#* ⋆ ‧ ₊˚ just like magic ／ multimedia.

[freshthoughts2020]

Why Sega Finally Gets Sonic Right

Why Sega Finally Gets Sonic Right

January 14, 2025

Growing up with Sonic the Hedgehog has been one of the most nostalgic aspects of my life. From playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the SEGA Genesis to experiencing the grandeur of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, I’ve seen the franchise at its peak and its lowest lows. Back in 2016, I criticized Sega’s handling of Sonic, lamenting how they had turned an iconic character into a mere tool for selling merchandise. But today, I’m here to say this: Sega has finally started to get Sonic right.

1. Sonic Mania: A Love Letter to Fans

While I’ve never played Sonic Mania myself, I’ve seen enough gameplay to appreciate what it represents. Sega handed the reins to passionate fans like Christian Whitehead, and the result was a 2D masterpiece that brought back the magic of Sonic’s Genesis days. Classic zones were reimagined, new ones were introduced, and the game perfectly balanced nostalgia with innovation. Sonic Mania proved that Sega could still make Sonic’s roots relevant in modern gaming.

2. Sonic Frontiers: Bold Innovation

I haven’t had the chance to play Sonic Frontiers, but the gameplay I’ve watched left me satisfied. This open-zone concept is a major leap forward for the franchise. It’s not just about running fast anymore; it’s about exploring vast, beautifully designed worlds. The game’s serious tone, coupled with the freedom of exploration, feels like a modern evolution of what Sonic Adventure started. Sega’s willingness to experiment has breathed new life into the series.

3. Sonic x Shadow Generations: Getting Shadow Right

I have played Sonic x Shadow Generations, and let me tell you, this game is a gem. Shadow’s gameplay feels distinct and refined, a far cry from the missteps of Shadow the Hedgehog. The mechanics are polished, and his stages bring a level of intensity that complements Sonic’s speed. Sega finally found a way to make Shadow fun to play without overshadowing the blue blur.

4. Sonic in Other Media

Sega’s multimedia approach has been phenomenal. The Sonic the Hedgehog movies were a game-changer for the franchise. I’ve loved every one of them, even though I haven’t seen the third installment yet. Let’s not forget the studio’s decision to redesign Sonic’s look after the original trailer sparked backlash. Listening to the fans like that? Major respect.

The Knuckles spin-off series was another fantastic addition. It fleshed out Knuckles’ character in a way that felt authentic and engaging. These projects show that Sega understands the importance of storytelling and world-building, even beyond games.

5. Embracing the Community

One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed is how Sega interacts with its fanbase. From embracing memes and fan art to collaborating with artists like Louis Guzman, they’ve built a bridge between Sonic’s legacy and its vibrant community. This level of engagement has created a sense of camaraderie between Sega and its fans, making the franchise feel alive and relevant.

What Sega Got Right

Sega’s recent efforts prove they’ve learned from past mistakes. Whether it’s through nostalgic throwbacks like Sonic Mania, bold innovations in Sonic Frontiers, or multimedia expansions, Sega is finally respecting Sonic’s legacy while adapting to modern times. They’re not just making games; they’re rebuilding a beloved universe.

Follow me on x.com/onlyonejaevonn gettothecorner.com LIFE LOGS™ by JAEVONN HARRIS

[noctiilio]

SWEETEST SCARE A Gensokyo 199x Halloween Original: "The Centennial Festival for Magical Girls" + "U.N. Owen Was Her?" Source: Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Happy halloween everyone this is the proof that outside of the mainline releases I can rearrange Touhou themes in that end of the last century goodness as many times as I want Also it was my birthday just a few days ago so this is like my little gift for you all and ESPECIALLY for little miss flandre herself who's been my best friend for exactly half of my current lifetime now Here's the Youtube version Here's the bandcamp link And here's the cover which I painstakingly painted like those semi realistic painted posters from the time period which my whole gimmick as a multimedia creator is to emulate

[ghosts-of-the-underground]

WELCOME TO GHOSTS OF THE UNDERGROUND

An Undertale sequel AU directed by @the-worm-man / @pipisofficial

Companion Chara blog here.

Companion Souls blog here.

Read it all in order here!

Sprites, Writing, alternate blogs etc. by: @the-worm-man, @queerrayne, @zavemann, @code-kindness, and @numberonephantompizza1

Promo Art by @fmsdraws, Textboxes generated from Demirramon

Rules and Info under the cut.

In this multimedia project, you, the “askers”, get to know the characters through asks.

The story progresses automatically through asks, mini-comics, animations, unprompted dialogue, or occasionally even playable games or fights.

This story takes place after a specific neutral route. Your job is to get to know and manipulate the characters through your questions to get the ending you want to see.

Major choices, such as Sparing or Killing an enemy for example, will be left up to an audience poll.

Please direct any OOC questions to @pipisofficial.

Rules:

Not every character will be open for asks at all times- only relevant characters are open. If a non-relevant character is sent an ask, the ask will likely be answered when the character becomes relevant.

Please refrain from blatant NSFW asks. shitpost asks, confessions of love, threats of violence, and other similar things are allowed in moderation.

Not all asks will be answered. Some may be too spoiler-y, some may just be too difficult to answer. Asks will not be ignored for no reason.

The characters cannot be give physical objects through asks. Magic Anons are not allowed. If you try them, you will look like a doofus and confuse everyone.

You may play an original character in an asks, just remember that the asks will be perceived as disembodied voices to the characters.

Have fun, and stay determined.

[thewadapan]

Multimedia & the Multiverse in Magic: The Gathering

I've got a nasty habit of, instead of reading "good, fun, meaningful" stories, devoting enormous portions of my time to pure hack shit, cynical works of corporate art that have little value as texts on their own merits, but rather through the intertextuality they share.

Anyway, the other week I sort of blacked out, and when I came to there was a spreadsheet on my monitor, with 1,251 rows corresponding to 1,251 storyline sources for Magic: The Gathering—the famous fantasy trading card game from Dungeons & Dragons manufacturer Wizards of the Coast—meticulously arranged into publication order. I'm not, like, doing so hot, at the moment.

So having spent a couple of days doing that, I sat down to work out where to start, and I eventually settled on the short webcomics leading up to the publication of Agents of Artifice, a novel by Ari Marmell. Was it any good? Tap that "Keep reading" button to find out. Uh, eventually.

I. A potted timeline of Magic: The Gathering media

The history of Magic: The Gathering is riddled with bizarre, sweeping changes in the big-picture corporate strategy, where a huge shift in the product will be announced, as if to say "This is it! We've solved it now! This is how MTG is going to work for the rest of time!" And then two years later, the decision is completely overturned, replaced with some other, new initiative that promises to fix the game forever. In some ways, MTG has lasted so long precisely because of its willingness to innovate, to experiment, to throw itself wholeheartedly at an idea and then throw up its hands in a mea culpa when everyone inevitably hates it. From its earliest days, when Wizards of the Coast began publishing its own magazine, The Duelist, the corporate culture has revolved around transparency; designer Mark Rosewater has outputted god knows how many words across articles, podcasts and social media posts, fielding endless questions from a horde of mostly-intelligent fans who seem to passionately hate the thing they love. I cannot imagine having this many hours in the day. But as a result, I can think of no other game—in fact, no other piece of art, period—where the physical process of its creation is so well-documented and so well-understood.

And it's perhaps because of all this disclosure of corporate thought processes, that to me, as a fairweather fan who's been following along for a while, many of the biggest decisions have struck me as almost embarrassingly obvious in hindsight: "How are y'all only figuring this out now?"

Agents of Artifice is kind of a perfect case study. It was the first in what was intended to be a long-running series of "A Planeswalker Novel"s, books by different writers with a more character-centric approach than MTG stories had traditionally taken up to that point. See, the big defining gimmick of the MTG setting is that it's a vast multiverse of these different planes of existence. You, metatextually, are a "Planeswalker", who can travel these worlds, and your (non-diegetic) deck of cards represents the spells and creatures you have collected from them.

But bizarrely, for fully the first decade of the game's history, from 1993-2003, the actual MTG storyline seemed to have an almost pathological disinterest in this basic premise. Nearly all of the expansions were set on a single plane, Dominaria, just across different time periods, only occasionally dipping into other planes, which were usually dreamt up and forgotten by whichever writer needed them for their particular story beat. The Planeswalkers, as depicted in canon, are long-lived godlike mages, less protagonists, and more lore. Until 1997, the tie-in media was a slate of novels and comics, respectively published by external companies HarperPrism and ARMADA, written by a fuckton of freelancers who didn't seem to be coordinating with Wizards, let alone with each other. And I'll be honest: I haven't read any of it, because so far as I can tell, for all intents and purposes, there is nothing to distinguish this stuff from the rest of the yellowy fantasy volumes from the '90s with names like "The Sword of Life" stacked sideways in piles in secondhand bookstores, from the cigarette-ash-covered floppies slumping over in wicker baskets, covers pulling away from the staples. Not even in that they relate to a card game: many of these seem to be MTG stories in name only, featuring characters and settings who never so much as appeared on a card.

In 1997, all the publishing stuff was brought in-house, all this material was declared semi-canon, "pre-revisionist", and an effort was made to tell a single coherent story across the cards and the books. This was the "Weatherlight Saga", which (I think) followed the crew of a plane-hopping skyship as they battled the forces of Phyrexia, a race of... machine zombies, I guess is the best way to put it? Anyway, mixed success. I gather the cards suffered from needing to relate to the story, and that the story itself was simultaneously a bit overly-formulaic and hamstrung by changing plans at Wizards.

In 2003, the decision was finally made to have each year's expansions take place on a different plane. Y'know, like in the premise of the game. So you've got this world of metal, a world inspired by Japanese folklore, Dominaria again, a world that's an endless city, a world inspired by Celtic folklore, and they each have their own really distinct feel and character. If anything, too distinct: it's hard to get invested in these worlds, because a year later, you won't be seeing these characters again. The broad format of the story continued, a novel accompanying each expansion, I'm led to believe of similar middling quality.

So in 2007, there's this thing called the "Mending", which is basically an in-universe excuse to nerf all the Planeswalkers, to make them more #relatable and, more importantly, to allow them to be depicted in the game itself, as a special card type, without ludicrously overpowering everything else. Lorwyn introduced five new Planewalkers, one for each of the five colours of magic, to serve as the audience's POV into the MTG multiverse going forward. And although I'm biased, because I started playing in 2011, I would say this was when MTG finally got around to fulfilling the promise of its premise. The idea was that every year there would be a "block novel", concerned with the events on that year's setting, and twice a year there would be "A Planewalker Novel", which would further the long-term character arcs.

Two came out in 2009. A third, The Curse of the Chain Veil, was written and solicited, then cancelled. Brady Dommermuth, former creative director on MTG, said a couple of years later:

Unlike publishing companies who usually buy a book and publish it only if it's already good enough, we commissioned books on spec and had to publish what we got (after a few precious weeks of revision), regardless of how the final draft turned out. Only one book differed so sharply from our expectation that we elected not to publish it. You can probably figure out which.

The fourth, Test of Metal, did make it to publication but has apparently be decanonised with prejudice, so far as I can tell. After that, Wizards was done with print novels for MTG. There were a couple of ebooks, these written by the in-house writing staff rather than freelancers, accompanied by throwaway online short stories, which in 2014 became the main outlet for the storyline. In 2015 there was another big effort to refocus on a core cast of Planeswalkers, who became the "Gatewatch"—look, they were just doing Avengers, The Avengers had happened three years ago and people liked it back then. In 2019, they tried to switch back to novels (I'm guessing the Amazon fantasy slop publishing boom made that more viable again? Sidenote, Brandon Sanderson wrote a novella for them for free), there were a couple of books by Greg Weisman, people fucking hated them, they cancelled the next one they had in the can, and by 2020 they were back to webfiction, where they've languished comfortably ever since.

And this is just what was going on with the prose stuff. Boy, they were doing such things to that card game. They were really having a go of it with comics, too, though in the end those wound up being their own continuity. There was a Netflix animated show in production in 2019, with the fucking Russo brothers (see?) exec producing, later replaced by Jeff Kline (of Transformers: Prime, Wizards of the Coast having been acquired by Hasbro back in '99, and eventually becoming one of their biggest moneymakers thanks to everyone and their mum owning a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Player's Guide). I'm pretty sure it's been fully written, almost certainly voiced, and hell, probably animated too, like the Micronauts cartoon, and I'm 90% sure it's never coming out, and even if it did, it would be dreck anyway, right? Django Wexler apparently wrote a prequel novel for it, which exists as a file on a computer somewhere. Also in 2020 they were doing a live-action show too. They wanted Angelina Jolie to play Liliana Vess. Having just read Agents of Artifice, I am laughing my ass off.

See, what I'm getting at with all of this is that over the last ten years, Magic: The Gathering has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light. The Magic 2014 Core Set was released with one of the five Lorwyn Planeswalkers, pyromancer Chandra Nalaar, as its poster girl. The branding across the products and tie-in video game all looked more or less like this:

I remember that even as a teen I was embarrassed by this, possessed of some notion that we'd kind of moved on from boob plate, culturally. And sure enough, companies like Wizards of the Coast are realising that you can make way more money if you don't limit your consumer base to straight white guys aged 16-35. By the time of the Gatewatch stuff, I gather that Chandra was being explicitly written as- well, not gay, as I expect that would've been difficult to square with her earlier portrayals, but certainly bi. So by 2019, when that Weisman novel came out, for some godforaken reason there's multiple bits in there about how Chandra is totally straight, and she and Nissa are totally besties, and everyone kicked off, from the sounds of it rightly so.

II. State of play

Look, I don't want to make generalisations about the current state of MTG fiction. There seems to be a stable of writers, and for each new expansion, one of them will take the reins for the accompanying storyline, with other contributors chiming in for side-stories. It's a lot of different voices, with their own strengths and weaknesses. I started playing again with Phyrexia: All Will Be One, mostly on the back of "holy shit, Phyrexia, I remember those guys!", which I gather was the intended effect. I followed along with the webfiction for five expansions total.

Of the stuff I read, most of it's not great!

If you're someone who cares about prose, well, you're not going to find much to like there. These are professional writers, who have editors, so there's a baseline competency you're lucky to see in amateur webfic. But for the most part it's workmanlike stuff. Here's a sample that really jumped out at me when I was reading the Murders at Karlov Manor storyline:

"No, no! Not you! I can't tell you! I can tell Ezrim. Only Ezrim. Can you get me to him without being seen? Is that within your power, oh great detective?" The way he spoke the words, they weren't praise. He turned them into a cutting insult, and Etrata glanced to Proft to see how the man would react.

That entire second paragraph exists to explain that the phrase "oh great detective" is being spoken sarcastically. My, such subtlety, so cleverly challenging the reader's expectations, and what beautiful command of language too! See, the way I just wrote that sentence, that wasn't praise, that was a cutting insult. I can do it too.

What about the fantasy storytelling, then, is it entertaining and memorable? Well, occasionally. In the March of the Machine storyline, there's some fun clash-of-aesthetics stuff, with the Giger-esque Phyrexians butting up against the Gothic horror of Innistrad, or the fairytale creatures of Eldraine, or the New Capenna gangsters. And this aesthetic mishmash is where Wizards seems to want to take the property; their latest big status-quo shake-up, at the end of the story, sees most of the Planeswalkers lose the Sparks that let them planeswalk, with "Omenpaths" instead connecting the worlds to allow all kinds of beings to pass between them at random. This defines the story of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, dubbed a "Showcase set", which brings a bunch of characters and objects from across the multiverse onto a single setting with a specific theme, in this case, cowboys; it also defines Aetherdrift, a "Travelogue set", which instead creates the aesthetic juxtaposition by spanning across a whole bunch of planes, in this instance through a death race.

Much as the Mending served to allow the introduction of Planeswalker cards, the "Desparkening" (which, come to think of it, really smacks of the Avengers Thanos snap, doesn't it?) serves the needs of the game designers: the meteoric rise of the Commander format to be the predominant way people play MTG meant that Planeswalker cards were less desirable, as they couldn't be played as Commanders, meaning it's actually more commercially beneficial if more of the popular characters can use the Commander-friendly Legendary Creature cardtype instead.

In MTG development jargon, there are two types of expansion: "bottom-up", the traditional style, which start by concepting the gameplay mechanics and then nail down a setting to suit them; and "top-down", which start with a high-concept setting idea and then develop gameplay mechanics to fit that. In terms of the game itself top-down design has won out, decisively, but I would argue that modern Magic: The Gathering storytelling is actually stuck awkwardly in the middle. The Omenpaths are clearly a "bottom-up" storytelling choice, informed by the material needs of the game. But you can also see the stories struggling against the "top-down" pitch for each expansion: Murders at Karlov Manor is an entire set themed around murder-mystery, but the writer for the stories is, put bluntly, not a mystery writer, so structurally and narratively the webfiction really struggles to execute on the basic formula for the genre, and can't deliver the feeling of "cleverness" that makes murder mysteries work. March of the Machine is meant to be an apocalyptic multiversal war story with an unstoppable enemy, with a sprawling scope and stakes that have never been higher... but because the entire thing needs to be wrapped up within a single expansion, it ends up being an almost farcical parade of the Phyrexians visiting these other planes and just completely jobbing, totally beefing it, in the end the heroes show up and just cut the big bad's head off and the day is saved.

It's honestly kind of a fascinating mode of storytelling, when you step back and really look at it. Corporate needs a story to resemble a certain genre, to hit certain beats that they can commission certain art pieces for to put on certain cards. In Wilds of Eldraine, there's this whole thing about these three evil witches, and the witch associated with one of the set's chase cards just gets shoved into her cauldron maybe a third of the way into the webfiction. Eldraine as a whole has a problem where it needs to pull from a specific canon of well-known fairytales, making it feel more like a jumble of references than a fantasy world in its own right.

Again, Mark Rosewater is actually very open about this creative choice: players react well to things they recognise. His "keep it simple, stupid" philosophy can be traced as far back as the Weatherlight Saga—which he had a big hand in—as I'm told the whole thing is very heroes-journey, very Star Wars. I haven't read that stuff; why would I, if I've seen Star Wars? The point is that Rosewater believes that iconic symbols, characters, stories, are iconic for good reason, because they resonate with audiences. All the numbers back him up. Money talks. Consistently, the most profitable Magic: The Gathering sets are not those with original worldbuilding... but rather, the "Universes Beyond" products, which consist of cards depicting established properties, like The Lord of the Rings, Warhammer 40,000, Doctor Who, and Fallout. There's a Spider-Man set coming out. We exist in the age of the perpetual crossover, a rich multiverse where every property gets to collab with every other. And to make space for more of these products, the number of original expansions has been reduced.

There are some signifiers, though, which aren't trademarked: things like cyberpunk (Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty), the '80s (Duskmourn: House of Horror), outer space (Edge of Eternities). Or, in particular, real-world international culture and history. The tension between fantasy as a genre and real-world culture has always existed, and Dungeons & Dragons in particular has grappled with the racial stereotyping and cultural appropriation that informs much of its basic lore. In Magic: The Gathering, there are an increasing number of planes based on mythology from around the world—see this map, which hilariously suggests that North America has "not enough history to adapt into fantasy". It's hard to point the finger at the expansion that started this practise: was it Arabian Nights, the very first expansion, where Richard Garfield literally just lifted the entire flavour of the set from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights? Maybe 1996's Mirage, which the wiki helpfully tells me had a "tropical African-themed setting"? Maybe 1999's Portal Three Kingdoms, intended for Asian markets and set in a period of Chinese history, or 2004's Champions of Kamigawa, with its premise Dommermuth described as "Shinto gone wrong"? Actually, yeah, I feel like it's probably Kamigawa.

Really, though, it's 2013's Ancient Greek mythology-inspired Theros that ushered in the modern era of fantasy tourism. Since then, there's been steady releases along similar lines, where it's like a find+replace has been done on all the Proper Nouns for made-up trademarks with similar mouthfeel. Like Disney with its animated features, it feels like Wizards of the Coast is sort of running out of parts of the world to mine for content. Speaking of mining, did you know that Lost Caverns of Ixalan, which returned to MTG's native Mesoamerica-inspired plane, was conceived as an underground set based on the popularity of Minecraft? There's a postcolonialist thread in that set about Quintorious, an elephant Planeswalker who's visiting the plane for research, where as I recall he has something of a crisis of conscience over whether he's just mining this other culture for his own academic success. Quintorious comes from a Harry Potter-inspired set.

And listen, I'm not going to sit here and pretend these sets haven't been meaningful for a lot of people. Increasingly, the team at Wizards has been making sure to bring on cultural consultants, or artists and writers who can draw on their own heritage in crafting the flavour of these sets. Fans seem to be responding well. The graphs are all going up. Last year, Wizards decided to change the name of the 2016 real-world-India-inspired plane Kaladesh (cludged together from Hindi words) to Avishkar, as it turned out one of the words forming the original name had unfortunate connotations. They're making an effort. Again, it's expensive when you get it wrong; you might have to shelve a novel or two.

The truth is that Magic: The Gathering has always been about escapism—or perhaps to use another word, empowerment. The very game itself is about collecting these cards to make a powerful deck that enables you to win. It's quite literally about being able to step out of one world, and into another. It's about evoking the kind of feelings that are rare or absent from our own humdrum lives. In the '90s, it was empowering to a certain kind of dork who got bullied a lot. Now it tries to be empowering for everyone. Check out Daretti's sick wheelchair.

People play Magic: The Gathering all over the world. Of course they want to see themselves represented in the game. If Kamigawa was borne from a place of Orientalism, exoticisation, then newer planes feel like they're at least coming from a place of inclusivity.

III. Agents of Artifice

This post started out because I wanted to review Agents of Artifice, and if it's taken me so long to get to the point, then it's only because I felt it was important to have all this in mind.

See, when I googled "Agents of Artifice EPUB", I didn't find an EPUB, but I did find a tweet observing how Agents of Artifice fans will always have an EPUB to share on the off chance they finally convince someone to read it. Except the way the tweet wrote the words, they weren't praise, it turned them into a cutting insult.

So this was great news for me! Already, I'd found out that there are two types of people, Agents of Artifice fans, and other people, and I was incredibly excited to learn which of these categories I fell into. I had a sneaking suspicion that Agents of Artifice might be a shibboleth for the tension inherent to the MTG playerbase, between the enfranchised players who came up with the game in the '90s—the kind of people who might unironically enjoy a yellowy fantasy paperback, assuming they can read—and, well, everyone else.

It took me a while to get through the book, mostly because I wasn't enjoying it very much for most of it.

From pretty much the word go, the prose is a cut above what I come to expect from MTG fiction:

The ground rolled, and it was not ground. Shifting grays and black—not a color so much as a lack of color—formed a surface scarcely less treacherous than quicksand. Through it, deep beneath it, high above it in what could hardly be called a sky, snaked rivers of fire, of lightning, of liquid earth and jagged water, of raw mana. Colors unseen by human eyes flew overhead, refusing to congeal, soaring on wings of forgotten truths, borne aloft by stray gusts. Mountains of once and future worlds wept tears of sorrow for realities that never were, unchosen futures that no other would ever mourn.

Like, it's not anything to write home about, except by this comparison. "Wept tears of sorrow", c'mon, just say "wept"! Clumsy repetition of the word "future" in that last sentence, too. This extract, from the very start of the book, is definitely a little bit annoying, a little bit affected, a little bit trying too hard. But, like, it's not bad. It's got ideas. It's trying to do something with the English language.

Unfortunately, I don't know, the start of this novel is just a slog. The prologue, quoted above, is told between two deliberately-unspecified figures, making some kind of vague pact; it's like every dogshit prologue you've ever read. After that, we're dropped into our POV character of Kallist, a guy invented just for this novel, so you know he's going to be boring as fuck. And he is! He's completely infatuated with Liliana Vess, the aforementioned Angelina Jolie black-aligned necromancer Planeswalker, and he resents that she seems to be leading him on, which she sort of is. There's a suffocating tinge of male heterosexuality that unfortunately taints the book in many places, not just on an object/plot level, but in the prose itself. Anyway, they've been hiding in a backwater part of Ravnica, the infinite-city plane, but their luck runs out and a mercenary captures them, hoping to track down Jace Beleren, the blue-aligned telepath Planeswalker who's the book's actual protagonist. They escape, and travel across the city to warn Jace.

Then there's a twist!

I wouldn't say that it's a particularly good twist. The rest of this review will necessarily go into spoilers, but just to keep things spoiler-free for now, I'll stop playing hard-to-get and say what I actually think of this book: if you like Magic: The Gathering and like reading, you could do a lot worse than this one. It definitely has its moments.

In fact, what Agents of Artifice has over the rest of it is precisely the fact that it's a novel written to promote nothing in particular, but Magic: The Gathering itself, in the abstract. Beyond the executive mandate that it feature so-and-so characters, it's clear that Ari Marmell is just getting to write whatever the fuck he wants. So there are bits in there that feel like they're not about communicating the mechanical beat-by-beat of someone else's synopsis, but rather are trying to communicate some kind of feeling, drawn from life.

Take Ravnica, for existence. In the game, Ravnica's identity is defined by the ten "guilds", factions based on the possible pairings of the five colors; in expansions set on Ravnica, nearly all the cards fall into one of these guilds or another, and the storylines are defined by inter-guild politics. When Ravnica last showed up in the lore prior to Agents of Artifice, I gather that the plot ended with the guilds collapsing? But a few years later, when the game returned to Ravnica in Return to Ravnica, the guilds were back, because that was what players expected. Agents of Artifice was written with a different status-quo in mind, where the guilds really were gone. The truth is that Ravnica's guilds don't really resemble reality; a city's population just isn't divided into a dozen color-coded factions of equal power and prominence. So here, Ravnica instead has the texture of a real city. Its world-spanning sprawl becomes overwhelming, isolating, alienating; outside of your few friends, there are all of these people who you cannot relate to or connect with in any form, and some of them might want to hurt you, and you feel like you're falling between the cracks in the paving stones, slipping into the gutter. At one point, Jace and Liliana commiserate that, although they could flee to any other part of the multiverse if they so chose, there is a baseline commodity to the city that simply does not exist anywhere. And isn't that how it is, with city life?

Jace and Liliana are these phenomenally unique and powerful individuals, but they can't use their talents, because they're in hiding. The sections of the story concerned with this are defined by a sense of suffocating frustration and impotency, of a feeling that you are destined for great things, to go to great places, but are instead trapped by circumstance. It's about this feeling that you could literally step outside if you wanted, but you can't, you can't, you can't.

And look, I think I just read this novel at the right point in my life, for that to mean something to me. Maybe it would mean something to you too.

Alright, you've had your fair warning. Like I say, this book has a twist, a couple of twists in fact, and while they're not great, the story does hinge on them.

The big spoiler is that Kallist, the POV we're following for the first chunk of the book, is actually Jace, who in a telepathic semi-accident has swapped minds with Kallist, who's been living under the delusion that he's Jace, in turn. When they meet again, the real Kallist (who thinks he's Jace) gets killed, and the effect reverses, so Jace (who, until now, we think is Kallist) remembers who he is and what he's done. At this point, the book makes this big jump back in time to show events from Jace's perspective, as he's recruited by another Planeswalker, the obviously-evil artificer Tezzeret, into a multiversal "Consortium" that seeks to accrue power from across the different planes. That's where he befriends Kallist, a non-Planeswalker assassin. The Consortium pays Jace very well, and his skills as a mage improve under Tezzeret's tutelage, but Tezzeret is an abusive boss who demands increasingly immoral actions from him, and before long, Jace realises that he can't get out. Eventually, there's a line that he refuses to cross, and he decides to go into hiding instead, forced to take Kallist with him as the man is implicated by their friendship. They meet Vess and have a love triangle, but eventually the Consortium tracks them down. Desperate to escape, Jace hatches a plan to carry Kallist with him to another plane, by stealing the man's mind and implanting it into a body on another world, but his abilities fail him, causing their minds to swap instead.

The second big twist, which actually gets revealed to the reader in the form of dramatic irony, is that Liliana actually betrays Jace to Tezzeret at several points in the book; she's the one who leads the Consortium to them, she's one of the unnamed figures in the prologue, who's making a deal to hide her own scheme from Jace's telepathy. I feel pretty confident that if you actually untangled the nonchronological storytelling and put it under a microscope, you'd find that her actions make no fucking sense whatsoever, just in terms of the basic logic. Still, it more or less passes the squint test. The gist is that Liliana wants to take over the Consortium—not to have it for herself, but as payment for Nicol Bolas, the evil dragon Planeswalker who used to run the Consortium, the other figure from the prologue, the only being in existence powerful enough to free her from a demon's curse. She's not powerful enough to beat Tezzeret by herself, so instead she wins his confidence and tries to manipulate Jace into challenging him. After the mind-swap accident happens, she pushes the situation to force Jace and Kallist back together hoping that if Kallist dies, the effect will reverse; she's right. The sections where Jace and Liliana are working together to plot Tezzeret's downfall are the best in the book, easily.

I'm struggling to really boil down the plot here, but I promise that relative to the book's length, surprisingly little actually happens in it. The early sections, first concerning Kallist, then concerning Jace's time in the Consortium, feel almost obligatory, very episodic, like Marmell is going through the motions to get to the bit he's actually interested in. There's a visit to Kamigawa, and to a few throwaway planes invented for this book, which of course in classic MTG media tradition aren't given names.

The thing is that a lot of these terribly mid plot-by-numbers scenes actual pay off within the narrative in surprisingly compelling ways. In a vacuum, the prologue reads as pure dreck, but revisited with the knowledge that the two figures are Liliana and Nicol Bolas... yeah, you know what, Marmell was kind of cooking there! There's an eyeroll-inducing training scene where Tezzeret gets Jace to summon increasingly powerful creatures to fight a horrible jellyfish robot of his, and then at the end of the book, when Tezzeret and Jace fight in earnest, there's another big scene where Jace has to beat an even bigger construct of his, and it's actually entertaining. The excursion to Kamigawa serves to characterise the minor book-only Planeswalker pyromancer Baltrice; you think the payoff is that at the midpoint of the book, Baltrice allows Jace to get away because she owes him for saving her life on Kamigawa. But no, it turns out that the real payoff is at the very end of the book, when Jace reaches his limit and still just can't fucking beat Tezzeret, he ends up luring the weakened artificer to Kamigawa, to let the locals get their revenge for what Tezzeret did to their village.

The truth is that, once it gets going, there's some cool stuff in here. Jace and Tezzeret escape from a heat-seeking monster by deliberately almost freezing themselves to death. Liliana trails Baltrice to Tezzeret's lair by sneaking a phantom into the package she's carrying, then summoning the phantom back from across the Blind Infinities after Baltrice planeswalks away with it. After Jace gets poisoned by Tezzeret, he has Liliana summon a vampire to suck out his blood. Again, at its best, there's this beautiful clash-of-aesthetics, such as when Jace and Liliana fight and scheme their way through Tezzeret's fantasy-factory sanctum.

More often, though, the big, memorable moments are actually times when Jace's power completely fucking fails him. During that first training scene with Tezzeret, where all of his summons just job horribly against the construct, one after the other. When he tries to shield Tezzeret's thoughts from Nicol Bolas, and the dragon just runs circles around him. When he's fleeing the Consortium goons in a crowded marketplace, and winds up accidentally killing a bunch of bystanders by calling a drake to save his own neck, and he feels their dying thoughts all at once. When he botches the mind-swap. Whenever he tries to use an illusion or telepathy on a zombie, or a golem, or some other mindless creature. When he tries to planeswalk away during his fight with Tezzeret, and he finds that he can't. When he still, after everything, just can't quite win.

It's obvious that Marmell is a writer who's cut his teeth working on RPG sourcebooks, because there's a sensibility to his writing that isn't quite at the level of "rational fiction", but which is nevertheless trying to be clever in a gamelike way. There are mechanisms in the world that can be used to contrive and resolve conflicts using oblique means, and even if it doesn't quite make sense, it at least feels like a system of cause and effect.

My favourite bit of descriptive work comes during Jace and Liliana's visit to Nicol Bolas on Grixis, a necromantic plane made out of dead tissue. The prose absolutely luxuriates in the description of a landscape composed of flesh, bone, boils, scabs, and abscesses, crawling with corpses that want nothing more than to kill, and Liliana is right at home there, possessed of more power than she knows what to do with. Goths are fucking crazy, yo. There's this raw-as-hell bit where Nicol Bolas gets one of his clairvoyants to spy on Jace and Liliana as they arrive, and the way she does this is by peeling the cornea from this guy she's been horribly torturing, and placing it in her own eye... and it's not the squick of this moment that got to me, it was the way her partner's like "gee, I'm glad this guy's still got his other cornea for next time, it's such a pain in the ass when we have to stake a new screaming torture shmuck to the ground".

The thing about the the multiverse, what draws me to Magic: The Gathering as a setting, is the idea of a place that exemplifies a kind of emotional reality. What if the rules of a genre were actually baked into the fabric of a world itself? What if you could take a thin slice of experience, and sort of extrapolate out a whole world from that one feeling? Grixis, then, reads as a reflection of Nicol Bolas, villainy taking place on a scale that just cannot be comprehended in a human lifespan, you can look from one horizon to the other and still not see all the corpses. The icy plane where Tezzeret and Jace meet (and flee from) Bolas reflects Tezzeret's cold treatment of Jace, and in turn the moral coldness that Jace has adopted by this point.

This is all just flavour, though. What the book is doing that's interesting, to me, is in those emotional stakes, the character work. Kallist says of Jace at the midway point: "He uses people he should trust, trusts people he should avoid, and avoids people he could use." The clairvoyant says of him: "He walks the intentions of others as easily as he walks between worlds, but knows not his own." Jace is cowardly and indecisive, often an honestly pathetic figure, cringing away from opportunities to change his own situation, making constant moral compromises and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. His solution to conflict is usually to reduce the other person to a vegetative state (that reminds me, in addition to the occasional sexism, you get some light ableism, and some blatant fatphobia with one particular character, just for spice I suppose).

He has this fierce loyalty to Kallist, but Kallist is really just some fucking guy, an assassin who just happens to be nice to Jace, and Jace's self-centred actions directly ruin Kallist's life. Funnily enough, the book at one point goes out of its way to remark that they're not gay, despite their close history, but y'know what, there's such a rich dynamic of mutual debt and jealousy there that it's hard not to be compelled by their platonic interactions regardless. Like I say, Kallist is boring, but as a foil to Jace, he works: he has less power, fewer moral compunctions, and he's happier for it... except of course, to Liliana, Kallist hardly registers. There's an asymmetry to his friendship with Jace, and again, I've had asymmetrical friendships.

As for Liliana, considering the kind of book this is, she gets a surprising amount of interiority, a desperation that drives her, a frustration with Jace, the faintest trace of guilt over her deception. The title, Agents of Artifice, refers most literally to Tezzeret, but Jace and Liliana are also both defined by lies, illusion, and self-delusion. The romantic ambiguity experienced by Kallist (actually Jace) at the start of the book turns out to have multiple explanations, as Liliana knows that he's not entirely Kallist nor Jace, and she's planning to betray Jace anyway, she just has mixed feelings about it. And it's like, yeah, I've liked people and not known if they liked me back.

Tezzeret is a fantastic villain, if a bit too obviously evil from the start, precisely because Jace has a sinking feeling that Tezzeret might really be that bad, but nevertheless hopes (wrongly) that he can be reasoned with. Tezzeret is fallible, occasionally afraid even, struggling to keep his own anger in check, domineering and cruel in a way that few people are. But, y'know, I've had a boss who sucks.

IV. Disempowerment

A while ago, I realised that I was playing Dungeons & Dragons wrong.

I've played with a few different groups of friends, and unfortunately, many of my friends have treated it less like a roleplaying game, and more like a wargame. It's a form of escapism that seeks to populate little labyrinths with subhuman, subsentient creatures who can be slaughtered en masse, their homes looted of everything that isn't nailed down. It's about finding clever ways of killing things, or if you can't come up with something clever, then just rolling the dice, over and over. It's about learning new spells and having the numbers go up, so you can fight and kill in more powerful and complicated ways.

And when I've played Magic: The Gathering, with different friends, they play the card game in much the same way, as an exercise in constructing elaborate combos, turns that take forever, a game of reading cards that say "all creatures", of swinging for lethal.

When I was a teen, my mum would drive me home from D&D, and my dad would always ask, "did you win?" And I would be like, no, Dad, you don't get it, you don't win in D&D, it's not that sort of game. It never sunk in. But I think part of what rankled me about that question was the fact that, on some deeper, truer level, he was right. My friends played D&D to win. Our characters were just representations of ourselves, not as we were, but as we wanted to be.

And I guess I just wanted something different, I was always pushing the games to be different. When the Dungeon Master instructed me to level up between sessions, I would "forget", leave my numbers a little smaller. My hit points remained comically small, even as the monsters grew comically powerful, such that a single hit would always knock me out. My character was a coward, a slimy little creature that would hug the corners, throwing spells and lying out his ass, at once scared shitless and bored out of his mind.

Look, I'm sure you can tell me lots of stories about the Dungeons & Dragons game you played that was nothing like this, where you were actually doing the whole "collaborative storytelling" shebang, building up these character arcs and overcoming your flaws and having things go wrong and, well, roleplaying. I'm sure you had lots of fun. I don't want to fucking hear it. Have you ever listened to someone describe something that happened in a tabletop game? It's like having someone recount a dream at you. It's either fuck boring, narrative white noise, or it's an embarrassingly real glimpse of the person's id.

You could put me in the fuckin' lotus-eater machine if you like, and I would lose my mind, I'd pluck out my own eyes and turn mean, hole up in a cupboard somewhere and kill anything that got close. I don't like myself, and I don't like the things I want, all I've got in me that's any good is a spiteful, righteous energy, half a conscience, I guess, and the jealously-kept dregs of the cleverness that defined me growing up. These days, I mostly just feel stupid, blind to the feelings of others, wasting away.

I think what I'm saying is that, in the end, I liked Agents of Artifice because I saw myself represented in it.

Appendix: The Spreadsheet

I'm not quite ready to share that spreadsheet, because, like, I haven't test-driven it, and honestly am not sure I ever will.

As I alluded to earlier, all these old MTG novels are out of print. I was able to track down Kindle listings for 35 publications, which by my count leaves approximately 50 books which you just can't read, period. Or, like, you can buy someone's dog-eared paperback on eBay, but it'll cost you far more than any of these stories are worth. There's no particular logic to the missing books, apart from the fact that all 12 HarperPrism books are missing (maybe they're tied up with rights issues).

Now, sales figures are a corporate secret, but I'd be interested to know exactly how much money Wizards of the Coasts makes off these ebooks. I wasn't even able to find half of them on the Amazon store without doing some roundabout google-fu. I'm also curious to know what sort of contracts they were written under, if Wizards owns these texts outright (I assume so, that's how it normally works) or if they have to pay a few pennies in royalties to the authors every time someone buys a copy. Especially taking into account that it's easier to, uh, download ebooks free online, they can't be making much, right?

It seems to me that the actual value of paywalling this stuff is that it doesn't meet the editorial standards of today, and "you have to pay a fiver to read this" is a great way to get around the Streisand effect: it's not that there are lost, forbidden MTG novels, they're right there, it's just that no-one is reading them, certainly no-one is paying to read them. Even dating back to the time of their publication, the reviews on the expansion tie-in books are generally merciless. The most common criticism seems to be that jack shit happens in them.

And indeed, that's a product of multimedia storytelling for a game like this, because you have to release ~three products over the course of a year, and a set of randomized trading cards is good at representing a single time and place, not a story with a sequential narrative. This was what MTG was struggling with during the Weatherlight Saga; if the story is on the cards, and the cards all get shuffled, how the fuck is a player supposed to know what order anything's happening in? So instead, narratives in the MTG universe basically got distilled down to this: here's a high-concept fantasy world. There's a big change and the world is put in turmoil. Finally, the world is in a new state. Ravnica has guilds which suffer Dissension until finally the Guildpact breaks. The disparate Shards of Alara undergo a Conflux which results in Alara Reborn as a unified plane. It's less an exercise in plot, and more an exercise in worldbuilding, flavour, because that's all it needs to be. The contract writers get handed off this big-picture outline, and about all they can do is populate the world, ground it in a POV, who futzes around sightseeing until the world-shaking event happens.

So yeah, this place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. I can totally see an argument that there's no reason to make this stuff accessible, because the only result of that would be that the human race wastes more of its precious time on it.

Except it's nothing so intentional, is it? As I say, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to which books are available for purchase, and which don't.

In a similar vein: by my count, there were probably just over a hundred Uncharted Realms short stories published on the Magic: The Gathering website prior to the switch to serialised webfiction. Of those, fifteen have vanished. The website has undergone multiple overhauls and migrations, and pretty much the entire article archive got wiped out, barring a few pieces (such as the serials) which someone made the effort to preserve. As the site was well-trafficked, pretty much everything can be found on the Wayback Machine, though retrieving it is a little tricky as a change to the site's URL schema means you have to know the old schema, the links on the wiki (which got migrated to the new schema) aren't reliably archived.

At a glance, I actually like the new "Magic Story" page. It's organized by year and expansion, beginning with the first serialised arc, Khans of Tarkir. The current expansion is right at the top for easy access. They've even released ebook compilations from time to time.

But, like, I do have some notes.

There's a few ordering issues, first of all. Magic Origins and Battle for Zendikar are swapped, a few of the individual stories are muddled up. Honestly, though, the real problem is just that the page doesn't know what to do with the side-stories. In earlier years, the MTG webfiction consisted of nothing but side-stories, written to complement the traditionally-published books. There was a transitional period where you're getting the serials, but still occasional one-offs furthering the long-term arcs, or even just interrupting the story to promote a supplementary product. For newer arcs, there's an explicit distinction drawn between the main story (divided into numbered "episodes") and the concurrently-published side stories, which are siloed off into a separate list, with no explanation for how they relate to the episodic plotline. I get that from an audience perspective, most MTG fans might just want to follow along with the main arc. And from an authorial perspective, for the most part, one person handles the main arc, and the side-stories are written by other people. But, c'mon! Are we doing multimedia storytelling, or not? Tell me how it all fits together.

The easiest thing for me, then, is to view the webfiction in the article archive from oldest-to-newest, read it that way. But a-ha, not so fast! During the big migration, a lot of the articles appear to have had their dates changed by accident. Currently, you get two random republished Weatherlight Saga stories from The Duelist in 1997, dated to 2007 for whatever reason; there's no indication what they are, both just launch straight into the prose. Then, there's "The Shadows of Prahv, Part 2". And look, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure there should be a "Part 1" somewhere before that.

Ah, but it's not just that the stories are out of order: it's that half of them are in the "Magic Story" category, and a bunch of them are in the "Feature" category. So it's physically impossible to view them all in a single list. And fifteen of them are missing altogether.

Remember how I mentioned that Brandon Sanderson novella? It came out in 2018, and less than two years later, it was taken down. It's been gone for half a decade. It turns out that the reason for this was that Sanderson had requested Wizards release a print edition for charity, and Wizards was like "Sure!", took down the download to push the charity edition, and then never got around to actually releasing the charity edition until now. I mean, hey, these things happen.

To the Wizards webmaster reading this: put me in, coach. Let me at your backend. I promise I'll be good. I'll restore those missing stories, fix the dating and category issues, correctly tag everything by plane and character. I'll curate the one-off side stories at the appropriate places alongside the main arcs. I'll make that shit more readable than it ever was. I'm in it for the love of the game, babey.

Oh, and to the Vorthos reading this, if you want to see the spreadsheet, hit up my DMs. Be nice for someone who's actually read this stuff to check my work, if I end up persevering with it. I've successfully retrieved archive links for the entire run of Savor the Flavor articles from the Wayback machine, a resource that I'm pretty sure doesn't currently exist on the web, I just don't have time to port it to the wiki right now.

And to everyone else, maybe you're wondering if I liked any of the stuff I read. Yes! One short story did stick with me. It's "A Hollow Body", by Aysha U. Farah, from the Phyrexia: All Will Be One arc. Certain followers of mine might recognise that name, and that's because Farah was one of the post-canon Homestuck writers. Indeed, there's clear influence from Homestuck in the short story, most directly in the interesting use of second-person narration. That one's good.

Addendum: please help me budget this. my multimedia product is dying

My friend Sam had this to say about this article:

I'm baffled by the idea of doing a fantasy novel twice a year to coincide with releases for your card game / a thing that sounds really hard to do at any level of quality and also totally ineffective as a marketing tool

It's an interesting point, isn't it? I think it generalises to a lot of these multimedia properties. It's the idea that the story is written almost begrudgingly—something the company is merely obligated to do, because without some kind of story, the product cannot exist. People cannot be made to care about it.

But of course, nobody likes to read, these days. So the question becomes, how do you communicate this story to the audience? The MTG website has experimented with various abridged summaries and recaps and stuff in the past, they've tried adding little flavour cards to the booster packs, or having "Story Spotlights" on cards themselves.

If you read any of the webfiction, it's obvious that what you're reading is no more definitive a window into the MTG universe than the cards themselves. It's as if these are merely facets of some underlying, true, canonical version of events, which exists less in the mind of any writer or game designer, but more in the creative director, the marketer.

Here's another part from that Brady Dommermuth post I quoted earlier:

Please know that across the 66 published Magic novels, we have tried every combination of more/less creative control, more/less time, and more/less money. No combination of those elements guarantees a great novel. (And I'll reiterate that the novels you think are great are generally in the bottom half sales-wise, and the novels you loathe are generally in the top half. There are exceptions.) Great novels are rare, and many of them take YEARS to write.

When it comes to Agents of Artifice, Dommermuth is spot on. It was only Ari Marmell's second novel. He had a lot of creative freedom on it. It didn't do crazy, "sales-wise". In that case, you can see that they just sort of rolled the dice, and got the result they got. As a novel, it's pretty good but not great.

What I think Brady sort of misses, here, is that good writers are good.

Like, again in discussing this piece, the one piece of MTG fiction that any of my pals could bring up was that Sanderson novella. Sanderson is a huge name in fantasy. I've only read extracts of his work, but I understand what he does and why people enjoy it. Of course if you get Sanderson to write a Magic: The Gathering story, people will like it! There's something so laughably backward about the fact that it was Sanderson who came to Wizards of the Coast with that novella. Like, it makes sense, he's at a level of success where you can't really pay him to do that, he was only ever going to do it for free. But Sanderson isn't the only good fantasy writer.

To me, there is something trivially self-evident to the idea that, if you're going to make an expansion themed around a fantasy murder-mystery... then you find an established fantasy murder-mystery writer whose work is well-liked, and you pay them to write a mystery for you.

Well, you can argue, they tried that, when they got Greg Weisman to do the War of the Spark novels, and it backfired spectacularly. Sure. I'd argue, firstly, that Weisman is predominantly a TV writer, not a prose writer, so of course his prose is going to kind of suck. And secondly, if you're bringing on people who aren't already intimately familiar with your property, then editorial really has to be heavily involved to stop stuff like the Chandra thing happening. That's the responsibility of the editor, not the writer.

Magic: The Gathering is a game which relies on building long-term audience investment, people who get hooked with a certain expansion and then will come back for more. You need those people to buy-in not just to the rules and mechanics of the game, but to the creative identity of the game, as well. And so if the expansions are mostly standalone from one to the next, if you're going to be rotating which writer handles the story every single time, to me it seems like a perfect opportunity to invest in the story, and hire authors who've shown they're able to hook readers, have them moonlight for a single storyline that will leave an impression on people. I'm not even talking about traditionally-published writers; the fantasy genre in particular means it's possible to take advantage of the talent in webfiction or Kindle self-publishing. That shit does numbers.

Then again, I guess you don't need to have your own creative identity. If you do enough crossovers, your consumers will always be able to find something they care about in your product. You can just cash in on that existing audience goodwill.

And I guess, if I'm being cynical, maybe that well never runs dry. Even after everyone who saw Star Wars in theaters is dead and gone, maybe the nostalgia machine can chug along still, convince the kids they care about it too, ensure that they too can recognise the icons. There's something timeless about Star Wars, isn't there?

But I don't know, maybe one day the bottom will fall out, and audiences will just stop caring. For me, it feels like in mass media, it's the writing that's consistently undervalued. With movies and TV shows, you have hundreds and thousands of people and millions of dollars involved in getting the look and sound and feel of the thing exactly right... in service of a script that just sucks. Dommermuth is right, that it seems like there's very little correlation between the quality of a story and its popularity; it feels entirely arbitrary. So I guess the numbers don't lie, and it doesn't matter if you invest in good writing or not.

It would just be really convenient for me, personally, if it did matter.

[wanderersrest]

An Abbreviated History of Mecha Part 4.2: A Grand Glorious Gathering (1996-2000)

Welcome back to An Abbreviated History of Mecha! Last time we left off, the Lost Decade had just begun, Gundam got a radical makeover, CLAMP came onto the scene, Takara created a replacement for Diaclone, and Evangelion would begin its run on television. What we'll see now is the rise of a lot of fan-favorite shows in this era, but we will also see the sudden appearance of a third honorary mecha series. We will also see why [adult swim] is going to play a big picture in all of this, as they will begin to get more involved with the production of anime. With all of that out of the way...

Big O!

Showtime!

Pocket Monsters/Pokemon (1996, honorary mecha show 3)

Pocket Monsters, or Pokemon for short, is a multimedia series created by Satoshi Tajiri and the folks at Game Freak, Creatures, and Nintendo that would round out the four anime that would make anime mainstream alongside Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing. The reason why Pokemon is worth mentioning in a series about mecha is due to the nature of a lot of mecha stories, primarily those involving giant robots: Pokemon would grow to eventually become the single largest franchise OF ALL TIME. And as it is a franchise that is aimed primarily at children, this would prove to be one of many things that would help in the decline of giant robot stories, as a lot of the giant robots of old relied heavily on merchandise sales (namely in the form of toys) in order to be successful. Now that Pokemon is in the picture, there is competition, especially since Pokemon's video games would be published by a little company known as Nintendo.

Fortunately, Pokemon wouldn't become the highest-selling franchise of all time just yet. It would take a couple of years for that to happen.

Martian Successor Nadesico (1996) & Martian Successor Nadesico: The Prince of Darkness (1999)

Produced in 1996 by Xebec, Martian Successor Nadesico would be the first series since the original Gundam to really take a swing at subverting and/or deconstructing the giant robot. Primarily a screwball comedy, Nadesico is known for its extensive use of its show-within-a-show Gekiganger 3 (a pastiche of shows like Getter Robo) to foreshadow events that would happen later on in the story.

Nadesico proved to be popular, but that chance of becoming something more would peter out with the release of the Prince of Darkness movie in 1999.

After War Gundam X (1996)

Also releasing in 1996 was After War Gundam X, a series that would suffer from the fact that it would be the fourth Gundam series in a row on television. Not helping things is the fact that Gundam X would infamously have its episode count reduced from the then-standard 50 episodes to 39, and then it would also be moved to the Japanese equivalent of the Friday Night Death Slot.

It would remain in obscurity for years until 2013 when Gundam Build Fighters would feature a protagonist whose primary gunpla kit would help to bring the series back into the spotlight.

The Vision of Escaflowne (1996)

When one thinks of older mecha isekai shows, they are usually thinking of 1996's The Vision of Escaflowne. Escaflowne, unlike its older sister series Magic Knight Rayearth, would feature its giant robots more openly in a truly even blend of mecha action, fantasy adventure, and romance.

Armored Core (1997)

1997 would see the release of legendary game development studio From Software's Armored Core. Featuring mechanical designs by Shoji Kawamori of Macross fame, Armored Core would see the player navigate through a world of high speed mecha action and hair-tearing difficulty that would become a trademark of FromSoft's future games.

Cowboy Bebop (1997)

Cowboy Bebop would be the brainchild of one Shinichiro Watanabe. Released in 1997, Cowboy Bebop would take Japan by storm due to its mix of science fiction with the aesthetics and tropes of the western. Part of Cowboy Bebop's legacy has less to do with its popularity in Japan and more to do with how well it did in the west: which was very well.

Like "Cowboy Bebop was part of what made [adult swim] successful in the early days" well. If the quartet of Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, and Pokemon made anime mainstream, then Cowboy Bebop would be the one that would prove to the mainstream that anime wasn't just for children.

The King of Braves, GaoGaiGar (1997)

Speaking of anime geared for children, 1997 would also see Takara's Brave franchise peak with its final entry: The King of Braves, GaoGaiGar. Acting as an homage to the original Brave Exkaiser, GaoGaiGar would go down in legend as one of the most hot-blooded mecha shows of the 90's, second only to fellow Sunrise production Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Unfortunately, GaoGaiGar would see its viewership falter due to the success of the Pokemon anime, which would bring an official end to the Brave franchise. But it would not be the end of GaoGaiGar's story just yet, as the production staff got to work on another series that would serve as a spiritual sequel to The King of Braves.

Full Metal Panic (1998)

In 1998, the light novel Full Metal Panic! would be published by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Written by Shoji Gatoh, Full Metal Panic would blend elements of giant robot sci-fi with elements of the romance, slice-of-life, and comedy genres. The series would eventually branch out into manga and anime at the turn of the millennium and prove to be one of the big hits of the early 2000's.

While the original light novel along with its manga counterparts would wrap up their stories eventually, the anime would ultimately be abandoned after the release of its fourth season, Invisible Victory, in 2018.

Dai Guard (1999)

What if you took Getter Robo, made it adhere to real-world physics as much as possible, and then have be piloted by a trio of office workers who have to also navigate a lot of corporate red tape on top of the military trying to undermine their endeavors? That's more or less 1999's Dai-Guard in a nutshell. And don't let that fool you: the giant robot is still as cool as any other giant robot, regardless of the hoops the main cast have to go through just to use the damn thing.

Turn A Gundam (1999)

Meanwhile at Sunrise, Yoshiyuki Tomino would return to the directing chair for 1999's Turn A Gundam as a way to celebrate Gundam's 20th anniversary. Turn A would feature a very unique set of mechanical designs courtesy of Syd Mead, who was known for his work on Blade Runner, Tron, and Aliens. This series would also mark the end of Gundam's use of cel animation, as the next Gundam series would be the first to use digital animation. As a result, the animators went all out on Turn A Gundam's animation as a proper send-off to cel-animation.

Unfortunately, while Turn A is often regarded as one of, if not the, best Gundam series, its lackluster performance during its initial run would not be enough to help Gundam out. It wouldn't be until 2002 when Gundam would become a major hit again.

Xenogears (1999)

Directed by Tetsuya Takahashi, Square Enix would release the JRPG Xenogears in 1999. Xenogears would differentiate itself from the competition by combining a combo-based JRPG with giant robots and Gnosticism. A lot of Gnosticism. Unfortunately for Takahashi and company, Xenogears would prove to be a tad bit more ambitious than expected, and boy is that oversimplifying what happened to Xenogears. Suffice it to say that what happened to Takahashi and company to form Monolith Soft under Namco. But, like a lot of other things covered here, that is a story for another time.

Betterman (1999) & The King of Braves, GaoGaiGar FINAL (2000)

Reuniting for a spiritual sequel to The King of Braves, GaoGaiGar, the same animation team would create Betterman. Taking a turn to being darker and edgier than its older brother GaoGaiGar, Betterman would be the basis for the OVA finale The King of Braves GaoGaiGar FINAL adding things like a darker storyline, fanservice, and, weirdly enough, more HOT BLOOD.

Unfortunately, plans for the two series to have a crossover would fall apart as Takara shuttered the Brave franchise for good after GaoGaiGar FINAL. It wouldn't be until about 2018 that the two would finally get to meet in The King of Kings: GaoGaiGar vs Betterman.

The Iron Giant (1999)

Released in 1999 by Warner Bros., The Iron Giant would be the directorial debut of one Brad Bird (the guy who did The Incredibles, among other things). Set in the 1950's, The Iron Giant would tell a story similar to that of the original Godzilla, though in the case of The Iron Giant, the titular character would be treated with much more sympathy due to his earnest attempts at trying to not destroy the town.

The Big O (1999-2003)

Created in 1999 by Sunrise, The Big O was a mecha show influenced by American media like Batman. Helmed by most of the people who worked on the Giant Robo OVA alongside the controversial Chiaki J Konaka, The Big O was supposed to be a more commercial spin on Giant Robo. Which is wild, because the series was cancelled after its first season in Japan.

Fortunately, that little American channel called [adult swim] would come to the rescue and produce the second season, as The Big O was a big success in the US.

For more on The Big O, I'd recommend Argonbolt's video On The Big O.

Throwbots (1999)

And finally, LEGO would release the Throwbots series of toys for their Technic line in 1999. Throwbots would prove to be moderately successful, but it's legacy is most known for being the predecessor to BIONICLE.

Conclusion

And that's a wrap on the 90's. As we have seen, the last two decades have been a big boon for mecha, though this would be soon to pass in the following decades. What we will begin to see in the following decades is a change to how anime in general is produced. You can even see it as early as 1999 with some shows such as Dai-Guard using digital animation as opposed to cel animation. The 2000's will see digital animation become the primary way shows get animated, though there will be growing pains. It should be interesting to note that cel animation doesn't go away in its entirety until 2015 when the last holdout, one Sazae-san, finally gave up the cel-animated ghost.

"The journey was long, but soon I found myself accompanied by a strange man in a black tuxedo. I couldn't tell if he was friend or foe, but he looked like he was about to faint from starvation. I think I remember him saying his name was Van... Van of... I don't remember what his title was anymore, he kept on changing it every time I asked him."

[akkivee]

HAPPY 7 YEARS OF HYPMIC EVERYONE 🎰🥳🎰🥳🎰🥳

to celebrate, i’m just going to list seven moments hypmic irrevocably changed the trajectory of my entire life lmao

1️⃣ buying the lives was probably the best worst thing i could have ever done to myself lmao. by the time i’d realised you could buy them, only the 2nd&3rd lives were out on dvd (they’re bundled together on one set), and though it wasn’t the first hypmic purchase i made, it kicked off the lives obsession lol. the 2nd live in particular blew my mind lol it was the first time most of the cast were on stage for hypmic and i’ll never forget the happy surprise on kijima-san’s face when the crowd screamed along to his call and response parts in drb lol. on top of that, kimura beatboxed live on stage confirming it really was ichiro beatboxing, shiraimu and nozu in lieu of souma-san’s absence gave it their all singing his parts and nozu dropped the sickest freestyle, and the samajuto cigarette kiss was born and so thoroughly rewired everyone’s brains, it just became part of samatoki’s character lmao

2️⃣ this list very easily can be just about the lives lol but i also loved getting to watch them live lol. forever and always 🖕🖕corona but getting to sidestep around abema’s booboo dookie region locks to watch the 5th live set off a precedence for needing to live watch them lmao. it’s probably the snowball that kicked off the avalanche that convinced me to try to go to japan for the first time in ten years, give or take, and bat’s 8th live day two was their most special live yet lmao

3️⃣ ITS NOT A LIVE ITS A STREAM LOL but the moment the kuukou brainrot roundhouse kicked me in the face was watching kuukou’s spirit possess hayama-san in real time lol i would have saved myself from so much heartbreak if i had stayed a matenhoe but nooooooo kuukou had to manifest in his seiyuu and i haaaaaad to watch it happen live and now i’m kuukou’s btch 🙄

4️⃣ wanna know how i became a matenrou stan lol???? jakurai’s voice introducing matenrou to the world in drb and hifumi flexing the love his women give to him makes him filthy rich lmao

5️⃣ i’ve felt a lot of frustration whilst mucking about in hypmic land, but i don’t think i have ever experienced as frustrating emotional rollercoaster ride more than the one hypstage has taken me on lmao!!!!! hypmic sneakily changing their description of the franchise from ‘voice project’ to ‘multimedia project’ when it was announced, okay actually showing a fantastic story despite hypmic’s ‘lack’ of one back in the day, nagosaka getting introduced and giving us simultaneously the best and ‘worst’ depiction of kuukou, only exclude them in the following tracks lmaooo, creating a really cool concept for mixing division pairs with an oridivi only for it to get cancelled like genuinely 🖕🖕covid but rolling up with the greatest comeback in the form of the rep lives where in the middle of the run we were given the best kuukou performance yet, shortly followed by the announcement that everyone was graduating!!!!!!!! but bop 2023 was magical; a fantastic send off to a legendary cast and closure to the pinnacle of stage production and hypmic storytelli— the stage was rebooted six months later in an absolute betrayal that was quite literally assuaged my love for hypmic, hatred for nelke and getting REAL WOMEN on stage lmao

6️⃣ and so like lemme circle back around to bat’s 8th live lmao. do you know how crazy that time was lol???? bat stans threw together a really sick flower display at a local flower shop, crowdfunded to make the lights display in this popular mall in nagoya shine purple for them, bars dedicating drinks for bat and welcoming live goers for an after party drink, day two of the live fell on bat’s 3rd anniversary and a few days prior they dropped the bright and dark mv for hypstage and the hella awesome banquet mv that bat stans ripped to shreds analysing jp bat fans my BELOVED lmao november is truly a bat month lol but anyway the 8th live was a peak time and i miss it daily!!!!!!!!

7️⃣ instead of being really gross and sappy about kuukou or the piece of merch that got me into hypmic lol shoutout to the music like actually lol. dba locked me in the moment i listened to it and i think very fondly of those days going thru the youtube for more lol. gave me a refreshed appreciation for music, esp jp music, got me to listen to more music instead of the couple hundred or so songs i’ve been listening to since i was in middle school LOL. so thanks hypmic, for giving me peak dissociation songs (like tigridia), the hypest shit that had me yelling (like moonlight shadow) and songs that had my heart racing at 3 in the morning and thoroughly unable to sleep lol (can you believe kaigen exists in this world and they let that shit drop during bat vs mtr 6th live and bc the bat seiyuu’s stage presence is just top tier they blew it out of the park frame one and she says the brainrot didn’t truly settle until live watching hayama-san get possessed but the damage was truly done listening to that calced cacophony of noise and in the ensuing silence as hayama-san’s ‘kaigen’ echoed throughout the studio OH IM GOING TO BE SICK—)

[theflagscene]

GMMTV having mostly queer shows on the docket for the next year and a half—there’s still a bunch that haven’t aired yet remember—should not surprise anyone.

There’s still 6 QLs yet to have been aired that they showed us at the 2024 lineup, and 7 heterosexual series as well. So add up what we got today that puts it at what? Like 23 queer series vs 8 straight series, with 2 that are an ensemble casts that have a mix of queer and straight couples.

That sounds like a massive shift from back in 2016 when they had one BL and two hetero series with side BL characters, because ya know what? It is! But you know what else? I don’t give a shit, and I bet most other queer/LGBTQ+ folks don’t either.

I’ve spent my entire life watching movies and tv shows about straight couples, didn’t matter the genre, the characters were always straight. And when I first started seeing fully queer made for tv movies from all around the world in the mid 1990’s most of those were about how wrong it was to be queer, how unacceptable it was, how I was going to burn in hell or die of AIDS or be murdered just for walking outside with my partner. But I didn’t need to see that on my tv, because I lived it already. I grew up in the LGBTQ+ community, my parents fostered two gay sons who grew up to be drag queens, their closest neighbours and friends were queer, they were the only parents around the neighborhood that were safe for queer kids. I watched people die of AIDS, I remember when Mathew Sheppard was murdered, I saw my childhood friend be brought to our house by his mother asking my parents to ‘take him, because his father is gonna kill him’. I’ve lived it and seen it all with my own two eyes.

So you know what, yeah, I wanna see dumb ass gay as fuck romances on my screen. I want shows with messy gays and not a single token hetero, because after the lives the queers have lived, we’re allowed to have some escapism that isn’t a warning that our entire lives are wrong or disgusting or evil.

So bring on the cats, the magic, the sluts and the sassy queens! The cheating, the threesomes, the marriages and divorces. I want it all, even if I don’t personally watch it or enjoy a certain series, I know someone out there will. They will love it and just for that reason alone I will love it as well.

GMMTV is a massive multimedia conglomerate, they have the GMM25 as well as One31 TV channels and hold shares in about three or four other companies/channels, they still make a shit ton of your typical heterosexual series and lakorns. This shift to mainly QLs isn’t wrong, stupid or even all that much of a surprise. Yes, they are doing for the money because they know that currently the QL market is hugely popular. But did anyone ever think of why it is? It’s not just about ‘Y girls’ or fujoshis or whatever else people think, it’s also because of the queers that are finally getting to see someone like themselves in the media. It’s not about a gay guy fetish, because if it was, every GL since FreenBecky walked onto the scene would’ve tanked. No, it’s also because even straight girls/femmes are so fucking tired of the same old shit, the same old guy gets the girl, blah blah, that they wanna see some girls kissing too.

Also this allows so many queer actors, writers and directors to be more open and honest about themselves and their lives, I hope to see more QL performers come out in the future. As queer, trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, all of it. I hope that the the rise of QL media can make it a safer place for queers to exists, in a world so full of hate, let’s just have this one tiny corner that’s barely a splash in the ocean. Because I love our tiny splash, and I hope it continues to be rainbow sparkly for a long time. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

[anonsally]

Day 4 in Australia

Today started off with an unexpected but brief rain shower. But soon after that, Wife and I had a magical experience: we heard a bird making a racket outside so I went to the back door, where I was somewhat stunned to see that the noise was a common myna apparently just alerting me to the fact that there was a laughing kookaburra perched on the fence about 2 meters from me! The myna flew away immediately, having achieved its goal of getting me to come look; but the kookaburra, which really is a sizeable creature, hung out for another minute or so! I'd never seen one so close up. I felt a little like a Disney princess!

We ate an extended, early brunch before heading out to experience some public transit. First we took a bus to the station, then the brand-new driverless metro to the central business district of Sydney. That was pretty great. We got on at the end of the line, at the front of the train. So we could look out the front of the train. At another stop, a family boarded, so we got out of the way to let them stand at the very front; the children were very excited, which was really cute!

We then went over to the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the Cao Fei exhibition. Cao Fei is an artist from Guangzhou (from a family of artists); she was really involved in Second Life in the early days. This exhibition was a sort of immersive multimedia installation exploring themes of everyday life in China, technology, isolation, connection, industrialism, urban planning. There were a number of videos; the ones I watched were mostly depictions of industrial settings (including everyday physical labor) juxtaposed with humans trying to connect with one another or with their dreams, making them slightly surreal. Some of the videos had dance in them. My favorite section was a quieter area inside a "house", which was about the artist's sister Cao Xiaoyun, who was also an artist and had immigrated to Sydney. Some of her colored pencil-on-paper artworks were displayed (very different from Cao Fei's work!), and there was a living room with a TV showing a video about her, including her childhood, her art, her experience as an immigrant in Australia, and her death a couple years ago from cancer. My second-favorite part of the exhibition was a modified "ball pit" consisting of medium-sized foam cubes instead of balls, which was very difficult to move around, making me giggle a lot. I couldn't get Wife or SIL to join me in it, but it was a delight.

Afterwards we had a drink and a snack at MOD. Dining, the bar in that section of the museum. It included an exquisite Crispy Eggplant dish. We left just as another rain shower was ending, and it was very humid. After a bit of a wander in the central business district, we took the train back to a neighborhood near the house and went out for dinner before heading home. The wind had apparently gotten rather intense, as we saw a lot of downed tree branches littering the streets.

Other birds spotted today (without binoculars) included the ubiquitous bin chickens, Australian ravens, Australian magpies, and a sulphur-crested cockatoo.

[project-e-diaries]

1/16/2025

I wrote more today and I reached a personal milestone! 6,000 words! The plot is coming along. I'm a little worried about the pacing. I don't know if I'm going at the right speed, but I'll keep at it anyway. That's a problem I can fix later on. Still, I'm worried everything is going fast. If it is, then I can add in more quiet moments.

As I'm writing, I'm thinking of the opening of Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 2. The reason being, magic has left Emis, or at least, it appears to have left Emis. Evelyn encounters strange things in rapid succession. It makes me think of the strange things that happen during the first few hours of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 and yes, you know it's fantasy, but Sora and Roxas don't know that at first. I guess Kingdom Hearts has influenced me more than I realize. That's not bad, it's just interesting to take note of.

In my heart of hearts, The Emissian Code would be a video game despite the fact that I'm writing it in novel format. One of my friends was like, "Just create a room in Blender and keep adding from there." And I might do that. I genuinely want TEC to be a multimedia project. Like, I don't think it would work solely as a written story. Or maybe, I don't want it to just be a written story. (I love books by the way. They're wonderful.)

I might write diary entries for the siblings to explore them further since there are a lot of them.

[girls--complex]

what brand of sketchbook and pens do u like to use? :]

I mostly draw on anything I can find. Like I do just have a lot of Dollar store notebooks. If I want a multimedia or watercolor type paper pad I will get a canson usually because they tend to be well put together but to me that isn't a sketchbook it's a nice pad of nice paper. And for a nice pen genuinely my favorite is the super fine black posca which is technically a paint marker because it makes crazy irregular lines. Not going to lie tho most of my drawings are on cheap bond and done with cheap ballpoint pens.

I like this type of pen. And I chew the end of the pen, and I have so many and leave them everywhere I go. My Friends call them Morty Pens.

For Monotypes? I started them using more inexpensive brands of Japanese style kozo paper but I switched to bond because I wanted to make a lot of them and even cheap kozo is a bit more than bond. And it turns out the bond works well and because it's very short fibers pressed super hard, it soaks up the ink less and that is nice because I'm using this waterbased speedball ink that dries suuuper fast. The kozo would produce more evn tone but drink it all up off of the plate in one drawing.

I mean, kozo paper is truly magical and the mulberry tree is An Angel sent to man so that we can have the joy of producing beautiful papers for manifold purposes. But I also feel an affinity for cheap, industrial bond because I am born and raised in the technocracy.

Now if you were to work with a press or with a more substantial ink you would probably need kozo because kozo is very strong for how thin it is. For monotypes you would want to use a kozo paper that had relatively short fibers but is toothier than washi. It doesn't have to be a super nice, bespoke sheet, but you should be wary of ornamental sheets versus the ones that are intended for artmaking. Just in my opinion!

Anyway hope that helps.

[creativmindful]

Deepseek vs Google Gemini vs ChatGPT: Which AI Brain Would You Pick? 🌟**

Hey, digital wanderers! Let’s talk about the three AI heavyweights currently vibing in the techosphere: *Deepseek, **Google Gemini, and **ChatGPT. They’re all brainy, but they’ve got *very different personalities. Let’s break it down like we’re judging a talent show (but for robots). 

---

### *1. Deepseek 🧠* 

*The Niche Genius* 

Born in China’s tech labs, Deepseek is like that friend who aces calculus and writes code in their sleep. It’s laser-focused on *technical tasks*—think data analysis, coding help, and hyper-accurate research. Need to debug Python at 3 AM? Deepseek’s your caffeine-free fix. 

*Strengths:* 

- *Code whisperer*: Fixes errors, writes scripts, and explains algorithms like a patient tutor. 

- *Data wizard*: Crunches numbers and spots trends faster than you can say “spreadsheet.” 

- *Minimal fluff*: Straightforward, no chit-chat (unless you beg). 

*Quirks:* 

- Not the best at creative writing or casual banter. 

- Still learning non-English languages. 

*Best for:* Developers, analysts, and anyone who dreams in binary. 

---

### *2. Google Gemini 🤖* 

*The Smooth Operator* 

Google’s answer to “What if AI could do… everything?” Gemini is the ultimate multitasker. It’s baked into Google’s ecosystem (Workspace, Search, etc.), so it feels like that one friend who’s weirdly good at organizing your life. Plus, it’s *multimodal—meaning it *sees, hears, and talks (yes, you can yell at it). 

*Strengths:* 

- *Ecosystem king*: Syncs with Google tools like Docs, Sheets, and your soul (just kidding… maybe). 

- *Multimedia maestro*: Analyzes images, videos, and audio. Show it a meme, and it’ll explain the joke. 

- *Safety first*: Google’s strict guardrails keep it PG-13 (no existential crises here). 

*Quirks:* 

- Can be overly cautious (avoids spicy opinions like a toddler avoids broccoli). 

- Still rolling out, so some features feel like a “coming soon” trailer. 

*Best for:* Google loyalists, students, and anyone who wants AI to handle their errands. 

---

### *3. ChatGPT 🎨* 

*The Creative Chaotic* 

The OG crowd-pleaser! ChatGPT is like that artsy friend who writes poetry, roleplays as a pirate, and occasionally makes up fake historical facts. With GPT-4 (and plugins!), it’s a Swiss Army knife of creativity and chaos. 

*Strengths:* 

- *Storyteller supreme*: Writes novels, jokes, and fanfic about sentient toasters. 

- *Customizable*: Plugins let it book flights, analyze PDFs, or teach you piano. 

- *Personality++*: Sassy, empathetic, or professional—you pick the vibe. 

*Quirks:* 

- Sometimes hallucinates (e.g., “Shakespeare definitely wrote Star Wars”). 

- Requires clever prompting to avoid rambling. 

*Best for:* Writers, curious minds, and anyone who wants AI with ✨rizz✨. 

---

### *So… Who Wins?* 

- *Need to code?* Deepseek. 

- *Living in Google-land?* Gemini. 

- *Want creativity + chaos?* ChatGPT. 

Or just rotate all three and feel like an AI CEO. 

*Poll time!* Which would you trust with your to-do list: 

🔵 Deepseek’s precision 

🟠 Gemini’s Google magic  🟢 ChatGPT’s chaotic charm 

*Visual vibe:* A doodle of three robots arm-wrestling on a laptop keyboard, with coffee cups labeled “CODE,” “SEARCH,” and “ART” spilling everywhere. 🌈✨

[itsleyally]

Entry#1: Love at First Sketch

Like a person would fall instantly for someone in just one glance, art had already bewitched me from the moment I experienced drawing for the first time. 

It all started in the past, I remember watching my mom work on beautiful illustrations. She was so elegant at doing her drawings that it kept my childhood self guessing how she even did those with perfection. As a nosy youngster, I was also curious enough to be meddling with her things when she was out of sight. I tried to mimic how my mom would hold one of her pencils and copy her facial expressions, mocking her so innocently. I then began moving my hand through the air, as if I were making colorful strokes on an imaginary canvas. After all, I’d been told not to waste paper, so what else could I do?

I did get caught in the end. But thankfully, my mom didn't mind at all. Instead, she found it funny and charming at the same time and thought that her daughter would also want to follow what she loves to do. By then, she had already prepared a sketchpad for me, and looking at it was sure a sparkling sight. From that moment on, I was completely hooked. The feel of the pages turning, the endless possibilities of what I could create—It was like a connection meant to be. It did feel that way when I looked at its number of blank pages, having to claim the sketchpad all to myself. And that specific day marked the beginning of my love affair with drawing. Holding that pencil in my small, inexperienced hands felt like a magic wand when I scribbled on the first page. And guess what? My very first drawing made me so proud at the time! Even though looking at it now seems awful, I knew my young self was totally in love with it. 

Ballerina: My first ever sketch as a child

As the years passed, my love and dedication for drawing continuously developed and became stronger. I grew up filled with lots of sketchpads in my room, each one contained with memories and improvements from the previous one.  My mom who had always been so supportive even put up a mini art gallery in the house, displaying our favorite artworks from each past year as a beautiful reminder of our artistic accomplishments together. 

Our Art Gallery & my other most beloved artworks

The onset of the pandemic, however, led to a dramatic shift in my creative journey. With the world suddenly put on hold for a few years, those times I was trapped indoors with my sketchpads and art supplies surrounding me, I found myself with an abundance of time to explore my craft. While I still enjoyed traditional drawing, I started exploring digital art as a new creative outlet. Seeing the stunning work of digital artists on social media inspired me to try it out for myself. At first, it was intimidating—the endless number of tools was overwhelming. But before long, I also became hooked on it. The ability to undo and experiment with different tools, brushes, and colors at the touch of a button was liberating and I came to love it even more when I got to use a stylus and a drawing tablet.

Some of my digital art creations

Looking back, I never thought art would lead me to be the person I am today. From the first sketch I made as a child to the digital masterpieces I am now creating, my love for drawing has only grown stronger since the moment I picked up my first pencil. The skills and techniques I’ve developed over the years have not only been a source of personal fulfillment but have also opened up new opportunities for me to pursue a career. As a college student studying in the field of Multimedia Arts, I am grateful to have the chance to continue exploring my passion and share my art with others. Whether it be traditional or digital art, I know that drawing will always be a part of me, shaping my life and creative expression in countless ways. 

[thelediz]

Sonic Underground watch along

Because… madness, is why. Almost twenty goddamn years ago, I started writing a crossover between the absolute worst piece of Sonic media ever and the games. That fic is The Lost Prince. I am maybe like… two or three chapters from finishing it. TWENTY YEARS AND THREE CHAPTERS. And I have no motivation. You cannot understand the pain this causes me.

So I’m watching the worst piece of Sonic media again in search of inspiration.

And I’m going to talk about it while I do it.

(Normally, I do things like this over on lediz-watches, but because this is specifically to explain some of my headcanons and inspire my writing, it’s here)

So let’s set the scene, first. This has become somewhat common knowledge in Sonic Tumblr fandom these days, but bear with me, because it’s important context.

(Also, the next paragraph is going to get me more death threats because I CERTAINLY HAVEN’T GOTTEN ENOUGH OF THOSE FROM THIS FANDOM, but we’ll carry on anyway because it’s important context)

Once upon a time, there was a cartoon series called Sonic the Hedgehog, now known as SatAM for reasons mostly relating to its timeslot. Sonic the Hedgehog was perfectly acceptable grimdark 90s environmentalist children’s programming which due to classic 90s multimedia marketing strategy also gave rise to the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics. It got cancelled on a cliffhanger because that was the kind of thing that happened in the 90s where writers thought FOR SURE a cliffhanger would spare them from the dreaded 2-season contract. (It never did.)

The reason this matters is because the production house maintained the licensing rights to that particular branch of franchise. And they needed a quick cash grab.

For some reason which I will never understand, this spawned Sonic Underground, which is… an insane premise, cheap animation, surprisingly not terrible songs, and a handful of voice actors getting milked for every inch of their three-voice contracts.

Sonic is a prince! He has siblings that are TOTALLY NOT knock-off Princess Sally Acorn or Miles Tails Prower! They have magic necklaces! They save the day with music! Don’t notice the statues of King Max Acorn in the background! Knuckles’ grandfather from the comics is there! Knuckles has magic! The Floating Island has guns! Totally don’t pay attention to the fact that both the episodes and music tracks have separate licensing that will cost the networks extra! No we don’t have time to check for animation errors! ALSO let us use highly complicated political socio-economic difficulties of enlightenment and industrialism as world building BUT DON’T NOTICE WHAT WE’RE DOING just accept the ones we say are bad are bad and the good guys are good! Good? Good. Great.

It is a trashfire.

I adore it.

I have no excuse.

I do, however, have wine.

Let’s go, kids.

Sonic Underground 01: Beginnings

The plot (for want of a better word): Once upon a time, Queen Aleena of Mobius ruled a beautiful world kingdom city (?) and had three lovely babies: Sonic, Sonia, and Manic. An evil industrialist named Ivo Robotnik came out of nowhere and took over her city world kingdom (?), turning all the aristocrats evil. In desperation, Aleena turned to the Oracle of Delphi I mean Delphius who told her that she must hide herself and her children away, until they could reunite as the Council of Four and enter a glorious New Age.

This episode is about the three children growing up, realising they have siblings, magical music, and the much less exciting fact that they’re once and former royalty, and coming together through The Power of Harmony.

Now, this episode immediately showcases what I love about The Trashfire: its background worldbuilding. You are not supposed to notice the worldbuilding, but it’s there and it’s amazing.

Realistically, Aleena would have been an absolutely terrible queen. I am not in the least bit surprised her aristocrats followed Robotnik, who promoted science and industrialisation and then sold them cheap labour. Honestly. Compare that to –

The facsimile of the Hanging Gardens, right there in the first twenty seconds. The HANGING GARDENS. Beautiful, yes. Legendary, absolutely. Would I have loved to see it? Hell yes! A good use of time or resources or indeed environment? HAH. MEANWHILE –

Slums! I don’t care what your artistic imagery is telling me, those tight dark alleyways you’re running down were there before Robotnik took over, your majesty. And you’re wasting tax payer dollars mobiums on THE HANGING GARDENS.

Manic was supposed to go to a middle-class family – you can tell by the clothing of the person that comes to the door. And he’s immediately stolen. Don’t question why a thief would steal a baby (there are so many things we must not question), but notice that it took all of ten seconds. The crime rate in her supposedly perfect city is CRAZY.

Side note: Manic was supposed to go to a middle-class family! The triplets should have gone aristocrat-middle class-working class, but instead we skipped straight from aristocrat to working class and then down to thief, but Aleena NEVER INTENDED to teach her children about the underclass.

Is Mobius a kingdom? Is it a world? We don’t know. We will never know. It Just Is, and Robotnik rules it, while Aleena used to rule it. Stop asking questions.

Music is illegal. This is a real thing that has happened in fascist communities, by the way, usually as a way of controlling the youth. And yet Sonia and Bartleby are out looking for an illegal club. Bartleby is bitching the whole way, but he’s there and he’d looking because it makes Sonia happy and it says SO MUCH about the spineless little worm. I love him.

Anyway. Onto my episode notes:

These character designs. What are these character designs… In my fic I call the alien-looking thing mixes, and say it's what happens when too many super classes (like... canine, feline, fish, etc) interbreed, but really it's just WEIRD.

Goddamnit, I hate Sonia. Not because of her character itself – she is… fine. But I hated GRRL Power even when I was the target audience of it, because of reasons that I can and probably will eventually go on for hours about. But basically, I mostly just hate that she’s perfect at everything, and her only flaws are being bossy and over emotional. It’s not real character, it’s not real personality, and I hate it.

Oh. A thing I’d forgotten. Sonic Underground’s one and only positive influence on other Sonic media: this was the first western animation that gave the hedgehogs more than three spikes. Probably because 3D games were also coming and going to make it A Thing.

Also: Sonic’s Tragic Backstory! I make so much of these foster parents for so many reasons.

But uh… yeah, starting the first episode with the out of place smiles during emotional moments… Sonic and Chuck smiling blandly as the only home Sonic’s ever known burns to the ground in front of them…

Imagine if you’d never read the comics or watched SatAM. Uncle Chuck and his dump-base would be a such a strange thing to see…

Oh, wow… Sonic’s reaction to the Oracle of Delphius’s nonsense. “I’m a prince? Weird. I’m a BROTHER? HOLY CRAP!”

Poor Sleet and Dingo. They never wanted to be evil, but they’re… not even very good at it…

THE SONG: Someday. Meatloaf pop eat your heart out. You would never believe that this was actually a pretty good storyboard match for some legit music videos at the time.

Seriously, Oracle, you could have stopped all of this by just stabbing him instead of warning him. You aren’t a good guy. Don’t pretend to be.

The instrumental song! Legit Sonic music. In fact, this gives serious Sonic and the Secret Rings vibes… I demand more than thirty seconds.

“Oh no, my family has been captured and turned into a robot! But you say my necklace is MAGIC? Fascinating…!”

I mean, look. I can’t defend this thing. I won’t defend this thing. Even when I was a kid, I knew it was terrible.

But I’m having fun anyway.

Normally, on these posts, I'll do one at a time because I've just realised how LONG these are, but the first three episodes are really just an hour-long conjoined episode. And things like that are s why I know at least someone in the producer's studio legitimately thought the Trashfire was a good idea. They were wrong.

Anyway. Sonic Underground 02: Getting to Know You

The plot (for want of a better word): the three siblings set out as directed by the Oracle of Delphius. They encounter a trainer who teaches Sonic how to stop, Sonia how to spin, and Manic how to do cool tricks with his drum sticks that he will barely use throughout the series. Mostly, it’s an episode that introduces some overarching themes, like Sonic being impulsive and irritable, Sonia being prissy, Manic’s insecurities, the divide between proper girl and stinky boys, and that while the triplets will tease each other constantly, it’s always all for one if someone else comes after them.

…That made it sound much sweeter and better than it actually is.

Dingo… she’s not that pretty, and don’t let Sleet tell you you’re ugly. You’re both 90s villains. I’m sure someone’s made Rule 34 fanart of you.

Oh hahaha Sonia’s so out of touch, thinking there’s a maid and that a mouse is terrible ahahano. GUYS.

Look, I hate Sonia, I do, but I have to give her props that Sonic and Manic don’t. Two hours ago she was a sheltered aristocrat’s daughter, she’s stating her expectations, and when Sonic shuts her down she makes a quick joke and gets on with things. I appreciate the pragmatism. I will give her that.

Look, Sleet, you gave Dingo an instruction and he followed it. Don’t act surprised. (Spoiler warning: He will continue to be surprised.)

Okay, this is a weird thing that the show will play with occasionally. Sonic and Sonia trade off mission-focus tunnel vision all the time. Usually when they want the other one to seem flighty or impatient respectively. But Sonia loses her props for not just getting to the point when their lives are on the line.

And then the boys lose it for being Idiot Boys despite the conversation.

Ah, Sonic Undgeround’s weird timelines. How I’d forgotten them. Side note, I also have trouble with pacing and timelines when writing The Lost Prince, so I probably can’t blame it. But here, they’ve been walking for two days, and Sonia is only NOW asking what Manic did for a living.

(also, notice that even Sonia, sheltered aristocrat that she is, thinks everyone of their age should have a proper job. They are somewhere between the ages of twelve and sixteen, folks! I make way too much of this!)

Gondar. Is certainly not voiced by the same guy as Robotnik, I’m sure.

No one questions why Sonic has super speed. This is not considered to be his ‘hidden talent’. For Reasons.

Manic’s ability to make drum sticks fly around will never be mentioned after this episode, to my memory.

Three days plus however much training time… and Robotnik is only just now figuring out the map they found? Apparently the super genius can’t read.

Ahh, Manic’s insecurity. So very well founded. He’s right, I’d argue – Sonic’s speed and Sonia’s… whatever that spin thing is, they are both so much more powerful than being able to throw sticks. And this isn’t even Sokka in the Last Airbender thing, the sticks are basically useless and will continue to be so. His actual power (SPOILERS) is over the earth, to the point that the whole stick thing is a weird addition from the get-go.

I’ll be honest with you, the monks and the invisible stairs are the only things I ever remember from this episode, because it’s such a weird visual that isn’t important in any way.

Sonic implying less than 100% American heterosexuality counter +1

Okay, so this is another running theme with the series, where they’re going to say Sonic’s impulsiveness is a huge problem, but the times when it isn’t, he won’t do anything different, it will just be that either Sonia tells him what to do, or he suddenly shows far more battle skill than he does when the impulsiveness is a problem. This is a common thread in Sonic media, actually, and it always kind of annoys me because they never do it well. Everything is always Sonic’s fault, except when it isn’t. Yes, this is why I still haven’t gotten around to watching Sonic Prime.

The SONG: Working Together, in which 60s rock would like their style back, thanks

…Wait, that was it?

Oh, yeah, in a better show this would have been the second third of a long first episode, RIGHT.

Sonic Underground 03: Harmony or Something

The plot (for want of a better word): After having discovered Manic’s power over the earth, the triplets are told Sonic’s friend Trevor is in danger. They abandon their training to rescue him, only to uncover a scheme to hunt down the Oracle of Delphius! The triplets must think quickly and work as a team to save everyone!

Once again, Sonic being cranky disrupts the harmony and causes problems. 90s Sonic was always so cranky…

A bit of world building here again, that you surprisingly are supposed to notice: elementals (of which dragons apparently count) are a thing, and apparently common-place enough that they teach it in school. Now, the way the conversation is phrased, you’re supposed to think Sonic’s stupid for not knowing about it, but Sonia is the only one that does. This is absolutely where I got the idea that she’s the only one of the three that went to school. Which would make sense in context, but I am thinking way too hard about it…

“Control of the earth can set off powers beyond your control”… this will never come up again. Manic, you could have had such an epic character arc of growing arrogance and humility… Instead I have to think too much about it and read into Manic’s insecurity and make him into A Nice Guy and ughhhh I am such a problem.

“I have also learnt that you might have the biggest heart in the world” – this is about Sonic, and while I agree with this characterisation in general, I have not seen it in this series, and certainly neither has Sonia. But we move on.

 Jeez… yeah, Bartleby’s a sleaze and a problem, but again, put a little reality on this situation and he’s actually worth his salt. He ‘walks the fine line’ as per Sonia’s words, and is immediately threatened by the sight of a woman who was his social equal (if not better) having been robbed of her sentience and turned into a slave, and he still does nothing worse than continue to walk the fine line. He’s a jellyfish, but the man’s got integrity.

Dingo, in contrast, is a creep, and Sleet’s insults make like, no sense

Once again, Sonia knows all the things. Hacking, flying jets, this will keep happening… If a skill is needed, Sonia will have it, as a good 90s female. God, I hate her character type.

Manic… seriously, man, mortal peril is not the time to play around, but Sonia, snarking at Sonic during mortal peril is also not appropriate

And the first of Aleena’s guilt tripping holograms! Hooray!

THE SONG: Birds of a Feather… oh, the… the early 90s pop nostalgia… oh ouch… it hurts…

 …I appreciate Sleet’s pragmatism. It never works out for him, but I appreciate it.

Sonic implying less than 100% American heterosexuality counter +1

Aleena… Oracle… it… I get prophecy, but… you’re RIGHT THERE. Reunite! Save us the next 37 episodes and the unresolved ending! Or at least tell the kids to stop looking until they’re ready. Come on.

The prophecy is obnoxiously vague, by the way. In this episode, it’s… arguably implied that the triplets need to learn to be better before they can be given their rightful place as rulers, but I would argue that in 40 episodes, the show takes absolutely no steps to improve their characters and make them better leaders. And as I said last time, Aleena is implied to have been not great to begin with. So CLEARLY my solution to this whole problem is change the last two minutes of this episode.

But that was the opening movie! Ridiculously too fast-paced for what it was trying to do, terrible animation, amazing world-building, interesting characters, acceptable dialogue. Welcome to the Trashfire that I have loved for half my life.

Come back tomorrow if you want to know more!

[rpgsandbox]

Tired of the hassle of maintaining multiple miniatures, searching for the right one, dealing with lost or damaged pieces, carrying bulky cases, and constantly needing new miniatures for each character?

Introducing Doppel, the revolutionary digital miniature that transforms your gaming sessions into epic adventures filled with immersive sights and sounds. Say goodbye to traditional miniatures and hello to a new era of gaming excitement.

Doppel isn't just another gaming accessory — it's a gateway to a vibrant world where your characters come to life. With Doppel, you'll unlock access to hundreds of dynamic characters all in one sleek device. Compatible with the leading RPG games, Doppel elevates your gaming experience like never before.

Picture this: as game day arrives, your character's portrait illuminates the Doppel screen, instantly setting you apart at the gaming table. Whether it's the enchanting melodies of magical chants or the thunderous clash of swords, Doppel's immersive sound effects will captivate everyone in the room as you take your turn.

But Doppel offers more than just visual and auditory enhancements. With the intuitive app you can access your character's information with a few taps of the screen. And with the turn assistant feature, you'll never miss a beat, ensuring you're always ready to seize the moment. With Doppel, the power to switch between characters seamlessly gives you the freedom to embody any miniature you desire. 

Doppel is more than just a gaming accessory; it's a digital miniature that brings your characters to life, immersing you in a vivid world of adventure.

Picture this: as game day arrives, your character's portrait illuminates the Doppel screen, instantly setting you apart at the gaming table. Whether it's the enchanting melodies of magical chants or the thunderous clash of swords, Doppel's immersive sound effects will captivate everyone in the room as you take your turn.

But Doppel offers more than just visual and auditory enhancements. With the intuitive app you can access your character's information with a few taps of the screen. And with the turn assistant feature, you'll never miss a beat, ensuring you're always ready to seize the moment. With Doppel, the power to switch between characters seamlessly gives you the freedom to embody any miniature you desire. 

Doppel is more than just a gaming accessory; it's a digital miniature that brings your characters to life, immersing you in a vivid world of adventure.

Elevate your gaming immersion with Doppel's built-in speaker, designed to amplify every moment of your adventure. Dive into a rich soundscape as character-specific sound effects resonate from the device, from the thrilling clash of swords to the mystical murmur of incantations. And that's not all! Doppel lets you upload your own custom sounds!

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Designed by gamers for gamers, Doppel understands exactly what you need for an immersive gaming experience. Its compact design fits into a standard 1×1 inch grid, and its no-slip base ensures stability during those intense gaming sessions.

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[bisque-firedvampire]

Head canons for Multimedia-Morbs

TAS: is the only: Romanian, one with both parents, one not sick, and one without a doctorate. He does impress everyone with his palm suckers (it’s more scientific curiosity than anything). Also surprises the rest by being friendly with blade and black cat. Is the closest to being an actual hero.

Ultimate: was probably raised by his father, it would explain a lot; his ethics, posh English accent, penchant for being backstabbing etc… he would be secretly jealous of the others for having love interests and/or dead bestfriends (he didn’t have a Nikos or Martine). Could be considered the token evil teammate, but he’s only ever been as successful long term as dr.doofensmirtz, so… practically harmless? he Is definitely the worst at teamwork, or even partnership. Gets made fun of for his life draining ability.

616: all the comics have happened to him, so he is tired and just wants to settle down with the lizard as a lab partner. Still has every version of his costume though, even the 90s one (is surprised to see that TAS and Movie’s costumes reference it). His power set and personality slightly change depending on which costume he wears. Probably ties with Midnight Son for knowing the most other superheroes. Is aware that he should probably be in his 80s or 90s if it weren’t for comic book time dilation.

Blood ties: never progressed past the stories in vampire tales, so is very confused when 616 Michael references things after them. He is very happy to know that he’ll eventually reunite with martine; no one tells him about the 90s out of kindness. His suit is navy and red where 616’s is black and red. He considers 616 to be his future, but really they’re more like divergent timelines.

Midnight Son: uses the literal deck of cards from the game to do his moves (he doesn’t think anything of it cause that’s just ‘how it works’), the others make fun of him for it. Probably has more costumes than 616 does, but they don’t really do anything (except for the yellow midnight Sun one having magical properties). He ties with Movie for being the handsomest (he wins prettiest vampire, movie wins prettiest human). Also, confuses the heck out of 616 whenever he talks about who is and isn’t on the midnight Sun’s roster (midnight suns the game and midnight sons the comics are very different). Is probably the best at teamwork.

Movie: is confused why everyone has Nikos as a childhood friend while he had Milo (isn’t sure which is better; dead best friend or evil best friend…?). Is slightly smug about being able to do the face thing. Baffles everyone by not knowing who Spider-man is but still knowing about Venom. Has a meta awareness of how poorly he stacks up to the rest of them; most of the others are impressed by his power set.

[beatle-yee]

what do you think of this alternate timeline where gen 4 of the rockafire gets released in the early 00's?

Rockin' into the New Millennium: Gen 4 Rockafire Explosion (Early 2000s)

In this alternate timeline, Creative Engineering Inc. unveils their most ambitious project yet: Gen 4 of the Rockafire Explosion in the early 2000s. This iteration explodes onto the scene, pushing the boundaries of animatronics and entertainment while staying true to the band's original spirit.

Technological Spectacle:

Servo Revolution: Gone are the limitations of hydraulics. Gen 4 boasts advanced servo motors and early AI, enabling lifelike movements, fluid dance routines, and expressive facial features.

Immersive Stage: Lasers, synchronized lighting, and interactive projections transform the stage into a multimedia extravaganza. The audience becomes part of the show, triggering effects and animations through touchscreens and voice commands.

Musical Evolution: The band's repertoire expands beyond classic rock, incorporating popular hits from the 2000s, remixing their own classics, and even dabbling in genre-bending mashups.

Holographic Collaborations: The show features special guest appearances, not just with live musicians, but also with holographic projections of iconic music legends, creating a mind-blowing visual experience.

Character Evolution:

Amplified Personalities: While retaining their core traits, the characters' quirks are cranked up to eleven. Billy Bob becomes the ultimate hype man, Looney Bird's inventions become even more outrageous, and Dook's spacey antics reach interstellar levels.

Dynamic Costumes: Their iconic looks get a modern makeover, incorporating trends of the early 2000s. Rolfe dons a hip-hop-inspired outfit, Mitzi rocks a colorful cheerleader uniform with a futuristic twist, and Fatz sports a bold new hairstyle.

Individual Showcases: Each character receives dedicated solo segments highlighting their unique talents and personalities. Fatz showcases his beatboxing skills, Rolfe pulls off impressive magic tricks, and Mitzi leads the audience in interactive dance routines.

Beyond the Stage:

National Tour: The Rockafire Explosion embarks on a nationwide tour, performing at major venues and children's festivals, captivating audiences across the country.

Interactive Website: A dedicated website allows fans to interact with the band virtually. They can vote on song requests, play online games featuring the characters, and even submit their own jokes and ideas for future shows.

Merchandise Mania: A wider range of merchandise is released, including plush toys with hidden voice chips that play iconic soundbites, video games featuring the band in interactive adventures, and behind-the-scenes documentaries showcasing the creation of Gen 4.

Showbiz Transformation: Showbiz Pizza undergoes a complete overhaul, becoming a themed entertainment complex. Interactive exhibits allow guests to learn about the history of the Rockafire Explosion and even create their own mini-animatronic characters.

But it doesn't stop there:

Animated Series: A new CGI-animated Rockafire Explosion series airs on popular channels, introducing the band's adventures and humor to a whole new generation of fans.

Theme Park Attraction: A dedicated Rockafire Explosion ride is built at a major theme park, transporting guests on a thrilling musical journey through the characters' world.

Charity Partnerships: The band partners with children's charities, donating proceeds from merchandise sales and even hosting special benefit concerts.

This is just a glimpse into the possibilities of Gen 4 Rockafire Explosion in the early 2000s. This timeline shows how the beloved characters could have evolved and adapted to a new era, staying relevant and engaging for a new generation of fans. What other exciting twists and turns would you like to see in this alternate timeline? Perhaps a virtual reality concert experience, a robotic pet version of Billy Bob, or even a Rockafire video game with interactive stories? The possibilities are endless!

Actually an interesting concept however this timeline does expand on what would happen if we were past Gen 2. Since this is in the early 2000’s I could see them sporting that cool look like CEC avenger era plus them expanding into theme parks is also and unique concept.