#what the fuck did those idiots do this time?

[denovoeve]

This reads like you aren't actually paying attention. Did people just not actually read project 2025? Are they just politically illiterate?It's some policy prescriptions, sure, but it's primarily the training and recruitment portions that matter.

Trump couldn't fuck your nation as badly as he wanted the last time because he didn't have a ready supply of thumbheaded henchmen to fill all the necessary roles in the institutions he nominally led. Most of the impact of project 2025 is supplying him those people. It's recruitment and a barebones training initiative for people willing to put president over nation in pursuit of Christian nationalist agenda. Trump obviously doesn't believe that shit, but he'll happily lead a big tent fascist takeover if they'll let him be dictator.

The bureaucrats that staff these institution, that resisted last time because they believe in the American empire and refuse to let a more overt fascist fuck it up, won't be able to this time. These bureaucrats are essentially demons themselves, happy to let the cogs of empire grind brown people abroad to mince meat, but they have limits. They pump the brakes when anyone risks starting WW3 or turning the nations stolen assets abroad into ruble. That guardrail is gone this time.

The only guardrail anyone can pretend exists against Trumps worst impulses this time is going to be capital. And I've got to be honest, if you think capital is going to prevent him from being the impulsive little troll he is, you're a fucking idiot. Capitalists are the most spineless, cowardly cretin on the planet. They do not ultimately believe in growing the economy, as they pretend. They do not believe in prosperity for all, to their own benefit or otherwise. Drill down, and at the end of the day all they believe in is being on top of the shitheap.

Look at how people couldn't even wait until the election to start spitshining Trumps rod. Musk and his toadies aren't going to get a real shadow presidency. Benzos isn't going to save us. They're going to jump for the chance to kneel in front of Trump the second it looks like he's willing to fight them on anything.

Capitalist will not risks a fight that might see them facing down the US government and losing it all. They'll make a value judgement and decide they're better off keeping what they can and letting the US implode if the alternative is risking a fight they might lose. Some will try and ingraciate themselves to reap the benefits of other forms of power (ala Musk), while others will probably just look at pulling up stakes and moving their shit to greener pastures.

If you hate the US empire above all else, some of this is going to likely be good, long term, in damaging its power and place at the head of the table.

But the largest and most powerful military (domestic and abroad) on the planet is going to be fully under the power of a dumb little troll, in all likelihood. That's going to suck for anyone that isn't falling in line domestically. It's going to entail even more brutal and unhinged use of muscle by the US abroad.

The US government already ignores its own laws in pursuit of doing terrible shit, but it can absolutely get worse. An increasingly overtly fascist empire flailing as it tears itself apart is likely to do incredible harm. Germany didn't have a fraction of the influence or military might the US does and it ate its domestic population alive and plunged the world into war. Theres a huge difference in the potential to do harm between liberal American fascism vs. overt, out and proud, fascim.

is it naive to think maybe a Trump second term won't be so bad? like is there any vision of the next four years and beyond where maybe things are okay

I do think that a lot of what he says is transparently fleeting bullshit he's not going to follow through on, doesn't believe in, and is only saying to get praise from his base, and that's been demonstrated many many times over the years. Like, he never started throwing people into prisons for burning the American flag or whatever. I don't want to minimize the horrors of what he has done in this country and what he could very well do, but I think the mainstream liberal narrative on Trump is to amplify the hell out of every out of pocket thing he says and does and to mine it for as much outrage and fear as possible while downplaying the numerous terrifying things that have already been happening all around the country under state-level Republican leadership, and ignoring just how much Dems are complicit in all of it. Like, will libs start complaining about kids in cages at the border again?? even though the cages never left, and Biden deported more people than Trump did??

The take away for me isn't necessarily that "things under Trump won't be *that bad*" but that things have already been exactly as bad as the Democratic Party has framed life under Trump to be. A lot of liberals exist in a permanent state of willful denial about the evils of this empire and Trump forces them out of pretending things aren't happening that already are, but they focus all the blame for it on him.

[deliciousnecks]

But can we talk about how powerful nandor is? like yeah, he might be a bit silly, and not in touch with the modern world, but if he wanted to, he could have already conquered whatever the fuck he wanted to. (he built an army, and jerry is still looking at maps over there).

like let's just start by pointing out that nandor didn't need to be a vampire to accomplish all these great things that he wanted in life. vampirism only made him more dangerous. nandor has always had too much power in his hands, that he tends to misuse, but that's actually a good thing for the people around him because if not, the truth is that they would be fucked.

He was born in a position of privilege, one that put him later on in his life in positions of power, he was a leader who did fucked up shit. As a vampire, he can hypnotize thousands, but even if he couldn't, nandor knows how to attract people to him when he puts his mind to it, as we were able to see, but guess what? he also has doing everyone around him doing whatever shit he wants, because rarely people can say no to him. What nandor wants, nandor gets (even the stupidest of things).

Now. Don't get me started with his pyrokinesis. The dude can create and manipulate fire. Like come on, you know all the batshit crazy things that he could be doing with that? people should be thankful that he's not going around acting in unhinged ways.

He's a formidable warrior, the fact that he live as long as he did as a human, through battles and wars, and the guy didn't get killed? i don't know, but I think that says a lot about his kills. he also can use a large variety of weapons, so now imagine. This guy who's the greatest warrior of his time, gets the strength and the speed that comes with vampirism. he becomes a fucking killing machine (not like he wasn't one already), but now he's unstoppable and on top of that, immortal!

As i said in the beginning of this post, time and time again nandor has been given power, too much power I should say. he even got those 52 wishes and the things my guy here could have accomplished with them? ridiculous! but he was feeling silly, so... he decided to have fun instead. Good for him.

Now, we now he conquered places and won wars, and while his years as a ruler were bloody, it seems like he did a lot of Al Quolanudar when it comes to territory. What I'm trying to say is that he's a good strategist, he's good, no he's the best at what he does. he excels in what he was trained and taught to do (and even the vampire community acknowledges this).

People always like to underestimate him (the fandom included. it's true.), say that in a battle he stands no chance. That X, Y, and Z are more could easily demolish him, that he can't do shit for himself, but like excuse me, he's the oldest vampire in that house, look at all the shit that he can do, so no. He's the strongest and most powerful piece in that chessboard, mam. Nandor could go on a killing spree and no one could stop him.

This latest season really brought forward this qualities of his that had always been there. Nandor can be competent, he can be assertive, he really just chooses not to, but if he did! well, we saw what can happen when he is.

nandor is powerful, skillful, and dangerous in more than one way, and yes! smart when he needs to be.

And i make this post, because some people have made him into this character that's just an idiot with 0 qualities, and those qualities that he does have, are always being diminished to make other characters look better (yes. to make guillermo look better. i said it, which is highly unnecessary because he can shine on his own).

It's not that he can't do shit, the fact is that he doesn't want to.

[futuremrscameron]

Parents Rafe and Bahamas reader, please! 😭

a/n: i ended chronicling their journey through/post pregnancy i hope you mind

bahamian!reader and rafe as parents🧑‍🧑‍🧒🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

first trimester (1-3 months)

bahamian!reader and rafe do not use condoms, just lube, prep, and vibes so it wasn’t a huge surprise when they saw those two pink lines

it’s hard to say who was more excited, he’s always wanted a family of his own and she loves kids and rafe so that’s literally her dream come true

rafe is worried he’ll be just like his dad or he’ll screw up and no matter how many times bahamian!reader reassures him he can’t shake the feeling that it’s inevitable

bahamian!reader and rafe having arguments over baby names. he thinks he should choose the name if it’s a boy and she should choose if it’s a girl. she tells him to shove it which leads to more arguing. they eventually decide to brainstorm together and pick a name they both agree on

bahamian!reader's morning sickness comes in waves, she'll be fine for three to five says and suddenly she's vomiting for days on end. during these times rafe stays home and watches over her, cooking, rubbing her back as she spews acid, tying her hair back/up, and running a washcloth under the water before placing it on her head

the first person that finds out is wheezie. they didn’t tell her, she was eavesdropping overheard them talking about the baby. she was every excited to be an aunt and asked if the baby has kicked yet. rafe calls her an idiot and bahamian!reader slaps his shaved head

bahamian!reader’s siblings are the next to find out. she calls her siblings over zoom to give them the big news and their reactions range from shocked, confused, and excited. the call turns into two hours of parenting advice that she did eyes because she basically raise them all, making plans for a baby shower, and trying to book tickets to obx

bahamian!reader and rafe buy all the parenting beginner books they can get their hands on. they wanna be ready for anything even though they know that’s impossible they’re excited but scared they don’t wanna fuck the kid up

rafe wants to know the gender but she doesn’t care which causes another argument that ends in them sitting down and having a mini therapy session

rafe tells bahamian!reader he wants a son to undo what his father did to him and to be a better father than he was. she assures him that won’t happen and that he’s a different man

rafe takes so many notes during doctor visits and side eyes the doctors every time they touch her stomach or she winced at the cold jelly

bahamian!reader and rafe cried when they saw their baby on the sonogram. rafe took a picture and sent it to the gc named ‘operation boss baby/storks’ by bahamian!reader

topper and kelce are the next people to find out because rafe is very proud of himself and his hard work like they weren’t fucking raw. they’re shocked but excited to be uncles and congratulate him and bahamian!reader. they argue over who’s going to be the godfather. rafe likes watching them fight so he doesn’t immediately tell them it’ll be probably be both of them and bahamian!reader’s brothers

sarah finds out after bumping into bahamian!reader at a flea market and sees her bargaining with the vendor for a box of fruits and veggies. she talks about needing to eat healthy while subconsciously rubbing her belly and sarah puts two and two together. she asks sooooo many questions, how long have the known, who was the first person they told, how could wheezie keep this from her, have they been to a doctor, how far along is she, do they know the gender?

bahamian!reader shows sarah the sonogram and she sobs because it’s so tiny and she can’t believe that’s her niece? nephew? she doesn’t care she loves it already

bahamian!reader tells rafe that sarah knows but before he can spiral she tells him they need to figure their shit out before the baby comes cause she wants all its aunts to be part of their life. when he calms down she tells him that sarah’s been added to the group chat

bahamian!reader's stops at barry's to make sure he hasn't been selling to rafe and vomits in his toilet while trying to intimidate him. he immediately knows she's pregnant and makes her some tea that helped his sister when she was pregnant. rafe sees her location and freaks out expecting the worst but when he kicks in the door he sees the two eating ice cream and watching old telenovelas

bahamian!reader makes him apologize and promise to replace barry's door

bahamian!reader and rafe agree that staying at tanneyhill is not optimal

rose is the last of the camerons to find out. she overheard wheezie talking to someone on the phone and thought it was sarah but it was actually bahamian!reader who was telling her about their recent doctor visit

bahamian!reader and rafe house hunting every night, determined to find a place for their growing family. the night they finally find the one that fits all their wants and needs is one for the history books

bahamian!reader who’s excited to be a mother but knows there’s a chance she might not survive the birth and writes a letter to rafe expressing her love form him and asking him to stay strong for their child and to keep a strong community around him and their child

second trimester (4-6 months)

bahamian!reader and rafe who move into their new house in the winter right when the second trimester starts

bahamian!reader's food cravings are bahamian delicacies which aren't common in obx so rafe calls her siblings so they can walk him through it. she cries when he makes her conch fritters because they taste exactly the ones from the street vendor by her school

bahamian!reader and rafe start to discuss birthing options which surprises rafe because he thought they were just going to the mainland, he'd been researching all the best hospitals, researching their doctors, and scrolling through reviews.

bahamian!reader wants a home birth and like rafe, already has a plan and has done her research

bahamian!reader who talks to rafe about the possibility of her dying during childbirth and has to explain to him that the mortality rate for black women is high so they have to prepare for the worst possible scenario. he understands but he doesn't wanna think about it and doubles down on their need to give birth in a hospital

bahamian!reader who is excited to be a mother but knows there’s a chance she might not survive the birth and writes a letter to rafe expressing her love for him and asking him to stay strong for their child and to keep a strong community around him and their child. she also writes twenty three letters for her unborn child for every birthday so she can give her advice for most of her life

rafe finally agrees to a homebirth after finding the letters after bahamian!reader fell asleep at his desk while writing letter twenty four. bahamian!reader already has a doula in mind, the woman that helped birth most of her siblings, rafe thinks she's too old to still be in her prime and bahamian!reader says he'll eat his words when he sees her work

bahamian!reader and rafe hire a team of midwives from the mainland to help with the birth and buy a ticket to obx for the doula in the bahamas

rafe hasn't touched coke in almost a year and plans on staying clean for his family. he takes up social drinking which bahamian!reader can already see becoming a problem

bahamian!reader and rafe miss partying sometimes but nothing beats staying home and getting a belly massage while watching reality tv. rafe massages her belly with oils recommended by doctors (and kiara) to help with stomach cramps

they feel the baby kick during one of these late night routines and they both freeze. they look at each other, communicating everything with their eyes, waiting for it to happen again and praying it wasn't a fluke. when it happens again they laugh, cry, and kiss

the pogues of course end up finding out one by one. john b’s first cause he saw sarah buying diapers and thought she was pregnant and sarah had to tell him she wasn’t and that bahamian!reader was the pregnant one. kiara sells bahamian!reader some oils that are often used by pregnant women, jj sees her baby bump while she's at the country club, and pope automatically knows shes pregnant when he sees her house a double burger supreme at the wreck.

rafe is at the country club with kelce and offhandedly mentions a baby shower which kelce takes rafe wanting one. he enlists the help of sarah to throw this baby shower and they go all out

bahamian!reader and rafe find elaborate gender reveals lame so they just go back to the doctor's to figure out the sex

it's a girl! rafe is nervous but happy and bahamian reader is excited. they also find out the due date, bahmian!reader is so glad that their baby's gonna be a summer baby

rafe knows kelce and sarah are planning the baby shower but they refuse to let him in on any of their plans outside of asking him vague questions about due dates and

bahamian!reader who spends time with wheezie when rafe is out with barry doing "business". they get along great, wheezie reminds bahamian!reader of her little sister and bahamian!reader reminds wheezie of sarah

rafe really wants to legitimize his business and break away from his father's shadow but it's easier said than done

bahamian!reader occasionally hangs out with barry when he comes over to discuss business and they just chop it up. rafe is only slightly jealous but he's happy they get along

bahamian!reader and rafe who can't wait to meet their baby girl

third trimester (7-9 months)

rafe gets super protective around this time and bahamian!reader's weakening state does nothing to ease his worries

the doula and midwives land in obx and immediately get to work, putting bahamian!reader on bedrest, setting up shop around their house, and prepping the birthing room

bahamian!reader's boobs are sore more often than not these days. rafe feels so bad because on one hand his baby is in pain but on the other hand mommy milkers

rafe definitely has questionable thoughts about her being a mother like it's doing crazy things to his brain he really hasn't thought of it til now and he can't stop

bahamian!reader and rafe come down to two names but refuse to tell when anyone asks because they don’t want to “ruin the surprise”

kelce and sarah are running the baby shower organizing party like the goddamn navy. they sit the parents to be down and show them the baby shower invitations and try to choose a theme but bahamian!reader is too busy watching rafe make johnny cake and how good he looks shirtless

bahamian!reader gets very homesick the closer her due date gets. she's worried that their daughter will never get to see her home and her family

rafe notices she's feeling down and puts two and two together when she cries into her plate of fried plantains

bahamian!reader and rafe come back home from a spa day booked by kelce and sarah to their house covered in decorations and their closest friends screaming 'surprise'. they knew.

rafe tells bahamian!reader he's got a surprise for her and tells her to answer the door when someone knocks. she opens the door and sees her siblings which causes a ten-minute reunion hug and cry

bahamian!reader kisses rafe all over his face until all of her lipgloss is on him and gets really emotional about him doing this for her and is overcome with love and affection she feels like she's gonna burst

wheezie is a welcomed surprise and rafe wants to ask how she got past rose before seeing her not to far from them. wheezie tells him not to let that stop them from having a great time and to remember this day is about them

kelce and sarah are very proud of their hard work and can be found talking to their guests about how hard it was to put all this together but how they wouldn't trade it for the world

bahamian!reader is the guest of honor so of course she gets a crown, a throne, a scepter and a beaded necklace, she feels like the queen of carnival

bahamian!reader catches up with her siblings, asks them about school, work, romances, old friends, how home is and they ask her what it's like living in a mansion

rafe does not like being away from bahamian!reader for long periods of time so he tries to stay close by as he's bombarded with questions about fatherhood and his relationship from kooks and pogues alike

bahamian!reader squeals when she sees barry and runs to hug him. she's glad that he can still spin her around despite her recent weight gain. he apologizes but she brushes him off, tells him everyone else is just early

rafe tells his drug dealer turned ally and business partner that he's late but barry tells him he's operating on "the white man's" time

the party ends with the "reveal", bahamian!reader hits a piñata and pink candy falls out. her siblings and friends wish them congratulations but bahamian!reader is too tired to continue the festivities so rafe being the good man he is kicks everyone out

bahmian!reader convinces her siblings to stay in obx until she gives birth but can't convince them to stay in the house even after going back and forth about how they wouldn't be burdening them at all

rafe and bahamian!reader spend the rest of the next day opening up the rest of the presents

birth/early year

bahamian!reader wants to go to the beach but not just any beach, one in the bahamas. flying is not an option at this point so rafe promises to take her and the baby to the bahamas when they’re ready

rafe is planning the hell out of the labor from what time contractions are gonna start to charging every device that has a camera so they can remember it

bahamian!reader goes into labor a week early and rafe freaks the fuck out while she's calm as a cucumber. he's worried what this could mean no matter how much the midwives assure him that she's fine and that it's perfectly normal especially considering her family history

bahamian!reader is walking around to help with the pain with rafe following closely behind her. she jokes about going up the stairs and his face going pale is equally hilarious and adorable

bahamian!reader falls to her knees after an excruciatingly painful contraction. rafe is panicking and decides that's enough walking around, lifts her up bridal style, and takes her back to the birthing room

the pool is ready and the midwives tell rafe to put her inside but she grabs his arm with a crushing grip, meets his eyes, and tells him to get her siblings. he reassures her he'll call them but she tells him to go pick them up and while he doesn't wanna argue with her especially at a time like this he doesn't wanna leave her alone and he's certain they'll answer and be on their way before they even hang up but she doesn't wanna risk it and now she's crying so he'll do it

he's pretty sure he's breaking every speeding law and passed many red lights but he can afford it. he doesn't even get to finish telling them she's in labor they're already in the car. he breaks some more laws on his way back but it's worth it because he gets to hold his girl's hand and tell her she's doing great as she pushes

bahamian!reader is happy to be surrounded by family at a time like this although she does threaten rafe with the camera while also telling him to get her good side

she's in labor for fifteen hours and rafe never leaves her side once. he needs coffee? the adults send one of the children to get them some (rafe's not sure about it at first but bahamian!reader's younger brother assures him that they've all been drinking and making coffee since they were five)

at the fifteenth hour, bahamian!reader brings her sisters in close and tells them to always wear condoms as she pushes one last time and the baby's head appears. she cries happy tears and feels rafe kiss her sweaty forehead, the doula and midwives tell her to push five more times

bahamian!reader and rafe cry tears of joy and disbelief at the sight of their little girl. she's taken out of the water by a midlife and cleaned up before being passed to her mother and father

rafe cries when he holds her. he can't believe something so tiny and soft and pure is half of him. he's overwhelmed with so much love and affection already he knows he'll do anything for her, for both of them. he promises her he'll be better than his father

bahamian!reader rests for two hours after delivery giving rafe and her siblings ample time to get to know the baby. her youngest siblings were made to wait outside during the delivery finally get to see their niece and the youngest, lil john, is happy he's no longer the baby (he's still a baby just not thee baby)

everyone wants to know her name but rafe refuses to tell them until bahamian!reader is up

bahamian!reader wakes up to rafe at her side with their baby and feels her heart squeeze at the sight of them. he tells her how proud he is of her and thanks her for giving him this bundle of joy which of course makes her cry

their intimate moment is interrupted by wheezie bursting in and asking where the baby is. rose apologizes for her and is followed by all of bahamian!reader's siblings screaming about "a white lady and her baby"

everyone's happy to see that bahamian!reader's up and alive but they all know the real star is the baby

rafe is very warry of anyone else holding her but when he side eyes bahamian!reader's siblings and wheezie she tells him to knock it off

wheezie wants to hold her but is scared of hurting her. bahamian!reader reassures her that it's not hard and she'll be fine. the baby is the spitting image of rafe but like if rafe was biracial

"what's her name?"

rafe and bahamian!reader smile at each other

“wheezie, meet louise.” she sobs.

she's very honored that they named her after her but worries that she'll be bullied in school for having an "old lady name". bahamian!reader cracks up rafe does not find this funny and takes his baby back

after everyone's gotten a chance to hold and look at the baby rafe kicks them all out because "his girl needs rest"

bahamian!reader says she's not tired but rafe doesn't believe it, he lets her have that lie though and tells her it's just so they can spend time with the baby themselves

bahamian!reader and her siblings say goodbye for what feels like two hours but is shockingly only one. rafe has to remind them that they'll see each other again tomorrow because their hotel is max thirty minutes away

sarah comes to visit and comes with a truckload of gifts and is automatically cooing over the newborn. she's talking about wanting to pinch her little cheeks and eat her up when rafe decides to take his baby back. she pouts and says she was just joking but he's not taking any chances

bahamian!reader was worried that louise wouldn't latch but she was proven wrong when she fed her the first time and she latched on immediately. it was more of a struggle to get her to let go

bahamian!reader is worried about the baby weight and what rafe will think and turns to her sisters for advice which was the wrong idea because they tell her to leave him if he says anything and that they'll take care of him

unsurprisingly, rafe has no problem with the change in her figure and says "onlys cucks and virgins have an issue with that". he's very into it actually, constantly grabbing her stomach and thighs and kissing up and down her neck. constantly being told "don't start something you can't finish bey"

bahamian!reader has a tearful goodbye with her siblings after the first month, she's scared that they won't be able to do it without their help but knows they have lives to return to. they promise her that she'll do great and that they'll see her when she visits

the first couple of doctor visits are easier than either thought until the vaccinations. rafe wants to wring the neck of the doctor giving louise her shots and making her cry. bahamian!reader has to remind him that it's temporary and her health

louise is a daddy's girl to her core thanks to rafe spoiling her rotten. when she's not with her mama she's definitely with her daddy, in his arms, behind his back, on his hip, in a stroller, a carrier, or in a pouch

her first social outing post birth is at the country club with rafe. kelce and topper see her and automatically start gushing about how cute she is. kelce talks in a baby voice and topper plays peek-a-boo with her, rafe would mock them if it was anyone else's brat but he knows his daughter is the cutest girl in the world so he understands

topper says she looks exactly like him down to his cold stare and kelce jokes that she's thankfully got her mother's melanin

first time barry sees baby louise is when he makes a surprise visit. he finds rafe on his balcony and is shocked when he turns around and has a baby strapped to his chest

louise loves barry. she's immediately intrigued by him, reaching for him from her pouch surprising rafe and bahamian!reader when she walks in on louise giggling as she pushes her tiny fingers into the dealer's mouth and pulls at his nose

barry says she's lucky she's cute and jokes that she got all her looks from bahamian!reader. rafe says he's lucky he's holding his baby or he'd knock his lights out

rafe and bahamian!reader go all out for her first christmas even though they know she probably won't remember any of it. winter photoshoots, pictures with mall santas, big family dinners, and loads of gifts. rafe promises her that when she's old enough to remember christmas he'll take her somewhere with snow for christmas

rafe gets bahamian!reader a snow globe of her bar in the bahamas and she gets him a new bike, both are left speechless by the accuracy of the gifts and the care that went into getting them they definitely fuck nasty after louise is asleep

bahamian!reader and rafe have no trouble with getting up in the middle of the night to look after a screaming baby because both their sleep schedules were kind of fucked beforehand

bahamian!reader wants louise baptized and while rafe is not against it he's surprised to hear that bahamian!reader is religious

"so what'd you think the cross necklace was for?"

"aesthetic reasons? i don't know."

"that brain of yours for 'aesthetic reasons'?"

they both agree that sarah should be the godmother only because they agree she's the most mature albeit not the oldest. rafe doesn't want wheezy to have all that pressure and power and bhamian!reader doesn't want the twins, two of her younger sister diana and donna, to fight over who gets to be godmother

bahmaian!reader's siblings watch the baptism through zoom but are still somehow the loudest there. sarah sobs at being named the godmother and while rafe looks disgusted at her snot and blubbering they both know he's happy she's there

louise says her first words a few weeks after the baptism. it's 'mama' which rafe says isn't fair because bahamian!reader has been "conditioning her to say it" they both know he's just jealous she said mama before daddy

he gets his lick back when she takes her first steps and wobble runs into his arms. bahamian!reader calls him a smug asshole and takes her baby from his arms

louise's first birthday is a grand occasion and this time they're all hands on deck. bahamian!reader flew out her siblings once again and they help with the party supplies, gifts, invites, and catering

rafe gets a little choked up during the planning cause he's never had a family like this, not since his mother. bahamian!reader and her siblings pinch his cheeks and cheer him up letting him know that he's family now

louise is dressed up in a big pink dress with a tiara to match because she is a princess. the three-layered cake is a castle and there's a bouncy house, she's having a ball

the girls of the family can't get enough of her from the twins, to fourteen year old mia and wheezie, and of course sarah. bahamian!reader find them moment too cute not to take a picture

bahamian!reader taking pictures of the birthday girl, the party, and all of the attendees, her favorite is the one where louise is messily feeding rafe cake

the baby is tired so rafe puts her down for a nap and stays by her side so bahamian!reader and keep talking to friends and family

bahamian!reader does not believe in the 'terrible twos' and even if she did that's something that happens to other peoples' kids not hers. rafe tells her he was a terror at two and she's like "oh i'm sure". if louise is ever extra bratty she blames it on rafe spoiling her and being her father which he knows is fair but does bring up that she is her mother. he sleeps on the couch that night.

bahamian!reader is so excited cause they can finally take their daughter to the motherland. they take the jet of course because it's the fastest and rafe has to hear 'are we there yet?' from a two year old and a twenty four year old

when they touch down in the bahamas they immediately book it to her childhood home where all her siblings still live and it's like she's been given a second wind. she's zooming everywhere from the beach to street vendors to her bar because she wants to show louise everything. rafe has to remind her that they're spending the summer so there's no need to squeeze everything into one day

bahamian!reader is very excited to take louise to the beach because there's nothing like it. she has to explain to rafe that obx's water is nothing like the bahamas

"bey you should know this, you seen it. ya stood in it!"

"wasn't really thinking about how beautiful the sea was at the time babe."

they of course brought a floatie for louise to sit in and get the full experience despite her pouting and telling them she could swim just fine

bahamian!reader pushes a strand of hair behind louise's ear as she speaks in a soft tone. "we know baby we just want you to be safe because the ocean can get really big. bigger than daddy sometimes."

louise's mouth is agape at the thought of something taller than her daddy. "woah. okay mama."

bahamian!reader's new bikini she bought just for the trip get a lot of attention from non-rafes. rafe comes over and kisses bahamian!reader silly in front of them like they're not there and passes louise to her before strutting off to get a beer. the message is loud and clear

louis is very sad when it's time to leave but they promise the beach is still gonna be there tomorrow. she immediately falls asleep in the ride back to the house

bahamian!reader's siblings offer to teach rafe how to play dominoes. she tries to save him but he tells her he can handle it, and in the beginning he does, he wins a round. the next few rounds are a massacre, he doesn't realize he's being swindled until the last round's over and he's lost five thousand dollars

bahamian!reader scolds her siblings for swindling him and rafe for not listening to her

bahamian!reader and rafe having date nights in the bahamas. she takes him out dancing one night which leads to a hot and heavy make out sesh in the alley. the next week they go skinny dipping and their last week in the bahamas they eat from several street vendors

you already know she's got him trained in taking photos like he has a master in cuntology and minored in photography

exhibit a

exhibit b

exhibit c

as the night comes to an end, they stop at a convenience store before heading home.

"you've never tried jarritos!?"

is it really that hard to believe?"

"a little yeah. nah we're fixing that."

that's how he found himself being dragged through the aisles of a 24/7 convenience store. they stop in front of the horizontal fridges, she grins at the endless options. "well, here it is."

"here it is." he parrots back. she looks back at him and rolls her eyes but the smile tells him everything he needs to know. "what flavor you want?"

"you're the expert, what do you recommend?"

"mango."

"mango it is." he watches her open the fridge and grab two mango bottles. there's something about the flickering dying white light above them, the blue dim light in the freezer, the condensation on the mirror and the hum of the fridge. he's already pulling out his camera when she turns and smiles. click!

she grins, ""okay big man! mr. professional! i see you!" she closes the fridge and faces him, one hand on her hip "was it good?"

"with you? always."

she halfheartedly shoves him and walks past him. "thank you." she stops and looks back at him, "i just wanted good photos."

he shrugs and reaches her in three strides. he wraps one arm around her waist, "yeah but i wouldn't have done it without you."

she smiles, "maybe. maybe not. let's go, my baby's waiting for me." he chuckles as they walk up to the cashier, manned by an old skinny dark skinned man with an unbuttoned shirt and a hat. he's looking down at his phone watching what sounds like a soccer game when she clears her throat.

the old man looks up and does a double take. rafe knows that look well.

he turns off his phone and attempts to straighten himself up, "good evening ma'am. little late to be out by yourself no?"

she glares, "don't try it old man."

the man frowns but squints, "hol'on oh my lord gal i didn't recognize you? how you been?"

"i straight, where's your glasses wilson thomas?"

he shrugs, "ah you know those doctors just tryin' to make money." he swipes the drinks and puts them in bags. "last i heard ya moved to north carolina and had a baby? i said "no way" thought it was just sip sip."

she grins, "yeah, i'm a taken woman now." the man finally acknowledges rafe who gives him a cold menacing smile.

wilson maintains his chivalrous act but the couple sees right through him "oh that's good!"

she chuckles as she swipes her card, "uh huh. goodnight thomas." she grabs rafe's hand and leaves the store as wilson calls after them. "hey stop by any time ya hear! i always got a discount for ya!"

they stop a good distance away from the store, she pulls out both bottles, "sorry 'bout him."

"what's his deal?" rafe asks as he accepts the drink from her hand.

she takes a sip and shakes her head, "old perv."

"oh?"

she shrugs, "always got everything in that shack of his though." she says it like it's no big deal but he notices the way her hand balls into a fist.

he looks down at the drink in his hand and taps the cap before biting the bullet. "do you miss living here?"

she stops drinking and looks at him. she swallows, "what's this?"

he wants to find the right words so it takes him a little longer to reply. "you're- you seem... happier here? do- would you wanna stay here?" she looks out to the direction of the ocean and closes her eyes, taking in the smell and the sound.

"i miss it."

he feels like he's been sucker punched in the gut.

"but i love living with you. and yeah i miss my family but you're my family, you and louise. doesn't matter where we are."

how did he get so lucky? "i love you."

she smiles, "i love you."

bahamian!reader and louise are disappointed when they have to head back to outer banks but bahamian!reader promises to visit when they can and tells her siblings their home is always open to them. they apologize to rafe for swindling him but he tells them it's fine cause he did worse at their ages

louise cries until they're at the airport and she falls asleep and doesn't wake up until they're in the sky

louise may be a daddy's girl but she loves her mama. it only becomes a problem on the first day of pre-k

louise stomps her foot and cries, "i don't wanna go mama!"

bahamian!reader squats down to her level and wipes her tears, "oh i know baby but you wanna get smarter and bigger right."

she shrugs, pouting and refusing to look her in the eye. bahamian!reader feel her heart break, seeing her baby sad is one thing but knowing she's the cause of that pain is another.

"okay. no lies, it's hard. it's gonna be hard for me and your daddy to watch you go through the doors and it's gonna be hard for you to be without us for a while. but i promise you, we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't know it would help you. i can't promise you'll have fun but i promise you'll learn something and the hours will go by faster than you think?"

louise rubs at her eyes and her come to a stop, “really?"

"really. and before you know it me and daddy will be here to pick you up and give you a million kisses and biiiiig hugs." she lightly squeezes her to give her an example of the hugs.

louise giggles. "you're silly mama."

she smiles, "i know." she wipes her daughters tears and gives her one last hug. "i love you baby."

"i love you more mama."

"impossible." she smiles and kisses her forehead signaling for the homeroom teacher to take over.

she grabs louise's hand and tells her to wave bye to bahamian!reader, she does and bahamian!reader waves back as she watches the two disappear into the classroom.

louise is already the next kook princess, only three years old and she has everyone wrapped around her cute little finger

second pregnancy

about 3 years after louise bahamian!reader gets pregnant again. they ecstatic but are worried that louise won't be since she's used to getting all their attention. they both know what it's like to have all the love and spotlight on you and suddenly having to share it with another kid

louise is very happy to hear that she's gonna be a big sister and puts her ear against bahamian!reader's stomach trying to hear them. they tell her she won't be able to hear or feel them for a while

they both agree that the second pregnancy was easier because they know all the tricks and hacks and have made a plan A-Z for the birth. what they weren't prepared for were twins

rafe’s shocked when they find out there having twins but bahamian!reader isn’t. she forgot to tell him that twins run in her family

rafe is officially freaking the fuck out, he doesn't know how he can replicate what he did with louise with twins!

bahamian!reader is surprisingly calm for most of her pregnancy, seeing twins as a challenge that she can take on

louise helps keep her stress as low as she can; she cleans up her toys, helps set the table, and keeps bahamian!reader company when she goes on bedrest later in her pregnancy

rafe and bahamian!reader stick to online shopping for baby materials this time

bahamian!reader's cravings have involved from bahamian food to triple cheese totinos pizza and cans of cool whip

jj jokingly calls her huge one time and makes her cry and rafe would’ve beaten the shit out of him if he wasn’t held back by barry and bahamian!reader forgives him

bahamian!reader and rafe agree to make charles, her younger brother, and barry the twins' godfathers because they are the most qualified despite some of their shadier pasts

bahamian!reader wants to have the twins at a high class fancy mainland hospital because she doesn't risk either of the twins. they find a place that's the combination of a high end hotel and a medical facility/hospital and book their stay

it's not a surprise when they put bahamian!reader on bedrest and while she understands she is still pouty

"i'm not pouting." she pouts from what she's started calling "a fluffy prison".

rafe looks up from massaging her feet and chuckles. "looks like pouting. what do you think lou?"

louise nods and points accusingly, "stop pouting mama?"

"louise!?"

the labor is eighteen excruciating hours but it's all worth it when she sees her babies joel and alice, named after billy joel and rafe's mom. he cries when he hears her name and can't stop kissing her and baby alice as he thanks her for everything

the twins give them a run for their money, not literally of course they could afford the diapers but sleep-wise. when one is down the other is awake which sometimes leads to the other twin being woken up, this goes on for a while until they find a good strategy

louise is a great big sister, always playing with the twins and holding thier hands when they cross the street, cheering them up when they're sad, and sharing her toys

both parents can't believe their lives but they wouldn't trade it for the world

[redrandomposts]

till narrowly missing ivan in every universe, either literally or figuratively, makes me giggle and cry at the same time AUUHSHSJSH if he was a regressor/reincarnator and og/alnst!till was watching his later incarnations, mans would be bald from tearing his hair out in frustration

"LOOK BACK MF LOOK BACK, YOU JUST MISSED HIM"

"THATS NOT WHAT HE MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT"

"NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO HAVE YOUR NTH SEXUALITY CRISIS, IVAN IS MOVING AWAY TOMORROW. MOVE IT"

and imagine his previous incarnations from other failed lifetimes watching the current lifetime with him and theyre all in the same frustrated state 😭

"can we PLEASE have one lifetime where we dont end up breaking his heart ? can we PLEASE—"

— 🌦️

HAHAHAHAHA LMAOOOOO

doomed lovers and tills watching it all happen, kicking and screaming

everytime an incarnation pops up in their little hell, he is kicked and beaten up and treated as a less-than-human being until the next one meets ivan. and then they're too focused watching how till (yes, that's you, a dumbass) misses every smile and glimmer of eyes and heartbreak that ivan shows.

"what the fuck?! what's he doing?! ivan is right there, don't go hitting on her - fuck! who is that idiot!"

"that idiot is you! do you remember how you made ivan your best man at your wedding?!"

"says the one had an arranged marriage with him then went to war and came home in love with a nurse!"

"all of you are idiots!"

and none of the tills know og till's backstory. most of the time he's writing songs and playing the guitar, as all of them do, but in a more extreme way. there's a little library with all the songs the tills have made, each shelf a different life. og till's is a whole bookshelf, but the ones about ivan only starts after he first appeared here.

(there's also the songs each and every ivan has made about till, for till, to till. those are treated much better than the ones the tills haphazardly throws into their respective shelves. they're encased in gold and glass, just as unattainable as ivan seems to be.)

extra reactions according to some of my aus (except it's all the bad ends and ooc??):

omegaverse

"...what the fuck?"

"WHAT'S A PHEROMONE?! ALPHA? THAT'S SO CRINGEY? WTF"

"GUYS!!! IVAN CAN BE PREGNANT-"

"-SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP-"

"holy fuck"

"it was indeed a fuck"

"did you know ivan could moa-"

"fucking hell we're all tills we're all here we all know!"

"BLOOD! GET A TISSUE YOU FREAK-"

"HALF OF US HAVE NOSEBLEEDS WDYM"

"please please please till hE IS PREGNANT-"

"..."

"what the fuck."

"HE'S DEAD?"

"guys i don't ever wanna get ivan pregnant if that's what's going to happen"

android au

"...he owns ivan..?"

"THAT'S NOT FAIR?? WHAT DID HE EVER DO TO DESERVE IVAN??"

"surely they fall in love, right?"

"don't fucking jinx it, you moron!"

"ivan's so cute... look! he's cutting the veggies into flowers!"

"hey! till! say thank you to ivan!!"

"ugh, can't he just get out the studio so i can see ivan??"

"till, can't you just be a stay at home musician?!"

"aww!! aren't those flowers in the stitching?"

"oh my god ivan hand sewed him clothes?!"

"that's not fair! ivan! you can't just give things to the idiot! or else!! ...or else."

"...you fucking jinxed it!!! ivan!!! you can't die!"

"how'd i know that they'd just shoot and never stop shooting?"

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM??"

"i'll fucking BEAT THEM UP I SWEAR."

"??? why's he only just checked the cameras now since he got ivan?"

"...ivan's voice is so heavenly."

"..."

zombie au

"is it another boring one? haven't we already seen till and ivan have normal lives and drift apart or something else?"

"maybe this time, till will..."

"shut UP! CROW'S MOUTH, I SWEAR"

"nevermind that is nOT NORMAL FUCK"

"OH MY GOD HE IS ROTTING AND MOVING??"

"IVAN GET AWAY FROM THERE -"

"...ivan?"

"FUCK! HE DID IT AGAIN!"

"TILL YOU FUCKER GO BACK FOR HIM!!"

"...at least we still have ivan."

"...and till knows he loves ivan."

"...and they kissed."

".....oh fucking hell, why are you so happy?! ivan's basically till's dog! till doesn't deserve him!"

"well, as long as they cure ivan, they'll be together for real, right?"

"..."

"YOU FUCKING JINXED IT-"

"WHY'D THAT RANDO JUST SHOOT IVAN???

mermaid au

"oh my god he's a fish -"

"- ivan looks like a prince!"

"??? how can you be so rude to ivan!"

"why are his thoughts so weird? ivan's a human, not some pearl! he has dignity!"

"he's much better than some pearl, too."

"till knows he loves ivan, right??? surely??? with those thoughts..."

"i wanna see ivan's eyes...."

"i wanna see ivan's smile..."

"fuck! till, just speak to him god damnit!"

"oh my god!!! ivan!!!"

"??? where's his fishy parts?? ow, don't hit me-"

"...he looks so fine."

"hey! he's sixteen! you are definitely not sixteen, you fucking homewrecker!!"

"homewrecker?! i didn't cheat!!"

"you wrecked your and ivan's house life!"

"what?"

"where'd the letter come from??"

"how's there sea foam???"

"IVANNNN!"

"HE'S DEAD? JUST LIKE THAT?"

"HE DESERVED MORE YOU FUCKER-"

===

anyways im going to edit my masterlist to be better ig

[ceasarslegion]

I wanna know about the guy you were talking about if no one else does lol

Spill the tea

Okay so like

If you get randomly pinged by the metal detector, we have to do everything that may have alarmed along with those additional procedures.

If you are carrying a baby with you, your baby is not exempt from security protocols. This is because terrorists don't give a shit about using kids and babies as bomb plants, not because we're soooo mean or whatever.

This guy came through the metal detector carrying his baby and beeps for both metal and a randomizer ping. I tell him sorry mate, the moment I see that, I have to do everything with you and your baby, you don't actually get any do-overs if you're pinged.

This guy instantly started screaming at me. Like top of his lungs screaming at me that he's not letting me touch him or his baby because "I dont know where you freaks have been." He's freaking out so hard, screaming that he refuses to "put up with this," calls me diseased, and then out comes "I need to protect my daughter from filthy cunts like you"

At this point I simply put the scanner down. I make eye contact with the officer at the end and point to the guys wife to round her up to the metal detector, and I tell them "because of your behavior, none of you are flying today. So you can either get out of my checkpoint willingly, and go back to your check in counter and explain to them that you cant behave yourself for a basic security check, or I can have the RCMP escort you out with permanent consequences for all future travel endeavors."

These fucking idiots still had the balls to argue with me. My supervisor was rounding the corner at this point and asked what was going on here. I told him this guy just called me a filthy cunt in response to a basic protocol and as such I am refusing the entire family their flight today, and they're choosing to argue with me instead of going willingly.

Supervisor takes out his phone and dials the RCMP and tells them we need an escort for a group of unruly passengers. This time, the switch flips with them. Oh, suddenly we're being so mean and unreasonable. Theyre having a bad day, please reconsider. I say "no, you ALL lost that right when you decided to scream personal insults at a security guard. And now you're going to wait right here with me until the RCMP brings all three of you out."

And they did exactly that, with the husband and the wife sobbing to a federal officer that they didn't mean it like that (what the fuck DID you mean it as?!) and to please oh please reconsider 🥺 they'll be so niceys this time they prommy they prommy!! 🥺🥺

I did push my luck a bit by waving them goodbye with a big smile and saying "have a nice day~!" in my old customer service voice while this escort was happening, but we don't have to tell my supervisor that.

[symbioteburnout]

Wait, did dumblr just remove my pages? I enter the URL and it takes me to the /blog/ page but not my main page.

[adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy]

home from work

[s1llycilantro]

how do I explain to hermitblr that I've overly thought about everyones body types according to headcanons as well as work n such- IGNORE OLD ART GUYS i was new and figuring out designs LET ME LIVE 😞😞

[fingertipsmp3]

Watching people catapult that white girl who said the n word to fame instead of ignoring her like she deserves

[no1ryomafan]

I love how I have at least 4 wip fics in my docs for getter rn-two are finished but need revisions, the other two aren’t finished-and even though I posted in this tag this month moving forward I should at least focus on finishing most of them especially since one of them was supposed to be a Halloween fic and is a au idea I want to unleash even if it’s not gonna get shit for awhile/if ever but yknow what my fucking brain wants me to write? Ryoma in jail. Even though I don’t have a finalized fucking concept so I don’t know what my BRAIN WANTS.

[batfossil-fr]

I have another skin I've been wanting to get some progress on and then I remembered that I haven’t streamed in one million billion years. if people are interested in a jank little ipad stream (oh god I’ll have to figure out if that’s even possible) maybe I’ll try my hand again at streaming my art. no promises I’m still trying to crawl my way out of Only Making 2 Pieces of Art Per Year so I cannot guarantee when the mood will strike me

[comfortunit]

the people who make fun of aplatonics don't actually know what being aplatonic is, or what it means to be aplatonic

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

did smth rly important for all of society to benefit from

[fmhobeus]

so, nerdy loser college boy choso *sighs* *opens legs*

a/n: just so you know, this man is gonna make you do all the hard work for a piece of that loser boy dick 😮‍💨 so... um so at some point around 2000 words in i realised this is way more than a hc post :3 eat it up if you will!

nerdy!choso who borderline has no friends except his gaming buddies who doesnt meet irl like ever. he doesnt like going to classes, especially this one. he doesnt need it but it's a requirement for all first years. and boy is glad it is when he sees you come in.

nerdy!choso who only listens to discussions when you're talking. suddenly he needs to put down his headphones and nod at every word you're saying. his eyes follow every gesture of your hand, every sway of your ass, every single time you fix your hair.

nerdy!choso who is starting to get a bit enamored with you, your style, your way of speaking. he loses track of time gawking at you in class from the last benches as you prettily do all the work in the class. he hates how beautifully your hair falls on your face, how nicely your clothes fit you despite being pretty modest for college. he hates how he can see the silhouette of your tits when you turn to the side. but he's too much of a gentleman to keep looking.

nerdy!choso who ends a game early when he remembers you, lying and saying that he had promised someone to meet them somewhere. the place is his bathroom and the person was you. god, you really shouldn't wear those tight jeans to class y'know? how will he continue to be a gentleman if you do?

nerdy!choso who despises groupwork but prays to dear god this class has some reason to pair you two together. he's getting so desperate to talk to you knowing damn well he too pussy to do it on his own. and the lord answers his prayers, the teacher assigns groups of three for a presentation. it's you, him and some slacking trust fund baby.

nerdy!choso who is about to combust and have a full blown panic attack when he sees you approach him after class with that smile on your face that would make the angels swoon. you're going on about distributing the work equally and what not while he is trying his fucking hardest to not accidently make eye contact with you and piss his pants : (

nerdy!choso who now has your name, your number and your email and he feels like the happiest man on earth. his hands are literally shaking as he responds to your request to call. he's overthinking every word he types.

choso: yeah i can do wednesday. choso: i'll be okay with whatever day you want.

nerdy!choso who hops on video call and short circuits with a view of you in an oversized band tee and a brief view of your room. why did you have to be this pretty? why did you have to video call him when you couldve done the work on text? why did you have to put your hair up like that? why oh why did you have you say "choso? hey, you there?" so seductively to bring him back to the present?

nerdy!choso who gets like no work done in a 30 minute call which felt like three hours. he knew he would hardly be paying attention so decided to record the call with your consent, saying he'd need the notes you were typing out on screen only to play it back and stroke his dick to you for what might've have been the twentieth time this week. his strokes only getting faster as you say his name in that voice he imagines sounds way better moaning and screaming it instead.

nerdy!choso who, after the presentation, is on greeting terms with you when he sees you studying in the library. he sits as far away from you as he can while still being able to see you. occupying the coziest corner of the library to stare at you study right when you come up to him.

"can i join you, choso? i'm all alone and your space seems comfy" you say with a smile, "of course, i dont mean to disturb you, is saw you were on your own too, so..."

uh oh, uh oh, uh oh. god no. please no. please dont say yes. please dont be staring at her like some dumb idiot (too late) please.

"uh... yeah sure why not?" he awkwardly says as he makes room for you to keep your things. he was such an idiot for thinking he could say no to your pretty face in the first place.

nerdy!choso who is absolutely drunk on your scent. it feels way better than any alcohol he's ever had. he feels like an animal in heat when he smells your sugary perfume mixed with the styrofoam-y air conditioned smell of the library. you're gonna kill him, yknow? how is he supposed to respond to this? what is one to do when their stupid college crush sits next to them? he gives you a half smile before furiously typing away on reddit, the only place with answers for losers like him.

nerdy!choso whose hands. oh his hands. (can be i a big whore for a second?) his long hands that feel like they're the size of your face. his kempt, beautiful and trimmed nails. his lengthy fingers that seem to yearn for something more to foddle with than just the keyboard or controller. he typed as such an insane pace it made your pussy ache. he was going so fast, jesus. those hands were meant to do more than just ask "how to talk to girls" on reddit.

nerdy!choso who (on the advice of reddit) asks if you would want him to order something for you. you tell you had a frappuccino not too long ago and that it was quite sweet and filling. and he hates himself for thinking that he could give you something much sweeter and filling than that like a horny fourteen year old.

nerdy!choso who is now determined to not come off as a creep so he does his work with the focus of four adderalls. he is typing as fast as his heartbeat, not realising he got two classes worth of work done in just an hour. he looks over at you, blissfully unaware of the absolute war in his mind.

nerdy!choso who feels as though if he doesn't muster up the courage to ask you out right then and there, he'll probably be the biggest loser on the planet. (as if he wasn't already)

nerdy! pathetic! choso who stutters a million times and barely gets the job done then too. his eyes are scanning your entire being (trying his best to not gawk at your tits) for any sign of discomfort.

"so- uhh so ummm... wo-would you, like, uh... like to do this again? sometime?... i got a.. a lot of work done today, so.."

oh heavens, the sheer nervousness in his tone makes you want to pull his pants down and show him how to really get work done.

you agree with a smile, even suggesting a better, more ambient (more romantic) cafe to study in. choso's heart is about to burst and flood the fucking library with his blood the way it is beating at an alarming rate.

"umm yeah uh 5 sounds... awesome... i hope it isn't a-a bother to you?" "no way, choso. i loved today," you offer him a smile as you gather your things, "i really like your hair, by the way" "i like your hair too, y-y-you smell very nice", he gulps.

fuck. why did he say that? what? you smell nice? who says that? is he like ten? you can't help but giggle at the sheer embarassment on his face.

he feels as though he's gonna melt into a puddle and turn to stone and throw up all at the same time.

nerdy!choso who is the most stupidly hot guy you've ever met, you think as you go giggling back to your dorm. mental note: pick a skimpy outfit for 5pm ;)

[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.

[ebodebo]

Ghost Garage

—mechanic!simon riley fucking you in his car garage because you couldn’t afford to pay for his services:(( MDNI ofc

“You’re lookin’ at six thousand for a new engine,” Simon says thoughtfully, scribbling a collection of messy additions in his notebook. “And if you’re lookin’ to do just one set of brake pads and rotors,” he says, scribbling some more, “lookin’ at six hundred even for those.”

Your eyes widen at his words because how the fuck were you ever going to be able to afford this? You swallow hard, pondering your following words. “Do you do discounts or something?” You’re sure you sound like an idiot, but you’re desperate.

The corner of his lip quirks at your question as his eyes stay glued to the notebook paper, still scribbling. “No. Still no discounts ere’,” he says, capping his pen, finally looking at you.

You fidget with your hands, eyes on his. “I—um…there’s no way I can…” you begin, turning your gaze away from him, feeling bashful, “…afford that.” Even though you had come to Simon’s garage before, this was just the first time you outwardly told him you couldn’t afford his services.

He leans back in his chair, the base squeaking a little. “Do ya’know how dangerous it is to drive with worn-out brake pads?” he states, placing the pen in his mouth, awaiting your response.

“Yes. I’m aware, but—” you begin, only for him to interrupt.

“But nothin’,” he calmly says, shifty in the chair, eyes shamelessly dragging down your body. You pretend not to notice even though it invokes an immeasurable amount of wetness to gather in your panties.

He can tell you’re nervous—your body language says it all. Clammy hands you wipe off on your jeans every so often, you’re avoiding direct eye contact with him, and the fact he can hear your heartbeat from where he sits.

He shouldn’t even have unholy thoughts of you come across his mind. But, shocker, he did. Every night from the time you first went to the shop all of those four months ago, he would fist himself in the shower thinking about you.

You, who always had that doe-eyed, glossed-over expression. You, who always had to bring Simon a sweet treat when you came, whether it be candy or some fresh-baked cookies you prepared. Oh, and you, who would hug him after he did your car inspections. Ya, he thought about that one a lot.

He considers your predicament. He has a solution, but it’s risky—perhaps too risky?

Eh, Fuck it. What’s he got to lose?

“Tell ya what,” he starts, standing up from his chair and grabbing the notebook paper with the numbers. “I’ll throw this ere’ piece of paper in the trash—hell, I’ll burn it,” he cocks a brow, “If you do somethin’ for me.” He hovers the small, intimidating piece of paper over a small trash can.

“Anything,” you say, desperation coating your voice. He hums, ducking his head to stare at the trashcan.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he says, followed by a gravelly laugh. You gulp, waiting for him to explain.

“I want somethin’ from ya,” he finally looks up at you, wiping his mask-less jaw with his hand. “Somethin’ that isn’t…money.”

You slightly confound your head. “Like I said…anything,” you amend.

He sticks his tongue in his cheek, drops the tainted paper into the trash, and then takes slow, deliberate steps towards you.

You inhale as he stands before you, unsure of his intentions. Exhaling sharply only when he brings his thumb up, dragging it delicately across your jaw, tilting it up so you are looking at him.

“I think we could figure out a way for you to get that work paid in full,” he rumbles, brushing his thumb against your bottom lip. “And a way I could feel that pretty pussy around me.”

Your eyes widen at his words, dumbfounded by his sheer bluntness and vulgarity. Though you admit, you feel a knot start to form in your lower stomach and more wetness pool between your thighs.

“Unless you don’t want to?” His tone his monotone, no signs of resentment as he drops his hand from your face.

“No—I do,” you affirm, even grabbing his hand and then dropping it from embarrassment. “I just didn’t think…you, uh, liked me like that,” you mutter, shifting on your feet and shifting your gaze to the concrete floor you both stand on.

“Oh, trust me. I like you like that,” he laughs lowly, stepping closer to you, bringing his hand back to the same spot to brush his finger against your pouty lip. “Can I?” He questions his gaze on your lips. You nod, standing on your tiptoes, gripping his neck, and bringing his lips to yours. You could taste remnants of cigarette smoke and the icy tang of Nicorette mint gum.

The kiss quickly became full of fervent urgency. Sloppy lips sucking your own, hands aimlessly gripping any piece of flesh it could, and teeth frantically clashing with your own.

“You do this with all your clientele?” you tease as Simon grips the bottom of your shirt and quickly pulls it off your head.

“Nah,” he coolly says, hands palming your breasts over your bra. “Just the ones I jerk off to.” You gasp at not only his hands on such a sensitive part of you but also his confession.

“You jerk off to me?” you tentatively ask, bringing your hands to grip the hem of his shirt, slipping it off his head. His lips instantly connect with your neck.

“What about it?” he murmurs against your skin, dragging his tongue from the side of your neck to your lips.

“I just…I finger myself thinking about you,” you admit in between his feverish kisses, which are apparently taking away your sense of shame. He pulls back only a little.

“You’re tellin’ me…” he reaches down to bring your hand up, grazing your fingers with his own. “You plunge these in your pussy, thinkin’ about me?” he stares at your fingers, unable to comprehend what he’s hearing. He darts his eyes to yours. “I get you off?”

“Of course you do,” you attest, dragging your hand so it rests on his cock that is tucked away in his greased stained jeans. He groans at your touch.

“Now let me see what I’ve been imagining.”

He wastes no time stripping you bare, throwing your bra and panties off to the side, before he unlatches his belt, roughly yanking his jeans and boxers down just below his thighs.

He grips the back of your thighs before hauling you over to a wood table that currently holds some pens and a toolbox. His lips connect with your collarbone, then to the fat of your breast, as you lazily stroke his cock.

“Little smaller than I imagined,” you cheekily say before Simon lightly nips at your nipple with his teeth, making you moan. He laughs against your skin, sending vibrations throughout your entire body.

“And yet it still makes you fuckin’ wet,” he cockily says as his hand slips to graze your glistening cunt. You don’t even talk; you have no breath left to speak. So, you let out a pathetic noise instead—somewhere between a moan and whine.

“Let me play with ya for a minute,” he murmurs into your ribs, pointer finger brushing against your labia. You squirm at his touch.

“Simon. I just…I need you in me,” you beg, pulling him by the hair so his ear is by your mouth, rocking your hips against his finger in you.

“I’m gonna come as soon as I’m in you, Sweetheart,” he says honestly, pointer plunging into your cunt, gently touching your clit.

“I don’t care…just…just,” you rasp, unable to speak with his hand plunging into you.

“Fine, fine,” he says. He gives his cock a tug before he pokes your entrance with the head, gripping your hips before he pushes inside you a little. He grits his teeth at the sensation, and you whine at the slight pain.

“Open up for me. Come on,” he hisses, throwing his head back as he sinks deeper into you. “There she goes,” he praises, gripping one of your legs and positioning it so it lies straight up against his body. You both groan at the deeper contact.

“Shit,” you curse as Simon starts up a good pace. His cock managed to graze you in all of the right spots—reaching places you didn’t even know was possible.

You knew you both wouldn’t last long at this pace—you’re honestly not so sure he would have lasted at any pace. He was painfully hard when you hadn’t even whipped your tits out.

Though you thought the jokes were on him, as soon as he brought his thumb to stimulate your clit, you were skewing curses, tightening around his cock.

“Fuck. That’s it…that’s—” he panted out as he felt you clamp around him, hearing you yell, ‘Coming,” before he followed with his orgasm.

Once both of your orgasms have subsided, he helps you off the table to grab your clothing. You gently tug on your lip before you speak.

“Also…about the payment?” You shyly question as he pulls his jeans up.

“Consider it handled,” he says with a smirk as he zips up his jeans.

a/n: bye once again i abused the italicized button

reblogs & comments are encouraged!