#these mobians can fit so much trauma in them

[helpful-hardware]

forces au time wheeeee

ill add onto this with more details as i think it out but ANYWAY

Gadget's backstory:

gadget is trans girl (hey now custom hero is perfect for some self projection)

she had transphobic parents (i didnt), and seeks out someone online that might be supportive

unlucky for her that someone is Zer0 (infinite before the ruby), an edgy pricc who seems nice enough at first

but soon enough revealed himself to be a canine supremacist fascist

shortly after that her parents somehow found out about gadget's online life and, well, ill spare the details there.

the war starts soon after and gadget is on the run, and feeling isolated

Sonic:

sega are fuckin cowards.. when yall say he were tortured for 6 months actually DO SOMETHIN WITH IT

anyway infinite psychologically tortured sonic with illusions. being drowned, crushed, you name it, he did it the bastard

worst part were seeing his friends die in gruesome ways, and developing massive guilt over being caught in the first place and letting them all down.

after being busted out he sees "oh shit, its actually a hellscape out there like in that teaser trailer"

determination to fight and to keep his emotions from being seen.

eventually we arrive at a final battle of sorts, sonic panics over the idea of friends dying for real.. combine that with chaos energy from the emeralds and

dark sonic emerges, no mercy for infinite or eggman

in fact he beats the latter to DEATH, shocking everyone including himself when the power dissipates

everyone gets a glimpse of how sonic really felt all this time and it aint pretty

after being looked over by the med team sonic isolates himself in a resistance dorm room

a few days after, shadow visits to check in on the poor boi

sonic spills it all out.. HE SAW THEM DIE-- HE LET THEM DOWN

shadow is understandably shaken, but does not hesitate to be there to comfort

oh and tails prolly distressed that his bro will never be the same again.. a fate worse than death? he aint sure but he isnt doin well either. no one is

After the war, with Gadget:

gadget found companionship in tails during the last few weeks of the war, but hasnt really opened up much

an offhand mention of having known infinite leads shadow to question gadget about it

that is all covered in this audio drama i made:

but tl;dw its war trauma on top of childhood abuse and betrayal and she cant really cope that well

shadow does his best (we love him for it) but its not an easy road to recovery for the wolf

oh and gadgets also sensitive to everyone else being ✨TRAUMATIZED✨ gahh she needs a hug..

surprise robo angst!:

okay this may just be inspired heavily by @wonderinc-sonic and their cyber virus au but anyway

eggman during the war sends out a virus to disable all eggtech, since he got word of some civilians hacking it

this means that omega, metal, etc will fuckin DIE unless they are out of those bodies

using pieces of some stolen scrapped tech relating to a "roboticizer" and a chaos emerald, the resistance is able to give our robo friends new organic bodies!

this is something none of them take well

omega takes a massive hit to her self esteem as her greatest trait, firepower, is forever gone

and metal... poor thing has been bottling up some feelings that let loose with the whole being a mobian thing

oh yeah both omega and metal are trans, and we got some metamy yuri as well

now back to shadow and sonic

shadow has ended up taking after sonic a bit in trying to be there for absolutely everyone even when there isnt much he can do

it takes such a heavy toll and team dark encourage him to reconnect with his old therapist because of it...

speaking of therapy! sonic.

his mental health has been absolutely shattered.. unfortunately to the point where he's been hurting himself

so his friends and shadow make frequent check ins while making sure that he is seeing a therapist for well, everything.....

it will be difficult as hecc but eventually everyone will (somewhat) adjust to this new era of mobius

after some time sonic actually starts feeling okay enough to move back into tails workshop

shadow comes by to check in and thats this other audio drama

the mental issues wont ever fully go away, but everyone is there for each other, and theyll find new ways to live

[mobius-prime]

277. Sonic Universe #8

Mobius: 30 Years Later (Part 4 of 4): The Freedom Fighters of the Future

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

So things are bad. Tikhaos is wrecking the castle and is already looking to move on to the rest of Portal, and no one really knows how they'll stop her. Sonic doesn't even know what he's looking at, and is baffled when Lara-Su mentions the monster's name, leading to the mention of a couple more noodle incidents.

I will say it seems a little trite to rehash the whole Perfect Chaos thing once again in a new setting, akin to how Star Wars just rehashed the Death Star twice after the original movie, but then again, the whole point of this arc is to show history repeating itself in both negative and positive ways. I actually do like the concept of the Future Freedom Fighters, the children of the original Freedom Fighters, carrying on the fight against renewed threats to the world - in m opinion it's one of the only things this arc actually gets right. The team wonders how Tikhaos was released and how she got all this Chaos energy in her in the first place, but decide they have to focus on the most present threat first.

This is one of the only actual character moments King Shadow gets at all in this arc, and honestly, I don't buy it. I suppose this is meant to be sort of a "bad future" Shadow, in which he never truly got the chance to fully comprehend Maria's ultimate wish and ended up horribly misinterpreting it, trying to bring peace to the world by conquering it and enforcing that "peace" through his brutal regime. But it falls incredibly flat without any kind of attempt at explaining how he ended up like this. Literally all we know about the past of this particular timeline is that Sonic disappeared shortly after Eggman was finally defeated for good - details that were covered in Penders' version of the future, such as Knuckles going green once more and "remaking the world as he saw fit" or whatever aren't confirmed to have happened or not happened, making everything about what led up to this moment entirely uncertain. Thus, there's no explanation whatsoever about what could have happened to Shadow that led to him becoming so brutal and tyrannical - literally, the backstory provided in SU#5 just makes it seem like he showed up one day and started taking over for no reason. Given his relatively tame character progression in the comics compared to in the games (where he undergoes significantly more trauma and is actually directly exposed to the temptation to violently take over the world), I find him developing in this direction extremely hard to believe. Like, I know I've gone on about how he's my favorite and all, but even if he wasn't, him becoming evil like this just makes no logical sense.

Anyway, Sonic orders Lara-Su to organize the rest of her band of new Freedom Fighters to stall Tikhaos while he rescues his family from the panic room, and orders Argyle to contact the Echidna Security Team to evacuate the city. Lara-Su is nervous about being totally in charge, but takes to it like a natural, ordering the others to distract and halt Tikhaos' advance so people have a chance to get away. Meanwhile, Sonic finds the half-destroyed panic room… with Sally still sitting pretty inside it, a vapid smile on her face. Seriously, normally Ian is good at writing his female characters, so I don't know what the hell happened here with Sally. I get she's close to fifty years old at this point and she was never a frontline combatant in the first place, but the Sally I know wouldn't exactly be content to just sit around while the castle literally fell apart around her, she'd be getting everyone on their feet and looking for an escape route, goddammit.

Once again I have to point out that Silver's motivations don't seem to make sense here. In every other appearance he makes in the comic, he's fully convinced that a traitor within the ranks of the Freedom Fighters is what caused his future to come to ruin, and yet here it's pretty clearly a result of Tikhaos' rage, which was obviously not caused by any Freedom Fighter at all. As Sonic carries Sally and encourages his kids to follow him to safety outside of the castle, Argyle reports that the evacuation of the city is going smoothly, with no reported casualties so far. The new Freedom Fighters are doing a decent job of holding back Tikhaos, but they're nowhere near strong enough to actually take her down, and are due to wear down eventually. Most importantly, the Dark Presence has actually fully renounced Shadow, and are helping to evacuate the civilians and have also freed Tails and Mina. Seems like a pretty quick turnaround for a terrorist organization, but whatever. There's also no further elaboration on the whole Shadow thing, by the way. You'd think everyone would freak out at the knowledge that Shadow has escaped containment and is clearly behind this disaster, but he's never mentioned again in the issue. This would have been the perfect opportunity to actually explain what the hell happened to him to cause such a drastic change in personality, and to have him show some actual regret and character growth from it all, but nah, he apparently just vanishes into the aether never to be seen again or face any consequences for his actions here. Great writing, Ian! Lara-Su decides that the fight is becoming a little too dicey, and decides to try appealing to Tikhaos' emotional side.

Hey, Tails! As he joins in the fight, Mina rushes in to grab their two kids and carry them to safety, much to Melody's annoyance. She protests that she and Skye are Freedom Fighters now, to which Skye emphatically agrees despite his timid nature, and this softens Mina's heart a little, no doubt remembering her own past with the original team. Meanwhile, Jacques and Belle are almost crushed by one of Tikhaos' tentacles, when Silver jumps into the fight.

While he helps stall Tikhaos, Sonic and Lara-Su discuss what needs to be done to actually stop her entirely. Manik and Sonia chime in at this point, reminding Sonic of his victory over Perfect Chaos when he was young and how he targeted its brain, and though he's not too pleased with being reminded that he's not young anymore, he decides they have a point. He calls on everyone on the field to clear a path for him as he rushes the beast, but he's not as fast as he used to be, and it turns to face him…

Look, I know Mobians like to start 'em young, but have we forgotten Sonic's kids are literally four years old?! I mean, kudos to them and all, but that's incredibly dangerous! Still, I can only imagine how popular one might be growing up if they were not only the offspring of a great war hero, but could also boast they took down a deadly monster at the age of four. With Tikhaos weakened, Lara-Su approaches while reciting Tikal's prayer, and this calms her down until she's reverted back to her ordinary Tikal-shaped spirit form, sleeping on the ground. Sonic congratulates everyone on working together effectively to save the day, and cracks a few obligatory jokes about his back hurting because, you know, he's old now.

"Chronos Control," huh? I actually like that quite a bit, nice twist on the ol' familiar Chaos Control. Sally congratulates Sonic on helping save the day, still relegated to being the useless cheerleader on the sidelines instead of doing literally anything proactive like her present-timeline self would definitely have been doing, and everyone poses for a nice final shot, excited to have formed the new Freedom Fighters. Despite the many, many (many) criticisms I have of this entire arc, it is a nice ending at least, fit to stand with the other triumphant finales in the comic at least. Still, overall, I feel like it was shallow, nonsensical, and full of bad characterizations of all the familiar characters. Individuals like Tails and Sally don't feel like themselves at all, but blank slates with the same names as their present-day counterparts, and others such as Shadow are entirely unrecognizable. Luckily for my sanity, this is the last foray we make into the Light Mobius timeline in the comic, and any future issues that deal with the future are set… a bit further into the future, if you catch my drift.

Like the last SU arc, this one ends with a teaser epilogue for the next arc, featuring none other than Finitevus coming out of a warp ring somewhere in a desert in Downunda, speaking to an unknown shadowy figure about how Angel Island is almost overhead and how he's "dying" to meet Knuckles again… Dun dun duuunnn!

[sugarysweetsprites]

This started as a character design from one of my design practice things, but I wanted to do something with the character. This is Fringe the Loach. (Although I’ll always simply call him Fringe) His backstory’s a bit long, but I really hope you enjoy him! I’m planning on doing a few art things and maybe a few RPs with him, so keep an eye out for that! 

((My Deviantart))   ((☆ Commission Info ☆))

There are, of course, many species of aquatic mobians. You have elegant fish and rays, grand whales and sharks and octopuses, creatures that carry elegant few land mammals ever could, and creatures that bear monstrous 'deformities' that would appear as living nightmares. But most of them are simple fish. No more, no less. And even among them, bottom feeders have a tendency to be conveniently overlooked. They carry a mildly unpleasant role, and look entirely bland. Most aquatic creatures would simply overlook bottom feeders as a whole. Unless, of course, they appear as a living nightmare. There exists a rare genetic deformity among certain bottom feeders called loaches. Exceptionally rare, on the verge of extinction, but present. If just the right rare genes are passed, a loach loses it's colors. Not just colors, but it's eyes. Yes, they revert to a primal species that existed in the deepest caves where light never touched. As such, coloration was unnecessary, and so was vision. Instead, they carry the vague image of a loach... but it's skin is transparent, organs visible through it's clear chest. Instead of eyes, it bears two fleshy, concave voids. And among them, there is Fringe, the blind cave loach. Of course, he'll insist you never use 'blind' and 'cave' in his species name. He will scarcely use his species name, in fact. He would much prefer if you would simply call him Fringe, although he won't bark at any nicknames. Fringe is Fringe, not a genetic deformity or a type of fish. As frightening as he appears to many people, he insists on being treated as just another creature. He wasn't cast from his family, but he was definitely unpopular. More a punchline for idiots or some prize people used to show up how selfless they wanted to look. A social outcast, if not familial.  Of course, school yard chants were his first introduction to any kind of hatred for who he is. It simple evolved as he grew, into middle school sneers and high school gossip, and evermore into basic condescension into adulthood. He will insist that blindness or appearances aren't an all-defining trait, but the trauma runs deep. Years of emotional damage have left him easy to set off. As from a young age, he's been very fight-or-flight. IT all depends on exactly who speaks to him. There are a few people - a very few people - who will result in a cower of fear. They'd have to have the right voice, of course. If they don't, his response is fury. A few wrong words on just the right topic can drive him to violence. He isn't particularly strong for who he is - simply a fit young adult - but he is often underestimated. His clear scales and body aren't paper thin, but completely normal. His win record is higher than he'd care to admit. But in spite of his anger, and in spite of how he grew up, he is a romantic soul. He can weave some beautiful image out of most things, save for just a few things, his anger issues included. He lives in what he would consider luxury. No, it's not beautiful, but everything he owns is oddly shaped, oddly textured. It feels luxurious. His love for textures has lead to an odd hobby - sewing by hand. He stitches fabrics together loosely, no regard for pattern or shape, just for the odd feelings. Of course, his favorite texture is water. Simple, clean water. He isn't rich by any means. In fact, he's considerably poor. But he's made a life he is happy with, on the outskirts of most of society. His home is built into a cave that stretches and curls for miles, but he wouldn't dare explore those crushing depths past the makeshift walls he built to stop further travel. The outskirts of the cave carry his farm. Yes, his farm, a strange aquatic garden overrun with strange kelps and underwater berries with origins he scarcely tells. He even had a small patch of land on the surface above the jut his cave entrance was born into, for more traditional foodstuffs. And that's how he lives. Quietly, happily on the edge of society, barely deigning to appear but to appear for occasional markets to sell enough to buy necessities and little goods here and there. He doesn't need to pay for his home, it was a patch of land he inherited years ago. He doesn't need to pay for many things, he simply lives a happy, quiet life. And a tragically lonely life, free of adventure or love and filled with more violent acts than he'd care to admit... Even in his small corner of the ocean, away from most life, he still hears stories. Fact and fiction, myths and legends, he hears tales of freedom fighters, time travel, gems that can destroy whole worlds and people who stop it from happening. He's heard tales of many disabilities, but most importantly, he heard tales of a woman with only one natural limb to her name. He hopes to find them someday, he hopes to fight for... anything someday. Letting his life go to atrophy in a small cave is wearying, and he craves for something more to enter his life. No matter what it is.