Popular and unpopular Sonic opinions you agree and disagree with!

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Then that's a problem;  if he's only being used because of his popularity and not because of anything he can actually offer to the setting,

 

I mean, a. the writers still avoided him outside of Season finales and a cameo per Steve, and b. they explained they were sorta treating him as a less of a villain and more of a curt warrior with a code.  Which is still .

Quote

then its the same as writers basically admitting that they have no actual use for him and just throwing darts at a board.

No, that would be him causing universal destruction because Eggman tricked him or something.

Quote

And CSS already pointed out a good role for him as the cold and pragmatic one to the more upbeat good guys, but then I don't know how well that role fits in this type of series. It opened the can of worms of why "Sonic never kills Eggman" but can't actually give a satisfying answer to that question.

Well yeah.

[Kuzu]

10 minutes ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

So Sega need to stop being so restrictive about him. It’s already been established by Ian that Shadow’s that way because they’re being more strict about his portrayal, because given how he’s wrote him in the previous comic he didn’t have this issue where they also did this without his arrogance being flanderized.

I agree. Its just one of the more weirdest decisions Sega have made and shows they really have no idea how to handle any of their most marketable characters. I understand they want to give him more of a personality, but they're going about it in a very misguided manner that doesn't actually address the problem. 

 

Whole thing just...sucks. 

1 minute ago, DabigRG said:

I mean, a. the writers still avoided him outside of Season finales and a cameo per Steve, and b. they explained they were sorta treating him as a less of a villain and more of a curt warrior with a code.  Which is still .

That's not what he actually comes off as though; in both of his appearances, he fights the gang for...virtually no reason whatsoever. The second time he's tricked by Eggman into doing so, then decides he wants to destroy the world cuz...he got tricked. 

That's not what a "warrior with a code" does :V

[Dr. Detective]

I'll say again that I do prefer Shadow be somewhat at odds with Sonic as far as their general approach to how they view it necessary to protect the world and such. The way Team Dark does what they do has often felt like it's been emphasized very little lately and I do feel that in the Archie days they fell a little into the trap of just being another set of heroes. 

That said, there is definitely a way that you can carry this across without having to ignore the development his character has had up to this point. I'm not fond of Team Dark being portrayed as characters that don't really give much of a shit about each other. I don't like the idea of them being an official government team but I've always liked the fact that those three characters like each other enough to come together often and form Team Dark themselves whenever the need should arise. 

The angle of the three of them not caring that much about their own comradery doesn't make any sense. Literally, why are you putting them together still? Fo brand recognition? Okay, I guess. It seems weird to draw attention to it and then have them distinctly act against the nature of an actual team.

It's not as though I have a problem with them being arrogant or jerks in some fashion. In fact, that's what I love about Omega specifically. His motivation is incredibly selfish and the things he says and does are so unapologetically harsh... that's part of WHY his friendship with Shadow and Rouge is so interesting. Taking that away just does unnecessary damage to the intrigue behind your own character.

This is why it's important to develop things and not just change the course direction of a character at the drop of a hat. We need someone to watch over everyone more closely. 

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, Shadowlax said:

As for IDW, executive meddling and to be quite blunt Ian's habbits. He could have told a whole story about sonic and shadow disagreeing on something that ISN'T MURDER and have them work together at the end to show some sort of dynamic. Instead he chose actual murder in which he cannot inherently have shadow argue his entire point because...there would be a character advocating for murder in a children's comic book and the protagonist would have to actually hear him out. Against a character who will always come back, which makes the character arguing for the murder infinitely right.  So shadow has to look crazeh and they laugh at him at the end. This is followed buy " shadow beats up the guy , oops he fucked up " and "We can't actually even characterize shadow correctly due to outside influences but I want a shadow zombie so i'll yet him in there anyway "

 

Eh, not necessarily. They could've had Sonic and Shadow debate their points without going deep into that aspect.

Shows like Steven Universe and FIM have episodes that were about that sort of thing, to say nothing of the others of a darker tone that got the point across without using the D or K word.

In fact, didn't Archie touch on that a few times?

13 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

 

Whole thing just...sucks. 

That's not what he actually comes off as though; in both of his appearances, he fights the gang for...virtually no reason whatsoever. The second time he's tricked by Eggman into doing so, then decides he wants to destroy the world cuz...he got tricked. 

That's not what a "warrior with a code" does :V

Tell that to Vegeta. Or Jiren, I guess.
Or hell, Zavok.

[Shadowlax]

3 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Eh, not necessarily. They could've had Sonic and Shadow debate their points without going deep into that aspect.

Shows like Steven Universe and FIM have episodes that were about that sort of thing, to say nothing of the others of a darker tone that got the point across without using the D or K word.

I feel like steven universe kinda fails a lot of times in that regard. To the degree in which they just kind of forgive what is essentially giant space rock Hitler.

Which is sort of the issue I guess? Its the who. Like Unless I have missed something ( and I have missed a lot ) outside of discord which is still a thing a lot of fans have feelings about, largely frame the characters that are forgiven as largely not the worst people in the world. They may have made mistakes or maybe some unfortunate events lead them here. But they generally aren't literally fascists. Though the girl in your signature sort of rode the line there a little.

FIM kinda knows what its about and to its credit tries to stay with in the lines and even went back to fix some stuff they messed up ( My boy spike and the entirety of the dragons and weird sorta racist bent they applied to them at the beginning of the series among other things )

Sonic , sort of does something simular. The characters that are forgiven generally have extenuating circumstances. Eggman is just not one of those characters for a few reasons. Because eggman is essentially a fascist dictator whole rules via murder and robots, and asking " Should I kill a murderous fascist dictator " is a different question. That's a different question than " Should I kill bad guy " because it comes with a lot of weight to it , some we have due to real life actual horrific events that maybe we shouldn't bring to this conversation. Its the same reason why people were weird about white diamond.

See we are able to ignore that shit because usually we don't question it, in some interpretations he's cruel in other's he's not but he's a kid thing in in a kid game so we roll with it. But when you actually bring up should you murder him, it calls his actions into question. Which that of a robo dictator, because he's a fucking robo dictator.

That's the problem. These sorts of things have very real implications based off of things in our real world, and it is baffling that Ian Flynn thought that " whether you should kill a dictator or not "  should be the lynch pin of this narrative. Because the dictator in question will always have to be around,  and you have now actually called attention to all the horrific shit he's doing. There's no room for sonic to look like a reasonable person in this scenario so shadow has to look bad. Because you have positioned your protagonist to protect a fascist dictator because " he helps sometimes" . Even with his memory gone, this conversation is entirely inappropriate for the material  and possibly implies some fucked up views on the people involved.

All this could have been avoided if they chose any other randome dude for this to be about. If this conflict was about metal sonic, all these implications go bye bye and the story functions as normal.

3 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

In fact, didn't Archie touch on that a few times?

Tell that to Vegeta.
Or hell, Zavok.

Vegeta is less of a code and more ideals that drive his character.

 

Which is more than shadow has atm.

[Kuzu]

I mean...Dragon Ball Super has really terrible and inconsistent writing too so lol.

 

But yea, I don't mind Shadow being an arrogant jerk; its kind of part of who he is as a person and him clashing with Sonic over ideological differences is also good. What's not good is when he has no other traits besides being an arrogant jerk, and just fighting Sonic just because he wants to show who's the big dog. 

You can take a character in a different direction without fundamentally changing who they are or completely ignoring their prior development. 

[DabigRG]

12 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I mean...Dragon Ball Super has really terrible and inconsistent writing too so lol.

 

 

I was kinda being smart there, but if you say so. I was actually thinking of his tenure throughout Z, btw.

 

[Guergy]

Someone shared this twitter post with me but it does speak volumes about how SEGA doesn't seem to know what to do with characters like Shadow,Blaze,Knuckles,Silver,etc.

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, Guergy said:

Someone shared this twitter post with me but it does speak volumes about how SEGA doesn't seem to know what to do with characters like Shadow,Blaze,Knuckles,Silver,etc.

Aw...

Not sure I get the correlation here, though.

[thumbs13]

5 hours ago, Guergy said:

Someone shared this twitter post with me but it does speak volumes about how SEGA doesn't seem to know what to do with characters like Shadow,Blaze,Knuckles,Silver,etc.

...Didn't this happen in Heroes?

[StaticMania]

26 minutes ago, thumbs13 said:

...Didn't this happen in Heroes?

No, it very might've did not happen in Sonic Heroes.

All like, nothing in that game is similar to what was in that post.

[DabigRG]

Okay, for a second I thought a bunch of posts from the last several weeks for deleted or something. 

 

[Red Hot Jack]

I tried to read all the posts, frankly they are really long, I want to try to recap this, or at least where the discussion started:

1. Shadow's role should be limited to few appearances because when he shows up, he's usually important, and takes most of the story, so with him the less is better, especially when Sonic is around.

2. Shadow works best when he's a villain (IMO), because he is not a random hero, he's wasted in that role if he ends up being treated like any other character.

3. We don't want Shadow to revert to his personality prior to character development, or worse, make him a cliché Vegeta with no canon backstory, just an edgy meme, we want him to stay true to himself, so a bit like in Forces, which is his only decent appearance recently, or at least the one that makes people agree the most about him.

So what to do with his character? How to keep him as an anti-hero, I say push him to his boundaries, instead of making him do stupid mistakes for his pride, push the character to his limits, that will make him go into a lost person situation, who works alone, ruthless, apathic to the Others, not evil or a jerk with no reason, not a hero either, but someone who has given in to his darkness because of the situation, I want Shadow to be in a bad place, I want him challenged and that's why he goes dark. It's too much to ask for in the games, but not the comics… if Sega allows it. 

[thumbs13]

9 hours ago, StaticMania said:

No, it very might've did not happen in Sonic Heroes.

All like, nothing in that game is similar to what was in that post.

Shadow getting sealed in a tube and getting waken up some time later? That was Heroes.

[StaticMania]

Barebones connection that ignores everything the context.

The idea is Shadow would put himself to sleep for decades after being fulfilled and be woken by a "someone"...

He wasn't in a capsule if I'm going to use literal words here.

[Wraith]

6 hours ago, Tangled Jack said:

 

2. Shadow works best when he's a villain (IMO), because he is not a random hero, he's wasted in that role if he ends up being treated like any other character.

3. We don't want Shadow to revert to his personality prior to character development, or worse, make him a cliché Vegeta with no canon backstory, just an edgy meme, we want him to stay true to himself, so a bit like in Forces, which is his only decent appearance recently, or at least the one that makes people agree the most about him.

 

These ideas are incompatible. He's a good person now. To make him a villain you would have to backpedal on his development or reboot the character.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Doing either one is stepping on a mine field considering they did just that with Shadow in Boom.

Although, admittedly, my knowledge of his whole character in that series is limited. 

[Kuzu]

8 hours ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

Doing either one is stepping on a mine field considering they did just that with Shadow in Boom.

Although, admittedly, my knowledge of his whole character in that series is limited. 

No, that basically sums up his entire existence in Boom; he's a villain with no real context to him at all. He's evil Sonic and that's it.

 

I do like Maekawa's take, but it's a bit too much like Zero lol. I know Sonic and Mega Man borrow a lot from each other, but I'd prefer to keep them distinct.

[DabigRG]

38 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

No, that basically sums up his entire existence in Boom; he's a villain with no real context to him at all. He's evil Sonic and that's it.

 

I do like Maekawa's take, but it's a bit too much like Zero lol. I know Sonic and Mega Man borrow a lot from each other, but I'd prefer to keep them distinct.

Holy shit, that is Zero! Is he gonna hide himself to repair himself too?

[Multikaris]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

No, that basically sums up his entire existence in Boom; he's a villain with no real context to him at all. He's evil Sonic and that's it.

 

I do like Maekawa's take, but it's a bit too much like Zero lol. I know Sonic and Mega Man borrow a lot from each other, but I'd prefer to keep them distinct.

Though he hates Lyric, he proved himself no better than him in the series finale, implying his hatred is for selfish reasons of personal pride and power, rather than due to Lyric’s deeds. 
 

I wonder if they could take a different direction from there with the Shadow capsule thing?

[E-122-Psi]

The problem is that to make Shadow a developed anti-hero, they have to utilise his role and dynamic in a halfway developed way, which many interpretations have failed miserably at. The Sonic series in particular is bad for interpreting anti-heroes as characters who have some sort of clause to be really good or really bad and can supposedly never cross too far into one direction. Sonic X Shadow was horrible for this, making him as scummy as possible but then having rapidly turn into a hero when the main climax occurred.

IDW Sonic I admit seems to dabble in a better compromise at times, conveying Shadow as well intentioned but INCREDIBLY pragmatic. We get a similar deal as Sonic X where he attempts to kill a harmless being because they have indirect threat to them, however this soul being Eggman instead of Cosmo has way more validity, and while Sonic X plays him like a sadistic horror villain that suddenly turns face with a slap on the wrist, comic Shadow is merely gravely serious about neutralising a threat, and is actually talked down when Sonic calls out his hypocrisy on the matter concerning his own dubious morality.

I think this is the sort of thing that would fit Shadow, a character that has mostly good intentions and can be an effective hero, but is willing to cross lines Sonic won't, and not in terms of having a hero pass for being generically cruel or jerk-like, more in terms of being very pragmatic and unfettered in how he makes things right and that having effect on his conflicts and dynamics with the rest of the cast, still making it possible for him to be a mild antagonist at times without undoing all his previous development.

[Bowbowis]

My personal take on Shadow is that he's somebody who has dedicated himself to bringing peace and justice to the world, even if it's a world he doesn't necessarily feel he has a place in. He has an ego and tends to come off as cold and standoffish but he's generally not mean to people for the sake of it; he's just socially awkward and more pragmatic than some other heroes may be comfortable with: Leading him to behave harshly because he feels his actions are necessary and doesn't believe in sugar coating things to protect people's feelings. Naturally, he doesn't make many friends but is intensely loyal to the ones he has.

Basically he's less Vegeta and more Miles Edgeworth with a dash of Solid Snake.

I'm in the camp who likes Shadow as a GUN agent for reasons I covered here:

On 11/4/2019 at 9:31 PM, Bowbowis said:

GUN gives Shadow a strong niche, it provides him purpose, it gives a solid basis both for Shadow to join in on Sonic's adventures and to have his own adventures with potential to provide a different perspective on the Sonic universe, and it keeps him in close proximity to Rouge which is a relationship that really helps to humanize him. Being a GUN agent also helps further Shadow as a foil to Sonic: Sonic is a free-spirit, Shadow is part of a regimented organization; Sonic shirks authority, Shadow represents authority; Sonic is driven by his own thirst for adventure, Shadow is driven by duty to a higher cause. In a lot of ways joining GUN was the best thing to happen to Shadow's character since SA2. If nothing else it gave his character a clear direction after his amnesia arc resolved, unlike Tails who's character has been more or less stuck in limbo since the Adventure games.

As you can probably surmise from this I'm also not in favor of dissolving or diminishing Team Dark. The three don't necessarily need to be joined at the hip 24/7 but I find the dynamic they have in stuff like Heroes and '06 really enhances the characters and gives them more humanity (or whatever you call it when your talking about a hedgehog, a bat, and a killer robot).

[Sonic Fan J]

1 hour ago, Bowbowis said:

You know, I never noticed that fist bump between them all those years ago.

On the topic though, I'm one of those people who honestly prefers Shadow as a G.U.N agent as it creates a different viewpoint of Sonic's world and gives the character something to do. Conversely, it also helps support him as he never really functions well off of his own agency when he isn't being introspective. Mind, I think Shadow is at his best when he is being introspective and aloof, taking the time to look at himself and the situation, but I could live with G.U.N agent Zero as well. The similarities between Zero and Shadow are honestly almost enough to get me to invest in the Megaman X and Megaman Zero branches of the Megaman franchise just to see how deep the similarities go.

[Kuzu]

6 hours ago, E-122-Psi said:

The problem is that to make Shadow a developed anti-hero, they have to utilise his role and dynamic in a halfway developed way, which many interpretations have failed miserably at. The Sonic series in particular is bad for interpreting anti-heroes as characters who have some sort of clause to be really good or really bad and can supposedly never cross too far into one direction. Sonic X Shadow was horrible for this, making him as scummy as possible but then having rapidly turn into a hero when the main climax occurred.

IDW Sonic I admit seems to dabble in a better compromise at times, conveying Shadow as well intentioned but INCREDIBLY pragmatic. We get a similar deal as Sonic X where he attempts to kill a harmless being because they have indirect threat to them, however this soul being Eggman instead of Cosmo has way more validity, and while Sonic X plays him like a sadistic horror villain that suddenly turns face with a slap on the wrist, comic Shadow is merely gravely serious about neutralising a threat, and is actually talked down when Sonic calls out his hypocrisy on the matter concerning his own dubious morality.

I think this is the sort of thing that would fit Shadow, a character that has mostly good intentions and can be an effective hero, but is willing to cross lines Sonic won't, and not in terms of having a hero pass for being generically cruel or jerk-like, more in terms of being very pragmatic and unfettered in how he makes things right and that having effect on his conflicts and dynamics with the rest of the cast, still making it possible for him to be a mild antagonist at times without undoing all his previous development.

This is actually a good point and I feel its a distinction that allows Shadow to still functionally remain sympathetic while still being antiheroic. I'd definitely prefer him being more pragmatic and unfettered than simply being more violent and uncaring. 

[Sonario]

Yeah my ideal Shadow is cold and pragmatic but not a short-tempered arrogant Vegeta expy. He's gotten over all the angst and rage about Maria but still resolutely sticks to his promise to keep the world safe and hopeful, no matter the cost, even if they hate him for it. ("If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have"). I do like the idea of him still sticking with GUN because now that the commander knows what happened in the ARK days, I doubt he'll keep GUN as the world-controlling conspirators and steer them towards saving the world instead of controlling it (they seemed to be doing just that in 06, trying to stop the Mephiles situation before it escalated). I also like Team Dark being Shadow's closest allies, maybe even his only permanent allies. I feel like forging new bonds with them is one of the things that really contributed to Shadow moving on from his past. He still has his trademark "edge" like Sonic has his "'tude", but now it's part of his character instead of his defining trait. At core, Shadow is a dark hero compared to Sonic's light hero. Just as heroic, but a lot more serious, focused and unfettered.