bigklingy

[bigklingy]

I like how the last one is just "took a shower".

Remember that scene in the first movie when Tom and Sonic were in the hotel and Sonic wanted to do all the things so Tom was like "Ok anything you can find to do in this room, you go ahead and do it."

And then Sonic took like two seconds to look around before it cut to him just all over the place doing a million things at once all while Tom is just sitting there with his ice pack trying to see what's going on

I wanted to make a list of all the things I can see that Sonic did because the more I see, the funnier it gets

had a pillow fight with himself

balanced on one foot on top of the wall light while wearing a lampshade on his head

climbed into the dresser drawer and tried to explore the inside and got stuck in it

grabbed a tissue box and tore every single one out and threw them everywhere

clicked through every single TV channel there was

stood on top of the toilet and flushed it a million times with his foot

went running around with a toilet paper roll and left it strung everywhere

spilled water on the bathroom floor and went sliding around in his socks

spun the picture on the wall around in circles over and over

knocked the lamp over

took a shower

[bigklingy]

Internet, PLEASE draw fanart of Ichiban geeking out over the Sonic cast. I NEED it. Wait, hold on. Ichiban goes to jail just after new year 2001 and gets out in 2019. This'd mean the last Sonic game he'd be familiar with would be Sonic Adventure 1? (SA2 wasn't until June 2001) Imagine how confused he'd be at people like Sage or the Babylon Rogues, lol.

Start your engines for the biggest Sonic racing game yet! Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds rolls in on September 25, 2025!

Race as your favorite Sonic characters…and more! Upgrade to the Digital Deluxe Edition for Season Pass content, including Minecraft!

Pre-order now!

[bigklingy]

SA2 Multiplayer PSA (Re: Amy, Metal Sonic)

Just want to put this out there: I've been spreading (mild) misinformation in my Sonic streams. Amy in SA2 multiplayer does NOT grind faster than everyone else. I tested and she's the same speed as the other organic Hedgehogs. (Also, Player 2 has a slight advantage in Grind Race if both hold nothing but crouch the whole time) METAL SONIC, on the other hand, grinds so fast Grind Race as him is flat-out unfair. Apparently how this works is he loses much less speed from losing balance, so maybe the others could catch up to him in theory... if they play perfectly. He can switch his brain off and be an consistent max speed. Metal also jumps really high. With his slippery ground traction, high acceleration and jumps, he controls a lot like Super Sonic in the 2D games. He makes up for it by lacking any specials. (So he and Amy are mirrors: she has bad raw stats but broken specials, he has broken raw stats but no specials)

[bigklingy]

Important note: the game DOES tell you how Sonic got arrested, in the recap for City Escape. Since you'll only see this if you quit out of or Game Over in Sonic's first level, it's very easy to miss. Basically a GUN sent people to Sonic, he went along with it because he thought it was a prank. (I think it's also said that in Japanese, Sonic got himself caught the second time on purpose to find out more about Shadow) iirc, Eggman's first stage recap also has some important info: that he learned about where Shadow was imprisoned through Gerald's diary.

Clearing up something that no person on this planet has given a shit about since approximately 2012:

G.U.N isn't mistaking Sonic for Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2, they're fucking framing him.

like it's a subtle bit of storytelling, it's not explicit stated as far as i remember. But it's there.

for some reason everyone just takes sonic's word for it when he says this, and then they get really confused because sonic and shadow barely look alike.

But if you think about it for like 5 seconds, sonic is the least qualified person in the story to make this assessment, he doesn't know shit about project S.H.A.D.O.W, he doesn't know who shadow is or anything like that.

the military knows literally of this though, they know EXACTLY what shadow is because they've been keeping him a secret, frozen in their basement for 50 fucking years.

Then suddenly he breaks out and does so many crimes it's insane, and if word got out about this top secret government project they killed an entire space colony full of people to get their hands on, they'd be fucked, they don't want that to happen, so they throw their hands up and go "uhh it's probably this blue fucker who runs fast and does ecoterrorism. it's that guy who did all those crimes and we need to arrest him and kill him probably, please for the love of god don't look up what happened on the ark"

basically sonic's wrong as shit and sometimes in stories characters say things that aren't true because they don't know better

if you'll allow me to be a weirdo who gives far more weight to the narrative element of these children's video games where funny cartoon animals jump around, sometimes you gotta read between the lines

[bigklingy]

So... Why Shaman?

Deirdre and Julia are the first characters in the Fire Emblem series to bear this title through their class. Out of all the class name changes made compared to Project Naga, Priestess > Shaman is perhaps the one I feel the most passionate about. It's a choice that will no doubt raise a few eyebrows, but to explain why we made this change, it's important to consider why "Priestess" was chosen.

The chart we provided gives a simple explanation, noting that Shaman has been used as a localization of the standalone katakana rendering "シャーマン" (pronounced Shaa-man) since Fire Emblem The Blazing Blade, which is true. This same rendering is used in Genealogy of the Holy War, so therefore, it should follow rules of consistent localization that the class should be called Shaman in FE 4 as well... right? The matter is more complicated than that, however.

(Apologies for the crusty quality lol..)

In Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, its class names are written in kanji with additional katakana as a guide for how the name should be read. Micaiah's tier 3 class, Light Priestess, is displayed in Japanese as:

巫女(with シャーマン in parenthesis in certain menus)

The kanji used here is Miko, conveying the idea of a shrine maiden, a priestly woman, etc. Due to the kanji used here, Priestess (or Light Priestess) is an apt localization of what's being conveyed for this class. Additionally, it is the use of that Shaman rendering in katakana that makes people believe this is the same class as the one seen in Genealogy of the Holy War, and should thus be named differently than the Dark Magic class found in the GBA games.

When translating Project Naga, bookofholsety took the stance that Radiant Dawn's kanji could be used as a reference for class names.

For example: Although, in Japanese, Scathach's class is Sword Fighter rendered in katakana, he argued the use of kenshi (剣士) in dialogue to refer to Scathach justified translating the class as Myrmidon, as Radiant Dawn did the same. He argued the same point for Deirdre, as dialogue about her refers to her using the kanji miko (巫女), the same kanji Micaiah's class uses in Radiant Dawn. He felt that connection served as strong enough evidence Shaman was meant to be interpreted the same way in both of these instances.

Many also wish to conflate the two classes (Shaman and Light Priestess) because of their similar weapon ranks and function.

All of these are fair points to make; however, recent localization trends by NoA show that these may be faulty lines of reasoning.

For starters, both Heroes and Engage saw the return of FE 4 and 5's unique "Fighter" themed classes, such as the aforementioned Sword Fighter, and rather than translate them in traditional series terms (Myrmidon, Fighter, Archer) they were instead faithful to the katakana and differentiated these classes from those adjacent to it. Notice that Lapis is a Sword Fighter, not a Myrmidon.

What this means is that not only does NoA seem to care about keeping these class names distinct from each other, but it also suggests there are flaws in BoH's claim that usage of RD's kanji in dialogue is a reliable reference for Genealogy's class names. Following FEH and Engage's examples, Ayra, Scathach, Larcei, and Chulainn would most certainly have their class translated as Sword Fighter if an official FE 4 translation were to come out today.

Unless you want to start bending the rules to make Shaman an exception, this would then mean the usage of 巫女 in relation to Deirdre in dialogue is unreliable as well, leaving us with just the standalone katakana rendering of Shaman used in GBA. However, not only does 巫女 fail to make a case as a reliable reference for Shaman for this reason, it also fails because FE 4's manual (included with the game) directly refers to the class using kanji that is notably different than 巫女

Pictured is a page of the manual. Under the entry for Shaman, the kanji Kitoushi (祈祷師) is used, which almost always conveys the idea of a Shaman esc person (witch doctor, healer, etc). Notably different than miko. We believe this to be sufficient evidence to suggest that Shaman in FE 4 was NOT intended to be interpreted the same as its usage in FE 10, and thus that conflating the two is invalid.

Not only that, it didn't exactly sit well with us to give Julia and Deirdre the name of a class that was reserved for Micaiah only, as it would take away from its uniqueness. As for gameplay reasons, we argue that conflating this as part of the "Priestess" group of classes is just as, if not more, confusing than conflating it with Shaman. Fates and SoV both use very functionally different renditions of Priestess, and adding this unpromoted light magic user into the mix would create a situation where three very different classes all have the same name. Localization trends by NoA suggest they don't seem to care super much about this point to begin with, though, as they had no problems showing of Gaiden's quirkyness with restoring the Mercenary > Myrmidon class line. I digress.

At the end of it all, we feel most confident in allowing Deirdre and Julia to be the original Shamans of the series once more. Hell, the fact that this class is later used for dark magic could even be seen as cool in the context of Deirdre and Julia possessing a relation to Loptpus, not to mention other elements of world building around them (Deirdre being raised by a fortuneteller and having access to unique magic and such).

[bigklingy]

This is the same profile as Fast Friends Forever back in 2023, by the way.

He got hung up on those words and didn't bother reading the rest of the sentence.

[bigklingy]

The Sonic Movie 2 packaging was also a dead giveaway. I was like "wait, it says 2 and Shadow debuted in 3. Eh, the logo's still official." But looking at the full packaging I'm like "...yeah definitely bootleg."

Shadow speak to me my boy

What have they done to you

[bigklingy]

Reminds me of this... thing my sister got me as a "souvenir" from overseas once. A bootleg Sonic keychain. And yes, it was missing an eye since she bought it. (She called it the "One-Eyed Sonic") Except that Shadow was official, right? That's worse.

Shadow speak to me my boy

What have they done to you

[bigklingy]

I got Shadow. Right after I finished a section on him in an upcoming video (which I'm really proud of), so that's a good sign!

Share your buddy!

[bigklingy]

so, they didn’t want players killing kids in the new lego star wars, so they made them immune to friendly fire damage, but they didn’t make them invincible, so now speedrunners are doing extended air combos on them to cross large gaps and climb tall structures. this has been dubbed Child Flight

[bigklingy]

Oh sweet Naga, Alear is a national treasure. Also Brandon McInnis is EXTREMELY underrated as Male Alear and deserves way more love. I absolutely would not have loved Alear as much as I did without his performance.

[bigklingy]

Didn't notice the nickname change until the tags pointed it out. Good call! I love that "Ames" is canon now.

"I want MY Sonic, not the WORLD'S Sonic"

From I Love You - Come With Me

(AO3)

There’s no me, anymore. In a way, there’s only Sonic the Hedgehog, and that hedgehog, somehow, isn’t me.

I keep telling myself that I’m zipping around the world with Amy because she needed a break and she wanted to get away from a desk and that all of this is for her, but is that entirely true? I guess it’s a symbiotic situation—it’s not like I’m not enjoying myself—but she needed this more than me... Right? ___

What if when Sonic asks Amy to go with him on an adventure, she says yes? They’ve always been inseparable kindred spirits, but what exactly makes their bond so unique, and where do they make each other stronger?

This is my Sonamy Thesis. This is that story.

Mild Language.

45K Words.

TAGS: romance, emotional hurt/comfort, friendship, action/adventure, angst with a happy ending, learning to love, world travel, best friends, friends to lovers, singing and guitars, exploration of Sonic's psyche, trauma, and experience as a hero, exploration of Amy's trauma and experience as a hero, Sonic the Hedgehog needs a hug, emotional growth, self-actualization, every ounce of potential Sonic and Amy have as a canon relationship (queer platonic and romantic), original characters (for world building), First Person POV, Sonic's POV.

[bigklingy]

Happy Hedgehog Awareness Week!

The British Hedgehog Preservation Society's #HedgehogWeek highlights the problems wild hedgehogs in the UK face and how we can help protect them!

Learn more: https://buff.ly/UwOz0sX

[bigklingy]

This Mii costume is one of the most cursed things to come out of any official Sonic media.

[bigklingy]

THIS.

[bigklingy]

Xane / チェイニー

Xane is a Divine Dragon with a penchant for adopting the guises of others appearing in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem and their respective remakes. Xane is a rare variant of the name Zane, commonly interpreted as descended from the name John. It is possible that the intent was to reference the "John Doe" pseudonym—a false name used primarily in legal situations when someone's identity is unknown or intentionally concealed. Appropriate, considering Xane kept his background vague in Shadow Dragon and adopts the appearances of others. There may also be references to the Christian figure John the Apostle, believed author of the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation, considering that Xane is a Divine Dragon and, in Mystery of the Emblem, exposits about the history of Archanea. The choice to use the variant Xane was likely intended to both add a sense of mysticism and resemble the original Japanese name a bit closer.

Speaking of, in Japanese Xane is called チェイニー (rōmaji: cheinī), officially romanized as Cheine. This name is derived from ロン・チェイニー (rōmaji: ron cheinī), famed American actor and makeup artist Lon Chaney Sr. He was one of the most influential actors of silent film, starting in the 1910s. His technical skill with makeup made him fill the role of disfigured characters like Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame with ease. Because of his incredible ability to change his appearance to suit a wide swath of films, Chaney earned the moniker "The Man of a Thousand Faces." The inspiration for Xane's Imitate ability is obvious.

It is unknown whether the localization team at 8-4 recognized this inspiration or not while working on Shadow Dragon. Regardless, they likely planned to change the name to something rather different. This remake of the series' progenitor entry released in August of 2008 and February of 2009. This coincided with the end of United States Vice President Dick Cheney and a shift in political power in the nation. With both the actor and the former VP's surnames being pronounced the same—even written with the same katakana in Japanese—any attempts to preserve this allusion were likely scrubbed to prevent interpretation of political commentary regarding conditions in the US.

[bigklingy]

The Shinto (and Buddhist) Inspirations Behind the Rods of Hoshido

Fire Emblem Fates added a Hoshidan counterpart to the standard staves used in the series, known in English releases as rods. Appropriate of the Japanese-inspired nation they come from, the original Japanese names of these rods are derived from traditional Japanese culture, primarily related to Shinto practices.

Starting with the category name, the rods are called 祓串 (rōmaji: haraegushi), literally meaning "cleansing/exorcising skewer." A haraegushi is a type of ōnusa (大麻), a sasaki baton with a head of zigzag paper streamers called shide (紙垂). These are used in Shinto purification rituals, which always are performed before any ceremony in Shintoism.

The core set of "festal" rods makes use of a more archaic adjective, signifying a relation to festivals. This seems to aim for an equivalent of what is used for the Japanese name, 祭 (rōmaji: matsuri) "festival." Note that in modern times, this word is more often written 祭り. The Japanese names of these rods follow a theming of the seasonal festivals of Japan, each tied to traditional Shinto practice. The Bloom Festal is 春祭 (rōmaji: harumatsuri) "Spring Festival"; the Sun Festal is 夏祭 (rōmaji: natsumatsuri) "Summer Festival"; the Wane Festal is 秋祭 (rōmaji: akimatsuri) "Autumn Festival"; and the Moon Festal is 冬祭 (rōmaji: fuyumatsuri) "Winter Festival". The English localizations seem to aim to less direct and more thematic words to represent the months. Bloom represents the blossoming plants of spring as opposed to Wane, signifying the dying nature associated with Fall. Sun and Moon would correlate to the Summer and Winter Solstices being the days with the longest day and night, respectively.

While these match the Western preconceptions of what represent these seasons, they are ill-befitting of the actual festivals they were originally named after. For example, the autumn festival is meant to be an event held in thanks for the harvest, rather than the annual receding of nature, and the summer and winter festivals do not necessarily have to land on the solstices and have no association with the sun and moon. In fact, it is thought that all of these events and their accompanying ceremonies were originally meant to be tied to the harvest and the appeasement of spirits of the gods, nature, and mankind.

Great Festal is nearly a literal translation of the rod's Japanese name, 大祭 (rōmaji: ōmatsuri) "Great Festival." This is the older name of a festival known as 例祭 (rōmaji: reisai) "Annual Festival." As the two names suggest, this is the most important festival for a shrine, held once a year. While the date of most major festivals are held around similar times among all shrines of Japan, the annual festival's date is dependent on the kami (god/spirit) enshrined at that location.

Additionally, the randomly-obtained Bamboo Branch has a more specific reference in Japanese. The native language calls this rod 笹飾り (rōmaji: sasakazari) "bamboo ornament/decoration." This references an element of the Tanabata Festival (七夕), occurring on the seventh of July (or traditionally, the seventh month of the lunisolar calendar). The day before, people tie small slips of paper called tanzaku (短冊) to branches of bamboo; upon this one writes their wish. It is said that the wish of someone of good penmanship will have their wish granted, so the wish is typically written as poetry. The wishmaking element of Tanabata likely is why this rod provides a Luck boost to the target.

The Lantern rod, more specifically named ちょうちん (rōmaji: chōchin) "paper lantern" may also relate to Japanese festivals, though it is more ambiguous. To this day, paper lanterns are a common staple of festival decoration, but they have more importance in certain events. One of the main examples is found in the Oban Festival (お盆), traditionally held in honor of ancestral spirits and typically held in August. The festival ends with a ceremony called okuribi (送り火) "sending fire" signifying the sending of visiting spirits back to the realm they came from. The most famous form of okuribi is the Daimonji (大文字), in which the five large fires, each shaped like the kanji 大 (dai; "big, great"), are set on the mountains surrounding Kyoto. However, the form of okuribi used more often involves lighting a candle within a paper lantern and letting it flow down a river. Whether intentional or not, a similar practice is sometimes done with the aforementioned sasakazari.

Even the dedicated joke item, the Dumpling Rod, has an amusing amount of thought behind it. The Japanese name 団子串 (rōmaji: dangokushi) clarifies the food on this staff to not be just any sort of dumplings, but dango: a rice-based confection, traditionally served on a stick. Remember how the Japanese name of the rods means "cleansing skewer"? The joke here is that dangokushi uses the same kanji for skewer found in haraegushi (compare 団子串 to 祓串). That said, the Dumpling Rod also makes reference to an element of Japanese customs. This "weapon" appears in-game with a set of pink, white, and green dango. This is the pattern found in the treat's most popular form, hanami dango. These are tied to the eponymous event of hanami (花見) "flower watching," a tradition in which people (originally the aristocracy, later the samurai as well) enjoy the view of sakura blossoms during the spring. Hanami dango has been an enjoyed accompaniment to the event since the Edo period, with their colors said to represent the blossoms of spring, the remaining snow of winter, and the leaves of mugwort, a plant that sprouts in spring and blossoms in summer. This snack became so emblematic of the hanami experience that 花より団子 (rōmaji: hana yori dango) "dango over flowers" or more figuratively "substance over style" developed into a proverb, serving as a commentary to those who go to hanami for the physical enjoyment of dango rather than the fleeting aesthetics of the cherry blossoms.

The three non-recovery rods—the Silence, Rescue, and Hexing Rods—all have radically different names in Japanese, each with a reference to a different element of the nation's religions. Starting with Silence, the name given in the Japanese release of Fates is 神風招来 (rōmaji: kamikaze shōrai) "invite/summon divine wind." Though we have a negative connotation with this word in the west, the term kamikaze (sometimes also called "kamukaze" or "shinpū") is rooted in both Shinto faith and Japanese history. Within the Nihon Shoki (日本書紀), the second-oldest text of Japanese history and mythology behind the Kojiki, is a passage in which the sun goddess Amaterasu provides an oracle to a princess. Here, she calls the lands of Ise: 神風の伊勢の国 "the divine winds' land of Ise" where she wished to remain. In response, the princess made the area fit to enshrine the goddess.

Leap forward in time to the end of the thirteenth century, and kamikaze became a far greater cultural idea. By 1274, Kublai Khan's China (successor to the Mongol Empire) had already conquered Goryeo (Korea) and wished to further expand their dominion to Japan. Any diplomatic attempts to acquire the island nation as a vassal state in prior years were met with declination and disrespect, spurring on a naval invasion by over twenty-one thousand collective soldiers. The Mongols reached Hakata Bay north of the island of Kyūshū with only easy victories over the Japanese. However, the next day the invaders were gone. It is uncertain if it occurred while the Mongols were already en route to Korea, but both Japanese and Yuan sources claim that a great typhoon struck, dismantling the Mongolian naval fleet. Over thirteen-thousand men were lost, and the Mongols did not return to Japan for nearly a decade. When a second invasion launched in 1281, it played out very similarly, with another powerful typhoon bringing an end to the Mongols' advances. These two typhoons would come to be called the kamikaze, allegedly due to the burgeoning of Buddhism amongst the samurai at the time. It's likely that the name of this rod was chosen due to the silence effect rendering a magic-based unit utterly helpless, not unlike the typhoons dismantling the Mongol's fleet.

Moving on, the Hexing Rod is named in Japanese 禍事罪穢 (rōmaji: magagoto tsumi, kegare) "evil/misfortune, sin, defilement." This is an excerpt from a chant known as 祓詞 rōmaji: haraekotoba) "purification words" always recited during the purification rituals mentioned earlier, in which haraegushi are used. It may also be read outside of that context by those who which to be purified. The prayer invokes the Haraedo-no-Okami (祓戸大神), four gods that were born when Izanagi cleansed himself from Yomi, the land of the dead, after trying to recover his wife Izanami. As such, these gods are those that handle the purification rituals, tasked with ridding mankind of their "misfortune, sun and defilement."

Unsurprisingly, there is a bit of nuance to these three terms. Before the Taishō era (1912-1926), there were two forms of "sin." 天つ罪 (rōmaji: amatsutsumi) "Heavenly Sins" are acts that negatively impact agriculture that were performed by the storm god Susanoo. 国つ罪 (rōmaji: kunitsutsumi) "Earth Sins" are forms of impurity by physical blemishes, immoral sexual acts, use of curses and natural disasters. That last one seems a bit odd to us, but calamities like plague and natural disasters were thought to be a result of mankind's tsumi. "Defilement" refers to a state of uncleanliness that someone reaches from having certain experiences. These experiences, when not just tied to the acts of crime or tsumi, tend to deal with death and the running of blood. These are not necessarily "evil" occurrences, but ones that bring a state considered "unclean." That said, tsumi and kegare are were seen as correlating ideas alongside, again, natural disasters. Interestingly, the word for "misfortune" can refer to disasters, but it doesn't seem that the ideas between magagoto and tensai (天災) are related in this context. In fact, magagoto seems to be the least addressed of the three here.

Lastly, Rescue (as well as the Salvage staff introduced in Fire Emblem Heroes) is instead called 七難即滅 (rōmaji: shichinan sokumetsu) "seven disasters instantly destroyed." Unlike everything else we've looked at today, this is specifically derived from Buddhist practice. The name is an excerpt from the 仁王経 (rōmaji: ninnōgyō), or Humane King Sutra or the Sutra of the Benevolent Kings: 七難即滅 七福即生 (rōmaji: shichinan sokumetsu shichifuku sokushō) "seven disasters instantly destroyed, seven blessings instantly born." The full sutra is meant to bring to attention the inevitability of change and to protect a nation by preserving the teaching of wisdom. This is commonly used in China, Korea and Japan with a desire of protecting a nation and its leadership. The verse even impacted Shinto practices, developing into the 七福神 (rōmaji: shichifukujin) "Seven Lucky Gods." It seems the name for this rod was chosen to relate to the protective element of the sutra, (presumably) whisking an ally away from danger in a similar, yet more flavorful, manner as the Rescue name suggests.