Why I am Afraid of Sonic the Hedgehog.

First, some house keeping.  My old DeviantArt is down and out.  Check out the new one here.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience.  Working on getting all pieces that were on the old page up again.

I haven't been sure what direction I want to take this blog in, so forgive the relative silence. I've decided to bring this par-tay back to its roots though and talk about continuity again. Yes, continuity . My first post on this blog regarded DC's reboot of its universe/multiverse/whatever they feel like.

I had also been talking about the absurd black hole of evil that is Left Behind: The Kids.  I'm sorry to disappoint, but I have to leave that franchise and similar topics alone for a while.  I try to be fun with the subjects that I write about, but dealing with something like Left Behind: The Kids which exists solely to scare kids into being Christians takes away my faith in people and makes me depressed.

Source

I need to focus on lighter things for a while.

Today I'd like to talk about a happier franchise: Sonic The Hedgehog.  Happier, but confusing.  This one I'm definitely intimidated by. I'd love to be more knowledgeable about the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, but I don't really know where to start.  The way I see it, the central hub of Sonic continuity is not the video games, but the Archie Comics series. This is simply because the comic has tried to incorperate every incarnation of Sonic into one narrative.  Obviously the video game series is the original inspiration for the story, but there's also the cartoons: The Advetures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonc The Hedgehog (AKA Sonic SatAM), Sonic Underground*, and Sonic X. None of these incarnations acknowledge each other as far as I know, yet the comic tries to tie them all together. This makes for some interesting anomelies. For example, in Sonic SatAM, Sonic had a love interest named Princess Sally, but since she was a creation of the American cartoon, she didn't appear in the Japenese made games.  In the video games Sonic got a self proclaimed girlfriend named Amy Rose instead.  In the comic both characters exist simultaneously.  Actually, as far as I can tell, every female in the comic is in love with Sonic.  With at least 20 something episodes of each show, and 200 plus comic book issues (not including spin-offs) this is one continuity I don't think I'll figure out soon. But I gotta stop talking now and get into this more at a later date...

*I'm not entirely sure this one is included in the comic.  Seriously, I watched ten minutes of an episode and hated it.  I know very little about it except that Sonic is younger and fights Eggman by joining a terrible rock band.

Publc Service Announcement

 When I was growing up and the Christian culture was around me I remember hearing all the time that pretty muc all non-Christians AKA THE WORLD believed in moral relativity. There was this one "Public Service Announcement" about moral relativity I remember.  It played on the local Christian radio station.  A son was trying to explain to his father that there were no absolutes.  He had learned this in school.  The father did not buy into his son's way of thinking, so the kid decided he would believe a certain wall in their house wasn't real and run through it in order to prove his point.  Of course he runs into the wall and falls down.  Moral: All non-Christians believe in moral relativity.  Boy are they stupid!"   It was also popular to claim that if moral relativity is real, then there is nothing that made Hitler a bad guy. I think far less of the world adheres to moral relativity than these critics would say, at least to the degree of claims like this, and pretty much for the exact faults they mock, especially that Hitler one.

One reason some Christians think the rest of the world believes in moral relativity my be this: when your morality comes from, or is at least attributed to your faith in God, it may be hard to imagine morality coming from another source.  Also, people who aren't fundamentalist Christians tend to have a different morality. Premarital sex, homosexuality, and maybe drinking too are examples of things that many people  don't consider sins, and sometimes Christians interperate this as a conscious rebellion against God. In other words, because a person rejects the strict moral code of the literal Bible, that means they "Just do whatever they want" and "Nothing is wrong", but that's just not true. Most people have a sense of treating others with respect or the golden rule, which is not exclusive to Christianity. This is why Hitler is still a bad guy even if you don't believe in Jesus. He took basic human rights from other people.

A popular argument against the gay rights movement is that activists are not tolerant of the conservative Christian view of homosexuality, but this argument doesn't work for the exact reason that we usually don't buy into moral relativity. Tolerance does, in fact, have limits.   A tolerant view of others cannot tollerate an intolerant oppression.

Here's What I Want From Nintendo for E3

1. I want Nintendo to release the N64 Disk Drive.  Add on for an old system from the 90's?  Why, of course, but do you realize how long I spent waiting for that thing to come out when I was a kid?  Me neither.  It was from when the N64 came out to whenever I heard that the N64DD wasn't coming out, which might have been a year after I had a Gamecube.  I wasn't the most informed person.

I distinctly remember talking with my dad about this.  Oh parents, you were so disappointed in me, always playing games instead of building things with hammers or whatever you wanted me to do.  I tried so hard to validate my hobby in your eyes.  That day I said to my dad "By the way, did you know there's a game coming out for the N64DD that will let you make your own games?" (I was referring to Mario Artist: Game Maker.)  "Neat." he said.  Hooray!  But I never got to use an N64DD, did I Nintendo? And now my parents don't talk to me.  Because of that.  Nintendo, just release it here.  I don't care if current consoles are more powerful.  Just let me have this, OK?

2. I want Nintendo to release Ura Zelda, the proposed expansion for Ocarina of Time.  "But... Master Quest?" Nintendo suggests.  "No!"  I say.  "That is not Ura Zelda.  Ura was meant to have more features than different layouts for dungeons and temples.  While you're at it, while we're having an N64DD marathon, why not just release Ocarina of Time as it would have been if it had been a game for the N64DD as it was originally intended to be.  I know you probably never finished that version or even came close.  What do you think I'm paying you to do?

3. I want Nintendo to go back in time and redo Super Mario's 25th anniversary.  This time don't embarrass yourselves.  Don't just release Super Mario All-Stars ON A WII DISK and a version of Super Mario Bros on the virtual console in which all the coin blocks say "25".  Those are terrible, terrible ideas.  I wouldn't have minded if you updated Super Mario All-Stars to have 3D graphics like that stage in Super Smash Bros Brawl that scrolls through World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros.  Graphics aren't everything, but I do think that would be cool.  Don't stop there though.  Do other things too.  Things that I can play, not stupid collectables.  I hate stupid collectables.  I didn't become a gamer to look at things on my shelf.  I became a gamer to look at things on my television.

The Pentecost Post

When I was living with the missionaries in Northern Ireland, we would have prayer meetings during which most of the thirty or so people on site would speak in tongues.  If you've never been to a church that does this, speaking in tongues sounds like people saying gibberish.  The idea, though, is that it is a sort of spiritual language granted by God.  Of course there are those who object to this idea and say it's something else, but that's not as important to me as the fact that the experience exists, and I would like to experience it but I haven't.  I was one of the only people who didn't speak in tongues at these meetings.  At the time, and despite what my friends told me, I assumed I wasn't holy enough, but there are plenty of spiritual leaders (I mean the good kind) who don't speak in tongues, so maybe that's not it.

Now that I go to a secular school *play dramatic music here* I have friends with a wider range of beliefs.  some of my friends say they can see your aura, which I guess is kind of like a halo around people that can be different colors.  As you can probably guess, I can't experience this either.  Whenever I find myself in a conversation about this it reminds me of not being able to speak in tongues at the prayer meeting.  I feel like there's no spiritual side to me, like I'm a robot or evil or something.  People don't tell me this.  I just think it.

I've become more skeptical than I care to be.  Skepticism is like the doppelganger of curiosity.  They both involve asking questions, but a skeptical question seeks to prove wrong, while curiosity seeks out new knowledge.  Curiosity doesn't mean believing everything you're told, but understanding and taking joy from the idea that you don't know everything yet.  Why don't I experience spiritual things?  Is it too much skepticism?  I don't know.

Fringe 4x21 Brave New World

Doesn't Feel Like a Finale.
The one thing I kept thinking was "Why is this a season finale?" The previous episode, Worlds Apart" concluded with the Fringe division preventing the end of both Universes. Now David Robert Jones is back with a seemingly unrelated plan to unleash nanobots that kill people from the inside.  Well that's great and all but what has that got to do with the multiverse? All Fringe season finales have had to do with the Fringe multiverse.  Season one's finale, "There's More Than One of Everything", concluded with the alternate Universe revealed on screen. Season 2's finale, "Over There Parts One an Two" featured all the main protagonists crossing over the alternate universe. By far the end of season three was the most climactic.  The final four or so episodes were so apocalyptic. There was a series of spots asking "Where Will You Be?" citing lines from previous episodes having to do wit the apocalypse/ universal collapse/ history eraser button/ what have you. But this time around, I don't know. I don't doubt that here starts another potentially universe eradicating plot, but it seems like last week's episode should have been the finale, not this and tomorrow's "Brave New World Part 2". It's like we already saw the climax.  Now things are relatively calm but we are going to slowly build up to the series finale. Don't get me wrong. "Brave New World Part One" featured the return of Leonard Nimoy as Walter's former partner, William Bell, his reveal as him as the mastermind behind David Robert Jones, and an orbital death ray destroying a skyscraper, so stuff did happen, but we don't know how this is going to end the world on a cosmic level and, yeah, that's how high the stakes should be when we're dealing with Fringe.

Spock?  Hey, do the thing.
So one of the main gimmicks of this season has been discovering the difference between before and after Season three's reality warping finale. This seemed a more prevalent element toward the start of the season, concluding with Peter's cosmic resurrection at the end of 4x04 "Subject 9" (Look at his position when he's hooked up to the machine and tell me that isn't an allusion to Christ.) I actually kind of forgot about it for a while, but here's a huge difference in Season 4's timeline that we saw in last weeks episode: as mentioned above, William Bell is still just fake dead, not encased in amber suspended animation deadish. And he's the bad guy again. Just like we thought he was the bad guy originally but then he redeemed himself / reenacted Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan.  Is he going to turn out to be the good intentioned misunderstood character again?  I'll be disappointed if we're playing that game again. It seemed like Lost, also a J. J. Abrams creation, played that game a lot, featuring characters that seemingly changed alliances on a weekly basis (see: John Locke)

Footnote on Astrid.
Also Astrid Fransworth was shot and probably dies in Walter's arms at the end of the episode. I'm just saying you better bring her back because she was my favorite character.  I know this is Fringe and there's time travel and alternate realities and stuff, but I would miss this version of Astrid if she is gone.

Footnote on Cool Death.
 Hey did you notice how David Robert Jones died at the end, He had his face half eaten by nanobots, kind of like how he was (as well as his face) cut in two when a gate between dimensions was closed while he was going through it. Neat huh?

Reflections on Fringe as Season Four Comes to an End

This post is going to have spoilers for Fringe, mostly because I talk about the end of season one and the latest two episodes, "Letters of Transit" and "Worlds Apart"

So every year since season two Fringe has had an episode toward the end of each season that temporarily changes the show's format. The first one, "Brown Betty" (2x20), placed the characters in a classic detective story. The next year "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" (3x19) used cell shaded animation instead of live action for most of its scenes. Oddly enough, these episodes exist in the show's regular continuity and events that take place in them move the story forward.  In "Brown Betty" the detective story was told by mad scientist, Walter Bishop in an attempt to entertain a child.  Though fictional, the story expressed the emotions Walter felt at that time in the show.  The cell shaded scenes in "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" occured when Walter and son, Peter Bishop traveled through other main character Olivia Dunham's subconscious. Because apparently her mind is a cartoon. Also there were zombies.

Not From that episode.

This year's format changing episode, "Letters of Transit" (4x20), starts us with a text crawl about the story of the Observers coming back from a future time to take over the present day. This is all new to us. We've met time travelers known as Observers before but only as neutral spectators who act solely to repair the natural flow of history.

The previous episode is set in present day and the Observers are not mentioned, so when the action of this episode starts us in an Observer run 2035, it's jarring to say the least. The episode plays out like a work of dystopian fiction. There's even a new title sequence to celebrate. Fringe's title sequences usually feature x-ray images of sciencey things like frogs, flowers, human hands, and skulls surrounded by sciencefictiony words like "telepathy" and "time paradox". There were six different intros before this one. Most feature the same content but are colored differently depending on what universe (There's more than one in Fringe) and time the episode takes place in. This new episode feature images of masses of people enclosed in a prison while words like "freedom" and "individuality" flash by. I think this is effective because, while in the normal intros most of the images are real world elements and the words that appear are fantasies (or "fringe science"), in the episode imprisonment has become the everyday reality, and concepts like freedom has become fantasy.

"Letters of Transit" ends without resolving what brought the world to this point and the episode that follows, "Worlds Apart" (4x20) starts us off in the present day again without explanation or acknowledgement.

Fringe tells the story of two parallel universes that are both at risk of being destroyed. This main plot point is revealed only at the end of season one though, so while the events of season one build up to this reveal, at first the episodes seem to be stand alone science fiction mysteries. The show has been compared to X-Files because of this. As the show continued past season one, the writers tried to hold on to that episodic formula of a different case each week, and just relate it to the overarching plot somehow. Sometimes the weekly plot will actually be caused by or move the main storyline, but it seems that usually the connection is only in theme. For example, season four starts with a string of weekly cases after a main character is erased from existence. We see how the other characters' lives turned out without this person in their history, similar to It's a Wonderful Life. Each of the weekly cases have a theme about loneliness or the idea that something is missing, things the main characters were experiencing. After a while of watching these episodes you start to notice a pattern:

Something crazy and bad happens --> title sequence --> "What is going on?" --> Differenter crazy and bad thing happens --> Our heroes start to figure things out --> Antagonist's motivation probably involves a lost love --> Obvious connection to their own lives -->   Third crazy and bad thing almost happens --> Good guys win instead

I love Fringe. It is one of the only current shows I watch that is not a cartoon, but it could be a lot better if THEY did two things:

One: Drop the weekly cases and stick to the main plot. In "Worlds Apart" we were treated to a plot that involved the possible immediate destruction of both main universes and one of the main antagonists of the series was involved. And it was awesome!

Two: Those annual strange episodes should really be the model for the regular episodes. I'm not saying Fringe should change genre every episode, but these are the most fun episodes, not in a stupid fun way but in a creative fun way.

It boils down to this: When it comes to science fiction, Go there. The premise of Fringe is bizarre on paper. The writing should reflect and embrace that. But we know why the writers aren't doing this, right? Networks like Fox hate for shows to stray far from generic mainstream. The goal is to get everyone ever to watch their commercials. Incidentally, did you know if you try to watch an episode on Fox's website you have to sit through five or six two minute long commercial breaks, witness ungodly banner ads, and get punished with MOAR commercials for rewinding? Yeah.
Also, Fox almost didn't renew Fringe for next year, which would have ended the series on a cliffhanger. But at this point the show has been granted a fifth and final season which will bring its total episode count to 100. I'm okay with this solution. I'm not the kind of person that needs my favorite shows to go on forever, but I think it's the perfect opportunity for Fringe to pull out all stops, and if the last two episodes are any indication, there are only good things to come.

The first part of Fringe's two part season finale, "Brave New World" airs on Friday.  Fringe's Season Finales are usually good, fun and involve lots of multiversey and spacetimey stuff

The Adventurers of Young Blake Parker: Ghost Hunter (6 of 6)

This is it!  Page the Last of my odd little adventure that I drew for Trees and Hill's anthology Shelter. Now I want to get to uploading new comics here, and I still have a few pieces from past lives to post so the comics are not over.  Comics will never be over.

If you're reading and enjoying, how about following.  You can Follow me here, on my Deviant Art or my Facebook page.

I've given every page of this story one label

Transcript.

Panel 1. I became scared that the devil would try to steal my soul while I was trapped there.

Panel 2. From then on, I feared my closet was a portal to Hell.

Panel 3. Not all spirits are evil though.  I believed angels and the good ghost could appear in the mirror.

Panel 4. This was scary to, but the welcome kind, like when you're the seeker in hide n' seek and you wonder if and when someone will jump out and scare you.

Panel 5. My cousins laughed at me because they had just been playing a game. They didn't believe in ghosts. I was alone.

Panel 6. By Blake Parker

The End?