#sonic discourse

[kittydoremi]

Noticing the current state of Sonic ships, Sega will tease ships, but won't make any ship an official couple.

In the games, there have been ships teased and hinted at in terms of feelings (most notably SonAmy and SonElise)

But Sonic has never been in an official relationship, and I personally feel it's for the best. Being in an official romantic relationship just isn't Sonic's thing, he isn't one to settle down in canon. But it doesn't mean a ship can't be teased or feelings can't be hinted at.

Even recently with Sonamy, I think Sega found a good middle ground. It's heavily teased to please shippers since it's a popular ship. But it won't really go beyond that. Nothing is made concrete in terms of them being a couple in order to not divide the fandom.

Most SonAmy moments usually end up being up to interpretation, you can see it as something romantic, or Sonic caring for someone he has a soft spot for and him reading the room. It's probably left open since Sega isn't choosing to make them an official couple, yet still wants to tease them.

Sonic is still canonically single (confirmed Morio Kishimoto, and Naoto Oshima also said Sonic would have "a boy's heart forever"), and is likely to stay that way. And it's most in character for Sonic in canon imo to not be in a romantic relationship with someone officially.

[sonicfanaticsez]

Happy holidays boos! ☺️😘

[toaarcan]

I still find it funny that IDW Sonic turned into the Intense Moral Debate story and the fandom went full Batman-vs-Jason-Todd on it.

Like, my dudes, there are 31 years of material that are allegedly canon to these comics. The question is not should Sonic kill, it’s has Sonic killed.

And the answer is yes.

Like the first half of Black Knight is just about Sonic planning a murder. He spends several days specifically gathering the materials he needs to turn off Arthur’s immortality so he can kill him. He is told explicitly that the journey he is about to embark on will make him “Slayer of Kings”, and says “Yeah cool hand me the talking sword let’s do some regicide.”

That the guy he kills turns out to be a demon ghost after he guts him with a sword does not erase the half-a-week Sonic spent planning to kill what he thought was a regular dude in spiky armour, carrying out the plan, and celebrating afterwards.

Look at him. He just killed a man with a blade and he gives zero fucks.

And yes the Storybook games are canon, they were specifically referenced in Generations, which was specifically referenced in Forces, which is also called-back-to in Frontiers. They’re canon.

They’re also the games which are renowned for containing the single best encapsulation of who Sonic is as a person, so this is not a case of bad writing.

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

"sonic frontiers looks awful" "sonic forces was the worst game in the franchise" i fucking DARE you to play rise of lyric. do it. play it and complete the entire story. i fucking dare you. then and ONLY then will i listen to your opinions

[infinitetrainss]

pov you said frontiers is gonna suck without even playing it

[slaket-and-sprash]

I'm glad we're getting a new 2D sonic game but I'm...kinda torn on the concept of Classic Sonic getting new games now.

because on one hand; I hate how "Classic" Sonic (Genesis-Saturn Era) is now a separate continuity of "Modern" Sonic (Dreamcast-Present) like...i know sonic adventure 1 is a soft reboot, but emphasis on soft reboot, the previous games still happened in adventure's world.

On the other hand, It makes sense for the timeline to split up after Sonic Generations, with Classic Sonic and Classic Eggman seeing their future, so when they go back they'd likely do some things differently. Infact Eggman seeing his future failures is what lead to his depression in Sonic Mania.

Also I hate how it locks certain charecters to different "continuities" like yeah I'm glad Ray, Mighty, Bark, Bean, and Fang get to appear again but I'm disappointed that we don't see them in the modern style. Conversely I'm disappointed we don't get to see Modern charecters like Shadow and Silver in the classic style.

While I'm bitching about how classic sonic is handled in Generations, Forces, Mania and Superstars, I am still salty about Sega choosing to make classic sonic silent and not having him voiced by Jaleel White like in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic SATAM, and Sonic Underground

[nervouswreck-96]

Me coming to the realization that the Legend of Zelda fandom is having almost exactly the same discourse over game design as the Sonic fandom

[furutetalks]

not tagging this with ships so it wont clutter the tags but omg that one espilver post under the vecpio tag that was posted a few weeks back in response to my rant proves my exact point so well

also i wasnt really planning to give any sort of response to this so take it as a grain of salt

some people are against vecpio because of how vector looks, espilver is easier to ship because silver is "cuter" and easier to draw

ill probably make a longer post specifically on espilver at some point i gotta decide if its worth it

(its really not)

moving on, calling or even just headcanoning espio as a kid is wild if youre sticking with his actual background

like its possible, im not saying its impossible or whatever and i definitely do think he atleast used to be a teenager in the mid-late 90s, but i personally like aging the characters throughout the games, and especially like, if you see sonic as older in frontiers like a lotta people do then you have got to admit that aging the rest of the characters up is necessary

theres a good percentage of people who are in the sonic fandom that havent seen the games which is understandable, being a fandom lurker is fun but mann its crazy when people stand so strongly for characters while not even knowing them well

and also people assuming that relationships = romance and sex aaagh

but as much i will pound espilver into the ground, if you ship it it really doesnt matter, do what makes you happy i just have my own little justified world with sonic stuff

and also obviously no hate to the op if they end up seeing this, i was just using them as an example, and considering how 20 people liked that post theres definitely others with that same perspective, half the notes on my original rant are just from a popular vecpio account reblogging it so its not like my pov is a well known one either

thats all ill say about this, and this probably wont get traction since theres no ship tags but i just want this to go on record

[eeleye-mcshitposts]

the only logical reason why Zavok keeps coming the fuck back...

[that-one-multifandom-syl]

Ik I’m going to be crucified by the fandom but is it weird that I think the whole US Sonic vs JP Sonic discourse is kinda silly? I’m not waving the criticism ofc and not biased to either side. Idk why I think that, but it sounds like the whole “dub vs sub” debate but for a blue boi and I really can’t take it seriously.

[kittydoremi]

I dislike when people say "a character can only be in a relationship with Sonic if they can keep up with him" like a character HAS to be fast like Sonic in order to date him. To me it just feels like a way of dismissing other ships. It's also suggesting that Sonic would only like someone, want to hang out with them, or want to be in a relationship with them if they're fast.

To keep up with Sonic doesn't just mean to "be fast" or even just going on adventures, it means to be able to keep up with HIS lifestyle, he's a free spirit that doesn't stay in one place for too long or settle down, he's always on the move. He doesn't want to be tied down by someone. And I don't think there's a character in canon currently that has the same lifestyle as Sonic or can realistically keep up with his lifestyle in the long run for a relationship.

So the only way I can see a character being in a relationship with Sonic is not by "keeping up with him" (unless the character is a clone of Sonic), but by having patience; Knowing that they won't be able to keep up with his lifestyle and Sonic won't always be around, and be okay with it. He'll often be doing his own thing, playing by his own feelings. And when he feels like it, he'll stop by and spend time with whoever he's in a relationship with.

[sonicfanaticsez]

Remember kids if you ever see any type of Sonic x Tails art or any proship…that’s no good and that person needs immediate jail time ☺️💕

[robynsramblings]

i actually love sonic lore discourse

even if people are misinformed about it, or simply disagree with one another, i’m just glad there are others who care enough to engage with the work on that level…cuz at the end of the day this community is a bunch of losers (affectionate) that spend maaaybe too much time thinking about a baby game. but i love it !!!

sorry i just got done reading the last few issues of the idw comics since i wasn’t totally caught up and they were such a treat :) actually was happy to see that these are confirmed canon now. it’s been said so many times before but i think it’s clear the people behind this run put so much thought into how they go about writing these stories and do such a good job reminding me why i love this world and its characters.

sonic 4ever tbh

[calebscalamity]

I feel like this might be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really see most of the Classic Sonic Era games as particularly great. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the games are bad by any means and there are some gems I really enjoy, but aside from Sonic 3 and Knuckles, Mania, and maybe Sonic 2, none of the classic games really grab at me the same way the Modern era games do.

That said, If your prefer the Classic Sonic games in general, more power to you! Like I said I don’t dislike any of the games in that era, I just personally find myself preferring the Modern games a lot more.

[sonic7ischaos]

So annoying when Sonic fans say "There is no definitive Sonic because everyone has a different jumping on point", like Sonic 1 had in series competition when it came out.

We've actually had the definitive Sonic from the beginning, liking Unleashed or Prime or whatever more doesn't make them the more authentic to Sonic's core artistic vision than Sonic 1 and the things that iterated directly on it. You make those things without Sonic 1 coming first and you'd NEVER come up with stuff like loops and rolling and the specific crossover between rubber hose animation and shounen battle/adventure anime stylistic sensibilities.

Everything that came after is either a remix of Sonic 1, or it isn't, and the ones that AREN'T are fundamentally less Sonic than the ones that are.

I've talked about this before, but the reason every Mario game or Mario side thing, like the movie, always feels like Mario is because it's all built on the foundation established in Super Mario Bros. Actually, it's why MOST Nintendo properties always feel like they belong to the same series, everything that they are, all the ideas they execute are built on the foundation established in their first game, with all iteration being additive to that foundation. This applies to EVERYTHING, game mechanics, musical composition, sound design, art direction, EVERYTHING. Super Mario Bros.' core gameplay is built around the way he runs and the specific inertial mechanics of that run, and the way he jumps, and the specific mechanics of his jump arcs, the way he interacts with game objects like blocks and shells. Those core run and jump mechanics can be found in every single mainline Mario game, and even a lot of the spinoffs use those 2 run and jump mechanics as a jumping on point for their own.

Take Zelda, which is built on free exploration, sword swinging, and item use to find secrets and open doors. From Zelda 1 to Breath of the Wild (haven't played Tears of the Kingdom yet), this has been at the core of what Zelda IS and so aesthetically it's only tied down in a few ways. Zelda can essentially take place in an entirely new world each and every time because its core elements are so consistent it doesn't even matter when it goes from a classic, grand, epic quest in a medieval fantasy kingdom to the cartoony, cel-shaded ocean world of Wind Waker to the Peter Jacksonian semi-grounded fantasy realism of Twilight Princess. It's always Zelda. And yes, until BoTW (or arguably Link Between Worlds, but that's another topic), that meant that there was a serious problem of stagnation, of repeating the same gameplay loop in every game (a problem Pokemon struggles with even harder, though Legends Arceus is more evidence to my point, since Pokemon is more about catching party members and the fantasy of building a team of favorites in the wild), but they MADE Breath of the Wild and by building it directly on the foundation of Zelda 1, it still felt like Zelda at its core.

I think it's a failing of language to some extent. People hear someone saying "it's LESS SONIC" and think they're saying it's worse, or bad. But Mario RPG is less Mario than Super Mario World, and it's not because it's classified as a spinoff. It's the reverse actually, it's classified as a spinoff BECAUSE it's so different, so much less of what Mario is on a gameplay level that it can't be anything BUT a spinoff. It still manages to feel like Mario in its own ways, the aesthetics, music, and mechanical references, that it doesn't catch any flack for being so fundamentally different (nor should it), but that's the thing, it's still not the definitive take on Mario, because one has already been established.

Sonic's problem is that it takes things that should've made spinoffs and keeps them in the same category of things as the main series, so now Sonic isn't about rolling and abusing the physics of inertia to platform, but now it's about boosting reaction challenges. It's not a series of semi-connected stories with an impatient delinquent with a heart of gold as its lead, but disconnected episodic stories with a self aware cartoon character as the lead. Even Frontiers, which is the first 3D game in the series I've loved since Heroes (because Mania exists) inherits some of these problems. As good as Sonic feels to control now, he's still not based on building inertia using running and rolling on slopes, which, good or not, is LESS Sonic. He still has the problem of missing his impatient, abrasive anime delinquency and disrespect for authority. The core art direction is still very disconnected from his origins, which feels less like the sort of intentional disconnect of Mario's aesthetics in New Donk City, and more like a consequence of carelessness about it. Frontiers didn't make the islands and cyberspace look like that to fulfill a creative vision that was consistent with Sonic, they did it because that sort of realism is cheaper and easier for modern 3D artists to make, because the industry prioritized it in developing the techniques and workflows for that sort of realism.

And yes. All this means that a lot of the Sonic stuff the fanbase has become invested in, Prime, the movies, even a lot of the games, from Unleashed to Frontiers I'd argue, and Heroes to 06 to a lesser extent, is LESS Sonic than the stuff that came before. It has less to do with the ideas that defined Sonic to begin with, and doesn't justify those deviations by making them explicitly not jumping off points for the main series. People jumping into the games expecting movie Sonic or Prime Sonic are not getting what they came for, because those things are so disconnected from Sonic's core ideas, and the people going from one era of the games to the next are disappointed for the EXACT SAME REASON.

And all this is coming from someone with more hope for Sonic than I've had since the leadup to Sonic 06, before THAT hammer came down and crushed everything in its wake. Sonic is course correcting, and it's closer than it's been in decades to that original vision. But it's not there

[solfinite]

extra doodles below