sprucetrapdoor2 - Tumblr blog

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sonic prime s3 ss

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Fanfiction is becoming people’s primary form of entertainment right now because most media right now is so cheap, bland, recycled, and sponsored by people who love money more than the source material. Fanfiction is written for free by people who genuinely love what they’re writing about. That’s why it’s better. That’s why it’s more satisfying. Fanfiction is a home-cooked meal made for yourself and for your friends. Media today is junky fast food spoiled by too much grease and the knowledge that the people producing it are being criminally mistreated and underpaid. 

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I wanted to capture this wonderful moment from the September 18th Bumblekast

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I love the "ARK siblings" concept and I love cute lighthearted fanart of them being siblings but I feel like a lot of people forget that they literally canonically share a soul and that her death is, in my opinion, I think supposed to represent a part of one's self dying and that they're supposed to be, symbolically, a lot more than siblings.

I always saw Shadow's story as a symbolic way to express the way your inner child and innocence is sacrificed in order to survive complex childhood trauma. Maria's color scheme and the way she's written is, I think, clear to all of us how she's meant to represent innocence and youth. I mean, she doesn't really stand alone well as a fully fledged character or realistic child. I'm not sure if it was purposeful, but the moon's Maria are craters that take the hits of asteroids. They're mostly on the side of the moon we see, and the far side of the moon, or "dark" side is better protected. I feel like this is an extension of Shadow and Maria's symbolism. She took the bullet for him, protecting him, the same way Maria takes the comets, and the same way your brain will kill your inner child (or freeze/rush your mental development) in order to survive intense childhood abuse. I know it all sounds extreme lmao but at the end of the day characters and storytelling are used to explore and express hard emotions and I don't think this randomly tragic character sprung out of nowhere for the Sonic franchise, which, before that point, always had very lighthearted positive characters with no written origins.

There's other things too, like the rushed/suspended mental development in the face of trauma being further illustrated by Shadow being forced into a dormant cyro slumber right after Maria's death, symbolizing the way he had to basically skip childhood or hit pause on development until he could escape the people controlling him. Much like how victims will have to pause everything and go on autopilot with only a goal of survival until they can escape their situation, only after they feel safe can they begin growing as a person and find their identity. In the Japanese language, there are different types of pronouns people can refer to themselves with instead of just "I" or "myself." In the Japanese dub of SA2, Shadow's creator said in an interview that he had been very insistent on Shadow using the pronouns reserved for young boys, despite Shadow's menacing villain role in the game, because he felt it was important to show Shadow's purity and his lack of experience in life so far.

And then in his self titled game, Shadow is searching for a way to reconnect with his past and to find the truth about this Maria person he keeps seeing in flashbacks, but in the end he throws away her picture and accepts himself as he is now, forever changed and stained by his past, but more than just a product of his situation. He is "all of him," including the negative impact he never asked for, and including the parts of himself he lost, but also the parts of himself he chose to become. Your environment and childhood shapes you even if you didn't want it to. He will never be the person he used to be, or could have been, (represented by Maria as a pure and untouched youth), but he still has a say in what that grows into.

I just feel like a lot of Shadow's identity issues and inner conflict stem from this whole soul sharing situation with Maria and that his character ends up inevitably being misunderstood if you water them down to just siblings. Especially considering, that it was never answered if Shadow actually even ever met Maria or if they're just memories planted by Gerald or caused by the shared soul.

I also think its what makes Shadow's character so substantial and meaningful. His self titled game's entire theme was purity, morals, what is good and bad. This question of purity and morality spreads into his appearances in other stories too like Sonic battle and the IDW comics. Its this question that, if you were badly hurt in your youth and shaped by evil- does that leave you impure? Stained? Destined to continue that cycle of harm? I think these insecurities feel very real and relatable, and that it's even more realistic that despite these insecurities, that hurt and damage actually fuels him to protect others. Just as he said in Sonic Battle, "There's no need to repeat past tragedies! Nobody else ever needs to go through the things that I have!"

Statistically (despite media portrayal) abuse victims RARELY become abusers, because they understand the pain on a deeper level and can't bring themselves to force someone else into experiencing that same pain, knowing the permanent damage it causes. However, childhood abuse leaves people socially stunted and conditioned to harshness, which causes them to accidentally hurt others without meaning to. Or they end up hurting people out of desperation if they feel endangered (like Shadow's "means to an end" approach where he'll prioritize violence if it means reducing the end-impact). I think Shadow conveys all of this so well, and that Maria's true role is an integral part of it all that can't be ignored or misunderstood, or else Shadow ends up reading as unnecessarily violent or overly obsessed with a girl he knew for a brief handful of years.

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happy 8th birthday :)

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I have a new favourite batshit rail idea

Please build it for the funny please please please

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thought about this, made meme

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he mocks him

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ive been finding myself deeper in sonic stuff (its your fault /j) and discovered the twitter takeover stuff and i want to ask. do you also feel that it is incredibly inaccurate to insist that any sonic character but ESPECIALLY of all shadow likes taylor swift

YEAH i'm pretty forgiving of the twitter takeovers because they're mostly just fun little events to promote the sonic twitter, but that was definitely the most egregious "he would not fucking say that" moment of that takeover imo 💀 personally i think the only music shadow listens to is drum&bass that sounds like trillions of metal pipes falling onto concrete and m-flo

i think MAYBE amy would like some tswift, but as soon as she finds out taylor's private jet is responsible for destroying 10% of the ozone layer that hedgehog is going to travel straight to LA and rip the wings off of that thing. anyway my opinion is that amy is really into vocaloid

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sage comics

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they are like little bugs,, i want to study them underneath a microscope,,,,

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Alt styles but sonic characters

Might make more if it gets clout(tee hee)

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past bedtime

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just hanging out :]