#But I'm someone with skeptical opinions for frontiers

[icycream24]

Tails and Eggman

For the Ask Game, please

Tails ✨

Canon did Tails so dirty 😭💦 he's not a character I'm particularly into, but I do enjoy his setting of being a young genius fox with his self-doubt & insecurities sometimes, and looks up to Sonic for all the reasons. In SA1, he tried to prove himself through various means, at least in Lost World he's still trying his best to help Sonic. (even tho the drama between him & Sonic came out of nowhere, it's not like Sonic looked down on him? 😭) But later on in Forces, Tails only looked pathetic when they kept on enhancing the incecurities into straight up "inability to fight", I get that they're trying to make a very kid friendly story where the concepts of good and evil, hero and sidekick(s) are very clear and simple, but they can definitely do a much better job, such as having Tails stand in a defensive pose, cautious of the phantom-made Chaos before Classic Sonic came? Heck, standing there would be easier for the animators to do as well. If they don't wanna do the characters justice, they might as well skip doing them at all. 🥱

But Tails as himself still has lots of potential! A game character doesn't always have to be top-notch in fighting and saving the day, and I think Tails's abilities can definitely give him lots of advantage in any aspect. It's like an engineer creating all kinds of gadgets and tools and have your creations do all the work for you, you can do fighting/healing/defending/buffing etc... that's the badass part I wanna see from Tails more ✨

Eggman 🥚

Particularly indifferent to Eggman except my thoughts of animating him doing sexy pole-dancing lives rent free in my head 👀💦

He does have a very iconic look tho, helps with inspiring me on art related fields... But let's talk about his character 😅

Despite not being into the movies' portrayal 100%, they did help me gain a better look on Eggman. His motivations for world domination & Eggmanland were established to be linked to his past, developing this twisted mindset of a villain. While 'turning evil due to past events' leans more on the cliche side, it does work in having Eggman became more believable in my head. He got his brain, and his ego that motivates him in wanting to make use of his smarts to the fullest, while also taking revenge on a world that does not stand with his supiority over the rest of them. He's evil & he'll take every opportunity to prove so 💨

Eggman might be the one I enjoy more in Frontiers, even tho I did not get his relationship with Sage. Him taking that giant pistol and shot Sonic to the moon was pretty badass to see, definitely carried much more charm than simply holding out their hands to hold the shield like the other characters. It showed him as someone with ambitious ideas when in comparison.

But still, I don't have that much opinions about Eggman, except that he should lean more into the evil side than the 'relatable' side. Imo, he would not have the "what have I done to you?😭" "I did not ask for this🥺" mindset, he should already know what he's doing & is having fun with stirring up shit when he wants to. He only victimizes himself when he needs to convince ppl to do evil with him. (eg Knuckles being told Sonic was attacking him & was planning to steal emeralds)...and the reason why he hates Sonic so much is not too much on Sonic's motivation to defeat him, but the fact that he actually got defeated. See it as a huge toll on his immense ego.

Also, fans getting the toxic relationship between Eggman and Sage as heartwarming & wholesome is a huge loss. It's straight up ppl getting core values of what makes a family wrong. The effort of trying to appeal to the 'found family' trend is also not enjoyable to watch, almost felt like they have a whole checklist of gimmicks when writing the dialogues. Don't get me wrong, I like Eggman and Sage as their own character. They work together good as well, even when Sage do think themselves as a family deep down. But trying to drive the 'they're a wholesome family!✨✨' mindset into the audience is mockery towards Sage's complicated emotions towards Eggman who did create her, but did not give her validation as a living being, but treat her as a tool, and then the potential manipulation when Eggman did say she was his daughter, straight up. Idk, I wished that ppl see them as family in a skeptical way than actually rooting for their father-daughter dynamic. At this point I can only try convince myself that found family is only a funny meme. 😐

[samueldays]

Plagiarist's Cant, and Plagiarists Can't.

"This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society."

-Claudine Gay, NYT, 2024.

That's four metaphors combined in one sentence: military, fabric, religion, architecture.

"The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech. About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips While drivel gushes from his lips."

-W.H. Auden, 1968, originally about Soviet cant.

The Gay affair (thank you English phraseology) has gotten headlines with Claudine Gay, plagiarism and antisemitism, but my interest in it is more about the entire class of people eagerly telling lies and talking cant. Lying is wrong. Cant is ogrish.

Gay lied, and the Harvard board lied to back her up, and an entire class of allegedly truth-seeking, fact-checking journalists lied some more. Several "professional" people who are well paid to be well informed were revealed as aggressively ignorant and less informed than I was after an hour with Sci-Hub and Google Scholar. I already felt cynical and jaded beforehand, and I nonetheless kept being disappointed by the sheer torrent of lies in the Gay affair.

I say "lies" because the alternative is that they are delusional imbeciles who genuinely believe that this canting midwit is a groundbreaking scholar. Look at her. Look at her and laugh.

Given a NYT column and a last word of sorts, she delivers neither competent workmanlike prose, nor literary excellence, but instead a grab bag of cant and overused metaphor and pompous self-importance.

My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.

She did not bring excellence, nor openness, nor truth, and I'm skeptical about the independence. She is at best spouting cant, at worst lying again. She communicates in emotive connotations, unfitting of a Harvard scholar.

It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution. Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism. Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from the frontier of quantum science to the long-neglected history of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university.

What a lot of blather. "Diversity" in particular is a bait-and-switch word that changes between meaning "More black people" and "Variety of opinions" depending on whether the speaker is engaged in rhetorical attack or defense. The four sentences of this paragraph could be reduced with little loss to the four words "Black. Race. Asian. Black." and in the process constitute evidence that the anxiety about changes on American campus is justified - the campus is becoming race-obsessed to the detriment of everything else. It's race-cant, similar in spirit to plagiarism, and to Orwell's complaint: "his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself."

The plagiarism is not the only problem. Even the broader issue that she writes and talks sloppily is not the only problem. Her papers were bad as scientific papers. Her p-values were absurd, her statistical analysis was confounded, she dropped an inconvenient data point, she failed to distinguish correlation with causation, she asserted overly strong conclusions from tiny sample sizes processed through interpolative models, et cetera. I've got Tumblr mutuals who write better and more factful analysis.

There is nothing inherently wrong with plagiarism as such: for example engineering approaches to the same problem, studies of the same object, or entertainment in the same genre ought to be similar to one another with good reason.

Much like Van Halen's famous "remove the brown M&Ms from the bowl" contract, though, a ban on close plagiarism can serve as a simple and visible test of someone's ability to follow correct procedure. Hence the pun: plagiarists can't. Claudine Gay is a serial plagiarist who sucks at expressing herself, so she copies, and she cants.

[beevean]

I’m a big fan of IDW. I know there are problems with the writing here and there. I know it isn’t a perfect comic, but I think it’s a fun alternate medium to enjoy Sonic in. Plus, comics are a medium where characters can talk more and get more in-depth.

To be honest, I feel like you and your anti-IDW group get too bent up on things. I understand pointing out faults with a series, but sometimes you and your friends go on for so much. It’s causing fights and definitely has gathered mockery online off of tumblr.

I think you all try to articulate your points well, but I also feel you’re all so determined to hate everything in the comics or anything Ian Flynn works on. I’ve read through many of your points. Some are valid and fair, but sometimes it feels like you’re searching for the tiniest nugget to make a stink over. What’s the saying? Making a mountain out of an ant hill? I don’t remember.

I’m writing as one of the most avid IDW Sonic fans around. I hope you don’t get mad at this message, but this endless barrage against these mediums have don’t more harm than good.

I just think that if you hate the comics that much, just please stop reading it. You’re not enjoying it, you’re bothering people (also many if not most of your posts still pop up in the IDW tag), your group is being marked as a ridiculous part of the fandom, and it’s just very sad and draining to see.

That’s all. Thanks for reading.

I feel like you're someone I know. I hope I'm wrong.

I won't read anything after #50, that much I promised to myself. I'm also genuinely sorry that my posts pop up in the main tag - what other tag could I use? Maybe "anti idw"? I can try and replace all my tags and see if they still appear in the page. Again, I apologize for that :(

I know it seems like I'm trying very hard to be angry, but I'm not trying at all. It's just stuff that pops into my brain. What I'm pointing at are (in my opinion, you can disagree) genuine, glaring writing flaws that ruined my previously enjoyable experience, and only got worse as time went on. I care about these writing flaws because I care about Sonic, both the series and the character, and I'm very alienated by the constant praise Flynn gets, praise that got him to be called by SEGA to collaborate on what could be the biggest Sonic game to date

I'm a little skeptical of your claim that "we made a mockery of the fandom" - IDW is nowhere near as relevant outside of the Western Sonic fandom as the games are, and in the Western Sonic fandom it's clearly popular enough that SEGA considers him trustworthy enough to make him work on so many Sonic products: IDW, Frontiers, Origins, Prime, the low-quality enclyclospeedia. People adore the guy, we are a tiny minority. Trust me, non Sonic fans don't need IDW critics to think that Sonic fans are cringy.

Anyway, feel free to enjoy the comic. I have nothing against people who simply like it, and don't use it to bash the games, deliberately misinterpret the other side's position, or worse harass the other side like it has happened here on Tumblr. I'll try to find a better tag so that I will stay away from the main tag, and I apologize for ruining your fun.

And if you're someone I know and I've annoyed you to the point that you can't stand me anymore, feel free to unfollow me, I won't be mad. I understand.