User blog:Smash The Echidna/The Big Day

Hello everyone. I noticed the introduction thread, but I figured seeing how close it was to my birthday I might as well give my introduction here since I had some things I wanted to say anyway.

So anyway, I'm Smash. Smash the Echidna. Local spriter, writer and game maker, I'm one of the older admins on this wiki. I joined here in March 2010, feeling that this was the perfect place to settle down and make detailed profiles on my cast of characters (after re-writing them multiple times in notepad/microsoft word and copy/pasting them onto other sites.) It's already been six years since I set foot on this wiki, and on wikia in general. But it's been longer than that for my series.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved to write and I loved to make stories. My fanon series began in late February, 2006. It's been 10 whole years since my main character, Smash The Echidna, came to be. (And boy, he's done some growing.) I made my debut on the Sonic X forums of 4kids.tv. I gradually became well known for actively participating in roleplays, fanfictions (because so many people were adding other people's fan characters to their stories on request) and even some contests. It was a great way to make friends, and there I've met some of the most important friends in my life. Sure, the forums sucked, (You had to wait for your post to be moderated before it even shows. Censoring was OP as heck--even the word "Hate" wasn't safe. The forums were full of kids so logic and reason was more often than not out the window.) but I still have very fond memories of my time there.

Back then I was kind of just a dumb kid wanting to have fun. Young, naive, and full of big dreams. Aside from writing stories, what I also enjoyed was messing around in the RPGMakers. I've been attached to RPG2k3 for several years, predating my fanon times. Once I joined 4kids and started developing my own characters, I began to get into spriting so that I could put them into a game. Around when I created Frost, my main character in my Kirby fanon, I was going through a bit of a phase. I had made him, and many other notable characters in my overall cast orphans or lose a parent. Smash and Pearl, Frost and Icicle, Kieara, Thunder and his bros, Splice (although that was subverted later,) and Light had all lost their parents. Kyle and Keela lost their dad, Kitty lost his mother, All these characters were made in the same general time period. But even some of my later characters, like Amber (Mother died, father is missing), Silver (orphaned, adopted, then re-orphaned when foster father died) and Melody (orphaned), they all suffered from this too.

The reason for this I believe is because I myself lost my own father when I was young, so I've grown up through the majority of my life without a father figure. I won'd disclose any details, but that incident was something I was still suffering from. I never really thought of it before, but when I think about it, I believe making those orphaned backstories was in a way expressing what I was feeling at the time. There's another observation to be made there that supports that point: Almost all of the early characters had a significant parent of some sort. Smash's dad was a famous fighter and even has his own page, Frost's father and Kieara's mother were both soldiers and war heroes, Splice's dad was is an amazing scientist, Kyle's father was the guardian of their village, Kitty's mother was a queen, etc. I thought very highly of my father. He was a great man and I had always wanted to make him proud.

Of course, being the uncreative kid I was, these orphan backstories were never really interesting. And I learned that the hard way once I ventured out the kiddie pool of 4kids and onto youtube with my early videos of Frost's Adventure fangame. I was only 14 and the best characters I had been exposed to were sonic recolors. It's pretty obvious that I got hit hard with criticism. I was pretty sensitive to it, though I tried to use it to improve. Unfortunately, I was also targetted for trolling and cyber bullying as well. Even when I began to improve, I would still have to deal with people putting me down. But, it reached its peak nearly two years after I had joined SFW, in late 2011.

When I began my first fanfiction in years, Memories of David The Echidna, I was so hyped. I was finally addressing one of the biggest problems in the history of my series: How and Why did Smash's parents die? I knew I was covering up plot holes, but I felt that I could make it work. Well, when I posted it here, things went downhill. I quickly learned that a certain person that had been trolling me off and on over the years had basically uploaded a reading of the story that insulted everything I had written. Not only that, but I had at least one person show up on the wiki, post links to it, come on the chat and basically deconstruct everything. I don't just mean the fanfic, I mean everything I had done. My series, my game, he essentially made me feel that everything I'd done up to that point was a big waste of time. What's more, I was clearly being stalked by said user, as whenever I would try to make a point about something he would show up and try to make me feel like an idiot--whether he was right or not. I tried to take it all about as calm and rationally as I could, but on the inside I was completely devastated. I never felt more like a worthless failure in my life.

And that's when it happened. In my darkest hour, I then learned who my true friends were. The ones that stood up for me, the ones that brought me back to my feet, and all of you people who then decided that that was the perfect time to elect me for administrator and have it go through with a 100% approval rating. I can't tell you just how much that meant to me.

Even now, while some of my old comrades are no longer around on the wiki, my current friends and all of you still continue to support me whenever I need it. So, I just want to say thank you all. Thanks for these six years. I'm looking forward to the years to come. And thanks for reading all of this. I know it was an eyefull, but I felt like opening up a little bit.



Really, Thanks.

Since that incident, I may have become a little more cynical and critical, hence why I've put my series through such a huge overhaul, but I try to take the best out of criticism however harsh they may be and improve all around. And I try to help others improve too, so that they don't have to put up with the type of harassment I've had in the past. Firm, but fair. That's how I roll. So don't be shy to ask me about anything. If I don't say anything right away, I'm more than likely busy so sorry for that.

Oh yes, today's my 24th birthday. I got so caught up in my own personal backstory that I forgot the main point of this blog. Go figure. Oh well, happy birthday to me! (And a shout-out to Kagome+InuYasha16, my best friend from 4kids, whose birthday was 4 days before mine. Happy birthday, old friend!)

And now, I'm going to enjoy a much needed week off from work. That's all, folks.

~Smash The Echidna~  21:10, July 31, 2016 (UTC)

P.S. check out my latest update on SpTH.