#melcodriggs

[blazehedgehog]

I think you've touched on it before so apologies if this is a repeat question, but do we know why they still push the Deadly Six as hard as they do? I know they have their fans and it could be my own confirmation bias but I feel like they're not terribly well liked.

The rumor I once heard, from someone who claimed to have connections on the matter (I did not personally verify anything myself) is basically that the Deadly Six were invented because somebody high up at Sega of Japan didn't like Dr. Eggman and wanted Sonic Team to introduce new villains to replace him.

Which suddenly shines a whole new light on why they are the way they are: they are pretty text book "we want to make a new mascot but we don't actually care." They have simple designs, they're colorful, they're made to be marketable and toyetic, they not only fulfill a lot of Eggman's same roles but even extend to demographics beyond that...

They are cynically made.

Like you said, they have their fans. I've seen so-called "Zetisonas" out there. So it worked on some people. But I think most folks can see the cynicism even if they don't know the rumor about them trying to replace Eggman across the whole franchise.

I suppose they keep coming back because enough people probably like them and I'm sure now folks like Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley are looking for any kind of character variety they can get. Especially villains.

[magmahurricane]

Let's say I felt like drawing interactions between our characters. Am I allowed to bully your characters? If so how mean can I be?

You’re absolutely allowed to bully my children! :D Honestly, go as far as you want. I’m no kinder to them. For the sake of keeping things in-character, in order of hardest to easiest to get a rise out of: Datura (ageless demon, not a whole lot of deep emotions in general) Lorna (She’s an empath, she’s always feeling everyone elses emotions as a passive feature. It’s why she’s a massive bitch. Bully her at the risk of her finding your insecurities and running with it) Carey (LOVES banter. When it’s serious and not playful, she will go right for the jugular with her comments and still seem like a ball of sunshine when she does, but if you know her you can really cut deep) Andre (He’s in his 30s, and had a turbulent youth ruled by his anger. He’s in control of it now, but words still hurt) Jace* (Until his life was changed by events out of his control during his teen years, he lead a pretty sheltered life. He can banter and play it cool but at the end of the day his mind will linger on what was said) Ileana* (Doesn’t do banter/doesn’t take pranks well. They are Anxiety Lizard™ and they might get a little teary or their frills may pop out from their tie, in which case they’ll definitely cry) **Jace is a trans male and Ileana is nb; please don’t make any transphobic jokes. I don’t think you would, just to clarify, but better a safe reminder than anything!

By all means, bully them! I might even draw responses.

[melcodriggs]

Other places you can find me

Yes I’m late on the draw. I upload so little here I forget I have the ability.

I’ve never really posted saucy pictures here (not that I draw much FILTH) but I read something about Tumblr shadow-banning visual artists so, to be safe here are some alternatives:

https://twitter.com/MelcoDriggs Twitter is my most active account, but if that doesn’t work for you my Deviantart usually gets uploads every now and then, too: https://www.deviantart.com/thell-vallock

[bimshwel]

femoral sketch 46 for MelcoDriggs. I am uncertain if the little gold pumpkin is being claimed or gotten rid of but I reckon it is bad news for somebody either way

[fiztheancient]

Tutor Toriel commission for @melcodriggs !

[thesepeopleproject]

Do you ever just see a bunch of people in public and wonder, "how many of these people are wearing butt plugs right now?"

— Person Man (@MelcoDriggs) July 28, 2017

[blazehedgehog]

How much attitude should Sonic have, in your opinion?

You know I'm kind of an old head because to me OVA Sonic is perfect:

He's trying to do his own thing (chill out) and when a problem comes to him, he tries to ignore it for as long as possible. He makes some snide remarks about wanting to be left alone, he tries to get someone else to do it for him, but ultimately he has no choice but to act. And when he finally springs into action, it's a task he accomplishes with basically zero effort.

He does not want to babysit the world. He wants to be himself and have the freedom to do as he pleases. He knows he's basically untouchable, and has fun with it when he can, but generally wants to to do his own thing and let the world take care of itself.

(In that way, I think he wants the world to be strong enough not to need him, but that's neither here nor there)

[shannohnflames]

Doodle of Eskie and Death Cannon I made a while ago. Eskie belongs to melcodriggs Death Cannon belongs to scantylicious

[magmahurricane]

melcodriggs replied to your post: My hand hurts so I gotta rest it but I have so...

Have you tried holding the tablet pen with your mouth?:D

I tried that with my last 153 pens and wound up eating them accidentally... i am weak to the cronch....

[melcodriggs]

On the subject of Isabelle’s muzzle.

[blazehedgehog]

Playing off the mention of translation errors like "Arabasta" and "Loguetown," does something like Varia Suit/Barrier Suit get a pass because they kind of got lucky where it sounds like "variable?"

Not trying to be a wise guy, that's genuinely my take.

It's cheap, but Varia Suit gets a pass because it took me 30 years to realize it wasn't just a mysterious sounding alien term. Or, like you said, sort of like "variable." It didn't trip any easy alarm bells about the quality of translation.

Whereas Arabasta sounds like a bad translation. And Loguetown, I guess the official explanation is that it's broken from "Prologue", because Luffy and crew depart it at the end of One Piece's prologue, which is like... I get it, but I don't like it.

I realize this basically comes off as "it's okay because I said so" but I guess that's just the way it is. Opinions! Human opinions! Right here on this very blog!

[blazehedgehog]

You ever notice that "Super Sonic" is a play on the word supersonic but other characters just get "super" tacked on? Think there's a reason they don't play with it more? Like Knux getting a bronze hue and calling the form "Brass Knuckles" or making Silver shinier and calling him "Golden Silver?"

Archie tried to. Super Sonic, Hyper Knuckles, Turbo Tails, etc.

Sega also kind of tried to, at least as far as Burning Blaze goes.

I suppose that puts the burden on the medium itself...? The Chaos Emeralds always make you "Go Super"? Is there the possibility of a Burning Sonic?

[blazehedgehog]

Let's say you're given the ability to greenlight a new game in as many different "branches" of the Sonic series as you like, even if they've never had games before. The catch being you have no oversight or input beyond the initial green flag. What would you tell the team(s) to take another crack at? (Will clarify the "branches" thing in a followup ask)

To clarify about the "branches" ask (not because of you, I always worry about my phrasing) basically I mean anything substantially different from other elements of the franchise. Sonic 1/CD/2/3&K/4/Mania would be one subset, but Chaotix is far enough away to be its own thing in my opinion. Adventure follows after the Genesis games but plays drastically different, 3D Blast and Labyrinth are close enough to be paired up, etc. Though of course it's all up to interpretation.

Give Tails another solo game. Heck, hire an indie developer to make a new Tails Adventure game. Get Team Ladybug to do it. Even though Takashi Iizuka says pixel art is a dead end, I don't care. Let them do it with pixel art.

Team Ladybug seems like a safe bet. But I was talking about this on stream... gosh, I think it was the last time I streamed, when I streamed part 1 of Freedom Planet 2...

Create like a fandom partner program. Deliberately relax quality standards a little bit. Just a little. Let fans make official Sonic fangames. Give them a special label so the mainstream public knows they are community projects, but with a little bit of official Sega backing. Let fans sell games released through this community program. Cultivate the future.

It is so easy to release a game on Steam. It is so cheap. Lean into that. Don't bother with Playstation or Xbox or Nintendo certification licensing. Do it PC only*. These are Sonic fangames with Sega's stamp of approval on them. They don't have to be huge grand scale type projects. Maybe an hour long would be good. Put a couple of those out a year for $6.99 or whatever. Kick start some careers.

If Sega wants another surprise success like Sonic Mania, this is how they find the team to build it. Short, experimental little Sonic fangames, with a little bit of oversight and some guidelines to prevent people from getting too violent, or weird, or doing other things that are off-limits.

It would be bold and revolutionary and it would kick every ass anyone's got.

If Sega wants to look forward and truly shift some paradigms, spending a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars on some nebulous metaverse "super game" isn't going to do it. Something grassroots and community forward will. The community has carried Sonic before. Might as well throw them a bone.

* Unless it blows up big. Then you can do a "Plus" release for consoles, again mirroring the Sonic Mania/Sonic Mania Plus dichotomy.

[blazehedgehog]

Mostly an "is it me?" question, but like... is it fair to say Shadow got a massive power buff purely out of popularity? I feel like he had two good narrative threads, years pass, then Forces grandfathered him into boosting and the Generations remake rewrote a fight he lost in 2011 (I know it changes nothing, but it annoys me nonetheless.)

Yes.

In my mind, the point of Shadow and Biolizard are lab-grown versions of Super Sonic and Perfect Chaos. Professor Gerald reverse engineered them from Echidna legends.

All throughout the final boss, Sonic expresses concern for Shadow. He seems to be having trouble maintaining his super form. He looks tired. And if you get far enough into the boss fight, Shadow comes to a realization: "Sonic... I think the Ultimate Lifeform... is you!"

Almost as if Shadow realizes what he was created from. Shadow is accepting his role as nothing more than a synthetic clone of Super Sonic. He was invented to become the very thing standing in front of him. And he can't keep up. Because he's just a clone.

But Shadow won't give up. Even if he's just a clone, he can still fulfill Maria's wish. He's going to give the earth a chance to find their happiness.

He succeeds. But it kills him.

It's been retconned now to make Shadow the ultimate coolguy vigilante hero, but that was Shadow's complete character arc in 2001. I mean, some of the most infamous exchanges in that entire game are Sonic and Shadow arguing over who copied who. Shadow fans have told me to my face I'm wrong, but Shadow realizing in the end that he's the copy is how that pays off. Sonic Adventure 2's storytelling is a hacked up mess that's poorly translated, but that's a real, actual character arc. One of the only ones in the entire game.

Shadow is brainwashed into doing evil deeds, attempts genocide on the whole of planet earth, and redeems himself through self-sacrifice because he was just a clone anyway. He was never real, and always living on borrowed time. In some ways, the care he and Maria shared for each other was the only thing real about his entire life. And so he must live that truth and become more than just Gerald's creation.

But everybody loves Shadow. We can't just tell them no. We've got to bring him back from the dead. They think Shadow is the coolest. But what if he was even cooler? What if he was a tortured soul, gifted a strength beyond anyone else, and is constantly torn on how to use that power? Does he serve himself, or does he serve the greater good? And who deserves to benefit from his power?

And so Shadow goes from "not quite as powerful as Super Sonic" to "significantly more powerful than anyone else in the franchise." Because now Shadow's like a character that may as well be in the Super Sonic state at all times. And presumably, when he uses all seven emeralds, he just becomes even more powerful.

In my own personal headcanon, Shadow is the most powerful character in the series... but only because Sonic never really pushes himself to his limits. Sonic's too carefree, Sonic doesn't like to punish others too harshly, and nothing in his life has ever actually tested his limits.

Weird comparison, but it's sort of like Frieza in Resurrection of F. Frieza reveals that his race are just naturally the strongest in the galaxy and as such he's never actually done any kind of real combat training. So he plots his revenge against Goku, which can basically be summed up as "plan ahead, do some training for the first time in his life, and actually put a little effort into it this time."

Sonic is similar. He gathers the emeralds, transforms into Super Sonic, and effortlessly wins almost every single time. But if it came down to life or death Sonic vs. Shadow, no holds barred, no going back, I think Sonic still wins, no contest.

[blazehedgehog]

I feel like I need to be corrected on this because I can't tell if it's just my own bias; Shadow's personality and impact on the world around him changes very little between interpretations (as in, Boom and Prime still write him as a jerk who plays a role in pushing the world to near-cataclysm intentionally or not.) Does that dampen Maria's importance in SA2 if not losing her still leaves him in more or less the same spot?

Well, to that end: do we know Shadow did not lose Maria in those timelines?

Like, to my memory, Shadow in Sonic Boom just kind of shows up out of nowhere and it's not really explained where he came from or why he is the way he is. He only really turns up in Sonic Boom for fanservice reasons. Maria may in fact still exist for him.

As for Sonic Prime, the show runner of that or whoever was at one point claiming Sonic Prime was canonical with the games. Prime's Shadow is our Shadow. Ergo, what happened to Maria still happened there.

I don't think you could say he's been diminished at all in that case.

[blazehedgehog]

What's your ideal voice cast for the Sonic cast? For as many characters as you feel like doing.

Honestly I don't even know anymore. I had fond memories of Jason Griffith in Sonic Unleashed but listening to him now in the PC Recomp, all I hear is everything everybody else doesn't like about him.

I still think Roger sounds a little old. I don't mind him, though. He's good at his job. And I'd take someone who's good at his job over a potentially worse alternative.

But I also think I agree with the growing sentiment that if Sega wanted to replace Sonic's voice, I'd be fine bringing Deven Mack in to voice for the games. The dude's young, he's kind of a Sonic fan, and he did great work on Sonic Prime.

In fact, if it came to it, a lot of the cast could probably be replaced with the Sonic Prime folks and I'd be okay with that on some level. Obviously I don't want Sega to just do that, like the usual way where they drop everybody without warning and suddenly there's just a new cast out of nowhere.

But if there was some sort of safe, amicable transition, I wouldn't mind that.