#maybe i should just rename this blog

[comments-collection]

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

The day has finally come. Many, understandably, thought we'd never get here. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten here. We've been through so much. Lawsuits, reboots, redesigns, unreleased NFTs, empty legal threats over the fact that movie Knuckles has a dad, an attempt to license out Scourge the Hedgehog to fans that immediately got canceled (in both meanings of the term), and many, MANY idiotic Twitter controversies. But now, here we are.

Thirteen years after first announcing it in the middle of his legal battles with Archie and Sega that changed the American Sonic comics forever, former writer Ken Penders has released the first part of his new series: The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Yes. I had to buy the book. I had to take one for the team. Look at the fucking URL of this blog, a blog I've been using to talk about the American Sonic comics for nearly a decade while the specter of this book loomed in the distance. The one time I've actually been paid to write an article about anything in any professional capacity, it was an article about the Penders lawsuits. I'm cited on his Wikipedia page. There was no way I was going to skip reviewing this, and there was no guarantee that scans would ever turn up online given the incredibly small audience for this trash. (Only 166 people preordered this, and even that number feels way higher than it should be.) No, I had to preorder it to ensure I could get a copy and cover it for the blog... even if that meant my name would be forever immortalized in the list of "supporters" in the back of the book. These are the sacrifices I must make as a woman who stumbled ass backwards into being an amateur Archie Sonic historian.

So, what exactly is in this book? How much of it is new? How bad is it? How did we even get here in the first place? How can this exist without Sega pursuing legal action? What happens next? And, most importantly... why are there multiple depictions of an Archie Sonic character breastfeeding in this book?

I'm here to answer those questions as best I can, and in agonizing detail.

First, for those just tuning in to this decades-long saga or those who maybe don't know the full story, here's a refresher on the background info.

"What the hell is this?"

The Lara-Su Chronicles is Ken Penders' long-dreaded long-awaited continuation of his 1994-2006 run on Archie Sonic, ignoring everything written after he left by other writers like Ian Flynn. In particular, it picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the 2003-2004 arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later," which was set in what Ken considers the definitive canonical future of the series. It stars Knuckles' daughter from that future era, Lara-Su, among other new and returning characters. The project was first announced near the start of Ken's legal battle with Archie in 2011, and he's been posting WIP previews online for about a decade. Now, after all this time, a Lara-Su Chronicles book finally exists.

We'll get to the actual contents of that book in a bit.

"He can do that without getting in trouble with Sega?"

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

Thanks to the outcome of Archie Comics' woefully mismanaged lawsuits against Ken (yes, they sued him after he started filing for copyrights, not the other way around), he now has full legal ownership of every story he wrote for Archie Sonic and every character he created for the series. This was explicitly granted to him in the terms of the settlement between him and Archie (acting on behalf of Sega). He can even reprint his old Sonic material as-is to his heart's content. The main catch is just that he can't write new stories featuring Sega characters or trademarks, and his new stories also have to be distinct from Sonic at a glance to avoid confusing readers. As such, reprints can't use Sonic iconography on the cover, a few Sega characters (mainly Knuckles) have been renamed and slightly redesigned in the new stories, and the art style has been changed to less closely resemble Sonic. But otherwise, he can do whatever he wants with his own characters.

All of this is because Archie lost the original copy of Ken's work-for-hire contract that signed over the rights to his work. Without that (or any alternative that was considered permissible in court), his comics and characters are the property of their creator by default. Yes, those old comics are full of Sega stuff, but Sega doesn't automatically own the copyright for every drawing of Sonic in existence. And Sega put their stamp of approval all over those comics and let them get sold at retail for decades, even though (in the eyes of the court) there was no legal paperwork granting them ownership of any of it. It's almost like they were unwittingly distributing a fan comic for years and declaring it a fair use of their property, and now there's no takesies backsies. It's a strange and unique copyright situation. Again, they worked all this out in the settlement. And, yes, fans have long speculated that Ken stole and destroyed his own contract to regain the rights to his work, but frankly Archie was so incompetent throughout the lawsuit (it went so bad that they had to fire and replace their lawyers midway through) that I completely buy the idea of them just losing important legal documents.

Also, in case it needs to be spelled out: while Ken's a weirdo, it's ultimately a good thing for creatives everywhere that Archie lost their lawsuit against Ken. We do not want to live in a world where corporations can claim ownership of peoples' work without the contracts to back it up. That would be an incredibly dangerous legal precedent to set. And more comic creators, and artists in general, should own their own work! Corporations are not your friend! They'll delete your work for a tax write-off in a heartbeat! It's just bewildering that this guy, of all people, was the creator who ended up successfully getting his shit back, and that this is what he's doing with it.

"What about his old collaborators? Are they involved? Is he paying them?"

Ken is mostly doing The Lara-Su Chronicles solo, though he has, in fact, talked about compensating the artists involved in any material he's reprinting. The ones who give enough of a shit to get paid for a small scale reprint of something they did 20 years ago, anyway.

On the subject of his collaborators, it's also worth pointing out that Ken's wasn't the only contract that was lost. Most of the early Archie Sonic writers from before Ian Flynn's time seem to be in the same boat as Ken, with the ownership of their stories and characters defaulting back to them. Again, Archie fucked up big time. But like I said, most of them don't really seem to give a shit. For most of them, Sonic was just a random temporary gig they took to pay the bills while Marvel was busy going bankrupt in the '90s, not the thing that defined their entire careers.

The only other Archie Sonic contributor who's tried to do anything on the level of what Ken is doing was writer and editor Scott Fulop. In 2016 he attempted to sue Archie for the unauthorized use of what are now retroactively considered his copyrighted characters and stories, and he even announced a standalone comic about his most famous Sonic character, the recurring villain Mammoth Mogul (sort of a pastiche of DC's Vandal Savage and Marvel's Kingpin, with wizard powers added for spice). However, Fulop lost his lawsuit because he didn't put together a particularly compelling case. Since then he seems to have wiped all traces of his ill-advised Mammoth Mogul comic and his company, Narrative Ark Entertainment, from the internet. For now, this leaves The Lara-Su Chronicles the only project of its kind.

"What about those other Archie Sonic reprints he just announced?"

At the time of writing, Ken is once again claiming that he's trying to get the band back together to reprint all of Archie Sonic, now under the bad new banner "Floating Island Productions: MOBIAN LINE" that I can't imagine he consulted literally anyone else on.

So, like, look. As we've established, Ken can reprint his own stories. And if he can work something out with the other contributors whose contracts were lost, he can print their work, too. But there is no fucking way he's getting his hands on Ian Flynn's run, which Sega undoubtedly holds the copyright for. Even if they don't, Ian needs to maintain a good working relationship with both Sega and IDW if he's to keep his job, so he'd never go for this. Not to mention that Ian and Ken just... don't get along! Ken's whole plan here seems to be predicated on IDW going out of business (a thing he REALLY wants to happen) and freeing up the Sonic comic license, after which he knocks on Sega's door and goes "hey I've still got dirt on you guys," blackmailing them into giving him the Sonic license back so that he can reprint the later comics. Every step of this plan is ludicrous. It's never gonna happen.

He's been saying he wants to reprint the whole series for a few years now, though. This isn't really anything new. And despite his lofty plans that set Sonic Twitter ablaze, he quickly backpedaled. The only specific things in the works right now are a "two-volume omnibus" of all of his Knuckles stories and a collection of artist Scott Shaw's work on the very early Archie Sonic issues, since they're on good terms with each other. I have no idea how Ken plans on packaging these when he can't put any Sega characters or the Freedom Fighters on the covers, but these projects are small enough in scale that there's a decent chance they'll see the light of day. Scott Shaw only did like five issues. But anything beyond that? I'll believe it when I see it.

Or, y'know, this could've all just been a publicity stunt for his new book. I wouldn't put it past him. Let's just focus on the book that actually exists.

"So he finally did it? He made a whole Lara-Su book? It's out? He finished it??"

Yes and no.

The book that's out now is The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings, a prologue for the series of seven graphic novels Ken somehow plans on making, even though it's taken him 13 years to put out literally anything new. I don't know whether or not this counts as book one of seven, because it only features 30 pages of new comics. 30.5 if I'm being generous.

Most of the book is actually just a reprint of his infamous Archie Sonic storyline "Mobius: 25 Years Later", which ran from issue #131 to #144 in 2003-2004. (Again, yes, he can reprint this, he just can't put Sonic on the cover.) Why's it infamous? Well, Ken had been building anticipation for this future era of the series for basically his entire run. We kept seeing King Sonic and Queen Sally from the future. Knuckles' entire backstory hinges on his dad having a vision of this future. Several years before Silver the Hedgehog was created, it was Lara-Su who was Sonic's equivalent to Future Trunks, the cool-looking child of one of the main characters who traveled back in time to try and prevent a dark future. Believe it or not, yes, there was hype for Lara-Su. And then we finally got M25YL, and none of that cool stuff happened. Instead it really ended up being about how unbearably boring the middle aged Sonic, Knuckles, Sally, and co. are in this peaceful future where Robotnik is dead and they're all married with kids, forced into traditional nuclear family gender roles. Lara-Su is present, but she mostly just does generic teen girl stuff and complains about how Knuckles won't let her do anything even though she REALLY wants to be the new Guardian of Angel Island, like, super bad! Come on, dad!!!

In its original printing, this meandering arc ended on an abrupt time travel cliffhanger that Ken was never able to follow up on before he left Archie in 2006. This new printing slightly changes that ending, using the unresolved timey-wimey shenanigans as a convenient excuse to alter the entire timeline. This creates the slightly different world of The Lara-Su Chronicles, where the few relevant Sega-owned characters have been replaced and everyone is ten times uglier.

After this, we finally get two short new stories picking up where M25YL left off: "The Storm," starring Acorn Kingdom super-spy and known creep Geoffrey St. John, and an early release of the first chapter of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows, the first full TLSC graphic novel.

And now that we're all on the same page about what we're looking at, let's actually talk about the book!

The cover

Let's start by beating a dead horse. The cover art: it's still bad! But why is it bad?

The cover is, of course, based on Patrick Spaziante's cover from Archie Sonic #131, the start of the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" arc. (Ken did the layout for that cover, though, so in the eyes of the law he's the original creator who owns that cover.) That cover was, itself, a tribute to the iconic cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum, the issue that introduced the version of the team with Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, etc.

Ken seems to have forgotten that the point of both these covers was to hype up the arrival of a new cast of characters. The new guys are supposed to make a dramatic entrance front and center. That's the focal point. Meanwhile, the cover for Beginnings has the old timeline versions of the cast from Archie Sonic dramatically bursting out of a shattered crystal ball, while their new counterparts look on in mild bemusement - if they're even bothering to look at all, since most of the characters here are just copied and pasted from their profile pages. That's just not how you do this particular homage! The point is supposed to be "out with the old, in with the new." And why are they using a crystal ball to view the past? Hell, why are they even using a crystal ball at all? The original arc was presented as a magical vision of the future courtesy of Tails' uncle Merlin (don't ask), but the new story leans all the way into being futuristic sci-fi.

Of course, there is no real artistic intent at play here. The old versions of the characters are placed front and center in the crystal ball simply because Ken traced over Spaziante's original art of Lara-Su and Julie-Su (the only two characters on the Sonic cover he owns) and threw out the rest, ruining the composition in the process. Look at the awkward empty space where Sonic, Sally, and Rotor once were, and the new drawing of The Character Formerly Known As Knuckles who's no longer properly centered between his wife and daughter. Even if Ken can claim ownership of the cover because he did the original layout, this all just feels scummy and lame.

And, yeah, if it needs to be said, the new characters and Ken's new rendering style look like absolute fucking dogshit. Putting new Lara-Su directly next to old Lara-Su does her no favors. The shattered glass effect looks absolutely atrocious. I could go on, but we'll have plenty of time to talk about the art style when we see how bad the stories inside look.

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

Overall, 99% of M25YL is presented identically to its original printing. Sonic, Sally, Knuckles, et al. are still present with no changes to their names and no tweaks to the art. Even the original cover for issue #131 is included only a few pages into this book with its Archie, Sonic, and Sega logos still intact and everything. Again, because of the weird copyright situation described above, these preexisting comics can be released without any changes.

There is exactly one bizarre change to the art, though, where a hand drawn shot of Angel Island is replaced with an unfitting photo background and the ugly Floating Island photobash that Ken has been using as his personal logo for decades. I think he only did this as part of a test for his motion comic app that nobody asked for. I don't know why this had to make it into the print version. It's like the book is firing a warning shot for what's to come if you keep reading.

The new content begins on the final page of M25YL. In the original wet fart of a cliffhanger ending, Sonic and co. accidentally alter the timeline with an old time machine of Robotnik's and Lara-Su begins to fade away. Then, after everything goes white, we just cut to the present day heroes going "gee, you ever think about the future?" In this new printing, that last bit has been cut, and the rest of the page has been awkwardly shrunk down so that Ken can fit in a new panel. We now see the hands of an off-screen villain, seemingly named "Override," proclaiming that "the Praetorian" (Knuckles) has messed up the timeline again and that they'll finally get their revenge.

Who is this Override? I have no fucking clue. The new stories in this book make no mention of them. You have to buy the next book to find out.

My confusion over the identity of this villain overlaps with another big problem: name changes. So many names and nouns have been arbitrarily changed in The Lara-Su Chronicles, even ones Ken didn't have to change for copyright reasons, and I only know what half of them are replacing because Ken's been tweeting about this shit for years.

The echidnas are now a totally original alien race called "the Echyd'nya." Even in flashbacks to events from M25YL attempting to mimic the old art style, if it's on a new comic page, they're gonna call themselves "Echyd'nya." Evil echidna faction the Dark Legion is now the "Cyberdark Dominion," hailing from the "Cyberdark Colony." The Brotherhood of Guardians is still the Brotherhood of Guardians, but now the main guardian is called "The Praetorian." Angel Island is still called "The Floating Island," like it was in the older Archie comics, but it's ALSO sometimes called "Avion"? When I read this I wasn't sure if he had randomly renamed Albion, the other echidna city from the Archie comics. But no. Now we have an Albion AND an Avion. Sally is mentioned simply as "Princess Acorn," while Sonic is referenced once as an unnamed "blue-spined Erinaceinae," using the scientific name for hedgehog to make it sound more sci-fi. In an incredibly ballsy move, Ken even mentions Robotnik as "the Insurrectionist Kintobor," retaining his original surname from the Archie comics that's just "Robotnik" backwards. Guess Sega never trademarked that one.

Aside from every name change being a downgrade, this leads to confusion when you're not sure if something is supposed to be new, or if it's just an Archie thing you're supposed to recognize despite having a new name and design. Is "Override" someone I'm supposed to know already? Am I just supposed to have read a fucking tweet from Ken where he said he changed the name of some existing villain to "Override"? The answer is no, but I had to term search his Twitter just to verify this.

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

If you've been following the WIPs, this is that story about Geoffrey St. John that Ken's been posting previews of for almost a decade. The title page copyright dates it to 2015, and that absurdly long gestation is probably why the art is so inconsistent here. Even the style of speech bubbles and the font change between pages two and three.

This is a problem when there's supposed to be a deliberate and noticeable change in art style here signaling the moment where the time travel stuff alters the timeline, replacing the Archie Sonic world with the Lara-Su Chronicles world. If you don't already know that's what's going on, the idea isn't conveyed clearly at all. It just goes from one hideous art style to a slightly different one with no explanation.

The main problem here is that Ken has hitched his wagon to a franchise about anthropomorphic animals when he can't draw furries to save his life. (Though a bit later in the book we'll also begin to wonder if he can even still draw humans.) He's shifted away from the cartooniness of the original designs and given them more human proportions and facial features, but this just ends up making them look incredibly uncanny and lumpy and gross. With some designs he's trying to lean into more of a Star Trek alien vibe, but then he still insists upon retaining the giant Sonic eyes on most characters even though he has no idea how to make them emote.

The rendering of these godawful designs doesn't do them any favors, either. Ken's going for more of a painterly look now, but it almost seems as though he's shading everything with Photoshop's burn and dodge tools that are designed to darken and lighten select areas of a photo. The result is a muddy, smudgy look that makes it feel like the color layer has been smeared in vaseline. And it only looks worse after coming off of 14 chapters of M25YL that have way more palatable art.

The backgrounds, too, are a complete mess, a jumble of low res jpeg photo elements (sometimes with extremely noticeable pixelation), stock textures, and smooth digital gradients. There's no real sense of place here, and it gives everything a surreal, dreamlike quality when you can't really tell where anything is supposed to take place. This first story is seemingly set in a high-tech stronghold below Castle Acorn called "the Bunker," but it could just as easily be confused for the bridge of a spaceship. This whole story features characters speaking to each other over floating video displays and hologram projectors from three different locations, but without a hologram effect and without a clear sense of where the characters are it often feels like they're just in the same room as each other. Characters will be in one location on one photo background, and then the camera angle changes and they're in a completely different place, because Ken just uses mismatched photos off of the internet. It's been like 25 years since he first tried using photo backgrounds in the Archie comics and he hasn't gotten any better at it.

When I had my boyfriend read the book to see if it made literally any sense to him (it didn't), Anthony said this: "This is the kind of shit I'd see linked on a Second Life world that hasn't been touched since 2004." I think he really hit the nail on the head. Now, there's actually a contrarian part of me that thinks that might theoretically almost be kind of cool, in sort of a messy counterculture way. I love weird indie shit. I was a Homestuck reader! But this isn't a scrappy mixed media zine, or experimental outsider art from someone just messing around with Photoshop, or a loving throwback to weird old internet art, or even something intentionally bizarre and offputting like Xavier: Renegade Angel or a PilotRedSun video or whatever where the fact that it's weird and ugly is part of the humor. This is supposed to be a sincere sci-fi epic drawing on Star Trek and Jack Kirby comics, made by a guy who's been drawing comics professionally since the '80s. This is supposed to look good. This is supposed to compete with mainstream comics that are on sale right now. He thinks any day now IDW's gonna go out of business and Sega will come crawling back to him so that he can stamp the Sonic logo on shit like this. It just doesn't work.

But, okay. It's ugly. We knew it would be ugly. But that ugliness would be much easier to accept if it was in service of an otherwise genuinely good story. So what about the writing? After all this time, how does Ken choose to kick off this new saga? Well, credit where credit's due. "The Storm" feels like a proper continuation of Ken's writing style from M25YL.

Because it's eleven pages of characters standing around and talking while nothing fucking happens.

Here's the synopsis: A dog woman named Brownie, an ensign in the Royal Secret Service fresh out of training and the only character who's almost cute, walks up to Geoffrey to deliver a report. He's immediately suspicious of her, asking who let her in and if she's a spy for Elias (Sally's brother, if you're new here) or Alicia (Sally's mom). The art style suddenly shifts when the timeline is altered, but the scene continues uninterrupted. Geoffrey points a gun at Brownie when she won't say whose spy she is. Geoffrey is distracted by a call and proceeds to have a conversation via a mix of holograms and video screens with Remington (head of Echidnaopolis security), Spectre (Knuckles' great great great great great grandpa, the one with the helmet who always looks evil), and a new scientist character named Dr. Zephyr/Zephur. (The spelling of this character's name changes multiple times throughout the 11-page story, because I guess nine years wasn't enough time to spellcheck this shit.) They say a bunch of made up technobabble nonsense about how it looks like the timeline was just altered and Knuckles and co. seem to be involved. It's complete drivel that I'm not even going to try to make sense of. Everyone decides to investigate further, and the conversation ends. Brownie tells Geoffrey she's his spy, then walks out and implies she's actually Alicia's spy in her inner monologue.

To be continued!!!

Yes, that's it. It's really just a bunch of technobabble where some characters talk about how it seems like the timeline has been fucked with. That's it. The whole time Geoffrey doesn't even get up out of his damn chair, which he's of course sitting in backwards to show how cool he is. It's just 11 pages of Geoffrey sitting in a chair and talking to people and looking uglier than he's ever looked. Nothing happens. Nine years for this.

I'm also struck by how meaningless all of this is to anyone who hasn't read Archie Sonic. The added context from M25YL may help a little, but "The Storm" focuses on characters who weren't in that arc, and the story does very little to introduce who any of them are. Brownie could've been super useful as an inexperienced point of view character who's only meeting the others for the first time here, but instead she's really just a passive observer who's here as part of some kind of 4D chess game between Geoffrey and Alicia, an off-screen character whose motivations in this era of the story are completely unknown to even returning readers. Who are the good guys and bad guys here? What are the conflicts and the stakes of the story moving forward? What do these characters want? Basic questions like this aren't really answered. I can't imagine a new reader being able to make heads or tails of this. Hell, I can't really imagine a returning reader who hasn't been following the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets about this story making heads or tails of it, either.

...Maybe more will happen in the next story?

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

After another message from Ken, the story of The Lara-Su Chronicles proper begins with the redesigned Lara-Su walking along a jpeg photograph beach at sunset and crying while thinking about how Knuckles - sorry, his name is K'Nox now - is dead.

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

Look, I'm the last person to complain about writers getting super personal and drawing from their own baggage in their writing, but Ken's just no fucking good at it. There's no nuance, nothing interesting to say. He just keeps writing mediocre-to-horrible dads whose misdeeds are always justified by their "good intentions," and then sometimes they die and their kids are like "we may have fought but actually you were the bestest dad ever and I'll miss you forever, I'll never be able to fill your shoes!"

This is the only part of the new material here that feels like it has any heart behind it, because I know how much his complex relationship with his late deadbeat father means to Ken (there's an author's note in this outright saying as much). But the guy died 42 years ago, and it doesn't feel like Ken has had any new thoughts about this part of his life in those four decades. He's just not an introspective or self-aware enough artist to actually mine his personal baggage for anything beyond "father knows best."

Anyway, so then it jumps forward in time(?) and now we're following this human guy who looks like this.

Previously, Ken got a lot of shit for literally just using the likeness of Anthony Mackie for this guy, based on his IMDB profile photo. Ken has thus redesigned the character... and by that I mean I think he looks more like Ernie Hudson now? Ken's clearly just working off of photo references (if not straight up tracing), given his face is the most detailed and realistic-looking thing on any page where he's present.

But you may be wondering: who is this, and why is he here? Well, for one, he's here to run around in front of some low res space photos while making trite references to things like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek. Haha, he makes a joke about red shirts! Original!! But beyond that, Commander Mykhal Taelor (yes, that's really how he chose to spell it) is a human... from Earth! Archie Sonic readers are probably confused, because in those comics Mobius is Earth in the distant post-apocalyptic future. Well, despite being a Planet of the Apes fan, Ken always hated that particular worldbuilding decision from Karl Bollers, always preferring to think of Mobius as a separate alien planet. And now he gets to make that canon in his own stories and throw out Karl's ideas. So Mobius is basically just, like, a Star Trek planet now, with its own alien creatures that sometimes just so happen to look like anthropomorphic Earth animals.

Also, at one point Taelor wonders if the inhabitants of the dead Mobius might have been human, and the alien ally he's talking to over the radio says it's unlikely. "I don't understand why your kind has a problem understanding you're a minority within a minority." Perhaps poor wording for a line said to the only Black character in the story.

Anyway, Commander Taelor here seems to have discovered the uninhabited husk of Mobius after the vague time-space cataclysm everyone was worried about in M25YL has come to pass, and he finds an audio log from Lara-Su that I presume will explain what happened. I guess those are the titular Lara-Su Chronicles. In theory this flash forward establishes some sense of pressing danger, but when the threat to the planet is so unclear and technobabble-y it just kind of lands with a thud.

It doesn't take long before we get back to Lara-Su being sad about her dad. A good little chunk of the chapter is spent with this new timeline's Lara-Su recalling moments in her life, including echoes of the original Lara-Su's memories from M25YL, which feels redundant coming hot off the heels of a straight reprint of that entire arc. And boy, for anyone who read the later Archie Sonic comics, the protagonist having vague memories of the old version of the series from before a lawsuit-related timeline reboot sure does sound familiar, huh?

The art inconsistency somehow becomes even worse in this story, with Ken flip-flopping on whether or not he wants to use outlines, with the no-outline art managing to look even worse by relying entirely on Ken's awful rendering. By this point in the book, readers are also likely to start noticing how often Ken reuses art from previous panels. This is a shortcut that tons of comic artists use, of course. Invincible famously did a joke about this. It's often understandable. But, again... it sure does stand out in a book that took 13 years to make with only 30 pages of new art. Amusingly, Ken even manages to combine his inconsistency and recycling problems by reusing the same art with and without outlines. And, of course, any time Ken tries to draw the Archie era designs it's just... the worst.

And, yes, it's in this dreamlike montage sequence of Lara-Su's life that we get...

The uncomfortable family nudity scene, followed by the dual timeline Julie-Su breastfeeding scene.

Yeah, you might have heard about this one already. If this incredibly eerie presentation of Lara-Su's hazy memories of the two different timelines make it hard to tell what's going on, don't worry. There's another, clearer version later in the book as part of Julie-Su's character profile, because I guess Ken was just so proud of it.

(I censored these myself because I'm not playing Russian roulette with Tumblr's inconsistent nudity rules and risking getting banned lmao)

Like, okay. Is a mother breastfeeding her child really that shocking of a thing to see in a story? No, not at all. But, like... when it's two characters who you previously created for an officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comic for 7-year-olds... and some of those officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comics for 7-year-olds are reprinted in the same book... and when it's drawn like this... yeah, it's kind of a shocker.

It just looks so unnatural. Julie-Su is posed very deliberately so that you'll see both of her breasts, and in the new timeline version she's barely even holding Lara-Su so you can really get a good look at her supermodel body, showing zero physical signs that she just gave birth. Most people will immediately jump to this being Ken putting his fetishes in his work (a type of criticism that I'm incredibly tired of - it's 2024, all the cool artists are blatantly putting their fetishes in their work now). And my immediate response is that, no, this is probably just Ken trying to come off as really mature on a surface level, a thing he's been obsessed with since the Archie days. Free from the shackles of writing a licensed children's comic, of course he's going to jump immediately into depicting some nonsexual, artistic nudity to try and prove he's A Real Mature Artist For Grown-Ups who just thinks the human body is beautiful and breastfeeding shouldn't be a taboo etc. etc.

But then, like. You look at some of the other character designs. Like Espio's daughter Salma, who's now this horrifying alien lizard person who's always nude, and her scale pattern puts scales exactly where her nipples should be. Or you look at his comments about the Echyd'nya age of consent. Or you look at how he keeps drawing Lara-Su in this. Like, does the shuttle really need this, like... reverse chaise lounge thing in the cockpit? So that we can keep getting these shots of the 16-year-old Lara-Su lying on her stomach and posing with one of her legs kicked up, her naked ass in plain view?

The vibe isn't great, is what I'm saying!

I'm not going to try to ascribe authorial intent here. I don't know. I'm not a psychic. Given his very blatant reliance on photo references elsewhere in the book, it's entirely possible he just referenced some figure drawing photos that were maybe just a little too sexy. And also, he's an American comic book artist, and a boomer one at that. Those guys tend to draw women a certain way, even when it's not supposed to be sexual. I don't fucking know. It just sucks. I'm not gonna make some hyperbolic statement about how this makes him a literal pedophile who should be in jail, but it is deeply offputting and objectifying.

But if you already knew about the nursing scenes and were hoping there was some other really shocking stuff in there for me to talk about in this review, sorry to disappoint, but nope. That's the only shockingly weird new thing in here. Once again, not a lot happens in this story, and what does happen is pretty boring.

Once we get past the recap stuff and the human guy, the plot developments boil down to this: The timeline was altered at the end of M25YL... but not as much as you might think. In the new timeline, Knuckles ("K'Nox"), Cobar (now looking significantly younger), and Rotor (now a rhino just called "The Emissary") still traveled via shuttle to go find a time machine in the Badlands and fix the time-space continuum, like in the climax of the original arc. This time, though, Sonic wasn't there, and Lara-Su came along without having to stow away. Lara-Su watches the ship while the grown ups go deal with the time machine, and then after a couple panels Not Rotor comes back with Cobar and is like "Hey, Cobar got hurt, we gotta leave. Dunno what happened to your dad." And then they just, like. Presume that Knuckles must have died. Even though we have no idea what happened to him. And then they just fly away. And then Lara-Su is sad that her dad died.

And that's pretty much it!

This is supposed to be a really emotional sequence - it's literally the scene where Lara-Su learns that Knuckles is dead - but instead it comes off as unintentionally funny because of how poorly it's portrayed. Not showing Knuckles' actual disappearance is a huge misstep, for one, making his uncertain fate more confusing and anticlimactic than dramatic. But also, Ken keeps just using the same two drawings of Rotor for two pages, so he doesn't really seem to be emoting at all, and he's in this spacey hazmat suit that honestly just makes him look like fucking Moltar from Space Ghost. So the whole time I'm just reading his dialogue in Moltar's deadpan voice as he's like "I dunno. We did what we could. Anyway, let's leave."

After this, we get a two-page spread previewing the rest of the story from Shattered Tomorrows. It's basically like a trailer in comic form. It has one of the most mystifying layouts I've ever seen in a comic book. I have no idea what order I'm supposed to read this in.

Yeah, I kinda have a feeling this is the full extent of what Ken has drawn for the rest of that book. I'd love to be wrong, but I fear that I'm right.

Bonus material: Data files

These are mostly very dull, recapping a lot of events shared between Ken's Archie run and the new Lara-Su Chronicles timeline. It seems like almost his entire run is still considered canon to the backstory of the new timeline, just with some names changed, and things only really diverge at the climax of M25YL. But I'll share the interesting stuff here.

Lara-Su

The main thing you'll notice in Lara-Su's profile is the massive, unreadable wall of text where Ken felt the need to list the entire Knuckles family tree, split across both pages.

This is literally so long that Lara-Su's personal history has to awkwardly cut off mid-sentence and be continued on the final page of the book, after the rest of the data files.

Also, please note that this list gives Julie-Su's mom's full name as Mari-Su of the House of Atrades. Incredible on all levels.

There's also a reference to the dark timeline Lara-Su was originally supposed to come from. You know, the one where Julie-Su is the leader of a rebel movement fighting against a Knuckles who had gone mad with power? The timeline that would have been way more interesting than the one in M25YL? Here it seems to have been written off as the result of another "timeline disruption." Lara-Su allegedly has vague memories of this timeline, in the same way that she has vague memories of the M25YL timeline.

Geoffrey

Geoffrey's bio mostly recaps events from the Archie comics, which means the Sonic/Sally/Geoffrey love triangle has to be alluded to. His rivalry with Sonic is described like this:

"He would later resurface when Kintobor was transporting his latest hi-tech weapon, the Dynamac-3000. It was during that mission he discovered a rival for the Princess' affections. Whereas the Princess would be one of a line of conquests where St. John was concerned, the blue-spined Erinaceinae who protested doth a bit too much regarding his affections for the Princess for St. John's taste would prove to be a source of great sport and amusement."

Yes. It's gross. Saying that Geoffrey saw Sally as "one of a line of conquests" is gross. Ken writing this and then still treating Geoffrey as the coolest badass ever is gross. The "Princess Acorn" is also first on the list of Geoffrey's "female relationships" elsewhere in his bio, though I suppose how much of a "relationship" they had is left vague. Honestly, at this point the fact that Ken didn't explicitly confirm that Geoffrey took the underage Sally's virginity in the book comes off as a display of restraint. The bar couldn't be any lower, I know.

Remington

His bio is, frankly, shockingly long for such a minor character, though I guess he does get a large portion of the word salad dialogue in "The Storm." There's a lot of stuff here about how the identities of his biological parents are shrouded in mystery, a plot point that fans have long speculated Ken just straight up forgot about in his time at Archie. (Ian confirmed that Kragok from the Dark Legion was Remington's dad, though, so this isn't really much of a mystery.)

Lien-Da

She gets a bio even though she's not present in the two new stories, just so we get to look at her awful new design and compare it to how Steven Butler drew her earlier in the book:

Commander Taelor

We get to see two drawings of him with the same exact Ernie Hudson face side by side! That's fun.

Julie-Su

She gets a list of "known friends," but the only character listed is Knuckles' mom. Poor Julie-Su.

Also, Ken feels the need to reiterate that Knuckles and Julie-Su are still distant cousins. He made a whole new timeline where he can change whatever details he wants, but THAT had to remain canon. Thanks, Ken.

And then after the data files we get the special thanks page, listing everyone who preordered the book and/or bought TLSC merch from Ken.

With my name on the list. Because I had to buy a copy to cover it for the blog.

My name is on the very next page right after the breastfeeding panel in Julie-Su's data file.

Yep. He got me.

Is it at least a well put together book? Like, in terms of manufacturing quality?

Its physical quality is... fine. It's a nice, sturdy hardcover. The print quality seems fine, though mine does have a bit of smudging from some sort of printing error on one page. The pages don't seem like they'll fall out on me. The image quality is crisp. The colors are vibrant. This is a low bar, but this is one of the few places where I'm able to give this book anything resembling praise.

The formatting and graphic design work, on the other hand...

(I didn't crumple those page corners, it came like that.)

For one, the placement and sizes of the M25YL pages is inconsistent, largely due to the fact that the book doesn't actually match the proportions of a comic. A lot of pages aren't properly centered vertically. Some pages go all the way up to the top edge of the paper, while others leave a visible gap of about half a centimeter. Every page has a 1cm gap to its left and right, which is sometimes filled in with a solid color or gradient that doesn't quite match the page it's surrounding. I have to assume Ken didn't have any sort of source files or original artwork to work off of, as those ideally would've had more generous bleed to account for slight shifts in printing. It kind of seems like he just got the highest resolution versions he could find of the digital releases online and printed those. The colors are a dead ringer for the digital versions, which have always looked slightly more saturated and pastel than they did in print.

I can't say this bodes well for his further plans for Archie Sonic reprints - sorry, Mobian Line reprints. If they ever come out, please, for the love of god, do not buy those. I don't care how much you love Archie Sonic, they aren't going to be good reprints. For comparison, IDW's similarly priced hardcover Sonic collections have none of these formatting problems, because they're made by people who know what they're doing with access to the actual source files.

The book also has its fair share of text-focused pages, split between the data files and messages directly from Ken about the history of his career and this project, and these are formatted in the most amateurish way possible. Just massive walls of Arial text over either plain white backgrounds, simple gradients, or faded photos. I've seen school yearbooks with better graphic design. Even ignoring my subjective feelings about the art and stories within, this book does not feel like it's worth $36 USD.

It's frankly shocking how shabby he let this thing look considering it's supposed to be his baby. And doesn't that really sum it all up?

Closing thoughts

Obviously, I did not expect this to be any good. But I'm still left kind of dumbfounded by it.

I think what really strikes me about it is that Ken had a blank check to do whatever he wanted here. He got an opportunity many writers would kill for when he gained complete ownership of his most famous work. He's free from the limitations of a monthly licensed comic book for children, free to make whatever creative decisions he wants without editors or other writers or Sega to worry about, free to completely reinvent the series to his heart's content and finally tell the story of his dreams. And with that opportunity and 13 years of his time, he made... this. A direct continuation of "Mobius: 25 Years Later" that barely changes anything about the characters or world beyond their awful new designs, even though much of the word count is spent rambling about how the timeline has changed. A story that makes zero concessions for new readers, or even returning readers who don't already have the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets explaining his creative decisions burned into their memory. 30 pages where nothing really happens and the story barely moves forward an inch despite the decades-long wait - but maybe something will happen if you buy the next book!

Who is this for? Maybe this really is a project for no one but Ken. Maybe he just really, really wants to finish the story he started, a story that's personal to him due to the family history it evokes, and the number of people who enjoy it or buy it beyond that is irrelevant. I think that many of the best artists are incredibly self-indulgent ones working with that exact mindset, artists whose enthusiasm for their own work jumps off the page or screen. So, if that's the case, then why the fuck isn't he telling the damn story? What's stopping him? Why is he still spinning his wheels? Where is that passion for his own work? Because it sure as hell isn't there on the page. There's a huge part of me that really wishes I could say "Man, what a weirdo, but you do you, Ken. You tell your weird little story." But there's barely any story here. It's like he loves styling himself as a storyteller, but he's terrified of finally having to actually tell a story after all this time. He's still stuck in the exact same mode of writing he was in almost 30 years ago when he was doing 6-page backup stories about Knuckles, just killing time and stringing readers along until he's eventually able to truly realize his vision. If not now, then when, Ken?

Even the back cover blurb is mostly just a dry recap of the history of this thing. It was a Sonic comic, the original arc was published in these issues, it went unfinished, Ken left Archie, the lawsuits happened, now he's continuing the story. There's nothing about why anyone should give a shit about this as its own story, even though Ken has spent years trying in vain to convince people TLSC is its own beast that shouldn't be judged as a Sonic story. I think deep down he knows that there's no pitch for this beyond the novelty of it originating from Sonic. And that's why, despite declaring that he'd leave the site, he's still on Twitter riling up Sonic fans. It's the only attention he gets at this point.

Maybe this is too harsh when those 30 pages of new comics are just intended as a preview for the "real" book. But the elephant in the room is that we have no idea if that "real" book will ever actually come out, let alone the entire series of seven graphic novels that will supposedly complete this saga.

Ken is undeniably a complete jackass and all around unpleasant, vindictive person who's rightly become an industry pariah. He's a self-proclaimed paragon of progressive values who'll send Comicsgaters after his successors for the crime of not worshiping the ground he walks on, and then turn around and announce he's going to reprint their work without even consulting them. He's a sore winner who already won his copyright battle on a level most comic writers would never dare to dream of, and yet still won't truly be satisfied until he sees an entire major comic publisher go out of business, putting god knows how many people out of work, because he thinks this would get him back the license to a video game franchise he doesn't even like.

But I still have to pity him.

As an artist, the trajectory of his life is my nightmare. I think all of us fear dying before we can tell all the stories we want to tell. There's simply never enough time to do everything. And here's Ken in his 60s, talking about how he's still planning on making his magnum opus all by himself out of stubbornness and pride, despite demonstrably proving he can't handle the workload, and also talking about how if he dies before the project can be finished he'll have to pass the torch on to his kids and get them to finish it for him. It's so grim. Even just typing that sends a shiver down my spine. It took nine years of his limited time on Earth to finish and release an 11-page comic about Geoffrey St. John sitting backwards in a chair.

This is a purgatory of his own creation. And yet... I'm not sure he's ever been prouder. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I guess if I want people to take anything away from this review, it's this:

Lesson one: If you're an artist or writer of some kind, or an aspiring creator, don't wait around. No one else is going to tell your story for you. Start writing that novel. Start drawing that webcomic. Start making that game. If Penders can put out this damn book that no one asked for after 13 years of work, then proudly proclaim that he's still going to make six or seven more books and also reprint hundreds of comics he doesn't have all of the rights to, then show up to cons with that foul Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows banner and sit in front of it beaming with pride, fully aware of his critics but saying "fuck 'em, I know I'm hot shit," then you can do fucking anything. Tell the weird, sincere, cringe story of your dreams. If Ken Penders doesn't have imposter syndrome, then nobody should.

And lesson two: Don't buy Ken's books.

[sotwk]

As I plot out my headcanons and detailed story/history timeline for Thranduil, I realize more and more just how much this poor king lost and suffered as a result of Sauron choosing the Woodland Realm as the headquarters for his comeback.

In SotWK-verse, here is the tally of Thranduil's losses:

His wife. The single love of his life. His soulmate, his primary source of light and comfort, his very heart. She should have been his companion for life, and now he must wait for who knows how long to see her again in Valinor.

His sons. They were good kids; he adored them and they worshipped him. He started with 5, and by the end of the Third Age, he is left with 1. He loses them one by one, each as a result of fighting the Enemy. You hear all those stories of parents driven mad by the loss of one child; multiply that four times. He even loses Legolas emotionally because of their grief. Honestly, how Thranduil managed not to fade from heartbreak makes him the strongest elf in Arda. His is a Silm/First Age-level tragedy.

His home. He once had a beautiful palace that he had built for his wife and their family, where all his children were born and over a thousand memories were made. He was forced to abandon it and move elsewhere like a refugee due to the Dol Guldur infestation.

His realm. At its height, his kingdom once spanned the entirety of Greenwood the Great. Check the maps--that forest is MASSIVE. It was home to the largest elven population in Middle-earth, and his people were happy and prosperous. As the darkness spread from Dol Guldur, his lands shrank as they retreated not only to a small corner in the north-east, but they were driven into underground halls, away from the stars and open spaces they loved. Elves died and ceased to reproduce as they once did, so their numbers shrank too. (Still did not stop the badass Elvenking from fielding an army at BotFA.)

His pride and legacy. In the first part of the Third Age, the Woodland Realm had a thousand years of peace and prosperity under Thranduil's rule, but they were pretty quiet and humble about it. His family was generous and extended goodwill and aid to outsiders who sought or needed it. But when the Woodlands darkened under the Necromancer's influence, outsiders were quick to rename the kingdom, "Mirkwood", or "The Forest of Great Fear", and call his people "more dangerous and less wise". That's what people chose to remember and talk about, not the years of Thranduil's Golden Age. Furthermore, help did not come from other kingdoms in Mirkwood's long struggle, but certain people got angry at Thranduil for not sheltering them when they were attacked and driven from their home. (How does it feel, Thorin? (I still love you, though.))

I mean... it really looks like he lost EVERYTHING because of Sauron, doesn't it? Because he refused to abandon his people, and chose to stay and fight with everything he had.

So maybe he's a bit of a cantankerous, ruthless, closed-up bastard in the events of The Hobbit. Can you blame him? A lesser being would probably be a homicidal, ultra-paranoid maniac after suffering so much. He deserves to behead every orc he comes across, no questions asked. I'm all for mercy, but even I give his rage a pass on this one.

How awkward that I try to keep my blog a source of positive vibes, yet I am writing about the life and family of an utterly tragic character! (I need to make sure I maintain an appropriate fluff-to-angst ratio!!!) But I think the reason I feel compelled to point all of this out repeatedly is to remind y'all: King Thranduil Oropherion is amazingly strong of will, mind, and heart to continue ruling and protecting his people, fighting against Sauron even after he's been beaten down repeatedly for centuries. He always gets back up--stubborn, brave, and unbowed.

For more SotWK/Thranduil headcanons: My Masterlist

[calatarii]

A little announcement of sorts?

Hey guys!

Basically, I want to make this blog a sfw side account [renaming it something else] and open up a new one for my art and characters Due to my stories getting more mature overtime, I might put some sort of age restriction just in case but nothing is 100% set in stone as I figure things out

Toyhouse will probably stay the same with some additional warnings and blacked out text for sensitive topics, even if only mentioned

Overall I wanna go back to sharing art and screaming how much I love my characters to the world when summer hits and I know where my future is heading, especially Shouta and Icarus [which yall probably have seen in some commissions and a fuck ton on my Toyhouse I am NOT normal about them] sooo uhh yeah!! I am also starting to learn that I should stop giving a fuck about other people's opinions as I personally believe that held me back on what I want to do with my storytelling and improving my art, hell maybe even as a person

In other news my newest obsession is TMA and I cannot wait to finish the podcasts after the finals so expect art of that shit too

Time to break them chains and start my life anew lads!!

[residents-of-the-darkforest]

Bored so list of Warriors AUs I have / I’m making up on the spot

Rainflower/Crookedheart

In this AU, everything in Crookedstar’s Promise is the same up until the fateful re-naming ceremony. The only one that knows what will happen is Hailstar--Rainflower still believes that Stormkit will be renamed.

Instead, Hailstar renames Rainflower without warning in front of everyone, calling her Crookedheart.

Storm feels guilty for it, but eventually grows to accept that none of it was his fault.

Hailstar and Rainflower are also littermates in this AU.

Brightflower raises Brokenstar

Connected to the Crookedheart AU, though it can stand on its own. With the connection, it was discussed at a gathering that custody of kits should be taken away from parents that do not care for them properly.

Because of this, the kits were taken away from Lizardstripe and instead given to Brightflower (can’t remember why her exactly, possibly her choice). 

Brokenstar didn’t know that he and Mintkit and Marigoldkit were related, but in this case they are his adoptive younger littermates, and if he still kills them, that makes things even harder for Brightflower--should she believe her daughter or her adoptive son? It’s worse when she finds out the truth.

Pinestar and Rusty

After Pinestar leaves the Clans, he feels really guilty for leaving his family. He finds comfort in Jake and the other neighborhood cats. One of them is named Nutmeg.

Eventually she has a litter, and names one of them Rusty. Hint hint who the father is.

The Void

More an AU of the Dark Forest specifically of this blog, but since I like to think that all characters are canon to the Warriors timeline, might as well add it.

The Dark Forest is actually a sort of purgatory. When evil cats are killed twice / cats die in the Dark Forest, they go to The Void, and endless black territory with nothing but open space. It is so wide, in fact, that the chance of running into someone else is 1 in 1000.

Bluestar Raised Tigerstar

Basically Leopardfoot dies (maybe with her daughters) and Bluestar promises her that she will take care of her remaining son, so she raises him with Whitekit.

I feel that that at least gives some weight to her pain in Tigerstar’s betrayal instead of just she knew him well. He wasn’t even her first or second choice as deputy.

This also leads to further questions. Does he even still try to kill her? If everything in the first series is the same, does he try to kill Bluestar’s bio kits?

Hawkfrost Gene

An AU that Hawkfrost is born mostly white but grows more tabby brown over time. When cats learn who he is the son of, they start to believe that he is Tigerstar attempting to come back through his son... and maybe some try to stop the process, however necessary.

I’ve been told that this gene may not exist (but Warrior logic, woo), but it also may be fever coat!

[cutekittenlady]

Tumblr Plays Pokemon White 2 - Part 1

And so it begins.

After several polls, we're going to FINALLY start playing through our first (and maybe only if i cant keep it up) installment of Tumblr Plays Pokemon!

You voted and now I will begin playing as Polly. An eager young trainer whos catching choices have been decided by YOU loyal tumblrites!

Just to refresh your minds as to the rules of this playthrough, here is the rough outline;

You, tumblr user reading this right now, will vote on a series of 24 hour long polls I post up on this blog deciding what pokemon we will attempt to catch in each area. When we've voted on all the available areas between the gyms (been using bulbapedias White 2 walkthrough to help me sort that out) I will play through the section attempting to catch the pokemon in question, and playing through the game with them.

Seems simple right?

Well not quite. To keep things interesting I added some additional rules to keep things interesting for all involved. After all it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we had it all our own way right?

Here are the rules in full;

(warning; long post ahead)

All attempted Pokemon catches on each route will be decided by tumblr poll. This includes choices regarding trade pokemon, gift pokemon, fossils, etc when they come up.

Can only catch a single pokemon from every route.

Can only catch a single member of each evolutionary family. (No team of all eevees)

Can only attempt to catch each species of pokemon ONCE. If I fail we don't get a second chance. (Can't catch pidgey on route 1? NO pidgeys on the team for the rest of the game)

Can only have a single pokemon of every type.

No repeat natures.

Any HM slave/mule will be a permanent member of the team and count towards all previous rules.

Outside of the pokemon there are two additional options on polls; Randomize will mean choosing a pokemon based on the results of a random number number generator. Choose this if you want a pokemon but don't care which or otherwise just want to cause a little chaos.

Abstain will mean skipping the route without catching any pokemon. Choose this if you want to reserve the catches and typing for the pokemon on another route.

So keep in mind that winning the poll for a route doesnt necessarily mean that that pokemon will be a 100% guranteed catch or member of the team. If I fail to catch them, or if they have a conflicting nature, they will not be added to the team.

(Note; Also please note that this is NOT a nuzlocke. There are no permadeath rules in this playthrough. So a pokemon added to the team is a permanent member of the roster both in and out of the PC.)

With all that rigmaroll explaind lets get started!

Our name is Polly and we're a freshly minted trainer starting out on our pokemon journey for the first time on a lovely Spring evening! See our mom is friends with Professor Juniper, one of the pokemon professors, and shes offered to give us a pokedex of our very own!

Which she tells our mom at the last second, the DAY Biana arrives with our pokemon. What a character that Juniper.

Naturally we're not going to say no to having a Pokemon of our very own. With a Pokemon we'd finally get to leave town on our own, and maybe Hugh would finally stop asking us if we have one every damn day.

Speaking of Hugh;

We meet him outside and he more or less INVITES himself to find Bianca. Ah well, the more the merrier. Maybe.

Found her...

So in the first ever poll to decide our roster you guys voted that our starter should be...

SNIVY!

First off the table is the grass type. As one of the three starters in the game, Snivy is bound to be a longstanding addition to the team.

Sadly in the older games you can't rename your pokemon until you find the Name Rater, and in this game you don't run into him until Castelia City. So we won't be able to gurantee any nicknames based off of natures. As a result we're going to have to name this guy blind!

With that in mind I decided to name him Bentley! Which is a name that refers to a meadow with course grass.

He has a Quiet nature which actually fits well with the stuffy british name we wound up giving him XD And he has Overgrow as an ability which should be expected.

All the same with this decision we can cross all grass types off our options in the future, and any pokemon we catch with a Quiet nature outside of Bentley will need to be released! The nature rule is first come first serve!

After we get our Pokemon Hugh comes up and basically demands poor Bianca give him a pokedex. Which, by some miracles, she actually HAS.

I try to leave but Hugh won't let me. Guess we gotta fight.

Hugh is going to use the little Tepig hes raised from an egg, adn we're gonna use out newly minted Bentley.

I start things off with leer, but tepig hits back with tackle. After that it was tackle after tackle until Bentley laid a critical hit and beat Tepig! Which is odd considering Hughs had his pokemon for longer.

(Lol if this were a written story I'd have us lose. I mean it'd only make sense. But eh. Video game logic.)

After the obligatory Pokemon Center tutorial (which we arguably wouldn't need given out mom works there) Bianca gives us some free pokeballs. Then we meet our mom outside who gives us some running shoes (you kids have no idea what a god send these were back in the day) and Hughs sister gives us a map. As we head to Route 19 for our obligatory catching tutorial the lady at the gate gives us a free potion.

Bianca gives the practice tutorial against a Purrloin which, coincidently, is the pokemon that we were voted to catch for Route 19! So after Bianca finally leaves a get into the grass and make my search for a Purrloin... which I found right away!

It was level 2.

Bentley one hit KO'd it with a critical.

I don't know what to tell you guys. I legit thought Purrloin was going to be a guranteed member of the team but uh... Bentley decided against it and went in for the kill. Maybe thats why Tepig lost despite Hugh having it for longer. Bentley is a quiet little guy who hides the soul of a killer.

So, uh, yeah Dark types are still on the table going forward. Purrloin and Leapard not so much. Oh well at least it gave Bentley enough exp to learn Vine Whip.

We continue on our way and find another potion in some grass.

And then a spiky haired old man jumps out at us.

I'm not kidding.

He jumps off that cliff by the way.

Are your legs okay?

I feel like hes dodging the question.

He encircles around us and then says our "snivy" is fine-looking. He then asks us to follow him.

Remembers folks theres no "stranger danger" in the poke-verse XD

Alder invites us to visit his house, but I opt to explore the town a bit instead. This bit of independent thought netted me another free potion from an old man in one of the houses. Nice guy.

We run into Alder again who tells us Hugh is probably on route 20 training his mons. And it just so happens that route is out next goal!

The attempted capture we aim for on route 2 is Pidove! Hopefully since it has a type advantage against Bentleys grass type it won't go down in one hit!

Before that though I have to fight some trainers. Not that its a huge difficulty. Bentley took them both out no problem. Issue is... hes now level 8. Hope that PIdove hops out soon...

And as I type that we find another trainer. Oh boy.

Of note though is that in the Unova games you'll often have moments like this where you'll see unreachable items.

These are here to encourage you to revisit routes during different seasons. We're in Spring at the start of the game so this pokeball will likely become reachable in the Fall or Winter when the holl around it fills with leaves or snow.

Thing is, the seasons in Unova change monthly. Back in the day you coudl adjust the season by changing the time on your switch buuuuut I'm playing on PC so that options isn't available. Lol here's hoping the polls keep us busy.

Still I liked this mechanic a lot growing up. It kept you invested in the game for a longer amount of time, and enouraged you to backtrack to older routes to see what new things you could find there.

North of this area is Floccessy Ranch but we gotta try and get our Pidove encounter before then. After running away from a few sewaddles we come across a Pidove.

Who is level 2.

Bentley is level 8.

Oh boy.

The thing is. I could just throw a pokeball. That could catch the Pidove. But I dont want to get into the habit of doing that because having to battle the pokemon just... makes things more exciting? But I don't want to just ignore your guys votes either.

So, at least temporarily, I'm going to give myself one chance to throw a ball at a wild pokemon if I think its too low level or that my pokemon might one hit KO it. However I don't want to resort to doing that the whole playthrough. So if I don't do it again in future, well... the lack of excitement is why. Plus once you unlock quick balls, doing this just kills the fun entirely so yeah. With that in mind I'm limiting it to the basic red and white pokeball.

With that being said here we go...

opening the bag

selecting the ball

throwing the ball

aaaaaaaaand

it busts out.

Okay. Still a chance though. I mean its a flying type. It has a type advantge on Bentley. Maybe if I just use the normal type attack tackle it'll leave it with a bit of health.

Okay Bently use tackle but do not under any circumstances=

... aaaand youve killed it....

. . . . .

.... Bentley I'm starting to think there's a reason Juniper and Bianca gave you away.

((Is the game designed this way? Am I supposed to be one shotting the beginner route pokemon? I havent played this game in years so I have no idea.))

Okay Okay. Floccessy Ranch is our last chance. We NEED a pokemon from there or else we're going into the first gym with JUST Bentley and while hes turned out to be a tiny murderous green bean, I don't ultimately think it'd be wise.

Nows a good time to delve into an aspect of this method of playthrough that I am only just now realizing is an issue. See because Pidove won the poll for Route 20, I removed it from the polling from the subsequent routes in this section of the game. Which mean pokemon like Lillipup, patrat, and azurill weren't on the poll even though the normal typing didn't wound up being used up.

This is a bit of an early game mistake on my part, as its an eventuality that simply didn't occur to me. However rather than redo the whole poll, I think I'm just going to keep the result of the Floccesy Ranch poll as is and just refrain from making the same mistake in future.

So from now on, I will only remove pokemon from the poll if their typing/species/evolutionary family are confirmed members of the team. Beyond that they remain on the polls. If a Pokemon wins two routes in a row or something like that, I'll just count it towards the route it was caught on and label the second one "abstained" and do another poll for it later.

Sorry I didn't catch this eventuality sooner, but this is the first time I'm attempting this kinda thing and these growing pains were to be expected. Regardless here's hoping Bentley doesnt decide to make all this musing pointless by killing our next potential team member.

Continuing on we enter Floccesy Ranch and fight Hugh. I'm not sure if there was a chance to catch any pokemon here BEFORE fighting Hugh, but I'm here now so eh. He only has one pokemon still so I think it'll be okay.

Bentley starts off with a couple of leers again, bu Tepig does a couple of tackles and hits with his own tail whip. Since Tepigs a fire type theres no relying on vine whip here. So I'm gonna rely on tackle.

A strategy which works and takes Tepig down. Raising Bentley up to level 9.

Oh joy. This is gonna go straight to Bentleys head I just know it.

After the big fight the ranch owners arrives and are shocking chill about two teenagers having a monster fight on their property. They even give me a potion for Bentley.

They tell us one of their Herdier has wandered off and Hugh just flips out on the poor guy and his wife and runs off to find it. Guess we better help find it. Could be a good chance to catch us another team member.

Assuming Bentleys blood lust is finally under control.

The pokemon who won the poll for Floccesy Ranch was mareep which seems thematically appropriate for the location. I try to run from as many battles as possible while hunting for a mareep sine Bentley does NOT need anymore levels! A lot of the pokemon in this area seem to be at least at level 4, but since Bentley is at level 9 at this point and is eyeballing level 10 I really gotta be careful to avoid battles.

nO

nOoOoOOOOOO

ARCEUS WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!

i guess I should be happy hes not managing to kill this purrloin in one hit but hes basically guranteed to level up from this trainer battle.

You see what I mean?!

Honestly when I started this I did NOT think quick leveling or weak wild pokemon was going to be a problem. At least not this early on. I'm really really really hoping that when we find that mareep its strong enough to survive Bentley.

Bentley did learn wrap which may be useful but I can recall if you can still catch a pokemon caught in wrap or not? I'm not sure I want to risk it. Especially since mareep has, I think, a 10% appearance rate? So it'll take me a hot second just to find one and I'd prefer not to have this murderous little grass weasel make all that for naught!

Finally found a mareep!

Aaaand its level 5

Okay. Bentley. My starter. My partner. My friend. Do not, and I neeed you to listen to this! Do NOT kill this mareep in one hit! Yes, I know it is raining right now and as a grass type in a gen 5 game thats basically a god send, but just.... please.

OH BENTLEY YOU DO LOVE ME!!!

Now if the pokeball gods don't hate me...

YES

OH THANK ARCEUS

I WAS THIS CLOSE TO FACING THE GYM WITH ONE POKEMON.

Okay okay okay. We gotta name our new little friend.

I took a while deliberating on this one and after way too many various google searches I've decided to call her Aries and be done with it.

"But isn't Aries a boys name?"

I have no idea. I did way too much googling by this point, and I was, like, 80% sure Bentley was going to murder her. Now as long as she has a nature that doesnt conflict wtih Bentley (which is likely) then we're good.

Bentley had a quiet nature, so as long as she has literally ANYTHING different then we're fine.

AND ITS GOOOOOOOOD!!

Now I know this is a rather abrupt play to end this, but after that wild ride of Bentley going on a murder binger and this post already being incredibly long, I think I'll start a new one to detail finding the pokemon and taking on the gym!

Thankfully this DOES mean that I can go ahead and make some new polls for the next section of the game. So look forward to that.

[dunaldoodles]

Feelin like i should maybe rename this blog? Dunal's Fandom Cave or smth. Considering like a quarter of the posts are just headcanons and asks and the like.

No i wont be separating fandoms, though. You all get to deal with all of my bullshit, from AHIT to JSAB to HK to FF to whatever other fucking acronyms I can think of.

[analucardadaykeepsthesadaway]

sorry for the inactivity again folks, maybe i should just rename this blog to "alucard yearly" or some shit

have this alucard as compensation

[missamyrisa2]

Dear Miss Amy, I may have admittedly made the mistake of falling down the rabbit hole that is your blog, that might be partly on me, but I would kindly like to ask you to cease and desist with all the mind-blowing teases and melty tickle hots thank you very much. It’s *incredibly* mean of you to write so well we can practically feel them you know? -- Sincerely, a Lee that should not be stuck this deep in Lee mood when I have to be up in 4 hours 🫶

Okayyyy first of alllll ~ I adoreee your name my sweeeet darling~<33

And how very fitting because I know you just couldn't help to tumble down to my silky purpley giggly menagerie, could youuu? That's the funnyyy thing ~ I don't self promote or really try to get my teases out there. I started this wholeeee operation just writing little ~tingly glittery~ scenarios to ensnare any ticklish minds who happen to wander in ~ ooooh and here you areee~

Maybe I should rename my little abode the Great Feathered Blush Magnet~

Wherever you are ~ whoever you are ~ you are drawn to be in the company of these lovely visions ~ the tickle hots, the folds in your mind alwayyyys working to keep your ticklish awareness pulsing. Which is to say you drift down as if attached to an invisible parasol, floating side to side into my world ~ wispy hands of my design reach out to graze your palms, drawing index fingers on each line and stroke each finger~ awww you resist but yet you spread out and let them tiiiickle in such silly places. Up your arms now, inner elbows to biceps grazed and tended to, such an adoooorable lil thing giggling and blushing as you float further and further to my domain~ ghostly hands trace up wiggling thumbs under each set of toessss~ tickle tickle cutie pieeee ~ are you getting blushyyy?

Good thing you're being deposited into my fluffy powder room~ and I'm just going to practice my blush brush craft on youuu~ let's make you into a masterpiece, shall we? And the thing is, I don't have to put any makeup on these brushes ~ you're going to pinken up from your tickles and be my little art project as I explore every little bit of your wiggly cute bodyyy~

and nooo~ we're not stopping the tickle teases and tickle hots ~ mmmh mmmh noooope ~ it's alllll teases all blushies all gigglegasps all the time here ~<3

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

maybe i just haven't looked through everything about Birds of Prey but what classes are utilized in this fangame? like it feels like each Fire Emblem game has a different selection of classes, or even variants of classes, or even based on game different weapons for the same classes! so like is it based on a specific game for what classes are there, is it a mixture, is Mod Goldmary making shit up(also a fun option), or some secret fourth thing im unaware of? also that is a lot of mages but i am not complaining because i like mages, but maybe add an archer if you haven't already cause archers are cool also feel free to go on a tangent about Birds of Prey even outside of just classes because as somebody who makes au stuff myself, and frankly i really need to start posting my shit to my actual blog, i know a lot of thought can go into the classes and how they would differ and that sort of fun stuff, that sorta thing is an entire rabbit hole for both au versions of existing characters and for ocs (side note im not signing it off as the anon name because it isn't talking about the au, but hey you listen to me blab about my silly au of making Naesala into a Lord so only fair i listen to your ideas too, especially since i personally would like to know more context to this Birds of Prey thing)

The classes are all pretty normal and their promotions are mostly what you would expect tbh. idk what else to say here. We have Spellspear (basara but renamed) as the only kinda odd thing here i guess? oh and Pegasus, Wyvern and Troubadour have only one possible promotion.

Also 10 magic users feels less like 10 units all competing for the exact same role and more like 3 groups of units competing for separate roles thanks to the changes i did for the magic types.

Dark Mages are designed to fight from a distance with the ability to summon additional units and being the only magic type with siege tomes. Also one spell applies Poison so add that to the war crimes bingo!

Conversely, Light Mages are supposed to be on the front lines and have a variety of spells that increase their own defences, recover hp, or grant damage bonuses on enemy phase. Oh and it also absorbed the fire and thunder from anima. If Yvette wants to grill a wyvern steak then i should let her tbh.

Anima mages stay pretty similar and just have a wide variety of ways to do damage through effectiveness, weapon triangle manipulation, brave effects, high might spells, high crit spells, guaranteed hits, physical damage, completely ignoring res and probably a few more. Wind also isn't all alone as its joined by water, ice and earth! MC is about to bury your ass alive while Alastor drowns your entire family <3

So while they all want high magic, their overall playstyles are very different :) In addition, no class has access to multiple magic types.

Also, just because a character can make a decent magic user, that doesn't mean its their best choice: Mary would prefer promoting into Battle Medic instead of Sage as her magic growth is pretty low compared to her competition and Battle Medic allows her to continue to use her decent strength, have weapon triangle advantage over a solid 40% of enemies, have no weapon triangle disadvantage (fists are really good), and grants her a really powerful supportive abilities, not to mention her ability to reclass into wyvern. Meanwhile, Hewe (might change his name) will probably prefer to stay in pegasus rider and zap enemies with a Levin Sword.

I already have 2 dedicated bow users, but there's room for more :)

And yes, Valstyr's dragon form has feathers :)

[nobodysdaydreams]

I STARTED SEASON 3 OF WOLF359 AND GUESS WHAT FOLKS? YOUR SI-5 FAVS ARE HERE, AND I DON’T LIKE THEM CUTTER’S ERRAND BOYS HAVE GOT TO GO (or my reaction to Episodes 29-31 and Mini Episode 4 of Wolf359).

Sorry for the delay, but I did warn you my schedule would be very inconsistent. Thank you everyone for your patience.

Tagging the mutuals who got me invested in this, and if you want to be tagged or untagged from these posts, lmk, or you can follow my blog or simply follow the tag "#bods wolf359 reactions". Anyone who has followed me for a while knows my updates are inconsistent, so I apologize in advance for that and for any spelling/grammar mistakes in my posts.

@sophieswundergarten @oflightningandstars @acollectionofcuriousreblogs @herawell @commsroom

Episode 29: Pan-Pan

Minkowski doing the intro because Doug is gone 🥺

Our boy has been gone for 100 days?!?!?

If the others knew about WHAT? Minkowski? Hera?

Ngl, the arguing and bickering subplot is getting a little old. I understand tensions are high due to the Doug situation, but where is the main plot?

Over one hundred critical failures and y’all are still fighting?

“It should be habitable” “But not comfortable”.

I love how Hera and the crew will do things to try help each other feel comfortable even though Hera can’t feel human sensations and the humans can’t feel AI sensations.

Are they gonna have to cuddle for warmth? Snuggle time! 🥰🧸

“Distress calls? Who is gonna pick up?” Why the characters I saw my mutuals posting about before I blocked the wolf359 tags, of course! I can only assume that why they’ve been so excited for me to start season 3.

Hilbert. CUTTER IS NOT GONNA HELP YOU.

No, don’t go to a corner. You guys need to snuggle and feel better.

“Why do I have to go?” Hilbert you tried to kill everyone. So yeah. It does have to be you. It should always be you.

Lovelace that’s too far, Cutter probably put some malware in her.

“Whose fault is it?” CUTTER’S WHO DO YOU THINK.

Oh my gosh this is going WAY too far.

All the bad stuff you did was out of desperation or impaired thinking due to the stress of space, which is, again, BECAUSE OF CUTTER! So stop blaming each other.

Minkowski… oh she misses Doug. 💔

…cracks? The end of operational life? We can’t fix it?

Um. No. Not this hopelessness. I need them strong enough to punch Cutter in the face.

Call command? No. Don’t do that. I don’t trust them. Bad idea. BAD IDEA. The only idea, unfortunately, but that doesn’t make it good.

Episode 30: Mayday

Um. What’s with the weird noises?

DOUG! HE LIVES!

…I say as if there aren’t two seasons left with him as the main character.

Oh no that was a rewind. This is a flashback. So maybe Doug doesn’t live.

Yikes that scream. Me too Doug me too.

Minkowski’s voice in his head 🥺

Haha… mocking him about not reading the manual Cutter worships.

And she put it in there just for him. 💕

Reliant Robin? Interesting name. I like it.

“Ignorance makes death inevitable” well put our heroes sure are ignorant of a lot no thanks to Cutter & co.

It’s okay Eiffel. I like your action plans.

“That’s dead boy talk” 😂

“Find someone else” …interesting. There are others…

…I wonder what they’re like.

I’d hate being frozen like that. Yeah. This is gonna be rough Doug…

I love how he keeps renaming the ship.

Oh gosh. It’s killing him. Poor Doug. Oh dear. Oh Doug.

“USS Peace of Crap”

Oh he lost his hair? Well. At least he matches Hilbert now. Maybe they can bond over that if they ever see each other again.

“Please respond” Doug sounded so broken.

Oh but now there’s whistling 🎶🎶🎶

He doesn’t have nails?

6,000 years? “How do you know there will even be anything there?”

“Nevermind”. Oh that was dark. Doug have you been freezing yourself incorrectly?

What about Hera’s voice? Or the voices of that family he won’t talk about? 👀

You tried Doug. You tried your best. Wait, “never get to talk to who?”

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOODNIGHT DOUG. RAGE!

USS Horrible Unending Nightmare, what a name.

YES HERA.

DOUG THEY WANT TO HELP! Yes! Or maybe no… depends on who it is…

How does he know who he is?

“We’re here to take you home” why do I not fully trust you random man?

Episode 31: Sécurité

Urania? Who is this? 👀

“They’re there”. YES THEY ARE.

JACOBI! Before I blocked the tags, I remember seeing your name. A few other names too in fact.

Well, well, well my friends. I’ve paused the episode to announce that the moment is finally here. You see I wanted to go into this spoiler free, so I dutifully blocked the Wolf359 tags on tumblr. But before I blocked the Wolf359 tags, I saw a lot of angsty Wolf359 fan art from my mutuals heavily implying that the Hephaestus crew gets betrayed by someone they come across. Now I’m going to assume that this is true, maybe I’m off base, maybe I’m not, please don’t confirm or deny anything. But working off this assumption, incorrect or otherwise, is very exciting because I just remember the art, nothing about names or context other than what I stated previously, which means it’s time to play everyone’s favorite game show:

✨Who Is Gonna Betray Everyone? ✨

Welcome to the show ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be checking in later to review our options, but for now let’s see what we got. In one corner we got Jacobi. I recall my mutuals posting about him, but were they doing it affectionately or with anger… ooo… that detail escapes me. And as always we have the “Bods… no one is gonna betray anyone except Cutter and maybe Hilbert again. They’re the bad guys. You already know this. I don’t know what fan art you thought you saw but literally what are you talking about?” And if that is the case then… uh… just ignore this sorry guys.

Ohhhh… never mind! Option 3 has arrived: Wareen Kepler. Works for Goddard Futuristics which already puts him high on the traitor suspect list. But of course Kepler and Jacobi could be working together, come to think of it, I think I might have seen a ship tag of them before blocking the general Wolf359 tag. Is it because they’re a canon couple? Good space buddies? Or a pair of sneaky Judases united by the atrocities they’ve committed? Only time will tell.

SI-5? Okay I have FOR SURE seen that mentioned before.

Kepler knows Hilbert? Oh yeah… yeah Kepler is moving right up that suspect list. Red flags out the wazoo.

Okay Kepler. Respecting Hera’s name. That’s nice, but the red flags are still waving. What do you want to know about Hilbert’s work?

DOUG IS BACK!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳

“Maybe the fact that we brought Doug back is proof we don’t mean you any harm”

EXACTLY WHAT A TRAITOROUS SNAKE WOULD SAY. 🐍

Besides, Cutter still wants to know about the aliens. He’ll keep them alive. For now. But what happens when they run out their use?

They have alcohol on board? Quite a luxury. And the rescue mission is very… nice of Cutter. Creepily and very suspiciously nice. I wouldn’t drink anything he offers you.

Another one? That sounds ominous. And I don’t like that Hera can’t see inside. If this guys are making Hilbert of all people suspicious, clearly things about to go South.

SI-5 agents? Black operations work? Top men? Kepler… the most dangerous man you’ll ever met? Don’t like that.

Don’t like you either scary lady. Oh. She was addressing Hera. I like that, but Dr. Maxwell? So far we haven’t had good luck with science people working for Cutter. And if she’s an AI specialist, she could very well be Cutter’s version of Garrison (@ my TMBS mutuals). Looks like detective Bods has sniffed out another suspect.

Well. She seems very helpful. Suspiciously helpful. And… my AirPods are out of juice.

Thank goodness AirPods charge quickly. Now let’s see… Maxwell is an AI specialist. Oh Hera sounded a bit nervous when she realized Maxwell developed AI. Makes you wonder how AI developers treat their creations. And yeah, why would command send you?

“Who said anything about a rescue mission”?

I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT. IT’S ALL THREE OF THEM ISN’T IT AND I’VE BUSTED THOSE LYING LIARS I’VE CRACKED THE CASE WIDE OPEN.

I knew it. They aren’t leaving.

“Your boss is an insane psychopath” THANK YOU DOUG. TELL THE TRUTH.

THEY DID KNOW DOUG. OF COURSE THEY KNEW. THEY’RE PART OF IT. THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN PART OF IT. THEY ARE EVIL. THEY VALUE PROGRESS AND THEIR OWN AMBITIONS MORE THAN HUMAN LIFE. THAT FALLS SQUARELY INTO THE “EVIL” CATEGORY.

“You’re whisky” Guess what Kepler? Guess what Jacobi? What happens when you’re whisky? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE EGGS THAT NEED TO BE CRACKED TO MAKE AN OMLETE?

Maxwell did that to Hera? Oh I might just hate her the most. She needs to keep her hands off of the AI. I know people like her, I recall seeing her name in posts, people have usernames with her in it, but look, right now, I really can’t stand SI-5. Cutter’s little errand boys have got to go.

I love how Hilbert is just back with them now 😂

Yeah, I don’t think knocking them out will work. Never thought I’d say this but Hilbert has a point. Wait, personal interest? I don’t want Cutter taking a personal interest in anything. And I don’t just mean anything involving the mission or space or AI, I mean literally anything. He can’t even take a personal interest in knitting or bowling or historical trivia. He doesn’t deserve hobbies.

Kepler was the one who lied about Lovelace. Well, well, well. Seems like someone has a motivate to kill. 👀

Oh no. They really got to Hera. But if you want to be subtle maybe DON’T change her language like that.

“you won’t see them coming” sure I will Hilbert I saw that fan art. I think they shoot one of you? Maybe I’m remembering it wrong. Well. At least a common enemy is bring the team together. Cheers for that at least. Mini Episode 4: Meanwhile

Mini Episode Time! 🥳

Who is talking? Why…why does that sound like female Cutter? Oh it’s Rachel. Wasn’t that the girl Cutter threatened to throw out a window? I feel less bad for her now.

Cutter please get past the BS.

“The Black Archives” well that doesn’t sound ominous at all. “Things that aren’t supposed to come back, they shouldn’t have a paper trail. They could get us into legal trouble”.

Oh I certainly hope they do Rachel. I hope you get your butts dragged to court: you, Cutter, Jacobi, Kepler, and Maxwell. I hope they throw you in cells without toothpaste and feed you nothing but the frozen mush you gave your astronauts. I hope, just like poor Doug, they force feed you enough cigarettes to get you addicted and then take them away to prevent your from dying faster, but still make you to feel the cravings Doug felt. And if you’re wondering why Hilbert isn’t on my jail list, his recent actions have struck a comical and benevolent chord in my soul. I sentence him to a lifetime of community service that involves surrendering his free will to his creation: the blessed eternal.

What does Blessie think about all this? No one has mentioned him. SI-5 either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care. But Blessie is a very capable plant. A good ally to have in a time like this.

Omega contingency? “Last resort”. I don’t like that.

“something big is coming” Indeed it is Cutter, and I hope it involves your death. Pretty please it would make my Christmas.

Thanks for reading friends. Sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoyed!

[limelocked]

im trying to like make the new dash usable and just... it dont

heres the main things im having trouble with in no particular order

there needs to be extra padding on top of the site, it feels claustrophobic without the buffer of the previous Top Dash

ad-free, domain, and store dont all need to have separate icons, just incorporate domain and ad-free into the store

settings are always the furthest down, idk if this is a rule but it feels very intuitive, same as account being at the top or at the bottom never in the middle

the icons are too small and more notably the text makes it very cluttered! you can have text for the store but other than the store and activity feed* the icons are generally the same as other sites and dont need explanations

*the activity feed also dont need text because its a tactile tab, as soon as notifications become a thing you have to worry about then you will click on the tab

the simple create a post button should be where the rest of the activity is, hiding it in the corner will do no good to anyone

this is a me specific problem but i have tumblr opened in a minimized window so i can use two tabs on the same screen and it feels crushing to be encapsulated on all sides by Stuff, let us navigate recommended blogs and the radar in the explore tab instead, it feels like that is where theyre supposed to be rather than on the main dash

personally i would love if search went back to the left hand side and maybe the sidebar thats replacing top bar went to the right side but those are minor issues

heres some other changes that i think would be good for the site in general

in the explore tab; dont default to Today, default to For You if you want to drive engagement, or trending, @staffs choice

rename Staffs Picks in the explore tab to Radar since they seem to be the same thing, staff doesnt have a great image so it might get more use in it if the dash name is used

like solitarelee said; it would be amazing to have custom dashs for different blog content, having a tab specifically for content from your followed tags is nice but having separate dashes can really be expanded on (and if you want to consider the option then this could be monetized as in you get 3-5 free custom dashes and then you pay per added dashboard, this should however be brought up to the users first because if the number is too low staff and automattic will simply be seen as evil)

PLEASE rename Manage to Labs or something, its much cooler and is more indicative of what you're getting from the tab as manage usually comes with Manage Settings, adding a beaker icon to the sidebar for labs content could even be a good idea to get people interested in it

i am begging on my hands and knees for staff to have a public dev log, please look at how the minecraft community eats up the mojang patch notes and understand that this would be good here too. warn us about upcoming changes like the dashboard update and treat us as costumers rather than shareholders, we dont want to solve an ARG to understand what you're going to do with our primary social site, we want to be told straight up whats happening so we can continue to make informed decisions about what we want to do with the site

something im surprised hasnt been done is tumblr adding an optional tutorial on how to use the site upon account creation, maybe it exists, maybe it doesnt, it should be optional and also the no tags warning should be able to be toggled in settings

[lagrosselegume]

I was thinking. If I'm not really using a nickname, that I used here. Maybe I can rename it? Can I rename myself? Or maybe I should just create another blog and start over?

What do you think, people?

[mask-of-prime]

Hopefully this urge doesn't fleet soon after posting this, but I should really get back into my Terra-Magna Bionicle Universe.

For a while, now, I've been wanting to do a bit of a reboot on the worldbuilding. Looking back, it was starting to get a little too complex, since I seemed to be making it more about replicating every existing real-world thing, rather than having more of a fictionalized, fantastical charm to it.

If I do get back into it, I wanna change the logos/overall blog designs. In fact, I'm thinking of merging my @terra-magna-living-archive and @terra-magna-verse into one blog. I didn't post much onto the Verse one, so maybe I should just move/reblog posts from there onto the Living Archive (and rename that one as Terra-Magna-Verse). "Living Archive" could just be a huge section/tag discussing the flora and fauna of Terra-Magna.

[elegyofthemoon]

for the character asks: 2,4,11,23,25 with kevin kaslana :))

eitan i'm coming for your spine. (APPRECIATE YOU BUT WHY....)

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

:( Hard to pick when I've found several... I'll just say his stupid jokes actually crack me up. Because they're just. really bad. And they're so bad that it becomes funny.

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

I feel like I've been going on forever about this on the other blog, but I just wanna see what happens if you put Kevin in Nier Automata what will happen. Vibes alone, I think it's pretty fitting for him. Between "Lyin - See You in the Next World", which I'm aware isn't his own song but I was introduced to that song via a live concert where they renamed it to "Kevin Kaslana" and his own theme (completely different song, I just feel like the music kinda fits him.

But mostly, I kinda wanna see what happens if I give this man an existential crisis. Has he been through enough? Maybe. But how about some more?

11. Would you date this character?

OH NOW I JUST KNOW YOU WANTED TO COME FOR MY SHINS BY ASKING THIS QUESTION EITAN.

But in actuality, no asldkfjasdklfjhl but I kiss him in my brain :)

23. Favorite picture of this character?

Your drawing of him bc I can crush him in my hands :) (I'm still crying over it btw it's sooooo so so cute alskdjafhslf)

That plus also whatever the hell is happening here.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

Good question.... Well, when your friend hands you a billion goofy ass photos of this guy, I think my inclination was that "Oh he's actually kind of a goof despite pretty serious front", AND THAT WAS A MISTAKE ON MY END I should never have looked anyways but alas, I am weak to a character that can make me laugh.

Getting further into reading and all that, YES he's still a little bit of a goof but I'm so fucking mad (joking) that he's like To A Tee my kind of character and I'm scared for the life of me what that means later down the line when I continue playing Honkai. Impression now is more on the lines of "well the guy lost a lot can you blame him for maybe doing something a bit insane?"

I want to understand further exactly what his plan entails but based on what I do know, it was such a huge jumpscare for me 😐Felt like I was revisiting Nier Gestalt for a split second and a bit of Dreamscape (my OC story) and that scared the heck out of me.

Please leave the premises, sir.

[sdbingo]

heya,maybe a silly question but uh... which blog am i supposed to follow/tag? Based on the post it seems like it should be the new one, but yall seem to be able to reblog things on this current one, so i thought maybe you just had to rename this one to fix whatever the problem is... sorry, i'm very easily confused /lh

Hello, you should tag/follow our new blog @seasonaldelightsbingo rather than this one, we won't be active here for much longer.

We used to have a couple of problems with this blog, and still seem to be having some problems which is why we won't be coming her anymore.

This blog gave us too many troubles, and because of that we ended up deciding to open a new account instead of wasting more time on this one. Hopefully things will sail much easier now.

So long story short, unfollow this account, tag @seasonaldelightsbingo so that we can reblog it.

Don't be sorry, it was a good question and I would have been confused too.