#and this hedgehog is just in the middle of everything

[mysteryshoptls]

SSR Deuce Spade - Room Relaxation Vignette

"Happy Birthday"

[Exterior Hallway]

Deuce: Whew… Today was another exhausting day.

Deuce: I couldn't even understand any of the questions they said was super basic… I don't even know if I'll be able to finish up all the homework we got by tonight...

Rook: Oh, my, is that you, Deuce-kun? What has you looking so forlorn?

Deuce: Hunt-senpai! Good afternoon! Umm… I was just coming back from my supplementary Enigmics class.

Deuce: I'm still not really understanding anything even after Crewel-sensei took the time to help me try and figure it out… Urgh, I'm just so lousy.

Rook: Oh là là! That is indeed a predicament. That must be why you seem so unusually tired.

Deuce: Yes... He told me to at least memorize the formula for magical power by tomorrow, so I need to have something to show for it…

Rook: I see… However, they say that joyfulness follows every hardship. I do hope you'll be able to enjoy your birthday tomorrow.

Deuce: Huh, you know my birthday?

Rook: Of course! Make sure to fully enjoy yourself at the party you're throwing in Heartslabyul and mingle with your friends to your heart's content.

Deuce: Thank you very much! No matter what, I need to avoid staying after for supplemental lessons tomorrow.

Deuce: I'm feeling more motivated thanks to your words, Hunt-senpai! I'll definitely focus on my studies tonight!

Rook: Heh, now that is a much better look for you to carry. I'll be cheering you on, Monsieur Spade.

Deuce: Yes, sir! I'll take my leave now, Hunt-senpai!

[Heartslabyul Dorm – Lounge]

Deuce: Alright, we're done taking care of the hedgehogs. Glad I was still able to make it in time to do my assigned duty…

[Heartslabyul student speaks]

Deuce: Eh, what was I doing…? I had to stay after for a supplemental Enigmics lesson.

[Heartslabyul student speaks]

Deuce: You can't think of anything that was confusing? Come on, we're both in the same class. I'm talking about the problem I got hit with today…

Deuce: Eh, you're saying that formula is something that's even taught during middle school? Y-You're joking…!

Deuce: Man… Becoming an honor student is a long and winding road. But I got no time to cry about it.

Deuce: I gotta finish up everything I gotta do and head back to my room. Bye!

[Heartslabyul Dorm – Deuce's Room]

Deuce: Now that I'm outta the shower, it's time to study. I'll pull out the papers that Crewel-sensei prepared for me.

Deuce: Rosehearts-ryōchō said it helps with memorization to vocalize things. I'll try that now!

[Heartslabyul Dorm – Deuce's Room]

Deuce: P = T × S² × X… P = T × S² × X…

[Roommate A speaks]

Deuce: Hm? What am I mumbling about…? Oh, I'm not talking to myself. I'm trying to memorize a formula for Enigmics class.

[Roommate B speaks]

Deuce: So, don't bother me… Huh? What do I want to eat at tomorrow's party? Oh, hmm…

Deuce: …Oh, yeah, I know what I want! A melty omelet, and a fluffy egg cake!

Deuce: Maan, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm starting to feel a bit hungry. I should head to the lounge to find something to eat…

Deuce: Wait… Now's not the time to do that. I need to memorize this formula. I'll write it out again…

[Roommate A speaks]

Deuce: Huh, you're giving this to me!? Thanks. I really was craving these cookies just now.

[Deuce starts eating]

Deuce: Ack, shoot! I stopped writing again. I gotta focus, focus…

[Roommate B speaks]

Deuce: Hm? You're gonna let me be the first to read the comic we've been taking turns reading every week?

[Roommate B speaks]

Deuce: Oh, wow, because it's my birthday tomorrow? Thanks! I was really excited for the next part.

Deuce: Ack, wait, now's not the time for that, I told you already! Augh, I can't remember the formula at all…

Deuce: Hm? What are you guys laughing about? Ah…! Wait, were you doing all that on purpose!?

Deuce: Don't bother me! I absolutely, definitely have to memorize this formula by tomorrow!

Deuce: If you guys keep this up…

「Survey on Quality of Life Improvements for the Student Body」

Deuce: I'm gonna write "There should be even more opportunities for supplemental classes."

[Ace speaks]

Deuce: What, that'd be a problem for me, too? Nope, I'm always super grateful for the extra classes that help me learn things with greater detail. I say bring it on!

Deuce: Besides… I already stay after class a bunch, anyway. Even if that happens more often, it doesn't really change anything for me…

[Ace speaks]

Deuce: …Heh, as long as you get it. Okay then, I'm gonna go back to memorizing the formula… Eh, an Ancient Magic quiz!?

Deuce: Shoot, I need to study for that, too. I can't fail that quiz, either!

Deuce: But I still haven't even memorized the formula for my Enigmics class either, what should I…

Deuce: Oh, right! I should just study for both of them at the same time!

Deuce: I'll write the formula for Enigmics while I repeat the Ancient Magic stuff out loud.

Deuce: P = T × S² × X… P = T × S² × X…

Deuce: The next word means… "to flow."

Deuce: P = T × S² × X… P = T × S² × X…

Deuce: This word means "mountain"… Right. I'm gonna get all the rest of these 40 words to stick in my brain, too…

Deuce: I'll definitely be able to memorize everything if I do this! Now to keep this up all night long!

[Heartslabyul Dorm – Deuce's Room]

[RIIIIIIIING!!!!]

Deuce: Nnnngh…

Deuce: Nnn… P = … The mountain… flows… T ×…

Deuce: EH, IT'S MORNING ALREADY!? NO WAY!!!!

Deuce: I only meant to take a short nap, but I ended up sleeping until morning…

Deuce: What was the formula for Enigmics again…? Urrgh, I can't remember at all.

Deuce: And I've only been able to memorize about 3 of the terms for Ancient Magic. What should I do…?

Deuce: No, I can't give up! I need to head to class early and study. Gotta get ready fast!

Deuce: …Whew, washing my face really feels refreshing. I'll apply some sunscreen after doing some quick skincare…

Deuce: Alright, next is the makeup. I'll start with my eyebrows.

Deuce: I just need to brush it and draw in any hairs where it feels lacking. Finish the ends of the eyebrows with a sharp point up…

Deuce: Cool, that's perfect.

Deuce: There was a time I just shaved off all my eyebrows… But I definitely look more like an honor student when I take care of them like this.

Deuce: After the eyebrows, I gotta draw in the suit… It's my birthday, so should I make it look a little cooler around my eyes?

Deuce: Maybe I could cover it in sparkly glitter just like how a Blastcycle can get all deco'd out…

Deuce: …Nah, I shouldn't. That's not something an honor student would do!

Deuce: My mom always said that the most important thing about making a good impression is looking crisp. If I think of those words, then…

Deuce: I guess the suit mark should just be drawn in simple black. I just gotta draw the line diagonally up, then make a sharp point…

Deuce: Alright, I drew it pretty good! Now all I have to do is fill in the color without any gaps… There, I'm done. Not bad at all.

Deuce: Next, I gotta deal with my hair. I just need to brush everything… Hmm.

Deuce: I did the makeup like I normally do, so maybe I should do something different with my hairstyle?

Deuce: I could use wax to give my hair some lift… Maybe make it a bit wavy, or harden it with a bit of gel?

Deuce: …Nah, I think I'll just comb my bangs to the side and call it a day. This looks the most normal, so.

Deuce: Besides, I can finish getting ready almost instantly when I choose to go with this hairstyle.

Deuce: In the past, I didn't just dye it, but sometimes pinned my hair back, or slicked it back, or had a more shaved look…

Deuce: I'd used to try out so many different hair styles, so it'd take a lot more time to get ready in the mornings. That kinda takes me back.

Deuce: I still kinda feel like something's missing, but… I don't want to come off as intimidating. I think this is the closest I can look to my ideal self!

[Main Street]

Deuce: My appearance looks spot on today. No matter how anyone looks at it, I look just like a serious student.

Deuce: I just gotta work on my insides. First, I gotta memorize the Enigmics formula, and the Ancient Magic terms.

Deuce: I'M GONNA GIVE IT MY ALL! RAAAH!!

Rook: Good morning, Monsieur Spade!

Rook: Not only do you look even more invigorating than usual, but there you go, giving yourself such a rousing inspirational pep talk… How beauté!

Deuce: H-Hunt-senpai!? Good morning. And here I thought no one would be here, 'cause it's so early in the morning…

Rook: Heh, there's nothing to be so embarrassed about. Your passionate declaration struck my heart like a steadfast arrow.

Deuce: Ahaha… I guess that's fine, then…

Rook: Oh, yes, and since we've met here, allow me to extend my heartfelt well wishes.

Rook: Happy Birthday. I wish from the bottom of my heart that this year will bring you nothing but the opportunity to shine on brilliantly.

Rook: As long as you have the will, your dreams will definitely come true. I will be rooting for you from the side.

Deuce: …! Thank you very much, Hunt-senpai… I'm so happy to hear you say that.

Deuce: In order to become who I want to be, I'll do my best today, too!

Requested by @farfalla049.

[patfr8]

I wanna draw knuckles but I don’t know how to draw sonic characters aaaaaaa *ugly sobs*

[number-one-shadisper-shipper]

I've seen a lot of takes on what would happen if Sonic and Tails returned to West Side Island and confronted the people who were so abusive to Tails, and I had an idea for a somewhat new spin on it.

What if, now that Tails is a world famous hero, the Islanders try to try to basically gaslight him into thinking none of the abuse ever happened? They find out he's coming and they throw a big "Welcome Home" party and give him a medal and stuff, and when confronted about their treatment of him just completely deny or twist it. Like "oh yes I'm so sorry there were a couple kids who were bullies but that happens to everyone you weren't being targeted, and we tried to get them to stop it" or "we didn't know you were alone and homeless, if we knew we would have taken you in" and all sorts of garbage like that

And Tails, who's maybe a tween-young teen now, and no longer has distinct memories from that early in his life, starts to question if maybe he really was blowing things out of proportion. Maybe he really was just bullied by one or two kids, and they weren't really that bad. Maybe people didn't really chase him away and refuse to even let him go through their garbage for food. He knows he has anxiety. Maybe he was just imagining how much everyone hated him. And he almost wants to believe it, to believe that he was never truly hated.

But Sonic remembers. Sonic remembers the gang of older kids beating and violently attacking toddler aged Tails, and only stopping when he physically intervened with his own fists. He remembers questioning the townsfolk about the two-tailed fox he'd seen and being meet with sneers and complete disdain. He remembers how skinny Tails was, how his ribs were visible even through his fur and how he wolfed down the food Sonic offered him so quickly that he nearly threw it up later. He remembers how Tails flinched from any quick movement or attempt at touch. He remembers the long process of gaining the fox's trust, a process that tested his nine-year-old patience as he spent literal weeks urging Tails to come closer, keeping his hands slow and his face friendly, finally getting the fox to join him at the campfire, to walk beside him without dashing away when moved his arm too fast, and then, eventually, to let him touch him. He remembers the first few times Tails let him try to brush out his matted, dirty fur, each knot a testament to neglect, and finding scars and wounds on the skin beneath that spoke of so much abuse. He remembers realizing for the first time that normal, everyday Mobians could be just as cruel as Eggman.

Tails doesn't trust his own memory. But Sonic remembers. And Sonic is not quick to forgive.

[mistycwavess]

Just because you asked nicely @reinafish <3

WIP of Umbra in a Sonic Riders AU (his team would be called 'Team Dusk' fr, I was thinking about putting him and Scarlett on the same team, since they're siblings and stuff, but I cant think who would be the third member :(

Would you like to put Quartz in Team Dusk reina?😏)

[totaleclipse573]

grhjfbkbsdkjabkjsdbakjshvd

blankie

[sortanonymous]

Somehow it took me over six years to realize that Far-Flung Starlight Heroes in Kirby Star Allies has a Sonic game structure. You have one normal level in a location, then another with a boss fight, and then rinse and repeat until the lair at the end with two levels and one level specifically for the final final boss.

Honestly, now it kinda makes me want to see someone turn Star Allies into at least something in the same vein as a 16-bit Sonic game, but still pretty Kirby-ish. Maybe even throw in the first few worlds of the game into one major half and the other half be Starlight Heroes, kinda like Sonic 3 and Knuckles. I mean, we have seen no shortage of spectacular Sonic fan games over the years and the Kirby fan developers have slowly been growing so hey, you never know!

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What the hell is this?"

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

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

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

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes and no.

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

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

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

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

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

The cover

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

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

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

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

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

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued!!!

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

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

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

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

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

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's pretty much it!

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

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

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

Bonus material: Data files

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

Lara-Su

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

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

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

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

Geoffrey

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

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

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

Remington

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

Lien-Da

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

Commander Taelor

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

Julie-Su

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

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

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

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

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

Yep. He got me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closing thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I still have to pity him.

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

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

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

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

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

[whitecompri]

Going to Market With Your Hedgie

(Sonic, Shadow, Silver, Scourge)

Pairing: Sonic x Reader; Shadow x Reader; Silver x Reader; Scourge x Reader

Genre: Fluff, comedy

Rating: T (Teen)

Warnings: Mild Suggestive Themes

Sonic

He had been bothering you for about three days to take him along to the market. When you asked why he was suddenly so interested, Sonic simply said he wanted to keep you company and, if possible, buy a soda for himself. In the end, you couldn’t resist the lost puppy look he was giving you and ended up taking him to the market.

At the moment, you had your back turned to your shopping cart, evaluating the price of some essential household items. That’s when you felt the familiar breeze that hit you whenever the speedy hedgehog ran. You only managed to hear his quick steps and the sound of him breaking the speed of sound inside the market. You decided to ignore it at first—he was probably just grabbing the soda he had asked for.

However, you narrowed your eyes when you felt the breeze and heard the noise at least three more times. Turning around suddenly, still holding the items you were choosing, you saw him—completely at ease, leaning against the shopping cart, a sly little smirk on his face.

When your eyes focused on the cart, you could only sigh. He had filled it with packs of sausages, hot dog buns, and a ridiculous amount of ingredients to make chili. On top of everything sat the can of soda he had promised to grab.

"Sonic... are you trying to make me go broke?" You stepped closer to the cart, looking at the prices. "Look at this—no. You’re putting half of this back."

"Aw, come on, [Y/N], don’t you want to make your favorite hedgehog happy? I promise I’ll share the chili dogs with you."

You could only sigh and scratch the back of your neck. In the end, at least he had already decided what dinner would be that night... and for the next few days too.

Shadow

Shadow preferred not to express when he needed to go to the market for his monthly groceries. Usually, he only accompanied you when you went, but if he ever ran out of supplies in the middle of the month, he refused to say anything or admit that he needed to go shopping.

Noticing this, you started paying attention to when his coffee beans, chocolate, or skincare products were running low. That way, whenever you saw something was about to run out, you’d call him to go with you to the market—even if it was just to restock what was missing at home.

Today was no different. You walked through the aisles with your shopping basket in hand, looking for the coffee section. Shadow kept pace beside you.

Then, at one moment, you noticed he suddenly stopped. He stood there for a few seconds, impassive, then shook his head slightly before quickly returning to your side.

"Did you see something you want?"

"No."

"You can tell me, Shads, I’ll get it for you."

"Nonsense. We came here just for the coffee beans."

"Yeah, but I don’t mind getting something extra for you. Come on, tell me—what did you see?"

He hesitated for a moment, crossing his arms, then tilted his head toward the store’s freezer. Following his gaze, you spotted the frozen food section and saw some Hot Pockets on sale. A small smile appeared on your lips.

"Shadow, whenever you want something, you can just say it, okay?" Giving him a reassuring smile, you walked over to the freezer, grabbed several of the frozen snacks, and placed them in your basket.

"Now, let’s go get your coffee." You resumed walking through the aisle toward the section where you could find what you needed.

"Thank you, [Y/N]." Shadow murmured, making you smile like an idiot and blush slightly at the rare display of gratitude from the hedgehog.

"Anytime."

Silver

Silver excitedly scanned the market shelves alongside you, helping you find the best prices. It was common for the white hedgehog to accompany you on your monthly shopping trips—he was always helpful and loved coming along to carry the bags or grab something from a high shelf using his powers.

For Silver, nothing was better than spending quality time with you, which was why he always went and returned with a huge smile on his face. Today, he was being especially attentive to everything you needed—reminding you of items running low at home that weren’t on the shopping list and picking the most budget-friendly brands.

Feeling grateful, you decided to do something special for him.

"Silver, I’m done getting what I needed. I just need to check this one last product—why don’t you pick something for yourself?"

You felt warm inside when you saw the sparkle in his eyes.

"Really? Anything?" He looked at you hopefully.

"Yes, feel free to choose whatever you want."

His smile grew even wider. Thanking you, he immediately used his powers to levitate and disappeared into the market.

You finished selecting your item, placing it in the cart, and started looking for Silver. But before you even reached the end of the aisle, you saw him floating back, carrying several products with his psychokinesis.

He gently placed them into the cart before landing back on the ground with a bright smile. You blinked in surprise, glancing at the items he had picked.

You had expected him to grab sweets, snacks, or the usual junk food people typically go for.

But now, looking at his choices, you couldn’t hold back the soft giggle that escaped you. Your cart was now filled with neatly packed vegetables, fresh fruits, and leafy greens.

"Is something wrong? Did I pick too much?" He watched you, slightly worried about your reaction.

"No, not at all. I just thought it was adorable."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, you chose healthy food. I wasn’t expecting that—I thought you’d grab something completely different."

Silver chuckled quietly at your comment.

"Well, these are all essentials, right?"

"Definitely. Honestly, I never really bought much of this stuff myself." You admitted your lack of a healthy diet.

"Then how about we eat them together? What do you say, [Y/N]?"

His words made you feel warm all over again.

"I’d love that. Thank you, Silver."

He let out a soft laugh, walking by your side as you headed to the checkout to pay for the groceries.

Scourge

Honestly, you didn’t want to take Scourge to the market. It was always a battle to keep him from filling the cart with the junk food he loved. But when Scourge wanted something, he was absolutely insufferable.

He acted deeply offended that you didn’t want to bring him along. Said he wouldn’t let you run your hands through his quills anymore. Even threatened to smoke inside the house if you didn’t take him.

In the end, with a deep sigh and a hand to your temple, you gave in, telling him to get in the car. He slid into the passenger seat with that smug grin of his, sunglasses perched on his face.

At the market, you left him in charge of the shopping cart while you went to grab some cleaning supplies for the house. When you returned to where you had left him, he was nowhere to be seen.

You sighed, placing the cleaning products in the cart, but as you did, you started noticing items that definitely weren’t there before. Energy drink cans. Instant noodles. And… a toy car? You had no idea what he planned to do with that.

As you dug through the cart, you found even more questionable purchases. Your brow furrowed when you spotted an expensive bottle of whiskey hidden at the bottom. And then—your face heated up as you found a few condom boxes stuffed underneath everything else.

Shaking your head, you turned to the side and spotted him standing there, a massive bag of potato chips in hand.

“Ey, Babe. You got everythin’ ya need? C’mon, let’s skedaddle.”

You grabbed the bottle of whiskey and held it up, giving him a pointed look.

“Huh? What’s the big deal? Just a lil’ somethin’ nice for yours truly.” He flashed you a grin.

“I thought we agreed to only get the essentials for the house.” You kept your voice firm.

“Eh, deals ain’t set in stone, sweetheart.” Scourge was impossible sometimes.

You opened your mouth to argue, but the words died in your throat the moment you felt his hand gently take yours—surprisingly soft and warm.

“Aw, don’t gimme that look, [Y/N]. I got some cash on me.” His voice had an almost sincere tone, and for a second, you nearly apologized for being upset.

But then—

“…And later, ya can show me just how grateful ya are.” His tone turned unmistakably suggestive.

“Scourge!”

He only chuckled, clearly entertained. You had no idea what to do with him anymore.

[txjis]

gojo being overly dramatic about you getting hit on in public

cw: none, he’s just being a DIVA

wc: uhhh 550 ish?

it was a sunny tuesday. birds were chirping, the vending machine outside the café wasn’t broken for once, and you were just trying to enjoy your iced matcha in peace when he appeared.

not gojo. which in reality it was rare for him to be your peace, but at least he was your headache.

it was some random guy in a leather jacket.

“hey,” leather jacket guy said, leaning casually against your table like it was a scene from a CW drama. “you come here often?”

you blinked. “seriously?”

“i just had to say, you’ve got a smile that could end wars.” before you could answer—or groan loudly—an intense shift in the atmosphere rolled through the café like a tsunami of egotism and infinity.

the bell above the door jangled. in walked gojo satoru. wearing three pairs of sunglasses for no apparent reason and holding a churro. he stopped, froze, and slowly removed one pair of sunglasses to squint at the scene before him.

“you’ve got to be kidding me,” he whispered, as though witnessing a shakespearean betrayal. “is this…? is this a flirtation? in my presence? in broad daylight?”

you sighed. “toru’—”

“no, no. don’t defend him, pookiebear. don’t defend this man, this… don juan cosplay reject. i am wounded.” he dramatically clutched his chest like a victorian widow, churro trembling in his hand.

the random man glanced between you and gojo, raising an eyebrow. “uh, is this guy bothering you?” gojo gasped so hard the barista dropped a tray in the background.

“am i bothering you? i— the light of your life, the infinity in your domain, the six-eyed snack of tokyo—bothering you?” you covered your face with your hands. gojo stepped forward, dramatically tossing his churro into a trash bin like a samurai abandoning his sword.

“you have exactly three seconds to remove yourself from this table, sir, before i begin quoting poetry. LOUDLY.”

“…poetry?” the guy said, confused.

“bad poetry,” you added solemnly. “he means his own poetry.” leather jacket guy mumbled something about needing to feed his dog and left so fast the door almost came off its hinges.

gojo turned to you, victorious.

“you’re welcome.”

you sipped your matcha, staring at him over the rim. “are you done?”

gojo slumped into the seat across from you, fanning himself. “barely. do you know what that did to me emotionally? i saw someone trying to flirt with you, and i went through all five stages of grief in ten seconds. it was like watching you get proposed to by a hedgehog with a credit card.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” you sighed.

“neither does the pain I feel in my soul,” he said, reaching across the table dramatically, knocking over the napkin holder. “i was this close to activating my domain expansion. right in the middle of the café. you would’ve been impressed.”

“you would’ve gotten banned.” you tried to point out, knowing the logistics of the statement would fall on deaf ears.

“a small price to pay for love.”

later that evening, you caught gojo writing in a small black notebook.

“what are you doing?” you asked, shifting your feet that were originally sat in his lap while you two were lounging around in the livingroom.

“crafting a haiku about betrayal,” he said, not looking up. “it’s called ‘leather jackets can’t protect you from infinity.’”

“do i even want to hear it?” he looked up, eyes glittering behind his remaining pair of sunglasses. he must’ve took the second pair off sometime earlier. “you always want to hear my poetry.”

you definitely did not.

but it was oddly endearing how passionate he was about any and everything revolving around you.

even if he kept trying to avenge your honor over a mildly flirtatious greeting like it was the plot of a k-drama written by a drunk raccoon.

leather jackets can’t protect you from infinity

by gojo satoru (a very wounded man)

sunglasses stacked high—

he flirted. i saw. i wept.

infinity burns.

[ihaznoclue]

Shadow fluff please I can’t do any more angst things today!!! I love your work🫶🏻you can ignore this

Hehe I know that feeling but fear not I have Fluff for you!

Pairings -> Shadow the Hedgehog x Reader

Warnings -> None

Note -> Reader cooking a nice meal and Shadow wants to taste test it

Genre -> Fluff

Shadow the Hedgehog

It was a chill evening, it was time for some dinner but you wanted to try something different this time

During the day you were searching up some meals that you could cook for tonight since you didn't really have a single clue on what to make

But finally you found a dish that looked really good to make and you hoped that Shadow was going to like it

You and Shadow have been living together, well it first started with you but then Shadow came around and you decided to take him in

Right now, you were in the kitchen getting everything you need to make this wonderful dish you found off the internet

Shadow was simply in your room, reading a book if you remembered. This dish was like a soup type, meaning that you had to get the taste just right

You were in the middle of the soup cooking, slightly boiling on low medium heat with the pan lid on to keep the heat trapped, you added some stuff in the soup as well

"What are you making?" A voice called out from behind you

You jumped a little as you wacked Shadow on the head with a spoon which caused him to jump and curl into a little ball, his quills sticking everywhere

"Oh Shadow I am so sorry, you scared me!" You put the spoon on the table beside you and you kneeled down, slightly petting him which caused him to come out

You smiled "I'm making a soup I found on the internet" You said, Shadow's ear flicked and then he started sniffing

"It does smell delicious" Shadow spoke as his nose wiggled which caused you to chuckled

"Wanna try a bit? See if you like it?" You asked as you grabbed the spoon, opening the lid off the pan making the steam go out, being carefully not to burn yourself

Scooping up some of the soup with some of the other stuff you put in as well to give it more flavour, you then blew on it making the steam go the other way

Then bending down for Shadow to take the spoonful of soup to try it, he sniffed it again and opened his mouth

He began to chew, taking in the flavour and the aroma, his eyes dilated a bit as he seemed to like it

You waited "So? Do you like it?" You asked him as he quickly nodded which caused you to laugh

"Well You're in luck, the soup is finished so I'll dish up your bowl and then you can eat it more" You said as you turned off the heat, stirring the soup a bit then putting some in the bowl for Shadow as you gave it to him

He thanked you and he grabbed himself a spoon and started to eat it quickly

"Woah slow down, you can have much as you like, there is plenty more when you're finished"

You were just glad that Shadow liked it

Okay I've did Hospitality for one year and I'm doing it for another year but I have my certificate and the soup that I made which I can't remember what it's called but It was soo good!

-A<3

[iannmin]

morning 9:05 — s.hwa | 박성화

pairing: seonghwa x reader wordcount: 0.4k

summary: both of you had a stupid fight, but all it took was the next morning to solve everything <3

a/n: just some realistic seonghwa drabble <3 feel free to leave a comment hehe, enjoy!

୨୧ ‘ masterlist ‧˚₊•┈┈┈┈୨୧┈┈┈•‧₊˚⊹

The morning sun peeked through the curtains, casting warm stripes of light across his figurine-filled room. I stirred, blinking groggily as the events of last night came rushing back to my mind—Seonghwa and I had been in the middle of a heated argument over something ridiculous, like who left the empty milk carton in the fridge.

I raised my head to see Seonghwa still asleep, his usually perfect hair sticking out in all directions, lips pressed into a thin line. He looked like a grumpy hedgehog (like the Able Sisters in animal crossing) and I couldn’t help but suppress a laugh, which somehow ended up as a snort. His grey pillow was half on the floor, back faced towards me with his black tee half ridden up, exposing his waistline.

I gingerly reached out and poked him in the side, tugging his shirt down in the process. “Hey, grumpy,” I said softly, trying to sound light-hearted. “You awake?”

He groaned, turning towards me, his eyes squinting open. “I’ve been awake for the last ten minutes, trying to figure out how to apologize without sounding like a complete idiot. I just didn’t bother moving.”

I chuckled, stretching my arms above my head. “Well, you’ve already got a good start. Your bedhead is pretty impressive.”

Seonghwa ran a hand through his hair, making it even messier. “Ah, great. I’m turning into a human mop. Just what I needed.”

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “I’m sorry about last night. I know it was silly.”

He looked at me with a mix of sheepishness and affection, that irresistible eye smile of his peeking right above the sheets. “I’m sorry too. We really let a milk carton ruin our evening, didn’t we? We were about to have a Lego date…” I nodded sheepishly. In that moment, I didn’t have any reason to be angry anymore.

He grinned, pulling me closer. “yeah, and you know, I really missed our cuddles this morning.”

Before I could respond, he wrapped his arms around my waist with an exaggerated sigh of relief. I tried to wiggle free, but he pulled me into a tight, playful hug, snuggling deeper into me. “No escape,” he said with a mock-serious tone. “I’m making up for all the snuggles I missed.” I laughed as he tucked me under his chin, my head resting against the crook of his neck. His hands slipped underneath the back of my pajamas, gently tracing circles on my bare back, his touch both soothing and affectionate.

Seonghwa let out a contented sigh, his breath warm against my hair. “I missed this. Just being close to you, without all the drama…..forgive me please?”

I couldn’t help but snuggle into him. “Alright, alright. I suppose I can forgive you, especially if you promise not to leave any more milk cartons lying around.”

“Deal,” he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “But if I do, you’ll have to deal with my bedhead.”

I looked up at him, smiling. “I think I can manage that. After all, I kind of like your bedhead. It makes you look stupidly adorable.”

<3

[itzy-bitsy-spidey]

Something made a hole in my backyard (pt.1)

In which an unexpected hedgehog visitor lands on your backyard.

Shadow the hedgehog x reader (platonic)

Notes: I saw Sonic 3 a few days ago and I have spiralled down a rabbit (hedgehog??) hole.This is rather short but there will be more parts to it!

Part 2

What a great time the night is, isn't it? It's peaceful, and quiet and such a good time to sleep. That's what you were doing the moment this story starts, just dreaming away without a worry in the world.

It was around midnight and your parents weren't home, so the Jackson's house was all yours to relax in. Outside the night was cool and there were no birds singing, only the distant sound of dogs barking.

So it actually did came as a surprise when you simply woke up in the middle of the night. No strange sound to wake you, no alarm, no sunlight, no nothing. Only a very dry throat and a weird feeling in your gut, as if something was supposed to be happening.

The walk down the stairs and towards the kitchen felt eerie, the feeling crawling up your back like tiny spiders that digged their little pointy legs under your skin. Even the sound of the water running as you filled your cup made every hair in your body stand on end.

You could see the backyard perfectly fine from the window, the moon light shining strongly and lightning everything up. Your parent's house was luckily a few kilometers away from the town so there wasn't really a lot of light pollution (or car noise, thankfully).

You could say that it was the lack of street lights what allowed you to see the phenomenon going on in the sky, but you were pretty sure that even in a modern city you could still notice what was going on. What was going on wasn't really something you knew, but it seemed as if a star had exploded on the night sky.

Against every reason that told you that you should run away and hide you could only gape at the sky in awe. With your eyes stuck to the window you made your way into the backyard, leaving behind your glass of water without even noticing that the remaining liquid had started to float out of the glass and into the air.

There's something else in the sky. It kind of looked like a star, one that shined brighter than the rest. And then you felt it coming. Every hair in your body stood on end, a chill ran through your spine and it felt as if time itself had stopped for a second.

The puddles of water that were left from the rain started to float, rising from the ground.

And then everything was silent.

You breathed in.

But you didn't have time to exhale.

A BOOM sounded,and the strength that, the thing you had thought to be a star, crashed with pushed you backwards, making you fall flat on your back. Your ears were ringing and your sight a little hazy, but nonetheless you stood right back onto your feet.

You had to see what had just crashed on your backyard.

The smoke and dirt made it hard to focus on what was resting on the ground, it seemed to be an animal of sorts (or even a stuffed toy, but you doubted that), the most important thing right then was that the thing was breathing.

And that it had made a huge hole in your backyard.

Your parents were so going to kill you.

[fluffypinkhedgehog]

❀⊱Messy⊰❀ ⤷Shadow the Hedgehog | sfw, fluff, one-shot, request

wc: 1,560

summary: You help Shadow wash his quills.

warnings: None! All Fluff!

a/n: aaaaaaAAAAA!!! Sorry this one is late! I hope you like it anyway <3 Anyway, I'm honestly not too confident in this one. Mostly because I don't think I characterized Shadow all too well compared to my high school au but I think it's because I was putting too much thought into it instead of just letting it flow. To which, once I did start just letting myself just write, everything just started flowing a lot better! Also sorry for the abrupt ending.

You sat down in your chair, the plush comfort immediately giving you relief from the stresses of your day. You sigh in contentment, breathing in the smell of your favorite candle as the fireplace next to you roared. It was a lovely overcast, the branches from the flower trees outside lightly tapped on your window from the wind. It was the perfect weather and atmosphere to read a book. You grabbed your current work-in-progress from the side table and set it in your lap, flipping to the pages where your bookmark was nestled in-between. The sound of pages lightly flipping as the fire in the fireplace crackled and popped filled the room, making you invested and immersed in the story.

As you were reaching the pinnacle of a very suspenseful chapter in your book, you heard the front door open and a loud crack of thunder roll overhead, making you whip your head towards the front door where a dark, menacing figure stood in the doorway. Your brain short-circuited. Your adrenaline was already raised due to your book, now a strange person was entering your home! You screamed in surprise, clutching your book, before noticing that it wasn't a serial killer here to murder you. It was just your boyfriend, Shadow.

Well, that's embarrassing.

You coughed and “calmly” set your book on the side table. Shadow raised an eyebrow towards you as he walked inside, another clap of thunder sounding out before he closed the door.

“Shadow, you scared me,” you said, trying to laugh away the fear. That's when you notice it: Shadow is absolutely caked in mud! “Shads, what happened? Are you okay?”

Shadow grumbled, looking away. The only thing you could hear was “Sonic,” and you weren't sure if you even heard that correctly.

Getting up from your chair, you approached Shadow, taking his hand. Shadow narrowed his eyes at you. You roll your eyes and scoff. “I'm not gonna do anything funny, I promise. C'mon, let's get you cleaned up.”

Shadow huffed as the two of you walked to the bathroom, you deviating to the supply closet while he continued inside, closing the door behind him. You sighed. You knew that Shadow was prideful, and if it was Sonic that caused this then his ego would be really bruised... You felt a bit guilty for indulging in your desire to take care of him, he's his own hedgehog after all. That would just bruise his Ego even more. You grab one of the shampoo bottles, looking over the label, before tucking it into your arm and grabbing a washcloth, some bar soap, and some towels. As you exit the room you wonder if you should just drop off the products and let him take care of himself.

“Okay, Shadow, I got the...” You say, trailing off as you open the door. The bathroom was already a mess. Shadow was kneeling in the middle of a mud puddle, barefoot, with his head over the tub. Your face pales, a little upset. You had just cleaned the bathroom this morning! It's okay, it's fine... This is what bathrooms are for. You take a deep breath. It's not Shadow's fault. You set the soap products and towels on the counter, the shampoo bottle making a loud noise. Shadow flinched slightly at it. Oops, you accidentally slammed it down. You didn't mean to do that.

Shadow lifted his hand out towards you, about to say your name, but you turned and left the room. You had back to the supply closet, grabbing more towels, the ones that have been stained with... something before walking back into the bathroom. You found Shadow sitting on the edge of the tub, looking at you. His face showed concern and a bit of guilt. You sighed and smiled at him, you couldn't get mad at such a trivial thing, could you?

Shadow scratched the back of his neck, looking down at the ground. “I'm sorry,” he started, but you wouldn't let him finish his sentence.

“Honey, it's okay,” you say, “This is what bathrooms are for. I can just clean it again later.” Shadow nodded at your response, but you could tell that he still felt a bit guilty.

You grabbed one of the stained towels, setting the rest on the counter, and tossed it directly onto the puddle on the floor before grabbing another, folding it, and setting it on the floor before kneeling on it, turning the tub faucet on. Shadow watched as you used your hand to test the temperature until it was warm enough.

“Okay,” you say, retracting your hand from the running water and standing up. “Hop in whenever you're ready.”

You walk to the counter, grabbing the shampoo and soaps before turning around and setting the products on the edge of the tub as Shadow gets in. You can hear him audibly start to relax with the quietest hum you've ever heard from a person. It's honestly adorable.

“Let me know if you need anything, okay?” You smile before turning to leave the room. Before you could get far, though, a hand catches onto your sleeve.

“Wait,” Shadow says. You stop and look back at him. You look into his dark, red eyes and the emotions that swirl behind them, though what those emotions are you're not too sure.

Shadow's a closed book, he doesn't like sharing his emotions with other people. The fact that the two of you are dating is even a miracle in itself. Shadow looks away for a moment, seemingly gathering his thoughts, but he doesn't let go.

“I.. apologize,” Shadow manages to get out. You turn to him fully, your attention entirely on him. “I ruined your evening. Messed up the bathroom that you just cleaned, interrupted your book...”

“Shadow,” you interrupt, kneeling in front of him so you're eye-level. “I said it's okay. Bathrooms are meant to get messy, and I can always resume a book later.” You cup his face in your hands, rubbing your thumbs along his cheeks with a smile on your face. Shadow melts into your touch, closing his eyes and breathing out.

Ultimately, you must let go. Shadow grumbles as you do, but then he raises and eyebrow as you grab the shampoo bottle off of the edge of the tub, squirting some of the product onto your hand.

“I can do this myself,” Shadow says, squinting his eyes in suspicion. You cup some of the water in the tub in your other hand after setting the shampoo bottle sound and letting it drop onto Shadow's head, the mud gliding down and into the warm water, staining it brown.

“I know,” you say simply, putting the shampoo onto Shadow's head and starting to scrub. “But I realized... That you probably couldn't get to this giant ant's nest that's on the back of your head.”

“What?” Shadow tries to reach around to feel if what you say is true. It wasn't, you just wanted to tease him.

“I'm joking,” you say, “You're always so easy to tease, Shadow.” You giggle, remembering the many times you made Shadow flustered. His flushed face is always so cute to you.

Shadow scoffs, “What's with you and always...” He trails off. Shadow was starting to relax in your ministrations, sighing as the tension of the day started the melt away.

“Hm?” You hum, stopping and leaning over his shoulder. “What was that, Shadow?” You tease.

“... Nothing,” he mumbles.

“If it's just nothing, then maybe I should just let you wash all this mud off?” You slowly lift your hands away from his hand, but he quickly grabs onto them and return your hands to his quills.

“I didn't say for you to stop,” Shadow says with a bit of a pout, his face flushed. He wasn't used to saying what he wanted, and it made you giggle.

“Oh, so you want me to keep going?“ you say, but Shadow only responds with a deep grumble, not really saying anything. You knew what he wanted, but you wanted to make him say it. “Shadow, I need you to use your words.”

“... Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I want you to keep going.”

“That's more like it,” you giggle, grabbing the shampoo bottle and lathering more onto his quills.

The room becomes quiet, the only sound in the room being your humming as you scrubbed Shadow's scalp. The water in the tub turned a dark brown and cold over the course of 30-ish minutes. You weren't really keeping track. Reaching down into the tub, you unplugged the drain, letting the muddy water drain before grabbing the detachable showerhead and turning on the water. As you aimed the showerhead towards Shadow's soapy head he suddenly turned around, grabbing your arm. You slipped in surprise at Shadow's sudden movement, making a small yelp. You blinked, your face was right in front of Shadow's as you practically on top of him. You could feel your cheeks turn red from the proximity. You could never get used to being so close to him, he's too hot.

“For someone's who's constantly teasing me,” He cups your face with his free hand, “You like to leave yourself open to counterattacks.”

“Um—” you didn't even get to start your thought before Shadow closes the distance between the two of you with a kiss.

Tag List: @affinitytales, @boogiemansbitch

[mira-atakirina]

And here we go again?...

- Dad! - You screamed in despair, running to the huge screen on the building that was currently broadcasting. Your father was going to commit suicide to save the earth and his loved ones.

How he regretted not telling Stone that he loved him, that he was not only his friend, but something more. How he wanted to tell his daughter to her face how much he loved her and was proud of her.

And that he regrets that he couldn't be a better father to you.

Ivo Robotnik trusted the first person he met, and now he regrets it so much that he completely forgot about his own child, focusing exclusively on taking over the world and Gerald's fake kind smile.

If he can't take over the world, he'll at least save it.

- My beloved and only daughter, I love you, baby. - He moved on to you after he opened up to Stone, he couldn't leave you without telling you his last words. He knew that Stone would take care of you, that he would be a better father than he was.

All the events of his life, from childhood to adulthood. Graduating from school with a gold medal, entering the best university, getting a high-paying job. Receiving fame for his inventions... And the birth of a child he loved with all his heart. The difficult fate of the Worker, which he overcame and became the best version of himself.

The last words he wanted to convey were said.

...

You and Stone returned home, neither of you talking to each other on the way back, just hugging each other tightly before going to bed.

[reader] was in shock, she was stunned and desperate, she wanted to cry and scream. She didn't want to admit that all this was real, her only loved one had died. To save their world.

But honestly, she would sacrifice the world for the person she loved.

Was that really what Shadow felt?

A burning pain in her chest, a desire to burn everything around her, to destroy everything, leaving nothing but emptiness.

The girl cried into her pillow all night, trying to drown out her pain, to be strong for her family and friends.

...She is not alone yet.

...

[reader] was still crying, although she had long since fallen asleep. She needed time for the pain to pass, that's what heroes say in movies, right?

The previously clean pillow absorbed all her grief, all her tears of regret.

Shadow appeared in the middle of her bedroom and stood there, sympathetically watching her cry and sob in her sleep.

Hedgehog walked up to her bed, stood by her face and gently brushed a strand of wet hair from her forehead.

He knew how much it hurt, but he couldn't do anything for you. You can't bring the dead back to life. No matter how much he himself dreamed about it for fifty years in the capsule.

Mobian could only wipe your wet face with his palms now. As if he could absorb your grief through the fabric of his gloves, he even wanted to do that. If only you weren't suffering.

Shadow leaned towards your face and kissed your forehead. Memories of her came to mind, how she could convey all the love through that touch.

He made the right decision, Maria would definitely want peace, for her loved ones to be happy.

He is not alone, he has you. I hope you think about him too.

[chrystal-ink]

The Hedgehog harem prologue part two: The proposal

Shadow(s) X GN Reader

Series rating: M Minors DNI Chapter warnings: NSFW towards the end mentions of sex noises, descriptions of masturbation

Tags:@ellieevu @hyenalover2630

Part one

It had been a week since all of the Shadows moved in and they couldn't take it anymore. they got along with each other the best they could, finding a middle ground was hard enough for the ultimate lifeform(s?) but they seemed more accommodating to, well themselves.

for some of them living a stable homelife was an adjustment, so used to fighting and missions all the time many of the Shadows haven't had real downtime in what seemed like forever, being cooped up was hardly ideal.

For others the technology was difficult to navigate, going from living in medieval times with no such thing as electricity or indoor plumbing to living in modern times where tasks that used to take all day took simply a few seconds now. or still getting used to things after waking up from a fifty year coma and having to re learn everything that you once knew how to do. there was much to be learned for certain.

However, the problem wasn't cabin fever, technology, or even each other. The main problem in the household was you.

In that short week you had managed to intoxicate each hedgehog into falling head over heals for you, and you weren't even trying.

The Day after all the hedgehogs arrived they were all gathered in the backyard, training with one another as a thinly vailed attempt at gaging who was the superior Shadow. A task you found quite humorous as you watched them from the kitchen window preparing lunch.

Right as you stepped out the back door to inform them that it was time to eat Tower kicked a Rock launching it full speed at you, before anyone could properly react you simply reached out and caught the rock and tossed it aside like it was nothing the thump in the dirt echoing throughout the back yard.

"Please don't break my window." You spoke gently as they all stared at you in shock "lunch is ready in the kitchen if anyone is hungry."

When asked about the incident you simply shrugged it off saying "Of course you taught me how to defend myself strength training included. The ultimate life form can't always be around to protect me, so he taught me how to fight just in case, we spar on most weekends just to make sure I stay sharp."

That was the moment Edge fell for you

⚔️

Lancelot looked at his torn under shirt in disappointment, he had intended to replace it when he got to the next village however he got swept up before that could happen.

You knocked on the door to your studio where he was staying.

"Hey Lancelot, is it alright if I come in? I kind of need to start working for the day."

Lancelot sighed in defeat not wanting to keep you from your work. "You may"

You entered the room placing your papers on the desk hardly noticing his lack of armor.

"Apologies for my state of undress but you see I have torn my undershirt"

turning to look at him you did find him not in his usual armor, only his helmet on as he held the shirt in his hand. "Oh, no problem I didn't even notice. would you like me to fix it for you?"

That won't be necessary, I can mend it myself do you have a needle and thread?"

"It wouldn't be a problem I make clothes for a living it would only take me a second on my machine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, from my understanding it's important for a knight to always be in armor when on duty is that right?"

"Yes when I pledged my loyalty to the Round Table I vowed to wear my armor with pride. a vow I fear I am currently breaking"

"Well we can't have that now can we. Let me see."

Lancelot handed you the shirt watching as you inspected it carefully. within a minute you had uncovered a machine he had never seen the like of before and he doubted he would see again. he watched as you turned a dial, placed his shirt inside and got to work.

"Why do you wear a shirt under your armor anyways?" you questioned.

"It's to keep the metal of my armor from cutting me, did you think I wore it bare?"

you giggled " yes. though I suppose in hindsight it makes much more sense for you to wear something underneath."

he watched you work a moment more before you turned your machine off, handing him the fixed garment.

he inspected it closely admiring your work, it was as if it was never torn in the first place "Thank you" he said as he bowed to you.

"Of course anytime"

that night as Lancelot turned in for the night he noticed an item neatly folded on his bed with a note that read "Incase you need a spare."

he unfolded the item to find you made him an entirely new undershirt trying it on he found it fit perfectly.

that was the moment Lancelot fell for you.

🎬

Nightmares were becoming more and more frequent as time went on, images of his sister limp and void of life flashed in his head as he tossed and turned on the sofa. silent tears streamed down his face as he recalls being locked away. he remembers the cold, the faint whispers of guards, he was not a person only a monster to be contained and they would always see him like that.

He gasped as sleep was ripped from him breathing heavily as he tried to steady himself in the dark living room. suddenly he felt a soft hand on his shoulder.

"It's alright, it was just a dream. You're safe" a gentle voice spoke.

Turning he saw you holding two mugs you carefully handed one to him his hands still shaky from his nightmare.

"Here drink this it helps with nerves, careful though it's hot"

He obeyed notes of vanilla and lavender danced on his tongue as the tea brought him down from his flashback.

He watched as you took a sip of your own tea, your hand still delicately placed on his shoulder.

"I have trouble sleeping sometimes" you answered before he even thought to ask the question. "I noticed you having a nightmare and figured I'd help. My Shadow says this tea usually helps so I make sure to keep it well stocked"

he watched as you took a seat on one of the chairs beside him, the two of you sat in silence sipping your tea allowing his emotions to pass.

"You don't have to talk about it, not if you don't want to, but I'm always willing to listen if you need me to lend an ear."

A small "Thank you" was all he could muster at the moment.

"Of course, would you like me to sit with you a bit longer or would you like to be alone?"

"alone if you wouldn't mind"

"Okay, let me know if you need anything else."

Shadow nodded as you took his empty mug to the kitchen disappearing from him for the rest of the night.

the dread in his chest had been replaced with something stronger, something more hopeful. he couldn't quite place it but he knew he liked it.

That was the moment Dual fell for you.

6️⃣

Six had been watching you all week. The way you treated all the variations of him and he didn’t get it.

you never feared him or what he could do you fully trusted him. You must have known about his powers, about his origins, about his potential. he wasn't even fully hedgehog and you didn't seem to care.

the way you smiled at him, the kindness you showed, the way you seemed to know what he was thinking by just looking at him. there had to be more that was happening, some kind of angle you're using to get what you wanted.

there were only two people he trusted to speak to about this and both were in back in his universe, he had to go to the next best thing.

Rouge had come over five days in, both to deliver any news about getting home and making sure everyone was settled in okay. that's when he took his opportunity. Taking her aside he proceeded to question her about you. suspicious behaviors you participated in, any desire for some sort of revenge, anything to prove that you weren't who you said you were.

Rouge just laughed over the questions. "I'm sorry hon but, this is Y/N we're talking about, they wouldn't do anything to hurt you."

"But what about-"

"I'm gonna stop you right there, look I get it, our Shadow questioned the relationship at first too, in his mind there was no way anyone could love him the way that they did. But it's true, They love him so much. they have seen every side to him there is, even the ugly ones he'd rather hide and despite all that they continue to love and be with him. I understand being wary but with Y/N there really is nothing to worry about I promise"

Six groaned still unsatisfied with the answer.

"just give it a few days I'm sure they'll prove you wrong"

"Fine" he puffed not knowing that Rouge's prediction would come true within the hour.

in order to cool off, and get a break from the others Six decided to take a run through the forest out back. his air shoes guided him through the trail as he whipped past trees and bushes.

The cool wind in his face calmed him and after about twenty minutes he was ready to return to the house. however, he didn't account for the branch on the way back.

once he arrived home Six locked himself in the bathroom assessing the damage done to his quills most of it was salvageable however most of the mess was on the one quill he had the hardest time reaching. back home he would have just had Rouge take care of it but it was just him so he would have to make due on his own.

he picked off what he could from the front wishing he knew where a comb was so he could straighten himself out properly. he was about to start working on the back when you walked in.

"OH! so sorry I didn't realize anyone was in here."

He sighed "It's alright I was just cleaning myself up"

"Oh, ok, do you need any help?"

"I've got it" you stood in the doorway as he continued cleaning himself off watching him struggle with his back quill. after a few more seconds of fumbling around he finally folded. "Fine"

You smiled pulling out a stool from the cabinet instructing him to sit. you opened a drawer full of combs every shape and size he watched as your fingers floated above your options finally selecting your tool.

He felt as you carefully removed the twigs and leaves tossing them into the trash he felt your hands gently trace against his scalp lightly massaging it. he had to admit it felt good he leaned his head back into your touch a soft hum escaping his lips. you didn't make any comment you simply continued your task gently dragging the comb through his quills.

within a few minuetes you were done, as you let go of his head he found himself missing your touch.

"there we go good as new" you broke the silence

"Thank you"

"Of course, anytime, and don't worry I wont tell the others about this, I know you don't like appearing disheveled." you winked at him before leaving the small room

Six felt a heat rise to his cheeks all doubts of you fading away in a single moment

That was the moment Six fell for you

🦔

After each of the Hedgehogs fell for you life in the house became torture. seeing your beautiful face everyday, knowing that you loved a version of them and not being that version.

worse yet watching as you openly loved your Shadow. giving him kisses when he walked in the door, snuggling up to him on the couch and retiring for the night with him.

somehow each of the Shadows became jealous of well themselves. they kept it together, knowing they couldn't resort to fighting. they were doing just fine that was until they hit their breaking point.

You and Shadow had excused yourselves early that night. nobody thought anything of it chalking it up to you being tired. they however were proven wrong.

Everyone was in bed sleep almost claiming them when all of a sudden a noise could be heard through the house. it started quietly maybe the soft squeaking of a door. but then it began growing louder and faster, soon enough everyone in the house was able to distinguish the noise.

It was you, your gentle moans echoed through the house like a beautiful gentle song "Shadow" you cried out in ecstasy making each of the tenants ears prick up. It was obvious what was happening now and it clearly had an affect on everyone.

Each of the Shadows found themselves in various states of arousal.

Tower who had set up camp in the backyard was listening from your open window. Tower had fallen for you the moment he laid eyes on you and it only got worse as the week went on.

He loved your smile, your kindness, your whit, your cunning. the only flaw he found was that you weren't with him.

Hearing you moan his name in pleasure had him worked up more than he had been before in his life ultimately he gave in, stroking himself picturing you underneath him crying out for his touch. he continued until white streams escaped his member landing in the grass below. He knew one thing for certain The next time he heard those noises coming out of you he would be the cause everyone else be damned.

Lancelot stared at his erection temptation growing inside of him. he was a knight of the round table he would never want to disrespect you that way. what was happening was between you and your love, as much as it hurt that he wasn't him. he covered his ears with a pillow hoping to drown out your beautiful music. If this were to happen again he wasn't sure if he would be able to resist.

Edge and Six had the displeasure of sharing the study unable to relieve themselves with the other person in the room they simply turned their backs hoping the other wouldn't notice them soft humping their sheets in order to obtain some kind of relief.

Dual sat in the living room knowing there was no easy way to hide the evidence if he were to try reliving himself right now, he simply closed his eyes memorizing your sounds to remember for later. hoping you would be done soon.

after thirty minuets the whole thing was done and silence was restored to the house. but the damage was done.

🌅

Shadow watched as the golden sun silhouetted your perfect sleeping figure.

Looking at you he wondered how he got so lucky to end up with someone as wonderful as you. despite all the challenges you still chose him and you always would.

he arose from the bed planting a kiss between your perfect ears.

after last night he knew you would need some breakfast in bed and he was happy to provide it. he snuck through the house and prepared your meal, having some practice he was able to make it almost perfect (toast was impossible for him).

On his way back to you he found himself confronted by his variant's.

"We need to talk." Edge stated.

🦔

you awoke to an empty room only a breakfast tray on your nightstand to greet you with a note attached.

"Eat before you come out" it read you listened eating the breakfast that had been so carefully made for you.

You emerged from the master bedroom full and dressed for the day. you found everyone in the Livingroom discussing something that seemed of great importance.

upon your entrance all of the Hedgehogs stood welcoming you in

"What's all this?"

"Y/N" Shadow started "We have a proposal for you to consider."

"Okay."

"We've seem to run into a problem, you see, It has become evident that we all share more than a face." Shadow took a deep breath "All of us for one reason or another has become infatuated with you"

"That's not funny Shadow."

"It's true" Six spoke up and the others nodded their heads in agreement.

"Being around you is wonderful and yet we find it difficult" Lancelot continued. "Seeing you in the arms of another is killing us, even if that person is technically us."

"Shadow picked up the discussion. "It's Important to know that you can say no to what we are suggesting at any point. We all agree that you will be the sole deciding factor in all of this"

"I Don't even know what you're suggesting"

"We were wondering if you would be willing to date all of us."

"What?"

"I know it's a big ask, and if you're not okay with it we can come up with another solution."

"You're okay with this?"

"It was his idea" chimed in Tower.

You looked at Shadow as he nodded confirming the statement.

you sat there in shock weighing your options. On one hand It was a huge ask, you weren't even sure if you could manage, on the other hand curiosity piqued at you. if you were going to do this there needed to be some ground rules.

"I will agree on three conditions. One, each of you have to ask to date me individually in your own time, not as a group. Two, In terms of the bedroom I can't take all six of you at once, I'm sorry I just feel like that would probably kill me. And finally three, Once a week as long as you all are here I want you all to meet with a group therapist and work through things together, now before you protest let me explain. each of you have been through an unspeakable tragedy and you are finally around people who fully understand and have been through that pain. you have a unique opportunity and I don't want you to waste all of that potential on me. so do we have a deal?"

Each of the Shadow's looked at each other looking for any signs of disagreement between them to which they found none. each hedgehog agreed.

"Alright" you said "Let's get started then."

Notes: this is the end of the prologue I Hope you enjoyed! from now on it's going to mostly be one shots with one or two shadows as the focus with the occasional group outing / activity. I don't have too many ideas for this series so feel free to share yours. Disclaimer: THIS IS THE ONLY SERIES I'M ACCEPTING SUGESTIONS FOR THESE ARE NOT REQUESTS I MAY NOT DO EVRY SINGLE ONE THAT IS GIVEN TO ME BUT IF IT SPARKS AN IDEA I MIGHT MAKE A FIC WE WILL SEE IM ONLY GOING TO BE TAKING SUGESTIONS FOR A COUPPLE OF DAYS JUST TO SEE IF IT'S SOMTHING I WANT TO CONTINUE DOING.

[thesunshinebunny]

Well hello 👀 May i req as well? Hcs of dorm leaders & gn!s/o, s/o asks the boys if s/o can kiss them/not, something like, "Can i have a kiss?" Or you can change it to the other sentences, thank you & nice to meet you ✨

These little requests are what fill my soul and make me scream like a hormonal teenager who is just starting to read romance novels. I hope you like it and have a lovely night.

Riddle

Okay but… can you imagine Riddle, the stickler for rules, being all flustered when you ask him for a kiss? Because I can.

Imagine, a super cute date in the gardens of Heartslabyul, hidden among the corridors of the labyrinth, with the multicoloured hedgehogs following your feet.

You sitting on a bench in the middle of the bushes, eating little sandwiches and drinking tea in little cups that who knows where they came from… everything was already prepared by the time you arrived.

Romantic magic or did Trey get ahead of you? We'll never know

Back to the date… again, imagine sitting next to Riddle, and you, out of nowhere, ask him…

“Can I have a kiss?”

Riddle's face turns BRIGHT red, like, super BLUSHING red.

He’s so caught off guard, but… he's not gonna leave you hanging, right?

He clears his throat and tries to keep his cool, even though his heart is doing a 500m sprint in his chest.

“W-well… if it’s just a kiss on the cheek, I suppose I can allow it. It’s not… entirely unreasonable”

Poor thing, even if the date was his idea, trying to be super romantic makes him a little embarrassed… he’s not used to it, understand him.

He tries to maintain his dignity, even in a private place.

He leans in and gives you a quick, almost too proper kiss on the cheek.

“It’s not that I mind, but I just—well, you’re certainly a bit forward, aren’t you?”

Riddle is screaming

Leona

Okay, so Leona is the kind of guy who’s way too chill to make a huge deal out of things.

You’ve been dating for a while, and you’re just chilling near the practice field, watching him cool down after a heavy training session.

Seeing him give it his all, physically, makes things start to heat up. Just imagining Leona sweating after training, with tired arms, maybe with a bare torso… is it hot in here or is it just me?

Let’s not lie to ourselves, Leona without a shirt is a vibe… a hot one.

Anyway. You stared at him, like someone looks at their crush who has just finished training and wants to jump on him.

With a lot of affection and love involved.

Still, these days were becoming very common, so, leaving lustful thoughts aside, you simply said to him…

“I want to kiss you”

Leona just kind of… looks at you.

He lets out a dramatic sigh. Like, why does everything you do have to be so complicated? Why can't you just…go for it?

For him, it might have been more interesting to see your independence and high self-esteem take what is yours, than just letting him know.

You can practically see the gears turning in his head as he debates whether he's in the mood to indulge you or not.

“Fine. Whatever. But don’t get too used to this, got it?”

He pulls you close and gives you a lazy, almost dismissive kiss on the forehead. It's like… a kiss but also not really? Because Leona is not about to get all lovey-dovey on you in public.

Azul

Azul is basically running his own side hustle even when you’re hanging out with him.

You’ve been dating for a bit, and he’s still a bit of a businessman even in private moments. And there’s never a better place to have that attitude than in his VIP area.

I mean, he loves you, but he has to keep up appearances.

So when you asked him…

“Can I kiss you?” he just looked at you and said...

“What can I get out of this?”

What a way to break the mood, really.

We love Azul, but his bad boy facade with his partner is enough to knock his fedora in his face.

And that’s exactly what you did, but not angrily, but playfully. With you, Azul doesn’t have to be making contract after contract to be romantic.

Azul blinks at you for a solid five seconds while adjusting his hat. He is NOT about to give up a kiss without some kind of agreement.

“Well, I suppose I can offer you a small one, but there must be something in return”

Before you could complain, starting for the millionth time a little discussion about why not everything has to be a deal, Azul planted a small kiss on your cheek.

On that romantic and tender side, you could also perceive his typical mischievous smile, the one that always said “this will cost you, just you wait”

Kalim

So Kalim is the most sunshine-y, affectionate guy ever, and when you ask him for a kiss?

He is THRILLED.

Like, this is the guy who’s practically jumping out of his seat to shower you with love.

Your relationship with Kalim is over the moon. He really is a person who appreciates his relationship and does everything to make you feel loved and respected.

And it is these small gestures, a greeting, a smile, a kiss, that make your relationship with him so… AHHHHHH beautifully beautiful and romantic.

Lots of diabetes

One day, outside in the sunny Scarabia courtyard, after an exhausting afternoon of just being adorable, you were sitting under the delicious shade of the marble structure of the fountain, enjoying the water falling from the jets, being splashed by some drops of cold water, your gaze met his.

Admiring those ruby ​​eyes full of light and stars, you couldn’t help but feel that wonderful energy that Kalim emanates day after day.

"I want to kiss you so bad right now” It just came out of nowhere, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Kalim's eyes light up like it's his birthday and he just won the lottery. You didn't even know that it was possible to be this excited over a kiss.

“I'd love to kiss you too, how could I not?”

He pulls you into a hug, and it's basically a bear hug that lifts you off your feet for a second before he plants a big, happy kiss on your lips.

“I'm so lucky to have you, seriously! We should kiss ALL THE TIME!”

Vil

Vil’s refined. Like, everything about him screams elegance and poise. So when you ask for a kiss, it’s not like he’s going to say no but the moment has to be perfect.

You’re in a quiet part of the Pomefiore dorm after a photoshoot, and he’s looking at you like you just asked for the moon.

That little part of you, so tender, so subtle, so…perfect, melted him from the inside out.

“Can I have a kiss?”

Vil raises an eyebrow, but not in a “what’s wrong with you” way—more like a hmm, you’re asking for something special.

He’s got this air of “I’m too fabulous for this” but deep down, you know he’s a softie for you.

“How bold of you, asking so directly”

He leans in with that regal elegance and gives you a gentle kiss on the lips, just soft enough to leave a lingering warmth between you two.

“Don’t think that just anyone gets a kiss like that, darling. You’re… special.”

He leaves you trembling with emotion and the heat that began to run through your body.

So weak to his touch, so weak to his voice.

So weak to Vil Schoenheit

Idia

Ok but, extremely shy, like, socially awkward AF

Idia is THE definition of socially awkward, but he adores you.

He just has no idea how to show it. So when you ask for a kiss, it’s like the entire universe just… freezes for him.

Inside Idia’s cold room, surrounded by his beloved tech pieces, his hacking programs and video games… he couldn’t help but feel warmth around him.

And that could be seen in the pink color on the “tips” of his flaming hair.

“Would you like to give me a kiss?”

A proposal so sincere, so sweet, so full of love and innocence.

Idia almost goes BOOM

Idia’s face goes from zero to tomato-red in like, 0.2 seconds. He can barely look you in the eye as he stammers through his words.

“W-W-Wait, you want a kiss? W-W-What do I do?!”

He awkwardly leans in and presses a very quick, very shy kiss on your cheek. It's the shortest kiss in history, but you can tell he's absolutely melting inside.

“D-Did that work? I mean… I… I can try again, but…"

Malleus

Malleus is a bit of a mystery.

He's been dating you for a while, but his intense, princely vibes make every moment feel… more.

You are still getting used to human emotions when it comes to romantic relationships. So please, let's be patient, everything in him multiplies and is much more intense.

But anyway, who doesn't want an intense romance with a dragon?

Just saying.

When you ask for a kiss, he's like—well, he didn't see this coming. But he's still genuinely pleased, even if he's trying to hide it.

“Can I have a kiss?”

Malleus goes quiet.

He doesn't know how to respond at first, because—does asking for a kiss need to come with a formal speech or something?? He's royalty, and he's not used to such casual requests.

But you're his beloved, and that changes everything.

“How curious. You’re so…direct”

He pulls you gently towards him, cupping your face as though you were the most precious thing in the world, and he leans in for a soft, lingering kiss.

“Such a request… I will grant it, my beloved”