I object to his claim that it was obvious. So he had some stereotypical idea of it that Rotor would work with?

In part of that article it seems like they think it was planned for an extremely long time, and by multiple writers, when it was only ever supposedly planned by Penders starting around M:25YL (again, according to him). I can't say I ever picked up on the hints that were supposedly dropped, and the ones that people are pointing out seem so petty. I don't think the fact that he wasn't paired off with a girl, or the fact that he shared a room with another guy are clues that he's gay. A lot of straight people share those same circumstances. While I have no problems with homosexuality, I don't think things will turn out that way for Rotor.

Oh, and it so figures that Penders would have paired him off with an echidna (and Cobar of all echidnas).

Lol @ Rotor being with an Echidna.

Imagine this will not be touched on since it was only hinted and not explicitly stated. For that I am relieved but not because I don't support gay couples. Quite the opposite. I'm one of the biggest M/M nuts. It's just that I'm sick of the comics randomly throwing characters together without a hint of development. Outside of Snively / Regina in recent times we haven't seen a relationship really blossom in years.

I feel if they were to really go this route then they should do it the right way and they just won't go there with Rotor's character. Why? Because he's been a miserably minor character who was replaced by SEGA's equivalent to him (Tails) a long time ago. I feel as though if they do give him a boyfriend he'll be mentioned once in some random arch and then we'll never see him with a speaking role again. For comparison's sake I think it'll be a situation similar to Meg Acorn's. Meg debuted in the comics almost 100 issues ago. Her daughter debuted a little over 50 issues ago. Even though they've been here for over 1/4 of the comic's run and their husband / father is the King of Mobotropolis we know virtually nothing about them. They're just there.

I have nothing against homosexuality, but it has been what? 16 years since the comic has debut & i joined on sth #29 & this really is something. I'm only going to lmao on the fact that this is surprising news. It's STH #206 & we find out about this now? Though I do need to say up to this point, I never would have noticed. If it weren't for the article, I probably would have never known.

I find it ironic that of all the characters chosen to be gay in this series it isn't one of the usual main characters commonly paired off in fandom.

I don't think the fact that he wasn't paired off with a girl, or the fact that he shared a room with another guy are clues that he's gay.

I wish someone had your logic when I was at school

Saw this reported elsewhere. Meh.

Personally, I object to the stereotyping and judging a book by its cover - especially since Rotor was a character who actually seemed to devolve over time, under Penders' writing. He was a lot more rounded in SatAM - admittedly, perhaps because he was taking a lot of the role that should've been occupied by Tails, but he still was confident, friendly and not afraid of getting into the thick of it. When Tails actually started taking that back in Archie (and even a while before), there was no effort to do anything with the idea of redefining his role except to make him even more withdrawn, even more socially maladroit and even more monomaniacal about his tech.

I don't know precisely when Penders started cultivating this idea (and if you check Penders' board itself, you'll find that it was just Penders' idea - Dub pointed me to this a couple of days ago), but the portrayal of the character really does make me wonder about what he thinks teh gay people're supposed to look and act like (including interests, rooming with the same gender et al). It seems rather dodgy to me, and definitely not the open-minded "Right-on!"-ness. that Penders is trying to pitch it as.

At least we have the final proof that not openly being a hormone junkie or thinking that you've met The One at sixteen is abhorrent in the Penders universe. Way to make your adolescent readership feel normal, Ken.

But that's about as much time as I'm willing to give this whole topic, on the grounds that this whole "The Truth Revealed" hooey out of the blue seems like just another desperate attempt by Penders to grab the limelight and get people talking about him again, seeing that he's not actually been relevant to the franchise in years and (given the age of the target demographic) he's in danger of getting to the point where - horror of horrors! - Archie fans might start asking exactly who this guy is and why they should care about his opinion.

If he thinks that the same company that spawns Betty and Veronica - let alone Sega, who ultimately own the rights to the FFs - would've ran with this for 6-12 years olds, I can't help thinking that there's something fishy going on. Personally, I don't trust Ken as far as I could throw him and I'm not convinced that this isn't just something he's making up off the top of his head because he knows that M/M relationships're currently a hot button issue and it'll get him attention.

(Check the answer to the last question here - no plans except for two characters and Rotor's not one of them. Can we say "character obsession", and have we seen his precious, much-vaunted echidna love-in movie - the one that even his editor didn't know about, yet which had at least as many rabid defenders as Rich Kuta - after nine years? I didn't think so.)

I'm not giving him the satisfaction. End rant.

I don't think the fact that he wasn't paired off with a girl, or the fact that he shared a room with another guy are clues that he's gay.

I wish someone had your logic when I was at school

Don't we all? And I've learned that it's not just "at school." Those idiots stay idiots their whole lives. That I got to talk to a lower concentration of idiots online has entirely to do with audience selection, not that they were out of high school.

Don't we all? And I've learned that it's not just "at school." Those idiots stay idiots their whole lives.

I think it's more along the fact that half of the accusers in question years on turn out to be homosexual themselves

Plate in the eye and all that

Frankly, I'm more curious that should something like this really would have happened, would either Archie or Sega allow it? I honestly just can't see it.

Sega probably would allow it. Archie on other hand , being more conservative probably would have shoot it down.

Sega probably would allow it.

After all the Sonic x Elise shenanigans, why not?

It's Dumbledor and Lexington all over again! *beats head against a brick wall*

What upsets me is when it comes out of nowhere. If a character is going to be gay I want to know this from the start. I don't know why I do but I just do. I'm probably evil for wanting that though. I'm one of the few left on this earth who assumes a character is straight until the narrator or evidence proves otherwise. Am I a bad person for this? I know I sound like a total close-minded jerk but getting news like that is like swiping the rug right out from under my feet. Though not so much in this instance. Rotor isn't around much anyway.

And if Penders was dropping hints he didn't do a very good job of it. More like a shallow attention grabber to me.

But wait if this is taking place in the 25 years later arc doesn't that make this sexual orientation only a possible of many many other possibilities? If you look at it that way it doesn't matter at all really.

If a character is going to be gay I want to know this from the start.

" Ohai my name is Rotor. I'm gay. I also make stuff! "

Realistically speaking a person doesn't always know they're gay from the beginning. They might try and struggle in heterosexual relationships for years before coming to terms with who they really are. I guess if you were to relate the process to a (not gay) character in the comic you can take a look at Mina. She thought for certain she was in love with Sonic and was adamant about her feelings until the very end. Ultimately she found true love with someone else. The only part really missing was how she got from Point A to Point B thanks to the time jump. They kind of redeemed that during that arch with Heavy and Bomb. That's an example of a more realistic progression.

But wait if this is taking place in the 25 years later arc doesn't that make this sexual orientation only a possible of many many other possibilities? If you look at it that way it doesn't matter at all really.

Yep that's right. All of the pairings we saw in XYL are subject to change in the Main Timeline. So I suppose it would be right to say that in some timelines (and possibly the current) Rotor is straight. On the other hand other characters may turn out to be gay. Go figure.

Archie Sonic could be a shipper's paradise. Since there's so many alternate Timelines / Universes everyone can be right!

Well I guess to rephrase what I said earlier. If Penders was "dropping hints" he did a bad job. At least with Mina it was easier to follow. A male talking to another male doesn't make him gay. But I keep wondering why the matters of sexuality are even being considered in a comic like this. It's like the whole relationship thing in general. I can kinda understand it when Fleetway fans say that Archie is focused too much on love and teen angst. But at least now a days its been action packed!

Eh. I have nothing else to say about this then.

Ok, so Rotor is gay. While it's certainly an interesting new tidbit (and its giving me ideas, gurrgh), I have one question: Why, in the end, does it matter whether we knew that or not?

I have to go with Sam on this one. He's trying to stay relevant about a comic book he hasn't worked on in half a decade because 1. He needs attention, 2. He thinks everyone will be shocked about it, and 3. He wants back on the book. Because it's 'his' book when push comes to shove in his mind.

Quite honestly, I think Ken could lay off trying to get back onto the Sonic comic and do something more productive. Like, say, work on The Lost Ones.

*swish!*

Sega probably would allow it. Archie on other hand , being more conservative probably would have shoot it down.

You mean the Comics Code Authority would prohibit it. I think Archie would have downplayed the fact (something like a Ernie and Bert, "best friends so much we share everything).

That's my two cents/pence/euros/whatever

I see your point Sam, Ken trying to stay relvent with the comic book. I never saw Rotor like that, I thought either he just didn't find the right girl or was focusing on things other than romance. I am glad to hear that it sounds like Ian will not go though with the idea. It is not that I hate gays, I just don't think the life style is right. Anyway, even though Archie and Sega did let Ken get away with the possiblity of Knux and Juile Sue having a child out of wedlock, I think this probably would have been too controversial even for them, and I really don't want to see Archie deal with something so controversial.

To be fair we shouldn't be placing the blame for wanting attention on Ken, since it was his lapdog BobR who made the big "revelation". Mind you, BobR doesn't believe anything post-#159 is canon, so...

It is not that I hate gays, I just don't think the life style is right.

I think you'll find that for most of us who identify as gay, there's really no difference between the two.

I think you'll find that for most of us who identify as gay, there's really no difference between the two.

I think that not seeing any difference is common to quite a few straight people, as well (myself included).

I'm more of the "what the bleep does gay lifestyle mean?" variety.

Precisely.

I think you'll find that for most of us who identify as gay, there's really no difference between the two.

I think that not seeing any difference is common to quite a few straight people, as well (myself included).

So, if you don't agree with someone that automatically means you hate them? So, anybody you know who is conservative, even family members, you hate them since many of you think that conservatism isn't right either?

I think you'll find that for most of us who identify as gay, there's really no difference between the two.

I think that not seeing any difference is common to quite a few straight people, as well (myself included).

Sorry, that's very true. I hope I didn't come across as trying to sound exclusive or anything, as that wasn't my intent.

So, if you don't agree with someone that automatically means you hate them? So, anybody you know who is conservative, even family members, you hate them since many of you think that conservatism isn't right either?

While this certainly isn't the place to get into an argument about the semantics of sexuality, disliking of conservatism is a bad analogy. A much clearer example is "I don't hate black people, I just disagree with them." I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who can distinguish between the two.

Suffice to say that there's a big difference between disliking someone for choosing to be conservative, and disliking someone for being gay (or black). It's something people are born into, not something they choose.

And to stop this topic from going completely off-track - Penders really seemed to have a thing for springing random sexualities onto people, didn't he? The whole Rouge/Locke thing still creeps me out.