It’s kinda weird some of the stances people take in a strange bid to remain optimistic for future projects. So you’ve got some people, who are clearly upset with some of the changes made to the Borderlands movie. Whether it be casting decisions, some of the humor being cringe (considering who runs the franchise, it should be par the course), the focus on BL3, the decision to change the roles of certain characters, typical shit Hollywood does.
But then you start running into this slogan of “well it’s a different interpretation” or “it’s an adaptation”, basically saying “Well we shouldn’t expect what we clearly enjoyed about the games to be featured in the film”.
All I have to ask is “if you strongly feel that way, why would you want to see the movie?”
Clearly the Borderlands fandom has no experience in having an adaptation of their favorite franchise, otherwise they wouldn’t be talking crazy. Though it’s possible they’re trying to appear more rational than most fans, not wanting to be seen as “those kinds of people”, ze “toxic” fans, et all, what they advocate for is based on disingenuoius feelings, likely out of a belief that “We’re lucky to be getting a movie in the first place”. Guilt much?
Granted, people are used to the idea that adaptations are just going to change things no matter what reasons they have, no matter how often people bitch about them. Often the changes have nothing to do with practicality or with “limitations of the medium”, but because the people handling said adaptations have a “better idea” of what to do with them rather than having a desire to recreate what people loved about those franchises in the first place. Cases can be made for a vast majority of them, too. X-Men 2 changed a lot from the original story of “God Loves, Man Kills” since that storyline would’ve been pretty extreme for just the second installment of the X-Men film series (what with the religious overtones, Kitty Pride dropping the N-bomb, and Xavier’s nightmare sequence involving a Kano Fatality), Spider-Man having Organic webbing saves time in trying to explain where the webs come from, and… I guess Red Wing being a drone is more grounded than Falcon having a psychic link to birds (even though the latter is FRIGGIN awesome). But then there are the egregious changes done without regard to what made some of these stories iconic to fans in the first place. There is no Spider-Man without Uncle Ben, there is no X-Men without the theme of oppression and marginalization, there is no Superman without the element of hope. So many adaptations in the past 7 years have bulldozed and bastardized stories from the last 30+ years in some vain (and I do mean VAIN) attempt to “make their own mark” on these works without respect to what made said works special. And of course they get away with doing so because you have legions of people these days that have no experience with said works in the past to care about what gets changed.
The latter fact is the tipping point that causes many to gain a cynical and defeatist attitude, of course, with many people resigning their own desires to the whims of commercialism. “Weeeeeeeeeell, people are going to throw money at it anyway!” But no one stops to think “if they’re gonna buy it anyway, why change what made it special in the first place? There’s virtually no incentive in doing so if there is no risk in maintaining it.” I don’t know why that thought never crosses people’s minds. Hell, if something like Gargoyles made fans back in the 90s, then whatever made those fans will more than likely make new fans. But we won’t ever know that because people keep trying to “modernize” shit regardless if it’s necessary or not!
Before I go off again, the point I’m trying to make is, as usual, you are not beholden to anything these companies decide to do with the works you love. If there’s some shit going on with ANY adaptation of fiction you happen to be a fan of, you have every right to be as unreasonable as you wish. The crazy changes people make to works of fiction today are every bit as unreasonable as a fan could be. Cause at the end of the day, you are the one paying for it. You should want to get your money’s worth.
And… lets be real. EVERYONE WANTS A MOVIE ADAPTATION TO BE A 1:1 TRANSLATION OF THE SOURCE MATERIAL! And no one… and I do mean… NO ONE… should be ashamed of such. Because it’s not just some run of the mill adaptation. It is a fucking movie! Movies are treated like events. You’re seeing a feature on the big screen, sharing in a celebration of sorts with hundreds of other people in attendence. All in these stadium-esque seats as you all partake in an audio-visual experience that absolutely assaults the senses from all directions. The thrill of going to a movie with crowds going wild is something that cannot be replicated by reading a comic book, watching a tv show, or listening to some run of the mill radio drama. Movies don’t get the spinoff treatment from people because the experience itself is so much greater than whatever other medium it’s in.
And if the movie is an adaptation of a franchise you’re already a fan of, of course there is significant reason to be excited for it. You get to share in that fandomonium with a stadium full of people, all on the big screen! The experience becomes hyper fanatical, it’s like the best drugs you’ll ever have! Plus, the movie more than not becomes the “definitive” experience for most of these particular franchises. As always, most of the people who watch the movies never read, watched, or played the original source material, so more often than not, the movies inform people to what these franchises are.
Wouldn’t you want it done right?
As it stands with the Borderlands movie, I personally could care less. I’ve only ever enjoyed 2 games in the whole franchise (BL1 and TPS) while the rest are tolerable to terrible. So from what I’ve seen, it DOES seem like the movie is on the right track. It at least looks like the games, the costume design looks fantastic, and it seems like the spirit of the games are kept intact. But it is difficult to ignore the casting decisions which are all out of whack. Lilith and Tannis are played by actresses that are simply too old for the roles. Kevin Hart IS too short to play as Roland. Jack Black’s voice isn’t at a high enough pitch for Claptrap. Those issues are distracting for fans of the series as it breaks the immersion. Everything else “looks” fine, but the casting decisions are the biggest detriment. It’s the same issue that plagues EVERY FUCKING MOVIE these days. The actors that Hollywood gets for these movies NEVER match up. Sure it might not be possible to find actors who actually look close in appearance to the characters they portray, but with shit like Raccoon City and Uncharted, they don’t… even… try. They find any poor schmuck they can find, and call it a day. It makes Fox look like they gave a damn about X-Men and Fantastic Four. Say what you will about the MCU, Fox actually made an effort to find the right actors to portray these people. You weren’t gonna get fantastic nonsense like the Ancient One being a middle aged woman who’s barely ancient, or Aunt May being some vaguely attractive 30 something woman, or Justin Hammer being some pseudo-hip 20 something dude, or a Caucasian to be the “Mandarin”. If they say “Hugh Jackman” is Wolverine, you will look to the screen and actually believe it. As many changes and fuckups Fox has had over the years (Fan4stic), their casting choices were on point (well… at least until the 2010s hit).
The casting decisions for films are based purely on star power and not whether these actors actually fit the characters they’re playing, and that has been a huge issue as of late. But regardless, just because it ain’t the source material doesn’t mean you have to accept it. A different interpretation is subject to the same criticisms as the source material, especially if said interpretation misses the point of said source material.
Archive for February, 2024
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Oh don’t mind me. Just going through a bit of catharsis once more as the tried and true slogan of “Time heals more than reason” once again plays in my favor!
I’ve noted numerous times that my sister is a fangirl of the Borderlands franchise, beginning with BL2 and going on into a future of wanton rants about how BL3 ruined the world! Twas this franchise that made me realize that I am not alone in obsessing over the ruination of my favorite works! I’m almost terrified at her level of focus on every detail this trailer gets “wrong” about Borderlands in general, from it’s over-arcing focus on BL3 aesthetics, to Roland’s height, the cast’s ages (Hearing LOTS of jokes about retirement homes), the plot itself being waaay too divergent from the games, to all the potty humor (piss wash gully and Claptrap shitting bullets)… wow, she can no longer speak of my hatred of the Sonic films with her level of pessimism at the forefront! OHHHHHH I cannot wait for August when I can once again be a spiteful little turd! This might be a good year afterall!
Then again, all it does is remind me that other fandoms have higher standards and more integrity than Sonic and Marvel fans. 😦
Well at least this movie has the look downpat. Can’t say I care about Krieg. He’s an overrated shitstain of a character who is all but useless in BL2 (Melee in general is terrible for a game based on SHOOTING people), they could’ve gotten the guy who played Jax in the 2021 MK movie to be Roland, my sister kept crying about wanting Jessica Chastine as Lilith (the alien chick from Dark Phoenix!? Seriously!?)… I guess the villain is supposed to be Rhys? Idk, he’s only referred to as “Atlas” because they want to hide his true identity for some reason. General Knoxx is a woman for some reason, Tiny Tina seems to be more obnoxious than she is in the games, Jack Black surprisingly does a poor job as Claptrap (Guess Bowser was lightning in a bottle)…. yeah, it has the look of the games, but it comes across as a polished turd much like the Resident Evil movie that came out just a couple of years ago. Aesthetically pleasing, feels like the games they were adapted from, but the overall portrayel will be completely off. It looks like Suicide Squad if I’m being honest.
Well, I’ll be hearing about this movie for the next… 6 months!? Dammit! But man oh man, I’ll be laughing my butt off as she has a meltdown over this baby!
Well…. it’s happening.
Disney has given us a preview of how they’re going to rape the X-Men. And unfortunately, they’re coming after the legendary 90s cartoon series! THOSE… BASTARDS!!!
Reportedly, they brought back the original VAs from the 90s toon with the exception of Cyclops since his VA passed away years ago. Wolverine’s old VA sounds rusty as hell. Eh, it has been about 20+ years.
They’re using CG animation like those horrid Netflix animes. It’s difficult to notice since they’re doing the ASW trick of “not using a whole lot of frames”, but it makes some scenes look a tad awkward (Wolverine’s running animation looks stiff at the end). Though I do like the part where Gambit charged up Wolverine’s claws.
Seems they’re retconning the series finale. Xavier survived thanks to Lilandra and went to the Shi’ar Empire to rest and recover. They left that detail out of the flashback at the beginning. Don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. But they want to be shocking and have Magneto inheriting the X-Men, like people don’t know how many times Magneto has joined the X-Men (Then again, looking at how many people forgave what they DID to Spider-Man, they probably won’t care). I guess it’s nice that they’re emphasizing Cyclops since he IS the leader and main character of the X-Men, unlike Fox with their whoring of Wolverine. Yeah, Wolverine’s cool and all, but Cyclops is too hardcore to be overshadowed.
Yah know, that was the main reason I hated X-Men 3 so much. Yeah yeah, Marsden was doing Superman at the time, but they shat on Cyclops in the first 2 movies. If anything, they wrote the films in a way that the audience would want Wolverine to steal Jean Grey away from Cyclops, and I’m like “This is so messed up”. Don’t know why Fox hated Cyclops so much. I mean… how could they hate him!? Cyclops is such a badass, he could make Captain America his bitch!
I’m kinda over Disney trying to use nostalgia as their meal ticket to free money and praise, but it’s another thing entirely to go after the original series. That shit is too precious to be destroyed by modern Disney. But they’ve shown over and over again that nothing is sacred to them. It is their MO to tarnish everything they get their hands on, but ohhhhhh, the 90s series…. no…. just no. Already, you can see the fake hype generated by AI bots all over the tubes. Cringe slogans like “To me, my 90s kids!” abound. Not to mention the fake outrage.
Already, I see a defamation campaign going on where people are allegedly outraged over Rogue’s bubble butt not being here. It was because of one single episode in the early seasons where Rogue’s ass was fuckng HUGE for like… one shot of the entire series, but that was for one episode. The rest of the series… well yeah, Rogue was still hot, but we never saw that glorious ass again. Nevermind how inconsistent the art direction and animation has been for X-Men (or hell… every cartoon in existence), cause you’d have some episodes with very stiff and static animation, and some episodes you would swear was animated by Gods. One point, Jubilee looked like that one girl from Captain Planet. That Asian chick with the water powers? I can’t remember her name. So honestly, outrage of this scale seems… rather fake and disingenious. We can honestly say Disney has a couple of rats scurring through the internet posing as fans to try and discredit the people who will have legitimate complaints about the series (Why does Morph look like an Alien now?), so they have these fucks posing as people who are outraged over the most shallow of decisions. I don’t care how ridiculous that sounds, but this outrage sounds too phony to be real. We already know the Entertainment industry has been on a constant defamation campaign against legacy fans, and they’ve been rather successful because people already had a negative view of fans in general (Henry Cavil withstanding, he seems chill), so this doesn’t surprise me that this phony outrage has come about. I’m personally more upset they gave Storm that BS mohawk (I hate that fucking hairstyle, I swear! Her anime look was the best), but yeah, people have been going on about the desexualization of characters for years for this to not be a tired argument.
But… yeah, I am actually shocked that they went after the original 90s cartoon. This is proof that nothing is sacred to Disney. That’s been their MO since Snow White, honestly, taking existing stories and putting them into a meat grinder for commercial purposes. But they went after the 90s cartoon. That… that is just bold. Like they don’t give a damn what they mess up. They’re gonna apply the cold frog strategy as usual by having the first couple of installments (or in the case, episodes) feel like what we expect out of X-Men before they slowly but surely warp it to push whatever nonsense they want out of the series. Cyclops might get pushed out of his leadership role in favor of Storm (not necessarily an issue, but the purpose of doing so would be neferious and not out of respect for the character or comics), they’re already screwing around with Morph (What the hell is “Non-Binary”?!), and I’mma be real honest, if they turn Ice Man gay out of the blue JUST because they did that in the comics, I refuse to pay any mind to anything they push out again.
…. Ok, lemme clarify that before people get the wrong ideas. It has something to do with my hatred of the character, Havok. A rather… juvenile hatred, I admit. Couldn’t be more juvenile than “I hate Hulk because he beat up Thing in the Fantastic Four cartoon”, could it?
Lets go back to the 90s and risk some seizures because GODDAMN, all the flashing lights in that show, man! One of these episodes was about X-Factor and Ice-Man. Now I have to reiterate that…. I am NOT a shipper. Regardless of my outrage over Vegeta tappin Bulma when she was Yamcha’s gal (and I will never forgive that shit), I do not go around pestering people about characters who should find a janitor’s closet and get it over with…. well, maybe except Nightcrawler and Storm… and Cyclops and Psylocke. 😛
Aside the point, since I was a kid, I had the usual trappings of “EWW YUCK, COUPLES!”, so as expected, I cared nothing of Ice Man and Polaris being an item. Course, midway through the episode, Bobby explains that Polaris had left him because he was unwilling to get involved in the wars between humans and mutants, and she felt an obligation to that cause. So… later on in the episode, the X-Men fight X-Factor, and they come to find that Polaris had gone into the arms of Havok.
And I say… fuck Havok. Fuck ol’ lightbright from the Gifted series too.
Now I was confused since the concept of a breakup was foreign to my fragile little mind. But furthermore, I was honestly pissed! Cause I’m like “That was Ice Man’s girl!” I figured they would’ve gotten back together by the end of the episode, but that simply did not happen. To this day, I fucking HATED that episode! Course delving into the comics, Polaris and Havok seemed to have always been a thing, but fuck it. It doesn’t help that Havoc has always been a prick, and Ice Man was always cool (pun intended).
So them turning Ice Man gay REALLY irritated me, because the chances of those two getting back together was completely demolished after that, all because they wanted that Blackrock money. As far as I remember, this was Ice Man’s only appearance in the show, so they have NO REASON to do that. But… this is Disney.
The boldness to go after the 90s cartoon speaks volumes of how much they wish to destroy all childhood memories and legendary works. Next thing you know, they’ll buy out the studio that makes Attack on Titan, and people would still find a reason to defend them.
Uhhhh …
I don’t know. Might need a better trailer, this one is kinda dull. And very on the nose about what they’re trying to do. Yes, Disney IS banking on Deadpool to save their floundering MCU, and they’re cheeky about that. How adorable, they’re so self aware! Because that’s Dead Pool’s thing, he breaks the forth wall!
The jokes in the trailer are… “too corporate” for my tastes. It feels like if they make enough fun of the MCU and Disney, people will lap that up without hesitation, but it reeks of desperation. Piling on the self-depreciating humor in some vain and cynical effort to pander to (or mock) their critics. Of course then, they’d be acknowledging their critics, but will not actually address the problems their critics have with the movies. Or tv shows for that matter.
I don’t think people care about the MCU’s connectivity with every other film in the series after Endgame. People went to see all of these movies because of the promise of having connections to the Infinity Gems and Thanos since that’s what every movie was building up to. Along the way, these movies were shoved out and sacrificed any real character for cheap gags and reference material to make fans weak on their knees. And because they’ve dragged this nonsense out for a decade, the fatigue is setting in nicely as there is no longer a reason for fans and audiences to engage out of obligation anymore. The MCU is focusing on characters that no one actually cares about aside from Spider-Man and, Amma forbid, the Guardians of the Galaxy. Because the movies and tv shows aren’t building toward anything that people care about, the continuation of the MCU feels aimless and without direction. So the only course of action they’d need to take is to make more self-contained films and tv shows. But… everything they produce keeps trying to maintain these connections when people don’t care.
This is the worst thing you can do to Deadpool.
Deadpool was so wildly successful because it wasn’t your typical superhero movie. It was refreshing, it was different. It was irreverent all the while staying true to the character. Deadpool felt like he was in his own world without being tied down to a Cinematic Universe, even though Fox would’ve had the perfect excuse to connect it to the main X-Men films. But judging from all the leaks and production problems the movie had going on, Disney has no such restraint. Deadpool is just being used as a tool to connect their broken Cinematic Universe to each other, and “invite” new characters into the MCU. It’s also apparently setting up Avengers: Secret Wars. Why should anyone care about that? Idk.
You’d think with all the money they keep losing off their movies and theme parks that they’d take a step back and review what they’re doing wrong, and why people are dropping off. But they’re just doubling down on their vices, and blaming each other for everything that’s going wrong with their business practices. As a result, Deadpool will be sacrificed on the altar of their hubris. I’m sure it will make money, but it definitely won’t make sense.
Like Fire! Rose Fire!
I decided to go back a few years to see why opinions on the Sonic Comics are so much more intense than for the games and movies. Not only have I been out of the loop for quite some time, I hadn’t paid a whole heep of attention to the comic scene. None of what I found was actually any help, and as per usual, most of it was just more dumps on Ken Penders and lopsided praise for Ian Flynn. Nothing as to why the Comic fandom are fucking insane, though I could probably theorize why. Look, Penders is not perfect. The Lara-Su Chronicles is laughable, and the lawsuit against Sonic Chronicles was a blunder that nearly ruined his own case against Archie. However, these reasons come up rarely when compared to his actual writing. One of the stories that gets criticized the most which… puzzles me is the story in the Knuckles Series where a kid dies from eating a hot dog laced with LSD. This one was the Chaotix Caper 3-part iirc with Ebony Hare as the main antagonist. They don’t actually detail what’s wrong with the story, they just blurt this out as if it was morally reprehensible or something. This ignores the time period this series came out which was around the mid-late 90s, a time where fucked up shit in “Kid’s Entertainment” was pretty much the norm.
Gargoyles (Early 90s actually) had an episode where Broadway accidently shoots Eliza Maza with a gun, sending her into the infirmary. It was a pretty crazy episode, but definitely got the point across to kids that they shouldn’t play with guns. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is possibly one of the most fucked up Disney Movies which had a Judge (who should’ve been an Archdeacon, but whatever) who literally lusted after a Romani girl (SNIFFING HER FUCKING HAIR) and suggested that if he cannot have her, then he would condemn her to the fires of hell (nevermind that in the first 5 minutes, he kills a woman and attempts to drown a baby). Dreamworks’s first movie, the Prince of Egypt (or was that ANTz?), has literal child murder onscreen, and baby drownings depicted in a mural and a dream. Not to mention the kidnapping and flesh peddling of a hebrew woman. Mulan goes nude a couple of times, Tarzan lynches a dude in vines, lot of fucked up shit from Disney alone. X-Men cartoon had racism, Batman TAS is all kinds of a fuckery (steroid abuse ala Bain, for one), personally I found the pouring of liquid on Clayface’s…. face to be disturbing back when I was a kid, but fuck it, made the show more awesome!
That’s not even touching the early 2000s, the last period of kid’s entertainment having a shred of testicular fortitude. I mentioned years ago about Sly Cooper 2 where they had a warden DRUGGING HER INMATES as an interrogation technique. Fucking SLY COOPER did this! El Dorado has Chel going down on Tulio (shit… EVERYTHING about Chel, honestly!), nearly everything about Shrek… Penders wishes he was as fucked up as a lot of creators back then! Is it any wonder that older crowds refer to young people as “Snowflakes”? I don’t know what it is with the next generation, but they can’t handle shit! I guess that’s what happens when you grow up on a steady diet of Nickolodean trash like Rugrats and Spongebob. We had Duke getting stabbed in the heart! We had Falcon from GI Joe slapping a girl’s ass! IN A MILITARY BASE!!! NO… FUCK’S…. GIVEN! 80s cartoon for kids! Rats getting drugged via animal testing (The Secret of NIMH), you’ve got sailor-mouthed dudes in Transformers, peeps… had…. BALLS back in the day! Not like today where Kids entertainment is so sanitized that adults can’t even enjoy it anymore, there’s nothing to hold them over if they’re held hostage by their desire to entertain their kids. I think this clip sums it up.
Which is weird since he pointed out Ripley who remains, to this day, the most badass female character to exist in cinema, no debate, but there was also Cheetara, Eliza Maza, Enzo’s sister from Reboot, damn near all the girl Rangers until Disney took over (yeah, that’s the one thing they fucked up until Jungle Fury)… lets be real, 80s and 90s had the baddest bitches! *coughs* ahem…
Besides that, the issue itself was about the Chaotix trying to find out what was going on and putting a stop to the LSD hotdogs. The villain wanted to kill people with some lethal ingredients, and that cunt Julie-Su was the main one leading the charge to stop it. Not nearly as interesting as Knuckles being de-atomized by Enerjak, or robot governors being a stand-in for shadow governments, but it beats having to deal with bullies and hormones (seriously, the Knuckles comics ended horribly!). It’s not like they were treating the mere act of having drug dogs as being a good thing, what the hell!? I understood that at age 10… or 8… shit, how old was I when I read that series? If that is the case, then ALL of the examples I’ve listed, these guys ALL need to be taken to task for putting in “questionable” materials in their works “for kids”, and not just when they cast a black chick as the Little fucking Mermaid. I don’t know whether to call these particular fans “Frauds” or “Pussies”. For a franchise that was practically marketed as being rebellious and going against the grain, shit like that should’ve been par the course! We’ve had actual child murder IN THE GAMES! We have Sonic and friends fighting against an artificially created Satan! The OVA has breast feeding and sexual harrassment! We’ve had messed up shit in this franchise for YEARS before 2008 rolled around and buttfucked the edge out of Sonic forever.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t IDW have something akin to a Ducktales knockoff abducting children, turning them into cyborgs, and basically giving them Schizophrenia when he dies off anticlimactically? But we give Archie a collective stinkeye when they show Sally’s feet? The bitch was practically naked for the first season of the show, but that’s just “too sexy” for these freaks (why are people turned on by feet, anyway!? That’s weird!).
I don’t get it. How can these people not be considered shills when all they do is parrot information, and then act so conceited and smug as though they’ve proven the fallacy and immorality of creators without going into detail as to what they’ve done wrong? This type of behavior I’ve seen from people who tried to prove the 9/11 attacks were legit, as well from those who tried to convince people the narc and proposed mandates were logically sound and NOT a depopulation measure, so pardon me if I am less trusting of what they put out when they act in the exact same manner. The behavior speaks more volumes than the (small amount of) info!
But that’s neither here or there. Like I said, the guy isn’t perfect, and I can personally verify the last 2 stories in the Knuckles Series were trash, but then you get claims that Penders was largely responsible for getting Archie cancelled, and that type of BS we all know is a blatant lie. But aside from that, like I said earlier, there was this concerted effort to… strip the Sonic Series of it’s Edge. Some people have started to acknowledge this with an examination of Sonic’s character in recent entries, there’s this one vid floating around called “Nobody Understands Sonic” which nearly encapsulates all of my feelings of the series without the vulgarities that people hate so much. I forgot the creator’s name, but his cartoon image wears a Sonic costume, so just look for that. But it seems the honeymoon period after Frontiers has ended, and people seem to be far more conscious of how Sonic is being ruined for the future… or so it seems because people are once again bought off by the hype for Shadow without realizing it’s just a marketing ploy for Shitshow 3, have they learned NOTHING from MVCI? *coughs* Sorry…
The thing I’ve noticed is that since 2008 or 09, Sega and their contemporaries are less interested in keeping Sonic true to itself, and more so turning it into a “Hero for Children” series, or as a shiptease for Amy Rose Weirdos, or a “Shonen Anime” in videogame form. Everyone that’s involved with Sonic… doesn’t want Sonic to be “Sonic” per say. Everything since the late 2000s has all been attempts to move Sonic further and further away from what it once was. None of this is more evident than in how these people choose to portray “Classic Sonic” whether it be Mania or Superstars. The goal seems to be, “Let the Past die. Kill it if you have to”.
This movie quote from a villain of a trilogy that most people hate… has weirdly resonated with kids today as a message against nostalgia rather than be an aesop for why the villain shouldn’t forget the past as they would be doomed to repeat it. This takes typical rebellious behavior and cranks it up to 11 where the newer generations literally hate the idea of learning from their history, or just finding everything they can “wrong” about it if only to chase clout. The Sonic franchise is, without a doubt, the biggest videogame victim of clout chasing I’ve ever seen, and that isn’t merely an exaggeration. Even today, you can still find videos of old has-beens’ trying to bring up the old talking point of how Sonic had a rough transition to 3D (which itself is a blatant lie since it took roughly 7 years before people started hating 3D Sonic games), to the point that it’s become a literal meme. People won’t admit that it has been pure clout chasing as people have come to accept that a lot of Sonic games after 05 has been ass since Naka left, but this “observation” is done in hindsight while preying on the (sometimes willful) ignorance of the fandom. There was no rough transition, people genuinely liked the Adventure games with some complaints here and there about certain gameplay modes like treasure hunting, but generally speaking, you didn’t hear a collective stink about them until years later as a result of hype backlash (Or shit ports to modern consoles, a Sonic Team tradition), a far too common phenomena that occurs in the Sonic fandom over… and over… and over again. So of course people would look to the “Rough transition” vids and, as a result of hype backlash, would outright BELIEVE AND PARROT that shit if only to spite the fans that hype shit up. It also didn’t help that IGN got in on the fun and attacked the old Genesis games suggesting that “Sonic was never good”. By that point, the clout chasing was getting out of hand, but that likely blew up in their faces because it was IGN. Let it be those fucks from Game Grumps, and people would fall on their swords in praise of their insight.
That being said, it is rather easy to convince the fans of falsehoods and mistruths simply because the franchise was in shambles and not enough people gave a damn to look into these issues. And… there’s been a certain subset of the fandom that has been all too eager to take advantage of this. They have to do with a certain pink Hedgehog that has been so hyped up that even websites like Game Rant declared that 2023 was her year. I’m convinced she’s more popular than Shadow the fucking Hedgehog at this point (thanks in part to how bastardized his character has become in recent years). And hell, I’mma just say it right here, she is the reason that people actually love Ian Flynn so much. Because he’s just as much of a fanboy of this character as the rest of the fandom. And he ships like a bitch.
I will be frank. I despise Amy Rose. However, much like Johnny Cage, it wasn’t always this way. Back before she opened her mouth, she was… tolerable. Even adorkable to some extent. But… this is all 90s era stuff, all she was was a fangirl who chased Sonic around. But… that’s all she did. Chase around the Hog of her dreams. But that was ok. Sonic himself was a boss. Him having fangirls in universe should probably come with the territory. 😛
But then the early-mid 2000s came around, and this was the period in which the Sonic cast would ALL get butchered horribly. Starting… 2003, I wanna say, is when the characters started going out of character… for virtually no reason. Well actually there was, much like Dragon Ball, the creators had no idea where to take the series after Sonic Adventure 2, and thus resorted to turning the series into a glorified comedy. So you have characters being flanderized to their most basic, surface level details. We wouldn’t see Shadow or Rouge get raped to crumbs until the 2010s, but everyone else wasn’t safe. I’ve gone into length about Knuckles and how sick I am of his stupidity (not “was” because creators STILL retain this for no reason!), Tails was literally a background character who’s story never moved past “I have to prove myself to Sonic”, Sonic himself couldn’t decide if he was an overly excitable kid or a quiet and stoic hero, and Amy Rose…. fuck me. They turned Amy Rose into the BIGGEST CUNT the franchise has ever had since Julie-Su! The 2000s RUINED what was a tolerable and maybe even an adorable character because the comedy gold of her being a stalker/psychobitch was more important than giving the characters some actual depth.
Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 didn’t do any harm, honestly, because the writers for those games weren’t idiots. But there were sprinkles of things to come in SA1. Amy having a sense of independence from Sonic would be fine… if there was evidence beforehand to support the notion that she wasn’t already. Since the 90s didn’t do character development (or character at all after 94), we didn’t know much about Amy prior to SA1. All I can infer was that she was already independent given that she already had her own car (which isn’t really evidence, mind you, but lets just say she gets around easily without Sonic and Tails). Sonic and Tails did everything they could to avoid contact with her. We see she already does her own shopping at the beginning of SA1. The game which she supposedly develops into a more independent character.. already shows her being independent from the get go.
I bring this up because I’ve read people try to make a point about Amy coming into her own from SA1, but Amy was doing just fine without Sonic and the gang. The only thing that’s changed is that she’s now a combatant. That is the difference… so long as you ignore Sonic Championship, but that’s the difference. In a franchise where fighting takes place, we don’t see value in characters unless they can defend themselves in battle. Otherwise, they’re useless. That doesn’t make them “dependent on others”, though, and it doesn’t make them outright useless from the outset. Amy’s actual value in both SA1 and SA2 came from being the catalyst that turns villains into heroes.
Gamma in SA1… didn’t really bring anything to the table as far as a character that contributes to the plot (And it was more so the bird that did the convincing), but the only significant part is that she stands up to Sonic. This act tends to get blown out of proportion because it’s the one moment in the series where she doesn’t let her fangirl tendencies dictate her feelings or actions, but yeah, good for her. Though in hindsight, since Gamma’s goal was to eventually destroy the E-Series and itself to free the animals from within, it probably would’ve made more sense if Sonic went ahead and trashed his ass right then and there, and handle the cleanup of the E-Series for after the events of the game since all they do is just… hang around and not do anything.
Shadow in SA2, far more significant, and likely her crowning achievement. Doesn’t need much elaboration, though I will say the Amnesia subplot in the next 2 games kinda fucked this moment, ngl.
However since then, Amy… literally added nothing to the games. She gets one moment in 06 where she talks down Silver and saves Sonic from getting murked, and maybe even saves Elise for a brief moment (can’t recall the details of that terrible interaction), but all that comes crashing down when Sonic gets murked anyway, and by then, the games AND Sonic X in between had already damaged her character. Most of this shit you can find in the Advance series and Battle, but there’s moments in Heroes that does her no favors (trying to strongarm the blue fuck into a marraige when their goal is to find Chocola and Froggy), flashing her hammer anytime he refuses her hand (Advance 3), insulting Vector for losing their race in Free Riders and even demanding that Sonic makes it up to her by having a date (hahaha, a consellation prize is a date with Sonic, hahahahaha), then you have her being a cunt to Cosmo in Sonic X just because she wanted a conversation with Sonic, she swings Tails into a tv just because the little shit wanted some pie, and probably some other moments I can’t remember atm. All I remember from the bitch was that she was beyond abusive to her “friends” which more than justified why Sonic and the gang would want to get as far away from her as possible. She was absolutely insufferable.
Her horrific attitude, however, is often excused by her inane fans as being justified because everyone leaves her behind, or people are “being sexist”, or they ludicrously argue that her traits within the games and anime… are NOT abusive at all! They argue that her critics (usually referred to as “Haters”) are merely delusional, misappropiating the term “abuse” since, to them, it only refers to more serious crimes like psychological, spiritual, child, or outright physical abuse (the latter of which arguably already happens in the anime and games). This phenomena… puzzles me greatly. I’ve seen an entire decades worth of Amy Rose’s character being absolutely terrible, whereas these fanboys and fangirls… live in some dreamworld where these criticisms are baseless and are simply the result of slander. I could say that anime fans (I know I know, I keep going back and forth on whether or not Sonic X made the fandom the toxic cesspool that it is) are often… emotionally or psychologically damaged, so much so that they are attracted to the most toxic characters they can find in anime (Vegeta, Sasuke, Paul, etc), and the addiction to anime has exposed them to a plethora of female characters that are just as bad as Amy is, and they tend to have some pretty big fanbases too. But… I don’t think that’s what this is. This is all tied to some irrational fear… that people will discredit the idea of a certain coupling being valid.
I often laugh at people who care so much about the sex life of fictional animals, but since one of those fans basically led to the death of Archie Comics, it’s something that can no longer be ignored. This… Sonamy fandom is the equivalent to fans of Joss Whedon before the Justice League movie. They are fucking assholes! I’m glad that I don’t have to go indepth as to how big of an asshole this base is as the majority of the fans have had the misfortune of dealing with these people, but I personally had the fortune of not being in the crossfire. This fandom is so infamous that people can remember certain names! Trueloveheart98 or 94, Wendy Atticus, there was a micktrap or something? idk. The only fanbrat I can remember was some dude named Dylan TNGA from the ol’ Smash Boards. forums. Lets just say Lowtiergod and darksydphil had some competition. But see, with these latter dudes, they at least care about the games they discuss. The former dudes (or chicks) will raise hell and bludgeon the fandom over and over to accept and embrace… a fictional pairing, it’s weird! They treat it like a goddamn war!
Back in 2022, they were getting pissed off over a figurine of Sally Acorn! Sally Acorn! You guys remember the Rally4Sally movement? Don’t know if it’s still around, but it was a push for Sally to get into the games and get a collector figurine made? These weirdos were… fucking… pissed! They believed that if the figurine got made, it would (somehow) convince Sega that there is interest in the character, and would possibly revive her and others for future media. They’ve actually said this, they were literally pissed at the idea of a figurine getting made out of fear of what it MIGHT do! Well, considering they rereleased SatAM on DVD last year (one that I happily purchased, no fucks given), it’s possible they might’ve shown some interest already. That way, people can see all the times Sonic and Sally SUCKED FACE back in the early 90s years before Amy Rose was in the public conscious. And there in lies the (supremely irrational) fear! The acknowledgement of Sonic having had a fully developed romance before Amy, and the fear that people would… like Sally over Amy?
Their hatred of Sally Acorn tends to influence their opinions of certain people, games, tv shows, comics, et all a little too much. So much so that they will make excuses for even the grandiose of sins. Do enough digging and you’ll find that… there was (or is) a deviantart page (Egh… I know, I KNOW, I know!) called the “Kill Sally Club”. A page dedicated to users drawing rather juvenile pictures of Amy or an equivalent OC brutally and viciously murdering Sally Mortal Kombat style. Just think of the most braindead fatalities you can imagine, and you’d get the Sonic Fandom version of Apokolips War. Compared to the shit I’ve seen over the years, this is unusually tame and not even close, but some people found this page at a young age and described themselves being traumatized. This was back in 2005! 19 years ago! I wasn’t even aware of this, I was too busy beefing with people over why Shadow was a good game! According to a tumblr user (Egh… I know, I KNOW, I know!), one of the club’s members stated:
“This Club is for us who hate Sally Acorn but also it is a method for us to vent. If one cannot vent then that person may SNAP at any moment. Some may say we’re unstable but I say we maintain stability through insane kill art”.
………FUCK!!!
Did this child step into the Dark Web or some shit!? That sounded like a threat! With all the mass shootings that went on through the years… idk.
It doesn’t beat wishing cancer on people’s families (which… yes, a Sonamy fan DID do this), but… FUCK!! These niggaz be wildin! With psychotic tendencies like this running rampant, it starts to become clear why a lot of missteps in the franchise and/or it’s spinoffs are so wildly excused. Ian Flynn, lets talk about his shit.
So before he ever killed off the Archie Series, he apparently wrote a bunch of fan comics. The most infamous being something called “Other M”. No I will not be tempted by the low hanging fruit of a joke, but lets just say it foreshadowed his butchering of certain characters. What stood out was that he had Sally getting shot in the head… *randomly, I should say. The crux of the story was supposed to be darker than anything… but going into Archie, he apparently killed off Sally like… 3-4 times, I forget. Infact, most of the Freedom Fighters get raped to crumbs, I think they killed off Antoine and broke Rotor’s back. Bunnie Rabbot lost her robo limbs which… defeats the purpose of her character and name, he started fetishizng Sally’s Game Gear… and for Sally, he turned the poor child into a robot that gets her ass kicked with no trouble. For some reason, Sonic isn’t that broken up over here (this was his fucking WOMAN!) and with the reboot… he decided to turn her into a lesbian… for said Game Gear.
That detail… infuriates me for a number of reasons, but most of all because it is completely disingenuous. It’s a move that can conveniently hide behind the desire to promote gays since they’ve become famous in the eyes of the entertainment industry as the mere existence of them in a work gives companies automatic moral superiority and carte blanche to flip off their fans if they so complain. But see, changing a character’s sexual orientation fundamentally changes their relationship with other characters. So obviously with Sally becoming a lesbian, the relationship between her and Sonic is bulldozed out of existence. Which was a horribly misguided action. You don’t discard a relationship that was in existence for 24 years for any reason. Joe Quesada thought he could get away with the same shit with One More Day, and that ended up being the most hated Spider-Man story in all of existence.
But this fat fuck didn’t care about! Naw, his thing was he wanted to “fix” the Archie comics. Ain’t that a kick in the ass, he wanted to fix a SPINOFF SERIES!!! Mind you, the GAMES WERE IN FUCKING SHAMBLES, AND THEY WERE THE SOURCE FUCKING MATERIAL… but his sights were on the comics. Yah know, the one series that people swore never mattered because they’re not canon!? Well turns out, their lack of canonicity WAS the problem! Nevermind how butchered the game canon was by characterization alone, people were bitching about the moon for years and why Knuckles wasn’t protecting the Master Emerald, or why the Master Emerald wasn’t tucked away in the Hidden Palace Zone when we get to SA1, or how Rouge was able to lift the Master Emerald off the damn island in the first place, or EVERYTHING about Blaze the cat… shit, the game canon is such a goddamn mess at this point, nothing makes sense anymore… BUT THE COMICS… NAW BITCH, THEM SHITS HAVE TO BE FIXED!!!
And what was he intent on fixing? The fact that Sonic and Sally were even snogging each other in the first place. Why? Because in the GAME CANON (somewhere, who knows!?), he, much like the fans themselves, is convinced that Sonamy is an official coupling. And that would be one thing, if people were just convinced of it’s existence, but that’s never enough! For Sonamy fans, they have to literally DESTROY everything that contradicts their preferred ship. It’s not enough for them to just have fan art or fan fictions where they have Sonic and Amy fucking like rabbits or whatever, they have to go and express their utter disdain for female characters that might even pose a challenge to Amy for who gets to be Sonic’s bed mate. It’s fucking weird! If it was contained on the internet where all the weirdos sleep, that would be one thing, but these bastards venture out into the realm of the real in order to push their fucking ship! You have.. a Sonamy fan literally getting into Archie comics to fuck it up and push his preferred ship! And thanks to his efforts, the comic got cancelled.
Despite his boneheaded moves, Ian Flynn is adored by them all, considered by many to be Sega’s best writer, and they cried for him to be in the games if only for him to finally make Sonamy official! Any other pairings should be destroyed and eviscerated at ALL COSTS! As a matter of fact… I’m convinced, seriously and unapologetically convinced… that this is the reason Sonic 06 gets DESTROYED every damn day. Because it is the game in which Elise stole Sonic’s first kiss. This was the first time in history where it became “creepy” for an animal/human pairing in a cartoon to exist. No matter if you point out Droopy and that red head, Roger and Jessica Rabbit, or Howard the Duck, OR Madonna, Sonic’s prototype hoe (not to mention Sarah from the OVA), they will rip people to shreds over this shit no matter what! Damn, I remember when people shipped Goliath with Eliza Maza! But for years, these fucks carried this burning fury over Elise, calling her one of the worst Sonic characters in history NOT merely for being a damsel in distress (those were common before the mid 2010s), but because she merely kissed his blue ass back to life. Objectively worse games (like Boom) don’t get nearly enough shit like 06 did.
AND IT’S CANON! It happened in the games, and they’ll fight tooth and nail over the whole candle blowing shit to deny it ever happened, but you know for a fact that scene gave them all brain hemmorages. They couldn’t handle that.
But back to Flynn, there is an interesting excerpt where he talks about why certain Sonic Pairings work and why they don’t. Why anyone would waste their time with that shit is anyone’s guess, it makes the moon obsessed fans look sane in comparison, but here’s the rundown.
Sonally “works” because opposites attract, with some backhanded compliments to Sally’s character such as her being weaker than Sonic, and how her personality conflicts and clashes with Sonic’s to create a Yin Yang dynamic. Why it “didn’t work”… because it’s “Tired”. Why is it tired? Because it was an on-again, off-again relationship (something that plenty of fiction did, and isn’t a flaw). But also came up with something like “unlike Amy, Sally slows him down”. What the fuck does that even mean!? Matter of fact, why the need to draw a direct comparison to Amy in what should have been Sally’s panel!? Sally’s qualities shouldn’t be dictated by a character that came… LATER down the line in relevance! It’s weird because these people don’t seem to realize that Amy started off in a NON-CANON MANGA SPINOFF!!! Sally at least was taken from the animal “Ricky” from Sonic 1! FROM THE FUCKING GAMES! So why are people (like this idiot) treating Amy as if she is the primary!?
As for his panel on Sonamy. It works because they’re “kindred spirits with superpowered abilities!” They’re like “poetry in motion”. A lively young couple!
… What? Sonic and Sally is an OLD couple, is that what we’re going with!? The fuck? Idk why, but I’m reminded of the whole “SupermanXLois Lane vs SupermanXWonder Woman” pairings. It’s like arguing that Wonder Woman is better for Superman on the grounds of “they’re both gods who will outlast the humans” and making a mockery of the former because Lois Lane isn’t Diana. But wouldn’t the former be more special because these super powered beings can love someone for something other than how well they compare to themselves based on their powers? Like Superman could see the beauty in Lois beyond her frailty and lack of comparable power sets? It just seems rather shallow to rank their compatability based on their capabilities. You might as well rank their compatibility based strictly on sex appeal (which… lets be honest, Sally would win hands down).
Why it DOESN’T work… is because of the Sega Mandate, and his hands are tied, fucking hell.
This asswipe is so biased, he can’t even make an objective observation as to why such a relationship would not work out between Sonic and Amy, it’s hilarious. We all know by now that the mandates are shit he made up to justify his rampage against the Freedom Fighters, but… lets say they weren’t all lies. He’s basically saying… that the company that controls the actual canon of the games… is firmly AGAINST the pairing of Sonic and Amy!
So… so wait! Sega doesn’t approve of Sonamy, but they approve of Sonally!? Mind you, the Sonamy fandom HANGS on Flynn’s every word, but not ONE of them took the time to look at this statement and think Sega was actually against them!? I get the feeling that this was the only actual mandate, and that everything else, he made up to justify his rage. He’s like “Well shit, if Amy can’t have him, NO ONE CAN!” And then he proceeds to destroy Sally and the Freedom Fighters back to back!
Much like a certain deviantart page…
Speaking of canon, these people like to argue that “Well, girlfriend! *smacks lips* SatAM and Archie aren’t canon to the games, so that’s why Sonally could never happen! *snaps fingers while shifting their heads from side to side*. It’s funny… because neither is Sonic X. Unless they’re willing to acknowledge that Chris Thorndyke is more important than Amy Rose since, in the adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2, Amy’s role of bringing the villains to the side of righteousness…. is given over to Chris! He brings Shadow to the good side with Amy just… being in the background! Yet Chris is never eviscerated to the same extent that Sally is even though Amy’s only real contribution to the entirety of the series was stripped away from her… for the sake of shilling Chris Thorndyke! Yah see, there were a lot of arguments back then where people literally stated that Amy’s contributions could easily be given over to another character, which is… admittedly, a logical fallacy as it discredits the contributions of said person or character by suggesting it’s an easy task that anyone can do. But… shit! The Sonic X writers validated it by allowing another character to do so! So even the anime studio doesn’t place much value on the character. Also doesn’t help that much of her cunt behavior comes from this show.
It would be really fascinating if the overall opinion of the Sonic franchise was dictated by people who are obsessed with a character’s sex life. It reminds me of Frollo from Hunchback in which he burned all of Paris just because he couldn’t get that big-tittied gypsy girl. Their support of certain writers hinges on how much they agree with a particular pairing, they constantly harrass anyone who DOESN’T agree with their pairing, and they are perfectly willing to destroy a franchise if they cannot have their pairing. This is cult-like behavior of the worst caliber, and might be why fans of the comics are far more psychotic than those of the games. Discussion is almost dominated by people who are too desirous of Amy getting into Sonic’s pa-… fur… eww. But what kills me even more is that they willfully ignore any evidence that contradicts their views on a whim! Saying Amy is abusive when people can give you all the examples in the world will always be met with outright denial, or a reinterpretation of said evidence, suggesting that Sega isn’t into a pairing will be met with all sorts of minor clues in the games (Sonic has the OPTION of dating Amy in Unleashed! Which is like saying all 10 endings in shth is canon in some way). It never ends, and these fucks are violently opposed to anyone who dares criticize the character or their own personal behavior. The funny thing about all of this… is that they perfectly resemble the very character they worship and glorify, and they don’t even realize it. That’s the scariest thing of all.
Also, you know what was in SatAM that wasn’t canon to the games? Sonic’s love of chili-dogs. Better yet… Kishimoto seems to be interested in bringing back the Freedom Fighters.
https://twitter.com/moq_46/status/1624216766015750144?s=20
Suck it.
…….. Man, this dude better stay offline if them Sonamy devils catch wind of it….
Man I hate being right sometimes.
So lemme get this straight. These shit birds… Are charging people money… For New… Game… Plus!? Do I have that right!?
Suddenly, them rereleasing generations with shadow makes sense…
Conflicting Views 