furrykef

I saw the pic before I saw who posted it and I just knew it was Shadow.

Was it "jumping-the-shark" when Sonic changed into his modern design when he made the transition into 3D?

YES.

(perhaps not in the games, but I'd have preferred it if they ignored it in the comics... and I'd especially have preferred it if they didn't have that dumb-ass storyline about how Sonic got his new look)

Do mine, do mine :3

I did terribly at Spanish when I was in high school. I did great the first year 'cause they were easy on us, but by the second year I was getting lost, and in the third year I had no idea what was going on. I think I only passed because everybody else was as confused as I was. After that I stopped because three years were all that was required. Truth be told, I really wanted to study Japanese instead, but I couldn't get into the Japanese class for one reason or another (I think it was scheduling conflicts), and after my second year the option pretty much disappeared since you can't switch languages; you have to study three years of the same language. That's a well-intentioned but really boneheaded idea, because while it's true you can't get fluent in a language if you keep bouncing between different languages, you're not going to get fluent studying three years in a high school classroom either, especially not if you're studying a language you like, and at the time I did not like Spanish.

Five years later I decided I did like Spanish and I picked it back up on my own. After a brief period of disorientation where I re-learned everything, I was pretty much right back where I was after high school and from there I got a basic level of fluency in fairly short order. I can converse with native Spanish speakers online entirely in Spanish and have done so several times with minimal difficulty. (Let me tell you, though, it gets a lot harder when I'm sleepy.)

Other languages I'm studying are Latin, Italian, and Japanese. Italian's perhaps the language I like the most, but it's also the one I study the least, partly because it's so easy for me (so it's not challenging and less study is required), and partly because studying it would take time away from Latin and especially Japanese, which are quite demanding languages. In the time I've spent on Japanese, I could have become fluent in several other languages. Yet I am still not fluent in Japanese... still, I'm getting there, in the sense that a snail halfway up a mountain is getting to the peak.

And so now I'm flirting with Korean. I flirt with languages now and then, but I'm not ready to fully take on another one (and probably won't be until I've decided I've mostly had enough Latin). Other languages I'm considering are German, Finnish, and Ancient Greek. Korean's attractive because grammatically it's similar to Japanese (even though it's generally considered unrelated) and it has a beautiful writing system -- perhaps the most beautiful one ever devised -- but it's also crazy difficult to pronounce, with many sounds that simply do not occur in English. For instance, Korean has two versions of "u": one is just "u" and pronounced simply "ooh" (like a Spanish or Italian "u"). The other one is usually spelled "eu" and is the same as the other "u" except your lips are unrounded. (Japanese has this sound, but it doesn't have any other u-like sound, so in Japanese there's a greater margin of error.) You have to practice your pronunciation and pay attention to exactly what your lips and tongue are doing... it may even help to practice in a mirror to keep an eye on what your lips are and aren't doing.

There are other issues with pronouncing Korean, too: words aren't pronounced the way they're spelled (though the problem is not nearly as bad as English). There are funky rules for how the last consonant of a word may change pronunciation depending on what follows it. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Well... yes... that's the point of merchandise.

...Knuckles, and, basically, the echidna design itself, are owned by Sega themselves. Unless he's doing this Lara-Su Chronicles thing for free (in which case, it would be nothing more than a fan comic lololol), he has no right or permission to make any kind of profit on it.

It would be a problem for him even if it were free. Not making a profit doesn't mean you're free of copyright problems. A place like FUS is fairly low profile, so we can get away with doing Sea3on, but Ken worked for Archie and so has a big following (or at least had until his assholery came to light -- who knows, maybe he still does). He'd be painting himself as a target unless he used a pseudonym and pretended not to be Ken Penders, which of course he isn't doing.

Soooooo how is he going to explain it when/if Sega takes him to court over that?

I think he's honestly under the deluded belief that his characters are not derived from Sega property. Sure, they're blatantly based on Sega's echidna design, but apparently he doesn't think so.

The Archie thing, I can understand, with the whole contracts and legality thing (trust me, this isn't the first time Archie's screwed over a creator. Look up Dan De'Carlos sometime)

I don't think Ken was screwed at all. Your creations being work for hire is something everybody knows going into this industry. I know it and I'm not even remotely connected to the comics industry. It was probably also common knowledge in 1993 or whenever it was he started. Now, if Archie had explicitly promised him that he'd still own his creations, then said "psych!" and kept the rights, that'd be one thing -- but it's also very unlikely, and Ken hasn't made any such claim.

Wake up

Wake up, wake up

Wake up, wake up

WAKE UP!!

Why? So you can become a lunatic asshole too?

Hmm, so I was sort of wrong that Hasbro flipped back to the bronies' side of the Derpy Hooves thing. Apparently the compromise they're going to be using is keeping the altered version of the episode but continuing to write Derpy into the background.

I think it's sad, really -- not because of the lack of Derpy Hooves (I really don't care, though I think it's awesome, and a bit scary, that 4chan had a significant impact on a children's program), but because of the stranglehold parents have on child-friendly media. Companies are afraid to take any risks at all because some parent might bitch about it -- never mind that the TV shouldn't be the one doing the parenting.

Also, didn't many of these parents watch the very things they now object to back when they were kids? They turned out all right, didn't they? What's the problem?

The "forgot password" feature didn't work?

Maybe his intelligence is in his stomach.

Antoine is four stars?

I may respect Roger Ebert but Antoine does not deserve that many

Umm, I think your hotlinking failed. It just says "jeff7.com"

So, now that I've seen a little over a dozen episodes, here's my opinion of the show.

Things I could do without:
* The theme song (not horrible but decidedly girly)
* The obvious moralizing at the end of the show ("Looks like you've all learned a valuable lesson today!" "Dear Princess Celestia...")
* The predictability of the plots. I'm usually not that good about predicting stories, but good lord, I can usually see where these stories are going from a mile away. Like the whole episode with Zecora. It was obvious the second that Twilight Sparkle suggested Zecora might not be bad that she wasn't (and even more obvious when Apple Bloom decided the same). Likewise it was obvious as soon as she warned the ponies about the plants that the plants were going to cause problems and it was hardly surprising when the ponies blamed Zecora rather than the plants. I realize these stories are being written mainly with six-year-old girls in mind, but come onnn, at least make us wonder if Zecora isn't as bad as she seems.
* Speaking of Zecora, I think the use of African stereotypes is a bit unfortunate, but eh. (And why does she seem to have a guy's voice?)
* Rarity's obnoxiousness. Out of all the main ponies, she seems to be the only one with few redeeming qualities. Element of Generosity my ass.
* The commercials during the show. Thankfully I don't have to deal with these on YouTube.

I could also do with Pinkie Pie being toned down juuuuust a little bit. She's funny, but she's best in small doses.

Good points:
* Applejack. :3
* The animation. There are a couple of bits where the animation seemed lazy and perhaps characters' expressions didn't perfectly line up with what was happening, but every cartoon has stuff like that. (Lord knows SatAM does.) What they did get right, they often got really right. The show's animated in Flash, but does it look like it? Damn right it does, but in the process proves that it doesn't have to be a bad thing. I often see small snippets of animation that are so sublime I have to rewind and watch 'em again.
* There's some neat in-jokes like the use of a song suspiciously similar to Yakety Sax (the Benny Hill theme) during a chase scene.
* "Flutterguy"'s voice had me laughing for a minute straight. "I don't want to talk about it..."
* The show's a nice time-killer.

So I'm not gonna be one of those guys who gushes about the show or anything like that, but I certainly like the show enough to keep watching it, I guess. *shrug*

Hay AC, how do you like my avatar? :3

I think if you could nail me on it anywhere, it's the stipulations where the pic has to be "good" and "impressive".

Remember to make S2E3 one of the episodes you watch, if only because Inhibitor will probably give you hell if you don't.