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

[Razule]

He says they're not humans, but his run of the Archie comics is one of the few Sonic media their ages in comparison to the adults gets brought up the most. Sonic and friends went to school that one time. He said he considered Geoffrey the, "college jock to Sally's high school junior". Ugh. 

[horridus]

1 hour ago, Razule said:

He says they're not humans, but his run of the Archie comics is one of the few Sonic media their ages in comparison to the adults gets brought up the most. Sonic and friends went to school that one time. He said he considered Geoffrey the, "college jock to Sally's high school junior". Ugh. 

Writers who invoke 'they're not human' to explain things that'd be odd or abhorrent to readers tend to come in two distinct types. The first type is a writer who has put a great deal of thought into how a nonhuman mindset would in fact be much different from that of a human (or rather, the audience's) and as such is writing to reflect the fact that the mindset of a nonhuman is in fact going to be non-human. A great example of this doesn't involve aliens, but rather rabbits- Watership Down goes to great pains to demonstrate that while the rabbits we follow are sapient and have their own culture and such, they are definitely not human. They have difficulties grasping concepts that humans take for granted, see the world in terms of being a great, perpetual danger and act accordingly, and do not have the same perspective of things like relationships that humans do, in reflection of the behavior of actual wild rabbits. It can be callous and even seem cruel at times, but that is the way it is, because they are rabbits. 

The second type of writer who does this, by contrast, is simply making excuses for their own shoddy writing, and sometimes even excusing themselves for putting more of their own tastes into their work than many would be comfortable with. These are writers who are basically using the inhumanity of the characters as a fig leaf, a smoke screen to cover up the fact that their behavior is something that the audience simply can't get behind, and that's without getting into the way more sordid reasons for this. 

Penders, obviously, is an example of the second type, on top of the fact that he is a writer who is *desperate* to be seen as a 'mature' writer, which is completely at odds with the fact that the only thing that gave him a career is a children's comic based on a children's video game franchise about a super fast blue hedgehog. That is not to say that it is forbidden or impossible to touch on more mature subjects in such a book, but frankly just in general Penders lacks the insight and maturity needed to do so. And THIS subject in particular has absolutely no place in this book, this licensed book meant for kids. Penders can excuse himself all he wants, but in the end that's all it is- an excuse, to explain away the fact that he simply cannot write compelling or believable people in general, human or otherwise. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

He says they’re not humans, but the story with the Xorda has them justifying wiping out the planet with a black hole because the “mobosapiens” (which, ngl, is a pretty good pseudoscience name for the mobians) had a “percentage of human DNA.”

Get the fuck outta here.

[horridus]

57 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

He says they’re not humans, but the story with the Xorda has them justifying wiping out the planet with a black hole because the “mobosapiens” (which, ngl, is a pretty good pseudoscience name for the mobians) had a “percentage of human DNA.”

Get the fuck outta here.

Keep in mind that THAT plot development happened under Bollers, so as far as Penders is concerned it may as well not exist. He was always pretty adamant and consistent about his belief that Mobius was an alien planet rather than an alternate/future planet Earth, and hey, that's a fair assessment of things. 

Unfortunately it doesn't really hold up when THIS is the map of Mobius HE designed-

Or that he insists on including references to pop culture like this, with this specific one causing Knuckles to remark how weird it is for an Echidna to be named 'Dave'. 

Given the names the Echdina have displayed up to this point it seems weird in of itself that 'Dave' would be singled out as an odd name for an Echidna, but that's by the by. 

Point of order is, his own worldbuilding gave more than enough evidence for Mobius to in fact be a future version of Earth or something along those lines, and even before that reveal his pretensions of writing his characters with a nonhuman mindset in mind is pure, undiluated hogwash. At no point in any of his stories has he ever written Mobians as anything but short, furry humans, with his attempts at demonstrating their 'different' nature being unconvincing at best and ludicrous at worst, and usually ignored after being introduced and inconsistently applied. 

One of the best examples of this are his much beloved Echidna- he concocted that 'Soul Touch' nonsense as being some kind of evolutionary compensation for the fact that Echidna are apparently so un-social they need that extra jolt to continue propagating their species. In theory this SHOULD mean that Echidna civilization looks very different from a human civilization, since they are not social creatures as we are, and in particular their ideas about love and romance would be VASTLY different due to the fact they have the Soul Touch. There are a lot of ways you can convey that, but at the end of the day the Echidna cultures as developed by Penders in absolutely no way reflect any of it. The Soul Touch was just a cockamamie way to justify Julie and Knux getting together quickly, and absolutely does not factor in to how the Echidna are as a people. They are shown, again, as being Short, Fluffy Humans, from how they socialize to how their buildings look. 

Like I said, Penders saying these things is just a cheap excuse for his failings as a writer, and in this case an excuse for his utterly reprehensible need to include an ephebophilial relationship in a kids book purely so he can pretend he's an 'adult' writer and to further facilitate his weird, weird hangups about Sonic as a character. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, horridus said:

3 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

 

Keep in mind that THAT plot development happened under Bollers, so as far as Penders is concerned it may as well not exist.

Oh, that makes so much sense why I actually liked that plot then. I actually forgot Bollers did that.

[AlienBunny]

Pender seems to forget that just because it happens in our world doesn't mean it's okay. Plus, is it a teenager dating a young adult or was it two consenting adults with an age gap dating, because that's quite a difference. 

[horridus]

30 minutes ago, AlienBunny said:

Plus, is it a teenager dating a young adult or was it two consenting adults with an age gap dating, because that's quite a difference. 

Oh, it was very much a teenager being aggressively pursued by an adult. 

See, it goes like this- according to that bio Penders releashed for St. John (which, I should remind you, he considers canon to his work on the Sonic comic) Geoffrey would have been 21 years old at the time Endgame happened. 

We know this because the same bio Penders wrote for (the first) Robotnik, it explicitly gives the date of his death as 3235.

Now, this is an important detail, because the bio given for Sally lists her birth date as day 186 of the year 3220-

In short, Robotnik died roughly three weeks before Sally's fifteenth birthday. 

Meaning that technically speaking, in those times we see St. John snogging with her? We're seeing a 21 year old swapping spit with a 14 year old. 

This is the hill Penders continually chooses to die upon. 

[CertifiedNobody]

Call me crazy, but I think Penders would rather just write massive loredump bios for his OCs than work on his obscure spinoff of a series he doesn't own

[Leebo4]

Can anyone find copies please of the data files bios he has done so far for Lara su chronicles? Like has one been done for the Anthony Mackie looking guy

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Not sure what this is meant to prove to anyone. And also Ken, what the last part of the email says is how you outlined contributions, not a compliment on it. Given this is from the man claiming to bring value to Knuckles as a character, somehow I’d imagine that those contributions are heavily more hyped up than they actually are.

[Rabbitearsblog]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Not sure what this is meant to prove to anyone. And also Ken, what the last part of the email says is how you outlined contributions, not a compliment on it. Given this is from the man claiming to bring value to Knuckles as a character, somehow I’d imagine that those contributions are heavily more hyped up than they actually are.

What claims is he trying to make?

[Jason Berry]

7 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Call me crazy, but I think Penders would rather just write massive loredump bios for his OCs than work on his obscure spinoff of a series he doesn't own

Because Penders doesn't want to create. He just wants to own. He wants to own so he can keep selling crappy merchandise of a book he refuses to finish after ten long years. He can write. He can draw (barely). But he keeps dragging his feet on the project because it's more about ownership than anything. He's been pushing his app for the last four years with only three pages finished. Even the most rookie talent could have a finished book done in a decade, so what's his excuse?

[King Scoopa Koopa]

53 minutes ago, Jason Berry said:

so what's his excuse?

All you have to do is look at the latest headlines on any given day, I'm sure.

[CertifiedNobody]

6 hours ago, Jason Berry said:

Because Penders doesn't want to create. He just wants to own. He wants to own so he can keep selling crappy merchandise of a book he refuses to finish after ten long years. He can write. He can draw (barely). But he keeps dragging his feet on the project because it's more about ownership than anything. He's been pushing his app for the last four years with only three pages finished. Even the most rookie talent could have a finished book done in a decade, so what's his excuse?

I think he's more like an OC creator you'd see on deviantart. He loves coming up with lore and trivia about his fan characters but can't be bothered to put in the effort to actually tell a story.

[Promethean0416]

 

 

I am debating on asking him if he knew Anthony Mackie at one point to get part of his "inspiration" for the character...

[SkullPirateMike]

On 4/19/2022 at 8:10 AM, horridus said:

 

Wha...? I know this is a little off-topic, but why was he giving heights in Marks? As far as I know Marks were an obsolete measure of WEIGHT, not height? Why give heights at all if you're going to do it in a way that nobody reading can possibly understand? Assuming that Geoffrey is roughly the height of other Sonic characters, 9.5 stone is pretty damn heavy, too. It's almost double game Sonic's canon weight. It's almost like... he just wrote down some random, meaningless numbers without actually understanding what any of them mean.

[Razule]

On 4/19/2022 at 11:08 PM, CertifiedNobody said:

I think he's more like an OC creator you'd see on deviantart. He loves coming up with lore and trivia about his fan characters but can't be bothered to put in the effort to actually tell a story.

That's definitely the fun part. Most OC makers have other obligations like school or work though. You'd think a former professional writer with seemingly nothing else going on would've been able to make at least one book by now. 

[Promethean0416]

5 hours ago, SkullPirateMike said:

Wha...? I know this is a little off-topic, but why was he giving heights in Marks? As far as I know Marks were an obsolete measure of WEIGHT, not height? Why give heights at all if you're going to do it in a way that nobody reading can possibly understand? Assuming that Geoffrey is roughly the height of other Sonic characters, 9.5 stone is pretty damn heavy, too. It's almost double game Sonic's canon weight. It's almost like... he just wrote down some random, meaningless numbers without actually understanding what any of them mean.

Unless someone else can clarify this better, I agree.

And I think it was not just him, but most, if not all, of his characters from the Sonic Data Files of the past. For example:

 

[horridus]

8 hours ago, SkullPirateMike said:

Wha...? I know this is a little off-topic, but why was he giving heights in Marks? As far as I know Marks were an obsolete measure of WEIGHT, not height? Why give heights at all if you're going to do it in a way that nobody reading can possibly understand? Assuming that Geoffrey is roughly the height of other Sonic characters, 9.5 stone is pretty damn heavy, too. It's almost double game Sonic's canon weight. It's almost like... he just wrote down some random, meaningless numbers without actually understanding what any of them mean.

There is in fact an obscure measure of height called the Mark, which is 1.4 CM, or about half an inch. That being said, Penders' uses these archiac and outdated measurements as a way to pretend he's doing in-depth world building, while at the same time doing as you said and tossing out numbers without regard for how much they actually measure. It's hilarious really- under this system, Robotnik/Eggman weighs 12.7 stone... which means he's only 177 pounds! 

3 hours ago, Promethean0416 said:

Unless someone else can clarify this better, I agree.

And I think it was not just him, but most, if not all, of his characters from the Sonic Data Files of the past. For example:

 

Yep, he does indeed- he's persisting with this format into the Lara-Su Chronicles. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Worldbuilding shouldn’t be complicated. I know it’s fun to pull up old units of measurements to use, but when telling a story and showing or detailing a setting, you should want the audience to be able to understand your information clearly so they can follow along.

If I have to pull up an encyclopedia or go on Wikipedia to figure out details that probably don’t have much affect on the story, then it’s safe to say you’re doing too much.

[SkullPirateMike]

It's probably lucky for him that his comics never made it outside the US, because stone as a weight measurement is still in common use in the UK, which is how I knew immediately his weight measurements were bizarre.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I think they had some limited overseas releases, if only because he constantly says there was and it would be much easier to disprove that objective statement than a subjective one like "I'm so great everyone loves me"

[SkullPirateMike]

Yeah, they haven't. I've looked into it before. Some specialist comic stores would import them from the US, but the only official Archie releases outside North America all started from after the first Genesis Wave and ended after 20-40 issues due to low sales.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Ideally, you could use multiple units of measurements—like basically everyone else does, and provide them together.

We here in the US are still on Imperial for most of our measuring in general, so any time we need to go to metric, we have to Google it. That or just stick to metric, because it’s not that hard to use even for us Americans—it’s just more common to use Imperial for one reason or another.

[Leebo4]

 

Big fan of his channel. He brought up derivative characters in regards to Spawn and how DC considers derivative Supermen as not being close to being an original creation

 

you think this would be brought up in regards to Ken claiming ownership of Scourge and how did he do a copyright on evil sonic

 

by the way Drake is working on another big video…..

 

https://www.twitter.com/TrailerDrake/status/1500568755126030342