Shadow the Hedgehog IDW Writer Evan Stanley Reveals New, 'More Workable Guidelines' for Shadow

[Kuzu]

5 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

That’s the thing tho, 06 being well over a decade ago before he makes any reappearance makes it doubtful the guidelines prior to now had to do his own game.

That Boom wasn’t made by them only highlights the inconsistency over how to handle this character when another separate party decides to go a completely different direction with them, yet they have to have this particular team on a tighter leash. 

And that Free Riders, TSR and Forces are the successive entries of his appearance after 06 and no one got up in arms with him there only further begs the question of where the hell did this fear of mishandling Shadow come from more than a decade after they (Sega/Sonic Team) mishandled the character themselves?

This is exactly why I said that this is probably not as complicated as some of the writers have been making it out to be.

As mentioned, Ian Flynn took Shadow in a direction that doesn't at all match what the games were doing; the fact that people liked or didn't mind it is secondary to that.

And Boom just did just whatever the hell it felt like it with every character to begin with.

Even when Evan Stanley confirmed the subject of this particular topic, she had to clarify that while she has her own interpretation of Shadow that she would prefer to write, she acknowledges that just isn't who he is in the games.

That's why I said Shadow has been subjected to so much misinterpretation and misinformation on who exactly he is in the games that fans just kind of lost who the character is supposed to be and simply found refuge in other takes on him in the comics regardless if those takes actually matched his game interpretation or not.

 

But at the end of the day, it's Sega's fault for not really setting the record straight and just leaving Shadow on the shelf and not clarifying the current direction of his character in the games. It left the door open for other writers and fans to just fill in the blanks themselves with their own ideas, whether they matched Sega's vision for the character or not.

[DabigRG]

15 hours ago, Zaysho said:

It doesn't at all track with the writers who have blatantly said they were writing exactly what Sega told them to write and how to write it (to the point that the character was mostly put aside for well over a year because he wasn't worth the hassle) only to be surprised they got notes back to expand on it.

Not strictly true: Mr. Flynn pitched the breakdowns for his stories involving Shadow and got them approved with only occasional big changes.

It was at the scripting phase of the individual issues where most of the actual notes come in, with Shadow consistently getting the excessive amount. Thus, what we see in the final products are his general story with SonicTeam editorial changes applied to over the dialogue, artwork, and other context. 

This was at its best in Issue 31 and at its worst in Issue 19.

 

[Kuzu]

43 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Not strictly true: Mr. Flynn pitched the breakdowns for his stories involving Shadow and got them approved with only occasional big changes.

It was at the scripting phase of the individual issues where most of the actual notes come in, with Shadow consistently getting the excessive amount. Thus, what we see in the final products are his general story with SonicTeam editorial changes applied to over the dialogue, artwork, and other context. 

This was at its best in Issue 31 and at its worst in Issue 19.

I think this is very important actually. This comic uses a LOT of dialogue, usually to explain situations to the readers. Most infamously the stuff with Sonic as of late. 

I'm assuming Mr. Flynn wrote a lot more spoken dialogue for Shadow than Sega deemed necessary for the character, hence the change. Flynn has confirmed that Shadow was always going to get infected the way he did, the only change made being how it specifically happened.

Because if you look at how Shadow behaves and acts in the games, he really doesn't speak more than necessary. The game that fans love to say is his best portrayal, 06, Shadow has very little spoken dialogue and when he does speak, it's brief and to the point.

So I guess the writers find it hard to characterize him if they aren't allowed to give him a lot of written lines. 

[Zaysho]

2 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Not strictly true: Mr. Flynn pitched the breakdowns for his stories involving Shadow and got them approved with only occasional big changes.

It was at the scripting phase of the individual issues where most of the actual notes come in, with Shadow consistently getting the excessive amount. Thus, what we see in the final products are his general story with SonicTeam editorial changes applied to over the dialogue, artwork, and other context. 

This was at its best in Issue 31 and at its worst in Issue 19.

His specific theory was that they did something bad and completely out of character and Sega slapped them for it when that doesn't make sense at all based on what Stanley herself said and how the character was already being written.

It's a fair bit different from the notes appearing to be "expand this" or "cut this back" and that's what I was responding to.

[Razule]

I may be misunderstanding, but the issues with Shadow go beyond him not being very talkative.

[Kuzu]

3 minutes ago, Razule said:

I may be misunderstanding, but the issues with Shadow go beyond him not being very talkative.

I'm merely speculating based on the information that we have is all. As well as pointing out the differences between how Shadow has been written under Ian Flynn in the past compared to now and how that compares to how the rest of the cast have been portrayed. 

[DabigRG]

.

12 hours ago, Zaysho said:

His specific theory was that they did something bad and completely out of character and Sega slapped them for it when that doesn't make sense at all based on what Stanley herself said and how the character was already being written.

It's a fair bit different from the notes appearing to be "expand this" or "cut this back" and that's what I was responding to.

Understood. That said, it's important to note the Ouroboros situation we had there:

On 3/15/2023 at 10:38 PM, EmTiven01 said:

My theory behind these new guidelines is that early panels for the upcoming issue portrayed Shadow as a completely unlikable character, and Sega was appalled by how loathesome he was. As a result, they decided to rework the rules on how Shadow can be written. It's like the infamous Black Friday reel for the first Toy Story. When Disney wanted more "edge" and their idea was "make Woody into a total asshole" and the result was a horribly mean-spirited script that would've killed the movie.

This isn't incorrect, but it's also not entirely the case: SonicTeam had to rework their approach to guidelines for Shadow BECAUSE they were half the reason he was so unlikable in previous issues.

While I don't know if Ms. Stanley ever went into detail about what exactly she originally wanted to do with the Chao Racing arc, it is worth noting that both she and Flynn implied that she was more than willing write that story *around* what SonicTeam expected from Shadow, hence how she worked in the whole apple thing. 

Which I think might've been the point @EmTiven01was trying to make.

14 hours ago, Kuzu said:

I think this is very important actually. This comic uses a LOT of dialogue, usually to explain situations to the readers. Most infamously the stuff with Sonic as of late. 

I'm assuming Mr. Flynn wrote a lot more spoken dialogue for Shadow than Sega deemed necessary for the character, hence the change. Flynn has confirmed that Shadow was always going to get infected the way he did, the only change made being how it specifically happened.

Because if you look at how Shadow behaves and acts in the games, he really doesn't speak more than necessary. The game that fans love to say is his best portrayal, 06, Shadow has very little spoken dialogue and when he does speak, it's brief and to the point.

So I guess the writers find it hard to characterize him if they aren't allowed to give him a lot of written lines. 

That's very much a recurring part of it, yes. In Issue 31, which was the closest Mr. Flynn got to keeping his original intent, SonicTeam's notes were summed up into three things:

1.Truncate his dialogue to be more to the point.

2.Shadow isn't really the type to reflect on his feelings to others, much less out loud.

3.Reframe his motivation to be in the context of him feeling that he now owes Sonic and that doesn't sit right with him in light of what's happened.

Keep in mind that this is the least amounts of overall amount of changes Flynn had to do at the time and you can see why he got drained of including Shadow for a while. The only revision he personally had to come up with there was turning much of the already shortening dialogue into thought bubbles and that was enough to preserve some of his intent.

Now apply that knowledge to Issue 19 and yeah, you can see why that turned out so badly.

11 hours ago, Razule said:

I may be misunderstanding, but the issues with Shadow go beyond him not being very talkative.

Oh, they do. That just happens to be one of the fundamental aspects of their vision.

Also recall that he's not particularly expressive either.

[Kuzu]

I have nothing but respect for Flynn and his work and I still very appreciate what he's done for the series, but even in his stories I liked that included Shadow, he's always felt way different from how he is in the games.

And I get it, Shadow being more expressive and open about his feelings makes it a lot easier (for him) to characterize him in a comic book where written dialogue is abundant.

But the fact remains, that's not who Shadow is in the games. Even after becoming a good guy, he's kept his distant from people and doesn't say any more than what he has to. That might make him annoying to use, but then maybe don't use him that often if you're not gonna respect those traits. And to be fair, that's what they've done.

 

Fans might want to see Shadow in a casual way and even bond more with the other characters, but that's not what he does. Shadow does whatever business he has to do and goes on his way. It's a trait that him and Sonic share in fact, neither of them stay in one place for long and are always on the move.  

 

So the comics trying to turn him into a guy who hangs out and overly expresses himself was never gonna align with Sega's vision on the character.

[Kuzu]

Ahh so I was actually pretty on the money with that assumption it seems.

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I feel like there are better ways to voice your post than spreading this rando terf account deriding Ian for doing his job to two separate parts of the forum. But more importantly I'm not sure what the point of this is supposed to be. Yes, game-canon Shadow is not the emotionally-vulnerable guy we got in Archie. No, that does not mean he needs to be written as a standoffish prick like he has been for the past fifteen or so years. Yes, Flynn and co. didn't handle him well in the Metal Virus arc. No, that doesn't mean there's a secret agenda to destroy everything The Real Sonic Fans™ hold dear.

I reiterate what I've said before: Ian is not a perfect writer but it's really hard to get angry at him when his haters can never be fucking normal about it.

[Kuzu]

I posted it for the clip, not the opinion attached to it. Unfortunately a lot of these clips are attached to these opinions.

 

My point wasn't even deriding Flynn. It was just making a point. It's literally constructive criticism. I even said that I've liked his work with Shadow, but I don't think its unfair to point out where he missed the mark at times.

I didn't wanna make an assumption and found a clip that sort validated the criticism.

 

That's it.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I'm not even really sure it totally works as a criticism, though. Consistency with the games (itself an EXTREME moving target) is pretty values-neutral in the grand scheme of things. Obviously I can't decide for others what's right, but diverging from the games to give different looks at the characters is kind of the point of licensed material, in many ways. Moreover, I think you totally could argue that Archie's interpretation was already more similar to Shadow at his best in the games, it's just, again, an extremely hard-to-hit moving target because he's got absolutely no role in the games past 06 (and I wouldn't exactly call Shadow the game his best showcase).

Also, I'm not really blaming you for the opinion, who cares, I just get a bit uncomfortable seeing tweets from >90 follower Posie Parker stans getting spread around.

[Kuzu]

Its a gray area I admit, because it varies from person to person.

For my part, while it didn't really bother me a lot, I distinctly remember how "off" Shadow felt reading those earlier stories. Not bad mind you, but definitely not what I usually envision from Shadow.

Its just that Sega weren't breathing down the writer's necks like they are now. And, like with any licensed product, the licensor has over how they want it to be potrayed.

 

But I think there's a happy medium between Flynn wanting a more emotive and social Shadow versus Sega wanting him to stick to his rigid stoicism. And I guess we'll see how Stanley handles him in the upcoming issue.

 

 

But let's be real, nobody will ever be 100% satisfied no matter what happens.

[sonicclaasic]

I'm glad they got the opportunity to work with Shadow more now seeing more of himself of his character with the more workable guidelines for Shadow In the future IDW Sonic comics arcs.