#but like. the first thing i see from them again is. shitting on idw sonic. and you look at recent posts and it's basically more of that

[wereh0gz]

Man. I genuinely don't get how idw sonic haters (Ian Flynn haters at this point, bc they shit on like literally *everything* he does for sonic) don't get tired. Like. You look at one and it's just post after post, paragraphs upon paragraphs abt how much they don't like this guy's writing

Isn't it exhausting. Constantly making yourself engage with something you clearly hate so much. Like what even is the point. It doesn't even look like they're having fun or trolling or whatever it's just genuine hatred

What is there even to gain? It's not enjoyment that's for sure. Attention? Is that it? I don't see any other reason why. Unless they think their "criticisms" are actually gonna do something to push the franchise in the direction they want

It makes me wonder if they even truly like sonic at all. It really doesn't feel like it with their constant negativity abt almost everything coming out of it recently

[kinopioa]

Welp bored, gonna catch up for IDW

Issue 76

So we begin with...this spat

Technically they wouldn't even know this, they were locked up the entire time by Clutch when that news was revealed. Meta writing strikes again

Regardless, there's no reason for them to be mad. Sonic saved people's lives again

And yet

"In cahoots" bro Espio, you really shouldn't know this. And Sonic, why are you telling them what Amy and Tails obviously did given those two rescued them?

This summarizing would work for literally anyone not actually in that arc

First, Jewel's fault for the Restoration when the ocean was RIGHT THERE

2nd, Phantom Rider didn't do shit till Mimic stirred shit. Like Sonic went out of his way in disguise to save people fucked over by Surge and Mimic

But instead of noting these points, Flynn instead opts for Sonic to...dismiss and ignore cuz IDW Sonic is an asshole that can't be held accountable for anything

And then of course, Clutch is a D tier villain. There's 0 reason to make him seem more important as is

And then of course, more meta strictly to instigate bs drama. Sonic should not know that Eggman tricked the Chaotix in Heroes

Goodness I hate how 180 Sonic is interacting with them after Evan stopped writing, this pettiness is lame

And now Silver and Blaze looking at the Garden

This is arguably the least wooby Flynn has ever written him

Unfortunately for readers, they'll only be aware of 2 time travel instances in this comic, the latter Silver *still* hasn't returned from for no real reason. Rivals, Rivals 2, Colors DS (which isn't even a ruined future), and Forces do not apply unless you have prior knowledge of the franchise

...despite how this comic immediately contradicted Forces and frequently gets events wrong for sass/drama

Oh cool, Flynn finally is aware his fav food is apples

Ah fuck, he'll randomly obsess over them and act like he was only recently introduced to them...

Where's that Twitter post bout Dick Grayson and cereal?

Anyway

Nothing's really implied she isn't in games. In Rush Cream hugs her after the last boss her story, and the olympics have Amy girl out with Blaze accepting it

Flynn genuinely seems to not accept that Blaze's char arc already is mostly finished, I've noted this before for the 2023 annual

This shit looked like a mall earlier issues, but more importantly, there's no way you had this "home base" apply to the ENTIRE world for services post Forces. This comic gets me for how artificially important this is

Not to mention this oddly is the first we see mention of other regional offices, like wow...before it was just 2-3 towns

Reminder that post war restoration genuinely was forgotten for NPCs after Zombot until the 5th anniversary 4 page comic randomly. And it appears to still be outside the offices...

Shout outs to Aaron, he's doing heavy lifting to make Silver not seem wooby. Even though the Diamond Cutters never should've talked down to him like he isn't experienced

Genuinely overqualified...

Like really, none of you are helping in the supposed other regional centers? You're just pouting?

Really?

Goodness

And then Jewel admits her insecurities

First Lanolin, no it fucking wasn't

It's ironic cuz Jewel suspected that Clutch was off the more she interacted with him, even being one of the main planners to stop him. But that'd give too much credit to Jewel

But regardless this entire thing is stupid. There's clearly no need for the Restoration after the Zeti, there was no reason the Chaotix never told anyone about Clutch, no reason to do a lot of shit in IDW outside false drama

Tangle wraps her tail and reassures her that if it wasn't for her, most would give up on Tangle. Which...I mean...

But anyway, fake apology

Note how she isn't specifying what she actually did. Just how others reacted

Also weird to wait and apologize now. Not directly to Whisper earlier, it just HAD to be a show after Jewel stated frustration

I know what you are

So she proposes to work in a town, which Jewel immediately calls out on

Damn girl, couldn't even lie fully. I actually like this humility, but I know Lanolin will be bossy Sally 2.0 again later, or just nonexistent after this :/

I hate to be cynical, but that actually might be what's being set. They're disbanding

They're only disaster magnets cuz y'all are mischaracterized to push bs drama frequently

Anyway they have a sappy "see ya later instead of a good bye" and go on their ways

And then it ends with Sonic and Chaotix...honestly not doing much yet working to start a search. For again, a D list villain that really is nothingburger

They then leave

The letterer had fun with fonts...

SONIC: ComiCraft Killjoy W5 Italic (stretched further)

CHAOTIX: Fight To The Finish Rough BlamBot Bold

Rest: ComiCraft Doohickey Lower W05 Regular (stretched for bottom, curved for Next time)

Overall, meh. It's a filler issue effectively, but it's clear Ian doesn't collab as well with Evan as he stated

[randomthefox]

As much as making predictions for IDW is pointless (but hey, maybe it can be fun to see how much the story deviates from its logical consequences :P)...

I think that in #75 Lanolin will finally discover that her babyboy Duo lied to her, and Whisper was right all along. She'll blame herself for being stupid, which will cause the others to rush to comfort her with the power of friendship and completely forget about her abusive behavior :)

Now, if the story was logical, this should be the breaking point for Lanolin. She was duped. She was stubborn. She was bossy, violent, and terrified the others (nevermind that it doesn't make sense). She always got in the way. No one cares that Sonic broke the rules, her oh so precious rules, because people inherently trust Sonic in a way they can't trust her, not anymore. She was useless and a terrible teammate.

These would be the perfect circumstances to make her reflect on her approach on heroism, and how flawed it is. Even assuming that she meant well at first, she did everything wrong. She should feel bad about herself! She should strive to be more relaxed and accepting of things that don't go the way she expected!

... but after ABT drew her getting so close to shooting Sonic because it's all his fault the world is shit, apparently, I doubt she's ever gonna change. She will join Surge in spreading the idea that Sonic upholds an unfair system of harm for his own amusement and she's just a poor victim of it.

Sometimes I feel like when I speculate about possible directions the comic could go in, I'm giving the writers too much credit. I'm thinking about the story too rationally. I'm thinking of it as if it is a story written by competent creatives who want to craft a narrative where the characters act believably and consistently. And the comic has repeatedly demonstrated that it is not capable of doing that even when it tries.

If I had to speculate entirely based off of this cover, my guess would be that Lanolin is going to demand Sonic be "brought to justice" only for literally everyone including Jewel to say uhhh no? And that is going to cause her to become disillusioned, especially since she interprets Tangle and Whisper hiding the truth from her as them "protecting a criminal." So Jewel ALSO being "in on it" would be interpreted further as a betrayal. The Restoration has lost its way, it as an organization revolves around this one crazy guy who is never held accountable even when he does something wrong. Duo's reveal as Mimic will either further contribute to that, OR he'll tempt her to the dark side and she'll take off with him to go become a villain.

But again that's me thinking about it in terms of what I think would actually make sense to happen based on the preceding events and characterization. Frankly this comic is so badly written and makes so little sense that it's almost unpredictable. I do think it's a pretty safe bet no matter what though that Lanolin is NOT going to grow and change and be inspired to become a better person. I think it's a pretty safe bet that she's going to start reciting the IDW gospel that Sonic Is Bad Actually. And the "fans" of the comic will eat it the fuck up.

Because this comic is written BY people who hate Sonic, FOR people who hate Sonic.

[prowerprojects]

I will not lie, I'm easily bought over by cute Sonknux and Sonamy interactions (Sometimes I hate how easy I am to bait)

But I'm still a bit disappointed by the fact that Tails is once again relegated to mission control... And he's billed as "the sidekick" once again as well... (And why do they keep using such an unflattering pucture of him??)

I guess I could gloss over it because Frontiers hasn't yet happened in the idw universe, that with it starting off with Forces and MV being the last major event they had to go through (as confirmed in the special itself). But the special also has Sonic calling Tails "partner", which is a cute Frontiers reference... except Sonic calling Tails "partner" is supposed to be Sonic's direct response to finding out about Tails's problems during the events of the game and switching up the nickname to assert Tails as his equal. Having him call Tails that even before that kind of cheapens it. But whatever. Chalk it up to a badly placed reference.

And I guess this issue is the right way to utilize Tails, why shouldn't he be providing support, figuring out how to dispose of the problem while Sonic is doing the legwork and calling up the allies? (He is the support character. He is "the sidekick". I guess. But I also wish people didn't give credit to idw for not writing him as just a sidekick because this is literally how he's described in his introduction box)

But I don't know. I don't actually hate the way he's written in the special itself, it just once again reminds me that despite being probably the most often appearing character after Sonic, Tails has never gotten a story that explores him as a person? (Aside from that one Classic Special which is great! But also like. It's his anniversary special. They were basically forced to write about him and isn't that sad) Maybe a couple of panels that show that he's still a person and isn't just a magic box that fixes up robots and provides exposition, but not an actual story.

I was so excited for Kit's inclusion because wow! An antagonist forTails. We've had a bunch of evil versions for Sonic before, but for Tails? What would Tails's relationship with his evil doppelganger be? How would having one affect him? Isn't that intriguing? And the Tails & Kit first interaction fight is probably my favourite Tails scene in the entire book. But afterwards? How silly I was thinking that Kit's inclusion was meant to explore Tails as a character. No. Neither of them gives a shit about the other as soon as Sonic enters the picture. (And now that Kit is around Tails is never gonna stop getting billed as "the sidekick", we gotta parallel them or whatever) It's all about Sonic, Sonic, Sonic. Even when Tails does something cool someone (maybe even himself) has to comment on how good of a job Sonic did raising him. Sonic getting credit for everything Tails does because isn't he such an amazing big bwother.

I'm upset not because I like being a hater, but because I get hopeful but keep being disappointed. I guess I just have to accept that the people currently writing the comics don't really like or care about Tails and stop expecting anything. (And liking or disliking a character is a completely neutral thing, it's not a moral failing or anything. I'm not condemning them for it. But also he's my favourite character and I can't help it if I feel upset about it. )

Yeah this post kinda went off the rails... but this is just how I feel. Can't make anyone like my favourite character, but also can't stop myself from being upset about him being underused.

Cute picture of Tails to brighten my mood (and yours after reading all of that).

Also nice to see the return of the M.E. Junior after it got destroyed in Urban Warfare.

[beevean]

Honestly, as someone who wasn't a huge fan of Frontiers from a gameplay or story perspective, I couldn't help but feel alienated from the fanbase for a while. People seem to praise it up the ass, and I honestly don't see what their seeing in the game. And often times when you point out criticism, you get responses like "It's a step in the right direction, we should praise it" or "You're not a real Sonic fan if you don't like this"

Are you me? :^)

After all the shit we endured with IDW and its endless, vitriolic discourse about its writing and take on Sonic and Eggman and its "deep" morality (which stopped being deep once Flynn got tired of the discourse, then it became "a book for kids")... Frontiers broke me. Again, I must stress: it's not about the game, because I haven't played it and videos don't make it justice. I can believe it's a fun experience. But the writing is honestly '06 level of bad, mostly for how boring and pretentious the story is.

Where are all these deep, emotional character moments? Where are all these compelling character arcs (that are totally not rehashes of past games)? Where is Sage's depth? Why are we praising Eggman sitting on his ass for 90% of the game and then suddenly developing fatherly feelings when past games made clear that he's only proud of his creations when they make him look good and he's more than willing to abuse them for the slightest transgressions (which Sage has made)?

Then you add the forced references (some of them straight up wrong, like the Neo Metal one), the meta jokes, the completely unnecessary lore that to this day I still don't understand, the underwhelming villain, the wasted conflict of Sonic getting corrupted, the lackluster finale, and the fact that literally nothing happens - which would be fine if this game had a tone more like Heroes or Generations, which were aware that story was their lowest priority, but no, this game wants to be DEEP, a step in the right direction after the EVIL PONTAFF! (I still find very... unprofessional? that Flynn wrote a jab at Baldy McNosehair in one of the Egg Memos. It's not even the first time he does that, he also did it in IDW. I get it man, you think your writing is so much better, "thanks for putting the chili back on my dog" :^) )

So anyway. It got to the point where the praise genuinely made me feel like there was something wrong with me. I don't like IDW, I don't like Frontiers, now I don't see anything promising in Prime - am I a bad Sonic fan? Am I being stripped of something that gave me joy since I was 8? I had to distance myself. I had to keep my few friends close and think about the parts I still enjoy.

It's not the first time I took a "break" from Sonic - the period from 2013 to 2017 was... bad. But everyone else agreed that it was! That's the thing. It's one thing to disagree that SA2 is a masterpiece, because fine, whatever, you can't always agree with the majority. But when it comes to modern material, the majority is so vitriolic and nasty, and I can't deal with it anymore. I'll make my own fandom :\

[ghoul-bunny]

Archie sonic issue #2

And here we move on to the second in the #290 comic book series woof.

As I said in my previous post as much as I dilike the archie comics this isn't to to shit on the comics or those that like them. I'll be giving just as many positive thoughts as I do negative.

I'm just reading through them and just wanna share my thoughts on them.

Issue #2 was released in July 1993 And publication was september 1993.

Must of been wild back then to wait so long in between as if tbf we do that now still with idw but I remember a lot of my own comics I read growing up were weekly.

Anyway this is like one of the few pins I wish I could own but trying to explain the gag to people would be a lot of effort.

Sorry but Coconuts is like a really cute design I wish he was used more, I think he was in the tv series more?

This was a fucking mob hit.

Also hello you two bastards I know you fuckos.

This is so fucking stupid but "your non identical twin" made me laugh WAY harder than it should off.

These are funny acutally. Like I forget early sonic also had a cheeky attidude, I mean his british comic self would tell tails to fuck off or he'll shag his mam in greggs but you know.

WOW throw back to issue one /J

I don't really recall seeing much of scratch and gounder after this, they were more involved in the tv show I guess and just didn't really hit of with comic audience I guess? Which is a shame because they are kinda funny as bumbling idiot servants.

I wonder what Cubot and Orbot would of thought about them?

Kids who read the comic when it first came out are all like this now.

I would say I think this is when they tried to insert lore but I think this is the one about the two gag characters and not the uh racist stereotype tribal men story line.

Yep I believe they returned somewhere in the #90s issues? maybe I don't recall but I don't think they were like meant for anything other than to just make a fun story about the rings.

Oh god this made me cringe acutally that looks oddly painful

also omg better look at sonic's lil nub tail.

Awful scene that implies sonic's nose isn't the black ball on his snout

They had this odd habit at the end of some of the comics like a desperate plea not to cancel them, I think it's in the mecha sonic comic to very bizzare espically consiering some kids prolly did send letters in but were most likely ignored.

For years after I read this comic (my dad brought the collection when i was younger they are prolly worth some now lmfao if we had them) I believed this was how they made 'foil' covered things.

I remember doing it myself and being dissapointed my face just tore through it.

That sure is a title.

Need you guys to commit this image to memory for later.

This was a cute little thing of people guessing why tails had well two tails. I don't think they had a solid idea at this point? I don't remember the cartoons that well.

He's not naked he has shoes on.

The sonic vs mario haters is as old as time

My thoughts on this one was pretty good again, it's a cute series at the start and it introduced characters from the series like scratch and grounder.

I guess they wanted to introduce the characters that were going to be in the tv series because as I said some of these characters weren't really seen again in the comics, well not that often.

Which I don't blame them because I suppose keeping a lot of cast around takes away from the main villian himself and it's easier to concentrate on him.

It's a shame though because I have fond memories of vividly hating scratch and grounder but for a goofy kids cartoon they slotted in well.

I like eggmans use of skinny and square shaped idiot partners as his sidekicks. He seems to have a type for those being his personal servants, err, assistants.

my time lines could be funky on these because I'm not following along with the mini series of comics until later on.

But I like them.

We haven't reached ken penders era yet /J

PREV NEXT >

[sonic-hot-takes]

Remember when everyone wanted to roast Pontac and Graff over a fire like a marshmallow? That’s how a lot of people treat Ian, except Ian is an actual tried and true fan of the series

I’ve critiqued Ian’s stuff on here before; which, to be fair, is kind of the point of this blog, I’m not sonic-lukewarm-takes and it wouldn’t be revolutionary for me to say “uh, actually Ian’s the best writer the series has ever had,” but it’s absolutely true. Ian is the best writer the series has ever had. Maekawa is up there, but Ian’s dialogue has consistently been much snappier and charming (though this may also be a localization issue).

I don’t understand how people can hear these random Bumblekast clips and claim that Ian just “doesn’t get” the characters or enforces the mandates himself or blah blah blah. If you took one look at Ian’s work with Archie, especially post reboot, you’d know right away how wrong that is. Freedom Fighters are there, characters like Shadow are well written, and honestly anything that could be perceived as “““woke””” is more subtext than anything overt (I’m honestly kind of surprised the intent was to make Sally and Nicole a couple post reboot since outside of a couple scenes in Spark of Life I struggled reading it that way).

As always, if fingers must be pointed at anyone it should be at Sega themselves. Even without memorizing all the stated mandates to heart, anyone who’s read both comics can tell that they clearly have IDW on a much tighter leash than Archie. Which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing since it’s meant to keep the series more accessible, but none of those creative changes are Ian’s fault. If Ian wanted to axe the Freedom Fighters so badly, he would’ve done it when he had the chance in the Archie reboot. Instead he not only kept them around, but also gave them new designs to help their outdated 90s Disney Channel lookin asses fit better into the Modern Sonic style that they were legally forced to go all in on. You really think that Sega advocated for a bunch of characters that had been made by some random foreign artists over two decades prior and never appeared in any of the mainline games?

(Spinball doesn’t count, fuck you)

This pattern continues. Sega wants to keep IDW accessible to new fans, so callbacks to previous games or older Sonic media are off the table. This is also why the worldbuilding is so bad in IDW, because they want to keep everything nondescript to avoid confusion. Sega is more concerned with branding than narrative, so Shadow is stripped of his nuance and just made into the edgy competitive Vegeta ass rival because that’s what his design and character archetype would entail (the general tone and aesthetics of his solo game don’t help). Same with Amy, who has slowly degraded from hyper fangirl to just girl. So on and so forth.

And it’s really sad to see Ian take so much crap for this shit, since you know he’d change it at the drop of a hat if he wanted to. Once again, post reboot Archie is proof of that. As a licensed writer, one of Ian’s biggest strengths is revitalizing and recontextualizing old characters and concepts in a new way. Literally one of the first things he did in Archie Sonic was put in Bark and Bean with the narrative role and personalities we know them for today. He took a random side character from SatAM that most people only barely remembered and turned her into a legitimately interesting antivillain, simultaneously filling a void left behind by the lawsuits. You know he’d kill to keep doing that kind of thing.

Once again, Ian’s not above critique. I took my big dump on Frontiers’ story when the game came out, and I’ll probably end up doing it some more if I can find it within myself to get any further in the DLC. Not all of his comics have been bangers, like some of his early early Archie stuff, some of the Metal Virus arc, and honestly quite a bit of the Mega Man comic, but overall his writing is overwhelmingly good. But some of y’all need to stop really need to stop crucifying him just because he says something like “maybe we should make Blaze a more accessible character” on his podcast

Help me out here: Why is there so much Ian Flynn hate going around lately? I thought everyone loved that he was contributing to the games. Now suddenly they aren't. I guess that's par for the course for this series but I don't get it. He isn't perfect but I like what he's done. Am I a weirdo?

Ian Flynn has always had a lot of fans, but any creator putting their work out there is going to have detractors as well. That's just the nature of being an artist. To some extent, it's no big deal. He's not a perfect writer. Nobody is! I consider myself a fan of his work, but I've criticized plenty of individual writing decisions from him on here.

But Ian doesn't just have critics. He has his own obsessive hatedom. And the specific nature of Ian's hatedom is... interesting.

A decade ago, Ian was only the guy writing for Archie Sonic, meaning any debates over his work were quarantined within that tiny niche of the larger Sonic fandom. Only people who kept up with the comics month to month had any real reason to have an opinion on the guy, which means we're talking about merely thousands of fans as opposed to millions.

Within that group, he had some haters. You had the people who were mad about story changes made during his run, particularly things like ancillary characters getting killed off (although over the years we've learned that most of those were editorial mandates from Mike Pellerito). You had the people mad that Ian didn't push their favorite ship, with feuding SonAmy and Sonally fans claiming that he was CLEARLY biased towards one or the other. You had the people who just really, really liked one of the previous writers way more - usually Penders, as hard as that may be to believe today. That sort of thing. Pretty normal comic fandom type stuff. Again, it comes with the territory.

Unfortunately, many of those haters only got worse over time, morphing into reactionaries who constantly try to incite Comicsgate type culture war bullshit.

There are people still mad at Ian for making Sally bi and pairing her with Nicole instead of Sonic in the later Archie comics. There have been elaborate MS Paint red string conspiracy boards explaining how people like Ian and Jon Gray have apparently been destroying the franchise from the inside for years by Making Sonic Woke. (Jon gets dragged into this because people are still mad about him drawing The Slap 20 years later. Yes, really!!) There was an unhinged change.org petition trying to get Ian fired, specifically from people who were mad that the Freedom Fighters aren't in the IDW comics. There was even a very sad little fan campaign from these people trying to get Sega to move the Sonic comic license away from IDW and over to Udon, because they thought Udon would bring Sally and Bunnie back and also make them sexy again. There's a lot of this.

(Unfortunately, Penders has also exacerbated this by gossiping about Ian on Twitter and giving these fans ammo, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)

The thing is, for years, people who only played the games or watched the cartoons had no reason to pay attention to any of this. Now, though, Ian isn't just writing for some weird spinoff comics that only the super nerds read. Now he's writing comics that are canon to the games, and ALSO some of the games themselves, and ALSO consulting on other tie-in media like Sonic Prime, and ALSO writing the official Sonic encyclopedia, and ALSO serving as part of the new Sonic Lore Team at Sega. And on top of all this, he's got an increasingly popular podcast where he fields questions about his work on all of these things, which serves as one of the fandom's main windows into creative decisions being made behind the scenes.

As a fan of Ian's work, it's been really cool to see him rise in prominence. But the dark side of this is that his obsessive haters from the Archie days now have WAY more of a potential audience of their own. Now, every Sonic fan has to have an opinion on Ian. What this frequently means is that you'll have the Comicsgate types taking things Ian writes or says out of context, attempting to get more of the general fandom to yell at the guy.

Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of Sonic fans who take the bait:

You've got hardcore fans who disliked basically any recent piece of Sonic media and are looking for someone to blame.

You've got the people who are concerned about the sanctity of Sonic's canon, who shoot the messenger any time Ian mentions a new retcon from Sonic Team on the podcast - or any time he even mentions the THOUGHT of changing anything about the canon, as we saw recently with the Sol Dimension nonsense.

You've got people who romanticize some sort of mythical artistic vision that Sega of Japan supposedly has (or had) for the franchise. To many of these fans, American contributors like Ian just don't "get" the heart of the series and are trying to turn Sonic into something different. (This "heart of the series" tends to be some mix of Japanese instruction manual lore, the cinematics from Sonic CD, the OVA, and/or the games written by Shiro Maekawa, depending on what Sonic media the fan in question grew up with.)

You've got fans of specific characters or ships who pin the blame for how their faves are depicted entirely on Ian - most vocally fans of Shadow, even though the root problem is that Sonic Team hasn't known what to do with Shadow since 2006. At best this stops at regular old criticism, but at its worst this devolves into claims that Ian has an agenda against certain characters.

You've got fans annoyed by a perceived over-emphasis on comic-original characters in the IDW comics, ignoring the obvious facts that these characters exist because the game cast is so tightly controlled by Sega, and also, you know, that people just like the IDW characters and want more stories about them.

You've got a LOT of discourse over IDW's Sonic being a hero who tries to give his enemies second chances, as if half of Sonic's closest friends aren't already former villains and rivals. Honestly this is very transparently just reheated Steven Universe discourse lmao

You'll also see people who just think they could do Ian's job better. They can't believe that THIS GUY is the American fan working on all these Sonic projects, when clearly THEY understand the characters and lore and themes SO much better than this charlatan.

All it takes is for someone in one of these categories to be unhappy about some recent piece of Sonic media, and for them to come across an out of context quote or comic panel that rubs them the wrong way, and suddenly the leftist Zoomer Sonic fans will join the latest dogpile on Ian alongside the reactionary Comicsgate types who are mad at him for Making Sonic Woke.

In general, when fandoms get upset, they tend to want a scapegoat. A person or two to point a finger at and go "THAT's who ruined the thing I love!" This tends to be based less on reality and more on which contributors are the most visible online. You'll sometimes see teenage and adult fans of children's cartoons single out a storyboarder who's particularly vocal on Twitter, blame them for every story decision they don't like, and harass them off the platform out of a sense of retribution for their favorite ship or whatever. Failing that, fans might choose to blame every nitpick, down to individual lines of dialogue and frames of animation, on a showrunner, just because that's the name they associate with the show. And unfortunately, when it comes to Sonic, Ian is now arguably the most prolific and outspoken contributor on the English speaking internet, and therefore a common scapegoat.

Some of the things I've seen Ian blamed for are truly wild. A lot of people have claimed for YEARS that he's just lying about the existence of creative guidelines and restrictions from Sega - or, as fans call them, The Mandates - even though they're just an inherent aspect of working on a licensed property. Others claim that The Mandates are real, but somehow Ian's fault. A vocal minority of fans have convinced themselves that Ian is the sole reason the Freedom Fighters don't exist in the IDW comics, even though Ian says he's been pushing to bring them back since day one.

Sometimes you'll see people say he ruined shit he didn't even work on. A few weeks ago on Twitter I saw someone claim that Ian had written a rejected script for Sonic Forces in which Tails died. I could not find a source for this for the life of me. As far as I can tell, the rumor seems to have been born from an alleged leaked script for Forces with margin notes from Aaron Webber that criticized the way Tails was written, and also an old tweet where Aaron joked that Tails would die in an upcoming episode of Sonic Mania Adventures. These merged into "Aaron Webber criticized a draft of the Forces script in which Tails died." How'd Ian get dragged into this? Who fucking knows!

It's all just a big game of telephone. All it takes is some asshole to make something up about Ian on Twitter or YouTube or a DeviantArt journal or some forum, and at least a couple people will believe it, and then it gets repeated as fact. Again, this used to be contained by the niche nature of the Archie Sonic fandom, but now there are WAY more people who are receptive to this shit.

It's just sad to me that Ian tries to be so open and honest about his work, to try to explain the rationale for certain things, to keep fans looped in on the direction the franchise is headed, and this just gives the Flynnspiracy types more quotes to take out of context and try to paint him as the devil. If it sounds like I'm being overly defensive and dismissing his critics, man... some of the things I've seen people say directly to him are just unbelievable. People will send paragraphs-long angry screeds in to his podcast that completely tear him apart, and he has to sit there and be like "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it." People literally pay for special guest interview episodes where they just rapid fire complaints about his writing at him directly to his face. I don't know how he does it. I would snap.

All of this over Sonic the fucking Hedgehog of all things.

I don't know how to wrap this up. Engaging with fandoms online is very tiring, which is why I tend not to do it. Things like this are too common. I guess, just... remember that making art collaboratively is a complicated thing. The people involved are generally trying their best given the circumstances, but they're only human. They make mistakes. But please treat them like humans. Criticism and dogpiling are not the same thing.

[sleepy-za]

soooo when are we going to talk abt the metal sonic reflections comic?

HOLY SHIT…..

i’ve only recently started to read the idw comics bc I’ve only ever read the archie comics and grew up on them and archie is notorious for some,,,, ridiculous plot lines (thanks ken penders). so far, i’ve absolutely loved the idw comics and picked up a few from my local comic shop, read those, then went online to read the beginning since i only have novel 6 and 8. the metal virus saga is just….so captivating,,,,.

the whole concept of robotization in the sonic Archie has always been something really interesting to me, and to see it being somewhat brought back through the metal virus saga just made me so excited.

so, i sat down, and read all the way up to idw issue #30, then went back to my physical copy of novel 8, read through big’s storyline, then the radio owl guy, then i stumbled upon the reflections comic.

i was like “omg!!!!” because i love metal sonic so much (i could make an entirely different post about the neo metal sonic arc) and read through it.

a silly sonic comic provoked such raw emotion from me i was just devastated reading it and then starline yelling at metal <///3

for those who haven’t read reflections, here is the summary from metal sonic’s idw wiki page:

“Metal Sonic walked around the halls of the Faceship alone. After watching a playback of his fight against Sonic and Silver, he walked on and slid his hand on his legs. He soon arrived at Dr. Starline's lab and saw a vat of Metal Virus. He entered the room and stared at it before focusing on a recording of Sonic getting infected with the virus. The robot checked to make sure that the coast was clear and turned back to the vat of Metal Virus. He reached his hand out to the tub but paused. After a moment, Metal Sonic determinedly extended his hand out again and dipped his index finger in the vat of Metal Virus. He lifted it out and looked at the mixture on his finger. However, as the Metal Virus has no effect on things that are already mechanical, it slid off his finger and dropped back down into the vat. The robot stood still, stunned, and stared at his hand. He is soon alerted by the presence of Starline, who told him that he should get out of his office. Metal Sonic simply walked away.”

link to wiki page: https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Sonic_(IDW)#Reflections

WAAAAAGGAGSGWG im having so many thoughts abt this specific comic and don’t know how properly say what im feeling I’m just,,,, waahahahahahhghhhgggg spewing my thoughts onto a tumblr post for any poor traveler to come across.

metal was created to be a superior version of sonic, someone who could finally fight on the same level as him, with all of his abilities and enhancements due to being a robot. to me, this comic is metal coming to terms with the fact that he is not sonic, and he won’t ever be the one true sonic. he’s not an organic life form, so the metal virus won’t affect him. he realizes he’s just a reflection of sonic, plastered onto mechanical data.

and he won’t ever be an organic lifeform; he’s just another one of robotnik’s creations that keep getting destroyed over and over and over again because of robotnik’s plan for world domination. the closest metal has ever gotten to finally defeating sonic (at least, in the idw universe) was becoming neo metal. even then, he was just following orders, he couldn’t do anything on his own free will. (if i recall correctly, during that arc, neo mentions how robotnik reprogrammed him so he wouldn’t be rebellious anymore.)

he hesitates at first before dipping his finger into the metal virus serum, giving a second and becoming confident in himself. if he’s truly a copy of sonic, he must be able to be infected too, right? he watched on the cams, sonic being ever so slowly infected by the virus, now was his chance to prove to himself that he is more than just a copy, more than just a mindless robot.

but…he’s not an organic being, the metal virus won’t affect him.

he simply watches as it slips off his finger, back into the vat. it won’t affect him, he’s a robot. he won’t ever be organic, he won’t ever be the true sonic because he’s not sonic. he’s just a mechanical version with sonic’s bio-data.

and maybe that’s okay. he doesn’t need to be sonic to prove himself stronger. maybe he’ll find his own identity outside of his counterpart.

anyway, thanks for listening to my insane ramblings

[nuttyrabbit]

I genuinely liked all the obscure Sonic Facts that Greeny would post about! It sucks, but I found them really interesting!

However, the constant Ian Flynn bashing was really annoying. I understand not liking his writing style, it’s not perfect and can be criticized. But I swear to fuck, he would complain about the tiniest things!

Then he would talk about Flynn stans and how they sucked his dick constantly. I’m sorry to say this, but Greeny was hate-sucking Ian’s dick constantly!!!!

I don’t usually follow drama in the Sonic Fandom, since I’m too old to be getting angry over stupid things. I just stay in my lane, occasionally read fanfics for my ships, reblog theorizing/positive posts and cute fanart. Like, I think fandoms should be fun, so I try to have fun.

I followed Greeny since, as I said, I like the trivia they posted about and wanted to learn more.

At some point though, I think I became embarrassed to like IDW Sonic because of how much Greeny and their group would criticize Flynn and Evan. I took a break from the comics because the zombot arc had exhausted me, but I think reading the constant criticism made me not want to pick it back up. I still haven’t picked IDW Sonic back up.

I also feel like it’s gotten worse over the years. Like, I don’t remember seeing this type of stuff, or at least not as much complaining, back when I first started following Greeny.

Eventually, I stopped having fun and enjoy my time with Greeny’s posts. I felt like it made me more ashamed of what I enjoyed, and that’s not how I want to spend my time. It wasn’t even thoughtfully negative, it was just mean-spirited.

I recently stopped following Greeny, I think before Frontiers came out. He had made a post bashing the Flynn’s dialogue in one of the leaked cutscenes at the time (when Sonic first encounters the voice). Then he made another post translating the Japanese of that scene… and it was literally the exact same fucking sentence!!!!

I realized then that I was done with Greeny, that he was going to criticize the English dialogue for the entire fucking game. And I didn’t want to deal with it.

I wanted to try and enjoy Sonic Frontiers with being ashamed!

Sorry for the super long rant. Didn’t expect this ask to be a novel. I know you weren’t really talking about Greeny, but I’ve been holding this in and I just needed to air out my grievances.

You don’t have to answer or even post this ask, I just needed to get this off my chest. Again, sorry.

Honestly anon, I'm glad you posted this because my experience was very similar. For a long time I followed Greeny because they had good insights and made good posts, and even thought they acted cunty sometimes and had opinions that I thought were outright ignorant, I generally let it slide because things were relatively civil

But then yeah, the Zombot Arc brought out the worst in her and a lot of people, including me. God going back to my posts from that time is exhausting because I was furiously debating every one of these people and we were all being brick walls about it, and I could feel the discourse get naster and nastier.

It was around that time I remember her and the other people in her group just getting meaner in general and becoming very hateful towards Ian specifiaclly. Like they didn't like him a ton before but it became downright vitriolic and it felt like even discussing the guy in anything other than a negative light was a reason for them to jump down your throat

Even after the Zombot arc ended, shit remained so toxic that it was one of the reasons (well that and just my focus shifting from Tumblr in general) I just kinda left this site and didn't really look back, because it was getting to the point where I was dreading every issue coming out for the inevitable fucking discourse.

From the looks of it, it seemed like it only got worse with time, especially with the release of Frontiers.

Here's my ultimate fucking take. Greeny is entitled to her opinions, however crudely worded or wrong or bad faith they may be. But people are also entitled to call her out on her opinions and attitudes or just flat out ignore them, much as they are with anyone else's opinions, including mine.

The only reason I got involved in all of this shit was because I vented an opinion on Twitter and it got out of hand. Most of the time, I'm like you and just content to vibe in the fandom and talk about whatever, and I'd like to go back to that. I'd much rather be talking about my fucking OCs and my verse than dumb fandom drama bullshit

But like I said, I'm glad you sent this both to get it off your chest and to give me the chance to do the same. At this point I've just had so many bad experiences in this fandom (some of them of my own doing I will freely admit) that it's hard to care anymore. But I don't think anyone should be afriad to speak up about anyone in this fandom, even someone like Greeny or Crusher or a popular artist or whomstever the fuck

[mooshs-crack-headcanons]

I'm not considering this a spoiler since it's been stuff confirmed in recent interviews but since it seems everyone including Sonic has lost their memory in some way:

Edit: second image confirms sonic's memory loss

And I think it's either rumor or was in an interview (a lot of game articles managed to get their hands on it, way too many to keep up with tbh) that I just missed that confirmed Shadow to be in the game, which I mean hey given he's such a money maker and Sega knows he is it makes sense - but I'm pointing this all out due to one thing:

You know what would be funny?

If everyone has lost their memory due to whatever plot reasons, except Shadow, who has HISTORY of having absolutely terrible memory where majority of the main villains who has beef with him he doesn't even remember them or even why they hate him and he just kicks them in the back of the head and leaves (see Infinite) However, not this time. This time his memory unlike his peers given whatever reason is perfectly in tact and he has to maneuver around wherever the fuck he is in the game with that being the funniest fucking shit.

Like with Ian Flynn writing this I'm really thankful we're finally moving past the post Colors "everything has to be a poor told joke that we have to explain the joke in the joke so babies will understand" (hopefully) however, I can see fucking comedic opportunities from this - actual good stuff too given Ian's writing (please read how he writes Omega, it's absolute gold) Like Shadow, not being the very best at communicating, in his own way in 'attempt' to get Sonic's memory back is to beat the fuck out of him - who of course the latter is very confused because to him who the fuck is this guy??? - and that way Sega can milk out giving us another Shadow boss fight without it going back on his established development with him in his own way thinking if he just kicks him in the head enough the blue hedgehog's memory will return and meanwhile Sonic's just like this the entire time:

"Who the hell even are you?"

Idk I thought it'd be funny.

And even if we don't get an encounter like or Shadow has his memories lost (again) that that's fine, Flynn's always said he doesn't like how he has to write Shadow given Sega mandates in the IDW comics but hopefully he gets way more control to go past them and have creative freedom (there's already rumor of Sonic crying in a cutscene shown at the ganefest demo so hopefully,) to be able to write Shadow the way he wants to and I'm really hoping he gets to. I really miss the SA2-06* characterization of him, like from SA2 to heroes to the 05 game there was a clear character arc that post 06 Sega seemed to just throw away and revert back on and it's annoyed/frustrated me for years where I gave up on the franchise for years after Boom was revealed and only recently came back to it with movie 2. Shadow is my favorite character in this franchise and the whole reason with the 05 game I got into it in the first place and it fucking sucks to see him (and the rest of team dark tbh) done so dirty and I'm hoping Flynn gets all the creative freedom he can get to get him back at last somewhat adventure Era track. At least hopefully 🧎🏻‍♂️

(*team dark's interactions were the best and the only one of the few good things about that broken game)

[milolunde]

Do you mind expanding on your HC about sonic and chaos energy ? So intrigued to hear , sorry if you’ve already explained this before

👁 I don’t mind at all

This got longer than I though it would so…

TL;DR: Sonic is wary of corruption after the events of Perfect Chaos and Sonic X’s SA2

The entire headcanon stems from the fact that one day I was thinking about Sonic and about the Chaos Emerald in general and tried to think of the times Sonic had actually used the Chaos Emerald’s powers outside of going super.

I couldn’t really think of anything other than his race with Shadow on the ARK in SA2.

Characters still can use Chaos powers; Shadow uses his Chaos spears in X and, for a more recent example, uses Chaos Control in the IDW comics. He seems to have a good relationship to the emeralds and their power. A relationship that we don’t see Sonic have with the emeralds, despite being more experienced in their use.

So, why?

Really, I think it’s just a thing Sonic stopped and really thought about. Something that Shadow has probably though of, but doesn’t seemed phased by as far as his actions go.

That’s corruption by the Chaos emeralds. As cheesy as it is, the emeralds have a balance of positive and negative that helps power them. Either one or both of these can be used, but using the pure negative energy, as we see with Final Chaos, can make you lose yourself. Negative emotions are just like that.

I think those events from SA1 and SA2 (more specifically, SA2 from Sonic X, ahem, Dark Sonic) and even the events of Unleashed (both the comics and the game) is what made Sonic realize, he’s not that above corruption*.

[*for the case of Unleashed, the comics aid it better. In the games Chip tells Sonic that his heart is too good; He’s too genuine to be overtaken by Dark Gaia, and that’s why he didn’t lose himself. In the comics, Sonic lost his shit the first time he transformed, damn-well nearly killing Mighty:

…or at least seriously injuring him since a lot of Sonic characters aren’t allowed to die.]

And the Chaos emeralds are… Chaotic in nature. It’s their namesake,

-Dr. Starline (IDW) about the Warp Topaz in comparison to the Chaos Emeralds

“[The Chaos Emeralds’ power] can change given the situation or their usage.”

We’ve seen this happen twice, as I recall off the top of my head, in Sonic. First, with Perfect Chaos only harnessing the negative powers of the Chaos emeralds,

And with Sonic himself,

Given the situation, given the need for the power, given the headspace Sonic was in, is all why I believe Dark Sonic happened.

After all,

“Chaos is power… Power enriched by the heart,” -Tikal’s prayer, SA1

It’s up to the unifier what happens with the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic doesn’t want that to ever happen again.

He’s no scientist and all of his knowledge, though reliable because how else do you study Chaos, comes from experience, Sonic has the gut feeling that if he were to overuse the Chaos Emeralds or start using their power, as he sees, selfishly, that that could happen again.

So yeah. That’s why I don’t think Sonic uses Chaos Control and that all whilly-nilly after SA2.

I am very bad at closing “essays”. [Closing Thesis]

[onestepfcrward]

future lifestyle headcanon dump.

eventually shadow will make space colony ark a base of operations for himself. he really has almost everything he needs up there (besides a social life) i think for a time he wouldnt go up there unless it was for specific reasons (because trauma and bittersweet associations) but i like the idea of him eventually getting to a point where he’s okay with being up there and it becoming like his version of a batcave kgjsd. 

he goes there to maintain his equipment (such as his hover skates & inhibitor rings) as well as keep an eye on his chaos energy levels. i just like the idea of him like... resuming Gerald’s studies. because he wants to better understand himself and what his capabilities & limitations are. he’s a little obsessed with making sure he’s always in pitch perfect condition so. self maintenance on the ultimate lifeform + may or may not of repurposed old tech GUN had originally confiscated from the professor. hell maybe even SHADOW teaches himself to understand this tech so he can have his own gadgets.

he is always trying to expand on his chaos powers and see what all he can do with them. he prefers to have range, to be flexible with these things. (at some point i need to make a headcanon dump of all the abilities he has because this hedgehog is op as shit LMAO)

the simulations i mentioned in this older headcanon post that the scientists would put him through --- he still puts himself through them to keep his skills sharp. oddly enough he finds doing them a little cathartic, comforting even. i kinda like the idea of him having a shard of the phantom ruby used to power the simulations and make them more complicated & unpredictable. keeps him on his toes.

he turned the control room into a bit of an office of sorts. its usually where he works on paperwork that has to do with his rehabilitation foundation he’s working towards establishing. the nice thing about chaos control is he can just blip from the control room back down to earth wherever he’s needed or being called upon for something.

speaking of, he keeps a communicator on him that keeps him in contact with those affiliated with his work, as well as government officials. 

in said control room office, he has framed pictures of past loved ones in there. pictures of maria, gerald, rouge, sonic & co. y’know, people who had an impact on his life when they were still alive. he keeps them in his memory. he also has like... documented files on each of them that he made. mainly because he has the paranoia in the back of his head that one day he may lose his memories again, or loses sight of himself again... and he doesn’t want to lose those people entirely. so he has a backup plan prepared in case something like that ever happens. he��s also very protective of this information and doesn’t allow just anyone to have access to it.

shadow only really rolls up to the fight to deal with the big threats. to deal with the things that he feels other heroes can’t. otherwise, he’s more-so interested in his own goals to make the world a better place. kinda like in idw, he has a habit of popping in and out of the situation once it’s resolved. he doesn’t really stick around for chit-chat. cut the head off the snake. dive head first into the lions den. he can do it because he’s the ultimate lifeform and he was designed for this.

in his free time, he tries to challenge himself to continue learning about things. he tries to stay up to date on his education and whats going on in the world, but he’s still pretty old-school in terms of interests. the Sinatra is never gonna leave this hedgehog. 

socializing... how do you do that. shadow is and has never been great at connecting with others, it’s difficult for him because he’s one of a kind. that said, he realizes he kind of... NEEDS that connection. to stay grounded. it’s not an easy realization for him, because he’s always going to be SHADOW and he’s always going to carry the title of ultimate lifeform, the idea that he is the perfect creation who needs no one or nothing. but maybe, a couple hundred years later when all his loved ones are gone (again) and he’s distanced himself from people in order to protect his broken heart... he may find himself drifting from the path he’d started to pave for himself. it occurs to him, in his darkest hour, that he simply can’t afford to do it completely alone, even though ultimately he is. he needs that presence in his life to remind him what he’s fighting for. what he’s trying to achieve. and he finds it in new people who come into his life. 

his chao reincarnates over and over. he’s lucky enough to of fostered another immortal creature that he’s forged a tight bond with. and it becomes a real crutch for his emotional state. the longer time goes on, the more important that chao becomes to him, and by god does he become even more fiercely protective of it as does it become of him.

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #32 - Nobody’s Ever Actually Dead in Comic Books

Our band of merry guys-who-weren’t-on-the-Lost-Light-in-issue-#1 approach the shattered husk of the Lost Light, in a gruesome scene that is only slightly marred by the graphic design.

Font doesn’t really suggest danger, does it? Here, for comparison, is something I slapped together in fifteen minutes (including recreation of background) using a font I got off a free font site.

Now, one could say that my version is rather derivative, flat, and arguably cliche, but you know what else it is? Appropriate for the fucking mood of having found a destroyed, hemorrhaging ship after everyone you knew disappeared.

I’m available, IDW! Hit me up.

Theorizing that this is the ship that the Coffin Rodimus came from- remember that? It was a few issues ago- the gang flies in for a closer look. The ship blood is actually something called quantum foam, which allows for quantum space travel to happen. It’s not supposed to be outside of the quantum quills, but the ship’s pretty junked up, so it is.

Because the ship is so very full of holes, the gang can set down for repairs pretty easy. They land in Swerve’s, finding it in less-than-pristine condition. They also find evidence of Crosscut having gotten creative, as a poster for the play he was working on is hung up in the room. Considering he was still writing it when he disappeared, this might seem a bit odd. But then you remember that this is a ship from the future, and it stops being so odd.

Because this is a future ship, with evidence that Crosscut did some stuff, it stands to reason that, at some point, everyone is going to come back from being disappeared.

Just to die.

Which is a bummer, but one crisis at a time.

Megatron disembarks the Rod Pod, with Ravage following, and everyone is just a touch put off by the duo. Everyone but Nautica, who proceeds to commit a microaggression.

Nautica, that’s Soundwave’s father you’re petting like a common animal.

Ravage, angered by this over-familiarity, swats at her. Skids questions letting an active Decepticon roam around, but Megatron brushes off these concerns, saying that finding any still-living crew members is more important. With that, the search begins.

The gang splits up to look for clues, despite Riptide thinking this is a horrible idea. They’re on the clock for this one- the quantum foam is liable to explode if it touches anything, and there’s an awful lot of the stuff floating around right now.

Nightbeat and Nautica leave the rest of the group to their own work, seeing as Nautica has the most appropriate alt-mode for traversing the gaps in the ship.

Man, that’s pretty cool. Wish Nautica hadn’t been regulated to being “girl best friend” for her character arcs, I would have loved to see her do some neat stuff for her own development. Guess that’s what happens when you get introduced as main cast late, and have to compete with all the faves who had dozens of issues to be established and who also don’t have to deal with the whole “token girl character” thing.

The rest of the gang- Megatron, Ravage, Riptide, Skids, and Getaway- start looking in the area they’re already in. Seems a little lopsided, but whatever.

Ravage finds someone almost immediately, identifying Ultra Magnus through smell alone. Only, it isn’t just Ultra Magnus.

The Magnus armor lays not terribly far away, having had its hands cut off to prevent the recall signal from being activated before being gut-murdered.

Gut-murdered wiTH A FUSION CANNON, MEGATRON

Of course, Megatron was forced to destroy his fusion canon after it was decided he would be joining the Lost Light, but you can buy these things off the black market like it’s nothing. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brainstorm had a few stashed in his lab.

As it currently stands, nobody can trust the guy who has a storied past of killing Autobots, on a future ship where the only folks who could stop him are dead. Megatron, at least, has the good sense to not argue this fact, and suggests that the boys lock both Ravage and himself up until they suss out exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, over with Nautica and Nightbeat, we run through all the weird shit that’s happened in the last day or so.

Nautica, you’ve been on this ship for months now. How did you miss the fact that the only couple within 800 miles got annihilated by way of Phase Sixer? I feel like that attack might have come up at some point.

Since they’re on the subject of spouses, Nightbeat asks Nautica if she’s married, or if she has friends. Though noting that such a direct line of questioning might get him slapped with someone else, Nautica reveals that she is single, though she does have a best friend. Nightbeat is also single, probably because he pulls shit like this.

While this conversation is going on, Nautica uses her Sonic Screwdriver wrench to open a door with the literal push of a button. Brainstorm tricked out her wrench so hard it turned into a magic wand, which is good, because they’re going to need all the help they can get now that space is literally warping around them thanks to the quantum foam.

Nautica kicks something on the elevator, and that something turns out to be Brainstorm’s mysterious briefcase. Too bad Swerve is gone, he was so invested in what it contained. Luckily, Nightbeat is just as interested.

Back over on the other side of the ship, it seems as though Megatron kept his word about not resisting, as both he and Ravage have been locked in a cabinet. Wonder how that’s going for them.

Oh, better than I expected.

Ravage is fucking pissed that Megatron joined the Autobots, thereby turning his back on everyone who supported his cause during the last four million years. Despite this grievous betrayal though, the Decepticons haven’t stopped moving. Turns out, Galvatron’s in charge now.

But only if Autobot Megatron isn’t some sort of ploy.

It’s at this point that we learn just why Ravage is here to begin with- to see if Megatron’s truly given up the Decepticons, and if he has, to murder him. But first he’d like to know why this is happening.

Megatron views himself as a monster, having perpetuated a war that ended the lives of billions, destroyed the Cybertronian way of life, ostracized his race from the rest of the universe, and killing just to have something to do. He doesn’t like feeling this way about himself, so he decided to walk away from that life by joining the other team.

Don’t think it’s quite that easy to do, but okay.

Ravage isn’t so sure that this change of heart is going to stick, still convinced that Megatron will snap back to his old self with just a bit more time. Problem is, Megatron may not have a ton of that resource left.

Didn’t they build that body in like an hour so you wouldn’t die? Yeah, no wonder it feels as ill-fitting as a twenty-dollar suit. Thing’s probably made out of pig iron and duct tape.

The lights come on before further self-reflection can be done, and the duo realize that they’ve had guests this whole time.

Someone put the kettle on.

Obviously some fucked up shit happened on this ship. Megatron isn’t so sure that it’s him who did these dirty deeds, however, as he reaches into Ratchet’s mouth and pulls out his brain. Which feels like something that doesn’t really absolve one of guilt, but okay.

Also, ew.

Back with Nautica and Nightbeat, things are getting weird.

Now, this sequence might seem confusing at first blush, but this is because the laws of reality are collapsing around them. Going by clues in the background, we can find the proper, linear progression of time, and thus is conversation. This is what is actually happening:

With the mystery of Brainstorm’s briefcase eluding us once again, we move on to see more graphic aftermaths of violence. Poor Tailgate has been nailed to the wall with a chunk of a metal beam that’s almost as big as he is. The mood lighting for this scene is gorgeous, but I’ve hit my limit for exposing y’all to gore for this issue, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Then they find something even more interesting.

Who’s ready for Under Cold Blue Stars… 2!

Back over on the opposite side of the ship, Riptide’s found something nasty. It’s a bunch of dead bodies!

Including, uh, Pipes.

Who already died a while ago.

Hm.

All the bodies in this room are in their alts, and it looks like they’ve all been shot and drilled into, for some reason. Skids brings up that he had a friend who could identify the placement of any robot’s brain module just by knowing what they turned into. Then he reaches into a corpse to see what the drill-hole’s all about. It makes him sick, though maybe not for the reason you might think. He gets on the phone with Nightbeat, who’s called to tell them that they’ve found Overlord.

Still locked in his weird body harness.

And decapitated.

Megatron is on the other line, calling because he’s figured out the same thing Skids has. Someone paid a visit to this ship. Someone nasty.

The gang regroups, and Nautica gets the basics on the DJD, because I guess nobody’s mentioned them even in passing in the last six months, either.

God, what do they even talk about on this ship? Certainly not their feelings.

The reason that one room was filled with alt-modes was because of Tarn’s addiction to transforming; t-cogs are easier to remove when they’ve been used recently.

We get a quick 4/5ths-page gore-fest, then it’s back to making it all about Megatron.

Maybe you should have thought about that before you FUCKING DEFECTED, YOU POOL NOODLE.

Nightbeat’s beginning to put two and two together. There’s an Overlord in the basement. That shouldn’t be, because Overlord got exploded by Chromedome when he mercy-killed Rewind. Something is off about the past of this ship.

Before he can establish his MTMTE everybody-lives-but-then-dies AU though, the quantum foam fucks with the ship. These sons of guns need to get the hell out of here, pronto.

Oh god, what now?

Ravage smells someone inside the Magnus armor, someone who isn’t a part of the usual nesting doll lineup. Megatron reaches into the Crackerjack box and pulls out one hell of a prize.

HE LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES

Chromedome would be so thrilled, if he still existed.

[prowerprojects]

I feel like this is a growing side effect of fans being starved from Tails being the non-action tech guy for so long to where Forces caused a boiling point for so many, some are latching onto Nine or IDW in spite of it. (I argue Tails got drowned out often even back then when characters like Shadow, Silver, and Blaze were a huge talking point back in the 2000s. But still in good standing before Unleashed and Colors.)

While I'm glad the movie and Prime made Tails in general a big talking point again; more positively this time, I am mixed on it coming at the expense of his Modern self. MOSTH and Modern being playable again later in Frontiers is a start, but he's probably not going to really shake this off until he goes solo for a bit in a upfront way. (That, and having more interactions outside of Sonic to show off more of his character. Love their bond, don't love how fans treat it so one-sided when discussing it.)

Anon, you're probably right.

(Though I don't really see what is there to latch onto in idw, he doesn't really do much? I wouldn't even say his characterization is bad, it's just that he kinda. Exists around. I see people hype up idw Tails and I'm like. Wow no wonder people think he's boring and lame if this is what passes for good Tails representation)

The thing with Unleashed and Colors is interesting, because I feel like the characters who had good early portrayals (the aforementioned Blaze, Shadow and Silver) but hadn't appeared since are still remembered as competent and cool characters because this characterization is still fresh in people's minds even though it was so long ago, while due to Tails having more appearances he's more remembered for the more recent ones... (and probably there's a part of "Why can't my supercool fave be in this game, why is Tails here, he's lame!")

I feel there's also the thing that all of those characters had very... impressive introductions. No matter how bad the writing for Shadow gets people can go back to his introductory game and remember what he was invisioned to be as a character, etc.

But Tails's backstory is all in the manual. He even has a little character arc (seeing Sonic, becoming more optimistic and learning to fly/run fast enough to keep up with Sonic, meeting Sonic for the first time and following him into battle), and it's not only only in the manual, it happens before the events of the game itself. Even Knuckles has more of a character arc/involvement in his introductory game plot. (This is how we ended up with early adaptations where Tails thinks that math is yucky and hard despite canon Tails literally being an engineer) Tails just. Doesn't get to make the same impression, and never will, because he's a 30+ old character and that ship has sailed. (And it's ironic to see how people latched onto Nine since he's technically having the same arc, it's just like you know... Show, don't tell. It really works. (And also he's angsty, that helps too))

Yeah... I love people being excited about versions of Tails from adaptations, but it really brings me down when people use them to talk shit about mainline Tails. You know what this reminds me of? When there's a new Scooby Doo adaptation and everyone is like "Finally they fixed Daphne so she's competent and isn't a damsel in distress anymore". And it's like. Do you know anything about Daphne. And. Why are you giving credit to the adaptation for doing something that has always been a thing?

I'm not expecting Frontiers to break through Tails's public image either, but I hope he at least has an enjoyable gameplay so people could be like "Wow that was fun! I wish Sega would make even more games where you could play as Tails!" :3c And then maybe we could get this "solo adventure".

(Though the way it's worded in Frontiers it's more of a "Tails is going to the mountains to train" than "Tails is becoming a solo operation". Like he clearly just wants to get "stronger"(in a broad sense of the word. Though personally I think what he actually needs is to stop basing his self worth on his usefulness and Sonic's opinions. Ironically if he was more like Sonic in this way he would be happier) and is expecting to get back to Sonic at some point. I could live with this though, I don't mind it at all as long as he's actually treated as Sonic's partner afterwards rather than a cute accessory that Sonic talks to so he doesn't look weird talking to the broken robots.)

I love tmosth! Ian Sr is such a good writer, honestly I don't know about his abilities to write a cool adventure plot, but he has the character voices nailed down! (Except for maybe kleptomania jokes with Rouge) But Tails was so good! He was basically a co-protag with Barry (they had a very cute dynamic), we saw him interacting with other characters who aren't Sonic (honestly he and Sonic barely interact with each other there at all), he took charge of the investigation and got to show off his smarts beyond "I fix this broken thing like it's magic"(Though he did that as well!), and he was still shown to be insecure and childish at times, it's just *clenches fist* so good.

Sorry had to take a break to gush, this post was becoming too negative ahaha. Ok back to it.

The Unbreakable Bond thing. Yeah... I also love their relationship, but the fact that Tails doesn't really have developed relationships with the rest of the cast makes him feel very isolated and like his life revolves around Sonic. Even Amy and Knuckles, whose most developed relationships are with Sonic as well, have other characters that they interact with without Sonic being involved, (or at least used to interact with), like Rouge or Cream. Who does Tails have? Professor Pickle? Barry? Please. Tails is getting suffocated by the soulmate bond.

(And I don't love to criticize how other fans engage with the franchise because I also have my silly headcanons and interpretations. Like. I literally hc Tails as nonbinary which he isn't, in canon, as far as I'm aware. But. Yeah sometimes it feels like people are more into the idea of Sonic having a little brother that he can dote on. Rather than, you know. Sonic & Tails's actual relationship. Like I literally saw someone say (genuinely as far as I could guess) "Sonic sacrificed so much to raise Tails" and like. Ok. It's time to step back a little and look at the actual canon content. Sonic didn't even know where Tails's house was in sa1, what exactly is he sacrificing with such attentive parenting I wonder. But I do also love cute brotherly bonding stuff so. (One of the reasons why I love aosth so much, though there are other reasons as well. Also while I'm complaining, nobody understands the "Mom, Dad and the Picket Fence" thing.))

Sorry if this post got a big edgy at times, sometimes I start going and slip into it a little bit, even though I'm generally trying not to complain too much about the stuff I don't like and instead focus on the things I do.

[beevean]

I find it rather surprising how quickly people lose interest with the "most-acclaimed" Sonic media there is out there each time something new releases. Posts about Sonic Prime have all but dried up as fas as I can see, and for IDW everyone posts the same four pannels for not even a week before it goes back to complete silence on that, too. Despite everyone screaming their heads off about how "good" Sonic is written in those. I contibute it to those being mostly empty fanservice running on quips and memes and the Current Internet Lingo; nothing deeper to keep you engaged for even two seconds other that gushing about how relatable (read: actually an asshole) Sonic is now.

There was a post circulating here that complained about the "planned obsolence" of fandom. In that context, it was about how fans stop drawing fanart or writing fanfic after a few years, almost feeling ashamed of still liking something after 5+ years, but I believe the same can be applied to how quickly fans move on in general.

In Sonic's case, some games have been fossilized in common conception: fans still adore SA2 despite at this point being older than a good chunk of them :P ... although I believe it's also because of this:

SA2 good because it had a good Shadow, unlike modern Shadow who is just Vegeta. It's not about praising SA2, it's about shitting on the Mandates.

But this is another discourse. I just wanted to strike the hornet nest because I'm feeling petty :P

However... when was the last time you heard anyone talking about Sonic Mania? You know? That game that everyone praised as being the new holy grail of the series? That game you couldn't escape from when it first came out? That game that turned only 6 years old this month?

The game that became famous for being the highest-rated Sonic game ever since SA2, and it might as well have not existed.

Same goes for nearly everything that is coming out recently. Frontiers has been kept alive through its DLC and the discourse on the writing, whether it fixed the characters and whether Eggdad is a good direction for him, things like that. Otherwise, I read multiple people complaining that the game has little replay value. Then, of course, you have cases like IDW where OCs are hyped up and dropped and hyped up again (*coughcoughsurgeandkit*), or Prime whose main appeal is basically Sonadow bait from what I gathered lol - fans did their endless fanart of "I heart you too Shadow" and moved on.

So personally I think it's a combination of "new material is shiny but shallow", "fandom as a whole consumes content much more quickly", and "the Sonic fanbase seems to have skewed much younger in recent years" (I have no data ofc, it's just my feeling based on the kind of posts i see lol)

[crusherthedoctor]

Can we have some unpopular Sonic opinions?

I tried to cram in a lot, so I hope this satisfies you. :P I tried to stick to the ones that I haven't brought up quite as often, since by this point, we all know that I think IDW's storytelling is dire, SA2's story is overrated, X Eggman is an embarrassing portrayal (at least from season 2 onwards), Blaze shouldn't be handcuffed to Silver, Shadow's backstory had issues with or without the Black Arms, Neo Metal Sonic looks silly, etc. But anyway, here we go:

- Knuckles may be tricky to incorporate into plots that don't relate to Angel Island, but making him obsessed with his duties is no better than having him forget about Angel Island entirely.

- I like Marine, and never found her annoying. Oh, I understood what they were trying to do with her, but I honestly wasn't put off by her, and found her Aussie lingo more endearing if anything. Since her debut was during the period in my life where where I couldn't stand Sonic himself, I instead thought he was irritating (and hypocritical) for getting annoyed with her for doing shit he would often be guilty of.

- Silver is just as guilty of being shoehorned into games and plots as the Deadly Six are. Having more fans than the latter is irrelevant, since we're still talking about a character who constantly has to time travel in order to be present.

- Speaking of Silver, if he has to stick around, please do something different with him. They've pulled the doomed future routine multiple times now, and it's been boring every single time. I wasn't interested when it involved Iblis. I wasn't interested when it involved Knuckles drinking the edgy Kool Aid. I wasn't interested when it involved a council of dumbasses... give it a rest already.

- The Tails Doll can work as a mildly creepy thing, with maybe more to it than meets the eye when it's time for a boss fight or what have you. But the memes about him stealing your soul are just dumb, and I thought it was dumb even back in my teenage youth.

- “Eggman is supposed to be clownish!” Yeah, well he's also meant to be a genuine villain with a 300 IQ. These qualities don't have to be mutually exclusive.

- “Sonic is supposed to have attitude!” Yeah, well that's not the same thing as being an absolute cunt. Sonic was only ever meant to come off as having an edge compared to Mario. He was never meant to be a GTA-tier protagonist.

- Rouge is not a villain, and never was a villain. Literally the whole point of her role in SA2 was to reveal that she was working against Eggman and Shadow the whole time, albeit using sneakier tactics to do so. You'd think all those people who exult SA2's story would remember this, but apparently not. She barely even qualifies as an anti-hero, since aside from stealing the Master Emerald, she rarely does anything morally questionable otherwise. She's got a lot more good in her than people give her credit for.

- Captain Whisker is a better Eggman Nega than the actual Eggman Nega. And as far as robot characters in this franchise go, Johnny's design is pretty underrated.

- I don't like Iblis or Mephiles, but I DO like Solaris, and it annoys me that it was out of focus for most of the story due to all the time spent on its less interesting halves. Had they kept the backstory with the Duke and his experiments, and worked from there, I think they could have provided an interesting contrast with Chaos (since Solaris can also qualify as a monster with a sympathetic backstory) instead of recycling the surface level schtick.

- Black Doom may technically be just as bad as Mephiles, Nega, Scourge, Mimic, etc, since he's yet another villain with one-note characterization and fucked over Eggman. But because he never gained a disproportionate fandom, he doesn't annoy me to the same extent. It's easier to ignore him by comparison, and his Dr. Claw voice and face shaped like a lady's delicate part make him enjoyable to mock.

- Likewise, while Lyric is also on the same level as these other villains, it's easier to dismiss him because I was never invested in the Boom games anyway, and being an obvious alternate universe (compared to Sonic X or IDW, which retain the Modern designs and plot elements), it never had an effect on the main series. I also unironically like his design, and if nothing else, at least this snake didn't start a hypnotism fetish across the internet.

- Sally - and the rest of the Freedom Fighters for that matter - have had their importance in the franchise severely inflated. They may have been lucky to be the face of popular media (SatAM and Archie), but they're not these magnificent entities that the game characters are but a speck of dust in comparison to. Having a “legacy” doesn't make them more entitled to shit than any other character, old or new.

- Conceptually, the treasure hunting gameplay is one of the better alternate gameplay styles IMO. But it was let down in SA2 by its one track minded radar (the levels may have been big, but I don't think that would have been an issue on its own if the radar was better). If they brought it back and made it more like SA1's treasure hunting, I'd be all for it, although it would probably be better suited for a spinoff title.

- This goes for a lot of games, but when it comes to 2D, I prefer sprites over models. Not that the Rush models are bad (though the ones in Chronicles sure as fuck are), but the sprites in Mania and the Advance trilogy are just so charming and full of character.

- I actually like Marble Zone. Yeah, the level design is a bit blocky, but I love the concept of an underground temple prison, mixed with lava elements in a zone that otherwise isn't a traditional volcano level.

- I also like Sandopolis Zone. Again, completely understand why it's not the most popular zone around, but I've been a sucker for the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic since childhood (you can thank Crash 3 for that), and Act 1 is visually stunning.

- I prefer the JP soundtrack for Sonic CD over the US version overall... but I also prefer Sonic Boom over You Can Do Anything.

- SA2's soundtrack isn't bad by any means - I love Rouge's tracks, and The Last Scene is one of my favourite pieces of music - but as far as variety goes, it's a step down from SA1's soundtrack.

- If Sonic X-Treme had been released, it probably would have been unenjoyable and confusing. Whatever your thoughts on SA1, it was probably the better option between the two as far as Sonic's first legitimate translation into 3D goes.

- I have no qualms with Modern Sonic and the other Modern designs and characters, but I also fully acknowledge that changing gears from Adventure onwards - and doing it with a great amount of fanfare - was always going to create one of the biggest divides in the fandom, and fans shouldn't act surprised that this happened. The fact that they felt the need to hype up a new design and direction in the first place (compared to Mario, who has mostly been the same since the beginning, with only the occasional minor change with little fanfare) also indicates that they weren't confident enough in Sonic and his universe being the way it was, which often gets ignored by all the “SEGA have no confidence!!!” complaints you see with their recent games.

- Unleashed did not deserve the incredibly harsh reviews it received back in the day... but it doesn't deserve its current sacred cow status either. It had more effort put into it than '06 to be sure, and I can respect that, but much of it was misguided effort, and even if you like the Werehog, you have to admit that the idea came at the absolute worst time. The intro cutscene may be awesome, as is the Egg Dragoon fight, but 2% doesn't make up the entire game. Chip was also quite annoying, and I wasn't particularly sad when he pressed F in the chat at the end.

- On the other hand, while Colours definitely has its shortcomings, and people have every right to criticse those shortcomings, a lot of its most vocal detractors tend to have a stick up their arse about the game because people actually enjoyed it, and it had a gimmick that people actually liked. Yes, it may have been the first game to have those writers everyone hates, but then SA1 was the first game to give the characters alternate gameplay styles and have other villains upstage Eggman, so...

- Forces is absolutely not on the level of '06. It's nowhere close. A game being flawed does not make it the next '06, clickbait YouTubers. Or should I say, the game they want to retroactively apply '06's reception to, since they've been trying hard to magically retcon '06's own quality...

- To echo @beevean, ALL of the 3D stories have their issues. SA1 is probably the most well-rounded of them on the whole, but even that one isn't perfect.

- To echo another opinion, although I do love SA1, I'm not crazy over the idea of a remake, and would prefer them to just take Sonic's gameplay from SA1 and work from there. Because with a remake, you're stuck in a hard spot: Do you keep it the way it is bar the expected graphical upgrades, and risk accusations of not doing anything to actually improve the experience? Or do you try to address past criticisms, and risk the wrath of the fans who will inevitably go on a #NotMyAdventure crusade about it? What people fail to consider is that the Crash and Spyro remakes were accepted gracefully because their original iterations were still unanimously beloved for the most part, whereas SA1 - and especially SA2 - have always been divisive, and have only gotten moreso over the years.

- People take their preferences for the character's voice actors too seriously. I have my own favourites like anyone else, but I don't make a big deal out of it.

- And with fandom voice actors, they usually focus too much on doing a basic impression of their preferred official voice actor, and not enough on the acting. So you end up getting a lot of fan voices who sound like decent impressions of Ryan Drummond or Jason Griffith on the surface, but they sound utterly empty beyond that impression, because there's no oomph or depth to the actual emotions. They think about the actor rather than the character, when it should really be the other way around.

- The thing with Ian Flynn is that he is capable of telling a decent story, and he can portray some characters well. But he's proven time and time again that everything will go off the rails if he's given too much freedom (ironic, given how quick he is to point the finger at mandates when something goes wrong).

- Ian Flynn and Shiro Maekawa are not the only people in the world who are allowed to write for Sonic. I understand that one should be cautious when seeking out new writing talent, but for all the fandom's accusations of playing it safe, they sure aren't in a rush to experiment outside of their own comfort zone.

- And of course, the big one: You don't fix the franchise's current problems by crawling back to its previous problems. It's much more helpful and constructive to discuss the good and bad alike with each of the games. Less “THIS GOOD, MODERN BAD”, and more “This could work, but maybe without that part...”