@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
And of course, ironically alot of his characters are based off Sega’s designs. Like all the echidnas are pretty much just Knuckles look-alikes. Same with the hedgehogs. One person even pointed out Geofrey St. John looked like a nameless skunk background character from the second season of the Sonic SatA.M. show. Sense the comic used some actual background character models from the show in it, (including a scrapped SatA.M. character named “Nate Morgan”) it’s possibly not a coincidence.
 
And there’s also ones like Fugly the echidna.

@Beau Skunky Nah, but since he thought them up he tried to claim ownership. That only flies in Japan!  
(see:Toho and Titanosaurus nonsense. Fortunately that lawsuit didn’t result in a sweeping change.)

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
I guess it’s easier to get along with if the OCs are not even human then?

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
Really? I didn’t know background characters were such a major issue for comics.
 
Though, I can’t recall if any of Ken’s characters were based on real people. Closest I can think of was “Hershey the cat” was named after his son’s cat.

@Beau Skunky Because of his suit against SeGA. It’s partly the other reason why that Ted Anderson thing blew up so big. /co/ came in because you’re legally not allowed to put OCs in. Hasbro is enormously lenient in allowing the show&comic staff to have their own personalised OCs. I imagine they only get a pass cuz they could point at themselves and go “Yea, that’s me!” But if they were wholly original OCs that they used prior or based on RL friends, there’d be some murky trouble there.
 
To put it in perspective a large majority of characters in Malibu comics were actually friends and family of the artists, some even shared the same names as their RL counterparts! But they were not people that were a part of the company nor working on their comicsverse. Malibu would have never been able to launch had they come about after the Penders suit. The only loophole that exists is for “public personas” like politicians, celebrities, musicians, and so forth. He essentially ruined fun non-serious 4th wall comics for everyone, due to the minute possibility of a similar suit.  
(When Marvel bought them they likely retired most of the characters in that universe for that reason, even though it predates Penders there was a case against Anne Rice for a similar reason at the time.)
 
From what I understood from the last Penders thread I read, only way around it is to have people physically come in (every single one you draw from) and sign a release of some sort with witnesses  
Comics is simply not profitable enough an industry anymore to put up with treating every background character like they were shooting a live documentary. Their info source was a book called the “Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook” that mentioned legal crackdowns due to that and a few literary “defamation” cases of people claiming characters with similar names to theirs was libelous.

@ghostfacekiller39  
You mean like this?

Let’s not talk about Penders
 
Scary things happen when we talk about Penders

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
Really?! The “Penders” case/drama got that bad it effected the whole industry?! (Thanks, Ken…)
 
Y’know, speaking of fans who think “they can do better,” I remember I saw a teen on DA who constantly bashed “Shadow the hedgehog” constantly, (saying he was a “lame emo recolor,” a “Gary-Su,” and such…) and get this…  
His OC/fan-character/screen-name was basically a Shadow recolor… (The character he hates so much.)  
Fans confuse me sometimes.

@Niggoslav_Krawczyk  
Shhhh…we will refrain from speaking of he who must not be named.

@Beau Skunky Yea, and come to think of it a common thing I used to see from detractors (ESPECIALLY over Silver) was lamenting that the crappy black&red OCs were actually better than SeGA’s
 
Their reputation also suffered thanks to the idiocy Penders pulled that basically made every other indie comics studio inject a NoFunGuy policy into handling OCs and fan and creator content.

@Aasha  
Perhaps, though to be fair some Sonic fans have come together for some get-togethers (like “Summer of Sonic”) and have teamed up to make some good fanworks to. (Check out “Sonic Paradox’s” hilarious “Sonic Shorts” animation parodies for an example.) So there has been some positivity, and such from said fanbase to.
 
The problem with the Sonic fanbase is, the “obnoxious” fans (like Richard Kuta, & Nicochi) tend to get the most attention, or tend to be the most outspoken, so people assume that’s what all Sonic fans are like. It also doesn’t help it’s become kinda “trendy/cool” to hate/bash Sonic nowadays due to the controversial quality of his newer games, and products. (Still, regardless what some say, Sonic is more “alive” at this point then Megaman is.)  
So some assume if you like Sonic, you therefore have “terrible taste in games,” or are some “blind man-child still living in the ’90s, who will love anything Sonic,” and such. (Which is ironic, as many Sonic fans are quite critical of the series to.)
 
Of course, some tend to generalize bronies to for similar reasons.

@liamwhite1  
Being popular is a double edged blade.
 
Many people that aren’t part of any said fandom tend to hear bad things about said fandom and just start disliking said fandom - often growing bitter towards the members of the said fandom for being in the fandom.
 
Same thing happened/happens to Inuyasha, Harry Potter, My Little Pony, Naruto, the Twilight books, Final Fantasy VII (and others), Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Dragonball, and endless other popular characters and works.
 
If a fandom persists long enough the haters often tend to thin out and the fandom is just accepted as a cultural norm.  
Pokemon for instance has been around for 20 years now. when I first got into it others were into it as well. Around high school (for me) it started getting really popular and kids that weren’t into the game or cartoon would mock people that were into them. But by the time I got into college every gamer friend I knew was playing the latest Pokemon games; battling and trading with others or boasting about strategies.
 
Sonic the Hedgehog has been around 24 years itself. I want to assume the lack of community behind the fandom - with no reason for Sonic gamers to get together compared to that of Pokemon gamers I mean - there’s less reason for people to warm up as fast to the fandom. It’s still a thriving community though.
 
Currently the majority of non-bronies no doubt consider bronies freaks. We’ve only been around about 4 years. And we’ve become massively popular. Being the new fandom we’ll obviously get the stink eye from people outside of the fandom.  
This is the nutshell of becoming popular. Also in retrospect I rambled more than I realized.

@Background Pony #9E9B  
Why have it faved, then?

i hate any ship with dashie with all of my being

>good art  
>sanic
 
immediate downvote bomb

Kinda looks like RD has a deer nose.

@h0rnycorn  
nah. They’re both sentient beings.

should this have the beastiality tag?

@Beau Skunky  
I want to give it a pass on that since this is both of their “natural” states.  
I’m personally fine with human-with-pony and anthro-with-pony images anyway though.

@Ghoul 13  
I guess it is weird to see an semi-anthro’ character like Sonic smooch a quadruped pony. I’d tolerate it better if Dashie was drawn as anthro’ as he was.
 
Still, I’ve seen worse crack-pairings.

@Ghoul 13  
plain*

Downvoted because this ship is stupidity, sonic and Dash being just in the same picture is okay by me but the ship is plane crap.

@Background Pony #E939  
message me i might have a rp your willing to do then

its actually drawn decently

@Background Pony #E939  
hehe oh my~