The '00s 'minimal' layout

UM OK SO??

1. parasites are common knowledge??? despite being generally hated, they’re a normalized enough thing to be like… a conversational topic???
in the main game, people always seemed sort of baffled to see them; i’d thought their, uh… mainstream-ness, was something more akin to that of cryptids. people seem to know OF them and believe that they exist or used to exist, but coming across one in modern society probably wasn’t going to happen. do you just learn about parasites in school??? eliza SAYS they “don’t talk about her in the history books” and i’d thought sekhmet had a lot to do with keeping her actions hush-hush since they evidently CAUSED the parasite stigma, but maybe this is par the course for a biology class or something…

2. where has carol been, or who has she known, that would give her this view on parasites???
this implies she’s knowledgeable about about them, but if you do learn about them in school, or even just through general conversational word-of-mouth stuff, you’re going to inherit that stigma. we know parasites aren’t very common any more, so where has carol learned… WHAT has she learned about them to make her love them so? i mean don’t get me wrong, she does strike me as the type to love any kind of creature, but she’s got to know more about them than just the negative views stemming from soul contamination, and killing the host when they leave, and whatever else people hate them for; but i feel like parasites being presented in a positive light... isn’t exactly something you can just find anywhere.
filia was pretty nonchalant about it too, for that matter. she shows some bias, sure, but it’s not strong at all. maybe there’s just actually a lot of parasite info out there and people generally just decide their shtick is a Bad Thing, or maybe the facts gets conflated with superstition from alleged “old folks”. who knows.

a lot of the skullgirls lore is really fucked up and all of it is completely whack; but for everything it is and tends toward tonally, one of the best and most bizzare parts of its canon is that the laboratory whose designation was researching and outfitting people with whacked-out bioweaponry to combat supernatural terrors decided to go renegade--not to do some kind of nefarious shit as one would usually expect from this kind of facility-- but because they wanted to instead use that technology to help people. so as a result they literally just became this whole found family of scientists and once-battered-now-rebuilt dudes and fucked up war-orphaned kids with freaky modifications to help them with their disabilities.  

sometimes they all just kind of hang out and watch cartoons together.

one of the scientists is a shark and there’s and some literal brought-to-life cartoons in there too but honestly in this game thats a minor point    

god ok i guess it’s a good thing i didn’t delete the draft for this. 

i’m gonna build this up and then proceed to disprove it let’s go

———-

so anyway this.

i’ve long held that “the even greater monster that binds [the bearer of the skull heart] to its will” marie speaks of in r-fortune’s story is just the Mother, but that is a whole separate thing and a whole other post i’ll make explaining/supporting more in-depth, since i’m realizing i don’t think i ever talked about it on here. i DO still stand by this part.

springboarding off that, it’s not marie who’s recognizing samson here, but the Mother–same as she did with “the crimson scourge” at the end of eliza’s story mode. {possible evidence for this would have been the sudden huge shift in her speech patterns showing it wasn’t quite “marie” speaking. even samson found it weird.}
the fact that her reaction is one of apprehension and… almost fear? says me that samson fucked her up in the past.

so, take 1; samson said he’s fought skullgirls on multiple occasions; the Mother could merely have recognized him from past skullgirl battles.

take 2, the kicker: the mother recognized him from THAT past battle. eliza’s the only other one she had a reaction to; it’d make sense someone affiliated with that event, and more likely with eliza herself, would also stand out. 

we know samson has… SOME kind of complicated relationship/involvement with neferu,  i was going to take this somewhere in the direction of them being on the same side and conquering shit together until: there was some sort of backstabbing between them, or, samson realized neferu’s goals were really fucked up and decided to go against her before shit got too bad. both of these could easily involve getting delilah killed in the process.

but like. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

anyway i decided all of this is not true because:

1. the skull heart had absolutely nothing of interest to say to samson in filia’s story.
2. this is still…marie. in eliza’s story, the skull heart didn’t flip out about neferu until marie was defeated and it was just the heart on its own.
3. she recognizes him as “the dog” and not samson. if you want to be obtuse you could defend this as it still being like….filtered through marie instead of just the heart’s knowledge, but this is already really obtuse so. no
4. she recognizes filia as well. …maybe? she doesn’t actually take any particular note of filia until samson shows up. this one’s kind of a wildcard because i’ve no clue why they’d both be relevant with the context of eachother

it’s just entirely simpler and more likely that it was really Just Marie recognizing them from some event we don’t know about [THANKS FOR YET ANOTHER LOOSE PLOT THREAD GUYS]. filia and dog had been together for a year at that point, and though we don’t know marie’s whereabouts during that time, with the way sg characters paths tend to crisscross all over the place, i wouldn’t be surprised if marie did see them somewhere before.

hell, who knows, maybe the fact that marie spared them points to them having done something good for her in the past.

understand that i mean this in only the loosest and jokiest of ways but boy i sure have been thinking about it. manifesting.

i wouldn't really call this "obscure" or "videogame history", you just had to have been hanging around in a somewhat specific part of the internet in like 2008.

before i get to that though the first thing you need to know and understand is that the sonic franchise has approximately 8347383296 stupid insane sega-mandated rules and strings about what the sonic team is and is not allowed to do with character interactions and portrayals in accordance with sega's Brand:tm: or whatever. for the purposes of this post the only one that's relevant is that characters from the "classic" sonic games are not allowed exist alongside characters from the "modern" sonic games, and vice versa.
this too needs a bit of explanation if you're not familiar with sonic- the classic/modern distinction isn't exactly about the age of the game. in a way it did start as that, but functionally the difference between classic and modern nowadays is.... which character design is used for sonic the hedgehog himself. the oldest original games for the genesis and saturn had one look, and when sonic adventure on the dreamcast came out in 1998 they updated his design a bit to fit the jump to 3d better. that's what "started" the "modern" era, but classic-style game are still being made. hell, the most recent release just a few months ago was a "classic" sonic game [and the most recent modern game was in 2022].
the IDW line of official sonic comics that started in 2018 also delineates the two; the bulk of them take place for the modern style, but every now and then they have a bonus side series or something for the classic style too, and they generally do these specifically to use characters that they can't use in the usual 'modern' series.

now, classic has gone through a few different iterations of what it's supposed to "be" in relation to modern and sega keeps fucking changing and redacting it. before there was a whole big divide about it, it seems it was just supposed to be The Stuff That Happened First. then they had a whole phase where classic was a separate continuity than modern and sometimes the two coexisted or crossed over. and sometimes they were... really vague about what it was? while still actively crossing them over? but anyway the current trend seems to be that it's just that it's the same timeline in the past again. it's all really dumb and annoying and it makes the aforementioned character separation+reasoning for it really confusing. but we're moving on now.

so. that brings us to the famed Super Mario Bros Z.

it's... well i mean it's 2008 crossover videogame battle sprite animation. i don't really know how to explain the landscape of that to the uninitiated, but there's a clip of it a bit further down so you can get a taste. [warning for flashing lights, and it's a bit loud. it also kind of showcases the all the good bad and ugly of the era, but that's all important context here. sound on.]

anyway this series was Pretty Fucking Popular, and for good reason. it was the cream of the crop in terms of action, writing, animation, and really just overall Effort. there were a LOT of people doing this kind of thing back in the 'aughts, and pretty much nobody was doing it better than this guy. to give you an idea the kind of earth-shattering impact this series could have on the 14-year-old mind: i can count on one hand the number of times in my life i've pulled all-nighters. the first time i ever did this? was when i discovered this series. i was at a friend's house having a sleepover and i wound up simply not sleeping because i was SO gripped by it and stayed up the entire night watching it.

anyway, naturally your cool crossover videogame anime fight series has to have its host of crazy villains; smbz has a bunch of random ass picks, as is to be expected for this kind of thing; the axem rangers from smrpg [souped up on custom megaman x sprite bodies, as one does], a koopatrol from paper mario, you get it. very clearly just the creator picking guys from his fave games who he liked and/or thought had potential. and king of all of them, the biggest bad of the series, the guy who showed up and annihilated the previous reigning villains in a single scene, the brutal, the unrelenting,: mecha sonic.

i like. cannot overstate enough that smbz is more or less the sole reason that anybody has ever cared about mecha sonic at all, let alone considered themselves a fan of the character. i cannot overstate enough that this series singlehandedly defined mecha sonic for basically everyone, for all time. it took him from being a single "generally cool but ultimately pretty forgettable" kind of final boss battle, to a niche fan favorite with a dedicated cult following. which maybe in the grand scheme of things, isn't the most prestigious position to hold, but what it does mean is he's secured a spot in basically any dedicated sonic fanwork, and anything he appears in you can bet your ass his portrayal will very clearly trace back or pay homage to smbz. but that's whatever right? that's small potatoes? fans will be fans and pass around their favorite interpretations that other fans have made, especially when there's no real canon for the character otherwise.

well, the thing in this case is that it eventually also secured him a spot in the official fucking sonic the hedgehog comics, which also, likewise, make sure to leave their own little nod to smbz. just so that everyone's clear about why this guy ever got any focus at all.

so this is a page from scrapnik island, a 2023 standalone miniseries featuring mecha sonic as its star. obviously, they've done a lot of work here, since he hadn't been officially featured literally anywhere else besides his original appearance in 1994 as a single boss fight, but here's the thing. this isn't a classic-styled series. this very firmly a modern series, using sonic's modern design, and even featuring mecha sonic right alongside other modern-exclusive characters like mecha knuckles from one of the gba games, and an e-100 series robot from sonic adventure [you know, expressly noted above as the first 'modern' game].

for some reason, this guy and this guy alone has been allowed to bridge the gap between classic and modern. it's anyone's guess as to why sega allowed this, i certainly have my own speculation, but that's not really important or the point here. the point is that- especially given the new reclassification of classic as just an older point in modern the timeline- he could very well be the start of sega finally loosening their grip about the "classic and modern can't mix" rule that they've clung to for like... over a decade at this point i think. and it's not even just me as a fan from an outside perspective who's shocked about this! the lead writer for the comics himself [scrapnik was done by a backup team] has even stated they did things in scrapnik he thought would never be allowed! and to be fair he did make this statement in a general sense but like he was almost definitely talking about the series mandates here [he has notably fought with sega and refused to write over some of their other mandates], there's nothing else about scrapnik that's really that out there and he's also said he would have never thought to try to use this guy.

beyond that though, the point is that someone on comics team [who it should be noted are basically all sonic superfans from the early days, as are like, the majority of the people working on sonic these days] cared enough about mecha sonic specifically to go out there and ask to make a comic about him. there is really no shortage of one-off forgotten guys from across the sonic series they could have pulled to do a random cool miniseries about and a lot of them would have been a hell of a lot of an easier pitch than mecha sonic. hell, they could have just had sigma or mecha knuckles and like some other rando modern 'bot without any needing to try to skirt any mandates. but they wanted mecha sonic for some reason. and the reason is a 2008 newgrounds flash animation series that rocked so much ass it cemented him in our hearts forever.

me and a friend ended up actually rewatching some smbz fights after that post yesterday and frankly. a lot of it still really holds up. like he is an actual animation student so he knows his shit about how stuff like this works and even he was like "yeah some of this is still really unique; i honestly cannot think of another anime that attempts and largely succeeds in having an earnest fight between fourteen different characters". i DON'T know animation stuff that well but like the impact and timing on all the hits still feels great and a lot of these fights have a LOT of elements that's all just really impressive to keep track of.

it is also crazy JUST how influential this still is for mecha as a character. in one of the fights he has the exchange "how could you do this to them!? you're a monster!" "a monster? i'm not a monster. i am a GOD." and jesus christ if that isn't exactly how i've been writing him here as well. i am not intentionally writing smbz mecha! what i was doing here is trying to read into his portrayal in scrapnik and then reverse-engineer that into an interesting contrast for what he might have been like pre-fall. but it still wound up being like 85% smbz mecha, and, honestly, i think that's by design.

like, don't get me wrong, scrapnik mecha is absolutely his own guy and the writers' own take on a character who hadn't been seen in nearly 30 years+also otherwise wasn't really a character before, but...

i think you would be hard-pressed to deny that there are facets of his portrayal that weren't directly influenced by smbz. like this isn't an intentional reference. but it's no coincidence the writer felt this is something he'd do. he literally just has THAT much of a presence in this damn ass flash series you literally cannot get away from it.

by the by i think the main difference between smbz and my own characterization of eggman-era mecha is that i spec far more into his vanity, while smbz mecha is just like, exceedingly cruel. don't get me wrong mine is also very cruel and smbz is also very vain, but there's like... an interesting note about how each of them work wrt to like... efficiency?

smbz mecha sinks an entire island because he delights in the sheer suffering and death toll he can inflict. my mecha will gladly kill anyone in his way, but he's also not going to go out of his way for excessive destruction if there's nothing in it for him or it isn't otherwise in service to the goal. on the flipside, smbz mecha still thinks he's better than everyone else, but he also doesn't do a lot of needless banter about it and in fact gets pretty pissed whenever people start drawing things out because he prefers his actions to make his point for him. my mecha looooooves to take any opportuntiy to go on and on about how awesome and great and cool and smart he is bc he's a dramatic little bitch at heart. [this doesnt change post-scrapnik btw he just now goes on these ridiculous soliloquies about existence and choices or regret or whatever instead]

SIGMA MY GOAT....

If u can believe it when I was first reading scrapnik as it was coming out sigma was actually my fave character. I distinctly remember being like "yeah its awesome they brought mecha sonic back after so long but this guy is just way too fucking fun." obviously i have since become turbo fucking insane about mecha, but that doesn't mean I love sigma any less than i did then!

'so mean' is only half marked because like no one is mean to sigma but i do think he is EXTREMELY overlooked and like i cant entirely blame people since he's a strictly passive/support role in an otherwise pretty dynamic story, but like he's so subtly cool and awesome and there is so much about him that i think is absolutely fucking genius as a pull for a character.
like im not even joking or exaggerating when i say sigma is probably the best thing they could have done for that sort of role. gamma was a widely beloved character and the first Big Deal of an eggman bot going off to do its own thing, and he also set a precedent for e-100's specifically being particularly observant and prone to developing their own line of thinking to become kinder. i think it's so so awesome of them to use sigma to follow in the footsetps of that. like it just feels like a natural thing an e-100 would wind up doing yknow. and aside from thematic stuff it's also just a natural pull to be like "hey yeah there were like 15 more of those guys we just never saw, there's one of just sitting around somewhere we can still use i'm sure.", especially since the egg carrier is also a feature on scrapnik. lastly also i do just enjoy having an early e-100 in the series again..... theyre such strange and charismatic designs.

i do also love him in a more general sense of like. they introduce mecha sonic as a big scary dude like twice the size of the average sonic character, and then on top of that they turn around and introduce a guy another two feet larger still as a bonafide gentle giant. 1000/10 no notes theyre the smartest people in the world.
Anyway all the scrapniks have awesome designs and it's just a kickass aesthetic in general that is so very incredibly My Shit but to highlight a specific point on sigma, I did recently notice that the hole on his left side is directly over where his serial number would be. Very interesting little detail wrt to the themes of identity of course. been rotating in my head a bit.

"so many headcanons" is a bit misleading because i'm sincerely just not a headcanons guy, but with sigma in particular my interpretations of him are a good bit more....arbitrary, than i usually work with. its mostly just stuff playing him up as more of a Force than the comic really suggests because i like him. sigma is a deeply modest character and he plays that vibe very well but i feel like if you can look past how cheery and well-adjusted he is he very quickly becomes quite the freak of nature...or, robotics, i guess in this case, and i intend to make a point of this.

1. i do like to believe he's like an actual literal zombie. we know the e-100's are animal-powered. there is no fucking way any animal in him is still alive. the sonic series has provided practically no other explanations as to what powers eggman bots, but i feel like most any of them would have gone to shit with the condition he was in when he arrived on scrapnik. i do not know how the hell he is alive and it is frankly way more fun to just not try and define it. i don't think he knows either and hes never thought to pay it any mind in the first place. dont worry about it
2. i genuinely think he has a level of technical prowess basically on par with tails and eggman. tails is always talking about how eggtech is weird and hard to work with, and while sigma obviously has a more innate understanding of how it all works, his being able to reprogram everybody is like, slightly insane i think. tails & co had to use motobud as a base to get any shot at nonaggressive badniks but sigma is out there doing it completely from scratch for like a bajillion different models. and even just physically that's a lot of different types of bot to work with and maintain!
3. somewhat tying back to the first point, i would count him as perhaps freakishly durable. he might not have been the first guy to wash up on the island, but he was the first one to wash up alive. that and also yknow he had no issue recovering a pretty solid hit from m.knux. i've been replaying sa1 a bit recently and gamma evidently has some kind of "auto-recovery system" which is on one hand is definitely kind of just some horseshit technobabble...but....yknow. maybe that has something to do with it.

i am saying these to say: sigma is weird. ok. he is Weird. he's a simple dude and his friendliness makes him come off as eccentric at most but he is kind of a deeply strange guy. it takes a strange type of guy to just wake up and be like okay ^_^ yay ^_^ and start doing robot necromancy. i'm sure it's mostly just out of wanting to give others the same second chance that he had, but still. scrapnik as a project is kind of a crazy undertaking that stems from an equally crazy sort of logic. i need everyone to appreciate how weird sigma is with me. ok.

beast unleashed has a ? Because I'm not..... quite sure what that means? But I'm taking it in a general 'he's doing something to me sense bc oh boy is he doing something to me. [by proxy of mecha of course but.... man. Man.]

and then @ 'i will cry', sigma [and all the scrapniks] are some of the most guys ever for being in that place of "these guys have literally never bothered anybody, he is just a little old man who wants to help people why would you EVER", like to the point there is a significant part of me that DOESN'T want them to show back up or be relevant in mainline comic stuff because bringing them in contact with the rest of the cast will necessarily mean bringing them into the crossfire of actual plot conflicts. i just want them to have their happy ending. those dudes have already well and been through it. Please.

ya girl back on her bullshit with reaching theories no one asked for.

SO aside from last night’s thoughts about how dhar is being “held prisoner”, i’ve been wondering about the tagline on his splash screen. 

the only reason im even thinking about it some much is bc of baozhai’s screen; there is...really not a better word you could have picked for that woman than “boisterous”, so some of the others must carry some weight too right?

anyway obvously the big thing here is the use of quotation marks on “helping”, of course he’s not in support of ajna’s goals at all, but what DOES he want out of her?

dhar works for lord ravannar, and ravannar is in direct support of kala; in indivisible’s lore she was ‘‘a goddess of destruction that landed on the planet and traveled the land, consuming all in her path, before being sealed in the base of the very mountain that would have allowed her to destroy the whole planet.’’

labzero loooooves using existing cultural mythos as names for key figures [in skullgirls too; argus, samson, buer, leviathan, taranis; all thematically appropriate names from across varying cultures/religions] and indivis already has a ton of direct influence from hindu and buddhism.
“kala” is likely a simplification of Kala Ratri/Kalaratri[Kaalratri]; also sometimes also known as Kali. OR it could possibly also be about Kala Bhairava.... there seems to be varying depictions, names, and roles for this being across a couple different cultures, but they’re constant in that they’re 4-armed, 3-eyed deities associated with destruction, annihilation, and ferocity. 

this image turns up in a vanilla search for ‘’kala god’’

popular from “kala bhairava”

and “kali”

and then we have ajna’s ‘hekura’ form, which is wildly powerful and has been described as “wrathful” on more than one occasion.

ajna’s quest has been stated to, in part, be about coming to understand her abilities, but if dhar saw this form, [or hell, even just that hand sign she does all the time in promo art and whatnot] learning more about her powers could very well be within both his and lord ravannar’s interests and aid their goals as well.

with these implications, i can definitely say i’m now a just a bit worried about what could potentially go down with ajna’s hekura form in the endgame as she learns more about it if she isn’t careful, especially since it’s said “forces associated with kala have been gaining power and some think the seal may be weakening.”...

but hey, the game’s still several months out; no need to jump to conclusions just yet! only time will tell what all these parallels really mean ;y

ok so one of the stranger little quirks about indivisible that i wasn’t expecting is ajna’s “inner realm” thing is directly addressed as a thing that....seems to sorta physically exist? at the very least, she and the incarnations and other npc’s are aware of it, and that they’re in it.

razmi’s being a little shit aside, this uh... sheds some interesting new light on dhar’s bio.

One of the Four Superiors under Supreme Lord Ravannavar’s army, Dhar led campaigns across the land to subjugate any region that was not in support of Ravannavar’s pro-Kala rule.
 He came upon Ajna’s village during these campaigns, but did not expect to become such an unusual prisoner of war. Despite being Ajna’s first Incarnation, he’s not exactly the most supportive of friends.
To say that they don’t get along is a massive understatement. His own survival depends on hers now, however, even though in his opinion her quest to challenge Lord Ravannavar is practically suicide.

“an unusual prisoner of war” and “his survival depends on hers now” huh

are you...telling me that ajna is fucking holding dhar hostage in her inner realm?? because what the fuck. absolutely wild.
it also seems to imply taking in an incarnation is a permanent one-way transaction [or at the very least they can’t be separated again without special means]; he certainly wouldn’t be staying there if he had any choice in the matter.

also, with dhar evidently being the first...

well, that’s a hell of a way for ajna’s powers to be awakened.

WANNA SAY STUFF ABT THE DIAMONDS BECAUSE I WASN’T EXPECTING TO LOVE THEM IN THIS WAY

man just. at the beginning i thought yd was just berating blue for having So Much Emotions, and she probably actually was, but by the time she was done she had herself all fucked up over pd again like...damn. i really, really did not expect that out of her, so much emotion and pain over her co-leader, and her grief presented in such a radically different way than blue’s. bd has well and accpeted the event, but can’t seem to move past it, while yd is still in a sort of denial; like she kknws what’s done is done, but acknoleging it at all is what fucks her up... both of them are bad at dealing with loss it seems; understandably so, i wouldn't think something like a diamond really has much, like, experience or even need to learn in dealing with losing someone important to them. i mean they ARE immortal and pretty much the most powerful things out there

even more interesting to see them so broken in composure tbh

the switch in tone of her song was so instantaneous too, once she hits the chorus; the understanding of blue’s emotions in ‘’yes of course we still love her and we’re always thinking of her’’ followed directly by her own logical yd flair of “but now there’s nothing we can do, what’s the use in feeling blue”[which is a standpoint that kinda resonates with me haha..] another thing i think is cool is how that chorus echoes is homeworld’s constant focus on something having to be useful to make it valid/worthwile at all. x and y and z have uses, but there’s not a use to this grief and it aggravates yd to no end-especially when it’s coming from herself.

and with that “how can you stand to be here with it all? drowning in all this regret...” that coupled with her facial expression just, yeesh, yd obviously blames herself for what happened somewhat, and like....she’s still not over it. maybe it was a thing of “i couldn’t save her”/i couldn’t get there in time kind of thing. she just kind of did her best to put it out of her mind. 

and to springboard off that i LOVE how rose quartz shattering pink diamond is never presented as a positive thing, at all. like, we don’t simply cheer for earth and our valiant defenders who believe in freedom and life, and fight off those who would threaten it, we see that what they did is BAD and it hurt a lot of people. in this single song sequence the diamonds are given SO much life and personality. it’s so, so refreshing to have truly sympathetic antagonists, and ot even in the way of ‘’oh they have a Tragic Backstory and reason for their actions”, but like. they just Are people and actions taken against them-even by our heroes-are still negative and they still hurt. seeing both perspectives of this event is. god i love it so much.

and after sapphire’s meeting!!! oh my gosh the “is THAT what you want?”, implying to me that yd had lowkey been looking for something to cheer blue up, and ”then there’s still time” with the little smirk showing that she intends to take the time to actually set up and Do this, despite whatever else the diamonds have got going on at the time. i love them??? i love how supportive they are of eachother despite their clashing on trying to get over pink’s death???
and don’t think i didn’t notice bd just laying a gentle, caring hand on yd’s back after she broke down at the end of her song there, a simple touch can mean a lot, and sadness/distress? now THAT’S an emotion blue is familiar with and knows how to deal with