A Case of Deja Blue ~A Sonic Generations Rewrite~

[spinny]

Hey, hey, hey, ladies n' gentlemen!

 

Now, there's probably one thing you're wondering. Holy shit, Spindash actually writes stuff!?

 

Yes, indeed I do! And quite the fair bit, at that. Writing is quite a large hobby of mine in recent times, especially when working with existing characters such as the Sonic the Hedgehog cast.

 

So... let's begin.

 

PLOT FOR THIS WHOLE THINGY-MAJIG

 

Sonic Generations is infamous for giving not nearly as many callbacks to previous adventures the cast have been on as it had potential to do. So without a doubt, that is one of my main hopes to fix here.

 

Amy and Knuckles (hell, even Tails) I do hope to make a lot more relevant throughout the story, actually revisiting the locations alongside Sonic.

 

Without any further ado or spoiling for the plot I have in mind...

 

Let's go ahead, shall we?

 

PROLOGUE PT. 1: "Classic Sonic"

One day, in the marvellous fresh grass of Green Hill...

Animals would look around at the gushing waterfalls, insanely tall palm trees, lively rotary flowers, the clouds-- everything. Some even believed Eggman was once good and actually helped control the environmental laws in this area before he suddenly turned to the evil side one day-- however, to most, that was simply a myth... sounds good as a comic book plot, anyway.

SWOOOOOOOSH!!!

A blue blur zooms by the luxurious fields, sending a draft around causing trees and the like to shake violently.

"S-Sonic, wait for me! You know I'll never move that fast!" a cute, high-pitched voice called out to its azure friend.

"Aw, don't say that, Tails! I'm sure you'll get a hang of it someday~!" the hedgehog replies, smirking back at the two-tailed fox that follows him as the hedgehog wags his index finger.

"Yeah, right, of course. If it was as easy as following you, everyone would be going at supersonic speeds right now!" the fox replies, slightly agitated whilst maintaining a young, childish nature.

Who are these two exchanging conversation, you ask?

None other than Sonic the Hedgehog, the world's most renowned, speedy, cobalt-shaded, spiny, "way past cool" hero. That last adjective is self-proclaimed. Yeah, he's full of cheese and couldn't have it any better.

The other, named Miles Prower, often known to many as Tails due to his twin tails, was Sonic's sidekick of sorts. Ever since first spotting Sonic zooming by out of the corner of his eye whilst running away from an orphanage he was housed in after his parents abandoned him over his 'deformed' tails, Tails treated Sonic as an idol to follow for the rest of his life of sorts.

The two are pretty much inseparable friends. These days, namely a short while after a racing tourney they held for simple fun, you would be hard-pressed to see the two ever split apart.

"...Actually, Tails, mind if I ask ya somethin'?" Sonic queries, slowing down to Tails' pace so they can simply walk and talk.

"Uhhh... it's about machinery again, isn't it?" Tails chuckles. "I'm not a full-on geek for that stuff, Soni--"

"Oh, no, no, no! I was actually gonna ask about something different for once!" Sonic explains, struggling to fight back a laughing fit.

"...Oh," Tails mutters as he facepalms. "By all means, shoot then."

"Ever wondered that just the two of us... and all these little guys that hang around us... ever felt it's a little sparse of life?"

"...Whaddya mean?"

"I'm not trying to say I don't appreciate your company or anything, dude! I'm just sayin'... ever think our little pair is gonna, like... grow into a full-on gang of friends?"

"Well... it'd help with my social anxiety so I wouldn't be against that... and who knows, Sonic, it could happen! The both of us are still really young, we have a huge future ahead of us..."

"Yeah... and Eggy aside, there's that girl I saved on Little Planet and that guy who guards that massive Chaos Emerald like it's his life... Muscles, is it?"

Tails bursts out laughing. "You mean Knuckles! Yeah... we saw the two of them at those fighting and racing tourneys we held a while back, didn't we?"

"Mhm. So, the red dude with the dreads was Knuckles... the other one... 'Sally'?"

"Last time I checked she liked to be called Rosy."

"Didn't she put her full name on the sign-up list? ...Unless that is her full name," Sonic snickers.

"Yeah, she did..." Tails replies as he pulls a yellowed piece of paper out of hammerspace. "Sonic T. Hedgehog, Miles Prower, Knuckles T. Echidna... Amelia Rose... that ring a bell?"

"Oh, yeah, Amy! I remember now," Sonic sighs with a hint of nostalgia. "Wonder when we'll see those two again. Come to think of it... that duck, polar bear and chameleon... they were weird. Did you recognize 'em at all?"

Tails shrugs. "Probably just tagged along so they could get the pleasure of meeting us," Tails replies in a cocky tone.

"Heh, true. I'm assuming those robotic clones of me, you, Knuckles and Egghead were his creations, sooo..." Sonic cocks his head, giving a blunt 'eh' expression.

"What about Nack? Or... was it Fang?"

"I heard he was some undercover agent working for fatso. He also apparently worked for the government too but got kicked out a few weeks ago in honor of this random female bat... talk about weird rumors, huh?"

"Yeah..."

"Anyway, how's about we feel the spee--"

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMM...

"...S-Sonic! What on earth was that!?"

"...I have no clue!" Sonic replies, searching low and high for the source of the sudden and short earthquake.

"...uh... sonic..." Tails mutters, pulling on Sonic's back spines.

"What is it, dude?"

"i-it's not good..." Tails mutters, tone going more melancholy as he turns back to face what was once a beautiful, lush green hill, now transformed into a flat, monochrome, lifeless void.

"H-holy..."

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a black hole forms, right in front of Sonic and Tails. And worse, it begins to drag them towards it!

"HANG ON, BUDDY!" Sonic screams, grabbing Tails' hand tight and diving to hang onto a piece of the fence that surrounded the cliffside.

"S-S-SONIC..." Tails yelps once again, beginning to lose his grip on Sonic's hand.

"TAILS, MY GLOVES AREN'T MADE OF BUTTER! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER IS THIS!?"

Before either of them knew it, Tails' grasp on Sonic's hand was completely lost as he was sucked into the aforementioned black hole.

"HELP ME, SONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIC!"

"T-Tails! That's it buddy, I'm goin' in with ya!" Sonic shouts angrily, letting go of the fence and allowing himself to be sucked into the void.

Then... voices...

"Way past coool..."
"Don't touch the pink water, Tails... that's uncool stuff."
"Just who is that redheaded jerk!?"
"Give back the oversized green Emerald, Egghead!"
"Darn! This makes it harder for us to get to the bridge!"
"What was that, Tails!? What happened to Amy!? TAILS!"
"Drat! A trap to stall for time!"
"I guess that means... welcome to the next level, let's go!"
"If you have time to worry, then run!"
"I wish for a mountain of handkerchiefs..."
"This is the real me... pretty cool, huh?"
"No copyright law in the universe is gonna stop me!"

Suddenly Sonic's vision faded completely... he felt unconscious, at least until his vision faded back in... into a white space of nothingness.

 

Any feedback on this half of the prologue would be appreciated. The next half will cover Modern Sonic's end... if that isn't obvious. :U

 

 

[Spin Attaxx]

I've gotta say, I'm actually legitimately interested in this! Only real complaint I can think of is that, while I understand this is "Sonic Generations - Now With Extra Plot and Call Backs", I think the references in the first part with Fang and whatnot felt a tad bit forced and shoe-horny.

 

Other than that, I look forward to more!

[ElectricAngel]

Can someone travel back in time and make this the script of Sonic Generations? I mean wow. I really enjoyed the prologue. It feels real true to the Sonic feel and I love how you make a sorta timeline to the events. Also Tails' backstory was an interesting read. Much better than what the canon backstory is.

 

If I could find one flaw it's that when you mentioned the plentiful characters, specifically the ones in Sonic the Fighters, it felt like it dragged on for a bit too much. I think it would have been better to not mention Sonic the Fighters as that game isn't exactly canon and the characters barely mean anything in the modern games. However, if you plan on using them in later chapters, it's completely understandable. Now, say you do have intentions on mentioning them later, I think you could have had Sonic just mention them all in one sentence and Tails going something along the lines of "Yeah, they were a handful". 

[spinny]

I do understand what you're getting at there, Attaxx.

 

I definitely wanted to have them mentioning Rosy (huehuehue true 90s) and Knuckles, but honestly I don't care much for the 'forgotten' characters myself, so I didn't want to drag it on too long or too short, keep it as medium talk. 

 

I always kinda wanted to mention me believing Nack was fired and replaced with Rouge, anyway. It's a nice little tie-up of things.

 

Still, thanks for the feedback there~

 

Oh, and pretty much same for you, Swift! I understand how Fighters isn't really treated as canon to most but I personally saw it as "we're bored, let's have a little fistfight tourney", same goes for Sonic R really.

[jords]

Ok, call me interested because this was so dang good. I like it.

 

The only little complaint was kinda what Spin said but that's it nothing major, it's still really good. This is going to be great from what I can tell. Nice job!

[ImPantsAtThis]

[Reserved for review.]

 

Note: This will seem negative and overly harsh, but as DocAzure will (hopefully) tell you, my reviews are a poor reflection of how I reacted to a piece. My reviews are first and foremost about improvement and helping -- as a result, my actual thoughts about the overall quality of a work can be unclear. So, at the end I'm gonna give my feelings about it overall (more 'big picture' stuff), if that's okay.

 

Alright. In the first paragraph, you have a bit of a tense discrepancy. You go from conditional with 'would', to past tense. Then, after that, you go to present for the next few lines. Tense consistency, while not the greatest issue, is still a major factor in suspension of disbelief; if the reader is having trouble understanding how you want to describe an event, they're not as likely to continue.

 

"sending a draft around causing trees and the like to shake violently" Is a poorly-paced clause. I suspect this is because you missed a comma between 'around' and 'causing', so I won't call it an issue. You gotta remember that your sentences need an enjoyable... rhythm, for lack of a better word, for the reader to become more immersed in your story. It's an important component to prose, is flow, so maybe you need to re-read some of your sentences aloud to get a feel for them.

 

As soon as the dialogue begins, you switch back to past tense. And then back to present. This is something you need to be careful about.

 

You seem to be trying to describe too much at once. A perfect example is "the fox replies, slightly agitated whilst maintaining a young, childish nature.". You don't need this much detail. It would be better to just leave it at slightly agitated; since you already told us Tails has a cute voice, the reader can imagine him as being childish anyway.

 

I like the narration style. It's very story-timey and impersonal, and it does well to describe the characters in an unbiased way. A highlight is when you acknowledge Sonic's ego by admitting his "way past cool" self-proclamations. Engaging -- but more importantly, entertaining -- the reader like this is key to a good story.

 

"Ever since first spotting Sonic zooming by out of the corner of his eye whilst running away from an orphanage he was housed in after his parents abandoned him over his 'deformed' tails," Daaamn, run-on clause here. Try revising these sections to make them more laconic -- don't feel the need to put them into one sentence. You could even describe this in a larger paragraph and give it as much wordage as you need. One thing's for sure, compressing Tails' backstory into a single clause can't work.

 

When Sonic and Tails are discussing talking about machinery, why are they laughing and chuckling so quick? There didn't feel like there was enough build up to whatever punchline there was meant to be. Maybe if you expound on Tails' growing interest in mechanics in a mini-paragraph just before the line it'd make more sense.

 

"Well... it'd help with my social anxiety so I wouldn't be against that... " This line, if you'll excuse my rudeness, is unnatural. A character flaw that deep can't be put in a throwaway line -- no-one I know speaks that candidly, so fast it seems like a quip, about something as serious as this. It;s too casual. I;d suggest maybe changing the line to just something like, "Uh... sure!"

 

 

"He also apparently worked for the government too but got kicked out a few weeks ago in honor of this random female bat.." Run-on clause again (use of "random" is unneeded here). I kind of disagree with the others -- mentioning Fighters and R, and therefore Bean, Bark and Espio as well as Fang felt okay to me. But by this point, it does begin to feel a little forced. I understand you want to make references; the thought of making someone chuckle to themselves as they feel like you've written an in-joke just for them. I did it with my Mass Effect story (that thing is like a reference minefield), and I still do it with my Sonic one. But you have to space them out otherwise it feels shoehorned.

 

"sudden and short earthquake." Don't need the "and short" here. Don't try to describe too much with words. A talented writer I know once drilled into my head: 'Show me, don't tell me'. If you want to show it was short here, you could have Tails, scared at the sudden jolt of the earth, grab onto Sonic. The 'quake dies down instantly, and Tails is left holding onto Sonic, shaking. Just an idea, but the point is that you shouldn't try to describe everything if you can help it; sometimes less is more.

 

Oh my, I do love that gauntlet of quotes at the end. It makes me wonder how Classic is going to react to his future -- that should be an interesting development.

 

--

 

Alrighty then: overall, this is a good start. There are a lot of things you need to work on, mainly flow, but underneath that is a solid foundation for what I hope will be an interesting tale. The characters, though we don't know much about how they'll work, show promise for a range of emotions later. We don't have much to go on for plot yet, but from what I've seen this could go quite well. So yeah, I enjoyed reading this. Hope I helped, and thanks for writing it!

Edited May 9, 2014 by ImPantsAtThis

[Iggy]

Not bad, Spinny. Lighthearted and engaging dialog with everyone perfectly in character. However, it feels like your wording is lacking a bit of needed description in some parts. Like the part with the earthquake, for example. I think I would be better to describe how the earth seemed to shudder beneath their feet as a loud rumbling echoed around them rather than just an "MMMMMMM". Also, can I give you a tip? If you're not writing in first-person perspective, you need to be careful of where you put exclamation marks when it's not part of the dialog. From my experience, it makes the story seem a bit less serious. I'm looking forward to see where you're going with this!