I thought I just didn’t know which companies made Supernatural, and that “HBO Supernatural” was in reference to whatever spn seasons came out on HBO instead of the CW.
But no. Today I found out “HBO Supernatural” is the concept people came up with of what the show would be like if it had aired on something like hbo where it would be allowed to be have more lgbtq rep, and be grittier, and more intense.
This is essentially what everyone has been calling their Supernatural But Better AU that exists in people’s brains, and whose story is told about via tumblr posts and strings of headcanons at your friends’ DMs.
Spectacular idea, not sure I agree with it having a brand name though.
thesonic the hedgehog filmverse writers waltzing into the studio after finishing their script adaptation of sonic adventure 2 to tell the higher-ups that they just made absolutely sure that they will never get any military funding
ok but. do my non-sonic followers know that the plot of the second-most popular sonic character shadow the hedgehog’s introductory game (which shapes his entire character) is like explicitlyanti-military and also that the sonic cinematic universe meticulously set up everything for his backstory to be exactly the same as it was in the games
no. tell me more please
ok so im going to tell you the plot of sonic adventure 2, one of the most beloved sonic games and, as i said, the introduction to the character of shadow the hedgehog. i want you to know that everything i say here is NOT a joke WHATSOEVER. it is not fake. you can look up playthroughs, wiki summaries, etc. to see for yourself.
so here is the plot
This begins 50 years before the main plot. There’s a Military called GUN. (It’s supposed to be multi-national but is very coded US Military; the filmverse seems to be making it exclusively USA.)
They contract Gerald Robotnik (Eggman’s grandfather) and ask him to make them an immortal lifeform, most likely to use as a living weapon. Gerald isn’t too sure but his family has some serious health issues so he agrees in order to find a way to cure his family.
They end up in a Space Colony, which we find out in other games was an actual colony. It wasn’t just scientists up there, there were families and children. Keep this in mind.
Gerald is working very hard on this Ultimate Lifeform because his granddaughter/Eggman’s cousin, Maria, was born with an incurable disease that is literally just AIDS. They call it NIDS but it’s very clearly supposed to be AIDS. She is too sick to leave the space colony and has to be under constant supervision and he wants to cure her so she doesn’t, you know, die young.
It’s not super important to the point of this post how he makes the Ultimate Lifeform but long story short there were demon aliens involved
So they make the Ultimate Lifeform– Shadow the Hedgehog. He seems to be practically immortal and has a deep connection to the all-powerful chaos emeralds.
Shadow says explicitly in later games that he was “born and raised” on the ARK, and that he was raised alongside Maria. Gerald refers to Shadow as his son in a later game and Maria is clearly his big sister figure. The two of them just reallywanna go see Earth bc they’ve been stuck in space forever.
Shadow starts having depression bc everyone tells him he’s supposed to be the Ultimate Lifeform and he was created to cure Maria but… he hasn’t cured her. She’s still sick. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.
And then. well.
We’re not sure exactly what happened? But it seems pretty clear that GUN found out about Shadow, that Gerald wasn’t planning on using him as a living weapon, and they got scared he might use Shadow against them. So they. well
GUN stormed the ARK and started murdering everyone
And yes, we know that it was everyone,not just the scientists. In Shadow’s spinoff game, we meet a survivor of the massacre who says explicitly that his entire family was killed during that incident
Gerald ends up captured, probably bc the government still wants him to make them stuff
MARIA IS NOT SO LUCKY
MARIA IS LITERALLY SHOT
THEY LITERALLY MURDER MARIA
If you’re wondering how old she is: the games give her no age but she is constantly referred to as a child and her model seems vaguely teenage. The anime, Sonic X, put her at twelve years old
Maria survives just long enough to send Shadow off in an escape pod but she is LITERALLY MURDERED by the MILITARY
Gerald manages to nab Shadow’s escape pod, which put him into a cryosleep. He finds out Maria is dead, absolutely fucking cracks, and decides to fuck with Shadow’s memory so that Shadow will want to destroy the planet
He gives Shadow false memories of Maria wanting him to avenge her and then sets him on a path to blow up the planet and everyone on it
GERALD IS THEN EXECUTED BY FIRING SQUAD
The military can’t figure out how to wake Shadow up so they keep him on ice for fifty years.
Eggman then breaks in and releases Shadow. Once Shadow is out and starts committing crimes, GUN doesn’t want people to figure out their fucked up secrets so they frame it all on Sonic, the only other nearby hedgehog, and try to imprison him
If you follow the theory that Eggman does what he does bc he has Orphan Issues, this implies that everything shitty that happened in Sonic Universe happened because the military decided to murder civilians
So that’s all canon, and think about this in the filmverse:
They set up GUN
They set up that Robotnik/Eggman is an orphan with government connections
They set up that the government can make people disappear if they’re a bad look
They set up that the military is incompetent, violent, and totally down to maim/injure/capture non-hostile aliens because they don’t understand them and/or want their power
In the post-credits scene, they established Shadow is 50 years old, that he was in Project Shadow, and that the government is covering him up while keeping him in cryo
You remember a few bullet points ago I mentioned a survivor of the ARK massacre in Shadow’s spinoff? You know the Olive Garden Military guy? They are very clearly supposed to be the same guy. Aside from the game!character having heterochromia, they look exactly the same, and he recognizes “Project Shadow” when he’s told about it
And most importantly:
The director of the SCU, Jeff Fowler, got one of his first jobs working on the cutscenes for Shadow’s spinoff game, where this backstory is restated and focused on HEAVILY
we are ABSOLUTELY going into the sonic the hedgehog “fuck the military” arc of cinema
the sonic movie 3 team making the most anti-military movie of the decade
“It ended badly in real life, but we’re not doing real life because we’ve got a Polynesian-Jewish man from New Zealand playing Blackbeard. Once you’re doing that, you’re not doing real life.“
as a person who makes trash gifs, i’ve come to appreciate animation, and wanted to share why i love bruno bucciarati’s animations so much. long post with lots of bruno gifs. ofc, spoilers
let’s look at the very first episode. pay attention to his eyes:
look at how ANIMATED his eyes are. any animator could’ve just made his eyes/face static while having only his mouth move, but they BOTHERED to make bruno’s eyes (and JAW!) animated. it might not seem like much, but it makes him so much more INTERESTING to look at. almost like, you can’t take your eyes off of him, or you’ll miss something.
and then THIS part, after he punches giorno the first time and puts luca’s fingers in his mouth:
BUT if you pause it, right before he says the line, there’s this single, subtle, frame:
make of that what you will, but to me, it’s almost as if he’s both disgusted and concerned (for giorno) by what just happened before he puts on his “gangstar” facade again. like, there’s a reason this frame exists, they bothered to put it there, what do you all think?
here’s some more eye things:
i slowed this one down so you could see all the frames that were used. SO animated. and it’s not just his eyes, sometimes his HEAD moves. they DID that.
even in combat/dangerous situations, or maybe especially in combat/dangerous situations, his eyes move. he’s always observing his surroundings, planning the next move in his head. i don’t think ANY of the other characters have this quirk (but correct me if i’m wrong maybe i’m just hyper-attentive to bruno because he’s my favorite):
even when he’s DRIVING???? his eyes are animated, for a split second.
even as diavolo??????? his eyes????? are so animated?????
EVEN HIS EYE SPARKLES ARE ANIMATED AS DIAVOLO?????
and this is BRILLIANT because this is like, bruno’s THING. that’s how you can tell bruno’s in there, even if his body is different, because even before the soul switching, his eyes had that sparkle (examples below) or was animated in some way (examples above):
they could’ve gone the lazy route and made bruno very static, but they MADE bruno such a better/deeper/more interesting character just by adding these subtle things. he’s responsive to things, and you can seeit, even if he doesn’t say or do anything, he’s definitely thinking about and processing it, which informs his actions. that’s also what makes him a good leader: he thinks first, then acts (unless something defies his moral values).
so there ya go. want to make an anime character more interesting without taking up too much time? ANIMATE their FACE and move the story along instead of dumping a 10 min. internal dialogue about how a character is feeling
