lost in the pleasure, but he was attentive to you, noticing all the little cues he was only once privy to. You moved with him as your eyes rolled back closed and your nails dug into his shoulders, and he felt the shattering orgasm start around his cock before he heard your moans.

Your orgasm started his out of nowhere, but as he grunted and trembled in your arms, he had only exhilaration radiating from every pore. He spilled his cum as deeply as your quivering heat allowed it but quickly and eagerly opened his eyes to look at you. You were still trembling and moaning breathily with your lip between your teeth, but then you looked at him, and he knew.

He’d never catch the moment you fell in love with him, because the truth was, you already had.

[signanothername]

it might be an awkward question but-

HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO DRAW SO MUCH?? how do you get so many beautiful ideas? how do you keep yourself motivated? tell me your secret I will sell you my soul

🩵 🫴 take it.

Why thank you 🫳🩵

Ah the question ever

Truthful and simple answer is that there’s no secret

This might seem contradictory considering how much I post, but I genuinely am not as motivated or as inspired as I seem to be

I struggle a lot with ideas and motivation and that is a problem I have on a daily basis that’s been happening for years (I have SO many wips that I never shared)

It’s not about the struggle, it’s about how I curated my art to that struggle

I’m at a constant threat to experience burnout (certified chronic pain and chronic fatigue haver), so to combat that, I take measures to make sure I don’t burn myself out and actually reserve the very little energy I have to continue doing artworks/comics

To give you a specific example, if you notice with my comics, they’re always sketchy and are never colored, that’s not because I don’t want to make colored comics, but because of knowledge from previous experiences that if I actually forced myself to make colored comics, I’d immediately plunge to burnout and would probably not be able to draw for a few weeks after because of it (in fact the last time I made a colored comic was here, which is a rare occasion even then btw, and that comic caused me to experience a near burnout)

Which was extremely frustrating to me at some point might I add, because before 2021, I had no problem making so many colored comics and artworks at a short span of time, I actually had motivation before (something that is lost to me now), so you can imagine how genuinely frustrating it is, it even made me feel like I’m not a “real” artist

(The concept of what is considered a “real artist” is bullshit btw, someone who draws stickmen everyday is as much of a real artist as someone who makes diverse fully colored artworks with backgrounds and everything, as long as you use your creativity and turn it to something meaningful, you’re already a real artist, regardless of skill or the extent of which you are able to conceive with your art)

That being said, it’s all about finding your own footing and workflow, what works best for you? What doesn’t?

Some things that you’d love for them to work (in my case making colored comics) might not work in reality, life is disappointing like that, so it’s also about acceptance

Acceptance of yourself as you are, maybe it’s not what you truly strive for, maybe you wish you could do more, but sometimes taking a step back and looking into yourself to see if you can actually achieve what you want with the resources you have could be life saving

So when it comes to motivation? Find your workflow, what are the things that you know could make you lose your motivation? On the other hand, what are the things that preserve your motivation?

Not only that, but time management is also a contributing factor

Of course, my own way to preserve my motivation/energy is as follows:

1- never force myself to finish artworks/comics if I feel like I can’t (even if I really really want to), I save them up for later when my motivation for them kicks back in

2-let perfectionism go, if I keep fretting over whether every line in an artwork looks good I’ll never accomplish anything but destroy my mental health (certified perfectionist speaking btw)

3-comics stay as sketches, as much as I want to make beautifully colored comics, I know this will only contribute to my burnout, so keeping it real with myself and what I can accomplish with my own resources (energy, time, health, etc) is important

4-making multiple sketches in a day then choosing what fancies my brain that day, or getting back to older sketches I already made before (sometimes months before) to see if my brain has the itch to work on any of them, by doing that, then I’m giving myself actual diversity in choices to choose from, which helps me feel like I don’t have to be forced to work on anything new, or something that I don’t wanna work on

For clarification, I’m talking actual sketches, not cleaned up ones, if you make clean sketches you won’t be able to make multiple ones in the same day

Here’s an example of what I mean by sketches

5-stop beating myself up over things I can’t control, if I keep being harsh on myself over the fact I couldn’t finish an artwork or the fact I’m not satisfied with it, it’ll only contribute to make me feel bad about myself and that would only contribute to me losing even more motivation which contributes to beating myself up and so the self torture cycle goes on, myself deserves to be pat on the back gently and be told “it’s ok, you’ll get there in time”

6-teach myself that it’s ok to lose motivation, there are times in which I do not open my art app for weeks, instead of hating myself for it, I tell myself “you need time, you’re tired and you need the break”, and it’s true, if you lost motivation, it’s most likely due to something else contributing to it

So i just ask myself what’s up, sometimes, I’m overworked in other life aspects, other times I’m in too much pain, so instead of forcing myself through my demotivation, I take care of these factors demotivating me so I’d feel comfortable enough to be able to work on artworks again

If I couldn’t identify a factor contributing to my loss of motivation, then I take it as my own brain telling me that it needs the break, it needs the dopamine if doing something different and I do that, whether by watching my favorite shows, playing my favorite games, trying a different hobby like writing or reading, etc

7- work on my own time, sometimes I do finish artworks quickly, and I do have the capacity to do so, but I’ve noticed that my loss of motivation became less of an issue when I gave myself the actual time to work on artworks, sometimes, a simple artwork that I could finish in 20 minutes takes me weeks to finish, not because I can’t finish it earlier, but because I intentionally worked slowly on it as I’m working on other artworks just as slow, that way, I don’t overwhelm myself and I’m making progress on multiple artworks/comics at the same time, and seeing such progress gives me even more motivation

Cough, anyway, got lost in talking about motivation ghcchch

As for your other question about how I get my ideas, it’s usually something I saw that inspired me, whether an artwork, something irl, etc

Or even sometimes, my own artworks inspire ideas for comics, so I’d draw something, then ask myself (asking yourself questions is such a great helper when it comes to coming up with ideas) why is the character doing this? How did they get there? Etc

That helps me come up with answers which are then answered via comics or multiple different artworks

For example, this comic, what inspired it was me asking myself one simple question, “what would happen if Murder actually asked Nightmare for a visit home for once, instead of running away like he always does?”, and that immediately got me to work on the comic

Of course, it doesn’t mean I always am on the ready for an idea, in fact, a lot of the time my mind is blank, nothing up there to help me, which is why I turn to mindlessly sketching sometimes

I just open a canvas and start sketching, what? I don’t know, I’m just gonna sketch something, could be a character, environment, scribbles, meaningless lines etc, it’s my iwn version of a warm up, and it helps a lot with making my brain get into the zone

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head

Enjoy a look into my brain chhcchch

[unsanctioned-if]

Writing Update 1/2 - 2025

January has, unfortunately, been a bit of a crash start. Not only did I fracture my wrist two weeks ago, but I also got the flu only a week later. Needless to say, I haven't been able to work much on the IF during this time.

The good news is that my hand is getting better and the mobility in my fingers has improved significantly; I can now write on my own instead of using voice to speech, if only for short periods at the time.

Since I'm also starting to properly recover from the flu I've been able to do a little bit more than before. Though the pace is slow, I'm just happy that I'm able to get back to it little by little.

My main focus for now is still fixes, polishing and editing + the profile, codex and spellbook, then I'll move on to adding more content or editing existing content more thoroughly. I'll make an announcement once the demo is fully done and then I'll continue to write the rest of chapter 2.

I experimented with adding more content to the backgrounds, but to be honest I think they are probably long enough as they are haha. I think I've mentioned it before but they were supposed to be quite short (10k words at most) but ended up around 17k - 20k words in total. I'm still going to include one or two additonal options for the scavenger background, but once that's done I think I'll probably leave them as they are, or come back to them later if there are bigger changes I want to include.

Another writing update will be posted end of February/beginning of March :)

I'll list the changes I've made so far under the cut for those interested (might contain slight spoilers!). Thank you so, so much again to everyone who has been reporting these, you're such a big help and I appreciate all of you <3

Changed Fri's fate depending on certain choices in chapter 2.

Fixed errors where some choices did not have a "continue" button in chapter 1.

Edited and polished the writing for the summoning for all backgrounds.

Fixed some stuff in the "spellbook" section to make it available only once you reach chapter 2 + added information about different types of magic. However the page is still a WIP and I'm slowly working on completing it.

Fixed an error where you were set as another background if you clicked "no" at the choice of background and instead picked another one.

Added the option for the nomad to be more shy or outgoing with strangers.

Added a unique interaction between nomad!MC and Cirern at the end of the lesson scene in chapter 1.

Fixed accidental repetitions in the aristocrat background (hopefully all of them).

Fixed a continuity error in chapter 2 regarding the Garm.

[starrysnowdrop]

I know this is a little late, but here’s my New Year’s post where I’ll discuss what my plans are for 2025 and some of my thoughts heading into this new year. I’m assuming that I might be a little long winded, so I’ll put the rest under the cut. Have a happy 2025 everyone!!

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone who reached out to me after the attack in my hometown of New Orleans. As I mentioned before, no one I personally knew was there on Bourbon Street when it happened, but it nonetheless left me feeling extremely distressed, and everyone here in Nola is grieving together, so we are taking it one day at a time.

Because of the attack, I wasn’t in the right mindset to write out this post, but I’m finally alright enough mentally to get these thoughts out.

Next, spurned on by my new profile picture, I decided that I wanted to change up the look of my blog a bit. There’s lighter, brighter colors used, and along with the new colors, I decided to make some new banners for my pinned post. The new banners are already being used in my pinned post, but I’ll attach them below in case you haven’t seen them yet. The background is a painting of snowdrop flowers! Don’t worry, the starry banners that were there previously will still be used interchangeably with the new ones when I answer asks.

Speaking of Hali and her ships, I have plenty of things that I want to gpose and write for Hali, and at the moment I’m still going forward with Hali having two ships in separate universes, but I’m not going to lie: I’m extremely inspired to write for Hali x Themis at the moment.

So does that mean that I’ll drop the Aymeric ship in the future? Well, I don’t know that yet. I’m still very happy with what I’ve done for the Hali x Aymeric ship, and even in the Themisverse, Aymeric is her first love. The only difference is that Aymeric pushes Hali away so that she doesn’t have to be stuck in Ishgard with him when she’s an adventurer, so they never get together in the Themisverse. So Aymeric would still be a very important person who plays a very important role in Hali’s story regardless if they are in a relationship or not.

However, my mind just will not leave me alone when it comes to Themis. I currently want to explore Hali’s experiences with seeing Themis in her dreams and not knowing who he is or why she can’t stop dreaming of him, and also having a Deja vu feeling whenever she encounters Elidibus but neither of them recognizing each other nor remembering their past love for each other. And of course, there’s much to write about Hali’s personal story during the events of Pandaemonium when they start falling in love with each other.

On the gpose front, I already have made some great strides with getting back to doing some more complex posing and using some shaders and presets that broke in the DT graphics update that I FINALLY got around to fixing! So once my son is back in school and I have more free time to practice, I’ll be getting back to do more gposes and especially more Hali x Themis shippy stuff!! So please look forward to it!!!

Alright, so let’s move onto Yume and Zenos (her side blog is @firelightmuse). I’m going to continue housing Yume’s stuff on the separate side blog even though all of my other OCs will be on the main blog, and that’s because Yume’s story has some darker content and themes from her backstory and her relationship with Zenos that is very different from Hali’s story and what I’m planning on for Sohna’s story.

There’s already several WIPs on the Yume x Zenos front, and I will be going forward with what I’ve wanted to explore with Yume for a long time: Yume will be heading home to Hingashi and facing what’s happened to her home since she left over a decade ago. It’s a storyline that I’ve been planning for a few years now but I finally feel confident enough in where she’s at that I’m going forward with it finally. So there’s much more that will be coming out from Yume’s story this year, so once again, please look forward to it!!

And lastly but certainly not least, I’m still going to be exploring Sohna’s story and developing her relationship with Alphinaud, but that’s going to be slow going, because Sohna is from Tural, and her story is so tied up in Dawntrail’s MSQ that I don’t know how much of a role she will play in the events going forward. I do know that down the road I want her to join the Scions and obviously she will grow closer to Alphi, but I’m not sure how I want to approach all of that just yet. Just know that I still love them greatly and I’m excited to see how things progress this year!!

And with that, those are currently my plans for 2025, and I have so much on my plate that I want to accomplish, but I’m really motivated right now and I’m excited to start working on it all. If you’ve read this far, thank you so much for your time, and feel free to ask me anything that I didn’t cover here or if you want more details on something. Once again, thank you, and here’s to a Happy 2025!!!

[werosmyss]

I've mentioned a little bit about writing on here, but it occurs to me that I haven't actually shared any of my writing yet. (Which is odd, because I don't consider myself an artist and I've already posted two little doodles.)

So I've been working a little lately on a period radiostatic fic (1930s-1950s). I'm thinking I might start posting it on Ao3, but I would love to gauge interest a little bit beforehand. All fic info + brief excerpt below cut. Would love to get some preemptive feedback and make edits before I go posting anything :)

No title yet; though I was inspired by the song Friendly Neighborhood Poltergeist by Rory Webley

Potential CW/TWs for the first arc: Alcohol, PTSD (Military flashbacks; WWII specific), Nazis, Period-typical racism, Period-typical homophobia, light violence/descriptions of death and gore. I don't write smut so there would likely be implied sex but no details. General TW for Valentino but he will be OOC from hellaverse (i.e. not abusive and rapey); Period-typical American patriotism; Police being Police (ACAB)

WIP Tags/Characters/Ships, etc.: RadioStatic; Chaggie; HuskerDust; Minor StaticMoth; Lucifer, Vox, Alastor, Charlie, Vaggie, Husk, Angel Dust, OCs used as plot devices/background characters (no major role in the story), Niffty, Rosie, Mimzy (Mentioned as of right now, not sure if she will be important yet), Valentino, Velvette.

Obsessive Alastor; Obsessive Vox; Demiromantic Asexual Alastor; Bisexual Vox; Protective Alastor; Human AU (kinda); Alastor Can't Control his Shadow; Alastor and his Shadow are different entities (but are still the same person); Possession.

(Can't think of any others right now)

Brief summary for what I'm going for: Vincent Olcott (Vox, though I likely won't be calling him that in this fic) gets home from the European front and wants nothing more than a shower and to curl up in bed with his beautiful wife, but he's rebuffed at the door and forced out on the street. Grappling with his demons, Vincent tries to move on and ends up with a job at the local paper. Just when his life is looking up, he's transferred to a neighboring state and forced to rebuild his life all over again. He catches his big break with a story on a serial killer, exposing police incompetence and helping to catch the person on the loose. But he quickly becomes more trouble than he's worth, and he's forced out of the paper. Vincent bounces around the midwest for a bit, chasing cold cases and selling his stories to the highest bidder, until he ends up in New Orleans with his biggest mystery yet.

Alastor Wiles is shot and ripped apart by dogs while disposing a body one evening in the muggy Louisiana summer. He doesn't expect to wake up, as one usually doesn't wake up from a bullet to the head. But awaken he does, with a new body and a whole host of powers to boot. It isn't long before the old house he's tethered to– his old house– is sold, and his first ever roommate is surprisingly easy to possess. With free rein of New Orleans once more, Alastor and his roommate team up to lure all manner of bad men to the cottage at the edge of the woods. Because who, really, would miss them if they were to disappear off the face of the earth? Tenants come and go. Some stay for longer than others, some end up buried in shallow graves just behind the treeline. It seems that even in undeath, a higher power is allowing Alastor to continue his righteous mission to eradicate the scoundrels and scum of the earth, and who is he to look a gift horse in the mouth? But his newest tenant is sticking his nose where it doesn't belong and threatening to unravel the tenuous house of cards that Alastor has only just erected.

Excerpt:

1945 - May

The war was over– well, the war in Europe was over. Vincent breathed a silent thanks to whatever higher power may be listening that he had been stationed in France for the past year and not the Pacific front. He’d heard horror stories through the grapevine about the kinds of things that were happening to the men over there, and he really didn’t want to find out if they were exaggerated. 

He had been all smiles coming home, picking up a bouquet from the florist almost as soon as he’d gotten off the train, and walking with the faintest skip in his step through the streets of Chicago. He could have hopped on a streetcar, but his house was only twenty minutes from the station and he was relishing in the smell of clean air and smiling faces in every window, American flags billowing in the wind.

An involuntary shudder wracked his frame as his gaze slid over a dilapidated row of brownstone townhomes. Shadows flitted across the darkened glass, ghosts of people he’d never known, voices he’d never heard crying out in pain. A sharp grin, a red armband, the glint of cold steel and the flash of gunpowder. The countless lives of the innocent occupied just as much space in his mind as his fallen comrades. 

Vincent hadn’t realized he’d been staring at the cold and empty window until he was jostled forward by a passerby with a grumble. He didn’t realize he’d been crying until the tears dribbled off his chin and splattered against his navy blue suit. Shaking away the ghosts of his past, he set back down the sidewalk. The skip in his step was gone, his smile was fading. The stems of the rose bouquet in his hand had broken under his grip, but it didn’t matter. Eileen would want to cut them to fit her favorite vase anyway.

Inspo playlist [Spotify]

(its set to private since this is just for writing inspo. let me know if the link doesn't work)

[lord-aldhelm]

WIP Wednesday

Another week, another tag game! Please share your last sentence; or, if you don’t have one, share a plot bunny or idea! (OR sketch for your artwork!)

Thank you for tagging me @grinningkatz and @thelettersfromnoone!

I have been so busy I have not had much time to write this past week. I managed to get a few paragraphs done in Chapter 11 of my Aldflaed WIP Darkest Before the Dawn; I hope to finish this chapter by the end of the week but I don't know how that will go lol!

Aldhelm stopped at the small village about a thirty-minute ride just south of Saltwic to rest for the night before continuing his journey to Lunden. He sat outside the entrance to the inn, half-heartedly drinking a small ale in an attempt to calm his nerves, the breeze of the night air cool against his flushed face. His heart was still pounding in his chest, as if he had been fighting a horde of Danes. He convinced himself that the visit was strictly for sharing information with her, but he could no longer pretend that he did not have an ulterior motive for traveling to her estate.

I finished my first pet portrait of the year, a cat named Chibi! You can see that post here.

Next on my list is a panther chameleon named Sherbert. Here is the rough sketch I just sent the owner for approval:

This will be fun, as he is very colorful! He has a lot of red, orange, yellow, and green coloration and the background will be dark with pothos leaves and branches.

In other WIP news, here is also what I am working on currently:

Making gifsets for 4.04 (there will be several as he was in it for most of the episode!) this week and adding to my queue

Making more edits for S3 for my Pinterest (just because....)

My edit for Mercian Monday next week (still haven't decided what to do for that)

Finish making Wihtgar gifs from Season 4 (still have to do 4.03)

Here is what I have planned for this year:

Finish giffing Season 4, Season 5, and SKMD

Making caps from the movie

Re-editing my screencaps (yess all two thousand of them!) and reposting them in much smaller batches. I am not happy with the way they look currently; the coloring is too cyan/blue especially in S2 and 5, they are not sharpened, and many of them are still too dark. I will be recapping everything from scratch to do this, so this is a long term project.

Making gifs of the BTS videos (Aldhelm-only ones; there are still a LOT that I have not done yet)

Adding all the BTS pics and vids from TheLastKingdom Instagram page as well as other cast/crew's Instagrams (the directors and costume designer have a lot of great pics!) to my queue (there are, like, 600+ posts so this will take a while lol)

Giffing/capping the rest of James' filmography (I have five films left to do, as well as his upcoming TV series 'Marie Antoinette' whenever that is released) [low priority]

Learning how to do more complex gifs/edits

@gemini-mama @synintheraven @thenameswinter99

@bagheerita @solinarimoon @errruvande @paula-in-dreamland @aneurins-barnard

@waterfallsilverberrywrites @holy3cake @whitedarkmoonflower @bilbotargaryen @lady-wyrd

@ladyinred2248 @hikaruchen @st-eve-barnes @alexagirlie

[twisted-tales-told]

Thank you @thisliminalspacedaydreams and @otrtbs (and also @whorerific who's doing this with me) for tagging me in:

Author Interview

How many works on ao3: Thirteen! Three are WIPS and 2 are Active WIPs

How many words on ao3: 89,218

Top 5 stories by Kudos

In Our Midst

My Jamie

A Hearts Bruising

The Grand Opening

On Bookshops and Cupcakes <-first ever fic btw

Do you respond to comments? Fuck yeah I do! As long as they're nice!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending? When you Wake up is Pathetically angsty

Do you write crossovers? More putting characters from one story into the universe of another story. Maybe a few cameo's.

Have you ever recieved hate before on a fic?

People ask me sometimes to expand on my one-shots. Also In Our Midst hasn't been updated since like July. People want more of her & I am literally working on the next chapter as fast as I can. U don't understand how big she is.

Do you write smut? Two future WIPs will have explicit tags

Have you ever had your fics stolen? Yeah my pandalily duology makes it onto wattpad sometimes. It makes me feel bad.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? I don't really play well with others in creative projects, or any kind of projects...I am not a team player. I do things on my own timeline and how I want to do them, and I have learned to love this about myself in recent months but it was rough going there for awhile guys!

What's your favourite ship of all time. Don't make me do this please don't make me do this. I have so many u don't understand. I have. So Many. I am a multifandom girlie to my Core. Like Kara/Lena from supergirl has been haunting me recently. All aftg dynamics you can think of (unless nicky is there. nicky belongs with his german guy only thanks). Jegulus, Dorlily, Jason/Dick, Jason/Tim. Timkon. Cass/Steph, Superbat, Lex/Clark (smallville edition) [redacted stranger things ship], percabeth, Nico/Will, like I could go on. Newtmas, Birdflash, Korra/Assami, Morgana/Gwen, Morgana/that blonde girl they made her sister because they're pussies. Merlin/Gwaine is a big one. Like I can't name one they all tumble out of me. Rhy's/his pirate boyfriend im too tired to name in Darker Shade Of Magic. Nick/Bree/Sel from Legendborn. McGonagall/Pomfry also. I have a whole war au for them in a draft somwhere. I need to stop.

Have you ever had a fic translated: no, but feel free as long as it goes on ao3 or that russian ao3.

Whats a wip you want to finish but don't think you ever will? Mercy Be is dead until I have a Supernatural and Hungergames Renaissance at the same time.

What are your writing strengths? I think I really know how to make time flow. I know how to create a Vibe. An Energy. I know how to build a character.

What are your writing weaknesses? Continuity. If I didn't have to make this make sense it would be so much easier.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages? LOVE it! Unfortunately Im scared of looking stupid to people who speak those languages.

What's a fandom/Ship you haven't written for but want to? I would love to write some DC fics. It took me about a year in the marauders fandom to start writing for them, I assume it'll take me about the same for DC. Probably write a silly little camping one-shot...it'll become something maybe

What's your favourite fic you've ever written? My lowest ever kudo'd one actually. Ghosts Of Us, Mary centric, Marylene and Marylily. background prongsfoot, wolfstar and Jegulus (trust me it makes sense). I want to go back to her. Flesh her out even more. Make her 100k one day.

Done! No pressure tags @cr-amber @sophsicle @residentrookie and anyone else who wants to! Im just sleepy. need to stop to sleep.

[risingsouls]

[I keep using Twi.light Prin.cess Gan...I guess because the situation and everything is giving me his overall vibe...even though I'm still not sure what he would look like at this point. And it's not like I could art any ideas anyway but.

To give some loose background on what I'm cooking for a potential story for him in this crossover AU, here's a messy post under the cut because it's a lil long:

So basically, Ganondorf survived the destruction of Hyrule (which, as I think most people here know, I made its own planet for ease of crossover shenanigans). Before that, at around the time he would have been trying to snag the Triforce, Frieza's forces come across Hyrule and the Gerudo and, since they're a formidable warrior race with a bit of A Problem, Frieza offers them a deal: he (read: his soldiers) teach Ganondorf and the Gerudo how to harness ki to deal with Hyrule being shitty to them and take it over in exchange for basically swearing fealty to him. It would be a situation like the Saiyans are in sort of save for the fact that the Gerudo stay planetside instead of going out and conquering: the Gerudo rule the planet in Frieza's stead, but it and everything and everyone on it belong to him. He also tacks on taking Nabooru as part of this deal which is how she ends up on the Frieza Force with The OG Squad.

With ki at their disposal, the Gerudo are easily able to deal with Hyrule and take over, thus ending their problems with their neighbors hating them and, basically, wishing they would just die out. Over the years, Ganondorf and the Gerudo have everything they need and then some. They're no longer forced to resort to thievery to survive. Hyrule is theirs...or mostly theirs.

But, of course, that doesn't sit well with Ganondorf. From the moment he cemented the deal with Frieza, the Gerudo king knew he would try to overthrow him. It was inevitable; no one rules him and he was not satisfied serving another. Hyrule should belong to him and his people, no one else.

This dissatisfaction and ambition drove him to continue his search for the Triforce, a far easier task when no one could stand up to him and his armies. Soon enough, he is successful in invading the Sacred Realm. The lack of balance in his heart transforms the Sacred Realm into a land of darkness and chaos and, much to his chagrin, the Triforce shatters when he touches it. Only the Triforce of Power remains in his possession.

Eventually, through his soldiers who are likely stationed on the planet, Frieza catches wind of the Triforce stuff (and probably either surmises Ganondorf is trying to use it against him OR outright finds out that's the case because…well it is) and that pisses him off so, despite their deal and Nabooru holding up her end of the bargain and Ganondorf not really doing anything treacherous yet, Frieza destroys the planet.

Thanks to the Triforce of Power (as well as probably a combination of his own, innate abilities in ki and magic as well as potentially the Demise connection if I decide to play with that or perhaps using the Sacred Realm somehow to pop in and then gets spat back out, Ganondorf survives the destruction of the planet and ends up on a new one. (I also really want to play with my idea of the planet's destruction causing the Sacred Realm to "leak" into the universe with like…native creatures on different planets evolving into amalgamations of half Hyrule monsters but that's a WIP idea).

As far as what he's been up to, he's certainly made this planet his own. Took it over by force if need be, filled it with monsters, and has been seething over the destruction of his planet and people. Trying to find a way off the planet. Plotting to somehow figure out what happened to the other pieces of the Triforce so he can bring his planet and people back. Find a way back to the Sacred Realm to find answers. Anything but wasting away on some strange, wild planet basically alone (I kind of want to go with the idea that the planet he finds himself on is "uninhabited" and maybe hostile; kind of like Vampa in that regard. Be a good parallel to freeing himself from the trap of the desert only to find himself back in a similar situation again...only this time, it's completely alone). The man is angry and wants nothing more than to revive his people and find out who destroyed them in the first place so he can take revenge.]

[conkers-thecosy]

Ohh, they all sound so good, could you share about "The Prince and the Botonist" please?

Hullo! 💛

Okay, so The Prince and The Botanist is a murder mystery/romance! I started writing it last January as an original story. Here's a snippet!

“Tea?” Dante asked after a long moment.  “Thank you,” Lucien nodded. “Was that all you wished to say to me before we begin?”  “Actually, there was something else,” he admitted, organising the cups and saucers with slightly shaking hands. “There’s something I’d like to ask of you, if I may.”  “You may ask,” he said noncommittally.   “My students are all commoners, you understand. They come from poor homes and poor families,” Dante explained, lifting up the teapot and starting to pour, but missing the cup and splashing into the saucer slightly.   Concerned he might scald himself, Lucien nudged the tea tray a little so that the tea was squarely in the cup. Dante’s eyes went wide in surprise, and he stared at the now cleanly pouring tea like it was somehow extraordinary.  “Yes, I understand,” Lucien said, when no further comment followed. “Local families from the lower city, I’m told?”  Dante poured the second cup without saying anything, this time without spilling any. He then replaced the teapot, and picked up the cleaner of the two cups, offering it to Lucien politely.   “It’s important that they feel comfortable here,” he continued, then offering Lucien milk and sugar, which he silently refused by holding up his hand. “Which is why I ask to be called by my first name only.”  “Lord Dante,” Lucien began, picking up a teaspoon and gently stirring the fragrant, hot liquid he had been served. “I can’t possibly…”  “Your Highness, I really must insist,” the younger man said firmly, some of his original energy returning. “At least within the confines of my home and gardens, I would ask that you call me Dante. We’ve all worked very hard here, and overcoming the fear they had of me simply for our various backgrounds has sometimes seemed insurmountable. I will happily answer any questions you have, I will cooperate with you and your enquiries of course, but I will not have my students and apprentices disrupted.”  Lucien turned this over in his mind, slowly considering his words. It would be a breach of protocol, certainly, and to him it felt hugely disrespectful, especially to a young noble of his standing. Still, he had to admit that what Dante said made a certain amount of sense, and to request it only within his own home was a fair compromise.   “Very well,” Lucien agreed at length. “However, I must stress that you continue to address me as a Prince of the realm, no matter where we are.”  “Oh of course!” he agreed readily, as though that hadn’t even crossed his mind. “I wouldn’t dare suggest otherwise, your Highness.”  Lucien nodded. There was a moment of silence again, and Dante offered him the plate of biscuits without a word. He maintained the quietness, and accepted one graciously.  “That was all I wanted to say,” Dante told him, taking a biscuit for himself and sitting back in the wide, winged chair. “Thank you for hearing me out.”  Lucien sipped his tea and was immediately intrigued by the delicious, floral taste. The tea was a pretty, bright yellow, and somehow tasted of sunshine. 

Thank you for asking about it! It's a little over 50k words right now, and I'm toying with the idea of rewriting the plot as a bagginshield fic! (I deliberately chose this passage because it reminded me of Them a little!)

Thanks so much for asking about the project! I hope you enjoyed my answer!

Conkers 🌰

WIP List Here

[wah-pah]

For the fanfic writer emoji ask game: 🤩 💪 🥘

Hello, dear Michelle. :)

Thank you for asking, @eroticfriendfictions.

🤩What's the most meaningful comment you've ever received?

Overall, I have been tremendously fortunate with the comments I have gotten, from how particular turns of phrases resounded with the audience, the appreciation for the details and historical background, and how the characters from the show seem like themselves and people like my OCs. Yet, the first that popped into my head mentioned how the commenter had recently been rewatching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and been looking forward to seeing the episode where Phryne and Jack were undercover at a golf club to solve a murderer. But the episode never came because what this person had so clear in their mind was my fic "Undercover at The Elvsworth Club". Someone else also mentioned how it seemed like they were watching a brand new episode. I worry a lot about it it's making sense and being in canon so this was a balm to my soul.

Also a shout-out to those The Great Gatsby mentions people have made regarding some of my fics. It's one of my favourite books and Fitzgerald one of my favourite writers so it felt really good to hear.

💪What motivates you to write?

I've always loved reading and creating stories, sometimes even only in my mind. When it comes to fanfic, I'd say it's the continuation of that fondness for storytelling as well as wanting to fill out some blanks or just be more involved in the world of the original work, namely when it comes to characters. Most of my fics are in the Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries realm so there's also the fact that while I also love them individually, Phryne x Jack really asks to be written about. Haha.

🥘What wip are you most excited about?

First and foremost, Homewards, which has been going on for literally years. 🫣

Then, another MFMM fic that has been on the backburner for a long time too that elaborates headcanons, shows as a friend of Jack and Concetta's new life. (This probably all sounds very vague for you - as I said, I wrote mostly for MFMM).

Even if there are some bits that are quite sad, I'd like to finish my Hinterland fic someday down the line. There are some bits of writing there I am very proud of. Besides, Richard Harrington popping up from now and then in shows I am watching it's a reminder haha.

Thank you so much for asking. Your messages for these memes are always a delight to receive.

[steelthroat]

👓💕✨️

Hiii thanks for the ask!

Okkk so:

👓-what helps you focus while you write?

Either a specific music I chose for THAT specific fic or background noises from a site I saved a while ago. But I can't write without headphones on because I have the same attention of a bee in a flower field...

💕-what is your favorite fic you've written?

mhhhh "Sore Wings" is an important milestone and I look at it fondly because it was my first time writing smut. It's not terrible but I cringe a little when rereading it because I could have done better I hindsight...

Missing home is the one I hold closest to my heart tho. I think it will be replaced by some of the new wips I'm doing but atm it's this one :). It just feels idk I like it, I really should continue that series aaaaah

✨️-out of the comments you've received on your fics two or three of your favorites:

Hmmmm let's see

[those 2 am dictionary and thesaurus hunts are evil. *hugs* But not only did you pull it off - it came out great! <3 Well wrote!] (Glitch, glitch, glitch)

[Uhm, the fact that this fic of yours has so little comments is a huge crime because this is so good. You nail down both Meggy and OP's characteristics, how these two dumbasses seem to be so different and opposite at first, but they all share the same visions and dreams (minus the method how to achieve them but they can work it out if Megan stops being a bull head 😀 😀😀). Plus, I want more of this and hope you are still planning to continue this fic. P.S. I just read your newest fic "Missing Home" and it was so good I have to check more of your works and found this gem 💎] (the spark that started the fire etc omg why did i write such a long title ffs.... I FEEL SO GUILTY ABOUT THIS COMMENT BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN MONTHS SINCE I UPDATED THIS FIC OMG SORRRRRRY)

This was... wow... no words only jsjajanzbxksmzm. I can't process this fic rn all my brain functions are gone (in a good way I promise) (Sore Wings)

I honestly could list all of them because every time I recieve a comment I just feel so overjoyed and grateful I start dancing around the house! LIKE OMG YOU PEOPLE. YOU ARE READING AND TAKING TIMW TO COMMENT THANK YOU I WILL KILL MY FIRSTBORN FOR YOU UNIRONICALLY.

[ouroboros-hideout]

WIP WEDNESDAY WHENEVER

I got tagged by @theviridianbunny thank youuu!

ART

The Kurt drawing I started a month ago is almost finished so I won't show that as a WIP again lol. But I settled on what I want to draw next already and I am way to hyped by the idea (Cyberpunk/Witcher crossover)

WRITING

I write quite a lot lately (or try to). Manly oc stuff because I managed to get obsessed with Alyona. Welp.

Her character introduction for my AU is halfway finished, but I am overthinking if it got a little to shippy (I didn't intendet that in the beginning but it just happened and I like it hehe). Maybe I make my shippy stuff into something extra and name it after the ship to keep the actual AU "cleaner" bc it's not that important for the plot. I don't know! I can't organzie my stuff!

Here's a preview of the introduction tho. For context: It's a backflash and around 2073, the business in Dtown starts to bloom and she comes for a visit to see what the Colonel came up with (try not to cringe by posting your writing but cringe anyway):

————————————————————

A woman got out of the helicopter after them. Relatively tall, slim, athletically muscular, her short black hair was tousled by the wind, the sides of her skull were shaved short. She wore simple, military-style clothing. Cargo pants, lace-up heavy boots, a tactical leather jacket. Everything was kept in black and dark olive tones. If you didn't know any better, you'd say she was from here and it would be easy for her to blend in with the masses in Dogtown. One detail that made her stand out, was a multitude of thin scars that ran from the lower left side of her face across her nose and up to her forehead. Judging by the degree of healing, it was a very old wound. At least on the outside.

She walked confidently past her people, holding a bottle of clear liquid with an elaborately designed label in her right hand. Probably high-proof alcohol from her home.

After a few steps, however, she stopped abruptly and pushed the aviator glasses she was wearing down a little to look over the rim in disbelief and with a raised eyebrow.

"You look old, Kurt," she said blatantly, examined the man in front of her from top to bottom and continued to walk slowly towards the him, then took her glasses off completely and put them in the inside pocket of her jacket.

"It hasn't been that long since we last saw each other, has it?"

Her English was remarkably good when compared to other representatives from this part of the world who were usually up for business in Dogtown. However, she was unable to mask the slight accents common to the Russian language.

Kurt ignored her little teasing and tried to be professional.

"I'm glad you're here too." He couldn't help but welcome her with a thin smile." And it should be about half a year. The last time was in Laos during the negotiations."

Both slowly came to a halt in front of each other. Jago had followed the Colonel discreetly and kept to the background.

"That was six months ago already. Seems like I did good on suppressing the memories about that terrible place“, she answered shaking her head in disbelief.

"How was the flight?" he added tersely.

"Ah," she made a dismissive hand gesture. "Alright. I am getting used to traveling.“ She showed him the bottle she brought with her. „Here's your favorite. Don't worry, I've got more in the helicopter."

Without further ado, she pressed it into Hansen's hand.

For all the people standing by who were not yet familiar with Alyona and her way of dealing with Kurt, this whole encounter must have seemed incredibly strange. They all only knew him as the undisputed authority figure and nobody, except at most his old brothers in arms, would dare to talk to him like that. And even there were limits.

Alyona finally looked with interest at the man standing behind the Colonel.

„And who is the cute little cat? I don't think we've met yet.“

Jago's features froze completely and he didn't think he had heard correctly.

"The cute little... EXCUSE ME?" he replied with audible outrage in his voice.

————————————————————

And I still NEED to write her fucking lore down. I think I got it togehter by now.

VP (new to the list)

Just started to activly making pics on my console and would like to come up with a little series in the future maybe.

Atm I try to make pics for a fun Discord Challenge where I have to show a single day in the live of my V. Since I am still obsessed with a certain disctrict I thought I make it a "Dogtown Days"- Edition. I struggle with the limited set of poses but I'll figure something out.

Yea think that's it for now. I still have so many ideas for a lot of different things but I have to restrain myself and finish some things first before I get lost in my WIP-Limbo.

[formula-fun]

(This was timestamped October 12th 😱 when I found bits of my always too long ramble in my notes; I was mostly talking about your answer to my ask on the 12th.)

Good morning! (This was really what I started with!)

Good gawd I totally forgot the other omegas on the grid🤣🤣 when I jumped down the rabbit hole of “ABO universes must be more patriarchal than real life” and “my poor baby being the one suffering the most on the grid for being an omega” and of course the waaaaaaayyyyyyyy too much talking about what I like in ABO fics.

It’s quite refreshing to remember that in your story Japan is less “only boys/alphas are deserving of the throne(literally and figuratively ”. (Still can’t believe I totally forgot about it yesterday, and it was mentioned in Capri too! One of my favorite parts!😱😱) Even though technically (please correct me if i’m wrong) ABO was created so Dean Winchester could logically get pregnant in English fics, I sometimes love the more Asian take on it: as in even in the real world, as soon as men can produce children too, the ones who could do that (like omegas in ABO) would immediately be degraded in the social hierarchy to becoming “women”. It’s a very widely used background in fics from Asian writers thus making me love a lot of fics with very strong omega characters, the whole “I am an omega but I am as strong as you(his future magnificent alpha mate). ”

“male can present as alphas or stay betas ;people born female can present as omegas or stay betas” So there is no female alphas. But if the world consists of male alphas + male betas +female betas+ female omegas, Charles is a male omega?

it’s indeed true we think very differently because half of the time is you amiably disagreeing 🤣 and I’m like nodding and pushing more into the same subject or different subjects and we just continuing on politely disagreeing. 🤣🤣🤣

The mating I do understand, since the actual “registering” happens ON each other and in bed hhahah! Do mating trigger heats and ruts for alpha/omega pairings? Since the whole biology of ABO is practically “let’s make two men having a baby as logical/easy as possible, and they should has they just mated!”.

As for spoilers! I am all for them lol, I have always been the type to want to know whether the end would be happy or sad/bad for movies or stories, and then I would decide whether I would read them (I am still on the life sucks so I shall only read stuff that makes me happy and my best friend is a lover of angst, and we bond alot over angsty stories I was “tricked” into reading that I end up recommending to her, so me reading WIP is totally growth 🤣)

——

I just checked the 2024 calendar so if the baby (yeah!) is conceived in June 2024, it looks like it’s going to happen in Austria? (June races are in Canada, Spain and Austria) At first I thought it was going to be in Monaco(late May) at home? (Why am I sticking to the real calendar when talking about characters in fiction having babies lol). I suppose too much is happening for them in Austria seriously hahahha.

You also mentioned that their baby was born early, the amount of stress for Max??? Did they speed all the way to the hospital in their Ferrari with Max “threatening” Charles their baby girl is most definitely not to be delivered in a Ferrari of all cars? Hahahhahahha

Wonder what kind of reaction the tifosi had finding out their prince/king is having a Ferrari baby?

Thank you so much for entertaining all my way too long explanations of “what I think”.

A very lovely Wednesday to you~~~~

Xoxoxoxoxooxoxo

ahhh hi hi!! Glad you found it! ill answer under the cut in case it gets long!

hahahah yeaaaaah sorry, im definitely breaking the a/b/o form a lot in this fic!! i think it's really only loosely an a/b/o fic in the first place tho--im using that as a way to explore gender, and it's become a pretty good vessel for that! there are a lot of expectations in a/b/o about how different genders are supposed to act and i KNOW thats why people like it.....it's just really fun to flip that on its head and poke at how at the end of the day they're all just people and biology doesnt dictate who they are dfjkdfkjdfjkdfk like am i doing it right? no. am i having fun? yes

and definitely! Im not asian so i can't really speak for that, i just knew from the start that certain countries would have different ideas about gender than others (just like it is in our world) and japan happened to be one of them. i do like the way it flips the script though, and you're definitely right about that meaning omegas can be stronger than alphas. it's kinda emphasizing that there's really no one truth about who anyone is and everything is fluid, especially the dynamics between two people. that's the whole bottom line with that scene with yuki, too--he thought alphas were super different but they're really kinda the same as anyone else. As for the bit about dean winchester, I have no idea if youre right but it doesn't sound wrong ;)

"But if the world consists of male alphas + male betas +female betas+ female omegas, Charles is a male omega?" charles was born female, he identifies as a man tho! same with his brothers, all the other omegas on the grid and a handful of the betas. there are also women who are alphas, who are biologically male. Gender and sex have nothing to do with each other in this universe, gender is just a form of self-expression and identity, so this is pretty common

and iiiiii do not knowwwwww to be honestttttttttt. not sure how mating works yet. We'll see! I think it can kind of be done whenever but there are probably some sort of requirements about hormones or some shit like that, like it probably relies on oxytocin or something so if there's not enough happy calm hormones being released then it wont take?? or something like that?? cause its basically the ultimate oxytocin bond right? its possible im getting too scientific about this but idk. cause in a lot of a/b/o it basically works like magic to the point people can start reading minds after and idk if thats really the direction im going to be going with this, but it's not just a bite either. we'll see we'll see, i need to figure it out still

Same with the calendar--not sure, we'll have to see. i had a plan at one point but i honestly do not remember now. I do think their first baby is conceived in a really dumb place like a sauna or a storage closet in the ferrari hospitality or the passenger seat of Max's valkyrie right after charles smacked his head on the roof and then whined for like six minutes straight while refusing to let Max look at the wound (spoiler: there was no wound. there was not even a bruise). idk why, it just feels like it adds balance to the narrative if the whole thing is dumb and ridiculous and literally not romantic whatsoever. im rejecting the 'uwu conception is beautiful and pure' notion, it's a million times funnier to me if charles gets pregnant because he tried to open a condom with his teeth but bit a hole into it instead and didn't notice or think about it until 6 months later when andrea looked at his most recent blood test results and immediately passed out

that's all i have for you!! no more spoilers, i have to go to sleep!! thanks for the ask and happy wednesday!