*shuuder** Yeeeeugh....
Pritty Toni
I know we've been through this many times, but still.... rememebr this chick
form "Blood and Metal"? No wonder Davey-kins fell in love with her.... she's
a hooker! You know that poo-poo foo-foo goes for those kind of girls!!
=P
There may be bugs on some of you mugs, but they're ain't no bugs on me...
Posted by Pritty Toni!
~~~~~~~~~
Toni Ferraro
Producer and Director of NAoStH
http://www.naosth.com
~~~~~~~~~
Need something good to MiST?
Check out my lame site with lame fanfiction:
http://dreamteamzone.org/amy/mist/LIVE%20BAIT.htm
JMShearer
>form "Blood and Metal"? No wonder Davey-kins fell in love with her....
>she's
>a hooker! You know that poo-poo foo-foo goes for those kind of girls!!
>
You know, when I read this post and all the stuff that went with that fan
character, I realized why I hadn't heard from the creator since about Christmas
1997. I would suspect that being associated with things like that could make
it a mite difficult to hold your head up and be proud of your work.
--Jesse Shearer
email: ambasos...@hotmail.com
>Gizmoduck: Really? Because I really am >here...
MIKE: That's the problem, to be honest with you...
---MiSTing of "Darkwing Duck: Schlock Treatment" by Jesse Shearer
Alex Weitzman
>form "Blood and Metal"? No wonder Davey-kins fell in love with her....
>she's
>a hooker! You know that poo-poo foo-foo goes for those kind of girls!!
>
Well, it's somewhat unfair to call her "that chick from 'Blood and Metal'",
since Emily had created the character before that story. Unfortunately, Emily
got sucked into Gonterman's web and came out the worse for it. I imagine that
she's not much for Sonic fandom anymore. It's been a while since I've spoken
with her, but we never parted on unfriendly terms.
Frankly, Emily was a real nice person, and it's not worth dissing her creation
farther than what Gonterman did to it. Y'see, that's where David Gonterman
really made himself a figure for hatred: He came in, altered a lot of people's
characters by his shoddy writing, and then turned his back on everyone he
changed, leaving their sense of enjoyment out of the AOL Sonic fandom literally
dead. As the guy who was Sonic for that fandom, and thus kinda the head guy
around there, I can't tell you how many people just were up and gone due to the
events with Gonterman. Now that I look back on it, the combination of
Gonterman, Comix (remember THAT fungus, Raz?), and the pathetic new management
of our message board forum were what ended any sophisticated AOL Sonicdom.
It's sad, really. But what's gone is gone.
Alex Weitzman
You were expecting a sig?
Blah!
"Pritty Toni" <soni...@aol.comehameha> wrote in message
news:20010525215451...@ng-xa1.aol.com...
> http://www.teamartail.com/profiles/page49.html#sonia
>
> I know we've been through this many times, but still.... rememebr this
chick
> form "Blood and Metal"? No wonder Davey-kins fell in love with her....
she's
> a hooker! You know that poo-poo foo-foo goes for those kind of girls!!
Uh.... Huh?
Enlighten me. Please. :-P
Of course, it might be because I don't read fanfics, but... Uh... Help?
~B!
(and to think I've been posting here for over a year, too)
JMShearer
Tribune the following:
>Well, it's somewhat unfair to call her "that chick from 'Blood and Metal'",
>since Emily had created the character before that story. Unfortunately, Emily
>got sucked into Gonterman's web and came out the worse for it. I imagine that
>she's not much for Sonic fandom >anymore. It's been a while since I've spoken
with her, but we never parted on >unfriendly terms.
True, I would very much doubt that Emily's much of a Sonic fan any more. And
as far as Emily being a good person, she was. As far as I can tell, she never
parted ways with anyone on bad terms, with the possible exception of the last
days with Gonterman.
Now, why am I posting this reply, you ask? Well, because when I responded to
the original post last night, I was in a more criptic mood and may have come
across as downing an old friend's work when I really wasn't. All I was saying
is that it's being connected with Gonterman and being remembered for that first
would tend to bring a person down. Like Alex said, Emily was usually good to
whoever she talked to in and out of Sonic fandom, even the "fringers" like me.
>Y'see, that's where David Gonterman
>really made himself a figure for hatred: He came in, altered a lot of
>people's
>characters by his shoddy writing, and then turned his back on everyone he
>changed, leaving their sense of enjoyment out of the AOL Sonic fandom
>literally
>dead. As the guy who was Sonic for that fandom, and thus kinda the head guy
>around there, I can't tell you how many people just were up and gone due to
>the
>events with Gonterman. Now that I look back on it, the combination of
>Gonterman, Comix (remember THAT fungus, Raz?), and the pathetic new
>management
>of our message board forum were what ended any sophisticated AOL Sonicdom.
>
>It's sad, really. But what's gone is gone.
Also true. And as what could be called "the lone Vorlon" in the AOL Cartoons
forum, I can attest to the fact that the whole thing is virtually dead.
Wheather or not that's because Sonicdom was the life of the place, I can't say.
Since that particular aspect ended, there have been several sparks. Most
notable and longest lasting was the Pokemon craze, but even that managed to
kick the bucket after only a year or so. And in spite of some recent activity,
I can assure you that AOL Cartoons is quite dead, although not entirely beyond
resusitation.
--Jesse Shearer; AFSH Tribune, AOL Bureau (part time)
email: ambasos...@hotmail.com
Raz Masters
> Well, it's somewhat unfair to call her "that chick from 'Blood and
> Metal'", since Emily had created the character before that story.
Yes. You see, her Sonia was one of the first, if not the first of its
kind (Sonic's sister) to be on the 'net. Regardless of what anyone
wishes to say, the Sonic fancharacter boom is largely in thanks
to the AoL Sonic fandom which existed years ago. I was here for
all of it, for its growth and downfall (or should I call it, the rise of
Artail), and I can tell you that a lot came from AoL. Simply put,
Artie used to be a regular in AoL-based roleplays, and his website
and mine (my old one at least, "Sonic Sector") used to silently
compete... that was until he purchased a domain name however,
and the rest is history. It's unfortunate that the bad overpowered
the good so long ago, and in this particular battle it doesn't look
like justice will ever be served.
Yes, I'm babbling, but, I feel motivated to do so.
> Unfortunately, Emily got sucked into Gonterman's web and came
> out the worse for it. I imagine that she's not much for Sonic fandom
> anymore. It's been a while since I've spoken with her, but we never
> parted on unfriendly terms.
I had actually managed to catch up with Emily again in late '98 I
believe, and was talking to her as late as early last year... I think.
Maybe not that recently. Anyway, she's still a Sonic fan, so Gon-
terman did not scare her away from that. In fact, I roleplayed with
her a few times in '99 I think, but then we seemed to drop out of
touch again. As far as I know, she's still speaking to someone I
had a falling out with friendship-wise, and that might be what's
keeping her from comfortably talking to me when she manages to
go online. I don't know for sure though, that's merely my guess.
> Frankly, Emily was a real nice person, and it's not worth dissing
> her creation farther than what Gonterman did to it. Y'see, that's
> where David Gonterman really made himself a figure for hatred:
> He came in, altered a lot of people's characters by his shoddy
> writing,
Not mine! Haha! I was fortunate, being a misfit and all. Nobody
wanted to write anything involving my characters. A mixed blessing.
> and then turned his back on everyone he changed, leaving their
> sense of enjoyment out of the AOL Sonic fandom literally dead.
> As the guy who was Sonic for that fandom, and thus kinda the
> head guy around there, I can't tell you how many people just were
> up and gone due to the events with Gonterman.
Pretty much everybody, most likely. Him and Comix did a number on
the whole thing. What's even worse is that few of us even talk to one
another anymore. Some relationships have gone from being friendly to
uncomfortable. I suppose you can blame that on the individuals, but,
well. Whatever.
> Now that I look back on it, the combination of Gonterman, Comix
> (remember THAT fungus, Raz?),
He's still around, you know. Occasionally he hounds some people, like
Yasha. He hasn't called me in a few years though, thank God. (Yes, he
knows my home phone number. Geh.)
> and the pathetic new management of our message board forum were
> what ended any sophisticated AOL Sonicdom.
On top of that, the Sonic MB was deleted without warning last year.
The chance of anyone getting together again and doing anything was
kind of shot to hell, then. The chance was already nil, but...
I think the AoL Sonic fans have sort of taken over this string. Well,
the old-school ones with a hold on proper spelling and such, at least.
I'm sure everyone else is like: "Uh? That's um, nice. Yeah..."
> It's sad, really. But what's gone is gone.
Indeed. I've thought of leaving the Sonic fandom, myself. But, starting
Sonic 10th was my way of trying to give something back to it. Will it
ever be noticed like that? Probably not... oh well.
> Alex Weitzman
-----
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- [ sig updated as of 05-20-00 ] -
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it couldn't be "Happy Valley," or "Wonderful Valley." Goblin Valley."
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Alex Weitzman
>wishes to say, the Sonic fancharacter boom is largely in thanks
>to the AoL Sonic fandom which existed years ago.
Quite true. For those who aren't familiar with it, the AOL Sonic fandom (at
least, our fandom in the Toon Talk section of AOL Cartoons) was rather
extensive and popular. Most of the people who came, however, didn't take on
character personas as much as they did create their own character - often
people would then create many characters that connect somehow to that first
main character of theirs. The practice was harmless enough on AOL, due to the
fact that the fandom was fanfic-run, and so newbies could see the works of
previous masters and get an idea of what makes a good character. TeamArtail, on
the other hand, has characters but no way to use them; these newbies have no
concept of quality.
>Anyway, she's still a Sonic fan, so Gon-
>terman did not scare her away from that.
Really? Well, if that's still true, then good. I'm glad to hear that the
aftermath of Gonterman was less than I'd thought.
>> He came in, altered a lot of people's characters by his shoddy
>> writing,
>
>Not mine! Haha!
Well, not mine, either. I was one of the few who never really created my own
characters because I was Sonic. I redid Nicole, but that's not really a fan
character.
>> Now that I look back on it, the combination of Gonterman, Comix
>> (remember THAT fungus, Raz?),
>
>He's still around, you know.
Oh, joy. I remember the chats where he'd try to play "evil prophet" and I'd
just make wisecracks at him.
>On top of that, the Sonic MB was deleted without warning last year.
>The chance of anyone getting together again and doing anything was
>kind of shot to hell, then.
Gotta love AOL. [vomits]
David Bulmer
"Raz Masters" <razjm...@aol.common.ape> wrote in message
news:20010528010237...@ng-md1.aol.com...
> Alex done wroted:
>
>
> > Unfortunately, Emily got sucked into Gonterman's web and came
> > out the worse for it. I imagine that she's not much for Sonic fandom
> > anymore. It's been a while since I've spoken with her, but we never
> > parted on unfriendly terms.
>
> I had actually managed to catch up with Emily again in late '98 I
> believe, and was talking to her as late as early last year... I think.
> Maybe not that recently. Anyway, she's still a Sonic fan, so Gon-
> terman did not scare her away from that. In fact, I roleplayed with
> her a few times in '99 I think, but then we seemed to drop out of
> touch again. As far as I know, she's still speaking to someone I
> had a falling out with friendship-wise, and that might be what's
> keeping her from comfortably talking to me when she manages to
> go online. I don't know for sure though, that's merely my guess.
It's always great to unexpectedly get back into contact with old-school
Sonic Internet folks. Every now and then I come across people like Ellie
Cataquet (Base O' Tara), and as I was looking through my ICQ logs recently
it seems it wasn't too long ago that me and Jeff Axer openly conversed about
whose Sonic character he was sketching today.
The thing is everything moves so fast on here. You can think that you've got
it straight in your mind who everyone is and then suddenly they disappear.
I'm very glad to see that Kulock's consistantly here, but where's Jim? And
speaking of old-school, I haven't spoken to Dawn Best in a couple of ice
ages either so I might have to drop her a line soon.
There's so many of us it's difficult to keep up. Isn't that strange? The
Internet community for Sonic the Hedgehog seems to be one of the biggest on
the Net, almost rivalling things like Star Trek in our numbers. How on earth
did that happen? I mean Sonic's hardly the most famous kid on the block,
he's known by all but followed by very few. Only reason I'm here now is that
I'm very good at remembering the old system, the way it felt when the first
games came out, how exciting it was to see Sonic 2 being played through the
window of the Sega Bus and marvel at the new character, or how much fun it
was to discuss with my friend what our next Sonic comic would be about, then
draw it during the dinner break. One time I got in trouble and was sent to
wait for some highher-up teacher so that I could get a right royal telling
off, and while I was waiting up in his office I read most if not all of Stay
Sonic by Mike Pattenden (the UK Sonic fan's Bible in those days, the first
and last anywhere to tell the Kintobor story in full, and otherwise packed
with character information and celebrity interviews). That stuff, and the
people I've met here, and the amazing stories told in the games and cartoons
and comics, is why I'm still here, and why I feel I have no choice but to
write more Sonic comics now that I'm studying writing at University and know
better how it's supposed to be done.
>
> > and the pathetic new management of our message board forum were
> > what ended any sophisticated AOL Sonicdom.
>
> On top of that, the Sonic MB was deleted without warning last year.
> The chance of anyone getting together again and doing anything was
> kind of shot to hell, then. The chance was already nil, but...
>
> I think the AoL Sonic fans have sort of taken over this string. Well,
> the old-school ones with a hold on proper spelling and such, at least.
> I'm sure everyone else is like: "Uh? That's um, nice. Yeah..."
I don't remember any of this other than by report, because I steered clear
of anything that said 'AOL' on it at the time (and largely still do). I came
at Sonic fandom from the other entrance: the Sonic Chat Room. I remember my
first day there actually, I logged-on as Knuckles but then I realised that
name was probably taken, so I changed to "Omni-Viewer", which was the name
of a gigantic all-seeing screen from STC. I played the part pretty well, I
spoke in-character and when rp was going on I used Omni's powers to further
the stories. First person I ever spoke to was called Maria, and she was
upset because she'd just broken up with her boyfriend who was another
Echidna or something, and I patched up the argument and made them make up,
and then they had one of those rp weddings people used to do. Eventually
this very strange and slightly scary girl called Flare came along and asked
me to change into an Echidna, which I did, and now I find that a lot of
Sonic fans all over the Net still refer to me as Omni Echidna, so we've made
him the narrator for TSI.
Anyway from the Sonic Chat Room came the Sonic Message Board, unless of
course that's the same AOL one you're referring to, but before long both
were pulled down, the Chat Room by hackers and the Message Board by who
knows what. Sara Hammond (Sonic, later named Miss Sonic on my request since
there was already someone called Sonic and it was confusing, and then later
still simply Missy) tried to save them both by setting up her own equivalent
using almost exactly the same coding but more attractive backgrounds, called
Miss Sonic's Chat Room or MSC, but that soon fell apart.
Luckily by that time I'd found Afsh and the various mailing lists, and so I
was able to keep my finger on the pulse ever since. It's a shame about the
old places though, and the people who used to go there. You'll still find EG
Foxfire or Sebrina hanging around here and there, sometimes the Cataquet
twins although I seem to remember either they fell out or they moved house
to live separately, but Axer's certainly left the fandom and the really
old-school Sonic artists from the Squeeky Clean Furry Archive (once a Sonic
fanart gallery, now an elitist Furry archive called Yerf with a bad
attitude) such as Matt Burt are all long gone.
Some of them can still be found though, Missy recently gave me the current
URL for the message board where the old-schoolers hang around, but I never
remember to go there. There's newer pastures now, with places like Green
Gibbon!'s GHZ site and the HQ, and newer people. What makes all this
interesting for me is that for something as small-time as Sonic the
Hedgehog, there are so many online fans that they have set up whole
factions, some bizarrely warring against others, enormous groups who hang
out here and don't hang out there - for that to happen, you need a LOT of
people. There are a LOT of people who I remember but haven't spoken to in
years, but they're still out there somewhere and that I find intensely
interesting, because if we ever got together we'd fill a stadium, or
possibly two or three, and that's a nice thought isn't it.
>
> > It's sad, really. But what's gone is gone.
>
> Indeed. I've thought of leaving the Sonic fandom, myself. But, starting
> Sonic 10th was my way of trying to give something back to it. Will it
> ever be noticed like that? Probably not... oh well.
You'll never leave, and neither will I. It's the same with any group really,
if you leave, you're not leaving a cartoon Hedgehog, you're leaving
literally hundreds of people that you like talking to. That's why whenever a
regular leaves, it isn't for very long. *B^)
-
Buml0r
Alex Weitzman
>Internet community for Sonic the Hedgehog seems to be one of the biggest on
>the Net, almost rivalling things like Star Trek in our numbers. How on earth
>did that happen? I mean Sonic's hardly the most famous kid on the block,
>he's known by all but followed by very few.
And to this day, I marvel at that, along with giggle with glee. It's quite cool
to be a member of a group that lesser known than Star Trek fans. Consider - as
a Star Trek fan, you're just another Trekkie. As a Sonic fan, you're something
special.
>Anyway from the Sonic Chat Room came the Sonic Message Board, unless of
>course that's the same AOL one you're referring to
Unlikely. Our message board was literally provided by AOL, since it was a part
of a forum that AOL established (AOL Cartoons). The message board was known as
Toon Talk, and various different fandoms were placed there; the Sonic fandom,
however, clearly ruled the day and night. The golden age of that time was when
Tooner was around - he was the manager of both the Archives (where all fanfic
was sent and available) and the Message Boards (where we all hung out). That
time was the best because Tooner was also a fan, and he was interested and
efficient in his job. Unfortunately, he left, and AOL ended up leaving the
forum for dead for over 6 months - an utter hell, believe me. We then went
through various managers (Gonterman even presided over the Archives for a
while; irony be damned) until we got the EStars, a bunch of AOL Terms of
Service-thumping busybodies who altered the message board system and managed
like purified crap. Thus did AOL kill our fandom in a roundabout manner.
>You'll still find EG
>Foxfire or Sebrina hanging around here
I don't know a Sebrina, but EG was a part of our group, too, albeit a little
later on.
Small world, ain't it?
>You'll never leave, and neither will I. It's the same with any group really,
>if you leave, you're not leaving a cartoon Hedgehog, you're leaving
>literally hundreds of people that you like talking to. That's why whenever a
>regular leaves, it isn't for very long. *B^)
Quite true. I've recently been very overloaded with RL responsibilities, and
about two weeks ago I made a short-lived decision to concentrate on Squaresoft
fanfic and stop writing Sonic fics. It lasted for a couple of days, but I still
posted on AFSH and participated in Brian Sapinski's SonicStreetFighter
Tournament (I won as Sonic versus Robert Brown's Julie-Su. Yes, THAT Robert
Brown.), and my mind started to swirl with the storyline I'd be leaving in the
dust if I stopped. I'm addicted. There's no stop. I still haven't gotten past
RL, but I know that I can't stop writing and participating in the Mobian
culture. I never will.
David Bulmer
"Alex Weitzman" <sonic...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010530003655...@ng-co1.aol.com...
>
> >Anyway from the Sonic Chat Room came the Sonic Message Board, unless of
> >course that's the same AOL one you're referring to
>
> Unlikely. Our message board was literally provided by AOL, since it was a
part
> of a forum that AOL established (AOL Cartoons). The message board was
known as
> Toon Talk, and various different fandoms were placed there; the Sonic
fandom,
> however, clearly ruled the day and night.
It sounds as though the Sonic Chat Room (which was a web-based chat room, I
don't know how these things work but it relied on you constantly hitting
'refresh', so it was a great day when the next IE came out with automatic
refresh built into it) was built in answer to that. Some of the people you
mention seem to have been involved in both halves of the culture, so I'd
imagine they built the SCR to be an exclusively Sonic room, rather than a
general cartoon one, although from what you say it sounds like they needn't
have bothered.
The Sonic Chat Room was what became largely responsible for a place called
The Squeaky Clean Furry Archive, in the long-run. I imagine the rest of it
came from your AOL boards. During the early years I couldn't find an artist
on there that I hadn't spoken to at least once in the Sonic Chat Room. You
can see how that's changed just by glancing at it now, but I'll go into that
in a moment.
> The golden age of that time was when
> Tooner was around - he was the manager of both the Archives (where all
fanfic
> was sent and available) and the Message Boards (where we all hung out).
That
> time was the best because Tooner was also a fan, and he was interested and
> efficient in his job. Unfortunately, he left, and AOL ended up leaving the
> forum for dead for over 6 months - an utter hell, believe me. We then went
> through various managers (Gonterman even presided over the Archives for a
> while; irony be damned) until we got the EStars, a bunch of AOL Terms of
> Service-thumping busybodies who altered the message board system and
managed
> like purified crap. Thus did AOL kill our fandom in a roundabout manner.
It sounds like this story ties-in with the half I lived through. We might be
able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net by the end of
this. Okay, here's the rest of what I saw...
Let's see... I do remember that in the days of the Sonic Chat Room, which
was reasonably early on, a few years before the Internet got popular, every
Sonic page on the web, and there weren't many, totally relied on something
called Rat Org. There was a guy I saw on the Chat Room a few times called
Ratman, and he was one of the leading figures in Sonic culture as I
remember. I don't remember it too clearly as I was a relative newbie and
didn't know much about the politics of it all, but the way I remember it he
was important. What he'd done was he had collected together as many Sonic
files as he could - movie files, sound files, everything except for Fanfics
and that was because his friend was running "Mastermind's Vault", which was
one of the definitive Sonic Fanfic archives at the time, although I don't
remember whether it was Mastermind that started it or whether he just took
over or what. I was still learning all this stuff as it went on.
Anyway, whenever you saw a Sonic page on the Web that contained a video file
or anything like that, it was usually just a hypertext link to the same file
on Rat Org, www.rat.org , where Ratman kept all this stuff. It really was
the backbone of our society. The artwork section of rat.org, "The Squeaky
Clean Furry Archive", which I mentioned a moment ago and which made up about
half of Ratman's site, got bigger and bigger, and was really the largest
Sonic fan-art gallery out there. Whereas the main page of rat.org featured a
prominent scan of a dead (or standing but photographed from under a sheet of
glass, I suppose) rat, Squeaky's logo was a cartoon version of the same, a
little rat with a big grin. Everyone who was anyone in the Sonic community
wanted to see their work in the Squeaky, and in those days it was as easy as
submitting it.
Then suddenly, Ratman, and this is where it seems to connect to Tooner in
your half of the story, decided he didn't want to be a Sonic fan any more,
and in an unprecedented act of violence which rocked the Sonic Net as I knew
it at the time, took down his entire rat.org Sonic archive, and began a hate
campaign against us! Suddenly there was no more Sonic Webring, everything
was gone, save Alessandro's page which held steadfast the whole time. But,
Ratman's leaving really shocked us all, and something had to be done to
rebuild our culture. Eventually we would be able to build it back up one
brick at a time, but in the meantime someone had to have the modem speed,
the hard drive space, and the Internet space, to completely back-up rat.org.
Until we found such a man, we would remain in a kind of murky grey
depression forever.
That man was David Gonterman, a member of various Sonic communities
including this newsgroup, who quick as a flash saved the archive onto his
Foxfire Studios website. This bit seems to relate to your half of the story
as well. He was known for his comics and a recent spell in Afsh posting his
brand new Sonic Fanfic "Blood And Metal", both of which at the time were
generally well recieved. He started to get a reputation as something of a
nuisance later in this story though, especially during the Blitz around the
time of Sonic The Hedgehog #47 when the whole Sonic Usenet community turned
against one another to fight about which Universe was the true Sonic and why
Ken Penders was the spawn of Satan, but just as it was about to balloon and
everyone was about to get really angry with Gonterman following his
notorious pro-Sally stir-up comic, he inexplicably disappeared, and so did
almost everything he had ever done, apart from a relatively new comic he had
started about a guy with a talking furry suit from a theme park or
something.
When I started to hear jokes about him over the last couple of years, I
didn't realise it had anything to do with his current Ed Wood status on the
Net, it took me ages to twig, because I thought everyone remembered him from
Afsh. I wondered how that could be when 94% of everyone here is relatively
new.
But anyway, back to the point I'd reached in my memory of the Sonic Net
Story - Gonterman's version of the Ratman Archives stayed online for quite a
while, but then they sort of petered out and eventually vanished. At about
the same time Ratman and his new partner in crime announced that no more
Sonic fanart would be accepted into Squeaky, which confused us all greatly
because it was a Sonic fan art gallery, but he had decided it would be
exclusively for other non-Sonic Furry work (ie countless Tails clones). With
a quick name-change to Yerf and a redesign of the mousey logo character, he
covered his tracks rather well. Despite a lot of verbal abuse to the users
of the Sonic Net, most of the artists on Yerf turned a blind eye, and it
began to grow in size, now seen as an elite due to its refusal to accept
anyone unless they met certain credentials.
So essentially what had happened was a systematic clear-out of the Sonic
Net. Everything had been destroyed, so that it could be rebuilt. All the
hangouts had gone - it was about now that the Sonic Chat Room was hacked
into and wiped - Rat Org had gone, and all of the regulars had fallen out,
drifted away or otherwise disappeared.
From out of this post-apocalyptic haze proudly stepped Ron Bauerle and his
band of old-old-schoolers, people like Dan Drazen, Alessandro Sanasi, and as
well as them names that have been seen less and less such as Bookshire
Draftwood, Dawn Best, Thad X Boyd, and so on. They were part of something
called the Bauerle List, a mysterious elite who watched over everything else
that happened with a keen gaze, the Elders of the Sonic Net, in their role
of quiet control and observation from behind the scenes. These were the guys
who prepared the legendary Sonic FAQ, this was the community from which all
the most famous Fanfics derived, and from the fabled writers Drazen and
Bookshire came all of what are now token online Sonic stories and
characters. If you were a SatAm fan, you read Drazen's stories, and that was
that. If you were a Fanfic writer, you used Bookshire's characters (such as
a robotic general for Doctor Robotnik whose name eludes me now), and that
was that.
By now, I had managed to slide my way onto this list, where I found battles
to be waging against writer Ken Penders because he had come up with a
shocking new idea: to kill Princess Sally. This was what really triggered
the Blitz. Suddenly everyone was fighting against everyone else, some saying
it was wrong to kill Sally because it would stop Archie's comics from being
anything like the cartoon series, others saying that this was okay since the
cartoon series was not the original Universe anyway and made such changes in
its own creation. I was one of these, arguing, on Afsh and / or the other,
more mainstream Sonic Mailing List, that SatAm was not fit to be called a
Sonic Universe when you could be enjoying the games (which I, sick of typing
out "The Sonic Team Sonic games" every time, nicknamed 'SegaSonic' for sake
of argument, based on the tag-name of some of the 1993 Sonic merchandise -
the name seems to have stuck), despite my views on the subject being very
biased and patently wrong.
The 1997 Sonic Internet Blitz-out was the start of Archie's downfall. All
the negative stuff you hear about Archie's Sonic comics now really didn't
come about until the Endgame story arc began. Even then, when the comic was
essentially still of a very high quality, it got a lot of abuse because of
the kill Sally idea, and then when Endgame's story was brutally cut from 48
pages to 32 and released as a quick and shoddy piecing together of all the
most important (and confusing) parts, people began to see Archie in a new
light - as a corporate-led title where Sonic isn't allowed to cry and
writers aren't allowed their freedom. This led into what is currently seen
as a fall in creative quality (I blame it on unfair deadlines and the
creatives themselves having to rush through their work).
Suddenly, after this, the Sonic Usenet community entered a whole new, very
exciting phase. Following the Continuity Wars of 1997, the fans of the
different Universes began to come together and live in harmony. To begin
with the Sonic Internet Fandom had been solely based on SatAm, but when fans
of the other Universes such as Sega Sonic and Fleetway began to arrive
(which began just a few months after I showed up), the Blitz was triggered.
Now it had been cleared out of the way though, and following the devastation
caused when the Webrings went down and the online chat forums died out, the
more offline-based Usenet community had taken over as the heart of the Sonic
Net, embracing this wonderful New Way in which ALL Sonic continuities were
seen as equals. From the ashes had risen wonderful new web pages, far
superior to their predecessors, containing unique editorials, whole TEAMS of
staff, and in some cases quite exclusive content. Examples include the Sonic
HQ, the Neo Green Hill Zone (now just the GHZ I believe), The Sonic
Foundation etc etc. Big, professional-style Sonic fan pages, the likes of
which other fandoms can only dream of.
During the Blitz-out I created the STC Mailing List, as a refuge for
Fleetway readers among the Archie masses, and it was at the dawning of the
New Age of Sonic Fandom that this took off, particularly when the main
writer, Nigel Kitching, joined the list, and began to share with us valuable
information about the creation of the comic. Still basically a child, I had
lots of stupid petty arguments with some of the people on the list, but like
the Blitz-out these finished and made way for some wonderful things to
happen. Namely, STC Stem, a website created by Zac and Ed, which was for a
time the STC equivalent to the big multi-Universe Sonic sites, providing
actual preview artwork and covers from the comic as well as plot teasers.
STC Stem was a unique site, the like of which I have never seen before or
since, because it was the only fan site actively contributed to by the
people responsible for the real thing. A kind of joint official-unofficial
web page of sorts. Not a lot of you will have been there for it, but STC
fandom really hit a high point around then, with all sorts of known names
from the Speedlines pages of the comic joining in the fun and us all have a
jolly good old time.
So with websites set up for every major Sonic continuity, a posh and quite
important mailing list there for the Archie readers (Ron's list), a very
warm-feeling general Sonic chat mailing list (Powerzone), a newsgroup (Afsh)
and thriving creative community making Fanfics, artwork, and basically
everything else you can imagine, plus the final unveiling of Project Sonic
(Sonic Adventure) and currently the advent of Sonic Adventure 2, our tenth
anniversary, and who knows what else, the Sonic Net Fandom is on a high it
has never seen before.
So whenever people complain that Sonic Fandom's boring, just tell them off
and remember how very exciting it is right now.
>
> >You'll still find EG
> >Foxfire or Sebrina hanging around here
>
> I don't know a Sebrina, but EG was a part of our group, too, albeit a
little
> later on.
>
> Small world, ain't it?
It was then, but it's been growing. *B^)
Sebrina Foxy was for a time very much associated with EG Foxfire. Same age,
and I don't remember whether they actually were best friends or whether they
just should have been, but they were very much alike and really lit up the
room when they came in, always cheerful and with another fun new picture to
show off. They came from the Sonic Muck community - the fourth part of the
AOL / Sonic Chat Room / Bauerle List / Sonic Muck quadrangle that seems to
have made up the birth of the Sonic Fandom as it is today. EG's real name
was Carol Schneeweiss (probable mis-spelling) and Seby's was Meghan
Dombrowski - and interestingly just last month I was re-reading Toshihiro
Ono's Pokémon manga series and I noticed one of Seby's drawings printed at
the end of the final issue. Whoo!
Whoo. So. That's my memory of it all. I'm sure I got a lot of it wrong due
to being misinformed at the time, but that serves as a frame for What
Roughly Happened to bring about today's Sonic Internet Fandom. I'm
interested to know the full story though, so if anyone else has any other
angles or corrections they'd like to make so we can figure out what
definitely really happened then I'd love to hear them.
-
Buml0r
Note - I've been here since about the time when I turned fifteen. I was a
disgustingly annoying child at the time. I have, therefore, probably annoyed
each and every one of the people mentioned in this post at some point due to
stupid teenage rubbishness. Having now grown up, I can only apologise
profusely to such people and not do it again. *B^)
A.N. Zac
David Bulmer <daveb...@idealcreations.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:9f3hf2$sfv$5...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
> It sounds like this story ties-in with the half I lived through. We might
be
> able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net by the end of
> this. Okay, here's the rest of what I saw...
Dave's an honest guy but his memory is completely unreliable much of the
time. Therefore take parts of this with a pinch of salt.
This paragraph especially:
I had
> lots of stupid petty arguments with some of the people on the list, but
like
> the Blitz-out these finished and made way for some wonderful things to
> happen. Namely, STC Stem, a website created by Zac and Ed, which was for a
> time the STC equivalent to the big multi-Universe Sonic sites, providing
> actual preview artwork and covers from the comic as well as plot teasers.
> STC Stem was a unique site, the like of which I have never seen before or
> since, because it was the only fan site actively contributed to by the
> people responsible for the real thing. A kind of joint official-unofficial
> web page of sorts.
You don't mention why it (sort of) ceases to exist these days.
STEM's setup was for many reasons, some of which are listed below:
1) Before it, there were NO STC sites around (apart from Ed's STC Page,
which lasted a week and was merged with the STC List page to form STEM).
2) STC needed promotion. Desperately.
3) The intention was to build up a vast archive of reviews that would
nullify the reprint cause.
4) The STC List would get more promotion, particularly if the site got a
mention in the comic itself (although, after at LEAST three attempts, it
hasn't quite happened yet - and believe me when I say that it REALLY WAS all
set to appear in STC on THREE seperate occasions)
5) Ed and I were interested in working on a project together (read = lie) I
wanted to make a site
6) I figured we could use this page to legitimately get into contact with
STC creators other than K-tching... and it worked : )
7) I'd been sacked from SHQ and needed somewhere to deposit my material...
and make them suffer ; )
However after the first few months it became apparent that STC was to become
all-reprint, which caused our enthusiasm to die down a lot (also due to
increasing academic pressure). Thus STEM has been very much dead for the
past nine months.
But there is a relaunch planned for July (post-exams!!) that will cause your
head to explode. You have been warned.
ZzzzZ
--
"It's just like people to assume a story is over just because the hero is
rotting in her grave." -- Joss Whedon
Raz Masters
>> "Alex Weitzman" <sonic...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:20010530003655...@ng-co1.aol.com...
>>
>>>Anyway from the Sonic Chat Room came the Sonic Message
>>>Board, unless of course that's the same AOL one you're refer-
>>>ring to.
>>
>>Unlikely. Our message board was literally provided by AOL, since
>>it was a part of a forum that AOL established (AOL Cartoons). The
>>message board was known as Toon Talk, and various different fan-
>>doms were placed there; the Sonic fandom, however, clearly ruled
>>the day and night.
>
> It sounds as though the Sonic Chat Room (which was a web-based
> chat room, I don't know how these things work but it relied on you
> constantly hitting 'refresh', so it was a great day when the next IE
> came out with automatic refresh built into it) was built in answer to
> that. Some of the people you mention seem to have been involved
> in both halves of the culture, so I'd imagine they built the SCR to
> be an exclusively Sonic room, rather than a general cartoon one,
> although from what you say it sounds like they needn't have bothered.
The SCR was entirely separate from the AoL MB. The message board
was completely different from a chat room, as it worked almost exactly
like how this very newsgroup works.
To be completely honest, I never personally went into the SCR because
I heard Missy Sonic was an extremely annoying ditz.
It's true, though, a lot of the people on AoL were involved in everything
Sonic. That is why I said previously that the AoL Sonic fandom was
largely responsible for the fancharacter boom. Artie came from AoL, EG
came from AoL, Matt Burt came from AoL... a ton of people who had an
impact on the Sonic fandom did. Fanfics were written regularly on the
AoL Sonic MB, and multiple writers participated in creating them, pro-
ducing what could be called "readable roleplays." Both those and inde-
pendent Sonic fanfic works were commonly uploaded into the ToonTalk
archives. In fact, so many 'fics were written and so many posts made
that there were -several- AoL Sonic MBs; they kept filling up and they
needed to make new ones. The old logs, containing every single post
ever made on those boards, were then uploaded to the archive as well.
> The Sonic Chat Room was what became largely responsible for a place
> called The Squeaky Clean Furry Archive, in the long-run.
Though I was not a participant in the SCR for above-mentioned reasons,
I question this statement of yours. I always knew rat.org to be a furry
archive, even though it was the place to go to for Sonic multimedia
(and "Mortal Kombat" stuff, though I believe that came later). A lot of
friends and allies of mine had galleries there, including EG and Emily
(Sonia), and I remember browsing Dawn Best's gallery as well. Those
primarily housed Sonic fanart, yes, but there were other galleries too.
Well. I don't clearly remember rat.org (though I do remember the soon-
to-be-mentioned "I Hate Sonic" fiasco), so I can't outright say that it
was not just a Sonic fanart archive.
> I imagine the rest of it came from your AOL boards. During the early
> years I couldn't find an artist on there that I hadn't spoken to at
> least once in the Sonic Chat Room. You can see how that's changed
> just by glancing at it now, but I'll go into that in a moment.
>
>>The golden age of that time was when Tooner was around - he was
>>the manager of both the Archives (where all fanfic was sent and
>>available) and the Message Boards (where we all hung out). That
>>time was the best because Tooner was also a fan, and he was in-
>>terested and efficient in his job.
To mention this for my own "I Was There" benefit, I was there, but did
not know anybody on the boards and as a result never posted. I had no
clue where they were roleplaying because the name of the private room
they were using was not mentioned on the boards (to the best of my
memory, and I still do have the logs). In my infinite stupidity I never
guessed that the name of the room was "Knothole." I had to get a
friend-of-the-times, Will O'Hare, to tell me. Yes, laugh at my stupidity,
I know I did... when I arrived I already knew how to roleplay, though,
as I had done Sonic (game-based, not SatAM-based) roleplays in a
videogame chat room. In those game-based RPs, I was Sonic. Knot-
hole already had a Sonic -- Alex -- so I wound up using my extremely
unusual SatAM fancharacter instead. I also didn't use my real name
but masqueraded as a non-existent person, which wound up causing
some trouble with friends later. I'll refrain from getting deeper into
that, though, since that would drag this addition of mine way off top-
ic. Anyway, already there was EG, Shades, Asrial, Yasha, Alex (duh),
Sonia, Will, and a few others. If you recognize any of those aliases,
then you know some of the old-timers of the AoL/Early 'net Sonic fan-
dom.
To inject an interesting little factoid, AoL used to have actual instruc-
tions on "How To Role Play." Seriously, there was a keyword for it,
and instructions on how to RP would pop up on your screen. It told
you to use two colons around actions and everything. To this day, I
still text roleplay using those methods.
>>>Unfortunately, [Tooner] left, and AOL ended up leaving the forum
>>>for dead for over 6 months - an utter hell, believe me. We then
>>>went through various managers (Gonterman even presided over the
>>>Archives for a while; irony be damned) until we got the EStars, a
>>>bunch of AOL Terms of Service-thumping busybodies who altered
>>>the message board system and managed like purified crap. Thus
>>>did AOL kill our fandom in a roundabout manner.
>>
> It sounds like this story ties-in with the half I lived through. We
> might be able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net
> by the end of this.
I do find this post of yours and the comments made to be much good-
ness, Dave. Mind if I put it on S10th? I think it would be extremely ap-
propriate material.
> Okay, here's the rest of what I saw...
>
> Let's see... I do remember that in the days of the Sonic Chat Room,
> which was reasonably early on, a few years before the Internet got
> popular, every Sonic page on the web, and there weren't many, to-
> tally relied on something called Rat Org.
That they did. You could check source codes for pages (not an easy
task if you were using an AoL browser -- back then you had no choice
in the manner) and find many links to rat.org's files. Any movies, with
perhaps a couple of exceptions, were hosted on rat.org. It was, after
all, an 8GB independent server existing when most of us had 500MB
HDs and 14.4/28.8k connections...
> There was a guy I saw on the Chat Room a few times called
> Ratman, and he was one of the leading figures in Sonic culture as
> I remember. I don't remember it too clearly as I was a relative new-
> bie and didn't know much about the politics of it all, but the way I
> remember it he was important.
He was the original administrator of the Sonic Mailing List, the first
one (which I think is still in existence today, although I no longer
personally subscribe to it -- I hear it went to shit). After him, Com-
mander Sonic Data, AKA Commander Sonic Acorn, BKA DJC Mike
took over the mailing list. Now Alessandro is in charge of it, which
essentially means that everything he doesn't like can go to hell. He
likes few things, folks.
> What he'd done was he had collected together as many Sonic
> files as he could - movie files, sound files, everything except for
> Fanfics and that was because his friend was running "Master-
> mind's Vault", which was one of the definitive Sonic Fanfic ar-
> chives at the time, although I don't remember whether it was
> Mastermind that started it or whether he just took over or what.
> I was still learning all this stuff as it went on.
I don't remember either. I don't think Alex would know, but, well.
Alex? Yasha?
> Anyway, whenever you saw a Sonic page on the Web that contained
> a video file or anything like that, it was usually just a hypertext
> link to the same file on Rat Org, www.rat.org , where Ratman kept
> all this stuff. It really was the backbone of our society.
For the Sonic Mailing List, it was vital. Without Ratman, there was no
list. He was the administrator and his computing knowledge was en-
vied -- not equaled -- by the average Sonic fan back then. Those who
had the knowhow to do what he was doing didn't have the server to do
it with.
> The artwork section of rat.org, "The Squeaky Clean Furry Archive",
> which I mentioned a moment ago and which made up about
> half of Ratman's site, got bigger and bigger, and was really the
> largest Sonic fan-art gallery out there. Whereas the main page of
> rat.org featured a prominent scan of a dead (or standing but photo-
> graphed from under a sheet of glass, I suppose) rat, Squeaky's logo
> was a cartoon version of the same, a little rat with a big grin.
> Everyone who was anyone in the Sonic community wanted to see
> their work in the Squeaky,
Except me, being a chicken shit.
> and in those days it was as easy as submitting it.
>
> Then suddenly, Ratman, and this is where it seems to connect to
> Tooner in your half of the story, decided he didn't want to be a Sonic
> fan any more, and in an unprecedented act of violence which rocked
> the Sonic Net as I knew it at the time, took down his entire rat.org
> Sonic archive, and began a hate campaign against us! Suddenly
> there was no more Sonic Webring, everything was gone,
Nonetheless, we have to thank Ratman. I'm serious. Back then, I was
fuming, but in retrospect I realize that without rat.org the Sonic fandom
would not be what it is today. Just as the cancellation of the SatAM
series inspired fans to create their own stories and mini-universes, the
destruction of the Sonic archive on rat.org motivated Sonic fans to get
up and finally produce their own websites and archives. It was sort of
pushing the fandom to "grow up" -- they no longer had a "parent" (that
being rat.org) to rely on, and had to take care of themselves. Rebuilding
what was lost was our responsibility.
> save Alessandro's page which held steadfast the whole time. But,
> Ratman's leaving really shocked us all, and something had to be
> done to rebuild our culture. Eventually we would be able to build
> it back up one brick at a time, but in the meantime someone had
> to have the modem speed, the hard drive space, and the Internet
> space, to completely back-up rat.org. Until we found such a man,
> we would remain in a kind of murky grey depression forever.
>
> That man was David Gonterman, a member of various Sonic com-
> munities including this newsgroup,
He was very well known in the AoL community, also. He became
especially inflamed when Archie/Ken Penders announced their plan
to "kill Sally"... was that when he vowed to abandon Sonic fandom?
I don't remember exactly.
> who quick as a flash saved the archive onto his Foxfire Studios
> website. This bit seems to relate to your half of the story as well.
> He was known for his comics and a recent spell in Afsh posting
> his brand new Sonic Fanfic "Blood And Metal", both of which at
> the time were generally well recieved. He started to get a repu-
> tation as something of a nuisance later in this story though,
> especially during the Blitz around the time of Sonic The Hedge-
> hog #47 when the whole Sonic Usenet community turned against
> one another to fight about which Universe was the true Sonic and
> why Ken Penders was the spawn of Satan, but just as it was about
> to balloon and everyone was about to get really angry with Gonter-
> man following his notorious pro-Sally stir-up comic, he inexplicably
> disappeared, and so did almost everything he had ever done, apart
> from a relatively new comic he had started about a guy with a tal-
> king furry suit from a theme park or something.
Just as I read that line I forgot the suit's name, but I remember that
the comic really sucked. No surprise there. The suit idea was a clear
ripoff of "IT."
> When I started to hear jokes about him over the last couple of
> years, I didn't realise it had anything to do with his current Ed
> Wood status on the Net, it took me ages to twig, because I thought
> everyone remembered him from Afsh. I wondered how that could be
> when 94% of everyone here is relatively new.
Yes, that includes you, Mach.
> But anyway, back to the point I'd reached in my memory of the Sonic
> Net Story - Gonterman's version of the Ratman Archives stayed online
> for quite a while, but then they sort of petered out and eventually
> vanished. At about the same time Ratman and his new partner in
> crime announced that no more Sonic fanart would be accepted into
> Squeaky, which confused us all greatly because it was a Sonic fan
> art gallery, but he had decided it would be exclusively for other
> non-Sonic Furry work (ie countless Tails clones). With a quick name-
> change to Yerf and a redesign of the mousey logo character, he
> covered his tracks rather well. Despite a lot of verbal abuse to the
> users of the Sonic Net, most of the artists on Yerf turned a blind
> eye, and it began to grow in size, now seen as an elite due to its
> refusal to accept anyone unless they met certain credentials.
Or they have to be a personal friend of the main administrator. Yerf
probably became a furry archive because that kind of stuff was be-
ginning to get really popular on the 'net. Naturally, a lot of geeks
were on the internet at that point in time, since it still wasn't ready
for the general public. Ratman was surely among them, changing
to fit in with his fellow geeky brethren. (Before I continue, let me
say that I consider myself a geek, although not a geeky geek. There
is a difference. I also do not want any geeks to take offense from my
use of the term.) When the furry stuff started getting major, he went
and made rat.org Yerf, a furry archive. People started using a lot of
"furry" lingo, especially "yiff," which was a sexual noise or something.
There was some other art archive that popped up around then too,
which was different since it accepted full-blown furry porn. It was
getting to be the geeky fantasy thing to be involved in on the internet.
Sonic was probably seen as a "baby's" furry fandom, to many, and
that could explain why Ratman ditched the Sonicdom. That's only
my theory, of course.
> So essentially what had happened was a systematic clear-out of
> the Sonic Net. Everything had been destroyed, so that it could be
> rebuilt. All the hangouts had gone - it was about now that the Sonic
> Chat Room was hacked into and wiped - Rat Org had gone, and all
> of the regulars had fallen out, drifted away or otherwise disap-
> peared.
Let me also note that the Sonic Webring did not vanish as well during
that time period. It was run on the Webring servers, not on rat.org,
and it was also not run by Ratman but by Jeff Read. Jeff was also con-
sidered "The God Of Sonic MiDis" and to talk to him was an honor. He,
too, began to drift away from the Sonic fandom, along with Jay, CSA,
and a number of others. To be truthful I don't even remember what I was
doing around then, though I know I was still doing... something. And I
was here. Just not paying a lot of attention and merging with my chair,
I guess.
> From out of this post-apocalyptic haze proudly stepped Ron Bauerle
> and his band of old-old-schoolers, people like Dan Drazen, Alessan-
> dro Sanasi, and as well as them names that have been seen less
> and less such as Bookshire Draftwood, Dawn Best, Thad X Boyd,
> and so on. They were part of something called the Bauerle List, a
> mysterious elite who watched over everything else that happened
> with a keen gaze, the Elders of the Sonic Net, in their role of quiet
> control and observation from behind the scenes. These were the guys
> who prepared the legendary Sonic FAQ,
Um... huh? I was on Ron's list, and I don't know of any "Sonic FAQ"...
I remember when Bookshire was writing out tons of theories on how
stuff worked in the Sonic world (according to him), but no exact "FAQ."
Can you enlighten me as to what you're talking about...? I may know,
but I really, truly don't remember that... I remember the "Sonic Code"
but not a "Sonic FAQ."
> this was the community from which all the most famous Fanfics
> derived, and from the fabled writers Drazen and Bookshire came
> all of what are now token online Sonic stories and characters. If
> you were a SatAm fan, you read Drazen's stories, and that was
> that. If you were a Fanfic writer, you used Bookshire's characters
> (such as a robotic general for Doctor Robotnik whose name eludes
> me now),
Packbell, deliberately named after "Packard Bell." He appeared to be
the most perfect servant to Robotnik, but Snively -- someone he com-
monly tortured -- hated him, and Packbell had planned to overthrow
Robotnik all along.
> and that was that.
>
> By now, I had managed to slide my way onto this list, where I found
> battles to be waging against writer Ken Penders because he had
> come up with a shocking new idea: to kill Princess Sally. This was
> what really triggered the Blitz. Suddenly everyone was fighting
> against everyone else, some saying it was wrong to kill Sally be-
> cause it would stop Archie's comics from being anything like the
> cartoon series, others saying that this was okay since the cartoon
> series was not the original Universe anyway and made such changes
> in its own creation. I was one of these, arguing, on Afsh and / or the
> other, more mainstream Sonic Mailing List, that SatAm was not fit
> to be called a Sonic Universe when you could be enjoying the games
> (which I, sick of typing out "The Sonic Team Sonic games" every
> time, nicknamed 'SegaSonic' for sake of argument, based on the
> tag-name of some of the 1993 Sonic merchandise - the name seems
> to have stuck), despite my views on the subject being very biased
> and patently wrong.
Hmm. Did I ever yell at you back then? I know I was an active partici-
pant in the "Endgame" battles, at least. But I don't even remember
what side I was on. Jesus, I'm not remembering things very well, am I?
Well, at least I'm recalling some things you aren't... maybe you'll re-
member what I've forgotten...
> The 1997 Sonic Internet Blitz-out was the start of Archie's down-
> fall. All the negative stuff you hear about Archie's Sonic comics
> now really didn't come about until the Endgame story arc began.
Though I do agree that it wasn't that bad -until- "Endgame" emerged,
I wouldn't say that everyone loved Archie before that. Some of the
issues were putrid when compared to great issues like the "E.V.E"
series and the coveted issue #25, the one based on "Sonic CD."
You see, what came out between those moments of Archie Sonic
greatness was crap on paper. One issue that's coming to mind had
a cover drawn by Manak, I think, which showed Robotnik and Sonic
enclosed in a clear sphere of some kind, being held by a shiny
metallic alien thing. That issue sucked hard.
> Even then, when the comic was essentially still of a very high
> quality, it got a lot of abuse because of the kill Sally idea,
And a lot of websites dedicated to Sally went up. People wrote
poems, songs, everything you could imagine to show their sup-
port for the Acorn princess.
> and then when Endgame's story was brutally cut from 48 pages
> to 32 and released as a quick and shoddy piecing together of
> all the most important (and confusing) parts, people began to
> see Archie in a new light - as a corporate-led title where Sonic
> isn't allowed to cry and writers aren't allowed their freedom. This
> led into what is currently seen as a fall in creative quality (I
> blame it on unfair deadlines and the creatives themselves having
> to rush through their work).
>
> Suddenly, after this, the Sonic Usenet community entered a whole
> new, very exciting phase. Following the Continuity Wars of 1997,
> the fans of the different Universes began to come together and live
> in harmony. To begin with the Sonic Internet Fandom had been solely
> based on SatAm, but when fans of the other Universes such as Sega
> Sonic and Fleetway began to arrive (which began just a few months
> after I showed up), the Blitz was triggered. Now it had been cleared
> out of the way though, and following the devastation caused when
> the Webrings went down and the online chat forums died out, the
> more offline-based Usenet community had taken over as the heart
> of the Sonic Net, embracing this wonderful New Way in which ALL
> Sonic continuities were seen as equals. From the ashes had risen
> wonderful new web pages, far superior to their predecessors, con-
> taining unique editorials, whole TEAMS of staff, and in some cases
> quite exclusive content. Examples include the Sonic HQ, the Neo
> Green Hill Zone (now just the GHZ I believe), The Sonic Foundation
> etc etc. Big, professional-style Sonic fan pages, the likes of which
> other fandoms can only dream of.
I still find that true. Even series which claim to have many more fans
don't have the online presence the Sonic fandom has.
> During the Blitz-out I created the STC Mailing List, as a refuge for
> Fleetway readers among the Archie masses, and it was at the dawning
> of the New Age of Sonic Fandom that this took off, particularly when
> the main writer, Nigel Kitching, joined the list, and began to share
> with us valuable information about the creation of the comic...
[snip]
>
> So with websites set up for every major Sonic continuity, a posh
> and quite important mailing list there for the Archie readers (Ron's
> list),
The equivalent of your STC list basically, except older and catering to
the American Sonic fandom crowd.
> a very warm-feeling general Sonic chat mailing list (Powerzone), a
> newsgroup (Afsh) and thriving creative community making Fanfics,
> artwork, and basically everything else you can imagine, plus the
> final unveiling of Project Sonic (Sonic Adventure)
Though pictures which had been illegally leaked were discovered way
ahead of time by Sonic fans. They were quickly taken down by Sega.
I remember anticipating the arrival of "Sonic Adventure" for so long...
the Dreamcast was the first videogame system I ever reserved. Sigh.
Still such a wonderful system...
> and currently the advent of Sonic Adventure 2, our tenth anniver-
> sary, and who knows what else, the Sonic Net Fandom is on a high
> it has never seen before.
>
> So whenever people complain that Sonic Fandom's boring, just tell
> them off and remember how very exciting it is right now.
I wish I could agree, but I don't believe the Sonic fandom is at a high
point at the moment. It isn't nearly as active as it used to be. There
isn't much to update pages with since STC is in reprint-mode, Archie
isn't so well-loved anymore and there are no cartoons to gab about.
Nobody can really hope for an anime since one was already made and,
for the most part, rejected. An animated movie is basically out of the
question. Also, now that Sega has become a software-only company,
Sonic's game-based future is questionable. Hopefully things will
brighten up...
[snip]
> Whoo. So. That's my memory of it all. I'm sure I got a lot of it
> wrong due to being misinformed at the time, but that serves as
> a frame for What Roughly Happened to bring about today's Sonic
> Internet Fandom. I'm interested to know the full story though, so if
> anyone else has any other angles or corrections they'd like to make
> so we can figure out what definitely really happened then I'd love to
> hear them.
I'm too lazy to add more now, but let me commend you again on
writing such a thorough and generally great history, here.
> -
> Buml0r
>
>
> Note - I've been here since about the time when I turned fifteen.
[snip]
Just to say so, I've been involved in the online Sonic fandom since
I was eleven or twelve (I think), although I didn't have much of a re-
cognized internet presence until late '95-'96. I'm now nineteen and
still a proud Sonic fan (plus I'd like to think that I'm far less
irritating.) Yes, I've grown up in this stuff, folks. Feel free to pity
me.
-----
- raz masters - ta'via (hunewearl lvl 100) on phantasy star online -
- razor(at)vampirehunter.com - razjm(at)juno.com -
- [ sig updated as of 05-28-00 ] -
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ dedicated to the great hedgehog _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ http://www.sonic-10th-anniversary.com _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ [ S10th Fan Speech Section Updated! ] _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Alex Weitzman
>able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net by the end of
>this.
Not a bad idea at all. We could use some official records. Let me see what I
can add:
>every
>Sonic page on the web, and there weren't many, totally relied on something
>called Rat Org.
Yes, I remember Ratman and his page. However, it's worth noting that rat.org,
after its demise, was truly taken up in spirit by David "Bookshire" Pistone's
site. While Gonterman had the actual files to boast, Bookshire had declared his
site as the successor to rat.org.
>movie files, sound files, everything except for Fanfics
>and that was because his friend was running "Mastermind's Vault"
That, of course, was Mastermind. Mastermind had his fanfic site for a LONG
time, until it shut down about two years ago, I think. He wasn't heard from
again until taking over fanfic managing duties at TeamArtail, a position which
he just stepped down from.
>Then suddenly, Ratman, and this is where it seems to connect to Tooner in
>your half of the story, decided he didn't want to be a Sonic fan any more
I may want to clear up that Tooner wasn't necessarily a Sonic fan per se, but a
cartoon fan in general. He just loved his work, and nurtured all the fandoms
there; it was just that the Sonic one grew very strong.
Tooner was probably also either fired or quit after a major fight between the
higher-ups at AOL (possibly even Case - that son of a bitch never did respond
to our pleas for a new manager). Tooner's departure seemed more reluctant than
anything else, wheras Ratman deliberately turned on the one fandom he was
affiliated with.
>That man was David Gonterman, a member of various Sonic communities
>including this newsgroup, who quick as a flash saved the archive onto his
>Foxfire Studios website. This bit seems to relate to your half of the story
>as well.
It ought to. Maybe a history of David Gonterman is in order to clear up any
questions newer people may have, who never read a Gonterman story but only know
him as some big taboo in Sonicdom.
David and I hit Toon Talk on AOL on almost the same day, which, now that I look
back on it, is damn freaky. In fact, hearing about his connection to AFSH, I
wonder which group he came to first. Probably AOL's, because he seemed as "fish
out of water" as I did. We were of different circumstances, though - he, in
probably his early 20s (this would be mid-1995), had come offering this story
called Blood And Metal; I was referred to Toon Talk by a couple of friends I
had made in a Sonic club I tried starting in Kids Only (I was 12, so no
comments), who were Emily "Suni/Sonia" Smith and Melissa "Princess Sally"
Johnson. I befriended him and was even the first to use Davey Crockett - who
wasn't revealed as Robo's son at the time - in a story not written by
Gonterman. "Blood And Metal" was a rather typical semi-self-insertion fic,
combining the SatAM universe with chapter markers as if they were Sonic game
zones. All of this was actually BEFORE Ratman had killed his site; it wouldn't
be much later, when Gonterman had created a site and gotten adept at various
HTML techniques that he would have been able to take on rat.org's archives.
Gonterman's downfall began with that site. His "Blood And Metal" series had
been advancing well enough, bringing in various fan characters he discovered on
AOL (Bear/The Hermit; Packbell - the polymorphous robotic general created by
Bookshire that you couldn't recall, David; and others). However, once hitting
the web, it was then that a lot of rather moronic newbies started to proclaim
Gonterman as the god of all Sonic fanfic. This got to his head REALLY quickly.
Meanwhile, on AOL, various newer generations were coming to Toon Talk -
including Yasha and Raz - and Gonterman would act very high and mighty to him.
Emily Smith had been dragged along a little, with her major character Suni
being made into Crockett's Friday-nite girl, though she was starting to smell
the stench of ego as well. I, on the other hand, remained healthfully detached,
and while I used Crockett as a character in my stories, I had alienated myself
from the Foxfire Studios following; my place had been secured from the
beginning in the AOL fandom. (It so happened that I showed up with my screen
name, Sonic90127, just as the AOL fandom lost all three of the simultaneous
Sonics they had; suffice to say, I became Sonic as a newbie.) When there were
major falling-outs between various AOL members and Gonterman, he retreated to
his ego-land of the site and didn't show his face for a while. (This was
translated story-wise as David Kintobor retreating to Suni's cabin by a
lagoon.) After some time, he came back, ego bigger than before. Naturally, he
didn't stay long, and that encounter was what made him just turn his back on
Sonicdom. He'd gotten into his Sailor Moon fanfic, and whatever else. There's
the untragic end.
>Gonterman's version of the Ratman Archives stayed online for quite a
>while, but then they sort of petered out and eventually vanished.
Yeah, Gonterman removed the files eventually once he realized the had the
"wasted space". Probably with vindictive motives.
>So essentially what had happened was a systematic clear-out of the Sonic
>Net. Everything had been destroyed, so that it could be rebuilt.
Which probably occured at the time that the Saturn was in obvious decline and
the Dreamcast buzz hadn't hit yet - a notorious low point in Sega and Sonic
popularity. Actually, our own fandom was also hitting the rocks at the same
time. Definitely notable as a major decay point in Sonicdom.
>From out of this post-apocalyptic haze proudly stepped Ron Bauerle and his
>band of old-old-schoolers, people like Dan Drazen, Alessandro Sanasi, and as
>well as them names that have been seen less and less such as Bookshire
>Draftwood, Dawn Best, Thad X Boyd, and so on.
I know and have communicated with most of those names. However, where they
stepped in and saved the Net fandom, our fandom was killed by the ones who
stepped in - the EStars. Us AOL fans scattered into the wind or the Net.
>All
>the negative stuff you hear about Archie's Sonic comics now really didn't
>come about until the Endgame story arc began.
Well, I dunno - wasn't Mike Gallagher a writer from the beginning?
I'm admittedly sour about the comics, because they didn't turn out the way I'd
hoped. My subscription ended at #47, and you can guess that I didn't renew it
after that.
Well, between us we've got quite a history of Sonicdom over the modem. Somebody
better be getting this down. (...as he types the comment in print. Hoo boy, I'm
a moron.)
Alex Weitzman
>clue where they were roleplaying because the name of the private room
>they were using was not mentioned on the boards (to the best of my
>memory, and I still do have the logs). In my infinite stupidity I never
>guessed that the name of the room was "Knothole." I had to get a
>friend-of-the-times, Will O'Hare, to tell me.
Raz, I'm a tad surprised. I didn't know you were out of the loop on the name
"Knothole".
Then again, it was probably assumed that you'd figure it out. Oh, well - OLD
embarrassment.
>Anyway, already there was EG, Shades, Asrial, Yasha, Alex (duh),
>Sonia, Will, and a few others. If you recognize any of those aliases,
>then you know some of the old-timers of the AoL/Early 'net Sonic fan-
>dom.
You know, Raz, those are really second-generation old-time AOL Sonic fans. The
bunch that I was a newbie to was Rottin Kid/Jennifer Cleckley,
GROMIT1436/Morgan Ingersoll (the one who created Melanie, Antoine's girlfriend,
among many other characters), Bookshire/David Pistone, Prin Sal 1/Melissa
Johnson (and, boy, there are other stories about her and me that, how to put
it, parallelled our characters' love triangle), and others. EG, Shades, Asrial,
Yasha, Will, and yourself all came later, once I'd established myself as Sonic.
The only one on your list who was also around when I started was Emily. In
fact, she was the first to join my paltry Sonic club in Kids Only.
>> What he'd done was he had collected together as many Sonic
>> files as he could - movie files, sound files, everything except for
>> Fanfics and that was because his friend was running "Master-
>> mind's Vault", which was one of the definitive Sonic Fanfic ar-
>> chives at the time, although I don't remember whether it was
>> Mastermind that started it or whether he just took over or what.
>> I was still learning all this stuff as it went on.
>
>I don't remember either. I don't think Alex would know, but, well.
>Alex? Yasha?
To my memory, Mastermind made that site. It took him a while, too, but
eventually the site became THE place for Sonic fanfic. Consider how long the
site lasted - you can see why it was able to hit that benchmark.
>Just as the cancellation of the SatAM
>series inspired fans to create their own stories and mini-universes, the
>destruction of the Sonic archive on rat.org motivated Sonic fans to get
>up and finally produce their own websites and archives. It was sort of
>pushing the fandom to "grow up" -- they no longer had a "parent" (that
>being rat.org) to rely on, and had to take care of themselves.
You know, that's a really good point. In fact, now that I think of it, the
Sonic fandom, even the most rabid SatAM types or of any other non-game
universe, has surged when something is LOST. The only times I can think of when
there was decline was when the *games* were the ones that were in decline - I'm
referring, of course, to Saturn's time.
>He was very well known in the AoL community, also. He became
>especially inflamed when Archie/Ken Penders announced their plan
>to "kill Sally"... was that when he vowed to abandon Sonic fandom?
>I don't remember exactly.
>
See my previous post for that answer and more.
>>apart
>> from a relatively new comic he had started about a guy with a tal-
>> king furry suit from a theme park or something.
>
>Just as I read that line I forgot the suit's name, but I remember that
>the comic really sucked. No surprise there. The suit idea was a clear
>ripoff of "IT."
You're both mixing up two different stupid creations of Gonterman's - Pippkin
and Jonathan Brisby.
Pippkin is the suit. Gonterman made a series called "Haunted Fantasies" about a
villainous Halloween outfit that spawned from Crockett's mind when he was
beaned by a falling Chaos Emerald. (Wouldn't it be interesting if physics were
obeyed and the Emerald just tore through Crockett's head?) After the stint in
the Sonicverse, Gonterman made him, of all things, a Sailor Moon villain for
his American Kitsune series. Quite stupid, indeed.
The comic of Gonterman's revolved around one Jonathan Brisby, who actually
first appeared, if I'm not mistaken, in Blood And Metal helping King Acorn on
Earth. Shoot me. He was supposed to have some connection to Mrs. Brisby and,
thus, the Rats of NIMH. His big thing before the comic was being part of a
monumentally bad fic called "The Rangers of NIMH", connecting Jon romantically
to Gadget. (Of course, we all know that Gadget and Zipper were practically
engaged.)
>One issue that's coming to mind had
>a cover drawn by Manak, I think, which showed Robotnik and Sonic
>enclosed in a clear sphere of some kind, being held by a shiny
>metallic alien thing. That issue sucked hard.
#23, I think. It was about a big alien thing that collected beings and took the
Odd Couple of Sonic and Botnik. You're quite right, Raz - that issue sucked
destructively hard.
Raz Masters
>>Anyway, already there was...
[snip]
> You know, Raz, those are really second-generation old-time AOL
> Sonic fans.
They're who I was exposed to when I finally got into Knothole, though.
I'm aware of some of the other people who were there, especially Rot-
tin and Melissa, but never really knew them personally. And. Yeeeah.
If you want to talk about how it all started, feel free, it'll really
add to this string (which is a good one if I say so myself).
> The bunch that I was a newbie to was Rottin Kid/Jennifer Cleckley,
> GROMIT1436/Morgan Ingersoll (the one who created Melanie, An-
> toine's girlfriend, among many other characters), Bookshire/David
> Pistone,
Do you remember him claiming to have changed his name legally to
Bookshire? I swear, for the longest time I thought it was authentic
fact, until he appeared to disprove it. Was it indeed David who said
he was going to change his name, or was it someone else? I know it
came from a believable source... on a mailing list or something...
> Prin Sal 1/Melissa Johnson (and, boy, there are other stories
> about her and me that, how to put it, parallelled our characters'
> love triangle),
Need I break out the paddle? You could be getting a bit excited here,
Alex. (I'm kidding, of course... but then again the paddle is always
available for deployment...)
> and others. EG, Shades, Asrial, Yasha, Will, and yourself all came
> later, once I'd established myself as Sonic. The only one on your
> list who was also around when I started was Emily. In fact, she
> was the first to join my paltry Sonic club in Kids Only.
I know that Yasha was a kind of late joiner, as I have the log which
has her original post in it, along with a bunch of other things. Forgot
to mention... um... how do you spell her name? Maegan? I can't even
remember. You know, AmyRose12? Damn, and I thought I was a case...
[snip]
> His big thing before the comic was being part of a monumentally bad
> fic called "The Rangers of NIMH", connecting Jon romantically to
> Gadget. (Of course, we all know that Gadget and Zipper were prac-
> tically engaged.)
That's just disturbing.
Alex Weitzman
>add to this string (which is a good one if I say so myself).
>
I wouldn't know about how it all started, since it had already begun before I
arrived. What I had learned about the time before I came was from Melissa
Johnson's "Sally's Diary" series, which was in three parts. The diary series
was actually based on real stuff which had occurred in roleplays, which
accounts for their mention of various Disney characters like Mozenrath (a
villain from the Aladdin TV show) and the hyenas from the Lion King -
apparently, there were some roleplayers who used those characters. My memory of
it is sketchy, but what I do remember quite clearly was that there were
apparently three Sonics at once: one who was really a fan character named Cyber
masquarading as Sonic, one Sonic "from the past", as she put it, and one who
went by the screen name SONICHEDHG, who Melissa attributed as the "real" Sonic.
All of those guys from the past started the system on Toon Talk - the
round-robin stories, the use of the Archives for story uploading, and the
format in which most Sonic fans there roleplayed.
>Do you remember him claiming to have changed his name legally to
>Bookshire?
Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. Yeah, Dave Pistone said that he had Bookshire
officially grafted to his name or something. I always brushed it off as
ridiculous.
>> Prin Sal 1/Melissa Johnson (and, boy, there are other stories
>> about her and me that, how to put it, parallelled our characters'
>> love triangle),
>
>Need I break out the paddle? You could be getting a bit excited here,
>Alex. (I'm kidding, of course... but then again the paddle is always
>available for deployment...)
What, you think I'm kidding?
The stories aren't in any way nasty, really, just somewhat freaky due to the
parallels with our characters. Melissa and I are about the same age (I think
she's just a month older than myself - possibly less), and we'd become good
friends even off the computer; we called each other a bunch. The big problem
was geography; I was in Southern CA (and still am), while she was in San
Antonio (and might still be).
The parallels involved a fan character named Remy, created by a guy named Kevin
who probably lived rather nearby to Melissa. I say that because they apparently
had a "thing" for a while, during which time Sally and Remy were a couple. Once
they broke up, Sally naturally went back to Sonic, and thus the quasi-romantic
tension rose again between us. Nothing ever happened - though we sent each
other pictures to see what the other looked like, we never met in person.
Eventually, she drew away from Sonic fandom and got into anime fandom, and I
eventually couldn't call her due to some inability between our phone services
(to this day, I'm not sure why that was). Thus, we just drifted apart, but not
with unfriendly motives.
>> His big thing before the comic was being part of a monumentally bad
>> fic called "The Rangers of NIMH", connecting Jon romantically to
>> Gadget. (Of course, we all know that Gadget and Zipper were prac-
>> tically engaged.)
>
>That's just disturbing.
>
So was the story.
The Chaos Emerald
Raz Masters babbled:
>Alex wroted:
>
>>>Anyway, already there was...
>[snip]
>> You know, Raz, those are really second-generation old-time AOL
>> Sonic fans.
>
>They're who I was exposed to when I finally got into Knothole, though.
>I'm aware of some of the other people who were there, especially Rot-
>tin and Melissa, but never really knew them personally. And. Yeeeah.
>If you want to talk about how it all started, feel free, it'll really
>add to this string (which is a good one if I say so myself).
<snip>
Why couldn't I ever find out about this board? I was on AOL at that
time, but I only frequented the Sonic video game boards. My nick came
because I wanted something Sonic Related and I didn't want something
with numbers after it... "ChaosEmer" was the only thing I could find.
--
/-----\ The Chaos Emerald
\* * */ Maintainer of The Hidden Palace, the original Sonic site
* \ / * with all four jewel chao!!
* |^^^^^| * http://www.hpalace.com
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KT
<sonic...@aol.com> wrote...
<Snip>
>>>apart
>>> from a relatively new comic he had started about a guy with a tal-
>>> king furry suit from a theme park or something.
>>
>>Just as I read that line I forgot the suit's name, but I remember that
>>the comic really sucked. No surprise there. The suit idea was a clear
>>ripoff of "IT."
>
>You're both mixing up two different stupid creations of Gonterman's - Pippkin
>and Jonathan Brisby.
>
>Pippkin is the suit. Gonterman made a series called "Haunted Fantasies" about a
>villainous Halloween outfit that spawned from Crockett's mind when he was
>beaned by a falling Chaos Emerald. (Wouldn't it be interesting if physics were
>obeyed and the Emerald just tore through Crockett's head?)
And generally beneficial to mankind...
>After the stint in
>the Sonicverse, Gonterman made him, of all things, a Sailor Moon villain for
>his American Kitsune series. Quite stupid, indeed.
*Shudder*
>
>The comic of Gonterman's revolved around one Jonathan Brisby, who actually
>first appeared, if I'm not mistaken, in Blood And Metal helping King Acorn on
>Earth. Shoot me. He was supposed to have some connection to Mrs. Brisby and,
>thus, the Rats of NIMH.
I may be wrong, but I think Jonathan is a character from the second
NIMH book, and is Mrs Brisby's son. Then again, it has been AGES since I
read the book...
> His big thing before the comic was being part of a
>monumentally bad fic called "The Rangers of NIMH", connecting Jon romantically
>to Gadget. (Of course, we all know that Gadget and Zipper were practically
>engaged.)
And? It is Gonterman we're talking about here. He doesn't appear to
pay the strongest attention to continuity ever...
--
KT Coope
Alex Weitzman
Because it wasn't a video game board. Our fandom was located in AOL Cartoons,
where the Sonic boards were based on SatAM.
David Bulmer
>
> >> What he'd done was he had collected together as many Sonic
> >> files as he could - movie files, sound files, everything except for
> >> Fanfics and that was because his friend was running "Master-
> >> mind's Vault", which was one of the definitive Sonic Fanfic ar-
> >> chives at the time, although I don't remember whether it was
> >> Mastermind that started it or whether he just took over or what.
> >> I was still learning all this stuff as it went on.
> >
> >I don't remember either. I don't think Alex would know, but, well.
> >Alex? Yasha?
>
> To my memory, Mastermind made that site. It took him a while, too, but
> eventually the site became THE place for Sonic fanfic. Consider how long
the
> site lasted - you can see why it was able to hit that benchmark.
Yeah, and it really was extensive wasn't it. I mean, any fanfic you'd ever
heard of was likely to be on there. I think mine was on there at one point.
And wasn't there something about continuities? I vaguely remember everything
was divided up into the main Mobius, which followed on from the cartoons and
was largely led by Dan Drazen, the other Mobius which was just anything
else, and then this one section especially for dark and nasty Mobius stories
with rape and murder and stuff, which was largely led by these brothers who
wrote a lot of that sort of thing.
Or something.
>
> >Just as the cancellation of the SatAM
> >series inspired fans to create their own stories and mini-universes, the
> >destruction of the Sonic archive on rat.org motivated Sonic fans to get
> >up and finally produce their own websites and archives. It was sort of
> >pushing the fandom to "grow up" -- they no longer had a "parent" (that
> >being rat.org) to rely on, and had to take care of themselves.
>
> You know, that's a really good point. In fact, now that I think of it, the
> Sonic fandom, even the most rabid SatAM types or of any other non-game
> universe, has surged when something is LOST. The only times I can think of
when
> there was decline was when the *games* were the ones that were in
decline - I'm
> referring, of course, to Saturn's time.
Yes, but if you remember there was a time of big excitement during the time
of the Saturn, when Alessandro leaked the first bits of information about
now-familiar titles such as Sonic R and Sonic Jam, back when they were
really, really, exciting and new.
>
> >One issue that's coming to mind had
> >a cover drawn by Manak, I think, which showed Robotnik and Sonic
> >enclosed in a clear sphere of some kind, being held by a shiny
> >metallic alien thing. That issue sucked hard.
>
> #23, I think. It was about a big alien thing that collected beings and
took the
> Odd Couple of Sonic and Botnik. You're quite right, Raz - that issue
sucked
> destructively hard.
I really enjoyed the phrase "sucked destructively hard". Nice work. *B^D
-
Buml0r
David Bulmer
"Raz Masters" <razjm...@aol.common.ape> wrote in message
> Bulmer done wroted:
>
> >
> > It sounds as though the Sonic Chat Room (which was a web-based
> > chat room, I don't know how these things work but it relied on you
> > constantly hitting 'refresh', so it was a great day when the next IE
> > came out with automatic refresh built into it) was built in answer to
> > that. Some of the people you mention seem to have been involved
> > in both halves of the culture, so I'd imagine they built the SCR to
> > be an exclusively Sonic room, rather than a general cartoon one,
> > although from what you say it sounds like they needn't have bothered.
>
> The SCR was entirely separate from the AoL MB. The message board
> was completely different from a chat room, as it worked almost exactly
> like how this very newsgroup works.
Ohhhh, it was a message board. I see, I thought you meant there was a
message board and a chat room to go with it. That was sort of how the SCR
worked. Right, so it really WAS two seperate things that eventually sort of
came together in the middle. How exciting!
>
> To be completely honest, I never personally went into the SCR because
> I heard Missy Sonic was an extremely annoying ditz.
Haha! Nahh, Sara's great. I mean she was probably annoying to begin with,
everyone is when they're new. She called herself Sonic for ages until I told
her it would have to either be Miss Sonic or something totally different.
But no, she's cool. I guess I must've been a newbie at the same time.
>
> It's true, though, a lot of the people on AoL were involved in everything
> Sonic. That is why I said previously that the AoL Sonic fandom was
> largely responsible for the fancharacter boom. Artie came from AoL, EG
> came from AoL, Matt Burt came from AoL... a ton of people who had an
> impact on the Sonic fandom did.
That's right, yeah, I reckon the half of Squeaky that wasn't from SCR was
from AoL. Or rather, those were probably two thirds, where the last third
came from both. *B^)
> Fanfics were written regularly on the
> AoL Sonic MB, and multiple writers participated in creating them, pro-
> ducing what could be called "readable roleplays." Both those and inde-
> pendent Sonic fanfic works were commonly uploaded into the ToonTalk
> archives. In fact, so many 'fics were written and so many posts made
> that there were -several- AoL Sonic MBs; they kept filling up and they
> needed to make new ones. The old logs, containing every single post
> ever made on those boards, were then uploaded to the archive as well.
Cool! Has anyone got a record of these? It'd be like re-experiencing
history, like reading the first notes of a Shakespeare or something.
>
> > The Sonic Chat Room was what became largely responsible for a place
> > called The Squeaky Clean Furry Archive, in the long-run.
>
> Though I was not a participant in the SCR for above-mentioned reasons,
> I question this statement of yours. I always knew rat.org to be a furry
> archive, even though it was the place to go to for Sonic multimedia
> (and "Mortal Kombat" stuff, though I believe that came later). A lot of
> friends and allies of mine had galleries there, including EG and Emily
> (Sonia), and I remember browsing Dawn Best's gallery as well. Those
> primarily housed Sonic fanart, yes, but there were other galleries too.
> Well. I don't clearly remember rat.org (though I do remember the soon-
> to-be-mentioned "I Hate Sonic" fiasco), so I can't outright say that it
> was not just a Sonic fanart archive.
Well, see, it was a Furry archive, but sort of in the sense that non-Sonic
stuff was openly allowed. Whether by the design of the owners or just by
chance, it was a predominantly Sonic gallery when I first found out about
it, and that was the way it was being used. That's probably why they got
sick of it and banned Sonic stuff. *B^D
> >
> >>The golden age of that time was when Tooner was around - he was
> >>the manager of both the Archives (where all fanfic was sent and
> >>available) and the Message Boards (where we all hung out). That
> >>time was the best because Tooner was also a fan, and he was in-
> >>terested and efficient in his job.
>
> To mention this for my own "I Was There" benefit, I was there, but did
> not know anybody on the boards and as a result never posted. I had no
> clue where they were roleplaying because the name of the private room
> they were using was not mentioned on the boards (to the best of my
> memory, and I still do have the logs). In my infinite stupidity I never
> guessed that the name of the room was "Knothole." I had to get a
> friend-of-the-times, Will O'Hare, to tell me.
Oh man! Will O'Hare! That name really rings a bell...!
> Anyway, already there was EG, Shades, Asrial, Yasha, Alex (duh),
> Sonia, Will, and a few others. If you recognize any of those aliases,
> then you know some of the old-timers of the AoL/Early 'net Sonic fan-
> dom.
Oh man! I recognise ALL of them! This is really bringing stuff back!
EG is the funny little fox Carol Schneewiess used to be, Shades was a sort
of blue Echidna thing with some kind of colourful clothing that EG was going
out with for a bit, Yasha we know, and the others I think I just spoke to
now and then, possibly later in the Efnet #sonic channel.
> >>
> > It sounds like this story ties-in with the half I lived through. We
> > might be able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net
> > by the end of this.
>
> I do find this post of yours and the comments made to be much good-
> ness, Dave. Mind if I put it on S10th? I think it would be extremely ap-
> propriate material.
No, sure, go ahead! It'd be great to piece together all this stuff and get a
proper record of it all online.
Like I said though it was all just from memory, so it's not researched or
anything, it's not official. Put it up, but be ready to change parts of it.
*B^)
>
> > Okay, here's the rest of what I saw...
> >
> > Let's see... I do remember that in the days of the Sonic Chat Room,
> > which was reasonably early on, a few years before the Internet got
> > popular, every Sonic page on the web, and there weren't many, to-
> > tally relied on something called Rat Org.
>
> That they did. You could check source codes for pages (not an easy
> task if you were using an AoL browser -- back then you had no choice
> in the manner) and find many links to rat.org's files. Any movies, with
> perhaps a couple of exceptions, were hosted on rat.org. It was, after
> all, an 8GB independent server existing when most of us had 500MB
> HDs and 14.4/28.8k connections...
Whoa, but not all eight gigs were full of Sonic stuff surely? If they were
then that's a pretty hefty fare even by today's standards!
>
> > There was a guy I saw on the Chat Room a few times called
> > Ratman, and he was one of the leading figures in Sonic culture as
> > I remember. I don't remember it too clearly as I was a relative new-
> > bie and didn't know much about the politics of it all, but the way I
> > remember it he was important.
>
> He was the original administrator of the Sonic Mailing List, the first
> one (which I think is still in existence today, although I no longer
> personally subscribe to it -- I hear it went to shit).
Ahhh, that makes sense. Actually yes, that sounds familiar.
> After him, Com-
> mander Sonic Data, AKA Commander Sonic Acorn, BKA DJC Mike
> took over the mailing list.
I had no idea those three people were one and the same. I remember when he
was hosting the list, I was definitely subscribed to it by that time whether
or not I was in the Ratman days, I don't remember.
> Now Alessandro is in charge of it, which
> essentially means that everything he doesn't like can go to hell. He
> likes few things, folks.
Heheh! Nah, it's not like that. He just hosts it, he made sure he wasn't
going to try and moderate it that way. Trouble is, not a lot gets posted
there any more, although it is still active and I still get around five
posts a day from it. The Powerzone list. Hopefully one day it'll get a
revivial to the way it USED to be, now that WAS fun.
>
> > Anyway, whenever you saw a Sonic page on the Web that contained
> > a video file or anything like that, it was usually just a hypertext
> > link to the same file on Rat Org, www.rat.org , where Ratman kept
> > all this stuff. It really was the backbone of our society.
>
> For the Sonic Mailing List, it was vital. Without Ratman, there was no
> list. He was the administrator and his computing knowledge was en-
> vied -- not equaled -- by the average Sonic fan back then. Those who
> had the knowhow to do what he was doing didn't have the server to do
> it with.
Actually yeah, he must've been really astonishingly l33t to have worked out
how to set up mailing lists and 8 gig websites and so on back then... I mean
easy services, even the first ones like Coollist, were really not around at
that time and he must've figured the whole thing out himself. I couldn't do
that now, and I've been here for ages!
> > Everyone who was anyone in the Sonic community wanted to see
> > their work in the Squeaky,
>
> Except me, being a chicken shit.
Heh! I wanted to be in it, but I never got the guts to send anything off.
Probably wouldn't have got in anyway. He wanted a lot of pics, it was either
three or eight, and eight sounds like a stupidly large amount but I have to
wonder why I've got that number in my head. Probably three though. I drew
Omni Echidna turning into a robot (Omnibot 2,000, after he was hit by a
roboticiser dart in an rp session in the SCR), Dippe and Dawk who were a
couple of fan characters my friend at school invented, and then I ran out of
steam.
> Just as the cancellation of the SatAM
> series inspired fans to create their own stories and mini-universes, the
> destruction of the Sonic archive on rat.org motivated Sonic fans to get
> up and finally produce their own websites and archives. It was sort of
> pushing the fandom to "grow up" -- they no longer had a "parent" (that
> being rat.org) to rely on, and had to take care of themselves. Rebuilding
> what was lost was our responsibility.
That's right. If they had stayed we would never have had that
post-apocalypse golden era when everything suddenly ballooned up into the
wonderfully large and thorough sites we have today.
> > Eventually we would be able to build
> > it back up one brick at a time, but in the meantime someone had
> > to have the modem speed, the hard drive space, and the Internet
> > space, to completely back-up rat.org. Until we found such a man,
> > we would remain in a kind of murky grey depression forever.
> >
> > That man was David Gonterman, a member of various Sonic com-
> > munities including this newsgroup,
>
> He was very well known in the AoL community, also. He became
> especially inflamed when Archie/Ken Penders announced their plan
> to "kill Sally"... was that when he vowed to abandon Sonic fandom?
> I don't remember exactly.
Hahah! Yep, that was it. I think he was the one who was the most verbally
vicious about it. Threatened to leave, threatened to do whatever he could to
bring Ken Penders down, and it seems he still hasn't got over that.
> > Yerf turned a blind
> > eye, and it began to grow in size, now seen as an elite due to its
> > refusal to accept anyone unless they met certain credentials.
>
> Or they have to be a personal friend of the main administrator.
Is it still Ratman? Or, whatever name he might give himself these days?
> Yerf
> probably became a furry archive because that kind of stuff was be-
> ginning to get really popular on the 'net. Naturally, a lot of geeks
> were on the internet at that point in time, since it still wasn't ready
> for the general public.
I was one of them. It was quite nice to finally go somewhere where at least
50% of the people were a bit lamer than me.
> Ratman was surely among them, changing
> to fit in with his fellow geeky brethren. (Before I continue, let me
> say that I consider myself a geek, although not a geeky geek. There
> is a difference. I also do not want any geeks to take offense from my
> use of the term.) When the furry stuff started getting major, he went
> and made rat.org Yerf, a furry archive. People started using a lot of
> "furry" lingo, especially "yiff," which was a sexual noise or something.
Yes, I took 'yiff' to mean 'cartoon animal s3xx0r', but I really didn't
press the matter so I can't be sure. What about Yerf though? I knew of the
word yiff by the time that name came about, and I wondered if it was a take
on that. But, now that it's more mainstream, I can't see how they'd get away
with it so I can only imagine that's not the case.
> There was some other art archive that popped up around then too,
> which was different since it accepted full-blown furry porn. It was
> getting to be the geeky fantasy thing to be involved in on the internet.
> Sonic was probably seen as a "baby's" furry fandom, to many, and
> that could explain why Ratman ditched the Sonicdom. That's only
> my theory, of course.
Probably. The whole Furry thing is really strange to me. I mean, as I
understand it, there are actual gatherings, people dress up and have casual
sex with other animal dresser-uppers at these gatherings. That's an
outsider's view and I don't want to insult something I don't understand,
but, whoa. That's a bit freaky.
I once knew a guy who told me all about his dream to be a Furry, I think it
was something to do with being a squirrel character sitting by a river at
night. The way he described it, it was absolutely wonderful, but the thing
is you really can't do that sort of thing in real life. Maybe that's why
things like Gummi Bears still has lots of fans.
Wuzzles was the best though. Grr. Upstart Gummi Bears coming and taking over
their slot. They were only HALF of the fun, wrapped-up and rolled into one.
>
> > So essentially what had happened was a systematic clear-out of
> > the Sonic Net. Everything had been destroyed, so that it could be
> > rebuilt. All the hangouts had gone - it was about now that the Sonic
> > Chat Room was hacked into and wiped - Rat Org had gone, and all
> > of the regulars had fallen out, drifted away or otherwise disap-
> > peared.
>
> Let me also note that the Sonic Webring did not vanish as well during
> that time period.
Oop! My mistake. When I said that I meant more that the content of the pages
was gone rather than the ring itself, but I suppose to be fair to Jeff I
should've been more clear about that.
Muhuh, this is fun. We are educating the masses.
> It was run on the Webring servers, not on rat.org,
> and it was also not run by Ratman but by Jeff Read. Jeff was also con-
> sidered "The God Of Sonic MiDis" and to talk to him was an honor.
God I remember him! A lot of the Midis out there are still his, aren't they.
> He,
> too, began to drift away from the Sonic fandom, along with Jay, CSA,
Hmm, I didn't know they had left, I always just assumed I lost contact with
them. That's a shame. They're missing a lot of fun stuff.
See I could never do that. I'm not the sort of person who likes to forget
portions of my life, I want to live them some more. This summer I'm reliving
the summers when I was 11-14, as they were excellence in a can. I brought
the summer in by watching an episode of Buzz Lightyear at eight o' clock on
a Saturday morning, AND THIS IS HOW I INTEND TO CONTINUE.
For anyone who hasn't yet seen the Buzz Lightyear cartoon, if you miss
Earthworm Jim you might want to have a look.
>
> > From out of this post-apocalyptic haze proudly stepped Ron Bauerle
> > and his band of old-old-schoolers, people like Dan Drazen, Alessan-
> > dro Sanasi, and as well as them names that have been seen less
> > and less such as Bookshire Draftwood, Dawn Best, Thad X Boyd,
> > and so on. They were part of something called the Bauerle List, a
> > mysterious elite who watched over everything else that happened
> > with a keen gaze, the Elders of the Sonic Net, in their role of quiet
> > control and observation from behind the scenes. These were the guys
> > who prepared the legendary Sonic FAQ,
>
> Um... huh? I was on Ron's list, and I don't know of any "Sonic FAQ"...
> I remember when Bookshire was writing out tons of theories on how
> stuff worked in the Sonic world (according to him), but no exact "FAQ."
> Can you enlighten me as to what you're talking about...? I may know,
> but I really, truly don't remember that... I remember the "Sonic Code"
> but not a "Sonic FAQ."
The Sonic FAQ, it was like a collection of all the Dan Drazen comic reviews,
a full-length review for every single issue, plus the RDB comments,
collected together into a single file. It started with an ASCII picture of
Sonic, a few frequently asked questions, and then all the reviews under the
heading 'Sources'.
I printed it out once, and even on the smallest text size my printer could
muster it took up almost all of our paper supply. Won't be doing THAT again
in a hurry.
So perhaps it wasn't as legendary as I thought. It was enormous though. *B^D
As for Bookshire's theories - was that the stuff about the frontal lobe and
the sheilds around him and so on? Or was that someone else later on? I got
into Ron's list fairly late due to initial feer of how l33t they were, so
I'm no authority on that stuff. I remember the Sonic Code as well, although
I think I got that from a website somewhere.
>
> > this was the community from which all the most famous Fanfics
> > derived, and from the fabled writers Drazen and Bookshire came
> > all of what are now token online Sonic stories and characters. If
> > you were a SatAm fan, you read Drazen's stories, and that was
> > that. If you were a Fanfic writer, you used Bookshire's characters
> > (such as a robotic general for Doctor Robotnik whose name eludes
> > me now),
>
> Packbell, deliberately named after "Packard Bell."
That's the one! I remember his creation story where the words were blurred
together or something weren't they? Or something.
Hmm... not that good a name now I think of it.
I feel awful because Bookshire came back not too long ago and I was in a bad
mood, and I was HORRID to him. He was wondering whether to put adult stories
up on his page, and I met him with endless flames and eventually shouted
something like "Face it - your site ISN'T VERY IMPORTANT any more". Perhaps
accurate if you consider all the wonderful new pages available and the drop
in the importance of Fanfics, but still, not called for. I'll apologise next
time I see him.
> > others saying that this was okay since the cartoon
> > series was not the original Universe anyway and made such changes
> > in its own creation. I was one of these, arguing, on Afsh and / or the
> > other, more mainstream Sonic Mailing List, that SatAm was not fit
> > to be called a Sonic Universe when you could be enjoying the games
> > (which I, sick of typing out "The Sonic Team Sonic games" every
> > time, nicknamed 'SegaSonic' for sake of argument, based on the
> > tag-name of some of the 1993 Sonic merchandise - the name seems
> > to have stuck), despite my views on the subject being very biased
> > and patently wrong.
>
> Hmm. Did I ever yell at you back then? I know I was an active partici-
> pant in the "Endgame" battles, at least. But I don't even remember
> what side I was on. Jesus, I'm not remembering things very well, am I?
> Well, at least I'm recalling some things you aren't... maybe you'll re-
> member what I've forgotten...
That's the idea.
Thinking back, I do think we had a bit of a tiff at one point. I certainly
hope you shouted at me, because I was very closed-minded and immature, to
the point where I actually made myself hate SatAm simply because it was
against my current argument. I didn't even understand what Sega Sonic was
back then, the boundaries between it and STC were still blurred in my mind.
But yeah, I think at least for a time we were unofficial enemies. I don't
remember why. It doesn't matter though because nobody knew one another back
then. When Kulock first came in him and I were at each others' throats, and
I can't remember why that was either.
Oh my! I must've been a really horrid little kid until just recently!
>
> > The 1997 Sonic Internet Blitz-out was the start of Archie's down-
> > fall. All the negative stuff you hear about Archie's Sonic comics
> > now really didn't come about until the Endgame story arc began.
>
> Though I do agree that it wasn't that bad -until- "Endgame" emerged,
> I wouldn't say that everyone loved Archie before that. Some of the
> issues were putrid when compared to great issues like the "E.V.E"
> series and the coveted issue #25, the one based on "Sonic CD."
> You see, what came out between those moments of Archie Sonic
> greatness was crap on paper. One issue that's coming to mind had
> a cover drawn by Manak, I think, which showed Robotnik and Sonic
> enclosed in a clear sphere of some kind, being held by a shiny
> metallic alien thing. That issue sucked hard.
Oh right. Wasn't aware of that.
My perspective on Archie was very different to that of its actual readers.
Over here in the UK we only had Fleetway's STC, and although in the end it
turned out to be a technically superior comic (I can think of few issues I
disliked, whereas Archie readers seem to only be able to think of a handful
they liked these days), when I originally found out about an American Sonic
comic I was intrigued.
I found out about it for the first time on 'The Freedom Fighter Shrine',
which was a webpage I remember little about, except that the background was
black with purple maze-like patterns, and that it may have played a Midi at
you when you went in. There I found a Fanfic archive, and it was the first
time I had heard of Fanfic either. I was astonished to find that there
existed a place where I could post my Sonic stories and they could be read
by the whole world, and so I was inspired to re-re-write my old Sonic story,
The End Of Mobius, which is STILL in the dibs list for Mysting, by that girl
who Mysted Blood and Metal, so I'm looking forward to that.
Anyway, at this Shrine I learned that there was an American comic out there
somewhere which was continuing the story of Knothole and Princess Sally, BUT
WITH CHAOS EMERALDS. This concept was more exciting than words could
describe, especially since it was accompanied by a rather excellent pencil
sketch of Sonic standing on the Master Emerald with swirly energy going up
around him, which I got Abby to re-draw as an advert for the pilot issue to
The Sonic Ideal. I imagined Sonic and the Knothole gang in this sparkly Sega
Sonic style world of colourful Chaos Emeralds and so on. I read some Fanfics
and discovered an exciting world where Solstice celebrations lead to the
extinction of a planet, and where a human entering Mobius would turn into an
animal, and where a grey-brown Hedgehog could learn to run on water, and
where a girl on a hoverboard could turn out to be one of the elders
connected each to one Super Emerald. Imagine my disappointment when I
finally got my hands on a few issues and discovered the Chaos Emeralds to be
nothing more than blandly coloured green Super Emerald shaped rubbish things
that nobody really cared much about.
>
> > Even then, when the comic was essentially still of a very high
> > quality, it got a lot of abuse because of the kill Sally idea,
>
> And a lot of websites dedicated to Sally went up. People wrote
> poems, songs, everything you could imagine to show their sup-
> port for the Acorn princess.
That's right, I remember now! And that one picture of Sally as an angel
looking down that is now burned into all of our retinas. When Princess Di
died over here, all I could think was "The response to this is a bit like
when Sally died isn't it!".
> > Big, professional-style Sonic fan pages, the likes of which
> > other fandoms can only dream of.
>
> I still find that true. Even series which claim to have many more fans
> don't have the online presence the Sonic fandom has.
That's right, I've found myself in a situation whereby, when I get a phase
of liking something new (although my Sonic fandom never wanes these days, it
simply coexists), I search the web in the absolute assumption that I'll find
the same sort of quality as in the Sonic Net. This is never the case. Only
in the last couple of years has an active Internet fandom for Dizzy (one of
my other videogame hero love affairs from my childhood) arisen with at least
two very large and well crafted websites, and that was largely based around
a FAQ file I wrote when I was fifteen, and invented most of it as a parody
of the Blitz-out wars in here, at one point actually taking an example of an
email from a fight between me and Alessandro and changing all the names and
references.
And that's the only example I can think of when I've been successful in
finding a decent page for a non-Sonic interest. Oh wait, the Mushroom
Kingdom for Mario, and there are lots of Zelda pages... BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I
MEAN.
> >
> > So with websites set up for every major Sonic continuity, a posh
> > and quite important mailing list there for the Archie readers (Ron's
> > list),
>
> The equivalent of your STC list basically, except older and catering to
> the American Sonic fandom crowd.
I suppose so really. In fact in the early days I intended to make it exactly
the same, I moderated the posts in a similar way, but adding my version of
RDB comments in-character as Megadroid, the fictional host of STC. By the
time the first wave of subscribers left and the second (the current crowd)
joined in, though, I'd let it run as it felt like. Nowadays it's sadly
drifting away because of the cancellation of STC and the sudden exams all
its subscribers are going through, but one day it'll be back. Maybe I'll
re-read all the comics this summer and actually put together that STC
Directory thing I started.
>
> > a very warm-feeling general Sonic chat mailing list (Powerzone), a
> > newsgroup (Afsh) and thriving creative community making Fanfics,
> > artwork, and basically everything else you can imagine, plus the
> > final unveiling of Project Sonic (Sonic Adventure)
>
> Though pictures which had been illegally leaked were discovered way
> ahead of time by Sonic fans. They were quickly taken down by Sega.
> I remember anticipating the arrival of "Sonic Adventure" for so long...
> the Dreamcast was the first videogame system I ever reserved. Sigh.
> Still such a wonderful system...
I remember Dreamcast Day UK vividly. I already had my copy of the Sonic
Adventure soundtrack album, so as I unpacked the Dreamcast and held it
aloft, I had the Fanfare For Dr. Eggman track playing. Amusement.
Which illegally leaked pictures do you mean? I remember we found out a lot
about the game very early (I'm pleased that not too much has been revealed
about SA2 even now, so it will come as something of a surprise and will
hopefully spark a lot of new and interesting old-school-style conversation
here when finally the day comes), but I'm a bit hazy on exactly what, and
what of it Sega tried to cover-up.
I think the time when I actually started to take notice and realise that
Sonic Adventure and the Dural (or Dragon, or Vortex, or Katana or whatever
the Dreamcast was called at that point) were not just going to be another
Sonic X-Treme, was the time I downloaded that first video. It had Open Your
Heart in the background, was far too small to see, featured a lot of quite
early beta scenes including the Windy Valley cyclone when it still looked
like a huge geometric block, and suddenly cut out in the middle. I also
somehow managed to download an early recording of Open Your Heart which
everyone presumed to be for the intro sequence as it opened and ended on a
lot of thunderstorm sound effects, played by a different band to the final
one. You could barely make out anything they were saying as they all seemed
to be using silly voices.
>
> > and currently the advent of Sonic Adventure 2, our tenth anniver-
> > sary, and who knows what else, the Sonic Net Fandom is on a high
> > it has never seen before.
> >
> > So whenever people complain that Sonic Fandom's boring, just tell
> > them off and remember how very exciting it is right now.
>
> I wish I could agree, but I don't believe the Sonic fandom is at a high
> point at the moment. It isn't nearly as active as it used to be.
That's sort of what I meant but said it badly - the people are the ones
being boring, but the actual world we're in couldn't be better, it's just
that nobody realises that. Everyone's sitting around doing nothing, when the
single most important and exciting thing ever to happen to Sonic fandom
since the Sonic 2 launch party is going to happen in just under a month.
When we should be more active than ever before, all that's happening is
nobody seems interested any more. What's that all about?!
> >
> > Note - I've been here since about the time when I turned fifteen.
> [snip]
>
> Just to say so, I've been involved in the online Sonic fandom since
> I was eleven or twelve (I think), although I didn't have much of a re-
> cognized internet presence until late '95-'96. I'm now nineteen and
> still a proud Sonic fan (plus I'd like to think that I'm far less
> irritating.) Yes, I've grown up in this stuff, folks. Feel free to pity
> me.
Whoa! If you're the same age as me then you must've been pretty damn l33t
when you were eleven! STC's first issue came out that year (1993), so that
was really when my absolute Sonic fandom began, although I'd been overly
fond of him since I first saw the advert for the first game ("Once you've
played Sonic the Hedgehog, everything else seems a little bit slow!"), so
you must've really known you were interested to actually manage to get
online and into what existed of the Sonic Net Fandom then. Commendations!
-
Buml0r
David Bulmer
> >We might be
> >able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net by the end of
> >this.
>
> Not a bad idea at all. We could use some official records. Let me see what
I
> can add:
Excellent.
>
> >every
> >Sonic page on the web, and there weren't many, totally relied on
something
> >called Rat Org.
>
> Yes, I remember Ratman and his page. However, it's worth noting that
rat.org,
> after its demise, was truly taken up in spirit by David "Bookshire"
Pistone's
> site. While Gonterman had the actual files to boast, Bookshire had
declared his
> site as the successor to rat.org.
Oh, I seeee. And was it? I mean, did it work? I only ever knew his site to
be a Fanfics vault, mostly of his own stuff, but then I didn't frequent it.
Probably why I was so unkind to him when he returned, which I can barely
believe I did.
>
> >movie files, sound files, everything except for Fanfics
> >and that was because his friend was running "Mastermind's Vault"
>
> That, of course, was Mastermind.
I thought it probably was, but I didn't want to actually say so in case it
started off as something else and Mastermind only took over. So he was one
of the old-school Sonic fan crowd as well, was he?
> Mastermind had his fanfic site for a LONG
> time, until it shut down about two years ago, I think. He wasn't heard
from
> again until taking over fanfic managing duties at TeamArtail, a position
which
> he just stepped down from.
Good to know people are still around, it some context or another.
>
> >Then suddenly, Ratman, and this is where it seems to connect to Tooner in
> >your half of the story, decided he didn't want to be a Sonic fan any
more
>
> I may want to clear up that Tooner wasn't necessarily a Sonic fan per se,
but a
> cartoon fan in general. He just loved his work, and nurtured all the
fandoms
> there; it was just that the Sonic one grew very strong.
>
> Tooner was probably also either fired or quit after a major fight between
the
> higher-ups at AOL (possibly even Case - that son of a bitch never did
respond
> to our pleas for a new manager). Tooner's departure seemed more reluctant
than
> anything else, wheras Ratman deliberately turned on the one fandom he was
> affiliated with.
I wondered whether that was the case. It certainly didn't sound as though
Tooner left with any malicious intent, but I couldn't help but wonder, not
knowing the circumstances of his disappearance, whether he was the
mysterious friend of Ratman that I seem to remember arriving and taking him
away. It clearly wasn't Tooner, but I'd be interested to know who it was, or
whether I made him up altogether.
>
> >That man was David Gonterman, a member of various Sonic communities
> >including this newsgroup, who quick as a flash saved the archive onto his
> >Foxfire Studios website. This bit seems to relate to your half of the
story
> >as well.
>
> It ought to. Maybe a history of David Gonterman is in order to clear up
any
> questions newer people may have, who never read a Gonterman story but only
know
> him as some big taboo in Sonicdom.
I was amazed to find the Gonterman Shrine recently. Until then I had been
one of those people, assuming he was only known among Sonic fans. But the
story is so much deeper than that. I'd love for someone to meet him so we
can find out who this guy actually is, what his job is, what his life
involves. I can't understand how a man as old as him could still be doing
the things he does, and seemingly little else.
What's tragic about the whole thing is that people LIKED Blood And Metal.
It's infamous now, but at the time it was typical of Sonic Fanfic, and
although I never read it, seemed to be reasonably good. An epic Sonic
Fanfic, exactly what we needed, with people's fancharacters in for
familiarity. Nothing wrong with that.
>
> >So essentially what had happened was a systematic clear-out of the Sonic
> >Net. Everything had been destroyed, so that it could be rebuilt.
>
> Which probably occured at the time that the Saturn was in obvious decline
and
> the Dreamcast buzz hadn't hit yet - a notorious low point in Sega and
Sonic
> popularity. Actually, our own fandom was also hitting the rocks at the
same
> time. Definitely notable as a major decay point in Sonicdom.
That's right, but for some reason I didn't see it that way at the time, and
I don't remember why. If this was about 1997 or 1998 then it was probably
because of STC hitting some very exciting high points involving an ancient
civilisation who were actually responsible for everything from the
extinction of the Echidnas to the Chaos Emeralds to the Aquatic Ruin Zone,
although a lot of it was only hinted at at this early stage.
OH YES, AND KNUCKLES METALLIXES. Or Metallices. Metal Sonic, only Knuckles.
STC did it first.
>
> >From out of this post-apocalyptic haze proudly stepped Ron Bauerle and
his
> >band of old-old-schoolers, people like Dan Drazen, Alessandro Sanasi, and
as
> >well as them names that have been seen less and less such as Bookshire
> >Draftwood, Dawn Best, Thad X Boyd, and so on.
>
> I know and have communicated with most of those names.
Yeah... I miss some of them, but it's a shame they're mostly just lurking or
gone completely by now. I didn't speak to many of them a lot, only once or
twice in chats or emails, apart from Dawn of course who a couple of years
ago I really got talking to when she let us take over the Sonic Ideal name.
For anyone interested keep your eyes open for the TSI revival we're working
on. *B^)
> However, where they
> stepped in and saved the Net fandom, our fandom was killed by the ones who
> stepped in - the EStars. Us AOL fans scattered into the wind or the Net.
EStars?
>
> >All
> >the negative stuff you hear about Archie's Sonic comics now really didn't
> >come about until the Endgame story arc began.
>
> Well, I dunno - wasn't Mike Gallagher a writer from the beginning?
Sure, the actual comic probably didn't drastically change after #47, but
that was when the negative comments started. Before then, everyone seemed to
pretty much accept the way things were.
>
> I'm admittedly sour about the comics, because they didn't turn out the way
I'd
> hoped. My subscription ended at #47, and you can guess that I didn't renew
it
> after that.
#47 really was the turning point wasn't it. I don't even know what happened
in it, I just know it was when I really started to notice the number of the
current issue, because it was so infamous. Was that when Sally actually
fell?
>
> Well, between us we've got quite a history of Sonicdom over the modem.
Somebody
> better be getting this down. (...as he types the comment in print. Hoo
boy, I'm
> a moron.)
mohh
This is fun. I bet there's a whole other angle of Sonic fandom that we
haven't touched upon yet. We've got the AoL board pretty much from the
beginning, the Sonic Chat Room / Message Board from sort of the beginning
ish, what about the old-old-school beginnings of Ron's list and Ratman's
involvement? Anyone know about that stuff? How did Dan Drazen and company
first get involved?
-
Buml0r
David Bulmer
"A.N. Zac" <z...@emulationzone.orgREMOVETHISTEXT> wrote in message
news:9f3uq0$del$1...@news5.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> David Bulmer <daveb...@idealcreations.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:9f3hf2$sfv$5...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> > It sounds like this story ties-in with the half I lived through. We
might
> be
> > able to piece together an official history of the Sonic Net by the end
of
> > this. Okay, here's the rest of what I saw...
>
> Dave's an honest guy but his memory is completely unreliable much of the
> time
Mohh. No it isn't, and I distinctly remember telling you so just yesterday.
>. Therefore take parts of this with a pinch of salt.
>
> This paragraph especially:
>
> I had
> > lots of stupid petty arguments with some of the people on the list, but
> like
> > the Blitz-out these finished and made way for some wonderful things to
> > happen. Namely, STC Stem, a website created by Zac and Ed, which was for
a
> > time the STC equivalent to the big multi-Universe Sonic sites, providing
> > actual preview artwork and covers from the comic as well as plot
teasers.
> > STC Stem was a unique site, the like of which I have never seen before
or
> > since, because it was the only fan site actively contributed to by the
> > people responsible for the real thing. A kind of joint
official-unofficial
> > web page of sorts.
>
> You don't mention why it (sort of) ceases to exist these days.
True, but I was trying to avoid going off on one about the STC list. I
thought it was probably better to let you do that and keep my post more
relevent to the history of the general Sonic Net.
You're right though - I expect most of it to be inaccurate and generally
based on what I saw, which as we all know is rarely the full picture.
>
> STEM's setup was for many reasons, some of which are listed below:
>
> 1) Before it, there were NO STC sites around (apart from Ed's STC Page,
> which lasted a week and was merged with the STC List page to form STEM).
Correct. Well. There were a few little ones or other sites that had STC bits
on, but it was indeed the only proper STC page.
> 2) STC needed promotion. Desperately.
Yeah, it's a shame about STC. It was a really really good comic.
> 3) The intention was to build up a vast archive of reviews that would
> nullify the reprint cause.
Wait a minute - aren't there just facts about STEM rather than reasons why
it (sort of) ceases to exist these days?
> 4) The STC List would get more promotion, particularly if the site got a
> mention in the comic itself (although, after at LEAST three attempts, it
> hasn't quite happened yet - and believe me when I say that it REALLY WAS
all
> set to appear in STC on THREE seperate occasions)
Yes, I remember that. Gahh!
...
>
> However after the first few months it became apparent that STC was to
become
> all-reprint, which caused our enthusiasm to die down a lot (also due to
> increasing academic pressure). Thus STEM has been very much dead for the
> past nine months.
>
> But there is a relaunch planned for July (post-exams!!) that will cause
your
> head to explode. You have been warned.
Yaaaay!
Do some marketing while you're at it. It'd be good to share links with the
big Sonic pages, that way more people will know about Stem. Good luck with
that, folks. Even a dead comic can have an active fanbase.
-
Buml0r
A.N. Zac
> > Dave's an honest guy but his memory is completely unreliable much of the
> > time
>
> Mohh. No it isn't, and I distinctly remember telling you so just
yesterday.
Well, okay, not COMPLETELY... :-)
> >. Therefore take parts of this with a pinch of salt.
> >
> > This paragraph especially:
> >
> > I had
> > > lots of stupid petty arguments with some of the people on the list,
but
> > like
> > > the Blitz-out these finished and made way for some wonderful things to
> > > happen. Namely, STC Stem, a website created by Zac and Ed, which was
for
NUHHHHH!!!!
(Hits skull hard)
I said "This paragraph especially" JOKINGLY! I was criticising myself, not
Dave, and now that I reread it I realise that I obviously didn't make it
remotely clear. DUHHHHNNNN.
> True, but I was trying to avoid going off on one about the STC list. I
> thought it was probably better to let you do that and keep my post more
> relevent to the history of the general Sonic Net.
As a great man once said: MOHH.
> You're right though - I expect most of it to be inaccurate and generally
> based on what I saw, which as we all know is rarely the full picture.
Never too far off, though. :)
> Wait a minute - aren't there just facts about STEM rather than reasons why
> it (sort of) ceases to exist these days?
Yeah... I pointed that out earlier in the post...
> Yes, I remember that. Gahh!
You don't know about the #200 incident though... :-D
> Do some marketing while you're at it. It'd be good to share links with the
> big Sonic pages, that way more people will know about Stem. Good luck with
> that, folks. Even a dead comic can have an active fanbase.
And it does, as the STC List proves. And as the MASSIVE SatAM fanbase proves
(although that's a cartoon rather than a comic).
Justin "Manic"
--
Justin "Manicknux"
"Always doing my best will be my goal, no one can stop me, no one can delay
me, and no one can make me fail!
"Alex Weitzman" <sonic...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010530003655...@ng-co1.aol.com...
Alex Weitzman
>> eventually the site became THE place for Sonic fanfic. Consider how long
>the
>> site lasted - you can see why it was able to hit that benchmark.
>
>Yeah, and it really was extensive wasn't it. I mean, any fanfic you'd ever
>heard of was likely to be on there.
........except mine. The site went down before I realized that there was an
advantage to submitting my Sonic fics to the Web.
>And wasn't there something about continuities? I vaguely remember everything
>was divided up into the main Mobius, which followed on from the cartoons and
>was largely led by Dan Drazen, the other Mobius which was just anything
>else, and then this one section especially for dark and nasty Mobius stories
>with rape and murder and stuff, which was largely led by these brothers who
>wrote a lot of that sort of thing.
>
>Or something.
You're completely correct, and, in fact, Mastermind's site was the OTHER site
that Bookshire took on in spirit. Pistone's most recent site is divided up into
the same continuities as Mastermind's was.
On Pistone's site, however, the "main" Mobius is led mostly by Joseph
Delacroix.
>>The only times I can think of when
>> there was decline was when the *games* were the ones that were in
>decline - I'm
>> referring, of course, to Saturn's time.
>
>Yes, but if you remember there was a time of big excitement during the time
>of the Saturn, when Alessandro leaked the first bits of information about
>now-familiar titles such as Sonic R and Sonic Jam, back when they were
>really, really, exciting and new.
Sonic Jam brought some excitement before and after its release; Sonic R brought
some before. Ultimately, though, the period in which the Saturn was in a real
slump was a particularly low point in Sonicdom.
>I really enjoyed the phrase "sucked destructively hard". Nice work. *B^D
I try.
Alex Weitzman
>rat.org,
>> after its demise, was truly taken up in spirit by David "Bookshire"
>Pistone's
>> site. While Gonterman had the actual files to boast, Bookshire had
>declared his
>> site as the successor to rat.org.
>
>Oh, I seeee. And was it? I mean, did it work?
No, not really. You're quite right; it was just a fanfic vault, but Bookshire
tried. At least that counts for something.
>> That, of course, was Mastermind.
>
>I thought it probably was, but I didn't want to actually say so in case it
>started off as something else and Mastermind only took over. So he was one
>of the old-school Sonic fan crowd as well, was he?
Yeah, he's been around for probably longer than me, and I've been around a damn
long time.
>I was amazed to find the Gonterman Shrine recently. Until then I had been
>one of those people, assuming he was only known among Sonic fans. But the
>story is so much deeper than that. I'd love for someone to meet him so we
>can find out who this guy actually is, what his job is, what his life
>involves. I can't understand how a man as old as him could still be doing
>the things he does, and seemingly little else.
I've actually talked on the phone to the man. Yeah, he definitely sounds like a
Middle American. (He sets stuff in Missouri for that reason.) At the time, his
plan was to be a cartoonist, and to my knowledge it still is his plan. However,
beforehand he hadn't earned that magnificent group of people who despised him.
>What's tragic about the whole thing is that people LIKED Blood And Metal.
>It's infamous now, but at the time it was typical of Sonic Fanfic, and
>although I never read it, seemed to be reasonably good. An epic Sonic
>Fanfic, exactly what we needed, with people's fancharacters in for
>familiarity. Nothing wrong with that.
The way you describe it, no, there *is* nothing wrong with that. Blood and
Metal, though, had time to evolve. BAM was initially a semi-self-insertion with
a couple of good ideas (a Punisher for the Freedom Fighter side, communication
between King Acorn and Sally) and a couple of bad ideas (Power Rings
inexplicably turning people into foxes, any involvement with the Power
Rangers). Unfortunately, it just went downhill from there.
>
>> However, where they
>> stepped in and saved the Net fandom, our fandom was killed by the ones who
>> stepped in - the EStars. Us AOL fans scattered into the wind or the Net.
>
>EStars?
That's what I call the collective group of managers AOL gave us after that.
EStarWenma, EStarDucky, etc. They changed the style of our message boards,
which meant we couldn't make our own board categories anymore, and erased
messages without archiving them. They were unimaginable dipshits, and under the
employ of the dipshit empire, AOL.
>#47 really was the turning point wasn't it. I don't even know what happened
>in it, I just know it was when I really started to notice the number of the
>current issue, because it was so infamous. Was that when Sally actually
>fell?
Yeah, that's the death scene. It wasn't the death that turned me off from the
comics. It was the remarkable stupidity surrounding the way King Acorn was
brought back into the fold (even if it wasn't really him), and the fact that
Geoffrey - a character beyond moronity - was allowed to arrest Sonic is just
plain out of character for the entire Freedom Fighter community.
>Anyone know about that stuff? How did Dan Drazen and company
>first get involved?
Oh, I wouldn't know. I'll leave that to someone else. Ron Bauerle comes around
sometimes; maybe you should ask him.
Mach
"KT" <Ka...@coopefamily.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:lEQk7AAw...@coopefamily.demon.co.uk...
> >The comic of Gonterman's revolved around one Jonathan Brisby, who
actually
> >first appeared, if I'm not mistaken, in Blood And Metal helping King
Acorn on
> >Earth. Shoot me. He was supposed to have some connection to Mrs. Brisby
and,
> >thus, the Rats of NIMH.
>
> I may be wrong, but I think Jonathan is a character from the second
> NIMH book, and is Mrs Brisby's son. Then again, it has been AGES since I
> read the book...
You're mostly right, Jonathan is Mrs. Brisby's son, but he also appears in
the first book as a baby with pneumonia, one of the reasons why Mrs. Brisby
seeks out the rats in the first place. And if these are spoilers to you,
shame on you for not reading the book! It's very good.
--
--
Mr. "Mach" Encyclopedia
--
Send money now to:
The Buy Jason A RAID Array Fund!
101 W. Main Street
Genoa, IL, 60135
--
Theme Song of the Indeterminate amount of time:
--
Hedgehog Mach!
A computer, which it received!
Hedgehog Mach!
Internet, which fastened it!
Mach was, but all right stupid AOLer and clumsily,
the fragmentation terminated!
Hedgehog Mach!
It can throw you for a loop!
Hedgehog Mach!
It has its own newsgroup!
Crusin ' by Internet, a good number of the recovery having!
She comes Mach Hedgehog, knows you that it is ann efficient
EXTERIOR of one LOOK!
the < interruption >
despite its Voodoo3 and its Puns, which are really false,
Mach is always human, but then it is only
extremely really great with one I the great for forming it,
Mach can more attractive one, if it does not remove falsely too,
is Mach Hedgehog be!
We think that it is really good!
Hedgehog Mach!
A Hero during that whole hour!
Mach, Mach, Mach, Mach, Mach, Mach, Hedgehog Mach!
Hoo jet for it!
--
KT
wrote...
>
>"KT" <Ka...@coopefamily.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:lEQk7AAw...@coopefamily.demon.co.uk...
>
>> >The comic of Gonterman's revolved around one Jonathan Brisby, who
>actually
>> >first appeared, if I'm not mistaken, in Blood And Metal helping King
>Acorn on
>> >Earth. Shoot me. He was supposed to have some connection to Mrs. Brisby
>and,
>> >thus, the Rats of NIMH.
>>
>> I may be wrong, but I think Jonathan is a character from the second
>> NIMH book, and is Mrs Brisby's son. Then again, it has been AGES since I
>> read the book...
>
>You're mostly right, Jonathan is Mrs. Brisby's son, but he also appears in
>the first book as a baby with pneumonia, one of the reasons why Mrs. Brisby
>seeks out the rats in the first place. And if these are spoilers to you,
>shame on you for not reading the book! It's very good.
Read the book. Haven't seen the films though.
The Deptford series is better mouse weirdness though. Hehe
--
KT Coope
Yasha-chan
>>
>>You're mostly right, Jonathan is Mrs. Brisby's son, but he also appears in
>>the first book as a baby with pneumonia, one of the reasons why Mrs. Brisby
>>seeks out the rats in the first place. And if these are spoilers to you,
>>shame on you for not reading the book! It's very good.
>
>Read the book. Haven't seen the films though.
The first film's really good. I mean... incredible. It doesn't
follow along the book exactly, though, but the changes
aren't all that big or plot altering. However, the
monstrosities that follow (which aren't produced or
sanctioned by Don Bluth, who made the first film) are
utter and complete crap. Kinda like the million "Land
Before Time" sequels.
It's a shame *sniff*
~Yasha
-=~*AFSH Stupid Brigade~*=-
#Mobius - "Reach out and smack someone"
http://www.dementia-praecox.com (Dementia Praecox)
http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/lothlorien/artists/moniquem/moniquem.html
(My ElfWood site, yay
David Bulmer
"Yasha-chan" <yash...@aol.com.biteme> wrote in message
news:20010602231912...@ng-cp1.aol.com...
> KT Coope wrote:
>
> >>
> >>You're mostly right, Jonathan is Mrs. Brisby's son, but he also appears
in
> >>the first book as a baby with pneumonia, one of the reasons why Mrs.
Brisby
> >>seeks out the rats in the first place. And if these are spoilers to you,
> >>shame on you for not reading the book! It's very good.
> >
> >Read the book. Haven't seen the films though.
>
> The first film's really good. I mean... incredible. It doesn't
> follow along the book exactly, though, but the changes
> aren't all that big or plot altering. However, the
> monstrosities that follow (which aren't produced or
> sanctioned by Don Bluth, who made the first film) are
> utter and complete crap. Kinda like the million "Land
> Before Time" sequels.
>
> It's a shame *sniff*
>
Mrs Brisby And The Rats of NIMH, or whatever the book's called, was the
first book I ever studied for English Lit. I twas about twelve at the time.
As a result, I found it dreadfully boring throughout - of course, I was
being forced to read it and it was realistic and I would have much rather
read about Power Rangers or Deptford Mice - but I suppose I ought to read it
again now in a not-being-forced-to context. I do remember quite enjoying it
when I had to read parts out in class...
The only memory I have of the film though was that it almost exactly
followed the plot of the book throughout, but although I don't remember the
ending to the book I can remember it was drastically different to the film.
At the end of the film, instead of winning the day through teamwork and
brainpower and all that sort of stuff, they seemed to run out of running
time in which to tell the story in the film, so they slapped a load of
special effects on and made out that they won the day literally "by magic".
Bit disappointed by that - although the special effects really impressed me
at the time.
-
Buml0r
Louis J.M
yash...@aol.com.biteme (Yasha-chan) wrote:
> KT Coope wrote:
>
>>>
>>>You're mostly right, Jonathan is Mrs. Brisby's son, but he also appears in
>>>the first book as a baby with pneumonia, one of the reasons why Mrs. Brisby
>>>seeks out the rats in the first place. And if these are spoilers to you,
>>>shame on you for not reading the book! It's very good.
>>
>>Read the book. Haven't seen the films though.
>
> The first film's really good. I mean... incredible. It doesn't
> follow along the book exactly, though, but the changes
> aren't all that big or plot altering. However, the
> monstrosities that follow (which aren't produced or
> sanctioned by Don Bluth, who made the first film) are
> utter and complete crap. Kinda like the million "Land
> Before Time" sequels.
>
> It's a shame *sniff*
The Secret Of Nyph?! Ah, the movie that put a human face on rodents onto the
big screen. I remember seeing that movie off and on as a kid. I didn't enjoy
watching it. Thinking back, that movie had a lot of Anime qualities. Fans of
Anime will know exactly what I'm talking about here.
Had Mrs.Brisby's children been savagely torn to pieces by a hawk, it would
have been perfectly in line with the mood of the movie.
__
__ (__`\
(__`\ \\`\
`\\`\ \\ \ Louis J.M - Great Ass Of Usenet
`\\`\ \\ \ E-Mail: Lou...@Worldnet.att.net
`\\`\#\\ \# AIM: Zsinj
\_ ##\_ |##
(___)(___)## "Listen with your heart. Speak with your mind.
(0) (0)`\## Don't listen to me."
|~ ~ , \##
| | \##
| /\ \## __..---'''''-.._.._
| | \ `\## _.--' _ `.
Y | \ `##' \`\ \
/ | \ | `\ \
/_...___| \ | `\\
/ `. | / ##
| | | / ####
| | | / ####
| () () | \ | | _.-' ##
`. .' `._. |______..| |-'|
`------' | | | | | || |
| | | | | || |
| | | | | || |
| | | | | || |
_____ | | | |____| || |
/ `` |-`/ ` |` |
\________\__\_______\__\
""""""""" """""""'"""