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IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread


Dejimon11

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8 minutes ago, Heckboy said:

Because plagiarizing a poem about the Holocaust

Yes, that would be the "Ken Penders is a fucking hack" part.

8 minutes ago, Heckboy said:

AND made tasteless references to real life things on top of that

Yes, that's the kind of thing that being a hack writer causes when you try to draw ham-fisted parallels to real life events in your fiction to increase the emotional stakes. It's why show don't tell is such a sticking point with many works. It very similar in that respect to "Sonic was thrown in solitary and tortured for months."

10 minutes ago, Heckboy said:

is befitting the setting of Sonic the fucking Hedgehog.

It certainly was for the Archie setting at various points. Too bad the person writing the comic for such a long time was such a hack, huh?

8 minutes ago, Wraith said:

We were specifically talking about tonal shifts and departures from the start of the discussion and not why the comic is bad on the whole.

Maybe more of the focus should be more on that and less on how "offensive" and "tasteless" the entire concept is, then. The only reason I've posted in this thread is because I saw that and my eyes rolled out of my skull at the implication, since reinforced, that the problem was inherent to the references rather than just because Ken Penders was a fucking hack who resorted to copy pasting Niemöller's poem to get the point across.

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22 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

All you've done to actually back up that point is use hypotheticals where the games were as bad as SEGA by exaggerating what they actually did in your head and then presenting it in a way to suggest said hypotheticals are on the level of what actually happened in the comics.

I haven’t exaggerated anything of what Sega actually did when I made those hypotheticals—I’m aware of what the games and comics actually did. Even when you state the obvious of “the games haven’t done that,” I’ve told you guys straight to your faces that I know they didn’t do that even when I made those hypotheticals, but that I still wouldn’t have put it past them during the same period they somehow thought giving Shadow a Glock 9 was the best idea ever until it blew up in their face.

You guys have been excusing the stuff Sega did as fantasy cartoon stuff compared to the comics when the stuff the comics have done aren’t outside the realm of cartoon fantasy. And the most you guys only seem to center on is just the holocaust reference, as opposed to litterally everything else, romance drama, the tone, the setting, aliens, conspiracies, and the likes the comics have also pulled just like the games.

Really, no one here argued against the holocaust reference being tactless. But that seems to be your only point of contention.

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He's a hack who, by resorting to forced parallels to real life events, took the comic to more awkward and uncomfortable places than the games did. Sonic getting locked in solitary confinement off-screen is stupid and out of place, but it's not on Penders' level. And I keep going back to this reference in particular because it's so fucking out of place that I think it alone surpasses anything in the games when it comes to which is more "bizarre" or whatever got this whole argument started.

Whatever, I don't give a shit. 

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Oh yeah, Penders straight appropriating that poem is tactless garbage. And yeah I do happen to agree. 

Listen guys. Sonic Forces was World War Sonic. It was hamfisted and dumb and nowhere near like a realistic world war. Not even going to argue that I want it to be like that. But also, if I've been paying attention to my pop culture of the last decade right, Steven Universe tackled PTSD and War Flashbacks in a cartoon aimed at the TV-PG audience. Hell, that show helped me out through depression to having lived with a family an awful lot like that. 

Sega very well could have easily done a huge talk on Robotnik's flavour of fascism and why it was actually horrific. They flirted with the idea of Tails having PTSD and an abandonment complex because he thought Sonic was dead. His own brother. It's a little serious in odd places for something with a blue cartoon hedgehog in it. 

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1 minute ago, Tornado said:

 

Maybe more of the focus should be more on that and less on how "offensive" and "tasteless" the entire concept is, then. The only reason I've posted in this thread is because I saw that and my eyes rolled out of my skull at the implication, since reinforced, that the problem was inherent to the references rather than just because Ken Penders was a fucking hack who resorted to copy pasting Niemöller's poem to get the point across.

The discussion began with whether the games or the comics are a more drastic departure from the more lighthearted original series. It was admittedly not worth getting wrapped up in to the extent that we did though. The context was lost along the way somewhere. It's why I just let it go somewhere on the last page.

Even Disney movies have made allusions to fascism so it's technically not out there for something similar to surface in another all ages piece of media. I'll hold that L.

Pender just did it in a way that felt like a step further to me by taking a real person's writing and using it as an aesthetic. It's obviously shit writing but it also feels uncomfortable to me. There's a reason these things are approached carefully. 

That's my last word on it. 

 

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1 minute ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

 

You guys have been excusing the stuff Sega did as fantasy cartoon stuff compared to the comics when the stuff the comics have done aren’t outside the realm of cartoon fantasy. And most you guys only seem to center on is just the holocaust reference, as opposed to litterally everything else, romance drama, the tone, the setting, aliens, conspiracies, and the likes the comics have also pulled just like the games.

Really, no one here argued against the holocaust reference being tactless. But that seems to be your only point of contention.

People focus on that as it's the best example of stuff out of place in sonic. You don't see people complaining about the Steve Urkel robot, because that's more feasable to see in Sonic.

Sonic takes tribute from a lot of fantasy, so all the elements you just named are acceptable. Sonic will never be a franchise for holocaust poems.

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Admittedly though, it has been a franchise that talks about the loss of self and being free to be yourself in the face of powerful industry giants like a Robotnik? 

I mean, putting animals in robots is pretty much making a human a robot to a guy like Sonic. He's not human. He's animal. Of course he'd have a problem with that like how humans have a problem with people being turned into robots. 

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Hey I think I discovered why Fourdraine's Vector was drawn off. I was doing a random search for Croco drawings and it turned out she's done fanart of SMRPG in the past. If that's her first point of reference, pass over of traits is far more likely. 

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Admittedly, when a story goes like this it's kind of hard not to fill in the blanks and think that one thing leads to another. 

I mean, think about it. Why is a Mobian working with Eggman in Forces? Yes, we know it's because of his angsty arse getting kicked by Shadow. Not what I'm talking about though. 

There's a Sonic World where it was normal to be loyal to the Eggman. Or to join his side because the person's world view is destructive nihilism and he just wants to watch the world burn. I mean that fits Infinite's edgy outlook on life. 

So what did Eggman do to those he crushed? The cities which he conquered? Where did all those people go? What happened to them? 

There's a point in what @Conquering Storm’s Servant says. Our minds link events together. What happens when a fascist wages a war on most of the continent you live on and conquers 99.9% of it? He clearly had them jailed and as we know by now, slavery is technically legal through the prison system. 

It's dark. Don't get me wrong, it's dark as hell. But surely these things happened in the context of the story. The Doctor's authoritarianism took a turn to fascism and here's Sonic and the gang fighting a war against him. 

Doesn't matter if it's a cartoon. If your cartoon is portraying war, it's probably also portraying the ugly side of it or hiding it with the facade of being a kid's videogame or show. 

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30 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Hey I think I discovered why Fourdraine's Vector was drawn off. I was doing a random search for Croco drawings and it turned out she's done fanart of SMRPG in the past. If that's her first point of reference, pass over of traits is far more likely. 

....Who?

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22 minutes ago, LongcrierCat said:

Admittedly, when a story goes like this it's kind of hard not to fill in the blanks and think that one thing leads to another. 

I mean, think about it. Why is a Mobian working with Eggman in Forces? Yes, we know it's because of his angsty arse getting kicked by Shadow. Not what I'm talking about though. 

There's a Sonic World where it was normal to be loyal to the Eggman. Or to join his side because the person's world view is destructive nihilism and he just wants to watch the world burn. I mean that fits Infinite's edgy outlook on life. 

So what did Eggman do to those he crushed? The cities which he conquered? Where did all those people go? What happened to them? 

There's a point in what @Conquering Storm’s Servant says. Our minds link events together. What happens when a fascist wages a war on most of the continent you live on and conquers 99.9% of it? He clearly had them jailed and as we know by now, slavery is technically legal through the prison system. 

 

Your mind can fill in the blanks, sure. But other people may fill in the blanks differently to how you do, which is why taking the hypotheticals as an actually established thing doesn't make much sense since ultimately what hasn't been shown or even touched upon within Forces isn't canon to Forces - it's just imagination doing what it does. Just because it fits doesn't mean it's accurate to what Sonic Team's intent was and whilst headcanons are fine, masquerading them as actual canon to serve as a point of "the games being like the comics" isn't. 

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Okay. Mind you, I've probably watched more film recently that was more about making you think a lot about what's going on onscreen. Wasn't meaning to make fan fiction or anything, even if I think the fan fiction surrounding Forces did a better job than the game itself did. 

I mean, this isn't Annihilation or the GitS series where Wild Mass Guessing is the norm. 

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Well, as for me, I like fights, and adventure, and dramatic moments, and comedic moments, and down-time for the characters, and desperate times for the characters, and I like awesome character moments and vistas and "Oh no! We'll never win now!" moments and "Yes we will! We just gotta keep trying!" moments and moments where they all work together to get the Infinity Gauntlet away from Thanos.

Do whatever you want with your stories. Make whatever parallels you want. If it works than cool, if not then we have something to discuss. 

I'm not sure why but today I'm just really feeling my love for Sonic. 

You ever get that way? Just randomly realizing just how much you love something? 

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That is surprisingly sentimental and yes. 

I mean, that's a good parallel too. It's like I tell people that comic books, manga, and videogames are culturally similar. Fwiw, the 90s may as well be the Gold or Silver Age of Gaming and games tell stories and/or entertain. Sometimes it's going to have a story that you think about. 

But I think we're getting a little too esoteric with that talk now. 

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10 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

What is even happening in this thread over the course of the evening?

A whole lot of mix up.

It over now tho, so it’s best to move on.

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I want to be clear? I think you can reference bad things in children media. Heck my favorite character's backstory is basically a tale of a government doing some messed up experiments covering it up and murdering the people involved. And at least the government I live under have done all three of those things, a lot of times to people who look like me. I guess my point is, if you want to make a story about something dark in sonic , as long as you tell it well and its somewhat tasteful... sure.

Penders fumbling around with holocaust poems to build tension... not so much. So to the question posed " I thought it was penders being a hack and not the content " a bit of column a and b. Maybe direct Holocaust references for tensions sake isn't great, and ALSO penders is a hack who thought that was ok.

I was hoping personally they kinda would tell a story about the world of sonic recovering from the eggman mess maybe different people feel differently about it. Its not guaranteed to be dark, but melancholy in some cases. But the story has been and seems to want to continue to run away from forces as fast as possible.

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Just now, Shadowlax said:

I want to be clear? I think you can reference bad things in children media.

I have to say, this is one Of the few things you and I can agree on. 

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I think the crucial point that's missing in some of the discussion that's been happening here of the games is that the games have rarely been good at emotional depth, or really any kind of depth.  That to me is where a lot of the comparisons to things like Steven Universe or (not in this discussion, but it's gotten a lot of play elsewhere) Kung Fu Panda fall down, because everything I've heard about those indicate that they have far more fully-realised, carefully imagined characters and worlds than Sonic has.  By comparison, Sonic, and especially the Sonic of recent years, is a shallow popcorn flick.  If you're spending even a second thinking about the logical consequences of the characters' actions, the off-screen fallout or implication of events, or the characters' individual emotional development, you're spending one more second doing so than Sonic Team ever did.  That's not necessarily a criticism; Sonic is a video game franchise and if it focusses on being fun first and foremost, then it's not wrong.  (Whether it succeeds at even that is a very different topic of conversation.)  But we can't pretend that it's something it isn't.

Sonic as a franchise could do a lot of things if it was prepared to seriously commit to the world it was developing and take the characters' internal lives seriously.  But it's not, and until it is there's really no point in speculating or drawing comparisons to other children's media which are far more plot-centric than Sonic.

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SU is honestly not that deep. Sonic can be lighthearted at times but you need to balance it. Long driven series need varying degrees of action and plot. If all we needed was comedy then theres boom for that. People die and I'd have no issue with the comics mentioning or hinting it

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13 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

This is what happens when we talk about Penders.

More like what happens when things get misconstrued. It’s not like Penders was given any good credit for his actions in Archie.

11 hours ago, FFWF said:

I think the crucial point that's missing in some of the discussion that's been happening here of the games is that the games have rarely been good at emotional depth, or really any kind of depth.  That to me is where a lot of the comparisons to things like Steven Universe or (not in this discussion, but it's gotten a lot of play elsewhere) Kung Fu Panda fall down, because everything I've heard about those indicate that they have far more fully-realised, carefully imagined characters and worlds than Sonic has.  By comparison, Sonic, and especially the Sonic of recent years, is a shallow popcorn flick.  If you're spending even a second thinking about the logical consequences of the characters' actions, the off-screen fallout or implication of events, or the characters' individual emotional development, you're spending one more second doing so than Sonic Team ever did.  That's not necessarily a criticism; Sonic is a video game franchise and if it focusses on being fun first and foremost, then it's not wrong.  (Whether it succeeds at even that is a very different topic of conversation.)  But we can't pretend that it's something it isn't.

Sonic as a franchise could do a lot of things if it was prepared to seriously commit to the world it was developing and take the characters' internal lives seriously.  But it's not, and until it is there's really no point in speculating or drawing comparisons to other children's media which are far more plot-centric than Sonic.

That sounds defeatist to me, especially when Sonic as a franchise has committed to his world in the past before we even came to this point.

But that exactly what the comics have done, as they by default are more plot-centric, at least compared to the games. It’s putting far more into than the more shallower entries of the recent games and exploring the logical consequences and off-screen fallout of events.

And it’s not like Sonic and his world aren’t fully realized or thought out, but more that, in contrast to the comics or other media that explore the setting, things have been more inconsistent in the games to the point that it falls flat numerous times and comes off more half-assed and lazier than expected. It’s telling that S3&K looks like it’s was handcrafted with care and detail, allowing you to explore the full setting of Angel Isle as you make your way to the Death Egg, and showing how much effort Eggman is putting into his plans as he tries to keep you at bay, with utmost simplicity whereas something like Forces is more hamfisted with its war setting. And that’s without getting into the Two Worlds nonsense.

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