#Sonic in high heels

[okcoolcoolwtf]

Sonic Au Swap roll

Basically an Au where Sonic was forced to work for Eggman. He may look relaxed but inside he's screaming. That's what happens when you are the only responsible older sibling providing for a young fox.

Well at least the egghead Robotnic pays well.

This Au takes heavily from sonic underground and sonic adventures as inspiration. My childhood hood self is jumping in joy!

[spocky-late]

The most electrifying daredevil, highflying The most exciting stunts you'll ever see Butchery! Been seeing a lot of people draw them and so i was inspired to draw him aswell :} loooove jester characters raaah

[bottle-of-harpoons]

Just a couple of fake hedgehogs.

[weirdofish]

Welp... here's the winner of the dress poll, you weirdos XD (says the one who not only drew this but also voted Eggman just so they could see who had the most votes) In any case, I was not expecting that to get more than fifty votes. I thought it would only get around ten, but boy was I wrong.

Anyway, holy hot damn he looks good! I had to give him a hand fan. There was simply no way I wouldn't (I drew my own hand holding a hand fan just to get it to look right). I wanted to put him in something that I thought would suit his personality, you know? A simple design wouldn't have sufficed.

The dress is somewhat inspired by this image made from Bing's AI image generator:

Apparently, this is what Eggman looks like XD

Bonus:

Looks like Bowser found himself a new princess. Man, even when Eggman wins he still loses

[kalehdo]

Angsty hedgehog also got drip

[iratusmus]

women

[habbodude]

Delcia the Hedgehog 7

Delcia by: Me

[coolcoolcoolbutwtf]

"To All the lovely people who make how to draw sonic or style guide tutorials, I love you and appreciate you." -Me at 2 Am

Me *sleep deprived at 3 am drawing sonic to cope with stress.* "this power was a mistake" and I have never since been able to repeat that level since. Probably for the good.

There is going to be a lot of Sonic's coming, I'm stressed with my lil literally baby nibbling.

[undergroundartwork]

Took me a while to get to it, but here's Amy Rose as a cop peeps wanted me to make, based off that one AI shitpost.

[hishighnesstheprincess]

Y’all ever think about how Sonic is wearing boots with no fucking socks on. What in the goddamn hell are his feet made of

[cartoontriper]

Surge...in high heels

original idea from @captainmolasses

[soudlenoop]

HYPERCHROME AU CHARACTER PROFILES: ROUND 2

Well, well, would you look at the time? It’s time for me to post thingies and stuff again! By thingies, I mean Sonic AUs, and by stuff, I mean character profiles! This time, it’s the guys who were in Forces.

Klaus “Rookie” Richter the Falcon

Voiceclaim: https://youtu.be/66CaiSf7oyk?feature=shared (ProZD / SungWon Cho)

Age: 17

Alignment: Good

A calm, smart, and collected individual, Klaus Richter was an ordinary Babylonian living in Starlight City. That is, until the Eggman Wars began, when Klaus saw an opportunity to follow his childhood dreams and become a masked vigilante known simply as “Rookie”. As Rookie, Klaus would help in various efforts against the forces of Eggman and Infinite. However, in a one-on-one battle against Infinite, Klaus would manage to destroy his mask, revealing the terrible truth behind Infinite’s true identity…

Zero “Infinite” McCallister the Jackal

Voiceclaim: https://youtu.be/BG9PWxT714U?feature=shared (Roger Craig Smith)

Age: 18

Alignment: Evil

Don’t be fooled by the intimidating mask! Zero McCallister takes very few things seriously, frequently making snarky comments and quips to taunt his adversaries. Zero was first hired by Dr. Eggman, right before the Eggman Wars. Not long after he got hired, Zero had the Phantom Ruby fused into his chest, granting him reality-bending and illusionary abilities. Rocking the mask he painted a smile onto, and the latest Egg-brand high-heel boots (for some reason), Zero was given the nickname “Infinite” and became commander of Eggman’s army! During his time as a commander, after successfully breaking the mask of one of his enemies, Rookie, Zero meets a rather familiar face…

[swordodinx]

Tightrope Rose

Here's our lovey pink hedgehog Amy Rose walking on tightrope in high heels

[msfantasy-comics]

The Little Three

Platonic!Damian Wayne x WonderGirl!Reader x Platonic!Jon Kent

Summary: A short story on “really want to see just a cute little platonic relationship with a reader who’s wonder woman’s daughter with damian wayne and jon kent. like a mini trinity goofing around while bruce, clark and diana are like “oh hell 😐”

A/n: Inspired by this post

Masterlist - Tip Jar

“Obviously Jon will be the best leader.” Y/n declares, finger outright pointing towards the half kryptonian. Damian’s snorts at such a blasphemous proclamation.

“That is ridiculous, I am obviously the best suited to be a leader. If you two went on a mission by yourselves you would not even develop a sound strategy. Jon would come up with a half-baked plan which will quickly crumble, while you would just go to the location and wreck havoc until you win.” Damian accuses, a signature bat frown now adorning his features.

Y/n just rolls her eyes with a groan. “It’s part of my strategy to overwhelm the enemy… it always works.” Which only grates on Damian’s nerves.

“You are only proving my point further. It is reckless and stupid. You cannot be successful by being a brute.” A high pitched gasp escapes, Y/n’s hands now slamming down onto the table.

“Shut up Damian! Just because you don’t like my battle strategy, doesn’t mean you’re better.” Smirking he crosses his arms over his chest, feet now kicked up on top of the hologram table.

“I am better than you, because I am smarter, stronger and better trained than you.” Jon slouches further back into his seat, nervousness creeping up his spin at the familiar dispute.

“Guys… let’s just calm down -“

“Oh shut up you annoying little rat! How about a game of capture the flag to prove who should be the teams leader. Whoever captures the flag wins!” Y/n asserts, fist outstretched waiting for Jon and Damian to fist bump in agreement.

“You are on Little Wonder.” Damian stretches his fist out, bumping the young wonders knuckles with his own. Y/n only clenches her jaw in irritation.

“Don’t call me that, Shorty!”

“Not all of us are born with Amazonian genetics freak!” Y/n and Damian are just about pressing noses, now playing an unspoken game of chicken.

Jon continues to stand behind them pinching the bridge of his nose. The soft ticks and beeps sounding off from the technology around them. The Justice watchtower now shifting and readjusting before settling back to a set position. “Guys… I’m not encouraging this I’m out.” Jon crosses his arms, launching himself backwards into the leather seat again, he turns his attention back to the holographic table, checking for his Dad’s location and only hoping that the pin is moving back towards the tower. Y/n and Damian only meet eyes with a knowing smirk.

“Jon’s the flag?” Y/n asks only getting a small nod from Damian.

“On your mark.” Damian says which only makes Jon’s eye bulge.

“Guys - stop! I said I didn’t want to be part of your games!” The two devils only smile as if not hearing his refusal.

“Get set.” Y/n says, the two now shifting their weight to the balls of their heels. Jon growls twisting and taking off in a quick dash.

“Go!” Damian and Y/n both shout taking off at inhuman speeds, eager to catch their human(?) flag.

Damian pulls out his bat gun, launching a wire and hook into the long wall in an attempt to quick zip line towards Jon only for Y/n to grab the wire and snap it with her bare hands.

“Leave me alone!” Jon shouts, the sonic sound of his shout vibrating the objects around him.

“You’re mine!” Y/n springs out, grabbing the corner of Jon’s jacket only for Jon to step away launching Y/n head first into the large computers and screens with a loud crack. The screens glass sprays across the floor, the Amazonian only jumps up and bounds towards Jon without a second to spare.

“Launch emergency Kryptonite!” Damian shouts into his suit mic now throwing lethal batarangs and recalling the projectiles. Jon only evading the objects by mere millimeters.

The projectiles where only continuously puncturing the steel walls and solid objects around. Sparks fly as Damian hits an electric reserve.

The red emergency lights now blaring a warning.

But the three pay no mind to the danger alarm, Y/n and Damian too absorbed in capturing their objective. Jon too distracted to not getting injured.

————

“Code Red, Watchtower is under attack.” An AI Voice announces into the earpieces of the Justice team. “Permission to counter attack the enemy by any means necessary?”

“The kids!” Superman exclaims, Batman redirecting the route of the Batship.

“Permission denied.” Batman grumbles into his mic. Worry now coating the features of Clark.

“What foe could be attacking the tower right now?” Diana voices, hoping that the answer will relieve some distress. Batman only grumbles a reply.

“Probably the kids.”

————-

Arriving to the tower the big three stand at the teleport entry, eyeing the mass damage that has occurred on the tower in the short moments they were gone. All of the screens are cracked and ruin, the holographic projector now laying on the floor in a broke heap. Sparks flying away from live wires.

“I caught him first!” Damian shouts, yanking Jon towards him.

“What are you stupid?! I caught him first!” Y/n shouts yanking Jon into her grasp. Jumping up she locks her legs around his torso, arms wrapping firmly around Jon’s neck in a lock. “You can claim him if you wretch my dead body off of him.”

“Fine.” Damian says coldly, taking a step back and launching himself onto the two making them tumble over with a loud thud. Yelps and grasps coming from the three now strewn a-crossed the floor. Jon now trapped between his two friends, thrashing limbs.

“What is going on here?” Diana yells making Y/n instantly release her grip and scrambling to get up only to slam into the floor as Damian’s grip is still wrapped around her ankle. The three slowly look up at their parents faces who are angry to say the least. “How could you let this happen.”

Y/n kicks her foot at Damian, before finally standing up, Y/n slouches under the angry gaze of her mother. “We couldn’t decide on a leader so we made it a competition of capture the flag… Jon’s the flag.” Diana’s eye twitched at the absurdity of your words. The watch tower was destroyed because their super kids decided to settle an argument with ‘Capture the Flag.’

“And added inflicted millions of dollars in damages in the process. You’re all in big trouble.” Clark reprimands, his usual friendly demeanour now replaced with stern anger.

“But Dad! I didn’t even want to be part of this stupid game!” Jon whines which only makes Y/n and Damian shoot Jon a silent deathly look.

“A good leader would’ve prevented a dispute in their team.” Clark reprimands Jon which only makes him bow his head in shame.

“You’re all clearly not ready for a serious role in the hero’s league if you plan of settling disputes with childish games and inflicting mass damage in the process - Clark, Diana and I will re-evaluate your readiness. Until then, the Little Three team is banned from missions.”

“What?! This is so unfair!” Y/n exclaims in exasperation. The hero’s team banned before they even got started. They hadn’t even picked a leader for crying out loud.

“What is unfair is that Jon, Damian and yourself have destroyed perfectly good resources all for a game.” Clark reprimands. “Jon your grounded, you will be staying home for the rest of the summer completing all farm chores including mine.” Jon groans at his punishment.

It was Bruce’s turn to supply Damian a punishment. “No vigilante work until you move stocks to cover the cost of your handiwork.” Damian stands stick straight, accepting his punishment without resistance.

“Yes father.”

Diana leans over, her brows knitting together in irritation. “Listen here missy!” Before Diana could utter another word, Y/n’s hands reach out to her mothers face, pressing her fingers into her mothers pinched brows, as if making Diana not frown would resolve her anger. Y/n begins to jut her lip out and stare up at her mother with big shining eyes.

“I’m sorry Mama, please don’t be mad.” Her soft and delicate voice pulling at Diana’s heartstrings.

“…it’s okay baby…” Diana folds instantly to her adorable daughter. “Just don’t do it again.” She coos giving her precious girl a big kiss on the cheek. Y/n only looks at her fellow mates with the cheekiest of grins.

The two boys stare in disbelief as Y/n escape parental punishment, especially as she is the instigator of the incident. Jon decides to take the plunge. “Dad-“

“Don’t even try it son.”

[iwanthermidnightz]

When I was 24 I sat in a backstage dressing room in London, buzzing with anticipation. My backup singers and bandmates gathered around me in a scattered circle.Scissors emerged and I watched in the mirror as my locks of long curly hair fell in piles on the floor. There I was in my plaid button down shirt, grinning sheepishly as my tour mates and friends cheered on my haircut. This simple thing that everyone does. But I had a secret. For me. It was more than a change of hairstyle. When I was 24. I decided to completely reinvent myself.

How does a person reinvent herself, you ask? In any way I could think of. Musically, geographically, aesthetically, behaviorally, motivationally. And I did so joyfully. The curiosity I had felt the first murmurs of while making red had amplified into a pulsing heartbeat of restlessness in my bars. The risks I took when I toyed with pop sounds and sensibilities on red? I wanted to push it further. The sense of freedom I felt when traveling to big bustling cities? I wanted to live in one. The voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman? I wanted to silence them.

You see, in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming, the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.

It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.

Being a consummate optimist, I assumed I could fix this if I simply changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth. And my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn't sensationalize or sexualize that, right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.

But none of that mattered then because I had a plan and I had a demeanor as trusting as a basket of golden retriever puppies. I had the keys to my own apartment in New York and I had new melodies bursting from my imagination. I had Max Martin and Shellback who were happy to help me explore this new sonic landscape I was enamored with. I had a new friend named Jack Antonoff who had made some cool tracks in his apartment. I had the idea that the album would be called 1989. And we would reference big 80's synths and write sky high choruses. I had sublime, inexplicable faith and I ran right toward it, in high heels and a crop top.

There was so much that I didn't know then, and looking back I see what a good thing that was. This time of my life was marked by right kind of naïveté, a hunger for adventure. And a sense of freedom I hadn't tasted before. It turns out that the cocktail of naïveté, hunger for adventure and freedom can lead to some nasty hangovers, metaphorically speaking. Of course everyone had something to say. But they always will. I learned lessons, paid prices, and tried to… don't say it don't say it. I'm sorry, I have to say it. Shake it off.

I’ll always be so incredibly grateful for how you loved and embraced this album. You, who followed my zig zag creative choices and cheered on my risks and experiments. You, who heard the wink and humor in "blank space" and maybe even empathized with the pain behind the satire. You, who saw the seeds of allyship and advocating for equality in "Welcome to New York". You, who knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood (not starting a tyrannical hot girl cult). You, who saw that I reinvent myself for a million reasons, and that one of them is to try my very best to entertain you. You, who have had the grace to allow me the freedom to change.

I was born in 1989. Reinvented for the first time in 2014, and a part of me was reclaimed in 2023 with the re-release of this album I love so dearly.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle on my life for so long. This moment is a reflection of the woods we've wandered through and all this love between us still glowing in the darkest dark.

I present to you, with gratitude and wild wonder, my version of 1989.

It’s been waiting for you.

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Prime Season 3: Final episodes, final thoughts

Well, here we are. The final seven episodes of Sonic Prime are out on Netflix, concluding the story of Sonic's adventures in the Shatterverse. I've previously shared my thoughts on the first and second seasons, which I was pretty mixed on, but there were still glimmers of hope. The fluid animation, Shadow being fun in all his appearances, Nine being fairly interesting as a jaded alternate version of Tails, etc. There was enough to make me believe that after some highs and lows there was still the possibility that this show could end on a high note - or at least a decent note.

This did not happen.

Sonic Prime's final season sucks. The ending sucks, and the road to get there sucks. It's left me wondering what the point of all this even was. There are still moments I like that I'll try to highlight, and the animators and voice cast are still clearly giving it their all, but these efforts sadly don't outweigh the overwhelming mediocrity of the story. I would barely even recommend other Sonic fans who are on the fence go out of their way to finish it. I won't begrudge people who got more out of this show than I did, but I think overall I just really, really dislike Sonic Prime.

...The problem, of course, is that all other discussion of the show has been overshadowed by needlessly hostile arguments over its place in Sonic's canon. So we've gotta talk about that, too.

(This post will contain full spoilers for Sonic Prime.)

The show's out of ideas but they've gotta stretch that shit out to hit the 23 episode mark somehow

Season 2 ended with the big twist that Nine decided to betray Sonic and Shadow, taking the Paradox Prism for himself so that he could go turn the empty world of the Grim into his own little paradise, since he doesn't believe he'll fit anywhere else. Nine has made himself the true big bad of the show.

The main impact this has is that now, instead of fighting endless identical Eggforcer bots and members of the Chaos Council over and over, the good guys and the Chaos Council have to fight endless Chaos Sonic-style robots sent by Nine while he goes "grrrrr I need Sonic's energy to stabilize the Paradox Prism." This continues for six whole episodes until the series finale, when the show decides it's time for Sonic and Nine to quickly make amends, fix everything, and send Sonic and Shadow home.

That's pretty much the whole season.

I cannot emphasize enough just how much of this final season is just fight after fight after fight against Nine's bots, and how fucking boring that gets. The season feels like one long, drawn out final battle that did not need to be nearly this long, but Nine had his big heel turn 2/3 of the way through the show and we've gotta fill up the rest of the time somehow. The novelty of the bots being based off of Sonic's friends (including the Chocobo-sized Birdie from the jungle world) really wears off quickly when they're just used as generic, silent mooks that the good guys have to fight by the dozen like it's the climax of an MCU movie. The first episode of the season with Sonic and Shadow fighting the new bots is pretty good, especially because Sonic and Shadow's dynamic is one of the few redeeming aspects of this show's writing, but after that it just gets boring. Three full episodes in a row are spent showing all the characters fighting robots in an empty wasteland while Nine scowls next to a big beam of energy. I found myself missing the in-your-face attitude of Chaos Sonic so much. He truly was one of the best parts of this show.

While the cast is busy fighting all these robots for what feels like an eternity, various things of varying levels of interest happen. There's a halfhearted attempt to have some kind of rivalry between Shadow and the main Grim Sonic throughout the final battle, but it completely falls flat because Grim Sonic has no personality whatsoever. It's like Shadow beefing with an above-average Egg Pawn. (Actually, no, that would be funny.) There's also a death fakeout with the two other versions of Tails, where they make a makeshift bomb and throw it a little too close to themselves on the battlefield and seem to get vaporized. If they had actually died there they would have had the funniest, most pointless deaths in the entire franchise.

I also realized at one point that they were trying to do the Avengers girl power fight thing with the three versions of Amy fighting a bunch of Rouge bots. This was very funny to me. Actually, so much of this is just following the tired MCU formula to the letter. Fighting over a macguffin, two armies just kind of running at each other and clashing in a big empty field, constant one-liner quips instead of actual jokes, the need to take out key targets to make the whole enemy army disappear, a villain who has a point but has to randomly hurt people so that there's an excuse for the heroes to fight him. When combined with how shit the multiverse stuff is, this whole show really is just Man of Action tackling some of the most played out storytelling tropes in modern pop culture in the most bland way possible. What a bunch of hacks.

By far, the one truly fun thing that happens in this protracted final battle is when a giant robot based on Big appears. It doesn't have arms or legs, but it can swing itself around to use its tail like a giant mace, and it can also shoot Froggy-shaped missiles out of its mouth. I wish the rest of the show was even half as fun as this. Again, Sonic Prime has just enough good moments to make you mad that the rest of the show isn't better.

The thing is, all this repetitive (but well-animated) action and the thin excuse plot would be totally serviceable if I just gave a shit about the characters involved. But I don't. I don't care what happens to the pirate version of Amy who goes "arrr." I don't care about what happens to Hipster Eggman. And unfortunately, by the end, I didn't really care about Nine, either.

Nine as a villain

It's hard to criticize the story here without it coming off as a broad condemnation of the tropes at play. The thing is, I like many stories that try to do similar things. I love clashes between heroes and villains that are really just fantastical exaggerations of more personal conflicts. I love stories where a tragic, sympathetic villain lashes out at the world as an expression of the pain they feel, and a compassionate hero just has to get through to them. I eat that shit right up. Undertale is my favorite game ever made. Shit, I love other Sonic stories that do these exact things. And Sonic having to fight an alternate timeline version of Tails also has so much potential for drama!

So I can very easily imagine a version of the show where all this works for me. That just isn't the version we got.

Like I said last time, Nine's motivation is just too sympathetic and understandable for his sudden turn to supervillainy to make any sense. He just wanted to start over somewhere where he can be happy after a childhood filled with bullying and loneliness. Nine betraying Sonic and stealing the Paradox Prism to go make his own world? That tracks! Especially since we don't even know if Nine will still exist if Sonic goes through with his plan to restore his original world! But trying to kill everyone in New Yolk City by tilting the world 90 degrees, intentionally targeting the civilian population because it'll get to Sonic? Nope! Sorry, that's a bridge too far. I don't buy it. He's jaded and antisocial, but he doesn't strike me as cruel. Writing in an excuse about him needing Sonic's energy to fix the Prism does not make this make more sense.

This was really just one of those conflicts where it felt like everyone should stop and talk it out. Instead we got six episodes of fighting before one of Sonic's many, MANY attempts at reasoning with Nine throughout the season finally works. This isn't me pulling some Cinema Sins bullshit where I complain about characters in a work of fiction not always behaving rationally - the real problem is that it's just so damn repetitive waiting for this conflict to resolve. This could have been wrapped up in two or three episodes and instead it takes seven.

A brief aside about that weird Dorkly-ass Sonic Advance 3 flashback scene hacked together with mismatched sprites where Gemerl happens to be present, presumably just because he's a part of the sprite for the Sunset Hill boss, and seeing him briefly makes me remember the extended cast from the games and how much I wish they had just made a cartoon about them instead of a bunch of stock characters wearing the skin of Sonic's friends, but then Gemerl just explodes with the boss machine at the end while Eggman is shown to get away so I guess Gemerl just dies in this flashback

Yeah that sure happened huh

The ending

Despite having a final battle that felt like an eternity, Sonic Prime is a show that just kind of... ends. And that ending is weird and haphazard.

The understanding I had was that Sonic's normal world had "shattered" when the Paradox Prism was destroyed, and from those remnants these new worlds were created. This is why they use terms like "Shatterverse" and "Shatterspaces" and why there's shattered glass/crystal/whatever imagery everywhere. This is a broken, fragmented version of the real universe. Right? Right?? Isn't that the entire premise of the show? And therefore, if the universe has been shattered, then fixing it means putting all the shattered pieces back together. Which I would assume means that the Shatterspaces cease to exist.

So, in the ending... Sonic's world seems to just exist as another Shatterspace. Restoring the Paradox Prism doesn't seem to combine the worlds or anything, it just fixes the broken portal to Sonic's world that exists alongside all the others. So... what exactly was the point of all the shattered glass symbolism?

Things only get more confusing as the ending progresses. Shadow brings Sonic through the portal before the draining of Sonic's whatever energy makes him disappear, and they're transported back in time to right before Sonic broke the Paradox Prism. Only Sonic seems to remember what happened (Shadow might remember, but he doesn't say anything), and with the Paradox Prism never shattered, it's unclear if the Shatterspaces exist now.

I'm not particularly hung up on the time loop ending. It's very much in line with all sorts of classic morality tales like A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, where the flawed protagonist goes through some kind of magical experience and then returns home with a new appreciation for the people in their life. It's always been pretty obvious that was the type of story they were telling. I'm more bothered by the fact that there's no time whatsoever spent on whether or not the other worlds and the characters in them continue to exist. Sonic seems to act like the worlds will go on without him before he leaves, but it's not like we get an ending scene that shows how the other worlds are doing, so they really truly might as well not exist anymore. Sonic just wraps up the adventure from the first episode when he gets home, and before he can explain what happened from his perspective he's interrupted by a mysterious energy wave from off-screen and it's off to the next adventure.

(Despite this odd cliffhanger ending, the show is extremely over and not coming back. I have to imagine this is just a "the adventures never end" type ending and not a hint that more shit is going on with the Paradox Prism.)

This ending is also a terrible resolution to Nine's whole arc, despite him being the driving force of so much of the show. The way I see it, there are are three possible fates for him:

The Shatterspaces continue existing, and things go as Sonic expects them to go. Nine is allowed to make the Grim into his own little utopia, and everyone else leaves him alone instead of punishing him for all the trouble he caused. Instead of finding love and acceptance so he can heal from a lifetime of bullying and loneliness, Nine is allowed to run away, isolating himself from every other living being in the multiverse, and live alone as the god of an empty world with only his own creations as company. Sonic was his only friend, and he's gone forever now.

The Shatterspaces continue existing, but because of the time travel ending, most of the events of the show never happened. Sonic never helped defeat the Chaos Council, so they still control New Yolk City. Nine is back to living in this dystopian city with no friends. He never met Sonic.

The Shatterspaces have been erased. After fighting so hard for his right to exist as his own person and not just a "wrong" version of Tails, when the timeline is altered, he just... stops existing. Along with almost every other character in the show.

Do I even need to explain why these are all unsatisfying?

Misc. thoughts

I skimmed over this, but a lot of the final season is just spent seeing Sonic's friends bicker with the Chaos Council and then Sonic has to beg them to get along to save the universe. It gets old.

We also never really got an explanation for why the Chaos Council exists. They can't have come from other Shatterspaces because there ARE no other Shatterspaces. If the original Eggman was just split into five guys or time travel was involved or whatever, it never comes up. I can live with this, but it seems like an odd omission for a children's show that's constantly bogged down in technobabble explaining the mechanics of its extremely small and finite multiverse.

I have no idea where Shadow was for the first part of the final battle. I figured Nine must have captured him off-screen after Sonic first left the Grim, but Shadow was just... hanging around until his cue in the script, I guess?

Sonic saying "help a brother up" to Shadow was funny

Hipster Eggman pointing to one of the few nameless extras who tagged along for the final battle and going "Who are you? Seriously, does anyone know who this is?" was the only funny thing he did in the entire show

Mangy Tails randomly pressing buttons on the Chaos Council's generator like a curious animal and managing to improve its output was cute

Rusty Rose randomly realizes that the Birdie in her chest actually isn't being used as a power source, and that the Chaos Council was just... using that to manipulate her, somehow? I don't really know how that works but whatever

The Sonic Advance 3 flashback uses the actual boss music from the game, but they can't use the real Sunset Hill theme because they didn't wanna pay Masato Nakamura for using the Green Hill motif, I guess

To my fellow fans of bad games: did you know that Man of Action wrote the story for the bizarre Square Enix game The Quiet Man? The one where the lengthy FMV cutscenes play out with muffled audio and no subtitles because the protagonist is deaf, so you can't tell what's going on? And you had to do a New Game+ playthrough to actually hear the audio and understand what's going on? The worst-reviewed game of 2018? That one? I only learned that recently and it blew me away

So yeah, that's the end of the show. I didn't like it, and I don't think I liked the show much as a whole. I am far from alone in this sentiment, but the reasons why people dislike the show... those vary a bit.

The canon conundrum

More than anything else, it seems like most other discourse surrounding this show has been consumed by one talking point:

How can this be canon? Why is it canon?

I want to state very clearly up front that I, too, am a person who's noticed and complained about the inconsistencies with the games in Sonic Prime. Some of the characters are a bit off - or, you know, completely unrecognizable when discussing the writing of some of the AU counterparts. I think it's lame to say Sonic and friends all live in Green Hill and act like that's the entirety of their world. That sort of thing. But if Sega says it's canon to everything else? Sure. Fine. There's weirder shit in the canon.

Really, most of this can be explained away pretty easily. The show was written at a time when Sega was still figuring shit out and there were looser restrictions. Why does Sonic act a little more immature? Probably just because Prime is aiming for a slightly younger audience than the games or the IDW comics. (And also it's, y'know, written by Man of Action, who people have accused of only knowing how to write one kind of protagonist for years.) Why do Sonic and friends live in Green Hill? Because that's the most recognizable location from the games, and the game world doesn't get enough screentime to justify modeling multiple different environments, so they just focus on Green Hill. Why is this considered canon to the games? Because this is the first Sonic cartoon that outright references events from the games as things that have happened to Sonic in the past.

But announcing early on that Prime would be canon certainly let fans' imaginations wander. It was one of the few things we knew about the show before it premiered. People wondered if characters from the games and comics who had never made any appearances in Sonic cartoons might get their time in the spotlight. We wondered if it would tie into the lore or any existing storylines in interesting ways, like the IDW comics do. But above all else, we hoped that its canon status would mean that Sonic Prime would finally be the Sonic cartoon that was faithful to the source material with no catches. We've literally never seen the actual world of the games brought to life in a TV show. Sonic X came the closest, but that still took its liberties. And so hype built for this Canon Sonic Cartoon.

And then it actually came out, and after a brief intro in Green Hill based loosely on the games, it spent most of its running time focusing on things like "what if there was a version of Eggman who was a bratty teen who just wanted to play video games?" The disappointment among fans is understandable. I am disappointed. Look at how much I've bitched about this aggressively mid cartoon.

Some fans, however, came up with an elaborate theory about the series. You see, when asked about the show's place in the game timeline during a live Q&A, Ian Flynn (who only served as a consultant on Sonic Prime and did not write any of it) said this:

"I cannot answer because I know the answer, and you haven't finished watching the show yet."

A couple days later, when answering another question about Prime's place in the timeline and also about a writing discrepancy, he said this:

"As to where it fits on the timeline, I can't speak to it because that would spoil the show to a degree. So you're just gonna have to wait 'til it's done. Towards the other point, I don't know how much I can say, so it's probably better that I not comment. That's a really dissatisfying answer, I know, I'm sorry, but my hands are kinda tied on that one."

I feel the need to quote Ian directly here, because these very basic statements about how he can't talk about behind the scenes shit or anything from unreleased episodes was GREATLY misinterpreted by the fandom. People clung onto Ian's claim that we had to keep watching like a life preserver. Some took it as Ian saying that the ending would explain everything. Finally, we'd have a definitive answer for every little discrepancy and the apparent differences in worldbuilding. An explanation for why Sega and the producers repeatedly insist this show HAS to be canon.

And to these fans, the only explanation that made any sense... would be if the ending of Sonic Prime pulled a Flashpoint.

As this theory explained, the Sonic we were following in Sonic Prime wasn't the Sonic we know from the games and the IDW comics, and likewise the world he comes from isn't really the game world. This is a different Sonic who fights a different Eggman in a world that's literally just Green Hill. It was a hint that something was off all along! But in the end of the series, this Sonic would sacrifice himself to merge all of the Shatter Spaces together and form a brand new world, and that would be the more visually diverse world of the games and comics. According to this theory, Sonic Prime was canon because it was a new origin story for the entire franchise.

I want you to really stop and think about how asinine of an origin story this would be. Really drink this in. The idea that there was another, slightly different version of Sonic who went on a kinda shitty multiverse adventure and then sacrificed himself to create the real Sonic that we've known since 1991. People convinced themselves this made more sense than the simple explanation that a different team of writers got some stuff wrong and Sega didn't make them change it. Interviews where producers talked about drawing on Sonic's "mythology" (ie: they reference the games in the show) were taken very literally - they must be saying that Prime's story is mythological in nature, and that this show would be integral to the games' mythology. Why bother making a show that's canon if it's not going to be crucial to that canon, after all?

The final episodes dropped, and none of this happened. Because of course it didn't. It was all Sherlock fandom-level copium. But fans were left confused by the lack of a grand reveal of where Sonic Prime fits in the timeline, believing they had been promised this, and they turned to Ian for an explanation. Ian's answer:

It doesn't matter, b/c Prime wipes itself out. It's sometime after Advance 3*, but otherwise, it's moot. I didn't want to sour anyone's expectations or investment by spoiling how Prime resolves, that's all. If you enjoyed it, awesome. Savor it. If you didn't, then you can safely ignore it. Simple as that.

* About a trillion people have um, actually'd Ian to point out Orbot and Cubot briefly appear in the show, but if we're really being pedantic here we don't actually know how long before Colors Eggman built Orbot and Cubot, so it wouldn't be fully accurate to say a story featuring Orbot and Cubot couldn't be set before Colors. Either way, a story set anywhere around Colors, or at any point later than that, could still be described as "sometime after Advance 3." Advance 3 is just the most recent game that has specific in-game events referenced in the show. Yes I can feel myself morphing into the nerd emoji before your very eyes

Anyway, this is the latest reason Ian is getting death threats on Twitter. This time it's over a show he barely even had any input on!

I'll cut to the chase. It is truly wild to me that people are getting this heated over canonical inconsistencies in a series as historically inconsistent as Sonic, to the point that they think threatening Ian is justified. The aesthetics of the entire world Sonic inhabits change every other game. Sonic Chronicles may no longer be canon due to the Penders lawsuits, but it was canon at one point, and it took huge liberties with Sonic's world, moving Green Hill off of South Island and reinterpreting Station Square as a tiny outpost in a snowy alpine forest region. Characters' personalities change from writer to writer and based on what Sega wants at the time, with some being WILDLY different across different games. One game Sonic will be stoic and cool, the next he thinks "Baldy McNosehair" is the funniest thing ever. Sega's STILL trying to figure out what Amy's personality is supposed to be. We still don't have the explanation for how the two seemingly contradictory backstories for Blaze can fit together. There have been multiple huge, sweeping retcons, and retcons to those retcons. Sonic Forces claims that Classic Sonic is from an entirely different universe than Modern Sonic, and the plot only makes any sense if that's true - otherwise, Modern Sonic would have already known Eggman was going to beat him and take over the world when he did, because his younger self had already lived through that war. All of that makes no sense in the newly reunified timeline, but Forces is very much still canon.

For fuck's sake, we're talking about the series where Eggman blew up half the moon and then it looked completely normal in every other game after, explained away as "the moon just rotated so we can't see the destroyed side from Earth." This has never, ever, ever been a franchise where everything lines up perfectly with no issues. It's not that serious.

The real core problem with Prime isn't that things don't line up 100% with our current understanding of canon, or that Sonic's characterization means this can't be the real Sonic, or anything like that. The problem, as I've been saying this whole time, is that the story is bad. None of these discrepancies would truly matter if the story was better. They'd just be nitpicks. The fact that Sonic and friends live in Green Hill would be the farthest thing from my mind if the drama was more engaging, if the villains were better, if the jokes were actually funny, if more of the alternate universe counterparts of Sonic's friends had more than one generic character trait each, if the multiverse was more creative and varied, if the final seven episodes of this show didn't devolve into the third act of an MCU movie and then just arbitrarily end, if Nine's character arc actually had a satisfying conclusion instead of ending with either isolation or nonexistence. Maybe we'd be seeing people talk about more than just whether or not it should be considered canon if the writing was any good.

"Canon" is not real, and it sure as hell isn't worth sending people death threats over. It's a storytelling tool. Real human beings decide what does and doesn't go into that canon, or how much they do or don't want to draw on past stories, when creating a new story. Serving that canon is secondary to creating a story where the emotional truth resonates with the audience. And Sonic Prime failed to do that. That is its true failing.

And finally, to close out...

Since people will ask, here are my current ranking of the Sonic TV shows, now that Prime is finished.

Sonic Boom

Sonic SatAM

Sonic X

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic Prime

Sonic Underground

Yes, I'd say Boom is my favorite. It's far from my ideal Sonic cartoon, but it gets a lot of points for being as funny as it is. But the top four are all shows I'd say I like, more or less. They all have their pros and cons.

So now, uh... I guess let's hope the live action Knuckles show coming to Paramount+ is better than the underwhelming synopsis of "Knuckles helps deputy sheriff Wade train in the ways of the echidna warrior" would imply? Maybe we'll get lucky?