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

[biznizz]

Well, yeah. But her being a mongoose is why she got speed instead of the above mentioned sound powers.

[Delta Starfire]

Do you mean having speed is why they chose a mongoose? It is a rather obscure animal, after all.

[biznizz]

Mina was introduced as normal first; then they revealed she had speed. She didn't have it right off the bat.

[Delta Starfire]

Mina was introduced as normal first; then they revealed she had speed. She didn't have it right off the bat.

 

I recall. I wonder if it was the long term plan, however, because it was revealed only within a couple of issues of her appearing.

[horridus]

I recall. I wonder if it was the long term plan, however, because it was revealed only within a couple of issues of her appearing.

 

Flynn tried to retcon that one as being Mogul's doing... which... was kind of stupid because Mogul was trapped in the ME at that precise moment described. 

 

But you know, speaking of Mina being Tails wife in the future? I actually heard somewhere that he came up with THAT pairing by literally pulling it out of a hat of names. And you know, normally I'd dismiss something like that as ludicrous, but it'd certainly explain a few things, given that Penders never once even wrote them interacting with one another and... well... everything else. 

[Vertekins]

But you know, speaking of Mina being Tails wife in the future? I actually heard somewhere that he came up with THAT pairing by literally pulling it out of a hat of names. And you know, normally I'd dismiss something like that as ludicrous, but it'd certainly explain a few things, given that Penders never once even wrote them interacting with one another and... well... everything else. 

 

Actually...

 

"The truth be told…it wasn’t Ken. When Ken and I were first discussing M:25YL pairings, we talked about who Tails might marry, and I jokingly thought "Mina" since she’s pretty cute and her speed would remind Tails of his bestest bud, Sonic. Heh! We tossed it around a bit, then nixed it for a number of reasons, not just the age difference. We were just going to have Tails alone, with no reference to any family. When Ken got the completed issue, he was rather surprised to see Tails paired with Fiona…yes, folks, it’s a Justin Gabrie revision, since this script (and the story in #139) were turned in before Mike took over. So please don’t blame Ken on that one."

 

Yep, the comics actually went there and plumbed the depths of bad fanfic (...Not that it didn't do so before) by utilizing couple-assigning.

[horridus]

Aaah, I stand corrected. As I said, I had only heard, but given Penders rather phenomenal amounts of Not Giving A Damn when it came to characters who weren't his, can you blame me?

[Vertekins]

Aaah, I stand corrected. As I said, I had only heard, but given Penders rather phenomenal amounts of Not Giving A Damn when it came to characters who weren't his, can you blame me?

 

Not at all. I would've been inclined to believe that TailsXMina was a Penders invention had I not read this on Sonic Retro's Mobius 25YL articles.

[horridus]

You know, since we're still on 25YL in a way, wanna know what STILL astounds me?

 

That he only very recently realized who Rutan's father is. 

 

Dead serious, plunge the depths of his twitter and you will find him saying this. 

 

He introduced Rutan. Without thinking who the father could possibly be. 

 

Who the hell does something like that? 

[Tenko]

Who the hell does something like that?

He does, quite often, even now. Take a look back more recently and you will find posts about his Lara-Su crap saying stuff like "I've just realized that <insert character name here> has a huge role in the story". Or "I'm going to have to do a few rewrites as I've just discovered that <insert character name here> is key to the plot".. Etc etc.

I know things change during writing a story, especially when your trying to write a whole series at once like he is. But the way he writes these posts about it makes it sound like he just shoves stuff in whenever and after writing huge swaths of story decides to change or insert things last minute. Which in turn makes it seem like he hasn't at all thought things through properly in the first place. If I was looking forward to this at all I would be worried about the contents of the story if he can just change things like that willy nilly and it won't have that much effect other than a few rewrites. Kinda makes it seem very throwaway'ish if even the author can go changing stuff last minute (especially key to the plot ideas) and it won't have that much effect on the rest of the story, especially if he's almost finished the script as he keeps saying.

Stuff like you just mentioned before from his past works kinda just confirms it.

[horridus]

I know, I know, it's practically a rhetorical question by this point, but still; when giving a character a child, that's kind of the first immediate thing that most people would think of. Whose the other parent? How'd they meet? Where are they now? Hell, even if it was intentionally kept vague and mysterious, you should at least acknowledge that there WAS another parent in the picture at some point. Especially when it's someone like Lien-Da... I gave serious consideration to the idea that Rutan might have just had a sperm donor and been raised exclusively with his mother and ancestor, given that he himself doesn't mention a thing. 

 

Yes, rambling a bit there, but come on, it's just such a violation of the most basic degrees of common sense.

 

But yeah, Penders does not really plan ahead; that's putting it mildly. It's been mentioned that a lot of his stuff seems spur of the moment, and honestly, that would explain a great many plotholes in his Knuckles work. You have Knuckles being completely and utterly unaware of either the Dark Legion or the Lost Tribe despite how abjectly stupid that is, you have the Brotherhood for some odd reason not intervening against Robotnik despite the threat he poses (well, not in Penders mind, but you get the picture), you have Moritori Rex infiltrating the Brotherhood without much clear reason as to how he could pull it off, Tobor wandering the planet for two centuries and somehow being shocked to see the Floating Island again... on and on and on it goes. 

 

And when you address and try to build from some of this, he just trashes you for it; he deeply disdained the little prot revelation that there had been other Enerjaks before Dimitri, despite the fact that when Dimitri first turned super he didn't adopt the look or name of Enerjak, so how could Archimedes possibly have known about him under that name? 

 

*shakes head* He's a plot driven writer in the worst, most inept way possible.

[Johnny2071]

Now this is a huge stretch (and I'm not fully sure how this whole character ownership negotiation works, but I may have an idea as to how to restore the old continuity. So far as of 2014, we have:

 

• This ongoing thread against Penders
• Penders' teasers of the Lara-Su Chronicles
• His ongoing ego in his attempts to win legal compensation over what he thinks is rightfully his.
• The hype over the upcoming new Super Smash Bros. games for the Wii U and 3DS.

Now the general idea is this: Penders is far too egotistic to resist a challenge where he potentially benefit in the end, so why not challenge him to an all-stakes highly competitive video game battle that decides the fate of his characters and the old continuity. To put it simply, challenge Penders to an epic SSBU battle. If someone should win against him, we get the true Sonic Archie comic continuiy back and put an end to all this post-SGW world nonsense. Now the two things left in question is, who will represent us fans and go up against him, and what thing of value would we be willing to give Penders if he should ever win for some reason, just so he would agree to this challenge? Right now, we need our own team of Sonic comic fans, SSB fans, and loophole detectors. 

 

I know it sounds like a huge unorthodox stretch, but it sounds like a good opportunity to make use of multiple events in pop culture that are happening around us. There has to be something out there given to us that we can use to or advantage.

[Splash the Otter]

No offense, but I think there are better and more logical ways to continue the old comic. For example, many people are working on fanmade continuations (similar to StC Online). And there's still SEGA's mandates to consider. Ultimately, I think the old comic is best left in the hands of people who aren't required to follow strict rules.

 

Besides, how do we know Penders even plays Smash Bros?

[Zaysho]

Now the general idea is this: Penders is far too egotistic to resist a challenge where he potentially benefit in the end, so why not challenge him to an all-stakes highly competitive video game battle that decides the fate of his characters and the old continuity. To put it simply, challenge Penders to an epic SSBU battle. If someone should win against him, we get the true Sonic Archie comic continuiy back and put an end to all this post-SGW world nonsense. Now the two things left in question is, who will represent us fans and go up against him, and what thing of value would we be willing to give Penders if he should ever win for some reason, just so he would agree to this challenge? Right now, we need our own team of Sonic comic fans, SSB fans, and loophole detectors. 

 

I know it sounds like a huge unorthodox stretch, but it sounds like a good opportunity to make use of multiple events in pop culture that are happening around us. There has to be something out there given to us that we can use to or advantage.

To be honest, as crazy as Penders is... even I know he wouldn't agree to this. There's no easy money for him and he just doesn't care how badly he's pissed people off.

Look, the sad and unfortunate truth about the old continuity is this: it's gone. It got a mercy killing after being gutted in the worst way possible, and there's really nothing anybody can do. Even if fans were somehow able to wrangle away the rights to the characters and hand them back to SEGA/Archie... what exactly are they going to do with them at this point? Sit on them and let them rot? They have no place in the new continuity. And I hate admitting that (though such a scenario could allow the return of Julie-Su as the Nocturnus would no longer be off-limits). The book was reset for the explicit purpose of erasing their tracks and preventing them from returning, primarily because of Penders's ridiculous conditions. We're lucky to get back as much as we did so far, and we're still crossing our fingers for a few stragglers (whose status is a little trickier, it seems).

 

Resetting it again would probably do more damage, and I don't think it's worth it. I'm not happy about the circumstances surrounding this, but I can at least enjoy the new continuity for what it is.

 

I know I'm not saying this in a particularly "nice" way, but I'm just trying to be realistic about the situation at this point. "The Lost Hedgehog Tales" is as good as we're going to get, and, as ElectroKyurem points out, there will at least be a fan continuation, of sorts. Not what anybody asked for, but it's better than nothing at this point.

[Phos]

In reference to apender's views on the games being insufficient to base a movie off of, that's a very narrow view in two ways. First, it assumes that a movie has to be an adaptation of a story that existed elsewhere. I guess with all the comic movies that's not exactly surprising, considering he has pretentions on a movie of his terrible story happening. He presumably views movies as a way to get stories made by people like him onto the big screen.

Second, adapting a story that is very much just a framework can yield great results. Technically, MK9 was a retelling of MK1-3, for example. Even in just Sonic 1 there's enough for a movie, you have a central conflict with personal repercussions and a potential conflict of principles.

Oh yeah, I never really liked the Sonic/Sally dynamic , kind of reminds me of like a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck sort of thing where Daffy ends up the butt of jokes the moment Bugs is on screen, or similar to a less acute Junior from George & Junior. Retainig her relevance to the plot limited Sonic's agency in the plot because if he wasn't told what to do by Sally, Sally wouldn't have had anything to do. This has been an issue since SatAM, though the transition to comic form fixed the problem where each of Sally's lines was preceded and followed by a loud gasp of perhaps some kind of deep pant. Of course , it goes without saying that there are a lot of better ways to write a character out and just replacing her with Man Sally solves none of those problems.

[KnucklesDontChuckle]

omg sorry im really out of this. Will penders be using knuckles? 

also lara su isnt in the comics anymore, right?

[Zaysho]

omg sorry im really out of this. Will penders be using knuckles? 

also lara su isnt in the comics anymore, right?

 

Penders can't use Knuckles and was never going to be able to, so no worries about him. *phew*

 

Lara-Su, among so many others, were given the boot because of this whole mess.

[biznizz]

No. Not even Ken can claim to own Knuckles. Outside of an expy, a similar character to get around a trademark, Knux won't be in LS-C. Hell, said expy is pretty much confirmed dead in this, unless Ken will shamelessly pull another Locke and reveal Lara's dad is still alive and watching from the shadows.

Lara-Su herself is completely gone from the book, alongside every other character Ken ever created, or pretty much even alluded to. And no, nothing will EVER bring them back outside of Ken outright selling them back to SEGA so Archie can use them (and that is even a snowball's chance in hell right now). Lara, Lien-Da and all of them are going to be in Ken's new project, altered beyond recognition.

[Wittymations]

Ken outright selling them back to SEGA so Archie can use them (and that is even a snowball's chance in hell right now).

And even then, SEGA would have to be willing to spend money on characters they care nothing about, and Archie (or at least Ian) would have to think it's worth the effort to try to reintroduce them.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

He does, quite often, even now. Take a look back more recently and you will find posts about his Lara-Su crap saying stuff like "I've just realized that <insert character name here> has a huge role in the story". Or "I'm going to have to do a few rewrites as I've just discovered that <insert character name here> is key to the plot".. Etc etc.

Sounds more like Penders has a loose grasp on how to make a rough draft.

 

This is why I plan my shit out first before I get to writing. It's easier to make adjustments when you know where you're going but need to alter things to get there.

[horridus]

Penders has a pretty loose grasp about most things in general, really. 

 

But yeah, most people would indeed plan ahead when it comes to a longrunning plot. Penders is a different animal though; he's the kind of guy who just piles on spur of the moment ideas and developments without really considering the consequences or the consistency issues that spring up. I honestly think he made Julie-Su into Lien-Da's sister because he wanted to do a 'Romeo and Juliet'-esque forbidden romance. 

 

While technically the separation of generations between the two is more than enough for them to not be related in any significant sense, it still gets to be a brow raiser when you consider that he had Knux refer to Kragok as a cousin and Dimitri as an uncle... 

[Delta Starfire]

Talking of the Knuckles family dramas, I have a burning question that I really want answered. 

 

The Guardians, right? There's, like, five generations (probably more) all still very much alive and seemingly healthy just hanging around and expositioning at Haven for 25 issues of KtE and when it comes to it, they still seem to be able to fight. Waht the hell's going in here? Why are none of them dead? Are Mobians just really long lived? Or are the Guardians in particular immortal for some reason? If so, how come? Also, Lien-Da doesn't look any older in M:25YL. Is she long-lived/immortal too? is it just echidnas who this applies to? 

 

It's never explained and it bugs the crap out of me!

[QuantumEdge]

I think I read it was thanks to interaction with Chaos energies that gave them such longevity. 

[biznizz]

I think the implication is that exposure & harnessing Chaos energy made the Guardians very long lived, even without all the overkill Locke did to Knuckles. And maybe that's after saying base echidnas lived longed than every other Mobian? Who knows?

My question is that, despite being introduced as being apparently posted around the world before getting summoned to Haven (not doing anything to fight Robotnik, natch) why they did they all decided to stay until Finitevus banished them to the Cage and continue to stand around and do nothing but spew out bullsh*t.

As for 25YL Lien-Da, I'm sure she wasn't visibly aged much because Penders & Butler wanted her to "still be sexy". Hell, wasn't that a reason Ken gave for Diva! Lien-Da's nightmare render art?

[Delta Starfire]

I kinda thought Lien-Da was sexy. But I'm a furry freak like that.