On June 23rd, 1991, Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog, a fast-paced side-scrolling platformer for the Sega Genesis console, and the character took the world by storm.
Sonic has since spawned dozens of games, five different animated series, with a sixth in the work for Netflix, and, of course, the 2020 live-action movie starring Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, and Jim Carrey, with a sequel set for 2022.
Still, Sonic has never quite recaptured his early 90s shine. At that time Sega was a real contender in the console wars with Nintendo, and Sonic — as the company's mascot — rivaled Mario in popularity.
We finally have video footage of the Sonic balloon incident back in the 1993 Macy’s Parade. https://t.co/LZuvb7J42U
But whether it was Sonic's in-your-face, Xtreme 90s attitude or the difficulty of translating his high-speed adventures into 3D, the character's popularity didn't translate into staying power. While Mario remains an icon of gaming, Sonic has become more of a novelty, with perhaps his biggest legacy existing in the world of online fan art.
Sonic's iconic and relatively simple aesthetic makes him tempting subject matter for many amateur artists, leading to some amusingly bad sincere fan art, as well as a whole meme culture of intentionally bad and disturbing work, often with references to 9/11, Christianity, and fascism.
But while much of this intentionally weird Sonic fan art has sexual elements, it can be hard to find the line between the ironic and the sincere. Because Sonic and his supporting cast — Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Shadow, and of course Dr. "Eggman" Robotnik — are also major players in the world of fetish fan art, rivaling My Little Ponies in the world of "rule 34" artwork.
It's along that blurry line — where the amount of effort and detail involved start to cancel out any of the artist's claims of irony — that things get truly disturbing. And if you think that Human Centipede taught you everything you need to know about body horror, wait until you delve into the twisted depths of Sonic fetish art involving impregnation, vore, inflation, diapers, macrophilia, tickling, and blood play, that will leave you asking "dear God, why?!"
Was an entire generation of budding artists traumatized by seeing the Sonic float stabbed through the eye and deflated in the 1993 Macy's Thanksgiving parade? Or did the creators of the 90s Sonic children shows deliberately implant these strange predilections in the developing minds of their young audience?
@BadSonicFanArt @Fleetcommander3 they fukin called it http://t.co/4z5wKze2sQ
In either case, it's such a well known phenomenon that the Twitter account @BadSonicFanArt has over 25,000 followers. the result is a disturbing world that it's probably better not to look into... Seriously, we filtered out the truly NSFW stuff, but it's still pretty rough. Are you sure you want to see this?
<p>In what seems to be a sincere bit of strange fan art, <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/ginkaze/art/ACAB-BLM-LGBTQ-Muscular-Sonic-129850407" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Deviantart user Ginkaze</a> has reimagined the cast of Sonic as a bunch of bulging bodybuilder types who look to be built for brawling rather than speed. It's definitely pretty sweaty, but it's also the least upsetting image in this slideshow, so there's still time...</p>
On Friday afternoon it was announced that this year's San Diego Comic-Con, scheduled for July 23-26, had been canceled.
The world-famous event has been held annually for the last 50 years and draws more than 130,000 attendants to the San Diego Convention Center to meet their favorite celebrities and artists and show off their elaborate cosplay. No doubt a lot of people were already looking forward to events like this, with the expectation that life will be returning to normal this summer. So why—with New York beginning to move past the worst phase of the pandemic, and Donald Trump already pushing for various states to be "liberated"—is Comic-Con being canceled more than three months in advance?
The short answer is that there was no sense in putting it off. It would have had to be canceled eventually, and it would have been cruel to let so many fans of comic books, sci-fi, and fantasy put together their elaborate costumes and work up their nerd glands into a lather only to be disappointed by a last-minute cancellation. Worse still to let it become another event that is repeatedly postponed before finally being called off. Better to be realistic. While we think about concepts like "reopening the country" with some optimism, and we should look forward to some of the current restrictions on our lives being relaxed in the coming months, it's going to be a long time before anything on the scale of Comic-Con will be possible.
For a start, different parts of the country are going to be hit by the coronavirus at different times. We're likely to see multiple waves of infection that will need to be met by multiple recurrences of quarantine orders. There's no telling what southern California's situation will be like in July, not to mention the places attendees would be traveling from. And even as society tentatively returns to normal, some restrictions will have to stay in place for movie theaters, concerts, and sporting events—let alone huge conventions. If even one person is asymptomatic and spreads the virus in a crowded event, it could lead to dozens or hundreds of new cases, and a ripple effect that would be impossible to contain.
Now fill that crowd with people from all over the country, bringing with them pockets of infection that have yet to even be detected. On top of all that, there is reason to expect that infection rates that recede during the summer months will come back with a vengeance in the fall—meaning that any minor spread that persists during the summer could be magnified to catastrophic proportions when the weather turns cold.
No, the long incubation period, rapid spread, and significant lethality of COVID-19 add up to the essential fact that we will have to avoid large gatherings until an effective vaccine is developed and widely available. Despite what you may have heard about certain unproven drugs from certain unhinged world leaders, we are still far from having anything like that. It is likely to be several months—if not a full year—before researchers can synthesize a safe and effective vaccine, and then it will be some months more before enough can be manufactured to immunize the country.
Until that time, Comic-Cons, Coachellas, and all manner of major events will need to be canceled. Better to tear off the band-aid now than continue to fool ourselves by listening to our delusional president and dreaming of a summer full of cosplay fun.
The good news is, as long as you're stuck inside, no one can stop you from dressing up like a sexy steam-punk Pikachu all day, every day.
Like many beauty enthusiasts, 23-year-old beauty influencer Eleanor Barnes (widely known as Snitchery) found her love for make-up in middle school— "maybe a little too early," she joked.
She continued to foster her interest and skills over the years, though in private. During her suburban North Virginia upbringing, she wasn't focused on building follower counts, not even on MySpace. It wasn't until she attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts in 2014 that she innocently discovered social media and its ability to create connections and friendships.
She said, "Okay, if I want to make friends in college...this is the way to do it—I'm going to do the social media route." As a make-up lover and early selfie queen, Eleanor began posting aesthetically-pleasing looks on her Instagram, with perfect lighting and solid background color tones.
"Because I didn't grow up with social media, I didn't know being an influencer was a thing; I didn't know [this] job existed," she said. "I kind of thought people on Instagram who had a lot of followers were just really popular. I didn't realize they were actually making money."
Understandably, this was the thought process of many early users on the Internet. Social media marketing really got started in 2010 when Amazon partnered with Facebook and began using algorithms to suggest products and services to "friends."
During the summer of her sophomore year at Emerson (majoring in Media Studies and Art History), while working in the crafty aisles of Michael's, Eleanor first realized her influencer aspirations and decided to turn a passing hobby into a full-time career. She quickly began making more money than any average 20-year-old college student.
By 2017, she was completely financially independent, creating make-up looks, tutorials, and eventually (as a self-proclaimed "nerd at heart") leaning into cosplay.
Dating back to the beginnings of her well-curated Instagram, Eleanor posted make-up looks that were heavily inspired by brightly-colored animated characters.
Eleanor's early talent for dramatic make-up routines naturally collided with her other loves: anime and Disney. She grew interested in cosplay as an outsider, not actually wearing full-blown outfits or going to conventions. However, she took the spark of her small interest and ignited it into a unique make-up style.
Her shift to cosplay was "natural progression," she said. She began stepping into more outfits (including props) in her photos, while still keeping her approach make-up focused. In October 2018, she began doing costume make-up, and her followers' positive reactions were more than what Eleanor expected. Thus, she became an active part of the cosplay subculture of the beauty industry.
She channeled her inner anime enthusiast into creating characters from Studio Ghibli and classic Disney princesses with a modern twist. Her passion and love for anime can easily be seen through her tutorials and detailed looks. When we spoke about what anime means to her, she reflected that many beloved series (HunterxHunter being a fave) returned adults to near forgotten lessons we learned from fables and even religion, like "friendship is important" and "don't underestimate yourself."
"I kind of treat [anime] as modern-day fairy tales, in a way," she said. This love translated to another business venture. Eleanor created her first merchandise collection of hoodies, sweatpants, beanies, and dad hats inspired by Japanese lettering and designs.
Eleanor's follower count jumped from thousands to tens of thousands in just a couple of years, helping her solidify fan bases in both the beauty and cosplay communities. But, as the old Hip-Hop adage goes, "mo' money, mo' problems." During her rise, Internet scrutiny rose and an infestation of self-appointed cancel culture police searched for names and profiles to include in popularized buzzwords, and all this eventually caught up with Eleanor.
"Blackfishing" accusations quickly circulated around late 2018, pinning white beauty influencers as perpetrators of using deeper-toned foundations or tanning for longer than necessary, leading them to be regularly mistaken for ethnic women. If this phrase is new to you, look at any Kardashian sisters' early social media photos compared to those of today. More recently, Kim has reawakened the blackfishing conversation with her unveiling of her controversial skincare routine.
Eleanor soon received her own mix of accusations. Given her sudden growth and notoriety and the public's very limited knowledge of her personal and family life, beauty enthusiasts accused the biracial influencer of blackfishing.
"It was weird," she remembered, not understanding the initial accusations. Growing up in a predominantly white suburb of Northern Virginia with her white mother and Black father, Eleanor's experience as "the Black family on the block" was profound.
"I was always the token Black girl," she confessed. Reminiscing about her childhood as a darker-skinned, curly-haired kid, she remembers being asked by a soccer teammate if she was adopted when she was picked up by her white mother. These moments gave context to her experiences of being racially ambiguous in white spaces.
"I was obviously read as Black for 18 years and [realized in college] for the first time I was going to be read as completely white," she said.
In college, Eleanor surrounded herself with Black people and those who looked like her by joining select clubs geared towards Black students and Black women specifically. "For the first time, I felt I was having the culturally Black experience just because I hadn't had the opportunity to have Black friends before," she said. She joined Black and brown organizations on her school campus and attended many protests and rallies surrounding Ferguson and the unjust gunning down of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
"I was approaching these issues as a Black woman because that's how other people saw me and that's how I saw myself," she said.
The accusations of blackfishing eventually prompted the YouTuber to take to her visual platforms to discuss the conversation around her Blackness, and also to open up about her biological background.
As a racially ambiguous woman of color, Eleanor makes it apparent that she understands the nuance of identifying as a Black woman, while acknowledging that her Black experience is a story that thousands of other mixed people identify with.
"I never want to take more up space than I feel is appropriate and I never want to talk over people, but there is a lack of biracial stories in the media," she shared. After sharing her background, she received literally thousands of direct messages from biracial fans who also felt displaced from their communities - not being Black enough for the Black spaces and being too Black for white spaces.
As part of an industry that favors racially ambiguity, fuller lips, and deeper tanned skin, Eleanor is not ignorant about her position in beauty and makeup spheres.
"I own up to every way that I move through life so privileged in a lot of ways to be read as racially ambiguous and white, but that doesn't change the fact that I wasn't read that way for 18 years," she said. Opening up these conversations, helping some find comfort, and educating others about the nuanced experience of ambiguous Black bodies was not an intentional move for Snitchery, but it was a necessary dialogue that received overall positive reception.
The IG Baddie
The beauty industry is a $600 billion machine that feeds on physical insecurities. Beauty influencers are glittery cogs in this massive system, and they do their part accordingly without deviating too far from the demands of advertising agencies and corporations. While many influencers are choosing to take the "safe" path, participating in dramatic disputes ("We're talking about makeup and [the industry] is 80% drama and 20% tutorials," Eleanor points out) while being coy with their followers about their beauty additives, Eleanor has attempted to be completely transparent with fans about what she does and does not do to enhance her looks.
"Everybody's face is starting to look the same, which is a little scary," she said. "For the average person who is interested in beauty, [there] probably is something damaging about having all of your influences having a very, very similar face, that they've all built and that they all paint on everyday. I don't know if that's the healthiest thing in the world."
While the "IG Baddie look" looks great on camera and video, at one point, Eleanor noticed that the look that she'd been doing for years was no longer fitting her face. The almost plastic-looking aesthetic of being flawless no longer served her.
So she began diving into styles from other time periods and from other countries. On her YouTube channel, which has over 300,000 subscribers, Eleanor began experimenting with what worked best for her face terms of eye shape, cheekbone contouring, and highlighter.
"I think it's silly to think one particular makeup style can be universally flattering on everybody. And we've gotten to a point in Western make-up where only really one style is being presented to us," she said. Through her personal expansion beyond Western beauty norms, Eleanor was able to find more of what works for her; she's dropped almost 50% of her "IG baddie" makeup routines.
"I'm never going to knock anyone's makeup style, but I just realized wearing that much makeup [daily] was not for me," she said. By teaching herself how to do her makeup intuitively, instead of checking Instagram to see what's trending amongst the beauty girls, Eleanor found new looks and trends that fit her face and daily routine more organically and fluidly.
The Future
Eleanor and her Snitchery brand have come a long way from simply using social media as a way to find friends. At only 23-years-old, she is financially independent, an entrepreneur, a caring and compassionate human being and, above all else, a self-aware adult using her platform to spread awareness of mental healthcare, climate change, the importance of voting, human rights and much more.
While there seems to be a standard, popular look that's generally considered normal in the industry, Snitchery is working her way to changing this for the better, allowing everyone to live their truth. More influencers are moving away from fully-covered, face-tuned selfies and are getting back to loving their natural faces (or at least something close).
Thanks to all this, Eleanor has a major future in the beauty industry. With aspirations of reaching the million follower mark on Instagram (which is only months away); she's also in the early stages of development for her own product line.
"[There are] a lot of big holes in the makeup industry that product is not necessarily filling, and I'm going to be the one to do it!" she said.
We can only hope that popular influencers in all industries, from make-up artists to our favorite gamers, can understand and respect their position like Snitchery does, making transparency a requirement instead of an option.
Today is the first day of New York Comic Con and crowds of people are already starting to pour in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, dressed up as their favorite characters.
Of course, NYCC won't be as big as the OG event, San Diego Comic-Con, but we can still expect tons of news about releases, movies, shows, and more.
If you're a die-hard fan for the original reason of this convention, you'll be pretty busy this weekend — comics will be a huge part of the show, like always. Marjorie Liu will be giving a keynote speech to kick off the day — she's the creator of the Monstress series, which won both Hugo and Eisner awards.
In the Artist Alley, you can check out independent artists showcasing their books and artwork, a great way to support smaller names. Bigger companies such as Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and others will host panels all weekend.
Some other interesting panels involve education and representation — Emily Ree will be speaking for the 'History Comics Club' and 'Queer Comics for Kids of All Ages' will also be represented at the convention.
The younger crowd — who weren't brought up on comics — will probably be more interested in the movie announcements and events. Fans expect new trailers to drop, such as for Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines, the last movie in DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon series, and the Hellboy reboot.
Movie panels will include Todd McFarlane's talk about his new Spawn movie, From Page to Screen: Owning Your Own Intellectual Property, and a movie interview about Constantine: City of Demons.
NYCC is pretty much the place to be for show premieres — DC Universe premiered the first two episodes of its Teen Titans reboot, Titans and Syfy will be showing Nightflyers, a George R. R. Martin adaption. Netflix will premiere new seasons of Daredevil, Big Mouth, The Haunting of Hill House, and more. Hulu will do the same with shows such as Marvel's Runaways and American Gods.
Activations
Activations are basically installations with show or movie themes — I think of them as Instagram opportunities within Comic Con. Audible will be presenting a Harry Potter exhibit while promoting the new Fantastic Beasts movie. Amazon has some installations relating to Good Omens, Jack Ryan, and more.
Other events will include a White Walker by Johnnie Walker pop-up, a Queer Lounge, NYCC Presents, a Star Wars Fan Club Experience, and more. This year will also include an entire section dedicated solely to anime. Guests will include Mark Ruffalo from The Incredible Hulk, Travis McElroy from the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me, Aisha Taylor from Archer, and much, much more.
Amber Wang is a freelancer for Popdust, Gearbrain and various other sites. She is also a student at NYU, a photographer and a marketing intern.
