Agentwriter - Agent Here!

This is going on the main blog because it's way too controversial for the Sonic blog, but- I wish the Sonic fandom could treat Eggman like how the Hollow Knight fandom treats the Pale King.

The Pale King, AKA, a character who is objectively a bad person and who did Horrible Warcrimes Things To Children, but is allowed to have multiple fan interpretations. No one's denying the Crimes but he's allowed to be interpreted as a nice person or a mean person fanfic-by-fanfic. Some fics write him as a great dad, or at the very least a dad who's trying his best. Others (the ones more closely aligned to canon, arguably), write him as a horrible dad, or sometimes not even a dad at all.

Levels of meow-meow-ification with this character are also regulated in this way. Fics range from "he did nothing wrong!" to "he did everything wrong" and there's no fighting about it. It's a very effective institution of "don't like don't read".

There isn't any fighting about this. Nobody in the Hollow Knight tag is writing essays about "um Actually??? he's a horrible person so if you think otherwise. . .". All views of this character exist simultaneously, and people enjoy these different interpretations of this character side-by-side, jumping from "good dad" fic to "bad dad" fic with just a single click.

And GOD I wish that were the case for one Dr. Ivo Robotnik Eggman. I want to click on one fic where he's torturing children and then click to the next where he's giving them nothing more than an evil cackle and a pat on the back. This dude can contain multitudes.

"But Eggman has more canon!" bro the Sonic fandom has been ignoring canon it doesn't like for the past two decades. Why should we stop now??

It’s been years and it still baffles me how fuckin’ hard the Sonic X writers went in the third season. Like, the setup with the space thing with the aliens that threaten galactic genocide, sure, fine. It’s probably on the darker end of Sonic plots, but sight unseen, I’m like 85% sure there’s an Archie Sonic arc that’s somehow more horrifying. Whatever. That’s all more or less within the bounds of expectation.

But the payoff of all that Mass Effect shit?

“Hey kids, wanna see Tails in catatonic emotional shock with a thousand-yard stare asking everyone to leave him alone before shooting his best friend at his romantic interest and possibly kill both?”

“Wanna see every step of him gradually losing his resolve and breaking down, trembling all the while, utterly unable to bring himself to shoot his best friend at his romantic interest and possibly kill both?”

(Note how he furrows his brow deeper, as if to steel himself, before the dam bursts.)

“Wanna see him lash out in anger and frustration over broken promises before Dr. Eggman steps in as the voice of reason?”

“Wanna see him emphatically refuse again to shoot his best friend at his romantic interest and possibly kill both after said romantic interest asks him to shoot her again?”

“Wanna see him on the verge of what is almost certainly a confession of love mere moments before pushing the button and ensuring his romantic interest dies by his hands?”

“Wanna hear the old ED about a love that cannot be, as the blast travels towards his love interest and she imparts her final words?”

“Oh yeah, also, you can’t hear it, because that song’s playing over it, but he’s definitely screaming his lungs out in what is almost certainly the most intense emotional anguish of his life. See?”

“And hey, as a bonus, in the next and last episode, not only do you get to hear him scream her name,”

“but you also get to see him realize that his best friend couldn’t bring her back!”

“That’s what you want out of your Sonic the Hedgehog show, right?”

(You can hear his throat giving out as he wails in that last one, by the way. Look it up, good stuff.)

Someone on that production team either really hated or really liked Tails, because anything less cannot adequately explain why someone not even old enough to be a tween had to be put through an emotional wringer this extreme as the conclusion to an entire season of a Sonic anime.

And, I don’t know, I feel like someone at Sega and/or Sonic Team had to sign off on all of this? Like what the fuck, guys? Did you all just decide “Yeah, Tails can have some time in the spotlight, and a romantic interest, and severe emotional trauma as a direct result of having to kill said love interest, as a treat.”

I’m not saying they shouldn’t have, but holy shit.

How one clip in the new season 3 trailer significantly changes Animaniacs canon

As I was replaying the new Animaniacs trailer for the 100th time in my head, I realized there's one clip that has big ramifications on how I previously viewed Animaniacs canon. How can one clip change canon before the episode's even out? I know it sounds clickbaity, but I think it's warranted. The clip in question is this:

Now, to most fans of Animaniacs, this might not look out of the ordinary at all. After all, this is far from the first time they've seen the tower depicted this way- for decades, in fan fiction and fan art, this is exactly how it's been described and shown when it comes to stories about the Warners being locked in the tower. To my knowledge, though, through all Animaniacs animated media, this is the first time it's ever been officially shown like this.*

*It was shown somewhat close to this in reboot episode 1, but that was after no one had been living in it for 22 years.

What do I mean by "like this"? Previously in the show, whenever we got a look at the interior of the tower, it's always looked something along the lines of this:

It's fully furnished, packed to the brim with all the fun activities the Warners could ever need. It has rollercoasters, basketball hoops, a TV, and, importantly, a kitchen, bathroom, and comfy beds. (We'll assume Yakko chooses to sleep in a ball pit.) It's a veritable wonderland that any kid would be overjoyed to play in. I always assumed it was shown this way to soften the blow for kids who thought too much about the Warners' backstory- sure, they were locked in a tower for 60 years, but it couldn't have been that bad. Look at all the fun stuff they have in there!

When reading and writing tower-related angst, where the tower is depicted as a barren prison, I had always done it with the understanding that it wasn't really like that. Sure, we played it up for angst, but in reality, in canon, the Warners were more or less fine in there. They played games, rode roller coasters, had a good time. I was even gonna make an entire analysis post about what the Warners' time in the tower was really like. Anything else would be just a bit too dark, wouldn't it?

But no. It really was like that. According to the clip in the trailer, when the Warners are locked in the tower, they get all their fun stuff taken away. It really does become empty, barren, and dark. There's no rollercoasters. There's no TV. There's not a kitchen, a bathroom, or a warm bed to sleep in. There don't appear to be any windows, except maybe one prison-barred window at the top. It doesn't even look like they get rations of food. When they're locked in the tower, they sit in shadowy darkness, with absolutely nothing to entertain themselves except each other.

For

sixty

years.

And that's canon.

shit was so bad it made stompin bob bypass the chat filter

here's the original! (i don't have twitter btw, i just got it from another version of the meme here on tumblr)

In memory of my penguin (and puffle) from my old club penguin account

now this is is the best club penguin hc

jet pack guy being trans is very correct but also so funny when you consider that his real actual name is Guy. apologies if im not the first person to point this out but it is actually so in character for him to have gone "okay im transitioning what should my new very masculine guy name be" and then doing the funniest thing ever

Fact #551

Source: Tour Guide descriptions

Rookie's had enough