#i'm obsessed with these two in every iteration and combination

[nipuni]

Some quick Doctor and Master sketches I had to get out of my system!!

[molinaskies]

hey, i'm a new sonic fan (really digging your writings btw!!!) would you mind explaining a bit of this tag of yours? i get the feeling youve been in the fandom for a while haha X)

hello, I am SO sorry for the late response. I am terrible with my asks and kind of disappeared for much of the winter. Some might say this particular hedgehog was hibernating! That said, welcome to the fandom!

You are right! I've been here since 2012, but I've done many blasts to the past to learn about the things before my time lol.

This is gonna be an off-the-cuff answer, so bear with me, but this ask was in reference to this post where I mentioned some "questionable Amy Rose characterization." In short, it's only within maybe the last eight or so years that North American Sonic has been in decent sync with Japanese Sonic, as a franchise. While there are still plenty of localization differences between these two realms (from characterization to plot/lore implications), they are largely on the same page, now. This wasn't always the case.

When Sonic first appeared in the 90s, there was essentially a version of him for every "video game region" (North America, Japan, and Europe). Sonic was characterized very differently depending on where he was. Again, super off the cuff, but American Sonic was a super cocky, sassy speed demon who made fun of his enemies and had no fucks to give. Japanese Sonic was still arrogant and sassy, but a lot less flashy about it. European Sonic, I am the least familiar with, but I know him to be somewhere in the middle of NA and JP. NA and EU also have their own cast of characters on top of the official characters we know.

To the core of your question about Amy, Amy chasing Sonic is a trope in JP media between young lovers and was largely meant to be shown as a game between the two. Amy also reads as a lot more "cute and endearing" in Japanese iterations of her in the 2000s.

However, NA Sonic, as a franchise, played up her romantic feelings for Sonic to an absolute extreme for laughs, but it ended up with some really dubious results. Amy's NA characterization makes her out to be more of an active aggressor. Words you might see floating around about this include "stalker," "fangirl," and "obsessed." These things led a lot--like, A LOT a lot--of people to dislike or vehemently hate Amy Rose.

Some iterations of this aren't so bad, but the ones people really point at are Sonic Battle (she mistakenly believes that Sonic intends for a robot named Emerel to be their son), Sonic Heroes (Amy's reason for hunting Sonic down is to "get him to marry her"), and Sonic Adventure 2 (Amy says that she will only free sonic from his prison cell if he agrees to marry her; she is unsuccessful and frees him anyway).

To be clear, I FIRMLY believe that the latter two examples I gave were meant to be understood as jokes and that IS how Sonic takes them. People also point to a moment in Sonic 06 where she says she would choose Sonic over the fate of the world, but I also firmly believe that people misinterpret her meaning (more on that here). However, the fact this is a hill I need to die on shows that it wasn't made clear enough by the American writers. And anyway, this really starts to simmer down around 2008 with Sonic Unleashed.

The general consensus in the fandom, to my knowledge, is that this happened for two reasons. 1) Amy's crush combined with Sonic's (at the time) purposefully ambiguous feelings for her made for the type of gag humour that was big in the 2000s, and 2) Sonic already had a highly popular love interest in Sally Acorn, a NA-exclusive character from the 90s cartoon (Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM) and the Archie comics that largely acted as a continuation of that cartoon's story.

Sally was so much "in Amy's place," as it were, that the NA instruction Manual for Sonic CD (Amy's introductory game, mind you) deliberately refers to Amy as Sally.

I'm not super well informed about Archie Sonic, but Amy has kind of a bad rep in those comics too. She has a uncomfortable back story (she uses magic, basically, to make herself older so she can join Sally's freedom fighters and be with sonic), is consistency depicted as overbearing and mean, and I've even seen people complain about the way she's drawn (she always has this unbecoming, large mouth that makes her unpleasant to look at).

However, the Archie comics underwent a total reboot in 2013 (the comics ended in 2017), and my understanding is that Amy's characterization is dramatically improved from there on out.

Again, SUPER off the cuff. There were a lot of micro details I skimmed over. I 100% encourage you to go on the deep dive and draw your own conclusions, but I hope this gives some good background to get started!

In summary, NA Amy Rose (and, to a lesser extent, Amy Rose in general during the early 2000s), is kind of rough to watch. SEGA over-corrected a little bit around 2012 by taking her down the hyper-independent route, but settled on something really solid for her in 2017 starting with Sonic Forces and the IDW comics.

[c6jpg]

i love seeing you ramble about hoyoverse music :3 any notes you'd like to share about your favourite music from hoyoverse?

jklasfklasj ty!! tbh I don't have very deep thoughts on music, as long as something itches my brain the right way I'm like hell yeah

I guess one thing is that there are some songs I "listen really hard to" and by that I mean I listen to it a specific way by focusing on layers or instruments that you usually don't pay attention to or notice unless you play it multiple times

on the instruments side, a good example is hsr's night of thrills which at first I mainly enjoyed because of the insane pipa drop but as I listened to it more I absolutely fell in love with the duet exchange between the synthetic and erhu notes in the first half.

like this song was at the top of my spotify wrapped because I played the first 53 seconds over and over and over again just to enjoy that conversation those two tones were having. camellia night was another fun genshin one where i really paid attention to the duet nature between the two instruments!!

in general a lot of songs i absolutely adore tend to have a specific instrument or two that has a specific moment that elevates absolutely everything for me, like when the cello in night's whispering breath comes in at 0:45, i have to play that one part over and over and over. little guitar or sax bits i also absolutely love.

another group of songs i listen really hard to are ones that have very noticeable layering going on (if that makes sense?), usually through a steady main tone with other layers weaving in and out of it. combat beneath the waves is a fantastic example of that and a song i go out of my way to listen to multiple times in a row in order to focus on a different instrument/layer every time. like first the main strings, then the backing strings, the vocals, the breaths, etc. OUGH.

like i'm not a musician by any means but for songs like this I almost like to fantasize myself as part of an orchestra and roleplay a different instrument/layer every time and it's just so?? fun???? ajdksfljafds i think it helps that this song is so fucking intense and crazy to listen to so combined with my fantasizing i always feel almost out of breath just from listening to it and its just so amazing to me that music can do that

one subcategory that fits into this layering thing is songs that start with a simple melody and have a slow build with more and more layers before reaching a climax and then fluttering back down to the beginning melody? so stuff like neath the fountain and jade chimes, i am just utterly obsessed with their buildups and i usually pay really close attention to the moments each new layer comes in. and if i miss it bc i wasn't paying attention once again i need to rewind the track and get my head in the fucking game.

another iteration i think is some of the more sinister track in general, like i looove before the light fades and bane of ambitions where they're very consistent with their tempos as different things weave in to gradually build it up. like the base heartbeat in bane of ambitions with everything else going on on top of it is just *chefs kiss*. but then there's also the slow intense ones like the recent hidden path above the savannah, i just love the powerful chanting the whole way through.

in hindsight i think i just enjoy songs that really make me think about how they're structured... jakladjsas like i guess it's just simultaneously mentally stimulating and auditorily pleasing and makes listening to music such a fun experience :D

[pagesofkenna]

my secret is that i have spent every single day of the last ten years absolutely obsessed with Hawkeye from the Marvel media empire. at no point in time was this character not hugely important to me and never have I met an iteration of this character that I did not immediately and fully adore

30-second bit role in another character's solo movie? favorite part. underutilized protag in the flashy big team movie? literally my main takeaway from that entire movie. goofy competent doofus in the team comics and cartoons? this guy's working harder than EVERYONE else combined how could i not admire him. exhausted loser struggling to keep his life from falling apart? this is the most relatable a superhero has ever been. gutsy teen refusing to be put on the back burner and leave the 'saving' to the wishy-washy adults? this girls working harder than everyone else combined how could I not admire her!!!

i had a hawkeye sideblog where i just reblogged hawkeye stuff every single day for a few years there because i was obsessed and i didn't want to overwhelm my followers (also i still have it, it's still there I just never use it)

then it got more popular to hate how hawkeye was portrayed in the movies so i just... quietly didnt say anything. then the movies themselves kinda fell out of fashion and i kinda put everything on the back burner. then the tv show was announced like years ago and everyone was like 'ugh, really? why?' and inside my heart was doing somersaults, colorful flappy-hand starbursts of joy

i fully expect people to hate the character (esp. the male Hawkeye, just because he has more history) and this show, and actually the first two episodes were pretty decent if not amazing which makes me hopeful. I do not expect to convince anyone to love a character they have no interest in loving, especially because I recognize this is probably just a Special Interest character of mine. i basically will not be going into the show tag or looking for peoples reactions after episodes because I don't want to have to deal with negativity and yes, this is an open invitation to send me gifsets or cool fanart you find. relatedly, i will not be reblogging a ton of stuff because i desire to keep up a cool and unaffected facade. i'm playing it cool. i haven't been counting down the days to this premiere all year or anything

(quick FAQs: "do you not think MCU hawkeye is the worst iteration of hawkeye?" no I love him "isn't it crappy that they took so long to make him HOH though?" yes this should have been done ten years ago and its a sign of the ableism in the industry "wasn't the surprise family bit a really bad character change?" no, Laura Barton is higher up on my list of favorite MCU characters than most of the other avengers "but the family-man shtick totally ruins his 'struggling to hold it together' characterization!!" I think if you see a man dying in the gutter and say 'this is the ideal depiction of this man' then that sucks, also there are multiple ways for a person to be falling apart "hawkeye should have died instead of black widow, and using her for his manpain sucks" yes!! actually yeah! it's weird to be like 'my favorite character should have died in this iteration instead of this other character' but its true!! the MCU has some crappy dickface writers. still love this character tho.)

[beauhoart]

Quick Sketch? Sweats. Amazing

Some quick Doctor and Master sketches I had to get out of my system!!