#my idea is that the shadow-chao that shows up in some official art with shadow (and clearly has purple bat wings like rouge)

[rouge-the-bat]

we need less kidfic in the world and more petfic. give those bastards a cat and lets witness the hijinks that ensue

[jsio]

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

MILES PROWER, ANTI-TAILS

Moebius' true king.

Art by Arealscrog

Archie's wasted character

Who is Miles?

Miles Prower is the Anti equivalent of Tails, from Mobius Prime. He is afew years older, being 11 instead of 8 and much more mature. He still appears to possess Tails' youthful tenacity and desire for independence, but he has a violent rebellious attitude and shows no interest in holding himself to childish things, even though he's only 11 years old himself, hating the nickname "Tails" being an example.

Miles holds his younger counterpart in utter contempt for traits Miles sees as weaknesses, especially how Tails went down the path of Science and technology instead of his magical Chaos force heritage, implying that Miles went down a more mystical path instead of Science, but from what we see in the comic Miles is more in the political field, by that I mean he manipulates all the political aspects of Moebius.

His actions throughout the comic run make him out to be smart, picky, but also cold, calculating and always 5 steps ahead of his own team and Adversaries, this leading to Alicia making him the Suppression Squads leader behind the scenes, while she is the figurehead "ruler."

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That's Anti-Tails, Who throughout this I'll be reffering to as "Miles." Now you may be thinking, "Why make a post on an extremely obscure and hardly used Archie character? Why not someone Like Tails, Shadow or a more popular Archie character?"

Well, it's because I believe that Miles had the potential to be one of Archie's most intresting original characters, I believe he could've easily held his own "Suppression Squad" comic run, but Archie Unfortunately really underused him and wasted his potential, but hey...

That's where us fans come in!

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This post is All about Miles Canonical self, every canon fact I can find about him and his full story in his short run during Pre-Reboot Archie Sonic, and my own personal headcanons in the later post.

But...before I get into any the headcanons, I need to teach those who don't know him about him, I need to talk about his Canonical self..so, let's get into it. Headcanons will be in the follow up post.

Canonical Apprearnces.

(Reworded from the wiki)

First appearance

The first appearance of Anti-Tails was back when the character was just "Evil Tails" and it was of him joining the Anti Freedom fighters in an attempt to take over Mobius Prime, prior to the downfall of Eggman.

He and his evil allies pretended to be the good Mobius Prime versions, and struck knothole with acts of mayhem, vandalism and overall mischief, a common thing on moebius. The real Freedom Fighters soon returned to set things straight, but their initial attempts to defeat the Anti-Freedom Fighters failed as their Anti-Mobius selves knew their moves as well as they did. Sally Acorn came upon the solution: switching combat partners. When he faced Rotor, Evil Tails proved unable to overcome the larger and stronger Mobian. Defeated along with the other Anti-Freedom Fighters, he was sent back to Anti-Mobius, where they continued to cause mayhem despite the efforts of the kindly Dr. Ivo Kintobor (Anti-Robotnik) to stop them.

This was the last we saw Evil Tails for awhile, however we did see a cameo of him along with every other tails when they all came together and formed Titan Tails.

The Suppression Squad

Art by Pota on Pixiv

Some time passed before his next appearance, and in that time "Anti-Mobius" went through changes in its name, now "Moebius." And all the characters changed alongside it.

Miles had assisted Boomer in stealing Dr Kintober's goal posts in order to allow the Suppression Squad to have access to inter-dimensional travel. Scourge obviously took this opportunity and went straight to Mobius Prime, along with a few other members of the SS, Miles being one of them, and they attempted an assult on the Freedom HQ, where we see Miles' and Tails face off, with Miles declaring to not be referrd to as Tails or Anti-Tails, but instead just "Miles".

He also indicated his disgust at Tails for having chosen a path of Science and study, despite having a strong connection to "Chaos force", aka magic. This has led to people believing Miles himself is a magic user.

When Metal Sonic attacked Scourge, believing him to be the real Sonic, Miles stayed back and observed instead of helping his king. Now, you may think that's betrayal, but in reality Miles didn't help because he did not wish to undermine Scourges strength, so instead he observed. Soon after Sonic came onto the scene he showed his willingness to help anyone, even his enimies, and this gave Miles an idea:

Let's team up with the freedom fighters to betray Scourge, that's the new plan.

Miles later met up with Sally, Bunnie, Antonie and Tails to offer an alliance, but didn't let Tails speak and showed his contempt to the original version, telling him, "Please don't talk, little boy, We're trying to have an intelligent conversation." Sally accepted the offer, knowing she needed all the help she could get for taking down Scourge.

Upon returning to Scourge, pretending to be running from the freedom fighters, Scourge asked for a summary on his mission, that being "bomb New Metropolis" but Miles ignored him however, instead reporting to Alicia (Anti-Sally) that his mission was a success. Immediately thereafter, Alicia told the Suppression Squad to, "Show our King just what we think of him", with Boomer and Patch clearly readying for battle

However, Miles was doubling up his betrayal, blasting both Sonic and Scourge back into Moebius for them to Duke it out there, with Boomer sealing the portal behind them. An ethical debate followed this, between Sally, Alicia and Miles, the trio being ordered to get the goal posts ready to be able to return the freedom fighters to Mobius after both groups agreed to make sure Scourge was defeated on Moebius by Sonic

Miles was as shocked as the rest of the group to find Scourge had defeated all of his opponents as Super Scourge. When the rest of the Knothole Freedom Fighters and Suppression Squad were quickly defeated, Scourge turned his sights on Miles, identifying him as the mastermind behind the betrayal.

Miles, cowering in fear, denied his role in betraying Scourge, who was threatening to beat him for his betrayal. However, Miles was saved by Silver the Hedgehog and unlike the rest of his allies, wasn't even hurt. Following Scourge's defeat and Miles' attempt to recruit Buns Rabbot into the Suppression Squad, Miles spoke to Alicia about who would be their new leader. Alicia explained that while she may be the figurehead ruler, they both knew Miles held the real authority at this point, to which Miles grinned.

That was the last we see of Miles in the Archie comics, he unfortunately isn't in the post reboot because he's now owned by Ken Penders, so we'll never see him again. Below is all of his official designs, and after that is my final thoughts on the character.

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My overview of Miles as a character.

I'm no Character analysist so I'll make this short and sweet, my review of Miles is that he's a Character with alot of potential, but he went wasted, not on purpose, but thanks to the lawsuit.

I believe that if that lawsuit never happened, and that arc was closed up nicely Anti-Tails would of became a far more realistic and grounded Character, and probably pretty popular too. Miles to me is a kid who was manipulated into a life of crime and now believes that's what is right, and I think that could of been an arc for him, mellowing out and becoming a true king for the people of Moebius. I also like how when Scourge goes Super and goes to Miles to confront him, he dosent stand up to him, he dosent become strong, but instead he cowers in fear, hes terrified and tries to lie, to me, that makes him feel more grounded, and I like that.

Personally I wish Miles was more popular, I wish he got more spotlight than he did and I wish his story got concluded, but with what we got, I think he's pretty good, and pretty interesting too! I've seen alot of ideas float around for this dude, all of them making sense in they're on way, and to be honest? His lack of story kinda helps make him more accessible.

Tl:Dr: I like Miles alot, and I hope this post helps you lot learn more about him and overall, gets more people down to write with him, draw with him and explore him!

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Would I change him in any way?

Yeah, there's one key part of Miles (from what we got) that I think was wasted. Now, what is that? What would I change about a Character I've mostly praised? Well...

I wish he was magical. In the Archie comics Tails is actually strongly connected to the "Chaos Force", not as connected as Shadow, but still VERY connected, and guess what? Miles and Tails ARE biologically the same, same DNA, and in that bit of the comic, Miles calls Tails out on something he should have no idea about if he himself isn't connected to the same thing (or Moebius equivalent). To me at least this kind of implies Miles is magical too.

Basically, I'd give Miles' moveset a touch of magical abilities, connecting him to Moebius' "Anarchy force". I think it would help separate him abit more from Tails, while also connecting them, because whenever you have science and magic together...they clash.

But yea that's all I'd change in what we got, just hints of magic, some magic attacks here and there. I think it'd be pretty neat, and it'd have the science Vs magic aspect with him and Tails relationship.

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Lets finally wrap this up! At least, for now.

Thank you so much for reading all this If you did, it, this took me alot of hours, and I, I think it's over 2000 words now you madman. Why not spend your time doing something more worthwhile? Why not...have fun? meet someone? Go on a date? Live your life? Why read a post on an obscure Character, mainac.

But in all seriousness thank you for reading my post, I really like this character (clearly) and I want to teach people about him, and I hope this post has done that! Post 2. There's going to be a sequel post going over all of my personal headcanons, and possibly a 3rd going over community ones. Keep ya eyes out~

But yea, big read, now you lot know about an obscure Character, and this was fun to write! But now I'm gonna end this post with a fun fact:

Miles and the Suppression Squad were going to have one more arc, it was teased at the end of issue 196, but unfortunately it never got written. That would of been really neat but unfortunately it never got to happen.

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BON'VOYAGE, HEDGEHOGS!

[infizero-draws]

ok so i was going to wait until i finished the cover but WHATEVER!!! this is something i’ve been (slowly) working on since last summer. my own idea for a sonic game: Sonic & the Candy Cuties!!

i’ve got usual gameplay pretty much down along with some ideas for boss fights, but the actual plot is a bit spotty currently (which is ironic since usually i care much more about the story than the gameplay). anyways more info on the candy cuties and everything under the cut!!

WARNING: THIS GOT REALLY LONG vvvvv

THE CANDY CUTIES

Sugar and Spice make up the Candy Cuties, a duo working to destroy Sonic and conquer the world in the name of Eggman!

Sugar: Silly and lighthearted, Sugar is more carefree than her partner. She can be rather ditzy and cutesy, but don't let that fool you into a false sense of security! Sugar is extremely powerful and a worthy enemy.

Spice: Aggressive and hot-headed, Spice is more hostile than her partner. With her burning passion and determination, she's a force to be reckoned with, especially when working with Sugar.

Sugar and Spice were employed by Eggman to destroy Sonic after he heard about their reputation as small-time villains.

GAMEPLAY

In SatCC, you play as Sonic. By completing certain levels, you can unlock the following characters: Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, and Rouge.

Sonic and Shadow are Speed Types.

Knuckles and Amy are Power Types.

Tails and Rouge are Flight Types.

You can only play as certain characters in certain levels - after completing the game, you can play all levels as the other character of the same type. (EX: Playing a Sonic level as Shadow.)

CHARACTERS

Speed Type Levels: SA2-Sonic/Shadow-style levels where the goal is to get to the end as fast as you can. Taking inspo from Colors, it switches from 3D to 2D.

Power Type Levels: Beat-em-up-style levels where the goal is to fight off waves of enemies and progress to the end. 2D.

Flight Type Levels: Air levels where the goal is to dodge obstacles and fight enemies to progress to the end. 2D side-scroller.

Sonic: High speed, medium damage. Special attack: Sonic Wind (propels him forward at high speed)

Shadow: High speed, medium damage. Special attack: Chaos Blast (destroys all nearby enemies)

Tails: Medium speed, medium damage. Special attack: Tornado Beam (clears screen of enemies)

Rouge: Medium speed, medium damage. Special attack: Night Flurry (makes her invincible to enemies and can go through obstacles for a short period of time)

Knuckles: Low speed, high damage. Special attack: Earthquake (stuns screen of enemies)

Amy: Low speed, high damage. Special attack: Rosy Rush (High damage attack that kills most enemies instantly within an average range around her)

DUO STAGES

Occasionally there will be stages that involve two characters. These are called Duo Stages. Duo Stages can have any pairing of two characters, whether they be the same type or a different type. 

In Duo Stages, you can either play as one character and have the other one be the computer, but there is also the option for a second player to join in as the second character.

COMBINATIONS:

2 Speed Types: A race to see who can get to the end first, like SA2 2P Sonic/Shadow levels. If playing with a second player, it becomes split screen.

2 Power Types: A co-op battle. Characters work together to destroy enemies and advance to the end.

Power & Flight: A co-op battle. Characters work together to destroy enemies and advance to the end. Power type destroys enemies on the ground while Flight type destroys enemies in the sky. 2D.

2 Flight Types: A co-op mission. Characters work together to advance to the end.

Speed & Power: A co-op mission. Speed type runs through the level, while Power type destroys enemies and obstacles to aid them. 3D.

Speed & Flight: A co-op mission. Speed type runs through a 2D level and dodges obstacles while enemies shoot at them from the sky, which the Flight Type can destroy. 

ZONES

There are 8 zones total. In order, they are:

Minty Field Zone

Dessert Desert Zone

Boba Sea Zone

Gingerbread Mountain Zone

Peppermint Tundra Zone

Cocoa Jungle Zone

Candy Castle Zone

Egg Base Zone

(pictured above: concept art for duo boss fight layout, “saucer” object, and alt. candy cutie form)

STORY

Again, surprisingly the least-fleshed out part of this so far. (and I call myself a writer lol) The main plot begins with Sonic chillin before the CC appear. They have a bit of back-and-forth with Sonic (he loves teasing them villains) before activating a mysterious machine (or something). Suddenly the landscape transforms into a bright candy land, and before Sonic can ask what they’ve done they run off cackling.

Sonic (and eventually the other characters - Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow & Rouge - I haven’t worked them into the story yet lololol) work to stop their sickly sweet plot~!

[insert the rest of the story here]

yeah............... ok so i dont have the middle stuff but here’s what happens at the END:

in what seems like the final boss fight, sonic fights both of the candy cuties together. after seemingly beating them however, they transform to another form (seen in the art above) and you have to beat another phase where they’re way harder. it’s their last ditch effort, and they nearly overpower sonic, but then the rest of the playable characters show up! with their help, sonic manages to beat them.

eggman shows up and the candy cuties, defeated and weak, call for help. but their pleas fall on deaf ears, as eggman cackles and reveals that he was going to betray them from the beginning. the defeated CC watch in horror as eggman abandons them and steals their candy machine thingy to power up his own big robot thing or whatever. eggman is about to strike them when suddenly they’re swept up by... sonic!

sonic yanks them out of harm’s way with his super speed, much to the surprise of both the CC and eggman. the candy cuties ask him why, confused, but sonic simply extends a hand to them. spice doesnt want to trust him, but sugar convinces her. sonic pulls them back up and asks if they can still fight. they nod, and in the REAL final boss fight, the candy cuties fight side by side with sonic and his friends, and manage to take down eggman.

the game ends with sonic and the gang celebrating, and the candy cuties being forgiven. after restoring the land back to normal, sugar and spice head off as sonic n friends wave them goodbye.

(this isn’t shown in the game, but they then retire to a little cottage together, being slightly evil and getting visits from sonic, whom they eventually become good friends with. oh also important note: im trying to stay somewhat realistic to what would actually be in a sega-approved sonic game, but the candy cuties are highly implied/coded (and are!!!) to be in a relationship.)

CONCLUSION

Uh yeah so that’s kinda what I have so far!! I’ve been thinking about this concept for a WHILE, and I can’t wait to flesh the story out more and figure out more of the game mechanics and boss fights. very glad to finally share it with you all ^_^

bonus: some old cursed art of the candy cuties. they were originally going to be mobians, but i really didnt like these designs and went for a more deadly six approach, where they’re not mobian but still look like sonic characters. i did one in the official style (by tracing some official art) and one as a quick doodle in my style (AT THE TIME) anyways i hate these:

cursed.

anyways peace out! <3

[mdwatchestv]

Everything I’m Going to Watch in April: *** SUPER QUARANTINE EDITION***

I mean.... here we all are then.

Usually in these blogs I try to keep the fantasy alive of like “oooh maybe I really am going to watch all of these shows!” But, let’s just cut to the chase - you’re bored, you need to fill the yawning void of time between now and when they let us back outside (June?), you clicked on this for cold hard content recs. I hear you, I see you, I adore you, I’d love to embrace you, but most importantly: I got you. This month, I’m listing everything that could even remotely be in the realm of watchability. I do it for you.

BUT FIRST - Let’s talk about QUIBI. Quibi (“Quick Bites”) has been a looming threat for a long time and its time is finally nigh. Designed for “people on the go” (lol remember them?), it’s tv, movies, and docs released in ten minute or less “bites” on your mobile device. I think it’s supposed to tap into the same part of your brain that wants to watch 100 Tik Toks when you are technically “in bed” but haven’t put your phone down yet. It launches April 6 and you can get a 90-day free trial! Just the length of the rest of our time indoors! And on that date Quibi is ready to absolutely blast you in the face with a shotgun of content and celebrities. Chrissy Teigen is a judge, Chance the Rapper is Ashton Kutcher, Liam Hemsworth is a dying task rabbit. We are flipping murder houses, break dancing, and learning how to become drag queens. Also turns out this is the final resting place of When the Streetlights Go On! Who knew. I can not do individual recs because I am just one girl, and Quibi is a vast, merciless ocean of bites. However you are welcome to  drown in a full list of their offerings here: GOOD LUCK 

Now in case Quibi doesn’t permanently disfigure the television industry and forever alter all of our viewing habits, here’s what’s on “real” TV:

Friday, April 3rd 

Home Before Dark (Apple +) 

A tiny child journalist solves a cold case in a small town! This is based on a true story (?!?!?) Adorable! Gritty!

Harley Quinn Season 2 (DC Universe)

If you want to continue the high of Birds of Prey, I have heard the animated series is actually pretty good. No idea how to get DC Universe tho, you’re on your own there.

Money Heist Part 4 (Netflix)

La Casa De Papal! Never been a better time to learn to speak Spanish AND plan the perfect heist with your hot criminal friends!

Tales From The Loop (Amazon Prime) 

A sci-fi show based on Simon Stålenhag’s paintings (see above). Its Swedish, its futuristic, Rebecca Hall is in it. Feels like more of a vibe than a show tbh, but the painting is cool!

Sunday, April 5th

Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project (7pm on Oxygen)

I KNOW some of you want to watch this.

Thursday, April 9th

The Good Fight S4 (CBS All Access) 

PSA: This is back for those who partake, and CBS All Access is doing one month free! Sir Patrick said so!

The Circle: France (Netflix)

Okay so I did watch all of The Circle, Netflix’s social media reality show. Am I proud? No. Am I going to watch it in French? Yes.

Sunday, April 12th AKA NATIONAL PWB DAY

Killing Eve Season 3 (9pm on BBC America / AMC) 

Admittedly, I was underwhelmed by season 2 but that’s only because season 1 set the very highest bar imaginable. Our favorite murder girlfriends are back with a NEW lady show runner, so blank slate baby. Speaking of the perfect season 1, it is all on HULU. 

Run (10:30pm on HBO)

After Killing Eve hop right on over to HBO where this show from PWB’s writing partner Vicky Jones premieres! What a day for us! Ex-lovers abandon their lives to RUN away together. Merritt Weaver! Phoebe is actually IN it!  Romance! Intrigue! Also I have official confirmation: Domhnall Gleeson is doing his natural accent for those of us made nervous by the teaser. 

Wednesday, April 15th 

Mrs. America (FX but on Hulu) 

Look, I’m just going to come out and say what we’re all thinking: Rose Byrne is the most underrated actress alive, every performances is a master class, and her American accent is a work of art. Anyway she plays Gloria Steinem in this and she’s going to absolutely crush it. This miniseries about the ERA could not be more on brand for me: fabulous actresses of today, playing feminist heroes of yesterday! Thank you FX, for this gift. And thank you Australia for Rose Byrne (and Cate Blanchett!) 

What We Do in the Shadows Season 2 (10pm FX on FX and then on Hulu) 

Season 1 also on Hulu to catch up! Maybe even I myself, your dearest blogger, will catch up. Anything is possible.

Thursday, April 23rd 

We’re Here (9pm on HBO)

Shangela, Bob the Drag Queen, and Eureka travel the country and empower people by making them into drag queens! Like a hug for your heart (in case you never actually physically hug anyone ever again).

Friday, April 24th 

Defending Jacob (Apple +) 

Chris Evans has to defend his son, Jacob. Look, do you want to stare at Chris Evans or not?

Sunday, April 26th

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (10pm on Showtime)

A sequel to the OG Penny Dreadful, the new series takes place in 1930s Los Angeles and Natalie Dormer in a leather dress, Natalie Dormer in a leather dress, Natalie Dormer in a leather dress, and um other supernatural chaos too I guess.

Vida Season 4 (9pm on Starz)

One of the shows most recommended to me I haven’t watched. I’ll say to you what my friends say to me: “Martha it’s only 30 minutes!”

Monday, April 27th

Never Have I Ever (Netflix) 

A teen comedy by Mindy Kaling about an Indian-American girl growing up in the valley. There will be awkwardness and growth! I love teens!!!

I Know This Much Is True (9pm on HBO)

2 Mark Ruffalos. 

Okay if you can’t find something here to whittle away the minutes unto freedom then idk how to help you. Please stay inside and watch tv, stay safe, I love you, I’m thinking of you <3

XO MD

[snugglyporos]

Poro head canons though. What is their height/size? From infancy to a mature poro. And what happens to older Poros? Do they age at all, and do they become less active like humans and other species?

Well, from what we see in pictures about poros in terms of size, a full size poro is about halfway up a person’s shin? seems like it so like, a foot tall maybe? Seems to be about as wide. baby poros are tiny too based on the art of them. So I imagine they’re like kittens. Not literally cotton ball sized, but close? 

In general, my theory is that poros don’t really ‘age.’ In fact, a poro fluft seems to always be about the same number of poros, which would mean that poros seem to just appear until there are enough poros. In truth I imagine this is because poros create new poros by being so filled with love that two poros snuggle together, their excess wool forms a ball, and the excess love fills the ball and it becomes a poro. 

Its better than feeding them until they explode into more poros, which to me would mean the world would be overrun by poros in little over a month. 

Thus, a fluft of poros, if I’m correct that it’s like, fifty to a hundred poros or so, given poros are kinda like sheep or goats like that, then the poros just naturally end up with certain ratios. Thus in a fluft there might be about ten to twenty baby poros. 

As I said, I don’t think poros age. I think that at some point the baby poro thinks that it should probably be a regular poro at this point, and then it becomes one, and that’s that really. We know poros are also very curious and have spread out across the world. So I imagine that when two poros meet somewhere, a fluft is created. Likely with local flavor based on the environment. 

Obviously, this begs the question! What about Woolbur? Isn’t he an old poro? 

Well, yes and no. 

See, my headcanon is that what poros believe to be true becomes true, because poros were created to keep the void in check, and keep the great old one under the Freljord ice there. If poros were created out of all the good left in the Freljord as a counterbalance, then logically poros have to somehow be able to survive in a climate that is apparently made of solid ice all year long. Also, poros wander around the Howling Abyss asking gods and monsters for snax and are seemingly immune to any and all forms of damage and magic. 

My theory about this is that poros do not believe that anything wants to hurt a poro, because poros are 1/3rd innocence and 1/3rd kindness. Thus, if nothing wants to hurt a poro, then nothing is trying to, and thus because nothing is trying to, nothing can. This is also in line with Riot’s one answered question about eating poros, where apparently even if you could cut one into a steak or something, as soon as you ate it, it would regenerate into a fully grown poro inside of you, and it would be unharmed. 

What does this have to do with old poros? Well poros are a very basic creature sentience wise. Poros do not seem to have concepts like government or religion or farming or cooking or even fire. They are slightly smarter animals, essentially. But poros can reason. And poros can learn. And we know that the poro king was a poro that traveled far and wide, learned from the world, and came back, becoming the poro king. 

Except poros have no idea what a king is. So their idea is from what they saw humans have. Thus, the poro king is the most poro-y poro, the way a human king is the most human-y human. Has a crown and boots and a cape and a mustache, because clearly all kings have these things. Is logical to poros!

Woolbur after all, is a wizard. What do poros know about wizards? Well, wizards are magical! Can make plants grow and stuff! Are also all old and shaggy! And mumble a lot! All of these things are clearly things that all wizards have. Thus, Woolbur is an old shaggy wizard poro. 

I’ve never said if Woolbur is actually old or not. Mostly because poros do not seem to have a concept of age. After all, if poros cannot die, then aging and reproducing turns them into a cancerous concept that would overrun the world. And that’s not how poros are. 

But my headcanon for Woolbur was always that he, like the poro king, adventured to see the world, and learned magic somewhere, my joke was he learned it from giant poros aka sheep, because in mythology giants always have magic, and a giant poro is a sheep basically. 

So he’s already someone who’s older by human standards. That he now looks and acts old is probably by his own volition and understanding of being a wizard; he found a bunch of wizards, they were all old when they knew things, so logically he must be old too. But had he come back and said ‘i’m a wizard and wizards are just normal’ the poros probably would have believed it. 

So he might not really be old. He might just be shaggy and mumbly and seem old because that’s what poros think wizards are. 

Again, it’s hard to have a concept of age without death, and poros cannot die. So if poros cannot die, then logically they cannot age beyond when they decide they’re not baby poros anymore. Note that means a baby poro might be a baby poro forever if it thought it should be. 

Of course, on some level, this would mean poros are some of the oldest creatures on earth in general, having been around since the void showed up originally. 

There’s also the matter of what ‘poros believing things to be true makes them true’ means for other people. 

For example, my headcanon is that Braum is immortal. Why? Because Braum is the only human with an official title given to him by the poros. He is ‘Friend of the Poros.’ Note that again, that’s in present tense. When the poros collectively think of Braum, they go ‘is friend of poros!’ Meaning that at all times Braum exists in the now. It also explains how Santa Braum exists. 

But this means that Braum is more than just a mighty defender, it means that he’s an immortal guy with a door and a big heart that became literally immortal by befriending poros. 

There’s also some speculation that poros are related to the watchers, given that they sorta look like them? and thus would be related to Bard somehow, one of the strongest beings in the world. 

But I believe that what makes the difference is that poros are innocent, and thus can believe fantastical things without questioning the logic of them, thus making them magically powerful enough to effect reality on the level of literally stopping the void. 

You could also say that a similar existence is true for the Poro Herder, a mysterious individual who seems to have befriended the poros as a part of a fluft, and for all we know is an immortal sage who lives with the sheep puffs. 

Also interesting of note, if poros cannot die, then how can there be ghost poros? Logically, my theory is that poros somehow ended up on the shadow isles. Once there, they realized ghosts looked kind of like humans, but were greenish. So logically, poros should look different too! and now there are purple poros. 

It’s also canon that poros have the power to change people around them; Thresh for example, one of the cruelest, most evil beings in the Shadow Isles, is made docile and caring in the presence of poros. Velkoz speculates that exposure to them makes people stupid; in truth poro’s innocence and kindness spreads to others around them. Thus can a being like Thresh be made kind despite being one of the cruelest beings in existence. 

Of course, this fits with the fact that poros, as a species, were seemingly made by the gods to offset the void, which is literally chaos and violence and hatred and the like based on the champions that come out of it. Thus, the creatures made to offset it would have to be equally powerfully attuned in the other direction. This would make them akin to like, neutral good avatars or snuggle elementals. 

It also means that any god or evil creature on earth cannot really hope to match poros. One of the jokes with Veigar is his attempts to do evil with poros just makes more poros. They are, simply put, incorruptible. You cannot make an evil poro, because a poro by definition is good. It would be like making a car that didn’t drive or a phone that didn’t call anyone. It defies the very idea of what the thing is. 

Of course, my theory on this is that evil gods actually approved of the creation of poros and use them to taunt their followers; evil gods after all would logically be opposed to the void, which wants to destroy everything, including the evil gods of the world, so logically poros become an easy way to torment the void. you don’t tell the poros that’s what you are doing with them of course, but that’s how it shakes out.

Another headcanon I have is that poros do sorta have a ‘god’ of their own. But it’s not a ‘god’ in the traditional sense, because poros have no concept of religion or faith the way humans understand it. The closest thing I can relate it to is like how elves in a lot of mythology venerate nature? Like nature isn’t a god it’s just a thing they believe in spiritually? 

Poros don’t know what a god is any more than they know what a king is. Thus, if their understanding of a king is the most x of x, then their understanding of a god is roughly the same, just even more x and also in the sky or something. 

Which has made me joke before that the Great Poro is literally just a massive poro residing in his own elemental plane of snuggles, which defies all logic but none of the other gods want to tell it or the poros that, because it’s not really hurting anyone and now the gods have a poro of their own too! The poros don’t worship it, and have no idea of what religion even is, but if there are somehow giant humans in the sky or somewhere else, then maybe there must be poros there too! 

This is also how moon poros came to be, because poros figured that A. snow is white, B. the moon is white, so thus the moon must have snow, and thus there must be poros there too! And now there are. 

As a result of this, there are also lots of other kinds of poros, such as the Pumpkin poros that I have on the blog in fall, because pumpkins are sorta poro shaped. Also sea poros, because the sea is big, and thus poros must be in there too. It’s unclear if they are the result of poros going there and then adapting, or if they spontaneously appeared. I figure it’s best left vague. 

Anyway, that’s a lot of headcanons and thoughts by me on poros, because I’ve been writing poros for almost four years I think and at this time the poros have their own backstory I’ve crafted out of random ideas and jokes along the way. hope this is useful as an answer!

[tev-the-random]

A casual Sonic Forces rewrite + some headcanons, because why not

Part 1 – Infinite and Episode Shadow

Just a warning: none of the images used here belong to me! They all belong to SEGA – the game screenshots, the official art and the comic pages.

Next Part ->

I have yet to see the Sonic Movie, because the universe seems devoted on not letting me do so, for some reason. Being as desperate for Sonic content but as determined to not receive spoilers from the movie as I am, I decided to go for the next coolest thing: writing really long and random posts about a game that came out three years ago and no one cares about anymore.

This shall be fun!

(Update: as of posting this, I have finally watched the movie! But I don’t want to throw this away, so I’ll post it anyway. We can have a nice talk about the movie later.)

*“Fist Bump instrumental” intro plays*

*“This is Our World: a New Hero” plays in the background*

I’m the type of person to always try and see the best in every game, and Sonic Forces is no different. Despite its obvious flaws, I love this beautiful game! Mostly the concept of it is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this last decade, but the execution… lacks on a few things. I mostly just fill in the gaps with my imagination and enjoy it nevertheless, but, upon going through the tag and seeing that some of my concerns were shared by other people, I decided to try my hand at rewriting Sonic Forces juuust a tiny bit. Just for fun!

For this first part (and I have no idea how many parts we should have), I’d like to share some of my ideas about…

*Infinite’s Theme plays in the background as I try hard not to sing along*

Oh, my poor jackal boy, what do we do with you? Despite being so heavily promoted and having an undeniably awesome theme song, Infinite’s backstory and general development throughout the game came out as lacking, having the self-proclaimed edgelord become a laughingstock amongst most fans. Nevertheless, I still love Infinite, and it saddens me how much wasted potential he had; it’s like they were trying to write a really interesting character, but gave up halfway through.

So yeah, let’s talk about it. And let us begin with his origin story.

I believe you are all familiar with this scene:

I… I want to defend my boy here, I really do. But honestly, the way this was portrayed, it just sounded like he was throwing a childish tantrum. It seems as if his entire motive for becoming a villain was “Shadow beat him and called him weak”; dude, you’re not the only one: Shadow does this to basically everybody who’s ever crossed his way! We’re not given a reason as to why Infinite gets so bloody offended, nor are we given a reason why we should care.

So, how can we fix this? I think we should firstly focus less on “I’M NOT WEEEEAAAAK!!! URRAAAAGHH!!!” and more on:

It doesn’t need to be – and I don’t even think it can be – as sad of a situation as the Rivaille Squad in Shingeki No Kyojin or anything, but I believe that showing us that Infinite lost something important would already do wonders to his backstory.

The simplest way – that is, the way that doesn’t majorly change how things go, but does give the jackal a clearer motive – to do this would involve the ever so humble inclusion of two new cutscenes and one new in-game battle, plus a few tweaks to some already existing scenes.

Episode Shadow begins not with the usual reading introduction, but rather, with Shadow’s voice. “I was a couple of months before the Doctor took over the world. The first time I encountered him… I didn’t know what he would become.” Then we open with what used to be a couple of months prior (aka where they presented Infinite’s memory, aka where they screwed up), so we’ll go through things in a chronological order instead of having a flashback inside of a prequel, because that’s confusing AF.

Now, instead of starting the Mystic Jungle level immediately, we should get a small cutscene: Shadow gliding through the jungle, cool camera angles/lighting and all – maybe something similar to the opening scene of Episode Shadow in Sonic 06? –, on his way to invade Eggman’s base as a voice coming from the hedgehog’s communicator reminds him about his mission (yep, that’s some subtle exposition to the audience so we don’t think Shadow is there just because). My idea for said mission would be the simple task of retrieving a Chaos Emerald (yeah, remember those?) from Eggman. Nothing too serious; just another day, another emerald stolen like usual; we’ve seen this before, there’s no need for a long dialogue.

As the black-and-red blur crosses the screen, the camera pans to a group of people hiding above in the trees: Squad Jackal. Infinite is not among them. One of the jackals asks “where’ the boss?” to which another one replies that he’s on the other side of the base/talking to the Doctor/whatever and they have no time to waste; their mission is to take down the intruder and protect the base. We get something in the lines of “the boss is counting on us. Expect no mercy, show no weakness. Let’s go!” and the camera fades out as the squad drops from the trees and runs after Shadow.

I believe that having the phrase “show no weakness” – or any possible reference to “I’m not weak”, really – appear earlier as seemingly common and then have it become something the character gives a lot of importance to due to consequences and parallels sounds a bit more interesting than having Infinite’s inferiority complex come out of nowhere.

The Mystic Jungle level plays as usual, except the dialogue in the background doesn’t say that “the Defence Squad has already been completely annihilated”, but rather that “the Defence Squad is on the case. They’re the best mercenaries there are, Shadow won’t stand a chance!” because Doctor Eggman is naive like that.

Once we reach the end of the level there’s another change: a boss battle against Squad Jackal. You see, we don’t want to hear the squad was taken down like some sort of lazy exposition, because it feels incomplete; we want to participate, we want to be the protagonist and see with our own eyes just what is Infinite’s squad. This gives faces and voices to something that will become an important plot point instead of just telling us “yeah, this happened or whatever”. This could also play as some sort of sympathy point for Infinite, because we, while in control of Shadow, took down his squad; it makes the villain’s animosity towards Shadow and his general anger at least a bit more understandable.

The idea is that this battle should play as some sort of field fight – that is, differently than most boss battles in Sonic Forces, this is not a racing track where you attack your enemy while running, but rather a large secluded area, much like the one we get in the fight between the Custom Hero and the DeathEgg Robot –, where squad members would attack individually in different patterns before going for a group attack. The individual jackals would have both projectile (perhaps something like a wispon, knives or some Eggman invention to keep it family friendly enough?) and close-ranged attacks, while the group attack would consist of this mass of wild jackals changing at you, trying to run you over. The opportunity windows could be either the moment when the opponents switch or band together for the group attack.

(I don’t know, maybe some of you can think of better ways to fight the Jackal Squad? This is just a random idea! I’d like to hear different ones!)

Once the fight is over, we get another cutscene: Shadow stands among the fallen jackals – don’t worry, they’re… sleeping… yeah, there’s no visible blood, they’re not dead… except they’re totally dead – and looks around for a second or two. His expression is indecipherable, and he soon leaves without saying a word – one might say he feels bad for them, or maybe he doesn’t give a damn; we leave that open to interpretation. Not a moment passes and we get to see the leader of the squad arriving at the scene. The camera moves in a circle around him as he looks at his fallen comrades in shock. How did this happen? They were the strongest, how could his whole squad be dead? This is a rather touching moment, where Infinite sticks his sword (because in his origins comic he used to have a super cool red sword and I want to pretend we have a reason for it not existing in the game) to the ground; there’s a feeling of anger and vengeance going on as we get a closer look at the last standing jackal. He clenches his fists and faces the direction of Shadow. “Expect no mercy, show no weakness,” he says in an infuriated, strangled voice. He starts to run and the camera fades out.

(Look at his sword and his squad, man. I do wish we could have seen them in the game…)

When the camera fades in again, we get that exact same cutscene from the game. Blah blah, “destroyed my squad”, blah blah, “ultimate mercenary”, a legendary ass whooping and Infinite falls to the ground, weak, pathetic and defeated.

Now, I’d like to add just a few lines to their dialogue, because this:

Doesn’t really sound like Shadow to me. I mean, man: you beat this random guy to the ground, called him worthless and pathetic out of nowhere and then you just leave? I know Shadow is rather apathetic and he’s supposed to be savage and all, but this just felt kind of out of place…

So instead of going full rude mode, what Shadow actually says is:

‘You’re part of the Defence Squad, aren’t you? Why would a bunch of mercenaries work for the Doctor? What is he hiding?’

‘The doctor paid well enough to not have his secrets spilled,’ Infinite retorts while trying to get up. He’s too hurt to do much, but he’s still willing to fight. He looks at Shadow with fiery eyes as he continues, ‘My squad… you took them down like they were nothing… why wouldn’t someone as strong as you be a mercenary?’

‘Mercenary work is for the weak,’ the hedgehog states matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve sworn to protect, not to follow the dirty line of work you did.’

This blows Infinite’s mind and he simply stares at Shadow, dumbfounded. He murmurs, ‘weak? How dare you, I’m not… We’re not weak! We’re the squad o-’

‘Where’s the Chaos Emerald?’ The jackal’s statement is completely ignored. However, Infinite is having none of this, so tries to attack Shadow once again in a fit of rage, only for the hedgehog to give him a signature roundhouse kick free of charge.

(Image merely illustrative)

‘What a waste of my time,’ Edgelord Number 1 says, aware that he’s not getting any useful information from this. He steps closer and Edgelord Number 2 flinches, ‘here’s some advice: don’t show your face around me ever again, or else I will finish you.’

And with that, Shadow teleports away, leaving Infinite to his existential crisis. He wasn’t able to avenge his friends; he wasn’t able to protect the base; heck, he wasn’t even able to hold his title of ultimate mercenary! How useless of a leader was he? Were mercenaries truly weak? Everything they’ve done… was it all worthless? Show no weakness… what did it even mean? They were all defeated, and Infinite can’t shake the feeling that he’s to blame for it. Wasn’t he supposed to be the best?

‘What is this? I’m…’ He looks at his hands, which are trembling ‘I’m shaking? I flinched? I... We failed… How pathetic… All because…’

Infinite stops as if he’s just gotten a moment of clarity. He then gets up and starts walking inside Eggman’s base. ‘I’m not weak,’ he says in a decided, chilling whisper; it’s almost scary. The view is set at the entrance, right in front of the jackal so that he starts blocking the light from the outside as he slowly walks towards the camera - while saying in that scary voice, “No mercy, no weakness”.

(I can totally see Liam O’Brien delivering this line perfectly…)

Then the last expository narrating happens about the same, except that Shadow narrates it – giving continuity to the fact that he was the one who started narrating this episode for a reason I will talk about later –, so we change a few words to match his speech more; it’s all in the third person and very husky and brooding, but with a subtle note of dread (oh, if only Jason Griffith would voice it… No disrespect to Kirk Thornton, but he just doesn’t hit Shadow’s perfect voice like Jason did; for me, at least. His Orbot voice is fantastic, though).

Now, instead of having Infinite looking forward for a few seconds before he gets the Phantom Ruby out of nowhere and places it in his chest very anti-climatically, we’ll do something different: as soon as he puts on the mask, he starts walking away, and we change settings to a dimly lit room, where we see Infinite from behind, fitting the frame perfectly. Following the beat of the background music, the camera changes to a close shot of his masked face as he’s holding the Phantom Ruby, which is glowing, reflecting on his mask and giving us a beautifully red-lit scene; it’s possible to hear very low, indiscernible whispers coming from the jewel. We then hear a small, evil chuckle from the masked jackal – he already sounds rather different from the guy who stuck his sword to the ground in honour of his friends earlier. The screen goes black, the whole “I was… Reborn!” thing dramatically happens in Infinite’s echoing voice and the not-flashback is over.

(I know this last part was quite specific and oddly detailed, but I had the scenes very clear in my head I wanted to try conveying how intimidating it looked to me o3o)

Ok, now that that’s done, prepare yourselves for an intermission. And by that, I mean prepare yourselves for a long analytical commentary on what I just wrote.

*”This is Our World: Phase 2″ plays in the background*

(Who is Shadow working for again? I don’t even know, man…)

Shadow isn’t just the guy who called Infinite pathetic. He’s the guy who killed Infinite’s squad (his friends) without any apparent remorse – and to be hypocrite as to say he’d sworn to protect when he just did something like this (yeah, Infinite doesn’t know any context of Shadow’s life, so of course he doesn’t understand what he meant); the guy who ruined everything he had going with his new job as leader of the Defence Squad; the guy who put him several levels under what he thought he was; the guy who questioned his entire way of living and the guy who put him under a lingering threat; “don’t show your face around me ever again” feels more intimidating now. Not only that, but, despite how Infinite might hate Shadow, he recognizes him as strong, admirable even – “why wouldn’t someone as strong as you be a mercenary?” Remember that Infinite himself is a mercenary; to actually acknowledge someone would be good at something you’re good at, specially someone you don’t like, has to be a sign of admiration, albeit a frustrating one. All of this puts a lot more of weight on how Infinite thinks of Shadow and why being stronger than the hedgehog is so important to him.

I made it so that “expect no mercy, show no weakness” is something like the Jackal Squad’s motto, their philosophy. I like to think it means that they should never count on someone’s mercy, for their enemies won’t spare them; they should always go into battle aware that they might actually be fighting for their lives. At the same time, they should always stand their ground and never let anyone think they can take advantage of a squad member. This is what the jackals live for. But seeing as Infinite’s world has just been shattered and he failed hard on everything, he revises his mentality. “No mercy, no weakness” is what he’s going for now, as he wants to be above everyone, he wants to effectively be the strongest and for people to know that; he will be the one who doesn’t spare others, and he won’t be weak at all. Never again would a failure cost him that much, for never again would he fail.

To have Infinite place the Phantom Ruby on his own chest in Episode Shadow contradicts the opening scene of the main campaign. Remember the episode is a prequel to Sonic Forces’ main game, so it shouldn’t be completely detached from it; things must make sense when put together. As the main game begins by showing us Infinite inside of a tube in Eggman’s lab, we can assume one of two things: he’s either a robot/biological experiment created entirely by the scientist, or he’s a guy who’s been experimented on, thus Eggman was the one who placed the Phantom Ruby on him. With this in mind, it wouldn’t make sense to show us Infinite doing something if you’re going to tell us that he couldn’t have possibly done it on his own. But to have him hold the ruby as someone who deeply desires its powers and who listens to its ominous whispering? Not only does it line better with the aforementioned scene, but it also makes Infinite seem more prone to the ruby’s power (instead of just… you know, “random angry dude”).

As this intermission has gone on long enough, I’ll only make a brief commentary on the Phantom Ruby: I like the idea of the ruby being somewhat alive and exerting influence over Infinite. Now, I won’t say it’s the kind of influence where it justifies his horrible behaviour or the awful things he did. It’s less “mind-control” and more “that best friend who always encourages you and never calls you out on your bullshit”. Its grooming Infinite’s ego and just nudging him to keep making bad decisions, to keep shutting himself in this new reality where he’s all powerful and above everyone else. So it’s the jackal’s pride, spite and grief, along with Eggman’s overall encouragement and the Phantom Ruby’s influence all put together that, in a general sense, make Infinite what he is. (I can go into more detail about this idea once I make a Part 2.)

Mission Accomplished: “angry bitchy boy turned edgy, OP and unimpressed” changed his status to “tragic boy turned edgy, bitter and extremely power-hungry”.

Intermission’s over, let’s get back to the story!

With Infinite’s backstory slightly redone (or rather, shown under a different light), I could stop right here. But I don’t want to, oh no! I say we take this a few steps further and just finish Episode Shadow! Yeah, I told you this was going to be a long post.

*”Battle with Infinite: Second Bout” plays in the background*

Ok, now we cut to a few months later, where Episode Shadow would originally begin. Rouge comments that Omega was on recon mission in that “unknown base of operations that seems to be totally outside the chain of command for Eggman’s army” (whatever that is supposed to mean) when he spotted an unidentified masked person with strange energy readings and an unknown battle ID. Omega reported a “large scale troop” and… that’s it, he just stopped talking. Rouge then talks about that “new weapon” Eggman was supposedly developing and sends Shadow to the base to investigate along with Omega. She makes a remark about how they should get the entire Team Dark together for this (“It should be fun”), but Shadow dismisses the idea, saying that he’s enough on his own. “Omega said the same thing. You two go together like chilli and hot dogs.”

We can keep this at the whole “dialogue on screen” thing. I don’t really mind and it sure spares the budget.

The City stage plays as usual, except the dialogue in the background changes a bit, because Team Dark bickering (or just talking in general, I love this team so much) is my jam.

‘E-123 Omega here. Extermination proceeding without incident. No problems to report.’

‘Omega!’ Rouge exclaims, ‘Why have you stopped responding earlier? We- wait, extermination? This is supposed to be a recon mission, what are you doing?!’

‘I was spotted. Priorities conflicted; therefore I decided to eliminate the enemy altogether. New Mission Objective: Defeat Eggman.’

‘But you can’t go making a scene like that!’

‘See, this is what happens when you send the giant killer robot for this kind of op,’ Shadow sasses. And I’ll imagine Jason’s voice for this too, thank you.

‘I have several reports of recon missions where you retaliated, Shadow.’

‘I might have to join you boys soon enough. I turn my back for five seconds and this happens…’ Rouge comments in a tired voice.

Omega is ready to start robotically recounting the reports of failed recon missions where Shadow retaliated, but he is suddenly cut by static and the vague sound of the Phantom Ruby. Rouge tries to contact him again and we get small bits of his original lines here – “All sensors offline”, “Casualty report”, “Unidentified system intrusion. Emergency withdrawal!” and “I am E-123 Omega, the most powerf-sjfpstswq”, that stuff – before his communication is completely cut. Shadow asks something like “what’s going on?”, but his communication with Rouge is cut as well. We play whatever’s left of the level in silence (except for the sweet background music).

(Oh yeah, this happened or whatever…)

Now, I know the next scene is a screen dialogue again, and I know I just said I don’t mind it, but watching this:

… Is so bloody uncomfortable. This feels dumb. This is so dumb. I feel like they robbed us an epic scene in exchange of some awkward reading with absolutely no context. What the hell is “!” supposed to mean?! What did Infinite do?! If I wanted to imagine the action scenes all on my own, I’d spend my time daydreaming! What, did they not know what to do here so they just threw in some random lines to fill the gap between this and the next level?!

… Sorry, I got a little carried away. This simple scene frustrates me a lot by not existing. So yeah, we’re throwing in a cutscene.

(I just noticed how salty this post is getting. This was not my intention at all, I still love this game, oh dear…)

Shadow reaches the edge of the city and encounters a dark silhouette hovering just above the flames that cover the ground; there’s debris scattered everywhere. The figure has its back turned, and the world seems to glitch ever so slightly around them.

‘The world’s most powerful robot is no more a challenge than crabmeat. Even the Doctor’s most daring designs can’t compete with my power… It is without peer,’ the figure chuckles to themselves.

Shadow starts approaching silently, analysing the situation. Despite this being Omega’s location, he can’t see the robot.

‘Wonder how easy it would be to end this entire planet. Don’t you…’

Suddenly, the voice speaks close to the hedgehog’s ear:

‘…Shadow?’

He turns around to see that the unknown person has appeared behind him, which throws him off. The hedgehog takes several steps back and puts himself in a fighting stance.

It’s hard to see past the jackal’s mask, but he seems amused as he looks down on Shadow. Twistedly so.

‘How wonderful to see that our not-so-tall, dark and brooding guest has arrived. I’ve been waiting for you, Shadow~’

‘Tell me what you did to Omega. Now,’ the agent demands.

‘Oh, come now, Shadow. Our long-awaited reunion and still you spout such nonsense.’ Infinite floats down to stand a few meters away from his enemy.

‘I don’t know you,’ Shadow states. The masked jackal tilts his head, but doesn’t say anything, so he asks again, ‘what have you done to Omega?’

‘Only what is ought to be done when someone stands in your way. Weaklings like E-123 Omega are of no consequence, don’t you agree?’

‘The only thing of no consequence is that big mouth of yours.’

Shadow launches himself at Infinite, who easily avoids his attack. The jackal starts laughing manically.

‘Ah, I suppose you would think so,’ he states. ‘After all, it’s not so funny to be the one losing the battle, is it? I am Infinite. You say you do not know me, and yet I remember you so very well… I’ve lost all I was, I’ve become what I am because of you. Savour that thought as I return the favour.’

Guess what happens? That’s right, we get another boss battle! I think it’s only fair that Infinite gets to have his rematch with Shadow. Besides, it establishes a comparison with the “old” Infinite and how much stronger he’s now – from Shadow’s perspective, that is.

I have no idea how this battle would play out. Maybe something similar to his second battle in the main story (no, don’t worry: we’ll talk about the exceeding amount of Infinite battles in the next part), with the 2D layout. Let’s say Infinite is surrounded with his Red Cubes of Doom while he’s not attacking, so you can’t touch him. Maybe he makes the fire glitch and get closer to you at some point. Maybe he makes clones and you have to defeat each of them to get to the real guy, I don’t know! Tag your ideas, I’d love to see them! ^^

Anyway, once the battle’s over and Shadow “wins” (because Infinite is not defeated, he’s just done with this fight), the jackal might say something in the lines of “I suppose I’ve let this duel go on for long enough. I have other matters to attend to, Shadow the Hedgehog.”

We get back to the cutscene and Infinite is glitching a bit, quickly recomposing himself, laughing. Shadow is panting.

‘What’s the matter, Shadow? Can’t take down a measly jackal anymore?’ The masked one says sarcastically. ‘It seems like I’ve overestimated your strength. You’re no fit to be a mercenary at all.’

There’s a beat and Shadow realises what this is about. He looks at Infinite, frowning. ‘It’s you… Defence Squad Jackal…’

Infinite stares at the hedgehog. He doesn’t seem to be as amused anymore. His golden eye’s glowing under his mask, and so is the Phantom Ruby on his chest. A tense background music plays as Infinite answers dryly:

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve spared you, but now you’re going too far. It’s time to finish this! Chaos Spear!’

The spears of light simply go through Infinite as if they didn’t exist. Shadow goes for a spin dash/homing attack/kick to the face or whatever you can think of, but the masked villain glitches out of the way with ease and lands an almost perfect copy of Shadow’s roundhouse kick.

The hedgehog glides across the floor, almost falling over. Infinite scoffs.

‘This new “me” has limitless power. I have no mercy; no weakness! I am the true ultimate force that will tear this world apart, and what may have worked to bring me down before…’ the jackal starts floating again; thousands of red cubes start dancing around him and, as he raises a hand, they all group in the sky not far above them. ‘… No longer does.’

(Why yes, this is a reference to Mephiles the Dark and that time he destroyed the Sceptre of Darkness!)

Infinite throws his “Take THIS!” and Shadow does the “!” – which is him frantically trying to get out of the way as the thousands cubes of doom come crashing down on him.

The screen goes black.

Scene ends.

The Virtual Reality level should play as usual from there. I don’t even want to change the background dialogue, because I really like it: it’s confusing, it’s weird, it’s unsettling and it slaps Shadow in the face in a way that we rarely see. I love it! (Although, I do think the gameplay should have a tiny little bit more of 3D parts. We love Green Hill, but we also love the freedom to move on more than two directions when playing as the Ultimate Life Form. But it’s cool)

After that, we could get another cutscene (we’re full of cutscenes, huh? Well, this is a hypothetical rewriting with a hypothetical budget. Also, Episode Shadow is more of an exposition episode anyway). In this cutscene, we would start with some shots of different known locations: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Crisis City, Mystic Jungle, Kingdom Valley, Babylon Garden, you name it! And all of these places are somewhat “corrupted”; they’re glitching out, full of those red cubes, and there’s just this ominous atmosphere in them, as if they’re abandoned, desolated despite looking roughly the same as ever. We then see a black-and-red blur cross the screen, and a short narration takes place:

“I’ve been here for longer than I can remember. This… alternate reality, this fake world. There seems to be no escape. Rouge and Omega talk to me occasionally…”

We see Shadow leaning against a wall. His communicator plays only white noise, then Rouge’s voice comes in; it’s strangely echoed as it calls out to him. Shadow throws the device far away and sighs.

“… They’re fake too. No matter where I go, no matter how much I run…”

Shadow is skating through Pumpkin Hill or something, when the world suddenly starts to glitch out massively; we hear the Phantom Ruby’s noise and suddenly, we’re on the ARK.

“It’s like this place was made to torture me. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.”

‘I’ve moved on from this a long time ago,’ Shadow says to the void of the Universe as we hear gunshots in the distance. He’s not being completely truthful. ‘Putting me through this scenario dozens of times changes nothing. Don’t you have anything more creative at this point?’

There’s silence, except for the shouts in the Space Colony. A voice calls out to Shadow, and he promptly ignores it, albeit with a pained look in his eyes. He’s visibly tired, almost hopeless, if one could ever describe Shadow the Hedgehog that way.

He sighs.

‘Alright, how do I get out of this one?”

We then get a start of a short level in the ARK. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those hellish mazes that usually haunt every ARK level there ever was; this is more straight forward, with doors closing all around you so that you know where you shouldn’t go, and some G.U.N. robots trying to kill you, simple thing.

The catch happens when you’re halfway through the level: as you’re crossing a long corridor, the game begins to “crash” – in the sense of you losing control of the character, the visuals beginning to glitch and the soundtrack going weird, all in a way that makes the soul leave the body of the player for a terrifying four seconds of “HOLY SHIT, I BROKE THE GAME”. But nope, you didn’t break the game: the Phantom Ruby is trolling you. We soon find that out as the signature noise plays and the glitching effect on screen disperses to show a new scenario: Mystic Jungle. The real Mystic Jungle. Congratulations: you get to play in a totally different zone for the rest of the level.

‘My head…’ Shadow murmurs to himself. ‘That was too quick; this can’t be right, it- ugh, why is it so bright here? Where are all the red things? This place seems too normal… is it… am I back in the real world?!’

We then finish the level, get our nice score and head to the last scene of the episode.

Shadow is going through the jungle, taking in everything that isn’t an illusion. He passes by a red sword stuck to the ground and leans against a tree, still a little out of it, still struggling to believe that anything is real anymore. The hedgehog then takes his communicator – surprisingly intact; hadn’t he thrown that away? – and tries to make contact. There is static for a moment, when suddenly…

‘Shadow? Oh my- Shadow, is that you?!’

He’s startled for a moment, but so relieved to hear Rouge’s normal voice again.

‘It’s me, Rouge. What’s the situation? Where’s Omega?’

‘Omega? We lost contact with him months ago; the Resistance says he must have been shut down after the Doctor took over!’

Shadow raises both his non-existing eyebrows in surprise, barely holding a gasp. He then frowns.

‘Shut down? Resistance? What do you mean “the Doctor took over”? What the heck happened?’

‘What happened? What happened?! I should be the one asking you that! You’ve been offline for six months! Everyone keeps saying you’re working with Eggman and Infinite, and I couldn’t contact you or Omega, I thought… I thought we’d lost you for good…’

‘Nonsense,’ Shadow states. We start hearing voices in the distance, and the hedgehog starts looking around while still talking ‘I’ll tell you the details later, it’s long story. What’s the current situation?’

‘Shadow…’

The (Tired) Ultimate Life Form spots something from behind the trees. Still in hiding, he looks closer only to see the Custom Hero holding the prototype Phantom Ruby they just found and talking to Tails and… Classic Sonic, much to Shadow’s confusion.

‘… We’re at war.’

Shadow takes a moment to process what’s just been said. He doesn’t even pay attention to what Rouge says next (neither do we, as the background music starts getting louder than the bat’s voice). He still watches the avatar, Tails and Classic Sonic as they leave; he focuses on the Phantom Ruby.

‘Meet me in the City. I’ve got a lot to tell you,’ Shadow says.

And with that, he leaves, the scene fades out and Episode Shadow is over!

*”The Light of Hope: Menu Version” plays in the background*

Now, a few more analytical notes before we close this ridiculously gigantic thing:

The immediate reason why we have Shadow being stuck in the Virtual Reality for six months is to indicate to us why he doesn’t show up earlier in the main game. It’s not like he was being useless this whole time and just decided to show up whenever it was most Ex-Machina of him; much like Sonic, he was trapped by the enemy. A mental trap that put Shadow on survivor mode for months without any way of communicating with anybody; with twisted versions of his friends trying to get to him and remind him that, hey, they’re still out there, probably in high danger; with these illusions mocking him, reminding him of painful memories, isolating him in familiar places… I say: if you want to emotionally hit a character, hit them hard. And this experience is bound to leave Shadow with some emotional scar, alright.

(Ever heard of conveniently coming out of nowhere?)

Shadow is bound to lose his sense of reality and sometimes it should be hard for him to acknowledge that this is the real world. I hope I can showcase some of his reactions in the later parts of this o3o

The Virtual Reality isn’t all glitchy by mistake. No, no: Infinite is perfectly capable of making a “perfect copy” of the real world, but he doesn’t want to. He wants Shadow to know this is a fake world and to know that he’s completely trapped in it while his real friends and allies are out there doing who-knows-what in a world run by the enemy. He wants to throw Shadow off-balance as much as he can, because he’s spiteful and doesn’t just leave the hedgehog to the side without a second glance.

In the game, Infinite says that they didn’t really have time to tune his power yet, so we can tell putting Shadow in the Virtual Reality was more of a practice of sorts. But man, I think this is too much of a cool concept, so I’ll say Infinite did put his power to the test before all of this; because Eggman, sir: you don’t simply throw your super-secret, amazing, unparalleled weapon in the battlefield without testing it first. This is something that can be inferred, it doesn’t need to be directly told, it just- I’m telling you this right now, ok?

I know Shadow is supposedly “over” this conflict with what happened in the ARK and it probably feels over-used to add it in again, but… it’s a thing the games haven’t tackled in such a long time, I feel like this would be a nice call-back. Besides, Infinite would want to know what would bring distress to Shadow; what happened in the ARK isn’t exactly a secret, especially if he’s working with Eggman. And Shadow can be as “over it” as he wants: it’s still a scar that will never truly leave him. Even if he watches it happen dozens of times, it’s still at least a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

ALTHOUGH! I also think this ARK level could be easily replaced with some other random level if you want to argue that Forces happens in Mobius or something, where Gerald and Maria and G.U.N. maybe never existed and whatnot.

What brought Shadow back, you ask? Well, it probably has to do with a certain someone spontaneously activating a Phantom Ruby. Maybe the avatar was thinking of Shadow and how it’d be nice to have him on their side again? Maybe they were thinking of undoing Infinite’s evil deeds? Maybe the raw power of the Phantom Ruby prototype being suddenly activated by the Custom Hero just crashed something another Phantom Ruby user did, like magnetic waves interfering with each other? Who knows?

I also find it important to show the Custom Hero here not only to show that there’s a connection between Shadow’s sudden freedom and their actions, but also to establish the tiniest amount of early familiarity between Shadow and the original character. Then maybe (maybe) I’ll give them a bit more of interaction in the main game, because it’d be nice to have a cool interaction with Shadow; and as endearing as his smile after the avatar does their thing with the sun of destruction is, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, if you think about it…

(I mean... Does he even know who we are?)

Infinite’s sword stuck to the ground goes completely over Shadow’s head, as he has no idea what that is or who it belonged to or what it means. It’s really just there for the viewer to reminisce the beginning of the episode and have a slight existential crisis.

When playing the main campaign, we get some pretty convenient information from Shadow once he finally shows up. Episode Shadow should give us a sense of how he knows those things. Want it or not, he did spend a long time studying the Phantom Ruby’s power far more closely than anybody else – well, maybe Sonic spent almost as much time as Shadow in a similar state, but that’s something to cover in another part.

The fact that Shadow is the one narrating this entire episode is supposed to allude to him telling Rouge exactly what happened during those six months he was gone. But if you want to read it as him talking to himself in the Virtual Reality as he slowly descends into madness, then be my guest!

I don’t know if it’s noticeable, but I’ve tried to tune Infinite’s cheesiness down a bit. I don’t think I can rid him of it entirely – after all, he is somewhat of a pompous, edgy, over-the-top character in general; he’s a full-on drama queen 24/7 and the only character cheesier than him is Sonic. Now, what we do with Infinite is to at least give a base to what he says. Also, I wanted him to sound a bit more like he lets the power get to his head. Oh well, I surely hope we’ll be tackling more of Infinite in the future!

Episode Shadow is extremely short, even for a DLC. I mean, it’s about only 20 minutes long – even less, if you’re good at it! With the addition of the cutscenes, the small changes, the boss fights against Squad Jackal and Infinite, and the added levels, the episode shouldn’t get overwhelmingly longer, but longer enough for it to feel more satisfying!

And with that, we’re done! I hope you enjoyed this massive thing. Despite me really liking Sonic Forces, I do think a few things could be improved. It’s not like it will happen, but rewriting is a lot of fun!

And why, no: I don’t take myself seriously.

[perenlop]

@overlord-of-turtles ok. ONE nazo post.

AIGHT so wayyy back in the early 2000s, the sonic x pilot was released to the world! this trailer had lots of info on the characters and... some scrapped ideas i suppose. danny was shown to be a more involved character, shadow appeared to be a constant presence as opposed to only appearing in the sa2 arc and season 3 (and also looks super ugly, he looks ill with the colors they gave him) but other than that the trailer was gave away what the show was generally about and it looked rather complete, using the shows correct art style and showing sonic getting chaos powers from the rings and chris and all that good stuff. aside from one still shot at the very end of a pale blue-gray hedgehog.

now, this one screenshot was the ONLY content we had of this character, and the sonic fandom had about a million questions about them. “who is this? are they a villain? are they hyper sonic?” were the most common ones. on the official sega japanese website, the screenshot was uploaded with the file name “nazo.jpg” which led the fandom to believe that this was the character’s name (though considering the fact that “nazo” means “enigma” it could’ve just been a file name, but that’s what we ended up calling them anyways)

of course none of these were ever answered nor confirmed, because the anime went and aired and this character never showed up. ever. this of course left many fans confused, and we all wondered what they could’ve been or what their role was going to be.

back in 2015, takashi lizuka confirmed that nazo was actually meant to be an early concept of super sonic, but tbh i don’t totally follow or believe that myself because super sonic actually shows up earlier in the teaser and also that doesn’t really even look like sonic, plus the whole situation is just questionable overall. so i’m personally trying to use the design for my own purposes.

throughout the years though, some people have tried to give this character a story! the most famous one by far, and usually the reason why fans today would know about this character, is a 30 minute fan movie called “Nazo Unleashed” that was made in 2006, which is basically inspired by old fighting sprite videos, but with drawn animation. it had heavy, HEAVY dragon ball z inspiration, and apparently the creator was 16 when he made it so it’s pretty edgy, has a lot of blood, and tails literally dies for no reason but gets better later? i guess, there’s no point to it. but honestly it’s a fun product of its time and i do recommend it if you wanna see something to remind you of the 2000s i suppose or old fight animations are just your thing (also act 3 is a HUGE guilty pleasure of mine hee hee)

tldr; sonic x pilot promised a new character/sonic form, it ended up being scrapped, so now they’re a very popular fan character.

[grovestep]

Ghostwatch: Chapter 2 [R76]

Title: Ghostwatch Chapter: 2 - Intermission Rating: M Ao3: Click here, remember to leave kudos! Summary:  Gabe, Jack and Ana plan their next episode, and employ the help of everyone's favorite cowboy.

Gabriel sat on the couch at Jack’s apartment, feet propped up on the coffee table and his laptop balanced on his knees. He worked on editing the Poltergeist House video while Ana and Jack bickered over the idea for the next episode. They were committed to posting a video a week, despite having jobs and classes to attend to. Sometimes, Gabe felt ran absolutely thin, but he loved his work. Filming and editing were two of Gabe’s passions.

He was thankful that he met the blond man from Indiana in one of his film courses. The guy stuck out like a sore thumb. Gabriel had figured he was a football player getting a creative arts credit in, but was pleasantly surprised when he found Jack was majoring in theater. He wasn’t a prodigy by any means, but Jack had an air about him that just commanded the camera. Ana was one of Jack’s best friends. Gabe was skeptic about how a finance major could be passionate about film (perhaps he bought into just a fewstereotypes), but Ana had a talent for special effects makeup, and never failed to impress him when they needed something bloody. She was the official co-host, and while not being as a commanding a presence as Jack, she gave as good as she got, and played one hell of a ghost.

He drummed his fingers on the touchpad of the laptop as the video processed. He felt good about the shots he managed to get, though this episode was strenuous to cut, edit and censor. He really needed to watch his copious use of the F-bomb in the moment. It only lead to more work later. It didn’t help that there was a giant purple phallus on the wall (that was not there when they checked the house).

Gabe sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face as he looked over his shoulder at Jack and Ana. Jack was gesticulating wildly, talking about Mothman.

“Jack, honey,” Ana said, her voice slow and pointed, like talking to a child. Gabe smirked. He knew Jack was in for it. “Mothman is from Virginia. We are in Los Angeles.”

“So?” Jack huffed, crossing his arms. He may as well have pouted his lip.

“So, we’d get more flack than praise for a California Mothman,” Gabe said. “Let the Virginians have their bug dude. You’re not fitting this ass in spandex.”

“Fine, then what’s your idea, huh?” Jack challenged.

Gabe stroked his goatee in thought, setting the laptop onto the coffee table. He got up to look at the idea board Jack had on the wall. It was covered in pictures, post-it notes, and push pins. They’d covered plenty of hauntings, alien encounters, the occasional cryptid.

“I don’t want another episode where one of us is the monster just yet,” he said. He ran his fingers over the corkboard, stopping at one of the images tacked there. “How about werewolves?” He pulled down the picture of a hulking, hairy beast.

Ana laughed, leaning back in her chair. “Gabe, werewolves? How is that not one of us dressing up?”

“Hear me out, pendejo,” he huffed. “There’s been reports of bizarre animal attacks up in Big Bear. It could be a two-part episode. The viewers eat that shit up.”

Jack steepled his fingers, leaning forward on his elbows. “Go on,” he said, drawing out the ‘o’ sounds.

“So, we take a trip up there. It gives me a chance to get some shots of the scenery and take a break from heavy editing,” Gabe said, going to sit with them around the kitchen table. “We get some exposition. Plant some footsteps, or pawsteps, or whatever.” He waved his hand. “Really set the mood and shit. Then we end on a cliffhanger.”

Ana still looked skeptical, her brow knit in thought. “Okay, but who will be the werewolf in the second part? It would be odd if one of us disappeared after being there for the first half.”

“We can get Jesse to do it. He’d barely need any makeup,” Gabe said.

“McCree? The guy that talks and dresses like he’s in a John Wayne film?” Jack asked incredulously. He leaned forward farther, encroaching on Gabe’s personal space. “The guy who is still undeclared in our junior year?”

“Can you name a better werewolf, Jackie? Or are you volunteering?” Gabe asked, leaning forward to challenge Jack in his space.

Jack elevated his chin, keeping eye contact with Gabe. He grit his teeth. He knew that Gabe was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. The editor drove him up a wall and challenged him at every corner. Sometimes he just wanted to punch that sly smirk off his face.

Gabe was relentless. He wanted Jack to know that just because he was gorgeous (come on, anyone with eyes could see that) and the head of the trio, he didn’t get final say in everything. Gabriel had dealt with plenty of his kind. While he wasn’t a jock, he was still that type of person that thought he could bat his stupid blue eyes and get people to conform to his will.

Ana sighed, rolling her eyes. “Are you two done posturing?” she asked, waving a hand in front of her nose. “It reeks of testosterone in here.”

“Once Jack stops being a diva,” Gabe said. He crossed his arms, eyes never leaving the blond.

“Me? A diva?” Jack said, clutching a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt, really.”

Gabe reached out and flicked Jack’s nose, making him scrunch up his face. The tension dissolved as quick as it arose.

They bickered more than she and Jack did. They were both so passionate and sure of themselves, it was natural for those energies to clash every so often. Ana loved how they could have a heated argument, then reset like nothing happened. Even if they were to beat the hell out of each other, they’d end up laughing it off.

Jack grunted, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his chair. Gabe took it as a victory. He poked his tongue out at Jack, who flipped him off.

“So, Jesse is our werewolf?” Ana asked.

“On one condition,” Jack said.

Gabe quirked an eyebrow. “Let me guess. So long as he dresses up as a werewolf and climbs into bed with you?”

Jack’s face reddened. “N-No! Why would you say something like that?” he stammered. “I was going to say so long as we can use his van to drive up there!”

Ana pulled a disgusted face. “Let me get this straight. You had an issue with Jesse coming, but you have no issue climbing into the back of his van. His van that smells like stale Pabst, cheap cigars, and In-n-Out?”

Jack put his hands up, the blush on his cheeks slowly dissipating, “Hey. If you want to use a ride service to get there, feel free. Sorry, Gabe, but your motorcycle and my shitty junker aren’t going to cut it.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t totaled your pickup,” Gabe grumbled under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Gabe said. “We leave for the forest this weekend, then.”

--

Getting Jesse on board was easy. Gabe showed up to his dorm room with a case of beer (carefully smuggled in) and a box of cigars. He knocked on the door. There was a clatter and a groan from the other side before the scruffy face of Jesse McCree peered out at him.

“Oh, hey Gabe,” he drawled. He was shirtless and clad in boxers, his cowboy hat casting his face in shadow. His eyes immediately landed on the six pack tucked under the editor’s arm. “Whatcha need this time?” he asked, opening the door to reveal his room.

It never failed to make Gabe balk. The man lived in chaos. There were clothes, beer cans, and fast food detritus everywhere. Jesse clicked his tongue, taking the beer from Gabe. “C’mon, now. You always look like yer about to implode every time ya stop by.”

“Jesse, there is a pair of underwear on the ceiling fan.”

“Oh, that there is,” Jesse said, snatching the boxers down and tossing them into the corner.

“What does your roommate think?”

“Who, Genji? Half this stuff is his,” Jesse said, kicking aside a pair of neon green boxers before plopping down on his bed. He pulled one of the cans from the plastic rings, cracking it open. He tipped the can toward Gabe. “So, what can I do for ya?”

“Well, uh…we need a werewolf for the shoot this weekend,” Gabe said, sitting beside Jesse, careful not to touch any of the stains on the sheets.

“Werewolf, huh?” Jesse stroked his beard, taking a long sip of the beer. “Dunno if a six pack a’ Blue Moon is gonna cut it.”

Gabe sighed, taking the pack of cigars out of his pocket. He threw them into Jesse’s lap. The cowboy beamed, turning the pack over in one hand. “You know me good, Reyes. You got yourselves a werewolf.”

“We also need your van.”

“Figured. Wasn’t no way Jack would have me along without my baby. How is Jackie boy doin’, anyhow?” Jesse asked, watching Gabe out of the corner of his eye.

Gabe flexed his jaw and crossed his arms. “He’s good. Still an asshole. Still stupidly good looking,” he said measuredly, unsure what Jesse was looking for.

“Sooo...you tapped that yet?”

Gabe thought he might actually combust. His face heated and he tugged his beanie down over his ears, hiding their red sheen. He glared at Jesse, who was smiling around the rim of his can.

“Fuck off,” Gabe snapped. “Jack is just an asshole friend who happens to be hot, like you.”

Jesse raised his arms and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m flattered, doll. But if you don’t, I will.”

Gabe snorted, rolling his eyes, “Jack wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole. It was hard enough convincing him to let you come.”

Jesse winked, crumpling the now empty can in one hand. “He just ain’t seen me lay on the charm.”

“Have at him, cowboy. I bet he shoots you down the first time you wink at him,” Gabe sneered.

“You got a bet,” Jesse said, punching Gabe in the arm. Gabe smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

—

The back of Jesse’s van smelled like bad decisions. The white panel van was painted with a desert mural on one side, while the other had “It’s High Noon” scrawled in towering font. The back of the van had shag carpeting that reeked, and the only seating was the front bench made of peeling red vinyl. Gabe was crammed in the back alongside Ana and their equipment. Jack was at the wheel, not trusting Jesse to get them there without a near-death experience. Jesse rode shotgun, not trusting Jack to drive his baby.

And, Gabe thought, to “lay on the charm.”

Jesse leaned close to Jack, talking in hushed tones. To Gabe’s surprise, Jack smiled and laughed.

“Gabe, you’re brooding,” Ana said, resting a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. Gabe grit his teeth, prying his eyes away from Jesse’s courting. He looked at Ana, who had one eyebrow cocked at him.

He rolled his eyes. “What? I brood. It’s what I do. When am I not brooding?”

“I can name a few instances,” she said.

Gabe held his tongue. He ran his hand across the dingy shag carpeting. He tried not to think of what was hiding in between the pieces of red fabric. He looked back at Ana. “He’s winning the bet.”

“What bet?”

Gabe cast a glance at the duo, making sure they were too busy to pay them any attention. “I bet Jesse that Jack would turn him down as soon as he even tried any of that charm shit.”

Ana rolled her eyes. “Never make a bet with that man, Gabe. He’s been gambling since he popped out of the womb.”

A sudden crooning came from the front seat. Jesse had his feet propped up on the dash, a cigar in his mouth and his head back. He belted out the lyrics to Hound Dog at the top of his lungs. Jack laughed along and tapped his fingers to the beat. Ana couldn’t help but laugh. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

Shoot me, Gabriel mouthed. He fell back onto the carpet, the film equipment prodding into his back.

“Jack, you better stop at the next scenic pull-off before Gabe melts into the shag,” Ana said over Jesse’s raucous singing.

Jack gave a thumbs-up in the rearview mirror.

When they came to a halt, Gabriel threw open the back doors, almost throwing himself over the side of the cliff that overlooked LA. He scowled at Jesse as he loped over to the edge. Gabe briefly debated pushing the cowboy off.

He decided murder wasn’t something he was prepared to go to jail for and grabbed his camera from the back of the van instead. He toyed with some of the settings before turning it on and panning across the view. If they had had more time, he would have loved to do a timelapse.

Gabe shooed McCree out of the shots, since he was supposed to be their werewolf. He got a shot of Ana leaning over the rails, looking off into the distance while her hair blew in the wind. She turned toward the camera and smiled, as though she had been caught. It made Gabe grin from ear to ear.

He panned the camera to Jack. He looked like a Boy Scout troop leader. All blond hair and blue eyes and tanned skin. He sat on the rail with his legs dangled over the side. Gabe was afraid he might fall, but the blond man had a sure grip on the rail. He leaned back on his hands and tossed Gabe a look over his shoulder. It was a cocky grin, one he was used to when they were getting into trouble.

Ana pressed into Gabe’s side and craned her head to look at the digital image projected on the camera’s screen. She smiled and pinched his side. “Your turn,” she said as she took the camera from him. Gabe shot her a glare, but didn’t argue. He disliked being on camera, but couldn’t object to making a cameo in some B-roll shots.

He leaned against the rails beside Jack. He took out a cigarette and lit it up. The smoke wraithed around his face and obscured his features. He smirked at the camera as he flicked his ashes toward Jack, who laughed and took a jab at Gabe’s shoulder. Careful not to send Jack sailing over the side, he grabbed the back of Jack’s shirt and gave him a tug. Jack lost his balance and tumbled back onto the ground. He glared up at Gabe, who was taking another drag from his cig.

Jack grabbed Gabe’s ankles and yanked them out from under him. Gabe landed on his ass with a momentous thump.

“Smoking kills!” Jack said between gasps of laughter.

“Yea, and I’ll kill you after that!” Gabe said and flicked his cigarette to the side. He grappled with jack on the ground, getting him in a headlock. Jack bit his arm, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make Gabe wince. “Hey, that’s dirty!” he laughed, not relenting his grip.

“Like you fight clean,” Jack said through grit teeth.

“Tell me in the best editor ever and I’ll let you go,” Gabe said, unaffected by Jack’s squirming.

Jack huffed, his hands in Gabe’s arms in an attempt to pry them off. His eyes flicked up to Ana, who was still rolling. He bit the inside of his cheek and grumbled.

“What was that, Jackie?”

“You’re the best editor…” Jack said louder.

“Ever.”

“Ever,” Jack sighed and rolled his eyes.

Gabe released Jack, earning a punch to his arm. Jack rubbed his neck and laughed through his nose. Gabe gave him a shit-eating grin and flipped him off.

Jesse leaned against the van, one leg propped up while he puffed on his cigar. He watched the two tussle with an easy grin. Jesse had competition, whether Gabe realized it or not.

[axemetaphor]

OC Masterpost

I need an organized place to put info about all my OCs so that’s what this post is gonna be for!

In addition to basic bios and some reference images, I’ve also got links to Spotify playlists for every character, because music is a strong association with personality for me. (If you don’t use Spotify, or if you know of a streaming platform more easily accessible than Spotify, send me an anon and I’ll duplicate the playlists to that service then add a link here!) I also have moodboards for every OC.

This post will be rather long so I’ve put in under a readmore for the sake of convenience.

It’s also important to note that my OCs exist in an AU where some things are a little different. For example, Infinite in this AU is 17 and that’s definitely not because I assumed he was an edgy teen like Shadow, and after Robotnik’s defeat in Forces, the Resistance became the Restoration. All the troops who had been battling were reassigned to rebuilding whatever town they happened to be in at the time of victory, with extra troops being redistributed as needed (leading to the formation of small roving teams traveling from place to place to help out).

It’s a little bit of an unorganized info-dump at some points, but I’ll update it to be more organized at some point.

Updated 01/20/2019

Rhys the Serval

Spotify playlist | Moodboard

Rhys was designed by @creative-sanic and she also came up with most of his backstory!

Rhys is a gender-nonconforming cis gay dude. He was born to a ‘feral’ mother in the wilderness closest to Central City (between the City and Mystic Ruins, far enough away from civilization to be undetected for a majority of his early life). At age 7 or 8, a massive fire swept the forest, putting him and his mother in massive danger. Officials sent to contain the fire discovered that she and Rhys were living alone in the forest, and took the two into protective custody while working through the devastation caused by the fire. The city pressured Rhys’s mother to join civilization, but she adamantly refused, and as a consequence, Rhys was stolen from her and put up for adoption, leading to her having a violent breakdown. She was moved to a containment facility and hasn’t seen Rhys since; he has only the faintest memories of her. He was adopted at age 13 or 14 (having been shuffled around in foster care before then) by a family of bears, and went on to be a fairly average Mobian citizen, working as a waiter at Penne For Your Thoughts. That’s where he met Vitriol, who is now his boyfriend. After dating for a few months, they decided to move in together, with Vitriol moving into Rhys’s apartment, which was the larger of the two. Rhys is now roughly 19 years old (18 or 19).

Rhys and Vitriol have a steady relationship relatively devoid of problems. They love each other enough that no problem is too big for them to tackle, and when Vitriol became part of the Restoration (the collective effort to undo the damage done by Robotnik and the Resistance), Rhys moved with him all over the world, glad to have a reasonable excuse to travel. Neither wanted to attempt a longstanding long-distance relationship; their being separated briefly during the Resistance was frustrating enough for the two of them.

Rhys is unaware that he possesses Empathic abilities, and simply assumes he’s very good at figuring people out/being sympathetic, but in truth, the forest fire in his youth served as the catalyst for his abilities. Since his Empathy doesn’t require the same physical drain as, say, Vitriol’s Strength, Rhys mistakes his Chaos-Energy-related fatigue after using his powers to be emotional exhaustion. When he’s that tired is roughly the only time he can show unprovoked anger, but he’s also in-tune enough with himself to recognize when he’s being needlessly mean, and he’ll usually apologize right away. This happened most frequently during the events of the Resistance, where Rhys was tasked with helping to get survivors to safe places; he was very good at comforting those who may have lost friends/family in the attacks. From that, he’s begun to entertain the idea of becoming a therapist someday, though he’s not sure how he would afford the college degree for that. 

He gets along very well with Unknown due to them both having rather upbeat personalities. Though Unknown can be a little overbearing sometimes, Rhys likes talking to them and sometimes they’ll gush about how cute Vitriol is. 

As mentioned previously, Rhys doesn’t conform to typical gender norms; he’s a fashionista of sorts and doesn’t care what gender clothing is associated with. He thinks skirts are cute and feel nice, and he thinks makeup is a lot of fun, though he doesn’t do either every single day, just every now and then. For the most part, unless he’s feeling adventurous, he wears a hoodie and jeans, though his work outfit is a fancy suit. So, it’s often nice for him to just wear something low-effort. That being said, he always jumps at every opportunity to do his boyfriend’s makeup, and though Vitriol isn’t the biggest fan of it, he likes seeing Rhys smile, so he usually gives in.

Rhys often prompts Vitriol to keep up with his health, and the two go on camping trips whenever Rhys can convince Vitriol to go. He’s very good at camping; he can build a shelter easily, knows which plants are edible, etc.. Vitriol, by contrast, is pretty clueless, but Rhys is more than happy to teach him. 

When speaking, Rhys normally has a somewhat-formal tone, and he uses little to no slang (usually just words like “gonna,” and he almost never drops the G’s at the end of words). He’s very polite by nature (and some of the formality was ingrained by his job), and he tends to not talk a lot. When he’s really comfortable around someone (like Vitriol), he can chatter a lot, but if he catches himself, he’ll get really embarrassed about it. He has a soft, lilting voice that many find pleasant to listen to and soothing. When he gets excited, or raises his voice, it gets slightly higher in pitch. He’s not an anxious person (as in, he doesn’t have an anxiety disorder) but he’s rather shy and awkward around new people. He’s more of a reserved person than an anxious one, and he is by no means meek; having been raised (post-adoption) by a family of bears taught him how to roughhouse and hold his own against bigger enemies.

For the most part, Rhys isn’t bothered by his past. His life in the forest is far enough away, mentally, that to him it doesn’t feel like it even happened to him. However, the fire was a traumatic event for him, and to this day he has a deep-seated fear of fire. It’s rare, but on occasion, he will have nightmares about that day, and he doesn’t handle that well when alone. Fortunately, Vitriol is fairly helpful to Rhys—his simply being there is very comforting, even though he never really knows what to say.

Toxic the Porcupine

Spotify playlist | Moodboard

Note: while this character started out as a sonicsona of sorts, they’ve somewhat evolved from that and I don’t see them quite so much as “me” anymore. They do, however, share my name (or rather the name I’m using currently, as I write this). To further complicate things they also look the way I do right now and I use them for vent art lmao so, if I happen to draw myself as a mobian ever again I’ll tag it as #not oc. That way it’s clear what’s Toxic the OC and what’s Toxic the...uh, human being I guess. 

Toxic is an agender porcupine who hasn’t settled on their sexuality yet--they know they’re asexual, but they haven’t thought any further into their romantic orientation. They were born in a tiny unnamed village settled in the shadow of Scrap Brain Zone, and only recently did they leave after a majority of it was burnt to the ground...by them. They showed signs of being trans at a young age, and were subsequently bullied quite harshly by both their peers and their family. They came out to their family at age 17, which only deepened the rift already forming, and subsequently Toxic ran away for a week, spending that time in Scrap Brain Zone. That was their first overnight foray into the Zone, something that would eventually become a staple of their life.

At age 19, they discovered an abandoned prototype Wispon in Scrap Brain Zone (devoid of Wisps), which they then decided to retrofit with the flaming spouts from Scrap Brain Zone to make their own strange hybrid flamethrower. A few nights later, after a particularly awful verbal spat with their family, they decided to fake their own death by setting fire to their own room. However, things quickly got out of hand, and the whole town ended up in flames. They fled, unsure if anyone made it out alive that night...and a little less than sympathetic if they didn’t. (Fortunately, a majority of the little village’s populace wound up trickling into neighboring villages and towns)

Since then, they’ve been absolutely destroying almost everything in their path. With no direction and no impulse control, they are a complete loose cannon throwing a wrench in both Eggman’s plans and Sonic’s adventures. They live by a motto of recklessness and “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.” Being an un-powered Mobian, they can’t do much of anything with the Wispon taken away, but taking that Wispon away is much easier said than done. Shortly after their ‘debut’ as a villain-of-sorts, Eggman reached out to them with a message essentially reading, “hey, do you want a direction in which to burn everything down (that is preferably not my everything)?” Since joining forces with Robotnik, though, their chaos has become much more controlled, and now incidents of mass fires can usually be linked to Eggman sending them off somewhere. They are a persistent thorn in the Freedom Fighters’ sides as they just love to fight and don’t really care who they fight.

They will not, however, attack civilians directly. Their fires might pose a threat to cities, but they don’t outright attack people unprompted--their chaos isn’t fueled of malice but rather of recklessness and an extreme lack of forethought. If harassed, however, they aren’t above punching someone in the face, and civilians are warned to just stay the hell away from Toxic. Their behavior overall is best classed as “more of a danger to themselves than others, even when provoked.”

Toxic only owns one jacket and one pair of boots, as well as no other accessories save for the spiked bracelets and collar, since everything else was burnt. One item they are occasionally pictured with, but rarely wear, is a long ankh necklace, the origins of which they refuse to elaborate on. However, it’s clearly important to them… Prior to burning everything, they often wore ripped jeans, loose half-torn-up tank-tops with a variety of detailed patterns, and lots of bracelets. They despite feminine-coded clothing and would rather die than wear it. Overall, they’re fond of clothes that look like they’re being held together by safety pins and hope.

Their speaking pattern is completely all-over-the-place. Their accent is untraceable, they mix slang from a variety of regions, and mix pidgin street-slang with oddly formal sentence structure or complicated words. They alternate between dropped G’s at the end of words and dropped H’s at the beginning, but inconsistently; rather than being a sign that this accent is faked, it’s more a reflection of how scrambled they are on the inside. Toxic’s voice is prone to cracking, especially when they yell (which is very often), and it has a certain hoarse quality to it most of the time. It rests in a midrange between stereotypically “male” and “female” voices, and can be mistaken for a young boy or slightly-older girl interchangeably. This irritates them to no end—they’re no stranger to yelling in demand for their proper pronouns to be used.

Toxic has frequent nightmares, but never speaks of them. They often suffer from broken sleep, only getting a few hours at a time, and on occasion are struck with insomnia. During that time, they doodle or write, dealing with rather dark subjects, but never share this willingly. Oddly enough, they have a rather intense fear of fire (ironic given their Wispon) and of heights. Strangely they seem to use their fear as an adrenaline boost of sorts, embracing it to use as a motivation. (It’s somewhat similar to how Batman uses bats as his main motif, despite having been traumatized by an experience with bats in his childhood.)

They cannot be swayed to being “good,” because they truly believe they are an awful person who could never be good even if they tried. So, they just do what they want out of a very specific, Nihilistic worldview, and truth be told they’re simply a chaotic being who’s in way over their head. Despite being a villain, however, they are a big fan of Sonic and his friends, and they consider it a huge honor to be able to fight him. They’ve created an odd sort of parent-child bond between themselves and Robotnik, adopting him as their dad (he didn’t really get a say). Robotnik isn’t exactly doting but he does view them as his child in a sense, and often makes them new weapons to use alongside their Wispon (which they refuse to part with; he repairs it fro them as-needed). 

Vex the Cat/Fox Cross

Spotify playlist | Moodboard

Vex is a bigender aroace genetic experiment who most closely resembles a fusion of a fox and a cat. (Any pronouns are applicable to them, but I use she/her most, because I have a lot of “he” and “they” OCs already) She has lived roughly 17 years, the first 14 of which were spent in the facility that created them. Partway through what would have been the 15th year, a catastrophe occurred at the facility, giving Vex, Vitriol and Unknown a window to escape. During this process, Vex and Unknown became separated from Vitriol, escaping the facility and winding up on their own. They traveled in a world absolutely foreign to them for months, eventually, through a strange turn of events, joining a thieves’ guild in an attempt to forge new identities. They had great success as a thieving duo up until the unfortunate disappearance of Unknown, after which Vex abandoned the guild to search for them. Instead of Unknown, however, Vex ended up reconnecting with Vitriol in Central City, after which the two worked together to find Unknown, eventually finding their sibling in the Resistance. Since finding each other, the three have not been separated, and now form Team Motley.

Vex is generally regarded as the smartest of the trio, having a sharp wit and capacity both to plan ahead and think on their feet. Her Manipulation ability makes negotiations and covert ops very easy for them, with its one flaw being that it doesn’t work on others with similar abilities, such as Empathy. All three experiments possess low natural levels of Chaos Energy, below what is healthy, and their bodies cannot contain it well, so their abilities rely on the Energy around them, both in the environment and other people. Mobians often report “a strange sort of tiredness” after being Manipulated by Vex, as her power functions by draining a bit of Chaos Energy from the target and matching its wavelength.

Due to her affinity for making others do as she says, Vex is the leader of Team Motley, and, despite being the ‘middle child,’ the other two often go to her for advice. She is the organizational backbone to the team, a natural leader with a kind heart hidden behind a few layers of selfishness. Vex values family and friends above all else, and has a keen sense of right and wrong, even if she doesn’t always do what she knows to be right.

Vex is aware of her Manipulation ability, and does her best to curb its effects when she isn’t intending to use it, but given that it’s activated by her voice, sometimes she can’t control it very well. In addition to that, Vex is more than a little greedy; coming from a background where she didn’t even own her own life, Vex fell in love with her life in the thieves’ guild, mainly for the riches they earned and the thrill of the escape.

She’s a fan of loud, gaudy jewelry, luxurious metals, and other frivolous high-class things, though she doesn’t wear them in public. During their time in the thieves’ guild, Unknown and Vex lived in a network of caves, where many of the things they stole during their heyday are still hidden. While she misses those days, she doesn’t regret leaving them behind, and rather considers it an... option for future employment, once the Restoration is all said and done.

Despite her love of jewelry, Vex prefers not to wear clothes at all. They’ll wear their binder or a sports bra, and that’s about all; if necessary, they’ll wear baggy army-pattern pants or a baggy jacket. They don’t like the feeling of most fabrics on their fur, and don’t care a lot about fashion, but they tend towards more masculine clothing, often for its less-skin-tight properties. They also don’t mind skirts, but only wear them casually, as sometimes the extra fabric can get caught on things or be uncomfortable for them to sit on.

All three experiments tend towards more formal speech, but of the three, Vex has been trained out of that habit the most. She’s a real smooth-talker who adapts her speech patterns to mirror those of the person she’s talking to. When speaking casually, Vex is fairly neutral and doesn’t have any specific quirks to their speech pattern. When she’s comfortable around someone, she speaks in a rather husky voice, but not a very deep or gruff sound. It’s more of what would be described as “butch,” because their voice is closer to the stereotypically “feminine” sound than the stereotypically “masculine” sound.

Vex’s main phobia is having their mouth covered by something—anything from someone’s hands to fabric to a muzzle. This is because when her Manipulation was discovered by the scientists who created her, they immediately recognized it as a threat and she was kept muzzled for extended periods of time. The muzzle had supposedly been ‘humanely designed,’ but if at any point she frustrated her keepers, they were no strangers to shutting or covering the air-intake of it until she cooperated. Of the three, Vex has dealt with her trauma the least, and her sleeping pattern is just as broken as if not more broken than Toxic’s, and she tends to grind her teeth when she sleeps as well. She doesn’t speak of it much, but she and Vitriol have really bonded the most over their shared trauma. He is, essentially, the only person remaining who knows what they went through. 

Because they’re aroace, they have little concept of how flirting works other than when they’re using their Manipulation ability (which isn’t really calculated, more an instinctive knowledge that saying or doing certain things will achieve the effect they want). In other words, they’re extremely oblivious. The only thing they really care about is family, and they will do anything to protect them--when fighting they have no qualms about “fighting dirty” and will use anything to their advantage. Unusually, Vex has the ability to climb along walls quite easily using their claws, practically like a lizard. This combined with their night vision makes them quite formidable to fight in the dark. 

Vitriol the Ferret/Porcupine Cross

Spotify playlist | Moodboard

Vitriol is a gay cis guy who most closely resembles a fusion of a porcupine and a ferret. He has lived roughly 18 years, the first 15 of which spent in the facility that created him. During the calamity leading to his escape, Vitriol separated from Unknown and Vex in order to give them a chance to get out, taking on the officials sent to stop them. He ended up leaving via a different route, resulting in him coming into this world in a completely different place from Vex and Unknown. Vitriol spent the next half-year wandering across Spagonia’s countryside, often stopping to spend a night or two on a farm in exchange for helping its owners, who never questioned why a mysteriously-strong stranger would be wandering the wilderness. Many took him to be some kind of nature spirit, and treated him kindly; he realized through this little pilgrimage that he quite liked helping people out, though he never stayed more than a week in one place. Searching for his siblings was his main priority.

Eventually Vitriol came across a little town, the port of which was a dock for ferries to and from Central City (primarily used by high-end citygoers for transportation to their summer homes). He was told that Central City was a place many people lived and an even larger number of people visited; Vitriol resolved that, if Vex and Unknown were to wind up anywhere, it was likely a place like that--a place people are expected to wind up at. Not understanding the concept of having to pay for things, Vitriol snuck aboard, and managed to go undetected for the entirety of the trip by packing himself nicely into a tiny corner belowdecks. The night before the trip was to end, he snuck off the boat and swam to shore in Central City. Immediately enraptured by the city’s many brilliant lights, Vitriol decided to stay there and do his best to keep an eye out for his siblings.

He spent his first two weeks sleeping on the streets and wandering through the city, until one evening, allured by the glowing neon signs on the inside, he found himself inside a rather lively nightclub/bar. One thing led to another and Vitriol ended up breaking up a fight, catching the attention of the bar’s owner (who was, at the time, half of the staff, as well). Vitriol was offered the job of security officer, no questions asked, and, having begun to come to terms with the fact that money wasn’t just something that one town invented, Vitriol accepted. For the beginning of his ‘career’ he still lived on the streets, but eventually he saved up enough for a tiny postage-stamp of an apartment. It’s only enough space for him to just exist, but that was plenty of space for him. Over time he earned enough money to live comfortably—comfortably enough to get gauges and a septum piercing, both of which helped him in his line of work immensely (as most of his ‘security’ work was simply to look scary enough to keep people from misbehaving). 

Vitriol worked there for roughly the same amount of time that Vex and Unknown “worked” as thieves, and it was during this time that he met and started dating Rhys, moving in with him after roughly three months together. He only reunited with Vex upon happening to run into her when wandering the town one weekend night. The next day he quit his job and left to travel with her, searching for their last remaining sibling. Now that the three are reunited, Vitriol serves as the muscle of the team, doing all the heavy lifting and door-kicking necessary. While he vastly prefers sitting on the couch and watching TV with plentiful snacks nearby (preferably cookies), he’s not the type to shirk responsibilities. He’s just looking forward to going back to relaxing in Central City with Rhys when the Restoration is over (and, though he won’t admit it, he does miss when his only job was looking mean).

Vitriol doesn’t have a lot in his wardrobe. His usual staples are a crop top and leather pants, though he also wears skinny jeans and ripped t-shirts. Sometimes he wears pants without a shirt, and, overall, he doesn’t care a lot about fashion. He just picks up what he thinks is cool, which is usually a t-shirt or crop top with a few words on it (his favorites are “BORN FOR HELL” and “LIFE RUINER”). From there, he’ll often tear off the sleeves of the t-shirt, or cut holes and slits into the body of it. The only thing he always wears are the red fingerless gloves with lightweight chains dangling off the backs. 

He tends to mumble the most when he speaks, unless he’s angry or using his “Work Voice.” His “work voice” is the particular loud, gruff tone he takes that he picked up from his job; an intimidating deeper and more snarling version of his voice, often accompanied by a very stern or frightfully blank expression. This is made more intimidating by the fact that all 3 of the genetic experiment characters have a habit of needing to initiate conversation through eye contact, much in the same way that a small child might gently rest their hand on the arm of an adult whose attention they want, albeit much more unsettling. So often if one of the three wants to speak to someone, they’ll stare very intently at the person’s face until acknowledged (Vex has adapted the most of the three and therefore only does it to the other two and Rhys). When not using his “work voice,” Vitriol has a rough undertone to his voice, not necessarily a snarl so much as a growl. His voice is naturally deep, and lends itself well to singing his favorite music—rock music.

Vitriol often suffers night terrors and nightmares* linked to his trauma. When living alone, after waking from a nightmare, Vitriol would pace his apartment or wander around Central City to cool off, but after moving in with Rhys, he’s processing his trauma a bit more as opposed to just avoiding it. He hasn’t told Rhys much, just that he came from “a horrible place, where [he] was trapped,” and Rhys doesn’t pry; oftentimes it’s enough to just be reminded that he’s free for Vitriol to calm back down. 

Despite his prickly exterior (both literally and figuratively), Vitriol is much more cuddly than Rhys is. Perhaps it’s from being touch-starved in the facility for so long or perhaps it’s just part of his nature, but either way, Vitriol is no stranger to snuggling up against Rhys (most often) or his siblings (slightly less often as Vex is somewhat touch-averse). Rhys isn’t exactly annoyed by this, and often finds it endearing, but on occasion Vitriol has been known to act like a housecat--flopping down right in Rhys’s way to get his attention. He’s also a bit of a jokester, but only around Rhys and his family.

His deepest fear is of being helpless. He doesn’t tend to show much external emotion besides smiling at Rhys or his siblings, or glaring if he’s annoyed by something, but if he’s being dragged along the floor—especially if he’s being dragged by his underarms, as was his keepers’ favorite way of moving him from place to place—he will absolutely lose his mind in a panic. He also panics if cornered, lashing out with uncontrolled strength to get away, which usually doesn’t end well for his captors.

*Nightmares are your standard bad dreams that occur during REM sleep. Usually when waking from a nightmare, the person remembers what they were dreaming about. Often someone suffering from a nightmare will toss and turn, and maybe sleep-talk. Night terrors, however, are somewhere between dreaming and being awake; someone suffering a night terror might yell, thrash, kick or scream, or sit upright in bed with eyes wide open. They cannot, however, see or be woken from the night terror, and will flop back down anywhere from ten minutes to a half-hour after initial panic. They can often be confusing to the person suffering them, and only a vague recollection of what was going on remains when the person wakes up.

Unknown the Raccoon/Hedgehog Cross

Spotify playlist | Moodboard

Unknown is an agender bisexual polyamorous genetic experiment most resembling a fusion of a hedgehog and a raccoon. They have lived roughly 16 years, only four of which have been spent outside. When Vex and Unknown ended up on their own, Unknown took on a role of the silent intimidator between the two. Vex’s Manipulation came in handy most times, but when necessary, Unknown could provide some intimidation.

Unknown was a vastly different person then from who they are now. They were far more focused, and taught themself parkour, as well as having put themself through rigorous training to maintain a good physical health. They rarely spoke, and refused to give themself a new name, unlike Vex and Vitriol. They weren’t interested in the riches, though they did suffer from a bit of a hoarding impulse, enjoying the feeling of owning something. They didn’t care for jewels or finer things, unlike Vex; they were more participating for the adrenaline rush. At that point in time, they fully understood the brevity of their power, and it was imperative for them to keep a calm demeanor at all times; they were far less animated than they are now.

Then, about a year and a half after they’d escaped, Unknown abruptly went missing. A heist went sideways, the two became separated, and suddenly Vex couldn’t find them. A few months after that, Robotnik began taking over the world, and shortly after that, Unknown awoke in a dumpster somewhere in Park Avenue, with no memory of any life prior to that. They gathered all the information about themself from this police flyer:

From there, Unknown wandered the city amidst the chaos, confused and curious. Through that, they met Sonic when they helped him fight off a few robots. Impressed with their skills, he asked them to join the Resistance, which they cluelessly agreed to, definitely not because a cute boy was offering it to them. Unknown ended up being quite helpful to the Resistance, despite presumably having no Chaos Powers. They got along well with virtually everyone save for Omega and Vector, as they have a slight fear of people taller than them.

After being reunited with Vex and Vitriol, Unknown has stayed relatively close to them; the three are inseparable, traveling in a group for the Restoration. Shortly after the final battle, as the Resistance members were celebrating for the night, Unknown stumbled across Infinite while walking home. Unsure whether to turn him in or not, they decided to take him home and let him heal from his wounds first, then figure out who to turn him in to. In the end, after two weeks of Infinite recuperating (during which he revealed his name to be Zero), Unknown decided instead to keep Infinite in their home, unsure what would happen to him otherwise. For a short while, they didn’t tell anyone else, but once they told Vex and Vitriol, they were urged to tell the Resistance as well. It wasn’t taken well at first, but eventually the issue was settled—Unknown would take care of and reform Infinite, because having him close by and watched over is better than having him roam around unsupervised. Despite that, Unknown doesn’t treat Infinite like a child or prisoner but rather a friend. Currently, Infinite resides in the home Unknown was occupying during the Resistance, which was rather close to the site of the final battle.

Unknown’s usual ‘work clothes’ are a leather bodysuit of sorts with buckles similar to an airplane seatbelt’s buckles (and a hole for their tail) and combat boots as well as padded gloves that help absorb shocks), but in the past, they would wear a large cloak. It’s not clear where this went during their disappearance. In their free time, they prefer to wear clothes with deep v-necks to let their neck/chest fluff breathe, and they often wear ripped clothing like Vitriol. Unknown’s thick fur makes them more prone to overheating, but despite that, they enjoy running as a hobby and a way to stay fit. They often wear fitness clothes (a tank top and gym shorts) when they’re in an urban area, though if in the wilderness, they’ll just wear running shoes.

Typically, their voice has a bright and happy tone to it, all the time, and they’re very good at faking it when they’re actually not okay. Vex and Vitriol can usually pick up on when they’re lying, but most others can’t, something Unknown is actually very happy about. When it comes to negative feelings, Unknown is very secretive, but with positive feelings, they love to share—and overshare. (The only exception to their secrecy is anger; an angry Unknown is frightfully quiet and cold, and painfully obvious.) Oftentimes they don’t realize they’re oversharing, but Vex (or Sonic, if present) is more than willing to quickly interrupt and divert the conversation. Unknown tends to use overly-familiar language with just about everyone, especially words like “buddy” or “pal.” It’s unclear if they’ve picked this up from Sonic. 

They often suffer from night terrors, similar to Vitriol, but they claim it has no effect on them, as they don’t remember the trauma giving them nightmares. In the beginning, this was the truth; however, they refuse to open up to anyone, even their siblings, about what’s going on in their head. They’re well aware that they’re the most positive of the trio, and part of them doesn’t want to ruin that idea. Another thing they never tell anyone is that they often suffer from sleep paralysis*, wherein they often see strange things from their past, but existing still in the present. They don’t really know how to verbalize the experience to anyone else.

Unknown doesn’t have many fears, but they are downright petrified of needles and electricity—not in the sense where they’re scared of electronics, but they’re more frightened of visible electricity, like a fizzing outlet, lightning, or the Electric Wispons.

That being said, they do have a few insecurities, namely their sharp teeth. They’ve accidentally frightened people with them in the past, so when they first meet people nowadays, they try to smile with their mouth closed only. The anxiety dissipates eventually, as they’re more concerned about first impressions. 

*Sleep paralysis is an event where a person is mentally ‘there’ but unable to move or speak at all. It occurs when they are falling asleep or just waking up, and episodes usually last less than a few minutes, but can occur multiple times, not just once. It’s thought to be linked to a dysfunction in REM sleep, and is caused by sleep deprivation, psychological stress, or a poor sleep schedule.

Extra stuff:

Files from the experimentation: Basic knowledge on Vex, Vitriol and Unknown, as they would’ve been presented to their guards.

Scrap Brain Zone (writing from Toxic’s perspective)

Unknown meets Infinite (Comic) Part 1 | Part 2

Experiment origins (Flipnote) [old] (Flashing light warning)

Unknown waking up (writing from Unknown’s perspective) [old] 

OC Voiceclaims (video)

Chaos Vision (superemeralds’ idea) doodles | Click bold text to see his post on his blog.

Chips Ahoy (goofy non-canon animatic that im just really happy with)

Test animation for Toxic (Flicker warning)

Pride (doodles of 4/5 OCs for pride [toxic didn’t exist yet])

Moebius AU (Drawings with short description) | Moebius!Unknown video (Flash warning)

First Punch (Animated comic feat. @creative-sanic ‘s Aurora) | Still version

Rough concept writing - Toxic’s powers [will be removed when I decide on their abilities and how they get them in canon] (Writing)

Character Turn-Arounds (Comic/Animation ref) (Includes colour hex keys!)

[jsio]

ANARCHY BERYL

Moebius' precious gemstone

Anarchy Beryl is the Moebius equivalent of Chaos Emeralds, both gems giving the user an immense surge of power, and both opposites. Chaos Emeralds only come in 7, however, Anarchy Beryl is the opposite, there's tons of it, 100s, thousands, maybe millions of pieces of the gem around Moebius.

But yet, Anarchy Beryl is only seen once, and in that one Apprearnce, the design is just bad. Officially in Archie, Anarchy Beryl just looks like the green Chaos Emerald, nothing special about it design wise, and I'm here to change that.

The official design of Anarchy Beryl is the green Chaos Emeralds, but just alot of them, and to me? That's pretty uncreative! So, what did I do to it?

I flipped it. I've made the colour purple instead of green, and created 2 forms of Anarchy Beryl, Refined and Unrefined. So, let's get into the Unrefined Anarchy Beryl first.

Unrefined Anarchy Beryl

This is Anarchy Beryl in its unrefined form, less powerful then the Refined version but far more common, this is his you would find the gem just out in the world. In this state Anarchy Beryl is pretty dangerous, sure it looks nice and would make for a neat decoration, but actually using it would be very, insanely dangerous. The gem like this is pretty unstable, and actually absorbing and using its power could give the user tons of side effects, tons of possible issues to face later in life.

Scourge actually used it, when he went Super, this is what he had stashed in his throne, completely unrefined Anarchy Beryl. The only reason it hasn't ruined his life is thanks to his previous exposure to the Master Emeralds power, it helped null the affects of the Anarchy Beryls issue's. However, if you do survive using the gem, and by the end of your Super transformation, you will lose all your energy, strength and overall just become really weak for a little while.

Refined Anarchy Beryl

This is Anarchy Beryl after it has been refined. In this state Anarchy Beryl is useful, not just for world takeover, but for every day use. Anarchy Beryl like this is what you want to use, because now it works like Chaos Emeralds, Strong and Powerful, while not hurting the user, however it is stronger than the Chaos Emeralds, significantly so. You can teleport farther, Super forms last longer, etc, but because of its increased strength it still causes you to feel weaker per use, and once you come out of your Super form you will be completely worn out, unlike the Chaos Emeralds.

The shape of the Gem matters, it can come in many different shapes, and depending on that changes how strong the gem is in that field. The Anarchy Beryl is great at everything no matter the shape, but the shape makes one area amazing. For example, sharp Anarchy Beryl increases the gem's power, how strong you get from the gem, sharp Anarchy Beryl allows the user to tap into its Super Strength easier. Then there are the Oval ones, these allow easier and stronger access into Anarchy Beryl's Anarchy Force, E.G the equivalent of Shadow's abilities, like teleportation, time manipulation, magical attacks. The next form is the Marquise Anarchy Beryl leans towards the Speed aspect of the Gem, allowing you to react and move significantly faster than before, and for Speedsters (Such as Scourge) it can make them go far beyond their limit. Then the last one I'll talk about here is the Radient Anarchy Beryl, this version of the Gem is best if you're looking for one that focuses on all areas of Anarchy, it's Great in everything, but not amazing in anything, basically it's what you want to start learning how to use Anarchy Beryl with.

Now, there are more types, each different Shape you make Anarchy Beryl into can change the outcome. There's Round, Emerald, Asscher, Princess, Pear and heart left, and I'll leave that up to your guys.

Monarchy Beryl

The Monarchy Beryl, Moebius' Master Emerald. This artifact, this powerful gem, the ruler of Anarchy, hasn't been seen in 100's of years. Why? It was destroyed, in a war, centuries ago.

Back in the old days of Moebius, long before any of the Suppression Squad were born, there was a tribe of Echidna, isolated on Angel Island, the floating Island above the ocean. The tribe were peaceful, looking out for eachother, sworn to pacifism and always willing to help a stranger, they were the guardians, the protectors of the Monarchy Beryl, and it was their God.

Then, the "Land Dwellers" as the Echidna's called them, they were selfish, in it for themselves and wanted power, and there was a race guarding the most powerful thing on the planet, so what did they do? They attacked, they raided Angel Island, they went to war with the Tribes. This war went of the weeks, ending with alot of lives lost, but the Echidna's victory. But...the Land Dweller's were not having this loss. If they can't have the Monarchy Beryl, no-one can.

One last time the Land Dweller's went to Angel Island, but not for a fight, but a terrorist attack. Using new technology they sent a handful of bombers, and sent them straight to the Gem, and, they blew it up, into tiny pieces to broken to ever put the Gem back together. And...we all know what happens when Angel Island's Gem is destroyed...the Island fell, straight into the ocean, the force of the fall, the force of the landing, the tidal waves and all the rubble and destruction caused by this wiped out the majority of the Echidna race. This was a mass extinction event, and, a couple 100 years later, only one Echidna Remains. O'Knux, Sunken Island's protector. And all he wants is to uncover his extinct race's history before he dies, taking the Echidna's with him.

The Monarchy Beryl no longer exists by the time of the Suppression Squad, it's lost to time, only in what little remaining artwork and writing survived the Echidna Extinction. No Chaos, no Tikal, Just Moebians fighting over power.

The history of Anarchy Beryl

Anarchy was Discovered early in Moebius' documented history, thanks to it being naturally stronger in some Moebians, and this lead early philosophicers to believe there was more to it, eventually finding the the rock underground, in mountains, cliffs, even boulders, it was everywhere. They learnt the 2 were connected because the Beryl glowed when In contact with a Moebian strong with the Anarchy Force, and this led to test after test, all culminating with Anarchy Beryl becoming one of Moebius' most expensive gemstones, if not one of the most expensive things, even though it's high in quantity. Anarchy Beryl was tested on lots, and only a couple hundred years after its discovery was it learnt that the gem acts differently when in different shapes, this being used to the advantage of the people. Anarchy Beryl was quickly integrated into every day life, and it still is to this very day.

Before the days of the Suppression Squad, Anarchy Beryl was used as tool for any everyday folk, it being useful for any task, and anyone could use it because it was so easy to get. However, once the Suppression Squad came into the picture, Anarchy Beryl was one of their favourite tools. So, they took it. They took almost all of the world's Anarchy Beryl for themselves and if someone didn't give theirs to them? They'd hurt, maim and make a message out of them, showing they won't have people say no. The Suppression Squad took it for themselves because it allows them to have easy access to Power. However, Once Scourge started going too far, making himself ruler instead of Alicia, taking Actual lives, attacking peaceful people and overall being awful, the Suppression Squad hid the Anarchy Beryl across the globe, and made sure Scourge had no idea where it was, unfortunately for them, he had a stash in his throne.

What actually is "Anarchy" on Moebius?

Anarchy on Moebius is just like Chaos on Mobius, but to the 2 universes, they're looked at differently. Anarchy and Chaos is the mystical energy that allows both universes to exist, it's the all-encompasing energy of the universe. Everyone has it. Scourge has it, Miles has it, even Boomer has it, you could have that power too. These forces are in everyone, stronger in others, it's more or less every magical ability we see in Sonic, for Example, Shadows abilities are Chaos, he has them from his strong connection to the Chaos Force. Same all goes for Moebius, Anarchy and Chaos are the same, just named differently.

Wrap up

Whelp. That's my take on Anarchy Beryl, what did you think? Is it an improvement? Is it a downgrade? What about design wise, do you prefer the official or my designs?

Honestly, I kinda wish we saw it more (wow shocker), but in all seriousness I think it did deserve more time to shine. I'd of loved to see how it was different to Chaos Emeralds, I'd of loved to see how a Mobian reacts to it, stuff like that! The idea of an Anti/opposite Chaos Emerald is neat in my opinion, but like most of Moebius, it was underused and then the lawsuit happened, causing it to be forgotten.

But anyway, thanks for reading! This took me abit, soooo I hope you liked it! Ima leave you with some extra notes now, bye!

═════════•°•📝•°•═════════

Extras

-Anarchy Beryl is found in clusters.

-Mobians can use it, but it is far weaker on them then it is on Moebians.

-Before the Suppression Squad, Anarchy Beryl was Moebius' most precious Gem.

-The Monarchy Beryl's existence is more of a legend than a fact.

-Sonic Universe's 25 years later "Light Mobius" References an "Anarchy Beryl bomb" located under Castle Mobius.

-It was Referenced in the Sonic Forces tie-in comic, but that actually turned out to just be a coincidence.

-All Anarchy Beryl art was drawn by me

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

We’re Mixin’ Up the Line-Up!

“You’re reading them in order, right?”

Back in the halcyon days of 2015, when David Bowie and Prince were alive and the world wasn’t on fire, Cartoon Network presented us with our very first Steven Bomb to wrap up Steven Universe’s first season. Marble Madness, pivot episode extraordinaire, set the show up perfectly for its final stretch, and what ensued was a tautly paced week of ratcheting tension culminating in an epic two-part finale and its immediate aftermath.

However, to achieve this goal, the network slipped four episodes out of the final line-up. Here’s the intended order, courtesy of Ian Jones-Quartey, that was eventually used for the official DVD release (minus Say Uncle):

Open Book, Shirt Club, Say Uncle, and Story for Steven were shunted to the beginning of Season 2, which created a couple of continuity issues: Garnet retains her pre-finale look in Shirt Club, and the episodes’ title cards lack the rubble visible in early Season 2 openers. 

Considering this, and the creators’ intent, many fans prefer the official order of episodes. While that’s fine by me, my reviews are going to be written in the show’s aired order instead. Here’s why!

Most obviously, the aired order is the order that I (and many of us) first watched the show, and it left a terrific first impression. Streaming services like Hulu, where I rewatched the episodes (before they moved to HBO Max or wherever they are in your present; I wrote this post years ago!), maintain this shifted format as well. Many new fans watching the show legally will likely continue to see it in this revamped order.

But more importantly, I find the original pacing to be perfect, while the intended order grinds us down to a halt after Marble Madness sets up a tense endgame. Rose’s Scabbard shows Pearl on edge after Peridot’s return, and The Message is essentially a point of no return, but the moved episodes have nothing to do with the Homeworld invasion and give no indication that the Gems are worried about it, even subconsciously. The intended airing sees all the air go out of the balloon for four full episodes, and The Message has to reinflate it rather than reinforce it.

I would also argue that all four skipped episodes work better where they’re placed in Season 2. Open Book coming later shows a more realistic time period for Steven to have properly finished a massive book series after Marble Madness (otherwise we’re to believe he really plowed his way through in just two episodes despite the chaos around him, and understood it correctly after all those misfires), and gives us a nice breather from the Homeworld Arc between Full Disclosure and Joy Ride. Shirt Club coming later lets us spend some time with Mayor Dewey and Buck by themselves before putting them together. Say Uncle…I mean, it can really go anywhere in this stage of the show, so might as well not have it interrupt the pacing.

But it’s Story for Steven that really pushes me over the edge on where to put this episode cluster. I love that we only see a full look of Rose once, as a glimpse, in the middle of Season 1. Contrasting this concrete link to the past, every other image of her is indirect: her closed-eye iconography, Amethyst’s shapeshifting, and Pearl’s holo-cast are shadows of the Gem that looms so large over the series.

Less is definitely more at this stage in the show, and having her show up in a full flashback takes all the oomph out of Season 1′s restrained portrayal. Steven Universe is a show segmented into fifty-odd-episode chunks—Season 1A and 1B are functionally identical to Season 2 and 3, respectively—and moving Story for Steven makes Season 2/3 feel like the start of a new chapter, a refocus on Rose that will continue to develop her character until it culminates in the devastating Pink Diamond revelation. Season 4/5 then deals with the aftermath of Steven learning this news until it culminates in everyone, Diamonds included, learning Rose was Pink Diamond.

Story for Steven’s intended airing order also gives us almost no time to dwell on the reveal of Pearl’s feelings in Rose’s Scabbard before making an offhand joke about it. I even love how the Gems’ reaction to Steven’s idea for a fence in Full Disclosure works as foreshadowing rather than a callback. When I rewatched the series “correctly,” this is the episode that really didn’t fit.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the opposite viewpoint. I imagine many people prefer Joy Ride to immediately follow Full Disclosure to add the same tension to finding Peridot that I prefer in the end of Season 1 (even though that tension dissipates regardless in Season 2′s first half). Buck’s behavior in Joy Ride may not feel as earned without bonding with Steven in Shirt Club. You might want more Rose ASAP, and enjoy Story for Steven’s link between Steven hanging in Greg’s van watching videos with the start of The Message. Hell, you might want every episode to be Say Uncle, I don’t know you! And the creator’s intention certainly sounds like what everyone should go for (even though a keen eye might notice that we, like the bulk of the internet, have already switched Warp Tour and Alone Together from the intended order to the aired order).

But Steven, Universally comes from a place of love, and I love the show the way it was released. Once a piece of art is out there, it’s out there, and if Open Book teaches us anything, it’s that folks can still be friendly when they disagree about elements of a story they like.

I’m not gonna write the reviews of moved episodes in a bubble, and will acknowledge oddities created by the shifts throughout this strange segment of Steven Universe’s history. But beginning with Rose’s Scabbard (which is indisputably Episode 45, by the way) the first Steven Bomb will be detonated in the same order it was all the way back in 2015.

[lazybarbarians]

Aftermath: Life Debt by Chuck Wendig

Ragnell: This week’s selection was Aftermath: Life Debt, the sequel to Aftermath. Now with major characters from the movie!

All right, a lot happens in this book and some of the events are just such a joy to describe this recap’ll be a little long:

We ended the last book with Norra putting together a team to track down war criminals. This book begins with a flashback to Jakku, and a check-in with Leia before we catch up with her. Norra and company are collecting one of their targets, and the mission shows us the tensions in the team before establishing they can all work together. Jom is still a new element, and he serves to establish how far from general acceptance people like Jas and Sinjir are before turning into a love interest for Jas for the rest of the book. Once they’ve finished, they return to Chandrila, we get a little slice of the lives they’ve carved out, the status of the New Republic, and Wedge contacts them. Han and Chewie fell into a trap while trying to free Kashyyk, Chewie was captured and Han’s transmission was cut off and Leia needs a team to go on an off-the-books mission to see what happened.

They split into teams and chase different avenues before meeting back up, being thrown off the case by Angry Police Captain Admiral Ackbar, because they can’t officially devote resources to Kashyyk. Because now that the Rebellion is officially over everything’s political and Wookiees have nothing political to offer and other reasoning that you might hear from your local lukewarm center-left political party. Norra quits and decides to work for Leia as a private citizen. Wedge does not, which puts a little damper on a romantic subplot between the two.

On the villains side, Admiral Sloane is reluctant to trust her mysterious boss, Gallius Rax, who is using her as his public face, has formed a shadow government, leaked information to the New Republic to destroy allies he doesn’t fully trust, has no Facebook or Twitter, has been keeping several groups of the Navy in hiding, and is planning an attack on Chandrila when she goes to visit. Oh no!

So she enlists the help of her assistant Adea, who Gallius has helpfully smuggled off of Chandrila and seduced, and her trusted bounty hunter Mercurial Swift (named here because even for Star Wars, that’s a bit much) to investigate his past and find out he’s the kid from the prologue.

The heroes find Han and learn he’s trying to sneak onto Kashyyk to break Chewie out of prison. They decide to help. Jom goes AWOL and joins them partway through because the power of lust compels him he is worried about Jas. Han and the original characters go to Kashyyk and free a whole ton of prisoners including Norra’s husband Brentin. Norra and Temmin go home with the freed prisoners. Han, Chewie, Jas, Jom and Sinjir stay on Kashyyk to save the planet. Here is where we learn they have control chips in the Wookies, of some old New Republic technology reminiscent of that stuff that controlled the slaves in the prequels.

Jom and Sinjir destroy the central controlling module for these chips, because like a damned idiot the villain has it all centralized, and free the Wookies. Han, Chewie, and Jas knock down some prison camp forcefields and the rebellion is off. However, the governor of Kashyyk, who is a cross between the rich guy from The Most Dangerous Game and those giants who eat talking animals in The Silver Chair. He calls down orbital strikes because he is an asshole.

Back on Chandrila, everyone is getting ready to greet Admiral Sloane who’s asked to negotiate a treaty because Rax totally implied to her that there would be a space attack on the fleet over the planet. What actually happens is she has to sit through a damned parade and a new holiday celebration, “Liberation Day.” Leia plays hookie, calls in her trusty Cameron from the comics Evaan, and steals the Millennium Falcon which really should belong to her so why did she have to steal it? Either way, she leaves a note for Wedge that basically amounts to “Come help me out or I and my unborn child are SOOO gonna die” and that is why the guy who set up security for the Liberation Day event was not present when it all went to hell.

See, the Wexley family and all of the freed prisoners are supposed to be on the dais. But something’s been wrong with Papa Wexley, that makes him stun his son and leave him in a crate beforehand. Understandably concerned, the boy tries to interrupt the ceremony but is unable to actually reach the dais before his dad shoots Mon Mothma. Norra manages to interrupt his aim. Turns out that the same technology that turned all the clones into mindless murderbots who kill their Jedi friends in TCW/RotS was used on these prisoners. ALL of the prisoners fire all over the place, there’s mass chaos, running around, and we get a pretty cool fistfight between Norra and Rae. In the confusion, some jerkass minor character frees Tashu the Worshipper of Darth Sidious. Rae shoots Adea, because Adea broke the sisters before misters rule, gets beat up and shot by Norra, and still manages to run off with Norra’s husband.

Meanwhile, back on Kashyyk, Han decides to steal a Star Destroyer--which he has totally done before but that was when he had a Jedi and a short-fuse princess--it goes a little badly but that’s okay because just when he’s about to get shot his crazy pregnant wife shows up in his miracle junk-ship, followed by Wedge with a bunch of crazy X-wing pilots, and Ackbar with his own ship of fools. They actually manage to neutralize the Kashyyk blockade. Chewie decides to stay home, Han and Leia almost do but all the chaos on Chandrila sends them back there because they are needed to stabilize the government.

The story ends with Norra’s group signing on for vengeance against Rae (excluding Jom because Jas dumps him), Rae and Brentin headed to Jakku to find out more about Rax, and Rax headed to Jakku because the Emperor sent him back as a kid to accomplish some mysterious purpose. Because Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious should never be allowed near children.

The first thing that strikes me about this book, and one of the things making it fun for me, is that it works other parts of the new canon into it. Last book we had some nods to the animated series. This book we have nods to those, and the comics. Han references stealing a Star Destroyer, which is a plot I enjoyed a lot in the Star Wars comics (I’ve seen some grousing on tumblr about the art that arc but the story is just fun) and we see Evaan from the Princess Leia comic. These were great ideas and great elements so it’s nice to see them in a novel. It’s also nice to think that some of the elements from the comics or the novel might find their way into the movies or animated series.

Kalinara: It does however make Luke’s absence very notable. He actually gets mentioned in this one, but there’s still no real clue as to what he’s doing.

R: The next thing is all the romance in this book. It’s like with Han and Leia’s marriage as the kickoff and driving force for the plot that their love gets echoed with the other characters’ lives. But like in ESB, all of these romances get derailed by the events. Wedge and Norra start to explore a romance, only to be stopped by Brentin’s reappearance. Norra focuses back on her husband and just as she starts to think she has him back again, it turns out he’s been mind controlled and he runs away. Jom gets too intense for Jas, so she drops the romance to focus elsewhere. And Sinjir slips into a shame spiral about his old job as a torturer and dumps his boyfriend Conder so that Conder can find someone better.

K: I had mixed feelings on the romance. Maybe it’s just because of the nature of the story, but it was hard to get too invested in the romances on the table. Sinjur and Conder seemed cute, but they had all of two scenes. I cared about the break up because I’ve grown attached to Sinjur and it was sad to see him so self-loathing. Norra and Wedge were cute, and I do like both characters, but they spend so much of the book apart, that I still don’t feel like I get an idea of what they’re like as a couple. (It does fit with Wedge’s terrible luck that his girlfriend’s long lost husband comes back though. :-)) Jom and Jas...well. Jom wasn’t even as interesting as what’s his name from the first book. And I can’t even remember that guy’s actual name.  (Edited:  I was actually thinking of Lok from Moving Target, not Aftermath.  Even so, that guy was more interesting than Jom.)

R: Among the new characters of the book, I rather liked Conder (though he didn’t get any really fun moments), Brentin, Oblivion, and Eleodie. I think Conder as Leia’s IT guy and Sinjir’s boyfriend should show up again. I think that’s a temporary breakup.

K: Of all of the new characters, I was most intrigued by Brentin. He reminds me of Ransolm Casterfo, oddly enough. Not because the characters have anything in common of course, but because I kind of think both characters serve as an example counterpoint to common fandom theories about Kylo Ren and (Armitage) Hux. Casterfo actually is the misguided Imperial-sympathizer who makes mistakes out of fear and trauma, and Brentin Wexley is actually an innocent victim brainwashed into doing things he doesn’t want to do. And when we look at these characters, and see how they’re portrayed, it makes it very obvious how weak these justifications are when we try to apply them to the actual villains.

R: I hated Lozen, but it was the kind of hate you should have for a villain. There’s a line in there with Lozen saying he likes the taste of Talz that creeped me out a bit. The Talz were a TCW species, they are sentient. It is a “We’re eating TALKING stag” moment for me and I was glad to see this guy’s end. It and the hunting sequence made him the most depraved villain in the Star Wars canon for me.

The little interlude saga of the red lightsaber is pretty interesting, but I’ll be surprised to see it wrapped up next book. This is the sort of thing that leads to a Luke plotline in a future series. I still wonder if it’s Vader’s lightsaber or someone else’s.

I’m glad Sloane survived, I prefer her as a villain to Rax. I’m looking forward to her and Brentin trying to deal with each other.

K: I think Sloane is really what Admiral Thrawn should have been in the Expanded Universe. I mean, yes, he’s got those Grand Manipulator tendencies like Gallus Rex, but there’s a reason that Sloane, not Rax, is our primary focus villain. It’s easy to get emotionally invested in Sloane’s arc. I don’t want her to win against our heroes of course, but I definitely want to see her rise in the Empire/First Order.

And I like watching Sloane come up against obstacles. I like seeing her adapt and redirect her focus. I like watching Sloane come up against things she doesn’t know, and the efforts that she makes to learn more. She isn’t magically omniscient when it comes to every single plot point like a certain blue Admiral, and I think she comes across as actually smarter and more formidable because of it. She’s tenacious, clever, and resourceful. She doesn’t need to be shilled by the narrative to be formidable.

R: I’m not sure where I want the Wexley-Antilles love triangle to go. It was interesting to see that Wedge has slid more easily into father figure role for Temmin than anyone else, even giving him a nickname. The next closest people are Sinjir and Jas, and Temmin seems to still have some serious defenses up with them. It’s an interesting situation I fear may end with Brentin’s death next book just to make a tidy family unit.

As for the majors, and the metaplot, I liked what this added. I was a little offput by Han at first, but on reflection this is exactly what he would seem like to someone who didn’t know him. Unpredictable, kind of stupid, relying mainly on luck. We normally see him with Luke, who relies on faith, and Leia, who relies on sheer willpower, so he seems kind of like the sensible of the trio in comparison. Leia, of course, topped all of his actions by being even more batshit crazy at the climax but seeming like she was in perfect control of everything all the time. (It’d be really interesting to see this group encounter Luke after how they’ve reacted to Han and Leia.)

Leia’s bits were the best part of the book, I loved the moment when she first experiences connecting with the Force and gaining knowledge from it. I loved her conflict with Ackbar and Mon. I loved her decision on what to do about all of it. I loved her calling in Evaan and I loved her playing the military guys like a flute.

I didn’t really care much for Jom or Hux, but none of their parts were big enough to drag the rest of the book for me. I really enjoyed it.

K: It was fun. I’m looking forward to seeing how the trilogy resolves..

[networkingdefinition]

Architect Quotes

Official Website: Architect Quotes

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• A journalist and an information architect face exactly the same problem – how to give shape to the pile of information in front of you in a way that will make it easy and natural for people to comprehend. I can’t imagine any better preparation for the work I do now. – Jesse James Garrett • A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy. – Walter Gropius • Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. – Philip Johnson • All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable. – Frank Lloyd Wright • An architect’s most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site. – Frank Lloyd Wright • And when an architect has designed a house with large windows, which is a necessity today in order to pull the daylight into these very deep houses, then curtains come to play a big role in architecture. – Arne Jacobsen • Architects of grandeur are often the master builders of disillusionment. – Bryant H. McGill • Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future. – Kenzo Tange • Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as salon art. Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. – Walter Gropius • Architecture begins where engineering ends. – Walter Gropius • Architecture can’t fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn’t real. – Frank Stella • Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea. – Yoshio Taniguchi • Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder. – Daniel Libeskind • Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space … On the one hand it’s about shelter, but it’s also about pleasure. – Zaha Hadid • Architecture is the art of how to waste space. – Philip Johnson • Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. – Le Corbusier • Architecture is the reaching out for the truth. – Louis Kahn • Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth – Frank Lloyd Wright • Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are. – Geoffrey Jellicoe • Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. – Frank Gehry • Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul. – Ernest Dimnet • Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. – William S. Burroughs • Artists to my mind are the real architects of change. – William S. Burroughs

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Architect', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_architect').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_architect img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders. – Seneca the Younger • Can’t nothing make your life work if you ain’t the architect. – Terry McMillan • Color is a very critical thing. I’ve found that architects don’t like colors. Engineers too. And so somebody has to stand in. Because this is the finish of it. It is the emotional part of a structure. – John Hench • Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy. – Jimmy Breslin • Each man the architect of his own fate. – Sallust • Every great architect is – necessarily – a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Everyone used to want to be star architects. That’s no longer the case. – Shigeru Ban • Faber est suae quisque fortunae. Each man is the architect of his own fate. – Appius Claudius Caecus • Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times. – Richard Rogers • Gratitude is an attitude that hooks us up to our source of supply. And the more grateful you are, the closer you become to your maker, to the architect of the universe, to the spiritual core of your being. It’s a phenomenal lesson. – Bob Proctor • He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. – Harold Wilson • Home is where you hang your architect. – Clare Boothe Luce • I almost rented a house by an architect named Schindler, but I couldn’t afford it. It was a jewel – Parker Stevenson • I am trying to counter the fixity of architectures, their stolidity, with elements that give an ineffable immaterial quality. – Toyo Ito • I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture. – Tadao Ando • I did a comparison of a school of architects known as the New York Five. I compared their articulation of wall surfaces, which I enjoyed very much – Parker Stevenson • I don’t divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one. – Luis Barragan • I feel however, that we architects have a special duty and mission… (to contribute) to the socio-cultural development of architecture and urban planning – Kenzo Tange • I feel most strongly about Jerusalem, because architects ultimately have to address that city. – Ben Nicholson • I have an expensive hobby: buying homes, redoing them, tearing them down and building them up the way they want to be built. I want to be an architect. – Sandra Bullock • I have designed the most buildings of any living American architect. – Alexander Jackson Davis • I learn more from creative people in other disciplines than I do even from other architects because I think they have a way of looking at the world that is really important. – Tom Kundig • I think Miss Monroe as architecture is extremely good architecture, and she’s a very natural actress, and a very good one. – Frank Lloyd Wright • I went to visit my father to tell him that I was going to go to college and become an architect – that was my dream. I was like, yeah I graduated from school, but it’s not like you showed up for that. But all he was worried about is whether or not I wanted money from him. – Jake Roberts • If architecture had nothing to do with art, it would be astonishingly easy to build houses, but the architect’s task – his most difficult task – is always that of selecting. – Arne Jacobsen • I’m often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That’s impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more. – Thom Mayne • In Europe, architects consider themselves artists. They think they’re special when they win a competition. – Helmut Jahn • In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect. – Arthur Erickson • It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man. – Michelangelo • It’s not about your greatness as an architect, but your compassion – Samuel Mockbee • Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease. – R. Buckminster Fuller • Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die. – Daniel Burnham • May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good. – Ralph Thomas Walker • Most architects say: I want to use this type of glass, even if it’s too reflective or doesn’t let enough light in. However, the use of a certain type of glass might change the comfort level. – Helmut Jahn • My dad’s an architect and my mom owned a French bakery for twelve years. – Alison Lohman • My father knew the charming side of my mother, and my mother thought that he was attentive and pleasant and was an architect, which was a respectable profession, but I don’t think that they actually got to know one another deeply. – Christopher Durang • My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city. – Richard Ernst • My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we – architects – can effect the quality of life of the people. – Richard Rogers • No architect troubled to design houses that suited people who were to live in them, because that would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far cheaper and, above all, timesaving to make them identical. – Michael Ende • No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple. – John Ruskin • Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things. – Rem Koolhaas • Nothing requires the architect’s care more than the due proportions of buildings. – Marcus Vitruvius Pollio • One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again. – Renzo Piano • Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture. – Ernest Hemingway • Sympathetic cracks. A term frequently used by architects and surveyors in terms of ageing houses. I know what they mean. – Ted Dexter • Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. – Steve Martin • The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine. – John Scott • The architect, Peter Arens who is the monstrous carbuncle architect, not merely did his design which had won a public competition never get built but his practice suffered financially for some years. – Anthony Holden • The dialogue between client and architect is about as intimate as any conversation you can have, because when you’re talking about building a house, you’re talking about dreams. – Robert A. M. Stern • The first gesture of an architect is to draw a perimeter; in other words, to separate the microclimate from the macro space outside. This in itself is a sacred act. Architecture in itself conveys this idea of limiting space. It’s a limit between the finite and the infinite. From this point of view, all architecture is sacred. – Mario Botta • The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics but that no architect worth their names wants to build a shoebox. – Rem Koolhaas • The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants. – Michael Dell • The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. – Frank Lloyd Wright • The only legitimate artists in England are the architects. – Benjamin Haydon • The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge • The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. – Salvador Dali • The Washingtonian said it shouldn’t be built. The gallery’s East Building is now considered a triumph, and members of the American Association of Architects have voted it one of the best buildings of all time. – J. Carter Brown • There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons. – Edwin Lutyens • To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history, but to articulate it. – Daniel Libeskind • To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works. – Ai Weiwei • Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune. – Ludwig von Mises • We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. – R. Buckminster Fuller • We should have a system of economics that is structure that is organic tools. We do not have it. We are all hanging by our eyebrows from skyhooks economically, just as we are architecturally. – Frank Lloyd Wright • When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers. – Colleen Barrett • When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature – this very unique to Japan. – Tadao Ando • Where do architects and designers get their ideas? The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism? – Nancy Banks-Smith • With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects – the building is there to be used, and times change. – Arne Jacobsen • You should just enjoy it, but as soon as you decide that it is going to be your career, no matter whether you want to be a doctor or an architect or anything else, you need to work 5 hours a day. – Guy Forget • Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny. – Alfred Armand Montapert

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[equitiesstocks]

Architect Quotes

Official Website: Architect Quotes

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• A journalist and an information architect face exactly the same problem – how to give shape to the pile of information in front of you in a way that will make it easy and natural for people to comprehend. I can’t imagine any better preparation for the work I do now. – Jesse James Garrett • A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy. – Walter Gropius • Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. – Philip Johnson • All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable. – Frank Lloyd Wright • An architect’s most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site. – Frank Lloyd Wright • And when an architect has designed a house with large windows, which is a necessity today in order to pull the daylight into these very deep houses, then curtains come to play a big role in architecture. – Arne Jacobsen • Architects of grandeur are often the master builders of disillusionment. – Bryant H. McGill • Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future. – Kenzo Tange • Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as salon art. Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. – Walter Gropius • Architecture begins where engineering ends. – Walter Gropius • Architecture can’t fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn’t real. – Frank Stella • Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea. – Yoshio Taniguchi • Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder. – Daniel Libeskind • Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space … On the one hand it’s about shelter, but it’s also about pleasure. – Zaha Hadid • Architecture is the art of how to waste space. – Philip Johnson • Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. – Le Corbusier • Architecture is the reaching out for the truth. – Louis Kahn • Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth – Frank Lloyd Wright • Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are. – Geoffrey Jellicoe • Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. – Frank Gehry • Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul. – Ernest Dimnet • Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. – William S. Burroughs • Artists to my mind are the real architects of change. – William S. Burroughs

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Architect', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_architect').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_architect img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders. – Seneca the Younger • Can’t nothing make your life work if you ain’t the architect. – Terry McMillan • Color is a very critical thing. I’ve found that architects don’t like colors. Engineers too. And so somebody has to stand in. Because this is the finish of it. It is the emotional part of a structure. – John Hench • Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy. – Jimmy Breslin • Each man the architect of his own fate. – Sallust • Every great architect is – necessarily – a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Everyone used to want to be star architects. That’s no longer the case. – Shigeru Ban • Faber est suae quisque fortunae. Each man is the architect of his own fate. – Appius Claudius Caecus • Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times. – Richard Rogers • Gratitude is an attitude that hooks us up to our source of supply. And the more grateful you are, the closer you become to your maker, to the architect of the universe, to the spiritual core of your being. It’s a phenomenal lesson. – Bob Proctor • He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. – Harold Wilson • Home is where you hang your architect. – Clare Boothe Luce • I almost rented a house by an architect named Schindler, but I couldn’t afford it. It was a jewel – Parker Stevenson • I am trying to counter the fixity of architectures, their stolidity, with elements that give an ineffable immaterial quality. – Toyo Ito • I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture. – Tadao Ando • I did a comparison of a school of architects known as the New York Five. I compared their articulation of wall surfaces, which I enjoyed very much – Parker Stevenson • I don’t divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one. – Luis Barragan • I feel however, that we architects have a special duty and mission… (to contribute) to the socio-cultural development of architecture and urban planning – Kenzo Tange • I feel most strongly about Jerusalem, because architects ultimately have to address that city. – Ben Nicholson • I have an expensive hobby: buying homes, redoing them, tearing them down and building them up the way they want to be built. I want to be an architect. – Sandra Bullock • I have designed the most buildings of any living American architect. – Alexander Jackson Davis • I learn more from creative people in other disciplines than I do even from other architects because I think they have a way of looking at the world that is really important. – Tom Kundig • I think Miss Monroe as architecture is extremely good architecture, and she’s a very natural actress, and a very good one. – Frank Lloyd Wright • I went to visit my father to tell him that I was going to go to college and become an architect – that was my dream. I was like, yeah I graduated from school, but it’s not like you showed up for that. But all he was worried about is whether or not I wanted money from him. – Jake Roberts • If architecture had nothing to do with art, it would be astonishingly easy to build houses, but the architect’s task – his most difficult task – is always that of selecting. – Arne Jacobsen • I’m often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That’s impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more. – Thom Mayne • In Europe, architects consider themselves artists. They think they’re special when they win a competition. – Helmut Jahn • In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect. – Arthur Erickson • It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man. – Michelangelo • It’s not about your greatness as an architect, but your compassion – Samuel Mockbee • Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease. – R. Buckminster Fuller • Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die. – Daniel Burnham • May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good. – Ralph Thomas Walker • Most architects say: I want to use this type of glass, even if it’s too reflective or doesn’t let enough light in. However, the use of a certain type of glass might change the comfort level. – Helmut Jahn • My dad’s an architect and my mom owned a French bakery for twelve years. – Alison Lohman • My father knew the charming side of my mother, and my mother thought that he was attentive and pleasant and was an architect, which was a respectable profession, but I don’t think that they actually got to know one another deeply. – Christopher Durang • My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city. – Richard Ernst • My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we – architects – can effect the quality of life of the people. – Richard Rogers • No architect troubled to design houses that suited people who were to live in them, because that would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far cheaper and, above all, timesaving to make them identical. – Michael Ende • No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple. – John Ruskin • Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things. – Rem Koolhaas • Nothing requires the architect’s care more than the due proportions of buildings. – Marcus Vitruvius Pollio • One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again. – Renzo Piano • Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity. – Frank Lloyd Wright • Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture. – Ernest Hemingway • Sympathetic cracks. A term frequently used by architects and surveyors in terms of ageing houses. I know what they mean. – Ted Dexter • Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. – Steve Martin • The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine. – John Scott • The architect, Peter Arens who is the monstrous carbuncle architect, not merely did his design which had won a public competition never get built but his practice suffered financially for some years. – Anthony Holden • The dialogue between client and architect is about as intimate as any conversation you can have, because when you’re talking about building a house, you’re talking about dreams. – Robert A. M. Stern • The first gesture of an architect is to draw a perimeter; in other words, to separate the microclimate from the macro space outside. This in itself is a sacred act. Architecture in itself conveys this idea of limiting space. It’s a limit between the finite and the infinite. From this point of view, all architecture is sacred. – Mario Botta • The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics but that no architect worth their names wants to build a shoebox. – Rem Koolhaas • The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants. – Michael Dell • The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. – Frank Lloyd Wright • The only legitimate artists in England are the architects. – Benjamin Haydon • The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge • The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. – Salvador Dali • The Washingtonian said it shouldn’t be built. The gallery’s East Building is now considered a triumph, and members of the American Association of Architects have voted it one of the best buildings of all time. – J. Carter Brown • There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons. – Edwin Lutyens • To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history, but to articulate it. – Daniel Libeskind • To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works. – Ai Weiwei • Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune. – Ludwig von Mises • We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. – R. Buckminster Fuller • We should have a system of economics that is structure that is organic tools. We do not have it. We are all hanging by our eyebrows from skyhooks economically, just as we are architecturally. – Frank Lloyd Wright • When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers. – Colleen Barrett • When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature – this very unique to Japan. – Tadao Ando • Where do architects and designers get their ideas? The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism? – Nancy Banks-Smith • With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects – the building is there to be used, and times change. – Arne Jacobsen • You should just enjoy it, but as soon as you decide that it is going to be your career, no matter whether you want to be a doctor or an architect or anything else, you need to work 5 hours a day. – Guy Forget • Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny. – Alfred Armand Montapert

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[foodieworldmelbourne]

Beyond terracotta warriors: Artist provides antidote to simplistic, 'exoticised' idea of China

Updated May 25, 2019 14:15:07 Photo: Cai Guo-Qiang created 10,000 porcelain starlings for the NGV's winter exhibition, as a tribute to the Terracotta Warriors. (Supplied: National Gallery of Victoria/Eugene Hyland) Related Story: China's 2,000-year-old terracotta warriors to come to Australia Map: Melbourne 3000 Cai Guo-Qiang was a young man when he saw China's army of 8,000-odd terracotta warriors for the first time, but the impression was indelible. "I was taken away by the momentum and might of the presentation," he told ABC RN's The Art Show earlier this week. It's easy to imagine this being a formative moment for the artist, whose practice, in the subsequent decades, has been characterised by the same kind of awe-inspiring spectacle: firework displays and behemoth 'explosion events'; a 500-metre-high 'sky ladder' to the heavens that defied three attempts across two decades to execute before success in 2015. Photo: Cai Guo-Qiang has utilised digitally-enhanced fireworks to create precisely-timed displays. (Supplied: Cai Guo-Qiang) On Friday, Cai's exhibition Transient Landscape opened at the National Gallery of Victoria, within the exhibition Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality, which features eight of the life-sized warriors alongside more than 150 ancient Chinese artefacts, dating from the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BCE) through to the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). The two parallel exhibitions, coexisting in the one space, constitute this year's 'Winter Masterpiece' showcase at the NGV a blockbuster by gallery standards, if not quite at the scale of that thousands-strong ancient army. Photo: The terracotta army is comprised of approximately 8,000 life-sized figures, which vary in height, costume and hairstyle according to their rank and position. (Supplied: NGV) Contemporary take on ancient culture Why pair a contemporary artist with an exhibition of precious ancient artefacts? Curator Wayne Crothers explains, "We wanted to put them in a fresh new environment where they could be appreciated not only as historical things but as objects that relate to our visitor but also in dialogue with a contemporary, international Chinese voice". Cai (pronounced tsai) is possibly the only contemporary Chinese artist whose work is at a scale and level of ambition to stand alongside the terracotta army, which took more than 30 years and 700,000 workers to create and is sometimes described as the 'eighth wonder of the world'. He is also an artist whose output has been deeply informed by ancient Chinese culture, from Confucian philosophy and traditional customs to classical art and materials notably porcelain, silk and gunpowder. Infographic: In Chinese culture, fireworks have traditionally been used to celebrate and to convey certain meanings. (Supplied: Netflix) Nevertheless, he says that he typically gives a wide berth to projects like the NGV exhibition. "I tend to keep a distance from the exhibitions of Chinese artefacts, because often times this kind of exhibition falls into the category or the phenomenon of promoting an exoticised cultural 'other'," Cai says. "First of all, only using a few sculptures, you cannot show the energy of the inventory of the thousands of the terracotta warriors," he explains, likening the alternative to "the decorations in a Chinese restaurant". Even if you brought thousands of terracotta warriors here, he adds, "they can't show you what today's China is about". Photo: This Western Han dynasty belt plaque is one of more than 150 Chinese artefacts on show. (Supplied: Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology/NGV) That is where Cai steps in, with a suite of new works made specifically with the NGV's exhibition in mind. Among them are a flock of 10,000 porcelain starlings, and several of his behemoth 'gunpowder drawings', made by setting gunpowder-daubed canvases alight. The wall text accompanying the porcelain flock compares them to a "shan shui landscape brush and ink painting" of Mount Li the site where the terracotta warriors were unearthed by farmers in 1974. A quote from the artist suggests the flock "seems to embody the lingering spirits of the underground army, or perhaps the haunting shadow of China's imperial past". Photo: In Chinese writing, the number 10,000 represents 'eternity' or forever which is why Cai chose this number for his flock of birds. (Supplied: NGV/Eugene Hyland) "[But] I'm not only using [the birds] to comment and refer to the history of China," Cai tells the ABC. "[The birds] also represent today's China and its relationship with the world its speed, energy, complexities and uncertainties." "Chaos," he summarises, mimicking an explosion vocally and with his hands. Living in interesting times Cai has seen seismic shifts in China over his lifetime. In his formative childhood years, he lived in the port city of Quanzhou, Fujian province, in a community where Confucian-steeped customs and rituals (such as burning ghost money to honour ancestors) were part of daily life, and feng shui was taken seriously enough to affect urban planning. His father was an intellectual and a traditional Chinese painter. Their house was a gathering point for local artists. Then, when Cai was nine, Mao Zedong came to power, with a call to Cultural Revolution and the rejection of intellectualism and tradition. The boy helped his father burn all his books, in secret, at night. Nevertheless, Mao's anti-establishment agenda ultimately proved irresistible to many young people, including Cai. He has said that this experience was formative of his proclivity to question convention and buck the status quo. Later still, studying stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in the early 1980s, Cai got a taste of China's heady opening up phase, with its attendant surge of experimentation. Though he moved to Japan in 1986, and the United States in 1995, he continued to undertake projects in China. And Cai still works there regularly including major government commissions for the 2008 Olympics ceremony in Beijing and the 2014 APEC Summit in Shanghai. Working within the system to change it In the Netflix documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, Cai speaks with some chagrin about working on the APEC fireworks display. "I wanted it to be more than just style," he says, explaining that the project was conceived to be environmentally friendly, to incorporate a video element, and to tell a story with a political element. "As a country, we no longer need to depend on bombastic ceremonies with thousands of performers, gongs and drums. Rather, I hoped we could engage people through a joke or a story." Photo: This 'explosion event' for the opening of Cai Guo-Qiang's Shanghai exhibition The Ninth Wave used biodegradable coloured powders. (Supplied: Netflix) In the film, footage from a meeting with party officials is overlaid by Cai detailing how his vision was stripped back piece by piece; compromise by compromise. "I feel awfully frustrated," he says. "I always worry about mixing art and politics. I put myself in a difficult position. But, as artists, can't we help change the system by working within it?" In Melbourne, at the NGV, he is reminded of a different system: the museum display of ancient objects that offers up, to use Cai's words, "an exoticised cultural 'other'". Photo: Terracotta warriors have previously been in Sydney twice (1983 and 2010) and Melbourne once (1982), when the NGV secured the first exhibition of the figures outside China. (Supplied: NGV/Sean Fennessy) "I'm very aware that these kinds of exhibitions are performing a mirage that is not true to life," says Cai. Consequently, he wanted to "dissect to the core of this project". The scalpel Cai wields in Melbourne, as elsewhere, is a kind of 'wonder', or poetry: he aims for the viewer to connect in an almost spiritual sense, rather than cerebrally "so that people feel that it's deeply relevant to themselves". Photo: Cai likens the mound of porcelain peony flowers, scorched with gunpowder, to "a burial mound of flowers". (Supplied: NGV/Sean Fennessy) "Even though the exhibition discusses China's past and present, I think when visitors come into the space with the birds, the first thing that will strike them is their own relationship with the artwork rather than 'What about China?'" "I've never tried to present a simplistic theme of China [in my art], but [rather] to reveal my true self and my relationship with the world, and to let people discover themselves and their relationship with the world." Photo: Heritage, featuring 99 life-sized replicas of animals, was commissioned for Cai Guo-Qiang's 2013 solo show at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. (Supplied: QAGOMA/Natasha Harth) 'A little boy who dreams big' Cai is the kind of big thinker and showman that the Emperor Qin Shihuang, who masterminded the terracotta army, might have approved of. Emperor Qin was nothing if not ambitious: at 13 he became head of his state; at 38 he unified China; at 49, when died, he had overseen the development of writing, the Great Wall of China, and a unified currency and measurements system. It is believed that even before he became emperor, he had begun planning and preparations for the vast underground necropolis that contained his eventual burial chamber guarded by the terracotta warriors. (According to Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, Emperor Qin's ironclad ambition extended to ordering that all the artisans be sealed alive within the necropolis, to preserve the secrets of its craftsmanship). Photo: Cai Guo-Qiang's 2008 exhibition Inopportune broke attendance records at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (Keith Bedford: Reuters) Cai ascribes his own tendency to 'think big' partly to living through the Cultural Revolution: "I saw huge scale protests with thousands of people, I saw a certain sense of social ability, social movement," he recalls. But mostly, he says, it stems from a childhood imagination that he has never outgrown. "When I was very little I already started to think about the universe, and that's why Sky Ladder is 500 metres. At Beijing Olympics, I designed these big footprints it looks like a giant of history, but also an extraterrestrial life that's making its first steps on earth. One of the footprints was 150 metres long," he says. "It's all related to the dream of a little boy, who dreams big." Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality and Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape runs until October 13 at NGV International, Melbourne. Topics:arts-and-entertainment,history,installation,sculpture,visual-art,contemporary-art,melbourne-3000,china,vic,australia First posted May 25, 2019 08:46:48 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-25/terracotta-warriors-and-cai-guo-qiang-exhibition-ngv-melbourne/11146078

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Still scrambling to get some great gifts for those special folks in your life?  Last week we gave you a list of books worth wrapping and today we have some more ideas to make your quest for the perfect gift just a bit easier.

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If you are like us, we grew up reading and loving everything by Stephen King.  His stories have scared us countless times and most likely, scarred us for life.  There is a company called Suntup Editions who share our love of all things King related and more directly, the book covers of his classics.

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If music is your thing, here are a few suggestions to liven up your holidays.  First up, the new album from The Murderers Of Love

Upon hearing it we instantly got a Lloyd Cole, Chris Isaak, Bodeans vibe.  We spoke to lead singer and guitarist Jaimie Muehlhausen and asked him to describe the album and here is what he had to say.

The Murderers of Love’s new album is what might be best described as “music for grown-ups.” People always need to label things, and sometimes there are such a variety of influences and sounds that it becomes hard to put a single label on something. This album has rock, pop, country, blues and folk…and yet all the songs still seem cohesive within the wide variety. There’s a straight up country rock tune, complete with fiddle, that sits equally at home next to a harder rock song that has little hints of fiddle mixed in.

https://soundcloud.com/rob-quillen/girlfriend-in-tacoma

There is a great pure pop song, “Girlfriend in Tacoma,” that is an obvious nod to The Smiths/Morrissey that shares elements with the folky rock stuff. So…while the album blends a lot of styles and influences, it always still seems cohesive and recognizable as The Murderers of Love. Hopefully the key to the whole thing is good songwriting and letting the songs become what they are.

Each song started out as just a vocal and an acoustic guitar. I live in a guest house on a ranch a couple of miles from the Pacific Ocean, and I have a little art and music studio space behind my house. Every night I would record a few tracks in my bare bones music space, and eventually started inviting other musician friends to add parts and pieces. Luckily I know a lot of great musicians who were willing and even excited to contribute. Like a lot of creative projects, it was just something that had to happen, with no thought of commercial success or becoming a rock star. Just pure creative energy finding its place. Eventually it started sounding like a real album and we transferred everything to a friend’s studio for mixing and mastering. And now the album is complete two years later and it’s like one of your kids or something. Very proud of how it came out and extremely happy with the songs themselves.

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Woke Against The Tide wrestles with themes of Love/Hate, Good/Evil – and in particular – the space between these polarizing ideas. “Cold Thoughts” and “Uneasy” personify the album’s conflict. There are hooks, melody and structure, but also a bit of chaos built on a more complex arrangement that’s constantly shifting and evolving, much like the band themselves.

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We collect everything, alternative movie posters, “The art of…” books, steelbooks and of course, Funkos.  So imagine our glee when they revealed a new figure from one of our favorite shows.  Yep, we’re talking about “Rick and Morty” and yes…we are talking about Funko’s incredible “Pickle Rick” figure.

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Earlier we told you that we collect everything and one of the things we mentioned were posters.  You may know the art collective, The Poster Posse, from their official studio work including Justice League, Star Wars, Kong: Skull Island, Deadpool and countless others.

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Hopefully these suggestions will give you a bit more to consider and make your plight for finding something cool, that much easier.

Blurppy’s 2017 Holiday Gift Guide Geek Fest Still scrambling to get some great gifts for those special folks in your life?  Last week we gave you…