Was Amy ever THAT bad?

[Tornado]

18 hours ago, 4th Chaos Emerald said:

Q: When has this discussion ever been about one specific era? A: It was about Amy in general. I brought up Adventure because people pan her characterization in that game too. We were talking about IDW, Boom, Adventure, Forces, etc,so where TF did you get the idea we were talking about one thing?

That'd be the OP of your thread, where you say that no, Amy didn't ever get that bad because she was fine in the games before she got that bad; and diverting attention from the things about her that actually actively annoyed people to talk about some other thing that wasn't the sticking point in the first place; and your later posts that dismiss people talking about the games that she did get that bad as a matter of how "people don't care to understand." What do you think was there that was so complicated to understand about Amy as she appeared in the middle of the 2000s?

People didn't hate how Amy was written in the mid-2000s because she was a damsel in distress in fucking 1993. People weren't annoyed with how Amy was captured again in the first Adventure when she beat the shit out the thing chasing her in the end. You're talking about shit that's 22 years old as evidence for why the changes to her character in the recent games was unnecessary, when the game from nearly 22 years ago isn't one of the ones that people were always complaining about in the first place regardless of if the changes were necessary. Either you're being deliberately obtuse because you wanted to make a thread to defend something that people actively disliked and took offense to people disagreeing, or you made a thread defending Amy's characterization in the games where she was disliked without actually knowing what games those were or why she was disliked in the first place.

 

 

 

People hated how Amy was written because she became a shrill one-note character whose existence in the series started and ended with chasing Sonic around, to the extent of attacking characters who got in her way over it. That was a specific aspect of her that was disliked, and it was most prevalent in a specific era of the franchise history. Talking about other aspects of her character or other games outside of that era where she was fine is irrelevant to your own thread. That you've accounted for that in your posts, and then dismiss it out of hand anyway as if the games where she did it was simply "played as a running gag" and it was the fault of the "people [who] treated it like a serious plot point" to take it that way just makes me wonder about why you made the thread to begin with.

It was a gag in X because she did other things with other characters and had storylines that didn't have much to do with Sonic at all and generally came off as a very polite and respectful girl, so it stood out when she went from 0-100 immediately and started beating the shit out of things and other characters went running. It wasn't a gag in Battle. She was awful in Battle, just as bad as Shadow was in his own game; and that aspect of her character wasn't treated as a joke to her, other characters didn't respond to it as if it was one, and her storyline of creating an internal narrative that Sonic would love her if she raised Emerl as her child (and the later fallout where she becomes so deluded that she imagines Sonic was fighting by her side to protect their child from Rouge and has a mental collapse when that reality is broken) was the entirety of her contribution to what was overall a dramatic narrative chronicling Emerl's character arc. No amount of jumping up and down and saying "well, look at this other game where she was fine" changes what she was in the games where people hated her role in the story. No amount of insisting people just don't get it changes what she was in the games where people hated her role in the story

 

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How many times did I say, "yes, Amy had bad characterizations in the mid 2000s games but so did the rest of the characters, yet they get a pass"?

lol. Just making shit up now, then? They didn't get a pass; and they weren't all made as much of a mess as Amy was to begin with. Knuckles was made an honorary member of the Special Olympics, Shadow spent several years of Ow the Free Edge, Sonic spent a decade being the most incorruptibly purely pure shonen hero that there ever was.

 

 

 

Remember when Shadow got such a pass for being a try-hard douchebag written for 12 year olds when he came back for Heroes that his titular game was immediately the biggest fucking joke on the internet from the day it was announced; which has followed him to this day even when that character arc was wrapped up over a decade ago?

Remember when Knuckles got such a pass for having a permanent consolation prize as a brain in Sonic X that Sega even hinting that they were going back to that well again for Sonic Boom caused people to write off the entire sub-series immediately and loudly?

 

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And how many times am I going to keep repeating myself? Y'all hear whatever you want to hear. I have no problem with having a friendly debate, but the key word is "friendly". He disrespected me. And you got me fucked up if you think I'm not going to defend myself. That's you dudes' problem now and why this site gets a bad rep. Y'all think you can say whatever you want and run behind the mods whenever you get a response you don't like. So I guess you better get to it, like you were probably thinking of doing anyways.

Charming. Are you planning on keeping up this persecution complex forever, or is this just something you're going to keep to this thread with until people acquiesce to the bias you're trying to force into it?

Edited May 27, 2020 by Tornado

[Sean]

4th Chaos Emerald has been banned for being a bandodger (Misfit the Hedgehog).

[Kaotic Kanine]

To answer the OP: no, Amy was never "that bad". And not gonna lie, I'm very annoyed with the people who do say she was "that bad" because of how it has influenced Amy's character since Lost World, which I've always felt was a step back for her 

The only times Amy did get close to "that bad" in the games were Sonic Battle and Sonic Rush, but both games are guilty of questionable writing for most of the characters anyway; with Battle having everyone being fight-happy (sans Cream, who had her pacifism dialed up to eleven even though the preceding Advance 2 and Heroes had her directly fighting without issue), while Rush had everyone except Sonic and Blaze at their most one-dimensional. Aside from those two games, I fail to see the "obsessed psycho stalker" people claim Amy to be in this era 

Everyone points to that moment in Heroes, but as KKM pointed out, they all seem to overlook how that cutscene, as well as the other ones preceding the Team Battles, had everyone holding the Conflict Ball for the sake of a boss fight. Amy threatening Sonic marry her is no more accurate to her character than Rouge picking a fight with Team Chaotix just cause, Espio demanding a little girl to hand over her pet chao in a threatening manner, and Sonic calling the guy whom he saw die helping him save the planet "stubborn and full of surprises" and subsequently fighting him for no real reason. I think we all know that Amy wouldn't dare hurt Sonic unless he did something to enrage her (such as the Team Hero ending to Riders 1, which had Amy attack Sonic in retaliation for sending a vortex at herself and Eggman), just as Rouge wouldn't needlessly attack a trio of guys unless she knew they were definitely after Eggman's treasure (which they weren't) and Espio wouldn't threaten an innocent child for their pet. And outside of that one instance, Heroes didn't handle Amy anywhere near as bad as made out to be. Yeah, she was searching after Sonic in the first two levels, but so were Cream and Big because their clue to the whereabouts of Chocola and Froggy made them all believe Sonic had something to do with it. After that confrontation with Team Sonic, Amy shifted focus solely on searching for Chocola and Froggy, with the only mention of Sonic I can recall being the in-game cutscene before Egg Emperor, and then resuming her chase for Sonic after Chocola and Froggy were saved

And Amy wasn't even bad in any of the other 2000's games. In Shadow, Amy would muse about Sonic sometimes but was mainly focused on rescuing Cream from the haunted castle and cheered on Shadow just as she would Sonic. Riders and Zero Gravity had Amy playfully flirt with Sonic on first meeting him but afterward she would be genuinely involved in the events of both games; challenging Wave in retaliation for insulting Tails, going after Eggman when he headed for Babylon Garden, and tagging along with Team Sonic to solve the Ark of the Cosmos mystery. Sonic 06, while having Amy searching for Sonic for no real reason beyond her crush on him (and pulling that stupid gag with Silver), that game also gave Amy an incredibly badass moment via defending Sonic from Silver with just a glare and then getting Silver to question his planned method to save the future (that is, murder). Granted, Amy didn't do much else in Sonic 06, but she was inoffensive at most. And before anyone @'s me about the "choosing Sonic over the world", that line is not Amy saying that she'd sacrifice the world in favor of Sonic: she saying was that she'd stick by Sonic even if the whole world turned against him, because she firmly knows that Sonic would never intentionally endanger the world nor turn evil. Definitely a poor choice of words for Amy that should've been revised, but that was the intent behind them. And the worst one could say about Amy in Unleashed was needing to be saved from the possessed Assistant. Black Knight could've done better, but honestly, wouldn't you be pissed at a trusted friend missing out on another date and claiming they were sucked into a storybook? And likewise, Generations could've also done better but Amy in that game isn't all that offensive 

So, putting Sonic X, Battle, and Rush aside... Amy wasn't that bad. Really, only thing that held her back from being a "great" character was being forced into a supporting role for Sonic. But thing is, you can have Amy be a main, independent character without erasing her personality and quirks, including the open and unabashed love for Sonic. But all the recent games have done with Amy is erase said personality and quirks, or at least tone them down to non-existent levels, while still keeping her a support for Sonic. So all that has been accomplished for Amy is taking away her character without actually improving her. She's not "independent and mature" now, she's just plain. But so long Amy's not fawning over Sonic, apparently that's enough to make her great  

[thumbs13]

I think that's a big problem honestly, people dislike one thing, so therefore the opposite of that thing is good.

People don't like Amy's crush, so the games that downplay it to nonexistance are good by default, no deeper look or introspection required.

[E-122-Psi]

3 hours ago, Tornado said:

It was a gag in X because she did other things with other characters and had storylines that didn't have much to do with Sonic at all and generally came off as a very polite and respectful girl, so it stood out when she went from 0-100 immediately and started beating the shit out of things and other characters went running.

Ehh, I think Sonic X had a 'slippery slope' progression. She was okay in early points (if still maybe a bit exaggeratively brash, especially in the Japanese edit) but by the third season, her role was diminishing besides those gags of being Sonic-obsessed and violent tempered. Even times she wasn't flying off the handle I generally remember her being snide and bratty, likely because other characters like Cosmo had taken over as the voice of empathy and being stuck in a spaceship on a mission plan made it harder to keep her 'everygirl' role to balance it. The gag had pretty much taken over her personality.

This is why I'm not big on the whole 'it's just a gag' approach anyway. Boom could make characters nasty for gags, but I guess it worked there because it was still tied to their default personality and often had repercussions to keep them sympathetic (case in point most of Amy's priggish moments were part of her normal character in that show and were usually undermined and made her a butt monkey). Sonic X leaned more into isolated character breaking gags where the cast would be nasty for an abrupt moment and it would be instantly forgotten (eg. even Cream being shrewish to Knuckles at times). I'm not big on character breaking humour, it's still character display, and often it ends up overwhelming their default personality anyway, much like it had Amy in the anime who just seemed to be all around a nasty tempered jerk by default by the end. It's like how Family Guy's mean spiritedness was just isolated Meg-bashing humour for a while, but as it became more dominant they just gave up with the formalities and made the cast unlikeable by default. How can you keep Lois a loving mother if she constantly abuses her daughter for gags?

Rush's plot is undermined by such isolated gag approaches, that we are supposed to  accept the main bulk of the plot contextually is Blaze needing to listen to Cream and the others and accept their friendships, and that the moments of Knuckles and Amy flying off the handle or Cream ruining first impressions by suddenly being passive aggressive are just an isolated gag that we're not meant to base their story relevant personalities from. It's trying to make the audience split the story canon into pieces for the sake making characters mean for a 'maybe slightly sorta funny' joke.

I'm kinda glad Archie ditched the isolated 'psycho Amy' gags as well by the end of the pre-boot for this reason. Sure they weren't as recurrent as X but they were starting to make Amy's most standout characteristic that of a creepy mood-swinger.

[Kuzu]

I get that humor is subjective and all and everyone has their tastes, but Amy's temper, when properly balanced with her other traits, is actually a pretty effective gag since it's something unexpected. Now granted, it was definitely overused but that's any joke in general as we can see with people slightly turning on recent year's blend of "meta humor". This series isn't a comedy, so it's not really going to have the most intelligent or well written jokes. It's an Adventure series with the occasional gag or two.  That's why I don't think it's good to take things like that too seriously. By all means, I understand if it's not your thing personally, and it can ruin characters in worst cases. But I don't think there was anything inherently wrong with it to the point where the series should never do that at all.

[DabigRG]

That's humor and/or particularly expressive characters for ya: one person's funny/entertaining is another's annoying/obnoxious.

 

Ergo, the main reason Tangle is so much better received than Amy, Charmy, and in theory Marine is because you can't hear her and generally get much less of her at a time.

[E-122-Psi]

It can also depend on if the character's annoying habits are at the expense of another likeable character. This is particularly common with anime tsunderes like X Amy because they tend to routinely abuse other characters (usually male ones) for what are often petty infractions, only sporadically getting karma for it (you can't really have a male character fight back). You sympathise with Sonic and Knuckles then you are liable to think Amy is a 'bully' and get sick of her lack of comeuppance and what not. I suspect those who dislike Eggman's villain decay would also consider him getting one sidedly owned and even cowering before Amy another low point as well, considering the fact he was defiant even in the face of Sonic or the Meterax was one of his redeeming qualities.

It's all mostly gag purposes sure, but it's a gag that encompasses more than one character this way. This is why you see characters like Misty from Pokemon and Sakura from Naruto as divisive in likability since gags about their flaws and abrasiveness are at the expense of other fan favourite characters more often than their own.

Compare this to say Marine and Charmy, who have what can be considered annoying habits but mostly ineffectual and self contained to their own personalities like talking loudly and obnoxiously. At worst you're just wondering why the others don't have a constant headache from listening to them. (This is something Boom Amy also generally avoids since SHE is usually the butt monkey when at her most obnoxious.)

[StaticMania]

Anime doesn't really understand "slapstick knows no gender" so any abrasive female getting comeuppance for slights against their friends isn't likely to happen...

Even comedically.

Unless it's an all girls scenario, Amy has the personality for the character who'd get the most pratfalls for being annoying or not.

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, E-122-Psi said:

It can also depend on if the character's annoying habits are at the expense of another likeable character. This is particularly common with anime tsunderes like X Amy because they tend to routinely abuse other characters (usually male ones) for what are often petty infractions, only sporadically getting karma for it (you can't really have a male character fight back). You sympathise with Sonic and Knuckles then you are liable to think Amy is a 'bully' and get sick of her lack of comeuppance and what not. I suspect those who dislike Eggman's villain decay would also consider him getting one sidedly owned and even cowering before Amy another low point as well, considering the fact he was defiant even in the face of Sonic or the Meterax was one of his redeeming qualities.

It's all mostly gag purposes sure, but it's a gag that encompasses more than one character this way. This is why you see characters like Misty from Pokemon and Sakura from Naruto as divisive in likability since gags about their flaws and abrasiveness are at the expense of other fan favourite characters more often than their own.

Compare this to say Marine and Charmy, who have what can be considered annoying habits but mostly ineffectual and self contained to their own personalities like talking loudly and obnoxiously. At worst you're just wondering why the others don't have a constant headache from listening to them. (This is something Boom Amy also generally avoids since SHE is usually the butt monkey when at her most obnoxious.)

Marine and Charmy are still pretty hated for being "annoying" as much as Amy was soooooooo.....

5 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Anime doesn't really understand "slapstick knows no gender" so any abrasive female getting comeuppance for slights against their friends isn't likely to happen...

Even comedically.

Unless it's an all girls scenario, Amy has the personality for the character who'd get the most pratfalls for being annoying or not.

It's kind of a case of different values between cultures; the entire tsundere archtype was born out of a subversion of the typical Japanese female, who were generally demure and submissive. The subversion comes by making said female more abrasive and outgoing. 

 

Naturally, given America's focus on individualism, this isn't that unusual, but abuse against males from "empowered" women is a pretty standard gag here; look at any fucking sitcom with a fat husband and a hot wife and you already know what that dynamic is. 

[StaticMania]

5 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Naturally, given America's focus on individualism, this isn't that unusual, but abuse against males from "empowered" women is a pretty standard gag here; look at any fucking sitcom with a fat husband and a hot wife and you already know what that dynamic is. 

That doesn't really stop the females from taking the fall every now and then...

It's just 2:1

[Sega DogTagz]

7 hours ago, Kaotic Kanine said:

 And before anyone @'s me about the "choosing Sonic over the world", that line is not Amy saying that she'd sacrifice the world in favor of Sonic: she saying was that she'd stick by Sonic even if the whole world turned against him, because she firmly knows that Sonic would never intentionally endanger the world nor turn evil. Definitely a poor choice of words for Amy that should've been revised, but that was the intent behind them.

I don't think the context around that quote allows for you to come to this conclusion. 

While she did state that she did not believe Sonic was capable of bringing about such devastation, she immediately qualifies her infamous stance with the precursor - and I am directly quoting her here -  "Even if that was true". 

There is no other way to take that then to accept it at face value. That is not a mis-spoke or a poor choice of words. That is direct intent to quantify the significance of what she was about to say next. She meant every word of what she said. 

 

The stance is given further contextual clarity, as it foreshadows the exact events of the game whereas at the end, Elise is given that same very specific choice, and makes the decision Amy can't. 

 

Unless you want to claim full on translation error, I don't think the English language allows you any wiggle room in defending that claim. I'd be interested in a direct hard translation from the Japanese version if anyone is capable of doing that. 

 

 

 

[Kuzu]

5 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

I don't think the context around that quote allows for you to come to this conclusion. 

While she did state that she did not believe Sonic was capable of bringing about such devastation, she immediately qualifies her infamous stance with the precursor - and I am directly quoting her here -  "Even if that was true". 

There is no other way to take that then to accept it at face value. That is not a mis-spoke or a poor choice of words. That is direct intent to quantify the significance of what she was about to say next. She meant every word of what she said. 

 

The stance is given further contextual clarity, as it foreshadows the exact events of the game whereas at the end, Elise is given that same very specific choice, and makes the decision Amy can't. 

 

Unless you want to claim full on translation error, I don't think the English language allows you any wiggle room in defending that claim. I'd be interested in a direct hard translation from the Japanese version if anyone is capable of doing that. 

 

 

 

No he's right; the point of the scene is for Silver to question if killing Sonic is the right thing to do to save the world by having Amy establish her unyielding faith in the guy. Out of context, it can certainly be taken the wrong way and given Amy's reputation at the time, most people definitely did take it the wrong way. But the sentiment is still there. 

[Diogenes]

Honestly I feel like the whole "choose Sonic over the world" thing is the least of the problems with Amy's characterization even if you do interpret it as literally sacrificing the world instead of him. It's not the objectively/morally "correct" choice but it feels like the right choice for Amy as a character. She's not supposed to be evaluating every situation rationally and dispassionately, she's a young girl with a major crush on half of the equation.

And I feel it's hard to hold it against her when she's ultimately right; killing Sonic would, at best, just be killing an innocent 'hog, and at worst, is part of Mephy's plan and would bring about the end of existence as we know it.

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, E-122-Psi said:

It can also depend on if the character's annoying habits are at the expense of another likeable character. This is particularly common with anime tsunderes like X Amy because they tend to routinely abuse other characters (usually male ones) for what are often petty infractions, only sporadically getting karma for it (you can't really have a male character fight back). You sympathise with Sonic and Knuckles then you are liable to think Amy is a 'bully' and get sick of her lack of comeuppance and what not. I suspect those who dislike Eggman's villain decay would also consider him getting one sidedly owned and even cowering before Amy another low point as well, considering the fact he was defiant even in the face of Sonic or the Meterax was one of his redeeming qualities.

It's all mostly gag purposes sure, but it's a gag that encompasses more than one character this way. This is why you see characters like Misty from Pokemon and Sakura from Naruto as divisive in likability since gags about their flaws and abrasiveness are at the expense of other fan favourite characters more often than their own.

Compare this to say Marine and Charmy, who have what can be considered annoying habits but mostly ineffectual and self contained to their own personalities like talking loudly and obnoxiously. At worst you're just wondering why the others don't have a constant headache from listening to them. (This is something Boom Amy also generally avoids since SHE is usually the butt monkey when at her most obnoxious.)

Oh yeah, she's certainly more offensive in that regard compared to them mostly yipping about.

33 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Marine and Charmy are still pretty hated for being "annoying" as much as Amy was soooooooo.....

 

Well I think that's a matter of that well stacked against age archetype being most of what they are and with little opportunity to be significantly more, whereas Amy is a constant who can be latched onto by tween girls who also want to express themselves.

It's especially bad for Marine though since she was obviously just overdone initially and never got another chance to be less intrusive like she resolved to do.

[E-122-Psi]

7 hours ago, StaticMania said:

That doesn't really stop the females from taking the fall every now and then...

It's just 2:1

I think probably the best comparison to X era Amy in the west is Miss Piggy, however they tend to beat around the bush less about Miss Piggy's abusive behaviour making her unlikeable a lot of the time and there's generally a lot more jokes played at her expense than Amy (especially in the original Muppet Show where a lot of her karate chops intended for more sympathetic cast members actually backfired onto her).

Generally the sympathy level of a character's flawed aspects are proportionate to how much the plot undermines them. This is why say an actual villain can gain audience sympathy if they are a big enough butt monkey like Eggman, and yet a more moderately asshole-ish character can't if they never suffer consequences for it, or even worse ANOTHER CHARACTER does instead. I think this is why a lot of the time in fiction, the female cast ends up the most divisive, since writers are more liable to dither inflicting the same fallibility and misery onto them as the male cast, even if they deserve it more (Peanuts and Spy vs Spy are creator confessed examples).

8 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Anime doesn't really understand "slapstick knows no gender" so any abrasive female getting comeuppance for slights against their friends isn't likely to happen...

Even comedically.

Unless it's an all girls scenario, Amy has the personality for the character who'd get the most pratfalls for being annoying or not.

Kind of ironic for a character who has a pratfall as part of her moveset in Advance 1.