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theroguequeenaniki · 3 years

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Questions 2009 -> 2021

This is from my Facebook. It popped up on my memories page thing. I originally answered this in 2009 when I was 15, it’s now 2021 & and I am 27, so I’m gonna do it again. Leaving the original answers. Original answers will be italicized. Commentary on the original answers in parentheses & crossed out? Lol. (I’m not gonna tag anyone, but, like, I guess if you want to answer these random questions from Facebook 12 years ago, go ahead lol)

Questions

Can you fill this out without lying? You've been tagged, so now you need to answer all the questions HONESTLY. At the end, choose people to tag. Don't forget to tag me so I can see your answers! To do this, copy this entire message, then go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, delete my answers, and type yours. Easy! Next, tag people that you think may enjoy this (in the right hand corner of the app). Click publish (at the bottom). Have fun! :) 1.What was the last thing you put in your mouth? My cup with my Big Red in it The straw to my Kate Spade tumbler to drink my HEB Cola Lol.

2.Where was your profile picture taken? I got it off the internet. it's a random anime girl. My bedroom. 3.Can you play Guitar Hero? Never played it. Probably wouldn't be good at it. Not to good at video games. But I am good at Mario Cart, both 64 and the Wii. plus I'm good at some Sonic games. Still never played it. Idk if I’m any good at Mario Cart or the Sonic games anymore, I haven’t played either in years lol

4.Name someone who made you laugh today? Doctor Who TikTok. My cats.

5.How late did you stay up last night and why? Umm, probably about 10:00 cause it took me forevor to get into bed. Uh..Past 4am. Lol. B/c my sleep schedule is fucked. I was in bed by 3am though, but I was playing games & watching TikToks on my phone. Lol.

6.If you could move somewhere else, would you? Yes. I'd move to either New York or Sweden. I don’t know. Part of me says yes. But part of me says no..b/c even though Texas has it’s faults (a LOT of them), I cannot imagine living anywhere else long-term..

7. Ever been kissed under fireworks? HAHA. Yeah right. I've never even been kissed! Still nope. I have been kissed though. He just didn’t kiss me under the fireworks the one NYE we spent together...

8. Which of your friends lives closest to you? Um, I think R, but D might also. D is accross Stasney from me and R is a couple blocks down (I don’t talk to these people much anymore & I’m not going to share their names on Tumblr) Uh. I think Maybe Raven? B/c they’re the only one who lives in the same city still. But, Sarah might technically be closer distance wise? Hold on. Ok, yeah, Sarah’s closer, even though she doesn’t live in this city anymore.

9. Do you believe exes can be friends? It all depends on the situation.(I totally stold M's answer but it's true) (I don’t talk to this person anymore & I’m not gonna share their name on Tumblr) I mean, yeah. Two of my best friends are each others exes and they’re still friends. I haven’t stayed friend with my ex, but, uh, he ghosted me so? Lol.

10. How do you feel about Dr. Pepper? I love it. I still love it. Lol.

11. When was the last time you cried really hard? I can't remember. I don't think it was that long ago, I had a light cry on Saturday, but I don't remember the last time I cried really hard. When we got back from our trip in July. Had a full on breakdown that night. Overheated all weekend. Overwhelmed. Anxiety. It was not a very good vacation..I cry a lot though.

12. Who took your profile picture? I got it off of google. I did.

13. Who was the last person you took a picture of? Umm, either myself, or one of my family members. Aside from myself. I think my dad, on his phone, b/c there was a cicada on his shoulder and he wanted to ask the family group chat if he could keep it. Lol. I take a LOT of pictures of cats though. Lol.

14. Was yesterday better than today? Hail yes! To much drama today! And I couldn't avoid it cause I was in the middle of it! (Oof, what drama was 15 yo Linda dealing with that she couldn’t avoid? Lol. I mean, I guess, Sophomore year was a bit full of drama lol) Anyway, I mean, they were pretty much the same. One wasn’t better than the other. One wasn’t worse than the other.

15. Can you live a day without TV? yeah. Now Music there is something I can't live without! Yep, Do it almost everyday. Sentiments about music remain the same. Lol.

16. Are you upset about anything? Yes. I'm annoyed about something and it's making me upset. (I assume this has something to do with the the drama mentioned earlier lol) Always. Anxiety & depression are a bitch. My rooms a mess & I can’t get myself to clean it. My shelves are still a mess.

17. Do you think relationships are ever really worth it? yeah. though i havent really had one yet. I mean, yeah. Even though I haven’t had one last, aside from friendships, but they’re worth it.

18. Are you a bad influence? I hope not. If so, let me know.(again I took M's answer but it's true) Probably. Idk. Lol.

19. Night out or night in? Depends on what's going on and how I feel about it. Night in usually. I do like going out sometimes, but, like, to dinner. Maybe a movie or a show. But, you know, we’ve been in a panini press, the only thing I’ve been comfortable doing is going to dinner (fully vaxxed & masked). But I also prefer staying home anyway. (Like I usually just go to dinner with my family lol)

20. What items could you not go without during the day? my computer. my book. my journal and a pen. My phone. My journal (b/c I write in it every night, as a diary, 14yo Linda wrote stories). Uh. I didn’t take food or drinks into account in the og, so I won’t in those. But, yeah. My phone & journal. I can go a day without my laptop if I need to. (Went the whole trip in July without pulling it out, though maybe that’s not a good example since my anxiety on that trip was so high..) I want to say a book, but I’ve been in a massive reading slump so...I wish I read as much as 15yo Linda did..

21. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital? I don't remember. I think it was myself.(if you want to know, ask me in person) I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember the last time I was in a hospital.

22. What does the last text message in your inbox say? "Mrbobbybones: wish ted would finally meet their mother already. geez. get to it. However, I see myself in that character more and more each episode." yeah. That's what it says. It's from Twitter. (Huh? and I can’t even go check b/c my inbox doesn’t go back to 2009 on Twitter?? (I haven’t had my account that long) Wait wait wait just remembered I used to get tweets to my phone as text messages lol)

Facebook messenger: “ Cool” From our group chat. Lol.

From actual text messages on my phone: “ heeey! Just put up the Tuesday PDS just for you it’s a big one.” From Phillip Defranco’s text line Lol.

23. How do you feel about your life right now? I'm loving and hating it. but hey nobody gets out alive right? Uh..I mean. I’m alive. I have WiFi. Food. Family. I haven’t seen my friends in 2 years. (Minus Alex, b/c they were here in July to cat/house sit, but I saw them for like, one night..) There’s a lot that could be better. A lot that could be worse.

24. Do you hate anyone? yes!!! Oof. I mean, kinda.

25. If we were to look in your Facebook Inbox, what would we find? some random conversations. most of my convos on her though have been in chat or through comments. Facebook Inbox is now Facebook Messenger. So you’ll find all my Facebook Messenger convos. Mostly our group chat. And side group chats for secret planning (birthdays & stuff). Plus other chats? Lol.

26. Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass? I better! (excuse me miss 15yo Linda you absolutely could have passed a drug test you ALSO didn’t drink or smoke or take any drugs lol) Yeah. Absolutely. I don’t drink or smoke or take any drugs so, yeah? Lol.

27. Has anyone ever called you perfect before?

Yes. But I can't remember when... Yeah. Pretty sure.

28. What song is stuck in your head? Gee by SNSD(Girls Generation) They're Korean. A few My Chemical Romance songs

29. Someone knocks on your window at 2:00 a.m., who do you want it to be? EDWARD CULLEN! Joke! lol. No I don't know. If it was Edward, I'd call the cops. whoever it is though better have an explaination or they are gonna get hit in the head with my Book of Shadows. (Maybe I wouldn’t mind Edward at my window though? Lol.) Uh. My friends? Lol. Idk if I want anyone knocking on my window at 2am.

30.Wanna have grandkids before you’re 50? I don't know....... Uh. No? Idk. Most likely not gonna happen.

31. Name something you have to do tomorrow? I can't think of anything right now... Eat. Should probably clean my room.

32. Do you think too much or too little? Way to much! lol. Way way way too much

33. Do you smile a lot? i try to. I think I do. I get told that alot in Theater...

I think so

#questions #throwback #is this a get to know me #idk

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deadcactuswalking · 3 years

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 03/04/2021 (Lil Nas X’s “MONTERO”, Mimi Webb, Russ Millions & Tion Wayne)

So, we have a #1 debut, and that’s pretty much the only story here in the UK Top 75 as we get a filler week before Demi Lovato, Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Tjay run in and cause havoc. As for now, “Wellerman” is replaced at the top by Lil Nas X’s controversial “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)”, spending its first week at #1 after making pretty sudden gains assisted by the video and alternate versions – the mid-week projection had this at #15. Elsewhere, we just see the fall-out from Bieber. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

It’s a quiet week – only seven new entries, and none from Rod Wave, 24kGoldn or AJR as I had predicted. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some stuff to talk about within the chart, or particularly off of the chart, as we have a fair few drop-outs switching their places with returning entries. In particular, we have Justin Bieber’s “As I Am” featuring Khalid being swapped out for “Anyone” at #25, as well as drop-outs for “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence – slightly premature, I’d think – and all of Lana Del Rey’s songs from last week. We also “Anxious” by AJ Tracey, “Heat” by Paul Woodford and Amber Mark and “Toxic” by Digga D exit the chart, but the only real notable loss was “34+35” by Ariana Grande ending its 21-week run on the chart. Returning to the Top 75 in its place – which I cover – we have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers of course at #73, as well as “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus at #72, “You’ve Done Enough” by Gorgon City and DRAMA at #70 (really hope this one becomes a hit) and “Don’t You Worry About Me” by Bad Boy Chiller Crew at #66. In terms of climbers and fallers, we do have some notable gains and losses. For songs travelling down the chart, we have “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G tanking a sharp drop in its third week to #18, “Streets” by Doja Cat shaking off the video gains at #22, “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo continuing to collapse at #27, another sharp drop for HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” down to #34 probably due to ACR, which was probably the fate for “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #46. The same probably can’t be said for Drake’s losses, as “What’s Next” is at #40, “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross is at #41 and “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby stalls at #55. We also see falls for “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #50, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #51, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix on its way out at #57, “Headshot” by Lil Tjay featuring Polo G and Fivio Foreign down to #61 off the debut (although it’ll rebound thanks to the album as soon as the next week rolls around), “Ready” by Fredo featuring Summer Walker at #62, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu featuring Drake at #63 and “Day in the Life” by Central Cee at #69. Where it gets interesting are our gains, such as outside the top 40 with “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer which could very well get even higher next week thanks to the album. We also have “Track Star” by Mooski at #53 off of the debut and a couple of tracks entering the top 40 for the first time, those being “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon at #39 and Majestic’s remix of “Rasputin” by Boney M. at #38. Elsewhere in the top 40, we have “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #13 and two songs marking their first week in the top 10, those being “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #10, a song continuing to sour on me, and “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S, an EDM song at #8 that I initially mocked for its soulless repackaging but has honestly got me pretty hooked since. I’m excited to see how this one does. For now, however, let’s get on with our new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#64 – “Cloud 9” – Beach Bunny

Produced by Joe Reinhart

Beach Bunny is a power pop band who last year released their album Honeymoon on Mom+Pop and it’s basically a modern r/indieheads staple in that it’s an accessible, airy pop-rock record fronted by a woman. It’s not anything unique, really, or different if you look further into it but that’s fine because there’s a lot of vaguely “indie” or music snob releases pushed out every year that miss the charts entirely. It’s a different story, however, when a year later, it gets viral on TikTok and streams its way onto the chart. In that case, we have “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny, a pretty simple but sweet love song about a guy who just makes her feel a lot better about herself in times where she can’t pick herself up from the rut she’s in. Again, it’s a simple track but enhanced by the wonderful and unique vocal performance from front-woman Lili Trifilo and some pretty great production making sure no guitar lick is missed in this mix, especially in that chorus which is such an ethereal blend of the electric guitar dubs. I would argue that this actually should end at that second chorus even if it ends feeling abrupt as the transition to the final chorus feels a lot less cathartic than it does awkward, especially if the bridge is going to be a simplistic, quirky instrumental meander that doesn’t go far enough to be a guitar solo and hence feels kind of like a worthless addition. As is, this is a pretty great song still, just not the most fully realised once it loses that initial tight surf groove, though I’ll let it pass if we’re going to get rock this good on the charts again. I know this won’t really get more traction for Beach Bunny – or power pop for that matter – but more of this, please.

#52 – “You All Over Me” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) (Remix) (feat. DaBaby) (Part 2) (Radio Edit) – Taylor Swift featuring Maren Morris

Produced by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner

Sadly, this does not feature DaBaby and is not the remix, radio edit or sequel to any previously released song. Jokes aside, I guess brackets are the next big comeback for pop music, which goes hand-in-hands with remixes and re-releases, hence why Taylor Swift is dusting off this leaked Fearless-era cut for a new recording with country singer Maren Morris, who you probably know from her contributions to Zedd’s “The Middle”. Now whilst Swift is a great songwriter, I do often find myself frustrated by how she treads common ground all too frequently without establishing much different with how a song is structured or how it emotionally connects. This is true not just lyrically but especially sonically as of recent, as despite being written in 2008, it has too much in common with the less interesting cuts off of folklore for me to really care that much. That’s especially if Taylor’s going to undercut the clean acoustic guitars with flourishes of harmonica and crow sound effects, showing some genuine intrigue here before refusing to let any of that develop past a couple stray melodies or notes further back in the mix. I’m trying really hard to be compelled by these re-recordings and re-releases of her back catalogue as I do consider myself a fan, but it’s tough to pay attention when any new compositions we get sound like folklore leftovers with Maren Morris only put to use as decoration, much like HAIM on “no body, no crime” – and we already got an album full of folklore leftovers. I’m not a fan of this, sorry – I can see the appeal, and I do think this has enough of a country tinge to it to make it at least somewhat interesting – but this goes in one ear and immediately out of the other.

#48 – “Tonight” – Ghost Killer Track featuring OBOY and D-Block Europe

Produced by Ghost Killer Track and Kenzy

Screw the formalities and screw the analysis because D-Block Europe are back to add another D-Block to their EU collection – and since they’re Londoners, their only – and that’s Paris, and contrary to the British nature, we’ve let French rap chart in the top 50 out of the fact that they collaborated with two of the most comical rappers in British history. They’ve also linked up with producer Ghost Killer Track, also from France, as this is ostensibly his song even if he intends not to prove himself with this dull piano-based beat and oddly-mastered bass and percussion, which are really just DBE staples. Unfortunately, past the initial comedy of that first line in the chorus, neither Young Adz or Dirtbike LB deliver any stupid lyrics or funny inflections, instead just resorting to being as boring as they can in their constant flexing as possible. I guess the French guy here, OBOY, commands a higher energy in his verse if only through his comical “no, no, no” ad-libs, but he’s the only French speaker in an otherwise basic British trap song that I just cannot see the appeal in when we’ve had song after song from these guys for three years now. This won’t be the last we see of cookie-cutter UK rap this week though so brace yourselves for that.

#47 – “Last Time” – Becky Hill

Produced by LOSTBOY

It’s almost as if the charts are trying to send me off to sleep as here we have Becky Hill, a singer hedging the line between a non-presence and mildly annoying, which is arguably more frustrating than downright infuriating as her slightly smokier voice does not sound bad, just lacking in texture in every way, especially if the multi-tracking is going to be this minimal on a royalty-free deep-house beat produced by Getty Images with a pretty worthless drop, a generic and simple melody of piano stabs for major chords, and a whole bunch of reverb on the vocal take... but it still ends up feeling dry as there’s nothing here to quench that thirst for a tighter, bass-heavy house banger or even a more ethereal, dreamy trance track, deciding to stick to a healthy medium of boring and utter garbage. Yes, that was a singular sentence. I’m not awake enough to form a cohesive sentence less than 40 words long, and this new Becky Hill track is just worsening that if anything. Speaking of...

#21 – “Body” – Russ Millions and Tion Wayne

Produced by Gotcha Bxtch

Who’s Russ Millions? He’s Russ. No, not that Russ. British Russ – or Russ Splash, stylised as Russ splash on Spotify and nowhere else. This confusingly-named fellow appeared on the charts a couple times and possibly most famously with “Keisha & Becky”, a song also featuring Tion Wayne that is referenced on this very track. Sigh, I usually like Tion Wayne but even he can’t be bothered to delivery his usual brand of suave charm or sinister menace, instead opting for a more growling but ultimately completely monotone cadence that doesn’t flatter him or Russ, who one of my friends described as sounding like one of the aliens from Toy Story. This is a pretty by-the-numbers drill beat too, and it’s pretty safe to say that neither Russ or Tion Wayne here are going to bother with wordplay, even when they start pretty smoothly trading bars and Tion Wayne goes for a more unique chopper flow in the second verse. This is just not of any note. Once again, speaking of...

#17 – “Good Without” – Mimi Webb

Produced by Freedo

I assumed Mimi Webb debuted this high because of a talent show she won or something because I’d never heard her name but instead, she just happened to have a major label deal before her unreleased song just happened to go viral on TikTok and just happened to be supported by one of the women who just happened to be the biggest creator on the platform. Yeah, and this song just happened to be garbage, suffering from every possible millennial pop trope and then some, from the mix dressed rather too overtly in reverb, the ugly guitar pluck, a generic indie-girl voice that you swear you’ve heard before in one of those dreadful piano covers of popular songs they use in adverts, as well as this ballad being undercut by badly-programmed trap percussion. I can tell this label is trying to create somewhat of an Olivia Rodrigo phenomenon from this and I for one am terrified of the Poundland knock-offs to come. Screw this.

#1 – “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” – Lil Nas X

Produced by Roy Lenzo, Omar Fedi and Take a Daytrip

At least Lil Nas X will bring some passion into this chart week? Well, not really, as when I hear this I recall that Pitchfork review of his EP, a much-maligned critique that featured the ever-so pretentious questioning if Lil Nas X really enjoyed making and listening to music. It reminds me because I think I now fully get it – at least when Lil Nas X was making slap-dash pop rock with Travis Barker or meme-worthy country rap with Billy Ray Cyrus for less than two minutes apiece, there was something invigorating in the execution or at least in concept. That 7 EP is still not a bad debut at all, but this new single “MONTERO”, a long-anticipated record that went from constantly-teased demo to Super Bowl commercial to Satanic-panicked videos of Lil Nas giving Satan a lap-dance to own the conservatives, has the same remote dreariness to it as “HOLIDAY” did late last year. The acoustic, Latin-flavoured guitar loop reminds me of his much better track “Rodeo” from that aforementioned EP that used its energy for similarly lighthearted subject matter but with some genuine energy, a Cardi B feature and a lot less subtle moombahton creeping in. With that said, I can’t say Lil Nas X didn’t try, as his vocal performance, whilst largely insufferable and strained, gives some energy to an otherwise aggravatingly stunted beat, and makes it a lot more infectious than it has any right to be. Content-wise, the song is essentially about a full circle where Lil Nas X becomes increasingly desperate for a man who starts off lonely and in a bad place, and the irony is that Lil Nas gets more explicitly sexual and crazed due to a combination of the LA life-style surrounding him and the fact that he’s simply, for lack of a better term, “down bad”, despite the fact that this guy doesn’t seem particularly desirable. Lil Nas knows this, though, and acknowledges it in the pre-chorus where he outright says that this guy is living the cocaine-addled celebrity life, but not living it right without Mr. Bullriding and Boobies in his life. I’m happy about the video and the outrage it seems to cause not just within conservative spaces but also amongst the hip-hop community, particularly Joyner Lucas, and I’m pretty happy with how out and proud Lil Nas X is about his sexuality, even if it leads to lines like “Shoot a child in your mouth while I’m ridin’”. I’m just really not a fan of this song past its content, which could really be interesting but falls flat with this plucking production that wastes time in barely two minutes with humming interludes. It’s not bad at all, just not for me.

Conclusion

And that concludes our week, and wow, what a bad week this was for new arrivals. Admittedly, it’s a filler week so only “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” will probably last – or at least we can hope as even if I don’t like the song, I still have to give out an Honourable Mention to someone, and it may as well be Lil Nas X trying to put the effort in. Best of the Week easily goes to Beach Bunny for “Cloud 9”, far and away the only good song here, with Worst of the Week also going out pretty easily to Mimi Webb’s “Good Without”, which is the type of soulless, unmemorable garbage that makes pop music look uninspired, and as a person who writes about the charts constantly, it’s a misconception I don’t want proven or revisited. Dishonourable Mention is a toss-up but I guess I’ll give it to Russ Millions and Tion Wayne for that sprinkle of drill disappointment that is “Body”, and that’ll be it for this week. I predict some impact from Demi Lovato, Lil Tjay and especially Olivia Rodrigo next week, but for now, here’s our top 10:

Thank you for reading – sorry for the grouchiness on this one – and I’ll see you next week!

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whrrlwind · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; mun & muse.

fill out & repost !

tagged by: no one! i stole it from ren <3 tagging: anyone who wants to do it!!

my muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK and im too afraid to find out Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL How strictly do you follow canon? — pretty strictly! it’s really only towards the end of SA2 and after it where i start taking creative liberties! as whirl nearly dies himself trying (and failing) to save his shadow, and then starts going into rider’s time instead of jumping into heroes.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — you like the adventure era sonic? you hate how he sometimes handles really serious scenarios or brushes them off like nothing, as if they aren’t traumatic as shit in any way? wanna see a pretty mentally and emotionally fucked up lad struggle with handling his troubles and keep up the dark/serious theme SA2 set that sega is too cowardly to go back to in modern day? well bOY DO I HAVE THE HEDGEHOG FOR YOU. this bad boy ACTUALLY has emotions and struggles with handling them and many other things due to the position he has put himself in over the course of his life, but also doesn’t completely wear him down and stop him from being who he is! as well as dealing with the fact he and his timeline are MUCH further behind than other alternates of himself and friends. sonic “ whirl ” hedgehog is a young hero still running his way through life the way he wants like the rebellious, free-spirited teenager he is, while learning that not only is he a hero, but he’s also a person.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — quite frankly, he’s sonic. there’s a lot of them out there. he can probably be too energetic, positive, etc, or perhaps this blog focuses a little too much on his trauma and internal struggles or even the general dark theme to the point it’s a turnoff or just hard to really read. he’s also an annoying idiot to the point it’s frustrating.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — yo sonic was my fucking LIFEBLOOD as a kid. lived and breathed this franchise. sa2 was my first game ever, sonic was my fav character (and still is), so my absolute love for this specific version of him became too much to internalize sooooo here we are ; w ;

What keeps your inspiration going? — straight up, sonic is probably my biggest comfort character to exist ever. always makes me happy, always makes me feel better when im down, etc. there’s nothing he can’t do that doesn’t make me smile, regardless of how sega treats him. being able to pour my ideas into a character i love so much to the point he becomes really personalized (and personal for me), and it’s actually something people enjoy seeing and interacting with? it gives me so much goddamn sertonin.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? Do you frequently write headcanons? YESSSSS I CANNOT SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT WHIRL ask anyone i Do Not Shut The Fuck Up even if i don’t post abt it on tumblr Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO just bc im bad at writing them abndhjbfd Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO / SORTA. Do you accept criticism about your portrayal? — always!! i’m always willing to learn and improve on things, especially with the canon of some events from games and such, as i’m not 100% with everything besides SA2. all i really ask is that when receiving criticism, people are as nice as they can be with it! thanks adhd and personal trauma

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — ABSOFUCKINLUTELY I DO

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — mmmmm? mm. kind of? but also not really? like. everyone’s entitled to their own opinion ofc, i’m not gonna rip anyone apart for disagreeing with something, but like. i have adhd. i’m v hypersensitive to some things, so it can really be processed in my head the wrong way and it makes me feel bad. so i guess just....... be careful about it if you ever wanna tell me why?

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — i’d probably just kinda be like “ damn that sucks bro, but thats literally not my problem, there’s a whole ton of other sonics out there bye ” bc like. i dont care? don’t even really tell me bc honestly ur just wasting ur time lmao

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — ill be the first to admit im. v attached to sonic as a whole. he means a lot to me! so going off abt how you may (generally) hate him really....... is just upsetting to me. but thats just bc im v attached to him, and there’s nothing wrong with having that opinion on him!! we all get upset when someone talks bad about something we love. all i ever ask is that try to keep it away from me, especially if it’s abt whirl in particular, bc it can really upset me and thats just not fun for anyone <:3c

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — absolutely!! i make them all the time and i even have a friend proofread some of my stuff bc of how common it is aBJDBHBJC, again i just ask if people are nice about it when pointing that stuff out to me!!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — oh fuckin yes absolutely, im tooting my own horn and i dont even care, im one of the chillest people on this fuckin planet

#《 🌌. eat my ass spirits! 》 (ooc)#《 🌌. i eat coffee beans raw to survive 》 (mun)#long post //#ask to be tagged //#heyooooo #ill probably do this for fleetway too #but later good GOD did this take a bit #anyway i would die for whirl thank u for ur time

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c7thetumbler · 5 years

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Quick Game Reviews: What I played 2018

I’m gonna go ahead and do this for the whole year, which includes games that WEREN’T released this year, but I played this year. I also made this throughout the year, so most the opinions were right after I played it and if it’s been updated further might not include that in my blurb.

I needed to type and felt like I needed to make something. This might motivate me I suppose. Let’s get started

DOOM 2016 [PC]

I grew up on Pokemon, Mario, and Doom II. I couldn’t play it until I got my new computer this year so yeah way too late. This is a pretty solid game, though thanks to all of the bonuses and honestly nearly intrusive leveling up system kinda stepped in the way of the raw combat. It’s obviously my choice, but I felt encouraged to spend a lot of time exploring areas I’d already cleared rather than run and gun.

That being said, I still loved it. The secrets were, for the most part, really clever and fun anyway and the combat is delicious. I would strongly recommend this

A Hat in Time + Seal the Deal DLC [PC]

I love this game. A lot. It’s really cute and looks really good, it’s got a ton of charm, and it’s honestly a very good time overall. I 100% the base game last year when it first came out, and I would highly recommend to fans of 3D platformers, and still worth a try if you’re on the fence on them. The mod support is also great that it’s in there and I want to try that a lot. however the DLC...

So the new level is pretty short and while it’s fun, it’s not as good as the other levels. The characters (I think) are really cute and the charm is all there and that great, but it has all of 3 levels, and 2 of them are exploring the exact same places (the boat) and the 3rd is a nice twist on that, but other than that it’s pretty barren. The time rifts were fun as well, but alone... eh. The Death Wish portion, that is the super hard challenge mode...

... is not good. Obviously my opinion, and I might be missing the point, but after having been frustrated over and over and over again, the game itself is just not tight or clean enough to warrant it. My backing for this is that a large portion of the challenges rely on originally unintended level geometry or quirky mechanics in order to complete, and having challenges that require you to be in the know about these honestly inconsistent “quirks” is just not good. Specific examples: the ice hat giving you a small boost to avoid jumping in challenges is alright but fluctuates in how much height it gives you a lot, the challenges around the train chase still have the wonky hitboxes that do not line up with what’s still on screen, and the parade challenge has an invisible hitbox on the main platform that can kill runs. In short If you have found you love the main game and are a bit of a masochist, go for the DLC.

Pokémon Ultra Sun [3DS]

This is more or less just a revisit of the same generation with some very minor changes. The story changes take the focus away from Lillie and Lusamine (and as a result how interesting the former and evil the latter are) and places it on Necrozma and Ultra Beasts. I really like what they did with Necrozma, but overall it feels like a lot less. And while the Rainbow Rocket post game was nice and fun nostalgia, it’s still missing a solid post game like B2W2 or Gen II had.

Ultra Wormholes are cool though, and all the good mechanics from SM are still there, so honestly I would recommend this if you haven’t played gen 7 and like Pokémon.

Hey! Pikmin [3DS]

It’s awful. I can’t think of a reason to pick this up.

I can rant about this for years, but it basically got the Zip Lash/ Sticker Star treatment: it took a franchise known for something and made it something else that was bad. It’s an incredibly slow puzzle “platformer” where you have to collect a bunch of treasure using pikmin you find in the level, it’s laggy even on a n3DS, and even though the point of the game is to collect enough treasure to leave, if you do that they’re all like “by the way, you still have to beat the final boss” so the entire auto-collecting side game you put your pikmin into is entirely pointless. This is honestly the worst 3DS game I played this year.

Hollow Knight [PC]

So I’m normally not that great with the games-that-are-pretty-dang-hard, and this was no exception. That said however, I did get pretty far (probably) before I got to a boss fight I just couldn’t beat (It was an onslaught of rolling knights in the raining city or something, it’s been a while). And after that I tried finding more power-ups and stuff to help, but I had to set it down after getting bottlenecked there. That being said, I can very easily see why people like this hardcore metroid-vania platformer, and would still recommend it if you’re into the Dark Souls style of high difficulty and mechanical mastery in other genres.

Axiom Verge [PC]

This is another Metroid-style game. I really liked this one as well, especially how its power-ups weren’t the traditional “You jump higher now” traversal power-ups. It really has a nice atmosphere and theme that still feels alien and metroidy while also feeling like the glitchy world by giving you weapons and movement abilities that let you glitch and change the environment around you. I really liked it! My only real complaint is the bosses get really challenging through a result of eventually figuring out what weapon and strategy is was designed for, and there are some areas that I was completely lost trying to find where I was going next, but all in all it’s pretty solid.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch [PC]

I normally really hate games where the focus is “lol, you can barely control your character! hahaha.” I actually really liked this one; it isn’t hard to get the hang of it and it’s really funny and still enjoyable at the same time. I rarely actually felt annoyed at the controls. I had a ton of fun with it, even if it was a little short.

Kirby Star Allies [Switch]

My complaints are very much the same as everyone else’s here; it’s a pretty okay Kirby game, but it lacks real challenge and is pretty quick. the real “star” of the show is playing the game with different characters, but since you can’t do that until after you play through as Kirby, by that point it’s either grown on you or hasn’t. The best part is the unique levels they made for the DLC characters, Gooey, Marx, Dreamland buddies, etc. Those are a ton of fun. If you like Kirby games, this one’s no Super Star but you’ll likely love all the attention to the free DLC characters and it’s not bad by any stretch.

HOB [PC]

It’s a 3D, top-down Zelda style game with an emphasis on some platforming elements. The world is wonderful, definitely the Aesthetic with clockwork worlds that Spiral Knights wishes it could’ve had. I actually had a ton of fun with it. The secrets and exploration were great, combat is ehhhhhh but that’s not really the focus. It’s a good time, If you like Zelda but with some puzzle platforming and great atmosphere, check this one out!

Poi [PC]

This is a Unity 3D platformer that attempted to brush off the Unity, and does an alright job with being mechanically tighter than most, but still has the Unity feel. Controls are a bit loose, could’ve used a lot of polish, but honestly this scratched the 3D platformer collect-a-thon itch for a bit and I actually 100% it. You have to love 3D platformers like Sunshine or Banjo Tooie to be able to like this, but if you do it’s a pretty fun romp.

Princess Remedy In a Heap of Trouble [PC]

This is a fun, short bullet-hellish game with an old-school Atari aesthetic. It’s pretty fun, but honestly I like the mechanics in the free game better (though this has more content). It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s quirky (and kinda short), try out the free game and if you like that one give this a try! The main difference is the “date” mechanic, where people you heal can join you to give you a different special power from healing, to various kinda of bombs, time freezing, homing bullets, etc. Once you find one though, it’s hard to convince yourself to try something else.

Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion [Switch]

This is Splatoon 2′s expanded hard/challenge mode. I’m a big fan; a few of the challenges are eh, but overall the aesthetic and branching map structure are super fun. The expanding on the lore and bonuses are also great; even though earlier I don’t normally go for the extremely hard, I found myself 100%’ing this. There’s a really tough challenge at the very end of all that, and I would say If you liked Splatoon 2, pick this up. It’s the expansion of Single Player that it deserves, though prepare for a few frustrating challenges.

... But now you have to pay for a terrible service to play it online so keep that in mind...

Celeste [Switch]

This is a fucking great game and you should buy it. It’s a challenging (very hard) platformer in the line of super meat boy and maybe even I Wanna Be The Guy, but this does it extremely right. restarting is very quick, the controls are incredibly tight, and the levels are genuinely clever and fun.

The story is also really solid, and I can’t recommend the whole package as a solid game.

Grow Up [PC]

This is the sequel to Grow Home, a game I’ve quick-reviewed a long time back. I liked the whole explore a whole planet and find some neat stuff, however the challenges are reliant on some weird procedural animations which don’t necessarily cooperate. It kinda overstays it’s welcome as a result, though the open nature of it is really fun. I have a hard time recommending this one, but it’s still a pretty solid romp even if it fights you a bit.

Sonic Mania Plus [Switch]

Having 100% the base game which I highly recommend, I was expecting a lot more things to do with this. Encore mode is fun; I really like how you can change up your characters and have to adjust on the fly. The new special stages are tough but fun, but the pinball minigame is.. not good. Gets old pretty quick. additionally it doesn’t add much after encore mode. Might and Ray have abilities that meaningfully add some neat gameplay stuff, but after how great the base game was, I was expecting a little bit more. That being said, the DLC is a nice bonus for the base game and you can’t really go wrong with it.

Lovely Planet [PC]

So I made a point to only play this game when I was drunk. The first few times I happened to be when I played it, so I stuck with it. This is a quick-restarting FPS with a focus on perfect shots and maneuvering to destroy all the target and get to the end as soon as possible.It’s hard as balls but really silly, so if you’re into perfectionist gameplay it’s worth a go. Probably not drunk tho.

Ever Oasis [3DS]

IIRC, this came out at a time where there was a lull in Nintendo games, or at least 3DS games so this one was very much skimmed over. It’s a mix between a town management sim and Zelda-style dungeon crawling and resource gathering. On paper, and even somewhat in game, this is a cool idea; you get townsfolk who can go with you on missions, each with their own abilities, and what you get outside of the town is used to help expand you town, which will buff you/your townspeople's abilities to go further in dungeons.

In practice however... they don’t really mesh. The limitation of 1 item per party member and items being locked to specific people you need to find, going to dungeons is a chore as you need to find out which characters you need to actually play (often not your best). Meanwhile, time passes so quickly and your town’s shopkeepers run out of resources so quickly, it’s a full time job to keep up the town and then you run out. They mitigate this near the end game by have the ability to make parties out of townspeople who can’t own shops, which are very rare. The ending is good up until the last moment where they do a thing that doesn’t make sense to get some points for emotion but... It just doesn’t work to me.

All in all, it has a demo to show how a dungeon works, and if you like management AND what that dungeon has to offer, go for it. Otherwise, the setting and character design are great but not enough to really hold interest

Q.U.B.E. 2 [PC]

The First game was Portal-esque in that you navigated the first-person Cube puzzle maze without any dialogue while manipulating the chambers with a variety of cube-spawning and extending abilities. You had to piece out and interpret the story yourself. This is the opposite; there’s a lot of dialogue, story set-pieces, and it’s bizarrely paced. You’ll get through most the game in like an hour, but then the last 2-3 chapters are the bulk of the game. Those are pretty fun, but the game is still incredibly short and I liked the tone of the first better. It’s short, it’s not bad, but it doesn’t really stand out.

NES Classic

So I dunno if I love or hate this thing. It’s great because it’s an official NES with controller and emulator and gives me the opportunity to play a buncha games I hadn’t before, but the controller cable is too small, the damn thing has trouble getting enough power (EDIT: This was actually my aparement’s faulty wiring, though if you aren’t supplying it with enough power the sound won’t work either), and this things existence is probably part of the reason we’ve not seen a proper virtual console support on Switch. You can hack it to be able to upload other ROMs to it, which is neat (I haven’t done that), but ultimately it’s worth looking at the games and asking yourself: Do I really want to play most of these? Do I really want to buy this when I’ve already bought most of them?

SNES Classic

This is the same as above but more expensive with less games... But to me is a better value. It has a better selection of games (in my opinion), though they could’ve included some better ones. It still has the power issues (which are overcomable easily) but comes with 2 controllers with longer cables. Also StarFox 2 is a very nice game. I’d recommend this more than the NES Classic, but again, weigh what’s in it vs what you actually want to play if you can’t already

WarioWare Gold [3DS]

This is a compilation game done right. It has the WarioWare charm and the voice acting adds even more to it. The microgame selection and adaptations are wonderful, and honestly I don’t have any complaints. It has changed everything to fit in one of 3 (+2 smaller ones) categories: Mash, Twist, and Touch (+ blow and short). These are normally separate by category, but near the end they mix and match and even do some fun mix-up with it in the very last rounds and bonus game modes. Whether your first WarioWare or a veteran, this is in my opinion the best in the series, and I would suggest you give it a go.

Monster Hunter World [PC]

So this one is hard. I really wanted to like it, and after playing Dauntless I thought I would. I even promised friends I would play it with them frequently and keep up but... between friends being able to play when I couldn’t and the game’s wonky controls and online issues, I was falling behind and getting frustrated. That’s kinda side stuff; if I really liked it I could’ve caught up. The truth is, I liked Dauntless better because while it was also very buggy, the combat was just a lot more straightforward and responsive. Monster Hunter seemed like Dauntless with a bunch of annoyances added onto it. There are tons of collectibles and recipes, weapon sharpness is entirely pointless when the monsters run anyway to give you breaks, the weapons I played seemed sluggish to attack with, and monster attacks were unclear a lot of the time. Everything just felt like a pain in the ass or waste of time to deal with and put a lot of focus on inventory management or grinding, and to me the core game you would do that for just wasn’t there.

Like I enjoyed the free roaming and exploration, but the fighting is just not for me and that’s the whole point of the free roaming and all that. I feel bad about not liking this after enjoying Dauntless, but I just am not into Monster Hunter and will be skipping the series from now on.

Katamari Forever [PS3]

I got this one thinking it was a compilation game of all the Katamari games!

It was not. It’s actually the hardest Katamari game... Which kinda surprised me about how much of a dick they are when you start out since their controls are incredibly weird and unintuitive (you get used to them) and anything short of perfection will get the Kings to any where from passive aggressively imply you did poorly or just straight out call you awful and not to bother.

Here’s the part where randomly in the giant text post I just completely break whatever I was talking about because I’m 95% no one actually reads this so for shits and giggles the first person to reply to my tweet where I posted a link to the blogpost stating that they found this paragraph will get a free me replying back to that tweet saying “nice” back. An enticing gift amirite? Anyway continuing on.

That being said, it’s pretty fun after all that; there are one or two levels designed to be super annoying but the ones where you play the core game of quickly building your Katamari are for the most part very solid. This is for existing fans of the series, but i had a pretty good time with it after I got past the barrier to entry.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: Ultimate Edition [PC]

I’ve talked about liking Shantae before on this blog; I mentioned that I liked Pirate’s Curse but the fact that side missions and collectibles were actually required for game completion. This Shantae looks great and all, but they completely tossed out the open-like nature and makes it a series of linear levels that you have to revisit at least 2-3 times to find the stuff that should’ve been off somewhere in a different series of areas and optional that’s really just slightly out of reach due to a power up you arbitrarily find after the level you needed to use it in ends. Dungeons are completely gone; the game literally is just “go right” and remember all the little things you couldn’t get to for when you have to backtrack over and over again.

That’s just the base game, and even with all that said it’s not a bad game, it just doesn’t really feel like a Shantae game anything other than aesthetically. I spent a few hours trying to 100% the base game, but after getting 99% and discovering I had to backtrack yet again to a snake merchant to trade for dances just to use them once and trade back, I just had 0 interest in getting the final percent. There are also a variety of different takes on the same campaign where you play as Shantae in different costumes with different abilities, Risky, or even Bolo + Skye + Rotty, and again those look fun but... I don’t really want to play the same game another 10 times.

Dragalia Lost [Android]

This is Nintendo’s first jump into mobile with a new IP, and while it’s definitely banking hard on more traditional gacha mechanics (you can get 5 star items instead of Hero characters only), it’s definitely not bad. It’s pretty generous with stamina and resources, at least when you start, and my only major complaint is how you seem to hit a wall in terms of how long it takes to really progress about a week or so of playing every day in. And it’s quite a wall; there’s quite a lot of grinding needed once you get to chapter 6 (the current final chapter that really feels like just the end of a prologue (Edit, they recently added chapter 7)), so you really need to like it. The levels are kinda simple as well, though there’s a maze-like area in the story that’s a bit more clever so it’s a start at least. All and all, it’s worth a try, but if you don’t like the top-down brawler after the first world, it’s not worth forcing through gacha mechanics for; especially since after you complete normal story mode, all you’re going to be doing is grinding to get through hard and the summoning currency gets scarce fast. For reference, getting enough to be able to challenge the High Dragon quests and not immediately die in them takes 2 months of grinding specifically for that purpose if you use your stamina optimally, which you won’t because events are more fun anyway

Overcooked 2 [Switch Download]

So this is actually really fun with a friend or 3; and that’s where it really shines. Sure, you can do it single player but it just doesn’t feel as fun. This is a sort of quick time-management game where you have to frantically run around cooking various recipes before they run out of time, to get a star rating at the end. There’s some bad levels, but the majority are really fun and it feels very fair even in single layer; I always think at the end regardless of the rank that I could’ve managed my dudes to do even better. The only real complaint is the loading times seem... unnecessarily long. Especially for restarting a level. It’s nothing too bad though.

Luckily this has online multiplayer, so I highly recommend picking this up on a platform that your friends have it on, ie Steam. I got it on Switch and in hindsight since I strongly dislike Nintendo’s online service I really wish I had gotten like a 2-pack on Steam. That’s not a complaint with the game though; I really liked it!

Super Mario Party [Switch]

Probably the best Mario Party in a very, VERY long time. This is going to be a longer review. I played this first with Keewy and his roommates and we had a great time in every single game mode (except online).

The Mario Party mode is really good; they’ve shrunk the map and reduced how much stars cost to 10 coins, but 10-15 turn games can still take an hour to an hour and a half. This makes it a much simpler, easier to get mode, but the real star here is them bringing back the Ally & character dice mechanic from Mario Party Star Rush (had it’s good moments, but was on 3DS so that’s it for that). Each character can roll a normal 1-6 dice, but they also each have a unique die that has different numbers on it. These are for the most part balanced; character with higher numbers on their dice also have downsides instead of a 1. 0′s, losing coins, and in some cases gaining coins (because you still don’t move), and it adds a level of strategy to it where otherwise it would be just “roll and hop for the best. That’s what it is still, but sometimes you can choose. You can also pick up other characters who will help you in minigames, give you the option to roll their die, and add 1-2 spaces to your roll. It’s super fun.

The River Rafting mode is 4-player co-op, and it’s pretty fun as well your first run through. Not single player though; this very much shines with 4 people. However, because there are only like 8? 4-player co-op minigames, you see every game on your first run so it doesn’t really hold up after your first couple runs.

The dance mode is great; it’s like Rhythm heaven but Mario Party themed. Again, these minigames are really fun, but once you play through all 3 difficulties, which takes about 10 minutes, there aren’t any you haven’t played.

2v2 is ripped straight out of Star Rush, which is a great thing. Again, don’t play this with a cpu on your team at least. As far as I can tell, even in Mario Party mode, CPU’s make the same brain-dead decisions on the boards regardless of their difficulty level. Anyway, this has the same 4 boards but opened up vastly; You now roll, combine it with your partner, then add any allies you may have picked up along the way’s 1-2 rolls and other bonuses. The point is to land on the starspace and buy it, and it’s just a good time to see the strategy involved with either going for the stars, allies, or secondary goals. By far the best alternative Mario Party gameplay style in a while (way better than Island Tour’s linear maps and 9-10′s Car mode), but again there’s only the 4 maps.

So I guess my only true complaint is that while there are a lot of minigames, they’re split so much over the different modes they don’t feel like a lot and you see repeats frequently. Additionally it would be nice to turn on/off the bonus stars at the end and other options involving maybe skipping some of the cutscenes (star moving, places changed, etc.). All in all, the best and most interesting Mario Party in a long, long time. I highly recommend it if you have a friend to pick it up with.

Just Shapes & Beats

Got this game for a bit of random multiplayer. It’s a pretty fun, music based bullet hell game all about staying alive through the song while crazy stuff happens on screen. The story mode doesn’t overstay its welcome, but there’s also plenty of content and challenges for those who are so inclined, and only one of the levels felt utterly, bullshitingly unfair (which is really good with bullet hells) so It’s a fun time if you’re into top down bullet hells, and better with a friend in challenge mode

Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee [Switch]

I could write a dissertation on this game and how it’s neither good or bad; it’s just kinda... there. Some aspects are incredibly disappointing; the capture mechanics are absolute garbage, forced motion controls are atrocious, player/npc animations and interactions are completely stilted and lazy, the world is very bland vs Sun and Moon, the performance in handheld mode drops frames sometimes which is unacceptable, there’s almost zero post game, and even more. It’s by all means an HD reskin of a Gameboy game running on their crappy 3DS engine.

But there’s a lot of good here as well; seeing pokemon in the overworld is amazing and should be the case in the series moving forward, partner pokemon (eevee) are fun and fucking adorable, riding pokemon is great, having fast captures makes chaining a really fun mechanic, Having some of the E4 and Gym leaders interact with you during your quest makes the world interesting, connectivity with go is very limited but still good, having only one pokemon be obtainable only once in the game is a welcome and frankly overdue change in the game, removing breeding/abilities/held items really streamlines the mechanics and makes the game more enjoyable in a lot of cases, and I could go on.

I’m not going to recommend it, but I mean if you liked any pokemon game you’re definitely not going to not have fun with this one, even if the randomness in the capture mechanics frustrates you to no end

Super Smash Bros Ultimate [Switch]

So I mean it’s smash bros. Not much really to say about that, it’s pretty good. I kinda like Smash Bros not just for the multiplayer but the single-player as well, which is why Brawl is still my Favorite so take that as my approach here. The normal gameplay is fine, though the input buffer feels wonky at times and some characters are much harder to play against than others, which in combination with the sheer amount of characters makes it very difficult to get the hang of and counter accordingly, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just the barrier between playing casually and playing a bit more seriously feels sudden when randomly coming across characters that have inherent advantages from being wonky. Cloud for example seems to have a move for evertyhing, can spit out attacks very quickly, and if you try anything silly they’ll just charge a better move, and then randomly fighting a Ganondorf is like “I hope they don’t know how to read you because you can die at like 35 from a single fuck up”

The Single Player content though was... Disappointing. Not nearly as bad as Sm4sh, but it seems like they spent so much time putting as many characters and stages in the game as possible that they realized they wouldn’t have time to do old game modes the same way, so they made a system which allowed them to make custom smash battles with weird attributes and built the entirety of the bonus content on that. There’s really only adventure mode which is just a progression of Event Matches which gets somewhat stale and repetitive quickly, Mob Smash is just not really that fun past your first run or two, All-Star Smash is actually near impossible and not even rewarding, Classic does one or two cool ideas with routes but they clearly got lazy with a lot of characters there too, and the only platforming challenge in the game is the bonus level which takes 30 seconds and never changes.

Their Online mode is unacceptably bad and lacks options for random fights as well, and given that they’re charging for it this is just flat-out unacceptable. Buy it if you like playing Smash for the Multiplayer (which is almost everyone), but this is a hard pass if you were expecting a large amount of interesting content like Brawl’s Adventure mode had. Or are incapable of learning past a certain point, like me.

Katamari Damacy Reroll [Switch]

So after having played Forever earlier in the year and hearing how much praise this got, I had very High expectations! Unfortunately the controls are still ehhhhh and the game is surprisingly short; I beat it over the course of a 4ish hour flight. It’s definitely a lot nicer to you than Forever is, but in terms of amount of content it’s not aged well. If you’ve not played it before, pick it up on sale, but as far as I can tell this outing doesn’t add anything new to the original and it’s just a straight up re-release

Mario Tennis Aces [Switch]

So does anyone actually look forward to Mario Tennis Games? The past two have been husks of content and this one’s not really much better. The charging mechanic is interesting, but doesn’t feel that consistent or fair in some scenarios, but like was anyone waiting for this to get announced? Or is this just a “safe” series that sells okay and pads out the library for quick cash?”

It’s weird that they knew the Adventure mode was something fans really, REALLY wanted and touted it as some huge deal, even advertising it with a cool pre-rendered cutscene, and the whole mode with all challenges turns out to be at most a couple hours long, repetitive, and only actually has the two cutscenes (the 2nd being like 10 seconds). They made some silly RPG level up mechanic which didn’t feel like it made any difference, you can’t change your character so you’re really only learning how Mario plays, and it does a really poor job of explaining the different kinds of shots to you so it’s not even good for learning the game. I wasn’t expecting an experience worth telling for generations with the plot either, but even that gives up on itself; Luigi is possessed but he doesn’t do anything the whole game until you fight him, not even with the 3/5 power stones you have, and these power stones you spent the game collecting don’t do anything or matter because Bowser comes out of no where and “takes” the racket and power stones and challenges you to an admittedly fun boss fight. Not in a cutscene mind you, you’re just told this happens. It’s just lazy.

The game has some visual issues too; it’s missing any sort of stylistic flair and honestly just looks like an up-res’d Wii game, though with smoother models. Shadows flicker and cut through textures, and something weird’s going on with anti-aliasing that makes everything look blurry as hell too. I will say props for going to the effort of making tennis costumes for every character though; so that’s more effort than what went into Ultra Smash.

If you’re a huge, HUGE fan of Mario Tennis, go nuts. But uh, yeah this isn’t really worth your time for the price otherwise

Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Starter Pack) [Switch]

Yeah so it’s rich coming from me, but honestly this game is only hindered by the physical toys. As far as I can tell you can only play as generic Mr. No Personality or Fox, and then you only have the two options for weapons. The game could get interesting combat-wsie with the combinations of ships and like I think 14ish different weapons? But with just the starter pack you run through what the game has to offer pretty quick.

It is interesting though how I very rarely play Ubisoft games and hadn’t played one since their open-world formula milking, but right away I could tell that it was a Ubisoft open world game. There’s a lot to do, a lot of planets to explore, movement is fun and surprisingly easy, combat is pretty straightforward and has potential, but the key thing is that there’s like 30-50 facilities on each planets with like 4 different types of objectives (3 of which are “kill the same bad guys immediately here”), and you can spend hours on one planets doing some minor variance on that same thing over and over and over.

It’s a pretty good start in terms of base mechanics for what would be a cool system for an open StarFox game (and I know it wasn’t trying for that) but the repetitiveness of exploring, frankly pathetic writing in terms of characters, and locking a lot of the interesting content behind toys detracts from the experience. It’s definitely not un-fun, but after clearing 4 planets and seeing that’s just what the game is doing I don’t have any interest in continuing.

At least other than to see StarFox, because Ubisoft did them better justice than Nintendo has in years.

Best Game I Played in 2018: Celeste

Easy choice here, Celeste has a wonderful story, looks gorgeous, plays like a dream and managed to be an incredibly challenging platformer that didn’t make me lose my patience ever, which is AMAZING considering how little patience I have whenever I fail at a game.

I was going to pick the best game that actually came out in 2018 but honestly it’d be between like 4 games that I had gripes with in some way or another, so i’m going to say Overcooked 2 is pretty fucking solid and leave this whole run on sentence in the heading font because why not it’s my dead blog I can do whatever the fuck I wan-

Anyway that’s it. Hope everyone had a good year

#Game Impressions

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charleecat-bat · 6 years

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Fandom Meme

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Uuuh, well, lemme think, for fantoms that aren’t sonic stuff, I enjoy Retsuko and Haida because adorable. Angus and Gregg from NITW is too adorable for it’s own good.

Sonic wise, well, I’m not strong on my ships but they’re are some I do think about or do think are matching, I think Shade and Knuckles are a good match, I enjoy Espio and Tikal, especially in my canon.

I do love Locke and Luger a lot though, since I can see them working in my canon, but other then that, I’m not huge on ships so eh.

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

Locke and Luger, mainly because they were related but then with some fanart and talking with friends of mine, especially @terraqua111, I started to like it and my friends had a point that they were too distantly related for it to matter anymore. She also showed me Lien-Da and Xenin which I liked.

I also didn’t consider Locke to be paired with anyone else before Luger, then I saw @lockewat‘s ship, Chuck and Locke... and I thought it was quite suiting as well.

Two other ones are Vanilla and Big because that was so adorable and that would be such a peaceful relationship good god it’s what they’d both need, so many picnics for dates. and @motobugg did some work on Rouge and Wave which I have never considered and I immediately thought... damn that would actually work a lot. XD Also Shadamy at some points due to a friends artwork and Shadow would be balanced from Amy’s personality that he would need.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will. I’ve never been big on Julie-Su and Knuckles, in the comics it felt kind of forced to me, same with Sonic and Sally, that I don’t see them suiting each other at all.

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

Ummm, I don’t know, I can’t think of one.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh, I don’t know.

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

Sonic fandom. XDD Been in that for around 8-9 years. Since I was 9 or 10 years old.

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

I think it would’ve just been Shade and Knuckles. lol Again ships aren’t my life.

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

Mainly ongoing stuff, I know it started with games, so I guess games? But I enjoy shows/series as well.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

Ummmm... not that I know of.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Animal Crossing? I didn’t start playing the phone game until I saw people talking and reblogging stuff about it, then I tried it.

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Well, in Steven Universe, a lot of the character have great arcs, that who their true opinions and colours, like how Amethyst had self-hating habits, Pearl didn’t think she was worth much, and seeing Peridot’s growing into a whole different gem, it’s really cool.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

I’ll go with um... Lars from Steven Universe, I didn’t like him much as a character at first, but I could understand his insecurity and being unsure on how to act and how to show himself, and being scared to show his true colours... but now he’s showing his own worth and letting himself be who he is with the Off-colours, which I can genuinely appreciate about him, he’s much better as a character now.

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

Can I say the entire brotherhood? XD I would love that like you wouldn’t believe.

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

Just more Brotherhood content in general, uuuummm more monster-related AU’s? I don’t know, maybe more merchandise too? I don’t know I’m not all that demanding about content. o-o I’m terrible at this.

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

All the Way (Jacksepticeye fan song) is the one that came up on shuffle, and it reminded me of Hawking, at least my version. I could imagine he would listen to this to motivate himself or something like that.

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

...Trying not to say Monster AU for any sort of fandom CRAP TOO LATE-

But what about a Shape of Water-esque AU?

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

I haven’t really abandoned any fandom? o-O R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

When they’re not a couple and they’re just best friends, Locke and Luger I guess, they act like big dorks. I don't know, I don’t think about relationships much besides family ones.

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

Hmm, well, I feel while Locke doesn’t know what his main sexuality is right now, he’d feel he’d be in writing (sexuality)/Asexual, as he never really had sexual feelings, he only had sex in order to have his son, and he honestly never liked it all that much.

I also have a head canon that Steppenwolf is afraid of humiliation, or just making a fool of himself in social situations (he’s got a very well hidden social anxiety), so if he saw a bunch of people staring at him and whispering to each other, he’d instantly become worried about what he did.

Another head canon is that I love to imagine Sabre can swordfight very well, and the person who taught him is surprisingly Tobor. As he was very good with a sword and shield combo back in the day (before his injuries).

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

That Steppenwolf is a werewolf okay not really, I’m not really about strong head canons that I would ‘die defending’. I just like the thought of him being one because it’d be ironic for his name... and it’s just with me for so long man.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Steppenwolf (Sonic Fandom I guess)- I still don't fully understand why I liked him, I simply did but nowadays I just find the character I made him an extremely interesting character and every time I’ve wrote something or drawn something to try and cheer myself up, it made me feel he’d be a very strong, protective and oddly supportive in his own way. I’m not sure. I’m weird.

Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe Fandom)- I just want her to be happy, I find her really interesting, her powers are really cool and I just want to know how things turn out for her, it just sucks that she tends to disappear for long periods of time.

Angus (Night in the Woods)-He’s a bit underrated but he’s just so cute to me, especially with how others draw him, I love his character and I feel bad for him when he takes about his abusive childhood and issues growing up that made him who he is today, made me want to give him a big hug.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

Well, I feel I can relate to Angus at a few points, always feeling like I have to be the responsible one, being usually quiet and wanting to hide in corners in parties (and your friend that you stick to is your corner in those situations),

I also feel I can relate to Retsuko from Aggretsuko, always trying to keep calm and from losing my temper, also Mister Ton kind of reminds me of my dad at some points... and he can piss me off just as much as he does with Retsuko so yeah.

Part of me also feels like I relate to my version of Rembrandt, he’s an artist, he deals with a lot of emotional issues, he’s insecure about his body size/weight, very motherly/fatherly and protective.

I dunno.

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

Annoying characters that think they’re full of themselves and practically perfect while thinking everyone else is below them and everyone is unworthy of their ‘greatness’... or mary-sues.

Or just a needlessly dramatic moments or moments of anger and arguments that don’t need to happen.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Kind of the big strong protective one with a heart of gold and is very loving whether they show it or not, or big ass ones who are strong as hell but are really just gentle giants.

And probably monsters stuff like werewolves or stuff but sometimes that can backfire and become annoying.

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Team Fortress 2 is one, have a few friends who like that game while I don’t like it much anymore for personal reasons, some horror fandoms like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Little Nightmares all of that. Idk

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Umm... I always strive to make my Guardians unique in different situations, hell, I imagined they were in certain AU’s or in certain video game situations, like a fighting game, I’d like imagining like ‘finishing moves’ they’d have or the type of weapons they’d have, or even simple stuff like hobbies or favourite foods. Just stuff like that... and I will try everything in my power to be unique, like in my Gem AU, wanted all the gems to be different and at the least unique, and the same with the Monster AU, only Thunder and Steppe’s are the same but they have a difference.

Okay that’s enough. ^^; This was really difficult surprisingly.

#long post #text #charlee rambles #fandom tag #fandom meme

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dlamp-dictator · 7 years

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Allen’s Rambling XXVIII: It’s just a [ ] (Fandoms)

So yesterday on one of my RP blogs I talked about making a blog for a character from the Fate franchise since I’m playing Fate/EXTRA and getting reacquainted with the Fate series in general. An anon was nice enough to give me a bit of a brush up on Fate lore, but told me that the Fate RP community had a reputation of being unwelcoming, to which I gave this response:

Dude, I’ve been forged in the fires of Gaia Online’s RP forums, trudged through the Touhou, Dangan Ronpa, and Blazblue RP communities my first three years of RPing on Tumblr, and have dealt with 18+ RP forums off this site. There’s not much I haven’t seen or dealt with in terms of difficult (RP) communities and fandoms.

After that, the anon asked me why I would then go an RP community with a bad reputation when I’ve already experienced similar issues with others. I told that anon that specific question was Ramble-worthy, but the short version was that I’m older, wiser, and know what to look out for in terms of figuring out how a community behaves nowaday. Now, I’m not gonna’ talk about RP stuff since this is my personal blog and all, but I did want to talk about fandoms and my general view of them.

Honestly? I could care less about the behaviors and tendencies of a fandom.

To give my general opinion, I don’t think any fandom is bad. I think some fandoms have rather loud, rather toxic voices in them at times, but at the end of the day whatever we’re into, whatever we’re talking about making ships and fanfiction about is just a game. It’s just a show. It’s just a book. It’s just a comic, and so on. These things are just pieces of media and it’s when one try to make them something more than that is when I get worried about that person.

As far as my own involvement in fandoms go I do quite a bit. I write lyrics to the BGMs of videos games I’m into, namely fighting games. I occasionally do comedic or serious graphics. I write fanfiction when the mood strikes me. I make RP blogs and write stupid, crazy crack plots with other RP writers. I’m... not linking that last one since I don’t do canon RP blogs as much anymore, but you get the point. I do all these things in the fandoms I’m in, but I try not to let them consume me. I’ll spend a solid 5 hours on a fanfic and lyrics, but that’s mostly out of my pride as a writer and lyricist, not my obsession with the fandom... I hope anyway. -_-;;

That’s not to say I can’t take semi-critically look at a thing and pick it apart if I felt like (just wait until I start comparing FE: Fates and FE: Echoes), but I do realize it’s just a piece of media in the end, and whatever I say about is just my opinion. Whatever feelings we have about a certain thing, I hope we can all realize that these pieces of media don’t matter at the end of the day, it’s not destroying people’s lives, it’s not plaguing the nation with disease and famine. It’s just... a thing. I know a lot of people know this, but I think it’s worth saying to remind everyone that it really is just a piece of media at the end of the day.

This isn’t to say that shows and media don’t effect people, they do. 90% of the interests I have now are due to media. My interest in fighting games and shounen anime had me taking martial arts when I was in middle school. My love of manga and anime inspired me to draw. All the cheesy YA books I read made me want to write. My interest in writing lyrics actually came from the Blazblue LA Vocals. Half the reason I wanted to play an instrument was to play my favorite video game BGMs. Hell, I got into rollerblading, a passion I’ve had since I was ten, solely because Shadow the Hedgehog was and still is my favorite character in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. When people asked me how I was able to rollerblade so well so quickly I just said it came naturally. No, what I really did was analyse Shadow the Hedgehog’s animations in SA2 so obsessively and Radical Highway so often that when I copied them at age 10 I was rollerblading perfectly with little assistance. No, fandom and media can push you to do many things, I won’t deny that. However, just know that when something about a fandom is making you upset and angry, it’s the people and not the media. And if the media is making you upset, then it’s time to find a new piece of media.

Of course, I have my fair share of annoyances with fandoms too. The fighting game community can be quite annoying when patches and update go through and I have to read through text wall upon text wall of complaints, “git gud” is an honest-to-god trigger word for me, and hearing commentators talk about who has skill in a game and who doesn’t just... drives me up a wall sometimes as a casual player, even if I can see where they’re coming from. I swear the next shounen/action anime that makes people spam it’s yaoi ships at me out of some social justice nonsense will be block. The next time I hear some asinine western cartoon discourse about horses and space rocks I might just scream, but... all the same, I don’t think fandoms are bad, you just have to find what you want to see and tolerate what you don’t... or block it, whatever works for you. At the end of the day, it’s just a piece of media, and if the people surrounding that media make you uneasy, then just enjoy the thing privately with those you trust and tolerate, nothing wrong if that.

I mean, there’s a reason I tag my Video Game Updates and not my Anime Updates after all.

#your dictator is speaking

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3ternaln0w · 5 years

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Journalist Jaroslaw Kowal interviewed Luton for Dni Muzyki Nowej Festival, Jan 2019.

Jaroslaw Kowal: Is that correct that “Black Box Animals” were written and recorded in various places across the Europe? How long did it take to make a whole album?

Rob: Yes, That’s correct. The whole thing took about 7 months, If I remember well.

Attilio: I think we had a clear vision from the beginning, it’s been a delicate and complex process but at same time everything was quite instinctive and so, step by step, we ended up at the crucial part of the album and for what I remember the last month was something really intense.

J: Was it initially planned to record music in several places or did You made that decision spontaneously?

R: It wasn’t initially planned, but since I was traveling quite a lot in Europe at that time, at some point I just realized it was way more enjoyable and spontaneous writing/composing on the road, getting ideas whilst hiking in the wilderness instead of being isolated in a studio like we normally do, so I personally tried to keep that way as much as possible. It was like a back and forth nature/studio.

A: Being all the time in a studio could be extremely boring and unproductive, sometimes. The fact the Black Box Animals was recorded in several different places is in my opinion what makes this music authentic and possibly with a so called wild character. So even without planning that much, that happened eventually.

J: “Black Box Animals” is a very dark album, with field recordings included and many different instruments, yet I wouldn’t call it a 100% experimental music - there’s a lot of melody in it. What is a perfect balance between those two worlds that for many musicians are opposite and can’t be combined?

R: Melody was already part of the intuition when Luton thing started, but at the same time nothing was really planned as we were open to the different explorations and sonic practices. I remember when I initially spoke about the idea to Attilio, I was probably way more into the orchestral part of the package but the bigger picture eventually came to us ended up in this sort of collision between those two worlds, strings and abstract electronics. We weren’t interested in being stuck in a single genre or label, though. In this terms we probably see Luton like a sort of open laboratory.

A: Neither do I consider Black Box Animals as a 100% experimental album and even the use of field-recordings is something marginal in my opinion. Creating compositions for classical instruments, sometimes even really ancient ones like russian zithers for example, and blend them with their opposite in terms of nature of sound, that was the main effort in this case. The contrast between a certain dark atmosphere that permeates the whole work and melody is just the natural consequence of the process in itself.

J: Is experimental or improvised music actually evolving? Do You see it changing across last five-six decades or is it more or less the same? On the other hand pop music - which is often seen as music without a soul - is clearly changing year after year. That makes me wonder, which of those is actually more progressive?

R: That’s a tricky question. I’ve never considered pop music a thing without soul, anyway. Music is music but also it is much more than that. We could discuss about that for a long while now and I’m pretty sure that would be very exciting to find out where every word could lead us at some point, the language-like stuff would come out, but at end of the day, I don’t really believe separateness is a great idea, so if you relate the word “experimental” in a John Cage way, thats perfectly fine by me then. We experiment with sounds. That’s what we do and lots of musicians in every genre do, after all. Everything else changes all the time and nothing really ends. It’s not like the world’s gone to shit now and stuff like that, almost the opposite I’d say. It’s a feedback loop, we -as human beings- don’t really need to put some language on it.

A. I personally think that experimental music is always in a never ending evolution. There are several artists keep going in really interesting directions, and this for me means looking for a personal expressive code, basically. But, in my opinion, there’s an annoying downside in contemporary music which is in the difficulty to perceive distinctly the artistic value from the marketing side. Marketing has nothing to do with quality in music or in art in general. Everybody knows that but unfortunately is really frequent that poor and soulless music are sold as sensational hype in really closed circuits, which is something we don’t really like or support honestly. About pop music, well, my preferences are often limited to what I used to listen to when I was younger, so for me it has an almost exclusively emotional value.

J: You are both from Italy, but at Your facebook page Stockholm is set as a home town. Are You located there at the moment and why did You decided to leave Italy?

R: We’ve been to Stockholm a couple of times. We were involved in a sound residency in electronic music at Ems Studios, a truly magical place with an extraordinary vibe and amazing staff. We recorded massive amounts of raw sounds and crazy “bleep booops shshshs trtrrtrtr” (…) from this incredible Buchla modular synthesizer but nothing from those sessions really ended up Luton, eventually. Sad story. But a couple of tracks in the album were recorded there and especially “Sodermalm Phantom Cab” is something really influenced by our Swedish adventures at EMS studios and good times spent together in Sweden. Said that, I’ve been living in Manchester (UK) for a couple of years now and Attilio lives in Southern Italy. There’s not a really specific reason why I have decided to leave Italy I’m afraid, I guess I was interested in leaving my comfort zone for a while at that time.

A: The connection between Black Box Animals and Stockholm is something really strong and without our time spent together in Sweden, our music would not be made in this way, I’m pretty sure. I personally have always lived in Catanzaro, a small windy city in the deepest south of Italy. But generally speaking, traveling is always a great inspiration for the musical composition. However, I tend to always come back to my hometown. I’m going to spend at least three months in Madrid in Spain in the next few months and I am curious to see what this will bring to my music.

J: Stereotypically Italy - or even whole southern Europe - is seen as a sunny place with parties from dusk till dawn, but Your compositions are very far from that. Is it actually that rare to hear Italian band playing so dark and melancholic music?

R: It seems we’re definitely far from that then ahah, but yeah lots of music from Italy it is indeed. It’s not that rare at all. And If you have the chance to check out some experimental music from ‘60-70s too, Archivio Rai or early minimalism, Luciano Cilio, and many others, well, that’s not sunny music at all. Speaking about melancholia, well could be probably because of a sort of mediterranean DNA, couldn’t be? It’s a cultural thing or something like that I guess. But yeah, sun is good. FACT!

A: What Roberto said is true, I believe that the melancholic connotation of music reflects a character, but it is something really difficult to explain with words indeed. Søren Kierkegaard said: “if you ask a melancholic what reason he has for his condition, what do you know what is it, I can not explain it? “Therein lies melancholy’s infinitude.”

J: I’ve seen Your rider and it seems that You have a very clear idea of how Your live shows should look like - no front lights, just monochromatic light behind You or completely dark room with the smoke. I can see how it fits music from “Black Box Animals”, but do You need that only for visual aspect or does it help You get into right mood? Is it somehow helping You on stage?

R: Something truly interesting happens when you listen, performing or doing things in the darkness and/or in self-imposed situations/conditions. I mean, it doesn’t have to be complete darkness, but we try to avoid any interference from music, like visuals, heavy lighting or too many things going together at the same time. Maybe in the future could be different, we are open to explore different ways actually.

A: Darkness is something really helpful to stay focused, but also for meditation and contemplation in general, and I believe it can facilitate people joining any kind of experience. In regard to the live show we would like not having any kind of aesthetic or sensory impulse to interfere the sound. This is also really helpful for us to play in the right condition in order to enter in our dimension. A black box.

J: First sentence in Your bio states that “Luton is an anti modernist duo” - is that because modernism is mostly about realism and it seems that Your music is more about “magic”?

R: That was a statement by Attilio so I would like to ask him if he could explain to us. But yes, about magic, what could I really say? I really do like the idea about that, if you ask me. Music or I would say sound primarily is magic indeed to me, like a primitive force or an invisible spirit world that I pretend to comprehend, and in my mind disturbing a system that I can’t understand and see what happens, well that’s what I call an experiment. At the same time the nature of sound is really similar to botanic or biology. With sounds you can say these big abstract things, something you can’t express with the alphabet. When the word fails the magic happens. Paying attention, contemplation, contradiction, moving all things back where there is nothing is probably my subconscious purpose. And -in this purpose- nature of sounds is my white light, my teaching voice.

A: You should add something really crucial to what you said, Rob. Capitalist Realism, the book by Mark Fisher was a great inspiration for the making of the album. We both are into Fisher vision of the modern life, and we are sadly observing that the widespread feeling of resignation and unhappiness that permeates our lives in general really depends on the capitalistic system and the neoliberalism that has changed any aspect of the social sphere. So work and life, social and real life became inseparable, capital follows us when we sleep, and unfortunately as you can imagine music and arts are included in the symptoms of our current cultural malaise too. Luton is anti-modernist in the sense that we try to reject our frustration of dealing with a so called entrepreneurial fantasy society, by trying to support ourselves to the ritual, the shamanic, the primitive, but also the anarchist side of the music, possibly without being attached too much to something in particular in terms of genre or hype.

J: It’s a bit of a cliché to call an album a soundtrack to non-existing movie, but “Black Box Animals” sounds very cinematic. Did You draw any inspirations from cinema art?

R: I personally studied cinema and wrote about that quite a lot when I was younger, so most probably thats still a big influence to me, but yeah we are both inspired by movies for sure. In terms of sounds, I think the way I worked with the orchestral part in this album is what makes the whole thing very cinematic, stuff like 4d sounds, spatialization, timbres etc. We are now interested in a different approach for the new material which is slightly more like painting or drawing abstract lines but with sound dynamics. You have to capture the right thing, but you don’t know what the right thing means exactly. Most of the times, I have not any clue about what’s going on, I’m just one of those dots between all these abstractions around me like a string extending from the top of my head to a distant cloud or star. It’s really odd.

A: Ours is a cinematic music for sure. Rob and I often discuss ourselves a lot about cinema and we constantly share different point of views about that. This in fact has played an important role in our friendship, I must say. For a song of the album, “Sodermalm Phantom Cab”, we asked Ion Indolean, a young Romanian filmmaker, to direct a videoclip. His style is in some ways similar to new Greek neorealism. We would also like to experiment with other forms of cinema and filmmakers in the near future.

J: What I’m quite sure is that dance and theatre are inspiration for You - both of You have experience in that field. How different is that to writing music without a script You need to fit to?

R: They are, indeed, especially contemporary dance personally. Writing music for commissions is challenging, sometimes frustrating, not always rewarding but you generally learn a lot from it which is good.

A: Experience I had with dance and theatre helped me to develop the ability to adapt my sounds to a context that was almost completely unknown to me. I find it much easier to express myself with self-defined limits. The work I did for Luton was facilitated by the complexities of previous experiences.

J: There are lots of the instruments on “Black Box Animals”, but I guess it’s not possible to bring them all on a live show? How different is this material live to what can be heard on album?

R: Thats considerably different. I would say the album is more like a sort of slow journey whilst the live version maybe a bit more like a black vortex, and consequently more physical, droney and abstract, but also we’re trying to get the job done with some reiterative piano moments in between and we’ll see how it goes. Does it make sense? I don’t know, everything is a process indeed.

A: At this stage we should prepare ourselves to the darkest side of Luton. However, there will be the presence of the piano which is something we’re really into at the moment.

J: What struck me the most is that You’ve started Luton just recently, but it feels like You understands each other perfectly. Were You a friends before starting Luton?

R: Well, I think we impersonate each other in a way, as we actually met each other only twice in the real life and we also live in different countries. But -you know- in Luton we’re just two guys swapping these sort of messy lines on a white canvas, making a lot room for fuckery if you know what I mean. For me that makes sense and it’s way more interesting and flexible that being in the same room jamming on ideas or having strict roles. There’s a kind of mix between mistery, alchemy and playfulness between us and I think we really enjoy.

A: We live in different countries, that’s a fact, but that doesn’t make much difference. Sometimes our level of interaction might be really intense and so our conversations. This is one of the positive sides of the internet age, after all. We’ve known each other for several years but in my opinion he’s like a childhood friend of mine. Connections between people have something mysterious and impossible to understand on a deep level, sometimes.

J: In January You’ll perform in Poland for the first time. Do You have any favorite artists that comes from here?

R: Penderecki and Eugeniusz Rudnik.

A: Apart from Penderecki, I enjoyed the music of contemporary ambient-experimental musicians like Gregg Kowalsky and Jacaszek.

A mention for my friend Nicholas Szczepanik too, American but with Polish origins.

J: Thanks for Your time.

R: Thanks so much, guys

A: Dziękuję, do widzenia.

#festival #luton #blackboxanimals

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tigerlover16-uk · 7 years

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You and all the other people that enjoy anything about dragon ball super disgust me. You fake fans are enabling the ruination of Dragon Ball and you should all hate yourselves for DARING to think that garbage is as good as DBZ. Pathetic shill. You and all the other worthless, spoilt, brain dead scum need to get off the internet and stop worshipping garbage.

(Insert gif of Frieza sipping his wine)

I’ve left this and the other angry ask insulting me for liking Goku sitting around in my ask box for a while now, because I honestly didn’t have the energy or patience to deal with this nonsense at the time you left it here, and after that I just didn’t think an obvious troll was worth giving the time of day. But you know, whatever, I’m up for it right now.

First off, way to be ableist with the brain dead scum comment, that and all the comments about how us fans who like Super should hate ourselves make you sound VERY reasonable and intellectually superior. Bravo, good chap.

Second… explain how I’m a shill who “Worships” Super? True, I’m more positive about it than some people on this site, but that’s because I don’t really care to complain about the flaws in things I enjoy when I could instead be having fun with them. If it’s something I hate, like GT or the DCEU movies before Wonder Woman, then oh boy I’ll be harsh if I have to talk about them, but I do prefer to avoid talking about them lately unless I’m directly asked.

I’m not a person that cares for discourse. The times I do get involved I often end up saying stupid things and don’t handle it well, so I prefer to maintain a “look on the bright side attitude” where I can involving the things I like. And that includes Super. I think there’s honestly more than enough negativity directed at it by the vocal minority of fans who dislike the series already, so I don’t think I need to bother chiming in complaints when there are others who could do that, and I can instead be having fun and gushing about the things it does right (And yes, I believe it does plenty more right than bad).

But that doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect. I’ve been honest about the fact that the show is flawed plenty of times and I’m not afraid to comment on them where I have to. The animation in the second half of the Resurrection F arc was HORRIBLE. Majin Buu, even if I loved the fight with Basil and the fit Buu thing, has been shafted way too many times and it’s getting really annoying. Gohan’s character arc is progressing really well this saga, but it’s been annoyingly stretched out and inconsistent before that. And the ending to the Future Trunks saga, while I don’t find it irredeemably awful like some, was still nonsense.

I acknowledge that the show has flaws. It’s just that for the most part, I actually think the show is really fun to watch and does a lot of good things, and many of it’s issues have been ironed out over time especially with the current saga, and I think it still has a ton of potential going forward. So I just prefer to wait and see what comes next and enjoy myself now.

So I don’t let the flaws ruin Super for me, any more than I let the flaws with Z or the original Dragon Ball take away my love for those shows. Heck, if I did I would have cut my rewatch of og Dragon Ball last year short the minute I got to the horrific homophobia that was General Blue, the misogynistic gay pedophile drawn to look like a Nazi (Still the worst thing the franchise has ever done, by the way).

I think Dragon Ball Super is a good show, that does a lot of good worldbuilding, tells some fun stories, gives some interesting development to several of it’s characters like Krillin and Gohan, is usually very funny, has tons of adorable and touching moments, and while it’s action’s not as good as Z’s, it does have some great memorable fights here and there.

It’s not as good as Z, but I never expected it to be. Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were a masterpiece, the kind of on the job miracle that only happens once in a lifetime, you can never fully recreate everything that made it so magical. And you don’t need to as long as you make something else that’s enjoyable in it’s own right with the property. I’m just glad I finally get to see more of these wonderful characters and this universe I love so much. And for now I’m pretty satisfied with that.

So no, pal, I’m not an entitled shill. That would require I put the show on a pedestal and declare it God’s gift to Dragon Ball while beating down any criticisms I find with unintelligible whinging. And clearly I don’t. I don’t agree with all the criticisms the show gets, but while I’ve occasionally said something stupid but then immediately apologized (Something I don’t expect from you at this point if you bother to read this anon), I don’t have an issue with people personally not enjoying it. Heck, I’m a guy who thinks Batman is an uninteresting character and the Dark Knight Movies were boring and awful, while liking the Star Wars Prequels more than the original trilogy, which I find just okay. We all have different tastes and opinions, who am I to judge.

You know what would make me a spoilt, entitled scumbag? Telling the people I disagree with that they’re worthless, disgusting fake fans and they should hate themselves for having the AUDACITY to like a fictional show! And trying to chase those people off the internet with petty ramblings in their personal space just so you don’t have to hear opinions you don’t like (Man, I’d hate to see how you react to political debates).

Also, how is Super “Ruining” Dragon Ball? Here’s the thing pal… Dragon Ball had a complete story. The manga is the only definitive canon in this franchise, and it ended two decades ago. The actual, classic story of Dragon Ball is complete, any other works based on it, whether people choose to view them as canon or not, are supplementary at best. It’s not actually possible to truly “Ruin” the franchise.

If anything, Super has helped in keeping the franchise from falling into relative obscurity, considering how in the latter half of the last decade Dragon Ball in general outside of it’s fandom (And in some cases, IN it’s own fandom) had become a bit of a laughing stock among much of the anime fandom and the internet. It’s been down to Kai, the Xenoverse games and other spin offs, the two Toriyama penned movies and yeah, even Super that the franchise has started getting more recognition again and more support. They’ve brought in new fans, and brought back many lapsed and casual fans.

And yes, that’s come with it’s own share of problems, particularly on the fandom side of things. But TFS is FAR more responsible for creating the toxic atmosphere of much of the modern Dragon Ball fandom, the toxic underbelly of which had been growing larger for years before Super debuted, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame Super specifically for the fandoms current state when at worst it’s responsible for bringing back a flood of casuals who absentmindedly buy into fandom stereotypes a little too heavily. The current atmosphere of the fandom would have been largely as bad whatever the quality or kind of new show we got.

So no, I don’t think Super has “Ruined” the franchise any more than GT did years ago. Anyone who wants to argue that Super ruined Dragon Ball for them as a whole is either being melodramatic, taking it too seriously, or maybe even never cared about Dragon Ball beyond being a casual fan in the first place.

I mean, I still love Spider-man even despite the abomination that is One More Day, and I’m still watching Boruto despite hating the majority of Naruto Shippuden with a burning passion. And I didn’t let GT lessen my love for the Dragon Ball franchise in the slightest, if anything it just made me appreciate the stuff I love about it instead a lot more.

If anything is ruining the Dragon Ball franchise for people, it’s jerks like you who feel the need to attack and insult people for liking stuff about it that you don’t. You’re no better than the scummy anons who harass the Gochi fans on here, or the people who constantly lie about, demonize and demean Goku’s character to prop up and shill other characters like Vegeta and Piccolo, when it’s completely unnecessary and stupid to try and undermine other characters to prop up others who are already great on their own.

It’s okay if you don’t like the show. I’m sorry if you feel it’s somehow ruining Dragon ball for YOU specifically, and I encourage you to go back and watch the previous series to remember WHY you like Dragon Ball so much. But buddy… NOTHING gives you the right to act like a ravenous jerka## to the people who DO enjoy it. Screw off with that elitist, childish nonsense and grow the (Bleep) up, child!!

This goes to EVERYONE who’s feeling even the slightest bit resentful to the people who are having fun with Super, or any other base breaking series connected to a franchise a lot of people like (Did I mention I prefer the 3D era Sonic games to the genesis classics? Oh boy, do I not get along with the Sonic fandom). You not liking it doesn’t make you superior to other people, nor does it make you objectively right while everyone else is just a moronic fake fan. to heck with that line of thinking.

I could go on, but it’s late and I’m tired and you’re not worth any more effort than I’ve already spent here, anon. Don’t bother coming back into my inbox with this nonsense unless you want to do the mature, adult thing (Assuming you’re an adult, and not a kid) and apologize. Good night.

#dragon ball super #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dragon ball gt #dragon ball franchise #stupid anons #trolls #I hope I don't get a flood of angry comments and hate messages for any of this #whatever I can take it

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thewayfaringheroarchived-blog · 7 years

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¦ 06 · 13 · 3221 Freedom Fighter HQ , Green Island ¦

“And…you're sure this will work?”

Unseen by the other people in the lab – all two of them - Porker Lewis rolled his eyes in a manner that was fixed somewhere along the line of annoyance and amusement. That very same question had already been asked twice before and so, for the third and what the pig hoped would be the last time, he turned away from the mess of wires of circuitry he was working on to aim a misleadingly exasperated look at the rabbit who insisted on nagging him.

“I'm sure,” Porker assured, turning back to his work as if to prove it. “I've built entire computers way more advanced than this from scratch when I was living in the middle of nowhere. This is nothing.”

From the opposite side of the beaten computer console his friend was working on Johnny let out an amused snort as his gaze mindlessly swept over the room they were in for the second time that day. It was a large area, not particularly cluttered but not empty either and it had obviously been cleaned rather recently – heck, the rabbit could still pick up the scent of one or two cleaning solutions. Yet, the most interesting thing about the space was the several large, and currently inactive, consoles spread around the area. Johnny had never seen a control station before but if he had he would have been hard pressed to compare it to his current surroundings. He had no idea what machines were for and, even for all his expertise, neither did Porker but the latter had been quick to go about figuring that out once he had been given permission.

From his vantage alone it was easy for the rabbit to forget that this room, and the several others that branched from it, were all several meters underground. They were part of a small underground system that neither he nor Porker had known about despite it being a part of the zone they both had grown up in, the zone they had diligently explored as children until they knew it like the back of their hands...or so they had always thought. Never would he have expected something like this to exist in the zone and yet, at the same time, it wasn't entirely a surprise the more he mulled over it.

Mobius was known for having its share of secrets and he had simply chalked this up to being another ‘hidden treasure’ at first but, though neither of them had said it aloud since being brought down there, both the rabbit and pig knew this bunker was something more. It was a piece to an old, troubling puzzle that was one step closer to being whole; a puzzle that they themselves weren't at liberty to reveal. No…that fell into another's hands and that was why, for now, the two of them would feign ignorance and treat the underground bunker like a brand-new development. They would act like wasn’t anything more than a ‘convenient’ discovery. It was for the best.

“This place is far from ‘nothin’’. You could fit a small army in here…” Johnny mused after his pause went on for a little too long, then stopped again for another moment of consideration. Well, that was the point of the whole place, wasn’t it? To fit a practical militia? Shaking his head, he turned to the other side of the base, one that was considerably brighter than the one he and Porker were currently in thanks to it being the only section of the electrical grid that still worked properly, and where their mutual friend currently stood. “I mean, you could if it wasn't for the whole place being a dark hole in the ground. Great choice by the way, Hedgehog.”

The addressed third party, who had remained oddly quiet for most of the trio’s time down in their shelter, barely looked up from the map and small makeshift table he was standing over - comprised mostly of another console and odd bits and ends - as he merely flicked his wrist through the air in the rabbit’s general direction in an offhanded manner. Though Johnny’s tone hadn’t been much more than a typical teasing one there was a certain underlined weightiness when the hedgehog spoke that could have easily been missed if the rabbit and pig hadn't known the hero so well.

“I didn't see either of you coming up with anything.” Only after making a quick and precise mark on the map with a pen did the hero look up to raise a brow in Johnny’s direction. His all-too-familiar grin and light tones were quick to follow the gesture. “Besides what’s more cliché than an underground base?”

The rabbit pretending to consider for all of three seconds before fixing the hedgehog with a feigned annoyed look, his own smirk mounting on his white muzzle. “An underground base with working power?”

The hedgehog had expected that answer and merely rolled his eyes before waving casually to their tinkering friend. “If anybody can get this place back online properly it's Lewis.”

Unseen by either of them a faint but proud flush suddenly came over the pig’s cheeks before the hedgehog continued, his tone still as easygoing as ever while his emerald hues meet Johnny’s sapphire. “And so far he and I are the only ones actually being useful, in case you've forgotten.”

That certainly got a reaction from the rabbit. One in the form of an aggravated huff that was only answered by the hedgehog and pig laughing in unison.

“Sonic does have a point,” Porker added once he regained control of himself, his eyes still twinkling with delight and, to a much lesser extent, a silent apology as he went back to his work - though his words did hold a good amount of truth to them. While it had been the rabbit who initially laid out the basics of their plan, it had been Sonic and Porker who had actually done those things while the rabbit just tagged along ( mainly with the pig ). It was a running joke the hero and tinkerer loved.

“I'd like to see either of you make a plan that actually works,” the rabbit grumbled, arms folding over his torso as he glared at his friends, though there was no real spite behind the motion. “Once the rest of us are here and together I can start putting things into motion. Speaking of that…” Turning to the famously social hedgehog Johnny’s irritation faded to pure curiosity as he voiced a question he and Porker had had for a while, “when are we going to meet the others?”

“In about a week,” the hero answered without missing a beat. “The first official meeting’s next weekend. It would’ve been earlier but some people had…prior commitments.”

This time it was Johnny who raised a brow. “Really? Like what?”

The hero just clicked his tongue as he went to roll up the small map, wagging a finger in the taller mobian’s direction playfully. “That's for me to know and for you two t’ find out.”

Before Johnny could ask why the hedgehog was being so secretive about the other Freedom Fighters - none of whom he or Porker had heard the slightest information about so far - there was a sharp popping noise from Porker’s side of the room followed by a much more pleasing hum as the remaining lights in the room suddenly came to life, bathing the room in soft yellow-white hues. With a delighted chuckle, the speedster walked over to the console, examined it for a moment then aimed a boastful look at Johnny.

“See? No one could've done it better,” Sonic stated proudly, clapping the pig on the shoulder. “Nice work, Lewis.”

The pig looked away somewhat bashfully, shoulders raising in an attempt to appear nonchalant though he felt pride swell within himself. “Thanks, i-it's not perfect yet but everything should be up and running by the time everyone else gets here.”

The hedgehog didn't doubt that for a second. While he knew Porker would have at least one of the terminals up and running before the day was out he certainly hadn't expected it to be as quick as it had, not that he was complaining. If he remembered right – and he was pretty sure he did – a few of the consoles would lead his technical friend to the lab’s defensive system and the others to in-depth research about the planet as a whole. If the information hadn’t been completely lost by now that is.

It had been a risk choosing this place to be The Freedom Fighters headquarters the hedgehog knew, but in the end, it was honestly the best place he could think of. Despite his obvious history with the place the hero’s memories of the lab had usually been ones that resonated comfort and happiness. Kintobor hadn’t been a perfect person, even before his transformation, but the doctor did know how to make a place safe from unwanted visitors. Even today.

As if he had somehow read the hedgehog’s mind, Johnny spoke up again with a skeptical tone. “Though…you never did tell us what half this stuff does. Or how you found this place.”

Again, Johnny was answered with a laugh. Shifting his weight, the hero cocked his head to the side, a knowing smile on his face as he tapped the map against his shoulder idly. “I am the one who’s been – how did you put it, again? – ‘damn near everywhere’, right?” After a moment, his smile faded a notch, a more serious undertone to his words as he straightened again. He knew the rabbit had a point; secrets wouldn’t do any of them any good. “Don't worry, I’ll tell you everything once everyone else is here...saves me having t’ tell the same story multiple times, y’know?”

Taking the resulting silence as agreement, the hedgehog nodded at nothing in particular and strolled away into one of the other rooms, humming quietly to himself. The forewarning of his own words went overlooked by the hero.

Nor did he notice the exchanged looks of anticipation that his two friends gave one another.

#│Give A Little Time To Me : Queue #{{ another update cha cha cha #{{ the next one is going to be long as hell but will cover pretty much EVERYTHING #│Everything Has Changed : Updates #│Johnny Lightfoot : Guest Stars #│Porker Lewis : Guest Stars

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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183. Sonic the Hedgehog #115

Meanie in a Bottle

Writer: Benny Lee Pencils: Art Mawhinney Colors: Jason Jensen

So I haven't really been mentioning them, but in lieu of the intro pages that older issues had, lately most issues have begun instead with a full-page illustration relevant to the story content. This one is no different, except that instead of depicting something that actually happens within the issue, it reimagines Sonic as Aladdin, which is honestly very cute. The actual plot of the main story does involve a genie, but it's a very silly story, a rare thing nowadays. Fittingly, Art Mawhinney is the artist, since his style is very cartoony, but weirdly enough, we've actually got ourselves a new colorist for this issue, one Jason Jensen. I have to say, his coloring style is probably the most interesting and dynamic we've seen so far, and while it looks lovely with its more complex shading and somewhat more realistic colors, the style ultimately kind of suffers from being paired with Art's pencils. Don't get me wrong, Art isn't a bad artist by any means - how could he be, with a name like that? - but his style just clashes weirdly with Jason's colors, making for kind of a jarring combination. But enough of that, onto the story! Sonic is playing fetch with the roboticized Muttski near a lake when he accidentally throws the stick into the water. Muttski obediently jumps in after it, and Sonic, worried for his dog's safety, leaps in after him.

I find it a little interesting, his comment about hating water and the implication that he can't swim. After all, throughout the entirety of the comic 'verse so far, Sonic's and Knuckles' swimming skills have kind of been swapped, with Sonic being a decent swimmer who enjoys a nice dip in the summer, and Knuckles being the one who can't swim and is afraid of water. It seems they're finally trying to align Sonic's swimming skills with that of his game counterpart, but after so many issues depicting him swimming without a problem, it's kind of a weird, sudden loss of ability. Anyway, as soon as he grabs the bottle, it shoots him and his dog safely to the surface of the water. Upon opening the bottle, a genie shoots out, and Sonic excitedly asks if this means he gets three wishes. The genie seems annoyed by this question, and decides to give him a little "present" anyway before flying away, zapping both him and Muttski at the same time.

Sonic realizes in shock that he has quickly run out of energy while Muttski bounds ahead, and gets a checkup from Dr. Quack, who confirms his worst fears - the genie straight up swapped his and Muttski's speeds, making Sonic an ordinary runner and Muttski a supersonic robot dog. Man, what is it about this comic loving to take away Sonic's speed through random happenstance? You'd think he'd kind of be used to it by now. He dejectedly, over the next few days, tries to figure out how to control his dog, who is now racing all across Knothole at ridiculous speeds and even offering some speedy help to people in need. After a few days of these shenanigans, Sonic and Muttski are once again playing a game of fetch in the forest, when Sonic spots the same genie floating around nearby and sics Muttski on him. Muttski swallows the genie whole, because it's the best way to keep him from running (flying?) away, and Sonic promises to let the genie back out if he gets his three wishes, to which the genie irritably agrees.

Wait, Sonic! Are you serious? That's your final wish? First of all I actually kind of find it funny that his wishes in this issue were very similar to the ones at the end of Secret Rings, in that he basically uses the first two as a fix-it for all the stuff that's happened over the course of the story and uses the final one to re-trap the offending genie back into its prison, but second of all, don't you think that third and final wish could be better used on, say, world peace or something? Maybe a guaranteed defeat of Egg… man… hey, wait a second, guys! Has anyone noticed the conspicuous lack of Eggman in the past few issues? I mean, I know his city got blown up pretty hard back in StH#110, but this is a Robotnik we're talking about. He's kind of known for coming back from seemingly certain death to torment the world time and time again. No one seems concerned at all with making absolutely sure that he's gone, but I have a feeling that the destruction of Robotropolis isn't the end of Eggman's story…

The Spaz Sketchbook

Writer/Pencils: Spaz

So here we've got something quite interesting! This isn't actually a story, but rather a collection of concept art by Patrick Spaziante, for various characters and machines of issues past, scrapped concepts that never made it into print, and even a few sketches for some upcoming stories! Unfortunately I can't just post every page here - that would be way too many pictures - but they're free to look at on the Archie Sonic wiki for those who are interested in viewing the full thing. I've decided to only include a couple things here, being sketches that I found the most interesting. First up we have a concept for Rob o' the Hedge that was ultimately scrapped in favor of making him look… well… exactly like Sonic.

Seriously, this design is so much more interesting! I mean, sure he kind of still looks like a recolored Sonic OC with a few details changed to make him stand out, but let's face it, that's what basically every hedgehog looks like in the Archieverse. As it stands, this design is way more unique-looking, and has much more visual interest than just making him a slightly lighter-colored Sonic clone.

A few pages in, we have what looks like a large, segmented train of sorts, which has its description box blocked out with a large "CAUTION: SPOILER INFO" sticker plastered over it. There's obviously relevant text behind it, but only a couple of words at the beginning and end show through, giving us a tantalizing glimpse at something that might come up here in a few issues. There's some references to a scrapped arc that takes place on Mobius twenty years in the future that depicts an older, redesigned Knuckles and Julie-Su - hmm, wonder if we'll ever see anything come of that eventually? - and then some pages devoted to plans for a manga-style alternate universe that never saw the light of day, due to the Sonic Super Special series being cancelled.

I include these mostly because they're really cute! I mean, the series has already been going in a much more anime-inspired direction with its art as of late, so it's interesting to see how that has been an inspiration for the art team for quite a while, even before Ron Lim and Steven Butler started really Nihon-ing it up. We conclude with a final page in which every sketch's text is completely spoilered out, but we can take our best guess at what the art depicts just from looking at it.

Two of those designs are pretty obviously Mecha Sonic and a new Mecha Tails, meaning we might be seeing those two get roboticized sometime in the near future. As for the other robots, given their unique designs, we can safely assume that we're looking at roboticized versions of Flying Frog, Lightning Lynx, and Predator Hawk. The top left robot is a little more ambiguous, but I just cheated and looked at the wiki, which informed me that it's a roboticized Drago. Man, how did this big ol' string of roboticizations happen, huh? It's almost like Eggman might not be truly gone…

Ultimate Power (Part Two)

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Dawn Best Colors: Jensen

So, we can pretty safely assume that Mammoth Mogul is up to no good. Harry drops him off at the hospital in Echidnaopolis just as Lien-Da leaves the building, and he walks in, gloating in the doorway over his former enemy lying so helplessly in the middle of all the life support gear.

It's kind of amazing how in the span of barely over a dozen issues, Penders has managed to take Dimitri from a hated villain that we're certain wants to conquer the world, and rebrand him as a tired, ancient old man just trying to do the best for his people using the only means he knows. These issues have really given a much different perspective on Dimitri that we've never seen before, painting him in a much more sympathetic light and even making us root for him in some respects. After all, I know I certainly don't want him to die here, and more and more it seems like the real danger within the modern Legion is Lien-Da, with a whole hidden agenda of her own.

Unaware of the brewing catastrophe, Knuckles, Julie-Su, and the Chaotix are hanging out in a park, generally enjoying the time they have together. Knuckles explains to everyone how his fur color changed from Rad Red to Gross Green, and demonstrates some of his newfound powers by producing a bouquet of flowers from thin air, much to Julie-Su's delight. I can't say she's the type of girl who I would have expected to be so happy with flowers, but hey, I can see her maybe being touched by a gesture that's so normal, in contrast to her messed-up past. Knuckles sobers the mood up, however, by saying that he really needs to go see his father about his powers, which begs the question of why he hasn't done so before now, and leads everyone away to the Brotherhood's new, temporary place of residence, what with Haven being wrecked and all. In the Legion's own secret base within Echidnaopolis, Lien-Da converses with what appears to be her assistant, Gae-Na, about Dimitri's state of being. The base appears to be small-time, something Lien-Da has had recently set up by a few loyal underlings of her own without Dimitri's knowledge, as she discusses that if the echidna's main council votes to not go through with reunification she's ready to go through with her "backup plan." Knuckles and co. enter the temporary Brotherhood base, noting how run-down it seems in comparison, but upon heading into the main room they're met with a nasty shock on screen…

Well, I'm sure nothing but good things will come of this…

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 115 #writer: benny lee #writer: ken penders #pencils: art mawhinney #pencils: pat spaziante #pencils: dawn best #colors: jason jensen

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