#anyways yeah this is my debut back into the posting of fanart

[ricky-mortis]

Something about Apples and Bananas…

Silhouette version :)

[the-sheep]

ID GO ABSOLUTELY BONKERS IF U TYPED OUT HIS ENTIRE HISTORY FBFBFBFB i would like 2 see it..........

alright right right

This ended up being A HUGE POST so all info is under the cut.

Unless you’re on mobile, in which case, enjoy scrolling.

It all starts on flight rising. Well, Heart starts on FR. It REALLY starts with my webcomic/animated series.

It wasn’t well drawn or animated at first, but it steadily got better. One of the plot holes, back in 8th grade, was “who created priscilla and Jake?”

It was mostly summed up to “Penny made all the bots its all simple” but i was a middle schooler and i needed a complicated (and edgy) story. 

Thing is I had already made Fandragons of a good chunk of my ocs on flight rising.

I bred two dragons to get my main characters, so why not just use them?

Christy Suggested the name Cavet, and I liked it.

Yeah this is my first digital image of him as a human and he DOES NOT LOOK RIGHT

no necklace, no beard, orange eyes…

horrific.

So I made human designs for them both, but Chrysanthemum remains forgotten, not even canon to Mechanical Fury anymore.

Here’s old art of her and Cavet back before she got wiped out from existence.

the art is bad btu the Heart gimmick is there

Here’s him in his second image ever. The one that pretty much defined his design.He also quickly gained a husband

Anyway he quickly morphed into a villain several time more dangerous than the main villain

He’s responsible for the deaths of not ONE, not TWO, but THREE children.

Two his kids, one the younger sister of a character that one of the dead kids liked.

One of his dead kids got his own story, the other was literally a main character.

Chloride, (Charlie) in all his glory, lucky enough to get resurrected as an android but after finding out he’s not who he thinks he is, has to attempt to live a normal Human life… when his two best friends are paranormal investigators, his love interest having lost their arm and their only remaining sister to the main villain.

He originally found out he was an android by finding his own blueprints, hearing his Mom cry about it, and then cutting open his face (for his signature scar) and running off. 

Running into Cavet’s husband, Nathair Liu. He stitches him up, know all about robotic n all that but he is.

also a secondary villain….

I hate the art in this video but its not my worst.

(Video was Vendy’s debut, too. tho Vendy was more Nate(logan/mind/princi/whatever)’s kid than Cavet’s)

Okay i’ve gotten off track.

Yeah at this point I was really loving Cavet, on FR, and wrote an entire long story between him and Skittles based on the events of Mechanical Fury.

This was where I got the idea for reincarnation.

I needed an explanation for why the same character was in two different universes, and it was perfect. In fact, it lead to an amazing way to end it. 

But what is in control of all this? What does he see in the in between?

Well, Death was packaged with two other red herrings to keep people from thinking she was more important than them from the start, when in fact, she was. One of the plot points is that Cavet dies. He continues causing havoc, but nobody can figure out why or how. he doesn’t have a body.

Except he does. Death.

She was scary, but that was just her, she was a literal robot grim reaper. Nobody suspected she was spreading a virus to make robots susceptible to Augap’s control everywhere she went. Not even her. Cav liked hanging out in the AI scape, AKA the robot afterlife or virtual heaven.

What a fun way to make a real grim reaper.

I never really kept track of the transition from “cute robot char” to “cute real god char”

and i guess it never happened. Heart still thinks of her as she was, as cute little Litty. Except when she’s not. He gave form to the literal concept of DEATH. And became her friend. She still calls him Papa, sometimes.

In any case, Cavet’s doodles started being more and more revolving around his angst with the reincarnation.

in fact, i had a few character in the same boat as him, as I had made a couple dragons into MF characters as well.

I called them The Artifacts. It didn’t seem rounded out with only four, so I added a 5th. To give me more leeway in case I make a character i like enough to bring with them.

and turns out. I did.

I was sad enough about Cavet losing the love of his life, betraying him, creating a rift between them with his descent into obsession.

So he came with them.

They’re inseparable.

after a few lives of getting revenge on him for killing his sons and some adult humans and a BUNCH of robots, (not even counting his crimes in the vampire life he committed because he thought he lost Liu forever) Soul revealed to him something about Heart’s 6th life, which Mind doesn’t remember.

But he was there.

Long story short, he was Captain Shuggazoom. Yeah 10 lives of stuff he forgot before he started remembering his past lives. Messed Heart up.

ANYWAY BACK TO DEVELOPMENT!

I went around, making original characters to fill in Heart’s lives. I put him in a LOT of stories, but a notable one is My Old Ask Blog, @ask-musical-monsters

In which Heart is our lovable Tweedle, Bean.

He’s the bird. (this is also the blog where Willow was made!) (also a character i referenced when putting antauri on the baldi blog)

I still hadn’t abandoned MF so Bean has a lot of influence from Cavet. 

I REALLY liked bean. It occured to me here-ish that Heart isn’t constrained by being my oc. He can be whoever he wants and nobody will care. 

So of course I immediately declare him purple guy. No drawings of him, but I know I said he was purple guy at some point. Also at this point in time I started organizing the lives by number order, and making a simple arc for Heart and the others to follow.

1000 lives. 

I made a brief description of heart’s 1st life, but made it purposefully very superfluous so i can change it whenever i want. All i know is he had albinism, and a desire to live forever.

That summer I got an amazing idea. I would take advantage of the Baldi’s basics trend with a ASK BLOG.

It was a mathematically calculated success. I did as many things as possible to generate more audience. MAIN thing being posting as often as possible, and being REALLY funny. 

But knew I wasn’t going to like adding to the ask blog if i didn’t like the main character

I already knew he was going to be Baldi, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to characterize him either. 

Turns out making him heart solved both of those problems. He’s always been Heart.

And Princi has ALWAYS been mind.

Even if they don’t always show their artifacts, they always were the same people as all these other things ive made. They have a DEEP connection to both each other and me.

At some point, I re-re-discovered SRMTHFG. The first few seconds I saw SK I knew he was Heart. It was so perfect it scared me.

HE EVEN DOES THE POSE!!!!! RED EYES!!!! AAAH!!!

I got an idea for a storyline based on formless and regret and monkeys… so.. uh

Anyway that kinda brings us to today, where the events of the blog have happened based on Heart things, and i can play around with Heart as much as I want.

And Willie’s next life? Well, 23 is my favorite number. It’ll be cool, but I’m not sure how. All I know is 23 wears a striped shirt, and is a vamp again.

In summary, Heart is the most important character I’ve ever made, and I will never come close to anybody as wonderful and as complicated as him. He’s the greatest formless, the best villains, the heroes, and one character i want to hold out for finding irl.

 I love them even in scribbles i find on bus seats, in fanart of him, love her in songs i hear, in flowers i see in the wild.

Whoever they end up being, it’s safe to say I’ve fallen in love with Heart. 

If you want me to describe his in universe story, I’ll need a seperate post.

Other Heart Resources:

The Spreadsheet

The Playlist

[jlf23tumble]

Agree so much with your post about the teams and fan engagement ! And love the way you articulated all of that. Although now I definitely am interested in knowing what your notes about the specificity of each team/artist cause I feel like they'd be fascinating to read. Hope you'll post them some day, and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us ! 😊

Awwww, that’s very kind! It’s definitely head canon city, I litcherally have ZERO clue what goes on behind the scenes (and I can’t stress this enough, none of us do), so this’ll look hilariously dated when we find out that blah woof was true all along, lmao (me @ myself, thinking of some random Grimshaw interviews from last fall, oh, bless). Let’s dig in!!

For those of you who just stumbled upon this post, it’s related to the one I made last night about how I think the management teams of all these men (mid-20s means = you’re a man, not a boy) are not, in fact, sabotaging them. They negotiate a lot of tricky interconnected arrangements that none of us are privy, to, plus they’re at least trying to achieve the goals their clients are going for. And they’re doing it—the trick is these goals are highly individual and not 100% sensical (at least given our own view from the afternoon, Arctic Monkeys ref, holllllllah!!!).

In addition, these goals constantly shift, as does the music industry itself—I drive my own self loony when I lurk on blogs that are seemingly broadcasting from 2012, confused by why xx’s team is so “terrible” because they aren’t throwing good money after bad to get on a radio playlist, or why they haven’t announced yy “properly,” as if they’re being paid to worry about this level of shit (which fires me up on about five levels, deep breaths in, deep breaths out). I’m much nosier about the signals we’re getting when we hear them talk in their beautifully media-trained way about their musical interests, when we get some of that sweet, sweet fan service with a Gallagher or a Capaldi, when we get that heads up about who’s attending what concert, stuff like that. These signals don’t necessarily indicate future collaborations, but they DO indicate what kind of image these guys want to have, the kind of music they want the public to associate them with.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself…their personalities and goals at the moment are all so vastly different, and I truly do love seeing how their teams are workin’ it accordingly. Again, please @ god, don’t @ me…opinions, massively unpopular opinions, dead ahead!

* Zayn. My read on Zayn is that he enjoys the creative process, loves writing and singing, digs collabing with people, but he doesn’t seem to give two shits about the biz side (and why should he? that’s called living the dream at this particular point in his career). His website recently added “tour,” which EYEBALL EYEBALL, but he doesn’t seem to be all that interested in putting himself back out on stage or into radio/print/etc. anytime soon, and again, why should he? His numbers are HUGE without pushing himself through the anxiety-provoking churn he endured for four years, so there’s no real drive for him to do any promo if he doesn’t want to (see: the netflix-like binge dump of Icarus Falls, which could be “sabotage,” or it could just be, “fineeeeeeee, here’s some stuff for you, enjoy”). What other artist gifts his fans with gorgeous covers of such a wide variety of songs that indicate he’s more interested in sharing them than selling them. Accordingly, his fan interactions seem fairly pure and not all that promo-y: he has a keen interest in fanart, he’s done some fan pop-ups/listening parties that are pretty low-key and *seemingly* fan-focused, and recently (with zero anything to really promote), he’s been posing for cute pics and chatting with randos on the streets of NYC. I recently read that his mgmt team is no longer with him, but that sort of folds into my feeling that he’s not pursuing anything biz-wise, hence no need to jump through those particular hoops (I think he’s also struggled with a lot of demons, so yeah, why add one more). Could he be adrift? Maybe, but the next guy is the posterman for lack of focus….

* Liam. Honestly, I worry about Liam most of all. His post-1D career seems very much adrift, and I like to joke that he’s giving me that tell-all about the D one sentence at a time, but goddamn, are people listening? The struggles with alcohol, the lack of focus on every level, the reliance on his dad’s career advice (which more clearly reflects his dad’s financial class, background, and history than it does Liam’s), and the overall confusion about look, sound, and direction also flow back directly into his team. I get the feeling that they aren’t sure what to do because LIAM isn’t sure what to do or what he wants, so they follow in his wake. He’s agreeable to a fault, so seeing him at a meet-and-greet at an HMV in Birmingham last week felt like a step back into 2010 for no real reason, just like hearing that he was more or less coerced into full nude photoshoots for an underwear ad (the decisions to say yes to both of those—who’s steering this ship? If it’s Liam, he needs to tell the team his overall goal, so they can plot a course he and his fans can follow; if it’s the team, ditto). Like Niall, Liam’s actually pretty good at the SM game: lots of selfies, snapchat filters, outfits, gym service, twitter interactions. But generally speaking, his promo is confusing, and that’s probably because there isn’t much *to* promote at this point, other than a mix of collabs, clothing endorsements, spon con, horse farms, and an album that’s always on the horizon. This might be tied to the general post-1D jolt they all went through, like a plane coming off autopilot and into the hands of someone who’s just learning how to fly it. Zayn debuted at number one, so his bump wasn’t as harsh, but the others are slowly, steadily finding their footing after taking some time to find themselves and their sound, releasing songs/albums, performing (or in Louis’s case, going through unspeakable tragedy). Liam’s still adrift…and somewhat admittedly, which is kind of telling in its own way. Just know that my nervousness on his behalf ratchets up every time he feels the urge to assure us all that he’s happy.

* Niall. Truly the one following the original 1D template, right down to working with most of the same people but with more of the overall control in his hands instead of a faceless management squad. Of any of them, he seems the most ambitious, the most scientific about the sound he’s after and how he’s gonna get there. His promo is a mix of new and traditional—radio shows, talk shows, podcasts, special events, twitter interactions with fans, twitter interactions with entertaining celebrities—and it’s all hustle hustle hustle, build build build, as if he were a new ingenue instead of coming up hard on solo album number two. He’s explicit in his goals, which is refreshing, but it means he walks a weird line with fans: on one hand, he’s done with their bullshit, get ready to get rekt if you start commenting on his boring food seasoning or home décor. But on the other hand, he fully recognizes how much he needs them, which is why we get so many peeks into his “normal” life (yet zero percent of his actual personal life). It’s also probably why the blatant tweets of the last two days seem so jarring to me (I might be alone on this one, but I’m not a fan of directives in general, and asking me to call radio stations on behalf of a rich white man to become even richer just rubs me the wrong way, same with asking me to stream stuff to get you to number one…you’ve been there, buddy, how about you calm down and build some character at number 51). And speaking of calming down, it does fascinate me that both Niall and Louis namecheck Taylor Swift as someone who gets the whole fandom push/pull thing right, so watching them try to reverse-engineer her secrets is fun. Louis nails it (that hotspot treasure hunt: chef’s kiss), but Niall’s heavy-handed easter egg dump in NTMY, she would never!! I think Niall’s team needs to watch “Calm Down” about five more times before they try that again.

* Louis. I think Louis honestly has an AMAZING team in place, and they’re all clearly on his side, which makes for a refreshing change. Like Niall, he has publicly praised Taylor Swift for how she engages with her fans, but I think he’s missing a key point: she doesn’t let her fans dictate strategy, and I HOPE that’s the case for Louis, too. His old team *was* shit, so yeah, encouraging people to do fan projects to get the word out was a good idea, but turning that spigot off to let a good (paid) team step in and take over has been, uh, challenging. He’s dealt with more than his fair share of personal tragedy, but every time he gets some momentum going, it feels like something bts pushes him back off track, and he tends to keep it private, which only makes his hardest-core fans scream “sabotage.” Rightly so, he’s focusing on his personal life, and rightly so, his team is giving him the space to do that, even when it costs cash money and throws a lot of shit seriously for a loop. It makes my heart soar to see the potential of what his team can do/is doing, how much space he’s being allowed to process what he needs to process. Weirdly, that’s an unpopular opinion, and a lot of people want to indulge in an angst wank fest where Louis’s the victim of a terrible team that won’t DO anything (nevermind the fact that he’s probably ASKED them not to do anything), so they undertake a tremendous amount of performative unpaid labor that ends up being counterproductive on just about every front. Even worse, most of them can’t seem to process the fact that losing your mum is a blow, losing your SISTER is a blow, juggling other siblings or close friends handling some serious demons of their own in the aftermath of all of *that* is a blow, let alone handling your own personal coping mechanisms, nope, they want Louis to release release release, perform perform perform, c’mon, what’s holding him back, he *said* he wanted to release an album this year, there’s “no reason” for a delay, gotta be his shitty team, free him. It drives me ‘round the bend because it’s the same talk from late last year, you know, when we later found out that at least one family member was losing a fight with drug addiction. Louis’s fan engagement/promo is therefore hella fraught: he has to balance LouisTM on twitter (Mr. Donny, he’s hard, mate), his werk IG posts, and his constant edging because nobody can remember or trust that he’s got this, that multiple things are in play. But he also knows his fanbase, knows that it’s resistant to any kind of change, so I hope he pushes through and stays true to what he wants to do. I was really encouraged with his last promo round because he seems to have narrowed in on a something solid, he’s got a plan, and it’s not, “hey mr dj, put my record on,” it’s getting his fans to trust that he and his team know what the fuck they’re doing, and spoiler alert, it ain’t radio, but go ahead and keep pissing off djs by sending angry tweets their way. (Related: why is it so bad to avoid the radio when all of us admit that radio music is garbage? Is it because it’s more about you than him? Much to think about.)

* Harry. My very favorite head canon is that Harry is Jeff’s nightmare client: what was perfection at first because the Azoffs are old-school promo all the way (no SM, baby, gimme that sweet, sweet paper), and that dovetailed nicely with post-1D Harry, but it quickly veered into mulish teeth pulling. Low profile can quickly spin into no profile, and that really doesn’t work too well when you’re trying to sell sell sell, even if your brand is Harry StylesTM. HS1 and Dunkirk in their own separate ways worked VERY hard to push past the still-persistent way the general public views Harry as boybander Harry Styles, or more accurately, former boybander Harry Styles who dated Taylor Swift (if you venture out and ask someone who’s not a fan), but what I love about Harry is that much like Zayn, he doesn’t seem to be too bothered by all that. Sure, he’s ambitious, he wants to challenge himself and do things, but he’s no Niall Horan. He’s put in his time! If he gets a number one, then cool, but he’s not gonna chase it. And this is where Harry’s team really reflects his goals and energy: sure, they want him to do some promo (that “Do” tweet, the entire bit about the fan in Australia and Harry Lambert’s follow, goddddd, I loved it, petty Harry, resigned Jeff), but they clearly aren’t forcing him. He drops a song that makes a HUGE splash, and the follow-up is…liking some tweets and going to a John Mayer concert (not a John Mayer fan, so that wouldn’t be my first choice, but I respond to the zero fucks given about the whole thing). The music industry has changed a LOT in just two years, so it’s kind of cool to see team Harry pivoting a bit, seeing more SM interaction, the kindness generator, etc., but that said, the team takes their cues from him, and he clearly doesn’t want to do a whole promo circuit beyond persons a, b, and c, and magazine R, F, and A. Does it make sense to have Rob Sheffield write a profile about Stevie Nicks-blessed shroom-eater Harry Styles when his new song sounds like the Zarry combo of my dreams? NOPE, but that’s okay, Harry wanted to talk to Rob, so that’s what happened. The new song is more streaming friendly, and thank CHRIST, a lot less crusty white dude stuck in the ‘70s, so I can only hope that the rest of the album is thus, but we shall see! We’ll also see if Harry’s fan engagement shifts any further into the active zone…so far, it’s been “I’m gonna follow some larries, like these fun generator posts, check out a few dads” and staged photo ops with the same familiar faces, but I think he’s dealing with his own major bts issues as well (album delayed at least twice; that entire stalking situation). I still contend the album’s coming in the next few weeks, so it’ll be interesting to see if/how any additional promo rolls out in this new world order post-gryles landscape, how many interviews he’ll do, but I like that there’s a strategy that seems less stodgy…kudos to the new SM team, at least!!

Oh man, that got really long! Hope you enjoyed, and YES, opinions opinions opinions, and they’ll be stupid in about three weeks’ time, thanks for coming to my already dated buzzfeed article

[sunwukong-stoaway-blog]

Oh shit, 3AM, time for a hot take on the FNDM from the perspective of someone who’s drifted in and out of it for years now. And yeah, spoilers, it involves Sun, the Bees, and experience therein.

We do need a few things set for the record before I dive further in. First, there is indeed a difference between normal Bee fans and flat out Wasps. Y’know, the psychopathic harassing jerks. There is also a segment of the Blacksun fndm that is more than happy to be as harassment heavy and take things too damn far. The problem in judging which is bigger is that you’ll only ever see the size of whatever groups you happen to be in contact with, which means if you’re a normal fan of one side, you’re likely to only see the hate-filled opposite side. And if you’re removed, then it’s a roll of the dice whether you see Wasps or... whatever the BlackSun equivalent is. And whichever side is bigger, they both still exist, which is the main problem. Now let’s take a stroll down memory lane and acknowledge a few things.

First and foremost. The Bees as a ship only exists as it does because people were throwing the first characters on screen at each other and held to them. This was true of Ruby and Weiss after the Red and White trailers, then true of Blake and Yang after the Black and Yellow trailers. We didn’t know anything about any of these characters, (in fact it completely flipped Ruby and Weiss’ personality traits, making Ruby a cool and aloof sniper chick and Weiss a soft melting princess) but the ships were already cemented and beloved by the community.

This kept going into the first season proper. Sure, we had alternate blends of ships, like Ladybug, Freezerburn, and Monochrome. Even Enabler, Ruby/Yang if anyone remembers that incestuous ship, before it was burnt to the ground by canon. But Whiterose/The Bees were the biggest game in town. Seemed to be backed by the canon too, to an extent. All the characters introduced were paired off and sent on their way, including JNPR, but this didn’t stop FNDM from laughing and enjoying themselves. (One particularly popular joke during the Jaune Arc was snickering that Yang and Blake were doing the do offscreen instead of running for help, for instance.) It didn’t matter Yang and Blake didn’t have a single conversation that didn’t end in Blake snubbing Yang and Yang writing Blake off as a “lost cause,” they were the pairing and nobody else was around, so, that was canon. And then episode 15 rolled around.

Everything broke down with episode 15, though not all at once. It introduced Sun and Penny, and FNDM wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. Some, like myself, found the new characters and their dynamics fun and interesting. Some, on the other hand, declared immediately that Sun was a rapist/stalker/murderer/assassin of the White Fang, sometimes all at once. Some people had been a little bored of Jaune by this point but Sun was the first morally good character the FNDM declared a monster, and to this day, has received the roughest ‘welcome.’ And, among the accusations, the declaration that Sun was nothing but a genderbend of Yang for a hetero ship. And so the tensions began to mount.

Bear in mind, up until this point the Bees had grown to be the de facto biggest ship in the FNDM. Nothing against Ruby, Weiss, or Whiterose, but Blake and Yang were the most mature/adult of the team, and consequently, got the most attention, desire, fanart, et cetra. Now here comes the first character to make contact with Blake in a definitively different fashion and connect with her. Without question, they saw Sun as a threat and an excuse to attack the show for not giving them the Bees. Hell, it’s no surprise they even shipped him with Penny (Optimal Primates) for a time, just because they debuted the same episode, to try and get him ‘away’ from Blake in the fandom’s eyes. The response to Sun by these proto-Wasps, otherwise known as ‘the entirety of the Bees at the time’ was swift, overwhelming, and nothing short of cruel. Especially when they started harassing Sun RPers, those who defended him, liked him, and so on. People who drew those first few pieces of Blacksun art were flat out attacked and screamed at to shut down their channels. (Similar attacks started appearing at this time too at artists for other pairings, noticeably Ladybug.) And for a time, that oppressive and painful atmosphere was reality.

Then, I put up a post pointing out how little canon the Bees actually had, and compared it to Blacksun. In V1? This was an overwhelming difference. I outright called the Bees a “Ghost ship,” a ship that had absolutely no basis in canon yet sailed anyway... And attacked others. Needless to say, this was not taken well by the proto-wasps.

It didn’t matter that I actively shipped Whiterose, passively Ladybug, and eventually Nuts & Dolts. It didn’t matter if what I said was true, that the emperor had no clothes (or canon.) All that mattered to these people was slamming me down and declaring me to the world a homophobic monster for not shipping their ship. To do everything in their power to break my spirit, break my connections with people, and break any place I had in this fledgling FNDM of comfort. All for their blatantly bullshit moral highground arguments. 

This went on for a good three weeks after that first post. Round the clock attacks, harassment, and vile displays of power. It really did break me, all things considered. That much negativity drove me into a deep depression, to the point I could barely leave my dorm room in university for food, let alone class. I’m still hesitant to use the term for fear of it’s overused impression, but this made the Bees ship into a full on trigger for me. Triggering every emotion of fear, depression, and anxiety that constant bombardment thrust upon me around the clock. To an extent, it still is such a trigger, and so I can admit without issue I’m biased.

Thankfully, it did all have a silver lining. I became a lightning rod of hate, but the heavy atmosphere was broken. Bees no longer were unchallenged rulers of the FNDM, and people legit began to call out the behavior of these proto-wasps as full on bullying, or at least stopped acting like the Bees were canon. There was room to move forward now. But... of course, it didn’t stop there.

V2 rolled around. On the one hand we got Yang and Blake having the first dance, as well as actually having a real conversation on screen and developing some kind of unique bond, flimsy as it may be to some. (Seriously, Blake’s having severe overwrought depression and anxiety over Adam and the White Fang, Yang makes it about her. Yeah, that can show solidarity for the cause, but it does little to assuage Blake’s issues. I do see it as a good scene, but it’s still not a great relationship.) On the other hand, we were confirmed halfway through the year, and thanks to Sun/Neptune being cut from that last part of the Paladin fight, Blake had to be the one to ask what Yang’s Semblance was. ...Yeah. Half a year of being partners. And she doesn’t canonically know yet what Yang’s Semblance is. Hell of a partnership, yeah?

And on the other side of the coin. Sun and Blake had their full on dance, came to it as a date, and it included Yang stepping aside to give Blake to Sun. This on top of meeting Sun’s team for the first time and solidifying his place as being right there with RWBY and JNPR. ...And to counterbalance, we got Neptune. Seriously. Wasps had Neptune pegged as Sun’s “actual girlfriend” from the second his name was dropped. Then the design came in, they declared Neptune FtM trans, and that Sun was dating him. I mean, clearly, right? Then Neptune actually showed up, he turned out to be the most aggressively straight-showing guy on the show yet, and the FNDM HATED him for it. Pitched him into the same bin as Sun right then and there, while shouting they’d be a better couple than the alternatives. (This also ended up, for the first time, generating enmity from Monochrome shippers for Sun. Before, Blacksun and MC shippers were effectively “ship and let ship” considering both had suffered under the Bees, but since that stranglehold had been broken after V1. Now Neptune came to town and fucked that peace up too.) Seriously. Just like the Bees, Seamonkeys only exists as a ship because the FNDM slammed the characters together without a clue what they were even like. Same as with Optimal Primates, remember?

Overall, V2 ended up being more or less like the aftermath of V1 the whole way through. Salty and bitter Wasps bickering and yelling about Sun even being in the same frame as Blake, trying to reaffirm their position, while everyone else just relaxed, some bitched about Jaune existing, and others enjoying the moment. ...Then V3 happened.

V3 was a powderkeg of moments for both Blacksun and the Bees. From the fingerguns/blushing/”dork” scene, to Blake tearfully holding Yang’s... one remaining hand, to the questions of where Blake was going after the ending. And consequently, the ship-to-ship combat had grown once again. Things like editing the fingerguns scene into a gif of Weiss proposing to Blake, or conspiracy theories that Sun was a mole for the WF hiding in plain sight, or just generally arguing back and forth over how important Blake holding Yang’s hand and Sun’s poppy love song were. The thing was, by V3, enough new fans of the series drawn in to all the Bee fanart that didn’t have the Wasp mentality existed to properly differentiate between the two groups. And consequently, some would-be Bee fans were surprised when their open appreciation for the pair was met with negativity and disdain by those who were used to liking the Bees being associated with far worse. The Wasps still existed, without question, but their presence muddied the waters and turned what was once a straight-forward fandom war into messy, vile person-to-person conflict, with bystanders dragged into the fighting. This, to my knowledge, is where the wasp-equivalent of Blacksun fans ended up coming to be, unable to differentiate between the Wasps that they hated and the Bee fans that they shouldn’t. In short, V3 was the most divisive and painful of the seasons for this warfare.

As we approach the modern day it should be noted that the longer the show runs, the less and less these ship-to-ship combats make an impact on the FNDM as a whole. This is a good thing, realistically, but it comes from an unfortunate division in the FNDM in general, with camps splitting off into effective echo chambers, and generally only interacting to spit hatred at each other.

V4 was easily the single lowest point for all of the Bees. With Blake and Yang canonically split apart, and Sun hanging around Blake full time as her only traveling partner, the Bees had effectively nothing to do but sigh and hope for a reunion soon. The Wasps, on the other hand, eagerly took to instead tearing into Sun’s character again, this time jumping on the questionable decision to shadow Blake and keep her safe, and characterizing it as flat out stalking... even without full knowledge of the situation. The Wasps just painted the scene as “Sun has spent months following Blake in a coat,” and a large part of the fandom picked it up in turn. Then, as a follow-up act, decided to screw with Sun a different way and ship him with, of all people, Kali, or Blake’s mom. Yeah, it was creepy and fetishism, and had no purpose other than to break Kali’s implicit acceptance of Sun as a partner for Blake into bizarre OOC lust. It’s telling that there was far and away more porn and pure shipping for Sun/Kali than Ghira/Kali for a while, despite the Bees laughing to themselves that “of course YANG would be accepted by Ghira, unlike Sun~.” Legit, Sun/Kali was just another attempt at slamming Sun together with the nearest character that wasn’t Blake. Just like Penny. Just like Neptune. But, V4 was the volume of personal growth and discovery for each of the main cast... And consequently, this journey down each of their four paths was panned by many “rwde” fans for not having the inter-team connections they wanted. Funny how the volume most about each member of RWBY and their personal stories gets panned as the one least about them. Whatever. All of this led to V5, however, and where we are now.

And where we are now is... Right back to how we were in V3. With giddy Bees squealing over Yang and Blake exchanging eye contact and words, while Wasps re-characterize Sun’s connection to Blake (including pushing her back to the team that she ran away from because it was time to reconnect and he knew that) as “pushing Blake to be with Yang.” It’s kind of absurd, right? Well... That’s what this FNDM war has been to me. Just absurd.

I’ve watched wasps shout down Micheal Jones because they don’t like Sun being close to Blake. I’ve seen wasps countless times call out RT as queerbaiting for not giving them the Bees right fucking then. I’ve heard directly from Wasps that it doesn’t matter to (the ones I talked to) whether any other LGBTQA+ people/ships/focuses appear or are naturally featured in the show, unless the Bees are made canon, they believe RT lied to them.

And that astounds me. RT did not lie to you. Either you were lied to by fans from that Trailer era, the original proto-wasps, or you lied to yourself. You were told the lie that the Bees were canon, had to be canon, needed to be canon or something was wrong. That Sun is a monster. That you are owed anything. Hard fucking stop.

So where does all this leave us? ...Hopefully, understanding that this fighting has been going on for far too long, and is over far too little. I want anyone in the FNDM who has ever been affected by the ship wars to read this, to share this with others with similar experiences, on either side of it. Because ultimately, I’m only on one side, and I’d love for Bees to give their take on all this. To get both sides to come to an agreement to ship-and-let-ship, to put to rest the anger and frustration and fear of the other side that fueled Wasps and, perhaps, myself for so long.

This shit’s gone on long enough.

[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.