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seventeendeer · 4 months ago

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my lifelong special interest in sonic the hedgehog has both a very sincere side (those little animal characters are so cute! these games are fun! yay bright colors and the power of friendship!) and a side I can only describe as "morbid fascination with all the ways a long-running franchise can try to do a million different things and none of them are good or right or nourishing to the human spirit"

today, I would like to take you all on a special journey through the latter !

did you know that, at a conservative estimate, there have been attempts to create a recurring love interest for the blue man himself no less than FIVE SEPARATE TIMES. MORE IF YOU COUNT THE ONES THAT WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO LAST

below is Madonna (left) and Breezie (right). Madonna was a damsel in distress type character Sonic would've been saving in an early draft of the OG 1991 game. Breezie was a temporary love interest in the 90's cartoon, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, who seems to be inspired by the scrapped Madonna concept.

another scrapped love interest was Tiara Boobowski, who was at one point in development going to be a playable character in Sonic X-treme, a game intended for release in the 90's, though it never materialized. it seems her story went through a few different iterations before development ceased. she has the dubious honor of being the first "princess" character created for the purpose of being Sonic's love interest, which would be revisited at least two more times in other contexts.

the first love interest to stick around for a while was Princess Sally Acorn, developed from the squirrel critter design in the early games into a major supporting character in the 90's cartoon Sonic SatAM (left), then kept around in various iterations in the comic book spin-off series published by Archie Comics (middle + right) until the series' end in the mid-10's. she was in an on-and-off relationship with Sonic over those decades, for better or for worse, and they had by far the longest running romance arc out of all of Sonic's love interests to date. after suffering every romantic melodrama plotline imaginable, she was unceremoniously booted from the franchise when the rights to Sonic comic books were moved over to IDW Publishing. rest in peace, Sally, you didn't deserve any of that. at the very least for five minutes towards the end, she stopped dating Sonic and it was implied she started dating her long-time gal pal, Nicole, so she had that going for her for a little bit. counting our blessings

speaking of romantic melodrama, the Archie comics also gave Sonic a temporary love interest in Mina Mongoose because they wanted to write in a love triangle. there was a "main characters all grown up and starting nuclear families" future story at one point where they married Mina off to Tails instead, which somehow felt deeply cruel to both Mina and Tails. "hand-me-down love interest" is a bad, bad vibe for everyone involved

a few years on, in the mid 00's, the games were having their own weird little time giving Sonic a short-lived romance arc with new addition to the cast, Princess Elise the Third, who only showed up in the game Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and managed to lay one singular smooch on Sonic's corpse to bring him back from the dead, disney style, before she was banished from the franchise due to a monumental amount of backlash (against both her character and the game as a whole). I'm beaming hostile psychic waves into sega's headquarters until they bring her back with better writing and none of that stupid shit. they did it with Silver, they have no excuse

and of course we finally have the one. the only. the most persistent girly of all time who's been trying to marry Sonic since 1993 and is still truckin' on in the year of our lord 2025 even though he's slippery as an eel and he "don't wanna" and there's kind of an uncomfortable age difference and reciprocated romance has over time become more or less outlawed by Sega because it never really pans out for them for some inexplicable mysterious reason. everybody's favorite hyper violent child psychic AMY ROSE !!!!

great character!! has always had so much potential to do her own cool thing if only they'd let her!! if they don't drop the stupid "kinda love interest, kinda not" aspect of her character soon, I'm going to start CRYING BLOOD!! FREE HER <3

anyway honorary mention also goes to Blaze the Cat (left, game continuity, still active), Bunnie Rabbot (center, Sonic SatAM + Archie comics, goners with the Archie series cancellation) and Fiona Fox (right, Archie comics, also goners, same deal), who, while not introduced as love interests, have all been put into some kind of romantic context with Sonic at one point or another just because

(and also while not really relevant to the topic at hand, I would be remiss not to give a special shout-out to the multitude of male characters who were most likely never intended to have any romantic connection to Sonic, but because this series is shonen anime inspired and the rivalries get crazy, our boy still has to hear shit like this on the regular)

and like, you know I've probably forgotten some more girlies out there, too. Sonic the Hedgehog has been pelted with potential romance arcs since the day he was created, and I'm sure there are more out there lost to time/my shoddy memory.

and it's just ... so profoundly morbidly funny to me. unstoppable force (heteronormativity) VS immovable object (misogyny). countless futile attempts to convince kids across the world that a cool guy like Sonic TOTALLY GETS GIRLS, DAMN IT, HE IS FULFILLING HIS HETEROSEXUALITY QUOTA, WE PROMISE, combined with this utter disinterest in sufficiently developing female characters who can effectively fill that role. even Sally Acorn, who was put through hell in the spin-off comics for DECADES serving as the designated narrative romantic punching bag, would eventually go gentle into that good night without fanfare because porting her into a new continuity would just be so much worrrrrk ughhh she's not even Sonic's girlfriend anymore so whateverrrrr

though as much as a massive L as this is for women, at the very least these poor girls are taking the obligatory main character romantic subplot down with them. taking one for the team here. Sonic is so fast and so smooth, those cringey romance plots just slide right off the wind screen of his character and I at least love that part. I love that it never works out and our protagonist remains utterly unpairable. and I hope nothing ever sticks. and I hope the current staff continue to get better at writing female characters just for the sake of having some cool girls around who are interesting in their own right. and may a thousand more cynical, sexist, half-assed attempts to awkwardly shoehorn romance into stories where it doesn't belong wither and die just as spectacularly, booyah

#deerchatter #you know i'm spiritually unsalvagable because i collect discarded sonic love interests like beachside rocks #it's so fascinating to me. what is a desirable woman to an audience of 12 year old boys?#is she nice? mean? does she need you? is she helpless? can she kick ass? but not too much right?#does she hold you back? does she make you look good? is she girly? a tomboy? but not too much?#are you friends? do you respect her? do you even really want her around?#i was never even an archie comics fan but the whole sally acorn ordeal haunts me #all the archie-only characters were dropped in the move to idw to re-focus on the game canon but sally was different #almost as much of a protagonist as sonic! mistreated in a thousand ways by a thousand writers and then just. gone #one of these days i'm going to start writing insufferable meta fiction about mistreated girl characters in childrens franchises #and it's going to be so self-indulgent and soap boxy and that's a threat <3 #long post

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wandixx · 9 months ago

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Ok it closes out on me when I tried typing it the first time-

Anyway, I'm a sucker for shock value ones, just so funny to me, so how about M'gann being nervous about introducing bf danny and it happens at an inconvenient time! Could go ghost royalty, ancient of space or anything, hell ghost as dragons would be pretty funny, up to you though!

I'm not sure if I did a good job at this, but I didn't want you to wait too long and real life is keepimg me busier than expected, so for now, it's here. I may continue it one day (I also have different version of fill for this prompt, because neither idea felt right, so if you'd like to see I too, just let me know whatever way is most convenient to you)

This wasn't supposed to happen like that. M'gann didn't have a super detailed plan on how it was supposed to happen, but even her vague (thought and rethought every night) ideas were anything but this. It was supposed to be a calm, low-stakes situation. Maybe even make it look like an accidental meeting, Team in civies hanging out around Happy Harbour, bumping into Danny and then she'd just introduced him, perhaps adding ‘btw, he is my boyfriend’ almost like an afterthought. This seemed like the best possible scenario.

This was also, as expected with the way hero life is, the exact opposite of what actually happened.

Of course, it didn’t start with anything heralding the absolute disaster this day had to become. Kinda accidentally the Team stumbled upon something between a cave and a basement, and in it a group of people, who decided to perform a summoning of a genie so they could… wish for stuff. They didn’t even look like cultists or villains of any sort, just a group of random adults from seemingly very different backgrounds. M’gann had a really hard time understanding what actually brought them together other than their wishes.

Which was actually pretty useful when it came to fighting them, because nobody really cared about their fellow summoner, just trying to save their own butt. She kinda wished more of their opponents were so incompetent.

Though, she spoke too soon because in the excitement of the fight, somehow all of them didn’t realize that one or two of the summoners… actually managed to finish a summoning. It was honestly a little bit embarrassing.

But, it was too late to dwell on all that, as right above the summoning circle appeared a circle in a worryingly familiar shade of green.

Of course, this one time she didn’t have any equipment from Danny, had to be when the Team encountered a ghost.

Ghost in question was a beautiful woman, with long hair covering one of her eyes, in a blue outfit that was related to one of Earth cultures, but M’gann didn’t know which, and a bunch of bracelets on her wrists. Martian could make a hazard guess on who it was, based on the stories Danny told her.

“We don’t have time for explanations, I think I know who this is, if I’m right for the love of everything that’s dear to you, don’t say the word ‘wish’ out loud” she demanded over the Mindlink.

Before she finished, Artemis took silver tape from somewhere and slapped a piece of it over Wally’s mouth. M’gann understood the sentiment but still… it was a little bit too nuclear option.

Desiree (if it was her) didn’t attack anyone, looking a bit confused, giving Team a moment of reprieve to plan and for Kid Flash to make sure none of the summoners could make whatever wish they wanted either. Also with the use of silver tape. Djinn’s were always tricky.

M'gann used this moment of everyone getting their bearings to curse herself for not bringing any ghost weapons this time. Any other mission, Team or not, she had something on her but today? Today she had nothing.

Excluding the summoning engraved into clips holding her cape but it was kinda last resort. It wouldn't annihilate everything in one mile radius or something but she didn't want to drag Danny there if he was during a test, other ghost fight or something. She knew better than anyone that he didn’t need more distractions.

Conner crashed into a wall right next to her. Artemis seemed to lose her cool when none of her arrows seemed to reach the ghost while Robin was trying to make some counter plans with Kaldur. They couldn't do a thing to Desiree and it was a matter of seconds before she stopped entertaining them and went to the city. It… would end badly, most likely. Danny would prefer to get involved before it got that far. Yeah…

She really wished she didn’t have to call.

“I have an idea, cover for me for a minute or two”

“Bold of you to assume we can stop her from anything”

“I believe in you Wally. Just distract her”

“My water attacks seem to be effective weapon against her”

“That’s aster! What do you plan to do, M'gann?”

“Summon another ghost”

She expertly ignored yelling that followed, taking the golden clip off of her cape. She held fabric in place with absentminded use of telekinesis, while she focused on an engraved pattern. Danny's summoning circle wasn't actually too complicated or intricate but she needed to do it just right. And frankly, she just liked looking at it. Physical proof that her boyfriend would be there if she needed it. Drawn representation of who he is, the deepest and truest parts of his soul written in the language that only Universe itself could fully understand.

And it was beautiful. Absolutely incredible. Much better than Desiree's circle, thank you very much.

M’gann dropped to her knees and grabbed leftover chalk from previous summoning and crouched to quickly draw Danny's seal. She had a lot of practice from all the times she doodled it on a whim just to get something of him with her when she missed him the most. She rarely actually summoned him, again, it was difficult to align their schedules, but she was very familiar with the first step.

And it was really easy from there.

She placed the clip in the middle of the circle, shapeshifted one of her nails to get a bit of blood on the chalk and leaned back.

After a careful, deep breath, she started an incantation, putting as much power in her voice as she could.

“I call upon you guard of Amity Park, I call upon you dearest child of the Ice, I call upon you one favored by the Time, I call upon you vanquisher of the Fear, I call upon you subduer of the King, I call upon you defender and the guide, I call upon Phantom, both worlds beloved child”

Circle erupted in green light, putting a momentary pause to the fight. M’gann was still blinking spots away when a figure flung itself out of the summoning circle, right at the Desiree.

“What the fuck?!”

Only after the first punch was thrown did Danny turn back to her, with his usual, somehow both gallant and bashful smile, that without fault made her knees get a little weaker. She smiled back.

“Hello Starlight” he greeted, sounding almost casual.

“Starlight?”

“Hi Angel. Nice of you to drop by” she answered in the same manner. Wally tried to yell from behind the duck tape.

“Angel?! M'gann, who is he? Who is she?!”

“I will always come if you call” he said without any doubt, suddenly as serious as if he was sharing information that could break or make the world.

It certainly worked like that to her world. She actually melted a little on the inside.

“I know”

“Actually, that's kinda cute. I still have no idea who this is, but you go girl”

“I feel like it's not the right time Artemis”

“Not to interrupt… whatever this is, but the other ghost is escaping” Robin cut in “Also, if you want to make out afterwards, please find the room, Batman and Catwoman are traumatizing enough“

Few people snorted, while Danny blushed green. He darted back at Desiree, clearly to escape the embarrassment. M’gann stood up, totally at ease now, that he was there to take care of it.

“Will you need a hand? I don't have any tech but we have a trick or two up our sleeves!” she asked, projecting her voice so it carried through the cavernous basement without yelling.

“I'm good for now but thanks for asking!”

“M’gann, can you give us anything substantial? Who is this? How do you know him?”

“One question at the time and let's wait until he finishes, okay?“

She cut off Mindlink before anyone agreed or protested.

“Miss Martian!”

“Soup time!”

With a blast of light, Desiree got sucked in and Danny landed in front of them with a proud grin.

“My job here is done”

“It truly is. You're getting faster too”

“And thanks to who is that?”

“You”

Danny sent her both an incredulous and playful glare.

“Of course. I miraculously found a ways to not be a mess and don't crash through every wall on my way and–”

“Well, no but–”

“Let me remind you, you're not alone… also who are you dude? And where did the other lady go?” Wally asked, right after ripping the duct tape off his mouth.

“Oh, well, I'm Phantom, I usually work in Amity Park?” he said a bit unsure, as if calling him a protector was under any question. That just wouldn't do.

“He's a hero from Amity Park”

“Thanks love. It's nice to finally meet you all. M talked a lot about you!”

“Can't say same about you, sorry”

“That's fine. I know M was agonizing over how to introduce me in the best way possible. I'm really happy it's finally over,” he paused for a moment, with his brows furrowed “Did I do good? This first impression thing?”

“You're… far less imposing that I personally expected after hearing Miss Martian summoning you, but–”

“M’gann how could you hide this from us?” Conner blurted out quietly, and oh, he sounded so utterly crushed. Everyone fell silent, the playful atmosphere gone as if it had evaporated.

“I never intentionally hid it. It wasn't significant enough to mention at the start and when it became important I felt like I couldn't just drop it at you during lunch or something. I always planned to tell you, there was just never the right time nor right words. I never wanted to hide it.”

“Even just me?”

“Especially you”

“You still should've…”

“Yeah, I should. I'm sorry”

“How long ago have you met?”

“Half a year ago,” Danny said before she managed to answer “It's all kinda my fault actually. I was really set on not getting mixed up with more hero business than I had to back then. I didn't want you or Justice League finding out about me. And when I agreed, it was already really late. I'm sure she'd told you all from the get go if I let her, I'm sorry”

“Why wouldn't you want us to know about you?”

“It's… Probably not the conversation we should have right here, over gagged wannabe cultists.”

“Valid. Let's call the cops and get going. You two have much to explain”

“And you're sitting eight feet apart until you do!”

Danny leaned in to kiss her, quick and playful, before he jumped back at the demanded distance.

“Well, this still went better than at your side”

“Absolutely”

*******

Also, here is some lil arts for a longish wait, sorry again, I hope this story is yours to your expectations

#dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #im not sure what exact relation would be between mgann and conner #i just feel like they'd be pretty close because they bith kive full time in the base #i have half the thought that conner did have some more romantic or romantic seeming feelings towards mgann #but she pretty quickly established she wouldn’t date him #because while he look like a teenager #it's outright said in the show that he didn't exist half a year before the Bialya episode and it just rubs me the wrong way ever since #though this route is probably a bad 3am as i write these tags and come up with this thing #anyway #circle on the clip of M’gann’s isn’t actually just a reference #it's fully funtional and if she used that she wouldn't have to use incantation (danny finds it embarrassing)#but the portal it makes is also pretty small and uncomfortable to go through and she wanted danny to get there comfortably #(he may or may not once turned into a little baby man trying to go through it. it took two hours to get him cognizant enough to even try #changing back hah)#i had fun coming up with it #especially the incantation. it may not be particularly good but im quite happy with it and it was fun to come up with #i hope you like it #wandixx writes #wandixx arts #spearmint ship #have a nice day dear stranger who got to this part

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