#I'm just listing out what happens in canon

[platonic-soulmates-gencest]

you said send mommy dean monday headcanons and my first thought was that when they were younger, dean used to cool down sam's soup by blowing on it himself before spoonfeeding sam. he only ever did it with soup (sam had to tough out the rest) but he was still doing it past a traditionally appropriate age and the habit stopped for the same reason they always do (john made a face, dean didn't do it anymore). dean wouldn't do it afterwards unless sam was really sick and the first time jess jokingly blew on sam's soup when he had the flu at stanford he broke down crying

OH MY GOD THIS IS PERFECT

Definitely happened. I don't care what anyone says this is canon to me now!! (Thank you for enlightening my day with this!!)

Dean blowing on Sammy's spoonfuls at first because he had to and later because it had always been like this. Dean knew no other way.

I'm thinking 15 year old Sam just sitting on the table and studying, too engrossed in his reading to eat on his own. Dean doesn't mind. He likes taking care of Sam. His own soup is untouched as he concentrates on feeding Sam without spilling any soup on his books or have Sam burn himself.

John finds them like that.

Dean just greets his dad and continues feeding Sam, who hasn't taken his eyes off his books.

John just keeps staring at them, eyes wide like he's suddenly walked in another universe, like this hasn't happened a million times before.

He talks to Dean about it the next day. Dean stops doing it in front of John.

Eventually, 16 years old Sam decides they have to stop to be normal.

Dean witnesses Sam getting burn or spilling soup on himself countless times after that. He always tries to get the spoon from his brother but stops himself before Sam notices.

When Sam is at Stanford, Jess does it once when Sam is sick. It was supposed to be a romantic gesture. Sam knows that. He knows it but all he can think about was how he misses Dean in the moment. Dean always made colds feel better. And Jess was trying. Sam knew she was trying but she wasn't Dean. Nobody could ever do it like Dean.

They don't get back in the habit of Dean spoonfeeding Sam until years after they've moved to the bunker. When they stop caring about what others think.

They don't do it in front of Mary though. Dean doesn't wanna rub it in how he's always been the one taking care of Sam and not her. Sam kinda wants to show her though. He wants her to know how Dean had always been a better mother than she would ever be.

(Okay, I'm gonna stop. But I kinda want to write more about this... I should add this to my "to write" fic list. Thank you for the ask!)

[pmpmyread]

spreading positivity for yourself and for others: what are some fanfics you've written that you're proud of? who are your favorite writers in the fic community?

Hey Anon, thanks for your lovely ask! Sending some positive vibes right back at you 🩵

Your first question tasks me to choose a favorite among my children lol but I will give it a shot.

Distraction is a Drifter x Eris Destiny 2 fic I wrote last year. I'm proud of it because it was my first try at tiptoeing back towards the romance genre after over a decade since writing my previous fic (a FFVIII Squall x Rinoa thing I'd written on ffnet back when I was 19 lmao). It's pretty tame, I even stopped just short of tagging it as Romance, opting for Romantic Friendship instead, that's just how chicken I truly was LOL. My writing has definitely improved since, but ultimately, composing and sharing this fic helped alleviate some of my self-doubt at the time.

Nanami Kento & Casual Touches is one of my earlier JJK x Reader fics. I'm proud of this one not only for what I've created but the way by which it was produced. To this day, it was the easiest time I've had writing anything during what happened to be a difficult period for me. I'd somehow managed to turn my turmoil into one of the most hopeful and positive pieces I've ever written. Corny as it sounds, that story and that moment truly did so much for me. The only negative here is that I've been chasing that elusive high ever since LMAO.

I've answered a variation of your second question within a recent ask linked here, so do check that out as well, but I will certainly add some more inspiring writers below, along with my current favorite work of theirs.

@mysteria157 (JJK): Incredibly deep stories with some of the strongest and most admirable MCs you'll ever read. Rec: Love's Ransom

@rahuratna (JJK + BNHA): Intricate and immersive universes depicted in the most beautiful prose. Rec: Arangetram

@cmdrfupa (JJK): Expert-level character studies skillfully wrapped into elaborate narration. Rec: Furtive

@espace--positif (LaDS + JJK): A fluff merchant. Target-precise canon characterization depicted in wonderful, feel-good fics. Rec: Mornings with Him

@imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese (Destiny 2): Insightful and healing stories that truly dig deep into the vast Destiny 2 universe and the complexity of its characters. Rec: Perfection

This list is FAR from exhaustive as I've recently connected with so many talented writers within these different fandoms and I still have a ridiculously long TBR list. I will definitely create a recs list sometime soon. If there is one thing I am confident about, it's my fan work curation skills. lol 💅🏽

Thanks again for your ask, Anon, it was a great way to start my day 🩵

[heterosexualomegaverse]

Personal top favorite fics on ao3 of all time

- living's just a waste of death by author tothendoftheline

Best Political Animals fanfic out there. I consider it the canon ending. I think all my longest comments ever I posted on ao3 were on this fic. It's a mostly canon compliant detailed exploration of what TJ's life would actually be like. How his (childhood) trauma effected him. His time as a white house kid, his sexuality, his addictions. It starts pre-canon and goes on long after canon has ended. TJ starts working on himself, his relationships with his family change, he gets new friends (kinda). Idk if I'm selling it well but I love it so much.

- Known Associates by author Thingswithwings

Fic that made me ship Steve and Rhodey lol. Though Steve calls him Jim. Was rereading it yesterday and damn its so good. an (I think) realistic depiction of queer life in the 1930's and 1940's then the movie plot happens and Steve is in 2012 and now has to figure out what/ who he is in this century. Also got a plot about kinda being experimented on and turned into super soldiers.

- The Barnes Files by author PaintedDoe

Bucky Barnes' therapy sessions in transcript format. (can you tell I love character studies)

- Flawed Perfection by author Squiggles13

Also part of a series but I haven't read the other parts yet. This one also mostly starts as Bucky going to therapy but then the tfatws plot happens but changed to be way better.

- Teach Me by author stucktogether

Steve/Bucky college au. Steve things he's straight but can't seem to keep his eyes off of Bucky. It's isn't until they've fooled around a half dozen times or so that he things he may just be bisexual. This Bucky's also got some deep lore.

- Treading water by author sparkagrace

SteveBucky olympic swimmers au where they were childhood friends that got separated at 12 but reunited at the olympics, except Bucky's presence brings back a lot of feelings that Steve can't deal with. This one gets real angsty. It has a sequel that is even more angsty.

- (A series) 'Til the End of the Line by author ohstars

SteveBucky with marvel canon except what if they were gay. Until endgame where shit is changed a lot cuz you know the time-travel staying in the past obviously doesn't happen. It does go on after that. They finally come out to the team (cuz they were closeted to whole time with Sam being the only one who knows) They have kids together, get married and then there is some time travel shenanigans and a lot of stuff until they both die of old age.

- The Island Man by author Amber_Skye

What if Steve Rogers was never found in the ice and got rescued by shield, but instead got out himself, but still only in 2012? And no one believes he is actually Steve Rogers Captain America? He ends up homeless doubting his own mind. Maybe he really isn't Steve Rogers? Maybe he really is crazy

anyway idk why I wrote this. I just wanted to list some of my faves. didn't really put a lot of thought into this, it's late and I'm tired.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Can you elaborate more on how Amelie is indulgent with Felix?

In Felix (the episode), after Felix does all that awful stuff including trying to make Adrien's friend's hate him via impersonating him, we get this:

Adrien: That video you sent to my friends... Unforgivable, Félix. (Félix doesn't look him in the eye, only looks down, upset and ashamed) Amelie: Now that his father isn't here to stop him from getting into mischief - (Félix stops her.) Félix: I don't deserve to be forgiven, mom. I put my favorite cousin in danger. He's right. No apology can ever be enough.

Now, we don't know exactly what Amelie was about to say, but Felix's interruption makes it pretty clear that she was about to defend everything he did or at least downplay it. Otherwise why would he say that he didn't deserve to be forgive and that Adrien was right?

This is further supported by the next scene in which we see Felix and Amilie. They get on the train and what does Amelie do?

Félix: I've got a surprise for you, mom. (He reaches behind her ear and pulls out Gabriel's ring.) Amelie: (gasps) But Gabriel refused to hand it over to me! And after everything that happened - (reaches out and cups his face) My little magician. I can never understand how you always manage to get what you want. (closes her hand over his) Keep it. It's yours now. Félix: But... you wanted it so much. Amelie: Only to give it to you. You've always been so fascinated by them. How many times have you asked me to tell you the story of the Graham de Vanily twin rings, huh? (she kisses his forehead) I'm glad it's back in the family where it truly belongs. (She winks at him and then rests her eyes. Félix smiles deviously out the window.)

She praises him for stealing and doesn't say a single word about all of the messed up things he did. If this were my kid, we would be talking about his actions were and trying to get him to explain why he did all of that. We'd also be discussing his punishment.

We also learn that Amelie only demanded that her recently widowed and still grieving brother-in-law give up his wedding ring because Felix wanted it. Even though, arguably, the rings should go to Adrien or at least stay with Gabriel until someone in the family is ready to marry. Amelie had no need for them other than "baby wants it, baby gets it."

This was before the sentireveal, so it's debatable if the original intent was to take it this far or if this is just another victim of the retcon, but it's canon now and the writers claim to have planned it all from the start, so I'm going to treat it as fully intentional and discuss the sentistuff, too.

We never see Felix or Amelie learn that the rings are Adrien's amoks, but Felix very clearly knew that's what the ring he had was. Based on that, it's not illogical to conclude that Amelie knew that she was asking for Adrien's amok and didn't care. Baby wants his cousin's controls, baby gets it.

Moving on!

The start of season five sees Ladybug and Chat Noir try to track down Felix since he knows Monarch's identity and gave him all of the miraculous. Kinda a big deal. When they get to London, this happens:

Amelie: My son wasn't here this morning, when I woke up. I didn't worry though, because I thought he might have gone to see his cousin Adrien in Paris. Those two are so fond of each other, but Félix wasn't returning my calls, though I contacted his uncle Gabriel; he told me he hadn't seen him. Cosmobug: And yet he was in Paris I talked to him. Amelie: Oh, Cosmobug, Astrocat, I hope nothing's happened to him! Cosmobug: Don't worry, ma'am. He'll probably end up at his uncle's. Astrocat: Or he might already be on his way back home to London. Amelie: Thanks so much to the two of you for your support!

Then the heroes leave. At the end of the episode, we cut back to London and see this:

Amelie: Tea break. (Félix comes out of the room holding a laptop and follows Amelie to the main hall. Amelie pours tea into a cup, while Félix sits on a sofa and works on his laptop.) Amelie: (putting her hand on Félix's head) Don’t worry, my Félix. Mom is here to protect you from those superheroes who think you’re a villain.

Who cares about saving Paris from a terrorist? If her baby wants to hide away, then Amelie will help him hide away.

Also, if she had forced Felix to talk to the heroes here, then Gabriel wouldn't have died because this is before Destruction. Not saying that his death is her fault, but Amelie did inadvertently let to her nephew be orphaned because she didn't want Felix to face the consequences of his own actions. Remember that as you read this next bit.

And then we have Emotion, which sees Amelie storm into the diamond dance and cause a massive, confusing scene:

Amelie Graham de Vanily: (struggles to make her way in through the guards) Gabriel! My son Félix has been missing for weeks now! (storms towards them) Not only have you and your friends been no help with the search! But now I'm not even invited to the ball?! You haven't been the same since my sister Emilie disappeared! Why are you rejecting us? Gabriel: This is not the place nor the time, Amelie. Nathalie will see you out. (Nathalie begins to walk towards Amelie, and grabs her by the wrist, walking her outside of the ball) Amelie: I don't understand how Gabriel could've become so cruel, let alone why you're still complacent in his actions. Nathalie: Sorry, Amelie. I have no choice. (hands Amelie to the guards) Amelie: There's always a choice, Nathalie.

Ignoring the massively hypocritical "you're still complacent in his actions" line, this is a weird scene. Amelie waltzed right into the mansion back in Felix (the episode). If she wanted to talk to Gabriel about the fact that Felix was missing, why not do that again? It's not like this is urgent. She's apparently waited weeks to come talk to him. Why now?

Cut to the end of the episode and we get our answer:

Amelie: You were right: I did everything you told me to and Gabriel didn't do or say anything to help me. He despises me. He's a monster! They're all monsters! Argos: Hold my feather. (He de-transforms into Félix and goes to hug Amelie) Félix: Not all of them. (smiles)

So Amelie was just doing what every good mom does: blindly follows her child's instructions.

What were you expecting Gabriel to do, hon? Stop the event? This is such a weird test to pull. It'd be different if Felix had just gone missing, but she literally says "weeks". Why is she shocked that Gabriel correctly said "this is not the place nor the time, Amelie"?

I don't like to give Gabriel points, but he gets them here. I wouldn't cancel my event either. I'd tell her to come talk to me tomorrow or ask an assistant to talk to her. Of course, I'd also have been helping with the search before this, but that brings us to the second issue: Felix isn't missing.

What have the search efforts been? What does Amelie want Gabriel to do? No one has ever mentioned an ongoing search and our heroes would absolutely be involved in that since Felix, you know, aided a terrorist, but they're not so this all feels like a shit test.

Also, please remember, this is right after Felix snapped humanity out of existence as Argos and he detransforms in front of his mother. Either Amelie was living in a bubble or she saw everything her son did and was just like, "That's cool, baby! Mommy loves you! Go commit genocide! Your song was so good!"

This is all probably Amelie overcompensating for Colt's abuse, but you asked this in response to another post where I said that Amelie and Andre are the same, so that excuse doesn't really hold water. Andre spoils Chloe for the exact same reason. Aubrey's abuse may have looked different, but it was still abuse.

The only difference between Amelie and Andre is that Andre abuses his mayoral power for Chloe's sake and Amelie doesn't do anything like that. But then, Amelie doesn't have that type of power to abuse. If she did, then I have no doubt that she'd do the exact same thing, so I'm not giving her that point. She is exactly the same: overly indulgent to the point that she's made her child rotten.

Overly indulging an abused person like this isn't going to help them get over their abuse. That's what therapy is for. I adore the magical power of love, but only when it comes to magical threats. Love is not enough to fix anyone's mental health. You can't love away things like PTSD.

[crystalkitty1220]

Man I wonder where the leader of the fear realm could've gone, it's alMOST LIKE NEVIN HAS AN

[backpackingspace]

an incomplete list of things I thought were pretty obvious bc I'm feeling petty

The jedi being about processing your emotions and grief and being able to work through the feelings in a healthy way

Odysseus being a rape victim

[hoperaypegasus]

Just statistically speaking here, not all these kids can have absolutely insane parents/guardians like Gingka and Hikaru have with Ryo. 

Like, we know Madoka’s dad runs B-Pit so he’s also a mechanic, but have him also be just an average looking dude. And Yuki’s grandfather might have been an old astronomer obsessed with beyblade, but like have none of his coworkers have believed him with the legendary blader thing. Because let’s be honest here, if your really old floor supervisor said a mythical star was going to chose the next saviors of the prophecy, you would not believe them.

And also, make some of these people have nothing to do with beyblade. Like absolutely nothing. They’re are so confused at what these kids are doing, but are trying their best to be supportive. 

For example...

Kenta’s mom? She’s a waitress at a really nice restaurant downtown and sometimes brings home extra deserts for Kenta.

Kyoya’s dad? He owns his own small real estate company and still also works as an agent a lot.

Hikaru’s mom? A nurse who ended up falling sick and dying from a disease she was working to heal.

Nile’s sister? Oh, she currently works as a seamstress as she’s in law school to become a family law attorney.

Demure’s grandmother? She was teacher who worked especially with language learning.

Julian’s family? Huge tycoons in manufacturing, especially in the car and vehicular industry.

Sophie’s family? She actually comes from a line of famous fashion and costume designers, commonly featured on Broadway and Hollywood.

Wales’s family? They’re old money from the oil industry and work globally to expand their company to this day.

Chao Xin’s sisters? One is a teacher, another is a travel agent, and the third one works at a pet store not far from Beylin Temple.

Mei Mei’s family? Oh, they run a pretty popular restaurant that’s even made it onto some global food locations lists.

Tsubasa’s parents? They were also special investigators but did not use beys at all in their work, sticking to more traditional methods.

Dashan’s mom? She was an admissions officer at Beylin temple and worked outreach for new students.

Gingka’s mom? Oh, she became a horror and mystery author after she left Koma and married an editor.

Masamune’s mom? She’s a diplomat actually and works with trade relationships between the US and Japan.

King’s mom? A social worker who adopted him and his siblings after falling in love with them on the job.

Benkei’s grandmother? She was a chef and the one who taught him how to cook.

And yes, they are all very confused by Ryo as a person as well as how the hell he was able to become director of the WBBA.

[yo9urt]

ball dur's gait 3 is ruining my life

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

🔥unpopular charles opinion

The thing is, it’s not an opinion, really. The question isn’t meant to be a complaint or a rebuttal or anything. I just genuinely don’t get it! The question goes something like this.

So Charles/Klinger seems to be the one actively disliked ship in the fandom, discounting the h*nn*hawk vs p*erc*ntyre gang war and that one rabidly anti-hawnk person (lol). Most nobody has any love for the ship, because it’s stupid and OOC, of course, but mostly because it’s egregiously obviously racist and gross, which is the critique that seems most common, and to be of most importance to people.

And to be clear, for the purposes of this post I am wholly agreeing with all that! It’s distasteful and immoral and people who are into it are insane, including me. I’m not arguing against this line of thinking, I just wanted to look at its inner logic. Because when I first heard people saying this, I thought, “Yeah, makes sense, Charles is truthfully a terrible person with abhorrent opinions. Nobody watching this already unfortunately bigotry-riddled show is obligated to try and look past that! It is Always valid to hate Charles’ guts.”

But it turns out most of the fandom (I assume it must be most, given how shockingly few people here have blocked me) actually don’t hate Charles, in general. It’s the specific ship, not the character, that’s distasteful. (Not to say any Charles ship is anything resembling popular, but like with most ships, that’s just a result of the general population’s Hawkeye BJ Laser Focus Gaze. I’ve never seen anybody actively dislike these ships when they’re brought up.) And the more I think about it, the more I wonder why, because well. to put it bluntly. It’s not like someone stops being racist when they’re not actively interacting with a nonwhite person.

You know what I mean? I feel like Charles��� bigotry would be a turn off for all of our generally morally sound protagonists, not just one who happens to be personally affected by it. But it only becomes an issue when it involves Klinger. I’ve heard people say that any Charles/Klinger ship fic would obviously have to go out of its way to address Charles’ racism, but I’ve read a few Charles/Hawkeye and Charles/Donna (and Charles / other strange and varied choices too, because of course I have) fics–really, REALLY good fics, that captured the characters very nicely and are very beautifully written–and I’ve yet to find one that discusses The Bigotry In The Room with any degree of seriousness.

(Pssst this is everyone’s chance to absolutely dunk on me by sending me fics that do this if there actually are a bunch and I’ve just never read them because I would in fact LOVE to read some fics with that topic regardless of ship!)

And to be clear, that’s fine with me! I truly do not care. When I read Charles running away to Maine or romancing Ms. Parker and I don’t see his love interests stop to ask “Hey, um, so any updates on the fact that you and your whole family are eugenicists?”, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because I just assume that Charles has already gone through the cult deprogramming step of his character development at some point prior to this, and either the love interest in question has already confirmed this off-page, or they are making the same assumption I am. After all, at least in Hawkeye’s case, the mere act of admitting romantic interest in a Democrat from the back of beyond would necessarily imply a shift in values, right?

(Admittedly, for all we canonically know Donna could be a fashy scumlord herself, so this reasoning doesn’t wholly apply there, but it obviously does to her fanon background/personality.) (Which is adorable, by the way. Everyone go check out the collective oeuvre of AO3 user onekisstotakewithme.)

So that’s all cool! It’s just that the same thing applies for me when it comes to Charles/Klinger. If anything, it applies even more, because you can have a fic where Charles’ whole family attend his and Donna’s 2nd wedding (Everyone go check out the collective oeuvre of AO3 user onekisstotakewithme!!!) but if Charles gets with Maxwell in any capacity, his father is at the very LEAST never going to speak to him again, ever. And personally I think that is SO fun and sexy, because Charles’ father is a white supremacist and I want him to die painfully forever and ever amen. <3

I got sidetracked a few times here and I just realized I never actually asked the question, which is, TL;DR: If it’s immoral–or at least gross and nonsensical–to ship Charles/Klinger, because Charles is bigoted, shouldn’t the same also apply to shipping Charles with many other characters too, given that they should logically also have a problem with his bigotry?

For what it’s worth, I have a bit of a theory about the answer to this, all to do with the incompetent way Charles’ bigotry (and other characters’ reactions to it) are portrayed in canon and the deeper Doylist factors that I think forced the showrunners into writing it like that, but I wanted to stay strictly on the topic of fandom attitudes for now, because it may be niche and silly, but I find it interesting. And I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on it!

[ofgentleresolve]

guess who...instead of doing drafts ended up continuing the monster of a fanfic for their ocs?

[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.

[pipermca]

New AO3 Tag Wrangling Policy and the Transformers Fandom

Edit in the event people come back to the original post: Please do not email AO3 about this issue. See their response about this issue!

(This is a long one, folks, but I think it's important.)

A new tag-wrangling policy on AO3 has the potential to create some massive confusion and chaos in the Transformers fanfic community, with regards to fandom tags. There is a Reddit post about it here with a focus on anime fandoms, but I want to give some concrete examples for the Transformers fandom on why we DO NOT WANT this, and why I think it's a horrible idea.

The Problem

Basically, AO3 is looking to get rid of the "All Media Types" fandom tag across the board, either by dismantling them or just not maintaining them. The Transformers - All Media Types tag has been an all-purpose tag that you could select when your story doesn't fall into any one specific continuity. Additionally, all most (see below) TF continuities on AO3 are considered a subtag of the Transformers - All Media Types tag. For example, if you look at the link above for all works in the All Media Types tag, you will see fics that are also tagged ONLY with Transformers: Animated, because it falls under the All Media Types tag.

One exception: With the upcoming Transformers: One movie coming out imminently, there will likely be a big influx of stories tagged with Transformers: One. In fact, there are several already. However, it hasn't been linked to the larger Transformers - All Media Types tag yet. I wasn't worrying about it though, because I know these things can take time.

With information about this new tagging policy, however, I'm now wondering whether it'll EVER get linked to the All Media Types tag. If that happens, and when more continuities are developed in the coming years (since you know Hasbro loves creating new universes) this has the potential to cause massive confusion when looking for stories to read.

Searching for Stories with the New Tagging System

So let's say the All Media Types fandom tag isn't accurate anymore, because it no longer includes ALL of the continuities (such as TF:One). You will need to include ALL the Transformers continuities when browsing for TF fics.

How many tags is that? Well, here are all of the tags currently listed under the Transformers - All Media Types tag:

Note that this doesn't include Transformers: One since it hasn't been categorized yet.

You will potentially have to have 40 or more different fandom tags in your search, just in case the author tagged their story with something you weren't expecting.

This massively decreases the findability of a story.

Tagging with the New System

The email response from the Tag Wrangling group (see the linked Reddit post above) seems to be a bit flip in the response to the user's concern. "...encourages creators to tag with the media they intend."

While I appreciate what they are attempting to do, this policy change feels like a solution in search of a problem, especially in larger fandoms with multiple continuities, versions, and media types that are all cross-pollinated in both canon and fanon. While I'm focusing on Transformers fandom, imagine a creator in the DC comic universe writing a story that incorporates bits and pieces from a dozen different reboots.

For example, let's say that I am writing a fic about Ratchet. I am using the setting of the original G1 episodes, but I also am using the characterization of him as a bit of an old man grump. That characterization originated in the Animated continuity, but I want to incorporate bits of pieces of his other characterizations as well (old friend of Optimus from TFP, Ratchet ran a faction-free clinic like he did in the War for Cybertron series, he's got a Decepticon boyfriend like in IDW1 - or maybe even Cyberverse, etc.)

With this new tagging structure, I might potentially have to tag the story with ALL of those continuities. So instead of just slapping down the "All Media Types" tag (and maybe one other fandom tag that matches the characters as best I can), I'll have to analyze my story and try to figure out how best to tag for the characters I used.

And what if you're doing a completely AU version of the story? For example, a humanformers story, or merformers? Using the All Media Types tag along with a Alternate Universe - Human or Alternate Universe - Mermaid tag worked perfectly, since you weren't writing the story to fit into one specific continuity. But now, that might not be an option.

What To Do??

The first thing I would suggest is to contact AO3 (using the Feedback and Support page) and let them know (nicely) that you think this is a horrible idea. Give them some examples on how you use the All Media Types tag to find stories to read, or to help you tag a story. People outside of the Transformers fandom don't always appreciate how absolutely tangled the continuities can be with each other, and providing examples might help them see why this would be a really messy change.

Readers: Be aware that when you are looking in the All Media Types tag, it will no longer show newer continuities. And if AO3 starts dismantling that tag like they suggested they are doing, be aware that some stories won't show up in that tag like they used to. You can also create and then bookmark a custom search page that includes all 40+ continuities. REALLY annoying, but it's a workaround.

Writers: Until they start dismantling the All Media Types tag, ALWAYS ALWAYS tag your stories using Transformers - All Media Types... Especially for newer continuities. This will be especially important if you are writing a Transformers: One story. Right now, anyone who is only browsing the All Media Types tag will not see a story tagged only with Transformers: One. Make sure you're aware of how tags work and how they can affect the visibility and findability of your story.

Epilogue

Ugh. That's a lot of words for a long-weekend Saturday. And maybe I'm overreacting a tiny bit. But my work involves information architecture, and this change just absolutely baffles me. It's almost as though they want to make it harder to find stories. Considering that AO3 won a Hugo partially because of its fantastic tagging system, this change seems like AO3 is doing its best to shoot itself in the foot.

When you have a square hole, a round hole, and a rectangular hole… Yeah, you DO want each peg to go in the "right" hole. But if all of the pegs fit in the square hole, who cares? You got the job done.

I love you @ao3org, but please reconsider this change... Especially for IPs that are as old and are as varied as Transformers.

[exhuastedpigeon]

Sometimes I sit back and think about how almost all of the most insane and unhinged stuff about Buddie is stuff that, before getting into 9-1-1, I thought was fanon.

I started watching at the end of s6 and binged watched s1-s6 and I thought I was getting into another show where two guys stand near each other and the fandom ran with it and instead I got Buddie. I was sitting there watching being like.. wait this is all in the actual show? I thought it was all fan created stuff.

-> Eddie's introduction being set to "Whatta Man"? I thought that was a fan edit. -> Buck getting bashful after Eddie says "You can have my back any day" felt like something you'd see in fanon until you watch it ant realize it's canon. -> The entire Christmas elf scene -> Eddie holding Buck's hand while Buck is trapped under the ladder truck -> "There's no one in the world I trust with my son more than you" with Ed Sheeran playing over it??? CANON???? -> "Wanna go for the title" -> Buck digging at the earth like he could get to Eddie through 40 feet of mud is canon???? -> Eddie seeing flashes of Chris and Buck while he was buried under ground was canon and not an edit (this one blew my mind I'm not gonna lie to you). -> Chris ran to BUCK when he was mad Eddie was dating someone. -> The whole "construction on sunset" scene being that domestic blew my mind too. What do you mean that was actually in the show. -> The entire shooting scene? I genuinely can't believe we got that one shot of them just staring at each other in slow motion -> "Just say with me" -> THE WILL??? I truly thought that was fanon until I watched it with my own two eyes. -> Buck and Chris spending time together without Eddie (Eddie's line about Buck taking Chris to the zoo all the time in s5 I was like.. I've read this fic before) -> Buck canonically worrying about Eddie's health and mental health in s5? How is that canon and not fanon? -> Chris calling Buck during Eddie's breakdown truly blew my mind. That was in canon. When Chris was scared and worried about his dad he called Buck! -> THE LOVE HEART BUCK DREW?? THAT WAS CANON?!? -> The small moments we get of them (both together and with Chris) that just have a different vibe than when they're hanging out with other characters. Again I thought that was fanon and it turns out, nope it's just canon. -> Eddie running up the ladder without a safety line to get to Buck (screaming Buck's name) when Buck was struck by lightening. -> EDDIE CALLED BUCK COWBOY! THAT HAPPENED IN CANON TOO?! -> Eddie yelling "DO MORE" when the get Buck to the hospital after the lightening. -> Poker night? The same episode when all the canon couples were on dates Buck and Eddie actually got dressed up and Eddie took Buck to a secret poker game? IN CANON! That isn't fanon either??!? -> Buck's entire "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie" moment in 704. He was about to be kissed by another man and he said Eddie's name, what? 7 times? -> Buck being SO nervous about telling Eddie about his date with Tommy. Like just freaking out for an entire episode. -> THE BACHELOR PARTY?!? Those two being in cahoots is another thing that I thought was fanon at first and then you get moments like that and you're reminded it's canon. -> Buck being who Eddie turns to when he needs parenting support because he sees Buck as a co-parent of some sort. I still can't believe that's canon. Like in the text of the show Eddie has turned to Buck for parenting support multiple times. -> Buck being there when Chris left with his hand on Eddie's shoulder. Again, so insane that it's canon.

Anyway, this list is in no way comprehensive since there's a lot of other stuff in canon that I thought was fanon, but my god the list is already so long I don't think I need to add more. I didn't even touch on the casual touches and the way they're almost always looking at or for each other when they're in scenes together.

[daincrediblegg]

no you know what I'm going to scream about the stuff I talked about in the tags of this post publicly

I'm tired of the well-meaning "don't feel bad if your work only gets 20 notes your genius is what counts and do it for you!" bullshit. I've had a good handful of friends who have straight up DEACTIVATED in recent months because their work was not getting reblogged AT ALL. No, it wasn't from lack of not being well-liked, no it wasn't from lack of trying to make sure it was getting out there to the people they knew would engage with it. It was because no matter how much they were praised privately for their work, when push came to shove, absolutely NOBODY reblogged it and gave it the audience that it was due, and I'm tired of people shoving the "unsung genius" narrative as an excuse for it. Nothing excuses that. And the boop event really proved that.

because I know given the opportunity, indiscriminately pressing a button (sometimes 10 thousand times, as I did) is not beyond this website's capability. y'all loved doing that. and look at what it wrought. nothing but love and affection and happiness. just from a couple of quick clicks of a little paw button. sure. nobody knew who you booped but the other person (which is how likes used to work on this website, btw). there was an element of anonymity to it. but that is kind of the core of this website that no other social media platform still has: the ability to be anonymous. and hyper-curating a blog on here like you might on twitter or instagram to project an image is simply not viable. and hey. you wanna know a secret: literally nobody cares what you post or whether it goes with the "theme" of your blog or not. yeah. I know. CRAZY concept in this day and age. but literally. I myself have reblogged things that have had nothing to do with whatever I am currently fixated by and you know what happened to my follower count? not a damn thing. in fact, I actively try to reblog things specifically BECAUSE it's my friends who made them (even though I'm not always good at KEEPING UP WITH HOW MUCH THEY POST @prismatica-the-strange will NEVER GO UNRECOGNIZED by me).

And you know what fucking sucks? I have to deal with this too. surprise right? you ever wonder why I reblog fics or art I post like 20 times the day that I post them? do you ever wonder why I ask about tag lists and beg for asks all the time? IT'S BECAUSE EVEN I GET LIKE. 5 LIKES ON THE THINGS I POST. AND THE REST OF THE REBLOGS ARE MINE SO I CAN MAKE SURE THAT PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SEE WHAT I MAKE GET TO SEE IT. and I say that knowing that I'm certainly not an unpopular blog, or an unpopular writer. I know that people love the stories that I create. Hell, half of the people that I've talked to about lady terror have told me that they consider her to be canon (AND EVEN SOME!! THOUGHT SHE WAS!!! WITHOUT EVEN HAVING WATCHED THE SHOW! WHICH IS STILL SO SO WILD TO ME!!!) But especially in the last 4 years (which really dates this phenomenon), my posts, no matter how well received they've been amongst people I've talked to about them directly, I still go into the notes and at least half (often more than half) are MY reblogs to make sure people saw what I posted. and it happens every single time, and I can't tell you how much it crushes me considering that it used to be that I would be able to post it only once, and people would reblog it sometimes even HUNDREDS of times.

It's not about popularity. it never has been. it's not about anxiety. or shifting website cultures. even if you lurk, the simple fact is, that if you want people to keep making what you love. you have to reblog. your theme won't suffer because you reblogged a fanfiction that you really admire. your posting won't be ruined because you reblogged some fanart from someone in a different fandom. really. I promise. and if people do unfollow you for that? who needs em. followers come and go but you should NEVER have to cater to them. on this website it has ALWAYS been the other way around. lean into it. make it yours. put stuff you ACTUALLY WANT to be seen and that you love and appreciate on your blog. no matter how old it is, how new it is, no matter how niche or off-theme it is.

so please. if you really want to show your appreciation for someone's work? you reblog. it's really as easy as that. check the tags. add some when you reblog if you like. but please for the love of god reblog. it's as easy as booping and even more rewarding for the people who you reblog from. if you want to let someone know that their work is genius and appreciate it? show it. reblog. then DM them if you're too nervous to say what you want to say but not in a public forum. but for christ's sake. REBLOG.

[gffa]

One thing that caught my attention while watching The Phantom Menace in the theater, a movie I didn't expect to find anything new with after how many times I've seen it and analyzed it, was that Sidious mentions multiple times that he has to change his plans to fit the new circumstances. It got me to thinking about how Palpatine gets credit for his carefully crafted plans, but often times not for how flexible he is in changing them on the fly, especially in time travel fics where someone destroys one of his plans and that's the end of it. Which, I'm not advocating against, I love a good Take That Wrinkled Walnut The Fuck Down However You Gotta Do It fic and I don't want them to change! But in canon Palpatine makes note of things he's not expecting, like:

When Valorum sends the Jedi as ambassadors, it's not part of Sidious' plan: DAULTAY DOFINE: This scheme of yours has failed, Lord Sidious. The blockade is finished. We dare not go against the Jedi. DARTH SIDIOUS: Viceroy, I don't want this stunted slime in my sight again! This turn of events is unfortunate. We must accelerate our plans. Begin landing your troops. NUTE GUNRAY: My lord, is that… legal? DARTH SIDIOUS: I will make it legal. NUTE GUNRAY: And the Jedi? DARTH SIDIOUS: The Chancellor should never have brought them into this. Kill them immediately!

On the Trade Federation ship, after Queen Amidala has disappeared from Naboo, Palpatine originally planned that she would be forced to sign the treaty, and then brings in Maul to deal with this. DARTH SIDIOUS: And Queen Amidala, has she signed the treaty? NUTE GUNRAY: She has disappeared, My Lord. One Naboo cruiser got pat the blockade. DARTH SIDIOUS: I want that treaty signed. NUTE GUNRAY: My Lord, it's impossible to locate the ship. It's out of our range. DARTH SIDIOUS: Not for a Sith. This is my apprentice. Darth Maul. He will find your lost ship.

On Naboo, after Padme allies with the Gungans: NUTE GUNRAY: We've sent out patrols. We've already located their starship in the swamp....It won't be long, My Lord. DARTH SIDIOUS: This is an unexpected move for her. It's too aggressive. Lord Maul, be mindful. MAUL: Yes, my Master. DARTH SIDIOUS: Be patient... Let them make the first move.

Palpatine's plans aren't static, they adapt and change with the events that happen, just as the other characters react to new information and head in new directions for it, so too does Palpatine and I think it's interesting to note that part of what makes him such a good villain is that he has an outline for what he wants to do, he sets up the dominoes of what he needs, but even when they don't fall precisely into place, he generally gets what he wants. He originally intended that Padme would sign the treaty, the Jedi wouldn't be involved, and that would lead to a vote of No Confidence to oust Valorum, using the sympathy for Naboo as a way to boost himself into the position. But he didn't really need her to sign it and still managed to use the sympathy for Naboo to get elected, it ultimately didn't matter what happened to the planet, so long as it was in danger while he needed it to be, he could use it either way. Nor, honestly, do I think he ever planned for Anakin Skywalker's existence, he had no idea they would find such a boy on Tatooine or how useful he was going to be, that was another way he changed his plans once the opportunity arose. Or a lot of his plots in TCW--he has Cad Bane steal the list of Force-sensitive children and kidnap them, bringing them to Mustafar for some sort of program to use them probably not too unlike how he uses the Inquisitors later. That plan is foiled by the Jedi, the babies are returned to their families, and Sidious' plans fall through, but that doesn't really change the outcome. tl:dr: I don't think Palpatine gets enough credit as a villain whose plans shift and change along with the new events that happen, just as much as the heroes' plans shift and change when new things happen. Yeah, he's a great villain because he creates an impossible trap for people, but also because the thing about him is that he's incredibly charming and charismatic and he knows an opportunity when he sees one, that any one given plan might fall through, but it's not necessary to his overall plot.

[foone]

Look if there's one thing, just one thing, that I wish everyone understood about archiving, it's this:

We can always decide later that we don't need something we archived.

Like, if we archive a website that's full of THE WORST STUFF, like it turns out it's borderline illegal bot-made spam art, we can delete it. Gone.

We can also chose not to curate. You can make a list of the 100 Best Fanfic and just quietly not link to or mention the 20,000 RPFs of bigoted youtubers eating each other. No problem!

We can also make things not publicly available. This happens surprisingly often: like, sometimes there'll be a YouTube channel of alt-right bigotry that gets taken down by YouTube, but someone gives a copy to the internet archive, and they don't make it publicly available. Because it might be useful for researchers, and eventually historians, it's kept. But putting it online for everyone to see? That's just be propaganda for their bigotry. So it's hidden, for now. You can ask to see it, but you need a reason.

And we can say all these things, we can chose to delete it later, we can not curate it, we can hide it from public view... But we only have these options BECAUSE we archived it.

If we didn't archive it, we have no options. It is gone. I'm focusing on the negative here, but think about the positive side:

What if it turns out something we thought was junk turns out to be amazing new art?

What if something we thought of as pointless and not worth curating turns out to be influential?

What if something turns out to be of vital historical importance, the key that is used to solve a great mystery, the Rosetta stone for an era?

All of those things are great... If we archived it when we could.

Because this is an asymmetric problem:

If we archived it and it turns out it's not useful, we can delete.

If we didn't archive it and it turns out it is useful, OOPS!

You can't unlose something that's been lost. It's gone. This is a one way trip, it's already fallen off the cliff. Your only hope is that you're wrong about it being lost, and there is actually still a copy somewhere. If it's truly lost, your only option is to build a time machine.

And this has happened! There are things lost, so many of them that we know of, and many more we don't know of. There are BOOKS OF THE BIBLE referenced in the canon that simply do not exist anymore. Like, Paul says to go read his letter to the Laodiceans, and what did that letter say? We don't know. It's gone.

The most celebrated playwright in the English tradition has plays that are just gone. You want to perform or watch Love's Labours Won? TOO FUCKING BAD.

Want to watch Lon Cheyney's London After Midnight, a mystery-horror silent film from 1927? TOO BAD. The MGM vault burnt down in 1965 and the last known copy went up in smoke.

If something still exists, if it still is kept somewhere, there is always an opportunity to decide if it's worthy of being remembered. It can still be recognized for its merits, for its impact, for its importance, or just what it says about the time and culture and people who made it, and what they believed and thought and did. It can still be a useful part of history, even if we decide it's a horrible thing, a bigoted mess, a terrible piece of art. We have the opportunity to do all that.

If it's lost... We are out of options. All we can do is research it from how it affected other things. There's a lot of great books and plays and films and shows that we only know of because other contemporary sources talked about them so much. We're trying to figure out what it was and what it did, from tracing the shadow it cast on the rest of culture.

This is why archivists get anxious whenever people say "this thing is bad and should not be preserved". Because, yeah, maybe they're right. Maybe we'll look back and decide "yeah, that is worthless and we shouldn't waste the hard drive or warehouse space on it".

But if they're wrong, and we listen to them, and don't archive... We don't get a second chance at this. And archivists have been bitten too many times by talk of "we don't need copies, the original studio has the masters!" (it burnt down), or "this isn't worth preserving, it's just some damn silly fad" (the fad turned out to be the first steps of a cultural revolution), or "this media is degenerate/illegal/immoral" (it turns out those saying that were bigots and history doesn't agree with their assessment).

So we archive what we can. We can always decide later if it doesn't need preserving. And being a responsible archivist often means preserving things but not making them publicly available, or being selective in what you archive (I back up a lot of old computer hard drives. Often they have personal photos and emails and banking information! That doesn't get saved).

But it's not really a good idea to be making quality or moral judgements of what you archive. Because maybe you're right, maybe a decade or two later you'll decide this didn't need to be saved. And you'll have the freedom to make that choice. But if you didn't archive it, and decide a decade later you were wrong... It's just gone now. You failed.

Because at the end of the day I'd rather look at an archive and see it includes 10,000 things I think are worthless trash, than look at an archive of on the "best things" and know that there are some things that simply cannot be included. Maybe they were better, but can't be considered as one of the best... Because they're just gone. No one has read them, no one has been able to read them.

We have a long history of losing things. The least we can do going forward is to try and avoid losing more. And leave it up to history to decide if what we saved was worth it.

My dream is for a future where critics can look at stuff made in the present and go "all of this was shit. Useless, badly made, bigoted, horrible. Don't waste your time on it!"

Because that's infinitely better than the future where all they can do is go "we don't know of this was any good... It was probably important? We just don't know. It's gone. And it's never coming back"