#i'm this close to muting every sonic tag to take a break

[beevean]

Especially the justifications ranging from "Sonic is neurodivergent-coded" to "Sonic is canonically neurodivergent" in Prime grind my gears. I'm certain many of the same people are gushing about how awesome it is that Sonic Prime is CaNoN tO tHe GaMeS... as in, the games where Sonic:

knew that simply defeating and sealing away Chaos again would do NOTHING except make its hurt and anger only worse.

gave Blaze a kind and supportive pep talk, acknowledging what she had been through because of her pyrokinesis and duties as Sol Emerald Guardian and offering her his friendship with a reminder she can count on the people she's got to know during her adventure.

defeated Merlina but expressed sympathy with her hurt about her world ending while sharing his own philosophy of needing to live life to the fullest, without any call-outs about her attacking him earlier, boasts about defeating her, or scoldings about her negative view on it all.

Immediately came rushing back from Cannon's Core in the ARK even though he was seconds away from foiling the entirety of Eggman's plan with the fake Emerald because Eggman and Tails informed him Amy was in danger.

And those are only the examples I know for certain on the top of my head, without even touching upon everything that happens in games like Sonic Battle and Sonic Forces. It's not even that Prime!Sonic is particularly nasty or rude, he clearly adores his friends, but he can't read a room to save his life and he is legitimately just stupid. Which is clearly done because it can be used to write jokes, but he is stupid, in a way that a properly-written game!Sonic could not be even if he tried. And you mean to tell me the Sonic from the above examples is the occasionally-insensitive constantly-dumb hyperactive chatterbox that Prime presents him as? Please.

(I'm sorry, I figure you might have gotten tired of Prime discourse now, but in general the whole He's Totes Neurodivergent fandom perception annoy me, because they use that card to completely disregard any (in my opinion valid) counterarguments about any poor portrayal...)

Oh wait I forgot to add: the reason I came up with those examples is apparently because people think that Sonic (aka Prime!Sonic) has low empathy. Stolen from some probably-shady and possibly-unreliable site on the internet whose definition of empathy does otherwise seem to check out: "In general, empathy is the ability to understand or sense another person’s perspective, feelings, needs, or intentions, even when you don’t share the same circumstances. It can sometimes involve acting on that understanding, including offering help." And I ask, in what world does Sonic from the games lack empathy?????? He's literally the most empathic pep-talk-giving perspective-seeing help-providing understanding sweetheart on the entire planet with that definition!

I remember reading a post that proposed that Tails had high empathy and Sonic had low empathy, before Prime was a thing. And I had your identical "bruh???????" reaction. Sonic has low empathy? Literally where. Show me proof that any version of Sonic struggles to empathize with people. My man is actually pretty good at understanding others, as you accurately pointed out.

Anyway, I don't have ADHD and even I am getting annoyed at how it's been reduced to "hehe i'm soooooo silly and quirky and kiddy 🤪". If it's not Sonic, then it's characters like Tangle who has pretty much become a womanchild and fans defend her because she's "neurodivergent-coded".

Also, speaking of differences between Prime and Canon Sonic, while the latter was also relatively slow to the uptake to accept that he was not meeting his actual friends in Secret Rings and Black Knight, it was still not as ridiculous as the former, who apparently could not recognize that he was in the third different AU in a row and still was all "oh Tails am I glad to see you!".

And apparently Apple Metal was built to be like Sonic but way more obnoxious about it, which prompts Sonic to say "if I'm half as annoying as you I need to change". Which. *sigh*

and i'm pretty sure there was a boom character like that, but boom apparently sucks ass now while prime is the best western show ever. okay