Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Sonic NonFans & the Trolling Items

Educational blog post alert!
This week's topic is "Trolling Items" which usually involves "Trolling Art". You can see stuff that fits into this category all around the internet, on places like youtube, tumblr & more. It certainly has no place on SonicGear, but it should be explained and acknowledged.

What is it?
FAKE "fan art" or other "fan" things involving Sonic that are made by non fans and are deliberately nonsensical, offensive, or bad-on-purpose.

Why do this?
To make Sonic of the fandom look bad. Since it is by it's very definition of the word "Trolling" it is specifically made to "Troll" the Sonic fandom and make ACTUAL fans look bad or make them get mad in some way. It's done to antagonize actual fans and bring scorn / ridicule / etc onto the fandom from non fans or casual fans. "Oh look how stupid / insane / uncreative Sonic fans are, that they would make something like this and post it up, haha!"

It can also just be an attention grab.
If you want people to look at your art/story/whatever, and it's all original content, it can be difficult to get it seen. But slap a "Sonic!" on there and at least Sonic fans will look, no matter what it is. Saying it has Sonic content gets eyes on the item. (for better or worse)

What are examples?
Shadow & Shrek the Ogre
Yes, THAT Shrek, the one from the movies, is supposedly in love with Shadow but he dies or something. Comics, bad pixel art & other goofy things of their "epic serious love story" are around. It's like a meme or a running gag.

Deliberately awful "fan characters"
Posting up doctored art of supposed "fan characters" that are really horrible on purpose or have no effort put into them. This is to perpetuate the "funny myth" that every Sonic fan has 5 color swap clones of already existing characters and constantly mashes in bizarre fetishes and loves ignoring Sonic while focusing only on OCs. "Wow, Sonic fans actually love stuff like this, they must all be horrible" (that's the goal of these trolls)

Sonic & Religion
Religion is guaranteed to offend someone. So by making up absurdly religious comics & fan art where Sonic (or someone else) is crying while professing his true love to their deity of choice they can troll all sorts of people. This also includes religion bashing too, where the characters purposely dump on a religious book or concept so as to offend people on purpose.

This dance video here is suspected of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0bmz6JHz9M&feature=youtu.be
Original show credit is supposed to be Ellos Tambien Bilan, which is They/male Also Dance (I guess) in Spanish. (Discovered by The Ultimate Hedgehog) People in weird Sonic head character suits dance around in strange ways to a bunch of random music. Yeah they're really coordinated, but the Sonic theme is pretty random.

What isn't it?
Satire doesn't count. Making fun of something isn't pretending that you like it while sabotaging it. Dumb Running Sonic (Where various kooky funny Sonic designs run in the silliest way possible) does not count because it acknowledges it is wacky on purpose & invites fans to make .gifs. Complaining doesn't count either. Complainers generally seek to point out what's wrong in order to bring about improvement. Really strange lone people with unknown intentions but really prolific portfolios....who actually knows. Such as the whole "evil Sonic.EXE" fad, (this was actually a game modification) whoever wants Cammy StreetFighter to marry Sonic, the people who say they worship the Tails Doll (lest it eat them), and other various fad related things.

Not everything on the internet is posted in seriousness.
Some people act like they're seriously a fan, when really they're just planting this stuff as a troll. It's generally fairly harmless as long as you keep in mind that it's trolling and they're doing it poorly on purpose. There probably isn't anything that can be done about it. But it's a curious phenomenon.

Monday, March 03, 2014

More Clothing (and then more) A Break from Boom

Wellllll ran out of time last update.
It was NOT supposed to be all about Boom, but it ended up that way because it didn't get a 2nd half. This update saw the last 2 known/seen Boom prototypes and then a bunch of regular stuff.

Item of the week:
Orange "Here to Party" tee. Why? NEW Sonic modern stock art. Yay, we get another pose & it's fun and distinct. Good on them. Now lets get new poses for ALL the chars too, as stock art as well. I think this tee is the first merch it appears on. Breakdancing (in my opinion) is also cool, so naturally I'm prone to liking the pose. It's fun & active. I hope it gets used but not over-used like...

Jumping-Twist overload
Like what, half the things posted this week have this pose? Bit of an overload. I am hoping it's just a coincidence that all these things turned up at once or people will think it's all the same tee.

Small but probable warning:
Stop customizing Jazwares figures. If you have extra figures it may be starting to be a good idea to hang onto them. With Boom on the horizon "regular Sonic" may get dumped into the back seat or dumped entirely out of the toy aisle. It's not guaranteed to happen, but caution should be used anyway because:

*JW figures are fragile
*Audience of 'little kids' breaks figures more often
* Supposed "boys toys"* also get abused/broken more
* Look at what happened to those at-the-time undesirable weird whacky Toy Island ones like the spacefighters and that Big who could barely move....they're worth many times the original value now just because you can't get them any more

**The split on Sonic fandom in actuality is supposedly 55 boys 45 girls, so its more evenly split than anyone lets on if that figure is true. However which one buys the most action figures? I don't think anybody knows for sure. Do girls actually break stuff less? Who knows. The "for sure" thing that people do know, is when they find a 2nd hand figure at a flea or a garage sale / yard sale / etc more often than not it is wrecked somehow or doesn't work.

If something is changing / you know new marketing is going on that is a cue for YOU the collector to start hanging onto stuff just a little tighter. Can't predict the future but shelves in stores only have so much space.

I hope all this is needless paranoia.

Next update:
Moaaar clothing. And a ride?