#photon (oc)

[dragooning]

💞🎀🕊️~

[mewezzy]

This is Photon, who runs the post office in Brightburg! They've been struggling with their letters and packages disappearing as of late...

[zosonils-art]

rewatched the sonic ova a few months ago. since then i've thought a bit too hard about the only loosely explained way that hyper metal sonic was created, been irreversibly changed by the idea of a sonic who wakes up in a body that isn't his and discovers that all his memories and friendships and adventures belong to someone else now, rekindled my obsession with the various metal sonics of pre-reboot archie, and finally learned how to care about sonic heroes

photon is basically every version of metal sonic ever, a few of the charmingly edgy aus i wrote when i was 11, and a few sonic cd fan theories all thrown in a blender and kicked down a flight of stairs, and i'm kind of obsessed with him. really, REALLY long infodump and some supplementary scribbles under the cut

WELCOME TO THE PHOTON ZONE

a little after sa2, eggman lures sonic into some trap that pins him down long enough for an electronic copy to be made of his brain. sonic trashes the place and escapes with only a mild headache and a bruised ego, but all the data eggman scraped is intact. as he's creating neo metal sonic, eggman uploads this digital ghost of sonic into him, with the intention to upgrade from having a fancy bootleg to a truly 'perfect' answer to sonic, who can simulate his entire psyche in real time and know everything he's going to do before he does it

[eggman would love to steal a hedgehog, actually]

unfortunately for eggman, his latest copy is too perfect, and sonic's indomitable will and sense of self easily overpowers any feeble attempts the rest of neo metal sonic's programming makes to keep him in line. pretty much the moment he's booted up, he books it outta there as fast as possible to go find his friends and fix things. with all of sonic's memories embedded in him, the thought that he isn't the real thing doesn't even cross metal's mind - as far as he knows, he made an embarrassing blunder in a dingy old egg base, had something done to his brain, and then woke up miles away in a robot body that eggman must have stuffed him into somehow. he just has to find tails and amy and knuckles and the rest, make sure he didn't hurt any of them during that mysterious gap in his memory, and slap together a plan to get his body back and shove eggman into a puddle. no sweat!

so naturally, it's a bit hurtful when none of his friends believe for a second that he's who he says he is. and it's a LOT hurtful when the real sonic shows up, in the body that's SUPPOSED to be his, and metal suddenly has no idea who or what he is

even though it's not enough to override the sonic personality, eggman's programming is still twisting metal's thoughts. an angry killer robot is an effective killer robot, so any negative emotion or violent impulse is forced to the front of his mind. metal is angry at eggman for doing this to him, and at his friends for not trusting him, and at sonic for existing in the body and life that belong to him, and all of this gets mixed in with the existential despair and knee-jerk denial of what's happening to him and then magnified tenfold. a version of the sonic heroes storyline takes place as metal's mental state worsens exponentially, and he begins to lash out more and more violently at everyone and everything around him in increasingly desperate attempts to prove [mostly to himself] that this other sonic is a fake.

this culminates in the metal overlord battle, where metal [who's escalated from 'prove himself superior to sonic' to 'defeat sonic and force him to admit the truth' to 'literally just kill him, since he's obviously a hyper realistic android sent by eggman or whatever and not a real thing that can feel pain and die'] harnesses the chaos emeralds in a last-ditch effort to prove his strength and reduce the 'fake' sonic to ashes - only for his body to twist and mutate into something so utterly, viscerally Wrong that the fear and confusion cause what's left of sonic in him to just shut down from distress, finally leaving only the mindless killing machine eggman set out to make in the first place and forcing super sonic to step in and kick metal overlord's ass. defeated by the power of friendship, depowered, and severely damaged, metal finally accepts and admits that he isn't the real sonic and probably never was, and doesn't fight it when his systems fail and he loses consciousness

contrary to what his anger had him believe, though, metal's [former?] friends did see that he was suffering and needed answers, and so sonic and tails take him back to the workshop in mystic ruins to shed some light on the whole situation. when tails finds a disturbingly perfect resemblance to an organic brain in the program map, everything finally clicks - what that weird Beam Of Give You Headache sonic got hit by a couple months ago was, how eggman made a metal sonic that knew so much about the real thing's life, why this metal seemed less mechanically violent and more genuinely emotionally distressed. with eggman's loyalty programming scrubbed from his system, metal wakes back up confused and upset but much more 'himself', and even manages a few natural-feeling responses as tails explains what he found and apologises over and over for not being able to help sooner.

he still doesn't like sonic.

metal leaves pretty much as soon as he's in working condition. even when sonic isn't there reminding him that he isn't himself anymore, he can't stand being around a tails who isn't his brother. he takes to wandering the world directionlessly, trying to figure out who he is now and find a place in a world that doesn't remember him. he's not sonic anymore, and it'd be easier to list the things he doesn't hate about being called 'metal sonic' or just metal, so after a while he settles on introducing himself as 'photon' - another intangible fast thing, like sound, but comfortably distant from his old name. [it's also a stupendously petty means of one-upping sonic, light being faster than sound and everything. drama queen.]

the timeline gets way fuzzier after all this overdetailed nonsense, but things do get better for photon. he has an identity now, and it's fragile and cobbled together and still missing pieces, but it belongs to him and nobody else. he strikes up a few odd but sincere friendships - he hangs out with big when he needs a calm and comforting presence, and has a fierce friendly rivalry with shadow underpinned by their quietly shared experience of not knowing whether to trust their own memory, and much later down the line he bonds with belle over the mundane frustrations of being a robot [and, privately, because she's the best fit so far for the tails-shaped hole in his heart]. he keeps up the drifter lifestyle, making new memories to replace painful old ones, finding ways to use his robot abilities for fun or to help people rather than purely as tools of destruction. it's not perfect for photon, he's still deeply bitter and existentially lonely and missing a sense of purpose, but it's Better, and that counts for something

photon is like some of the earlier [western] depictions of sonic in personality - rougher around the edges, more sarcastic and much less sincere, often brushing up against the line between playfully teasing and just being a bully. whereas sonic has grown into the generally kinder and more patient person he is these days thanks to the friends he's made and the adventures he's had, photon split off from him when that character development was just barely starting, and the trauma from his loss of identity made him regress instead of moving forward. he's still a kind person at heart, but that period of artificially inflated anger and despair has left its mark on how he handles his emotions, even if the programming that first caused it is long gone.

powers-wise, photon is pretty much identical to neo metal sonic, albeit with some limitations. he's as fast and strong as the real thing, can shapeshift or use chaos control if he's got an emerald with him, and with all 7 can take on a super form - though since the metal overlord incident, he's refused to try. [i'm leaving it open whether metal overlord is his innate super transformation now or if it was caused by him tapping into the negative energy of the chaos emeralds rather than sonic's usual positive, since both are really fun ideas. either way, becoming metal overlord was way too traumatic for photon to have any interest in trying again for now.]

he can still copy the biodata of living beings that he comes into contact with, but most of his storage space is taken up by the entire organic brain being simulated in realtime, which he's definitely not willing to modify or delete, so he's effectively limited to only the most recent two or three powers he's copied. he shapeshifts a little to reflect the data he's pulling from, mostly because it's fun to imagine what it'd look like. also because i'm a mega man guy. once again it all comes back to worlds collide being peak fiction

this concludes THE PHOTON ZONE, if only because this has been in my drafts for 3 days and i just want to make my damn post already. if the 1400 word infodump didn't make it clear i am VERY obsessed with my sad little metal sonic amalgam lmao. all this and i still had to cut a ton of details to prevent this infodump from being do you love the colour of the photon, so if my unhinged ramblings have convinced you to care about him even a fraction as much as i do i'd be thrilled to answer any followup questions here or on my main!!!!

[photon-crest-art]

Art Fight in one week YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Very excited to participate again after how much fun I had last year!

Link to my account below the cut:

[hoeheaven]

Happy Holidays! Love from Peter, Monica, Nova & Magnus🎄🕎✨

(Lightspeed AU)

[cranialisotope]

guess which one is a god and which one is a college professor

[theschwawashere]

this game was very formative to me and I still don't like most of the modern fashion options, ofc I'm going to dress him the same from eightish years ago. welcome back xane-o-blade fartsicles fashion edition

[photonified]

*drops drawing of OC and leaves no additional context*

[timegearremix]

My girlfriend and I watched ova sonic together back in August and it's coming back into my mind with a vengeance

[dannidorina]

WIPS // you couldn’t have paid me any real dollar amount to convince me I’d have transformers OCs six months ago.

[mechahero]

//Game I used to play updated so I caved and drew art of an old oc for it instead of writing. Booboo the fool moment 😔

Her old design and the morph she used to use down below

[robotsafari]

shadow found this sassy lost child in the garden. i dont think they're supposed to be here. weird.

[goldenwolfae]

“Shamtrie, The Light Celestial. The 4th Celestial and the King’s 13th challenge. It is unclear what triggered this, after a week of no activity from the king in any area the company picked up a celestial crystal signature. Two to be exact. We have narrowed this first one to be the light celestial’s crystal. We did not have as much time to fully research this one due to the time frame, though we do know any human who touches her crystal gets flooded by photons that disintegrates them, not even their bones survived it was just a pile of dust by the end of it. What we know about Shamtrie is that she is a beautiful creature, a blinding light that was born from the first light of the universe. There are no names given to this or the next 4 celestials as their warp crystals were only found recently. Though vague sightings do call her the blinding flash.“

[photon-crest-art]

Finally, after all these years, a ref for my sona!

This has been a long time coming. I should've done this earlier, but I was just so focused on other OCs and whatnot that I never got around to it. But now that has changed, and I feel a weight lifted off my shoulder.

Now, if I can bring myself to do a render of her + a new icon....

Reduced detail/"bald" version down below:

[patchworkmirage]

my weirdos (finally made their refs for artfight. they’ve been in my head for like a year now)

[akibento]

Kite and Baby Galaxy-Eyes

Kite was running out of shoes.

Kite let out an annoyed scoff as he looked down at his shoes. “Again, really?! Galaxy-Eyes!!”

A little Galaxy-Eyes peaked from behind the wall, his large eyes staring at Kite. He looked at Kite like a little angel. Like he could do no wrong.

Kite knew it was all one big lie.

“Stop chewing my shoes!!” Kite yelled, holding up his ruined shoes. He was supposed to be the Galaxy-Eyes Master. But this baby Galaxy-Eyes did not wish to listen and his shoes paid the price.

The baby Galaxy-Eyes let out a sad noise, giving a big show of how sad he was. Kite didn’t really care, looking at his shredded-up shoes.

“Kite,” A soft female voice scolded him. “He’s just a baby”

She was like an angel. Scooping the baby Galaxy-Eyes into her arms. She gave the baby lots of love, cooing at him to make him laugh. The Galaxy-Eyes let out what could be described as laughter, wiggling his little baby legs. She gave him a smile that could almost soothe him. Almost.

“Seki,” Kite said sternly. “He ripped up my shoes!”

“He is just a baby, he doesn’t know better!” Seki Risako gave him a look. She cradled the Galaxy-Eyes, as if she was sheltering the baby from Kite’s vengeance.

“He needs to learn to not eat my shoes!!”

Seki pouted her lip. “Well, do you need to shout? I am sure if you ask nicely he won’t eat your shoes. He doesn’t eat my shoes.”

Kite rolled his eyes. “Because he adores you.” Galaxy-Eyes wasn’t the only one, but Kite wouldn’t say it out loud.

“He adores both of us dear,” She kisses his cheek. “I promise.”

A small blush spread across Kite’s face. He looked down at Seki and Galaxy-Eyes, both of them were looking at him with large pleading eyes. He sighed and grumbled.

“You both are lucky you’re so cute.” Seki giggled happily, wrapping her arms around Kite. Baby Galaxy-Eyes happily chirped in agreement.