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(Where applicable.)
This page is designed around HTML 4.01. If you turn on style sheets, I promise not to use them to make the page look horrible or try to crash your browser. If you have no idea what that's even talking about, don't worry; you can ask me if you really want to know. Thank you.
Every TV show has a fandom. Every TV show with more than a few fans online gets fanfics written. Mystery Science Theater 3000 is no exception. An MST3K fanfic takes some story, or spam, or anything else that's written, and treats it like it was one of the bad movies watched on MST3K, the real show. Hence, MiSTings. Many, many, many of them are kept at Mike Neylon's Web Site Number Nine, under special pressurized conditions that allow a lot of them to be stored in close proximity without detonating.
Now, something to remember about every TV show getting a fandom, is that shows that you might not expect get surprisingly strong fandoms. In particular, the Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon has quite a few fans who will write as many fanfics as they can share with their community. More than you'd think you could find are stored in well-maintained skyscrapers and financial institutions throughout the world.
Not unlike peanut butter and chocolate, or sodium and chlorine gas, these two disparate tastes combine to make something that's remarkably addictive and probably very seriously bad for you if taken in significant quantities. Here is probably enough to make you notice just how much free time there is, on the Internet.
A word of warning. Warning.
If you take the Sonic the Hedgehog series, comic books, video games, or fandom very seriously, you should think twice before reading these, which are at heart very long strings of cheap shots and easy jokes made at the show's expense, and then go away without reading any of them. It'll just hurt yourself if you don't. If you take Mystery Science Theater 3000 very seriously, you've probably missed the point.
And one more caution: I, Joseph Nebus, have only assembled this page, and in some cases (namely, those not tagged as being by another writer) written episode summaries or descriptions of host segments. I do not write all the MiSTings on this page, in fact, I don't even come close to writing them all. I haven't got nearly the time or talent demanded for that much. Oftentimes it's hard enough just keeping track of what other people have written. One other thing I do not do is archive them; they are kept by Michael Neylon, a devoted MST3K fan who stores many MiSTings, of Sonic and many, many other genres, at Web Site Number Nine, which is where you should send any of your MiSTings. I don't have the time, space, or energy to archive them; fortunately, he has, at least, the space.
So while I appreciate the comments sometimes sent me that various MiSTings are great, it's not fair to the many talented people who write the vast majority of these.
While strolling through a field one day, Ryan Huber, who happens to be the author, is hit by a comet and transported to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. Once there, he tries to join up with the Freedom Fighters attempting to overthrow the evil Dr. Robotnik; he nearly has a romantic moment or two with Sandra Nightweaver, who's evil, but not really that into it; he proves his loyalty to the Freedom Fighters by being captured repeatedly; a villain named for a telecommunications company lets him go; his finger turns into a laser gun; and he develops the ability to shapeshift at will. Also, there's a raccoon and a walrus in the story, although they may be a walrus and raccoon instead.
Host Segments.
Segment Two. Inspired by the story, Joel and Crow build
a time machine. Tom tries it out.
Stinger: A moment of reflection by Sandra Nightweaver.
Reflections:
This is my first MiSTing (and, so far as can be determined, the first Sonic MiSTing). I think it's a fairly decent story; certainly no disastrous abuses of the English language are found, and while it's a familiar plot with a couple of potholes, there's nothing to make you run screaming from the room.
Quite a few people have read the story and thought they had read it before, only to find they were wrong. This has happened to enough folks that I'm willing to speculate that this is an archetypical first fanfic, in the literal sense of archetypical.
Also, Ryan Huber is a really nice person who has been an incredibly good sport about a lot of really cheap jokes made at his story's expense, so if you should see him around the Internet, please be kind and thankful to him.
Note that this MiSTing was written well before episode #903, in which Crow and Tom tried to get Mike to become "Coatimundi Man." If you're the sort of person who insists on tying everything in the universe into some battered semblance of a continuity, you could read this invention exchange as raising Crow and Tom's awareness of coatis enough that years later, they got a host sketch out of it. But that's getting pretty silly, overall. -- JN.
Tormented by Destiny, who it turns out is less one of those ancient Greek gods than she is Monty Hall doing a satellite TV Dish commercial, young Keith (who happens, by a wild coincidence, to be the author), decides to give up the horrid prospect of a life in Seattle for joining Sonic the Hedgehog's counterrevolution against the evil yet somewhat ineffective Dr. Robotnik. Once there, he gets sort of attacked by some completely useless Freedom Fighters, and he teaches us all a little something about prejudice. Also he gets a computer plugged into his arm, becomes a raccoon, discovers girls, and threatens to produce the computer equivalent of a sneeze, which we're told would be a bad thing. Also he saves the day and evokes memories of The Dukes of Hazzard, which actually went on the air before author Keith Aksland was born, which is a thought that makes me feel old. Musical numbers and what feel like about seventy-nine epilogues included.
Host Segments.
Stinger: An attempted plot point leaks out.
Reflections:
After reading my MiSTing of "The Newcomer," Keith Aksland, whom I'd known for the better part of a year already, asked me to go over his Sonic story. I agreed; it took longer and was harder than I thought. Frankly, I worried that I'd used up all my good Sonic jokes on "The Newcomer," and at a couple of patches I had to just put the story away for a while. (Some of this was because the Premier Marquis group MiSTing came up and had a tight deadline for inclusion.) Following its posting, another person asked me to look at his Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic for MiSTing. Somehow I feel I'm not making any net progress.
This is the first story in a series of stories by Keith, which in their later stages leave the Sonic continuity behind and try to be better stories. I don't know if I or anyone else will ever get to them.
This MiSTing began as a Mike script. It only changed to a Joel script at the request of Keith and because some of the extended interchanges among the Brains (specifically the ongoing intelligence/cookie saga) seemed to fit Joel better. Most of it changed over seamlessly, but the jokes about Wisconsin, George Jetson needing a union, and Joe Don Baker (originally an explicit Mitchell reference) hint at the original setting. -- JN.
Did you know that if Senator and long-retired astronaut John Glenn gets the chance to fly on the space shuttle, it will prove that Adolph Hitler wasn't nearly as bad as everybody thinks he is? Neither does the writer of this short. Mike Tyson figures into it somehow.
The peaceful, friendly, ferret planet of Ferretara is invaded by evil purple ferrets from space who send in nasty robots to cause all sorts of off-camera mayhem. Meanwhile -- get ready for a plot twist -- FX, a young, genial character representing the author has his boring, dead-end job interrupted by a magical meteorite that he gets to tamper with, which gives him awesome yet strangely useless superpowers.
When Ferretara's army's one-day-long recruitment drive fails to produce enough volunteers, they decide to send away FX and girlfriend Liz to the distant planet of Mobius seeking help from the tiny band of counterrevolutionaries who aren't making any progress on their war for survival either. As soon as FX and Liz leave, the Ferretarans achieve complete, total, and suspiciously instant victory over the evil purple ferrets, though word of the peace doesn't get to FX until after the Standard Sonic Fanfic Raid On Robotropolis, Class Two (Girlfriend Gets Zapped) is done. FX suggests he and Liz stay on Mobius and the Ferretarans are more than happy to let them.
Host Segments.
Segment Five. We get to talk to FX, who's doing all right
for himself. Pretty much.
Stinger: Tails gets excited.
Reflections:
This is the story I got asked to MiST after Altered Destiny was done. I was impressed at the use of details in the story, since not a single one of them actually matters to the outcome of the story. We never even get to see one character's superpower. And I am suspicious about the major crisis, Ferretara's invasion, being solved immediately upon FX and his girlfriend getting way, way out of the way. Are we sure Ferretara wasn't just trying to get rid of FX and Liz?
Oh, and for a question you never considered asking, who is Miles Seligman? Well, that's a wonderful question, and I'd love to explain all about it, but it would force me into Longwinded Geezer Mode to explain and is way too self-indulgent even for a web page. Feel free to contact me if you really want to know, or just accept things as they stand now, which would be fine, since I'm kind of slow about answering my email most of the time anyway.
As a side note, when I wrote the MiSTing of the short, the idea of returning John Glenn to space looked dead as the Dyna-Soar. -- JN.
What was with that short? It kept talking like an auctioneer about nothing. I went to an auction once, my parents took me. It was so long and pointless, even though he kept talking like a motorboat. Motorboats are kinda fun. You have to be careful, though. Always wear a life jacket. But why are they always so orange? Orange is an okay color, like for Nickelodeon, but it just seems a bit unoriginal to have orange on every life jacket. Oranges, for me, are just too sour to eat. I can drink the juice if you take the pulp out; I just like my food and drink to be a consistent texture. While on the subject of texture, I once had wallpaper that was just so rough. You could almost cut your hand on it... Well, as I was saying, never ramble. It just gets so annoying. -- JB.
The author is the same George Ettinger who's done the MST3Kings of Bunnie Rabbot and Uncle Bob Returns. -- JN.
Did you know Sonic fans get to hate some of the Sonic characters too? At the very least, some appear to have very strong feelings about a skunk in the comic books called Geoffrey St. John. In fact, George Ettinger (FXFerret) has devoted a whole story to explore the theme that he really hates Geoffrey St. John.
Anyway. There's nobody in so much trouble as a regular show character who's hated by the fanfic author. After a brief, unpleasant encounter that might actually have been an understated mugging in a Robotropolitan alley, Geoffrey turns to a life of crime, stealing secrets of Knothole village and passing them on to the evil Robotnik, never suspecting that he's being watched by the vigilant eye of FXFerret (who fortunately knows Geoffrey isn't working as a double agent for Knothole and passing faulty information). At least he didn't suspect until FX and Sonic ran into him in the midst of Robotnik's lair, said they expected to find him there, and hit him.
Somehow Geoffrey is then able to outsmart everyone in Knothole Village and paint FX and Sonic as the true evildoers; naturally, this works up until the climax of the story, in which it is revealed that nobody's able to outsmart a determined fanfic author-avatar. After some explosions and falling towers and the like, Geoffrey accidentally blows himself up.
Host Segments.
Conclusion. How do you think Geoffrey's dad feels about this story?
Stinger: What does an author live for?
Reflections:
This was the first group MiSTing in which I've been the editor. I suppose it worked out okay, although on the whole I didn't enjoy the experience. Matt Miller and Corwyn Kalenda were perfectly fine to work with, mind you; I just didn't like picking through several texts and putting the riffs together, and I don't think our comic styles blended together very well. A determined reader could probably pick out who contributed exactly what lines. -- JN.
The unthinkable is happening. Precious Kabuki is being hunted by the strange and terrifying Wandering Psycho. Don't know who Kabuki is? We don't either. Sorry. The only clue to what's going on is a set of tickets to the opera offered by the Wandering Psycho. Despite Antoine's enthusiasm, they follow this lead.
The story moves to Maxl and Tracker, a pair of pretty dumb badgers who really ought to be in middle school or be roboticized or something. They seem to just be hanging out like it's the Presidents Day school holiday. They take a break from fighting to watch "Password Plus" and "Card Sharks" and snicker at the screen.
Kabuki comes out of a comatose state to reveal that she knows the Wandering Psycho: it's Maxl's alter ego. She also reveals that she knows Maxl: She once came upon a single badger who kept running into a tree and, in trying to kill him, caused him to split into Maxl, Tracker, and an evil green badger named Jade. See, they were all fused into one body for whatever reason.
So everybody goes to the opera house, which it turns out is the most impregnable structure on Mobius, where Jade launches goofy and pointless attempts to stop Maxl and Sonic and the, uhm, good guys. Kabuki gets killed, so she has to go back to the starting point of the level and ends up stuck with Bunnie and Antoine.
Finally, Maxl sneezes, causing Jade to disappear into another dimension and for himself to become marginally less stupid and annoying. Maxl and Tracker are invited into the Freedom Fighters, but turn them down, because they feel they need to learn more about their astounding powers and besides "Press Your Luck" is coming on.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Antoine likes the opera.
Reflections:
This was my big return, my first Sonic MiSTing in a couple of years -- I'd done some cartoon, some comic book, and some Stephen Ratliff stuff instead, most of it as part of a collaboration -- and it turned out everybody hated this one.
OK, that exaggerates, slightly, but about all I heard from people were that they were disappointed or that they expected better from me. I even swapped e-mails with one guy who thought it was boring, and he couldn't pin down anything particularly wrong; just didn't like it. I started to look somewhat seriously about retracting it and re-editing it, to rerelease when it was funny again, but I got busy and most of the individual lines seemed funny to me so I couldn't say what should be changed or not and ultimately that would just take a lot more time than I wanted to give it so here, it's staying like it is.
Like it is, by the way, won MiSTing award nominations for: Best Solo Misting, Best Overall Riffing, Best Single Riff ("just because they're trapped in a desperate struggle for survival against a crushing worldwide war machine doesn't mean they can't maintain a very active theater community"), Best Host Segment (Tom Servo's editorial on Richie Rich), Best Characterization of Standard MST3K Characters, Best Author, and Worst New Character (Jade), which ties it with the nominations for "Blood and Metal". So there.
On later questioning, Stephen Tramer admitted he couldn't figure out how Kabuki escaped certain death in the story, and suspects it may be just a continuity error, which hurts the resale value of this story.
Tom Servo's references in his editorial are all of course scrupulously accurate, and if you ever visit my apartment I can show you the original comic books. Call first.
The Big-Time Wacky Forced-Fun Comedy Improv Ha-Ha Revue is based loosely on a California improv club called "ComedySportz" or something like that that I went to back in 1998, which had two teams competing in various short improv sketches. They did indeed have a wall of "retired" references that the audience couldn't call out anymore, as they explained at the start of the night. Despite that a few people did call out retired references, including ones (Oprah and Elvis, I think) cited as examples of retired references. Antidisestablishmentarianism, remarkably, was not retired, but it was called out during the night.
In any case the sketch fairly well summarizes my disenchantment with improv comedy as anything more than a practice exercise for comic actors in training. Anything can happen, but most of the time, it won't. -- JN.
The Authors Speak:
I'm sorry I wrote this. For years I looked around to find the one person who could MiST it adequately as punishment for my sins (I even tried myself, to no avail), and after bothering Joseph for around two years, he finally agreed. That probably affected the quality, and I'm still deeply sorry for writing it.
But on a more interesting note, this story actually has some history behind it -- Thad and I were bored one weekend, and under the influence of Mountain Dew, decided to create a stupid Sonic fanfic based on people we knew from the Local BBSes (if we were doing it today, it would have undoubtably been based on the people we knew from Internet BBSes and the Portal of Evil forums - but I digress).
Badgers we picked because, for some reason, Thad assumed that was the kind of creature that would have a Movie Brooklyn accent. There are more FF6 references than I can count, which makes this a good one to play along at home with -- and I kept around a a clean copy for those of you who feel like doing it.
Also of note is "The Prequel Menace" sketch, which I thought was absolutely great -- because if I remember right (and I probably don't) it sounds like some kind of backstory explanation which either Thad or I came up with -- or potentially both of us. Something similar, anyway, and I liked it. It's easily the best part of this whole thing.
Even more frightening are the forthcoming sequels that I wrote, which Joseph is also MiSTing. They're much, much worse. Much worse. I can read Jaded Views, but I still can't read those stories, and I wish they would just go away most of the time.
But hey, it seemed like a good idea when we wrote it -- then again, we were twelve. Who could imagine?
I'll shut up now, to let Thad say his peace. And show you all that my writing style really hasn't improved over the years by inviting you all to a not-for-children web page where most of my writing these days goes. -- SPT.
Steve grabbed me in a chokehold when I suggested badgers ... and now look at him.
Just thought that bore reiteration.
Incidentally, he choked me because the badger was the mascot of our junior high school. That's the other thing nobody seems to want to point out: Steve and I were twelve when we wrote this. Hardly worth the effort Joseph put into it ... but again, Steve asked him to, so it's not really his fault.
Incidentally, I think it bears note that the copy used in the MiSTing contains a slightly different legality section from the final version. I was quite impressed when Joseph pointed out that I'd made an error in editing and switched haphazardly between "I" and "we" in one paragraph ... up until I finally unearthed a copy of the finished version and found that I'd actually caught it before releasing it to the public. Oh well. An HTML version, complete with a newly-added list of the slight difference between the "official" version and the MiSTing, is available on my page.
Anyhow, an average MiSTing of an average fic. Good for killing time. -- TB.
For the record, I knew -- from Stephen Tramer's age, and the age of the story -- that it was written when they were somewhere in the sixth-to-eighth grade range, and tried to include comments to reflect that knowledge both overtly ("The Prequel Menace" assigns them to "Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin Junior High School") and covertly (Mrs. Falvo, mentioned in one riff, was one of my middle school teachers). In any case I think most readers figured, or desperately prayed, the story wasn't written by fully grown men. -- JN.
In "Star Fleet Academy: A New World," Richard Story and his compatriot John Peterson outline their proposal for a new Star Trek series. After providing Starlog-style summaries of their personalities, the first few minutes of script play out, with Picard discovering a cadet is chewing gum in class, and Dr. Claw blowing up the Enterprise.
In this tender Marrissa Picard story, Marrissa reports the tragic death of Anupum Chagnon, disposable redshirt first class, to the strangely undernamed Mrs. Chagnon (Mr. Chagnon isn't mentioned in any way, so we can only assume Anupum was born parthenogenically and 'Mrs.' is a first name). It's distinctly not bad and Marrissa doesn't do anything goofy or improbable, but since it is a Marissa Picard story regulations require making fun of it, so: Tom and Joel and Crow can't keep Anupum's name straight and it's wacky.
A really long mess. In the sequel to "Jaded Views", and technically three stories rammed together, Jade reappears from the void to keep her appointment with some guys named Karl and Crotswurth. An irritant named BoB (or to me, Bob) claims to be a salesman and proves it by pulling a Volkswagon Beetle out of his briefcase.
Jade steals some jades so she and Crotswurth can destroy the universe and then take out their revenge on Maxl and Tracker, which seems to me to be taking things in the wrong order. Anyway, the project will take 72 hours to destroy the universe and there you have the title for this saga.
Karl and Crotswurth have some falling out and Karl goes off and warns Maxl and Tracker. Maxl and Tracker team up with Bob to make fun of Sonic and then time travel in a machine known as The Seventy-Two Hours and there you have the title for this saga.
After spending several weeks trying to figure out how to press the one button it has, Maxl finds himself in the past, where he ineffectively attacks Crotswurth and Antoine's sword shapeshifts into somebody named Kate Chaos who doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything and soon disappears.
So, in the present, Jade and Crotswurth figure they can take control of all the alternate histories of Mobius to throw everything into a state of higgledy-piggledy and destroy the Universe so they can rule it, so Jade gets Crotswurth a bionic arm with plasma cannon attachment which he uses to attack her, don't ask me why. Jade gets a big hole blown through her chest, and doesn't care.
Bob reveals he's really a nigh-omnipotent creature looking in on the battle between good and evil but forbidden to interfere in any way except by giving Maxl the time machine and the hints about what he has to do to beat Crotswurth, who's by the way using bionic limbs and plasma cannons that Bob provided and suddenly it's three years or five years in the future and Maxl the time-traveling hero has to save Mobius from Crotswurth and his future, Crotswurth-lackey, self before the universe-destroying machine, which is counting down the longest seventy-two hours in history, can destroy the universe and there you have the title for this saga.
So in the future Tracker and Karl and Jade are all rooting for Maxl to save the universe, but he's got an urgent appointment to pass out. Tracker, Karl and Jade try to pick up the torch and before long everybody's captured, though Bob does manage to shoot Crotswurth in the chest before he goes, which doesn't affect Crotswurth in any way.
Maxl wakes up, meets the annoying and badly accented Sven-Sven, who's whipped up a machine that will destroy the universe and needs only seventy-two hours to do it and there you have the title for this saga.
Crotswurth captures Maxl quickly and tells lackey Arrial that as a symbol of his trust in Arrial, Arrial can go ahead and set any of the prisoners free. Naturally, after setting Maxl free, Arrial returns to slice Crotswurth's skull in half, killing him for real this time.
Also featured are a lot of zany sidelines and wacky shenanegans and what looks like a personal attack of some kind on somebody who foolishly has written fanfiction based on an incorrect idea of the meaning of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Maxl annoys Sven-Sven.
Reflections:
Does this story sound like a lot to you? It sounds like a lot to me, too, and after riffing it to within an inch of my life and reading it carefully to get the plot for you, I'm still not sure that I have it all.
The time-travel method of the author forgetting what year he said it was is employed here, and according to Stephen Tramer the little incident where Crotswurth is shot in the chest in one scene and then appears unharmed in the next is itself one of those pesky little continuity errors he didn't realize were in there. Ditto for Jade's remarkable recovery.
My overall impatience with the forced-fun school of humor through wacky words comes across here, particularly at the approximately four thousand Editor's Notes that offer new annoying sidelines. Also returning are jokes about how bad the story is, something I made a conscious effort to avoid in "Jaded Views" and possibly one of the reasons people thought it wasn't as funny as it could have been.
The "Star Fleet Academy: A New World" script was written by someone I've known via the Internet even longer than I knew Stephen Tramer, and he was glad to see it MiSTed finally; it'd been sitting in my "to complete" box for a year or so. Can you spot the line taken from The Jetsons in it?
I have no idea why Joel, Tom, and Crow keep mangling Anupum Chagnon's name, but it provided for a lot of lines made ever so marginally funnier than they otherwise would have been. In the host sketch after this, though, spot the references to "Cheers," "The Facts of Life," Plastic-Man, "Due South," Doonesbury, "The Mouse That Roared," and of course "Bosom Buddies" and you could win a prize, if you enter a contest.
Originally the fourth host segment, instead of a "World News Now" parody, was an odd and very static thing in which everybody was on camera describing what they were doing and shifting loyalties and planning to blow up the Satellite of Love and changing their minds and ordering ice cream and all that. It was very strange and hard to follow and despite looking random remarkably hard to edit. The effect was funny, maybe more because there wasn't really any normal way to react to it except laugh or be annoyed.
Stephen Tramer loved it, but I had a hard time convincing myself there was any particular funny moment anywhere in it, and so replaced it with a segment that was not likely to tax anybody's patience. Up to a day or two before publication, Crotswurth's comments in the World News Now sketch were provided by somebody playing Crotswurth in the Hex Field View Screen -- making the implied joke that the crank-calling kid was Crotswurth's son actually detectable to the audience -- but that seemed to be taxing the premise too much, and it left Crow without any part to play.
The sense of when any of these MiSTings take place is a naturally pretty garbled one, but this one has for me the feel of being an earlier episode -- somewhere around the second or the early third season. At least that's the energy and voice style I hear when I read the script; I don't know if that helps you any. -- JN.
The Author Speaks:
This is the most horrible, evil, amalgamated mess that ever existed. I will forever attone for it -- yet still, far into the future, when mankind has lost all hope, they will find this story and promptly decide to give up fighting whatever post-apocalyptic threat will devour our souls.
I also haven't ever read the story all the way through since I finished it. Yes, this includes the MiSTing -- although one day I'll overcome my fears and go through it all, mostly to assure myself that really, it isn't too horribly awful and could, in fact, even be tollerable in small doses. This excluding the awful explination of faster-than-light, of course, which Joseph did a good job of debunking. Children with minimal knowlege of special relativity usually do screw things up.
But now, on the lighter side, I have vague recollections of many things about this story -- the first of which is that while I was writing it, I knew how awful it was. I knew it was so dreadfully awful that I intentionally cut the last bit of the story ('Book' Three) short. I knew it was so awful that I begged, indeed, pleaded to Thad -- or, as I like to refer to him, 'that editor guy' -- to not post it where maybe ten or twenty people would see it after showing him the more-or-less final draft -- and the rat bastard put it up anyway, because he had written some other story that referenced it (I forget what, exactly, but it was surprisingly decent).
All the bleeping in the story? Yes, there was really that much swearing. Not only was I an ignorant teenager, but I also magically assumed that if there were enough of those words in the piece, it would magically transform from a slimy, ugly slug into a beautiful butterfly. Unfortunately I didn't realize slugs don't turn into butterflies.
For those of you who didn't catch it, a goodly chunk of the first story/book is directly related to a Frank Zappa song. If you can guess which one, then you should be proud of yourself and give yourself a sticker. I'm not sure how much else in the story is related to it, but my personal guess is a goodly chunk.
The evil bartender who kills somebody (which happens somewhere in the story, I think) was a character that I was intending to bring back for some other, even worse story that I wrote. Fortunately it never saw the light of day -- and it was even longer and more confusing than this one, and involved something along the lines of creating lots of new insanely powerful characters, who all promptly died for almost no reason. Fanfic is great.
Sven-Sven was a character that was also going to be used in a comic book that Thad and I were planning on getting around to Real Soon (circa 1996). Like most things we talked about, it never materialized, and humankind is probably better for it.
The character of Bob was, of course, meant to be an intentional direct ripoff of "Bob," the famed smug-looking pipe-smoking face that adorns all things SubGenius. This was probably partially inspired by some other Sonic fanfic -- which I also remember being as half-decent, if not actually really good -- where one of the characters was the much more obscurely named G'Brogfan, the Mystery God of the aforementioned pseudocult.
I have no idea why I feel compelled to share this, but I do -- as I remember it, the story of Girard's hair being on fire spawned from some sort of Star Trek related incident invloving a heater and a teddy bear, and the tragic idea of a seven-year-old kid that he could build a working teleporter. Since then, 'Girard' has become a popular verb among about five people to mean to light something on fire.
On to the plot! And what a plot it is. Believe it or not, this was actually intended to be part of a much, much larger series of stores, which would hopefully explain everything (for example, why this story makes absolutely no sense). I think that I conciously tried to forget what I had previously written as I wrote it, meaning that very little in the story is related to anything else. What I remember of what the story was supposed to be before I muddled it all up was, in fact, most of what occurs in the pretentiously-named 'Book' One: Heroic author-avatar saves universe through stupidity and deus ex machina, and of course, lots of harsh language.
The final irony -- only recently did I become brave enough to get over my horrible failures of previous writing and churn out entirely new and fortunately much shorter pieces of literature. Upon showing these to almost any person who is still breathing, the immediate response is 'you should get that published', and one day this might result in it actually happening. So remember my humble roots, children, because one day I might make five dollars by having a short story appear in some unknown literary magazine... but in the end, it wouldn't make this giant mass of words any better. -- ST.
Fairly simply, it's after the big battle, and Sonic and Sally are king and queen, inflicting pain upon the world with their spawn. They go out of the castle, go back in, then only one is remaining in the story. He joins another group which the Cloaked Figure is in, and Sonic gets choked by her. Mary, the cloaked figure, chokes Sonic and stuffs him in her backpack. They go and meander about for a while. Chuck and Tails track them, too. Mary's group stumbles through "Where Dead Bones Tell No Tale," and are stalked by foxes. A few new characters are introduced. Meanwhile, the bad guys are talking, and the "cloaked hedgehog" has been causing trouble for them. Sonic runs into him and finds out it's his dad. Whoop dee doo. "Scooter," Sonic's son, follows "Sero," another young hedgehog, to his home. We find out that Mary, although mentioned occasionally as Sero's mom, isn't his mom. Gasp! Anyway, Sero gives Scooter a projectile weapon. A surprisingly uninteresting fight occurs, and the bad guy dies. -- NC
Host Segments.
Stinger: Jonathan shows the limits of his endurance. Rather bizarre.
Reflections:
I had been attracted to Sonic MiSTing because of the excellent work of Joseph Nebus and Shay Caron. I don't think I've done as well as they have, but at least I tried my best. Good job, guys!
Also, I seem to have a subconscious attraction to fodder totally devoid of quotation marks. Almost all of the ones I've MiSTed have about three marks in all. Maybe it's a psychic thing. Maybe I'm just teetering on the brink of insanity.
You may notice that I didn't describe the story very well. It's because so many things happen in the story, and space limitations hurt, too! It's also just very uninteresting. I had to push myself extra hard to write a ton of this. -- NC
Bookshire begins with immediate self-insertion. And I mean immediate. He shows up in the fourth sentence, for crying out loud! However, he breaks the seventh Law of Self-Insertion by failing miserably at his task, said task being the breaking into of the "Robotropolis Main Computer Core", or RMCC as it isn't referred to in the story.
bunnie_rabbotBut I digress. (Oh, boy, do I ever digress.) This story really is one of Bookshire's ways of totally rewriting the history of Sonic the Hedgehog, for as we see after Sally and Bunnie enter the acid rain factory because Bookshire read about it after finally breaking into the RMCC because of something Sonic did or something, Bunnie gets captured and partly roboticized, except Sonic saves her.
(After a sentence that size, I need to start a new paragraph.) Bunnie ends up not blaming Sonic for not getting there sooner (you'd think he would, seeing as he's the "fastest thing alive"), and we all learn a little lesson about life. Yeah right. -- SAC.
No host segments.
Reflections:
OK, it appears to me that Bookshire didn't like the official explanation for Bunnie Rabbot's limbs. While some of us would have written letters to the editor, Bookshire actually wrote a whole new robo-limb origin story. This, I believe, would be known as "retcon"ing if he worked for Sega or DIC or Archie or something. You have to admire his tenacity, though. I guess.
And a request for all "unknown" MSTies: if you see your MSTing here (or on Web Site Number Nine), please tell me (Shay Caron) or Joseph that it's yours. I hate it when I don't know something. -- SAC.
As a side note, I happened to know offhand who wrote this particular MiSTing so I could match it up with an author. We're not always going to be that lucky, so please, make sure you include your name with your MiSTings when you send them to Web Site Number Nine to be archived. Don't send them to me; I just do the episode guide (and life gets a lot easier if you write a description of your own 'episodes,' by the way). -- JN.
The Author Speaks:
First, it's not a bad MiSTing. I honestly don't read that many, but comparatively, I really liked this one. I got a couple of good laughs out of it. Like all my Sonic stories, this was written in the days when I used PICO on my ISP's UNIX systems (back in the day when they offered shell accounts) Which of course means, no spell check.
A lot of people though who come into the fandom after the classic authors faded into the background (myself, Dan Drazen, Joseph DeLaCriox, Shawn Walski, etc.) get the idea that I tried re-writing history with this one. However, that's not true at all. Back in my day (god, I sound old), when the comic was actually good to read and was mostly a silly, funny comic, and not an overblown, complex drama that's failed to follow where the Saturday Morning show left off, it was generally considered by everybody in the fandom, both among the original fanfic authors as well as our readers that the comic strip and the TV series were two completely seperate timelines.
I actually can't remember if this story was written before or after Bunnie's condition was explained in the comic... I think I wrote it in late '94 sometime... but, either way it was supposed to be a Saturday Morning fanfic and that's just what it was. In two seasons they never did explain what happened. I thought they would in the second season "Blast to the Past," but I guess they went in a different direction. Back then the comic was telling a completely different story, so frankly, nobody cared what it stated from a Saturday Morning viewpoint. The stuff was fun to read, but it wasn't regarded by anybody as the history of the Saturday Morning series.
Oh, and on the note of self-insertion. I suppose I set the ball rolling with fan created characters, at least among the old group of fans ('94 - '97), most of whom have moved on to bigger and better things, I'm sure. The thing is though, I didn't want my character to be the hero. I wanted a small part of myself to play a supportive role in the war on Robotnik, and that's just what Bookshire was. Never a hero, never the central focus... just a background character. Some people have to admit that's better than many authors do.
So many authors both then and now feel the only good fanfic is one where they thrust their own character into Sonic's world and immediately start being the hero. Admittedly, I make an exception for DeLaCriox's series of stories, but that's only because he never went under the pretense that they were supposed to be Sonic stories. They were stories about his character and he happened to use Mobius as a backdrop. Fanfics that claim to be Sonic fics, but have a fanmade character as the hero, though, generally are the kind I really dislike. -- BD.
We start off, cheerily enough, with Mecha Sonic X robotically assaulting the recurring yet unimportant Amy Rose. Although she's saved at the last minute by powerful aliens who've never before appeared in the Sonic universe, the conscience-stricken Mecha Sonic X is put on trial for rape and murder. It turns out, by the way, these aliens that rescued Amy are pretty much responsible for Robotnik gaining the technological secrets that let him throw his little evil coup and incidentally create child-molesting robots, but nobody gets worked up about that unpleasant little fact.
Back to the trial. Mecha's expert legal team consists of Phenix and David Davey "Contrivance Man" Kintobor Gonterman. Or maybe his legal team is Phenix and his judge is Gonterman. Or maybe Phenix is actually a character from the X-Men comic books who's in here because of a typographical error. In any case unimaginably goofy and hopelessly lost alien Gumby-robot Boing wanders in and cures Mecha of being evil. Despite this and a stirring defense from Marrissa Picard, Mecha is hung, just before those aliens return Amy. Luckily, hanging is a dumb way to try to kill a robot, Amy gets a lollipop and stops feeling about about her rape and near-murder, and this is pretended to be a happy ending for one and all.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Fertility makes everything better!
Reflections:
I really try to avoid commenting on the MiSTing, since this is supposed to be about the stories and what they do to the folks who read all the way through them, but this one demands special attention. Joel Lyles somehow formatted his MiSTing so that the text was cut off somewhere about the 80th character. And it's cut off exactly there, midword if need be, with an equals sign placed at the end of the line so that we know it's the end of the line.
The result is that I put off reviewing this MiSTing for the archive as long as possible. It was just needlessly hard to read. The problem is made slightly worse by the fact the quote marks are replaced by what in Joel Lyles' word processor are clearly Smart Quotes, the nice curled quotes. Unfortunately, in plain text -- and for all their flash and spin, web pages are plain text, with a few extras thrown in -- they come out as control codes, in this case the syllabic hash =91 and =92.
This can be overcome; a reader can work through and make all this readable. This does not mean the reader should. The reader's convenience is more important than the author's.
What I'm getting at, folks, is, please. Make sure your word wrap is sensible. Make sure you don't use Smart Quotes, Real Hyphens or any of the other characters that your word processor can do but that can't be represented in plain text, that can't be represented on the web. It requires some conscious thought -- or that you skip the word processor and fall back on a plain text editor like NEdit or BBEdit that can't do anything except plain text -- but your readers deserve it. -- JN.
King Acorn, deposed from the Mobian throne, is stuck in some crystalline world known as the Void. Despite it being a void, he runs into an old friend, but leaves when she turns out to be heavily accented. Later, he runs into another old acquaintance, who kindly helps him deal with the silence by giving King Acorn the power to turn into rock candy at will. In the meantime, nothing happens.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Just some talk.
Reflections:
Could we please, please, please ask fanfic writers to declare a moratorium on representing accents in text? While they can help establish a character and give a greater sense of realism, they only do work if you're Mark Twain or George Herriman, and dreadfully few of us are these days. And wouldn't it be more effective to try to simulate the different vocabularies and grammars that make up an accent anyway? Sure, it's subtler, but -- at least in my experience -- it's much more effective if you assume your reader has a good ear for the language.
As long as we're talking about overdone accents, by the way, might I just pose a general question of when random 'eh's became the hallmark of a Canadian accent? From the Canadians I do know in real life, there's sometimes the suggestion of an eh at the end of a sentence, but just that, a suggestion. I'm able to mimic it much more accurately if I think the syllable but refrain from consciously saying it. Anyway, my hunch is that it comes about from all those wonderful Bob and Doug McKenzie sketches on SCTV back about 20 years ago. At the very least, I can't find comic sketches that use excessive 'eh's that predate that. Anyone have anything?
There's actually a good story struggling to get out of 'Inside the Void,' although it made me painfully aware of how perfectly Cordwainder Smith would have told this tale. Not that this is inherently A.M. Fleury's fault; altogether too few of us are Cordwainder Smith these days, too. -- JN.
There's no need to fear; Underdog is here!
Well, no, that's a lie. Actually, Sailor Moon is here. She and her collection of hard-to-distinguish friends detect the Negaverse making moves against Mobius, although they're not actually there or doing anything yet. So, they decide to use their freshly-invented time machine/universe transporter/whatever it is gadget to go over there (incidentally leaving the earth unprotected in case it's a Negaverse trick) and check things out. They manage to break just about every one of their bones and pull all their muscles in the crash landing, just in time for the Mobians to notice, extremely slowly, that Princess Sally was kidnapped.
sailor_hedgehogIn various ways the Mobians demonstrate their complete helpless inability to do something about the kidnapping by the badnasty jumpjump from Sailor Moon, and have to depend on the Sailor Moon characters somehow combining their powers to overcome their weakened state... oh, forget it. There's some explosions near the end.
Host Segments.
Stinger: A button is pushed.
Reflections:
The Sailor Moonies seem to get very freaked out by the notion of talking animals in the Mobian world. Now, I grant hopping through dimensions will cause some disorientation, but don't they technically speaking hang out with a couple of talking cats all the time anyway? And they are visiting somebody else's universe; isn't it just rude to keep harping on the differences? Particularly since humans -- which the various Sailors were last I heard -- have something of a bad reputation on Mobius? I know when I visited Europe I didn't go around saying to people, "Hey! You're a talking German!" or "Hey! You're a talking Switzerlandanianer!", if that's even a word, and I'd have to hope that a similar courtesy would be extended to cross-dimensional visits. -- JN.
Ever think that one Sonic was really all that the world needed? This story seeks to prove you right, as mysterious and hard-to-explain creatures employ dimensional portals, chaos emeralds, ancient mirrors, and everything else you can imagine to make a whole bunch of new Sonic-like clones and evil twins and robot forms and rag dolls and corn muffins and I don't know what else.
All this work seems to fool some of the Mobians; even the ordinarily sharp Antoine seems confused. Or maybe that's just me reading my feelings into it, because there are a lot of scenes where Sonic-like characters are described and we're supposed to pick up on which version is which by subtle cues that completely escape me. If there were only some way of distinguishing between characters in a story -- say, if they were assigned names to be used in association with the actions and dialogue of the characters -- it might have turned out very differently indeed from whatever does happen.
At least one of the several hundred Sonics eats chili dogs, and some stuff gets blasted with lasers and Robotnik gets beamed down to the surface of the planet Gideon where he finds he's on an exact duplicate of the starship Enterprise except everybody on it is mising and Sonic ends up dating his robot twin and oh, there's the end and not a minute too soon.
Host Segments.
Stinger: You have much to learn.
Reflections:
This story was really hard to follow. Between the attempted drama of putting four nearly identical characters on screen and the long passages in which we're not given clear hints as to who's who, where they are, or what they're doing, the whole story takes on this dreamlike air that keeps it from ever really building suspense.
And that climax! Look fast, or you'll miss it, overshoot, and get lost in a series of well-padded resolution scenes.
Chili dogs show up again, and despite heroic efforts don't figure into the plot. -- JN.
It's Holloween Spirits meets Fanfic of Ray Rabbit! Sonic, the hero he is, sits on the couch and watches TV all day. He suddenly gets hit by a missile, which causes him to IRC with someone next door. I wish I was kidding you.
Robots attack the village... actually they walk in, and stand there. Robotnik has stolen FurryMTV and threatens to bring Over the Top back on the air. Sonic rushes into action! While Tails creates a new swear word, Sonic battles a commercial break. I wish I was kidding you. Robotnik falls out a 5000 story window, but apparently bounces to safety, while the building, of course, explodes. This, obviously, inspires the Freedom Fighters to look for jewelry. While Bunnie takes a few hours to describe the crystals, a big robot appears, which is destroyed immediately.
Five years later, they're still failing, Tasonic_fights_robotnikils breaks out in Disco Fever, and they finally get around to getting rid of that Death Egg thingie waaaaaayy back from Altered Destiny. I wish I was kidding. Robotnik splurges and brings every bit of war technology to Knothole, which he apparently already knew the location of the whole time. He loses again. Poor dope.
Tons of Green Day and a tribute to the Lord of PEZ are also present. Be a-scared. -- JB.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Mountain "Due" and what does not make a hero.
Reflections:
Rarely is it a good sign when a story assures you that it's good. In fact, most genuinely good writing is apologetic about its quality; the author sends her or his regrets for not doing a better job at conveying whatever message or storyline was attempted. More than two-thirds of A Midsummer Night's Dream consists of the actors conveying, in one way or another, Shakespeare's deep sorrow that he didn't write something else, such as Tank Girl, instead. Nearly four reels of Duck Soup are just Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and that other guy effacing their storyline and sneaking into a Porky and Beans cartoon. It gets even more severe when you look outside the bounds of fiction; Robert Benchley's classic Treasurer's Report and Other Aspects of Community Singing is actually just three paragraphs of apology and then an entirely different book (in this case The Best Yo' Mama Jokes VIII) inside. These observations have nothing to do with this story, but neither does the story. -- JN.
The author of the fantastic Sonic Fights Robotnik and the sequel Sonic Fights Robotnik 6 admits that it'd be silly to have Sonic Fights Robotnik 52. So he writes a different story, in which Sonic fights Robotnik, but on his own time. Sonic and the gang join forces to start up a rock band. There's some sort of argument about finding Uncle Bob, whether or not he's there or whatnot, and then Sonic stops. Bob is found after his trailer blows up. Then it's the Robotnik Show again, this time starring Salma Hyek. Dulcy the dragon appears, and is immediately forgotten. Sonic's hut is again destroyed, and nobody cares.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Archie Comics is given permission.
Reflections:
After all this time, I have to confess: I have no idea who Uncle Bob is. I don't know who he's related to, or what species he is, or what he's supposed to do with the Freedom Fighters, or why anyone should care whether he returns or not, or by what means he should return. If you know, please write your explanation on a clean piece of 8 1/2 by 11 paper, fold it neatly four times, and mail it anonymously to the editor of a local newspaper. Repeat this several dozen times, each time mailing it to the same person but from a different town in your area, and see if and how it gets reported. -- JN.
Stick with me, here. This is one of those meta-MiSTings, in which somebody goes through a MiSTing another person wrote and adds new commentary to it, ridiculing the original story and the first attempt to ridicule that original story. Confused? Yeah, me too, not incidentally because the first MiSTing, the one now being ridiculed, is by the infamous Dr. Thinker, who writes in a language uncannily similar yet unmistakably alien to those known on Earth.
The Dr. Thinker part starts with Mike and the bots trying to name the TV shows various classic cartoon characters like the cast of "Sailor Moon" and the "Swat Kats" come from. Suddenly, Dr. Thinker calls and orders them to read -- tada! -- "When Worlds Collide," a Sailor Moon and Swat Kats crossover story, with the help of Diana, his female robot pal for the gang.
The crossover story starts with an explanation of who the characters in "Sailor Moon" are. This explanation lasts, by my watch, about as long as the Roman Empire did. After that rip-roaring opening, the Swat Kats go flying into the world of Sailor Moon. They go on to fight Malacite or Azorite or Menemonite or whoever those goofball villains from the Negaverse are. Finally, the Swat Kats leave. There's some kind of hint of a romance or something but don't ask me to explain it.
Finally, the Dr. Thinker part ends with the Satellite of Love running into a Sailor Moon voice-over. His stinger for the story is Razor helping Stardust (I don't really know) to her feet.
After an excessively long break, there's a sudden moment in which the question of "Why is this on a page of Sonic the Hedgehog MiSTings?" is finally answered with a little scene in which Robotnik gets dressed, bawls out Snively, and orders a time machine from room service and what do you know, it's over.
Host Segments.
Stinger: T-Bone is ordered to ease up a bit.
Reflections:
I think this is the first meta-MiSTing to get onto this page (there was another meta-MiSTing that had been on Web Site Number Nine before, but it had very little actual Sonic content and most of the work was the continuation of some flame war), and I think the text explains why. It's only the coloring of character names for the 'outermost' MiSTing that Mike Neylon helpfully offers that made it possible for me to follow the story at all. The exotic word formations Dr. Thinker tends towards didn't help me any.
What were Tom, Crow, and Gypsy building in that middle host segment there? I don't know; I think it might be related to the time machine that shows up in the last segment.
Still, the original story, "When Worlds Collide," is a crossover in the purest sense of the word. One set of characters falls into another set's world, and then leaves. You know pretty much exactly what you're getting with this.
Mostly I'm glad the scene of Robotnik getting dressed wasn't any longer. -- JN.
Alex Gariepy's pet cat Tigui gets to join the Mobian crowd this time. This, by the way, is the story from which a fragment was plucked for the odd ending of "MiSTed: When Worlds Collide."
Robotnik's starting to question whether taking over Mobius, roboticizing everything in sight, and beating up Snively is really a fulfilling life, or if maybe he should've taken that job working for his dad at Wa-Wa. Fortunately, Snively's invented a time machine. Given the chance to pluck any item, from any time, out and bring it to him, Robotnik rejects the chance to prevent Sonic's birth or bring himself an item of unlimited power and demands a pet cat. He gets Tigui instead.
Sonic and Sally are planning their one billionth objective-free raid into Robotropolis when the detection of time machine residue gives them something to actually investigate. They quickly decide Tigui is the key to the whole operation and rescue him from his life of being told all Robotnik's deepest secrets. (For some semi-explainable reason Tigui talks better than any of the regular characters, too.)
So Robotnik orders the place blown up, but gives Sonic and the gang two minutes so they're able to just barely escape the explosion. Stuff explodes, Tigui proves himself more powerful than all the other Freedom Fighters combined, blah de de blah blah, blah de de dah. Future Tigui-based stories are promised.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Tigui meets Tails.
Reflections:
The story opens with a category of the various contrived ways guys from Earth end up stuck on Mobius. The list includes time portals, space ships, Robotnik experiments, Rotor experiments, and miscellaneous accidents with magic. Remarkably, comets don't make the list. This story, of course, uses the Robotnik experiment with a time portal variant, and from there follows pretty much the same blueprint as "The Newcomer," "Altered Destiny," and about half the stuff on this page.
I don't know about you, but I never thought of Robotnik as a cat person, really. Maybe a cockatiel, which is a tiny and somewhat evil bird that both makes noise and violently attacks anybody trying to feed or water it, would be a good pet for him. Still, the impulse to get a pet as a way of bringing some meaning to an otherwise discontented life isn't a bad one -- certainly there are worse reasons to get a pet -- but that does not mean you should allow it complete access to your top military secrets. Would-be world conquerors, take note! -- JN.
It's Christmastime on Mobius, if we can put aside wondering how a holiday central to the Christian ethos spread very far at all on Mobius, which is either on another planet, in another dimension, or whomptillions of years in the future from Earth and just settle down to families getting together and sniping angrily at one another over slights committed decades ago.
As Sonic and the gang decorate Christmas trees, a roboticized hedgehog wanders in and asks to be taken to Sally and initiated into the deepest levels of trust in the Freedom Fighter community, and what do you know, Sally notices the cyber-spunk in his eyes and lets him join up.
Before long he's Sonic's brother, they're moving his home all the way across Mobius instead of just using the guest cottage (no lonely teenagers from Earth seem to have jumped into the world of Mobius this story) and there's an invisibility shield or something.
Finally, everybody trades Christmas presents, and the gang goes on a commemorative raid of Robotropolis, get captured, escape, and end up hitting warp speed. Finally, stuff blows up.
Host Segments.
Stinger: None provided.
Reflections:
You know, I'd started to wonder whatever happened to the raids on Robotropolis; there's been a run of stories that seem to have forgotten there's evil going on at all. I guess some of it's just weariness with the old fighting premise, and I gather from rumors that the comic book has, if not beaten Robotnik once and for all, at least moved on to other things.
I understand the comic book is also to blame for things like the Death Egg, which naive MST3Kers ridiculed fanfic writers for. I don't think we need to apologize, though, because wherever it did come from, they needed to come up with a less goofy name if they wanted people not to snicker at it.
This MiSTing, incidentally, ends without a stinger, just a note to "insert obligatory MiSTing legal notes here." So please print out this MiSTing and add such notes to your copy, fold it over twice, and mail it (registered, return receipt requested) to Sally Pederson, Lieutenant Governor of the state of Iowa, State Capitol, Des Moines, IA 50319. You'll be glad you did. Don't mention my name. -- JN.
Everybody, say hi to Jake. He's a newcomer to Sonic's world, a human who finds his destiny altered when he suddenly -- get ready for a surprise -- found himself wrapped up in a mysterious colored ray and transported to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. He's awfully confused and unfamiliar with the people and politics and conflict around, but after hearing nearly three or four minutes of the history of this society, he's ready to join up with the Freedom Fighters and go about on insane, suicidal missions to the heart of Robotropolis or whatever it is the new guy is supposed to do to prove his loyalty.
Jake is also pretty much completely irrelevant to this story, since, after being introduced, he stays in the background of a raiding party or panty raid or whatever it is exactly the Freedom Fighters have organized for him to do. All he really does is hold a red chaos emerald until a couple of scenes before the end of the story, at which time it open up and grabs him and -- get ready for a surprise -- transforms him into an echidna with strange and vaguely defined superpowers. Jake/Dark Knuckles goes on to overthrow Robotnik and adapt Snively to being his useless sidekick.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Dark Knuckles lays down the law.
Reflections:
I just wanna open my big mouth to ramble on incessantly about a couple things. One, that "nuke the whole cave" thing. I'll bet a bajillion dollars that almost nobody got it. It's from a strange (but very very funny) Quake movie I saw called Operation: Bayshield, so if you want to see what in God's name I was thinking, find a copy of that.
Also, something was bothering me for a long time, and I finally figured out what it was. You may have noticed (or maybe not, I dunno) that I was trying to avoid clichés in this one. Well, I screwed up and I think possibly overdid the Manos refs. What can I say, I'm a bozo. -- DK.
The burning question, of course, is: is this a self-insertion fanfic? Is the Jake of this story a thinly veiled version of author Lane Kramer? It's certainly got some of the hallmarks of one -- the sudden transport from Earth into this story, and the acquisition of superpowers, and the familiar Sonic twist of the human turning into some Sonic-continuity animal; on the other hand, usually in a self-insertion fanfic the author's avatar actually does something. All Jake here does is get possessed, really. -- JN.
Well... "Black Angel" is another entry in the dark-evil-Mobius genre of Sonic fic, which nowadays seems ready to overwhelm such staples as the self-inserted-Mobian-shapeshifter genre. This little paste jewel is actually written by a friend of Kefka, of A Sorcerer, A Demon, and some Emeralds "fame." (Scary, huh?) Basically, Sonic gets possessed by an evil entity (big surprise there) and starts killing and eating people (again, big surprise). "Black Angel," never touched by mortal proofreaders, also features a surprisingly inept avatar who gets overshadowed by Bunnie (?!) on a regular basis. Just in case that wasn't enough excitement for you, there's INTENSE! CHARACTER-LISTING! ACTION!, various theories on how the heck Antoine is supposed to speak, and an official Knothole Rusty Pickup Truck. Personally, I was at the edge of my seat, until I scooted back.
Oh, yeah, I didn't mention the stomach-slashing. On second thought, that's a subject best left for dead. -- AVR.
Host Segments.
Stinger: A triple stinger to commemorate the in-depth badness of "Black Angel." We revisit Kiki's revealing of Antoine's secret shame, Antoine thinking (now there's a new one) in an accent, and a lovely hunk of undigested gore.
Reflections:
"Black Angel" was pure, uninterrupted bot fodder. Surprisingly, even though it was so loathsome, it was an absolute blast to MiST. I can only hope that all the fun I had riffing it transfers to the MiSTing itself.
Also, it was nice to find a truly rotten Sonic fanfic to start with. When I began "Angel", I had completely stalled on "Tail," which is very goofy yet competent. Now, with "Black Angel" under my belt, I feel a little more confident in my ability to MiST this stuff.
Want something deep? Sorry. Go read Nietzsche; it's fun. - AVR
Miles "Tails" Prower discovers Sonic and Sally significantly relating to one another, and then goes off and pouts because he can't play all the boring games children used to play before there were cable TV and (ironically enough) video games. Then somebody or other needs help in planning a New Year's Eve party until the Death Egg comes along and they stop for a few minutes to listen to a bunch of really bad accents. Finally, the author is introduced, as Tails' long-lost younger (by five months) brother. An intense rivalry begins over Dr. Robotnik's dirty pictures, prompting nothing but apathy from their supposed guardians, even when they (the kids) start beating each other into bloody pulps. Naturally, they become the best of friends. A sequel is threatened. -- JN.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
I don't mind the notion of a romance between characters, even in a cartoon. In fact, if it can be done believably, that's great, a real bonus to a storyline. Or sticking with a goofy but cartoonish romance, again, that's fine with me. But there is this streak in some cartoon fanfic writers to suggest characters, ahem, sharing animation cels, that really repulses me. I've been on the Internet long enough to not be shocked or offended by very much, but the suggestion (as in here) of, say, Sonic and Sally doing more than happy cuddling really makes me, well, dread the prospect of finding a Scooby-Doo fanfic (i.e., that fair but uninspired Johnny Bravo crossover/parody episode). Still, at least so far we've kept all of that action off camera, so we're probably lucky overall. -- JN.
The Author Speaks:
First, this is really old. About three years old. I was very immature while writing it, and I guess that was funny to me. I still don't know what I was on...
Don't expect another fanfic from me. Hopefully. Maybe. I don't know. Just don't judge my writing by this, me can writ moch beter know. As for the crossbreeding, hmm. I just remember about five cups of coffee thinking of how to start the story off. I was on the Internet, then it hit me. I make the worst decisions at those times, really. Before I start to write off-topic ramblings, I better stop. Now. -- MR.
Oh, happy day; it's another story with the author putting himself in as a character. After meeting them, we find an astounding invention that allows one to project music to a person without their prey suspecting. Tanks and energy balls and whatnot fly around, but fortunately there's some sort of force field so there's nothing too horrible. Several months later, Sonic intrudes on the story after the author and his pals travel may light years to find them. In no time at all, the author characters are leading a raid on Robotropolis in order to accomplish some vague objectives, and isn't this all just the hap-hap-happiest day?
Host Segments.
Introduction.
Crow opens up his very own convenience store. Pearl's started a newspaper.
Conclusion.
Pearl's got her own Metro section columnist.
Stinger: Get out! Please!
Reflections:
After a gap of several stories, chili dogs make a comeback! Yes, everybody's favorite inedible foodlike product has returned for yet another writer to prove that their version of Sonic the Hedgehog possesses a personality that goes beyond running quickly and saying stupid things. Now we can just wait for someone to put strawberries on their chili dog, and things will get really wild. -- JN.
In this long awaited sequel to The Newcomer, we find that Ryan has chosen to quit doing imitations others and has changed himself into a black fox. After a bunch of random instances that lead to nowhere, the author decides it's about time to have a plot. So Ryan gets captured again while learning how to track Sandra (she rips leaves, gives deep footprints, knocks down whole trees, etc. to make him feel like he's following a vague trail). There's a lot of dust settling, finger pointing, and, of course, smiling. Ryan turns himself into Peter Puppy somehow after his comet/meteorite shatters and slashes Packbell's robotic guts out. The good guys prevail, unfortunately, and Ryan agrees to take on Sandra's last name of Nightweaver, to bring shame to her family name for generations.
I'm sure Sonic the Hedgehog is somewhere in this Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic. I can't recall where. -- JB.
Host Segments.
Stinger: A "homemade" one just this once. Sonic and Crow duke it out in a JPEG.
Reflections:
Joseph Nebus' MSTing of Altered Destiny really hit the spot for me, so I decided to finally go through with my own. Nebus had also done The Newcomer, which a couple of years ago I had planned to do before I heard of the dibs list, so he beat me to it. But why not do the sequel? Ryan Huber (the author) was very nice about me MSTing his story, as I know it can't be too good for the ego to have two of your stories used as `bot fodder. Yet, I feel like there was still more I could do: there was that out-of-place REDRUM ref, very repetitious gags, and even spelling flames when I had made some errors myself. But in the end, it was worth it, dammit. I mean, this story had so much nodding, more smiling, and as the cherry on top, Ryan pointing at Sandra's toobular boobular region. Yes, folks, I love abusing my first amendment privileges, and you should, too. Thank you, and good night. -- JB.
In this story, Sandra shares with Ryan all of her secrets of stealth and camouflage, and she and he are then instantly captured. Also, astonishingly stupid villain Packbell is able to identify Ryan even though Ryan cleverly did not walk up to Packbell, slap him across the face, and shout, "It's me, you cretin, the guy you want to kill!" seven or fifty times. These observations don't enhance the story, but seem noteworthy. -- JN.
Ever want to get involved in one of those stupid pyramid chain-mail schemes, but insisted that it involve more bureaucracy than attending Rutgers University for four years would? Finally, the scam for you.
Something big is happening. The evil Dr. Robotnik has amassed over half his resources towards some project undoubtedly aimed at wiping out the Freedom Fighters once and for all. But since Robotnik's resources consist entirely of dimwitted sidekicks and stupid underlings, let's ignore this urgent threat and turn to the Noah Hathaway of Mobius, Tails. He's pouting because, despite being nearly twice the age Marrissa Picard was when she started her reign of terror, he's not allowed to go on foolishly risky suicide missions like the rest of the Mobians. Naturally, he wanders off and finds the one drug dealer to have escaped Robotnik's conquest and roboticization of the entire planet. Since the hallucinogens make Tails interesting to read about, a quick stop is put to his hobby in the most rational, balanced fictional discussion of drug use since the Blueboy episode of Dragnet.
Host Segments.
Segment Two. Crow, Tom, and Gypsy enjoy a Spam Eating
Contest. Who wins? The entire reading public.
Stinger: "Rock candy" catches a Mobian's eye.
Reflections:
Ah, spam. Now you can spend money on a program to spend money. I love technology.
But this story. This story... what could have been a better, albeit cliché, fanfic was merely used as a plot device. What is this thing that Robotnik was doing? Did it succeed? Did it involve eggs? How many licks does it take? The world may never know. As for the story structure and grammar, I'm almost convinced that the anti-drug message was coming first-hand. -- JB.
Okay, remember the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon? Sure, we all do. Remember their anti-drug episode? It had a plot just like this one, except that instead of an actual certified recurring character, Teela and Princess Adam were betrayed by a friend we never saw before and never saw again. I'm guessing they had a temp agency send up a friend for that plot. Anyway, that cartoon was a lot less painful to watch than this story was to read, and also the cartoon repeatedly used the incantation "Em Ot Emok," which I think is a lot of fun to say, even to this day.
Matthew Miller points out that the incantation was probably "Em Ot Emoc," and I think he's right. -- JN.
The Author Speaks:
Oh god, I had hoped people forgot about this one. To this day I wonder what I was thinking by writing a badly written public service announcement. I'm glad somebody MiST'ed this one. Still, I was a child of the Eighties, so I grew up with all of those anti-drug episodes. My favorite of all time, though was the one they did for 'BraveStar.' Not often you see an actual death in a cartoon like that. In fact that was the first, open, honest, and in your face death I'd ever seen in a cartoon up to that point(after all everybody in G.I. Joe obviously trained at the A-Team school of marksmanship so what were the odds of them actually shooting somebody). Anyway, I digress. Yes, I wrote a Sonic anti-drug public service announcement, yes I did it on the advice of my soulmate, and even inserted his character into it. I wrote this story when I was in a total slump around '96 and was desperate to write anything that I could manifest into written words. I loved the MiST of it, though, I frankly think it reads better than the original. -- BD.
Some standard omnipotent shapeshifting energy beings have nothing better to do than say words like "absoposilutely" and leave incredibly dangerous stuff lying around Mobius, and so are surprised when the evil Dr. Robotnik finds some of it. Rather than fix their mess, Vision, superpowered yet annoying Lord of Pez, who happens (by pure coincidence) to be the author, gets Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters to do the dangerous work, since interfering would somehow violate the Pez beings' Third Law, but hiring subcontractors doesn't. The mandatory raid on Robotropolis occurs; stuff blows up; Vision becomes more annoying.
Host Segments.
Segment Two. Tom drinks soda; Vision (from the story) steals
attention from Pearl.
Segment Five. Crow catches Smilitis; Pearl saves the Mobians
from Vision.
Stinger: Meet the Lord of Pez.
Reflections:
At this point, I had received an e-mail asking me to stop making fun of fanfics formerly at Bookshire's page because they were so great... I intend not to insult this person, so I'll go no further.
Admittedly, I was really mean in this MSTing, especially in the host segments. I guess all these identical-plot self-insertions finally got to me. Blblblblblblblbl!
You may have also notice a gratuitous amount of Christmas references due to the time of year this MSTing was being produced. -- JB.
There's self-indulgent author-surrogate stories. There's stories with incredibly annoying, precocious characters. This, however, is possibly the most irritating imaginable mixture. It would not be unreasonable to blame a large portion of unexplained violent crime on the existence of the character Vision, Lord of Pez.
I believe the public's general failure to rise up in outrage against the creation of Huckleberry Hound some 35 years ago is directly responsible for the rise of Adam Sandler and Vision, who may not be separate people. Think about it. --JN.
Robotnik proves himself more fiendish than ever when it starts raining, even though the weather prediction was for sunny skies. Meanwhile, MeanSonic robs a bank and Sonic gets blamed for it. But it all works out in the end.
[Note: While Vixen In The Labyrinth has been restored in this reproduction of Joseph Nebus' guide, the episode guide and segment notes remain lost. -- DF.]
And for a lighter turn of events, consider Holloween Spirits. If it bothers you that the author has misspelled the name of his/her/its story, then maybe you shouldn't continue. As events unfold, the Knothole Villagers attempt to celebrate Halloween, or just psychologically scar one another. After about seventeen hours arguing where to start trick-or-treating (Right! Left! Right! Left!) some mysterious evil robots kill Antoine, Rotor, and Bunnie, and vanish. Later, Sally goes on a killing spree. Get it? It's wacky, 'cause it's repulsive.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Robotnik's roboticized robots. Repeat.
Reflections:
I believe Holloween Spirits shows even greater contempt for the possible audience that might have tried reading it than even Down the Drain, a classic in horrifyingly bad Star Trek: Voyager fanfics, did.
Although at least the Holloween Spirits writer didn't use incomprehensible smileys instead of character names. -- JN.
The short for this is almost impossible to not compare with Fanfic of Ray Rabbit. Despite this, I won't anyway. The author of Vixen was a MSTie, so there really wasn't much of an argument as to my MSTing of her work. And as for Holloween Spirits, someone pointed out to me that it seemed more like a chat log from when everyone got home from school around 4 PM. But judging from its grotesque-ness, I'd say more around 4 AM. And it may be mentionable that Joseph Nebus was glad for Eclipse of Emotions to keep all the hubba-hubba off-stage. Sorry to disappoint you with Holloween, Nebby... or may I call you Joe?
At the time of writing these notes, I've noticed that three people so far have used my "Mads on Mobius" continuity; only one person actually asking permission (thanks, Shay). Not that I mind this, lemme tell ya; it's actually quite flattering! I don't own copyright on either of the set of characters, so knock yerselves out! Just either give me credit or a big fat check; I don't care which. Both, if you'd like. I wouldn't mind that. -- JB.
The fundamental question, of course, is how many host segments can be written in the "Mads on Mobius" continuity before that continuity itself becomes a Sonic fanfic? -- JN.
Note as of May 25, 1999: The episode guide of Vixen In The Labyrinth, as well as the original fanfic, has been removed, per the author's request. -- JN.
While on a daring raid to Robotropolis, this time for the excellent reason of stealing tuna noodle casserole from EvilCo's company cafeteria, there's an unscheduled eclipse of the sun. It turns out it's our dear old pal Amy Rose, who made Knuckles return her to Knothole Village. Knuckles, showing the sort of brain power that makes us think he's just the most scrumptious echidna ever takes his entire floating island, lets it hover over Knothole Village, and tosses Amy overboard. Packbell, determining that Robotnik is dead, fires off a couple of the non-lethal-style missiles at the island in the hopes of softening it up for an invasion, but never thinks that maybe the floating island is pointing out the location of Knothole Village.
Anyway. For whatever reason the Chaos Emeralds are thrown out of the island, since they're the only things that keep the island floating, they'd better all be returned in a prompt and timely fashion or else Knothole Village is doomed. So the Freedom Fighters break into randomly sorted groups to retrieve the various emeralds, leading them to wacky encounters with a packrat child, a corrupt gambling boss who surprisingly has sinister ideas in store for Tails, and a frightening place no Mobian will go, where it's impossible to commit an injustice against anyone else. Eventually, Snively disgraces himself, and all is restored to normal.
Host Segments.
Stinger: A question for a robot.
Reflections:
For the record, the participating writers are John Berry, CDM, MacMog, Joseph Nebus, Satyajit Phanse, Jennifer Berry, and Shay Caron.
Apart from the nonsense of bringing the floating island directly over Knothole Village -- let's face it, any villain not as stupid as the Sonic the Hedgehog villains would immediately pick up on that clue -- this isn't a bad idea for a story. You've got the built-in deadline, a string of subplots you can send as many of the characters as you feel like writing about on, the opportunity to try writing a bigger story without having to make it more epic, and a well-defined resolution for each subplot you introduce. Episodic while still reasonably flexible.
Not pointed out in the final riffings was an observation of mine, that the middle name of Cap I. List, the porcine corrupt gambling boss who tries to roboticize Tails in exchange for deroboticizing his creepily similar wife, absolutely had to be "Ita." Happily, one of the writers confirmed this speculation in email after the MiSTing was completed. Score one for cheap political gags. -- JN.
Ray Rabbit leaves Sonic the Hedgehog's life, and is not missed.
A volcano erupted but conveniently stayed inside a building and cooled off well before the start of the story. Robotnik plans some kind of orbital weaponry. There's a lot of arguments about whether Knuckles the echidna should be involved. And Tails overcomes his fear of cooties long enough to get a girlfriend in a truly repulsive relationship. The Chaos Emeralds are supposed to be heavily involved. Stuff blows up. I'm not sure this didn't merge with The Rangers of NIMH II at some point.
Host Segments.
Stinger: He won't let go. Not if he wants to sleep tonight.
Reflections:
I had a fun time MSTing this fanfic. It was readable, which was nice, but there was plenty of room for riffing. I'm taking part in a group MSTing of the prequel to this, Chaos Race. In it, the Chaos Emeralds are scattered and Amy is obsessed with Sonic--her putrid relationship with Tails comes later. I haven't sent anything in for ages, though. John, if you're reading this now, I'm sorry.
I really have nothing to say about this fanfic, but I feel like I should contribute something, since Joseph was kind enough to write up a host-segment description when I didn't, despite knowing perfectly well that I should. Uh, I had Raisin Bran for breakfast today. "Total" Raisin Bran. Er, I'd better go now, before I embarrass myself further. -- SAC.
I'm kind of curious what was behind the writing of Fanfic of Ray Rabbit................ Perhaps it was a rough sketch for an elaborate story that we've never seen; maybe it's the plot sketch for a real fanfic; who knows. It's incoherent and bizarre, however, it's shorter than this discussion about it, which makes it delightful in retrospect. --JN.
Have you ever read Dave Barry's column about what happens when you put a strawberry Pop-Tart in a toaster and hold down the handle? Good. Imagine another Pop-Tart filled with a delicious manure filling. Same toaster, hold the handle down. Got that image in your mind? That's Blood and Metal.
This dreck is written and frequented by David "Davey 'Crockett' Kintobor" Gonterman. Yes, if you sketched it all out, that's what it'd look like. It goes downhill from there. It involves a human who, by the end of the story, gets a robotic arm, turns into a fox, shouts "TO A FREE MOBIUS", throws up repeatedly, gets a hedgehog girlfriend (yeah, right) named Sonia (or Suni--the story's not too clear) who wants to "dive into his chest fur," learns that Robotnik is his father, tells someone to blast him with a rifle (no, not because Sonia/Suni is his girlfriend. At least I don't think so), and gets a new father, Julian, who is Robotnik's old personality saved as AI (yeah, right). Also, he sings more songs than can be found in three Altered Destinys and a whole lotta tear-licking's goin' on. And no, I am not making this up, no matter how much I wish I were.
I did a count. "Sonic" came up 106 times; "Sally" was used 84 times; "Sonia" and "Suni", Dave/Davey/David's perpetually nicknamed girlfriend, both came up a total of 66 times, and I counted 404 uses of any form of the name "Dave". It kinda puts the thing in perspective, eh?
The only positive thing I can think of is that he doesn't call himself "Lord of PEZ". -- SAC
Host Segments.
Stingers: First, what's left for David after the women have all gone batty. Second, a woman swears his love to David.
Reflections:
I am sooo glad to have this done!! This was the most horrendous story I have ever had the displeasure of MSTing. On the plus side, though, I did sorta have fun, and I think this is my best work ever. It just evens out.
David Gonterman has become a popular MSTing target as of late. His tendencies toward self-insertion, denial, re-use of plot points, and contradiction of previous stories make him a "good" bad author. He seems to take it well, even putting MSTings of his work up on his web page, and for that, I commend him. Commend commend commend.
I was going to put in the Humor-Impaired Translating Metallic Automated Nanometer, or "HITMAN", at the beginning of part 5, but it proved too unwieldy to implement. Now you know what that machine might once have been.
Oog. I was finished with this MSTing and was having a few people proofread it, but David told me that I had an older version of the story. Aargh. I had good riffs in the parts that had been changed, so I didn't want to remove it. What to do?! Eventually, I decided to put in the changed parts at the end, as Segment Eight states. I guess it worked out OK.
And one final note: I have an uncle named Chuck. No, really. -- SAC.
This MiSTing was the most-requested item to appear at this little compendium of Sonic MST3Kings. Uh, which actually means I think two people asked when it was going to move from a "Coming Attraction" to an actual entry on Web Site Number Nine with clever commentary and such here. But, still, that's more than anything else has gotten. -- JN.
I'll let you all in on a little secret. Three or four years ago, when I was a Sonic the Hedgehog fanboy and had never heard of MST3K, I read Blood and Metal and really enjoyed it. Looking back over it now, I can't understand just what I was thinking. Sheesh. -- SAC.
Don't worry, I'll never breathe a word of that shocking confession. Oh well, it could be worse... it could have been American Kitsune that you said you liked. -- AF.
For the four billionth time in a row, Tails feels the first stirrings of puberty as he watches Sonic and Sally fight over nothing in particular. Feeling his happy home threatened by the colossal war machine of Dr. Robotnik, not to mention Sonic and Sally's inability to agree who was going to call the cable guy, Tails flies off to bother Knuckles on the Floating Island.
Eventually Sonic notices Tails has run away from home and goes searching for him. He's not in the first hut, he's not in the other hut... ah! He must not be anywhere! Meanwhile Tails asks Knuckles if he likes movies about gladiators.
Following the trail of Blue's Clues, Sonic finally makes his way to the Floating Island, where Tails confesses his undying love to Sonic. Sonic thinks it over and decides to break up with Sally and start dating Tails, which is fine since Sally would rather start dating Knuckles, who has to break up with Mighty the Armadillo who, spurned, starts dating the robotic chicken, until finally an annoyed Graham Chapman comes out and orders them all to stop it, stop this silliness right away. At least that's how I wanted it to end.
Host Segments.
Stingers: Only Knuckles treats Tails with respect. Also: Why does Sonic have to act stupid now?
Reflections:
So, if we read the story carefully, it appears that Sonic has agreed to begin dating Tails and to break up with Sally mostly because he can't bear to tell Tails to his face that he really isn't interested in him and would much rather date Sally. This looks like the start of a beautifully dysfunctional relationship, and the starting ground for many thousands of endless fights over unimportant problems that leave enough emotional debris lying around as to poison the ground for years to come. Good luck on that counter-revolution, kids!
Although this is yet another story about Tails discovering puberty, it's not as terrifying as it might be as it does focus more on the emotional ambiguity and generally screwed up nature of the characters than on their sharing a pencil test or doing anything more than kissing. Still, none of it really compares to the romance between the G.I. Joe computer expert Mainframe and Zartan's evil sister Zarana, to this jaded old soul. -- JN.
Knuckles' floating island suffers a massive, damaging attack from Robotnik's forces -- wiping out half the city there with the main assault still expected. So that means Sonic and his Freedom Fighters will have to stop playing volleyball and reading their fan mail, in about a half hour or so. From then on, nothing happens. Eventually, the story is halted.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
There's something aesthetically pleasing in this MiSTing, in that everything stops before the story gets started. That's probably more efficient than other stories where we just go on forever without anything happening. -- JN.
In the fine tradition of mature, sophisticated, thoughtful Christmas specials such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, you will find nothing vaguely reminiscent of this one. Maybe it's closer to those insensible Christmas specials Hanna-Barbera likes to churn out where the Flintstones or the Herculoids or whoever celebrate the holiday by blowing stuff up while there's a light snow on the ground.
Anyway, for this story, ineffective evil robot Packbell figures out that the location of Knothole would be the perfect Christmas gift for ineffective head evil villain Robotnik; and since it's that time of year, all he has to do is ask part time evil spy Sandra Nightweaver for the location. Sandra thinks it over and over and ultimately decides, showing the true Christmas spirit, that betraying the Freedom Fighters would be an un-cheery thing to do. Packbell disapproves. I think he ultimately gives Robotnik a plastic "World's Best Ineffective Head Evil Villain" trophy from an arts and crafts fair. --JN.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
When I originally wrote this MiSTing, I was ready to give up host segments for good, due to some not-too-good ones from Hair, a Final Fantasy 7 fanfic. But then I had a realization. I worship Joseph Nebus's MiSTings, as you may know if you have read this bit of text. I thought (in Lindsay Cibos style) Maybe I could use the format from the MiSTings. Hell, Jen White did it! Why can't I? So, thanks to him, I found I was able to work the host-segment magic!
BTW: Near the end, I put in a kind-of-bad description of Amy Rose (whose fanfic I am half-done MiSTing at the time) so, Lindsay, if you're mad, I'm sorry.
Also, don't believe everything you hear about me (unless it's from Steve Desch or Negaduck9). Just because I MiSTed FF7 doesn't mean I'm evil! So, let me remove some untrue rumors once and for all.
Incidentally, Amy Rose is not an author-representing self-insertion character. She starred in the Japanese version of Sonic CD as the cliché damsel in distress. When said Sega CD game was imported to the US, her name was changed to "Princess Sally," for reasons unknown to all but the SOA executives. She's also been in a few of the Archie comic books, where her name was changed back to Amy. How do I know this? I was once a total Sonic fanboy. I had a point when I began writing this, I swear. Sigh. -- SAC.
The Author Speaks:
Well this was one of my originals from the '94 - '95 when I was actually writing some of the most popular fiction around. I hadn't yet become a pagan at that point, so the only winter holiday that I cared for was Christmas, and I thought, well, most series do a Christmas episode eventually, so I wrote one. I introduced another one of my characters in it, though I often think I could've introduced her a bit better. Still, everybody at the time seemed to love it. The plotline is kinda weak in some areas, but on the whole, I have to say I've written worse. The MiSTing was good and does credit to the original work. -- BD.
Our good friend Dave Bulmer starts things off with an actually infinitely long introduction. He tells us more of The End of Mobius's history than we really needed to know, explains Sonic's life in the Fleetway universe, and seven or eight metric tons of legal stuff. Well. That said, enjoy your Sonic fanfic (it's not that bad, all things considered). The story finally starts Grampa Simpson Hedgehog telling stories to his grandkids. One story -- sure to cheer up the kiddies -- is about Sonic's four hundred thousandth death in a piece of fanfic. Don't get your hopes up. It doesn't happen here in Part 1.
Sonic gets up one morning and goes running with Tails, but on the way he crashes into the middle of a mountain and meets the Metallix, or a Metallix. This sounds like a cool chance to play by assembling basic motors and simple controllers into robots you build at home, until you realize you're actually thinking of the 1980s toy sets Robotix.
The Metalli, in contrast, are robot clones of Sonic with Care Bear symbols on their chests or something. This particular Metallix blasts Tails into nothingness and almost beats up Sonic, but Knuckles saves him at the last minute by smashing some shiny thing outside the cave.
Knuckles has some bad news for Sonic when he awakens. Turns out the Death Egg (snicker) is being rebuilt, and Robotnik didn't die like they thought he did! Robotnik sends approximately fifteen trillion robots out to fight Sonic and the Freedomteers, which they destroy. The Chaotix Crew shows up, does nothing useful, and leaves. I'm making this all sound a lot more exciting than it is in the story.
Robotnik captures the Floating Island and steals the Uber Emeralds or something like that. He uses them to restart the Death Egg and starts destroying everything on South Island. Sonic and Knuckles, while trying to save survivors, get a long metal spike shoved through their chests, but the condition is only temporary. They get captured and escape (can you tell I'm trying to rush through this summary? It's a long story), the Super Emeralds try to help but fail, this MetalAxe thing brings Robotnik the Master Emerald, and he uses it to turn Mobius into glass. There, I'm done. -- SAC
Host Segments.
Segment Four.
Tom and Crow raise some very valid questions about pop music. Mike is unimpressed.
Stinger: So, comic relief. Basically. Yeah.
Reflections:
This MSTing is quite literally about three years in the making. No kidding. Way back when, after I'd done my MSTing of Blood and Metal, David E-mailed me and asked if I'd be willing to try my hand at his own old work. That was in '98 or '99, I believe. I worked on it for quite a while, but before too long, I'd slowly drifted away from the whole MST3K fandom, MSTings, rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc, and all. Just last month, though, I loaded up what I had (I'd riffed probably just over half of the story) and thought, "I'm gonna get this thing done!" And I did, and I'm happy!
I decided on the name for the "Phantasmagoriatron Deluxe" device before I figured out what it did. I decided the name sounded like a horror story or something, so I picked nightmares. Originally, I think I had something funny planned for that evil plot of Pearl's that used electricity and a fish tank. Over the two years that this MiSTing sat in oblivion, I completely forgot it. So when I got back to this, I made up a quick line about death guppies and wrote a couple more segments where Pearl's evil plots got wrecked before they even began.
I think this story is pretty well suited for MiSTing purposes. It's pretty well written, with only the occasional spelling or grammar error (and, of course, the word "span"). The plot and events aren't so awful that you can't bear to sit through the story for the jokes -- it's no Hobgoblins, that's for sure. The End of Mobius genuinely cares for the audience. It's like an elderly butler that can't hear well and keeps spilling the drinks but tries its hardest nonetheless. -- SAC.
Yes, Doomsday has failed. Again. Peace has come to Mobius. Again. Sonic and Sally prepare to ascend the throne of Mobotropolis. Again. Snively is sort of in charge. Again. He sends Mecha-Sonic out to destroy Sonic. Again. There's some sort of battle and the threat of roboticizing the Freedom Fighters. Again. Bunnie does more of that wacky and lovable bad Southern accent schtick. Again. Finally, Snively catches the Freedom Fighers, and in order to make them suffer and humiliate them for all the times they've tormented him, lets them go.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Sonic fights Mecha-Sonic!
Reflections:
Clear stage directions and accurate typing help set this fanfic apart from many others. Meanwhile, the premise here isn't outlandish enough that the actual real TV show might not have used it to change the premise of the show without changing the premise too much. I still can't fathom an archvillain specifically letting the heroes go in order to humiliate them later -- I'm sure he could leave them in jail while he works up something sufficiently painful, such as rubber bands slapping their wrists -- but then I can't fathom Snively as an archvillain either. It wouldn't make much of a story if Snively survived the end of Robotropolis in order to become shift leader at White Castle, though, would it? -- JN.
The fic itself is half-decent, and was actually a favor to a friend of mine. Although the plot is somewhat shaky, and seems to lead into the self-insertion run-a-round, it didn't really deserve what it got. So Tails, along with a special friend seem to do stuff, things... ten year olds do. Ya know, the average, flame-thrower thing. Then they find a car, and are very fascinated! Something beyond the candle, blew their minds. So in the back of the truck which it is revealed to be, a bunch of plot contrivances show up. Wackiness ensues, and people like Bookshire Draftwood can't seem to stay away. Packbell is there too, actually wanting Snively's job, don't ask. Something about a spider, I think, and an orange blob is in there somewhere. Also, the love interest of Sonic is ripping Sally's throat out, as is Sally's... to rip her OWN throat out. -- m2b
Host Segments.
Stinger: It's huge!
Reflections:
Although it didn't deserve it for the most part, I found problems. I mean c'mon, Packbell wanting Snively's job? Don't make me giggle! The gang discovers swearing is a bad thing, and Sonic likes drums. Sally thinks the eight foot - two foot - sixteen foot - 5 inch tall fox drove it there from the 20th century. What I was too lazy to MiST was just Sally discovering her hidden love of chili-dogs. -- m2b
In this special installment of the Freedom Fighters Kids Crew, all the gang is somewhere lodged between fourteen and eighteen years old, just old enough to lead the valiant cause of freedom for Mobius, or actually to spend all day debating when Tails will be old enough to have sex. We learn that Sonic and Sally have been cuddling up under the design sheets since they were sixteen.
Having thus warned us off, the story proceeds to send Tails off to visit Sasha, whom I distinctly vaguely recall as being a character in some other fanfic somewhere, while she's showering. Tails, of course enjoys a lovely mug of Ovaltine while Sasha prances around the house naked.
Enough of that, though! Sonic wanders off from a pool party and happens to wander to Robotropolis or whatever, even thought it was long ago destroyed (destoryed?) and finds out his parents have been kidnapped. There's some kind of desperate pursuit going somewhere, while we meet somebody or other, and find somebody or other, and we find that Robotnik, who was given up as really and truly and totally and horribly dead, faked us out. The Freedom Fighters gang up on him, but Robotnik cleverly escapes using his fiendish new "Your shoes are untied" trick and shouting, "Nanny nanny boo boo!" at them.
Finally, things stop happening.
Host Segments.
Stinger: A strict warning for Tails.
Reflections:
I just don't get it. What is the obsession with Tails hitting puberty and discovering girls? If one makes the assumption that many Sonic the Hedgehog fans are teenagers, maybe they see Tails' coming of age as reflective of their own, and see his forced maturation as metaphor for their own adolescence. He is, after all, capable of at least one remarkable trick, but he's too inexperienced to use it effectively, and is supposed to follow carefully the lead of adults.
I'm also curious why there's an obsession with blowing up all the old stuff from the series -- Robotnik, Robotropolis, whatever else people can think of -- only to reconstruct it as a new, more cybernetic Robotnik or a scarier secret headquarters or whatever. Superficially, there's no difference in the stories whether the Freedom Fighters are after Robotnik, a new all-robot Robotnik, Snively, Packbell, or any of the other gaggle of villains that could be whipped up. Though this might also be because by tearing out and replacing all the trappings of the series, without changing its fundamentals, fanfic writers put their own stamp, their own identity, on the series without making it harder for other people to join in.
By the way, considering how much they're used in this fanfic, and how they appear to be the first line of defense against all intruders, laser beams are remarkably ineffective against actually keeping people out. Somebody should look into that. -- JN.
It's your average self-insertion author who is, wow, what a surprise, part of the Royal Family. Why she wants to be, well, that's beyond me. The minor characters make 'hello' parts, and you never see them afterwards. Celius is a hedgehog at the center of attention... So I assume she wants to be Sonic. Again, beyond me. So with her peace chain and her uncanny ability to dress like 'Janice' from Friends, (who is NOT Fran Drescher which greatly surprised me,) will she hit Sonic with a pillow and be able to run faster than him, making everyone sigh at the same time.
This fic makes me think SONICFAN has more aliases. In a VERY unnecessary crossover fit, do ninja turtle, Teletubbies, the Alien owned by FOX, and do the crew from Sonic the Hedgehog appear to live together, eat cookies, fish, and make theories on aliens that come from red pods. Sally is taught how to open a door by what I'm told is a 'Lem.' I assume it's/he's some sort of crawfish. I don't know, all I know, is that Knuckles has access to a barrage of weaponry that was IN the castle, and Sally had NO idea. Also noting the fact that he lives on the Floating Island, does Knuckles bring with him shotguns. Bunnie complains of alien blood, Knuckles makes an NRA plug, and games like poker and 'who's a stupid idoit' are played. (The 'idoit' game was taken directly from the fic, I know.) So it's a not so thrilling cliff hanger that makes you want to actually fall OFF the cliff. -- m2b
Host Segments.
Stinger: Chile dogs and alien sleep.
Reflections:
Sanity kept a weak hold, but the humor of Big IB trying to be serious was too funny. Let's stop. Princess Sally can't open doors, Iain thinks about garbage pods, and they all live with Teletubbies. It's the worst clash of PBS shows, bar Aliens. Robotnik apparently doesn't exist, the king is nowhere to be found, and they are upset about Ant nearly dying. What is wrong here?? The short was no better. Self-insertion is the cheapest of the recognitions factions. Whoever wants to cross with Sonic and be in the Royal Family... with ELIAS, I just won't explain. The MiST wasn't spiteful, but sure as fudge was deserved. -- m2b
Well, it's a fine morning one day when Foxfire -- who it turns out is not the Foxfire, but is rather merely a Foxfire -- watches the sunrise and turns into some kind of seafood-based superhero or other. Then Foxfire and, incidentally, the actual characters of the show manage a huge raid on Robotropolis that doesn't accomplish much, but goes wrong anyway (imagine that!) and almost all of them are captured. Fortunately for them, Foxfire somehow manages to escape, and as one of the Colossal Calamaris he saves everyone from certain doom or whatever was going to happen. Also at some point he's thought to be dead, which proves to be an overstatement.
Finally, mint happens.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Isn't it a beautiful day.
Reflections:
In order to turn into "Piraneh Man," the sort of named superhero form of Foxfire, it's only necessary for say "Piraneh Man" three times in rapid succession. While I have no specific desire to turn into a "piraneh" man per se, I must admit there are times a power like that would be useful. For example, when moving furniture, being able to turn into a bear would be quite handy. Or if there's no time to run to the store, changing into something that can tolerate the taste of spaghetti could be useful.
Okay, perhaps the sort of transformation suggested by this story wouldn't really make one's life vastly better just by fiat. However, the energy blaster rays and flying could. Except that the blaster rays would be real nuisances when you're trying to wear gloves or work at delicate machinery or such -- think about the safety hazards if you were doing woodwork and accidentally set off a little fire around piles of sawdust, for instance. And turning into something that could fly would probably either get you shot at or else get you in lots of trouble with the FAA. So maybe it's not worth it. Sorry. -- JN.
Deep in the secretest bunkers of Area 51, down below even the alien vessels and the G.I. Joe team's Pit #4, is a secret government project to turn soldiers into humanoid wolves. Fortunately, this is not a problem as they have found some kind of weird dimensional portal that happens to have opened up in the secret underground bunker; everything they put through it and bring back turns to crystal. Naturally, the cure to newly lupine Lieutenant Hernandez's problems, then, is to put him through the portal and sell him as a collectible on the Home Shopping Network.
Hernandez is more than willing to go on this vague mission, pausing only long enough to ask that he be nicknamed "T-Bone." Naturally, he turns up in the world of the short-lived TV program It's Your Move, there to side immediately with the forces of good against wacky but antagonistic principal Dwight Ellis (Garret Morris). Meanwhile, Sonic blah blah blah raid blah blah blah blah Robotropolis blah blah blah. It all goes horribly wrong, and David "Pain" Gonterman's character is involved, but eventually the fanfic ends anyway.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
What have we learned? I'm still trying to figure that out.
This story does feature one of my favorite riffs, though, this jewel:
> "Hey T-Bone what car is that?" Tails asked.
>
> "1958 Impala. My grandfather first had it then my dad and he turned
> it into a lowrider then it was given to me."
>
> "What happened to it?"
Mike : < T-Bone > I ate it.
While this is a relentlessly average "fan gets to play himself, only way more cooler and powerfuller, in the Sonic universe" class of story, you can't fault it too badly when it offers lines like that. -- JN.
If you've read Blood and Metal you may want to see David Davey "Kins" Crockett Kintobor Gonterman Banana Nana Fo Fanna the Third beaten up. Well, Wildcat Alley starts on a promising note as the only thing that can possibly beat up an author's avatar is shown us -- namely, T-Bone, the author-avatar of this fanfic!
After this promising start, the story begins falling apart when T-Bone's friends back on earth send a de-funded prototype jet airplane over. A couple of months are spent discussing nicknames for the plane, and finally T-Bone decides to hold auditions among all the various self-insertion characters to see who'll be his copilot. Also somehow the Knothole Villagers get the airstrip, processing facilities, fuel, spare parts, logistical support staff, and repair technicians to support this plane. Probably by renting out the Swat Kats's old place.
Oh, and Robotnik has some kind of connection with T-Bone from the past and so T-Bone and Gonterman blow stuff up. Somehow the movie The Rock is supposed to be involved, but isn't.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
I have my doubts about the super fighter jet in the story. While I don't wish to disparage the obvious test piloting credentials of "T-Bone," a man who clearly shows the sort of experience and expertise typically associated with the pilots who applied to become the Mercury Astronauts, I have to question whether he could in fact take a nearly-completed top-secret fighter jet and develop a proper testing and debugging regimen without the assistance of facilities comparable to Edwards Air Force Base.
If nothing else, the plane's Stealth characteristics would seem to guarantee requiring considerable ground support -- stealth airplanes are hard to spot on radar because they're built with flat surfaces at odd angles that avoid reflecting radar at receiving dishes. This has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging very complex and turbulent air flow over the plane, resulting in a flight that, it is my understanding, is thought nearly impossible for an unaided pilot to control; computer assistance is essential. It's not clear that T-Bone's gift of a YF-23X would have its software developed well enough that a team of programmers would not still be needed.
Furthermore, the YF-23X is credited with a top speed of Mach 20, putting it very close to the speed of spaceflight. The X-15 research plane achieved speeds of Mach 5, in the 1960s, but at that required heavy ablative coating (which looked remarkably like the erasers on top of number two pencils) that had to be replaced every flight. No provision for that is explicitly stated in the story.
Finally, the plane -- developed secretly by the top-secret secret project that secretly opened a portal to Mobius and secretly sent T-Bone there -- was sent to Mobius because Congress stopped funding the project, noting the incredible risk to national security if the plane were ever stolen (this is why experienced fighter pilots park their F-15s only inside parking garages, and never on the street). It strikes me as odd, then, that Congressional overseers would never ask what happened to the plane -- why there weren't the disabled and chopped-up pieces of it sitting around safely under lock and key, since as far as they'd be able to tell, the plane was stolen. I don't see the advantage to the top secret secret military secret people in sending it to another universe, here.
I guess I'm just saying, I have my doubts about the super fighter jet in the story. -- JN.
Get yourself both free satellite TV, free installation, and free vacations to fabulous spots like Palm Springs, Atlantic City, or Muscatine, Iowa, focus point of the "Graybeard Regiment," a unit composed of men over the age of 50 who served the Union army during the U.S. Civil War.
Sonic, Tails, Antoine, and somebody named Chuckie go off looking for plants in the forest. I bet. They wander around and discover there's a swamp, and its swamp goo is taking over the world or something like that. They take a sample back to Sally, as if she can do anything with it, and then pass the time dropping mud on other people's hot dogs. Finally, Swat bots attack, interrupting Juice Time, and various people fall down holes and meet somebody called Marley, and they finally press the goo's 'self destruct' button and everybody goes home.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Snively freaks out.
Reflections:
The swamp goo, naturally, made me think of the episode of the "ThunderCats" where evil chaser Mandora was introduced. In that story, Mandora and Lion-O and Snarf (whom I like) had to chase down a swamp monster whose very presence caused decay and ruin. Eventually, they back it into a corner and Mandora unleashes an ancient superweapon to defeat this monster of decay. She sprays it on the creature, causing it to wither and shrink into harmlessness. Lion-O and Snarf express amazement at the superweapon; Mandora explains it's an ancient recipe called "soap." Snarf remarks that he hopes only our side knows it.
This, of course, leaves us to wonder how it is the ThunderCats, and for that matter how most of the galaxy in the "ThunderCats" universe, wash their hands. One would hope they do wash after going to the bathroom, at a minimum, and before preparing food. If they don't use soap, all right, then what do they use? It's shown in several episodes that they do use water for washing plates and the like; have they developed some sort of substitute for dishwashing liquid? Do they use the Sword of Omens to clean dirt and grime and unpleasant microorganisms off their hands? And does the Sword of Omens resent having to take on this task, not to mention the great number of other responsibilities heaped on it after the first season? And didn't they notice that they destroyed Mumm-ra forever and ever about seventeen times over the course of four years, and he kept coming back? So why were they so confident he was destroyed forever in the very last episode?
Well. That's probably not what Toni Ferraro wanted to leave me wondering. The "ThunderCats" episode ended, by the way, with Mandora and Cheetara having a contest to see who could more awkwardly misplace the emphasis in common words and phrases, and they made some strange jokelike comment and everybody laughed while the camera pulled back and the off-screen chorus sang "thunder, thunder, thunder, ThunderCats!" The end. -- JN.
Tails brings Sonic a Green Day CD; Sonic, stunned by the idea of music, decides to get a band together and hit the road. After literally minutes of practicing his air guitar, he and Tails and a few others form a glam rock band and tour well-known Mobian cities such as Oakland, California; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; maybe someday even New York City. Not insane yet? Then let's move on. The Mobians assume entirely the identities of Green Day. Kurt Cobain shows up and gets Nirvana to regroup, but this reunion is short-lived (ha! I slay me!) as they're nowhere near as as good as the fake Green Day. The fight to free Mobius from the evil oppression of Robotnik is forgotten as Sonic gets the rare chance to trash hotel rooms in northern Canada. -JN.
No Host Segments.
Stinger: They're sure of their fans.
Reflections:
This may be a less plausible crossover than the one between Peanuts and Dr. Who, but it's also more painful. I don't know who is responsible for this story, or what point he, she, or it was attempting to make, or if there was any sense of pride when the story was completed. I'm not sure, in fact, that this wasn't just made by slicing together random segments of a Sonic comic book and a couple Entertainment Weekly magazines.
Anyway. It might be possible that this is meant as a fanfic set in the "other" Sonic TV series. See, there were two; one, the popular one, in which the gang is Freedom Fighters struggling for the victory of good over Robotnik's powerful worldwide war machine; there's also the other, less popular one. I've only seen one or two episodes of this, but my main recollection is it involved Sonic trying to keep Robotnik from beating him in some activity (probably chili dog eating) at a county fair. If the fanfic is set in that storyline, then Sonic and friends starting up a band is fine.
What they're doing in Saskatchewan, I'll never know. -- JN.
It's a collection of unfinished stories, of which only the first two are Sonic stories. In the much-awaited crossover between "The Crow" and the usual gang of Mobians, it's determined that that a hedgehog with a tattoo of a crow in his chest possesses a mysterious gene that keeps him from being roboticized. His clone escapes after being created and humiliating Snively, and sensibly covers himself with black paint. The next story starts.
In "Predator," somebody named Snip runs around and is eaten. Flame, who's something called a hedgehog-nightmaren, is upset because Snip was in her care. It seems to have something to do with casting spells and entering dream worlds or possibly transforming the real world into a dream. Huge blocks of exposition set up big blocks of dialogue, which sets up somebody being cloned. Good guys? Bad guys? Let's just say some of them are guys and leave it at that.
"A Change of Heart" is a Sailor Moon story. In a change of pace for Sailor Moon, she acts like a nitwit and is yelled at. Suddenly, she starts behaving like an actual student, what with doing homework and attending class and all that. She disposes of a rather dumb monster quickly and efficiently; and all her friends realize she's been taken over by space aliens. Nobody minds all that much.
In "Sailor Journeyman," the far future Earth has become part of a galactic alliance of sorts, and has time travel. Despite this, they watch Sailor Moon. It comes in handy when -- all together, now -- a rip in the fabric of the spacetime continuum leads them to Sailor Moon's world.
In "World of Magic," there's a lot of pyramids and spheres and orbs and purple glows and whatever zipping around. This ends up blowing up the third moon of a planet, which proves to be a potential inconvenience to the people below. Meanwhile, the main characters do nothing.
Host Segments.
Segment Two.
Crow covers himself in black paint, but it all goes horribly wrong.
Stinger: Bobo and Mike meet up.
Reflections:
Why, no, Sonic the Hedgehog never appears in these stories. Go figure.
There is a lot of cloning in the Sonic stories, which strikes me as really silly. Cloning doesn't automatically create photocopies of people; they have to be born and grow up and all that. Even if it did create photocopies of people as adults with superpowers or whatever, what good would that be for the forces of evil? A photocopy with the exact same body as the original would have the exact same thoughts and mind as the original, and presumably the original doesn't like the bad guys or they wouldn't be trying to clone them. And if you made a perfect photocopy of the grownup person without the memories of how to use their superpowers or whatever, what good is that? If the copy doesn't know how to use their superpowers, and you can't teach them, what good is the copy? And if you could teach them how to use the superpowers, you could create them in yourself and not need the copy. So the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Thank you, and goodnight. -- JN.
Sally (or maybe somebody else) falls from a great height and is Caught at the Last Minute by somebody or other, and then something happens where lots of things are pointed at people, but somebody throws some stuff back that makes things blow up or get sliced or else just vomit over a 'Bloddy Card.' Then some people argue over something or other, somewhere, and somebody gives a speech about how The Ancients wrote stories about something like this. Oh, plus somebody explains how a century of communist rule meant there were no more Chinese women left, and this somehow lead to Mobius. Oh, and something blows up, which somehow causes somebody to become Dr. Robotnik, if there wasn't already somebody being him. Or something. -- JN.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
Cartoonist Walt Kelly experimented for a while with onomatopea sounds in the "Pogo" comic strip that were 'inappropriate' sound effects -- Churchy LaFemme might play a trumpet and the sound would be 'Charlie!'; or someone might fall on the ground and the sound effect would be 'Schenactedy!' He noted that although he found it amusing, the only effect he ever got was hearing that people named Charlie who lived in Schenactedy were uncertain as to whether they should be offended.
Given Mr. Gonterman's choice of sound effects ... I do wonder if such a catchy sound as 'Last Minute Catch!' was intentional humor, maybe echoing back to one of the great artists of this century, or if it was just a desperate grab at explaining what was going on. Well, okay, I'm pretty sure which it was, but... anyway.
On another note, I could be completely off base here, but it seems to me you can pretty much count on a story being unpleasant to read whenever somebody in it talks about Darth Vader as Anakin Skywalker. (A similar rule holds when someone discussing politics quotes Heinlein as 'Robert Anson Heinlein.') -- JN.
Well. Where better to take a giant flying wristwatch or maybe a Von Braun-designed pinky finger than the decimated, ruined ashes of Saint Louis, where, by the way, the Arch is still standing? Oh, sure, the 'rest of the world' comes to mind, but if what are presumably the characters of 'Sonic the Hedgehog' went elsewhere instead, they wouldn't have the chance to be observed by some ghost or evil Smurf or something or other. Somebody, maybe David Gonterman's character, gets chased around the streets of somewhere or other, leading ultimately to a scene of complete inaction. Oh, and suddenly 'Sailor Moon' becomes an integral part of the story. Don't ask me how. Oh, and something blows up.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
This story demonstrates what we love about David Gonterman's work -- and, rest assured, there are people who do indeed love it. It's never really precisely clear what's going on or who all these people we're looking at are, and literally anything might happen next, but the thrill of finding out what is weirdly compelling. There are some things you can kind of count on happening, like his avatar finding something to save the world and guarantee peace and freedom for all time to come until the next story, or the sudden odd rant about sins of the past, or the scene composition not quite showing what you need to see and focusing on details you can't quite make out, but then you'll hit something new and unexpected, like (in this story) Sonic riding a huge suction cup dart past a giant pile of cardboard boxes or David Kintobor showing up as a holographic character with Sailor Moon's cat's moon-crescent forehead and George Lucas's facial hair, and it's new and wonderful and it just leaves you feeling like you're ten years old and writing you own "M.A.S.K. Meets C.O.P.S." comic book again. It's rejuvenating. -- JN.
Well, it's a tight follow-up to the last book in which somebody named 'Signal,' whose distinguishing characteristics are she's a female-type woman and she has magical flying ribbons that are supposed to terrify us but mostly just offer us an inexplicable sound effect (either dTHM or WH upside-down T P), is introduced to precious little tension or interest. Meanwhile, the roads have their first lines of dialogue, and suddenly we're saved from a countdown we didn't know was happening, at the very last second, or last minute, or last one-hundredth of a second, or whatever. Suddenly, there's a lot of simulated activity without dialogue, which is fine by me. David Gonterman puts on his full-body costume, and something blows up, which makes the art turn into vaguer scribbles.
Host Segments.
Reflections:
I'd like to point out something about this third in the MiSTing series. "The Mobius Chronicles" are, as those who've read them found out, actual comic book MiSTings, with the silhouettes of Brak, Space Ghost, and Zorak superimposed on the panels from David Gonterman's comic books. What I want to point out is that in this one, most of the word balloons for Space Ghost and crew have tails -- the long straight lines connecting the balloon to its speaker -- that don't cross one another, or go behind another character's silhouette, or do anything disruptive like that. This probably reflects Jen White getting more experience with these. Placing word balloons so the flow of dialogue is natural and so that identifying the speakers is easy for the reader is one of the subtler and harder lessons to learn in creating comic strips and comic books, and I'm glad this time around there's never trouble following the flow.
Gonterman, meanwhile, turns in another fine performance in plotting and drawing the comic book, keeping the next plot twist shrouded in mystery until well after it's occurred. I don't know why everybody ends up in scribble doodle land in the end, but the variation in line weight between the background and the characters made it easier to see who was where, certainly, and for some reason made me think of the amusing independent comic book "Apathy Kat." I can't give any explanation for that association, though. -- JN.
Sonic turns bad. I mean, he really turns bad. I don't mean bad, you see. I mean evil. You know, rule the world, act nasty, take over for incompetent evil villain evil. It's the usual sort of turning into evil -- you know, lead character discovers mysterious ancient artifact and, ignoring every bit of common sense not to mention about 400 billion episodes of "Star Trek" spinoff shows, he touches it and lets loose evil alien spirits who've been trapped forever by a gum wrapper or something. So, years later, when Sonic's managed to get truly repulsive (as opposed to just plain obnoxious and unsympathetic), Knuckles and Antoine and other folks decide to use some sort of time travel to go back and prevent all the bad stuff from happening. This could of course cause the complete destruction of the temporal flow of the universe, causing the entire universe in which Sonic and friends live to never have existed; for some reason, this raises protests. Time travel, however, is quickly forgotten, so that we can chatter about the Wacky Workbench and ultimately have an encounter with mystic forces who want to know which was the coolest Sonic comic book magazine cover and who try to prove that 'Miles Prower' is a pun. Eventually, the story ends.
There's also a brief interlude for some wrestling fiction. -- JN.
Host Segments.
Segment. In which ... uh ... stuff is said in Japanese.
Segment. In which gimmicks are exchanged.
Segment. In which "Evangelion" is discussed.
Segment. In which Sailor Moon visits.
Stinger: Trivia. How about that?
Reflections:
So, apparently, Sonotropolis is what used to be Robotropolis, which used to be Mobotropolis. Somehow I get the feeling this will never ever ever inspire a song from "They Might Be Giants." Anyway, this story does offer proof, once again, that the seediest, dirtiest, basest impulses of human psychology can be taken out by a certain select few authors and combined with a limited set of rather lightweight characters to produce genuinely vile stories. I note there is a threat in the story of sequels; I wouldn't take that warning lightly. -- JN.
David "Davey" Gonterman, Alicia Ashby, and the Trey Tackett log into their favorite chat rooms, IRC lines, roleplay mucks, and in less than nineteen billion lines of preliminaries are sucked into the world inside the computer. They're turned into their characters -- a Sailor Moon/Han Solo fusion, a standard-issue humanoid cat-woman, and a talking cheetah cub, respectively -- by a mysterious disembodied voice who explains they've been taken from their universe and changed from humans in order to participate in an important "let's watch them do nothing" experiment. True to form, they wander around Road Rovers headquarters, where a Ninja Falcon Zord made to look like a bald eagle contains duplicates of the Next Generation Enterprise's sets, and our trio of writers set about doing nothing.
Somewhere else -- don't ask me where -- a bunch of loser characters from various fanfics these guys wrote, including Dark Sonic (not to be confused with Sonic, Mecha Sonic, Nega Sonic, Hyper Nega Sonic, Silver Sonic, Mean Sonic, Origami Sonic, or any other Sonic), decide to take revenge. They get so busy planning that the story runs out of time, but a continuation is promised.
Host Segments.
Stinger: The unrealistic plans of ineffective evil characters. The poor dopes.
Reflections:
There is a good story to be written out of this premise. It's not this one. This one, if concluded, will be a goofy showdown between authors and the deficient characters they've created. The story of the fictional character confronting the author has been told, in stories good and bad, and we don't need another.
The story to be written from this starts with a basic observation. David, Alicia, and Trey are literally cast into the characters and locations that they've imagined -- the sum total of their creative impulses, the things they did when they could create anything in the world just by typing it up, by writing.
The characters they came up with were a Sailor Moon derivative, a cat-human hybrid like we've seen a million times before, and a soft version of The Lion King. The world they came up with was an imitation of the Road Rovers show, containing an imitation of the Power Rangers, containing an imitation of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were sent there by aliens taken from the Animorphs. They're in a world that is empty of other people, and even emptier of themselves. All the things they put in there, even the force that put them there, are imitations of the ideas other people had.
How long can you live exclusively in somebody else's imagination?
Surely this is one of the important questions of identity that a fanfic author has to face, and a worthwhile question for an ever increasingly pop culture-saturated society. A story examining that is a story I want to read. -- JN.
Sailor MSTie and Duke Nukem sneak around evil Sonic's lair and replace grotesque pictures of violent scenes with grotesque pictures of other Sonic fanfic author-avatars. They're awfully proud of themselves, but feeling the desire to do more, Sailor MSTie engages the 'Movie Riffing Power,' and they go to try to tear apart the 'A Sorcerer, a Demon, and some Emeralds' universe.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Standing up for your self-inserted authorial rights.
Reflections:
In this story, Geoffrey St. John -- remember him? The one FXFerret destroyed -- is the ultimate good guy who frees the world from evil Sonic and launches us into a dramatic recreation of the interest-free final scenes of "Return of the Jedi." This proves almost nothing of any consequence.
By the way, I understand the idea behind an anti-fic, but is a violent, gory story really the most effective way to show your disapproval of a violent, gory story? -- JN.
Speculations on what might have happened in the never-made Third Season of Sonic the Hedgehog. Remember how in a couple of these stories the evil Dr. Robotnik dies at some point, in some way related to the Doomsday thingy? Well, in this interpretation, he did die. Except he gets saved by magic crystals or super void or whatever, and the thingy that saved him is planning to take over the world, and, once again, saving backup copies of important programs proves to be a good idea. Or a bad idea. Whatever, it's somehow the way that Robotnik gets saved from The Void, where he's getting turned into crows or pigs or slugs or whatnot. Also, William Campbell returns in several episodes playing the Klingon Captain Koloth, giving Captain Kirk a recurring, likeable adversary as Gene Roddenberry returns to take full control over the series again.
Host Segments.
Introduction. The Satellite of Love rams the Mir.
Segment One. Gypsy finally goes something about the damaged chunks.
Segment Two. Crow contracts Paul Reiser's disease; he's not funny anymore.
Segment Three. Emergency care for Crow's disease. Wackiness ensues.
Stinger: Hi, Max!
Reflections:
Once again, we see that making backup copies of software is inherently evil; if it weren't for the spare copies found floating around in the hardware somewhere, none of this story would have been necessary.
The use of the symbol +AH4Afg- instead of 'a character thinks' combines the advantages of being ugly and distracting with those of being confusing and inexplicable. But, hey, so what if the English language has plenty of ways to communicate a narrative using only actual, certified words; why not invent a useless string that looks like a system error to do the same thing? -- JN.
Did you ever wonder what would happen if Tails were to advertise Kibbles and Bits? Or if Sonic and Sally were trying to sell boredom? Now you know some part of the story, at least.
The usual scam; this time on CD-ROM.
Sonic Comic Book #62. Sonic and Tails, in an airplane, fly into a cloud. The action is To Be Continued, or perhaps begun, in Sonic #63.
Host Segments.
Conclusion. They try to understand the next issue of the Sonic comics.
Reflections:
Where did Sonic and Tails go to flight school? They were both pretty young when Robotnik launched his big coup and caused everybody oh so much trouble and it's hard to imagine that the community college or whoever was still teaching after being roboticized. I guess they could have picked it up by trial and error, but that takes a lot of time and you wouldn't think they'd have too much of it, what with having to go on unmotivated raids to Robotropolis every few hours and having all those authors' avatars intruding on their lives and needing processing.
I saw an insane Australian reality-TV program -- at least one of those words is redundant, and I'm not sure which -- called "Who Dares Wins" or something like that, in which various people who're just minding their own business are offered cash if they'll perform various "what would you do for a Klondike bar?" stunts -- eat a plate of beans in thirty seconds using only a toothpick, pull the tablecloth off a cheap place setting without sending the dishes into the ground.
One poor woman who was just going to the mall was dared $500 to land a light airplane with only advice from the ground and a few minutes of training. They had a real pilot sitting next to her, but if he had to take over once they started the final approach, she'd lose the bet. Well, she managed just fine most of the way down, but when she got close to the ground -- where the aerodynamics get a lot more messy -- she was pitched too low and the real pilot had to take over.
She ended up winning the money anyway, though, as one of the hosts of the show tried the stunt herself and -- this time fighting a twenty knot crosswind -- had to wave off the first landing attempt, circle around the landing strip (which she allegedly did herself) and then had to have the real pilot take over on the second attempt. I suppose all works out well, but you can also see how this show would never in a million years get enough insurance to be made in the United States. -- JN.
Unicron eats Cybertron. Then he eats Mobius. Then he eats Earth, devouring the Power Rangers in a special meal. That's our story.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Megatron knows what to do.
Reflections:
Obviously, Warp intended to write a heartbreaking tale of Unicron eating a couple planets, but never quite got around to it. I can understand that; what with one thing and other, this very page went over a year without any real, attentive updates. We all get overwhelmed now and then and need time to finish our self-appointed duties. So it's probably for the best that he released this little outline, so that people would know what story he planned to write just as soon as he got some free time. I know I'm waiting eagerly for him to complete the chore. -- JN.
This story replaces Uncle Bob Returns. You may need to reset your watches.
Scratch, Grounder, and Dr. Quack are unfrozen and brought back to life. Don't ask me why. Then the Robotnik Show, sort of a really demented version of Late Show with David Letterman, starts up (his guests are Walt Whitman and Frank Sinatra). He demonstrates his appeal as a talk-show host by firing missiles -- he doesn't know where to -- and having an audience of his evil robots cheering him on. This -- meaning the missile -- destroys Sonic's hut, but nobody cares. Sonic is given the wondrous and sacred Master Chaos Emerald that nobody's heard of before this, and they celebrate by going to the mall, where they meet Uncle Bob (of the returns) and seek to purchase a "way past cool cake." Tragically, the store only has "moderately neet-o" cakes. Dr. Quack questions the "deal" with lightbulbs, and Robotnik hits him with a garbage can. Meanwhile, nothing happens at a frantic pace, and Sinatra sings the Death Egg Battle Song, which mentions neither the Death Egg nor any battle.
Later, Sonic fights Robotnik during a pointless raid on Robotropolis, and the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 robots who attack Sonic all fall over in the greatest domino chain since the Kelloggs Frosted Wheat Thins "Crunchy Sweet/Whole Wheat" debate of the 1970s. The number of Swatbots is taken directly from the story; I am not exaggerating.
Tragically, a missile blows up the kosher deli.
Host Segments.
Segment Two.
Jim and the bots come back.
Segment Three.
Pearl tries to draw a flowchart explaining the story.
Stinger: The climactic battle in which Sonic fights Robotnik. The entire climactic battle, in fact.
Reflections:
Here's a quote from the story:
"Oops" says Sonic "I think we were supposed to go to the Death Egg, not the mall"
Also, there's a chili dog vending machine on the Death Egg.
And while in a sewer in the Death Egg, Sonic and gang go down a waterfall. Mercifully, they do not reach the "Land of the Lost."
Crow has a riff here that fits the story about perfectly: "Third person insane singular, right?"
1053 evil robots, huh? So, if they each weighed in at one millionth of a gram apiece, that's still about the entire mass of fifty thousand galaxies turned into evil robots. I guess I just have doubts about a production run that large.
This story hurts. -- JN.
It's the long-awaited sequel to The New Season. You remember that one, about a new season of Sonic the Hedgehog? Where some other bad guy Nagus takes over the world, Robotnik gets turned into a slug and back again, and Snively goes over to the good guys? We're picking up where that left off, only this time from the first person perspective of Snively himself. Yay.
Snively is put on trial for treason and so is allowed to join the gang until such time as he can betray them later. Entrusted to Geoffery St. John, Snively proceeds to lie about his hair loss and start wearing Bunnie Rabbot's nightgowns and experiencing odd sexual thoughts about her. Eventually Snively demonstrates his usefulness to the Freedom Fighters by leading them on a pointless raid of Robotropolis that goes wrong.
Doctor Quack appears, and it hurts.
Host Segments.
Segment Two.
Geoffery St. John (remember him?) is on line One:
Segment Three.
It's a fine bonfire, roasting everything that gives off even a hint of sexuality.
Segment Four.
And now Snively's calling on line One: They have got to get caller ID.
Stinger: Geoffrey comes in.
Reflections:
The story's another one of those curious efforts to put "real" grownup-type emotions into the Sonic universe. I suppose it's possible to do this and make it work, but shoring up the emotional involvement to me just highlights a flaky plotline. With some work the events of the main storyline could probably be made sensible and coherent to the characters living through them, but of course if one did that, we wouldn't see the stories on Web Site Number Nine, would we? -- JN.
You know, from the start of Rhino Home Video's tapes. The goofy commercial.
Quotation marks? Spaces before sentences? Paragraph breaks? Apostrophes when using contractions? Capitalization? Consistent spelling rules? Forget all that fogey old longhand writing stuff. This is a bold new tale written for the high-speed, high-volume, content-free Internet, and all those stupid little signposts that we thought made a sentence make more sense are just slowing us down. There's something about Tails going on a killing spree. There may be a tiny shred of sense here, but I'm not going to pay Fargo North, Decoder's bill for figuring this one out.
Host Segments.
Stinger: The question I think anyone reading this had to ask.
Reflections:
Yeah, there are people who hate Rhino Home Video's little weird commercial for itself at the start of MST3K tapes and think it's dumb. They're wrong. It's funny. Also, I note that recently I picked up two interesting (to me) videotapes -- one of Roger Ramjet and another of Crusader Rabbit, a sort of prototypical Rocky and Bullwinkle that Jay Ward did before going on to his magnum opus. Both of these were published by -- you guessed it -- Rhino Home Video. I know that these cartoons aren't exactly crowd-pleasers, so we have to conclude that they were published out of Rhino's faith that someday, somehow, I'd get copies of both of them. Plus they made just enough copies of The Amazing Colossal Man for me to get One: Clearly, Rhino Home Video saw fit in its heart to spend at least some of its resources making videotapes aimed perfectly at me, for which I thank them. They're on my list of good things about capitalism, and they can put their weird little commercial at the start of their videotapes all they like. I'll watch it. It's funny and it's the least I can do to repay their favors to me. -- JN.
Stephen Frey, played by Troy McClure, plans a whole bunch of new fanfics based on the Power Rangers, Animorphs, and Arkanoid for al401.htmll we can tell. There is no need to panic.
Sonic and Tails go off in search of new people to annoy because the Eggman was pretty easily beaten. They are quickly shot at, but survive, landing in Sandopolis, a charming town in south-southwestern Ohio noted for its taste in dress fabrics. Unfortunately, it's a desert so within seconds Sonic and Tails are dying of thirst.
We don't get to enjoy the scene, though, because the story cuts away to show Knuckles the Annoying Echidna beat up on the Eggman, Mecha Sonic, Mecha Tails, and Mecha Knuckles. This, naturally, leads to an enormous flood sweeping up Sonic and Tails, who rush off to save Knuckles or something like that and they go off riding the rapids, surely to fall into the Land of the Lost in their next wacky adventure but who knows as they have to lurch to a halt right now.
Host Segments.
Stinger: Go easy on that vert ramp, OK?
Reflections:
This is one of those Sonic the Hedgehog stories that emphasizes why it's become one of the favorite easy targets of MST3K fanfic writers everywhere. The story starts for no particular reason, goes off to a couple of scenes where stuff happens, and then stops. In the meantime, there's a lot of inaccurate punctuation.
I would like to apologize for the MiSTing's failure to follow-up on any of the estimated 2,038 mentions of The Eggman in the story with any sort of Beatles reference whatsoever, but it isn't my fault as I didn't write the MiSTing and had nothing to do with it whatsoever apart from writing this summary. In any event, when you read it, I do recommend you remember such comments should be in there. Thank you, and please come again. -- JN.
Cool.caz though she'd tell a Sonic verus Mario story. She got bored and gave up. This is the result. Sonic, Tails, and Amy go wandering around blowing stuff up, when a demon possesses Knuckles. So they go off to beat up Princess Toadstool and kill her quickly. The end!
Host Segments.
Stinger: Sonic demands vengeance against Mario.
Reflections:
There's not a whole lot to reflect on in this story, although it does serve as a potent reminder to us all of several important things. First: just because an idea pops into your head, doesn't mean you have to be grateful to the idea. Second: just because you entertain an idea by writing it out into a full fanfic, doesn't mean you have to share it with the world. Third: if you get into a rage so violent you feel the need to slice a harmless mushroom-like character's head open over video games, you probably should take a break from video games for a good, long while.
Overall I wonder what cool.caz will feel like, forty years from now when she finds this story by accident. -- JN.
There's a whole lot of shouting. More than is possibly healthy for anyone. The whole story starts off somewhere around everyone's favorite wacky echidna Knuckles and his merry band of misfits, who start off some top-secret raid and are almost immediately captured by that most hideous of hideous evildoers, that top dog in the villainous underworld of Mobius, that fiend's field... Dimitri. I don't know who he is either. Apparently Dimitri leads something called the Dark Legion. In any case Enerjak does various evil things to Mighty the Armadillo, which is just fine. Eventually, things blow up. -- JN.
Host Segments.
Segment Two.
A poem, in spell checking.
Reflections:
This story features a place called "Echidnaopolis." -- JN.
Guess what? Tails hits puberty, and the resulting collision injures dozens. He tries to get people to explain what it's all about, eventually becoming desperate enough to ask Antoine for help. After that fails, he seeks the advice of engineer Rotor, and manages to take about five weeks to mince around asking if Rotor ever feels attracted to Bunnie Rabbot, whose robotic parts he maintains. Rotor never figures it out. Later, Tails goes swimming with Bunnie, who has to remove all her limbs so that she can float.
Host Segments.
Segment Two.
They're already trying to escape the Satellite of Love.
Segment Three.
What are the possible uses of cybernetic limbs? Find out in this
informative sketch.
Stinger: Tails yells at his various private-type parts.
Reflections:
Bunnie's accent is mercifully underplayed, showing up mostly as saying "ain't" or dropping a trailing 'g' from words like 'thinking.' It made the story a lot more readable.
As for the almost Heinleinian borderline paedophilic bits and the creepy, protracted, and lovingly detailed descriptions of Bunnie removing her limbs, uh, I'd rather not think about them either. -- JN
Please note, I'm not making up any of these titles. I just take them right from the MST3K Dibs List. I'm not responsible for any of them, I don't know when any of them will be completed, or if any of them will be completed. I can direct you to the people working on them, but it's probably quicker to look up the people on the list yourself if you want a status report.
I can't wait for the big, hefty, complete guide to The Robotnik Show, complete with the inside story of Jerry Lawler and Andy Kaufman's epic struggle for supremacy in the studio.
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