#if i made something popular I'd never get over people making fanart and fanfiction about it

[very-uncorrect]

the absolute urge to draw your sona again but i’m like perpetually burnt out and can draw nothing but ocs and spooky month…… AUGHHHHH

Augh I get that ALSO THE FACT YOU WANT TO DRAW MY SONA AT ALL MAKES ME SO HAPPY HEHE YAYYYY

[myfandomrealitea]

That post you made about Harry Potter and how to not financially support and fund the franchise and put more money in Joanne's pockets felt like a lie because I swear I got the impression that even that wasn't allowed when the whole thing started

To be clear; I stopped. Completely. I compartmentalized it all and just stopped interacting with anything Harry Potter online whatsoever. But I always wished it would be fine to still be able to do certain fandom things without supporting her, but people were saying that even using the tag or reading the fanfiction or making fanart was still supporting the ip and not letting it die completely as a topic on the internet was indirectly putting money in her pockets.

It wasn't until I came across a post from a queer woman from somewhere in the global south with heavy OCD and intrusive thoughts or something like that, commenting on how hostile of a thing it became for someone of her affliction; the way people were treating it like do or die. Pointing out that no matter how much trans people and allys cut off their support of her, she has other large means of income that we won't be able to touch, and there will still always be transphobic homophobic Harry Potter fans that will continue to support her actively, putting that money in her pockets. Another thing she mentioned was the treatment of Harry Potter and Joannes bigotry in contrast to the treatment of FNAF and the creators bigotry. And lastly something about the USAmericanized nature of it? I don't really remember that part but I think I understood it at the time I read it (maybe it was something about all the other countries the IP is popular in who are probably more conservative and unaware or caring of the issues with her who will still put money in her pockets, or maybe it was something about American fans fixating and posing the support of her as the ultimate battlefield of Trans Rights to other queer and trans individuals trying to be quiet fans who are facing Much Worse in their countries)

Anyways after that I briefly started reading ao3 fanfic again, just put a filter for anything before 2019 or so, and then my interest more gently fizzled out.

I can't remember what my point is anymore, maybe just to bring these arguments to your attention(also I am not arguing against the financial boycott or ending of support for this woman through her ip).

Harry Potter will never stop earning money. That's just the flat reality of it; I mean, look at the likes of Elvis and the original Sherlock Holmes books and every other 'dead' media that's still earning money. Short of making Harry Potter an illegal piece of media, yes, there will still always be a number of people giving her money.

The goal is to give her less money. To turn Harry Potter from a prominent, profitable cashcow into a defunct piece of media that only select groups are still clinging to. To make it so that JK Rowling has to choose between paying her bills and funding anti-trans movements.

When something stops bringing in a certain amount of profit, studios start looking elsewhere. When a cashcow starts drying up, they stop trying to milk it as hard. Which in turn means less productions for JK Rowling to collect her pocketmoney from.

What would you rather; JK Rowling getting $100,000 or JK Rowling only getting $10,000?

Something is better than nothing. Damage reduction is better than open exposure. If everyone just rolled over and gave up because "things will keep happening anyway" the world will literally be a rancid, fetid wasteland of bigotry and violence.

I'd much rather watch JK Rowling fizzle out into a bitter old wench sustained only by the dogged support of other stubborn bigots than watch people willingly disregard and condone bigotry because its "easier" and "she'll be a bigot anyway."

I'd much rather JK Rowling only have $10,000 to donate to shitty movements over $72,000. Shitty movements can do a lot less with a lot less money.

[paperlovesadness]

I'm sitting outside in the sun in wet jeans - following advice on how to stretch denim to better fit you - making breathing room for myself and my thighs who are hated by jean sizing everywhere - and I'm getting sappy about Tumblr and fangirling and this community of lovely, unapologetically excited people I've met here.

This is something not many will probably read (long posts can be tough, I get it) - it just kind of all spilled I guess? Incoherently but with passion. So why not set it free when it's already here.

You see - I can't help but credit Tumblr as this huge part of my inner child healing journey. And particularly the girlhood part of it all.

Subconsciously & even consciously I've felt so so ashamed of these "girly" sides of me all my life. Especially in their "prime time" of my tween and teen years. I'd love things secretly - or at most - talk about them only after loudly labelling them as "guilty pleasures" (quite a terrible concept) or acting like it's all done with a tinge of self-aware irony.

But being a hopeless romantic; loving your favorite characters with your whole being; squealing over your favorite music and the musicians who make it; talking about your favorite songs and lyrics and photos; drawing, editing, making fanart of things that make your heart sore; sharing your fantasies and dreams; crying about quotes and big ideas; writing stories - those are all such beautiful things.

I've immersed myself back in the worlds of blogging and fanfiction and musical fangirling and... In many ways I haven't felt this good since I was a kid - still untouched by society and it's shaming of the endless supply of passion I had in me towards the things I loved.

And fangirls are a force. Fangirls are what made the music industry what it is. They're who discovered the Beatles and Leonard Cohen and Frank Sinatra and David Bowie - amongst so many others - and when they did the hard work - only then was it all taken over and appropriated by men who claimed only they can "truly and objectively" appreciate it.

It's girls - bright, unapologetically excited, passionate girls who care for pretty things and things with a soul and things with a story, with romantic connotations - girls who love to curate aesthetically pleasing landscapes and spaces around themselves - it's those girls who contributed hugely to an actual analogue photography and vinyl pressing revival & re-popularization.

I'm in my late twenties. I've only recently let myself pierce my ears and start wearing makeup sometimes. And care openly about my appearance and fashion choices. It's very much still all queer coded and slightly gender-mixed. Because that's me. But caring about these things has always been categorized as a "girl thing" = therefore = shameful, shallow, not something to be proud of.

I'm continuously curing my incredibly hurtful and internally misogynistic complex of "not being like other girls". There are still biases and automatic-judgements I'm fighting on the daily. But it's become so much clearer and easier to do so.

Im more ways than one I want to be exactly like other girls. I want to grab the hands of all the fangirls around this site and dance with them in a circle and tell them they look great whatever they choose to look like and I want to sit down in a meadow and make flower crowns together and squeal over our favorite things.

And to be clear I'm not saying be girly. I'm saying embrace you inner girlhood.

And that could be so many things. Just... Never be ashamed of the parts of it that society deems shallow and embarrassing or worthless.

And just... Thank you for being girlies with me 💗

(girlies & girls as usual used as more of a state of my mind and being; not a strictly gendered term. This applies in all, most or many ways to queer people & of course non-binary and trans experiences).

[broken-clover]

🍓🔪🍬🦴🥤 :D

Wheeeee

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

Tbh you think I'd remember but I really don't. I have vague memories of making Pokemon OC's but wasn't really introduced to the concept of fanfiction until my older sister got me into Hetalia and I found out about it while looking up fanart. I think I've discusses it before, though, that I didn't feel confident writing full-on fanfic for the longest time because I was too terrified about writing characters OOC. Idk what exactly made me get over it, maybe GG just instilled enough brainrot I couldn't help it

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

See I dunno about 'weird' but I've done a lot of random shit I never thought would be relevant until I had to go look for it. Hard to objectively say what was the oddest so I'm just gonna make a list of some off the top of my head

-(I've repurposed a surprising amount of my learnings from mortuary for anatomical and medical reference)

-Giraffe/horse autopsy

-Introductory guides to Jamaican Patois

-"Can bats get polio"

-"Common clothing of Nepal"/"Common clothing of Tibet" (notable in that it ended up being relevant for half a paragraph)

-"Cheeses of Bhutan"

-"What is the highest proof alcohol you are legally allowed to buy"

-Profanities of numerous languages, including sign

-"How old are children before they can pronounce 'x'"

-Brazilian cryptids

-"least flammable bed fabrics"

-Treatment and recovery time of a PCL tear

-Step by step guides for kimono-wearing

-Bone throwing as a form of divination

-Adult clubfoot treatments

-"what type of video is security camera footage"

-"autoimmune diseases caused by stress"

-psychogenic stuttering

-how to replace/modify a clutch disk for a stick shift

-French homicide law

-Pyretic drugs

-LOTS of fish biology

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

Probably in part due to oversaturation, but Bridget is just...kinda boring. I find her concept and story endearing and sympathetic, of course, but she doesn't have the same kind of complicated themes and bizarre lore that engages me like a lot of the series' other characters to the point where I can delve into it and get on that level of brainrot.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Can't simply say 'a.' I feel like I take a lot of bits from a lot of different stuff! I find I like to try and find 'weird' media frequently, though, I like seeing the bizarre concepts people can cook up and wonder if I'm not thinking outside the box hard enough. Likewise for horror, to a lesser extent

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

hweeeehhhh why do you always give me the tough ones. There's some really obvious picks, you and Jim and Roy and Crow, but I've probably done you all like three times already! Easy picks

Lemme see, if I wanna try and do something a little different than the obvious, I do have a couple recs! For anyone that's into Psychonauts, I totally recommend BabyCharmander (ESPECIALLY 'Cavity,' do not read anything else before you go into it, reading it for the first time hits you like a truck to the face) and The_Angst_Alchemist (Particularly if you're a Thorney Towers fan, they write the inmates with such panache and easily some of the best interpretations of Fred) It's a little more niche, but if you're an ARMS fan I recommend anything by MeltyMetroid, for a series that has such little lore they've written several incredibly fleshed out and well-constructed longfics (I'd recommend 'DisARMed' and 'Broken Mirror' for the plot-heavy jaunts and 'The Brass that Saved Christmas' if you want a good laugh)

Admittedly in general I don't pay as much attention to specific writers as I should, or the series I look for stuff for is so niche it doesn't really have dedicated writers

[duhragonball]

Duhragonba11

(That title looked cooler in my head for some reason.)

Hi, I'm Mike, and on December 21, 2012, I made the first post on this blog. It's nothing special, just a fandub video that always amused me. I didn't have any particular agenda with this thing, which is why I went with the name I chose.

I signed up for tumblr in 2011. Livejournal was dying, I had just moved to a new place and I was kind of looking for a fresh start. My main blog, @sodiumlamp, was my half-assed attempt to do a cool science themed blog. I thought you had to have a moody aesthetic on this site, because a lot of popular tumblrs posted black and white photos with wistful poetry and shit. I was burned out on """fandom""" and wanted to try to write something focused on a more general-interest topic. To be honest, I still want that, but it took a back seat as my priorities changed.

I created a few sideblogs, and decided the only thing I was missing was one for anime nonsense. It feels weird that I waited so long to go through with it, though. That first year or two on tumblr, I was kind of wary of the site, like I didn't know what to do with it, and I was worried I'd screw something up. Anyway, I broke my leg in the fall of 2012, and I spent about five months laid up at my parents' house. It was on the evening of December 20 that I made up my mind to set this thing up. Maybe I just couldn't settle on a name for the blog, or I wasn't sure I could post enough stuff to it to make it worth the trouble. My sleep schedule was a mess in those days, so it doesn't surprise me much that the first post was made in the middle of the night.

What really made this important for me was a post I made a few days later. I decided to just write about Raditz, and it got a lot of notes. Well, more than a hundred, which is kind of a big deal to me. There seemed to be an audience for this stuff, which led me to devote more and more time to this blog. Over the years, my other blogs have fallen by the wayside, and this became my main internet presence.

I don't think this thing is all that "big" in terms of popularity. I currently have 3957 followers, which sounds like a lot, although I usually only see 20-30 unique users in my activity reports. Still, it's a lot for me, and I'm grateful for it. I think things started to pick up in 2015, probably because of Xenoverse 1, Resurrection F, and Dragon Ball Super all starting up around that time. I got a lot of positive reinforcement from my audience, and that was a major factor that led to me getting back into writing fanfiction.

The Luffa concept was something I had been sitting on for years, but I never tried to write it because it seemed like too daunting a challenge, and even if I could finish a story like that, I wasn't sure anyone would bother to read it. But in 2015 I felt a lot more confident about giving it a shot. And people read it! They seemed to really like it! And in early December of that year, I even got fanart of the story.

(Art by @bluewavelengths)

It still blows my mind that this happened. It's eight years later, and I still find myself kind of averting my gaze when I look at this. Like, it's just sort of overwhelming. I really need to assemble some sort of gallery for Luffa art. I've got a folder with a lot of XV2 screencaps and loose drafts, and I'll run across this image from time to time and it always gets to me. Thank you, Nico.

So Luffa kind of took over a lot of this blog space from 2016 onward. I still felt like I should maintain some sort of general presence for an audience that wasn't interested in the character. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but that led me to kind of half-assedly liveblogging JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in 2017, which led me to three-quarter-assed liveblogs around the time I got to Stone Ocean and Steel Ball Run. That kind of set the stage for much of the stuff I do these days. Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z in 2019, Hellsing and Battle Tendency in 2021, and GT and Super in 2023. Well, I like to think I use my whole ass now when I liveblog these things, but I guess I should let history be the judge of that.

I'm not sure there's a coherent message to this. Honestly, I noticed back in January that I passed Year 10, and I thought I should really make a point of doing some sort of retrospective on the next anniversary, so here I am. I kind of debated making it a shitpost, or blowing it off altogether, but now that I've settled on revisiting the history of the blog, I feel like the common denominator here is that I can express myself and there are people who are interested in what I have to say. Every so often someone will tell me they liked something I wrote, and it's great. I'm not good at taking the compliment, but it's still gratifying to know that someone actually paid attention long enough to go "Yeah, he's got a good point." That matters. It matters a lot. If you're reading this, thank you.

I don't know what the future holds. I mean, I'm gonna keep posting stuff here, but for all I know Tumblr will get sold to Yahoo again and go out of business. In the short term, I still have fic work to do, and I've got a lot of messages in my ask box that I need to get back to. Also I'm gonna try to watch Evangelion next year, and reread Jojolion now that it's finished, and see if it makes more sense. Other than that, we'll see.

Serious question: Did I coin the term "Knife Lady"? Like, other people call her that now, but I think I may have been the one to get that started. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but it's fun to think about sometimes. I just don't want to steal fandom valor from the actual inventor of "we should all call that Saiyan 'Knife Lady'." But if it really was me, then that's pretty cool.

[kitkatopinions]

2, 6, 13, 17, 26 for RWBY

Alrighty, let's go!

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?*

Whiterose, Emercury, something that rhymes with stumblebee... Oh, and Roman/Neo. With Weiss and Ruby, I think that it's likely that Ruby had a bit of a crush on Weiss when they first met, but it faded pretty quickly and they're just close good friends and also I write Weiss to be in love with her sister. I understand why people ship it, but for me, the two of them are better off as friends. And then, I've been writing Emerald and Mercury as sibling like partners to the point where people refer to them as 'sister' and 'brother' for years at this point, and the same goes for Neo and Torchwick who have this whole backstory I invented where she was ten when she met him and he was fifteen and they've been like siblings ever since, and then eventually in my fics Roman takes on a dad-like role with Emerald and Mercury and Neo is like their aunt/much older sibling who also acts in a parental role - but that's not important. Basically, I've been seeing these guys as siblings so long that even though I understand why people ship them, I just don't really. With Blake and Yang, I've been pretty soured towards their relationship both by the show itself and by the wasps who try to punish people for not thinking it's God's gift to queer people. Though there's a lot of good to be found in this pairing, I much prefer to write them as 'Yang probably had feelings for Blake when they were first partners, but then all the division happened and they had a lot of problems to work through and meanwhile they both had feelings for other people and now they're close friends again but that's all they'll ever be.'

Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?*

You know... I don't think so. Not in the RWBY fandom anyway. I've been in other fandoms where fanfiction and fanart has completely changed my mind on some pairings, but for RWBY, most of the time I either start to like a pairing I didn't really think about before, or the reason I change my mind on a ship is because of what I've seen in the show itself (like, I'm starting to come around on Monochrome but it's only because of an interaction I saw in the new ep.)

Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

Weiss is a severely mishandled character and it's turned her into the worst member of Team RWBY. I love what Weiss could be when I say this, but almost every significant choice made for her character whether that's in her arc, her summoning semblance, or even her wardrobe is actively detrimental to her and makes her hard to enjoy - of course with the standout really hard to get over faunus racism she never apologized for and was never shown unlearning being the really hard hurtle to get over. I can never take it seriously when people refer to her as 'best girl' or freak out about her character arc.

Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

Ohhh boy, I have so many of these. XD

Instead of focusing on Jaune's troubles with being a leader early on, I'd give Ruby and Weiss's problems more time and focus on developing their dynamic.

Instead of having Ironwood unnecessarily get shot into a rapid decline into a villain in order to get Ruby and Co to be on their own against Salem, I'd have Ruby come up with the plan for Ironwood and the others to take Atlas to Vacuo for extra protection and resources and then use the staff to make portals to evacuate the remaining people of Mantle that they'd volunteer to stay behind and fight.

Instead of Yang going to the Vytal dance by herself and standing around doing almost nothing all night, I'd have her go to the dance with Velvet but then express feelings for Blake to Ruby.

Instead of having all four members of Team RWBY fall into the void and wind up in Wonderland copy-paste so that dealing with the crisis in Vacuo is entirely put on hold so Ruby can be sad without seeing the consequences of anything, I'd have had Yang and Weiss fall along with Nora. And while they're trying to find a way back out of a more Narnia based world or Peter Pan based world or... Realm of Darkness from Kingdom Hearts based world, Ruby and Blake and the others would be dealing directly with what's going on in Remnant while they prepare for Salem's inevitable attack and deal with a mass-homelessness crisis and struggle to know if they should trust Theo and deal with civilians hating them for destroying their home and so on and so forth.

Most shippable character?

You know what, I'm gonna give this one to Ruby. I don't ship Ruby with a lot of characters, but there's a ship for her that fits pretty much anything you could want. You want a fluffy cute kids-have-crushes on each other ship where the characters have a lot of similarities? Ruby and Penny. You want something that's still cute but is a little more angsty and has a bit more drama where the characters have a lot of differences? Ruby and Whitley. You want some of the vibes of Ruby and Whitley but you want it to be a bit more high stakes and personal and based on a deeper connection? Ruby and Weiss. You want a slowburn of mixed feelings and mutual pining where two characters share similar beliefs but couldn't be more different in terms of personality and experiences? Ruby and Blake. You want a story where one person who is a leader trying their best is involved with a confident sly person who is able to challenge her and make her better? Ruby and May. You want two good friends who are really strong and secure in their relationship as friends but also you want them to be something more and explore a starts-out-awkward but ultimately healthy romance? Ruby and Jaune. You want enemies to friends to lovers who have a history of distrust and hurt but now they could end up leaning on each other? Ruby and Emerald. You want a wild ride that seems like it's a lot of fun but also there's underlying serious themes of finding joy in dark places and protecting each other both emotionally and physically? Ruby and Nora. You want a wild ride that seems like a lot of fun and doesn't have emotional hang-ups? Ruby and Neon. You want a bittersweet angst driven what-we-could-have-had romance based on mutual feelings that leaves someone emotionally devastated after a death? Ruby and Pyrrha. You want a quirky sweet ship between two cinnamon roles but for some reason Ruby and Penny just doesn't do it for ya? Ruby and Velvet. You want that enemies to friends to lovers thing but Ruby and Emerald is just too boring for you? Ruby and Neo. You want the close friends who have a secure relationship and are friends but you actually hate Jaune? Ruby and Oscar!

I could go on, but I'm probably already being really boring. The point is, Ruby is very very shippable with a lot of people. XD

Anyway, thanks for these asks, it was a lot of fun!

[robotnik-mun]

I usually have answer for questions like these...but what specifically about Mobius: XYL made it so horrendous that not even someone with actual writing talent like Flynn could save it? I'd say that it was just a blank slate and that any competent writer could fix it.

*Sighs, pulls out a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. Pours the glass. Takes the shot* 

Alright, before I get into the specifics, I’m gonna contextualize a few things for you. I want you to picture a comic book, one built primarily (but not exclusively) around action, and despite the intense quality issues it tends to suffer from its still pretty popular, with a fairly vocal fanbase. One day a character is teased- the daughter of a major character, hinting towards an amazing story that will show the future of your favorite characters. Years past, the hype builds up. A hint of what’s to come is given in a story where this mystery character is featured, pulling forth an intriguing scenario in which her father, one of the heroes, will become a villain years later. 

Finally it is announced- at long last, this much anticipated storyline is going to happen! We’re going to see the future of the setting, the future of the characters and their offspring! Oh, what things will await? What mysteries will build in the interim? What new villains will operate in the future? What will the children of the heroes be like? 

Well, eventually, the storyline finally comes. All that waiting, all that excitement and hype, all of that theorizing... and all it amounted to was a fart in the wind, all noise and fury signifying nothing. 

That, in a nutshell, was Mobius 25YL. 

Now let us get into specifics. Forgive me if I miss anything, for there is a LOT to get into, so I’ll just summarize what comes off the top of my head. 

-Firstly, there was Lara-Su herself. Oh, poor Lara-Su. That’s really one of the great tragedies of the Pre-Flynn era. She had the design. She had the concept. She had the hype- people were doing fanart and fanfiction of her long before she debuted properly in the book. And then 25YL came along, and what we saw was... 

....yeah, that. See, it turned out that she wasn’t being trained as a guardian. She was just a normal leading a normal teenage life, and my GOD it was boring. Our opening scene involves her thumping her stupid cousin on the head with a book for insulting the Guardians, and this? This is how she became a Guardian. After everything we had been led to believe, everything we had been wanting to see, the mysterious, much-anticipated Daughter of Knuckles... turned out to be a whiny, entitled little rich girl who literally whined her way into being a Guardian. Not that we got a chance to see her tenure as a guardian, oooh no- it was FAR more important to see her sweet sixteen and a sleepover with her friends, and of course pool party antics. Which brings us to the next point....

-...namely that this story went *nowhere*. Like it was literally the last few issues that the damn plot moved forward and reached a climax. THe build-up took a back seat to what Penders evidently felt was what the audieance REALLY wanted- DOMESTIC DRAMA! Marvel in Lara-Su getting in fights at school because someone had an opinion! Wonder in the glories of her sweet sixteen! Behold the pool parties! Amaze at Sonic’s son being a little pervert! Hey, do you know what we needed more of? Sonic and Knuckles getting in a belching contest at a dinner party! And so on and so forth- the whole thing was basically a domestic drama, a really, really cheesy and badly written one, and these aspects of the story overtook everything else. Even worse, this story dragged on and on and on at a snails pace, and as I said, the only remotely exciting thing happened literally within the last few issues, with the build up being drawn out and unengaging. 

-The future was boring. Very, very boring, and even worse, we were told exactly how it got that way. What portions of the story weren’t dedicated to observing the Domestic Life Of The Teenage Echidna were spent infodumping and expositing about the events of the past that led to the present time. And at the present time? Everything was so peachy and perfect it could make you sick. There was no danger, no new menaces to fight in the Post-Robotnik Mobius, everything was just bland and happy and nooo real problems whatsoever. The Kingdom of Acorn now ruled Mobius, and Angel Island was now a superpower, and all the enemies of the past were either defeated or domesticated (more on that below). There was nothing to draw people in. No conflict to engage the readers. Even worse, ss this at the time was regarded as ‘the’ future and not just a ‘What-If’ (the debate of which caused an infamous feud between Penders and Bollers), the exposition ensured that there could not even be a potential mystery in figuring out how things got to this point, because the entire future was now laid bare before us. And since we now knew that this achingly perfect and tranquil future was to come, and exactly HOW Eggman was going to be defeated, there was little reason to become invested in past stories. What’s the point of sticking around when you know how its all gonnna go? Every conflict that took place in the past was now rendered irrelevant thanks to this future, which pretty much gave away the ending. 

-On top of all that, the developments of the characters from the past who were featured in this future were... nonsensical, and in some cases deeply insulting. Knuckles, for example, who had grown up in the wilderness away from cities and the like, was now in a position of power as not only Guardian but the head of the EST, and living very comfortably in a manor, with a maid of all things. Even accounting for the fact that the years change people, this doesn’t really feel like the kind of life Knuckles would ever want to live or COULD ever want to live, instead feeling like a reflection of Penders’ own ideal for what a happy ending should look like. Worse though was what happened to Julie-Su... while her depiction as such was not always very stellar, there was at least a token amount of effort applied to depicting her as a capable soldier and action girl, and prior to the release of this he swore up and down that she would STILL be a badass. This was false. This was very, very false. She was pretty much a stay at home mom who did upkeep on the house, acting as a *painfully* cliche ‘50s Housewife’ at utter odds with her prior depiction. While there is nothing wrong with being a domestic or anything like that, the fact was that this was definitely not how anybody ever wanted to see Julie-Su, and even worse, despite Penders’ touting of the ‘non-traditional’ nature of their marriage (which I should add was a reflection of the fact that he and his own wife operate under a common-law marriage), the fact of the matter was that the marriage was even MORE tradtional and bland than most marriages in media at that time. 

And it didn’t end there either. Sonic was now King of the world and pretty much going through a midlife crisis, and Sally, who actually WAS a leader of men during her youth and Queen of Mobius, was now happy and content with taking a backseat to Sonic and letting him make all the major decisions. There are many arguments about whether or not Sonic should have ever been a king or if it fits his character, but the point of order is, nobody at all wanted to see THIS from Sonic, or Sally. The decision to make him King was especially baffling because in real life, that’s not how European monarchy’s work. Sonic is not nobility, and even if he were, his lower rank would ensure that he would only ever be a prince or a regent at best, while Sally would be the one calling the shots thanks to her being higher ranked than him to begin with. 

And then there was Lien-Da. Recall how I said some threats became domesticated? Well this here is Exhibit A- wanna now what kind of future Lien-Da has after a lifetime of terrorism, deceit and murder? She’s living comfortabltly in suburbia with her son (with no mention or hint of who the father could be), and is just so gosh darned chummy with her half-sister that they gossip like a couple of old hens. I mean sure, Lien-Da helped murder Julie’s mother and their father, and then had Julie mindwiped twice-over, to say nothing of spending generations trying to murder the Guardians, but it’s all coooool, brah! No hard feelings, no bad blood whatsoever! Why, even Dimitri himself confirms that all of Lien-Da’s ambitions would never ever come true anyway, so hey, why carry a grudge? Family trumps all!

Yeah, I digress. Whatever people envisioned for the future of the characters they loved, this wasn’t it. At all. 

-The kids sucked, both as characters and from a design standpoint. For visuals, Lara-Su got off easy, having a reasonably unique and recognizable design that made her an instant hit with a lot of fans... the fact that Penders didn’t design her might have had something to do with that though. Everyone else? Clone children. Clone children as far as the eye can see. Literally they were all just traces of their parents with different clothes, and they had even less going on with regards to personality. The one with the most distinct personality was Manik, who was such a loathesome little creeper that everyone kind of wished he really WAS just as bland and forgettable as everyone else. While obviously children are gonna resemble their parents, making them flat out clones was just a step too far (sadly this would plague the sequel series as well). There have been many fan ideas and conceptions of what the children of our heroes would look like- all of them were better, or at least made more of an effort, than this. 

-While the book might have been called “Mobius: 25 Years Later”, it was actually more like “Angel Island Twenty Five Years Later”. Given that this storyline started out as a special called Knuckles: Twenty Years Later, this isn’t really that unexpected, but for a storyline that billed itself as the future of Mobius itself, the focus on Angel Island at the expense of everything else left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. WHile it would be impossible to cover everyone, it was Knuckles and his family that got the most coverage, with the extended cast getting cameos or token mentions regardless of how important they were in the past. Bunnie and Antoine didn’t show up, Tails only showed up much later, we barely get any action from the other Chaotix... you get the idea. Even worse, Knuckles was pretty much revealed to be the destined savior of the planet, the one to finally defeat Eggman instead of Sonic, and the reveal of what was causing problems in the future would eventually be revealed to be SOnic’s fault! The Knuckles favoritism was incredibly grating, and incredibly disappointing. People wanted to see the future of *Mobius*, not JUST all the parts most relevant to Knuckles. This was the storylien that really did much to establish how little Penders cared about the title character of the series and how hellbent he was on ensuring the ‘legacy’ of his personal pet despite the Knuckles series having been gone for years by that point. 

-On a retroactive front, the reveal of Rotor being gay, or rather the rationale and circumstances of it, did a lot to taint the perception of the series. Even when the series was going on, Penders hinted that one of the cast was gay, and didn’t reveal who it was until years after he had left the book...it just happened to be Rotor, who just happened to be tortured in the new 30YL storyline while his supposed lover, Cobor, was dead. That he timed the reveal in such a way that it made Flynn look like a homophobe was suspect enough, but his reasoning behind the reveal was especially troubling, with him declaring that Rotor was gay due to his shyness. Adding insult to injury, there was absolutely no chemistry between Cobor and Rotor, like at all. In a fandom where two characters so much as looking at eachother too long can result in shipping, this was especially noteworthy, as nobody at all shipped Cobor and Rotor before the reveal... and after, for that matter. Penders loudly patting himself on the back for this despite how little he had done in-story to indicate it did a lot to taint the storyline in people’s eyes, and forever made Rotor’s sexuality a touchy subject due to knowing that Penders would always be eager to take credit for it despite having done nothing to build it up. While there was only so much one could really do at the time it was written, that doesn’t excuse the fact that there was so little affection and so little to read into with regards to Cobor and Rotor, due to the fact that believable, human interaction is well beyond Penders’ capacity as a writer. 

There is probably more I am not considering. Anyone who has anything to add is free to do so. But in conclusion? For everything that this story promised to be, and for all the ways that promise was broken, this whole thing became a black hole of wasted potential, a vortex of suckage that would consume everything in proximity, and that is why despite everything, a lot of people are not that eager to see it re-visted, believing that its just impossible to un-anchor it from the awful, awful story that spawned, and that there is nothing worth salvaging from it. 

They might have a point.