Megathread The Lara-Su Chronicles and Ken Penders topic - READ PAGE 164, POST 4096

[SenEDDtor Missile]

11 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

Returning to the internet after it disappeared, here is Ken Penders' "The Lost Ones" Trailer to see just how bad it is IN HD!

The Thumbnail and Endscreen are my partial creation. I do give credit to the website http://www.patrickluque.com for making it easier to get them though, as I probably would have spent way too much time trying to make new ones from scratch.

i kinda can’t help but notice that the way my reupload of the Ken Penders Lost Ones Trailer unintentionally mirrors how the Archie Sonic comics under his penmanship were handled: A pretty exterior cover (in my case, the thumbnail I made and the end screen to a lesser extent) surrounding an otherwise mediocre to poor product inside.

[Big Panda]

“Enter a world unlike any other except for X-men”

[Sidronas]

I think it is right on the money that about Ken trying to widen the net so to speak because he knows he might get slim pickings if he only released his project in America, plus someone might be fooled into thinking it is not stemming from Sonic,

 

like instead of just growing and letting the fanbase establish and grow the normal way, it seems like he is trying to make a " big bang" effect cause he knows it would probably might not be enough popularity or money and face the same result of his Lost Ones comic. Also i have a feeling that a possible reason for trying to release it to the world at once would give off the appearance that is is already popular in other coutries and "taking the world by storm", not to mention making it sort of gives off the appearance that there is no issue with it being a rip off of Sonic.

[Alexios31]

Excuse my ignorance but is Rob O' in this?

[Promethean0416]

6 hours ago, Alexios31 said:

Excuse my ignorance but is Rob O' in this?

No idea at this point.

[The Tenth Doctor]

11 hours ago, Alexios31 said:

Excuse my ignorance but is Rob O' in this?

No one knows, Ken hasn't said anything at this point. Even so, he'd be unrecognisable to avoid looking like Sonic (probably wiping all family traces too to avoid Amy) and Ken will never release this trash. You really don't want him in this.

[Alexios31]

Thanks.

I love Rob so I definitely want to see him again. 

[Salamander]

Well, if he isn't in yet, I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

[Rabid-Coot]

One month after the last alleged release date and

 

[SBR2]

No Retcons until he changes his mind about something I'm sure.

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, Rabid-Coot said:

One month after the last alleged release date and

 

Hm. Makes sense. And 3...2..1...

Kinda wish he'd settled already given he's been making actual pages.

 

[horridus]

6 hours ago, Rabid-Coot said:

One month after the last alleged release date and

 

Wish I could say I was surprised, but frankly I'm really not. One impression I got with Penders and his writing in the comic is that he tends to be driven by whatever catches his fancy in the moment, and that's part of the reason why his stories just kinda start to meander after a while. It's no different here, and unless he figures out a way to discipline himself, this really isn't ever gonna come out. 

Frankly taking a break from social media might help, but given how much he seems to LOVE making a fool of himself on twitter, I don't see that happening anytime soon. 

[Kellodrawsalot]

Hé hasnt finished any chapters

[amadeii]

Not completely related to The Lara-Su Chronicles, but oh my... I cringed when I read "Sweet 16 and never been kissed." I rolled my eyes at the "Staggers the imagination, doesn't it?" line regarding how this sixteen-year-old girl is mankind's best hope for peaceful intergalactic relations. I mean, come on, Ken. The basic concept of this could be handled in an interesting manner, but what are you doing by describing the role of all your female characters to your potential audience as being so "hard to grasp"?

Like he himself cannot believe the boldness of his own choices: "And all this is going to be handled by a 16-year-old GIRL! Unbelievable!"

Also, he appears to have a fixation with girls whose names end in -ara, and they all seem to have the same fashion sense and the same set of "uncharacteristically female" traits (interests and excellence in science, for example). I have an idea, Ken. Pick an idea and finish it. Or better yet, take all the best bits of your range of ideas and combine them into one single series - and I'm not saying throw Cara who lives on Mars into some random volume of TLSC. I'm saying focus on developing one single character with all those best ideas.

The way he's making it seem here indicates that he wants to create a random volume of TLSC where this Cara character appears out of nowhere and totally makes sense with the rest of the series, and that's not a good way of combining ideas. It'll just make everything even more of a convoluted mess than it's already going to be.

[Salamander]

Reads a bit like this is just TLSC back before he realised he could still gain access to his characters from the comic.  He should've been making a non-Sonic reboot all along, and it turns out, he almost did.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

11 hours ago, horridus said:

Wish I could say I was surprised, but frankly I'm really not. One impression I got with Penders and his writing in the comic is that he tends to be driven by whatever catches his fancy in the moment, and that's part of the reason why his stories just kinda start to meander after a while. It's no different here, and unless he figures out a way to discipline himself, this really isn't ever gonna come out. 

Frankly taking a break from social media might help, but given how much he seems to LOVE making a fool of himself on twitter, I don't see that happening anytime soon. 

He’d probably get things done faster if he just focused on the main story and then wrote his meandering ideas off to the side in little side stories if anything.

[DabigRG]

56 minutes ago, amadeii said:

 

You know, I probably shouldn't say this...but that actually looks sorta good and sounds kinda decent.

Comes across as a tad dated and Captain Ersatz-y, sure, but overall that's not a bad setup for a little series.

 

 

Also, NUMAN!

 

[horridus]

3 hours ago, amadeii said:

Not completely related to The Lara-Su Chronicles, but oh my... I cringed when I read "Sweet 16 and never been kissed." I rolled my eyes at the "Staggers the imagination, doesn't it?" line regarding how this sixteen-year-old girl is mankind's best hope for peaceful intergalactic relations. I mean, come on, Ken. The basic concept of this could be handled in an interesting manner, but what are you doing by describing the role of all your female characters to your potential audience as being so "hard to grasp"?

Like he himself cannot believe the boldness of his own choices: "And all this is going to be handled by a 16-year-old GIRL! Unbelievable!"

I think this is a pretty good demonstration of just how out of touch Penders is when it comes to things like the cultural landscape. He likes to toute himself as some kind of uber feminist, yet as this illustrates, he really has no idea that this kind of premise has been done before and done far better, to the point where NONE of this is innovative or astonishing on its own. Penders presents it this way because he's deeply unfamiliar with the media that utilizes tropes such as these or the fact that media in general has long since surpassed his own ideas. Likewise, the presentation of this feels like something from around the time when he was growing up... in the days when presenting a band, announcers would say something like "Watch out, girls! He's single!"

It's an attempt to appeal to teenagers using a method that hasn't been in vogue in a very, very long time. Everything about it just SCREAMS constructed. 

It's all just part and parcel of Penders' general cluelessness and inability to recognize that he's not really at the forefront of things as he likes to tout.

3 hours ago, FFWF said:

Reads a bit like this is just TLSC back before he realised he could still gain access to his characters from the comic.  He should've been making a non-Sonic reboot all along, and it turns out, he almost did.

Yeah, I wouldn't doubt that before he decided to begin this entire lawsuit mess, THIS was going to be his attempt at trying to continue the stuff in 25YL via other means. You got the similar name, the color scheme of the clothes, the thematic similarities of teens and dealing with change, the space setting rather than being confined to a single world, etc. I wouldn't say this looks good, given that she still has that 'American ARtist Trying And Failing To Ape Anime Styles' vibe going on strong, but it still looks better put together than a lot of what we have seen of LSC, aside from the by now obligatory Google Image Search cover. If he was going to plunder stuff from this over to Lara-Su, then it's a pity he didn't simply give her that outfit. It's a lot better looking than what we've seen her in so far. 

[Tylinos]

Yeah, wow, it turns out that Ken somehow understands teenage girls (and people in general, honestly) even less than we already knew.  It reads like a pitch straight out of the 1960s.  I know Ken has a preference from stories from that era, and has insisted before that many of them don't need updating for modern audiences because he feels they were just fine as they were, but really?  More than anything else he's teased over the past few years, this shows that he's really out of touch with people.

[SBR2]

All I  could think reading that was this quote from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia "What Year is it in your head"?

This would have been alright maybe in the 80' or 90's but Jesus we've moved past this teen romcom stuff.

[horridus]

It feels like it was made by someone who saw that Kim Possible was popular, and then proceeded to mimic the same beats while at the same time lacking ANY kind of understanding of *why* it was popular. Only somehow it's even MORE artificial and fake feeling than THAT. 

[Riggo]

18 minutes ago, horridus said:

It feels like it was made by someone who saw that Kim Possible was popular, and then proceeded to mimic the same beats while at the same time lacking ANY kind of understanding of *why* it was popular. Only somehow it's even MORE artificial and fake feeling than THAT. 

“Staggers the imagination, doesn’t it?”

[DabigRG]

49 minutes ago, horridus said:

It feels like it was made by someone who saw that Kim Possible was popular, and then proceeded to mimic the same beats while at the same time lacking ANY kind of understanding of *why* it was popular. Only somehow it's even MORE artificial and fake feeling than THAT. 

...Why Kim Possible?

[horridus]

5 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

...Why Kim Possible?

Kim Possible aired in the early 2000s and was a major smash hit, and for a time was the biggest heroine on kids TV, targeted at the same audience that Penders previously purported that he wanted to create for- Young Teenage Girls. Kim Possible's entire deal was doing the whole 'Save the World' bit while juggling with the trials and tribulations of teenage life despite her own extraordinary existence. Notably, Kim managed to stay a fairly good representation of a "basic, average girl" when it came to her interests, indeed demonstrating a lot of traits normally associated with antagonistic teen girls and alpha queens in other shows without any of the negative stigma attached. The show won accolades, praise and popularity due to its clever writing, memorable characters and excellent humor, enough so that it was able to get a fourth season based on popularity power alone. 

Ken's projects, both this Cara thing and Lara and his initially purported reasons for doing them strike me as extremely similar to the kind of ground that Kim Possible covered- a teenage girl protagonist who is at once a typical teenage girl yet atypical in some way, thrust into extraordinary circumstances alongside others her age, with the themes of the teenaged life taking place side-by-side with said extraordinary circumstance. Only sans any of the stuff that made Kim Possible likable, enjoyable and successful. 

[DabigRG]

2 minutes ago, horridus said:

Kim Possible aired in the early 2000s and was a major smash hit, and for a time was the biggest heroine on kids TV, targeted at the same audience that Penders previously purported that he wanted to create for- Young Teenage Girls. Kim Possible's entire deal was doing the whole 'Save the World' bit while juggling with the trials and tribulations of teenage life despite her own extraordinary existence. Notably, Kim managed to stay a fairly good representation of a "basic, average girl" when it came to her interests, indeed demonstrating a lot of traits normally associated with antagonistic teen girls and alpha queens in other shows without any of the negative stigma attached. The show won accolades, praise and popularity due to its clever writing, memorable characters and excellent humor, enough so that it was able to get a fourth season based on popularity power alone. 

Ken's projects, both this Cara thing and Lara and his initially purported reasons for doing them strike me as extremely similar to the kind of ground that Kim Possible covered- a teenage girl protagonist who is at once a typical teenage girl yet atypical in some way, thrust into extraordinary circumstances alongside others her age, with the themes of the teenaged life taking place side-by-side with said extraordinary circumstance. Only sans any of the stuff that made Kim Possible likable, enjoyable and successful. 

...I...guess?

My first thought was Llyod in Space, though I wanna say there's something else out there that's closer.