So much stuff has gone on in the two weeks since SSNG launched. And none of them have been good things. Controversy galore surrounds us now about what truly truly happened, so I’ve taken some time off to confide in you lot and tell you what the beef was…
The Sonic Stadium never had any controversial problems before. Never. When I merged with Sonic News however, many people started to get iffy at Sonic_Hedgehogs and myself. This was mostly because the stuff that people had claimed we had ‘stolen’ from Sonic HQ _was_ from the Sonic News site, not the ‘Stadium.
Now, I’m in no way insinuating that S_H is a thief of content – he’s a dear friend to me and I would never accuse him of anything like that. I stick by his word till the end, that’s me. I talked to S_H, and it turned out that the major thing that was getting on everyone’s nerves was the fact we had hold of SHQ’s Knuckles Adventure hoax. Sonic News had mirrored ‘Official Artwork’ from the hoax that was originally theirs.
Before I go on, let me explain what really happened. None of us had been further than a few pages into Sonic HQ. That’s the truth. We personally never came across the Knuckles Adventure pics on their site, so we did not steal them from SHQ.
Sonic_Hedgehogs had seen the images hosted on a different Sonic website. S_H thought they were cool, so he emailed the webmaster of that site if Sonic News could host the pics too. The webmaster agreed, and that is how we got hold of the ‘stolen’ goods. So, we asked nicely to host it, but the pics were already placed on a different site to SHQ. Just a misunderstanding, right?
Sadly, no-one wanted to listen to us – so if any Sonic HQ fans are reading this they’ll just have to live with the irony that it was someone else that stole those pics originally, not us.
Anyway… the only other thing that had been ‘stolen’ from SHQ was one or two backgrounds. That, I put my hand up to. But it was another misunderstanding. I had the backgrounds to test how good the site would look overall, what with not having enough time to actually make some myself at that stage of development.
I swore to myself I would make original backgrounds as soon as the site was up, so’s to avoid any issues. Of course, being the forgetful plum I am, I put the site up with SHQ’s backgrounds still intact, and the fans of said Sonic site immediately assumed the worst.
Well, back to what happened… S_H and I decided to do a cheeky plug on the Sonic HQ’s Mobius Forums… turns out that backfired, for a start. As soon as you could say ‘Irony’, loads of SHQ fans started snapping at us, accusing us of the worst, without giving us a chance to explain ourselves (which, I have just done so above, so there ya go).
Vector [SHQ owner] was cool about the whole situation though, and for that, I thank him and to the small minority of the SHQ MoFo members there (there was only one other person other than Vector) to be understanding and give us a chance rather than act like an idiot – like the rest of the board members that were acting irrational towards us.
I found it disgusting that the members, who collectively have a reputation of being one of the most understanding communities out there, didn’t even give us a chance to explain what really happened. I appreciate what the good-natured guys like Vector did for us, but as for the rest of them… they need their issues sorted, sharpish-like.
I was getting annoyed by the whole ordeal by this time… and the site had only been up a week! A few days later, I have a right go at one of my own SSMB members – who’s only purpose (it seemed to us) was to criticise everything we said or did. I had had enough and blasted at him. That… was when I regretted it.
I don’t know how they arrived there – I’m not saying the SSMB user rounded them up or anything of the sort – but suddenly about 16 Sonic HQ MoFo members had invaded the SSMB and were spamming there like crazy! Talk about immature. And to top it off, it was on a Sunday – when I’m not on the computer, so S_H was the only one holding the fort down there.
On the Monday I saw the damage and all, and thought it was time to apologise.
On the MoFo I said sorry for the outrage I seemingly had unleashed onto my Message Board… however I was not sorry for actually trying to start another Sonic website with my friend, and be ridiculed by idiots who wouldn’t listen to us for one second.
We got it all out of the way, and bizarrely, I’m now pals with many of the MoFo guys who invaded us in the first place. O_O It’s weird how life goes, eh?
But, without a shadow of a doubt, this must have been the worst 2 months of my Internet Life, of the 2 years I’ve been ‘existing’ online. Won’t be doing much anytime soon. Need to take a break.
This is a series of personal blogs written by Dreadknux during the formative years of The Sonic Stadium. It chronicles significant events in the website’s early life.