The Drive: Form and Focus

When writing a story many things need to be taken into account. Trying to take on all of them at once however causes chaos and confusion.

This can be alleviated by two things. Form of writing and focus of writing.

Form is important because it provides a shell for an author to build their story within, and helps them to define their current limits and boundaries. The direction and crafting of a certain story whether short of long follows from the application of form. Sometimes you want to try something like a longer story after writing a lot of shorter ones for a long time. There are ways to go about this, including making detailed outlines and plans or more commonly the serial route, which involves creating a story in pieces and adjusting from chapter to chapter depending on their needs. There are other methods to consider as well.

It also extends to the smaller details such as sentence and thematic structure. In simpler terms, if you’re the type of person that has a writing style meant for poetry it’s not prudent to jump into long sessions of prose on a whim; it isn’t very accommodating at first. It’s not to say that a poet can’t ever write a novel, but their story has to be paced in a way that fits their style. Some of us can adjust quickly while others take much longer – it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not the time that will be needed to adjust is worth it in the end.

Focus as a concept is as it says on the label. There are habits that go from focusing too much on certain parts of storybuilding to being too loose with the same kind of thing. Neither benefits the overall story. Even hyper-detailed stories that take a path towards character study do not actually ignore the other details; they are small but essential to the overall picture. When it comes to fanfiction it’s usually a lack of focus that takes its toll on how a story pans out, as many don’t have the mental endurance to continue on their path and bring things to a successful end. This goes beyond not just finishing a story, it also includes being swayed by author opinion, being too stubborn to accept criticism, keeping up with trends and also letting laziness take over. Some of the hugbox mentality of communities doesn’t help either nor do the low effort praises heaped at anything that looks like a marginally good read, or worse. The idea that writing is for ourselves continues to be an outstanding ideology and one that aspiring authors usually latch onto in order to boost their self-esteem. The result is writing of a story without actually being focused on the story; it becomes a means to an end, an outlet alone instead of something that is provided to the public as reading material. Anyone can put text onto a screen. A story is a bit more than that.

The Best Policies

It’s been a while. The past few months haven’t been exactly prime time for this project.

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There are a few keys to good writing, whether with original fiction or fan fiction, or just writing in general. I felt like going over a few of them in this write-up, which include honesty, integrity, and balance. I’m guessing that there are official/specific terms for these things, but I’m just going to call them as they are for now.

Honesty is key to producing good ideas. As a writer, you have to be honest with the audience and honest with yourself first and foremost. Why I mention this is simple: if you’re so busy trying to hide who you are, then it’ll show in how and what you write when you decide to make a script or story. I’ll explain. Let’s say you like…I dunno, a bit of fanservice every now and then with female characters. That’s not bad in and of itself. Some people might say it is, but whatever. You can’t please everyone. The moment you try to appease people and/or fool yourself into thinking that you’re not about that, it then starts to put a strain on your writing. It’s noticeable since you’re constantly trying to get around it and/or erase it. This isn’t the same as having self-control; this is straight up denial of what it is you want. If it’s a thing that you like, like maybe grappling hooks or something, include it in your story in some way and then take a look at the results. If you can see it’s goofy, remove it. That way, if you haven’t made that piece/chapter/etc. final yet, it’s out of your system. Creators need to do that, they need to vent and get stuff off of their chests once in a while. Now, if all you vent about is say, fanservice, then there’s probably a problem somewhere. But otherwise, you need to be honest about what it is you like or like to do. I realize what I’m saying, considering what fandom I’ve been talking about for the past while, but to improve the quality of the product you put out, no matter your level of skill, you need to be honest. And that might be the problem. People are so scared of being ignored that they just “go with the flow” so to speak and never really express themselves, only writing to appease the audience that is right here and right now. Many people whine about how they feel restricted by sites with some semblance of standards, like FanFiction.net, but in reality they’re not being creative in any sense.

This leads straight into the subject of integrity. Integrity is consistency in what you believe and what you’re about – it’s about sticking to what you say you are and how your represent yourself. Having integrity means that you don’t attempt to jump from one stance to another whenever it suits you. It means that you deliver on what you promise each time and that people can expect certain things from you. Integrity is also key to good writing on the whole. Establishing a style of writing, subject matter, and content means that you’re not jumping all over the place to make everyone happy. This doesn’t bar you from experimenting with different things – that’s very much justified if you want to grow as a writer. But having a set of principles that you know you can and will adhere to will help keep you in check and give some unspoken guidelines to your work. Integrity means being honest about the content you produce, your work ethic, thought processes, scheduling, and other things. It means that you understand both your strengths and limitations, and work within them until you are ready to make a change. Trying to just “accept” everything and not trying to grow because you believe that you’re not good enough or something isn’t being honest. Either you like writing and you want to get better, or you don’t and should just stop. Forcing the issue just makes you look and feel bad in the long run, no matter how much of a long masterwork or massive pile of stories you may produce.

Finally, we come to balance. Balance in this case means balancing what you love with what you put out – in essence, it is self-control. Having a healthy balance of content is probably the biggest thing that hampers fanworks as well as original works that are more or less inspired by existing franchises/subjects/etc. Most authors fall into the extreme directions for one reason or another. Commonly what you see is one extreme brought on by bored teenagers, which is that they try to bring in real world drama into a stylized, fictional world. That’s not to say that there can’t be ‘human’ reactions and emotional states, after all, it is humans that make these worlds after all, and we relate to characters by way of the humanity they show us. But taking your high school drama and shoving it onto Sonic, Amy, and Shadow to make a story doesn’t work. I would rather see high school fics banned altogether for how horrible most of them are, but since that won’t happen, I’ll just comment on the phenomenon. The issue isn’t necessarily that they are in high school, but it is that they are going through someone’s very human high school routine, complete with whining about teachers, simulated classes, lunchroom conversations, and so on. It’s not even charged with any flare that might come about as a result of the characters and their personalities. There’s rarely any witty banter at the lockers, nothing that has any action in it that isn’t scripted to the tune of a sports game, no twists that would be reasonable for a high school and couldn’t be carried out anywhere else on the planet, and there’s no real redeeming quality to the whole thing. Instead we get a smattering of Sonic the Hedgehog characters driving fancy cars and wearing expensive, brand name clothing with generic stock teenager personalities, made-for-tv issues, and inane plot twists and love triangles or squares or whatever. There is no balance between the new setting and the characters that are in them, or the information that we have gleaned from the series. It’s all just forced in and a mess. That is why high school fanfiction does not work. There’s no thought process, no balance, no anything. Just cardboard cutouts and projections onto existing characters.

The other end is people going too far into the fictional universe…so far that they don’t come up with anything new at all or actually expand on the universe they’re writing for. It’s recycling at its pinnacle, and these stories are worse off for it. Remember that this fanfiction that you’re writing. While it’s perfectly fine to draw from existing elements of franchises and stick to their roots, balance is still required to make the story work and be interesting. If all you’re doing is rehashing the same things over again, and not actually trying to bring a few new things out of the work, then what’s the point? Adaptations aren’t as bad, but they’re usually still overly safe. I say usually because a handful of authors have managed to pull off the adaptation angle, but they’re good writers at their cores, have an interest in their material, and are still very creative regardless. That is what makes those stories work. As for everyone else, they’re again running away from what their strengths are. And as a result, their writing suffers for it.

If you’re just starting out, it’s understandable to set out and try to find out yourself. I know the feeling because I’ve been there. My first story on FFN was an overly melodramatic story for the Megaman section. It took me about four or five years to actually put up a Sonic story, and even that was left on the backburner for a year before I really put myself into it. I had to put work into whatever I did until I reached that point. I rarely even wrote anything that was more than a single chapter, but I eventually broke into multiple chapter stories as well. Now I have one with almost 60 chapters at this point in time.

But above all of that, I was honest with what I could and could not do. It’s the first step you need to take if you want to be a good writer.

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Until the next time.

Driptorch Sessions, Act 2

Characters have their set patterns and ways of being written nine times out of ten. They have an established routine of how they’ll talk, how they’ll react to certain situations, and so on. Growth and character development will cause changes; understandable as one progresses through a story or story idea. No character should be absolutely static in any story that has a plot that progresses forwards. I make that distinction because there are special cases where characters are allowed to – and sometimes even should – remain the same way from beginning to end. This includes but is not limited to crossover specials, short stories or “one-shots” that don’t go too far when it comes to plot, character pieces, and other things.

The term OOC confused me for a while when I first got into the fanfiction community, because it looked a lot like the term OC, which stands for “original character” or “own character”, pretty much the same thing. OOC means “out of character”, a term used when authors alter or change characters’ thoughts or personalities blatantly for the sake of plot. Taking a character out of character happens when people either want to “experiment” or use the characters in situations that they wouldn’t normally find themselves. A character that may be good-natured normally could be taken out of character in this manner and turned into a vicious sadist or something like that for the sake of the story’s plot, themes, or characterization in relation to other characters. The reason why I talked about the terms OOC and OC seeming similar to me in days past is that my perception hasn’t really changed, even with my experiences. But they look the same for different reasons now, ones that I can explain. Taking a character grossly out of character is for all intents and purposes is making them an original character. It’s like stripping an old car of its parts, then putting in brand new parts from another, newer car inside of it and trying to pass it off as “vintage”, as if nothing much had changed at all. That’s basically what these severely out of character characters are: new characters with the shells of the old ones.

Some authors still use the term as I think it was intended to be used, as a warning that there might be some elements of a character that are changed from what the usual would be. The changes are pretty blatant once you take a look at the text, and the nature of the advertisment makes sense. Granted, the warnings aren’t even needed if the changes in a character or several are actually explained in the context of the story (they usually aren’t, which is another problem in itself). In contrast, there are many stories that abuse this label and use it as a means to do whatever they feel like with characters and their personalities. The problem was something that I really didn’t see myself at first and kind of stumbled over a few times before I got into it with one of the first stories I put on FFN. It’s also an excuse that authors use to make drastic and nonsensical changes to characters and scenarios while claiming that they’ve done “nothing wrong”.

It’s a strange divide, and might be why fanfiction writers don’t realize they’re doing it most of the time, but this is the problem. Authors of fan works write characters in situations outside of their normal boundaries. They then adjust the characters to react to said situations, as one would normally do, but this is where things get tricky. Instead of the characters reacting to their situations the ways their characters would in an absolute sense, the world influences how the characters react. In other words, the characterization is tied to the current setting instead of the basic things that make up said character(s).

An example to make things clear…let’s say that Sonic is placed in some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario where everything is ruined and shot to high hell. Stupid, but whatever. Fine. Here’s where you make a decision: is Sonic now reacting based on an environment of anarchy and darkness, becoming sick and depraved on some level so that he fits into the surroundings? Or is Sonic reacting based on his innate character traits, making wisecracks, being stubborn, helping people in need, etc.? This kind of thing is where authors stumble, because they will invariably choose the first option, thinking it is the correct thing. And on some level, they’re right. Depending on what kind of story you’re trying to tell, you might make Sonic or whoever out of character so that you can bring them up as a product of their environment, so if there’s an element of ruthlessness there, the character will absorb it onto themselves. The issue is that it’s…kind of dumb to do that. Why not make a character that is like that from the start instead of taking another character, screwing around with them, and then shoving them into a place where they don’t belong? People are going to expect certain things from that character, and it’s entirely pointless to include them if you’re going to ignore everything that makes them who they are. If you’re going to transplant a character into a different scenario, you have two viable options (if you want to write a good story): either choose a character that would actually fit into that environment in a few ways (having one or two vague connections isn’t really enough), or keep the character that you’re going to use true to themselves as much as possible. By that I don’t mean making characters completely ignorant of their situations, but having them learn to adapt in some way. The exceptions would come about if a character’s trait is to be oblivious to changes in their situation; that can be played up and used effectively in a good author’s hands. Otherwise, those two options are what make the most sense. To tie it all up, I’ll just say that if you’re going to write fanfiction with altered character traits, don’t go overboard. Changing things up is all well and nice, but lines have to be drawn somewhere. Having something like Tails shoving a Desert Eagle in his mouth and writing a suicide note or some ridiculous shit might be just a little much, I reckon.

“Theming” is something that the majority of fanfiction authors – and even some professional ones – have trouble doing. To theme something is to give it a particular idea in one or more aspects and follow that idea up until the end. Much like interior decorators have to stick to a certain style in order to model or remodel rooms, authors need to be consistent in their writing For example, if the theme of a story is growing up, then that theme should be followed up until the end in order to keep the story honest with itself and consistent in most, if not all of its aspects. Story arcs may have different content in them, but the overarching theme needs to be unified in order for the story in its entirety to make sense. This directly opposes the incredibly stupid mantra of “write what you want” that has been followed by fanfiction authors for years and has been used to justify terrible characterization, garbage plots, and all sorts of twisted shit that goes up onto the internet. Simply having a unified idea isn’t a theme nor does it constitute theming in any sense. However, we have people that also believe that if a story has a particular theme, it can’t be deviated from in any sense, which is just as stupid as putting the atmosphere all over the place. To theme a story is to give it an idea and a direction, which means that you can include different elements as long as they fit together and make sense. A serious story can have humour in it, or a few moments of silliness to get rid of some tension. There can be some sad moments in otherwise silly stories, or a heavy atmosphere in what would be a lighter story. The difference between a good author and a bad one is how they use these moments to connect with their themes and whether or not they know which elements are appropriate to use at the right time. Something like character growth doesn’t have to be a completely linear progression, but throwing in bullshit moments so that the character is forcefully regressed for the sake of drama doesn’t work. These things require thought. They require some sort of planning and consideration. More than anything, they require some sort of effort and a willingness to learn from mistakes made. Having a beginning, middle, and end to a story project isn’t going to cut it – there has to be a common thread uniting them. And maybe this could be your first time writing, and you haven’t got everything else down yet. But if you can understand this sort of thing along with everything else, you’ll be well on your way no matter what the first result is like. It will get easier with time.

If you choose to ignore it, then whatever. Good luck to you.

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Till the next one.

Questions and comments appreciated, as always. Stay frosty, yo.

Driptorch Sessions

There is a technique in fire fighting and forest fire prevention called back burning. Back burning reduces the amount of flammable material during forest fires by starting smaller fires along the front end of a fire or some barrier, either natural or man-made. Back burning is named as such because it ‘burns back towards the front’; that is to say, from the place the back burn was set, it will move towards the front of the approaching bushfire or what have you. Basically, it takes away anything that could be used as additional fuel for the fire ahead by burning it up first. These controlled burns can slow, stop, and even prevent large-scale blazes.

So if you haven’t already drawn your own conclusions, you’re probably wondering what this little lesson on fire fighting means in the context of this post, or even this blog. I’ll put it like this: awful fanfiction is like a forest fire (understatement of 2012), and I’m one of the firefighters on the front line. Water and fire foam and all that good stuff isn’t going to help much if the fire keeps picking up steam by consuming other materials. I can’t stop this fire on my own, but maybe I can slow it down a little by clearing out some of the debris in the fire’s path first.

The debris in this case is the subject matter that is used in fanfiction. I’ve given it thought but admittedly, not that much. So if there is a subject that anyone thinks should be mentioned, let me know and I’ll include it in a later post. For now, it’s what I can think of when it comes to – should be obvious – Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction.

When it comes to the issue of relationships in this series, the rule ideally should be K.I.S.S.; Keep It Simple, Stupid. Even the acronym fits here! Basically, we don’t need complex relationship dodecahedrons between brightly coloured talking animals – an adorable little kiss or two will do. We don’t need graphic depictions of sex, overblown feuds, dramatic pregnancies, and other loopy crap that most authors throw into their alphabet soup of television tropes. But I know that people are still going to do those kinds of things. It’s sadly almost inevitable as long as these people are fed the bullshit notion that they’re allowed to express themselves ‘however they want’.

Yawn.

So this is my back burn coming into play: if you’re going to do this kind of thing, put at least some kind of class into it. Read other works of smut – 50 Shades does not count in the slightest, by the way – before you jump into a mess of sexual areas that you probably didn’t even know had names, let alone existed. Not on the fanfiction front because it is invariably shit…I mean legitimately published crap that you find in the corner of your local retail store. Or stuff online, maybe even the stuff that people self-publish. Wikipedia, even. Whatever. You have to do some homework if you’re so sold on jumping into this kind of thing; I don’t advocate any of it at all and think it’s just pukeworthy on the whole, but if you’re going to do it, put some effort into it so that you don’t end up looking like [more] of a dumbass. Am I outlawing everything to do with those kinds of situations? No. I don’t see how you can pull off half of the crap that people put into their stories explicitly, but if you can actually try to do it, go for it. There are a few stories that I’ve read that actually manage to pull some of the more “mature” themes off well enough (objectively tasteful stuff, anyways), but they also were grounded in the elements of the series that make it what it is. If it sounds like I keep going back to this “grounding” thing, it’s because I am for the most part. It’s important, and it’s what separates a competent writer from…others.

We can also talk about crossovers and the like. I’ll pose a question first, though. What makes superhero crossovers like The Avengers or the Marvel vs. Capcom series of games or the Archie Sonic multiverse not suck complete ass? What could possibly be the difference between one crazy superhero special and another? There are many different reasons, some more important than others in the real world (Avengers was helped by years of planning and having the characters share the same central universe, for example). But the one thing that any successful crossover series must do is acknowledge its own absurdity. Not play it up to the point where it becomes an unfunny joke, no. Acknowledging the absurdity of a situation means not straining to make every single thing fit into place at once, especially if characters come from completely different universes with wide gaps in powers and environments. It means letting things run their course, using the characters properly, and not inserting unnecessary and overblown drama. Yeah, I bolded that last part because it’s kind of important. You see, the one thing you will notice about most fanfiction crossovers is that they are drowning in melodrama. All the time. This is a problem that spreads across fandoms, not just this one (though we have enough crap as it is). Everything has to be super serious business and love triangles and life or death situations and augh the tension drawn out over 40 billion chapters of an unfinished work in progress. See…I wouldn’t recommend doing anything other than maybe some kind of multiverse thing within the fandom. Like, crossing over the games with the comics or reimagining something at some point in time with some extra people. That’s basically what Archie did in their Genesis saga for the Sonic comic. I didn’t care for it much, but whatever. Not really the point. Crossing over with other series isn’t something that I would exactly endorse unless you’re willing to do the research on both series. Not just the one you know, and not just the one you don’t know, either. Research helps you keep your facts straight and find links that you can use to improve your crossover idea. If you want to make a change to how things work between the universes so that things go smoothly, then go ahead and do it. Just don’t try to make it more than it is, and that goes for everything else as well. The essence of crossovers is to go wild and do crazy things. It’s not grimdark bullshit and pointless wandering on a SERIOUS adventure. But, I mean…don’t take that as licence to bullshit your way through a story, either. There has to be some kind of order and balance in a crossover, or else it will fall flat. Again, research and planning will help you overcome those issues and set boundaries for yourself. Your story/stories will be better off for it.

Or you could just fail like 90% of fanfic authors do. Your choice, I guess.

Characters are another matter to talk about. I’ve been over this, but I haven’t really gone over one of the most prevalent character problems in Sonic fanfiction, and all fanfiction period.

The original character (do not steal).

Called OCs for short, original characters are used heavily in Sonic fanfiction. Hell, I do so myself. Most people feel the need to bring in extra characters when they’re trying something different for a story, and that’s actually perfectly justifiable. You already have a cast of characters and an extended cast from the multiverse, but how would they fit into the role that you’re trying to fill? Most characters that aren’t on the bad guys’ team already aren’t going to have believable “heel” turns. In some cases, bad guys aren’t going to have believable “face” turns, either. Sometimes it’s easier and far more viable to put a new character in because they have a clean slate and they’re easier to experiment with. Plot turns can set themselves up more efficiently, new conflicts and solutions can be created, and basically, they give a bit more breathing room when it comes to writing a story overall. Introducing new characters can enhance a story overall.

So how do you screw that up so badly?!?!

Well, we found a way. You see, original characters aren’t supposed to be overshadowing the established ones, yet they do. They get into serious relationships and make major changes to the storyline constantly. They’re repetitive, uncreative, bland, and annoying. Obnoxious Mary Sue characters who save the day all the time and utterly embarrass the original cast to the point where they become a joke. The plot bends around these characters and they’re immune to anything bad happening to them unless it’s supposed to for the sake of drama and “epic” plot twists. They are not longer a part of the story, oh no no no. They have become the story. They are the main event. Some authors just cut out the middleman and start stories starring their original characters, with the actual cast in supporting roles.

Yeah, all that stuff and much more. That’s what’s wrong with original characters in this fandom. These characters are supposed to compliment the story and the plotlines in it. They are not a substitute for actual storytelling and character development. They are not meant to be author avatars or inserts. They are not meant to be what readers come for. That’s just bad form, aside from being terribly stupid. Someone could bring up that a lot of the” OCs” encountered are hedgehogs; easy enough to explain since the majority of the cast is of that species – Sonic, Amy, Shadow, and technically Metal Sonic if you want to include him. It changes once you step outside of the game universe, but I think you get the idea. That’s more of a minor thing in comparison to all the others.

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Next time, we’ll cover a few more topics. Continuing on original characters, moving to characters out of character, adaptations, theming, and others.

Thanks for reading, ‘till the next one.

A Matter of Perspective

“I know you said your focus is on writing and not the fanfiction community, but I think an examination of how audience affects storytelling would make an interesting post. You mentioned everything being rehashes of rehashes, so could it be that fanfic writers are sticking to what they know is popular and will get praised instead of attempting something riskier and more difficult? New writers have got to be looking at what’s already well-regarded and being influenced by that precedent.

I mean, low-effort praise-grabbing isn’t unique to the Sonic fandom, but it’s probably an especially bad environment for producing good writing.”

We’ll start this post from that comment.

Communities are, more or less, hubs from which content is produced or distributed in the case of fandoms. Some places specialize in content, others are more diverse, and etcetera. The fanfiction community is about fanfiction, obviously. Stories, writers, ideas, all of that fun stuff.

In the fanfiction world, more often than not as pointed out in the quote above, audience affects content. This is a bad model to follow, but it’s the one commonly used by most authors. So in other words, what’s hot at the moment or what’s been well-received determines what most of the new content is going to be about, whether it’s a good or bad thing. This isn’t any different in the Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction community – what’s trending will get you more reviews and more praise than what’s actually good.

There are safe bets all around. “Adaptations”, for one. Romance stories. Long and pointless adventures. You know the drill. A good portion of people writing fanfiction, like it or not, are lonely, socially inept anime fans or obnoxiously weepy teenage girls. Most times the two categories cross into each other. Writers also usually feel that they could “do better than Sega” most of the time, that they provide “depth” to characters and are willing to go further than the “sparse” source material. I’m using quotes here so that I don’t have to type “bullshit” a lot beside each instance of bullshit.

I’ll be blunt here and make some people upset in the process. Whatever. The Sonic fandom when it comes to fanfiction and…well, everything else beyond that if you think about it, is basically hopeless. I mean, you can call yourself a Sonic fan without being a pathetic loser, but if you’re part of the fandom, you’re going to be associated with these people at some point. There are good people within the fandom, somewhere. But that doesn’t magically change the fact that this fanbase is pretty much pathetic, really. I guess I sound a bit bitter, but it leads into a point that I’m going to make.

A pathetic fanbase leads to a pathetic audience for content and really a horrible group of peers. You’ve found your network of competent people? Great. That leaves the other 95% to deal with. Reviews usually aren’t helpful or informative, just gushing about how great the latest chapter is. That’s not bad in and of itself, but then there’s no indication of what made the chapter good, what made the story stand out or any commentary whatsoever. Just mindless praise. Then when someone tries to basically detail a problem or an inconsistency, you have the standard fanfiction author spaz-fest. There aren’t that many people to do this (provide constructive criticism) in the case of Sonic fanfiction, as evidenced by the fact that I know or knew most of those who provided some form of constructive criticism. One such person is reviled throughout the community, and intentionally or not, I’ll probably end up following in his footsteps once I get the will to review more stories. In essence, the community is resistant to change, as most fanfiction communities are. That leads to a few things happening.

I talked about safe bets when it comes to writing fanfiction in this category, and that goes back to, again, the influence of the audience. We have the prevalence of gender-bending, grimdark stories with excessive length, a disturbing amount of what we call “yaoi”, copy-pasted romance stories, rape, terrible adaptations, more rape, high school drama, and other flavours of crap. These stories are frequently updated, mainly due to a lack of [cohererent] plot or actual story-building elements as well as a need to please the audience. If they don’t, the cost will be precious reviews and popularity…I guess? I admit I don’t know exactly how the average writer’s mind works but from what I can gather, it’s usually reviews that drive the story forward. Either that, or some sense of boredom. Planning also becomes an issue – there usually is none. Chapters tend to be disconnected and lack unity within themselves. Sustained story arcs are padded with “filler” which shouldn’t really exist unless you’re working for an animation studio on the side. Drama comes out of nowhere in order to keep the story from grinding to a halt. And so on. I’ll even say that the “epics” written in the section don’t bring much more integrity upon themselves either. Long chapters don’t mean anything if nothing is going on in them, and stories can be huge without amounting to much at all. There are decent stories with enough popularity to make it seem like I’m talking nonsense, but it’s like a bucket of water being measured against a lake. On the whole, the nonsense stories draw in readers and that encourages others to do the same. In a universe where you only have so much to work with in terms of characterization and story before it gets loopy (unless you’re a competent enough writer…but I digress), quality control should be a key issue. But of course, the way to go about things is clearly to give everyone pats on the back and encourage them to go on with their inane plots and botched characters because it’s a learning experience. God bless any decent author that makes it onto the front page of the archives for a few hours at least…

It gets worse when you consider what is being supported within the Sonic fandom, in regards to writing, at least. You see, many many people – even supposedly good authors – have really missed the point of what this franchise is about normally. I’ve probably said this before: Sonic the Hedgehog is a videogame series about a blue hedgehog that runs really fast. Is that the end of it? No, it doesn’t have to be. You’re allowed to use your imagination to write about different things pertaining to the series. You know, make it a little darker if you want. But at its core, what the series is about is crazy adventures and thwarting diabolical plots, about making friends and triumphing over evil, maybe even losing fights once in a while. Exploring different subject matter is all fine and dandy. But from what has been presented to us, there are limits as to how far you can go before you start to drift away from the series’ intent. A good thing to look at in terms of limits? The current run of the Archie comic series. Ian Flynn has done a damn good job in terms of pushing the limits of the series’ nature while not losing sight of what it is. Another good thing? Check out a story on FFN by the name of Survivor’s Resolve. Pick any chapter, any single chapter. This is how you write something good without going over the top. But it’s not simple and it takes a good deal of time – time that people apparently do not have because it’s just for fun and they’re being creative. Editing a story is optional because everyone understands what you mean anyways. Forcing your sob-stories onto brightly coloured videogame characters is just fine because it’s so emotional and really speaks to people. Using characters to soapbox about political/social/sexual/etc. issues is great because it’s fanfiction so we can do what we want. Taking the characters out of their elements and throwing them into mundane places ripped out of other media is super cool because we can recognize things from our favorite shows and that guy did that thing like that other guy from place in show from episode and oh my god it’s so cool and shiny and I’ma review because the author won’t continue the story without reviews and I like reading this because Starlight Moonflower Raven Rose the Hedgehog Prower is so cool and xir’s violent bloody BDSM rape relationship with my OC is so magical and I like it so you have to write more.

You know what? I wish that was just a silly joke. It isn’t. This is pretty much what the writing community has become. It’s no wonder that we keep getting poorly written sex scenes from furry authors because…people condone this kind of shit. They let it happen. It’s not okay. You have to have standards, people. This isn’t just for your amusement, here – people are reading this stuff. People are learning from this and picking up on it, causing this perpetual cycle of garbage that gets harder and harder to break with each volley of stories released. And maybe the good writers left can make a difference somehow…maybe.

All we can do from here is try. That’s the sad truth.

—

I mentioned a story earlier, Survivor’s Resolve by DC111. The story’s on FF.net; well-received with very good reason. As of now it’s still in progress but make the effort to check it out if you want to read something good for once.

The opening quote and idea for this post was contributed by the good Dr. O. You can find him on Project AFTER, a well-established community of those who hate all the crap that is produced by anime and fanfiction fans on the internet (the professional hacks get theirs as well). Make sure to check it out if you like intelligent discussion, laughs at the expense of others, and a chill atmosphere.

—

‘Till the next one.

No Mas, It Just Won’t Stop

I’m back, and ready to continue our general discussion on the content of Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction.

The first topic that ties into my earlier post is relationships – more or less about how they work now, how they ideally should work, and why we have a ton of crap just getting thrown everywhere. Relationships in the series aren’t too complex besides the Sonic-Eggman dynamic that has gone on display recently. That being said, it’s perfectly fine to extrapolate on characters and certain relationships in ways that the source material doesn’t. All that should be done within reason, of course. Adding depth isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but there’s a bit of a tricky balance to it from my perspective. The original builds of the characters need to be taken into account when anything that wasn’t necessarily there before is added. Whatever new or updated information an author adds needs to follow (connect) with information from the source material. This isn’t just a helpful suggestion to look at from time to time, it’s actually required in your writing. Not doing any of that makes the added characterization look and feel superficial. We have things such as the Dark Sonic transformation as one example of how not to go about things. While the basis of the Dark Sonic transformation is sound on its own as a stand alone thing, once you put it into effect it gets stupid really quickly. I think about it now and sort of feel bad about doing this sort of thing in one of my longer stories because it’s so…done. Granted I didn’t use Chaos Emeralds and gave a decent reasoning for…whatever. I can’t go on justifying it. Point is that it’s usually used as a substitute for actual conflict and an excuse for Sonic to usually kill Eggman without it “actually being his fault”.

Here’s what’s wrong about this. The Chaos Emeralds contain a balance of positive and negative energies. Anyone not adept at using the Emeralds from the start is going to be overwhelmed by the negative energies unless they’re purposely using said energies. Sonic is adept at using the Chaos Emeralds, having come in contact with them many times before. As of Unleashed, we have proof that Sonic at his core is inherently pure-hearted, which is why the Dark Gaia Force didn’t drive him insane when it entered him and transformed his body, and also the reason why he is himself once night falls. Sonic could also handle the negatively-charged Purple and Violet Wisps in Sonic Colors with their corrupted Hyper-go-on energy. The negative energy could harm him as a weapon, but in those instances they were externalized. I listed this to show how incredibly flimsy the Dark Sonic transformation is, but all I need to say is Darkspine Sonic and you’ll probably get it then. Darkspine Sonic quite literally is a transformation borne of negative thoughts and feelings. Guess what? Sonic wasn’t overwhelmed with bloodlust then, either! He didn’t get to tearing Erazor Djinn a new asshole after he beat him, because that’s not who Sonic is or what he’s about at all. Sonic gets angry and upset, but unless there is a pile of shit happening at the same time and he’s stressed beyond belief, he’s not going to let himself get overwhelmed with anger. The only things I did right when I did this were have Espio nearly kill the guy, have Sonic feel really awkward about the whole situation (as opposed to indifferent or happy…just no), have Eggman escape alive (like no way!) and Sonic was exhausted when he woke up. For someone who naturally draws on positive energy, taking on a wealth of negative energy has got to have a bad effect on his body somehow. I don’t know if that’s too deep for some people, but whatever…

I guess we kind of took a detour there. So let’s go over to “shipping”. Shipping is generally illogical. Shipping wars are outright retarded, and if you participate in those, well…you suck. That’s all I can say. Your degree of suck can easily be balanced out by other things, but…

Shipping in the Sonic series is retarded squared…though I mostly talk about the games in this instance. I don’t actively “ship” any pairing but if I’m writing about close [opposite-sex] relationships it’s usually between Sonic and Amy. I gravitate towards those two for whatever reason and it’s the one relationship that would make sense if it happened, which in canon it will never, ever will. Amy chases Sonic but will never catch him. That’s how it is and how it will always be other than in fanfic land. This is literally where it ends. There are no other characters to pair. Period. For a huge example, you can’t – you are unable to – pair Tails and Cream together because Tails is a gear-head and has no time for anything else other than Sonic and technology (usually in reverse order). Whatever age you cite him as, he’s a kid, and kids aren’t that interested in romance. Not to mention that Cream is a very polite girl and she is six years old you creepy fuckers. Who the fuck ships six year old children? Sonic fans, that’s who!

Shadow and Amy? Nope, Shadow has no interest in romantic bullshit and only really cared about Maria…platonically…Amy is a clingy girl and wouldn’t last long anyways. Sonic and Amy? Hahaha, not happening any time soon…I know the series borrows from Dragon Ball a lot but it’s not hitting a wedding arc in this dimension…

Sonic and Blaze? Oh sure that could wor-NOPE ALTERNATE DIMENSION TRY AGAIN. Someone’s going to get snarky and mention that Sonic and Elise happened, but other than that very strange event, she simply valued him as a close friend since, you know…she didn’t have any before…

Shadow and Rouge? Just “friends”. I guess as much as Shadow puts up with her Rouge is Rouge and Shadow again doesn’t care about romance. Rouge and Knuckles? Pretty clear that she does like him, but again, not in that sort of way. More like she enjoys just messing with his head a lot…in order to get a shot at the Master Emerald.

I’m certainly not going to list every single combination. But we have shit like Rouge and Eggman which actually fucking happened. Oh, since she’s such a slut, how about pairing her with Metal Sonic! Yay! Oh, how about Tails and Vanilla, or Tails and Amy, or Tails and every female character to ever exist. By the way, the second pairing is usually based on Tails’ need for attention and “respect”, which I explained in the first post about him was a figment of some author’s imagination…

And then we have the same-sex pairings which…goddammit, no. I can’t even…

(see bottom of the page for a note I have on that)

If that was too long to read through, I’ll just sum it up: shipping is dumb, deal with it.

The next topic we have to get to…oh boy. We gonna talk about sex, people.

Sex is bad. I say this in the context of writing about blue cartoon hedgehogs that run really fast. Sexual intercourse has no place in this series. Ever. Period. I don’t care how mature you’re trying to be, or how edgy, or how many feels you or other people get from this sort of this. It’s retarded. That’s it. Retarded. You literally have problems if you write about cartoon animals fucking each other or doing any sort of sexual acts to each other…or other things. You also have problems if you enjoy reading this sort of thing as it basically tells the authors “hey, people like this! Lemme write some more!” as if it were okay. It’s not okay, man. It’s not cool. It’s…you can’t justify it at all. It’s a kid friendly series with no implications of this type of thing happening at all, yet we have all of this twisted shit happening constantly. It is wrong, the people writing that sort of thing are wrong, and the people reading all of this are wrong. Stop perpetuating it, stop doing it, stop writing about it publicly, and stop promoting your sick garbage. If anyone wants to receive a specific explanation on why this is sick and wrong in this series, then simply comment on any one of my posts on this blog – or preferably this one – and I’ll get to working on a post that explains why this sort of thing is wrong in the most absolute use of the word. Until then, I’ve made my case.

So until the next time, peace out.

—

Hopefully in the next segment, I get to dissect the basic relationships in this strange little universe of ours – the canon one, of course. Then I’ll get to talking about how the fandom’s been getting it all wrong for years…what, did you expect something different?
—
About that note from earlier. I’m not really expecting it per se, but I anticipate someone eventually reading one of the stories I wrote entitled “Sugar and Spice” and attempting to call me a hypocrite when it comes to pairing female characters in the fandom. Uh…nope. You can’t. It wasn’t a drama piece, though it was dramatic. It wasn’t overtly sexual, though it had some of the tones. Most importantly, it wasn’t even shipping the two characters in the story together…closer to a look at one of the characters in particular and how their obsessions will make them do daring things. It’s not graphic, it’s not angsty or emotional, and it’s none of the things that I listed in the rest of my post. If anyone wants to, go and read it. It’s a short piece. Maybe it’s not something you’d like and maybe you want to lump me in with all of the other crazy-ass furries because of it.
Like I said, I don’t know. If you do read it and have something to say, give me a bit of feedback in one way or another. See you on the flipside.

Shadow of a Doubt

Well, I might as well get on with it. This post will talk about the character that supposedly helped lead the franchise to its “downfall” from his introduction in 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2, Sega’s 10th Anniversary game for Sonic the Hedgehog. The character that either you love or love to hate in the fandom.

Shadow the Hedgehog has a deeper backstory than any character in the series thus far, and this was because of his involvement in the plots of the games that he was featured in. A run of three games had him heavily involved in plot structure from the beginning: Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow the Hedgehog. Sonic 2006 had him making up 1/3^rd of the game, but we’ll leave that out of the discussion for the time being.

The story of Shadow should have easily cleared up any misconceptions we’ve had about him, but many people, non-Sonic fans included, tend to misuse his character traits and continually misrepresent his character as a whole. So I’ll recap some of the events surrounding Shadow’s creation.

More than 50 years before the beginning of Sonic Adventure 2, Professor Gerald Robotnik was working on Project Shadow for the United Federation, which presumably was intended to be used as some kind of weapon, possibly creating super soldiers or something similar. It was in essence a project that searched for a way to make beings immortal, if not invincible as well. But out of that could have come a cure for many diseases, like Neuro Immune Deficiency Syndrome or NIDS. Maria Robotnik was his granddaughter and someone afflicted with such a fatal and incurable disease; this was Gerald’s true motivation to complete Project Shadow for the government. The first product of his research was the massive and unstable Biolizard, a prototype that required a life support system and special area for continued survival. Black Doom, supreme leader of the Black Arms, happened upon Gerald’s research and offered him help in exchange for Project Shadow’s use as an instrument of destruction and the seven Chaos Emeralds (in order to use a massive Chaos Control on the Black Comet, as in Shadow the Hedgehog). Perhaps basing his design for Shadow mark 2 on some of the murals seen in the Mystic Ruins (specifically the ones prophesizing final bosses Sonic would end up fighting and defeating), the Shadow we know was born from a combination of Gerald’s original research and Black Doom’s DNA. The government learns of Project Shadow’s completion but also of Gerald’s dealings with Black Doom; they intend to take Project Shadow for themselves out of fear of attack and because of the potential of such a powerful tool. An assault on the Space Colony ARK killed all those on board who were believed to be involved with Project Shadow, including Maria. There was no reason to shoot or even shoot at Maria since she was just a little girl and already frail due to her condition; there was also the fact that she could have done nothing to help Shadow other than send him to Earth via the capsule, and that could have easily been tracked from the colony. Maria was presumably killed because of her relationship to Shadow: she already knew too much for her own good. Shadow was sent to Earth, scooped up by the Guardian Units of Nations and placed in suspended animation for the next 50 years. At some point, his memories were manipulated or scrambled, because once he awoke…

That was just a small summary of what happened up to Shadow’s first appearance in “modern” times. So let’s knock a few things out of the way.

A frequent criticism of Shadow is that he’s “emo” or too angsty for his own good. Let’s consider the following: Shadow was not given time to get over the massacre of people he knew for years and the murder of his best friend – possibly the only person he truly loved – in front of his very eyes. The fact that he was in stasis for 50 years means that he was frozen with those memories still fresh. So for all we know, Maria could have been bleeding out in front of him just five minutes earlier as he remembered it. He had no time to truly absorb or comprehend the trauma rationally. If someone that you knew and loved dearly died right in front of you, wouldn’t you feel emotionally destroyed? That’s how Shadow felt at the beginning of Adventure 2 and ever since. Maria and Gerald, along with countless people had died 50 years ago, but those 50 years were not 50 years for Shadow. He technically is so close to those events that he is very much justified in being angry and emotional about what has happened, because it really did just happen in his eyes.

…I believe that actually dismisses a huge percentage of the complaints against Shadow, actually. His supposed angst is justified and it’s sort of hard to be emo when you’re tearing down a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge while stomping on the military at Mach 1. Well, I might be a bit biased here…

Shadow as a character doesn’t suffer from an inferiority complex; he refers to himself as the Ultimate Life frequently. He is strong, confident, arrogant to a point, ruthless, precise, intelligent, calculating, cold, blunt, and a host of other things. He has a heart, as evidenced by his memories of Maria and the entirety of White Jungle. You know, when he cut back across an island that was about to explode to save Rouge after she got herself stuck inside of Security Hall. He has an intense rivalry with Sonic, as well. Not just “spar you every once in a while for fun” but more like “get yourself ready because I’m shooting to kill” in the spirit of the age-old Goku/Vegeta dynamic from Dragon Ball. Shadow, for all intents and purposes is Sonic’s arch-rival and has been the sole one to occupy that position – not Knuckles who was tooled into opposing Sonic for all of two games (and parts of several others) before realizing what the score was. Shadow is a sort of “what-if?” version of Sonic, or the “darker Sonic” if you wanted to put it like that. Why I say he is a “what-if?” Sonic is because of how they operate and the dynamics of the relationships they hold.

Sonic has many friends and allies, while Shadow has a select few. Sonic fights selflessly (arguable if you wanted to look at it a certain way) for the sake of the planet and people he may or may not know. In other words, he puts himself on the line for the sake of many. Shadow on the other hand – and you can see this quite clearly in Sonic Adventure 2 – acts on what Maria has asked of him and what he feels is right for himself, nothing more. He puts himself on the line for his own goals and ambitions, regardless of what happens to anyone else. He is, in a word, selfish. And maybe rightly so considering what has happened to him. There has been talk about what the original story of Sonic Adventure 2 was going to be like, that there were going to be far fewer characters and that Shadow was in essence literally “Dark Sonic”; a transformation brought on by certain situations. The whole idea of the split personality was going to be one of the main points of the game. It’s possible that time constraints factored in that idea being scrapped in favor of what we got. This is something that I remember hearing frequently but I can’t really make it part of my argument since I can’t reliably source its origins. We’ll leave that as just a rumour I heard.

But Shadow returning after his supposed final farewell in Sonic Adventure 2 was planned from the start. Takashi Iizuka is the current head of Sonic Team Ltd. at the time of this post. Under Yuji Naka, then boss and considered one of the fathers of the franchise, Iizuka directed Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow the Hedgehog while working at Sega Studio USA, Sonic Team’s American arm. At one point while Shadow the Hedgehog was approaching release, Iizuka clearly states that Shadow’s continued involvement in the series was planned very early on, around the end of Adventure 2’s development or close to it. He was not simply shoehorned into later games solely because of popularity, though to say it had nothing to do with it would be stupid on anyone’s part. It helped a lot with the reception of his character in later games. There were pretty clear signs in Shadow’s debut game that there were several questions to be answered. With most of the characters in the series we have “whats” and “whys” that are still a mystery, but they’re pretty much inconsequential. With Shadow, we have several gaping holes in the “completion” of his backstory. In the Dark Story for Adventure 2, we have Rouge talking to Shadow about the other Project Shadow, which is revealed to be the Biolizard later on. We have the problem of there being two “Shadows” as mentioned, which meant that one was a fake, both were fakes, or both were the real thing. We have the question of why Shadow was complete and the Biolizard was a failed prototype. We have the question of why G.U.N was so intent on keeping Shadow locked up since he was suck a powerful weapon. There’s the question of what the hell the Eclipse Cannon was for since it didn’t have any purpose other than destruction. It was a strange road to get there, especially going through the campiness of Sonic Heroes, but those questions and more are answered in Shadow’s self-titled game. He had the honour of being only the third character in franchise history to have a game all to himself, with Sonic and Tails being the other two. This notion that Shadow just came back with no rhyme or reason other than blind popularity and Sega trying to cash in is another gripe about him as a character, and it doesn’t have any basis. Shadow’s game and continued involvement in the series didn’t come out of “nothing”, no matter what anyone thinks.

That’s about all I have to say about Shadow for now. I think he’s a great character to work with and has an interesting personality on the whole. But of course, personal bias isn’t really what we’re here for.

No Mas, It’s Got To End

It feels good to give advice to people, to know that you can help at least one person out in their time of need. Therefore, I have decided to give my input on writing sexual content in Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction. There is only one piece of advice that I ask you people to follow.

Don’t.

Just don’t. Ever.

This post could just as well end here. I really don’t have to justify my reasoning.

I’m going to do it anyways, just to be a jerk and crush someone’s furry sex fantasies…simply because I can. So we’ll get started.

We’ll first distinguish two things: sexuality in the field of fiction and sexual content on the whole. In this particular series, you have characters who are designed with certain traits, and these characters are and have been on the female side specifically. You have the longer legs, the different proportioning, the body shapes, all of that. It makes sense to distinguish the males from the females, right? That’s all fine and whatever. The character who purposely was designed with more inherent sexuality than the others was Rouge, and it ties into her character without being completely over the top in its existence. She’s meant to be vibrant, sassy, and most of all, confident in herself (perhaps to the point of arrogance), so her character design reflects the boldness in the way that she lives her life as well as her marriage to style. Amy in comparison is the “sugar and spice” kind of girl, Blaze takes a sort of flashy warrior princess approach, and we can go on from there. But you can clearly note that they aren’t built the same way Rouge is, to be blunt.

Now, people will be quick to point out how Rouge’s existence is part of the reason for all of this…stuff…going on, but truth be told, she’s not the problem. We’ve had characters in other mediums like her (cartoons most notably, you can cite anime as well) that have had pronounced feminine traits and have been in children’s entertainment. And if you look at the proportion of things involving her compared to the proportion of things involving characters that sane people wouldn’t look at and say “hey, those two look like they’d fit right into a porno!”, then you can clearly see there’s a high, high level of projection going on here. While she [among other characters] gets scapegoated for this behaviour, everyone can happily turn their eyes away from the real elephant in the room.

So let me sum this up: a character with defined gender traits – like you know, boobs – doesn’t count as sexual content. It’s perfectly fine to have [female] characters that have more exaggerated features so long as it doesn’t go into Uncanny Valley. This is when things go way too far and the lines start getting blurred, which is a very bad thing. You want examples? Go look at fan art, you’ll see tons of it. Or at some of the stuff from Archie Sonic…Sanford Greene…Ken Penders…

…Rob Liefield…

Yeah. So continuing on, we’ll get into sexual content in the context of the Sonic series.

I…hm. How do I say this.

The general response to this is “no, fuck you furries”. That’s my usual thought on the matter. We have different subcategories within this part, so it gets tricky. If you want to imply something like that has happened subtly, then while I wouldn’t necessarily like it myself, I could side with it in a few cases because it ends up being more classy than anything else, weird as it sounds. I have to reiterate how little sense this makes unless you’re going for a whole mix-up of the series atmosphere, in which I throw my hands up and leave you alone. It’s better if you’re trying to make some kind of point by including the implication but more often than not (more like all the time), it’s just used as a setup for a sappy-ass scene or a terrible in-joke. This isn’t 100% of the stories produced, but good examples are very few and very far in between. This is usually seen in shitty rape-fics involving Amy Rose, with her getting raped by some stranger or Sonic. It’s usually the latter for the sake of DRAMA and relationship bullshit involving another male character who gets played up to be sooooo much better than Sonic is. But in spite of all that…

If anyone hasn’t noticed it by now, subtlety is not a strong point of this fanbase.

So let me get this out of the way right now. If you have written, are planning to write, or regularly read furry porn that involves characters from the Sonic fandom, then you suck and I hate you forever. Stop writing indefinitely and pour kerosene onto your computer, then light it on fire to appease the wrath of [the few remaining] sane Sonic fans across the planet. You are a sick person and you need help immediately.

This is not a hard concept to grasp. The series has nothing to do with sex, nothing to do with bullshit relationship drama, nothing to do with prolonged sexual tension and blueballing, nothing to do with all of the sick and twisted crap that is penned daily. Nothing at all. Detailed descriptions of hedgehog genitals? THAT’S NO GOOD. I’m offended even thinking about that sort of thing, so imagine me reading stories involving this. The series in and of itself does not need this sort of thing. Sexual content is not even necessary in any plausible scenario you can think of. I don’t care how ‘well’ you can write it (well, I care in that you’re a sick bastard for even knowing how to do that), because it has no place in this fandom. This is a series about a blue hedgehog that runs really fast, and maybe some of us see a bit more depth to that premise, like I do. Maybe we like to imagine relationships and how they could be, maybe we like to imagine certain characters getting together and just hanging out, maybe we like crazier adventures than we’ve gotten and with more consequences for the characters’ actions. Maybe we have thoughts on how certain story elements can be improved or changed. We can think about what-ifs and why-nots and maybes. We can run with ideas that were left behind, give a bit more thought to things that have happened in the past. We can do all of that, and while I might think myself above a lot of things, I can’t blame people for thinking and trying to share their ideas.

But the one thing I can not and will not stand is multiple page descriptions of jacked-up underage furry orgies. You can tell me how creative you are, you can tell me that you have ‘the right to express yourself’ (whatever), you can tell me that decrying this practice ‘stifles your creativity’. I don’t really give a damn. Honestly, I don’t. You’re sick assholes and I hate you for putting this shit on the internet and making it seem like it’s okay…when it’s not. It’s not okay in any sense of the word. It’s not okay to take characters who are supposed to be enjoying grand adventures and depict them having sex whilst throwing around flowery words and just goddamn.

I’m going to become incoherent if I go on any further, so I’ll stop here for now.

—

We’ll be getting back to this topic, and I’ll be going over what’s okay with regards to relationships in this category, why shipping in this series is generally dumb, more reasons why furry sex scenes make me extremely angry, and how there are actually other possible relationships other than “whipped as all get out” and “fuckbuddies”. And possibly discuss retarded combinations such as Rouge x Metal Sonic. Yes, this is a thing.

‘Till the next one.

Oh, and you may have noticed a lot of cussing in this post. Yeah…this just really riles me up.

Damn furries…

Dumb Like A Fox

Surely, I’ve said enough about Amy Rose for the time being, so let’s move on to another topic that one reader suggested recently.

In this post, we deal with Miles Prower, better known as Tails. He’s the third major character introduced in the series and the second hero character to appear, right after Sonic.

General data has him at about eight years old, with an IQ around 300 if not above it, since he regularly goes toe-to-toe with Dr. Eggman, who has his IQ at 300 officially. He is a gifted mechanic, scientist, chemist, technician, inventor, pilot, etc. and is good at pretty much anything else you can think of that involves…well, thinking. His physical capabilities leave him able to keep pace with most characters, but he seems to have his limits. Tails isn’t as naturally physical as his friends, but can hold his own in a fight without the use of any tools. He has the ability to fly at variable heights and speeds for set periods of time. He can use techniques such as the Super Spin Attack and the Spin Dash, as well as various techniques with his tails that make them into cutting tools. His reflexes are right up there with everyone else’s, probably higher in some cases due to the fact that he regularly pilots aircraft at [at least] subsonic speeds without incident. To put it simply, Tails is no slouch. It doesn’t make much of a difference what situation you put him in.

In terms of character and personality, Tails is less straightforward. His motivations for the most part are to become a more independent person and to help out Sonic whenever he can – both of these are actually linked to each other, as strange as it sounds. It would usually make more sense for him to drift away from Sonic if he wanted to become stronger on his own, wouldn’t it? Well, not really. I’ll explain why that is in a moment. He’s quite literally a kid, but he isn’t childish. Tails would like nothing more than to be acknowledged by Sonic and be someone who he could rely on in any situation. He’s loyal and determined, not prone to slacking, able to provide information at will, and very clever. Tails is a sidekick, but not necessarily the standard sidekick that always trails behind the hero – well, he used to be but grew out of that phase with the help of Sonic Adventure in 1999. You may note that Sega/Sonic Team has had a sort of ‘pattern’ going with Tails – I say ‘pattern’ because Sonic Heroes screws it up – in that he hasn’t been fighting the same way his other friends would be. He has been using technology of different types to fight alongside his allies, such as the Cyclone (Tornado 3 mechanical walker mode in SA2) and the Magic Hand (Sonic Battle). That means he’s regressed, that he’s weak since the recent titles have him unable to fight on his own for whatever (Dark Gaia’s minions in Unleashed for example, but it’s bloody obvious why he couldn’t take on them), correct?

Uh, wrong. In fact, Sonic Team has been using one of the best possible methods of character growth for Tails in recent years without forcing him into the spotlight or shoving him out of the picture completely. And I’ll explain my reasoning for this statement.

In Sonic Adventure, the theme going for Tails is so obvious you’d have to be blind, deaf, dumb and just plain stupid to miss it. His character theme song. The Action Stages. The cutscenes. The last boss fight of his story. Tails wants to be better and stronger, not having to rely on Sonic so much for anything, but more importantly, he wants to be like the guy he idolizes. He wants to be a hero in his own right and wants to be someone who can be relied on when things get rough. Tails, in everything he can do, wants to truly be strong. And Sonic Adventure is pretty damn blatant about that one wish of his. The Action Stages for Tails in that game look like rehashes of Sonic’s Action Stages, and they pretty much are. What’s clever is in the way you need to progress through them. Each stage is a race against Sonic (Eggman for the final) in which you lose (obviously) if your opponent reaches the goal first. Tails’ speed is capped lower than Sonic’s, as it always has been. But where Sonic is bound by gravity, Tails isn’t. Using his twin tails, he can take to the skies for at least a little while and access shortcuts, secret areas, and the like. The Action Stages then take on a new depth in that you have to think about the best routes, the best lines to take and the best ways to finish as fast as possible while not getting yourself killed in the process.

Oh, wait. You have to do some thinking and strategizing in these stages. Thinking and strategizing. Huh.

Maybe it’s a stretch, but that sounds like the line of thinking that someone like Tails would use to solve problems primarily. It’s not that you can’t do this in Sonic’s stages or Amy’s stages in the same game, but it seems like an odd coincidence to me that this is pretty much asked of the player from the start in Tails’ story.

Sonic Adventure 2 continues where Sonic Adventure left off in terms of character development – Tails has proven himself and you see it in the storyline as the Hero side tries to stop the Dark side from completing their plans. Tails is seen working in tandem with Sonic and Knuckles, is relied on by his friends, and takes a major role in fighting with his allies to the Eclipse Cannon’s core. Tails could have very well done without the walker, but if you think about it, the Tornado 3 is an insane piece of technology and not only illustrates the parallels between Tails and Eggman but how far the kid has come up. It also serves as an indicator of the way Tails is growing up and the path he has decided to take. The Tornado 3 is a multipurpose machine that is loaded with firepower to take on nearly any situation. As Eggman sliced through Prison Island to release Shadow, Tails did the same to clear a path for Amy to release Sonic from his cell. Creating a machine to rival if not surpass that of a madman with a 300 IQ is no small feat, especially for an eight year old boy. And while Eggman’s walker is really just a walker, the Tornado 3 also functions as a plane capable of supersonic speeds and a high-performance sports car.

Adventure 2 was trying to make a point with Tails as Adventure already did. Each member of Team Sonic (Amy excluded here for the sake of argument) brought something to the table. And being a team requires a bit more than just contributing along with the other guys, it asks that each member of the team do one or more things well. Sonic isn’t an expert on technical or mechanical matters, and he’s well aware of that fact. He relies on Knuckles for raw power and relic hunting, and he relies on Tails for strategies and technical support. Tails realized (as all of us should have by now) that he wasn’t going to be as fast as Sonic or as strong as Knuckles, so he found his role and settled into it. One of his strengths was in using technology, and in realizing his strengths, something huge happened.

Tails was no longer just a sidekick. Tails had become a partner.

 Equality on the highest level wasn’t achieved with a mystical super form, or an enormous increase in speed, or being an overpowered, musclebound bruiser. In growing up, Tails moved from idolizing Sonic to complementing him. Tails would create the ideas, and Sonic would put them into action. This has been something that has worked for the last few titles, and maybe Tails isn’t as active as Sonic, but he’s far from irrelevant because of it. Where Sonic has evolved in his speed and skill, Tails has evolved in his inventions and thinking. He’s become more thoughtful, wittier, and a lot better than just being a little fox in Sonic’s shadow, which is apparently what the fanbase wants of him.

The problem that arises with Tails is that the fanbase [ironically] does the reverse of they’ve been doing with Amy. With her, writers try to make her character so deep omg that it makes her incredibly goofy if not outright stupid while ignoring the character traits staring them in the face. She wears her heart on her sleeve but nobody gets that. Tails on the other hand somehow becomes more shallow than Kim Kardashian in a toddler’s wading pool (overused pop culture references, lolz!). Yes, Tails is a child. That doesn’t mean that he is going to act like a small child 90% of the time. He’s been forced to grow up because of what Eggman did to his home(s), because of being bullied for his gifts and more importantly, because of travelling all of this time with Sonic. Tails does not pine for the spotlight, he doesn’t care about it all that much. Does he enjoy accolades? Sure! But if he wanted to be loved and admired so much – as many fanfiction authors so strongly believe – then he would not be living in the Mystic Ruins. He would live inside of Station Square if he cared about being compensated for his heroics. He doesn’t. He does not care. This is a fact. He is not prone to jealousy over Sonic saving the day. I mean, damn! Sonic doesn’t even care that much! Why do you think he’s never in the same place for more than a moment?

And then there’s the so called ‘cue’ that Sega has apparently given. Tails isn’t fighting physically as much anymore, so he’s weaker than everyone else now. And that’s pretty well reflected in the fanfics that he appears in. It’s not even satirical or ironic. People actually believe that Tails is now physically inept because he’s been taking a backseat to Sonic’s heroics lately and relying on his technology.

Wow. This fanbase is so dense that it’s amazing.

All Tails has been doing is relying on his strengths instead of just blindly trying to emulate Sonic like he did in the beginning. Maybe it worked for the period of time where he was unsure of himself and what he could do, but Tails has no reason for that now unless everyone wants Sega to erase all semblance of character development that he’s had in the past 12 years. There was no sudden retcon that made Tails a weakling, so there’s no need for him to compensate by gaining ridiculous superpowers to outdo Sonic or Shadow or whoever. If anyone needs to create an ability for him that isn’t tied to the Chaos Emeralds, then for the love of God, make it something that compliments who he is. Just give him a damn ability that makes sense for once. Tails knows how to fight, evade, and defend himself otherwise, with his inventions or without. He doesn’t need Sonic unless he’s dealing with a particular threat, like maybe Metal Sonic, but even in those situations you can give him a non-asspull ability with some consequence to it that can give him a fighting chance. You know, like I did.

Fanfic land is a place for creativity and thinking outside of the box, there’s no doubt about that. But when you’re writing about someone else’s characters, you treat them with the proper respect they deserve and don’t make up random bullshit because you think you can. You can’t. End of discussion. Spreading around stuff like nicknames and phrases and stuff of that nature doesn’t bother me if it makes sense and is accessible to normal people. For example, Amy shouldn’t be uttering Sonikku unless it’s in a sentence with other Japanese words. The nickname ‘Ames’ as Sonic tends to use for Amy in fanfics is fine as long as it’s not overused to the point of tedium. In both of these cases, I tend to practice what I preach.

Maybe the minority have been doing this and didn’t mean to degrade Tails’ character with it. Well, then they don’t need to take offence to this post and know now what and what not to do when writing. As for the rest of those writers, maybe it’s asking too much of them to write an intelligent character properly.

As for being proven wrong? I’m not holding my breath.

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A thank you to Exploder for contributing one of the ideas for this post. You can find him and his stories here on FFN. Seriously, read them. Good stuff.

‘Till the next one.

The Melancholy of Amy Rose, Act 2

Here we are again.

Normally…I guess authors wouldn’t go into such an amount of depth with certain characters in this fandom. I happen to like Amy Rose, in both the way she is and the way that she could be. She is so much to so many of the people she knows on some level, and I try to incorporate that in the stories that I write. Her archetype is a typical one – not “tsundere” as people wrongly deduce, but the “girl who’s scary as hell when pissed off” type, whatever they call it in Japan. Basically the “don’t screw with me” female cast member. Think of a well-written female character in an anime – Amy is closer to that than anything else. To be tsundere would mean that she would outwardly deny her feelings, and as anyone with a brain can clearly see, she is the exact opposite of that type. I haven’t finished Sonic Chronicles but I know in that game she can play hard-to-get…for a while, anyways. Other than that, she’s quite direct about who she is. Opening that up, we can construct some complex feelings and desires for her as a character if we so choose…I mean, I think it’s pretty interesting and I’m sure the writers at Sonic Team think so as well, but they’re in a situation where it’s not too wise to do that sort of thing to a character that is supposed to have universal appeal and meet a status quo. She, along with Sonic as part of the “original six” as I call them (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman and Metal Sonic) have been pretty static in who they’ve been, at least in terms of roles. Amy will chase Sonic but never catch him. Tails develops but always will be the trusty sidekick. Knuckles will always be guarding the Master Emerald, etc. The roles are static but the characters are pretty dynamic in their design. Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, if you think about them for maybe a few minutes at most, really open up how you could look at Sonic’s heroics or Eggman’s ambitions, and everything else relevant.

But getting back to Miss Rose, I’ll start on something that makes her unique in the series. Amy Rose is – and you can’t argue this – the series wildcard. She’s the “X-factor” that you would clearly identify in any other series.  She is a wildcard because of the fact that she simply can’t initiate huge changes on her own and the fact that she is pretty much made to be a wildcard. You know the standard “peaceful girl who changes a troubled heart” thing from like…every anime ever almost? This is what Amy does.

In every major title she has been in aside from Sonic the Hedgehog CD (and you could argue that she impacted that one as well, even) Amy has quite literally changed the final outcome and helped to trigger the endgame(s) in subtle ways.  Sonic Adventure is the first example. Amy is locked up by Gamma and refuses to hand over the Flicky she’s protecting.  In a small space of time, Amy manages to have Gamma question his motivations, stops Sonic from destroying him, and ultimately becomes the catalyst for Gamma’s heel-face turn (becoming a good guy, basically) which in turn affects Eggman’s plans which in turns affects the entire story.  And if she seems inconsequential there, then try Sonic Adventure 2. Cannon’s Core ends, the colony is in free-fall, and Shadow is content to let everything play out until Amy steps in. She becomes the trigger for Shadow to remember Maria’s true wish, and in doing so (besides providing an opening for every Shadow x Amy story in history) sparks Shadow into action. This leads to the defeat of the Biolizard, which leads to Sonic and Shadow going super…you probably know the rest.

Let’s examine the impact there. If Amy had not said anything to Shadow, if she had not been determined to do her part to help (because that’s literally who she is, you know) then Shadow would have not left for Cannon’s Core, leading to Sonic and Knuckles wasting time, leading to everyone possibly running out of time, leading to…pretty much the destruction of Earth. Now granted, you could possibly say that things could have been stopped without Shadow, but given the time the rag-tag squad had left, Shadow was a key to their success. And Amy Rose was the one who made Shadow a key to their success in the eleventh hour.

…Yes, I probably spend way too much time analyzing videogames with cartoon animals. Whatever. Point is that Amy directly changed the events of Cannon’s Core. Wildcard.

I didn’t have to detail any of that, but I did it because it leads into my next point. The issue with a lot of depictions of Amy is that she is put into roles that do not at all suit her. Instead of being the wildcard or like the wildcard in some way, she is put into leading roles by drastically altering the make-up of her character. Sonic and Eggman are static in that they are two opposing forces and arguably the two titans of the series that everything revolves around. Events usually boil down to Sonic vs. Eggman or some kind of proxy battle relating to that. Sonic Adventure 2 is a pretty blatant example with the Hero and Dark stories; the “Hero” label is pretty ironic seeing that Sonic and co. are causing just as much collateral damage as the villains are as well as breaking the law at nearly every turn and going up against the military itself. The “Dark” label becomes ironic with the reveals of Shadow’s purpose and Rouge’s mission. That’s a bit off-topic, though…it’s a discussion for another time.

There’s nothing wrong in and of itself with making Amy the focus of a particular story or arc in a story. It’s simply a problem when Amy Rose is no longer Amy Rose for what reason or another. That’s really it. She isn’t herself and that is the main issue when it comes to writing.

Balanced stories as a rule usually have balanced characters, at least in relativity to each other. Reactions to the changing plot are natural and not forced. In most cases with Amy it is forced and awkward for one reason or another, usually because of imbalances. How is she imbalanced? Well, I have a list…as you probably guessed.

The ideals of a romantic story in this fandom have imbalances; Amy’s usually the victim but other female characters get this treatment as well. Suddenly, Amy Rose becomes the meek, star struck perfect anime waifu and loses all semblance of ability that isn’t pulled out of the author’s ass. She blathers on and on, milling about and spilling her feelings into the air for chapter after chapter after chapter. There’s nothing wrong with emotion, but 99% of the time it goes nowhere at all and even regresses Amy as a character. She has a sense of independence, which brings us to the tragic or perhaps “anti-romance” story, loaded up with angst and detailing how hurt and tormented Amy becomes simply because Sonic doesn’t acknowledge her. I’m going to be subjective for a moment and say that these scenarios are among the things that bother me the most when it comes to fanfiction. I even took the liberty of writing a story like that just to have realize what a stupid bitch she was and just to have Sonic not cave into her bullshit and be defiant for once. I don’t know if the intended effect was truly reached but it was cathartic if nothing else. These stories annoy me so much because Amy is much more than her obsession with Sonic, but these authors insist on making Amy so incredibly vapid that she only has Sonic to live for and nothing else. But what about that um, the rabbit girl? Aren’t they friends or something? Nah, she couldn’t be important. What was her name…Sundae, or something…?

You get my point, hopefully.

Then we have the fantastic stories where Amy “grows up” and manages to get over Sonic, finding someone else “worthy of her time” in the process, and/or [in most cases] inadvertently makes Sonic realize what he’s been “missing” all of this time, both physically (whoooo!) and emotionally. Fairly basic rules here: Amy is at least 16 years old (hit her strides in puberty), “smoking hot” according to the author and everyone else, and Sonic is an immature prick in some shape or form (bonus points if he sleeps around with other girls!). These are always great because not only do the authors try and usually fail to make Amy look like the better one out of the two, but they take potshots at Sonic’s character traits as well, even changing positively regarded traits into negatively regarded traits faster than you can blink! Yay! It really seems like a contest to make Amy look like the most self-righteous, pompous, airheaded bitch in the known universe, and everyone’s a winner here. Suddenly we’re reading an adaptation of Dawson’s Creek with talking animals; only that would be entertaining if it did happen. There’s a little story out on FFN by a certain author that actually fits my description above to a T, I kid you not. And it is even worse than anyone could imagine…

There are more things to list, but another topic came to my attention and I’ll discuss some of these things along with said topic. I mean…actively thinking about how a story is written will bring a good chunk of these problems to anyone’s attention. It should be the case, at least.

Then again…this is the Sonic fandom…

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In the next segment I go over the various ways that Amy is abused in fanfiction, and the various ways that these make stories suck horribly.

An Introduction

I didn’t think this was necessary per se, but I felt like doing it anyways. I thought it would be nice to give people a glimpse at the madness before they got caught in it.

A few things I’ll clear up from the beginning. I’m not a great writer. I’m not a titan of any writing site or group on FFN or anywhere else. As I’ve probably said before this post, I’m not an elite. Nor am I an elitist. I’m cool with writing what suits me, which is fine for everyone. The problem arises when you – intentionally or not – end up writing for a large(r) audience and subject your work to criticism from the masses. I’m here not only to criticize, but to dissect as much as I possibly can properly.

The stories in the Sonic the Hedgehog archive on FFN are what have drawn my attention in my writing career. There are many other stories on many other sites but this is my community, for better or for worse. I contribute to it like anyone else does, and its concerns become my concerns. What I’m trying to get at is this:

Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction is terrible.

This isn’t talking about the individual pieces that make it up, this isn’t talking about individual authors and their copy-paste stories or whatnot. This is a fact, a description of this particular section of fanfiction and something that has been going on for way too long. The adventures are boring. The character pieces suck. The characters themselves suck. Rehashes and rehashes and rehashes of rehashed rehashes. That’s my point. This community, besides being made up of incredibly sick people that for whatever reason become the introduction to Sonic the Hedgehog if not videogames and fanfiction in general, is dysfunctional. I’m not going to go over the reasons why this entire fanbase is horrible, because then I’d have to change the purpose of my blog. If I wanted to just spout off over the fandom, I’d make a Tumblr page with periodic snipes at key people. This isn’t really about that. This is focused on the writing aspect primarily – everything else comes later on if you want.

Having basic writing skills helps keep you from the bottom of the barrel. But after that, you’ll need to put some form of effort into your writing in order to produce a good product. This isn’t really a blog for raising your popularity. I’m not popular on FanFiction by any means, I think. But well-liked stories get a lot of good reviews, provided readers find them and word-of-mouth spreads. There are great stories that I like and great stories that I don’t really like.

The blog’s main focus will be on characters and plotlines. Both are abused constantly for negative results, and I’ll be explaining why I believe that’s the case so often. Posts will go into what makes up each character and what the ideal uses of them are, as opposed to the unfortunate status quo. I’m not going to wow anyone with loads of numbers and raw data, that’s someone else’s job. I just feel like identifying problems and why they’re problems, along with possible ways to fix them if I can. Otherwise, this blog is going to be a mixed bag.

The Melancholy of Amy Rose

Sonic as a character is an easy enough subject to handle. We can talk about him soon enough. For now, it’ll be about someone else for a change…so let’s start with this.

There is a problem with Amy Rose.

There must be, because she has somehow become the most hated, abused, and flat-out horribly written character in the fanfiction universe. Holy crap. I kid you not, Amy Rose is a million times worse in fanfiction than she is in any of the games or even the comics (Archie, Fleetway, whatever your fancy). And what makes this so much worse is that Amy is such an easy character to write about if you’re just going for surface details most of the time, which most authors should be sticking to along with their superficial depictions of all the other characters in the series. But in this first part of my article on Amy Rose, we’ll see that fanfiction writers seriously try to change or even completely alter her psyche for the sake of plot…or whatever caricature of plot you can see. This is where most writers stumble over themselves – they’re in way too deep for their own good.

We can start simply enough with a breakdown of who Amy is. The details I take and what I presume a writer for a series franchise like Ian Flynn (head writer for Archie’s publication of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series) would come from the games. This is the source material. I’m not putting myself on any level with Mr. Flynn, even if I disagree with some of his ideas (well, very few of them to be clear about it), but good writing is cut from the same cloth – not a mindless obsession over the characters you write about, but just really knowing your stuff. That means playing the games, paying attention to what’s going on and how characters react to certain things. You start to notice patterns, especially with the games that have included voice acting. To sidetrack, Sonic Rush has minimal VA work but the cutscenes provide huge windows for the characters involved. You can easily get something on Cream and Vanilla from the few lines they have in Rush. Sonic characters aren’t too terribly deep, that’s something that you have to admit. They’re not highly complex and don’t usually have detailed backgrounds (strange how Shadow is now less of a mystery than Sonic, wouldn’t you say?) but I feel that it’s enough for a good adventure or two or more. Everyone has the desire to make the characters more detailed than they are, everyone has the desire to bring a bit of creativity to the table. And that’s great, it’s a good thing. But when writing about characters with established personalities and backgrounds and all of that, it’s best not to stray too far from what the characters actually are. And this happens to an extreme with Amy.

So getting back to that breakdown, Amy Rose is an energetic character in every sense of the word. She is highly emotional, and that isn’t a bad thing. Her moods can swing from love-drunk to violent-drunk in an instant, to say the least. Highly devoted to Sonic and his causes, but can and will be independent for her own sake and for the sake of her friends. She is a kind person, loving, and can be thoughtful at times. She has a huge heart and isn’t afraid to show it. Amy doesn’t like to reign in her emotions when she’s riled up, but she can be calm and collected. She can – get ready for this – get frustrated with Sonic at times. Amy is able to hold her own in battle and if you want to take anything from SA2’s Battle mode, can hold her own with the boys to a degree. It can be said that she has some sort of connection with magic or more likely Chaos Energy because of the huge mallet she whips up out of nowhere, the Piko Piko Hammer (named for the sound it makes when hitting anything). The Sonic CD manual says she can read tarot cards (this was used to an extent in a story I read, but while that was interesting the rest of the story wasn’t even close) so it implies that she has psychic potential. Her strength is legendary along with her temper, she’s quick enough to chase Sonic around, and is a frequent target of Eggman. The only non-villain character she has a problem with is Rouge, at least to a point. Amy is able to make deductions and can read people fairly well.

I listed all of that for reference material, and if anyone has any doubts about what I’ve put up, check out the games she’s been in. The only ones I don’t remember much of are Sonic Shuffle and Sonic Riders, which I really don’t take too much from as a whole. I don’t think I’ve even gotten everything about her, but that’s what I have off the top of my head. The thing I’m trying to say is that there is so, so much on Amy that can be used in different combinations without damaging or altering her character for the sake of a story.

Small wonder it gets ignored.

It’s not even laughable, it’s just outright sad at this point. The majority of stories have Amy either in high school against some manufactured conflict, or have her being raped, or have her in a generic anime love triangle, or have her doing something mundane and just undeniably stupid. Shipping I don’t really care about, despite the fact that a good chunk of stories I’ve written have a Sonic/Amy tint on them in some form. But even the stories that lean towards that interest are mostly awful and feature…things…that need not be discussed in this post. Possibly others will contain that content if my stomach is feeling sturdy on those days.

Amy fundamentally is a bouncing ball of a character. She goes up and down and all around emotionally; she is not made to rest for a long time on any part of her character besides the happy/bubbly part. That’s not my opinion, as much as you might think it is. Now, extenuating circumstances are totally fine. If Amy snaps because of trauma, then I can’t hold a grudge against that if it’s well written. And it’s usually not, so you see where I’m going with this. Amy has moods but is not moody. She isn’t a grouch; she isn’t a moper unless again, plot properly demands it. She has fears and you can play them up if – again – plot properly demands it. She’s a fighter unless it puts her friends in danger. She’s self-sacrificial to a fault. Amy is stubborn – not dense. That’s Knuckles’ department (and we’ll talk about that with him). She can be sassy, but her aura is bubblegum pop slash category 5 hurricane. She isn’t Rouge or any variation thereof…which doesn’t reflect badly on Rouge in any way. But of course people make seductiveness equal sluttiness for God knows what reason, intentionally or not. Amy is a character made up of many different things but something just keeps getting thrown off whenever she’s written in most stories. And we can probably deduce that it’s the influence of anime and manga that causes this, the logic that playing up a minimal amount of traits in a character will make them stand out and be more entertaining.

That’s a problem. It’s a problem when the character in question is made up of a finite amount of character traits and a few of those are played up above anything else, or even worse, they’re played up so that an author can erase the rest of her positive/negative traits in order to make her a Mary Sue/author avatar/self-insert/etc. And the problem worsens when you are trying to have her side with one character or another in a relationship that couldn’t possibly have worked before (Sonic and Shadow are both equally invalid for one reason or another, and they’re the frontrunners here). And so the story, which usually revolves around this shallow caricature of a character (as insane as that sounds) becomes laughably stupid in one respect or the other, because the other characters around her are warped into ridiculous versions of themselves as a result. Amy becomes so stupidly polarized that your story couldn’t look like more of a joke if it tried – she becomes a magnet that draws in parts of your story while actively repelling others, and that just sounds like a bad day from the outset.

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I’ll continue by talking about Amy’s placement on the character spectrum as I see it, and why that becomes important when trying to write in general. Other things are soon to come.

Thanks for reading.

Hey, everyone.

This here is my account on FFN. I fancy myself a writer, an amateur one for now. In the midst of the masses, I can call myself above average, so pretty darn good compared to most. I am not almighty but I can hold my own.

The purpose of this blog is mostly to discuss writing Sonic fanfiction, not necessarily tips but trends that I’ve noticed or things that need to change. It’ll be a mixed bag, and if anyone has anything they’d like to discuss or see discussed, let me know.

That’s my introduction for now. I’ll be making posts shortly, so until then. God bless.