#this was a set but then i realized cori had different hair and it bothered me. so now there's one

[scionshtola]

🌅🏳️‍🌈

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

The Thrilling Saga of Connie paying real life money for the Worst Sonic TV Show

Let’s begin with the simple fact that me and my sister, @birdsareblooming​ “Cori”, have both been hyperfixating on Sonic the Hedgehog since last March. During this hyperfixation, I was on Sonic Wiki to copy-paste song lyrics onto my stolen mp3s, and I called my sister in and pointed at the template at the bottom. 

“What is this Sonic Underground thing?” I asked. “It has one shit billion songs.” 

So we clicked on the page to read about it, and each sentence we read was a punch in the gut and this quickly became the funniest thing we’d ever read. Highlights include:

It looks like this:

“Sonic[...] is known to be a prince” 

Sonic has two siblings who actually have good characterization but their names are literally just Sonia and Manic. Like. Sonic split into two names. jesus christ 

Also Sonic and his siblings all share a voice actor. honestly Jaleel White does his best with it but 

“The three siblings possess enchanted medallions that transform not only into musical instruments, but also into weapons.”

“Some fans consider Sonia to be a clone of Amy Rose, minus the attraction Amy feels for Sonic.” YEAH I SURE HOPE IT DOES

“Manic is the most often captured of the siblings” himbo king 

Knuckles shows up, and for the first, like, two sentences his description is very similar to the game, and then you get immediately pulverized by “He has a pet Dinosaur called Chomps.”

Literally so many sentences on Sonic Wiki are lowkey salty about this show. The page features lines such as “Sonic Underground bears little relation to the often complex Sonic universe (including previous animated series, as well as Sonic comics and games), and shares only three established characters” and “many of the characters in the Freedom Fighter group that were in Sonic the Hedgehog are completely left out (including Tails).”

“The show met with mostly negative reviews.”

*checks air dates* It only lasted two goddamn months

So after seeing this we thought it was the funniest thing and we showed our older sister, @patema-introverted​ “North.” To our surprise, our at the time “knew nothing about this sonic bullshit” sister recognized the show. Turns out she’d seen trailers for it as a child and that was her sole exposure to Sonic canon. 

We were in quarantine at the time, so we ended up finding it on YouTube and binge-watching it all together as a sibling bonding activity. It was just as hilarious as we thought it would be- some stuff was legitimately good, like the sibling dialogue for instance, but good lord were the character designs ugly, the plot all over the place, and pretty much every song, um, not great. Also there was one episode that we skipped because it got, um, I think “stereotypical” is the nicest word I can use here. 

But the point is, we had a jolly good time watching it, and afterwards we binged all the other Sonic shows and bonded as a family. 

After quarantine, North and I go back to college. My roommate gets groceries at Walmart, while I get them elsewhere, so while she and North collect food I wander the DVD aisle to look at the cool movies and also dumpster-dive in the bargain bin for Cats (2019). I am also short as fuck, so the top shelf of movies I cannot see, I can only read the labels. 

So one day I was browsing the DVDs, and glancing over at the labels for the top shelf. I read over the final one before the shelves end. 

And then I stop, do a double take, and have a heart attack, because there is a label that reads “SONIC UNDERGROUND $3.74″

I immediately climb the shelf but there aren’t any DVDs atop the shelf. However, the label is still there. I excitedly tell my sister and roommates, freak out with them a bit, and then give myself a mission statement:

I will buy the $4 Sonic Underground DVD from Walmart

I did not want it as a gift, I did not want to find it online. I wanted to walk into a store, pick up the Worst Sonic Show on DVD, walk it straight to the checkout, and in front of the cashier and God, pay for it with my own money. I did not care if it was the whole series or two episodes; I needed to do this for my own serotonin.

We would go to Walmart about once a week. Every time, I would go to the DVD aisle, and go right to the end of the shelves. I would stare at the label SONIC UNDERGROUND $3.74 and empty space above it and wonder who the fuck was buying this other than me. I would occasionally ask employees if they had any copies in storage. I would build a shrine to Manic in my room. Okay, no I didn’t, but only because my RA would have murdered me. 

Christmas break comes, and we have to go home. We have a nice Christmas, and Cori and I infodump at each other about how we would make Sonic Underground a good show (note: we’re both galaxy braining) and also play Bendy and the Ink Machine. Fun times. 

When we finally get back to College, it’s late January- long story short we have a very long winter break. My roommate who gets food at Walmart got food without us the first week cause she showed up first, so we take her out to Walmart the first time in the year of our lord 2021 on January 29. 

I wander the Valentine’s aisle, immediately grabbing a sequin puppy. I go to the DVDs and see Animaniacs Season One, also grab that. 

And then.

There it is.

The Holy Grail. 

Above the label SONIC UNDERGROUND $3.74, is one DVD left. 

Already I am losing my mind. It’s roughly seven hours of episodes- I couldn’t find an episode list, but I think that’s half the show, for $4! And the cover is amazing. 

That’s a png of Sonic from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993) with a medallion badly photoshopped over it. The medallion is too small. 

Manic is shoved into the corner. He doesn’t have his medallion at all. 

Sonia isn’t even pictured on the front cover, probably because they realized she was the worst designed of the bunch. I’m not ragging on her though, because she’s still one of the better designed characters of the show. Those background characters make me cry 

So you bet your ass I finally paid my hard-earned $4 for this shit. Upon getting home, I discovered that there was even wilder shit with this DVD than I thought. 

For starters: the bonus features listed are as follows:

Original Concept Art - did not expect that these character designs were the final draft

Storyboard-to-screen - did not expect they bothered to storyboard this 

Music Video Jukebox - that’s cute, they thought we liked the music 

Interviews with original screenwriter & executive producer - I fully expect the only questions to be “why.” 

On the left of this list are screenshots from the show, where people can finally see Sonia, who we Know™ is a girl because she is pink and has hair and also an actual body shape instead of just circles like her brothers. 

But wait... what’s that in the lefthand corner? 

That looks like some kind of robot. But it’s not a robot from Sonic Underground! That didn’t appear once. Why is it here? 

The mystery continues upon opening the DVD case: inside are advertisements for other collections, including other Sonic DVDs: two volumes of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993) and the final episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog “SatAM” (1993)

First of all, the first volume of AOSTH has the exact same PNG of Sonic as the Underground Volume 1. Not even trying to hide it. But second... the second volume of AOSTH also has this robot on its cover. 

And THIS ROBOT IS ALSO DECORATING THE THIRD DISC IN THE SET?

So you may be asking, who is this robot? Is it from AOSTH or Underground?

IT’S FROM FUCKING SATAM. The one show that doesn’t have it decorating the DVD covers.

Also, not only is it from SatAM, it only appears in one fucking episode. Not a major character! AND IT HAS A DIFFERENT DESIGN ON THE PROMO ART, WITH HAIR AND FANGS.

Why is it showing up everywhere? What is going on? 

I have not yet had the opportunity to watch this glorious piece of animation, but I am so glad at the confusion I have felt upon receiving it. 

But before I go, I must share with you the best part of this DVD purchase. And it was flipping to the back, scanning the details, and discovering the exact runtime of the episode collection. 

Guys, gals, and enby pals, friends and enemies, Nintendo and Sega, the first Volume of Sonic Underground has a runtime of...

420 MINUTES.

Maybe I’m wrong and this IS the best Sonic show. 

[grisdidthis]

Soooo, I spent yesterday learning how to use the Body Shop and Delphy’s Download Organizer and doing ten years overdue spring cleaning on my CC folder (I’ve had it forever and don’t think I’ve once bothered to put some order into it. Kind of a wonder my game still loaded, with those 12GB of bloat bogging it down.) After making actual categories (I used to just extract and dump all the packages into the main dl folder, so that thing was the stuff of nightmares for anyone with OCD) and slimming the thing down to 6GB, I loaded the game and realized that I had gotten too carried away with deleting, and accidentally purged a few important files. 

Like, you know, skins and eye sets. 

Because when I made my playables, I obviously rushed things and used the very same genetics that once I looked at them twice, made me go “fugly, delete!” In my defense, I usually rush through CAS because the game is prone to crashing unexpectedly and I don’t feel like losing thirty minutes of work.

So today was spent figuring out how to fix the damage and get something out of it. Since I’m replacing the genetics of half the cast, and since it took me all these years to discover that there are mods and tricks that can be used to make Body Shop a less horrific environment to do anything in, I decided to go all out and give everyone who needed it an upgrade in the looks department. 

(Because of course, the first thing I did once I had everything semi-tidied up was run around downloading all the clothes, hair and makeup within sight.) 

So far, I’ve redone Rita, Cory and Juniper. Buuuuttt, since they’ve already appeared in story, I couldn’t change them too drastically. 

Rita was the one that has less play room, since the next episode of her storyline follows directly from where we left her, and there’s no context appropriate reason why she would have a complete makeover when she’s supposed to be stressing about the world ending. So with her I adjusted the shadows on her features and tweaked her nose a bit, and gave her a jacket to cover up whatever the hell I was thinking when I decided to dress her up in this. (It’s not the outfit itself, the outfit is fine, it just doesn’t fit the setting or the character AT ALL. She’s a modern day girl undergoing an apocalypse, not a pilgrim in the Dark Ages. Same goes for Juniper’s steampunk getup. *groan*) 

Juniper has different eyes, a slightly different freckled skin (I had two of those, 50/50 chance that I’d delete the wrong one and lo!) and eyelashes. Still no teeth, though. Somehow all this resulted in her leaning more towards being more beautiful than cute, when it was meant to be the other way around, but I expect that she’ll pull enough weird and inappropriate facial expressions while I’m screen-capping that it will even out. She also has a different, still steampunk-ish but less overtly so, outfit, because we won’t see her for a while and I feel it’s reasonable to assume that she would have changed at some point.

Cory only showed up for two or three pictures in Ep.1, sooo I gave myself permission to do a ton more work on him (and will have to retake those pictures and replace them in the post whenever I can be arsed). Until I find flowing blond hair for men that I like, his is staying up in that bun. Face scar is gone along with that beard; eye color changed to a slightly different blue. Facial structure, redone nearly from the ground up, as this guy is supposed to look ruggedly handsome and all. I also gave him a larger nose. IDK, I have a thing about noses. 

The Madhavis are next. Nadeem is getting cloned for the second time this week, since his eyes vanished. *sad trombone noise*

[multiversemuses]

Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon || A Slytherin House Altercation

@darthvoldemaul

Cori could ignore a lot of nonsense. When it came to student rivalry, Slytherin was known to do its fair share of bragging and swaggering. However, some members of her house seemed to be all hiss and no bite. One boy struck her as especially guilty of this. Due to being louder than any other arrogant parties, he was also significantly more difficult to tune out. Draco Malfoy. The privileged only son of Lucius Malfoy preened more than the albino peacock his family kept on their property, and he made just as much ruckus. The Malfoys had money, influence, and power -- all facts which Draco had doubtless been fed since birth, and all of which gave him the impact of being a richly powerful pain in the ass.

Today, Draco was boisterous as he swept into the common room with a large posse in tow. Crabbe and Goyle (whose nose looked oddly speckled and sore) flanked him. Pansy Parkinson was not far behind and trying her best to weave past them. Several strides back from the usual trio, Cori estimated that there were at least an additional dozen following Draco’s every step. She curled her lip and went back to her Potions textbook. Her brow furrowed as she tried to block out Draco’s voice and focus on homework. The expression of concentration on Cori's face morphed into an irritated scowl as Draco's calls grew noisier with each proclamation. 

“Badges! Get your badges, if you haven’t already!” he shouted gaily. His hand plunged repeatedly into the bag at his hip. Draco passed the contents to his cronies, delegating the task of distribution to everyone but himself. “Supplies are limited, so don’t miss out!”

Judging from the metallic clinking that reached Cori’s ears every time Draco rifled past his books, this was a bold-faced lie. He had enough to adorn all of Slytherin house and then some, from the sound of it. The braggart merely wanted to create a false impression of high demand. 

Crabbe shuffled across the floor with several badges clenched in his sweaty hands. He came to a halt in front of Cori and fanned out his fingers, waiting for her to take one. 

“No, thanks,” she said tersely without making eye contact. 

Crabbe blinked at her in befuddlement. He nudged a single badge over his skin with a short and jagged fingernail. His arm extended farther, entering Cori’s field of vision. It was as if Crabbe thought forcing her to get a closer look at his offering would change her mind. Cori tucked two fingers into the Potions book to mark her page and finally looked up at him. Her lips formed a flat line.

“Yes, I saw it perfectly well from across the room, which I’m sure was the point of its design,” she acknowledged. “Still don’t want one, you semi-sentient boulder. Move along.”

“What’s this, then?” a second voice interrupted. Draco.

Cori let out a beleaguered sigh. She turned her still very visibly perturbed face to him. 

“Go on, Selwyn,” Draco goaded with what he must have assumed to be a charming smile. “They’re two for one, really. The message changes, see?” 

The pad of his forefinger covered the upper half of the badge, which read SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY. All the letters of the first slogan swirled and changed before turning green to spell: POTTER STINKS.

Cori’s eyebrows lifted. “You wasted that much time on little button things for other houses?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Draco’s face. He plucked the badge off Crabbe’s hand and pinched the pin between two fingers. 

“It’s not a waste,” he argued. “It’s taking Potter down a peg, which still leaves his opinion of himself about fifty notches above where it ought to be.”

“Sounds like you know a lot about having an excess of self-confidence,” Cori remarked dryly. “Half your badge might do that, but the other half cheers on Cedric. He’s a Hufflepuff. Harry’s a Gryffindor. Why mention either by name if they aren’t Slytherins like us? It could just say something about Hogwarts in general.”

“Because it’s important everyone sees that nobody wanted Potter representing us. His trick to get attention backfired. Everyone hates him now.” Draco cast a look behind him at his friends. Several murmured in agreement or nodded their assent. 

“And yet I don’t see anyone else making merchandise to say so.” Cori set aside her book and sat up straighter, resigned to the oncoming argument. She squared her shoulders and draped her open hands across the arms of the chair.  

“I expect they would’ve, but I beat them to it. Anything after this would look like a pathetic knockoff.” Draco bounced the heel of his hand, causing the badge to flip midair and catch the light. He caught it and held the emblem out to Cori as Crabbe had done. “Take the damn badge. You’ll be the only one here without one, elsewise, and you wouldn’t want people thinking you’re a Potter fan. You don’t support Potter do you, Selwyn?” His smile shifted into something more smug and jeering.

“I don’t give a good goddamn who got chosen, so long as Durmstrang and Beauxbatons get obliterated in the tasks. They’re the ones who really need to be taken down a peg or two, if you ask me. Put them on one of your buttons.” Cori reached as if she were going to pick up her textbook again but, predictably, Draco wasn’t finished yet. 

“Little Coriander Selwyn, waving a banner for half-blood Harry Potter.” Draco tsked. “What would Mummy and Daddy have to say about that?”

“I don’t know or particularly care. I’m not the one who keeps my parents as pen pals,” Cori retorted. She held an imaginary quill in the air and made strokes across an invisible piece of parchment. ��Dear Mum, Second best at everything, as ever, but I made wearable circles with words on them and everyone thinks they’re brill! Love and Kisses, Draco. P.S., Please ask Father to stop sending back his envelopes unopened.”

Pansy swooped down and emitted a steady stream of scathing insults, but they were drowned out by Draco’s sharp reply.

“Careful, Selwyn, the last person who crossed me went to the hospital wing.”

Cori scoffed. “Granger? You can’t take credit for that one, Malfoy; the hex was meant for Potter!”

“Potter’s hex missed, too!” Pansy was quick to retort.

Draco jumped in immediately afterward. “Granger went from rabbit to walrus in ten seconds flat!” He and Pansy laughed. 

“And what difference does that make?” Cori overrode them both. “Why do you even know how long they were to begin with? Do you spend a lot of time staring at Hermione Granger’s mouth?”

Pansy looked as if she could breathe fire, but Cori noted with satisfaction that her eyes darted frantically to the boy at her side. Draco, for his part, had an unusual amount of color in his generally pale face. 

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Draco snarled. “Anyone who’s ever had a class with her knows what her teeth are like. They’re right in your face every time she speaks.”

“And she never shuts up!” Pansy added. 

“Right, sure.” Cori nodded slowly. She touched her fingers together in a steeple. “You know, Malfoy, if Granger bothers you in class so much, why don’t you just spend more time studying so you can answer faster? I’m sure everyone will be thankful for the peace and quiet while you have that pointy nose in a book.”

Pansy harrumphed. “What, like you?”

“And how do you stand up for Slytherin?” Draco crossed his arms over his chest, one hand closing around the badge. “What would you suggest, exactly?”

“We’re the house known for our ambition! Let your actions speak for themselves. Tearing down the competition doesn’t raise you any higher, you fumbling git. Beating them at their own game is what makes sure you stay at the top. If you’ve got a problem with someone, you defeat them at what they do best and make sure there are witnesses.” Here, Cori mirrored Draco’s earlier smirk back at him and looked pointedly at the crowd of fellow Slytherins behind them. A look of dawning comprehension appeared behind his gray eyes. 

Draco’s jaw clenched. He cast the badge aside. It hit a nearby pillar with a quiet crack and clattered to the floor. 

“All right, Selwyn, since you’re so keen for a fight,” Draco growled through clenched teeth, “how about you and I settle this in a duel?”

Cori was on her feet, wand in hand and pointed just below his chin, before Draco had even twitched his fingers toward the pocket of his robes.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you not mean now?” Cori asked innocently, although her wand remained exactly where it was. “I can give you a while to prepare, if you’d like. You can send your dear old mum a list of last wishes. Tell your dad how you’re about to get your ego blasted off and handed to you by a girl who’s eight inches shorter and a year your junior.”

For a moment, Draco tried to draw himself to his full height and sneer down his nose at her. Cori could see the calculations that must be taking place in his mind, realizing just how much judgment and criticism he would face if Cori were the victor. She could also tell how badly he wanted to inform her that his father would hear about this, but she had effectively denied him his most reliable threat. 

“This isn’t over, Selwyn,” he spat. “Watch your back.”

Cori snorted derisively. “I won’t need to. If Moody finds out you tried the coward’s way again, he’ll present you to me as a winter stole. Well, you and about two dozen of your white-haired polecat friends.”

She twitched her nose, imitating his unanticipated transformation into a ferret earlier that year. Draco was positively pink with fury.

“I’ll make sure you regret this,” he promised with a jab of his finger. 

Draco swept away in a rather clumsy swish of his cloak. He stalked off toward his dorm room with Pansy following as far as the magical separation security would allow. 

Cori picked up her book once more and settled comfortably back into her chair as she called after Draco:

“Be sure to send me an owl with the place and time!”