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Sorry for the lack of posting been having a lot going on with finals this week and all

Anyway you can thank the deltarune brainworms for reviving my art kick (no spoilers btw)

Bonus:

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Got bored and my friend gave me the idea to draw a dragon :D

Heavily inspired by Lady's Amherst Pheasants (Image below cut)

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Little DTIYS I saw like a week ago from @returntosunder :3

Really proud with how this came out

Ink belongs to Comyet

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If the darkness wishes to be alone, then why does it weep for the warmth it once had?

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Just a little thing I did for a quick animation over on my TikTok :3

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A lot of people recently—as in, a weirdly high number of people—have been posting about how Solaris as a deity is a sympathetic figure, and how he was a victim in the grand narrative of Sonic ‘06.

This post is neither meant as a “gotcha” nor is it attempting to disprove or devalue this reading of the narrative, in fact I’m actually going to demonstrate how moral ambiguity is a theme that ‘06’s story definitely and intentionally explores, but I do want to just… point out what’s textually stated about Solaris in the game’s story.

To best illustrate what I’m getting at, I want to talk about Solaris chronologically. To do that, we need to discuss some deep lore that has come up on my blog several times in the past. (And no, it’s not the fact that the owner of the shops in Soleanna is named Enrique.)

Most people know that Solaris is represented by an eagle in Soleanna’s religion, but for those who missed the symbolism, Soleanna’s crest depicts an eagle standing proud with wings outstretched underneath a simplistic depiction of the sun, with the prominent feathers protruding outward in a manner reminiscent of sunbeams. Considering Solaris is known as Soleanna’s sun god and the eagle here is clearly represented as being a proxy for the sun (with the wing-sunbeams and all), and based on the fact Solaris’ physical form heavily resembles an eagle, it’s safe to say the eagle became a symbol in Soleanna due to worship of Solaris.

Additionally, the stained glass murals found in Kingdom Valley seem to show the eagle—Solaris—having some connection to or dominion over the day cycle, with the mural depicting this in a serene, positive light.

With that connection in mind, I would like to bring up the most insanely loaded and impactful throwaway NPC dialogue of any Sonic game:

Now, I’ve posted about this dialogue plenty before, but I wish to reiterate how this completely missable dialogue from some random woman in Soleanna’s New City contains deep lore that is heavily implied to be the origins of Soleanna’s symbol of their god, and may even be an origin story for Solaris’ worship in general.

The story is about Soleanna being overtaken by huge flames, until out of nowhere a huge eagle saves it. We know that Solaris’ physical form has the appearance of an eagle, so it’s barely conjectured to say that this story represents Solaris saving Soleanna—otherwise it would literally just be a narrative red herring. Additionally, the NPC specifically says that some people still believe the story to be factual, so this is clearly meant to be some manner of biblical non-fiction in the Solaris religion.

Clearly, this event sparked worship of Solaris, which, as previously mentioned, was viewed by the people of Soleanna as a positive deity—the “Eternal Sun,” which was paid homage to via the Festival of the Sun, which involved (description from the game’s official guide but this is also just what’s shown in the intro cutscene) “lighting a beautiful fountain of fire, bathing the city in the crackling glow of a thousand flames,” which I would say is representative of the great fires that overtook the ancient Soleanna, then afterwards “fireworks fill the sky, and there is much rejoicing by the general populace.” I would consider this as representing Solaris appearing from the call of the flames, but that’s conjecture—all that we need to focus on is what’s textually stated, which is that fact that there’s “much rejoicing by the general populace.” This is mirrored by the dialogue heard in-game, in which Elise, whilst lighting the fountain, prays: “Sun of Soleanna, guide and watch over us with your eternal light.”

The next event that we know of chronologically is, after somehow taking the form of a meager sentient flame, Solaris was entrusted to the royal family as the “Flame of Hope.” We don’t know how this happened, just that it did.

Later down the royal family lineage, we get to Elise’s father, the Duke of Soleanna. At some point, his wife—Elise’s mother—died, and conveniently the Duke then became infatuated with the altruistic idea of harnessing the power of time to allow his people to rectify past mistakes and avoid bitter fate. To that end, he started the Solaris Project, which aimed to study the Flame of Hope the royal family had been entrusted with and, more bluntly, manipulate the super-dimensional god-being Solaris for its power.

It is noted that the Living Flame had to grow larger for this power to be harnessed.

It is explicitly stated in-game that Solaris disagreed with this treatment. During the cutscene “The accident 10 years ago” which shows the Solaris Project experiment failing, a scientist notes that out of nowhere an electromagnetic pulse has been generated, which is causing a meltdown. The Duke responds to this by saying, “Why, Solaris? Why do you refuse to listen to my voice?” which suggests that Solaris itself generated the EMP, despite the fact that this causes it to fracture.

Furthermore, the game’s official guide (which should admittedly be taken with a few thousand grains of salt, as it’s a Prima Games guide and those are rather notorious) has this to say regarding Solaris and the experiment:

So, pretty cut and dry when you view it all like that in isolation, right? Solaris was a benevolent god that was abused by the duchy of its people and driven berserk from said abuse, which is why even after reforming its darkness and wrath it still sought to destroy all time. The Duke of Soleanna sucked bad and Sonic ‘06 is a narrative about… god dying for no reason? And the ending of Sonic ‘06 with Elise extinguishing Solaris represents, uhhh… deicide? Elise is perpetuating the cycle of abuse???

Obviously no hate to people who prefer viewing Solaris in a strictly sympathetic light (I literally wrote a fanfic with that as a partial premise), but you have to admit that it muddies the narrative. And, additionally, what a lot of people ignore when they come to that conclusion is the fact that Solaris had known malevolence.

First of all, consider the fact that the Flames of Disaster were a known thing in Soleanna’s faith—specifically known as Solaris’ wrath.

And when you remember the fact that Solaris takes the form of fire, and is known to be the being whose wrath is released in the form of flames,

Suddenly the story of the eagle has an alternative reading!

I am SO firmly in the camp that that NPC’s one-off dialogue is meant to suggest that Solaris manipulated its way into a position of worship, and that it being reduced to a meager flame was a saving act—which is why said flame was then entrusted to the royal family.

As stated above, this isn’t even an unheard of concept: Elise just casually tells Sonic about the potential of the Flames of Disaster, and all of Eggman’s actions throughout this game hinge on the fact that he wants to take the power of said flames (which he already knows about, just not how to channel) for himself.

Not to mention the fact that the component parts of Solaris don’t do the sun deity any favors. Iblis is literally a destructive manifestation of blind wrath, and Mephiles is a misery maximalist who literally overcomplicates plans to a fault just so the absolute most amount of karmic irony and sheer misfortune can underline all of his actions.

So… Solaris was vastly malevolent, ergo the Duke’s actions were completely justified, and Sonic ‘06’s narrative is about defeating ontological evil?

Also probably not!

A major theme of Sonic ‘06 is the dichotomy between the actions of an individual and the impact those actions have on the whole of society/the future—impact those actions hold in general:

Elise’s decision to sacrifice her relationship with Sonic by unmaking the instigating event of their meeting from the timeline, all to save the future, that’s just the underlining of this theme. There’s also the fact that Elise had to bear the Flames within her and repress her emotions in order to lead her people and hold back Solaris’ wrath, and the fact that Silver grapples with the idea that to save his future he has to personally kill an individual. Shadow has that whole moment where he says if the world chooses to become his enemy he’ll still fight like he always has, and even Amy gets the (admittedly pretty funny) line where if she had to choose between the world and Sonic, she’d choose Sonic—and for what it’s worth, that arguable ideology did plant the seeds of Silver questioning whether what he was doing was right or wrong. Even Blaze, who’s notoriously underutilized in ‘06, sacrifices herself to seal away the flames of Iblis for good.

I feel like the intended reading you’re supposed to have is that, yes, Solaris was terrible and did terrible things, but the Duke of Soleanna and contributors to the Solaris Project were also terrible and attempting to harness powers no mortals should possess, and both sides acted in manners that impacted the wider world in direct and indirect ways. It’s supposed to be a little difficult to work your head around and completely justify in one direction or the other—it’s trolly-problem-esque, in that sense.

So, in conclusion… all of this being said, there is still room to be made and interesting narratives to be constructed around the idea that Solaris was a victim—and personally I agree there’s some sympathy to be felt for the Flame and the experimentation it underwent even with its malevolence—but I feel like the actual narrative presented is much more intentionally nuanced.

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Here’s what it looks like in case anyone wanted to know. Sonic B definitely fits better to my style than Sonic A lmao

So of course directly after I finish that absolute masterpiece of a drawing I actually find out that I do know how to draw Sonic in my style.

Like I took a couple days break after doing the line art for that and I just tried to figure it out again today and it's like my art had a software update.

*sigh*

Oh well at least I can draw him comfortably now 😔

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So of course directly after I finish that absolute masterpiece of a drawing I actually find out that I do know how to draw Sonic in my style.

Like I took a couple days break after doing the line art for that and I just tried to figure it out again today and it's like my art had a software update.

*sigh*

Oh well at least I can draw him comfortably now 😔

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Weee more art :3

Kinda out of my style but only because I can’t figure out a good way to draw Sonic in my style lmao

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Got bored and thought the idea was cool lol

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Finally have my interest in Undertale back so I’ve started working on actual reference sheets.

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Blog Masterpost

My Undertale/UTAU storties⭐️

@underverse-explorer

My Warrior Cats Story

@warriors-btr

My Transformers Prime/RID 2015 AU

@evolutionarytransformers

My Sonic Story/AU⭐️

@sonic-singularity

Some blogs don’t update as often as others because different alters within our system are the creators.

Blogs marked with ‘⭐️’ mean the story on that blog is based of an alter’s source memories.

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Destined Fate

I didn’t realize until I finished it but this was actually somewhat inspired by this

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For me and the 5 other ppl who ship these two

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Little smth I drew up today :3

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A little smth I did for art on the first day of school :D

(Click on the picture for better quality bc Tumblr is just like that lmao)

I didn't color it until now but I had the outline and stuff done the first day

I don't have a ref for the character to the right of Shadowoak yet but her names Troutwish!

She's blind and constantly underminded by her parents and siblings (Sandyheart is her mother). I'll give more info on her on her actual reference lol

As for the Starclan cat watching over them? Well you'll just have to figure that out >:]

(Also congrats if you know where this quote is from, you get a sticker :3 )

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Jackdawcrunch

He’s a skilled warrior within RiverClan, who was mentored by Sandyheart.

He tries his best to be kind, but since he was mentored around Sandyheart he has a bad habit of seeming cold to others.