It was a mistake to watch that video at 1:00 in the
morning.
What a horrid video.
If you love Sonic the Hedgehog, stay away from that video. I’m not even going to leave a link to the
video because I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you want to go see the
video yourself.
The date was August 24th. On YouTube my sister and I watched a play-through of an
unofficial computer game called Sonic.exe,
which I thought was a horrific take on the classic Sonic the Hedgehog video game.
(The suffix “.exe” is used at the end of file names of computer
programs). My first impression of the
video was that in this game, Sonic somehow turned evil, probably from some sort
of parasite or disease, and goes of killing innocent animals as well as his
friends Tails the Fox and Knuckles the Echidna.
And Dr. Robotnik, even! They all
can’t run from this Sonic.exe thing. The
person playing this game (YouTube user PewDiePie) wasn’t able to successfully beat the game with the
other characters, and those characters are brutally murdered by this Sonic.exe
character.
It is something called “creepypasta”, a genre of
pictures or videos (or video/computer games, in this case) that go around on
the Internet to scare people and possibly disturb them. It certainly disturbed me and my sister. There is probably worse stuff from this genre
out there. Some people like this
stuff. Some people think it’s funny or entertaining. The thumbnail for the video got my attention
because I’ve seen this “version” of Sonic in another website but didn’t care
enough to look it up. It’s been around
for months and I finally decided to see what the fuss is about.
Like I said, I watched that video at 1:00 in the
morning. Big mistake.
I could have had a nightmare that contained everything
that video does. I’ve had nightmares
before, several times, where something was seriously wrong with Sonic. In fact, in at least one of them he might
have had the same eyes the Sonic from Sonic.exe did: they were black “whites of
the eyes” with red pupils. That’s always
scary to me, but it was a very scary thing seeing Sonic have them, this time
with blood coming from his eyes.
It wasn’t the gameplay that scared me. Not even the “Kefka Palazzo laugh” either. I found that funny because now I know it’s
been reused in a few other videogames other than Final Fantasy. And the
music was intriguing in the Tails stage.
Scary, but intriguing. Then soon it was showing dead bloody animals, and
well, that started to freak me out a bit. That certainly wouldn’t be in a Sonic the Hedgehog game. But then later the mother of all $#%^#@…
It was…dat big scary Sonic.exe face. It popped out all of a sudden filling the YouTube
Viewer screen. So glad I didn’t have it
on full-view. It could have filled up my
entire monitor screen. But it was so
startling, the size didn’t matter.
As soon as I saw it, I screamed and turned away,
covered my mouth and hyperventilated.
My eyes were wide with disbelief. I’ve never been so scared in a very long
time. My sister was there watching
the video with me, and she told me she rather I not watch the rest of the video
with my eyes. I listened to the rest of
the video but as curious as I still was, I dared not look at my computer screen.
So, um…after 23 years of NOT being afraid of the dark,
I AM afraid of the dark now. It is only
temporary. It’s been 12 days (Wednesday)
since I saw that video (I have 94.7 the Wave on the radio all night to distract
me from my fear, although I still lost sleep but at least I can relax in the
dark). I understand now what people
meant in the comments of the video when they say, “That hit me right in the
childhood.” My
initial impression of Sonic.exe: This is the classic
(first) Sonic the Hedgehog video game
made into a computer game made into a horror-lover’s, Sonic-hater’s dream come true. My nightmare comes true, dammit! Something cute and innocent and awesome, his
image twisted into a perpetual murderous rape face.
I tried to write a short fan-fiction to make sense of
how Sonic came to be this way. And then
I questioned, well, what is the real story behind this game? I told my sister I wanted to learn about its
history, so she looked up Sonic.exe for me and came across a website that
included the creator’s statement about, get this: why he created the game and what the story is
about. After I learned about it (she
read it out loud for me because I was NOT going to go near a computer for a
while), I calmed down and realized, “Well that’s actually an interesting
backstory and explanation to this game.” It turns out the Sonic.exe character
wasn’t actually Sonic himself, but a whole different being from another world. I
wasn’t mad at the creator anymore. It
was meant to be an experiment, but one that would scare people too (I hate the
afterthought of this “thing” trying to enter our real world! I don’t
need that!). Now that I know it’s not Sonic himself that’s
killing other characters in his universe, it’s easier to deal with. Or accept.
Whatever. I just hate that the
innocence of the classic Sonic the
Hedgehog game has been ruined, period.
But now I am still afraid of the Internet because some
careless people think it’s amusing or funny to have that scary face as their
profile picture. I DON’T WANT TO SEE IT
AGAIN. But I did see it again. I saw that
someone did have that scary Sonic.exe
face as a profile picture. At least it
was a tiny 50x50 profile picture, but I KNOW that was the very version of the
face that scared the daylights out of me.
I looked up at the crescent moon a few days ago and I saw the grin and
then the eyes followed after. When my
bedroom was dark I saw those glowing red eyes on my Cloud Strife wall scroll
and then the grin followed, saying a scary monster-like “Hiiiiii.” I closed my eyes and I saw it again, dat big
scary Sonic.exe face. GET OUT OF MY
HEAD, YOU MOTHERF@#%&$! GET OUT MY
HEEAAAAD!!
Is there something seriously wrong with me if I am still
spooked by this thing? It’s not real,
it’s just pretend, he’s not going to come out of your computer and grab your
soul, etc. BUT the image of that face is
still unsettling. So I listen to more
music, watch other TV try to renew my personal opinion of Sonic by playing Sonic Generations and seeing him as the
fast, way past cool, adorable, funny, positive, freedom-loving blue hedgehog he
is. I can’t go to YouTube or DeviantArt
without being afraid of the scary face because I know it’s going to appear one
way or another if I browse any videos or art that’s Sonic-related. So…I’ll stick to Smosh or Tobuscus or
Transformers parodies for the next few times I visit YouTube. As for DeviantArt (I have yet to update my
journal with the new format), well… gosh there was a lot of Sonic fan art I
wanted to see and now I don’t know if I can, at least not during the
night. Maybe in the morning when there will
be daylight for some hours I may have some courage. I must tread YouTube, Sonic Retro, The Sonic
Stadium, and DeviantArt with extreme caution.
I
get maybe 1 ½ to 2 hours of sleep at most during the night. I have to catch up on sleep during the day I
feel like you’re going to think this is all so silly of me to be afraid of just
a face. But this video attacked the
innocent image of my favorite childhood video game character. Do you know what it’s like to be afraid to go
to a dark room at night (before turning on the light), or to be afraid to fall
asleep or even close your eyes in the dark?
For crying out loud I was even afraid of my computer screen because my monitor is widescreen and the scary face
was stretched out. I just—totally became
a different person after seeing that video. I am going to get better; I just
need to almost avoid my favorite websites for a while. Or visit them very carefully from now on.
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