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


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45 minutes ago, Ernest-Panda said:

I'm honestly surprised that Ken even did a SEGASonic adaptation of his own volition. Like, Ken's written game-related stuff before, but those were because the higher-ups made him do it. Ken's pretty much proven that he'd happily write nothing but crazy sci-fi stories that had Sonic characters thrown in here and there with very little to do with the games if he had his way. And yet, there he was, writing a story based on one of the most obscure Sonic games out there that I'm surprised he was even aware of, and it couldn't possibly have been forced upon him by Sega because what would they have had to gain from it? Promoting an arcade game from half a decade ago that nobody could even play anymore?

It is indeed a very strange aberration, given that Penders made it a point of pride to have never actually played any of the games he was supposed to be promoting. I myself suspect he knew about it due to the fact that Sonic knowing Mighty previously was actually referenced first in the Battle Royal Super Special, written by Kent Taylor (aka Scot Fulop). Fulop and Penders were evidently close, and it is possible that Fulop knew about SegaSonic arcade and told him about it back then, hence why Penders would even know about Ray.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a coincidence re-worked into a chance to score some brownie points with the fans- that story was really more about the origins of the Fiona duplicate than it was about what little story there was in SegaSonic arcade. He might have learned about Ray later and just worked him in, and the fact that it all KIND of aligned to SegaSonic Arcade was just a happy circumstance. 

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2 hours ago, horridus said:

It is indeed a very strange aberration, given that Penders made it a point of pride to have never actually played any of the games he was supposed to be promoting. I myself suspect he knew about it due to the fact that Sonic knowing Mighty previously was actually referenced first in the Battle Royal Super Special, written by Kent Taylor (aka Scot Fulop). Fulop and Penders were evidently close, and it is possible that Fulop knew about SegaSonic arcade and told him about it back then, hence why Penders would even know about Ray.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a coincidence re-worked into a chance to score some brownie points with the fans- that story was really more about the origins of the Fiona duplicate than it was about what little story there was in SegaSonic arcade. He might have learned about Ray later and just worked him in, and the fact that it all KIND of aligned to SegaSonic Arcade was just a happy circumstance. 

I couldn't say for sure, but I would be willing to bet there were letters about Ray and SegaSonic. I distinctly remember there being fan art of the OVA being sent in way before it got released over here in the States, and a little after that, Knux inherits a hat from his grandfather. Alternatively, we all know Spaz was a big Sonic fan, so he probably brought up stuff that would be cool to include and fortunately Sega approved it. It's also possible Fulop seeded that himself, or maybe it just lined up by happy coincidence after the fact.

Could go either way, but considering that story was a back-up to the boring slog that was "The First Date" it was quite refreshing. It's actually one of my favorite post-End Game stories he wrote, and even if it's about the Fiona-droid, I think how it was all tied together with the Archie continuity was pretty smart, and there aren't many others after #50 of his that I can praise (I actually tend to like a lot of his stuff prior to that point/Knuckles getting a series).

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So apparently he always thought of the cast of the comics as sci-fi aliens...

He's also apparently decided to lift some of the plot points from Black Panther into his story..that's not what he said, but if you read between the lines, and have followed how he keeps adding to the project this late in the game it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Also...oddly his habit of capitalizing the brand names or titles seems to have skipped a beat. Shouldn't it be "love the new BLACK PANTHER". He used to do it to Sonic and Knuckles.

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30 minutes ago, Tenko said:

So apparently he always thought of the cast of the comics as sci-fi aliens...

 

Not very surprising.

Although, it just occurred to me that he's also technically saying the preboot SONIC books and THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES are one and the same. 

30 minutes ago, Tenko said:
 

As much as I love the new Black Panther film, I'm cringing at the thought of hearing how THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES ripped off plot points which I actually wrote down years ago. It was amazing to see how many elements tracked with the story I'm working on.

He's also apparently decided to lift some of the plot points from Black Panther into his story..that's not what he said, but if you read between the lines, and have followed how he keeps adding to the project this late in the game it wouldn't surprise me at all.

To be fair, there's bound to be some amount of general overlap in just about anything. It has been roughly fifteen years since he introduced Lara-Su/Jani-Ca herself after all and he's been in the comic books industry for even longer.

I haven't seen the movie myself though, so any real construeable context is lost on me. I'll just assume it is comprised of loosely adapted events from the comic.

Gotta appreciate that one reply, though.

30 minutes ago, Tenko said:
Also...oddly his habit of capitalizing the brand names or titles seems to have skipped a beat. Shouldn't it be "love the new BLACK PANTHER". He used to do it to Sonic and Knuckles.

He could've easily been referring to the character.

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3 hours ago, Tenko said:

So apparently he always thought of the cast of the comics as sci-fi aliens...

There is a certain degree of logic in not naming her breed- its part of a rabbit hole in fiction featuring anthropomorphic animals. Namely the origin of 'domesticated' breeds. We often take for granted the myriad breeds of things like cats, dogs and horses and the like, while forgetting a crucial detail- they exist as they are because they were bred to be that way over generations thanks to humans. It even extends to names- which 'Doberman' family was responsible for the Doberman Pinscher on Mobius? How does the Siamese get its name when there is no Siam? And on and on it goes. In this, Penders is not incorrect to not put much thought into what Hershey's 'actual' breed is, as it can potentially raise a number of difficult to answer questions, and many works that use anthros just gloss over it if they use specific real world breeds of domestic animal.

The rest of his rationale though.. it sounds more like a justification for himself than anything for the sake of fans. Another way for him to ignore the reality of what he was writing. He wasn't writing an action oriented Funny Animal Book meant to tie into a video game and a cartoon, no no, he's really writing EPIC SCIENCE FICTION populated with ALIENS, like a REAL writer should! 

3 hours ago, Tenko said:
 

He's also apparently decided to lift some of the plot points from Black Panther into his story..that's not what he said, but if you read between the lines, and have followed how he keeps adding to the project this late in the game it wouldn't surprise me at all.

It sounds less like an admission of him trying to lift stuff and more like him trying to make his work sound more impressive- "I DID BLACK PANTHER BEFORE BLACK PANTHER". I very recently saw that movie (literally within the hour of making this post. Great movie, btw, you should see it!), and it covers much of Penders' personal pet tropes- hidden civilizations with high technology, the themes of family and responsibility and legacy, ethnic conflict, all that stuff that Penders just loves to obsess over.... only done with a great deal more skill, insight and nuance that Penders could ever hope muster. To be blunt, I would be deeply shocked if anything of what he is talking about has any specific resemblance to Black Panther beyond the most superficial level... I could even hazard a guess as to what he specifically referring to within the film, and his take would be so blinkered and uninspired that it would still be mediocre enough to avoid being a specific rip. 

Even giving him the benefit of the doubt in this fashion, its still stupid of him to actually bring this up, ESPECIALLY when he DOES have a history of lifting stuff from other franchises for his own works in an incredibly blatant fashion that borders on outright theft. All he is doing is inviting people to scrutinize his work to spot the similarities. 

....or rather, it would be, if he actually had anything to release, which is increasingly looking to not be the case. 

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Ironic he says that Rough is a Geoffrey rip off, when: 

His current work involves the echidna characters with most of them being a literal rip off to Knuckles (k'nox)

And the Skunk designs are clearly different. It's probably early to tell, but we do have a brief idea about Rough and Tumble's character, them being general bullies (from what we've heard) while Geoffrey was an agent gone bad (from what it looked like.) 

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Okay, I honestly hate playing devil's advocate for Penders, but let's unpack what was actually said here. From Cory Scott's tweet:

Whether this is a jab at the @KenPenders character or just a coincidence is beyond me.

So it's Cory who brings up the idea that there could be something there, even going so far as to say that they are the ones reminded of Geoffrey by the new guys.

To which Penders responds:

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs if they’re more interested in taking a shot at me with a 2nd rate Geoffrey rip-off than coming up with something fresh and original.

Emphasis mine. He's saying that under the condition that the character(s) is a jab at him instead of being something fresh and original, it would be sad.

And it would be. So much so that I can imagine him doing that very sort of thing. *cough-SallyMoon-cough*

But as far as we know, these guys don't seem to have any relation to Penders' Gary Stu, so it should be a non-issue by his own words.

Of course, as we all know, his word is effectively worthless, so I probably just wasted my time here.

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3 hours ago, Tylinos said:

Ken believes that Rough is "a 2nd rate Geoffrey rip-off", despite the fact that the only similarity between the two characters is that they're both skunks.

Remember that this is also the man who called people trolls for asking him if Geoffrey was inspired by the skunk character from SatAM.

...you know, just once I'd like to come here and discover that this man isn't behaving like a living parody of himself. Is it really too much to ask? Is it really too much to ask that this guy doesn't do everything in his power to come off as a cartoon character? 

I'm not even angry or upset. I'm just astounded that literally the first thing out of his mouth regarding new anything has to do with  this shit, and that he's dragging in Archie when they have nothing to do with it. Like... I saw gags about this. And was stupid enough to think they might not come true. 

3 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I wasn't aware skunk was a copyrighted species by Ken Penders.

All animals are copyrighted by Ken Penders. Aaaaalll of them. The entire zoological spectrum is HIS to command. 

22 minutes ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Okay, I honestly hate playing devil's advocate for Penders, but let's unpack what was actually said here. From Cory Scott's tweet:

 

 

So it's Cory who brings up the idea that there could be something there, even going so far as to say that they are the ones reminded of Geoffrey by the new guys.

To which Penders responds:

 

 

Emphasis mine. He's saying that under the condition that the character(s) is a jab at him instead of being something fresh and original, it would be sad.

And it would be. So much so that I can imagine him doing that very sort of thing. *cough-SallyMoon-cough*

But as far as we know, these guys don't seem to have any relation to Penders' Gary Stu, so it should be a non-issue by his own words.

Of course, as we all know, his word is effectively worthless, so I probably just wasted my time here.

It's valiant that you're honestly trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but even under the caveat of someone else bringing it up, there's still plenty to read into that doesn't speak well of Penders at all. He didn't need to bring up the idea in the response- he could have easily just said 'Just because they're skunks doesn't mean they're ripoffs', and he REALLY didn't need to bring up Archie, like at all. That he chose to even entertain the idea or acknowledge it in any fashion while passive aggressively trying to dig at his former employers and a company that has nothing to do with him does not reflect well on the guy. 

It might not have originated with him, he ran with it and never looked back. 

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51 minutes ago, horridus said:

...you know, just once I'd like to come here and discover that this man isn't behaving like a living parody of himself. Is it really too much to ask? Is it really too much to ask that this guy doesn't do everything in his power to come off as a cartoon character? 

I'm not even angry or upset. I'm just astounded that literally the first thing out of his mouth regarding new anything has to do with  this shit, and that he's dragging in Archie when they have nothing to do with it. Like... I saw gags about this. And was stupid enough to think they might not come true. 

All animals are copyrighted by Ken Penders. Aaaaalll of them. The entire zoological spectrum is HIS to command. 

It's valiant that you're honestly trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but even under the caveat of someone else bringing it up, there's still plenty to read into that doesn't speak well of Penders at all. He didn't need to bring up the idea in the response- he could have easily just said 'Just because they're skunks doesn't mean they're ripoffs', and he REALLY didn't need to bring up Archie, like at all. That he chose to even entertain the idea or acknowledge it in any fashion while passive aggressively trying to dig at his former employers and a company that has nothing to do with him does not reflect well on the guy. 

It might not have originated with him, he ran with it and never looked back. 

Oh, I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt-- there's no point when he changes his mind and "but what I really meant was..." so frequently.

But I've no doubt that much like the resemblance between his stories and Sonic Chronicles, the idea will probably take root and he'll run with it as if he thought that all along.

It's just that at the moment, that doesn't seem to be where he's at.

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Hmm...apparently having the cast/voices from a multimillion dollar video game series, that is not only recognizable to the target audience, but also generally used in any media they create with the characters (4Kids actors in Sonic X and the games at the time etc), is out of the question, they must cast "Hollywood" stars for it to be marketable.

Now I'm not saying studios wouldn't think like that, in fact it would be just like them to try an approach like that, what with Hollywood's track record ruining licenced IP when brining them to the big screen being legendary and all. It's just with Sega presumably having a say in it all, and their track record using the game cast for extended media, wouldn't the game cast being used be a no brainer?

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1 hour ago, Tylinos said:

To be fair to Ken here, he does know a thing or two about announcing release dates that are unlikely to be met.

True, true. Though I think any film corporation that made the sheer number of false alarms as him would actually suffer consequences for such repeated and blatant failure, whereas Ken stands to lose nothing but his dignity with each failure to live up to his own deadlines, and let's face it, he long established how little value he places on THAT. 

Though to this day, I'm legitimately wondering what he'll do if/when this Sonic film actually takes off and he STILL doesn't have anything to show for his efforts, and how long he'll be able to stretch this even when the obvious is staring him down.

34 minutes ago, Tenko said:

Hmm...apparently having the cast/voices from a multimillion dollar video game series, that is not only recognizable to the target audience, but also generally used in any media they create with the characters (4Kids actors in Sonic X and the games at the time etc), is out of the question, they must cast "Hollywood" stars for it to be marketable.

Now I'm not saying studios wouldn't think like that, in fact it would be just like them to try an approach like that, what with Hollywood's track record ruining licenced IP when brining them to the big screen being legendary and all. It's just with Sega presumably having a say in it all, and their track record using the game cast for extended media, wouldn't the game cast being used be a no brainer?

Insert sarcastic remark regarding Penders stating the obvious when it comes to Hollywood mentality. I mean really, you gotta love someone who touts himself as an expert on these things when all he's doing is regurgitation observations that most people become aware of when they pay ANY kind of attention to how Hollywood operates. Then again, the man is abnormally affectionate for all the most soulless aspects of how Hollywood operates, so this is no surprise. 

And yes, you would THINK that the obvious would be to use the game cast, but then, you would think it would be rather obvious that an all CG film would be the way to go instead of a live action hybrid, yet here we are. 

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2 hours ago, Tenko said:

Hmm...apparently having the cast/voices from a multimillion dollar video game series, that is not only recognizable to the target audience, but also generally used in any media they create with the characters (4Kids actors in Sonic X and the games at the time etc), is out of the question, they must cast "Hollywood" stars for it to be marketable.

Now I'm not saying studios wouldn't think like that, in fact it would be just like them to try an approach like that, what with Hollywood's track record ruining licenced IP when brining them to the big screen being legendary and all. It's just with Sega presumably having a say in it all, and their track record using the game cast for extended media, wouldn't the game cast being used be a no brainer?

Counterpoint to Penders' statement: Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime.

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All release dates are subject to change and most will have it up against something bigger. I'd assume they would consider it counter programming and that date gives them  thanksgiving and to a lesser extent christmas. As for the voice actors they could retain the game cast and still use the live action tallent as the more marketable people.

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Bizarre attitude towards Rough.  I don't know much about Archie, but even I know enough for it to be quite obvious that Geoffrey St. John and Rough have completely different roles and personalities.  And yet it being the same species is all some people need to call it a rip-off, even though skunks have been used as unsavoury animal characters for - well, apparently Pepé Le Pew came along in 1945, so...  This is a deeply silly charge.  Happily, Penders and his opinions are so irrelevant at this point that we can quickly move on to the fact that he's probably not wrong about the movie.  Wouldn't be at all surprised to see the voice actors from the games bumped, and the release date is clearly aspirational at this point.

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There's a possibility they'd go the route the Ratchet movie tried. They got all of the original VAs back for the movie for the main cast, bar Chairman Drek. Ratchet, Clank, Nefarious, Qwark, even the plumber had their game voices.

And then the smaller side and minor role had the big name actors voicing them so they could still use the game cast while having stars in the movie.

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I'd agree with him on the voice thing, if Wreck-it Ralph hadn't cast Roger as Sonic in that.

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Wasn't his speaking role just a fifteen-second cameo, though?  I don't know that that really compares to the title role.

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I'm actually going to rewind the conversation back a bit so I can give some cents on some topics of discussion I didn't see.

1. For "Good stuff Penders did", I still stand by "The Library" from StH#65 being a small but nice gem of a story, and the best Dulcy story the Archie comic ever got. 

The story is really simple; Amy is frustrated because she wants to rescue some books but everyone else is too focused on restoring other parts of Mobotropolis, Dulcy agrees to go with her, they explore the library and find a couple of books from the author before being disturbed and scared out by an intruder (it's actually a character called Jeremiah, but nobody remembers him and it's not needed to follow the story). What makes it work is how Amy and Dulcy's characters complement each other and tap into aspects that were still fairly unused compared to their main traits (Amy still being in the phase of not being taken seriously due to her age and her having annoyance over it, Dulcy being empathetic towards kids due to being younger herself), and doing that while giving them good and believable character interaction. 

Seriously, the only other times "Dulcy connects with kids" ever come up again are "The Price of Flame" (which was more because she rescued a child so they thought she couldn't be there for bad as opposed to her connecting with them) and "Wings of Fire" (which was more because Dulcy was being shoved into a Chaotix dynamic post-reboot, especially since we don't know how old she was post-reboot). 

2. I don't see how anyone can chastise Penders for not thinking of a specific breed for Hershey when I doubt any of the official Sonic cast were based on specific species or breeds deliberately. While some people and places can try to claim that x, y and z traits mean that they're supposed to be A, it's more likely that it's a result of choices in stylisation and/or taking the most familiar features of the animal in general. Even discreperancies like Big and Blaze being vastly different can be explained by Blaze being influenced by one set of cat stereotypes and Big another (with a dash of Totoro influence for good measure). 

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