#year of sonadow REAL!!!!.

[yellowvixen]

Oh yeah. I'm so normal about this

[punk-pitcher]

I like the hedgehogs that go fast <3

It's been around 5-6 years since I was last involved with the Sonic fandom, and I kind of want to get back into it. I miss this

[donelywell]

I can't fucking believe sonadow is real- I'm losing my shit.

I still headcanon Sonic as aroace, I just want them to be best friends.

Dude this was the ship I was obsessed with as a cringy teen- 13 year old me is having a field trip with this.

[thatshadowcomic]

I'm making a sonadow comic in the year 2024 but it's mostly just slow burn haha :) You can also view on Deviant Art for the better experience.

here's some context for anyone who hasnt played his game/dont know the real lore...SKIP TO NEXT BREAK FOR HEADCANON/PROLOGUE.

PROLOGUE:

[fleetways]

sorry if this is an annoying question but have you posted art of chimera before?

i saw you were participating in sonic oc showdown so I just had to ask

I have! Her tag is just “chimera baby” but Here and here are the defacto chimera baby introductions. She was birthed from the joke that all sonadow fankids look like this:

I thought it would be funny to make an actual oc based off the plush above and hence chimera baby was born

for the better part of a year i referred to her exclusively as Chimera Baby but a couple months ago I ran a poll to give her an actual name so her “real” name is technically Mira now but I’m so attached to her original title I still use it more than not <3

anyways this all started as a funny but whoops i grew attached to her and now she has some lore (which you will learn about in the showdown!)

[samethstarr]

Sonic Prime Spoilers. I ship Sonadow, but I would be legitimately disappointed if "Sonadow Prime" became a canon thing. Because it doesn't fit the theme at all.

This is a friendship story.

Everything went wrong because Sonic wouldn't listen to his friends. Everything escalated because Sonic wouldn't listen to Shadow. Sonic is running around making trivial friendships and treating them the same way as his longest, dearest companions, those who have known him for years. It shows that he doesn't fully appreciate his real friends, even after they're gone. It's in the back of his mind, sure, but he's running around and playing with his new novelty friends, letting them distract him from his goal.

And then Shadow shows up and starts to ground him. Shadow is trying over and over again to remind Sonic that these people he just met aren't his friends, and it's getting lost in translation. Shadow is saying "These people you just met, who resemble your friends, are not the people you have a bond with" and Sonic is hearing, "The relationship you have with these new friends is fake." Because Sonic's understanding of friendship is fairly shallow.

But Shadow is starting to set an example of what responsibilities come with friendship. You have to make sacrifices, do things you don't want, cause and resolve conflict, hold back and wait for the other.

And now that Sonic's shallow friendships are falling apart, Sonic is starting to learn to appreciate the real ones, that go deeper than surface level. Shadow's making that effort for him, he needs to start making that effort back. He's going to start realizing why losing his "real" friends hurts so much more than losing his new ones, but he's also going to learn how to form better bonds with his new friends and have stronger allies as a result.

And this will end with Sonic being a better friend.

And that message will be lost if him and Shadow go off and snog behind the palm tree when it's all over.

[cringelordofchaos]

Bro, if you're telling me THIS fucking image is real and canon, then I don't know what to say. I used to draw this type of ship art for Soknux and Sonadow when I was like fucking 11 years old. It's like I foretold the future. This shits gay

[transgender-battlekukku]

Sonic opinions that may or may not be controversial

Sonic character design is at its worst when they try to make it as "Sonic-like" as possible, and at its best when it's at its most unconventional (i.e. Fang the Sniper, the Witchcarters, the Kukku Empire, the humans in Sonic Unleashed and Chronicles, SatAM and AOSTH characters, etc)

Infinite's maskless design is lame

Sally Acorn, Amy Rose, Princess Elise and Lanolin aren't the worst characters, you just want to hate female characters. There are way worse written characters and you choose those three to bash on

That said, Chris Thorndyke and Charmy Bee aren't annoying, you just hate children. Chris' unwilling to let Sonic go in the finale of Sonic X's season two wasn't a dick move, that's his character arc. And of course Charmy being loud, annoying and basically dooming the resistance by turning himself into a zombot to try and save someone makes sense. He's a god damn six year old

Ian Flynn trying to "simplify" Fang the Sniper takes away all that made him interesting, his weirdness and confusing design (he literally took away Fang's hybrid side and him being originated from the Special Zone. Blaze exists, why can't Fang be from another dimension too?)

Gemerl not having Emerl's personality isn't neither a betrayal nor a bad take on his character. In fact, it makes his contrast with Emerl and comparison to Omega and Metal Sonic better. Shard is not coming back guys. Cope

Sonic Forces should've been less focused on Classic Sonic and more on the Rookie. In fact, Shadow should've replaced Classic Sonic in the storyline

Sonic Colors is worse than Sonic 06 in terms of storyline and the DS version should've been the real deal

As fun and awesome and amazing as Sonadow is (totally not speaking from bias), making it non-canon is the best for everyone

Characters like Shadow and Omega shouldn't have a classic form, but it would be interesting to see other modern characters in classic form

Classic characters shouldn't be confined to the "classic universe". Archie's best parts were when classic and modern characters interacted (Mighty and the Werehog, Shadow and the Hooligans, Jet and Speedy)

The idea of the Babylon Rogues being associated to the Kukku Empire in the past IS an interesting concept. What isn't is the Kukku Empire being associated with the Babylon Garden. They should be their own villains

As goofy as Sonic Chronicles was, it wasn't a bad game at all

Western and eastern Sonic media should be treated with the same respect

Sonic characters acting immature shouldn't be a big deal. They are kids, no matter how many times you point out how they removed the ages at the Sonic Channel site. Amy Rose herself was at her best when she was an immature hotheaded girl

As much as I wish Silver was more serious at IDW, him acting excited and happy isn't bad either. He's healing from multiple broken futures

Silver and Blaze are better staying out as platonic. If Sonic and Shadow's tanabata references can be seen as platonic, then those two can two. That said, their relationship should still be seen as meaningful to both of them (perhaps more to Silver than to Blaze). Male and female friendships exist without it being instantly romantic

MORE. UNSEEN. CHARACTER. INTERACTIONS. PLEASE

Sonic Shuffle shouldn't be shafted just because of the weird gameplay and human-like characters. The Maginaryworld characters should make a comeback (ESPECIALLY with to the implications of the angel statue in Sonic CD's Wacky Workbench)

We need more truly irredeemable female villains (Surge doesn't count, I'm talking about characters like Witchcart, Lien-Da, Thunderbolt)

For the love of God, Sega. Bring Classic characters back

If you can give personality to Metal Sonic and Mecha Sonic II, you can give to the other robots (and no, making Tails Doll an eldritch horror doesn't count)

Hyper Sonic should come back. Maybe even make it the "third stage" to the Super Sonic and Super Sonic 2 duo

As good and amazing as Amy's everything was in Sonic the Comic, that shouldn't be the blueprint of her canon character. At max bring back her crossbow (and her girlfriend)

Tails Adventure is better taking place before Sonic and Tails meeting. If he was confident enough to follow Sonic and help him defeat Eggman's ass he should be confident enough to abolish the monarchy (last part is /hj lmao)

Tails Adventure mentioned, the Kukku Empire should make a comeback too. If Shadow can come back the Kukkus can. They weren't cntrl+alt+del from existence like Mephiles was y'know

We don't want to see the classic universe. We want to see classic CHARACTERS

Sega. Hey Sega. Sega. Are you hearing me. Sega. Bring classic characters back Sega. Sega-

Post-genesis wave Archie character designs sucks ass. The color palettes make it worst (Antoine I'm looking directly at you)

[scottsumrners]

sonic x shadow generations......sonic prime part 3.... sonic 3.......2024 sonadow year is REAL.

[redpenship]

Many fans bemoan Sonic's characterization in issue 50. Why does he talk so much? they wonder. Should he be moralizing at someone he just met? they post on Tumblr/Twitter, the websites for moralizing at people you just met. As a comic fan, should I really be expected to read more than 40 words of dialogue on a single page?

All of these are valid critiques. However, I believe the debate around Sonic's characterization distracts from the issue's most problematic content: the destruction of gay men in the Sonic IDW universe.

The first incident is obvious: the relationship of Doctor Starline and Doctor Eggman. Despite being two men in a relationship, their relationship is very obviously lesbian-coded. As we all know, lesbians get divorced at higher rates compared to hetero- or m/m homosexual couples (source). This is sometimes attributed to the lesbian phenomenon of "u-hauling", in which lesbians move in together very shortly after dating. Now stuck in close quarters despite never truly testing the boundaries of their relationship, they are prone to discover love-breaking flaws in one another that ultimately destroy their romance affair. Eggman and Starline's relationship follows a similar cycle: they meet, move in together, and then tragically break up because they discover irreconcilable differences between each other. Their relationship is lesbian-coded, whether done intentionally by the writers or not.

This is the first affront committed against gay men. Lesbian-coding them is problematic, as lesbian and gay relationship cycles are unique and cannot be swapped around carelessly. Male homosexual romance is particularly distinct. Allow me to outline an example here: typically, the two men begin as rivals who dislike each other for a variety of reasons. This rivalry ebbs due to conflict or mutual interest in helping one another with a problem, such as figuring out what to do when there is only one bed in a hotel room or one of them is going through that "time of the year". Any intrinsic binaries dividing them, be they sociological or biological, play heavily into the flourishing romance--heteronormativity is what makes gay relationships exciting, after all. The two men then realize that they may be attracted to each other despite their rivalry, forgiving each other for past sins even as severe as trying to crash a space station into the planet. They are then free to comfortably fall back into the fictional gender roles ascribed to them, reflecting dominant and submissive positions, and--huh? Sonadow omegaverse doesn't reflect the complexities of IRL gay relationships at all? Weird.

Moving on, I have now established that the lesbian-coding of Starline and Eggman's relationship was one of IDW's first offenses against gay men. The next offense is even grander than the first, so hold on tight!

Within the Sonic universe, Eggman has always stood in defiance of gender roles. His insistence on wearing pants, despite bottoms being a degenerate garment for women only, has always set him aside from other men in the series. Issue 50 undermines his anti-masculine position by reincorporating him into the hetero-patriarchy via intimate violence.

It is common knowledge that drone operators are kinda gay (source). Real soldiers kill other men in close combat wherein their life is likewise in danger. A man killing another man, dominating him while sweaty and short of breath and tussled up, is a strictly masculine affair. Drone operators do not experience such a masculine version of killing. Queer theorist Cara Daggett asserts that the spatiotemporal disorientation of drone warfare emasculates drone operators, as they kill from afar without bearing any of the risks associated with normal combat. A hypermasculine designs and messaging around drones fail to disguise their reality as genderqueer bodies.

This theory can be easily applied to Doctor Eggman. In games and most comics, he does not directly engage with any foes--he prefers to fight with robots and mech suits. His badniks and other robots (such as Metal Sonic) therefore turn into genderqueer bodies as they deny him "masculine killing" by disorienting his spatiotemporal axis relative to his enemies. When this is combined with his insistence on wearing pants, it becomes clear that always operated in defiance to hetero-patriarchal norms. He is a gay man.

In issue 50, this becomes unclear. Doctor Eggman reorients his spatiotemporal axis by grabbing the platypus by his leg and smashing him into the ground. With this one action, Eggman openly embraces his role in the heteropartriarchy by engaging in close combat. The queer ideal of Doctor Eggman is dead.

Starline is gone. Eggman is effectively a heterosexual man. No one cares about Don and Nite. In one issue, the IDW writing team has destroyed the status of gay men in their comics and reduced them to nothing.

Remember this post next time you so proudly post about how many lesbians there are in the comics. Their empire has been manufactured by the systematic removal of gay men in the comics. Do not let the cute wlw or questionable Sonic characterization distract you from this fact!

a/n: sorry, this got away from me. big /j for everything here.

[yellowvixen]

Got the chance to meet Roger Craig Smith today and he signed some art @fleetways and I collabed on!!

That's right folks, year of sonadow is real, Sonic himself said so :]

[nottheweirdest]

could you drop some sonadow fic recommendations for this year? especially when we’re at sonic franchise’s peak and shadow’s!

Hi there! I absolutely can. I'm not sure what you're looking for content/rating wise so I'll drop a handful below. 😁 I have quite a few fics that I really enjoy, so this is just a very small selection that came to mind.

Blizzard Bedfellows by magicstorm101, Rated E, is one of the first Sonadow fics I ever read and holds up so well. Easily one that I can read over and over.

The Sounds of Home, Rated Teen, by Vee_Skies is soooo good. It's absolutely poetic and the descriptions are perfection.

Sonic and The Green Eyed Monster, Rated Teen, by supafroot is another of my first I ever read. Supa has an amazing way of making even the mildest of spicy scenes sizzle and there were definitely some in this that I loved!

What Lies Underneath by greenhillsblueskies, Rated M, had be on the edge of my seat from the get go. It's unfinished, but the plot and character development are so intriguing I'm just grateful I got to read any of it! Always hopeful the other returns to it someday. It's so good...

Beyond A Promise, unrated, by but_why_not is one of the few Sonadow fics I've read that actually made me cry. I think there's been maybe two or three? It KILLED me but just because of how well done it was. For real. Must read.

These are just a few! Let me know if you ever want more. 💖

[etaleah]

Jotting down my initial thoughts on Part 3 of Prime:

Love the few Sonadow moments we got but I don’t get why Sonic rushed to save everyone else yet didn’t even bother to ask where Shadow was when he got to the Grim. Didn’t even try to go down below and get him. Seems more than a little unfair.

The Rose sisters teaming up was excellent.

That 3-minute recap was fuckin’ ridiculous; they really must have been struggling to pad out the runtime.

Dropping Sonic back in the moment of the shattering was a nice touch.

Having Sonic find out about the palm trees in the Grim was also a nice touch.

Why is the Alpha Big the thing that gets everyone scared? Big is easily the least effective fighter of them all.

I love that Sonic asks Rebel Rouge to take command, but I’m not sure what the point of that is if her plan doesn’t work and falls apart quickly. Good character development for Sonic at least.

FINALLY SHADOW AND ROUGE INTERACTED

The ending was clearly setting up for a Part 2, which we are never going to get because Netflix is garbage like that.

For that reason, the ending isn’t nearly as satisfying as I had hoped for. New Yoke City is still a hell scape, Boscage Maze still hasn’t been rebuilt (meaning Sonic broke his promise to Thorn, something both of them seem to have forgotten), and Nine is still alone in the world. The whole point they’re trying to make is that everyone deserves a happy ending and yet it feels like only the Green Hill characters got one.

I love Renegade Knux so much; he’s easily the best version of Knuckles.

Shadow was robbed once again by both being stuck on the sidelines for so long AND for not being allowed to kick Nine in the head at least once.

WAY too much repetition holy hell. If you took a drink every time more robots appeared or every time Nine growled/yelled before zapping more prism energy, you’d be dead by the end of the season. That fight was Battle of the Five Armies levels of long and drawn-out, which is a real shame because that time could have been much better spent elsewhere.

I don’t think Nine and Dread really deserved their redemptions and both felt very rushed. To me, Nine crossed the line into irredeemability when he decided to kill the foxes just because he didn’t like that they looked like him. That isn’t a trauma response from years of bullying or a matter of self-defense. It’s just murderous and mean.

On that note, it felt like quite the emotional bait-and-switch to say that Sails and Mangey were fine actually and they just flew away when no one was looking. Bit of a cowardly move on the writers’ part, I think.

The Chaos Council is so ANNOYING can’t they just fucking DIE.

Overall I’d say this season turned out similar to the last in that the first episode of the batch was EASILY the best of the bunch. It peaked at the first and never quite got that good again. I’m biased here because Shadow is my favorite, but I just feel like it’s better to have a quick fight scene with two or three characters than it is to have a long fight scene with dozens of characters because then you have to jump around too much.

The sad thing is, the disappointments make me glad the show is ending, because now I feel certain that if it kept going, it would only get more repetitive and the quality would decline rapidly.

[somemismatchedsocks]

HI I HEARD WE’RE SHARING OR SONADOW FANKIDS

This is kaiko!!! They have been in the deepest parts of my mind for like two years now. he finally gets to be introduced to the world!

Age: 629 years old. (or just 9 ig??)

Powers: Empath 

Likes: The company of sheep

Dislikes: The dark

You can stop here if you hate word barfs but there are doodles at the very end if you would like to see.

(this is they’r ungodly long backstory)

The idea of the ‘process of making a child’ tickles my brain in many weird ways so he’s more like a mutual agreement of adoption sort of thing

So basically they were a shepherd on a small seaside coast in 1422. Orphan. Precious six year old child. Used to do odd jobs until they found a job as a shepherd and stuck with it. They’re a very good Shepherd because they can soothe the sheep and the wolves and other predators after the sheep. However, one day one of the sheep, Alice, runs into the forest which is right by the meadow they work. 

Obviously, Kaiko being the good little kid he is, follows the sheep into the forest. They search until the sun goes down before realizing they are lost. And it starts to rain. It’s a horrendous thunderstorm and Kaiko can barely see three feet in front of him. Luckily, he finds a nice cave, very pretty, with crystals sprouting all over the walls. They try to spend the night there- or at least until the thunderstorm stops when they realize that they have company.

Wolves.

Startled, they just tried to soothe all the wolves at once. However, the crystals on the cave wall ricochet the spell, clobbering them too. Amplified by the crystal, the spell is even more powerful than intended. Cue 600 year sleep. (the wolves are also asleep btw) The thing about his powers is that when they are using they’re powers on a person, it sort of keeps them in a stasis. However, it is not perfect. So they age around three years while the world passes around for six centuries. 

600 years later, Kaiko and the wolves wake. Kaiko tries to run but limbs are basically useless because of how stiff they are. (even in stasis, they have been asleep for three years) Thankfully, Sonic and Shadow were racing in the area when they heard sounds of distress.

Answering the call, blah blah blah, cool fight scene, Kaiko rescued, wolves run away with tails tucked between legs. Kaiko is in life debt and thanks Sonic and Shadow. However, the way they talk is funny. The words go up in the end and they’re voices sound tinny. Nevertheless, they go lead him to town to see a… village? What was once acres of farmland, is a charming city with the hustle bustle of people filling the early morning. Definitely not Kaiko’s meadow. And they’re worst suspicions are confirmed when they see the tabloids which read : July 2nd, 2042? Kaiko realizes what happens. They tell Sonic and Shadow about they’re situation.

Sonic and Shadow make it their mission to adopt this sad wet cat of a kid and teach them some real english. 

the doodles I promised:

[magicstormfrostfire]

There's something going on in my brain and i cant explain it. All i know is that its Sonadow.

Have you ever felt something in real life, give you deja vu from a dream youve forgotten? And no matter how hard you think about it, you can just barely catch the essence of the dream, but not the dream itself? I had this with Sonadow today, for some reason.

I just saw Sonadow on my feed (yknow like I always do) and it triggered something in my brain. I drempt of Sonadow last night. Something inspiring and provoking that made me love the ship all over again but I know this, not because i REMEMBER anything. I know this because i REMEMBER MY FEELINGS. I remember tenderness and blue and black fur but for the life of me i cannot remember the context of it all. This is going to haunt me for WEEKS because ive had almost no Sonadow inspiration/thirst for like 6-8 months if not year and i apparently have a profound dream about my GOAT OTP and cant remember any context besides 'they are furry little beasts and i love them'

[biolizardboils]

so heads up! im popping a LOT of Prime Season 3 posts into the queue--they'll start coming out one week from now, on January 22nd! if you can see this post and haven't watched it yet, here's some tags to block: #prime spoilers, #sonic prime spoilers, #sonic prime s3 spoilers, #sonic prime season 3 spoilers.

got all that? great! here's my final unorganized little rambles about the show:

shoutout to Rusty Rose's Birdie, who only appears in the very first and very last eps for some reason 😭 her speech about it not being her power source came outta nowhere too, but i loved the message behind it

when everyone arrives at the Grim, just before the ep ends, Nine starts breathing heavily and it. instantly reminded me of Movie!Tails when the bar was calling them freaks. fuck. its a nice reminder of where Nine's coming from

speaking of Nine his poses getting more unhinged over time!! hell yeah

i love that the final fight(s) felt like a kid smashing 3 different Lego sets together, real Robot Pirate Island shit

i laughed a little too hard when the Grim's dome started closing in cus Nine's citadel-thing already reminded me of a thing that happened in Fortnite once, but hell naw they had to add The Storm too sdfghj

METAL BIG DESTROYED ME LJKHGFDV im SO glad i wasnt spoiled about it!!! a while in i started finding it creepy instead of funny, which is an added bonus

i was spoiled about the Advance flashback and its clashing sprites though. the utter whiplash of seeing that without warning mightve made me choke on my hot cheeto puffs. someone's already remade it btw, check it out

i fistpumped at the small reprise of "me beauty" gfhjk ill miss you so much Dread

we're four years into the 2020's and Sonic has nearly died an agonizingly slow death 3 times in 3 different continuities! and dare i say it was delicious every time >:)

unless Word of God says otherwise I'm gonna assume that the giant shadow at the end was The Return Of Metal Big lpoihgfds

So... Twitter, huh? My spoiler filters there had some leaks, and I saw some discussion out of context that... actually made me kinda scared to finish the show. But then I did, and had fun with it just like the other two seasons, and I remembered that Twitter gets high-strung about things that don't matter so much, and that giving it sway over how much I enjoy things is silly lol.

Yes, I think the last season could've been paced differently so it wasn't 5 episodes of the same Final Boss Fight. Yes, I think the writing switches jarringly between gearing for a young new audience and for a seasoned old one. Yes, I think the 2D flashbacks look and move worse than what fans constantly make for free. Yes, I think the final episode doesn't do nearly as much housekeeping as it should (does the Shatterverse still exist or not??). Yes, I think declaring the show is canon to the games or whatever they said probably wasn't the best idea. And yes, I think Black Rose should've had a shoulder-parrot!Birdie to match the other Amys. All valid critiques! All sensible things to think when you've been around the Sonic bush!

But I swear to god, people on Twitter act like these things spoil the whole package. Where's the nuance? Why does every opinion there become an absolute worth tearing others down for? Is it the character limit? I bet it's the character limit.

There's so much I love about this show that were infeasible for the Sonic brand just 3-4 years ago. Externalizing the characters' facets to explore them in-depth. Said exploration spanning multiple episodes instead of being one-and-done. The sheer amount of genuine Sonadow food (and I don't actively do shipping, so me adding it here should hold a lot of weight). The snappy, playful, yet blistering fight scenes that, dare I say, feel like a successful TV-budget Spider-Verse. It was all so much fun!

But I guess stuff like Green Hill being the gang's "home" is a big deal-breaker?? Like?? I thought that was silly too, but not worth ratio'ing people with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse over? Get well soon, I guess??

Rambling over, shout-out to the entire country of Canada for giving me the most fun I've had with a Sonic show since X! I'm gonna go figure out how to address all this as The End lol