User:Blanche Hodapp

<forumuser name="Blanche Hodapp" /> Blanche Hodapp is a long-standing member of the community.

History

Humble Beginnings

Blanche's arrival on the scene can be said to have begun as far back as 1976. The young Blanche, barely two minutes old found herhimself embarked upon a transAtlantic crossing which was to end horribly when the ship was scuttled by an errant pineapple salesman with a grudge. Only proto-Blanche and her his best friend were to survive, conveniently finding themselves washed up on the shores of an uncharted island somewhere in the south Pacific. Or it may've been upon the Dead Sea. Details are sketchy.

The young Blanche and her his friend were able to survive for ten whole years, living off coconuts obtained from the tallest palms by throwing balled-up hedgehogs and hoping something came loose. After this, however, disaster struck as Blanche murdered his friend was forced to watch as his friend died in unknown circumstances. Apparently she wandered off into the woods and fell asleep and when she woke she was dead. At least, that seemed to keep the authorities quiet.

Where was I? Oh, yes.

So Blanche found himself suddenly alone upon this shore, however things were not all bad, for after ten years of coconuts his friend provided the best meal he'd ever tasted in his short, tragic life, and the remains were bashed together to form a rudimentary raft (she was, shall we say, of a rather buoyant figure), by which he left the island and was picked up eighteen hours later by a tramp steamer. He paid his way back home by taking his clothes off for the desperate perverts aboard, but anyone who touched him found themselves on the receiving end of a whale shark to the bonce.

Once back in sunny Malawi, Blanche rekindled his love of the spiny vermin he'd learned were hedgehogs, not by eating them when they failed to knock coconuts from trees, but instead by playing a game one of the sailors had inserted in his anus given him in thanks for a lapdance. This game, he discovered, upon learning to read eighteen years later, had been called Sonic the Hedgehog.

By this point, the internet had become well-known in most mud-huts, and Blanche found himself thrust into a strange and wonderful world known as "Usenet". This proved to be more interesting than real life, there was no medium through which a dispute could be settled with an old-fashioned mud-slinging contest, but instead were settled with "flame-wars" and use of a strange and wonderful device known as "*plonk*". Blanche was fascinated, and found many discussion groups dedicated to subjects he'd never even heard of, like "scat" and "Anne Widdecombe". There was even one for Sonic the Hedgehog!

Armed with this knowledge, Blanche decided he must once again reach out and communicate with others, and began to post under the name "Stones". This made him feel very big and clever, as he had ripped the name off a Star Trek parody, but who on Earth was to know?! Especially since he only mentioned it twice in his signature, which grew to monstrous proportions, despite the protests of those still crawling on 28.8 dialup connections. Who gave a damn?! If he could read it, so could everybody else!

It was while at this strange and fantastic alt.fan.sonic-hedgehog group that Blanche, then Stones, began to work his way through the jungle of the internet. A cinch, he thought, as he'd already worked his way through a real one to recover the corpse of his best friend after he'd thrown her to the mercy of the Vorgons heard her terrified screams many years before, and rushed to her aid.

Some months later, Blanche began to uncover the utterly illegal world of emulation, focussing primarily on Sonic the Hedgehog, and found a community based around something that had not been mentioned in AFSH for years: The Sonic 2 Beta community. Tightening his anus wits, Blanche dove in!

Sonic 2 Beta & Beyond

The year was now 1965, and Blanche had been an unofficial member of the Sonic 2 Beta EzBoard for several months, after pretty much forgetting about it after posting once and then deciding he had much better things to do like picking his nose and flicking it against a wall studying for his GCSE examinations. Upon his return, and finding it necessary to abandon his local account "Stones" for the global "Stones Lavoy", after having forgotten his password and EzBoard's recovery system being offline for at least another three years, Blanche found he had managed to ingratiate himself with certain members of the forums, and used this as his chance to become an elitist and make himself rather unpopular with other members. Despite this, and growing evidence that he would've been better-suited in a therapist's office than let loose upon the internets, Blanche was still able to remain close to those who mattered, while casting a derisive snort upon those he believed didn't.

Over the years, he was present for most major drama, though preferred to watch from the sidelines and shoot off one-line insults when necessary. Except the whole "Demod Bryn" fiasco. He took a more active role there, because he and Bryn bore a childish grudge against one another for some reason. (The author would like to note that Blanche himself admits to only having fleeting memories of events during this period, and those he does remember aren't worth mentioning, thus little humour can be derived from the account.)

He also saw many attempts, both realised and unrealised, to make something of the community after Simon Wai reappeared and asked for his forums back, taking a lot of members with him. This includes Project Nemesis, and the hilarity that he seems to recall ensuing during that time. Oh, and the time the forum merged with the "Hot Dim(m)ensions" community. God, that was a funny five minutes until the Scandinavian with the superiority complex ruined it for everyone else. Bastard.

Anyway, he remained there right up until the end, noting that over the years the community had stagnated, and from the once-almost-diverse community there now remained about four or five regulars who were liable to frighten off anybody new and sit talking about boobs all day every day which Blanche has no interest in at all.

Eventually, and some might say thankfully, Sonic Classic, as the forum had become known, was finally merged with Sonic Retro, and Blanche went with it (though he'd apparently already registed an account more than a year ago and simply forgotten about it. The reason for this is noted under "Contributions"), mainly because it was mid-2008, or thereabouts, and it was better than writing his dissertations.

The Present

The year is now 2150 and after a gruelling eighty-odd years of community life, Blanche is old and tired and more inclined to sit back and tell long, rambling stories to himself because nobody wants to listen. Most major discussions pass him by, because of the prevalence of Yanks on the board who insist upon talking about important things and arguing a lot when he's asleep, so he doesn't get a chance to stick his oar in (and who wants to come in on page 5 of a thread with a rebuttal to a comment made on page 2? Honestly).

So he sits back, alternating between not posting anything of substance, and making the odd deep and meaningful statement (often because he has a woody for Tweaker and doesn't want to leave him disappointed).

Contributions

Comparatively little, considering his many years in the community, but this can be put down to the fact that a lot of people only consider you a useful member if you're involved in a hack or have some manner of disassembly or code that proves that Sonic shot JFK in a beta version. Blanche never learned to code, hack, splice, disassemble or deep-fry because frankly he can't be bothered and there are so many people doing it now that anything he'd come across/demonstrate as a wild new hack would be declared older than God Himself, and his estimation would probably drop further in the eyes of whose whose penises respond only to the weird and wonderful world of hacking.

Instead, he takes a back-seat, but occasionally pretends to be "creative" by suggesting ideas toward works that are currently in progress. One of his happiest moments was when he suggested, more as a joke than anything else, the name "Sonic 2 LD" for Eggfan's 8-bit Sonic 2 hack, only to wake up the next morning afternoon and find the name had officially been adopted.

He has also expressed an interest in the possibility of a "Sonic 2D Blast" hack (though something will have to be done about the name. "Blast", I ask you...), even going as far as contributing art for the Rusty Ruin stage, however the project has been stricken with a terminal case of disorganisation and lack of real contribution (as well as interest from actual hackers who no doubt have more important things to do, like sitting down), and thus keeps dropping off the radar. Possibly for the best, but time will tell.