Edgelord Sonic fics back in the mid 2000s was also a product of the kid fanbase trying to be cool and adult to prove Sonic is mature.
I know this because I was one of them.
Good times.
Thankfully, none of you all will cringe at the time I wrote Dark Super Amy going all Yandere for Sonic.
I was 10 alright?
Edited by RedHunter543 on Aug 12th 2022 at 12:17:38 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Well to each their own...you're still wrong, but to each their own.
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After Sonic Adventure 2 became the runaway hit, fans became obsessed with making Sonic dark and depressing and Sega double downed on it.
People gotta learn its not a mutually exclusive thing
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
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Doesn't help that Shadow the Hedgehog was one of the more prominent games back then.
Yeah, I was in that demographic for whom the game was meant to appeal to. Kid me thought it was unironically cool.
Doesn't help the opening movie was hype AF unironically.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Aug 12th 2022 at 12:29:44 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I still hold the belief that Shadow should have remained dead, because an overpowered overly-complex character in this series is bound to suffer The Worf Effect or receive Character Development people doesn't catches on.
Because Shadow learned to let go of his past. But people don't like Shadow's game, so they actively refuse to aknowledge this development and still think he's obsessed with the past. And unfortunately Sega gives these people ammunition: Lego Dimensions side quest is Shadow doing flowers for Maria, and all the Takeovers Shadow mentions Maria here and there.
This makes me appreciate 06 and Forces not doing the easy way out. I noticed this cool detail: Mephiles and Infinite don't annoy Shadow with the past, Mephiles annoys Shadow with the future, and Infinite with the present. Mephiles could travel to where Maria is and kidnap her to make Shadow yield, but he doesn't. Mephiles tells Shadow humanity will betray him in the future. Infinite could have created a phantom Maria or send him to the Ark, but instead he messes with his present alliances.
Idealistically, if I were to write Shadow, I would just write him finding a reason to be alive outside of GUN (I hate this idea, I refuse to consider it a valid arc)
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.I do kinda agree that it was a mistake to bring Shadow back.
Or rather, it may have been an error to write him as such a complicated character in a series where such development can't really make much progress.
Sure, he's popular, but Sega seems to have issues figuring out what to do with him.
One Strip! One Strip!Its an issue characters like Knuckles and Shadow have. The story beats tied to them aren't relevant or Sega aren't interesting in exploring them, but they're too popular to ever get rid of them.
The Artifact in a nutshell.
Like I said, Shadow isn't the only character who suffers from that. Knuckles too.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Aug 12th 2022 at 12:47:42 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.That's true.
Sega really needed to sit down and think about what they wanted from these characters.
I think this is why Mario (and specifically Miyamoto) deliberately keeps plots simple.
There are issues to that as well, but the stuff Sonic goes through isn't one of them.
One Strip! One Strip!The Miyamoto approach is also fucking over other franchises, and Mario RP Gs.
And, the more I look at it, the more it feels like Heroes nailed a post Adventure 2 Shadow. Like in that game, he is sure of who he is despite the potential of not being the real deal.
The 2005 game didn't really give answers to questions that were getting made. Shadow in Heroes being the real deal was answered in a throwaway easter egg line, getting an explanation for the presence of a planet burster weapon was nice, but would had been fridge at best, and, well, everything else in that game was kinda either confirmation of Adventure 2 assumptions, or weird resolutions to things that were brought up by that very own game.
Edited by Eriorguez on Aug 12th 2022 at 6:57:40 PM
Its kind of the inevitable result when you tell too deeply of a story with a character.
Tails and Amy lack this problem because their characters are basically tied to Sonic's hip. Knuckles and Shadow (along with Silver and Blaze) have too complex of stories that makes inserting them difficult without accommodating for said story.
And I doubt Sega cares because the priority is gameplay, not storytelling
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Blaze is the best of the rivals in terms of writing, just because her arc was so simple it didn't really make her complicated.
Just as long as we pretend 06 never happened. Don't care about your ship, that story is awful.
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.Colors DS handled that well.
As for Silver, eh, if you want to have him around, just make him get stuck in the present because, well, the naive kid from the future came back and changed history in a way that deleted the time he came from.
Blaze apparently lives in another dimension but can use the Sol Emeralds to cross over at will, so...
Edited by Eriorguez on Aug 12th 2022 at 7:01:34 PM
Heh. I've made my thoughts on Blaze, and how she should have been handled in 06 and maybe even her own game pretty clear already.
Silver is shit out of luck in that idea. Nothing against him, but he never needed to be a thing and that happens sometimes.
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The problem I see with that is that being from the future is Silver's gimmick. So if he's just stuck in the present, what separates him from the rest of the supporting cast?
Also if Blaze has the Sol Emeralds on her, that logically means she can just go Super whenever she feels like. And therefore trivialize the plot.
Sega's biggest task with these characters is keeping what makes them interesting while also making him easier to utilize in general.
And to be fair, that is not an easy task for even the most gifted of writers. Long running franchises struggle with moving iconic characters past their status quo in a way that doesn't alienate fans of those characters.
Its why comic characters are constantly resetting.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Aug 12th 2022 at 1:18:49 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.What makes rival characters like Knuckles, Shadow, Silver, and to a lesser extent Blaze special is that they're all Sonic's Foil in terms of characterization and power set. They were made as antagonists first.
All of them are/were driven by duty to one thing or another: Knuckles to the Master Emerald, Shadow to Maria's wishes, Silver to the future, and Blaze to her kingdom. Sonic does things just because "it's the right thing to do" or "it's fun". The contrast should allow them to, for example, call Sonic out on his more reckless behavior like Shadow does in IDW. But the series has either "solved" their primary motivation or shoved it to the side, so they oppose or help Sonic...just because. Hence their apparent meaninglessness.
Meanwhile, their powers and abilities were designed to counter Sonic as well. Knuckles could not only block Sonic's Spin Attacks but even punch him out of his Super state, so the player had to time their attacks to damage him. Shadow not only matches Sonic in speed but also has ranged attacks, teleportation, and time control at his disposal, so Sonic has to keep moving to catch Shadow and avoid his attacks. Silver has a bit of both thanks to his psychokinesis. The only one that doesn't quite fit is Blaze. But since they rarely oppose Sonic anymore and haven't been playable in a long time, their abilities are just cutscene fodder.

2000's was filled with a ton of edge fics.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.