#Except sonic ofc

[tails-boogie-board]

Tails' moral code when Sonic is there: :3

Tails' moral code when Sonic leaves for longer than 45 minutes: ;3

[butterscotch-brigade]

does anyone else remember that sonic fanfiction trope from back in the day where amy would just call sonic "sonikku" for no reason. like what was that. why did ppl collectively decide to have her do that

[phantompeaches]

Tumblr exclusive drawing because I have no followers here and don't know how I feel about it. Amy Rose Gijinka ♡ ill redraw it better at some point prommie

[yellowvixen]

Wow I am so bad at video games <3

[donnie-mw]

breaking news:

shoutouts to chariii5 for playing all of the sonic games* before sonic frontiers

[the-daiz]

Arachnophobia | One Punch Man

Synopsis; How One Punch Men would react to you calling them to get rid of a spider in your house.

Characters; Saitama, Genos, Zombieman, speed-o’-sound sonic, Flashy flash, Child emperor(platonic)

Genre; Crack, fluff

A/N: I was just daydreaming abt zombieman cuz I love him so much and thought of this scenario so why not have it with the rest of these guys (and boy)

this can be viewed both platonically and romantically, except child emperor, he’s purely platonic ofc

SAITAMA

When you first call him, and you hesitate a bit while trying to explain you situation since it’s slightly embarrassing for you, he rushes you then gets a bit worried thinking it might be something serious

he then proceeds to say “seriously…?” When you finally tell him why you’re calling: there was a spider in your house and you were too scared to do anything but stand on top of your table, keeping a wary eye out incase the soider tries to approach.

At first he was about to decline and tell you to just squish it with a shoe, or trap it under a cup and throw it out your window, but when he hears the actual fear in your voice, he sighs and puts on his slippers. He’s supposed to save people and stuff after all…

Surprisingly, when Saitama arrives to kill the creature… he sucks at it. It keeps just escaping from him, no matter how fast or strong he was.

Saitama started to grow mad with every passing second, trashing your house as he jumped from spot to spot trying to catch the thing, with you pointing and yelling frantically from your safe-zone on the table.

”IT’S RIGHT THERE, NO- NO- WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU AIMING AT, SAITAMA?! YOU SUCK AT THIS- OH MY- ITS RIGHT THERE, KILL IT!!!” -You “STOP YELLING YOU’RE MAKING ME LOSE FOCUS.” -Saitama

Your house quickly becomes almost like a war-zone with both of you yelling at eachother from the top of your lungs, you out of panic and him out of frustration.

Saitama eventually squishes the spider…. Then an army of tiny spiders erupts from it.

Saitama tries to deal with them quickly, throwing punches at all of them.

when he’s done, he turns to you with a fulfilled expression on his face but deadpans once he catches you lying passed out on the table and foaming at the mouth.

Ofc he takes you to the hospital though.

GENOS

Unlike Saitama, he takes it very seriously when you call him and tell him the predicament you're in.

He doesn’t quite understand the big issue, it's just a bug… but he can detect when someone is in distress, and either way, he would do anything you ask of him.

When he arrives at your home, he’s already gathered enough information on how to safely deal with spiders to take the best approach he can to this.

he grabs a glass container and a piece of paper, proceeds to efficiently trap the spider, and throws it outside.

He does listen to your instructions though and releases it at least a kilometer away from your home.

He then comes back to check on you and gives you a small, almost pitiful, pat on the back.

”Don’t worry about it, you did good.” -Genos, with his very stoic expression

ZOMBIEMAN

MY MUSEEEE I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

Sorry, anyhow, when you call him, your voice is obviously on edge, and you tell him what’s wrong. The first he does is reassure you over the phone, telling you everything will be fine and he’ll be right there.

And as he said, he was right there.

He checks up on you when he first enters the house, then goes to search for the spider.

When he finds it, he ALMOST stomps on it with his shoe out of surprise but quickly remembers how it’ll probably cause a bigger problem, and like genos he uses the good old glass container and paper method and throws it out.

After that, he helps you get down from the table, with his hands firmly holding you from your sides.

If you’re still uneasy even after he gets rid of the spider, he’ll give you a reassuring embrace, with his large build basically consuming you.

He then takes you out somewhere nice to eat.

SPEED-O’-SOUND SONIC

Ahhh, speed of the sounds

Calls you stupid at first, and tells you to just kill it or leave it be, its more scared of you than you are of it.

But not a second later he’s at your door and asking where the spider is.

He REALLY doesn’t get what the big deal is, it’s just a spider. Nonetheless, he doesn’t really question it much and helps out anyway.

He grabs the spider gently with his hands and throws it out the window, then flashes you an unamused look.

Again, he calls you weak but then tells you not to worry so much when you have someone like him around.

FLASHY FLASH

Sassy flash

He’s irked by your call, then hangs up on you

….

He then calls you again not a second later and asks if you’re actually panicking, and when you say yes, suddenly he busts down your door.

He HATES spiders. But that doesn’t mean he can’t deal with them

thanks to a previous encounter he had with the creature, he learned killing them is a bad idea.

So he hesitantly kept trying to get the spider under the damn cup, but every time he did and it would move, he’d dash to the other side of the room instinctively, releasing the spider once more.

It takes him about 10 tries to finally get the spider out of the house.

After making sure that you’re ok, he then tells you to never waste his time on such ridiculous things ever again

he doesn't mean it though, don’t worry, he’d do it again for you

CHILD EMPORER

He is scared of spiders too

Reluctantly he shows up at your house.

He tries to act tough but you can clearly see the sweat running down his face as he uses his robotic equipment to slowly look under the couch for the spider.

When he finally catches it, he screams, prompting you to scream, and blasts the area of the spider with a laser beam.

the both of you stare intently at the area of the blast and let out a sigh simultaneously as the ash clears and the arachnid has been successfully vaporized.

You both give each other a pat on the back for being so brave

Then you offer to take child emperor to a nearby store and get some ice cream together

he happily obliges and you both skip out of the destroyed apartment with your hands intertwined.

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

What was up with Chris Thorndyke, anyway?

I think it’s safe to say that Chris Thorndyke is one of the most hated characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, which is... a bit odd, when you think about it. In a world of Ken Penders’s Daddy Issues Personified and Octopus Who Kills Children For Fun (the latter of which basically being a fandom sexyman), why is a twelve-year-old boy so polarizing?

It would be easy to chalk this up to the bad 4kidz dub, but I don’t quite think that’s it. A lot of the complaints I’ve heard can go to “he got the main character slot in Sonic’s show” or “I just don’t like the human characters,” which are valid, but pale in comparison to basically all I’ve seen being: “He’s just annoying,” “I can’t fucking stand him,” etc. That’s basically all I hear, and when asking why, it usually boils down to two things: 1) his extreme attachment to Sonic and 2) his status as a rich white american only child basically puts any and all of his problems at “first world problems” at best. Those also seem like valid reasons, right?

Thing is, while on the surface it seems like this kid has no issues, as a kid with a, how you say, rough childhood, something stuck with me when I watched the show for the first time. I remember sitting through episode after episode, wondering, When does Chris stop being sympathetic and start being annoying? Since, you know, that’s his reputation.

It didn’t happen.

And it slowly became apparent to me that a lot of the things that made Chris “annoying” and “obsessive”... were just obvious symptoms of a traumatized kid.

Join me for my thesis presentation: Chris’s “annoying” traits are not a writing flaw, but an intentional character flaw brought about by severe neglect, which is resolved through his character arc, and why the fandom reaction to him is so furious.

Note: Throughout this meta, we will only be looking over the Japanese version of Sonic X, as it’s the original script and 4kidz did not translate it accurately. So if you see some lines you don’t remember being said, those are from the English subtitles/direct translation.

Once again, it is possible (also likely, we’ll discuss that a bit) that the kidification and cuts to Sonic X did a number on Chris’s likability, but for most of the meta we’ll be discussing his Japanese characterization with only a few references to cut scenes or lines in the dub.

Part I: First Impressions

On the surface, Chris seems like not just a normal kid, but a very privileged one. He goes to regular school with regular friends, but also goes home to a mansion and millions of dollars. His parents dote on him, his grandfather has fun with him, the two servants treat him like their own kid. He should have no problems, right?

Except, honestly, the issues become apparent in Episode One.

You may be saying here, “What do you mean, episode one? The second episode is when Chris gets all his characterization and exposition.”

Except we get all this visually in the final scene of the episode. (I PROMISE the whole essay won’t be this analytic over small scenes but this is important.)

Before Chris rescues Sonic, kickstarting his part in the plot, we see him hear Sonic fall, peer out the window, and then run out to get him.

Firstly, the shots of his room. His room is huge– and we’ll come back to that detail later, so keep it in mind– but it’s also dark. Which tracks ofc, it’s nighttime and the kid’s asleep, but there’s also a lit desk light, which we see when Chris goes to the window. This together gives the audience the visual impression that Chris is in the dark, with the light only coming when he opens that window and sees Sonic.

Let’s get into the bigness of the house here, as Chris runs out of the room. In every shot we see him running, it’s emphasized how small he is. No, not only how small he is, but how empty the rest of the house is.

First the shot in the hall. There’s minimal lighting from a few wall lamps, the rest of the hallway is incredibly dark. Chris is shorter than the height of the lamps on the wall, his positioning keeps him small in the frame despite him running closer. He’s also centered in the hall, and when you look to the walls you can see several doors, implying several rooms, but only Chris is in the hall.

Then the stairwell– once again incredibly dark, but we see more of the grandiose nature of the house. A painting taller than Chris, a Grandfather Clock maybe twice his height. He also runs down the stairs with the railing up to his shoulder. It’s all finely detailed, which of course reflects the Thorndyke luxury they live in. But it’s still dark, and Chris is still so small.

A shot of him running across the floor. It’s shot from above, and we see that the tiles on the floor are bigger than his whole body. This shot is even darker than the rest, only a few lights reflecting on the ground. The above-shot also shows a ceiling fan in front of us, which makes it look bigger than it is, also dwarfing Chris in the shot.

There’s a shot after that of Chris running to the pool– it is actually near-impossible to see him here, but if you look he runs off the back porch. Once again the world is huge, everything around him is huge, and everything is dark, except the pools. The pools where Sonic is, not that he knows that yet.

The pool still remains brightly lit as Chris dives in and saves Sonic. The first shot we see is him diving in, and then grabbing onto Sonic’s wrist. This is repeated multiple times later in the show as they reach for each other’s hands. It’s not only the first time we see this kid make contact with someone in the show, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time we see Sonic. In the first bit of the episode he’s only hitting robots, in the second bit he’s fleeing from everyone who comes near him. This first contact thus subconsciously establishes itself in the audience’s minds as important for both of them.

We finally see Chris clearly after he pulls Sonic out, where the two of them are lit by the pool’s light. Despite the long shadows coming off of them, they are both fully visible and sitting amongst the lit tiles, meaning Chris is now in the light.

This opening scene also establishes something important about Chris as well, and that’s that he’s... not a rich asshole. This kid woke up in the middle of the night, and for all intents and purposes saw nothing in the pool– he saw the ripples stilling, but that could’ve been anything. Could’ve been a frog. Could’ve been a bird taking off into the air. Could’ve been a bird shitting. But Chris still investigates anyway and immediately dives in, presumably once he sees something still in there. As he dives in, he also reaches for Sonic instantly, meaning it wasn’t just pure curiosity that drove him forward, but a deep desire to help whatever was in there. Likely he saw it moving and leapt in to save it without a second thought.

It’s established in the next episode that Chris knew full well he was not allowed to do this and it probably wouldn’t be safe; he’s not allowed to go outside at night or swim in the adult pool. Not to mention he’s also probably still half-asleep and wearing pajamas. Without hesitation he jumps in anyway because there’s something that needs his help. When he pulls Sonic out, he can clearly see this is a weird fucked-up thing he doesn’t recognize, but without even reacting to that fact he just asks if he’s okay. He only starts showing his surprise when Sonic begins talking. Even then there’s no screaming, he just introduces himself politely and then. Takes Sonic inside.

The next episode opens already in the next morning, and with Sonic still there we can assume Chris just hid him for the rest of the night without telling the other adults in the house. After Sonic mentioned people chasing him, Chris probably figured it wasn’t safe to tell anyone and took it upon his 12yo self to make sure this little guy didn’t get spotted.

Which, if it weren’t for Sonic’s impulsiveness, would’ve been incredibly easy.

The second episode opens with another panning shot of the huge mansion, with a voice overlay from Lindsey. The first thing we hear from Chris’s mother is that she’s sorry, but she won’t come home til “next week.” But she’ll send him a ton of gifts, so it’s okay!

Our next interesting shot is as she continues talking, and we see a ton of family photos tacked onto the wall. This immediately gives the impression of, of course, a family that really loves each other. It then immediately pans to Chris, alone on the balcony, talking minimally into a phone.

Chris then has another character beat of apologizing for diving in the pool. It seems like if he hadn’t mentioned it, nobody would’ve known, but he does anyway because he’s just like. A good little kid. Either that or it’s anything to keep his mom on the line longer.

Another thing to note is that Tanaka briefly enters during this scene, but doesn’t even look at Chris as he drops his food off and leaves.

When she hangs up, we hear a little kissing noise, and then Chris kisses the phone receiver and rubs the back of his head. His expression doesn’t seem embarrassed, though, especially as he didn’t notice Sonic staring at him until the next shot. He looks perhaps relieved, a soft kind of happy, perhaps at the compliment she gave him immediately before her abrupt goodbye.

Sonic then asks why Chris referred to him as a cat; he doesn’t seem upset, just a little curious. Chris’s reaction is interesting here– the first thing he does is ask if Sonic is mad at him, and then immediately launch into an explanation.

After Sonic seems calm, Chris then curiously asks Sonic where he learned to talk. They’re interrupted by the phone ringing, and Chris seems incredibly confused that it rung. He answers almost robotically, and immediately grows excited upon hearing it’s his dad, though his voice still indicates surprise. You can really hear it in the line delivery of his og actress, Sanae Kobayashi.

Chris continues smiling blankly as his Dad talks about how his mom told him that a cat got into the estate and maybe he should update security. Chris swiftly assures him that it’s okay, and then says, “But more importantly, you’re very busy, aren’t you?”

Basically he already knows that this conversation will be less than a minute long, but he’s still smiling until his dad’s already hung up.

The rest of the scene plays out as Chris googles what hedgehogs eat, tries to feed Sonic cat food, and then rightfully freaks out when Sonic leaves to get a chili dog, considering he’s a fugitive. And while his face and mannerisms at the end of the scene does effectively display this worry, they really do hold on that shot for a while as he fades back into a sadder expression.

These scenes both serve as introductory scenes to Chris, and both visually and through dialogue, we have established:

Chris is constantly alone.

His world is dark until he finds Sonic.

He has a kind personality and doesn’t seem to be at all jaded or spoiled by his privileged upbringing.

His parents love him but are so absent that he doesn’t even bat an eye at the fact he won’t see his mom for a week. He is surprised when his Dad calls but immediately puts his work before his own well being.

He’s relatively calm, but only freaks out when he thinks Sonic might be mad at him, and when Sonic leaves.

I’d love to do a fucking scene-for-scene analysis of the entire show, but we’d be here for like twenty years so instead let’s uh. jump ahead a bit.

We slowly unravel Chris’s backstory and mental state throughout the first two seasons, in a slow way that I think is very effective and won’t be effective enough through this essay, but I’m gonna try my best.

Anyway, let’s jump ahead and cover his whole... thing.

Part II: The Backstory Scene that 4kidz Cut

The youngest we ever see Chris is in the season two penultimate episode. There’s a flashback to him as what seems to be a toddler, or just out of toddlerhood. This scene, right here, was cut in the English dub for... no real reason I can think of. In fact, it just makes Chris look less sympathetic.

The first shot we get is of Chris and his parents. Much like the Chris’s first scene, he is tiny, even tinier. But unlike that scene, everything is bright. It’s blinding, actually, as the doors are open and Chris’s parents stand in front of it. This is obviously from baby Chris’s perspective, representing his emotional state. With those doors open and his parents in front of him, he is covered in light. Covered.

His parents are quite formal in their parting words. “We’re leaving now,” his dad says. His mom then says, “I’m sorry, Chris. Make sure you behave until we return.”

Once again, I mentioned that this scene is from baby Chris’s perspective, so maybe they weren’t as formal when this actually happened. But that’s how it came across to Chris.

Sidenote, but honestly? Considering his age, this could very well be one of his earliest memories.

Little Chris says, “If I behave, will you come home right away?” While of course operating on little kid logic, this also reflects on how much he loves his family again, as all he wants is for his parents to be home with him.

His parents look at each other, confused on how to answer. They then give the worst answer– “Of course.” We see how happy this makes him, but it’s only a temporary happiness. They’ve just made a promise they cannot keep and they know it, and at baby Chris’s age, he will NOT understand that.

When they turn to leave, Chris’s face falls. They once again have a formal goodbye, and as they leave, the doors shut, and the light is gone, and he stands there for again a long time. I don’t think I need to explain what this symbolizes.

The next shot, we see Chris is reading a picture book by himself on the couch. Once again a small little guy in a big world; the book also seems to be The Little Matchgirl, which... oof. The story is about how a lonely orphan dreams about having a family as she slowly freezes to death, in case you weren’t aware. The two shots we see from the book are first of her freezing, and then of her looking in a window and imagining a family. As Chris reads this, he repeats that if he behaves, his parents will come home.

He then hears the door about to open and immediately leaps up and smiles widely.

It’s not his parents, it’s Ella, but she has presents from his parents!

Despite being a little kid who would normally be ecstatic at the prospect of new toys, Chris just looks numb as she speaks.

He takes no joy in the toy either, because his parents aren’t there with it.

So. I have worked at a daycare and as a babysitter for about... seven years now. Kids? They have separation anxiety. They will sob and scream and shout and kick and run if their mom is out of their sight. I recently babysat a kid who learned how to unlock the door so he could try and run after his parents which was terrifying for me tbh.

Chris’s reaction of just immediately falling into a numb depression isn’t something I saw in the kids I watched. At this age, they cry at the very least. Chris doesn’t even do that, he’s just staring. We get one voiceover at the end of this scene, as Chris just says, “It never came true.” Obviously referring to the promise– he behaved, and his parents still stayed away.

What impression does this give a kid that age? One of two things, if not both at once:

I am not behaving enough and I need to behave perfectly.

Mom and Dad don’t care enough to come home.

From knowing Lindsey and Nelson, we know this is not true. They’re busy, and they hope to show their love through gifts. But Chris’s love language is very much not gifts, it’s quality time. And he doesn’t. Get that.

From anyone.

Part III: Chris’s Abandonment Issues

As I’ve made it clear, Chris’s parents are never around. He doesn’t bat an eye at his mother saying she’ll be gone another week, and is surprised that his Dad even bothered to call. We saw all those family photos, but looking at them again, how many of them were taken at the same time, one of the few times his parents were home? How many is Chris standing stiffly, properly, instead of relaxing like a kid?

Another line from episode six really drives his home, one I think a lot of people miss.

Upon being told his parents are coming home, Chris remarks that it has been months since he’s seen them. Months.

Later in the episode, Chuck remarks on how it’s a miracle to see them both at the house at the same time. They laugh this off, and spend the rest of the episode anxiously waiting for Chris to get home because, yeah, they do care. When Chris gets home he immediately calls for them and gets tackle-hugged. As they do, he stiffens upon the physical contact, and looks awkward the whole time, like he’s not used to physical affection.

He’s then later surprised to hear his parents were worried he was late.

The next episode, Chris’s dad has already left by the next morning. When he hears his mom has unexpectedly left, he is upset, but not surprised; he immediately resigns himself to this and sighs before leaning back on the couch.

When he brings this up to his uncle, Sam immediately remarks that his sister is never home.

This is where Cream breaks, because she has seen Lindsey herself break down over not being there for Chris. Chris has not seen that. All he knows is that his mother was there and then was gone, despite their elaborate dinner plan, despite knowing he was bringing a guest to meet her.

Once again, he’s not surprised. Neither is Sam.

Similar with his Dad; in the previous episode, when they were worried, Nelson implies that he has a guard service making sure Chris doesn’t get abducted. They’re two seconds away from calling the US Military to find him. But they stop short of going after him, because they don’t want him to think they’re being overbearing.

We’ve firmly established this by now, okay? His parents are never home and haven’t been since he was, what? Three? Four, tops.

Nobody else was really there, either.

Ella and Tanaka seem to have done most of Chris’s raising. And while Ella and Tanaka are amazing, and definitely care a lot about Chris, it doesn’t change the fact that they are paid employees and Chris knows this. They’re paid to hang out with him. If they weren’t getting paid, Chris has no idea if they would even give a shit about him. Even with that, there’s not a ton of evidence they like. hung out with him outside of making sure he was alright. As mentioned, in the second episode Tanaka doesn’t even look at him as he delivers food. Not for lack of care, but probably because they’re busy as only two servants in a huge estate. This isn’t their kid, too, they’re under no obligation to raise him. Ella is the cook and Tanaka is the butler-bodyguard, they’re not childcare experts.

What about his grandpa? Sorry to break this to you but Chuck wasn’t around, either.

In episode 51, which we’re gonna keep coming back to as it’s the culmination of Chris’s arc, Chuck says this while reprimanding Nelson and Lindsey. He says, “I never blamed you for neglecting your household because you were too busy with work. That’s because I also did whatever I wanted and continued my research.”

Back to the second episode, when we first see Chuck, you notice on the second watch that Chris 1) doesn’t trust his grandpa enough to tell him that he’s hiding a fugitive in their house, 2) didn’t seem to expect him (or ANYONE) to walk in on them in the LIVING ROOM, 3) seems to not know a ton about his personality. He’s surprised when his grandpa closes the door on Sonic, and surprised that he’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie. It seems that instead of spending time with his grandson, Chuck spent most of his time in his shed tinkering with machines.

His uncle? Seems to visit on occasion, but has a government job. You know he’s never around, either.

So Chris is growing up in a huge house, which is serving to give him a constant reminder that nobody’s home. There are two servants going around working and sometimes saying hi to him, there’s a grandpa in the shed somewhere who might come in once or twice to watch TV, and there’s photos on the wall of parents who aren’t home. He’s like that for at least eight years.

OH, and let’s talk about the friends argument which I’ve confusingly seen. He’s got two friends at school. His parents seem to recognize Danny’s name, so Danny might have been a longtime friend, or at least friend he talked about before. But Danny and Frances, being barely in any episodes, we can assume they also have their own lives and things going on and thus don’t, like, hang out with Chris after school a lot. He uses Danny as an excuse for being late in ep6, but the fact that nobody seemed to expect him to be late implies this is not a usual thing. And of course it is ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY not on the shoulders of these other 12yos to emotionally support another kid, but it’s not like they’re immediately moving into his house and giving him attention 24/7. They’re friends. Which is all they need to be. But for a neglected child like Chris, they’re just another part of his life that comes and goes. Him having two buddies at school that he shares a table with (thus probably just. friends by proximity) doesn’t negate the neglect.

Looking at the photos on the wall again, there’s one photo of Chris with some kind of sports team, probably baseball. Considering how bad Chris played in the baseball episode, he probably didn’t stay there long, and considering we never see anyone even resembling the kids in that pic, we can assume they didn’t stay long-lasting friends. The other photos, they’re dressed in suits, like they’re taking professional photos. Once again stilted, stiff.

But I hear y’all on twitter now. “Oh, boo-hoo, his parents weren’t around. He was still living fancy, it’s fine.”

So let’s talk about the effects of emotional neglect on the childhood psyche.

Part IV: Connie Read Actual Research Papers and Scholarly Articles For This Instead of Doing Actual Work

So, here’s something that’s been seen recurrently in neglected children: kids are psychologically dependent on parents or caregivers throughout their whole childhood and adolescence.

From New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research by the Committee on Child Maltreatment Research, “Children who have experienced abuse and neglect are therefor at increased risk for a number of problematic developmental, health, and mental health outcomes, including learning problems, problems relating to peers, externalizing symptoms [aggression or conduct disorder], and posttraumatic stress disorder. As adults, these children continue to show increased risk for psychiatric disorders, substance use, serious medical illnesses, and lower economic productivity.”

Let’s talk mainly about the mental health outcomes. Without a present caregiver, neglected children often fall behind on the abilities to regulate behavior or emotions. Several parts of the brain will end up altered due to early childhood neglect, including the stress response system, the emotion processing and regulation system, the learning and memory system, etc.

The stress response system is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortial axis, aka the HPA. The HPA is incredibly sensitive to early childhood experiences and an uncertain childhood can effect a lot of things, such as sleep patterns and hyperactivity. Abused children will often have higher spikes of cortisol, a high enough number of which can cause damage to the brain and premature aging.

The behavioral regulation is also most commonly affected in these victims; neglected children will often show “behavioral and emotional difficulties that are consistent with effects on the amygdala, such as internalizing problems, heightened anxiety, and emotional reactivity, and deficits in emotional processing.”

Other mental health issues are also seen; children with trauma experiences will show similar mental patterns as those with ADHD, and can have serious issues with inhibitory control– aka, controlling your impulses.

Then there’s the corpus callosum. (Insert SnapCube dub joke here.) The corpus callosum manages communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. Several studies have found that abused children have a much smaller corpus callosum than non-abused children, even those who are mentally ill; these effects are also more pronounced in boys than girls, which is relevant to our analysis of a 12yo anime boy from 2003. This means that their brain development will often be behind that of their peers, and it could take a while for them to mature.

That was long and boring Connie. Give us the tldr.

Okay don’t worry, the article got to that right about now. Children dealing with neglect will show several issues related to the interrupted development of these parts of their brain, including:

Extreme Deficits in Executive Functioning

Difficulty in regulating attention: As a note on this, 18.6% of abused and neglected teens are diagnosed with ADHD. Compared to 5% of other children. That’s like three times the amount!

And, most interestingly, the behavioral outcomes:

Difficulty forming trusting attachments to caregivers

Both Disorganized and Insecure Attachment Issues, usually getting severe Attachment Disorders

Reactive Attachment Disorder: Inhibited or emotionally withdrawn behavior, rarely seeking or responding to comfort

Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder: Basically the opposite; it’s marked by a pattern of overly familiar behavior with strangers.

Emotion Regulation: infants learn how to deal with distress via their parents– how their caregivers handle stress, how they take care of problems and slowly introduce the ability to deal with them. Without that, abused and neglected children will often fail to develop effective strategies for regulating emotions. This will probably cause a lot of the following.

This also includes recognizing emotions in others. While abused children will identify anger quickly, neglected children tend to be worse than non-neglected children at identifying any facial expressions.

Their emotional issues can also cause them to feel isolated from their peers, as their peers do not understand them and do not act like them.

Anxiety

Depression– nearly a 3x chance compared to non-neglected kids

Dissociation

Conduct Disorder

PTSD

Physical issues include stunted growth and motor development, and lower health.

Note that these do not appear in all victims of neglect, these are just common symptoms.

Part V: Every “Annoying” Thing Chris Does is a Fucking Symptom

Difficulty forming attachments to Caregivers

In episode 43, Chris deals with a situation that’s obviously alien to him: his parents coming home to care about him.

His parents hear that he’s sick and drop everything to come home. This is clearly something that’s unusual, judging from both Chris’s and his grandpa’s reactions to it. Chris is confused and embarrassed, kinda numb and still, until his grandfather and father start arguing. Even then, he only reacts when they bring up Sonic.

He then yells that he hates his family and orders them to leave him alone. This doesn’t last long as they’re immediately attacked by more badniks, but it’s a beat they definitely put in there intentionally.

Also, he doesn’t seem to trust Chuck as an authority either. He really just sees him as an impulsive adrenaline junkie at best; in the cruise ship episode, Chuck is drunk the whole time and Chris doesn’t seem to care. It also says something that while Ella and Tanaka are present, he doesn’t trust them to tell them they might be finding an alien in the attic until they find out for themselves.

Difficulty Understanding Others’ Emotions

This one’s gonna be easy, as I talked about it earlier in the essay. When Sonic asks, “Was the cat supposed to be me?” Chris immediately assumes he’s upset and tries to placate him with an explanation. This happens throughout the show as well; let’s take Mr. Stewart for example, that man is obviously spying on him and inserting himself into his life and Chris thinks it’s maybe a little weird, not that much though. He also spends most of his time hanging out with Shadow standing there in complete obliviousness as to what Shadow is thinking or feeling. He doesn’t even seem to really register Shadow as a threat, instead throwing himself at him in hopes that he can convince him to help Sonic. In doing so, he also doesn’t think that Tanaka would at all be worried about him, and is surprised at their reunion that Tanaka was upset.

Aggression / Delinquincy

This was very underplayed, but in the Sonic Battle arc, we literally see him start to rebel. He tells Sonic that he’s sick of being the perfect rich kid, that he wants to be a problem on purpose sometimes. Sonic seems to completely understand that, as that’s a point Chris needs to reach. He has to realize he cannot be perfect and that’s okay.

[except that dialogue was all cut in the 4kidz version no im not bitter]

Only Chris explores his imperfection in a really bad way.

And now. Let’s get into the attachment.

And to do that, we need to get into...

Part VI: What Sonic Represents

This is a fascinating part of Chris’s psyche since I think it occurs both subconsciously and consciously, but when I drew attention to Sonic bringing the light back into Chris’s life? Yeah, that’s cause he did.

Everything changed only after Sonic arrived. Suddenly Chris’s parents are... visiting??? For once??? TOGETHER??? His grandfather wants to spend time with him! His friends at school are hanging out with him more and he’s even made new friends! And most importantly, he has the mobians around him constantly. He’s got constant attention from all of them, and while he quickly takes on the figure of the Responsible One, he’s still WITH PEOPLE. He’s gone from being alone all the time to surrounded by a rowdy-ass found family.

Most of all is Sonic. Chris seems to have attached himself mainly to Sonic, likely because in his mind Sonic represents the moment when everything changed. Of course, Sonic would probably have been the worst of the gang to get attached to, seeing as he runs off all the time. The first several episodes, even after they stop hiding from the public, Chris is noticeably upset whenever Sonic leaves. He only calms down after several, several episodes, after assurances from every character that this is just a thing Sonic does, he never sticks around anyway, don’t worry about it.

But still, he definitely attaches himself to this hedgehog for better or for worse.

And it gets worse.

Part VII: Even More Trauma

First we gotta talk about the end of Season One.

At the beginning of the arc, Chris is noticeably... incredibly depressed. He’s also disassociating hardcore. He’s constantly staring into nothing, his face upset, but as soon as someone snaps him back to reality, he forces a smile on his face, acting happy despite going through a ton of negative emotions at once. Almost like he’s trying to behave perfectly.

Chris realizes throughout the episode the attachment he’s gotten to the mobians, and especially Sonic, but even then he still does his best to help them. He steals a chaos emerald and runs off to Eggman in order to get them home, because it will make them happy! Nevermind if it doesn’t make Chris happy. He’s never worried about that anyway.

Of course this backfires and Eggman kidnaps him, and then Chris has to go through the serious trauma of. Well. Being strapped to a wall, forced to watch helplessly as Sonic fucking dies.

And he’s blaming himself for it too.

MAJOR shoutout to Kobayashi’s acting in this scene, holy crap. But he just screams, and then... BREAKS THROUGH METAL?? And GRABS the Chaos Emeralds despite them ELECTRIC SHOCKING HIM???

And then of course we get this incredibly subtle dialogue.

"I will not let you have it. I will not let anyone have it. They’re only mine. Only me. Sonic... Sonic, you’re staying with me forever.”

Immediately after this, Chris almost fucking dies, and is only saved by Super Sonic. When he sees Super Sonic, he reacts by... begging. He drops down, clinging to Sonic and screaming and crying that he is nothing without Sonic.

Chris literally yells that he can’t do anything without Sonic, because that’s how he felt before Sonic. He could not do anything to get anyone to care about him, it only happened when Sonic arrived. So that’s how he sees himself: useless, worthless.

Sonic of course stays, but then dips for six months. When he gets back, a fucking god attacks Chris’s neighborhood, destroying his city. He gets sent away for a month, but that’s interrupted by Sonic being declared a fugitive from the government. Then Chris ends up with Shadow. He gets kidnapped by the goth clone of his emotional support hedgehog. He bonds with the goth clone. He gets the shit beaten out of him begging the goth clone to help save the world. It works, and Shadow runs off to save the planet. And then DIES.

You can tell how traumatized Chris is by this in the next episode. He’s disassociating again, staring at nothing, and eventually asks his uncle if he thinks they can actually live in the same world.

Which is followed by...

Part VIII: The Season Two Finale

We get the rather worrying scene of Chris having to write an essay for his school about his ideal future. Literally all he can think of is that he wants to stay with Sonic forever. He has no other ideals for the future. Just being attached to Sonic.

Only to go downstairs and find out that Sonic HAS to leave. They ALL have to leave. Their dimensions are caving in on themselves and they need to separate.

So he enters the Denial stage of grief.

He seems... dazed. Like he’s in a trance, as he argues that Sonic can’t leave, that all he wants to do is be with Sonic, that he can’t be apart from Sonic because he’s only been able to do things since Sonic got here. This was the first time he’s had agency in his life and he places it all on Sonic.

He decides that it must be Eggman’s fault and literally tracks him down. When he finds out that it’s not Eggman’s fault, he is distraught, and what’s interesting to me is that Eggman seems to get it. He just tells his robots to let him go. Let him be alone. Let him accept it.

Chris then falls back into the depression/disassociation during the entire farewell. He doesn’t emote, he just stares ahead. Something they cut in the English version is that while Chris is politely saying goodbye, throughout the whole scene you can hear his inner monologue screaming. Crying not to let them leave.

So he doesn’t.

The penultimate episode of Season Two is the culmination of Chris’s arc and they do it so beautifully.

Sonic knows Chris is going through a breakdown, and he lets him figure it out for himself. He lets him run off with him, he lets him make the decisions about where they go. Chris starts to realize this but says nothing. They see his tearful parents on TV begging him to come home and he... groans and leaves.

The episode also subtley shows Chris doing things himself. Climbing up the mountain, picking their roads. Sonic is slowly trying to let Chris know he has his own agency. That he is his own person.

They get to the campsite that meant a lot to Chris in his childhood, one of the only times that his parents hung out with him, and he breaks. Asks Sonic why he doesn’t hate him. Why he hangs out with him. If he only hangs out with him out of obligation.

And he comes to the conclusion himself that no, he can’t keep Sonic here. He can’t keep Sonic away from his world just because he has attachment issues. It was what he knew was right in Season One but couldn’t get himself to understand no matter how hard he tried. But now he gets it. And now he can let Sonic go.

The episode is soooo good, sooo fucking good. And then in the season finale, when we see the aftermath of that, when Sonic takes him on one last run and... he sees Sonic crying? Realizes that Sonic does love him and still lets him go? It’s impactful. It’s emotional.

Then when his parents come get him and he just smiles? Because he realizes they did come for him? That if Sonic can love him without obligation, maybe other people do too?

Chris’s severe attachment issues and trauma from being neglected culminated in this episode, and he made a bad choice. And then he made the right one. And that’s so good.

Part IX: Some Season Three Notes

Chris’s inclusion in the third season was... weird. It felt like they didn’t want to animate his adult model so they shoved him into a child body and made an excuse for it. But honestly, after traveling there, you can kinda... tell how much Chris has grown.

He was trying to get back to Sonic, but not because he needed him, but because they were friends. He and his friends wanted to see their friends again. He only went alone because he had a sense Sonic was in danger. And even in the twelve-year-old body, he’s an adult now and he acts like it. His only real emotional issue is that he is upset he can’t fight as well in his kid body, but then he figures out he can be useful with his inventions and finds a place with Tails. He’s basically parenting the rest of them for the rest of the season, telling Cosmo that her impulsiveness reminds him of his younger self. He offers to give up a way to return home because he knows the Metarex problem is bigger than himself.

At the end, when Eggman offers him a way home, you can tell they expected him to freak out about it. They’re shocked when he just says thank you, cries, and leaves immediately. They clearly not only will miss him, but they expected him to freak out like he did at the age of twelve. But he’s not twelve anymore. He’s spent the last six years surrounded by people who love him, healing from his trauma, and becoming his own person. So now he isn’t unhealthily attached to Sonic, and he can say goodbye if he has to. That growth, so subtly in the background of the season, really impressed me.

Part X: Fandom Reaction

On June 24 2022, I posted this meme to both twitter and tumblr.

On tumblr I got no pushback and a few agreements. On twitter I got a tidal wave of discourse, which tells you a lot about the two sites but regardless, this is the first time I get to ratio my commenters cause as of today, it has 23.4k likes and only 161 replies and 156 quote tweets. So that’s barely over 300 people (TOPS, considering several replies were positive) arguing against 23,400. So I may not be the only one thinking this!

But even still, with this being my most viral post atm, I got so many people bitching about Chris still. Even after all these years, he’s despised for being so annoying. And what is it? Is it really the fact that he got main charactered over Sonic? Really, I thought that was a plus of the show, that Sonic was a static figure that influenced what was around him. It doesn’t work for every Sonic property, but it did for this one. Was it just a hatred for humans in the franchise? Probably not, everyone loved Helen and the recent movies.

I really do think a vast majority of it is his realistic reaction to the trauma of neglect. “Ugly” trauma symptoms, like attachment issues, impulsive destructive behavior, aggressiveness, and selfishness, they are not looked upon kindly. Just look at how TikTok picks and chooses cute parts of mental illnesses and calls the rest “toxic.” And yes, sometimes mental illness can cause you to be toxic! And sometimes you’re just mentally ill! Sometimes you just have bad days and bad decisions and horrible mental states, and sometimes, life gets better. Sometimes life gets better and you begin to heal, and that’s what Chris’s arc was about, about him slowly gaining his own agency and starting to heal from his abandonment trauma. And he does this through the help of others. But with him having several moments where he reverts, several moments where his healing is non-linear, viewers see it as an annoying personality trait, not a trauma symptom he is trying to overcome. And one that he does. I cannot emphasize enough that he does overcome this and that the narrative specifically focuses on it. I’ve seen so many people say it was a writing flaw, that they never criticized Chris for his attachment to Sonic... it’s the focus of two season finales, what are you talking about? I think at that point, it’s just you.

Just think about why you find him annoying. You do not have to like Chris as a character but please recognize that his arc is a realistic portrayal of a neglected child and that’s why he is the way he is.

Part XI: Conclusion

I was gonna write a full-ass conclusion here but tumblr’s already trying to kill me over wordcount so uh. tl;dr Chris isn’t annoying he’s a traumatized child and this is something the narrative notices, examines, and resolves. What this means is that it’s not a writing problem, it’s a character flaw brought on by trauma that his character arc makes him heal from.

Leave him alone.

[max-nico]

Shadow and Sonic or Shadow and Tails headcanons? 💞

Hell yeah, I am all over this ask. They are. My favorite guys ever. Here are some Shadow and Tails headcanons for youuuu

Tails and Shadow, my beloveds

No one expects Tails and Shadow to get close, but once they give it a bit of thought it actually makes a lot of sense

I mean they're both these mechanic loving introverts with somewhat mysterious pasts so it checks out

Definitely think Tails was afraid of Shadow in the beginning so it took a long time for them to actually become friends, but once they do they're inseparable

They're the type of friends to split off from the main friend group during group events and show up three hours later with no warning

I think Shadow treats Tails older than how Sonic treats him. I think Shadow would be more willing to leave Tails alone during missions, and it makes Tails feel like he's trusted. It takes so much of the burden of needing to prove himself off his shoulders

Sonic trusts Tails with his life ofc, and Tails knows that, but with Sonic being so.... Over protective it's hard to believe it sometimes. It's different with Shadow, he has an easier time showing trust in a way Tails understands

If Tails needs a second pair of eyes to look at an invention he's probably calling Shadow, one of the only easily accessible people he knows who likes machinery as much as him

You can pry Shadow being a Car Guy(tm) out of my cold dead hands

I think Shadow and Tails are more prone to arguing than Sonic and Tails, mostly because they're arguing about Sonic lol

Whether it's Shadow saying Sonic's annoying and Tails brother instincts kicking in to defend him, because nobody can make fun of his brother except him, or Shadow scolding Tails for his martyr tendencies that he very obviously got from his older brother

I can definitely imagine Shadow and Tails being close and seeing some of the trauma that Tails has been through, Shadow lashes out in this like... Protective anger and calling Sonic anywhere between a mediocre to a bad older brother and Tails just not having it

Otherwise, those two are best friendlies forever and ever. They just have a few differences in who they think is worth hanging around lol

Unfortunately for Tails it is just as hard to get a genuinely emotionally vulnerable conversation out of Shadow as it is with Sonic, fortunately though he's not willing to initiate them either, Shadow still frets when Tails gets hurt tho... Just in a much less hovering way and a more brooding "uncaring" way lol

If this keeps up nobody is ever going to teach that kid any emotional competence =(

Shadow encourages weapons of mass destruction but only if he gets to field test them, and if Tails please stops making all his inventions such garish colors

Everyone takes delight in watching one of the babies of the group try and imitate the brooding mess that is Shadow the Hedgehog. Fully believe if Tails has an emo phase it's entirely Shadows fault

[honoviadakai]

Rating the Hazbin crew based on how much I trust them to drive me places 🚗 😈

(This idea comes from @not-just-another-hazbin don’t think I didn’t see your reblog my friend, it’s been making me cackle for a week now 🤣)

Charlie 🏨🎶:

8/10

Oh this is the SAFEST person you could get in a car with

Although

9 times out of 10, she’s probably not the one driving

It would be Razzle and Dazzle

That being said

When she DOES drive, you’re guaranteed to get from point A to point B in one piece

She’s a little too safe though….

She follows all traffic laws to the letter

And that wouldn’t borne a problem…if you guys weren’t in hell

Traffic laws in hell are a suggestion more than anything else

So more often then not, people are yelling slurs and insults at you two

Also, she’s lowkey a s low driver

She refuses to go above 30mph unless absolutely necessary

And that’s usually never with her

So if you have an appointment at 4pm and she’s the one driving you

No you don’t

It’s at 2pm

3pm at latest

She honestly gives off massive “trying to be the cool mom” vibes when driving

But her some slack, it’s the daddy issues that make her give that vibe

Vaggie 🦋🗡️:

8/10

She’s pretty ok at driving tbh

She’s gonna keep you safe and she’s more than capable of navigating you through the hellscape of hell’s roads

But her road rage is insane

Like you’d think someone like Husk has horrible road rage right?

Nah

It’s Vaggie

She genuinely might actually start ramming into people if they’re being truly unreasonably unhinged and threaten your safety

She truly just wants to keep you safe so that’s exactly what she’s gonna do

Just keep your seatbelt on…please

She’s also just not gonna let anyone eat in her car

No exceptions

Alastor🦌📻:

-100/10

Why…oh why in the ever loving FUCK would you get in a car where the RADIO DEMON was behind the wheel!?!

Get out of the car!

NOW!

He’s gonna cause an accident on the freeway on purpose!

And god help you if you say you’re in a hurry!

He’s gonna grove even slower than Charlie!

Like 5MPH kind of slow!

DO. NOT. LET. ALASTOR. DRIVE!

Angel Dust🕷️💕:

6/10

He’s an average driver tbh

Well…

When he’s being chill/sober

He’s pretty good at staying out of trouble and getting you from point A to B in the time you need

Now if he’s having a manic episode or had too much coke….

Please for the love of god buckle up

He’s speeding so fast it makes Sonic the Hedgehog look like a tortoise

He’s there for a good time, not a long time and he wants to see some shit get wrecked

But tbh he might not let you in the car if he’s doing this

He doesn’t care what happens to him

But you?

Your safety matters so much to him…

Thankfully he hasn’t done stuff like that in a long time so for the most part, he’s a good person to go to if you need a ride

Husk🐈‍⬛🥃:

9/10

He’s got the soul of a grumpy old man and he drives like one too

First of all

He’s gonna complain when you ask him to take you anywhere

He’s gonna drive you ofc

But he’s gonna act like you took him away from something important

It was booze

You took him away from his quiet drinking time

How dare you

He’s gonna get you from point A to B as quickly and as safely as he can

Nothing crazy, he just wants to hurry back home with as little chaos happening as possible

Low key I feel like he plays country, blues and/or rock music from around the time he was alive

It’s mostly sad music if you really listen to the lyrics

He honestly doesn’t care if you eat in the car but if you make a mess, he’s making you clean it

It’s honestly like getting a ride from you’re very tired and jaded uncle

Niffty🐞🪡:

-90/19

No

Absolutely not

First of all

Look at her

She’s like 3 ft tall

How is she supposed to reach the pedals or look over the steering wheel????

Second

Even if she was tall enough to drive properly….would you honestly get in the car with her???

The best way I can explain her driving….

And even then…I think she’s 1000 times worse than this guy

She’d tumble it hard enough to make it explode while you’re both still inside

And she’s laugh gleefully….

Just get a cab…it’s much safer

Sir Pentious🐍🥚:

-60/10

Ok

I know he’s capable of piloting his war machine

But piloting a ship and driving a car and very different for him

Ships are easy for him

But cars????

It’s like reading a foreign language to him

You’ll eventually reach your destination sure

But the town you just passed through is somehow on fire

And so is the car

And it’s only being held together by duct tape and prayers…

Just walk

Your chances of coming home in once piece is much higher that way

[bestjeanistmonster]

I've been wondering... are you gonna do anything with the gotham sirens in your au? Or is that a spoiler 😶

Ofc! I know I’ve posted art with the three of them before but i honestly don’t draw them nearly enough dyflfydhck, they’re a rlly fun trio to think about tho

Rouge, Sonic and Shadow work well together but would literally sell the other two out for a dime in the right circumstances (spite, conflicting interests, etc.) , usually it’s Rouge who does it the most often leaving the other two to take the fall. It means that Shadow and Sonic are very always reluctant to lend their services to her latest schemes, and Shadow especially tends to hold a grudge over those instances

But Rouge always manages to find a way to convince them to team up

They team up together on and off throughout the au on random side adventures!

Edit: they do grow to be friends eventually tho but it’s very slow burn and none of realise it’s happening except maybe Sonic

[cryingatships]

NorthSonic fic idea-

Everyone in x hunter is all tired after betting in the Epic NorthSonic Get Together bet that went on for a whole year after the events of Pit Babe, started and maintained by Kim who kept tabs on every development and in which everyone participated, including Jeff the self-proclaimed hermit and Babe, who like to stay 10 feet away from messy romantic relationships these days.

(Jeff had his future seeing powers wiped away with the magic serum shortly after the Pit Babe events so Kim allows him to participate. Tho Jeff regrets giving up his powers slightly after seeing the wagers involved.)

But it leads to nothing for literal months.

Kim is so, so close to giving up his detailed spreadsheets with times and dates and locations of where North and Sonic were seen together and everyone in the team is quite close to assuming that the alpha and omega were just v v good friends who sometimes liked to cuddle and nuzzle and share their bed and nest with e/o. It happens. They have seen weirder things. Like Way getting knocked up with Pete's child and marrying the man in the course of 3 months.

At this time members from other racing team have also joined, some under diff aliases, cause North and Sonic, the chaotic duo, were popular and well-loved in the thai racing scene, and there was no lack of hush-hush gossiping about the relationship status every season.

X hunter secret betting association (secret cause they want to keep it out of Alan's eyes, not knowing that he knows this already and has even placed a bet with an alias in favour of North and Sonic being together. Can't be caught publicly making bets about his team members, he needs be a responsible owner u.u)

Except the spreadsheets fall on North and Sonic's hand (or maybe only one of them) along with the wagers. By now the entire narrative has shifted, and most are betting that North and Sonic are not, and will not, be together ever.

The only people still favouring the duo being together are Alan (under his alias ofc), Kim (he swears he get couple vibes from the two), and Kenta, who is participating solely to support if bf, and a random few names from the other teams.

NorthSonic sees this, and like the gremlins they are, they see this as a lovely opportunity to make a nice, quick buck. Afterall, who told ~80% of the thai racing scene to speculate so shamelessly into other people's love lifes?

They laugh at how delulu people are these days, because in which universe would they fall in love and be together? Their laugh tapers off into silence and they stare at e/o's eyes. They turn a little red, look away, and a few minutes later together arrive at a wonderful idea—they'll place bets and pretend to get together for a month to snag the money.

It all goes well.

They turn out to be very good actors—turning their usual cuddles, back hugs etc a little longer and posting pics of them visiting places together like always, except this time they stand a little closer and put heart emojis and kissing faces when they post and tag e/o.

Then they start occasionally dropping a kiss or two on the other's cheeks, forehead or lips. What's a little kissing between homies, right?

Then they both start bringing each other random gifts and flowers, red roses and perfumes and all that glitz that online magazines will heap praises on them for.

It's nice. Too nice.

They both start realizing that maybe they like the more than a homie. It's slow. But it's there. North and Sonic both feel shy yet can't stop cause BAHTS.

The deadline for the bet arrive and they (along with Kim, Kenta and Alan) have a very, very happy day.

They have a nice dinner at a nice beachside restaurant in Pattaya as an ending celebration for their successful, month-long fake relationship while sipping fancy imported wine.

Then they go to a beachside bar, like they do after every successful race, and get drunk off their asses. They stumble back to the hotel, fall on the large bed of their suite (cause why pay for two suites when you can share one with your homie?)

They make good use of the nice, soft, large hotel bed.

They wake up in the morning and find themselves staring at e/o and smile and decide to not talk about it.

They go back to Bangkok together in one car.

North drives Sonic to his house and go to Alan's himself, where he stumbles into the team-uncle's arms, ignoring Jeff's very concerned glances, and is escorted (more like dragged) to a room by Alan, who then shuts the door after him, telling Jeff to not worry, he can take care of it.

Alan gets a call and leaves the room. Some time passes, during which North completely panics and wonders if his friendship will ever be salvageable, if he can ever look at Sonic as a friend, if he wants to look at Sonic as a friend, would Sonic ever look at him as someone more than a friend, why would Sonic never look at him as someone more than a friend, why is Sonic so pretty, why does Sonic have the prettiest eyes, Why does Sonic look so hot when he's moaning and telling North to fuck him harder, why is Sonic so nice and soft and cute and small for an alpha, would Sonic ever knot him, how would Sonic help him through his heats if he were his boyfriend, why did he never realize how much he loves Sonic, why is he not dating Sonic anymore, why did he not confess when he had the chance, why was he so greedy for money, is not getting to date Sonic the retribution for being so sinfully greedy about Money-

Alan comes back right then as he's spiralling out of control.

He offers North an ibruprofen, a bottle of water, and a long, long hug during which he pats the boy and tells him it will be ok as the omega wets his shirt with tears and snot. (Alan cringes only a little. He's quite used to it by now.)

He gives North a short speech about the importance of communication, and another about birth control and safe sex. North splutters at the later one and mournfully says that it's useless, Uncle should save his breath.

Alan smiles mysteriously and leaves the room.

Fifteen minutes later Sonic is pushed into the room by Alan and the door bangs close, leaving two of them in the room.

(Alan smiles at Jeff's raised eyebrows and says it'll all work out. He was the one who talked Sonic into coming here, he knows his boys and he knows they are finally ready to take their heads off their asses.)

When the door is opened 2 hours later (because Alan can not possibly starve his boys, no matter how much he wants them to talk it out), the couch and the table in the room have already been sullied. The bed would have been next, and also Alan's eyes, but North and Sonic were a little too too tired by then.

Alan is sad for his furniture, but it comes with the two dumbasses in his team finally sorting themselves out and making Alan worry less, so it's a worthy trade. And he also has the money from the bet :)

The rest of the team only knows much, much later, thanks to a slip of tongue from Jeff while talking with Charlie, who tells Babe, and the secret is out.

Kim is very happy and by proxy Kenta is too, but the rest are a little miffed. They get over it soon after seeing how happy North and sonic are.

The secret is never spilled out of the team, however, because even Kim, with his cute korean looks and winning smile can't keep it down if ~70% of the thai racing scene starts yelling at him for unofficial fraud. And also cause he, and NorthSonic really like their profits from the bet.

[son1c]

Teddy knitting a Shadow plushie and a Teddy plushie, so each of them have their own. They're immaculate and filled with love. Shadow finds some random Shadow plushies in a store that aren't nearly as good. Internally the 'I found you, faker' scene plays out in his mind with the store and Teddy plushies.

I'm not sure if they'd do that but hopefully that brings smiles.

i'll admit i struggled to imagine what a knitted plush would look like for a second cuz. i guess i've never had one??? but omg...

they look so squishable... this is awesome

but yeah the VAST MAJORITY of official sonic plush are god awful. take it from a guy who cares way too much about merchandise; 99% of companies SERIOUSLY STRUGGLE to translate sonic designs into plush form. and in a way that's easy to mass produce... they wind up weird, off model, and ugly. ofc there's a few notable exceptions, but that goes without saying

i think teddy's handmade plush would be saurrr cute. they wouldn't even have to be knitted like those pictures! i think he can sew too. that specific vein of arts and crafts is where he excels. and sidenote: if YOU ever want a cute af sonic plush, you should just save up some money and commission an artist to make one for you. the quality will far outweight whatever you can find at the store

[jelmet]

what pets i think fit with the batfam

these are kinda out of order but what evs

tell me what other characters u want (doesnt have to be bat-adjacent)

Dick Grayson

German shepherd maybe a huskey mix too

I know he has Hailey in canon but canon is of my choosing

I feel like his prestict was training dogs and one of them failed the training but hes already bonded with it so he takes it home with him and now he has a dog

he names it after somthing in the cirus

also named nightbite and the dog is considered a vigilante but only comes out to calm down children

Jason Todd

orange tabby

whenever someone meets the cat for the 1st time he spends 15 mins trying to convince them the cat is actually red

named elizabeth, and he forces you to call the cat elizabeth, no lizzie or any other nickname only elizabeth

he found her wandering around crime alley with out a collar and scooped her up and took her home

they become inseparable except when jason is doing vigilante stuff them the cat sleeps in his bed

shes tiny from malnourishment ect. from being on the street

he nourishes her back to health but she never gets to full size

Tim Drake

toad

he wanted a bullfrog before realizing how annoying they are and ended up getting an american toad

he named it either tim jr. or frog

he puts it in a mason jar (no top ofc) with some water and brings it everywhere (non vigilante)

the toad works comms and he tries to get everyone to call it red toad (failure)

he wears gloves when handling it and is very careful not to get salmonella (all reptiles and amphibians are loaded with it)

Duke Thomas

im giving him 2 types of pets

first he has a fish tank with those floresent neon fish

he has the full set up with the black lights and everything

1 fish of each color named color fishie (blue fishie, yellow fishie, ect.)

he also gets a rabbit

specifically a Miniature Cashmere Lop

he names it judy (zootopia reference lol)

he took her on patrol with him one in one of those baby carries that straps to your chest but he bent down and judy hopped out and he spent half an hour chasing her around

she lives on his bedroom floor, he has everything she needs lined along a wall and she just kinda chills all day

Cass Cain

SNAKE

she gets a common brown snake

they are non venomous, typically very docile, and the longest they can get is 13 inches long

she did tons of research on snakes and makes sure it living its best live

names it after her favorite fruit

she keeps trying to feed duke’s fish to it

brown snakes are fairly small so she will curl it around her fingers on one hand and do her homework with the other

Carrie Kelley

Yes shes part of the family

a hedgehog

she keeps it in her pocket

his name is sonic

she made him a blue mask and paints some of the quills blue and takes him on patrol (he mostly stays in her pocket)

one notable occasion she shot him with her sligshot into a thug’s face

sonic was ok the thug however was not

sonic lives in carrie’s pocket

Alfred Pennyworth

mini horse

he named it named fredrick

it stays out in the barn with batcow

he goes out on walks around the manor grounds and the horse will follow him around

helps out around the batcave and works coms with frog

Damian Wayne

i know he already has a ton of pets go away

caribbean reef octopus

i saw a video of one of these guys escaping its tank and immediately thought of damian

either gives it an arab name or names it richard

has an amazing tank setup for it with lots of enrichment

sometimes he takes it out on walks around the manor and damian will carry a little spray bottle to ensure he doesnt dry out

HE GETS 2 ASWELL CAUSE I JUST REMEBERED SMTH

a bearded dragon

he wanted a komodo dragon but they are massive (and venomous) so he compromised on a bearded dragon

he gives her either an arab name or names her timothy

ITS A DRAGON HED BE SO HAPPY!!!!

just like the octopus he takes really good care of her

she has a bunch of differnt outfits and leashes and he takes her on walks all the time

Stephanie Brown

Indian star tortoise

she saw a tortoise mukbang video and decided she needed one (go to animal asmr on youtube)

she named her ravioli

tried to get her a job in the bat med bay but alfred refused to let “ground zero for a salmonella outbreak” into the med bay

she has a massive box with multiple sets of lights despite how tiny she is (hes a baby now and about 2.5 in but adults get to 7-12 in)

as a baby she rides around on steph’s shoulder

once she gets bigger steph puts her in a leash

Bruce Wayne

way too many bats to count

each person has a bat named after them and a bat they have named

the rest are named bat bat

the bats are not allowed outside of the batcave

he also has ace (bat hound) who, from my best guess, is a Doberman

he also gets a fox moth

he raises it from a caterpillar and he loves it (he picks it up off the sidewalk and decides to keep it)

he names it bug

only pet not allowed to go into the batcave

it mostly stays on his head or shoulder when not asleep (even as a full grown moth)

sleeps in a net like cage thing hanging in his room

he cried really hard when it pupated only for a moth to come out a few weeks later

Jarro

why is the starfish here?

because

anyway in Flash 238-243 in the 70’s hal has a pet alien starfish thing named itty

jarro gets his own itty and yeah

[dystopicjumpsuit]

Stars Beyond Number - Chapter 21

The Emotion and the Response

Rating: T (rating varies by chapter; mature content will be tagged; regardless of rating, minors DNI)

Pairings: Echo x Riyo Chuchi; Gregor x OFC Cerra Kilian

Wordcount: 2.4k

Warnings and tags: language; blood and injury; a panic attack; sensuality.

Suggested Listening:

Summary: A reunion.

A/N: This story shares continuity with Martyrs and Kings, "Double, Double Boil and Trouble" (part 2 here) and "Do It Again," but all the fics can be read as stand-alones.

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Between the emotion and the response falls the Shadow

—T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

The coordinates Gregor sent dropped Cerra quite literally in the middle of nowhere, parsecs away from the nearest star system, inhabited or otherwise. As the shuttle shifted into realspace, she saw the reason he’d chosen this place. Instead of the black emptiness of space she expected, the Archeon Nebula stretched out before her: a luminous, golden cloud of gas and cosmic dust. It was an incredible view, but that wasn’t why the commando had sent her there.

The electromagnetic radiation of the nebula interfered with long-range communications, including any signals from tracking beacons that she might have missed on the shuttle. Short-range comms would still work if she boosted the signal as high as it would go, but she was invisible to the Empire and everyone else in the galaxy so long as she stayed put. 

She navigated away from the hyperspace lane and powered down all systems except life support and comms to avoid detection by passing vessels, then she increased the range and sensitivity of the shuttle’s proximity sensor to maximum. With the tiniest shred of luck, the next ship that arrived would be Gregor, not smugglers, pirates, or worse. Of course, her luck hadn’t been particularly stellar lately.

While she waited, she raided the shuttle’s supply cabinet and was disgusted to find that it didn’t even have a basic medkit. Supply officer on that Venator ought to be busted down to private, she fumed with a disgruntled, unintelligible mutter.

On the plus side, there were a few expired ration bars, which she ate, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a meal, and a few bottles of water, which she drank, because she had no idea how long she’d be waiting for Gregor. That karking mudscuffer Yularen had split her lip badly when he hit her, and she winced as she chewed the desiccated rations, hoping that she wouldn’t reopen the wound.

She stripped off the plastoid TK armor and the compression bodysuit and headed to the refresher. The shuttle didn’t have a shower—not even a sonic—but she scrubbed off as much of Daivik’s dried blood as she could in the tiny sink, washing until the red swirls that circled the drain disappeared and the water ran clear. 

The familiar harsh, medicinal scent of the soap stung her nose and transported her instantly to her time in the GAR, filling her with an odd sense of nostalgia. She examined the swelling bruise on her shoulder where Daivik had struck her. It hurt like a sonofabitch. She rolled her shoulder gingerly, testing her range of motion. It wasn’t terrible, but she wouldn’t exactly call it great, either. She’d had worse injuries, but that didn’t make her current ones any more fun.

Should’ve killed that scughole before he beat the shit out of me, she mused. I’ll have to remember that next time I get my ass captured. 

She sighed and stepped back into the compression suit, and then headed to the cockpit, where she curled up in the pilot’s seat to wait, stretching and shifting in the cramped seat to try to get more comfortable. Her eyes felt gritty and dry. Her body ached. Without the sublight engine running, the only sounds were the quiet hum of the life support system and the faint clangs of the ship itself as it drifted in the emptiness. The displays and buttons of the ship’s navigation panel were barely bright enough to see anything, but nebula cast a faint glow through the viewport, subtly illuminating the cockpit in soft, golden light. 

She gazed out the viewport as her eyes grew heavy. There was something strangely comforting about the nebula—knowing that it continued to create new stars even as others flickered and died throughout the galaxy. The darkness hadn’t won. Not yet. There was still light. There was still hope. And even the stars that died continued to shine long after they’d burnt out.

Her head throbbed, and her lids drifted closed, only for a moment. Just a few seconds, really. No more than that. She needed to stay awake while she waited for Gregor. She… She needed…

She slept.

She had no idea how long she’d been out when she jerked awake, startled into consciousness by the blaring proximity alert. She cursed silently as she lunged forward and toggled the switch so the alarm would stop screeching. The comms crackled to life.

“Code tango-two-one-eight. Watchman to Scrapper, I’ve reached the rendezvous coordinates. What’s your status?”

Cerra’s heart lurched at the sound of Gregor’s voice.

“All good here, Watchman,” she replied. “Send me a ping, and I’ll dock with your ship.”

“Copy that. See you soon.”

Within minutes, she docked with the freighter, and before she boarded, she programmed the shuttle’s hyperdrive to overload. She hurried across to the freighter and sealed the hatch, signaling Gregor to release the docking clamps. By the time she made it to the cockpit, they were already at a safe distance from the shuttle, and within seconds, a blinding flash confirmed the shuttle was destroyed.

Gregor sprang out of his seat and rushed toward Cerra. His eyes widened when he saw her bruised, bloodied face, and he pulled her into a crushing embrace. Cerra let out a tiny whimper of pain, and he loosened his grip immediately.

“Are you all right?” he asked, checking her frantically for injuries.

“I’m all right, Gregor,” she said as relief flooded her. She was safe. She was home. “There was no medkit on the shuttle, otherwise I would have taken care of it already.”

He pushed her gently into the copilot’s chair and reached across her to grab the small emergency medkit they kept in the cockpit. He knelt between her knees as he pulled out a tube of bacta, biting down on the finger of his glove and yanking it off with his teeth. As he leaned close to dab the gel on the bruises and lacerations that marred her face, his dark eyes filled with such distress that her heart twisted inside her to see it. His touch was incredibly gentle, and Cerra took a moment to simply enjoy the way his skin felt against her, his fingers were warm and comforting in contrast to the cold bacta.

“Is there more under the suit?” he asked.

She nodded and reached for the autofastener, but Gregor found it first and tugged it down, careful not to pinch her skin as he unzipped the tight-fitting garment. As he slid the pressure suit cautiously down over her shoulders to puddle around her waist, his breath caught when he saw the extent of the bruises that mottled her skin.

“Those fucking bastards,” he growled. “I’ll kill them.”

“Sorry, buddy, I beat you to it,” she said with a pained smile.

He grunted. “As long as they’re dead.”

He smoothed the bacta onto her shoulder with the lightest touches, easing her bra strap out of the way as he worked. The soft, warm glow of the nebula caught on the planes of his face, throwing the angles and lines into stark relief. He knelt so close to her that she could see the rise and fall of his chest with each breath, the subtle pulse in his neck with each heartbeat. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent, at once so familiar and so unique, and a memory flashed in her mind: strong arms wrapped securely around her; a thick, solid thigh slotted between her legs; the firm press of a body against her hip as she drifted on the edge of consciousness.

“Gregor?” she whispered, then swallowed thickly.

“Hm?” He raised his eyes to hers inquisitively, and he was so close that she could see the golden flecks in his irises.

“I don’t want to fight any more,” she said. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

His eyes softened. “I know you didn’t.”

He was so, so close. Her gaze drifted down to his mouth, and when she looked back up, he was staring at hers, too. His hand stilled and rested against her shoulder, and she knew he could feel the way her breathing became rapid and shallow. Almost without realizing she was moving, she raised her hand to his face and traced her thumb across the chiseled line of his cheekbone. How had she never noticed how sharp it was? Maker, he was so handsome it almost hurt to look at him, like staring directly into a star. No wonder she’d spent the last several months avoiding looking too closely. She trailed her fingertips along his jawline, feeling the scratch of his stubble, and he leaned imperceptibly closer. 

He looked so much like Fives, and yet so different at the same time. When did his face become so incredibly important to her? When had his voice become as vital as the air that she breathed? When had he gone from being her dearest friend to being the one person in the galaxy that she could not imagine living without?

She brushed the pad of her thumb over his lips, and his eyes drifted closed.

“Cerra,” he whispered, and his warm breath washed across her skin, sending prickles of awareness through her body. “Don’t do this.”

She froze, and hurt flashed through her, worse than anything Yularen and his thugs could ever inflict. She withdrew her hand immediately and looked away, unable to meet his eyes. She was such a fool.

“S—sorry,” she stammered. “I shouldn’t have—I’m so sorry.”

Gregor pulled his hand away from her shoulder, and she steeled herself for his rejection, swallowing down the tightness in her throat. But instead of moving away, he cupped her chin softly and turned her head to face him.

“Don’t do it unless you mean it,” he said.

Her eyes darted to his, and she saw the truth there, written plainly as it always had been, if only she hadn’t been too stubborn to read it. Something deep inside her chest snapped, and she pitched forward, closing the short distance between them as their lips collided. Pain lanced through her bruised mouth, but she didn’t care. All she knew was that she couldn’t exist for another second without kissing Gregor. She needed him more than her next breath, more than the blood coursing through her veins, more than life itself.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him, sliding her whole body forward in the seat. Her thighs pressed open to accommodate him, and it seemed the most natural thing in the galaxy to wrap her legs around his body. She flattened her hands against his back, then dragged them up his shoulders, up his neck, to caress the velvety shorn hair at the base of his skull, and then further, to tangle her fingers in the longer curls at the crown of his head.

His tongue slid against hers, and he let out a short, urgent sound and clutched her body tightly against himself. He tasted like everything she had ever wanted. His hands roamed across the bare skin of her back, one of them settling low to press her hips closer, and the other gliding up to clasp the back of her neck. He pinned her against his body as his lips moved away from hers and he began to work his way down her jaw and neck. 

She dropped her head back, her body lighting with arousal beneath his lovely, talented mouth. The light abrasion of his stubble made a delicious contrast with the soft, gentle warmth of his lips and tongue. He reached a particularly sensitive spot at the base of her throat, and she gasped, unconsciously grinding her hips against him. He rewarded her by sinking his teeth lightly into her skin, raking them across her until she writhed and moaned, clutching his head closely to herself.

The moment felt surreal, as though her brain couldn’t quite process what was happening. She’d spent so long denying the truth that it felt as though her entire universe had been inverted—and yet at the same time, the touch of his lips, the grip of his hands, the press of his body against hers seemed so incredibly right that she could no longer imagine going without them.

“Shit,” he said suddenly, breaking away from her.

“What?” she asked, dazed.

“You’re bleeding.”

Startled, she raised a hand to her chin and was horrified to feel a slick of blood on her skin. “Kriff!”

Gregor extracted a square of gauze from the medkit and pressed it against her lip, holding it gently but firmly in place until the bleeding stopped. While he waited, he dropped tiny, feather-light kisses across her face, over and over, until she began to giggle.

“Stop smiling,” he said sternly, kissing the tip of her nose. “You’re going to make your lip start bleeding again.”

“Then stop being so perfect,” she retorted.

He paused to consider. “Best I can offer is ten percent off.”

“Well, that hardly seems like a bargain at all,” she said.

“Take it or leave it.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her, and she caught her breath.

“I love you,” she blurted.

His eyes widened with shock.

“I mean—” she stammered, panic threading in her voice. “I—I mean—”

She laughed nervously, and then the laughter turned to shallow, gasping breaths as the edges of her vision began to darken and black spots swam before her eyes. Her lungs heaved, but there seemed to be no oxygen in the cockpit. She scrambled backward in her chair, trying to put some distance between herself and Gregor.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey!” Gregor said. “All the way out, come on, Cerra. You know what to do. Breathe all the way out. One, two, three, four, five. Now breathe in through your nose, sweetheart. One, two, three, four, five.”

He held her hands in his warm, reassuring grasp, and as she brought her breathing back under control, she suddenly remembered what he’d told her that awful night at 79’s. 

“Easy, love. I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”

---

A/N: I know nebulae don't cast light like that IRL, but this is Star Wars, where they totally do! If you want to see the nebula in question, check out Rebels Season 3 Episode 18, "Secret Cargo."

---

Next chapter

[sonichaunt]

Don't have a lot of time to do anything more than sketches rn, but I felt like drawing one of the new kids on the block (aka one of the new STH rewrite bosses). Some rewrite spoilers and some of my heroes headcanons, I suppose: Shadow android "gold" is a new boss introduced to 'flesh' out the whole concept of the shadow androids in the game. More lore about its creation below, if you want.

In Sonic Heroes, Eggman has Shadow captured, being Geralt's greatest creation and legacy, as well as a good way to deal with Sonic, Eggman feels Shadow is something he's owned/belongs at his side obeying him (this is based on dialogue from Eggman and the way he treats Shadow in STH05). After Eggman failed to reach Geralt's level of bio-engineering genius despite having shadow in his possession to study, and failed in altering shadow's mind to be loyal to him (yes, eggman was a factor why shadow has amnesia, more on that later) he decided he'd for the time being just create new Shadows from the ground up, it give him a good alternative and maybe it would help him understand his grandfather's design more. But how does one get that amount of chaos energy inside a living creature without it going horribly wrong (see biolizard)? Well you need some special DNA and assistance of this alien immortal "god" thing ofc- but Eggman would not know this. But what he does know is robots fix the need for something silly like supporting life functions and pain, so androids it is. Eggman figures Geralt's chaos drive research might be the key to make it work, that's going to be the power source. Experimenting with it he creates Omega (who in canon is powered by chaos drives, not an animal) a robot able to match shadow's power. While this is just the stepping stone to the shadow android, Omega is a good way to recapture shadow if he'd ever get free, so is tasked with guarding the original. (This is also Omega's canon function)

However what works for Omega doesn't work for the Shadow androids, he needs something extra to make it all work. How did Geralt do it? He goes back to the bio-lizard notes, it was based on Chaos, just like- Artificial chaos! I believe that his study of the Artificial chaos is what helps him come up with the "liquid metal" that Neo metal sonic is coated in to give him the new form. Eggman starts basing this new Shadow android design on metal sonic and this new metal. The first prototypes, which would be mass produced by Metal later, are far from perfect, which is why shadow takes them out no problem in his game later. However, likely after Heroes now that Metal Sonic is temporarily benched for his actions, Eggman creates a new set of Androids (these will all be based on the STH05 multiplayer designs). He starts with 4 variations, metallic looking body and replacing Shadow's signature red with Green, Pink, Blue and orange accents, with the ability to morph one of their arms into a weapon. The final shadow android he creates will not have this metal design, but instead look like shadow if not for the golden accents. How is he able to finally get this done? Because, Sonic battle happens after STH05 on the canon timeline, and Eggman having a direct portal into the Gun's cyberspace network (we know this because exiting this level in STH05 puts Shadow in Eggman's computer room, which is something the rewrite will also explain ofc) gives him access to even more of GUN's data on Geralt, including the Gizoid data. And thus the GOLD prototype is created, this android has a much better control of his chaos abilities while retaining the ability of the special metal to morph. Meaning this one is an actual challenge for Shadow, as well as something that makes him doubt if he might be an android after all, something that the inferior models really shouldn't have accomplished, they were nowhere near his level. Phase 1 of the boss fight will feature the regular appearance with the exception of the arm being able to morph for special attacks. in phase 2, after damaging it in the boss fight, the body will shift to the more metal appearance and make cracks appear on its body where chaos energy starts slipping through as the integrity of the body fails to contain it. What more happens with this Gold android? This post is already long, so I guess more on that later. Feel free to let me know what you think. I also opened asks, though I probably can only respond with text and only respond with doodles when I have more time in November. Bye for now.

[beevean]

Idk if you still do the hot takes thingy but i have probably a pretty spicy one : Sonic lore/timeline feels a bit strange since 2022.

Idk how to explain perfectly but the way i see is that before 2022 Sonic lore/timeline is pretty solid (aside of a few oddities ofc) like i only take account games by Sonic Team so i considered spin off games like the game gear games as non canon (iirc Sonic Chaos has this whole "gather chaos Emeralds before South Island sink)

But ever since 2022/ the lore team existed, things are bit odd/ questionable like Sonic Spinball supposedly canon, the comics/Prime being canon and so on

Ps : probably controversial but i accept that after Generations, Classic Sonic being both the younger version of Sonic and coming from another world

Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree

I think Mania and Forces were the games that started to make the timeline a little more complicated, with Mania taking place after 3&K (and deliberately ignoring Sonic 4 in its intro) but then having Sonic travel forward to Forces and then back. It's no Zelda, but before that the games were pretty much in a chronological level, except for 4 again.

It's the crossing of material that worries me a bit about the implications. Spinball being canon would make the Freedom Fighters canon, but clearly they're not, because that is the only game in which they appeared, as it was an American spinoff never meant to be taken that seriously. Tangle and Sticks are mentioned in Frontiers, but while we can make a complex argument about IDW, no way Boom is canon in the gameverse, it was meant to be an AU! So the Sticks that Amy allegedly knows is a Sticks that is not the Sticks we know, but a yet unseen, unintroduced version of her that would match her Boom counterpart. This, of course, might also apply to Tangle, and at that point would IDW be canon? Even though no one has mentioned yet the Metal Virus, or Starline, or Surge and Kit, or Belle? (in a reference-heavy game like Frontiers, they could have absolutely compared Sage to Belle.) Even though IDW is yet to include Sage or other elements from Frontiers in its story, instead being firmy a vague split timeline from Forces? "Canon" isn't a stamp of quality, guys!

Don't get me started about Prime. And what it did to Advance 3.