Lair of Arranos

As much as I’d like to claim this is a practical joke, this is the ACTUAL CARTOON NETWORK SCHEDULE FOR CHRISTMAS DAY TO NEW YEARS EVE.

H-how?! This is a marathon of EVERY EPISODE (all 203) of Teen Titans Go! repeated 2.5 times in a row. Who asked for this? Who asked for “instead of a decent or just remotely tolerable Christmas schedule, maybe with some of those old specials we put on the app, let’s just run a show we have already marathoned for almost every other major holiday or premiere this year for EIGHT DAYS??”

I mean seriously, I’m just… shocked. This is seriously like, a joke schedule I probably made to joke around on Discord once. It even has the small bit of Steven Universe.

Oh yeah, there’s Steven Universe. I hope you noticed that. I hope you noticed those TWO episodes it has, both being TV premieres (Sadie Killer, Kevin Party). 1 week before the SU half-hour special that will probably get super-hyped by CN. Those two episodes makes this schedule just even more absurd. The TTG marathon could have stopped that day. It could have stopped after SU. But nevertheless, it persisted.

New Years Eve is the absolute stopping point for the marathon. Unikitty! premieres on the 1st and will start getting all the attention for a month at least. So there’s an end. But still. Eight. Fucking. Days. I don’t mean to curse on a blog about, well, Cartoon Network. But still. EIGHT. FUCKING. DAYS.

I-I try to find silver linings in every terrible CN schedule. Like that one from August. “At least they’re giving OK K.O.! a lot of trust!” But… I don’t… think I can find a silver lining in this. SU is just aired because it was advertised so and that they need to air those episodes before “Lars of the Stars” and “Jungle Moon” the week after. So, here’s my attempt at a silver lining for this… you don’t need to watch this. You could be watching the holiday specials that CN posted on their app. Make your own schedule out of that. I could watch “Hey Hey It’s Knishmas” all the doo-dah day if I wanted to.

Yeah, I know. The silver lining is basically “don’t watch CN this week.” But, yeah. It’s got to the point where that’s my suggestion. Good luck trying to catch a Christmas special on Boomerang, btw. Just the app or cable on demand.

2017 has been one heck of a year for the network. You had two new shows! Ben 10 and OK K.O.! First show is alright, second show is amazing! Then Teen Titans showed up! Then the original Ben 10 showed up! Then Regular Show showed up after ending in January! Then Ben 10 and Regular Show disappeared quickly. But that was expected. The bigger surprise is that Teen Titans is still on the lineup.

But the schedule had problems. Teen Titans Go! marathons were getting longer. More frequent. More pointless. I thought there would be some nice stuff for Christmas. I thought the holiday specials they put on the CN app were a good sign.

I shouldn’t have hope.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s what’s new that week:

Steven Universe - Friday (12/29) at 7:30p

Top… 2:

Teen Titans Go! - 384 - 99%

Steven Universe - 2 - 1%

the final days of december~ 

the final days full of yellow~ 

Time to be the best Atomic Sharpshooter in the world.

Tumblr rn:

-(submitted by @arranos)-

I wish I had something to say but I don’t. Not sure if this actually happens in the AU lol

More of the AU >>here<<

AT THE END OF SONIC 3

Y’all know this big mural, yeah? the prophecy predicting the end of it?

ok so buckle the fuckle in cuz this is about to get messy

BEFORE I GET STARTED, THOUGH, bear in mind that this is all based on the chronological release of the games.  What I’m tackling here only makes sense up to the SEGA split between Japan and the US, where the development of the series became less cohesive and started going in two different directions.  In other words: a lot of this was retconned.

SO, JAPAN

Japan REALLY loves its DBZ.  We all already know Super Sonic is basically a big Super Saiyan joke, right?  7 Dragon balls, 7 chaos emeralds, going blond and sparkly and superpowered?  All on the same page?  Ok, good, good

We also all know that the Echidna civilization is basically a parody of Atlantis, right?  Okay?  Knuckles is the last “Atlantean?”  aight cool excellent SO

IN SONIC ADVENTURE TWO

we learn that Gerald Robotnik was trying to create the ultimate lifeform.  now, you gentlepeople reading this are likely familiar with the English version of the game, which leaves a lot unexplained – what was the Biolizard, exactly, in relation to Shadow?  Was the Biolizard really the ultimate life form?  Was Shadow?  If they’re both attempts to create the same thing, why do they look so vastly different?

Why does Shadow look so much like Sonic?

We learn that Gerald Robotnik managed to create Shadow using a bit of alien DNA and splicing it into his creation.  Shadow was the result.  So… again, if he’s part alien, why does he look so much like Sonic?

It’s implied that Gerald came across some strange things in his search for the secret to immortality.  Because the Chaos Emeralds are, starting with Sonic 3 and continuing through the rest of the series from then on, not just a gimmick but an actual central plot element, we know that any lore to do with them is also central.  It is, then, a reasonable inference that Gerald came across the ancient Echidna murals from Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure, depicting grand battles with horrific beasts and, in the case of Sonic 3, a hero using the power of the emeralds to fight back.

There are two possibilities for the Sonic 3 mural: either it’s a prophecy, or it’s a historical record of a battle that happened long ago, in a “history is doomed to repeat itself” sense.  Either way, this begs the question of “why did the echidnas know about Sonic?  Why did they know he could turn super like that?”

Either Sonic himself was around back then, another of Sonic’s kind was around back then, or they simply made a prediction based on what they knew.  However you take it, they had to have known of Sonic.

Now, let’s head back to the present again.  Sonic is one-of-a-kind in this series – at this point, we’ve met another hedgehog, but Amy isn’t anything like Sonic.  She’s got that hammer and boatloads of determination, but she’s hardly superpowered.  Sonic is the only character with a true inherent superpower: the power of speed.  He also arguably achieves the most powerful super-form of all the characters, in that like the others, he is invincible, but his speed still far outmatches all the others’.  He is also capable of achieving multiple super states, even at this early point in the series (Hyper Sonic).

Shadow is the only other character who’s shown to rival Sonic’s specific skills… and he is only able to exist by way of having been created with alien DNA.  Even then, however, Shadow is only able to perform Chaos Control with real Chaos Emeralds, as is reasonable.  Sonic, however, can perform it even with a fake emerald – using the far lesser energy it contains.  He doesn’t even practice – it comes naturally to him.

See where I’m going with this?

The only way to even get close to Sonic’s capabilities, as portrayed by the mural on Sonic 3… was to use alien DNA.  These abilities were not naturally-occurring on Earth, at least to Gerald’s knowledge.

How did Gerald get that idea?  Why, from the same place where he initially got the inspiration to make Shadow after the Biolizard experiment failed – the same place he got the idea to model Shadow after a hedgehog.  The Sonic 3 Echidna mural – which, based on Gerald’s appearance, he might have mistaken to depict somebody of his visage giving the Chaos Emeralds to somebody of a hedgehog’s appearance.  I mean, look at it.  Without context, it’s an easy mistake to make.

In the Japanese version of SA2, Shadow specifically realizes, and vocalizes, that Sonic is, in fact, the true ultimate life form.  This doesn’t happen in the English version.  The JP voice acting in the ending of the game also has Sonic realizing, musing to himself, about how Shadow was created to be the “ultimate life form”… in a way that pretty clearly shows he’s wondering what that means for him.

Now, look at all this again with the lens of understanding that, like a lot of Japanese media at the time, it was using the same kind of story tropes as DBZ.  Super-advanced alien race comes to a planet, bestows its knowledge upon that planet’s people; those lucky people get to enjoy advanced alien knowledge and technology as a result.  Eventually these people die out, leaving one guardian (often one who doesn’t fully understand his own past) to protect their secrets.

Echidnas, with Knuckles as the sole heir, who doesn’t even know enough to recognize his ancestors’ savior/benefactor from the prophetic murals.

The sole member of the super-advanced alien race gets separated from his ancestors, possibly as the last of his kind.  He grows up, unaware of what he really is, and makes friends with the local inhabitants.

Not Goku or Superman.  Sonic.

Shadow doesn’t look like Sonic in spite of the alien DNA spliced into him.  He looks like Sonic BECAUSE of it.

Sonic is the creature Shadow was created to imitate.  Shadow was specifically designed to imitate Sonic, and the only way to achieve this was to use alien DNA.  Going backwards from here, this also means that the Chaos Emeralds, which seem to be conducive to Sonic’s natural talents, might not have originated from the echidnas – no, they might have originated from the being they engraved in their murals as some kind of protective deity.  Knuckles hasn’t just ben protecting the secrets of the echidnas all these years – he’s been protecting the secrets of Sonic’s origins.

And neither Sonic nor Knuckles realizes it.  The only one to canonically realize what’s going on is Shadow, who came to the conclusion that Sonic was, in fact, the ultimate life form.

And then Shadow died, and was intended to stay dead, until the USA branch of SEGA made him his own game. 

Meaning he was meant to die with Sonic’s secret… and Sonic would never learn who and what he really is.

(or close enough, lol)

anyway, it’s been a while since i’ve posted abt passing a follower count milestone!! and w me reaching 7.5k p soon, along w the past few days which have been hype af thanks to sdcc + “legs from here to homeworld”, i think it’d be appropriate if i did something to celebrate. so, i will be giving away the url…

@whitediamond

that’s right!! v appropriate rn lol. so, the only rules are:

you must be following me

you have to reblog this post

your account must be older than a month