#Hardboiled Heavies

[kaos-mass]

[fusions-hardboiled-artshack]

Today marks 3 god forsaken years since I’ve became obsessed over these freaks. Aughh the creatures…

Context for the one with the reddish/pinkish background, to me it looked like they are looking down at you after you died, they are welcoming you to hell.

And the drawing that started it all.

[sanitrance]

I never realized I hadn’t posted this fellow here before.

Heavy King from Sonic Mania in traditional pens. I really love the Hardboiled Heavies, they’re such fun characters. :)

[not-available-for-comment]

Always forget how much I love roasted seaweed until I’m making these bowls and adding like. 2-3 times the recommended amount. 😄

One of my favorite hot weather dinners, and good for this weekend since I seem to have wrecked my stomach with stress this week.

I got imitation crab stick to put in it last night, and some frozen shrimp scampi to put in it later, but I might try and hunt down some smoked salmon and avocado too. Just really craving cold smoky creaminess right now.

[a-hardboiled-heavy-a-day]

It’s like 5 am for me but ITS HAPPENING!

ITS FINALLY HAPPENING!

GUYS!?!

THEY ARE BACK!

It’s all of them too not just one or two but all of them, Jimmy as well.

I’m going to draw a wonderful drawing for this momentous occasion!

[countesspetofi]

Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, Part 2 of a double feature! This episode had so many good shots of the Star Trek star, and so many Trek connections, that trying to put it all in one post would have made it way too image heavy.

James Doohan guest stars in "Expanding Human," episode 4 of the second season of The Outer Limits (original air date October 10, 1964).

Jimmy plays a hardboiled police detective investigating a series of crimes linked to a university science lab where the faculty and students have been experiencing with mind-expanding drugs. One of the professors has been using himself as a guinea pig and ends up in a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation where he gains superpowers but loses his moral compass. The drugs wear off at an inopportune moment during a hostage situation that turns into a fatal shootout with Doohan's police colleagues.

Other Trek connections:

Jason Wingreen, who plays the police coroner here, can be seen as the doomed scientist Dr. Linke in the Star Trek episode “The Empath.” He was also the original voice of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back, before his lines were redubbed in 2004.

Peter Duryea, who played navigator José Tyler in the Star Trek pilot The Cage" and its repackaged version “The Menagerie,” appears in “Expanding Human” as one of Dr. Clinton's inner circle of students.

Doohan's assistant, Detective Sgt. Alger, is portrayed by Troy Melton. He did stunt work on several episodes of Star Trek, and also played an unnamed Eminian guard in "A Taste of Armageddon."

The narrator of The Outer Limits, known as "Control Voice," was prolific voice actor Vic Perrin. He provided voices in three episodes of Star Trek, including that of Nomad in "The Changeling," and appeared in a fourth as the leader of the Halkans in "Mirror, Mirror." He was also the original narrator of Spaceship Earth when it opened in EPCOT Center in 1982.

[randomthefox]

Second of all I don't like how the Hardboiled Heavies are talking. Or how they're talking.

I hate this comic

[sonic-hot-takes]

New Sonic media needs to introduce more heroic male characters to the lineup.

Normally I like my takes quick and spicy and let people come to their own conclusions with them, but out of all my thoughts on the series that I’ve shared with fellow Sonic fans, this one tends to get the most ire. Bellow the cut are my more in depth thoughts on the matter.

I may be forgetting someone but I’m pretty sure the last character the series introduced that was simultaneously a guy, a hero, and had any sort of staying power was Silver all the way back in TWO THOUSAND SIX. This applies to ALL Sonic media/canon, by the way (be it the games, comics, spin offs like Boom, etc.)

The closest character I could think of that fills this criteria is Razor from the post-reboot Archie comics—he did appear in both the main comic and Sonic Universe, and was the only new character to get his own SCO backstory—but for obvious reasons he’s not showing up again any time soon. I don’t count Chip or Yacker since they’re pretty blatantly meant to be one off characters that fill a specific niche for that game’s plot. Also let’s be real they’re both mid as hell

Compare this to the girls: Sticks, Tangle, Whisper, Sage (who is framed as more of an antihero in Frontiers than a villain), Trip, this new girl from Dream Team…

People scream sexist at me whenever I bring this up, which is ironic because I am a Girl™ myself. My favorite Sonic character, Blaze, is a Girl™. Sticks is one of my favorite additions to the series in a long time, and she’s a Girl™. I’m not against Girl™ in Sonic.

BUT it does make me raise a brow looking at the track record of new characters that have been introduced to the series, specifically when it comes to gender and morality alignment. This is a lot more prevalent in the IDW comics than in the games, but it’s present in both.

Since Colors (which signaled a shift in direction in the series), the new antagonists we’ve gotten in the games are: Orbot and Cubot, the mostly male Deadly Six, the Hardboiled Heavies (if you wanna count them), Infinite, and Sage (kind of). In the IDW comics, we’ve gotten Rough and Tumble, Dr. Starline, Mimic, Clutch, Kit, and Surge.

In the same time period, the new leading/supporting protagonists we’ve gotten in the games are Yacker, the Forces OC, Sage (kind of), Trip, and Ariem (the new girl from Dream Team). You can also squeeze Sticks in here since she’s the only Boom character to get any extra relevance or spotlight on her outside of that spin off. In the IDW comics, we’ve gotten Tangle, Whisper, Jewel, Belle, and Lanolin.

Sure, there’s a little overlap here and there. But you should notice a pattern.

Do not interpret this as me saying that Sonic Team or the writers at IDW have some kind of anti-men agenda going on. That’s not what I’m suggesting. BUT I am getting tired of every new hero being a girl and just about every new villain being a boy. Can’t we switch it up a little?

Even the most prominent female antagonists in the series have some kind of sympathetic edge to them. Surge was brainwashed and experimented on by Starline. Sage’s character arc is supposed to be the focal point of Frontiers, and she only does evil things under Eggman’s command. Trip isn’t even evil in the first place, she just ends up working with Eggman and Fang for…reasons, and ultimately turns against them and becomes a playable hero. They’re not framed the same way that most, if not all of the male villains are. Not even Merlina is fully immune of this.

Outside of the sexist allegations, I usually get one of two responses whenever I bring this up:

A lot of Sonic fans are girls, so the series should introduce more female characters in order to appeal to their female fans.

The series already has a lot of male characters, so they need to balance out the cast with more girls.

Both of these points have their merits and flaws. I think that both of them are/were true up to a certain point, but nowadays they don’t hold up as well after we HAVE gotten tons of new female characters. When Sticks and Tangle were first shown off, I was ecstatic! Sticks being a fourth wall breaking conspiracy theorist is both tons of fun and a character archetype that the series hadn’t explored until then, and Tangle has one of my favorite designs of any Sonic character. But at some point, I started to notice the trend of every new hero being a girl and every new villain being a boy, and it really started to bother me. For IDW Sonic it was around the time Belle and Clutch were introduced (with Lanolin ultimately being the straw that broke the camel’s back—she insists upon herself), and for the games it was after seeing Ariem in Dream Team (I probably would’ve been more annoyed by the Fang/Trip dichotomy if I wasn’t absolutely joyous that the Nack Is Baaaaack). The whole “we need to introduce more girls to the series” angle doesn’t hold up as well when the series seems reluctant to commit to a straight up evil girl. Sonic desperately needs to flesh out his rouges gallery in the games, so why not add an absolutely psycho female antagonist?

Also this is a more personal note but I hate hate HATE it when people allege that girls can’t relate to male characters, so franchises need to introduce the Girl™ character so the Girls™ can relate to her. Can girls not relate to boys? Can boys not relate to girls? Once again, not against female characters in general, but that particular mindset has and will always bother me.

Who knows, maybe Ariem will end up being the main villain of Dream Team. It’d be cool, but I don’t see Sonic Team taking that route, especially not on an Apple Arcade exclusive. I don’t expect any big twists in that game.

Those are my two cents. I just think it’d be cool if we got a new boy as well as all the new girls we’ve been getting.

[jessaerys]

if i'm being totally honest part of the reason why m-ttm-llo gets on my nerves (well it gets on my nerves in a fun angry dopamine hit kind of way. i love getting mad about it the stakes are SO low and a girl’s gotta get their hatearade somewhere) is because i AM a void-cigarettes-sex-drugs-cars-violence girlie. it's my hardboiled inner monologue i have a phd in griminess i love to write characters smoking seventeen cigarettes in the rain and shoving guns inside mouths phallically. so it's not like i don't GET the appeal because i do. it's incredibly easy to write, it’s universally sexy, it is flexible and forgiving — grittiness comes pre-packaged with a veneer of depth because (well we don’t have time to get into the history of american media). unfortunately underneath all of the fanon heavy lifting it is all aesthetic dust bunnies without substance when half the ship is an original character (matt is whatever you want him to be and the usual characterization of ‘just some guy’ appeals to the quintessential teenage boy next door who’s a bit witty trope to counterbalance mello's, well, everything) and the other half of the ship is more often than not wildly mischaracterized because if we know one thing from canon is that mello’s life revolves around beating near. our blessed understanding of mello's place in the narrative vs their barbarous creative liberties. like! what about black vs white what about being two halves of the same thing what about together we can surpass him. what about my brother broke my rib one morning and gave me half his orange in the evening. what about the machiavellian seedy underworld disgraced heir in all of his grimy fucked up fallen-from-grace streetsmart glory lifting his eyes up to a cold sterile skyscraper that fades into the clouds and the pristine boyking held prisoner within it wanting nothing but to stain the throne his entire world revolves around with his ugly fierce humanity; to break into the prince's tower and grind his face in the dirt, to free him, defile him. what about having known a boy only to be blinded years later by the knifeedge divine wrath of a naturalborn godkiller instead, pointing a gun at him anyway. look at me, why won’t you look at me. what about i don’t know where you end and i begin. what about then i guess i’m going to have to do it, what about the point where mello becomes aware of his place in the narrative and runs towards it to the bitter end. what about the relentless adversary turned unholy disciple by the festering devotion he could not excise. turned dirty-handed enforcer paving the way for the godtouched oracle to accomplish what neither of them ever could on their own and in that way finding release and grace. the softness and despair of adding up to a greater whole and yet both dying for it, one in body, the other in spirit. what about cain and abel. stick figure violence what! about! cain! and! abel! where was i going with this post it got wildly out of hand. oh yeah stream i'm your man by mitski on itunes

[shaped-creatures]

Hello and welcome, this blog is mostly for posting my strange AU’s and scenarios along with miscellaneous doodles thrown in the mix.

The little freaks broke into my house beat me up and gave me a hyperfixation then left, can’t have shit in Scotland.

My other blogs for your amusement.

My Main.

@fusions-hardboiled-brainrot

General art.

@fusions-hardboiled-artshack

And a Hardboiled Heavies exclusive blog. (my other hyperfixation)

@a-hardboiled-heavy-a-day

I’m also on artfight, so attack me if you want. :)

[roughandtumble-r]

Happy slightly belated 6th anniversary, Sonic IDW! To celebrate, it's time for me to get into Issue 3 of Fang the Hunter!

After being saved by Eggman, he asks Fang, Bean, and Bark why they were in Newtrogic High Zone, and Fang tells him about their search for the eighth Chaos Emerald...

Eggman of course doesn't believe him, but he takes the suprise meeting with them as an opportunity to hire them to find a ship of his that went missing and was piloted by the Hardboiled Heavies and could be powered by the supposed Chaos Emerald (...gee, I wonder which ship that could be? :3).

Back at Tails' lab, he begins working on a tracker to find the disappearing ship they saw earlier, although Sonic doesn't want to keep waiting for it to be finished.

While Tails is still working though, Fang manages to track down the ship, and he, Bean, and Bark board it and begin searching for the Emerald. What they find however is none other than the Warp Topaz, and it's revealed that the Hardboiled Heavies found it and used it to take control of the ship.

And that's it for Issue 3 of Fang the Hunter! We also got some covers and the solicits for both Issue 70 and a one-shot called Spring Broken, which are both set to come out in June...

Welcome back, race fans! Extreme gear engines are revving as we prep for the second leg of the Clean Sweepstakes! But there's drama on the track! As Tails and Amy go to investigate a mystery of their own, only Sonic is left to answer the question, who is the Phantom Rider?!

Spring has sprung! The flowers are in bloom, and so is trouble! When Sonic, Tails, and friends try to take some downtime, they run into a mystery that's spring broken! A seasonal whodunit in the Sonic style!

[fusions-hardboiled-artshack]

Hi. Is it okay if could show your Heavy King design?

Oh, sure!

I don’t have any fully complied artwork dedicated to King (I need to draw him more tbh), but I do have this picture of him and his siblings in meme format.

OG meme and how tall my redesign’s are just because.

[tbonechessor]

🔥🔥🔥

on ttrpgs, halo, or anything

Alright let's give a Halo Opinion that I've kind of hinted at before but now I will extrapolate on.

Halo 3 is Great but it's story is kind of crap in comparison to some other games.

The first 3rd of the game is spent running around doing nothing of great consequence until the plot falls out of the sky.

Cortana hints at a big solution to the flood which either does not really manifest later OR her big solution is Blow Up The Ark. Alright play the hits I guess.

The Ark stuff is pretty good for awhile but then you get the both best and worst Halo scene where Miranda gets herself killed in kind of a really stupid way.

She crashes a pelican through a window, starts fighting a pitched battle against brute Chiefs then quickly agrees to a suicide pact before getting shot in the back.

??? Sure okay.

the Prophet of Truth suffers HEAVY recharicterization. Truth is no longer a conniving plot-maker he's just a madman Zealot. The scene where he talks on that big screen in Rats Nest is kind of the Big example.

Then you Super Mario Rescue Princess Cortana from the Big Bad Gravemind and blow things up. Aight. Cool.

Idk in comparison to Halo:Ce that's got a tight little Aliens Homage, or Halo 2's political division and Thels Character arc within. Or ODSTS little Neo-Noir mystery (yeah I know yall hate buck but he makes a great hardboiled protagonist to me.) Or even H4's very heavily considered Character Drama. Idk

H3, when your not under the age of 17, doesn't hold up storywise for me all that much.

...

That said, the campaign and level design own fucking bones and I would Play the Game in a heartbeat if anyone asked.

[rad-roche]

back with more dww development fun facts! this one is spoiler heavy for the ending, so give it a skip if you're still reading the series

so! ending happens. gloria and DiMA are dead, and nick is dying after having lost everything dear to him. if he dies or not i've left up to you, there's another evidence to swing that either way. such is the peril of a noir, right?

so nick killing glori i foreshadowed way, way back in the first one. you'll notice there's a lot of language comparing her to winter. here's a factoid: that was originally going to be the ending of dmt. everything would have played out as normal, but gloria would have mentioned finding a lump, and they'd walk off together wrestling with their uncertain future. two reasons i didn't go with this in the end. i knew i wanted to do a follow-up and also that would have been too many things to juggle and made the endings parts too obvious. nick and gloria wrestling with her guilt was enough to sustain the story. second reason, dead man talking isn't very long, and we don't find out much about her in it, so it's not going to have much impact. dmt is nick's story, dww is gloria's, so i felt the need to give her as fair a shake as i could, even if it ends in tragedy. especially so, actually

on topic! cannot thank the anonymous pathologist, who i'm going to call Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, enough. such a good sport. if a particular detail or the name of a drug or something is wrong, it means i get to say something i've always wanted to say: take it up with the board!

all stories are meant to be reread, but my favourite thing in the world is when you read a book back and find foreshadowing so obvious that it feels like it's beating you over the head. recontextualization, love it. tried to do this for the second half of dww. i'm not going to do both you and myself a disservice and point it out, but know i've put a lot of thought into it all

if you enjoyed it, especially the style, you'd really love 30s-50s noir/hardboiled. i'd totally recommend you seek it out. this is, after all, a pastiche. i can only hope i've come even a little close to the real thing. thanks again for reading

[a-hardboiled-heavy-a-day]

Yooooo

She’s so cool I could gush about her all day, like there’s a reason she’s my favourite heavy like look at her.

The silly and the serious.

I was also going to draw her in the Akira pose even before the volume came out, I was even going to draw that for this ask but I really didn’t like how it was turning out so made the bellow image instead.

Words silliest & most powerful creature.

(She should have exploded Fang and his crew with her mind for messing with Jimmy btw.)

(Also tumblr actually let me know when I get an ask on a sideblog and be a functional website challenge (((impossible.))))

[countesspetofi]

Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, Part 1 of a double feature! This episode had so many good shots of the Star Trek star, and so many Trek connections, that trying to put it all in one post would have made it way too image heavy.

James Doohan guest stars in "Expanding Human," episode 4 of the second season of The Outer Limits (original air date October 10, 1964).

Jimmy plays a hardboiled police detective investigating a series of crimes linked to a university science lab where the faculty and students have been experimenting with mind-expanding drugs. One of the professors has been using himself as a guinea pig, and he ends up in a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation where he gains superpowers but loses his moral compass. The drugs wear off at an inopportune moment during a hostage situation that turns into a fatal shootout with Doohan's police colleagues.

Other Trek connections:

Gerd Oswald, who directed the Star Trek episodes "The Conscience of the King" and "The Alternative Factor," is the director of this episode. You can gird your loins, but you can't Gerd your Oswald!

The Dr. Jekyll-type character Dr. Clinton is played by Skip Homeier, AKA Space Nazi Melakon in "Patterns of Force" and Space Hippie Dr. Sevrin in "The Way to Eden."

Dr. Clinton's boss/brother-in-law is portrayed by Keith Andes, who also played the spokesperson for the Space Noble Savages in the Star Trek episode "The Apple."

More to come in Part 2!