#But then people are talking about IDW or Sonic Prime and suddenly it's all “

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Anyone else get that feeling that whenever it's about the Sonic games themselves everyone is like "the writing is just a mess and the characterizations are no different" but the moment it's about a Sonic adaptation (new show, movie, comic, etc) suddenly the Sonic cast has solid characters and the bad bad adaptation is making them so ooc?

[thankskenpenders]

Help me out here: Why is there so much Ian Flynn hate going around lately? I thought everyone loved that he was contributing to the games. Now suddenly they aren't. I guess that's par for the course for this series but I don't get it. He isn't perfect but I like what he's done. Am I a weirdo?

Ian Flynn has always had a lot of fans, but any creator putting their work out there is going to have detractors as well. That's just the nature of being an artist. To some extent, it's no big deal. He's not a perfect writer. Nobody is! I consider myself a fan of his work, but I've criticized plenty of individual writing decisions from him on here.

But Ian doesn't just have critics. He has his own obsessive hatedom. And the specific nature of Ian's hatedom is... interesting.

A decade ago, Ian was only the guy writing for Archie Sonic, meaning any debates over his work were quarantined within that tiny niche of the larger Sonic fandom. Only people who kept up with the comics month to month had any real reason to have an opinion on the guy, which means we're talking about merely thousands of fans as opposed to millions.

Within that group, he had some haters. You had the people who were mad about story changes made during his run, particularly things like ancillary characters getting killed off (although over the years we've learned that most of those were editorial mandates from Mike Pellerito). You had the people mad that Ian didn't push their favorite ship, with feuding SonAmy and Sonally fans claiming that he was CLEARLY biased towards one or the other. You had the people who just really, really liked one of the previous writers way more - usually Penders, as hard as that may be to believe today. That sort of thing. Pretty normal comic fandom type stuff. Again, it comes with the territory.

Unfortunately, many of those haters only got worse over time, morphing into reactionaries who constantly try to incite Comicsgate type culture war bullshit.

There are people still mad at Ian for making Sally bi and pairing her with Nicole instead of Sonic in the later Archie comics. There have been elaborate MS Paint red string conspiracy boards explaining how people like Ian and Jon Gray have apparently been destroying the franchise from the inside for years by Making Sonic Woke. (Jon gets dragged into this because people are still mad about him drawing The Slap 20 years later. Yes, really!!) There was an unhinged change.org petition trying to get Ian fired, specifically from people who were mad that the Freedom Fighters aren't in the IDW comics. There was even a very sad little fan campaign from these people trying to get Sega to move the Sonic comic license away from IDW and over to Udon, because they thought Udon would bring Sally and Bunnie back and also make them sexy again. There's a lot of this.

(Unfortunately, Penders has also exacerbated this by gossiping about Ian on Twitter and giving these fans ammo, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)

The thing is, for years, people who only played the games or watched the cartoons had no reason to pay attention to any of this. Now, though, Ian isn't just writing for some weird spinoff comics that only the super nerds read. Now he's writing comics that are canon to the games, and ALSO some of the games themselves, and ALSO consulting on other tie-in media like Sonic Prime, and ALSO writing the official Sonic encyclopedia, and ALSO serving as part of the new Sonic Lore Team at Sega. And on top of all this, he's got an increasingly popular podcast where he fields questions about his work on all of these things, which serves as one of the fandom's main windows into creative decisions being made behind the scenes.

As a fan of Ian's work, it's been really cool to see him rise in prominence. But the dark side of this is that his obsessive haters from the Archie days now have WAY more of a potential audience of their own. Now, every Sonic fan has to have an opinion on Ian. What this frequently means is that you'll have the Comicsgate types taking things Ian writes or says out of context, attempting to get more of the general fandom to yell at the guy.

Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of Sonic fans who take the bait:

You've got hardcore fans who disliked basically any recent piece of Sonic media and are looking for someone to blame.

You've got the people who are concerned about the sanctity of Sonic's canon, who shoot the messenger any time Ian mentions a new retcon from Sonic Team on the podcast - or any time he even mentions the THOUGHT of changing anything about the canon, as we saw recently with the Sol Dimension nonsense.

You've got people who romanticize some sort of mythical artistic vision that Sega of Japan supposedly has (or had) for the franchise. To many of these fans, American contributors like Ian just don't "get" the heart of the series and are trying to turn Sonic into something different. (This "heart of the series" tends to be some mix of Japanese instruction manual lore, the cinematics from Sonic CD, the OVA, and/or the games written by Shiro Maekawa, depending on what Sonic media the fan in question grew up with.)

You've got fans of specific characters or ships who pin the blame for how their faves are depicted entirely on Ian - most vocally fans of Shadow, even though the root problem is that Sonic Team hasn't known what to do with Shadow since 2006. At best this stops at regular old criticism, but at its worst this devolves into claims that Ian has an agenda against certain characters.

You've got fans annoyed by a perceived over-emphasis on comic-original characters in the IDW comics, ignoring the obvious facts that these characters exist because the game cast is so tightly controlled by Sega, and also, you know, that people just like the IDW characters and want more stories about them.

You've got a LOT of discourse over IDW's Sonic being a hero who tries to give his enemies second chances, as if half of Sonic's closest friends aren't already former villains and rivals. Honestly this is very transparently just reheated Steven Universe discourse lmao

You'll also see people who just think they could do Ian's job better. They can't believe that THIS GUY is the American fan working on all these Sonic projects, when clearly THEY understand the characters and lore and themes SO much better than this charlatan.

All it takes is for someone in one of these categories to be unhappy about some recent piece of Sonic media, and for them to come across an out of context quote or comic panel that rubs them the wrong way, and suddenly the leftist Zoomer Sonic fans will join the latest dogpile on Ian alongside the reactionary Comicsgate types who are mad at him for Making Sonic Woke.

In general, when fandoms get upset, they tend to want a scapegoat. A person or two to point a finger at and go "THAT's who ruined the thing I love!" This tends to be based less on reality and more on which contributors are the most visible online. You'll sometimes see teenage and adult fans of children's cartoons single out a storyboarder who's particularly vocal on Twitter, blame them for every story decision they don't like, and harass them off the platform out of a sense of retribution for their favorite ship or whatever. Failing that, fans might choose to blame every nitpick, down to individual lines of dialogue and frames of animation, on a showrunner, just because that's the name they associate with the show. And unfortunately, when it comes to Sonic, Ian is now arguably the most prolific and outspoken contributor on the English speaking internet, and therefore a common scapegoat.

Some of the things I've seen Ian blamed for are truly wild. A lot of people have claimed for YEARS that he's just lying about the existence of creative guidelines and restrictions from Sega - or, as fans call them, The Mandates - even though they're just an inherent aspect of working on a licensed property. Others claim that The Mandates are real, but somehow Ian's fault. A vocal minority of fans have convinced themselves that Ian is the sole reason the Freedom Fighters don't exist in the IDW comics, even though Ian says he's been pushing to bring them back since day one.

Sometimes you'll see people say he ruined shit he didn't even work on. A few weeks ago on Twitter I saw someone claim that Ian had written a rejected script for Sonic Forces in which Tails died. I could not find a source for this for the life of me. As far as I can tell, the rumor seems to have been born from an alleged leaked script for Forces with margin notes from Aaron Webber that criticized the way Tails was written, and also an old tweet where Aaron joked that Tails would die in an upcoming episode of Sonic Mania Adventures. These merged into "Aaron Webber criticized a draft of the Forces script in which Tails died." How'd Ian get dragged into this? Who fucking knows!

It's all just a big game of telephone. All it takes is some asshole to make something up about Ian on Twitter or YouTube or a DeviantArt journal or some forum, and at least a couple people will believe it, and then it gets repeated as fact. Again, this used to be contained by the niche nature of the Archie Sonic fandom, but now there are WAY more people who are receptive to this shit.

It's just sad to me that Ian tries to be so open and honest about his work, to try to explain the rationale for certain things, to keep fans looped in on the direction the franchise is headed, and this just gives the Flynnspiracy types more quotes to take out of context and try to paint him as the devil. If it sounds like I'm being overly defensive and dismissing his critics, man... some of the things I've seen people say directly to him are just unbelievable. People will send paragraphs-long angry screeds in to his podcast that completely tear him apart, and he has to sit there and be like "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it." People literally pay for special guest interview episodes where they just rapid fire complaints about his writing at him directly to his face. I don't know how he does it. I would snap.

All of this over Sonic the fucking Hedgehog of all things.

I don't know how to wrap this up. Engaging with fandoms online is very tiring, which is why I tend not to do it. Things like this are too common. I guess, just... remember that making art collaboratively is a complicated thing. The people involved are generally trying their best given the circumstances, but they're only human. They make mistakes. But please treat them like humans. Criticism and dogpiling are not the same thing.

[beevean]

I've been kinda following the reaction to recent IDW, Frontiers and now Prime's story stuff and after reading enough threads and comments I started wondering: is the mainstream fandom really this easily emotionally manipulated?

I mean it like, you have IDW, you got Surge being painted as this badass and a portion of fandom claiming her as the new girlboss, but suddenly one panel of her looking sad and scared and people go "o no poor babby she has the feelies 🥺". Or the Prime clip with Sonic and Tails that's making rounds right now. Apparently the pretty standard parallel/alternate universe plot of "a character meets a slightly different version of a character they are familiar with so interaction is going to be a little awkward" is enough to make some go into crying all over the keyboard mode because muh feels and muh angst.

Concepts like these sound emotional on paper and they can be executed well, of course, but like, is the bare minimum drama really enough to illicit this strong of a reaction from people these days? Or do fans just... imagine this high intensity of feelings because there are none in the actual source material and then run purely on that?

I don't know. I really don't. I've been feeling so alienated, and I don't want to think that everyone else is stupid and I'm the smart one to not fall for these obvious emotional manipulations.

It's like I'm seeing something different. I don't see Surge having a panic attack: I see her behaving in a wildly OOC way, because this behavior comes out of nowhere - since when does Surge, whose personality has been since page 1 "fuck yeah I wanna fight!", care about "being hurt"?. I don't see Sonic being horrified at the discovery about the true origins of Surge and Kit: I see an asshole who immediately brushed it aside and went to fight a traumatized girl with a grin on his face.

Do you seriously interpret this as HORROR? He doesn't care! He doesn't! What are you guys seeing?!

I've already talked about Frontiers in length. I see the game as empty. There is nothing there. I can't feel bad for Sonic if he gets better 1 minute later. I can't feel bad for Sage's death if she spent most of her time on screen being stubborn (for sensible in-game reasons, but still). I can't feel bad for Eggman being all sad because THAT IS OUT OF CHARACTER. "oh but bowser can be evil and a dad" "oh but muh humanization" it's out of character, sorry. 31 years, and Eggman not once displayed any characteristic that would lead him to feel genuine affection for anyone, let alone an AI. No, Eggman saving Sonic from lava to preserve a Chaos Emerald doesn't count as a good action of his. Sure, Eggman saving Tails from Orbot in Colors was uncharacterisically nice... but you're not going to use an example from a game written by Pontaff, the people you consider on par with the 11th plague of Egypt, as source of good writing, right? You would be consistent, right? :)

I don't even care about Prime. I really don't. It slides off my brain. Oh, Tails became edgy because Sonic wasn't there, okay, sure, there are at least a dozen fanfictions like that.

(the fact that I watched Netflixvania right before Frontiers, and I went through a similar feeling of "why can I only feel rage at this poorly written mess?", doesn't help my mood. I genuinely felt like I lost all my ability to enjoy things)

But I know what's going on with Sonic. The idea that everything from 2010 to 2019 was horrible, flat, OOC and nothing but Cringe permeated the fanbase. So now, any kind of emotional moment, no matter how shallow and try hard, gets praised to high heavens. Add a good dose of Adventure nostalgia (because muh Meta Era if the games reference the Classics, but thank you Lord Flynn for saving the franchise if the games reference the Adventure era), and there you go. (meanwhile I'm still here getting my heartstrings pulled by that one scene of Sonic realizing that he's all alone on Lost Hex and it's all his fault...)

I'm being bitter. I also realize that I'm sounding like an arrogant cock, and I don't like it. I wish I could see what everyone else is seeing. I wish I could love Surge and think of her as the best villain the franchise has to offer. I wish I could gush about how deep Frontiers is. I wish I could be interested in Prime and have something to look forward to. This is not fun. I don't feel oh so smart bitching about stuff that others like, I feel like a thief of joy and not a nice person to be around.

And yet, something as simple as hearing Maria say to Shadow "you used to run so quickly on these slopes", implying that edgy anti hero Shadow used to play on the ARK like a normal child with her best friend before tragedy struck, makes me feel more awful than anything else I've mentioned. So it's not that there is something wrong with me.

[p-receh]

Its understandable people to get upset but sometimes the reasons for them to get upset is the wildest thing imaginable

Sonic fandom:

Like there is a good chunk of people that absolutely hate the idw sonic comics, they read it. But they hate it.

But the complaints sometimes are just ridiculous or plain unserious at this point

"This is such a bad character, they're so annoying" and thats the point.

"This character is so mean for no reason what a bitch" and its a regular character flaw plus you're only upset cause its you favs they're being mean too

"Ugh its so different than the games and the characters are all different" its called a different medium.

"Sonic in prime is so annoying the show is awful" ITS A DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE CHARACTER, HAVE YOU SEEN THE OLD SONIC SHOWS

(No but seriously sonic x was a wild ride and Boom was just a nice slice of life hilarious mess)

Bbb fandom:

"They made yaya dumb!" That isn't dumb thats unhinged did you all suddenly forget the original series.. also smart characters can make dumb decisions excuse me.

"X character have so little screentime" get in line with the rest of us, i love Z character and they appear once in a blue moon. Also heres a magical thing you can do, its called ✨️creation✨️ make fan content the way how you'd like the character to be, the power is yours!

"The animated version is nothing like the comics" say that sentence again :), "animated" "comics" DIFFERENT MEDIUMS PEOPLE, also highly recommend stop comparing things, you'll get an aneurysm

Am i upset they made Gopal a bigger idiot? Yea, its a problem. Am i annoyed with the changes? Yea sure but i've long accepted that it would be highly different since the first time galaxy s1 comics roled around (they had Fang's backstory while the show didn't)

I may be upset but i'm not gonna complain in the smallest of things, those things i can fix myself, i'll write what i want. I'll fantasies it. I'll even draw it myself even if it looks terrible

And its not even just sonic or bbb fandom, all fandoms are like this. The more years have passed the more I'm not taking complaints seriously. I'm enjoying this media whether you hate it or not.

Sorry for the sudden rant to you, you're the only bbb and sonic blog i know. Feel free to ignore and hope you have a great day :D

I dare you want to see my answer when you write that essay. Don't think you want me to ignore it when I know you want to read it, anon. hehe😏

I treat Sonic and Boboiboy a bit different nowadays. In the past I might get over excessive, but I know I said this before, my view of Sonic fandom change recently and I blame internet because of that.

It felt exaggerated but that fandom genuinely damaged my heart and soul for sonic. I'd rather be a silent enthusiast rather than engaging or contributing to the community. It sucks cuz I want to share my love with people, sharing art, thoughts and discussion....

But I cannot differentiate which one is satire, constructive criticism or straight up hate.

Everyone wants to be the voice of reason and It's... Exhausting to watch. I have my pen friend who emotionally broken after he went online debate in the fandom. He even gave up to the fandom and the franchise itself. At first I thought his response was dramatic(no joke), but then I witness the same thing and almost caused me a mental health problem.

Karma I guess🙃

Therefor, for the sake of my sanity, I don't want to engage too much in every fandom.

That's also includes Boboiboy. Different fandom treatment, same war.

I already talked this much on this site more about the fandom anyway. Here in case you haven't seen it