#OLD acorn

[hoodedjelly]

i like these silly fellas lalalalaaa

[lateralxyz]

they dont like eachother

[seventeendeer]

my lifelong special interest in sonic the hedgehog has both a very sincere side (those little animal characters are so cute! these games are fun! yay bright colors and the power of friendship!) and a side I can only describe as "morbid fascination with all the ways a long-running franchise can try to do a million different things and none of them are good or right or nourishing to the human spirit"

today, I would like to take you all on a special journey through the latter !

did you know that, at a conservative estimate, there have been attempts to create a recurring love interest for the blue man himself no less than FIVE SEPARATE TIMES. MORE IF YOU COUNT THE ONES THAT WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO LAST

below is Madonna (left) and Breezie (right). Madonna was a damsel in distress type character Sonic would've been saving in an early draft of the OG 1991 game. Breezie was a temporary love interest in the 90's cartoon, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, who seems to be inspired by the scrapped Madonna concept.

another scrapped love interest was Tiara Boobowski, who was at one point in development going to be a playable character in Sonic X-treme, a game intended for release in the 90's, though it never materialized. it seems her story went through a few different iterations before development ceased. she has the dubious honor of being the first "princess" character created for the purpose of being Sonic's love interest, which would be revisited at least two more times in other contexts.

the first love interest to stick around for a while was Princess Sally Acorn, developed from the squirrel critter design in the early games into a major supporting character in the 90's cartoon Sonic SatAM (left), then kept around in various iterations in the comic book spin-off series published by Archie Comics (middle + right) until the series' end in the mid-10's. she was in an on-and-off relationship with Sonic over those decades, for better or for worse, and they had by far the longest running romance arc out of all of Sonic's love interests to date. after suffering every romantic melodrama plotline imaginable, she was unceremoniously booted from the franchise when the rights to Sonic comic books were moved over to IDW Publishing. rest in peace, Sally, you didn't deserve any of that. at the very least for five minutes towards the end, she stopped dating Sonic and it was implied she started dating her long-time gal pal, Nicole, so she had that going for her for a little bit. counting our blessings

speaking of romantic melodrama, the Archie comics also gave Sonic a temporary love interest in Mina Mongoose because they wanted to write in a love triangle. there was a "main characters all grown up and starting nuclear families" future story at one point where they married Mina off to Tails instead, which somehow felt deeply cruel to both Mina and Tails. "hand-me-down love interest" is a bad, bad vibe for everyone involved

a few years on, in the mid 00's, the games were having their own weird little time giving Sonic a short-lived romance arc with new addition to the cast, Princess Elise the Third, who only showed up in the game Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and managed to lay one singular smooch on Sonic's corpse to bring him back from the dead, disney style, before she was banished from the franchise due to a monumental amount of backlash (against both her character and the game as a whole). I'm beaming hostile psychic waves into sega's headquarters until they bring her back with better writing and none of that stupid shit. they did it with Silver, they have no excuse

and of course we finally have the one. the only. the most persistent girly of all time who's been trying to marry Sonic since 1993 and is still truckin' on in the year of our lord 2025 even though he's slippery as an eel and he "don't wanna" and there's kind of an uncomfortable age difference and reciprocated romance has over time become more or less outlawed by Sega because it never really pans out for them for some inexplicable mysterious reason. everybody's favorite hyper violent child psychic AMY ROSE !!!!

great character!! has always had so much potential to do her own cool thing if only they'd let her!! if they don't drop the stupid "kinda love interest, kinda not" aspect of her character soon, I'm going to start CRYING BLOOD!! FREE HER <3

anyway honorary mention also goes to Blaze the Cat (left, game continuity, still active), Bunnie Rabbot (center, Sonic SatAM + Archie comics, goners with the Archie series cancellation) and Fiona Fox (right, Archie comics, also goners, same deal), who, while not introduced as love interests, have all been put into some kind of romantic context with Sonic at one point or another just because

(and also while not really relevant to the topic at hand, I would be remiss not to give a special shout-out to the multitude of male characters who were most likely never intended to have any romantic connection to Sonic, but because this series is shonen anime inspired and the rivalries get crazy, our boy still has to hear shit like this on the regular)

and like, you know I've probably forgotten some more girlies out there, too. Sonic the Hedgehog has been pelted with potential romance arcs since the day he was created, and I'm sure there are more out there lost to time/my shoddy memory.

and it's just ... so profoundly morbidly funny to me. unstoppable force (heteronormativity) VS immovable object (misogyny). countless futile attempts to convince kids across the world that a cool guy like Sonic TOTALLY GETS GIRLS, DAMN IT, HE IS FULFILLING HIS HETEROSEXUALITY QUOTA, WE PROMISE, combined with this utter disinterest in sufficiently developing female characters who can effectively fill that role. even Sally Acorn, who was put through hell in the spin-off comics for DECADES serving as the designated narrative romantic punching bag, would eventually go gentle into that good night without fanfare because porting her into a new continuity would just be so much worrrrrk ughhh she's not even Sonic's girlfriend anymore so whateverrrrr

though as much as a massive L as this is for women, at the very least these poor girls are taking the obligatory main character romantic subplot down with them. taking one for the team here. Sonic is so fast and so smooth, those cringey romance plots just slide right off the wind screen of his character and I at least love that part. I love that it never works out and our protagonist remains utterly unpairable. and I hope nothing ever sticks. and I hope the current staff continue to get better at writing female characters just for the sake of having some cool girls around who are interesting in their own right. and may a thousand more cynical, sexist, half-assed attempts to awkwardly shoehorn romance into stories where it doesn't belong wither and die just as spectacularly, booyah

[blueberry-chick]

Heartbeats~ (*/ω＼*)

[navii-blaze]

M37yl Sally

[gbiechele]

Tiny Resident

Asahi Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4 Sony A7

[rapidhighway]

do i need to say anything

[galacticghoste]

Yeah I kinda already celebrated being on here for a year but that was back in july so yeah XD

You can find these under this art tag GGhosteArt

I think the biggest change that happend this year would have to be how i would grow an intrest for lighting and wanting to spend more time on a drawing.

I can say that my lighting has improved which I'm happy with

So has my understanding of sonic characters in my style

[radiodormouse]

The Freedom Fighters got their asses beat.

[hoodedjelly]

art trade i did with @talkativewreck (the designs are also his)

also not art trade related i just wanted to post these

[sunnibits]

went to fanexpo today and predictably caved and bought Sting…. I just had to complete the boyfriends set 🍂🍁

[pokelbelysshadowobsession]

Shadow obsession showing a bit lmao

Everything before like 2023 is getting grouped together whether it fits or NOT.

Blah blah

Because the quality might be bad, but my spirits are…less

‼️Review the terms of my blog page aka art usage—do NOT repost(STEAL.)⚠️

[flagellant]

The more I think about Wildmender the more I grow invested in it. It's a fascinating interpretation of terra nil and solarpunk since so often the genre is fundamentally rooted in settler-colonialist philosophy, and even games which are intended to be the opposite of that--terra nil comes to mind as the obvious one--just end up actually revealing a different side of the factorio problem, because terra nil is an incredible impersonal restoration of ecological systems. Terra Nil acknowledges climate destruction on a global catastrophic scale and it accepts the responsibility to fix that, but it isn't shown as a human act, nor does it really allow itself the realism of just how terrifyingly impossible the task is to try and literally fix the entire world. Its game structure is supposed to be the anti-factorio but its puzzle structures focusing on efficiency and robotic engineering patterns of rewilding end up feeling more like a dialogue than an inversion. It's trying to say that the idea of humanity as fundamentally destructive is wrong while it doesn't actually ever address the human element.

And then there's fucking Wildmender. A game where you are a single human child in a world of endless wasteland and death, where the only other things are ghosts who remember a halcyon era and the hubris that ended it, wraiths which are consumed by their own greed and destruction of the land for their cursed immortality, and a couple god statues. The entire map is just ceaseless grief, filled with the literal dessicated remains of all the biodiversity that came before the countless disasters. And it's a big fucking map.

And then...the game gives you a shovel and a sickle and a mirror that shows the wraiths what twisted reflections they've become.

And the game says, "The entire world is waiting to be better, and the only way to do that is by doing it yourself, long and hard and hopeless as it seems."

I cannot emphasize enough how overwhelming the task you're handed. There is not a single speck of life left in the world. You are given a shovel and a water bottle and just...expected to do something about it. To look at the literal endless wastes and think you can heal it.

This is what Wildmender cherishes that Terra Nil denies: This is an impossible task for you alone. But it has to be done...and you can actually do it. The way you can turn sand into soil and dig irrigation channels is beautiful. Every single scrap of land that you reclaim is something you had to do on purpose. You had to do it yourself. You had to actively choose how to do it.

And the game makes the reward of even just getting a bit more water into the sand feel like victory. Your starting oasis turns from soil into lush and beautiful meadows--sure, technically instantaneously by doing magic on a specific type of plant. But it took me 4-5 hours before I got there. You have to travel so far into the desert to learn how to grow grass again, and then you realize that this endless hostile wasteland is a fraction of the map you're given. And you look at this sudden profusion of meadowy grassland surrounding your spring and despite how sudden it feels you remember how big the world is. You made more progress in a minute than you did in 5 hours and it's not even a speck on the map. How the fuck is this gonna happen?

And the answer is by accepting that it's going to take a long fucking time and a lot of hard work.

That's how it's gonna happen. Get to work.

[chewyhanniebug]

2021 -> 2025

[rhymeswithfart]

Hello my friends!

I am Ahmed from Gaza 🇵🇸🍉

Asking for help is not easy. Ask for a small donation of€20 or€25 from each person...

I need your help, if you can donate to save my life and the life of my family. My donation link is in my bio.

Every donation, even if small, will make a big difference in my life.

Help me and my family 🇵🇸😍

https://gofund.me/dd544a0e

Has a clean reverse image search, very low on funds!

https://gofund.me/395dfbcf

I hope this will help reach more eyes: I'll add images to add more tags

[beepboopappreciation]

Omg I forgot to post the "finished" computer sketches from a few days ago!

Also some bonus tech related sketches :]