#and his prototype has existed since 2020 but I only created him last year in ts4 and this is his recreation in ts3

[melien]

𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧

[beevean]

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

[Translator’s note: here is the original article written by @latin-dr-robotnik​​, originally written on the 18th of May 2020]

Today we’re going to talk about one of the aspects SEGA is more secretive about: Sonic’s relationships.

[Translator’s note: this article was written to celebrate Seaside Hill Paradise’s 200th entry. If you’re fluent in Spanish, I highly recommend you to check it out! And if you aren’t, go follow Latin’s Tumblr blog if you haven’t already and you’re into Sonamy, analyses, gushing about music and shitposts.]

This article concludes my Sonamy trilogy, and I recommend you to read the previous two articles: “SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonamy dynamic” and “’I love you’ – forbidden words in Sonic”. This means this is a shipping article – if you’re not interested into another essay about the love life of a blue hedgehog, I can redirect you to other articles such as “Sonic and speed: are we misunderstanding them?” and “What went wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces?”.

Everybody else, welcome to today’s article!

It should be noted that this article focuses more on the semi-official and strictly official aspects, since there is really not much to say about the fandom. Nowadays the fandom has a relatively peaceful coexistence, creating art, fanfics and more, for all kind of ships; sometimes there’s an occasional fight between ships or a ship that clearly is not appropriate… but besides that, everything seems relatively calm, at least in my experience and compared to other fandoms.

Too cool for relationships...

Few things are as mentioned and yet silenced by the official SEGA media as the fateful words “girlfriend” and “Sonic” put together. In official terms, Sonic has always been this young, cool hedgehog, with a pure love for nature and never too worried about life, but with a moral code that makes him fight against injustices. During his first years, Sonic was almost impatient and a little emotionally distant, although as it was the ‘90s and things were not so clear for the young SEGA star, different interpretations would take the character through different paths - some more radical than others. As the years went by, and going through many redesigns, certain aspects of his personality would be perfected, exaggerated, or even flanderized. His position on relationships, on the other hand, would remain relatively constant over the decades, with a few particular exceptions.

The this is that Sonic, in the words of his own creator Naoto Ohshima, has always been considered “a young man with a child's heart”, which has helped to substantiate and understand why the character would remain relatively distant from his feelings, and much closer to his own interests associated with the life of adventure.

... or is he?

Despite everything I just said, they tried in many occasions, if not succeeded, to give Sonic a girlfriend, with various results.

As carefree as Sonic is, and as much as SEGA tried to clarify this point over and over again, the people behind his character have always tried to introduce one or more relationships into his life. Even Naoto Ohshima himself has made his own suggestion as to who might be a hypothetical partner for his character. The different interpretations I’ve mentioned have tweaked Sonic’s character to make it more apt to certain types of dynamics, and the cultural gap between the East and the West (which I analyzed a few years ago with the first article of this “trilogy”) also has a considerable impact on the type of relationships that would be established for Sonic from very early in his history until today.

Author’s note: the concept of “Sonic + human woman” of 1990 wasn’t completely forgotten, no no, it was brought back 16 years later, in… well… the worst way possible.

Let’s see an example. Going back to his very origins, in his pre-Sonic 1 sketches Sonic was often depicted with a stereotypical damsel in distress, Madonna, his own “Princess Peach” that ended up being scrapped for many reasons, including the similarities with Super Mario. As the years have gone by, this concept has not disappeared, but rather the writers and directors of the series have taken it down different paths over time. While Madonna was too cliché, other candidates for the role of “Sonic’s girlfriend” would quickly appear to try different dynamics, directly or indirectly endorsed by SEGA.

Sally Acorn

For many years, Princess Sally was for Western fans the first person who came to mind when they thought of “Sonic’s girlfriend”. Since 1993, and for 2 more decades, her relationship with Sonic has gone in many directions, but fundamentally the most amazing thing about this whole situation was that she was Sonic’s official girlfriend (at least in the Archie Comics canon). It was also one of the many headaches for SEGA in the last decade.

Originally a fellow fighter against the macabre Robotnik from the 1993 animated series Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic and Sally’s relationship was always marked by their opposite personalities; while Sally tends to plan ahead and is much more focused on the seriousness of the task, Sonic was the type to destroy robots first and think later. “Opposites attract,” they say, and by the (premature, I might add) end of that series both were already more than friends. They had already kissed a couple of times.

At the most critical moment in their relationship, Sonic, after a year of being missing in space and presumed dead by everyone, returns to Mobius only to end up back in potential danger, decides to ignore the wishes and warnings of Sally, who’s clearly emotionally traumatized and stressed by both the general situation and the responsibilities she had to carry out for her kingdom in the absence of her parents. The result of this explosive cocktail was one of the most infamous scenes in all of Archie Sonic, "the Slap", where Sally finally reacts violently to Sonic's selfish statements. The hedgehog's response? Well, a long exposure to the screams about her experience - also traumatic - up to that point. In the end, both end up screaming and crying in front of virtually everyone.

What followed in the next decades was an expansion of that original SatAM canon in the Archie Comics, in which its various writers introduced varying degrees of drama and increasing conflict to demonstrate the strong bond between them, destabilizing or even stabilizing it again, multiple times. They would be together for some time, then they would be apart, eventually rekindling the flame of love passionately, until a final sacrifice on their part and the eventual resetting of the entire Archie Sonic canon.

In their last years, after the Super Genesis Wave, Sonic and Sally’s relationship went back to being platonic. a good friendship with the advantages and disadvantages of their personalities - Sally’s leadership and Sonic’s extreme confidence - while the focus was put on the flourishing relationship between Sally and her best friend (and old computer!) Nicole.

Regardless of the way their relationship ended, it's undeniable that Sally has left a huge mark. Being a product of the West, her existence was never really accepted by the Sonic’s Japanese creators, but because the bulk of the fandom is here in the West, Sally's presence has been strongly associated with Sonic, the Freedom Fighters, the comics... and also the ship wars between her and the character we’re going to talk about next. Her very existence was a living contradiction to the Japanese central canon, an official girlfriend who broke all the ideas that existed for Sonic in terms of his conception of relationships and lead him through unique paths. Whether for better or worse, Sally broke the mold.

Eimi. Rosy. Amy Rose.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there’s Amy, a character that was originally conceived as the Minnie to Sonic’s Mickey, but with her own dynamic.

Despite Amy’s existence being strongly tied to Sonic’s, once again Sonic Team tried to avoid the classic cliché (in this case to copy Mickey and Minnie), opting then to establish Amy as the one interested in a relationship, while Sonic runs away from this idea. For this dynamic to keep working, Sonic’s feelings have to be kept hidden, with excuses like his “shyness”, which leads to ambiguity, or because, as said before, of his “child’s heart”.

The most interesting thing is that Amy kept her canonical status of “self-proclaimed girlfriend” since 1993, which makes her “official” and “not official” at the same time, but there are some traces left from the Sonic manga of 1992 (which in turn influenced Amy’s original design), where a prototype version of Amy (or, as it was spelled there, Emi/Eimi) played the role of Sonic’s girlfriend (or Nicki’s, to be more precise). With this detail in mind, Amy can be considered, at least in the East, the very first “Sonic’s girlfriend”, even before Sally – but her situation is much more complex.

Sonic Mega Drive (top) and Sonic Boom (bottom), representing some differences in different Sonic continuities.

In any case, the manga would be the first and only time Amy was officially considered “Sonic’s girlfriend”, because in the following decades and in several continuities the core of their dynamic shifted to Amy chasing Sonic. Both would get closer or further away depending on each case (in Fleetway, for example, Amy ends up marrying another character, while in Archie Sonic there would be only a few instances of potential interest, quickly overshadowed by convenience or other things directly or indirectly related to Sally), but generally no continuity would establish an official relationship. In some cases, such as Japan, it wouldn’t even be necessary to clarify the state of the relationship, since their cultures accept more easily the dynamic that Sonic Team proposed as an “official relationship”. Just looking at the artwork highlighted on Sonic Channel (run by SEGA of Japan) shows how much more accepted the relationship is, even though Sonic Team’s official artwork still avoids any kind of public confirmation. (Author’s note: I’ve written more about Amy according to the East and the West in the first article of this trilogy)

Unlike Sally, there is no “opposites attract” situation between Amy and Sonic, and, at first, there is no prior friendship from which a potential relationship could flourish. We witnessed their dynamics from the first moment they met, and it would not be until years later that there would be a minimal basis for interaction from which various official continuities would bring both characters closer together.

Technically Amy already knew that her destiny was tied to Sonic and the events of Sonic CD on Little Planet, thanks to her tarot cards (an element that has disappeared since then), but for Sonic it was just another day of adventure, and although we’ve seen how Amy's feelings have progressed, mostly in Adventure 1 and 2, Sonic has never reflected on his personal feelings; it’s an aspect of the hedgehog that to this day remains a mystery to the audiences.

Also unlike Sally, Amy has appeared in multiple continuities of all kinds and because of that her relationship with Sonic has been affected in various ways. The main videogames canon has remained ambiguous and unchanged for 25 years: Amy would stay close to Sonic and offer some good moments to reflect on her feelings about him (some of which I mentioned in my post about Sonic Unleashed and Amy’s emotional support), while Sonic would remain distant, uncomfortable, shy, and, more recently, potentially affected by her apparent loss.

Sonic X is the first official attempt (by Sonic Team no less) to offer an expanded view of our characters. There’s a lot of discussion about how Sonic is slowly opening up to Amy’s advances, and these developments follow a line that we discussed in previous articles of this trilogy, and how, during the 2000s, the Japanese writers of the series kept slowly deepening the interactions between the two, reaching very important symbolic moments like Sonic X Ep. 9, 52 and 76, among several others. I am purposely leaving out specific details to direct your attention to this fantastic thread by Yvanix Rose that highlights some key details about how this continuity worked the Sonic-Amy dynamic. [Translator’s note: the thread is in Spanish]

Sonic X, episode 76.

Another essential continuity for the development of this dynamic was Sonic Boom, since, despite having been a separate continuity with its own interpretation of the characters, its existence managed to influence the main canon in some way in the years that followed its original release in 2014.

Sonic Boom made two important changes in the dynamic: Amy did no longer externalize her feelings with the same frequency or intensity (speeding up a process that already started in the main canon in 2008), and Sonic was noticeably more nervous and insecure of his feelings for her, even being jealous in several occasions. These changes got the dynamic closer to the “friends who have secret feelings to each other but they’re too shy to admit it” trope, and in the second season it could even be said that there are signals of the “secretly dating” trope. Nothing was officially confirmed yet, but the changes to the dynamic offered a fresh perspective to work from: winks and inferences about a relationship that was not talked about but seemed to happen behind the scenes.

Sonic Boom S1E16.

Sonic Boom’s approach also opened the door to working a little more on the characters’ new personalities. Taking a little inspiration from the original foundations of Sally and Sonic’s relationship, Boom now presented situations where Sonic and Amy’s perspectives actively clashed with each other, leading to discussions and moments that showed a little more of the mundane details of the friendship they had, rather than appealing to more classic behaviors of the main canon, like Sonic leaving the scene in a hurry. Considering the way things turned out the last time we saw this kind of dynamic on screen, it was pretty safe to assume that their new opposites were now attracted; the implied secret dating and so on only helped to give it more sustenance - which the fandom would eventually take to the extreme.

And lastly there’s IDW Sonic, the comic series that replaced Archie Sonic after its cancellation in 2017, and the most recent arc that offers an interesting perspective. Starting its continuity from the end of the events of Sonic Forces (which at the same time took on certain characteristics from the post-Boom era, particularly as far as Amy is concerned), IDW Sonic didn’t waste any time in presenting the way in which it would carry out its dynamic between Sonic and Amy.

Amy makes her feelings for Sonic very clear, and he is surprised but unable to match them. However, Sonic doesn’t want to outright reject her, and suggests that she come with him; she refuses, claiming that she has duties to the Resistance, setting the tone for the rest of the series. (IDW Sonic #2)

“Sonic’s girlfriend” today

As I mentioned earlier, after the reboot Sally was no longer considered Sonic’s girlfriend, and her disappearance after the cancellation of Archie Sonic in general is a sign that we may not see her ever again, even as a friend. As of today, in 2020, only Amy has been left in her “unofficial, but…” state, with various minor events taking place both in the main canon and in IDW Sonic:

In 2018 the official SEGA shop wrote a description for a piece of Amy Rose merchandise that said “celebrate 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend”; the mistake wasn’t immediately corrected, despite the fandom pointing it out immediately.

The video game canon has remained dormant, with Team Sonic Racing in 2019 featuring more of a regular friendship between Sonic and Amy, sharing rivalries and quiet moments alike.

On the other hand, since IDW Sonic and Sonic Boom laid their foundations, we've begun to see a certain shift in the way the two characters are presented. While we’ve talked about IDW Sonic already, Sonic’s social medias have done multiple “Twitter Takeovers” where Sonic characters answer questions from fans, and Sonic has always answered more like his version of Boom to the inevitable question about Amy and his “feelings”.

Recent official animations like Sonic Mania Adventures and Team Sonic Racing Overdrive have shown Amy flirting with Sonic in a more casual way.

The current dynamic seems to be pointing towards “Sonic’s hidden feelings”, and I think we are at a perfect point to change the approach. SEGA in general seems more open to the idea of bringing these characters closer, probably as a marketing strategy, but without yet separating themselves from the central ideas that defined the dynamic for the last two and a half decades.

Conclusion

The idea of “Sonic’s girlfriend” has been one of the most experimental and controversial in the almost three decades that this series has been around for. SEGA has opened the door to all kinds of ambiguities, developments and interpretations, all with their pros and cons, instead of settling on a definitive position. As iconic as these characters, conceived as Sonic’s “romantic interests”, have become, they have also had their share of criticism and controversy, especially in the fandom.

The presence of Amy as the only “official but self-proclaimed girlfriend” today says a lot about the control SEGA (specifically SEGA of Japan) regained over the characters, after decades of interpretations that offered different alternatives with various degrees of success. At her best, Sally represented an ideal relationship with Sonic, much more complete and profound than the back-and-forth game between Amy and Sonic. But at her worst, this same relationship represented everything wrong that could happen by associating Sonic with the emotional spiderweb of a romantic relationship. SEGA hardening its control over the characters seems to have put an end of this type of situation where Sonic ends up being involved in a romantic telenovela, but at the same time it has revitalized the flirting game and the implicit associations that give fuel to the fandom fire.

From my humble interpretation, I think we’ve reached a point where Sonic and Amy have shared enough stories and moments to solidify the core aspects of their personalities and their friendship, allowing them to take the next step, which is to play around with the idea of “something else”. 25 years ago it was hard to see how these two characters could work together beyond “it’s SEGA’s word”; today there’s enough of a story to find a rhythm and chemistry for them, and the series of situations they've put themselves in (e.g. IDW Sonic’s plot arcs) are increasingly helping this case. The topic of “Sonic's girlfriend” may be a controversial one for SEGA and the fandom in general, but the doors have slowly been opened for this debate to develop and be investigated with interesting results, and I think that, in this new decade of 2020, there’s a unique potential to explore this kind of discussion, without sacrificing in any way the central principles of Sonic as a character. Thank you for joining me in these 200 entries, and hopefully we’ll see each other for many more.

[gadgetsrevv]

Busquets’ days appear numbered at Barcelona, but he’s still wanted by Spain

The ESPN FC crew analyse Barcelona’s performance sans Antoine Griezmann in their 4-0 win over Sevilla.

Spain manager Roberto Moreno announced his squad last Friday in the now fashionable, social-media-friendly manner at which the Spanish FA has become pretty good.

It’s ironic that it was Moreno, a Catalan, a self-declared Barcelona supporter and someone who helped coach that club to the Treble in 2015, who went on to name Sergio Busquets as the only Camp Nou representative with La Roja to play Norway and Sweden. There were, of course, eras when Barca would be sending seven or eight footballers off to Spain duty — Carles Puyol, Andres Iniesta, Xavi, Gerard Pique, Victor Valdes, David Villa, Pedro, and so on and so forth.

Sergi Roberto‘s form and Jordi Alba‘s injury partly explain why Busquets was deprived of any club company on the Puente Aereo (air bridge) from Barcelona’s El Prat airport to the Spanish capital. But it’s symbolic too, of the change happening in Busquets’s career, indicative of a massive sea change in elite European football and an indication that Moreno remains a true believer in the concepts that Johan Cruyff held and Pep Guardiola holds, but are now patently being eroded.

Busquets is enduring the bleakest beginning to any season since he broke through, under Guardiola, in 2008. Ernesto Valverde has dropped him three times — unheard of. He’s only eighth and 11th in the list of Barcelona players with the most minutes in La Liga and the Champions League, respectively.

And he was, ignominiously, hooked when Barca trailed Inter last Wednesday and their coach threw caution to the wind by moving to a 4-2-3-1 formation with the introduction of Arturo Vidal and Ousmane Dembele. Within five minutes of Busquets departing, the change worked. From 1-0 down to 1-1 and then a total domination of play that, eventually, brought an epic win.

Busquets’ replacement, Vidal, created the first goal, pressed like an enthusiastic rottweiler puppy and, realistically, changed the entire pattern of the game. The Chilean, at 32, is in his footballing twilight; but his attitude, physique, athleticism, aggression, pressing and tempo are all the prototypes for the kind of footballer Europe’s biggest clubs now covet. Times are changing.

That said, Valverde’s loss of faith in Busquets generally hasn’t been that profitable. Twice prior to Saturday’s 4-0 win over Sevilla, when he was also benched, the 31-year-old Catalan was dropped — in defeats to Athletic Club and Granada, no goals scored.

– Euro 2020 qualifying: All you need to know – Lowe: Why Courtois is struggling to win over Madrid fans – Odegaard showing La Liga he’s more than just a piece of trivia

Valverde’s loss of faith in Busquets also has been ultra dramatic. Last season, while winning La Liga for the eighth time since Busquets joined the first team 11 years ago, Valverde used this order-installing central midfielder in every single game from August until mid-April barring once — when he was suspended. Busquets was then rested against Huesca on April 13 so that he’d be fresh for Manchester United in the Champions League, then missed just one more La Liga match through suspension.

The conclusion: Across a season in which they won the title, came within a goal of reaching the Champions League final and lost the Copa del Rey final, Barcelona only played three La Liga matches without Busquets — winning none of them, failing to score in two and losing at Celta Vigo. No Busquets, no three points — that was the message just a few short months ago.

Then came the massacre of Anfield from which, there can be no doubt, Valverde drew sharp conclusions. Ivan Rakitic — Busquets’s bodyguard most of last season, his running mate and Winston Wolfe-like problem solver — seems to be on his way out of the club. Barcelona patently want to sell him. No Rakitic, apparently, means less Busquets.

All of which makes his Spain inclusion fascinating.

He’s at an age, and at an athletic stage, when you’d imagine that, like Pique, who’s only a year and a half the elder, Busquets might feel hugely relieved at getting several free days without matches or training over the international break. Time to clear the brain, disconnect, rid the limbs of any lingering, niggling pain, stay away from planes and trains and reset in time for the massively important couple of months between now and the short Christmas break.

Not a bit of it, it seems.

And it’s equally interesting that Spain’s coach is still a firm believer. When justifying who he’d picked and who he’d unceremoniously dropped, Moreno said on Friday: “I believe players have to be in this squad because of what they do, not because of who they are.”

Sergio Busquets could find himself out of favour as modern tactics evolve.

Completely fair, but of course, we’ve established that since the last international break, Busquets hasn’t been playing quite so regularly nor has his form been stellar. He’s in, though.

By comparison, Dani Parejo, who featured in three of Spain’s past four Euro 2020 qualifying matches — all wins — has scored a couple of goals and provided a couple of assists for Valencia since the last international break. He’s been dropped, though. Alvaro Morata, recently fit and back in Atletico Madrid’s starting lineup — not to mention a regular goal scorer for Spain — is also excluded and felt moved to point out, unhappily, “I’d really hoped that I would be picked for this squad.”

This column isn’t about Parejo or Morata, but they serve to show that, to Moreno, Busquets remains special. Neither his absence from the Barcelona team nor his form affected his selection. Moreno wants a cerebral presence in midfield in order to withstand helter-skelter pressing from Norway and Sweden — the very thing Valverde seems not to trust now.

Way back when the Catalan broke into Guardiola’s Treble-winning 2008-09 team, Valverde, then at Villarreal, was asked to assess Busquets: “He oozes self-confidence and, from day one, has known precisely what to do in every situation. He adds equilibrium and control to Barcelona’s midfield,” he said a decade ago.

But when he was asked about Vidal’s introduction against Inter, Valverde said: “Vidal brings pressing and a certain disorder between the lines which we needed. If we want control and possession, we’ve got Arthur and [Frenkie] De Jong.” Please note: no mention of Busquets in relation to “control” and “possession.” Unthinkable a season or two ago.

But this isn’t an isolated issue. Possession-based football is under attack all over Europe. Tottenham have faded this term, Manchester City are wracked by injuries, Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds didn’t get promoted, Chelsea sacked Maurizio Sarri despite him getting them playing the closest thing to Guardiola football as is possible to imagine, and La Roja themselves are deep in transition.

Trying to work out if the formula that brought them three straight international trophies is sustainable without possession addicts like Xavi, Iniesta, Villa, Xabi Alonso, Marcos Senna or David Silva? Roma, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus all have trampled over Barcelona recently. They are bigger, faster sides packed with stamina, not lacking technical excellence, intelligence or wit; but certainly not playing the brand of football for which Busquets is now an increasingly isolated representative.

This was once Guardiola.

Busquets has always been the closest thing to a young, dominant, intelligent Guardiola, the fulcrum of Cruyff’s “Dream Team” of the early 1990s. He possesses the same ideas, same skills, same deficiencies (pace, power and athleticism), same brilliant technical gifts and vision, same bravery in showing for the ball, intercepting danger, thinking three passes ahead of everyone else.

Guardiola left Camp Nou burned out, jaded and keenly needing new inspiration, when he was 30 — a landmark Busquets passed last year.

Within a couple of seasons, Guardiola was in Qatari football, saying: “I think players like me have become extinct because the game is now more tactical and physical. At most clubs players are given specific roles and creativity can only exist within those parameters. To play in front of the back four now you have to be a ball winner. If I were a 20-year-old at Barcelona now I’d never make it as a professional. At best I’d be playing in the third division somewhere.”

Although it’s happening again, the outlook for Busquets is not so glum. On form, with runners around him, with Arthur blossoming and De Jong’s heyday some time away, he can still be deeply influential for Barcelona in specific types of contests. His brain is as bright as ever, his technical marvels undimmed. But he continues to be hustled, hassled and pressed, he continues to give away far more possession than was once imaginable.

One day, some time hence, Xavi will be Barcelona manager and, if Busquets isn’t still playing, he’ll be Xavi’s assistant. Bank on it. That’s when 4-3-3, position, possession and pressing will be the untouchable mantras at the Camp Nou once more.

For the moment, Busquets has two choices: hunker down into a mode in which he squeezes every last drop of quality out of decreasing first-team starts, or follow Guardiola’s 2001 decision to seek out new pastures in a league in which brains, technique and vision are rated more highly than speed, power and perpetual high-tempo pressing.

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An inside look at the first solo trip to the deepest point of the Atlantic

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/an-inside-look-at-the-first-solo-trip-to-the-deepest-point-of-the-atlantic/

An inside look at the first solo trip to the deepest point of the Atlantic

One down!” Those were Victor Vescovo’s first words after climbing out of the hatch of the DSV Limiting Factor. He had just dove 27,480 feet down to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench, making him the first person to reach the absolute nadir of the Atlantic Ocean. Or at least those were the first intelligible words, over the waves, and the motor of the nearby Zodiac raft, and the low hum of the support vessel DSSV Pressure Drop, which was idling nearby.

The sun had just set, creating a ridiculous backdrop of orange sky and translucent blue Caribbean water. It would have seemed stage-directed, had I not been on the Pressure Drop for a week by then, observing three failed tests that put the whole dive in jeopardy. The Pressure Drop needed to leave its post at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 19 in order to reach its port call in the Dominican Republic the next morning. Vescovo surfaced from his six-hour, 55,000-foot round-trip journey to the ocean floor and back at approximately 5:45 p.m.—just over an hour to spare. Next year, provided there are no major setbacks, he plans to take the Limiting Factor around the planet in an attempt to become the first person to reach the lowest point in all five oceans. Hence those first words: one down, four to go.

The dive also made Vescovo the second deepest-diving solo sub pilot in history, after the film director James Cameron, who reached the bottom of the Pacific’s deepest point, the Mariana Trench, in 2012. Vescovo will head there, too, probably in the summer of 2019, after attempting the 8,180-meter (26,847-foot) South Sandwich trench near Antarctica, and the 7,290-meter (23,917-foot) Java Trench, with a likely stop to visit and film the wreck of the USS Indianapolis en route.

This audacious, self-funded mission is known as the Five Deeps. It is more than three years in the making and began when Vescovo asked Triton Subs, a small, Florida-based maker of submersibles, if they could build him a vehicle capable of reaching any point in the world’s oceans.

This was a big ask. Three years ago, there was no vehicle on Earth capable of such a feat—or anything close to it. Cameron’s sub, the DSV Deepsea Challenger, caught fire after a freak highway accident a few years after his expedition and was never repaired. And there are only five working submersibles capable of going past the oceans’ average depth of 4,000 meters (13.123 feet). All five of those are owned and operated by national governments, and unavailable for private use. But Triton co-founder Patrick Lahey had been chewing over the idea of a full-ocean-depth sub for years; he just needed someone to pay for it. (The sub cost $35 million. With the Pressure Drop the price tag is more than $45 million.) That arrangement worked for Vescovo, a Dallas-based private equity investor with a thirst for adventure. He’s one of just 12 Americans to have climbed the Seven Summits and skied to both poles—the so-called Grand Slam of adventuring.

So when Vescovo passed 7,100 meters (23,200 feet) sometime early Wednesday afternoon, the Limiting Factor surpassed China’s Jiaolong (which reached 7,020 meters in 2012) to become the world’s deepest-diving submersible. And if Vescovo’s successful in reaching Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench next year, it will be the only sub officially rated to full ocean depth—built to repeatedly reach the sea’s deepest places.

Almost no one thought it was a good idea for Vescovo to attempt the Puerto Rico Trench dive solo. Lahey tried very hard to convince him that he needed a co-pilot—someone with submersible diving experience—but that was a non-starter. Vescovo is a jet-rated pilot who’s been flying planes since age 18. He had Triton install a simulator in his garage so that he could practice while the sub was being assembled in Florida. He was either going alone, or not at all.

Complicating matters, the Limiting Factor is a prototype, designed and built using exotic parts—the most important one a spherical titanium pressure hull surrounded by a sleek cocoon of syntactic foam. The Limiting Factor’s chief designer, John Ramsey, simplified the sub’s electronics by basing its seafloor navigational capabilities on three $100,000 landers deployed from the Pressure Drop before launch. The sub triangulates position on the bottom by pinging modems on those landers, as well as the surface. The landers also serve as three additional science stations. They’re equipped with fish traps, push cores for sediment sampling, and “bio boxes,” where Vescovo can place samples plucked from the seafloor using the sub’s robot arm. (After every dive, Dr. Alan Jamieson of England’s Newcastle University—a specialist on the infrequently studied “hadal zone” and leader of the Five Deeps science team—will gather the samples for study. Jamieson also deploys his own landers, and thinks his team found four new species, all amphipods, in the Puerto Rico trench alone.)

Expedition leader Rob McCallum calls the Limiting Factor “the most significant vehicle since Apollo 11,” and while that’s a little hyperbolic, it’s not completely outlandish either. There is a reason no sub exists that can make repeat visits to the ocean bottom. They are expensive to build, and extremely difficult to engineer. Every part must be able to function at sea level, and also at 1,100 times that pressure, while protecting electronics that will be submerged in salt water, which corrodes metal at five times the rate of fresh water, for hours.

Really, Vescovo wasn’t just asking to pilot the Limiting Factor; he was asking to become a test-pilot of a sub that was still working out kinks two days before his dive. Initial tests in August were fraught with issues. Vescovo reached 5,000 meters (16,400 feet), and the sub was certified to that depth, but it went immediately back to Florida, where Lahey and his team took it completely apart to make changes.

On the Puerto Rican Trench mission, the first test, scheduled for December 15, was scratched because of a leaky hatch. A day later, with Lahey on board to make his final check of Vescovo’s piloting ability, the dive was scratched again for the same reason—after an extremely hairy launch and recovery in rough seas that caused Vescovo to lose his lunch. On the 17th, the two men managed to get the Limiting Factor to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) on the leeward side of Puerto Rico, simplifying launch and recovery, but the hatch was still leaking slightly at the surface. There were also issues with the variable ballast system, two thrusters got smashed during recovery, and worst of all, the $350,000 robot arm that Vescovo would use to collect scientific samples from the sea bottom fell off and is now a very expensive sonar blip. “I’ve joked that this sub cost me an arm and a leg,” Vescovo said later. “Today, it literally cost me an arm.”

Expedition leader McCallum is a relentlessly cheerful but also very careful voice in the room. He was the expedition leader for Cameron’s Challenger Deep, and the leader for a number of missions to the Titanic, using Russia’s Mir subs. So when he called an all-hands meeting that night, most of us onboard expected him to announce that the mission was being postponed. Instead, he said that Vescovo had decided to go forward. Triton’s engineers would have until the morning of the 19th to repair the submarine, minus the arm (which wasn’t mission critical). If they could, Vescovo would go for it; if not, they’d call it off.

By early the next afternoon, Lahey was bouncing around the ship, radiating optimism. His guys, he said, had nailed it. They’d solved the hatch issue, rewired systems to fix a few mechanical bugs, and ironed out some communication problems. Heather Stewart, a Scottish marine geologist who is leading the mission’s seafloor mapping project, was convinced that she’d identified the absolute lowest point of the trench using data captured by the ship’s multi-beam echosounder, thought to be the most advanced sonar on any civilian vessel. And Jonathan Struwe, the German engineer from DNV-GL, which certifies submersibles, was satisfied that the sub was safe enough to go for it.

A crew from Atlantic Productions, embedded with Five Deeps to film a five-part TV series that will air on Discovery sometime in late 2019 or early 2020, cornered Paul-Henri “PH” Nargeolet—a veteran of deep sea exploration whose Five Deeps uniform patch reads “Legend”—to ask if he had concerns. Was this dive risky? “Yes and no,” replied the man who has dove on the Titanic wreck more than 30 times. “I would tell you it’s more dangerous to cross the street where you live than to dive past 4,000 meters. But, in the extremely rare chance [of an accident], you are dead before you know something happens.”

The next morning, McCallum gathered the troops one last time. “We have all worked very long and very hard to get to this point … the culmination of a dream that’s become a reality.” He acknowledged the many people who played a role: “Scientists give us purpose. Sonar tells us where to go. Filmmakers are telling our story. And the ship’s crew got us here…We just have to go and execute. The plan is pretty simple.” McCallum considered that and laughed. “He says, preparing to send a submersible to 8,400 meters under the sea.”

A few hours later, Vescovo was tucked inside Limited Factor, carrying out final safety checks. “If you’re happy, and life support is good, you’re free to dive,” Triton operations manager Kelvin Magee said, over radio.

“Life support good,” Vescovo replied. “Starting pumps … See you on the other side.”

Six hours later, at sunset, McCallum was there in a Zodiac raft to pluck him from the sub. “Welcome home, Victor,” he said, and drove him back to the Pressure Drop, where Lahey was furiously hugging his engineers.

Later, as Vescovo clutched a bottle of champagne, Lahey handed him a sheet of paper. “I’ve never given anybody one of these: a diploma for certified test pilot,” he said. “I distinctly remember my first dive in a sub. I went to 1,400 feet. You only went 20 times that far.”

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Written By Josh Dean