#trying to cram as much of the sonic experience in as i can before generations so that involves | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flamebearrel · 4 years ago

Note

Ness (smash) Steven (su) and Sonic (also smash) for your ask game!

Ness BrOTPs

Snake - Ness has built up a huge admiration for Snake over time - what he’s been through, how he powered through it all, his weapons and abilities and sense of humor and the like. He essentially feels like Snake is a second father figure, and is honestly pretty shy about it. But Snake is happy to spend time with him and makes sure he voices his approval more frequently than usual, cause Ness’s face lights up every time and he finds it so sweet

F!Wii Fit Trainer - As someone interested in athletics but not speedy enough to play competitively, Ness quickly latched onto WFT’s more relaxed fitness and yoga sessions as a way to get moving instead. Over time she effectively became his Cool Aunt that he’d come to with new discoveries and questions! One particular thing they often do together, as a very-confused-with-tech lady and a kid who still lives in the 90s, is try to figure out new tech and ignore anyone who tells them they’re doing it wrong yes I know cameras aren’t new they’re just messing around in the linked example

Toon Link and Lucas - The first pair of people his age that he really clicked with, since Young Link was a lot more solitary and the Ice Climbers just didn’t become part of the super-tight group they formed. These three can find pretty much anything to do together, and they often like to discuss their families. When it comes to competition, their teamwork excels - they’re somehow always in sync, especially with Ness always leading the team (until Villager joined the friend group in 4 and started competing for that role)

Luigi and Dedede - While they don’t usually go out of their way to hang out, the three of them just feel really connected with each other post-Subspace. Expect lots of knowing smiles, inside jokes and eye contact from across the room, to the extent that people know they’ve got secrets but no one ever gets a real hint as to what they are. They will also most certainly team up if they have the chance, but honestly that’s when they do most of their catching up rather than trying that hard to win anything

Steven BrOTPs

What makes this easier is that he forms some kind of relationship with pretty much every character in the show, so let’s talk about a few we don’t get to see him with much!

Jeff - It took a while before they could meet up, since at first Steven only heard about him from Connie and then her cram school started, but when all three finally did (around Change Your Mind time) it was a pleasant surprise to see how many interests they shared. Jeff immediately started looking up to Steven and took to learning about Gem stuff, even volunteering to help with the construction of Little Homeworld! Eventually they start hanging out themselves playing video games and such, and Steven even gives him a warp whistle shortly before the movie so they can meet up more

Nephrite - Steven wanted to spend as much time as he could with Nephrite once she was healed - it was his chance to finally really listen to his friend after so long and he could just feel the excitement radiating from her to be back. For a while she came with him to Homeworld out of wanting to see how it had changed. Hearing others’ stories and tales and being able to tell her own really struck a chord with her, so she started studying therapy - Nephrite was actually the one who helped Steven get into it! In addition, Steven is happy to introduce her to Earth tech, and on his road trip she somehow always manages to sneak up and stop him for a hangout

Blue Zircon - Upon making changes around Homeworld, one of the first things Steven wanted to do was show some appreciation for the more trustworthy faces around there. Immediately he voiced his approval for Blue Zircon, calling to mind her amazing deduction skills from the trial. BZ also feels the trial let her see Steven as someone on her level rather than far above her - there are plenty of occasions where she calls Steven to ask for leadership tips or discuss plans, rather than any other leading Gem

Peedee - Though he doesn’t realize it, once Steven starts managing Little Homeschool he subconsciously makes comments on his work woes as he goes about Beach City. Peedee’s the first to pick up on it, and honestly, he gets it - soon the conversations at the fry shop/tater truck are getting longer and longer before Steven has to go. He recognizes the deflecting and watering down of his problems Schtu-ball tends to do too, and asks cautious questions so both of them have a better outlet when they talk. The realization that they haven’t hung out enough hits hard leading up to Steven’s road trip, so that’s what they do - Steven helps him relax a little more and Peedee helps with the plans

Sonic BrOTPs

I wanna point out that I know enough about Sonic to get all the important characters’ personalities and general dynamics, I just don’t really know the lore :,D so hopefully these are okay ahaha they took a while to think about

Mega Man - Buddies since the comics, and that holds true even to now. When Rock first arrived at Smash, it was the hedgehog that showed him around and helped him settle in - and the actually kinda overwhelmed Rock clung to his arm for quite a while. They like to host friendly competition all the time or poke fun at each other’s slip-ups. Honestly, though, it’s refreshing for Sonic to have a robotic friend rather than an enemy for once; in turn, Rock appreciates having a stable friendship with a former enemy instead of some vague tension-filled team up

Orange and Blue Inklings - During the first Ultimate pool party, Sonic wasn’t the only one who hanging around away from the pool - he was able to click with Amber and Neil almost immediately. The Blue Blur’s found himself completely enamored by the culture of Inkopolis, and these two are happy to share with him their “fresh” fashion tips and lifestyles. And if they so wish, they can become one of the most chaotic trios in the whole Palace

Mario - As much as he tries to play off the aloofness sometimes, Sonic always inevitably draws to Mario in a crowd. His “old man” just makes him feel a lot safer since he always backs him up, whether it’s a tough battle or just messing around (not only will Mario find it hilarious every time Sonic pulls something, half the time he can and will join in). Mario keeps the hedgehog at the top of his list for whenever he’s up for some sports, and while usually Sonic’s too caught up in stuff to join in, he makes sure to mentally cheer for the plumber every time

Shulk - His kind, nerdy vibes remind Sonic of Tails, so he’s more than willing to just walk up and start chatting with the guy. Initially Shulk didn’t think too fondly of him since their priorities and tactics seemed to clash a lot, but when Sonic started telling stories of his friends (specifically Silver and the aforementioned Tails), it definitely grabbed his interest. The two start talking about their own experiences with the future, and their regrets, and it definitely becomes one of Sonic’s more introspective relationships

16 notes · View notes

toaarcan · 5 years ago

Text

Sonic X, Sonic Heroes, and IDW, or: How a bad anime from 2004 spoiled a comic from 2019.

Now, I haven’t been following IDW Sonic all that closely. I get regular updates from Nemesis via Discord, and additional info from some of the Tumblrs I follow that are invested in it, but I don’t really have a desire to touch it myself. Here’s why.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this. Starting with the background of Sonic Forces wasn’t really a good place to begin from, and being based on present-day game lore in general was always going to hurt it, mainly because SEGASonic canon is currently a confusing mess of retcons brought on by Iizuka taking the J.K. Rowling approach.

Wait, no, he’s just saying stupid shit that contradicts previous canon, not trying to score woke points and hoping nobody notices the frankly terrible stereotypes and TERF tweets. Iizuka is taking the Greg Farshtey approach.

Added, as anyone that’s had experience with my opinions will tell you, I started falling out of love with Ian Flynn’s writing somewhere around Issue 200, and moved to outright dislike during Mecha Sally, and to make matters worse I started noticing that some of the flaws in the 200-247 era were also present in the 160-199 era, retroactively making those harder to go back to.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I kept up with Archie for the SatAM cast. SatAM reruns back in 2004 were my Sonic, moreso than anything else, and even now I still have way more attachment to those two seasons of animation than I do to most other aspects of the franchise, warts and all. So Archie providing me with additional content for said characters was a major draw for me. I’d generally put up with a lot just to get myself more SatAM content.

That in itself is a large part of why I fell off the Archie train during Mecha Sally. The entirety of the SatAM cast were removed from the regular lineup, just leaving three SEGA characters with their personalities stunted, even if that didn’t make sense in-universe. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So being written by someone whom I no longer enjoyed the writing of, set in a mess of a canon with a thoroughly shite game as the main basis, without the cast I read the previous comics for gave me little reason to invest in IDW Sonic. It wasn’t for me, I’d just keep reading Transformers and move on.

Then MTMTE/LL ended with a heart-twister and Ex-RID ended with a giant Unicron-shaped fart, and the new comic is dull as fucking dishwater and started by killing off one of my favourites, who was also one of the franchise’s confirmed LGBT characters. So now IDW is getting none of my money. Which is good because I’m broke.

Tangents aside, my lack of interest wasn’t something set in stone. If it turned out that the comic was actually really good, then sure, I’d try it. I was up for being proven wrong. But so far, I haven’t felt compelled by the responses from the internet. If anything I’ve been more turned off.

I could talk about how zombies are really fucking boring. I could talk about how SEGA’s recent confusion over what to do with Amy has combined with Ian’s need to include a Sally-esque character to make IDW Amy into Sally Lite. I could talk about how Ian seemingly fundamentally misunderstood everything that was cool about Neo Metal Sonic and somehow managed to reduce him to a boring Eggman minion in an arc where Eggman was out of action due to amnesia… But I won’t.

Instead I’m going to talk about how the comic has done something that would legitimately make me think twice about picking it up even if the FF were to debut tomorrow.

Yeah, I would pass up a SatAM fix because of this, that’s how much this ticks me off.

Now, I presume that if you’re reading this, you have a favourite Sonic character. And you probably feel pretty strongly about how your favourite character is portrayed. If they get a bad run in a game or two then you probably get a little salty about that. Tails and Knuckles fans in particular, as of late, seem to be the ones getting the short end.

Well, my favourite character in the entire franchise is Emerl the Gizoid. I will take Gemerl as a worthy substitute, they’re basically the same character. And the comics have been doing them dirty since the Archie reboot.

(Sidenote: I will be referring to Emerl with male pronouns from this point on. The Maria-soul thing isn’t as widely known as I’d like it to be, so I’m going to compromise for the sake of keeping the focus on the actual point)

However, not everything about this can be laid at the feet of Ian Flynn. Arguably his portrayal of said character is merely a symptom of a long-running issue that has plagued Sonic storytelling for roughly 15-16 years now.

But before we get into that, let’s get into something important: Why Emerl is my favourite Sonic character.

Part 1: Emerl in Sonic Battle, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Gizoid”.

This game doesn’t get enough love.

Now, I totally understand why it doesn’t get enough love. There are game design choices, like the grinding and the repetitiveness of the story mode that really drag it down, and because of that, Battle can become a slow-going and tedious experience, and that’s a real shame, because the story that’s hidden in this game is a thing of beauty.

Like most Sonic games from the 2000s, this game introduces a new character to join Sonic’s list of friends. Unlike the games that aren’t SA2 and Sonic Rush, this new character is actually good (This is hyperbole, Omega, Silver, and Shade were fine too).

Emerl enters the story as a mute, barely-functional robot that doesn’t do much of anything for a while, and only seems to come to life when Sonic locates it and attacks it. However, as the robot absorbs more Chaos Emeralds, slowly a personality starts to form, largely pieced together from other characters’ traits.

Emerl, as he is dubbed, is initially childlike and naive, but as he grows he develops a sassy streak, and his speech becomes a lot more developed. Maturity sets in, as Emerl grapples with his own nature, particularly the legacy he carries from the ARK, and Shadow’s ongoing turmoil with regards to the whole “Living Weapon” deal. Ultimately he becomes a hero, following in the footsteps of his mentor, parental figure, and closest friend, Sonic.

That’s right, Sonic, not Cream, is Emerl’s closest friend. We’ll get to that.

But this heart-warming story of Sonic becoming a dad for a robot doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Shadow and Rouge finding a way to neutralise Emerl’s destructive Gizoid programming, Eggman has a way to reactivate it anyway, driving Emerl into a berserk rampage. This is kind of the one sticking point I have with the game’s plot, Eggman shouldn’t have been able to do this after Shadow and Rouge neutralised Emerl.

Additionally, while Emerl was on the ARK getting Maria’s soul crammed into him, Gerald also added a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if he ever went Ultimate again.

So with Emerl quite literally exploding with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, but his destructive programming forcing him to turn Eggman’s latest Death Star knockoff on Mobius/Earth/Sonic’s World, Sonic races up to confront his mecha-child, and things take a turn for the Old Robot Yeller.

In a moment that really deserves more attention, Sonic confronts his own child on the bridge of a space station, while Emerl is running on the power of the Chaos Emeralds and outputting more energy than he can physically take, and they fight. In the space of thirty seconds, they have a ten-round knock-down, drag-out brawl, and at the end, Sonic stands triumphant. Without using a single transformation. Yeah, that’s how powerful this guy is, that’s not travel speed, that’s combat speed. Looking at you, Death Battle.

It’s not really clear whether Sonic outright defeats Ultimate Emerl, or just survives long enough for his opponent to reach his limit and self-destruct, but the end result is the same. Sonic cradles a robot that became his own child over the course of the past few weeks, someone he raised from a baby-like state into a mature and heroic individual, and Emerl looks up at him and asks “Sonic… am I going to die?” And despite Sonic desperately trying to get him to keep it together, Not only does Emerl die, but he’s aware that the end is coming, and bids farewell to all of his friends as Sonic pleads with him to hold on. Shadow is equally distraught, his only friend with a connection to the ARK, someone he can call a brother, someone who carries the soul of his deceased sister within him, is dead.

Emerl: “Sonic I don’t feel so good.”

Like it’s canon that Eggman basically murdered Sonic’s kid.

And goddamnit this ending hits me hard. It frustrates me that Eggman was able to pull a means to drive Emerl into his Ultimate freakout mode out of his arse, but other than that, it’s so gutwrenching, I love it.

Gamma’s story from SA1 gets a lot of praise on the Internet, but for me, this is even better. It’s like Gamma’s story, but if Gamma was actually central to the plot of the game and the characters other than Amy gave a shit about him, and gave a shit about him for longer than a single cutscene, after which they are never mentioned again. Hell, due to Chaos Gamma being a thing, Gamma gets more love from the other characters in Battle than he does in SA1.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.

Part 2: (Sonic) Anime was a Mistake, or: “Sonic X ruins everything.”

I’ve made my dislike of this anime quite clear in the past. The characters are flanderized, Sonic is a B-lister in his own damn show, the villains are weaksauce or boring or both, the plot is only remotely close to good when its cribbing from two videogames which told the stories in question better, and for the first two seasons the entire show actually revolves around not Sonic, but the least relatable audience surrogate ever made. The third season would continue to include him, but shove him (And everyone else) to the side in favour of a Pokemon whose only move was “Flashback”, making audiences the world over question why he was even there in the first place.

Oh, and it also near-singlehandedly destroyed the thin shreds of character development that Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman had received in Sonic Adventure 2.

All four of these characters had been significantly enriched by the then most recent console game. Eggman had been revealed to be motivated by an admiration for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, but in the same game learned that Gerald had lost his marbles and programmed the ARK to smash into the planet and kill everyone on it, probably including his surviving family, i.e. little baby Ivo Robotnik. Gerald betrayed Eggman posthumously, and it’s clear from Eggman’s interactions with Tails during the credits of the game that this is giving him a lot to think about.

Knuckles is a weird case because most of his characterisation in SA2 is conveyed via… the lyrics to his rap music. Yes, really. He gets minor growth through the cutscenes, most notably in his decision to shatter the Master Emerald early on. Having already reassembled it once after it was broken in SA1, he’s now confident that he can do it again, so is willing to break it to prevent Eggman or Rouge stealing it. Via the rap lyrics, however (Yes I just wrote that), we also learn that Knuckles is slowly warming up to Sonic, gaining a greater respect for him, that he is more in-touch with his history and ancestors after SA1 (Though fortunately not in a Ken Penders way), and that he’s also struggling with feelings for Rouge, a plot element that went completely out of the window after this game.

Tails and Amy, however, get it the worst, as both went through arcs in SA1 that are followed up on and expanded in SA2. Amy had come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to rely on Sonic for everything, and that she would make him respect her as a hero in her own right. And while Amy is clearly in way over her head throughout the events of SA2, she still makes a significant difference, not only freeing Sonic from his cell on Prison Island, allowing Tails’ invasion to be a distraction and stealing a keycard to facilitate it, but of course, she later saves the world by motivating Shadow to join the fight to stop the ARK drop.

Tails had a similar plot, about learning to believe in himself as a hero, without having to rely on Sonic, and in SA2 he gets to prove it, not only partaking in the same rescue operation as Amy and fighting Eggman on even footing, but effectively taking command of the heroes and becoming their new leader, and for the first time, Sonic defers to him.

And then Sonic X came along and fucked it all up.

Eggman became a clownish antagonist with no semblance of nuance, and he actually got off the easiest.

Knuckles became a loud, dimwitted loner who got tricked by Eggman constantly, which would go on to be his personality for the rest of the franchise, ultimately culminating in the travesty against all sense that was Boom Knuckles.

Tails was reduced to a wimpy taxi driver, incapable of doing anything without his giant mecha plane to sit in. This was largely exacerbated by the presence of Donut Steele, who usurped his role as Sonic’s best friend and sidekick for two seasons, a problem which only got worse in the third season when Donut Steele suddenly became a genius inventor too, encroaching even more into Tails’ territory. Tails did get himself some more focus in S3, but only to make googly eyes at the Pokemon, a role which frankly could’ve gone to literally anyone else and would have made no difference on the plot. I would say that Tails being involved in a romance story at all is weird, but given the comics and Boom the weirdest thing about this latest tragic love story for the kid is that the Pokemon was actually close to his own age, because outside of this it really does seem like Tails goes for older ladies. Though she did turn into an adult at the end so I guess that counts?

But Amy arguably got the worst of it. Not only was her crowning moment in SA2 taken away from her and given to Donut Steele, but the poor girl had her promising character arc cut short and replaced with an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on Sonic, combined with a violent temper and an eagerness to smash anything that displeased her, Sonic included, with a giant hammer. Her admiration and crush on Sonic were warped into her being a possessive, mean-spirited stalker, whom only got away with it because she was an anime girl and therefore it was cute rather than creepy.

I want to take the time at this point to stress that stalking is not okay, under any circumstances. A girl obsessively following an older guy and threatening him and everyone around him with violent assault if they ever so much as imply that he isn’t interested in her is not cute, it means it’s time for a restraining order. Sonamy is not cute.

Now that I’ve swatted that particular hornet’s nest with a cricket bat, let’s move on!

I’ve always found it ironic that, despite being the adaptation with the most oversight from SEGA and Sonic Team, and the most endorsement from them too, Sonic X had easily the worst characterisation of any of the shows at the time. But, for all its faults, I can’t blame everything that went down in the aftermath on it. It had a comrade-in-arms. Mediocrely-written arms.

Part 3: Partner in Crime, or “Sonic Heroes also ruins everything.”

Sonic Heroes has a lot to answer for. And I mean a lot. It was the beginning of the franchise’s obsession with references to the classic games, it codified the really awkward ages for certain characters, and it seemed to be dedicated to completely unpicking everything established in the Adventure duology.

Shadow’s sudden resurrection is one thing, at least they had the graces to include a means to preserve his sacrifice via having him be an android, the blame for that not taking should be laid at the feet of his own game.

But the rest of the cast? Ohhh boy. Sonic’s still fine, he didn’t change much in the Adventure games, but then there’s Tails. Despite all the development he went through in SA1, in this game he needs to turn to Sonic when Eggman returns, and honestly this whole setup could’ve been fixed if Tails sought Sonic out not for the sake of having him lead the charge, but rather simply to recruit him into the counterattack he was already planning. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the game Tails is almost as wimpy as his X counterpart, not helped by the voicework he’s given. No offense to William Corkery, who was probably like six when he recorded his lines, but this what you get when you choose actors via nepotism, rather than talent. But at least he does something.

How about Knuckles? As the other side of his derailment, Knuckles just turns up in this game, buddy-buddy with the characters he was only just starting to warm up to before, and blatantly not caring about the Master Emerald until Rouge mentions she’s going to steal it at the end. This will combine with his becoming a dumbass in Sonic X and become basically his entire character for… ever. Even in Forces, where he’s supposed to be doing slightly better as the leader of the resistance… but he’s a dumbass, and even Ian Flynn, who kept Knuckles as competent and intelligent in the Archie comics (Making the best version of Knuckles we’ve had in forever), kept this ongoing in the IDW comic. The Forces prequel portrays him as deciding to become leader of the Resistance (To an empire that hasn’t actually formed yet) purely to be a glory hound, and then goes on to establish that he was basically a figurehead while the real work was done by Amy, of all people.

And speaking of Amy…

Yeah, poor Amy is basically her Sonic X counterpart. But worse. I didn’t think that was possible, but at least X’s Amy seems to care about her friends. In Heroes, we’re treated to an equally violent and stalkerish Amy, who ostensibly starts searching out Sonic because he’s implicated in the abduction of Cream and Big’s pets, but when they actually catch up to him, Amy clean forgets why she is looking for him in the first place and tries to force him to marry her. Despite being twelve.

Y’know when Amy said she wanted to marry Sonic in SA2, she was joking, right?

This is why I find the idea of Amy being the real leader of the Resistance frankly absurd: Because the only time she led anything, it was a team that consisted of herself, a small child, and a man less intelligent and aware of reality than said small child, and she completely forgot their actual objective the moment she set her eyes on Sonic. Add in an unfortunate stint of very poor eyesight that got less and less understandable with every instance, and we got Amy’s rough personality for the next decade.

While Knuckles mostly stagnated at the same level of stupidity during that time, Tails got worse and worse, losing all of his badass traits with every game, a factor only increased by the “Sonic only” mentality costing him playable status, until he reached his nadir in Forces, cowering in terror from Chaos 0, and crying out to Sonic to save him, despite knowing full-well that Sonic was captured already. Amy, meanwhile, limped along at the same level until about 2014, where it seemed someone at SEGA finally realised that A) Having the only female character you regularly use be a pink-coloured gender-bent version of your male hero whose only function is lusting after said hero doesn’t and shouldn’t fly in this day and age, and B) violent stalkers aren’t cute, and dropped this trait. Unfortunately, this has been more of a lateral move than a fix, as, much like Antoine in the comics, they forgot to give her anything substantial or fitting after she lost her negative traits, leaving her a bland and dull character, and when you’ve had a character be consistent for ten years, even if they were consistently bad, then changing it without cause or warning is still going to be jarring and awkward.

Part 4: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, or “Why the fuck did this happen?”

As I said in Part 2, Sonic X was made under heavy oversight from Sonic Team, and was heavily endorsed by them at the same time. There were promos for the show inserted into Sonic Adventure DX, a few episodes were released on GBA cartridges, and it received a long-running comic from Archie that ran alongside the main book, even after the show had ended. Additionally, characters that debuted in games from 2002-2004 were restricted from appearing in Archie’s main book for years afterwards (Which will become relevant later). The third season was commissioned solely off of the response to the first two, and primarily overseas response, hence why the original sub was never aired in Japan.

Sonic X was huge. And with that in mind, it’s plain to see that the portrayals of the characters in Sonic X were intended by SEGA. Yeah, all that horrible characterisation was intended as the vision for the franchise going forwards, and subsequent games were adjusted to match it.

And unfortunately, not only did this have a serious impact on the main cast of the games, but it had an even worse effect on Emerl.

Part 5: Emerl in Sonic X, or “Emerl vs. ‘Emel’”

Sonic X’s original mission statement was to adapt Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Battle. Why they skipped Sonic Heroes, despite Shadow being a major player in Battle’s story, I don’t know.

For whatever reason, the show took a full season to actually get to the first game adaptation, SA1, and instead spent the first 26 episodes on bland episodic “adventures”, in some kind of strange reverse-Isekai series. However, once it got there, the adaptation work was fairly faithful to the source material, which the exception of Donut Steele’s being crammed in to the plot. However, he mostly followed Big around, and since Big was the least involved in the game’s plot, he didn’t disrupt too much.

Sidenote, after 26 episodes of filler, the actual SA1 adaptation only lasted six episodes.

SA2 was likewise only six episodes, but with the exception of Amy’s big scene, it likewise wasn’t too bad. Tails suffered this time around too, which is somewhat surprising since he was mech-dependent in the anime anyway.

After some more filler, which introduced the Chaotix and then did nothing with them, Emerl finally made an appearance, albeit they got his name wrong.

‘Emel’ looks like Emerl, and somewhat works like Emerl, but might as well be completely different. ‘Emel’ stays completely mute for the entire time he’s around, never advancing much beyond Emerl’s initial silent, pre-first Emerald persona. He does get better at fighting, but he’s limited to only absorbing a single skill at once (Except for when he isn’t).

Dispensing with Battle’s interesting, rich, and heart-twisting plot, Sonic X instead has ‘Emel’ linger in ensemble for three episodes, before condensing the entire game’s premise into a two episodes of really bland tournament arc, where Sonic himself doesn’t actually fight and we get two rounds of Donut Steele being a dick to his friend and his father.

‘Emel’ wins the tournament, and is given a Chaos Emerald, and just when you think it might kickstart him becoming an actual character, instead it just drives him insane and he immediately becomes a pathetically weak version of Ultimate Emerl. After kicking the crap out of the entire cast, he is defeated by Cream and Cheese, because even though he can take on Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge at the same time and win, along with Tails, Amy, Donut Steele and everyone else, he… can’t handle two opponents at once.

This is stupid.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about Sonic’s relationship with ‘Emel’, and that’s because he doesn’t have one. The wonderfully-written parental bond that these two characters share in the games is completely excised, and instead the focus is put on Cream. Bare in mind, Cream is so inconsequential to the actual game that she doesn’t even get mentioned individually in Emerl’s dying speech like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow do. Instead she’s just grouped in with Amy.

This is also stupid.

And as a result of this, it means that what is arguable base form Sonic’s most impressive feat just doesn’t happen in the anime, instead Emerl dies because he is lightly kicked a bit by Cream. Yeah, unlike the Advance games, Sonic X’s Cream is not an unstoppable engine of destruction, she’s basically just a small child who can sometimes fly.

Instead of Emerl’s tragic speech and Sonic’s desperate attempts to keep his son alive, we get treated to a prolonged scene of Cream crying over the death of her “friend”, something that is probably meant to tug at heartstrings but doesn’t because Cream’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

And Shadow isn’t even there! He doesn’t come back until a third of the way through Season 3, and never meets ‘Emel.’

This is really stupid. And, for those keeping track, that means of Sonic X’s originally commissioned 52 episodes, and the full series run of 78 episodes, a stunning total of seventeen of them were actually adaptations of the games that the series was supposed to focus on, leaving us with 61 episodes of what might as well be filler.

And, unfortunately, that franchise-wide initiative had damning consequences for Emerl.

Part 6: Gemerl and Sonic Advance 3, or: “An incomplete resurrection.”

So, Gemerl. I know his name is apparently G-Merl now but fuck that I’m calling him Gemerl. If the comics can do it then so will I.

Gemerl is the worst thing Eggman has ever done to Sonic. Like, there is no contest. Some of his other schemes might be more destructive and generally evil, but in terms of personal pain inflicted, nothing has topped this.

Eggman salvaged Emerl’s corpse, and brought him back to life as a mindless murderbot under his control. So not only did he kill Sonic’s robo-son, but he also brought him back as a weapon.

Come the conclusion of the game, Gemerl predictably betrays Eggman, steals the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, and goes on another rampage. I have… headcanons about this fight, but that’s something to worry about later. What’s important is that, once again, Sonic is victorious, and Gemerl’s defeated body plunges into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Tails is able to bring Emerl back properly this time, presumably using the Chaos shard that was left over at the end of Battle’s finale. So, it’s all a happy ending, right? Sonic has his child back, Shadow has his connection to his history restored, and Emerl is alive and well, right?

Wrong.

See, the vile spectre of Sonic X rears its ugly head once more, and sabotages this conclusion. Gemerl doesn’t return to Sonic, in fact we never see him reunite with his father. Instead, Sonic X’s version has enough clout now to take precedence, so Gemerl is now Cream’s playmate.

Bear in mind that Emerl’s idea of a fun game is all-out combat against his friends, and Cream doesn’t like fighting (Even if she’s really good at it in Advance 2 and 3).

And then he never shows up again. Even when Cream is part of the game’s plot, like in Rush or Generations, he’s not there, and most egregiously, in Sonic Chronicles, where Cream is not only an active player in the plot, but so are Gizoids, the creators of said Gizoids are the main antagonists, and Emerl himself is mentioned… Gemerl is not there.

But he did make it into the comics, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Part 7: Embargos, knock-offs, and misused tropes, or: “Ian Flynn dun goofed.”

For a long while, Emerl/Gemerl was barred from the Archie comics, due to the Sonic X embargo, and when it was lifted, he didn’t appear until the reboot. We did, however, get a suspiciously similar substitute in the form of Shard.

Shard was the original Metal Sonic, but when he was brought back and rebuilt for the Secret Freedom arc, he was given a colour scheme ostensibly derived from Metal Sonic 3.0, but one shared with Gemerl, and a personality that was a lot like a watered-down version of Emerl’s own.

On some level I can understand Ian’s decision to bring back Metal Sonic v2.5, rather than use the character that seems to have been an inspiration for this new incarnation in some way. He’d need a fully-formed Emerl, necessitating a skip over the whole story, since there wasn’t room for an adaptation during the Mecha Sally arc that the Secret Freedom story was framed within. Heck, for all we know, the similarities between them may simply be a pretty sizeable coincidence.

But then the reboot happened and Gemerl finally joined the comic cast. And to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

You’ll notice that I said “Gemerl” rather than “Emerl”, because his entire story was indeed skipped. The events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3 had both happened already. This wasn’t Ian’s decision, as far as we know, his intention was for the comic to start over from the beginning. However, due to the interference of Paul Kaminski, who wanted a softer reboot, Ian was forced to fill the characters’ active histories with a large chunk of the games’ stories. Battle and Advance 3 were among those that had already happened, so Emerl made cameos in both incarnations via flashback… which unfortunately led to a plot hole.

See, Advance 3 and Sonic Unleashed are rather difficult to keep in the same continuity, because both share a common plot element: The world breaking into seven pieces.

For a long while, it was generally assumed that the handheld games and console titles were only semi-canon to each other. This avoided the awkward question of “If the Gaias were already there, why didn’t they emerge when Eggman broke the planet in Advance 3?”

Ian shoved them blatantly into the same continuity, and gave no attempt to explain what was different about the Advance 3 world-break compared to the Gaia incident, which served as the backbone to the reboot’s three year long Shattered World Arc. Why didn't the Gaias wake up during Advance 3? Because that's now a question we have to ask of the comics' world.

When Gemerl finally showed up doing something other than yard work for Vanilla (Despite allegedly being Cream’s friend, Cream spends all her time with the rest of the cast, and Gemerl is basically Vanilla’s maid), it was to get effortlessly dispatched by a brainwashed Mega Man with a terrible name in the extremely lacklustre Worlds Unite event.

This one was more than a little bit of a slap in the face, considering that Emerl and Mega Man are very similar in concept- robots that can copy the abilities of other characters- but Emerl is demonstrably more powerful. Now, if Ian had established that Gemerl had been nerfed when he was rebuilt, either by Eggman or by Tails, that would be fine. But he didn’t. In fact, Gemerl is given the title bubble “Super Gizoid”, implying that he’s stronger than a regular Gizoid.

Worlds Unite is generally pretty bad for having its corrupted heroes easily curbstomp every other character around, to the point that the only thing that can stop them is each other, but in Gemerl’s case it really serves no purpose.

This is the only thing that he actually does in Worlds Unite. He shows up to get beaten up and make Mega Man look stronger. That’s it.

This is something that TV Tropes refers to as “The Worf Effect”, a trope wherein an established powerful character is defeated easily by a new character, in order to demonstrate the latter’s power. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using this trope, but please note that I said establishedpowerful character, which Gemerl wasn’t.

At the point that this comic released, Gemerl’s last appearance in any Sonic media was over ten years prior. None of the comic’s intended target audience would remember him, and they wouldn’t know why defeating him was impressive. And this was, in addition, a terrible way to introduce him to new fans. Though the worst part is easily that this was unnecessary. Mega Man had already defeated everyone else, and had established his power pretty well just on them, and he was about to get removed from play permanently in the next issue. There was really no reason to throw Gemerl under the bus for this.

He made one more appearance in the event, getting controlled by the Zeti along with every other robot, and after that he got bopped on the head and just flew away.

Later, he’d make another appearance in the Panic in the Sky arc, and while his portrayal was far from the worst thing about Panic in the Sky, it only adds to the issues caused by the previous showing.

Gemerl makes one appearance, and promptly gets pinned down by the Witchcarters and Team Hooligan. Bear in that one of those groups are the joke villains who nobody takes seriously, and the other are a gang that was defeated by Tails before he met Sonic.

Archie Gemerl was a character who only existed to lose to villains in a vain attempt to make them look better, and that’s legitimately all Ian ever did with him, which makes me wonder whether he disliked the character. And it didn’t even make the villains look good, when you think about it. For anybody that was actually the intended audience for this book, Gemerl had no significance. He was just a robot that got beat up all the time. But for anyone like me, who does remember the games he appeared in, it stands out, not as good writing, but as a blatant narrative device and misused trope.

In this situation, I would simply rather Gemerl never appeared in Archie. At all. If Ian wasn’t going to give him time to shine, or at the very least be an adequate member of the supporting cast, he shouldn’t have used him at all.

Part 8: A Fresh False Start, or: “Wait, how did this get worse?!”

And now we arrive at IDW.

The one nice thing I can say about Archie Gemerl is that at least his personality was mostly on point. He read like a generally accurate take on the character that Emerl was at the end of Battle, which is what he’s supposed to be.

The same cannot be said for IDW.

In the pages of IDW, Gemerl acts like the most generic robot. He speaks in emotionless, stilted sentences with little in the way of actual grammar, leaving him to read like a poor man’s Soundwave, or Soundwave in one of those comics where the writer can’t decide whether they want him to speak normally or adopt his speech pattern from the G1 cartoon, so they just sort of do both.

Emerl pretty much never talked like this, as far as I can recall. His speech development is much more reminiscent of a child learning words, and the only time when he did adopt a more robotic speech pattern, it was a clue that he was slipping back into his destructive programming. He only spoke like a generic robot when he was in mindless destroyer mode.

He gets thrown for a loop by a simple logic flaw, unable to reconcile “Protect Cream and Vanilla” with “Don’t kill the zombots”, and has to be talked out of killing everything around him, when the entire point of Gerald’s modifications to the Gizoid was to make him a bringer of hope rather than destruction, and give him a compassionate heart.

The part of Battle’s story where Cream imparts a pacifistic mindset doesn’t frame her as being right. In that part of the game, they are cornered and under attack by hostile but ultimately mindless drones, and when she convinces Emerl to stop fighting, he almost dies. It’s Cream that learns the lesson there, that sometimes fighting is okay.

This character is already compassionate, he shouldn’t need to be talked into not killing the zombots by a small child, nor should he need her to point out that they’re innocent people who have been made this way by Eggman, because he was made into a killing machine by Eggman twice, and the first time he did die because of it. The character that lay dying in Sonic’s arms, scared and bidding his last goodbyes to his loved ones shouldn’t be the one experiencing this struggle when Omega is also in this arc.

That’s it, really. He’s not Gemerl. He’s a second, less goofy Omega. And it boggles my mind that, despite getting Gemerl’s character, if not his combat abilities, down almost perfectly in Archie, Ian is now subjecting us to this travesty.

Like with the Archie example above, therein lies the crux of why the steady decline of Emerl/Gemerl that began with Sonic X is pushing me away from IDW: I don’t want to read Ian’s take on this character, because, to me, No Gemerl is better than Badly-Written Gemerl,

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, either. Way back in 2016, when I complained about Ian’s portrayal of Gemerl in Panic in the Sky, I said that the way he handled characters that I liked tended to make them the least likeable parts of the stories he wrote. As well as stating my dislike for his handling of Gemerl, I also stated that I used to really like Fiona Fox, moreso in concept than in execution, but under Ian’s pen she was largely an insufferable antagonist, little more than a trophy to make his pet recolour look better, and almost every story she was in only added to the “List of reasons she needs to stop lying to herself and just start the redemption arc already”. Additionally, I said that I didn’t want to see him bring back Neo Metal Sonic or Mephiles in any context, and we got the former, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, that’s basically why I don’t want to read IDW. That’s why, even if the aspect that was a big sticking point for me back when the comic launched was to be undone soon, I still probably wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to see my favourite Sonic character continue to be written badly by a guy that should know better, and has done better in the past.

If he were simply screwing up Gemerl’s personality the first time he wrote him, I would file it away under the same category as “Emel”, but the fact that he’s done better before, in a book where he had greater restrictions on what he could do with the characters, really settles this as an interest-killer for me.

Well done, Mr. Flynn. I legitimately didn’t think you could make me actually miss SEGA’s tighter control, but you somehow managed it. I would be impressed if it weren’t so sad.

#Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic X #IDW Sonic #Archie Sonic #Emerl #Gemerl #Emerl the Gizoid #Gemerl the Gizoid #Critical #Sonic Heroes

13 notes · View notes

theseventhhex · 7 years ago

Text

Noah Gundersen Interview

Noah Gundersen

Two years after the release of his highly acclaimed LP ‘Carry The Ghost’, Seattle native Noah Gundersen is ready to unveil his newest body of work. The conception of ‘WHITE NOISE’ started long before Gundersen stepped into his homemade studio, nestled inside a 1600 square foot loft on the marina in Seattle, Washington. After overcoming a feeling of overwhelming emptiness Gundersen turned the feeling of blessed unrest into 13 diverse tracks that embody ‘WHITE NOISE’. Throughout the years, Noah has gained recognition with songs featuring on TV shows Sons of Anarchy, The Vampire Diaries and The Following. However, with its wall-of-sound production style and notably mature, almost world-weary lyrical motifs and musings on modern-day culture, this new album represents the culmination of Noah’s writing and production efforts… The Seventh Hex talks to Noah about collaboration, spirituality and riding motorcycles…

TSH: Diligence and patience were primary factors as you formed ‘WHITE NOISE’...

Noah: Definitely. In the past I think I’ve been inpatient, I guess it’s just in my nature to always move on to the next thing. There were detrimental elements to my last record, where I just didn’t give it the time to be fully realised and I didn’t want to make that same mistake again. With this record I spent a good part of the summer just getting up every day and working on tunes, sometimes that would be writing something new and then going back to something old, or revising verses even. I wrote so many verses for the songs. Overall, I think for this album it was a process of being patient and trying to live in a creative headspace every day.

TSH: Do you feel you were pulling from a range of angles with regards to lyricism?

Noah: I’m definitely pulling from external events on this record, more so than on any other record. Nonetheless, this album is still mostly filtered through the lens of personal experiences. I’m not necessarily setting out to write topical music, but I also don’t want to be hyper-confessional or on the nose about anything. I think what I set out to do with this record was to create a mood or a snapshot for people to live in for a minute. I wanted to sort of create a sensation without telling you what to feel.

TSH: Also, with this release there’s the notion of turning your frustrations into something productive...

Noah: Yeah, making music has always been therapeutic for me; it’s a form of escapism and catharsis. With music I get to often turn what feels like a lot of meaninglessness into something that is meaningful and encouraging. I hope I’m putting some kind of beauty into the world, which is why I do it.

TSH: It must have been so beneficial to have numerous individuals helping you to learn and grow as the record came to fruition...

Noah: Absolutely. This record was the most collaborative thing I’ve ever made. I had a conversation with a bandmate towards the end of last year and we were talking about me relinquishing a little bit of control. I think I was pretty tight-fisted for a long time, but I hit a wall with it - I could only go so far. I think I put a lot of intrinsic value in being controlling. I thought the more control l had the more creative worth I personally was endowed with. I think this kind of mentality really inhibited my creative growth. And so with this project, there was a lot of collaboration - bringing the band in, having a producer and having friends playing on the record, which helped make it what it is. I mean I still write the songs but there’s just so much more you can accomplish when you let other people in. I feel this attitude translates to life in general too.

TSH: The change in the sound has been mentioned often with this album. You’re going from acoustic to a more edgier and bolder electronic sound...

Noah: Yeah, I think I got pretty bored with the music I’d been making and I wanted to make something that resembled what I enjoy listening to, which is why the record is sonically all over the place. I wanted to make something that would be more fun to play live too. I’m a rock guy at heart; I like loud and big music.

TSH: There’s a lot emotional depth within the track ‘HEAVY METALS’...

Noah: That one went through a lot of different rewrites, I wrote a lot of different verses for that song because I feel it’s conceptually so abstract. I was thinking about how we each are consuming all of this information that is essentially just meaningless. With this track I was thinking a lot about our infinitesimally small mark that we have with our timeline on this universe, as well as thinking a lot about my mortality in terms of me ageing. There’s a lot that I’m cramming into this song: trying to find what is meaningful, our animal instincts as humans and how we allow room for things that we have been culturally conditioned with in recent times.

TSH: ‘BAD DESIRE’ is more about a given time period...

Noah: Yeah, that song is one of the more literal snapshot songs on the record. I wrote it when I was sort of seeing someone but knowing that it was inevitably having to come to an end. It’s a pretty relatable experience for a lot people, especially now that we’ve seen a transformation in what romantic relationships can look like. You know, I travel often and I’m gone a lot, so there’s an excitement for me to come home to someone. At the same time, I think there’s also a tragicness to it too, knowing that you’re not on any traditional trajectory.

TSH: ‘Day is Gone’ worked so well being featured on Sons of Anarchy during a very harrowing and emotional scene. Was it a cool experience to take on a different assignment in doing this track...

Noah: Yeah, it was spontaneous as I’d never really done that before and not worked like that since. I’m curious about doing more of it, for sure. It was surprisingly easy because I’ve done so much work with Kurt and Bob from the show before. I kind of just took a swing at it assuming that’s what they would want. It’s a cool tune.

TSH: Religion was definitely a part of your journey growing up, even though that is not the case now. What does spiritually entail for you nowadays?

Noah: I think I’m less interested in searching for some cosmic truth. I started micro-dosing mushrooms recently, which has been a really positive thing for me. It’s so easy to spend so much time obsessing about what’s going on in our own heads and our own self-consciousness. I just think religion and spirituality can impact you strongly if it’s what you’re raised in. I‘ve now reached a point where I feel an energy in a room with people and I can experience an energy in having interactions with people. I think creating art is a form of spirituality too. Nowadays, I’m just not into religion or traditional ideas of faith at all.

TSH: You used to be the type of person that psychoanalyses himself a lot and reflects on what’s made you who you are, is this still the case...

Noah: I think there will always be a part of my songwriting that is introspective, but I think it’ll be interesting to see what the next phase of writing is because I’ve changed a lot as a person in the process of making this record. Even when I wrote this album, there wasn’t a lot of introspective nit-picking as much as it was filtering my perspectives and surroundings. I have to say I’m having more fun than ever with my songwriting; it’s been so liberating. As I’m getting older I’m taking myself a little less seriously.

TSH: How have you been relaxing outside of music?

Noah: I love riding motorcycles in my spare time. I also read a lot and I have a great group of friends in Seattle. Still though, music is at the core for most things in my life.

TSH: What’s driving you most artistically as you look ahead?

Noah: I think the unknown drives me more than anything right now. I think surrendering myself to the unknown is exciting for me. I love the magic of pulling something out of thin air and creating something that wasn’t there before, I’m excited to do more of that. It’s great to know that I can continuously grow and learn as I go along. I’m just looking forward to making as much music as I can and doing so with my friends.

Noah Gundersen - “The Sound”

WHITE NOISE

#Interview #Noah Gundersen #Sons of anarchy

2 notes · View notes

blus-witchy-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Silver’s day off

WARNING: If you can't handle a male hedgehog being a precious naive cinnamon roll in a dress, then do not read this. your heart will explode form cuteness. this is your only warning. After the event's of sonic generations, silver decides to take this opportunity to spend a day in the past that doesn't involve fighting some evil super villain.

It was another beautiful day in station square. The sky was gorgeous and everyone was happy. And while his time was certainly better than it ever has been, the past was still far superior when it comes to practically every aspect. After sonic’s birthday fiasco, silver had decided to remain in the past. He rarely got the chance to visit on his own time, as so far every time he’s come here it’s because the future’s in danger… again. But now he was presented with the option to stay in the past and finally get the chance to explore and see the wonders of the world that were lost in his time. How could he possibly say no to that? After catching up with blaze, and speaking to a few of sonic and his other friends, he set off to the nearest city (after receiving directions from sonic). He couldn’t help but gaze in awe as he flew towards the city of towering buildings and dazzling lights that would easily blind you if you dare stare at them at night. When he first arrived he spent nearly an entire hour just walking the city streets, admiring every little detail of every little thing. He listened to all the sounds around him, the passing cars, the chatting people, the busy stores full of customers. He took in the smells of the various little carts of food he found on nearly every street of the large city. Everything about this city was so colorful and alive! Far different from the various destroyed cities that lay scattered in his future. Even some of the better cities of his time simply could not compare to just one of the cities in sonic's time. After his hour of sightseeing, his grumbling stomach signaled to him that it was time for a lunch break. But where to eat? He passed by many restaurants and small stores with food on his little exploration, but he had no idea what kinds of food they had. Earlier he had walked by a small building that sonic had said had the best chili dogs in the united kingdom. Then again if they were as spicy as the ones sonic had at his party, he’d rather avoid that. There was also a small ice cream parlor, filled with an assortment of people all trying to escape the summer’s cruel heat. He decided that would be the best place to go as he wiped a thin layer of sweat from his forehead. As he rounded a corner to make his way to the parlor, he was stopped by the most intoxicating smell ever. Across the street to his left, was a small food stand, with a large opening showing a kitchen and various cooks. It looked like a store was cut in half and they stopped building the wall and door halfway and just left it there. Obviously it looked very different from the other restaurants he has seen. Curiosity overpowered him as he used his psychokinesis to quickly fly over the cars and land before the small food stand. Inside the opening of the building was an impressive, yet small, kitchen with about two humans and one mobian working in it. There were odd round seats with no backs resting on poles out of the ground, and not one person sitting on them. Why isn’t anyone here? The smell of whatever food is being prepared within there should be enough to lure any hungry person to it. He decided to take one of the empty seats, grateful for the small bit of shade the overhead tarp provided. One of the humans, a somewhat chubby male with a shaggy beard noticed him and quickly wrapped up whatever he was doing to come and take his order. “Hello sir,” He greeted warmly. “What can i getcha?” Uhh…” Silver had no idea. He looked around for some sort of indication as to what food was provided here, and noticed an overhead menu, displaying several images of various foods. One image in particular interested him, a large oddly shaped corn chip stuffed with meat and several other things. “Uh, one taco please.” Taco? He wondered for a moment if it tasted similar to a chili dog. Oh chaos he hoped not. His stomach probably wouldn’t be able to handle another one of those spicy gut bombs. “Sure thing. What would you like on it?” Silver glanced at the menu once again. So many options for just one type of food! He didn’t bother with reading over all the option and just ordered whatever was on the picture. The man merely nodded and walked away to prepare his meal. Silver paid close attention to how this taco thing was made. They’d cook up some ground beef, warm up the weird shaped cornchip, then place the meat inside it, and finally add all the toppings that you ordered on top of it. Not only did it smell good, but it looked delicious! Silver licked his lips as the man placed the taco on a napkin and handed it to the hungry hedgehog. “So will that be cash, credit, or rings?” The man asked. Silver nearly missed the question as he was about to taste this new type of food. “Oh! Rings.” “Then that’ll be five rings.” Silver obliged and tapped into his collection of rings to make seven appear from nowhere. He handed them to the man, and he thanked him before walking away to put his payment away. Silver briefly questioned how the rings do that, but shrugged it off as he took a large bite from his taco. Sweet chaos… It was the best thing he’d ever tasted! The meat was so juicy, and the cornchip thing was so crunchy! And the toppings! He had no idea was some of them were, but he didn’t care. Needless to say his small meal was quickly consumed. With his hunger satisfied for now, he continued his little adventure in station square. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Perhaps it might have been better to get ice cream after all. He had no idea that food could make you so… gassy. After an embarrassing incident of letting one rip on accident in front of a large crowd, silver flew away to a slightly less crowded area in the town. Why would something so delicious be so cruel to you? It took some time, and a quick stop to the little hedgehogs room, for the tacos gassy side effect to fade away. Next time he should probably ask questions about what he’s considering to eat before ordering it. As he continued down another one of the city streets, he noticed the air has gotten much cooler, and that the moon was starting to come out onto the sky. Pretty soon his little adventure and sonic’s birthday would come to an end. Sonic’s birthday… that sure was an experience. After all it’s not everyday you see two versions of your friend from different timelines. He felt a twinge of embarrassment for attacking sonic like he did, thinking he was some faker that was after the chaos emeralds. It seemed like a possibility at the time, and considering what was going on he had every right to be as cautious and suspicious as he was. And what was up with that weird destroyed city with the lava and weird lava monsters? It made him feel kinda off when he and sonic were fighting there. His mind began to wander as he looked back to what happened only a few hours ago. That whole fight that the two sonic’s had with the two eggman's and that monstrous time eater thing was an amazing spectacle. And when the battle was won they all appeared in the present and continued sonic’s birthday like nothing happened. Everyone chatted, played games, ate an assortment of foods, and gave sonic presents. He felt kinda bad, seeing as he had nothing to give to sonic. If he knew it was his birthday he could’ve gotten him something, and maybe make up for attacking him like that. He paused for a moment, pondering this thought. It was still sonic’s birthday, so why couldn’t he get him a present? But what does he like, aside from chili dogs of course. Maybe if he did a quick fly around the city he could spot a store that looked like it’d have something sonic would enjoy. After some time, a particularly large store caught his eye. Honey clothing? Sonic doesn't seem like the type who likes to wear a lot of clothes. But it wasn’t the name that caught his eye, but rather one of the large posters plastered onto one of its windows. ‘want to be as fast as a speeding hedgehog? Buy out super sonic running shoes. These shoes have the blue blurs stamp of approval! Only 299 $!’ ‘Two hundred and ninety nine dollars for a pair of shoes like sonic’s?!’ He thought to himself. He wondered ‘is this where sonic gets his shoes from?’ If that was the case then this would be the best place to start hunting down a gift for sonic. As he entered he was greeted by the cool air of the buildings air conditioning and a young human woman at a large counter with a small line of people gathered in front of it. The store somehow looked even bigger on the inside, and despite it being crammed with people and clothing everywhere you looked, there was still enough room to move freely. It was a lot to take in, so he took a deep breath and began to browse through the store. As he walked through the store, he noticed most of the clothing selections were rather fancy, and very expensive. Not like he couldn't buy them with the ridiculous amount of rings he’s collected, but he thought it was absurd that clothes could cost that much. And why was their sections dedicated to only one gender and age group? He could understand the age part, but why gender? Most of the clothes looked the same, excluding some of the more feminine clothing in the women's section. He merely shrugged it off and was about to go down the next aisle when something caught his eye. It was a small clothes rack with a fifty percent off sign atop it. One of the clothing pieces in particular caught his eye. It wasn’t anywhere near as fancy as most of the clothes in the store, but at the same time it was just as beautiful. It was a dress for mobians around his size, with a white string that would tie around the back of your neck and act as the sleeves. The dress had no back, for mobians who had things such as wings, fins, or quills like himself. The dress ended just past his knees and the color was mostly white, but blurred to sky blue at the bottom. It reminded him of a cloudy sky. He wasn’t sure why but he always enjoyed looking at the sky, as there was something just so beautiful about it. Especially at night, when the sky is filled with thousands of stars. He’d never get tired of a sight like that. As he took the dress from the rack, he reminded himself that he was here to get a gift for sonic, not to buy things for himself. But he had plenty of rings, and it’s not like he can’t keep looking if he decides to get this for himself. What’s the harm in treating himself to something nice? So without a second though he made his way to a section of the store with little rooms he saw people go in to try on clothes they selected. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ While he wasn’t a fashion expert he knew that this dress didn’t quite fit with his usual attire, but aside from that he really liked how it looked on him. It was rather loose, making it so it didn’t cling to the body like some of the more fancy and figure showing dresses he saw. He liked making the skirt swirl around, making a cooling breeze as it spun. He admired himself in the large mirror more suited for humans, and smiled. In his home, he rarely saw any fancy clothing. And while some of the more spruced up cities may have things like this, his didn’t. It took him years to find the outfit he has now, but when he saw it he knew he had to have it. Not only were the boots super durable and good for combat, they looked really cool too. He decided to get this for himself, and now he’ll have something nice to brighten up his day when he returns home. He spent nearly a half hour searching the last bit of the store and the only thing he saw that may interest sonic where the very shoes he already owns. He sighed in annoyance as he’d have to search for another store for a gift. Maybe he should just do what his friend tails did and get him a chili dog. As his mind began to go over what stores he saw and what little he knows about sonic’s interests he approached the now empty counter and handed the dress to the employee. As she scanned the price tag she smiled at the young hedgehog and begun a casual conversation. “Did you find everything you were looking for?” She asked cheerily. Silver sighed “No.” “Sorry about that sir. Was their something in particular you were looking for?” “No… well kinda? I was looking for a gift for my friend. But i don’t really know much about what he likes.” “Well, when all else fails i usually go for a gift card.” She chuckled. Silver grinned at the comment, and thought about the suggestion. ‘What’s a gift card?’ He mentally questioned. “Your total is thirty five dollars or rings.” She said, interrupting his train of thought. Silver nodded his head as he repeated his earlier action of making a pile of rings appear from seemingly nowhere in order to pay for his new piece of clothing. As she began to count the rings, she continued to converse with him. “So are you getting this for a girlfriend?” She asked as she continued to count. “Actually i’m getting it for myself. I usually don’t see nice clothing where i’m from so i thought i’d get something nice for myself while i can.” Silver explained. The woman paused, and glanced at silver oddly. She placed the rings she was holding back onto the countertop and eyed silver. Was it something he said? Was their something on his face? Why was she looking at him so oddly? “You’re a guy, right?” She questioned. Silver was confused at her question but replied. “Yes?... why do you need to know?” She froze for a moment, and kept opening her mouth as if to say something. She cleared her throat and finally managed to speak. “W-well it's just that, um… this is a dress. And you know, dresses are for girls.” She nervously explained. Silver was just getting more confused. He knew women wore dresses, what was wrong with him wearing one? “And?” He questioned. “Well you said you’re a guy. And like i said, dresses are for girls. Not guys.” “How come?” She paused once more, and was trying to choose her words wisely. “Dresses are made for women, not men. Like how tuxedos are made for men and not women. Theirs clothes for each gender to wear, and if a guy wears girl clothes, or vice versa its…” She stopped. It took her a minute or two to find her words once again. “It’s weird. We have different clothes for a reason.” She finished her statement. Silver just stared at her, making her seem nervous and uncomfortable. She merely put the dress aside and stepped out from behind the counter. “If you’re looking for something nice to wear that’s still casual i can help you look. We have a wide selection of summer clothing that i’m sure yo-” “No thanks,” Silver interrupted. “I’d just like my dress please. I don’t like wearing alot of clothes, and the dress is just fine.” “But sir, its for women!” She exclaimed once again. This was getting ridiculous. He simply couldn't figure out the reason behind what this woman was saying. What was wrong with him wearing clothing more for women? In his city people would be lucky to have clothing that didn’t have giant holes and tears in it. People would literally be fighting each other for something like this, boy or girl. He simply stayed at the counter, hoping that this lady would stop wasting his time and just let him finish his purchase. “Look ma’am, i’m kinda on a tight schedule so can you please just let me buy this?” He tried to reason. The woman was about to retort, when she started wide eyed at the entrance. Silver looked to the door and was surprised to see none other than sonic himself, alongside his pink companion amy rose. “-ok get ready to see your present sonic!” Amy said as she pulled sonic in by the arm. Looks like she had the same idea as silver. As they walked in, amy was surprised to see silver, and eagerly ran to the counter, releasing her iron grip on sonic’s hand. “Hey silver! Surprised to see you here.” “Hi amy.” He glanced at sonic who was approaching the two hedgehogs with a grin. “Sup silver? I didn’t take you for a hedgehog that likes clothes that much?” He joked. “Not really. But i really liked this dress and wanted to buy it, but this lady’s acting really weird and isn’t letting me get it.” He admitted. Sonic was silent for a moment, before turning his attention to the flabbergasted woman who stood before the trio. He crossed his arms as his emerald eyes stared into the woman's own terrified brown ones. “Hey lady, are you gonna let him buy it or what?” Her tongue was tied. She just started at the hero, unable to say her previous comments to him. She tried to avert his gaze, but was met with another pair of judging and somewhat angry green eyes, and innocent, confused gold ones. She gulped as she tried to explain the reason behind her actions. I mean come on, this is sonic she’s talking to. Surely he’d understand her reason, right? If that was the case, then why did she feel like she was going to faint from fear? And why were all the other customers looking at her like she’s doing something wrong? “I-i,” She stuttered. “He’s a guy and…” She paused again. “Well, he want to buy, and wear, a dress and-” “I’m just gonna stop you right there ma’am.” Sonic interrupted. “Lemme guess. You’re going to say that he can’t wear it cause he’s a guy, right?” The woman could only nod her head, as there was no chance she’d be able to form even a single word at the moment. “And you won’t sell him that because you think it’s weird, right?” Again, a simple nod to reply. Sonic sighed and shook his head. “Look lady, how about you keep your rude and judgemental comments to yourself and just let the guy buy his clothes? It’s not your place to judge him and say he can’t wear this cause he’s a guy. It’s your job to merely help him find what he needs and to let him buy what he wants. Now how about you get on that so we can all be done here, ok?” The woman's face was simply priceless. She turned as red as knuckles fur, and was embarrassed to silence. She walked back to the counter and finished counting silvers rings, placed silvers new dress in a bag and rather roughly handed it to him. Amy then walked up to the counter and said “Also, i have an order here under the name amy rose. Why don’t you be a dear and bring me what i purchased please.” Amy teased, making the woman even more angered and embarrassed. This probably was one of the worst days of her life, getting lectured by sonic the hedgehog and seen as a judgemental asshole. She angrily stopped into the back room, and returned moments later with a large shoe box, and slammed it onto the counter before disappearing back into the room. Clearly she didn’t want to make a fool of herself anymore and decided to hide until they left. As amy eagerly took the box and shoved it into sonic's arms, the crowd began to dissipate as the customers either left to take their business elsewhere, or continued their shopping. “Happy birthday sonic! It took forever to get this, but it was worth it!” She happily exclaimed. Sonic grinned as he opened the box. His mouth hung open from surprise as he stared at pair of shoes. They were kinda similar to sonic’s current shoes, but also not. Silver thought they were shaped kind of like shadow’s hover shoes. Sonic’s expression changed to that of joy as he admired the new pair of kicks. “No way!” He yelled. “Where did you find these?! I though honey clothes discontinued these!” Amy giggled “I sent a letter to the headquarters of honey clothing to ask if they’d be willing to make a pair just for you. I figured it’d be really expensive, but seeing you happy would be all worth it. But after a month of waiting they sent me a letter saying they delivered these and more to the nearest store for me for free! Miss honey said to this of it as a token of thanks for saving the world so many times.” “Wow. that was really cool of honey to do that, and you to ames.” He said as he placed the box underneath his arm and used his now free arm to hug amy, much to her delight. After a brief moment of silence, silver finally spoke. He cleared his throat. “Uh, thanks for the help sonic.” Sonic turned to silver and grinded. “No problem silver!” Now amy turned her attention to silver, jumping in place eagerly. “Well, aren’t you going to put it on?” She eagerly questioned. Silver seemed a little uncomfortable by the sudden interest. Not to mention after that whole fiasco, he wondered if it’d be a good idea to wear it at all. “Well…you’re not going to be all weird like that lady, are you?” He nervously asked. Amy laughed at the comment. “Of course not silly! I bet she was just jealous that you can rock a dress better than her.” He was still a little hesitant, but obliged. Using his powers he quickly slid on the dress and tied the lace into a nice little bow in the blink of an eye. Amy eyes sparkled as she beheld the sight. “Wow! It looks amazing on you silver!” She admitted. Silver couldn’t help but blushed, and glanced at sonic to see his reaction. He still had his usual grin on his muzzle instead of a disturbed look like that lady. “I think it looks nice. Not really my thing, but still nice.” The three then stepped out of the store, and were greeted by the setting sun. The air, while still rather warm, was even cooler than before. A light breeze made silver’s dress sway to the side. It felt rather nice. As sonic and amy began to walk away from the store, silver tagged along, unsure of what to do now. Now he had to get something to thank sonic with, and something to make up for fighting him. Well he’s here right now, maybe he can ask sonic what he likes and he can get him something tomorrow? “Hey silver, what were you doing in there anyway? The clothes those stores sell is pretty fancy and expensive.” Sonic questioned. Silver was thrown off guard by the question, but quickly replied. “Well, i was trying to find a present for you and i saw the poster with your shoes on it so i thought i’d look in their.” Sonic grinned once more. “Aw, that’s really nice of ya silver, but you don’t have to. I’m not really the kinda guy who likes to get a lot of presents. I already got way to much stuff from the party. Just having you there to hang out with was good enough.” Silver would be lying if he said that this didn’t make him a little angry. He wasted so much time trying to find something for him, and he didn’t even want anything! How was he suppose to make up for the fight earlier today then? “But i need to get you something!” He blurted out. Sonic stopped walking and looked at silver confused, making him blush from embarrassment. “I-i want to make up for the fight we had in that weird white void.” He paused. “I was being stupid and paranoid and attacked you out of nowhere.” He shuffled his feet nervously. Sonic laughed. “Dude, you coulda just said you were sorry if it made you feel that bad. It’s cool silver, that was in the past. And besides, if i got a present for every time someone attacked me like that, i’d be drowning in stuff right now.” he joked, making amy giggle. Silver felt relieved when he said that, but he still felt bad about it. And not to mention he had to thank him for helping him out of that awkward situation with that lady in the store. “No! I have to do something to make it up to you, and to thank you for helping me at the store.” He insisted. Sonic paused for a moment, a contemplative look on his face. He turned to silver with one of the most serious expressions he’s ever seen sonic make. “Buy us ice cream.” Silver just stared at him confused. “What?” “You really wanna make things up to me so badly?” He asked. Silver nodded his head. “Then how about you treat me, amy and yourself to some ice cream. After all it’s still pretty hot outside, and the ice cream shop is still open for another hour.” He smirked. Silver could only smile in return as they made their way to some delicious frozen treats, with amy suggesting some stores to silver that are much more open and friendlier to people. She even suggested he go shopping with her on her trip to the mall this weekend, and she’d help him find some accessories to go with his new dress. Looks like he’ll be staying in the past for a little bit longer than he planned.

(Hope you enjoyed my little short story i wrote solely for the purpose to write about silver wearing a dress and being cute.)

#sonic the hedgehog #silver the hedgehog #amy rose #amy rose the hedgehog #sonic fanfiction #fanfiction #silver is precious #silver is a cute naive ball of fluff #protect this fluffball #boy wearing a dress #silver looks good in dresses #sega make him have a costume that's a dress #i will legit pay money to see him in game in a dress #same for sonic and shadow

9 notes · View notes

alfstop50 · 7 years ago

Text

Game #2: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

”Audi famam, illius...”

Released: Jan. 31st, 2008 Synopsis: The third installment of the acclaimed fighting series, Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes with more content than ever before in Smash Bros. history! Play as new third-party characters, construct your own unique stages, or take part in a brand new story mode and thwart the twisted machinations of the Subspace Army in Subspace Emissary! Chosen Music: Main Theme --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a game that I associate with some of my happiest memories. The first time I laid eyes on the game was back in middle school, when the first trailer landed onto the internet and showcased all-new content and characters. I remember feverishly trying to get the trailer to load and managing to piecemeal enough of it together as it was loading, and every reveal threw me for the biggest loop. I saw a lot of familiar faces and some I had never seen before, one of which being the very first third-party character to join the series and catching literally everyone by surprise. To this day, it’s still the greatest trailer that’s ever been made for a Smash Bros. game, and probably one of the best video game trailers of all time, for how it surprised us, got us hype, and effortlessly managed to capture everything that made the series great. Little did I know that that trailer was only the beginning, and the following year I would be glued to the biggest source of hype generation for a video game to ever exist on planet Earth: the Smash Bros. Dojo. There’s really no other way for me to describe just how much of a juggernaut the Smash Dojo was in terms of marketing; the simple process of doling out updates on a Monday-Friday schedule was just pre genius. Not only were we learning new things about the game itself, but every piece of new information that we’d never seen before was enough to get everyone going. Usually an update would include a really cool new feature (like a new musical arrangement or an Assist Trophy), other times it would be as simple as explaining gameplay mechanics, and sometimes we wouldn’t even know what we were looking at (I couldn’t tell you how shocked and fascinated I was by the update that would lead into the Subspace Emissary reveal). And of course, every time a new character got revealed for the roster, all of our collective socks would instantly get blown off, and our hype levels most definitely reached critical mass with the reveal of Sonic (I had to stop myself from screaming and waking up my parents when I saw that update). It was a magical time where anything was possible and you could learn all the nitty gritty details about every new feature in the game (which I wish Smash 4’s Daily Picture thing could have done nearly half as well). Then the game actually came out and public opinion of it was and continues to be divided as hell (and is arguably the reason why the Smash community has been divided ever since it came out). And I will freely admit to saying that Brawl isn’t without its problems; the revamped physics making everything slower is something I actually favor, but it’s not hard to see why Melee fans hate how slow it is and how often tripping happens. I will also admit that some of the content that’s jam-packed into the game isn’t really up to snuff, like how the Subspace Emissary ends up being a slightly worse Kirby game, or how woefully underdeveloped the stage maker tools are. There’s a lot to unpack over what Brawl does right and what it does wrong, and I can’t really fault anyone for ending up being disappointed with the final product. But whenever I played Brawl back in the day, I couldn’t help but be completely enamored by it. There aren’t many games that can claim to have as much content as Brawl does (and even fewer in the case of Smash for Wii U), and regardless of the overall quality or how well it all meshes together, I loved every single thing about it. I loved Subspace Emissary for bringing all these classic and lovable Nintendo characters together, compensating for the weak story with some incredible moments and team-ups, and making me realize how fuckin’ awesome crossover stories could be. I loved all the fanservice they were able to cram in, from the Assist Trophies and Stickers reaching into the deepest parts of Nintendo’s history, to the music covering such a wide range of memorable Nintendo songs, and even making the third-parties feel like a true part of the experience. I earnestly love and appreciate how ambitious it was in becoming the ultimate celebration of Nintendo’s entire history up to that point, and I’ve got nothing but respect for Sakurai and his team for giving it their all and making a Smash Bros. game that had something for everyone. Perhaps the most important reason why I love Brawl, though, was how it got me to meet and connect with people in a way no other game had done before, primarily through online. Playing the game on my own was great fun in and of itself, but around the time it came out, I didn’t have a whole lot of people in real life to play it with. Online, however, I was part of an active community of people, some familiar and some not, and Brawl was the biggest thing I could think of that allowed me to connect with those people. I loved those days of playing with people just for fun, or competing against each other in online tournaments, because either way I would be playing with people and growing ever closer to them as a result. Then in real life, my skill in the game was what gave me the confidence to enter tournaments for Smash Bros. on an occasional basis, either through conventions or whenever an event was being hosted somewhere locally. I never did manage to be all that successful in these small-town tournaments, but getting the chance to play the game with more people that also loved the game is something I’ll treasure forever. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is not a perfect game by any means, but the time at which it came out could not have been more perfect for me. It’s a game that got me to have a deeper appreciation for Nintendo and video games in general, and I hardly think I’d be as much of a Nintendo fan without it. It got me interacting with more people than ever before, some of which went on to be my closest friends, while other people I frequently played with made me feel like a part of a good community. And even beyond all that, there’s just so much love and care put into delivering an absolutely jam-packed Smash Bros. game that it’s hard for me to feel any real disappointment with it in the end. I’ll always love Smash Bros. and I’m always looking forward to where the series goes next, but I know that in my heart of hearts, nothing can replace the influence that Brawl had on my life. Teaser for Game #1: It matters not who you are... Death awaits you.

1 note · View note

ccassen · 7 years ago

Text

One year ago, I was two-and-a-half months into my solo travels around Europe and, very unfortunately, found myself in the middle of the attempted coup d'état in Istanbul, Turkey on July 15, 2016. Close to 300 people, both civilians and soldiers, died that night. I initially wrote the following during my July 16th flights out of Istanbul, while the details were fresh in my mind; I didn't want to forget, but I never have forgotten and I actually did not look at this again until now. It's emotionally difficult for me to recall these memories in such detail, but I never formally shared my experience and I now want to do that, on the anniversary of that horrific night. I'm a better, stronger person for it, who can attribute this experience as one of many that have taught me to listen to my instincts and trust my intuition... ----- I have since read The Alchemist, a book that really feeds my wanderlust soul: "Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there." ----- What was supposed to be a quick visit (both unexpected and welcomed) to Istanbul, Turkey, en route to Portugal after spending a beautiful three-and-a-half weeks in Italy, turned into a nightmare that shook me to my core. Traumatic and terrifying, I was reeling from the experience for some time afterwards and, if I'm being honest, I still carry it with me and the effects linger to this day. Early on in my travels, I had been very much anticipating seeing Istanbul based on friends and other travelers' rave reviews, but I had decided against traveling there due to security concerns of its close proximity to Syria and especially after hearing about the June 2016 terrorist attacks in the city of Istanbul and at the airport. I had reluctantly agreed with my intuition that it just wasn't the time for me to go to Turkey, that is, until I was looking at flight options to make my way from Sicily, Italy to meet my good friend, Steve in Lisbon, Portugal. I found affordable flights on Turkish Airlines with layovers in Madrid for an afternoon or Istanbul overnight. My gut told me that Madrid was the safer option and I'm sure it would have been a lovely few hours there, but spending a night in Istanbul was tempting, especially when I didn't think that it would be in the cards for me at all. And, to boot, Turkish Airlines offers a free tour or hotel stay with a long layover in Istanbul. After consulting with my Dad the pilot and agreeing with him that lightning doesn't strike somewhere twice (...right? After all, Istanbul just had their share of attacks in June and security should be beefed up following such events... Please note: needless to say, I hold nothing against you, Dad). Against my better judgment, I booked my flight from Sicily to Lisbon through Istanbul for an overnight layover; I was so excited! July 15, 2016 My flight arrived in Istanbul in the afternoon without any fuss. I checked in to the Marriott hotel provided by Turkish Airlines, which is near the airport, and took the relatively long airport shuttle, plus train ride to downtown, almost 14 miles away. I beelined it to the Hagia Sophia, to marvel at this incredible church turned mosque turned museum. I even made a wish that day for good, safe travels in the so-called "sweating column," which is believed to be miraculous based on legends associated with the drops of water that have appeared to flow from this particular marble column. I met a nice French girl there, who was a student at UC Berkeley and in Istanbul for a few days for a wedding; we planned to meet up later that evening for a drink. I then donned my head scarf and visited the gorgeous Blue Mosque, walked through Gülhane Park and the gardens outside of Topkapi Palace, before walking over the Bosphorus strait via the Galata Bridge. I was awed by the Galata Tower, beautifully lit up as the sun went down. It was near the Galata Tower that I met an English-speaking local, Turkish guy who offered to walk with me and show me around the Taksim Square area, which happens to be his neighborhood where he is from and lives with his family. We ate kebab together for dinner and then met up with my new French friend for a drink. It was Friday night and the general feeling on the streets was one of merriment, people out enjoying the start of their weekend. While strolling around the Taksim Square area, though, I couldn't help but vaguely remember what I learned in history books about the landmark's background of demonstrations and unrest. It was getting late and I realized that I would be cutting it close to take the train back to the airport, in order to catch the last hotel shuttle. I bid farewell and my Turkish friend offered to walk me back to the Taksim Square subway station. It was a little past 11:30 P.M. when we were walking through Taksim Square towards the subway entrance; I don't know what it was exactly that first caught my attention, but I felt unease that something was wrong. A group of armed men in fatigues, a dozen or more of them, were marching through the square in our direction, first in formation, then they broke apart as they started to yell in Turkish and train their guns ahead of them. People in the square scattered and started running away in all directions. I was startled and asked once "what's going on?," then continued with this question repeatedly as my friend grabbed my hand and directed us to run, out of the square instead of to the metro station below. He responded to my distress immediately to tell me that everything is okay, this is normal, but I could tell that something was very wrong with the way that he guided me as we were running, starting and stopping, all the while he was scanning our surroundings before we hurriedly continued on. It seemed like he was looking for potential shooters and, though there were no gunshots in the square yet at this point, I pictured being shot right there as we ran around the corner of a building to leave the square. It was one of those moments where your life flashes before your eyes and I found myself thinking of my loving parents. After running from Taksim Square, my first thought was to cover my head with my scarf. The last thing that I wanted to do was stand out as a foreigner to anyone who might intend to do me harm. There were people everywhere, we saw and heard helicopters circling above. As we walked aimlessly with no idea what was happening, I turned my cell phone on to get service with the intention of calling my Mom, to say goodbye, in case it was the last time I could speak with her. I had already received a few messages on my phone from her and friends (including my French friend who told me that she was safe in an apartment), asking me if I was okay because there was an active coup d'état being reported in Ankara and Instanbul. I told my friend what I was hearing and he asked me to explain this term to him; I frightened myself as I defined our current situation of the Turkish military's intention to take over the government by force. My friend expressed disbelief and seemed to refuse to comprehend. It couldn't be true; these things don't actually happen and especially not unfolding before our eyes, right? Conversations that my friend had with people passing by were in Turkish and, although I could not understand what was being said, I could tell that no one knew what was happening nor what to do. At one point, we scrambled down an embankment and my friend spoke with a couple who were headed in the same direction. They saw my look of fear and perhaps thought they were helping when they said in English, "it's going to be bad." It was then that I started to lose it, panic-stricken, crying and hyperventilating. It was mayhem; we learned that the bridges were closing and we watched traffic become a mess, cars and motorcycles drove down the street only to have to turn around and drive the wrong way back with nowhere to go. We knew that we should not get on public transportation as it may be targeted and taxis were not taking passengers. I had no way back to my hotel by the airport (which we learned was seized by the military) and my friend could not return to his home near Taksim Square, where fighting between soldiers and civilians had broken out. We realized that it was not safe to continue to wander the streets as we watched the news blaring from storefronts and learned that martial law and a curfew had been imposed. I knew that my priority needed to be to get somewhere safe and stay inside. My phone died and luckily I was carrying a charger that day, so I asked to charge it in the lobby of a hotel that had no available rooms for the night. I went online to find a nearby hotel with availability, quickly booked a room and as we walked there, we heard gun fire in the distance and planes continuing to circle overhead. I considered how long we might need to remain inside and necessary sustenance, but when we tried to go to a market on the way to the hotel, it was crammed with people trying to do the same thing. It also seemed that there was a similar run on the ATMs. We checked in to the hotel in the Besiktas neighborhood and sheltered in the room that very long night of watching the news of disturbing footage of military versus police conflict and many civilian men fighting in the streets and on the bridges. The news was in Turkish, of course, so I really wasn't understanding more about the situation and instead I became more afraid. We each reached out to our family and friends to confirm our safety. I spoke with the U.S. Embassy and Consulate to inform them that I am in Istanbul and learn what I should do. The planes continued overhead and what sounded like nearby bombing may have been sonic boom (or, as I learned later, military tactics of flying at high speed to break the sound barrier, causing a loud raucous without doing any physical damage). Little by little that night, I understood that a faction of the army plotted the coup in order to protect democracy from President Erdogan, who has been known to crack down on free media and is seen as authoritarian. President Erdogan was on holiday when the coup started, so he used a FaceTime broadcast via the news to urge his citizens to take to the streets and resist the military. TV stations were then raided by soldiers; my mom told me that she watched Turk CNN forced off the air by soldiers that night. It was difficult to understand who were the "bad guys" in this situation, the President and government or the military. Troops surrendered to the civilian resistance overnight and the government declared victory in the early morning hours. I have since heard an interesting perspective from a Turk who thought that it was unwise for the president to call civilians to the street to resist the military coup, which could have started a civil war. It seems to have worked in the end; who knows what could have happened if there was less resistance to the military's coup attempt than the combined police and civilian forces, all those people who gave their lives. I couldn't sleep at all that night and, as the sun rose, my focus was to determine if my scheduled flight out of Istanbul would leave as planned later that morning and how I would get to the airport, which was still being reported as closed. It was difficult to choose to leave the safety of this hotel in order to try to get to the airport hotel to collect my passport. After no one would respond to his request for a taxi, the hotel owner agreed to take us himself to find a taxi. We climbed into his car and drove to a taxi stand, where there was a taxi in the middle of the street that appeared to have been bombed and was turned on its side. The hotel owner was growing impatient and stopped his car at one point to indicate where I could walk to get the train to the airport. I refused to leave his car to try to take the train on my own; after all, I had no idea the state of public transportation and my own safety doing so. We eventually found a taxi driver who agreed to take me and I thanked the hotel owner, and especially my friend, profusely for all of his help as he went his separate way to reunite with his family. This taxi ride was surreal. There were men waving red Turkish flags, standing on tanks and abandoned cars parked on the highway. I couldn't help but be paranoid and leery at this point, feeling that I was unsure if the taxi driver was going to be able to deliver me safely or maybe he would turn me in to the hands of terrorists. There were, after all, concerns of ISIS using the attempted coup event to launch a terror attack. Happily, though, I arrived to the Marriott airport hotel, reunited with my passport, took a shower and had my first meal since the previous evening. Turkish Airlines finally turned their phones back on and I was able to speak with someone to rebook my cancelled flight to Lisbon, by way of Barcelona. I now had a ticket for a flight to depart that afternoon, but it was still not clear if the airport had been yet reopened. I was so determined to get out of Istanbul that I decided to push my luck; I would go to the airport to see the situation for myself and be ready the moment my flight would be able to depart. It was pure chaos at the Istanbul airport, hundreds of passengers sitting around on the floor; there weren't even airline employees working the check in counters. I was very fortunate to have my boarding pass from the day before, so that I was able to get through airport security. My flight finally departed Istanbul that evening. I had to run through the Barcelona airport to make my connecting flight to Lisbon, pleading with anyone who would listen that they hold my flight, which they did... the kind people of TAP Airlines assured me that I was safe as I ran up to the gate, sobbing, and they welcomed a broken down, emotional mess of a passenger on the flight to Lisbon. 24 hours after running from Taksim Square that night, I finally felt that I was "out of the woods," could breathe a sigh of relief, and express gratitude for my safety. Epilogue In the days following the attempted coup, I learned much about the situation in Turkey. From my understanding... Coup attempts are not uncommon in Turkey; this is the fourth and bloodiest attempted military coup since 1960. Since the attempted coup, Turkey is more divided than ever between supporters and opponents of President Erdogan. Tens of thousands of people have been detained in prison for suspected participation in the coup plot, without formal hearings or charges, and many more suspects have been investigated and fired or suspended from their jobs. Since the constitutional referendum last April, President Erdogan has expanded his own power and reduced parliament authority. The state of emergency imposed by the government following the coup is still in effect today, which allows these raids and arrest to continue. To mark the anniversary since the attempted coup, opponents organized "justice marches" and a mass rally in Istanbul. The Bosphorus Bridge has been renamed the July 15 Martyrs' Bridge. Following Istanbul, after I spent some time in Portugal and Spain with friends, I decided to go home at the end of July for a break from my travels. Traveling can be stressful as it is, but it is a whole other story when you have to worry about your physical safety, shelter and food in an emergency situation in an unfamiliar place with people who speak a foreign language. I was feeling exhausted and reeling from my experience in Istanbul. I wish that I could say I don't regret going to Istanbul last year in July... But, I still feel that it is a beautiful city and the Turks are good people, and someday I hope to return. In the meantime, it makes for a good story.

0 notes