Monthly Post Archive - August 2025

Do you remember? The ______-first night of September? That's tonight! It might even be that when you're reading this... Ah, who am I kidding? Nobody's reading this September 1st, 2025...

And, uh, it being September 1st means another Monthly Post Archive! I mean, it's a bit later than usual, but I'm still doing it.

---

Oh yeah, I finished Sonic Adventure this month. I was considering postponing this stream by, like, a week, but I rewatched a bit of a previous stream where I was asking my chat about Sonic Adventure's story so far. They basically told me to wait until the game was over and I mentioned that that was fair enough and I essentially said that by August 3rd, I would be able to process my thoughts on the game's story more. So, because I hate having things I say age poorly, I had to play it August 3rd... and I did! So, what are my thoughts on the game post-completion?

THIS SECTION HAS SPOILERS FOR
SONIC ADVENTURE (1999)
SONIC 3 & KNUCKLES (1994)
SUPERMAN (2025)
AND DELTARUNE CHAPTER 4 (2025)

Right, so despite going in mostly blind, I know about the story of what happened to the Echidnas. Pachacamac tried to use the Emeralds' power, Tikal tried to stop him to no avail, and Chaos, a mutated Chao, retaliated, wiping out the Echidnas, leaving Knuckles as the only one left. That said, I felt a bit unsatisfied by the way this part of the story was delivered. Honestly, the entire story felt a bit weird, but I imagine if I went into Sonic 3 & Knuckles knowing that "Knuckles was tricked by Eggman to antagonize Sonic and Tails before realizing he was tricked and working with them", I might have been unsatisfied with how that story was told. There's also the aspect of Eggman just doing his regular thing of trying to take over and getting stomped out by Sonic, which was pretty par-for-the-course, but he feels secondary to the Echidna plot to me since, one, Perfect Chaos is what stomps him out, and, two, this is the game where that story is introduced. Nevertheless, despite my feelings that parts of the story were a bit underwhelming, I really enjoyed others. My favourite moment — and I would entirely understand if this was a common answer among Sonic Adventure fans — is when, before Sonic goes Super, Tikal tells Sonic he needs to trap Perfect Chaos in the Master Emerald, and Sonic replies "how can that help? It won't change how he feels inside, will it?" You're so kindhearted and considerate, Sonic the Hedgehog, and I love that. I'm sure some YouTuber in the early 2010s said it was corny or something, but it's the shit like that that I love. When Superman tells Lex Luthor that being human is his greatest strength, that shit hits for me. So, while, yes, I think the full story itself was kinda unsatisfying, didn't think it was bad by any stretch of the imagination — I think maybe it could have just been told better.

Now, the reason I started with the game's story and not the gameplay is because, well, if you've watched the streams and are a Sonic fan, you probably think I have no grounds to talk about the gameplay. I was consistently really bad at the game. I never got the hang of Sonic's light-speed dash, I used Tails' spin attack only a handful of times and only realized I had to hold jump instead of mashing it to fly, I don't recall using Knuckles' punch really, I got confused in the mirror section of Amy's Twinkle Park action stage, I spent half-an-hour figuring out Big's fishing mechanics (but that feels fairer that I didn't understand than some other stuff), Gamma... was fine actually; I don't think I was getting yelled at for my Gamma gameplay, and it's a complete surprise I beat Perfect Chaos with Super Sonic as quickly as I did. I am not good at this game and I didn't use every ability in my arsenal, so it feels a bit unfair to even complain about something being too hard or whatever because there's a likely chance that difficulty was self-imposed through my supposedly strange playstyle. I think, if you want to know how I felt about a certain character's playstyle, watch that stream. If you're looking for any specific stage, all seven streams have chapters.

I initially said that I think Knuckles was the best translation of 2D to 3D, but that's inaccurate. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are all great translations. Sonic feels like Sonic, even if some of his upgrades were a bit strange coming from the 2D games. While I would still prefer to have had a Tails spindash instead of an attack on B, Mr. Prower, too, was good — holding to fly instead of mashing is just a better control scheme. I'm surprised Sonic Mania and Sonic Superstars didn't adapt that. Knuckles' moveset is still very good. I think I made that initial statement because, with how different the physics can be between the 3D and 2D games, Knuckles glide felt equally good in 3D as it did in 2D.

The music was weird because, when it was a reused 3D Blast track, I could only think of it as a 3D Blast track on account of having played 3D Blast two streams before starting Sonic Adventure. It's all very good, but I'm bad at noticing when music is interesting. The absurd time signature of Deltarune Chapter 4's "Third Sanctuary" did not occur to me until pointed out. It just felt like "yeah, this song makes sense here." I can't tell if I liked Open Your Heart or if it's solely because chat really fucked with the song. Nevertheless, I am excited to get into Sonic Adventure 2's soundtrack when I play that one. I know some of that game's music better than I do Sonic Adventure's, and I wonder how that'll affect my understanding of that game's score. We'll see. I dunno when, but we'll see.

---

Believe me, I already know I have a notification. Even though I've had that annoying little fuckass sound off since 2017, there's still two taskbar icons I can see. There's even a graphic next to the icon of the server I got the notification in that shows me where to check. What are we doing here?

[image or embed]

— Chillin (@camillechillin.bsky.social) August 15, 2025 at 9:49 PM

If you're from some miraculous future where this isn't a thing anymore or they made it disable-able, this is a button in your Discord server list, parked permanently between the Discord Home button and your top-sorted server. It will sometimes, but not always (from my experience), show you what messages you haven't yet read in servers you don't have muted. That's about it. Pings don't get flagged I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, I still do not like this notification thing. It pisses me off. I want to do the tedious thing of checking the ~70 servers I'm in for where I could have been pinged. This is my enrichment. Do not take this away from me, Discord. Let me turn this off.

---

So, I played a game called Sudoku RPG last month. It was on sale for a few dollars and I picked it up. Since Undertale, I've loved non-standard combat types. Grev's Breakout-inspired RPG and Marlowe Dobbe's Daydream Skies are both games that I wish had updates beyond 2023 because they just look neat and I know from my crashout playing Bobby Schroeder's Super Lesbian Animal RPG that I don't like traditional RPG combat all that much. And, in that department, I really liked Sudoku RPG! It's a fun idea and the developer, Myeong Ho Song of Rainbow Studio, successfully executed it.

However, there was one major problem for me as the woman streaming the game: one line of dialogue. After clearing the first two areas of the game, a mysterious character approaches the protagonist and his reluctant fairy sidekick. In an effort to show this mystery character's disdain for the protagonist, they have the character call him the ableist R-slur. Now, there is a whole conversation to be had about what language and imagery you can or cannot use in your artworks. It's complex and thorough and, if we were having that conversation, I would conclude that censoring their work is wrong even if I disagree with the word choice. Hell, if I played the game on my own; privately, I might just see that, go "oh, no" like I do when I watch old It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes where the gang says slurs, and keep playing with a bad taste in my mouth. However, I was live when I played it. I do not like using or even displaying slurs, even ones I'm told I can reclaim. So, when I start showcasing a game to my audience and that game, unbeknownst to me, contains a slur, I really am not a fan. I went through YouTube's editor and censored it with a blur because that is not language I am okay with broadcasting. Like I said earlier, if this were a conversation about just the art itself, I would not campaign to censor this, but when it's being broadcast under my pseudonym, it becomes about — and this is going to sound very pretentious, but bear with me — the stream itself as the art; as the entertainment. I do not want people to, while watching a stream or a VOD of mine, be met with derogatory language they might be coming online to escape. That goes for the rest of my work too. You will not see a slur appear in Traversal or any other work I produce during or after it. If a word I have been using starts finding an identity as a slur attributed to a marginalized group by bigots, I will effectively stop using that word, possibly updating older works to remove the usage of the slur before it became one. Hold me to that. Anyway, all of that's to say: I do not like the fact that I broadcasted a slur.

Also, there's a bit after it happens in the stream where I wonder who wrote the slur into the game, whether it be the game's developer Myeong Ho Song or machine translation. (The game does not have anyone credited as a translator.) Either way, it doesn't matter. That was just something that piqued my curiosity during the stream since I was just so taken aback.

---

Maybe promotion for my game is a weird thing to follow that up with, but that's kinda what this post was. In my defence, it felt like a longer distance between the Sudoku RPG stream and this post. Traversal's cast of characters all have names now! I don't have to refer to them by ominous and weird nicknames anymore. Hell, even characters like Joshua have surnames now, so it's a refreshing change for almost everyone; (Player's first and last name have been locked in for years however. He's Player Traversal).

---

Oh, was that just four posts? Damn. Okay. See you in October... for the... uh... September Post Archive...

That's confusing.