#I don't know if this counts as 'analysis' per se but it's long and detailed enough that it might as well go in the tag

[descendant-of-truth]

Heads up, I'm gonna be discussing Sonic x Shadow Generations leaks below the cut, so if you don't want extra-early spoilers then just feel free to skip this one for now.

That being said: it's come to my attention that the Sonic Generations portion of the game is, in fact, being rewritten... but not reanimated. Meaning that it's just new dialogue on top of the pre-existing animations.

This is. quite possibly the worst route they could have taken. not to mention the weirdest??

I can see what the train of thought most likely was, to be fair. Shadow Generations is being written by Ian Flynn, while the original game was written by Ken Pontac and Warren Graff, and their versions of the characters are very different from Flynn's. Clearly, they wanted some sense of internal consistency between the writing of the re-release. That part is normal.

But then, I guess they just... didn't have the budget, or interest, or whatever it was they needed to reanimate everything from scratch. So they just added some lipsyncing when necessary and called it a day.

The problem is that doing it this way fundamentally kneecaps what you can actually do with a rewrite. The revised dialogue I saw in a video doesn't feel any less stilted or awkward, and the only thing it really changes is giving the characters slightly more reasonable priorities, or filling in gaps in their knowledge that were there before.

And those aren't bad things to do, but it's... kind of the ONLY thing they can do. It doesn't fix the game's story. It's barely putting a band-aid over it. All it does is read like an amateur fan project, especially with the addition of Modern Sonic responding to his friends after he saves them where he didn't before; I'm convinced I've seen videos of fans doing that exact thing in the past.

Yes, everyone knows that the few seconds of silence while he gestures felt unnatural, but so does trying to fit a relevant sentence over such a short animation. The official attempt isn't going much better, adding this really out-of-place and forced "alright!" when Sonic gives Knuckles a thumbs-up, and it doesn't flow naturally with the rest of what he was saying at all. It's there seemingly just to fill the space, so that there's no moment where Sonic is animating and not talking. It's bad.

Not to mention, I kind of assumed that the reason Modern Sonic was silent during those segments was because Classic Sonic was. You can play either Act of each stage in whatever order you want, so you could rescue the others as either Sonic. It would give people an unfair incentive to always play Act 2 second if it meant they would get more dialogue that way, and they would miss out on Classic's interactions as a result. Sure, neither of their interactions are anything to write home about, but... that's not really the point, here.

Trying to insert new personalities and character dynamics into animations that were meant for something different only works if you're doing a fanmade parody. Doing it in an official capacity feels... weirdly insulting to both the original writers and animators, honestly?

Like, no, that's not the script they spent hours animating for. That's not the tone they were trying to convey with those character movements. No, Sonic isn't face-palming in exasperation because Amy's too focused on "saving Sonic next time," he's doing that because she's joking about how scared she was that she'd never get to flirt with him again. Those are not comparable interactions.

I understand why they wanted to change the script, I really do, I don't even like the original version but for crying out loud, swapping out the dialogue does not make the game more interesting. There's a reason the story felt utterly bland and lifeless and an extremely large part of that was the animation and cinematography. The white space that most of the cutscenes took place in was literally just the side-scrolling hub world, they had maybe five square inches that each character could move around in and it was really, really boring.

A rewrite of Sonic Generations, especially with the goal of making it an equivalent experience to Shadow Generations, desperately needs more than this. Shadow's story is going all-out with the animations and camera angles and the severity of the situation and the deep-dive into Shadow's character and Sonic gets. this. a slap in the face to the original writers with no attempt to meaningfully improve upon their story.

It doesn't solve the problem of Sonic's story being jarringly lackluster in comparison to Shadow's. If anything, it's just going to stand out as being even weirder, because if this was all they were going to do, then... why did they even bother? What was the point? Does Tails recognizing the Chemical Plant from Sonic 2 mean anything when there's no new scenes that actually take place in it? Are we really making "Sonic References: the Game" into nothing more than a vehicle for Slightly More Accurate Sonic References and Nothing Else??

And what really gets me about this is that I would've gone nuts for an official Generations rewrite as a kid. My Sonic Generations Phase(TM) was both extremely long-lasting and filled to the brim with others' fan projects, because I couldn't get enough of this idea of Sonic and Tails meeting their past selves while trying to save the very fabric of reality. It's such an inherently cool and fun idea!

But what I was invested in as a kid was just that: an idea of a story. The reason I was obsessively reading and watching fanfic about it was because the actual game gave me nothing to work with. Now, it seems we're still getting nothing, just in a different flavor. Like, plain oats, but this time they're gluten free so that means they're totally what I wanted, right?

No. I didn't want a Sonic Generations fandub that happened to be paid for. I wanted a story. It should not be this difficult to give me one.

(To clarify, this is not a diss on Ian Flynn himself or his ability to write. I think he was given a task that was impossible to do well and I'm mad at whoever made this decision)

[hysokaz]

Don't you think Hisoka is most likely pan? This doesn't invalidate your point tho

short answer: nah, not really. but that doesnt matter much, hes gay coded, or queer-coded at the least, and so long he is the harm is still done

long answer: nah, not really. i think hisokas sexuality is a lot more complex and different than what would count for usual sexuality. controversial opinion: i dont think he feels sexual attraction at power, per se. not like allosexual people usually do (i think thats the right term? feel free to correct me). i think his sadomasochism is very psychological rather than sexual, if that makes any sense. his bloodlust and urge to fight is what would fill the usual hole of sexuality (something tells me thats poor wording .................. )

i dont know whats in his head, really. all i know is that he likes to entertain himself, i cant think of anything hes done that couldnt be tied to him wanting to help himself or entertain himself in some way. i dont believe that he is self punishing, i think pain feels good to him but i could not tie it to anything as we dont know his past, but if i had to say it could be some sort of abuse. or a broken psyche, i could go in detail about how certain types of childhood abuse rewire your brain, and how it could very much so lead to sadomasochistic behaviour. but thats pure sexuality, i think pain fills that spot. romantically, i cant see it either. i dont think he loves like most people either. he doesnt get in relationships. i believe hes described the relationship he and kurapika had in yorknew was give and take, i forget what he got out of kurapika, but kurapika got phantom troupe info. illumi its... give and take whatever, i guess. help. money, most likely. death. he wants illumi to kill him. i think thats the closest hes going to come for love-- he doesnt love chrollo, even though they have the second “strongest” bond in his life. i dont think he wanted chrollo to kill him. i dont think he wanted to kill chrollo. from what i can see, i think he just wanted to break him. but with illumi its diffirent

he wants death. from illumi. people might want to bring up his relationship with machi as some kind of proof for something, but i just want see it. i think he wants to be her friend, and heres where i go into speculation. if youve ever read the (non canon) oneshot of his past, he seems to have a very similar relationship with a girl named abaki, though its a not more normal and more innocent. (heres my analysis post on the oneshot: warning, its long)

heres him with abaki:

its so...normal. but he does seem to care about her, in some way. and its definitely weird, cus he doesnt get anything out of it. the talks, i mean. theyre very... normal. he doesnt want to hurt her. he saves her life

and its not like he was planning on killing her later or something. he completely abandons the circus troupe without saying a word after a fight that i wont spoil in case whoevers reading this wants to read the oneshot

i dont think he wants to hurt machi either. lets pretend this is canon, it helps understand his character somewhat. it would explain his relationship with machi, he seems to be intrigued by her. maybe hes reminded of abaki. he seems to want another friend like that. sure he says weird things, hes hisoka what do you expect, but hes never tried to fight machi or hurt her (im...pretty sure, if not, then, lol my bad). but i dont think thats romantic. i just think hes very lonely. 

back to illumi.

if i had to pick “something” then i dont know, hes just gay. hes gay because the closet bond he has to a living breathing person is a man. illumi. but this is behind layers and layers of “not normal”. hes just not normal. in the way hes unusual. wrong. but thats the point. and probably far off from what youre asking

but back again, i guess, i just dont think it matters, yknow?

hes gay coded. queer coded. whatever. the fact that the strongest coded character is often read as a sadomasochistic nonce who wants to kill the main character of the show, a 13,14 whatever year old, is harmful. it doesnt really matter that you could (obviously) make an argument that gon/killua are gay coded (because i mean obviously) because that doesnt erase hisoka out of existance. you cant have a caricature and a normal character and get away with being harmful like that.

i think its just important, instead of arguing what or what hisoka is or isnt, is to look at what he shows in canon, how its read, and why togashi decided, consciously, to do that, and why he decided, consciously, to not make any statement about how hisoka has been read for years on end. 

tl;dr: nah, mostly because his sexuality and romantic attraction are deeply disconnected from what normal labels define, mostly because of his relationship with illumi. but it doesnt matter either way