#((And I know about Shadow's Doom Powers. Maria. Gerald. and everything else that was shown in the trailers. but that's it.))

[silver---linings]

So what's up with you holding a hotdog? You also show up with it when teleporting back in Sonic's party from white space. Where did you get it? Also I think your gripping it too hard

"I did have a chilidog for lunch before I headed to Sonic's party, when Time Eater suddenly dragged me into White Space. Maybe it rewound to a few minutes before I ate it? If it's a completely different chilidog, I don't know where it could've came from. Time stuff is confusing."

"And I'm gripping it like this Sonic can't snag it when I'm not paying attention."

[egg-emperor]

Sometimes… characters don’t need a dramatic and traumatic history to become a villain… You can be a bad person in many different ways and something bad happening to you doesn’t automatically cause you to become a bad guy at all… and just maybe… Eggman has always been an asshole that felt entitled to his world and his greatness because of his grandfather’s significance and the inspiration he had on him was based on his importance, not his good deeds.

I don’t know about you but it really isn’t hard to picture him thinking that his intelligence is underappreciated and that he wants to go the extra mile to be hailed as the genius he is. He could do that through doing what is considered the things but he doesn’t. Instead, he’d rather do it in his own way, which is by forceful means with the power and rule of his empire. If anyone doubts him he remains confident and certain in his ego that he’ll take the world for himself. And while it isn’t his main goal in doing so, it will also prove all those people wrong.

It’s right there in the games as a whole lot of the pride he takes in being Gerald’s grandson is evidently because of his significance, which was the sole reason he looked up to him. What, with the way he’ll say “that’s MY grandfather” and how he wanted to be as great and as recognized as him as a great scientist in history.

And wanting to be just like him doesn’t necessarily equal him wanting his accomplishments to be as selfless and kind-hearted as Gerald’s deeds. It has never been establihed that Eggman does the things he does in order to get some type of revenge for him either. Instead, he just expressed confusion towards him wanting to destroy the entire planet and seemed much more appalled that included his own death too rather than others. 

His desire for revenge is directed to Sonic first and foremost because he gets in the way more than GUN and anyone else. He has his own personal reasons for disliking all of them, because they’re all obstacles preventing him from reaching his main goal. But he never lets them truly stop him. 

He also doesn’t want to take over the world to benefit anyone else in general, he’s doing it for himself and the fact that he wants products of his work, his amusement parks and everything he owns to be all over the world, his face plastered on logos all over everything. You know, because he wants to be above everyone else and to acknowledge his greatness.

If you think about it, Gerald is more canonically shown to be what a bunch of headcanons want to perceive Eggman as. His work was all about helping people and bettering the world, creating the ultimate lifeform in working to cure Maria, etc. But in the end, as his projects started to backfire, Black Doom tricked him and GUN took away everything that was important to him, it turned into malice. He died with the desire to take his anger out on the planet but ultimately helped save it from the black comet with the help of his previous deeds and the way Shadow ended up being able to carry out what he was really intended for since the beginning. 

I think that’s fantastic because they are not the same. I think it’s a lot more intriguing if he and Eggman have a lot of differences between them, that way comparing them is also far more interesting.

As for Eggman, he seems too self-absorbed to have ever cared about how others are affected by anything he does. I personally can’t see him ever thinking otherwise. It appears that the Sonic bible especially has a big influence on the headcanon that his intentions were once pure, but it’s obviously not canon and very flawed in multiple ways. I wouldn’t want any of it to be at all lol

Basically I see his past self as him being the proud, arrogant kid that wanted a lot of attention for his intelligence and effort, that his ego was always present and grew so large that he went mad with his power and desire to own the entire world. I’m not saying that everyone has to agree, but that’s definitely the impression I’ve gotten from his behavior and inspirations in the canon.