People who complain that Sonic's character is "static" must have never played Unleashed or Black Knight. Or they did, but they didn't understand them.

I think one of the reasons why Unleashed and Black Knight are such fan favorites and stick in our memory so well is because the entire theme of both games is about taking Sonic out of his element, taking away things that he has relied on for so long- speed, jumping, spindashing, boosting, homing attacks- taking all those things away from him, and seeing how he does.

And he still shines. Even without all the abilities that he has relied on throughout his entire life, he still manages to beat the Big Bad.

(Please note that I haven't finished either game yet and I'm just drawing from what I've been spoiled on.)

As the werehog, Sonic is not able to curl into a ball at all (we're ignoring the mobile games for this post), and his greater height and weight, probably due to a larger bone structure, as well as heavier, thicker fur, keeps him from being able to run as fast or jump as high as he's used to. He now how to resort to fighting styles he has never used before, including several forms of martial arts (aided by his Dark Gaia-powered stretch abilities). Perhaps the most unusual of all is how he has to get down on all fours to run.

In addition, Sonic describes his werehog form as "pretty ugly." Sonic thinks of himself as good-looking, and this is a part of his personal identity, which is part of why he was upset that Amy didn't recognize him (no matter what feelings he may or may not have for her). The werehog form also seems to be physically uncomfortable and taxing on Sonic's body due to the heavier weight, as the werehog idle animations include Sonic stretching in an exaggerated way and forcibly rotating his shoulders (motions I, myself, have learned to use after years at a desk job that has ruined my neck and upper back). Sonic's idle animations also include him being jumpy and looking around every few seconds- basically, the werehog never fully relaxes.

All in all, Sonic is very uncomfortable as a werehog, and prefers not to be seen in this form. But the reason why is not fully evident until he thanks Chip for protecting him and keeping him from turning evil. To this, Chip replies, "I haven't done anything, Sonic. You're too strong to lose yourself."

On top of this, Amy doesn't have a problem with Sonic's appearance. She still loves him. Tails also doesn't care what Sonic looks like. Neither does Professor Pickle. Neither does ANYONE. Even if they're startled by the werehog's appearance at first, they all seem to go, "Oh, it's just Sonic. This is just what he's like at night."

The entire story of Unleashed was about Sonic coming to realize that he is not who he is because of what he looks like or how he is built.

Black Knight takes this a step further. In Unleashed, Sonic wasn't able to run, but he was still able to use his body as a weapon. In Black Knight, Sonic can run again, but nowhere near as fast as his normal speed. All of Sonic's abilities to fight with his body are stripped from him, and he is forced to use an actual weapon, instead. And Sonic hates this. He even says it: "I wish I didn't have to use this dang sword!"

Sonic has never used a weapon before in the games (as far as I am aware, anyway). His weapon has always been his own body: his feet, his fists, his whole body via spindash and homing attack. Now he's having to train himself to fight with something outside of his own body. This requires not only the creation of new muscle memory, but also a complete shift in the way his brain processes information to fight. He always has the option to just crumble and say, "I can't do this, it's not what I'm used to, I give up." He never does that. He complains a bit at first, but eventually rises to the occasion and excels at swordfighting.

Please bear in mind that I haven't ever gotten past the King Arthur battle. I presume Sonic is forced to kill him, and then I believe there's another half a game after that. But so far, it seems that Sonic's character arc in Black Knight is about him learning that he is not who he is just because of what he can do.

What makes Sonic Sonic is not what he looks like or what he is able to do, but about who he is inside. Sonic is someone who cares, someone who is strong, someone who doesn't give up, someone who sees a difficult situation and, no matter how much of an inconvenience it may be, turns it around and finds a way through.

thinking about how there's some incidental dialogue in shadow gens (iirc it's when you enter doom mode) when gerald says smth like "i think i have an idea of what's going on with you. just know that we love you and not to change the timeline lmao" or smth like that. but like. also thinking about how maria knew shadow was half-alien but was surprised at the whole "faustian bargain" thing. and how she stood up to black doom and. i'm now convinced that they got plucked from a time right before they recorded that video message to shadow in '05. i think they got back and knew that shadow was going to have to fight black doom and made that recording.

BUT.

in that recording, maria seems to think she'll be with shadow when it happens. she says they'll do it together.

i think gerald knew he was going to die. he saw how shadow reacted when he first saw him... but not when he first saw maria. gerald ran in late to that. when gerald was talking about being at peace with his fate, i think he was telling the truth. but i don't think he knew maria was part of that. he never thought that maria would die. she was too central a presence in his life. he spent the last decade or so of his life working to cure her. he made his entire life's purpose to help her. he made shadow for her. and his journal shows how much faith he had in his own abilities. he saw himself as a genius. he figured it was only a matter of time before he cured maria. he figured that he made shadow so powerful that he could protect her.

gerald knew he would die, that shadow's hesitancy and desperation to protect them came from a place where gerald wasn't there for him in the future. but he had no idea maria would be gone, too. and that's what broke him

That look into Mimic's psyche was so fascinating, because—despite him being the most obviously unreliable of unreliable narrators—it truly seems that his actions stem from him being a deeply mentally ill man, torn between a desperate need to be loved and rejection sensitivity so powerful it drives him to paranoia and murder.

Few things before I elaborate:

So as I said, Mimic's main thing is that he is torn between two powerful emotions within himself: a desperate need to belong and be loved, but also an intense fear that he'll be rejected by those who might ultimately love him. Mimic being an unreliable narrator, he's a bit all over the place with this, but he does acknowledge his need to be loved in a few places:

But as you can see, he tied it up with "the spotlight" — with validation and appreciation, something he later tries to convince the reader he believes is beneath him (hence—unreliable, because an attentive reader knows he's a lying ho):

"Why Would You Bother With Me?" - An Analysis of Kitsunami, 09/07/2024

so like when I first read this panel my reaction was just to joke with Cori that this is a "get out of my school" moment (iykyk) but I've been thinking about it a lot recently because I... couldn't remember any specific beef Kit had with Tails?

Last we saw of them interacting one-on-one, Tails was talking Kit down from fighting, and Kit's beef with the squad later was more with Sonic than him. Tails didn't take down Surge in #56 or even affect the fight in any way, and Sonic was the one who told Kit that Surge was dead beforehand. At least that I could remember, so I went back to those comics. Indeed, in #56 he shows no animosity towards Tails specifically, nor when he talks to Surge in #55.

Then I went back to #54.

See, he does seem to blame Sonic entirely for the Surge death fakeout, and he thinks that Sonic is literally trying to kill her when he walks in. But he does have one (1) reaction to Tails, right at the end of the interaction.

In the previous issue, after Sonic and Tails saved his life, Kit immediately switched on his subservient personality and was desperate for any kind of validation from the hedgehog. We only see it for a few panels before he is told about Surge and sinks into a depressive state, but it's made very obvious.

And when he leaves to help?

Kit's conditioning under Starline means that he is excessively codependent on Surge– and if Surge isn't around, on anyone who is nice to him. The hypnotic repetition shown to us was "You live to support Surge. You'll do anything for her." Kit's sole purpose in life is to be a Support party member.

Kit's conditioning was to be the new Tails.

Starline wanted Surge and Kit to replace Sonic and Tails– that much was obvious from the get-go. But what was also obvious was his fundamental misunderstanding of Sonic and Tails's dynamic and how that negatively impacts Surge and Kit's relationship.

Starline completely misses the strong sibling bond that Sonic and Tails have. To him, Tails is just there to support Sonic, to provide the brains and tech that Sonic lacks, and so Kit needs to be there to support Surge in the same way. He sees it only as a business partnership, and not a mutual relationship built on trust, love, and shared experiences. Starline only saw other people as tools, so obviously he projected that onto Surge and Kit, hoping that they would immediately take up the closeness that Sonic and Tails did because, well, they served the same purpose to each other, right?

Except Surge and Kit don't have that relationship. These two children were forced into the same proximity and made to work together. They're coworkers at best, being told to act like a family.

Obviously their dynamic is super toxic, with Surge clearly holding a lot of power over Kit, but it's also clear that this isn't because Surge wants to beat on the kid. She was made to be Sonic, and so she has his arrogance (and possibly Shadow's, considering IS1 showed his image when Starline was talking about stealing abilities), but, as Boom!Sonic says, "Without any of the awesomeness to back it up." Okay, wrong, she's plenty awesome, the correct phrase is "Without the experience" and, most importantly, "without the altruism that makes Sonic Sonic." Surge wasn't programmed to like the people she saves, because that would conflict with Starline's goal to take over the world. So she's only made to be competitive and to want to best Sonic, anyone inbetween them be damned. This clashes with Kit's programming to not only be liked, but to be liked by Surge. Surge was also programmed to believe fully in herself in order to enhance the arrogant trait, and Kit was made to give her the help that she doesn't want.

To Surge, Kit represents everything holding her back. And she's not built to view him as a person, because Starline doesn't view him or her as people. Obviously this doesn't absolve her of her treatment of him, and later issues showing her getting more and more aware as she becomes more social is definitely going to impact the way she views him– or, if it doesn't make her reconsider Kit's personhood, it'll serve to make her more antagonistic for the viewer.

But the point is, Sonic trusts Tails because he knows and respects him as a person. It isn't just because Tails can help him, but because he knows Tails will. Surge, at this point in the comic, not only doesn't view Kit as a friend, she doesn't even care what he thinks or feels.

And despite the brainwashing, I don't think Kit is oblivious to this. He knows how bad their situation is, but he is so conditioned to accept it that he can't escape it whatsoever. In both fights with Tails, Tails talks him down easily because Kit doesn't want to hurt anyone. Kit only reacts violently when Surge is brought up, because he's meant to do anything she wants.

Like he said to Belle, he was made for Surge. And what he says directly after– "Sonic can use me, too." Kit doesn't even view himself as a person, only a tool– that's how far Starline's brainwashing went. It's clearly even affecting Surge, who realized in the latest issue, #72, how fast she and Kit fell into their abusive patterns again once Clutch took over– they were conditioned to be tools. Clutch claimed to want to help them, but really he was just using them for his own ends, just like Starline. So they went back to the familiar.

And speaking of familiar– pain is familiar to Kit, specifically pain in service to others. In his breakdown in #50, he says that Starline made him happy he'd been hurt. And in Imposter Syndrome #3 and #4, we see that him and Surge hate Starline and want to usurp him... but also are still trapped in the patterns he implanted in them. Surge still wants to kill Sonic and outperform everyone else. Kit still can't do anything but what she wants, to the point he becomes near catatonic when he believes she's dead.

Another pattern Kit is still trapped in is the idea that he has to be okay with his own suffering.

The only sense of home or family Surge and Kit have is in each other, but they fundamentally can't work together, at least as they are currently. Kit is expected to take Surge's anger, and Surge isn't expected to treat him like his own person.

And this, I think, is Kit's problem with Tails.

He was made to be Tails, and he knows this, but he can never have what Tails has. He can never live up to Tails and do what Tails can do, despite that being his entire life's purpose.

He doesn't hate Tails because he was programmed to– as he says to Surge, he only wants to destroy Sonic because she wants to. When he first encounters Tails, he refers to him as his target- a simple, unemotional term. He doesn't have the deep ingrained hatred for him that Surge does for Sonic.

Instead, he hates Tails because of what he sees in him. He sees Sonic and Tails interact, he sees how much Sonic trusts and relies on Tails, and he sees how he also loves and respects him. He sees how Tails has his own motivations and opinions, and he's experienced Tails's genuine compassion that was in part fostered by the hedgehog that raised him. In turn, Tails is loyal to Sonic, but not because he has to be– because he, in turn, loves Sonic and wants to be with him.

Kit only wants to be with Surge because he was forced to. Starline wanted to use Surge and Kit to stop Sonic and Eggman's cycle, but he made a whole new one instead. Kit is trapped in a cycle of pain, knows he's trapped in it, and is helpless to escape it.

Tails isn't, and Kit sees that in Tails. Subconsciously, he sees Tails and only sees how he fails to live up to his life's mission, and how he'll never have what Tails has.

After all, why would anyone bother with him? They already have Tails.

Is he a target? I like it here now.

I mean I'm pretty sure it's actually canon. Didn't he say in one of the Twitter Takeovers that he wanted to start a safety house thing where he'd just take care of a bunch of cats?

Hi Hon!❤️✨

Please bear with me on this one. This is the best way that I can explain the whole “canon” kerfuffle going on in the fandom at the moment.

The modern games are the main canon that we follow every day. Games like SA 1, SA 2, Unleashed, Forces, and so forth are the main timeline focus. It’s a straight projection. Sometimes media can branch out and take core material to use as a continuation. For example, Sonic Prime. Prime, itself, is NOT canon to the main games, but it takes the main substance/back bones of the modern games and splits into its own universe (SOURCE). The IDW comics to the same thing as well (SOURCE). These media outlets use the core games as their primary source to tell their own narrative of that universe’s existence. They exist in their own continuation. Kinda like saying “in another time, in another place” type of thing.

In a sense, the Sonic Twitter Takeovers are canon to their OWN timeline with the games with the games as their “backbones.”

Does that make sense?😅

Haha yeah. I just think it's nice that some version of Shadow somewhere did say he likes cats 😂

I definitely understand the whole canon/ different continuity situation, but generally when I'm talking about a character I will use info from any continuity or official source as canon for the character as a whole, although it might not apply to each iteration of that character. So if I say Shadow is "canonically" a cat person, I mean the overall character Shadow the Hedgehog likes cats, although any specific version of him may not.

Why do people think that Shadow's going to beat up Sonic after the most recent episode. just because he was proven right?? Do we think he wanted to be proven right???

Shadow had ample reasoning to stay back at the cave and keep an eye on Nine. He doesn't trust him, doesn't think he should even be left alone with the shards, and he's certainly stubborn enough in this opinion to stand guard. But he decided to leave him alone anyway.

In a practical sense, it's probably because he knows that the Chaos Council is the more immediate threat, and that they'll buy more time if he works with Sonic instead of against him. But think about it; he never even goes to check on Nine until the SECOND explosion. Why?

I do think it's possible that I'm wrong about this, but my first thought was that this was actually a show of trust from Shadow. He lets himself trust Sonic's judgement just this once, because there's a viable reason for him to go along with it - Nine is the most qualified to handle the shards, and Sonic does need his help on the battlefield.

Shadow expects the worst, sure. But his behavior suggests to me that he's hoping for the best, deep down, and that's important because it means that it wasn't just Sonic's trust that Nine betrayed.

And I mean. just look at how the scene plays out when he gets there:

Shadow sees Sonic trying to plead with Nine, who scoffs at the idea of trusting him before leaving with the Shards. It's only once he's gone that we get this shot of Shadow looking ticked off, and while it's hard to tell, I don't think he's supposed to be looking at Sonic here.

If he was, I think his head and/or eyes would be tilted down more, given where Sonic is in relation to him. But as it is, I'm inclined to think that he's more angry about the shards being taken away than he is at Sonic specifically.

And even if he does have a moment where he gets mad at him, how long can we really expect that to last when it's implied that Sonic was on the verge of tears after this? It's a little hard to tell, but he brings his hands up to his eyes right before the screen fades to black, so even if he's not crying, he's clearly not okay.

I don't think Shadow is mean enough to fight Sonic right now, because as previously established, he loses a lot of steam whenever Sonic starts looking sad, and doesn't gain anything from fighting him like that. If anything, I imagine he'd try to practically drag Sonic out of his slump to deal with practical issues instead of letting him wallow in his feelings for much longer.

There's no telling how effective that would be, but I think it's a more likely first attempt for him than just smacking Sonic around and adding injury to insult. I know we love to see Shadow pick fights and all but give him a little credit

YES really hoping that the next episode plays out with Shadow actually trying to comfort Sonic. Not sure if they'll do that but Shadow's portrayal has actually been so good that I have hope!

Ohhh this scene. This one's a doozy

Nine is right to call this out about Sonic, of course. While he's definitely grown since the start of the show, he's never really been able to move past his tunnel vision and tendency to project onto the others.

He never thought to ask Nine what he wanted not because he doesn't care, but because he didn't think he needed to. He inherently assumes that the people he's working with are on the same page as him until told otherwise - in fact, it wasn't too long ago that he was similarly thrown off by Shadow in that very room.

(Love Shadow being used as a sort of "test run" for these kinds of conflicts by the way)

But here's the thing. While it's true that Sonic didn't really think about what Nine wanted and just assumed they were going to stick together no matter what... the same is true of Nine.

Look at how confused Nine looks when Sonic talks about coming back to Green Hill and restoring it:

Nine didn't ask what Sonic was wanting to do by repairing the Prism because he thought it was obvious that they were going back to the Grim together. I don't think it even occurred to him that fixing Green Hill was even an option, or at least not one that he considered in favor of his original plans.

And just like Sonic, it's not that he only cares about himself - he went out of his way to engineer coconuts and (presumably) palm trees because he knew how much Sonic missed them. It was really sweet!

But, in what's becoming a pattern in this show, he doesn't understand why those trees matter to Sonic. They're not just cool plants, they're a reminder of home. And as Sonic aptly puts it at the start of the show, home is where your friends are.

I love that the conflict here is that both of them were convinced they knew what the other person wanted/would be okay with, because they think it'll naturally be the same thing they want, and then were both completely unprepared to handle a conflict of interest. It feels so natural and makes perfect sense with how they've been written up to this point.

But see, while I think it's pretty clear that Sonic and Nine fell into the exact same communication trap, I think it's going to take longer for Nine to realize his own fault in any of this.

Sonic spent the entire second half of that conversation looking devastated, and he's made it clear throughout the show that he's quick to feel remorse when he realizes he's hurt someone. In all likelihood, he's going to put all of the blame for that argument on himself, decide that Nine was right about everything, and leave it at that.

Nine, likewise, doesn't strike me as a particularly self-reflective type. He'd probably try to justify not needing Sonic to himself before anything else, and with that in mind, who else is there to make him see the situation with more nuance?

If I had to pick, I'd guess Shadow - our resident "smacking people in the face with their own flaws" extraordinaire.

Why would he bother with any sort of mediating between the two? Well, the funniest reason would be that he finds Sonic's self-pitying and Nine's self-righteousness equally annoying, but I'm inclined to assume any sort of confrontation between him and Nine would be a little more dramatic than that. (He might still use that reasoning as justification though)

Anyway I gotta cut this post short before I go too far into speculation territory or else I'll be here for another hour and this took long enough to write as is, case in point I love me a well-written and believable conflict

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah the pain here