#I know power isn't everything Sonic's more than proved himself a hero | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

egg-emperor · 3 years

Note

not sure if you didn't get my ask the first time but what about Sonic X , version of Eggman? its Yuji Naka's vision and he isn't that evil as many of the other characters that appear in the series, I would really love to hear what you think about it as an Eggman fan

Oh I did get your ask, I was just trying to think of the best way to word my answer.

X Eggman has a very special place in my heart for being one of my first pieces of Sonic media, aside from Heroes and Shadow 2005. As you may know, that two games didn't have that much Eggman in them and his character was being mistreated with the way he was being sidelined. But something about Eggman was already appealing to me and I wanted to see more of him, so I watched X before getting any other games. It was one of the first bigger looks I got at Eggman as a result.

X really helped me fall in love with Eggman because I got to see much more of him and how charming, funny, and evil he can be. Literally every time he was on screen he made me smile and laugh, I just found him so entertaining. I still do to this day and I rewatch it annually. But it wasn't the idea they tried to push of him being 'not that evil' or capable of doing good that appealed to me about his character from the very beginning. I loved all the evil and assholic things he did throughout the show.

He still had evil, selfish, and rude moments that made him look like a big dick and I loved it. The idea of him suddenly caring for Sonic and friends later on came out of nowhere and I don't like how it was handled, so I like to imagine it was just another one of his acts to get on their good side, so they could all defeat the Metarex. I know that wasn't really the case and I'm not very happy about it. It was random and out of nowhere and it contradicts things that Eggman did in this very show. It downplays his villainy for no good reason.

I think the "when you actually hurt them, that's going too far" line was one of the most ridiculous things to come out of Eggman's mouth of all people. It makes him so hypocritical, even when it comes to his portrayal in the show because he still hurt plenty, attempted to kill Sonic and friends, tried to blow up Station Square, and did countless other terrible destructive things, and there's no way that multiple of his plans didn't result in collateral damage.

Chris wasn't even the exception either because remember when he jumped onto Eggman's Egg Mobile in an attempt to take the emerald, and when he grabbed Eggman's mustache, he shook him off and sent him plummeting to his doom? Where was the good in his heart when he allowed the twelve year old to fall and almost die and only cared about the fact that he'd just accidentally let the emerald fall with him? It doesn't seem very kind and caring to me, but very in character selfish, as he should be. So yeah, he's one to talk in that scene when he's even put Chris in harm's way himself.

In the Japanese version of that line, he said he doesn't hurt hostages. But what I think would've be more in character would be that he just wouldn't care if hostages get hurt, as long as they're still alive to use as the bait. I said in the little rant that I slipped into my Eggman X supercut season 3 video that the only way I could really see the scene working was if Eggman was just pretending to take the moral high ground just to piss off the Metarex or something. Because otherwise it just really doesn't make sense.

I despise the Metarex for being boring villains with generic designs. They really wanted us to think they were amazing, powerful, and scary but they were try hard and had no interesting motive. Eggman made them look stupid by pointing out how their plan doesn't make sense and results in destroying planets so they won't have anything to rule over and prove their power to. They have a boring motive, unlike Eggman who has an egotistical dream that he'll go to great lengths to accomplish, rather than just being "haha I'm so evil I'm going to destroy everything for no reason"

It feels like just another case of Eggman's villainy being downplayed in an attempt to emphasize how much better of a villain and bigger of a threat others are supposed to be, which I'm never a fan of because it's not true. Eggman isn't innocent compared to them, he just has a better plan that doesn't involve just destroying the world. And when you have to either put Eggman down or make him act OOC so he doesn't seem as evil, then they're clearly not good villains that can prove themselves on their own. Other villains shouldn't take away from Eggman, instead we should be told why we should see these villains as a dangerous threat like Eggman.

I can't take away the idea that 'oh Eggman is actually a kind and caring guy compared to the big scary super evil Metarex' away from the scene. He's a terrible person too, the only reason he frowns upon the Metarex's acts isn't because he has a good heart, it's because they're going to destroy everything he wants to conquer. Eggman has always been selfish and only cared about what he wants and he doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he gets it. This even applied to X Eggman himself earlier on in the show.

If he was truly a good guy, why wasn't he holding back and showing care from the start? When people were getting hurt because of his actions and he was intentionally trying to kill others, why were there so many moments of him clearly enjoying it? And if it was supposed to be seen as some type of character development, they didn't do a very good job at showing it because him actually being concerned for others came out of nowhere. And even so, I just don't think it works for Eggman because if there isn't some secret evil and selfish motive behind his actions, it just makes him a big hypocrite.

But besides that bothering me because it's not the kind of development I think Eggman should have, I love X Eggman for many other reasons in a way that I can rewatch the show without it getting to me much. But I still really wish they would've done some things differently because earlier on it seemed like they had the right idea but had to bring that whole twist out of nowhere which I just don't think suits a deeply selfish, narcissistic, dangerous man that lacks empathy. (Because yes, there were even blatant moments in X that showed Eggman's low empathy was still there. That's how he does the things he does without shame.)

And one thing that stops me from being as bitter about it in the end is that, despite who was involved with X in Japan, it's still clearly very separate from the games. Just like how Boom Eggman, who is also portrayed as being a nicer Eggman, is entirely separate. Game universe Eggman has done a lot more evil, selfish, fucked up catastrophic shit than both X and Boom Eggman combined and clearly has no ounce of remorse. That's why I've never been a fan of people attempting to merge the separate universes/canons together when they just don't work.

There's nothing in the games that implies game Eggman has this same mindset and ability to care about anyone other than himself, unlike X or Boom Eggman. And even though X Eggman was the first time I got to see a version of him really in action, it didn't shape my view of him in the games because I could recognize the differences. I'm happy that it didn't affect his game portrayal because I already think those moments in X were OOC enough for X Eggman when they contradict his actions, so it would've made even less sense for him in the game universe.

The concept of him being not such a bad guy doesn't need to be a part of his character to make him charming, lovable and entertaining to me. He's perfect just the way he is as the prideful, selfish, egotistical bastard that I fell in love with. 💜

#asks #dr eggman #eggman #dr robotnik #dr. eggman #sonic x #analysis #opinion #my post

30 notes · View notes

dreamsister81 · 3 years

Text

Jeff and MI:

By age, you fit in the G.I.T generation, but you obviously are not one of them...

These facilities are a mystery to me. There they tell you only one thing: hurry up! This leads you nowhere, afterwards your own children run away from you. Through these trainings you get to know women, you get to know men, music is inoculated into people who have no feeling for it; then they can only scare other people or insult them...

I was in this terrible place too, by the way-G.I.T That was a complete waste of time, apart from the theoretical lessons and the friends that I had there. Otherwise: an absolute wrong decision.

How long have you studied there?

One year, the normal program. They give you tons of material, you have to absorb everything, you practice, you are tested and you go to the next course. An intensive support with development is simply not possible. I did so many things: theory, single string technique, jazz class, rock class, all sorts of genres. My friend John was teaching bass there, and he once said that there is not a single teacher at the institute who says to the students, "OK, you're learning all this stuff here now, you're learning how to entertain people and you're learning to learn. But do you even know that there is no one in the universe other than yourself who plays the music you play? " John left the school then. For me it was all a joke that cost me $ 3,900. People interested in music should take private lessons somewhere, start a band, do something with people who like them and have what it takes. These schools are a scene in their own right, a very small, secluded world-the music, on the other hand, is gigantic and open. If you don't notice it, you miss a lot of magic, pain, development...(thinks) and rock! Apart from Paul Gilbert, there was no one there who really rocked. Session musicians are bred there; and at the end of the year you get a piece of paper that says, "Now you have the skills to become a professional musician." Well, congratulations! And then you look for jobs and play what other people want. But that's not all the music, there's something else isn't there? Where's the music coming from? From your own head or stomach, or the concepts of the people you work for?-Gitarre & Bass, October, 1995

I had a friend named John Humphrey. I went to this really crappy guitar school for a year, and he used to teach there, he was a bass teacher. And then he left, and we ended up being roommates later on, after I graduated. This is the kind of school where you give them a shitload of money in order to spend a year learning their curriculum.

What was it, G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles)?

Yeah, it was G.I.T.. They give you their curriculum, and it's not too comprehensive, but it's just enough, and then you can [snaps his fingers] move on to the next thing. And pretty soon you have all this shit inside you and then they give you this paper that says you have what it takes to be a professional musician.

It's a rock-oriented thing, isn't it?

In the end, I think, the only true product of that kind of learning is to get you gigs on the studio circuit and to get you gigs on the session guy circuit.

So, Lee Ritenour went there or something?

G.I.T. was started by Howard Roberts, the guy who played the wah-wah guitar on the theme to Shaft. And this other guy named Pat Hayes. I don't know. It just seemed like a racket, really. John said a lot of things to me that stuck in my mind. He said that there was nobody who stopped you, sat you in a room and said, okay, we have all these artists that you're learning the licks from, you have your guitar heroes, your virtuoso lust objects. But there's nobody who can make the kind of music you can make now except for you. And you can make it now. You don't even have to know how to go fast. And that makes all the sense to me in the world. It's also kind of an unseen process, that concept, originality. It's like that in all the education systems; there's never any real...identity education, self-generative identity art sort of thing, to be yourself. If everybody in Melbourne had a Wurlitzer organ and had the passion to sing something or make something, you'd have hundreds of thousands of different styles, if they were coming exactly from only their DNA, only their makeup, and their emotional percepts, their idea about what art is. You could have way-removed genres from what is already accepted, avante-garde country-rock-punk-folk-whatever. It's unlimited. But for some reason, the conventions always take over and there's a very ready and powerful formula to step into...

Those are the type of [formula-derived] players who can say, "Well, I was listening to the radio in 1967 and I heard the guitar solo in Jimi Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower,' and that guitar sound, that tone, would work perfectly for this television commercial."

Yeah. See? "Stealing from the greats, that's okay." That's right. Once I stopped in [at G.I.T.] years later, when I was on tour going through L.A., just to see what it was like. They've got a completely high-tech, multi-million dollar facility...

More so than when you had been there?

Way more. When I was there, it was just a ragtag bunch of teachers, and they had all left by then. They had video facilities and a class for stage moves and all kinds of things. And I saw this guy who was working the desk, the guy who watches the door. He had a bass on, and he was practicing his Nirvana chops! He was playing "In Bloom" on his bass, way up on his chest, jazz-fusion style, to the Nirvana song. I thought, oh shit--he was practicing his grunge riffs! He was getting his grunge down! Best fucking thing you can do, if you have the interest, is go to a private teacher, go someplace, some college, and learn theory. That was something I really enjoyed, actually, something that wasn't totally pointless. Theory meaning the meaning of the musical nomenclature. I was attracted to really interesting harmonies, stuff that I would hear in Ravel, Ellington, Bartok.-Double Take, February 29, 1996

Once the site of a seakeasy and a bra factory, the 30,000-square-foot quarters were now the home of Musicians Institute, a vocational school for anyone who considered himself or herself a serious musician. With its wooden desks and chipped-tile hallways, MI resembled any other urban school, but at those desks, student guitarists and drummers studied scales and power chords in hopes of becoming the next Eddie Van Halen or Neil Peart, the flashy drummer with Rush. On their way to class each morning, flaxen-haired guitar gods in training could be spotted holding their guitars and practicing licks as they walked down Hollywood Boulevard.

Jeff had heard about Musicians Institute (and its subdivision, the Guitar Institute of Technology) while in high school and told everyone it was his one and only destination. However, potential superstardom did not run cheap. The school charged $4,000 for its one year course, and by the time Jeff Graduated from Loara High School, Mary Guibert was beginning to fall on hard financial times as she went in and out of jobs. In need of money for herself and her two sons, she prematurely broke into a $20,000 fund earmarked for Jeff, but only after he tured nineteen. Once Mary proved to the courtsthat Jeff needed it for his education, he and Mary received it a year early. In a deep irony, the father Jeff had barely met and increasingly resented would be paying his son's way through music school.

On graduation night, September 15, 1985, at the Odyssey in Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley, Jeff, Stoll, and Marryatt closed the ceremony by playing Weather Report's "Pearl On the Half Shell."-from Dream Brother

With its 30-odd thousand feet of floor space and row upon row of "labs", where hopeful guitar heroes could jam with such shit-hot players as Scott Henderson, LA's Musician's Institute must have seemed like nirvana for someone like Jeff Buckley, trapped as he was behind the Orange Curtain. According to his buddy Chris Dowd, that's exactly why Buckley enrolled there, arriving just before autumn, 1984, bankrolled by $4,000 that Mary managed to squeeze from a Tim Buckley trust fund.

Originally known as the Guitar Institute, which in itself says plenty, the school was opened in 1977. Drawing on the educational philosophy of journeyman guitarist Howard Roberts, it was co-founded and managed by Los Angeles music businessman Pat Hicks, "a real shyster opportunist", in the words of Tom Chang, an expat Canadian who would become very tight with Jeff Buckley during their two years at the Institute. In 1978, thr Bass Institute was opened, followed by the Percussion Institute two years later. Desppite Hicks' questionable business ethics-amongst other things, he'd hire students as cheap labour to do essential maintenance work on the building, which led to Buckley being hired as an electrician's assistant soon after graduating-he did manage to persuade well regarded players and bands to lecture, and play alongside, the hopefuls who'd enrolled there.

What Buckley lacked up in "front" he clearly made up for in ambition. That was proved, in spades, by Buckley's graduation performance which was played out on September 15, 1985, at a venue called the Odyssey in Granada Hills. While the sonic crush and enviable chops of Rush and Led Zeppelin still rocked the world of this Orange County teen, Buckley had also developed a real taste for such "noodlers" as Weather Report.

The number chosen by Buckley for graduation was their "D Flat Waltz" (not "Pearl On The Half-Shell", as documented elsewhere, which they'd performed at a previous event), a typically complicated few minutes of Weather Report neo-fusion-a "really cool piece, very involved", according to Tom Chang-and a standout from their 1983 set Domino Theory. But Buckley, accompanied by Stoll on drums and Marryatt on bass, didn't just play the piece, he also wrote the individual parts out beforehand for the band.-from A Pure Drop

MI pics by me

#jeff buckley #MI #Musicians Institute #GIT #mylove #supremebeing #favorite #music #jeff places

24 notes · View notes