#( seriously. i'm loving him in adow )

[black-arms-hivemind]

Another instance of me making my own post to avoid possibly derailing Chai's great post

Also, I don't know how he is or how often he is to front, but regardless, this post might not be the kindest towards Sega Source Sonic (I have baggage with Sonic (the character) as a whole, and Hive Shadow isn't a fan of him), so do know that I don't mean any of this towards the Sonic fictive in the Solstice System ♡

BUT

I don't really like to ship Sonic with peeps anymore for a multitude of reasons ( I used to have some frankly fucking awful takes and if you remember me from them I want to profusely apologize I hate that version of me now-) but I do agree that most ships with Sonic and another character his age are fine and dandy, but there's one ship (other than Son//amy) that I used to like (again, I very much apologize) but see now that is uhhhhhhhhhh not good actually. Yes this is gonna be a hot hot take

Son//adow

Or at the very least, the way the fandom portrays it a lot.

Shadow is a very complex person with many emotions and lots of baggage. They canonically have severe PTSD and I personally see them as also being autistic and perhaps even having a personality disorder of some kind. I'm not at ALL saying that those thing make someone "undateable" or something like that. I myself am an autistic system with a whole lot of anxiety and I'm in a very stable and loving polycule relationship where I have two girlfriends outside of my system!

The problem is in how the fans often depict Sonic treating Shadow in their son//adow stuff.

All too often I see son//adow media(mostly art) that depicts Sonic not respecting Shadow's boundaries, that depicts Sonic being dismissive of Shadow's feelings, even Sonic straight up carelessly triggering Shadow's PTSD and hastily tries to comfort them to cover his ass.

This content is, frankly, very fucking ableist.

Shadow (in a good chunk of their appearances) is a very good depiction of and representation for people who struggle greatly with their mental health, and they deserve as much love and respect as the rest of the Sonic cast, despite their baggage.

But honestly? Putting that aside, I don't think they'd work even in canon.

Sonic is incredibly free spirited and loves running off any which way to find whatever adventure he seeks. This behavior could bring on some pretty bad effects to Shadow's mental well-being if they got with him. What if Sonic is gone on an adventure for a bit too long and Shadow starts to panic that he got seriously hurt or even died, and blames themself because they couldn't protect him? And Sonic is often pretty dismissive of his peers' emotions, and this could very well include Shadow's.

Overall, I do not like this ship, Hive Shadow fucking hates it, goodbye

- 🌹🍰