#all info from wikipedia

[onejellyfishplease]

Part 31

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[fvkvrodani]

so im looking at the historical accuracy of federal pardons & whether someone like arthur morgan—wanted in 2 states w a 5k bounty on him; had committed multiple crimes etc.—& the closest one i could find is billy wilson, an outlaw & associate of the infamous billy the kid. he ran w the kid's gang for some time & even escaped multiple attempts at capturing him, then went to texas & started a ranch... like he didnt have a criminal record...

but the important part of all of this is that billy wilson's capturer—pat garrett—was the one who made the effort to the american govt so they could pardon billy's crimes... & they did.

theres so many other ppl who were federally pardoned & their crimes were... literally going against the american govt itself. james brooks, a texas ranger convicted of manslaughter, was pardoned (after lobbying from his fellow rangers tho). al jennings, a train robber who was imprisoned in 1899, was pardoned (in 1904 but still...)

all that is to say: arthur morgan couldve possibly been federally pardoned had he lived. do w this information what you will.

[randomwriteronline]

Mata Nui refused to sleep.

He had not given a reason for it, in the distinct way one does not give a reason for something they find immensely discomforting, so none had bothered to pry further, and he had never slept.

This was a useful problem. Useful, because he could still rest through meditation whilst remaining aware of his sorroundings, meaning there was always someone to keep an eye out for the many rogue crawlies that infested Bara Magna at night and any Bone Hunter ambushes, so there was no need to take turns keeping awake and vigilant; a problem, because Kiina now had to be wrestled to sleep lest she abused the down time they had to pester the stranger on space and planets and the such, and Mata Nui was more than glad to speak of anything she might have inquired about at length.

That would have also been a useful problem, as his explanations were told in a low gentle monotone that could have lulled a furious Rock Steed into a chittering pup gently kicking and pawing at the sand in its slumber, if the Gaquri would have managed to stop interjecting with far too loud a volume of voice.

As it was, however, all their conversations did was hinder everybody else's attempt at getting some shut-eye.

When Ackar awoke, the night was perfectly silent.

He wondered briefly why in Plude he'd stirred. A sudden flesh-rendering pain jolting through his right shoulder answered him a little too eagerly for his tastes, and he groaned as he kneaded into it with his fingers.

"Ackar?" a half whisper reached him.

He grunted in acknowledgement.

Mata Nui shifted from where he sat to lean over him: "Is something the matter, my friend?"

The Glatorian pushed himself upright with a bit of difficulty: "Nothing, nothing... Give me a second," he muttered, "I shouldn't sleep with it, but - urgh! Alright, alright, hold my elbow a moment, would you?"

He hissed his thanks through gritted teeth as his limb was caught in a gentle grip. His fingers slipped below his armpit and fumbled angrily with the folds of his skin as his grimace twitched with each spark of pain: at last, with a few clunks and exhausted pops, the arm went limp in Mata Nui's hold as it detached from the rest of Ackar's body, leaving the Glatorian to sigh in relief and move his hand closer to the crook of his own neck.

His friend stared at the body part suddenly in his palms with no shortage of surprise.

"It is a prosthesis," he noted, a little awed: "I did not realize that."

"Yes, well - it's not really your fault for that. It's not that easy to tell, and I never mentioned it," the Glatorian replied as he did his best to massage his aching shoulder blade.

The motion attracted the attention of blue eyes: "Are you hurt?"

"Ah... Nothing to be worried about. I should not sleep with it, is all. It decides to start stinging like Plude if I do that too much."

"You have slept with it all these nights, though."

Ackar gave a lopsided smile: "I know, I know - but when you're out here in the desert, it's always better to have two arms at the ready rather than one."

Mata Nui nodded solemnly, with a grave air about him, as though the Glatorian had bestowed great wisdom upon him instead of basic Bara Magnan common sense, and the veteran warrior could not help chuckling a little at him.

The otherworlder took great care to place the fake limb on the sand so that it would not jam its inner mechanisms before turning once more to his friend: "May I help you?"

"With what?"

"Your shoulder."

"It's just inflamed muscles."

"It doesn't seem as though you can reach the spot bothering you very comfortably on your own. I would be glad to lend a hand."

"Oh? You have experience with this?" the Glatorian teased him lightly, but he did slowly begin unfastening his chest armor with careful movements made surprisingly swift by half a lifetime practicing with only one hand.

"I do not," Mata Nui confessed, completely missing any and all implications: "But I do wish to be of help."

"If it would please you, then, be my guest," Ackar smiled. "Though I will say, at the cost of sounding like a frail maiden - take off your gauntlets at least. I'm pretty sure you'd rip my flesh right off of me if it got pinched in your armor."

"I see. That is an unfortunate request."

"Why so?"

"I am physically incapable of removing my armor."

The other just shrugged casually as he pulled off his undershirt: "I can help you with it."

"You are very kind, but I did not mean that it is impractical to fasten or get out of," the otherworlder clarified. He placed a palm on where his clavicle should have been, lightly curling his phalanxes around the edges of the golden yellow metal covering his upper half: "Taking this off would be akin to skinning me."

Ackar responded to the information with a wide eyed stare.

"Ah," he convened finally: "That'd be quite terrible."

"It would indeed, my friend."

"So - hold it, hold it. You've been naked this whole time?"

"I... Would not... Describe myself as such."

"No, no, I mean--" the Glatorian reworded himself as he scooted over, "This whole time, we've been running around fighting for our lives, fending off vicious beasts and Bone Hunters, and you haven't had a single piece of protective gear on you?"

Mata Nui blinked: "I am shielded," he replied.

"I don't mean Click and the whole - thing, that you make him do that turns him into a shield," Ackar said as he settled down with his back to his friend. "I mean something that keeps your soft insides from getting sliced in half at the first swing of a blade, or from getting skewered by the first Thornax launched into the back of your knee."

"I am shielded." the other insisted.

"By what?"

"My carapace."

His fingertips laid on the Tapyri's back, only to retreat in confusion a moment after. Whatever puzzled him was eventually deemed inconsequential, as he returned to study the shoulder blade beneath his fingers in search of any anomalies beneath the skin that could clue him in on where to strike.

"Your what?" Ackar asked.

"My body is naturally armored," he explained without breaking focus: "Much like insects, certain species of reptiles, or likely the Vorox and Zesk from what I could observe of them, I am covered by an exoskeleton meant to protect my organs and sustain my body. It is unclear whether I possess an additional endoskeleton, like you, but I must confess I am not very keen to find out."

"Huh," his friend noted. After a moment, he added: "Because you'd have to be skinned."

"Yes."

"Very fair."

That was quite the load of information.

By all means, this wasn't necessarily the first time they'd heard of carapaced sentient beings - the Fezeri of the Iron tribe had something of the sort, and if you tried searching through their old settlements enough you were bound to find some molts that had survived the passage of time - but they still had bones in them. Like normal people.

And yes, of course, Mata Nui was abnormal under every aspect if you looked at him for longer than two minutes.

But being a huge humanoid bug?

Now that was unexpected.

More than everything else.

Including coming from space. Because even Kiina had imagined that spacepeople would have had bones in them, or at least been aware of having them.

All of a sudden the Glatorian gave a short snorting laugh.

"You're so confusing," he said whistfully, craning his neck back. "By the looks of it one would guess you're just a slightly irregular fellow, and yet you're some sort of alien who's more like Click than any of the rest of us. You're just full of surprises."

"Oh! I suppose that is true," Mata Nui mused.

He sounded somewhat amused by his resemblance to the beetle. Like he hadn't noticed it himself until now.

His fingers slid on what seemed like a slight bump under the oily skin. That must have been the problem, he thought to himself, and without further ado dug his thumb in the spot: against his carapace he almost felt the individual fibers of muscle flatten under the pressure he exercised upon them, the tight knot they were wrapped in struggling not to yield and unfurl.

He didn't quite get the time to focus on that, however, as he was startled out of the tactile sensation by a deep gurgling sound rattling almost right in his audio receptor.

Ackar, for his part, was trembling so much that the flesh folded around the back of his ribs seemed to be trying its hardest to imitate the vibrating tempo of a dragonfly's wings as it raced its peers across the surface of a lake.

"Oh, I think you found it!" he gingerly said before his friend could wonder whether he'd accidentally hurt him - which in a matter of seconds was no longer a concern seeing as the Glatorian all but leaned further into his thumb: "Go on, go on, those bastards are hard to get rid of--"

Another growl reverberated through the otherwise still air, and Mata Nui realized it was coming from directly under his palms.

Ergo, it was coming from Ackar.

He tried digging harder into the skin: the shoulder wiggled around his finger in a very curious way and the gurgling's volume raised a little more, while the trembling returned to rattle through the Tapyri just as hard as it had before.

Sound and tremors repeated in varying intensity as he continued to knead his fingers against the suffering spot, usually accompanied by the body in question trying to recline directly into the pressure much like certain creatures do when gently scratched in specific areas. He deduced these reactions must have been positive ones, meant to communicate a contented or happy disposition - perhaps specific to the Fire tribe? The trembling in particular, with its very visible reverberations all across the being's frame, seemed to require the presence of an amount of skin which was notably higher than what he could glimpse on Gaquri and Lebori alike... Although Ackar was also significantly older than Gresh, Berix and Kiina, and it would not have been wise to rule out the possibilty of age playing an important part in determining the quantity of soft tissue.

Speaking of the skin, though he was very taken with the large splatter-like marks all across his back, there was also something else that was puzzling if not outright concerning him about it.

"You're sweating quite a lot," Mata Nui noted out loud.

Ackar leaned so far into his hand that he almost dropped down right onto the sand.

"Ah - 'sss not sweat," he drawled through the rumbling in his neck: "Don'- don't frrreak out now, ok- 's mucus."

His friend hummed, unbothered: "That explains the consistency."

"Don' worrrrrry about it - 's norrrmal, yesss? We - us Tapyri, we jusss' make it, see... For the, the tem- RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Sorrrrrry, so'ry... We live near volcanos 'n' open lava pools, so the temp'raturesss would shrrrivel us up..."

"I understand... It keeps you hydrated in otherwise extreme climates."

"Uh-huh... Plus 's easierrr t' wash off the ash like that... Jusss' ssscoop it all off, and the'e, all clean like an oil'd up--" an even more powerful gurgle took over his throat, and he arched his back so much that Mata Nui had to quickly catch him with both hands before he slipped right out of his grip. Now that the Tapyri's face was in view he could note with great interest that his thin teeth were paraded in a wide trembling grin, almost clattering together, and that his eyes were squeezed shut as if he were in great pain - although the effect his expression gave off, even looking at it upside down as the fallen god was, seemed closer to exceptional enjoyment. He watched him mutter a curse under his breath before his voice raised again, slurring in bliss: "A'e you su'e you've nev'r done this beforrre? Y're good!"

"I am afraid I only have theoretical knowledge at my disposal, although in great quantities," his friend replied, a little embarrassed as he laid the other's head down onto his armored legs.

Ackar grinned a little wider as his nape touched down on something pleasantly warm: "Ahhh, booksss, booksss..." he chuckled, wriggling in place, fingers idly pulling the air in uncoordinated motions: "I g'ess they'rrre good f'r sssom'thin', eh?"

His chest jumped with a giddy silent giggle, causing his rumbling to stutter a few times.

Now that he looked at his actual arm better, Mata Nui realized that its back too sported large splatters of different pigmentation. He caught it in his free hand very carefully, turning it over to observe it better while the Glatorian simply allowed him to, maybe not even noticing: their position and shape was not as random as it appeared, but instead seemed to follow an imperfect pattern which mirrored that flanking the man's spine. A quick glance at his prosthesis revealed no such detail on the fake flesh.

Such a curious thing, he mused as he thoughtlessly played with the organic limb - pressing on its palm, lifting it, bending its elbow and wrist to watch the skin crease and muscles tense or relax. He'd seen this sort of appearance on a few creatures along his travels, usually to ward off predators by denoting some sort of poisonous nature... Perhaps the Fire tribe had evolved to secrete a type of venom mixed into their protective layer of mucus in response to threats, or it could have been a strategy of ages past that had managed to survive with each subsequent step they'd taken up their evolutionary ladder for some reason or another.

He'd never had a tongue to test the effects of different poisons personally, and while he might have had one now (though he wasn't sure, since he had not had the time to properly study or think about this body's anatomy much) he was a little uncertain on whether his friend would have appreciated having his fingers shoved in Mata Nui's mouth for the sake of scientific research.

He had come across a few sapient species that considered that a formal greeting, but he would rather not take his chances.

Maybe he could have asked later.

He felt Ackar's shoulders shift and squirm in his lap to get more comfortable, and he returned his attention to him just in time for the Tapyri to open his eyes and meet his gaze in turn.

For a small period of time they simply looked at one another. The otherworlder continued idly moving the other's limb, exercising a gentle pressure upon his palm as he shifted the arm up and down without any rhyme or reason; Ackar himself just let him do as he pleased, only blinking back at him, face stuck in a neutral expression, not making a singular attempt at stopping him.

"Oh," he spoke at last with a nervous laugh: "Well. Hello."

What a strange thing to say. Mata Nui tilted his head slightly: "Hello," he replied in tone.

"I've made myself comfortable, haven't I?"

"If you are referring to your position, I took the liberty to recline you myself in order to keep you from getting injured."

It was unclear if the information reassured the Glatorian or not, as his reaction was to widen his pupils slightly, considerably darken the skin of his nose, and only peep: "Ah."

"You were leaning rather far back. You could have fallen."

"Ah," he repeated. "Thank you, friend."

"It was my pleasure."

Ackar's nose turned a little darker again.

Mata Nui touched it thoughtlessly: its temperature had increased, he mused to himself, so perhaps blood was rushing to that specific spot for one reason or other.

"You might be building a fever," he warned.

"I do not believe I am," the Tapyri replied a little stilted, again with an embarrassed chuckle, "But thanks for worrying."

Concerns soothed, the fallen god dug a digit back in the pained spot and earned another gurgle for his good deed, which reverberated this time across the plates of his legs. He was surprised to find it caused a weird, pleasant sensation akin to a feeling he unfortunately was not sure he had a name for yet.

He returned his attention to his friend: "How is your shoulder feeling?"

Ackar had shut his eyes again, and squirmed in a sort of pleased manner: "Betterrr," he replied, growls now coming from his throat in shorter bursts. He cracked open an eyelid to look at his own arm being maneuvered by Mata Nui's hand as though it were the limb of some sort of machine, losing himself in the feeling of the armored palm and the limp movement of his own joints: "Havin' fun?"

The other followed his gaze, and instantly turned bashful: "Oh - I apologize. I was lost in thought," he whispered sheepishly, placing the limb down on the Glatorian's chest.

His friend cackled: "It's quite fine, it didn't hurt."

Another gargle rumbled through him as the last kink in his muscle was smoothed down.

Mata Nui continued massaging the spot either way, and Ackar continued quietly responding to his kindness with soft purrs; and for a short while, as the desert breathed its tired chill and the winds didn't blow any sand into their eyes or noses or mouths, they simply remained quiet.

Fingertips ran across his arm softly, slowly.

If he concentrated enough he could hear how the barely perceptible sound them scraping the mucus off of one another.

It was terribly comfortable.

Terribly soothing...

A soft monotone stirred him from the torpor he was falling into: "In truth, I was quite taken with your skin's markings."

Without opening his eyes, Ackar turned his head: "Hm?"

"These," his friend explained. He felt him trace an unclear shape on his forearm a few times, gently: "You present an irregular pattern of noticeably different pigmentation both here and on your back. The closest condition I could try to compare it to would be vitiligo, but it does not appear to be anything like it."

The Glatorian hummed softly: "Oh, we just have them... They're common, to us Tapyri. Splatters, spots, dots... Various colors, too..."

"How curious," the otherworlder murmured. He moved from one spot to the other seamlessly, following their borders. "Poisonous creatures often advertise their toxicity to potential predators through similar visual cues."

"Is that so..."

"Perhaps you too have some."

Ackar chuckled as he humored him: "Perhaps I do, who knows!"

"Like a salamander."

"And what is that?"

"It is a term that indicates a family of small amphibians of which many species contain a potent poison within their mucus-covered skin. Their appearance is quite similar to that of lizards, so they are often mistaken for reptiles despite their lack of scales. Land-dwelling turtles often incur into a similar yet opposite misconception, being believed to be amphibians when they are not."

"Hm. And their poison, what does it do?"

"It is deadly in exceptionally small doses and can affect the victim by means of contact with bruised skin, ingestion, inhalation, and injection."

"Oh, I'd like that."

"You would?"

"Yeah, why not? First sand bat to swallow me whole gets a nice surprise, and I take that bastard down with me."

He laughed softly, reclining his head further into Mata Nui's lap.

His yellowish eyes looked up again curved into half moons, meeting the fallen god's own with a lopsided grin: "That'd be a nice little consolation at least, wouldn't you think?"

His friend's glowing irises looked back down at him with a sort of vacuous glimmer.

They were a very nice blue.

The otherworlder's hands were heavily segmented, each articulation encased in a golden shell fitting perfectly against the others. It was really curious how he'd never noticed that until he had his cheeks cradled into one of those palms, weirdly coarse and warm like sand.

Mata Nui looked directly into his eyes: "You are so deeply interesting," he said with such earnest awe.

He sounded so starstruck - he was so starstruck, staring at the Glatorian utterly entranced as though he was marveling at the sight of in the most incredible discovery of this age.

"If the circumstances of our meeting had been different, less wrecked with quests and worries," the fallen god continued, speaking awfully softly as he returned his mellow grip to the Tapyri's hand and began shifting his arm around aimlessly again, to feel the shift of muscle and skin and mucus, "I would have loved to simply watch you live for weeks on end. To take note of your speech patterns, your specific anatomy, how your body moves, how it reacts to stimuli..."

"That," Ackar murmured, breathless: "Is a bit forward - isn't it?"

His friend leaned his head to the side ever so slightly, not blinking.

"At least you should first..."

He choked on his own breath very briefly; he shut his eyes with a little bewildered wheeze and smacked his palm on his face.

Great Beings.

That could have been incredibly awkward.

Mata Nui, who was still holding onto his hand waiting for an elaboration with a fair share of interest on the matter, decided the necessary amount of time for an explanation's request to be polite had passed and curteously encouraged him: "Do continue. I would like to know the proper steps to follow."

But the Glatorian shook his head with a breathy cackle: "Don't- it's nothing, don't think about it. I'm very tired and talking stupid."

"I apologize. I should let you rest, then."

"Oh, no, if you - if you want to talk about something, it's fine."

A surge of warmth radiated from the carapaced fingers wrapped around his hand: "It would not bother you?"

"No, no... You've got a soothing voice really, so it wouldn't... I don't know how long I can listen to you consciously, but if you'd just keep telling me about... Oh, I don't know..."

"Would you like me to continue with the salamanders?"

Oh, he knew that little wiggle that had just shaken his friend's legs. It was the same as Kiina's flapping knees while sitting crosslegged, Gresh's one-handed claps and the weird little laugh Berix sputtered when he saw something he liked way too much.

Mata Nui really wanted to tell him more about those beasties.

Maybe he was excited about the similarities he'd found between them and the Tapyri. Or maybe he just liked talking - he'd always seemed awfully happy rambling to Kiina.

Either way, the little terrors had already gotten in his good graces with their poison, so why not learn more about them?

"I reckon I would," he smiled.

His arm was lifted again, and he could now see the excitement in his friend's eyes: "It would be my pleasure," he assured him. He leaned a little further down, closer to his face: "What would you like for me to start with?"

The Glatorian twisted his mouth for a moment: "To start, to start... The legs, let's go with those. How many do they have?

"They tend to have four limbs, two front and two hind, although certain species completely lack the latter," Mata Nui began without missing a beat: "The number of toes is also variable, but never exceeds four on the front and five on the rear. A rather incredible ability the entire salamander genus can vaunt is that of fully regenerating entire limbs without any trace of scarring."

Ackar hummed, amused, and moved his lone shoulder blade as though its arm was still attached: "That's a real good one, I'll say... Don't quite get the lack of back legs, though."

"Specimens that showcase such a peculiar characteristic tend to be fully aquatic throughout their entire lifetime, so perhaps an additional pair of limbs were considered more superflous to them than they were to other species that maintain an amphibious existence or even turn completely terrestrial upon reaching adulthood - though still favoring damp, cool habitats due to their permeable skin, preferrably near water." the otherworlder explained. Then, as though remembering it suddenly, he added in a slightly humored tone: "Sapient inhabitants of the planet on which I observed these creatures most often associate them to fire, particularly to the ability to resist it unharmed or putting it out entirely. A misconception created by the salamanders' habit of making their nests in rotting logs, from which they would flee when they were placed in the fire, also led to the belief that they were born from flames."

Something else they had in common with Tapyri...

One of their oldest tales, a myth to tell children - they were the spawn of embers, born from ashes still warm of extinguished bonfires, from the glowing rivers trickling down the sides of volcanoes...

Ackar squeezed his eyes hard and forced himself concious. A small sigh escaped him: he was already fighting a losing battle with his eyelids to keep them open, lulled into a thoughtless state by Mata Nui's excited monotone gently and eagerly pouring as much information as he could into his head.

His throat rumbled weakly, its grumbles vibrating against the equally pleased lap wiggling beneath his head - oh, if he could stay awake a little more, just a little more...

"Their diet tends to vary based on their environment and size, but they are known to eat anything the deem large enough," Mata Nui kept going softly, stroking the Glatorian's hand with his thumb: "Among their most common preys are insects such as flies, beetles, cicadellidae, moths, caeliferae and aquatic bugs, arachnids such as mites and spiders, earthworms, hexapods, and various larvae, while larger species may also hunt crabs, small mammals, fish, and other amphibians; in case of particularly scarce resources they might also resort to cannibalizing other salamanders, something that often happens between young specimens. Their jaws have each a row of small teeth capable of bending inward to keep the prey from escaping, sometimes helped by patches of teeth found on their palatine bones and vomer as well to better hold it down - aquatic specimens rely on them to macerate and tear the prey, as their tongues lack muscles and cannot be flicked out to catch food in the way their terrestrial counterparts' can. This is made possible by their ability to secrete a sticky mucus from glands positioned on the roof of their mouth and the tip of the tongue itself..."

And he continued talking for a good couple of hours, droning in the night with his quiet excitement without worrying too much about Ackar's silent snoring adding itself to the sound of Kiina, Gresh and Berix, simply happy to listen to them breathe and live around him and talk, talk, talk about all the marvelous things he'd loved alone until now.

[aspenicus-is-learning]

further Franco Research (trademark pending) has been conducted.

Oscar, Liam, and Logan felt like the most comparable choices, given the similar ages of all four (Logan the oldest, Oscar, Liam, and Franco youngest)

Franco's karting record is better than Oscar's (Oscar's karting record is a bit weird and bad for some reason, he kinda just took off his second year of open-wheel racing, 2017, and didn't stop) and somewhat worse than Logan's (but also Logan also did A LOT of karting) and Franco did more karting than Oscar, in respect to Liam his record is worse but not by a huge amount (Liam also did massive amounts of karting, though not as much as Logan)

His open-wheeled racing record is pretty similar to Logan's and worse than Oscar's (Oscar is not really a great comparison in this area, as previously mentioned) and similar if not slightly worse than Liam's.

Franco has done a fair bit of endurance racing, competing in both the Asian and European Le Mans series in 2021, as well as a couple other series. He did pretty well all things considered.

He won Spanish F4 in 2019. His birthday is May 27th. He's 21. His car number is 43. And all of us are gonna be on his side, alright?

Please check my research and add on!

[makorragal-312]

Yeah ..Todd in the Shadows (a strictly music reviewer) making an hour long video exposing James Somerton (a former video essayist) for misinformation and plagiarism DEFINITELY wasn't on my bingo card for 2023.

[stopthatfool]

stop-that-fool's ICEMAV timeline for Your jeep. Your Teeth. The coffee that you bought me.

AKA where my icemav's story sticks to canon and where it diverges/changes-- all while trying to make it align with real military/historical events.

Also, thank you @sliderkerner for indulging me and saying that you wanted my timeline posted here!

DISCLAIMER! I am in no way an expert of the US Military. This whole 'timeline' should not be taken as fact or canon regarding TOP GUN. I am making this for my own understanding of my icemav story and to help myself and anyone reading keep track of the timeline. This is just for fun and mostly for me.

Quick note about the time off US Military members get. According to this website, people accumulate leave-- 2.5 days per month of work. I don't think that either Mav or Ice are eager to take time off. I can only see them wanting to take time off to visit Carole and Bradley (as Val Kilmer stated, I also believe that Ice does not have the ideal family). That's why a lot of their work seems back-to-back/never ending.

1986-

-The movie stays the same (Goose dies, intense amounts of sexual tension between Ice and Mav, "You can be my wingman anytime" etc., etc.)

-The FIRST change in canon is when Mav states that he's going to try teaching at TOP GUN. In TGM, Mav said he barely lasted one class. Within my story, Mav lasts until 1988.

Between '87 and '88-

-Ice comes to teach at TOP GUN (entirely for the purpose of his career/'resume' for working his way up for promotions etc., etc.)

-While Ice is there (for around 2 TOP GUN classes) that is when Ice and Mav start getting involved romantically.

-But Ice hates teaching. He leaves mid '88 and joins the Iran-Iraq War aboard USS Enterprise.

Late 1988-

-Mav completes one last TOP GUN class after Ice leaves and follows Ice to the USS Enterprise (a happy accident that they were stationed on the same ship). This then allows them to continue their 'involvement' and allow them to fly together again ("Bullshit, you can be mine" blah blah blah).

1990-

-The Gulf War. According to Fandom Wiki both Mav and Ice have the Kuwait Liberation Medal-- meaning they both fought in the Gulf War around this time. (Btw they are no longer on the USS Enterprise as she was no longer involved in the Gulf War past 1989 (I think))

-In my TOP GUN universe, Mav gets another 'kill' during the Gulf War (I have no idea if any naval aviators did this in 1990 (Mav didn't do this canonically) but it happens within the stop-that-fool fanfic universe). Merlin is also Mav's RIO throughout the the Gulf War.

1991-

-BUT Ice has the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia) while Mav does not. Mav has the Southwest Asia Service Medal. So, for my story this time in between 1991-92 is when Mav pisses someone off and is moved squadrons/carriers to somewhere in Southwest Asia.

-Both of them, according to these medals, participated in Operation Desert Storm. (Mav also could have participated in Operation Desert Shield due to his Southwest Asia Service Medal.)

-Throughout 1991 they are able to see each other a couple times, but the fact that Mav keeps pissing people off makes it difficult. This is also because Navy deployments on average last between 6-7 months (according to a quick Google search) and for the sake of the story, their deployments and time off in between rarely overlap.

1992-

-This difficulty continues into 1992 where it all comes to a head on Dec. 31st 1992 (Ice's birthday! (Ice does not have a 'canon' birthday, but Dec. 31st is Val Kilmer's and I thought that bday also made sense for Ice)). Que the car scene in ch.4 and the aftermath the next morning.

-Throughout '92, Mav was in Iraq participating in the Iraqi no-fly zones. (I think. I find this UN mandate difficult to understand, especially whether or not the US Navy was involved or not.)

1993-

-Mav and Ice do not see each other in person at all in '93. But as said in ch.4 they-- "...talk about nothing on the phone. Ice never picks him up from the airport again."

-The US Navy also provided air cover for cargo planes that were bringing relief supplies during the Bosnian War. This is where Mav was placed in '93 (pissed off some captain or higher up or something).

-Ice and Mav don't see each other (in person) until '94.

The UNITED NATIONS MEDAL- In the TOP GUN fandom wiki page, both Ice and Mav are listed to have a United Nations Medal. What it does not state, and what I cannot find anywhere online, is what conflict they were a part specifically of for them to receive this medal. There are multiple options throughout the 1990's and 2000's that could have led to this award. BUT for the sake of my story, I will only be considering/applying conflicts that took place between 1994-98.

Between 1994 and '96-

-I think Ice received the UNPROFOR United Nations Medal for his service during the Yugoslav Wars. This is where he was between 1994-95. As I stated in ch.3 he was stationed somewhere in Europe after he and Mav 'break up' (I can't figure out what United Nations Medal Mav could have received-- it's difficult to figure out US Navy specific peacekeeping missions he could been involved in besides UNPROFOR.))

1997-

-It's around this year that Mav uses some of his accumulated vacation days to spend a longer period with Carole and Bradley. Ice is still stationed in Europe (workaholic).

1998-

-After Mav's time off, he's deployed again to Iraq.

As I mentioned in a previous post, not a lot of things happen in early to mid 1998 in regards to military conflicts, BUT Operation Desert Fox happens in December of 1998. I think the military would need to have people around before the operation before completing something of that scale. AKA that's why Mav is there in June.

-Then on an undisclosed date in early June, Mav crashes as stated in ch.1 (“You dodged some crazy bastards up there, then hit a bird. The plane crashed into the ground, and you ejected and landed on some rocks...").

-Mav is transferred to a hospital in California as he needs special surgery for his shattered knee cap.

-Ice has been in California for a couple days when Mav gets there because his paternal grandfather is dying (another happy accident that his grandfather is in the same hospital as Mav (god i love plot armour)). Ice had previously been permanently stationed somewhere in Europe (to get away from his family, Mav, and to work up to a promotion).

-Carole dies a couple days after Mav is released from the hospital. Bradley is now under Mav's legal guardianship. They move into military provided family housing on the Lemoore Naval Air Station with Mav teaching at the SFWSPAC (Strike Fighter Weapons School Pacific) once his injuries heal.

-Ice then reveals that he has requested to be stationed in California with Mav (the request was approved, Ice is now near both his family AND Mav... he's so silly).

-On June 21st 1998, Mav, Ice and Bradley drive out to West California to the beach cottage Mav rented (courtesy of Viper) with the plans of celebrating Bradley's birthday on June 27th (finally someone with a canon bday thank u Bradley).

Anyway, that's all we got so far! I would just like to say again that I am in no way claiming that this is accurate or canon. I also can't guarantee that I understand all of the wars, conflicts, operations, and details of the US military that I stated previously. So if I got something wrong; any of the language I used, details of the wars and conflicts stated, I apologize! Very deeply. From the depths of my soul.

[skitskatdacat63]

My dad is reading Seb's Wikipedia page now 😭😭 I think I got him guys 😭

[wild-grinders]

Hello! I came here to ask since I don't know anyone else active to ask, do you have any information on/know where to get information about a Wild Grinders character (toy line exclusive, not in the show, according to the broken down shack that is the fandom wiki) called Beefy? I can't find anything other than like 2 images proving they exist. They are a bulldog like meaty, but have some brown spotting. One of the images is them as an action figure and the other is of them on a box, so must be real.

in short, do you know anything about beefy (not meaty) Wild Grinders?

Foreword: This was written at 11pm

Anon the answer to this entire question is that there's no fully compiled archive of the toys (both past and planned that would be discontinued). But my assumption would be that Beefy has not been confirmed to be part of the next toyline (post-discontinued) because FANDOM Wikia runs on 'opinionated info' aka misinformation and tends to be unregulated. As long as you have an account, you can make any sort of page or manipulate others into believing text.

One of my closest friends drew mecha fanart for an obscure fandom and the Wikia people stole it and claimed it as production art from the official artists (who never planned on making a mecha for their female characters).

Another instance of Wikia being Wikia has to be when one of my headcanons, for another small fandom, led to everyone believing 2 characters were canon brothers. (They weren't, it was just my headcanon).

But looking at the page for 'Beefy', there's no real proof of Beefy to have a toy. Especially when most of the images are of Beefy are just only of Meaty toys. There's no leaked prototypes or any references to Tracy's sketches of Beefy either. Because in order for the toy to be planned for production, Tracy needs to at least draw a reference for it. (He probably has drawn Beefy one time, but very unlikely usable for model reference).

If anything, the page could have originated from Rob Dyrdek making a comment about a Beefy toy from one of his series (he has a lot of reality TV episodes and it's just a random snippet). And it seems that it could have been a color malfunction (very common for toys to have this sort of thing).

Some of the 'leaked' toy plans on Wikia were reuploaded from this Facebook (unactive), where someone who was part of the production team just dropped it off there: https://www.facebook.com/FansOfWildGrindersInBrazil

[c0rpsedemon]

every once in a while i find myself daydreaming about what it'll be like when i'm a successful and widely celebrated illustrator/author/game dev/whatever the fuck it is this week. which is a completely normal thing to do btw. the thing is though, at the point in time the daydream is at, i've always already produced every miscellaneous project which is bouncing around in my head, so now i need something new for daydream me to be working on/promoting. slightly less normal thing to do but alright. the thing about daydream me is that the fame has gotten to his head, everything he touches is looked upon as gold, so the new games/whatever he's putting out are basically what i would put out if i was too conceited to know what kill your darlings means, and are a parody of what i would come up with. that's the part where this thought exercise (read: indulgent fantasy) takes a turn into insane person territory. the problem with this is that a decent percent of the time i get so attached to daydream me's conceited little projects that i miss the point where they're meant to be a literal parody of how my mind works and they become actual serious things i want to make some day.

[loredwy]

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

Edit: Now that we're talking about it, look. There is all the countries ratification dates, along with considerations for their laws.

And you can check the convention here.

Edit 2: For those in the US who want to check their state's laws compliance to the convention, there is this site.

Edit 3: The map source btw. Its from wikipedia.

Thank you people in the notes for the info and image desc.

[sugarcoatednightshade]

I see a lot of people thirsting after this girl in the notes - which, to be fair, same - but nobody’s actually talking about who she is.

As far as I can tell, this is Hyejeong Park. Shes competed in multiple international tournaments, most recently the 2023 World Weightlifting Championship, where she won gold with a total lift of 289 kg, about than 637lbs! For reference, Li Wenwen won the 2020 Olympics in what I think is Hyejeong’s weight bracket by lifting 335 kg, or 738lbs.

Heyjeong hasn’t competed in the Olympics, but I’m pretty sure that’s mostly due to her age. She just turned 18 this year, and I’m sure that in a few years we’ll all be seeing her face on the big screen!

[skyburger]

the fact that the atari video game burial was a real thing and they only dug it up in 2014 is fucking crazy. They left, as confirmed by atari officials, over SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND CARTRIDGES. they left them buried in new mexico. for THIRTY YEARS!!!!! and apparently they also buried consoles & computers in there and those numbers to my knowledge are NOT included in that 700k. oh this wikipedia page gets worse as it goes on they poured concrete? over the landfill where they dumped these??? it does have a nice ending though cause they started the excavation (ten years ago as of 04/26 this year) as part of a documentary and well first of all. they had actual fucking archaeologists & historians there (one of the historians was specifically a "video game historian" which i didnt even KNOW was a real job) to "examine and document" stuff thats nuts to me. and when they dug up some of them (not even 2k carts out of the supposed 728k that were buried) a bunch of them got donated to museums & they auctioned off a little under 900 of the unearthed copies for over $100k??? and one of the cartridges went to the fucking smithsonian which is nuts

[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.

[psqqa]

literally everywhere i have gone in this city i have seen references to a preacher called savonarola, clearly a Known Entity, and yet to me wholly unknown

i gathered from context he was A Thing around the same time a lot of the other figures of the renaissance were doing their thing, and that generally he was against whatever the medicis were up to in general, but the only place that deigned to give me any actual information about the guy himself and what exactly it was people were following him for was a temporary exhibit in the pitti palace’s modern art museum about florence’s jewish ghetto and its relationship to the medici family

anyway apparently his Thing was Wanting People To Be Protestant, except protestantism didn’t exist yet. Tragic 😔

[nyancrimew]

i have your old pictures, david. from before you became delusional. you have one month to delete your tumblr blog or i will be sharing them with the ENTIRE world.

ok so before you go further down your obsession with harassing me here a few things since you appear to be completely incapable of looking into your harassment targets whatsoever:

you can stop asking me to "post a photo if you are brave enough", the first link in my pinned post is my wikipedia with a photo of me, and basically all the info about me ever, i regularly post selfies on all social media sites im active on

you did not "clock me" i am a well known, publicly out trans girl, i crop slurs out of the asks you send me because i see no reason to share your pathetic hatred with my audience

it takes like 2 minutes of research to find my actual deadname, and david sure aint it

you clearly dont have my old pictures but even if you did i have no reason to care, i have posted pre transition pics myself regularly

sorry but i unfortunately wont be deleting my tumblr blog due to not giving a shit about you

half your asks are you being mad at me for not giving you attention, have you tried making friends?

i will now be blocking you and continue to live a happy cheerful live while you get mad at me and become sadder and sadder from this path you have chosen to go down

i am only sharing this because you are less than just pathetic and it is fun to clown on your terfshittery

[ticketridehome]

★THE ACCOUNTS OF ADAM LANZA (1/?)★

*enjoy…!*

☆KAYNBRED

Kaynbred was one of Adam’s accounts, (random info-drop…) in which if you ever seen the “suicide poses” that Adam had found on Adam’s computer. The file name “Kaynsu1” and “Kaynsu2” taken round 2010, and the file names are a reference to alias “Kaynbred.”

*also, when Kaynbred was created; Adam was 16.*

The first existence of “Kaynbred” was on the forums “glocktalk.com” which he joined on April 1st, 2009. Whichhis first post on that account was on October 1st, 2009–asking about glock length. Most of the questions are mostly PC hardware related.

Adam would go on to post 8 discussions, all ranging from:

October 1st, 2009

October 13th, 2009 (3x)

October 14th, 2009 (2x)

October 20th

NOTE: Adam got banned on the account, reasons unknown.

Adam, also went on to create a another account on a another gun forum, under the same name. This website “northeastshooters.com” on May 2nd, 2009. Adam was 17 during this time.

*i also think he didnt post on there since i only see dicussions talking about him, he probably got banned?*

On June 7th, 2009, Adam made a account on Wikipedia—on this account he edited pages mostly about mass shootings, ranging too

August 6th, 2009

August 14th, 2009

August 30th, 2009

December 9th, 2009 (4x)

January 21st, 2010

February 4th, 2010 (4x)

Now, his “last” site under this name when he joined another gun forum called “thehighroad.org”. The posts on this forum would be centred around the same time his posts on “glocktalk.com” would be.

The time of these posts would be:

August 25th, 2009 (2x)

August 26th, 2009

August 27th, 2009

September 7th, 2009

October 12th, 2009

October 13th, 2009

February 23rd, 2010 (2x)

*top: his account on thehighroad.org. bottom: his account on wikipedia.*