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There are totem poles in Sonic the Hedgehog. It's not like they're even a small detail, they appear over and over. Totem poles are a theme. They last longer as a theme in the series than Sonic did, arguably.  And when things came full circle and everyone realized new Sonic iterations from the Dreamcast to the silver screen were just all bad, screw it here's old Sonic... check it out, he still has totem poles.  There is a whole page of the Sonic Fandom wiki devoted to totem poles, obviously. But less obvious, in the "trivia" section: "Totem poles are based on the real-life ones, which are common in Native American tribes" Which links to the real wikipedia page for Totem poles. There, you can learn that "common in Native American tribes" really means the Pacific Northwest. Like, the religious ceremonies of very specific tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Close enough, I guess? It's the second piece of trivia after all, less important than there being unused alternate sprites. I'm not gonna get into how crappy cultural appropriation and colonization and the treatment of native peoples in general is but totem poles are a particularly heinous example of basically that entire swath of issues. People have been stealing totem poles as decorations and museum exhibits for a long time and only recently started returning them, despite the fact that they're mortuary containers. Yeah, there are dead people's remains in totem poles! Grave robbing is one thing, but this is stealing actual graves. What's become of totem poles culturally is somehow even worse than what became of the pacific island cultures that got twisted up into the Tiki craze, and that's really saying something. Sadly it's no mystery why a children's video game franchise (that also steals from Egyptian and Mayan cultures relentlessly) can have horrible cultural appropriation from still-practiced religions for decades unchecked. For gently caress's sake, this boss character's actual name is "Unga Bunga":  But what is mysterious is how specific this case of cultural appropriation is. There really are just a handful of regions with tribes that built totem poles, which means Sonic's "Green Hill Zone" is either consistently set: A: in Vincent Price's back yard, or B: somewhere between Washington State and southern Alaska, but tropical, probably because of a climate catastrophe. I assume it's B because there don't seem to be any fences in Green Hill Zone, and even the ruins of Beverly Hills would have fences and walls everywhere. So do Sonic games take place in Western Canada after some kind of climate catastrophe? Did said catastrophe spare the Tlingit people specifically, and they continued their religious ceremonies into the weird new world? Why are there horrible blue hedgehog men anyway? I will never again be able to pass the glittering waterfalls of Green Hill Zone, without wondering what the world was like when they were glaciers. The horrible rodents gnaw at the Tlingit graves. What has happened here? 
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Jan 5, 2020 22:36
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:36 |
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sonic ran too fast and melted the ice caps with the friction off his shoes and that's why seattle looks like that now
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Jan 6, 2020 03:37
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hey op, you're way off about totem poles. not sure why they're in sonic (and it don't really bother me) but they aint grave markers. they tell stories and are kinda like a substitute for written language, all kinds of reasons for em. my favourite is shame poles, that get carved just to tell the world what a bitch someone was tbh your assertion that totem poles are spooky and packed full of savage remains is way more offensive than them showing up in a video game w/o comment
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Jan 6, 2020 05:09
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I think the developers put them in the game because no one totem not to 
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Jan 6, 2020 06:05
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owlhawk911 posted:hey op, you're way off about totem poles. not sure why they're in sonic (and it don't really bother me) but they aint grave markers. they tell stories and are kinda like a substitute for written language, all kinds of reasons for em. my favourite is shame poles, that get carved just to tell the world what a bitch someone was Ouch. I never called anybody a savage, but I see your point. Observation withdrawn. Edit- oh wait, I can't just shut down a thread because I made a mistake in it, dang. Well, I made an ignorant remark about native peoples, time to eat cr... uh, humble pie. BoldFrankensteinMir fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 06:09
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If we want to get down to nerdy canonical nitty-gritty, Sonic takes place on a fictional planet. iirc Knuckles was the last survivor of some ancient mystical tribe--at least in the 90's lore, I haven't kept up with the post-3D era games and btw his name is "Dr. Robotnik" once and forever--and so is the most likely Native American stand-in despite being an Australian animal. Whether there's anything clearly linking his people to the totems I don't know. |
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Jan 6, 2020 06:43
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BoldFrankensteinMir posted:Ouch. I never called anybody a savage, but I see your point. haha it's still nbd just pointing that out/taking a chance to share a fun fact about totem poles. it's not worth getting upset over you not knowing what they're all about any more than them being in sonic. you owned it/didn't just edit it away,  getting all worked up over "cultural appropriation" at the drop of a hat is for extremely online white people. i hate the tourist trap stuff that knocks off regalia and buses people through fake villages but even with that there's a decent argument that without that stuff we'd be 100% erased or running casinos like the guys down south and tourism is a lot easier to live next to than logging/mining. we really got it way better than indigenous people almost anywhere else in the world here (still got hosed but  ) just due to being one of the last places colonized. native corps own about twice as much of the land as private citizens do, even if the state has twice as much as us and the feds run most of it as national forest. the national forest thing works out pretty well but the state is a dick about stuff and our main competitor for that sweet timber sale money, and they're constantly trying to say they own our poo poo or selling it to people even though it isn't theirs. it's hard to get too upset about sanic running past a stylized totem pole when there's stuff like that to worry about. here's a real one i got to help raise in town https://www.krbd.org/2017/12/07/59172/i think you got a good thread here and i hope i didn't ruin it, google THIS is taking it in a fun direction and i would love to learn more about whatever mystical tribe knuckles the enchidna is supposed to be part of and if there is a reason other than "they look cool" that sonic is full of totems. please carry on w/ sonic lore deep cuts/theorizing/etc
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Jan 6, 2020 12:34
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google THIS posted:I think the developers put them in the game because no one totem not to
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Jan 6, 2020 12:54
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owlhawk911 posted:my favourite is shame poles, that get carved just to tell the world what a bitch someone was I seriously love learning about the effort people will put into calling someone out. |
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Jan 6, 2020 14:04
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shame poles are very good and funny e: also! i read somewhere that the "bottom of the totem pole" is actually a more important position because it carries the weight of all the others. is this true? google is hard sometimes
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Jan 6, 2020 15:02
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I've seen a few shame poles in my time |
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Jan 6, 2020 15:03
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hamjobs posted:I've seen a few shame poles in my time But enough about my ex. |
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Jan 6, 2020 15:09
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Thank you for the real First Nations (that's the right name in Canada, right?) info. What gets me is the specificity, not the outrage (which isn't mine to wield anyway), totems are not just "generic native things". Even compared to imagery like pyramids and sarcophagi; multiple cultures had those things. It's really hard to explain totem poles anywhere other than the Pacific coast, unless Dr. Robotnik stole them from Earth in an attempt to branch out in his villainy. Like a bad guy hobby garden or something. |
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Jan 6, 2020 16:28
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Maybe a better comparison would be if Sonic was running past, like, the stations of the cross. Even if we accept that another planet parallel-evolved Catholics it's still crazy they came up with the same exact style of statues (and then abandoned them and died off). |
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Jan 6, 2020 16:34
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:36 |
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This kind of thing never happened in the Mario games |
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Jan 6, 2020 17:12
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