#how would he even treat some rando fiance....

[microwaving-my-ocs]

i'm probably going to keep sammie though, and just transpose him into a new fantasy setting. his general settings/traits that make him him are:

backstory & angst over his sister and the tension between wanting to preserve her memory in a very tangible way (living AS her, or the live he thinks she would have wanted to live) and living for himself & in the present, where the past isnt a shackle but just a part of him

crossdressing / being androgynous. bc i want to draw a char like that

being generally smart in his late teens / adulthood (both IQ and EQ)

i also want to give him a romantic partner, but it becomes unnecessarily complicated in the original setting; where the FL is a disadvantaged noble who has to bow to society's demands, and sammie is influential enough to deflect judgement from her recent divorce but also not powerful enough to make the plot irrelevant.

sammie pretty much can only flourish outside the eyes of society's elites. if he's powerful enough to shrug off the disdain of any conceivable competition, then it's a situation like Hades/Aisha (Married the Male Lead's Dad) where it's a power fantasy. which can be a very satisfying story, but i don't think it's one i'm interested in telling.

i want sammie's story to be one about the past/present. about living in the past and living in the present. about being unable to get to know others bc of how guarded you are, about losing your faith in people, and gradually coming to trust at least a few people and having some faith in the future again.

i think i can probably do this while keeping his original story, just changing the FL's settings and how they meet. maybe sammie isn't trying to take over the duchy anymore. he isn't suave and he isn't ambitious, he just wanted his sister to live but she didn't, and now he has a new sister he never knew and he somehow needs to keep the both of them (and samantha's friends) alive.

altho tbh, one thing i will miss is the process of how FL discovered sammie's past in the original plot. i like the idea that you need to peel him like an onion. that the people you meet in adulthood have so much history to them that you usually are not privy to and may never know. that the people they lost and whom you never personally knew are also lost to you forever (the idea that we never see samantha's POV; we only see the other chars' recollections of her and their interpretations of her, and they all kind of conflict w each other in tiny ways)

i think i can possibly make FL a rival spy. maybe the one that was supposed to be sammie's bestie, but then i realised she had better chemistry w sammie than his supposed fiance. either way, i think their chemistry would be more important than the premise. which is quite funny, because my unhappiness w how the premise usually folds out is why i started writing this story in the first place and now i'm ditching the premise entirely

[thankskenpenders]

Yeah, this is the big one. Grab your popcorn

Sally finally gets a moment to talk to Sonic after being ignored all day, and tells him what’s up. With her being put in charge, and Sonic being her royal consort (basically, the guy who’s committed to marrying her someday but isn’t quite her fiance yet), Sally wants Sonic to stop going on away missions and lead Knothole by her side

Look. Let’s set aside all of our preconceived notions about what a Sonic comic should or shouldn’t be. Ignore the fact that we obviously want to see Sonic go on adventures. Forget it. Let’s look at it from Sally’s perspective for a second

Yes, this is the post in which I explain that “The Slap” isn’t that bad. It’s certainly not great, but it’s not The Worst Thing Ever like it’s been made out to be. I wish I didn’t have to spend my evening writing this, but 15 years of hyperbolic fan outrage (note: some Wikia rando added that “reception” section this year) have forced my hand

First of all, again, Sonic is formally committed to marrying her and ruling alongside her someday. This was established ten issues ago. He was already committed to this. Then, Sonic went and died. Sally still spent an entire year of her life thinking her basically-fiance was dead, and had to deal with shit in Knothole without him as things continued to get worse and worse. No one can just bounce back from that unscathed. After his return, she WANTED to help Sonic and go be a Freedom Fighter on the last mission, but her parents forbade her and the royal guards kept her in the castle. (That SUCKS, but is a whole ‘nother conversation.) She wants to fight by his side and keep him safe, but her parents are forcing her to stay home and be the princess, which only makes her more distraught. Last issue, she broke down into tears when she saw Sonic get shot by M over Eggman’s video feed, and her mother had to console her and reassure her Sonic wasn’t dead

Sally very clearly has PTSD over Sonic’s “death” a year ago. She doesn’t want to lose him again. She’s outright said as much

And also... when she says Sonic isn’t the only hero around, she’s got a point?Sonic barely did anything in the last arc! Tails was the one who outsmarted ADAM. Shadow dealt with Eggman. Bunnie did most of the damage to M and took out an entire fucking aircraft carrier on her own. Knuckles, the Chaotix, Rouge, and Amy took out the robot horde. All Sonic did was land the final attack on M--which, honestly, someone else could’ve done. And he got his arm injured in the process

Add on to this all of the chaos of the last few days. Sally’s barely had a free moment to see Sonic since she found out he was alive. They nearly got nuked by Eggman. They’re being harangued by the paparazzi. It sucks. And hell, it goes back WAY further than this! She spent years as a kid trying to save her parents, and now all they do is belittle her. She found out she had a secret older brother, and then her parents decided he was the more important child. She went through all sorts of relationship drama. She nearly died a few times herself. And now, her parents have decided to leave her in charge of their whole kingdom at a time of war, while she’s still a mess from the trauma of losing Sonic. The idea Bollers had was apparently that Sally had been bottling up her issues for years (which she totally had been), and this was just the breaking point

I know Sonic’s desire to keep being a hero is understandable. I know he’s right. That’s all he really knows how to do, and he feels useless in times of peace. And obviously, we the readers want to see Sonic go on adventures. But Sally’s concerns are valid. We don’t have to agree with her plan to have Sonic rule by her side for her emotions to be understandable

Sally’s been on the verge of a breakdown for who knows how long. She should be mad at her parents, but they’ve worn her down to the point where she thinks she’s unable to confront them. (It would be very, very easy to make a case arguing that Sally’s parents are emotionally abusive. Max especially.) She thinks that Sonic is the one person who will listen to her and have her back. They’re betrothed, after all. This is literally what he signed up for. After trying to get his attention ALL DAY, she finally gets a chance to talk to him. But he wants other things in life, and refuses. In front of a crowd, no less

So she lashes out at Sonic and slaps him

Then they both start yelling at each other and crying. Sally asks Sonic if she’s more important to him than fighting Eggman, Sonic can’t answer, and Sally runs away in tears. For all intents and purposes, Sonic and Sally are now broken up. (For now.)

Should Sally be lashing out at Sonic? No. Could this scene be done better? Oh, absolutely. This is not the direction I would want Sally to go in as a character, and if you ARE gonna have them fight, this wasn’t written with the care required to make fans sympathize with both parties. The fact that we’ve seen everything from Sonic’s perspective with barely any insight into Sally’s certainly doesn’t help. But as the several lengthy paragraphs above explain, this does not come out of nowhere. It’s easy to find lots of fans online calling Sally all sorts of names (sometimes very misogynistic or ableist ones) because they think she just flipped out on Sonic out of nowhere. But she didn’t. Sally having some sort of breakdown had been foreshadowed for several issues, and the reasons why make sense. No, she shouldn’t have lashed out at Sonic, but this isn’t just her going “Oh no, my period! Let’s nuke England!” as so many have made it out to be. (And hell, the comics already had a lengthy history of treating Sally even worse than this, with Gallagher making her the nagging girlfriend who bickered with Sonic all the time and Penders sympathizing more with her shitty dad.)

Again, this was supposed to be a turning point in which Sally bottling up all this crap and carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders finally leads to her breaking. It’s a dramatic low point to build back up from. The problem is that Bollers left the series only a few issues later, and Penders and “Chacon” never did much with this. So in hindsight, many view this as her randomly snapping “for no reason,” because the followup stories that would have explored how she’d been bottling up her feelings were never actually written. But it’s not hard to figure out what’s supposed to be going on in her head if you actually go back and look at the preceding Sally scenes

For the most part, this is just run of the mill relationship drama for Archie Sonic. You see this kind of shit all the time in serialized media. Characters date, but the writers need to keep things ~spicy~, so they break up, see other people... then inevitably end up back together, and the process repeats ad nauseum. You ever watch Scrubs? You know how JD and Elliot are obviously love interests from episode one, but they had to do that will they/won’t they shit for years and have flings with other characters to keep up ratings? Yeah, it’s just that. For Sonic, there’s also the added pressure from Sega, who never allowed Sonic to be in any stable relationship for very long. Several writers have talked about how this limited what they could do with Sonic and Sally. Do I like that this cycle of drama is the norm? No. But after over 200 of these comics, I’m used to it

(And hell, at this point in the comics, they had literally just broken up Bunnie and Antoine, and Rouge was starting to get in the way of Knuckles and Julie-Su’s relationship. Between Julie-Su and Knuckles’ first kiss and them actually dating, Penders had Julie-Su get mad at Knuckles and go out with some random other guy. They do this shit all the time)

The worst you can really say about this scene is that Jon’s art is a little too goofy and undermines the drama a bit. In his own words from his website’s FAQ: “I’m sorry. Like I said, I was an overeager noob and I drew what I was given.” But really, he had been drawing these sorts of exaggerated, frantic expressions throughout the entire issue. Not just with Sally. Look at all the panels of Sonic wigging out in the previous pages. I still think his work is fantastic. If anything, it was a bad call on Archie’s part to give this somber scene to a brand new artist with a very exaggerated, silly art style. He just drew what was in the script

You know what really blows about this whole thing, though? Jon Gray is still, to this day, over 15 years later, getting harassed for drawing The Slap

That is so utterly ridiculous and shitty. People have made up all sorts of conspiracy theories about the slap, saying that Jon had some sort of “anti-Sally agenda” and that it wasn’t in the script. (This is completely false.) People are so stuck in the past and bent out of shape over this one panel in a pretty run-of-the-mill Archie Sonic issue that Jon has to block people who come into his Twitter mentions accusing him of “sabotaging” the series on a regular basis. Y’all, Jon’s a good guy, and he doesn’t deserve to be treated like that

And lord. There’s so much nastier shit within this series. Penders hooking a 15-year-old Sally up with a dude in his 20s (and later saying that he wanted her to lose his virginity to said dude). Gallagher making Barby Koala have a creepy crush on Tails. Penders rephrasing a poem about the Holocaust to be about hedgehogs. Penders having Sally rationalize her dad’s attempt at genocide. (I could go on and on with Penders, can you tell)

This whole thing is just, so blown out of proportion. It’s not a great scene, but it didn’t “ruin” Sally’s character. Neither Jon nor Bollers had some sort of “anti-Sally agenda.” They weren’t out to ruin your fucking ship. And for god’s sake, quit yelling at them about it. This was 15 years ago and all parties involved have moved on. It’s just more melodrama in a series that’s always 90% melodrama

It’s a single panel in a comic about Sonic the Hedgehog. Can we move on

[madscreamsvoid]

This has to stop.

Season 8 happened, and many of you are not satisfied with it. Nearly all the fandom agreed to never let it affect them. Some refused to acknowledge this latest season of Voltron, and a huge amount of us act as if it never existed. All of this is okay. I understand your anger. I do rant a lot too about all of this privately or to some of my friends.

However, I noticed that there was a lot of hate which was unjustified and unacceptable lately.

Here we enter the spoiler zone.

So at the very end of season 8, Shiro got married with a guy who barely had screentime and who we know nothing of his relationship with our beloved hero, aside from the fact they are happy and in love and wed each other. Yes, it was rushed and yes, this isn’t good representation for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Now, why are you hating on the guy? This is an issue I saw a lot with the Sheith side of the fandom. This is actually within Sheith shippers that I witnessed it the most.

Curtis, Shiro’s now canon husband is disrespected by so many of you it makes me sick. And because of what? He married Shiro. The reason I see the most is “he’s some rando who married Shiro.” Many of those comments are followed with “it’s not Keith who got with Shiro at the end.”, and rants about how LM and JDS could have represented the most beautiful and powerful relationship in the whole show if it wasn’t for DreamWorks barging in.

I’m gonna be critical, I don’t believe they were even rooting just the slightest for Sheith. They did want to kill off Shiro to have Keith has the official and uncontested leader for the rest of the show since season 2. I feel like it was somehow destined to fall with the amount of time they wanted to kill him (I feel like they really hate Shiro in a way).

So yeah, Shiro married Curtis and we didn’t see any real development for their relationship. Is it a reason to hate on the poor guy who didn’t do anything? No. And please, those of you who are directly concerned by this, don’t try to act innocent and accuse him of things he didn’t do. No, Curtis didn’t send Adam to his death, it was Commander Sanda at the head of the operation.

The main reason Curtis is hated so much is because he popped out of nowhere to “ruin your ship”. Yeah, Shiro and Keith could’ve been a beautiful relationship ignoring all the time Keith called him his “brother” and not his “bro” (as in, ‘dude bro’ which isn’t the same) and it didn’t happen. Is this a reason to spit on Curtis? Still a no.

You have no rights to put down a character like this for the sake of a relationship you wanted to see on medias.

Many of the season 8 writings tagged with Sheith on AO3 are a proof of it. Infidelity, cheating and early divorce are not “fix-it” for the wrong in the Voltron show. Those are hate and disrespect shown to a character who was unlucky enough to take the brunt of the rage shippers have after seeing Sheith wasn’t canon.

The same issue happened with Adam (further proof that you really hate all canon romantic partners of Shiro because it’s not Keith). I will not give names, but I remember seeing a comic which made Adam pass for a huge jerk to value Keith’s determination on finding Shiro, having him lash out at Keith and almost insulting his ex-fiance. You think it’s treating a character with respect?

We got some insight of their past relationship from interviews, explaining how they argued about missions because Shiro would constantly put his health on the line which implies he ignored Adam’s concern and brushed off his worry as best as he could. Adam cared about Shiro and loved him. Sadly their relationship was badly handled on screen to make people thinks he’s an asshole, but some of you are pushing it and made him appear as a villain.

Just like Curtis is disrespected and cursed to have a one-sided love with Shiro by watching him cheating on him with his teammate, being put on the sideline but oh it’s okay because it’s “one true love”? No, it’s not.

There shouldn’t be any hate yet I’m seeing so many and I gotta say this has to stop. As a Sheith shipper, I’m truly ashamed of the behavior of some of the other shippers in the community.