#Sonic Ramble

[sonicattos]

shadow the hedgehog deserves to be happy. there’s nothing wrong with him being nice, having friends and family, being loved and giving love. he should be allowed to be a little crybaby because of how much love he has. he shouldn’t have to be boiled down to “edgy guy” just because his design sees fit. that’s missing the whole point of his character. i miss him. my baby girl i hope they bring you back to life again.

[rollflasher]

So, because I feel in the mood, I’m gonna drop a hot take here.

Today I was listening to the Sonic and Tails R radio drama and at one point I realised something.

I’m starting to get pretty annoyed at writers making Shadow unnecesarely point out that he’s going a good deed because of his promise to Maria.

You may wonder why I’m having a problem with this, isn’t it actually good that writers remember Shadow’s past and don’t get rid of it like in his Sonic Boom incarnation? Well yes, but the problem I have is the consequences of going the opposite direction with this and the implications that come from it.

For a while my friend @colony-drop-program has pointed out the big problem Shadow has with writers not knowing what to do with him outside of his past, and not only is this a symptom of that problem but for me it puts into evidence one thing.

The fandom and writers actually misunderstand or underestimate Shadow’s devotion to justice from his own will.

What do I mean by this? See, when the trailers of Sonic Forces came out, the fandom speculated non-stop but a common theory was that Shadow became evil because of Maria, ranging from ‘’They offered him to revive Maria!’’ or similar nonsense. To go even further, we got stuff like King Shadow, a completely warped interpretation of Shadow who embodies this misunderstanding, as if having an angel Maria statue wasn’t enough to hammer it home.

See, this flanderizes Shadow’s attachment to Maria and in turn pushes the implication that Shadow is still dangerous, why? Because it implies that the only thing keeping him from flipping out is Maria...and that for me destroys a lot of what makes him compelling, and this particular flanderization carries much of the same problems that Boom!Shadow has with warping the character into something he isn’t.

What makes Shadow so compelling as a character for me is that unlike other ‘’edgy’’ characters, he’s not a morally grey character for the sake of it and is suprisingly mature emotionally despite what his personality would lead you to believe.

For instance, in 06 he constantly flips the bird to Mephiles whenever he tries to torment him with the idea that humanity is afraid of his power and will dispose of him when given the chance, and while this could be attributed to Mephiles being a poorly written villain Shadow’s attachment to Maria’s promise, I think the real reason Shadow doesn’t listen to Mephiles’ BS is because of his devotion to justice in general and his famous line ‘’If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have!’’ confirms this. Maria is never alluded to in this conflict, instead, there’s a constant emphasis on the idea that Shadow is the one who chooses his destiny and that he has his friends by his side.

Another example of Shadow’s more personal motivations for doing good is Sonic Battle, where Shadow flat-out states that no one should go through what he has, being his main motivation for trying to destroy Emerl, it’s even pointed out that Shadow never used his powers for selfish motives.

The point I want to get across here is that flanderizing Shadow’s promise to Maria heavily downplays the idea that Shadow by nature is devoted to justice and he himself chooses to do good, Maria’s promise only reinforces this, he’s not chained to be a hero. And I think this is what gives more dimension to his character, since Shadow has every reason to hate the world and he’s canonically a misanthrope, yet despite all of that, he’s still willing to stand for his ideals and do the right thing, because he is mature enough to be capable of putting his grudges aside for the sake of the greater good.

In short, Shadow doesn’t need a morality pet to do good, he chooses to be a hero and this is a result of the development of his character, and I think this needs to get discussed and adressed because not only it does a disservice to his characterization, but it also accentuates the problem his character has of being too tied to his past.

[song-of-the-rune]

y'all are absolutely free to use tumblr however you please but I want redditors to know that they could, hypothetically, start a sideblog about a particular topic, add moderators to it, turn on submissions (and asks), make an "about" page laying out rules and such, and create a good tagging system. If you want it to be a bit more familiar.

[nagichi-boop]

SHADOW IS WRITTEN SO WELL IN THE MURDER OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!!

First of all, just him showing up to Amy’s party is a step up from his recent “I will do everything myself, I hate everyone, imma fight you” attitude that we have seen. Secondly, and idk if it was intentional, but him attending shows he cares about Amy. He’s always had a special place for her after the events of SA2, so it’s nice to see him showing up for something that maybe isn’t his style for her sake. (Parties aren’t really his thing, after all.)

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

It’s also really sweet of him to go through so many lengths to try and get Amy’s present. I definitely don’t think he forgot to get her a present, he genuinely just didn’t seem to know that it was a social norm to bring presents to a birthday. If he really didn’t care, he either wouldn’t have gotten her anything or he would’ve given her a rushed gift. But no, he went through a lot of effort, basically foregoing the game, just to stall Amy so he could get her a present she would enjoy.

And not just any present - he remembered her mentioning a specific band she liked and that she hadn’t seen them live. This not only suggests he listens to her and remembers what she tells him, but also implies that he has had multiple conversations with her. Clearly he must have also done some research too since he knew that the tickets were going live soon. He thought this through, even if it was a bit last minute, and did his best to get the tickets (even though he admits to not being the best with computers, which is also nice because usually Shadow just insists he’s the best at everything). I also think it was sweet that he didn’t heavily protest Amy’s suggestion to see the band together. He hesitated, but then yielded. This…for a character who recently has been written to be quite selfish.

He seemed upset that he couldn’t keep this a surprise, but he also didn’t become enraged or lash out at Tails and MC/Barry. In fact, he didn’t really lash out at anyone at any point which is refreshing, since in most Sonic media that’s his go-to emotion.

Most of his expressions throughout the game are fairly gentle in fact. Sure, he doesn’t smile, but he also isn’t actively angry. And the one expression where he does seem a bit negative just seems like his resting expression, or at absolute worse just a little annoyed. He’s very mellow throughout the game and it’s refreshing.

Even after he has finished talking to Amy, Tails and MC/Barry, he offers to stay with them and help them with the investigation. Normally in Sonic media, Shadow has no interest in helping others and only really cooperates if there’s a mutual goal/interest. And even then, he tends try to do things on his own. But in this game? He actually cooperates, and what’s more, he goes out of his way to offer his help.

So far I’ve mostly talked about his attitude towards Amy. But what’s his attitude towards Sonic? People debate back and forth on whether Shadow hates Sonic and the recent games and media have made it seem like he does hate Sonic. But in this game? I wouldn’t say so. I mean, he’s literally hanging out with him and his friends and instead of having beef with Sonic, he just focused on making Amy happy. And even when the situation gets more dire and Sonic is found to be knocked out, he doesn’t make any snarky comments or anything. In fact, he actually helps to tend to Sonic’s condition, even if it was just checking his pulse. If he rly didn’t care, he would’ve left it to everyone else.

Man, I could talk for hours about Shadow in this game. I can’t believe this April Fools prank game is actually the best characterisation for Shadow we’ve had recently. He’s not overly aggressive, he isn’t selfish, he isn’t super edgy. He is still sorta cold, but he’s not rude or mean. He’s actually really kind (in his own way), putting his needs and desires on hold to make Amy’s birthday fun and to help everyone out. I seriously hope that Shadow is written more like this in the future and not like he has been. Maybe Sega wasn’t joking about taking on board the complaints of the fandom.

[fettiowi]

Since everyone suddenly remembered and was talking about that SA2 ad where shadow eats an entire cow, can we talk about how funny the SA2 ads in general were. They were trying to convince us that shadow was this super duper evil guy soooooo bad

[charmsterz]

autism HUNGRY must feed it TWENTY MILLION HOURS OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

[megalomari]

i watched the hobbit !! it was… an experience…

[sonic-adventure-3]

[squidthechaotickid]

Sonic names are so funny like. Sonic can run at sonic speeds. Tails has two Tails. Knuckles has large knuckles. Silver has grey quills. Shadow has black quills. Espio is a spy (espionage). Blaze is a pyrokinetic. Marine can waterbend. Tangle has a long tail she often gets tangled up. Whisper hardly ever talks above a whisper. Froggy is a frog. Big is big. This is top tier naming and I think more media should use this naming technique.

[larabar]

sonic x episode where its bring your pet to school day and chris somehow manages to convince sonic to come with him. everyone thinks hes the weirdest cat theyve ever seen and eventually sonic gets so fed up with being called a cat and chris has to try so so hard to keep sonic normal

[the-cactus-taco]

Just bought some sonic legos and realized I can do this now

[sonicattos]

“all hail shadow” (shadow’s theme) is in second person, the song is being sung TO shadow.

the song is played after a hero story in shadow the hedgehog.

in the hero story, sonic consistently praises shadow, and he is also the last hero you see during this campaign.

all hail shadow is sung by sonic. thank you for your time.

[rollflasher]

Source Source 2 Source 3

So, recently there's been a lot of controversy with Sonic Origins. At first I critisized a lot the complaints because most were rather pointless and focused too much on trivial stuff that doesn't affect the game itself or go beyond what is to be expected from compilation re-releases, and I still stand by that, however, right now I found out that apparently the game got released on a broken state, specially on the Steam version, and to top it all off Stealth himself confirmed the development of the game was very troubled.

I would normally dismiss this but a friend of mine had to experience Origins' issues first hand on the Steam version and while not as bad as Colors Ultimate, the experience apparently was less than stellar.

I usually defend SEGA because the fandom really pushes it at times, but I can't help but feel rather disheartened by this. If SEGA allowed this to happen, then honestly I'm actually concerned with what will happen in the future. SEGA already promised Sonic games would have more extensive development time for the sake of quality but it seems like Stealth's team had to face a lot of pressure for the sake of releasing the game for the anniversary.

I still don't want to jump to conclusions, but I'm actually getting concerned about Frontiers now. I still stand that the game itself looks very promising and the positive impressions from the demo are a good thing, but if Origins apparently suffered development issues and got further tampering because of things like Denuvo being inserted into it, I'm genuinely nervous about SEGA possibly hurting Frontiers' quality in the final product and then leaving Sonic Team to pay the consequences for it.

That would really suck, specially because it would be a very low blow for Iizuka if the project ends up being a failure, specially because of how important it is and how blatantly has a lot of work put into it-

I dunno, I'm really not sure how to feel about all this. I'm not going to jump into the ''SEGA is evil!'' bandwagon yet, but I'm really concerned about what the hell is going on behind doors, specially when their marketing for both Frontiers and Origins has been chaotic.

[weirdozjunkary]

THE REAL QUESTION IS THIS:

IS SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 GONNA BE CONSIDERED A CHRISTMAS MOVIE?

[sharpedgedfool]

Everyday I wake up mad that Shadow and Knuckles are given the same personally half the time

For me its always been Knuckles is the one easily angered, jumping to conclusions, openly emotional, stubbornly confident but also huge heart and tries to hide it behind acting tough

On the other hand, Shadow is completely emotionally closed off, he can get focused and serious but rarely actually expresses anger or rage in an outburst (he just glares more), unlike Knuckles, he rarely trusts anyone and if he does it's taken time to earn that trust

The pair have multiple aspects of their character arc and backstory, but they've handled it in different ways. They've turned out very differently from eachother despite these similarities which is what makes them both so interesting both individually and more so when they interact. For Sonic, Knuckles is a friendly rival who would always help out when asked, Shadow is a rare ally who often takes a different path and his help is not guaranteed

[fettiowi]

You ever think about how this was probably the first time shadow had ever encountered another mobian in person after always being surrounded by other humans

Not only that but its also a hedgehog that looks kinda similar to him