Who "owns" the story: creator or audience?

[Wraith]

3 hours ago, charmsb said:

Nope, it's not just me "personally disagreeing" with Iizuka. Again, EVEN IF it comes from word of god, which is an extremely debatable precedent to give Iizuka, it still needs to be coherent and make sense.

For one most of everything he has claimed has contradicted previous statements and lore that was created by people who have more authority than him. He is retconning things made by people who were WAY more involved than him.

Secondly, again, he literally just spits these things out in interviews to give an answer. Its all malarkey made up on the spot that doesn't actually consider its consequences or what came before. Sure, Iizuka is the current head of Sonic Team, but he sure as hell didn't make Sonic, and seems to know very little about its origins and inspirations... should we really just go with what he says because he has legal precedent? 

Imagine if you create something, lets just call it Thing, and years later you leave the company that was creating Thing with you. You are the figurative father of Thing; you know absolutely everything about it and know your intentions for Thing. But now some guy who, while still an important team member in the past, has assumed your role as the head of the company that makes Thing. He starts saying absolutely bonkers things that don't at all agree with what you wanted or intended, and none of what he says actually considers much of the existing material. Maybe you don't care about Thing much anymore, but can we really all collectively say that this new guy should be trusted with Thing? That his word is important and valid, just because he's the new head of the company?

Art is not created and persisted with legality and company politics. It is with creators who truly value what they've made or what they've been given.

Iizuka isn't just some new suit that they got to replace Naka, Oshima etc, he was the director and lead game designer on both Sonic Adventure games which, imo, wrote the book for the modern iteration of the character. Him and Naka worked together on the series and other projects like NiGHTS from the 90s up until 2006. All the lore and worldbuilding shit you guys are so fixated on in the first place sprung from those titles.
 
Sonic isn't just his of course, but it never entirely belonged to one person and they never completely agreed on everything anyway.

Again, though, people are quick to diminish his role just because they don't like what he's saying anymore. How is that fair? Why not put yourself in Iizuka's shoes instead for a moment: imagine putting yourself through year after year of crunch to deliver products for an IP, creating a top performing brand in the process, only to have some fanboy on the internet say you don't give a shit because you halfheartedly answered a worldbuilding question they didn't like. You know, worldbuilding. For Sonic the Hedgehog. That thing that's never been even remotely consistent with this IP, and thus not essential to anyone's enjoyment of it.

Like, who the fuck was supposedly more involved with Sonic than him and what statements of theirs is he contradicting? I'm genuinely curious.

 

[Kuzu]

13 hours ago, charmsb said:

Nope, it's not just me "personally disagreeing" with Iizuka. Again, EVEN IF it comes from word of god, which is an extremely debatable precedent to give Iizuka, it still needs to be coherent and make sense.

For one most of everything he has claimed has contradicted previous statements and lore that was created by people who have more authority than him. He is retconning things made by people who were WAY more involved than him.

Secondly, again, he literally just spits these things out in interviews to give an answer. Its all malarkey made up on the spot that doesn't actually consider its consequences or what came before. Sure, Iizuka is the current head of Sonic Team, but he sure as hell didn't make Sonic, and seems to know very little about its origins and inspirations... should we really just go with what he says because he has legal precedent? 

Imagine if you create something, lets just call it Thing, and years later you leave the company that was creating Thing with you. You are the figurative father of Thing; you know absolutely everything about it and know your intentions for Thing. But now some guy who, while still an important team member in the past, has assumed your role as the head of the company that makes Thing. He starts saying absolutely bonkers things that don't at all agree with what you wanted or intended, and none of what he says actually considers much of the existing material. Maybe you don't care about Thing much anymore, but can we really all collectively say that this new guy should be trusted with Thing? That his word is important and valid, just because he's the new head of the company?

Art is not created and persisted with legality and company politics. It is with creators who truly value what they've made or what they've been given.

Sonic has no one, singular creator who has authority over him above anyone else and you're making a assumption by saying that. Yuji Naka, who fans assume is the supposed "father" of Sonic, literally left Sega over disagreements with how the IP was run. 

Iizuka directed every mainline game between 1998-2006, and was the co‐creator of Shadow along with Shiro Maekawa. He is quite literally the main reason the era of Sonic that this fanbase never shuts up about even exists.

And despite all of that, you're quick to disregard his credibility as an important figure and write him off as just some guy who doesn't know anything about this series. And only because he made a statement or two that contradicts the fanon interpretations of this fanbase?

 

All you're telling me is that you don't actually care about any of these supposed creators you're espousing about, and care more if their beliefs and words line up with yours and you're disregard them if they don't. It honestly baffles me that you can pin so much of Sonic's missteps on Iizuka while praising the very things he contributed to the series without giving him any credit.

Sonic's a mess, but its incredibly misguided to blame soley Iizuka for that when he's at the mercy of Sega's executives. 

[charmsb]

12 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Sonic has no one, singular creator who has authority over him above anyone else and you're making a assumption by saying that. Yuji Naka, who fans assume is the supposed "father" of Sonic, literally left Sega over disagreements with how the IP was run. 

Iizuka directed every mainline game between 1998-2006, and was the co‐creator of Shadow along with Shiro Maekawa. He is quite literally the main reason the era of Sonic that this fanbase never shuts up about even exists.

And despite all of that, you're quick to disregard his credibility as an important figure and write him off as just some guy who doesn't know anything about this series. And only because he made a statement or two that contradicts the fanon interpretations of this fanbase?

 

All you're telling me is that you don't actually care about any of these supposed creators you're espousing about, and care more if their beliefs and words line up with yours and you're disregard them if they don't. It honestly baffles me that you can pin so much of Sonic's missteps on Iizuka while praising the very things he contributed to the series without giving him any credit.

Sonic's a mess, but its incredibly misguided to blame soley Iizuka for that when he's at the mercy of Sega's executives. 

Well that was all a bit reductive, but alright... at the end of the day I'm really concerned with Iizuka's modern ramblings more than anything. And no, I don't think I ever even mentioned Yuji Naka, who I honestly didn't intend to. I was moreso talking about Naoto Ohshima. Even so, Naka and Ohshima have a lot more credibility compared to Iizuka. Hell, Iizuka had like two games that actually stuck to the original vision and it dwindled pretty quick from then on. I don't want to write off his importance but I don't want to give him much credibility either.

I also want to be clear that this entire argument is absent from my personal biases. Its an honest view of what is and isn't Sonic, and Iizuka has been pulling the series away from "Sonic" for a while now. If it helps at all, I actually quite like 1998-2006, even Shadow (game, not character), and might even prefer it to the classics. But whats undeniable is that past ~2005 the series barely at all resembles its original inspirations... and that's what I've been trying to say. My favorite Sonic look is the dreamcast model from SA1. I like Shadow as a character, yadda-yadda-yadda. But I'd still think it would be more true to the original vision and hell, more of a complete, coherent, and overall better piece of art to actually go back and see what the intentions were behind a creation. Experimentation is one thing, but honestly, and especially in the past decade, Sonic has been bastardized. Experimenting on an existing idea is not throwing random shit at it and seeing what happens; you're still considering what came before and extrapolating core concepts.

 

This is getting rant-y but you really have to stop assuming that I'm just "only agreeing with what I like". If that were true I'd be a lot more biased towards and forgiving of Iizuka, but I'm not. This is not a topic about what my favorite edition of Thing is, this is what the hell exactly Thing is.

23 hours ago, Wraith said:

Like, who the fuck was supposedly more involved with Sonic than him and what statements of theirs is he contradicting? I'm genuinely curious.

 

...Ohshima?? Naka?? The weird two worlds thing being an entire fabrication that no one before supported? Permanently changing the look of the character and slowly draining it of its original inspirations based on arbitrary "artistic" decisions? Stuff like that? 

[FlameStream]

The point he wanted to get across is that no one individual would be responsible for Sonic's handling and image, good or bad direction, today. Not Naka-san, nor Ohshima-san, if they were still employed. All of this is projection.

What seems to be happening is a case of having too many clashing stakeholders (read: some board, execs and creatives alike) trying to steer or keep Sonic in a certain direction, because he's an important company asset.

[TailsGotTrolled]

might be OT but apparently sonic isnt sega's biggest earner anymore so now I have this pipedream of using crowdfunding to buy the whole IP and release it to the public domain.

 

No idea why they would want to part with it though, not if theyre using it to sell NFTs

[MetalSkulkBane]

6 hours ago, TailsGotTrolled said:

might be OT but apparently sonic isnt sega's biggest earner anymore so now I have this pipedream of using crowdfunding to buy the whole IP and release it to the public domain.

 

No idea why they would want to part with it though, not if theyre using it to sell NFTs

If something like that was possible (it isn't) someone would buy Crash before N-sane trilogy was made. It would been more do-able.

(In a sense "eating whole car" is more do-able than "eating Eiffel tower")

[Shade Vortex]

It might not make the -most- money anymore, but Sonic is far from unprofitable. And there's no way they're gonna get rid of one of their biggest IP for an amount of money that you could get a group of people to scrounge up. Not to mention, historically Japanese IP holders especially don't tend to sell to non-Japanese companies. It's why it's incredibly unlikely for MS to buy SEGA, for example- nationalism is one of the few things that seemingly trumps money in this world.

[TheNerdyKMT]

Well, I feel like a creator obviously shares their creations for an audience to experience, but at the end of the day, whether they thinks it's amazing, or garbage, it's still the creator's baby.

 

At least that's what I think as far as stories, & the meaning & passions behind them go.