#it's fun revisiting them though from time to time

[mirawakestudios]

Hiiii! I found your game while browsing on itch io and I absolutely LOVE IT. The art, the story, EVERYTHING is so unique and it really stood out to me!

Here are a few (like 8) of the

questions I have after playing the Demo!

1. Was Ilya's kidnapping of us premeditated? Did he have it planned beforehand and whats the extent to how much he knows about us prior to the first meeting. (And maybe spoilers) but whats the reason behind the kidnapping?

2. In the bad ending, Ilya grabs hold of the steering wheel crashing the truck.. does it kill both the MC and Ilya or just MC? It seems like there would be an awfully high risk of hurting yourself in the process so how come Ilya went to such lengths?

3. Is he a cat or dog person?

4. Can he handle spicy food?

5. Would he ever physically hurt us?

6. How would he react to a really healthy, mentally stable, mc? One thats able to spot and call him out whenever he's getting manipulative, is able to enforce boundaries, validate his feelings while also holding him accountable for his wrongdoings? (like kidnapping us)

7. Does he like pet names? If so what would he liked to be called and what would he call us?

8. Does he drink? If he does, whats his alcohol tolerance? How would he react to a drunk MC?

Thank you so much for making this game and taking the time replying to asked questions from other curious players! I hope you dont mind me bombarding you with so many. Feel free to answer them however you like! 😗😗

hiii!! thank you so much;; sooo for a couple of these questions, they do dip into spoiler territory unfortunately </3 i’ll mark the ones i plan to revisit after the full release with a ❅ !!

1. ❅

2. there were two bodies found at the scene! can't answer the other half though ❅

3. neither 😭 but he'd be willing to warm up to either if the mc/pc really wants one... imagine him begrudgingly learning how to care for a pet just because it makes you happy… sobs

4. yes, but only to a point! i think he has a decent spice tolerance, but he’s not a fan of extreme heat for the sake of it

5. ehehe… well… aside from the obvious violent death endings, the confinement + emotional abuse, i don’t think he’d physically hurt the mc/pc down the more romantic routes. not on purpose, at least

6. this actually depends a lot!! if the mc/pc comes from a place of care rather than constant blame or arguing, i think it’d get through to him. just... not immediately. it’d take time (and some emotional turbulence)

7. my boy has literally not heard a term of endearment since he was like 6 LMFAO but i think he’d start liking them if the mc used them first ;; he’d probably use really simple, soft ones in return

8. another ❅ for later!!

thank you again for all these questions btw, they were super thoughtful and fun to think about!! (´｡• ω •｡`) i really appreciate you taking the time to write them out!!

[the-cosmic-cauldron]

We’re in the heart of summer—things are hot, humid, and buzzing, no matter where you are. And soon, we’ll be transitioning into one of my favorite seasons: autumn. But in the meantime, let’s be honest—things might be starting to feel a little dull. The energy is shifting, July is wrapping up, and there’s a lingering sense of finality in the air.

That’s exactly why we need something to look forward to. Today, we’re diving into: What is your next adventure? Where are you headed? What will you explore?

What’s the next thing you’ll do that will light you up, shake things loose, and remind you that life is still full of wonder?

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Open them when you feel ready. Choose a pile—and read below to discover what your next adventure will be.

Ｐｉｌｅ １

For this group, I feel like your next adventure is going to come with some frustration. You’ll likely go into it with a lot of anticipation and hope, but it ends up being a letdown. It seems like someone involved isn’t as invested in the experience as you are.

This upcoming adventure will definitely be a wild ride. It will trigger unexpected changes in your life—shifts you didn’t see coming. You approach it with a light heart, just wanting to have fun, explore, and feel good. But unfortunately, it leaves you disappointed and may shake things up emotionally or mentally.

I sense that the person or situation involved is toxic. It might be a revisit—like returning to a familiar place or reconnecting with someone you used to spend time with. You’re open to reliving the experience, and at first it seems promising, but once you’re in it, regret hits almost immediately. You realize nothing has changed. That’s the core energy I’m picking up.

Someone might present this “adventure” to you—some kind of exciting proposal—and they’ll make it seem sincere. They’ll act invested, as if they genuinely want to experience it with you. But then, they pull the rug out from under your feet. Their actions don’t match their words.

This next adventure seems destined to leave you dissatisfied. You don’t even go into it with unrealistic expectations—you’ve kept your standards reasonable. You already sense this person isn’t consistent. They’re unpredictable, not fully present, and there’s risk involved. You take the risk anyway, hoping for a different outcome—but what you get instead is deep disappointment.

The discontent here runs deep because it’s laced with emotional negativity. This feels like the final straw. You’ll likely come out of this experience with clarity—finally able to see this person or situation for what it really is and close the door for good.

The experience may seem exciting at first. They may present it as a fun hangout or meaningful connection. But then, they’ll likely be late, cancel last minute, or change plans without thought. The whole thing will feel disorganized and inconsiderate.

Before this all happens, though, I sense you’ll already have intuitive nudges. You’ll feel conflicted, unsure whether you should go. You’ll be in your head about it, reflecting on past experiences and feeling torn. Even though something feels off, you’ll be tempted by the offer—wanting to believe in the possibility. But ultimately, the whole experience falls short.

This is the kind of disappointment that helps you finally let go. A painful but necessary realization that sets you free.

Ｐｉｌｅ ２

For this group, I feel like there’s a lot going on in your next adventure. It’s going to be chaotic—a wild ride, but not necessarily the fun, carefree kind. There will be a lot of hiccups along the way.

Eventually, you will go on this adventure, but I don’t think it’s going to be something spontaneous. It’s not an impulsive “let me just go!” kind of moment. Instead, it feels more like a pivot—something you turn to because other things didn’t go as planned. Maybe you didn’t get the job you wanted, or the program you applied to didn’t accept you. Maybe you were rejected by someone, or a romantic connection fizzled out. It’s the kind of situation where you say, “I just want to get away. I can’t be here anymore.”

This feels like an escape adventure—a way to get out of your current situation because it’s become overwhelming, draining, or disappointing. The energy surrounding this trip is heavy. It’s not born out of excitement or joy, but out of exhaustion and a need to reset.

It seems like you’re going through a period where life feels chaotic, and your mind is burdened with too many thoughts. You may be losing sleep, staying up at night trying to figure out how to get out of your current circumstances. There’s a strong feeling of avoidance—of not wanting to face what’s happening in your life right now. And this trip becomes the perfect excuse to delay or escape those confrontations.

I don’t think this journey will be luxurious or highly planned out. It feels like you’re low on funds, or at least not in a place to splurge. You likely don’t have an itinerary or a solid idea of where you’re going. It’s more of a desperate attempt to shift your energy and find clarity through movement. You’re not running with reckless abandon—you are trying to put some plans in place, maybe setting aside a little money, making small preparations. But at its core, this is a healing escape.

I do see travel here—whether it’s a road trip, a flight, a long-distance bus ride, or even going back home to your family. Some of you might be crossing oceans, leaving the country for a complete reset. Others might just be trying to go somewhere peaceful, quiet, and grounding. Either way, this is about creating emotional distance from the chaos you’ve been sitting in.

This trip isn’t just about physical movement. It’s about finding a space—emotionally, spiritually, and mentally—where you can feel safe, still, and sane again. Even though it begins with emotional exhaustion, it becomes a journey of renewal. A chance to breathe. A pause button for your soul.

Ｐｉｌｅ ３

For this group, I immediately sensed that you’re carrying something heavy right now. Your next adventure feels deeply connected to that weight—either as a result of it, or as an attempt to move through it.

There’s a lot of murky energy surrounding you at the moment. Things may feel unclear, confusing, or emotionally overwhelming. You might be caught in a fog of negativity that’s making it hard to think straight or gain clarity about your path. It feels like it’s weighing you down, creating a sense of mental and emotional lethargy.

Right now, you might not feel motivated to do much. There’s a strong passivity here—like you’re stuck in a state of indecision, unsure of how to act, where to go, or how to follow through on the things you want. That lack of follow-through is significant, and it seems to be one of the reasons you’ll end up taking this next adventure.

For this group, your next adventure doesn’t feel grand or dramatic—it feels nurturing. I see a self-care day. Maybe a spa trip, a spiritual retreat, a walk in the woods, or a quiet moment journaling outdoors. You might spend the day grounding yourself—putting your feet in the soil, reconnecting with nature, letting your breath slow down. I see some of you visiting a peaceful garden, a winery, or a cozy salon. Some of you might get a massage or do something that simply brings you back to yourself.

Others of you might go camping or spend time deep in the forest. Even so, I sense a disconnect—like your mind has been in overdrive for too long. There’s a fog that’s blurred your connection to your body, to the earth, to the present. This next adventure is meant to bring you back down—not in a defeating way, but in a grounding, stabilizing way. It’s here to help you land back in your body.

This journey feels very nature-oriented. I can almost see you walking through trails, surrounded by flowers, breathing in the air of a quieter place. It’s a path that reconnects you with your senses, your instincts, your stillness. It’s deeply somatic—something that brings you out of your head and back into your physicality.

And with that, clarity begins to return. You may find that the thoughts that once confused you begin to unravel. You start to breathe deeper. You see the bigger picture. You start to understand what you actually want. It’s like a mental fog lifts, and suddenly, everything makes more sense.

This might not be something you would normally choose for yourself. Maybe someone encourages you to go. Maybe you’re not the kind of person who typically finds comfort in nature or who prioritizes self-care. Maybe you’ve just been too caught up in survival mode to slow down. But this adventure breaks that cycle. It opens something new.

Before this trip, you might have felt like giving up. Maybe things hadn’t been going your way. But this experience brings you back to yourself. It reawakens your essence. It revitalizes your energy. It reminds you that you can make things happen—and now, with a clearer mind and a steadier heart.

I also see imagery of someone standing on a beach, the waves rolling in. There’s a sense of emotional cleansing here. Some of you might travel far—maybe even overseas—and find yourselves in a completely new environment. This change in scenery activates something inside of you. It’s grounding, healing, and deeply transformative.

This next adventure will help you crack open the shell of your old mindset and step into something firmer, truer, and more aligned with what you really want.

Ｐｉｌｅ ４

For this group, I immediately felt that your next adventure will be deeply peaceful. It feels like you’re craving stillness—an experience that allows you to rest, reset, and simply be. And I truly feel that this next adventure will give you just that.

There’s a strong sense of healing here—something nourishing for the soul. It feels like a gentle purge of the old, so you can fully enter the new. This experience may be shared with someone close to you, but for many of you, it feels like something you’ll do alone. Either way, it’s much needed.

You’ve been working hard. You’ve been showing up, taking care of business, standing your ground, and doing your best. I can sense how much effort you’ve been putting in—and that effort is beginning to wear you down. You might be feeling burned out, overwhelmed, and questioning whether you can keep going at this pace.

This next adventure feels like your moment to breathe. A moment to return to yourself—to feel what it’s like not to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. It’s not spontaneous. This is something you’re planning intentionally, something rooted in your desire for transformation and renewal.

You’ve just closed out a major chapter. Whether it was a toxic cycle, a draining situation, or simply a long phase of survival mode, it’s ended. It has withered away. You’ve shed it. Now, you’re stepping into a new energy—and you want your next experience to reflect that. You want it to be thoughtful. You want it to be peaceful.

For many of you, this might be the first time in a while that you’ve truly allowed yourself to feel at peace—to let your guard down, to be still, to soften into rest. You’ve been holding yourself together for so long, perhaps feeling misunderstood, unsupported, or simply depleted from giving too much of yourself to others.

This is your moment to come home to you.

I see this as a very calming, grounding adventure—likely outdoors, likely in nature. I see you by water: maybe at a beach, by a river or creek, surrounded by trees or flowers. The air is gentle. The energy is soft. And you are present in your body. This is a moment of mindfulness, of balance, of returning to your center.

Some of you may share this experience with a woman or group of women—a mother, a friend, an aunt, a grandmother, or perhaps a new connection with nurturing feminine energy. Whether you’re alone or not, the energy feels maternal, loving, and restorative.

There’s a deep reset happening here. It’s a turning point where you stop overextending for others and start giving to yourself. This is about replenishment—filling your own cup, recharging your energy, and slowly, gently coming back to life.

You might rent an Airbnb in the woods. You might spend an entire day alone in a forest, by a lake, or simply wandering through nature, savoring your life. You might cry—not from sadness, but from the release, the relief, the softness of letting go. I see you closing a chapter, finally, with grace.

And in that release, you begin to pour into yourself again. Your heart opens. Your spirit breathes. And you begin to receive.

Ｐｉｌｅ ５

For those drawn to this group, I sense that you’re currently in a period of deep self-examination. Before your next adventure, you may find yourself reflecting on your life—questioning how things got to where they are. There’s a strong introspective energy here. Many of you are trying to understand the root of your pain, depression, fear, or insecurity. It feels like you’re in the middle of sorting through it all, possibly even stuck in analysis paralysis—overthinking every aspect of your experience. This could feel like an existential crisis that’s happening right before your breakthrough.

You’re realizing it’s time to pause.

You’ve been doing too much, thinking too much, filling too many roles. You’ve been carrying so many responsibilities—constantly alert, constantly performing, trying to be everything for everyone. But that’s not sustainable. You can’t hold it all anymore.

That’s why your next adventure feels so needed—and so different.

I see it being passionate, fun, and creatively liberating. A moment where you can truly shine. For some of you, this may look like a girls’ night out—a vibrant evening full of music, dancing, and laughter. Letting loose. Releasing everything you’ve been holding inside. Some of you may end that night with some bomb sex—intimate, exciting, and deeply connected.

For others, this adventure might take a more creative form. Maybe you’re attending a pottery class, an improv acting workshop, a candle-making session, or even booking a studio session to make music. Some of you may gather with others to write, sing, or paint—perhaps at a wine-and-paint night, surrounded by good vibes and joyful energy.

This feels like a time where you’re reclaiming your passion. Where you’re getting back into your body and shaking off the mental weight you’ve been carrying.

I also see a romantic element here for some. A beautiful date. Maybe a cozy picnic, or a night out with someone you deeply connect with. You’re immersed in one another, fully present, having the time of your lives. It feels warm, playful, and full of chemistry.

You’re also dressing up—looking good. Showing off your body, your curves, your silhouette. You might wear something bold and colorful, or maybe you make a statement with jewelry or let your hair out wild and free. There’s something magnetic and tempting about your energy during this adventure. You’re radiant. You’re alive.

And yes, it comes after a difficult time.

Some of you may have experienced a deep loss—something that’s been echoing in your mind, looping on repeat. You could have been through a legal issue, lost money, or just felt like life had gotten too heavy, too overwhelming. Your headspace may have been cluttered, with little grounding energy. You were in your mind, not your body. Emotionally disconnected. Perhaps even abandoning yourself in subtle ways.

But this adventure? It’s your release.

It’s chatty, social, full of banter and belly laughs. You’re definitely not alone. There’s another person—or a group—sharing in the experience. It’s giggles, inside jokes, heartfelt talks. It’s joy returning to your system. It’s fun, uninhibited, expansive.

Before you go on this adventure, though, there’s a truth you’ll have to face: your life hasn’t been aligning with the vision you had for it. And that’s okay. This experience is part of your recalibration. It brings back the positivity you’ve been missing. That empowered energy of I’m going to get what I want. That spark that reminds you: My future is still something to look forward to.

This is your return to self—out of the fog, out of the mind, back into your heart, back into your joy. It’s your yes after a long period of internal no’s.

And it’s going to feel so good.

Ｐｉｌｅ ６

For this group, I strongly feel that your next adventure is deeply restorative. It’s about getting out of your head and actually beginning to live again. I’m hearing that many of you are craving a life that feels real—one that isn’t just overthinking, overprocessing, or fantasizing, but rooted in presence. You’re seeking to return to a space where life feels like it’s working in your favor.

This adventure is about recalibrating—bringing balance back into your world and finally feeling as if you’re receiving what you truly deserve. It’s a moment to ground yourself again. I sense that many of you have spent a lot of time in your imagination, or with a “grass is greener on the other side” mindset—believing others had it better, comparing yourself constantly.

Your upcoming adventure asks you to detach from that version of yourself—the one who believed they had to do X, Y, and Z to be worthy, successful, or “enough.” This experience comes after a stretch of stagnation, boredom, and disconnection. Some of you may have been keeping to yourself—avoiding people, avoiding life, and telling yourself small lies to stay hidden.

Now, it’s time to re-emerge.

I see this next adventure being a day where everything just flows. You might try a new restaurant, enjoy a beautiful meal, sip on a cocktail or mocktail, and feel as though the day was perfectly crafted for your joy. Some of you might go to brunch, dinner, or a cozy gathering—surrounded by kind faces, laughter, and warmth. The energy around you will feel like home.

There’s something here about nurturing yourself—the version of you that felt lost, astray, or disconnected. I feel this day may be spent with someone special, someone you feel safe being raw, open, and authentic with. You might spend the day doing fun, spontaneous things together, ending with a delicious dinner and coming home with a deep sense of contentment.

Many of you were feeling out of control before this point—as if life was slipping through your fingers, as if you were cut off from meaningful reciprocity, whether in relationships, with life itself, or within your own spirit. Some of you were isolated—either physically or emotionally—and maybe overly cautious with who you allowed in.

There’s a buildup of tension in your body and soul that’s ready to be released.

I sense this next adventure might come unexpectedly. Someone may simply come along, scoop you up, and say, “Let’s go.” It could start as a day out and stretch into something more. It will feel spontaneous, energetic, and revitalizing—something that wakes your blood and spirit up. It’s likely something you’ve wanted to do for a while, something that makes you feel fully present and genuinely happy.

At the heart of it, this is an emotionally nourishing, soul-connecting experience. It’s intimate, fulfilling, and leaves you feeling re-centered and aligned with where you truly belong. This is your reward after all the heaviness—a moment that brings back a sense of hope, luck, and joy. It will make your heart flutter. It will remind you that you can win in life.

[peanuttoffee]

I don't post that many wips but hey, here's one!

[hannahchronism]

Mermay: Week One!

I am not following any particular prompt list or theme or anything (although I have found a style of tail I really enjoy designing lol) and I am having sooo much fun playing around with brushes and render styles.

[mothocean]

I looked at some old art yesterday and i still feel a lil sad about it

[warandpeas]

Taking Steps is Easy, Standing Still is Hard

There is something about the act of closing a calendar year, a task as tiny as it's monumental, like washing the last dish after an hours-long dinner party, except the dinner party lasted 365 days and the dishes include everything from wine glasses to sledgehammers.

Every year is its own puzzle-box of peculiar challenges. We've been doing this for 13 years now, which in cartoonist years feels like both a geological epoch and the blink of an eye and in that time we've experienced global crises like the pandemic, recessions and countless “little problems” that weren't so little then but seem almost insignificant now.

One of the ways we cope with time – with its merciless forward motion, with the absurdity of continuing to draw lines on paper and pretend those lines mean something – is by revisiting our best comic strips from the year.

It’s not just self-congratulation (though we’re not above that) it’s something deeper, a way of reminding ourselves that even in the roughest stretches of the year, we managed to create something that made us laugh, or made someone else laugh, or at least made us feel less alone in the dark.

In this respect, 2024 was a real treasure trove. It was fun. No, scratch that: it was VERY fun.

We went to festivals – glorious, chaotic, overstimulating festivals where the air smells like ink and coffee and ambition. Angoulême was a highlight, of course. But there were other adventures, too: a road trip through Belgium that felt like stepping into the panels of a Franco-Belgian comic, and not one but TWO visits to Vienna, which is somehow both the most elegant city in Europe and the one most likely to inspire surrealist doodles after a few cocktails.

And then there’s Patreon. Oh, Patreon! What a strange and beautiful thing it is to be supported by people who care enough about what you do to give money for it. To those people (you know who you are) we owe not just our gratitude but our ability to keep going, to keep drawing, to keep finding the absurd and funny in the everyday.

Thank you feels not enough, but we mean it with a depth that’s hard to articulate in a medium primarily composed of speech bubbles.

And now here we are, staring down the barrel of 2025. We’re looking forward to it – the new strips we’ll create, the new people we’ll meet, the new places we’ll visit (and the old places we’ll revisit, because let’s be honest, Vienna probably hasn’t seen the last of us). There will be challenges, there always are. But if 2024 taught us anything, it’s that even the hardest years can be fun if you’re willing to see the humor in them.

So here’s to 2025. Let’s draw!

PS: Yes, you might have noticed that the Top 3 is all about aliens. We're surprised as well but – as we've compiled a sophisticated score to evaluate your reactions to each strip – this one is clearly on you.

[shadowlucario778]

I'm... Wh- what?!

That's terrifying!! And also awesome as hell! But aaaaaaaaaa!!! Just... the moon crashing? And I literally just watched Grian's Episode 3 where they launch people with fishing rods, and I was so confused why Grian's comment of "Is the moon big?" activated the fight or flight response of people in the comments. This is hilarious that this is how I find out about the context. Though it makes sense, given what further context is given in the post's comments. Wicked way to end a season early.

Also, if I had a dime for every time the moon has crashed and caused massive destruction in a video game, I'd actually have 3 dimes. Which still isn't a lot, but it's so weird that it's happened three times now XD. Majora's Mask, FF14, and now Hermitcraft. That's so funny. Thank you @salamencerobot for at-ing me, and also being the push to finally watch Hermitcraft. I'm having a blast watching it.

okay so:

the year is 2021. the month is june. the new season of hermitcraft, season 8, has just started, and everything is great! the hermits are all messing around, having fun, building insane things within the first week of the server being active, and generally having a good time. everyone's collected themselves into little factions, pranking each other, and it's all the fun, lighthearted, mostly-vanilla content hermitcraft is known for.

and then the split between minecraft versions 1.18 and 1.19 is announced. the delay of new terrain, and especially of new mobs like the warden, considerably disrupt several of the hermits' plans. but it's fine, they'll figure something out, they're professionals, and it mostly goes unnoticed.

about two weeks later, on november 9th, grian turns to mumbo jumbo in one of his episodes, and asks the famous question that would seal hermitcraft season 8's fate:

"mumbo, is the moon... big?"

suddenly, the fans panic. they search back through videos and streams, and realize that the moon had been abnormally large and stuck in a full-moon phase since october 30th. the Moon Big event has begun.

this is where the roleplay really starts. once the moon's size has been brought up, the hermits start a weird combination of scrambling to figure out why the moon's growing, and how to stop it- but also of ignoring it, hoping it won't be a problem, hoping someone else will deal with it. the moon keeps getting bigger, more hermits start realizing it's going on, and a creeping sense of dread starts to grow. but it's fine. it's fine, right? they do little plotlines like this all the time. they'll figure something out, the moon will go back to normal, and we'll laugh about it when this is all over. it's fine.

and then, blocks start flying away. just floating up out of the ground, and falling right back down! like for a moment, a square meter chunk of dirt has decided it's a ballerina and leaped out of the ground! but it's fine, right? the blocks are coming back. no lasting harm is done. they're going to fix it all... right?

the moon gets bigger. it's growing every day- local hermit weirdguy joe hills measures it every stream. the blocks start flying higher. gravity starts getting... weird, with players getting the slow falling effect at random, and being lifted off of the earth themselves. the players form cults and rituals and whatnot to try and appease the moon, convince it to leave them alone, making plans to escape. nothing works. things keep getting worse, and the moon keeps getting bigger. but it'll be fine. these storylines never leave lasting harm, or at least they never have before. they'll be fine.

and then the blocks stop coming back, just floating into the sky forever. the players have the slow falling effect more than they don't now. the moon is now so big it's visible even during the day, and fills the entire sky at night. they start planning their escapes in earnest, and say their goodbyes. some hermits jump into a void hole in the overworld (it was the centerpiece of their village). some flee to the End, some to the nether, some just fly with elytras and hope they can get far enough away in time. one brave hermit, tango, flies himself to the moon in a futile attempt to blow the whole thing up before it can crash.

but in the end, the moon crashes into the server, and everything they'd built was destroyed. and the whole time, there'd been nothing any of them could've done. season eight was over, a full six months before anyone had expected it to end, and season nine wouldn't start until about three months later. and im still not okay about it.

(here's a cool animatic of the moon's crash! honestly i dont think you need too much hermitcraft knowledge to get the gist)

(also the moon crash happened on the day before my birthday lmao.)

….

holy shit

[felassan]

Sylvia Feketekuty: "To celebrate DA day, I've made a bluesky account that I'll keep active for a few days to talk about my work on Inqusition or Veilguard! After a few days I'll lock the account, because I'm not a social media person. Happy to talk until then though. I want to say straight off: the reception to Emmrich, Manfred, the Mourn Watch, and the Grand Necropolis has been heartwarming for all of us who worked on those people and places. Thank you all very much!" [source, two]

Rest of post under cut due to length and spoilers. [Post Two, Post Three]

Sylvia Feketekuty: "In the meantime, I do want to talk about a couple of things I saw floating around regarding Emmrich: 1. Emmrich being 52 or 50. I think people got 50 from data mining a character file, but we can't do a ranges in those files. As in, I couldn't input 50-60, it had to be a whole number. I put down 50 as an early ballpark, then went more accurate in later audition scripts. 2. Fifty-two is a old number I threw into an early document before his art or character was totally final. (And which caused another developer a headache because they thought it was accurate, I never updated it. Sorry about that.) 3. "Wait, how old is Emmrich then?" Once I saw his final character art, I felt more mid to late 50s. MAYBE early 60s. But unless we specifically state a character's age in the game, it's all malleable. I honestly would just adjust it to your impressions unless stated otherwise. 4. I've also seen comments on how weird it is for Emmrich to act like there's an age-gap in the romance if your Rook is around his age. And you're right. 5. The reason is because Rook WAS younger when those scenes were written and worked on. I felt it'd be odd if I never addressed the May-December aspect, especially as it hooks into some of Emmrich's worries. 6. By the time that shifted, it was really too late to change without catastrophic repercussions to the excellent cinematics and music and other things that depend on line delivery and timing. 7. To be clear: you can feel how you want about the age gap coming up at all! But that's how the discrepancy came about. 8. "Is there a way to reconcile Emmrich acting like my Rook is way younger than him if they're not?" Great question! I have several suggestions: -Accept it's an error. (True, but unexciting) -Emmrich considers a gap of 3-5 years scandalous. (Funny, albeit a bit cartoonish.) -The Mourn Watch has perfected swapping out organs, and Emmrich is nervously hiding that he's way older than he looks out of vanity. (Untrue, but funny.)" [source thread]

User in reply to point 6. above: "I'm personally glad it was too late to change because their argument about it is genuinely my favorite scene in the entire game! 😭💕 It's such an important moment to me" / Sylvia: "Thanks! That one was one where I was all sweatily trying to balance things out, with tone, with pacing, etc. Really glad it came together for you. (Cine and the actors did heroic things there to get it feeling just so!)" [source]

More snippets:

Emmrich's favorite ice cream flavor? Rum raisin [source]

Lots of people on the dev team shared the vision of having a bunch of gothic weirdness in that pocket of Thedas [source] (Necropolis/Nevarra)

Sylvia "especially liked writing the Mourn Watch origin, it was fun to write a fellow nerd for Emmrich to chat with" [source]

Sylvia poured some personal worries and fears into writing Emmrich [source]

On Vorgoth and their nature: "I'm a little leery of saying anything, partly because I'm cowardly avoiding publicly defining anything more until/if I ever need to. And partly because I did want them to be a fresh unknown. Sorry!" [source] "I'm glad you like Vorgoth, but I'm afraid I don't have much for you that isn't in the game. I deliberately wrote them so as to leave room, if we ever revisited them, or for Vorgoth to remain mysterious, if we did not. I'm sorry if that's not a very satisfying answer!" [source] "I will say, it was fun to throw in a few lines about Vorgoth's art collection. Their passion for it is sincere and deep. (I wanted all the Watchers to have a little non-death related hobby or interest, because they can be so singularly focused.)" [source]

Dwarven Mourn Watcher is a rare origin combo for Rook so Sylvia wanted to call it out [source]

On the outcomes of Emmrich's quest: "I tried really hard to make the options equally viable, and more up to the player's interpretation or preferences of what it would mean for Emmrich in their view. It's been interesting seeing reactions to it, which hinge sometimes on various single lines pushing people one way or another!" [source]

"The Grand Necropolis is always eager and ready for a new member of the Mourn Watch to grace its ranks." [source]

User: "I loved Emmrich's view on death and what his personal quest ultimately went on to say about the nature of death itself, and how the beauty of mortality lies in its impermanence and unpredictability." / Sylvia: "I really wanted to dig into those themes, and everyone in cine and art and level design and editing and the whole team honed in exactly on the vibe. The floral stuff especially, I was so thrilled when I played through the Memorial Gardens' with the art and lighting in." [source]

User: "I experience thanatophobia and that first conversation w/ Emmrich was so affirming and helped me describe my own anxiety to others" / Sylvia: "Thanks, the thanatophobia was, as you may've guessed, a personal experience for me too. I'm glad it was something that helped a little." [source] "I suspect that phobia is way more common than people think, and part of the reason Emmrich talks about it was to express that sentiment out loud. I find it helps sometimes just to acknowledge it." [source]

What languages does Emmrich speak other than Trade? "I think he'd be familiar with Tevene, since there's surely many, many old texts about magic written in that language. Kind of like a doctor that knows latin through their work. I also named that MW alphabet "tomb-script", though I'm not sure if it has a spoken component or not since it never came up in-game. If it does, he'd be able to speak that for sure." [source, two]

User: "Playing as a Mourn Watch Rook has been an absolute delight!!!" / Sylvia: "Thank you so much, I really liked writing those branches of the dialogue. Since Emmrich's so focused on necromancy, it was fun having a Rook who could be both casual and knowledgeable about it." [source]

User: "In your opinion, what outcome do you prefer for a romanced Emmrich (lich/non lich)?" / Sylvia: "Interesting question! To be honest, I'm afraid to answer it properly in case anyone takes my answer to be a canonical one. I really wanted either path to feel equally interesting/correct for whatever you decide fits your Rook's relationship with Emmrich. (We're also in the strange waters of meta-reasoning. I GAVE Emmrich his fear of death-Sorry Emmrich!-which makes me feel a little culpable for that, even though he's entirely fictional. And that might prey on my mind when trying to decide. A very odd experience!)" [source, two]

What music genres would Emmrich be into? "Classical music is very much playing to type for Emmrich, but I feel it's also correct. He'd enjoy a nice concerto or an organ recital. Or, if he's feeling daring, a bold new Orlesian opera! But I don't think his tastes are too outré in that area. That said, I saw someone post something like "Leave Emmrich alone, let him attend the Depeche Mode concert" while listening to Depeche Mode's "Violator", for the first time, which made me laugh. (Great album. If he could get over the shock of synths, Emmrich might enjoy "Waiting for the Night".)" [source, two]

When writing Emmrich the devs wanted to try and hit the gothic romance vibe [source]

Does Emmrich mix his own fragrance/cologne? Does he ever vary it by the season? "I think Emmrich goes to some of the many perfumers that have set up shop in Nevarra City around the Necropolis, just because he trusts their judgement and expertise. I hadn't considered him varying it by season, but that's very fun! I certainly think he has more than one bottle of scent." [source]

User: "How does Lich Emmrich have sex?" / Sylvia: "I don't mind the question! But my answer's a bit boring: I generally stay at arm's length on the more explicit romance stuff, just because if it's not stated or shown in-game, I don't want to bring in a canonical answer that might affect what people imagined. My general preference for romantic scenes that get physical is to leave blank space somewhere, so players can imagine what happens next. It's not the ONLY way to do it, I think there's legitimate artistic reasons to go more explicit. But that's how I approached Emmrich (and before him Josephine.)" [source, two]

User: "The scene with the fade glow where he touches your hand haunts me in the best way" / Sylvia: "Aw thank you. Our animators and audio people made that scene way better than I could've hoped! They took such care with everything there. I want to say that little eye-peep from Rook was added in by one of them, which was the perfect touch." [source]

User on Emmrich: "i’m curious whether you think he’d prefer dogs or cats (or both, or neither)" / Sylvia: "I think he'd consider cats and dogs a little too noisy and messy for his tastes. Not like a nice, quiet plant or skeleton! (Weirdly, I actually had a scrap of banter going over this exact subject at one point. It got tightened down to the exchange with Harding about the pig he used to hug when he was a kid.)" [source, two]

Sylvia was trying to tease Nevarra with the Tevinter Nights story Down Among the Dead Men [source]. "It was really fun to tease the Necropolis, so to speak, in TN, and I'm grateful we got to actually let players through its gates at last." [source]

User: "if Rook chooses to save Manfred and keep Emmrich mortal, what would Emmrich wish to become of his body once he did pass on?" / Sylvia: "Good question. I think he'd want to remain active and useful in death. A guide for other Mourn Watchers, or posted as a mystic guide somewhere dangerous, or perhaps an oracle in the library." [source]

User: "when and how was it decided that Emmrich would be romanceable? I remember reading that he would not be a romance option." / Sylvia: "I'm not sure where that came from, because I pitched him and then shortly after that we decided the entire cast was romanceable. That was fairly early on in the development of Veilguard, as I recall it. (Could've been a crossed wire?)" [source]

Trick Weekes: "Sylvia wrote the fantastic Emmrich "the Vol-carnage" Volkarin and everything that happens in Nevarra while dealing with a lead writer whose attitudes about corpses and undead are... not dissimilar from Taash's." [source] / Sylvia: "I still remember when you gave the very accurate feedback "I think we need to give players whose Rooks aren't into corpses some roleplaying choices to express this" and I was all "Ohhh yeaaaaaah." (Thank u Trick, you were right)" [source] / Trick: "Specifically, being able to express this without locking themselves out of the content! (For non-Sylvia folks) Given my issues with corpses, Emmrich as a whole was SUPER Not For Me, so I gave one caveat and then said, "For the rest of my critique, I will be impersonating his target audience." [source]

Sylvia on the secret origins of Manfred: "After I pitched Emmrich, I started jotting down notes and thoughts on his plots, his quirks, all that kind of stuff. It was very early on Veilguard, anything was still possible. We were chatting in the writer's room about it one day, and I think we'd just seen some early concept art for Emmrich. And our lead writer Trick Weekes joked that Emmrich looked like a man who'd have a skeleton named Manfred. And I laughed and went "Yeah he does!" And then I thought about it. It's wild in retrospect, but that one comment spurred a train of thought that led to the core of Emmrich's arc. He may've ended up a very different character without it! tl;dr: I stole it from Trick." [source, two, three, four]

"I got to play with a pretty free palette when defining the way Emmrich and the necromancers view death and spirits. But I tried to keep it within the confines of existing lore. That's one reason why that scene where Emmrich talks about Manfred to Harding goes into "the eternal question" of whether a soul actually returns with the dead or not. Nevarra has distinct beliefs, but I thought it'd be interesting if its people argue over their interpretations of those beliefs." [source, two]

"the other writers also suggested a bit later on that the big choice dig more into Emmrich's philosophies. Initially, it was more personally focused on his fears, which made it 'relatable' but pettier. Without that correction, I think it would've been weaker, I totally needed the team push." [source]

"I have a few guides to graveyard symbology, and it's so packed with references and meaning." [source]

User: "Did any of your own fears & experiences, make it into the writing of Emmrich? If yes, is it information you’re comfortable sharing with us? If it’s too personal to give any details, that’s fine as well. Also, across the other games, who do you think Emmrich will get along with best?" / Sylvia: "some of his fears are absolutely personal. The reflexive-compulsive panic over death is something I'm very familiar with, and I wanted to explore that through him. Because I suspected it was not uncommon, and worth examining. The question of who he'd get along with from the other games is surprisingly tough! Because without asking the other writers about their characters, I wouldn't know for sure. So I can only really speak to Josephine with surety. That said: -I think Josephine would be polite, and grow to like him, but would never entirely be over the ostentatious necromancy. -I think Emmrich meeting Sera would be the funniest match." [source, two, three]

"Peter Cushing was also one of my go-tos as an example of what I wanted Emmrich to be." [source]

"(Huge shout out to all the animators and level designers making Manfred run, quite literally. Like 95% of his personality lives in his movement, I think they nailed it.)" [source]

On Emmrich: "I tried to put a lot of passion and sincerity in his love for the dead, and I admit the Necropolis was THE big place I wanted to see in Thedas myself ever since reading about it in a codex." [source]

User: "Thank you for letting him have that cemetery dream date!" / Sylvia: "Having the date in the cemetery was one of the first things I wanted when thinking about the romance." [source]

"Josephine was the first time I was entrusted with a new character and a new romance at once, and that'll always be special to me." [source]

User: "How much input did you have in Emmrich's appearance in the podcast?" / Sylvia: "In the podcast, none myself. I believe it was handled by a third party but reviewed by a few people at BW, I don't know too much past that. (We did provide a descriptor and character rules. Stuff like "Emmrich never swears" and "always says amongst" and broader, more thematically useful things.)" [source]

User on Emmrich: "Are you planning any other external-media stories for him?" / Sylvia: "Thanks very much, The Flame Eternal has a special place in my heart for being the first time Emmrich got to be center stage in a story. (And very flattering to hear about the cross stitch. That's so cool!) I can't speak to any external-media plans, I'm afraid. That's not an implied hint about anything existing or not, it's just literally outside what I'm allowed to chat about. It'd be fun to do something like that again though!" [source, two]

"I must give full credit to Nick Borraine, Emmrich's voice actor. He got the compassion and tenderness the character needed right away." [source]

"And glad him being closer to your age resonated, I really wanted someone older out on an adventure. No reason that has to stop at any age IMO." [source]

User: "do the mourn watcher/nevarra in general raise their pets after they die to keep them around? like a dog skeleton with a whisp in it?" / Sylvia: "To be honest I hadn't thought out this one, but it's a very good question. I'm not sure how common that would be, or even if it's permitted to have pets running around the family crypt. (I definitely thing people would WANT to do it.) You know, I think I'm going to have to leave this one in the vague quantum foam of the future. I think I'd want to not only double check existing lore, but answer that in-game (or in a book or etc.) if we ever need to. (Hope that's not too much of a cop out. Sometimes I like to leave questions I'm not sure about alone, because until it's in an official game or story, it doesn't quite count.)" [source, two, three]

User: "as someone who shares emmrich's anxiety about mortality, getting to spend time with him, and in the grand necropolis and with the mourn watch, was genuinely soothing" / Sylvia: "Thank you, I'm glad he was a comfort. It's a familiar fear for me too, and I'd hoped he would connect that way with people very much." [source]

On the giant ribcage 'ceiling' in the Necropolis: "sadly, even I don't know all the mysteries of the Necropolis. (Which is to say it's a very cool bit of art but has no stated origin yet. Could be a large dragon, a giant...or something weirder!)" [source]

On TN story Luck in the Gardens: "It was nice change up, writing in first person and with someone so rascally. I've got an enduring affection for the Lords after writing Hollix, the scamp." [source]

User: "I just love his genuine enthusiasm for everything he does. If the other party members had fan clubs Emmrich would be the president of each and I love that for him" / Sylvia: "Thank you! I really wanted him to embody a kind of expansiveness and generosity of spirit, to stand in contrast to the eeriness of his abilities." [source]

User: "What was your inspiration for Josie?" / Sylvia: "My girl! When I came on to Inquisition, there'd already been work done on setting up the spine of the main plot, and figuring out the overall cast. But one of the advisors was a little murkier. It just said "Diplomat" on the white board. We knew we wanted someone in that position, but not who. So in a game where you were out exploring, killing demons, etc., but also had a big organization to run? I immediately wanted to make a Diplomat firmly there for you. Somebody you could hand the keys to the entire Inquisition to while you were out, and know it'd be in good hands. I also thought it'd be fun to have someone from Antiva, since that area wasn't covered yet by anyone in the cast. And I needed her to be polished, smooth, but heartfelt, because of that aforementioned trust. And that was the core of Josephine! Her voice actor, Allegra, brought her to life with such lovely charm, and hearing those early sessions also helped me further hone her tone." [source, two, three, four]

"Our music supervisor Ron Dazo hit it out of the park with Emmrich's music IMO. And so glad you liked Hezenkoss! Just very fun to write as a character." [source]

User: "Did any specific watcher raise MW Rook?" / Sylvia: "Good question! I kind of left that one alone because I wasn't sure if I wanted to let Rook define that themselves, or leave it open, and also I'd have wanted a full conversation on it. In the end that was a little out of scope so I left it unsaid. Which is to say that it COULD be Vorgoth who helped raise your Rook. And that stands until/unless we give a definitive answer (or let you choose from a range of answers) one day." [source, two]

"It was such a pleasure for all of us to finally get to explore the Necropolis, I am very glad we got to throw open the gates." [source]

User: "I was wondering if there were any Mourn Watch details you wished you had more time to explore? I was so struck by some of the ethical implications in your stories" / Sylvia: "Geeze, now that's a question. I mention it with Emmrich, but there's some resentment over the power the Watchers hold as THE mortalitasi of the Grand Necropolis, between them and the other orders. There's something to that situation I liked. There's also questions of how they select people for the order. What their standards are, how closely they work with benign spirits. And how they cultivate those relationships. How deep does that go? I also mentioned in a codex "the lives and bodies of those who tamper with the undead of the Necropolis are forfeit unto the Mourn Watch." which is pretty chilling. What's that punishment like, exactly? And in general, writing about anything weird or unexplained in the Necropolis brought me much enjoyment, and it would be fun to dig around how the Mourn Watch deals with (or what they want out of) all these mysteries and entities." [source, two, three, four]

"Geeking out with Emmrich about spooky stuff was a delight to write." [source]

"I liked writing someone older this time, it was something different for me and rewarding in some unexpectedly different ways. (And thanks especially for the nice words on DAtDM - I was very excited to introduce people to the Mourn Watch there!)" [source]

"Ah, tomb-script. I named it but it was our concept artists who went developed it with the hexagon shape-language of the Mourn Watch, which I loved. Conceptually: I think it's used purely an occult or sacred language. Something for the graves, or books on magic, but not everyday things." [source]

"Some trans people kindly offered their help with some feedback on some of the romance lines and others, which absolutely made them much better." [source]

"Trick Weekes actually wrote a ton of the banter where Emmrich inquires into qunari artifacts and customs, and Taash talks about what it was like to grow up under a scholar. I really dig the dynamic they unearthed between the two there." [source]

User: "Do you remember what was written in the script to describe ✨this✨ moment? [link]" // Sylvia: "Lol. I miiiiiight? Let me look at my notes. Ah hah, I do! My note says that Emmrich "takes a second, surprised." And then he's touched afterwards." [source, two]

Sylvia: ""i hope it's not too late, but were there any designs in mind for what Nevarra City looks like?" Not too late! We've got a few sketches in the World of Thedas books, but that's it. If the team ever went back to Nevarra City proper, I'd imagine the art team would want to do a deeper dive." [source]

Sylvia: "(Glad you liked Myrna in particular. My first Mourn Watcher everyone got to know!)" [source]

Sylvia: "I'm glad to hear getting to know Emmrich has been of some comfort." [source]

[cheshiresartblog]

Spire of Obscurity AU - Shadow Milk and Truthless Recluse refs

Catch me experimenting with the animal features i see some folks add to their cookies for this au in particular. I had fun with them both. I gave Shadow Milk a fallen angel vibe this time and PV's a mix of sheep and fox because of that fox spirit costume he has that's a China only release ;; w ;; I thought it would be a fun spin on the usual animal features people five PV.

The Spire of Obscurity AU is the au that won in my poll earlier.

Info dump below the cut

The AU starts out similarly to Vanilla Recluse in the sense that PV was baked back in the time when the Beasts were the Virtues, but I imagine in this au he actually had a closer relationship with all the beasts, not just Shadow Milk, having maybe traveled with them for a time. He even married Shadow Milk back when he was Blueberry Milk, in what I'm just gonna say in the au is an old Cookie-Yeast tradition of exchanging a small amount of life powder in lockets.

But then the beasts get sealed still after corrupting one by one. Btw, those scars on Shadow Milk are from the fork that sealed him. I can be a lil more gruesome if I want.

Either way, PV gets chosen by the Truth Souljam and reluctantly embraces it, moving forward and trying to just get by knowing there is literally nothing he can do. He's a healer. A master healer, yes, but he can't undo the silver tree. He can't undo witch's magic (He can weaken it subtly, though, he found.) He can't undo corruption or even understand why it occurred. So, he just moves forward, trying to help other cookies as he does with his too long life. Eventually he meets White Lily Cookie one his occasional visit to the Blueberry Yogurt Academy while she is visiting herself, and ends up joining her and the other Ancients.

Despite forming bonds with them all and considering them friends he still keeps up this wall. He keeps his past to himself, his true age to himself, etc, etc. It's painful to revisit, even now. One way or another, after White Lily became Dark Enchantress, it came out while tensions are high in the midst of the Dark Flour Wars, causing a rift between Pure Vanilla and the others. Feeling homesick and alone, and wanting to use what he knows to help stop Dark Enchantress, PV makes the trek back to Cookie-Yeast...well, Beast-Yeast now, to seek out the Spire of All Knowledge for research, unaware of it's now time warping properties. What was supposed to be a month trip was 10 years.

The Vanilla Kingdom is gone and while the other Ancients were able to seal away Dark Enchantress in Moonstone themselves, PV is now known as the cowardly king who abandoned his people and friends to die.

And that was the final push he needed to embrace not the truth, not deceit, but obscurity.

[smiggles]

Do you have any tips for learning anatomy for an intermediate artist? Something that might not come to mind/be said otherwise that might make something, like, click, somehow? It's so hard to find good tutorials for someone that's already been drawing for a long time. Thanks!

It took me awhile to think of an answer for this because honestly it can really depend on what your goals are for your art and the type of artist you are

But im going to keep it generalized

Since you mentioned you've tried looking for tutorials online I already know you want to study

Im going to direct you to bookstores/libraries

You are going to want to get art books of all varieties and read them. Here are a few staples i have in my personal collection (I will link them later)

We will never stop learning, even the foundations of art need to be revisited at times. So if you believe "I already know this"

Abandon that thought process. Devour your resources.

You can also grab artbooks of media you are inspired by

These books should be read, not just looked at. The artists often talk about the process that went into creating their works and give insight, though at times minimal, of their approach to art.

Study their style. Pull from it what you enjoy and work it into your own.

The internet can be confusing to navigate and much of the time finding a good tutorial is based on luck

Ive been online for a good while, most online tuts are great and fun. Some are very damaging or flat out wrong. (Not to say every art book is correct. But there are certainly ones that are held as standard such as Color and Light and the Morpho books)

I could say a lot more on what advice I have but I would honestly be simply parroting what I've learned in these books. Good luck !

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

May I present for your artistic pleasure...the 2025 TES Pinup Challenge! Coming to you August 2025!

My ask box is open for prompt suggestions through Saturday, July 12! The official prompt list will go up Sunday, July 13!

Please like, reblog, and share this post so everyone can see! If this challenge has a good turnout, I may put together other challenges for October and December! Doing that completely depends on participation and feedback, though, so if that's something y'all are interested in, I need y'all to amp this up!

(Challenge and guidelines text below the cut)

TES Pinup Challenge 2025

Happy summer, kwamafetchers! On August 1, the second TES Pinup Challenge will make its way to your dashboards! “A TES Pinup Challenge?” you ask, “What’s that about?” You see, the TES Pinup Challenge was a month-long art challenge that I originally ran back in June 2023. Now, due to popular demand, the challenge is returning this August! The main theme will be drawing our favorite NPCs and OCs in a pinup art style reminiscent of the 1940s and ’50s! Once drawn, we’ll post our work here on Tumblr to share with our friends and fellow fans! 

Everyone participating in the challenge should use the #tes pinup challenge 2025 tag so I can reblog your work here for everyone to enjoy!

Guidelines:

All characters of every race qualify, so long as they are adults! This is a suggestive challenge, so depictions of minors are a big no-no.

This time, rather than limit the “art” side of the challenge to traditional or digital art, I’m opening it to other mediums! If you can write, sculpt, bake, bead, cosplay, etc., a prompt for the pinup challenge, be my guest! Just keep it within the Tumblr community guidelines! Be sexy but sensitive, if you catch my drift. 

No character claiming! If you and your friend both want to do Serana, that is totally fine! The point is to have fun and express ourselves artistically! If that means having five different portraits of Brynjolf from five different people, then we’re all the richer for it! 

For example: The 2023 challenge produced SO MANY Sotha Sil pieces and I am thankful for EVERY ONE of them! 

The month is divided into ten groups of three days (e.g. 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc.). Each group has a primary and secondary prompt, so if you don’t like one, you can do the other! Or, if you’re feeling particularly creative, you can combine them or do both! How you fulfill each challenge is entirely up to you.

Because August has 31 days, August 16 will be an open “Freestyle!” day! Want to take a break before tackling the back half of the month? Go for it! Want to come up with your own prompt? I can’t wait to see it! Want to revisit a prompt from the first two weeks? Say more! Point being—do whatever you want that day! 

Participation in the entire event is NOT mandatory! Whether you want to fill every prompt or choose just one, the goal is always to be safe and have fun! 

[cleo-fox]

Daylight

Summary: Despite your best efforts, Sunday morning doesn’t go as planned…and you couldn’t be happier about it.

Pairings: Loki x Female Reader

Warnings: Smut, 18+, Minors DNI, shower sex, fingering, vaginal sex, soft sex, sex that causes you to be several hours late for work, Loki being a (respectful) horn dog.

Series: Overtime (I don't have a masterlist for this yet, but the first fic is here). A/N: This started out as a scene in Overtime that kind of took on a life of its own. You don't necessarily need to read Overtime in order to enjoy or understand this fic, but you'll have more context if you do. Anyway, it was fun revisiting these two idiots--I've got a few more ideas for them up my sleeve, so there will be more in this series at some point.

The sunlight wakes you the next morning.

It’s the same sunlight as always, but it looks different coming through Loki’s window and streaming across his bed. It looks better, you think, splashed across his sheets.

Or maybe it’s the addition of your hand clasped with his resting on those same sheets. Or perhaps it’s the sight of your clothes and his, discarded on the bedroom floor in a pool of sunlight, combined with the fact that you’re still wrapped in his arms. Maybe all of that is why it seems better.

That seems more likely.

You lie still for a moment, simply enjoying the feeling of his arms and the heat of his skin against your bare back. You are reasonably certain he’s asleep from the steady rhythm of his breath on your neck, but you’re not about to disturb the sleepy calm of the morning to confirm that. 

The clock on his bedside table says it’s just after six. Before last night, you would have said that this was a reasonable time to get up—early enough to ensure that you’re in the office by eight, which would hopefully give you enough time to meet this evening’s deadline, but not so early that it makes you question your life and your choices.

But that was before. Now…well. You suddenly find that your priorities look very different from the comfort of Loki’s bed.

You decide that you didn’t really see the clock. Neither one of you thought to set an alarm last night. Sleeping in was inevitable. That’s not your fault. No harm, no foul.

You close your eyes and allow yourself to fall into a light doze, warmed by the sunlight and Loki’s embrace.

Sometime later, you’re woken by the soft brush of a kiss against your neck.

“Did you sleep well?” he murmurs against your neck.

“Yes, though I did have a bit of a late night,” you say. “Someone kept me up.”

“Really? That was rude of him.”

“Very.”

He’s noticeably—achingly—hard. His lips brush against your neck again. “Perhaps he might make it up to you?”

Your intention is to open your eyes, roll over, and allow yourself to be ravished. But in a development you can only describe as tragic, you happen to catch sight of the clock on his nightstand.

7:38 am.

“Shit,” you say. “It’s almost eight.”

Loki is predictably unconcerned about this. “We don’t have any official hours to keep,” he says, his hand skimming along your ribs and down the curve of your waist. “We have all day.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got a ton more to do,” you say, trying to ignore how good he is at kissing your neck or how his hand is drifting down your hip toward the aching pulse between your legs. “We really need every minute.”

“That is true,” he says solemnly. “Perhaps we ought shower together to save time.”

You can’t help but smile. “I kind of feel like you have another agenda.”

“I’d never,” he says.

“The raging hard on pressing against my ass would suggest otherwise.”

You can almost hear him smirk as he gives his hips a teasing little thrust against you. “I contain multitudes.”

You wiggle out of his embrace and slip out of bed. You intend to look back and give him a coquettish look and say something sharp and teasing, but instead, the sight of him takes your breath away. He leans back on his elbows, looking everything like the sort of lounging god you would see depicted in marble at the Parthenon, all chiseled, sharp muscles and clean lines. His cock stands fully erect and deliciously thick, flushed with wanting.

“I can’t help but notice that you didn’t reject the offer,” he says, seemingly fully aware of the path of your gaze. His hand drops to his cock and he strokes himself casually, which very nearly sends your sprinting back to bed.

“You’re right,” you say, trying to keep your cool as you throw him your most beguiling look. “So you should probably hurry up.”

You turn and start walking toward the master bathroom. You don’t need to look over your shoulder to know he’s following you, his gaze hungrily devouring every inch of skin, eyes dark with purpose.

You walk into the master bathroom and are immediately confronted by several flagrant violations of the residential handbook. The TVA is many things, but it is not the sort of place that deviates from set floor plans, nor is it the sort of place that deviates from those plans to install a rainfall shower and soaking tub—in marble, no less.

You think of the stark, vaguely institutional aesthetic in your own master bath and you can’t decide if you’re annoyed at his rule breaking or jealous that he could get away with it.

“I’m not even going to ask if you got approval for this setup because I know you didn’t,” you say as you reach in to the shower to turn on the tap.

“Do you think of anything other than that cursed personnel manual?” he asks as he comes up behind you, his arms snaking around your waist and his lips again finding your neck as he draws you to him.

“First of all, it’s not the personnel manual, it’s the residential handbook, which you specifically agreed to abide by when you signed off on your lease.”

He turns you around so you face him and draws you close, a wicked gleam in his eye, “Oh, I’m going to make you forget all about those ridiculous rules.”

“That’s a pretty tall order—oh.”

His hand is slipping between your legs, stroking your already slick folds.

“I think I’m quite capable of inspiring other passions,” he says, rolling his fingers in a broad circle over the hood of your clit

You loop your arms around his shoulders. You can already feel your knees starting to tremble, but you know he won’t let you fall.

“Bold claim,” you say, “I’m going to need more evidence.”

“Oh, you’re going to get a lot of evidence,” he says softly. He curls a finger inside of you, pressing his thumb against the hood of your clit. “You will have no doubts by the time I’m done presenting my argument. You will be weak-kneed with evidence.”

You shudder as he rocks his hand slowly. He’s touching you enough to stoke the flames of desire, making your hips rock helplessly toward his hand as you try to create that extra friction and pressure that you know will send you flying over the edge. But Loki is meticulous—perhaps even ruthless—about not giving in. 

“Not yet,” he murmurs softly when your latest attempt is thwarted. “Slowly.”

Your pleas become louder and more frequent, but his answer remains the same: slowly. You whimper and beg, but he is resolute.

Steam has fogged up the mirrors and is curling around you when your orgasm finally begins to crest. You suddenly find yourself grateful for his pacing as the intensity builds to a level that makes your knees shake.

“That’s it,” he breathes as you tremble in his arms. “You can come for me now, lovely.”

Like magic, the coil inside you snaps at his command and you cry out as your cunt shudders around his slowly thrusting fingers. Your arms looped around his shoulders are the only thing keeping you standing.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss against your temple as you sag against him. “Beautiful.”

He gives you a moment to get your bearings before leading you into the shower. He sits down on the marble bench, spreading his thighs wide and pulling you into his lap so you straddle his hips. The spray of the water hits your back as he kisses you again, slow and hungry.

You love everything about this. The heat of the water on your back. The closeness. The way his thighs are spread wide. How his cock presses against your bare cunt. The noise he makes low in his throat when you start rubbing yourself against him.

“Need you,” he mumbles against your neck. His hands squeeze your hips and you reach between the two of you to line his cock up at your entrance.

It occurs to you that you could take the opportunity to tease him, to make him beg for you, but pretending that you have any control over your aching need for him is several degrees beyond impossible. So instead, you slowly ease yourself down onto his cock while he groans against your neck, dragging his lips down to the curve of your shoulder.

The feeling of him inside you is still so new that it feels just a little unreal. After all that wanting and yearning and thinking that he was too handsome, too divine, too out of reach to have, he’s suddenly yours and it’s absolutely dizzying. 

You pause for a moment, eyes closed, savoring the feeling of unyielding fullness, of connection. Of him.

“All right?” he asks softly.

You open your eyes and his look of sweet concern makes your heart swell. “Yeah,” you say, a lazy, satisfied smile tugging at your lips. “I just—I needed a moment. You feel—” You pause for a moment, searching for the right words, sifting through the effusive and flowery and the things that are true but too early to say. “You just feel really good,” you say.

It sounds wildly inadequate, but he seems to understand, to hear all of the unsaid parts that you’re keeping close to your heart. He could turn away, say it’s too much too soon, that you haven’t even said what you are yet, much less committed to anything serious, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans forward, drawing you into a slow kiss, his hands framing your face, tracing the curve of your cheek and jaw with the kind of reverence that makes you want to say everything you feel.

“You’re perfect.” He says it in between breaths, with such a disarming sincerity that you can’t bring yourself to try and deflect, to name a flaw or even make a joke.

Later, he will tell you that he was struggling with a similar battle, trying to reconcile how new this was with the depth of feeling that was already blossoming in his chest. He will tell you later that he couldn’t believe you were his, just as you couldn’t believe he was yours, that there was something about you that felt right in a way that made him feel like he knew even then.

But right now, he simply kisses you with a fervor that makes your toes curl and your hips start to move.

It’s only the second time that you’ve done this, but there’s a strange blend of both the new and the familiar. The shape and feel of his body pressed against yours is new, but the way that he moves, the way that he touches you is as though he’s loved you for centuries.

The rhythm you fall into is slow, despite the excuse that this shower was to save time. His hand slides down your stomach, his fingers finding your clit to add another layer of bliss to the feeling of his cock inside you. Despite your slow pace, your ascent rushes in fast and brilliant as a comet blazing through the night sky. Your back arches, almost as though you’re presenting yourself as an offering to him as you come undone in his arms. Loki watches you with a kind of breathless wonder, brow furrowing in pleasure, his lower lip caught between his teeth at the tight clench of your cunt around his cock.

Your legs are rubbery with pleasure, but you keep going because you need his release as much as your own. You need to feel him empty himself inside of you, to hear the low groan he makes as he unravels, to see the way his eyes flutter shut. You want crescent moon marks on your hips from where his hands gripped you too tightly in that final ascent, physical proof that you can make not just a god forget himself, but Loki specifically. Loki with all his masks and tricks and artful poise; Loki laid bare below you, free from all artifice and glibness, raw and real and just as he is. All the parts of him that make you think that down this path lies something wonderful (not that you’re ready to call it love. Yet).

But Loki is nothing if not predictably unpredictable and he seems determined to make you work before granting you that little glimpse at the heaven that is the god of mischief coming undone beneath you.

“Let me feel you come again,” he murmurs as soon as you catch your breath.

“Is once not enough?” you say, trying and failing to sound cool and calm, like you’re not completely wrecked for him.

“Hardly.” His eyes flash in a way that makes you shiver as he urges your hips into a faster rhythm. “I am not so easily satisfied when my need has been so great.”

You can feel the coil in your hips beginning to tighten again.

“I’ve burned for you for years, my love,” he says, his voice going a little shaky. “Would you deny water to a man dying of thirst?”

You shake your head, your words lost to the oncoming wave of your undoing.

“Then do not deny me your pleasure, I am desperate for you.” He’s panting, barely holding on to his composure. “Now come for me again, let me feel you.”

You are so far gone that it only takes a few more strokes to make you come undone and the first shudder of your climax takes Loki with you.

You savor his pleasure more than your own release, memorizing the sound he makes, the way his lips form a silent plea in the shape of your name until he slides a hand up your neck and pulls you down to kiss him.

His kiss is fierce and hungry at first, but it ebbs to something slower and sweeter as he empties himself into you. He sighs as you tangle your fingers in the wet tendrils of his hair.

It’s a long moment later when you finally break the kiss, resting your forehead against his.

“I don’t think we saved any time,” you say.

He doesn’t even open his eyes. “I cannot overemphasize how much I do not care about being late in these circumstances.”

You grin. “Not even a little?”

He kisses you sweetly on the mouth before opening his eyes, his lips curling into a slow and satisfied smile. “I would be late every day for the rest of my life for just a few seconds of that.”

His words spark something warm in your chest and you try to hide it with a wry look. “I’m not sure that you’re getting the better end of the deal.”

He kisses you softly. “You don’t know how good you feel.”

“You’re one to talk,” you murmur against his lips and he smiles as he deepens the kiss.

The warmth of his body pressed against yours and the feeling of him smiling as he kisses you is a kind of luxury you’ve never imagined. It takes you a while to untangle yourselves, but you can’t find it in yourself to move any faster.

The actual showering part of your shower is slow and unhurried and you find that Loki’s hands are equally gifted at these mundane tasks. His fingers have a knack for finding every stubborn knot in your neck and shoulders, which he explores leisurely under the pretext of washing your back. The press of his fingers unwinds the tension in your shoulders, loosening up muscles that have been too tense for too long.

“You are way too good at this,” you say.

“Just one of my many talents,” he says, dropping a kiss on your shoulder. “Though perhaps I ought to stop—I wouldn’t want to make you late.”

“I’m so relaxed I’m going to ignore that little bit of sass.”

He chuckles against your shoulder. “You’ll forgive me.”

“We’ll see.”

The sweet, almost chaste kisses he’s been pressing against your neck and shoulders are gradually growing slower, more insistent. When you feel the tip of his tongue draw a quick, teasing line on your neck, you know that you might be in trouble.

His hands slide to your waist, drawing you close enough that you can feel that he’s hard again. 

“I’m sensing some ulterior motives,” you say.

“A bold accusation,” he mumbles against your neck, pressing himself more firmly against you.

“We can’t have sex again,” you laugh.

“Mmm, we could,” he says in between kisses. “There’s nothing stopping us from having sex again.”

“We are already running late—”

“I thought I was very clear about my feelings on timeliness in these circumstances.” He nips at your earlobe and you shiver. “And would you really deprive me of the utter bliss of coming undone inside you?”

“It’s more like rescheduling than depriving you of anything.”

“I’ve waited so long, darling.”

“We just had sex like…less than an hour ago,” you say through a laugh.

“Ah, but the days before that were so terribly long,” he says.

You turn to face him, thinking this will make things easier for you. This turns out to be a grave miscalculation because now you have to contend with the fire in his eyes and the twin flame that it summons low in your hips.

Fuck. 

You are definitely going to have sex again.

His eyes glitter like he knows and he slowly walks you backwards until you’re pressed between him and the shower wall.

“You are absolutely incorrigible,” you say as he peppers your neck with slow, decadent kisses. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“Funnily enough, I don’t think you’ll be complaining about my mouth in about thirty seconds.”

And with a wicked and hungry grin, he slowly sinks to his knees.

It’s 10:48am when you finally walk into the office.

Even though you are now several hours later than you intended and the stack of files is no less imposing, you feel nothing but a pleasant glow of happiness as you take your seat. Loki sits down in the chair next to you and this time, he sneaks his foot underneath your desk and hooks his ankle under yours.

He catches your eye and smiles. “I can be a little more obvious now.”

You put on your most exaggerated expression of mock seriousness. “Only a little. This is a workplace, after all.”

He adopts a similar expression and nods. “Of course. I imagine there will be paperwork as well.”

“There actually is a form we’ll need to file with HR,” you say.

Loki frowns. “Wait, you’re not being serious about that, are you?”

“Yep. We’ll need to file it by next Friday.”

He sighs and throws his hands up in the air. “Is there anything that this place hasn’t managed to weigh down with the burden of unnecessary bureaucracy?”

“I see we’re in a good mood this morning.” Mobius has arrived, cup of coffee in hand. He nods at Loki and looks at you. “How long has he been raging against the machine?”

“Not terribly long,” you say as Loki rolls his eyes.

“It’s not raging against anything,” he says. “I just fail to see the point of some of this organization’s operational practices.”

Mobius raises an eyebrow at you. “You told him he has to fill out a form, huh?”

“Got it in one,” you say as Loki scowls.

Mobius chuckles and takes a sip of coffee. “You should hear him during performance evaluation season. I get entire monologues. It’s like Hamlet meets HR.”

Loki’s scowl deepens and you have to bite the inside of your cheek in order not to laugh.

“It looks like you made good progress, though,” says Mobius, looking at your completed stacks of files. “I took a look at what you pulled earlier this morning and there’s some good stuff.”

“Oh, good,” you say, hoping he doesn’t think much of the fact that neither one of you was in the office earlier this morning. “What time do you think you’ll need the rest done?”

“Right, about that,” says Mobius. You steel yourself for bad news. “I took a look at what you pulled so far and I think I’ve got what I need.”

You blink at him. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, you’re off the hook,” he says. “Go enjoy the rest of your weekend.”

You look at Loki, who looks just as pleasantly surprised as you feel.

“In fact, you can take the rest of the week off,” says Mobius. “Triple overtime, right? You earned the time.” 

“This feels like a trick,” says Loki. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” says Mobius. “You did good work.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “However—”

“And there’s the catch,” says Loki.

“There’s no catch,” says Mobius. He gestures at you with his coffee cup. “I’m just going to need you both to turn in the relevant paperwork to HR by next Friday.”

Loki sighs, though you can tell he’s fighting a smile. “There’s absolutely no privacy here.”

Mobius raises his eyebrows. “You’re playing footsie under the desk. It’s not exactly rocket science.”

You look at Loki and shrug. “He’s got a point.”

“You’re taking his side?”

You roll your eyes and stand up. “Well, you can sulk about it if you’d like, but I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my weekend.” You share a sly, secret smile with Mobius. “I’ll see you next week, Mobius.”

It takes Loki approximately twenty seconds to catch up with you.

“And you say I’m incorrigible,” he says as he falls into step beside you.

You smile at him. “I think you’ll get over it.”

“I’ll consider it.” He catches your band, fingers twining with yours. “What are your plans for the rest of the week?”

“Hadn’t decided,” you say, biting back a smile. “Did you have any suggestions?”

“Well, I’d like to start by going back to bed.”

“To sleep?” you tease. 

“Eventually.” He licks his lips. “And since our respective schedules have been cleared for the week, we’ll be able to take our time.”

The hunger in his eyes is still so new and intoxicating that you can’t help the shiver that works its way up your spine.

You give him a slow smile. “Lead the way.”

[decayedsword]

Ronin headcanons! (kc with a sprinkle of his past)

may or may not be based on his wiki (some r just my speculation though!)

(ps. i am so sorry if this is ooc ueue)

- Owns an electric guitar and drums. His room's walls are padded for this reason. Whenever he plays, he goes all out.

- Knows how to sing IM RIGHT. Vocal range can go from punk to heavy metal--THAT RASP IN HIS VOICE ISNT THERE FOR NOTHING

- Will sing for you if you ask veeerry nicely (post-meeting in purgatory :3c)

- will speak words of endearment to you in cantonese

- when you ask him wtf he just said he'll say he called you an idiot with legs for arms

- (he called you his beloved)

- ambidextrous. grew up left handed though

- pierced his own ears with a safety pin

- will d.i.y. his own clothing accessories just so he's satisfied with how they resonate with him

- extremely inconsistent sleeping habits. one day he's pulling an all nighter and the next he's hibernating

- cannot draw anatomically correct humans to save his life.

- reads shakespeare and knows most of his work. his copy of romeo and juliet contains a lot of dog-eared pages.

- poet by heart, but he doesn't write them down. if he gets an idea, he'll record him saying the poem/poetic narrative, but he never revisits it.

- knows a bit of latin

- used to be in sunday school. has read the bible a select few times.

- has tried to graffiti before. some of his work are still on the walls of purgatory, albeit faded.

- has dyed his hair multiple times before deciding on red (gg!ronin has white hair, kc!ronin has red hair)

- dare i say he decided on red hair to somehow match ther's ginger hair (SPECULATION. i might be crazy.)

- doesn't drink coffee, energy drinks are his lifeline.

- loves chocolates as much as the next person

- sometimes he'll hack into people's computers for fun and make them think they got a virus

- he thinks about jd and veronicas relationship whenever someone asks him about romance

- will lay in bed and stare at his collection of bones from his victims while listening to the nbhd's songs

SO. YEAH. he lives rent free in my mind. im writing three fics as i type this. ronin give me strength.

AGAIN, im sorry if its ooc ☝️😞

[malsmind]

please. .ᐟ not in the mood part 2

fwb!chris sturniolo x reader

summary: chris makes it up to you

warnings: swearing, smut at the end, oral (f recieving) fingering, biting, hair pulling, that's all i think LOL

author's note: idk chat, i dont fw it

wc: 2.3k

english is not my first language!

you left chris's that night, annoyed with how your night went. of course, you could've just told chris to stop, knowing you weren't in the mood to have sex, but you genuienly believed you could get there, and you just had too much on your mind to really get into it, so you kept trying. chris's reaction left you in disbelief at the lack of understanding and how he treated the situation, like it was a huge problem that he didn't get his relief that night.

purposely, you didn't text him back, letting him know that you were not too happy with his actions. you thought about apologizing, but you really didn't have to defend yourself for not getting horny, but for wanting to try. you went out that after leaving chris's place, drinking with friends to forget about your evening with chris, trying to have some fun. but no matter how much you laughed with your friends, dancing to the loud music, taking shot after shot, you still couldn't help but feel bad about the situation, telling yourself it was your fault even though it definetly wasn't.

you barely slept after getting home from the party, tossing and turning in bed, fighting the urge to text chris back. to your luck, the alcohol in your system helped you fall asleep after the few restless hours of overthinking. when you woke up, you decided to check your messages. you did last night too, you just didn't answer any of them.

the time on your phone read 5:27PM. you sighed when you read what chris had sent you, literally two minutes ago -

you couldn't help but chuckle to yourself when reading his texts. you've never seen chris act like that, blowing your phone up for a whole night, giving up when you didn't answer, then trying again the next day. what really surprised you was how desperate he was on trying to fix his mistake. in the whole four years you've known chris for, you have never seen that man wanting to make up for something he did, let alone beg for something.

you knew you shouldn't give in, you knew he was being unreasonable with you last night, but unfortunately, he meant too much to you to just cut off. it was a one time occurence, he always made sure you were comfortable with what was happening, whenever it was happening, so you thought his frustration last night deserved a hearing out. you sighed, rolling out of bed and typing out a message before sending it to him.

'omw'

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

you arrived at chris’s place shortly after you sent the text. the evening was settling in, the light outside dimming as the sun dipped behind the horizon. the street was quiet, and you stood in front of his front door. you got a little nervous, still not super happy about how things went, but you knocked anyway. chris opened the door, greeting you with a half-smile, he seemed unusually nervous but still trying to act casual. “hey,” he said, his voice low, not quite meeting your eyes. “thanks for coming over.”

“yeah, no problem,” you replied, stepping inside. “wasn't really planning on comin' over after... last night.” you gestured vaguely, not wanting to fully revisit what happened the night before. chris closed the door behind you and looked at the floor for a second. “i know,” he said quietly, taking a breath. “listen, i was an asshole, like for real. i shouldn't have said the things i said. i obviously know you can't control it and flip a switch to be horny whenever you need it. i was being a dick about it n' i'm sorry."

you sighed. last night had had honestly hurt your feelings a little, making you feel guilty for something you have no control over. it didn’t help that he was insistent when you tried to explain how you felt, telling you you wasted his time. the whole thing had been frustrating, but there was no denying that chris wasn’t usually like that, so you heard him out.

“it wasn’t just what you said,” you said, trying to explain again. “it was more that you weren’t hearing me, you know? i should've told you, yes, but i came over so we could fuck and all, so i wanted to keep trying and get in the mood... i dunno..” you tried to explain,

“i get it,” he said quickly, meeting your eyes now. “i wasn’t thinking about you—I was thinking about myself, and what i wanted. ’m sorry for that..."

him apologizing made this whole thing even more intense than it already was, surprising you. you didn't think he'd ever apologize for something when he was usually pretty careless about most things anyway, but you felt a little lighter just hearing him admit to his mistake, actually caring, which also surprised you. "it's okay. i just didn't like the way you spoke to me, made me feel like shit to be honest.."

chris nodded, his expression serious and surprisingly empathetic, like he really regretted his words and actions. “yeah.. i know.." he sighed. "i had a rough day, not gonna lie, and i let it out on you cause i was pissed. 's obviously not your fault, i was just being stupid."

you nodded, a small sigh leaving your lips. you really saw how he was trying, apologizing for what he'd done. it meant a lot to you. "can i make it up to you? i know theres nothin' i can really do to take the shit i said back or whatever... but can i try and make it up to you?" chris asked, his voice genuine.

you raised an eyebrow. “make it up to me?” you huffed out a chuckle, curious on where this was going. chris making something up to you? oh wow, he really meant it, he really was sorry.

“i was thinking we could go for a walk on the beach. sun's setting right now. i know you like that shit, so...” he said, a little less confident now when he heard what just came out of his mouth, but he really did want to make it up to you. fuck buddies or not, you guys were still friends after all.

you mulled it over for a second. part of you wanted to just keep things simple, not overanalyze it. “alright,” you said, your lips twitching into a small smile. “not goin' soft on me, are you?"

chris scoffs, a small smirk forming on his face at your words, "shut up, kid. don't make me take it back." you chuckled, grateful that the awkward tension was slowly slipping away.

his smirk faltered a little, clearing his throat. you noticed some slight nervousness in his gaze, tilting your head to the side, waiting for him to get out what else he wanted to say “we could... watch a movie together after. like when we're back. if you want to, of course. you don-"

"i'd love to." you cut him off, chuckling at his suggestion. he nodded, a little embarrassed but still amused. “okay.. okay, great."

you followed him outside, and the two of you walked in comfortable silence toward the beach, your steps slow and easy, like you’d done a hundred times before, just not with chris. it felt a little strange at first, that undercurrent of last night’s tension still lingering, but the evening air helped clear your head. the sky was painted with streaks of pink and orange, the waves crashing in the distance. it wasn’t the most perfect beach walk you’d ever had, but it was nice enough.

you walked a little further, the sand crunching beneath your feet. "y'know, i didn't think you'd apologize, let alone try to make up for it." you chuckled a litte, looking over at him "oh come on, i'm not a complete asshole. like, i know what i did was shitty, i wasn't jus' gonna leave it like that."

you nodded, another small chuckle leaving your lips. you kept walking in a comfortable silence before you heard chris sigh, “i really am sorry."

"i know, chris. it's okay. i really appriciate you doing this, and apologizing." you reassured him, seeing the way it took some weight off of his shoulders.

you took a deep breath, letting the ocean breeze wash over you. the conversation fell quiet as the two of you watched the sun set fully beneath the horizon. it was an easy moment—no pressure, no expectations, just the two of you standing there in the silence. you could tell that chris was really trying, and that meant something.

when the sun had set, the two of you headed back to his place. you walked in, throwing your phone down on the coffee table before plopping down on the couch. chris followed you, sitting down on the couch next to you, picking up the TV remote. "what you wanna watch?" you shrugged, not too sure yourself. "anything. as long as it's not some horribly scripted action movie." he nodded, huffing out a laugh. when he finally decided on a movie, he put the remote down, leaning back against the cushions next to you.

the movie started, but neither of you focused on what was playing on the screen. dramaric music and dialouge coming from the TV, but it seemed inaudible as your eyes were on his, drowining out everything around you. chris felt the same, but unlike your eyes, his didn't keep the eye contact up, his gaze darting down to your lips and you couldn't help but smirk a little. "we're not watching that movie, are we?" you rasied your eyebrows at him, his eyes meeting yours again as he shook his head. "fuck no."

before you knew it, his lips were on yours, capturing them in a hungry kiss. you pulled him closer to you, hands slipping under his t-shirt, your fingertips soft against his skin sending a shiver down his spine.

chris's hands roam your body, deepening the kiss as his tongue slips past your lips. you moan into the kiss, your hand sliding out from underneath his top, tugging at it. chris breaks the kiss when he feels your hands tug at the fabric, pulling it over his head quickly before his lips land on your neck, kissing and biting at the skin. your hands find his hair, tangling your fingers in it, tugging lightly. your back arches off of the couch when chris slowly kisses his way down your stomach, pushing your shirt up with his hand before he moved it up to squeeze your tit. good thing you were too lazy to put a bra on this morning...

chris's kisses and nibbles on your lower stomach, right above the waistband of your sweatpants were painfully teasing. you were definetly in the mood tonight, and you definetly didn't want to wait. "chris hurry up." you whined, your hand gripping his as it kept kneading your tit. chris smirked against your skin, his eyes darting up to meet yours. "impatient tonight, huh?" his hot breath against your skin as he spoke only made you needier. luckily, chris remoced his hand from where it was, sliding down your body. he pulled back, and you lifted your hips up for him as he tugged down your pants, your underwear following.

chris pushed your thighs apart, hands sliding up and down the flesh as his lips placed soft kisses up your inner thighs. he sucked on your skin, sinking his teeth into it before pulling back with a wet pop. "not gonna make me eat you out for twenty minutes and fake moan again, are you?" he joked, and despite the way his words made you feel last night, you found it funny. you scoffed out a laugh, rolling your eyes at his comment. "get to it or i'll go home and leave you here alone and hard again." chris chuckled, his eyes staying on yours as he buried his face between your thighs.

you sucked in a sharp breath at the feeling of this tongue making immediate contact with your clit, circling it. "oh fuck.." you breathed out, your fingers tangling in his hair again, earning a groan from chris, sending vibrations trough you. he slipped two fingers into your wetness, curling them up. his tongue focused on your clit, licking, wrapping his lips around it and sucking until you're a mess of whimpers and moans, real moans.

hearing the real emotion behind your moans, how you were actually turned on and in pleasure encouraged chris, his tongue and fingers working on you skilfully, tongue lapping at your pussy while his fingers continuesly curled up to hit your sweet spot. your grip in his hair tightened, your moans coming out between gasps, growing closer to your orgasm faster than expected. "don't stop, fuck, please..." you gasped out, and chris groaned against you, reassuring you that he was nowhere near stopping.

you bit your lip, trying not to moan too loud as your orgasm washed over you, your thighs threatening to close around chris's head, but his hands held them apart before they could.

even after finally cumming, chris didn't stop. you tried to wiggle away, whining at the overstimulation of his tongue never slowing down, but even then, chris only kept going. his name left your lips in small gasps, tugging on his hair but he grabbed your wrists, pinning them down on each side of you on the couch, "didn't get to hear your pretty moans last night. cmon, give me more.." and he kept going...

even after offering him to suck his dick, let him fuck your mouth, whatever you two usually did, he didn't stop.

you were in for a long night.

© 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝

@middlepartmatt @emely9274 @impossiblecollectorcat @staargazr @sllutty-sturniolo @shadowthesim237 @sturns-mermaid @courta13 @grace-sturnz @sofia-is-a-sturniolo-triplet-fan @ncm9696 @rcklessheavn @sophand4n4 @amyiasturnl @ivysturnss @loser41ifee @helpimateenagerinlove @angvl3tears

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Harry Potter and PTSD

I think no one would argue Harry Potter isn't traumatized, but I actually wanted to go through PTSD symptoms and find evidence of them in book quotes. It's mostly as a fun, little exercise (the word fun is debatable here, it made me quite sad, actually) as I'm not a licensed therapist, and I have no qualifications to diagnose anyone with anything. But I wanted to take a look at some of how Harry's trauma manifests especially in the final 3 books as the signs of PTSD are most obvious and glaring after Voldemort's resurrection and get worse after Sirius' death.

(As the title and first paragraphs suggest, this post isn't a happy one, so beware. I will be discussing symptoms of trauma as shown in the HP books)

I will be using adult PTSD symptoms since:

Older children and teens usually show symptoms more like those seen in adults. They also may develop disruptive, disrespectful, or destructive behaviors. Older children and teens may feel guilt over not preventing injury or death, or have thoughts of revenge.

(Source)

All further quotes regarding PTSD and its symptoms and how they might show were taken from the same website linked above.

To be diagnosed with PTSD, an adult must have all of the following for at least 1 month: * At least one re-experiencing symptom * At least one avoidance symptom * At least two arousal and reactivity symptoms * At least two cognition and mood symptoms

So, let's get straight into it and go into the diagnosis categories:

Re-experiencing symptoms

* Flashbacks—reliving the traumatic event, including physical symptoms, such as a racing heart or sweating * Recurring memories or dreams related to the event * Distressing thoughts * Physical signs of stress Thoughts and feelings can trigger these symptoms, as can words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event.

Harry definitely suffers from nightmares post-Voldemort's-resurrection, and memories coming back about it:

Had they all forgotten what he had done? Hadn’t it been he who had entered that graveyard and watched Cedric being murdered and been tied to that tombstone and nearly killed ... ? Don’t think about that, Harry told himself sternly for the hundredth time that summer. It was bad enough that he kept revisiting the graveyard in his nightmares, without dwelling on it in his waking moments too.

(OotP)

In the meantime, he had nothing to look forward to but another restless, disturbed night, because even when he escaped nightmares about Cedric he had unsettling dreams about long dark corridors, all finishing in dead ends and locked doors, which he supposed had something to do with the trapped feeling he had when he was awake.

(OotP)

And it continues even months later, he's still dreaming about the graveyard:

He was not going to share his dreams with anyone. He knew perfectly well what his regular nightmare about a graveyard meant, he did not need Ron or Professor Trelawney or the stupid Dream Oracle to tell him that...

(OotP)

Distressing thoughts are par for the course for Harry, but I'll bring up some examples:

And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him.

(HBP)

He feels responsible for all of their deaths even though they are all adults who chose to be there and protect him. Harry still feels guilt and responsibility over them, even when it isn't his fault, and he shouldn't feel responsible for those who stood between him and Voldemort.

While Harry shows physical signs of stress (such as a racing heart or sweating), They are shown in actual moments of stress where any human would be stressed, so I don't count them here since they are not an immediate result of trauma.

Regardless, I'd say he does have relieving symptoms. Recurring dreams, thoughts, and a sense of guilt are all present.

Avoidance symptoms

* Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience * Avoiding thoughts or feelings related to the traumatic event Avoidance symptoms may cause people to change their routines. For example, some people may avoid driving or riding in a car after a serious car accident.

Harry doesn't actually have the luxury to really avoid anything (poor boy) but he does avoid talking about his dreams of the graveyard, as mentioned in the quote in the Re-experiencing section. He doesn't tell anyone, not even Ron or Hermione about his nightmares. Neither does he want to talk about Cedric. He doesn't even want to think about the graveyard and Cedric as mentioned in one of the above quotes:

Had they all forgotten what he had done? Hadn’t it been he who had entered that graveyard and watched Cedric being murdered and been tied to that tombstone and nearly killed ... ? Don’t think about that, Harry told himself sternly for the hundredth time that summer.

(OotP)

Even though Cho keeps bringing Cedric up to process her own experience, Harry does not want to talk or think about him and what happened at the graveyard.

She shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m — sorry,” she said thickly. “I suppose ... it’s just ... learning all this stuff... It just makes me ... wonder whether ... if he’d known it all ... he’d still be alive...” Harry’s heart sank right back past its usual spot and settled somewhere around his navel. He ought to have known. She wanted to talk about Cedric.

(OotP)

“I came in here with Cedric last year,” said Cho. In the second or so it took for him to take in what she had said, Harry’s insides had become glacial. He could not believe she wanted to talk about Cedric now, while kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub floated over their heads.

(OotP)

Zacharias said dismissively, “All Dumbledore told us last year was that Cedric Diggory got killed by You- Know-Who and that you brought Diggory’s body back to Hogwarts. He didn’t give us details, he didn’t tell us exactly how Diggory got murdered, I think we’d all like to know — ” “If you’ve come to hear exactly what it looks like when Voldemort murders someone I can’t help you,” Harry said. His temper, always so close to the surface these days, was rising again. He did not take his eyes from Zacharias Smith’s aggressive face, determined not to look at Cho. “I don’t want to talk about Cedric Diggory, all right? So if that’s what you’re here for, you might as well clear out.”

(OotP)

And when he mentions some of it, he's emotionally overwhelmed and stumbling over his words. He didn't really process everything that happened in the graveyard and he doesn't know how to talk about it:

Ron and Hermione were still smirking and Harry felt his temper rise; he wasn’t even sure why he was feeling so angry. “Don’t sit there grinning like you know better than I do, I was there, wasn’t I?” he said heatedly. “I know what went on, all right? And I didn’t get through any of that because I was brilliant at Defense Against the Dark Arts, I got through it all because — because help came at the right time, or because I guessed right — but I just blundered through it all, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing — STOP LAUGHING!” The bowl of murtlap essence fell to the floor and smashed. He became aware that he was on his feet, though he couldn’t remember standing up. Crookshanks streaked away under a sofa; Ron and Hermione’s smiles had vanished. “You don’t know what it’s like You — neither of you — you’ve never had to face him, have you? You think it’s just memorizing a bunch of spells and throwing them at him, like you’re in class or something? The whole time you know there’s nothing between you and dying except your own — your own brain or guts or whatever — like you can think straight when you know you’re about a second from being murdered, or tortured, or watching your friends die — they’ve never taught us that in their classes, what it’s like to deal with things like that — and you two sit there acting like I’m a clever little boy to be standing here, alive, like Diggory was stupid, like he messed up — you just don’t get it, that could just as easily have been me, it would have been if Voldemort hadn’t needed me — ”

(OotP)

He mentions how it isn't easy for him to talk about it when he does his interview for the Quibbler:

Harry had not found it an easy experience to talk about the night when Voldemort had returned. Rita had pressed him for every little detail, and he had given her everything he could remember, knowing that this was his one big opportunity to tell the world the truth. He wondered how people would react to the story. He guessed that it would confirm a lot of people in the view that he was completely insane, not least because his story would be appearing alongside utter rubbish about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. But the breakout of Bellatrix Lestrange and her fellow Death Eaters had given Harry a burning desire to do something, whether it worked or not...

(OotP)

So, I'd say Harry shows avoidance symptoms in abundance as well.

Arousal and reactivity symptoms

* Being easily startled * Feeling tense, on guard, or on edge * Having difficulty concentrating * Having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep * Feeling irritable and having angry or aggressive outbursts * Engaging in risky, reckless, or destructive behavior Arousal symptoms are often constant. They can lead to feelings of stress and anger and may interfere with parts of daily life, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating.

"CONSTANT VIGILENCE!" anyone?

But more seriously, Harry is extra vigilant and alert in the final 3 books especially. As mentioned in the above quote with Smith, Harry is more angry in the final 3 books:

“If you’ve come to hear exactly what it looks like when Voldemort murders someone I can’t help you,” Harry said. His temper, always so close to the surface these days, was rising again.

(OotP)

His temper, which was always present, got worse after the graveyard. In book 4, Harry holds Ron back from hitting Draco when Draco throws his usual insults:

“You know your mother, Malfoy?” said Harry — both he and Hermione had grabbed the back of Ron’s robes to stop him from launching himself at Malfoy

(GoF)

In book 5, Harry punches Draco himself over similar insults because he's angrier and has less of a handle on his emotions and reactions. He is barely aware of what he's doing:

Harry was not aware of releasing George, all he knew was that a second later both of them were sprinting at Malfoy. He had completely forgotten the fact that all the teachers were watching: All he wanted to do was cause Malfoy as much pain as possible. With no time to draw out his wand, he merely drew back the fist clutching the Snitch and sank it as hard as he could into Malfoy’s stomach —

(OotP)

And in general, Harry is much more on guard:

He raised the cup to his lips and then, just as suddenly, lowered it. One of the horrible painted kittens behind Umbridge had great round blue eyes just like Mad-Eye Moody’s magical one, and it had just occurred to Harry what Mad-Eye would say if he ever heard that Harry had drunk anything offered by a known enemy.

(OotP)

He startles easily and is ready for an attack at all moments:

Dudley lay curled up on the ground, whimpering and shaking. Harry bent down to see whether he was in a fit state to stand up, but then heard loud, running footsteps behind him; instinctively raising his wand again, he spun on his heel to face the newcomer.

(OotP - after the dementor attack)

Malfoy wheeled around, drawing his wand. Instinctively, Harry pulled out his own. Malfoy’s hex missed Harry by inches, shattering the lamp on the wall beside him; Harry threw himself sideways, thought Levicorpus, and flicked his wand, but Malfoy blocked the jinx and raised his wand for another — 

(HBP)

“Pathetic, Weasley,” said Snape, after a while. “Here — let me show you — ” He turned his wand on Harry so fast that Harry reacted instinctively; all thought of nonverbal spells forgotten, he yelled, “Protego!” His Shield Charm was so strong Snape was knocked off-balance and hit a desk. The whole class had looked around and now watched as Snape righted himself, scowling.

(HBP)

By HBP and OotP, Harry is always ready for an attack and he defends himself on instinct. It doesn't matter where he is or what he's doing, fight or flight instincts take over and he's acting. It's always there, under the surface, ready to spring.

After Sirius dies, we also see a change in what Harry keeps to himself and what he says out loud. All his sassiest quotes towards Snape come from after Sirius dies. Harry becomes more reckless with his words (and actions in general). The pain makes him care less about his own life and future:

“What are you doing, Potter?” said Snape coldly as ever, as he strode over to the four of them. “I’m trying to decide what curse to use on Malfoy, sir,” said Harry fiercely. Snape stared at him.

(OotP - after Sirius' death)

“Yes, sir.” “There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ Professor.” The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying. Several people gasped, including Hermione. Behind Snape, however, Ron, Dean, and Seamus grinned appreciatively.

(HBP - yes, this famous scene is because Harry is depressed)

This is Harry just speaking his mind with complete and utter disregard for the consequences of what comes out of his mouth. This is something we see with him only after Sirius died, as before that, he made an attempt to not anger his professors, even Snape. In the earlier books, Harry is all for de-escalating situations with Snape:

“What on earth were you thinking of?” said Professor McGonagall, with cold fury in her voice. Harry looked at Ron, who was still standing with his wand in the air. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed. Why aren’t you in your dormitory?” Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look. Harry looked at the floor. He wished Ron would put his wand down.

(PS)

“Let’s see,” he said, in his silkiest voice. “Fifty points from Gryffindor and a detention each for Potter and Weasley. Now get inside, or it’ll be a week’s worth of detentions.” Harry’s ears were ringing. The injustice of it made him want to curse Snape into a thousand slimy pieces. He passed Snape, walked with Ron to the back of the dungeon, and slammed his bag down onto the table. Ron was shaking with anger too — for a moment, it felt as though everything was back to normal between them, but then Ron turned and sat down with Dean and Seamus instead, leaving Harry alone at his table. On the other side of the dungeon, Malfoy turned his back on Snape and pressed his badge, smirking. POTTER STINKS flashed once more across the room.

(GoF)

Harry may be thinking of wanting to say/do something, but he doesn't, because he has some self-preservation. This self-preservation disappears as the books go along. Harry in the early books is much more concerned for his own well-being than in the later books, and I don't think it's due to bravery or childhood trauma, at least, that isn't all there is. I think it's a reaction to some of his more recent trauma as well. A combination of feeling responsible for everything and thinking it's fine he goes through pain and danger because that's what he should do. In HBP and DH, he repeatedly says how willing he is to endanger himself, but not others. It's why he breaks up with Ginny, it's why he initially doesn't want Ron and Hermione to come with him on the Horcrux hunt. He thinks his own life is worth less. That it isn't so bad if he dies.

So he shows 3 arousal and reactivity symptoms at least.

Cognition and mood symptoms

* Trouble remembering key features of the traumatic event * Negative thoughts about oneself or the world * Exaggerated feelings of blame directed toward oneself or others * Ongoing negative emotions, such as fear, anger, guilt, or shame * Loss of interest in previous activities * Feelings of social isolation * Difficulty feeling positive emotions, such as happiness or satisfaction Cognition and mood symptoms can begin or worsen after the traumatic event. They can lead people to feel detached from friends or family members.

I already mentioned Harry's guilt regarding people "who stood between him and Voldemort". And it's true for this section as well. And I mentioned above how Harry considers his own life as worth less than others, which leads him to be incredibly reckless.

Besides the above two points, Harry also shows clear signs of depressive states:

On the fourth night after Hedwig’s departure Harry was lying in one of his apathetic phases, staring at the ceiling, his exhausted mind quite blank, when his uncle entered his bedroom. Harry looked slowly around at him. Uncle Vernon was wearing his best suit and an expression of enormous smugness.

(OotP)

Harry mentions that after the graveyard in the summer between 4th and 5th year, he starts having what he calls "apathetic phases", in which he just feels too tired to even think, just staring blankly at the ceiling. Him calling it "phases" as in, plural, suggests this is a common occurrence at the Dursleys.

Even later in Deathly Hallows, we see this is something Harry still does. After Ron leaves Harry and Hermione are at their most depressed:

She [Hermione] threw herself into a chair, curled up, and started to cry. Harry felt dazed. He stooped, picked up the Horcrux, and placed it around his own neck. He dragged blankets off Ron’s bunk and threw them over Hermione. Then he climbed onto his own bed and stared up at the dark canvas roof, listening to the pounding of the rain.

(DH)

Hermione reacts to her emotions by crying and letting them out, she's processing her emotions in some capacity, as hard as it is. Harry, on the other hand, just gets tired. His mind goes blank and he just stares blankly at the ceiling. Another one of these "apathetic phases". Instead of feeling, he goes numb.

We also see in book 6 how he loses some of his interest in Quidditch. The one pastime that reliably brought him joy, wasn't as important to Harry post Sirius' death. Sure, he was still playing, still interested, but there was none of the joy described previously. He doesn't have the same passion and interest even though he's the captain:

Harry smiled back vaguely, but as he pulled on his scarlet robes his mind was far from Quidditch. 

(HBP)

“Don’t be stupid,” said Ron sharply. “You couldn’t have missed a Quidditch match just to follow Malfoy, you’re the Captain!”

(HBP)

Some of it is to follow Draco who Harry thinks is a Death Eater, sure, but Harry in 4th year would not have acted the same. He wouldn't have let it make him miss a game, he wouldn't have even considered it.

In Deathly Hallows we also see Harry struggling with happiness in many ways. Yes, the situation is bad, but he is so incredibly affected by it, and I do want to mention that:

But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.

(DH)

This above quote makes me so sad whenever I read it, and I do want to mention it here. Like, Harry isn't actively suicidal, but he's in a lot of pain that he wants to stop. These negative thoughts are practically a constant in DH even when he isn't wearing the Horcrux.

A hundred dementors were advancing, gliding toward them, sucking their way closer to Harry’s despair, which was like a promise of a feast. ... He saw Ron’s silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly, and expire; he saw Hermione’s otter twist in midair and fade; and his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling. . . .

(DH)

Harry is the character with the most reliable Patronus, but even for him at some point, it's too much and he struggles with it. Struggles to bring up the happiness he needs for a Patronus. The happiness part is what he always struggled with most when it came to this spell, after all:

“No!” said Harry. He got up again. “I’ll have one more go! I’m not thinking of happy enough things, that’s what it is. ... Hang on. ...” He racked his brains. A really, really happy memory . . . one that he could turn into a good, strong Patronus ...

(PoA)

So, I'd say he shows at least 4 cognitive and mood symptoms.

Conclusions

Someone get this boy a hug and therapy, I really don't have much more to say.

I started writing this post to see if I could find evidence of PTSD symptoms in the books, and I searched and found so many that it just made me sad. So, yes, Harry obviously deals with untreated PTSD he has no idea how to regulate in the final 3 books and I think his readiness to walk towards his own demise is influenced by it.

[project-sekai-facts]

Prskfacts 2nd anniversary!

Today (March 13th) is the second anniversary of when I started posting trivia! Thank you so much for the support over the last two years, it means a lot and I'm glad people continue to enjoy the blog!

As of today there will be some changes to how this blog is run. Posts will continue to be daily, but most days will be reblogs of old facts instead of new ones (new ones will still be posted sometimes). It has been incredibly hard for me to keep posting daily over the last year and a half and I feel like the quality of trivia has been declining recently as I've been running out of things to post. I don't want that to continue, so I'll be focusing on quality over quantity from now on. Plus, it's been a long time and a lot of people weren't here for the older posts, so they'll be fun to revisit.

I will still be answering asks, but don't expect me to be as regular with this. It will probably continue at the rate it has for the past few months. This is just to give me time to focus on uni and personal life over this blog, which was getting to the point of being like a job for me. I will also be emptying my inbox today because it's got like 800 unanswered asks in it and I need it to be more manageable. Sorry to anyone whose questions I didn't answer, but feel free to send them again (submissions have been put on the queue).

Sorry this is a bit of a downer anniversary post. To reiterate, I'm not fully moving away from prsk or this blog, just reducing my activity. I hope you continue to enjoy prskfacts for the next year!

So in January 2024 I explained what 4kids was to an anon and said this:

and someone said this in the tags:

i decided explaining shadow the hedgehog lore in depth was the funniest way to semi-retire from this blog that wasn't posting "sayonara you weeaboo shits" or posting my shitpost drafts and going radio silent afterwards. so thank you to the person who said that you gave this blog a slightly less unceremonious death. also if ur a new sth fan who got in bc of the movie this might be useful idk i mainly just wanted an excuse to talk about shadow the hedgehog

So 50+ years before the events of peak fiction Sonic Adventure 2, we have Gerald and Maria Robotnik, Eggman's grandfather and cousin respectively. Gerald was a revolutionary scientist/roboticist (and archaeologist, this will be relevant later) and one of the greatest minds of his time, making huge scientific developments with the goal of bringing hope and happiness to humanity. One of his greatest inventions was a space station for scientific research, the Space Colony ARK, which served as his main lab from then on. The construction and operations of the ARK were partially funded by the United Federation (in-universe USA), but primarily funded by GUN (Guardian Units of Nations, the in-universe US military).

So SA2 is an extremely anti-military game. That's going to become apparent from here on out. So, GUN wants weapons in exchange for funding, and they're starting to get annoying about it. Obviously this is not what Gerald wants, so he asks the President of the UF if he can intervene, since the govt is the other source of funding. So the president says he'll do that, but he also sucks and decides to ask Gerald to invent immortality. Gerald hates the idea of this just as much, and shoots it down immediately, not to mention it being an impossible task.

However, back on Earth, Maria gets sick, and is diagnosed with NIDS (neuro-immuno deficiency syndrome (EN) or native immunodeficieny syndrome (JP), either way it's clearly based on AIDS), a terminal illness. Gerald manages to get Maria brought up to the ARK when treatments on Earth are failing so the team up there can do assessments and research treatments. The low gravity on the ARK also helps to keep the illness' effects at a low, for the most part. Maria's family back at Earth isn't exactly happy about all this though (the Robotnik family drama isn't actually too important here I just wanted to talk about it).

So the president keeps pushing for the immortality thing, and Gerald figures he can use this to find a cure for Maria, so decides to go forward with Project: Shadow, named as such because "the concept [of immortality] is as intangible as a shadow". GUN still wants weapons as well, which is where the archaeology thing starts coming into play. So to tie SA2 into its predecessor, there's these robots that look like the god Chaos from SA1. Gerald had researched Chaos in the past, and builds robots based on it to give to GUN.

Okay now we're finally getting closer to actual Shadow stuff. The scientists are using a Chaos Emerald in their research into immortality, and develop Chaos Drives using the Chaos Energy from the emerald. Gerald also supplies GUN with these drives so they can use them as a power source to try and appease them (they still use them 50 years later to power their mechs, GUN robots drop them when destroyed in SA2). The staff test out these drives on a salamander when they feel they're developed enough to be used on living tissue. Some time later, the salamander being used in testing has such rapid cellular growth that it can't survive on its own, and it becomes violent and uncontrollable, prompting Gerald to build it a life support pack and seal it away in the ARK's basement (functionally). This is the Biolizard, the prototype Ultimate Life Form and the final regular boss of SA2 (also one of two characters with a confirmed birthday, that being January 27th).

More Robotnik family drama stuff just bc I feel like mentioning it, you can skip this paragraph. So Maria's been up on the ARK for a while now, enough years that some scientists on the ARK think she was born there, and Gerald isn't making any progress with creating a cure. Some of the scientists are even starting to doubt that Maria is even ill, since her symptoms are invisible most of the time. Also, the rest of the Robotnik family is losing faith in Gerald and it's getting to a point where they want either a cure or for her to be sent home to be with her family. Gerald cannot yet provide a cure, but he also does not want to send Maria home because she will die. See now Gerald has a pretty big ego. He constantly talks about how much of a genius is and has boundless confidence in himself, which only now is being put to the test. He keeps biting off more than he can chew, and it's starting to cost his family.

Here we fucking go. Exactly 50 years prior to the game Shadow the Hegdehog, the Black Comet passes by Earth. This comet it the home of an alien race called the Black Arms, led by this demonic looking alien guy called Black Doom. Gerald makes contact with the comet, and strikes a deal with Doom, who was interested in Gerald's work with the Chaos Emeralds. Black Doom lends his DNA to be used with Project Shadow, and it reacts well with the Chaos energy. See now Doom has this plan to invade Earth next time his comet comes by, and he wants the thing Gerald is making to be able to do that for him essentially. An Ultimate Life Form is pretty appealing when you want to conquer the Earth.

Also fun thing that originates from a 4koma but was brought up for the first time in English in Shadow Generations: Maria is the one who named Shadow. He originally called the project "Project Shadow" out of mockery as mentioned earlier, and also thought the name sounded too dark for the project he was using to help develop a cure to Maria's illness. However Maria said that he should name the hedgehog he created "Shadow", because a shadow shows the way to the light. Maria also designed Shadow's shoes and inhibitor rings to try and reduce the strain his body will be under from the alien DNA and Chaos energy (Gerald's Journal specifically refers to them as mobility and focus aids). Fun fact 3 if you hack the camera during the lab cutscene in Shadow 05 there's multiple failed Shadow prototypes in the room.

So why is Shadow a hedgehog? It's not ever been confirmed, but it is heavily implied that Shadow was based on the Hidden Palace mural from Sonic 3 & Knuckles. This is an ancient prophetic mural that depicts a blue creature glowing gold fighting a robot that has the Master Emerald. It's depicting the true final boss of the game. We know Gerald visited Angel Island and, while it's never mentioned, it's likely that he saw this mural and made Shadow in the blue/gold figure's likeness (which is why Shadow looks like the Adventure-era Super Sonic design specifically).

We're gonna have to go back to the archaeology stuff for a bit. Years before Project Shadow one of Gerald's sons (presumably Maria's dad, since it's stated that the other son is a roboticist and it makes sense for him to be Eggman's dad) discovers this robot built by an ancient civilization while doing some archaeology shit. Gerald finds it in a warehouse some time later while on the ARK. After researching into it more he discovers that this robot is a weapon capable of mimicking the combat and abilities of other people and weapons as well as being reactive to the chaos emeralds. Presumably Gerald puts the robot back into storage because his Journal (the shadow gens one) doesn't mention him again for ages.

So fast forward to Shadow being in-progress. Gerald is researching the robot again and discovers that it is called a Gizoid (he is later given the name Emerl in Sonic Battle). Emerl can establish a "Link" to a person, becoming completely loyal to them, provided they have some sort of power (Gerald shows Emerl a gun). As mentioned, Emerl is a weapon programmed to be very destructive, but currently Gerald has him under his control.

Although, GUN gets demanding again due to still not having results for the immortal super soldiers they wanted. So Gerald hands over Emerl, knowing full well the risk of GUN just giving him something more powerful than the gun Gerald had and developing a Link with them instead. GUN doesn't really give a shit about Emerl though and asks for something else. Gerald uses this as an opportunity to give them a massive, planet-destroying, Death Star-esque laser cannon, called the Eclipse Cannon. Obviously, GUN can never use it, but it's a big powerful weapon and they're the US military so they're happy with it. Its true function is actually for Shadow to use it to blow up the Black Comet when it comes back past Earth in 50 years, because of that whole deal about Shadow being used by Black Doom to conquer Earth. (Gerald does apologise in his journal for kind of actively ruining Shadow's life before he's even been born, but y'know he's kinda on a streak of making bad decisions at this point).

Shadow is finally awakened and quickly becomes incredibly close with Maria, developing a sibling relationship. She tells him about her love for Earth and he takes care of her and looks out for her when she's struggling. Dialogue in Shadow 05 and Shadow Generations suggests that aside from testing and combat training, Shadow was treated like a fairly normal kid. Maria mentions running around the ARK and playing with him, as well as going to school with him (fun fact: Maria says in Shadow Gens that he never handed in any of his homework).

(To get Shadow age discourse out the way: he's physically 15. This is stated in his character bio in the leaked Sonic 06 script, which admittedly is not entirely accurate, but there's also other information to suggest this, such as him having the same height and weight as Sonic (15) and Silver (14) while Knuckles and Espio (both 16) are taller and heavier. And yeah there's some sources that put him as ageless and that script is the only thing to ever give him an actual age and all the character ages were removed from the official bios anyway due to a timeskip between Forces and Frontiers but you get the idea he's physically the same age as Sonic. Also no he did not age while frozen. Go win internet arguments or something)

Gerald also comes to think of Shadow like a son, which is funny because at this point in the Journal he stops referring to Maria's dad as his son. Likely because he and his wife had another child, which reads like they've lost hope in Maria being saved and are starting over. I mean yeah that's very clearly what's going on.

Unfortunately shit starts to go downhill from here. Emerl absorbs enough weapons to make him go out of control and he goes on a destructive rampage across the ARK. He's shut down and Gerald reprograms him with a 'soul' to prevent this from happening again, and a self-destruct function just in case it does. However, the rampage causes those Artifical Chaos robots I mentioned earlier to go out of control as well. Those are taken down as well but an SOS has been sent out to Earth by this point (there were also other general safety concerns bc of the evil demon aliens and. the military blaming other people for things they asked for)

So GUN and the government kinda go "fuck we need to pretend like this isn't out fault" so GUN goes up to space and shuts down the colony. By raiding it and killing almost everyone on board, covering it up by saying there was an accident. Only three ARK residents are known to have survived: Gerald, Shadow, and a kid called Abe (who is the GUN commander in present day). Considering that they spared the only other kid on the ARK, Maria was probably shot because she was with Shadow and was helping him into an escape pod.

Shadow is found and put in cryo and Gerald is arrested by GUN and made to finish his research under supervision. Gerald learns Maria died and goes insane with grief. He becomes immensely hateful towards humanity as a whole and secretly reprograms Shadow's memories to make him think that Maria's final wish was for him to avenge her (by literally destroying the Earth) instead of what it really was, which was to protect the people of Earth. Gerald is then executed by firing squad.

(Additional Robotnik family lore: Takashi Iizuka confirmed not too long ago that Eggman was born after Maria died. Eggman also mentions that he didn't know Maria in one of his unlockable memos in Frontiers, but reveals that her death was felt throughout his childhood. Apparently the attention was never really on him due to everyone always focusing on how great Maria was. Knowing Eggman this may be a slight exaggeration but yeah there's speculation that the Robotnik Family Drama will be relevant at some point since they keep bringing it up in recent materials)

Fast forward 50ish years to SA2. Eggman finds his grandfather's journal from his supervised work while he was being held by GUN and learns about his work on the "Ultimate Life Form" who can destroy things. Eggman wants to conquer the world and he's like yeah I want that so he breaks into the GUN base where Shadow is in cryo. Eggman is also the first person in 50 years to try the password "Maria" to free Shadow (Gerald got to set the password for whatever reason they've rewritten the lore a couple times don't worry about it).

Also Shadow being freed is so funny like you gotta remember he's 15 and an emo bordering on theatre kid and also the last thing he remembers is his sister getting shot and he sees Eggman, probably didn't even clock that it wasn't Gerald for 30 seconds, and is like "I'll grant your wishes bring me the chaos emeralds and meet me on the ARK lol bye" and what he means is "we're gonna blow up the Earth bc the military killed my sister like 3 hours ago as far as i'm concerned" but like he doesn't tell Eggman this so Eggman's just like "fuck yeah let's take over the world". Eggman goes to meet Shadow on the ARK and Shadow explains the Eclipse Cannon and Eggman's like "cool I can use this to threaten Earth until everyone has to submit to me".

Also Rouge is here because she works for GUN as an agent and they want her to investigate Eggman and Shadow. Also GUN is stupid and keeps trying to arrest Sonic because he looks like Shadow and Shadow robbed a museum bc it had an Emerald. They literally have newsreel footage of Shadow and everyone's like "no this is Sonic" (this makes way more sense if you consider that Shadow's original design as when he was being developed as "Terios" was way closer to Sonic's). GUN arrest Sonic twice in this game, and attempt a third time. Sonic escapes police custody twice and evades arrest on the third one. He also says he doesn't like cops this is important. Anyway he and Shadow keep trying to kill each other. Sonic wants to know what the deal is but that doesn't stop him from trying to fight Shadow constantly. Shadow wants to blow up Earth but this also doesn't stop him from fighting Sonic constantly.

Eggman, Rouge and Shadow go to GUN's Prison Island where they send everyone they arrest and then steal the Chaos Emeralds that GUN has and blow up the island. Using the six Emeralds they have, Eggman powers up the Eclipse Cannon and livestreams himself blowing up the moon with it. The Heroes go to the ARK as well and there's some whole drama there but this ain't about them. Eggman gets the seventh Chaos Emerald and puts it into the cannon, which activates Gerald's doomsday plan that Shadow did not tell Eggman about. The ARK sets off on a crash course for Earth so now the Heroes and Eggman and Rouge are trying to turn it off.

Also there was a whole thing where Rouge looks into Project Shadow and all she can find is stuff about the Biolizard so she thinks Shadow is lying or delusional. I mean we know he's telling the truth but back then this was like adding to the mystery. Not that relevant in retrospect. Moving on.

Back to Shadow. His goal is fulfilled and he's kinda just standing there looking out the window as the ARK falls. Amy got left behind when everyone went to go shut down the ARK and she happens to find Shadow and asks what his deal is. She talks about the good of humanity and manages to partially say the exact same thing as Maria said when she put Shadow in the escape pod when she was dying. Shadow remembers Maria's wish for him to give everyone a chance to live and be happy, cries very briefly, and then runs off because he has his real memories back now and needs to fix this shit.

Sonic and Shadow go Super and use Chaos Control to warp the ARK back into orbit and stop the doomsday program. However Shadow isn't accustomed to using a Super form and is weakened (there's this whole thing about Shadow realising that Sonic might be the true Ultimate Life Form if you take long enough on the final boss). Sonic warns him to return back to the ARK but he doesn't, and ends up losing his super form and falling to Earth, presumably dying (Twitter Takeovers are noncanon but #5 says that Sonic tried to save Shadow but Shadow let himself die because otherwise Sonic would've fallen with him and as far as he knew then, died with him. This isn't shown or mentioned in the games but is likely what happened given that Sonic comes back to the ARK afterwards with one of Shadow's inhibitor rings).

Shadow was actually meant to stay dead and SA2 itself was actually pretty vague about what really happened 50 years ago. Pretty much everything I mentioned prior to the SA2 summary was lore introduced in later media (this will be relevant later). But, Shadow ended up becoming the most popular character in the franchise so Sonic Team decided to bring him back for Heroes and write more solid lore for him.

In Heroes, Rouge is stealing some shit from Eggman and finds Shadow in A Tube so she lets him out. He's being guarded by a robot called E-123 Omega, who decides to fight them because he's angry and loves violence and killing things (not a joke). Rouge manages to stop the boys from fighting each other and is like "let's go find Eggman" so they do and also they're called Team Dark now. She wants his treasure, Shadow has amnesia and wants to know who he is and why he's here, and Omega wants to prove to Eggman he's the best robot ever and also kill and destroy things. I dunno why Rouge doesn't think to tell Shadow anything. I assume it's because this was the first third party mainline title and they wanted to keep things simple for new players who hadn't played SA2 which was only available on Dreamcast or Gamecube, neither of which sold well compared to the PS2 or Xbox.

During the story Team Dark finds a Shadow Android, and later, shitloads of them in Eggman's warehouse. Shadow and the others aren't really sure if he's the real Shadow from SA2 or if he's another android who's just gained sentience. At least now Rouge is somewhat justified in not telling him anything since she's not sure if he's real now. Cue Shadow having an identity crisis. This plot carries over to the next game.

Shadow 05 takes place exactly 50 years after Gerald's deal with Black Doom. The Black Comet comes back to Earth and Doom and the rest of the Black Arms start invading and fucking shit up. So Doom wants Shadow to work for him and conquer Earth so he finds his son and asks him to go get the Chaos Emeralds. He also does not tell Shadow that he's his dad he just tells him what to do and leaves him to work it out and Shadow just does this without question because BD clearly knows who he is so he might be able to tell him who he is.

Shadow 05 is infamous for its choose-your-own-adventure story so to quickly list off the noncanon endings he can:

Destroy Earth (Pure Dark/Dark)

Conquer the universe (Pure Dark/Hero)

Side with his dad (Semi Dark/Dark)

Kill Eggman (Semi Dark/Hero)

Decide he's an android and kill Eggman (Neutral/Dark)

Decide he's an android and kill Eggman BUT take over the Eggman Empire and lead and android uprising this time (Neutral/Hero)

Stay on the ARK and become its protector (Semi Hero/Dark)

Have implied suicidal depression (Semi Hero/Hero)

Go insane with power?? idk what's going on (Pure Hero/Dark)

Say he's gonna kill his dad and presumably does it offscreen (Pure Hero/Hero)

The true ending (that doesn't actually lead from any of the previous so who knows how we got here) has Shadow obtain all the Chaos Emeralds and then BD uses them to bring his Comet into Earth's atmosphere so he can start destroying things. BD then loredrops that Shadow was made to help him conquer Earth and he processes this for like a minute then decides to kill BD. BD then loredrops that he's Shadow's dad and Shadow gets really close to crashing out over this one but the Chaotix manage to find an old tape from Gerald just in time and play it for him that helps calm him down a bit and tells him how to kill BD. Also it reminds him of the promise he made to Maria again.

So he goes Super, kills his dad and blows up the Black Comet destroying the entire Black Arms race. Also if you take really really long on this boss fight then Eggman mentions that he found Shadow after he fell to Earth, confirming this is the real Shadow from SA2 and not one of the androids. After BD is killed Shadow seems to have mostly remembered everything and decides to move on from his past and become his own person.

I'm assuming Sonic Battle takes place after Shadow 05 because he knows he was made by Gerald in this game. So Sonic finds Emerl, that Gizoid robot from earlier, and everyone befriends him but is also trying to work out who/what Emerl is. Sonic says that although Emerl is a weapon of mass destruction, he has a heart and he trusts him to not destroy things, just like Shadow. Shadow has a mini crisis over this and is wondering why he has a soul and feelings if he was created as a weapon and Rouge sits him down and tells him that Gerald didn't want him to be a weapon. Shadow still has Feelings about this but that's kinda it here.

06 isn't canon and also barely makes sense but it had good Shadow characterisation. So we're gonna cover this as quickly as possible. So Shadow works for GUN now (for some reason?? it's only in this game whatever) and he and Rouge go to get The Time God of Italy. or half of it. this half of it is Mephiles, who takes the form of Shadow's shadow. Mephiles and Shadow keep fighting during the game and Mephiles taunts him that hundreds of years in the future, humans blame Shadow for the apocalypse (caused by Mephiles. who looks like Shadow. so) and put him in cryo again (oh yeah Shadow's immortal I don't think I ever clarified that but you probably worked it out). Anyway at the end of Shadow's story he says this raw ass line "if the world chooses to become my enemy i will fight like i always have" and then he takes off his inhibitors and blows up Mephiles. But Mephiles doesn't die and then kills Sonic and then fuses with the other half of the Italian Sun slash Time god and then there's the bit where a human girl kisses a dead Sonic and now he's alive again and triple S go super and blow up the Italian Time slash Sun god. Sonic then erases the god from existence and bam 06 isn't canon anymore praise be.

Is anyone still reading this. Why? I'm not even taking this seriously anymore I'm enjoying this way too much.

So allegedly Sonic Prime is canon and it probably takes place somewhere vaguely around here. Sonic Prime actually doesn't fit on the timeline due to ooc and also Cubot and Orbot but it's "after Sonic Advance 3" so it's either before or after 06. Anyway Sonic accidentally breaks spacetime and is now hopping around the multiverse. Shadow is here too so that he has someone to play off of. They're like. Really gay here like there had to be at least one sonadow fan on the writing team why did they do the SA2 falling thing again that's evil. Also there's one line at the end of season 2 iirc that got translated into. actual romantic language in some dubs kinda like the destiel confession adding in the line for Dean in the Spanish dub. does this mean sonadow is destiel 2. i need to start calling buddie destiel 3. Shadow breaks the sound barrier 3 times in the finale to save Sonic's life while bridal carrying him. love wins. Sonic Prime is pretty mid but bonus points for good yaoi 7/10

In terms of the next big Shadow lore game we have Shadow Generations. The Time Eater sends Shadow to the void but manages to send Maria and Gerald there too from a point in time not too long before shit went down on the ARK. Shadow kinda has the worst day of his life in this one. Also Black Doom managed to regrow himself but he's not at full power. He wants to use Shadow as a vessel due to him being the Ultimate Life Form and so activates all of Shadow's alien biology, making him "perfect" so BD can take over his body. In some ways this acts as closure for Shadow since yknow. He's had amnesia TWICE since he knew them and also the Gerald here gets to tell Shadow all the stuff that he'd only heard previously in recordings about the Black Arms. Gerald also finally Apologises to Shadow directly. Shadow gets like really angry at BD but Maria comforts him and tells him to not give into BD and his anger, since he exists to show the way to the light. Shadow kills his dad for a second time. Gerald and Maria are sent back to their time and Shadow tries to stop it and almost has a panic attack (for the second time this game he has one in the prequel) but Maria comforts him again. Shadow cries again and that's the end of the game.

So by the time we get to Sonic Forces he's kinda just doing his own antihero thing and sometimes works with Team Dark. He kills (? at least beats the shit out of) Jackal Squad, a mercenary team that was working for Eggman at the time. He spares the leader and calls him weak and pathetic and leaves. And this GROWN ASS MAN throws a fit over this and decides he has to prove he isn't weak. So he agrees to be a test subject in Eggman's latest experiement with this rock called the Phantom Ruby that has incredibly inconsistent properties but the big one is Virtual Reality (this in itself is presented inconsistently). So Infinite is infused with the power of the Ruby and wears a mask now because his previous weakling face was unsightly or something. He then decides to shut down Omega and torment Shadow (who doesn't remember him) for calling him weak. He then tells Shadow he's gonna go kill Sonic for some reason. And then does (or at least everyone thinks he does). This is all in the prequel DLC. Shadow shows up halfway through the main game to help the heroes and that's about it.

And that's kinda it. There's the IDW comics in terms of what I'd consider major appearances but I'm like 2 years behind on those so idk what Shadow's up to in those now. There was also the July 2021 Sonic Channel story with him that kinda altered my brain chemistry. Not entirely sure when it takes place. Pre-Forces maybe? You can read a TL of it here.

Oh yeah I should clarify on what was said in the 4kids post. So in that I talked about how the dub in avoiding an onscreen character death actually caused Shadow MCD. Sonic X is interesting because it was developed at around the same time as the "Shadow arc" of games in the early 2000s and ends up taking a different approach to the truth of 50 years ago. I haven't watched X fully yet but from what I know about it Maria never knew Shadow. All of that stuff was made up by Gerald and put in Shadow's brain. Like Maria did exist and there's a whole episode where they meet the soldier who shot her but she didn't know Shadow. Iirc it was something to do with the escape pods she sent down being empty thereby implying Shadow was created entirely on Earth post-GUN raid.

Following the game's SA2 adaptation and his later return, Shadow meets a girl called Molly in season 3. She's a fighter on her planet that's at war and mostly destroyed. Iirc she wants to keep fighting, but her friends are growing hopeless and think they're all just gonna die in battle and never get to live. Long story short, at the end of the episode, she sacrifices herself and charges her fighter ship straight at the enemy and is killed when it crashed into the enemy ship. In the series finale, Shadow helps Sonic fight Dark Oak, the main antagonist of the season, and isn't seen again afterwards, presumably having died. However, he shows up during the credits, visiting Molly's grave, confirming he's still alive.

4kids obviously didn't like the child death, so at the end of Molly's episode she ends up just flying away and says she'll come back someday. The scene of her grave is cut from the series finale for obvious reasons, but in turn makes it seems like Shadow died in the previous episode. Good shit.

If you made it here. Good lord. Uh. I love my son he has every disease. He's so cute here I want to throw him at a wall.

Watch Love Live it's really good please just watch it. And then watch LL Sunshine because it's even better.

AND READ PROJECT SEKAI STORIES.

(Also yes this is the longest post on my blog)