#penders bullshit

[tikal-the-echidna]

Once again in my missing the archie sonic comics phase. o(-(

[thankskenpenders]

Help me out here: Why is there so much Ian Flynn hate going around lately? I thought everyone loved that he was contributing to the games. Now suddenly they aren't. I guess that's par for the course for this series but I don't get it. He isn't perfect but I like what he's done. Am I a weirdo?

Ian Flynn has always had a lot of fans, but any creator putting their work out there is going to have detractors as well. That's just the nature of being an artist. To some extent, it's no big deal. He's not a perfect writer. Nobody is! I consider myself a fan of his work, but I've criticized plenty of individual writing decisions from him on here.

But Ian doesn't just have critics. He has his own obsessive hatedom. And the specific nature of Ian's hatedom is... interesting.

A decade ago, Ian was only the guy writing for Archie Sonic, meaning any debates over his work were quarantined within that tiny niche of the larger Sonic fandom. Only people who kept up with the comics month to month had any real reason to have an opinion on the guy, which means we're talking about merely thousands of fans as opposed to millions.

Within that group, he had some haters. You had the people who were mad about story changes made during his run, particularly things like ancillary characters getting killed off (although over the years we've learned that most of those were editorial mandates from Mike Pellerito). You had the people mad that Ian didn't push their favorite ship, with feuding SonAmy and Sonally fans claiming that he was CLEARLY biased towards one or the other. You had the people who just really, really liked one of the previous writers way more - usually Penders, as hard as that may be to believe today. That sort of thing. Pretty normal comic fandom type stuff. Again, it comes with the territory.

Unfortunately, many of those haters only got worse over time, morphing into reactionaries who constantly try to incite Comicsgate type culture war bullshit.

There are people still mad at Ian for making Sally bi and pairing her with Nicole instead of Sonic in the later Archie comics. There have been elaborate MS Paint red string conspiracy boards explaining how people like Ian and Jon Gray have apparently been destroying the franchise from the inside for years by Making Sonic Woke. (Jon gets dragged into this because people are still mad about him drawing The Slap 20 years later. Yes, really!!) There was an unhinged change.org petition trying to get Ian fired, specifically from people who were mad that the Freedom Fighters aren't in the IDW comics. There was even a very sad little fan campaign from these people trying to get Sega to move the Sonic comic license away from IDW and over to Udon, because they thought Udon would bring Sally and Bunnie back and also make them sexy again. There's a lot of this.

(Unfortunately, Penders has also exacerbated this by gossiping about Ian on Twitter and giving these fans ammo, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)

The thing is, for years, people who only played the games or watched the cartoons had no reason to pay attention to any of this. Now, though, Ian isn't just writing for some weird spinoff comics that only the super nerds read. Now he's writing comics that are canon to the games, and ALSO some of the games themselves, and ALSO consulting on other tie-in media like Sonic Prime, and ALSO writing the official Sonic encyclopedia, and ALSO serving as part of the new Sonic Lore Team at Sega. And on top of all this, he's got an increasingly popular podcast where he fields questions about his work on all of these things, which serves as one of the fandom's main windows into creative decisions being made behind the scenes.

As a fan of Ian's work, it's been really cool to see him rise in prominence. But the dark side of this is that his obsessive haters from the Archie days now have WAY more of a potential audience of their own. Now, every Sonic fan has to have an opinion on Ian. What this frequently means is that you'll have the Comicsgate types taking things Ian writes or says out of context, attempting to get more of the general fandom to yell at the guy.

Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of Sonic fans who take the bait:

You've got hardcore fans who disliked basically any recent piece of Sonic media and are looking for someone to blame.

You've got the people who are concerned about the sanctity of Sonic's canon, who shoot the messenger any time Ian mentions a new retcon from Sonic Team on the podcast - or any time he even mentions the THOUGHT of changing anything about the canon, as we saw recently with the Sol Dimension nonsense.

You've got people who romanticize some sort of mythical artistic vision that Sega of Japan supposedly has (or had) for the franchise. To many of these fans, American contributors like Ian just don't "get" the heart of the series and are trying to turn Sonic into something different. (This "heart of the series" tends to be some mix of Japanese instruction manual lore, the cinematics from Sonic CD, the OVA, and/or the games written by Shiro Maekawa, depending on what Sonic media the fan in question grew up with.)

You've got fans of specific characters or ships who pin the blame for how their faves are depicted entirely on Ian - most vocally fans of Shadow, even though the root problem is that Sonic Team hasn't known what to do with Shadow since 2006. At best this stops at regular old criticism, but at its worst this devolves into claims that Ian has an agenda against certain characters.

You've got fans annoyed by a perceived over-emphasis on comic-original characters in the IDW comics, ignoring the obvious facts that these characters exist because the game cast is so tightly controlled by Sega, and also, you know, that people just like the IDW characters and want more stories about them.

You've got a LOT of discourse over IDW's Sonic being a hero who tries to give his enemies second chances, as if half of Sonic's closest friends aren't already former villains and rivals. Honestly this is very transparently just reheated Steven Universe discourse lmao

You'll also see people who just think they could do Ian's job better. They can't believe that THIS GUY is the American fan working on all these Sonic projects, when clearly THEY understand the characters and lore and themes SO much better than this charlatan.

All it takes is for someone in one of these categories to be unhappy about some recent piece of Sonic media, and for them to come across an out of context quote or comic panel that rubs them the wrong way, and suddenly the leftist Zoomer Sonic fans will join the latest dogpile on Ian alongside the reactionary Comicsgate types who are mad at him for Making Sonic Woke.

In general, when fandoms get upset, they tend to want a scapegoat. A person or two to point a finger at and go "THAT's who ruined the thing I love!" This tends to be based less on reality and more on which contributors are the most visible online. You'll sometimes see teenage and adult fans of children's cartoons single out a storyboarder who's particularly vocal on Twitter, blame them for every story decision they don't like, and harass them off the platform out of a sense of retribution for their favorite ship or whatever. Failing that, fans might choose to blame every nitpick, down to individual lines of dialogue and frames of animation, on a showrunner, just because that's the name they associate with the show. And unfortunately, when it comes to Sonic, Ian is now arguably the most prolific and outspoken contributor on the English speaking internet, and therefore a common scapegoat.

Some of the things I've seen Ian blamed for are truly wild. A lot of people have claimed for YEARS that he's just lying about the existence of creative guidelines and restrictions from Sega - or, as fans call them, The Mandates - even though they're just an inherent aspect of working on a licensed property. Others claim that The Mandates are real, but somehow Ian's fault. A vocal minority of fans have convinced themselves that Ian is the sole reason the Freedom Fighters don't exist in the IDW comics, even though Ian says he's been pushing to bring them back since day one.

Sometimes you'll see people say he ruined shit he didn't even work on. A few weeks ago on Twitter I saw someone claim that Ian had written a rejected script for Sonic Forces in which Tails died. I could not find a source for this for the life of me. As far as I can tell, the rumor seems to have been born from an alleged leaked script for Forces with margin notes from Aaron Webber that criticized the way Tails was written, and also an old tweet where Aaron joked that Tails would die in an upcoming episode of Sonic Mania Adventures. These merged into "Aaron Webber criticized a draft of the Forces script in which Tails died." How'd Ian get dragged into this? Who fucking knows!

It's all just a big game of telephone. All it takes is some asshole to make something up about Ian on Twitter or YouTube or a DeviantArt journal or some forum, and at least a couple people will believe it, and then it gets repeated as fact. Again, this used to be contained by the niche nature of the Archie Sonic fandom, but now there are WAY more people who are receptive to this shit.

It's just sad to me that Ian tries to be so open and honest about his work, to try to explain the rationale for certain things, to keep fans looped in on the direction the franchise is headed, and this just gives the Flynnspiracy types more quotes to take out of context and try to paint him as the devil. If it sounds like I'm being overly defensive and dismissing his critics, man... some of the things I've seen people say directly to him are just unbelievable. People will send paragraphs-long angry screeds in to his podcast that completely tear him apart, and he has to sit there and be like "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it." People literally pay for special guest interview episodes where they just rapid fire complaints about his writing at him directly to his face. I don't know how he does it. I would snap.

All of this over Sonic the fucking Hedgehog of all things.

I don't know how to wrap this up. Engaging with fandoms online is very tiring, which is why I tend not to do it. Things like this are too common. I guess, just... remember that making art collaboratively is a complicated thing. The people involved are generally trying their best given the circumstances, but they're only human. They make mistakes. But please treat them like humans. Criticism and dogpiling are not the same thing.

[toaarcan]

Hi, hey there, did you know that the whole "Jedi can deflect blasters so Mandalorians used solid-shot weapons to kill them because blocking a bullet with a lightsaber just results in molten metal spraying the Jedi" meme is actually bullshit?

Like, first thing you have to know about that lore is that it was written by Karen Traviss. Traviss is fairly infamous for writing a shitton of military wank and really hating the Jedi, portraying them as cruel, cold, fascist idiots, who are much, much lamer than the cool Mandalorians, who are badass military types and definitely haven't carried out multiple genocides in the past (they have). She was also known for not exactly playing ball with other writers, and ultimately ragequit the franchise when TCW started to include Mandalorians and portrayed them differently. This was not a detail that basically any other writer in anything Star Wars ever actually backs up.

And like, here's the thing... this exists.

That's a Jedi using the Force to deflect bullets with her bare hand.

This is Tutaminis. And/or Force Deflection, it's not really clear whether they're the same thing or not. It's a pretty standard Force ability that a bunch of characters have demonstrated. Obi-Wan blocks both bullets and a flamethrower with it in the 03 Clone Wars microseries. It's how Yoda catches and redirects Force Lightning during his duels with Dooku in Attack of the Clones and Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. It's how Vader absorbs Han's shots with his hand in The Empire Strikes Back.

It's also evident from the amount of times that the Mandalorians fight the Jedi with normal blasters instead of breaking out their "anti-Jedi" weapons for their ancient enemies. And the fact that the Mandalorians lost their wars against the Jedi.

If solid-shot guns/slugthrowers were the amazing anti-Jedi weapons that totally always worked against Jedi, then we'd see a lot more slugthrowers and a lot fewer Jedi. We see the CIS' Droid armies fight against the Jedi for three years, we see the Clones being designed from the get-go to kill the Jedi at the end of the war and being highly successful at it, we see the Empire hunting Jedi for the next 19 years and the rest of the Galactic Civil War after that, and y'know what they have in common? None of them use slugthrowers. They all just keep using blasters.

The answer to "How to kill a Jedi" equation has traditionally been depicted as "Use more blasters than they can actually physically deflect."

There's also the detail that Jedi are precognitive space wizards who can move with superhuman speed. If you're actually in range to shoot one with a gun, they'll sense you, evade or block with the Force, close the gap before you can chamber the next round, and revoke your Hand Privileges.

Even the "You'll kill them with a spray of molten metal from the melted bullet!" thing doesn't actually track with what we see on-screen. At the climax of Revenge of the Sith, we see Obi-Wan and Vader fight in the middle of an active volcano. They get splashed with showers of lava a couple of times, and at the end of the fight, both of their clothes are scorched and burned from the embers. Obi-Wan continues to wear his charred robes throughout the rest of the movie. And he's fine. No lava burns. Neither of them actually gets hurt by the lava until Obi-Wan cuts Vader's limbs off and he can no longer move or protect himself, and even then, Vader survives getting burned to a crisp by being really fucking mad about it.

So yeah, it's nonsense. A dumb "Hurr, Jedi are so lame and my unproblematic genocidal warrior race could totally kill them super-easy" take written by Star Wars' own version of Ken Penders.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 1 - Side B

Gerard art by @lmerlm

Propaganda below ⬇️

Knuckles

Knuckles is very heavily Christ-coded - walking on water, resurrection, prophecies, the whole nine yards. Not necessarily Catholic specifically, but I feel like there’s a comparison to be made between the Brotherhood and the Catholic Church as a structure. Also he’s made it to the semi finals of the Christ coded tournament if that means anything to you

God this whole thing was literally insane. Also pretty much completely forgotten as soon as p*nders was off the comic, which was probably for the best tbh.

Ken penders did a lot of wierd fucking bullshit, and made knuckles literally Jesus.

Nothing left to say except another fuck ken penders.

Gerard

Caused me to consider christianity again, due both to the fact that he’s genuinely a good guy who believes in the same sorta stuff as me, and because I’m Insane In The Head. I think the way he battles with his faith is unique, in that he firmly believes and is firmly integrated into the church, while he still wrestles with the questions of what his god wants with him, why horrible things happen to him and his friends, etc.

He does exorcisms :)

[beevean]

That's indeed what makes me so annoyed by the whole 'Sonic's embarrassing first name' debate... The only way I can envision people liking it is indeed because they want to tear Sonic down, for whatever reason. But it's just so annoying when fans try to claim this factoid as canon for Sonic from the games, and I don't think they'll change their mind if you point out that in the games this has never been mentioned in any way, because """""everything is canon"""""...

Oh and my autocorrect says that Olgilvie is actually spelled Ogilvie, so I guess Ken Penders couldn't even spell it correctly, or he tried to make it even worse for Sonic? Anyway, ugh.

I'm glad I'm not in the circle you are in because I haven't seen the Olglive factoid being mentioned as if canon in decades :'D it's so stupid lmao

But goddamnit sometimes I do feel that a minimum of gatekeeping is necessary. No, not everything is canon, the bullshit spewed by Penders sure isn't. What's the logic in everyone having names like Miles Prower, Knuckles, Shadow, Cream, and then the actual protagonist's name is Olgilvie Maurice. Or even just Maurice. Why. Why does Sonic have to have a "real", embarrassing name that he covers up with a "cool" nickname. Why can't Western writers accept that Sonic is effortlessly cool.

(yeah I had to check the correct spelling too. When I google Ogilvie I don't get a name, though. I get this. Okay.)

(and besides, when it comes to alternative names for Sonic, Nikki from the 1992 manga at least makes more sense. Sonikku -> Nikki.)

[crusherthedoctor]

"Our tribe has been through some tough times, too. He's basically Jewish!"

I keep seeing this line get thrown around, but I've yet to see it in the flesh. (Note that I've not had the opportunity to watch the show yet.)

I know it sounds reminiscent of a certain Penders blunder, but until I see it for myself, I'm not going to believe something just because it became a meme or whatever. I learned from a misunderstanding in 2018 involving Neo Metal Sonic's role in IDW to not leap before looking, and I've tried to abide by that since then. Not helping is that there's already been a lot of bad faith misinformation thrown around regarding this series, so it's harder to get confirmation on what's bullshit and what isn't.

[theliterarywolf]

Man, I was having a decent day until someone reminded me that, with the new trailer for the Knuckles series, we're due to be subjected to Ken Penders starting his ol' bullshit again.

[cyberbun]

Can I ask that last anon's question in a less rude way? I'm curious why you think the Ken Penders lawsuits were justified.

The Sega one was complete bullshit, obviously, but I take issue with people framing him having attempted to enforce the terms of his contract signed in the 90s that Archie straight up lost and to secure ownership of his original creations as him trying to "steal" from Archie because he was working under an established franchise to be disingenuous at best. Creator ownership of characters and stories is a major point of contention in the comics industry, and I frankly support any comics writers and artists trying to use the system in their favor to get a slice of the financial pie after how badly the industry treats its creatives. This is the entire reason Image Comics was founded, to give you an idea of how long this specific issue has been fought over.

To put it another way; if it's okay when Stan Lee or Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby or Alan Moore or their respective estates do it to Marvel and DC to get some residuals from the media empires they created for those companies, then it should also be okay for Ken Penders to do the same, even if I hate the guy's work. I can't really blame the guy for trying to take advantage of Archie's incompetence in bookkeeping and US copyright law to secure ownership of the characters and story concepts he created, which, make no mistake, were almost entirely original and unconnected to Sega's original story concepts besides Knuckles being there, and were also the backbone of that comic's success for an entire decade. Just because I don't like him or his work doesn't mean I don't think he's entitled to be compensated for his labor appropriately, just like any other artists or writers.

[takerfoxx]

Okay. Extremely controversial hot take time.

=deep inhale=

When it comes to edgy Sonic doppelgangers...

I LIKE SCOURGE MORE THAN SHADOW!

Yes, Shadow is probably the most popular Sonic character there is, while Scourge was a side character in a very messy comic series that ultimately wiped him from existence due to the most bullshit of copyright bullshit. Yes, Shadow has a really cool backstory while Scourge is the cliched evil version of the hero from another universe. I understand that.

I still like Scourge better.

Why?

Because Shadow looks like he was designed by committee to appeal to edgy 13 year olds who make Sonic OC's, while Scourge looks like an actual edgy 13 year old's Sonic OC. It has the same silly authentic charm as Coldsteel.

Plus, Shadow is always Mr. Too Cool For School with his edgy brooding and perpetual scowl. Scourge actually looks like he's actually enjoying being a total shitweasel! He was just so much fun!

But now he's gone, and I miss him.

Fuck you, Ken Penders.

[thecoolertails]

hey look at that, penders actually letting sally get mad at her dad and confront him about his bullshit, thats new

[ponett]

Ken Penders tweeted, "I’m convinced a lot of the so-called toxicity of Sonic fandom is the result of a lot of autistic fans trying to express themselves and not sure how to respond when discussion veers into a disagreeable direction. It’s an aspect of fandom no one wants to acknowledge but is needed." I think he was trying to say, 'Don't fuel toxicity by attacking rude people; they might not realise they've been rude', but it wasn't worded well. He was accused of attacking autistic Sonic fans.

i cannot tell you how little interest i have in responding to random bullshit penders says on twitter while the tkp ask box is off. if i don't respond please don't take that as an invitation to send it twice

[thankskenpenders]

I somehow completely forgot today was the day, but today is, in fact, Archie Sonic's 30th anniversary. (TKP also turns 8 in a few days)

Well... maybe today's the day? The main Sonic wikis list November 24th, 1992 as the release date for issue #0 of the original pilot miniseries, while Sonic Retro lists November 4th as the date based on an ancient news group post about comic releases from that week, and Wikipedia lists November 22nd, which was... a Sunday? And of course the cover date is way off and says it was for February 1993. Whatever! It was 30 years ago this month, is the point. So I should say something

While this blog has become sort of a go-to source for learning about the many weird and bad parts of the series, Archie Sonic will always mean a lot to me. It was the first comic book I started actively following as a kid, and it was what really introduced me to the world and characters of Sonic. I might have joined during one of the worst eras of the series, but the expansive mythos that had been built up over the prior decade really grabbed me. I'd pore over Penders' bullshit character bios and take them as gospel. I'd trace over panels to make Shrinky Dinks. For a time I cherished the climactic 10th anniversary issue, #125, as my prized possession, keeping it in my parents' fireproof box meant more for things like, you know, the deed to our house. I fell out of following it in middle school, but it was pretty crucial in shaping my tastes. I can easily trace a direct line from the stuff I'm working on now back to Archie Sonic

It's been almost six years now since the series was canceled. At the time it was hard to believe this was even possible. Archie Sonic was an institution. Everything else came and went, but "those weird Sonic comics with their own continuity that were still using the SatAM characters" were eternal. At this point I've made peace with it, in no small part due to the existence of the IDW series. But even if they're gone and never coming back (continually delayed projects from a certain writer notwithstanding), they're definitely not forgotten. I still see people drawing fanart, sharing individual moments, coming up with AUs to fix things that didn't work, redesigning the cast to fit in with Sega's Sonic. And I'd be remiss not to mention that we just got the first mainline Sonic game ever written by an Archie Sonic writer. A game that has some surprising parallels with certain pre-reboot Archie material, intentional or not. (Given the lawsuits and Sonic Team's disinterest in Archie, I'm guessing "not," but it's certainly there.) The spirit of that series lives on in small ways, even if characters like Sally and Rotor are currently relegated to fanon

Archie Sonic remains one of the largest branches of the franchise, rivaled in scope only by the games themselves. And people are still coming back to it, either as returning readers or as new fans discovering it for the first time. I'm happy to have been a small part of that

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

ken penders is spewing bullshit on twitter again

sgkjashg kids would take one look at that terrifying sonic and rip the comic into shreds

[mooshs-crack-headcanons]

TW ableism

I'm literally fucking speechless.

You think the fucknut can't get any fucking worse THEN HE PULLS THIS BULLSHIT OUT OF HIS ASS OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE.

As an autistic fan, Penders seriously go fuck yourself.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 4 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Knuckles

Knuckles is very heavily Christ-coded - walking on water, resurrection, prophecies, the whole nine yards. Not necessarily Catholic specifically, but I feel like there’s a comparison to be made between the Brotherhood and the Catholic Church as a structure. Also he’s made it to the semi finals of the Christ coded tournament if that means anything to you

God this whole thing was literally insane. Also pretty much completely forgotten as soon as p*nders was off the comic, which was probably for the best tbh.

Ken penders did a lot of wierd fucking bullshit, and made knuckles literally Jesus.

Nothing left to say except another fuck ken penders.

In the Archie comics, Knuckles inherits the role of being a spiritual leader to a lost tribe of Echnidnas, that have been wandering, searching for their prophesied homeland for centuries. Knuckles is the one to finally lead them there.

He also dies and comes back, and because of this is hailed as the prophesied “Avatar” by his people, the one who’s supposed to bring peace to their planet, Mobius. Cannot for the life of me remember where this went though.

It maybe isn’t allegorical as much as it is the writer thinking putting Judeo-Christian themes would make it cool or something. But the comparison to Jesus is at least intentional, whereas it probably isn’t with Shadow.

Shadow

In sonic destruction (the AI generated fan thing snapcube made a while ago) shadow was catholic or something which I think is reallyyyyyyy funny

Ok listen. I know this is a stretch but hear me out. He says “oh my God” in the Twitter takeovers so we know this is a possibility. I see him as a Christ-like figure because I saw his whole confrontation with Mephiles and was like “this is a thing that happened in the Bible??” and the pose Mephiles shows him in is literally like a crucifixion and Mephiles is meant to be a demon / false prophet reference. And also he’s called a demon in Shadow The Hedgehog 2005 then the guy who calls him that is like “I was wrong I’m sorry” and that also reminds me of a thing with Jesus in The Bible. But the biggest reason is his whole thing with Maria cause I think he’d come to earth and hear Ave Maria once and convert to Catholicism idk he’s like we’re comforted by a female familial figure named Mary sometimes called Maria?? And her color is blue????? Heck yeah I’m in because I Will Cry. Also feel free to share this as propaganda obv even if he doesn’t get in the bracket just. It’s funny.

I feel like he’d battle a lot with being seen or portrayed as a demon and how the aliens he’s related to very much look and act like demons idk lmao- and also I feel like confession would just be good for him I think he needs it for his mental health

There is a debate on the lovely website tunblr that Shadow T. Hedgehog is an allegory for Jesus Christ.

He is Jesus, idk what to tell you. He lived, he was sealed away, he was awakened again and deemed the ultimate lifeforms, he’s angry but not evil, does what he believes is best for people and the world at any given time. Total loser.